Re: Re: 2019-20 Movies Review Thread: There Will Be Spoilers
I just saw The Grudge today without seeing your review and wow, I was fucking shocked to see just how incredibly DULL it was. I was the only person in the theater and was so bored I spent the majority of the second half fucking around on my phone. Also, the director of this latest one has said he wants to do a crossover movie with The Ring which... WHY?
Although with Like a Boss (and Underwater) coming out tomorrow, I have a feeling this movie won't even hold the title of Worst Movie of 2020 very long.
That's not even an original idea. They already did it in Japan and it was called Sadako vs Kayako. It was kind of fun and had the right amount of cheese, but an American version would be boring and self serious.
Re: Re: 2019-20 Movies Review Thread: There Will Be Spoilers
Firmino of the 909 said:
Boomer Kamala said:
I was baffled when I saw an ad for that. Why the hell would you make a reboot/remake of a non superhero movie (that is another remake btw!) that is less than 20 years old!?!
The thing that really got me is how this was even released knowing how boring it was. Perhaps they knew it wasn't salvageable from a test screener, I see no way that a screener could ever have ended without the audience laughing at it.
The first or second weekends of the year have been a dumping ground for bad to truly godawful horror films for over a decade now. Escape Room, The Forest, The Bye Bye Man, The Woman In Black 2, Texas Chainsaw 3D, The Devil Inside, The Unborn and on and on.
The first or second weekends of the year have been a dumping ground for bad to truly godawful horror films for over a decade now. Escape Room, The Forest, The Bye Bye Man, The Woman In Black 2, Texas Chainsaw 3D, The Devil Inside, The Unborn and on and on.
1917 is a movie that goes straight for it, one that someone will either really like or really hate. There is absolutely no in-between here. Why's that? The long take is a gimmick, even though it's a really good one. People sometimes have a hard time handling those gimmicks and come to the conclusion that because there's a gimmick, the story is only going to turn out one way. In the case of 1917, the film does a great job of subverting that expectation. Before really digging in, perhaps we should talk about World War I movies. There is a distinct lack of those movies, and while I do not know why, I do know that there have been a handful of those movies over the last decade. At best. That may also take into account foreign movies that I don't know even exist. This kind of thing naturally leads history buffs to wanting one of these movies, and once there is one of those movies, everyone seems to be relatively satisfied. 1917 was cleaning up on awards shows before it was even widely released, so I think just about everyone knows that this movie was probably good. It isn't quite on the level of Dunkirk, but this is a gripping film throughout, focused on a distinct aspect of the war rather than sprawling out in scope. It's great. There were countless moments at which I couldn't believe what I was watching on screen. This is good.
1917 is set in 1917, obviously. In France, trenches have been dug, everyone is dissatisfied with how the war is going, but nothing can be done to change it. Communism, I believe, had not taken hold by this point. You would think at this point with things in a stalemate that the countries would just give up, but they did not. Schofield (George MacKay) and Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) are two young British soldiers. Blake has been given a mission, been asked to choose someone to go with him, and chose Schofield on the spot. General Erinmore's (Colin Firth) mission is as such. They are to deliver a message by hand to the 2nd Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment. It is by hand because phone lines have been cut off. The message is that the 2nd Battalion must call off their attack on the Germans, who have set a trap by pretending to retreat to the Hindenburg Line. The British are to be ambushed by those Germans, and the British would lose 1600 men in the process. This must be stopped. Blake has been chosen because his brother is one of the men to be ambushed, and this would give anyone extra motivation. Their job is to cross no man's land, make it through the former German front, make their way through a destroyed town, and reach the 2nd in a small forest. They have until morning. Sounds easy, right?
I'm not attempting to make this review short, but the plot is rather simplistic and easy to explain. This movie does have more cameos from notable actors, but largely the entirety of the story is about Schofield and Blake attempting to get to Blake's brother. It doesn't matter what they encounter, they must push on. They do encounter some things too, to say the least. That you don't know what they're going to encounter is largely the appeal of this movie. The one-take gimmick is also used extremely well, with some neat tricks employed to ensure this wasn't actually done in one go. I also found this to be a rather realistic portrayal of time spent in the trenches. MacKay's performance as an actor is also particularly of note, which I was not quite expecting. When I go into a movie like this one, I expect the plot to dominate and rule over the rest of the movie, for the cinematography to be so impressive that I neglect to think of anything else. In this case that is not the truth. If you're headed into this movie hoping for a specific portrayal of a battle, or anything like that, you just won't get it.
Due to the use of this specific viewpoint, I found that made the movie much more surprising. The viewer is left not to know what is around every corner, and this could be all sorts of things. One particular thing of note is the absolute amount of corpses in 1917. You don't know when you're going to see them or what they're going to look like, but you know that they're there. The movie also surprisingly balances things out with a scene in the forest that would otherwise feel corny in a movie such as this, but in a movie filmed this way that scene offers a scarce moment of reprieve. This movie is really intense, which seems to follow a pattern in movies that I've seen of late. I do think there are some contextual notes missing that viewers may find important, but they do not have them and this movie expects the viewer to enter the proceedings with knowledge of what is going on. While welcome, I think people are too stupid for that. That is my lone complaint though. This movie is a masterpiece in a technical sense, filmed unlike almost every other. It is excellent.
9.5/10
2019 Films Ranked
1. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
2. Parasite 3. 1917
4. Midsommar
5. Ad Astra
6. The Lighthouse
7. Waves
8. The Farewell
9. Knives Out
10. Uncut Gems
11. Booksmart
12. Avengers: Endgame
13. Queen & Slim
14. Toy Story 4
15. Joker
16. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
17. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
18. Us
19. Ford v. Ferrari
20. Gloria Bell
21. The Beach Bum
22. The Art of Self-Defense
23. Dark Waters
24. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
25. Arctic
26. Spider-Man: Far From Home
27. Rocketman
28. High Flying Bird
29. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
30. Paddleton
31. Richard Jewell
32. The Peanut Butter Falcon
33. Honey Boy
34. Doctor Sleep
35. Hustlers
36. Blinded by the Light
37. Captain Marvel
38. Jojo Rabbit
39. Long Shot
40. Shazam
41. Ready or Not
42. A Vigilante
43. Late Night
44. Crawl
45. It: Chapter Two
46. Hotel Mumbai
47. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
48. Zombieland: Double Tap
49. Harriet
50. Hobbs & Shaw
51. Official Secrets
52. Always Be My Maybe
53. Cold Pursuit
54. The Laundromat
55. Where'd You Go, Bernadette
56. Shaft
57. Happy Death Day 2U
58. Ma
59. Terminator: Dark Fate
60. Annabelle Comes Home
61. Greta
62. Jumanji: The Next Level
63. Aladdin
64. Triple Frontier
65. Fighting with My Family
66. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
67. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
68. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
69. Brexit
70. The Dirt
71. Velvet Buzzsaw
72. Stuber
73. Little
74. Alita: Battle Angel
75. The Good Liar
76. The Current War: Director's Cut
77. The Kid
78. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
79. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
80. Good Boys
81. The Upside
82. The Lion King
83. Dumbo
84. The Hummingbird Project
85. Escape Room
86. 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
87. Brian Banks
88. Tolkien
89. The Dead Don't Die
90. Captive State
91. The Highwaymen
92. Bombshell
93. Pet Sematary
94. The Intruder
95. Child's Play
96. 21 Bridges
97. Gemini Man
98. Brightburn
99. Never Grow Old
100. Rambo: Last Blood
101. Midway
102. Angel Has Fallen
103. Black and Blue
104. Yesterday
105. Anna
106. What Men Want
107. Them That Follow
108. Unicorn Store
109. The Curse of La Llorona
110. Miss Bala
111. Men in Black: International
112. The Red Sea Diving Resort
113. The Perfection
114. Hellboy
115. Glass
116. Dark Phoenix
117. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
118. The Kitchen
119. The Hustle
120. The Best of Enemies
121. The Prodigy
122. Polar
123. Serenity
Re: Re: 2019-20 Movies Review Thread: There Will Be Spoilers
Underwater (2020), directed by William Eubank
How many movies filmed in 2017 are going to be premiered in 2020? I assume the number is not very high at all, but I know of one more. Underwater was filmed early in 2017 at that, so this movie does feature T.J, Miller, who has largely been buried by Hollywood and with good reason. I'm confused as to how this was even made, but 20th Century Fox made a lot of bad movies before they were acquired by Disney. This wasn't even the worst one. The New Mutants was also filmed in 2017, and I don't understand why the release of that has been held for so long too. I guess we'll see in a few months. For now, when it comes to Underwater, I feel like a lot of stuff was left on the cutting room floor. I also feel like this would have been a bad movie if not for an amazing reveal later in the film that popped the whole theater. This wasn't terrible, but Underwater didn't really bring a whole lot to the table either. It isn't boring though and that should be something I mention first thing. For a movie like this to not be boring, that is probably the most important piece of the puzzle. Unfortunately having a good story and stuff went by the wayside somehow. I think this was also supposed to lead to a sequel of some kind which is completely laughable.
We are introduced to the world of Underwater with some newspaper clippings that explain what's going on. A company called Tian Industries has decided to drill to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. You know, for oil...or whatever. Before anything else happens, we are introduced to Norah (Kristen Stewart), who is brushing her teeth and doing a monologue in her head while playing with a spider. All of a sudden, an earthquake hits and a section of the station she's on begins to implode upon itself due to pressure. While running away she encounters Rodrigo (Mamoudou Athie), and with his help they are able to close the bulkhead. In doing so, they kill everyone in that part of the station, but they prevent everyone else from dying. This is an acceptable loss. Along the way, they also rescue Paul (T.J. Miller), while they're on their way to the captain, who is named Lucien (Vincent Cassel). The escape pods on this station are gone, so they must continue to move through the station, where they encounter Emily (Jessica Henwick) and Liam (John Gallagher Jr.). Here's the deal. They need to get in their suits and walk a mile on the ocean floor to another station that has escape pods. Problem is, there's...something out there. They don't know what it is or what to do, but the creature is very aggressive...
