Guna Guna Istri Muda (2023 film)

This marks the 50th movie I've reviewed for this blog!

Thanks to all my supporters - I couldn't have got this far without you :)

Anyway, back to the high-quality and definitely not sarcastic movie reviews!

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Category: Foreign language supernatural horror

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The title of this movie roughly translates to "Black magic from the junior wife", and revolves around a successful businessman who takes a second wife who then takes it upon herself to launch a campaign of supernatural terror against the husband and his first wife for being left out of the fortune.

Now, Indonesia does things differently - I mean, it is a different place, but can they make a good horror film? Let's find out after the plot!

The plot:

The movie starts off with three women in a gym, Angel, Mayang and one other person doing some sort of yoga or Pilates session, presumably to keep them fit and desirable. After the session, Angel and Mayang discuss Angel's new boyfriend. The third woman then goes to the bathroom and notices an uncomfortable itch around her crotch. She removes her leggings and sees maggots in her underwear, her scalp then gets itchy, skin peels off, her body breaks out in pus and goo, then she seemingly drowns in a deluge of something resembling bodily fluids.

The Watchers (2024 film)

Category: Supernatural drama/thriller

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The majority of reviews I read for this 2024 supernatural drama movie rated it negatively. However, I enjoyed this movie enough (for the most part) to come to a different opinion, putting me in the minority of reviewers who thought this movie was overall positive. But there two lessons - know when to end a movie, and when will people learn to not blindly trust their GPS?

The plot explained:

Dakota Fanning plays Mina, an aspiring artist who works a dead-end job in Galway, Ireland, and is asked by her boss to drive a precious Golden Conure parrot to a zoo in Belfast.

However, just like with Outback, the GPS is the movie's first villain as it leads Mina deep into a forest with no paved road in the west of Ireland when her car suddenly breaks down and the electronics stop working. As she walks around the forest looking for assistance (caged Golden Conure in hand), she first notices her car isn't where she thought it was and can't be found, and then she suddenly sees an elderly woman walking alone. She gives chase to the elderly woman who leads her to an incongruous box-like structure whose defining feature is a large one-way mirror in the front that allows the outside to see in, but the people inside to only see their reflection.

Nitram (2021 movie)

Category: Biographical drama.

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Nitram is produced by the same person that brought you Snowtown, Justin Kurzel. So you know it's not going to be a rom-com.

Even if you're not overly familiar with large swathes of Australian history, you probably already know about the Port Arthur Massacre, Australia's worst instance of firearm deaths and the catalyst for our world-famous gun laws. And just like with Snowtown, this movie is a 90% retelling - it tells the overall story, but changes some details.

Nitram (played by Caleb Landry Jones, and based off of the real-life perpetrator Martin Bryant) lives with his mother (Judy Davis) and father (Anthony LaPaglia) who clearly love and dote on their son, but his intellectual disability affects how he interacts with people and the world around him. And given this is the 1970s and 1980s, not much in the way of social support is given - you were expected to tough it out and hope for the best.

We see various interactions between Nitram and his parents that clearly show the struggle they go through to keep him out of trouble and them onto their sanity, as well as Nitram's father's attempt to secure a bank loan to buy a bed and breakfast on the Tasmanian coast that he plans to retire to.

Immaculate (2024 movie)

Category: Nun horror

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If you asked me even last week if I'd be eager to see Sydney Sweeney in a film, any film - let alone a horror - I'd have laughed you out the building. I mean, after her performance (if I could call it that) in Madame Web, who would have thought a nun-horror film would be the thing to sway my opinion?

But sway my opinion it did, and while I'm nowhere near becoming a Sydney Sweeney fan-boi, I can see her becoming an top-level actress if she can make some minor improvements to how she goes about her craft (something I will expand on later).

So the plot of this movie isn't TOO deep and meaningful, but interesting nun-theless (see what I did there?):

Like all good nun-horror films, we start with a flashback to a scene however many decades prior where a young nun in her convent/abbey/cloister sneaks into the bedroom of her Mother Superior and steals a set of keys. Said nun then runs towards the front gate and fumbles the keys as four hooded figures bear down on her. The nun is able to unlock the gate, but that gate is also chained and the chain has just enough slack to squeeze her body through. But right as she gets out, she slips and a hooded figure grabs her leg, pulls it back through the gate and gives it a twist to (painfully) ensure the nun isn't able to run anywhere in a hurry.

Dragged Across Concrete (2018 movie)

Category: Crime drama/thriller

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They say there is no such thing as bad publicity, but I'm sure Hollywood big names like Harvey Weinstein and Mel Gibson would disagree. And so we come to one of the biggest conundrums I felt when I hit play on this movie: despite all the horrible things Mel Gibson has been recorded as saying and has been sued for as well as any number of other things, can we still appreciate his work as an actor?

Well, you better, because you're going to miss out on a LOT if you let your personal feelings about Mel Gibson get in the way of what is an outstanding performance in the 2018 crime drama, Dragged Across Concrete.

This movie is actually three stories that eventually weave in to one:

South Park: Joining The Panderverse (2023 Animated Film)

Category: Animated comedy/social commentary

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South Park are an acquired taste, even for people of my generation. I remember when South Park first hit the screens in the late 90s and while all the uni kids loved the low-brow humour, the older generation made sure that South Park made the news for its ability to offend. And the church I was in at the time may or may not have had a thing or three to say about it as well.

But you have to give Trey Parker and Matt Stone credit. Where The Simpsons have gone on to die a slow, painful death after bowing down to the deity of political correctness, Parker and Stone have been able to keep the creative juices flowing BECAUSE they don't tow any line and let EVERYONE cop a serve.

So if you like offensive comedy as much as I do, this will be right up your alley.

There are two plots running side by side in this movie that eventually tie up. The minor plot is that Randy, Stan's father, needs his oven door fixed. However, because very few people know how to actually fix things anymore due to the proliferation of electronic entertainment devices, the only two handymen in South Park are able to charge what they want and become very rich. Randy attempts to buck the duopoly created by the handyment by going to a hardware store to find an illegal immigrant who will do the job for cheaper, but all he ends up finding are more professional men like himself who also need things fixed.

The Hate U Give (2018 movie)

Category: Race-relations/social commentary drama

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It takes balls to create a movie revolving around black-on-black crime and still think that it's white people that need to take notes. Maybe the people behind this movie went to the same school of logic as the people who made Candyman.

And it takes even more balls to be half-Dutch half-American actress from Los Angeles, consistently get work as you grow up, become a trained violinist but somehow still say your people are opressed and that "white people crying was the goal!". Seriously - get over yourself!

My children had to watch this movie as part of a school project, which they liked it enough to make me watch it. And look, as a movie, The Hate U Give (based on the book of the same name) is not bad - the story is easy to follow, pulls at the heartstrings in all the right spots, all that stuff.

But there's a reason why fictionalised drama is just that - fictionalised.