The Gift (2000) - 1/5

This movie is overwrought and derivative. It uses small town depravity for cheap shock value and draws out its personal drama into melodrama. Despite its appearance, there’s no mystery for the audience to solve, as all relevant information is revealed at the end. No justice is served for any of the crimes in the film, except assumedly for the central case which takes up surprisingly little of the runtime.

Content warning: female nudity, domestic abuse, child sexual abuse

Closest comparison: It’s like Blue Steel by way of Dolores Claiborne.

Setting: Small Town Horror
Plot: Psychic Mystery
Tone: Tragedy

Nightmare Alley (2021) - 3/5

This film is a faithful, high budget adaptation of the 1947 movie of the same name. It’s a compelling depiction of a tawdry, base, cruel story with an ending that approaches psychological horror. The style is not the fun-creepy defunct carnival that I had hoped for, but more of a grimy, despicable underbelly of society style. Its narrative is winding and sometimes loses its way, but ultimately delivers an unforgettable, twisted morality tale.

Closest comparison: It’s like Detour by way of The Devil’s Backbone.

Setting: Noir
Plot: Self-Made Ruin
Tone: Thriller

How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World - 2/5

There are a few great moments between Toothless and the new dragon with some legitimately beautiful cinematography, but the story overall is only mostly passable. The main supporting characters are so aggressively obnoxious that even if someone else were watching this movie I would only stick around for the scenes with Toothless. The movie is going for irritating humor, and if you enjoy that then you will probably get more mileage out of it than I did.

Closest Comparison: The same thing is happening to this franchise as happened to Shrek.

Setting: Fantasy
Plot: Adventure
Tone: Comedy

Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (Netflix) - 4/5

This is what Disney’s The Jungle Book (2016) should have been: much more thoughtully constructed, more emotive facial animation on the animals, and an all-around more engaging story. The voice acting is so good I couldn’t tell who anyone was (except Cate Blanchett), and was astonished to see the cast list in the end credits. In Disney’s version Mowgli looks like he has never been outisde before and timidly walks around fallen logs. In this version Mowgli is running on all fours and diving off treebranches. This is a microcosm of the difference in quality between these two movies. Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle is a bit darker than its Disney counterpart, and even though it’s still a family-weight film some parts may be frightening to young children.

Closest comparison: It’s a better version of Disney’s The Jungle Book (2016)

Thor: Ragnarok - 3/5

Mileage may vary. The action is awesome, but only some of the humor worked for me. The visuals are stunning, but much of the plot only pays off mildly well. It's not a bad film by any means, but it's only 'fine' when it could have been 'great'. It's candy, not meat and potatoes. It's fun, flashy and fleeting.

 Honestly the fact that the trailers ruined so much of the movie was very disappointing to me. There's like 20 minutes of build-up to "who is Thor going to fight?", but that was in the first 20 seconds of the trailer. And for as amazing as many of the costumes were, Valkyrie's costume was one of the worst I've seen in any super hero movie. Who thought "You know what's a badass color? Taupe."