Author: Caillou Pettis

Men: Another Review

In the aftermath of a personal tragedy, Harper retreats alone to the beautiful English countryside, hoping to find a place to heal. However, someone or something from the surrounding woods appears to be stalking her. What begins as simmering dread soon becomes a fully formed nightmare, inhabited by her darkest memories and fears.

Alex Garland‘s Men opens up genuinely heartwarming. I know, the word “heartwarming” is probably the last word you want to hear me use to describe the latest film from Garland, who is definitely best known for directing legitimately disturbing horror films that are capable of making even grown men want to sleep with the blanket pulled up over their eyes.

But, hear me out.

In the opening few scenes, we watch as Jessie Buckley‘s Harper drives down an idyllic countryside road, listening to some tunes. The drive she’s taking is filled with absolutely gorgeous scenery, and everywhere you look is green. It’s basically like a dream come true for most people.

We soon learn that she’s driving down to a massive but ancient countryside house that’s owned by a man named Geoffrey. Why is she renting out this house? Well, as it turns out, her husband died not too long ago, and this is her way of trying to cope with it all. She’s trying to make sense of him. Why? That’s part of the movie’s mystery.

As for Geoffrey, he’s a super charming fellow. As soon as his path crosses with Harper’s, it’s clear that this man is jolly, happy, and friendly. He’s more than willing to help Harper settle into this new home of hers, and frequently insists that if she ever needs even the slightest bit of help, to come and find him.

Honestly, his character had me smiling from ear-to-ear. At this point in the film, I found myself thinking “Why is this movie so warming yet so… unsettling?”. That’s the absolutely mesmerizing thing about Men – it’s a film that is absolutely terrifying, and yet, for so much of the running time, you barely know why.

Even in the opening when Harper is driving down to the front of the house and talking with Geoffrey, there’s an aura of unease present. Harper plucking off an apple from a nearby tree and taking a bite will send a shiver down your spine. But why? Deep down, we know it’s just an apple. People eat apples all the time, so why does this feel different?

Men is, simply put, the greatest horror film since Midsommar, which, by the way, is my favorite film ever made. I am legitimately in awe that this film even exists, because it’s these kinds of movies that inspire me the most. Weird horror is my kind of horror, and Men is easily the weirdest horror film I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

But I truly cannot express enough just how disturbing this movie is from beginning to end. There’s an incredible scene that was shown in the trailer where we watch Harper walking down a long, dark tunnel where she eventually proceeds to sing a song, only to hear the echo of her voice go on and on for miles.

In this scene, nothing necessarily creepy happens, but there’s still that sense of foreboding. Like something is about to go wrong at any given moment. Men finds terror in the most simplistic of places and situations. Harper gets into one of the most terrifying encounters I’ve ever seen in a horror movie while simply being in her living room.

There’s a scene in the final ten minutes that felt so grandiose and frightening, that I seriously felt my heart beating rapidly, almost to the point where it felt as if it was going to pop out of my chest. Garland is a straight-up master at making horror that grows and grows and grows until you can barely take it anymore.

And it also features easily the most messed up horror movie ending I’ve ever seen. My entire theatre was in complete bewilderment at what they had just seen, and it was such a good feeling to witness that in person. I love whenever a filmmaker is able to freak audiences out so much to the point where they are quite literally rendered speechless, much like I was. As soon as those end credits appeared on screen, I just stared straight at the screen for several minutes before leaving the theatre. I honestly couldn’t tell you the last time a film left me feeling that way.

I want to stray away from talking too much into Men for fear of spoiling it. Trust me, you need to watch this movie as blind as possible because if you do, you’ll end up having one of the most memorable horror movie experiences of your entire life. Alex Garland – please make more horror films.

In Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, Chip and Dale are living amongst cartoons and humans in modern-day Los Angeles, but their lives are quite different now. It has been decades since their successful television series was canceled, and Chip (voice of John Mulaney) has succumbed to a life of suburban domesticity as an insurance salesman. Dale (voice of Andy Samberg), meanwhile, has had CGI surgery and works the nostalgia convention circuit, desperate to relive his glory days. When a former cast mate mysteriously disappears, Chip and Dale must repair their broken friendship and take on their Rescue Rangers detective personas once again to save their friend’s life.

To this day, I’ve never seen a single episode of the Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers animated series, despite the fact that as a youngster, I absolutely adored watching cartoons – as a matter of fact, they were basically all I ever watched. Because of my not watching that show, did I have a lame childhood? Probably. I can safely say that after watching this brand new live-action/computer-animated action-adventure comedy directed by Akiva Schaffer (who helmed the outstandingly hilarious Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping), that this is one of the funniest movies in years. Seriously.

If you were to have told me that an animated film about two goofy chipmunks would end up being one of best movies of the year and one of the funniest in several years, I would’ve legitimately laughed right in your face and told you you were crazy. But, alas, here we are. In my opinion, Schaffer is easily one of the best comedy directors out there, full stop. As I mentioned earlier, he famously directed Popstar, which has a reptuation for being off-the-walls crazy but in all the best ways.

