"Now we can have a real day of the dead."
It's like time never passed. I mean it when I say 3 From Hell feels like it was shot at the same time as it's acclaimed predecessor, The Devil's Rejects. Zombie's still got it and he absolutely nails his toot fucking fruity balls deep gore fest with near perfection. Now, I won't go too much in detail, because I'm assuming if you're reading this you're either a follower of me or a big fan of Rob Zombie wondering if this film is worth checking out. As a biased fan of all of his work, I would argue aspects of this surpass the sequel. Seeing this back to back as a double feature, I didn't get the impression I was watching a different film, made fourteen years later, but like a four hour epic of blood soaked proportions and twisted humor. Zombie understood what his fans were looking for, this plays off like a partial remake, only expanding the story to really where the Firefly family plans to go after their escape from prison. Sadly, during the film's production, Sid Haig was hospitalized and couldn't really reprise his role as the clown Captain Spaulding, but reduced to a really small role where he's given lethal injection on death row after his monologue is over. It was clear he was sick during the filming, but glad he was able to make an appearance. Instead, Richard Brake comes in to the picture as Otis' half brother, and he fills the shoes just fine, playing a deranged hillbilly that's obsessed with getting in to the Hollywood movies. With these three back in their usual shtick, Zombie just goes nuts. Whatever you liked about the previous, it's amped up a couple notches and played more for amusement. It doesn't shy away from the idea you're supposed to sympathize with these awful people. You have to disconnect their horrible crimes with where they are now to really get all the fun, and that may be difficult for some people. It's a lot like if Warren Betty's Bonnie and Clyde was turned in to a funny action movie, where Bonnie starts massacring the police with a bow and arrow as "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" plays. The kills are as creative and brutal as ever, turning in to a southern fried Mexican showdown in the second half of the film, whereas the previous was the family on the run and being persecuted by the avenging sheriff, this film was finally their stance against the system, the battle to make up for their defeat before. They have a chance to escape from all their troubles and making a life for themselves out there, as odd and confusing as that sounds. The only thing I would say that just barely brings the film down is the main antagonist doesn't receive as much screen time as Forsyth's character, so the conflict of the justice system taking matters too far and having the audience ask the tough question, "Who's in the right?" This film answers the question for you and it delivers that answer coldly. But everything surrounding it's loose core is the spectacle. The witty jokes, the funny character moments, the exploitation, the profanity, the sex, and above all John Wick inspired action is what you're coming for. This film is obviously not for everyone, but for those that it is for, the depraved, the mad, the clowns, and the Zombie lovers, this has it all. It's one of Zombie's best films, on top of an already great catalogue. Check it out when it comes out on video.
"What the fuck did you do to Bruce Lee?"
Tarantino's simplest script, yet biggest production value to date. It's a fairy tale, and Quentin doesn't overcomplicate things. It's just a story of a man who wants more out of fame and a bigger presence in Hollywood, and we see the pieces to reaching those heights are fun, nostalgic fueled remnants of the experimental 60's cinema. It feels a lot like a Roman Polanski film, fitting that the crux of the movie and striving goal for Leo's character, Rick, is to meet the rising director. It uses the era and it's celebrities to tell a more fantastical and satisfying story that looks back on the decade with extreme fondness. If Stranger Things is a sucker for the 80's, this blows it's rose tinted goggles off it's face. It's worth watching this for it's atmosphere and presentation. Much of the budget is spent recreating the entire Los Angeles city, getting down to the costumes, vehicles, set dressing, and most of all, the films and stars of the era. He really dug up a vault of the films that were coming out, the variety and accuracy to what was being shown, rather than it just being a blanket of all popular movies that came out the decade, is oddly lovely. Despite the story not being accurate, given then Manson murders in this do not at all go like how it went down, the window dressing on top of it is the most accurate a period piece of this time has looked since a real film from then. I'm glad Quentin didn't go convoluted this time. It's an inviting heartwarming at times and rowdy revisit to his favorite part of Hollywood.
Not even discussing the quality of the film it's about, The Last Jedi, this is actually a poorly structured documentary. From it's first introductions, it's the wrap party followed up with clips of internet buzz about the film's director choice, and from there, starts showing off the cycles of the production. The big issue, in comparison to The Beginning film showing The Phantom Menaces's shoot, is there is hardly a straight timeline of events. You don't know how far away pre-production is from shoot, how far Rian was along writing the script when the sets were being built, when storyboards were being drawn and colored proper for practical and digital techniques, when effects demonstrations started, any conversations really between Rian and the producers, etc. The entire ordeal is glossed over with rapid pace, never stopping it's stock orchestral score to showcase the fancy B-roll they took for this. The style of which this is edited is less of a documentation of what happened, and instead a very fancy marketing show-reel. Pieces of conversations are let to breath, but sometimes the punch line or follow up to conversations are not finished, random choices of what to include and what not is jarring, i.e. the comment about Russian tweets which has nothing to do with the preceding and proceeding sequences, and nothing ever really makes sense. It's like a jumbled compilation of pieces of the production with graceful intent, but no foundation. Everything feels out of order and it doesn't make me feel like I'm actually there experiencing the labor intensive shoot with the crew. I feel like I'm being told what happened, rather than being shown it, which brings me to one of my major gripes, is the over extensive use of narration and interview footage/audio instead of raw B-roll conversation. There is some to be found, sure, but it feels less personal and intimate when a lot of what is being fed to me is not the initial or in the moment feelings of the people involved with the production, but heavily scripted and filtered interviews after the fact. There's a manufactured feeling which I can't shake, and that's my question. Why was this made? Genuinely, I want a real answer, why was this produced and released? Why wasn't one done for The Force Awakens or Rogue One, especially the latter, I would have loved to have heard from Gareth Edwards' mouth his process for making the movie, especially in regards to his documentaries for his film Monsters. What was the goal here? Well, I'm going to put my tinfoil hat on and conclude, the studio probably knew there was going to be backlash, or at the very least, misunderstandings about the creative choices taken with the script and presentation as a whole. It's almost like they anticipated the vitriolic response to the final picture, so my guess is at some point in pre-production they started making this. They probably loved what Rian was doing, "being risky," but that's the point of this, it's a piece to convince the viewer why Rian is a misunderstood, genius director, in a veil attempt to save face, to show the public that they actually "make creative decisions" and this film is some kind of work of art. That's why there's inclusion of a number of interview pieces from actors Mark Hamill and some of the crew facing their concerns about aspects of Rian's planning, but are painted in the light that, oh, he know what he's doing and it should be supported. I want to respect the work by the cast in the background that actually seemed to care, but there's something so disingenuous about everything here. In comparison, Rob Zombie's Halloween documentary that is over four and a half hours long uses almost no interviews, only when it helps the day of shoot, not much narration, just straight B-roll from the start of pre-production, to the very end, and it is one of the best documentaries I've ever watched. The important thing is it's a day by day look in to it, not a shimmering gloss. It's actually a journey, you become attached to the crew through it, nothing is left out. This, it feels like revisionist history.
What a shame, I liked the first Wreck-It Ralph a lot, and many of the complaints I have with this one, you could throw at the original, but I don't think so. This is a two hour advertisement for a huge conglomerate of intellectual properties, just everything you could think of about the internet, it's in here. Amazon, eBay, YouTube, everything under the cyber sun, and I would almost be okay with it if the story had some deep rooted sincerity or depth to it to justify it's money hungry bullshit. But the script is so simple, just a saturday morning cartoon plot that can be summed up in two sentences. The real meat of the movie is the eye candy of seeing these websites that you all already know, just sold to you for a full price movie ticket. The genuine charm and cleverness of the original is not here at all, and the film doesn't use in the internet in a clever way, just presenting it as is. Yet some want to argue it satirizes it, sorry, no, just showing it accurately doesn't make it commentary. I'll given them credit for being more accurate to mainstream internet, but everything else, worthless. This could've been a thirty minute television episode and I would've been okay with it. The filler is ridiculous in this. What a waste.
