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Obsession (R)
This indie film finally found its way to theaters in Asia. For those not in the know, three YouTubers have three films running in theaters worldwide, and they’re doing quite well at the box office. Hollywood may be a bit worried around the edges. As they should be.
It started with the movie, Iron Lung (made $21 million at the box office), then Backrooms (256 million so far), then Obsession. Obsession was written, produced, directed, and edited by the young YouTuber Curry Barker. It has grossed $285 million so far, and climbing. It only cost him $1 million to make. That makes Hollywood look like a bunch of clowns. If the shoe fits…
The story shows us a group of young, straight people in their mid-20s going through life in a normal way. One of the guys really likes one of the girls in their group. He wishes he had the courage to ask her out on an actual date, but struggles mightily in that department. We see multiple scenes of him falling apart over it.
After blowing his chance with her in a laughably pathetic way that can only be imagined in our sad current Gen Z era (more on that below), he resorts to using a novelty gift called “One Wish Willow” to make a wish.
The directions on the box are clear: that you only get one chance in life to be granted one wish. So putting ourselves in his shoes, if you make one huge wish and snap that stick of wood in half, no matter what your wish is, if it suddenly comes true, you embrace it. Full stop. Why wouldn’t you?
His obvious wish, for her to love him more than anyone in the world, comes true in amazingly quick fashion. And he shuns it! Inexplicably. This is where the film stumbles, with its portrayal of a spineless, milquetoast modern-day white male. This very much falls in line with the Hollywood mandate these days.
We actually witness something here that’s far more far-fetched than the fact that a “One Wish Willow” gag gift could actually grant a wish. We witness a straight guy in his hormone-raging 20s (thinking about sex for 12-14 hours a day), with literally the girl of his dreams wanting to be with him, and he wants no part of it. C’mon, man. Stop this madness. The human race would be extinct by now if that was even half plausible.
Obviously, it’s a horror movie, so the infatuation goes off the rails with some nice onscreen gore to be had. But the male lead is far too spineless throughout for the movie to really succeed.
As a low-budget horror film, Obsession is well-acted and well-shot. And most of the cast looks like middle-class, suburban Americans. Pretty refreshing. But unless it’s gay sex being thrown at us, anything else is heavily tempered as heterosexual-hesitant. Such is the case here. The film already earned the R-rating because of the blood/gore, so there’s no reason to temper the sex scenes between a young heterosexual couple.
I applaud the fact that these young YouTubers are exposing Hollywood as the politically correct, financially irresponsible clown show that it is. But unfortunately, this hard swing for the fence comes up short.
– Wait for Rental
Power Ballad (R)
Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas star in this film about an American wedding singer/guitarist (Rudd) playing in a cover band that plays steadily exclusively in Ireland, of all places. The reason for the Ireland gig locations is explained in the movie.
One night after a wedding performance at a castle, Rudd starts drinking with a famous ex-boy band singer (Jonas) who’s trying to get his solo career jump-started. Rudd listens to some of Nick Jonas’s rough demos in Nick’s lavish suite and helps him fine-tune some of the musical parts. As the drinks flow, Rudd is off in the corner, strumming his guitar and singing a ballad that he’s been working on for years. Jonas thinks the song is great (so does Rudd), and they jam on it for a bit.
They part ways, and that’s that.
Six months later (too soon for real life), Rudd hears his song being played over the mall speakers. Before he knows it, the song he wrote is a monster hit, with the Nick Jonas character doing stadium tours on the back of it.
So most of the movie is spent with Rudd trying to convince everybody (including his family) that he wrote the song with no actual proof of it.
The movie is billed using the word “comedy” loosely here. Rudd has spent most of his career doing comedy, so Hollywood probably thought they had to pitch it as comedy to get butts in seats. But this is played straight and is definitely a drama. The Shawshank Redemption had some funny parts in it, but it’s hardly a comedy. Power Ballad falls in that same category.
Story-wise, I felt like this had Hollywood parallels with the 2019 movie, Yesterday. If you gave this Power Ballad pitch (or Yesterday) to 10 other Hollywood writers, a few of those attempts would be much better movies. But this one’s acceptable enough. Just not in a theater-worthy way.
