Flash Frames

Timothée Chalamet in A Complete Unknown Musician biopics are something that I’m very partial to, especially when an actor just sinks into a role. However, the worst of the worst can be painful to sit through. The worst ones just seem tone deaf more than anything, and the best paint an image of who the subject is, with the good, bad, and ugly parts. While it definitely does lean in the more “wow, what a guy he is” angle, Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis is one of my favorite movies of the decade so far. It captured the energy that Elvis had at his heights, but the only real critique I have is that Priscilla Presley was just left by the wayside for most of that movie. It felt poetic that a movie surrounding her life, directed by Sofia Coppola, released just a few months later and feels monumental. Coppola’s Elvis is kept at a distance because you know how Elvis was. A Complete Unknown , James Mangold’s second go-around at a music biopic after 2005’s Oscar-winning Walk the Line (and a great title ch...

Still from Flow I bet a lot of people that were watching the Golden Globes didn’t expect Inside Out 2 or The Wild Robot , the expected winner of not just the Globe for Best Animated Feature but the Oscar too, to lose out on that award. However, it did to this movie, Flow . An independent movie from Latvia, which is also a nominee in this year’s Best International Feature category at the Oscars, beating out not only a strong Pixar movie but the Dreamworks underdog is a big deal. Flow not only has the quality to back it up, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if it took home that animated feature Oscar. It’s also a very simple premise: a cat that’s been run out of its home by a massive flood finds shelter with different animals and has to adapt and survive in this new world. I didn’t really know what to expect, but the ties to more fantastical elements would be something to at least watch out for. It doesn’t exactly tie into the plot, but I can’t lie and say that I was expecting it. The a...

Chris Sullivan and Lucy Liu in Presence Steven Soderbergh is a director I admire the hell out of. He’s gotten very experimental lately, but he’s got a pretty versatile filmography. The Ocean’s series, Erin Brockovich , Contagion , and even Magic Mike are some of the examples from his peak popularity, but he’s also got bangers like The Informant! , Haywire , and his first true stab at horror, Unsane . I didn’t really know anything about marketing behind Presence , Soderbergh’s first of two movies this year, but NEON did a great job with getting the word about Longlegs last summer. The big problem with that, though, is that I didn’t think Longlegs was scary. Good movie, sure, but I wouldn’t call it a scary movie. There are parts of me that wouldn’t even call it a horror movie, but that’s not the point. Presence ended up having a smaller scale of marketing, but still with that “scariest movie of the year” billing. Presence isn’t a horror movie, full stop. I didn’t particularly enjoy...

Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in Wicked No time to waste here. I’ve got a lot to write below this point, so let’s just get to the Oscar nominations. As a note, I decided to not include the short film categories, mainly because I just don’t have a lot to say about them. Congrats to all of those nominees. Along with the list, I’ll share my thoughts at the very bottom of this post. Best Picture Anora The Brutalist A Complete Unknown Conclave Dune: Part Two Emilia Pérez I’m Still Here Nickel Boys The Substance Wicked Will Win: The Brutalist Should Win: The Substance Brandon Wilson and Ethan Herisse in Nickel Boys Best Director Sean Baker – Anora Brady Corbet – The Brutalist James Mangold – A Complete Unknown Jacques Audiard – Emilia Pérez Coralie Fargeat – The Substance Will Win: Brady Corbet Should Win: Coralie Fargeat Monica Barbaro and Timothée Chalamet in A Complete Unknown Best Actor Adrien Brody – The Brutalist Timothée Chalamet – A Complete Unknown Colman Domingo – Sing Sing Ralph...

Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin in Sing Sing At the time of this writing, the Oscar nominations are coming tomorrow morning, and I’m still in that catch-up period of the supposed nominees that will show up there. Out of all of my blindspots, Wicked is definitely the biggest, but I still have to see a couple of them. Sing Sing , out of what I could find, just wasn’t released at all in my area this past July. I saw the trailer for it when I watched I Saw the TV Glow , and it looked phenomenal. If you haven’t seen it or haven’t even heard of it since A24 has been doing an awful job at marketing it, this is based on the true story of the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at Sing Sing Maximum Security Prison. Divine G, played here by Colman Domingo, is incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit and finds his purpose through RTA with his fellow inmates by creating their own productions. Outside of Domingo and Paul Raci, most of the cast is made up of real-life alumni of RTA who were ...

Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce in The Brutalist Author’s Note: An article was recently published about The Brutalist and how it utilizes generative AI for certain elements in this film. I’ve linked the original article here , but I don’t mention it in the review because a majority of the below was written before this article went viral. Man, this one has a lot of hype around it. One of the year’s big awards frontrunners, co-writer/director Brady Corbet has The Brutalist up to bat, which releases wide in the U.S. and the U.K. on January 24, which has seemingly come out of nowhere. Corbet has come out of nowhere in the awards scene, really shocked that he came back bounding from Vox Lux , an ambitious, campy movie in its own right. A24, who’s distributing the film, pulled a little marketing stunt with the Golden Globes, waiting to see if The Brutalist would pick up any awards. Not only did it, but it ended up winning three of the biggest awards of the night: Best Picture – Drama, directo...

Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Russell Crowe in Kraven the Hunter I’m not even sure what to say. Sony’s little venture into Spider-Man spin-off movies that don’t actually have Spider-Man in them was admittedly interesting to watch unfold, in a morbid sort of way. I remember being pretty excited for the first couple of Venom movies, which I think are fun in their own right. Turning Venom and Eddie’s relationship into a rom-com is an inspired call, but I can’t even begin to say that about the other films in this “franchise.” Morbius and Madame Web were both famously clowned on by the internet, but even though the latest Venom movie really wasn’t, I think that was the worst of all of these spin-offs so far. Now, we have the unfortunate end to this little world. Sony said just a few days before Kraven the Hunter released that the solo Spider-Man villain movies aren’t returning any time soon, so we’re getting to see a cinematic universe implode in the span of two hours. For the sake of savin...

Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan in The Apprentice Noticing trends in Hollywood has always been fascinating to me. It’s not too often that such a big machine like Hollywood avoids a movie’s existence, and in this case, I don’t even blame the big studios for avoiding The Apprentice . If you don’t know, this movie is about Donald Trump and how he was mentored by his lawyer, Roy Cohn, and molded into how he’s viewed in the year of our lord 2025. If any of you heard about this movie, it’s how Trump had described it as a hack job that was made intentionally to derail his 2024 re-election campaign. Even one of the producers of the film, Washington Commanders owner Dan Snyder, threatened to sue because he was under the assumption that The Apprentice would be painting Trump in a more positive light. All of that basically scared off any major studio from picking it up for release, and coincidentally released in theaters just a few weeks before the presidential election. The Apprentice came an...

Still from Transformers One It’s nuts to see that there’s actually a pretty well-received Transformers movie out there now. I know I’m very late to the party with this one, but I just kept hearing about Transformers One and how good it is, from non-fans and fans alike. I know I should take out that bias when I’m reviewing something, but it was so overwhelming that it felt unescapable. One is apparently a prequel to Michael Bay’s live-action Transformers films, but there’s no real connection to them. I honestly don’t even know why this is tied to it. One follows two lonely workers: Orion Pax and D-16. They work in the mines on Cybertron, where the intelligent robots are divided into two classes: the ones who can transform and the ones who can’t. Why they mine for Energon, the fuel that powers Cybertron, is because the planet lost the Matrix of Leadership. Gaining this back could end the need for what’s basically slave labor and restore Cybertron to its former glory. It’s refreshing t...

Still from Creature Commandos There always is some standard with James Gunn now. Maybe it’s because of the quality, mainly because he’s made the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, but even his DC work in The Suicide Squad (and its Peacemaker spin-off series) has shown that there’s a big audience for his work. I’m certainly in that audience, and I’m personally very excited for his Superman movie. However, it’s well known now that he’s the current co-head of DC Studios, with Peter Safran. Creature Commandos , an animated series that’s wrapped up its first season on Max this week, is the soft launch of the DCU, the new established canon. The reset button has been hit. That being said, there’s some things carrying over. Gunn’s previous DC entries are canon, with events from both The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker being implied to have happened here. That being said, I’m still stuck on why this is the beginning of this new canon. Was there something important here that we have to know? The...

