Scre4m (2011)

★★★
Kevin Williamson used the time well between Scream 3 and Scre4m. In those eleven years, he saved up enough good ideas and had the opportunity to watch how horror movies were evolving in the new millennium. His movie is shockingly prescient. Social media is making stars out of anyone who can acquire a large following by creating and posting videos (I hate the word "content") that show everything from the ordinary to the outrageous, but the extent to which some creators will go to gain validation has gotten worse since this movie came out in 2011. Scre4m exposes the dark and ugly side of online fame. Watching someone find a lost kitten sounds benign until you realize it was staged.

Eye of the Beholder (2000)

★★
In an interview for T.V. Guide, Ewan McGregor was discussing his role in Star Wars: Episode 1—The Phantom Menace. He said that he appeared in this big-budgeted movie because of the prestige of the series, but that he would continue to do all the small, independent efforts that he truly enjoys doing. In one of his comments, he said that he would never "taint [his] soul with crap like Independence Day." Well, I guess that didn't stop him from appearing in Eye of the Beholder, which isn't crap but comes close to it by employing a weak story with even weaker plot connections.

David (2025)

★★★
Capsule Review

Beautiful animation highlights this biblical tale of David and his rise to the throne as king of Israel. The opening scenes were breathtaking, and the level of detail remains consistently high as the story unfolds. David takes down the hulking Goliath to end the first act, with the rest of the movie covering David's adult life as King Saul grows jealous of the young shepherd who does not desire to usurp his ruler. Plotting, characterization and voice acting are all adequate, and the songs are a mix of catchy tunes and forgettable filler. The movie's greatest strength is its successful presentation of the Biblical story as a children's musical while maintaining a reasonably close approximation of the account as recorded in the Old Testament. I was hoping this would reach the soaring heights of 1998's The Prince of Egypt, but it does not, but then again, that set the bar very high.

© 2025 Silver Screen Reviews

Sicario (2015)

★★★
Capsule Review

A deliberately slow pace is not the end all be all to building suspense. Sicario is a crime drama involving U.S. law enforcement and Mexican drug traffickers, and everything about it indicates a top end production. It has a stellar cast, a gifted director (Denis Villeneuve) and amazing cinematography. There are two masterful sequences. The film opens with a raid on a house with suspected human traffickers. Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), who participated in the raid, is then recruited to join a task force that is targeting a drug lord. Macer and her new comrades execute a tense infiltration into Ciudad Juárez to take custody of the drug lord's associate and bring him back over the border. Beyond these two scenes, the movie chugs along at a plodding pace with little else going for it except arguments between Kate and task force lead Matt Graver (Josh Brolin). Benicio del Toro also stars, but he also appeared in the superior crime/drug movie Traffic from 2000. This is a solid movie but not something I would revisit.

© 2025 Silver Screen Reviews

Ready or Not (2019)

★★★
Ready or Not is the kind of horror movie for which the creators probably had a blast brainstorming different ideas and compounding those ideas with more to arrive at a final draft that is simply fun to make and fun to watch once filmed. It can be produced at a reasonable cost and marketed purely on an idea, and if that idea is sufficiently intriguing, it can act as a hook that can reel in curious viewers and reward them with a good show. The movie isn't scary in the sense that it's terrifying. It isn't scary all that much, but it is inventive. If a horror movie doesn't deliver on the usual expectations by design but has a different agenda, then it can still be deemed a success. Yes, there is blood, violence, screaming and suspense, but they are the foundation for the clever and sometimes humorous unraveling of a story that starts simple enough before leading to surprising places.