The Nutcracker and the Four Realms

November 02, 2018 by Guest User in reviews, sandy devito

Directed by Lasse Hallström, Joe Johnston
Starring Mackenzie Foy, Keira Knightley, Morgan Freeman
Running Time: 1 hour, 39 minutes
MPAA rating: PG

By Sandy DeVito, WitchQueen of Darkness

There isn't anything new here in a bare-bones narrative sense (they add some plotty stuff about Clara needing to find a key to unlock an egg her mother gave her posthumously, there's an easily-foreseeable twist 3/4ths of the way through), but there are a hundred tiny details that make this particular project subtly unique in the Disney canon.

That Video Store Across the Street From Sheetz: A Short Memoir About My Childhood

October 25, 2018 by Guest User in sandy devito

by Sandy DeVito

When you grew up in the middle of nowhere in the 90’s, you watched movies.

Bad Times at the El Royale

October 10, 2018 by Guest User in reviews, sandy devito

Written and directed by Drew Goddard
Starring Dakota Johnson, Jon Hamm, Jeff Bridges, Chris Hemsworth, the kitchen sink
Running time: 2 hours and 21 minutes
MPAA rating: R for strong violence, language, some drug content and brief nudity

by Sandy DeVito

At some point around the halfway mark of Bad Times at the El Royale I disconnected with it pretty abruptly. Is it because I had a super long day at work and then had to rush to eat dinner before the screener and I drank a yerba mate really fast and chased it with two glasses of wine (on the back of yerba mate cans it reads "do not mix with alcohol" hahahaha)? Or is it because the Chris Hemsworth character shows up about halfway through and his presence in the film just makes no fucking sense in the context of what's been going on so far? I mean, you can hamfistedly shove any kind of character into any kind of narrative, sure, and pretend that it works somehow from sheer personal desire to have said character in your story, but that doesn't mean it works. The first half of this movie I was really enjoying (despite having to pee almost immediately and being really tired, as I was saying, which in a way is the truest litmus test for how much you're enjoying something if you're willing to stay awake and hold your pee to keep watching it). But the second half feels unfinished, and I got sort of fatigued and bored of it.

The House with a Clock in Its Walls

September 21, 2018 by Guest User in reviews, sandy devito

Directed by Eli Roth
Starring Cate Blanchett, Jack Black, Owen Vaccaro
Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes
MPAA rating: PG
Genre: Fantasy, Family

by Sandy DeVito, WitchQueen of Darkness

What a delight!

I knew I was going to like this film. Call it a hunch. I get those sometimes with certain films. I like Eli Roth's films. Whether you're a fan or not, you have to admit his love of horror is obvious and guileless. That's a love I share. The House with a Clock in Its Walls is the love of horror that blossoms in the pit of a child's stomach, that interest in the strange and unknown that often needs a mentor to come into itself. Here, Roth is the chauffeur for a new generation of young people who like the weird stuff in life. He couldn't be a better fit for this material; his enthusiasm is evident in every frame. How could I not love something as heartfelt and Halloween-candy-sweet as this? It will be a Halloween staple for years to come. Children are going to love this film. It's spooky, just the right amount of scary, and its heart is truly in the right place. The production design! I was dying. I was eating that shit up. The house! The pumpkins! The tiny minute details on the books, the creepy dolls, Lewis' bedroom with the murals of moons, all the clocks, the costumes! Love after love after love.

Love, Gilda

September 17, 2018 by Guest User in sandy devito, reviews

Directed by Lisa Dapolito
Starring Andrew Alexander, Anne Beatts, Chevy Chase
Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes

by Sandy DeVito, Witchqueen of Darkness

A lovely, sincere slice-of-life documentary about Gilda Radner, first woman on the National Lampoon radio show and one of the first original seven members of Saturday Night Live. I particularly liked director Lisa Dapolito including some popular SNL comedians from today (Bill Hader, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Melissa McCarthy) reading bits of Gilda's journals aloud. To see how beloved she is still by the comedy community was particularly moving, even when some of the structure of Dapolito's film veered into a kind of paint-by-numbers scriptedness.

