thanksgiving

Thanksgiving – Shea\’s Review

Reviews /

In 1978 John Carpenter gave us Halloween which has become synonymous with the season, from the iconic look of Michael Myers to the amazing soundtrack. Now we have Thanksgiving, which is Eli Roth\’s attempt at creating the defining slasher horror movie of the (American) Thanksgiving season. Taking place in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the movie begins on Black Friday 2022 outside of a RightMart. Eventually the crowd is whipped into a frenzy and storms the store causing multiple fatalities. A year later, people involved in the incident are the targets of a killer wearing a John Carver mask and a traditional pilgrim outfit. The film stars Patrick Dempsey, Addison Rae, Milo Manheim, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Nell Verlaque, Rick Hoffman, and Gina Gershon. Despite being a new film in 2023, the inception of Thanksgiving actually dates back to 2007\’s Grindhouse which was written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. It\’s actually a double feature made up of Tarantino\’s Death Proof and Rodriguez\’s Planet Terror. In Grindhouse a fake trailer (also directed by Roth) is shown for \”Thanksgiving\”. There are definite references from the trailer in the movie, but tonally they are very different so just be aware of that if you check it out before you see this movie. Now, sixteen years later, we have the full feature film! Is it destined to become part of the Thanksgiving tradition or is it as forgettable as the casserole that your aunt always brings to Thanksgiving dinner? Let\’s get into it! My Thoughts I\’ve probably watched more horror movies in my life than any other genre and I was really worried that I had hit a wall with horror movies. This year saw the releases of The Evil Dead Rise and Talk To Me. Both received positive critical responses, but I really didn\’t care for either one. I went into Thanksgiving hopeful, but I couldn\’t shake this worry that maybe horror movies were just not working for me like they used to.Thankfully (pun intended) Thanksgiving was an absolute blast! The trailer shown in Grindhouse has a bit more of a sinister tone than the actual movie does, so if you felt put off by the fake trailer, don\’t worry! Eli Roth loves the genre and that definitely shows in this movie. Many of the kills are over the top and they\’re definitely graphic without being too mean spirited. There is a decent sized cast in this one, as is typical in these kinds of movies, and while everyone does a fine job nobody really stands out as a scene stealer. You won\’t really remember anyone\’s name after the credits roll, but you don\’t really need to. Typically in horror movies they will try to give you some backstory or exposition about certain characters to try and get some emotional investment going, but it often feels cheap and unearned. They give you a little bit of this in Thanksgiving with the main character, but the good news is that it doesn\’t really impact your viewing experience. You don\’t need to care about the characters for this movie to work. I mean this is a movie where the tagline is \”There will be no leftovers.\” so you clearly aren\’t meant to take it too seriously. What really shines here is the tone this movie takes. It delivers all the classic slasher staples while giving you a steady stream of laughs throughout. The laughs are genuine and earned and the quippy jokes and dialogue that seem to plague movies these days aren\’t used here thankfully. It doesn\’t rely on jump scares either which is becoming increasingly important to me as I watch more and more horror movies. Also, I want to make special mention of the inclusion of Tim Dillon in the cast as Manny the security guard. Tim is one of my favourite comedians and it was really fun to see him in this movie. I hope we see him in a lot more projects in the future! There is also a component of mystery to this movie about who exactly the killer is which is done well enough as the movie gives you many people to consider as possibilities. As is the case with the rest of the movie, this particular aspect isn\’t breaking new ground but is handled well and offers an interesting twist to keep things going along. Verdict There really isn\’t much more to say about this one! If you\’re a horror fan, be sure to check this one out. It didn\’t get much of a marketing push and deserves more success than it has gotten so far. It might not have the same iconic feel of the original Halloween movie but Thanksgiving is a feast of fun that I am certain I will watch again next Thanksgiving!

