Infinity Pool | Movie Review

My husband and I have become recent fans of Mia Goth’s work, thanks to X and Pearl. When we saw she had a new movie coming out, Infinity Pool, we knew we wanted to see it. I don’t think we fully knew what we were in for. The plot description for this is long so buckle in.

James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) is a novelist, though the only book he has published was released six years ago. Unable to write another book, he goes on vacation to Latoka with his wife, Em (Cleopatra Coleman). The two are having relationship difficulties that worsen when James meets a fan named Gabi (Mia Goth) and her husband Alban (Jalil Lespert). After dinner that night, the two couples decide to go on a seaside picnic the next day, even though tourists are forbidden from leaving the resort. They spend the day eating and drinking but, as James is driving the group back to the resort, he hits and kills a local farmer crossing the street. The punishment for the crime is death. However, the local detective makes a deal with James. For a large sum of money, they will create an identical clone of James. The clone will take the punishment while James goes back to his regular life, after watching the clone get murdered. Em is horrified by the whole thing and wants to go home. James has an opposite reaction and decides to stay. From here, James spends his time with Gabi, Alban, and their friends, who have all committed serious crimes on the island and have been cloned as a result. The debauchery continues until James can’t take any more. He tries to leave the group but they won’t allow it. Will he be able to get out or is he trapped in a life of crime forever?

Yeah. For those that don’t know, this is a movie directed and written by Brandon Cronenberg, son of David Cronenberg. As such, Infinity Pool does have a lot of very disturbing scenes. There are drug-fueled orgies (which were apparently tamed in order to get the R rating), fairly graphic murders, and a lot of blood. It is very over the top.

Did I like it? There were a lot of things I liked. The clone issue is always an interesting plot device. Who is the “real” person and who is the clone? I also liked Gabi’s leadership of the group. Everything seemed to be her idea and everyone else was just following along, even though they also enjoyed what they were doing. I don’t think that we necessarily needed all of the weird visuals that sometimes made me difficult for me to understand what was happening but that is a typical Cronenberg trope. His dad does stuff like that and now he does too. It should be expected when you hear their name.

With that said, I don’t think I would recommend this movie to just anyone. It is a very specific type of person that enjoys Cronenberg movies. If you enjoy the trippy type of visuals and absolutely gore that comes with the family name, you might like this a lot. For me, I’m giving it a 3 out of 5.

Dog Gone | Movie Review

To be honest, I kept passing by Dog Gone on Netflix ever since it came out on January 13. The thumbnail looked boring, the preview looked boring, the description was boring. It just didn’t look like a movie I would enjoy. But I’m a reviewer so I finally put on my big girl pants and turned it on.

Fielding Marshall (Johnny Berchtold) is in his senior year of college. After his girlfriend breaks up with him, he adopts a dog named Gonker. When graduation rolls around, Fielding misses the ceremony because he lost track of time camping with his dog. Needless to say, his parents, John (Rob Lowe) and Ginny (Kimberly Williams-Paisley), are not happy. Fielding and Gonker move back to the Marshall home to try to figure out what to do with their life. While hiking with his college buddy, Nate (Nick Peine), Gonker chases a fox and gets lost. Fielding and John spend the next couple of weeks together searching for their dog.

If you are looking for a movie that will keep you on the edge of your seat, Dog Gone is not it. Instead, you will find a heartfelt drama that is based on a true story. While the search for Gonker drives the plot, it’s the strained relationship between Fielding and his father that is the core of the movie. As such, I found Dog Gone to be fairly dull. The parts that I found most interesting were the parts involving Fielding’s mother, Ginny, and her past relationship with her parents and the dog that she briefly owned. Those were the parts that made me teary-eyed. Not the testosterone-filled “Let’s not talk about anything” men. They were actually kinda annoying.

