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Longlegs

FBI Agent Lee Harker investigates a series of gruesome deaths connected to a mysterious figure known as Longlegs. As the case unfolds, unearthing evidence of the occult, Harker discovers a personal connection to the merciless killer and must race against time to stop him before he claims the lives of another innocent family.

Longlegs Review

Since their earliest days, horror movies have relied on a handful of essential ingredients to deliver their thrills and chills. From jump scares to disturbing imagery, the only thing that has changed is each film’s specific usage and the degree to which it relies on those ingredients. Over the last two decades, it seems as though the art of eliciting fear from audiences with subtlety and creativity has been largely lost, replaced by the current crop of genre filmmakers’ race to see who can be grosser and more explicit. Enter Longlegs.

With its minuscule budget and cast of unknowns, Nicolas Cage and Blair Underwood notwithstanding, Longlegs harkens back to the days when the cinematographer and score were more essential than gallons of dyed corn syrup and an FX budget to rival a small nation’s GDP. Despite the fact that the film is a little underdeveloped, with far too little Cage, and loses a bit of focus in the third act, by going back to the basics, Longlegs delivers a delicious ever-present tension as the audience sits on the edge of their seats waiting for the shoe to drop.

Its quintessential 70s horror chic cinematography, with long lingering shots framed ever-so-slightly off-center, and director Oz Perkins’s (son of Anthony Perkins – aka Norman Bates in Psycho) keen sense of timing are the film’s true stars. However, its classically understated vintage score and some surprising performances shine nearly as brightly.

Obviously, seeing Nicholas Cage as a demonic serial killer is Longleg’s big draw, and the only disappointing thing about his disturbing performance is its abbreviated nature. He’s one part creepy, three parts demonically terrifying, and all Nicolas Cage. That said, despite having a relatively underwhelming resume of which her turn as President Whitmore’s daughter in the critically panned Independence Day sequel,  Maika Monroe surprises as Agent Harker. With Cage only appearing briefly, the bulk of the film lies on Monroe’s shoulders, and she is more than up to the task.

Even though the outward trappings of her role as an FBI agent combined with the time period in which Longlegs is set, not to mention the film’s tone, understandably invokes parallels to Clarice Sterling and Silence of the Lambs, Monroe’s Harker is wholly its own creature. The actress beautifully portrays the socially awkward agent with a grounded sincerity and realism that precludes what could have easily been a caricature. As such, she is the perfect straight man to the film’s bizarre goings-on.

Unfortunately, Longlegs flounders a bit under the weight of its concept and what appears to have been very limited access to Nicolas Cage. As a result, everyone’s character development is fairly rushed, with Cage’s character suffering the most. It also suffers from a botched reveal of its twist in an unnecessary and redundant montage that’s overlong, overly expository, and completely robs the film’s final minutes of virtually all of its momentum.

In spite of this and a rushed two-dimensional relationship between Harker and a catalyst character, Longlegs dishes out a quick and fun fright night worth seeing.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Lady Cops

• Nitpickers might take umbrage with yet another “strong female” cop-like character leading a film. However, not only have there been female FBI field agents since the 70s, but Lee Harker is a socially awkward mess and not some unstoppable bad@$$ who was clearly written to be a man until studio interference. Her feminity actually adds a nice layer of vulnerability to the story.

The post Longlegs first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

Twisters

After experiencing a brush with death, one-time storm chaser Kate Cooper will have to face the deadly storms that killed her friends if she hopes to overcome her crisis of confidence and develop a way to stop future twisters from taking any more lives.

Twisters Review

1996’s Twister was far from high-concept cinema, but it knew what it was and maximized what it had to offer to its fullest. Although billed as a “standalone sequel” to the original, Twisters is best described as a remake or reboot, as it is unrelated to the original except for a handful of Easter eggs. Like many other reboots, Twisters is comparatively weak sauce to that of its papa.

Even though there is no denying that Twisters’ special effects are significantly superior to that of the original, and those who see it in IMAX or XD will be viscerally rocked by the chaos of its digital storms, the fact of the matter is that this sequel/reboot/remake relies far too heavily on its technical superiority to carry the film.

The original filmmakers clearly demonstrated their understanding of the material by peopling their story with fun, if two-dimensional, characters and building a rudimentary but thematically identifiable narrative around the film’s action. Audiences had those for whom to root and root against and the film even managed to sprinkle in some emotional ambiguity with the love triangle between Bill Paxton’s, Helen Hunt’s, and Jami Gertz’s characters. In short, audiences were given a reason to care.