I’m sure people coming out of the theater could argue both sides of this story. Jonas desperately needed a hit song, or he was cooked. On the other end, if someone makes mega-millions of dollars off of your idea, it’s obviously painful for the original creator. But anyone who’s created something that they think is great, whether it’s a written story or a song, they have to be aware of copyright laws. And I believe 99% of creators in the Western world are aware of that. Artists live and die on that.
If you write a book, the first thing you do is send a copy of the manuscript to the Library of Congress. If you write a song that you think is good, you send a copy of it to the Library of Congress. Even bar bands back in the 80’s would routinely send their rough tapes of original songs to be copyrighted under their name. Because you never know! It’s the cheapest insurance in the world to protect your creations. And it’s ironclad.
For those sitting in the theater that know the (very well thought out) rule of US law, the fact that Rudd didn’t do that (regardless of the reason) weakens the story substantially. He doesn’t have a leg to stand on, yet we watch him struggle with it for 3/4 of the movie runtime.
One other quibble. Joe Jonas has obviously done a lot of videos for his musical career, so he knows how to lip-sync to the camera to make it look like he’s really singing on stage. Mark Wahlberg pulled it off in the movie Rock Star as well. But Paul Rudd obviously didn’t spend much time trying to really sell the fact that he’s singing on stage. And it takes you out of the movie.
Unlike other movies in this genre, this one lacks any real hit songs by Rudd/Jonas that will have you thinking about them as you leave the theater. But the wedding cover band does cover some cool songs from the past. And the ending isn’t awful. This might be a good rental on a rainy Tuesday pizza night.
– Wait for Rental
Disclosure Day (PG-13)
The iconic shots above from Spielberg’s 1977 hit, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, are images that will remain seared into our minds forever. Steven Spielberg used to be great at evoking just the right image to portray what we were supposed to feel when watching his films. He’s lost that ability.
It’s been a tough 10 years of terrible movies from Spielberg. And there are no such iconic images from his latest movie, Disclosure Day.
Instead, we get images like this, that let us know who the villain is.
The Hollywood Blueprint is in full use in this film. We know who the villain is because it will be an old white guy. We know who the savior, or powerhouse protagonist is, because they’ll be black. The guesswork has been totally eradicated from movies over the last decade. You can tell from the cast who’s good and who’s bad.
This nearly 2.5-hour film plods along with just enough activity to keep you awake. The train scene is by far the best few minutes of the film. We could have used more trains. Don’t go into this movie thinking you’re going to see a great, summer blockbuster Spielberg film. Unfortunately, this is not that movie.
The following quibbles can be applied to most movies coming out of Hollywood today. Spielberg has fallen in line with the Hollywood messaging.
Emily Blunt is a great actress and does her best here. If you’re a huge fan of hers, the movie might be worth watching just because of that. But the script (blueprint) demands that all the (white) men are babbling idiots throughout the film. Both the boyfriends act like little children, asking their girlfriends, “Why? Why? What’s going on? Why? What?” Seemingly unaware of the situations they find themselves in, as if they’re four years old. Whenever Emily Blunt is on the phone, her hapless boyfriend keeps interrupting her, incessantly, like a little kid. I wanted so badly for her to hold her hand on the phone and turn to him to say, “What the hell’s wrong with you? This is an important call. Are you four years old!?” That would’ve been the best line in the entire movie.
Instead, we have to suffer through long scenes like this. A lot of them. Over and over. Come on, Spielberg. You were better than this – decades ago.
No one acts like they would in real life. If your mate disclosed their solid, special powers to you, and you suddenly realized that everything you knew growing up is thrown out the window, you’d immediately believe their plan of action going forward. The last thing you would do is try to torpedo what they wanted to do. You might want to walk away from the scary plan, but you wouldn’t torpedo your spouse’s plan.
In one scene at a farmhouse, the boyfriend inexplicably talks himself into becoming a combination of Rambo/Arnold Schwarzenegger, as if he’s seen way too many movies and doesn’t know the difference between action movies and real life. It makes utterly no sense and takes you completely out of the movie. Scooby-Doo cartoons were more believable.