I would have preferred if Dog Gone was told from Gonker’s point of view, like Homeward Bound. It also would have made the title a little more appropriate. Yes, it’s the name of the book that the movie is based on but it still feels disingenuous. The Search for Gonker or Where Has My Dog Gone? would have been better titles. Anyway, I didn’t like the movie but I didn’t hate it either. It just needs more dog.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 - Mostly because Gonker is a good dog and the credits are filled with pictures of the cast and crew with their pets.

How I Caught My Killer | Series Review

The title of Hulu’s How I Caught My Killer intrigued me. A lot. Like, what could that possibly mean? I knew it was a docu-series, meaning these were true stories. Were these stories where victims called their friends or loved ones and told them who killed them before they died? Sadly, no.

How I Caught My Killer is a nine episode series that tells nine separate stories of murder. In most of the stories, the killers were caught thanks to some clues from the victim’s cell phone GPS or diary entries or a conversation they had with someone in the days before their death.

Hulu has a lot of true crime documentaries on their roster. It seems like every time I try to watch one of them, I find myself disappointed. In this case, the series wants you to believe that the victims made a conscious decision to identify their attacker. Alas, that is not the case. While the victim’s cell phone or personal conversations have a hand in catching their killer, it’s nothing that the victim did on purpose. In a lot of these cases, it was the cell phone’s GPS that told the police where the victim’s body was or what their movements were before their death. Unless you are actively turning off your GPS, I wouldn’t count that information as you “finding” your killer.

Not only are the victims not “catching” their killer, in some of the stories, they had nothing to do with the arrest at all. In one of the stories, an ex-boyfriend who was already in jail told the police that the killer confessed to him and that is how she was apprehended. Now, I’ll admit that some of the stories had some awful police work but just as many of the stories relied totally on the police doing their job. Looking into a victim’s text history or Facebook chat history is basic policework. And none of those messages were “Hey, I’m going to murder you tomorrow.”

The only positive thing I can say about this series is that I was not familiar with a lot of the stories. I stopped consuming a lot of true crime media during the pandemic because it was doing bad things to my mental health. But it is still pretty rare for a docu-series like this to be filled with stories that I haven’t heard about. I just wish the series was a little more honest about it’s content.

Missing | Movie Review

When I saw the trailers for Missing, I couldn’t decide what to think of it. On one hand, it looked like a Netflix or Shudder original movie rather than a theatrical movie. On the other hand, it seemed like an interesting premise. Since I had some time, I decided to check it out.

Grace (Nia Long) and her boyfriend, Kevin (Ken Leung), are going on vacation to Colombia. June (Storm Reid), Grace’s 18-year old daughter, is staying by herself in Los Angeles. However, when June goes to the airport to pick them up after their trip, neither Grace nor Kevin can be found. When the police and FBI take their time investigating the case, June turns to the internet to find her mom by herself.

I will say that Missing did keep my attention through the entire 2-hour runtime. The various twists and turns in the case were both intriguing and fairly realistic. I can believe that June would run into all sorts of red tape while dealing with detectives. And June was extremely innovative using internet tools like TaskRabbit (well, the Colombian equivalent) and live feed cams to try to track her mom’s movements in another country. I don’t know that I would have done as well as she did.

With that in mind, I’m not sure this is worthy of a theatrical release. The whole movie was supposed to feel close and personal, which is lost when you’re sitting in front of a huge screen with other people. I think it might have felt a little more targeted if it was a streaming release. Especially with the twist ending. Missing deserves to feel personal. And I feel like I lost that in a theater setting.

Despite wanting a more personal feeling as I watched the movie, I would give this a 4 out of 5 stars if I rated movies. (Should I give movie ratings?) It was really good and I didn’t predict the twist, which I usually do. I would probably watch it again to see if there was anything I missed during my first watch.

7 Women and a Murder | Movie Review

This was originally on my list of Christmas movies. However, after some digging, I realized that 7 Women and a Murder isn’t really a Christmas movie. It takes place during Christmas but it’s only mentioned twice. So it got kicked out of the Christmas lineup.

