Please check out our latest episode of our Movie Chats where this week we discuss the 2025's action comedy The Running Man

https://youtu.be/xavuCQWM7jc

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My review of the period drama Virginia Woolf's Night & Day

#VirginiaWoolfsNightandDay #NightandDay #VirginiaWoolf #perioddrama #Britishfilm #film #filmreview

https://popculturemaniacs.com/virginia-woolfs-night-day-review/

Virginia Woolf's Night & Day Review

#VirginiaWoolfsNightandDay #NightandDay #VirginiaWoolf #perioddrama #Britishfilm #film #filmreview

https://popculturemaniacs.com/virginia-woolfs-night-day-review/

Toy Story 5: Let It Die

Summary: Pixar continues to run a beloved IP into the ground.

Lets stop the story and do an incredibly boomer moment of kids being on screens are bad huh, every grandparent in the room just let out a cheer, whereas everyone under the age of 50 says shut up. Of course the villain is sympathetic as the days of having evil villains are long gone, we all just need to be more empathetic and listen to each other.

Jessie has to get a backstory, because God knows audiences were crying out for that, but hey what would a Disney product be without a girlboss. Herein, they do the incredibly cringe Taylor Swift song to try and get the Swifties to care about a franchise that hasn’t been relevant in 15 years. Of course in order to give Jessie her moment Woody had to be humiliated, gaining a beer belly and a bald ‘sun bleached’ spot.

The most depressing thing of all is how this is just a franchise that should have had the life support out pulled ages ago but Disney is too scared of new ideas. We get these needless retreads and time with side characters that no one ever asked for.

Overall, Disney as a company is creatively bankrupt.

1/5

Pros.

One or two funny jokes

Cons.

It’s needless

The screen commentary is tiresome

We don’t need a Jessie backstory

Girlboss slop

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Hell Of A Summer (2023) – Review

Look, I love 80s slashers too, but just how many more times can we deconstruct the genre with a mixture of post-modern snark and genuine affection? Well, if you’re actors turned writer/directors Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk, then I guess the answer is at least once more as their slasher pastiche/love letter, Hell Of A Summer, takes modern teens and plonks them in a classic scenario as a ruthless killer stalks the cabins of a summer camp.
However, the old stalk and slash is once of those genres that’s been taken apart and put back together again more times than Robocop; in fact, in recent times, there’s no other genre that arguably been poked and prodded more than any other type of movie around, so was there really a call for another? There’s only one way to find out as we venture into Camp Pineway and get introduced to the smorgasbord of potential victims who are lined up to live fast, die young and leave a severely chopped corpse.

It’s a new season at Camp Pineway and 24 year-old Jason Hochberg is excitedly being driven to camp despite his mother believing he needs to drop this camp counsellor crap and start applying for law school. However, ever the idealist, Jason still sees the camp as a place of hope and joy despite everyone else finding it increasingly pathetic that he keeps coming back every year.
However, when the head counsellors end up being a no-show and with only a day to get the camp ready, Jason finds a note that puts him in charge and tries to wrangle his staff into getting everything ship-shape. However, that proves to be tougher than it sounds when the staff end up being a cluster of self-obsessed brats, and while friend Claire has a secret crush on him, such people as influencer Demi, goth Noelle, film-bro Ezra and dangerously insecure Bobby consistently make Jason’s life a misery. However, things get even more complicated when it seems that a devil-masked killer has infiltrated the camp and starts to pick off the councilors one by one in various ways.
Lacking both survival instincts and the ability to sideline their own personal shit in the face of potential death, the counselors all flounder during the high-stakes crisis and all point fingers of guilt at one another. Faring especially bad is Jason, whose nice-guy persona and advanced age (comparatively speaking) inspires suspicion among his peers and soon he finds he has to protect himself against his friends as well as a ruthless killer. But while the idiotic antics of these kids should mean that killing them off is like shooting fish in a barrel, some manage to channel their cons into rather effective pros.
But who lurks behind the devil mask? Is it  some random psycho who has wandered onto the property, or is it actually one of the counselor’s rapidly dwindling number that’s doing the violent deeds?

