It's What's Inside (2024)

The first Netflix horror movie I watched this season is It’s What’s Inside. To be honest, I forgot that it released on October 4. I just happened to be scrolling through Netflix and thought it looked interesting. But was it?

Shelby (Brittany O’Grady) has been trying to get her boyfriend, Cyrus (James Morosini), interested in her. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be working. She wants to skip the party for their friend Reuben (Devon Terrell), who is getting married, but Cyrus insists they go. At the party, they meet up with all their friends - Dennis (Gavin Leatherwood), Maya (Nina Bloomgarden), Nikki (Alycia Debnam-Carey), and Brooke (Reina Hardesty). Surprisingly, their estranged friend from college, Forbes (David Thompson), also shows up. Forbes has brought a mysterious suitcase containing a strange machine. He hooks everyone up to the machine and turns it on, immediately making everyone swap bodies with each other. Chaos ensues as the group plays a game where they try to guess who is actually inside everyone’s bodies.

This was such an interesting premise. And I really wish the writers had done more with it. Sure, there were some people who were only interested in hooking up with people while they were in their friends’ bodies but there could have been so much more going on. Even the Big Problem that happens doesn’t really cause much drama on-screen. People should be more scared or angry or something but we only see a fraction of how they should feel.

One of my other problems was keeping track of who everyone was. Granted, this is the plot of the movie. You are supposed to lose track of who is who. It make the twist ending better. But since I barely knew the characters’ names to begin with, it was really hard for me to remember who was who. I would have liked maybe a subtitle instead of showing who was inside with a red filter scene. I can’t know who is who when I didn’t know who they were to begin with!

With all of this is mind, It’s What’s Inside wasn’t a terrible movie. I might actually watch it again to see if I can get more out of it. If you like movies that are a little confusing, this one could be for you.

Rating: B

Irish Wish (2024)

Does Netflix know it’s 2024? That it’s OK to have women that don’t think terribly of themselves? I guess not. Let’s talk about the new Lindsay Lohan movie, Irish Wish.

Maddie (Lohan) is a book editor who dreams of writing her own book. The most recent book she edited was written by Paul Kennedy (Alexander Vlahos), who she is absolutely in love with. However, Paul is about to marry one of Maddie’s best friends, Emma (Elizabeth Tan). As the group, along with other best friend Heather (Ayesha Curry), travel to Ireland for the wedding, everything starts going wrong for Maddie. The airport loses her luggage and it takes so much time to fill out the paperwork that she has to take the bus to Paul’s house. It’s on the bus that she meets nature photographer James Thomas (Ed Speleers). The next day, while the soon-to-be-wed couple go out rowing, Maddie accidentally makes a wish to Saint Brigid (Dawn Bradfield) that she would be the one marrying Paul, not Emma. Once the wish comes true, Maddie finds out that she didn’t really want what she thought she did.

The Maddie character really annoyed me. She was quite incapable of doing anything, except for writing obviously. The whole opening of the movie is Maddie making googly eyes at Paul but being too scared to tell him that she likes him. She’s apparently so scared of her feelings that she doesn’t even tell her two best friends. Not in the bar, not in the car home, not at any point during Emma and Paul’s 7-month relationship. Oh wait, she does tell her mother played by Jane Seymour. I have no idea why she is even in the movie. She doesn’t do anything.

Then, when Maddie’s wish comes true, she does nothing to stand up for herself. At the last minute, Paul’s mother wants her to ditch the wedding dress that she picked out (with her mother…off-screen, of course) in order to wear the family wedding dress. I think Heather said something like “But what about your wedding dress?” and Maddie just kinda shrugged it off. There’s another scene where Paul asks her to go bicycle riding. Maddie doesn’t want to do it but she lets Paul bully her into it.

From what I can tell, Maddie had a crush on Paul because he is cute. He’s a terrible person and I’m not sure why she didn’t see that when she worked with him. While I’m not going to spoil his biggest flaw, yes, she absolutely should have known he was awful and she probably should have outright hated him instead of loving him.

Is there a good part to this movie? James was probably the only redeemable character in the whole thing. He was better to Maddie but I’m not sure he is enough to actually save the entire movie. Instead, I think I’m going to chalk this up to another terrible romcom and put it out of my mind. There have to be better romcoms out there to watch.

