Movie Review: THE INVITATION...

Earlier today, I watched the horror flick The Invitation at AMC theaters.

I fell asleep a couple of times during the movie's first act, but I stayed wide awake once I realized that this film was about vampires!

I don't know if I was completely oblivious to the clues when I saw it on the big screen, but the trailer (posted below) for The Invitation did a great job in not letting us know that the relatives of Evie (Nathalie Emmanuel) were members of the undead.

I now realize that the shot where Viktoria (played by Stephanie Corneliussen) licks the blood off of one of Evie's fingers was one hint in the preview... My bad!

I originally had no interest in seeing The Invitation (there were no new releases this weekend that I wanted to watch at the multiplex instead), as it reminded me of the 2019 film Ready or Not—where Samara Weaving also played a bride who needs to fight for her life against murderous, supernatural-crazed in-laws at some eerie mansion.

On the plus side, if there's ever a sequel to The Invitation (it currently made $26.5 million worldwide off a $10-million budget), the ending to this movie made it look like Evie somewhat became the female equivalent of Blade! I can't wait till Marvel Studios' version of the daywalker (this time played by Mahershala Ali) arrives in theaters nationwide late next year.

That is all!

Movie Review: BARBARIAN...

Earlier today, I watched the Zach Cregger-directed horror flick Barbarian at AMC theaters.

I would definitely have to say that this is one of the cleverest scary movies I've recently seen on the big screen!

Barbarian starts off in a dilapidated Detroit suburb, with a seemingly-clichéd beginning where unfortunate circumstances force a woman (Tess, played by Georgina Campbell) to spend the night at a house with a random stranger (Keith, played by Bill Skarsgård) who she distrusts so much that she secretly photographed his driver's license with her smartphone after he inadvertently left his wallet inside the room she was going to sleep in.

Keith is predictably portrayed as the odd man who draws Tess' suspicions by doing such questionable things as making her a cup of tea (she doesn't drink it) or going out of his way to venture to the local laundromat to wash new bed sheets for her room. They both coincidentally found this house through an Airbnb service.

Spoilers Ahead: This is where the predictability ends and great storytelling begins as Barbarian's story is turned upside-down the moment Tess stumbles upon a secret passageway in the house's basement!

I won't tell you what happens in that passageway, but Barbarian suddenly becomes so unconventional that the story abruptly focuses on an actor named AJ (Justin Long)...who's caught in the middle of a Hollywood sex scandal that prompts him to leave California and head back home to Detroit. It just so happens that the house which Tess and Keith rented through Airbnb is AJ's original home!

(Why AJ lived in a house surrounded by a bunch of abandoned homes that were last occupied during the Ronald Reagan years is a question that Barbarian leaves unanswered.)

AJ is actually unaware that Tess and Keith were renting his house, but by the time he finally runs into one of them (revealing which one will probably be a big spoiler), the situation has already gotten extremely out of control.

Barbarian's story gets so twisted that by the end of the film, we really don't know who the movie's title is referring to! One thing's for sure— The barbarian isn't Tess, and it certainly isn't Keith.

True to horror form, this movie definitely has both gruesome and non-gruesome 'WTF' moments: With one scene showing a man getting his head crushed as it's repeatedly slammed against the wall, another scene showing a person get their arm ripped off, and another cringe-inducing scene where a hapless victim is forced to breastfeed from the most frightening-looking woman (who somewhat resembles a zombie from 2007's I Am Legend) you'll ever see on the big screen.

Barbarian is such a cleverly-written film...with a great music score by Anna Drubich to boot. Watch it now if you want to appreciate a great horror flick! Happy Saturday.

Movie Review: PURPLE HEARTS...

Earlier today, I watched the romance drama Purple Hearts on Netflix.

I might be a bit biased (since I worked as an extra on this production when it filmed at the Hollywood Bowl last year), but I thought that Purple Hearts was a great film!

There was controversy (specifically on Twitter) about Purple Hearts' story when this movie was released online over a month ago, but I found nothing wrong with the messaging.

Purple Hearts' plot is about an aspiring singer (Cassie, played by Sofia Carson)—dealing with diabetes—who's unable to secure a refill on her insulin because her health insurance won't cover the cost of her medication. Living in Oceanside, she meets a Marine (Luke, portrayed by Nicholas Galitzine) who has financial problems of his own that could be rectified if he was married and had access to special benefits provided by the United States military.

Realizing that both of their financial predicaments can be solved by tying the knot, Cassie and Luke discuss how their marriage (and would-be divorce) will be handled before they're off to their private wedding.

The problem is, a soldier getting married just so they can receive extra money from the U.S. military amounted to insurance fraud...which was punishable through court-martial and imprisonment.

Folks on Twitter complained about Purple Hearts' message because they didn't like how Cassie and Luke only married to get financial benefits from the American government.

However, if they watched the whole film (spoilers ahead), then they'd see that the insurance fraud was eventually exposed...and Luke ended up getting court-martialed and sent to jail at the end of the movie.

Purple Hearts went to great lengths to show that Cassie and Luke slowly started to fall for each other after an awkward start to their relationship. Cassie took care of Luke after he returned to San Diego to recover from a combat-related injury suffered in Iraq, Luke made sure that Cassie was okay after she returned home to their apartment feeling dizzy from her diabetic condition, Cassie got Luke a support dog named Peaches to help him in his recovery, Luke took full responsibility for the insurance fraud when he found out that Cassie might be prosecuted by the state of California after his military hearing was over, and Cassie drove all the way from the Hollywood Bowl to Camp Pendleton to declare her love for Luke before he was shipped off to jail.

(We'll overlook the fact that it seemed like Cassie arrived at Camp Pendleton in less than an hour...when it's a 112-mile drive, at maximum, between the Hollywood Bowl and this military base in San Diego County.)

