In Which I Briefly Review Movies

[909]

Rambo: Last Blood (2019), directed by Adrian Grunberg

The moment I saw the reviews for Rambo: Last Blood, I knew exactly how I was going to tackle mine. We need to talk about whether or not this is a racist movie. When I was in the theater tonight, I was thinking at the end that I could see how someone would perceive this as being a racist movie. Then, I lingered in the hallway for a while. I saw that almost everyone who went to see this movie was Latino. I also saw that almost everyone was vocally stating how much they liked this movie. So, I'm curious how some of these phenomena about supposedly racist entertainment material actually jumps off. I'm also curious to know if people who the movie is supposed to be racist against are being surveyed for their own opinions. What I think is that a lot of people project their own feelings onto an entire group of people and assume that there couldn't possibly be anyone in that group interested in a movie where someone kills cartel members. The problem with that projection is that everyone is different, and a lot of people don't take movies like Rambo: Last Blood as associating all Mexican people with horrible cartel members. The notion that they do is something I don't think a lot of people would like to hear. The critiques people apply to a film shouldn't be based on how it will make the lowest common denominator of people (Trump voters) feel about another race of people. They already feel that way. Now, I may have buried the lede a little bit here in my defense of Rambo: Last Blood. At no point did I ever say that this was a good movie. Because it isn't.

Rambo: Last Blood has decided to take a very different approach from the other Rambo movies. John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) now lives in Arizona on a horse ranch that he manages with Maria (Adriana Barraza), and her granddaughter Gabriela (Yvette Monreal) lives on the ranch too. One day, Gabriela tells Rambo that a friend of hers has found her father, Miguel (Marco de la O). While Rambo has effectively been her surrogate father, Gabriela needs answers as to why her father abandoned her and went off to live back in Mexico. Although Maria and Rambo do not want her to travel to Mexico to see him, she does it anyway and is led to Miguel's apartment by her friend Gizelle (Fenessa Pineda). Miguel subsequently tells his daughter that he never gave a shit about her or her mother, so this trip was really a bad idea. Gizelle decides that Gabriela needs to have some fun, so they go to a club where she is kidnapped by people involved with a Mexican cartel. The bosses are Victor (Oscar Jaenada) and Hugo (Sergio Peris-Mencheta), and Rambo is gonna have to come to get them.

I don't know why Paz Vega is even in this as an independent journalist, but my assumption is that the script was being written by Stallone and he realized his thin his story actually was. This movie is less than 90 minutes long, but the tone of it is such that I don't see much purpose in it being any longer. This movie is way too dark and depressing for me, and it ultimately lacks in purpose and satisfaction at the end of things. With that in mind, the last thirty minutes of the film is still very entertaining. The climax is full of inspired, rated-R Home Alone type material that I appreciated quite a bit. There's just SO much of it. The action in this film is excellent, there's no disputing that. My problem is with other things that Rambo: Last Blood brings to the table. The surrogate daughter character is a really, really poorly constructed character. Her sole purpose in the story is to be kidnapped, raped, and treated like shit. You can say whatever you want about the movie having good action scenes, but I don't know how someone could look at the film in total and not see there's a huge problem here.

While I do believe that the film isn't racist, and the reactions of audience members is telling me that it isn't, I'm also not completely sold that it isn't. The thought that it isn't is largely born from an absence of location, of speech and of stereotype. There's one stereotype I could think of. The movie is lacking a specific location, Rambo never says anything even remotely racial about anyone he kills (and we already know he'll kill literally anyone), and Rambo: Last Blood is lacking in stereotypical Mexican cartel members. The guys with tattoos on their face are not here, these guys are just criminals. I think an important detail in why I say this wasn't a good movie, is because there were times it was reminding me of Sicario and I was thinking about how well Sicario built tension in comparison to this. Well, everything in Sicario is way better than this. The action is less frequent and holds more value because it's well calculated and conceived by the filmmakers, the story gives you the feeling that anyone in the movie could easily be disposed of, and everything is better filmed in general. In Rambo: Last Blood you have a movie where the guy has randomly built a giant system of tunnels underneath their property that they can use to blow up acres of field. Like, what? No, this isn't a good movie. The violence is fun enough that I'm probably giving this a higher rating than it deserves, but this is almost in so-bad-it's-good territory. I wish Rambo was more fun here.

5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

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

 

[909]

Just got done watching this and absolutely loved it. Probably one of the best High School, coming of age movies in I don't even know how long. I think it's one that will stand the test of time for many reasons, one of which i the use of pop culture references was about as minimal as it could be which will help keep it from feeling dated and let's it focus on the characters in a way that allows all to identify with them, past, present or future generations.

I think I need to rewatch it. The only real fault in the movie is that this follows the standard comedy trope where the duo has a spat over something, but the one in this movie is unbelievably well done.

I also think it's crazy that the box office for this finished at $24.4 million while Superbad pulled in $170 million twelve years ago. Comedy is dead

 

[Brocklock]

Oh it's incredibly mean spirited and it's something I can see myself not enjoying down the line. On the other hand, there's the montage of Rambo booby trapping his house and the last 30 minutes plus the weird scenes of Stallone hanging with his horses. I wasn't expecting this to actually be good. I just wanted the right kind of stupid and it landed at that in the last half hour. Pretty much every other character besides Rambo was underwritten or just blah.

 

[909]

My favorite part was him throwing his pills down the drain and killing people like immediately after that lirl

 

[fazzle]

What was the point of Rambo

Spoiler

getting a concussion and them showing the whole scene of the doctor saying he'd be sensitive to lights

if it never comes up again in the movie? I have a feeling there's probably a deleted scene somewhere where that came into play.

 

[909]

Joker (2019), directed by Todd Phillips

I haven't written a review in some time due to things that I've already posted about on this board, but I thought Joker would be the best way to get back in the swing of things. I do have to shorten these because I no longer have time to write long reviews, but I don't know exactly how I'm going to do that. Perhaps the first thing I should do is not write lines like the ones I've already written. Now, what I was going to say is that I feel like a lot of controversy related to this movie has been heavily overblown. Some of that is because Joker could have gone much further than it actually did. I also thought it was funny how much Todd Phillips had said he didn't try to adhere to the comics in any way, while at the same time entirely making this feel like a comic book movie that adhered to the concept of someone becoming the Joker. You can take all that for what it is. What I found over the course of watching this was that it seemed a lot of the people who criticized had an agenda that they wanted this film to fit into. It's fair to say that this movie rips off other films that occupy the same space, you can also say that Joaquin Phoenix is trying too hard and that the film is too dark. Those are fair criticisms. "This will incite people to shoot up movie theaters" is not a fair criticism. Not only did that clearly not happen, but the movie is such that I don't see how it could inspire anyone of right mind to think that the Joker is any kind of hero. However, again, as far as the film goes, when I say that it could have went further than it did, I wish that Joker really had.

Everyone has an opinion on what becoming the Joker should actually be, but this is not going to be a film that uses any previous origin that I'm aware of. Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is a party clown who lives in Gotham City, it is 1981. Gotham is a shithole as it is always supposed to be, with crime and unemployment being very commonplace. There are segments borrowed from modern society as well as it appears there are many homeless people. Arthur is, suffice it to say, not well. He has a disorder that causes him to laugh when he does not want to, and is entirely dependent on social services for psychiatric medication. Problem is that this being the 1980s, social services are in the process of being cut and Arthur will not have his medication for very long. He lives at home with his mother Penny (Frances Conroy), both of them dedicated to watching the same show every night, a late night one featuring Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). Overall, Arthur sees that things are going well for him even though they are not, but there is one positive, and it's that he's dating a single mother, Sophie (Zazie Beetz). Arthur's work life on the other hand is very troubled. It's hard for him out there and he's been sent to fend for himself. His mother Penny believes they can write letters to Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), because she worked for him and believes that Thomas will provide them a better life. But, how does Arthur become the Joker? Watch the movie if you want to find that out.

Of course, most of the plaudits are going to Joaquin Phoenix's performance, which was great of course. But, I think I should talk about the story and what it means to certain people who have started to feel bad for the Joker in the aftermath of having watched this. There are some issues with that kind of logic and the main reason for that is that the actions of the character are inherently bad. This is a character who deals with those who wronged them in very violent and unacceptable ways. There is of course a catalyst, that he needed lots of medication in order to be relatively stable and once he lost it. I don't think it's easy to sympathize with the Joker at all if you have your head on straight. Bad stuff certainly happens to mass shooters, but bad stuff happens to everyone. People should not attempt to solve their problems by killing each other. The film also does tackle the idea that people are inspired by bad things, which is certainly true although I was a bit surprised that material was in a film about a character who some lunatic decided to say he was while he shot up a theater. What I will say is that Joaquin Phoenix said a lot of the things I was already thinking about this film when he was doing press interviews. He said he was intending to make Arthur Fleck a character that people could not identify with. Because a couple hundred or few thousand people do identify with him is not a good enough reason to criticize the film on its own.

As for thoughts that aren't related to the perception of the film, I really hate that another DC movie has shown the same Batman thing that has been shown about a billion times before, but that's one of my only complaints. The other is that Arthur doesn't go as far as I really thought he would. I found the story to be engaging as a whole and the film features a lot of good, uncomfortable laughing moments. Surprisingly enough this film also feels technically strong. The cinematographer has never done anything of value before, which leaves me to wonder how much input everyone else was having on the film. The director is someone you would not expect to make a good film. But, maybe it's because it's the Joker and because it's Joaquin Phoenix that I'm able to believe this is a good film. I'm genuinely unsure. The closing scenes of the film, some of them anyway, are deeply unsettling. This is no perfect film because of the things I mentioned in my first two paragraphs here, but the tone of the film is consistent throughout. It's dark and quite brutalist. Almost everything you could laugh at is for a fucked up reason. The violence in this film is very realistic and raw. This kind of thing plays better than a movie where a generic villain easily kills countless amounts of people. I've seen better movies this year, but few darker. This absolutely feels like a movie about the Joker, absolutely faithful to how a person could become the Joker. It is also like an indie movie.