Rating: D

Imaginary (2024)

My husband is a big fan of horror movies. I don’t hate them, for the most part, but they are not my favorite. Over the weekend, we stopped by the movie theater to see Imaginary. Weirdly, this isn’t the first movie that will be released this year about imaginary friends…

Jessica (DeWanda Wise) is a children’s book author and artist. After her father, Ben (Samuel Salary) is moved into an elderly care facility, she moves into her childhood home with her husband, Max (Tom Payne), and stepdaughters, Taylor (Taegen Burns) and Alice (Pyper Braun). Shortly after moving in, Alice begins playing with a new imaginary friend, Chauncey, in the form of a stuffed bear. When Max goes on tour with his band, leaving Jessica and the girls home alone, Chauncey starts asking Alice to do violent and painful things. Gloria (Betty Buckley), a neighbor and Jessica’s old babysitter, tells the story of Jessica’s old imaginary friend, Chauncey Bear. Can Jessica protect her family from the entity that has entered their new family?

To be honest, I’m not really sure why this movie is being marketed as a horror movie. There wasn’t anything particularly scary about it. I covered my eyes for one scene but, according to my husband, the event occurred off-screen so I didn’t need to cover my eyes. At best, this movie is a thriller. And that is being very generous. After the movie, I did say it seemed a little like a live-action Coraline but Coraline was way better.

Since this isn’t a horror movie and it’s not a thriller…it definitely isn’t a family film…I’m not sure who this movie is for. I don’t think I would say it’s a bad movie. It is a directionless movie though. If it wanted to be horror or thriller, it really needed to commit to those genres. Instead, we get a PG-13 sleeper.

Rating: C+

A Scottish Love Scheme (2024)

Hallmark must really have a thing for Scotland now. In 2021, there was A Castle For Christmas. 2023 was A Merry Scottish Christmas. And now they gave us A Scottish Love Scheme. How many Hallmark movies can Scotland handle?

Lily (Erica Durance) has recently left her job marketing for a family brewery. Now she has time to take a mother-daughter trip to Scotland with her mom, Cait (Jo Cameron Brown), to visit their friends, the Campbells. While they are there, Cait schemes with her old friend, Mairi (Juliet Cadzow), to set Lily up with Mairi’s son, Logan (Jordan Young).

For a movie that claims to be about schemes, there isn’t a lot of scheming going on. Unless you want to count Mairi telling Logan that he should take Lily to dinner at a specific restaurant a “scheme.” I think schemes are supposed to be kinda secret, right? With the exception of one instance toward the beginning of the movie, Cait and Mairi must think their kids are pretty stupid to not realize what they are doing. Then again, Lily and Logan never say anything about it so maybe they are stupid…

If we look beyond the unschemey schemes, the rest of the movie is just fine. A little boring, as usual, but there is nothing particularly offensive about it. Everything just takes a very long time to happen. I would have liked it a little more if Cait and Mairi were a little more sneaky about what they were doing. Maybe make this a bit more of a mystery romance instead. Well, at least we got some really pretty shots of Scotland.

Rating: B-

Godzilla Minus One (2023)

My husband is a big fan of Godzilla. Whenever a new film hits the theaters, we are there to see it. We first saw Godzilla Minus One when it came out in theaters in early December. We saw it a second time when they released the black and white version earlier this month. But this time we got to see it in 4DX.

Near the end of World War II, kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) diverts his plan to an outpost on Odo Island, pretending that there is a mechanical failure. That night, the island is attacked by a giant sea monster the locals call Godzilla. Everyone except lead mechanic Sosaku Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki) and Shikishima are killed. Ashamed of his cowardice, Shikishima returns home to Tokyo, only to find his parents died in an air raid. He meets Noriko Oishi (Minami Hamabe), a young woman who is caring for an orphaned baby named Akiko. Knowing that they need money to keep Akiko alive, he takes a job detonating mines in the ocean around Japan. When he finds a much larger and more powerful Godzilla is on the way to attack Japan, he teams up with other veterans from the war to defeat the monster.

