Reviews

I've been looking forward to this film for quite some time. Whether it's a Wendigo (Black Mountain Side, Ravenous, Pet Cemetary), Cernunnos (Dark Spot), or a Norse Jotunn (The Ritual), these mythical creatures are some of the darkest, most menacing and fear inducing monsters in history. The antlers and deer like form just make them that much creepier.

Antlers doesn't disappoint either. The acting is top shelf with Keri Russel and Jesse Plemons' strained sibling relationship portrayed by the actors in such a way the audience is as uncomfortable as they are being in the same room. Jeremy Thomas is incredible as the young protagonist who has lost his mother and loves his father and brother so much he will do anything to protect them, despite the obvious danger to himself. Thomas plays it well; the fear, the anger, the aloofness, the deranged intensive expression as he pens his red snd black illustrations; all played perfectly. Scott Cooper's direction puts it all together giving it the atmosphere and pace needed for such a film. The creature is well done as well. What I found most interesting though were the themes of issues that our modern society weaves in thoroughout the story.

Lucas is an apparently frail boy bullied in school by the usual suspect, but like Ralphie in Christmas Story, he doesn't tolerate it for long. He's carrying a much heavier burden on his shoulders than worrying about some junior high toadie. He must protect his family at all cost, even as his father degenerates and becomes increasingly dangerous to him and his younger brother. His father lost his job and has turned to meth production in an abandoned mine. As the story unfolds you begin to wonder whether Lucas' father's raging transformation is a metaphor for the destructive nature of Meth addiction and how addiction destroys families. Russel's character, a school teacher, is also burdened by a history of abuse and addiction. She recently returned to live with her estranged brother (Plemons) many years after leaving their childhood home to escape her father's abuse. She's someone who has struggled with alcohol dependency and although tempted throughout the movie, she overcomes and in so doing she is ultimately in a position to help Lucas and rebuild her relationship with a brother.

The film also nicely illustrates how children are marginalized by the very systems put in place to protect them. When first clues of possible abuse of Lucas surface and Russell takes her concerns to the school principal, the administrator's response is that at least he has a daily 6 hour respite in a safe space unlike many children of Meth parents who keep their kids home to run drugs for them. No report to child protective services. When Russel tells her brother sheriff of her suspicions, he says there's nothing that can be done even though the father has repeated drug offenses and convictions because when the mother died he was deemed a suitable parent. Even when trying to gain access to the boy's home to speak to the father, they will not enter because they need a warrant despite the smell of rotting flesh emanating from the house. This chain of events is infuriating. But our protagonist ultimately achieves what the school, the police, the legal system and social services refuse to do because of procedure and a general apathy towards these real and serious circumstances. It's a subtle but powerful statement on how little society is willing to do to protect our children.

Antlers unravels slowly but it's well paced, well acted and deserving of a place on the list of top horror films of the 21st century.

Acting was descent and both Barbara Hershey and the actor portraying her grandson were very well played. The subtle portrayal of the thin line between reality and delusion was brilliant. It really highlighted modern society's dismissive treatment of the elderly and how they are sandbagged into a spiraling deterioration once they enter "care" facilities. The premise was good and the story unraveled well. Unfortunately, the message was a complete failure. When given the opportunity to do the right thing, the protagonist chose to go and join the villains and drag her grandson along with her. At the moment of truth, he says something like, "I don't want to lose you grandma" and instead of enjoying the rest of her days with him, she throws it all away. No consequences. The film is however a reflection of our current state of affairs, where self comes above all else and everyone else be damned. Disappointing.

The movie was entertaining to some degree and followed the standard Marvel Universe formula. Trite, current day pop cultural references and jokes during the first half of the movie were cheap and certainly will be lost on audiences of the future. A few idiots in the theatre guffawed loudly at most of them. As usual, though, the women were strong, kind and intelligent and the men were dumb and evil. Are we to believe that the most evil man in the Universe, Xi, is going to change his evil ways and that his wife would have even married a mass murderer on the scale of Genghis Kahn or Vlad the Impaler? Of course she's killed by his enemies and he returns to a life of evil and sends his henchmen to kill his own children to retrieve some necklaces so he can read a map. I will say Xi was a badass, as were Shang's sister, Aunt, and pretty much every other character compared to Shang, who was soft and definitely not superhero material. Awkwafina was funny and entertaining as usual, overshadowing Shang in most scenes as his character was so forgettably boring. Even his Aunt could kick his butt. Loved Ben Kingsley as the Mandarin, extremely funny and his performance was genius. The outcome was the usual for Marvel Universe and even the pre-view for the next movie during the credits was lame; I guess they could only get Mark Ruffalo and Brie Larson, perhaps the only two Marvel Universe characters lamer than Shang, to set up the next movie.

