Category: REVIEWS

A boastful elf and his prank-happy orc brother must learn to work together to stop a fiendish orc gang from retrieving a magical stone that will give them the power to take over the world.

Back in the first week of March, Disney and Pixar released their newest animated adventure in the form of Onward, a tale of two elvish brothers that embark on a journey together in hopes to find a spell that will be able to bring back their father, whom they never met, for one last day.

Although it did not emotionally affect me nearly as much as the studio’s previous efforts, or as much as I had hoped it would, it was still an incredibly fun, comical, and deeply moving story, even if it didn’t make me cry.

However, the movie ended up being a commercial disaster and was unable to make back its budget. Raking in $104.1 million on a budget of $175-200 million, the movie’s flop is not the fault of Disney or Pixar. It’s nobody’s fault. It just came out at an unfortunate time, as, within a matter of weeks, the coronavirus got worse and worse each day, and ultimately caused nearly all movie theatres to close down temporarily.

So, many people around the world are eager to watch some new movies in the comfort of their own home. Recently, a number of new release movies have been released straight from the theatre to video on demand or streaming, such as The Hunt, Emma, The Invisible Man, and Trolls World Tour, and yes, even the aforementioned Onward, which is streaming right now on Disney+.

But let’s say that none of those movies tickle your fancy. Or, let’s say that you have already seen Onward and don’t really feel like watching it again. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, Homeward, directed by Michael Johnson – a hilariously bad and blatantly obvious ripoff mockbuster of the newest Disney/Pixar film.

It would be incredibly easy to sit here all day and just make fun of this movie for a while, and although it would definitely be extremely easy to do that, I’ll just focus on the biggest reasons as to why this movie shouldn’t exist and why it fails at being a good movie.

First of all, the animation is ridiculously jarring. It isn’t necessarily awful, but it certainly isn’t good either. But, the main issue with the animation here is that the two lead characters here are modeled to look almost identical to the two lead protagonists of Onward.

Not only that, but the main characters of Homeward have incredibly similar names to the heroes of the aforementioned Disney/Pixar movie. In Onward, we follow the adventures of Ian and Barley Lightfoot. In Homeward, we follow the adventures of Lloyd and Barl Lightspinner.

Are they different? Sure. But you have to admit that the names are heavily similar and it is positively another ripoff of Onward. In addition to that, Lloyd and Barl are disappointingly bland and uninteresting to follow. With Ian and Barley, it was easy to root for them and you genuinely wanted them to succeed on their mission. But with Lloyd and Barl, we are never really given a good reason to care for their plight.

They are trying to stop an orc gang from retrieving a magical stone that will give them the power to take over the whole world. It’s a story that we have seen done countless times in the past, and better mind you. As a result, the characters involved really don’t get a lot to do and feel so one-note and underdeveloped.

At the end of the day, that is the best way to describe this movie besides the obvious, a ripoff. It’s painfully dull and underdeveloped. It does nothing to set itself apart from Onward, and instead plays out as an immensely bad ripoff mockbuster. Was it trying to be so bad that it’s good? Maybe. It does sort of feel like that at times. But, then again, something tells me that this was trying to actually be a good movie. Either way, it isn’t. If you want a fun family adventure for all ages, just stick to Onward.

Homeward is a hilariously bad and painfully obvious ripoff of Onward. It takes everything the Disney/Pixar film did right and makes it truly awful.

“A Disappearance” is a short film that follows celebrity medium Dame Alvera as she struggles to restart her career after 11 years, and perform readings in front of an audience.

From the beginning of the short we see the Dame struggling with alcoholism, self-hatred, and blame shifting. The actress who plays Dame Alvera, Sophie Thompson, really captured the perfect balance between sweet and sinister, complete with subtle cues in her wardrobe.

A sweet pink ruffled blouse and pink skirt confused me as to whether or not she was actually evil and at fault for the downfall of her career or if it really was her manager Pat’s fault as she accuses him of while he’s crying out his black eyeliner begging her for another chance.

As the short progresses the Dame performs a public reading, with some degree of accuracy for those in the audience and others accusing her of being a fraud. There is great tension and suspense build, the cinematography and score are superb and add to the effect of not knowing whether or not to believe in the validity of her readings.

The storyline has a great arc and landing and perfectly fills the fifteen minute space. It held my attention and made me curious to see how this would play out as a feature film, I wonder if the filmmakers, Laura Spini and Laurence Brook, would have any interest in making this into a longer piece.

With the increasing popularity of mediums and tarot I think this could potentially develop into a unique feature, and would be timed properly with the interest in mysticism in modern culture. The only thing I was looking for in the short that I felt was missing was more in terms of production design. Having additional objects and a brighter color wheel would have added to the supernatural effect, and, in these types of films, it is almost an essential.

I thought of one of my favorite films “The Love Witch” (2016,) and I see shades of that here, but so much of the otherworldly beauty of that film relied heavily on unique and detailed production design. If that aspect could be amped up here this short has a great potential to be something more.

“A Disappearance” is available now, streaming free on Vimeo, I highly recommend this one, a very enjoyable 15 minutes and I would love to see it as a Vimeo Staff Pick.

Gets Good Light: Review. by Heidi Sharpley.

