Movies, Film, and Chili

  Mean Girls  is a musical remake of the beloved cult classic of the same name in 2004. I understand trying new directors but Tina Fey and Lorne Michaels should have helped Samantha Jayne  out by teaching her the ropes. The film follows the same beats as the original and as such the only real problem was the casting and direction. Angourice Rice plays Cady this time around. She was the only saving grace for the film as everyone else other than the returning cast is miscast. You might remember Rice from The Nice Guys  and Betty from Spider-Man: Homecoming.  Regina, this time around, is played by the twenty-four-year-old Rinee Rapp  who looks like she's thirty. The make-up artists had their work cut out for her as Renee just has a mature face and body. One of the things about looking cool or hot, the harder you try the less you look like what you're going for. Rapp is trying so hard to look like the hot girl at school. She just doesn't pull it off.  Avantika  was funny but

  Boy Kills World  is the oddly titled, oddly written action comedy. The film is written and directed by Moritz Mohr,  who has only done shorts before. While there are some technical problems in his direction, the writing was funny and even though it wasn't original it was a fun take. Tyler Burton Smith helped with the screenplay. You might know him from video games more than movies since he did Alan Wake II, Quantum Break, and Sleeping Dogs. He also did the screenplay for the poor remake of Child's Play.   Bill Skarsgard has a few movies coming out this year namely  The Crow and Nosferatu . The latter of which I'm most excited for. He has to act since his character is mute and deaf. He constantly looks at people's lips when they talk and it seemed like either the CGI was on point or he did a lot of his own stunts. Either way, he got shredded for the role. Speaking of shredded, Jessica Rothe  has her abs out the entire film. I wondered what happened to her after Happy D

ISS is a what-if drama set in space, where what if you were aboard the international space station while nuclear war broke out on Earth below.  Gabriela Cowperthwaite takes her best stab at making a mainstream movie but it's clear she has a hard time taking a good premise and getting the most out of every scene and actor in the film. She isn't known for much and this is the first movie I've seen her do. It doesn't help that the writer is also brand new. This certainly reeks of writer-strike writing.  Despite Ariana DeBose being gorgeous and a solid actress, she has little to work with as the writer and director are bringing her down. I know she's more talented than what this movie allowed and in some ways, I feel bad for her. The worst offender was John Gallagher Jr. who I know has more depth in him from 10 Gloverfield Lane  and Hush . Here is kinda of just goes through the motions or perhaps the director didn't allow him a second take.  Pilou Asbaek actually d

  Road House  is a remake of a beloved 80s film of the same name. This time it's updated for a modern audience. Doug Liman  is credited as the director. He did Edge of Tomorrow  and Mr. & Mrs. Smith,  so he knows his way around the director's chair. There wasn't anything glaringly wrong with the direction as he got what he could out of Conor McGregor , which wasn't much. He had to work with five writers and seven producers. I have a hard time believing his vision is the one that was chosen after watching. One of the writers was Anthony Bagarozzi  who did well in writing The Nice Guys, but it seems he had a lot of help with Shane Black  when writing that. I say that because he hasn't written anything else. The other screenplay writer,  Chuck Mondry,  had never written a movie before. Jake Gyllenhaal took over the role of Dalton  and his age is starting to show. He does an okay job but he had a hard time selling how cool he was. Coolness 101: the more you try to a

  Abigail  is a horror involving a team of people who kidnap a ballerina vampire. Directed by Scream V and Scream VI duo: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the film is a spiritual successor to the amount of blood they had in Ready or Not.  The duo also brought along their writer, Guy Busick, s ince the team has been so successful lately when it comes to these types of films. They're really improving their craft on all ends. The new member of the team is Stephen Shields  who is a relative newcomer and was probably just along for the ride to learn the ropes. It was tightly written, the characters were fleshed out completely, and the only narrative problem was the minor exposition between the entertainment. Speaking of Scream V and VI,   Melissa Barrera  has been working with them for a while now. They really know how to make her look both good and a believable action star. I'm not a hundred percent on seeing any movie that has her in it as she has some iffy-looking movies

  The American Society of Magical Negroes is a fantasy that pulls on racial tensions in the United States. Written and directed by Kobi Libii , the film struggles with writing realistic dialogue. This is Libii 's first time directing and second time writing. Perhaps the film was written during the writer strike and so they asked if anyone wasn't a part of the guild and willing to write something. There is about a half hour of exposition. The starving artist trope was overdone, and the direction had some obvious technical issues. The close-ups weren't utilized as intended and the CGI wasn't up to expectations for a movie involving magic. I liked Justice Smith when he was in the Pokemon live-action movie. Now that he's been playing the same character since then it's become tiresome. He's typecast as a beta and scared young man who lacks confidence, just look at the Dungeons & Dragons  movie.  David Alan Grier  hasn't been in a good movie since the 90

  Civil War is a journey across the eastern United States during a hypothetical civil war. Alex Garland wrote and directed the film. I was worried there would be too much of a political message in the film but really the message was so muted and delved into the story of Lee and Jessie. There are undertones of who is right and who is wrong in Garland's opinion but I was glad he kept it from being the story. It seems he's learned his lesson from his 2022 film Men. I'm glad to see him branching out from science fiction but Ex Machina and Annihilation were his best movies. Kirsten Dunst  plays Lee the main character and the manifestation of jaded experience. She's seen war, suffering, and horrible things. She wants to protect Jessie just because of how polar opposite Jessie is as the manifestation of innocence. The makeup even shows how dead Lee looks in the eyes with the first close-up. You'll remember her as MJ from Spider-Man . Cailee Spaeny  plays Jessie and despite

  Monkey Man is a John Wick-style movie set in India with revenge and political overtones. Story by, directed, and starring Dev Patel,  the movie has an identity issue that seems intentional. There's a line in the film where a gun dealer says "You like John Wick?" hinting at how the movie is marketed towards that audience. Dev Patel  has the look of someone who could pull off a John Wick-style movie too the problem is that the movie is a bait and switch. Any Wick movie will need a good fight choreographer. Brahim Chab does his best as many of his prior times as a fight choreographer have been in no-name Thai or B movies. There isn't much of a story done through the fighting and there are too many cuts and odd camera angles. The film has a particular producer, there are 23 in total which take that for what you will, but the particular producer is Jordan Peele.  His name alone got me even more excited for the film as I've enjoyed Patel in most things and Peele has