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giamatti

The Holdovers – Shea\’s Review

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\”The Holdovers,\” directed by Alexander Payne and starring Paul Giamatti, is a comedy-drama set in New England during the Christmas season of 1970. Giamatti plays an uptight professor at Barton Academy tasked with overseeing a group of students staying on campus during the winter break. The film is praised for its layered characters, humor, and touching moments, providing an experience that manages to be both hilarious and emotionally resonant. The reviewer considers it a potential addition to their regular Christmas movie rotation, balancing themes of family, loss, and depression with comedy.

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anatomy of a fall

Anatomy of a Fall – Shea\’s Review

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\”Anatomy of a Fall\” is a French film directed by Justine Triet. The film, initially presented as a murder mystery, evolves into an exploration of relationships and truth, supported by remarkable performances. It explores the death of a man found by his blind son and his dog, Snoop, and delves into complicated familial relationships, and at times intense emotional scenes. Despite its murder mystery premise, the film\’s true strength lies in its depiction of the messy nature of real life relationships.

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killersoftheflowermoon

Killers of the Flower Moon – Shea\’s Review

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Before I get into the review itself, I want to do what I can to make sure you\’re prepared for this movie. I\’ve been excited for Killers of the Flower Moon for a long time now. Scorsese is a true master of the medium and has been for fifty (yes that is FIVE-ZERO) years now. Couple those skills with having Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio as your two most frequent collaborators and you\’ve got a recipe for some fine damn motion pictures. Fairly early on in this movie though my excitement was hit by a Mack truck of emotions. This movie is bleak and the story is heartbreaking. This is a far cry from something like Wolf of Wall Street tonally, so just make sure you\’re prepared for what you\’re in for. My Thoughts I think it\’s good to go into this movie with as little information as possible so I will be very light on the setup. This is based on a true story that took place in Oklahoma in the 1920s and is about a series of murders of the Osage people, a Midwestern American tribe of the Great Plains. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Ernest Burkhart, Robert De Niro as William King Hale who is Ernest\’s uncle, and Lily Gladstone as Mollie an Osage Native American. There\’s also an impressive supporting cast as well but to avoid spoilers I will leave them out of this review. It\’s impossible to talk much about the performances in the movie without giving too much detail away here, but it should surprise absolute nobody that DiCaprio is fantastic as Ernest. He\’s our main character in the movie and much of the events are told from his perspective. However, I was most impressed with Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro in this one. Even though DiCaprio is the lead, Gladstone carries the heavy emotions of this movie on her back for nearly the whole film. Her character is quite reserved throughout the movie and her performance is understated most of the time. I heard Scorsese mention how much she can convey with just her eyes and he managed to capture that aspect of her performance beautifully. Overall, it\’s a heartbreaking performance that was solely responsible for snapping me back to attention from my giddy excitement of a new Scorsese picture. I can\’t heap enough praise on her and I expect some buzz for her come awards season. De Niro is interesting because I think there is a whole generation of people around my age that may not know just how good De Niro actually is. For most of my life De Niro has been in a lot of movies with some highs and lows and everything in between. For people older than me, you might be more familiar with his work in Goodfellas, Mean Streets, Casino, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The King of Comedy to just name the masterful performances he\’s given in other Scorsese pictures. If you\’re my age though, you may remember him from much worse movies like Little Fockers and Dirty Grandpa. If you either forgot or didn\’t know how good Robert De Niro is, you\’ll see exactly what he is capable of in this movie. At 80 years old De Niro still manages to just disappear into this role and deliver an unsettling portray of William Hale. The way that he so effortlessly switches between the supportive and caring face of this character to someone so cold and calculated truly induced genuine awe in me. I want to briefly pivot though from these performances to talk about the importance of the story that unfolds here. I consider myself something of a history buff and I\’m an avid consumer of true crime stories (another thing gifted to me by my Gram) and it\’s concerning how little I knew about this story. It was to my benefit as the events of the movie unfolded, but that benefit pales in comparison to the cost of this story not being more widely known. It really is heartbreaking and horrific and I felt Scorsese in this film do the best he could to handle the material and do justice to the Osage people. Even if you don\’t watch many movies, I think this should be considered mandatory viewing just to know what travesties occurred here. The fact this is made by some of the most talented people on the planet is honestly just an added bonus. I also briefly want to talk about the runtime. I\’m personally not a fan of this discourse because to me a bad movie is a bad movie and a good movie is a good movie. I\’ve watched garbage movies that only clocked in at ninety minutes and I\’ve watched perfect movies that were over four hours long. Just a few weekends ago I did a marathon of the extended versions of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy with my friends Abby and Sam which took us over twelve hours to complete and I could\’ve stayed in Middle Earth longer if Peter Jackson had made more movie for me to watch. Listen, the point is that runtime doesn\’t determine the quality of a movie. There is a lot packed into this movie but one thing in particular that adds so much weight to this story is just how much time passes from the first of these suspicious deaths before anyone does anything meaningful to figure out just what the hell is actually going on. When someone finally starts seriously investigating these crimes, it hits you how much has happened and how much time has passed while these crimes went on completely uninvestigated. Finally, one last thing I want to discuss is the way that Scorse shows violence in his films. There were similarities to the violence in this and the violence in Scorsese\’s last film The Irishman. Now this could be just me, but what I felt during these moments is just how easy

