Monday, July 29th, 2024

CHALLENGERS - MGM+

What we like:

• Luca Guadagnino’s sexy tennis romp legged out $50M at the US box-office, which many deemed a failure. But $50M for a sexy tennis romp? We’d say that’s pretty damn impressive.

• Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist all leveled-up with the success of the film. The memes were plentiful. And Zendaya’s assistant, Darnell Appling, got to play the umpire in the film’s climactic match.

What we don’t like:

• We have no doubt the hardworking people at MGM+ are doing their best, but is it time to fold it in to Prime Video? The film will eventually hit Amazon’s much larger platform (we’re estimating in October), so let’s hope it gets a surge of viewership when awards season starts later in the Fall.

Tuesday, July 30th, 2024

DADDIO - TBD Rental / TBD Sale

What we like:

• Writer-director Christy Hall’s feature directorial debut. Her script was initially conceived as a stage play, and soon gained traction as a screenplay when it was featured on the 2017 Blacklist of best unproduced scripts.

• A classic ‘two-hander’, with Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson playing cabbie and fare, respectively, as they have an unexpectedly honest conversation about numerous topics, including their past and present relationships, sex and power dynamics, loss, and vulnerability.

What we don’t like:

• This feels like a classic COVID production. Small cast. Limited locations. Not the film’s fault, of course. But it still bums us out a bit.

GHOSTLIGHT - $19.99 Sale / TBD Rental

What we like:

• This family drama premiered at Sundance this year to great acclaim. It tells the story of melancholic construction worker Dan (Keith Kupferer), who finds himself drifting from his wife and daughter, but discovers community and purpose in a local theater's production of Romeo and Juliet. As the drama onstage starts to mirror his own life, he and his family are forced to confront a personal loss.

• The actors who portray the family in the film are in fact a family in real life.

• Dolly de Leon, so memorable in Triangle of Sadness, has a supporting role in the film.

What we don’t like:

• We complain about it every week, but the arthouse market is still in crisis. Granted, this film has no stars to drive the marketing, but its universal raves should have helped it make a bigger splash in theaters. It failed to reach $1M.

A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE - $24.99 Sale / $19.99 Rental

What we like:

• Lupita Nyong’o fronts a genuine blockbuster! We love the Oscar-winner and hope this success leads to more starring roles.

• Pig director Michael Sarnoski proves he can deliver spectacle along with story. With this and Lee Isaac Chung’s Twisters, the indie director-to-tentpole filmmaker pipeline is hot again.

What we don’t like:

• The large majority of the scenes set in New York City were filmed in London. The film's crew built a rough replica of NYC's Chinatown vicinity on a London-area backlot for filming most of its early scenes, and many of the scenes set in the NYC Subway were filmed in various now-closed London Underground stations and tubes.

TOUCH - $24.99 Sale / $19.99 Rental

What we like:

• Icelandic action filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur (Everest, 2 Guns, Contraband) takes on a more romantic and wistful story, where a man tries to find out what really happened when his Japanese girlfriend mysteriously vanished without a trace from London fifty years earlier.

• Our beloved Focus Features deserves so much credit for providing theaters with a steady stream of quality films. If you can’t make it to theaters to catch these films, throw them a few bucks on PVOD.

What we don’t like:

• The film’s Icelandic title, Snerting, should have been kept! Touch is too generic! We want to roll up to the box-office and demand: ‘Two for Snerting!’

TREASURE - $14.99 Sale / TBD Rental

What we like:

• German filmmaker Julia von Heinz’s tragicomedy is based on the 1999 novel Too Many Men by Lily Brett, and stars Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry.

• Set in 1990, it tells the story of an American journalist Ruth (Dunham) who travels to Poland with her father Edek (Fry) to visit his childhood places. But Edek, a Holocaust survivor, resists reliving his trauma and sabotages the trip creating unintentionally funny situations.

What we don’t like:

• With mostly poor reviews, the film did minimal business at the US box-office, grossing less than $1M.

Wednesday, July 31st, 2024

MOUNTAIN QUEEN: THE SUMMITS OF LHAKPA SHERPA - Netflix

What we like:

• Lhakpa Sherpa’s life straddles two wildly disparate worlds. A dishwasher at a Whole Foods in Connecticut, she is also the first Nepali woman to climb Mount Everest and survive. Once forced to conceal her gender to pursue the sport she loves, Lhakpa and the current stages of her remarkable journey are chronicled in this film as she prepares for a tenth Everest summit, a new record for female mountaineers.

• Filmmaker Lucy Walker chronicles Lhakpa as she faces a gamut of challenges as an immigrant, a single mother of two teenage daughters and a survivor of spousal abuse.

What we don’t like:

• We’re a little worried Netflix is dropping this in the middle of the summer. Will it be lost in the sea of content? It’s well worth seeking out.

Thursday, August 1st, 2024

THE BEAST - The Criterion Channel

What we like:

• We’re big fans of director Bertrand Bonello, who here delivers another big-swing winner that will confound as many people as it delights. If the log line ‘A sci-fi epic based on the Henry James novella The Beast in the Jungle’ doesn’t intrigue you, then the film is probably not for you. For the rest of us…settle in and enjoy.

• Léa Seydoux continues to impress, here giving a three-role performance that could be career defining. The actress is on an incredible run. In just the 2020’s, she’s worked with the following auteurs: Bonello, Denis Villeneuve, Mia Hansen-Løve, David Cronenberg, Cary Joji Fukunaga, Bruno Dumont, Quentin Dupieux, Arnaud Desplechin, and Wes Anderson. Impressive.