Ugh. The first movie I come back to discuss on this website, it's this new live-action Disney masterpiece. The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is a special kind of bad. A Wrinkle In Time from earlier in the year failed spectacularly due to it's haphazard presentation, claustrophobic cinematography, and abysmal acting. I could almost see the script working with some tweaks and a much better director at the helm, because I could see what was attempted with the fantasy sequences. Now this latter film Nutcracker, is the inverse of Wrinkle. One thing I noticed off the bat is the production design and cinematography is beautiful. Victorian London, although has a bad CG introduction, is presented beautifully and even looks better than the real world sets from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. The use of blue and golden color hues and lighting give a fantastical storybook vibe. And once Clara emerges through the other end of the hollow tree log, the white forest illuminated by the sun looks like a painting, just, wonderful imagery that wouldn't be possible in a real location. There's also lots of classical and even Fantasia inspired pieces, when Sugar Plum and the rulers of the Four Realms are showing Clara their kingdoms. Instead of a generic clip/slideshow, it's opted to represent the lands in a stage show ballet, with performers and stage effects. I can't say the same for the make up and costuming though, as it becomes very hard to take the characters seriously who are dressed up like they're at queer parade, with mismatched colors and ridiculous hats and face paint. It's too off the walls for it's own good. But okay, visually, the movie has most everything going for it; a storybook brought to life. Though, I don't know what's with the connection to the Nutcracker story, besides Sugar Plum Fairies playing here and there and there being a "nutcracker" character, this script doesn't seem to be about this world, just this one event happening in the world. And this leads into the disaster that ruined this movie at it's core, and it's the script. I hate to compare, but imagine taking Tim Burton's Alice and strip away all the character development, most of the world building, any sense of scale, pacing, really, any sense of story. There are no pauses, no real chance to breath in this world, no one-on-one conversations about, I don't know, human emotions. Clara just keeps talking about finding the key to her egg her mother gave her, or, we need to go here, I want to go home, etc. She rarely ever talks about what she actually wants, who she wants to be, what she wants to do now knowing this world exists and her mother was a part of it. I would say an overwhelming majority of this movie is action sequences. The script is all in service of the most underwhelming, small scale battles against such dangerous foes like mice, slow tin soldiers, and a high pitched Keira Knightly. Yeah, spoilers, but I don't care. There is no reason to care about anything, and the twists and cliched dialogue can be recited perfectly before they happen. "Oh, open this egg, and everything you need will be inside." Inside the egg, there's only a mirror. Let's have an elongated drawn out sequence where Clara gets upset and storms off about it, then like ten minutes later realizes, "Everything I need is inside... it's me." Like, I laughed hysterically because I read the lines out before she said them, it's so predictable and childish. And the detriment is, you might say, this movie is for children, why are you, a grown man criticizing this. I don't think even kids would want to sit through this, I say that as a sibling. There's nothing that gives you a reason to care about anything, and the exposition is dropped faster than Alice's scroll and so much more lazily through awful mumbling acting. "That is the fourth realm, which is currently at war with the other three realms." Wow, so creative. No images to convey that a war is even happening. Yeah, I know later it's revealed that there isn't even a war going on and everyone was just being tricked by Sugar Plum, but even that doesn't make sense. Why is the forest destroyed? Where are the casualties to prove to the people that a war is actually happening? Sugar Plum isn't mind tricking anyone. There are real people here, and other lands filled with population that can see this. The world has no scale or sense of consequence. Clara could so easily just walk back through the hollow tree and go home. What, so she can get the key for her stupid egg? So what? Why should she or the audience care about anything that happens to this world? It's populated by a bad acted Nutracker, ridiculous looking leaders, obnoxious and unfunny sidekick guards, and ballet dancers. I'm on the edge of my seat, worrying about the future of this stupid world as it gets invaded by slow moving, hollow tin soldiers. This movie is a pathetic, watered down children's fantasy movie, and I think Disney even knows this. You will not seen advertising or promotion for this anywhere at the theme parks or online. It's best we forget this ridiculous, unfortunately beautiful looking 90 minutes of dreck.
I'm trying to find the words to express my clouded sadness. I remember I used to have a bedroom dedicated to all things SpongeBob SquarePants. The walls were covered in stickers of the characters, I had a Sponge themed lamp, and the toys galore. I would stay up for the 24-hour marathons of the show, and I dragged my parents to the theater three times so I could see this film in theaters. I guess I'm trying to say Hillenburg's creation, his world famous show affected my childhood a lot and who I am as a person. I think it's safe to say anyone who uses the internet actually owes something to this man, for his humor, creative characters, and off the walls (yet down to Earth) storytelling. He brought happiness to many children (+ adults) every Saturday morning and left his mark on not just the animation industry or television, but our culture. The characters of SpongeBob transcend all languages because, yes, it takes place in the middle of the ocean. The show found it's way to every country and found a loving audience of goofballs, crustaceans, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, every age group could relate to the big hearted main star. SpongeBob is a character I think we can all relate to: a child at heart with supreme passion for his pass times, but reality can come crashing down his youthful, optimistic outlook. But it's important to see the good in everything.
An absolute legend has passed away today. It hurts to see the man who created one of the biggest inspirations to my childhood go, but his work will never perish and his memory will live on. Stephen Hillenburg can take it to the grave he created one of the best cartoon shows in history; bar none. We should all take a moment of silence for such a talented man. After all, you're all Goofy Goobers, right?
I'm not even sure why I watched this. I was spending time with my folks and they decided on this, because the trailer admittedly looked inciting. But due to it's very unclear focus, any emotion the film tries to power, falls short because of lack of development between most of the leads. There's an entire subplot somewhere in the second act involving the workforce prison on this planet, you know "world building," but nothing it dredges through helps the characters become more dynamic. It's filler for the sake of entertainment. There's a fight in the mess hall, the captive monsters are let loose in an escape scene, but as I was watching, I was like, "Why am I watching this?" The entire focus of this story is this dad trying to save his daughter as the government is launching a deadly virus to wipe out this planet's population. Why am I watching unrelated characters do stuff that have little impact on the central character? It does this multiple times. Oh, the mains go buy weapons from this arm dealer. Let's give the arms dealer a five minute shoot-out scene that literally does nothing for the story. Some people say movies can be cut down to be shorter, and most I disagree with, but here, you literally could cut out over a half hour of material. The focus is so off, that when the emotional climax (and sacrifice) happens, I'm left more numb than bawling my eyes out, like I'm sure they wanted me to. There's a little something from every science fiction movie ever done here, just not as good. Oh well.
I love the fittingly dramatic irony and dark metaphors these Twilight Zone-esque anthology stories present. Joel and Ethan Coen string the audience along for the first short by giving the impression the average Netflix viewer is in for a more rompous and humorous affair, but after a downhearted ending to the first story, the audience is strung along for more poignant and serious matters. The themes of each of these stories are incredibly powerful, and ones that transcend a specific trend, but go on for generations. The seemingly light-hearted and beautiful imagery of this movie is just facade. The dark undertones will resonate with a lot of people because of how it connects to people on a deeper level. The short involving the armless, legless man being paraded around by a con artist, using him for mere coins to trick the poor stage performer, only to scam him right to his face, oddly, had me sitting in shock, considering how obvious the story is. The way it's executed carefully: slowly, not much music, just the motions happening and characters going. As the number of attendees dwindles, the owner begins to wonder why the money isn't rolling in anymore. He finds a crowd of people in this town, instead of attending his performed tale of sad and woe, are gathered around a chicken hitting metal plates. The owner sees this as the opportunity to make more money, so he buys the chicken from that man using cash clearly gotten somewhere other than his own performer, then cowardly dumps the poor boy into a river, discarded for the next attraction. And the message of that short I think gets to me because of how it shows audiences in general. People would rather watch a chicken do bells and whistles than see a man recite Shakespeare. The Coen's play with the audiences expectations but thankfully satisfy them and upset them in meaningful ways. This is my favorite film from the brothers outside No Country For Old Men.
