In Which I Briefly Review Movies

[909]

The Cured (2018), directed by David Freyne

After what I've watched in the last week, I must admit that it is a little strange I would watch another zombie film. One, after all, was only slightly better than the other, but the two were about extremely different perspectives. Can there be two different perspectives on a potential zombie apocalypse? I suppose so. The Cured is a film that blatantly leans into sequel bait at the end, this is an independent movie someone thought would get strong distribution and a good box office. Of course, that did not happen and we now know that, but this is an interesting case of a movie. This does not happen very often where an independent movie takes that on with that amount of ambition. Is the film good beyond that? I mean, it's good enough and features a good concept, but the ending is so hackneyed I could hardly believe it. Of course, to talk about the movie it is essential to write an explanation, because the title does not go to any lengths to describe what kind of movie this really is. When watching a movie like The Cured, and when the characters do such baffling things that bother me, it's often very difficult to succinctly describe my thoughts. I'll try my best.

The Cured takes place in a different society, and this is not post-apocalyptic at all. There is a title screen that describes the situation and I will do my best. There was a plague called the Maze Virus, it swept through Europe and affected Ireland worst of all. The virus created a horrible situation that led with much of the country evacuated and the rest economically destroyed, but there's more. Of course, this being a zombie movie, the virus transformed the infected into zombies that ate the things they came across, but the Irish were fortunate and their country was not entirely wiped out. A cure was eventually discovered, which separated the country into three groups. There were those never infected, those cured, and those still infected that could not be treated. The latter group consists of 25% of those who were initially infected. Obviously, some people were simply killed. The disease has been ravaging the country for five years, and some of the Cured were Infected for that long as well. It goes without saying, or maybe it doesn't, that the general population is very fearful of the Cured and hold lots of prejudice towards them. They also think that the Infected still living in hopes of another cure that reaches them is a dangerous proposition that could lead to another outbreak.

Now that I've explained the situation, I can start talking about the film itself. Senan (Sam Keeley) is an Irishman who is one of the Cured. After being quarantined, he is set to be released to the car of his sister in law, Abbie (Ellen Page). Abbie is not Irish as I'm sure you can tell, but her son was not born in the US, and as such they aren't allowed to move overseas. So, stuck in Ireland is what they are. Senan is troubled after being released, and there's another wrinkle I haven't mentioned yet. The Cured can remember absolutely everything that happened while they weren't in control of their bodies. Conor (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) is someone who has been presented as a person Senan met while in quarantine, but this is absolutely not true. You have to understand that this cure, such as it is, affected everyone who needed it in different ways. Some of the people who were Infected have kept their predatory instincts, others cannot get over what they've done, and there are some who stick to the pack mentality that afflicts the Infected. Conor has major influence over Senan and it is clear as the film plays out that those things are the reason why. As far as those who believe the Cured cannot be integrated into society, this element of the population is rather large and holds considerable influence. Some of them will treat the Cured like shit. What's really at play here, is what happened while Senan was infected. It's also important to note that a lot of the Cured are fighting to get their rights back, to get back what they've lost after being bitten. Going from working as a lawyer to being a janitor, that's not going to suffice for some.

Of course, with a zombie movie, there are some concerns that I already addressed in my review of Cargo. One is how much gore the film contains. There needs to be quite a lot. There's a lot. The film has far more elements of horror, but it's slow in the same way that Cargo is. The overarching story, on the other hand, that mark goes to The Cured. It's far superior. The problem is that the end is really not, and it's difficult to decipher the motivations of characters both named and unmentioned. The sequel bait is what it is and I've largely made the decision to ignore that. The ending is bad enough on its own. Regardless of that, there's still motivation for the viewer to stick things out and see what happens because the ending is not an inevitable one. There are many routes that the story could have taken, and they don't end with an already bitten character dying after you know that they're going to die for an hour. The director was desperately trying to create something unique, something about reintegrating people into society in Ireland. I don't think I need to tell you what the Cured and Infected are allegories for, if I do need to then you need to pick up a history book. Everything, as far as that goes anyway, could not posisbly be more blatantly obvious. I thought the film was fresh, but I didn't think it was particularly great. There's some good drama, but the ending got me so badly, and I couldn't give my endorsement to a movie with an ending like this one. Regardless of that, as focused on the story as it is, The Cured definitely has its moments and may be worth a look.

6/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Roma
2. A Star Is Born
3. First Reformed
4. The Favourite
5. Widows
6. First Man
7. BlacKkKlansman
8. Blindspotting
9. Leave No Trace
10. Black Panther
11. If Beale Street Could Talk
12. The Sisters Brothers
13. A Private War
14. Avengers: Infinity War
15. Stan & Ollie
16. Green Book
17. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
18. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
19. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
20. On My Skin
21. Private Life
22. Climax
23. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
24. Mid90s
25. Eighth Grade
26. Sorry to Bother You
27. Suspiria
28. 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. Ready Player One
55. Ben Is Back
56. Monsters and Men
57. The Mule
58. On the Basis of Sex
59. Bohemian Rhapsody
60. White Boy Rick
61. Papillon
62. Game Night
63. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
64. Instant Family
65. Alpha
66. The Front Runner
67. The Predator
68. Apostle
69. The Cured
70. The Commuter
71. The Angel
72. Tag
73. Beautiful Boy
74. The Nun
75. Operation Finale
76. The Equalizer 2
77. The Spy Who Dumped Me
78. Cargo
79. Yardie
80. Bird Box
81. 12 Strong
82. Venom
83. Skyscraper
84. The Meg
85. Assassination Nation
86. The Girl in the Spider's Web
87. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
88. 22 July
89. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
90. The Little Stranger
91. Tomb Raider
92. Night School
93. The 15:17 To Paris
94. Peppermint
95. Mile 22
96. The First Purge
97. Hunter Killer
98. The Cloverfield Paradox
99. Mute
100. Kin
101. Hell Fest
102. Proud Mary
103. Robin Hood
104. Traffik
105. The Happytime Murders
106. The Outsider
107. Slender Man

 

[909]

Brian Banks (2019), directed by Tom Shadyac

How does someone go from making the first Ace Ventura to making a somewhat religious movie about a person who was wrongly convicted? This person is a complete trash man, never made anything with any sort of real levity, until this film right here. The story of Brian Banks is well publicized, but I didn't know all the details and if there was enough in the story to make a feature film. It turns out that there was, but there wasn't enough in the story to make a great film. Or, perhaps there was, but the ground to do so was unexplored. For starters, we should have had some insight as to why a person would have wanted to extort a school district for a massive amount of money, and why it was worth their while to do that to Brian. We should talk about why it's so easy for black men to be convicted or take plea deals when there's a complete lack of evidence against them. The film at least delves into the last part, but there could have been much better work and more time dedicated to that portion of the movie. Perhaps it doesn't need to be said. As I said, Brian Banks isn't a great film, but it's one with a strong lead performance that carries things as far as this script can possibly go. That's to be expected as well, because this is the kind of director that made a movie with Jim Carrey talking out of his ass. You know, funny as that was, that kind of person making a serious movie is hard to believe. Some of the characters in this are hard not to laugh at too.

As some of you may know, or may not, Brian Banks (Aldis Hodge) was a high school football star in Long Beach, California. Brian was headed to USC on a full ride to play college football, at least that is until he wasn't. He was falsely accused of rape and coerced by his attorney into taking a plea deal even though there was minimal evidence at best, and even though the prosecutor hadn't even bothered to do an investigation to see if these charges were remotely legitimate. Much of the film follows Brian's reintegration out of prison into society, and the rest follows what actually happened, and how he got into prison in the first place. Obviously, coming out of prison after pleading guilty to a rape charge does not lead to an easy life. His mother Leomia (Sherri Shepherd) supports him, but that's all that Brian has. He was trying to play football at Long Beach City College, but he can't do that because he has to wear his GPS ankle bracelet and that can't get damaged. Brian's parole officer, as tends to happen, is a complete piece of shit that is focused on riding him and not interested in his well being at all. This kind of life, when you know you didn't do anything wrong, would be very difficult.

