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Serkis Circus

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Animal Farm

by George Wolf

You may have questions going into the newly realized Animal Farm. And it’s a good bet you’ll have more coming out.

Who is this for exactly? What’s with these changes? Did someone think Orwell didn’t get the point across? And just…why?

For his part, director Andy Serkis has addressed some of these concerns in the weeks leading up to the film’s release. Serkis has stressed that he worked closely with Orwell’s estate, striving to update the classic tale with modern themes and a nod toward understanding “the contradictions within its author.”

That is an ambitious goal, to say the least, and one that Serkis, screenwriter Nicholas Stoller and a star-studded voice cast can’t completely bring to market.

The first major adjustment is adding the character of Lucky (voiced by Gatan Matarazzo), a young pig that serves as a moral compass for younger viewers. Lucky is easily influenced by boss hog Napoleon (Seth Rogen) as the farm rules of equality and fairness are twisted and broken.

Lucky is key to Napoleon’s plan of exploitation, and to making hard working animals like Boxer (Woody Harrelson) believe Napoleon has their best interests at heart. So why is he cozying up to the cyber truck driving tycoon Frieda Pilkington (Glenn Close) and Mr. Whymper the banker (Steve Buscemi)?

Well, some animals are more equal than others. That’s always been the rule!

The fart jokes and obvious humor are a bit jarring for such cherished material, but make it clear Serkis is aiming to give younger audiences a primer in Orwell’s belief that absolute power corrupts absolutely. It’s best to keep that in mind when the movie delivers a new, hope-filled ending that’s a few pastures away from Orwell’s bleak reveal.

To adults who revere that original cautionary tale, much of this overhaul may feel like a blasphemous Chicken Run rebellion. These animals have to decide for themselves that they’ve been hoodwinked, don’t they? So isn’t Lucky’s hand-holding a bit contradictory? And as well meaning as this might be, why risk diluting the power of Orwell that will come when the kids are old enough to grasp it?

After a series of examples both pro and anti-capitalism, the end credits montage cements the message that the enemies are the absolutely corrupt of any ilk. And history has shown they can be overcome.

Some of it works, yes. But honestly, it’s just impossible to come at it with the fresh eyes and clear heads of the ones it appears to be meant for. Do I respect what this Serkis circus is trying to do? Yes.

Do I wish he did it with an original story not named Animal Farm?

Also yes.

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Wrecked Him? Nearly Killed Him!

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Deep Water

by George Wolf

It isn’t too long before counting all the borrowed ideas becomes the most fun Deep Water is offering.

It’s a shark movie, so…Jaws. But you’ll also spot Titanic, the Airport franchise, The Shallows, Train to Busan, The Perfect Storm and a good bit of The Poseidon Adventure.

At least they acknowledge that last one with a Shelly Winters wisecrack, and it’s welcome. Because for a film that seems to think it’s farther above a Sharknado sequel than it ends up being, a bit of self awareness is long overdue.

First, director Renny Harlin has to get us on a plane to Shanghai, so the team of six screenwriters (six!) runs us through a some broadly-drawn Airport style intros of passengers and crew.

In the cockpit we meet the rugged First Officer with personal demons (Aaron Eckhart), the veteran Captain with scalawag charm (Sir Ben Kingsley), and the patient flight attendants (Lucy Barrett, Chrissy Jin). On the passenger list we have the asshole (Angus Sampson), the idiot parents looking to join the Mile High Club (Kelly Gale and Ryan Bown), kids in peril (Molly Belle Wright and Elijah Tamati), the Shelly Winters (Kate Fitzpatrick) and two twentysomething dudes who almost throw hands early on (might they be forced to put aside petty differences and work together??)

The plane crashes into the sea, and the placement of the two main chunks of wreckage allows Harlin to execute some Poseidon-esque set pieces in between shark attacks. Those sharks are CGI, of course, and their ridiculous gymnastics make you long for the true tension of a mechanical maneater that often broke down.

Nothing here is the least bit scary, the writing is obvious and overwrought, and the entire tone is caught awkwardly between giving in to sharksploitation silliness and striving for a well-plotted thriller.

