Author: Rudie Obias

After winning an Academy Award for Best Screenplay for Dead Poets Society in 1990, filmmaker Tom Schulman has found a lot of success in Hollywood writing family films, like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, comedies like What About Bob?, and serious dramas like Medicine Man. However, after his directorial debut 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, his work in Hollywood has yet to reach such heights as in the early ‘90s — especially after writing the notorious box office bomb Welcome to Mooseport in 2004. 

Schulman’s work seemed better when he was diving into genre pictures with a bit of grit and violence. After nearly a 20-year hiatus as a writer and nearly 30 years as a director, Tom Schulman is back making motion pictures with the, albeit mixed, Double Down South, a bayou pool shark movie.

Starring Lili Simmons (Sound of Violence, Bone Tomahawk), as a breathy billiards player drifter named Diana, Double Down South is a major throwback to crime films from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s that shows that it has something more up its sleeve, but sadly, not much, than a game of high-stakes keno. 

The film follows Diana, an up-and-coming star in pool who shows up in a backwoods underground pool hall run by the very unsavory country boy Nick, played by Kim Coates (Bad Blood, Sons of Anarchy), who manic and violent outbursts keeps an audience on edge and deeply aware of his presence on the big screen.

Helping out around the pool hall is the one-eyed Little Nick, played by Igby Rigney (F9: The Fast Saga, The Midnight Club), a teenanger who helps with games and has ambitious to run the place one day, and Old Nick, played by Tom Bower (Senior Love Triangle, Out of the Furnace) an old timer who counts the cash and is considered the soul of the seedy joint. Both characters are basically shells of their former-selves, thanks to years of Nick’s abuse and violent outbursts.

Double Down South may have the grit, but oftentimes feels like a watered down version of a David Mamet or Paul Schrader film with lofty bits of dialogue, clever monologue scenes, and effective tension rising stakes. However, it just feels lightweight and paperthin, as if it’s holding back. Think House of Games or The Card Counter without the gray morality or over-the-top moments and thrills — akin to what you’d find if you were playing high-stakes keno.

In this way, Double Down South just doesn’t have the oomph to bring it over the top and back home. Characters are clearly defined, but very really steer clear of those first impressions. Diana is clean and virtuous with a chip on her shoulder, while Nick is violent and petty. He’s clearly the villain of the piece, but never strays away from that impression, despite the film directing us in the opposite direction.

The film climax involves an on-going feud and hustle with rival southern pool shark Beaumont DuBinion, which is objectively a very cool name, played by Justin Marcel McManus (Power Book II: Ghost, Star), which admittedly is clever and smart. But it should be in a much better movie, or the general focus of this one.

It’s unfortunate, because Double Down South has the elements to be a wonderful crime thriller, but it just misses the pocket — or keno board, so to speak.

The space thriller is a movie genre that certainly has its highs, like Gravity, The Martian, and Alien and lows, like Life, Passengers, and Voyagers. The sub-genre has to include the mystery and unforgiving nature of space, while also conflict between characters to accomplish a mission. Space is the one constant that man can’t completely control. In the new film I.S.S. (which stands for the International Space Station), asks the question, what if the conflict has nothing to do with the characters themselves? In fact, what if the conflict was completely out of their control.

Written by first-time screenwriter Nick Shafir and directed by journeywoman Gabriela Cowperthwaite (Megan Leavey, Our Friend), I.S.S. follows biologist turned astronaut Dr. Kira Foster, played by Academy Award-winner Ariana DeBose (West Side Story, Hamilton). She joins the crew of the I.S.S., one American and three Russians, along with a big ball of nervous energy Christian, played by John Gallagher Jr. (10 Cloverfield Lane, The Miseducation of Cameron Post).

After the pair settle in for their first days onboard, a nuclear war breaks out between the United States and Russia, as the crew receive new orders to take over the space station by any means necessary. Although the crew had no part in the conflict, their duty as scientist binds them to helping out mankind, regardless of nationality. However, when Russian commander Nicholai, played by Costa Ronin (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Red Dog), takes his duty too far with his conflict with the American commander, played by Chris Messina (Air, Birds of Prey), each crewmember — who’s rightfully confused and worried about their loved ones on Earth — is at risk.