8/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

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

 

[909]

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019), directed by Vince Gilligan

So, after a few days, I suppose it was time to watch and review El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie. I'd been waiting for this for months just like everyone else, and everyone has their own opinion in the aftermath of this, which is good. Mine is that this was exactly what I had been waiting for. The story isn't all there the way that it should be, and there are some scenes that don't really belong. But, from where I sit, this is what I wanted and it ended in a way that I ultimately found to be very satisfying. What this is not, is an episode of Breaking Bad. The breakneck pace of the show is removed in favor of something much more slow, something a bit more restrained. Something I wanted. There is a hurdle though, it's that you have to watch the entire TV series in order for this movie to mean anything to you, but it did mean something to me. Perhaps the movie is also a little too long. One thing's clear though, this is a movie with some great performances and even better interactions between the characters that we're all familiar with. If there's anything wrong with the movie, it's the new characters that Jesse comes across as events play out. Some find them bad, I find them acceptable, but there's so much here to think about that I don't find their impact on my enjoyment to be large at all.

I said that I need to shorten some of my reviews and I think this one in particular is one where I'm going to do exactly that. There's no reason to drone on because the barrier for watching this movie is so unbelievably high that anything I could say is being said to people that have already watched the film, and I don't need to explain the plot. The gist of the movie is that Vince Gilligan is infatuated with the characters he has created and loves the actors that he chose to bring those characters to life. This movie has everything you would want to see in a movie where Jesse's story receives closure. The characters that you'd want to see in the movie are all here the way that they should be. Closure, of course, does include flashbacks with characters that Jesse would have had flashbacks with. It is safe to assume we saw everything Hank would have been a part of, so he was not included in these flashbacks. The scenes with Robert Forster, by the way, were making me freak the fuck out. So this film does have that crucial element from the show that it really needed to have in order to feel like Breaking Bad. The pace doesn't, but that does.

I should admit that I finished Breaking Bad much later than everyone else, and I haven't watched Better Call Saul, so this puts me in an interesting situation as far as watching the movie goes. A lot of the people who jumped to watch this finished Breaking Bad around the time the series ended. A lot of them went straight to watch Better Call Saul and have had relatively little time away from these characters or have seen some of these characters in scenes they're playing out in a prequel show. I have had neither a lot of time nor any overexposure to those characters. I'm still attached to them because I have seen them fairly recently, but I haven't seen them too much. I also am not accustomed to the new filming style of this universe where apparently everything is very slow. This does not feel like an episode of Breaking Bad and people certainly may hold that against this movie. I loved it though. This does feel like another television episode, and nothing in the film is particularly surprising either. How can it be, unless someone was never dead in the first place? Not like that would make sense. In any case, this is a great performance by Aaron Paul and he carries the movie the same way that he made more difficult scenes in the show easier to believe. That's what he is capable of doing. I thought this was great, but not perfect and ultimately it is missing something. One of the villains should not have died at the end of the show in order for this to really pop as a classic followup. But, the lack of loose ends is why the show was so great. I think everyone would rather have things be this way, and the reason this movie is missing something is because of how strong the show was.

8/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

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

 

[909]

Hustlers (2019), directed by Lorene Scafaria

In the end, I wasn't sure that I was going to go see Hustlers. There were a lot of reasons why, but the largest factor is that I didn't feel like going to the theater three times a week while I have all these things going on. I did, in the end, because I don't want to stay at home all the time. I am slightly afraid to admit that I seemed to not have enjoyed this movie as much as most of the people who watched it. I think I do have some good reasons for feeling that way, and when you read this review you can decide if they're fair or not. It's still a good film that deserves some credit for the performance of Jennifer Lopez and how it was shot. The cinematography and choice in how this should be directed deserves credit. The story, on the other hand, I don't know. It was wearing on me really fast and I think that's largely related to the lack of introspection and examination of the lives of the two lead characters. Something's definitely missing there, but this is certainly an entertaining film that is worth watching regardless of its faults. I mean, have you seen any of the previews? Knowing the audience on this forum I don't think I need to point out anything about the roles played in this movie. If you think this is going to be a movie full of sex and all that, I guess you're right to some extent, but Hustlers is a little bit more than that. This is a crime story, after all. What's criminal about strip clubs? Read on, my friends.

Hustlers kicks off in 2014, with Dorothy (Constance Wu) living in her house and being interviewed by Elizabeth (Julia Stiles), a journalist. Why? Elizabeth is working on a story that deals with Dorothy and her former best friend, Ramona (Jennifer). Their relationship is best described by kicking back to 2007, before the recession killed Wall Street and/or at the very least made people more unwilling to waste their money on things like strippers. Dorothy is Destiny in this world, a stripper who works at a club to support her grandmother even though she cannot get by herself. The work can best be described as having shitty pay. She dances, and the guys pay, but not all that much. She's relatively new at this club and seems to be lacking in confidence. That is, until she sees Ramona on stage. We get a scene where we see how good Ramona is working the pole, after which Destiny decides to join her on the roof having a cigarette. Over the course of the conversation, Ramona decides that she wants to be Destiny's friend and mentor, and Destiny is more than pleased with this as the help will push her forward to having a better life.

The better life comes, as you'd expect in a movie like this one. Destiny becomes relatively wealthy, she has a new best friend in Ramona, life is good. At least until it isn't. The market crash hits in 2008, and Destiny becomes pregnant. Neither of them have money anymore, they're both completely screwed over. Ramona has to get a job at Old Navy, and Destiny's boyfriend gets kicked out of the house, but she can't find a new job. Destiny doesn't know what to do, so she goes back to stripping even though the market crash has devastated the strip club industry. The clubs are now full of foreign women who give out blowies and handies, so what's a good American girl to do? She reconnects with Ramona, of course. Ramona seems to have her own ideas about what to do in this new society. She has a scam going on with two of the other strippers, Mercedes (Keke Palmer) and Annabelle (Lili Reinhart). Ramona targets rich guys at bars, brings them back to the strip club and runs up their credit cards as far as they'll go, and they get a percentage of that. Destiny decides to join, at which point she learns that Ramona doses the guys with ketamine and MDMA to impair their judgment and get them to give up their credit card in the first place. After all, what married guy is going to tell their wife they got robbed by strippers? How long will that last?

Of course, you know the deal when it comes to these kinds of crime stories, the scam never lasts. I am going to point out that some of the laughs here are deriven from guys being total idiots and getting scammed by women, and if the reverse was true it would be seen as being totally abhorrent and beyond the pale. Now that's out of the way and I can say that these laughs are absolutely hilarious more often than not. The movie is fun even though the story begins to wear thin as soon as it becomes apparent Destiny and Ramona have to break things off, and I didn't find that sequence of the movie particularly enjoyable at all. Everyone keeps saying that Jennifer Lopez has an electrifying performance and all that, but the fact is she has a great ass, shows it a lot, and I can get away with saying that while professional critics or not. Yes, that does make for a great performance, but her acting is good too without exception. The celebratory scenes are a bit over the top, but overall the film has good balance and has some overtones that I'm curious to know if the majority of people picked up on at all. The most obvious one is that of friendship and what happens when people find it, and how important it is to them. All that good stuff.

The con artistry in the film is so good because it's so simple and easy to understand, but again, I must reiterate that the story of the film does not quite match up with everything else. Things are very choppy from scene to scene and I'm uncertain as to whether or not that was the point. What I mean by choppy is that the celebratory scenes and overuse of montages seems to break the film up into segments and I'm not really a big fan of that. It also takes too long for the friendship overtone in the movie to come to the surface when it's obvious the entire time. But, all that being said, this is a pretty good movie. To say it's entertaining is an understatement because it's much more than simply entertaining. The scenes that start the movie off are wild, some of the scams are wild, and I found myself not really knowing what would come next until there started to be a few too many scams. At that point it was rather obvious, but it doesn't change the fact that Hustlers is a good movie that will likely get a major award nomination or two.

7.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

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

 

[909]

Gemini Man (2019), directed by Ang Lee

How does a reviewer even begin to approach a movie that features as much weird shit as Gemini Man does? I'm not talking about weird shit as in the content of the movie, but the technical decisions that were made in the process of producing this work. I am of the opinion that some of those techniques did have value although I'm not sure how much they can bring to the film industry as a whole. I wasn't able to see Gemini Man in 120 FPS as intended, but I did see the film in 3D 60 FPS. I believe that most films are shown in 30 FPS. As a viewer, you can see that there's something that just isn't quite normal about the movie as it's filmed, that it is rather different. Most of the time I found it to be quite good. The action scenes have a little more pop even theough there's nothing innovative in the scenes themselves, but how they look just doesn't feel the same. The decision to have a de-aged Will Smith also works for the most part. The exception is in the final scene where you can tell something's not right, that it wasn't given the same care and detail as everything else before that, and to some extent it ruins the effects as a whole to see a scene like that in this movie. None of that is what's really important though. What I think everyone would want to know, is if the story is good enough to support these effects, that this isn't a movie full of empty things that don't matter because the plot of the film just isn't good enough. The answer is that this is an empty movie. The story just can't match up to everything else, and in this case it's easy to see why. When David Benioff is allowed to write the script and when he has already ruined the last season of Game of Thrones, there's nowhere else to put blame in this case.

Henry (Will Smith) is an government assassin, and the film starts off with him being sent to assassinate a terrorist on a train in Belgium. He has a spotter inside the train, who warns him that there's a little girl near the terrorist. Henry delays his shot as long as possible, and because of this he hits the terrorist in the neck instead of the head. Guy still dies, but the shot isn't where Henry wanted it and conceivably he could have accidentally killed the girl. This incident leads to Henry deciding that he wants to retire. Retirement is apparently on the coast in Georgia, where Henry lives on a compound with an alarm system that lets him know if anyone is coming to snatch his birthday. In the process of retiring, he meets a boat rental manager, Dani (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and reconnects with another retired buddy from his branch, Jack (Douglas Hodge). Of course, Dani is not just a boat dock manager, but anyway, Jack tells Henry that he was told by an informant in Budapest that Henry killed an innocent man. Henry, of course, wants to talk to the informant. Now that the agency knows that Henry knows what they made him do, they want to get rid of Henry.

