In Which I Briefly Review Movies

[Mickey Massuco]

he meant 4+5 y'all, 9 is a solid score

 

[Brocklock]

2 is way better. Add Wayne Newton as a pervy villain, set it in Vegas, add a drunken older Native American brother played by Billy from Predator, take away the melodrama and add more blood and you got a 10/10 movie.

Sorry povy but I find the first kind of dull.

 

[909]

Trying hard to get back on the horse here. I figure it'll be like when I used to force myself to do things and started to look forward to it more and more. I don't want to review anything I was REALLY looking forward to until I'm out of this funk.

The Death of Stalin (2018), directed by Armando Iannucci

I was supposed to watch this months ago, but I've had some difficulties and could not. It is going to be hard to review this because there's a lot here to take in. I was thinking that this movie couldn't possibly live up to some of the scores that it received, and in a lot of ways it did not. In a lot of ways it also did. Balancing a movie like this one is extremely difficult. There's two ways to make a movie about when Stalin died. One is to be as serious and historically correct as possible. The other way is what happened here, to make a movie that would make people laugh and have cinematic appeal while retaining enough accuracy to get the nuts and bolts down. In the process what we have is a movie that goes straight for laughs, initially failing, but once the movie stepped up a bit and I became more familiar with the characters, I liked it more and more. You might ask what's to like? That's a good question, considering all the people portrayed in this movie were objectively terrible. That's why this had to be a satire. The gallows humor here was worth waiting for.

The Death of Stalin starts in 1953, with Joseph Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) at his dacha in Moscow. He is listening to a concert on the radio and demands that it be delivered to him via record. Problem is, the concert house did not record this. As such, to demonstrate how important Stalin is, the orchestra is made to recreate the performance. The pianist, Maria Yudina (Olga Kurylenko), is able to slip a note inside of the record sleeve on its way to Stalin. On this night, Stalin is with his friends on the Central Committee, or at least some of them. This is his inner circle though. They're drinking and watching Westerns because that's what Stalin wants, and we are introduced to them during this. Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi) has been recalled to Moscow due to paranoias of Stalin and is now in his inner circle. Lavrentiy Beria (Simon Russell Beale) is the head of the secret police. Not so secret I guess you'd say. Vyacheslav Molotov (Michael Palin) is the foreign minister. He is also on an execution list that Stalin has crafted for Beria. For that matter, so was Molotov's wife, who was executed five years previously. Lastly, on this night anyway, you have Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor). Malenkov is simply very good at sucking Stalin's ass.

Okay, so that was difficult to explain. Anyway, the record with Yudina's note is transported to Stalin. It's not a good note, and when he reads it, he has a cerebral hemorrhage. The guards outside are terrified to go in the room and see what happened to Stalin as they think they'll be shot, so they wait until the maid comes next morning. When she walks in, she discovers that Stalin is paralyzed and has been laying on the floor covered in his own piss for quite some time. How could this happen in the great Soviet Union? After this, we are interested to the other members of the Central Committee, which are genuinely not that important in the context of this film. Beria also discoveres the note from Yudina and keeps it until it becomes useful to him. What he really wants is for Malenkov to become the General Secretary of the party, because Beria is convinced that he can make the weak Malenkov into a puppet. The rest of the movie plays out with Khrushchev and Beria both jockeying for power, regardless of the cost.

This movie is much funnier than I made it sound, but most of that happens once Jason Isaacs shows up as Georgy Zhukov. Zhukov held the rank of Marshal, which is a big deal as I'm sure you know. Anyway, he demanded to know what was going on with the Red Army and things would snowball from there. What I appreciate about this movie is that it unabashedly attempts to be funny until the climax in the last ten minutes of the film. There are aspects of that which are amusing even though I'm not sure it was supposed to be. What this movie attempts to do is make clear what politics actually is to most of the people who participate in it. This is something borne out over time and is always the case. The people who want power don't have any real beliefs. They have the skill to advance their position to the point where they hold power, and that's basically what the Soviet Union was all about. I'm not really reinventing the wheel with this review, I'm just pointing out the obvious. Everyone in this movie is supposed to be scummy, and maybe this would be even more hilarious if I was in a good mood, which I'm not. Instead, this was a funny movie with a lot of good acting, I found. It is also nice to see the conclusion and how interpersonal relationships with scummy people can culminate in a coup.

There's definitely something sticking with me though. It's that I'm not sure this is the appropriate way to deal with people who killed so many. I absolutely do not have the answer for that problem, but I'm having it right now. Also, I thought this was an accurate portrayal of Soviet politics although the film can get up its own ass at times. I don't think that's shocking to anyone though.

8/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

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. The Death of Stalin
29. Vice
30. The Old Man & the Gun
31. Vox Lux
32. Bad Times at the El Royale
33. The Other Side of the Wind
34. Searching
35. A Simple Favor
36. The Hate U Give
37. Unsane
38. Disobedience
39. Boy Erased
40. Bumblebee
41. Mary Poppins Returns
42. Creed II
43. Hold the Dark
44. The Land of Steady Habits
45. Halloween
46. Ant-Man and the Wasp
47. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
48. Blockers
49. Beirut
50. Roxanne Roxanne
51. Tully
52. Mary Queen of Scots
53. Aquaman
54. Ideal Home
55. Outlaw King
56. Overlord
57. Ready Player One
58. Ben Is Back
59. Monsters and Men
60. The Mule
61. On the Basis of Sex
62. Bohemian Rhapsody
63. White Boy Rick
64. Papillon
65. Game Night
66. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
67. Ocean's Eight
68. Alpha
69. Come Sunday
70. Instant Family
71. The Front Runner
72. The Predator
73. Apostle
74. Uncle Drew
75. The Cured
76. The Commuter
77. The Angel
78. Tag
79. Beautiful Boy
80. The Nun
81. Operation Finale
82. The Equalizer 2
83. The Spy Who Dumped Me
84. Cargo
85. Yardie
86. Bird Box
87. 12 Strong
88. Venom
89. Skyscraper
90. The Meg
91. Assassination Nation
92. Backstabbing for Beginners
93. The Girl in the Spider's Web
94. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
95. 22 July
96. Tomb Raider
97. Rampage
98. Hotel Artemis
99. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
100. The Little Stranger
101. 7 Days in Entebbe
102. Night School
103. The 15:17 To Paris
104. Peppermint
105. Mile 22
106. The First Purge
107. Hunter Killer
108. The Hurricane Heist
109. The Cloverfield Paradox
110. Breaking In
111. Mute
112. Kin
113. Hell Fest
114. Proud Mary
115. Robin Hood
116. Traffik
117. Winchester
118. The Happytime Murders
119. The Outsider
120. Slender Man

 

[Baby Shoes]

I usually wait to read a lot of your reviews until I get a chance to see them. I had wondered what the audience err Fantasy Island was myself. The other day I accidentally came into spoilers where everything just sounded so bad, I became curious to the point I wondered if I needed to see it. See you have a review listed, I had to read. Did not disappoint.

 

[909]

I usually wait to read a lot of your reviews until I get a chance to see them. I had wondered what the audience err Fantasy Island was myself. The other day I accidentally came into spoilers where everything just sounded so bad, I became curious to the point I wondered if I needed to see it. See you have a review listed, I had to read. Did not disappoint.

My review also does not do the badness justice. This is definitely one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

 

[fazzle]

I'm not going to defend this movie, because there's no question it's fucking TERRIBLE, but I've still got it above Like a Boss, The Grudge and The Turning in my personal rankings for this year, because at least I'm getting some enjoyment out of mocking it's badness rather than just being bored out of my mind like those three.

 

[909]

Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), directed by Jeff Fowler

The elephant in the room when it came to this movie was obviously what I posted in the picture above. I will never forget how mad people got over something so simple as the animation of this one character. Of course, the studio was wrong to animate the character improperly in the first place. It is still interesting that this movie has been so successful. My assumption was that the people who whined wouldn't even show up to see the film. I was wrong. It turns out that a lot of people have gone to see this. Will it be enough for a sequel? Only time will tell. The changes to this movie cost a lot of money and pushed the budget into what I'd consider to have been insane territory. What we have here is a very large budget kids movie with enough nostalgia for those that played the Sonic games on SEGA. That this is going to gross much more money than Birds of Prey is rather remarkable and unexpected. I was unfortunate enough to go to a showing where there were hardly any people, so I can't say how other people reacted to the movie. I liked it enough though.

Everyone knows the basic story of Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz) and what Sonic is, right? This movie puts another spin on things. Sonic grew up on a planet similar to those that were always in the first level of his games. Eventually he runs into some trouble and other creatures on his planet attempt to abduct him because of the powers that he has. He is given a bag of rings by his guardian, and it turns out that these rings open portals to other planets. Sonic is shot through one of those portals, and from there we move forward about ten years. After traversing many planets, Sonic eventually comes to Earth and specifically to Montana. He comes to know some of the locals from afar, but only one of them even knows that he exists. Sonic's favorite locals are a local police officer, Tom (James Marsden), and his wife Maddie (Tika Sumpter). Tom and Maddie are going to make a change, unbeknownst to Sonic. Tom got a job with the San Francisco Police Department and is wrapping things up so that he can move there.

I think you may figure out the reasons that Sonic has hid himself, but he's lonely and doesn't have any real friends. This is obviously a problem. One night, he plays baseball with himself and this only serves to make him angry. He runs around the field to the point where an EMP goes off that knocks out power across the entire Pacific Northwest. This leads to the Department of Defense deciding to unleash their greatest asset, and you've guessed it, it's Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey). Robotnik is rather persistent in finding Sonic, but I think it's obvious where Sonic will turn in a time of great need.

