MONSTER SUMMER is a teenage horror movie in the tradition of GOONIES. Noah is a young teenager living on Martha’s Vineyard with his mother, who runs a boarding house. Noah’s father was a journalist, but died. So, Noah wants to be a journalist. Noah’s friend, Ben, goes swimming with a teenager girl and gets attacked by someone under the water and turns into a zombie. Noah recruits two of his friends to investigate what’s happening. He eventually finds out that Old Man Carruthers, played by Mel Gibson, is a former police detective who left the force to search for the man who kidnapped his young son. With his help, Noah and his friends search for the perpetrator whom Noah thinks us a witch.

In many ways, MONSTER SUMMER is very clean with no overt sex and almost no foul language. There are also Christian symbols and allusions. However, the movie reveals frightening things about witches, especially their ability to appear as normal next-door neighbors. Also, the final showdown with the witch is extremely scary. Therefore, MOVIEGUIDE® recommends caution for younger teenagers.

(Pa, BB, CC, OO, L, V, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Mixed worldview with a moral ending as well as Christian symbols throughout with lots of focus on witches, who seem incredibly versatile and strong, but the good guys eventually win;

Foul Language:

Two obscenities;

Violence:

Lots of scary violence though not bloody where an offscreen witch sucks the souls out of young people, sometimes in the water, sometimes in the woods and sometimes beside an old station wagon, which leaves the people as zombies, eventually a showdown with the witch concludes with strong violence where the witch attacks a man and three teenagers, and a character is shot several times;

Sex:

No sex (some light kissing);

Nudity:

No nudity;

Alcohol Use:

No alcohol use;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No smoking or drugs; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Man cracks frightening jokes, trespassing, lying, but all rebuked.

MONSTER SUMMER is a teenage horror movie in the tradition of GOONIES. The movie, which stars, Mel Gibson commends the search for truth and has good triumphs over evil, but the witch is very scary for many reasons, including its ability to appear as an ordinary person. So, the witch causes the viewer to be scared of everybody.

Noah is a young teenager living on Martha’s Vineyard with his mother, who runs a boarding house. Noah’s father was a journalist, but died, so Noah wants to be a journalist.

The movie opens with Noah being suspicious of Old Man Carruthers, whose son disappeared. Noah has written several articles about disappearing children, but the local editor doesn’t want bad news about Martha’s Vineyard. Noah’s friend, Ben, goes swimming with a teenager girl and gets attacked by someone under the water and turns into a zombie. Noah recruits two of his friends to investigate what’s happening. He eventually finds out that Gene Carruthers, played by Mel Gibson, is former police detective who left the force to search for the man who kidnapped his young son.

With Gene’s help, Noah and his friends search for the perpetrator whom Noah thinks us a witch. In fact, he thinks the witch is a woman who’s come to room in his mother’s house for the summer, but in an embarrassing reveal, this turns out to be false.

Eventually, other kids get taken and turned into zombies. Gene has mapped New England towns where other kids turned into zombies, and now only Noah can find out whodunnit. However, the witch is hot on Noah and his friends’ trail. The showdown between them is very scary. Who will survive?

In many ways, MONSTER SUMMER is very clean with no overt sex and almost no foul language. There are also Christian symbols and allusions. However, the movie reveals frightening things about witches, especially their ability to appear as normal next-door neighbors. Also, the final showdown is extremely scary.

This problem could have been alleviated with a little more humor and some judicious editing of the violent showdown. The jeopardy was strong enough that it didn’t need the prolonged showdown to hold the viewer’s attention. Furthermore, it would have been nice if there was more Christianity in the final showdown like the movie THE CONJURING.

Therefore, MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for younger teenagers.

Joker: Folie à Deux, 2024.

Directed by Todd Phillips.
Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Zazie Beetz, Steve Coogan, Harry Lawtey, Leigh Gill, Ken Leung, Jacob Lofland, Sharon Washington, Troy Fromin, and Bill Smitrovich.

SYNOPSIS:

While struggling with his dual identity, Arthur Fleck not only stumbles upon true love, but also finds the music that’s always been inside him.

Co-writer/director Todd Phillips wants the last laugh with Joker: Folie à Deux. In some ways, it’s remarkable that something so anti-fan and experimental yet mainstream exists in a David Zaslav-run Warner Bros. world. None of this is the reason the movie is bad, mind you; that would be because, despite its initially intriguing, offputting nature that has no interest in being what anyone would expect from a Joker sequel, it is also crushingly boring and often feels like a 2+ coda to that film. The movie has a point to make, which could have simply been Todd Phillips making a statement online. Then again, perhaps it’s funnier to make people, especially fans, endure something so aggressively subversive and oppositional to what those fans believe. Either way, the film isn’t good.

