Jake Gyllenhaal (Nightcrawler, Stronger) makes every movie he is in better than it would otherwise be, regardless of it it’s a great movie, a terrible movie, or anything in between. Director David Fincher (Se7en, The Social Network) doesn’t make bad films. With Gyllenhaal and Fincher together, along with an ensemble that includes Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man 3, Natural Born Killers), Mark Ruffalo (Foxcatcher, Spotlight), Anthony Edwards (Top Gun, NBC’s ER), Dermot Mulroney (My Best Friend’s Wedding, Young Guns), Brian Cox, (The Ring, HBO’s Succession), and John Carroll Lynch (The Trial of the Chicago 7, Jackie), Zodiac was bound for success. While the film connected on all fronts, it felt like it left something to be desired, though this would undoubtedly be true for anyone familiar with the story.
Category Archives: Mystery
65 (2023)
The first major letdown of 2023 is, without a doubt, the Adam Driver-led (Marriage Story, Paterson) 65. The trailer was amazing. There is much-deserved credit to those video editors for making a movie that felt bland and like it would be so much more. I really wanted to like a movie. Even as the poor critic reviews started coming in (34% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), I remained hopeful. Sadly, that hope was distinguished throughout a poorly-directed movie that tried too hard to build mystique and tension before failing to deliver.
Watcher (2022)
Watcher is a movie that falls into one of two categories. It is either a movie you’ve never heard of, or it’s one you’ve not only heard of but have probably seen. Chloe Okuno’s (V/H/S/94, screenwriter of Bodies Bodies Bodies) revered, suspenseful stalker film already has a cult following among the “this could happen to you” film buffs. It is undoubtedly a film that needs to be watched in the right environment (dark, quiet, isolated) to hit on one of humanity’s most innate fears, the unnerving feeling of being followed. It also needs time to develop. That’s not so much to say that it is a slow burn as much as it is an “it won’t hit on all cylinders” if you aren’t willing to go all-in with it from the opening credits.
The Batman (2022)
After Christopher Nolan’s fabulous trilogy of Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises, I was sure we wouldn’t see The Caped Crusader in a standalone film for a long time. Nolan’s series was pure perfection. Whichever director attempted to bring, arguably, the most storied superhero in comic book history was already behind the eight-ball before a script was even imagined. With its 29% Rotten Tomatoes score, 2016’s Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice was far from what we all hoped it would be. 2017’s Justice League (39%, 68%) didn’t help much. However, However, Zach Snyder’s 2001 director’s cut, while chalking in at over four hours, faired much better (71%, 94%). Matt Reeves’s (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Cloverfield) The Batman is a darker, more mysterious take and is the perfect movie to bring the iconic superhero back to the big screen in his own story.
Smile (2022)
If watching the trailer for first-time feature director Parker Finn’s Smile evokes memories of a particularly disturbing videotape from an, at the time, unknown movie that had the casual horror filmgoing fan cowering their eyes behind their hands for the better part of two hours, it’s because it’s supposed to. I’m referring to, of course, the 2002 classic The Ring, and the comparison I’m making is the phone call the watcher receives after watching the videotape that tells them they have seven days to live. Likewise, the trailer for Smile informs us that when the viewer sees “it” (what “it” is, we are uncertain), they will soon die. While there are both similarities and differences between the two films, what is certain is that The Ring generated $129 million domestically at the box office, which Finn would gladly like to duplicate.