Writer Daniel Sole’s “Gets Good Light” opens with an illegal immigrant, Manny testing his resolve over a bottle of spirits. He is an illegal immigrant working as a chef in New York and two Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are looking for him.  

The plot is simple and straightforward even though the subject matter is so complex.  For me, the imagery in this short film was a standout.  The white well-to-do real-estate agent contemplating the artwork on the wall says, ‘I can’t tell where it begins.’

She’s talking about the circles in the print and I’m thinking about racism.  Perhaps a better question would be where does it end?

Andrell, played so well by Edmond Cofie, our Black American protagonist who helps Manny’s family find safety just for the night, has styled the apartment to sell.  

He wipes the dusts from the two monochrome photos on the wall which look to me like they represent a gathering at perhaps an equal rights rally, his face reflects in the glass showing us he is part of the persecuted too.  Am I reading too much into this?  

The acting is without fault.  The sound-track is soulful, mournful and moving.  Director Alejandra Parody has done a tidy job.  It will be interesting to see future works from both Parody and Sole.

Gabriella (Sarah Chang) is looking to avenge her family after the aswang hybrid killed them all. She teams up with some demon hunters calling themselves the Slayers, and with a hybrid killer named Bolo (Vincent Soberano) who is looking to redeem his humanity.

Their quest is to hunt down and kill Naga (Temujin Shirzada) and Gundra (Mekeal Turner), hybrid warlords of the supernatural underworld. However, after Gabriella settles into an unusual partnership with Bolo, they soon realise that their efforts to track down and kill the evil warlords is leading them right into a trap.

Blood Hunters: Rise of the Hybrids is a feature length version of writer/director and co-star Vincent Soberano’s short films set in the same universe. Soberano’s pet project brings his vision to life on a bigger screen and makes no apologies for how loud, chaotic and violent that it gets. It may also remind its audience of things they watched in the Nineties such as Mortal Kombat and Buffy the Vampire Slayer – although nowhere near as well written.

Despite the comparison to pop culture martial arts favourites, there isn’t really enough to keep an audience invested in the world that Soberano has created. That is unless audiences just want to switch their brains off and watch some weakly choreographed fight scenes that go on for far too long.

After all, Blood Hunters: Rise of the Hybrids plays as just that, like a pilot for a TV show where very little is explained in hopes that an audience will be distracted just long enough by a string of stunt men lining up to be hit in the chest.

There may be a particular style that the movie is going for that I may be missing, but the only thing that I can think it could be going for is a movie that’s so bad it’s good.

Unfortunately, despite a couple of laughable scenes, bad acting and a villain whose prosthetic teeth seem too big for his mouth, the movie doesn’t even have this kind of appeal either, leaving its audience with a wholly unearned sequel tease that nobody will want.

While police officer James Coffee (Ed Helms) enjoys his new relationship with Vanessa Manning (Taraji P. Henson), her beloved 12-year-old son Kareem (Terrence Little Gardenhigh) plots their break-up. Attempting to scare away his mom’s boyfriend for good, Kareem tries to hire criminal fugitives to take him out but accidentally exposes a secret network of criminal activity, making his family its latest target. To protect Vanessa, Kareem teams up with Coffee – the partner he never wanted – for a dangerous chase across Detroit.

The world right now is a scary place. With the coronavirus still ongoing and with everybody still quarantined within their households, many of us are trying to find great movies to watch to pass the time, since nearly all movie theatres are temporarily closed right now due to public health and safety concerns.

There really isn’t any major movie releases coming until June at the very least, and so, with us all stuck at home, what can we watch? Well, director Michael Dowse has just released his latest comedy action feature Coffee & Kareem on Netflix, and unfortunately, the movie is just as dumb as the title.

Easily the biggest issue with this film is the screenplay by Shane Mack. Admittedly, the premise is quite interesting and had the potential to be a modern-day love letter to classic action comedies of decades past such as Lethal Weapon and Beverly Hills Cop. But in its efforts to pay homage to those classics, it instead rips them off in blatantly obvious ways. There truthfully is next to no originality in this screenplay, and it is baffling as to how all of these big-name actors agreed to star in this.

Aside from the familiar script, it’s also just painfully unfunny. Gratefully, the film has a running time of a mere eighty-eight minutes, so you don’t have to suffer through it for too long, although it definitely feels longer than it is. Sure, there are a couple of moments where you may chuckle, but that’s about it. There’s not a single scene that has excellent comedy in it, and instead comes across as cringy for the most part.

Plus, all of the characters that we follow throughout the story are incredibly bland and, sadly, unlikable. The most annoying and hard to watch character here is Kareem himself, and it is not young Gardenhigh’s fault. It’s the screenplay. They don’t give us any reason to root for him or Coffee. Their characters are essentially just restricted to small quirks and the development here was unexistent.

When it comes to the action sequences, they are decent for the most part. There’s nothing extremely exciting unfolding on screen, but there is also nothing incompetently filmed and headache-inducing either. These scenes are entertaining while you watch them, but as soon as the film ends, you’ll forget about them. As a matter of fact, you’ll forget about the whole movie a few days after you watch it.

Coffee & Kareem is a failed attempt at paying homage to action comedies of the past with a familiar and drastically unfunny screenplay.