As I already said, there is a great reveal near the end of the film and I must reiterate that. The movie is to some extent saved by this. I'm not sure Underwater was worth sitting through to get to that point, and I can get into further detail about that. For starters, all of the action is filmed much too close to the characters, so it can be difficult to decipher what's going on. Also, the director isn't particularly skilled in the sense that I can't tell which characters are dragged away from the pack at any given time. This seems like a huge oversight, and fixing this alone would very much have helped the film. I'm not sure if this was supposed to be a horror movie, or science-fiction, or an action movie, or what. The money was in this being a horror movie where T.J. Miller's character stuck around for a long time in order to lighten up the proceedings with jokes. For what it's worth, a lot of people laughed at these jokes. I know that this movie was trying to be like Alien, but this is something from an era gone by as studios no longer try to do this. Fox sure did, and that's part of why they sold the company. I'd have to do some math, but their losses over the last year or so would have been in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Almost every holdover release from before their merger with Disney has bombed.
Anyway, I think there's a lesson to be learned from this movie. It is that sometimes you need to film character closeups when those characters are being carried away by monsters. In addition to that, it seems like the first twenty minutes were removed from this film in an attempt to shorten it and make it more palatable, but this doesn't work either. If nobody filmed those first twenty minutes, this movie was doomed from the start. We are literally dropped right into the action.
Re: Re: 2019-20 Movies Review Thread: There Will Be Spoilers
Ended up actually watching both Underwater and The Grudge remake (actually technically could be considered a subtle sequel) on Saturday.
Underwater....I certainly liked it better than you. I thought it had a lot of interesting facets to it. I wondered if there was a story with the character of Stewart maybe being some sort of hybrid human or something. There was weird instances where there was some serious stuff on that end going on. Maybe a cloned synthesized version or something. Just seemed like she was extraordinarily pulling off feats of incredible things compared to the other characters. I thought this was perhaps a nod to the Alien series in that aspect too. Stewart, of course, had Ellen Ripley written all over her too.
That said, could it have been better? Certainly. You were right on with the muddleness of the characters being attacked. I had no idea who was who in those scenes. Visually though, impressive effects here. This felt like a film maybe originally intended to be 3D as well by the way it was presented. If this was shelved since 2017, it very well may have been.
The Grudge was.....wow......what a mess. The Grudge franchise is very deep, 14 films in all I believe. Most of them Japanese. I did watch the original Ju-On before this (which isn't even the first film, there was two prior to that) and then dived into the American trilogy of Grudge remake films. This was a much more visceral version of the other American ones, but really not much different than especially the shitty Grudge 3 in alot of ways. The lack of telling the story chronologically is a staple of these films too, so I guess that explains why they felt the need to do it again. But my god, this was an unnecessary reimaging/sequel for sure. The ending was just so....there. The content of the film was just so dull, boring, and done before. The performances were tedious and underwhelming. And yes it did make for some laughs here and there.
Re: Re: 2019-20 Movies Review Thread: There Will Be Spoilers
Like a Boss (2020), directed by Miguel Arteta
I can't explain why I decided to see Like a Boss instead of some of the other movies out at this time. I guess I would say that the times of the movies worked out better for me. I can however explain why I chose the picture above, and you can probably already see why. So, there's that. I don't know what to say about a movie like this one other than to point out that there are now very few comedies released in general. I can't tell you the last time I saw a straight out comedy movie in theaters. In going back to look, I see that it has been since I saw the second Zombieland movie back in October. That's a long time! In watching this movie tonight, I learned how the comedy genre has gotten to this point. There is a distinct lack of talent in this space, but more than that, there's an issue with how these movies are written and structured. The constant comedy trope where the two characters have to fall out before redeeming themselves is some shit that I'm really tired of. This is the kind of bad movie that people watch when they're forced to sit on a long flight and there's nothing else to do. What's crazy is that this director has helmed a good drama movie, Beatriz at Dinner. Why is this so bad?
The very few people who gave this movie a positive review and tried to spin this into a movie with some grand message, good for them because I don't know how to do that. Mia (Tiffany Haddish) and Mel (Rose Byrne) are best friends, and they've been best friends for a very long time. This extends to them living with each other in what was Mia's mom's house. At some point in their friendship, they made the decision to start a cosmetics company, which is called Mel & Mia's. Really inventive, right? These two have totally different personalities. Mia is the creative side of the business is and Mel is the accounting side, one has confidence and one does not, you can derive which is which based on what I've just said. At their business, they have two employees, Barrett (Billy Porter) and Sydney (Jennifer Coolidge). There are some issues with the way things are going, and they are largely related to money. Their business is massively in debt and has never recovered. This issue will lead to the loss of their business in six months if they don't do something. They're going to do something.
Eventually, through some notoriety they have achieved with one of their products, they are approached by a cosmetics giant, Claire Luna (Salma Hayek). Claire wants to buy into their company and wipe out their debt, but she has her own ulterior motives. While she tells Mia and Mel that she wants to promote their product and give them a large amount of money for doing so, what Claire really wants is to steal their idea for herself. This sounds like a good idea, right? With her crappy assistant Josh (Karan Soni), they are going to put their own scheme in play and make things happen. The easiest way for them to do this is to split the friendship of Mia and Mel up, once and for all.
I tried my best to fluff things up, but I couldn't do more than that. Like a Boss has one major inherent problem in that the film is so short that something from every single scene is in one of the trailers that has been played hundreds of times before every movie that I've seen in the last six months. This is a major issue, and while the trailers don't completely spoil every gag in the movie, they ruin a lot. The script is also bad and so is the premise. There are a few bright spots, and there aren't many scenes in which those people really get to do good work with the horrible material. Tiffany Haddish and Rose Byrne are alright, and Billy Porter is good, but that dude is barely even in the movie to begin with. The movie also dives off a cliff in the last half hour or so, and it wasn't too great to begin with. Obviously, that's a problem. I did laugh a bit, but none of this has any real sticking power, and the film greatly lacks in consistency. It isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be though. That's about all I can say about this movie, which hopefully will bomb hard and show that there's no market for shitty comedy anymore. Most of the gags that are the worst gags in the movie are also in the trailer though, so you know what they are and there isn't a whole lot I can say about them.
Re: Re: 2019-20 Movies Review Thread: There Will Be Spoilers
Bad Boys for Life (2020), directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah
So, it's 2020. It's 2020 and there's going to be another Candyman movie, another Top Gun, a Ghostbusters sequel, a Bill & Ted flick, a Sopranos prequel movie, Sonic the Hedgehog, another Halloween, and a Coming to America sequel. Whew, that's a lot. These movies soon to debut all have one thing in common, they are reboots of old intellectual property. In most cases this kind of thing has proven to be a failure as people do not want to see old IP dragged out there. Some of the movies I mentioned above inevitably will fail. Hollywood has been producing a lot of sequels that nobody ever asked for. But, what about the ones that people did ask for? Bad Boys for Life is in that category. I have heard a lot of people over the last few years ask for a sequel that wasn't quite as bad as Bad Boys II, that didn't have Michael Bay involved, and that did bring back important pieces from the other two movies. Bad Boys for Life brings all of that. All of the bad shit from the second movie is removed, and it's clear to see why nobody wanted to make a third movie as long as Bay was attached to this project. The guy cannot make a profitable movie anymore and nobody really cares what he has to say about anything. You know what's really crazy? This might be Will Smith's first really good movie since before he last made one of these. Before I continue I should also point out that 2019's first good movie premiered at around the end of February. That is not the case this year.
Man, you know all the characters from this shit, don't you? Bad Boys for Life begins with Marcus (Martin Lawrence) and Mike (Will Smith) speeding with a police escort to be at the birth of what will be Marcus' first grandson. After this scene, we are taken to Mexico. In Mexico, Isabel Aretas (Kate del Castillo) is making her escape from prison. The reason why is something you find out much later, and because the plot holes are so absolutely gigantic we are treated to brilliant comedy (not being sarcastic) that makes us gladly forget about all of that. She is able to escape from prison partly as a plan of her own, but the help of her son Armando (Jacob Scipio) is crucial to actually breaking free. There is a reason for all this, it is because Isabel wants Mike dead for some reason. Again, we find out why later. Armando is tasked with coming to Miami and killing everyone involved with putting his mother in prison for such a long time. Last on the list is supposed to be Mike. Last on the list is not Mike.
Mike and Marcus go to a celebration party with their group, and to this point the only known character in said group is Captain Howard (Joey Pants). While at the party, Marcus starts talking about retiring, which makes Mike mad. They decide to have a running contest in order to measure each other's manhood, and during said running contest Mike is shot by Armando. This is not good. Armando goes on to kill everyone else that his mother told him to while Mike is laid up in the hospital and in a wheelchair. Once he gets out, and around six months later, Mike can walk again. Things have changed though. Marcus, he actually went through with retiring even though he had made a pact saying that he wouldn't. Seeing his friend near death was too much for him. Mike wants help, Marcus is not going to give that help. He just won't. After some cajoling and self-investigating on Mike's part, he eventually works his way into being somewhat on the case of finding out who shot him. He is going to consult with AMMO, a unit with Miami PD who specializes in technical surveillance and/or raids. On this unit we have the leader and Mike's ex-girlfriend, Rita (Paola Nunez), the hotshot Rafe (Charles Melton), very big tech geek Dorn (Alexander Ludwig), and hot, very easy to be undercover Kelly (Vanessa Hudgens). This unit will find out who Armando is and stop him. Or won't they?
There seems to be a shock of sorts that this movie is doing great business at the box office. I understand why people are surprised, but they shouldn't be. Minority audiences are very much undercatered to at the box office, but even more than that, there are hardly any comedy movies that get people's attention anymore. This, by the way, is very much a comedy and it is very funny. Nearly every joke lands, and the ones that don't are easy to ignore because something else comes up very quickly. There are some massive plot holes here, but it seems that the directors are completely aware of this and decided to fill that spot up with Martin Lawrence telling the best jokes of his entire career. This would wear thin if he was not written out of 30-40 minutes of this movie, but it seems that everyone involved with this iteration of Bad Boys had some very good ideas. This isn't a great movie, but it's pretty good and if you enjoyed Bad Boys II for any reason at all, you will like this. The last few minutes of this movie are also completely ludicrous, but it needs to be said that I do not care.