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Flora and Son – Shea\’s Review

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You most likely haven\’t heard of Flora and Son and if you\’re reading this review, unfortunately it seems that the movie is no longer available in theaters. That\’s not an indication of the quality of this one though. Heck, I love John Carney movies and by the time I realized it was out in theaters, I had already missed my chance to see it. Fret not though! The movie is available on Apple TV+ if you read this review and want to check it out! If you\’re unfamiliar with writer/director John Carney\’s previous work, he makes some pretty awesome movies that largely revolve around people and music. They\’re not musicals by definition, but they follow people that are musicians or at least aspiring musicians and the things going on in their life. His most well known movie is probably Begin Again which star Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo. The movie also features Adam Levine from Maroon 5, Hailee Steinfeld, Catherine Keener, CeeLo Green, and James Corden. My favorite movie that Carney has made so far though was definitely Sing Street which follows a kid who lives in Dublin in 1985 and starts a band to impress a girl. The music is absolutely fantastic and is a classic feel good movie that\’s also a coming of age movie. Definitely check that one out if you haven\’t already (and his other film Once for that matter)! ANYWAY, suffice it to say I love John Carney and his movies and I was very excited to watch this one. For this viewing experience, because we missed it at theaters, Adriana joined my brother and I for \”Taco Tuesday\” and a John Carney double feature! I\’ve come to learn that \”Taco Tuesday\” at the Angus household is a quintessential \”white people taco night\” experience, but I have no intention of changing it up…for now. We watched Flora and Son after Sing Street and here are my thoughts! First, this one is a return to the modern day Ireland and follows Flora and her son Max. They have a difficult relationship but find some common ground through music. Flora is played by Eve Hewson (did you know she is Bono\’s daughter?!) who does an excellent job with all aspects of her performance. She\’s a believable character that you can easily find yourself invested in. Flora ultimately starts taking online guitar lessons taught by Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who lives in LA. The dynamic between these two carries the movie and was definitely the part that I found myself most invested in. Also, from a music perspective, these two also took the crown in the film for me. Unfortunately, I didn\’t feel as positive about her son Max (Orén Kinlan). It wasn\’t so much the performance that bothered me as much as the writing in this case. The movie does little to make Max a character you either like or understand. An \”angsty teen\” that is dialed up to be a little extra irritating and a compulsive and unsuccessful thief, Max bounces back and forth between his mom and his dad Ian (Jack Reynor) who had him at a young age. This sets up one of the big themes of the movie too, about the paths we take in life and what could have been for both Flora and Ian. The dynamic between these two is interesting and has a few fun moments throughout the movie. Going back to Max though, another aspect that didn\’t work for me was Max\’s musical pursuits and style. He\’s a white Irish boy who likes to rap, wear hats, and puffy winter coats even though it\’s not winter weather. I just couldn\’t take that seriously, and this quite possibly could just be me, so I encourage you to remain open to it. However, the \”cool\” kid in the neighborhood is also a white Irish rapper with a similar style and something about the Irish accent just makes me giggle when I hear them rap. As music comes increasingly important to Flora and Max throughout the movie, the time spent with Max strained me a bit and took away from what I was more interested in which was Flora and Jeff. By the end, I was left feeling like I could have spent more time with these characters though to see what happens next and close some threads that I felt were left hanging. Verdict Overall though, I did enjoy this movie enough to give it some love! At just 97 minutes long, nothing that I disliked lingers long enough to bore me or take me completely out of the movie. Check this one out for Eve Hewson and the grounded family story. I don\’t think you\’ll regret it!

