Only God Forgives
Only God Forgives has all the markings of a good Nicolas Winding Refn movie: daring choices, the Tumblr neon aesthetic, Ryan Gosling being sad. It also has what makes certain Refn movies bad: lifeless characters and an almost unbearable level of immorality. Only God Forgives is more divisive than anything, but it’s a good test of your tolerance for Refn’s slow burn brutality.
Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
“Do you think God stays in heaven because he too, lives in fear of what he’s created?” asks Steve Buscemi in Spy Kids 2. I like to believe he was preemptively referring to the movie’s sequel, a computer generated monstrosity that wildly miscalculates what future virtual reality would be capable of. I remember the DVD came with those cardboard 3D glasses with the red and blue lenses, and Netflix just can’t compete with that.
Velvet Buzzsaw
Jake Gyllenhaal is a character actor who tricked Hollywood into believing he’s a leading man. For proof of this, just look at the eccentricity of his best role as a lunatic TV host in Okja. (Fight me, I know I’m right). His high-strung art critic in Velvet Buzzsaw has elements of his rarely-deployed wackiness, but it’s not enough to save the rest of the film—a half-baked art satire that suddenly shifts into a horror movie where people die by a haunted painting. Admittedly, the death scenes are fun for sheer creativity. Also, do you know this movie came out in February? That’s how long this year has been.
Wild Child
In the late ‘00s, Great Britain saw a cinematic trend of teen comedies, often set in a boarding school that Juno Temple attends. Wild Child, the worst among them (but also the best in that sadistic way), stars Emma Roberts as a spoiled Valley girl who gets shipped off to England to learn a lesson in humility and destroying bullies through lacrosse. It’s clichéd in all the right ways and Roberts showcases her talents as the perfect cinematic mean girl.
Why You Can’t Stream Your Favorite Movie Anywhere
And what you can do to change that.
By Paul Schrodt
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