I have to go back to what I said about the audience though. At the end of the year, absolutely nothing debuted in theaters that was rated R, a comedy, and a crowd-pleaser all at the same time. There are maybe five other films I've seen in the last two years that made people this happy. In addition to that, look at what movies came out last year. You know how many action comedies with black actors even made it into a theater? Jumanji is a family movie, but we'll count that. I count Hobbs & Shaw, and Shaft. That is literally it. While I may have said at some point very recently that I don't believe in racially diversifying awards nominations just to make people happy, when I bother to type things out and think about them, it's easy to see why movies featuring minority actors aren't nominated for awards. It's because there aren't any of them. When those movies are made, they are usually made by directors who don't have the ability to make a good movie out of the material. Directors like those who made this movie have never directed an English language feature. You see, it's easy to figure out what's wrong with Hollywood when you look at a list of movies that premiere on a yearly basis, and go back a few years in the process of doing that. You will see more often than not that certain kinds of people only directed one movie in that timeframe. The surprise in Bad Boys for Life having a high box office total clearly lies in the fact that studio heads don't really give a shit about minorities and that audience doesn't factor into their projections or what leads to them deciding to make a movie. The only reason Bad Boys II didn't make money was because it was grossly overbudget. But at the same time, that movie was something that defined the era in which I went to high school. People talked about that movie...FOR...MONTHS.
Also, the media can talk about progress or really whatever the fuck they want to, but I look at the upcoming list of films and I see the same issue where there aren't movies like this one. I shouldn't be surprised though. After all, this movie was "way too risky" for anyone to try to make for 17 years. Studios need to realize that not everyone in the world is going out to see Star Wars or Joker. One of those is a great movie, but there are people in this country who want to see something more representative of how the world actually looks. Anyway, I really enjoyed this, but I was thinking about that as I went to finish my review and had to get it out. The only other time I laughed like this in a theater over the last 12 months was when I saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. On repeat viewings I find comedies to not be quite as strong, but I don't think that should mean anything when giving a movie a score.
7.5/10
2020 Films Ranked
1. Bad Boys for Life
2. Underwater
3. Like a Boss
4. The Grudge
There is one reason and one reason alone that I decided to watch Jungle. I heard that this movie had some gruesome scenes, and I don't have four hours to set aside to watch The Irishman. Actually, that's two reasons. I still can't find the time in my day to watch that movie simply because it's so long. I'm not making any promises but it's possible I will finally be able to do so on Saturday. Anyway, Jungle. Yes, this movie has gruesome scenes. But what's it about?
Sometime in the early 1980s, a young Israeli man decided that he was going to travel to South America in search of a journey. Eventually, Yossi Ghinsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) sets his sights on Bolivia. Sometime after arrival, his intention is to travel into the Amazon and learn things about the world and himself. On the first day, he goes to Lake Titicaca, where he meets Markus Stamm (Joel Jackson). Markus is Swiss, and his friend Kevin (Alex Russell) is American. The trio seems to get along really well, and all of them are at least somewhat interested in going to the Amazon. Kevin is also a hiker and Markus is a school teacher, I should note. Eventually the three wind up staying at an Israeli hostel in La Paz, and one day when he's out in the market, Yossi encounters Karl (Thomas Kretschmann). Karl is an Austrian who is very good at telling stories. He claims there's an Indian tribe out in the jungle they should go see, as the tribe to this point is undiscovered and they can make first contact. Karl also knows the jungle and says that he could easily bring Yossi there. This kind of thing is very alluring for potential adventurers and it's easy to see why someone could easily bring themselves to do something very stupid.
When Yossi comes home that day, he's enamored with this idea because this is something that he's always wanted to do. He decides to tell Markus and Kevin about this, and they really don't want to do anything because they don't trust some random guy from the market. Eventually they give in and decide that they really want to go too. Shortly after, they meet Karl and it's time to head out to a small village called Apolo. I don't know how to phrase things, but this place is near enough to the jungle that they can easily head deep out there. Karl brings them to a village that he's clearly been to before, and everything goes pretty well. That is, until it doesn't. A few days later, Markus has developed awful sores on his feet that are bleeding and won't heal. This leads to problems, specifically between Kevin and Karl. Eventually it is decided that the foursome must split into duos. Karl wants to head back to La Paz and is going to hike his way there. A raft has been built and Kevin wants to head further into the jungle. What is Yossi going to do?
The answer, if you're still reading, was that he pushed deeper into the jungle despite having no survival skills. This was a huge mistake. This film is only above average as a result of some creative decisions that were made once Yossi went into the jungle. Movies where the lead character has visions needs for those visions to be as strong as those in The Revenant. When they aren't, the movie isn't. The visions in this film are rather corny and completely ludicrous. It's fair to say that I did not like them. When I watch a movie like this one, there's a few things that I hope for. I want the film to remain brutally realistic, which this would have done if not for those bad visions. Less is more. I also thought this movie didn't do a very good job of setting up anything prior to the scenes on the river. This movie builds really slow. Jungle is still on the positive side of average though. There's some strong cinematography here, and it's hard to believe that this story is true even though it's entirely true. I also thought Radcliffe had another good performance in a decent movie, which seems to be becoming a thing as for some reason he is no longer making anything that other people watch. I don't understand why that is, but it's weird to see Harry Potter suffering in the jungle, and that alone makes this movie just a little better than I thought it would be.
6/10
2017 Films Ranked
1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
7. Mudbound
8. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
9. Logan
10. Baby Driver
11. The Post
12. Wonder Woman
13. The Big Sick
14. Lady Bird
15. Wind River
16. Thor: Ragnarok
17. mother!
18. Logan Lucky
19. The Beguiled
20. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
21. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
22. Brawl in Cell Block 99
23. John Wick: Chapter 2
24. The Disaster Artist
25. The Lost City of Z
26. First They Killed My Father
27. A Ghost Story
28. Last Flag Flying
29. Hostiles
30. Darkest Hour
31. Spider-Man: Homecoming
32. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
33. Sweet Virginia
34. It
35. Battle of the Sexes
36. Stronger
37. Brad's Status
38. Okja
39. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
40. Kong: Skull Island
41. It Comes at Night
42. Happy End (foreign movie, did not write review)
43. Crown Heights
44. Split
45. 1922
46. Personal Shopper
47. Landline
48. Thank You for Your Service
49. Beatriz at Dinner
50. Chuck
51. Atomic Blonde
52. Shot Caller
53. Wheelman
54. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
55. Wonder
56. Brigsby Bear
57. The Lego Batman Movie
58. Megan Leavey
59. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
60. Wonderstruck
61. Only the Brave
62. Marshall
63. Menashe
64. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
65. Walking Out
66. American Made
67. Annabelle: Creation
68. Beauty and the Beast
69. Imperial Dreams
70. Gifted
71. Murder on the Orient Express
72. My Friend Dahmer
73. The Zookeeper's Wife
74. The Glass Castle
75. The Foreigner
76. Free Fire
77. Win It All
78. The Wall 79. Jungle
80. Life
81. My Cousin Rachel
82. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
83. The Ballad of Lefty Brown
84. The Fate of the Furious
85. Breathe
86. The Man Who Invented Christmas
87. Maudie
88. Patti Cake$
89. Sleight
90. Alone in Berlin
91. A United Kingdom
92. Trespass Against Us
93. The Mountain Between Us
94. War Machine
95. Happy Death Day
96. Lowriders
97. Justice League
98. To the Bone
99. Ghost in the Shell
100. Wakefield
101. Bright
102. The Tribes of Palos Verdes
103. The Hitman's Bodyguard
104. Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
105. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
106. The Mummy
107. The Greatest Showman
108. Rough Night
109. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
110. Sand Castle
111. The Circle
112. American Assassin
113. CHiPs
114. Death Note
115. 47 Meters Down
116. The Belko Experiment
117. The Great Wall
118. Fist Fight
119. Baywatch
120. Snatched
121. Suburbicon
122. Wilson
123. The Dark Tower
124. Queen of the Desert
125. The House
126. Flatliners
127. Sleepless
128. Geostorm
129. All Eyez on Me
130. The Snowman
131. The Book of Henry
132. The Space Between Us
133. Daddy's Home 2
Just Mercy (2019), directed by Destin Daniel Cretton
It will forever bother me that the term "social justice warrior" is a pejorative. When I watch movies like this one, I feel like it should be anything but. In fact, there's a lot of things that bother me when it comes to this movie and almost all of them are the reaction to this movie and what people were saying. There is nothing about Just Mercy that I found to be part of a generic legal drama at all. To write something like that considering the scenes in this movie is rather galling. I found this to be a powerful movie in many respects, even though some of the material is heavy handed. Some of the more heavy handed stuff happens to hit home harder than I had expected. Just Mercy is a movie with a clear goal in line and a narrative point that you are supposed to think is true, that the death penalty is wrong and should be abolished. Maybe the people who wrote bad reviews are in favor of the death penalty. I'm just postulating because I don't know, but I don't understand a lot of the reviews about this film and I probably never will. Alright then. Let's talk about the movie a little bit.
Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) is a young would-be lawyer doing an internship in the South while on break from law school at Harvard. That was a mouthful. On this internship, he is tasked with going to death row as an assistant of sorts. At the end of one of his visits, the person he was seeing is accosted by corrections officers because the visit took too long. Also, Bryan being a black man seems to be part of the issue as well. This experience and another that Bryan talks about later in the film seems to shape what his life is to become. After graduating, even though his mother does not want this, Bryan decides that he's going to move to Alabama and take on what would seem to be an impossible task. He is going to make it his life's mission to prevent inmates on death row from being executed. There are some obvious reasons why a young lawyer would be compelled to do this. First, the death penalty is bullshit and should only be used for getting rid of genocidal freaks, if even that. Second, the people on death row are largely poor and had no legal defense, so it's impossible to know if they're actually guilty. Third, and playing into what I said about not knowing if the accused are truly guilty, it's fucking Alabama and most of the inmates on death row are black. This is automatically suspicious.
