Author: tiki god

Running with the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee: Directed by Charlie Russell. With Dean Barrow, Rocco Castoro, Neil Cavuto, Janice Dyson. Life and death of software pioneer John McAfee who developed the software: McAfee Antivirus. I only tangentially knew about John McAfee and what he was up to in the later parts of his life, but this 1hr 45min movie gave a peak behind the curtain and there’s not much to like about what he was up to, from the supposed ties to governmental hacking and cartels to the over use of drugs that eventually lead to his...

Dave Made a Maze: Directed by Bill Watterson. With Meera Rohit Kumbhani, Nick Thune, Adam Busch, James Urbaniak. Dave, an artist who has yet to complete anything significant in his career, builds a fort in his living room out of pure frustration, only to wind up trapped by the fantastical pitfalls, booby traps, and critters of his own creation. A sweet story of an artist trying to find himself in an unsure world, coupled with some seriously dark underpinnings. The entire movie is a gift to puppetry and carboard art, and per the credits there was an entire team dedicated...

Mary Shelley: Directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour. With Elle Fanning, Bel Powley, Owen Richards, Joanne Froggatt. Life and facts of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, who at 16 met 21 year old poet Percy Shelley, resulting in the writing of Frankenstein. This is apparently pretty dang close to a true story of her life from my understanding and if that’s the case she lives an exceptionally liberated life filled with freedom and heartbreak. There’s nearly nothing about her most famous story in the film, at least not on the surface. It’s not until the very end of the film when one of the...

Richard Jewell: Directed by Clint Eastwood. With Paul Walter Hauser, Sam Rockwell, Brandon Stanley, Ryan Boz. Security guard Richard Jewell is an instant hero after foiling a bomb attack at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, but his life becomes a nightmare when the FBI leaks to the media that he is a suspect in the case. I think we’ve all met people like Richard Jewell, over compensating, overweight, overstimulated people with exceptionally high aspirations but lacking the abilities and authority to accomplish much of what they see for themselves. Despite the air of being an imposter in nearly every scene, Jewell...

Red Rocket: Directed by Sean Baker. With Simon Rex, Bree Elrod, Brenda Deiss, Sophie. Mikey Saber is a washed-up porn star who returns to his small Texas hometown, not that anyone really wants him back. Directed by Sean Baker, best known by me for doing The Florida Project, “Red Rocket” has many of the same things that made TFP so captivating, from the shooting style to the dialogue, I really got the feeling that I was a fly on the wall during most of the scenes. The main character “Mike Saber” is a blown out ex-porn star that feels he...

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story: Directed by Gareth Edwards. With Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Alan Tudyk, Donnie Yen. In a time of conflict, a group of unlikely heroes band together on a mission to steal the plans to the Death Star, the Empire’s ultimate weapon of destruction. Back in IMAX for a weekend engagement to promo the next Star Trek series to show on Disney+, this is still the strongest Star Wars film that Disney’s released since they spent a couple Bs to purchase the entire franchise. The next best one is Solo, which is terrible to say when...

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn: Directed by Radu Jude. With Katia Pascariu, Claudia Ieremia, Nicodim Ungureanu, Olimpia Malai. Emi, a school teacher, finds her career and reputation under threat after a personal sex tape is leaked on the Internet. Forced to meet the parents demanding her dismissal, Emi refuses to surrender to their pressure. As a subtitled film, this fell to the bottom of my watch list, and as a film with no US distribution, finding a copy of it to watch wasn’t a fun endeavor, but if you do get the opportunity, try to give this one a...

Minions: The Rise of Gru: Directed by Kyle Balda, Brad Ableson, Jonathan del Val. With Steve Carell, Pierre Coffin, Alan Arkin, Taraji P. Henson. The untold story of one twelve-year-old’s dream to become the world’s greatest supervillain. Have you seen other Minion films? Did you like them? You’ll have the same opinion of this one if you have opinions on the others, as there’s nothing ground breaking here. It’s the same goofy minions doing the same goofy stuff, but this time they’re with a young Gru and they’re trying to take a different McGuffin than the other films, but it’s...

Being Human: Directed by Bill Forsyth. With Robin Williams, Kelly Hunter, Maudie Johnson, Max Johnson. One man must learn the meaning of courage across four lifetimes centuries apart. Four different stories, all told in different ways, all in vastly different time periods, and all of them staring Robin Williams as the main character. It’s an ambitious movie and sticks it’s landing in my humble opinion, it wasn’t received very well by either the public nor critics, with a 54% on RT. There’s never an explicit mention within the film that this is the same “soul” or person that’s living through...