While those responsible for Twisters attempt to do the same, only Glen Powell’s perpetual wry smile gives any semblance of being an even marginally realized character. The rest of the cast are bland, interchangeable, and forgettable. Daisy Edgar-Jones plays the lead, Kate, who is an amalgam of Paxton’s “human barometer,” who has an almost 6th sense about the storms, and Helen Hunt’s character, who was singularly driven by an early tornado-related tragedy.

Jones gives a serviceable performance but is hampered by a paper-thin plot and a major character arc that is seemingly overcome after a good night’s sleep until it unnaturally pops back up 45 minutes later for some artificial second-act conflict. Of course, in true modern Hollywood fashion, that conflict is easily and almost immediately overcome after a bit of conversation.

The lack of conflict is arguably the Twisters’ greatest downfall. The original gave us a love triangle, two disparate teams competing for the same goal, and a single overriding goal driven by tragedy for which to cheer. While these were separate elements, each served to build up the others. This new film gives us overzealous YouTubers chasing the same storms as the protagonist but for clicks, and treats the scenes in which both are doing their thing as though one is in the way of the other. In reality, the giant storms are big enough for both of them, and neither is in the other’s way at all, giving the characters’ early animosity toward one an unnecessary and artificial flavor.

Although both films require truckloads of convenience, contrivance, and fuzzy physics to exist, You could almost believe that the events of the original were possible. Twisters takes it to a whole new level with Powell’s character’s truck, a truck driven into the heart of several tornadoes without getting even a pit in the windshield.

A modified RAM dually, it is virtually impervious to the finger-of-God-power of the film’s storms thanks to some one-inch steel reinforcement and a pair of hydraulic augers. These augers burrow two feet into the earth, anchoring the truck against winds that rip foundations from the ground. It’s a silly idea, but one that audiences could perhaps suspend their disbelief for if the rest of the film were any fun.

Unfortunately, even Twisters’ action, while technically sophisticated and realistic, is largely unimpressive thanks to a combination of the aforementioned lack of emotional connection to the various story elements and equally egregious pacing. What story there is flows at a glacial pace only to be interrupted by the occasional world-ending storm, which often feels like it is over before it begins.

Having not seen the original Twister since it came out in theaters (saw it at a drive-in), I streamed it last night on Max just to see if I was unfairly comparing this new iteration against the nostalgic warm and fuzzies. I am not. Do yourself a favor and save money on theater tickets and popcorn, get some dollar-store snacks, crank up the big screen, and rewatch the original.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Lip[stick] Service

• The film tries to play the “boys are easily fooled by pretty girls” cliché for about half a second, to the point that a song playing in the background says as much.
  • I didn’t ding it much because the boy in question was never fooled, not even once.

The post Twisters first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

A Quiet Place: Day One

An angry and despondent cancer patient, Sam, who is spending her last days in hospice care, and a lonely law student, Eric, come together as the world as we know it ends. The unlikely duo must now navigate the deadly streets of New York City (nearly as deadly as in real life), avoiding unstoppable monsters while searching for a way out.

A Quiet Place: Day One Review

Prequels are not a new phenomenon. There have been numerous films set before the events of the books and plays upon which they are based, but the first-ever prequel to another film is 1948’s Another Part of the Forest, a prequel to 1941’s Little Foxes. The impetus for such films is understandable both monetarily and artistically. Studios get a built-in audience that makes the film’s commercial viability that much more likely, and fans get answers to burning questions only hinted at in their favorite programs.

Unfortunately, the modern prequel, arguably starting with Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999), has become a cinematic crutch used by creatively bankrupt movie studios looking for a quick and easy buck. Their proliferation, along with unwanted and botched sequels and spin-offs, have ruined beloved franchises and cost companies like Disney billions of dollars.

This brings us to today. Set a little over a year before the events of the John Krasinski/Emily Blunt original, A Quiet Place: Day One may be one of the most unnecessary prequels ever put on film. It adds nothing to the lore of the original two in any meaningful way, as virtually every significant event or discovery happens off-screen. Have you ever wondered how it was discovered that the aliens used sound to locate their prey? Too bad. It happens off-screen. Were you hoping to watch the American military engage in what we know will ultimately be a losing battle against the invaders? Off-screen. Had you hoped to learn of the origins of some of your favorite characters from the original two movies? You guessed it – off-screen.

Instead, A Quiet Place: Day One introduces fans to two original characters: Sam, a cancer patient at the end of her life whose sole motivation is to experience a single moment of reconnection to her past before she dies, and Eric, an English law student who is alone and afraid. The result is a familiar film with less compelling characters than the original and a story that is thereby harder to bond with emotionally.