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bottoms

Bottoms – Adriana\’s Review

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When I was a teenager, a movie like Bottoms wouldn\’t have existed. I was 12 years old when Superbad (2007) came out, and I remember sneaking in to see it in theatres with one of my best friends. I’ve seen Superbad more times than I can count, and it still feels like one of the genre-defining high school comedies of my generation. But to see a raunchy, R-rated high school comedy centred around two queer girls would have been unthinkable to 12-year-old me.   Bottoms follows the aforementioned queer girls as they try to hook up with their popular cheerleader crushes by starting an after-school fight club. Lesbian protagonists aside, the movie feels in many ways like a 2000s-era comedy—right down to the blooper reel in the end credits. I don’t mean that as an insult, though. The movie is as much indebted to 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) as it is to Fight Club (1999), and it’s made for the kind of people who think both are masterpieces in their own ways. In other words, me. I am absolutely the target audience for this movie, so, of course, I loved it. Everything from nods to Fincher and cult classics like But I’m A Cheerleader (1999) to the music, with a soundtrack by Charli XCX, feel purposeful and eclectic. Yet, the movie never feels stale or derivative. That’s largely thanks to writer/director Emma Seligman and a fantastic cast, led by Rachel Sennott (who co-wrote the film with Seligman) and Ayo Edebiri, both of whom are oozing with talent and destined to be absolute stars. High school comedies like this, and comedies more broadly, feel like they’ve become fewer and farther between in the age of big-budget superhero blockbusters. The only recent analog that comes to mind is 2019’s Booksmart, which is a great movie in its own right. But Bottoms is weirder, wilder, and gayer. Its humour is silly and specific, and the movie deftly moves between balls-to-the-wall absurdism and over-the-top violence to more grounded moments of friendship and tender adolescent romance. That it strikes that balance and still manages to be very funny is an impressive feat. The movie is full of jokes that stem not just from the excellent script, but also down to the way actors deliver lines or facial expressions to blink-and-you\’ll-miss-it production design details in the background to certain needle drops. At the time of writing, Bottoms has made just under $12 million USD at the box office. That doesn’t sound like much, especially on the heels of Barbie, which has been breaking box office records left and right and has crossed well over the $1 billion mark. But it’s a success story nonetheless. Bottoms debuted on just ten screens, but managed to earn the highest per-theatre average on a ten or more screen opening since Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022). The movie never even got an international release. I feel lucky to have even been able to catch it on the big screen (twice). Verdict In the age of big-budget blockbusters, a relatively small-scale high school sex comedy centred on two “ugly, untalented gays” feels like a breath of fresh air. We need more stories that come from specific voices and unique perspectives, even ones that are silly or violent or over-the-top. I think one of the reasons I loved this movie so much is that it feels like the kind of movie that my friends and I would have made, with the sole goal of trying to make each other laugh. It’s the kind of movie I would have snuck in to see as a kid, had it existed back then—the kind of movie I would watch over and over again. In fact, I probably will.

