Speak No Evil 2024

Speak No Evil (2024)

There’s something not quite right with the Daltons.  That’s painfully evident from the outset, when they choose to wallow in their own misery despite being in a beautiful part of Italy.  They don’t hide their misery, either, wearing it like an irritating jacket wherever they go.  Ben Dalton  (Scoot McNairy) is morose, while Louise Dalton (Mackenzie Davis) is edgy and controlling.  The two are so clenched around each other I imagined they squeak while walking.  Unsurprisingly, the two have unresolved issues between them that will play a consequential role in what transpires. 

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Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

As I grow older, I sometimes wonder what the afterlife is like.  Will it follow the Catholic doctrine I was raised in, and be a celestial wonderland where everyone sings hymns and floats along on wings?  While that certainly sounds nice, I suspect I would get bored with it after a millennia or two.  Or maybe the afterlife will be like what Tim Burton envisioned in Beetlejuice, a world where the dead alternate between haunting the living and traveling to a janky bureaucracy.  Call me crazy, but the latter sounds like more fun.

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Deadpool & Wolverine

Deadpool & Wolverine (review)

One movie?  That’s all that Kevin f****** Feige is giving me in 2024?  This hardly seems fair, considering how I’ve been among the party faithful from the beginning.  I paid to see the very mediocre Black Widow, The Eternals, Thor: Love & Thunder and Antman and the Wasp: Quantumania.  I’m one of the biggest defenders of Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness, for crying out loud.  I did punk out on The Marvels, but that’s no reason to force me to go cold turkey, Feige.

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Blink Twice

Blink Twice

One theory about crime that I’ve latched onto is how criminal activity is driven by the need to feel in control.  Generally speaking, criminals want to control the things they lack.  For example, a wealthy person controls money.  When a person of limited means steals it, they obtain control over the other person’s money.  (I’m grossly oversimplifying “Control Balance theory”, by the way.  Search on it if you’d like to know more.)  Similarly, a person can effectively control another person through a variety of criminal behaviors, principle among them being physical assault and murder.  The latter examples came to mind while I watched Blink Twice, where the desire to control another person, both mentally and physically, explains what we see, if only superficially.

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