Brian is fixated on clearing his name, fixing his life, and getting a job so that he isn't sent back to prison. He meets Karina (Melanie Liburd), and there's a potential love interest, but when he has to tell her what's happened to him she doesn't want to see him anymore. I can only imagine what something like this would be like, once again. Eventually he writes a lawyer, someone involved with the California Innocence Project, which overturns the convictions of those who were wrongfully accused and tried. Justin Brooks (Greg Kinnear) is the one who Brian comes into the most contact with, he's the one who can help Brian the most, but he isn't sure if he should. He won't represent anyone who can't win their petition and isn't innocent, but most importantly they have to win their petition and present new evidence. This is when we head back to Brian's time in prison, when he had a mentor, Jerome (Morgan Freeman). At first, Brian didn't take anything Jerome said seriously, but eventually he did. No surprise there, this film does have that cliche. We also have to see how he got to prison in the first place, something I can't even call a mistake because he didn't do anything wrong. Kennisha (Xosha Roquemore) accused him of rape because he'd abandoned her in the middle of a makeout session near some stairs, he was worried about getting in trouble. There was no DNA evidence that he did anything else, there was a hallway full of people near him, and he's still thrown in person. What could someone do in a situation like that?

As mentioned above, the film features quite a few cliches and when the director doesn't have great skill, that is an inevitability in a story like this one. I heard some people laughing at Xosha Roquemore's performance, and I'm unsure if that was deliberate. It was so true to life that you can't possibly feel any other way. The performance of Aldis Hodge has to carry this thing, but the story is just not the way I would have presented things. I would have leaned harder into the idea that the accuser was forced to do this by an overbearing, poor parent in a bad neighborhood. That's what happened, after all. The script just doesn't focus on the things that I would have, and this feels like a TV movie in some ways as a result of that. That isn't to say it's a bad movie, because it isn't one of those, but it isn't great. You can feel the desperation that Brian felt to clear his name, you're easily able to understand why it's so important and why merely getting out of prison isn't enough. I just thought it would have been better if we understood the perspective of the accuser.

5.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
2. Booksmart
3. Midsommar
4. Avengers: Endgame
5. Toy Story 4
6. Us
7. Gloria Bell
8. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
9. The Beach Bum
10. The Art of Self-Defense
11. Arctic
12. Spider-Man: Far From Home
13. Rocketman
14. High Flying Bird
15. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
16. Captain Marvel
17. Long Shot
18. Shazam!
19. Paddleton
20. A Vigilante
21. Late Night
22. Crawl
23. Hotel Mumbai
24. Hobbs & Shaw
25. Always Be My Maybe
26. Cold Pursuit
27. Shaft
28. Happy Death Day 2U
29. Ma
30. Annabelle Comes Home
31. Greta
32. Aladdin
33. Triple Frontier
34. Fighting with My Family
35. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
36. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
37. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
38. Brexit
39. The Dirt
40. Velvet Buzzsaw
41. Stuber
42. Little
43. Alita: Battle Angel
44. The Kid
45. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
46. The Upside
47. The Lion King
48. The Dead Don't Die
49. Dumbo
50. The Hummingbird Project
51. Escape Room
52. Brian Banks
53. Tolkien
54. Captive State
55. The Highwaymen
56. Pet Sematary
57. The Intruder
58. Child's Play
59. Brightburn
60. Never Grow Old
61. Yesterday
62. Anna
63. What Men Want
64. Them That Follow
65. Unicorn Store
66. The Curse of La Llorona
67. Miss Bala
68. Men in Black: International
69. The Perfection
70. Hellboy
71. Glass
72. Dark Phoenix
73. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
74. The Hustle
75. The Best of Enemies
76. The Prodigy
77. Polar
78. Serenity

 

[909]

Thank You for Your Service (2017), directed by Jason Hall

When Thank You for Your Service was released, I remember a lot of disappointment because people were expecting a movie that "honored our heroes" and it wasn't to their liking. Apparently it is not honoring our heroes to actually tell the stories of the struggles that they go through. We must show them being Rambo in order for these movies to feel like reality for some people, even if that reality does not exist. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about this film myself. I think it's hard to make a movie about PTSD without it feeling like exploitation of this problem, and it is a major problem that is still largely unignored. There are scenes with real poignancy here, but this is also the kind of film that should have been made 10 years ago and not just now in 2019. That being said, you know, no studio would have dared to do that. We've seen movies like this one, but they're largely related to the physical disabilities that a soldier may encounter, not about this specific subject. We aren't talking about a fantastic movie, but it was good and I found myself invested in the characters. One in particular, the one with a physical disability, absolutely steals the movie away from the lead. Does this really hit new ground though? I'm not sure if it does, but I'm also not sure that's required of a film in order for me to say that it's good.

Thank You for Your Service is about three men who returned from Iraq after their deployments. All three of them were in a different stage of their life. PFC Billy Waller (Joe Cole) is headed home after deployment, looking to get married, but it seems that he's going to push on with the army and head back once again. SSG Adam Schumann (Miles Teller) is on his last deployment, looking to leave the military once he's done. He has a wife, Saskia (Haley Bennett), and two children, one of whom was born while Schumann was overseas this last time. This was his third tour. Specialist Tausolo Aieti (Beulah Koale) is a lifer, at least until he isn't, he's no longer allowed to go back. With a wife at home and baby on the way, there's a problem, he has suffered a traumatic brain injury. Their humvee was blown up by an IED while Schumann was not in it, a fact which he blames himself for. He was not in it, someone else was in his spot, and he died. Aieti is now very much damaged, and for that matter so is Schumann. There's more too. At the start of the film, Schumann was tasked with rescuing another shoulder from a building under fire, after they were shot in the head. Somehow Emory (Scott Haze) did not die from the shot, and he did not die when Schumann dropped him either. Instead, Emory is a cripple and Schumann blames himself for dropping him, but there's also an unspoken element that is not revealed until much later.

Thank You for Your Service does not have a complicated plot, or a huge group of characters, or really anything that would lead to a very long review. It's a movie about post traumatic stress, about traumatic brain injuries suffered in war and the things that could result from that. Solo Aieti forgetting everything was extremely frustrating to say the least, but it was very true to the character and his problems. This is a movie that I feel is perfect for a lot of people to watch and know that others go through the same problems as them. A lot of the families of veterans go through these issues and never receive any help, or the help is too long in coming. I thought that Solo was a character who completely stole the movie away and I was more interested in his scenes than anyone else's. That's a flaw of sorts, I suppose, but it speaks to the level of his performance, or rather how I saw the construction of the character. Thank You for Your Service is a heavy-handed movie, but that's because the subject matter requires it to be one. This is a movie that people who decide to take soldiers off to war really need to watch, it's one that they never would because it doesn't fit into their idea of masculinity. Masculinity, to the people in the White House who've never been off to war, doesn't equate to coming home with mental issues as a result of what happened overseas. Of course, we have a shitty country and that goes without saying, this is one of the reasons it's a shitty country.

The film's heavy tone is welcome, considering what I've watched in the last few weeks. What I was thinking was that I was glad this was relatively free of humor, with only one funny scene coming to mind at this time. The direction of Thank You for Your Service isn't great, the story here is good enough that I could imagine this film being a lot better with a different director. The cinematography and everything like that, it's lacking more than you'd think. The script, which was written by the director, is really strong though. It's not like the film would have a different director when the person wrote it to begin with. It's also crazy that we still haven't removed our troops from the Middle East, not in the context of this film, but when they throw things back to 2007 the viewer is made to realize that we're still there. Anyway, this almost felt like a documentary, and if it had been one, that wouldn't be too shocking either. The scenes at the VA building are very realistic, to say the least. Those places are some of the most depressing on this entire planet. They're full of people who are lied to by our country, given orders to do things they should not have to do, to be a peacekeeping force when that wasn't their role in being sent to foreign countries in the first place. How to deal with that? I don't even know.

