The Packers and Film

This week, like every other week so far this year, has continued to give me more and more great films. However, this week was a little weaker than many weeks of the year have been, with two of the worst films of the year having graced theaters, along with some good but mostly weaker films. Still, it wasn’t a complete failure, and I am still convinced that this is one of the best years in film I have seen in a long time. Here is everything I watched this week.

Roommates

Roommates is the new film from director Chandler Levack. It tells the story of Devon, a high school graduate who is about to go off to college and is worried about not having any friends. That all changes when she meets Celeste, a cool, confident, free spirited girl that quickly becomes Devon’s best friend. However, after they become roommates, a blossoming friendship slowly turns into a complete and utter trainwreck.

Levack managed to release this film on the same day as one of my favorite films of the year: Mile End Kicks. While I didn’t enjoy this quite as much as Mile End Kicks, I still had a great time. Chloe East gives a mean girl performance of the ages. It reminded me a lot of Regina George, and there were multiple times over the course of the film that I felt infuriated and frustrated with Celeste. I also really enjoyed Sadie Sandler’s performance as Devon. Devon is so kind and funny and relatable. Sandler gives her a very down to earth and charming vibe, and she does a great job carrying the movie around her. The script was also much funnier than I expected it to be. The film is a Happy Madison product, which is Adam Sandler’s production company, and the studio makes a lot of inconsistent films. I wasn’t sure where this would land on the Sandler spectrum, but I thought the movie was very funny. However, there are quite a bit of moments with deeply cringey humor, which is a lot of the gross out type stuff you see in some of Sandler’s other work like “Happy Gilmore” or “Little Nicky”, and when those jokes pop up, the movie didn’t work for me. That being said, I still enjoyed it far more than I thought I would, and I’m excited to see where both Sadie Sandler and Chloe East go from here.

Rating: 7/10

Apex

Apex is a new Netflix thriller starring Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton. It tells the story of Sasha, a grieving woman going on an expedition in the Australian wilderness who catches the attention of a serial killer. Sasha has to use her climbing skills and brain to try and survive.

What a piece of shit. This movie should be far better than it is. I love both Taron Egerton and Charlize Theron, but they are given nothing to work with in the script. Nothing in the movie makes sense. Egerton has a chance to kill Theron about 75,000 times over the course of the movie, and he never does. Why? I don’t know and neither does the movie. There is never a good explanation given. Her leg gets trapped in a bear trap at one point, and he takes her leg out of it and puts her in handcuffs. Huh? Why? Why on earth would a serial killer who has done this kind of thing countless times ever do something like that? Oh right. He wouldn’t. There are so many choices made like that over the course of the film, and every time I saw one of them I just got more and more frustrated with the film. There are films that take a similar plot and make them far more interesting. Take the 2017 film Revenge. Revenge is a similar plot. A woman gets left for dead in the middle of the desert, and when the three men who left her discover that she is alive, they hunt her down to try and finish the job. Now, Revenge is a very good film, and the reason for that is the writing is far superior. The way Jen survives in Revenge makes sense. She uses the weaknesses of the men against them. She hides. She sneaks around. She plays it smart. Sasha in Apex does not do any of these things. If the film wanted Sasha to survive, they needed to write her as a smarter character. As is, this is one of the worst films of the year.

Rating: 1/5

Over Your Dead Body

Over Your Dead Body is a remake of the 2021 film The Trip, which centers around a couple where both the husband and wife plan on killing the other, but their plan goes awry when home invaders break into their house.

While this film wasn’t as good as the original, I still had a great time! The action is well choreographed and fun, the script is solid, and both Jason Segel and Samara Weaving do a fantastic job. I am much more of a movie watcher than a TV show watcher, and since Segel spends most of his time doing shows, it has been a while since I had seen him in a project. I forgot how funny he is. His delivery and timing is perfect. Samara Weaving does a great job as well. After having to watch her deal with such an awful script in Ready or Not 2 earlier in the year, it made me happy seeing her actually given something good to work with. She has great chemistry with Segel, and she did a great job with the comedy bits, being just as funny as Segel in several moments, which is very impressive. Now, the film started to fall apart a little bit for me once Timothy Olyphant and Juliette Lewis come into the film. Their performances felt a little too over the top, and I felt like the prisoners plotline was unnecessary. I understand that it was part of the original film, but I think the film felt a little overstuffed with that additional plot point. It was too much and took time away from the best parts of the film, which was watching Weaving and Segel try to kill each other.

Rating: 6/10

Ricky

Ricky stars Stephan James as the titular character and focuses on his struggles of dealing with life after getting out of prison after a 15 year sentence.

What a heartbreaking film. The film doesn’t do anything new, or say anything that hasn’t been said in countless other films about prison, but it still broke my heart and kept me glued and engrossed for every moment because of James’ performance as Ricky. At points it doesn’t even feel like he’s acting. He embodies the character and makes him feel so real, and my heart broke watching him try to do good time and time again over the course of the film, and yet he seems to only make things worse the more he tries. Sheryl Lee Ralph also gives a great performance as the parole officer for Ricky. You can tell that she is a hardass, but she does it because she cares and is doing everything she can to keep Ricky from going back to jail. I was also a big fan of how Rashad Frett directed the film. I loved the opening scene with all of Ricky’s family around him with their hands on him, like they were trying to lift him up, and I loved the grainy and simple filter over the film. It reminded me of how Coogler shot Fruitvale Station. Now, I do have to knock the film down a little as it does not do anything new. There have been many, many films that have told a story deeply similar to this film, and have told it in a more interesting and unique way. Still, James’ performance carries and shines through, and makes it completely worth watching.

Rating: 8/10

Mother Mary

Mother Mary comes from acclaimed director David Lowery and stars Anne Hathaway as a pop star who goes to her former designer to request a new dress for her upcoming tour.

Personally, I found this film to be completely exhausting. The characters do not speak like human beings. They speak exclusively in metaphors for two hours, and it feels like every line is said only if it feels like it should be “important”. It is exhausting and tiring trying to keep up with it and understand what the characters are trying to say, especially with how boring the film is. In addition to the characters speaking nonsensical, they also speak in an almost whispered tone for almost the entirety of the film, which caused me to almost drift off to sleep at least five times over the course of the film. I found it to be insufferable. The one and only saving grace that this film had was the visuals. There were many moments where the visuals were absolutely gorgeous, stunning, freaky, and interesting. I only wish the script had the same aspects.

Rating: 3/10

Animal Farm

Animal Farm is the newest adaptation of the classic George Orwell novel from director Andy Serkis. It tells the story of a group of farm animals kicking the human farmers off the farm and taking control, but things start to go awry when there’s confict within the group of animals.

This may quite possibly be the worst film I have watched in my entire life. The film takes an incredible book, takes out everything that made it special, dumbs it down, adds in fart jokes and product placements, and turns out what might possibly be the worst adaptation of a book I have ever seen. The animation is horrible, the voice acting is terrible, the script is terrible. There is nothing good about this film, and I wish that I had never gone to see such a monstrosity.

Rating: 0/10