Alright, so, movies like these are the easiest to review because they're supposed to be franchise starters. You know exactly what the formula of a franchise starter is. I was surprised that was the intention of the film but I shouldn't have been surprised. I do also think that this can be a franchise as long as they limit costs and keep Jim Carrey in these movies. Jim has barely been in anything over the last decade or so. People want him to be in more things worth watching. The few people that were in my theater were laughing at him constantly. He is also the only thing that puts this movie above an average line mark. Also, I should note that I'm very biased towards the idea of a Sonic movie in general. This was something that I also wanted, but I didn't care much about the way the character was animated. That was relevant and at the same time it wasn't. I don't think people should be overly effusive in praise though. This movie hit the minimum from a standards standpoint, but they had Jim Carrey in it and he was doing his thing. That is one of the only reasons anyone is giving this a positive score.

6/10

2020 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Bad Boys for Life
2. The Gentlemen
3. Birds of Prey
4. Sonic the Hedgehog
5. Underwater
6. The Rhythm Section
7. The Last Full Measure
8. Like a Boss
9. The Grudge
10. Dolittle
11. Fantasy Island

 

[fazzle]

The changes to this movie cost a lot of money and pushed the budget into what I'd consider to have been insane territory.

I can't find it right now, but I'm pretty sure I read that the character model changes only added an extra $5 million to the budget.

 

[909]

The changes to this movie cost a lot of money and pushed the budget into what I'd consider to have been insane territory.

I can't find it right now, but I'm pretty sure I read that the character model changes only added an extra $5 million to the budget.

Based on what my BIL said, considering he's uhhhhhhh in that industry I guess I'll say, I have a hard time believing that's true unless the company doing the effects violated their agreement in some kind of way.

 

[909]

The Call of the Wild (2020), directed by Chris Sanders

When The Call of the Wild was in production, it sounded like this movie might be really cool and different than most of what gets made. After seeing the film, it turns out that this movie is merely different than most of what gets released while in many ways remaining all the same. What I found when watching this film was that the first half had much better content than the second half. Thing is, this is based on a book and those kinds of things cannot be changed. Perhaps a lot of people feel differently than I did. See, to me, this is a better film when it's about a dog working on the Yukon Trail delivering mail with a jovial French-Canadian and his wife. The second half is the whole point of the enterprise but to me, it just isn't as good. I haven't read the book before but I'm getting the feeling that this is much better in book form than it is as a film. As a film, what we have here is an above average effort with some of the weirdest CGI that I think I've ever seen. It's 2020, and we know there's going to be a lot of CGI in a movie, but the engineering of all this is extremely strange and it is too obviously shot in a studio. There is no way that anything here was shot on location anywhere in the world.

The Call of the Wild is set during the Yukon Gold rush, but first we have to be introduced to our lead character. Buck is an enormous St. Bernard who lives in Santa Clara, on a big property owned by the town's judge. The dog is absolutely crazy and rambunctious. One night, he is punished for that and made to sleep outside. That doesn't turn out so well. Buck is kidnapped and shipped all the way to the Yukon as there's a need for dogs up there and they sold for a decent amount of money back then. On the way, Buck is treated terribly, but inevitably the ship arrives and he's set somewhat free. Upon arrival and prior to his sale, he returns a harmonica to a random man, John Thornton (Harrison Ford). He is then purchased by a man named Perrault (Omar Sy) and his assistant and/or wife Francoise (Cara Gee). Buck becomes a sled dog tasked with being part of a team taking the two of them around northwestern Canada, and on that trip the two humans deliver mail. One of the dogs, however, is not so nice. This dog does not like Buck taking more and more of a leadership role in the pack, and there are going to be problems.

I had to cut it off there because this is a very short movie and it would be very easy to summarize more than half this movie. The second half of the movie largely centers around everything that happens after the sled team, with Buck feeling more and more like wanting to leave people behind and become wild. So, basically the title of this movie. The CGI is such that I can't really figure out what is and isn't CGI at times, but I do know that none of the backgrounds were real and that this was not filmed outdoors in Alaska or anywhere like it. That's not such a great thing, obviously. The CGI dog is great though. It isn't terribly realistic, but I liked it a lot. This movie also doesn't have as much action as I thought it would have considering the budget, this movie is more introspective and thoughtful than I thought it would be. This is not a bad thing, of course.

The thing about the CGI is that even with the unrealism of it, the crew has to work around that and present a good looking film. I think that's what happened, although I can't understand why they didn't film anything on location. Ultimately this is also a family/kids movie. This movie won't make back its budget, but it had a pretty good first weekend in large part because the market for live-action kids movies is very much under-served. Maybe it's just because I'm tired, but I can't recall more than three or four not featuring Disney characters in the last two years. When I was a kid, Homeward Bound was probably my favorite movie. That was a better movie than this one, but the same basis of the film remains. Kids really love movies about animals. While The Call of the Wild doesn't feature talking animals, I don't think that hurts the film in any way. The Call of the Wild has some of the heart that film had 27 years ago. Also, wow. 27 years ago. That's pretty crazy. Also, in case you're curious, the movie is far more about the dog than any of the human characters.

6/10

2020 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Bad Boys for Life
2. The Gentlemen
3. Birds of Prey
4. Sonic the Hedgehog
5. The Call of the Wild
6. Underwater
7. The Rhythm Section
8. The Last Full Measure
9. Like a Boss
10. The Grudge
11. Dolittle
12. Fantasy Island

 

[fazzle]

The changes to this movie cost a lot of money and pushed the budget into what I'd consider to have been insane territory.

I can't find it right now, but I'm pretty sure I read that the character model changes only added an extra $5 million to the budget.

Based on what my BIL said, considering he's uhhhhhhh in that industry I guess I'll say, I have a hard time believing that's true unless the company doing the effects violated their agreement in some kind of way.

From what I read it said that the majority of the effects in the movie weren't done yet by time that first trailer came out, so while there were still a lot of additional costs to come, most of them would have been in the budget either way and that it was an extra $5m to change what had already been done.

 

[909]

Molly's Game (2017), directed by Aaron Sorkin

Molly's Game is a movie that has been on my list for about three or four months, but I haven't had the time to actually watch much of anything. As I think I recently said, I'm working on it. Molly's Game is also the longest movie I've watched in quite a while. I will get one thing straight out of the way because I need to. It's very easy to watch a long movie when the lead character looks the way they do in this film. The obvious must be pointed out sometimes. Anyway, after watching Molly's Game, what I think is that this is a good movie that needed someone else to be directing it and perhaps even writing it. There are some great parts of this movie and there are some that aren't so good. The structure of the film is also very confounding to me and I don't understand why filmmakers want their crime stories to be structured in this manner. Another thing I'm immediately thinking in the aftermath of having viewed this is that the film desperately needs something it does not quite have. The film is lacking that consistent antagonist that really makes things jump off. Thing is, if there isn't an antagonist in that person's life, they can't just make one up. I'm also really thankful that it was decided not to make Kevin Costner's character into that antagonist.

The film starts out in typical Sorkin fashion, even though this is the first film he directed. Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain) was once a young girl learning how to become a mogul skier, her overbearing father Larry (Kevin Costner) is a psychologist who demands perfection from all his children in all facets of their life. Years of training went into this moment, where Molly was attempting to qualify for the 2002 Winter Olympics. Unfortunately, she crashed and did not qualify. After this we learn that as a child she had a busted back, and for whatever insane reason Sorkin decides to wait until the end of the film to show the ramifications of Molly's crash. I don't understand this. Instead of attending law school after her Olympic dreams were dashed, she decided to take a year off and move to Los Angeles. Molly became a bottle service waitress, and eventually came across Dean (Jeremy Strong), a real estate developer. Dean talks her into taking a job with him as an office manager, and this job progresses into her running his underground poker games. This sounds like a fun job to me. Did I mention that this is all supposed to be real?

Dean, for whatever reason, seems to know a lot of people who want to spend a lot of money on playing poker. There are famous and wealthy people who go to these games, and Molly earns a lot of money in tips as a result of these games. Eventually, Molly comes to bring people to this game and makes it a full time job via which she earns more than just a lot of money. She doesn't understand the game of poker, but eventually she learns because she knows this is good for her business. The most influential player is a Player X (Michael Cera), who I believe is supposed to be based on Tobey Maguire. She knows that people come to the game to play against Player X because of how famous he is, but she has to deal with Dean and his problems. To make a long story short, she eventually comes to leave Dean's game and creates her own. Because of the relationship she's built with Player X, she's able to bring him along with her and with him comes all the action. Instead of in a seedy club, the games are now run out of a hotel, and she hires staff as a matter of necessity. She's also decided to expand her network by paying people who work at local casinos here in LA to send her new fish. This goes well. The legality of all this, as the film tells you, is because Molly doesn't make money off rake and only collects tips. I'm not sure that's true though.

I deliberately left out that the film intersperses these scenes with others where she has to get a lawyer (Idris Elba) to help defend her from a federal indictment. I do not understand why these scenes have to be in the middle of the film. Metaphors or something, I don't know. Hustlers did exactly the same thing, but when you take J-Lo dancing around in a thong out of the equation, Molly's Game is a slightly better film. The movies that do this seemed to have learned nothing from Goodfellas. A break in the pace of the film is a problem. What if they cut to Ray Liotta in the courtroom every 15 minutes? That's ass. The reason that there aren't films as strong as Goodfellas these days is in large part because they do not commit to their narrative and believe that the narrative itself is strong enough to carry the entire film. In the case of Hustlers it may not be, because ultimately that movie is the same people doing the same thing over and over. Molly's Game is different because that isn't the case. Each individual that Molly encounters is unique in their own way. This could have been a stronger movie even though it's already pretty good.

I did find myself tuning out during some of the scenes later in the film with Chastain and Elba, or for that matter Chastain and Costner. This is what I mean by the structure of the film being a problem. It isn't Chastain that is in any way the problem in these scenes, I must note. Now that I wrote these last two sentences, I can see why they didn't leave the entirety of that part of the story until later in the movie. Perhaps I have just explained some shit to myself that I did not entirely understand. In any case, Molly's Game is also a little too long. It is still very difficult to think of scenes that I would have removed. All of the gamblers encountered are interesting in their own way, but I would have liked to see the film go a little further into showing what the Russian Mafia did in New York City that would make the FBI look into them to begin with. Instead, this is a good movie that could have been better. I believe some people hated Molly's Game and I think that's totally fine. I really wish Kevin Costner's character wasn't in this movie too.

