I thought it was great, personally. Carrey likes to pontificate and sound like the smartest guy in the room these days, sure, but here's a piece that steps into not only a case of method acting gone mad but the mentality of those who even go method. Add in some really solemn moments as Jim talks about those he loved who died and it becomes clear that we're not watching a doc about an actor playing a role, we're seeing the consequences of forcing identity instead of allowing it to develop.
It is a coincidence, or rather really bad planning that leads to me watching two of Besson's films in one week. I don't often make that mistake, and I didn't realize that I would, but it turns out that I did. It turns out that I like Anna more than most, but I'm surprised as to why. I don't think this is a good film at all, it's rather derivative of other films. What I was thinking as I was watching this was that Besson or someone else had watched Atomic Blonde and wanted to put their own spin on things. Their spin is also simply not as good, there are reasons for this that I will explain as I go. I heard numerous people complaining about one of them, that's the thing that sticks out the most. I'm trying to pad this a little bit but I also don't want to give away my whole review. Anyway, because this is a Besson film, some things are to be expected these days. The visuals are supposed to be extremely clean, but this film is set in a time long gone by and as a result that feels strange. You expect Besson to tell the same story and that's exactly what he does, so you make of that what you want. What I want is for a filmmaker to do something different than what I've seen before, but failing that I would like them to execute their film to the fine details. Anna does not do that and it is not a good film, simple as that. Is it really bad though? I don't think I'd say that, and I think some of the piling on is because reviewers are tired of Luc Besson.
I don't know how to describe a movie that plays fucking games with time shifting to the extent that this one does. The most lame and lazy form of storytelling is when a filmmaker decides to repeatedly show the viewer something and immediately flashback after those scenes to show the things we did not see. I wish I could explain how many times we saw those screens detailing the loss or gain of time, but I lost track of that shit. Let's try to start the film with its true start. This thing kicks off in Moscow during the early 80s, with a man named Vassiliev (Eric Godon) taking control of the KGB. He does so by finding American CIA agents in Moscow and having them captured, then summarily executed. The heads are sent to an agent in the US, Leonard Miller (Cillian Murphy), and that's that. I think I can do with two or three of these time jumps, so I'll continue. We jump forward to around 1985, but I'm not sure Besson is even sure of where he's jumping forward to. There are reasons why I think this as I'm sure you're aware. I also may get some of these out of order. When we come forward this time, we're still in Moscow about five years later. Or are we?
This time, the film focuses on Anna Pliatova (Sasha Luss). She is in a market in Moscow selling matryoshka dolls when approached by a French modeling agent who wishes to send her to Paris. That's exactly where this is going. When she arrives in Paris, she is forced to live in a house with a lot of other models, but it turns out she's a natural at modeling. This is going to last for a long time. While at a party, Anna meets Oleg (Andrew Howard), a businessman from St. Petersburg. Their relationship pushes forward very fast, but Anna has also started one with a fellow model, Maud (Lera Abova). Eventually Anna is invited back to Oleg's place in Paris, at which point Oleg reveals his work. He's an arms dealer, believes in liberating people from the clutches of evil, whatever that shit is. That's when the gig is up, Anna goes in the bathroom to get her gun and shoots him in the head. There's one last flashback I wish to cover here, it's with regard to how she became a KGB agent. Anna was a junkie, not quite someone who did bad things, but she was abused by her boyfriend Petyr (Alexander Petrov). One day, Petyr does something really bad, and I must leave some intrigue and not spoil everything. It turns out that Alex (Luke Evans) is a KGB agent who has followed them back to their house, he wants to recruit Anna and make something of her. With their hard driving boss Olga (Helen Mirren), they're going to have a little setup where Anna will be an agent while reporting to Olga, but there are tests that must be passed.
The film has blatant disrespect for the audience, so even though there is good action, there's probably going to be a lot that I say on this subject. The use of technology here is completely beyond the pale and I do not understand why a junkie would have a laptop in the 1980s, or why someone would carry around USB sticks, or have phones that belong in the early 00s and late 90s. I just don't get it. Anna also has too many twists and turns, the flashbacks do not serve as a feature in any way and are terrible. By absolutely every standard you could use, when taking everything into judgment as a whole, this is a very poorly made film. I could be generous and simply say it's poorly made. The sequence of the events isn't always confusing, but it's very frustrating to have these time shifts and I heard people complaining about that as I was watching it. The filmmaker is deliberately withholding information from the audience, and it's lazy. At a point it becomes impossible to place any trust in the characters and believe in what they're doing. It seems that Besson thought he could make his own John Wick, but he couldn't. The lead actress also doesn't have the ability to convey all of these scenarios, all of these emotional issues that would come with being twisted and turned to this point. I feel how I feel on this one.
When the action scenes happen, they're great. That's something that needs to be stated outright. There is a scene inside of a KGB facility that borders on masterful in its conception and execution. The problem is that the rest of Anna simply doesn't match up to that in any meaningful way. As I'm writing this out, the more I'm beginning to dislike the film. The hand to hand combat scenes, of which there were very few, were all very unrealistic. That's what this was as a whole, it just doesn't match up with the realities of being a period piece. I know that I shouldn't look for realism while watching a film like this one, but my intelligence shouldn't be blatantly insulted to this extent. The thing just doesn't make sense, even though in many respects it is very entertaining. I think I would watch a hot girl shooting people up no matter what, and this is a real test of that. Deep down to my core, I know exactly how bad this really was.
4.5/10
2019 Films Ranked
1. Booksmart
2. Avengers: Endgame
3. Toy Story 4
4. Us
5. Gloria Bell
6. Arctic
7. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
8. The Beach Bum
9. Rocketman
10. High Flying Bird
11. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
12. Captain Marvel
13. Long Shot
14. Shazam!
15. Paddleton
16. Late Night
17. Hotel Mumbai
18. Cold Pursuit
19. Shaft
20. Happy Death Day 2U
21. Ma
22. Greta
23. Aladdin
24. Triple Frontier
25. Fighting with My Family
26. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
27. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
28. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
29. Brexit
30. The Dirt
31. Velvet Buzzsaw
32. Little
33. Alita: Battle Angel
34. The Kid
35. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
36. The Upside
37. The Dead Don't Die
38. Dumbo
39. The Hummingbird Project
40. Escape Room
41. Tolkien
42. Captive State
43. The Highwaymen
44. Pet Sematary
45. The Intruder
46. Child's Play
47. Brightburn 48. Anna
49. What Men Want
50. Men in Black: International
51. Unicorn Store
52. The Curse of La Llorona
53. Miss Bala
54. Hellboy
55. Glass
56. Dark Phoenix
57. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
58. The Hustle
59. The Best of Enemies
60. The Prodigy
61. Polar
62. Serenity
I had read recently from the filmmaker that legally, they could not reference or homage any of the Chucky series aspects or themes, characters, etc, (except anything that was present in the first film) so that explains why they went in such a different direction. I just wish that direction would have been a bit more coherant and not a jumbled up clusterfuck of concepts.
Ideal Home is a movie that I didn't know existed until I was alerted that it would be expiring from HBO in July, at which point I Googled the thing and found out what I wanted to know. Onto my list it went. Ideal Home is a very standard concept movie, one that you'd think you'd seen before except you haven't seen it in this context. It's cool that the film was made in this context. I found the characters to be incredibly realistic instead of being stereotypes as often happens in movies with gay men. I'm not a huge fan of Paul Rudd, but his performance here was pretty good and he reminded me of what my brother will be like when he's older. That's a strange thing to say about a movie, when someone looks enough like my brother where I can feel that as things are playing out. I am not sure that has ever happened before, that a character felt like it represented him. So, on some level you can see what I think about this movie and I am going to give it a nice score as a result of that. This is the kind of movie that feels like a diversity movie and is still good, contains its own story and is not trying to send a message to the viewer. At the end you should just feel that way anyway because it is the rational way to think. After the day I had, spending time with my brother, to come home and watch this was strange and oddly cool. There weren't movies like this one a very short time ago.
Paul (Paul Rudd) and Erasmus (Steve Coogan) are a gay couple who lives in New Mexico. They both work together on a cooking show that Erasmus hosts, it is similar to Rachael Ray's show. One time when Erasmus was young, he had a heterosexual encounter with a woman who decided to have their baby, who was named Beau (Jake McDorman). Beau had a son of his own (Jack Gore), they are camped out in a motel in Albuquerque. The reason for that is because Beau beat up a hooker and has serious substance abuse problems. Anyway, Beau is about to be arrested, he has no wife because she died due to substance abuse issues, but he doesn't want his son to wind up with CPS. So, he shoves him out of a window with Bible in hand, some money, and some directions. Of course, the kid winds up with Paul and Erasmus. Erasmus has never met Beau before, nor met Beau's son, so he's not entirely sure of what's going on until he reads a note. Beau winds up in prison, and there's not all that much to this story. First, the couple needs to figure out the kid's name. His name is Angel, he prefers to be called Bill because he hates his name. They also have to learn how to take care of the kid because they've never done that before. Of course, their relationship also has some issues.
There isn't much to the film beyond what I've already said in these two paragraphs. I've been trying very hard to shorten reviews of films that aren't great and aren't poor, I still haven't figured out how I'm going to do that. I'm trying and that day is coming though. What I thought was that there are very few depictions of a realistically gay couple. Almost every gay character, including those played by gay men, has to be stereotypically gay in some way. That doesn't really exist here, and because of that I liked the film even though it's a rather generic comedy. The events are predictable but there are interesting variations on the story, in large part due to the performances of our two leads. Rudd and Coogan make for a funny couple and I wasn't expecting that at all. These guys tried very hard to make things work, I appreciated it. There aren't many side characters as I think I've made clear, the only one I didn't mention was Melissa (Alison Pill), who was a CPS agent doing the things you expect in this kind of movie. That's it though. I laughed a lot as this story played out. So, I thought it was good, not great, not poor. This is a short review because of the content of the movie, but I need to figure out a way to shorten nearly all of them to this extent. I just haven't figured out how.
7/10
2018 Films Ranked
1. Roma
2. A Star Is Born
3. First Reformed
4. The Favourite
5. Widows
6. First Man
7. BlacKkKlansman
8. Blindspotting
9. Leave No Trace
10. Black Panther
11. If Beale Street Could Talk
12. The Sisters Brothers
13. A Private War
14. Avengers: Infinity War
15. Stan & Ollie
16. Green Book
17. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
18. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
19. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
20. On My Skin
21. Private Life
22. Climax
23. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
24. Mid90s
25. Eighth Grade
26. Sorry to Bother You
27. Suspiria
28. Vice
29. The Old Man & the Gun
30. Vox Lux
31. Bad Times at the El Royale
32. The Other Side of the Wind
33. Searching
34. A Simple Favor
35. The Hate U Give
36. Unsane
37. Disobedience
38. Boy Erased
39. Bumblebee
40. Mary Poppins Returns
41. Creed II
42. Hold the Dark
43. The Land of Steady Habits
44. Halloween
45. Ant-Man and the Wasp
46. Beirut
47. Mary Queen of Scots
48. Aquaman 49. Ideal Home
50. Outlaw King
51. Overlord
52. Ben Is Back
53. Monsters and Men
54. The Mule
55. On the Basis of Sex
56. Bohemian Rhapsody
57. White Boy Rick
58. Papillon
59. Game Night
60. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
61. Instant Family
62. Alpha
63. The Front Runner
64. The Predator
65. Apostle
66. The Angel
67. The Commuter
68. Beautiful Boy
69. The Nun
70. Operation Finale
71. The Equalizer 2
72. The Spy Who Dumped Me
73. Yardie
74. Bird Box
75. 12 Strong
76. Venom
77. Skyscraper
78. The Meg
79. Assassination Nation
80. The Girl in the Spider's Web
81. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
82. 22 July
83. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
84. The Little Stranger
85. Tomb Raider
86. Night School
87. The 15:17 To Paris
88. Peppermint
89. Mile 22
90. The First Purge
91. Hunter Killer
92. The Cloverfield Paradox
93. Mute
94. Kin
95. Hell Fest
96. Proud Mary
97. Robin Hood
98. The Happytime Murders
99. The Outsider
100. Slender Man
Strange coincidence, I was looking through my HBO recordings on my DVR the other night and watched Ideal Home a few nights ago too. Think you summed it up well. I had a few good laughs, I enjoyed it but there was nothing special or of major substance to it. Glad it wasn’t a stereotype parade and I have a soft spot for some of the cast. The kid was played by the main child from that Kids Are Alright sitcom and a bit of a different role, so was interesting watching him play a completely different character.
