We knowingly attended a surprise screening to see this. I didn't know anything about this duo but from the get go I was down for this brand of humor. It's like jackass but less agressive and violent + plus Canada. It's rare for a movie to get consistent laughs out of me but this one managed to. Idk it's just a good time and I left with a smile. I miss Canada...
It toes the line between an "eat the rich" and a pseudo-banality of evil vibe but never really does either in a satisfying way. Our "hero" Beckett (Glen Powell) is a vacuum of personality with his only motivation seemingly being wanting to be rich because he thinks his mom wanted that for him. Margaret Qualley (I dont remember her character's name... Jane?) exists to ultimately validate Beckett’s hollow desire for money. Either you get rich, or someone is going to get rich off you. It presents this bleak outlook on life. Except that Jessica Henwick’s character (Also don't remember her name... Cathy?) is seemingly very content and fulfilled with the decision to abandon (?) wealth for a high school teaching job. The movie tries to do too much and the titular killings somehow end up being the most boring and rushed parts. Final thoughts: Jessica Henwick is a star.
Seen on 03/06/2026
While some of the narrative elements are pretty generic/poorly executed, I found the relationship between Frankenstein and The Bride to be weirdly charming and endearing. Frank is just a sad lonely man who idolizes an image of male lead chauvinism seen in classic movies, but he’s a literal walking corpse. He goes in search of a wife to try and complete this image of ideal couplism he sees on screen and finds a corpse that he believes is actually to too beautiful for him (AWE). But it turns out she is kind of club queen baddie that doesn’t want to be tied down to the conventional idea of heteronormative partnership. Frank falls for her immediately with a kind of puppy dog love, and she slowly lets him in seeing how much of an outsider he is as well. It feels queer in the way they both fail/disavow the conventional gender norms and expectation, and eventually find a form of partnership that doesn’t eradicate their individualism. It’s kind of a mix of Bonnie and Clyde with the gangster violence but also Thelma and Louise in the way patriarchy is the ultimate villain... but with zombies as the leads. The designs are great and I love all the unexplained weird reality warping powers their love has. If you ignore the forced narrative going on outside of their relationship, and the Mary Shelley possession (lol) it’s a goofy, fun, sweet, time. Jesse Buckley continues to be one of my fave new white queens.
Seen on 03/21/2026
I didn’t really need a sequel to Ready or Not, I felt like the original kind of nailed everything it was going for. It was ahead of the “eat the rich” trend while also just managing to be a gory, fun time separate from its class commentary. Its evolution of the final girl trend felt fresh too. Like she doesn’t just hide, she fights back and gets hurt, A LOT.
Its sequel is less tight, but still competent. Somehow less violent and less funny even with a bigger cast and more deadly arsenal. Everybody in the film has a great face and really give their parts 100% no matter how small. The leads both do a great job but the start and stop of their narrative undermines the action. It’s kind of the same convo 5 different times. By the end it all comes together in a meaningful way though. It's disavowal of wealth in how it ultimately perpetuates a cycle of violence regardless of who’s on top feels pointed and earned. The lifelong commitment to what we have as opposed to what we could have by leaving people behind is sweet. It’s all totally solid, but also not doing anything better than the first one. Perfect 7/10 film. Seeing bodies blowing up never gets old.
Seen on 03/29/2026
A real Ryan Gosling vehicle that is totally serviceable otherwise. For a story about saving the entire human race from extinction, it really feels like there are no stakes here. We’re told things need to be solved OR ELSE over and over but it never feels that bad cuz the movie is constantly undercutting any serious moments with one liners or marvel movie like jokes. And just not even good jokes. One joke is two security guards eating sour skittles? There’s also this long sequence of Ryan gosling and his security shopping at home depot and just like… having fun putting things in a shopping cart. No one in the audience really laughed throughout most of the movie, except for the couple next to me that chuckled at every single joke. Everybody is kind of a non-character, though I did like anatomy of a fall lady for how one note she was the whole time. Her stoic straight to the point Schtick is a fun contrast to the Ryan gosling’s incredibly conventional “woah I’m just a guy I can’t be doing all this????” But she’s not in it much, and it really is just Ryan gosling talking to himself for the majority of the movie. He goes to space, meets a rock, and they save the day. And that’s it. The sets are fun, and there are some pretty space shots so 6/10 I guess. Highlight of the movie was the rock violently fisting itself.
Seen on 03/31/2026
What a fun time! It’s kind of a reverse slasher with the lead character doling out violence at an increasingly aggressive pace without any qualms or hesitations. She’s blood thirsty and determined. Every scene with violence hits hard, and it has some of the best fight choreography I’ve seen in recent films. It’s stylish, but not so over stylized where it felt like it was entirely reliant on it. It’s clearly riffing on older Samurai/Horror B-Movies in aesthetic, it has enough fun ideas to make it feel original though. For example, I really liked how the movie relied on machetes and kitchen knives as opposed to long swords for these closer fights that fit a cramped hotel setting better. In another scene the weapon becomes the light source as we watch her take people out one by one through a landscape shot.
