January movie reviews

In theaters:

The creepy killer robot doll movie that swept the nation. I think it is basically just silly trash, but the movie knows that it is silly trash, and leans heavily into the campiness. So it gets way more laughs than scares. You could (and have) done way worse for early January horror. 

Quietly, Gerard Butler has amassed a pretty decent filmography. Plane, despite its hilariously bland title, fits right in as another rock solid genre flick. He's a pilot, he has to land a plane full of passengers in a country ruled by a crime lord. It's up to him and a tag along convict (Mike Colter) to save the day. I liked how the movie cut out a lot of the extraneous stuff that movies like this usually pad their runtimes with. It just gets right to it, in a good way. 

Nice to see Anna Kendrick (an Oscar nominee once upon a time) do something more serious, in this drama about a woman stuck in a mentally abusive relationship. She's terrific, even if the movie itself is very Lifetime-y  

Not exactly a sequel to The Father, despite sharing a director and both having Anthony Hopkins (who only has an extended cameo here). This is mostly the Hugh Jackman show, as he is a father dealing with a depressive teenage son. Jackman is very good, but the movie absolutely drowns in melodrama (the ending is way over the top). Jackman's son is a huge liability, played by a very poor actor and also written quite terribly.

From the same people who made Searching a few years ago, this is another mystery thriller taking place almost entirely through screens. Storm Reid is quite good as a teenage girl whose mom (Nia Long) goes missing on a trip to Columbia with her new boyfriend. Reid ends up having to do most of the police's work for them. I enjoyed how resourceful and smart she is.  I really enjoyed all the scenes with Joaquim de Almeida as a local who helps Reid investigate. Hey we even get the gorgeous Megan Suri from Never Have I Ever in there. I was pretty engrossed by this movie. Then, like a lot of thrillers, it can't quite stick the 3rd act landing, and gets a little too outlandish. 

Bill Nighy was nominated for best actor for his role here as a paper pushing bureaucrat who has a terminal illness and tries to make something of his final days. Nighy and the movie itself are quiet and reserved to the point of boredom. The movie gets a spark from the gorgeous Aimee Lou Wood as one of Nighy's underlings. 

Everything else:

Mel Gibson is a late night radio host who deals with a caller who claims to have taken Gibson's family hostage. Gibson's presence makes this feel a bit like Ransom, and Mel is still a more than capable actor in stuff like this. I was fairly into this, but then comes the twist. And oh boy is it a twist so positively ludicrous that it skips right past being bad and becomes impressive that the filmmakers actually tried it. 

Oscar nominated documentary about a couple who studied volcanoes (until actually dying during an eruption). I wasn't all that taken with the personal love story, but there is a lot of fantastic volcano footage in this film. 

Surprisingly, this comedy got savaged. I thought it largely fulfilled the most important job of a comedy: be funny. I laughed a lot at this movie, where Jonah Hill wants to marry Lauren London, but their respective parents (Eddie Murphy and Nia Long on one side, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and David Duchovny on the other) might ruin it. Obviously a lot of the comedy comes from uncomfortable conversations about race, and yeah some of those jokes are forced and obvious (nobody in 2023 is this clumsy) but a lot are very funny too.