Strange coincidence, I was looking through my HBO recordings on my DVR the other night and watched Ideal Home a few nights ago too. Think you summed it up well. I had a few good laughs, I enjoyed it but there was nothing special or of major substance to it. Glad it wasn’t a stereotype parade and I have a soft spot for some of the cast. The kid was played by the main child from that Kids Are Alright sitcom and a bit of a different role, so was interesting watching him play a completely different character.
I thought it was generic in all but the realism of it. There are basically no comedy movies with gay people that have the catty realistic behavior that exists in a relationship with two men. It's always way overboard, but these two reminded me so much of my brother and his fiance.
I should have known that the man who directed a trash fest like The Intruder had made something even worse before that. The best you could say about Deon Taylor is that he's learning from his mistakes and that the film from last year is much worse than the one from this year. The problem is that Traffik still exists on the same plane and in the same universe as every other movie. It's bad, really bad. There's an opening screen where it is claimed that Traffik is inspired by true events, which is an absolutely insipid lie that the filmmaker uses to make an absolute disaster of a film. I actually cannot believe that even Lionsgate would allow the movie to be released with that screen at the start of it. It's unbelievable. When you're making something bad, there's a benefit to having the gall to make crazy claims, but when you're making a film about human trafficking, that's not the time to do so. The subject is handled with a complete lack of care, and in some ways that's hilarious while in others it is not. It's a new genre where movies are made to exploit people's racism for a cheap thrill, or a subgenre, or you know, something. This is a movie I would consider to be in that category, where it plays on people's assumptions of racism or on the expectation of delivering it throughout the film. It's really strange, I honestly don't know what to think of that aspect of Traffik. I just know the film is bad. It is very very bad.
Brea (Paula Patton) is a journalist in Sacramento who works for a paper edited by Carl (William Fichtner). Carl has received a story from another reporter who wrote it faster than Brea, it's a pretty good story I guess. When Brea complains, Carl threatens to fire her because her work was just going to be a fluff piece. Afterwards, Brea goes out and we get to meet some friends. There's her boyfriend John (Omar Epps), and another couple, Darren (Laz Alonso) and Malia (Roselyn Sanchez). Darren is a bit aggressive in all forms and conversations, and he's a bit antsy to talk. He tells Brea that John has a surprise planned, a getaway weekend that John has not yet mentioned. You know, whatever. While in the bathroom, Brea says that she thinks John is going to propose, but she doesn't want to get married. This is the most standard, most basic, most lazy setup scenario for the movie that is to come. I still haven't figured out the significance of the first few scenes other than that it needs to be established she is a journalist. There are many better ways of doing that, but Traffik is not a film where that comes into play. Also, obviously, John does intend to propose because his girlfriend is gorgeous. No surprise there.
Apparently John and Brea had a fight, but we are only shown flashbacks of that. When John comes back from wherever he went, he has a classic car that was apparently Brea's dream car, which he had built in his shop before their vacation. How nice. While on their way into the Sierra Nevadas, they have sex in the car and do all kinds of shit that feels like a sleazy director filming these things. This happens over and over again, by the way. When they stop at a gas station, they encounter some weird biker fucks. There's a lot of them. First Brea runs into Red (Luke Goss) and spills stuff all over him, after which he buys her order. Then, in the bathroom, Brea meets Cara (Dawn Olivieri), an abused looking woman who also looks like she's on a lot of drugs. While that's going on, a biker is bothering John outside. John punches the guy in the face, after which the sheriff (Missi Pyle) comes over and breaks things up, sending everyone on their way. After that, we get some stuff on their way to the house, but John and Brea eventually arrive. Darren and Malia are supposed to arrive in a few days, but it turns out that they arrive much sooner. So, everything's good. The issue is that when John punched that biker, he created a shitstorm, and it is the job of Traffik to resolve that in a goofy and very shitty way.
The movie flat out sucks, I already mentioned what I thought about the tie to human trafficking, in a word it's very tasteless. The eroticism of the movie is funny, and it's interesting because of how Paula Patton looks, but this ties into the theme in a way that I don't really think is acceptable. I can admit that too. If you don't know what's going to happen as the film is playing out, I can only assume that you've never watched a movie before. When it comes to people going up to a house and attacking people, and them having to escape from that house and go on the run, everything in this is exactly what you'd think. I straight out did not like this and thought The Intruder was a lot better. The differences are pretty clear, The Intruder is largely confined to a house and committed to building tension, Traffik drops all kinds of shit on the viewer and you have to deal with it any way you can. For example, I didn't understand how Brea was able to crack the code on a phone until about 30 minutes after I finished the film. So, make of that what you want. Traffik also has horrible reviews, so it isn't just me who thinks this is a shitty film. It's pretty poorly made too.
I'm kind of sick of movies that play on racial problems that are fitting of a Trump era, because almost all of them are done in the most lazy way imaginable. When the movie finally starts taking the subject matter seriously after showing you tits and ass for almost a whole hour, I don't know what gives here. What can you say about something like that? The ending screen with all the statistics about human trafficking is one of the best delusions I've ever seen. What can possibly lead anyone to believe their movie was really about making people aware of human trafficking? Give me a break. All the performances here are horrible, no exception. The director is absolute trash on all levels. There is a scene here that uses Nina Simone's music, where she's talking about lynched black people as Brea is captured by Missi Pyle. Like, what? That shit is unconscionable, but as always when I see things that make me feel that emotion, I did laugh a little bit. The balls to make something like this, I don't even know what to say. The way everything plays out, it all happens instantly from one scene to the next as well. As soon as Brea finds a phone with pictures of beaten women (who has those), she unlocks it and looks through it, immediately after which someone comes knocking on the door looking for the phone. Give me a break. I think the director is just too stupid to know what they're actually doing, I don't know how this was even made. I should note that due to how ridiculous the movie was, I never got bored. That has to count for something.
3/10
2018 Films Ranked
1. Roma
2. A Star Is Born
3. First Reformed
4. The Favourite
5. Widows
6. First Man
7. BlacKkKlansman
8. Blindspotting
9. Leave No Trace
10. Black Panther
11. If Beale Street Could Talk
12. The Sisters Brothers
13. A Private War
14. Avengers: Infinity War
15. Stan & Ollie
16. Green Book
17. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
18. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
19. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
20. On My Skin
21. Private Life
22. Climax
23. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
24. Mid90s
25. Eighth Grade
26. Sorry to Bother You
27. Suspiria
28. Vice
29. The Old Man & the Gun
30. Vox Lux
31. Bad Times at the El Royale
32. The Other Side of the Wind
33. Searching
34. A Simple Favor
35. The Hate U Give
36. Unsane
37. Disobedience
38. Boy Erased
39. Bumblebee
40. Mary Poppins Returns
41. Creed II
42. Hold the Dark
43. The Land of Steady Habits
44. Halloween
45. Ant-Man and the Wasp
46. Beirut
47. Mary Queen of Scots
48. Aquaman
49. Ideal Home
50. Outlaw King
51. Overlord
52. Ben Is Back
53. Monsters and Men
54. The Mule
55. On the Basis of Sex
56. Bohemian Rhapsody
57. White Boy Rick
58. Papillon
59. Game Night
60. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
61. Instant Family
62. Alpha
63. The Front Runner
64. The Predator
65. Apostle
66. The Angel
67. The Commuter
68. Beautiful Boy
69. The Nun
70. Operation Finale
71. The Equalizer 2
72. The Spy Who Dumped Me
73. Yardie
74. Bird Box
75. 12 Strong
76. Venom
77. Skyscraper
78. The Meg
79. Assassination Nation
80. The Girl in the Spider's Web
81. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
82. 22 July
83. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
84. The Little Stranger
85. Tomb Raider
86. Night School
87. The 15:17 To Paris
88. Peppermint
89. Mile 22
90. The First Purge
91. Hunter Killer
92. The Cloverfield Paradox
93. Mute
94. Kin
95. Hell Fest
96. Proud Mary
97. Robin Hood 98. Traffik
99. The Happytime Murders
100. The Outsider
101. Slender Man
I've already watched one movie about the Boston Marathon bombing, it was Patriots Day. Patriots Day was about the investigation of, the things leading to, and events after the bombing, with Mark Wahlberg basically serving as the eyes of the audience, following everything around but not really making an impact on the story. Stronger is about something a lot different, the kind of thing that a disaster should be about. Making a movie about one of the victims can be considered to be in poor taste, particularly when that victim dies, but in this case the movie is entirely about the victim and their struggle after having been bombed. The movie could have went deeper, but I think this was careful in ensuring that it did not make someone out to be a hero when they'd had their legs blown off. A lot of people who say things like BOSTON STRONG in the aftermath of bombings neglect the feelings of the victims, they engaged in the tragedy like it actually happened to them, but people should be aware that it did not. This is the kind of movie that people should watch in order to have some level of understanding about the tragedy. Instead, people did not watch this, Stronger only grossed $4.2 million in North America. That's rather paltry by modern standards, and certainly the film cost a decent amount to make. For what it's worth, Patriots Day didn't make anything either. People do not have the hunger to relive tragedy, but studios believe that we do. It is one of many examples of Hollywood being out of touch.
Stronger begins in a Costco somewhere in Boston, the story being centered around Jeff Bauman (Jake Gyllenhaal). Jeff is a guy who is probably to good to be working in the Costco deli, but I did something like that before and feel like that's the land of underachievement. That's what we do. He lives in a small apartment with his alcoholic, chain smoking mom Patty (Miranda Richardson), and this does not seem to be the greatest existence. The guy drinks a lot too, I wouldn't go so far as to call him an alcoholic, but they showed one scene and I noticed it. Anyway, at a bar, he learns that his ex-girlfriend Erin (Tatiana Maslany) is running in the Boston Marathon. She's raising money for the hospital she works at, and Jeff is definitely down with supporting that. He has what seems to be an ulterior motive though, he wants to get back with Erin. No big shock there. He heads to the finish line the next day to wait for her with a big sign, but as you know, bad shit happens. The Marathon is bombed, Jeff's legs come clean off. He is saved by Carlos (Carlos Sanz), but the best way to describe this in Jeff's mind is that he was "saved". I don't know how a person moves forward from this, I don't think I would have the mental strength to carry on. That's where the inspiration in this film comes from, but there's quite a bit more to go.
As expected after the bombing, Erin did not make it to the finish line. She sees Jeff as a victim on television and jets to the hospital, along with the rest of Jeff's family. Jeff Sr. (Clancy Brown) is his father, and he has a lot of good lines as these things play out. The Bauman family is typically Bostonian. You could call them endearing or white trash, that's up for you to decide. They like to yell at the television a lot. Anyway, Erin arrives at the hospital and somehow manages to sit through this. Eventually, Jeff regains consciousness and is able to tell the FBI about the bomber, the one he saw being the older brother Tamerlan. After a while, Jeff is discharged from the hospital, but picking up and carrying on after an event like this is extremely hard. His mother drinks a lot, as already mentioned, so that's easy for Jeff to fall back into. There are also mental problems that come with experiencing being bombed. This adjustment would be too hard for me. The other fact is that his life as he knew it was over. He could not walk, could not drive, could not do anything without a lot of help. Going to the bathroom is difficult and the way everything is structured leads to someone having accidents. Getting up and down the stairs to his apartment is very painful. His mother is not cooperative and wants him to do things that a bombing victim does not want to do. He has to go through very painful rehab. But, there's Erin. She loves him and feels bad for him. I didn't understood what he thought of her until much later in this film.
I don't think this is a recovery story wrapped around a romance story, the film is rather tough viewing. Stronger is one of those very realistic stories that deals with the idea of being in a wheelchair as you would believe it to be. A person may get shit on themselves and have to dive into the bathtub without help. This would be very difficult. When losing control of one's faculties by getting drunk, it's a much worse situation. I do have high standards for a film like this one and I have expectations of it. The ending of the film does not quite meet my expectations even though the events contained in it are certainly true to reality. This is a very strong performance from Gyllenhaal, Maslany, and Richardson. To play an alcoholic mother interested in pimping your disabled kid out for television fame requires some very good range and acting talent. To play an amputee and make someone believe that this person could have no legs, that's a tough ask as well. The film also realistically handles the reality that being this disabled creates a burden for the people tasked with providing care for their loved one. The focus is well placed on these things, and of being unable to deal with the notoriety that comes with having ones legs blown off in a very public and prominent terrorist attack.