Sorry if this feels like a sloppy review, but I am burning myself out a little bit.

7/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

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

 

[909]

The Farewell (2019), directed by Lulu Wang

I have been waiting for WEEKS to watch The Farewell. It was getting to the point where I thought it wasn't coming to my theater at all, and if it wasn't I think I was just going to wait until I could rent this and watch it at home. That would have sucked and was not what I wanted to do at all. When something gets good reviews at Sundance, I'm naturally skeptical and believe there's a possibility that this won't be for me at all. Quirky is probably the term that I'm looking for, maybe the film is too quirky for me. That wasn't the case this time. The premise also sounds like some corny stuff that's designed to make you cry, but there's nothing corny about this film either. Everything is given the right treatment, the tonal shifts ensuring that this isn't a depressing experience for the viewer as this story develops. There are going to be comparisons to Crazy Rich Asians because people are very lazy and like to compare films with an Asian cast to one another, but I don't see how, or even why there would be one. A Google search shows there are a lot of articles with this comparions. It's so lazy and I've taken my own time to talk about it, which is something that I shouldn't have done. Anyway, with The Farewell being a minor hit of sorts, one has to wonder if there's a future for more large foreign language releases. This was one of them, it made good money even though most of the film is in Chinese. You would think someone else would look to make a film like this one and release it in theaters. It seems obvious now more than ever that people don't care about the film being in English, they care about it being good and something they can relate to.

How can I set this premise up? Let's give it my best try. Billi (Awkwafina) is a writer, she's thirty and trying to make her own way in the world. She's an immigrant, as are her parents Haiyan (Tzi Ma) and Jian (Diana Lin). They came to the States when Billi was 6 years old, having moved from Changchun, China in search of a better life. Haiyan is a translator, Jian is a housewife, and Billi has just finished school and moved out. Seemingly, things are good. Except, they're not. Billi was trying to get a fellowship at the Guggenheim Institute, but she was rejected and is at a crossroads in life. She can't pay rent, but she's proud and doesn't want to ask her family either. Fortunately, The Farewell takes absolutely no time in getting to the point. That's good, and I'm glad the film didn't beat around the bush at all. Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen) is Billi's grandmother, Haiyan's mother. She has gone for tests at the hospital, accompanied by her sister, Little Nai Nai (Lu Hong). The way it works in China is much different than here, this situation could never happen in this country. When Nai Nai has her MRI, her sister is told the results, and they are not good. Just as the title makes it sound. The sister subsequently makes the decision that her older sister is not to be told that she has lung cancer, that she will die without ever knowing why. That, as they say, is going to be that.

The thing is, when Nai Nai has three months left to live, there has to be a reunion of some kind. It would be wrong if there was not one. When Haiyan is told, he's so devastated that when Billi stops by to do some laundry, it's obvious that something is up. Haiyan tells her, but it seems like he wasn't going to do that. Once he does, Billi's parents say that they don't want her to come. The reason is, when someone is not supposed to be told that they're sick, they don't want a person there who can't hide their emotions. Doesn't take more than a look to see that something's up if they're looking at Billi. The thing is, even though her parents seem to make the decision for her, there's no way she's staying at home. She arrives later than everyone else, but she makes her way to Changchun and arrives to a house full of people. It seems that it has been relatively easy to manipulate Nai Nai's test results, as a lot of people are there and still have not been told. Haiyan is not the only prodigal son to have arrived. Haibin (Jiang Yongbo) is Haiyan's brother, and Haibin has been living in Japan as an artist. It turns out that the two have not been home in Changchun at any point in the last 25 years. They've come together for this moment, and the way they've decided to mask their reunion as being something else is to use Haibin's son Hao Hao (Chen Han) and Hao Hao's girlfriend, Aiko (Aoi Mizuhara). They've been dating for three months, but they're going to have a good, old-fashioned sham marriage. The key is, can everyone keep from telling Nai Nai about what's wrong with her?

There's humor in this very serious story, much more than I'd expected there to be. You expect when watching a movie like this one that you'll be emotionally manipulated, but in the case of The Farewell, there isn't any of that. The story is presented to you in an authentic way, without any twist or turn. It's hardly surprising in this case that Lulu Wang's grandmother had gone through the same things as Nai Nai, because there's no way someone would have these sorts of experiences to call back to unless they've lived it themselves. The scene that kicked the credits off was just one more piece of amusing filmmaking, and it takes some talent to make a funny story out of a movie that the average viewer is largely reading the subtitles of. The seriousness of The Farewell though, when it hits it comes very hard. My mother's birthday is tomorrow, that's something I should have made clear before. When Haibin is giving his speech at the goofy wedding, I'm not sure I've ever come closer to losing it while sitting in a theater. There's a balance required of any film that is based upon keeping a secret. The balance here is near perfect, any flaws in the film being the limitations of a very small budget approach to filmmaking. There are so many other routes the conclusion of The Farewell could have taken, but Wang does an excellent job of faking the viewers out. The ending is not at all what you think it would be, but it's also one of the most realistic solutions.

I was feeling the same way as Billi about how wrong it was for the family to hide Nai Nai's lung cancer from her, but there's a scene with Haibin that dealt with that cultural issue perfectly. It's something that I don't understand because collectivism is not something inherently tied to our culture. Billi was raised in the West, therefore she does not either. You can debate or think about what's better all you want, but The Farewell doesn't try to do that. It's just telling you how these things are and why they're this way. There are so many other things at play here as well. One of them is that China is unrecognizable from when Billi lived there, their house has been destroyed and replaced by the ubiquitous enormous flat buildings that plague the Chinese landscape. The people there do not like to live in them, many of them are empty, and these ghost buildings are made in part to help drive the economy forward. There are also a lot of people in China, and a lot of businesses as I'm sure you can tell. The ghost cities do not stay that way forever. The thing that really sticks with me is the way that economic growth has changed families like these. In a previous life, everyone would stay at home. The idea of separating from your brother for 25 years was unfathomable, but this is something that happens to every family these days. The family that does not spread around the state or country, or in this case around the globe, is rather rare. The sadness presented in a movie like this one, hurts much less when you're able to see your loved ones every day. This is clear in how Nai Nai's sister treats her. To think someone could overrule the present loved one is rather unconscionable, I've learned that myself over the years, and that this is a point made clear is one of the reasons this film was so strong.

8.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
2. Booksmart
3. Midsommar
4. The Farewell
5. Avengers: Endgame
6. Toy Story 4
7. Us
8. Gloria Bell
9. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
10. The Beach Bum
11. The Art of Self-Defense
12. Arctic
13. Spider-Man: Far From Home
14. Rocketman
15. High Flying Bird
16. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
17. Captain Marvel
18. Long Shot
19. Shazam!
20. Paddleton
21. A Vigilante
22. Late Night
23. Crawl
24. Hotel Mumbai
25. Hobbs & Shaw
26. Always Be My Maybe
27. Cold Pursuit
28. Shaft
29. Happy Death Day 2U
30. Ma
31. Annabelle Comes Home
32. Greta
33. Aladdin
34. Triple Frontier
35. Fighting with My Family
36. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
37. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
38. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
39. Brexit
40. The Dirt
41. Velvet Buzzsaw
42. Stuber
43. Little
44. Alita: Battle Angel
45. The Kid
46. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
47. The Upside
48. The Lion King
49. The Dead Don't Die
50. Dumbo
51. The Hummingbird Project
52. Escape Room
53. Brian Banks
54. Tolkien
55. Captive State
56. The Highwaymen
57. Pet Sematary
58. The Intruder
59. Child's Play
60. Brightburn
61. Never Grow Old
62. Yesterday
63. Anna
64. What Men Want
65. Them That Follow
66. Unicorn Store
67. The Curse of La Llorona
68. Miss Bala
69. Men in Black: International
70. The Perfection
71. Hellboy
72. Glass
73. Dark Phoenix
74. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
75. The Hustle
76. The Best of Enemies
77. The Prodigy
78. Polar
79. Serenity

