When actors direct
In this week’s Criticize This! we take a look at Chris Pine’s directorial debut, a nasty movie about a theatre critic, and a sci-fi film that made us feel ugly.
THE BIG ONE
We’ve been interested in seeing Chris Pine’s Poolman ever since reports of walkouts during its screening at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2023. Could a movie at a prestigious film festival really be this bad, we thought? The answer is yes, and maybe even more so than the barrage of terrible reviews depict it as.
Along with directing and co-writing, Pine also stars in Poolman as Darren Barrenman; an odd man who lives in a trailer by a pool at an apartment complex and writes letters to Erin Brockovich as if they’re best friends. He’s also making a documentary of some sort about his battles with Los Angeles City Hall, but it’s not quite clear why.
That’s pretty much the intro to the movie. From there it falls apart and becomes barely watchable. How Pine was able to get Danny DeVito, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Annette Benning to join him in this debacle of a pet project is beyond us (and it makes us mad).
After viewing it, we totally get how the movie has a 21% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes with a 20% audience rating (it also has an abysmal 4 out of 10 on the IMDb). This is a bad movie with no redeeming qualities to it.
“[Poolman] does not have the luxury of being the funny type of bad; it’s just altogether bad, an astounding misfire that plenty of talented people got roped into and then given absolutely nothing to work with, for an entertainment-free 100 minutes,” Jack Martin wrote in his review.
Carla Hay wrote on Culture Mix that the movie is “very unamusing and incoherent”, adding that “everyone involved should be embarrassed.”
Pine should not only never attempt to direct again, but we’re even questioning his acting abilities now. His performance was annoying to sit through and made us angry to watch. And we think he would have been just as horrible with someone else directing him.
“Surely, you hope, this turkey will eventually come to life. Surely, you think, with one eye glancing at the exit door, it will turn out to be about something. But all hopes are eclipsed by its idiotic, self-indulgent nothingness,” Rex Reed said of the film in his zero star review.
Out of the 12 positive reviews for the film on Rotten Tomatoes, the only one that feels sincere is from an NPR podcast where Andy Klein said Poolman was “sort of a hot mess, but it’s a really enjoyable hot mess.” No, Andy, it’s just a piece of shit.
Our take: Don’t bother wasting your time with this trash.
Poolman is now available to buy on VOD platforms in Canada.
IN THEATRES
The Critic
We didn’t see the original cut of The Critic at the 2023 Toronto Film Festival, but apparently the filmmakers reshot some scenes and reedited the movie after receiving negative feedback from the audience. The adjustments didn’t seem to help, as the movie still only has a 43% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes with a mediocre 6.2 out of 10 on the IMDb.
Set in 1930s London, the version we watched offered some great performances from Ian McKellen, who plays a powerful theatre critic, and Gemma Arterton, who plays an actress in McKellen’s crosshairs, but overall the movie is just nasty and hard to enjoy. Supporting actors Mark Strong and Ben Barnes were also sadly wasted in their roles.
The Critic is now playing in limited release across Canada.
Speak No Evil
Speak No Evil is an American remake of a 2022 Danish thriller of the same name that many fans felt was unnecessary to remake. But this new version, which stars James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, and Scoot McNairy, seems to be winning people over, and it currently has a 89% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, with many applauding McAvoy’s performance.
“McAvoy is where the praise should start when it comes to the performances as it’s such a treat to see an actor be locked in with exactly what the movie needs at any moment,” Terence Johnson wrote in his review.
And Olga Artemyeva wrote in her review for ScreenAnarchy that “it’s rare to see an actor visibly have so much fun with a role, and McAvoy actually manages to make [his character] believable as such a force of nature and magnetism that he can lead seemingly smart, sane people to ignore their brains screaming at them to get the hell out.”
We’re a bit more excited to see this one now!
TOP BOX OFFICE
STREAMING
Uglies (Netflix)
Based on the Scott Westerfeld book series and directed by McG, Uglies feels like a mashup of the Hunger Games, Divergent, and Maze Runner movies all in one, only meaner.
Set in a dystopian future where people go through a transformation on their 16th birthday in order to look like the perfect version of themselves, the movie is quite off-putting in a lot of ways. It tries to get a message across that what’s on the inside is what counts, but it never really feels sincere. And the cliffhanger ending was total cringe.
McG is known for action movies, and here he relies way too much on cheap-looking scenes of characters riding hoverboards to fill space. The CGI of the “pretty” people’s faces also didn’t feel right, but maybe that was intentional?
We’re sure fans of the books might enjoy parts of it, and we will give credit to actress Joey King who is not ugly at all and is quite entertaining to watch throughout the movie, but it’s hard to recommend this to anyone over the age of 25.
Uglies is now available to watch on Netflix.
Kneecap (VOD)
We loved Kneecap when it was in theatres in August, and we love it even more now that we can watch it at home on repeat!
The movie, about the Irish rap group of the same name, is now sitting at a 97% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes with a 96% audience rating. Over on the IMDb, it’s climbed to a 7.7 out of 10. If this doesn’t get an Oscar nom, Hollywood is dead to us.
Also streaming this week: The Oscar-nominated animated film Robot Dreams, the Megan Fox robot AI thriller Subservience, and The Crow remake are all on VOD platforms, and The Fall Guy, starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, is on Prime Video.
COMING SOON
Why did Warner Bros. feel the need to ruin Minecraft for everyone? That was our first thought after watching the trailer for A Minecraft Movie, starring Jack Black as main character Steve.
Hopefully we’re wrong about it when hits theatres on April 4, 2025, and it surprises everyone like The Lego Movie did.
Check out the trailer for A Minecraft Movie on our YouTube channel and let us know what you think?
ON DISC
We continue to find more to like about Alex Garland’s Civil War with each viewing, and it’s easily one of our Top 10 movies of the year.
Besides being a highly political “what if” scenario about America, the movie has a stellar cast that includes Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny (Alien: Romulus), Wagner Moura (who played Pablo Escobar in Narcos), and Nick Offerman in a small role as the President of the United States.
The film also has an amazing soundtrack, and the few action scenes are mind-blowing they are so well put together.
The 4K Blu-ray for Civil War highlights everything about the movie perfectly and is well worth adding to your collection if you’re a fan. The image is sharp, and the Dolby Atmos sound mix is one you’ll be using to show off your home theatre with.
Special features include the trailer for the movie and a six-part making-of documentary.
You can currently get the Civil War 4K Blu-ray on Amazon.ca for $22.99.
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