Susanna (Diana Del Bufalo) has come home for Christmas. Shortly after her arrival, her father, Marcello (Luca Pastorelli), is found dead. All seven women in the house have a motive for his murder. But which of them did it?

Right away, I knew this Italian movie was going to fall under the love-it or hate-it categories. Netflix has it listed as an Agatha Christie or Knives Out type of movie. While I can see the similarities, I don’t think that 7 Women is anything like those. Both Agatha Christie and Knives Out have a singular detective trying to figure out who perpetrated the crime at hand. In 7 Women, they are left to try to figure out the killer on their own. As a result, everyone lies to one another and tries to out each other’s secrets. Without that impartial third party, the movie ends up just being about bickering women who point their finger at anyone but themselves.

That isn’t to say the movie isn’t interesting. It just isn’t as fun as the established detective movies. Personally, I always try to figure out who the killer is when I watch whodoneit movies. Doesn’t everyone? Isn’t that the whole point of the movie? But in 7 Women, we aren’t given any clues to try to piece together the puzzle. And, honestly, the solution is a little bit of a let down.

Instead of using the story or the plot to keep the audience’s attention, 7 Women uses the characters to keep us involved. Unfortunately, all of the women kinda suck. The least annoying of them is the youngest daughter, Caterina (Benedetta Porcaroli). But she still isn’t someone we want to be innocent.

Maybe it’s the differences between Italian and American cultures. Maybe this movie would be better if I understood Italian family dynamics. As it is, I spent too much of the movie waiting for something to happen and nothing did. I wanted to like it so much and, in the end, I didn’t.

Kaleidoscope | Series Review

Netflix is trying some new things with their original series. Kaleidoscope, released on January 1, 2023, can supposedly be watched in any order. Instead of the episodes being numbered, they are designated by color. It’s an interesting concept but does it work?

Leo (Giancarlo Esposito) is gathering his crew to pull off the biggest heist in the world. Together, the group of six plan on breaking into a vault owned by security expert Roger Salas (Rufus Sewell) in order to steal seven billion dollars worth of bonds. Meanwhile, FBI agent Nazan Abassi (Niousha Noor) is hot on their trail. Will the heist be a success or will they all end up in prison for life?

My husband and I had been looking forward to watching Kaleidoscope. We thought that the concept of a show that can be watched in any order was really cool. But it was only recently that we got the chance to sit down and actually watch it. Before I go further, let me tell you the order we were given by Netflix’s randomizer: Black, Yellow, Green, Orange, Violet, Blue, Red, Pink, and White. No matter who watches the show, Black will always be first and White will always be last. (Black isn’t really an episode. It just explains how the series works.)

While the randomization was really cool, it didn’t always work very well. For example, the last three episodes we had - Red, Pink, and White - took place The Day After The Heist, Six Months After The Heist, and The Heist, in that order. It made the ending a little confusing. We spent way too much time saying “But what about this guy?” or “Who is this person?” or “What is going on?”

The concept worked a little bit better when we saw Leo putting the team together then the next episode would be a flashback of how Leo met that person or you would see how Leo met that person then he would be putting together the team. It made a little more sense compared to seeing the aftermath of the heist before actually seeing the heist.

Despite the weirdness with the randomness of the episodes, we enjoyed a lot of it. Paz Vega, as lawyer Ava Mercer, was amazing; Jai Courtney made me hate Bob the safecracker (which I’m pretty sure was the goal. If you like Bob, you have issues.); and I am ecstatic to see Tati Gabrielle in more roles. I’m honestly not sure I enjoyed the story as much as I enjoyed the characters. I wish we got to see more of Hannah’s (Tati Gabrielle) story but she wasn’t meant to be a main character. Some of the episodes wanted Hannah to be relevant to the story but she was nothing more than a reason for Leo to do the things he did.