"When Lords ends, I want people to feel like they just went through a nightmare. I want them to say, "I think I just went through an actual nightmare, and I'm still trying to sort it out," as opposed to a movie where they can easily explain what happens to Heidi and it's all wrapped up nicely for them and they can walk out of the theater thinking, OK, everything got wrapped up perfectly for me. The movie makes sense, but I didn't want to make it obvious. There are details that people will catch the second time around that they may have missed the first time. Lords leaves you with a weird, uncomfortable, off-balance feeling. That's what my favorite kinds of horror movies all do." - Rob Zombie
This is not the usual Rob Zombie. The Lords Of Salem falls more akin to Italian horror, Robert Eggers, and Roman Polanski. Both times Sheri Moon entered the theater, first at the entrance, the second the main stage, the Lacrimosa music combined with the blinding visuals echoed of 2001: A Space Odyssey and it made my jaw drop. This is the best a Rob Zombie film has ever looked and sounded. Something about the golden, white, and red grainy aesthetic puts a hauntingly beautiful historical filter over the picture. Something as simple as a theater stage looks alien. The shining spotlight glistening through the silhouettes of the witches and landing on the audience members is like a historical event. An apartment hallway begins to play tricks on your mind, if it's changing or it's your mind just wanting to see something different. I thought the staircase went missing, but I was wrong. Every room is bleakly lit and desaturated, usually accompanied by a lot of bloom or light flares. It feels like a nightmare. The perversion of Christian imagery and classical art is played wonderfully throughout, it's like the Devil has a strong hold on everything around it and all of Salem. Something that's lacking in a lot of mainstream horror now is atmosphere and tension. It's never about character building anymore; characters are soullessly placed in a preconceived script just so they can deliver spooky jump scares for an hour and a half, they leave you open for a twentieth sequel. Zombie's carefully paced script lends itself to profound set up and pay off. If he revealed the later images too early, their impact would not have as much of a lasting impact. Watching Sheri's character go insane, both i.e. drug use and indoctrination by witches, builds to the empowering images of the theater where Satan is and all the trippy classiness shots in the third act. If not for the thin story, which is actually pretty self explanatory, what makes it stick out is the outstanding visual storytelling. Rob was ahead a few years of other films like Hereditary in re-popularizing horror films that are reliant on their atmosphere. This is next level Stanley Kubrick Zombie. If you like your horror films more experimental, macabre, and not straight forward, this is the closest you can get to a modern pick. Also, thank you Blumhouse for producing this!
I'M BACK! OH YEAH, FUCK THIS MOVIE.
Venom is unfortunately everything I feared it would be. This year has been especially brutal to blockbusters as studios are rushing to neuter their projects in hopes of recouping losses from spending too much on their budgets, even though Logan, Deadpool, and IT have proven R rated films can be monster hits. We've seen Jason Statham trash talk The Meg just days before release, and while that may have made half a billion dollars, no one is talking about it and is already culturally irrelevant. These are the kinds of movies were are putting on the top box office charts; shit we don't even like. Now we have Tom Hardy depressingly revealing in interviews all his favorite bits to film were cut out the movie, something a good forty minutes. It shows, the editing and pacing of this movie is a haphazard mess. Scenes come and go so quickly, you're never sure what emotion to be feeling. Eddie breaks up with his fiancée and like, it jump cuts six months later so quickly and he's being goofy. Events transpire like fingers snapping, so a lot of it becomes a blur. One of the scientist ladies comes to Brock because she thinks evil baddy, Drake, is doing immoral research using the symbiotes. She seems kind of interesting, but her only purpose is to dispel hideously bland exposition, make a snappy one liner to a security guard, get caught, then given as a test subject to a symbiote. No one in this pile of cinematic universe dreck is given an ounce of character development outside of Eddie. Tom Hardy shines in the few moments he gets to chow down on some frozen tater tots, but they're cluttered in between headache inducing action scenes that can't show any violence. Upgrade just came out a couple months ago and that's a better Venom movie than this, beaming with a better paced story and much more paid off emotion (the first ten minutes had me near crying), plus, hardcore violence. I hate to play the IMDB audience normie reviewer, but I'm just going to say it, imagination is for pussies. If I'm dropping down $12+ on ticket, and it's not explicitly an arthouse film, you're damn right I'm going to be mad when violence is happening as part of the set piece and you don't show it on screen, especially if that's the selling point of a movie. This was so clearly shot to be R, I could just picture the blood splattering and grotesque imagery, but because of the editing, it's not there. The PG-13 curse has robbed us of Venom ripping people's faces to shreds. Oh sure, they imply it, hell, he does it a few times, but the cutting happens so quick, it's like he swallows them whole and quickly disposed of off screen. Venom resorts to just jumping all around the room and throwing people into walls. The disappointment I feel watching a freaking Venom film, a property that's come from a more serious comic book series and has the potential to withhold a three hour R rated epic shows how much the mark has gone left field. Sony would rather make the character as friendly as possible and able to blend right in to the Marvel Cinematic Universe if I buy out would happen. This is the movie industry today. I saw a review for this movie in a magazine that mistakenly categorized this as a film in the Infinity War. I don't blame them. I can't tell the difference. The stink you get from the formulaic quips, forgettable villains, and regurgitated hero origin story could fit right alongside Ant-Man. What a bollocks shame.
For never was a story of more woe than this of Adam Scott and his agent.
There's a reason the term "Straight To Netflix" has been coined. For years, it seemed Netflix would become the answer to cable television and multi-chain theaters; everyone would switch to digital streaming services and all new films and long form shows would be watched via the internet. Only one little problem: a lot of the content being dumped onto these platforms are total garbage. I had no interest in checking this out, as I had already seen the original The Omen in theaters, but my father wanted to try it out, so why not. Trust me, all you'll be greeted to is an abhorrent display of mediocrity. Eli Craig may have put out one successful horror comedy, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, which critics began to quickly overpraise the talent presented. little evil is one of the most forgettable and plagiarist amateur pieces I've sat through. When the film isn't directly ripping the montages from Edgar Wright's films, it's copying the scripts from Silent Hill and a bevy of other better projects. It's downright jarring to see a very polished quick location switch montage borrowed from Shaun Of The Dead in the midst of all these other film school-tier shots. Shots will be digitally all in focus, no depth of field to speak of, very poor framing of actors (see Adam Scott in the car at beginning), no real artistic vision to speak of. It's like a second unit director, whom are usually out to get pick up shots, was given the reigns to shoot the main pieces. And the slog of a joyless and heavy on annoyance script doesn't at all overcome the lackluster presentation. It tries to be clever by throwing in a couple twists at the end but fails miserably at developing any tension. I get the idea is they want this to be a comedy, with a couple scary bits being the undertone, but the humor is the most sassy blackcent shit ever, most relying on this hideously ear-grating co-worker who's throw in for no reason other than "comic relief." The creators were hoping that would be the driving force, since they forgot to make the child at all intimidating. Nothing they do works; when they try bad CG demon composites (few and far between), it looks too cheesy to startle or disturb, and the poor little actor just doesn't have an intimidating appearance to fool you. No set-ups or pay-offs to speak of, the mother is the most worthless, disposable, underdeveloped, totally avoided plot device in a recent motion picture. Nothing that captures your little imagination, it's honestly draining to watch. You see every moment coming, just, whatever, fuck this movie and Netflix for approving this kind of soulless nonsense to continue parading around on the platform for suckers to sap into. People wonder why I have such a vendetta against the company, their originals like this is why. I'm so confused how people can look at by-the-numbers dreck such as little evil and just shrug, meanwhile lampooning and attacking other bigger budgeted films with much more artistic merits. Priorities are so backwards.