7.5/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

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. Molly's Game
32. Darkest Hour
33. Spider-Man: Homecoming
34. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
35. Sweet Virginia
36. It
37. Battle of the Sexes
38. Stronger
39. Brad's Status
40. Okja
41. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
42. Kong: Skull Island
43. It Comes at Night
44. Happy End (foreign movie, did not write review)
45. Crown Heights
46. Split
47. 1922
48. Personal Shopper
49. Landline
50. Thank You for Your Service
51. Beatriz at Dinner
52. Chuck
53. Atomic Blonde
54. Shot Caller
55. Wheelman
56. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
57. Wonder
58. Brigsby Bear
59. The Lego Batman Movie
60. Megan Leavey
61. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
62. Wonderstruck
63. Only the Brave
64. Marshall
65. Menashe
66. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
67. Walking Out
68. American Made
69. Annabelle: Creation
70. Beauty and the Beast
71. Imperial Dreams
72. Gifted
73. Murder on the Orient Express
74. My Friend Dahmer
75. The Zookeeper's Wife
76. The Glass Castle
77. The Foreigner
78. Free Fire
79. Win It All
80. The Wall
81. Jungle
82. Life
83. My Cousin Rachel
84. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
85. The Ballad of Lefty Brown
86. The Fate of the Furious
87. Happy Death Day
88. Breathe
89. The Man Who Invented Christmas
90. Maudie
91. Patti Cake$
92. Sleight
93. Alone in Berlin
94. A United Kingdom
95. Trespass Against Us
96. The Mountain Between Us
97. War Machine
98. Lowriders
99. Justice League
100. To the Bone
101. Ghost in the Shell
102. Wakefield
103. Downsizing
104. Bright
105. The Tribes of Palos Verdes
106. The Hitman's Bodyguard
107. Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
108. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
109. The Mummy
110. The Greatest Showman
111. Rough Night
112. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
113. Sand Castle
114. The Circle
115. American Assassin
116. CHiPs
117. Death Note
118. 47 Meters Down
119. The Belko Experiment
120. The Great Wall
121. Fist Fight
122. Baywatch
123. Snatched
124. Suburbicon
125. Wilson
126. The Dark Tower
127. Queen of the Desert
128. The House
129. Flatliners
130. Sleepless
131. Geostorm
132. All Eyez on Me
133. The Snowman
134. The Book of Henry
135. The Space Between Us
136. Daddy's Home 2

 

[909]

A Quiet Place (2018), directed by John Krasinski

I know that I'm really late in having watched this movie, but I am also entirely demotivated and don't feel like writing. That's why this took so long. Anyway, what we have in A Quiet Place is a horror movie that actually dared to be good, that at the time certainly seemed like it would stand alone on its own, but now it does not. Now we know there will be a sequel, but I think the film should be judged on its merits and not in a way that takes the knowledge of a sequel into account. There aren't very many horror movies that stick to something, that maintain a decent amount of minimalism for a very long time, and that deliver when revealing whatever it so happens that the monster actually is. I think this will be the last time that I review an older movie (more than one year) most people are aware of in the fashion that I usually do. I guess I'll write said review of an older movie based on two things. One will be the box office, and if it was high I'm not going to be typing out five paragraphs. I'll still be doing this for newer movies though. I will also have a second criteria, if the film is such that it makes me gush or viscerally detest it, I'll probably write a lot about that too. Classics also deserve some fair treatment. The review time of movies like this one is actually quite long, but I think there's a sunk cost in that because everyone's seen it and I don't need to describe the plot unless I find humor in doing so. In this case I do not.

I do not think A Quiet Place is a completely great movie, but what I do think is that it was pretty good. There are so many things that happen in the third act that I'm not sure how to decipher them or put them all into place. I probably need to do so, I just can't. See why I don't want to write forever for older movies that other people have written takedowns of? Anyway, this isn't a film that I think merits a takedown. A Quiet Place is effective in some ways and not in others. One of those ways is that I do not remember ever seeing the names of any of the living characters. There's guy (John Krasinski), lady (Emily Blunt), their daughter (Millicent Simmonds), and their son (Noah Jupe). Is that alright? I dunno how to answer that. The setting and the usage of each character throughout the first two acts of the film is what makes this a strong effort. As a viewer, I feel those building blocks largely pay off in the third act. For starters, we know that the characters getting killed off is certainly in play. I have complained a lot in the last few years about how many horror movies are afraid to actually kill off their characters. Nobody in either of the two main Conjuring movies has died. People are paying a lot of money to watch those movies. This kind of thing is hurting the genre.

As far as setting goes, there's more than just the potential for characters to die. There's the fact that everything in the film comes into play later on if it happens to not play a part the first time you see it. Obviously, some of these instances are not very subtle. The nail on the stairs is one example of that. The ending, by the way, is kind of a piece of shit. I wouldn't say it's outright bad, can't say it's good. It's almost in the bad category though. The rest of the movie is so much better than that, which makes the ending even more strange. I do understand that these monsters would not have been found out in any way prior to that. At least, you'd think they wouldn't be. But maybe they would. I don't know. I'm caught in a hard place here because the movie is so short and I really didn't like the last five minutes or so. This movie is a strong effort though. It's also very bold to make a movie that is nearly entirely silent, with the death at the end that people were probably not expecting. The decision to have the first one in the trailer defies all logic. The premise that kids would effectively be doomed to this kind of life is also rather interesting. Now that I've completed my thoughts on this without considering the sequel, I can say that I'm looking forward to the sequel and I think there's a decent chance it will be better.

7.5/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

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. The Death of Stalin
29. A Quiet Place
30. Vice
31. The Old Man & the Gun
32. Vox Lux
33. Bad Times at the El Royale
34. The Other Side of the Wind
35. Searching
36. A Simple Favor
37. The Hate U Give
38. Unsane
39. Disobedience
40. Boy Erased
41. Bumblebee
42. Mary Poppins Returns
43. Creed II
44. Hold the Dark
45. The Land of Steady Habits
46. Halloween
47. Ant-Man and the Wasp
48. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
49. Blockers
50. Beirut
51. Roxanne Roxanne
52. Tully
53. Mary Queen of Scots
54. Aquaman
55. Ideal Home
56. Outlaw King
57. Overlord
58. Ready Player One
59. Ben Is Back
60. Monsters and Men
61. The Mule
62. On the Basis of Sex
63. Bohemian Rhapsody
64. White Boy Rick
65. Papillon
66. Game Night
67. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
68. Ocean's Eight
69. Alpha
70. Come Sunday
71. Instant Family
72. The Front Runner
73. The Predator
74. Apostle
75. Uncle Drew
76. The Cured
77. The Commuter
78. The Angel
79. Tag
80. Beautiful Boy
81. The Nun
82. Operation Finale
83. The Equalizer 2
84. The Spy Who Dumped Me
85. Cargo
86. Yardie
87. Bird Box
88. 12 Strong
89. Venom
90. Skyscraper
91. The Meg
92. Assassination Nation
93. Backstabbing for Beginners
94. The Girl in the Spider's Web
95. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
96. 22 July
97. Tomb Raider
98. Rampage
99. Hotel Artemis
100. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
101. The Little Stranger
102. 7 Days in Entebbe
103. Night School
104. The 15:17 To Paris
105. Peppermint
106. Mile 22
107. The First Purge
108. Hunter Killer
109. The Hurricane Heist
110. The Cloverfield Paradox
111. Breaking In
112. Mute
113. Kin
114. Hell Fest
115. Proud Mary
116. Robin Hood
117. Traffik
118. Winchester
119. The Happytime Murders
120. The Outsider
121. Slender Man

 

[909]

Gook (2017), directed by Justin Chon

First things first. The film's title needs to be talked about. This is obviously intentionally provocative in an attempt to get attention, which I believe the film did at the time. I do not think anyone actually watched this though. So, I guess that didn't work. The film also has this title because of a scene where the word is spray painted onto someone's car, so it ties into the movie as well. I still think the title is totally ridiculous, but it needs to be pointed out that people generally don't watch movies like these featuring Asian and black actors. They just don't. This is leaving Netflix tonight, so if you have any interest because of my review, you need to get on that. What we have here is a good film that decides to paint the Rodney King riots as a tool which people used to do bad things to each other, including those they had grudges with. Which, well, you know that's exactly what happened. At some point you'd think that there would be a movie entirely related to these riots, but there hasn't been and this may be as close as we get.

Eli (Justin Chon) and Daniel (David So) are two Korean-American brothers struggling to survive in Paramount, one of the worst areas in what was at one point the hellscape of Los Angeles. The crime rate is still very high in Paramount even by current standards. This is seen in one of the first scenes of the film. Eli and Daniel own a struggling shoe store they inherited from their father. Stock is lacking, and selling women's shoes is not paying the bills. Eli has a hook-up he uses to get some Air Jordans, and from there he will sell those Jordans and the brothers will be able to pay the rent on their store, which is two months behind. When getting those Jordans, he's spotted by some guys, and because he's Korean and they're Mexican, and specifically because there's three of them and one of him, he's getting jumped. A great way to start your day to be sure. Fortunately, he left the Jordans in the truck and was able to go back and get them. They didn't take anything from him that way.

At the same time, Kamilla (Simone Baker) is starting her day. Kamilla has no mom, no dad, but she has a brother and sister. Her brother Keith (Curtiss Cook Jr.) doesn't give a shit about her, but it seems that her sister does. Instead of going to school that morning, she decides to go to Eli and Daniel's shoe store. At this point we learn that they are quite friendly, but we also learn that Keith does not want Kamilla going to the shoe store for any reason. The neighborhood, such as it is, consistently has these sorts of racial tensions. Mr. Kim (Sang Chon) owns a liquor store and has a major problem with Kamilla, which leads to Eli confronting him and the both of them treating each other like shit. While all this is going on, this is the day that the Rodney King verdict will come down and ultimately spark long standing problems and racial tensions that everyone at the time was feeling. May still be feeling, if the wrong thing happened. Anyway, Eli is concerned about the failing store, but we know that riots are coming. We also know that Daniel likes to sing and gets jumped by Keith. Lastly, we know that Mr. Kim and Eli have to know each other in some way merely beyond being neighboring store owners. Where does it all go?