 

[909]

Daddy's Home 2 (2017), directed by Sean Anders

I cannot guarantee that you're going to get the full greatness from me right now. I have a story to tell. There once was a time I watched Daddy's Home with my dad. This was one of the most excruciating experiences, but it paled in comparison to trying to write a review. That was the first, and to this date only time that I have been too disgusted with what I watched to write a review of any length down. There have been others where I didn't write much, but that had nothing to do with the quality of the film itself. I wrote about two paragraphs and trashed it because I could not compel myself to write more. It was making me sick. Now, if you really want to know what sick is, you should watch Daddy's Home 2. I am forcing myself to write this, and I'm just going to post the end result once I get too fed up to continue. I do not think I've ever watched something where I hated all the characters more than I did while watching Daddy's Home 2. Mel Gibson's character was contemptible as well, but when I found myself in a situation where his scenes were the only thing getting me through this, I don't know if there's anything I can say that would help everyone understand this atrocity. Almost nothing I've seen before could possibly compare to a movie where I was hoping for all the characters to get in a plane crash and die at the end of it. All of them.

I don't know how to talk about this, and it was ten minutes between the time I started writing this paragraph and finishing the last one. I'm just going to set this shit up as best as I can. Brad (Will Ferrell) and Dusty (Mark Wahlberg) were feuding step parents in the previous film, and now they're not. These guys are co-dads, they act fucking stupid together, and all that. Dusty has married Karen (Alessandra Ambrosio), and Brad is still married to Sara (Linda Cardellini). Once it's Christmas time, all the kids have to come together in order for things to go more smoothly. Dusty and Sara had their two kids, Sara and Brad have their one kid, and Karen had a kid with Roger (John Cena). Kill me now.

With this being Christmas and all, family has to fly in so that everyone can be happy. We are given the pleasure of meeting Dusty's dad Kurt (Mel Gibson) and Brad's dad Don (John Lithgow). Kurt thinks that his son has turned into a bitch, and Don pretty much is a bitch. Kurt makes the decision to rent everyone a cabin for Christmas, and at this point I realized that everyone traded living in New Orleans for living in Boston, and it is completely unmentioned throughout this piece of shit. Anyway, Kurt's reason for renting the cabin is to stir up some shit, to see everything explodes. He knows what he's doing, I guess. Our journey features gags that don't land, with the exception of one or two that land for the wrong reason. We are subjected to this for around 90 minutes, give or take. This is hell.

The thing that gets me about films like this one, is something I'm sure bothers everyone else. I don't understand how or why someone would debase themselves to this extent for a paycheck. It doesn't even matter how much of a paycheck this is, it couldn't have been that much. The whole thing is embarrassing. The worst part is that Will Ferrell produced the movie, so there's a chance that he just FUCKING LIKED IT. Imagine that shit. I know after one of Ferrell's last movies, it was decided to split his shared production company with Adam McKay, and I can only imagine that it's somewhat related to this movie. The Wikipedia page is telling me that associating with Will Ferrell is very bad for business. There's one bomb after the next, and one very bad movie after the next. All of these movies have bombed and these two guys couldn't possibly have so much money that they could continue to fund them. I hope we are spared of a third Daddy's Home, but I can tell you right now that I am not going to go into a theater and watch that shit if there is one. There's another movie with John Cena that comes out later this year, it's called Playing With Fire and has one of the worst trailers I've ever seen. I'll put myself through watching that, but not in front of other people. There are limits, and I would feel shame.

As for Daddy's Home 2 itself, what can I really say? I think I've said all that there is, because there aren't words for how bad these gags are. I found myself completely turning on John Lithgow, who is a great actor, but this was just embarrassing. That there are people who actually liked this, and they must have considering the box office tuned up a nice $180.4 million total, is an absolutely sickening thought. There is hardly anything in this that a non-mentally handicapped person should be laughing at. If it wasn't for my rule about not turning off movies like this one, I think I would have turned it off about 20 minutes in. The funny part is that this franchise is chock full of toxic masculinity, of cuckery, but in the second film there's no statement made about any of that stuff. There has never been a worse franchise in the history of cinema, that I am sure of. This was such a painful experience. I think I am done with my review because I just can't do more, but I must depart with this. Even people who should have great taste sometimes do not.

https://www.vulture.com/2017/06/sofia-coppola-calls-daddys-home-one-of-her-favorite-movies.html

FUCKING WHAT

1/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

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

 

[HarleyQuinn]

I legit never thought I'd see you give you a 1/10 towards a movie... bah gawd the review thread has been broken in half! Caveat: I have never seen either Daddy's Home movie and have no intention to ever bother.

 

[Brocklock]

Will Ferrell's shtick gets really sad as he ages. I can't watch his movies anymore unless he sprinkles in some dramatic stuff like Sandler does.

"Looks at IMDB and sees"

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6314510/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_2

Okay, he's worst than Sandler.

 

[909]

Yeah, he's worse. At least Sandler has his dramatic performances to look forward to. Other than Step Brothers and the first Anchorman, I think I could do without Will Ferrell having ever existed.

 

[HarleyQuinn]

Yeah, he's worse. At least Sandler has his dramatic performances to look forward to. Other than Step Brothers and the first Anchorman, I think I could do without Will Ferrell having ever existed.

No love for his performance in Stranger Than Fiction or Elf? I find those 2 the ones I tend to like most, aside from Anchorman, from his film discography.

 

[909]

Don't like Elf, haven't seen the other.

 

[Brooklyn Zoo]

I think his best performance is in “Everything Must Go.” He should do more like that.

Actually saw “The Farewell” yesterday, glad the director didn’t compromise her vision. Agreed that the movie is relatable for many different reasons and white washing it would’ve damaged the authenticity.

 

[Brocklock]

Yeah, he's worse. At least Sandler has his dramatic performances to look forward to. Other than Step Brothers and the first Anchorman, I think I could do without Will Ferrell having ever existed.

He was great in the SNL context and I like him on The Office a lot. Weirdly enough he was probably the best part of Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back, but that might've been his best use. As a weirdo that you can throw in as a funny supporting character rather than make the lead where you have to deal with that for 90-120 minutes.

 

[Big Papa Paegan]

Will Ferrell hate and not a single mention of Bewitched?

 

[One Epic Winter (OEW)]

Farrell peaked over a decade ago and has been on a steady decline since. His best comedies were helmed by Adam McKay and even during that period he was in shit like Bewitched, Land of the Lost, and Semi-Pro.

His best performance was "A Night at the Roxbury" and I will not hear otherwise.

And speaking of Sandler, he had Punch Drunk Love and the (underrated) Reign Over Me.

 

[Brocklock]

Sandler was really good in the recent The Meyerowitz Stories and is also in the next film by The Safdie Brothers who made he awesome movie everyone should see called Good Time.

 

[Gary]

Sandler was really good in the recent The Meyerowitz Stories and is also in the next film by The Safdie Brothers who made he awesome movie everyone should see called Good Time.

"Good Time" was my favorite movie of 2017 (the other two were "Get Out" and "Brawl in Cell Block 99.")

Sandler actually did a decent job hosting SNL last season. I can't remember if it was the last season or the one before, but I remember really hating Ferrell last time he hosted.

 

[Brooklyn Zoo]

We need a Good Time thread. Feel like it’s mentioned here and there and we all love it. Should be Good Time thread that turns into the Lighthouse thread.

 

[Mickey Massuco]

film discography.