Janet (Linda Emond) is the director of this agency, which is for whatever reason called the DIA, and in the process of eliminating Henry she is receiving pressure from the director of a private military group called GEMINI, his name is Clay Varris (Clive Owen). Clay is your typical Blackwater type operative, and of course he also wants Henry dead because of course they have a past with each other. Anyway, Janet's team is not able to get the job done at all. Henry's home is broken into and he kills all of them, then they come for Dani and she kills them too. As you might guess, Dani works for the DIA as well and was assigned to watch Henry. Anyway, Henry decides to call one of his friends, a pilot named Baron (Benedict Wong). Baron lives in Colombia, so that's where Henry is going, but as that's happening Clay finally gets the authority to do some of the things that he wants to do. You see, Clay had decided a very long time ago that he wanted to clone Henry. So, there are two Will Smith's out there and the younger one is coming to kill the older. Does he know, and what does he know? Does Henry know?

The difficulty I had in forming those two paragraphs is reflective of a script that doesn't make sense and has too many things going on at the same time. We are asked to care about characters with pretty much no build to their inclusion in the story, or in some cases because they sing along to Ray Charles' music. The writing here is so bad, almost beyond words, but that isn't to say the film doesn't have its great points. It certainly does. The action scenes are all very strong and well constructed, there is no exception to that. They are also very well filmed and entertaining. The problem is that the things leading to these scenes are just poor. It's not poor performances or anything of the sort, we're talking about poor material here. The film is very disappointing and also isn't quite topical. I think this was supposed to ignite a furor over human cloning, but said furor took place in the mid-90s and we're well past that point in human history. For the record, the original script for Gemini Man is also 22 years old, so this was written when people actually cared about cloning. Nobody had the technology to film a movie with the same person playing two roles.

The third clone and all that shit, that was so bad that I don't really know what to say, but I didn't hate this movie. The technology and action alone served as enough of a counter-point, but the idea that this guy Benioff is going to write a Star Wars trilogy makes me fucking sick. The entire franchise would be ruined because he doesn't know how to write anything.

5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

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

 

[909]

Zombieland: Double Tap (2019), directed by Ruben Fleischer

I am absolutely shocked that it took this long for Sony and the actors involved in the first film to double dip and make a sequel to this movie. In this case, I think ten years may have been too long, but I should point out that I previously said I felt Zombieland was too short. Zombieland: Double Tap was similarly short, but I felt that the movie was more amusing even though the closing scenes were a fair bit worse. Have I just defeated the purpose of writing a lengthy review? I'm afraid so. That's why I waited to post this for nearly a whole day after I'd seen the movie in the first place. The thing is, you stick Woody Harrelson in a movie and give him every chance to tell all kinds of jokes and curse all that he wants to, it is going to be funny. I can't pinpoint why I felt this was more humorous than the first film, I hope I can do so in the future if someone happens to ask why. I guess I think that the movie was more amusing becsause it wasn't trying to beat me over the head. I also found Zombieland: Double Tap to be a good escape from the problems that I'm having. Overall, I guess what I'm saying is that the characters added to this film helped to make things better when they usually don't in a sequel. I am also clearly heavily in the minority compared to the general public as I'm looking at these ratings and scores. In fairness, there is certainly an element of having seen too many movies try to do this over the course of the last few years.

Zombieland: Double Tap is set in Zombieland as with the first film, but it's obviously many years on from that although nobody was specific in stating how many. Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Wichita (Emma Stone), Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) are all back and ready for more, or in this case perhaps they are not. They have decided to make the White House their home, which leads to better jokes than I thought anyone would have at this point. Columbus decides that he wants to propose to Wichita, while Tallahassee is still acting as Little Rock's surrogate father even though she's plenty old enough to decide things for herself. Anyway, one morning Wichita and Little Rock decide to leave for the following reasons. Wichita thinks she has become too attached to Columbus and Little Rock is tired of being treated like a child. Sounds normal, to me anyway. Of course, the two guys are pissed and inevitably they both must move on.

A month later, the two guys head out to a mall and take a look around, seeing what they can find that catches their interest. While there, Columbus is startled by Madison (Zoey Deutch), who has been living in the freezer of a Pinkberry for years and years. She is incredibly annoying, but she has also been alone. When they go back to the White House, she seduces Columbus. In the middle of the night, there's a sound downstairs and we see that Wichita has returned without Little Rock. She wants weapons and some other things, and fortunately it is drawn out as long as possible for her to discover that Columbus brought someone back to their pad. Anyway, they're both a little mad at each other even before that, but Little Rock had decided to go to Graceland after years of hearing Tallahassee talk about it. She and Wichita had encountered Berkeley (Avan Jogia), a hippie who apparently attracted Little Rock enough for them to steal the car and leave Wichita behind. There are some obstacles in the way of the group now. They must find Little Rock, but they have a Pontiac Transport and those are very shitty vans. Madison also has to come along with the group even though she annoys the shit out of them, and perhaps most important is that Columbus and Wichita now do not get along.

If you liked the first film, you'll probably like the second, and in the end I think I liked both of them just about the same. There are strengths and weaknesses in the two films and I think that I've covered nearly all of them, but the addition of characters found out on the road livened things up quite a lot. This sort of thing prevents what I'd call sequel rot, but I thought this movie was properly goofy. Due to how goofy it was, I liked it and I can't complain too much about anything that this film features. Perhaps part of this feeling is because it's insane to expect very much from this kind of film. I still don't really understand why they made a sequel to this because I don't know how a movie like this could possibly make a ton of money, but it is going to be Halloween and the horror movie market is going to be very thin. There will be The Lighthouse, which is great but probably not something a lot of modern audiences will enjoy. There's also Countdown, which looks like complete shit. Then there's Zombieland: Double Tap. Last year, I believe the only horror movie out at Halloween was, well, Halloween. Suspiria was still in limited release. While Zombieland: Double Tap isn't very much of a horror movie, it's just enough to get people in the building. That matters, and I thought this was pretty good by the standards of modern comedy.

7/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

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

 

[909]

The Rachel Divide (2018), directed by Laura Brownson

The Rachel Divide is the first documentary that I can say made me laugh a lot while obviously not being a good documentary. Perhaps more than in any other case, the coverage of Rachel Dolezal brings to light the negativity in covering a subject entirely undeserving of people's attention. The ramification on the family of the subject cannot possibly be lost when this documentary is bringing it to light, but this is a shitty documentary for one reason alone. The nature of such a documentary is that the person is going to be given time to tell their own side of the story, and such as this story is, the person should not be given that time to tell their story. I think this highlights the problem with American media in general, and overall it explains why this country seems to tolerate things that others do not. The Rachel Divide isn't entirely lacking in events and important material, but the way that things work out is something I find more comedic and ridiculous than anything else. Is that wrong? Probably, but I can't help myself in this case. At no point did I ever feel bad for Rachel, but her kids were ultimately made to deal with the decisions their mother made. All of those decisions were inexplicable, selfish, and a sign someone is very mentally ill.

Everyone knows the story of Rachel Dolezal and what she actually did, but I think I should talk about the ramifications of her decisions in this section. Rachel had two kids, her former adopted brother Izaiah (long story) and her son Franklin. When this documentary began, she was pregnant with another son who would later be named Langston. Rachel's decision not to disappear once found out had extreme effects on everyone around her, including herself. Rachel went broke, and after this documentary was released she was prosecuted for welfare fraud. She had been receiving money in unreported income somehow regardless of her financial problems, but anyway, these are problems of her own creation. What I'm trying to say is that this is a very bad person. Addicted to social media, Rachel consistently created problems for her children because she could not help herself to do anything else. She said that it was her only outlet to the world and made her feel like herself, but what I see here is a disease. I see someone who doesn't care about anything that happens to their children as a result of their actions.

I don't really know where else to go with a review of this documentary other than saying that I was disgusted and appalled. I was stunned into laughter at this idiot claiming they were black and saying all kinds of other quite horrible things that served to devalue the experiences of other people. I also, quite frankly, do absolutely not understand what could have led someone to do all these things. Even being familiar with her life and the claims of abuse in her childhood do not do enough to explain why someone would inflict all this pain onto their kids. She associated her whiteness with bad experiences from her childhood, but I don't think that makes a hell of a lot of difference in knowing a bad person when I see one. Ultimately I can't write anything else about this person because of how ridiculous this was, how much I hate them, and how strongly I believe that this person should not have received any media attention.

5/10

 

[Mickey Massuco]

i'm surprised at the low score, you seemed to really be laughing hard while watching

https://collider.com/gemini-man-75-million-box-office-bomb/

smfh america can't appreciate the extra fps

 

[909]

Yeah towards the end though, you realize the deleterious impact that comes with giving someone like her a platform. By the end of the movie you fucking hate this person and what they represent so much.

I also did some of my own research and saw the way she talked to black women when confronted with the reality of her life. The race struggle only mattered to her when she felt she was a major part of it, the struggle for her was her and totally about her. Once it went anymore she was like a tornado that ruined the lives of those closest to her, and she couldn’t bring herself to stop doing that.

 

[Valeyard]

I've made a real effort not to watch this, by the way.

 

[Mickey Massuco]

Yeah towards the end though, you realize the deleterious impact that comes with giving someone like her a platform. By the end of the movie you fucking hate this person and what they represent so much.

I also did some of my own research and saw the way she talked to black women when confronted with the reality of her life. The race struggle only mattered to her when she felt she was a major part of it, the struggle for her was her and totally about her. Once it went anymore she was like a tornado that ruined the lives of those closest to her, and she couldn’t bring herself to stop doing that.

but what about the gemini man

 

[909]

It's in the other thread my man

 

[KOAB]

ART OF RASSLIN AIN'T GOT TIME TO READ

 

[Mickey Massuco]

It's in the other thread my man

ART OF RASSLIN AIN'T GOT TIME TO READ

 

[Mickey Massuco]

reading that gemini man review, it's cool to hear that even in 60 FPS it still made it look better than otherwise. I was curious to hear your opinion because I've read online that some people who saw it in 120 FPS thought it made it look TOO realistic. They felt that the 120 FPS made certain other aspects look even phonier than they otherwise might have, like CGI. That's an interesting take, I'd have to see a film in 120 FPS to see for myself.