I mean, I'm a fan of historical films, big time, I think if you can accurately portray a point of history and grip me from start to finish, it's an out of this world film. Schindler's List, The Pianist, Defiance, Life is Beautiful; all Holocaust films that engaged me and never halted to a grinding slug. The characters are given enough stock and feel like real human beings. The story doesn't feel like a retelling of events for the sake of historical accuracy, but rather a complete narrative arc. In Life is Beautiful, the boy wins the tank and finds his mother. In Schindler's List, the war ends and Oskar sets free all the Jews he was harboring. Unfortunately, Operation Finale fails to reach a cinematic aesthetic, so it ends up feeling like made for television. Scenes kind of just happen for the sake of keeping events accurate, without much regard for asking, "You know, will this being entertaining for the audience?" Oscar Isaac is fine, I guess-- he kind of just says his lines. The only sequence the film got more engrossing is when he's acting opposite Kingsley. Adolf believes he should be able to tell his side of what happened during his time as head of the camps. Watching the two bounce back and forth perked me up a little bit, as I had started to fall asleep within the first twenty minutes; quite an accomplishment. They try to also "explore" the hive mind phenomenon that brought impressionable teenagers to the Nazi regime, but it's glossed over with no finishing arc, it could've been cut out of the movie. Watch Swing Kids if you're eager to see that on screen. The televisual cinematography leaves a lot to the imagination. They couldn't find any other creative ways to shoot these scenes? The framing is so flat and the editing is like an assembly line chop, you can count the cuts. Even during the alluring conversations with Isaac and Kingsley, the laborious presentation kept it back from being better. I don't remember any of the characters' names; just don't bother; the most average a film can get.
You have no interest in what I have to say. Unless it confirms what you think you already know.
Okay, before I type anything, a little update on my writing. I feel like I try to correct myself too often, to make my reviews appear more professional than they really are, which can get in the way of my actual opinions on a movie, and getting reviews out quicker. I'm doing it right now as I type this, it's become a habit. My point is, from now on, I'll try to just spill out my thoughts without worrying too much about format. I'll keep them in mind, but what I want to share comes first. The Happytime Murders is your standard detective murder mystery, only with a gimmick of Muppets being very adult (swearing every other sentence). What makes this so funny is it's directed by Jim Henson's brother, who's responsible for The Muppet Christmas Carol and it's funded by the Jim Henson Company. This is basically a Muppets movie, just for adults. At first, it appeared as just one of those spoof parody movies made by the two hacks who did Disaster Movie, but no, this is the real deal. That said, the script needed work if it wanted to at all resonate with audiences and stand out as a classic you could revisit. This lacks the charm or wit of, say, an Edgar Wright film. It's amusing as hell to see a Muppet in a porn shop, watching a puppet jack off a cow, but it kind of just shows adult behavior without earning any of it or showing it in a clever way. Okay, so puppets are snorting cocaine and jizzing all over the place. It stops being funny after ten minutes. This movie would work better as just a short comedy sketch, like a twenty minute television pilot. Melissa McCarthy is surprisingly passable, I usually find her type of yelling and fish out of water humor annoying, but she restrains herself a little here. All I can say is, if you want to see Muppets be represented as an oppressed group in society (social commentary on minorities), dealing drugs, having sex, saying "fuck" every other sentence, you could find enjoyment in pirating this flick. I would like to see them make a sequel to this, actually. There's potential with this approach, just needs an original, crazy script, that's worthy.
I hated Crazy Rich Asians. When the film isn't sending you through montage orgasms, it's telling one of the most cliché and surprisingly underdeveloped romcoms in the last hundred years. There's a reason the proposal on the airplane has become a joke about it's overuse, they just parodied it in an AT&T commercial. How the hell people are looking at this amateurish display of subplots and spikes of drama as anything other than "been there, done that" flabbergasts me. The biggest single praise I've seen for Not so crazy, Royalty Asian-Americans is it's stellar and diversity-quota representation. "This film is so revolutionary because of it's all Asian cast!" Never mind the fact China regularly puts out big budget films, with insane box office returns, all the time. Let's all forget Zhang Yimou's The Great Wall, which was a giant American and China co-production with an overwhelmingly large Chinese cast. That came out two years ago. Anyone screaming praise about the, not even fully Asian, cast is a brainwashed soyboy who wants to be W O K E. Your representation does not make a good film. Nothing that comes up in this film heightens any kind of drama at all. A random affair thing with a couple in the royal family gets brought up, but dealt with so quickly and with very little consequence, it comes and goes like a passing emoji on a Facebook livestream. Speaking of emojis, the inconsistent editing is another problem with this movie. Why is there a hyper fast edited social media montage in the first ten minutes of the film, clearly stylized with stock footage and done by a separate editor, and nothing like that sequence is replicated or topped afterwards? It's really jarring in hindsight. To create some forced conflict, off-screen, the traditionalist and "bigoted" mother hires some investigator to look into Rachel Chu's family history, to get her to leave her rich son. It's totally out of left field, comes across like a Disney twist villain, it's comical and not clever. Maybe the reason people are praising this is for "the immigrant stands up to the traditionalist" and anything that tackles that sort of topic is automatically good. Seeing Chris Stuckmann squirm his way through his review, like, "You'll have fun with this movie. Go see it to support Asian representation" makes me sick. We should be supporting good cinema, regardless of cast. I want to go see Searching, which has an Asian lead. I like the Asian culture and aesthetic, but this does nothing for me, no, wait, it insults me. If all you're looking for is a blandly directed John M. Chu movie (the cinematic genius behind the Jem and the Holograms movie and the Justin Bieber documentary), with a plot as predictable as a children's book, just in service of "wacky" people doing not so wacky things, just cause, by all means, keep saying this movie is a masterpiece. I compare it to Fifty Shades Of Grey because of it's almost fanservice and spectacle like attitude. With no regard to writing a timeless and emotional plot you'll remember for the ages, it sends you off on a tourist like safari through Asian food and "glorious" rich mansions, then tacks on stupid drama to make it seem like it has plot. I want to know why this movie's objectively good, outside it's overrated, and frankly horribly acted, cast. This story is so overdone and nothing unique is done here. I'm baffled this is what people accept now, this is how low standards are.
