On DVD & Blu-Ray: June 18, 2019


“Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them.” And so goes the Bible verse Jeremiah 11:11 from the Old Testament which serves to add incredible weight to the context of Jordan Peele’s sophomore effort and follow-up to his Oscar-winning feature debut, Get Out. Specifically, this passage represents a key mind set for half of the characters in US, but given the countless interpretations each verse of the Bible inspires so does what this verse might mean to our cast of characters. Peele utilizes both a handful of horror movie tropes as well as some admittedly fantastic symbolism to reiterate the influence of this verse on his work time and time again throughout the film seemingly forcing the audience to determine just how much they might mean to take or receive from film, what these images and actions might mean, what they might be saying, what they're trying to say, or if they even intend to say anything at all. In the context of the Bible, this verse refers to God's punishment of the Jews after the fall of Babylon. God was punishing Jeremiah and his fellow Jews for worshiping false idols, but in US, the descending attackers who are also doppelgängers of the characters that make-up our main family seem to be mad at their counterparts for a handful of other reasons. Of course, there is no doubt the argument could be made that in some regard the family under attack in US are false versions of these invading doppelgängers thus the reason the red jumpsuit-laden clones are so intent on doing away with their counterparts, but it can't help but feel as if there should be more to Peele's second film than simply this tit for tat comparison between the verse he quotes and the story he is telling. Moreover, it doesn't just feel as if there should be, but it feels as if there is more at work here than just a metaphor for this kind of darkness that lurks inside us all; this ugliness we all have to come to terms with at some point in order to move on and either choose to better ourselves or succumb to our repressions. Of course, the seemingly numerous analogies and motifs littered throughout US could simply exist to suggest the inspiration of different ideas and considerations in individual viewers while the core of what Peele is doing is executing his love of horror on a much grander if not more stimulating scale. Full review here. Video review here. B

I’m all for animated movies that encourage children to use their imaginations and paint grand metaphors with as much, but let’s be honest: the Jennifer Garner-voiced mom in Wonder Park is totally faking it. If she were sick and receiving cancer treatment wouldn’t her husband be with her more often? Wouldn’t her daughter be allowed to visit her from time to time?

My money is on rehab over hard time, but that’s only because she must have been on something to imagine a monkey who creates amusement park attractions via a magical pen and voices he hears in his head not to mention the plush toys that have transformed into rabid “Chimpanzombies”. Catch my drift? C-





"I gotta go low to get high."

Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers follow-up, The Beach Bum, sees Matthew McConaughey doing the definition of parading around South Florida as he rides the line between a life of vagrancy and that of superfluity that seems to simultaneously be about the repercussions of acting purely out of irresponsibility and shortsightedness while also being an ode to the moment, the feeling, and the existing in of these intangible emotions connected to these brief instances in time. That may be boiling things down to more of a simplistic idea than Korine likely formulated while penning the screenplay, but this is also a movie that reminds us what happens when people have more money than they know what to do with.

The sequences featuring Zac Efron and Martin Lawrence are close to if not automatically instant classic-worthy, but that moment when McConaughey and Efron jam to Creed's "Higher," is a moment I wouldn't mind living in forever so, Korine for the win. B-

It's sad that I'd not heard of these events prior to seeing the film, but upon seeing this movie I don't know that to create art for the sake of entertainment out of such a blunt tragedy was necessarily the right way to go; even if it did make me aware of said events. I realize this is long from being the first time this has happened and will not be the last, but there is something striking about how Hotel Mumbai handles its content and positions its structure in documenting these events.

In November of 2008 an Islamic terrorist organization based in Pakistan, carried out a series of twelve coordinated shooting and bombing attacks lasting four days across Mumbai. At least 174 people died, including 9 attackers, with more than 300 being wounded. The tension and characters first-time feature director Anthony Maras elicits and attaches to these events in his film are certainly compelling, but these stone cold facts are all we really needed to know to feel something. C


"We crave mystery because there is none left."

Director David Robert Mitchell's (It Follows) sophomore effort feels like one of those movies the filmmaker dreamed of making his entire adolescence-since he first laid eyes on a Hitchcock film-but that he also never thought all the way through to the point of execution. In all instances, Under the Silver Lake feels like more of an idea than an actual reality both in the sense of the development of the project and the final cut of the film that actually exists. It's somewhat ironic that a movie about cults, conspiracy theories, and hidden messages is ultimately destined to become a cult classic itself, but this is where we are more than a year after the film first premiered at Cannes.

The film is all over the place in terms of story and starts way too many strands for the audience to keep up with or care about in any profound manner, but the style and ambition is all on the screen; in every frame. It's clear Mitchell seems to not only have an affinity for pop culture or, more specifically, the golden age of Hollywood, but where he goes in the screenplay for Under the Silver Lake makes it all the more evident the director yearns to know what it was like to exist in this period of time; idolizing it to the extent he's created a mythos around it only he can piece together so as to have a piece for himself. Andrew Garfield seems to be doing what he feels the story calls for-as do all the numerous extras in crazy costumes-but while the ambition is evident and the style is admittedly on point, the intent remains unclear. This yearning to create a mystery through our culture, a secret society in the elite, and a theory of how reality exists as constructed through the media and our consumption of entertainment are each thoughts that might credit contemplation were the film to have anything to say about them beyond, "they could exist! This could be real!" C+? I guess?

Run the Race is set against the backdrop of high school football and track where two brothers, in a small Southern town face escalating problems with two different world views, straining - but ultimately strengthening - the bonds of brotherhood.














Crypto stars the likes of Kurt Russell, Alexis Bledel, and Luke Hemsworth, but comes from the director of a 2010 weed comedy starring Adrien Brody that none of you saw and is about a demoted, young Wall Street banker who is drawn into investigating a tangled web of corruption and fraud in Upstate New York. Affecting both his personal life and business career.

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