Leviticus: Taking Aim At The Wrong People

Summary: two young LGBTQ teens face the supernatural and prejudice.

Lets be blunt in the West most LGBTQ+ teens do not face being forced into conversion therapy, maybe in backwoods areas living about 50 years in the past but not in the modern west, and that includes Australia.

By and large most sects of Christianity have also come to accept LGBTQ people, not that you would know from this film. In many ways the horror herein is a means to attack Christianity even though it has long since accepted them. There could be an idea made that they are too afraid to go after the groups that do not accept them as that would be un-pc the Church makes for a better target.

The horror here is nothing new, they try and say it is different as it features LGBTQ characters and themes but honestly queer horror has evolved far beyond this sort of thing. In many ways this film is based around putting identity first and trying to make a statement but that has been done before what this film is trying to say has been said better before.

The real issue here is that this film feels like it is trying to mimic other queer horror films from the recent past.

Overall, one or two good scares but by and large just more of the same you have seen before.

1.5/5

A few good scares

It is well paced

Cons.

It is repetitive

The commentary feels outdated

It is directing ire in the wrong direction

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Practical Magic: Lesbian Sisters

Summary: two young women navigate the world of men and love by way of magic.

So let’s get this out of the way earlier, there are a number of scenes where it looks like the two lead sisters are going to kiss and it is weird. Throughout the history of witches in horror particularly when it is not the old crone there is implied lesbianism, and sometimes that’s okay, but other times it feels like male titillation. There is nothing wrong with titillation but when the two leads are sisters it’s weird. Kidman and Bullock’s sister characters are far too close.

The film itself feels as though someone couldn’t decide on a structural level what this was supposed to be. It is based on a novel so perhaps the issues are from that. You have essentially two competing stories you have the curse placed on the Owens women where if they find love they die and you have the fact that Kidman’s character is going out with an abusive guy who they then kill and he comes back. This doesn’t just feel like a film of two halves it feels like two different films of different genres sown together. It doesn’t work as tonally it is too mismatched.

The ending of the film wherein the town that had attacked and belittled the sisters for being witches turns around and helps them out doesn’t cut the mustard. Neither does the fact that in the final sequence of the film they jump off a roof using magic to not die and not one person goes wait what witches are real.

Overall, whilst there are some moments of cozy comfort it feels like a more icky and poorly thought through relic of yesteryear.

2.5/5

Pros.

It’s watchable

Kidman and Bullock

There is charm

Cons.

It totally doesn’t work

The creepy stuff with the sisters

The ending

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One Night Only: Remember When Men Weren’t A Joke?

Summary: for one night a year sex is legal, two people try to make it work.

Owen is told at the offset of the film that his girlfriend wants to sleep with someone else, then he goes to stay at his mother’s who wants him out so she can get down. After that he is robbed by a woman who takes his clothes, when he finally meets Allie and they are about to have sex this is then denied them. Allie’s journey is far more about her coming out of her shell, daring to sing in public, ultimately to grow as a person. Notice the difference one is about empowerment the other is about humiliation.

You might have heard that a lot of the nudity and sex scenes where cut out of this film, we did a Cinema Issues about it, because audiences don’t want to see nudity unless it’s Sydney Sweeney in Gluck’s last film. For the most part this is not a steamy affair, it is oddly clinical and depressing and maybe that is a comment on modern dating but this film is supposed to be a rom-com, yet there is nothing romantic or funny about it.

Monica Barbaro does her best to keep the film together but this is really DOA on arrival.

Overall, more modern slop to avoid.

1/5

Pros

Barbaro

Cons

It is dull

It doesn’t have anything fresh to say

The male humiliation

The ending is cheap

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The Ice Cream Man: Eli Roth Is Back On Form

Summary: an evil ice cream man is giving kids ice cream that makes them kill their parents.

Thanksgiving was a good film, but it has been a while since we last heard from Eli Roth so expectations were high for this film and for the most part he delivered.