Only Kingsley seems to know which end of the pool Deep Water belongs in. Too bad nobody else let the Cap’n make something fun happen with all these remnants of better movies..

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Living Out Loud

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I Swear

by George Wolf

Honestly, I didn’t know that much about I Swear until Robert Aramayo’s amazing performance won a BAFTA Award earlier this year. Now, after seeing it, I have to wonder why officials from BAFTA and the BBC didn’t take more of its lessons to heart.

The film follows the life of Scottish Tourette’s campaigner John Davidson, and opens with Davidson yelling “F*&$ the Queen” moments before Queen Elizabeth herself presented him with an MBE for services to the Tourette’s community.

As a teenager, Davidson developed Tourette’s with coprolalia, a complex vocal tic which causes “the involuntary, uncontrollable utterance of obscene words, sexual/racial slurs, taboo phrases or profane language.” The condition brought isolation within his community and his own family, leading Davidson to move in with the family of a friend, where he found the unconditional support that launched his journey to help others.

Aramayo’s turn as Davidson is simply astonishing. Beyond the physical and vocal authenticity, Aramayo crafts an endlessly sympathetic arc of frustration, acceptance, perseverance and triumph. Heartbreaking but ultimately joyful, Aramayo’s is a deeply felt performance that fills each scene with a humanity that buoys the film.

Writer/director Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Devine) is careful to keep events accurate, drawing from the 1989 doc John’s Not Mad, actual clinical trials, and Davidson himself. Nothing here feels overwritten or sensational, as Jones allows the terrific actors (including great support from Maxine Peake as John’s surrogate mother and Shirley Henderson as his actual mum) to work specific moments for emotional depth.

The message of education, patience and understanding is meaningful and lasting. And it reminds you that, with more of each, there was certainly a way to host Davidson at the BAFTA ceremony and still safeguard other attendees and the television audience from the slurs that occurred.

But I Swear can stand on its own merits. It is a film that is able to turn simple human compassion into a crowd-pleasing event. May it play to large, humanity-pleasing crowds.

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Death Do Us Part

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Over Your Dead Body

by George Wolf

Why would Jason Segel plot to kill Samara Weaving?

Has he not seen Ready or Not? Borderline? Azreal? Ready or Not 2?

Segel is surely smart enough to play nice, but Dan – his character in Over Your Dead Body – is not. Dan and Lisa (Weaving) are off on a secluded weekend in a cabin by the lake. After 7 years together, they can barely say a cordial word, but this time Dan is laying the sweetness on pretty thick.

He’s cooked up a great dinner, along with a great alibi. Because after a nice boat ride on the lake, Lisa will sleep with the fishes.

Or not. Because Lisa has a plan of her own. And so do some convicts on the run (Timothy Olyphant, Keith Jardine) and the corrections officer who helped bust them out (Juliette Lewis).

Power shifts, violence and blood splatter ensue!

Writers Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, fresh off the hilariously unhinged Pizza Movie, adapt the 2021 Norwegian film The Trip with a healthy scoop of witty cynicism atop one good ol’ American mean streak.

Segel and Weaving make an excellent pair of frassasins (friendly assassins), he of the emasculated man child and she of the exasperated younger wife wondering what she saw in this guy. Neither is blameless in the demise of the marriage, and the two actors make the deadly bobbing and weaving (pun intended) a surprising, squirm-inducing delight.

Those squirms only increase once the three fugitives enter the fray, and comic director Jorma Taccone (Popstar, MacGruber) forays into body horror with a respectable aversion to sparring the rum or the wisecracks. What starts out as an in-the-moment sendup of how couples avoid therapy takes a nasty turn in the second half. The threat of violence inherent in the premise makes for a smoother transition, but make no mistake: Taccone leans into that R-rating with some serious bloodshed.

If you’re fine with that, Over Your Dead Body is an entertaining genre blast that’s pretty hard to ignore. And by pretty, I mean pretty funny.

And pretty gross.

