The Month in Theaters April 2024
Photo of Meridian 16 Cinema, downtown Seattle. 2012 by Sea Turtle on Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
This was a very good month in theaters. Fourteen movies in theaters, with one repeat, and an additional nineteen otherwise, for a total of thirty-two reviews. Let’s get on with it!
Late Night with the Devil
Saw it twice, movie of the month, currently movie of the year. A+. My long-term thoughts can be read here. Saw it the second time with a friend at the local indie theater in my area, as my local Regal had only one showtime left the day we saw it (and it was late in the day.) Any excuse I have to buy some of those wonderful freshly-made cookies that indie theater sells for a really good price…
Monkey Man
This was the best action movie of the year when I saw it. This was supposed to be dumped on Netflix until Jordan Peele saw its potential, bought it out from Netflix for a song, and gave it a theatrical release. It cost basically nothing in that transaction (it cost a lot more to film,) so Peele made out like a bandit in the end. The movie is odd at places, especially when a “licking his wounds” segment before the third act drags on a little too long, but it is quite an enjoyable movie. Dev Patel doing a John Wick is not something I needed, but I do want a sequel. Hanuman, the white monkey, is a mythological figure at the center of this film’s mythos that is also the same deity worshipped by the Jabari tribe in Black Panther, oddly enough. There’s also a lot of Indian political subtext that I know nothing about and that the movie doesn’t really care to focus on. The people that help him lick his wounds are apparently transgender or something, but that is all of one line of dialogue the entire movie. And I don’t really need to know more. I am not voter in India. So what do I really care about the caste system there, Bueller? The action scenes are pretty awesome, although there is some shaky cam. It looks like Dev Patel does most of his own stunts (except for one pretty obvious one.) He wears a monkey mask for a small part of the movie. And then something happens, and he immediately takes it off and throws it away like a burger wrapper for no reason the movie ever cares to explain. A to A+. This is definitely worth seeing, but it is no longer my favorite action movie of the year… I don’t know where they go for a sequel, but that doesn’t mean they can’t. The justification for a sequel is best to not think about. Revenge action movies are a cottage industry now because of the John Wick franchise. And I’m all here for it.
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
One of the best action movies this year but not the best. A. Henry Cavill and Alan “Reacher” Ritchson are both awesome. There are very few slow parts of this movie, but there are a few moments where they abuse cinematic time a little too much. I want more explanation, and they don’t show it. The plot is overly convenient at times. And basically no one on the good side dies. There is a random usage of the Lalo Schifrin score from Dirty Harry for some reason… During the inevitable prison break scene such movies always have. While technically based on a true story, it is apparently as loose as humanly possible. They show what is, in fact, a real operation during WWII, but how it went down almost surely did not go down that way. Not a lot of potential for a sequel here, as the character played by Henry Cavill died in an operation a few years after the events of this movie. And the movie bombed… But it is Guy Ritchie. If he wants it, I’m sure he can convince a studio to throw more money at him. This is his third movie in about a year. And he did a Netflix TV show based on a 2020 movie of his inbetween his last movie and this one! Man keeps workin’. This movie has a bevy of English talent, including Cary Elwes and Snake Eyes. And a bunch of other actors and actresses you know from a thing. Oddly, no Vinnie Jones. Or Jason Statham. It’s an uncomplicated movie that knows what it is. This was a Screen Unseen showing at AMC, the first time Regal and AMC did not show the same movie on the same day. I’m glad I saw this movie instead of the baseball movie that got almost no distribution (and I obviously didn’t get around to seeing…)
Civil War
This is very good drama, but it could have been better. A. What holds it back is how intentionally apolitical it is. We do not see what sparks the titular civil war or have anyone else really describe the beginning of the war in any detail at all. We know the President, played by Ron Swanson (not in the movie enough,) is in his third term. But we have no idea if this is an FDR during WWII situation or not. An antifa massacre gets mentioned during the movie, but we don’t know if antifa was massacred or did the massacring. It is a love letter to wartime journalists but also makes those same journalists into “if it bleeds, it leads” scumbags like the ambulance chasers in Nightcrawler. The acting from most is excellent except for the young, doe-eyed war photographer. She is very green, and it is very noticeable compared to everyone else, who all seemingly give the performances of their dramatic careers. She also looks 15 even though she’s in her twenties to the point the screenwriter felt compelled to put a line of dialogue to that effect in the movie. And she uses actual film for her camera. Even though everyone has digital cameras. Including her! Because she has a smart phone. Which can probably take much better pictures much faster than her stupid ‘90s-era Hipster ass camera. Jesse Plemons is in all of one scene. We don’t know which side of the civil war he’s on. All we know is that he’s a nationalist and probably incredibly racist. We don’t even know if he’s officially in any military or not. But his scene is the best in the entire film. There’s a reason his scene was the trailer scene. The battle sequences are quite impressive for an A24 movie. This looked very expensive to make. And it was much better than Alex Garland’s last movie, Men. So much better. This isn’t gonna be drama of the year, as it already isn’t, but it is definitely worth seeing. Like most A24 movies usually are.