There are quite a few Godzilla movies that mostly focus on the monster. (I’m pretty sure most of those are American-produced versions.) Minus One is an extremely emotional story about the effects of war and survivor’s guilt and doing what is necessary in order to survive. While I know these are somewhat common themes in the Japanese-produced Godzilla movies, I have never seen one this emotional. We really get to see Shikishima break down over his perceived failures as a man. And Noriko’s anguish at not being able to help someone she loves overcome what the war has done to him. Seeing all of this in color was already amazing and beautiful. Seeing it in black and white was very different. Somehow it made everything feel more important or more heartbreaking. I didn’t think I could enjoy this movie more, but the black and white version proved me wrong.

Rating: A

Asteroid City (2023)

The next movie that I wanted to see last year but missed out on due to a bunk eye is Asteroid City. I generally enjoy Wes Anderson films and, with this cast list, it couldn’t miss. But this may be a difficult synopsis to write.

Asteroid City is set as a televised documentary about a stage play, which we see acted out on screen. Conrad Earp (Edward Norton) writes a play about an unusual group of people brought together to Asteroid City for a Junior Stargazer convention. Brilliant teenagers have been invited to accept awards for their various inventions. However, when an alien lands a UFO in the middle of their ceremony, Asteroid City is locked down and no one is allowed to leave.

I think this is one of those polarizing types of movies. I remember hearing a lot of bad things about it. However, I actually enjoyed the movie. The transitions between the documentary and the actual play kept me interested where I probably would have grown bored if it was just the Asteroid City parts. I also found myself smiling at all of the various cameos. While I don’t think this will be one of Anderson’s most beloved movies, I do think that it deserves to be watched at least once. You should probably watch it twice, though, just in case you missed something.

Rating: B+

Lift (2024)

On January 12, Netflix released a new movie starring Kevin Hart titled Lift. Let’s see if this heist movie holds up against the others in the genre.

Cyrus (Hart) leads an international group of thieves. There’s master-of-disguise Denton (Vincent D’Onofrio), pilot Camila (Úrsula Corberó), hacker Mi-Sun (Yunjee Kim), engineer Luke (Viveik Kalra), and crazy safecracker Magnus (Billy Magnussen). After successfully stealing a Vincent Van Gogh painting in London while kidnapping a mysterious artist named N8, the group gets tasked by Interpol to help capture a terrorist named Lars Jorgensen (Jean Reno). In exchange for their freedom, the group agrees to the deal.

I don’t think I have ever seen a more boring heist film. For most of the movie, I was wondering when the action was going to start. Even though the movie begins with a massive art heist, we don’t see anything interesting until around an hour and fifteen minutes into the 90 minute runtime. I wanted to like this movie so much but is was so utterly bland. How can they take someone like Kevin Hart and make him dull?? Who was OK with this?

Rating: D

X | Movie Review

My husband and I watched X awhile ago. Originally, I wasn’t planning on writing a review for it, but then the sequel came out and I figured I might as well review them both.

The year is 1979. A group of filmmakers travels to a farmhouse in Texas to film a new pornographic movie. Their movie, The Farmer’s Daughter, is directed by Wayne Gilroy (Martin Henderson) and stars Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow) and Jackson Hole (Scott Mescudi). Wayne’s girlfriend, Maxine Minx (Mia Goth), will also appear in the film. However, Lorraine (Jenna Ortega) is only there to help her director boyfriend, RJ (Owen Campbell). That is, until she gets drawn in by the allure of the sex scenes. Then she wants to take part as well. Meanwhile, Howard (Stephen Ure), the owner of the farmhouse, is rather mean to the group. But it’s his wife, Pearl (Mia Goth), that they really need to avoid.

Like most A24 films, X is an unusual type of movie. Even though there are movies about making porn movies, they don’t quite follow the same format as X. We do see sex scenes (there is only one scene of full frontal nudity and it’s not related to The Farmer’s Daughter) but, for the most part, they don’t come across as sexy. They come across as almost robotic, which is probably pretty accurate for the porn industry. Something that needs to be done in order to become a rich and famous star.

In addition, the villain in this slasher film isn’t someone who can chase young adults across a farm in order to murder them. And still, most of the cast still ends up dead. It’s an interesting twist on the slasher genre of horror movie that definitely keeps you on your toes. Just when you think that the killer can’t possibly do something, that something happens anyway.

While I want to recommend X, it’s a difficult movie to actually recommend. It’s one of those movies that people will either love or hate. It is A24, after all. With that said, this is the middle film of a trilogy. The prequel, Pearl, came out on September 16 and the sequel, Maxxxine, will be coming out next year. You might want to wait until all three movies are out before watching this one.

