Fackham Hall (2025)

One of the more clever titles in recent memory (say it with a thick accent), this spoof of stuffy period dramas is a wonderful blend of ZAZ humor and Monty Python irreverence. Like many films of this ilk, it's stuffed with so many gags, you won't be able to catch them all the first time around. Even if you've never seen a Downton Abbey in your life, there's still plenty to enjoy, including the romance at the heart of it. Jimmy Carr lends his particular style of joke writing skill to great use, although it sometimes feels like the edginess is being held back in spite of its R rating. It's funny, but I wish it would have gone harder.

3 fap war injuries out of 5

Babylon (2022)

Damien Chazelle (La La Land) directs this epic historical black comedy about Hollywood's rocky transition from silent film to "talkies" in the late 1920s. And particularly, just how difficult an adjustment that was for certain performers.

I thought it was beautiful, in a frenetic, drug-addled way. I love how it tells the evolution of film history in a much darker fashion than Singin' in the Rain ever could back in 1952. It celebrates the wild excesses of a time long gone by as a very entertaining fever dream with great original music (by La La Land's Justin Hurwitz) throughout. It's not as personal a story as The Fabelmans, but it's just as relevant to understanding the ways the world has changed over the past century. It's about those who came before us and those who will be there after us. I found it existential amidst all the crazy orgies and bodily fluids.

4 "it girls" out of 5

ALIEN: COVENANT [2017]

Director Ridley Scott's Alien: Covenant is a sequel to Prometheus and a prequel to Alien.
A colony ship's crew find a beautiful planet inhabited by a being that has a thirst for hugging their faces and bursting their chests.
As an Alien film it's really quite pointless but tries to make itself relevant by asking many questions about faith, science and the whole evolution jibber-jabber.   In the fog of all the one-dimensional characters it clumsily gives the Xenomorph a backstory that quite frankly neuters the horror of the creature.  Apart from a particularly wonderful action sequence, Michael Fassbender's performance and Jed Kurzel's Jerry Goldsmith-homage musical score, the film is an uninspired bore that really struggles to find a point in existing.

2½ John Denver transmissions out of 5

FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM [2016]

After a rather dull outing with Tarzan, director David Yates wisely returns to J.K. Rowling's cinematic Wizardry World with the first part of a prequel series, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
Inspired by Rowling's fictional Wizardry school textbook, set in the 1920's, the film follows a British wizard in New York City who accidentally lets loose a suitcase full of magical beasties of all shapes and sizes.
The film doesn't require you to know anything about the previous Hogwart's stories so it's easy to enjoy on it's own.  Though none of the characters aren't as instantly as memorable as the Harry Potter gang none of them are as irksome as some were either.  The plot hits a couple speedbumps in favor of dazzling you with bizarre creatures and their antics but when it's moving it really impresses with dazzling set-pieces and imagination.  It's not perfect but it makes me eager to see what worlds the expanded universe takes us to.

3½ No-Maj's out of 5

STEVE JOBS [2015]

Director Danny Boyle & screenwriter Aaron Sorkin together craft a near-perfect autobiographical drama about priggish Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs.
Broken up into three distinct parts, the film follows Jobs' three major demo launches: the Macintosh, NeXT PC & the iMac G3, all while trying to juggle the troubles that surround his personal life.  
The film interestingly choses not to allow the settings take place anywhere else rather than back-stage of each launch given it a torando-esque feel of enticing dialogue and a fittingly hurried pace that never misses a beat.  Boyle knows the script is the star here and allows his usual frantic style of film-making to take a back-seat (apart from a few distractions) and resorting to using some subtle techniques only film-lovers will probably pick up on.
It's the welcome type of movie that isn't too heavy.  Isn't too light.  It's really just right.

4 Judy Jetson Easy-Bake Ovens out of 5

QUEEN OF EARTH [2015]

Director Alex Ross Perry's psychological horror film Queen of Earth is the type of subtle terror that you're not fully aware of until it's already crawled deep into your psyche.
It's about two besties whose friendship is growing apart as they grow older, resulting in one of the girls to lose grip on her already fragile sanity.
Mad Men's Elisabeth Moss delivers a powerfully convincing performance as the nutty as a fruitcake women that is quite frankly very unsettling to watch from beginning to end.  The film runs along a baffling pace that isn't easy to jump onto until you realize that was it's sinister intentions. The heavy feeling of unease is built up wonderfully over long scenes of awkward conversations, nerve-wracking sound effects & music, disorienting camera shots and dizzying character confrontations that are hilariously uncomfortable to watch.  It's not a particularly pleasant watch but an thoroughly easy film to admire for it's masterful nightmarish execution.

4 salads out of 5

INHERENT VICE [2014]

Director Paul Thomas gets on high on the weird-o-meter with Inherent Vice, a comedic crime-drama based on Thomas Pynchon's novel of the same name.
Narrated by musician Joanna Newsom, a stoner P.I. named Doc finds he's taken a case that completely spirals out of his control amidst a cast of characters even stranger than he is.  Planted deep into 1970's California, the film has a psychedelic noir-ish feel to it as if it were The Big Lebowski's evil twin with it's back-drop heavily influenced by the paranoia of the Manson Family murders.  There's not a whole lot of sense to be made out of this incredibly confusing psychedelic noir but it's unsettling humor, fantastic music, wildly bizarre performances and hypnotizing character interactions make it so damned engaging I didn't want it to end.

4 Pussy Menus out of 5