 

[909]

The Laundromat (2019), directed by Steven Soderbergh

Do you guys remember when Soderbergh said that he was going to make movies using the iPhone camera from now on? Clearly this wasn't true and I'm not sure why he said that in the first place, but its been a few weeks since The Laundromat premiered and the reception has been rather tepid. I know exactly why the reception was tepid after having viewed the movie, but now I'm confused as to how this script attracted such a strong cast to begin with. I'm not saying that because I thought this was a bad film, as I did not. It's a weird film, and I'm not sure how this actually makes sense on paper. It's probably far more to do with the talent trusting the man directing the film, which is what they should do. Soderbergh has been rather prolific this year and this is his second release, which doesn't happen too often for a director in a single year. I don't know if using the iPhone made him rediscover his love for film or what, but I know that he said he wasn't sure he wanted to make movies anymore. Perhaps doing it for a streaming service is far more liberating. Anyway, to the film itself. I don't know how it was determined that Soderbergh was going to make a film in his style that was also related to the Panama Papers, but goddamnit he was going to do exactly that. When I say that the movie is in his style, you'd have to be familiar with him just to even know what I mean. This is a movie where Soderbergh's plot, or the remnants of that plot, drop the viewer into a slew of situations with new characters and hopes that the viewer enjoys those moments. In my case, I did.

The Laundromat can best be described as a dramedy. I don't really know how else to frame things. The film initially follows Ellen (Meryl Streep), a woman whose husband dies by drowning in a boating accident while they're on vacation. The boat was driven by Richard (Robert Patrick), who it turns out was no longer insured at the time of the accident despite payments that were made. The film goes so many different directions from this point that it's rather difficult to continue, because this story is very sprawling and super ambitious. At some point in here, our narrators Jurgen Mossack (Gary Oldman) and Ramon Fonseca (Antonio Banderas) decide they need to chime in here and explain the workings of shell companies and other various shady financial dealings. The aftermath of the boating accident is heavily impacted by those kinds of things. The chief culprit is that the insurance company doesn't actually exist. Actually, this is one of my gripes with the movie as a whole, it is too difficult to decipher how this particular thing is connected.

Apparently the insurance company that doesn't exist was administered by a man named Boncamper (Jeffrey Wright), who lives on the small island of Nevis in the Caribbean. Yes, Nevis is a tax haven and arguably it's the damn best one in the world. It is an island where the government prides itself on secrecy and this is definitely extended to foreigners who wish to do shady shit. Boncamper works for Mossack Fonseca in some kind of way, and he seems to be a rather rich accountant. Anyway, I don't want to get bogged down in details. The point of the movie is as such. Soderbergh wants to show you what Mossack Fonseca did and he wants to show you the kinds of people Mossack Fonseca dealt with. In the process of that, Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas narrate the film and explain everything that needs to be explained in order for people to understand the movie. The trailer made it seem like Meryl Streep's character would be a whistleblower of some kind, but this is absolutely not true. Instead, you get to see melodrama surrounding an African family, as well as a true story set in China where a very wealthy and powerful woman decides to murder a money launderer based on implied threats. Interesting? Probably not based on the description, but moreso in reality.

There are some key components that are part of this Soderbergh film that are common in his other films. Namely, it's the passing along from one character to the next. He's quite good at that. I will say that I can see why someone would absolutely hate this movie. It isn't focused. This film absolutely does make its point though and it has good characters although only a few of them will have lasting impact with me. His best works have had more, I digress. The lack of focus and the way that he passes the film along leads to stories that may in some sense lack resolution, although I found that the resolution in these scenarios were fine. If you aren't feeling one of the scenarios though, this could entirely tank one's opinion of the film. They are rather lengthy and all completely different in tone. The bit with Meryl Streep as a Panamanian woman is an enormous misfire. Gary Oldman as a German with a pronounced accent, on the other hand, is oddly amusing. The two narrators/hosts are essential to the film, without them this thing is a mess and not even able to be filmed. Of course, the script is written around their presence and the extent to which this works or doesn't is entirely left up to the viewer.

I thought The Laundromat was a good movie although not one I'll dwell on very much. I won't dwell on it because it doesn't tell the right story about the Panama Papers, and instead decides to make fun of the excesses and circumstances that come along with setting up these shell companies in an effort to hide income and evade taxes. The movie is supposedly trying to be like The Big Short, but I've never seen that and have judged it on its own merits. I laughed a fair bit and found every scenario to have value, but I feel like this isn't the right kind of movie to make about a scam like this one.

6.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
2. Midsommar
3. Ad Astra
4. The Farewell
5. Booksmart
6. Avengers: Endgame
7. Toy Story 4
8. Joker
9. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
10. Us
11. Gloria Bell
12. The Beach Bum
13. The Art of Self-Defense
14. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
15. Arctic
16. Spider-Man: Far From Home
17. Rocketman
18. High Flying Bird
19. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
20. Paddleton
21. The Peanut Butter Falcon
22. Hustlers
23. Blinded by the Light
24. Captain Marvel
25. Long Shot
26. Shazam
27. Ready or Not
28. A Vigilante
29. Late Night
30. Crawl
31. It: Chapter Two
32. Hotel Mumbai
33. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
34. Zombieland: Double Tap
35. Hobbs & Shaw
36. Official Secrets
37. Always Be My Maybe
38. Cold Pursuit
39. The Laundromat
40. Where'd You Go, Bernadette
41. Shaft
42. Happy Death Day 2U
43. Ma
44. Annabelle Comes Home
45. Greta
46. Aladdin
47. Triple Frontier
48. Fighting with My Family
49. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
50. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
51. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
52. Brexit
53. The Dirt
54. Velvet Buzzsaw
55. Stuber
56. Little
57. Alita: Battle Angel
58. The Kid
59. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
60. Good Boys
61. The Upside
62. The Lion King
63. The Dead Don't Die
64. Dumbo
65. The Hummingbird Project
66. Escape Room
67. 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
68. Brian Banks
69. Tolkien
70. Captive State
71. The Highwaymen
72. Pet Sematary
73. The Intruder
74. Child's Play
75. Gemini Man
76. Brightburn
77. Never Grow Old
78. Rambo: Last Blood
79. Angel Has Fallen
80. Yesterday
81. Anna
82. What Men Want
83. Them That Follow
84. Unicorn Store
85. The Curse of La Llorona
86. Miss Bala
87. Men in Black: International
88. The Red Sea Diving Resort
89. The Perfection
90. Hellboy
91. Glass
92. Dark Phoenix
93. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
94. The Kitchen
95. The Hustle
96. The Best of Enemies
97. The Prodigy
98. Polar
99. Serenity

 

[909]

Black and Blue (2019), directed by Deon Taylor

I am going to be very blunt. When Deon Taylor directs a movie, I know it's going to be trash. The question is always how trash it could actually be? The answer in this case is that Black and Blue is one of the most ridiculous concepts of the year, but it is filmed very well and has good music. So, how am I supposed to feel about something like this? Even though I watched this movie a day ago, I don't have a good answer to that. Black and Blue is a movie that lays it on as thick as it can possibly do so, and at the end it's likely that you won't feel any sort of way at all. It's funny though, this is a blatant attempt to get over a message. I think this is a movie that instead should be treated for what it is, a rather formulaic cop drama movie that is supposed to be like Training Day. Except, in reality, it isn't. I've never been at such a loss when reviewing a movie so long after having watched it. This is a movie that could be interesting, except it isn't. There is no need for social commentary in a movie with this much action. I am beginning to repeat myself, so I'll stop.

Alicia West (Naomie Harris) is a US Army vet who has returned to New Orleans, where she grew up at some point in the past. Upon her return, she is recruited into the police department and we are treated to a scene that shows how heavy handed this material actually is. She's running through her neighborhood, stopped by two white officers, and treated like shit even after they know she's a cop. At this moment I was wondering what could actually come next, but the trailer gives a hell of a lot away. Her partner is Kevin (Reid Scott), and they go into a store in a poorer neighborhood where we meet half the remaining characters. Never mind that. When they go back to the station, Kevin is met with news he doesn't want to hear, that he's wanted to work a double. He's not going to do that because he wants to spend time with his wife, so Alicia will take her place. She's tasked with being partner to Deacon Brown (James Moses Black), an experienced officer who makes clear that Alicia needs to realize where she now stands, that being a cop will be the most important thing and defining trait of her life.

At the end of their shift, Deacon is called to a long abandoned power plant. He tells Alicia to wait in the car, and because she's a rookie, Alicia must listen to him. When she hears gunfire from the place, she goes inside and turns on her body camera, which all the officers do not yet have. She does. Anyway, inside the building, she sees Deacon and two other officers named Malone (Frank Grillo) and Smitty (Beau Knapp) murder two drug dealers. Her body camera is on, so Smitty shoots at her and she falls down and has to escape the place. After doing so, Alicia no longer knows which officers to trust, but one thing's clear. She needs to make her way to the police station so she can upload that body camera footage. Why not call a reporter? Who the fuck knows. With there being a corruption scandal in the department centered around Malone, he is dead set on stopping her from exposing him. The film makes a big mistake though, the primary motivation for that should be exposing Malone as a murderer, not protecting the department. That's where people from the store come in. Mouse (Tyrese Gibson) was convicted of having resisted arrest and now tries to keep to himself. Darius (Mike Colter) is the father of the boy that Malone killed. Malone has told him that Alicia did it, so there is also a bounty now on her head.

This movie sounds disjointed from my description and it is in reality, with only a few saving graces. One is that Naomie Harris deserves to have been in a much better movie with this same character. The second is that this would have been a thoroughly dour experience had Tyrese not been in this movie making jokes. I would have hated this movie to its core if this role had been played by any other generic, boring actor. Overall I think the cast of this film deserved much better, but I did find some entertainment here and was laughing. If you're taking anything serious from a movie like this, I think that's a big mistake because this is trash entertainment. I was wondering as I was watching this if it was possible to consider this a racist movie. Is it my place to say something like that? I don't think that it is. But, I thought this was the kind of movie that someone would make if they wanted to paint black people in a bad light. That the director is of the same race is the only reason I'm even asking this question instead of outright stating it. On the other hand, there's the undisputed fact that this is a movie that black actors have the opportunity to work on in an industry where there aren't very many of those. However, this is something that one could also say about the last Rambo movie. The last Rambo movie is similarly close to being a disgusting watch, and in the weeks after having viewed the film I've felt this more and more so. Perhaps the thing about a racist movie is that the more you think about it, the more you realize how fucked up that it is.

