Greetings! Have you ever wondered if a movie's worth blowing the money on to see at the theater or what to add next to your NetFlix queue? Then you've come to the right place! Enjoy!
UPDATED 4/1/2025: Completely revised the When To See scale to reflect the extinction of rental stores and 2nd run dollar show theaters in today's streaming world. The original version of this can be visited here. -----------------
Oh, fercryingoutloud! ANOTHER movie review blog?!? Another guy who
thinks his opinion matters and wishes to inflict it on the overloaded
Information Superhighway? (What ever happened to that buzzword? Haven't
heard it in ages.) Why should we care?
A: Yes, yes, and why not?
The purpose of this blog when started after seeing Avatar in 2009 was to allow me to get back into the habit of
reviewing movies and DVDs like I used to between 2004-2008 for IGN and The Digital Bits before life stuff and editorial differences ended those associations.
Initially intended to not be 1000-2000 word chin-stroking
epics, but mostly a few
paragraphs about what I've been watching and whether they might be of
interest to you, I unfortunately got slack about actually writing anything. While I logged and scored everything I've seen, I didn't write reviews in a timely manner and after a while and a dozen intervening movies, I couldn't remember enough specifics to properly review them, so they remained unpublished.
Since fixing hundreds of unwritten reviews is impossible, I've dedicated myself to knuckling down this year (2025), and as of this revised update only a few reviews need to be finished off out of over 40 this year. I may also go back and start publishing older reviews, even if they're just scores; perhaps adding a sentence or two. Use the hashtag options and search box to see if I saw something in particular.
With movies even more outrageously expensive and even an all-you-can eat
service like Netflix and Amazon Prime can still cost you time (which is
worth more than money because you can't make more of it), I give
movies a numerical score (wow! original!) and how urgently it is for you to see it. Since the Hot Fad Plague of 2020-2022 completely upended going to the movies and everyone and their dog started subscription streaming services (as well as good old cable for Boomers), I have radically revised the When To See scale from six to basically three points:
1. Pay full/matinee price to see it at a theater. Pretty self-explanatory. The rare times I now go see a movie theatrically, I'll rate whether it's worth going to the show and how much you should pay.
2. Catch it on cable/streaming. This is the most common recommendation now because I see the overwhelming majority of movies at home, but also not every movie needs the theatrical experience. Whether you choose to wait for it to come to your streamer/cable channel of choice, rent or buy it digitally, or hoist the black flag to obtain it, is up to your budget and/or morals. Movies with this ranking are worth your time.
3. Skip it. Even for free, life's too short to waste on bad movies.
For Blu-ray/DVD reviews, I'll recommend whether they're worth buying since there's no rental options anymore now that Redbox has joined Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, Family Video in oblivion. The quantity and quality of extras or the audio-visual quality factor heavily here.
As always, these reviews are just one lifelong movie fans opinions, except that unlike other critics & fans, mine is the only opinion that matters and all reviews are 100% correct in their judgements. If you disagree, that's fine, but understand that you are incorrect in your opinion. ;-)
Tonight we settle into a double-feature of 2006's The Devil Wears Prada and its 2026 sequel which tacked a 2 on the end. What follows is my IGN DVD review from 2006 after which I will update whether I had any new thoughts upon viewing this again for the first time in almost 20 years.
When Lauren Weisberger's novel The Devil Wears Prada became a best-seller in 2003, it was widely viewed as a roman a clef about Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue magazine, for whom Weisberger served as an assistant. Full of gossipy tidbits about the behind-the-scenes business of high fashion, it was a "chick lit" hit and an obvious candidate for translation to the big screen.
Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) is a plucky Midwestern college grad living in New York City looking for a writing career, having edited the Northwestern newspaper. After interviewing with the publishing conglomerate Elias-Clark, she's offered menial work at either Auto Universe or a second assistant gig at Runway magazine, working for the imperious editor, Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep).
Miranda is a "boss from Hell" - demanding, dismissive, cruel, and capricious - who has driven many an assistant screaming from her presence, despite the job supposedly being one that "a million girls will kill for." Despite Andy's frumpy college prep appearance and utter lack of knowledge of the fashion world - she has to ask how to spell "Gabbana" - Miranda keeps her on and Andy tries to stick it out because she knows that if she stays a year, she'll have a good resume item that will allow her to write her own ticket to more rewarding work.
