Joey King

The Princess

  • Title: The Princess (2022)
  • IMDb: link

Joey King stars in the title role of a princess who refuses to marry a sociopathic suitor (Dominic Cooper) who then takes control of the kingdom by force and locks her away in the castle’s tower. Not one to wait for Prince Charming, she fights her way out of the tower and battles the invading knights and cutthroats in hopes of freeing her family from the dungeon and killing her would-be husband who will stop at nothing to seize the throne.

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The Lie

  • Title: The Lie
  • IMDb: link

The Lie movie posterThe Lie is a joyless exercise featuring Peter Sarsgaard and Mireille Enos as a pair of divorced parents who decide to to work together to hide the fact that their daughter (Joey King) is responsible for the death of one of her friends (Devery Jacobs) during a contrived set-up in the film’s tiresome first act.

The film features the parents making a series of bad decisions, including trying to throw suspicion on the missing girl’s father (Cas Anvar) as the reason for her disappearance by painting him as a child abuser while forcing their daughter to echo the lies to the police. Sarsgaard and Enos do what they can, but there’s not much here to work with, while King is stuck with a character the script can never properly come to terms with. Melodramatic as a tween with her first phone, events spiral out of control and even an absurd late twist can’t save what is best forgotten.

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The Flash – Magenta

  • Title: The Flash – Magenta
  • wiki: link

The Flash - Magenta

“Magenta” introduces a new meta-human altered by Doctor Alchemy when a schizophrenic girl with an abusive Foster Care family begins lashing out at those who have hurt her. Calling herself Magenta (Joey King), the young woman uses her powers to manipulate metal of any size to put her Foster Care father in the hospital. Not even aware of what her other personality is doing when she is blacked out, eventually it will take the Flash (Grant Gustin) to talk her through her pain and understand just what she is doing before she hurts hundreds of more people to get her vengeance.

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Wish I Was Here

  • Title: Wish I Was Here
  • IMDB: link

Wish I Was HereTen years ago Zack Braff wrote, directed, and starred in a little film called Garden State. Over the next decade the actor continued to work in front of the camera but other than directing a few episodes of Scrubs left the work behind the camera to others. With the help of a Kickstarter campaign, Braff returns to the big screen with Wish I Was Here which features many of the same quirks of his Garden State while focusing on sensibilities that have evolved over time.

Despite having a similar slice-of-life take on a character not too far removed from his own (here Braff stars as a struggling actor with an overworked wife and demanding children), Wish I Was Here is far less effective than Garden State. Co-written by Braff’s brother Adam, the new feature provides some great individual moments (including reminding us that Kate Hudson can act when called upon to do something more than braindead romcoms), but fails in becoming more than the sum of its parts by offering an overly simplistic ending to a messy (and increasingly cliched) life seemingly freed of all troubles in under two-hours.

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Die Hard in the White House (with a kid)

  • Title: White House Down
  • IMDB: link

White House DownAfter the initial success of Die Hard there was a time when every movie studio was trying to cash in on the concept of a great action star (usually a cop or specially trained soldier) in the wrong place at the wrong time and forced to save the day (which almost always also included endangered hostages and some kind of robbery or cash grab). We got Die Hard on a plane, Die Hard on a boat, Die Hard on a bus, Die Hard on a train, and so on. More than 25 years later Hollywood still hasn’t given up on the formula.

Much like Olympus Has Fallen, released earlier this year, White House Down offers us a story of a terrorist attack on Washington D.C. and the capture of the White House, the President of the United States, and several high ranking members of the United States Government. Where Antoine Fuqua‘s film struggled to be Michael Bay-style action porn, director Roland Emmerich‘s movie has a far better sense of humor and an understanding of the complete ridiculousness of its entire premise. Don’t get me wrong, the movie is dumb as dirt at times, but at least it knows this.

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