LMAO

Ferrell hasn't made anything good in a while but in his prime he was good or great in:

Roxbury (One of the most underrated comedies of the past thirty years)
Ladies Man
Zoolander
Old School (GOAT scene with comedy chat legend SWS)
Anchorman
Ricky Bobby
Stepbrothers

I like all those movies too, though some are barely likeable to me. Also his stuff as James Lipton was hilarious, NBC makes it hard to find that stuff online outside of their site though.

 

[909]

Roxbury is good too, legit forgot about that. The rest? Trash pile.

 

[strummer]

Sandler was really good in the recent The Meyerowitz Stories and is also in the next film by The Safdie Brothers who made he awesome movie everyone should see called Good Time.

"Good Time" was my favorite movie of 2017 (the other two were "Get Out" and "Brawl in Cell Block 99.")

Sandler actually did a decent job hosting SNL last season. I can't remember if it was the last season or the one before, but I remember really hating Ferrell last time he hosted.

Ferrell hosted in the 2017/2018 season

Thought Sandler was fantastic as host this season. By far my favorite episode of the season. He got an Emmy nod for it.

Unfortunately he's now shooting a terrible sounding movie called "Hubie Halloween" with Kevin James

 

[Mickey Massuco]

Roxbury is good too, legit forgot about that. The rest? Trash pile.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yYDzLUH1NE

hating on will ferrell sonning james carville smfh

 

[Brocklock]

Old School I remember loving when I was 15 but I haven't seen it in 10 years or longer. It seems very of the time with appearances from Andy Dick and my main man the SWS.

 

[Brooklyn Zoo]

Roxbury is good too, legit forgot about that. The rest? Trash pile.

 

[909]

Ocean's Eight (2018), directed by Gary Ross

Did you ever want to see a reboot of Ocean's Eleven with a completely different cast? Those movies are so sacred to some that they couldn't handle the idea of a cast completely featuring women, which is absolutely absurd and ridiculous. It is not surprising that some people would freak out over it though. Ocean's Eight isn't a gimmick, I wouldn't say that at all. It is, however, simply not as good as two of the films in the trilogy. There are reasons why and they have absolutely nothing to do with the cast, which is rather strong. Direction is one of those things that is lacking. The fact is, Ocean's Eight didn't have Steven Soderbergh to call on because he's never going to do anything with a large budget ever again. The man has still continued to make heist movies, because it's hard not to do so. Ocean's Twelve was a huge whiff, but the rest of these have all been good to various extents. I'm not overly effusive with praise, it's one of my goals in life to turn that down a little bit, but I liked Ocean's Eight well enough. I also thought this was the perfect movie to watch with my mom on her birthday. I was correct in that assumption. I don't think it's my perspective that's warped here when I say that these films are not sacred, in fact none of them are. I think people need to accept at some point it is time to stop holding works of entertainment dear to one's heart, and it is time to push on in life.

Of course, when there's a film called Ocean's Eight, someone shouldn't be surprised to see that the spinoff is going to create a character related to Danny Ocean. Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock) is his sister, and she has been in prison for five years. Attempting to gain parole is nowhere near as difficult as you'd think it would be for a felon, but she has a plan and knows exactly how to con people. She got in prison in the first place because she became involved with the wrong guy, a man named Claude Becker (Richard Armitage) who framed her for a crime that he committed, but he sure as hell wasn't going to go down for it. Anyway, when she gets out, it's time to put together a crew almost instantly. Ocean's Eight has build, but it isn't the kind of build where you get a bunch of meaningless character shit before diving straight into the heist and planning of it. Debbie's intention is to rob the Met Gala and steal a $150 million necklace from Cartier, but there's a lot that goes into planning such an operation. Fortunately, she's had five years to think about all this and run through every possible scenario. Not just every scenario, but every way in which this could go wrong. As far as making a heist film goes, that creates somewhat of a problem.

So, the crew. Gotta start talking about that as soon as I can. Lou (Cate Blanchett) was her partner-in-crime, and there's a good flashback scene where they see how this is. It made me laugh quite a bit. In order to pull this off, specialists are needed. You have a hacker, Nine Ball (Rihanna); a pickpocket, Constance (Awkwafina); a jeweler who doesn't like her current job, Amita (Mindy Kaling); a fence named Tammy (Sarah Paulson); and lastly, perhaps most importantly, there's the bankrupt fashion designer, Rose Weil (Helena Bonham Carter). Why would a heist team need all these things? Well, you need a mark. The mark is Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway), a famous actress who doesn't have anyone designing her look for the Met Gala. So, you know, there's a window there for some idiot to unwittingly help them steal something. The thing is, this necklace is so expensive that Cartier has a security team with the necklace at all times. It also goes without saying that there will be unforeseen issues, but Ocean's Eight is a movie where things slide into place, where these very talented women are able to steal something specifically because they're women and aren't expected to pull anything off.

While the premise in Ocean's Eight is solid, the way that the team doesn't meet any true resistance is an enormous problem. A similar problem is that James Corden has a role in the film, which takes me out of things instantly. Sorry, he and Jimmy Fallon should go away. The heist team does pretty well and has good chemistry, but the movie is more goofy than it is serious, and once I reached the point at which I realized everything was going to come off without a hitch, that made for difficult viewing. The movie's fun, but I think it should have been more than that. The characters, fun as they are, are a little bit underutilized. Sarah Paulson's character gets more screen time than Rihanna and Awkwafina do. I have no idea why that is and I can't even think to answer that issue. There should be a sequel though. When the team doesn't encounter anything difficult, when the job goes well and everyone is shown to be professional and very capable at doing their job, it doesn't make for the best film in the world. I actually forgot that I had to finish writing this, that's how much of a merely above average movie this was.

6.5/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Roma
2. A Star Is Born
3. First Reformed
4. The Favourite
5. Widows
6. First Man
7. BlacKkKlansman
8. Blindspotting
9. Leave No Trace
10. Black Panther
11. If Beale Street Could Talk
12. The Sisters Brothers
13. A Private War
14. Avengers: Infinity War
15. Stan & Ollie
16. Green Book
17. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
18. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
19. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
20. On My Skin
21. Private Life
22. Climax
23. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
24. Mid90s
25. Eighth Grade
26. Sorry to Bother You
27. Suspiria
28. 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. Ready Player One
55. Ben Is Back
56. Monsters and Men
57. The Mule
58. On the Basis of Sex
59. Bohemian Rhapsody
60. White Boy Rick
61. Papillon
62. Game Night
63. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
64. Ocean's Eight
65. Instant Family
66. Alpha
67. The Front Runner
68. The Predator
69. Apostle
70. The Cured
71. The Commuter
72. The Angel
73. Tag
74. Beautiful Boy
75. The Nun
76. Operation Finale
77. The Equalizer 2
78. The Spy Who Dumped Me
79. Cargo
80. Yardie
81. Bird Box
82. 12 Strong
83. Venom
84. Skyscraper
85. The Meg
86. Assassination Nation
87. The Girl in the Spider's Web
88. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
89. 22 July
90. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
91. The Little Stranger
92. Tomb Raider
93. Night School
94. The 15:17 To Paris
95. Peppermint
96. Mile 22
97. The First Purge
98. Hunter Killer
99. The Cloverfield Paradox
100. Mute
101. Kin
102. Hell Fest
103. Proud Mary
104. Robin Hood
105. Traffik
106. The Happytime Murders
107. The Outsider
108. Slender Man

 

[909]

The Snowman (2017), directed by Jonas Alfredson

What we have here, and what we've continued to have almost the entirety of this week for myself, is one bad decision after the next when it comes to which films I'm watching. I need to space my trash out a little bit better, it seems. After Daddy's Home 2, there's no way it could get worse, that's something I've never been more sure of even after watching The Snowman. The rate at which characters appear and disappear from this film despite being part of a strong cast, with a director who has made some good films, is rather shocking. I have read some complaints from the director about the production schedule, saying that they didn't film the entire screenplay, Val Kilmer had throat cancer and couldn't talk, and the last thing I can think to mention is that they went into production right after getting their budget. Basically, Alfredson says that none of this was his fault and it was entirely due to the production company/studio. So, alright. That's not a good enough explanation. There were things in this movie that weren't right, bad scenes that didn't seem to be filmed in a way where I could understand them, and an absolutely incomprehensible screenplay that would not have been fixed merely be more additional scenes. Alfredson has made a complicated film in a good way before, but this is a film that never should have seen the light of day. The last scene is also a hilarious attempt to make people interested in a sequel, a second case if you will. This film did have characters that should have been interesting, but I am absolutely not interested in another film.