The interesting thing about I.S.S. is that some blindly act on their new orders, while others are hesitant and want more information. Are scientists soldiers, or are they simply scientists? However, the themes aren’t really explored to their most logical conclusion, as the film becomes a standard space thriller as each crewmember is picked off one-by-one until the end — which is smartly ambiguous.

The screenplay from Nick Shafir is tight, clever, and well-written, but lacks the punch or originality to make I.S.S. memorable or rewatchable. The decision to keep the story on the space station is smart, as the audience is left in the dark about what’s happening on Earth as much as the crew themselves. It really does check all the boxes for an engaging space thriller, but doesn’t have the oomph to get it over the finish line, or stick the landing — so to speak. Cowperthwaite direction is serviceable with some visual flairs, like zero gravity set pieces and action, while the performances and motivations are just boilerplate.

Perhaps I.S.S. might have benefited from leaning into its “B-movie” genre concept more, instead of being so middle-of-the-road, while the film itself is merely a ho-hum experience with a lot of potential wasted floating in space.

Human’s relationship with machinery has been a subject in movies since the beginning of cinema with films like Metropolis in 1927. Through the years, the machinery has evolved into artificial intelligence with movies like A.I. in 2001, while fiction is quickly becoming a reality with AI apps like ChatGPT and Midjourney.

Is artificial intelligence a tool to make everyday life better and easier, or is it something that will slowly, but surely take over our lives? These questions are asked, but go unanswered in the British science fiction horror film T.I.M.

Written by Spencer Brown and Sarah Govett with their first screenplay and directed by Brown in his feature film debut, T.I.M. — which stands for Technologically.Integrated.Manservant — finds Abi, played by Georgina Campbell (Barbarian, All My Friends Hate Me), a prosthetics engineer who was recently hired as the head of robotics at a tech company in England. As part of her job, she has to move to the countryside where the company’s labs are based and live in a, literal, smart home to integrate her life with the company’s products and solutions.

Joining Abi is her husband Paul, played by Mark Rowley (Macbeth, Guns Akimbo), who has a rocky relationship with her after she caught him cheating. Already on the rocks, the pair believe a move to the country could rekindle their love for each other, build trust, and start anew. Abi then discovers that she’s working on a top secret project that involves a new robotic prototype called T.I.M., stoically and creepily played by Eamon Farren (The Dig, Red Dog), the couple’s new robot manservant that’s there to fulfill all of their needs and anticipations.

Needless to say, T.I.M. isn’t everything Abi hoped, as he slowly becomes more and more self-aware. Think M3GAN meets Ultron. All the while Abi’s new boss is more concerned with getting the prototype ready for market rather than safety, as she starts to suspect that Paul is cheating again, this time with their new neighbor Rose, played by Amara Karan (The Darjeeling Limited, The Death and Life of John F. Donovan).

Although T.I.M. asks interesting questions about technology and capitalism, the film is a slow burn that doesn’t deliver on genre thrills. It’s a premise that feels very familiar, while it would have benefited from a tighter script.

While the movie has some sharp and smart moments, namely the more human aspects of the film with Abi reconciling her relationship with Paul, it falls into many genre tropes and traps that keener members of the audience could pick up a mile away.

Speaking of M3GAN, T.I.M. shares a lot of similarities with the Gerard Johnstone-directed film, especially with its view of the corporate culture to rush to market and humanities overreliance on machinery. However, M3GAN is a vastly more entertaining, therefore more pointed satire and cautionary tale, because it leaned into its genre voice and campiness, while T.I.M. seems to shy away from it. 

Overall, T.I.M. had a lot of potential, but taking its subject matter too seriously without injecting it with a dose of fun, humor, and excitement, leaves this writer scratching his head what it all added up to. It just seems less authentic and more of a copy of a copy.

One of the best things about Batman is that he’s the rare superhero for everyone. Whether it be dark and gritty, like Ben Affleck’s Batman in Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League, or pensive and emo, like Robert Pattinson’s Batman in Matt Reeves’ latest big screen iteration in The Batman.

In fact, the Caped Crusader is even campy and goofy with Adam West’s portrayal of the DC superhero. In the straight-to-streaming version, animator Mike Roth (Regular Show) displays the Dark Knight’s bearded-fatherly side in Merry Little Batman.

Written by Morgan Evans (Teen Titans Go!) and Jase Ricci (Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham), and directed by Roth, Merry Little Batman finds an eight-year-old Damian Wayne, voiced by Yonas Kibreab (Obi-Wan Kenobi, Sweet Tooth), wanting to grow up like his father, while Bruce Wayne, voiced by Luke Wilson (Old School, The Royal Tenenbaums), is reluctant to let his son become a superhero at such a young age.

