In Which I Briefly Review Movies

[909]

Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard (2021), directed by Patrick Hughes

I think everyone here has watched some shit that you know is bad, but it still makes you laugh a couple times anyway. That's what this movie is. The first one of these was terrible too, but not quite as terrible as this one was, and also not as funny as this one was. There was a level of filmmaking competency in the first film that was not reached here. Also, like I told a couple people here, I think Ryan Reynolds is a worse actor than Gerard Butler and as a result I had a hard time listening to his lines.

Anyway, Michael Bryce (Ryan Reynolds) is about to be permanently banned from being a bodyguard. Unfortunately for him, while in the process of that, he's found by Sonia (Salma Hayek) once again. Sonia needs Michael to help her find her husband Darius (Samuel L. Jackson), but she doesn't really need him because she pretty much finds Darius anyway and rescues him almost entirely by herself. Anyway, while this is all going on, they kill an Interpol informant and are put in a bad position. They are needed to find a terrorist named Aristotle (Antonio Banderas), who is angry with the EU for sanctioning Greece and would like to take down the EU. Seriously, that's it. No other motivation at all. Aristotle has found a diamond tipped drill that will allow him to break through a box and access a network, place a virus in it, and kill the EU's infrastructure. Some of this shit I just mentioned isn't mentioned in the film even though it's obvious that's what he's doing.

You know what this movie is like? It's like if Ace Ventura 2 was less funny and had an even worse plot. A lot of people think Ace Ventura 2 is this bad, but they're idiots. No offense. I did laugh a couple times here though. Almost all of them were related to Salma Hayek's foul mouth. There's another scene where I was the only person in the room to laugh, when they're showing how Bryce's mom died from some fat fuck breaking through the bar on the gyro swings, flying out of the seat, and killing her. This is the kind of trash I really hope for a trash movie like this to be filled with, but there's not enough of that. I did laugh very hard at that. The other thing is that I haven't watched a lot of movies that fit this standard of being bad while still having some funny scenes. I don't really know how to react to this. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard is like a 90's movie, the cast just isn't having as much fun as they did in the 90's.

There's also a lot of things here that don't really work the way they should. Banderas and Hayek on the screen again is supposed to feel like it means something, but it's completely irrelevant. The director seems to have believed they were making a masterpiece, but they're way off. There's some digital blood added here that's supposed to make the movie like John Wick, but it doesn't work. There's a horrendous CGI scene where the drill is being lowered into the ocean. You know what, I'm spending too much time talking about this movie and not enough time watching scenes from one of my favorite 90's flicks.

3/10

2021 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Judas and the Black Messiah
2. A Quiet Place Part II
3. Wrath of Man
4. Godzilla vs. Kong
5. Nobody
6. Cruella
7. Those Who Wish Me Dead
8. The Little Things
9. Profile
10. Mortal Kombat
11. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

 

[909]

F9 (2021), directed by Justin Lin

Alright, so when I was wanting there to be more of these, I wanted them to be less like the second and eighth one. Instead in this case we have an entry more like those two films. I rewatched the eighth film recently and thought it was much worse than I'd remembered. Yet, F9 is an improvement compared to that. Not by much though.

What I think is that F9 has the pieces of what could actually be a good movie, but some of the things in it are so far over the top as to be laughable and kind of annoying. Let's start with the good part. We have a major flashback here to 1989. I'm just going to ignore that this was never mentioned in the other movies. Dom's dad Jack (JD Pardo) is in a stock car race, after which he will be moving on to the Busch Series and touring the country. His sons Dom and Jakob work on the pit crew. Jack gets into a spat with another driver over the course of the race, then he has engine problems. While having those engine problems, the other driver crashes into Jack, flips his car over and in the process kills him. How this wasn't mentioned in the other movies, I don't know. But it's a good basis for the story. After this, Dom learns that Jakob is responsible for their dad dying, and he effectively exiles him after a battle in the ultimate form of gladiator combat shit: street racing.

Back in reality, Dom is retired from all criminal stuff as is no surprise, spending time with Letty and his kid. One day, all his friends show up and they have news, Cipher (Charlize Theron) has been captured. Not good. Dom replays the video he was watching, and sees that Jakob (John Cena) was in that video. Not good. But what's all this shit about? All I know is, Cipher is the worst character in this entire franchise and the more she's in a movie, the worse it is. She's not in it that much but it's an absolute given she'll heavily feature in one or both of the last two movies. As the trailer also shows, Han returns in a scene that is very horribly explained, but everyone accepts this because why not?

I think everyone can see the point I'm trying to make here, which is that this story has a good basis but everything else is ridiculously far over the top. The first action sequence in the movie is a great example of this. There would be nothing wrong with driving the car into the water and bailing on the way down. Using one of the strands of a bridge to get to the other side? It's just too much. There are a few other situations with similarly over the top scenarios and resolutions, but none stick out quite as much as that one. Yes, I really just said that. In a movie where Tyrese and Ludacris fly to SPACE, that isn't the most ridiculous thing here. The other crazy thing to me is that we keep adding characters without subtracting them. The only death not to be undone as of yet is the one where we saw Wonder Woman's body shoot into a jet engine. Can't fix that one!

I don't have a problem with these movies being stupid because that's what I like about them. The problem here is the water is poisoned. Cipher in the movie immediately gives me negative feelings. The opening sequence in the fake country does the same. Then, throw in the way nobody stays dead, the way nobody in the movies recently gets killed off, and there you go. It's frustrating and it overshadows what's otherwise a fun movie. The space scenes are great, the chase through Edinburgh is great, and I was strangely entertained by how much damage the characters caused in Tbilisi. We're way past the point where they stopped caring about other people and they ruined quite literally thousands of lives in that scene. I also feel like it's possible I would hate this movie if I hadn't been locked inside for 15 months, deprived of the sensory experience movies like this provide. The best thing in this movie though? It's Ludacris and Tyrese's Dumb and Dumber act. Nothing else even comes close. Get rid of Cipher and you might have something, but until then I'm going to give way less of a fuck.

Maybe they should do some shit like have Clint Eastwood show up as the real boss of everyone and shoot Cipher dead, and maybe I'll be really into that shit.

5/10

2021 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Judas and the Black Messiah
2. A Quiet Place Part II
3. Wrath of Man
4. Godzilla vs. Kong
5. Nobody
6. Cruella
7. Those Who Wish Me Dead
8. The Little Things
9. F9
10. Profile
11. Mortal Kombat
12. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

 

[909]

Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), directed by Eliza Hittman

Reason for Watching: I need to get back to this project, right? I decided to pick some heavy material tonight instead of taking it easy with a light, trashy kind of movie. If I don't get back to watching this kind of material, I never will.

Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) is a 17 year old from a small town in Pennsylvania who believes she is pregnant. Firstly, the film starts at a high school talent show, where some guy tries to humiliate her while she's singing on stage. There are two people in this film we can assume to be the father of this fetus, he is one of them. Later on, while at a restaurant, she walks up to this guy and throws her drink in his face. Over the course of the first act, I'm led to believe the father is either high school douche or her dad/step-dad. I don't think it matters that much. After she thinks she's pregnant, she goes to a crisis center that is heavily anti-choice, anti-abortion. They tell her that she is ten weeks pregnant. We later learn this is a lie that some places will tell a person in order to make them believe they have more time to make a decision. In other words, they trap people.

Autumn is quite resolved to deal with the problem, and I need to be clear here. I am entirely pro-choice and I don't refer to a fetus as a baby or any of that stuff. At the timeframes referenced here? It is a problem, not a person. I just wanted to say that in case anyone read this and thought it was weird. Autumn has a cousin, Skylar (Talia Ryder), and they both work at a grocery store together. Their manager is a complete pervert, which isn't entirely surprising. Autumn learns that she cannot get an abortion in Pennsylvania without one of her parents consenting, so she tries to punch herself in the stomach and swallow pills. Neither of these causes a miscarriage. It's time to go to New York. With the grocery store money they can take, Autumn and Skylar are on their way to New York City.

What we really have here is a movie that's made up of entirely heavy material. Nothing here is not heavy. This is a very accurate potrayal of what it's actually like. This is strong, hard to watch filmmaking. The film is also enhanced by the situation, where two kids wind up in a very large city with very little money, not having much of a clue about anything they're doing. The most frustrating thing here is just how little agency a girl has in her decision. When you have to travel hundreds of miles, that's pretty fucked up. She should also not really have to answer the counselor's questions, but at the same time, someone needs to ask those questions. It's not an impossible scenario because people have to do it all the time. What it is, is a wrong scenario. This doesn't have to be this way. Of course the main problem here is how many rules politicians have put in place to force a girl to have to jump through all these hoops. The choice to be questioned or not should be entirely up to them.

Overall I'm also not really qualified to be talking very much about this subject. The film is compelling even though as a viewer, I know the choice isn't going to be turned into something used for dramatics and I know how the film would be resolved. Yet, that doesn't make the events any less interesting, and the film doesn't feel like exploitation of the issue. Anyway, this is a great film. The tone is right, the characters feel like they stay entirely true to themselves throughout, there are no unnecessary dramatics, and I think perhaps most importantly Never Rarely Sometimes Always isn't a film that is intent on changing people's minds and preaching to people. There is a right side and a wrong side. The people on the wrong side will not be converted and it pointless to attempt to do so. So, yeah. This is a great film from last year and it didn't get nominated for any major awards (except the Indie Spirit Awards), so perhaps there's something to look forward to when I go through last year's movies.

