The Month in Theaters: 20 Reviews From October 2022

This was a good month. Eleven movies in theaters, as well as an additional ten otherwise, with one repeat, for a total of twenty reviews. The standout is clear, but I had fun this Halloween season. MILD SPOILERS FOLLOW!!

Bros

Starting off the month weak, we get this C- movie. It passes, if only barely, because the humor that wasn’t spoiled in the trailer I saw about a dozen times in front of various movies was, at times, quite funny. The plot is a very tired rom-com script, but with an incredibly annoying gay male lead instead of an incredibly annoying heterosexual female lead. Equality. The character actors that fill out the script are responsible for most of the jokes I found funny. The lead, known for playing incredibly grating characters who are blatantly flamboyantly gay, does the exact same thing here. The biggest problem with this movie is that the lead, who also wrote the script, was pissed that it bombed. If it wasn’t for the trailer I saw 80 bajillion times, I wouldn’t even really be aware the movie existed prior to its opening weekend. I probably still would have seen it as I tend to see two movies every weekend day I go to the theater to make the trip more worth it. (I can see up to three movies a week with the AMC Stubs A-List.) It’s a rom-com that delights in making the square straights uncomfortable. And those people are the core moviegoing audience in America. This movie had a very limited audience. Spoiler Alert looks much better with the same basic premise. Drama beats comedy almost always for romantic subject matter.

Smile

A movie that is so much better than it has any right to be. The ending you can see coming a country mile away, but the tension the film palpably builds is intense. This is not a movie I will think much about after writing this review, but the actors, some of whom I recognized from somewhere, all did a good job. If this gets a sequel, I wouldn’t be disappointed. It sort of sets one up. B- to B.

Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile

Another movie that is far better than it should be. And that all comes down to heart and very little politics, if any. The song and dance numbers are acceptable even though I don’t care enough to buy any of the songs on iTunes, the story is predictable but charming, and the crocodile slapstick antics are enjoyable for what they are. We also get a balding male Karen as the “antagonist” as it were, and that’s something I hope we can all get behind. C+ to B-.

Amsterdam

A movie that critics and audiences both hated for some reason. Is the plot sort of a mess? Yes. This is an actor’s showcase, so the plot is largely secondary. I think the reason a lot of people hated this movie is how much levity the movie places on the conspiracy at the heart of the plot. You can’t joke about that!?! Well, they did, and it was funny. B. Is this a movie I will ever revisit? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t not watch it again if somebody like my fiancée wanted to see it. It is pretty long, although it never felt that way. Or maybe I just didn’t drink too much water before entering the theater…

Halloween Ends

This is the movie I saw again, but on Peacock with my fiancée after seeing it by myself in theaters. This is better than the last one, but that ain’t saying much. I have to rescore Halloween Kills as a C so that I can accurately score this one: C+. The problem that anybody on Twitter already got spoiled for them is that a certain character who was not in the trailer is the focus of the movie while the “final” showdown between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers that was heavily spotlighted in the marketing is thrown into the last fifteen or so minutes of the movie and lasts about five minutes. Yeah, that’s a rug pull for the audience. Not appreciated. This was especially glaring in my second viewing. Some of the kills were excellent, though. Michael Myers just does almost none of them. Which seems like a problem in a Halloween movie. Ya think?

Black Adam

A fun time but not an excellent one. This is a B to B+. The Rock delivers, although the plot is a mess. This is a soft reboot of the DCEU using its best movie, Shazam!, as the cornerstone. Black Adam is Captain Marvel’s (I will never refer to him as Shazam) biggest antagonist. And one of my favorite overall villains in the history of comics. While he has gotten more anti-hero as of late, especially in this movie, Black Adam just straight up kills people all the time. Pierce Brosnan is great as Doctor Fate, one of the most powerful figures in all of DC Comics, while the rest of the cast is mostly just there outside of The Rock. And the big spoiler, which I didn’t realize The Rock was spoiling in every media interview he gave, is that Henry Cavill is back, baby! We have that to look forward to. I want a live-action adaptation of For the Man Who Has Everything, which got an excellent episode of Justice League Unlimited. The DCAU is the best thing DC Comics has ever done and likely will ever do. Just use it as a template, executives!