Nothing is made any easier by the choice of lead characters. The originals benefitted from the family dynamic that was central to the plot. Audiences needed little dialogue and less setup to identify with and be invested in the stakes immediately. Conversely, in Day One, Sam is an understandably angry and jaded woman who spends the entirety of her introduction being aggressively offputting. While friendly and helpful, Eric isn’t heroic or particularly skilled, and his panic attacks that happen at just the wrong time are offputting, even if they are understandable.

The film does a commendable job of finding moments to help the audience bond with the two, but it’s too little, and the moments often feel too contrived to elevate the film from popcorn flick to genre-defining. What it did get right was its choice of performers. Both Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn are excellent. They manage to give far more nuanced performances than the script calls for, and it is the two of them, as well as Michael Sarnoski’s generally good pacing and excellent sense of continuity, that pulls this film together.

A Quiet Place: Day One might not be worthy of an official recommendation as Worth it, but it’s certainly not boring, at least not often, and offers sufficient thrills to justify purchasing an IMAX ticket and some popcorn.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Putting the Male In Damsel

• Eric’s character (a white male) is neither a coward nor incapable. His fear is proportional and understandable, but there are two moments when he begins to panic and needs Sam to be the rock that rescues him from his fear.
  • Conversely, Sam (a black female) is never out of control. That said, her particular circumstance lends itself to a nihilistic acceptance of her fate, making her behavior and general demeanor throughout the ensuing horrors more understandable.

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Monkey Man

A young fighter named Kid plans and exacts his revenge for a lifetime of tyranny and loss.

Review

Monkey Man is a slapdashed action/revenge film with an underdeveloped everything except an overdeveloped sense of its own importance.  With a messy narrative scotch taped together with thousands of nausea-inducing fast cuts and a bloated cast of nameless characters that make cardboard cutouts look deep, not even the writer/director/star of the film’s 1000% commitment and impressive physical prowess is enough to make this monstrosity passably entertaining.

If you thought that The Beekeeper was a poor man’s John Wick, Monkey Man is a cheap Indian knockoff to rival Bollywood Superman. From the black-on-black suit to the unstoppable badassery as Dev Patel’s Kid slices his way through one nameless thug after the other, there’s neither an original thought nor even a good one evident at any moment in this husk of a waste of time.

Sidenote: Those of you who have read other reviews on this site know I normally write significantly longer ones than this. However, this movie is 2 hours of noise and strobe lights that I will never get back and have no desire to spend any more time thinking about.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Because he said so

• There need be no ambiguity. The writer, director, and leading actor Dev Patel has expressly said that this film is about activism.
  • It is a movie solely about power dynamics and victimization.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Trannies

• Kid is rescued by a temple full of dudes who think that they are women. Their wisdom and kindness drives half of the film.
  • Later, they save him again, but this time, they are ninjas in Asian drag queen armor.

Faith: We Should Be Fighting For Each Other… But Not Christians

• In the video above, Dev Patel says that his movie is supposed to be about the beauty and importance of “faith” and that we should come together as one under it.
  • In the film’s first scene, after its prologue, a ring announcer who is working the crowd randomly tells them that they consist of people of various religions, which he lists off to cheers. Of course, when he gets to Christianity, the crowd aggressively boos and hisses.
  • Sidenote: this is such a meaningless bit of Leftist BS. Faith unto itself is meaningless. My youngest children have faith that a fairy sneaks into their rooms at night to trade money for teeth. There are all kinds of false idols and crazy ideas in which people place their faith. Faith is only good if that in which you have put it is both good and true.

The post Monkey Man first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

Road House (2024)

Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a retired UFC fighter who now lives a nomadic life, wandering from one underground fight to another while scratching a living off of his sordid reputation. When he’s hired to provide security at a Florida Keys Road House, he has no idea that he’ll have to do more than break up bar fights if he hopes to survive the month.

Road House (2024) firmly belongs as a VOD rather than a theatrical release. Its uneven pacing and underdeveloped characters combined with its cartoon plot aren’t worth the price of admission. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s all bad or not worth the watch.

Jake Gyllenhaal absolutely brings it. His Dalton is cool under pressure, slow to anger, and utterly convincing as a nigh unstoppable bad@$$. Gyllenhaal’s Dalton doesn’t read Legend of The Falls. He certainly doesn’t have a degree from NYU’s philosophy department, and Tai Chi and fruity spinning back kicks have been replaced with rage-filled haymakers and a WWE/UFC hybrid that looks friggin’ great on screen, especially when combined with Gyllenhaal’s commitment and Conor McGregor’s expertise.

