Popcorn Perspectives with Danny Minton
Week of February 10, 2025
Love Hurts
Rated R for strong/bloody violence and language throughout
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 19%
In Theaters
Superbowl weekend is traditionally the worst weekend at the box office for the entire year, and thus any films opening this weekend are essentially studios sending their dead-on-arrival films to the graveyard. And while recently some studios have had some critical success with some of their low budget horror flicks like Heart Eyes, Love Hurts is a prime example of what the studios are trying to rid themselves of. In this uber-short (83 minutes) action flick, recent Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All at Once) is a lovable real estate agent who is forced back into the life he tried to escape when his brother discovers his whereabouts and a girl he allowed to survive (former Oscar winner Ariana DeBose) comes back to seek revenge. While the reviews would have you believe that this is a film completely without merit, there is some mighty good action and martial arts in this project. Almost enough to get you to like it. The fighting choreography is impressively fun, and the characters are different enough to draw interest. There are also some decent laughs here and there. What hurts here is the story, for which there isn’t much of one. From the beginning, you should be scratching your head about why a person trying to stay hidden and incognito has his name on every billboard in town. That clue alone is enough to make this tale completely nonsensical. But then the plot kicks in to help you realize that this movie is all style and no substance. The one saving grace is you’ll be watching the trailers almost as long as you’ll be watching the movie, and that brevity might be its best quality. C+
The Gorge
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, brief strong language, some suggestive material, and thematic elements
No Rotten Tomatoes Score at the time of writing
Streaming on Apple TV+
Two highly skilled assassins (Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy) are appointed to a one-year post as a solo guard in a tower on each side of a gorge, somewhere in a remote part of the world. They are explicitly told to not communicate with the other, but a sweet little romance begins to form right before they discover the true purpose of their jobs: keep out the deadly monsters who are trying to escape the gorge. This is certainly an interesting little straight-to-streaming project from Dr. Strange director Scott Derrickson, which provides a little bit of everything you want from a Valentine’s Day pic: romance, thrills, and horror. In that regard, the film works, for what it is. It also helps to have two great actors in the leading roles, with Sigourney Weaver thrown in for good measure. While the monsters are well-crafted, the secrets of the gorge aren’t the most compelling, but the action is fairly non-stop, overcoming any obstacles that a poorly conceived plot would provide. B-