Everyone's seen this movie already, so my thoughts really don't matter. I saw this out of obligation, not 'cause I was on the edge of my seat in roaring anticipation if my flavor of the month favorite character would live. All I can say, this is the best Marvel Studios movie, just on the basis it feels like a... movie. Yeah, with a story, a character to follow, and a real artistic production value behind it. Granted, it still falls short because of the studio mandating and tiresome quips, some of the jokes land, but most don't. The real protagonist of the film is actually Thanos. From the start, you follow him, like he was written with the hero's journey in mind, and he has a clear set up and pay off. He's the best written character in this entire goddamn universe because he is interesting; he has purpose, and I can say that since I've seen over 13 of these released products. As vengeful and heinous as his "overpopulation" removal solution may be, he actually gives solid reason for his actions and you almost end up feeling for him over any of the other disposable and rather annoying superheroes. Who the hell even is Bruce Banner anymore? What does he do? What is his job? Why does he not contribute anything more to this universe other than babble around and turn into the Hulk every once in a while? He's the most useless character in all of this. Thankfully, the Russos' actually attempt to demonstrate the consequences this time around, and use basic human emotions to tell the story. Because of Peter's sudden lack of judgment and losing control of his anger, Thanos gets the gauntlet back and dooms the entire universe. Gamora is given a decent backstory that comes into fruition, she's the adopted daughter (little one) of Thanos, and it works emotionally whenever the two are together. When certain characters are given proper screen time, this works. Other times, some are throw in purely for fan service and have no overall impact on the story. This movie should've just involved Gamora, Quill, Strange, Stark, and Parker, the rest of the cast is there to make this the Infinity War. I really hate Black Panther. This movie isn't bad. I still like Batman v Superman more, yeah, sue me. (I know we shouldn't compare the two, just throwing that out there)
It's The Revenant without the Tom Hardy revenge plot. It is exactly that, only in the process, our lead befriends a wild wolf. There isn't much else to say than that. It's basic shit, but all in service of some of the best cinematography and visual effects I've seen for a movie in a while. Albert Hughes seems to have a pretty solid track record of films, and his DP Martin Gschlacht does well taking cues from Zack Snyder and Larry Fong. So many shots in this look like they're out of Watchmen or 300. There's lots of good symmetrical framing, usually against something in the distance like mountains, or a sunset, or a herd of wildebeests, and they make sure to rack up the slow motion for the really impressive ones. It's almost like a ballet, every element is beautifully aligned to upmost perfection. At times, it's too perfect. Maybe the digital elements and sometimes CG animals hurt the illusion of a gritty environment, the opposite of the hand held approach of The Revenant. But still, there's some elegant work here, it benefits seeing in a large auditorium. It feels like those 45 minute IMAX shows they do in, like, museums, or Baraka, only this is a longer feature. I'm not sure if this movie will hold up on home formats, I'd have to check it out on the 4K television, but if you're at all interested in seeing this, see it now in theaters. Don't wait for the digital download, go on a ticket discount day.
"He gets in your head, like a virus."
There is no way I can approach this movie with that score without looking like I'm out of my fucking mind. I unfortunately have to side with Jeremy Jahns on this. I don't understand what makes this movie so inexplicably worse than other shit like Winchester, Truth or Dare, The First Purge, and so on. And let me just say, I don't think Slender Man is that great, far from it. I want to see what the inevitable Blu-ray extended cut will feature that hopefully completes the fractured narrative this has. To watch the first trailer and then see my favorite parts from the trailer are just flat out missing, was a bummer to me. But, I think the film offers more in the way of genuine scares and creepy imagery than most other horror movies of the last few years. All too often, we audience bitch about the use of incessant and cheap jump scares, and this one does have some, but the most memorable parts are the montages with seizure inducing flashes of disturbing and abstract pictures. It earns it's jumps and uses them in the right places. There is a strong component in this that relies on psychological horror, and asking the viewer the question, "Are these characters just imagining all of this or are they going insane?" People are complaining there is a lack of a story, but I felt it was there, just placed more subtly. This isn't a movie that has an easy to follow beat for beat story like IT or A Quiet Place. I'm not saying this is smarter written than those, no, but what's done here is reliance on the characters being appealing enough that you just follow them along as they break down mentally. Since I rather dug the teenagers here, as opposed previously mentioned trash, I found it easy to get into the transpiring events. The film is set in a small, mostly run down town, and the surprisingly not obnoxious four lead girls all have unhappy lives, one has an abusive father, and their group wish is to skip town and just go somewhere, kind of like the seniors in American Graffiti. What makes the pay off all the more a real closure is, they technically got their wish, they did leave, just not the way they wanted to. They're now in another dimension. The story starts off simple, they watch a video and then one of the friends goes missing, but the rest of the movie is them hopelessly trying find a way to stop the psychosis. One of my favorite parts is the reveal that Wren desperately used Hallie's sister as practically a sacrifice to appease the Slender Man to get him to go away. The performances these kids puts on is more raw than I expected, I actually believed I was watching some kids on the brink of mental collapse. Okay, enough spoiling, I'll get into more of the technical shit I liked. There's good use of mystery here. It could've been honed in collectively better, but they tried. This hearkens back to the glory days of The Ring and my favorite horror film of all time, Sinister, where the use of technology, old and new, is implemented in their resources figure out the Slender Man mystery. The stuff I crave that I don't seen enough films do is the "found footage" prop, or the "Once you see it, you'll shit brix" element that scares me the most. When Hallie is looking at online videos of "supposed" Slender Man encounters, pauses one, and sees the figure in the background, that's what gets to me. The fear of not knowing something was actually there is what I love; and it raises the question further, is Slender Man just tinkering with the footage or was here there? That's what this film really excels at: making you paranoid. The shots of the woods are beyond excellent. While there's a lot of dark color work, it works, as the on location shoot they did implemented a lot of fog, to highlight the silhouettes of the trees. This movie repeatedly pulls out the rug from the viewer and has the thin Slender Man emerge from an object, pole, or tree that looks like him. It happens multiple times, so eventually, you become on the edge, looking all over the screen, waiting for him to come out. Once that effect hits you, that's what you'll see when you walk outside at night. Couple that with some of the best sound design of this year, you have a movie that has quite a few tense and shake inducing sequences. Everything here has a pattern, three bell sounds, three knocks on the door, the attention to detail is exquisite at times. Maybe I'm stretching for qualities that are present in other, better, movies, but I really got a kick out of the presentation offered here. They didn't twist the mythology of the title character at all, if anything, they were too faithful, and that's why they had to cut it down. I loved the use of a real actor and costume for the Man, even if it got overshadowed by the giant CG leg monster that unwinds at the end. This is all wholly subjective, and maybe I just have the worst taste imaginable, but I have to wonder where the complaints are coming from other than picking on the movie being "made too late" or "it has no story" or other empty complaints I keep seeing regurgitated. Give credit where credit is due. I'm not saying the film is immune from criticism, I think the story is actually incomplete, but I got a massive high from it's colonial subtle creepiness and mystery restraints. Sony, please release the footage that was clearly shot, finished, and promptly cut, for the home video release. We need to see what was removed. I'm going to see this again, and later with the cut stuff, to further evaluate if maybe I was reaching here, or I actually think this movie is underrated.
As the Oscars grow increasingly irrelevant and a shell of it's former golden Hollywood days, the limp dick Academy has opted to create an "Achievement In Popular Film" category, as well as a shorter show time and other changes. The details and eligibility for nominations are to be announced later. As viewership continues to plummet every year, this year's being an all time low, some pointing to streaming or politics as the perpetrators, ABC and those running the show are in total panic mode. If they continue digging into their rut, they would probably have to end the Oscars completely. I am completely against adding this category and it just serves as more proof how out of touch these people are. By creating this separate "achievement," it highlights a slue of conflicts. One, they're aware they don't recognize "blockbusters" or any movies general audiences like as real films. Two, movies like Mad Max: Fury Road will now have the privilege of being shoved out of the Best Picture nomination and instead lumped into shit like The Smurfs, because, this is "most popular" film, right? The Smurfs made like a billion dollars, that means it has a chance of winning an Oscar now. This is the same shit that happened with the Best Animated Film category, masterful works of art like Loving Vincent have no shot at even touching the Best Picture award. However, if they consider Fury Road artful enough to get a Best Picture nod, people will still complain why didn't X blockbuster also get nominated? This will still cause debate about what counts as an award worthy film. Three, what the hell defines "most popular?" The box office or the critical reception? Are we going to gauge the popularity based on the extremely outdated Tomatometer:tm: or the "rigged" audience score? How about the flawed "Cinemascore" system that only weighs initial reactions of a film from literally walking out of the theater? Four, just adding this category at all is shady and screams desperate. We need other categories made first well before a popularity contest. How 'bout following The Golden Globes' footsteps and making genre based wins? Best action movie? Best drama? That way at least each type of film has a shot at getting recognition. The Oscars have always been shit, but this "attempt" at staying relevant is only going to sink them lower. Now Disney owns two wins of the night, since all the most popular movies made now are distrusted by Disney, and they always win the Animation award. No coincidence ABC, who runs the show, is owned by Disney. They've already thrown obviously endorsed lame Star Wars skits into past shows, but this is no longer a celebration of the best of Hollywood. This is a money driven popularity contest, and I hate it. Black Panther will get the win so they can scream black empowerment, even though the film is odious filth.
why are we still here? just to suffer?