8.5/10

2020 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
2. Bad Education
3. The Invisible Man
4. Bad Boys for Life
5. Tigertail
6. The Way Back
7. The Banker
8. The Gentlemen
9. Greyhound
10. Birds of Prey
11. Uncorked
12. Extraction
13. Big Time Adolescence
14. Sergio
15. The Lovebirds
16. Sonic the Hedgehog
17. The Call of the Wild
18. 7500
19. Come to Daddy
20. An American Pickle
21. Wonder Woman 1984
22. Lost Girls
23. Underwater
24. The Rhythm Section
25. The Last Full Measure
26. Spenser Confidential
27. Like a Boss
28. The Grudge
29. Dolittle
30. Fantasy Island

 

[909]

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021), directed by Michael Chaves

Here we have a franchise that has recently descended from good (first one), to expected and acceptable mediocrity, and then after that into terrible shit. Would The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It bring things back to mediocrity at least? Would it be good enough to say it's on the good side of mediocre? Actually, yeah. You already know a lot of the story here. Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) go around as these superheroes who solve shit with exorcisms and other similar spooky things in nature. In this film they go full into the satanic angle. The Warrens are to document an exorcism, during which Ed has a heart attack and nearly dies. Before passing out, he sees a demon leave a little boy and go into the boyfriend of the little boy's sister. This was at the boyfriend's behest, his name is Arne (Ruairi O'Connor). Of course, when Ed wakes up for the first time, he tells everyone what he saw. I don't see any reason to continue with this portion.

As for what I mean by leaning into the satanic angle? Arne kills someone at the behest of a demon, and it turns out that a satanist has cursed him. Well, alright then. So now's a good time to explain why I said this movie was an entry on the acceptable mediocrity side. First of all, the jump scares are greatly limited compared to how frequent they were in the bad entries of the Conjuring franchise. Everyone's had a chance to see all these fucking movies, so everyone knows what I mean. This franchise is played out though. It's not the only played out franchise in the world, but this is definitely one of them and there are some hoops that have to be jumped through in order to interest me. That being said, the opening sequence prior to the title credits works and does that job. The end of the film however does not. The storyline ends rather predictably, even though Ed forgets his heart medication and runs around a whole series of tunnels swinging a sledgehammer. I think there's also something to be said here about the 1980s and satanic panic, but that doesn't happen.

Where the movie does work though, is in its use of the curse to possess other people. The 300 pound vision chasing people through a house or running through a morgue is pretty cool. There's not enough fat, dead, naked guy horror out there. That sounds wrong. Oh well. The jump scares in this movie that there actually are, those work too. The film also isn't too long and the action scenes are good. In the end though, while this is a more acceptable version of the same kind of film that's been made ten times, this movie needs more investigation shit. That's where the series really works, and we don't have very much of that here at all. I also haven't watched the second movie in a while, but I seem to remember that there was a plot line ending the movie that was supposed to lead into this one...and we did not get that. I do also have to admit that I would rather watch movies like this instead of ones with the creepy doll. So yeah, there's good to be taken with the bad, and I landed on the positive side more than the negative here.

I also have to say that even though I don't think they're amazing films, 20 years from now people will probably look back on the main line movies in this series with great fondness. People ten years younger than us are probably going to look back on Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga the way people think of Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween. And I guess that's just how it is. That's why it's really annoying when these movies don't live up to the standard everyone would hope for. Making a lot of money isn't enough, there has to be more than that.

5.5/10

2021 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Judas and the Black Messiah
2. A Quiet Place Part II
3. Wrath of Man
4. Godzilla vs. Kong
5. Nobody
6. Cruella
7. Those Who Wish Me Dead
8. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
9. The Little Things
10. F9
11. Profile
12. Mortal Kombat
13. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

 

[909]

Don't Let Go (2019), directed by Jacob Aaron Estes

Reason for Watching: I was going to see this before my mom got diagnosed with cancer. Obviously I became too busy after that and had to be more choosy with what I went to the theater for.

I have mixed feelings after watching this. Firstly I was engaged the whole time but secondly I know this movie is a load of crap that's wildly inconsistent and doesn't make sense. The science-fiction aspect here is also never explained in any way at all. Jack (David Oyelowo) is a police officer who takes a lot of care of his niece Ashley (Storm Reid). Her father Garret (Brian Tyree Henry) isn't as good a dad as he should be, and her mom seemingly ain't much either, so Jack has to pick up the slack sometimes. The night we join the story, Jack promises to talk to her father and get things straightened out. He does that, and we don't see it, but we fast forward to another night. He gets a phone call from Ashley and zips over to their house, but when he gets there he finds that all three are dead (Ashley and her parents). Nightmare scenario really. The police have also ruled this a murder suicide committed by Jack's brother Garret.

Obviously, Jack knows there's no way that could happen. In typical police movie fashion, it's time for him to do his own investigating. He's interrogated by internal affairs and all this other stuff, and he's just drowning. His partner Bobby (Mykelti Williamson) is small help, and his captain Howard (Alfred Molina) is kind of an ass. We move forward two weeks and Jack has taken time off, but now he's receiving phone calls from Ashley's phone. She's dead, but now it's time for Jack to do some reconstructing and figure out the deal. AND MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, HE CAN SAVE HER.

Is it possible for a movie to be good with this concept? I don't think it can be because of how predictable a movie like this one has to be. Obviously, Bobby or Howard has to turn on Jack and kill him at some point, which leaves Ashley to have to save herself. In this case, Jack gets killed once in a drive-by and nearly killed a second time, but before that happens Ashley gets to his house and he kills Bobby to save them both. No shock here. I think there's two important things to point out about this flick and then I'll be done. Firstly is that when you start fucking with time in a movie, it's hard to fix in a way that makes any logical sense. The thing that doesn't make sense in this movie isn't the time travel, it's the obliviousness and lack of paranoia the characters have. In this case Jack also knows someone is going to kill Ashley, but he's so trusting as to be absurd. Secondly the 'Georgie' bit is just too goofy to take a movie like this seriously. Unfortunately this also is definitely a movie supposed to be taken seriously.

The good things I didn't mention are mostly related to the action scenes.

5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
2. Parasite
3. 1917
4. Midsommar
5. Ad Astra
6. The Lighthouse
7. Waves
8. The Farewell
9. Knives Out
10. Uncut Gems
11. Atlantics
12. Booksmart
13. Avengers: Endgame
14. Queen & Slim
15. Toy Story 4
16. Joker
17. Dolemite Is My Name
18. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
19. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
20. The Two Popes
21. Clemency (had some stuff happen, couldn't review)
22. Us
23. Ford v. Ferrari
24. Gloria Bell
25. The Beach Bum
26. Just Mercy
27. The Art of Self-Defense
28. Dark Waters
29. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
30. Arctic
31. Spider-Man: Far From Home
32. Rocketman
33. High Flying Bird
34. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
35. Paddleton
36. The Peanut Butter Falcon
37. The Mustang
38. Honey Boy
39. Doctor Sleep
40. Hustlers
41. Wild Rose
42. Richard Jewell
43. Blinded by the Light
44. The Standoff at Sparrow Creek
45. Captain Marvel
46. Jojo Rabbit
47. Shazam
48. Ready or Not
49. Native Son
50. See You Yesterday
51. A Vigilante
52. Late Night
53. Crawl
54. Long Shot
55. It: Chapter Two
56. Hotel Mumbai
57. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
58. Zombieland: Double Tap
59. Harriet
60. American Woman
61. Hobbs & Shaw
62. Official Secrets
63. Always Be My Maybe
64. Cold Pursuit
65. The Laundromat
66. Where'd You Go, Bernadette
67. Shaft
68. Happy Death Day 2U
69. Ma
70. Terminator: Dark Fate
71. Greta
72. Brittany Runs a Marathon
73. Annabelle Comes Home
74. Diane
75. Jumanji: The Next Level
76. Aladdin
77. Triple Frontier
78. Fighting with My Family
79. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
80. Little Woods
81. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
82. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
83. Brexit
84. The Dirt
85. Velvet Buzzsaw
86. Stuber
87. Little
88. Alita: Battle Angel
89. The Hole in the Ground
90. The Good Liar
91. The Wind
92. The Current War: Director's Cut
93. The Kid
94. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
95. Good Boys
96. The Upside
97. The Aeronauts
98. The Lion King
99. Low Tide
100. Dumbo
101. The Hummingbird Project
102. Escape Room
103. 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
104. The Wedding Guest
105. Brian Banks
106. In the Tall Grass
107. The Day Shall Come
108. Tolkien
109. The Dead Don't Die
110. Captive State
111. The Kill Team
112. The Highwaymen
113. Bombshell
114. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
115. Pet Sematary
116. The Intruder
117. Child's Play
118. 21 Bridges
119. Gemini Man
120. Brightburn
121. Don't Let Go
122. Never Grow Old
123. All Is True
124. Rambo: Last Blood
125. In the Shadow of the Moon
126. Charlie's Angels
127. The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot
128. Trial by Fire
129. Midway
130. Little Monsters
131. Angel Has Fallen
132. Black and Blue
133. Yesterday
134. Anna
135. What Men Want
136. Them That Follow
137. Wounds
138. Unicorn Store
139. The Curse of La Llorona
140. Miss Bala
141. Men in Black: International
142. Murder Mystery
143. Donnybrook
144. The Red Sea Diving Resort
145. The Perfection
146. Hellboy
147. Seberg
148. Glass
149. Dark Phoenix
150. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
151. Point Blank
152. The Kitchen
153. The Hustle
154. The Best of Enemies
155. The Prodigy
156. Polar
157. Serenity

 

[909]

Palm Springs (2020), directed by Max Barbakow

Reason for Watching: I need to catch up on 2020 stuff. From what it sounds like this is essential viewing from last year. Even if I wind up not liking it.

Spoiler: I did like it. As always, the third act in these movies is kind of flimsy, but the ride there is pretty good. The third act leads to some of the praise being overblown though. It's November 9 in one of the shittiest places in the country, Palm Springs. Nyles (Andy Samberg) and his girlfriend Misty (Meredith Hagner) are at a wedding. It turns out that Nyles has relived this day mad fucking times. Anyway, at the reception on this day, Nyles comes to like Sarah (Cristin Milioti). Sarah is the maid of honor. Who wouldn't like her? He decides to show her Misty in the process of cheating on him, and then they go out into the desert to bang. While out there, Nyles is attacked by Roy (JK Simmons). Roy has brought a bow with some arrows, and he's coming for a kill. He does what he wants, and Nyles heads into a cave. Nyles tells Sarah not to follow him into the cave, but she doesn't listen. She goes in, wakes up, and finds out that she's reliving November 9th too. All kinds of shit happens after that.