While Batman is called out to investigate a Justice League distress call in The Arctic — after being coming of retirement for eight years — two burglars sent by a mysterious super villain break into Wayne Manor only to find Damian Wayne taking on the persona of “Little Batman” to defend his home and save Christmas for all of Gotham.

With its animation style that harkens back to ‘90s Nicktoons shows, Merry Little Batman is decidedly a simple, yet at times fun, adventure that’s aimed for kids more than anything else — with some nods to other Batman movies and comic books. It feels like Home Alone meets How The Grinch Stole Christmas, but with Batman and DC characters and settings. If that sort of thing is appealing, then this 92-minute feature film is for you.

However, for this reviewer, it was too aggressive in animation, while the voice performances seemed a little too phoned in. For example: While Luke Wilson is a well-guarded actor when it comes to movement and expression, he’s not someone who relies on his voice for a great performance. It was just too stilled to convey any emotion other than loud.

Merry Little Batman hits all of the marks for Batman, such as his troubled past, slayed parents, an assortment of gadgets and weaponry, a caring and protective Alfred Pennyworth, voiced by James Cromwell (Babe, L.A. Confidential), the Batmobile, super villains and their henchmen, and other traits and tropes. It may be just too kiddie times at the playground for some viewers, especially with its ease of accessibility on Prime Video, Amazon’s streaming service. Although there’s a Batman for just about everyone, and this movie does its job and entertains a young audience, this iteration of the Guardian of Gotham isn’t for this writer.

Horror is one of the few movie genres that can take everyday situations and make them scary and frightening for those who aren’t experiencing it. The genre takes the smallest of details, anxieties, and flaws and magnifies to a scale that’s shocking and eerie. It’s a real empathy machine, especially when you can start to understand and sympathize with the marginalized and the forgotten. In the movie Raging Grace, writer and director Paris Zarcilla (Pommel) takes a look at the everyday horror of being an undocumented immigrant living and working in a foreign land.

The movie follows Joy, played by Max Eigenmann (12 Weeks, Kargo), a Filipino housekeeper working in posh London, England, while her adorable 10-year-old precocious and mischievous daughter Grace, played by Jaeden Boadilla, in her feature film debut, hides away from her mother’s employers. Joy and Grace move from fancy home to fancy home, as Joy takes odd jobs cooking and cleaning to earn enough money to buy fake papers to “prove” her citizenship, while Grace goes off to school.

After losing another job, Joy lands in the perfect situation working for Katherine, played by Leanne Best (Our Kid, Ted Lasso), a caretaker of her wealthy, but bedridden uncle Mr. Garrett, played by David Hayman (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Sid and Nancy) and his large estate in the English countryside. Although she’s close to her financial goal to gain false documents, things are what they appear after Joy does too good of a job, as she nurses the elderly man back to health. Let’s just say, Joy and Grace got more than what they bargained for. 

Raging Grace is an exceptional film that offers thrills and scares, while also delivering up a point-of-view that’s not often seen in movies — namely, the stories of Filipino women who leave their homeland to work in service of others. No wonder Zarcilla wanted to take those very familiar stories of the Filipino community and make a horror movie out of them. In fact, it’s very common for Filipinos to leave their country to work as housekeepers, nurses, caregivers, or cruise ship workers, so they can send money back home for their families.

There’s a theme throughout the film that offers up the idea that Joy is better off in England than with her family in the Philippines because England is (somehow) the center of the Western world. Why wouldn’t anyone want to live in the center of the world instead of on the outskirts of society, even if you’re living a life in servitude to oblivious White people? It’s almost as if people don’t consider their home as the outskirts.

Zarcilla injects so much detail of Filipino culture in Raging Grace that it feels like he has a steady hand with the material and how to present it for a general audience. You give it some entertainment value of shock and horror to lead viewers into a way of life that may be different from their own. It’s striking and smart.

Raging Grace is a breath of fresh air and does things that are difficult to pull off in movie making, like showcasing a story that’s not often told, do it in an engaging and satisfying way, give humanity to a class of people who are considered as “the help,” and scare the bejesus out of audiences. All while Zarcilla gives the film style and a certain panache to get viewers to pay attention.