The answer is that this all leads to a pretty good movie, but I'm still having a hard time explaining exactly why that is. A large reason why I feel this way is probably due to this being a movie about something that should have long had a movie addressing this subject. Another reason is that this film is obviously a personal story in some way, the extent to which I do not know. I did see that the characters of Mr. Kim and Eli are played by father and son. I think a lot of Korean people who grew up in LA would feel this story to their core. The issue when it comes to a story like this one is that the American film industry is entirely decided upon by people who are not Korean, who see no value in such a film. We have seen this story time and time again when there are films made about people different than those who run Hollywood.

I should note that I do not think this is a perfect film. The riotous moments are probably not handled in the best way possible. The character who wound up closest to them would probably not have so easily ran away. There is also no examination of why Korean business owners wound up sitting on their roofs with guns. That whole situation was and still is profoundly disturbing. The police who fucked up the city did not show up to defend them. The Koreans who came to this country certainly did not expect that they would be in this kind of situation at any point in their life. Koreans and their customers also hated each other well before those riots. This is one of the things the film very much addresses. This is not a perfect film, but it is still a good one. The conclusion of the film is very strong, and the work done in order to garner investment in these characters largely worked. The scenes set in the shoe store are valuable in doing this. It is a bit strange that this was filmed in black and white, but that decision allows the film to more easily be made without obvious mistakes in presenting the time in which this story is set in. Overall, I liked this. The third act of the film is wild, but that's reflective of the time and situation that the characters are in.

7.5/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

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. Gook
29. Last Flag Flying
30. Hostiles
31. All the Money in the World
32. Molly's Game
33. Darkest Hour
34. Spider-Man: Homecoming
35. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
36. Sweet Virginia
37. It
38. Battle of the Sexes
39. Stronger
40. Brad's Status
41. Okja
42. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
43. Kong: Skull Island
44. It Comes at Night
45. Happy End (foreign movie, did not write review)
46. Crown Heights
47. Split
48. 1922
49. Personal Shopper
50. Landline
51. Thank You for Your Service
52. Beatriz at Dinner
53. Chuck
54. Atomic Blonde
55. Shot Caller
56. Wheelman
57. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
58. Wonder
59. Brigsby Bear
60. The Lego Batman Movie
61. Megan Leavey
62. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
63. Wonderstruck
64. Only the Brave
65. Marshall
66. Menashe
67. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
68. Walking Out
69. American Made
70. Annabelle: Creation
71. Beauty and the Beast
72. Imperial Dreams
73. Gifted
74. Murder on the Orient Express
75. My Friend Dahmer
76. The Zookeeper's Wife
77. The Glass Castle
78. The Foreigner
79. Free Fire
80. Win It All
81. The Wall
82. Jungle
83. Life
84. My Cousin Rachel
85. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
86. The Ballad of Lefty Brown
87. The Fate of the Furious
88. Happy Death Day
89. Breathe
90. The Man Who Invented Christmas
91. Maudie
92. Patti Cake$
93. Sleight
94. Alone in Berlin
95. A United Kingdom
96. Trespass Against Us
97. The Mountain Between Us
98. War Machine
99. Lowriders
100. Justice League
101. To the Bone
102. Ghost in the Shell
103. Wakefield
104. Downsizing
105. Bright
106. The Tribes of Palos Verdes
107. The Hitman's Bodyguard
108. Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
109. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
110. The Mummy
111. The Greatest Showman
112. Rough Night
113. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
114. Sand Castle
115. The Circle
116. American Assassin
117. CHiPs
118. Death Note
119. 47 Meters Down
120. The Belko Experiment
121. The Great Wall
122. Fist Fight
123. Baywatch
124. Snatched
125. Suburbicon
126. Wilson
127. The Dark Tower
128. Queen of the Desert
129. The House
130. Flatliners
131. Sleepless
132. Geostorm
133. All Eyez on Me
134. The Snowman
135. The Book of Henry
136. The Space Between Us
137. Daddy's Home 2

 

[909]

The Invisible Man (2020), directed by Leigh Whannell

I am apparently one of the only people on the internet who didn't see Whannell's last movie, which was Upgrade. After seeing The Invisible Man tonight, it turns out that I need to get on that. I have not seen many good horror movies in the last year or so. More than perhaps any other genre, I find myself quickly feeling fickle about the events playing out in front of me during a horror movie. I also missed the bad horror movies that came out early this year because I did not have time to watch them. I wonder what my reaction would have been if I had. I made a second list to ensure that once these movies are free for me to watch, I watch them and add them to my rankings before the year finishes. I'm going to try to stick to that. I had the unfortunate situation of sitting in front of someone who was laughing their way through most of this film. What I'll say is pretty high praise in my book. You know how hard it is to get someone like that to take a movie seriously? Well, The Invisible Man accomplishes that come hell or high water. Those kinds of people are so intent on laughing at anything that they usually don't change their mind. I don't remember the last time I was in the theater when that happened. This wasn't the best movie of the year so far, in my opinion anyway, but it was a strong effort from a genre I often find myself having problems with.

Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss) is a woman trapped in a very abusive relationship with an extremely wealthy optics scientist, Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). Cecilia decides that it's time to make her break to get away from this loser. She drugs him with Diazepam and sneaks through the house getting the stuff that she wants to bring with her, disabling the security cameras in the process of doing that. While going through the house, she sees a empty contraption of sorts, and she also decides that she wants to bring the dog with her. Unfortunately, the dog has a shock collar, and in the process of removing it, the dog knocks into Adrian's car and sets the alarm off. Cecilia high-tails it over the fence and makes it out into the road to meet her sister, Emily (Harriet Dyer). Adrian eventually catches up to her even though he's been drugged, but Cecilia and Emily are able to make their escape.

In the aftermath of Cecilia breaking out of her prison, she hides with a friend of her and her sister, James (Aldis Hodge). James is also a police officer, so Adrian isn't going to try to find her. James has a daughter, Sydney (Storm Reid), and the three come to share the house as James is very accomodating. Two weeks later, it turns out that Adrian has killed himself. His estate is being handled by his brother Tom (Michael Dorman), and Tom mails a letter to Cecilia so that she can meet him in San Francisco. Cecilia doesn't know this ahead of time, but it turns out that Adrian has willed her $5,000,000. Cecilia is going to take it, because she needs it and there's good uses to put it to. After all, the motherfucker is dead. Or is he? When Cecilia tries to move on with her life, things continue to happen to prevent her from doing so. She faints during a job interview. There is clearly something in the house trying to annoy her. What is it?

This movie has a few good twists and surprises up its sleeve, only one of which I saw coming. Everyone can probably guess what that is. The rest, on the other hand, are things I didn't see coming. The Invisible Man also has a couple really good jump scares. That's all you need, a couple. Some movies like The Nun nearly completely killed jump scares for me because THAT'S LITERALLY ALL THAT'S IN THE MOVIE. There's one specific reason that this movie works, and it's the way that everything is framed. The viewer is constantly made to pay attention to whether or not things are moving in the background of the picture. Almost everything is framed in this way as a rule. What I was also thinking is that this was what Hollow Man could have been if anyone involved with the project knew what kind of movie they should have been making. Cheesy is not what a film like this needs. This one is instead very serious, and you need to pay attention the entire time. One of these scenes was genuinely stunning.

Where The Invisible Man misses the boat, is largely as it relates to some logical inconsistencies with the last thirty minutes of the movie. One thing I hate about movies is when viewers have to come up with bad theories in order to explain everything that's happening in front of them. There are some of those theories about the end of this movie. I also didn't like how one of the scenes with Sydney and James is handled, as I found it to be an entirely unrealistic reaction. That being said, this is the rare case of a movie that is good and didn't reveal everything in its trailer. If you think that the trailer does reveal everything, just know that you are wrong. Also, the manner in which the invisibility is done deserves top marks. I would talk more about this, but when you watch this movie and read this review, just know that you are probably thinking the exact things that I wanted to write down in this space. Very nicely done. I also better mention that Elisabeth Moss is great here.

7.5/10 fuck I am giving this rating out way too much

2020 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. The Invisible Man
2. Bad Boys for Life
3. The Gentlemen
4. Birds of Prey
5. Sonic the Hedgehog
6. The Call of the Wild
7. Underwater
8. The Rhythm Section
9. The Last Full Measure
10. Like a Boss
11. The Grudge
12. Dolittle
13. Fantasy Island

 

[909]

The Catcher Was a Spy (2018), directed by Ben Lewin

Despite the picture I have chosen, this film was absolutely not a baseball movie. I am struggling with reviewing The Catcher Was a Spy, the main reason being that this film could best be described as being dry and boring. The Catcher Was a Spy also could at worst be described as dry and boring. So, what I'm saying is that this movie was dry and boring. I'm surprised this is the case when the cast is so good, but I suppose I shouldn't be or this film would have made far more money. I remember that this was out in smaller theaters around the time I started going so frequently to the movies, but I never had any real intention of watching this movie anywhere but at home. At least that way I could shut the movie off if it was boring enough to be bothering me. I wasn't bothered, but I was interested enough to see whether or not the lead would wind up killing the person they were spying on. In order to ensure you do not put yourself through this boredom, the answer is no. What I need to find out is how a film like this could have pulled in such a good cast.