The First Omen
This was so much better than it had any right to be. While it is good (and the first movie in The Omen franchise I’ve actually seen,) it is beat for beat almost the exact same movie as Immaculate until the birth. And it ends on such sequel bait. The worst scene in the movie being the last one is not great for a movie. Even people, like me, who have never seen one of these movies before knows what the name of the demon boy is. They treated it like a big reveal. Like a pin drop moment. Everyone in the audience knew the name! American almost nun decides to go to a small nunnery in Italy to take her final vows. And gets pregnant through machinations by the church. As is usual in these type of horror movies, the Catholic Church is incredibly corrupt but in such a stupid way that only a lapsed Catholic could come up with it. This is a B to B+. It might have cracked into A- territory if Immaculate, which was an unproduced script for nearly a decade, hadn’t beat it to the punch a month earlier. The acting from most is great, although the lead actress is not amazing. And it is very obvious. She doesn’t play “moron coming to terms with the evil crap around her” very well. Because of how quick the switch flips to being strongly against the church. Sydney Sweeney is a much better actress who did a horror movie because she wanted to, producing the movie and everything. And there’s a bad twist at one point. It is obvious but stupid. Those are the worst twists.
Spy x Family Code: White
The second Monday $5 mystery preview screening of the month. And I am so glad I got the dubbed cut. I prefer subbed to dubbed in most cases when it comes to anime, but Spy x Family is a dialogue-heavy anime. It’s not that I don’t like reading. I just don’t want to do it for an hour and a half straight or more with no breaks. Shonen anime tend to have those breaks with amazing action sequences with little dialogue. While this also has action, it is mostly a sitcom. And it was very funny. The audience I saw this with, with probably a handful of anime fans at best, laughed heartily many times throughout the movie. We got some converts before it was over. Somebody who I told what the likely movie was going to be before the trailers even asked what this anime was called before we left the theater. This is probably going to be the anime movie of the year unless the Chainsaw Man movie manages to come out before the end of the year. Still waitin’ on that second season. And it may never come. While this is technically a 2023 movie, it did not release outside of Japan until this year. I will allow it to be considered a 2024 movie. Because I really liked it. A+. Third best movie of the year, I would wager? This could potentially be the animated movie of the year. I don’t really know what else is definitely releasing this year, but what I do know is coming likely ain’t takin’ this movie’s crown. You need to know nothing about the anime before seeing the movie. Like most anime movies, it is likely not canon to the manga. I have seen two or three episodes of the anime (before it got dubbed and the aforementioned reading issue,) so I likely will return to it soon now that the dubbed cut is out. There was one new main character, a dog, that wasn’t in those first couple of episodes. But the movie brings you up to speed very quickly. I thank the movie for doing that, considering it was used in a mystery screening. Only a couple walkouts when the movie started. Most stuck it out. I’m proud of that audience.