With all of that in mind, I do think the show is worth a try. I’m debating trying to watch the show in a different order to see if it changes my opinion any. My husband and I tried to envision what the show would have been like if we saw it in a different order but I’m not sure our imaginations were successful.

The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker | Movie Review

If you were alive in the United States in 2013, you probably remember this story. It is the epitome of the phrase “going viral.” And now Netflix has released a documentary about it called The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker.

In February 2013, Kai Lawrence was hitchhiking around California. He caught a ride with Jett Simmons McBride, who crashed his car into a construction worker, pinning him against a truck. When a woman who witnessed the accident got out to help, McBride attacked her. Heroically, Kai attacked McBride with a hatchet he was carrying, saving the woman from harm. After an interview with a reporter from the local news station, Kai’s story went viral. But what happened to Kai after his rocket to stardom stalled?

I remember this story vividly. Like most of the country, I also got a kick out of Kai. And like most viral news stories, I forgot about him almost immediately. I seem to recall reading some article about him being arrested for murder but I wasn’t interested enough to really read it. In short, this documentary seemed targeted to someone like me.

The documentary doesn’t actually talk to Kai himself. Instead, it revolves around all of the people that surrounded Kai at the time, as well as some of his family members. We hear from the reporter that originally broke the Kai story, who seems to be the only person that Kai still talks to. We also hear from the variety of people in the entertainment business that wanted to make Kai a superstar. People that wanted to give him a reality show or booked him for talk shows or just wanted a piece of the viral Kai cake.

While all of this is interesting in a way, it does feel like we don’t get to know Kai as a person. We only get to see him through the lenses of these people that wanted something from him. Jessob Reisbeck, the original reporter that broke the story, is the only one that doesn’t seem to want something from Kai. The only reason he is involved in the story is he is the only person Kai will talk with so Reisbeck ends up as a sort of go-between for Kai and the rest of the world.

We do hear from Kai’s mother and a friend who knew him in school but both of those stories feel fake. Shirley McGillvary, Kai’s mother, sounds like she is only telling stories that don’t make her look like a terrible mom. But her stories don’t make her look all that good either. I can’t tell if she really abused Kai when he was a child or if she was just overwhelmed by motherhood. As for Kai’s school friend, he barely gives us any backstory about Kai’s childhood. He was only there to throw his two cents into a Netflix documentary.

Overall, I thought The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker did a decent job of telling the story of Kai. However, without talking to Kai himself, it’s difficult to tell how much of the documentary is true. If it isn’t on film, it very well may be a lie. A lot of people seemed to want a piece of Kai and that makes me feel bad for him. Not bad enough to believe that he didn’t murder Joseph Galfy in May 2013. But it is possible that Kai was attacked like he claims. Everyone seemed to want a piece of him at the time and that just sucks.

Shin Ultraman | Movie Review

Whenever we can, my husband and I try to go see any Japanese movies aired by Fathom Events. We saw Shin Godzilla back in 2016. This week we saw Shin Ultraman. Both movies were made by Shinji Higuchi and Hideaki Anno. A third movie is scheduled to be released in Japan later this year but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, Shin Ultraman.

Giant monsters called kaiju are attacking Japan. The government has formed a taskforce called S-Class Species Suppression Protocol or SSSP to handle them. During a particularly difficult kaiju attack, an extraterrestrial in the shape of a giant human appears and dispatches the beast. But now the SSSP has a new problem - is Ultraman a friend or foe?

In an attempt to reboot the original series into one 2-hour movie, the kaiju fights are very short. The movie starts with a list of kaiju and how they were killed. Ultraman fights two kaiju then the first “big bad” is introduced. Yes, there is more than one Big Bad. There are actually three Big Bad enemies. Ultraman fights five enemies in total. Unfortunately, the kaiju fights are usually the focus of tokusatsu movies. By minimizing the fights, the movie seems to drag a lot.