As time goes on, Andy gradually gets the hang of the job and routine, earning the grudging respect of Miranda's #1 assistant, Emily (Emily Blunt). It also helps when Nigel (Stanley Tucci), the photo editor, decides to take mercy on the fashion-challenged Andy and takes her into the magazine's "closet", the storeroom where all the clothes that are provided by designers for the magazine (and rarely returned) are kept. After finding something that the size 6 Andy could wear - one of the film's premises is that the just fine Hathaway is too bovine for the fashion world - and a trip to the salon, she begins to at least look the part of the "clackers" (named for the clacking of their stiletto heels on the marble floors) indigenous to Runway. (In a merciful twist, we're spared the obligatory Pretty Woman transformation montage; she just comes into the next scene with her new look and duds.)
With her increasing responsibilities at Runway, at Miranda's constant beck and call, Andy starts to have problems with her sous chef boyfriend, Nate (Adrian Grenier) and her art-gallery-manager friend Lilly (Tracie Thoms). Also showing an interest in Andy is Christian Thompson (Simon Baker), an author whom Andy is impressed by and could be helpful to her writing career. One sequence revolves around obtaining a copy of the unpublished next Harry Potter novel for Miranda's twins - a request slightly less feasible than obtaining a Bible autographed by God - and when he comes through, it clumsily introduces the possibility of romance.
I hadn't read the novel - hey, I'm a manly man, OK? - but as a film, The Devil Wears Prada fumbles being an effective update of prior workplace comedies like 9 to 5 and Working Girl by being too bland and toothless about its story and characters. This impression was solidified after checking out a synopsis of the novel, revealing a lot of angles that got cut in the process of Aline Brosh McKenna's script homogenizing the story into a popular hit. Considering it grossed $311 million worldwide, the producers surely aren't losing sleep over these changes.
The first problem is Andy and her career goals. In Working Girl, Tess (Melanie Griffith) had to combat workplace sexism in order to be taken seriously as something more than a secretary. Andy isn't being held down by anyone and no one is forcing her to become Miranda's on-call drone and it's not really explained how surviving a year of running errands is supposed to advance a serious journalistic career. Tess wanted to work in business; Andy could have waited tables and done freelance writing for all it matters.
Secondly, Andy's lousy friends are thinly written and hypocritical. When she bestows thousands of dollars worth of swag upon them that she's obtained from work, they're appreciative, but then they turn around and attack her for spending more time on her job than with them. Nate is an ungrateful tool - it doesn't matter when a dish like Hathaway comes home as long as she comes home, you mook - and Lilly is so underwritten that it was a surprise when a line revealed that they've been longtime friends and not just new acquaintances in the city.
Finally, the problem with Miranda is that in humanizing her by giving her a younger nemesis, Jacqueline (Stephanie Szostak), and an unhappy husband, Stephen (James Naughton), it dulls the boss-from-Hell aspects. Mr. Hart (Dabney Coleman) in 9 to 5 wasn't anything but a sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot, but Miranda is painted as someone who both demands the impossible, but is also a victim of ageism and sexism and we're treated to the hoary trope that if she was a man she'd be thought as merely driven, which was boring back when it may have meant something. Because she's not a total monster 24/7, it makes her more outrageous requests less threatening, as if the fact that she allowed a total fashion naif to work for her more than 15 seconds doesn't stretch the limits of credulity.
While the story really doesn't amount to much, The Devil Wears Prada is still fairly entertaining to watch thanks to its glossy look (directed by Sex and the City vet David Frankel), dazzling array of fashions on parade, some genuine funny dialogue that doesn't smack of sitcom-grade contrivance, and the performances of the leads.
Streep doesn't have much of a reputation as a comedic actress, but she's simply sublime as Miranda, even though her skill at fleshing out what could've been a one-note character ultimately weakens her as a negative force in Andy's life. One scene has her explaining to Andy how people like those who run Runway determined the color of the lumpy sweater she is wearing years before and it's a stellar mix of sneering condescension and motherly education. Thanks to Streep, we feel for Miranda, even though I don't think Miranda was meant to be so sympathetic in the beginning.
Also excellent is Tucci as the flamboyant and bitchy, yet not campy or clichéd, Nigel. I wouldn't be surprised if he garnered a supporting Oscar nomination for a performance that could've emphasized the "fairy" in Fairy Godmother but thankfully doesn't. Hathaway is lovely with her big brown eyes, but she's somewhat hemmed in by the safe script and doesn't really get the material to shine like the others. She's very appealing, but not very compelling. Blunt is also funny as the harried and offended Emily. Thoms and Grenier are wasted with non-characters to play.