I say this as a life long fan of Brad Bird, and I mean watching The Iron Giant when I was five, Incredibles 2 is rushed. No, it's very rushed. This is his most amateurish work to date, including Tomorrowland, which I believe is a unfairly maligned movie. My guess as to what happened here, Disney looked at their release schedule for 2018 and 2019, and noticed both this and Toy Story 4 were supposed to come out the same year. To make sure they capitalize their profits as much as they can, I bet they pushed Bird to release it a year early. As a result, the long awaited sequel to one of the surprise underdog hits of Pixar's line-up is lacking a lot of detail and the epic heart of it's predecessor. This feels like one of those direct-to-video sequels that Disney liked to pump out incessantly from the early 90's to late 2000's. The plot has about the weight of a television episode, the characters lack a lot of the intrigue previously seen, and the direction is very stock at times. Half the time, I forgot I was watching a Brad Bird production, his usual trademarks are missing in this. Even just the wee details I appreciate, such as these two guys' cameos, are nowhere to be seen. The most Birdiam-esque feelings I would get are the brief villain moments, like the seizure inducing, literally, fight in the apartment, the monologue, and one-on-one talk on the plane towards the end. But just, I don't know, I didn't really care about anything that was going on. There's some sweet little scenes with Par and the kids, including his amending with Violet, plus the fan service of seeing the family's reaction to Jack Jack's powers. None of it's bad, but comes off swapable. A lot of it is generic family fare, just done with Brad Bird's style. You may enjoy that, but I was looking for something much more special, especially coming from the man himself in the same franchise. Where's the scene that tops Par's heartbreaking revelation that all his friends are dead? Not only that, but murdered by the villain, and he watches the screen as he sees their names marked off. There is no such scenario in this, nothing comes close. It appears they took the VERY surface level political attributes from the first movie, and just decided to make that the childish plot around that. It's like a child's understanding of what made the first movie clever and it becomes redundant. Supers were already kind of coming out of hiding by the end of the first movie. To retread that old ground, bring back up the Underminer villain cliffhanger, only to not do anything with it and not acknowledge it after the opening scene, makes this almost feel like a fanfiction like remake. The magic just isn't there. The new villain is incredibly (haha) forgettable and replaceable. She barely has any connection to the heroes, and the dinky thread she does have is copied from Syndrome, but there's no big comeuppance for her, just, nothing. She's just thrown in jail without much word about it, then the film just ends. Believe me when I say, my heart almost sank when I heard the end score play so early after the final fight. It couldn't have been over that quickly, but it was. The saving grace this sequel boasts is it's very imaginative action, adequate set pieces, and some shining little character bits. But holy wow, this needed a rewrite or two and another year of production.
Bill Skarsgård was in this movie and there was not one Pennywise reference. Writers, you have failed me.
Wow, I am really on the fence about this one. I don't have much to say about this, just, if you enjoyed the first, you'll be fawning all over this one. It's better. I'm not a fan of Tim Miller's original, mostly because of the constant meta humor and terrible, inconsequential story. It just didn't click with me. Making a jab at a popular movie that recently came out isn't clever writing. Deadpool 2 is exactly what you would expect of a sequel that thrives off a film built on fourth wall jokes and inappropriate gags. It's the reason you're in your seat. Thankfully, the jokes are actually more respectful this time around and not as often as expected. The Take-On Me piece is the best thing to come out of the movie; I chuckled. And Cable makes for a great character, actually much more so than the Wade Wilson. Josh Brolin nails every role he's in, which is why I wanted more of him. He's a tragic anti-hero, but unfortunately, his struggles aren't given much attention. He brushes all his reason for being there in the last scene (yes, I get what they were doing), but lacked in any satisfying wrap up for his arc. We instead have to focus on the lamest, eye-roll inducing fat kid, Russel, and his quandary at his abusive orphanage. It's so lame and not interesting, but we're forced to endure it, because it ties back to Deadpool's relationship with his wife. It's the center of the movie, and I couldn't give less of a fuck. They could've gotten a better actor, or something. Given more screen time to the horrible crimes the orphanage is committing, but just, I did not care. And at times, it seems the movie didn't either. There's a few subplots that briefly come up, only to be swept under the rug only minutes later. Whatever happened to the kids Negasonic Teenage Warhead were saving in the finale? What happened to the orphanage, or Russel for that matter, after the battle was over? It might be looking for things that aren't there, but the story felt incomplete. It's a cryptic and broken script that's copying Guardians Of The Galaxy and The Terminator, missing any kind of emotion. This should've been all about Cable, not Deadpool making dumb jokes as a guy gets cut up in a shredder. If you just want a silly action movie, with subpar work of John Wick director David Leitch, pounded together with wacky and gross humor, you will like it. It just didn't do much for me. Not going to remember it in a week.
Okay, if you've followed me for a while, you know I would never sell out my voice for money or clicks. I don't construe my feelings to be contrarian, and I've stated a number of times I don't enjoy hating. Oh sure, A Quiet Place looks fantastic in comparison to the relentless gluttony dispenser of superhero blockbusters, but what about it's own? John Krasinski creates a well crafted picture: it looks and sounds great, although it cheats by making everyday sounds artificially quieter. But, I can't help feel the short run time, and plot holes that are coins gushing out of a slot machine, more than you can carry, rot the spine of what otherwise is an intriguing concept. An apocalypse of monsters that seem unstoppable, attracted by simple noises? Having just seen the teaser, I was itching to see what could be done with a story like this. There were, almost literally, a couple seconds of what I could consider worthwhile achievements. The location and cinematography is excellent, using tricky lighting and blocking, but only serves as the means of telling a very cliched story. I don't understand it. How was it that I was bored through this? This has been done better in so many other monster movies, even from Platinum Dunes' own catalogue. What about Signs? None of the characters were interesting, which could be accounted by their lack of speaking, but even performance wise. I didn't create a connection to any of just the cast of six characters. Krasinski is the most intense, but we don't know anything about his past life. What was Emily Blunt's occupation before this? What did they like to do for fun? Have they always lived at this farm? What is the political and social ramifications of the catastrophe on the rest of the world? What did the kids do before the invasion? Where are the creatures even coming from? What sounds can the monsters pick up and why do they not attack at some of them? We don't know. I can appreciate it just focuses on the crucial events, like an old horror movie from the seventies (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre), but it's hard for me to care about a creature coming to attack when I don't care if someone is going to be killed, not even the newborn baby. If you want an example of killing a child done better, just go to the recent IT. It guts you watching Georgie get sucked below the streets, because it took the time and carefully put an emotional tie between the lead, Billy. It's tried here, but to a lesser extent. The writers have already announced a sequel, so maybe the budget will be much larger to expand the world of this universe, but money is no excuse. 10 Cloverfield Lane had nothing, and that boasted an incredible creepy narrative. I nearly laughed when Krasinski screamed and sacrificed himself, while the daughter just stared with her gaping mouth open. And, again, my issue's not the under utilization of it's possibilities, but just that I wasn't able to care about anything going on. Everyone just seemed so flat. And especially more of a problem, when the weakness is so obvious, and shown in a silly way, it makes the monsters all less terrifying. I believe, a spectacularly wasted use of a great idea, most likely just getting praise for not being a Marvel movie.