I think where Stronger has strengths beyond what I've already mentioned, is in things like the Boston Strong mindset, or the reality that someone has to put up with when this happened to them and they aren't independently wealthy. Life becomes more difficult than can possibly be described, but Stronger does a good job of this. I don't care for the ending as I already said, but the film has a raw quality that I couldn't look away from and can't describe. You'd have to see it to understand what I meant. The director is also careful to ensure that the scenes are given the time required for a person to understand a legless reality. When Jeff gets in the bathtub, or goes to take a shit and falls down, all of these things take a very long time. It's not enough that someone is a symbol of how tough a city is, their reality is that they are struggling and a lot of douchebags would rather puff out their chest because their city is tough. Stronger didn't make money in some part because it doesn't appeal to that mindset, likely because the film wasn't released quickly enough after the bombing, and because a lot of these realistic dramas don't catch people's attentions. This is the kind of story about an attack that more people should watch. The badness of the ending is in that we're given a lot of those platitudes about how life moves on, but it doesn't and I don't like the idea that someone may come to grips with themselves. The ending also rings hollow when you know that Jeff and Erin's relationship fell apart.
7.5/10
2017 Films Ranked
1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
7. Mudbound
8. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
9. Logan
10. Baby Driver
11. The Post
12. Wonder Woman
13. The Big Sick
14. Lady Bird
15. Wind River
16. Thor: Ragnarok
17. Logan Lucky
18. The Beguiled
19. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
20. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
21. Brawl in Cell Block 99
22. John Wick: Chapter 2
23. The Disaster Artist
24. The Lost City of Z
25. First They Killed My Father
26. A Ghost Story
27. Darkest Hour
28. Spider-Man: Homecoming
29. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
30. Sweet Virginia
31. It
32. Battle of the Sexes 33. Stronger
34. Brad's Status
35. Okja
36. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
37. Kong: Skull Island
38. It Comes at Night
39. Crown Heights
40. Split
41. 1922
42. Personal Shopper
43. Landline
44. Beatriz at Dinner
45. Chuck
46. Atomic Blonde
47. Shot Caller
48. Brigsby Bear
49. Wheelman
50. The Lego Batman Movie
51. Megan Leavey
52. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
53. Marshall
54. Menashe
55. Walking Out
56. American Made
57. Annabelle: Creation
58. Beauty and the Beast
59. Imperial Dreams
60. Gifted
61. Murder on the Orient Express
62. The Zookeeper's Wife
63. The Glass Castle
64. Free Fire
65. Win It All
66. The Wall
67. Life
68. My Cousin Rachel
69. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
70. Breathe
71. The Man Who Invented Christmas
72. Maudie
73. Sleight
74. Alone in Berlin
75. A United Kingdom
76. Trespass Against Us
77. The Mountain Between Us
78. War Machine
79. Happy Death Day
80. Lowriders
81. Justice League
82. To the Bone
83. Ghost in the Shell
84. Wakefield
85. Bright
86. The Hitman's Bodyguard
87. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
88. The Mummy
89. The Greatest Showman
90. Rough Night
91. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
92. Sand Castle
93. The Circle
94. American Assassin
95. CHiPs
96. Death Note
97. The Belko Experiment
98. The Great Wall
99. Fist Fight
100. Baywatch
101. Snatched
102. Wilson
103. The Dark Tower
104. Queen of the Desert
105. The House
106. Flatliners
107. Sleepless
108. All Eyez on Me
109. The Book of Henry
110. The Space Between Us
Potential for Endgame spoilers here, but you really shouldn't be reading these if you haven't seen it.
Furious 7 (2015), directed by James Wan
I'm running out of things to say at the opening of reviews for movies in this franchise. I guess I'll start with Paul Walker. As everyone knows, Walker died during filming of Furious 7, which was a situation I'm sure brought bad feelings to production. I didn't act in this movie, but it would prove very difficult to make it through without tears if I was a person who worked on it and worked with him. I thought the production handled the situation with the care that was required. I did notice that the shots with Walker's face were visual effects, but with advancement in technology I didn't realize it until the very end of the film. There are many tricks that were used here in order to ensure that people did not treat this the same way that the character of Livia Soprano was treated. What I'm trying to say is that the CGI was fantastic, the people playing body doubles did an excellent job and actually felt like Paul Walker. The most strange thing about his death is the way he died while doing something befitting of his character, feeling like he had become his character. I don't exactly have the words to describe how I feel about that, but it's different. When exactly did he become so interested in cars? I don't have the answer to that, or at least I don't know it, but it's something I would like to know. It's also interesting in that the franchise primarily consists of people who haven't done anything with their careers outside of the franchise. I think people get worked into treating these productions like they're real, but I think that's part of what makes the franchise feel important. Anyway, I only have one more film to go before the spin-off that premieres next month, and once I'm done I'll create a ranking of some sort.
Where do you even start with this kind of thing? Furious 7 begins with Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) in a hospital bed, comatose after what happened in the previous film. Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) is his brother, he is intent on seeking revenge. To show what he can do, a destroyed emergency room lays in his wake as he leaves. Meanwhile, THE FAMILY has returned to Los Angeles. There's Dom (Vin Diesel), Brian (Paul Walker), Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Tej (Ludacris), and Mia (Jordana Brewster) of course. Mia and Brian now have a son, as we know, and there's some timeline sorting out that has to be done. It needs to be explained what happened to Han (Sung Kang), and bringing the timeline together is really important. When Han and Deckard were shown together at the end of the previous film, Deckard had made some plans of his own. He has sent a package from Tokyo to Los Angeles, it is a bomb, and it destroys the house we have seen in film after film. At the same time, Han is killed, bringing the timeline together. Only took four films after the third one. Of course, Dom has to travel to Tokyo in search of answers, revenge is going to be on the mind. Too many funerals is one of the lines said here. On his trip, we finally re-encounter some of the characters from Tokyo Drift, bringing things full circle. The answers Dom seeks, he does not find.
Meanwhile, there's Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson). Hobbs didn't go anywhere himself. He's still pushing on with his job, but it's getting boring, nothing as fun as what he was doing during the events of the previous film. That is, until the film picks up, because of course that's how things work. It turns out that Deckard Shaw is in his office, and he's looking for revenge. You don't miss with family, whether it's THE FAMILY or HIS FAMILY. His attack leaves Hobbs in the hospital, defeated but not dead. Of course, everyone closes ranks and it's time to get shit done. During Han's funeral, there's someone spying on them, and of course it's Deckard. Dom gives chase, there's a fight, and all of a sudden a black ops team comes shooting their way into the fight. They are led by Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), and he has an idea. He says that he will help Dom in killing Deckard if he does something. The goal is to retrieve God's Eye, which is a program that would serve as an extreme government surveillance measure. This thing uses digital devices to track a person down, and the mission is to retrieve Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel). Ramsey is a hacker, she created the program and has been captured by a mercenary/terrorist, Mose Jakande (Djimon Hounsou). If THE FAMILY does that? They get what they want, they kill Deckard, and they'll be safe. Or will they? You'd think Deckard knows what's going on and will do his best to stop them.
The absolute ridiculousness of Furious 7 is something I believe should be applauded. I felt like this was a film so corny that it could have been conceived in the 1980s. I don't know what comes next in the last film, but obviously, I liked this. It took me some time to come around to it, but once things started to click, the scenes flowed together very smoothly. This isn't as strong as the fifth of sixth entry, but it's good enough that it does rate with them. The franchise is so absurd that when a car flies through three skyscrapers, you're actually expecting it and hopeful the scene turns out the way you want it to. There is very little logic to this, it is entertainment given in the most crowd pleasing way possible. I don't think there's much description required when it comes to a movie like this, and I don't need to tell you what I liked and didn't like. I liked everything after the film got past Han's funeral. It's as simple as that. Beyond the action scenes, there's a plot that works for me, and the fact that the actor who died got a great sendoff/tribute is part of the glue in ensuring that this all comes together. Everything here is exactly what you want, unless it turns out that you don't like this franchise at all, in which case you probably never will.
When it comes to some guy, like myself, who watched these characters for the first time when I was 14 years old, this is the kind of franchise that has some real poignancy. Nothing about these stories should lead to me becoming attached to these characters. My problem was that I never bothered to watch the other films because I couldn't imagine they would live up to the image I had planted in my head. They've surpassed that though, they absolutely have. The scene with Statham and Johnson wasn't exactly what I would have wanted it to be, but those aren't the characters I'm attached to. Truthfully I could go for a movie without them, and in 2020 that's exactly what we're going to get. I don't know what to expect, we'll find out, but I can't wait to see that. That isn't to say I'm not looking forward to Hobbs & Shaw, because I absolutely am. It just isn't what I saw when I was still a kid, when I was still able to become attached to multiple characters in a series. I didn't feel anything like that during Avengers: Endgame when one of the characters died, but another one left me floored and feeling like I'd just seen something that couldn't have actually happened. Except, it did. I'm not saying I was attached to Paul Walker like that, but the ensemble as a whole is what is appealing, his loss doesn't change the fact that I still want to see the living ensemble continue to make films. These movies are insanely popular, but the first real test of their popularity is if the living ensemble can draw a huge box office without the Rock. I'm interested to see how that goes and I'll be there on the first day.
Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019), directed by Jon Watts
When it comes to Spider-Man: Far From Home, there's a question everyone has, and it's a question that I can answer. Does this set up the events after Avengers: Endgame? The answer to that question is that it doesn't in a sense beyond Spider-Man himself, but there are many interesting aspects that could be a factor in the story to come. Who knows though. It turns out that a lot of people were vociferous in not enjoying this film. I don't exactly know why, but I thought it was touching despite some faults that it did have. I also thought Spider-Man: Far From Home was better than Captain Marvel, which was my minimum expectation for the film. That isn't the highest bar to clear, but this hasn't been a good year for films and as a result maybe it is a high bar. I don't know, your mileage may vary on this one. I think in this case, it depends on how much you like Spider-Man, what your hopes were for the MCU after Tony Stark, and probably most importantly if you think that the series needed to be radically different once the Thanos saga was over. It was radically different and at the same time it wasn't, there's so many different things at play here and it's easy to have an opinion on all of them. I liked everything except one or two things, that's what I'd hope for from a film in this series. What I am curious about is if more characters who were not part of the MCU will be incorporated as happened at the end of this film. That's a question that will only be answered many months down the road, and nothing's on the release schedule yet. So, who knows?
As you certainly know, Tony Stark is now gone, and the film jumps off from that point. We start off in Mexico, with Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) investigating an incident in Mexico. It's supposed to be a cyclone, that's what was reported, but it isn't. Instead, this is some creature made of sand that I incorrectly assumed was Sandman. All of a sudden, in comes what I know to be Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) out of nowhere, and he fights the creature as we cut away over to New York. The snap was a thing, and I was always interested in how they were going to deal with this. Some people aged and others did not, it's as simple as that. Most of Peter Parker's (Tom Holland) classmates went away with the snap, there were others who have aged five years in the meantime. Peter is still devastated by Tony's death, but there's good news. A trip is planned and his class is heading over to Europe, starting off in Venice and making their way to Paris. Once they get to Paris, Peter has the intention of telling MJ (Zendaya) about his romantic feelings, giving her a necklace at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Bold, but fortune favors the bold and people should try shit like that sometimes. At a fundraiser run by Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) before they leave where Spider-Man makes an appearance, he is told by Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) that Nick Fury has been trying to get a hold of him. Because Peter does not want to do anything with his suit over in Europe, he's going to avoid Nick until he comes back.
Once the tour arrives in Venice, we see some new characters I was not expecting. My favorite is Julius (J.B. Smoove), but we are also introduced to MJ's friend Betty (Angourie Rice), Mr. Harrington (Martin Starr), and Brad (Remy Hil). Brad is a kid who aged and did not disappear during the snap. Anyway, not long after arrival, Parker and his friends are attacked by a water monster that destroys Venice. Eventually Mysterio shows up again to save the city, and we are going to be introduced to him. While in Venice, Peter is given some glasses that Tony Stark wished for him to have. Their purpose is to be revealed later, but they are also Tony's as anyone can see. Anyway, I'm not going to talk about that, but Peter is scheduled to meet with Mysterio. Mysterio is Quentin Beck, a man from another Earth, who came to Earth-616 when the snap destroyed reality as we know it. These Elementals destroyed his Earth, the most dangerous one was Fire, and it is going to present itself in Prague sometime during the following day. Beck says there are many realities in the Multiverse, and he also wants to become Peter's friend. Peter is left with a choice though, one he doesn't want to make but one he will. He's left with the option of continuing on his trip around Europe with his friends, or continuing to be a superhero and dealing with the problems that come with that job. It is, like it or not, a job.
Everyone that you'd expect to be in this, like Peter's best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon), is also in this. I just didn't want to weave every character into my recap, I tried to do it organically. Anyway, the film does some great teases with Mysterio, and I really enjoyed the character as a whole. Some may feel differently, but I thought this was a nice update to modern times, it was reasonably unexpected because the trailer didn't hint at it, and Jake Gyllenhaal gave a strong performance as always. It's difficult to close out Phase 3 in a way where the people involved are still not allowed to choose a future direction for the whole franchise, but I thought it was done properly here. There will also obviously be a third Spider-Man film as everything leads into that being the case, but by no means will that be the last one either. It can't be, the characters are too young and are clearly having too much fun for that to be the case. The people playing these characters are a little older, but this experience gives them the ability to properly handle the roles that they're given. It's rather interesting to me, but I'm really here for the Mysterio movie. Everything else is quite secondary as it relates to my tastes, but when it's good, it's good. The scenes with Peter and MJ are very good. Peter learning to believe in himself and moving on from Tony's death is very good.
