Category: REVIEWS

The Dragonfly Prince despaired. No sooner had he emerged from his chrysalis, transformed from an uncertain and confused youth into his new, assured, confident adult form, did he find out he was being used as a simple metaphor for maturity and self-discovery in writer/director James Bird’s feature film Honeyglue.

His tale was a recurring motif in the film’s misfit love story between Morgan (Adriana Mather) and Jordan (Zach Villa), who form a seemingly instant connection after a brief encounter at a nightclub. Their relationship forms the basis of a story penned by the androgynous Jordan, with the Dragonfly Prince serving as his analogue.

While the Dragonfly Prince understood why he was only being used as an analogy – one that would be better suited to a teenage notebook than that of a film of technical competency – he wished there was more to his presence than this. He wanted to straddle both lines – like Honeyglue does in its attempt to be unique by having Morgan’s love interest be non-binary, while at the same time saying that there’s nothing unusual about being pansexual or of indefinite gender.

Similarly to Honeyglue, the Dragonfly Prince tried to gain wider acceptance by addressing some universal problems and current social issues about identity, but never talking about them in any real depth. He also wanted to make people laugh, as does Honeyglue with its allusions to the works of Lynn Shelton and other mumblecore comedies, but attempts at being witty and quirky felt forced and fell flat, as the humour was decidedly vanilla.

Learning that his lifespan would only be three months long (something mentioned at the top of Honeyglue), the Dragonfly Prince realised his time was short, like Morgan in the film, who has an inoperable brain tumour. Despite that, he felt a distinct lack of real human emotion, such of which is absent from Honeyglue.

He thought there would be some conflict or tension, or that he or someone around him would learn something and grow, but in the end there was nothing of the sort – exactly like scenes in Honeyglue where Morgan’s conservative family show obvious discomfort when Jordan is around, but don’t build to anything.

He didn’t know what to do or even how to think and everyone around him started feeling more and more ill-defined, much like every character in Honeyglue. Just as the film does, he unnecessarily went looking for a change of scenery just to prolong his lifespan and in the hope of finding something new that could rejuvenate himself.

The Dragonfly Prince walked plenty of familiar avenues, like Honeyglue does, and after a while wasn’t sure at all where he was going, again like Honeyglue. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that, once again like Honeyglue, he either didn’t know where to go, or just didn’t have anywhere interesting to go.

That’s not to say there weren’t effective moments in his life, or in Honeyglue, but in the end, like the film, he just ended up running out the clock as he trudged on to an inevitable and underwhelming conclusion. After which, the Dragonfly Prince would fade into obscurity, and with him all of his clear promise – exactly like Honeyglue and those involved with it.

By Alex Goldberg PhD.

There are some things to like about Bird Box, the movie where weird aliens/monsters descend upon Earth and cause anyone who sees them to commit suicide. There are also some things that are truly dumb and silly and make you roll your eyes—just look at that picture! They’re rowing down a river blindfolded! All considered, though, it’s a typical end-of-the-world monster movie with a story that has fresh (well, sort of fresh) ideas but doesn’t really find a meaningful conclusion for them to go to. 

So, the story revolves around Sandra Bullock—totally forgetting what her name in the movie is, which isn’t a great sign, for either the movie or my memory…oh yeah, Malorie—as she traverses a river with her two kids, Girl and Boy (not shitting you, these are the names Malorie has given the two children), blindfolded so that the movie’s monsters don’t look into her eyes and cause her to kill herself. The rest is told in flashbacks to explain how her and the two kids got there, beginning with her visit to the doctor, where things start to go haywire and people start offing themselves in the street.

That initial set up is also pretty bland, regurgitating things you’ve seen before in an end-of-the-world movie. There’s nothing particularly fresh about it, with things that might disturb you only if you’ve never seen any recent horror movie ever. People die and survivors are forced to fend for themselves. What a novel idea! One of them even believes in hokie-pokie mythological gods or something! What?

Anyway, there are two things that the movie does well, and that’s make it somewhat suspenseful and make Malorie’s journey atypical. The suspense is pretty straightforward, from hidden monsters lurking around trying to effectively kill people to our heroes being blindfoldedly navigating obstacles, some of which are just really too stupid to ever ever ever try (please, don’t take part in the Bird Box challenge and try driving a car blindfolded, there’s no way you’ll make three feet down the road). Malorie’s storyline is somewhat interesting in that from the beginning, she’s reluctantly pregnant.

She doesn’t really want kids or the responsibility that goes with them, making the fact that she’s now responsible for keeping two of them alive during a monster infestation even more strenuous. It’s an interesting idea and, to the detriment of the film, it isn’t explored in nearly the amount of depth that it needed to be. Most of the film focuses on Malorie right before she gives birth, making her relationship with her kids vague at best, showing you only one or two scenes of how she handles it from day-to-day. I wish I could get to know the kids, because they’re only really dangled like pieces of meat for the grinder, making their names Girl and Boy actually kind of fitting in the grand scheme of things.