• The Criterion Channel will premiere the film live on Sunday, July 28th, at 8p ET, and then will begin streaming it on demand on August 1st.

What we don’t like:

• Bonello told Indiewire that the film was rejected by Cannes. How do you say ‘morons’ in French?!

GODZILLA MINUS ONE/MINUS COLOR - Netflix

What we like:

• Toho Studios Oscar-winning sensation gets the desaturated treatment, and we can’t wait to revisit this instant classic.

• One of our favorite moments of the year so far: The reaction of the VFX crew as they learn their film received an Best Visual Effects Oscar nomination (it would go on to win the category). Special shout-out to the Godzilla figurines pointed towards the television.

What we don’t like:

• This version of the film was the last credit for producer Shūji Abe, who died on December 11, 2023. Director Takashi Yamazaki and the visual effects team paid tribute to Abe in their acceptance speech at the Oscars.

TAROT - Netflix

What we like:

• A Sony Pictures/Screen Gems release that looks like a flop, but like many Screen Gems titles, is actually a nice little money maker for the studio. On a thrifty $8M budget, the film grossed $49M worldwide and likely did quite well on VOD. Horror is still your safest bet in Hollywood.

• The story follows a group of college students who, after using a strange Tarot deck, begin to gruesomely die one by one and must uncover the deck’s mystery before time runs out. Solid premise for a PG-13 horror thriller.

What we don’t like:

• The film is based on the 1992 novel Horrorscope by Nicholas Adams, but in the lead up to the release of the film, its title was changed to Tarot. TERRIBLE DECISION! Horrorscope is a terrific, non-generic title.

Friday, August 2nd, 2024

KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES - Hulu

What we like:

• The mo-cap technology in the 21st century Planet of the Apes movies continues to astound. It’s a travesty that none of these films have won Oscars for visual effects.

• Lead actor Owen Teague capably takes the reigns from Andy Serkis, who memorably played Caesar in the previous three Apes films. Teague even inspired some ‘Are the Apes hot?’ discourse online, to which we say…sure. But he’s no Helena Bonham Carter:

What we don’t like:

• When Disney released The First Omen on Hulu two days after its digital release, we rejoiced! But we also wondered why the company would leave money on the table by offering it on SVOD so soon. Well…it looks like they listened to us (they are not listening to us). Apes arrives on Hulu almost a month after its digital debut.

MAXXXINE - $24.99 Sale / $19.99 Rental

What we like:

• The third installment in Ti West’s X trilogy, Maxxxine features West’s most impressive cast, including Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Halsey, Lily Collins, Giancarlo Esposito, and Kevin Bacon.

• A true tour-de-force showcase for star Mia Goth, all three films in the X trilogy have given the actress a chance to show her range, and yes, chew the scenery (in the best way). What an exciting partnership between actor and director.

• We love that West took inspiration from the scuzzy slasher movies of the 80s for Maxxxine, films like Vice Squad, Angel, and Body Double. In fact, we kinda wish it was a bit scuzzier.

What we don’t like:

• Maxxxine was positioned to be the horror film of the summer, but has been overshadowed by Longlegs. The critical and audience reception felt like a bit of a letdown. Still, West is an exciting filmmaker and we can’t wait to see what he does next.

REBEL MOON: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT - Netflix

What we like:

• We love original sci-fi! Like last year’s underrated The Creator, the Rebel Moon films attempt to create a new mythology that give fans of the genre something to obsess over that’s not Star Wars or Star Trek-related.

• Zack Snyder does love his director’s cuts. He even re-titled each part of the Rebel Moon saga. For those keeping score:

  • Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire is now Rebel Moon -Chapter One: Chalice of Blood.

  • Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver is now Rebel Moon - Chapter Two: Curse of Forgiveness.

What we don’t like:

• The Chapter One runtime is 3 hours and 24 minutes, a full 70 minutes longer than the first cut. The Chapter Two runtime is 2 hours and 53 minutes, 51 minutes longer than the previous cut. We’re exhausted just looking at those numbers.

SAVING BIKINI BOTTOM: THE SANDY CHEEKS MOVIE - Netflix

What we like:

• Who doesn’t love SpongeBob SquarePants? This spin-off follows Sandy and SpongeBob as they venture to Sandy's home state of Texas to save Bikini Bottom from the hands of an evil CEO. It’s the first in a series of SpongeBob character spin-off films.

• It feels strange to have a SpongeBob movie premiere on Netflix, not Paramount+. But it’ll likely reach a much larger audience.

What we don’t like:

• Prior to its release, the entire film was leaked on January 21, 2024, as a video upload on X. For a portion or the audience, this movie is old news.

THE VOURDALAK - $14.99 Sale / TBD Rental

What we like:

• The feature directorial debut of French filmmaker Adrian Beau, this stylish horror film is based on Tolstoy’s 1839 novella The Family of the Vourdalak.

• We love an atmospheric, gothic vampire movie, and this one has received terrific reviews since it premiered at last year’s Venice Film Festival. We can’t wait to catch up with it.

What we don’t like:

• Trigger alert: For dog lovers, there is a scene that includes a man shooting his pet dog (though offscreen). All simulated, of course.

Happy Streaming Everyone!

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