Why I'm Skipping The Predator Reboot

September 13, 2018 by Guest User in sandy devito

by Sandy DeVito, Witchqueen of Darkness

Hey y’all. Sandy, your Witchqueen of Darkness here. If you know me in my daily life, or you have been following my film reviews and criticism for awhile, you may know already that I’ve often sung the praises of Shane Black, director of two films I love Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Nice Guys and writer for many more. I’ve watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang probably thirty times, no exaggeration. I can quote that whole movie with music queues and sound effects and facial expressions. I fucking LOVE that movie, you know? It’s in my top ten of all time. So you can imagine: I was really excited for his Predator movie. I’ve been following the production since it was announced last year. I hounded Rosalie to give me the screener when it came up. There was this incredible cast lined up! I was stoked. But then something happened.

The Nun

September 07, 2018 by Guest User in reviews, sandy devito

Directed by Corin Hardy
Starring Demián Bichir, Taissa Farmiga, and Jonas Bloquet
Runtime: 1 hour and 36 minutes
MPAA rating: R for terror, violence, and disturbing/bloody images

by Sandy DeVito

I liked Corin Hardy's sophomore effort about as much as I expected to; that is, more than The Conjuring films that have preceded it (1, 2) and not as much as I was hoping to. James Wan, producer of this film and the director of both Conjuring films, was quoted saying this film was meant to be "inspired by Hammer", the British film studio famous for its cheesy, grotesque, genre-pushing horror films, mostly in the '60s and '70s, all of which I'm a huge fan of, running the gamut of legitimately great Horror of Dracula, The Devil Rides Out to fun exploitation The Vampire Lovers, to contemporary efforts at gothica The Woman in Black. I mean, honestly, the bar was set too high as soon as I heard that. Hammer's special because though many have tried to mimic their particular style and wheelhouse, their films remain one-of-a-kind in atmosphere, performance, and horror credentials. I could see and appreciate the ways this film wanted to be like a Hammer film, but ultimately it falls short, lacking the flair, content to be a sort of cardboard 2D cut-out of Hammer's grand 3D horrors. Still, there were things here I enjoyed.

The Little Stranger

August 30, 2018 by Guest User in sandy devito, reviews

Directed by Lenny Abrahamson
Starring Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Wilson, Charlotte Rampling
Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes
MPAA rating: R

by Sandy DeVito, Witchqueen of Darkness

First of all let me say, it’s truly great to see gothic films making a comeback. I’ve long been a fan of gothic narrative above all others, but rarely have I been looking forward to such a slew of films that could fit into the gothic framework (as far as the gothic films that have been made so far go, I made a list that you should check out, and as you can see, compared with other genres, even other horror genres, it’s not as long as purveyors would hope, though it’s filled with gems). The Little Stranger is one of several that remain for the end of 2018, and the mere idea that I have more than one gothic film a year to look forward to is a new experience. As our society turns ever toward chaos, so do our minds need the refuge of gothica, which stares at the chaos with a loving eye; something we must be able to do in order to survive.

Christopher Robin aka Me Listening to 100 Kids Yelling Over the Movie

August 03, 2018 by Guest User in reviews, sandy devito

Directed by Marc Forster
Starring Ewan McGregor, Hayley Atwell, Jim Cummings
Running time 2 hours
MPAA rating: PG for some action

By Sandy Devito

I think I liked Christopher Robin, but I honestly don’t know. The reason I don’t know is because the combined press/public screener I went to had approximately 100 kids streaming in and out of the theater the entire time. I am NOT exaggerating. Combined press/public screeners are common, specifically if the screener is taking place a few days before the film’s wide release, and most of the ones I go to at this point are combination screeners (because I don’t write for Entertainment Weekly or whatever), but this was a very special, unique hell. Most of these types of screeners are fine, and people are quiet and obey the movie manners. But as far as I can recall, this is the first truly “kid-friendly” screener I’ve gone to; usually I avoid them like the plague, but I really wanted to see this Winnie the Pooh movie with Ewan McGregor, because I grew up with Pooh and I love Ewan with all my heart and soul. Alas. It was Not A Good Idea.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout

July 27, 2018 by Guest User in tommy c club, sandy devito, rosalie kicks, daniel scully

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
Starring Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg
Running time 2 hours 27 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13

by Sandy DeVito, Rosalie Kicks, Dan Scully

The Tommy C. Appreciation Club, or TCAC, solemnly swears to watch and appreciate all theatrical
performances by Tom Cruise then recap them, round-table style. In this edition, the Moviejawn crew embarks on a bonkers adventure with our pal Tommy in Mission: Impossible - Fallout.