Palm Springs being the kind of movie it is, a lot of stuff happens but there's no point in explaining all of it. It's like if I wrote a play-by-play for Groundhog Day. Why the hell would I do that? This being the case, the plot is really simple, there are a lot of extremely funny moments in this movie. Like I said, the third act is very thin. The first and second act on the other hand are not. Of course this movie also works because Milioti is very likable. It is easy to see how someone who was clearly depressed prior to the events of this film would come to be enamored with her. Without that, you hardly even have a movie. The male character here is a smaller part of the puzzle and Samberg also does a really good job. The shining star here though, it ain't him.

This is a movie that I also think was robbed by the pandemic. This could have been a big hit in theaters, but it was never there. You know how it is. There's something original about this spin on a time loop that I just can't put my finger on. It's probably the wedding aspect. Rom coms also usually don't have any weight with me, and I've already stated a lot of the reasons why. The leads have to be 'very fucking good' at their job. It also needs mentioning that Samberg's character is extremely relatable to me. I understand what it feels like to be floating through life and to think things are meaningless and don't have any value. Sometimes you just wish you could do things that you knew were stupid but didn't face any consequence for doing them. Deep down there are very many people who would like to. Some would like to use that free pass to do very bad things. I'm not one of them. In my case it would be nice to do things free of the financial consequence of doing them. To do everything and not something, without worrying about how it would impact my other decisions. I don't want to be rich. The things I want to do, I wouldn't have to be rich to do them. I can't do very many of them though. So, in that way, wouldn't it be easier to be trapped in a time loop, to feel the way Samberg's character does. For me, yeah, it would be. Obviously that doesn't apply to everyone. Not everyone should have the ability to do things knowing there are no consequences. World wouldn't look good if they could.

Anyway, all that being said, this is a good movie. It's especially a good movie considering the genre and the way in which comedy movies now rarely have the capability to make me laugh. That isn't a problem here.

7/10

2020 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
2. Bad Education
3. The Invisible Man
4. Bad Boys for Life
5. Tigertail
6. The Way Back
7. Palm Springs
8. The Banker
9. The Gentlemen
10. Greyhound
11. Birds of Prey
12. Uncorked
13. Extraction
14. Big Time Adolescence
15. Sergio
16. The Lovebirds
17. Sonic the Hedgehog
18. The Call of the Wild
19. 7500
20. Come to Daddy
21. An American Pickle
22. Wonder Woman 1984
23. Lost Girls
24. Underwater
25. The Rhythm Section
26. The Last Full Measure
27. Spenser Confidential
28. Like a Boss
29. The Grudge
30. Dolittle
31. Fantasy Island

 

[909]

Black Widow (2021), directed by Cate Shortland

Obviously it has now been quite a long time since I watched one of these. It is clear this will probably not be a ringing financial success, but there's no surprise there. The question is why it isn't going to be a financial success. Is it the character, oversaturation, or the pandemic. Can it be all of them? Obviously we won't know until much later. I think Shang-Chi is going to bomb too, but I always thought that. The trailer makes it look too similar to other movies that have bombed in the last few years. It's also really similar looking to Snake Eyes and that probably isn't good either.

Alright, so of course this is a movie that goes back, considering that Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson) is now dead. Of course any movie that goes into Black Widow's past is going to be about the Red Room. For this, we first go back to 1995. Alexei (David Harbour) and Melina (Rachel Weisz) are posing as an American family in Ohio. They have two daughters and obviously one of them is the future Black Widow. They are there to steal something from S.H.I.E.L.D, and they do just that. Afterwards, they escape to Cuba and at the behest of a General Dreykov (Ray Winstone), they are separated and moved on to their next missions. After all, they weren't a real family. Fast forward 21 years or so and we join the story in the situation of our third Captain America movie.

Natasha is now a fugitive who has fled to Norway in order to escape capture for violating the Sokovia Accords. At the same time, her 'sister' from the past, Yelena (Florence Pugh), is on an assassination mission. While in Morocco, she breathes some dust that ends whatever mind control this Dreykov guy has over his assassins, and she jets off to Budapest to escape her overlord. She also sends some vials of this dust to Black Widow, who gets them and is summarily attacked by Taskmaster. All I was thinking during this was that it's about time Taskmaster is in one of these movies. In any case, Natasha wants to find her sister and find the Red Room. To do so, she and Yelena will also have to find Alexei and Melina, who are completely off the radar by now.

As far as Marvel movies go, I think this one is decently solid. Nothing about it blows the doors off anything, but nothing here is bad in the way that Thor 2 or Age of Ultron are. Of course David Harbour's character provides what I found to be good, but infrequent comic relief. That's when one of these characters works in a Marvel movie. We don't need someone to be funny all the time. Just some of the time. It's also funny because his role here feels similar to how Stranger Things left off. He finished last season in a Soviet gulag. Now in this movie, he has to be broken out of a Russian prison. Unfortunately this movie tails hard in the third act, once he's been broken out and once Melina is found by the three of them. That's where the movie really suffers from not having a strong villain. In that way, Black Widow is very much like the early MCU movies, a lot of which were worse than what followed. The thing that differentiates it is that the cast is really likable and the first two acts aren't banal like some of those worse movies.

I haven't mentioned it yet, but the post-credit scene is pretty good too and indicates that we really have seen the last of Black Widow. I mean, she's dead, but I'm saying I don't think we're going back for more prequels. That's a good thing. This franchise cannot afford to become bogged down in the past like Star Trek. It is time to move everything forward, especially given that we've been shut down for 15 months. We need more stuff to watch. I should also mention that the prequel tie-in to Captain America 3 is really, really lazy and not remotely important in any way at all.

6.5/10

2021 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Judas and the Black Messiah
2. A Quiet Place Part II
3. Wrath of Man
4. Godzilla vs. Kong
5. Nobody
6. Cruella
7. Black Widow
8. Those Who Wish Me Dead
9. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
10. The Little Things
11. F9
12. Profile
13. Mortal Kombat
14. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

if you believe disney's numbers than it's sitting at around 260 million right now which is pretty good for a movie that's been put back so much and all the other circumstances.

I think Shangchi will do fine. Eternals is more likely to not do well IMO. I don't have super high expectations for the box office for either of them though. Doctor Strange and Spiderman will do big numbers. Antman will probably do well. Is Thor this year or next? that will be huge.

It being a prequel for a character that is gone now hurts its appeal as well IMO. One of the appeals of the MCU is there is a overall direction and putting together of clues with each movie to the overall storyarc (which leads to some crazyness like with the tv shows). With BW you don't get that. Still looking forward to it though.

 

[909]

The Forever Purge (2021), directed by Everardo Gout

I see that this iteration of the franchise actually got some good reviews. I couldn't disagree more. The Forever Purge is a film some will see as prescient but I see the premise as being somewhat plausible yet handled the way only a hack could. The Forever Purge is set in 2048, the fascists have regained control of the government and they've brought back the Purge. After their victory, white supremacy has come back into the forefront, and there are a lot of people in the country who believe races should either be kept separate or booted from the country. The former is a rather widely held position in this version of the world. It is also assumed that this Purge will be worse than the others as a result of this. Our story follows Juan (Tenoch Huerta) and Adela (Ana de la Reguera), migrants who cross the border from Mexico prior to the story launching forward ten months into the future. Adela and Juan are married. Juan works as a ranch for the Tuckers, Dylan (Josh Lucas) and his father Caleb (Will Patton). Dylan's wife Cassie (Cassidy Freeman) and his sister Harper (Leven Rambin) also live on the ranch.

The day before the Purge, it is made clear by one of their employees that he doesn't much like the attitude of those he works for. It is also made clear that Dylan is at best just a bit racist. Then, it's time for the Purge. Juan and Adela head to a warehouse with armed guards, and they're just fine. While there, it is made clear there is a Purge Purification Force that takes it upon themselves to ethnically cleanse the country. The Tuckers, on the other hand, have a slightly less quiet night. Dylan arms himself beforehand and I thought for a second he was going to go out to shoot some Mexicans. Instead, he doesn't use his weapon. He does see someone running through his barn, but he doesn't do anything. Come the morning...what he saw very potentially could be a problem. The Forever Purge does mean a Purge that lasts much longer than a night, obviously.

Unlike many of the people who reviewed this film, I found it to not be very good. I have some specific reasons too. I think that a movie like this really needs some charisma in the cast and The Forever Purge does not have that at all. The characters bring nothing to the table other than their ability to fight off assailants. If you want the characters to interest you in any meaningful way? You're not getting that. The dudes who kill them and chase them ain't even interesting. This film attempted to be more serious, less fun, and with me that doesn't work. I'm also not too sure I liked the action scene. For a lot of them, the camera is in far too tight. I also don't like how this film deals with some of the realities of modern life. I mean, at some point you gotta make your audience happy. This film doesn't do that until the end, when the quasi racist character's wife gives birth. By then, it's just too corny to fit in the movie, and it's also just too late.

There are a lot of little things that lead me to feel this way too. The cliches are just too prominently placed throughout this film. The only real moment in which I feel like they were trying to make the audience feel something, is when Adela is riding in a police wagon with a Nazi guy saying all kinds of shit. Then, the Nazi guy gets killed. I felt good about that. The rest? I dunno. I didn't feel shit. I also think that the last approach for a movie like this one should be to go out there and make a movie that prominently features a racist white dude who learns to be less racist throughout the movie. Not by choice either. He has absolutely no choice otherwise he dies. I don't like that shit. Miss me with that. I don't know what the audience is for a movie like this one. There were a lot of people in the room but I didn't hear as many reactions as I have to countless other horror flicks. So they failed to make it work. End of story.

That being said, I was thinking about how maybe I feel this way because of how society has been going in the last five years, and came to the conclusion I don't think that influenced how I feel about this movie. Maybe if you had some funny characters that actually felt like real people, like people who deserved to be saved, it would be different. The immigrants here did deserve to be saved, but their role in the movie was to protect the helpless white people. So, you know. Not good.