4.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
2. Midsommar
3. Ad Astra
4. The Farewell
5. Booksmart
6. Avengers: Endgame
7. Toy Story 4
8. Joker
9. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
10. Us
11. Gloria Bell
12. The Beach Bum
13. The Art of Self-Defense
14. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
15. Arctic
16. Spider-Man: Far From Home
17. Rocketman
18. High Flying Bird
19. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
20. Paddleton
21. The Peanut Butter Falcon
22. Hustlers
23. Blinded by the Light
24. Captain Marvel
25. Long Shot
26. Shazam
27. Ready or Not
28. A Vigilante
29. Late Night
30. Crawl
31. It: Chapter Two
32. Hotel Mumbai
33. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
34. Zombieland: Double Tap
35. Hobbs & Shaw
36. Official Secrets
37. Always Be My Maybe
38. Cold Pursuit
39. The Laundromat
40. Where'd You Go, Bernadette
41. Shaft
42. Happy Death Day 2U
43. Ma
44. Annabelle Comes Home
45. Greta
46. Aladdin
47. Triple Frontier
48. Fighting with My Family
49. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
50. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
51. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
52. Brexit
53. The Dirt
54. Velvet Buzzsaw
55. Stuber
56. Little
57. Alita: Battle Angel
58. The Kid
59. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
60. Good Boys
61. The Upside
62. The Lion King
63. The Dead Don't Die
64. Dumbo
65. The Hummingbird Project
66. Escape Room
67. 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
68. Brian Banks
69. Tolkien
70. Captive State
71. The Highwaymen
72. Pet Sematary
73. The Intruder
74. Child's Play
75. Gemini Man
76. Brightburn
77. Black and Blue
78. Never Grow Old
79. Rambo: Last Blood
80. Angel Has Fallen
81. Yesterday
82. Anna
83. What Men Want
84. Them That Follow
85. Unicorn Store
86. The Curse of La Llorona
87. Miss Bala
88. Men in Black: International
89. The Red Sea Diving Resort
90. The Perfection
91. Hellboy
92. Glass
93. Dark Phoenix
94. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
95. The Kitchen
96. The Hustle
97. The Best of Enemies
98. The Prodigy
99. Polar
100. Serenity

 

[909]

The Lighthouse (2019), directed by Robert Eggers

I am unashamed to admit that since Avengers: Endgame, the movie I have been looking forward to the most is The Lighthouse. Why would I say that? Have you seen the trailer for this movie at all? The aesthetic is exactly what I want from a movie from a director who has already directed one classic horror film in his own unique fashion. I would say something about this movie in comparison to The Witch, though. The fact is that this is a much less terrifying film. This is more of a drama and you can take that for what it's worth. If you're a horror movie gatekeeper, and me saying this makes you mad, time to look away! There are so many similarities between the two movies though. I'll eventually get to that. For now, it's a good time to talk about things that the director has said. I have seen comments from him saying that he doesn't think he'll make a movie set in modern times. Considering his two films, this is absolutely for the best. Not enough directors are able to properly capture the time they decide to set their movies in. This is clearly the kind of film that has been committed to in every way with painstaking labor. I won't go so far as to say this was everything that I hoped it would be because in one particular way it actually isn't. What I would say is that instead this is its own movie that to some extent subverted my expectations, a movie that isn't anything more than what you see on the screen, and best described as a fever dream. I am also surprised that one of the actors wasn't completely outshone.

The Lighthouse is set sometime in the 19th century, with Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) and Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) being sent to work at a lighthouse on contract. Thomas is the supervisor and keeper of the light itself, whiile Ephraim does the bitch work on the island even though he's also supposed to be in the lighthouse. But, Thomas is in charge and that's that. Ephraim's bitch work is very, very hard. He is to carry heavy containers with kerosene in them, to refuel the light, to dispose of their chamber pots, to ensure that their cistern is clean, to catch fish so that they can eat, and to paint the lighthouse so that it looks proper and the way that it should. There is also much more, but the constant shoveling seems to be the most difficult. The two are supposed to stay their for four weeks, but each of them have some serious peculiarities. Ephraim seems to not want to talk to anyone and that appears to have played a part in his decision to go on this job. Thomas, on the other hand, he was a seaman for some time before retiring after a leg injury, but the sea is in his bones and he seems to deeply love his job.

Now that's out of the way, we can talk about the crux of the film and why people have been discussing it. Many of the things that happen in this movie are quite strange. When Ephraim arrives, he notices a hole in his cot and digs out a mermaid scrimshaw that he summarily hides in his jacket. Later that night, after having been banned from going up to the top of the lighthouse, he sees Thomas up there while naked. Strange? You bet. That's not all though. Ephraim begins to have visions of tentacles, of mermaids, of all these things that aren't real but to his mind they are. To some extent this is explained later in the film, but there is one thing that is a constant and is not explained. Similar to Black Phillip in The Witch, in this case we have a seagull. This one has only one eye and is very interested in harassing Ephraim. The two guys just have to make it four weeks though!

One of the similarities in The Lighthouse and The Witch, as already stated, is the use of animals in a villainous role. Both movies are also completely committed to their time period, accents and speech all adhering to the way that it was. This is a very talky movie and with only two actors in it, that's what is required. The mood and tone of this movie is absolutely on point the entire way. Everything in The Lighthouse also hits pretty hard, but some clarification is now absolutely required. The difference in the two films Eggers made is that The Lighthouse is entirely reliant on the performances of Dafoe and Pattinson, both of which are excellent. The Witch has a much better plot. This is also a very funny movie. If you aren't finding humor in this film, there's probably something wrong with you. There are scenes that aren't funny though. Most of them are masturbation related. This movie is totally absurd on almost every level. The two guys are tasked to do a very difficult job that causes them both to descend into madness. What's real and what isn't real is also something that the viewer is left to judge for themselves, but this viewer thinks that none of it is.

The question of how I feel about this film as a whole is something I cannot yet describe without a period of reflection, but I can make some assumptions. One of them is that I will always remember some of the things in this movie. Most of those memorable things occur when the characters are drunk. The closing scenes are also completely batshit on all levels, and I think that as the movie plays out there will be one of the two characters that you prefer. At the end, that character may or may not be your favorite. Obviously, this is a film with its own technical achievements, and you've probably heard about how the production had to build their own lighthouse they could maneuver a camera through properly. This is a major achievement on its own, but the use of black and white also grounds the film and makes things feel much more bleak. Which I'm certain was on purpose because absolutely everything else in this film was engineered to create that feeling. What I would also say as far as my list placement of The Lighthouse, while this film is very memorable, the films ahead of it left me feeling more once they were over. This one, I did feel a fair bit and most of what I was thinking was how crazy this was, but there isn't any great thematic thing here unless I'm really missing something. I don't think I am, either. This is two guys who go absolutely batshit.

9/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
2. Midsommar
3. Ad Astra
4. The Farewell
5. The Lighthouse
6. Booksmart
7. Avengers: Endgame
8. Toy Story 4
9. Joker
10. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
11. Us
12. Gloria Bell
13. The Beach Bum
14. The Art of Self-Defense
15. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
16. Arctic
17. Spider-Man: Far From Home
18. Rocketman
19. High Flying Bird
20. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
21. Paddleton
22. The Peanut Butter Falcon
23. Hustlers
24. Blinded by the Light
25. Captain Marvel
26. Long Shot
27. Shazam
28. Ready or Not
29. A Vigilante
30. Late Night
31. Crawl
32. It: Chapter Two
33. Hotel Mumbai
34. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
35. Zombieland: Double Tap
36. Hobbs & Shaw
37. Official Secrets
38. Always Be My Maybe
39. Cold Pursuit
40. The Laundromat
41. Where'd You Go, Bernadette
42. Shaft
43. Happy Death Day 2U
44. Ma
45. Annabelle Comes Home
46. Greta
47. Aladdin
48. Triple Frontier
49. Fighting with My Family
50. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
51. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
52. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
53. Brexit
54. The Dirt
55. Velvet Buzzsaw
56. Stuber
57. Little
58. Alita: Battle Angel
59. The Kid
60. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
61. Good Boys
62. The Upside
63. The Lion King
64. The Dead Don't Die
65. Dumbo
66. The Hummingbird Project
67. Escape Room
68. 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
69. Brian Banks
70. Tolkien
71. Captive State
72. The Highwaymen
73. Pet Sematary
74. The Intruder
75. Child's Play
76. Gemini Man
77. Brightburn
78. Black and Blue
79. Never Grow Old
80. Rambo: Last Blood
81. Angel Has Fallen
82. Yesterday
83. Anna
84. What Men Want
85. Them That Follow
86. Unicorn Store
87. The Curse of La Llorona
88. Miss Bala
89. Men in Black: International
90. The Red Sea Diving Resort
91. The Perfection
92. Hellboy
93. Glass
94. Dark Phoenix
95. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
96. The Kitchen
97. The Hustle
98. The Best of Enemies
99. The Prodigy
100. Polar
101. Serenity

 

[909]

The Current War: Director's Cut (2019). directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

I believe it is required to explain why there is a director's cut. The Current War began filming way back in December of 2016, and was rolled out in Toronto in mid-2017. This was intended to be Harvey Weinstein's last opus, or whatever it is that he really wanted it to be. It turns out that the finished product was not very good. The film was also shelved because of what he was exposed as having done, but that wasn't the only reason it was delayed. It turned out that the film wasn't any good. You mean a movie about the expansion of electricity across the nation isn't extremely entertaining and marketable? I don't know how anyone could have decided to spend $30 million on such a movie. I also do not know how the director was able to convince Martin Scorsese to fund reshoots and fix what was a rather broken film. I don't know what could have been wrong with the first version that made this one so much better. I digress. If you are interested in things like this, about the titans of America and how this country was made into what it is now, I suppose that this kind of movie is for you. If you don't care, you'll probably fall asleep. I will say one thing though. If you don't know the history of electricity in this country and would like to, the way this movie ends would very much surprise you.