The Snowman begins sometime in the past, in an area of Norway with seemingly no people, a family quite isolated. A woman confronts a man about their son, saying that she is going to tell his wife that this older man has fathered a child with a much younger woman. When the son overhears this, he runs outside to make a snowman, and the man leaves as well. The woman and son give chase, lose him in the snow, and the mother decides to kill herself in a frozen lake. The son departs, and we kick forward to present times. Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender) is your typical, cliched excellent cop with a troubled past and present. In this case, his troubles are related to the drink, a bottle he wants to put down he has not yet met. Harry works in Oslo as a murder investigator and it is made clear that he needs to get his act together, but it has been difficult. He's broken up with his girlfriend Rakel (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and their son Oleg doesn't know (Michael Yates) that Harry is his father as a matter of choice. Why someone would withhold that information, I can't yet figure out. Anyway, Oleg mentions to Harry at one point that his mother refuses to let him search for his father. I think you can see how stupid The Snowman is going to be based on this one storyline alone. I will continue though.

One day, Harry receives a letter signed with the drawing of a snowman, and he is paired with a new recruit, Katrine (Rebecca Ferguson). The Snowman is a movie that has not met a cliche that it didn't like. There's a reason Katrine is searching for the person they're searching for, and I don't want you to watch the movie, but it's probably the reason you'd think. Dropped in throughout this investigation are clips of Gert Rafto (Val Kilmer), in the midst of investigating a killer, which we come to find out are one and the same. Katrine is his daughter. Anyway, they're assigned to a missing persons case, and another, and another. It is clear there is a serial killer roaming around Norway, and Katrine seems to think that it's Arve Stop (J.K. Simmons). The reason she believes so, is because he's a business magnate of some kind. He's also very powerful, and I can't really tyell you what other point this film is trying to make because it's indecipherable.

I don't understand how The Snowman was made to begin with, but I suppose that this is based on a series of novels, of which there are twelve. THERE ARE TWELVE BOOKS ABOUT HARRY HOLE. I don't really know what to say about that, but I have to talk about how boring this was. I think this may have been the most boring film I have ever watched. It is not because The Snowman isn't goofy, because it is, but because the subject matter is so dry that it isn't anywhere near goofy enough. The plot is incomprensible and it's hard to actually follow the film. When I saw Chloe Sevigny playing two different characters, and I saw that it being treated like a big nothing, I don't understand what this film was even supposed to be. The serial killer using snowmen as his calling card is properly goofy, but it just isn't played that way. It isn't played for laughs at all, it depends what the viewer is thinking at the time they see the scene. There are also a lot of things in the trailer that don't exist in the film at all. You have to wonder how difficult this movie really was. Why would the director sign on to direct a film with this script? I can't figure that out. The worst thing, and I can't figure out if this is true to the books nor do I give a fuck, is that they just up and killed one of the characters before the end of the film. It's like it was nothing.

If you want to know how bad The Snowman is, let me put it to you this way. Thelma Schoonmaker is Martin Scorsese's editor. She's edited a lot of great films. There is clearly no way in which someone with her talent could edit this film into anything resembling a good cut. You know how bad that is? It's laughable. The scenes where Val Kilmer's voice is dubbed over isn't even the worst. I'm fairly certain there's a scene where the killer is talking and his audio is edited out. I cannot tell you why this would happen, I'm just making clear what kind of movie this is. Piece of shit movie? Absolutely. It's also horribly made to say the least, but the content in it could have been much worse. Films like The Book of Henry and Daddy's Home 2 are so laughable that I could hardly make it through them at all. I was thinking for the entirety of those pictures that I wanted to shut them off. With The Snowman, I was thinking about how I could make it through the film before falling asleep. As you can see here, I didn't fall asleep. The film is just lacking anything that makes a halfway decent murder mystery. The basics are not here.

2/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

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

 

[Mickey Massuco]

damn it was running a 3 rating, what made you drop it another full point?

 

[909]

The Kitchen (2019), directed by Andrea Berloff

So, The Kitchen is what it looks like when a person tries to make a movie like The Departed without having even the slightest idea of how to do so. You can tell that this was Berloff's first film as a director, but beyond that we can also now tell that her screenplay of Straight Outta Compton was a complete fluke. Actually, I'm not sure the screenplay was the reason that was a good film at all. It was more because the cast was driving things forward and putting on excellent performances, drawn from their experiences in reality. The Kitchen does not have that, what it does have is what should be a strong cast, but the reality is much different. Berloff also wrote 2017's Sleepless, which was another horrible absurd movie. I don't think The Kitchen was quite that bad, but it was bad enough. When someone doesn't know how to create an interesting film with original characters, this is the end result. The Kitchen is a cliched affair, not merely cliched but lacking in depth almost entirely. The characters, sans one, are completely undeveloped to any extent. The film also lacks the heart to show you certain violent acts, and I'm not sure if it's because the director believed the viewers didn't have the heart for it, or because some of those characters deserved respect when they clearly did not. I suppose that when a film leans so heavily into this aspect of sociopathy, that a character who does something sociopathic should actually act like one. You get what I'm saying here?

The Kitchen is a gangster movie, set in New York City at some point in 1978. The first scene is a preparation for what's to come, as we see three women married to members of the Irish mob. Kathy (Melissa McCarthy), Ruby (Tiffany Haddish), and Claire (Elisabeth Moss) are married to Jimmy (Brian d'Arcy James), Kevin (James Badge Dale), and Rob (Jeremy Bobb) respectively. Some of these husbands are given more time than the others, but I did my best. Jimmy would like to leave the mob, but he cannot. The other two husbands are scum, simple as that. Helen (Margo Martindale) runs this mob behind the scenes, and Kevin is her son, so his crew gets the good jobs I suppose. We are also shown that Rob is a wife beater, which does matter. One night, these guys are out to rob a convenience store, but they're busted by two FBI agents, Silvers (Common) and Martinez (EJ Bonilla). This leads to the three guys being put away for three years, and their wives at home to take care of their problems. Kevin had a brother, Little Jackie (Myk Watford), and he's going to take over the mob in the absence of his brother. After all, that's what Helen wants and that's how things always are.

The thing is, when Little Jackie takes over, he's supposed to take care of the three wives. The problem is that collections are down, or so he says, and he says Ruby and Kathy can get fucked when they confront him. At the same time, Claire is volunteering at a homeless shelter, during which she's attacked by a homeless man when she sees the man trying to rob an office. This isn't going to work for anyone. The gist of the rest of the film is this. The local businesses, some of them anyway, have been paying protection fees to the Irish mob. Most of them have not actually been protected and have to deal with problems on their own when that isn't the point of paying for protection. Someone should take the initiative, and the three wives are going to do exactly that. Who's going to stop them, anyway? Maybe Little Jackie's going to stop them. Maybe they have some friends that can serve as muscle, like Gabriel (Domnhall Gleeson), who have been gone for a long time. Their husbands are eventually going to get out too. What happens then?

