Movies, Film, and Chili

  Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is the newest edition of the American storyline for the titular monsters. Let me start off by saying that if you turn your brain off for the human parts the film is watchable. The film has eye-rolling character development where men act like women and women act like men. Just like the newest Ghostbusters there is a bit of teen angst in a film that doesn't need it. They brought back Terry Rossio to write the film yet had one of the world's worst writers Jeremy Slater  there to edit the writing to make it boring. He's one of the worst because of how he butchered Death Note and Fantastic Four. I enjoyed Rebecca Hall  in The Town  but here she's so one dimensional. She plays the main scientist. Dan Stevens plays a hippie which I don't know who that's appealing to, but it's not the general audience. He's got a film I'm excited for later this year called Cuckoo . He also played the Beast in Beauty & the Beast in 2017

  Anyone But You  is a romantic comedy where two people hate each other at the beginning and then by the end you expect them to be together. The film is written and directed by Will Gluck  the same director as Annie  and Easy A . Easy A had a good writer while Gluck tries his best to write how modern people talk but really it comes across as contrite and written for people with a short attention span. I have nothing against romantic comedies as The Proposal was great. Sydney Sweeney  plays the female lead who makes all the wrong decisions and is quick to judge. She has a lot of character flaws but you end up rooting for her anyways to make the decision to be vulnerable. It's a delicate balance but she does a good job despite what was written for her. Glen Powell  hasn't had a good movie that allowed him to really act in it. He's trying in the film whereas when he was in Top Gun: Maverick he played more of a one-dimensional character. The character here is written as if the

  Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is the fourth installment of the Ghostbusters franchise excluding the attempted reboot. After Jason Reitman 's reboot with Ghostbusters: Afterlife the studio gave the reigns to writer Gil Kenan  to try and keep the flame alive from a directorial aspect. The film suffers from having a too-packed cast and the director didn't cut out unnecessary scenes and because of that, the film feels like a wait to see the big bad teased in the poster, trailer, and premise of the film. Kenan hasn't had a successful live-action film with the Poltergeist failure and his only good film being Monster House, but that success is partly attributed to writer Dan Harmon . Paul Rudd has a minor character arc into a more fatherly figure in the family who has to take on a more authoritative role for a child who treats her mother horribly. It makes me wonder who this was written for as it seems the message is for teenage girls who have issues, the odd thing is that there

Immaculate is a religious horror about a cult in Italy determined to bring about the apocalypse through an immaculate conception with a nun. I should have expected less from Michael Mohan but I suppose I'm a sucker for horror. He hasn't done anything good and I'm not sure why Hollywood puts faith in people like this and writer Andrew Lobel. Lobel  is a complete unknown and this isn't a good film for his first. It's quite the opposite, his writing shows he knows very little about the bible except for what is available through social media or a quick Wikipedia search. I haven't seen Sydney Sweeney  do anything worthwhile and they gave her character very little to work with. She was in Madame Web  but that was nearly horrible. The Handmaid's Tale was good for the first season only as the second season wasn't good enough to catch my attention so I didn't get to see her character introduced. I still need to see Anyone But You  but I'm not too excited

  Bob Marley: One Love  is a journey into the life of the reggae icon. Written and directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green , the same director of  King Richard. Here he continues to succeed while the writing takes a backseat for authenticity. The son of Bob Marley was a part of the production to ensure that the film accurately reflects the life and message of Bob Marley to the point where the film is less grand to the point it does hinder the film overall. Bob is played by Kingsley Ben-Adir  the same man who played Malcolm X in One Night in Miami... and who was one of the Kens in Barbie.  One Night was a much better film but this is his best performance.  The beautiful  Lashana Lynch plays Bob's wife. You'll recognize her from No Time to Die , The Woman King,   Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness , and Captain Marvel as Maria Rambeau . This is clearly her best performance yet even if the film won't bring enough attention to her performance. The film just seems like a step

  Dune: Part 2  is the second film in Denis Villeneuve's trilogy for the science fiction franchise.  Denis Villeneuve  is quickly becoming a modern master of science fiction. He did Arrival  in 2016 which probably landed his next gig. I gave Blade Runner 2049 an A+ and if you follow this blog you'll know I don't give out those often. The last one was Parasite  back in 2019. Two of his films have been nominated for Picture of the Year at the Oscars. It's only a matter of time till he gets his first win. Timothee Chalamet is coming into his own with his acting, especially his control over his voice. Playing Paul Atreides requires a lot of force in the second half of this trilogy and I was pleasantly surprised. Zendaya  can act with her face but she should have asked for some reshoots as some of the scenes didn't land for me. There is a stellar supporting cast, reuniting Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem who we haven't seen on screen together since No Country For Old

  Imaginary is a horror film about an imaginary friend gone wrong. The film is written and directed by  Jeff Wadlow. There are plenty of other films to look at by comparison to this film and then you'll probably start to grasp the direction the review is going. He directed The Curse of Bridge Hollow, Truth or Dare, and Never Back Down.  That being said the direction has some flaws in small details that just didn't make sense. The major flaws come with the writing and dialogue. The film isn't scary, or I should say the film would be scarier if all of the scary scenes weren't in the trailers. The writing credits go to Greg Erb and Jason Oremland  the same writers for The Princess and the Frog but then you find out they also wrote Playmobil  and Reindeer in Here.  DeWanda Wise plays the main character a stepmom to the main child actress. She walks through all the dialogue and hasn't really done much except being a side character in Jurassic World Dominion . She was bor