3.5/10

2021 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Judas and the Black Messiah
2. A Quiet Place Part II
3. Wrath of Man
4. Godzilla vs. Kong
5. Nobody
6. Cruella
7. Black Widow
8. Those Who Wish Me Dead
9. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
10. The Little Things
11. F9
12. Profile
13. Mortal Kombat
14. The Forever Purge
15. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

 

[909]

Pig (2021), directed by Michael Sarnoski

This has to be one of Nic Cage's best performances. Obviously I haven't seen all of them, so I'm just saying. But it has to be. Robin (Nicolas Cage) is a very complicated man, it is best for me to be as non-specific as possible when it comes to this sentence. Some things are best learned throughout the film. Robin lives in the woods after a tragedy in his past which was bad enough that he can't listen to a cassette recording of his wife's voice. Out in the woods, he hunts truffles with the help of a foraging pig. We join the story on a day where Robin is in the process of selling truffles to Amir (Alex Wolff). Amir, it seems, is also a drug dealer. Perhaps some of these mushrooms will be used by edibles. I don't know and the movie is not keen to be overly specific. Just figure out some shit for yourself based on what you see on the screen, and that's that. The night after Amir's departure, Robin is assaulted by two people who knock him unconscious and steal his pig. You think this fuckin guy is just gonna let someone steal his pig? John Wick he isn't, but he has a past and a history. It's off to Portland to get his damn pig back.

A movie like this one, where a lot of the story is told to you based on what you see on screen rather than overly explained with words, those kinds of movies really resonate with me and hit all the right tones. Of course there has to be more to them, and in this case Pig has a good story and it has Nic Cage's performance. Anyone who thinks Cage is a hack has been thoroughly refuted by this effort, if they haven't already been. This is great material though. Although, Pig is a very slow film. If you think this is going to be an animal movie, it's not. If you think it's an action movie, it isn't. What it is, is a story of people who suffer and cope or decide not to cope with their grief. Maybe they just can't.

Another thing I really dig here is that the story of Pig lends itself towards romanticism. I'm not educated enough to phrase things in this manner, but in life, there are things that matter. It is important to be true to one's self. It's important to do what you want even if other people will look upon you badly because you did it. In this case, my man Robin has completely forsaken any care for what other people think of him, or of anyone else's happiness. This man loves his pig and he wants his pig back. He lives how he wants to live. There's a scene here where he walks into a restaurant and gives the head chef a full dressing down about their life decisions. I'm not like Robin or some shit, but I don't know what it's like to pretend to do something because it's what people expect of you to do. I don't do that. Dedicating your whole life to making the kind of food, running the kind of restaurant you never wanted to run? I can't fathom living life that way.

There's also an obvious parallel here between Cage's character and his own career. I barely need to spell it out. There is one thing here that doesn't make sense to me, but it is extremely minor to the point I don't need to mention it. The trailer is also cut in what I would say is fraudulent fashion. I don't give a shit about that, but I assume that quite a few people would say the movie was not what they expected at all and as a result they didn't like it. But I always think you should take a movie for what it is rather than what you thought it would be. Also, if you don't ever understand why someone would steal the pig, certain wild truffles are very highly valued in the restaurant scene.

8/10

2021 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Judas and the Black Messiah
2. Pig
3. A Quiet Place Part II
4. Wrath of Man
5. Godzilla vs. Kong
6. Nobody
7. Cruella
8. Black Widow
9. Those Who Wish Me Dead
10. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
11. The Little Things
12. F9
13. Profile
14. Mortal Kombat
15. The Forever Purge
16. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

 

[909]

Nine Days (2021), directed by Edson Oda

Of course I would see a small indie movie first after not going to the theater for two weeks because of the Olympics. This is some high concept shit too. Will (Winston Duke) lives in a dimension that cannot be quickly described. He lives in a house with television screens spread across his living room, and at first you don't understand what they are, but this part is actually quite simple. In this dimension, Will keeps track of people who he has previously judged to be deserving of living a life. His job in this dimension is to pick from a number of souls who are assigned to him whenever one of his previous picks meets the end of their days. In this case, Will has a favorite, she is Amanda. Amanda is a violin prodigy who performs at concerts. Will had chosen her 28 years before, and in a rarity she had retained a memory of him having chosen her in this dimension. I have no idea what else to call it. One day prior to a concert, Amanda drives very fast off the freeway and straight into an overpass, killing herself. This seems to clearly be suicide, but Will has a very hard time coming to grips with the whole thing. Will isn't God, but he chose to bring her into the world and now she's dead.

With Amanda having died, it is time for the viewer to see the process of how someone is brought to life as a human in this concept. Kyo (Benedict Wong) assists Will in some of these interviews. It isn't explained why, but Kyo never disappeared even though he was not chosen. That being said, Kyo knows other judges of character and this makes me think he's something more than that. I don't know though. It takes nine days to decide whether someone's soul comes to life, and Will will ultimately decide that all on his own. Here we have Maria (Arianna Ortiz), Alexander (Tony Hale), Mike (David Rysdahl), Kane (Bill Skarsgard), and Emma (Zazie Beetz). One will be chosen, all of them are different, and four of them will be rejected for various reasons. The main thing here is whether or not Will himself is correct in his decisions. Will was also once alive and makes his determinations in part because of that experience. Kyo was not.

I found that this was a high concept movie that was really good until it came time to stick the landing, which it did not do. Sometimes you have to give the audience what they want even though the choice is too obvious for it to be an easy decision. It's also risky to make a movie like this particularly knowing that audience are having less and less taste as time goes on. People are often unwilling to sit there and wait so long to see what happens. The ending of the film does bother me greatly though and strikes me as pretentious. This is a good film despite that. What if all the rest was real? Some of it is when you think about it. Everyone living to this point has been chosen. They were the embryo that was fertilized. The odds are infinitesimal. It very well could have been someone else in your place. Would you know if it was real? I mean I'm sure it isn't, but the concept is that nobody remembers. It's all pretty bold too. The featured actors here are not the ones you'd think would be in a movie like this one.

Even though I didn't care for the ending of the film for specific reasons I'd rather not get into detail about, the fact remains that this is unique. I neglected to mention that the candidates also have to pass through a series of challenges and questions Will has prepared for them. I'm not talking about physical challenges though. I also like that the characters are all distinctly different and there's not much commonality between them. The way all this ended was too much for me, but the road to that point was really good.

7.5/10

2021 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Judas and the Black Messiah
2. Pig
3. Nine Days
4. A Quiet Place Part II
5. Wrath of Man
6. Godzilla vs. Kong
7. Nobody
8. Cruella
9. Black Widow
10. Those Who Wish Me Dead
11. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
12. The Little Things
13. F9
14. Profile
15. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions
16. Mortal Kombat
17. The Forever Purge
18. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

 

[909]

Snake Eyes (2021), directed by Robert Schwentke

I can be honest here. I was going in expecting far worse. It seems like fans expectations for this were too high, but I feel like I need to say that the amount of people who actually know anything about G.I. Joe is really small. I am one of those people who doesn't know shit, and I think my whole theater didn't know shit. With that being said, who is this movie really for anyway? I think it was for people who know a lot about G.I. Joe, and because of that, we can't be surprised that a movie like this completely bombed in everyone's faces. I have nothing against the subject material, I just don't know it.

Snake Eyes starts off with a scene where a young boy has to run away from a cabin while his father is being murdered. This is very bright and positive stuff as you can see. We fast forward quite a few years, and all of a sudden this guy is now an underground fighter going up against Mojo Rawley. He kicks Mojo's ass, and we find out the guy is now called Snake Eyes (Henry Golding). Snake Eyes is a reference to how his father was killed, at the hands of a guy who gave him a chance to roll for his freedom. The father did not win and rolled....snake eyes. There you go. After this fight with Mojo, Snake Eyes has been discovered by Kenta (Takehiro Hira). Kenta is not the current NJPW guy, but he is a Yakuza. He makes Snake Eyes an offer to follow him, and in return Kenta will find the killer of Snake Eyes' father.

Obviously, to an angry young man, the offer above has a lot of appeal. He takes it. Snake Eyes then finds himself in Los Angeles for a few weeks, transporting firearms by placing them inside of dead fish. One day, Kenta pulls up to the place and says there's a traitor amongst them. It is Tommy (Andrew Koji). After a lot of fighting and shit, Snake Eyes saves Tommy's life and Tommy is very grateful. The way Tommy tells it, Kenta was once part of his clan in Tokyo, the Arashikage clan. Tommy is going to be the heir of said clan, Kenta could not handle this and tried to kill him. Now they hate each other. After what Snake Eyes has done, Tommy has taken him to Tokyo in an attempt to get Snake Eyes initiated as a member. Thing is...Snake Eyes does not have pure intentions. Maybe he didn't turn on Kenta after all.

As everyone now knows, this bombed completely. That isn't shocking, because like I said, nobody cares about the source material. Given that, a movie introducing new characters really has to wow the audience. More importantly it also needs to be released outside of a pandemic. Neither are the case. That being said I'm not too sure a lot of the upcoming movies would be sure things to excel at the box office even if there wasn't a pandemic. Venom 2 is one of the only sure things there is until at least the end of September. I am a little worried that the lack of sure things is going to irreparably harm the film business. There are a lot of good movies upcoming, or at least they sound good, but I'm not sold that they would ever be a sure thing to draw a big audience. I guess we'll see.

I wouldn't say Snake Eyes annoyed me or anything, or that it was really terrible, but it wasn't good either and I was left nonplussed. I didn't mention that there was a plot here revolving around a Cobra agent or whatever the fuck, and a GI Joe agent, and it intertwined with the movie as things went. It wasn't good and it didn't matter. Not to sound like a complaining little bitch but there are also some serious problems with the plot. Like how can dude who was only just street fighting at the start of the movie wind up knowing how to fight with a sword while riding a motorcycle? That kind of shit annoys me sometimes. They also try really hard to shoehorn a complete franchise into this film through Baroness and Scarlett, and it just does not work at all. Anything they tried to do with that failed. I also love when movies like this go for philosophical notes and wind up sounding more like liquor store philosophers. Unironically I love that shit, but it's not a good sign for a movie. I don't hate this but they whiffed hard here. A better director and writer would have saved this. Instead they hired a dude who helmed a profitable, shitty franchise like Divergent. You get what you ask for.

