The holiday season is always a big time for the box office. Studios always have a movie always coming out around this time of year, because people go to the theaters more in the winter. I have seen 3 movies that have came out this winter, and am going to review them all. The movies are Napoleon, Thanksgiving, and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
Starting it off, I am going to talk about Napoleon. Napoleon is a biography/action movie about the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. This movie is directed by Ridley Scott. He has directed some amazing movies, like Gladiator, Blade Runner 2049, and Alien. This movie also has Joaquin Phoenix playing Napoleon, and Vanessa Kirby playing his wife, Josephine. Those are two actors I really like, Ridley Scott has directed some great movies, and the movie is about history, which I find very interesting. All of that was making this one of my most anticipated movies of the year. After coming out of the theater, I was very disappointed. With the 2 and a half hour plus run time and what was shown in the trailers, I was thinking this would be a huge action movie showing all of Napoleons’ battles. It had some of that, which was very well done. All the action was great with huge set pieces. Instead of focusing on Napoleons’ journey for power, the movie focused on his relationship with Josephine a lot more. These parts of the movie were very dumb and not needed for in my opinion. I feel like by the end of this long movie, you didn’t even get the full Napoleon story. Overall this left me disappointed, and I probably wouldn’t watch again.
Second, I’m going to talk about Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is directed by Eli Roth, and is a horror movie. This movie is set in Plymouth, Massachusetts and is about a Thanksgiving inspired killer. My expectations were pretty low for this, and to be honest I was only going because my friend wanted to. I am usually not much of a horror movie fan, and if I watch them, it’s usually around halloween time. To my suprise, this movie was pretty good. This is a very typical horror film, but it is done very well. I think the setting of Plymouth worked very well. The films lead actors are Patrick Dempsey, Ty Olsson, Gina Gershon, and Addison Rae. This cast doesn’t sound great, but the performances were surprisingly pretty good. Overall, this movie was surprisingly good and a solid holiday horror movie.
The last movie I am going to review in this article is the Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. This movie is based off of the book published in 2020. I read this book when it came out, and I didnt like it. I felt like it dragged on forever. When I heard they were making it a movie, my expectations weren’t high but I still wanted to go see it. This was directed by Francis Lawrence, who directed the other Hunger Games films. The cast includes Tom Blyth, Peter Dinklage, Viola Davis, Jason Schwartzman, and Rachel Zegler. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a prequel to the Hunger Games series, and is about President Snow as a young adult. This movie was shockingly very good, way better than the book. The performances, pacing, and action were all great. It was a great surprise and my favorite movie out of the ones I reviewed today.