Bryan does need some help, and this film is based on his memoir, so if anyone is in this film it is because he wanted them to be in the film. Eva (Brie Larson) is his chief assistant, the person from Alabama who helps him get set up down there, who drives him around and helps him with how things work. Without help this would all not be possible. Eventually the movie comes to center around one man and his case. That man is Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx), a death row inmate whose cell is between that of a man named Herbert Richardson (Rob Morgan) and Anthony Ray Hinton (O'Shea Jackson Jr.). Bryan decides that he is going to take all of their cases. In the case of Herbert, he made the mistake of making a bomb that he said was not meant to explode, but merely to terrify someone who had broken up with him. Herbert was a Vietnam veteran who came back with PTSD, who was clearly messed up in the head, and had never been given access to psychological help. The death penalty is still wrong. Hinton had been convicted of murdering two fast food workers during robberies. Someone who was in a third robbery picked Hinton's photo out of a lineup, Hinton was given extremely poor defense from a racist public defender, and he was convicted even though his boss said he was at work. That's what life in a racist society is like. McMillian got it really bad. He was arrested for killing an 18 year old white girl because someone had to be arrested, and that was one of the only reasons at all. The prosecution seems to have gotten two witnesses to give bullshit testimony, and McMillian is set to die. Somehow, someway, this must be stopped.
I had to wind down that last paragraph a little too quickly, but I'm not capabable of explaining the entire movie anyway. This movie has some powerful scenes. When Bryan is strip searched is the first of those scenes. I find it really odd that people are able to downplay this stuff as merely being heavy handed. For a large number of people in this country, being treated like this is a nightmare that they live in fear of. I must reiterate that I don't understand how something like this is dismissed when I hear a movie theater full of people nearly in tears for this scene. Then, when one of the men is executed, that was probably the hardest I've had to try to keep myself from crying in a theater because literally everyone else in the theater was doing it. This sequence is extremely well filmed and the film as a whole is free of the melodrama that you often find in such legal films. Part of that is because of the quality of the actors involved and it is also due to a good script. It's easy to forget because he's in a lot of really shitty movies, but Jamie Foxx is a really good actor when he's in a project with a good script and something to make work of. It's hard to do something with a movie like 2018's Robin Hood, I don't think anyone could. I will also say that The Irishman must have been fucking amazing for Foxx to not have been nominated for an Academy Award.
There are some things here that I find to be a bit too common in movies, and what I'm referring to when I say that is that the only kinds of movies featuring black actors that get nominated for awards or are considered to be nominated for awards feature bad shit happening to black people. I'm sure I've pointed this out before. That doesn't mean these movies shouldn't be made, I'm not saying anything like that, I'm just saying what I'm saying. As far as movies about these kinds of court cases go, this is a very good one as it packs emotional weight that the others do not. There are a few other ways this story could have been made, but I think this one was best befitting of its subjects. The scenes on death row are what really set this film apart from the rest, but I also appreciated that this was a movie that left nothing in doubt for any melodramatic revelations later on, a movie that was resolute in telling you the man was innocent, and framing things in a way that it never could have been in question.
8/10
2019 Films Ranked
1. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
2. Parasite
3. 1917
4. Midsommar
5. Ad Astra
6. The Lighthouse
7. Waves
8. The Farewell
9. Knives Out
10. Uncut Gems
11. Booksmart
12. Avengers: Endgame
13. Queen & Slim
14. Toy Story 4
15. Joker
16. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
17. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
18. Us
19. Ford v. Ferrari
20. Gloria Bell
21. The Beach Bum 22. Just Mercy
23. The Art of Self-Defense
24. Dark Waters
25. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
26. Arctic
27. Spider-Man: Far From Home
28. Rocketman
29. High Flying Bird
30. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
31. Paddleton
32. Richard Jewell
33. The Peanut Butter Falcon
34. Honey Boy
35. Doctor Sleep
36. Hustlers
37. Blinded by the Light
38. Captain Marvel
39. Jojo Rabbit
40. Long Shot
41. Shazam
42. Ready or Not
43. A Vigilante
44. Late Night
45. Crawl
46. It: Chapter Two
47. Hotel Mumbai
48. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
49. Zombieland: Double Tap
50. Harriet
51. Hobbs & Shaw
52. Official Secrets
53. Always Be My Maybe
54. Cold Pursuit
55. The Laundromat
56. Where'd You Go, Bernadette
57. Shaft
58. Happy Death Day 2U
59. Ma
60. Terminator: Dark Fate
61. Annabelle Comes Home
62. Greta
63. Jumanji: The Next Level
64. Aladdin
65. Triple Frontier
66. Fighting with My Family
67. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
68. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
69. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
70. Brexit
71. The Dirt
72. Velvet Buzzsaw
73. Stuber
74. Little
75. Alita: Battle Angel
76. The Good Liar
77. The Current War: Director's Cut
78. The Kid
79. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
80. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
81. Good Boys
82. The Upside
83. The Lion King
84. Dumbo
85. The Hummingbird Project
86. Escape Room
87. 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
88. Brian Banks
89. Tolkien
90. The Dead Don't Die
91. Captive State
92. The Highwaymen
93. Bombshell
94. Pet Sematary
95. The Intruder
96. Child's Play
97. 21 Bridges
98. Gemini Man
99. Brightburn
100. Never Grow Old
101. Rambo: Last Blood
102. Midway
103. Angel Has Fallen
104. Black and Blue
105. Yesterday
106. Anna
107. What Men Want
108. Them That Follow
109. Unicorn Store
110. The Curse of La Llorona
111. Miss Bala
112. Men in Black: International
113. The Red Sea Diving Resort
114. The Perfection
115. Hellboy
116. Glass
117. Dark Phoenix
118. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
119. The Kitchen
120. The Hustle
121. The Best of Enemies
122. The Prodigy
123. Polar
124. Serenity
I think you'd love The Irishman if you ever watch it and out of all the nominees Anthony Hopkins in The Two Popes is far more undeserving than Pacino or Pesci. I can see qualms about Pacino since its a very hoo hah performance, but I thought his take on Hoffa might be been the most entertaining performance of the year and he hasn't been this good in decades. It has been a stacked year for great male supporting performances though. I'd probably have Shia from Honey Boy and Willem Dafoe in Lighthouse in there over Pitt or Hanks tbh. Still need to watch Just Mercy, but I'm sure Foxx is amazing.
Yeah, just sacrifice the time you've reserved to watch two movies you think are probably garbage and watch the Irishman, even if you have to split up the viewing time.
All the Money in the World (2017), directed by Ridley Scott
I remember the day it was announced that Kevin Spacey was going to be removed from All the Money in the World. While that was something that needed to be done, I thought there was also another side to this decision. In doing so, the producers gave a unique movie about an unknown subject a chance of clawing back some money when it otherwise would not have made anything at all. Unfortunately this was not a film that made money, but that's alright. The cat and mouse games of kidnapping thrillers will likely always be entertaining to me. There's a few reasons why. For one, nobody makes those movies anymore as they rarely make money and cinematic content is less adult oriented these days anyway. There's also the reality of these situations leading to wild scenarios that are hard to believe. In some cases they're true and in others they aren't. What we have with All the Money in the World is a good movie that almost reaches great heights. There were a lot of great movies in 2017 though. I also wonder how long Ridley Scott will continue to work. He's 82 and he has a lot of projects announced that haven't yet been followed up on. Lately his movies have been hit or miss as well. Hopefully that isn't the case with the ones that close out his career.
All the Money in the World is set in 1973, with John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer) out on the town in Rome, looking to get some or perhaps even get in trouble. He goes by Paul, and Paul is the grandson of the richest man in the world, J. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer), who will be referred to as Getty for the rest of this review. While out on the town that night, Paul is kidnapped by a mysterious group of individuals, who we later learn are affiliated with organized crime. After this scene, we are taken back to Paul's childhood in San Francisco. Living with his mom Gail (Michelle Williams) and his father John Paul Getty Jr. (Andrew Buchan) was a good time. John drank a little too much, and everyone was a little too broke, but things are alright. When John was a kid, he was basically abandoned by his father and left to learn the way of the world himself. No great fortune was passed down to him or anything of the sort. One day, Gail and John get the gumption to get in contact with John's father, which leads to them being flown to Rome. Over the process of things, John is given a job by his father even though he knows nothing of the oil business, and Paul becomes Getty's favorite grandchild.
In large part because of John's access to his father's fortune, John becomes a drug addict who just can't help himself. Getty had changed in his old age, now wanting the family that he'd already had and ignored before. The divorce of Gail and John is not so great. In the process, Gail rejects alimony in exchange for custody of her children. This is pertinent as now she does not have the money to pay any ransom, and the kidnappers want $17,000,000. Getty decides to go on television and say that he has no intention of paying any ransom on any of his grandchildren, as doing so enables people to get rich by taking his family captive. It was assumed by the kidnappers that Gail was rich herself, which is not true, so now there's a problem. Getty also decides to ask a former CIA operative, Fletcher Chace (Mark Wahlberg), to get involved with investigating the case. Chace and Getty have history, Chace helps him negotiate deals in places like Saudi Arabia. As for Paul, he is now a hostage and hidden deep in Italy, away from people and anyone who may find him. Cinquanta (Romain Duris) is the lead captor, and everyone seems to be somewhat friendly with Paul, but Gail doesn't have any money. It is going to take a very long time to get a ransom, and the captors believe they may not get one at all. As for the case, it is being investigated by the Carabinieri, who believe that communists may have done this. Everyone suspected communists in those days, and Getty being super rich is another reason for the suspicion. It isn't them though.
This movie is pretty good although not great, and there's one specific scene where Wahlberg's character is threatening Getty, and that really didn't do it for me at all. It is clear that the events have been spiced up a bit in order to make this a good movie, and I thought that worked. Not knowing exactly what happened, I was rather surprised by the way the situation with Paul was resolved. I'll keep that to myself just in case, but this movie has pretty good thematic elements to discuss. Obviously, the title gives away what this movie is really about, and Plummer has quite a few scenes where he can explicitly say it. Money is a corruptive element that creates a lot of problems with our society. Most people will do pretty much anything to have it, within reason. Some people don't have reason. In this film, Getty is painted as not having reason the same way that the kidnappers don't. He utterly refuses to give in even when his grandson's ear is sent to the newspaper, and is a miserable fuck even though he has tons of money. One thing I find interesting as it relates to that is Kevin Spacey's replacement in the film. I'm uncertain that it was made clear if other people in Hollywood knew about what he had done prior to any public release of information. I don't remember. Money seemed to be no object in the case of replacing him in this movie, I do know that.