The way this works, with the husbands not having interest in anything their wives have done, is absolutely ludicrous. I tried not to laugh at the twists and turns in this tale and I failed completely. The Kitchen is a very typical August movie, I guess we could put it that way. The film is poorly constructed, and it doesn't matter that we have Elisabeth Moss going around shooting people as she pleases. It just isn't good. The side characters exist merely as plot devices, and that's all they're used for. The dialogue is laughable, with Tiffany Haddish given the absolute worst lines possible. The delivery of those lines is not so great either. Character motivations are a thing here that doesn't really exist. I can't explain why this film ends the way that it does. The way The Kitchen approaches feminism is also absolutely laughable. There is one character, played by a great actress, who pops in LITERALLY ONLY to say how great it is that women are taking over the mob game. I mean, dude, come on with that shit. You can't have platitudes like that coming from random characters in a movie like this one. There also has to be stakes, which there are not. The premise is one thing, the way it is approached and dealt with is something else entirely. I was looking forward to this film before I saw the horrible reviews.

There's even more that I haven't said yet, but I was thinking about how some people will go see shitty movies just because their favorite actors and actresses are in them. Melissa McCarthy has had some shitty films that fit into this category. However, her last three films, regardless of their quality, all failed completely to make a dent at the box office. I think this is a case of someone's star having dulled. She had fans, and now she doesn't. I think this is a case of her having been in far too many bad projects. She probably no longer has a large fanbase, and she's in a comedy that comes out at the end of this year. That'll tell the tale. The story here, I don't know if it's because of the comic it's adapted from, but it sucked. The idea of Domnhall Gleeson as "muscle" is absolutely laughable. The only way that guy could intimidate anyone is by shooting them, which does happen rather frequently. This idea that Jimmy would turn on Kathy though, that's a big nope. A bunch of people laughed at this part, so I think that says it all. If you know what's good for you, don't even bother trying to watch this. It's a slog, even though it's rather short. The juice isn't worth the squeeze and nothing here is particularly entertaining.

3.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
2. Booksmart
3. Midsommar
4. The Farewell
5. Avengers: Endgame
6. Toy Story 4
7. Us
8. Gloria Bell
9. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
10. The Beach Bum
11. The Art of Self-Defense
12. Arctic
13. Spider-Man: Far From Home
14. Rocketman
15. High Flying Bird
16. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
17. Captain Marvel
18. Long Shot
19. Shazam!
20. Paddleton
21. A Vigilante
22. Late Night
23. Crawl
24. Hotel Mumbai
25. Hobbs & Shaw
26. Always Be My Maybe
27. Cold Pursuit
28. Shaft
29. Happy Death Day 2U
30. Ma
31. Annabelle Comes Home
32. Greta
33. Aladdin
34. Triple Frontier
35. Fighting with My Family
36. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
37. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
38. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
39. Brexit
40. The Dirt
41. Velvet Buzzsaw
42. Stuber
43. Little
44. Alita: Battle Angel
45. The Kid
46. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
47. The Upside
48. The Lion King
49. The Dead Don't Die
50. Dumbo
51. The Hummingbird Project
52. Escape Room
53. Brian Banks
54. Tolkien
55. Captive State
56. The Highwaymen
57. Pet Sematary
58. The Intruder
59. Child's Play
60. Brightburn
61. Never Grow Old
62. Yesterday
63. Anna
64. What Men Want
65. Them That Follow
66. Unicorn Store
67. The Curse of La Llorona
68. Miss Bala
69. Men in Black: International
70. The Perfection
71. Hellboy
72. Glass
73. Dark Phoenix
74. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
75. The Kitchen
76. The Hustle
77. The Best of Enemies
78. The Prodigy
79. Polar
80. Serenity

That's 80 of these motherfuckers! 80! Only around 25 of them are actually good!

 

[909]

Wonder (2017), directed by Stephen Chbosky

Have you ever sat down to watch a movie and felt like you were being emotionally manipulated? I'm sure that's true for everyone, but how many times that you watched a movie like that did you actually feel the way that the director wanted you to. Certainly I wasn't going through Kleenex while watching Wonder, and in truth I can't even tell you the last time that I cried while watching a movie. Wonder was a novel written by an author who had an incident while out in public, where their son had noticed a girl with a severe facial deformity and started to cry. The author subsequently tried to leave the place but the situation got a lot worse. Some of the details in the book are different in order to make things easier for people to understsand and not to overwhelm, but Wonder is one of those movies where you have one character say the title of the movie. Because, of course it is. I was going with this until around that point, but fortunately that point was near the damn end of the movie. I cannot properly illustate how much that bothers me. Even though the film does brazenly mess with your emotions, and make you think about things as you're watching the film, it's not all that bad. There are things I was thinking about my own time in school, and I'm certain that was what the director was intending to achieve. At least this isn't a movie that is actively bashing you over the head with moments that are supposed to make you feel bad.

A person should bear in mind that Wonder is rated PG, and the point is supposed to be for parents to watch the film with their children. Auggie (Jacob Tremblay) is a 10 year old who lives in Brooklyn with his mother Isabel (Julia Roberts), father Nate (Owen Wilson), his sister 'Via' (Izabela Vidovic), and their dog Daisy. Life should be happy, and most of the time it is, but some of the time it isn't. Auggie was born with Treacher Collins syndrome, which can best be described as a genetic disorder that leads to someone being born with a messed up face. Auggie has had 27 surgeries, they've fixed his face the best they can do, and he's been home-schooled for five years now. With fifth grade upcoming, his parents have decided to enroll him in private school. The kid needs to have friends, and his mother can't home school him forever. That isn't healthy. Before the school year begins, he meets with the principal, Mr. Tushman (Mandy Patinkin). It seems clear that the school is going to do everything they can to protect Auggie. He is to take a tour with three other students, Jack (Noah Jupe), Charlotte (Elle McKinnon), and Julian (Bryce Gheisar). It is also very quickly made clear that Julian is going to bully Auggie, and that some other students may do the same. On goes the astronaut helmet.

Wonder goes an interesting route in that the entire story is not focused on Auggie. The viewer is forced to think about the impact that Auggie's disability has on everyone else. Via, as already mentioned, is Auggie's sister and she's in high school as this plays out. Miranda (Danielle Rose Russell) was her best friend, until she wasn't, and Via does not understand why things are this way. Via meets a boy, Justin (Nadji Jeter), and he inspires Via to sign up for Drama Club. Thing is, Miranda signed up too in an attempt to do something different, and Miranda doesn't have the heart to tell Via what the issue is. As this is going on, Auggie is acclimating better and better to school, eventually making a friend in Jack. At least, that is, until Jack says something when Auggie is dressed in his Halloween costume and unrecognizable. Then, they aren't friends. It's time to go back to wearing the astronaut helmet that he was wearing when he first arrived at school and went out in public. As far as Via's story goes, and how it relates to Auggie's disability, the viewer is presented with the reality of being the ignored child. Auggie's problems are more important than everything else, and this is very difficult ground for a teenage girl.

There are two routes that a film like Wonder could have gone, and both are realistic. You have the route where the other children adjust to Auggie's disability and aren't bothered by it. Then, you have the story where the chidren don't ever adjust to his disability and the child becomes a pariah for the rest of his life. Both those things happen, I think the latter is somewhat more likely to happen, but I don't know what mileage there is in a film about that. So, with that in mind, you have to take Wonder for what it is. Wonder is an anti-bullying story, but again there are two different ways of telling one of those. This is not a perfect film though. The actors playing the parents, famous as they are, actually have little impact on the film as a whole. The structure of the movie is a great strength that makes up for this flaw, the chapters and insight into the background of the other kids allow the story to be fleshed out more than the parents are able to do so. Another flaw, of course, relates to one of the parents. We are never shown or told what Owen Wilson does for a living, he's just Auggie's dad and I guess that's all that matters. Is that accurate and true to the reality of a ten year old boy? Yes, sometimes they don't know.