For the most part, Road House (2024)’s camera work is fairly utilitarian, but like every other part of the film, it goes next level in the fight scenes. Road House (2024) boasts some of the best fight cinematography in the last ten years and certainly this year’s top three best fight choreography.

With the exception of Gyllenhaal and McGregor, virtually every other character is forgettable and generic. However, McGregor might have himself a new career as this generation’s Vin Jones. He’s not a terrific actor by any means, but he can obviously sell the fights, and he’s good enough and intimidating enough to be the mostly silent baddie in a Guy Ritchie flick.

The film’s pacing isn’t always consistent, with too much screen time given to unimportant events and far too little given to establishing the bad guys and giving the audience a reason to care or someone to root against. This renders the finale a little underwhelming.

That said, this Road House’s weakest point is its lack of identity. The 1989 Road House was a raunchy campfest. However, 2024’s is far more sanitized. No patrons are offering anything special for $20 or being used as a “regular Saturday night thing,” and zero throats get ripped out. By straddling the line between the original’s camp and today’s cinematic sensibilities, it sacrifices distinctiveness and relegates itself to a fun but forgettable watch.

If there’s one takeaway from Road House (2024), it’s that Jake Gyllenhaal needs to do more action flicks right now before he ages out.

WOKE ELEMENTS

DEI

• You can almost feel the studio calculus in the film. “What is the correct percentage of diversity that will offend the least number of people? What characters can be ‘diverse’?”
  • The film is set in the fictional town of Glass Key, FL. However, the real Florida Keys has a black population of 3.3%. It’s rather coincidental that the only two business owners (one of which is the gal who owns the Road House) we are introduced to happen to be black. So, it’s there but it’s not made into a big deal, and even I have to admit that this is a real nitpick.
  • While the henchmen are “diverse,” the two main baddies are blond-haired white guys. Of course, the main good guy is a white guy, so I guess the studio’s calculus figured that balanced things out.

Free At Last, Free At Last

• The film only has a single eye-rolling moment of wokeness artificially shoehorned in.
  • Out of the blue and never mentioned again, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the 1960s Civil Rights Movement are briefly and inexpertly fumbled into a completely unneeded, unwarranted, and unwanted bit o’ dialogue.

Ain’t No Eves Around These Parts

• The few female characters have little to do in this Road House, but those with speaking roles are all flawless, even the bartender.
  • I can’t emphasize how little they have to do with the film or how little screen time they get. I promise that you wouldn’t have even noticed ten years ago.

The post Road House (2024) first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

Land of Bad

When his Spec Ops team is ambushed, Air Force Sergeant JJ Kinney’s only hope of survival lies with drone pilots thousands of miles away to guide him through 48 hours of hell.

Falling somewhere between SISU’s relentless and over-the-top action and Guy Ritchie’s The Covenanent’s grounded depiction of combat, Land of Bad is a surprisingly engaging action war thriller. It may not add much new to the genre, but it manages to deliver what genre fans want: compelling and realistic men depicting visceral heroism while unironically exploring universal themes of duty and survival under impossible conditions.

Its limited cast does its duty by giving equally natural performances that expertly hook the audience and provide them with a raw connection to the film’s stakes. Hemsworth, who gets the lion’s share of the film’s focus, proves that he has what it takes to be a serious action star. Were it not for every other aspect of the show, his turn as Sergeant Kinney would be more than enough to give Witcher fans hope. Admittedly, though, there are one or two very brief moments in which his intensity isn’t quite commensurate with that of the scene’s.

The rest of the cast is brimming with enough charisma to work quickly within the constraints of their relatively brief screen time to infuse a richness to their characters that lesser performers would have missed. This is especially true for the once-svelte star of Gladiator, Russell Crowe. Crowe proves that his talent is as expansive as his waistline by infusing a character that could have easily been omitted with heart and purpose. He delivers a magnetic performance for an otherwise cutting room floor subplot.

Land of Bad isn’t a perfect movie. Its plot has been recycled from countless other films, and it overlooks some basic details (especially toward the end). Still, for those few things it gets wrong, it more than makes up for with its primal stakes, perfect pacing, and some first-rate cinematography.

It’s been a while since I left the cinema with a smile on my face. I’m happy to mark Land of Bad as Worth it.

Role Models

• The self-sacrificing, no-quit, complete-the-mission attitude that exemplifies the best of U.S. soldiers is on full display and honors those who have sacrificed much for more.