Moe Berg (Paul Rudd) was a middling catcher in the big leagues prior to the outbreak of World War II. At the start of this movie, he is catching for the Boston Red Sox and not doing the best in the world, hardly playing at all. The film decides to play around with the time frame, which isn't all that surprising. For whatever reason, he is invited on a barnstorming tour of Japan. The tour has stars on it, but he is not one of them. Seeing a potential opportunity, he decides to bring his camera. His girlfriend Estella (Sienna Miller) would like to come with him, but she is told no. There are some heavy assertions throughout this film that Berg was gay, and I don't know whether or not that's true. Upon arriving in Japan, Berg has a random liason with some random Japanese guy he meets at the game, after which he decides to go up to the top of a hospital and take some video of the Tokyo harbor. The reason for doing this is obviously strategic, yet Berg was not affiliated with the government. The real reason he did this is not mentioned in the film, and it was because a newsreel paid him to film sights of Tokyo on the trip.

Of course, this being the 1930s and 1940s, it turns out that the American government has hardly any video of Tokyo. Once Pearl Harbor happens, Berg is contacted by the OSS, which at the time was run by Bill Donovan (Jeff Daniels). Donovan wants to know if Berg is down to join the war effort, which unsurprisingly he is. After some time working the desk, Berg is going to be sent to Europe with Samuel Goudsmit (Paul Giamatti), a physicist. The reason? Berg is to find Werner Heisenberg (Mark Strong), a German theoretical physicist. The American government believes that because Heisenberg returned to Germany during the war, he may be of use to the Nazis in creating the atomic bomb. Berg is ultimately going to be sent to Europe along with Goudsmit in order to find someone who may know where Heisenberg (I can barely type this name without laughing) is. Why Berg? It turns out that he knows many languages despite being a mere backup catcher, and that's a good attribute for a spy.

For once, this was a film without any description on Wikipedia for me to recall when describing how the movie went, and writing down my own description was extremely easy as the film wasn't too complicated. That was nice. The movie is unfortunately very bland, which is reflected in the ease of writing all those things out. Theoretically there should be nothing wrong with this film, considering the cast and subject. There still is. Part of it is because there's a reluctance to commit to Berg killing someone over the course of his spying, but I understand that it's not realistic to make something up or for him to kill Heisenberg, who lived long after the war. This is just a sterile and generically executed kind of movie. I have read that there's a book about Moe Berg, and it sounds far more interesting than this. Plus, considering the cast, how is this possible? This kind of movie should have been a rampage of sorts because Berg was such a strange guy, but everything here is dull and tastefully done. This is not worth your time.

4/10

2018 Films Ranked

I should consider re-ranking these, but not tonight.

Spoiler

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. The Death of Stalin
29. A Quiet Place
30. Vice
31. The Old Man & the Gun
32. Vox Lux
33. Bad Times at the El Royale
34. The Other Side of the Wind
35. Searching
36. A Simple Favor
37. The Hate U Give
38. Unsane
39. Disobedience
40. Boy Erased
41. Bumblebee
42. Mary Poppins Returns
43. Creed II
44. Hold the Dark
45. The Land of Steady Habits
46. Halloween
47. Ant-Man and the Wasp
48. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
49. Blockers
50. Beirut
51. Roxanne Roxanne
52. Tully
53. Mary Queen of Scots
54. Aquaman
55. Ideal Home
56. Outlaw King
57. Overlord
58. Ready Player One
59. Ben Is Back
60. Monsters and Men
61. The Mule
62. On the Basis of Sex
63. Bohemian Rhapsody
64. White Boy Rick
65. Papillon
66. Game Night
67. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
68. Ocean's Eight
69. Alpha
70. Come Sunday
71. Instant Family
72. The Front Runner
73. The Predator
74. Apostle
75. Uncle Drew
76. The Cured
77. The Commuter
78. The Angel
79. Tag
80. Beautiful Boy
81. The Nun
82. Operation Finale
83. The Equalizer 2
84. The Spy Who Dumped Me
85. Cargo
86. Yardie
87. Bird Box
88. 12 Strong
89. Venom
90. Skyscraper
91. The Meg
92. Assassination Nation
93. Backstabbing for Beginners
94. The Girl in the Spider's Web
95. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
96. 22 July
97. Tomb Raider
98. Rampage
99. Hotel Artemis
100. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
101. The Little Stranger
102. 7 Days in Entebbe
103. Night School
104. The 15:17 To Paris
105. The Catcher Was a Spy
106. Peppermint
107. Mile 22
108. The First Purge
109. Hunter Killer
110. The Hurricane Heist
111. The Cloverfield Paradox
112. Breaking In
113. Mute
114. Kin
115. Hell Fest
116. Proud Mary
117. Robin Hood
118. Traffik
119. Winchester
120. The Happytime Murders
121. The Outsider
122. Slender Man

 

[909]

I can't bring myself to write a long review about Crazy Rich Asians. If the goal of this movie was to give Asian people representation in Hollywood while focusing on the worst aspects of society, perhaps this would be a good film if such material was treated the way it needs to be. The problem is that all of these worst aspects of society, the way that people blow money on garbage, all of that is given completely serious treatment as if those things are cool. At the same time the overarching plot does not. It's just everything else that surrounds the movie that seems to bother me. The inherent problem with these kinds of romantic comedies is that the people act entirely unlike human beings, but in this case I think this film also tends to enforce bad stereotypes about Asian people. So, while the acting in this movie is actually good enough for me to give the film a 5/10 and keep me engaged, I didn't really like it.

I think this is also the problem in that at the time, I recall the film being widely upheld as a form of unprecedented representation. While that is true, for that to be in this kind of film shows exactly what's wrong with Hollywood in the first place. The only movie Hollywood would make about Asian people is this one. Think about that.

Spoiler

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. The Death of Stalin
29. A Quiet Place
30. Vice
31. The Old Man & the Gun
32. Vox Lux
33. Bad Times at the El Royale
34. The Other Side of the Wind
35. Searching
36. A Simple Favor
37. The Hate U Give
38. Unsane
39. Disobedience
40. Boy Erased
41. Bumblebee
42. Mary Poppins Returns
43. Creed II
44. Hold the Dark
45. The Land of Steady Habits
46. Halloween
47. Ant-Man and the Wasp
48. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
49. Blockers
50. Beirut
51. Roxanne Roxanne
52. Tully
53. Mary Queen of Scots
54. Aquaman
55. Ideal Home
56. Outlaw King
57. Overlord
58. Ready Player One
59. Ben Is Back
60. Monsters and Men
61. The Mule
62. On the Basis of Sex
63. Bohemian Rhapsody
64. White Boy Rick
65. Papillon
66. Game Night
67. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
68. Ocean's Eight
69. Alpha
70. Come Sunday
71. Instant Family
72. The Front Runner
73. The Predator
74. Apostle
75. Uncle Drew
76. The Cured
77. The Commuter
78. The Angel
79. Tag
80. Beautiful Boy
81. The Nun
82. Operation Finale
83. The Equalizer 2
84. The Spy Who Dumped Me
85. Cargo
86. Yardie
87. Bird Box
88. 12 Strong
89. Venom
90. Skyscraper
91. The Meg
92. Assassination Nation
93. Crazy Rich Asians
94. Backstabbing for Beginners
95. The Girl in the Spider's Web
96. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
97. 22 July
98. Tomb Raider
99. Rampage
100. Hotel Artemis
101. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
102. The Little Stranger
103. 7 Days in Entebbe
104. Night School
105. The 15:17 To Paris
106. The Catcher Was a Spy
107. Peppermint
108. Mile 22
109. The First Purge
110. Hunter Killer
111. The Hurricane Heist
112. The Cloverfield Paradox
113. Breaking In
114. Mute
115. Kin
116. Hell Fest
117. Proud Mary
118. Robin Hood
119. Traffik
120. Winchester
121. The Happytime Murders
122. The Outsider
123. Slender Man

 

[909]

It probably goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, this thread isn't going to be updated with anything except Netflix movies for the foreseeable future. Things are starting to get out of control here and the growth of the virus is becoming exponential. I'm not going to the theater and dragging that shit back to my sick mom. Not happening.

We live in a generation where we've been conditioned to do shit while we feel sick because we can't afford to stay at home, and the chickens are going to come home to roost on that kind of mentality. Lots of this was forced upon us by evil pieces of shit. People who are probably carrying the virus refuse to stay at home and disrupt their own life, so inevitably everyone's life will have to be forcibly disrupted because people are too stubborn to care about other human beings. We try all kinds of shortcuts like telling people they just need to wash their hands, then it turns out that the virus stays in the air that you breathe. Again, it's because people are too stubborn to accept reality. Now, a theater is the perfect kind of place for people to get sick. Most of those places are fucking dirty, you're around all kinds of people who you don't know, and you're sitting in chairs and next to handrails that everyone's been touching without being cleaned. I assume this is one of the industries that will have to be bailed out after this, because there's no way these places are going to stay open.

 

[909]

The Florida Project (2017), directed by Sean Baker

I'm not quite done with 2017 just yet, but having watched The Florida Project is a sign that I'm getting close and will be wrapping things up on that year for good. That being said, who really knows? Maybe there's some stuff out there that wasn't released in theaters, and I'm distinctly unaware of it. I should also point out that I'm not watching the cum peach movie. As for the rest, we'll see. Let's talk about this movie though. There aren't a lot of movies made about real people these days, but this one is about real people on the bottom rung of society. If you think you have it bad, you could be doing what these people are doing. In creating this film, Sean Baker made the decision to use a lot of first time actors in an effort to create a glimpse at the life of someone who has to live this way. The Florida Project is more than that, though. It's a movie about a child growing up without any parent worth having input from, the frustration of a society that allows people to live in such conditions, and about what happens when someone is completely unfit to be a parent while not being an abusive one. This film doesn't go quite as far as I thought it would, but in doing so the story retains realism and lacks in melodrama, which is what I think most people hope for in such an adventure. Of course, in making a movie like this one, you need somebody with name value to be in the film, and in this case nobody better could possibly have been chosen.