Outtakes

Wrapper’s Plight

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Balls Up

by George Wolf

Is it funny to see Mark Wahlberg and Paul Walter Hauser bust out a lightly choreographed karaoke version of Goyte’s “Someone That I Used to Know?”

It is. But are there enough solid laughs in the rest of the film to make Balls Up a thumbs up?

Not quite.

Wahlberg is Brad from sales, and Hauser is Elijah from design, both reporting to boss lady Burgess (welcome delight Molly Shannon) at the Regal Blue condom company.

Elijah has designed a revolutionary condom that extends far enough to wrap the testicles, and Brad just landed the pitch to make “Balls Up” the official condom of the 2025 World Cup in Brazil!

“Raw Dog? Nah Dawg!”

The..ahem… head of the World Cup committee (Benjamin Bratt) is impressed enough to set the guys up with VIP treatment at the tournament. But things go so wrong so fast that Brad and Elijah become branded as “The Stupids,” two American villains on the run from a drug cartel kingpin (Sacha Baron Cohen) and any number of Brazilians who’d love to see them dead.

Speaking of drugs, this entire premise sounds like something two guys thought was freaking hilarious while they were high.

I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese have scripted funnier movies. Like Zombieland, or Deadpool, or Deadpool & Wolverine. In comparison this one feels like something that could have been abandoned when they sobered up.

Hauser has the dim-witted schlub act down cold, but as talented as he is, he’s not enough of a comic presence to offset Wahlberg’s struggles with timing and delivery. The Other Guys worked because Wahlberg’s contrast with the effortlessly funny Will Ferrell was instantly engaging. This pairing is constantly in search of real chemistry, and director Peter Farrelly seems helpless to uncover it.

Farrelly has certainly had success with below-the-belt comedy (Kingpin, Dumb and Dumber, There’s Something About Mary), but Balls Up becomes just the latest streaming effort to string together inane antics and hope for the best.

This one just gets worse as it is goes, and after an hour and forty minutes of unfunny, you give up that hope.

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Content Re-creator

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Faces of Death

by George Wolf

It’s almost quaint now to remember the word-of-mouth infamy achieved by the original Faces of Death in 1978. By the mid-80s it was a cult favorite at the video store, with a lurid promise to unveil shocking video of real fatalities.

Though the non-stock footage was faked (yes, even the monkey scene), hyperbolic stories of the film’s effect continued to gain traction and the sequels were cranked out.

This new Faces is not one of those. Writer/director Daniel Goldhaber smartly brings that pre-viral legend into the internet age, tucking the bloody hunt for a serial killer inside the dulling nature of modern-day voyeuristic fetishes.

Barbie Ferreira stars as Margot, who works as a website content moderator for a company promising to protect “the young and innocent.” Though she occasionally flags a video for violations, most make it through – which is just how her manager prefers it. But when Margot sees some videos of murders that look alarmingly real, it sets her off on the trail of a killer (Dacre Montgomery) intent on recreating scenes from the original Faces of Death.

Though employees at Margot’s firm are strongly discouraged from researching the videos they moderate, she begins sleuthing. What Margot finds, of course, is an internet audience eager for the brutality, and online footprints that aren’t difficult for a tech savvy psycho to follow.

Stupid decisions (especially by young people) are a staple of horror films, and Margot makes a maddening amount. But Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) is able to mirror most of them alongside the questionable bargains we’ve made as a web-obsessed society.

“It’s an attention economy, and business is booming.”

Our killer (Montgomery gives him both Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon vibes) knows his audience, and Goldhaber gives the funny games he plays with both his victims and Margot a nice sense of tension. Sure, you may want to slap some sense into most of these people, but then again, is your own browser history MENSA worthy?

The rough patches in the story go down easier thanks to the savvy, in-the-moment winks Goldhaber flashes while telling it.

Why has the explosion of technology that holds so much positive potential continued to reveal the worst parts of ourselves? If you give the people what they want, how culpable are the people that want it?

Michael Haneke may have asked the question more eloquently, but Goldhaber and Faces of Death have more trashy, finger-wagging fun.

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Blame Canada

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Hunting Matthew Nichols

by George Wolf

Is this a faux documentary? A true crime thriller? Found footage horror? It’s all of that, at least some of the time.