I didn't entirely believe that it was possible to translate Mysterio to the screen, so I am very surprised by how this turned out. The illusions in combination with technology of the time are nicely handled, I really enjoyed this a lot. I really did not think this would work out, and for a good amount of time I thought Mysterio was going to pull a grand trick on all of us and save the villainous behavior for a third film. When it didn't turn out like that, I was very satisfied. There's also a large amount of Nick Fury here, that makes the second time this year and I was happy to see that. Even when you'd think the other side characters wouldn't get the time required of them, they actually have enough of it. I would like them to make a show with some of these people involved, but I don't know if that will ever happen. Something else worth mentioning is that the jokes in the movie landed for me when they often didn't for other people, but I think I like Spider-Man a lot and that's the reason why. In any case, Spider-Man: Far From Home does have useful post-credit scenes when the other films often do not, and while I won't spoil those entirely, I didn't expect any of what I was seeing. The action here is a little goofy and sometimes I had a hard time understanding what Spider-Man was intending to do, but overall I think this was a really good superhero film. Time will tell though, it often does with these things.
8/10
2019 Films Ranked
1. Booksmart
2. Avengers: Endgame
3. Toy Story 4
4. Us
5. Gloria Bell
6. Arctic
7. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
8. The Beach Bum 9. Spider-Man: Far From Home
10. Rocketman
11. High Flying Bird
12. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
13. Captain Marvel
14. Long Shot
15. Shazam!
16. Paddleton
17. Late Night
18. Hotel Mumbai
19. Cold Pursuit
20. Shaft
21. Happy Death Day 2U
22. Ma
23. Greta
24. Aladdin
25. Triple Frontier
26. Fighting with My Family
27. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
28. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
29. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
30. Brexit
31. The Dirt
32. Velvet Buzzsaw
33. Little
34. Alita: Battle Angel
35. The Kid
36. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
37. The Upside
38. The Dead Don't Die
39. Dumbo
40. The Hummingbird Project
41. Escape Room
42. Tolkien
43. Captive State
44. The Highwaymen
45. Pet Sematary
46. The Intruder
47. Child's Play
48. Brightburn
49. Anna
50. What Men Want
51. Men in Black: International
52. Unicorn Store
53. The Curse of La Llorona
54. Miss Bala
55. Hellboy
56. Glass
57. Dark Phoenix
58. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
59. The Hustle
60. The Best of Enemies
61. The Prodigy
62. Polar
63. Serenity
909, I got mixed signals from reading your review. It made me feel like you're the type of guy who likes to watch movie reviews on YouTube, where they spend a smooth fifteen minutes shitting on a movie, and then, at the end, give it four out of five stars, anyway.
From now on, probably for the next twenty years anyway, when a film is directed by a woman people are going to talk about how the story is from a female perspective. That is true, of course, but what's important is if the story is any good and had cinematic merit. In this case, it would qualify as being good enough. I found Blockers to be very funny, and in the case where there were things I didn't care for quite so much, they can easily be written off as part of the successes and failures of comedy. Some things land and others don't, at the end one is tasked with deciding how much one side outweighs the other. When it comes to comedy, now that I'm looking at the box offices from last year, now I am very confused about why comedies are failing at the box office in 2019. Is it the premise or the people attached to star in them? There have been good comedies in 2019, but none of them have featured John Cena. None of them have been about games and the implication that people are going to be playing them, and only one comedy in 2019 has featured Kevin Hart. The one with Kevin Hart made well over $100 million, so one of my theories is being challenged. The quality of the comedy may not be what draws, rather the people in it. Go figure that one. Comedy may be the only genre in which movie star power still exists. Where Blockers is successful is in its ability to have a message that's actually worth telling people, to feature scenarios that are a neat spin on the usual. Most importantly Blockers does go where a lot of other comedies will not.
Blockers kicks off sometime in the past, with Lisa (Leslie Mann) dropping off her daughter Julie at kindergarten. Julie is joined by Kayla and Sam, the daughters of Mitchell (John Cena) and Hunter (Ike Barinholtz). They all introduce themselves and become close friends, driven by the friendship of their children. When it's twelve years later, none of the adults are close friends. Julie (Kathryn Newton), Kayla (Geraldine Viswanathan), and Sam (Gideon Adlon) still are friends though, they share a whole lot of information with each other too. Julie tells her friends that she's going to lose her virginity on prom night to her boyfriend, Austin (Graham Phillips). Kayla immediately pledges to do the same thing with Connor (Miles Robbins), so we have a pact. Eventually, Sam feels obligated to join in, she's going to prom with Chad (Jimmy Bellinger), who is the definition of a Chad. He even wears a fedora! While this is going on, Lisa sets up a party for the parents and kids, after which the situation is broken down further for us to understand. Mitchell and Lisa don't talk because Lisa doesn't want to, even though she's a single mother she seems to have no friends beyond her daughter. Hunter has divorced Sam's mother after a cheating situation, and he arrives in amusing fashion with a pledge to make this the best night of Sam's life. Is that what's going to happen? You know, on some level, I guess.
When everyone heads out, with particular note being made to Sam and Hunter having an estranged relationship, Julie makes the mistake of leaving her laptop open. Her mom is very snoopy and overly attached to her daughter, she cannot help herself. When Lisa looks at the laptop, she discovers the sex pact and is furious. How dare her daughter do anything without her? That's what I guess this is all about, I still haven't figured out her motivations. I've tried. Hunter is there and makes sense of the emoji messages, which leads to Sam and Mitchell wanting to go stop their daughters. Hunter does not want to do that, and he thinks that Sam is gay, so he's not particularly worried about Chad. The film gets quite funny from here on out.
Blockers is a comedy with a rather simple premise, so there's only so much a person can divulge about the story before they decide they need to write out the whole thing. I don't want to do that. Reviewing this movie would feel like a minefield if I had a larger audience, but I don't. I think it's a very stereotypically male thing to talk about how we all know what losing our virginity is like, and that it's an experience we all know about, because that's not exactly true. The male and female experience is different and varies from one person to the next. So, I don't think this is a movie that really addresses that in any grandiose way. The message I got here is that eventually parents need to let their children go. Those parents who do not do so ultimately damage their children and create a wedge between themselves and their kid that cannot be broken down. A lot of people still have luddite beliefs, but there are also parents who don't know when it's the right time to give their child advice. Finding that middle ground has proven difficult for parents in a modern world that is completely different to the one they grew up in, which has been the case for parents particularly in the last 120 years. Once technology kicked in, this generational gap accelerated and there's no coming back from that.
Anyway, this is a fucking comedy movie and people need to keep that in mind. The gags, for the most part, are very funny. More land than those that don't. There's good physical comedy, which is a rarity these days. The one liners I thought were good but not great. There are some issues with the film even though I enjoyed it quite a bit. The way the ending comes along is too nice and neat for my taste. Blockers doesn't play it safe until it comes time to resolve the story, which is a puzzling thing to me. All of the performers do a good job with the material they're given and feel like representations of their parent characters, which isn't always the case in these sorts of movies. The buttchugging scene is interesting in the light of this film. For a man to humiliate themselves to get what they want and fail anyway is a little bit different. There's nobody here that feels out of place in any way. All six of the important performances hit their marks. This is also a rare film where an heterosexual adult man and woman have a completely platonic relationship and the idea of them hooking up is out of the question for the entire run time.
I'm in a weird spot because while the progressive politics in the film are in complete alignment with my own, I am so used to seeing actual representations of these characters due to where I live and grew up, that it's a bit strange for me to talk about this. I am not the person to talk about those sorts of things because I am so used to them that I am no longer enamored and enthralled by them. I'm fully aware of how that sounds, but I am willing to acknowledge that it is the case. When I lost my virginity it was a matter of the girl I was with doing what they wanted. They put a target on me and did what they wanted. That's what I'm talking about when I say everyone's experience was different. The film is very committed to the reality that people wish different things for their sons and daughters, you would be a fool not to see it, and everything in Blockers plays off of that. I liked this, and it is good, but I'm not sure it's a great film because it doesn't push the premise as far as it could have been pushed. I do also think that the year in which this film was released is something I'm holding against it a little bit. There were a lot of really strong films in 2018. This was one of them, but due to the way I've already constructed my list, I know which tier each film belongs in and this doesn't hit a level where I loved it. Maybe if Chad had been removed I would feel differently, but he was a bad joke that kept on going for too long.
I said that I was going to shorten reviews of movies that are neither great nor bad, and I do mean that, but something about this subject made me want to keep writing.
7/10
2018 Films Ranked
1. Roma
2. A Star Is Born
3. First Reformed
4. The Favourite
5. Widows
6. First Man
7. BlacKkKlansman
8. Blindspotting
9. Leave No Trace
10. Black Panther
11. If Beale Street Could Talk
12. The Sisters Brothers
13. A Private War
14. Avengers: Infinity War
15. Stan & Ollie
16. Green Book
17. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
18. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
19. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
20. On My Skin
21. Private Life
22. Climax
23. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
24. Mid90s
25. Eighth Grade
26. Sorry to Bother You
27. Suspiria
28. Vice
29. The Old Man & the Gun
30. Vox Lux
31. Bad Times at the El Royale
32. The Other Side of the Wind
33. Searching
34. A Simple Favor
35. The Hate U Give
36. Unsane
37. Disobedience
38. Boy Erased
39. Bumblebee
40. Mary Poppins Returns
41. Creed II
42. Hold the Dark
43. The Land of Steady Habits
44. Halloween
45. Ant-Man and the Wasp 46. Blockers
47. Beirut
48. Mary Queen of Scots
49. Aquaman
50. Ideal Home
51. Outlaw King
52. Overlord
53. Ben Is Back
54. Monsters and Men
55. The Mule
56. On the Basis of Sex
57. Bohemian Rhapsody
58. White Boy Rick
59. Papillon
60. Game Night
61. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
62. Instant Family
63. Alpha
64. The Front Runner
65. The Predator
66. Apostle
67. The Angel
68. The Commuter
69. Beautiful Boy
70. The Nun
71. Operation Finale
72. The Equalizer 2
73. The Spy Who Dumped Me
74. Yardie
75. Bird Box
76. 12 Strong
77. Venom
78. Skyscraper
79. The Meg
80. Assassination Nation
81. The Girl in the Spider's Web
82. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
83. 22 July
84. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
85. The Little Stranger
86. Tomb Raider
87. Night School
88. The 15:17 To Paris
89. Peppermint
90. Mile 22
91. The First Purge
92. Hunter Killer
93. The Cloverfield Paradox
94. Mute
95. Kin
96. Hell Fest
97. Proud Mary
98. Robin Hood
99. Traffik
100. The Happytime Murders
101. The Outsider
102. Slender Man
Annabelle Comes Home (2019), directed by Gary Dauberman
The question when I looked at the release schedule and saw another ConjuringVerse movie so soon after the last, was about the quality of these films and whether or not they could be any good anymore. I may be in the minority, but I found that I liked Annabelle Comes Home. There are some things about this that reminded me of the first Conjuring film, but I think there's an enormous problem with the fact that the films are beholden to the franchise as a whole. The death and destruction that should exist in a horror movie like this one is not there. Now, you see, I'm talking myself out of liking the film so much. WHERE IS THE DEATH? That's a question that I cannot answer. I don't know if this is because the film is released by a large studio, because it was supposed to be for a summer audience, or if the producers are committed to the concept that the movies are given an R rating due to the dread contained within. I will maintain a few things though. Not very many of these movies have been good in any way. I nearly forgot about the second Annabelle movie, which I thought was good and had some real stakes. There was also DEATH. Do you understand what I'm trying to say here? Even when I find myself enjoying a horror movie like this one, in the aftermath of it I find myself thinking about the way that nobody died. That bothers me greatly, but I will say that Annabelle Comes Home left my pleased as I was walking back to my car. Take that for what it's worth. Now I'm glad there is a long break between these movies, but I would prefer some variety in this franchise. They could definitely do it if they wanted to make it happen.
