RRR - Randall's Review Room

"The Banshees of Inisherin" Where I watched it: Disney+ This film is fantastic. On its surface it's a simple story of two Irish men who have found themselves at odds with one another. Beneath that, it's an allegorical take on the Irish Civil War of 1922. The film centers around two men, Pàdriac (Colin Farrel) and Colm (Brendan Gleesan) while the Irish Civil War plays out in the background. The set up comes in the way of Colm no longer wanting to continue his friendship with Pàdriac due to his desire to focus on the more "intellectual" pursuit of composing music rather than spending his time exchanging meaningless conversation with what he considers a "dull" person. This sets the story in motion and Pàdriac, not satisfied with Colm's assessment of him as "dull" decides to be persistent in finding out the real reason behind the discontinuation of their friendship. In his attempts to do so, he is met with a strange and masochistic ultima...

"Infinity Pool" Where I watched it: Toronto Premiere at Scotiabank Theatre "Infinity Pool" is Brandon Cronenberg's third feature film. To be brutally honest, I stopped watching his first film "Antiviral" after about 20 minutes. I kinda hated it. I own a copy of his second film "Possessor" but I still haven't gotten around to watching it. I decided to check out his latest film in part due to the premiere screening having Brandon Cronenberg himself and star of the film Alexander Skarsgård in attendance. Another big draw was Mia Goth with "Pearl" being one of my favorite films of 2022. I knew very little about this movie going in and I would recommend keeping it that way for anyone interested in seeing this. The trailer is weird and vague enough that you can safely watch it without spoiling much. To say this film is an assault on the senses is an understatement. Imagine David Lynch, Gaspar Noè and David Cronenberg all stepped into ...

"Pig" A troubling look into the seedy underbelly of the truffle racket, with Nic Cage playing a vagrant soul with a history of... you guessed it... being an awesome chef. This film has a lot going on, part revenge movie, part buddy comedy. It's premise is that a truffle farmer has his treasured truffle pig/best friend/emotional replacement for his dead wife stolen by some competing meth head truffle farmers. They trade the pig with some mafioso type truffle dealers and Nic Cage goes on a journey through the characters of his past in search of his beloved porky boi. Cage remains bloody and bruised throughout the film and nobody seems to overly care, despite dining at lavish restaurants and entering various households and businesses. Everyone bows to him though because he is a cheflord. All together it was an entertaining watch but I felt the relationships between characters and pigs wasn't established on a level that really brought the emotional weight they were going ...

  "Crawl" This movie is stupid but at least it knows it. CG alligators and CG gore make up a good portion of this movie and it's almost always disappointing to witness but despite that the film is ultimately pretty fun and entertaining. 6/10

"In The Deep" is a shark themed horror film starring Mandy Moore and the asshole "father" of Eleven from Stranger Things. Originally titled "47 Meters Down" this movie is about two sisters who decide to go for a cage dive to see some of Mexico's Great White Sharks. What could go wrong? Everything! The line attaching the cage to the boat breaks, sending the two sisters down to the bottom of the ocean. Well not really, but they end up being stuck 47 meters down in the deep (no wonder they had a tough time naming the film). The sharks are a primary conflict but the film doesn't rely solely on it. It's kind of like Gravity but underwater. The hopelessness of being in such a hostile environment is not ignored for a single moment, throwing the viewer into a claustrophobic nightmare. The panic levels are always high as you watch the characters oxygen levels dwindle. And no, they can't swim to the surface or else they will get "the bends"...

  "Exists" a film by the director of the Blair Witch project, shows a return to the found footage genre, where the notoriously blurry Bigfoot decides to "fuck with" a group of asshole twenty-somethings. A guy who looks like Charlie Day obsessively films everything with seemingly endless battery supply and media storage. A woman gets shaken to death. There's even a wittle baby sass. 7/10. Fantastic film. Can't wait to see what Eduardo Sanchez does next.