Brandy Norwood in The Front Room Is there such a thing for nepotism going to your siblings? The Eggers Brothers, Sam and Max, have their debut feature project on their hands. If you recognize that last name, you’ve definitely seen it. Their brother, Robert Eggers, is a much more well-known filmmaker, who recently directed Nosferatu . Sam even co-wrote my personal favorite Eggers film, The Lighthouse . The duo of Sam and Max got a theatrical release for their debut project this past fall from A24, where Robert got his start with The Witch and The Lighthouse . The Front Room is no The Witch . Just getting right to the point with this one, this was just bad. This follows an expecting mother, played by Brandy in her first horror movie role since I Still Know What You Did Last Summer in 1998, who takes in her ill mother-in-law after the death of her husband’s father. There’s really only one criticism I have with The Front Room , but it’s one that cuts deep: I’m not entirely sure if this ...

Naomi Scott in Smile 2 It’s not too often that we get a major glow-up for a practically immediate horror sequel, maybe outside of the Saw movies. The original Smile , which was released back in 2022, was a massive surprise for me. It looked like a really corny Truth or Dare -adjacent cheap jumpscare horror, a comparison that became even more apparent when it was supposed to be a Paramount+ original that got sent to theaters due to positive test screenings. However, it was a genuinely bleak, atmospheric, and straight up terrifying look into how traumatic events can twist and bend a person so out of shape that they may never return to who they were before. It was a pretty impressive outing for a streaming movie, especially as a debut feature from writer/director Parker Finn. That being said, it’s certainly one of those movies where you stare at the blank screen for a good 20 minutes, just processing what you have just seen. Sosie Bacon made for a great lead in that movie, but we’ve got ...

Demi Moore in The Substance Like the last post about the Golden Globes, these are just the movies. I don’t really watch a lot of television. My reactions below are being written in real time during the broadcast, so let’s just lock in and get it going. Best Supporting Performance in a Motion Picture – Actress Selena Gomez – Emilia Pérez Ariana Grande – Wicked Felicity Jones – The Brutalist Margaret Qualley – The Substance Isabella Rossellini – Conclave Zoe Saldaña - Emilia Pérez – WINNER Thoughts: Man, I’m torn on this one. I love Saldaña and she’s definitely the best part of Emilia Pérez , but even as someone who hasn’t seen Wicked yet, I’m shocked Grande didn’t win. Really thought she was going to take it, and I know that my personal pick, Margaret Qualley, wasn’t going to win. Maybe this is the first step to Saldaña winning her first Oscar, which I honestly wouldn’t be mad at, but maybe I’ll block out that it’s a win for Emilia Pérez . Best Supporting Performance in a Motion Pictu...

Channing Tatum and Naomi Ackie in Blink Twice We’ve been in an interesting era for pop culture and how we deal with consequences for our actions, and I’m surprised that there really hasn’t been a horror movie that doesn’t directly attack the mentions of “cancel culture” and things like that. Well, at least ones that don’t come off as preachy. Blink Twice really doesn’t come off as preachy in most parts, but it’s practically tackling “cancel culture” head on. Naomi Ackie plays Frida, a cocktail waitress at tech billionaire Slater King’s annual gala. He invites Frida and her friend, Jess, to his private island with his buddies for a dream vacation, where something sinister begins to creep in. It’s not exactly subtle with what it’s trying to say, but maybe it’s best to use a hammer rather than a pair of scissors for this topic. Blink Twice is very much a thriller in the vein of Get Out or even Don’t Worry, Darling (a movie I like quite a bit), with the first half being a very accompli...

Well, here we are. 2024 is a couple of days behind us now, and with the 94 new releases I saw this year at the time of publishing, they ranged from future classics to piles of crap to hidden gems, and everything in between. I can’t talk about every single movie I saw, and since this post isn’t ranked, you can follow this link to my Letterboxd list to see how all of these movies stack up. First, some honorable mentions… Honorable Mentions : The Bikeriders [dir. Jeff Nichols] Conclave [dir. Edward Berger] Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga [dir. George Miller] Longlegs [dir. Osgood Perkins] The Peasants [dir. Hugh & DK Welchman] The People’s Joker [dir. Vera Drew] Rebel Ridge [dir. Jeremy Saulnier] Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band [dir. Thom Zimny] Road House [dir. Doug Liman] Terrifier 3 [dir. Damien Leone] The 20 Best Movies of 2024 (in alphabetical order) AGGRO DR1FT [dir. Harmony Korine] This is probably the most singular theatrical experience I’ve had this ...