The Month in Theaters: Twenty Movie Reviews for April 2022

Late like last time, but it’s not like I haven’t been writing anything. I watched 13 movies in theaters, two of which were watching a certain movie for a second and third time, with 9 movies watched otherwise, for 20 total reviews. That’s a lot. Let’s dive right in, shall we? SPOILERS AHEAD for some of the movies below.

Everything Everywhere All at Once

I saw this thrice and loved it more each time. This is not only movie of the month; this is almost surely movie of the year. If something beats it, I won’t exactly be mad. A+. You can read my further thoughts here.

Morbius

F. Worst 2022 movie I’ve seen this year. Morbius is an interesting character, but it’s clear they don’t really know what to do with him. So much so that the two post credits scenes are the best scenes in the entire movie. Michael Keaton’s Vulture got shunted to the Morbius/Venom universe due to the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home for some reason… And now Sony has a charismatic villain for a Venom-verse Sinister Six movie. My theory that I mentioned in my Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness review, that this universe is the same one as Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man, is probably true. I mean, they’re gonna fight Spider-Man. But which one? Probably not a new one.

Ambulance

A dumb fun action movie littered with beautiful camera work. R-rated Michael Bay is best Michael Bay. This is not his best, that’s Pain & Gain, but it is a great time. Jake Gyllenhaal plays out of his mind evil so well. Candyman dude is also good, although his “heroic ignorance” of his brother’s criminality and brutality drags on way too long. The rest of the cast does their job, but seeing as Gyllenhaal is the only actor I know by name without having to look, it means what it means. Character actors are great, but their names get lost to the sands of time. A-.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2

This movie was better than the first one, as long as they stick to the characters from the actual video games. Anytime another human is on camera that isn’t Robotnik or his assistant, they’re just padding the run time. Donut Lord and his whole gaggle of friends and associates just delay the actual plot. If they were cut from the movie, almost nothing would change. Jim Carrey is again the best part of the movie, although I enjoyed Idris Elba as Knuckles. We’re getting Shadow in the next one, but I want fat Robotnik and Metal Sonic. Paramount has to bribe Jim Carrey with money to not really retire before completing the trilogy. He did the same thing after Kick-Ass 2 when he went on an anti-gun kick and refused to do the press tour for that movie. B+.

Jujutsu Kaizen 0

A subbed anime movie I only saw because it got added to the A-List. I knew absolutely nothing about this series prior to watching this, outside of its name sounding like something Jason Mewes would say before he failed to karate chop someone in a Kevin Smith movie. This is apparently a prequel to the manga and follows a protagonist who was not in the series prior, based on the one dude in my theater who knew the series. It was really fun. The worldbuilding was scant yet fascinating and put it all at a breakneck pace to give us just so much fun anime action. I will probably check out this series at some point. A.

Father Stu

Mark Wahlberg plays a real guy who got diagnosed with a debilitating illness shortly after turning to Christ in his mission to be a priest. The love interest angle is badly handled (he has to break up with her when he decides to be a priest,) but Mel Gibson plays his grizzled father. He’s been playing bad people as of late and he’s good at it. Mark Wahlberg is very much one-note as per usual, but he does convey his desire to live in the faith well after only getting involved in the church to get laid (said aforementioned girlfriend.) The weirdest thing about this movie is I thought his mother was played by the maid from Clue, which wasn’t true, but the very same actress produced the movie. Strange. C+ to B-.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

God, this movie sucked. This series keeps begging for a reason to exist. Of five planned movies, this is now the last, which was decided well after filming concluded. This means we never get the finality to the plot. We know where it was going. It didn’t need five movies. Dumbledore kills the dude who is the precursor to Voldemort. If it spent most of this now trilogy on Dumbledore, maybe people would care. Jude Law is a great actor. Too bad the writing and plot were both awful. Real courageous of them to include dialogue about a gay relationship that literally adds up to only six seconds that was easily stripped from the Chinese release. Stunning and brave. F.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

I wanted to like this more. No doubt I enjoyed myself, but I was expecting an amazing film and only got a B to B+ out of it. The plot is predictable and very convenient. Some of the jokes are incredibly lazy. The action is nice when it’s there. A few characters get yeeted out of the movie, one offscreen who is in the trailer for about as long as he’s in the actual movie. The Mandalorian and Nic Cage have a great bro chemistry, but I expected more insanity. Very muted in that regard. They never went whole hog with it. Not like Mandy.

The Northman

This may knock Studio 666 from its current perch as #2 this year. A+. I love me some mythology, and Norse mythology is one of the better ones, especially considering Germanic mythology steals a lot from it (Nibelungenlied.) The action is amazing, the story doesn’t drag, the revenge is done methodically, and the ending is awesome. Everyone crushes the role they play, especially the lead. Björk is in this, for some reason, although I couldn’t tell which character she played before I looked at the credits. Dancer in the Dark was such a bad movie. I saw this movie with subtitles as that was just the first showing of the day (I saw two movies that day.) I liked it as some of the character names would have needed three dictionaries for me to spell otherwise. Subtitle supremacy!