Plummer's performance in this movie was pretty good and he was nominated for it, but I thought that Michelle Williams did an even better job in her lead role. Certainly more deserving of a nomination than Meryl Streep was for The Post. There are also so many things in this movie that I would find to be difficult to film in a way that's easy to understand. This isn't a great movie because the family dynamics never really go as far as they probably should, but this movie is plenty long enough as it is and doesn't need more scenes. This isn't one of Scott's best movies or anything, and I think it's more fit for fans of this kind of genre, but I liked the movie well enough.
7.5/10
2017 Films Ranked
1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
7. Mudbound
8. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
9. Logan
10. Baby Driver
11. The Post
12. Wonder Woman
13. The Big Sick
14. Lady Bird
15. Wind River
16. Thor: Ragnarok
17. mother!
18. Logan Lucky
19. The Beguiled
20. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
21. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
22. Brawl in Cell Block 99
23. John Wick: Chapter 2
24. The Disaster Artist
25. The Lost City of Z
26. First They Killed My Father
27. A Ghost Story
28. Last Flag Flying
29. Hostiles 30. All the Money in the World
31. Darkest Hour
32. Spider-Man: Homecoming
33. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
34. Sweet Virginia
35. It
36. Battle of the Sexes
37. Stronger
38. Brad's Status
39. Okja
40. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
41. Kong: Skull Island
42. It Comes at Night
43. Happy End (foreign movie, did not write review)
44. Crown Heights
45. Split
46. 1922
47. Personal Shopper
48. Landline
49. Thank You for Your Service
50. Beatriz at Dinner
51. Chuck
52. Atomic Blonde
53. Shot Caller
54. Wheelman
55. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
56. Wonder
57. Brigsby Bear
58. The Lego Batman Movie
59. Megan Leavey
60. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
61. Wonderstruck
62. Only the Brave
63. Marshall
64. Menashe
65. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
66. Walking Out
67. American Made
68. Annabelle: Creation
69. Beauty and the Beast
70. Imperial Dreams
71. Gifted
72. Murder on the Orient Express
73. My Friend Dahmer
74. The Zookeeper's Wife
75. The Glass Castle
76. The Foreigner
77. Free Fire
78. Win It All
79. The Wall
80. Jungle
81. Life
82. My Cousin Rachel
83. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
84. The Ballad of Lefty Brown
85. The Fate of the Furious
86. Breathe
87. The Man Who Invented Christmas
88. Maudie
89. Patti Cake$
90. Sleight
91. Alone in Berlin
92. A United Kingdom
93. Trespass Against Us
94. The Mountain Between Us
95. War Machine
96. Happy Death Day
97. Lowriders
98. Justice League
99. To the Bone
100. Ghost in the Shell
101. Wakefield
102. Bright
103. The Tribes of Palos Verdes
104. The Hitman's Bodyguard
105. Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
106. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
107. The Mummy
108. The Greatest Showman
109. Rough Night
110. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
111. Sand Castle
112. The Circle
113. American Assassin
114. CHiPs
115. Death Note
116. 47 Meters Down
117. The Belko Experiment
118. The Great Wall
119. Fist Fight
120. Baywatch
121. Snatched
122. Suburbicon
123. Wilson
124. The Dark Tower
125. Queen of the Desert
126. The House
127. Flatliners
128. Sleepless
129. Geostorm
130. All Eyez on Me
131. The Snowman
132. The Book of Henry
133. The Space Between Us
134. Daddy's Home 2
Re: Re: 2019-20 Movies Review Thread: There Will Be Spoilers
Dolittle (2020), directed by Stephen Gaghan
By my standards, this review is going to be very brief. I would like to think when I was a kid that I wouldn't laugh at most of the things in Dolittle, although I know that's probably not true and that I probably would laugh. Grading this movie on a scale for little kids is pretty easy though. This is a bad movie all the way around. There's been some commentary stating that this movie is crass and rude, and it really isn't with the exception of a scene where a dragon is dying because the doctor needs pull some old armor out of the dragon's ass. This is done in the most benign and inoffensive way, with the exception of a fart, the lone fart in the movie. What I'm really not understanding is why a studio would pay $175 million for an inoffensive, largely rated G movie. The lack of offensive moments in the film is a serious problem for adults as you might assume, there has to be something to get people to take their kids to the theater and this movie doesn't have anything like that. What a pitiful display.
Dr. Dolittle (Robert Downey Jr.) was a married man, a doctor who could talk to animals. His wife could as well. The two separated so that his wife Lily could travel in search of a fabled tree, and on that trip his wife died. This is supposed to be a little kids movie and they just drop that shit on people. This event sends Dolittle into a depression, and we continue on to the plot. Dolittle now has locked himself in his house, away from all human beings. He lives with his animals, who are all voiced by A-list actors even though that likely cost a massive amount of money. I could hardly tell who was doing the vast majority of these voices as well. Anyway, a boy named Tommy Stubbins (Harry Collett) is out one day hunting. He doesn't want to kill any animals, but he accidentally shoots a squirrel. Dolittle's house is nearby, and the kid basically breaks in with the help of Lady Rose, a princess. Rose is at his house because Queen Victoria (Jessie Buckley) is in need of Dolittle's help as she is sick. Dolittle eventually comes out of the house, and tasks himself with finding the cure, which is what Lily (his wife) was looking for all those years ago.
At least if this movie was crude I would have something to talk about, but I feel like I was misled by people who made up shit about the film. A Twitter account can be a powerful thing and people have the ability to use it for many different purposes. This movie is straight out boring by the standards of a kids movie, and if I knew that I never would have went to the theater tonight. There are very few worse movies than this one that I can think of. The CGI isn't all that great, and Downey has never given a worse performance in his entire life. It is incredible that someone decided to fund this project, I can hardly believe it. That this movie is rather sad is an extremely huge mistake, nobody should make a depressing kids movie that is this bereft of content. I don't know how that happens.
2.5/10
2020 Films Ranked
1. Bad Boys for Life
2. Underwater
3. Like a Boss
4. The Grudge 5. Dolittle
Same... if I can't trust people I never heard of on Twitter giving Dolittle snippet reviews like I would wax on and on about Charlie St. Cloud then who the hell can I trust damn it? Only this man and this thread, brudda.
Bad shit just keeps happening and I’m spending another full night at the hospital. I saw Clemency way earlier and can’t write a review, and I obviously couldn’t watch The Irishman tonight either. This shit sucks so much.
The Last Full Measure (2020), directed by Todd Robinson
Before I get started, I need to make mention of something that usually tells me when a film isn't good. The Last Full Measure was filmed in the middle of 2017. That was a long time ago, right? That was the first year of Trump's administration and hopefully this is the last one. In the case of The Last Full Measure, I see exactly why this movie took so long to be released. It's not just that the film isn't good, it's that this is totally unmarketable and something best portrayed in a documentary. I do not know how this film even received financing, especially considering its cast. Now, I shouldn't say too many bad things about the movie. It's just that everything here is better told in a different format, but the way its done here feels like something that would have been better released on the History Channel than in a theater. I will say at least that this film was powerful enough to some, but I thought everything here was presented in a heavy-handed and emotionally manipulative way. That being said, I don't have any servicemen in my family or anything of the sort. So, take that for what it's worth.
The Last Full Measure is the story of William H. Pitsenbarger (Jeremy Irvine), an Air Force Pararescueman who saved over sixty lives through heroic acts during the Vietnam War. Pitsenbarger did not survive, but his memory lived on in the hearts of those who served with him and saw what he did. Scott Huffman (Sebastian Stan) is a career-minded, me-first staffer working at the Pentagon in 1999. Advancement in the bureaucracy of Washington is his way forward in life. He has a son and wife, and maybe he works a little too much, but there isn't much insight on that end. One day, he is approached by Pitsenbarger's best friend, Tully (William Hurt). Tully had scheduled a meeting regarding Pitsenbarger's inability to receive a posthumous Medal of Honor. He was rejected for whatever reason, and given the Air Force Cross instead. This meeting with Tully sparks a review, which Scott believes is going to be perfunctory and not mean much of anything at all. See the cliches here? Scott is subsequently tasked with tracking down everyone who has testimony to give about what Pitsenbarger did, and it will be decided what to do about the Medal of Honor after this review.
Over the course of the rest of the movie, when these testimonies are given, we are taken back to Vietnam so that we can see what happened. The testimonies themselves are given by people who are for the most part quite traumatized. Ray Mott (Ed Harris) returned home from Vietnam and became a school bus driver. He is one of the only soldiers featured in this movie who came back without those problems. Jimmy Burr (Peter Fonda) was not so lucky. He was severely traumatized and now cannot sleep at night. Some of this stuff was like a caricature, but I have more to say about that later. Takoda (Samuel L. Jackson) blames himself for everything that happened on that day. This is the kind of movie that this is.
To say this is the kind of movie that The Last Full Measure is, is kind of an understatement. The first thirty minutes of this film felt so long, and I kept closing my eyes, but fortunately I didn't fall asleep and start snoring and ruin everyone's night. This is a movie for boomers who think it's still 1983. I don't know how else to put it and I know that this is probably an insensitive way to talk about a movie featuring the story of a Medal of Honor winner. The problem is that everything in the film is melodramatic, boomer loving type trash and I just can't handle that kind of stuff anymore. For a cast like this to put in such shitty acting performances is rather mindblowing and unexpected. I don't know what else I can bring to this review other than what I've already said, but this isn't worth your time. I was bored. Pitsenbarger's story is worth telling, but definitely not in a movie about people trying to get him his Medal of Honor. That kind of stuff is best placed in a documentary. The Vietnam scenes would be better placed in a movie that solely featured Vietnam.