Terrifier 2

Movie of the month goes to this gory gem of a mother father cat. I heard rumblings on the Internet that people were vomiting in the theater at this movie. My local AMC had one showing on the Saturday I saw this. Some stupid kids even tried to sneak into the movie and got slapped out of the theater by the manager. Never encountered that before, thankfully not when I saw Borat as I snuck in with my high school best friend (we did pay for tickets, just not the movie we saw.) Back on target… I was curious but had not seen the original. I will cover that below as I did manage to see it on Freevee (Amazon’s ad-supported streaming service) the night before I saw this one. More on that later. A+. Art the Clown, the slasher protagonist-antagonist (he’s the main character but is the villain,) is lovely. A mime clown who doesn’t talk but is incredibly expressive. His performance is legendarily good. The plot makes it clear that Art the Clown is supernatural, if the first movie didn’t make that too obvious. Is he a demon? Who knows? The kills are brilliantly telegraphed with copious Chekhov’s Guns while the payoff is grand and gory and fantastic. This movie has everything a horror fan wants except for exposed breasts. I don’t think that happened in this movie, unlike the first one. This movie cost only $250,000 to make and has already grossed nearly $10 million. We will be getting another one. This director (who also wrote it and the previous movie) deserves all the work. I want like 20 sequels.

Ticket to Paradise

The third movie I saw in theaters that was so much better than it had any right to be. B. The dialogue and acting are both pitch perfect for a very predictable script. The ending is abrupt but not great, but the lead-up is fun. The youngest daughter from Last Man Standing, the daughter of Carrie Fisher, George Clooney, and Juliet Roberts all put in great work, as does the fiancé of the first person I mentioned. He’s gonna get some more work after this. I really liked Carrie Fisher’s daughter as the horny and functional alcoholic best friend of the daughter, but the plot was clearly rewritten as they were filming as a major plothole is just glaringly staring the audience in the face the whole movie. The daughter is said to be 25 but is said to be graduating college with many mentions of “four years” but also starting at a top law firm in Chicago after her destination vacation post-graduation. Law school is only three years. So, which is it? I may be the only person who noticed or cared. But that’s a glaring plothole, and it pulled me out of the movie. Also, no Eddie Money. Come on!

Till

Oscar bait season has officially begun. This one is definitely getting nominated, although the most likely award it will win is Best Actress. We are looking at a very competitive Best Actress this year unlike normally, which I’ll get to with the last movie I saw in theaters. The story of Emmett Till, which is a tragic tale of horrific racist nonsense, just sucks all around. The mother’s broken heart is the core of this film, which is why the actress will get deserved Oscar buzz. The film is littered with character actors I recognize from somewhere else and EGOT winner Whoopi! This is a B to B+. The plot does drag in the middle, considering the story of what actually happened can be read in about five minutes on Wikipedia. I would have liked them to spend more time with Emmett Till, whose life is largely seen as a footnote in the actual movie.

Prey for the Devil

The only F of the month within theaters (but not the worst movie I saw this month.) That’s solely because of the ending, which completely undoes the entire rest of the movie that preceded it. And you can see it coming a million miles away. Skip this blatant rip-off of The Exorcist. It breaks zero new ground, even though the world-building could have led somewhere. But it didn’t. That bloody ending…

Tár

The first hour of this way too long movie is so chokingly indulgent and up the bum of NYC, it’s not even funny. Hard to think of a more indulgent movie other than Synecdoche, New York, which is in my bottom ten movies (that I managed to get through) of all time. It takes way too long to get to the actual plot, which is that Cate Blanchett’s character is a terrible human being. They build her up with a literal exposition dump narration before her character gets interviewed by the New Yorker in front of a live theater audience. This screenwriter and/or director did not trust the audience to know this woman is crazy successful, so we need an hour establishing that first even though that exposition dump narration does it in less than five minutes. But she turns out to be an awful person for a litany of reasons, especially one that’s really bad. Once this is made clear to the audience (lots of symbolism before they spell it out that she’s terrible,) the movie gets going and is good for what it is. The problem is the first hour. That could be truncated into fifteen minutes and the movie would lose nothing of value. This is a C- to C. Cate Blanchett wants another Oscar, but she has two already, one of which is for Best Actress. The lead actress from Till and Michelle Yeoh from my favorite movie of the year (so far) are significantly more deserving.

EVERYTHING ELSE

Lots of new television, at least to me, this month. Got back into anime since Hulu has both Chainsaw Man and Spy x Family. Both excellent for different reasons. Andor is still great, setting up K-2SO, I hope. It’s gonna have two seasons. Please have K-2SO show up before the season finale. I must have my Alan Tudyk! I managed to watch all of House of the Dragon, the prequel spin-off to Game of Thrones, in less than a week. Excellent. Matt Smith is the standout who deserves an Emmy. I managed to catch the first episode of Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities. It’s an anthology series that makes me wonder why this never happened before. If there’s one visionary writer-director that deserved a The Twilight Zone-style show, it’s the freaky fish guy. I’m into season ten of Criminal Minds. A lot less than the previous month, but as you can see and will see, I was very busy with other shows and movies and stuff.

