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Dangerous Lies (2020) – LIEEEEEEEES

Released: 30th April
Seen: 2nd May

About a year ago I did a review for a film called Secret Obsession which was basically Netflix picking up the scraps left over from a Lifetime all-you-can-eat-buffet and turning it into something meant to resemble a film. It wasn’t exactly good and you could kind of tell what network it was made for originally but I figured “Oh well, if Netflix does a Lifetime movie every now and then that could be entertaining. Sometimes those are campy enough for a laugh” and Netflix apparently heard me and decided to make an even blander wannabe lifetime movie… I’m so ready for 2020 to be over.

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Spenser Confidential (2020) – Not So Condidential

Released: 6th March
Seen: 28th April

The buddy cop movie is a classic and reliable genre for a reason, the formula is so simple that if you pull it off right you will have something fun. You take two very different people, an Odd Couple if you will, and then you put them in cop outfits and make them do cop stuff. This is not a hard concept to execute and yet Netflix has already kinda screwed it up with the disastrous Coffee and Kareem which still haunts my nightmares which I have a lot more of now because I sleep more often because what the hell else does one do during a pandemic? Anyway, since Netflix either knew Coffee and Kareem was going to hurt or because they figured that no one would care if they did the same general thing again they made another buddy cop movie and this time they did an adequate job, IMPROVEMENT!

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Extraction (2020) – Familiar But Still Good

Released: 24th April
Seen: 27th April

It feels like 2020 is the year when certain actors need to prove that they can survive outside of the Marvel ecosphere. Namely, the original Avengers who are either no longer in the main series or are on their way out. The year started with RDJ making everyone worry that maybe he was going to be the big casualty of this with his devastatingly painful performance in Dolittle, we recently got the confirmation that Chris Evans is probably going to be fine with his work in Defending Jacob and now we come to Chris Hemsworth, who has also been working outside of the boundaries of the MCU for a while but keeps picking projects that no one likes (MiB: International) or no one sees (Bad Times At The El Royale). So, here he is teaming up with a first-time director who used to be a stunt coordinator and one of the Russo brothers to create a “White stuck in a foreign country shooting all of the bad guys” movie. It might not be great, but it’s pretty damn good.

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The Willoughbys (2020) – Home Alone: Extreme Edition


Released: 22nd April
Seen: 24th April

So, I know right now we’re all a little frazzled thanks to the mild apocalypse we’ve got going on. The people who are probably most in need of a respite from the insanity are the parents of young kids who are just running about without anything to watch since they’ve probably sat through Trolls: World Tour and Onward about 17 times each. Well, let me offer something that might delight them… and might make them work out ways to murder their parents, but they will be quiet for an hour and a half so you can decide if that trade-off is worthwhile.

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Circus of Books (2020) – The Happiest Show On Earth

Released: 23rd April
Seen: 23rd April

In 1960 at 8230 Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, a little bookstore named Book Circus opened up. Loaded with hardcore gay pornography, the store managed to keep the doors open until 1982 when Barry Mason found out that the store was in trouble and wound up buying it. One brief name change later and the little porno store owned by a cocaine addict would turn into the mom and pop shop Circus of Books, still dealing in gay pornography and run by a former special effects engineer and a heavily religious journalist. It would become one of the most important hotspots in gay culture and would be there for a lot of essential moments in queer history. This documentary tells that story through the eyes of the daughter of Barry and his wife Karen and it tells it beautifully.

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Love Wedding Repeat Header Image
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Love Wedding Repeat (2020) – I Want A Divorce!

Released: 10th April
Seen: 14th April

Love Wedding Repeat Info

Love Wedding Repeat is one of the blandest, stupidest and most pathetic attempts at a rom-com that I’ve ever seen. There is no other way to even start this, I don’t feel like trying to find some esoteric tangent that I could go on, the film is bad and pathetic and I do not like it for even a second. You want a film to make you hate the concept of marriage in totality? Have I got a film for you? A pathetic film that sells itself on looking pretty and having attractive actors with British and Italian accents say things that they believe are jokes but under the faux-pretty surface lies one of the ugliest messes I’ve ever laid eyes on.

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Horse Girl (2020) – Coming In In All Directions

Released: 7th February
Seen: 9th April

Normally when I write these reviews I do an opening paragraph that is intended to set the scene. Either I talk about the original text that inspired the film or I’ll talk about a cinematic trend or, in one case, talk about paint drying to create a subversive joke that can lead into the bulk of the review. Partially this is for context and it’s also done so that if people are scrolling through my page, the opening paragraph might catch their eye and make them want to read more. So, how does someone write an interesting and appropriate opening paragraph for a movie like Horse Girl, a film about a woman who is slowly being overtaken by her serious mental illness that starts as simple little obsessions and culminates in dressing like a peach-ninja and having imaginary sex with the nerdy guy from Criminal Minds? I sat here and tried to think of such an opening and ended up not having any idea, so that’s why you got that tiny bit of information about how I write this… it’s the most interesting thing I could think of because I do not know how on earth I can begin to explore this one.

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Lost Girls (2020) – Found It

Released: 13th March
Seen: 7th April

Lost Girls Info

Between 1996 and 2010, it’s believed that around 16 women who were either sex workers or closely tied to the sex work industry were murdered by someone who is currently only known as the Long Island Serial Killer. The identity of the killer has never been found and the story of how this case became known was so interesting that in 2013 it was turned into the book Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker. The book rights were later optioned for a film that went through some cast changes and went from Amazon to Netflix before being released in March where it promptly got ignored because… I don’t know, we were busy anticipating the new season of the Boss Baby series. All I know is that I saw no discussion around this film whatsoever which is odd because it’s genuinely fascinating.

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