I got about what I was expecting, and I like it a lot. I had my eye on this from the first time I saw the trailer; I loved the idea. Now that it's been released, and promptly bombed at the box office, is it worth spending an overpriced ticket to go see? Based on my values, I say go with MoviePass, discount Tuesday, or wait to buy it when it's less expensive. Don't let that warning dissuade you from seeing it, I'm just sick of these ridiculously high prices. Bad Samaritan has a lot going for it. It's Dean Devlin's best movie, it's David Tennant's best performance ever, and the script is incredibly creepy and interesting, borrowing a couple ingredients from Psycho and The Silence Of The Lambs. It aims for the mainstream sensibilities at a time or two, but I was happy that it treated itself seriously for the majority of it's two hours. It has an engaging concept, that employs most of it's potential. It like keeps track of everything the audience may pick out as something that could've happened, and actually follows up on it. Quick example, Tennant opens a video chat with the robber? He takes a screenshot as evidence, instead of just closing the phone in fear, or some shit. The two leads are robbers, who cleverly break into people's houses using their valet cars, but then they come across one who happens to be a sadomasochist or a murder. I totally dug this, and Devlin executed it carefully, with great editing and set pieces. The characters acted with realism, like real people. There's something about the way these actors are directed that make it leagues better than what Truth Or Dare did. Robert Sheehan pulls out an unexpected vigorous performance as the robber who feels guilt for what he's done before, and now wants to help this victim. You feel genuine sadness for this man, I did not expect this. I was just heading in rooting for Tennant to destroy everything and win. The finale in the snow is one of the better climaxes in the past few years, beautiful design. All the tension built from the past two acts encapsulates in a stand-off. The big problem is it's undercut by a totally out-of-place joke. I get what they were setting up, I even just realized that, but still doesn't change that all the tension I felt had been ruined by it. However, if you're searching an original, gravely creepy thriller that utilizes a lot of it's premise, believable performances from the entire cast, and unforgettable set pieces, seek this one out.
FUCK
So, here's the thing: I grew up with a family dog. That means this movie is automatically great, because I have a deep, emotional attachment to the character's identity on-screen. I've never told anyone this, I've never typed it before, but you're all hearing it first, courtesy of me. Let me tell you about myself, instead of informing you about the quality of the movie. I'm in college, a film student, and an inspired fan of Wes Anderson's grossly overused and distracting aesthetic. I love the colors purple and orange, I'm a great driver, and I'm working on a novel, but I'm having writer's block. Wes Anderson is all I hear about in class, which I really appreciate. He's so much better than other "filmmakers" out there, with his gorgeous CINEMATOGRAPHY, and his phenomenal DIRECTION, he's the biggest auteur in the business right now, not like scumbags like Michael Bay, who are just ruining this industry. I got emotionally connected from the first frame of this movie, when I recognized Anderson's flat and symmetrical art style. Literal chills and goosebumps. From there, it was a roller-coaster of epidemic proportions. You aren't ready for these feels. We need a movie like this, in the current year we live in. When, by executive decree, all the canine pets of Megasaki City are exiled to a vast garbage-dump called Trash Island, 12-year-old Atari sets off alone in a miniature Junior-Turbo Prop and flies across the river in search of his bodyguard-dog, Spots. There, with the assistance of a pack of newly-found mongrel friends, he begins an epic journey that will decide the fate and future of the entire Prefecture. Overall, I would recommend this film.
i'm gonna go shoot my head off now
I'm sorry Blumhouse, a big fan of yours, but people, PLEASE DO NOT GO WATCH BLUMHOUSE'S TRUTH OR DARE. A 2018 horror movie... relying on this many clichés. No attempt at writing any character development, or, well, there's plenty of half-baked ass moments to "define" this collection of sad fucks. "Oh, see look! That Asian guy is the gay one! He's going to come out to his dad! Our main character is just a super nice gal in a bad situation. She's going to do something rotten by the end. Her roommate is a stuck-up meanie, but it's just because of a misunderstanding. What's that? You don't care? You want to see them all die in gruesome and horrific ways? Sorry! This is a PG-13 movie, we're not going to show any violence. Please suffer through our god-awful script, to finally watch a character die, but you won't get to see the details!" Effectively, they made it so there's nothing here to satisfy anyone. It's all equally degenerate. The only reason you see a movie like this, is for the gore and blood, let's be real. This anal sauce is trying to act like it has a deep script or some shit, so it doesn't need violence to sell itself. I'm sorry, that's the main reason your audience bought their tickets to come see this, not watch teenagers take selfies. I love the horror genre, I seriously do, but I have standards. This is one of the worst movies I've ever tried to get through; I failed. Shame on Blumhouse for trying to parade this fecal matter around, proudly stamping their name on the cover. Of all movies, this one? I'm frustrated and monumentally disappointed.
Well, this is interesting. What makes the experience work is the dichotomy between the two lead actresses. Without them and Anton Yelchin to boost the script, I don't think the movie would work as effectively. Olivia Cooke does a strong job, oddly, playing a character who bares no emotions, and Anya Taylor-Joy, whom I loved from Split and The Witch leaves another fine role to add to her résumé. Unfortunately, the trailers, which I did not watch before seeing the movie, give the film off to be dark comedy, when in reality, it's a deliberately slow-burn drama in the vein of Yorgos Lanthimos. There are humorous moments to be sure, but none of them come off as deliberate comedy, just natural dialect. The core of the story is a drama about a girl wanting to escape her step-father and she's caught in the middle with a weird friend, who had something traumatizing happen to her. Yelchin doesn't have as big of part as some might expect, but regardless, he still nails the act of an overly-confident druggie who thinks he's hot-shit. The script is nothing remarkably spectacular or refreshing, but watching the main two bounce conversations off each-other upgrade the work. If you get a kick out of some slow drama mixed with splendid tension, try it out.
R.I.P. Anton Yelchin
Why are you doing this?
Why not?
This is a shame. I'm a big fan of the first film's creativeness and said director's talent to create some truly terrifying scenarios. Even though it bares huge flaws, it stands out to me as one of the best horror movies of the past few years. Said that, I was cautious but optimistic about The Strangers: Prey At Night, I love the horror genre, even the bullshit that's shat out every year. It's just a genre that's hard for me to get tired of. Before I rip into what really butchered this movie for me, I salute Johannes Roberts for trying his hardest to replicate the style of the first film, mainly in the first half. You got more family complications, they arrive at this secluded place, then the strangers want to come out and play. I was anxiously awaiting to witness what Roberts would conjure up this round to top some of the brilliant set-pieces of the first film... and, there are some cool moments here, like the man in the mask ramming a car into a house, a fight-out in a swimming pool, and a chase through a playground. There's memorable and pretty magical stuff here, not denying it. A lot of it is decently executed, good sound mixing, some adequate music choices, and two decent kills. Yeah, I'm spoilers now, so if you're really curious about seeing it, only see if you're a fan. My biggest setback arises in the last act. They show the killers' faces and then the two siblings kill all three off... supposedly one lives, cliffhanger nonsense. My issue is doing this goes against everything, I thought, the first installment was trying to establish. By not showing the killers at the end, it left them up to be anonymous, they could be anyone with masks, and that's what made it scary to me. By giving the killers an identity beyond their generic (yet recognizable) faces, it takes away the fear factor... a lot. When the reveal scene happened at the end of Prey At Night, I wasn't really feeling anything I expect Roberts wanted me to. I was just, kind of let-down. The finale is just an exact copy of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, so that was off-putting by that point. I wasn't invested in the tension, I was still hung-over from the reveal that just happened, so I couldn't help noticed the similarity in the final chase. I think it almost harms the original movie, as a movie on it's own credentials, it's just not all anything impressive, excluding the couple of stand-out scenes. I didn't feel any of the same tension the first film carried, so that sets it down a lot, on-top of the flaws it contracts, from the first.