The protagonists are constantly out of breath. Just standing still, out of breath. We’ve all been in stressful situations before. It doesn’t make us out of breath like we just ran a mile. It’s like everyone has emphysema. Did Spielberg not notice this from his director’s chair?
“Hey, blowhard. Why are you overacting? Just say your lines like I wrote them, OK?”
And there are so many accidental coincidences. Too many. Laughable coincidences. AKA lazy writing.
There are also too many examples of the Hollywood blueprint of (mostly brown) women coming to immediate right conclusions, much to the dismay of the white men around them. Women in the news control room, immediately overriding the clueless men, with their quick, brilliant thinking. The men can only shake their heads.
The woman newsroom cohost chastising the newsman on the air for not immediately vacating his seat in the middle of his broadcast. Women government officials in a room full of equals, who immediately and confidently know which correct path to take. The 5’ 3” woman secret forces agent shouting for “the Alpha team” of bad white government guys to “follow her” as she leads them into a building. Yeah, OK.
In another scene, the couple needs to get away from a line of SUVs full of white baddies. So using a MacGyver-type of plan, they make their empty car drive off a cliff. The genius boyfriend (the government is chasing) doesn’t come up with that plan nor implement it. His girlfriend does. He just wanted to run away. (Sigh)
The Hollywood blueprint is exhausting. And the movie is weak.
Again, if you’re a huge Emily Blunt fan, it’s probably worth a watch. She earned her pay on this one. For the rest of us, this is another loser to add to Spielberg’s filmography.
– AVOID!
In the Grey (R)
Jake Gyllenhaal, Henry Cavill and Eiza González star in this strange Guy Ritchie film, In the Grey. It’s a convoluted story about a team of lawyers, bodyguards and hard, x-military thugs (all with GQ looks) that get back money from shady deals that go south, for a percentage of the recouped money and fees upfront. In this case, they are sent to claw back a billion dollars that was looted in a corrupt deal.
It’s a mess of a story, and how it was green-lit is anyone’s guess. Even worse, it’s full of endless expository dialogue, long voiceovers to explain what’s happening, and slow-moving job prep that will make your eyelids droop. The action is OK but sparse.
As the picture above reveals, Eiza González is really the star of this story, as the head of the tough outfit. Dozens of her employees even call her “Mother.” But even Eiza González, doing her best in this thing, can’t save this strange misfire of a movie. I’m not sure who this was made for. Certainly not me. If you’re a big fan of Jake Gyllenhaal or Eiza González, it might be worth renting on a night with nothing else to do.
– Wait for Rental
Michael (PG-13)
After some lawsuits, re-shoots and a lot of controversy, the new Michael Jackson bio film hit theaters this week. Reviewers that got into the pre-release screenings were pretty harsh on it.
So is it worth seeing for the casual fan? I think for most fans of his music – yes.
It starts out at the very beginning of the Jackson family getting their musical jam together as very young kids. The five brothers rehearse in their little home, relentlessly. More on that in a minute.
By the time they started playing local clubs, it was already apparent that Michael Jackson was the most talented of the brothers in a performance way, and certainly vocally. The film takes its time showing us the slow rise to fame until Michael forges out a path of his own. Like every “true story” told by Hollywood, there may be many fabrications, mix-ups of timelines, etc., but for the overall theme of this film, none of that matters. It’s interesting stuff to see how the sausage was made.
Their father, Joe Jackson, was a harsh taskmaster, who drove his boys to rehearse constantly and reprimanded anyone who was soft. Especially Michael, the youngest of the group. It’s hard stuff to watch at times, and his heavy handed discipline was well-documented by the family over the years. But people have to remember that spanking disruptive children was the norm in the 1960’s. Joe is painted as the antagonist throughout the movie. Fair enough.
But I think there’s another side that could’ve been fleshed out better and would have given this story a more even-handed view. If you want to truly excel at something, even more so if you want to be the best in the world at something, you have to be coached hard if not self-driven to relentlessly pursue your dream. Especially if you’re black folk living in Gary, Indiana, in the early 1960’s. That’s not exactly the Mecca of the entertainment world, much less a place where you’re going to make a lot of money if you stick around.