4.5/10

2021 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Judas and the Black Messiah
2. Pig
3. Nine Days
4. A Quiet Place Part II
5. Wrath of Man
6. Godzilla vs. Kong
7. Nobody
8. Cruella
9. Black Widow
10. Those Who Wish Me Dead
11. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
12. The Little Things
13. F9
14. Profile
15. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions
16. Snake Eyes
17. Mortal Kombat
18. The Forever Purge
19. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

 

[909]

Stillwater (2021), directed by Tom McCarthy

First off, can't not address the elephant in the room. This already has a reputation for being a movie about Amanda Knox without Amanda Knox. In some ways it is, but man. Let's not distill the whole thing down to Amanda Knox. There is WAY more to this film than just to bring it all down to that. Of course, some people also hated this movie, and that's cool too. There are a few ways to interpret the film, to enjoy or not enjoy the film, and that's alright with me because I can see all sides of this. The thing is, even if this was a story about Amanda Knox, I don't think there would be very much wrong with straight up stealing it and making a movie out of it. Maybe I have no morals though. Also, you see how this movie is directed by the dude from The Wire who made up fake stories? Yeah bro. You can't make that kind of shit up can you?

It's funny how word of mouth can taint something. One person says this is a movie about a MAGA guy, and boom. Then that's what it is. But it isn't. Bill Baker (Matt Damon) is an oil worker from Oklahoma. He is headed to Marseille to visit his daughter Allison (Abigail Breslin), who as you know from any of the promotional material, has been imprisoned. If you have your head in the sand you don't find that out for about fifteen minutes. Allison has been tried and convicted of killing her girlfriend, Lina. Before Bill heads off, the family situation is made more clear. He was an absentee father, Alisson's mother has died some time ago. Allison's maternal grandmother has supplied the funds for these trips to Marseille, but she can no longer go. Allison has been jailed for five years by the time of these events.

Bill is headed over there for another number of visits, after which he will go back to Oklahoma for work. He was picking up debris from a tornado after having been laid off, so he doesn't have much else to do. He and Allison have a conversation in which it is made clear that she wants her defense lawyer to file an appeal or start an investigation, but Allison wrote the letter in French and Bill cannot read it. There's a hotel guest next to Bill, she is Virginie (Camille Cottin) and her young daughter is Maya. They can speak French but he cannot. After Bill gets rejected by the lawyer, he wants to know what's in the letter, and it's clear Allison thinks her father sucks. Bill decides to lie and tell Allison that her lawyer is investigating. Instead, Bill is gonna do this shit his damn self. Just like any good American who thinks they know every fucking thing about the world would go do.

The last thing I mentioned is one of the real sticking points of the story, the way Americans think they know everything and can do whatever they want. This is personified through Bill but he isn't the only American in the story, and as a result isn't the only American who holds this kind of mentality. That's all I want to say about that. People thought the movie was about one thing, but it really isn't. This is a film with three very distinct acts. The first one is about Bill's search for whoever did this. The second is about Bill settling into a routine and home life that he never had with his own daughter, he has created a substitute family that is going very well for him. The third is the recurrence of the first, having seen someone at an Olympique Marseille match and following them. He wasn't looking for them or anything. They came into his vision as a result of Bill abandoning his old American life and becoming more familiar with the city. His "Americanism" kicks back in while at this distinctly French tradition (going to the match), and the film comes to its conclusion as a result of his actions.

Even though Stillwater is a very long movie, I wasn't really feeling the length until the end of the picture. It's not anything specific that makes me feel the length of the movie towards the end, it's that McCarthy gives the game away a little too early in the third act and you know what the truth actually is for a little too long. The thing is, because of how long the movie is, it feels like the end could come at any time. At least that's the case when you're sitting in the theater and can't see a clock. There is a difference between thinking it could come and wanting it to come, and I wasn't in the latter category. This movie is good though. A key component here is that they don't set out to make you feel sorry for Matt Damon's character. I'm sick of entertainment works trying to make you feel bad because white people have to live a harder life than they thought they would. The scenes also don't go in the direction that most Hollywood works go in. As an example, Allison gets paroled for a day from the prison. What do you think would happen on that day as portrayed in most American movies? Some conflict and shit? We aren't getting that here. The script is written as a coherent work rather than someone wanting to shove five or six key scenes into a movie and writing the rest of the movie around those scenes.

This isn't a perfect film or anything, and like I said, the third act certainly has its problems. However I do appreciate that this isn't a story in the fashion of making fun of the justice system of another country. Plenty to make fun of here, after all.

7/10

2021 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Judas and the Black Messiah
2. Pig
3. Nine Days
4. A Quiet Place Part II
5. Stillwater
6. Wrath of Man
7. Godzilla vs. Kong
8. Nobody
9. Cruella
10. Black Widow
11. Those Who Wish Me Dead
12. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
13. The Little Things
14. F9
15. Profile
16. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions
17. Snake Eyes
18. Mortal Kombat
19. The Forever Purge
20. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

 

[909]

Old (2021, directed by M. Night Shyamalan

I think everyone who went to see this knew what they were getting, and their expectations were fulfilled. If you want to see another wildly entertaining M. Night piece of shit, this is for you. Old is also better than some of his pieces of shit.

I don't know how to set the stage for something like this, but I'll do my best. Guy (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Prisca (Vicky Krieps) are a married couple who are having major problems. They intend to get get divorced, but this is one last vacation for their kids Maddox (various actresses) and Trent (various actors) to enjoy before they break up their family. In a normal movie this would have a lot of tension. Not this one. They head to an isolated resort and run into a few people, which seems to have no significance until THE TWIST, but I'll continue. The day after they arrive, they are offered a private beach by the resort, and a few other families head out there too. Before they arrive, a rapper named Mid Size Sedan (no cap) (Aaron Pierre) and his girl are out there on the beach. She takes her clothes off and I'm wondering why this is PG-13, but cool. Into the water she goes.

Alright, so like I said, they're going to a beach. They walk through a canyon, then they arrive with the other family the resort sent with them. This family consists of Charles (Rufus Sewell), a surgeon who looks thirty years older than his wife Chrystal (Abbey Lee), their daughter Kara, and Charles' mother Agnes (Kathleen Chalfant). You learn some shit about them over the course of these events, but I don't want to talk about that. Eventually Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird) and her husband Jarin (Ken Leung) arrive, but before that, we have one big revelation. The naked chick from earlier? Well, she went into the water and all that, but she washed up dead. Now what?

There was some shit here that made my theater laugh pretty hard, and I enjoyed the movie most likely in some part due to that. A few of the things here were not supposed to have that effect, but they did anyway. I'm not sure about some of the others. There's a pregnancy scene here that made every single person in the room laugh hard. No exceptions and I can't tell if it was supposed to be funny or not. It just was. The end of the movie is also surreal in that it feels like some shit out of a Jurassic Park movie. I cannot describe it and I'm not going to be specific in referring to which kind of thing in those movies I'm talking about. It's one of them though. I realize that I made this sound really intriguing, but it isn't like that. I'm glad this didn't completely bomb though. It's original firstly, and secondly it's entertaining.

Of course, this is an M. Night movie and when it comes to the twist he most definitely does not stick the landing. It seems like the general moviegoer accepts that now and doesn't really give a shit if he does or not. The trailers for his movies look interesting and for a lot of people that's good enough. There are too many concepts here though, too many things that matter. In the aftermath of having watched the film it feels like everything mattered, and that's just a step too far. There is one really good thing we keep seeing throughout the movie though. Of course I'm referring to the guy on the hill spying on everyone. I'm not saying that you could make a great film with this material but I feel like there was a better way to execute it. You could also make a terrible film with the material in Old, and at least M. Night didn't do that. I guess a good way to phrase my opinion here is that I didn't like the movie, but I liked watching it in a room with a lot of people who laughed at how ridiculous some of this was. It's not fair to hate on a movie when you enjoy the experience.

5.5/10

2021 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Judas and the Black Messiah
2. Pig
3. Nine Days
4. A Quiet Place Part II
5. Stillwater
6. Wrath of Man
7. Godzilla vs. Kong
8. Nobody
9. Cruella
10. Black Widow
11. Those Who Wish Me Dead
12. Old
13. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
14. The Little Things
15. F9
16. Profile
17. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions
18. Snake Eyes
19. Mortal Kombat
20. The Forever Purge
21. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

 

[909]

It also seems like The Green Knight is gonna be the casualty from me waiting two weeks to see anything because of the Olympics. I'll rent it as soon as it's under 7 bucks though. If I'd known it would be gone from my theater so fast I wouldn't have seen the GI Joe trash.

 

[909]

Jungle Cruise (2021), directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

Obviously this movie wasn't buried, but due to the pandemic this was filmed three years ago and only released now. That's a long time for anything to be delayed. Of course there is a connection to the Disneyland ride, and my connection to the ride is that I rode it with Diane Keaton. That was weird.

That all aside, this is a movie and I usually talk about them. The premise is not similar to the ride at all. As told early on, Aguirre (Edgar Ramirez) is a Spanish conquistador who led many of them to South America to search for a tree whose flowers were noted for curing illness, healing injuries, and lifting curses. This may or may not be a myth. Of course this being a film and shit, it is not a myth. While in the Amazon, many of the conquistadors die. They are subsequently healed by a tribe that uses the flowers from this tree, and Aguirre wants to know where they came from. The reason why is revealed later. When the tribe's chief refuses to tell him the location of the tree, Aguirre murders him and burns down the village. In the process, Aguirre is cursed by the chief, and those conquistadors cursed by him are doomed to live forever in the sight of the Amazon River. Sounds cool, right?