I laughed when I found out that those were their names, as if the director couldn’t tell the audience in a more direct way, “THIS WOMAN DISLIKES CHILDREN,” but really, why not? There’s absolutely nothing about them that makes them special in the movie, except that they make stupid decisions at bad times because the movie needs suspense. Now if you think about it that way…the suspense is cheapened by the manipulative dangling of the kids. I guess it’s filmed well, though.

If you like Sandra Bullock and John Malkovich, you could do worse than Bird Box. It’s got good production and interesting ideas. I just didn’t get too into it, because every time a fresh idea would appear, it would get cut off at the bud. A better way to have written the script is to forget about the flashbacks and give the audience something more concrete to hold on to, like a tense, lifelike relationship between Malorie and her kids.

The backstory provided too much filler and not enough atmosphere, a glaring problem for an apocalyptic tale that requires a bit of world building to keep you intrigued. By the end, no matter what the final destination was for the characters, I didn’t really care all that much. 

This is the story of a young couple trying to overcome personal trauma and haunting memories. Lauren (Christina Ricci) and Russell (Brendan Fletcher) move out of their city home to find peace in a high security, luxury building in the countryside. Lauren struggles with her mental health and hopes that the fresh start will help her overcome her demons. 

However, nothing is quite as it seems as Lauren appears to experience disturbing sounds coming from various speakers around the building and flash imagery from her TV. Lauren senses something is not quite right around her and struggles to understand who to trust, until she encounters Vernon (John Cusack), an unlikely, shady ally that comes to the rescue through a conspiracy theory chatroom. 

Distorted, written by Arne Olsen and directed by Rob W King, is a psychological thriller trying to blur the line between what is real and what is in our heads. We follow Lauren’s struggles to handle her bipolar disorder and overcome depression sparked by a recent tragedy whose details slowly unfold during the movie. 

Paranoia, cyber conspiracy, technophobia, subliminal mass manipulation and brainwashing are the ingredients of this film where Christina Ricci’s performance seems to be the only memorable element. 

Overall, I feel this fairly predictable thriller fails to truly deliver a gripping experience, its pace too slow at the beginning and too rushed at the end.  

From British production company Chocolate Bear Films comes another humorous Short from writers Dermot Daly, Ivan Mack & Kathryn Hanke; directed by Dermot Daly & Ivan Mack.

“Professor Vanessa (Kathryn Hanke is a scientist and a survivor. What she knows will change the world. And she intends to, one subscriber at a time. Madness or genius? Download the taster and you decide.”

This is a simple piece in it’s conceit; which is a quasi-spoof web series which while being based in comedy also highlights a lot of unpleasant truths about our modern culture and society.

Hanke pulls off a brilliantly comedic performance whilst still instilling her character with self-belief which makes the film compelling. Visually it is a simplistic setting but the film-makers manage to make the maximum use of what they have; while being mostly static one-camera there is occasional use of close-ups to great effect.

By Alex Goldberg PhD.

Escape Room is exactly what it says it is: a movie about escape rooms. There’s really not much more than that. It’s fun, sort of dumb, reminds me of Saw a bit, and makes for an hour and a half of people cleverly finding ways out of elaborate set pieces meant to kill them. You could probably do worse during January and February, when studios dump most of their weak-sauce films.

The film is about several seemingly random people who are sent boxes containing an invitation to the ultimate escape room. Once there, they must find clues within a certain time limit before their environment offs them. So, they go from room to room searching for clues, dangling from ledges, avoiding hypothermia, and finding key puzzle pieces that lets them get to the next room. There’s the awkward, shy college student, the cocky businessman, the down-on-his-luck guy who works packing boxes, a pretty, athletic woman, a random truck driver-looking guy, and a young guy who loves doing escape rooms (because of course he does).

All the characters play up to their stereotype throughout the movie, but not in any over-the-top or funny kind of way. The plot is thin…and I mean thinner than Tara Reid on drugs! (Hi-yoooo) It’s got some twists, but they’re not half as intricate as the escape rooms they designed for this thing. Overall, it’s really the most disappointing thing about the movie, because the escape rooms are fun enough, with plenty of suspense to keep you guessing when a character might get knocked off.

Of course, like a Rube Goldberg machine, things happen that, in turn, set off other events within the room that cause chaos and destruction, torturing our heroes as we cheer for them to make it out alive. Each room is well-designed, shuffling from one type of atmosphere (outdoors in the cold) right into another (a billiards bar). It’s just that the writers focused all their attention on the rooms themselves and forgot to add the same kind of dynamic to the story, from the initial character introductions and foreshadowing to the dull conclusion.  

Look, you have two choices: either you want to see people escape from these rooms, risking life and limb, or you want to do an escape room yourself. Both are good options, and both will kill around two hours. Should you spend $20 and see Escape Room in theatres? Probably not. Is it worth renting when you have nothing else to watch? Yeah. Is it better for your brain to solve puzzles on your own instead? Of course! Just don’t expect too much out of either, because the prize at the end is rarely worth it—unless the escape room you finish gives you cash…cash or like LEGO sets or something, then it’s totally worth it.