Annabelle Comes Home jumps off in the late 1960s, with Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) retrieving and bringing the Annabelle doll back to their house and room full of evil shit. On their way home, we are shown a display of how powerful and evil this doll actually is. The doll is a conduit for powerful spirits to come into the Earth and haunt people, some shit like that. When they drive, the car comes to a stop in front of a cemetery. Of course there are lots of powerful spirits in such an area. One pushes Ed in front of a truck that its driver could not control, but he gets away. Such is the power of Annabelle, who is then locked away in the case we've seen the doll in many times before. Of course the film could not start any other way. Now, as shown once before, the Warrens have a daughter, Judy (Mckenna Grace). There is the overarching feeling that she may have some of the same psychic abilities that her mom has, which is just another example of how much these are starting to feel like superhero movies of some kind. Four years later is when this film picks back up, with the Warrens going to investigate another case. Their daughter needs a babysitter, of course, and as was common in 1972, people easily had ones they could trust.
Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman) is who the Warrens call when they need help with their daughter, and she has a pretty good relationship with Judy. We follow Judy to school, strange as that sounds, and she sees the spirit of a priest following her around. I couldn't tell if this was a good or a bad ghost, anyway, it doesn't actually matter. Mary Ellen shops at a supermarket where her crush Bob (Michael Cimino) works, and she gets a cake to make with Judy later. This is important. Daniela (Katie Sarife) is Mary Ellen's friend, she arrives at the Warrens house, and this is where I should note there was a newspaper article that appeared earlier in the story. Everyone in the neighborhood knows the Warrens are creepy and Judy is teased as a result of that. Daniela is also aware of this, but she has her own reasons for going there. See, her dad died in a car accident, and she knows that the Warrens either can contact spirits, or that it's all a hoax. She wants to know more, she knows that they have a room full of evil shit, she's going to get in that room. Annabelle (the doll) is in that room too. She's going to get out of that case, going to destroy shit, that much is very clear. Why have a movie if that isn't the case?
The lack of death in this movie is an issue, but only one of the issues that Annabelle Comes Home has. I still believe that the positives outweigh the negatives. One of the largest issues Annabelle Comes Home has is that I am fatigued on spirit and possession horror. I am definitely not the only one who feels this way. The lack of variety in this series is somewhat unnecessary. Yes, this is a series about spirits, that doesn't mean that's all that has to be in these movies. The lack of death and permanent action is a major issue, but this does bring a fair bit to the table. Possibly most importantly is the amount of new spirit characters and trinkets. Cursed samurai armor, Charon, a wonky board game, and a hellhound all make appearances here and made me laugh, or at the very least interested. I also appreciated that Annabelle Comes Home wasn't trying to jump scare me for the entirety of the film. There is good downtime here that is used to flesh out the characters and explain their motivations and lives. There are other films in this series that are just trying to trigger you over and over again, to make you jump out of your seat, and those ones fucking suck. Straight out.
Gary Dauberman apparently adapted It to the big screen, and in some ways this shows. The film is visually pleasing beyond simply the matter of the story. There are some good long shots that look down hallways with a stationary camera, interesting use of color, and one of my favorite things I've spoken of before, the feeling of having a clear layout for the house these events take place in. As I was watching this, in some ways I was thinking about the overall tone of the film being like Stranger Things. Annabelle Comes Home isn't as good, and the characters aren't the same, but there's a similar feeling here. Looking down my rankings list I do see that I have four horror movies in a row counting this one, and I don't know if that's a personal matter of merely the reality of the year. It isn't a very good year, and this is yet another sequel this year. The originality feels like it's lacking in Annabelle Comes Home as well, but the lack of jump scare attempts makes this film much more palatable. There are more Annabelle movies than their are Conjuring ones, which is really strange considering this is a spinoff series. Warner Bros. should really tone this franchise down to one film every two years. Even though I did like this, it was unnecessary and the formula is down to a science. That science is not a good thing.
6.5/10
2019 Films Ranked
1. Booksmart
2. Avengers: Endgame
3. Toy Story 4
4. Us
5. Gloria Bell
6. Arctic
7. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
8. The Beach Bum
9. Spider-Man: Far From Home
10. Rocketman
11. High Flying Bird
12. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
13. Captain Marvel
14. Long Shot
15. Shazam!
16. Paddleton
17. Late Night
18. Hotel Mumbai
19. Cold Pursuit
20. Shaft
21. Happy Death Day 2U
22. Ma 23. Annabelle Comes Home
24. Greta
25. Aladdin
26. Triple Frontier
27. Fighting with My Family
28. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
29. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
30. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
31. Brexit
32. The Dirt
33. Velvet Buzzsaw
34. Little
35. Alita: Battle Angel
36. The Kid
37. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
38. The Upside
39. The Dead Don't Die
40. Dumbo
41. The Hummingbird Project
42. Escape Room
43. Tolkien
44. Captive State
45. The Highwaymen
46. Pet Sematary
47. The Intruder
48. Child's Play
49. Brightburn
50. Anna
51. What Men Want
52. Men in Black: International
53. Unicorn Store
54. The Curse of La Llorona
55. Miss Bala
56. Hellboy
57. Glass
58. Dark Phoenix
59. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
60. The Hustle
61. The Best of Enemies
62. The Prodigy
63. Polar
64. Serenity
The Conjureverse (or whatever the hell it's called) is maybe the most frustrating film series in ages. I really enjoyed the first Conjuring movie, and thought the rest have been shit. But it's not just that they're bad, it's that they always cut the trailers to look decent enough and make me think that maybe they've finally got a good one again, only for me to leave the movies pissed at myself off that those fuckers fooled me again.
I decided after watching Patti Cake$ that I would pick the most displeasing image possible to post with this review. You see what I'm talking about here? I wanted a picture that would perfectly summarize how I felt about this review too, but I'm not sure this did both. What I was thinking about this movie as it was playing out, was that this was a good riff on 8 Mile, but it turns out that this wasn't a riff and it was supposed to be taken seriously, which I could not do. Once the end came, I had a hard time with what I was watching and how corny this became when I could otherwise have bought the seriousness of the film. It turns out that in the end, I cannot find the greatness in a movie about a fat white girl trying to become a rapper. I actually cannot believe that I watched Patti Cake$ at all. Just two or three years ago there is no chance that I would have, in some ways I cannot believe that I have expanded my horizons and taste out to an extent where I can watch something like Patti Cake$ and even tolerate it. Things change in people's lives it seems and this is just one of those ways. I have just blown what the story of this movie actually is, and I'm probably not going to write a very long review here, because as I said I really wanted to cut down the length of some of these. This is the perfect candidate for an opportunity to do so as the film is not my primary subject matter and it wasn't great, it also wasn't very bad. Just imagine throwing your head into a world you never wanted to enter and that's what Patti Cake$ really is.
Patti (Danielle McDonald) is literally exactly what is pictured here. She is white, overweight, from the lower classes in New Jersey, money is hard to come by. She also wants to be a rapper. Patti has a hero, O-Z (Sahr Ngaujah), he is the reason that she seems to be motivated to do this. She has dreams of his music videos, of performing in them as a guest, this is what she wants to do. The reality of her life, as already said, is not so great. Compounded by the facts of not having money is that she seems to be supporting her mother Barb (Bridget Everett) and her Nana (Cathy Moriarty). This all done while working a job at a bar. Obviously, things aren't so good. In time off from the bar, she hangs around with her friend Jheri (Siddharth Dhananjay), they mess around and he's interested in rap too. He works at a pharmacy, which makes for some of the more strange moments in this film. Patti Cake$ was made on a budget of only $1,000,000 and it shows, the more fantastical portions of this movie have a poor production value I cannot really describe. Anyway, Nana has medical bills that have to be paid for, and Barb is a drunk who won't pay her bar tab, presumably because she can't. Such is life in New Jersey.
Some of the people fade in and out of this film to the point where I can't tell you who is who at times, but there are people in the area who rap as well. Eventually, Patti, or Killa P, or Patti Cakes, whichever name you'd prefer to use, she encounters one of them in a gas station parking lot. They get to having a rap battle, it culminates in her burning the guy so bad he feels compelled to headbutt her. Very scummy thing to do, obviously. Anyway, while at this place, she meets Basterd the Antichrist (Mamoudou Athie). Basterd makes his own music, seems to hate life, and you know what? This is getting hard to describe. The facts are as such. Patti's mom is a slut who is very difficult to deal with, but she's trapped living at home. Barb was also once a musician, but she doesn't think rap is real music. You know, that's what kind of movie this is, and you should know that before you get into it. Patti's intent is to use Basterd's equipment in order to create an album with her grandma and with Jheri, and who knows, maybe she'll feel better about herself along the way. I have omitted some details because they aren't that important.
Patti Cake$ takes the wrong approach to a movie like this one and doesn't go far enough with its premise. The absolute ludicrous of the ending where she had sampled her mom's song and used it to do well in a contest, I don't know bro. Some people find that touching but I no longer do. There has to be something more to the movie, the person getting shit on cannot wind up doing something that makes the awful person happy, and I do not like that. The film needed to be more bold, daring, and break Patti free from her mother and her negative energy. When the movie doesn't do that, I lost my will to write a long review, the functional ending broke me. I was thinking that if someone was making a movie about this subject, they should be bold enough to break boundaries with their story. There is, however, a good part where O-Z destroys Patti by calling her a culture vulture. That's more my speed and the kind of thing I was looking for even if I wasn't hoping for that exact scenario. I will say that even though I don't like the film as a whole due to its lack of vision and willingness to be too crowd pleasing (lot of good that did with the film's low box office), there is one great performance her from Danielle McDonald. I cannot believe that this is an actress from Australia and not a rapper from New Jersey. Her performance is the reason this will get a passing grade, but as a whole I do not like the film too much. There's authenticity, but this isn't 8 Mile. The ending is corny as fucking shit and not true to the lead character at all.
6/10
2017 Films Ranked
1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
7. Mudbound
8. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
9. Logan
10. Baby Driver
11. The Post
12. Wonder Woman
13. The Big Sick
14. Lady Bird
15. Wind River
16. Thor: Ragnarok
17. Logan Lucky
18. The Beguiled
19. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
20. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
21. Brawl in Cell Block 99
22. John Wick: Chapter 2
23. The Disaster Artist
24. The Lost City of Z
25. First They Killed My Father
26. A Ghost Story
27. Darkest Hour
28. Spider-Man: Homecoming
29. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
30. Sweet Virginia
31. It
32. Battle of the Sexes
33. Stronger
34. Brad's Status
35. Okja
36. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
37. Kong: Skull Island
38. It Comes at Night
39. Crown Heights
40. Split
41. 1922
42. Personal Shopper
43. Landline
44. Beatriz at Dinner
45. Chuck
46. Atomic Blonde
47. Shot Caller
48. Brigsby Bear
49. Wheelman
50. The Lego Batman Movie
51. Megan Leavey
52. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
53. Marshall
54. Menashe
55. Walking Out
56. American Made
57. Annabelle: Creation
58. Beauty and the Beast
59. Imperial Dreams
60. Gifted
61. Murder on the Orient Express
62. The Zookeeper's Wife
63. The Glass Castle
64. Free Fire
65. Win It All
66. The Wall
67. Life
68. My Cousin Rachel
69. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
70. Breathe
71. The Man Who Invented Christmas
72. Maudie 73. Patti Cake$
74. Sleight
75. Alone in Berlin
76. A United Kingdom
77. Trespass Against Us
78. The Mountain Between Us
79. War Machine
80. Happy Death Day
81. Lowriders
82. Justice League
83. To the Bone
84. Ghost in the Shell
85. Wakefield
86. Bright
87. The Hitman's Bodyguard
88. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
89. The Mummy
90. The Greatest Showman
91. Rough Night
92. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
93. Sand Castle
94. The Circle
95. American Assassin
96. CHiPs
97. Death Note
98. The Belko Experiment
99. The Great Wall
100. Fist Fight
101. Baywatch
102. Snatched
103. Wilson
104. The Dark Tower
105. Queen of the Desert
106. The House
107. Flatliners
108. Sleepless
109. All Eyez on Me
110. The Book of Henry
111. The Space Between Us
Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House (2017), directed by Peter Landesman
Around two years ago, when I first saw the preview for Mark Felt, I thought this was a film that could be very interesting. At no point prior to the bad reviews this received did I ever think it could be a stinker. In came the reviews, and I accepted immediately that this was a stinker I would watch someday. Today was that day. Accompanied by a very annoying score with a few ear grating sounds, Mark Felt can best be described as a rather boring film. Who would've thought that a movie about a man who spent no time in the field by this point of his life could possibly have a boring story to tell? Due to All the President's Men, we already know enough of what we need to know about Mark Felt, that he was Deep Throat. I was considering writing a review centered around this film's release and how it pertains to the current politics of our country, but I can't do that because this was filmed in early 2016. So, someone thought this was a story that needed to be told about the Nixon White House and Trumpism was not at all the reason Mark Felt was made. There is still the overarching feeling that Mark Felt was made because the message needed to be sent that our institutions are important, but there are also things in the film, and in the reality of Mr. Felt, that contradict how much of a standup man this guy supposedly was. That dichotomy leads to a rather strange story that I can't decipher the point of. The ending of Mark Felt does not help matters either.