The Bad Guys

This movie surprised me. Don’t front, the plot was still very predictable, but the dialogue was very clever. Very snappy back and forth dialogue that wouldn’t be out of place in a Tarantino movie or Oceans heist. The villain is so obvious from almost the moment of his introduction, but the ride was fun. Every voice actor fills their role well, although most of them are interchangeable. Sam Rockwell is the only one that made the role his own. A-, which I never thought this movie would accomplish.

Memory

A middle of the road Liam Neeson action flick. Cold Pursuit is his best action work, as the dark comedy elements add a nice sheen to the whole enterprise, but this action thriller following an assassin losing his mind due to Alzheimer’s didn’t have a satisfying pace or conclusion. I didn’t expect what happened when it happened like ten minutes before the end, but Bosch this is not. This is a B- to B.

EVERYTHING ELSE

One of my favorite shows of all time, Bosch (hey, that show again!), premiered its spin-off on Freevee (IMDb TV rebrand) two Fridays ago. Bosch: Legacy is excellent. This is the best successor to Dirty Harry we’ve ever gotten. Inspector Callahan would be proud. Candy, a miniseries on Hulu, was also superb. I watched the current entirety of What We Do in the Shadows, the spin-off show from the Taika movie of the same name. Matt Berry really shines as per usual, after Toast of London and The IT Crowd. Need to watch the spin-off to that former one. The Thing About Pam and Reacher both ended really well, outside of a random character reappearing in the climax of the latter in a way that made no sense. Super pumped for the return of The Boys soon, as I mentioned previously. I also got into Barry since I last wrote one of these. Man, it’s good, especially Bill Hader and the guy who plays NoHo Hank.

Finally saw GoldenEye. It did not impress as much as I expected, although the villain twist was spoiled for me a long time ago. It’s a solid B. The way the villain dies is pretty awesome, though. One of the best in film history.

The Mist was excellent, even though the ending was spoiled for me years and years ago. It is strange that at least three actors from The Walking Dead are in this, although the creator of that was involved with this movie. A. The ending is world class, but some of the plot is not the best. Especially one character who seems to be only there to generate a dumb conflict.

I just don’t get why people love this movie, although I understand the look is pretty cool. Akira, like the movie that inspired it (Blade Runner,) has a much cooler world than the story that fills it. The plot is just confusing and takes way too long to get anywhere. I realize it’s based on a manga, but why was it so slow in the middle? The ending was very strange, although I knew about it before seeing this movie. I can see where the indie video game Inside got its inspiration. This is a C+ to B- for me, man.

Ricochet was awesome. A to A+. Denzel Washington as a hero cop turned ADA against the psychopath he put away that’s now out for revenge, played so devilishly well by John Lithgow. Yes, some of the actors are just kind of there, but the two leads do such a good job in their cat and mouse game that it doesn’t matter.

A ridiculous Arnold picture, Eraser, but really fun. Absolutely ridiculous in basically every action scene, but who cares? Arnold takes down a group of thugs using animals in a zoo. Rail guns are the MacGuffin of the plot. And they’re so stupidly out of place but so dumb in such a fun way. This is easily an A from me. The person he’s set to protect doesn’t really impress me much, which is why it isn’t an A+.

A movie I finally saw because I spied it in the $5 DVD bin at Wal-Mart. Bill & Ted Face the Music isn’t better than the original, but is probably wackier and a little bit better than the first sequel. This movie is a cameo-a-thon, including NoHo Hank from Barry. I wish the time travel meant more gallivanting with historical figures, but the limited scenes we got with that were still fun. This is a B to B+.

My fiancé loves Matthew Broderick but had somehow never seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. One of John Hughes’ best and easily Broderick’s best movie. What more can I say? A+.

Man, this movie sucked. I have yet to see Straight Outta Compton, but my fiancé wanted to watch Surviving Compton: Dre, Suge & Michel’le. It is the story of Michel’le, who has an incredibly distracting speaking voice and narrates most of the movie. The acting from everyone involved, including apparently the same actor with played Suge Knight in Straight Outta Compton, is borderline terrible. Michel’le was almost surely mistreated by both Dr. Dre and Suge Knight, but her not being in Straight Outta Compton was likely done because she wasn’t key to their story. She was around, but she makes herself out to be way more important than she actually was. This movie is one-sided as Hell and tries to palm off her horrible decisions to stay with both men far longer than she should have as wise at the time. It was not. F.

An American remake of Yojimbo, apparently Harry Bosch’s favorite film and one I still need to see (it’s on my list on HBO Max,) Last Man Standing takes place in a very 1870s looking Texas town during Prohibition. So, Western meets gangster flick. I bought this on Blu Ray because of news surrounding Bruce Willis. Never even heard of it before people started Tweeting about their favorite movies he’s in. Bruce Willis does a great job, although some really dark stuff happens. Christopher Walken, Christopher from The Sopranos, and Bruce Dern were also good. It drags in the middle getting to the inevitable conclusion, but I had fun with it. Godspeed, Bruce Willis. B to B+.

Well, that was a lot. Altogether, I’ve seen eight movies in total so far in May, but one of those is a repeat, for obvious reasons. But more on that later…