Things Heard & Seen [2021] ★½
Simply put, Netflix’s latest supernatural thriller is a waste of two hours. Part family drama, part haunted house movie, “Things Heard & Seen” tries to juggle a lot of themes at once, but it all adds up to nothing. Amanda Seyfried is the only saving grace of this movie; she plays an artist who relocates with her family to a house with a mysterious past. She also starts to suspect that her husband (played by James Norton) is keeping secrets from her. It’s easy to know where this story is going, perhaps a bit too easy. But the people behind it are convinced that they have a few surprises up their sleeve. Surprise: there isn’t any. Instead, the final third is a complete disaster and left a bad taste in my mouth. I’m convinced that this movie could have been at least decent. Too bad I probably won’t remember it a week from now.
It took Eddie Murphy and co 30 years to cook-up a sequel to the 1988 cult classic “Coming To America”. Was it worth the wait and the hype? Quite frankly, no. This is a tedious sequel, the kind that shouldn’t even exist in the first place. No one was expecting Shakespeare, but even nostalgia couldn’t save this film from being a complete misfire. It’s been three decades since African monarch Akeem (Murphy) visited America in search of love. Now he’s about to learn that he has a long-lost son and must travel back to Queens to bring him home. There isn’t much going on here, and most of the jokes fall flat. Even the flashback sequences from the first film feel forced and unnecessary. I don’t know what they were hoping to achieve with this sequel, but it feels like a reunion rather than a feature film. Sadly, I couldn’t wait for it to end. “Coming 2 America” is the first real disappointment of the year.
I rarely say this about any movie, but I truly struggled to finish “The Midnight Sky”, Netflix’s latest Science-Fiction film directed by and starring Georges Clooney. He plays a lone scientist whose sole purpose is to warn a crew of astronauts about a global catastrophe. Or something like that. The film is all over the place from the word go, with Clooney failing to deliver on an emotional level. How can anyone give a crap about all these characters if we’re not given a single reason to do so? But that’s just one of the things that bothered me here. Visually, the movie earns some extra points. But everything else is a dud. Space movies have never been this dull. Skip “The Midnight Sky” and stream the limited series “Away” instead.
After his unforgettable performance in last year’s “Uncut Gems”, Adam Sandler goes back to his old, silly self in Netflix’s latest Halloween comedy “Hubie Halloween”. Sandler plays the good-hearted Hubie Dubois, a man devoted to his hometown of Salem. Hubie also happens to love Halloween so much, and this s obviously a setup for a night of silly/spooky gags. Unfortunately, and like most of Sandler’s comedy vehicles, the result is a forgettable film that rarely rises above the routine. Most of the gags fall flat (no surprises there), and the supporting cast (which includes Kevin James, Ray Liotta, Steve Buscemi, Maya Rudolph and, of course, Rob Schneider) is wasted. Still, I have to admit that I enjoyed the Halloween atmosphere in Salem, and that’s probably the only reason why I decided to watch this movie in the first place. The rest, from the stupid jokes to a chaotic climax, is a dud. “Hubie Halloween” is dead on arrival.
You’ve seen this movie a zillion times before: married woman (Nia Long, wasted) is reunited with her college boyfriend (Omar Epps). They kiss. She regrets it. He doesn’t. Surprise: he’s also an obsessed stalker who would stop at nothing to get what he wants. I’d call this Netflix film a cross between “Fatal Attraction” and a lot of movies of the same genre, but you probably knew that already. The result is a thriller that buries itself in endless clichés and never truly delivers something worth remembering (everything you need to know is in the trailer). It’s not completely awful or unwatchable, but it’s recycled and doesn’t bring anything new to the table. Skip it.
Title says it all: Kevin Bacon and his family book a vacation at an isolated modern home in the Welsh countryside. Then weird stuff begin to happen. By “weird” I mean the same generic things we’ve come to expect from movies of the same genre. What starts out as an intriguing mystery soon turns into a preposterous thriller that makes no sense whatsoever. Bacon and Amanda Seyfried are both wasted here, but the movie would have been even worse without them. So that extra star goes to them. Everything else, from the lazy writing to a stupid climax, is a dud. Needless to say, this movie should have never left that studio.
Netflix’s “Wounds” is 5% intrigue and 95% a waste of a talented cast. It starts out well enough then quickly degenerates into a confusing mess. Armie Hammer is good as always, but he doesn’t have much to work with. He plays a bartender who finds his life spin out of control when he finds a cell phone with disturbing messages and photos on it. This is the 5% intrigue I was referring to. And I admit: I really wanted to see where this story was going. Unfortunately, nothing makes sense here, and the movie never truly gives you the answers you’re looking for. In fact, it raises more questions than it answers, leaving you with a sense that you’ve just wasted your time on yet another terrible Netflix movie. You’ve been warned.
“Horse Girl” is yet another Netflix movie that tries to juggle a lot of themes at once, only to end up falling flat on its face. Alison Brie co-wrote the script and stars as a socially isolated woman who becomes convinced that she is the cloned version of her grandmother. A series of increasingly lucid dreams send her on a roller-coaster ride that sadly leads nowhere. Brie is good and gives it her very best, but everything else -from the dull dream-like sequences to a confusing ending- is a dud. I admire Brie and Jeff Baena’s ambitious screenplay, but I wish it were more coherent or even better: fulfilling. Movies like “Horse Girl” are supposed to leave you with a feeling that you’ve just witnessed something special. Alas, I ended up feeling like I’ve wasted my time instead.
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