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The Creator – Shea\’s Review

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This weekend I did a double feature at the nearby Cineplex. We started off with The Exorcist: Believer, which you can read my thoughts on here. Next up though was Gareth Edwards latest film The Creator. If you\’re not immediately familiar with the name, Edwards has directed the 2014 Godzilla movie and 2016\’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. The Creator was also an original movie, not based on some previous IP and got a decent budget of around $100 million which is increasingly rare for original movies. I\’ve enjoyed much of his previous work though and I\’m always excited to see some original ideas come out of Hollywood, so I was fairly excited for this one! To provide you with the basic setup of this movie, humans create an AI that they also use to create sentient robots and \”simulants\” which are robots with human faces. The opening scene of the movie sets up the larger conflict where the AI apparently went rogue and detonated a nuclear missile in Los Angeles. This causes the western world to outlaw AI, but in \”New Asia\” they embrace this AI and choose to live alongside them. The US declares war on AI and thus we have our main conflict of the movie. With that setup out of the way now, I\’m a bit disappointed to report that I thought this movie was only okay. Before I get into what I didn\’t like though, I want to start with some positive thoughts. First, the performances were great. John David Washington stars as Joshua Taylor, a military sergeant and undercover operative for the US Army. I first remember seeing Washington in BlacKkKlansman and I thought he was fantastic but then I saw him in Tenet and I was less enthusiastic about that performance. Luckily though, he gets a little bit more to do in this movie with some more emotional beats and even a sprinkle of some comedic moments to mix it in. The real standout though in the cast for me was the nine year old Madeleine Yuna Voyles who played Alphie. Child acting has often felt like a bit of a coin toss, but luckily Voyles absoutely nails this role. Alphie\’s role in the story is an important one with some good emotional beats that will absolutely pull at your heartstrings if only because of the great perfomance by Voyles. Another brightspot of this movie is the craft on display. First, they filmed this movie using a camera that costs around $5000 that you can get on Amazon which is a cool little note and something you don\’t often see for $100 million dollar movies. The on location sets also payoff here giving a more realistic feel to this scifi world. The VFX also look fantastic, particularly the simulants. Typically movies where you have these humanoid androids they appear just completely as humans. In this movie though, the heads are still clearly robotic but have human faces and it blends seemlessly throughout the entire movie. This wasn\’t a guarantee as VFX work in movies and TV have taken a bit of a hit in quality in recent years due to overwhelming demand, crunch, limited resources, and underwhelming pay for VFX artists. Unfortunately, my biggest issues with this movie lies in the themes and story. I explained at the start of this review how this was an original movie not based in an existing IP and while that is true, this movie in terms of themes and plot sorely lacked in originality. For example, the movie has this Vietnam War vibe of gureilla fighters up against the might and technologically advanced enemy, but it does very little to explore the finer details of that. The whole human vs android and what it means to be human concept is sort of in this as well. I say \”sort of\” because this movie does shockingly little with these concepts that are admittedly a little overdone in the year 2023. Washington\’s character does grapple with the theme of whether or not these AI are \”human\” but they strip the moral complexity out of this issue for his character. Overall, there is not much new here and for the themes that they recycle, they don\’t take a particularly deep or interesting direction with any of them. As a result I left this movie feeling a little underwhelmed. I wanted to like this more than I did but it felt more like a surface level studio movie without a name people would recognize to sell it. Verdict Overall, I still want to give this movie a positive review because there is enough here to justify a watch but also because this is the kind of direction that I hope we can return to soon. I\’m tired of studios only financing movies that are based on existing IP or as part of a big franchise and relegating everything else to super limited theatrical runs or streaming. Edwards and the team clearly have a passion for the craft that is on full display in this movie and the cast take advantage of everything they are given to ensure you enjoy the ride as you watch. I only wish that this movie engaged more deeply with the themes it flirts with and drew from our emerging real world experience with AI to explore that. If you go check out The Creator let me know what you think and please share your thoughts about my review as well! Thanks for reading and being part of my Screen Love Affair!