And I can safely say that he more than brings that same energy to this project. This movie is honestly able to get away with a lot. This is a Disney movie, and yet absolutely nothing about it feels like one. It feels like the edgy humor of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (who, by the way, makes a cameo in this film) accompanied with the extremely meta and ridiculous comedy from Andy Samberg that we all know and love him for.

Speaking of Samberg, he is absolutely marvelous here in the voice role of Dale, who’s definitely the more optimistic chipmunk of the two. Dale is incredibly adamant about bringing the Rescue Rangers crew back together, but Chip isn’t so keen to tag along. This is mainly because, in the past, Dale abandoned him to join the cast of a spy television show, essentially leaving Chip and his career behind.

So, of course, Chip has every reason to be upset. Dale notices this immediately, and throughout the course of the film, does whatever he can to rekindle that friendship that he wishes was still a part of his life. Not only is this film hilarious (seriously, there are at least two jokes every minute), but it’s also surprisingly heartfelt and emotional. I didn’t expect myself to get teary-eyed in a movie about chipmunks, but that’s exactly what ended up happening.

John Mulaney is also great in the voice role of Chip, although he definitely does get outshined by Samberg quite a lot. There are plenty of amazing cameos throughout, including “Ugly Sonic,” from the 2020 film Sonic the Hedgehog. Oh, yeah, and J.K. Simmons is also in this film, so that’s kind of awesome.

At the end of the day, Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers is one of the most delightfully hilarious and heartfelt films of the year so far. It’s a relentlessly entertaining blend between live-action and animation that’ll leave you smiling from ear to ear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4Z0GHWHe60

Kunle (Donald Elise Watkins) and his best friend, Sean (RJ Cyler), are both seniors in college
about to embark on an epic night of Spring Break parties. Sean has the whole night planned
out, including every party they will hit on their “legendary tour.” Kunle is down, yet mostly
concerned with finishing up his mold experiment in his lab, as his acceptance to Princeton is
hinging on the results.

They return to their apartment to pre-game, yet find that their roommate, Carlos (Sebastian Chacon), left the door open. As they enter with trepidation, Sean and Kunle discover a drunk, semi-conscious White female they don’t know on the floor and an oblivious Carlos, who didn’t hear her come in over the videogame blaring in his ears. Kunle wants to call the cops but Sean vehemently opposes the idea concerned how it will look when the cops show up (two Black men, one Latino man and a passed out White woman).

Together, Carlos, Sean and Kunle load the girl — who they nickname Goldilocks, but whose real
name is Emma (Maddie Nichols) — into Sean’s van, with the intention of taking her somewhere
safe rather than calling the police. Meanwhile, Emma’s sister, Maddy (Sabrina Carpenter), has
realized that Emma left the party they were at, and begins to search for her in a drunk panic
using Emma’s phone’s location. What ensues is a chaotic, hilarious, and tension-filled chase all
over town as our trio grapples with their differences while attempting to bring Emma to safety.

Carey Williams‘ Emergency is fascinating in that it starts out very much so like a blend between
an old-school coming-of-age film and a modern one along the lines of Olivia Wilde‘s Booksmart,
before eventually turning into a legitimately suspenseful comedy-drama. Surprisingly enough,
there’s also no shocking tonal shift that’s jarring and wildly noticeable. Screenwriter KD Dávila
manages to walk a fine line between being too serious and too comedic, crafting an authentic
yet absurd film that will surely be remembered as one of the most insane movies of the year.

The film runs for a total of one-hundred and five minutes, and with every passing scene, things
get increasingly crazier for our lead cast of characters. Just when things look as though they
might finally be okay, something happens to throw our protagonists off course completely,
forcing them to re-analyze. The problem is that the situation that they’re all in is incredibly
dangerous – they aren’t sure what to do with this passed out girl, and it seems as though they
all have drastically different opinions on the matter.

Emergency can oftentimes be gut-bustingly hilarious because of the moments where we watch
our three leads weigh the outcomes, which often ends in huge disagreements or even
sometimes going off into a whole different topic. I will admit, however, that at times the film can
become a little bit old mainly because it’s a nearly two hour movie that solely revolves around
this one storyline.

It almost seems as though it would’ve been a better story had it been told in the form of a
television episode of some sort of comedy sketch show. Even still, though, Dávila’s script is
mostly witty and sharp, and it is seriously impressive to see just how much she was able to write
based on just this one scenario. Screenwriting is hard, obviously, but I feel as though comedy
films would be some of the hardest to write because if you don’t make audiences laugh, you’ve
fundamentally failed mission number one with your film.

Another thing that makes this film so great is the performances all across the board. RJ Cyler,
Donald Elise Watkins, and Sebastian Chacon have some of the best chemistry I’ve seen so far
this year, working wonders off one another in practically every single scene. Also terrific here is
the always amazing Sabrina Carpenter who gets a smaller role than you may think, but it’s still
an important one and Carpenter makes it her own.