Abigail
Horror is having a Hell of a year already. A to A+. The Dark Universe is mostly dead, but that means it is technically slightly alive. A group of criminals stupidly walk into a trap by kidnapping Dracula’s daughter, who looks ten or younger but is, in fact, hundreds of years old. She’s his enforcer, killing his enemies for him. Using this exact trap: A staged kidnapping plot that will end badly. The ending is convenient as the character you think will survive within the first five minutes of the movie is the only member of the gang who does, but you probably knew that going into the movie. Scream (2022) girl (who is probably a raging anti-Semite,) Freaky girl, Legion from Legion, The Blob from the worst comic book movie of all time, and Gus Fring are all really good. I won’t spoil the obvious cameo near the end, but you know what character is coming. It is very hard to not spoil this movie because the trailer does a great job of doing that already. But, I will say no more. Based on my rating, this is definitely worth seeing. This is technically a remake, which I knew the day I saw it when I opened the Wikipedia article (I like to write down the movies I see in order on paper and having the official title in front of me is helpful.) That’s how I knew it was Dracula’s daughter before the movie brings that up very early on when everything goes mammaries skyward.
Boy Kills World
A+. Second best movie I have seen so far this year and the best action movie of the year so far as well. Long-form thoughts can be read here. It bombed hard at the box office, so it might be out of theaters before this article even goes up. I’ve already checked at my local AMC for this upcoming weekend. It has all of one showing at 8 PM. Not great. The third and final Monday $5 mystery preview screening of the month.
Sasquatch Sunset
I didn’t expect this movie to be good. I sort of expected it to be bad weird and not good weird. And I was right. C- to C. It is mostly a nothing movie. A family or group of nomadic Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) have adventures of little interest even though some of them die. I fell asleep at one point, and there was one less Bigfoot when I woke up. Probably passed out for less than 10 minutes. This is a very short movie, less than an hour and a half. And this was probably within the first 45 minutes. Because they don’t talk, we learn precious little about them they don’t demonstrate in action. Reading the Wikipedia plot summary, which will take you no more than two minutes, gives you everything you really need to know. It doesn’t fail because the makeup/costume job the crew did is probably gonna land the movie an Oscar nomination. Incredible. The Bigfoots are stupid as Hell. How they haven’t been completely wiped out by their own incompetence or killed by humans is anyone’s guess. We see human civilization markers throughout the movie, so we know humans are around. But we never actually see any. Also, the movie decides to be incredibly gross in that toilet humor way. And there’s also a very graphic birth scene. The movie just isn’t very exciting. And just sort of ends. There’s little plot or narrative structure. It’s a slice of life movie with no real beginning, middle, and end. Perfect Days it is not. Either make them talk (rudimentarily if necessary) or give the movie a humorous unreliable documentary-style narrator. That last thing? Would have made the movie amazing. A lot you could do with that. This movie didn’t have a big budget, clearly, but imagine Morgan Freeman or Samuel L. Jackson narrating it. It would have been awesome!
Challengers
This is The Lonely Island song with Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga… Plus tennis. The tennis stuff is excellent. Not nearly enough of it, though. The relationship drama is both awful and lacks balls. It is a very paint by numbers love triangle with copious cheating by the one at the center of the triangle (that metaphor might not make sense.) Zendaya continues to be an OK actress but she isn’t great yet. Her acting comes off very wooden and incredibly arrogant. “I’m the biggest fish and I know it” kind of attitude. She’s obviously the biggest actor in this. The movie has almost no other characters that get any real screentime or dialogue other than the three main leads. Other people are mostly conspicuously absent for the entire film. That almost surely kept the budget for extras and such down, but it comes off weirdly. Mostly empty locker rooms and spectator audiences that don’t really make any noise outside of gasps and applause. It is eerily chilling at times. There is also an obvious thread to pull that I don’t want to spoil, but the movie brings it up in one scene early into the movie and then never brings it up ever again outside of subtext. It’s like it didn’t even happen. This is still a B to B+. It is a very competently made movie, especially the tennis parts. But the tennis stuff is such a tiny part of the movie. What industry the three leads are in could easily have been anything. Life insurance sales, basketball, competitive cornhole even. The tennis part has so little narrative thrust to the whole enterprise, which is told repeatedly through constant flashbacks over the course of over a decade where they do little to age up the characters who are 18 in the youngest flashbacks so you can easily get confused as to when events are happening (which happened to me at least once.) It just needed some extra oomph. Like, I don’t know, showing more than three tennis matches in the entire film. Only one of which is given more than two minutes of screentime. This is one of those rare movies that is both too long and too short for the story it tells. There were things that both needed to be cut and needed to be expanded upon. And it ain’t doing too hot at the box office. $15 million ain’t a great opening.