I don't know how much of what's in The Current War is real or not. I'm not going to go looking through a history book because that doesn't sound very fun. Instead I'm going to present the version on screen. The Current War is about the battle between Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) to see whose preferred version of electricity would conquer the United States and be the way people received electricity. Also, the film makes the mistake of not saying that it's also about who can make the most money. Edison was backed by JP Morgan (Matthew Macfadyen), while Westinghouse was risking everything on his own. Both men had assistants, Edison had Samuel Insull (Tom Holland) and Westinghouse had Franklin Pope (Stanley Townsend), both of whom were essential to their operations. After meeting with Morgan, one night Edison was traveling home and supposed to meet with Westinghouse as well. When reaching the train station, Edison asked the train to keep on going, blowing off his meeting with Westinghouse. The way the film tells it, this leads to them becoming enemies.

The Current War also adds in another wrinkle, Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult). Nikola had just made his way to our country, and after arriving, he began working for Edison. One of the only things I knew about the people in this movie was that Tesla didn't last long working for Edison, the reason being unpaid bonuses that Tesla thought he was entitled to. Tesla's rejection pushes him into a bit of a tailspin. Meanwhile, I should explain why Edison and Westinghouse had these issues. Edison was attempting to forward Direct Current electricity, which was limited in range and expensive. Westinghouse was pushing Alternating Current, which could work over longer distances and was cheaper, but Edison had muddied the waters by smearing AC power. He had said that it could kill people, which any electricity could if receiving enough of a charge, but it was Edison's goal to win at any cost. Edison was very much a dick.

Effectively, the film paints Edison in a much more horrible light than the general public is aware of. I certainly wasn't aware, and I don't think it's possible I'm the only one left in the dark. The film isn't all that good even though what we have here is a movie with two great actors facing each other in a war of sorts. The reason why the movie isn't great is largely related to circumstances and the fact that Westinghouse and Edison did not have public confrontations or work in a space where they could have those confrontations with each other. A format where they are receiving news about the other through newspaper does not really allow for a strong narrative. What we have here is something that makes for a better documentary than a narrative. The spark just isn't there, and while the events are enlightening because I don't know enough about them, that just isn't enough. There are interesting visuals here, though. I am incapable of describing them, so you'll have to learn for yourself. I'm not saying The Current War is a bad film, but it isn't as good as I was hoping that it was. It is a solid history lesson though and illuminating should you not know the details. Have I made enough electricity related puns yet?

The last thing I wanted to say is that movies like these often ignore the plight of those tasked with doing business on behalf of these titans of industry. Very little dialogue is devoted to that at all, other than Westinghouse regretfully talking about laying off workers in his other industries after having made them redundant. That's it, and that's not enough.

6/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
2. Midsommar
3. Ad Astra
4. The Farewell
5. The Lighthouse
6. Booksmart
7. Avengers: Endgame
8. Toy Story 4
9. Joker
10. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
11. Us
12. Gloria Bell
13. The Beach Bum
14. The Art of Self-Defense
15. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
16. Arctic
17. Spider-Man: Far From Home
18. Rocketman
19. High Flying Bird
20. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
21. Paddleton
22. The Peanut Butter Falcon
23. Hustlers
24. Blinded by the Light
25. Captain Marvel
26. Long Shot
27. Shazam
28. Ready or Not
29. A Vigilante
30. Late Night
31. Crawl
32. It: Chapter Two
33. Hotel Mumbai
34. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
35. Zombieland: Double Tap
36. Hobbs & Shaw
37. Official Secrets
38. Always Be My Maybe
39. Cold Pursuit
40. The Laundromat
41. Where'd You Go, Bernadette
42. Shaft
43. Happy Death Day 2U
44. Ma
45. Annabelle Comes Home
46. Greta
47. Aladdin
48. Triple Frontier
49. Fighting with My Family
50. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
51. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
52. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
53. Brexit
54. The Dirt
55. Velvet Buzzsaw
56. Stuber
57. Little
58. Alita: Battle Angel
59. The Current War: Director's Cut
60. The Kid
61. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
62. Good Boys
63. The Upside
64. The Lion King
65. The Dead Don't Die
66. Dumbo
67. The Hummingbird Project
68. Escape Room
69. 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
70. Brian Banks
71. Tolkien
72. Captive State
73. The Highwaymen
74. Pet Sematary
75. The Intruder
76. Child's Play
77. Gemini Man
78. Brightburn
79. Black and Blue
80. Never Grow Old
81. Rambo: Last Blood
82. Angel Has Fallen
83. Yesterday
84. Anna
85. What Men Want
86. Them That Follow
87. Unicorn Store
88. The Curse of La Llorona
89. Miss Bala
90. Men in Black: International
91. The Red Sea Diving Resort
92. The Perfection
93. Hellboy
94. Glass
95. Dark Phoenix
96. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
97. The Kitchen
98. The Hustle
99. The Best of Enemies
100. The Prodigy
101. Polar
102. Serenity

 

[909]

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019), directed by Tim Miller

It is strange to watch something when you know that it is very likely the end of the franchise before you even head into the theater. After this movie, I'm alright with this being the end of the Terminator franchise, but I do think there's potential for someone to come along and make a movie that works for the same reasons that the first one did. I'm still confused as to why this has not yet happened. At least the damage of this loss will be spread across three studios, which ensures that nobody is taking such a large hit they will go broke. What I'm thinking right now is that this is an alright movie, but there's a reason this is a dead franchise. The fact is that a lot of people who were younger when the first movies came out have now aged out of going to the theater. People who weren't around for those movies and watched the first two on DVD or not at all, they have no affinity for these movies and couldn't give a shit less about them. They've also been known for being very shitty movies. It's hard to see how this franchise could continue and I never thought this would be a box office hit of any kind. Making a movie with a budget this large and an R rating also limits the audience they can reach. What I'm thinking is that the effects in this movie are good, but ultimately they are excessive and counter productive when it comes to keeping the franchise alive by making money. Paramount has had a pretty bad year both because of this and Gemini Man, it's hard to understand how a studio can stay open when they have no intellectual property of any value, but I'm sure they'll try. Original stuff doesn't draw anymore either.

I was going to watch the last two Terminator films prior to this, but I didn't and that's that. It doesn't matter as they aren't pertinent to this one. Terminator: Dark Fate ignores those films and decides to start things off in 1998, with Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in Guatemala with John Connor. They believe that the future has been saved. It has not been saved. A T-800 Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) arrives from the future and murders John prior to leaving, having completed its mission. We must jump forward to 2020, with a new Terminator, the Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna) sent back in time to Mexico City. The Terminator is to do what Terminators do, in this case it is to kill Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes), whose place in the future is not mentioned for a long time although it doesn't take a genius to figure that out. Dani is in need of saving, but before that she is blissfully unaware and lives at home with her dad and her brother Diego (Diego Boneta). Of course, like everyone else, they have a job and head off to work at an assembly plant undergoing automation like everyone else. Do you get how that ties into this? Not so subtle, this movie.

Anyway, after they head off to work is when the Rev-9 arrives. Seemingly unbeknownst to the Rev-9 is that someone else has arrived from the future. Grace (Mackenzie Davis) is an augmented human soldier, so even though John is dead, the future happens and his death assured that humanity was able to live on in some fashion. There is something I wish would have happened in the story and I would have prefered Grace and the Terminator had their roles reversed. Grace's role in the story is to protect Dani at any cost, to hide her as long as she can be hidden, should she be unable to kill the Terminator. They will also need some help and the trailer foolishly gives away said help. That's about all I should mention.

In order to get people to show up in a theater to see a Terminator movie, you do have to give away that Arnold Schwarzenegger is in it. I'm not complaining about that. Instead I have some other complaints. I would have liked that the trailer not reveal Sarah Connor is a character in this movie in any way at all. Again, I understand why that was done, but I don't like it. Second of all, when I say that I wish Grace and the Terminator had their roles reversed, I'm saying that this would have been a great movie if Grace had been taking Dani somewhere to kill her while the Terminator was saving her. If Sarah had foolishly chosen the wrong side, that would have made things a hell of a lot more interesting in the third act. I haven't yet figured out how to work Arnold's Terminator into that though. Anyway, I said that I thought this movie was alright and that's how I feel. The action here is good, but I want the series to return to the style and feel of The Terminator rather than attempting to recreate T2 over and over again. The fact is that they can't recreate it, but they're also not doing the right things to even attempt to do so. I'm not trying to shit on anyone's performance here, but what you need in this kind of movie is for a big guy like Dave Bautista to be in the role that Grace is in. The banter between he and Arnold would obviously speak for itself. I think people expect some level of charisma that they aren't getting from these movies.

I did find the action in this film to be pretty good, but the issue is that everything inevitably comes back to a comparison between the action here and the action in the two good Terminator films. I can't bring myself to talk about this movie very much more, or about Skynet and the lack thereof, or really any of that. I do think this is a fun movie as well, which is just about all you can ask for when the filmmakers are so committed to attempting to continue the story from T2 while making the film in a similar way. There are just so many things that I would have rather done given all the time that I've had to think about how the Terminator series should have continued after the second one. The film desperately needs more time to focus on the future though, and perhaps this film would have been better set in the future too. I don't know anymore. What I do know is that Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger are really good here, but it's impossible for anything to follow T2.