I did like this movie, and I'm going to give it a 7, but most of what I've posted is praise. I need to explain something though. In fifth grade, bullies are a hell of a lot worse than this. I wasn't a bully, but if someone was bothering me, or trying to pull some shit on me, I know that I sounded a lot worse than this when I was 10 years old. Of course, I'm not everyone though. I also got in a lot of trouble for this. It takes the bully in this film nearly the entire story to get in trouble, without talking a lot of shit. Bullies know how to avoid getting in trouble and the person caught cursing back at someone will get in trouble instead. The film is true to life in this way. Ultimately, take it for what it's worth, the movie is a straight forward story about a disabled kid trying to make it in the world outside of his house. His sister has had her life destroyed by his problems, and no focus placed on her development as a result of this. That the film doesn't neglect that issue, and that part of growing up, is somewhat of an achievement. It's also funny that the film focuses more and more on this as it plays out, this is not a film limited to its disabled subject. As someone who has disabled family members, and someone who lives with them, I was surprised that this story seemed to reach me on that level. I get it, I really do, I know exactly how a person feels in that situation. It is very authentic, actually. A person who doesn't understand that may think Via is being selfish, in which case it is hard for me to accept their review of the film.

7/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

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

 

[909]

damn it was running a 3 rating, what made you drop it another full point?

When there's a closing fight scene and the filmmaker can't even show you what's actually happening, where you can't even understand how one of the people attacked the other one, and there's a shitload of other inexplicable scenes like that...that'll drop a movie a point at least.

 

[909]

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019), directed by Andre Ovredal

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a bit of a strange one to me. I have absolutely no attachment to the book or books as I never read them. Also, in a bit of a strange thing for me, I've only seen the trailer for Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark a grand total of one time. I cannot think of any other movie I've seen in the last few months where that's the case. I really can't think of any big release that pertains to at all. Going in blind to just about anything is very strange for me, but once I realized I was going to watch the movie without having seen the trailer more than once, I resolved to keep it that way. I looked up nothing about this movie, didn't know anything, didn't remember the trailer. Talk about a strange experience. I did see that Guillermo del Toro wrote this movie, and after seeing the film, the impact of his story is apparent throughout. There's a heavy influence here, and he also produced the movie, so I suppose his fingerprints are all over the whole thing. This is the kind of movie that is supposed to obviously get a younger audience into watching horror movies, and there aren't too many of those anymore. Most importantly, this isn't a movie about possession and it does feature lasting consequences. I have complained about that a lot lately, and I think you can tell by now that I'm tired of it. Best of all, I think this is an enjoyable movie throughout. I did have a problem though, and I think this was my problem rather than the fault of the film. The movie was so dark, and the theater was so dark, and I think I was tired, and I had the absolute hardest time with yawning. I was even doing it while laughing.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark starts off on Halloween in 1968, in small town Pennsylvania before those small towns up and died. The film focuses on a group of friends, eventually centering around Stella (Zoe Colletti), an aspiring writer who really digs the horror related material of the time. Auggie (Gabriel Rush) is one of her friends, and he's dressing as a clown of sorts for Halloween. The jokester of the group is Chuck (Austin Zajur), and he has a sister, Ruth (Natalie Ganzhorn). Everyone is interested in his sister and he gets tired of hearing about it. Casting a group of unknowns like this allowed the studio to keep the budget down, ensuring success for the film. Some studio executives should consider that in the future. When the film starts, we are also introduced to Tommy (Austin Abrams), who can best be described as the town's bully. He is obsessed with causing trouble with these kids, and on Halloween night they're obsessed with causing problems for him. Sounds like a healthy relationship, right? Obviously, it isn't. The group of friends does something to Tommy, not knowing that Ruth is on a date with Tommy as this is going on. Of course, Tommy gives chase and they run, with the group eventually winding up at a drive-in theater. I remember going to those. It was fun.

When the group gets to the drive-in, they need somewhere to hide and wind up settling on a car driven by Ramon (Michael Garza). Ramon can best be described as a drifter. He isn't weird or anything, but he's moving through Pennsylvania and taking a road trip. Eventually Tommy comes across the car and sees that the people he's chasing are inside, but he decides to leave. In the meantime, Ramon becomes interested in Stella, and the group decides to explore a haunted house in the area. The house formerly belonged to the Bellows family, and they helped found the town. Inside the house, Stella and Ramon find a secret room and a book of scary stories, which belonged to Sarah Bellows. Sarah, for lack of a better word, was tortured as a kid some 70 years prior to these events. The secret room was hers, and she was locked in it. The viewer is to assume that the stories were hers. When the group leaves, we fast forward to later that night. Tommy comes home to his house, drunk as he could possibly be, and while this is going on, Stella is seeing a new story pop up in the book from the Bellows house. As it is being written, and as she is reading it, Tommy is being stalked by a scarecrow called Harold. He's stabbed with a pitchfork, and over the course of the next minute or so he transforms into a scarecrow. Will this happen to everyone else who was in the haunted house?

The most important thing in a movie like this, where creatures are appearing out of nowhere and killing people, is the special effects. The budget of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was $25,000,000. You cannot tell that it was this low, but the choice in cast gave the production a lot of creative freedom I'm sure. The monsters stay true to what I was expecting from the film, and there's more than attempts to endlessly jump scare people here. You are supposed to be creeped out, or laugh in nervousness, or find the events thoroughly enjoyable as a whole. I'm in the last camp. There are issues with the film in terms of how the story is presented, but this is a movie attempting to scare children that probably very much did so. I'm sure some people thought Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark would be an anthology, and I'm glad it wasn't because those aren't always so good. That isn't what I would have wanted. There was one story in particular that I was surprised made it to being PG-13. I would have assumed it would be cut, but fortunately it wasn't. I don't know the source material at all, so I can't talk about how faithful it was or anything like that. Someone else would have to answer that.

As far as a Guillermo del Toro movie goes, you do expect some interesting kind of monster creation to appear, and that's what you get multiple times. Is this the greatest movie ever? Of course not, but it's good and doesn't really bother me in any way other than superficial matters. Like, for example, Dean Norris being wasted as a random dad. I can live with that though, it's fine. The reveal of what happened to Sarah doesn't have the emotional weight intended because I was more enthralled by the monsters by this point, but that's alright. For other people, they may feel differently. Keeping in mind that I'm a grown up, and not the target audience, and that I liked this movie, you should take everything into that context. There's some symbolism here about stories, but ultimately the most important thing is that the kids weren't annoying. If they had been, the movie would have been absolutely intolerable. I'm glad that it wasn't.

7/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
2. Booksmart
3. Midsommar
4. The Farewell
5. Avengers: Endgame
6. Toy Story 4
7. Us
8. Gloria Bell
9. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
10. The Beach Bum
11. The Art of Self-Defense
12. Arctic
13. Spider-Man: Far From Home
14. Rocketman
15. High Flying Bird
16. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
17. Captain Marvel
18. Long Shot
19. Shazam!
20. Paddleton
21. A Vigilante
22. Late Night
23. Crawl
24. Hotel Mumbai
25. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
26. Hobbs & Shaw
27. Always Be My Maybe
28. Cold Pursuit
29. Shaft
30. Happy Death Day 2U
31. Ma
32. Annabelle Comes Home
33. Greta
34. Aladdin
35. Triple Frontier
36. Fighting with My Family
37. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
38. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
39. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
40. Brexit
41. The Dirt
42. Velvet Buzzsaw
43. Stuber
44. Little
45. Alita: Battle Angel
46. The Kid
47. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
48. The Upside
49. The Lion King
50. The Dead Don't Die
51. Dumbo
52. The Hummingbird Project
53. Escape Room
54. Brian Banks
55. Tolkien
56. Captive State
57. The Highwaymen
58. Pet Sematary
59. The Intruder
60. Child's Play
61. Brightburn
62. Never Grow Old
63. Yesterday
64. Anna
65. What Men Want
66. Them That Follow
67. Unicorn Store
68. The Curse of La Llorona
69. Miss Bala
70. Men in Black: International
71. The Perfection
72. Hellboy
73. Glass
74. Dark Phoenix
75. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
76. The Kitchen
77. The Hustle
78. The Best of Enemies
79. The Prodigy
80. Polar
81. Serenity