Netflix released a PG-13 horror movie starring the one kid from IT that isn’t Finn Wolfhard. You know the guy. And Donald Sutherland. Mr. Harrigan’s Phone. And it’s OK if predictable, but doesn’t have a very satisfying ending. It is basically Death Note with more steps and more build-up, which is the best part of the movie. It’s fine. B-.

Werewolf by Night, which is Disney’s first MCU “special presentation,” is not quite movie length, but it isn’t really a TV show either. So, I claim it as a movie. It has the guy from Jon Stewart’s Rosewater (I may be the only person to remember that film) and Old, Frasier’s terrible agent, and a bunch of other people I recognized from somewhere else still. This is an A- to A.

Mila Kunis is still trying to have a movie career, but is not mainstream enough to really get anywhere. I like seeing her in stuff, but she clearly makes most of her annual income off Family Guy and has for the better part of two decades. She did Luckiest Girl Alive, which is actually much better than I thought it would be. I don’t want to spoil anything, but her character got dealt a bad hand as a teenager and has spent her entire adult life trying to be something. I give this a B+ to A-.

Terrifier is not as good as the sequel. It’s a good stepping-stone for establishing Art the Clown with some excellent but far too spread-out kills, one of which is fantastically awful and shocking to a degree that is hard to understate. If you know, you know. B to B+. We’re almost surely getting at least a trilogy out of this. The biggest problem with this film is the opening, which spoils the plot majorly. That scene should have been at the end, not the beginning. And they repeat that opening at the beginning of the sequel anyway, which makes it pointless for this one. Yes, it took six years to get that sequel made and released, but still.

The worst movie I saw this month is The Munsters, a Netflix-released PG family comedy directed by Rob Zombie of all people. It didn’t lean too heavily into Rob Zombie’s strength, which is stylistic but empty gore, nor did it lean into the sitcom, as this is a prequel before the children were born. I’m glad Daniel Roebuck and Jorge Garcia got a paycheck out of this, but they are the only actors that really did anything approaching a good job outside of the mad scientist who I recognized from somewhere once again. The two leads are terrible. The wife is Rob Zombie’s wife, so that part makes sense. The idiot playing Herman Munster is so awful. This is one of the worst movies I’ve seen all year, possibly the worst. F.

The Good Nurse is a Netflix drama starring recent Best Actress winner Jessica Chastain and guy who didn’t deserve the Oscar he got Eddie Redmayne in a based on a true story sort of thriller drama that doesn’t quite stick the landing. I’m never seeing this again. C. The problem is we know who the serial killer is from the beginning but Jessica Chastain doesn’t until about an hour into it. The cops who were trying to uncover the coverup of dozens of murders are the highlight of the film, outside of one scene of tension between the two leads about twenty minutes before the end of the movie. Those cops are put on the back burner for most of the film even though they zero in on who the killer is almost immediately after being introduced. Jessica Chastain’s character felt like a side character they made the main character once she was attached to the role. This ain’t winning any Oscars and would boggle my mind if it even got nominated. Eddie Redmayne just doesn’t strike me as a very good actor in anything I’ve seen him in. He can’t play terrifying, only eerie.

Finally saw the original Child’s Play. Excellent horror movie and a franchise that deserves all the credit it has with horror fans. A.

Immediately watched the second one, Child’s Play 2. A great first horror sequel, which is saying something. Very few first horror sequels approach the first one in goodness. Most of them are rushed to take advantage of the box office when the first one does unexpectedly well. In my mind, the only other franchises that managed that task are the only horror franchises I’ve seen every entry in that have four or more entries. Saw, Friday the 13^th, and Scream. Still need to see the remake/reboot of Evil Dead. B+ to A-.

On Halloween night, I watched Child’s Play 3. Not as good as the last one, but still good. There’s a bit of casting that excites the Dirty Harry fan that I am. Only actor in this other than the voice of Chucky that is famous in any way. There are just so few kills in this movie. And a good chunk of them aren’t even directly caused by Chucky. And one happens off-screen in a way that must have been done to conserve the budget. This one came out nine months after the last one yet jumps eight years in the timeline, likely to age up Andy, the protagonist from the previous two films. This gets a C+. I will watch the rest of the franchise, but time has run out for this month. I looked at the cast for the next one. We definitely get an upgrade.

And that’s everything. Spooky season delivered. Let’s hope the doldrums of the November release schedule don’t persist for more than a week or two.