Movie Review ~ Christmas Bloody Christmas

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The Facts:

Synopsis: It’s Christmas Eve and Tori just wants to get drunk and party, but when a robotic Santa Clause at a nearby toy store goes haywire and begins a rampant killing spree through her small town, she’s forced into a battle for survival.
Stars: Riley Dandy, Sam Delich, Jonah Ray Rodrigues, Dora Madison, Jeremy Gardner, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Abraham Benrubi
Director: Joe Begos
Rated: NR
Running Length: 81 minutes
TMMM Score: (2/10)
Review:  This may get me an extra lump of coal in my stocking, but I’ve come to enjoy a more subversive Christmas movie morsel to counteract the saccharine sweetness that can feel overwhelming right around Thanksgiving. Don’t get it peppermint-twisted; I’m one of the first people to scan Hallmark’s Countdown to Christmas list once it is released and will note any film starring Lacey Chabert or plots involving amnesiac grumpy corporate executives getting a dose of their figgy pudding. Still, it’s more than a bit of fun to see what creative filmmakers can do with a satanic Santa on the loose or elves running amok causing mayhem.

I had high hopes for Christmas Bloody Christmas because the general plot summary seemed like such a slam dunk. It’s one of those loglines that gets scribbled down on a paper napkin at a bar late one night and feels like a good idea at the time, but once it comes time to write the thing and make it, well… that’s where the problems start. Unfortunately, Christmas Bloody Christmas is a fruitcake of a meal, sticky and filled with indigestible bits that don’t go down well.    

Director Joe Begos has gained a sizable cult following with his previous two films, Bliss and VFW but can’t capture the same goofy horror charms here, despite a winning performance from Riley Dandy. Dandy plays Tori, a record store owner unexpectedly fighting off a robotic Santa Claus (Abraham Benrubi, Strange World) that’s gone haywire in her small town, viciously murdering anyone that gets in his way. For what seems like an eternity, Begos follows Tori all over the tiny hamlet evading ‘ole St. Nick in what amounts to an extended version of the finale from The Terminator. 

That may sound like a welcome wild ride, but the low-budget thrills and exceptionally crude dialogue take Christmas Bloody Christmas down the crummy chimney with zero care for any sophisticated skill. It squanders any leg up it gets on similar shoddy Christmas fare with more gross shenanigans or foul-mouthed back-and-forth between characters. A movie so short should not drag on so long. By the end, I wished for them to dash away all.

Movie Review ~ The Apology

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Twenty years after the disappearance of her daughter, recovering alcoholic Darlene Hagen is preparing to host her family’s Christmas celebration when her estranged ex-brother-in-law arrives unannounced, bearing nostalgic gifts and a heavy secret.
Stars: Anna Gunn, Linus Roache, Janeane Garofalo
Director: Alison Star Locke
Rated: NR
Running Length: 91 minutes
TMMM Score: (2/10)
Review:  For me, the biggest test of a mystery or high-tension thriller is how well it holds up once it starts to reveal its secrets.  If it’s a corker, it can keep going on the built-up strength of the steel trap it set for its audience, refusing to let go.  The weaker ones only show they were merely treading water from the beginning and quickly find they can’t keep their head above the waves they created, eventually drowning under the weight of a back half they can’t support.    

Written and directed by Alison Star Locke, The Apology might be one of the most disappointing thrillers I’ve seen lately, primarily because there is so much promise in the premise.  Here we have an isolated home on a snowy night before Christmas when evil tidings from the past come to haunt a woman (Anna Gunn, Sully) continuing to grieve her daughter’s disappearance two decades before.  Her long-absent brother-in-law (Linus Roache, Non-Stop) unexpectedly turns up bearing wrapped gifts and offering a present for her, a present involving information she’s been waiting years to receive.

I’ll let you guess what he might have to share, but I bet you can discern that it sets into motion a battle of wills between the two that occupies much of the 91-minute run time.  Unfortunately, while Locke was lucky to nab the underappreciated Gunn for the lead, she’s paired her with the less intriguing Roache for an overly talky two-hander that goes nowhere fast.  Despite having a best friend played by an oddly muted Janeane Garofalo (The God Committee), a hop, skip, and a jump away, most of The Apology is just Gunn and Roache trading power positions.  And it’s sadly weak.

Letting the cat out of the bag so early damages what little goodwill The Apology had going for it.  Despite the ideal locale and major potential for something special, this is a present you’ll want to re-wrap and pass along to someone else.

