Author: tiki god

The Visitor: Directed by Giulio Paradisi. With Mel Ferrer, Glenn Ford, Lance Henriksen, John Huston. The soul of a young girl with telekinetic powers becomes the prize in a fight between forces of good and evil. I started this one becuase I was drawn in by the amazing artwork on the Kanopy page for it: www.kanopy.com/en/video/11413791 but alas, that artwork did not live up to what I was hoping for. Even the art on the wikipedia page is pretty cool: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Visitor_(1979_film) The movie is nominally about a war between cosmic powers for the fate of humanity, but that story gets...

Marriage Story: Directed by Noah Baumbach. With Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Julia Greer, Azhy Robertson. Noah Baumbach’s incisive and compassionate look at a marriage breaking up and a family staying together. It’s hard to see this movie as anything other than a direct attack on ethics, and while I love her as an actress, the character that Scarlett Johansson plays here is an absolutely abhorrent villain that drags her kid through the mud and breaks nearly every promise or agreement that she made with her husband. I can’t believe this was the intent, but every opportunity for her to act...

Last Night in Soho: Directed by Edgar Wright. With Thomasin McKenzie, Aimee Cassettari, Rita Tushingham, Colin Mace. An aspiring fashion designer is mysteriously able to enter the 1960s where she encounters a dazzling wannabe singer. But the glamour is not all it appears to be and the dreams of the past start to crack and splinter into something darker. From all the trailers and marketing that I had vaguely seen out of the corners of my eyes, I had the impression this was going to be a fabulous story of the 60’s with dancing and singing. We did get that...

Hook: Directed by Steven Spielberg. With Dustin Hoffman, Robin Williams, Julia Roberts, Bob Hoskins. When Captain James Hook kidnaps his children, an adult Peter Pan must return to Neverland and reclaim his youthful spirit in order to challenge his old enemy. At long last, my Robin Williams journey has brought me to one of my favorites of his career. Even though the directory doesn’t hold a special place for it in his heart, I’ll always be grateful for the massive display of talent and effort that’s exhibited in every scene of “Hook”. Buy On Amazon!

Samaritan: Directed by Julius Avery. With Sylvester Stallone, Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton, Pilou Asbæk, Dascha Polanco. A young boy learns that a superhero who was thought to have gone missing after an epic battle twenty years ago may in fact still be around. Initially written as a movie, then released as a comic, then adapted for the big screen, then bought and distributed by Amazon, the journey for the film was long and difficult, but now it’s ready for you to consume at your leisure on your device of choice! The movie itself is pretty ok, with many elements of a...

The Fisher King: Directed by Terry Gilliam. With Jeff Bridges, Adam Bryant, Paul Lombardi, David Hyde Pierce. A former radio DJ, suicidally despondent because of a terrible mistake he made, finds redemption in helping a deranged homeless man who was an unwitting victim of that mistake. If you want to know what 90’s film making was like, this movie is a great look into the transition from the nitty gritty 80’s style to the slightly less gritty but still grungy around the cuffs 90’s films. This is by no means one of Robin’s better films, nor is it Jeff Bridges’....

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...