Since the fights are so short, the time is filled with a lot of talking. We aren’t given the time to see the kaiju or Ultraman or the baddies do much so it has to be explained to us. This also makes the movie drag. Seriously, this was the longest 2-hour movie I have ever watched.

But there are some good parts. Masami Nagasawa was wonderful as Hiroko Asami. She brought the perfect amount of humor to a movie that sorely needed it. Everyone else was fine but it really was Nagasawa that made Shin Ultraman worth watching. OK, really she is the only good part.

Shin Ultraman really is a Japanese movie for a Japanese audience. While that isn’t a bad thing, we were shown an interview with the director, Shinji Higuchi, before the movie. Higuchi noted the differences between Japanese audiences and American audiences and he hoped that American audiences would enjoy his movie. I didn’t hate the movie. As a matter of fact, I did find a lot of it quite enjoyable. But I’m not sure a lot of people would feel the same.

Death In The Dorms | Series Review

After watching so many movies in the last quarter of the year, I often don’t feel like watching very many movies in January. So I end up turning to true crime series and documentaries. Death In The Dorms showed up just in time.

Death In The Dorms is a 6-episode mini-series. Each episode tells the story of a college student murdered on or near their college campus.

While this series does hit a little close to home (my daughter is currently a college junior), I thought it did a good job of telling each student’s story. Unlike most true crime documentaries that focus on the killer, this series features the family and friends of the victims. Yes, we do still hear about the crime and how the murderer was caught but we hear more about how each student lived and how much they are missed.

I know that hearing the sordid details of the crime and the terrible history of the killer tends to get shows higher ratings. However, I think that the format Death In The Dorms uses should be the blueprint for future true crime documentaries. Let’s focus on the victims and their lives instead of glorifying the evil monsters that took those lives from them. Maybe people will be less willing to do terrible things if we stop plastering the bad guy’s name all over the place.

M3gan | Movie Review

What better way to unwind from the holiday season than a movie about a murderous robotic doll? I have been looking forward to this movie but was it worth it?

Gemma (Allison Williams) develops robotic toys for children. When her sister and brother-in-law are killed in a car accident, her niece, Cady (Violet McGraw), comes to live with her. Seeing that Cady is having difficulty transitioning to life without her parents, Gemma gives her the robotic friend prototype she is working on, codenamed M3gan. M3gan is perfect - she listens, she teaches, she protects. But maybe she is a little too perfect.

While M3gan isn’t the perfect movie, it is a lot of fun. On the positive side, M3gan isn’t the scary Chucky-style doll killer we are used to. Instead of a serial killer doll, we are faced with an AI who is fulfilling their duties to the extreme. This isn’t anything new. We see it in movies like Wall-E or Alien. In M3gan’s case, her duty was to protect Cady’s emotional and physical well-being. When those things are threatened, M3gan removes them. As a result, we actually cheer on M3gan’s murderous tendencies for the most part.

Thankfully, I don’t think there are too many negatives to the movie. Lydia (Amy Usherwood), the therapist that comes in to evaluate Cady, is awful. There is a scene where Lydia wants to watch Gemma play with Cady but then she contradicts everything she says. Lydia says to let Cady lead the play session (basically telling Gemma to not tell Cady how to play with a toy) then she, herself, tells Cady how to play. I understand why Lydia has to exist in the movie. I think it would have been better if she wasn’t so intolerable the first time we meet her. It makes all of the other interactions with her cringey.

I also wish that Gemma’s co-workers, Tess (Jen Van Epps) and Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez), were used a bit better. We only ever see them in the robotic lab. Considering that M3gan is now out in the world, they could have made the trip to Gemma’s house to give feedback on how they think M3gan is progressing. As it is, they have to make calls on M3gan’s behavior solely based on what Gemma tells them. They get biased information instead of getting the information for themselves.

With all of that in mind, I still highly enjoyed M3gan. It was a great story about attachments children make and the role parents play in their lives. I will probably watch it again when it comes to a streaming service.