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exorcist

The Exorcist: Believer – Shea\’s Review

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Well, if I ever believed in The Exorcist as a franchise then consider this me officially having a crisis of faith. Of course, I never had any faith in The Exorcist to carry a franchise. I didn\’t even know there was official sequels until I started reading and watching reviews for this movie. Let\’s not jump too far ahead though. Normally I\’m very cynical about legacy sequels, especially of the kind we\’ve gotten lately. I was also skeptical of David Gordon Green after the last two Halloween movies that he made. Fortunately though for this movie, my Gram absolutely LOVED the exorcist. She always told me it was her favorite movie. When I told her that a sequel was coming up, she had the same skepticism that I did, but was insistent that we would go and give it a try whenever it came out. I have to credit my Gram with my love of horror movies. When I would go and stay with her and my Papa, I would go back and forth between them. Usually Papa would be watching the Leafs game in the living room and Gram was in the bedroom watching horror movies. On one such visit (when I was probably far too young to watch these kinds of movies) Gram was at home recovering from surgery she had related to her breast cancer. She just so happened to be watching Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood at the time and I stayed and watched it with her. From that day on, our unique bond was sealed. As I got older we watched countless horror movies together at home and at the theater. She would even join my friends and I in high school to see the latest horror offerings. For those familiar with the genre, you know there is everything from bad language, to gore, to nudity. None of it was enough to phase us. I don\’t know how many of you have seen lots of boobs with your grandmother but I\’m certain I am up there for most all time. I\’m not sure I\’m particularly proud of that fact, but it was uniquely us and I certainly was happy to brag to all my friends about how cool my Gram was for wanting to join us for all of these movies. Unfortunately, my Gram passed away just over a year ago now. A promise is a promise though, so today I went to see The Exorcist: Believer with my brother Ty, our friend Sam, and we bought an extra ticket right beside us for Gram. So what did I think? Well I think Gram and I would have had on heck of a fun conversation about this one on the ride home. Unfortunately, it wouldn\’t have been a conversation full of positive things to say about the movie. I really did want to enjoy this one and I hoped with all that I had that this movie would be able to be more than just a cheap use of what amounted to very expensive rights that Universal Studios reportedly paid for The Exorcist IP. Already though, the studios have two more sequels in the works despite the lackluster critical and financial success of The Exorcist: Believer. So what exactly went wrong? Well the biggest issue for me was just how generic this movie was. You could\’ve slapped any of the numerous horror IPs to this movie and it would\’ve felt the same. It was a generic story that lacked the originality of what has come before but also didn\’t go further than what came before it. My Gram would tell me stories about how shocking her experience was when she first watched The Exorcist back in the day. Unfortunately, this sequel wasn\’t even true to the spirit of the first one as it felt very tame and had much less shocking and horrifying moments than most horror fare these days. Beyond that, the performances were pretty bland, but I don\’t really blame the cast. Some of them I have seen shine in other roles, but I think the writing and the movie itself didn\’t offer up much for them to do anything with. This might sound lame, but one of the many reasons the first Exorcist movie resonated then and has remained so prominent still is that it pushed the envelope and dared to be different. What I would\’ve done for this movie to be a new daring piece that split people along lines about how far the movie went instead of both audiences and critics all in agreement about the mediocrity of what we received. Verdict If it isn\’t clear from what you\’ve read so far, I definitely can\’t recommend this one. Even if you\’re curious, don\’t waste your time and money because they don\’t deserve it. Some early reports have emerged that apparently some serious changes are being looked at for this franchise. I only hope they can learn some good lessons from this failure and put this IP in the hands of some hungry filmmakers that want to use this opportunity to leave their mark. Are there any other horror movies you\’re going to watch this Halloween season? Let me know what ones are on your watch list and please share your thoughts about my review as well! Thanks for reading and being part of my Screen Love Affair!