Movie Review ~ Hunt (2022)

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The Facts:

Synopsis: After a high-ranking North Korean official requests asylum, KCIA Foreign Unit chief Park Pyong-ho and Domestic Unit chief Kim Jung-do are tasked with uncovering a North Korean spy deeply embedded within their agency. When the spy begins leaking top secret intel that could jeopardize national security, the two units are each assigned to investigate each other.
Stars: Lee Jung Jae, Jeon Hye Jin, Heo Sung Tae, Go Youn Jung, Kim Jong Soo, Jung Man Sik, Jung Woo-Sung
Director: Lee Jung Jae
Rated: R
Running Length: 131 minutes
TMMM Score: (3/10)
Review:  Hunt is a complex spy thriller that runs over two hours but took me almost twice as long to finish. Why? I had to go back and watch long stretches of it more than once because the screenplay by director/star Lee Jung-Jae is a tricky knot to unravel. Usually, this would be a ball of string I would happily follow up with and stick with until I’d untangled it. However, at a certain point in Hunt, I realized it was making no effort to engage with the viewer. That’s when it all felt like a pointless exercise in running behind a locomotive that sold me a ticket but never intended to let me ride.

A long-gestating project for Lee, it’s the age-old tale of two men competing to ferret out a mole within their institution. Of course, they both suspect the other, and we spend much of the film flip-flopping our allegiance between them. If Hunt were simply this story, it might have been seen as another standard entry into the espionage genre…but it would have maintained a biting crackle that gets snuffed out the moment historical Korean politics gets layered in. 

For American audiences unfamiliar with the history of the military dictatorship that existed in Korea during the 1980s, Hunt will likely be a frustrating journey through a truncated timeline only partially explained.   This is due to the balancing of the thriller element, and because, after the rough showing the film had in Cannes, the filmmakers returned and re-edited the film to make it easier to understand. The result of that tinkering weakens everything because now the focus is quite prominently on a chronicling of events for our education instead of our entertainment.    

Rising to international acclaim with his role in overnight sensation Squid Game, Lee was already an established star in South Korea, but Hunt serves as his feature film debut for most of the audiences that took to him on the popular Netflix show. Admittedly, I haven’t made my way to that streaming phenomenon, but I have witnessed the acclaim lauded on the actor. While his passion for the material is evident from a filmmaking perspective, his performance is stiff and unconvincing. 

Between Hunt and Decision to Leave, my ordinarily strong feelings toward South Korean cinema took a significant hit in 2022. I appreciate what Lee was going for and recognize compromises were made to bring this movie to U.S. shores, but sometimes you have to let a film stand on its own and allow the viewers to embrace it or not. When you cast the net wide so clumsily, there’s nothing to grab onto.

Movie Review ~ Wildcat

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Back from the war in Afghanistan, a young British soldier struggling with depression and PTSD finds a second chance in the Amazon rainforest when he meets an American scientist, and together they foster an orphaned baby ocelot.
Stars: Harry Turner, Samantha Zwicker
Director: Melissa Lesh and Trevor Beck Frost
Rated: R
Running Length: 105 minutes
TMMM Score: (7/10)
Review:   Far from simply joining an endless list of documentaries charting the long-term effects of PTSD and the ripples it sends through the lives of men and women in the military, Wildcat offers a fascinating way inside the story. It’s still a raw examination of trauma and how war can damage emotions irrevocably. Nevertheless, directors Melissa Lesh and Trevor Beck Frost don’t leave the possibility of hope to die on the battlefield.

Lesh and Frost juggle several relationships that are central to the plot. The first is between graduate student/preservationist Samathna Zwicker and discharged solider Harry Turner. They’ve both come to the Peruvian Amazon to make a difference and what starts for her as a noble effort to give animals impacted by rainforest deforestation and poaching a fighting chance ends with his attachment issues with an ocelot named Keanu they raised from infancy. Of course, it’s about far more than Harry’s ties to the cat; he’s channeled a lot of his anger about being helpless to the horrors of war in Afghanistan into Keanu’s recovery and release. 

As Zwicker feels the pull to continue her studies away from the rainforest, it isolates her boyfriend again, further complicating the matter. This is when the soldier looking for answers, like the wildcat he’s tending to, needs socialization. The eventual downfall of the romance and project is documented with unbiased but unflinching honesty. 

More intriguing than you may think and filled with real-life curveballs only a true story could lob without blinking an eye, Wildcat was expected to make the Oscar shortlist for Best Documentary but didn’t show up when that roster was announced. That’s unfortunate because, for all the standard documentaries about war and the internal wounds it leaves, this film clearly shows the toll in a tangible, relatable way.