Unsung Hero
I didn’t even plan to see this movie nor knew it had come out the weekend I saw it. My fiancée wanted to see it. (Five movies I saw this month all released on the same weekend; the final four and Boy Kills World.) It is a Christian pander movie, but one that clearly tries to be a movie first. A lot of them don’t. This one actually tried. It helped that the true story it is based on is a good one and recent enough. And some members of the family at the heart of the story executive produced the movie. There is almost certainly some fake tension added for dramatic flair, but wholesale inventing dramatic events was almost surely limited, unlike Ordinary Angels. Australian family with a concert promoter patriarch at the head, although he seemingly largely does Christian music, move to America after the Australian economy fishtails around 1991. They don’t drill this home, but most of the acts, including three of his children in the future, that come up are Christian musicians. (Not musicians who happen to be Christian, if you didn’t catch my drift.) They end up moving to America for a job that disappears by the time they arrive. They do what they need to for money to stay sheltered and fed. There are seven kids by the end of the movie. That’s a lot of mouths to feed. It is better than it honestly had any right to be. B to B+. My expectations were in the floor. And it surpassed them pretty easily.
Alien
I had never seen this in theaters. Since there is a new Alien movie releasing this August, they decided to return the original to theaters. Ridley Scott and the director of the new movie even introduce the film with a question-and-answer segment where the new director talks way too much before letting Ridley speak. You can tell he’s pissed at the new director for his run-on sentence questions. What more can I say about this movie? None of the cast was really famous when this came out. Sigourney Weaver is an absolute smoke show in this, especially for a scene near the end. The practical effects and creature designs are insanely good; thank you, H.R. Giger. A lot of stupid decisions and motivations, mostly at the hands of the twist reveal antagonist, which the fictional corrupt corporation at the center of this franchise never really explains ever in any of the movies. Written by someone with a bug up their ass who wore their hatred of capitalism on their shirtsleeve. The motivations of the company have never, ever made sense. And they never really try to. The Vault-Tec of the Alien universe. A+. A top five horror movie of all time in my book.
The Mummy
This one had an anniversary screening the same weekend as Alien. There are two AMC locations within two or three miles of each other in my local area (due to the Carmike Cinemas buyout AMC did nearly a decade ago.) One has a third less screens than the other. The smaller one showed this one, while the bigger one showed Alien. I managed to get into both in the same day. About 45 minutes from the end credits roll of one to the showtime of the other. I had plenty of time. This movie is awesome. It stands the test of time. The rest of the franchise isn’t anywhere near as good, especially The Rock CGI scorpion monstrosity in the sequel, but I like the third one even though they recast the female lead. (I am such a sucker for Asian mythology…) A+. It feels timeless while also dated to the ‘90s in the best possible way. The very difficult balancing act that Seinfeld and Friends also manage beautifully.
EVERYTHING ELSE
A lot less television this month. I am going to be doing something a little different going forward, by covering any video games I am currently playing. I’ll tackle that first.