After we're shown that, we're jumped forward about 350 years. The story is now in London. Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) has done research about these supposed flowers, which we learn are called Tears of the Moon. She is not allowed to present her research to the Royal Society, so her brother MacGregor (Jack Whitehall) is tasked with doing so. He does so quite poorly. This leads to Lily engaging plan B, which may have been plan A all along for all we know. The poor presentation means that she must steal an arrowhead that has been acquired by the society. She has an old map of the Amazon already, which is also essential. Of course, Lily does steal the arrowhead. In the process she encounters a Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons), a German who we will see again later. Lily and MacGregor subsequently head to the Amazon, where they meet Frank (Dwayne Johnson). When we meet Frank prior to that, he's giving tours in the vein of the Jungle Cruise ride. Frank has his own sets of problems, but Lily and MacGregor need him to guide them down the river. What could possibly go wrong?

I don't think Jungle Cruise is anything really special as a film, but it seems to be getting a bit unfairly buried. It seems like a lot of people wanted something on the level of Indiana Jones, but that's really unrealistic. Indiana Jones wasn't entirely original, but it isn't possible to easily replicate that kind of magic. It's particularly difficult in a world where Indiana Jones already exists. The movie is decent for what it is, and the humor and horrible Jungle Cruise ride-like jokes pushed this into being a net positive for me. There's a little too much going on with the storyline though. Another thing is that despite the differences in setting, they are trying to recapture some of what The Mummy had. That's what all these movies try to do now. They can't really pull that off, but remember that critics savaged The Mummy upon its release. Now look at how people hold that movie in regard. It's not a great film or some shit, but it brings something to the table. When I was in the room tonight I thought that Jungle Cruise does oddly bring something to the table people will look back on fondly, and it's that Johnson and Blunt have really good chemistry. They do have something and I heard multiple women in the room talking about wanting them to kiss. So there's that.

The main problem a film like Jungle Cruise has is that it doesn't bring anything original to the table in terms of cinematography. This is Disney boilerplate though. You aren't really allowed to deviate from their formulas and create anything unique, but that's why they hired a director who has directed multiple Liam Neeson vehicles. Those aren't allowed to be much different either. I also bet there are some who were beyond angry at the portrayal of natives here even though they were nice people! Remember what I said though. Nothing great, nothing really bad. It's alright. Copious amount of snakes here though. If you hate them as much as I do, you might need the warning. Bear in mind this is also a movie for younger people and kids, despite what I said about the snakes.

6/10

2021 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Judas and the Black Messiah
2. Pig
3. Nine Days
4. A Quiet Place Part II
5. Stillwater
6. Wrath of Man
7. Godzilla vs. Kong
8. Nobody
9. Cruella
10. Black Widow
11. Jungle Cruise
12. Those Who Wish Me Dead
13. Old
14. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
15. The Little Things
16. F9
17. Profile
18. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions
19. Snake Eyes
20. Mortal Kombat
21. The Forever Purge
22. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

I also realize that I put Disney's three big releases back to back to back even though they're of differing quality. I think this speaks volumes about their formula and the lack of releases that I've seen.

 

[909]

The Protege (2021), directed by Martin Campbell

Yes, I am going to see more notable movies than this. Except for The Green Knight, as I already explained. Perhaps Respect too because that movie is very long. If I don't see them now, I will later. Don't worry.

This is pretty much a formula film, so I can explain everything really easy and not waste anyone's time. Anna (Maggie Q) is an assassin. She was found in Vietnam by Moody (Samuel L. Jackson), an assassin who trained her after finding her in the middle of a massacre of some kind. What a guy he must be. As you know, in these kinds of movies, he's a good guy and shit and so is she. The film starts off with a mission in Romania, where between the two of them they kill a mob boss by using his son as bait. This scene is pretty cool and shit, I can't complain. Afterwards, they retreat back to London, where they've settled and decided to live. Maggie runs a rare book store and Moody is "retired", living in a huge house. Obviously he isn't retired and he's still killing people because we've already seen that. One day, Moody starts looking into a past mission. Apparently he's looked for the wrong things, because now everyone close to him is winding up dead. Including him. Anna on the other hand is not. She has a USB drive, and on that drive she has information leading her back to where she came from...Vietnam. It is unrelated though. I promise!

I can see the ways in which this isn't supposed to be a formula movie, and that particularly relates to the scenes with Michael Keaton and Maggie Q. Except, it is a formula movie and nothing can change that. Any attempt at subtext, of which there are two attempts, prove to not be fruitful at all. It isn't even worth my time to mention what they are, because it just doesn't matter. In the end this is an attempt at escapist fare that doesn't get off the ground. There are many things here that could have been better than they were, namely the ending. The ending has one part that's absolutely gruesome and another scene that you don't see at all even though you should. On the other hand this is a movie that uses Robert Patrick and it's a role that fits him pretty well. At least there's that.

In short, a movie like this one needs to have a better ending, and if there's this little meat on the bone in terms of plot and story, the action scenes need to be better. The Protege isn't terrible, but it feels like just any other movie when there are a lot of actors here that are capable of being in more than just another movie. The director is also the same guy who put together Casino Royale. So, he knows how to make a good movie, but he didn't. All that being said I wasn't bored by anything in The Protege, none of it was hard to watch, and a couple things here cracked me up. Pretty sure this has massively bombed though.

5/10

2021 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Judas and the Black Messiah
2. Pig
3. Nine Days
4. A Quiet Place Part II
5. Stillwater
6. Wrath of Man
7. Godzilla vs. Kong
8. Nobody
9. Cruella
10. Black Widow
11. Jungle Cruise
12. Those Who Wish Me Dead
13. Old
14. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
15. The Little Things
16. F9
17. The Protege
18. Profile
19. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions
20. Snake Eyes
21. Mortal Kombat
22. The Forever Purge
23. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

 

[909]

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), directed by Destin Daniel Cretton

I think I have never been more glad to see a movie or television franchise move forward from a pivotal event. Maybe that alone is reason to care about this movie.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is not a movie that sets up the big story of Phase Four, or anything like that, but there is a potential tie-in that people have to wait on. Regardless, that isn't the sole reason to see the film. It's pretty good by Marvel movie standards. The way we are told this story is far different than in the comic books. Fu Manchu isn't here, for one thing. Wenwu (Tony Leung) is an original character, he has been alive for one thousand years. How? He found the ten rings, which have granted him immortality as long as he shall wear them, and great power which shall not be rivaled. Using this power, he has founded a mercenary group, which is called...the Ten Rings. No shit. In 1996, after doing whatever he's wanted to do for all this time, he sets out to find the secret realm of Ta Lo. Ta Lo may or may not exist. While searching, Wenwu is stopped from entering by the realm's guardian, Ying Li (Fala Chen). Not only is he stopped, but he is finally defeated. The two become attracted to each other in the process of all this, they decide to marry and they have two children. Wenwu has decided to take the ten rings off.

After this short setup, we kick forward to present time in San Francisco. This is after the Snap and after the population has been restored. You do need to stick around for a while when this is over. Let's make that clear. When we join this part of the story, Shaun (Simu Liu) is waking up. He works with his best friend Katy (Awkwafina) as a valet, and life is good for him. This guy doesn't really want much, but things are going to be brought to him and he's going to have to deal with them. It also turns out he's aware of this. One day, while riding the bus to work, Shaun and Katy are attacked by Razor Fist (Florian Munteanu), who is obviously a mercenary. Somewhere in here it becomes clear that Razor Fist works for Shaun's father...Wenwu. NO WAY. Shaun is also not named Shaun, he is Shang-Chi. Also no way. Thing is, Shaun is carrying a pendant that Wenwu must have. He has a sister, Xialing (Meng'er Zhang). She has a pendant and is in Macau. Wenwu definitely wants that too.

For a movie like this one I find it best to skip past a ton of the details. The details matter, but people need to see them for themselves. All I really need to say is that I liked the movie. There is a formula that is starting to become too prevalent and annoying when things don't click the way they're supposed to, but they did click here. There are some highly amusing cameos and those characters stick around far longer than anyone could possibly have expected. Even still a negative point here is that the film is too complicated. I mean, really, it is. It's hard not to feel that way after having watched it, but I do feel like people were able to hang in there. The third act drags a little bit, noticeably so. The mid-credits scene really popped the crowd though because nobody was expecting anything like that. I was happy, but I do overwhelmingly have the feeling that Wenwu is a poorly conceptualized character.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings contains a ton of content to lead to those complications, but I didn't find them to be much of a problem. There is very little downtime here and I only counted two scenes where the characters sit around talking about bullshit. The martial arts scenes here are also really fucking good. The Macau scenes are a real pleasure, and some of the scenes at Ta Lo are entirely unexpected. Did I think there would be all kinds of weird creatures in this shit? Not really! This is a good effort and there's enough content here to have supported a miniseries or second movie, but they got it all in one. That's not for everyone, but it works well for me and I enjoyed this a fair bit. I also waited to post this until the next day to make sure I agreed with the rating I was going to give. I do.

7/10

2021 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Judas and the Black Messiah
2. Pig
3. Nine Days
4. A Quiet Place Part II
5. Stillwater
6. Wrath of Man
7. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
8. Godzilla vs. Kong
9. Nobody
10. Cruella
11. Black Widow
12. Jungle Cruise
13. Those Who Wish Me Dead
14. Old
15. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
16. The Little Things
17. F9
18. The Protege
19. Profile
20. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions
21. Snake Eyes
22. Mortal Kombat
23. The Forever Purge
24. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

 

[909]

The Suicide Squad (2021), directed by James Gunn

I put off watching this for quite a long time, which in effect explains why and how this movie bombed. The Suicide Squad being on HBO Max rendered it not worth the trip to the theater, but I felt like I could wait quite a long time to watch the movie. After doing so, it also feels like this film is completely the opposite of something that caters to a general audience. The violence here is great, but it is too violent. Anyway...

