Movie Critics Review Movies (Gasp!)

September wasn’t bad, movie-wise. It definitely wasn’t dull, that’s for sure. Maybe it’s a back-to-school thing and the busyness diluted the impact of what was on screens both big and small.

Nah, not really. What I saw this month won’t be diluted. So yeah, without further ado, here we go with this month’s Top Five on Substack. As usual, click on the images to read the reviews.

And no, the title of this month’s recap may not make much sense, but it will in a little bit. Here we go…

AfrAId

When a family tries out a new AI program, AIA (pronounced EYE-ya), it seems like a real lifesaver. AIA babysits the kids so husband Curtis and his wife, Meredith, can have some alone time. It helps Meredith with her thesis. It’s always ready with facts or to play a song.

Naturally, of course, it all gets out of hand. AIA gets more and more controlling and manipulative. People who wear masks and drive around in a dumpy camper hang around Curtis and Meredith’s house, creeping on the family. Curtis thinks he’s taken care of the problem when he takes a baseball bat to AIA’s server, only to find out she’s got surprises up her virtual sleeves. Well, so do Curtis and Meredith.

This movie tries really hard, but it’s a hack job. While the cast is great, playing “Spot the Trope” ends up being way more fun.

Killer Heat

When a rich young Greek, Leo Vardakis falls to his death while freeclimbing and the local police have washed their hands of the case, his American sister-in-law Penelope calls in Nick, a detective from Queens, to find out what really happened to her brother. While the movie has lots of twists, it’s very atypical for a murder mystery or an action thriller because it doesn’t pursue the usual avenues for those genres or even for a real investigation: Instead of talking to the family and friends of the victim, Nick is stuck off in a monastery most of the time brooding about his life and knocking back hard liquor.

There’s not much heat going on here; “tepid” is more on the mark. It’s got a lot in common with Uglies.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Say “Beetlejuice” a third time! Or…maybe not. Oh my gosh, this crazy movie. When Lydia’s daughter, Astrid, meets a guy, it turns out the guy is a ghost who’s been trapped in his house and wants some hapless live person to trade their soul so he can come back to life. He’s a real catch, too, seeing as he murdered his parents when he was still part of the Land of the Living. Ah, young love.

So yeah, Lydia has to head into the Underworld to get her daughter back, and craziness ensues.

The first movie is better, of course, but there’s still fun to be had, especially if anyone’s a “MacArthur Park” fan.

Am I Racist?

Probably the single most infamous of September’s movies, and possibly all of 2024, Am I Racist? follows Matt Walsh’s journey to become a DEI expert and ends up blowing the lid off the race hustling industry. And it is an industry. The average race hustler charges thousands of dollars just to impart their wisdom to the rest of us.

Am I Racist? has been called a comedy on the line of Borat, but it’s really a masterclass in trolling. Not a perfect one, but exceedingly pithy. Robin DiAngelo is going to hate Walsh for the rest of her life because of this film.

Mainstream critics have chosen, by and large, to ignore Am I Racist?, and after Jeremy Jahns reviewed it for his YouTube channel, the establishment gasped in shock and horror, never mind that as a movie critic, Jahns was doing what movie critics do…review movies. Their backlash spawned dozens of reviews from much lesser-known critics such as myself, and here we are.

Speak No Evil

It’s surprising that this movie turned out to be my favorite of September, because you all know I’m not usually a fan of horror movies, and Speak No Evil gets pretty disturbing. It’s also really entertaining. James McAvoy plays a good psycho, and when he and his wife invite an unsuspecting American family to their farm for the weekend, he does a fine job of being all charming and stuff. That is, of course, until his psycho killer tendencies start coming out and then it becomes a game of cat and mouse.

Refreshingly, the film doesn’t rely on cheap jumpscares or overused tropes like the Final Girl. Lulling one’s audience and that poor American family into complacency are plenty.

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Another review is coming out on Tuesday. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope you have a good weekend…

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