You know what, just don’t worry about it and enjoy the clever way Hunting Matthew Nichols tips its hat to a variety of genre influences.

Director and co-writer Markian Tarasiuk plays himself as a documentary filmmaker out to solve an over-two-decades-old missing persons case. Canadian teens Matthew and Jordan went missing on Halloween night of 2001, and now Matthew’s sister Tara (Miranda MacDougall) is teaming with Markian to get to the bottom of what really happened.

Early on, we come along on an engaging hunt for clues. A succession of solid supporting performances bring welcome authenticity to Tara’s fact-finding interviews, until a surprise discovery turns the film on its found footage ear.

The missing kids were big fans of the Blair Witch Project, and took a camcorder into Black Bear Forest to uncover the local legend of Roy McKenzie. This turns out to be a slyly organic way of acknowledging the big comparisons that will follow, and to setup the type of in-your-face finale that more than a few BWP naysayers may have preferred.

The ride is well-paced and impressively assembled, and the payoff is satisfying enough to make you forget about who’s manning the camera or why we’re watching reactions to a shocking videotape instead of the tape itself.

But this Hunt is a fun one, and it comes complete with a mid-credits stinger that flirts with the possibility of another chapter.

If so, count me in.

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Truth Bomb

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The Drama

by George Wolf

If The Drama is in your date night plans, better put the dinner after the movie.

Hoo-boy. You’re gonna need to make some time for conversation.

Writer/director Kristofer Borgli continues his social provocateur-ing with look inside a couple thrown waaay off course by a shocking confession. The aftermath – affecting not only the couple involved but other couples in their orbit – becomes a darkly funny and intentionally cringe-worthy dissection of intimacy.

Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson) are knee deep in wedding plans. As Charlie works on this planned remarks, his remembrances give us an organic – if one sided – primer on the Emma/Charlie relationship.

But one night while sampling food and wine menu options with their fiends Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and Rachel (Alana Haim), everyone starts confessing about “the worst thing they’ve ever done.” It’s all embarrassing fun and games, until Emma takes a a turn.

Over a decade ago, Ruben Ă–stlund’s Force Majeure explored how relationships are changed in an instant by one man’s panicked choice. Borgli picks similar scabs, but with a more serrated and much darker edge.

Pattinson is excellent as a man struggling with the notion that his fiancĂ©’s past should not change how he sees her. Zendaya makes the complexities of Emma’s life after the confession seem desperately authentic, and her search for support from those she trusted most achingly real.

Haim gives Rachel some serious teeth, taking instant and very personal umbrage to Emma’s reveal, and Hailey Gates impresses in a smaller role as a co-worker of Charlie’s who gets a little too close to his breakdown.

Because the thought experiment here isn’t just about Emma and Charlie. Borgli, even more-so than he did with 2023’s Dream Scenario, invites you to imagine yourself in several roles (and, of course, to judge the choices of those around you). The script is crisp, the humor is coal black, and the pacing (aided by some nifty editing and visual cues) keeps you invested at every turn.

“You always turn my drama into comedy,” Charlie says early on.

The line ends up feeling like Borgli’s own confession. The Drama is a totally different rom-com animal, one that many may find just too confrontational. But there’s a layer of hope to be found here, too, and a kind of unflinching eye that’s hard not to respect.

Outtakes

Half Hallucinogens, Half Pepperoni

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Pizza Movie

by George Wolf

First off, pineapple is the all-time greatest pizza topping. And I am not on drugs.

I can’t say the same for Monte and Jack. They are most definitely on drugs, and a pizza is all that might save them from their worst nightmare coming to shove a chainsaw where it most definitely does not belong.

That’s just a tiny sample of the batshit craziness delivered by Hulu’s Pizza Movie, an outrageously R-rated gross out and stoned out comedy that rises above some dry stretches to land several set-pieces of outright hilarity.

Jack (Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things) and Monte (The Goldbergs‘ Sean Giambrone) are college nerds. Jack’s unfortunate mishap as the football team mascot made both of them targets of constant bullying, even from Lizzy (Becky‘s Lulu Wilson), an old friend who’s now trying to run with the cool kids.