Damsel

June 25, 2018 by Guest User in reviews, sandy devito

Written and Directed by David and Nathan Zellner (2018)
Starring Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska
Running time 1 hour 53 minutes
MPAA Rating: Rated R for some violence, language, sexual material, and brief graphic nudity

by Sandy DeVito

Sort of spoiler disclaimer: since one of the “major” characters in this film dies about half an hour into it, it’s virtually impossible to write anything about the film without including that. I’m also writing this with a sinus infection. I also didn’t really enjoy watching this film. The basic gist of the plot is: Samuel (Robert Pattinson) tells a drunkard parson (David Zellner, who is one of the directors too) that his ardent love Penelope (Mia Wasikowska) has been kidnapped and he needs to rescue her whereupon they will be married by the parson and live happily ever after. This is all taking place in the dirty, dry and desolate waste of the early American-occupied West.

Mountain

June 06, 2018 by Guest User in reviews, sandy devito

Directed by Jennifer Peedom (2017)
by Sandy DeVito

Jennifer Peedom's body of work, thus far, has been obsessed with the natural world, specifically humankind's relationship and obsession with that which is indifferent to us. This tradition is continued in Mountain, an experience deeply rooted in the idea of the grandly cinematic being innately tied to the realistic spectrum in the mind of human artistry. As a meditative poem on humanity's desire for the existential, Peedom's film of Robert Macfarlane's verdant prose read by Willem Dafoe's wise, gravelly intonation (a voice he's had since he was in his late twenties, as anyone who is familiar with his filmography knows) invokes the wonder of our tininess, our arrogance, and our fragility in the face of these monuments to the giant wheel of time.

Disobedience

May 11, 2018 by Guest User in reviews, sandy devito

Directed by Sebastián Lelio (2017)
by Sandy DeVito

Disobedience concerns two Orthodox Jewish women coming from very different adult lives; having conducted an illicit affair with one another in their youth that was subsequently torn apart by Ronit's (Rachel Weisz) rabbi father, she and Esti (Rachel McAdams) are reunited when Ronit’s father dies unexpectedly and she returns for his funeral, having left and estranged herself from the Jewish church for years. Esti is now married to their childhood friend Dovid (Alessandro Nivola), causing a tumultuous jumble of unresolved emotions between the trio.

Itzhak

April 20, 2018 by Guest User in reviews, sandy devito

Directed by Alison Chernick (2017)
by Sandy DeVito

I've said this before in other reviews, but the litmus test by which one gauges documentaries should always be slightly different from the one used for fictional narratives. Reality is not like fiction; it has no arc or final moral, it just is, rising and falling, an oxymoronic, chaotic rhythm of days, a series of events that do not have a mythic structure. For a character study in fiction, we examine the ways in which we relate or do not relate to their theoretical experience; for the character study documentary, we are a more passive witness to the person we are learning about. Are we necessarily here to see how we relate to Itzhak Perlman? Yes and no. The subject of Itzhak is a real person, astoundingly real. Both an Israeli-American, disabled Jew, and a wunderkind violinist, existing in the same body, two sides of the same soul. His brightness exceeds all fiction. He is inherently human. Director Alison Chernick makes the right decision in focusing her camera, therefore, on his intense humanity - his intimate conversations with family and friends, the difficulty of riding his electric wheelchair over icy New York streets, a rehearsal with Billy Joel, teaching students at his school, buying cauliflower. Chernick's documentary is not about what people think of Itzhak Perlman. It's Itzhak Perlman, preserved on film.