As everyone should now know, Mark Felt (Liam Neeson) was "Deep Throat", the whistleblower who helped expose Watergate for what it actually was. I'm not gonna bullshit anyone by saying this was a complicated man of some sort, he was not. He believed in doing things the FBI way, the Hoover way, this is how he was brought up through the FBI. He and his wife Audrey (Diane Lane) had a daughter, Joan (Maika Monroe), she had run away from home after developing leftist viewpoints that were in contradiction of those with her parents. Throughout the film, Mark is attempting to find out where she is so that he can either bring her home or regain contact with her. Early on, we are introduced to one particular shady figure throughout Watergate, John Dean (Michael C. Hall). I must admit that I laughed at this. After this scene, J. Edgar Hoover dies, and in the aftermath of that key moment we are very sloppily introduced to some other characters. Pat Gray (Marton Csokas) becomes the Acting FBI Director, seemingly a problem as he had been working at the White House and had no experience with the FBI. Bill Sullivan (Tom Sizemore) is a rival of Mark's who was effectly forced out of the FBI by Hoover, he would like to get his job back and had become close to the Nixon Administration. We are also introduced to Charlie Bates (Josh Lucas), an agent who worked under Felt, and Ed Miller (Tony Goldwyn), the FBI Chief of Domestic Intelligence. These scenes serve to establish the hierarchy, there is Dir. Gray, then Mr. Felt, Mr. Miller, and Mr. Bates. Felt is the FBI's #2 man.
After all this, it's time for Watergate. The cover-up is made clear and lines are drawn in the sand. Everyone involved with the investigation, particularly Felt, knows that Dir. Gray cannot be trusted with sensitive information due to his ties to Nixon. Angelo Lano (Ike Barinholtz) takes charge of the investigation of the break-in and reports to Felt, this is one of the most strange castings I've seen in a while, but I rolled with it. The gist is this. Gray is trying, or has taken orders from people like John Dean, to shut this shit down and limit the investigation to the break-in alone. Gray is very successful in doing this, which leads Felt to take desperate measures. He is going to talk, he has to talk because his sacred FBI is being ruined by some guy who never worked in it before. The fact that he's forced to stand there during these public charades really eats at him, but he knows a guy. Sandy Smith (Bruce Greenwood), writer for Time, that's his guy. They meet, Felt talks, he can't help himself and he needs to let it all out. I think if you've seen other films about this subject, you know where he turns next.
When it comes to anything I've stated so far being inaccurate, I was going with what the movie told me so that it was easy to understand. Anyway, I think there's a few key differences between this and All the President's Men. Information did not flow so freely at the time All the President's Men was released. There is more obvious intrigue as a result of that, particularly at the time. The direction of All the President's Men is also better, as is the story construction and the purpose of the film as a whole. The story being written and investigated is more interesting than the person who gave the story to those reporters. To this end there is very little investigation of Watergate itself in the film I'm currently reviewing. Mark Felt is a boring movie, simple as that. There is also bad political commentary where some of the FBI's more evil actions are simply brushed away because lives were at stake. Sure they were, lives were also ruined. Mark Felt is a film that shows not all angles of a story are worth exploring, but on some level I think Landesman's script and direction are to blame here. There is a place for a good film about Mark Felt, but none of the things in this one could have been anything other than boring. The story is not worth telling unless you can get Richard Nixon in a room with someone tied to the FBI's end of the cover-up, or unless you tell a story about Deep Throat the same way that All the President's Men did, and we don't need a remake of that. When you don't have that kind of hook, you don't have a film worth my attention. There's a good performance from Liam Neeson here, but I was bored. Simple as that.
Once I'm done reviewing a film, I go looking at some other reviews before I bother to post my own. I see that some people tied this film directly to Trump and I already explained why I thought that was stupid. Nothing about this film other than its release date was related to Trump in any way, it was impossible to have released the film any sooner even though it was all made before that. Timely isn't the word I'd use, timely implies that something is also worth my time to watch. I think I would rather be bored than watch something as stupid as the things I've ranked below this though.
4.5/10
2017 Films Ranked
1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
7. Mudbound
8. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
9. Logan
10. Baby Driver
11. The Post
12. Wonder Woman
13. The Big Sick
14. Lady Bird
15. Wind River
16. Thor: Ragnarok
17. Logan Lucky
18. The Beguiled
19. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
20. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
21. Brawl in Cell Block 99
22. John Wick: Chapter 2
23. The Disaster Artist
24. The Lost City of Z
25. First They Killed My Father
26. A Ghost Story
27. Darkest Hour
28. Spider-Man: Homecoming
29. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
30. Sweet Virginia
31. It
32. Battle of the Sexes
33. Stronger
34. Brad's Status
35. Okja
36. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
37. Kong: Skull Island
38. It Comes at Night
39. Crown Heights
40. Split
41. 1922
42. Personal Shopper
43. Landline
44. Beatriz at Dinner
45. Chuck
46. Atomic Blonde
47. Shot Caller
48. Brigsby Bear
49. Wheelman
50. The Lego Batman Movie
51. Megan Leavey
52. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
53. Marshall
54. Menashe
55. Walking Out
56. American Made
57. Annabelle: Creation
58. Beauty and the Beast
59. Imperial Dreams
60. Gifted
61. Murder on the Orient Express
62. The Zookeeper's Wife
63. The Glass Castle
64. Free Fire
65. Win It All
66. The Wall
67. Life
68. My Cousin Rachel
69. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
70. Breathe
71. The Man Who Invented Christmas
72. Maudie
73. Patti Cake$
74. Sleight
75. Alone in Berlin
76. A United Kingdom
77. Trespass Against Us
78. The Mountain Between Us
79. War Machine
80. Happy Death Day
81. Lowriders
82. Justice League
83. To the Bone
84. Ghost in the Shell
85. Wakefield
86. Bright
87. The Hitman's Bodyguard 88. Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
89. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
90. The Mummy
91. The Greatest Showman
92. Rough Night
93. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
94. Sand Castle
95. The Circle
96. American Assassin
97. CHiPs
98. Death Note
99. The Belko Experiment
100. The Great Wall
101. Fist Fight
102. Baywatch
103. Snatched
104. Wilson
105. The Dark Tower
106. Queen of the Desert
107. The House
108. Flatliners
109. Sleepless
110. All Eyez on Me
111. The Book of Henry
112. The Space Between Us
47 Meters Down (2017), directed by Johannes Roberts
I will be the first to admit that I didn't even know 47 Meters Down existed prior to seeing a trailer in theater for its sequel, a sequel I am now not looking forward to because I know there is no way this director could make a good shark movie. The Swallows this certainly is not, 47 Meters Down is filled with all sorts of bad junk science and stupid characters. The movie is totally ridiculous on just about every level, worse than The Meg in my estimation. At least The Meg is a movie where the people making it knew they were making something goofy that people would talk about. I am still glad that I watched this because deep down, I needed to watch a horror that wasn't about possession type stuff and I needed to watch one fast. Sharks are a good enough substitute, but I do have other things planned over the next few weeks as well. Ultimately, 47 Meters Down is a film that failed to capture my attention, in large part because the script as written was incapable of doing so. The drama in this film, such as it is, is literally exactly what you'd expect the entire time. Take that for what it's worth. There are some good moments here though, and again, take that for what it's worth. This was straight out stupid.
Lisa (Mandy Moore) and Kate (Claire Holt) are sisters going on vacation to Mexico, but they look so dissimilar and don't act like sisters would, they might as well be friends. Unbeknownst to Kate until about four minutes into the movie, Lisa's boyfriend has broken up with her, and that's why Lisa wanted to go to Mexico in the first place. After this bomb drop Lisa places on her sister while crying, they immediately go clubbing and pick up two guys, Louis (Yani Gellman) and Benjamin (Santiago Segura). Who picks up who is ultimately unimportant, the guys suggest that they go to watch sharks from a diving cage in the morning. The boat that comes to pick them up, driven by a man named Taylor (Matthew Modine), is not so great. It's rusted, the equipment looks like shit and all that, but Lisa still lies and says that she's been on a dive before when she has not. This lack of experience is obviously not so good, but it's only really relevant in the sense that something might happen and she won't know what to do. Obviously, something does happen. The cable supporting the cage breaks, and the cage sinks all the way to the bottom, a grand total of 47 METERS FROM THE SURFACE. That's about 154 feet.
The science in this movie is really shitty, but fortunately 47 Meters Down is rather short and easy to explain. The girls cannot swim up to the surface too quickly because Taylor believes they will die from nitrogen sickness, but there's merely a chance of that in reality and this is a stupid film. There's only so much aversion to the truth that I can take in one movie. The cage, as shitty as it is, is fitted with lights that work even though they aren't connected to a power source. The operation as a whole, shitty as it is, boasts some of the most top of the line equipment ever created. The science in 47 Meters Down can also best be described as Fake News. Everything that happens at the depth that it happens is completely unrealistic. Someone without diving training is not going to swim a long distance on the ocean floor. It's not going to happen. This film also features what I would like to call feats of superheroes, where a very small woman is moving a crane all by herself. You know, maybe that can happen, but the film lives in an altered universe. I usually don't complain about a lack of realism, but when the lack of realism is so apparent that I notice it out of hand without doing my own research, I can't help but call it out for what it is. The director/writer seems to be fascinated with concepts they cannot understand.
As for the film itself, look, this is what it is. 47 Meters Down is a movie where Mandy Moore screams because sharks are trying to eat her and her sister while they're trapped on the ocean floor. The concept is as simplistic as it gets, but it lacks the imagination that something like The Shallows has. It also lacks a decent duck character and someone worth leering at, but I digress. 47 Meters Down is also weird in that conceivably, if these very stupid characters had done what they were told the entire time, they would have remained safe and been brought up by the Coast Guard. You know what else is strange? Why would the US Coast Guard be rescuing divers who went out on a shitty boat in Mexico? This is a stupid film made by very stupid people, I can see why someone would enjoy this, but the flaws are too readily apparent for me and I couldn't help but notice them. Hopefully the sequel has more imagination and some concepts beyond the characters hidding on the ocean floor. The ending is also absolutely horrendous and I couldn't believe what I was watching.
4/10
2017 Films Ranked
1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
7. Mudbound
8. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
9. Logan
10. Baby Driver
11. The Post
12. Wonder Woman
13. The Big Sick
14. Lady Bird
15. Wind River
16. Thor: Ragnarok
17. Logan Lucky
18. The Beguiled
19. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
20. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
21. Brawl in Cell Block 99
22. John Wick: Chapter 2
23. The Disaster Artist
24. The Lost City of Z
25. First They Killed My Father
26. A Ghost Story
27. Darkest Hour
28. Spider-Man: Homecoming
29. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
30. Sweet Virginia
31. It
32. Battle of the Sexes
33. Stronger
34. Brad's Status
35. Okja
36. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
37. Kong: Skull Island
38. It Comes at Night
39. Crown Heights
40. Split
41. 1922
42. Personal Shopper
43. Landline
44. Beatriz at Dinner
45. Chuck
46. Atomic Blonde
47. Shot Caller
48. Brigsby Bear
49. Wheelman
50. The Lego Batman Movie
51. Megan Leavey
52. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
53. Marshall
54. Menashe
55. Walking Out
56. American Made
57. Annabelle: Creation
58. Beauty and the Beast
59. Imperial Dreams
60. Gifted
61. Murder on the Orient Express
62. The Zookeeper's Wife
63. The Glass Castle
64. Free Fire
65. Win It All
66. The Wall
67. Life
68. My Cousin Rachel
69. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
70. Breathe
71. The Man Who Invented Christmas
72. Maudie
73. Patti Cake$
74. Sleight
75. Alone in Berlin
76. A United Kingdom
77. Trespass Against Us
78. The Mountain Between Us
79. War Machine
80. Happy Death Day
81. Lowriders
82. Justice League
83. To the Bone
84. Ghost in the Shell
85. Wakefield
86. Bright
87. The Hitman's Bodyguard
88. Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
89. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
90. The Mummy
91. The Greatest Showman
92. Rough Night
93. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
94. Sand Castle
95. The Circle
96. American Assassin
97. CHiPs
98. Death Note 99. 47 Meters Down
100. The Belko Experiment
101. The Great Wall
102. Fist Fight
103. Baywatch
104. Snatched
105. Wilson
106. The Dark Tower
107. Queen of the Desert
108. The House
109. Flatliners
110. Sleepless
111. All Eyez on Me
112. The Book of Henry
113. The Space Between Us
This movie triggered me badly, so I spoiled a lot. The person I was with did not like this either.