So bottom line is, I thought the story of Purple Hearts was great.

Also, if the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) found the messaging of Purple Hearts to be objectionable, then it wouldn't have given the production crew access to Camp Pendleton and military hardware for this movie. Not only that, but the USMC probably wouldn't have provided that honor guard during the funeral scene at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery—which is also where Iceman's funeral in Top Gun: Maverick was filmed. That is all.

On This Day in 2007: Remembering 3:10 TO YUMA...

It was 15 years ago today that the James Mangold-directed film 3:10 to Yuma—one of my all-time favorite Westerns—was released in theaters nationwide.

Russell Crowe was badass as Ben Wade...a captured outlaw who needs to be escorted by Dan Evans, a war veteran-turned rancher played by Christian Bale, as he was brought to a 3:10 afternoon train that would transport Wade to Yuma Territorial Prison in Arizona. Of course, this wasn't an easy task to do, since Wade's gang (led by his second-in-command Charlie Prince—sinisterly played by Ben Foster) was in constant pursuit of Evans' posse as Prince attempted to free his group's sharpshooting leader from government custody.

The last time I rooted for Russell Crowe to vanquish the bad buys (even though he was more of an antihero in 3:10) was as Maximus in 2000's Gladiator. And it was interesting to see Christian Bale play a post-Civil War protagonist in this movie before he donned the Batcowl again in 2008's The Dark Knight. Ben Foster himself has played a variety of roles throughout his career...such as a former convict in 2016's Hell or High Water, another—um—convict in the NBC TV comedy My Name Is Earl (2005-2009) and a U.S. Navy SEAL in 2013's Lone Survivor.

I'd watch 3:10 to Yuma again if my DVD player wasn't broken. I'm wondering when the next Western film will be released... And will it be as entertaining as James Mangold's hit movie? (I feel asleep during the first hour or so of Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight in 2015.) Carry on.

Movie Review: THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING...

Earlier today, I watched George Miller's fantasy romance drama Three Thousand Years of Longing at AMC theaters.

The trailer made Three Thousand Years look like it would be as quirky as the very eccentric and enjoyable Everything Everywhere All at Once, but this film fell short of expectations.

Tilda Swinton (who I kept picturing with a bald head during the movie, after she portrayed the Ancient One in Marvel's Doctor Strange and Avengers: Endgame) played Alithea—a divorced London scholar who traveled to Istanbul to give a speech about mythology until a series of events led her to stumbling upon a bottle carrying the Djinn, portrayed by Idris Elba.

Some critics refer to Three Thousand Years as 'Aladdin for adults'...which is true. But I don't recall Aladdin—either the 1992 animated classic or the 2019 live-action remake—being bogged down by so much dialogue. Of course, how else are you gonna explain three millenia worth of events that got the Djinn to where he was in modern-day Turkey?

One thing that I admire about Three Thousand Years is that it's the first film I've personally seen in the pandemic era which acknowledged that the pandemic exists. Scores of people wore face masks while Alithea gave her seminar inside a packed auditorium early on in the film, while Alithea herself was shown wearing a mask while seated inside a public bus taking her back home in the movie's final act. Good for her!

Though this begs the question: Why didn't Alithea use one of her three wishes to end the pandemic? I'm sure that asking the Djinn to rid this world of the coronavirus (but not the existing illnesses) didn't violate his rule of not wishing for all suffering to end. But that's just me.

When all is said and done, I'll stick to watching the animated or live-action version of Aladdin if I wanted to be entertained by a genie granting three wishes to a solitary but headstrong individual. Happy Labor Day to my fellow Yanks!

Movie Review: JAWS... (I'm 47 Years Too Late, But It's All Good)

"You're gonna need a bigger boat." I finally understood the context of this memorable line from Jaws after watching Steven Spielberg's classic 1975 adventure thriller—the very first summer blockbuster ever made—in IMAX at AMC theaters today.

While it doesn't have the high-octane energy that action scenes in today's blockbusters have, Jaws was nevertheless a very enjoyable film...and one whose message still has resonance today. Just as how some people in the 21st century willfully ignore the dangers of exploiting Mother Nature (resulting in issues such as climate change) to continue making a buck, the folks of Amity—a fictional island community off the coast of New England—refused to do anything about a ravenous great white shark that threatened their ability to earn lots of money through tourists visiting from the U.S. mainland on the Fourth of July until it was too late.

Considering that it was released almost a decade before the PG-13 rating was created (in 1984 thanks to Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom), it's amusing to know that Jaws was merely PG—what with the implied nudity (via that unlucky female skinny-dipper in the opening scene and the poster above), drug use (also in the opening scene) and bloody depictions of people getting attacked and maimed by that great white throughout the film.

There was even a moment or two where Jaws really gave me a jump-scare...one of them being when oceanographer Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) dove into the water to examine a seemingly-abandoned boat that was attacked by the shark, only to discover that someone was still onboard—but clearly no longer breathing.

The final act where Amity's police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), the shark hunter named Quint (Robert Shaw) and Hooper sail out to sea to hunt down that great white was no doubt an exciting sequence 47 years ago. To watch these three characters put their lives on the line as they chase after an apex predator in its own habitat was an enjoyable thrill to see.

And the fact that the shark met its demise in such an epic and explosive manner makes Jaws so revolutionary for its time. No wonder why Quentin Tarantino recently called Jaws "the greatest movie ever made." That's obviously not true—but I understand the sentiment behind it!

Also, it was great to hear John Williams' classic Jaws theme in the film itself...on the big screen. It wasn't great that Amity's repulsive mayor (Larry Vaughn, aptly played by Murray Hamilton) managed to get through this entire movie without a single shark bite, but oh well.