MUTTPLEX MOVIE REVIEWS

Unfortunately, Westley Piddle doesn’t have a cinema, cineplex, or multiplex…only a Muttplex. But it’s showing some great movies…

🐾🐾🐾🐾= as good as it gets on the subject.  Drop everything, , sniff out, scramble to catch up and ‘watch NOWS’!

🐾🐾🐾= entertaining or informative.  Worth putting on your short-watch list.

🐾🐾= Average entertainment, will pass casual viewing time but does not exceed expectations – even modest ones. Ultimately forgettable.

🐾= Seriously! There are many far better movies out there on this subject. Don’t bother unless it’s a rainy afternoon with absolutely nothing better to do.

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This week it’s pure Indie gold found lower states America, and pure Hollywood trash found in ancient China …and all at the press of a TV button.

The Devil All The Time (2020) directed by Antonio Campos – Netflix

(courtesy IMDb) 🐾🐾🐾🐾

Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia, The Devil All the Time follows a cast of compelling and bizarre characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s. There’s Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can’t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrificial blood he pours on his “prayer log.” There’s Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial killers, who troll America’s highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. There’s the spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin Eugene Russell, Willard and Charlotte’s orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right. (courtesy IMDb)

My take: stir in The Waltons with The Hills Have Eyes, sprinkle liberally with Coen Brothers dry humor and outrageous characters, and bake to crusty perfection.  Bang!  You have the best driller (drama/thriller) on Netflix this year.  The cast are superb and they all revel in the crazy characters they portray – especially Jason Clarke, and a fav actor of mine.  Don’t miss this!

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Mulan –  directed by Niki Caro (2020) Disney Plus

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Based on an ancient Chinese legend, a young Chinese girl disguises herself as a male warrior in order to save her father and family from shame. That’s all you need to know!

My take: remember the days when Disney represented quality family films (complete with family values)?  Nah, me neither!

This is a bloodless, spineless and lackluster attempt [to mint coin] at refreshing (and re-franchising) the 1996 Mulan animated song and dance movie – and erh, based on the legend of Mulan the Chinese general who saves the empire.  Worse, it falls heavily into violence and the solution of war to save a country.  Is that what Disney is all about?  Okay, make an action-adventure war movie (like Troy) and I can buy into it.  But make a war movie full of clean killing (no blood, no screams, no nasty dead people) aimed at children!!!  That’s totally unacceptable. Glad it’s a flop.  Children deserve better – and they certainly don’t deserve to be introduced pre-cut, vacuum wrapped, hygienic violence as if this is entertainment aimed at their age group.  Yuck!

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SNIFZ YUZ NEXT MATINEE! 🐾