Joker: Folie à Deux (penned by Todd Phillips and Scott Silver) is a courtroom drama that follows Arthur Fleck (a returning Joaquin Phoenix, once again unnerving and convincingly unstable) at Arkham Asylum whenever not on trial for his psychotic break and subsequent murders throughout the first film. Unsurprisingly, the guards (led by Brendan Gleeson) dish out inhumane treatment from time to time and reduce him to a source of cruel entertainment or personal gain. If they aren’t demanding to hear jokes, one of them is asking for an autograph under the impression it will be worth a hefty sum of money once he gets the death penalty.

Occasionally moved around the asylum, Arthur comes across a music room. He meets fellow inmate Lee (Lady Gaga), a disturbed individual who has developed an odd obsession with him and his actions. They quickly start falling for one another and planning a future that involves getting Arthur off trial, escaping, and building a mountain on the hills. At one point, Lee starts a fire because everyone working in this facility is incompetent (really, the movie makes everyone in New York City look incredibly irresponsible at their jobs), which leads to the two almost escaping while singing and dancing outside. It’s a sequence that plays like part of it might be inside Arthur’s head, but it is soon confirmed as full-on reality. So, too, is the scene where a guard lets Lee into Arthur’s bedroom at night.

Not only is there something wildly off and illogical about what’s happening here, but Arthur starts getting in touch with his musical side to express certain emotions. Most of these scenes depict Arthur retreating into his mind to sing and behave freely, especially when the courtroom pressure gets to be too much for him, but it mostly feels like a cheap tactic to get some Joker scenes in there alongside a scene or two of fantasy violence to be shoehorned into the marketing to muster up extremely misleading interest. Again, that’s not bad, but this movie is between interesting and boring across its entire running time.

Even with popstar sensation Lady Gaga in some of those musical sequences, the direction here is flat and makes no visually compelling use of real-life or fantasy surroundings. It’s one thing to make a Joker movie pointing and laughing at everyone who believes the character is some misunderstood symbol of good in the face of a selfish, greedy world looking down on the lower class, essentially making fun of Joker fans. That’s also one hell of a questionably cruel creative choice to make about a character who has been physically and sexually abused as a child, regardless of the murders he committed and cult following he amassed. It’s another thing to decide to make a musical that is a forgettable musical, aside from occasionally recognizing the lyrics from familiar songs. Fortunately, Hildur Guðnadóttir has crafted another brooding, unsettling score, trying and failing to do some heavy lifting from the rest of the lackluster narrative.

Speaking of Lee, this universe’s take on Harley Quinn, there isn’t much of a character here. She is infatuated with Arthur, but there’s never any sense of why since the screenplay spends most of its running time clouding whether or not this is a fresh interpretation of the character or something with slight familiarity with the source material. Is part of the joke here also casting Lady Gaga only to give her nothing memorable to do?

It truly is a baffling experience watching Joker: Folie à Deux, a movie certainly not made for fans but also seems to have been made for no one. By the time it tries to recreate some of the chaotic feel of the climactic first film, eventually taking a few admirable crazy swings, one can’t help shrugging one’s shoulders. It’s a film that wants to explore the extent of whether Joker is a second personality or an extension of Arthur, starting with a Looney Tunes-inspired cartoon to set up that concept but mostly slogs along aimlessly. It doesn’t know what to do with these ideas, characters, or subgenres. Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga are let down and left hanging in this mess.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist

 

John Amos, the prolific actor known for his work in the sitcoms “Good Times” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” the movie “Coming to America” and the miniseries “Roots,” has died. He was 84.

Amos’ publicist, Belinda Foster, confirmed the news of his death Tuesday to the Associated Press. No other details were immediately available.

For three years and three seasons, Amos was adored by audiences around the country as the tough-loving patriarch of the Evans family on the 1970s sitcom “Good Times.” Amos played James Evans, a hard-working Korean War veteran with a withering stare and sharp wit who did everything he could to provide for his family.

Like any great TV dad, Amos loved all his TV children equally — which became a point of contention behind the scenes when the scripts started focusing more and more on the comedic antics of the eldest Evans child, J.J. (Jimmie “JJ” Walker). In a 2014 interview with the Television Academy, Amos recalled expressing concerns about the show placing “too much emphasis … on J.J. and his chicken hat” while neglecting James Evans’ “other two children.”

According to Amos, his creative differences with the “Good Times” producers — including the legendary Norman Lear — led to him being labeled a “disruptive factor” and getting fired from the show. Lear personally called Amos to deliver the news.

“I didn’t curse or anything. I just hung up the phone,” Amos told the Television Academy.

“And he didn’t call me back to see if I might have anything else to say. I never heard from him again for months and months and months.”

Amos bounced back from termination swiftly and triumphantly, landing an Emmy nomination in 1977 for his powerful portrayal of adult Kunta Kinte in “Roots,” the groundbreaking miniseries about slavery based on Alex Haley’s novel of the same name.