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dumb money

Dumb Money – Shea\’s Review

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It\’s weird to see movies pop up about what I still consider to be fairly recent events, especially of ones that happened during the pandemic, but Dumb Money has been on my radar for a while now. For anyone that may be unaware, Dumb Money is about the entire Gamestop (GME) saga that occurred in 2020 and 2021. Dumb Money is what people on Wall Street call your average joke that does their own personal investing and this story is about how those average people came together to shake the foundation of Wall Street and fleece the rich for billions of dollars in the process. I won\’t spend time explaining what happened because the movie does a great job of that for you. Rest assured you don\’t need to be an investing whiz to follow and enjoy this movie! I was excited for this movie for a few reasons. First, that I was part of this whole ordeal (though a modest one at that). I was frantically following these events as they occurred and was staring at stock tickers all day on my computer. It was really cool to be an actual part of a moment that had real impacts. Watching how average people were seeing obscene increases in their investments while at the same time costing some of the ultra rich to lose billions for trying to profit off the struggles of another business by shorting (betting against) Gamestop stock. GME went from around $3 per share in November 2020 to as high as $500 at one point. The second reason though was the cast of this movie is stacked with talent. Paul Dano leads the way as Keith Gill or Roaring Kitty who really started this whole movement to begin with. Dano is really good as Gill in this movie and uses the time he\’s allotted to flush out his character and make the audience care about him while showcasing the toll this took on his family life. The cast also includes Seth Rogen, Pete Davidson, Vincent D\’Onofrio, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Anthony Ramos, Sebastian Stan, and Shailene Woodley. However, this is where my first criticism of the movie comes in. This is a large cast for a movie that has to spend a decent amount of time explaining things and showing you what happens to these characters and I felt like beyond Paul Dano, most of the other characters didn\’t really have time to shine or make me invested in their stories. I think a big issue was how similar these characters are from a narrative perspective. Much of the cast are playing other people that invested in GME and all struggle with similar issues. Do we hold? Do we sell? What if we hold too long and miss out? These same questions are what nearly everyone in this movie is dealing with and the only real differences are just their setups. You have two students that have a ton of student loan debt, a single mom who is also a nurse, and a Gamestop employee. By filling this movie with so many people with such similar stories, I felt like I wasn\’t able to really connect in any meaningful way with their characters. I think this would\’ve benefited from maybe focusing more on less characters for sure. If you\’ve seen The Big Short then this movie will definitely feel familiar. Unfortunately, I found this movie lacked the pace and character of The Big Short. Another thing that separated these two movies in the benefit of time passing. The Big Short released seven years after the 2008 financial crisis and so the impacts of that time were more evident and clear. Dumb Money on the other hand sort of feels incomplete in that we really don\’t know the larger and longer term impact of the whole situation. Sure there is some finality to the stories of these characters, but the overall importance of the situation feels unclear because it\’s still so soon afterwards. Verdict Overall, if you\’re curious about the movie, I think it is definitely worth your time. It does a great job capturing the time and events as they unfolded. If you\’ve never heard about the movie or don\’t know anything about the whole situation, this will definitely be a fun way to bring you up to speed. It\’s a good time watching people eating tendies, watching GME go to the moon, and squeezing the rich in the process! Have you had checked out Dumb Money? Let me know what you thought of the movie and please share your thoughts about my review as well! Thanks for reading and being part of my Screen Love Affair!