Sure, those Jackson boys were relentlessly pushed by the equivalent of a drill sergeant in their formative years. But let’s keep it real. If you compare the Jackson’s outcome with the thousands of other black boys in crime-ridden Gary, Indiana, in the mid to late 60’s, I expect a good double-digit number of their peers wound up in prison. And the rest of their peers never amounted to anything, much less performed to millions of fans around the world. Tough love was a necessary evil in that early environment.
That’s what I thought as I watched their dad get roasted for a full two hours straight in this bio.
There is controversy that Michael Jackson’s inappropriate behavior around young boys is never addressed in this film. That stuff was shot and then taken out, with the timeline adjusted so that the story ends before those allegations were brought up. Which is a fair defense on the part of the producers facing legal challenges. We only get to the beginnings of his long solo career, and by the two-hour mark, you’re ready for the credits to roll anyway.
The selling point for this movie is very much the same as the incredible documentary, “Michael Jackson’s This Is It.” That documentary film from 2009 is a must-see for anyone that has an appreciation for his music. Which turns out to be most people. The musical performances in this latest biography are shockingly good as well. Your brain may not be convinced at all that it’s really Michael on the screen. But his nephew, Jaafar Jackson, is close enough that the effect works. They know how to pace this thing, and by the end, the last series of songs really bring it home and make it worth the movie ticket price.
I went in expecting the worst, and came out glad that I saw it in the theater.
– See it on the Big Screen
Brothers Under Fire (R)
Kiefer Sutherland stars as a military captain who’s deployed in Syria. One of the men in his squad is going to get married to his Mexican wife in their hometown in Mexico, so 4 of the squad join him to attend his wedding. It’s an approved R&R trip.
The film then jumps to beautiful rural mountainous Mexico, and takes its time (nearly an hour) developing the story, showing us the large cast of the Mexican families attending the wedding, as well as a local cartel of bad guys. The cast is so solid, it’s relaxing enough to sit through the long set-up.
Eventually, the two groups clash, just as you would expect from such a film.
Overall, it’s an OK story, in a direct-to-video kind of way. There’s a good deal of bloodshed dished out by the vicious cartel. Hollywood always makes sure to leave no gray area as to whether the bad guys deserve to die or not. But be warned that this story is more bleak than you’d find in a typical Hollywood film of this genre.
Due to the authentic Mexican setting, there’s also a good bit of English subtitles needed, in case you’re put off by such things. Those realities aside, it’s a pretty solid weekday night rental if it’s miserable and raining outside, and you’re ordering a pizza and looking for something to watch. It’s available for streaming now.
– Wait for Rental
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (R)
I liked part one. Now that that’s out of the way.
In this sequel, the bride that survived the original “hide and seek to the death” game is forced to play again, with new family members hunting her. Only this time she’s paired up with her annoying sister (played by Kathryn Newton). The two of them bicker throughout the film like a couple of 12-year-old girls in the backseat fighting over a Barbie, and it’s more annoying than I could possibly describe. They even bicker loudly (constantly) while the devil-worshipping villains are close by, hunting them.
The script is dumb, annoying, and hard to sit through. To try to sell their sisterly angst, every 6th word is an F-bomb. And with a movie overstuffed with dialogue, it’s a B-52 carpet bombing of F-bombs from start to finish. Only once did the lead put her hand over her sister’s mouth to shut her the hell up (see photo). What she really needed was a gag ball.
Each evil family here for the hunt is represented by a husband and wife. The husbands are worthless pussies and can’t even work a TV remote without their wives showing them how to do it. Just like in real life, right guys? The wives have a lot of spirited fight in them and wear the pants while their husbands mostly cower and pout. There’s not one likable character in the mix. Even the lead (Samara Weaving) is insufferable.
Twice during the film, I contemplated walking out of the theater. It’s that bad.
– AVOID!
Project Hail Mary (PG-13)
Ryan Gosling stars as an astronaut sent out into deep space to literally save Earth from extinction. We’ve seen a lot of movies with that theme, but this has a different twist to it. The trailers have already given too much away, but that’s Hollywood.