4.5/10
2020 Films Ranked
1. Bad Boys for Life
2. Underwater 3. The Last Full Measure
4. Like a Boss
5. The Grudge
6. Dolittle
The Rhythm Section (2020), directed by Reed Morano
The Rhythm Section hits the double on things I like to bring up when it comes to movies released early in the year. This film began production at the end of 2017, that isn't a good sign! The Rhythm Section has also already bombed. I believe this is now the worst opening wide release of all time. It's not like today was any better. It's a strange feeling going to a theater with over 200 seats and there are only six people there. In this case it's easy to understand why this film has failed. The budget was kind of too high for what this was, it was not a spy movie that could ever have turned a profit. For what it's worth, I think the studio knew that. Before Blake Lively got hurt, this was pegged for a November release date. So, someone thought this would be good and possibly worth an awards nomination. At least until it wasn't. The reason this movie wouldn't have turned a profit is because this is barely a spy movie. It's a story about a broken person who really wants to kill someone even though they're completely unqualified to do so. The movie is extremely slow building and we are treated to a lot of shots where the person is clearly in grief and doesn't know what they're doing. This kind of thing works in a movie gunning for awards. It does not work in a movie that isn't really good, and is frankly too difficult to understand. I will say that critics have shit on this film a little too much though.
Stephanie Patrick (Blake Lively) is a young woman from London, and being young should be fun. In her case it is not. She has become a prostitute and drug addict during her grief, a grief I can't understand because it has never happened to me. Her entire family was on a plane that crashed, killing all of them. Stephanie was supposed to be on that flight with them, but she did not go. One day, while working at a brothel, she is approached by a journalist who wishes to speak to her. For whatever reason, she tells security and they send the guy out, busting his face up. A few days later, she decides that she wants to talk to the journalist after all and runs off so that she can call him. The journalist is Keith Proctor (Raza Jaffrey), and he has a flat in London where they can talk. This movie, cliched as it is, has Stephanie faint and come to sometime later. At Keith's flat, we see that he has a lot of evidence and has been working on what some would call a conspiracy theory, the idea that someone bombed the plane Stephanie's family died on. It's obviously true, and there's a cover-up that's easily explained.
When Keith tells Stephanie who bombed the plane, obviously she wants to know and is going to attempt to track him down. It's not like Keith can keep her prisoner. She goes to encounter the man, who is named Reza, but she finds herself unable to pull the trigger on the gun she's purchased from her drug dealer. After that, she discovers that her bag has been stolen, and whoever stole it has gone to Keith's apartment. Now Keith is dead. She had already figured out where his source in the intelligence community was, now she has to go up to Scotland. Once she does, she finds B. (Jude Law), a former MI6 agent who is naturally quite concerned that someone's snooping around his cabin. So, he throws her into a room and takes away her junk. She'll have to get clean. Of course, B. just needs a little while to find out who Stephanie is, and initially he wants to just make her go away. Instead, Stephanie is able to convince him that she has nothing to lose, and that she'd be the best person to go out there and kill Reza. B. begins to train her, but the thing is, Reza isn't who she needs to be going after. Reza was hired by a terrorist who was given the designation of U-17, the name being because nobody knows who he or she even is. The terrorist bombed the plane to kill a liberal Muslim reformist, and everyone else on the plane was unimportant. Will Stephanie still go through training?
I said a while ago that there isn't much of a market for female oriented spy movies, and while I think that's something that shouldn't be the case I also think it's true. Anna was one from last year that didn't make anything, neither did Charlie's Angels. I can't tell you why they don't make money, I just think they don't based on what's happened in the last year. Now, this one, I already said why it didn't make money, but I didn't think it was all that bad. I was at least interested in seeing where the story would go after the very slow beginning to the film, and while cliched I didn't have much of a problem with the beginning of the film either. My issue with The Rhythm Section is the conclusion of the film and how confusing things become. Those things also seemed to me to not make much sense. The movie isn't too keen on these kinds of details, to the point where a really strong lead performance by Lively is completely wasted. I don't think the movie is really bad, but it's not good either. I wasn't entertained that much, but the journey of the lead character shines through to some extent. The stuff where Lively's character fumbles her way through assassination missions is very difficult to explain. When there's no way that any of this stuff could actually happen, the events should be much more fun than this. That this movie is so serious works as a detriment, but Lively's performance here is really good. I don't know how to rate this movie, but I'll take far too serious over far too boring any day.
5/10
2020 Films Ranked
1. Bad Boys for Life
2. Underwater 3. The Rhythm Section
4. The Last Full Measure
5. Like a Boss
6. The Grudge
7. Dolittle
All that seemed to matter when it came to this movie and the details surrounding it, was that Guy Ritchie was going to make a movie that was like the other movies he used to make. I was sold based on that. I've been busy enough to avoid any other details, but I know what I want from a movie like this one. For the most part I got it, and I'm pretty satisfied with that. I think there are some aspects of the film where Ritchie goes too far up his ass, the ending being one of those aspects, but we all probably knew that would happen if we cared enough to know. A movie like The Gentlemen just has to hit certain notes. It cannot be afraid to go too far, to attempt to be completely sanitized and make everyone happy. It is a movie that just has to be this way. Sometimes it's good and sometimes it isn't. The picture I posted describes exactly what kind of movie this is, I think. There's only one place where people dress like that, a certain kind of people in fact. I think there's now such a lack of movies about crime that these sorts are much more welcome than they used to be. Everyone used to try to make these kinds of movies, and there were way too many of them, and now there aren't enough. Does that make sense?
I'll do my best to describe The Gentlemen in my usual two paragraph form, but that may prove very difficult. Big Dave (Eddie Marsan) is the editor of a paper, snubbed by Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey) at a party. Dave wants to know why he's been snubbed and treated like garbage by a criminal, so he hires a private investigator named Fletcher (Hugh Grant). Fletcher has made some discoveries about Mickey, but he has ulterior motives. His intention is to sell those findings to a man attached to Mickey in some way, Raymond (Charlie Hunnam). Look, this sounds way more complicated than it actually is, but it is essential to pay attention to the first twenty minutes of this film. If you don't, you'll be totally lost. The price on this story, which has been typed up in a screenplay, is the grand total of £20 million. That's a lot. The movie subsequently goes back and forth with Fletcher revealing what he's learned, and the viewer being taken both to how those events actually happened, or shown the perspective of what would have happened if Fletcher was actually correct.
How is Mickey a criminal though? I buried the lede on that one and for that matter so does the film for a brief moment. Mickey was born in the US, of course. He was poor until he wasn't, he won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, which he used to sell marijuana to the other students. After that, he decided to drop out and build a cannabis empire, which has been very successful. In the process of that, he has had to kill a lot of people. Mickey decides that it's time to call it quits, and he wants to sell his business to an American billionaire, Matthew Berger (Jeremy Strong). Berger is in need of convincing on the sale price, and not to reveal too much, but Mickey is able to convince him. As a result, once the deal is done, Mickey can retire with his wife Rosalind (Michelle Dockery) and leave this life behind. Over the process of this movie, you see how Mickey runs his business and how this might all work. You also learn how Raymond is tied into things. There are some other factors though. There's a man called Coach (Colin Farrell) who seems to hold a lot of sway over what we would describe as hoodlums. They are very willing and able. Dry Eye (Henry Golding) is a heroin dealer and thief who works as a capo for Lord George (Tom Wu), a gangster from Hong Kong. Lastly, how was Fletcher able to find out all these things without getting caught?
The first takeaway I had from this film because he made me laugh so much, was that I've never seen Hugh Grant act like this. It's different, it's very amusing. I really liked this aspect of the film. The Gentlemen isn't as good as Ritchie's best British crime stories, but it slots somewhere in the middle. The ending of this movie was so ridiculous that it made me laugh plenty, but I think you can see the obvious problem in the movie's conclusion being that ridiculous. I would say that mileage may vary on this one. If you're tired of Ritchie's style, sick of these kinds of movies, then you'll probably hate this straight away. If you think its been long enough since the last one of these kinds of movies, then you'll probably like it. It's really as simple as that. It isn't wrong to like or dislike genre fare such as this, but you should know what the film is beforehand. There are hints at a sequel, but this is more meta than anything else. The screenplay is a good hint at that. I will also say that this movie is probably exactly what you think it is. It's a movie for guys, with a cast full of guys, set in London, and it's about crime. You can figure out the rest for yourself, sometimes these movies work and sometimes they don't. This was what I was hoping for though.
7/10
2020 Films Ranked
1. Bad Boys for Life 2. The Gentlemen
3. Underwater
4. The Rhythm Section
5. The Last Full Measure
6. Like a Boss
7. The Grudge
8. Dolittle
The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018), directed by Desiree Akhavan
The picture I posted just makes this look like an indie movie, doesn't it? I'm trying very hard to get back into the groove of reviewing movies that I watch at home, but it's been difficult to find the time to actually watch them in the first place. All I can say is that I'm trying my best to carve out the time to do the things that I like to do. Anyway, I saw that The Miseducation of Cameron Post was expiring on HBO and figured that I really needed to get on that while I had the chance. This was a movie I wanted to see in theaters almost two years ago, but I didn't have the chance as the nearest showing was 40 minutes away. I ain't fucking with a 40 minute drive to see a damn movie. With that in mind, let's talk about the movie itself. The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a rather short feature that seems to go by very quickly. It's also strange because the film is set in 1993 and I fully remember how people acted in those days, both teachers and students alike. I also think the film ends too soon in many respects. Inconclusive is the word that I would use. It's still good, but I wouldn't say that I liked it. Liking a movie should be reserved for those that aren't so sad, that don't make you think about all the people who have been forced to go through this process.
As already said, it's 1993. Cameron Post (Chloe Grace Moretz) is a teenager in high school, doing the things that teenagers in high school like to do. She is in two relationships though. One is with her boyfriend Jamie (Dalton Harrod), and the other is with her best friend Coley (Quinn Shephard). Coley is, as you might suspect, a girl. Her name gives that away. On the night of homecoming, Jamie walks in on them having sex in Coley's car, which leads to Jamie telling Cameron's aunt Ruth (Kerry Butler). Cameron's parents died in a car accident many years before, so now Ruth is her guardian. Ruth is also very Christian. She decides to send her niece off to a conversion camp called God's Promise, which is run by a Dr. Lydia Marsh (Jennifer Ehle) and a reverend named Rick (John Gallagher Jr.). This is a concept that certainly sounds like nightmare fuel for some. Rick claims that his sister Lydia cured him of his own homosexuality after two members of his church found him at a gay bar. This kind of thing is so ridiculous, it's too bad that there are people who profess that this happened to them. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to believe it.