They’ll no doubt be a few of you that think I’m being way too hard on Hell Of A Summer as all the film seems to want to do is gently riff on familiar slasher tropes. However, while I recognise that Finn Wolfhard has to do something to ensure some relevancy once Stanger Things comes to an end, and that moving into writing and directing is a smart move, the film that he and Billy Bryk have crafted is so utterly devoid of originality, you have to wonder if it was made especially for people who have never seen a horror movie before. I’m all for gateway horror, but why make one where roughly all the jokes only work if you’re already familiar with the genre? Worse yet, the approach both Wolfhard and Bryk take is one that’s already been done in ways that are far superior (and funnier) than this. If the pair watched various movies for inspiration, you wonder if viewing a double-bill of Tucker And Dale Vs Evil, or even Bodies Bodies Bodies wouldn’t have given them the push to actually do it better, or at least add I little originality.
To pay the film a compliment or two, it certainly looks good as it visually checks off an accurate look of a classic slasher and while the movie avoids the excessive gore content of something like Ti West’s X, the deaths featured still have enough oomph to register. However, while the occasional axe in the head and the odd creative murder, such a someone with a nut allergy getting stabbed with a knife smeared in peanut butter, keep things ticking over fairly well, the film is let down consistently by it’s jokes. If you’re going to tread familiar ground, you’d better have the goods when it comes to either the jokes or the likability of the characters, and it’s here where Hell Of A Summer falls flat. It’s unoriginal, and for a comedy, curiously unfunny, as it attempts to spear familiar tropes and spoof the demeanor and attitudes of gen z in a life or death situation. And yet, while most are the actors are legitimately solid, the majority of the film doesn’t really think to have them do much other than complain and/or die and at best it feels like an underwritten Saturday Night Live sketch that forgot to add any big laughs.

However, some of the cast manage to wring out some diverting stuff. Fred Hechinger (before going mad from syphilis in Gladiator II), brings a genuine sweetness to the painfully cheerful Jason as he tries to negotiate murder and teenage indifference with a smile on his face. However, I couldn’t help but be distracted by the incredibly strange fact that both Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk have chosen to not only put themselves in the film, but also given themselves roles that – on paper anyway – seemingly gives them the opportunity to get the best lines and play the most fun characters. However, this backfires hideously when the roles of both Chris and Bobby turn out to be either the wrong kind of annoying (the latter) or just utterly pointless (the former). Even more irritatingly, things start to feel suspiciously like a vanity project when, instead of giving themselves cool deaths and then dipping out early in order to take a step back to focus solely on directing, the duo simply make themselves even more important to the plot despite neither of them technically being the lead.
While it’s good that young filmmakers want to write and direct their own stuff and it’s admirable that Wolfhard and Bryk want to add more strings to their bow, it’s just a shame that they’ve managed to deliver a horror/comedy that doesn’t add a single new thing to add to an already crowed market. Furthermore, all the good intentions in the world don’t help when your horror/comedy is neither scary, funny or even particularly smart and I’m genuinely curious why the brains behind this thought it would be a good showcase of their respective skills.

Competently made, but virtually as pointless and frustrating as a blunt kitchen knife, Hell Of A Summer ends up being a enthusiastic retread of virtually every slasher movie released over the last ten years. As a horror film, it’s negligible, but as a showcase for the various talents of its two point men, it’s a painfully empty watch that suggests that Wolfhard pray for another couple of years in Hawkins…
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The name of the film is O Menio e o Vento (The Boy and the Wind), and oh boy, what a magical experience it turned out to be. The film was released in 1967 and is shot in black and white.
https://medium.com/prismnpen/a-review-of-the-boy-and-the-wind-o-menino-e-o-vento-ab8ec8a236fa?sk=2bd4a0585e827fd57b07ff8a91192e51