Andy Weir was the author of the book, “The Martian,” that was then made into a very successful movie starring Matt Damon. Weir also wrote, “Project Hail Mary.” I read both books before seeing the movies, and I thought both the book and the movie version of The Martian were well done. But the movie version of Project Hail Mary skips so many chapters and details that it’s basically just a superficial flyover of the novel. The CliffsNotes version. It does make sense, as a typical 2.5-hour film would calculate out to about 150 pages of script. “Project Hail Mary” is a 482-page novel. Tough to condense that down so hard.
The novel is filled with scientific theories and explanations that go on and on. It gets mighty deep, in chapter after chapter. But for those that march through the slog, it goes a long way to explaining why complicated things are happening. As I watched the movie, I understood the setbacks (many that were left out) that the audience around me was likely shaking their heads at. Maybe they enjoyed what they were watching, maybe not. Hard to tell.
The movie version tries to add sidekick humor that often falls flat. At the 2-hour mark, you may get antsy. I did.
The good news is that although Weir’s novel held up Communist China as the major leader in this space project to save the world, the movie totally shuns that notion, even if that might cost the film big money at the Chinese box office. Give Hollywood credit where it’s due.
I’m going to go against the grain here and say I don’t think Project Hail Mary is a movie that needs to be seen in a theater, much less in IMAX.
– Wait for Rental
Shelter (R)
Jason Statham is back doing Jason Statham things in his latest movie, Shelter. His 14-year-old costar actress (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) is surprisingly good in this. And unlike the 111 other young characters before her, who all play the role of “dumb kid,” never doing what they’re told, to create weak-writing plot tension, she actually follows orders and acts like a normal person in peril would act.
Refreshing.
For maximum enjoyment, I recommend knowing as little about the story ahead of time as possible before walking into the theater. It’s a bit of a slow burn at the beginning, but definitely a theater-grade movie.
I liked Statham’s previous movie, The Beekeeper. But this one has a better story than The Beekeeper. I have some quibbles with it, but going over any of them would give too much of the plot away.
There are very few movies worth going to a theater these days. Which makes this one really stand out.
– See it on the Big Screen
Greenland 2: Migration (PG-13)
I saw the original Greenland movie (starring Gerard Butler and Morena Baccarin) in the theater in 2019 and thought it was one of the best end-of-the-world movies ever put together. This part 2 picks up where the original ended with the occupants of the government bunker in Greenland emerging five years after the comet strike only to find the world is still a pretty inhospitable place. On a yearly cycle, the fragments of the comet are still hitting Earth, the Earth’s crust is splitting open with lava flowing, and radiation and terrible storms (understatement) are a constant threat. None of this is realistic from a scientific point of view after such an event, but as an action-adventure movie, it’s OK.
In one scene, they claim that the tectonic plates are shifting into a new formation, which is causing the massive earthquakes that are even threatening the integrity of their nuclear bunker. Tectonic plates move at about the same rate as human fingernails. Mighty slow. Imperceptible.
Years ago, I would have bet that by 2026 we would have these shaky-cam movies behind us. No such luck. Which is strange because it’s the same director who did the first one, without all this shaking going on. The constant, amateur-hour, “drunk cameraman” motion is likely the #1 reason for hordes of people to skip this one completely. If the shaky-cam filming technique bothers you, this movie is not for you. I’m not sure sensitive people would even find it acceptable on their TV for rental.
In a common theme with such disaster movies, here again, there is just enough room for a car to drive out of the city or through an area littered with abandoned vehicles. It’s so nice to know that evacuating people will always think of the future sole survivors, leaving room for them on the roadways as they perish themselves in a world-ending event.
We do get a rash of “Survivor” types of challenges, one after another, that would make most sane folks turn back from the long quest to the unknown. But it’s fun to watch this tight little group march forward toward a safe haven land that may or not be enchanted as promised. It’s also good to see that they dropped the whole insulin-dependence son plot crutch for this one.
The thing that throws cold water on most of these harrowing scenes is that you know none of the main stars are going to get even a scratch from any of it until they get close to the end and either live or die. But it’s still a pretty grim tale, so kudos to that overall theme.
The bottom line is that if you saw the original Greenland movie in 2019, you’ll probably want to see this one, just to see how this end-of-the-world story ends.
– Wait for Rental
End of 2026 Movies.