Now there is a hullabaloo about oh no the film uses AI, to that we say grow up most films do and just don’t tell you, see Supergirl. If you think the effects shots in Brand New Day didn’t have any AI involvement then you need to put the beverage down and get serious.

The thing that is perhaps the hardest to understand is what the tone is, as the film is both very dark and also very silly, you could argue it is a comedy horror perhaps. Once you adjust to it it’s okay.

The film feels both fresh but also like it is calling back to A Nightmare On Elm Street in one key way.

The best thing the film does is how it ends, it ends in a way not typical at all for horror films, as the villain basically wins, most films have the killer stopped, the demon exorcised, the ghost sent on etc, this does not.

One thing that was not so good about the film was a line of dialogue where a 12 year old girl says “I’m a 12 year old girl of course I know how to make myself sick”. Bulimia is a very serious condition and it should not be made light off particularly with teens who are often prone to eating disorders and suicidality. It’s a throwaway line it’s not like they dwell on it but it’s a clumsy line that harms an otherwise good film.

4/5

Pros.

The ending

The gore

The tone once you adjust

The Ice Cream Man

Cons.

The Bulimia line

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Paw Patrol The Dino Movie: Brain Rot For Kids

Summary: the animals find other older animals.

This is soulless if this is what constitutes animation these days then the practice should be shelved permanently. There is no depth in the characters or their bonds, or their dialogue, it is just the most obvious vapid platitudes.

This feels like a glorified advert with the animals needing to get new vehicles and have the disabled dog who was already riding a t-rex, have it upgraded to sell more toys. It was incredibly cynical.

The villain is maybe on screen for about 5 minutes and is just silly without any real motivation, they are also stopped incredibly easily showing no real stakes at all in that.

When you look at a film like Minons and Monsters and compare it to this you can see the difference, one is designed to sell toys and to rot kids brains the other goes a bit deeper, has characters and has a story to tell.

Overall, the series and films need to stop.

0.5/5

Pros.

It has a few unintentionally funny moments

Cons.

It’s shallow and vapid

It doesn’t have characters it has a tick box list of traits

The villain is weak

The pacing is awful

It is just an advert

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Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma: The Musings Of A Pervert

Summary: everything wrong with modern horror.

Where to start, one could start with the filmmaker who made this made I Thought I Saw The TV Glow one of the most unwell horror films ever made that made trans people look bad. He is not a filmmaker that should have been given a bigger budget to make another film.

You could mention how Gillan Anderson has exploited the LGBTQ+ market for years, pretending that she is Bi-Sexual when she only ever dates men, but won’t say that as then she’ll lose gigs like this.

You could also mention Hannah Einbinder and her hate filled views about Israel and the Jews and how she embodies the very worst of modern progressive values.

Much like with many modern progressives the director of this film has to make his personal identity central to it. The film heavily features trans messages, the Jason stand in, is claimed to be both a boy and a girl, you can only be one or the other, and dies due to the camp councillors being bigots. The eye roll is real.

At times the film would almost be funny if viewed as a parody but it just inst that. Einbinder’s character is brought in to update his horror franchise and make it less transphobic, again it borders on parody.

Anderson’s character is in a polygamous relationship she doesn’t like, but no doubt it is still better than monogamy as God forbid you conform. Anderson can only climax if she thinks she’s being watched by the killer from her old slasher franchise and then has age inappropriate sex with a much younger Einbinder.

Einbinder character creates a new version of the slasher franchise wherein the killer kills her parents, agent and superiors, one wonders what the incredibly on the nose message the director/writer wants us to see here. She then later dies in the film within a film by being stabbed with a spear as she orgasms during sex. There is something deeply sick and perverse about this film.

Overall, this film shouldn’t be made and the director should not work again.

The film is flopping even on a tiny budget

0/5

Cons.

The age inappropriate relationship

It makes lesbians and the broader LGBTQ+community look bad, as they only seem to have dark fetish sex

It is badly paced

It borders on parody

It is entirely disconnected from reality of any kind

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Spider-Man Brand New Day: Spider-Man Is Depressed

Summary Jean Grey shows up for no reason and decides to act like a villain. Spider-Man pines over his girlfriend.