#LGBTQ #QueerFilm #FilmReview

Fiend Without A Face (1958) – Review

To the uninitiated, I guess most 50s sci-fi flicks seem the same. Take a cast of stuffy, exposition spouting, scientist/military types and have them pontificate about the nature of the unknown, while some stunt man in a rubbery monster suit acts as a loosely disguised allegory for either communism, fear of the atom, or both. On the surface Arthur Crabtree’s Fiend Without A Face seems to dutifully tick a lot of these boxes as a string of suspicious occurrences rocks the Canadian town near an experimental military radar installation; but while the starched shirts of the U.S. war machine and the pipe puffing musings of thoughtful scientists are all present and correct, there’s something a little more urgent about this particular jaunt around the 50s paranoia block.
I would say that we should prepare to face one of of more fiendishly designed creatures of the genre, but how can we when said fiend has no face to face?

We’re off to Manitoba, Canada to visit the U.S. Air Force Interceptor Command Experimental Station No. 6 (catchy name), but as the techs there are working on using nuclear power to further the reach of their radar signals, the locals are quickly getting pissed. While complaints have already arisen that the overhead jets and radar emissions are upsetting local livestock, matters get even more serious when unexplained deaths start afflicting the human population. But when the latest death occurs not far from the base itself, public outcry reaches an all time high and the man in charge decides to take swift action.
That action is to let Major Jeff Cummings sort it out for him, which means that he has to wade through a bunch of hostile townsfolk and a ton of local red tape in order to make any headway. However, after finally convincing Barbara Griselle, the sister of the latest victim, that an autopsy has to be performed, a rather disturbing result is discovered. It seems that the victims are not only missing sporting two puncture marks at the base of each skull, but their entire brain and spinal column is gone too, which certainly isn’t a normal form of death in rural Canada.
As Cummings continues his search – and gradually seduces Barbara – he becomes interested with the works of local scientist, Professor R. E. Walgate, whose experiments into telekinesis may prove to be the link needed to unravel this mystery. Another clue is that whatever’s claiming the lives and stealing the brains of all these rural Canadians, it’s actually invisible to the naked eye, but they don’t plan on being invisible for very long. You see, a combination of Walgate’s telekinetic fumbling and the radiation from the base have created a creature made of living thought and is reproducing by making others like itself out of the brain matter of its victims. Hoping to increase their power and numbers, the cerebral swines converge on the base, hoping to use the radiation to increase both their power and their numbers. Brain power, y’all.

For the vast amount of Fiend Without A Face (God, I love that title), we discover that it follows many established rules that the genre had long since cemented in concrete before it. Most of those slightly cynical descriptions I gave out in my opening are all cheerfully trotted out here as a lot of the human characters are virtually interchangeable with dozens of other movies released during the same decade. However, among the oh-so-serious line readings and 50s gender politics are a couple of things that helps the movie stand out from the crowd a little. The first is the faintly amusing plot thread that seems to be desperately trying to convince the audience that the 50s military are stand-up, trustworthy guys who absolutely wouldn’t allow awful things to happen to local townsfolk. While the military are often the good guys in this type of thing, I found myself chuckling at how far the plot bends itself over backwards in order not to make their radiation spewing experiments primarily the cause of the deadly problem. It’s a rather fascinating example of the keep calm, duck and cover, everything’s fine example that some movies were trying to put across during such turbulent political times that simultaneously urged folk suspicious of the outsider while utterly trusting their own government.
Rather than the military machine and their experiments to create better radar coverage, it’s the eccentric work of a fussy professor that’s fingered for the creation of the outlandish beasts; and the other reason Fiend Without A Face has always stood out a little to me is how wonderfully realised it’s mental menace truly is.

