Nothing is particularly great this week.

Monkey Man

If there was ever a ‘kitchen sink’ movie, it’s Monkey Man, the debut feature of underrated young actor-turned-writer/director/producer Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire, The Green Knight, Lion). While it often feels like fourteen different movies starting and stopping throughout a 113-minute runtime, it’s more or less a hyper-stylized revenge tale. When a former slum kid (Patel), trying to make a living throwing fights in underground boxing matches, encounters a powerful group of criminals that mysteriously wronged him in the past, he takes a shitty kitchen job to get closer to them so he can eventually kill the fuck out of them. That’s about it.

A crucial mistake Monkey Man makes is not letting us know why our protagonist is seeking revenge until nearly three-quarters of the way through. Without knowing what powers this man, who is just named “Kid,” by the way, it is difficult not only to empathize with him but also to understand him. We like him because Dev Patel is playing the character, but when do we not like Dev Patel? The film is too focused on stylization and breakneck pace to slow down and tell us a cohesive story. Inevitably, I have to compare this to similar revenge films. While it’s better than most toothless mainstream bullshit, it isn’t nearly as pulse-pounding as the John Wick or the Indonesian Raid movies. It also doesn’t have a large ensemble of richly detailed characters that your average Quentin Tarantino revenge picture does. It’s somewhere in the middle of this seriously overplayed sub-genre.

Monkey Man is at its best when it’s an action movie; it falters when it’s a drama because of how little we know about the central character. All the fight sequences are fantastic, especially the final one, which involves stabbing a person with your mouth. The film is also backloaded with social commentary that isn’t woven into the fabric of the narrative as much as shoveled on top of it. It’s admirable that Patel is trying to do so much with his first movie. However, he must learn that sometimes less is more. He’s skilled behind the camera, so it will be interesting to see what inevitably better and tighter movies he makes in the future. Grade: B- (In Theaters)

Immaculate

One of the best newer actresses to come onto the scene in the last five years or so is Sydney Sweeney, best known for playing the tragic Cassie Howard on HBO’s Euphoria. Of course, she’s an absolutely gorgeous woman, almost unbelievably so, but she’s also an incredibly gifted actor with a real talent for communicating her character’s complex emotions with only her facial expressions. Unfortunately, a lot of people are so taken by her looks and uhhhh…boobs…to see beyond that, including what seems like the filmmakers of Immaculate.

In this very strange exorcism horror/gothic drama hybrid, Sweeney plays Cecilia, a young novice who travels to Italy to take her final vows and become a nun. During her stay, she begins experiencing creepy stuff and miraculously gets pregnant. The priests and church doctor check her hymen to see if she’s lying, and lo and behold, she’s not. It must be Jesus 2.0! Cecilia isn’t so convinced. From there, she begins investigating what’s really going on and it’s some predictably freaky shit.

The reason I accuse the filmmakers of not being able to see beyond her breasts, is because Sweeney‘s nipples are piercing through every blouse she wears. They’re almost featured as prominently as her face in some scenes. This is a movie about a nun, one that doesn’t really deal with or try to deal with any sexual psychology going on with the character. So why the fuck do we need to see Sister Cecilia’s hard nipples while she’s spying on other nuns conspiring behind locked corridors? Maybe it was a firm studio note from a couple of firm studio male execs. It made me feel kinda dirty and it never ever felt like it was an integral part of the story, or was making any kind of comment on anything subconsciously going on with the character.

Beyond that, this is sorta milquetoast thriller with just enough interesting visual choices to make it not seem like a generic genre entry. It begins strongly, establishing characters in a way most beginning-of-the-year horror movies, let alone possession movies, rarely do. However, as it goes on and when what’s actually going on gets revealed, it’s more or less a drag. Like I said, there’s some interesting visual choices here, but they’re usually undermined by an inherent lack of scariness or a forced plot/character development. Seriously, this movie is one of the least scary “horror” movies I’ve seen recently. Even the cheap jump scares didn’t jolt me.

Without giving anything away, I really loved the ending sequence/shot of the film. It hinted at a movie far more interesting than what Immaculate ultimately was. It hinted at something that actually took Sydney Sweeney‘s abilities seriously. Grade: C+ (In Theaters)

Road House

What a lame idea. Remaking a cheesy 80s movie with a barely existing plot that’s so inherently tied to the time period it was made it would feel utterly stupid in a modern setting. Well, Doug Liman‘s Road House is just as stupid as the 1989 original, but it’s nowhere near as fun. In fact, it’s a chore to sit through. Jake Gyllenhaal, one of our best mainstream actors, does his best to elevate this CGI-laden junk, but he’s ultimately unsuccessful.

The movie opens on an underground fight club where our hero, Dalton (Gyllenhaal), is running a scam. You see, he’s so well known as an unbeatable fighter that his mere presence at one of these matches will cause any opponent to forfeit out of fear. That’s pretty funny, but the movie actually thinks it’s cool. From there, Dalton is stabbed in the parking lot by Post Malone and then approached by a bar owner (Jessica Williams in the Kevin Tighe role) about coming down to Florida to be a bouncer at her bar, The Road House. Dalton comes into town and everyone witnesses what a perfect Christ figure he is. Sure, he’ll beat your fucking head in with a socket wrench if you challenge him, but at least he has the grace and civility to drive you to the hospital afterwards. There, Dalton meets a sexy young doctor played by Daniela Melchior, the Kelly Lynch role from the original film. This doctor has a name, Ellie, but the character is written so shallowly I was half expecting her to be credited simply as “Sexy Young Doctor.” There’s also a teenage girl in the movie. She’s sort of like the doctor character in that she helps Dalton and Dalton protects her, but of course there’s 100% nothing romantic about it. Thank Christ.