A Quiet Place

April 06, 2018 by Guest User in reviews, sandy devito

Directed by John Krasinski (2018)
by Sandy DeVito

A Quiet Place has, most readily, sequences of high tension that help it come quite close to feeling like a cohesive narrative, mostly by simply dragging you along at a break-neck pace, but after the credits rolled I found myself remembering more and more that is either clumsily executed, feels incomplete, or is just too basic and vague to leave a lasting impact. Like last year's It Comes At Night, we are thrust immediately into the post-apoc world of Krasinski's film without our footing, trusting the narrative to give us clues in time. Most of the major bits of exposition in the first twenty minutes are given to us, literally, on a dry-erase board. Call me picky, but I wanted more, and I wanted it more creatively.

The Alienist Episodes 9 and 10

March 28, 2018 by Guest User in recaps, sandy devito

by Sandy DeVito

I decided to combine my thoughts about the final two episodes of The Alienist because they feel like one episode chopped into two parts. I'll be honest; I am not happy to see the end of this show, and my greatest hope is that the executives at TNT will consider the 10-episode series to be enough of a success (which is not totally clear yet ) to fund a sequel series covering the second book, Angel of Darkness. Author Caleb Carr also has other Kreizler novels in the works; my hope is this is not the last we've seen of Bruhl, Evans, and Fanning in these roles. I've become deeply attached to them and want more time with them.

The Alienist Episodes 7 and 8

March 19, 2018 by Guest User in recaps, sandy devito

by Sandy DeVito

The final three episodes of The Alienist will no doubt be largely devoted to the killer, a man we have only seen from the back and one whom John cannot even seem to draw with direction from Stevie, the only one from our group of misfits who has looked at his face. I'd also assume this knowing where we are chronologically compared to the novel; I can't possibly divorce the source material from the show as I've probably demonstrated already. Last week's episode was the only one that I was sort of actively disgruntled with; this week is a marked improvement, though it's still not trying to tie up everything that bothered me in Ascension yet.

They Remain

March 09, 2018 by Guest User in sandy devito, reviews

Directed by Philip Gelatt (2018)
by Sandy DeVito

”There were moments when the sun coagulated between the teeth of distant peaks and the brass shell of sky peeled back to reveal the stars welded to a deeper darkness, and the moon would heave, yellow as an old cracked skull bone of some massive space-faring thing. I would be reminded with the cold that seeped up through the soles of my boots and stole into my blood that I was minute and impermanent, that every work of civilization is a speck upon the face of speck floating upon an infinite abyss." - Laird Barron on his childhood in Alaska

The Alienist Episodes 5 and 6

March 05, 2018 by Guest User in recaps, sandy devito

by Sandy DeVito

Hildebrandt's Starling

This episode features two of my favorite scenes from the novel:

The Alienist Episode 4: These Bloody Thoughts

February 19, 2018 by Guest User in sandy devito, recaps

by Sandy DeVito

It's important to consider The Alienist in the context of 2018, and the showrunners here are hyper-aware of its themes in a contemporary mindset. I keep expecting TNT's premiere drama to play out as a more conventional adaptation of the novel (which is wonderful, don't get me wrong), but it's building on Carr's world with subtle, masterful precision. In the scene in this episode where John takes Mary to see a vitascope projection, a lovely scene in the book, the context is given new layers when we see the tumultuous world outside Mary's usual controlled environment inside Kreizler's household; suffragettes campaign for voting rights, and we witness the frenzied reactions of spectators to the new invention. Likewise, we are given a rich new scene where we get to see the meeting between Kreizler and Sara that prompts the outing between John and Mary, a scene we are excluded from in the book; in it, Kreizler deftly asks Sara if it would be possible for her to empathize with someone who had murdered. Sara immediately balks at the idea, but Kreizler proceeds to tell her about a woman they see across the path, who was convicted of killing her two young children but acquitted as she was from a wealthy family. She now brings an empty perambulator to the park every day, and sits with it quietly. The ills that society wreaks up on the human mind, Kreizler points out, can push anyone to madness and violence; and women are given darkly heavy burdens.