Little Fish, the limited release and widely underseen 2020 film from Chad Hartigan (The Threesome, Morris From America), was a movie that captivated me so much that I turned it off 30 minutes in while falling asleep late at night, knowing I could not give the film the full justice it needed, and started it from the beginning the next morning. Released straight to streaming during the COVID-19 pandemic, most who have watched this film likely did so through word of mouth or because they are fans of one or both of the two lead characters, each an A-list actor with a large following.
Category Archives: Science Fiction
Godzilla Minus One (2023)
Finally! This is what a Godzilla movie was meant to be! Since 1954, there have been 37 movies with “Godzilla” in the title, with another (Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire) set for a 2024 release. Of the 37, only four are animated. Almost all are Japanese-made. The handful of American-made films, including Godzilla (1998), Godzilla (2014), Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), and Godzilla vs. Kong (2021), are mediocre at best. These films failed to execute in many ways, something Takashi Yamazaki’s (Lupin III: The First, Destiny: The Tale of Kamakura) nearly impeccable Godzilla Minus One does not.
Poor Things (2023)
Give Emma Stone (La La Land, Battle of the Sexes) this year’s Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role. This category will be STACKED with 2023-released, eligible movies. With six weeks left before the nominations, I have seen all the films considered frontrunners. Lily Gladstone (Kill of the Flower Moon) was the thought-to-be shoo-in for most of the year heading into the fall. Gladstone delivers an award-deserving performance. However, I would rather see her considered in the Best Actress in a Supporting Role category, where I think that performance fits better (at the time of this post, it is still being determined which category Gladstone will be submitted for. The others expected to be in consideration for Best Actress in a Leading Role are Greta Lee (Past Lives), Carey Mulligan (Maestro), Margot Robbie (Barbie), and Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall). Each is deserving of a nomination. No one in this group has a chance to beat Stone or Gladstone. Stone is my pick to win.
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 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.
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.