6.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
2. Midsommar
3. Ad Astra
4. The Farewell
5. The Lighthouse
6. Booksmart
7. Avengers: Endgame
8. Toy Story 4
9. Joker
10. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
11. Us
12. Gloria Bell
13. The Beach Bum
14. The Art of Self-Defense
15. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
16. Arctic
17. Spider-Man: Far From Home
18. Rocketman
19. High Flying Bird
20. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
21. Paddleton
22. The Peanut Butter Falcon
23. Hustlers
24. Blinded by the Light
25. Captain Marvel
26. Long Shot
27. Shazam
28. Ready or Not
29. A Vigilante
30. Late Night
31. Crawl
32. It: Chapter Two
33. Hotel Mumbai
34. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
35. Zombieland: Double Tap
36. Hobbs & Shaw
37. Official Secrets
38. Always Be My Maybe
39. Cold Pursuit
40. The Laundromat
41. Where'd You Go, Bernadette
42. Shaft
43. Happy Death Day 2U
44. Ma
45. Terminator: Dark Fate
46. Annabelle Comes Home
47. Greta
48. Aladdin
49. Triple Frontier
50. Fighting with My Family
51. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
52. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
53. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
54. Brexit
55. The Dirt
56. Velvet Buzzsaw
57. Stuber
58. Little
59. Alita: Battle Angel
60. The Current War: Director's Cut
61. The Kid
62. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
63. Good Boys
64. The Upside
65. The Lion King
66. The Dead Don't Die
67. Dumbo
68. The Hummingbird Project
69. Escape Room
70. 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
71. Brian Banks
72. Tolkien
73. Captive State
74. The Highwaymen
75. Pet Sematary
76. The Intruder
77. Child's Play
78. Gemini Man
79. Brightburn
80. Black and Blue
81. Never Grow Old
82. Rambo: Last Blood
83. Angel Has Fallen
84. Yesterday
85. Anna
86. What Men Want
87. Them That Follow
88. Unicorn Store
89. The Curse of La Llorona
90. Miss Bala
91. Men in Black: International
92. The Red Sea Diving Resort
93. The Perfection
94. Hellboy
95. Glass
96. Dark Phoenix
97. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
98. The Kitchen
99. The Hustle
100. The Best of Enemies
101. The Prodigy
102. Polar
103. Serenity

 

[909]

Korean, subtitles

Parasite (2019), directed by Bong Joon-ho

With my mom finally out of the hospital, it is clear that I will have to skip a movie or two until they're on television, but Parasite was never going to be one of those skipped movies. When a movie comes out with the early buzz that Parasite had, and when it has already made $100,000,000 before ever showing here, you certainly must know that it's a movie you have to watch. That's the boat I've been in. It was just a matter of being lucky enough for this film to head out my way, so I did not have to wait. This is the third of Bong's movies that I've seen, and it certainly won't be the last. I'm going to need to go back. Another thing I will say is that the hype for Parasite is not misplaced at all. I have also said before that I strongly believe only one movie in every given year should be given a 10 rating. I do have every intention of sticking to that, and in this case Parasite actually gave me a reason to feel that way. Not giving a movie a 10 rating is no lack of endorsement, however. This is one of the best films that there is, it is only barely marred by the closing frames of the film, and Parasite is also one of the most entertaining movies that I've watched in a few years. But what's it about, you may ask?

par·a·site
/ˈperəˌsīt/

noun
1.
an organism that lives in or on an organism of another species (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the other's expense.

Parasite is a devilish concept if there has ever been one, it is about a family of people who live in a very shitty basement apartment and struggle to live. It turns out that South Korea is just like everywhere else. There are haves and there are have nots, and the Kims are in the latter category. The subtitles play tricks and I'm not familiar with Korean naming conventions. The patriarch we will refer to as Kim (Song Kang-Ho), his wife is Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin); their children are a son, Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik), and a daughter, Ki-jeong (Park So-dam). Their current job is to fold pizza boxes, which they receive a pittance for. This job allows them to eat, but not much else. One day, Ki-woo's friend arrives, he is Min-hyuk (Park Seo-joon). Min presents Ki-Woo with an opportunity, to take over his job as an English tutor while he goes abroad to study. Min is a specific kind of tutor, and as a college student this has allowed him to tutor the daughter of a very wealthy family, the Park's. They are the father and CEO of a tech company, Park Dong-ik (Lee Sun-kyun); his absent minded wife, Choi Yeon-go (Cho Yeo-jeong); the already mentioned daughter in need of English teaching, Da-hye (Jung Ji-so); and lastly the son, Da-song (Jung Hyuon-joon). When I say that Yeon-go is absent minded, that is an understatement and this is why Min believes that Ki-woo will easily be able to do his job.

Unfortunately, the Park family has a housekeeper who is not so absent minded, she is Moon-gwang (Lee Jung-eun). The thing is, she's a motherly type so she's also easy to con. I don't really want to say how everything in this movie comes to pass because that's rather boring and isn't what I think anyone wants from me. The fact is that Bong is a very cunning director and is able to come up with scenarios that I could not possibly have conceived. The other thing is, everyone has their secrets, and the events that happen at a certain point of Parasite are entirely unexpected on every single level. What we have in Parasite is a movie about the differences between rich and poor in a place like Seoul, but this does apply to pretty much everywhere else in the world. Best of all that isn't the entire point of the movie.

Parasite is a movie with its themes, but these themes aren't so pervasive that all you can do is think about them. The idea that the Kim family has latched themselves to the Parks does have the reverse effect in the sense that this family is entirely dependent on the Kims for their own happiness. I do also find the duplicity required for the Kims to infiltrate the Parks to be a rather interesting study. I was finding myself left to question how much easier this worker-employer relationship could be without the need for deception. Of course, one of these jobs is entirely duplicitous as someone has completely bullshitted their way into it when they aren't qualified, but at the same time they do provide help for the person who needs it. Ultimately, the things in this movie are just too much. There is so much entertainment value from one scene to the next.

I have already explained why this isn't getting the perfect rating, but so many people have already given it one that I probably should too. This movie is hilarious, and this is a case of a movie where it's better when you know less about it. I strongly recommend not reading anything other than what I've written. As far as craft goes, this is also not a movie short on that. The cinematography is excellent, which is of course no surprise. If you've seen Mother, you know exactly what I mean and I'm not talking about the American movie here. If you haven't seen that, what the hell are you doing? The scene where you find out what happened in that film is absolutely incredible, and there's no shortage of that in Parasite. At this point I'm wondering how many of Bong's movies are going to wind up getting this kind of release in North America. Parasite is going to haul over $15,000,000 in this country after Oscar showings start, which is practically unheard of and just doesn't happen. The reason why in this case is rather obvious. As already stated, Parasite is a funny movie and has devilish twists and turns. Perhaps most importantly, it's easy to relate to the characters and feel what they feel.

9.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
2. Parasite
3. Midsommar
4. Ad Astra
5. The Farewell
6. The Lighthouse
7. Booksmart
8. Avengers: Endgame
9. Toy Story 4
10. Joker
11. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
12. Us
13. Gloria Bell
14. The Beach Bum
15. The Art of Self-Defense
16. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
17. Arctic
18. Spider-Man: Far From Home
19. Rocketman
20. High Flying Bird
21. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
22. Paddleton
23. The Peanut Butter Falcon
24. Hustlers
25. Blinded by the Light
26. Captain Marvel
27. Long Shot
28. Shazam
29. Ready or Not
30. A Vigilante
31. Late Night
32. Crawl
33. It: Chapter Two
34. Hotel Mumbai
35. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
36. Zombieland: Double Tap
37. Hobbs & Shaw
38. Official Secrets
39. Always Be My Maybe
40. Cold Pursuit
41. The Laundromat
42. Where'd You Go, Bernadette
43. Shaft
44. Happy Death Day 2U
45. Ma
46. Terminator: Dark Fate
47. Annabelle Comes Home
48. Greta
49. Aladdin
50. Triple Frontier
51. Fighting with My Family
52. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
53. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
54. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
55. Brexit
56. The Dirt
57. Velvet Buzzsaw
58. Stuber
59. Little
60. Alita: Battle Angel
61. The Current War: Director's Cut
62. The Kid
63. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
64. Good Boys
65. The Upside
66. The Lion King
67. The Dead Don't Die
68. Dumbo
69. The Hummingbird Project
70. Escape Room
71. 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
72. Brian Banks
73. Tolkien
74. Captive State
75. The Highwaymen
76. Pet Sematary
77. The Intruder
78. Child's Play
79. Gemini Man
80. Brightburn
81. Black and Blue
82. Never Grow Old
83. Rambo: Last Blood
84. Angel Has Fallen
85. Yesterday
86. Anna
87. What Men Want
88. Them That Follow
89. Unicorn Store
90. The Curse of La Llorona
91. Miss Bala
92. Men in Black: International
93. The Red Sea Diving Resort
94. The Perfection
95. Hellboy
96. Glass
97. Dark Phoenix
98. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
99. The Kitchen
100. The Hustle
101. The Best of Enemies
102. The Prodigy
103. Polar
104. Serenity

 

[909]

My Friend Dahmer (2017), directed by Marc Meyers

It turns out that when watching a film about someone so absolutely repulsive, I have a hard time writing anything about it. So, here we are. This is a movie that on some level I'm surprised exists at all, but fortunately this is also a movie where the filmmakers take great care not to paint their subject in a better light than he deserves. That's the best thing you can say about a movie like this one, I suppose. My Friend Dahmer is also an interesting movie in its own right, although I'm not too sure I'd call it good. My first, and probably most important observation, is that My Friend Dahmer is a boring movie. The examination of the subject doesn't quite hit as strongly as I would have liked it to, and I think the most important question is left unanswered. What drives someone to kill another person, and in this case multiple people? This isn't quite answered effectively enough by the film and you're left to make your own determination. I don't know if I would have done that. Also, you have to consider the fact that this movie was adapted from a graphic novel that one of his classmates wrote. I don't know if this was an attempt on the part of his classmate to absolve himself, but what My Friend Dahmer does is make people like said classmate look pretty bad.

I don't know if the time jumps on Wikipedia are accurate, but what I can tell you is that My Friend Dahmer kicks off with Jeffrey Dahmer (Ross Lynch) living in Ohio with his parents, Lionel (Dallas Roberts) and Joyce (Anne Heche). He also has a little brother, but the kid is truly irrelevant to this story. Jeffrey is a strange kid to say the least. He has an obsession with some guy who jogs on the same road as his school bus from time to time, but that's not even the worst thing about him. This kid collects dead animals that he dissolves using chemicals that his father has given to him, because his father is a chemist and has clearly indulged his son way too much. After some time, Lionel destroys Jeffrey's collection and forces him to make friends at school. While all this is going on, his mother Joyce is becoming more and more mentally ill, more difficult to handle and cope with. During school, Jeffrey is able to make friends, but for lack of a better word it's by acting like a special needs person. These friends are Derf (Alex Wolff), Neil (Tommy Nelson), and Mike (Harrison Holzer). Are they a good influence or are they indulging this guy? Does their presence help push him into doing crazy things, or was he already fucked up to begin with?