I guess this is supposed to be a sequel, but I don't think anyone knows for sure. The setup is the same as the first one. Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) needs a team of mercenaries to do bad shit on her behalf. Of course, she will turn to the inmates at Belle Reve penetentiary, and that means she's going to create another Suicide Squad. Some are the same as the first one. Others are not. I don't know how to do this review because some of the characters here are very easily dispatched, others are not, and then some of those who aren't wind up dying anyway. This time Waller has assembled two teams. Some of the characters here are really fucking funny, even the ones who die quickly. I guess I can mention some of those who don't. Here we have Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Bloodsport (Idris Elba), Peacemaker (John Cena), Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), King Shark (Sylvester Stallone), Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), and Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian). Is that all of those who survived? You need to watch the movie to figure that out.

The mission here is to infiltrate a country called Corto Maltese, and deal with a situation called Project Starfish. Can these group of misfits do it properly? Of course not. This is one of the best movies I've seen so far this year. Not so shocking, but needs to be said. There's been a real lack of quality so far. I am catching up on things by next Sunday though. I feel like the marketing here did a great job of disgusing what this movie actually was, but they did such a good job that nobody turned out to see it! I think it's obvious that hiding the movie is clearly a problem when it's done too well, but at the same time I'm not sure anyone wanted this movie to even exist. I sure didn't. Even though I didn't, I'm very glad that it does because this feels much more like what the first movie should have been. I enjoyed it a lot.

As for what this movie actually is, well, they hid how violent this was going to be. The violence here is extreme to the point where it would turn off a lot of people. There's also dicks, so nobody would let their kids watch this and as a result the box office is limited. All of this is cool though. It feels like a movie that's made for fans, not for everyone else. Because of all that, it's a movie made to the maximum, where there's nothing holding things back from being what anyone wants them to be. Nothing is supposed to be serious in this movie. I love that Starro was chosen to be the villain. It's so far out there, it's really unexpected, and it isn't what you'd think a director would do. Of course I would like another one of these movies, but I doubt it. Particularly great scenes here are Harley Quinn tearing through security after escaping captivity, Starro rampaging through the city, Waller completely losing her shit, and pretty much every time King Shark kills someone. The US government being evil is a theme that runs through this film but I don't have the energy to talk about it. This was fun.

8/10

2021 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Judas and the Black Messiah
2. Pig
3. The Suicide Squad
4. Nine Days
5. A Quiet Place Part II
6. Stillwater
7. Wrath of Man
8. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
9. Godzilla vs. Kong
10. Nobody
11. Cruella
12. Black Widow
13. Jungle Cruise
14. Those Who Wish Me Dead
15. Old
16. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
17. The Little Things
18. F9
19. The Protege
20. Profile
21. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions
22. Snake Eyes
23. Mortal Kombat
24. The Forever Purge
25. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

 

[909]

Don't Breathe 2 (2021), directed by Rodo Sayagues

I guess I need to start with the obvious here. In this movie we are rooting for a rapist to kill people who may or may not be worse than him. Eventually we find out they are worse, but not by much!

While the trailers were playing, I had to look up what happened in the first movie. I've seen so many fucking movies that I could honestly not remember. So, imagine reading that the hero in this movie is a rapist literally immediately before watching him go to town on people. Don't Breathe 2 is set eight years after the first movie. Norman (Stephen Lang) still lives in the suburbs of Detroit. The difference now is that he actually has the child he wanted, Phoenix (Madelyn Grace). Can I just say something? Who would let their kid work in a movie like this one? Seriously now. Norman has decided that the way he needs to raise this girl is the same way he kept that pregnant woman locked up. She doesn't need to go out in the world. She is also obviously not his child but we get to that later. Norman is so isolated in this suburb that he has someone go out and do shit for him on the regular. She is Hernandez (Stephanie Arcila). She was in the army the same way he was a Navy Seal, so they get along and considering Norman is blind, someone has to do stuff for him. You know there are actually a lot of funny things here and inconsistencies but while I was watching the movie I didn't feel like laughing. Take that for what it's worth.

On the day we join the movie, Norman decides to let Phoenix go out. She has a decent time and shit, but she doesn't go to regular school and she doesn't have any friends either. Instead she dreams of living in a shelter with some kids that are apparently happy but this is nothing like anything in reality that I'm aware of. Maybe I don't live in the same reality as whoever wrote this movie. Anyway, while out for the day, Phoenix encounters a really creepy dude who touches her hair and stuff. This sets off a chain of scenarios that's so absurd I could hardly believe it, but again, I did not find any of this to be very funny at the time of viewing the film. It's only now that it's funny. The creepy dude is Raylan (Brendan Sexton III), and for the duration of this movie you better get used to seeing this low rent Jon Moxley looking guy. Somehow he's worse than the guy who raped someone and held them captive in the last movie.

This movie isn't very good, but again, it isn't because of things I was thinking about as I was watching them. It's only towards the end when you get the full picture revealed to you that everything falls apart. Regardless, it's still pretty entertaining to a point. The obvious issue is that you can't cheer for the guy who's killing everyone. You shouldn't be cheering for that guy or for anyone except the little girl. This is more than a minor problem. I don't think Don't Breathe 2 is an outright terrible movie but it's pretty close. There's a gamble made here that people in the theater would root for Norman because they have to, but I think someone would have to be a psycho to root for either side. That's just my opinion though.

You know, the more I think about Don't Breathe 2, the more terrible it is becoming to me. There are parts here where characters attempt to kill Phoenix even though they need her alive for an insanely ridiculous reason. This guy Norman is a fucking mass murderer! Why couldn't they just do a movie where this guy tried to kidnap a child? I don't know. You only need one side of a movie like this one to feature horrible people. Can't have both.

3.5/10

2021 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Judas and the Black Messiah
2. Pig
3. The Suicide Squad
4. Nine Days
5. A Quiet Place Part II
6. Stillwater
7. Wrath of Man
8. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
9. Godzilla vs. Kong
10. Nobody
11. Cruella
12. Black Widow
13. Jungle Cruise
14. Those Who Wish Me Dead
15. Old
16. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
17. The Little Things
18. F9
19. The Protege
20. Profile
21. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions
22. Snake Eyes
23. Mortal Kombat
24. The Forever Purge
25. Don't Breathe 2
26. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

 

[HarleyQuinn]

I thought the trailers for DB 2 were very sketchy considering, as you said, the "hero" this time was a rapist who impregnated an unwilling victim and tried to do it a 2nd time to a different woman in that same exact first movie. It's the gambit taken where some of these writers/directors forget that while horror fans liked Freddy, Jason, Ghostface Killer, Chucky, etc. at the hearts of those movies they were the bad guys, and fans of those movies still wanted to see the good guy win and get away.

The success of movies like Joker and the Disney-fication of making bad guys into antiheroes is really forcing a narrative that takes away from the impulsive bad guy dynamic. You shouldn't be cheering the bad guy just because somebody else is worse. As you said, they both suck just one sucks less.

 

[Mickey Massuco]

Eagerly awaiting the candy man review it’s one of the few new movies I wanna watch. I know you’ll post spoilers in the review but what is a spoiler free quick take on it?

 

[909]

I didn’t really write any spoilers into my review. Basically just the first twenty minutes. It’s a slasher movie that’s pretty good but only a little bit gory at certain moments.

 

[909]

Candyman (2021), directed by Nia DaCosta

I did not realize this was going to be a direct sequel or I would have watched the old film again. Let me put it that way. Even still, it's not like you have to have watched it. Set 30 years after the first movie, Candyman is about Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). You may know who that is and you may not. If you don't, that's cool. Anthony lives in Chicago with his girlfriend Brianna (Teyonah Parris), and they share a very large apartment in a gentrified neighborhood. One day, Brianna's brother Troy (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) comes over and tells them a story. This story is of the 1992 Candyman movie. Except in this version of the story the events have been warped because they've been told too many times and his version is not correct. He says that a lady named Helen Lyle went on a killing spree. She tried to sacrifice a baby, he says, and he says the residents rescued the baby before Helen killed herself in a fire. I need to reiterate here that this is not a retconning of the events. Troy is simply wrong.

It appears that Anthony's career as an artist has not been going all that well. He's having problems with a creative crunch and may not have anything to showcase at an upcoming show his girlfriend is directing. Troy did tell that story though. This leads Anthony to start walking around the Cabrini-Green housing project, where Troy said all these things happened. While looking around, he encounters William Burke (Colman Domingo). William owns a laundromat nearby where he can talk, and we learn that a clip shown at the very beginning of the movie is something he saw himself as a child. He had an encounter with Sherman Fields (Michael Hargrove), who was supposedly putting razor blades into pieces of candy. William wound up screaming because Sherman scared the shit out of him, which led a bunch of cops to come running into the room. They were looking for this guy, after all. Then the cops beat him to death. So, you know, you can see how this might be inspirational to an artist and I think I'll stop right there.

A lot of the commentary around this movie is related to social issues, but I've made pretty clear in the past that I don't really focus on those kinds of things in a movie. The movie ultimately has to be able to stand on its own and I'm not giving extra points just for focusing on a theme I might like. For the most part all of this really works. Candyman might not be gory enough but that's one of my only complaints. The themes are well intertwined with the movie and they don't feel like they're slammed in there in an attempt to be cool. There's also two actors from the first movie here and they're brought into the picture in a cool way, nothing that feels out of place. You see what I'm trying to get at here? When you make a good slasher movie, even though Candyman only barely qualifies as one due to there being some lack of gore, that happens most often when things aren't overcomplicated. The scenes here with Candyman are good even when they don't feature gore. Everything feels right.

Unfortunately, the ending of the film leans more towards being hack shit than everything else does, but the social commentary everywhere else is pretty good. There is a discussion about what it is to make art and when it becomes exploitation and/or beneficial (yes there is such a thing as being beneficially exploitative) to make that art, but this is left unexplored beyond that. I was glad the film didn't get bogged down in these kinds of issues. There are also some inspired decisions when it comes time to kill, and when not showing that gore you need those kinds of decisions. The cinematography here is particularly on point. The shit with the bees also had me feeling like I was itching the whole time I was sitting there. While the ending doesn't really pay the story off in a way I found to be engaging, this was a good time. You should also not compare this to the first movie because they're totally different and it's not worth wasting your time comparing them.

