[EXPRESSO] The Boogeyman (2023) | Mid-Boogie

Apparently another Stephen King’s short story adaptation, which makes me kinda wish i did watch last year’s Firestarter remake, but then again, does it really matter?

I mean, we get a movie like this like every few months or so, and the title is apt even if it’s the most stock combo of laughable and generic.

It’s definitely “to the point”, because the plot concerns a therapist and his family, processing their grief after the death of the wife, only to be haunted-stalked by a supernatural entity that feeds on vulnerable people and feeds on their suffering, after a troubled man shows up at the therapist’s house out of the blue and is found hanged in a closed room.

Did i tell you the crux of the movie is about the sisters (a child and the older teenage daughter) bonding and managing to get over their mother’s death while they learn more about the entity and try to face it when it’s clear nobody else actually believes the thing to be more than a byproduct of their imagination? Well, you could have guessed that too.

What’s surprising is despite the movie being as stock, formulaic, derivative and uninspired as it seems… the execution saves it, almost shocking you that, despite the premise, there being no big twist to mix the formula, and – well -everything, ultimately the movie isn’t half bad.

Which it’s kind of a stupid way of putting it, it’s average so, yeah, it’s “half bad”, technically, but the characters aren’t detestable or too stupid, at all, the creature is shown fairly clearly, has an ok design and looks quite decent in terms of effects, plus the finale it’s satisfying enough.

For something called The Boogeyman, it’s a surprising enjoyable horror film, if generic, very average and throwaway.

[EXPRESSO] Air (2023) | L’homme d’argent

While i missed in theathers, it happens it was made available on Amazon Prime Video (pretty much immediatly after its theathrical run here), so… we’re reviewing this one too!

While it’s not the first time the story surrounding the cultural impact of the Air Jordan line of sneakers, i didn’t see the One Man And His Shoes documentary (which came out in 2020 and i guess was an antepasta of sorts), so sod it, let’s talk about something that definitely will feel weird to younger generations, as it’s pretty much a film about a line of shoes your uncle had.

Exciting it sounds not if you didn’t grow up in the 1990s (or earlier), i do understand that much.

Despite the name, it’s not the biopic about classic french electronic musical groups, but about the deal between a then unknown Michael Jordan and the newborne basketball division of shoe manufacturer giant Nike, which would develop into the “Air Jordan” line of sneakers, and their cultural impact for sport and footwear,

Directed by Ben Affleck, Air it’s not quite the 2 hours long sneaker commercial you’d expect it to be, but an old fashioned yet compelling biopic underdog story, where Michael Jordan’s almost total absence make sense, as this is ironically not so much about him, but the process and the people that brought upon the phenomenon itself via the mundane realities of conferences, phone calls and so on.

It also has a great period sountrack, which is nice but it’s almost overbearing (and sometimes odd in the way some songs are used), like Affleck’s choice to oversell the fact it’s 1984 by throwing way too many visual references for nostalgia more than establishment, but it’s still a solid, decent film. About your granpa’ (or uncle’) shoes and corporate glorification. 😦