The answer to the last question, I suppose, is mostly the latter. I still feel like I'm not understanding the role of his friends, but they aren't really his friends in the first place. I had to do some of my own reading and found it strange that his father believed Jeffrey had a scientific curiosity in such things, but this is some information that I think belonged in the film. Perhaps I'm just not the proper audience for such a movie, you know. I think it's expected that most of the people watching My Friend Dahmer have some sort of knowledge about Dahmer, and I don't have any. I do appreciate that the film doesn't present the idea that Jeffrey could ever have been alright. That was never going to happen, but I think the film errs in not nailing down why they felt Dahmer became this way. I'm clearly in the minority as a lot of people think this was a strong film, but I do not. On the other hand, it is passable, and that is largely because of the performance by Ross Lynch. It is rather believable to a degree where you wonder if there's something wrong with the actor as well, highly convincing the whole way.

While there is something wrong with the movie, and while I did say it was boring, I couldn't bring myself to completely hate this. It is a movie about the development of a serial killer and there aren't very many of those. I think this is in the same category as the Ted Bundy movie that premiered earlier this year. I wish there had been just a little more to them, but both movies were acceptable.

6.5/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

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

 

[909]

Doctor Sleep (2019), directed by Mike Flanagan

For the second time in two weeks, I went to see a movie that I was very much looking forward to even though I knew that it would bomb. Doctor Sleep has long bombed, but in this case I don't seem to care either way about it. I think deep down, this was made knowing there was a good chance of the film bombing. This was a film made because studio heads really wanted to make a good movie, made because they thought there was an audience for it because it would be a good movie. The reactions to Doctor Sleep have been mixed, but I would say they're mixed for the right reasons. The mixed reactions are largely because the film is attempting to be ambitious. You could say that the film is too long and you wouldn't entirely be wrong, but I'm having a hard time figuring out what to remove from Doctor Sleep. I don't really give a shit about the source material the way that a lot of people would. Stanley Kubrick's film this most certainly is not, but this is ultimately a satisfying movie until the last few minutes. Maybe it's too much though. This is a horror movie that doesn't bring a lot of terror, but it is a good story and features a fair bit of fan service, which also may be too much.

Doctor Sleep is a movie that has balls, for lack of a better word. Surprisingly, things kick off in 1980, with Danny Torrance and his mother Wendy (Alex Essoe) living in Florida. Danny looks like, well, Danny...but Wendy does not and we have to ignore that even though it is very jarring. Danny has been quite ruined by his experiences at the Overlook Hotel, and is now haunted by the ghost from the bathtub. Through the shining, Dick Hallorann (Carl Lumbly) has reappeared even though he is dead, to teach Danny how to lock these ghosts away in his mind so that he isn't tormented by them. While this is all going on, there is a cult of beings that feeds off the souls of people who have similar abilities as Danny. In a very creepy scene, we are introduced to them. They are led by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), but other prominent members are Crow Daddy (Zahn McClarnon), and Grandpa Flick (Carel Struycken). Flick is obviously the oldest of them, while Crow Daddy and Rose are lovers. Anyway, they have found a little girl with what is called steam. Steam is what comes out of the mouths of those with the shining when they die, and devouring this steam allows the beings to live for an extremely long time. So, bye bye little girl.

After this scene, we jump forward in time, which is where we really belong. Danny has become Dan (Ewan McGregor), and he is an alcoholic. Being an alcoholic, or for that matter filling his body with other substances, allows him to suppress his abilities, which you learn more about over the course of the film. Anyway, Dan has decided to escape and move to New Hampshire, where he finds a job at a hospice center after quitting drinking. With the help of Billy (Cliff Curtis), he's also able to get a room and put his life together. At the job, there is a cat who goes to patients who are dying, and Dan uses his shining in order to comfort those people as they pass on. It may not surprise you that he is given the nickname of "Doctor Sleep." Dan also starts to receive telepathic communication on his wall from Abra (Kyliegh Curran), who is a little girl with far more powerful ability than him. At the same time, Rose is able to recruit someone with powerful ability, Andi (Emily Alyn Lind). These scenes solely exist for the purpose of showing you how these things work, which I'm not going to talk about because I don't want to explain exactly how all this works. However, when things jump forward to 2019, when this group of freaks is no longer easily able to find uncorrupted people to feed on, things become more difficult for them. What's more is that Abra's power continues to grow while she remains uncorrupted, so obviously, they're going to find her.

It's funny that there seems to be some sort of disconnect between critics and audiences, 90% of whom seem to have enjoyed the movie judging by Rotten Tomatoes. The length isn't an issue for regular people, but the critic class is telling everyone that the movie is too long. It's quite strange. Anyway, I thought this was a fun movie that made the best of adapting a novel that sounds like a piece of work. My brother decided to read the book prior to watching the film, but the book sounds as if it isn't even worth my time. Anyway, this movie is worth my time. What we have here is an extremely hot woman playing a child murderer. That's the most important thing. Secondly, we have what is actually a good sequel to The Shining, even though I'm surprised this was made at all in the first place. The cinematography and score is supposed to be a callback, and it's a very good one. I did find some of the scenes to be laughable and not in a good way, most of them being related to Wendy, who looked nothing like Shelley Duvall. This kind of thing, it is what it is because they couldn't bring her back, but it's strange.

I also didn't much care for the ending itself, but this is to some extent overridden because there's a scene where the most annoying child actor in the world is tortured and murdered. That seems like fan-fiction of a sort and the scene plays out exactly like that. Ultimately I'm quite glad this film was made. The story is very complex and takes a long time to develop, but I never felt bored at any point while I was watching this. I hope a movie that fails at the box office like this one did doesn't discourage executives from using the intellectual property that they have in an inventive way, the way Doctor Sleep was made. It probably will, but that wouldn't be good at all. My assumption is that this will lead to more horror movies eschewing story in favor of making cheap, senseless slasher movies, which is not at all what I want. Mostly I was just glad Doctor Sleep didn't suck ass.

7.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
2. Parasite
3. Midsommar
4. Ad Astra
5. The Farewell
6. The Lighthouse
7. Booksmart
8. Avengers: Endgame
9. Toy Story 4
10. Joker
11. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
12. Us
13. Gloria Bell
14. The Beach Bum
15. The Art of Self-Defense
16. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
17. Arctic
18. Spider-Man: Far From Home
19. Rocketman
20. High Flying Bird
21. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
22. Paddleton
23. The Peanut Butter Falcon
24. Doctor Sleep
25. Hustlers
26. Blinded by the Light
27. Captain Marvel
28. Long Shot
29. Shazam
30. Ready or Not
31. A Vigilante
32. Late Night
33. Crawl
34. It: Chapter Two
35. Hotel Mumbai
36. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
37. Zombieland: Double Tap
38. Hobbs & Shaw
39. Official Secrets
40. Always Be My Maybe
41. Cold Pursuit
42. The Laundromat
43. Where'd You Go, Bernadette
44. Shaft
45. Happy Death Day 2U
46. Ma
47. Terminator: Dark Fate
48. Annabelle Comes Home
49. Greta
50. Aladdin
51. Triple Frontier
52. Fighting with My Family
53. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
54. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
55. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
56. Brexit
57. The Dirt
58. Velvet Buzzsaw
59. Stuber
60. Little
61. Alita: Battle Angel
62. The Current War: Director's Cut
63. The Kid
64. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
65. Good Boys
66. The Upside
67. The Lion King
68. The Dead Don't Die
69. Dumbo
70. The Hummingbird Project
71. Escape Room
72. 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
73. Brian Banks
74. Tolkien
75. Captive State
76. The Highwaymen
77. Pet Sematary
78. The Intruder
79. Child's Play
80. Gemini Man
81. Brightburn
82. Black and Blue
83. Never Grow Old
84. Rambo: Last Blood
85. Angel Has Fallen
86. Yesterday
87. Anna
88. What Men Want
89. Them That Follow
90. Unicorn Store
91. The Curse of La Llorona
92. Miss Bala
93. Men in Black: International
94. The Red Sea Diving Resort
95. The Perfection
96. Hellboy
97. Glass
98. Dark Phoenix
99. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
100. The Kitchen
101. The Hustle
102. The Best of Enemies
103. The Prodigy
104. Polar
105. Serenity

 

[AA484]

I thought the actress that played Wendy in Dr. Sleep was a decent representation of Wendy from The Shining. Shelley Duvall is a unique looking woman, for lack of a better term, so I feel they did as good as they could.

I also didn't notice that the kid who played the sacrificed boy was too annoying but otherwise I agreed with you on most of the other fronts.

My big complaint with the movie, and you may agree considering you mentioned the ending was

Spoiler

everyone just acting like a girl (Abra) outside a burning hotel in the middle of nowhere was no big deal. I guess she could have explained that she was kidnapped but it just seemed weird to me.

 

[Brocklock]

I thought the actress that played Wendy in Dr. Sleep was a decent representation of Wendy from The Shining. Shelley Duvall is a unique looking woman, for lack of a better term, so I feel they did as good as they could.

I also didn't notice that the kid who played the sacrificed boy was too annoying but otherwise I agreed with you on most of the other fronts.

My big complaint with the movie, and you may agree considering you mentioned the ending was

Spoiler

everyone just acting like a girl (Abra) outside a burning hotel in the middle of nowhere was no big deal. I guess she could have explained that she was kidnapped but it just seemed weird to me.

I read a review that spoiled that the boy was

Spoiler

Jacob Tremblay from Room, Wonder, The Predator, Good Boys, and The Book Of Henry

While I imagine that the character isn't annoying, the actor is very overexposed and the ad campaign for Good Boys in particular was obnoxious.

 

[AA484]

I thought the actress that played Wendy in Dr. Sleep was a decent representation of Wendy from The Shining. Shelley Duvall is a unique looking woman, for lack of a better term, so I feel they did as good as they could.

I also didn't notice that the kid who played the sacrificed boy was too annoying but otherwise I agreed with you on most of the other fronts.

My big complaint with the movie, and you may agree considering you mentioned the ending was

Spoiler

everyone just acting like a girl (Abra) outside a burning hotel in the middle of nowhere was no big deal. I guess she could have explained that she was kidnapped but it just seemed weird to me.

I read a review that spoiled that the boy was

Spoiler

Jacob Tremblay from Room, Wonder, The Predator, Good Boys, and The Book Of Henry

While I imagine that the character isn't annoying, the actor is very overexposed and the ad campaign for Good Boys in particular was obnoxious.

Now that makes sense. I had no idea that was even him