Recent Viewings, Part 2

[Rev. Powell]

DOG MAN (2025): A dog-man cop (with a dodgy origin story) pursues a mad scientist cat intent on cloning himself and  unleashing a telepathic fish on the city. Decently animated, with a couple of nice gags, but wow, is it made for kids with short-attention spans. 2.5/5.

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (2025): In a mythical island where Vikings are at eternal war with dragons, one misfit boy befriends an injured dragon. Totally unnecessary but nevertheless entertaining live-action adaptation of the hit cartoon. 3.5/5.

[HappyGilmore]

Scream 5

Fifth movie on the series. Tara, played by Jenna Ortega, is brutally attacked by a new person taking on the Ghostface persona in the town of Woodsboro. She survives, but her sister Sam, comes home to care for her and apologize for using drugs and leaving the family.

More attacks happen, and we find out one of the victims is the nephew of Stu Macher, one of the killers in Scream 1. Sam admits to Tara that Sam caused their dad to leave a few years back, upon finding out that Samantha herself is actually the daughter of Billy Loomis, the second killer from part 1.

David Arquette, Courtney Cox and Neve Campbell reprise their roles from the first four movies, with Arquette's character getting killed.

Jack Quaid, son of Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid, is hilarious in this, playing the real killer

[M.10rda]

Hot Take: These later sequels had been highly unnecessary with Arquette, totally unimaginable and pointless without Arquette.

[Rev. Powell]

HARVEST: Life in a Scottish farming village changes dramatically with the arrival of a new lord. Beautifully shot (reminiscent of the "harvest" subgenre of European painting) and impressively scored (one peasant threshing song is synced to the rhythm of swinging scythes), but the storytelling is confusing, the dialogue can be stiff, and the feckless protagonists supply little dramatic momentum as the story limps to its inevitable conclusion. A mild recommendation, because it is thought-provoking, but with a major caveat that this is for hardcore art-house patrons only. 3/5.

[Trevor]

FINAL CUT: THE MAKING AND UNMAKING OF HEAVEN'S GATE.

Quite a superb doccie. 😊

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyeOmPMHRYg&t=2645s

[Rev. Powell]

THE ICE TOWER (2025): A French teenage runaway hides out on the set of a film production of her favorite fairy tale, "The Snow Queen," and becomes obsessed with the diva who's portraying the lead role. Visually exceptional movie that, unfortunately, is also quite dull, with little of the intriguing strangeness Lucile Hadzihalilovic normally invests in her films. 2.5/5.

[lester1/2jr]

The Focusing Effect (2018) - sort of found footage, but actually a thriller (of sorts) with a faux documentary concept. It's got a couple okay and interesting things going for it, but is brought down somewhat by how annoying the main guy is. I think the actual director is playing the movie director, so he should have been more sensitive to how the audience sees the character (he's a jerk).

A doughy film student decides to make a documentary about couples breaking up for his final project. One couple's story goes in a more exciting direction so he's happy, but then starts to realize that the fact that it's so interesting is also what makes it a problem. Some of the writing and acting is good, but it falters in other places. The ending was thoughtful, but felt like the rough draft of an ending.

The main area of interest in this movie is not the story about a couple breaking up with possible life or death implications, it's about the director who tries to capitalize on it. I don't think this team quite understood that.

3.75/ 5 It was entertaining enough for a weekday night. I would definitely not hire this guy to choreograph an action sequence though.


Edit: No IMDB reviews and Letterboxd ones are generally less charitable than mine was.