JoeMama's Movie Reviews

Worst2First: My Most Anticipated Films of Fall 2022 The arrival of fall brings about the unofficial start of Oscar-bait films, but it also includes several crowd-pleasing franchise films and horror movies in preparation for the Halloween season. With that in mind, here are my top ten films I'm most excited to see during the Fall months of September, October, and November. **THERE WILL BE NO SPOILERS** **DATES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE** #10 Black Adam October 21 The DCEU has been floundering for a while to say the least, and can't seem to get its footing compared to the MCU, but they're putting hope that "Black Adam" will reverse that tide. It doesn't hurt that Dwayne Johnson takes on the titular antihero role, but it also comes with reservations, as Johnson is pretty much a one-note actor, so we'll see if he can lose the comedy bit since Black Adam isn't someone known to be a jovial character. He, unlike other heroes, has no quarrels with killing the bad...

  Choose or Die Starring Iola Evans, Asa Butterfield, Robert Englund, Angela Griffin Directed by Toby Meakins Sometimes the only thing worse than a movie based off a video game is a movie about a video game, because the two don't generally intersect all that well - much less when it comes to a completely new idea that you try to get across. "Stay Alive" was one such film: a movie about a group of teens who play a video game and if they die in the game, they die for real, but it's so cliche and terribly acted it was easily forgotten. Then there's the hilariously bad "Countdown," about an app that predicts the time you die and then...well...you die. While the 80s rocked with these video game films like "Videodrome," it was because of the talent behind the screen: most notably David Cronenberg, the father of body horror. In the hands of a "noob," you've got another forgettable video game horror film not worth its weight in quarters. ...

Deep Water Starring Ben Affleck, Ana de Armas, Tracy Letts, Grace Jenkins Directed by Adrian Lyne Back in the late 80s and early 90s the erotic romantic thrillers were all the rage in cinemas, brought about - I'm just spitballing here - by those romance novels with Fabio on the cover, where bored domesticated housewives wished they could be and do more than they're doing in their real lives. Films like "Fatal Attraction," "9 1/2 Weeks" and "Indecent Proposal" were worldwide hits, and besides all of them centering around this very specific subgenre, the other thing they all have in common is their director: Adrian Lyne. He continued his work finishing with 2002's "Unfaithful," and went into retirement: until now, where he dusts off the director's chair to bring back the erotic romantic thriller subgenre for a whole new generation with "Deep Water" - a film that lives up to its title, because if this is the beginning of th...

  No Exit Starring Havana Rose Liu, Danny Ramirez, David Rysdahl, Dale Dickey Directed by Damien Power Agatha Christie popularized the "whodunit" genre of novels, creating the iconic Hercule Poirot in novels like Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express where he investigates a murder with a slew of suspects who all had equal motive. You never knew who the killer was until the big reveal, after piecing together all the minuscule clues left dangling around, and that was the most entertaining part of reading them. While both of those novels have been made into big-budget films, other films - most notably Rian Johnson's amazing "Knives Out" - continued in that tradition. "No Exit" is a smaller, independent film that doesn't have the same budget, but uses its one location and smaller cast of characters to still weave an interesting - if not generic - whodunit caper. Darby Thorne (Havana Rose Liu) is a recovering drug addict living in a rehab...

Bodies Bodies Bodies Starring Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, Myha'la Herrold, Chase Sui Wonders Directed by Halina Reijn When the pandemic started there was a game on Nintendo Switch that came out called "Animal Crossing," and it was a phenomenal success, where you get to take care of your own patch of land, invite other cute creatures to live there, and form your own society. By the end of the pandemic, the game that everyone was playing was a game called "Among Us" where a group of colored characters try to fix something while someone else among them is out to sabotage and kill everyone, creating suspicion and doubt. It's an interesting parallel as to how we went from enjoying planting gardens to planting seeds of mistrust, and lately it seems that everyone is at each others' throats for every little thing. Friends don't trust one another anymore, so I guess "Bodies Bodies Bodies" is a perfect film for a new generation - dropping buzz ...

  Virus: 32 Starring Paula Silva, Daniel Hendler Directed by Gustavo Hernandez Zombie movies are a dime a dozen these days, mostly due to the rapid success of George A. Romero's zombie trilogy that re-vitalized the zombie subgenre, along with hit television series like "The Walking Dead," and no matter how "dead" the subgenre is (get it?), I still absolutely love it for some odd reason. Maybe it's because it's the one form of apocalypse I think I would do well in (as long as the zombies are slower shufflers like "The Walking Dead"), but I can't get enough of these undead brain-searchers, no matter how terrible some of their iterations are. While there's the standouts - "Shaun of the Dead," "Night of the Living Dead," "Dawn of the Dead," "Zombieland," "World War Z" - there's other, more independent films like "[Rec]" that don't have the bigger budgets to produce a multi-...

The Deep House Starring James Jagger, Camille Rowe, Eric Savin, Anne Claessens Directed by Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury I've always wanted to participate in urban exploration - or urbex, as it's known - which is the exploration of abandoned manmade structures such as old houses, hospitals, and the like. It's fascinating to see how time and nature overtakes what was once beautiful human-created structures and proves once and for all that mother nature is the ultimate power in the world, as she can take over that what was once thought created by man. Of course, these buildings are also known to be haunted and that only piques my interest more, along with the overall danger associated with it, such as rotting floors, squatters, and so on. "The Deep House" is a unique French-created horror film that features two American actors who explore abandoned buildings for their budding YouTube channel, and the film manages to split itself into three distinct sub-featu...