Emergency is a highly entertaining movie that succeeds greatly with its comedy, even if it
struggles to find ways to be interesting all the way through.

A high-school cheerleader falls into a coma before her prom. Twenty years later, she awakens
and wants to return to high school to reclaim her status and become prom queen.

It’s summer, and you know what that means! Oh… right. The inevitable time when Netflix dumps
a whole bucket load of content in our faces and we have to scrounge around and find what’s
actually good. But obviously, it’s frustrating to have to sort through the bad to find gold. Sadly,
Alex Hardcastle‘s Senior Year falls into the former category. The film definitely has its moments
but the vast majority of the time is spent with wildly annoying characters who populate this
terribly predictable, corny, and bland script that honestly offers nothing new to the coming-of-age
scene.

First thing’s first – the humor in this movie sucks. It’s seriously awful. Rebel Wilson‘s character
Stephanie Conway is fun and likeable at times, but there are some sequences where we can’t
help but hate her, which wasn’t the intention. In one scene early on, she drops the “r” word like
it’s nothing and uses the word “gay” as a way to insult something. Luckily, two characters in the
film immediately correct her and straighten her out, but it’s still frustrating to imagine a
screenwriter legitimately writing this scene down on paper.

Wilson is extremely charismatic in the role and she definitely brings her A-game here. You can
tell while watching the film that she has a lot of passion for this story and she wanted to do her
best, and she is quite charming in the role. However, I will say that I found myself being
compelled by her younger self in the film, portrayed by Angourie Rice.

Surprisingly, there are quite a lot of cameos in here that took me off-guard. Seriously, some
actors’ appearances in this movie took me by more of a surprise than the cameos in Doctor
Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. For example, what the heck is Jeremy Ray Taylor doing
here? And Michael Cimino? Steve Aoki?

There are some scenes where Senior Year actually has a big, beating heart and you’ll find
yourself getting invested in what’s going on, but then, next thing you know, the screenwriters
come along and make everything cringe-inducing again. A lot of this movie is exactly that –
heartwarming scene, funny scene, then… ugh.

Terrible dialogue, and a story that feels totally directionless. At one point in the movie, I checked to see how much longer I had in the film to go and saw that there were forty remaining minutes and yet, even still, the film didn’t have a clear story direction.

To be fair, there are way worse ways to spend your time, but that doesn’t make Senior Year any
less terrible. The film is a sloppily written mess of a comedy complete with unlikeable
characters, a directionless story, and painfully cringe-worthy dialogue.

Val has reached a place where he feels the only way out is to end things. But he considers himself a bit of a failure—his effectiveness lacking—so he figures he could use some help. As luck would have it, Val’s best friend, Kevin, is recovering from a failed suicide attempt, so he seems like the perfect partner for executing this double suicide plan. But before they go, they have some unfinished business to attend to.

Jerrod Carmichael‘s On the Count of Three opens up with a bang as we watch two young men panting heavily behind a building, standing a few feet apart from one another, each holding a loaded gun at each other’s hand, counting down to the inevitable second where they’re going to shoot each other fatally point-blank.

Not only is this opening scene absolutely pulse-pounding, but it’s made all the more shocking when, in the very next scene, we learn that these two men are best friends. Now we’re left to wonder why they got into this situation and what lead up to it. It turns out – they want to die.

Written by Ari Katcher and Ryan Welch, On the Count of Three is one of the most brilliantly written films of the year so far. Even though it doesn’t even clock it at ninety minutes, this film is relentlessly paced and utilizes every single scene to its utmost potential. You’ll get so invested in this zany and oftentimes hilariously dark story that next thing you’ll know, the end credits are rolling.

A lot of this movie’s power comes from the dynamic between its stars Carmichael and Christopher Abbott. Carmichael’s character Val continuously tells Abbot’s character Kevin that he wants to commit suicide and he doesn’t care if he dies, but each time he says something like this, you can tell that maybe he doesn’t fully mean that.

Kevin, on the other hand, does. Of course, seeing as how this movie is well over an hour long, it’s pretty obvious that neither men dies in the first act. The second act is absolutely amazing because it ponders on the two men and their thoughts. If you knew that you were going to die by the end of that given day, what would you do with that day? Would you right some wrongs?

Well, not these two. Kevin sets out on quite a bloodthirsty act of revenge while Val essentially just tags along for the ride because since he’s going to die at the end of the day as well, what else does he have to lose?

I will admit that I wish this movie was a bit longer because I wanted to learn more about Val and Kevin’s past. We know a few things here and there, but some things definitely are murkier than others. Also, there’s several scenes where guns are fired indoors or around the public and yet, for some reason, nobody screams? Nobody gets alerted or anything? Movie logic.

All in all though, On the Count of Three is one of the best films of the year and an extremely impressive debut directorial effort from Jerrod Carmichael. It’s hilarious, unsettling, and powerful all at once.