In something I found rather surprising considering the reason everyone's there, Cameron is given a roommate, Erin (Emily Skeggs). Erin is there because her parents want her there, but in the process of going to this place there is emotional abuse. One of the first activities that new campgoers must do is fill out a chart explaining what their problems are, and how it is that they may have come to be gay. Erin believes that her interest in sports was a great factor in her having homosexual feelings. Over the course of things, we are shown how these gay conversion camps work or used to work, and how fucked up that is. For the most part the subject matter is treated with care and not made into a melodrama with a lot of shock value. Gay people at conversion camp are still real people, after all. Cameron eventually comes to make two friends, Jane (Sasha Lane) and Adam (Forrest Goodluck). Jane was raised on a commune and Adam is Lakota, both were taken away from their parents as a result of newfound Evangelism. The ultimate problem here, of course, is the religion of the people who have decided to send their kids off to self-hate camp.
Considering I saw this film after the fact, it is very lazy to compare The Miseducation of Cameron Post to Boy Erased, but I am very lazy and films in the same subgenres need to be compared to one another. Of course, they were also released in the same year. I felt that The Miseducation of Cameron Post could have been a better movie than it actually was. The film is a good one, of course, but it lacks in conclusion. Considering the subject matter I find that to be a bit of a problem. For the most part I've already said what I wanted to say, but I think the film lacks in punch. It needs more of it. There's a scene off-screen where someone attempts to cut their genitals into pieces. I'm not saying we need to see that, but the film is lacking a hard hitting moment. That's one opportunity where a confident filmmaker would have made one. However, there are scenes that do land harder than the rest. Adam having his head shaved is one of those scenes. The repression of sexuality permeates the whole movie. The scene where Cameron is telling the reverend that he's unqualified to do this is powerful but may be a bit too on the nose. Moretz does put in a very good performance as well. It's essential because the entire film revolves around her, but there are other movies with that focus on their lead character where it turns out the actor or actress is incapable of doing what is required of them.
This is what I would call a good, solid movie. If you're hoping for more, you won't get that. By no means is this a bad movie though. What I kept thinking about during this film, is what would have happened if my parents were pieces of shit who sent my brother to a place like this.
7/10
2018 Films Ranked
1. Roma
2. A Star Is Born
3. First Reformed
4. The Favourite
5. Widows
6. First Man
7. BlacKkKlansman
8. Blindspotting
9. Leave No Trace
10. Black Panther
11. If Beale Street Could Talk
12. The Sisters Brothers
13. A Private War
14. Avengers: Infinity War
15. Stan & Ollie
16. Green Book
17. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
18. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
19. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
20. On My Skin
21. Private Life
22. Climax
23. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
24. Mid90s
25. Eighth Grade
26. Sorry to Bother You
27. Suspiria
28. Vice
29. The Old Man & the Gun
30. Vox Lux
31. Bad Times at the El Royale
32. The Other Side of the Wind
33. Searching
34. A Simple Favor
35. The Hate U Give
36. Unsane
37. Disobedience
38. Boy Erased
39. Bumblebee
40. Mary Poppins Returns
41. Creed II
42. Hold the Dark
43. The Land of Steady Habits
44. Halloween
45. Ant-Man and the Wasp 46. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
47. Blockers
48. Beirut
49. Roxanne Roxanne
50. Tully
51. Mary Queen of Scots
52. Aquaman
53. Ideal Home
54. Outlaw King
55. Overlord
56. Ready Player One
57. Ben Is Back
58. Monsters and Men
59. The Mule
60. On the Basis of Sex
61. Bohemian Rhapsody
62. White Boy Rick
63. Papillon
64. Game Night
65. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
66. Ocean's Eight
67. Alpha
68. Come Sunday
69. Instant Family
70. The Front Runner
71. The Predator
72. Apostle
73. Uncle Drew
74. The Cured
75. The Commuter
76. The Angel
77. Tag
78. Beautiful Boy
79. The Nun
80. Operation Finale
81. The Equalizer 2
82. The Spy Who Dumped Me
83. Cargo
84. Yardie
85. Bird Box
86. 12 Strong
87. Venom
88. Skyscraper
89. The Meg
90. Assassination Nation
91. Backstabbing for Beginners
92. The Girl in the Spider's Web
93. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
94. 22 July
95. Tomb Raider
96. Rampage
97. Hotel Artemis
98. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
99. The Little Stranger
100. 7 Days in Entebbe
101. Night School
102. The 15:17 To Paris
103. Peppermint
104. Mile 22
105. The First Purge
106. Hunter Killer
107. The Hurricane Heist
108. The Cloverfield Paradox
109. Breaking In
110. Mute
111. Kin
112. Hell Fest
113. Proud Mary
114. Robin Hood
115. Traffik
116. Winchester
117. The Happytime Murders
118. The Outsider
119. Slender Man
I'm in a different position than I'm usually in when it comes to Downsizing. Very rarely does it feel like I'm the person who hated a movie way more than critics did, but Downsizing is that kind of movie. Even great directors have major misfires and I think this was one of them. What we have in Downsizing is a movie that tries to tie together a lot of ambitious ideas and fails at doing so. As a result, the film feels totally insane and nonsensical, I found the characters to largely be impossible to identify with or take seriously. That's a very harsh takedown, I suppose. One of these ideas does resonate with me though. Arguably this is a racist caricature of a Vietnamese person, but the movie does make a person think about the choice of doing something contrasted with being forced to do something nobody would want to do. That was the idea that really seemed to come together, and what keeps this movie from being a complete disaster on all levels. In the context of 2017 I am surprised that Paramount would greenlight both this and mother! in the same year. Then I thought about what they've done since then. They have learned all the wrong lessons and defaulted to making absolute garbage. I am somewhat surprised their studio has been able to remain open, but if they have a bad slate this year they're completely screwed.
Downsizing is set at some time in the very near future, and the first scene revolves around a scientist named Jorgen Asbjornsen (Rolf Lassgard). Climate change and overpopulation is effectively destroying the Earth, so Asbjornsen is attempting to perfect an extreme solution. Downsizing is his goal. The point is to shrink people to a height of five inches, and shrink goods in order to serve that kind of population. Eventually he comes to perfect the process and downsizes an entire colony of people, which leads us to the rest of the story many years on from that. Paul (Matt Damon) and Audrey (Kristen Wiig) are the Safranek's, and they live in Omaha. Paul works at Omaha Steaks, and Audrey works in a store. These two have some financial problems, but they're looking to buy a new house. Property values are tanking as a result of downsizing, so they're looking for houses they could ordinarily not afford. They're still not able to buy one though. Eventually they are visited by some friends, Dave (Jason Sudeikis) and Carol (Maribeth Monroe). Why does that matter? Dave and Carol have chosen to move to New Mexico and downsize.
The process of downsizing is easier for people than you'd think. There's obviously a medical procedure, and that isn't covered by insurance. The thing is, if a person is able to liquidate their assets, should they have assets, they can pay for all that and more. The Safranek's have some assets, and though downsizing was supposed to be environmentally friendly, it's also a way for people to save money. Leisureland in New Mexico is what you'd call a rich person's paradise, except you don't have to be rich in order to enjoy life there. Paul and Audrey decide that they want to do with. But, what if life in Leisureland isn't all that it's cracked up to be? Who does the shit jobs in Leisureland? That kind of infrastructure isn't self-sustainable and it needs people to shrink to do things that they shouldn't have to do in order to live. These questions and more are answered should you decide to watch Downsizing.
I did my best selljob on this film, but everything doesn't really come together the way that it should. One of plot threads is pretty good, but I still don't know what to make of it and how I'll feel about it in a few days. The rest of the film is very much not good with the exception of the slums of Leisureland. This kind of thing is like candy for liberals, so I'm not surprised that people gave the film a good review despite everything else that's wrong with it. I am very surprised that this was in top ten rankings for 2017. I can't agree with that. Hong Chau's performance feels like a racist caricature, but she's responded to that by strongly questioning how or why anyone would think that, so maybe I shouldn't say that at all. Movies like this one are strange in that they leave me completely at a loss for words. This movie is such a mess for so long. There are little things that kept me hanging on to see where this would go, and the conclusion of the film was alright. So, I don't know what to think. If anyone reads this and really wants to know, ask me in a week and I'll tell you. One thing sticking with me is that this is another movie where some random white guy learns how to live their life through a minority. But, in the case of this movie anyway, there are two older white guys who contribute a lot to his viewpoint. So, I don't know.
4.5/10
2017 Films Ranked
1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
7. Mudbound
8. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
9. Logan
10. Baby Driver
11. The Post
12. Wonder Woman
13. The Big Sick
14. Lady Bird
15. Wind River
16. Thor: Ragnarok
17. mother!
