The Skolney Blog

In theaters: WUTHERING HEIGHTS Emerald Fennell started the decade with the great Promising Young Woman, but that's starting to look like a bit of a fluke. She no doubt takes a big swing with this film, and it's not some standard stuffy literary adaptation. But it is entirely a style over substance situation, and at well over 2 hours, it becomes quite dull. Margot Robbie tries.  THE BRIDE Speaking of a big swing by a female director that winds up way more style over substance, we have Maggie Gyllenhaal's Frankenstein movie. Jessie Buckley is a wonderful, now Oscar winning actress. But the wild overacting she does in this is just not in her wheelhouse. It's a film that occasionally comes to life (ha ha), but too often is just obnoxious.  READY OR NOT: HERE I COME Really liked the original Ready Or Not, one of those movies that makes it look easy. This belated sequel goes the John Wick route, expanding the lore in a big way. I'm not sure this is a case where the lore i...

1976: I may be old, but there's a whole history of film that took place before I was born. Even to this day, I have not seen a whole lot of what are considered the greatest films made, if they came out prior to 1979.  There ARE some films made before then that I am a big fan of, and often my go-to choice as my favorite film that existed before me is Martin Scorsese's 1976 masterpiece Taxi Driver. I think I might have actually watched this for the first time in my college film class. Before that, I knew the basics. I knew the "you talking to me" scene. I knew Jodie Foster played a teenage prostitute. In arguably his most famous role, Robert Deniro is Travis Bickle, a New York City cab driver, roaming the streets of that seedy, dangerous 70s New York. He appears like a decent enough guy on the outside, but he's an isolated person with no family and no close friends.  The episodic film finds him attempting a romance with Cybill Shepard, but their first re...

In theaters: SHELTER The latest Jason Staham movie is generic even by his standards (this is half Safe, half Beekeeper), but it's an okay watch.  SEND HELP Sam Raimi's super entertaining dark comedic thriller where mousy office worker Rachel McAdams and her douchebag boss Dylan O'Brien crash land on a deserted island. The comedy is very funny, led by McAdams in the kind of full bloom, going for it movie star performance she has been so rarely afforded.  GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON'T DIE My favorite film of the year to this point, a super creative, weird, wacky time travel sci-fi comedy. A well cast Sam Rockwell leads a cool ensemble that also has Zazie Beetz and the always terrific Haley Lu Richardson. This thing is like 12 Monkeys if it was made by the Rick and Morty team. Shockingly, it was directed by Gore Verbinski, a filmmaker who has been doing big projects for over 20 years, but few I have liked at all.  CRIME 101 We used to get these big star-driven crime movies a ...

2026 marks 30 years since the original Scream movie came out. The first two in particular are core texts for me as a film fan. I can not imagine the late 90s without them. The franchise has mostly had ups. Scream 3, not so good, but also not unwatchable. Figured that was the end of things, but then Scream 4 came a decade or so later. It was very good, but it wasn't that successful, so you figured maybe that was the end of the line for the franchise. But then another decade passed (as did Wes Craven), and we got a new creative team who delivered a pair of really good new sequels, mixing old and new cast. Scream 6 even managed without Neve Campbell. It's been a few years again, but now we get Scream 7, and boy has it arrived with people mad at it. The team behind 5 and 6 mostly bailed, and breakout star, the magnificent Melissa Barrera, was fired due to social media posts. Even with Campbell back as Sidney, and original franchise creator Kevin Williamson also back as co-writer, a...

My 25th anniversary post Not much to add. Just another layer of "I can't believe X movie is this old" We're now seeing 30 year anniversaries of movies that came out when I was in the 2nd half of high school. It's sometimes hard to accept that I have gotten this far out from those years and gotten this damn old. Which, I guess, makes me relate to the characters in this movie that much more. 

In theaters: ANACONDA I'm not sure if this is a reboot or a sequel or what. What I do know is that it's an odd artifact, a comedy so self-referential that it reveals a much better movie that was sitting right there. Why not just have Jack Black and Paul Rudd play themselves?  WE BURY THE DEAD Presented as a zombie movie but far more of a drama with zombie stuff in it. I found it somewhat boring, but when Daisy Ridley is your lead, your movie can never be unwatchable.  SONG SUNG BLUE Liked this a whole lot more than I expected. The true-ish story jukebox musical about a Neil Diamond tribute band, with the typically good Hugh Jackman and the borderline revelatory (and now Oscar nominated) Kate Hudson. Where the hell was THIS Kate Hudson the last 20 years? The parts of the film centered on the music are across the board fun (even if I hate the people who do the "SO GOOD SO GOOD" thing). The critical event that happens halfway through (and which did happen in real life) t...