Veron The Reviewer

Everything Everywhere All At Once . A bold yet fitting title for this madcap movie directed by Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) that never really stops and takes the audience on a truly wild journey throughout the multiverse, mixed in with a dose of philosophical musings about emptiness and meaning and an emotional family drama at its core. The film starts with Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) having a bad day: her laundromat is being audited, her disapproving father (James Hong) is visiting, and her frigid relationship with her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) isn't getting any better. Things get weird when, on the way to the meeting with the inspector (Jamie Lee Curtis), her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) gives her a series of strange instructions. Following those instructions, Evelyn is recruited by an alternate version of Waymond to stop a dangerous threat to the multiverse. What follows is a journey that feels grand but also contained, and one that forces Evelyn to step up and...

You Won't Be Alone is not an easy film to watch.  The dialogue is sparse and entirely in an old Macedonian dialect. The protagonist never speaks. The pacing is slow, and yet there's something mesmerizing about the whole thing, in large part thanks to the beautiful scenery captured by the cinematographer. I could never look away, I was so completely immersed in the film. The plot is simple enough: A young witch rejects the witch who raised her, and, using the ability of witches to almost literally live someone else's life, she begins to understand more about humanity, even as the old witch expresses nothing but hatred towards humans.  The story is not the focus, merely the tool through which the themes of the film are laid out to be examined. Musings on identity, gender roles, privilege, and the innocence of youth are all at the heart what the film is trying to say, but the most important concepts are empathy and understanding. It is only with empathy that the young witch g...

I'm Your Woman  is a crime drama directed by Julia Hart and starring Rachel Brosnahan as Jean, a sheltered housewife who suddenly gets saddled with a baby brought home by her thief husband Eddie. When Eddie disappears, Jean is forced to go on the run with only the mysterious Cal to help her along. As the plot progresses, we see Jean caring for the baby, who she names Harry, as she attempts to hide effectively from various gangsters who want to force her to reveal where Eddie is, mistakenly believing that she knows Eddie's location. The film is very enjoyable, with Rachel Brosnahan giving a great performance firmly anchoring the character of Jean and the film in every scene. Jean starts out a clueless and panicky wreck, barely knowing how to care for Harry, but over the course of the film, we see her become calmer and more self-assured as the reality of her situation sets in and she gradually understands Eddie's true nature from her newfound associates. I also love how the f...

The Invisible Man  (2020) is a horror film directed by Leigh Whannell (who also directed Upgrade ), starring Elisabeth Moss as Cecilia Kass, a traumatized woman who escapes from her controlling boyfriend Adrian. When she receives word that Adrian has killed himself, she tries to resume a normal life, but things are complicated when it is revealed that Adrian left her an enormous fortune and Cecilia finds herself increasingly sure that she is being stalked by an invisible presence who may be Adrian. Elisabeth Moss is really the star of the show here, making everything that Cecilia does highly relatable, whether it's looking around in fear while convinced that something is stalking her, talking about her abuse at Adrian's hands, or actively trying to fight against the invisible entity. She embodies Cecilia's fear and determination so absolutely that all the horrible things she has been through and all the horrible things that happen to her throughout the film search to make h...

Fresh (2022) is a horror film with comedic elements, available on Hulu. I implore you to watch the film before reading any more. Be warned, it is not for the faint-hearted. Seriously. A well-made horror film Ingredients: Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones, Normal People ) Steve (Sebastian Stan, Bucky from the Marvel movies) Mollie (Jonica T. Gibbs, Twenties ) The horrors of modern dating come to life in the worst ways imaginable Steps: Step 1. Be Noa, a nice but lonely girl struggling with dating via dating apps Step 2. Meet a nice handsome guy randomly in a supermarket Step 3. Get to know the guy Step 4. He takes you to his house Step 5. He gives you a drink Step 6. What happens next is not what you'd expect, it's much much worse For the first 20 to 30 minutes of Fresh , the film presents itself as a romantic drama centered around Noa and Steve's relationship. I was interested to see where it would go next, but thought it would be somewhat predictable. To say that my jaw dropped afte...

P2  is a horror/thriller film stripped down to the bare basics: a woman, a man, and an enclosed space. Angela Bridges (Rachel Nichols) is a young workaholic working overtime on Christmas Eve. Once she finally decides to leave, she finds that her car will not start. She gets help from security guard Thomas (Wes Bentley) but still fails to get the car to start. Angela resolves to call a taxi. Thomas invites her to spend Christmas with him but she declines his offer, anxious to get home and have dinner with her family. However, she soon finds herself locked in the building, unable to leave. When she goes back to the parking garage, the lights go out, and Thomas drugs her and takes her to his office to have his Christmas dinner, whether she wants to or not. What follows is a suspenseful, occasionally disturbing story about Angela desperately trying to survive against the twisted affections of the increasingly unhinged Thomas. The story is simply but the thrills and scares are definitel...

Kimi  is a 2022 techno-thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Zoe Kravitz as Angela Childs, a nervous and agoraphobic (fear of difficult situations where escape may not be possible) woman who refuses to leave home out of intense anxiety and works at home for a major tech company manufacturing a product known as Kimi (think Amazon's Alexa device), specifically analyzing data streams recorded by Kimi to improve the device's voice recognition functions. Angela has severe anxiety, compounded by the fact that she was previously assaulted. She struggles to even leave her home and walk across the street to meet her boyfriend. With the film being set and filmed during the COVID-19 Pandemic, her anxiety over stepping outside of her home will likely resonate with many viewers.  One night, Angela hears a strange voice stream that alerts her to the possibility of a violent crime, but when she tries to notify her superiors, she is quickly told to ignore the concerning situatio...