Elvis | Movie Review

A lot of people know the story of Elvis Presley, right? A small town white boy learns how to sing like the black people around him then he makes it big. With Baz Luhrmann’s new movie, Elvis, we hear the tale from Elvis’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker.

As Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks) lies dying in a hospital room in 1997, he thinks back on how he met the King of Rock n’ Roll, Elvis Presley (Austin Butler), and how they effected each other’s lives.

I know that seems like a very short description of the movie but anything beyond that would just be a biography on Elvis’s life. The movie takes us from the time Parker meets Elvis in Louisiana in 1954 (with some flashbacks to Elvis as a child) through to the death of Elvis in 1977 and the death of Parker himself in 1997. Through that time we see the ups and the downs. The highs of Elvis loving performing in front of people to the downs of Elvis buckling under the pressure of everyone depending on him to continue making tons of money. They even include Parker filling Elvis with all sorts of drugs to make sure he could perform every single night. It was a sad, lonely life.

it’s no surprise that most people who have watched Elvis loved it. The movie was both written and directed by Baz Luhrmann, the man who famously brought us such brilliant movies as William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (you know, the one with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes), Moulin Rouge!, and The Great Gatsby. Luhrmann is a master of flashy, stylish movies with amazing musical scores. If you have seen any of his previous works, you will see the same themes and styles here. Thankfully, Elvis Presley’s life, once he starts to get famous, is nothing but flashy and stylish. The glitter and gold of Las Vegas, chunky jewelry as far as the eye can see, and so many bedazzled outfits, you won’t be sure where a rhinestone doesn’t belong!

What I appreciate the most in this version of Elvis’s life story is that we get to see the parallels between the songs that Elvis has heard from various black people in his life and the songs that he himself released. A lot of the Elvis songs that we are all familiar with are songs that black people had recorded but weren’t able to get onto the radio due to the color of their skin. Now I’m not sure that Elvis was as accepted by the black community as he was in the movie - it would have been nice to have seen at least a few people be upset that a white boy made millions of dollars off of their songs - but it was nice to see that credit was given in some way. The movie will absolutely show Arthur Crudup (played by Gary Clark Jr. in the movie) singing “That’s All Right” then overlay it with Elvis recording that same exact song and becoming famous with it. And this happens multiple times in the movie with multiple different people.

With that said, I do think everyone should watch Elvis. It is a good movie. Butler and Hanks to a superb job as Elvis and Parker. The soundtrack is phenomenal, both the Elvis songs (which is part Butler’s voice and part actual Elvis) and the original songs that were thrown into various scenes. it may not be a completely truthful movie as it is intended to be from the point of view of the person that took the most advantage of the man but, from what I have read, the Presley family all approved of this movie and the way everyone was portrayed. That is good enough for me.

I write about more than just Christmas movies. Seriously.

For the past three years, I have reviewed Christmas movies. I tend to get so burned out on them that I don’t know what to write about the rest of the year.

In an attempt to fix my Big Time Writer’s Block, I am going to expand the holiday movie reviews this year. Yes, I will still do the Christmas movies. But this time I am going to add Halloween to the schedule. I am going to review Halloween-related movies released in 2021.

Now - the Christmas movies usually have to follow some rules. The big rule is they have to be first released in the year they are being reviewed (no reviewing 2012 movies in 2021). The Halloween movies will follow that same rule. In 2018 and 2019, I only reviewed movies released in December. In 2020, I moved that to every movie released for the Christmas season, which started in November. While I would like to stick to movies released in October, I might not have enough movies to fill the entire month. There are some scary movies that either have already been released or will be released in the next few weeks. So don’t be surprised if you see some September releases in the October reviews.

Another addition is series. There are a few series that have popped up on the Halloween release schedule for 2021. I don’t normally review series as it can take me awhile to power through them. But I think there are a couple of 8-episode series that I could kick out pretty quickly. I haven’t committed myself to watching the series yet. We’ll see how that goes when they actually come out.

I am interested to see how the Halloween movies match up to the Christmas movies. I don’t particularly like slasher films but, then again, I don’t like cheesy love movies either. I really am a glutton for punishment, aren’t I?