Peglin and Vampire Survivors both continue to be awesome. The former is officially leaving early access soon with its official release coming presumably before the end of the year. The next update is supposed to be the full version 1.0 release. I have unlocked every achievement, including all DLC, the last time I checked into the latter. You can get both of them on Steam for a song. $20 (outside of regular sales) and around $5 (before DLC,) respectively. I recently picked up a replacement copy of both Super Mario Odyssey and Maneater. I managed to misplace both of them a couple years ago and could not find them for the life of me. Both physical copies for the Switch. I played about a half an hour to an hour of both of them. The prologue of both. I will get back to them again later, although I did beat SMO already many years ago.
Chucky is back and as bloody fun as ever. As of this writing, the season finale is the last episode that needs to air. My thoughts for the second half of this season will be in the May theater roundup. I’m sure they want to do another season, but they need to leave room to do another theatrically-released movie with this cast (or, at least, the voice of Chucky.) I watched the first three episodes of X-Men ’97 while visiting family as they have Disney+ and I currently do not. Three episodes was all that was out at the time I visited. While they are covering a lot in each episode, I actually like that. Getting to the point without much wasted space is nice. Since these are all mostly comic book storylines I am at least tangentially aware of. I watched the first two episodes of The Sympathizer, which has a far more nuanced view of the Vietnam War than basically any media I have ever seen. The ending of the first episode is incredibly harrowing. Robert Downey, Jr. is clearly trying to win an Emmy. He plays two different characters in the first two episodes but will apparently play at least four if Wikipedia is to be believed. I finally got Prime back for a period, so I watched the rest of the second season of Invincible. It’s awesome. One of the best superhero TV shows out right now. Please come back quickly. The gap between the two season finales was way too long. The Fallout series was much better than it had any right to be. Walton Goggins’ character is pretty much the sole reason for that. He seems to be the only character with any real intelligence other than the dude from Twin Peaks (I really need to watch that at some point) and the original Dune (which I also badly need to see at some point.) Vault-Tec is clearly another evil corporation written by an idiot with no real knowledge of economics. I don’t expect Hollywood or AAA video game development to have economics consultants but maybe they need to.
I saw five documentaries this month. All of them were spectacular for different reasons, except for one that was fine. The Truth vs. Alex Jones will make you angry. This man is a scumbag supreme and one of the worst Americans that is still alive, along with Noam Chomsky. A+. It’s on (HBO) Max.
Ricky Stanicky is a fun comedy that I really enjoyed even if the ending is way too cute by half. B+ to A-. The comedy is good from everyone. The plot is way too convenient, but that’s absurdist comedy for you.
Road House, the remake. Not bad. But I don’t particularly love the original. They’re both about the same to me. B- to B. Jake Gyllenhaal came to play. Man, I spelled that correctly without having to look it up! Yeah, me!!
Butcher’s Crossing had a much better trailer than movie. The ending was so disappointing. The hunting madness that takes up most of the middle isn’t interesting. Also, Nicolas Cage is not the main character. A very naïve Harvard dropout is. He gained nothing good from his experience with buffalo hunter Nic Cage and probably got PTSD from it. His character is so bad and badly written. Saban bought the distribution rights to this movie and then didn’t release it theatrically in the United States. For some reason… I doubt the streaming rights Hulu bought covered the investment Saban made. This screams Netflix movie no one cares about outside of Nicolas Cage’s great performance as mad man possessed with the desire to kill thousands of buffalo in short order. C to C+.
Steve! (Martin) A Documentary in Two Parts might technically be a show, but it is a two-part three-hour documentary, so I am counting it. I learned a lot I didn’t know about him. I knew about the bluegrass musician part, but basically nothing before his movie career. A+. It’s on Apple’s streaming service. Wish there was more stuff about Planes, Trains and Automobiles and John Candy.