It doesn’t try too hard to say anything new about the evils of wealth, it really is all about the action. It does shift the focus to be about how the working class can perpetuate the evils of capitalism by being okay just having crumbs. It gestures towards this component of capitalism that instill us with the idea that we are not enough for each other and that we should always be wanting more. It’s the same idea that was in Ready or Not 2 also, and I like this kind of collectivist approach to anti-capitalism as opposed to the singular suffering person. Capitalism requires us to leave each other behind for profit, and I appreciate how blatantly the two films acknowledge that directly and reject it through these characters narratives.
There no exploding bodies in this one but there just as much blood and a lot more gore. I was smiling throughout the majority of it.
Seen on 04/07/2026
I have a feeling that with distance I’ll like this move less and think it’s just kind of weird. But coming out of it, I’m feeling positive of center.
My immediate reaction to the twist was “really? That’s it?” In a way that I don’t know if the movie intended. Not to make light of the violence that Zendaya thought of doing, it’s just that she didn’t do it. It might be because of how likable and charming Zendaya and her character both are. She is treated as having no flaws other than the twist, which again, doesn’t hit me as that big a deal. Her feelings of it are very honest and real, and only makes her come across as more human than everybody else in the movie. Everybody else is like "yeah, yeah I did a terrible thing but you THOUGHT about doing something horrible!" Zendaya processing people learning about it and revisiting it is kind of heart wrenching. Her experiences as a child captures the kind of society we live in where violence is validated with attention. The movie does a good job of not making her out to be a villain, which maybe does a disservice to the imagined violence she was planning but also she never does any level of violence. Unlike the rest of the cast.
Once the movie begins to stray from her and become more about Robert Pattinson trying to decide if he still loved her, it lost me. Robert Pattinson is set up to be the more flawed character from the beginning through their "meet cute" and so him reckoning with her one flaw that is in the past doesn't feel very balanced. It kind of goes in circles and you get the impression that the movie really is just interested in one idea and maybe could have been shorter. The ending also left a bad taste in my mouth. I’m not against them ending up together but it kind of vaults over the conflict it set up in a way that does a disservice to the very interesting dilemma Zendaya is in. She seems to have no problems at all about marrying him, even though he has provided reasons in a more tangible way than her.
Alana Haim really does an amazing job of being the worst white girl you know though. I like her, I wanna keep saying her. She seems very character actress-y
Seen on 04/14/2026
I had no expectations going on (I don’t really know anything about the video game other than its premise) and yet I was still let down. I really liked the early pov stuff. I think it really captured this overwhelming, pervasive feeling of societal norms in a visceral way. I also liked seeing the main character slowly realize the hall was looping and learn the rules. But then it kind of nose dived and got very repetitive. The shift from first person to third person really cements this not as a fun “play along” experience and more just a “watch this guy suffer.”
But watching this man suffer wasn’t satisfying for me. He makes the same mistakes over and over and it all feels so slow and drawn out. He also is really freaking out after hardly any attempts or time spent in this hallways. Idk Maybe it’s just my gamer brain trying to speedrun, but it really was frustrating how bad he was at this. Like it really is not that scary of a situation in the grand scheme of psychological horror you could experience. They are also kind of going for a silent hill thing of this trap being metaphorical for his state of mind, but even then it doesn’t really commit. The narrative feels very thin, and it’s barely fine enough to justify making a movie.
I guess I wish it was scarier, or the anomalies were more interesting or connected to his internal dilemma. There’s a feeling of propaganda in this too about him ultimately becoming folded back in. I liked walking man’s energy though. I hope someone makes a fancam of him to 360.
Seen on 04/21/2026
I love a chamber piece, and while this isn’t entirely that, it really is fundamentally about two people dealing with projections on each others for basically the entirety of its runtime. Stone faced, bubbling under the surface Lori and neurotic old gay Julian are just so enthralling to watch. Lori has been let down by the artist that came before, and Julian is let down by his children and what he imagines comes after he’s gone. Together they’re deeply disappointed and frustrated with the present world they live in, the one that’s made Julian hate himself, and the one that’s made Lori lose hope in having a career in the arts. And they take it out on each other. It’s watching them finding that middle ground and remembering what it is about art and making art that is the journey of the movie. Remembering how creating art and seeing art captures something that is so hard to put into words.
The forgery story does the job of introducing a moral conundrum but Lori being mad at the world that devalues art is so relatable that the movie doesn’t even have to do the work of justifying her decision to do the forgery. And even then, “forgery” comes to be complicated in this beautiful way where she is once again inspired by the same artist that caused her to not pursue a career in the arts. There is this very inexplainable way that artists and people motivate and inspire each other. We see things in others that they cannot and vice versa. While this isn’t really much of her journey, you do get the sense that she’s reconnected to this appreciation of the work that’s come before her. Julian’s journey back to making art is fun, and one of the most beautiful moments in the movie is when he slides into that flow state after so much antagonism to painting throughout the movie.
It’s a small movie, but it really works with what it’s got. It’s kind of meditative in the way that Materialists (2025) was, but maybe a little more high brow. I also thought of Hamnet (2025) and thinking about the medium discourses. Did you know that Marshall McLuhan was Canadian? They don’t let you forget that up there.