Mediocre Movie Club Movie Reviews

I Am Not A Serial Killer

9/7/2018

C+
2.42

A budding sociopath keeps himself from killing people by investigating murders in his small town.

Directed by Billy O'Brien
Starring Max Record and Christopher Lloyd
Initial Review by Jon Kissel

On our recent Best of 2018 So Far podcast, I raved about The End of the Fucking World. It’s by accident that I saw what is still one of my favorite TV series of the year before I saw I Am Not a Serial Killer. These are essentially the same pieces of fiction. A teen male who is sure he’s a sociopath bides time until the inevitable moment when he makes his first kill, but he discovers what it means to follow through on those impulses and that he doesn’t have to be like the people that do so. The lesson that brain chemistry is not destiny is a powerful one that the species has had to continually remind itself of, and it’s something pitched at my wavelength due to my preference for both skepticism and liberalism. However, I Am Not a Serial Killer is no End of the Fucking World thanks to its own choices of who the villain is and what the viewer is supposed to feel about him. It doesn’t believe that sociopathy is interesting enough on its own, and needlessly spices things up with the supernatural.

1 Comment

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

8/28/2018

0 Comments

B+
3.38

An enraged and grieving mother harangues the police department to find her daughter's murderer.

Directed by Martin McDonagh
Starring Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell, and Woody Harrelson
Initial Review by Jon Kissel

Irish playwrights and auteurs Martin and John Michael McDonagh have been responsible for some of the most memorable morality plays to hit theaters in recent years. John Michael’s Calvary is a definitive ‘good man in a fallen world’ post-recession tale, and Martin’s In Bruges resuscitated Colin Farrell’s career on its way to cult status. Of the two brothers, Martin experienced the McDonagh family’s greatest success with his roiling hit Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. An angry film for angry times, Martin McDonagh turns tragedy into righteous fury and blinkered obsession, while taking stabs at a conservative flavor of political correctness that praises figures of authority and state power. There’s also grace in the small Ozark town at the film’s center, but its inhabitants have too many excuses to shun it. Three Billboards is complicated and conflicting and often times at odds with itself. McDonagh’s utilizing some raw power in a less-than airtight film.

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Heat

8/17/2018

0 Comments

A-
3.71

A master thief has to elude a master detective.

Directed by Michael Mann
Starring Robert de Niro and Al Pacino
Initial Review by Jon Kissel

Michael Mann is a director who cares about process. His debut, Thief, spent minutes watching James Caan crack open a safe from start to finish. With Manhunter, Mann founded a genre by dissecting crime scenes and murderous psychology. If one needs to know how to lay siege to a 18th century colonial fort, The Last of the Mohicans contains a handy manual. Mann’s attention to detail is as meticulous as the characters he puts onscreen, and that’s certainly true in Heat, his modern masterpiece (as opposed to Mohicans, his period masterpiece. The man’s multi-masterpieced). The director cares about competency, and he creates characters who share in that admiration even when the fruits of their practiced labors are diametrically opposed. Heat is at the pinnacle of this kind of film, wherein talented character are believably sculpted, spun up, and let loose to do their thing.

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Free Fire

8/7/2018

3 Comments

C+
2.28

An arms deal devolves into a warehouse shootout.

Directed by Ben Wheatley
Starring Brie Larson, Armie Hammer, and Sharlto Copley
Initial Review by Lane Davis

Only apple pie and John Denver come close to being as quintessentially American as guns, and “Free Fire” gives us plenty of two out of three. The night before watching “FF” I watched the first “John Wick” (because I’m often late to some parties); a highly stylized action movie with plenty of action and gun violence. I enjoyed it very much. But the violence in “Wick” was so coordinated and scripted, as it should be, that it left no illusions that it was comic book fantasy. Two shots to the gut, one to the head. Bam. That’s the assassin’s signature in movies and books.

3 Comments

Cutthroat Island

8/1/2018

3 Comments

D
1.05

A pirate master searches for treasure.

Directed by Renny Harlin
Starring Geena Davis, Matthew Modine, and Frank Langella
Initial Review by Jon Kissel

Carolco Pictures went from producing the Rambo series, Basic Instinct, and Terminator 2 to losing the 2017 equivalent of $147 million on Cutthroat Island, incidentally the last film they released before declaring bankruptcy. Of course, there’s often a wide distance between commercial and critical success. A film can be a masterpiece and a complete flop, or make a lot of money while being a piece of shit. The failure on one side does not guarantee failure on the other. This is not the case with Cutthroat Island. Though it’s surprising that it was such a flop, as it at least looks like it could fool enough people with a decent poster or a trailer that cuts out most of the dialogue, Renny Harlin’s swashbuckling disaster is disgraceful and amateurish. It is good and right that people lost their jobs after putting their seal of approval on Cutthroat Island.

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I Am Not A Serial Killer

C+
2.42

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

B+
3.38

Heat

A-
3.71

Free Fire

C+
2.28

Cutthroat Island

D
1.05

Authors

Categories

Archives

I Am Not A Serial Killer

C+​2.42

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

B+​3.38

Heat

A-3.71

Free Fire

C+2.28

Cutthroat Island

D​1.05

Authors

Categories

Archives

C+
2.42

B+
3.38

A-
3.71

C+
2.28

D
1.05