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Prey for the Devil (2022)
Solid scares, great cast and story
Just finished watching a screener as I'm interviewing some the cast and thought this was a solid, well-directed and performed movie. When I watch horror films at home, the scares rarely get me but this one still managed to. Possession/exorcism films are nothing new, they've been around for decades but Prey For The Devil had some great surprises and twists to keep the story moving. Jacqueline Byers gives an incredibly vulnerable performance, with Posy Taylor also giving a great performance, sweet at times and disturbing at others.
Christian Navarro was a very sympathetic leading man and it was cool to see him in a role like and moving on from teen roles. Colin Salmon and Virginia Madsen both gave solid performances as well. Wish they had a bit more to do in this one besides giving exposition or being opposing voices of reason, but happy to see them in another horror project.
Overall I thought it was pretty scary, well executed and enjoyable.
Hellraiser (2022)
Entertaining if you can go in objectively
I have only seen clips, bit and pieces of the Hellraiser franchise and thought this film was... just fine. Mildly entertaining, well-performed and shot really well, I was intrigued enough to finish the film and overall, enjoyed it. I don't understand why anyone, whether critics or fans, cannot help but weight films against other installments or other unrelated films. That's not critique, it's comparison, and it's completely irrelevant.
It's not meant to be an improvement upon the first, but as described time and again in its marketing, a new adaptation of the source material. From all I've seen this one is slightly more loyal to the novel than the film made by Barker himself. I always found some of the kills of the original films rather cheesy and campy. That's what they were going for, so great! But the storytelling, effects and direction were all great.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)
Solid New Chapter, But Misses Some Marks
I overall enjoyed the film, the performances from some of the young cast, especially Elsie Fisher, and Garcia's direction and cinematography was brooding. Wasn't a huge fan of borrowing the legacy character aspect of the movie that has been done recently in 2018's Halloween and 2022's Scream. Sally's appearance had a lot of promise but added very little to the plot.
Not a masterpiece, but we certainly weren't promised one.
Grand Crew (2021)
Solid Ensemble Comedy by episode 3
I was excited, particularly because Nicole Byer is massively underrated, she deserves her own show. I always watch the pilot episode of shows knowing "this is a pilot, they're always a little off" because they're meant to hamhandedly set up these characters relationships and backstories in less than half an hour. The pilot was okay, episode 2 kept things moving but was still finding its' footing. Episode 3 was the best we've seen yet.
Due to a fire in Los Angeles, the crew has a sleepover at Wyatt's house and the hilarity ensues. Wyatt and his wife are trying to outdo each other as the best host; Nicky and Fay break their bougie German washing machine and try to fix it; Anthony gets a big promotion but finds out it was for the company's diversity optics; Sherm is trying to find out why a woman he's seeing wears her judge robes everywhere and Noah gets his hair done and looks like a cult leader and gives everyone unsolicited advice like one.
It's ridiculous, over the top but it's damn funny. What works best about the show is everyone's relationships and dynamic with each other, especially by the end of episode 3.
Quantico (2015)
Has its flaws but its entertaining (Season 1 review)
FBI trainee Alex Parrish is accused of a terrorist attack in New York City and is desperate to clear her name, and find out who from her FBI training class was truly responsible. The series jumps between two timelines of the 'present' which is post-attack and the 'past', 9 months earlier when Alex was a new trainee at the FBI Academy at Quantico.
I started watching this series out of curiosity of seeing it added on Netflix back in August 2016. I'd heard about it when it originally aired and was told good things about it so I gave it a try. The first episode will make you want to binge through it. From the start, I think the characters that draw you in and keep your curiosity are Alex Parrish, Shelby Wyatt and Simon Asher. Without giving spoilers, what you learn about the characters in the first episode will keep you intrigued to keep watching.
As the show goes on, the dual timelines can get a tad muddy and after the initial crisis, the timelines jump ahead some more, stretching the story even more than necessary.
I think that a 13 episode season for this would have been perfect. This show isn't a 'procedural' like Law & Order or Madam Secretary, where they have a different case or crisis every episode. Like Homeland, this has massive storyline that continues week after week. But shows formatted that way tend to have shorter seasons in order to keep the storytelling neat and rather easy to develop and resolve. The initial order for Quantico was stretched from an initial 13 to a full order of 22.
While there are great performances from Priyanka Chopra, Johanna Brady and Tate Ellington in their respective characters of Alex, Shelby and Simon, the writing eventually loses its spark and some story lines feel forced or inconsistent.
Despite this, I remained interested and watched the first season fast enough to watch the second season week by week. It gets better!
This Is Us (2016)
best Pilot of the season so far!
The "Pilot" episode follows several story lines including pretty boy actor Kevin (Justin Hartley) looking for something more substantial in his career and life, Chrissy Metz as his sister Kate who is struggling with her weight and looking for love, young couple Rebecca and Jack (Mandy Moore and Milo Ventimiglia) who are expecting triplets and Randall (Sterling K Brown), a successful business man looking for his biological father who abandoned him as a newborn.
Performances all around were solid, especially from Hartley and Brown and a guest appearance from TV vet Gerald McRaney. The writing of this episode was so cohesive with everything and everyone connecting in some way, and the unexpected twist towards the end of the episode is brilliant and pretty mind-blowing. I will definitely be keeping a close eye to this series. Hopefully the strong viewership the Pilot got will continue to keep this series alive.