This is the documentary that was so OK, I forgot I had even watched it when writing the number earlier in this article and had to edit that section to correct the number watched. Who Done It: The Clue Documentary doesn’t even have a Wikipedia article. It is a fan made documentary that is on Prime. It’s a B. The shoddy production is mostly why. The director/documentary maker films most of his segments without voiceover while driving his car. That’s weird and very low quality. The interviews with the cast and crew were great. Tim Curry unfortunately had a stroke before they made this documentary, so they merely play footage where he talks about the movie at a nerd convention of some persuasion. The stroke clearly really affected him. Leslie Ann Warren even brings up the 100th episode of Psych, one of my favorite shows, which was a love letter to Clue. Clue is probably in my top 20 movies of all time. I love the movie to death.
While visiting a different family than the one I mentioned earlier, I watched two movies one of the younger members of my extended family wanted to watch. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron is not a great movie. C. It bombed for a reason. Never seen it before, even though I definitely remember the likely Burger King kids’ meal toys for it.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas is short and nearly perfect. Not feature length, but it is a movie for as far as this accounting goes. A+. Wish the songs were full length and not cut up on the official soundtrack, especially the You’re a mean one… song.
When You Finish Saving the World is far better than it has any right to be. It’s on Netflix. I don’t want to spoil anything. A to A+. Highly recommend. 2022 movie.
This movie sucked donkey nuts. Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver was boring. So very boring. Outside of a scene vignette clearly stolen from the third book in The Iron Druid Chronicles series, the movie is mind-numbingly boring. F. So much worse than the last one. Zack Snyder wants to do six of these. SIX?!?!?!?!?!
Somehow, the last movie wasn’t the worst thing I saw in April. Mr. Magoo might be one of the bottom ten worst movies I’ve ever sat through. I spied it in the $5 bin at Wal-Mart. I knew it would be bad. I didn’t think the movie would have only one joke it would do to death. That I was sick of before the opening credits were finished. The main character is incredibly short-sighted. They even have a thing before the end credits telling you this movie isn’t intended to make fun of people with disabilities. Ebert or the other guy said that was the funniest part of the movie, if Wikipedia is to be believed. The opening and closing of the movie is animated in the style of the cartoon this movie was adapted from. F.
Blankman was OK. Could have been better, but was pretty funny at times. The physical shtick of the lead character gets so old by the end. David Alan Grier was really good. As was most of the rest of the cast. B.
28 Weeks Later had an amazing opening. And then the rest of the movie had to happen. Insanely badly written after that. So many stupid things have to be true of this world for the plot to work out the way it does. And I really like the lead actor. I really like Formula 51, which I should rewatch to review in this article series at some point. And The Tournament had great worldbuilding even if the ending was slightly too cute by half. C-. Only doesn’t fail because of the opening. After the opening, just turn the movie off and read the Wikipedia plot synopsis. I just saved you an hour and a half of your life. You’re welcome.
This wasn’t as good as I thought it would be, but was still good. Did not deserve a screenwriting Oscar as the screenplay is my biggest problem with the movie. Good Will Hunting is a B to B+. Robin Williams got an Oscar that he almost surely deserved before this movie.
Earth Girls Are Easy was weird and awesome. A to A+. Based on an EP from the singer who sang about the homecoming queen with a gun that I have because my dad got the Dr. Demento compilation album. She’s also in the movie and sings the musical parts of the movie. Basically just vignettes that don’t really have anything to do with the movie. Early Jim Carrey and Jeff Goldblum. And the latter’s wife at the time. And a Wayans brother. And Michael danged McKean! It is currently on Freevee.
Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary was very good. A to A+. It’s on Prime.
District 9 was very good, but the ending was not great. Again, a lot of convenience to get there. Still an A- in my book.
Screams Before Silence is harrowing. It is about the events of 10/07/23. It is about an hour long and is free on YouTube. A+.
I finally got to finish Blast from the Past, a movie I saw most of in 11th grade English class. It was free on YouTube, so I checked it out. It’s delightfully corny. A.
And that’s everything. As I write this on the first day of May, the summer movie season presumably officially starts this coming weekend. Here’s hoping the blockbusters this summer are actually good!
