More Than Funny (2018)

The Olivia Wilde renaissance is upon us.

The film may be a thriller, but I wasn’t thrilled by it. If anything, I was bored and annoyed.

While this film thinks that it is diagnosing the cause, it is merely diagnosing a symptom instead. 

'Motherless Brooklyn' is a 1950s whodunit made by its star, Edward Norton. Like most detective films in this setting, the cast is mostly white males (with a few notable exceptions).

Striving for validation. Let’s be frank….we ALL want to be successful. Whatever we put our efforts into, ideally it is to make it culminate in the best possible results across the board, especially when it comes to what career path we are pursuing. We WANT to excel, to shine, to advance, to be acknowledged. AND…let’s hope that we also wish to better everyone around us to boot. However, what occurs when those whom we initially put our trust in suddenly become a burden instead of a boon? Do we falter under the weight of rejection? Or STAND UP for WHO WE ARE?

"WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO SACRIFICE?!!!!" "EVERYTHING!!!!!" This is but one of a multitude of highly emphatic questions, and subsequent answers, being asked in the newest feature film from one of the current masters of horror, Jordan Peele ("Get Out", "Us" and "Nope"). I must give Peele credit in that he continues to push the boundaries of specific genres and their associated tropes in order to provide what ends up amounting to subtly then jarringly intense, yet still character and story-driven, cinema that speaks more to indie stylings than mainstream.