18. Logan Lucky
19. The Beguiled
20. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
21. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
22. Brawl in Cell Block 99
23. John Wick: Chapter 2
24. The Disaster Artist
25. The Lost City of Z
26. First They Killed My Father
27. A Ghost Story
28. Last Flag Flying
29. Hostiles
30. All the Money in the World
31. Darkest Hour
32. Spider-Man: Homecoming
33. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
34. Sweet Virginia
35. It
36. Battle of the Sexes
37. Stronger
38. Brad's Status
39. Okja
40. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
41. Kong: Skull Island
42. It Comes at Night
43. Happy End (foreign movie, did not write review)
44. Crown Heights
45. Split
46. 1922
47. Personal Shopper
48. Landline
49. Thank You for Your Service
50. Beatriz at Dinner
51. Chuck
52. Atomic Blonde
53. Shot Caller
54. Wheelman
55. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
56. Wonder
57. Brigsby Bear
58. The Lego Batman Movie
59. Megan Leavey
60. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
61. Wonderstruck
62. Only the Brave
63. Marshall
64. Menashe
65. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
66. Walking Out
67. American Made
68. Annabelle: Creation
69. Beauty and the Beast
70. Imperial Dreams
71. Gifted
72. Murder on the Orient Express
73. My Friend Dahmer
74. The Zookeeper's Wife
75. The Glass Castle
76. The Foreigner
77. Free Fire
78. Win It All
79. The Wall
80. Jungle
81. Life
82. My Cousin Rachel
83. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
84. The Ballad of Lefty Brown
85. The Fate of the Furious
86. Happy Death Day
87. Breathe
88. The Man Who Invented Christmas
89. Maudie
90. Patti Cake$
91. Sleight
92. Alone in Berlin
93. A United Kingdom
94. Trespass Against Us
95. The Mountain Between Us
96. War Machine
97. Lowriders
98. Justice League
99. To the Bone
100. Ghost in the Shell
101. Wakefield 102. Downsizing
103. Bright
104. The Tribes of Palos Verdes
105. The Hitman's Bodyguard
106. Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
107. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
108. The Mummy
109. The Greatest Showman
110. Rough Night
111. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
112. Sand Castle
113. The Circle
114. American Assassin
115. CHiPs
116. Death Note
117. 47 Meters Down
118. The Belko Experiment
119. The Great Wall
120. Fist Fight
121. Baywatch
122. Snatched
123. Suburbicon
124. Wilson
125. The Dark Tower
126. Queen of the Desert
127. The House
128. Flatliners
129. Sleepless
130. Geostorm
131. All Eyez on Me
132. The Snowman
133. The Book of Henry
134. The Space Between Us
135. Daddy's Home 2
What everyone on the internet seems to be talking about in the aftermath of the release of Birds of Prey is that this isn't doing what people thought it would do at the box office. To that I say, why is anyone surprised? This movie looked far too much like a sequel to Suicide Squad, which in many ways it was. People hated Suicide Squad for a lot of valid reasons. I'm still bummed out though. This movie is better than that, deserves better, but it isn't going to get better. Such is life. I do find it to be very amusing how this isn't really a Birds of Prey movie. There's good reason for that as such a movie would have drawn even less than this one. There has to be questions asked of why Marvel/Disney is able to push their obscure characters in a manner that WB is not. I think this is largely related to marketing or a lack thereof. I saw very little marketing both for this film and for Shazam!, which similarly disappointed. Those aren't the only movies in the last year or so that WB has poorly released. Their marketing department is just not doing a good job. Or, you could say that they're releasing movies nobody wants. I don't agree with that though.
The gist of this movie is as such. After the events of Suicide Squad, the Joker and Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) broke up. She's on her own in Gotham City these days, but everyone doesn't know that she's no longer tied to the Joker. As such, she receives a level of immunity that nobody else does. Nobody will mess with her, but with that comes a personal cost. The way this film tells it, people talk a lot of shit about her and what she'll do, but she really wants to be independent. I'll spare a lot of the details here, but she decides that in order to prove her independence, she needs to blow up the Ace Chemicals factory. Once she does, this has a side effect that she didn't see coming. Everyone that wouldn't kill her because they didn't want to deal with the Joker wants to kill her now. That's not the only thing, the cops want to deal with her now too. While out in the morning getting breakfast, she encounters GCPD Detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez). Montoya obviously wants Harley to come with her.
The encounter does not go Montoya's way. Harley is able to get free during a chase with the help of someone wielding a crossbow (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), but she is summarily captured and taken away. This film plays really loose with how it tells its narrative, so I have to bring things back to the nightclub. There's a nightclub that Harley frequents, it is owned by Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor). If you know anything about Batman, you know that Sionis is Black Mask. They've played around with origin stories a little bit, though. Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina) is Black Mask's right hand man in this movie, but he's still as psychotic as he is in the source material. They both like killing people, let's put it that way. Anyway, he has it out for Harley because of stuff that she's done, but he couldn't do anything. Until now. On the night of the factory explosion, Harley broke the legs of his driver, who has subsequently been replaced by the nightclub's singer, Dinah Lance (Jurnee Smolett-Bell). After that, Roman decides to send Dinah and Victor after a diamond embedded with bank account numbers to a great fortune. The thing is, when they get the diamond, it is pickpocketed by Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), who has a bounty put on her head by Sionis. I promise you that the movie is nowhere near as hard to follow as I just made it sound, so I'll stop.
Birds of Prey is in fact too easy to follow, because there's an extremely long flashback that ties things all together. Unfortunately, this also comes at a time when I really wanted to know why Harley Quinn was in a police station with a beanbag shotgun. That's my only complaint as it relates to the film, but it is a very large one with merit. As for everything else, I thought the characterizations were spot on. I couldn't understand why this was rated R, as the only rated R things here were bad language and some blood. I'm sure that will be looked at and examined by WB in the aftermath of this box office. This isn't a perfect movie or anything, but it is fun and Margot Robbie makes a perfect Harley Quinn. If you don't like this, I suppose that's alright, but I found the movie to be funny and feature good action. These kinds of movies have to bring something to the table in order to differentiate themselves. This one does look too much like Suicide Squad, but it isn't that kind of movie. The filmmakers have the restraint to know not to do certain things, as such we are only treated to a few origin stories. Some of them are extremely short.
It's clear that I liked this movie, and it had a good ending so I left feeling satisfied. I don't know how these characters can really continue on from there though. The movie isn't going to make enough money. I also think that the people who put together the trailer made a big mistake, as they did so featuring a lot of the scenes from the film entirely out of context. It is clear that this did not make people want to watch the film.
7/10
2020 Films Ranked
1. Bad Boys for Life
2. The Gentlemen 3. Birds of Prey
4. Underwater
5. The Rhythm Section
6. The Last Full Measure
7. Like a Boss
8. The Grudge
9. Dolittle
I was going to see Fantasy Island no matter what, but I should have done some research. I did not know this man directed a Kevin James classic, True Memoirs of an International Assassin. Upon learning that, I was pretty surprised. My first thought just now was that a studio that wasn't Netflix should have given this guy basically no latitude to make a movie. Instead it turns out that Sony didn't care, and we get what can best be described as an insane trashpile. I don't know how a movie like this could even get made, but I see that the budget was very small. At that price point, maybe you'd try anything too. There were many times during this movie where I started laughing at the horror provided within. This is never a good sign. What's worse is that other people were joining me in my laughter and there came a point where I was able to stop covering my mouth. That's bad. I do not remember any other time before where I was able to stop trying to ruin other people's enjoyment of a movie because they also thought it was terrible. I'll say one thing though, at least I wasn't bored to sleep. Though it isn't the fault of the actors that this is a horrible movie, to say all of them did a good job with the material they were given would be a lie.
Fantasy Island is about an island, of course. If you don't know anything about the old TV show, you really don't need to. The film starts with a woman (Portia Doubleday) having been abducted and brought to the island. She calls for help only to find that a man who knows her name has answered, and he tells her that she's going to be staying on the island. Summarily she is taken away by some goons. The next day, or some other day, five people arrive on Fantasy Island via plane. I find the descriptions on Wikipedia to be highly amusing, but let's not go there. We have Gwen (Maggie Q), Patrick (Austin Stowell), Melanie (Lucy Hale), and two step brothers named JD (Ryan Hansen) and Brax (Jimmy O. Yang). I don't even remember how those guys became step brothers or what their story was. They have arrived on the island because they've won a contest, and their fantasies will come true on this day. They meet the island's keeper, and of course he's Mr. Roarke (Michael Pena). This is one of the points where he started doing a bad accent and I had to try hard not to laugh.
At this meeting, Roarke tells all the guests that they must see their fantasies to their conclusions. Nobody thinks anything nefarious of this, and they all agree. Over the course of the next night and day, every guest is ferried off to their fantasy. I will list them as best as I can without going into detail. JD and Brax wanted to have it all, whatever that could mean. JD wants all the women he can have and Brax wants all the men he can have. Roarke sends them off to a big party. Good for them. Gwen has a major regret in her past, a marriage proposal she did not accept. She would like to remedy that. Patrick wishes that he'd become a soldier instead of a police officer. Being a cop did not stick, but for whatever reason he's never enlisted. He also wears dog tags and says it's because he wants to immerse himself in his fantasy. Lastly and probably most importantly is Melanie. Melanie intends to get revenge on a childhood bully. It turns out the bully was the woman from earlier, she is named Sloane. I thought these were supposed to be fantasies that didn't contain real people though?
The ending, considering that one of the guests has a different fantasy than the one I listed, is absolutely ludicrous on all levels. This feels like a really trashy television show, but someone decided to make this into a film. It's not like I can explain why because that doesn't make any sense. What I do know is that this film is putrid. There are twists and turns, all of which don't make any sense. The most galling aspect of the movie is that it's intended to be a horror movie when all of this stuff plays as comedy instead. I don't know what the target audience was for this, but I did see a lot of older people who probably watched Fantasy Island at some point. I can say that a lot of things were the worst thing about this, but only one of them really reigns supreme. It's the amount of time this movie takes. This runs nearly two hours, and when you factor in previews, that's a really long time to be sitting there watching a piece of trash like this. The story is terrible but there's some really bad acting too. The guy who plays Patrick is borderline unwatchable and unbelievable. The blatant sequel trap at the end is something too. I don't even know what to say, but rest assured I either laughed or felt like laughing a lot. When homeboy dived on the grenade I lost it. HOW DOES THIS EVEN EXIST?
2/10
2020 Films Ranked
1. Bad Boys for Life
2. The Gentlemen
3. Birds of Prey
4. Underwater
5. The Rhythm Section
6. The Last Full Measure
7. Like a Boss
8. The Grudge
9. Dolittle 10. Fantasy Island
Best of the Best (1989), directed by Robert Radler
I'm not doing a full review because I just live chatted this movie. I lost a bet a while ago and I totally forgot to watch this until now. Anyway, what I was gonna say is that Best of the Best is definitely a movie of its time. I also think this is a movie that could have been a hell of a lot better. With a cast like this, with the melodrama that this movie needs in its fighting scenes, some of the sequences prior to the fighting tournament are totally confusing. This is also a film with a good cast and a lot of comedy, unintentional or otherwise. The problem is that it takes way too long for this movie to get to the fighting, and the script makes some bad scenes that are hard to get through on the way there.
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