WOKE ELEMENTS

None

The post Land of Bad first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

Tenet

A super spy, played by John David Washington, is recruited into a world of danger and intrigue on a temporal scale. Working almost entirely in the dark, he will have to fight his way to the top of a criminal organization wrapped in mystery. The price of his failure? All of existence.

Originally released 6 months into the COVID scare in the hopes of bringing people back to the cinema, many criticisms have been laid at the feet of Tenet. Chief among them is that it doesn’t make any sense, which isn’t helped by director Christopher Nolan’s recent admission that Tenet isn’t supposed to make sense. In the interview, Nolan says that he wants viewers to “experience” his films and that they aren’t puzzles to be solved.

This is all well and good. Ambiguity can be an effective narrative tool. Just look at another of Nolan’s films, Inception. More than 13 years after its release, people are still arguing over its ending. However, for all that Tenet gets right, which is gone into some detail below, it misses a key ingredient that helped to make Inception’s spinning top thought-provoking instead of frustrating. That is a visceral connection to the characters and action. In Tenet, you root for the protagonist because you’re supposed to. In Inception, the audience roots for DiCapprio’s Cobb because they want to.

So, what does Tenet get right? As per the norm, Christopher Nolan surrounds himself with the best people. His visual crew, including the cinematographer and production designer, consists of familiar names from his past films, and the actors whom he cast are always perfect for their roles.

John David Washington exudes an immediate presence and swagger as well as a sincerity as The Protagonist that helps to carry his character through some of the film’s more unfortunate and repetitive exposition dumps. One day, he will find the right role for him that will be a worthy showcase of his talent (on a side note, I’d love to see a buddy action film starring him and Henry Cavill. Both are charming and charismatic actors who do action right but have never really found their place in Hollywood – The Witcher mess not withstanding.).

The supporting cast is also strong, with Robert Pattinson showing once again that he’s more than just a sparkling vampire for whom tween girls salivate. Unfortunately, the audience is never given much of a reason to care about his character. Oh, sure, at the film’s conclusion, there’s a bit of a twist revealed that, if explored earlier, had the potential to engender empathy for the two men. However, it’s far too little, far too late.

After the debacle that was the Star Wars prequels, it was revealed that George Lucas believed that audiences “didn’t care” about the story; they only wanted mind-blowing visuals. While Nolan certainly doesn’t seem to ascribe to the same filmmaking philosophy, Tenet suffers from exactly this, nonetheless. The interpersonal relationships are sacrificed on the altar of thoughtfully intricate and thought-provoking story mechanics.

In the second act, a character is introduced whose primary purpose is to provide the audience with some human connection and a reason to care about the impending apocalypse. Regrettably, both her character and the B-plot surrounding her feel tacked on and artificial. Were the main protagonists compelling enough to cultivate that needed connection on their own, the stakes would have been sufficient to engage the audience on a deeper level, and the film would have provided a much richer experience.

Sadly, while character development might be Tenet’s greatest weakness, it’s not its only weakness. Even though Nolan claims that audiences aren’t supposed to understand the film completely, Tenet is no stranger to dialogue-heavy scenes that spend 70% of the film trying to (sometimes clunkily) explain what’s going on. Nolan is usually a master at pacing; however, Tenet is plagued by an abundance of these heavy exposition dumps that completely arrest the film’s momentum.

Tenet’s Visuals

Tenet is a quintessential Nolan visual experience that, despite its deceptively mundane plot and significant narrative deficiencies, is an underrated technical achievement. The thought and care that must have gone into coordinating the film’s effects while maintaining continuity can’t be overemphasized. The storyboarding likely sent at least one artist to the insane asylum.

For this reason, and the fact that your only other choices are the indecipherable Bob Marley: One Love and the cinematic roadkill that is Drive-Away Dolls, we’re unofficially recommending Tenet as Worth it for this weekend’s limited re-release, but only under the condition that you see it in IMAX.

WOKE ELEMENTS

I Don’t Need No Man

• One of the tertiary characters is secretly in charge of her organization and uses her husband as a front. Fine, obviously, women can be capable bosses. What’s woke about this is that the filmmakers actively make her subterfuge about misogyny.
  • She dismissively tells her husband, “Sanje, make a drink for our guest, please.” It’s done in such a way that were the roles reversed, feminists would be crying foul.
  • In the very next scene, she tells Washington’s character, “A masculine front in a man’s world has its uses.”

How Dare You

• It’s one line that is saved for the end of the film, but the entire movie exists because ***SPOILER ALERT*** Global Warming ruined the future. ***END SPOILER***

The post Tenet first appeared on Worth it or Woke.