Yesterday (2019), directed by Danny Boyle
I can't say that I've watched all of Danny Boyle's work before, but this concept is rather strange and I don't think he's made anything else like this. Someone must have very much wanted to make a romantic comedy, or a movie about the Beatles, I'm not quite sure. There's obviously some inspiration coming into play here even though Yesterday is a studio romantic comedy, but the inspiration is apparent in the film's ending. Which, unfortunately I must get out of the way and say I thought was quite bad. This is a great idea though, there's no doubt about that. It's also a bit surreal to see this much Beatles music in a movie because as was made clear many times, I wasn't the kind of person to watch a lot of films. There may be more and there may not be, the only one I know of is Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I haven't watched it though, nor have I seen Yellow Submarine, which I forgot about when writing the previous sentence. I don't want to track back to delete anything though because that leads to wasted time. Anyway, I must also point out that some of my criticisms may be different if characters had been left in the film. I don't want to say anything, but apparently an entire large storyline was chopped from the film. There are ways in which that leads to things becoming a little disjointed as certain character actions are not completely explained.
Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) is a singer-songwriter from small town England, he is struggling to make his way in the world. Jack would prefer to play gigs to large crowds, but crowds would prefer not to see him perform in any context. He is forced to get a job at a place like Costco, whatever the British version is or a facsimile of it, the manager plainly does not care for him either. His manager is his best friend Ellie (Lily James), a woman clearly holding a torch for Jack, although he is completely oblivious to this fact. Ellie does not want Jack to give up on his dreams, but he's close to doing exactly that. She books a gig for a festival, it turns out to be in a tent and nobody's there, so that's going to be it for Jack because he can't take this anymore. For ten years now he's been playing music and for ten years nobody's noticed him. He doesn't know why, but not knowing why is good enough reason to stop. When Ellie drops him off that night, he gets on his bike and the power goes out, which leads to a lack of stop light and Jack being hit by a bus. When someone gets hit by a bus, they wind up in the hospital, and Jack has been rather damaged by this accident. He's forced to stay for a day or so, his face smashed into the asphalt and two of his front teeth are now part of the pavement. If that isn't a sign to give it up, what the hell is?
There are some signs not to give up the dream as well. For starters, there's the obvious, the thing everyone saw if they've seen the trailer. When he starts asking Ellie why she doesn't get his references, she's totally confused that they're even references to begin with. He's also given gifts after getting out of the hospital, and one of them is a new guitar as his was smashed. Of course, this leads to Jack playing "Yesterday", nobody knowing what it is, and him thinking that everyone's playing a huge joke on him. They aren't. When he gets home, he goes to Google to search for the Beatles, but they no longer exist. Some other things no longer exist as well, and considering there was a worldwide blackout and the Beatles no longer exist, that makes sense. This is a big opportunity for Jack, he feels that he should perform those lost songs, but he can't remember all the lyrics. He also claims that he wrote them, and because those songs are so good, this is going to be an interesting ride for Jack. Once discovered by Ed Sheeran, this leads to him being signed by Sheeran's agent, Debra Hammer (Kate McKinnon). Who wouldn't want to have the same agent as that guy, after all? You'd make a load of money. The problem is that Ellie has her job as a teacher, she's happy with her life. She isn't going to give that up.
Now, because of the cut character, I feel like there's something crucial really missing from this. It is one of many things though. Jack was supposed to have another love interest and perhaps her existence would explain why Ellie would stay at home after being Jack's manager for this long when he's unsuccessful? I could not make any sense of this at all. Obviously, this is a movie with a fantasy element to begin with, but I would like the characters in these films to have more clear motivations. This aspect of Yesterday didn't do it for me at all, the friction is built on a shaky foundation. The conflict is completely irrational. That's too bad because this is a hell of a concept. You have a world in which certain famous things disappeared, and there are ramifications of that as the movie plays out. Some are small and others are large. Despite the problems I had with the basis of the film (the two leads growing apart), I did think that the leads had a good performance. There's still a problem with everything as a whole and I'm having a very difficult time figuring out how to explain things. I guess what my main problem is, is that this is a film that distills The Beatles down to terrific songwriting. And, nah man, it was way more than that. The idea that someone could become famous merely by performing a few of their songs prior to the release of an album, that's stretching the believability of a fantasy movie as far as it can be stretched.
I think to some extent that Yesterday is also too late in coming, this is a film that would have been better made when George Harrison was alive, when you could have three of the Beatles appear in the film in some fashion to make things feel special. This does not feel special and it isn't for lack of trying by the actors, it's because the concept is botched. There is one case in which it is not, where two other people remember the songs and tell Jack that it's inspirational for him to be playing them as they shouldn't be lost to the world, but the way the scenes afterward are handled is like a sick joke. The film needs to answer questions that are crucial to its story. Danny Boyle needed to make clear why The Beatles were so important, he failed. Importance is not talking about how important the songs are, there needs to be a personal touch of some kind, we need to see how those works impact other people. It's lacking. Another key problem is that the songs chosen for play in Yesterday are the ones that I think wouldn't work these days. Yesterday also strongly teases the idea that Jack is going to play "Wonderwall" for Ellie and he never does that. When he doesn't do that and does something completely stupid instead, I felt like someone was pissing directly in my face. I'm also going to point out that this film has a scene with a living John Lennon, which is a scene that nobody ever should have filmed or thought up in their brain.
It seems like this was a misguided exercise, where someone had a great concept to have the world forget about great things, but doesn't explain why they were ever so great in the first place when a person is attempting to bring them back. I think that just about sums it up. When the film doesn't even bother to bring up the idea that an Indian man is the one playing these songs, and what that actually means as it pertains to our culture, you can see how lazy Yesterday actually is. The film isn't completely terrible, it isn't lacking in great moments, but it is horribly misguided. Every part with Jack's parents is great, most of the scenes with Kate McKinnon are as well, and there are quite a lot of those. I don't have enough bad things to say about how this was directed though. When a character has to be cut out, when it seems that the character is also essential to the story, I think it's clear that nobody really knew what they were going for with this. There's no message, no anything about how important certain bits of entertainment were to making things into what they are, nothing at all. THESE ARE ALSO THE WRONG FUCKING SONGS, MAN. The more I think about Yesterday, the more I'm genuinely bothered by it because this completely misses the point. The lyrics Jack remembers are also almost entirely the most superficial of the Beatles work. I must admit that I did not think Danny Boyle would make something like Yesterday, and this is one case where the slightly positive critical opinion on a film is way off.
I'm also surprised that I liked this more than something like Brightburn, but I thought about that before posting this and I did. At least Yesterday didn't give away absolutely everything in the trailer.
4.5/10
2019 Films Ranked
1. Booksmart
2. Avengers: Endgame
3. Toy Story 4
4. Us
5. Gloria Bell
6. Arctic
7. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
8. The Beach Bum
9. Spider-Man: Far From Home
10. Rocketman
11. High Flying Bird
12. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
13. Captain Marvel
14. Long Shot
15. Shazam!
16. Paddleton
17. Late Night
18. Hotel Mumbai
19. Cold Pursuit
20. Shaft
21. Happy Death Day 2U
22. Ma
23. Annabelle Comes Home
24. Greta
25. Aladdin
26. Triple Frontier
27. Fighting with My Family
28. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
29. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
30. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
31. Brexit
32. The Dirt
33. Velvet Buzzsaw
34. Little
35. Alita: Battle Angel
36. The Kid
37. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
38. The Upside
39. The Dead Don't Die
40. Dumbo
41. The Hummingbird Project
42. Escape Room
43. Tolkien
44. Captive State
45. The Highwaymen
46. Pet Sematary
47. The Intruder
48. Child's Play 49. Yesterday
50. Brightburn
51. Anna
52. What Men Want
53. Men in Black: International
54. Unicorn Store
55. The Curse of La Llorona
56. Miss Bala
57. Hellboy
58. Glass
59. Dark Phoenix
60. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
61. The Hustle
62. The Best of Enemies
63. The Prodigy
64. Polar
65. Serenity
Roxanne Roxanne (2018), directed by Michael Larnell
Roxanne Roxanne is one of those rather obscure movies that premieres at Sundance, but due to the obscurity of the subject is buried for quite a long time before being unceremoniously dropped on Netflix. That isn't to say that this kinds of films are bad, because they usually aren't. It's just that companies can't figure out how to market these things in order for them to find an audience, or that they don't have an audience at all. Except, that is, people like me who want to watch everything, or those who are genuinely interested in the subject. I decided that I was going to watch this tonight in large part because I was very busy and I think Roxanne Roxanne was the shortest film on my list. I also thought that after some things that have happened to me, I didn't want to watch anything violent for one night. I was wrong in assuming this wouldn't have violence in it, but at least it wasn't the kind that I was specifically wanting to avoid. I thought this was a rather interesting film that also feels incomplete, with a very rushed ending and frustrating lack of explanation of what happened to the subject after the film. I guess that's where the thing with distribution problems kicked in. Not that many people know this person's life story and what happened to them after their moment of fame, and if you already know her whole life story, are you that likely to watch the film? The thing is, when a film assumes the viewer knows the life story of the subect, they usually tend to dig very deep. In digging deep, that's where the quality of a music biopic can really shine, and that's reflected throughout Roxanne Roxanne.
Roxanne Shante (Chante Adams) was once merely Shante, doing things as a kid that made her mom Peggy (Nia Long) proud as Peggy was trying to save money to move out of the projects in New York City. The film starts off very early on in her life, as a kid in a rap battle, which she wins. The money goes to her mom, life is good. She has multiple sisters, but I'm going to be honest, I wasn't focused on their names because there were more important things at play here. Wikipedia is also quite unkind because nobody has bothered to ensure that there is a cast listing that would allow me to remember. Anyway, her best friend from childhood to adulthood is Ranita (Shenell Edmonds), and Ranita is also Shante's first DJ. The movie jumps forward a bit, with Shante a little bit older, living with both parents, her father Dave (Curtiss Cook) as of yet being unmentioned. There's a reason for that, even though he presumes to care about his daughter, he doesn't care all that much. When Peggy has saved $20,000 and it's time to go, she tells Dave and he's quite excited. The reason for his excitement? It's because he's going to steal that shit and leave everyone wanting more from life. On that night, Peggy hits the bottle, and that's how life goes sometimes. Hitting the bottle that one time leads to many more times, and Peggy becoming a full blown drunk. A rather successful family from the projects, one that can buy clothes for their children and put braces on their oldest daughter's teeth, can no longer do so now that the single parent is a drunk.
Dave, such is his way, never comes back into the life of his children, which leaves Shante to fend for herself. Someone has to take care of her sisters, and stealing clothes is a way to earn some cash. Beating guys in battle raps is another way, but her mother hates all of these things. When someone becomes a drunk to that extent, they find a way to shit on everything their children do. Nothing is enough even though they themselves have become nothing as a result of their permanently inebriated state. Life is about surviving, and when children are left to themselves, they're going to steal. Now, being a student isn't going to put any food on the table. She babysits the kid of some guy named Cross (Mahershala Ali) in addition to that stealing, sells some drugs. It is about whatever, but she does love rapping and is pretty good at it. She just doesn't do it that much. At least, that is, until one day at home with her mom. She's doing her mom's laundry and is called up to an apartment by Marley Marl (Kevin Phillis). This isn't how things really happened, there's obviously some creative license going on, and that's something I really didn't like about the movie. As soon as I looked up how "Roxanne's Revenge" was actually made, the film was hurt in my eyes. Anyway, they tell it that she was called up to the apartment, cut the track in one go without putting any thought into it, and became relatively famous in a short matter of time.
I left out a lot of the details as far as where the film goes after that recording, but I liked that aspect of the movie. The lack of commitment to the truth is really bothersome though. The film just does not pay attention to or feature any of the music that led to these ongoing battles, deciding instead to focus on how much Roxanne Shante was screwed over by the music business and her personal life. These aspects of the film are really good, the commitment to detail is strong. The lead performance is rather strong for someone tasked with acting opposite Mahershala Ali in many scenes, this all works though. The director decides that there is little point in telling the story of her fame and to some extent that's true, she never became mega famous and faded into the background rather quickly. Being a legend of your own time is still something important though, something worth making a film about. I would have preferred greater attention to detail when it came to the specifics of her music, but this is a different kind of music biopic. It's also really short and that's why I'm having these issues, there's a gap that needed to be filled by something. The personal bits were so heavy that I don't think there could possibly have been more of those. The reality of growing up in an area without hope is fucked up.