While The Devil Wears Prada feels particularly flat and predictable in its third act and ends on kind of a muddled note, it's still a decent trifle worth watching even though it's ultimately a triumph of style over substance. (Watch it while wearing some comfy sweats for added irony.) Too gentle in its satire and too pedestrian in its plot, it shows that when it came to balancing on its Manolos, the devil was in the missing details. ========== OK, 2026 Dirk here and I reread this review before watching and I must say I pretty much nailed it like a carpenter with OCD. On second viewing I noticed more business like how people scrambled to get out of Miranda's path when she strode the office halls. Considering how all the main stars have had massive award-winning careers over the past two decades and still look great, it's still wild to see Blunt so good in only her second feature role and just how luscious Hathaway looks, appearing to be made of cream and kittens' dreams. (At some point I dubbed her "Yummy Girl" and even as she's proven to be certifiably woketarded in real life, I still call her that and credit her for being the only non-terrible things in Christopher Nolan's craptacular The Dark Knight Reloaded and Intersuckular where she somehow manages to deliver the lines about love being the 5th dimension without bursting out laughing.)
When I reviewed it originally I scored it a 6/10, but on second glance it's worthy of a succeeded-at-what-it-was-trying-for...
Pardon the pun, but the only reason the airplane disaster film Deep Water appeared on my radar was because one of the dozen producers was KISS bassist Gene Simmons who hit the interview circuit wearing a baseball cap with the title on it. Since it's been a couple of months since we'd had a trashy shark movie like Thrash (4/10, Skip) we decided to unplug our brains for some dumb (hopefully) fun.
Aaron Eckhart is Ben, a pilot who is avoiding going home to cope with a very ill child by working a haul between LA and Shanghai. He's co-piloting with Captain Rich (Ben Kingsley, slumming) when during the flight where we kill the first act getting to know a bunch of people who will either die or we're supposed to care about surviving, a defective battery power bank wrongly checked into the hold by a raging a-hole, Dan (Angus Sampson), eluding the scrutiny of a distracted X-ray technician, catches fire causing a cascade of system failures leading to the plane having to ditch in the Pacific Ocean hundreds of miles from land. Unfortunately, there's a coral reef which tears the plane into three sections leaving the 30-odd survivors separated in variously precarious situations.
And there's a bunch of hungry sharks. Dun-dun-DUHN!!!!
Director Renny Harlin, coming off the trio of The Strangers movies, had directed the camp shark classic Deep Blue Sea so I suppose we're supposed to expect great shark action, but Deep Water is just dumb tedium. Perhaps there's a few surprises as to who gets eaten, but it completely drops the ball when it comes to disposing of Dan, whose battery triggered this whole disaster. He's been a complete bag of dicks the entire movie, implying that of all the kills, his will be the most visceral and satisfying. Well, it's not. Yeah, he gets his, but it's not like in The Lost World where the guy gets snacked on by two T. Rexes. (I was banking on four sharks grabbing a limb and ripping them off while a fifth shark swallows the torso, but apparently I'm more creative than the FOUR credited screenwriters.)
You can also tell this was a Chinese co-production because of the prominent casting of Chinese actors and the fact a small Chinese fishing boat rescues the survivors after the American helicopter crashes in a ridiculous sequence. China always saves the day in multinational productions. (Ironic that Simmons would be flogging this considering his love for the USA.)
2026 will probably go down as the year YouTube surpassed film schools for turning out wildly successful new filmmakers. The warning shot came in January with Iron Lung by YouTuber Mark "Markiplier" Fischbach which he directed, wrote, edited, and starred in, self-funding the $3M production and grossing a (then) stunning $51 million.
But the earthquakes came in May as a tag-team of original horror movies completely upended the natural order of things with Backrooms - an adaptation of a series of YouTube shorts helmed by their creator, 20-year-old Kane Parsons, raking in $350M off a $10M budget, making it A24's highest-grossing movie ever - coming two weeks after the word-of-mouth phenomenon Obsession blew Hollywood's collective mind by surpassing its projected opening weekend gross then increasing it's take the following two weekends; the first film since (I think) E.T. - The Extraterrestrial to accomplish this feat and that was by Steven Spielberg, director of Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, not a 27-year-old YouTuber. Produced for a rounding error for Hollyweird $750,000, as of this writing it has grossed $407 million worldwide and turned its star into a early Oscar nomination shoo-in.
How much of a word-of-mouth hit was it? We met up with a friend about a month after it'd opened and almost right off without prompting he asked if we'd seen it, raving that it actually lived up to the hype. We didn't get a chance to see it in the theaters, but now that it's streaming we checked it out and, yep, believe the hype.