The lead character of the The Florida Project is Moonee (Brooklynn Prince), a six year old who lives in a motel called the Magic Castle. Magic Castle is a motel near Disney World, but it's seedy enough that tourists do not go there. Instead, this is a motel where people live, and it really sucks. Moonee lives with her mother Halley (Bria Vinaite), who can best be described as a wild child. Her age is never mentioned, but it's not like we need to know anyway. Halley is very immature and unfit to be a mother. This is my own determination even though the film later shows you that she is in fact unfit to be a mother. Moonee spends her summer days running around with her friends, Dicky, Scooty, and Jancey. These are also kids of the same age, also not supervised, and they do pretty much whatever they want. Moonee meets Jancey when she and her other two friends are caught spitting on a car owned by Jancey's grandmother. The way it turns out, there are a lot of people trapped in this motel life, they cannot get ahead. The Florida Project isn't similar to 99 Homes, but I am very much reminded of that film during these scenes. If you recall, 99 Homes was a movie about evictions in Orlando, after which people had to live in motel rooms.

So, that pretty much describes Moonee for the most part. What does her mom do? Halley is extremely lazy and sleeps around in her pajamas all day, only managing to scrape together the weekly rent at the very last moment or even late. Halley is also friends with Scooty's mom, Ashley (Mela Murder). Ashley and Halley have an understanding of sorts during the summer while there's no school for their kids to go to. Halley is to watch Scooty, which as we know she is not doing, and in return Ashley has Scooty and Moonee go pick up stolen meals from the diner she works at. It's fair to say that Bobby (Willem Dafoe) is watching the kids more while performing in his job as the motel's manager. While Halley did have a job as a stripper, she no longer does, and that leads to a loss in temporary assistance benefits that she needed in order to pay the rent, and feed herself and Moonee. This leads to desperation because she can't get a job at Ashley's diner, and for obvious reasons she can't. This person is very uncouth and likely mentally ill, I couldn't imagine giving them a job working in front of people. Anyway, she gets desperate. Very, very desperate. She also isn't watching any of the kids that she's supposed to be watching.

I think to some extent, someone's perspective of the events is influenced by how their own childhoods played out. I think this film was brilliantly handled in terms of finding that balance between Moonee and Halley. That being said, there are a lot of scenes in this movie that I think could be and have been viewed as superfluous. Perhaps Halley bangs a john one or two times too many. Maybe Moonee goes to get waffles from Ashley one time too many. The point of these scenes however is to show that these are things that people in this situation do not only once but twice or even more than that. I think this kind of story is necessary in this era, truthfully we do not get enough of them. The choices in casting are for the most part pretty good, with the exception of Ashley and some of the kids who don't have any acting range. This isn't that surprising though. This is a movie where it also could be perceived as one where nothing happens, but that isn't the case. the way I see it, a lot happens and if you care about the characters at all, there's a strong feeling of impending doom prevalent throughout the movie.

Ultimately, this is a movie that spotlights how broken the system in this country is, and how poor people have to deal with their problems as a result of said system. It's interesting to contrast Moonee's overall behavior with the things that are happening in her life during the film. She, like many other children, is completely oblivious to what they do not have. Most kids come to realize later what it is they didn't or don't have. Part of me thinks that the film could have been even better if the film was slightly more structured, but to say that about a film that's already great isn't much of a negative at all. The ending was also pretty slick considering that Disney doesn't allow anyone to film at their parks. I read a story about how Baker was able to accomplish this and I was quite impressed. There are some great performances here as well. Willem Dafoe and Bria Vinaite belong in the same sentence, which is quite surprising from a first time actor that hasn't been able to land themselves in any project of note since this film was released. Maybe they don't want to though. Anyway, if you can't tell, I really liked this movie.

9/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
7. The Florida Project
8. Mudbound
9. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
10. Logan
11. Baby Driver
12. The Post
13. Wonder Woman
14. The Big Sick
15. Lady Bird
16. Wind River
17. Thor: Ragnarok
18. mother!
19. Logan Lucky
20. The Beguiled
21. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
22. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
23. Brawl in Cell Block 99
24. John Wick: Chapter 2
25. The Disaster Artist
26. The Lost City of Z
27. First They Killed My Father
28. A Ghost Story
29. Gook
30. Last Flag Flying
31. Hostiles
32. All the Money in the World
33. Molly's Game
34. Darkest Hour
35. Spider-Man: Homecoming
36. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
37. Sweet Virginia
38. It
39. Battle of the Sexes
40. Stronger
41. Brad's Status
42. Okja
43. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
44. Kong: Skull Island
45. It Comes at Night
46. Happy End (foreign movie, did not write review)
47. Crown Heights
48. Split
49. 1922
50. Personal Shopper
51. Landline
52. Thank You for Your Service
53. Beatriz at Dinner
54. Chuck
55. Atomic Blonde
56. Shot Caller
57. Wheelman
58. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
59. Wonder
60. Brigsby Bear
61. The Lego Batman Movie
62. Megan Leavey
63. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
64. Wonderstruck
65. Only the Brave
66. Marshall
67. Menashe
68. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
69. Walking Out
70. American Made
71. Annabelle: Creation
72. Beauty and the Beast
73. Imperial Dreams
74. Gifted
75. Murder on the Orient Express
76. My Friend Dahmer
77. The Zookeeper's Wife
78. The Glass Castle
79. The Foreigner
80. Free Fire
81. Win It All
82. The Wall
83. Jungle
84. Life
85. My Cousin Rachel
86. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
87. The Ballad of Lefty Brown
88. The Fate of the Furious
89. Happy Death Day
90. Breathe
91. The Man Who Invented Christmas
92. Maudie
93. Patti Cake$
94. Sleight
95. Alone in Berlin
96. A United Kingdom
97. Trespass Against Us
98. The Mountain Between Us
99. War Machine
100. Lowriders
101. Justice League
102. To the Bone
103. Ghost in the Shell
104. Wakefield
105. Downsizing
106. Bright
107. The Tribes of Palos Verdes
108. The Hitman's Bodyguard
109. Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
110. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
111. The Mummy
112. The Greatest Showman
113. Rough Night
114. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
115. Sand Castle
116. The Circle
117. American Assassin
118. CHiPs
119. Death Note
120. 47 Meters Down
121. The Belko Experiment
122. The Great Wall
123. Fist Fight
124. Baywatch
125. Snatched
126. Suburbicon
127. Wilson
128. The Dark Tower
129. Queen of the Desert
130. The House
131. Flatliners
132. Sleepless
133. Geostorm
134. All Eyez on Me
135. The Snowman
136. The Book of Henry
137. The Space Between Us
138. Daddy's Home 2

 

[Brocklock]

It took two viewings to really land with me but it is a great movie. I didn't like Bria Vinates character or performance the first time, but it definitely resonated on my second viewing and it is a very good performance. Her character might of just hit a little too close to home on that first viewing. From interviews I watched she was pretty close to the Hailey character so I'm not really surprised she hasn't been in a lot because I imagine she doesn't have a lot of range. Of course it could also be her choice not to act anymore as well. I loved Dafoe and the kids immediately. The scene with

Spoiler

Dafoe telling off the pedo

Is one of my favorite Willem Dafoe acted scenes period.

 

[909]

It took two viewings to really land with me but it is a great movie. I didn't like Bria Vinates character or performance the first time, but it definitely resonated on my second viewing and it is a very good performance. Her character might of just hit a little too close to home on that first viewing. From interviews I watched she was pretty close to the Hailey character so I'm not really surprised she hasn't been in a lot because I imagine she doesn't have a lot of range. Of course it could also be her choice not to act anymore as well. I loved Dafoe and the kids immediately. The scene with

Spoiler

Dafoe telling off the pedo

Is one of my favorite Willem Dafoe acted scenes period.

This was mine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNYPtuYQq38

 

[AA484]

909 you watched A Marriage Story yet? I assume you haven't because I don't see a review.

 

[909]

909 you watched A Marriage Story yet? I assume you haven't because I don't see a review.

Nope, not yet. But now that I can't go anywhere I should demolish my pre-existing list that I've had made for three months or so.

 

[909]

Big Time Adolescence (2020), directed by Jason Orley

I decided with all that's going on, I could use some light entertainment that nobody's seen yet, and I saw that Hulu recently released an original movie of theirs. I also saw that this premiered at Sundance in 2019 and failed to be released prior to this point. Considering this movie featured Pete Davidson, I was surprised by that and I quickly questioned how that could be. I would have thought an indie movie of his could be picked up by Netflix far prior to this point. After watching the film and seeing the end of it, I now know exactly why this wasn't put in a theater or released immediately after its showing at Sundance. Most comedy movies do not end this way. At the very least this movie does have a clearly defined path and sees that out to its conclusion. The point of the story is to show what happens when the only people that take interest in your kid are the wrong people to take interest in your kid. As a parent, it has to be hard to know that there's basically nothing you can do to prevent their interactions.

My review of this movie will be rather short because this is a 90 minute comedy. I see no need to stretch things out. Mo (Griffin Gluck) was a very young kid at one point. His sister Kate (Emily Arlook) had a boyfriend, he is Zeke (Pete Davidson). Zeke was one of those guys who wanted to also hang out with the younger siblings of his girlfriends, so Mo was dragged on dates. Eventually Kate and Zeke broke up, but Zeke decided to remain friends with Mo. After all, Mo didn't have any friends. We subsequently push forward seven years, to the current state of events. Kate no longer lives in the same house as Mo, as she is no longer a kid. Mo's parents are Reuben (Jon Cryer) and Sherri (Julia Murney), and Reuben does not want Mo hanging out with Zeke anymore. It turns out there are good reasons why. Zeke is a typical college dropout kind of guy, he likes to drink and do drugs. His girlfriend Holly (Sydney Sweeney) is much younger than him, his friend Nick (Machine Gun Kelly) is crazy, and so are his other friends who I believe remained unnamed. Why does Zeke hang out with this kid?