Before he was cast as the show’s main character (along with LeVar Burton, who played young Kunta Kinte), Amos auditioned for two other parts. When he was finally invited to read for the “once-in-a-lifetime role” of Kinte, Amos “almost fainted.”

“I couldn’t believe it,” he told the TV Academy in 2014. “It was like I’d hit the lottery.”

Amos was well aware of the impact his performance and “Roots” had on viewers, who let him know in real time how deeply moved they were by Kinte’s revolutionary story.

“I was on the freeway and this big brother pulls up next to me in this piece of ancient Detroit steel,” Amos recalled in an interview with The Times 40 years after “Roots” premiered.

“He said, ‘Man, pull over!’ So I pulled the car over. He said, ‘Hey, man, I watched that “Roots” on TV last night, man. Man, it really affected me … I was halfway through it and I went and got my .38 and I went and shot the TV!’ That was the funniest thing that happened. I hope he wasn’t looking for me to reimburse him.”

Amos was born Dec. 27, 1939, in Newark, N.J. He attended East Orange High School, where he played football at the same time singer Dionne Warwick was a cheerleader, according to the New York Times.

For a while, Amos stayed on the athletic track. He was a running back at Colorado State before trying out unsuccessfully for the Denver Broncos and getting cut from the Kansas City Chiefs after tearing his Achilles tendon — a season-ending injury. Amos credited former Chiefs coach Hank Stram with helping him realize his true passion.

“Young man, you are not a football player,” Stram told him. “You are a young man who happens to be playing football.”

While grieving the imminent loss of his football career, Amos wrote a poem that Stram permitted him to read aloud for his teammates. The team gave him a standing ovation.

“When [Stram] saw the team’s reaction to the poem he said, ‘I think you have another calling,’” Amos recalled in 2012.

Upon leaving the NFL, Amos pivoted to copywriting before moonlighting as a comedy writer for the small screen. He launched his entertainment career as a staff writer for the 1969 CBS musical variety series “The Leslie Uggams Show.”

By 1970, Amos booked his first major acting role as Gordy the weatherman on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” after some writers working simultaneously on “Uggams” and “Mary Tyler Moore” determined he would be perfect for the part.

“Quite frankly I never looked back after that,” Amos told the Los Angeles Times in 2012.

Amos went on to appear in dozens of seminal TV series, including “Good Times,” “Roots,” “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” “Sanford and Son,” “Hunter” and “The West Wing,” in which he portrayed military Commander-in-Chief Percy “Fitz” Fitzwallace.

Amid the high-stakes political drama of the landmark show about a fictional president and his staff, Admiral Fitzwallace was often the voice of reason that could command a room as effectively as Amos could command the screen.

“That role of Admiral Percy Fitzwallace … is one I would have paid them to do,” Amos told the TV Academy.

“The uniform in itself was one thing, all that salad dressing — fruit salad, we’d call it — his medals. Once I put that jacket on, I became the commander in chief.”

Once a TV writer himself, Amos never missed an opportunity to give props to the creators — even Lear, who eventually reunited with the ousted “Good Times” star for “704 Hauser.” The short-lived series starred Amos as the liberal father of a young conservative activist living in Archie Bunker’s old house in Queens.

“I matured to the point if I had creative differences, I would say ‘Norman, can I speak to you?’ instead of threatening to do bodily harm,” Amos joked in a 2012 interview with The Times.

More recently, Amos denied reports made in 2023 by his daughter, Shannon, accusing her brother Kelly “K.C.” Amos of neglect and not providing proper care for their father. The elder Amos was hospitalized in 2023 but recovered after treatment for fluid accumulation in his lower body.

“I will say this for now: This story about neglect is false and unmerited,” Amos said in a statement in March after the LAPD opened an investigation into the allegations. “The real truth will come out soon and you will hear it from me. Believe it.”

In addition to his extensive work on the small screen, Amos appeared in a number of films, such as “Coming to America.” He portrayed Cleo McDowell, restaurateur and father of Eddie Murphy’s love interest, in the classic 1988 comedy.

Even after his acting career took off, Amos didn’t stop writing. For decades, he traveled around the United States performing a one-man show he had penned about an 87-year-old man awaiting the return of Halley’s Comet.

Amos told the Television Academy in 2014 that he wanted to be remembered as “a guy that made people laugh” and “made people think.”

“I’d just like to be remembered as someone they enjoyed watching and they enjoyed having their homes,” he said.

“That’s a good feeling, to know that some stranger sitting in some remote town somewhere laughed to the point that he forgot his ongoing miseries or problems and said to his family, ‘Hey, John Amos is on. Come in here! Let’s get a laugh.’ I mean, is there anything better than that?”

Former staff writer Susan King and the Associated Press contributed to this report.