Let’s get one thing right off the bat as our article from a few days ago said putting Jean Grey into the MCU sans X-Men is dumb as hell. Jean does not behave like herself here, and her backstory around her missing sister etc would have fit very well into a gritty X-Men film but without the light hearted world of a Spider-Man film it really sticks out. If you removed her entirely from the plot and just had it be Spidey working with and then going up against the leader of Damage Control it would have been much better.

The arc they give Peter is probably the best of the MCU, he is broken as Peter but on top of the world as Spider-Man he has lost everyone and needs to learn to trust and let people in again. This is a serious and grown up Spider-Man, we wouldn’t be surprised if kids like this one a bit less as it’s far less about dances and curfews and far more about loneliness, sadness and trauma. Seeing Spider-Man at a low ebb is kind of what the character is all about though.

You’d argue that the supporting cast does a lot of the heavy lifting here, John Bernthal is wonderful as the Punisher and you really see how much he cares about Peter. Yelana is funny and steals the scenes she isn’t in. However, the star of the side cast is arguably Zendaya. Now a number of the contributors to this magazine do not have a high opinion of Zendaya however, here she is the emotional core of the film. The fact that she can’t remember anything about Peter and that they don’t get back together in the end is incredibly mature and grown up.

There is a real sense of transition with this film not the least due to the changes happening to Peter with his Spider DNA but because it shifts from being a children’s film to something much more serious and grown up.

3.5/5

Pros.

Peter and MJ

Frank

The action and the go pro scenes

The humour

Cons.

The stuff with Jean Grey

The end credits tease isn’t good

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Interstellar: Back In The 2010s Chris Nolan Was A Serious Filmmaker

Summary, a man goes on a mission to find a new home for his kids across the stars.

Unlike something like Project Hail Mary this film actually scienced it was hard science fiction from the off rather than wasting time with goofy elements.

The performances carried the film and there was a lot of weight to it, particularly the scenes wherein the main character sees his daughter again for the first time in decades.

The film does have some of the usual Nolan bloat as he likes to indulge in, the film would have been better sans the Matt Damon plotline, and sans the Cassie Affleck side quest but hey Nolan has to Nolan.

The film is visually great and the new worlds they explore look well realised and hold up even now 12 years later.

Overall, a sign of what Nolan can do when he’s not race swapping characters to bait the culture war.

3.5/5

Pros.

The world design

The human aspects

The science

The gravity of the situation

Cons.

Bloat

Needless subplots

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Evil Dead Burn: Is That It?

Summary: the deadities go after a family after they discover an ancient weapon that can kill them.

So this film was watchable and had some good gore but that’s really it, it didn’t do much of anything new either in terms of horror more broadly or in terms of the franchise.

Another thing that was odd was that the humour which is a staple of the Evil Dead franchise was mostly missing as the film played it straight, this was a bad choice.

The film once again showed the evil side of the nuclear family and turned the film into a depressing PSA on domestic abuse.

Crucially it was an Evil Dead film that wasn’t fun.

Overall, watchable if the low point for the franchise.

2/5

Pros.

The gore

It is watchable

Cons.

The lack of humour

The return of Ellie is fairly meh

It is something you have seen before

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Moana (Live Action): Disney Doesn’t Respect You

Summary, a film that is barely 10 years old is repackaged to you by Disney as they think you’ll just buy anything.

This film is insulting, not in that it’s bad it’s incredibly mediocre, but in how cynical it is. This film was simply made to mine an IP there was no need for it and they didn’t change much about it, it was made as Disney thought kids would just watch anything. Gone are the days of Walt’s standards.

There is precious little to say about the film as they change very little about it, you’ve seen it all before as once again the film is barely 10 years old and most people can remember it. At times it feels like a parody of the original film but you realise it is played too serious for that, a parody would have been better.

Overall, if your kid like Moana just put the original on.

2/5

Pros.

The adventure is still the same

The songs are still mostly the same

Cons.

It doesn’t need to exist

It does nothing new

It is the worst version

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