Magellans at the Movies: the Blog

  The Monkey Genre: Horror comedy Director: Osgood Perkins Released: 2025      Whether or not you enjoy The Monkey will be almost entirely determined by whether or not you're the target audience. That sounds obvious, I know, but trust me, The Monkey is a film that has been meticulously calibrated to appeal to a very particular kind of viewer. It sets out to kill weirdo redshirts in creative, graphically violent ways and complement all the blood and guts with a twisted, absurdist sense of humor. If that's up your alley, you'll be eating well. If not, look elsewhere, there is literally nothing here for you.      The Monkey is based on a short story by Stephen King, by which I mean both stories have a few character names in common and both concern an evil monkey toy. If you've read the short story, as I have, you'll be familiar with the conceit, but pretty much everything else will be new.      After an extended setup (twin brothers discove...

Heart Eyes Genre: Horror/rom com Director: Josh Ruben Released: 2025      I can't tell you that you shouldn't go out and see Heart Eyes, but I also can't tell you that you should. Heart Eyes is a generic, inoffensive slasher movie firmly set in the lighthearted, horror-comedy mashup tradition of Scream. Whether or not you're up for that will be determined largely by your feelings towards that formula. If you hate it, obviously you should give this film a wide berth. If you love it, then I think this will probably be enough for you. If you're like me, and you've enjoyed the formula in the past but need more than just a standard execution drawing well within the lines of its contours, there's no reason to not just wait until it hits streaming.      Heart Eyes follows main characters Ally and Jay as they fight and flirt and generally do all the romantic comedy things, the hook being that all this happens within the context of a masked killer's violent rampa...

  The Brutalist Genre: Historical epic Director: Brady Corbet Released: 2024      When it comes to movies, extreme length is something of a risk. On the one hand, length can amplify flaws that brevity may have been able to obscure; if your main character is irritating, the longer the film drags on the more time you give the audience to realize just how terrible David Aaronson-sorry, I mean your protagonist-truly is. On the other end of the spectrum lies your Lord of the Ringses, your Blade Runners, your Lawrences of Arabias, movies whose hefty runtimes exist to accommodate the scope and scale of something truly epic.      I say all of this because length is one of the main talking points about The Brutalist, and likely front of mind for those considering it for their next trip to the theater. Is it worth the three and a half hours, plus a fifteen minute intermission, the movie demands from you? The answer to that isn't clear cut, as what's good and not...

  Gladiator 2 Genre: Historical Action Director: Ridley Scott Released: 2024      In the interest of full transparency, I feel it necessary to inform you that I don't love the original Gladiator. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a pretty good, entertaining popcorn flick, but I've never been able to see the satisfying, compelling characters or resounding, moving drama that others insist elevate the film beyond the status of competent but unremarkable action fare.            I say this in part because I just want to get my Gladiator hot take off my chest, but more importantly to hopefully dispel any doubts about my ability to approach its sequel objectively. I have no great attachment to or affection for the original Gladiator, so when I tell you that Gladiator 2 is kind of not great, I hope you will not attribute that stance to a surfeit of over-protective love for its older sibling.       I would say that Gladiator 2'...

Megalopolis Genre: ??? Director: Francis Ford Coppola Released: 2024      Megalopolis, the self-financed vanity project by relevancy-starved director Francis Ford Coppola, follows an architect named Caesar Catalina as he attempts to build a utopia in the middle of New Rome, a city in America run by mayor Franklin Cicero. I could go into more detail about the plot, but to what end?      Megalopolis may be the closest I have ever come to describing a movie as "So bad it's good." Because make no mistake: this is a very, very  bad movie. Its useless, paper-thin characters stagger around the screen executing the awkward blocking of a high school play while spouting breathtakingly poor, middle school dialogue, its terrible special effects suck the life out of would-be jaw dropping displays of man's full architectural power unleashed, and its cast of (mostly) heavy-hitters is wasted on a banal, bloated, self-indulgent script with nothing intelligent or worthw...

Every Coen Brothers Movie Ranked from Worst to Best       As anyone who has listened to the podcast can tell you, I am a longtime fan of the directing duo Joel and Ethan Coen. It is the opinion of this reviewer that the Coens have released some of the finest motion pictures ever committed to the silver screen. Because I've been too busy with moving this week to watch a movie for the blog and recently closed out their filmography, then, I've decided to instead give you what you've all been waiting for(?) and rank their each and every film from worst to best for your reading pleasure!  #18) Barton Fink      We begin with the only Coen brothers movie about which I truly have nothing positive to say. While their dramas tend to be relatively straightforward in their execution, Coen brothers movies that lean more comedic tend to navigate an exceedingly delicate balance among sometimes contradictory forces of drama, pathos, and surrealism or what you might ca...