Good premise as a murder mystery at a remote Antarctic research post. Loved the wintering over group tradition of watching John Carpenter's "The Thing". I also liked the idea of unraveling of the mystery through interrogation of the two surviving suspects. Did it have something to do with the scientific finding of a subarctic bacterium that converts CO2 into Oxygen? If this was such a great discovery which was going to save the world from global warming, why had seven years passed and they were still just talking about it rather than implementing their discovery to practical application? Once the organism was isolated, why did the microbiologists have to continue their research in the Arctic? What "science" were they doing for the full summer before wintering over? Anyway, the murders had nothing to do with the anything related to the research or Antarctica. Disappointedly, it turned out to be about hum drum revenge murders for which the impetus was sexual harassment in the workplace ending in involuntary manslaughter of a poor woman trying to fend off the advances of hr lecherous scientific research mentor. That's the back story that leads to a coverup because of another woman's ambitions to get credit for saving the world. Her rationale for the coverup is based on the assumption that the discovery would be ignored because of the Me Too scandal. Of course the scientific world would not ignore a life saving discovery over a case of workplace sexual harassment ending in accidental death. She could have gotten all the credit for the research if her lech of a boss was held accountable for the original sin. Instead, she leads a coverup that results in the subsequent murders of no less than 10 more people. I'll leave the identity of the killer to you if you dare waste your time on this nonsensical murder mystery that tries to loosely tie it all to the higher purpose of saving the world from global warming. Unfortunate, in the end, it's just another revenge murder movie where people engage in ridiculously irrational decision making and end up dead. I gave it 3 stars because it was filmed in beautiful Iceland. It should have been 1 star for poor writing and wokeness.

Who knew that a stowaway janitor on a transport ship to the new world would save humankind with a bottle of industrial strength bathroom cleaner. Well he almost did, but not quite. Burn them all. Enough said.

This was a fantastic expose, not of the Elisa Lam story, which was a tragedy and well covered by this documentary, but of the narcissistic self serving internet sleuths of this era. These sleuths' mental illness is much more subtle than Elisa's. They sadly seem to have such little in their own lives that they become can become so engrossed in the mystery of her death, demonstrate behaviors indicating they truly believe this is about them solving the case that nobody else can. Spending thousands of hours within the confines of the internet because they "must know" and must have closure is the height of self-centeredness. To feed their delusions of grand sleuthing abilities, they accuse the hotel, the police, and the coroner of incompetence, conspiracy, and doctoring the elevator video because those ideas are more interesting than what really happened. They even destroy a man's life who is just trying to build his career as a metal musician just because they didn't have the facts. This documentary does a great job of telling the true story of what happened to Elisa Lam while at the same time showing in detail the way that lack of complete information can send the uninformed down paths which can be quite destructive to themselves and others. A folie a monde if you will. It does a great job of bringing attention to the severity of untreated bipolar disorder and perhaps also can help those sleuths and all of us to be more careful in how we interpret information in our limited capacities.

Could have been really good, but fell short. Acting was pretty good. Opening scene way too long and dialogue manic and irrelevant. The old TV screen Twilight Zone 'esque' scenes were just plain useless. Use of switchboard was intriguing and interesting component of the unfolding of the story. I found it hard to believe that the radio show announcer didn't think of aliens ever throughout the whole movie until he saw the ship hovering over his head. Sure, Soviets were on people's mind in the 50s, but didn't this dummy ever see The Day the Earth Stood Still or Forbidden Planet? His discussion with the radio caller was intense and quite good but his dismissal of the old lady was abrupt and bizarre. The UFO Incident (Betty and Barney Hill Abduction) did it better in 1975.

Some amazing acting by both Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche in some very difficult roles and although film had some elements of Silent Running and other great films about post apocalyptic space exploration, High Life falls way off the mark to the point of incoherence. The only black hole explored in this film belongs to Juliette Binoche, and therein lies the rub, a film about sexual deviancy and moral depravity masquerading as a science fiction film. I always love it when the 10 star reviewers try to insult the low star reviewers because we don't get the art or the deeper meaning of the film. True, we don't write our reviews while sipping malt whiskey from crystal tumblers whilst lounging in our drawing room arm chairs wearing an ascot and dressing gown, but pretty easy to see what's going on in this film. I suspect the only high ratings come from those enlightened pseudo-intellectuals or those who identify with the writer/director's sexual hangups. This is perhaps why the film gets such high ratings from the experts. They love the Binoche self gratification scene. There are some interesting themes throughout the movie about parenthood, guilt and misplaced efforts to right the wrongs of our past and consequences of the choices we make but all is spoiled by the depravity that was otherwise unnecessary to the plot. Then again, without it, the film would have had very little plot and been much shorter. The director almost goes full Lars von Trier on us but fails miserably. In the end, Monte asks Willow if she's ready and she says yes but for what, we don't know. We can only assume more depravity. Music by Stuart Staples was a nice choice for this film though.

Film that emphasizes the fear of nuclear aftermath during the Reagan/Thatcher era. Had promise but character development and relationships weak. The acting was decent but what little story there is seems to fall apart as the last 45 minutes just seems to last forever with images of dead people and people foraging, fighting and getting killed over scraps of food. Who would have thought a nuclear holocaust film could get boring, well this one doesn't disappoint on the yawn scale. Surprise shock ending....everyone dies a miserable death, probably realistic but nothing we didn't learn about atomic bombs during the Cold War. When the Wind Blows does a better job in just 80 minutes.