After one of their regular dorm room beatdowns jars a tin of ten-year-old drugs loose from the ceiling, the boys partake. And the ride begins.

A YouTube video from the drug’s inventor (Sarah Sherman) tells the guys they’ve got several stages of trippiness coming, including Nothing but the Truth, Bad Words, The Old Switcheroo and more. And if they don’t want to experience that last stage with the chainsaw enema, they better wolf down some ‘za in a hurry.

Oh, and Lizzy thought the drugs were mints and took some, too.

Writers/directors Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney (from the SNL writers room) craft their feature debut as if Edgar Wright took Scott Pilgrim and the Superbad guys to college for a drug-fueled class on practical blood splatter effects.

Leaning on a winning ensemble that perfectly sells the vibe, Kocher and McElhaney move through the six stages of balls tripping like levels in a video game, keeping the intensity up with a succession of quick cuts, camera swipes and rapid fire gags. From psychotic R.A.s out to banish all partiers to the wasteland of Gralk Hall, to tenacious Snackatron food drones to a college band performing only “clown-core vomit opera,” the barriers between Monte, Jack, and their Lord of the Pies delivery two floors down keep piling up.

And I haven’t even mentioned the “Makin’ It” dance sequence and the butterfly named Lysander Featherhemp that’s voiced by Daniel Radcliffe!

Yes, it’s nuts, and sometimes in a can’t-catch-your-breath funny kind of way. Not everything lands, of course, but Pizza Movie doesn’t slow down long enough for any cold spots to linger. Just let them pass, another piping hot slice of WTF will be in your face any second.

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Retail Equinox

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Forbidden Fruits

by George Wolf

Just a few minutes into Forbidden Fruits, it’s clear that Apple (Lili Reinhart) has created a living space that does not bow to the patriarchy – at the local mall or anywhere else.

Apple, Fig (Alexandra Shipp), and Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) are the Queens of the Highland Place mall in Dallas, and the awestruck whispers we hear as they walk in tell us much about the kind of power the “Fruits” enjoy.

Reporting to an unseen manager named Sharon (stay late for an important reveal), the ladies work the floor at the Free Eden boutique, fleecing customers into big dollar buys, worshipping Marilyn Monroe and adhering to a strict regimen that includes sex on a schedule and communicating with boys only through emojis.

Also…there are hexes and spells when needed. So, all seems good with this coven as a trio. Until Pumpkin (Lola Tung from “The Summer I Turned Pretty”) strolls in from that pretzel place in the food court.

Pumpkin is unintimidated by the Fruits, confidently telling Apple, “My job doesn’t define me, my hotness and personality do.”

That’s just one of many priceless lines, and writer/director Meredith Alloway’s adaptation of Lily Houghton’s stage play becomes a sharp, sly and sardonic treat, spilling the beans (and the blood!) about the chaos and contradictions of trying to stay true to yourself.

All four actresses are terrific, carving out distinct identities that keep various secrets on simmer. Is Cherry really that much of an empty-headed vessel? Does Fig have aspirations beyond Highland Place? And what’s the real truth about the death of Apple’s abusive Dad (“R.I. – but not P!”)

Tung makes it fun to guess Pumpkin’s true motives for joining the Fruits, and Alloway crafts an engaging ecosystem of complex girl power. The limited setting of the play never feels claustrophobic, and the mashup of storefronts, costuming and technology creates an anachronistic callback to the glory days of mall society.

Alloway does take her time getting to the bloodletting, but leans in pretty hard with some fun practical magic once it does hit. Remember those warnings about getting caught in escalators? Ouch!

But the real delight here is how the film utilizes a horror device derived from the fear of a women’s power to discuss how messy and imperfect the path toward self-actualization can be. There is strength in community, but danger when – as Cherry points out – you forget Shine Theory and “ruin my glow!”

These are definitely some hot topics for a day at the mall. But in the world of Forbidden Fruits, digging into them is even more fun than sorting through the blacklight posters at Spencer’s.