Fortunately, the question I posed at the end of the paragraph did not remain unanswered. It was always easy to see why the two hang out with each other, but it was nice that the film didn't leave the viewer to assume the reason why. Anyway, I thought this movie was alright. I laughed hard a couple times, but I thought it was funny that Pete Davidson basically played himself. I don't care one way or the other for Davidson, but he was a good source of laughs in what I'd call an above average film. I think everyone here knows that I hate Jon Cryer, but in this case his role is serious and I wasn't remotely bothered by anything he did. The thing about a movie like this is that it has to find some kind of balance. Going overboard doesn't work because ultimately this is a movie about a kid and his much older friend. What the older friend has the kid do has to remain believable. I thought that was the case here. The ending I mentioned here was also nice. I don't know if I want to spoil this or not because it was literally just put on Hulu. That being said, Davidson and Gluck had good chemistry and I liked this movie enough. I don't think the second half of the film is as good as the first though.


Also, I wonder how long this movie will occupy a spot in my yearly top 10. It could be a really long time.

6.5/10

2020 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. The Invisible Man
2. Bad Boys for Life
3. The Gentlemen
4. Birds of Prey
5. Big Time Adolescence
6. Sonic the Hedgehog
7. The Call of the Wild
8. Underwater
9. The Rhythm Section
10. The Last Full Measure
11. Like a Boss
12. The Grudge
13. Dolittle
14. Fantasy Island

 

[King Kamala]

I feel like if this crisis does go 3-4 months, we will see studios releasing more films streaming/VOD. And it could be another nail in the age of the movie theater's coffin.

 

[Epic Springs]

There's no way the indie theaters in NYC (the few left) are going to survive this. I expect them to start closing permanently in the next month or so which is awful.

 

[909]

Den of Thieves (2018), directed by Christian Gudegast

I'm trying to think of a way to summarize this movie in three sentences. Were you ever looking for a movie ripping off Heat to be written by the man who wrote London Has Fallen, featuring the star of London Has Fallen. Does it improve the movie when I tell you that the film presents itself as being set in Los Angeles when it is obviously not filmed in Los Angeles? How about the fact that the film has Max Holloway and Michael Bisping in speaking parts? Isn't that all you really need in order to watch a movie like this. That was all I needed. There were ways in which this film greatly amused me. It is hard for me to take Gerard Butler seriously in a role like this one, where you have him squaring off with Nick Sobotka the way that De Niro and Pacino went after each other 25 years ago. That is a sentence I never thought I would type out, but I can tell you that after watching this flick, I really want to watch Heat. I won't, but I definitely want to. I laughed really hard when I went to Wikipedia so that I could ensure that I associated the characters with the actors who played them, and I saw that there would be a sequel for Den of Thieves. Talk about something that probably should not exist.

Den of Thieves starts off in Los Angeles as a film that never leaves its initial setting. This begins with a heist of an armored truck that we later learn was empty, although much bloodshed was involved in stealing said truck. It turns out that this hijacking was done by former marines. Their leader is Ray Merrimen (Pablo Schreiber), and through him these guys came together. Donnie (O'Shea Jackson Jr.) doubles as a bartender, Levi (50 Cent) and Bo (Evan Jones) also work under Merrimen. This seems to be their full time job. There are others involved in pulling off a heist, but let's limit things to those who were involved in the shootout. In the process of this donut shop parking lot extravaganza, one of their crew was killed. This led to them shooting up a hell of a lot of cops and killing the armored guards. The next day, it is made clear that the shootout got someone's attention.

LAPD's head of Major Crimes is Nick O'Brien (Gerard Butler), and Gerard Butler is basically playing every other character that he's ever played. He is married to Debbie (Dawn Olivieri), but that doesn't last long as he has been cheating on her. This leads to a divorce. Do you not see the absurd parallels where this movie is ripped off of Heat. Watch the film if you don't. Anyway, O'Brien is fixated on Merrimen and he just knows that the guy is a robber. In order to get to him, he decides that he's going to turn Donnie on his own crew. This works, but he's still in the dark as to what they have planned. This crew intends to rob the Federal Reserve branch here in Los Angeles. The way this is all explained actually makes sense even though there are a few things towards the end of the movie do not. That's not the problem here. The problem is the way in which this all comes together. The details in this film are lacking very much. Of course, Donnie can't let O'Brien know that they're robbing the Federal Reserve, right?

I don't really mind when a movie like this has errors in terms of the details of how money is stolen itself. My problem with this movie largely lies in logistical and continuity issues. It is actually impossible for this bank robbery and heist to actually come together so fast. You'd think that a person involved with the production would actually scope out a map of this area. Another issue is that as a resident of Los Angeles, I can plainly tell that this movie is absolutely not filmed in Los Angeles. There are also massive plotholes in terms of how people actually enter the building. High security buildings do not allow the Chinese food delivery guy to walk around with a bag of food. I actually laughed at how stupid this was. The reason I'm not going to give this film a horrendous rating is because I laughed a lot. This is still quite a bad movie, but I'm not going to be throwing down a 2 or 3. It isn't surprising that the person who wrote London Has Fallen wrote a movie full of plotholes, but the film is also 140 minutes long while featuring all that stuff. Despite the long run time, this film isn't absolutely unwatchable on every level, because again, it's funny.

Most of the amusing scenes in Den of Thieves pertain to Gerard Butler's character, which is so far overboard as to be worse than ridiculous. Think of every bad thing that a cop in the middle of a divorce might do and there's a chance that his character does this at some point in the film. The attempt at making another Heat is what really does me in here. I feel like I kind of wanted the film to try to do this and fail at doing it. At least this wasn't a film that tried to do so with boring actors. What we have here is a movie that somehow made money at the theater even though it should have had a lower budget and been released straight to DVD.

4/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

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. The Death of Stalin
29. A Quiet Place
30. Vice
31. The Old Man & the Gun
32. Vox Lux
33. Bad Times at the El Royale
34. The Other Side of the Wind
35. Searching
36. A Simple Favor
37. The Hate U Give
38. Unsane
39. Disobedience
40. Boy Erased
41. Bumblebee
42. Mary Poppins Returns
43. Creed II
44. Hold the Dark
45. The Land of Steady Habits
46. Halloween
47. Ant-Man and the Wasp
48. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
49. Blockers
50. Beirut
51. Roxanne Roxanne
52. Tully
53. Mary Queen of Scots
54. Aquaman
55. Ideal Home
56. Outlaw King
57. Overlord
58. Ready Player One
59. Ben Is Back
60. Monsters and Men
61. The Mule
62. On the Basis of Sex
63. Bohemian Rhapsody
64. White Boy Rick
65. Papillon
66. Game Night
67. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
68. Ocean's Eight
69. Alpha
70. Come Sunday
71. Instant Family
72. The Front Runner
73. The Predator
74. Apostle
75. Uncle Drew
76. The Cured
77. The Commuter
78. The Angel
79. Tag
80. Beautiful Boy
81. The Nun
82. Operation Finale
83. The Equalizer 2
84. The Spy Who Dumped Me
85. Cargo
86. Yardie
87. Bird Box
88. 12 Strong
89. Venom
90. Skyscraper
91. The Meg
92. Assassination Nation
93. Crazy Rich Asians
94. Backstabbing for Beginners
95. The Girl in the Spider's Web
96. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
97. 22 July
98. Tomb Raider
99. Rampage
100. Hotel Artemis
101. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
102. The Little Stranger
103. 7 Days in Entebbe
104. Night School
105. The 15:17 To Paris
106. Den of Thieves
107. The Catcher Was a Spy
108. Peppermint
109. Mile 22
110. The First Purge
111. Hunter Killer
112. The Hurricane Heist
113. The Cloverfield Paradox
114. Breaking In
115. Mute
116. Kin
117. Hell Fest
118. Proud Mary
119. Robin Hood
120. Traffik
121. Winchester
122. The Happytime Murders
123. The Outsider
124. Slender Man

 

[909]

Russian, subtitles

Loveless (2017), directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev

I know what you're probably thinking right now. Why would I watch a Russian movie? As it turns out, Loveless was a festival favorite and was nominated for an Oscar. The film being a festival favorite alone means that I should probably watch it at some point. In this case the film is on Starz and is being removed in a few days. That's as good a chance as any. When it comes to Russian movies, I don't know exactly what I was expecting heading in. I feel like the film met my expectations while simultaneously being even more cynical than I thought possible. I thought that I thought badly of people, but that was nothing compared to what I saw in this film. Russians have an even darker way of looking at things, I suppose. Shit, not I suppose, I know that they definitely look at things from a darker perspective. Despite how good some of the reviews for Loveless are, I do not think this was a classic or a truly great movie. Perhaps over the course of this review I'll be able to explain why. If forced to do so in one sentence, I would say that this movie has one of the slowest paces that I've ever seen in my life. If you want to talk about a long buildup to the event the film is centered around, look no further than Loveless.

Loveless is set in 2012, back in an era when some people and it seems particularly Russians were believing that the end of the world was going to happen. If you'll recall, a year later a meteor hit Russia and freaked a lot of people out. Anyway, this film isn't about that even though I'd like to see a sci-fi movie that based its story on that meteor. Loveless also takes place in Leningrad Oblast, near St. Petersburg. The film starts with children leaving school, and a boy named Aloysha (Matvei Novikov) heading back towards his house. His parents Boris (Aleksey Rozin) and Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) are divorcing, and they need to get rid of their apartment. In these opening scenes, they are having a horrible row which Aloysha happens to hear. You see, his parents were talking about having him put in an orphanage because neither one wants to have custody of the boy in a divorce. This obviously destroys him. Over the course of the next day, we are given some insight as to why his parents are this way. Boris has gotten a young woman named Masha (Marina Vasilyeva) pregnant, and Zheyna has paired up with Anton (Andris Keiss). Anton has an adult daughter who doesn't need his attention, so this is perfect for her. Anyway, these two are fucking scumbags. In addition to that, it turns out that these two are so selfish as to not even care if their son came home at all because they weren't at home either. Now he's missing.