While other sci-fi creature features tended to feature bipedal threats that allowed hulking stuntmen to be entombed in rubber monster suits, Crabtree’s opus instead gives us a completely inhuman foe in the form of beings that are essentially vampire brains. Even more macabre is that they use those repurposed spinal columns to either push themselves along the ground like molluscs, or spring at their enemies as they strangle them into submission. As inhuman 50s villains go, they’re delightfully lurid, and are realised by some pretty solid stop motion animation – but while the movie keeps them off-screen for the majority of the runtime thanks to a convenient bit of plotting that renders them completely invisible (bit of a cheat, that) it more than makes up for it thanks to a finale that’s surprisingly frenetic for the period.
While Cummings takes time out from courting a woman whose brother has just died to sprint to the base and blow up the radar’s power supply, the remaining cast members undergo a siege scenario as slithering brain creatures try to gain entry to the house and try and wrap themselves around the throat of their latest, screaming victim. As they pop through holes in the house’s defences and tumble down the chimney like the brain and spine of Santa Claus, the survivors try to fight back with their guns and everytime one of the creatures are hit, great, satisfying globs of black blood gloop out. While constant phlb-phlb-phb-phlb sound of the brains messily dying does sound suspiciously like they’re shitting themselves, it’s a great sequence that’s full of energy and that fully makes sitting through the more derivative parts of the film totally worth it.

While maybe not at the top of the 50s, creature features pantheon, Fiend Without A Face more than earns it’s keep thanks to the wonderfully extreme nature of its central critters and how satisfying it is when someone plugs them sending chocolate spread gore all up the walls. Solid as hell and truly well made, it’s a great, pulpy example of just how dangerous, intrusive thoughts can really be.
🌟🌟🌟

Film Review: HAYWIRE (2011): Steven Soderbergh, Gina Carano

Link: https://film-book.com/film-review-haywire-2011-steven-soderbergh-gina-carano/?fsp_sid=215032

#AaronCohen #ActionMovie #AnthonyBrandonWong #AntonioBanderas #BillPaxton #ChanningTatum #DavidHolmes #EddieJ.Fernandez #EwanMcGregor #filmreview #GinaCarano #Haywire #Haywire2011 #MatthieuKassovitz. #MaximinoArciniega #MichaelAngarano #MichaelDouglas #MichaelFassbender #MovieReview #NataschaBerg #OvertureFilms #RelativityMedia #Steve...

Code 8 (2019) – Review

Oh hey, anyone else remember Push, that gritty Chris Evans superhero movie? No? OK then, don’t mind me…
I only bring it up because I’m sort of fascinated by Hollywood attempts to keep trying to offer up a “realistic” movie with superpowers in it that doesn’t spring from the pages of a major comic book. Alongside Push, other examples include Jumper, Poject Power and Chronicle and despite their attempts to deliver a more down to earth look at outlandish abilities, most of them seem doomed to be forgotten when compared to the household names of DC, Marvel and the like.
Making a play to change that is Code 8, Jeff Chan’s expansion of his own short film that hopes to give the genre a more tangible feel by blending zappy powers and unbreakable skin with the grime and stakes of a modern day crime movie. So do we get X-Men meets Heat, or is it more like a league of unextraordinary gentlemen?

In the early 20th century, superhuman abilities are real, which creates a world both different and eerily familiar to the one we have today. All “Powers” have to be registered to the government and from that they became integral to the workforce as their abilities help build a “city of tomorrow” that became known as Lincoln City which, in turn, created an economic boom. However, this is where things get noticably rough for the Powers, because as this kicked off a third industrial revolution, the entire race was soon marginalised as mechanization and automation quickly became the norm – ie. cool looking robots taking the strain.
What this all means these days is that Powers are treated like the underclass as normal folk tend to hate and fear the fact that some of those abilities can be pretty damn threatening. Forced to scratch out an existence, a lot of Powers have either turned to crime, or are being trafficked for their spinal fluid in order to help manufacture an addictive new drug named Psyke. In this grim existence we meet Connor Reed, a 26 year-old with electric powers who us trying to look after his ailing mother after a brain tumour is making her ice abilities gradually go out of control. Unable to find work as his mother slaves away at a convenience store, Connor soon falls in with telekinetic criminal Garrett, who works under the mind reading crime lord, Sutcliffe doing various heists and bank jobs. However, after the police has managed to raid and confiscate large quantities of his production of Psyke, Sutcliffe needs to get back in the good books with his various partners.
Before you know it, Connor has joined Garrett’s gang of lawless supes in the hope of getting in with Nia, Sutcliffe’s own personal healer; but with an automated police force having little tolerance for super powered criminals, can our hero stay alive long enough to use Nia to save his mother?

