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 could have been 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 dashed throughout a poorly-directed movie that tried too hard to build mystique and tension before failing to deliver.
Category Archives: Adventure
Prey (2022)
For as impressive as Dan Trachtenberg’s (10 Cloverfield Lane) Prey, the origin story of the successful Predator franchise is, it’s a travesty that this movie did not receive a theatrical release. From Forbes.com about the movie’s release to Hulu/Disney+, over a theatrical run.
Since ‘Prey’ was a holdover before Disney bought Fox in 2019, the potential for post-theatrical streaming boosts was contractually limited. Had it been released in theaters, its post-theatrical afterlife would have begun not on Disney+ or Hulu but on HBO Max. However, if Disney wanted the film in theaters badly enough, they likely could have worked out a post-theatrical deal akin to ‘Death on the Nile,‘ which premiered at home after its theatrical run on both Hulu and HBO Max. It didn’t, so theatrical was never in the cards.
Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
Everything Everywhere All At Once has slowly and quietly followed the established A24 template, a studio known for releasing groundbreaking, original, and independent movies. Through initial word of mouth, the co-directed film by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (who also co-wrote), Everything Everywhere All At Once, has become a movie everyone has at least heard of, even if they have not seen it. Other nonconventional A24 films that generated a lot of buzz and earned Best Picture nominations in the last half dozen years include Minari (2020), Lady Bird (2017), and Moonlight (the Best Picture winner of 2016). While I appreciated all three movies, I only enjoyed Moonlight. I know that many will die on the sword for Lady Bird. I was not one of those people. A growing number seem willing to do the same for Everything Everywhere All At Once. Again, I am not one of them. I found the story incredibly uneven, the pace hurried, and the narration unreliable.
Infinite Storm (2022)
I love a good survival film. Before starting a recent movie, the trailer for Małgorzata Szumowska’s (Never Gonna Snow Again) Infinite Storm instantly caught my attention. After watching the first half of the adrenaline-inducing preview, I closed my eyes and plugged my ears for the rest. I had seen enough to know that this was a movie that I wanted to see, and I didn’t want anything more to spoil that future experience. Infinite Storm surprised me. While it didn’t have nearly the extended intensity that the preview suggested, it also didn’t follow a predictable formula that would have left this movie lost in the shuffle compared to other survival movies. While a decent film with heartfelt ambition, Infinite Storm failed to wow and was doomed by a lousy script.
Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)
Perhaps a perfect popcorn flick for moviegoers who can shut off their brains and enjoy a decent action story with pretty good cinematography, Those Who Wish Me Dead fails to capitalize on its potential. Outside of Maleficent, Angelina Jolie (Girl, Interrupted, A Mighty Heart) hasn’t had the best decade in front of the camera. However, her fanbase is still tremendous. Her opportunity to return to the action-adventure drama helped solidify her career (Salt, Wanted, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Mr. and Mrs. Smith). She may have done enough to secure future starring roles with her physically impressive performance as Hannah, a Montana smokejumper. She was the highlight of Taylor Sheridan’s (Sicario, Wind River) movie that otherwise failed to deliver.