Zhenya and Boris are normal people of course, and that's what makes their arguments so strong even though I have to read subtitles. You do not need to know the language to figure out that these two absolutely hate each other. The picture that this paints of Russia is surprising in the sense that I wouldn't have expected this to be released. We are given a picture of Russia where none of the institutions work as needed in order to form a functioning society. I think there's a lot of ways to interpret the rest of the film, but that previous sentence is beyond dispute. I decided to look at a review before writing this, and I don't like the film as much as a lot of critics do, but I found their take on things to be interesting. A few people thought that the story of the film was unresolved. This absolutely is not the case. Ultimately the film becomes a mystery, and I feel like I could not have watched this movie had there not been something past those first 35 minutes to really hold onto. It is also fascinating that the volunteer organizational effort to find Aloysha and others like him is so accomplished.

This movie is pretty bleak, and it's very cynical, so in that way I find the movie to be entirely Russian. Have you ever watched or heard of anything upbeat coming from Russia? Like, ever in your life? Russia is a very grey and dark place. I have noticed that a few other countries have such an outlook portrayed on films from their auteurs. Iran is another one of them. There is also commentary on the absurdly religious state of Russia post-communism. Boris works for a company that is described in the film as being in favor of Russian Orthodox Sharia Law. If he is found to have gotten divorced or cheated on his wife, he will be summarily dismissed with cause. While it would seem like Boris and Zhenya are similar as people, they are not. Zhenya is a classic social media addict who cares about absolutely nothing else in the world. There's one scene where she's riding on a train and everyone on it is staring at their phone. Boris, as already alluded to, is addicted to his job and likes young women very much. The allure seems to be impregnating them rather than actually raising the children. This man is not remotely emotionally equipped to do so. This kind of thing has obvious parallels with American society and it may please people to know that individuals in a country like Russia are so similar to them.

Obviously, this is a pretty good movie or I wouldn't spend so much time in the following paragraphs discussing points of it, but the film is very disengaging to begin with. I can see how a person could decide that they were going to shut the movie off. I am now interested in Zvyagintsev's other work though. Three of the descriptions of his films on IMDB sound like they could be a great time. Movies depicting dark societies such as this do have their appeal. I decided to watch this prior to Marriage Story as I'm going to get some separation between the two before delving back into another divorce movie. It seems like I could not have checked this out otherwise.

8/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
7. The Florida Project
8. Mudbound
9. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
10. Logan
11. Baby Driver
12. The Post
13. Wonder Woman
14. The Big Sick
15. Lady Bird
16. Wind River
17. Thor: Ragnarok
18. mother!
19. Logan Lucky
20. The Beguiled
21. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
22. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
23. Brawl in Cell Block 99
24. Loveless
25. John Wick: Chapter 2
26. The Disaster Artist
27. The Lost City of Z
28. First They Killed My Father
29. A Ghost Story
30. Gook
31. Last Flag Flying
32. Hostiles
33. All the Money in the World
34. Molly's Game
35. Darkest Hour
36. Spider-Man: Homecoming
37. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
38. Sweet Virginia
39. It
40. Battle of the Sexes
41. Stronger
42. Brad's Status
43. Okja
44. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
45. Kong: Skull Island
46. It Comes at Night
47. Happy End (foreign movie, did not write review)
48. Crown Heights
49. Split
50. 1922
51. Personal Shopper
52. Landline
53. Thank You for Your Service
54. Beatriz at Dinner
55. Chuck
56. Atomic Blonde
57. Shot Caller
58. Wheelman
59. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
60. Wonder
61. Brigsby Bear
62. The Lego Batman Movie
63. Megan Leavey
64. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
65. Wonderstruck
66. Only the Brave
67. Marshall
68. Menashe
69. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
70. Walking Out
71. American Made
72. Annabelle: Creation
73. Beauty and the Beast
74. Imperial Dreams
75. Gifted
76. Murder on the Orient Express
77. My Friend Dahmer
78. The Zookeeper's Wife
79. The Glass Castle
80. The Foreigner
81. Free Fire
82. Win It All
83. The Wall
84. Jungle
85. Life
86. My Cousin Rachel
87. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
88. The Ballad of Lefty Brown
89. The Fate of the Furious
90. Happy Death Day
91. Breathe
92. The Man Who Invented Christmas
93. Maudie
94. Patti Cake$
95. Sleight
96. Alone in Berlin
97. A United Kingdom
98. Trespass Against Us
99. The Mountain Between Us
100. War Machine
101. Lowriders
102. Justice League
103. To the Bone
104. Ghost in the Shell
105. Wakefield
106. Downsizing
107. Bright
108. The Tribes of Palos Verdes
109. The Hitman's Bodyguard
110. Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
111. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
112. The Mummy
113. The Greatest Showman
114. Rough Night
115. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
116. Sand Castle
117. The Circle
118. American Assassin
119. CHiPs
120. Death Note
121. 47 Meters Down
122. The Belko Experiment
123. The Great Wall
124. Fist Fight
125. Baywatch
126. Snatched
127. Suburbicon
128. Wilson
129. The Dark Tower
130. Queen of the Desert
131. The House
132. Flatliners
133. Sleepless
134. Geostorm
135. All Eyez on Me
136. The Snowman
137. The Book of Henry
138. The Space Between Us
139. Daddy's Home 2

 

[909]

Spenser Confidential (2020), directed by Peter Berg

You know what I really wanted from this coronavirus infested year? Yet another collaboration between Mark Wahlberg and Peter Berg. There wasn't one of those last year, so there was a void in the 2019 film schedule that will forever remain unfilled. This was obviously intended to be a starring vehicle for Winston Duke and Mark Wahlberg, and to that end this did receive a fair amount of advertising on regular television. Netflix movies usually do not get that kind of publicity. The only two I can remember that being the case for are Roma and The Irishman. That's it. It's possible that I would have waited even longer to watch Spenser Confidential, but the fact is that there isn't anything coming out in theaters or much of anywhere else. There is a void in the current film schedule that needs to be filled. When it comes to movies like this one, there's something that I really get a kick out of. Does anyone outside of Boston enjoy the romanticizing of Boston in these kinds of movies? Whenever I see a movie revel in the setting of Boston, it immediately annoys me. The Departed is not a movie that I would say does this. Shitty, poorly made and poorly thought out movies like Spenser Confidential are the kinds of movies that romanticize Boston, and it bothers me very much. I know for sure that I'm not the only one who feels this way. The accent, the use of shitty Irish bars, of Southie, all that stuff usually sucks fucking ass. Now that I'm done with that, let's get to the movie.

Spenser Confidential begins five years back from the actual setting of the movie, still in Boston of course, but with Spenser (Mark Wahlberg) in a much different role. Spenser was a police officer in Boston, until one day he decided to make a pretty bad decision. He went to the house of his captain, Boylan (Michael Gaston), and after seeing that Boylan had beaten his wife, he snapped. Spenser beat him up very badly, and you can't beat up a police officer, so he was sent to prison on a five year bid. Due to the manner of his crime, he was also placed in general population. This only matters because we are kicked to Spenser's last day in prison, which was five years later. Spenser was in the library with Squeeb (Post Malone), having a friendly conversation. It turns out this conversation was not so friendly. Squeeb is part of the Aryan Nation, so he and some other guys attack Spenser. They fail. After this, Spenser is released. In the process of leaving prison, he avoids his ex-girlfriend Cissy (Iliza Shlesinger) while being picked up by Henry (Alan Arkin), his mentor of sorts.

Upon arriving at Henry's house, I think everyone knows the deal with this kind of movie. Nothing is the way that it used to be. It turns out that Spenser is trying to entirely avoid Cissy because she's crazy. That wasn't exactly surprising. It also turns out that Spenser's dog no longer cares for him all that much. The reason? Henry has also taken in another guy released from prison, and he is Hawk (Winston Duke). Henry runs a gym at which cops and guys like Hawk train and learn how to fight. Hawk does not really know how to fight at all. Spenser wants to become a truck driver and get out of Massachusetts, so that's what he's looking forward to. That won't happen. The second day Spenser is out of the joint, some bad shit goes down. Boylan is killed in a bus yard, and almost immediately Spenser is suspected because he'd beaten Boylan up those years ago. Driscoll (Bokeem Woodbine) is Spenser's lone friend on the force and can easily put people off of Spenser, who obviously didn't do anything. But what went down? For Spenser, this is an itch that must be scratched.

The most clear observation I had of Spenser Confidential is that the two leads have literally no chemistry. I think this was supposed to be a buddy comedy, and in that case a lack of chemistry completely dooms this movie. I didn't find much of anything here to be funny at all, so the positives, such as they are, are in the action scenes. The action scenes are not bad and its been a little while since I've seen an action movie, so perhaps I'm seeing those scenes in a better light than they deserve. The other problem with the movie is that none of it makes sense. I realize that this movie is adapted from a book, but this is a straight out bad story. I don't think that a Mark Wahlberg movie is inherently bad even though he's shown little range over the majority of his career. It's the story. I don't understand how one random officer could hold so much power over an entire police department and gangs. I also don't understand how Spenser could have been his partner and not known. The characters in this movie are also not very well fleshed out at all. Ultimately what I'm trying to say about this story is that Peter Berg should stick to making movies about events that actually happened.

I would have thought that something would be a solid movie if it was adapted from a book, but because it isn't I feel like I should be rating it even worse than I ordinarily would rate a movie. The blatant sequel bait at the end of the movie was rather jarring considering how weak this movie was as a whole. Perhaps the worst part is that the mystery in this film is so trite and comes down to something I find extremely boring? I don't know. What I do know is that I won't ever watch this again. There are some other unmentioned characters in this movie that can best be described as caricatures, all of which will probably return should there be a sequel. Please don't make a sequel.

3.5/10

2020 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. The Invisible Man
2. Bad Boys for Life
3. The Gentlemen
4. Birds of Prey
5. Big Time Adolescence
6. Sonic the Hedgehog
7. The Call of the Wild
8. Underwater
9. The Rhythm Section
10. The Last Full Measure
11. Spenser Confidential
12. Like a Boss
13. The Grudge
14. Dolittle
15. Fantasy Island

 

[HarleyQuinn]

My mother's a big fan of the book series and refused to watch the movie due to the poor casting of Wahlberg as the lead character.