There is some goofy stuff in this though, like when you realize some kid who wanted to rap against her turned out to be Nas, but I accept that and that's okay. Remember in Straight Outta Compton when Snoop Dogg is in around two scenes? I accepted that and I liked it a lot, it's the same kind of thing. The standard for a rap biopic though, it's still that. Roxanne Roxanne doesn't punch through, one of the reasons it can't is because I have no personal attachment to the subject in any way. These scenes are still very strong and this is not in dispute. I was feeling things while I was watching the movie. What I was thinking at times, was that I may have given Notorious very short shrift when I was reviewing it. I think I gave that film a 7 (a blatantly wrong rating), but I've been thinking about it a lot over the last year or so. Notorious wasn't the best rap biopic, but it was the one that blended the personal aspect of the subject and their fame the best of all of them. The film is remarkable in the way it is comfortable with portraying their subject as somewhat of a monster. I must admit that I did not expect that. In the case of Roxanne Roxanne, there is the personal touch, but it doesn't resonate with me the same way. There is an innate bias in favor of other subjects that I will admit to, but the facet of her music career not being covered is a flaw in an otherwise pretty good film.
7/10
2018 Films Ranked
1. Roma
2. A Star Is Born
3. First Reformed
4. The Favourite
5. Widows
6. First Man
7. BlacKkKlansman
8. Blindspotting
9. Leave No Trace
10. Black Panther
11. If Beale Street Could Talk
12. The Sisters Brothers
13. A Private War
14. Avengers: Infinity War
15. Stan & Ollie
16. Green Book
17. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
18. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
19. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
20. On My Skin
21. Private Life
22. Climax
23. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
24. Mid90s
25. Eighth Grade
26. Sorry to Bother You
27. Suspiria
28. Vice
29. The Old Man & the Gun
30. Vox Lux
31. Bad Times at the El Royale
32. The Other Side of the Wind
33. Searching
34. A Simple Favor
35. The Hate U Give
36. Unsane
37. Disobedience
38. Boy Erased
39. Bumblebee
40. Mary Poppins Returns
41. Creed II
42. Hold the Dark
43. The Land of Steady Habits
44. Halloween
45. Ant-Man and the Wasp
46. Blockers
47. Beirut 48. Roxanne Roxanne
49. Mary Queen of Scots
50. Aquaman
51. Ideal Home
52. Outlaw King
53. Overlord
54. Ben Is Back
55. Monsters and Men
56. The Mule
57. On the Basis of Sex
58. Bohemian Rhapsody
59. White Boy Rick
60. Papillon
61. Game Night
62. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
63. Instant Family
64. Alpha
65. The Front Runner
66. The Predator
67. Apostle
68. The Angel
69. The Commuter
70. Beautiful Boy
71. The Nun
72. Operation Finale
73. The Equalizer 2
74. The Spy Who Dumped Me
75. Yardie
76. Bird Box
77. 12 Strong
78. Venom
79. Skyscraper
80. The Meg
81. Assassination Nation
82. The Girl in the Spider's Web
83. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
84. 22 July
85. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
86. The Little Stranger
87. Tomb Raider
88. Night School
89. The 15:17 To Paris
90. Peppermint
91. Mile 22
92. The First Purge
93. Hunter Killer
94. The Cloverfield Paradox
95. Mute
96. Kin
97. Hell Fest
98. Proud Mary
99. Robin Hood
100. Traffik
101. The Happytime Murders
102. The Outsider
103. Slender Man
Dang son, I sawStuber when it came out on Thursday and been waiting on your review. Supposed to go with family to see this recently poorly reviewed Yesterday, so will read when I’ve seen it.
The Perfection (2019), directed by Richard Shepard
I'm probably going to find myself deeply in the minority when it comes to The Perfection, which can best be described as a trash pile that went viral due to its content. The content itself is offensive on multiple levels, and I'm rather curious to know why there were good reviews in the first place. Killing abusive men is only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to a film like The Perfection, it cannot be the sole reason that people think a film is good when the story both defies convention and outright spits in the face of the viewer. I just want to make one thing clear because I am going to give this a rating that's somewhat close to middling, but I did not like this film at all. I found it interesting the entire time, and engaging prior to the first point at which the filmmaker decided not to treat their audience with respect for their time. This movie is a turd, cloaked in something that does make people happy to see, but the facets of storytelling required to actually pull it off are nonexistent. The Perfection is very consistent in not doing any single thing in a way that makes sense, so I didn't like this even before getting into the worst aspect. Rape exploitation is bad, it is very bad. There's actually very little that could be worse, regardless of the content in any given movie. This is...absolutely a rape exploitation flick. There's one scene that's beyond the pale.
Charlotte Willmore (Allison Williams) is a woman whose mother has died at the start of the film, and this plays out in rather strange fashion although I ignored it. She was a cellist who was part of a prestigious school in Boston, but when her mom got sick, that was that for her career. When her mom dies, it seems that it's time to get back in the game and make something of herself. She travels to Shanghai to join the head of the academy in Boston, a man named Anton (Steven Weber). Anton is in Shanghai with his wife Paloma (Alaina Huffman) trying to find a new student, which he eventually does. His prized pupil is Lizzie (Logan Browning), and through the course of conversation we find out that Charlotte was once in this position. They even share the same tattoo! Lizzie took Charlotte's spot when she left, and they have some chemistry with each other. The shared experiences and all that leads to them sleeping with each other, this scene is like something out of Cinemax and I wasn't too sure how seriously I should really take the film going forward from that. The answer was that I shouldn't.
When they wake up the next morning, Lizzie has a major hangover and needs some medication. Charlotte has some ibuprofen handy, it is downed with alcohol, and we all know exactly how stupid that is. Lizzie wants to take a trip in rural China before she goes back to Boston, and I guess that's going to be allowed even though I don't know why anyone would want to do that. When she goes out, she eats at a street food stall first and really doesn't like it. So, as they leave the city, Lizzie begins to become very sick. First she pukes all over the place and starts complaining about shitting herself. There's a huge language barrier, but the bus driver pulls over so that she can take a shit. After that happens, she starts throwing up on the bus, and now it's time to go. When they get off the bus, and rather before that I should note, Lizzie is starting to feel bugs crawling on her skin. This made her bash her head into the bus windows as well, and there were rumors that there was a sickness that had started in southern China. When they get out, Charlotte starts to feel bugs crawling under her skin, and they start to poke through the skin too. So, what is a person going to do about that? The film decides to rewind in order to show us how this decision comes to be, and that's the moment I realized this was going to be a very shitty movie.
Rewind scenes are one of the worst things that a director can put in a film, because they're deliberately withholding information that all the characters involved are aware of. I don't like that, I never have, and to go back and show something hidden in the scenes that we were watching makes the film feel like a waste of my time. But, all of this pales in comparison to the obvious, to the exploitative scenes. There is one here where it is heavily implied that Anton will rape a little girl if Charlotte doesn't play some music perfectly as he wants her too. I just don't like this kind of thing, I never have, and I feel how I feel. The inherent lack of tension that arises when a film uses a rewind scene, because you know that it's going to happen again, it really hurts things. It's one thing if the rewinding pertains to events never shown, but it pertains to every event shown in the film prior to the pivotal event leading to the rewind. It's pretty terrible storytelling. The stuff where you have characters shitting their pants is also really offputting, so is the script as a whole.
The Perfection is a really sleazy feeling movie, and that's okay with some but it isn't my thing. It's a sore subject, something I don't like seeing in movies. The events are too hard to believe, but I will say that I'm not going super negative with my score for a reason. The stuff prior to the rewind is rather amusing, I think I liked it at that point. It seemed like The Perfection would be a good ride, but the gimmick in combination with the use of rape as a plot device killed that. Not sure if anyone will care about this summarization, but The Perfection got rather good reviews and I don't agree with any of them. The film has a strange feeling of spinning all over the place too, I don't know how to describe that sensation, but the events are too far off the rails for my taste and not entertaining enough to make up for it. Chinese people are also used as a strange boogeyman of sorts, that's not my favorite thing either.
4/10
2019 Films Ranked
1. Booksmart
2. Avengers: Endgame
3. Toy Story 4
4. Us
5. Gloria Bell
6. Arctic
7. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
8. The Beach Bum
9. Spider-Man: Far From Home
10. Rocketman
11. High Flying Bird
12. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
13. Captain Marvel
14. Long Shot
15. Shazam!
16. Paddleton
17. Late Night
18. Hotel Mumbai
19. Cold Pursuit
20. Shaft
21. Happy Death Day 2U
22. Ma
23. Annabelle Comes Home
24. Greta
25. Aladdin
26. Triple Frontier
27. Fighting with My Family
28. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
29. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
30. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
31. Brexit
32. The Dirt
33. Velvet Buzzsaw
34. Little
35. Alita: Battle Angel
36. The Kid
37. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
38. The Upside
39. The Dead Don't Die
40. Dumbo
41. The Hummingbird Project
42. Escape Room
43. Tolkien
44. Captive State
45. The Highwaymen
46. Pet Sematary
47. The Intruder
48. Child's Play
49. Yesterday
50. Brightburn
51. Anna
52. What Men Want
53. Men in Black: International
54. Unicorn Store
55. The Curse of La Llorona
56. Miss Bala 57. The Perfection
58. Hellboy
59. Glass
60. Dark Phoenix
61. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
62. The Hustle
63. The Best of Enemies
64. The Prodigy
65. Polar
66. Serenity
I usually enjoy indie horror that tries to go in new directions, but The Perfection was just shitty. I thought there was a lot of promise and intrigue during the first half hour, but it just tries way too much. The rewinds were embarrassing and every new twist and turn was worse than the last and more annoying.
Probably just keeping it simple and have Allison Williams be a crazy stalker to the new top cellist on the block would've been better than the Stephen Webber rape cult It wouldn't of been the most original movie, but Williams has shown in Get Out that she can nail that type of character..
London Has Fallen (2016), directed by Babak Najafi
I already knew that London Has Fallen was going to be bad, because Olympus Has Fallen was so awful I didn't understand how there could possibly be a sequel. What I didn't know until a few minutes prior to viewing the movie, that this was directed by the same man who destroyed Proud Mary. With that in mind, there is absolutely no way London Has Fallen could ever be a good, or even a decent film. I never thought that would happen anyway, so I don't care that much. There's one obvious problem with this that you notice as soon as you turn the movie on, the racism is kicked up to 100. The film is directly aimed at those who have a disposition towards hating Arabs and being afraid of Muslim people. Knowing that, I refused to give this any money, so I watched it on USA where I assumed this would be edited in some meaningful way, but it turns out that was not the case and I got the full picture of whatever this is. To some extent London Has Fallen is also lacking in action compared to its predecessor, that was also not what I was expecting. I thought that when a movie was trying to follow up on something big, they go even bigger, but that's just not true in every case. The simple fact is that I can hardly muster up the gumption to write this review because I don't really care. The badness in this, including the racism, never hit me hard enough for me to give a shit about what was happening.
London Has Fallen kicks off in Pakistan, with all the intelligence services of the G8 having come together to stop an arms dealer, Aamir Barkawi (Alon Moni Aboutboul). The drone strike doesn't go all that well, a hell of a lot of people die in the process of it. It is presented that they killed Barkawi, they clearly did not. Two years later, there's an attack in Manila, and on the same day the UK PM dies quietly in his home. Arrangements are made for the world leaders to attend his funeral, and because of the attack in Manila, everyone's on edge. Everyone who survived the first film is back, I'm not going to go down the list because that's a fucking stupid thing to do for a shitty sequel. Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) is still the top Secret Service protection guy, and his wife Leah (Radha Mitchell) is now pregnant, but he has to go off to London to do his job. Anyway, they all head to London with the President (Aaron Eckhart), and there's obviously going to be an attack, but the key is that you don't know exactly what's going to happen and where it's coming from. I admit that I was interested in this part, but once that was over I didn't care anymore. Anyway, Mike has to get the President out of London, but you knew that.
I know I said I was only trying to shorten the reviews of average films, but this is also a really bad one that I'm going to shorten. The racism here is so dominant that I could never even get into watching the bad movie, which is a shitty feeling. I usually enjoy these to some extent, but that wasn't the case this time. The thing about the first film is that the villains are given some sort of dominant screentime, but that wasn't the case here. The movie is boring, the actors don't seem to care very much, but there are a few funny lines. The director participating in such racism is really strange too, you would think someone born in Iran wouldn't want to do something like this, but the movie revels in that shit. There's no plot to speak of, the violence is totally ridiculous and the lead character never gets hurt while killing nearly a hundred people. There's actually not much worse than what I've already said, this plot is so lazy that it doesn't really have twists and turns, I don't think anyone knew what they were doing. I would prefer not to say anything else about this movie, so I'm not going to. If you want to watch an action movie with a lot of killing, there are so many other options and you should not watch this one.