fuck that bear scene and fuck that camera footage
This is the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. movie I've always wanted. The disturbing imagery, psychological exploration, atmosphere, tension, it's all out of this world. The over-grown, disturbing, but entrancing layout of the shimmer is the long-awaited Chernobyl and Fallout-esque landscape I've wanted to see explored on-screen for years; but yes, it goes way beyond that. Ignoring it's few-and-far-between narrative hiccups, Annihilation is the one of few films in the past decade to have my full-attention start to finish. Come on, we all do this. I wasn't bouncing around ideas for my script for my review while I was watching, I wasn't thinking of other things in my mind as scenes passed by. Absolutely not, I was all in for this one. The story isn't what I'd consider too-brainy for the box office, in fact a number of it's themes are blatantly spelled out through dialogue, but that doesn't mean it isn't interesting as hell. It's just abstract, which is what may be turning off the common audience. Despite it's on the nose nature, possibly from Paramount's pressures to make the movie more accessible, it manages to delve more into it's greater questions about evolution of life itself; the whole hour and forty minute journey of this project is a jaw-dropping experience. As I humorously stated above, there are a few very disturbing and shocking scenes here, so steer clear if you're squeamish at all, I was getting Sinister flashbacks.
The thing I've hated about a lot of productions coming out, is a lot of them fully grasp their potential. What do I mean? Many works, The Dark Tower comes to my mind, for example, may introduce a compelling plot point, like the main character has a connection to this object, or, this side-character came from an abused family, I don't know, some casual beat of the story that's introduced. But a lot of times what happens, is a segment like that is brought up, only to further move the story along, and that beat is totally ignored afterwards. I keep thinking, why not make the movie longer and tap into these really exciting ideas? You've got the base, go all the way with what you can within the story's limits. Go all the way. A real-world example, Silent Hill: Revelation, the master-piece-of-shit sequel to one of my favorite movies of all time, had an added set of characters that were introduced mid-way into the run-time, and the woman in the pair basically said, "We took a wrong turn, we got lost in the fog." And all I kept thinking was, "Why aren't we seeing that? That sounds like a cool and creepy tangent."
But even beyond that, not just plot-points, central themes of a movie. What I was worried, with Annihilation, was the environment in the shimmer is so fascinating and absorbing, I began to worry at a point the movie wouldn't explore it. It wouldn't show off much of the environment and what it's effects have been on what stays in it. But thankfully, it does tap into that realm, so I am satisfied. I kept saying, "Come on, come on, you're so close, just keep going with this creepy sequence," until finally, "Yes! You did it. You went all DAE way with it. I am happy." If there's one thing I hate about movies more than any other quality, it's untapped potential. Having a cool set-up only to go nowhere. Thankfully, Annihilation goes a long way and satisfies. If you want to be creeped the hell out, go see it right now.
There was such a huge missed opportunity to push a pre-established joke. In one bit, Dug is sneaking into the enemy's royal arena to get some soccer balls for their team's training. The girl, Goona, sees and asks what he's doing. Dug responds, "I need to get some balls." Goona just replies, "You're really brave... or stupid. Probably stupid." I was thinking after that, why didn't she say, "You already have some balls for sneaking in here."
This is literally Aardman's Space Jam. I'm not exaggerating, it's the same script practically. Take Space Jam, replace the "heroes being turned into theme park attractions" with "heroes being forced to work in a mine," and then replace the basketball with soccer. There you go, same thing. Problem is, it's not as good, or even memorable as Space Jam. The soundtrack and Michael Jordon's green-screened performance with the Looney Toons' characters made the film a cult classic, even earning it a 15th anniversary re-release. I applaud all of Early Man's cast and Aardman's stunning stop-motion work, but the story is not anything special. It's every h eroes' journey story ever told, and not done any differently. I don't remember any of the cave-men's names because none of them were really properly developed, and there's over ten of 'em. That's just the unfortunate nature of kid's movies that are an hour and a half long. That brings me back to my My Little Pony: The Movie, that, this was not made for me, but keeps the adults in mind so they're entertained. I'm a big fan of Nick Park's work, the Wallace and Gromit series is one of my favorite franchises of all time. So, if you are hesitant about seeing this movie, I'll just say, go see it under the following conditions: If you have kids, if you have MoviePass, and if you want to support the studio. If you don't fall under any of those, don't bother, I hate to say it. Judging strictly on it's technical merits, it's a very-average movie held up by it's stop-motion spectacle.
I'm not even going to be bother with a long review, this "big-budget" religious piece of confusing garbage doesn't deserve it. Unfortunately, it's not terrible enough to be funny, i-it gets close in a couple places, but falls into the just-trash mountain. Samson is the latest disaster by Pure Flix, after such smash hits like God's Not Dead 2. They decided to go big-budget for this one, which I guess means paying $50 for a shitty SD drone-camera that looks horrible every time it shows up, the left-over CG from Gods of Egypt, and actors plucked out of the middle of a porno. There were times I was expecting a sex scene to happen, just because the production design and script felt like something out of that. Samson's fake beard he gets half-way in is some of the worst make-up appliance I've ever seen, there's a reason there's a category for this at the Oscars. Billy Zane looks like he's doing this for the million dollar check I'm sure Pure Flix promised him, he's so fat and looks so out of place here. And they managed to drag Sokka from the live-action The Last Airbender on-set too. I walked out around the time he grabbed Billy Zane's crown from atop his head, I couldn't stop thinking about the "BALD!" scene from The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. There's this quick little part before the third act beings, Samson and his brother step out of a cave, and good lord, the green-screen they had to use for these lines of dialogue is so horrible, I started laughing out loud in the middle of this empty theater. I feel awful for the class of Church kids that will probably be forced to endure this.
The fight choreography is terrible, the script is abysmal, the characters are flat with no depth, the special effects are eye-piercing, and the stock music deserves a round of applause. You guys know the Youtuber, Sargon of Akkad? They play his theme song in the movie, which I assume now is a stock piece of music. I really hope the budget for this wasn't any higher than $20,000. Monsters was made for less than $500,000 and Hardcore Henry was made for less than 2 million. Pure Flix, please just cancel God's Not Dead 3 now, have mercy on our souls.
You know, I gave this a below-average score when I initially watched it, but after thinking about this movie's place in the current wave of animated movies, I've bumped it up to a luke-warm recommendation. What do I mean? With the rise in such classic animated films to come out like The Emoji Movie and The Boss Baby, I almost feel obligated to recommend this movie just on the basis that it didn't insult my intelligence, and is a fine movie for children (or adults who are young at heart). I give the director Jayson Thiesson credit for going all out with the material and attempting to make this a Disney-style musical. The animation notably harkens back to great kid's films like The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, the character Pinkie Pie expressing some pretty colorful and eccentric faces. The point is, the animation is note-worthy, yes, it's all digital, but the work put in deserves appreciation more than some of the shit CG-movies out now. The bar has been set that low. The music is decent, encompassing a live orchestra to fuel the rather catchy songs, the characters are unique and recognizable, and overall, wasn't a chore to sit through. Remember, this wasn't made for me, but I'm glad it respects the adult viewers who are there watching. It's one of the better kid's movies to come out, we need to be encouraging this stuff, so, if you are an adult reading this, it's a decent pick to watch... well, if your kids haven't already asked to see it.
