Christopher L

I don’t think the critics saw the same movie I did because The 355 is a very entertaining movie from start to finish. The action scenes were great - thankfully there weren’t any martial arts move that defied gravity because that would have easily made it more cheesy than what the critics had been saying about this film. Props to the great cast which comprised of 5 beautiful and extremely talented A-list actresses - each of whom could easily headline their own movie. Diane Kruger gave the best performance as a very believable assassin who could really hurt you. Jessica Chastain looked stunning throughout the movie and was very easy to see that she was the alpha - the pack leader. Lupita Nyong’o is the cute girl next door who you would least suspect to be an MI6 but could quickly turned deadly when called to duty. Bingbing Fan’s gorgeousness and beauty is watered down in this film (what’s with the hairstyle?!! - she should let her hair down or tie it back in a ponytail instead of wearing it in a bun that did a major disservice to her beautiful face). Bingbing also should have spent more time practicing her lines in English because some of what she said was difficult to understand (as English isn’t her fluent language). Penelope Cruz looked young in this movie! She still has that innocent beauty that is just as captivating now as in Vanilla Sky. Her doe-eyed look made for one convincing damsel in distress (as she was the only one in the team who wasn’t a trained assassin). These 5 women were so captivating and we know that this movie is about them and therefore everyone else especially the men were easily forgettable. I look forward to a sequel with these same five actresses on their next mission doing what they do best - save the world while looking pretty!

NEFARIOUS (2023) REVIEW “Nefarious” has the right premise and potential to be a good horror film. Unfortunately, despite being endorsed by a real life exorcist as being accurate in how it portrayed the demons’ intelligence and cunningness, the performance by the two main characters left a lot to be desired. Sean Patrick Flanery played his character very one dimensional. He failed to show a significant distinction between the personality of the demon Nefarious and the deathrow inmate Edward. Their mannerisms were the same (e.g. watch his eye twitch). It also didn’t help that the 2 main leads were not likeable characters. This 1.5 hr film is a rental at best if you must see it now; otherwise wait until you can watch it for free on your streaming network. In the meantime you can check out the exorcist’s review of this movie on Youtube.

THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER REVIEW Just got back from watching The Last Voyage of the Demeter, the latest film offering surrounding the classic Dracula lore. This movie brings to life Chapter 7 based on the Captain’s log from my favorite horror novel of all time (“Dracula” by Bram Stoker). This is a beautifully shot film; it oozes high production value from start to finish. Towards the beginning, you’re given a glimpse of gypsy men transporting wooden crates, traversing on very narrow paths overlooking the town of Transylvania with a barely noticeable sight of Castle Dracula in the far background. The story, for the most part, remained true to the novel. The extra stuff you see could easily have happened even though they were not mentioned in the pages of the book. This was very well put together - and it was pretty scary too. Was a little disappointed though that Dracula didn’t look like how he was described in the novel. Here he looks like an overgrown human-bat hybrid (think Nosferatu, Barlow from Salem’s Lot, or better yet the vampire monster from Netflix’s Midnight Mass). This film captured eerie elements of the novel really well - lots of fogs and mists - and created the perfect tension that took hold of all the crew members and the audience too. Dracula is shown here as a gigantic bat that could fly and is also capable of transforming into the form of a mist which allows him to seep through small openings and cracks of the ship. Unfortunately, he was not depicted in his full human form at all throughout the movie nor was he ever presented in his wolf form. In the novel, a witness claimed to have seen a wolf escaping from the ship after it crashed into Whitby harbor. Unfortunately they left this out of the movie. One other departure I noticed from the novel is that here Dracula doesn’t fear the sight of the holy cross. Overall this was a very well directed film with good acting and is, for the most part, true to the novel. Don’t listen to the critics who gave this a low score. Score deserves to be higher on Rotten Tomatoes. My afterthought- if Hollywood can make this 2 hour movie from a single chapter of the book, imagine what they can do with all 27 chapters of the novel. Streaming sites with big budgets like HBO, Netflix, or Apple should have plenty of materials to make several seasons of a ‘Dracula’ series based on those 27 chapters.