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Barbie – Shea\’s Review

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Okay so reviewing Barbie in late September when it has been out since almost mid-July is definitely a call, but something also just feels right about this movie being my first review here on Screen Love Affair. I\’ll start out with the obvious face that at first glance you might assume that I\’m not necessarily the target demographic for the Barbie movie. Heck, before the first trailer dropped for it, I didn\’t think that I was going to be going to see Barbie at all. As of September 25th, 2023 I have seen Barbie four times now: twice during a Barbenheimer double feature, once with a friend who hadn\’t yet seen it, and once more in IMAX. So clearly something changed! I was intrigued when Greta Gerwig was set to direct and co-write the movie with her husband Noah Baumbach. I\’m a big fan of both of them, but I was sure that this was going to be just another studio cash grab made for little kids. After all, we\’re deep in the era of \”content\” instead of cinema. I won\’t get into the details of that distinction here, but check out Patrick Willems video on it here if you\’re interested! That all changed with the first teaser, which also is how we open the movie. Starting off with a near shot-for-shot parody of the 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, the movie promises the viewer that this isn\’t just another form of phoned in content made for little kids. From that opening scene, the passion is clear in almost every aspect of this movie. From the beautiful sets of Barbieland, to the amazing performances from the entire cast, and the heartfelt evolution of these characters. What Gerwig and the team accomplished with this movie is remarkable, but that\’s not an original claim for a movie that has shattered box office records and blew past ever increasing expectations as opening weekend approached. What works most for me throughout the movie though was the performances and the satirical tone of the movie. Save for a few moments where some characters say the themes in more direct ways, most of the movie shines as it exaggerates the positive impact of Barbie on the real world, to the way Ken discovers the patriarchy by seeing flashes of Bill Clinton, Hummers, Ronald Regan, horses, and just dudes being bros. On the supporting side, Kate McKinnon, America Ferrera, and especially Michael Cera do great jobs. Cera plays Alan and gets an audible reaction from the audience almost every time he\’s on screen. Speaking of performances though, this brings me to my personal favorite part of the movie which is Ryan Gosling as Ken. Barbie and Ken could\’ve easily been the title of this movie given how much time Gosling gets to shine and boy does he shine brightly. Gosling\’s comedic chops are on full display in this movie and between this and his 2016 film The Nice Guys, if he only did comedies from here on out that would be fine with me. With that said though, Ken is not there just to lighten the tone in the movie. He has his own character arc where Gosling gets the opportunity to flash a few serious moments in between all of the other side splitting lines he delivers. Robbie also shines in this movie as her Stereotypical Barbie character starts to develop some complicated feelings and emotions as she becomes faced with change to the life she\’s enjoyed in Barbieland. From a simple scene at a bus stop, Robbie does so much with so few words to really draw the emotion out of these scenes. Her performance combined with the music from Billie Eilish really tug at your heartstrings at all the right moments. Quick note on the music as well, this is one of the best soundtracks we\’ve had for a movie in a while. Eilish\’s song \”What Was I Made For\” is used brilliantly throughout the movie to enhance those emotional moments, while Lizzo, Dua Lipa, and Charlie XCX, offer up some great tunes for the movie. Don\’t worry, \”Barbie World\” by Nicki Minaj, Ice Spice, and Aqua is in there too! Gosling though also shines in the music department here with two songs, including \”I\’m Just Ken\” and cover which I won\’t spoil here. I fully expect to see Ryan Gosling in my Spotify Top 5 at the end of the year! I want to avoid getting into the whole discussion about whether or not this movie is \”anti-men\” simply because I believe that nobody that honestly watched this movie could ever have that interpretation. Heck, I\’ve even read comments from people who think the movie was too nice to the male characters in the movie. The themes and messages of this movie are more nuanced and universal than even I expected going in. I do think there is a bit more here for the girls, who definitely deserve a movie this good, but there is still something here for nearly everyone to connect with. As far as things I didn\’t like, there really wasn\’t much here. There\’s a couple of moments where I felt the movie get a little more heavy handed about the themes. This is something though that other friends had no problem with, so your mileage may vary. I just felt the movie was doing such a good job throughout of showing those themes and messages in smart ways, so when the movie takes a more direct approach to really spell things out it just sort of feels out of place. Overall though, I really don\’t have much to complain about with this one! Both Barbie and Oppenheimer opened on the same weekend and the Barbenheimer phenomenon captured audiences hearts and minds. At the time of writing, Barbenheimer has grossed almost $2.5 billion dollars ($1.5 billion for Barbie & $925 million for Oppenheimer). For nearly two weeks when Barbie opened, theaters were jampacked and full of pink. Theaters

Barbie – Shea\’s Review Read More »