When Dalton finally gets to the titular Road House, it looks like a Macayo’s in Scottsdale. It’s a very clean, practically spotless bar, with a hipster barista making coffee behind the counter. Eventually some ruffians come into the bar and elaborately fight each other, yet the bar never gets that trashed. Dalton steps in and lectures them on the option of non-violence before beating the tar out of them. What he doesn’t realize is that they work for the local crime boss, Ingrid Goes West‘s Billy Magnussen, playing a spoiled trust fund baby version of the Ben Gazzara character from the original. Besides Gyllenhaal, it’s the only decent performance in the entire movie. Shit goes nuts, and Dalton gets hit with many CGI trucks – never causing anything more than a limp – until shit comes to a head out on a boat in the film’s thoroughly underwhelming climax. All of this would be fine if the movie was fun or had a decent sense of humor about itself, but this is just lazy, uninspired, sloppy work from an experienced director (The Bourne Identity, Go) that should know better. Apparently Liman was sour about Road House arriving directly on streaming and not having a go in theaters. I think he should be happy it wasn’t a studio tax write off. Grade: D+ (Amazon Prime)

^^P.S. – I never mentioned that Conor McGregor is in this. He’s real bad but it looks like he’s having fun. He’s always smiling, not because it’s something that makes sense for his lead henchman character, but because I think he’s real excited to be in a movie. I’d be too.

The Truth vs. Alex Jones

HBO documentaries almost always deliver and The Truth vs. Alex Jones is no exception. Certainly not an all timer, but more tightly constructed than most any Netflix documentary, The Truth vs. Alex Jones starts as a pretty straightforward doc. It follows the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting and how Alex Jones, a large, hoarse-voiced walking parody of a conspiracy nut, convinced his legion of loyal viewers that the school shooting was actually a hoax for the government to enforce gun control. Would you be surprised if nearly a quarter of the country believed this odious lie? Anyway, this led to the parents of murdered children being harassed, threatened and in some cases, stalked or accosted by conspiracy nuts all over the country. Eventually, the parents decided to sue Jones for slander while Jones tried to play it off as an attack on his first amendment rights – which don’t protect you if you’re lying. The more interesting portion of this documentary is the actual trial, which features unnerving footage of a non-performative Jones trying to level with the parents suing him. At one point, a parent offers him a throat lozenge in court, cause according to Jones he “tore his larynx”, and Jones politely pleads with her that she’s being manipulated cause this is a “kangaroo court.” At another point he live streams a show claiming one of the parents suing him is mentally challenged, a mere hour before appearing in court. It’s fascinating and terrifying at the same time, what planet is Jones on? You’ll be asking that question the whole two-hour documentary. Grade: B (Max)

The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping

I’ll admit my knowledge of these reform/corporal punishment boarding schools for troubled teens, the ones where they pick kids up in handcuffs, was limited to old Dr. Phil episodes (which for the most part, championed them as solid last resorts) and that one episode of The Sopranos where they send Vito, Jr. there for pooping in the school showers. The Program is Netflix’s three-hour, three-episode docuseries shot and crated by former students/abused kids in one of these schools, reuniting and trying to piece together what happened to them. The first episode is really solid because you learn so much insane shit you never knew, but the second and especially third are lacking. This is because the makers of The Program aren’t actual journalists, they’re former victims of this legal torture chamber. While this does give the proceedings an urgent, personal feel, the subjects are obviously too close/connected to material for any good, sound journalism to happen. At one point, one of the former students puts a threatening letter in the mailbox of a former teacher/guard at the facility as a way to bait them to talk. Predictably, this puts the former teacher/guard strictly on the offense and they don’t get anything useful from this person. At one point, they follow the founder/creator of these former torture schools to a dumb karaoke night, not to confront him but just to watch him make a fool out of himself. The pieces are all there for a fascinating investigative documentary on these schools, but halfway through this docuseries, the tank runs out of gas. Still, I did learn way more than I ever thought I’d know about the subject. Grade: C+ (Netflix)

You’ll Never Find Me

One of the most difficult sub-genres to get right in horror is the two-person movie. These are films consisting of only two actors/characters, generally set in a single location, as is Indiana Bell and Josiah Allen‘s Australian indie horror film, You’ll Never Find Me. It’s about an old hermit living in a mobile home (Brendan Rock) who, one ominous and stormy night, gets a mysterious visitor at his front door in the form of a young woman (Jordan Cowan). Something isn’t quite right about one of them, but which one? Is the old hermit a creepy old predator or is the young woman there under false pretenses? Or both? Or neither? The film eventually makes a decision in the third act, but for the first two acts it’s just these characters feeling each other out. While the performances of Rock and Cowan are very good, I just didn’t find the dialogue exchange between their characters to be all that interesting. There’s a handful of really well done five-minute runs throughout this hour long conversation, but not enough to keep me consistently engaged. When the movie finally becomes clear or clearer about what’s actually going on, it settles into a more traditional thriller territory. It’s done all right, but it’s been done better in several other films and the filmmakers’ attempt at getting inside the minds of both the old hermit and the young drifter kinda falls flat. This is a very ambitious movie that’s well made and acted, but I was left really not giving a shit. Grade: C+ (AMC+/Shudder)