Code 8 is one of those films where it seems that far more thought has gone into its world building than what’s gone into the other aspects of the plot. A whole timeline has been created for this alternate reality that stretches back decades to drop metahumans into our everyday life and, at multiple times, it almost feels like the sort of mix of sci-fi and gritty social commentary that used to be chiefly handled by the likes of Neill Blomkamp. Jeff Chan certainly has the visuals down cold as the blending of crime flick and super powers means that we get a certain amount of dsytopian urban decay while it wisely downplays the fantastical attributes of the leads – in fact, we even get a Elysium/Chappie-style robot police force dubbed the Guardians to really push that Blomkamp feeling home. While other films that have attempted to use sci-fi/fantasy tropes as a metaphor for the underclass tend to trip over their own world building (Bright, I’m looking at you), Code 8 manages to balance it better than some.
Also working well is the hierarchy of this world that delivers urban bigotry that doesn’t make the mistake of overwriting the fact that actual racism has to still exist. Yes, the film switches out Mexican day labourers for Powers hoping to get hired for cheap building work, but it’s not so in love with it’s alternate history that makes any boneheaded plays that prove to downplay other cultural ills. The crime stuff works pretty well too, with the gang that Robbie Amell’s Connor falls in with using familiar power sets for different uses as the various heists are planned. Augmented strength, pyrokinesis, telekinesis, telekinesis; each ability is portrayed nicely subtle in order to slot into the more down-beat, stripped back tone of the film – which is a fairly odd thing to say about a film with robot cops.

However, even though the look and extensive backstory of Code 8 give a novel spin to some familiar genres that – while hardly super original – work pretty well, it’s with the characters themselves that the movie experiences it’s Kryptonite – some pretty basic charactizations. While there’s nothing objectively wrong with them, there’s nothing that particularly stands out about them either and their personalities and experiences feel less born from the situations that they’re in and more from the fact that the script is cribbing heavily from the crime movie playbook. Connor is every young man in a crime movie that’s ever crackled with potential (no pun intended), who just can’t get a shot at a real life because of what he is; and similarly, Arrow’s Stephen Amell (Robbie’s real-life cousin) is every charismatic, criminal who is just waiting for their shot at the big time. Literally the only thing separating them from every other crime movie archetype is the fact they have funky powers, but it’s not quite enough to make it feel much more than just a remix of everything you’ve seen dozens of times before.
Regrettably, that also means that there isn’t a huge amount of surprises to be had here either and it’s rather abrupt finish suggests that Code 8 may have been better served as a TV show rather than a film in order to give the various characters just as much room to breathe as it does the enthusiastic world building. Still, robot cops, zappy powers and the occasional bank job are a tough nut to make completely boring, and so even though some threads are starved a little for attention (Sung Kang’s empathy driven cop could have used a bit more screen time), we get just enough to whet our appetite. Of course, once again, a more grounded approach to super powers ends up not having the support of a major hero to fully give it the recognition of its Marvel/DC funded peers, but even though the smaller scale is refreshing, a mere ninety minutes just doesn’t have the power to do it justice.

A longer runtime or punchier characters may have benefited the film and helped it be a bit more memorable than it is. But when it comes to smashing superhero and crime genres together like gritty action figures, Code 8 does just enough to avoid a code red.
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'Toy Story 5' surges into the digital age -- while also peering lovingly backward

https://www.npr.org/2026/06/18/nx-s1-5861716/toy-story-5-review

#Movies #Animation #FilmReview