Grant Minnick's Movie Reviews

“Murder is sin.  Murder is damnation.  But murder is also work.” - Wilfred James 1922 is a 2017 Netflix original film based on a short story by Stephen King.  It is written and directed by Zak Hilditch, and stars Thomas Jane, Molly Parker, and Dylan Schmid.  The story is set in the year 1922, and follows Wilfred James (Jane), a hard-working farmer with an extremely antagonistic and demanding wife named Arlette (Parker), and a teenage son named Henry (Schmid).  When Arlette wants to sell the farmland given to her by her late father, Wilfred states that he would rather not pursue that course of action.  But when Arlette announces she wants a divorce, and is going to take Henry with her to Omaha, Wilfred decides that one way or another, he is going to keep his son, and the farm.  He points out to Henry that Arlette is always making judgmental and hurtful comments to both of them, and enlists Henry to help him kill her.  For the entire rest of t...

“He’s going to laugh at you, they’re all going to laugh at you!” - Margaret White Carrie is a 1976 horror film based on the first novel by Stephen King.  The movie is directed by Brian DePalma, and stars Sissy Spacek in the titular role of Carrie White, a shy, and extremely introverted high school senior with telekinetic powers.  She is incessantly bullied not only at school, but also by her fanatically religious mother, so when everything finally becomes too much for poor Carrie to take, things go downhill very quickly. For roughly the first half hour of Carrie , I was asking myself many questions.  “What are the filmmakers trying to communicate here?”  “ Why was this choice made?”  “How does this scene relate at all to the film?”  “Why is everything so tonally inconsistent?”  “In what direction is this film going?”  Nothing was making sense to me, and everything seemed unintentionally funny.  This continued to go on for the whole ...

“This is gonna be good for us, Jess.  Really good.” - Gerald Gerald’s Game is a 2017 Netflix original film based on the classic Stephen King book of the same name.  The film was directed by Mike Flanagan, and stars Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood as Jessie and Gerald, a married couple who decide to go to a remote lake house to spice up their romantic relationship.  They begin a sexual adventure involving handcuffs, when suddenly, Gerald has a heart attack and dies, leaving Jessie chained to the bed with seemingly no escape in sight.  From there, a hungry dog finds its way into the house, and after a while, her mind starts playing tricks on her, causing her to hallucinate.  This film is incredibly tense, and rarely gives you any moments to catch your breath.  It’s one of those very few films that really managed to get under my skin.  To put it bluntly, this movie scared the daylights out of me, which is something that barely ever happens to me ...

“Losers stick together.” - Ben Hanscom It Chapter Two is a horror film directed by Andy Muschietti, and is the sequel to the 2017 movie It .  The film stars James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, Bill Hader, Isaiah Mustafa, Jay Ryan, James Ransone, and Bill Skarsgård.  The story follows the Losers Club all grown up, 27 years after they fought the evil clown Pennywise.  Now Pennywise is back in their hometown of Derry, Maine, and so the Losers must all come back to get rid of the menacing clown for good. I am a huge fan of the first It , and considered it one of the best movies of 2017.  Chapter Two was one of my most anticipated films of this year, and I walked away feeling more or less satisfied with what this movie gave me.   First of all, something that everybody seems to be talking about is the cast, and for good reason.  The actors are all wonderful, and they do a great job at personifying the members of the Losers Club, and how they act as ad...

“This here’s the Bad Batch.  We ain’t good.  We’re bad.” - The Dream The Bad Batch is a 2016 sci-fi drama film about a girl who is dropped in the middle of a desert wasteland, and forced to fend for herself among all of the other people who have been cast out from the rest of society like her.  The film stars Suki Waterhouse, Jason Momoa, Keanu Reeves, and Giovanni Ribisi, and is written and directed by Ana Lily Amirpour.   I began watching The Bad Batch with high hopes, and came away feeling disappointed and underwhelmed.  The film has some things going for it, but there were so many issues and problems, that I found myself growing bored of it not even halfway in.  The film was entirely too long, and the runtime could’ve been cut back at least forty minutes, if not even more.  The pacing is really terrible, and the majority of the scenes in the film drag on for far too long.  Most scenes in this movie are just long, extended scenes ...

“Do you believe there is a part of yourself, deep inside your mind, with things you don’t want other people to see?  During a session when I’m inside, I get to see those things.” - Catherine Deane The Cell is a sci-fi thriller that was released in the year 2000.  The film stars Jennifer Lopez, Vince Vaughn, and Vincent D’Onofrio, and is directed by Tarsem Singh, or as he’s more commonly known, Tarsem.  When serial killer Carl Stargher (D’Onofrio) is found passed out on the floor when the FBI raid his house, Agent Peter Novak (Vaughn) has a dilemma.  Stargher’s latest victim is trapped in a cell in an unknown location, that at the end of the day will be filled up with water, causing her to drown.  But because Stargher is in a coma, he is unable to tell Novak where the victim is located.  The solution he finds is in the form of a psychotherapist named Catherine Deane (Lopez), who can enter Stargher’s mind using a new technology, to find out where the vi...

For this review, I wanted to do something a little bit different.  I just read Ghost World by Daniel Clowes, and immediately after, watched the film adaptation.  I thought it would be cool if I talked about both the comic and the film, giving my thoughts on each of them, and comparing the two.  I’ll start with talking about the book, and then go to my thoughts on the film.  Hope you enjoy!     Comic Review     “I guess that’s the problem…  I feel like I want to become a totally different person…” - Enid Coleslaw     Ghost World is a 1998 comedy-drama graphic novel written and illustrated by Daniel Clowes.  The story was originally published in eight small segments that appeared in Clowes’ comic anthology series, Eightball , from the years 1993 through 1997.  Each issue of Eightball usually included a series of self contained short stories, and a piece of a longer story which would eventually be ...