The premise is so simple it could've been inspired by a Treehouse of Horror episode of The Simpsons where they parodied The Monkey's Paw short story. (It was!) Bear (Michael Johnston) has a major crush on his coworker Nikki (Inde Navarrette) at the music store they work with their friends Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) and Sarah (Megan Lawless), the daughter of the owner, Carter (Andy Richter). The movie opens with Bear attempting to rehearse telling Nikki his feelings with the others, but he's such a sweaty dork they advise against it.
Bear's cat dies from eating oxycodone pills that his late grandma, whose house he now lives in, took. (This is the least realistic detail in the movie. Every try to give a cat a pill? Exactly. It should've been a dog; they eat anything.) While talking to Nikki on the phone she mentions dropping her tiger's eye necklace down the drain, so being the simp he is, he goes to a shop to buy her a replacement, but instead buys her a One Wish Willow, a novelty that promises to give the person who breaks it one wish. (Duh.)
He ends up not giving it to her when he drives her home after the pals hang out. When she confronts him whether he has feelings for her, he chickens out and denies he does, not that she hasn't already clearly friendzoned him so hard it's visible from orbit. Disgusted with himself, he opens the One Wish Willow and wishes that Nikki loved him more than anyone in the world. *SNAP*
Big. Mistake.
She immediately begins to throw herself at him, but it's weird as she seems to snap in and out of being in love with him and seeming confused as to what's going on. Things settle into a comfy couplehood and he gets to enjoy plenty of the benefits of being a friend with benefits, but things begin to veer into somewhat concerning to downright horrifying territory as Nikki's obssessive love for Bear begins to manifest in increasingly harmful ways.
While it'd be easy to be reductive and dumbly claim Obsession is a commentary about toxic men wanting dominion over women's bodies (as many feminists Karens squawked because everything is about being a victim), but it's really just a simple morality tale about unintended consequences. While Bear has entranced Nikki into loving him, he's quickly gnawed at by the understanding that this is wrong and tries to figure out how to free her even when it's supposedly everything he wanted.
Director-writer-editor Curry Barker's script actually fleshes out Ian and Sarah and their relationships with Bear and Nikki so that they're part of this crazy situation especially during a group party scene where a game of Truth or Dare Jenga gets out of hand. They have their own goals and cares, so their fates aren't just superfluous window dressing for the main couple.
The lions share of praise has rightfully gone to Navarrette as she conveys the various states of Nikki's deterioration as her true self tries to break free from the spell the willow has placed on her. She's a very cute actress - she's like a darker, sexier Anna Kendrick - but throws herself fully into the complicated role. After Amy Madigan's Best Supporting Actress win for Weapons, a far less demanding role than Nikki, it appears the Academy is loosening up in its bias against genre movies and Navarrette is already talked up for a Best Actress slot. Considering the success of Obsession rests primarily on her shoulders and ability to make the audience connect with this poor young woman, she'd darn well better get a nom.
Other than quibbles about the handling of the cat, Obsession is a rare horror movie that elevates the form with a sharp script and performances. If we'd seen it at the show, I would've given it the highest "Pay full price" when to see it rating, but now that it's streaming (it should eventually land on Peacock soon), I give it the score below and my highest recommendation.
In my review of Fountain of Youth (5/10) I noted that I'd assayed the checkered and heavily mediocre career of Guy Richie in my The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (5.5/10) review so rather than re-rehash things go read those after you get done with this latest loaf of even-less-barely-passable mediocrity, In The Grey, written and directed by Ritchie so this is all his fault.
Eiza González stars as Rachel Wild, a lawyer who specializes in collecting debts for wealthy interests. After Bobby Sheen's (Rosamund Pike) last negotiator was murdered after making a deal to recover $1 billion loaned to Manny Salazar (Carlos Bardem - raise your hand if this is the first time you've heard of Javier's older brother being an actor) by her firm, Spencer Goldstein, she brings in Rachel to take a run at Salazar.
Rachel's play is to use lawfare combined with extralegal shenanigans conducted by her associates Sid (Henry Cavill) and Bronco (Jake Gyllenhaal) along with various redshirts who lack plot armor, if you know what I mean. What follows is a rapid-fire sequence of tactical moves which result in Salazar's projects and assets being frozen and seized. Figuring he'll try to retaliate, elaborate escape plans are exhaustively made and rehearsed, but come on, we all know something will go wrong, right?
Even by the play-it-loose-and-look-cool low standards of recent Guy Ritchie movies, this is a low effort effort. Everything works flawlessly and Rachel seems to be able to stroll into court at will to get a judge to bless her requests instantly. When Salazar sends a squad to kill her, the team effortlessly counteracts them with lethality.
While there are a few throwaway laughs and stars are attractive, there is no there there and In The Grey ends up just another instantly forgotten trifle from the Guy Ritchie slop mills.