7/10

2021 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Judas and the Black Messiah
2. Pig
3. The Suicide Squad
4. Nine Days
5. A Quiet Place Part II
6. Candyman
7. Stillwater
8. Wrath of Man
9. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
10. Godzilla vs. Kong
11. Nobody
12. Cruella
13. Black Widow
14. Jungle Cruise
15. Those Who Wish Me Dead
16. Old
17. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
18. The Little Things
19. F9
20. The Protege
21. Profile
22. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions
23. Snake Eyes
24. Mortal Kombat
25. The Forever Purge
26. Don't Breathe 2
27. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

 

[909]

The Card Counter (2021), directed by Paul Schrader

This is Schrader's first since First Reformed. Needless to say I was very much looking forward to this.

I haven't yet figured out how to tackle this review because there's a reveal here quite early on that genuinely shocked me completely. It's in the trailer but I have learned how to not pay attention to trailers at all. So I guess I'll be brief. The Card Counter starts with William Tell (Oscar Isaac) teaching the audience how to count cards. It may not surprise you to learn this isn't his actual name. William learned to count cards while in Leavenworth for eight years. He doesn't tell us how or why he got there, at least not for a while. We just know that he did. He also says that he bets small and wins small because he doesn't want to be famous and doesn't want to be harassed. Anonymity is what he wants. While William doesn't tell us what happened, we learn that he is extremely fucking weird. The guy covers his motel room in sheets and wraps them with twine. This serves the purpose of having clean furniture and potentially getting rid of anything that could be used to spy on you. Like, for example, the television. This guy is weird.

One thing William does, is travel around from city to city in order to gamble without the casinos booting him from their property. That way he doesn't win all that much, and he wins enough to keep on going. All this guy cares about is cards though. The game of choice to make a living with is blackjack. You learn the loser organization convention circuit, you use them to make you money. At one of these casinos, he runs into La Linda (Tiffany Haddish) and is offered to be staked. To be staked would allow him to play bigger games, potentially make more money, and everything that comes with. He does not want that. Of course, with this being a movie, we get to that somehow. I think now's the time for me to shut up though.

Much like First Reformed, this movie is really fucking good. There are some similarities I don't want to mention, but The Card Counter hinges more upon one insane moment that floored me. In any case I feel like this is the kind of movie I wanted to see in a theater, but all these sorts of movies keep getting delayed because nobody wants to lose their money, so we keep on pushing back everything for who knows how long. What we have here is a great screenplay, great directing, a great performance, but we also have an ending that just falls short of what the movie deserves. Haddish is also not great here but is not distracting either. The best thing I can say here is that I will be telling people to watch The Card Counter. There's a lot of thematic elements that really broke through in a way I didn't expect when I half ass paid attention to the trailer the one time I saw it. See I'm one of those people who tries to get away from everyone else in the theater, I completely dim the brightness on my phone, and I stay on my phone during the previews. I don't get anything out of these previews and I find them harmful to the overall experience. If I knew what moment would completely turn the tables in this movie? It's just not as good.

OIf course I am limited in what I can say here because I don't want to spoil the movie. William is a really troubled dude though. This movie fuckin rules. You'd never expect the two main themes here to interact with each other in any context. But they do. I should also point out that this movie has a bad audience score but has gotten great reviews. Usually that's a very good sign. People are very stupid, and I saw some of those stupid ones walk out. Maybe people thought they were watching some shit that was gonna have gambling scenes like Casino Royale or The Hustler. I don't know. I do need to say that my list should be taken with a grain of salt because I've skipped a few movies that I have to come back to. Also, it really annoys me that Oscar Isaac wasted his time being completely neutered in a Star Wars trilogy. People who can act like that guy can need better material, but I haven't even watched some of his best material, so I guess I'm just talking shit.

8.5/10

2021 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. The Card Counter
2. Judas and the Black Messiah
3. Pig
4. The Suicide Squad
5. Nine Days
6. A Quiet Place Part II
7. Candyman
8. Stillwater
9. Wrath of Man
10. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
11. Godzilla vs. Kong
12. Nobody
13. Cruella
14. Black Widow
15. Jungle Cruise
16. Those Who Wish Me Dead
17. Old
18. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
19. The Little Things
20. F9
21. The Protege
22. Profile
23. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions
24. Snake Eyes
25. Mortal Kombat
26. The Forever Purge
27. Don't Breathe 2
28. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

 

[909]

Blue Bayou (2021), directed by Justin Chon

Have you ever seen a movie that started off great and finished up like the third act wasn't really thought about? That's what we have here in Blue Bayou.

Blue Bayou is the story of Antonio LeBlanc (Justin Chon), an adoptee from Korea who was never naturalized as a citizen, nor was he ever actually adopted for longer than a few months. If you watch the movie it'll get into that. Anyway, Antonio came from Korea as a really young child, and he settled in Louisiana. Currently he lives outside New Orleans with his pregnant wife Kathy (Alicia Vikander), and Kathy's daughter Jessie. Jessie is pretty much his daughter as well, or at least that's the relationship they have. Antonio has a criminal background that did not previously get him deported, but he needs to find another job and he can't do it because of that criminal record. One day while at the store, Antonio is harassed by some NOPD officers. Ace (Mark O'Brien) is Jessie's father, and his partner Denny (Emory Cohen) is a classic piece of shit. Anyway, Denny beats Antonio up and Antonio gets arrested. ICE comes to pick him up, and deportation is in his future because he was never naturalized. Antonio and Kathy subsequently need to get a lawyer, Barry (Vondie Curtis-Hall). Barry needs a retainer fee. Antonio has a criminal record. Put two and two together here.

Alright, so my description of the beginning of the movie doesn't quite match the way the events play out on screen. The first and second acts are a lot better than the melodrama I just made them sound like. There are directors who are great at melodrama, but Chon is not one of them. I will explain. There's a lady named Parker (Linh Dan Pham) who Antonio encounters much earlier on in the film. She is a Vietnamese refugee who has terminal cancer. It is clear that Antonio has never spent much time around Asians at all, so Parker reminds him of the mother he never had. In addition even though she isn't Korean she represents a side of himself that he's never explored. It needs to be said before I get into the worse aspects of this film that Chon's performance is really good. His direction is too, but his screenplay really isn't, and it's about time that I finally start to address that.

The issue with Blue Bayou is that Chon has woven a good tapestry about how someone gets deported by way of a sociopathic system devoid of human behavior and emotion. The problem is that he decided to take said tapestry and dye it one color. The film is very one note as a result of this. This movie just doesn't need the amount of emotional manipulation going on here. It's like this guy kept taking Owen Hart's botched tombstones until they killed him. Straight up. I don't know how else to describe this film. Blue Bayou is so emotionally manipulative that I heard quite a number of people crying, which doesn't usually bother me but in this case it does. The reality of what happens to immigrants in this country is bad enough. You don't need some evil cop going over and beating this guy up to ensure his deportation. The film also makes a mistake of not showing Antonio's court hearing, where people surely gave an impassioned statement on his behalf only for the judge to not care at all. That's the fucking story. A movie doesn't need all this extra piling on.

Of course, because of the piling on, this knocks the movie down a great deal in my eyes. The actual ending of the film is almost right, but for me it's ruined by some of the creative decisions prior to that. Back to the first and second act though. It's straight that the closing stretch of the film has the subtlety of a sledgehammer when the beginning was done so well. Throughout the story Antonio clutches onto this sole memory of his biological mother. It is one where she tries to drown him, but it is his only memory. Antonio's relationship with Jessie is one of those that feels like it belongs in a great movie, but as things compound with Antonio, it all goes by the wayside. That's really what I'd have to say about the story as a whole. I thought the first act was really good filmmaking, I liked the second act, and then I had to watch this guy get stabbed in the gut over and over again. How do you rate a movie like this? I don't know.

6/10

2021 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. The Card Counter
2. Judas and the Black Messiah
3. Pig
4. The Suicide Squad
5. Nine Days
6. A Quiet Place Part II
7. Candyman
8. Stillwater
9. Wrath of Man
10. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
11. Godzilla vs. Kong
12. Nobody
13. Cruella
14. Black Widow
15. Blue Bayou
16. Jungle Cruise
17. Those Who Wish Me Dead
18. Old
19. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
20. The Little Things
21. F9
22. The Protege
23. Profile
24. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions
25. Snake Eyes
26. Mortal Kombat
27. The Forever Purge
28. Don't Breathe 2
29. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

 

[909]

Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021), directed by Andy Serkis

This is a movie made by someone who doesn't fuck around. They got straight to the point, they made a short film, and I will also get straight to the point. In 1996, we learn the origin of Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson). He was a guy who killed lots of people, but his first love Frances Barrison (Naomie Harris) was taken away from their group home and sent to an institute. On the way, Frances tried to escape and it didn't work. She attacked a young officer named Patrick (Stephen Graham), who shot her and believed he killed her. Thing is that he didn't and she was institutionalized and studied at Ravencroft anyway. Of course when you shoot someone in the eye you think you killed them, but that wasn't the case. This chick Frances also has a very powerful scream which we'll learn more about later. Of course we already met Cletus in the mid-credits scene of the first movie.

I was thinking this was a bold start to the movie to not show Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) for so long, but once they finally bring the story to him this whole movie condenses a lot. The cast here is very small by big budget movie standards. Cletus only wants to talk to Eddie these days. One day, Eddie does exactly that and interviews him. Unbeknownst to Cletus and everyone else, Venom is able to remember everything said and everything Eddie sees in perfect detail. Venom remembers some drawings, Eddie puts them on the computer, and he finds out where Cletus buried all the bodies he took out as a serial killer. This almost goes so far as to fix Eddie's ruined career. Unfortunately, he is then told by Anne (Michelle Williams) that she is getting married, and this sets him back quite a bit. And with that, I should stop talking about the story.

I don't have a lot to say about this movie because it's so short. This thing moves so fast that clearly everyone decided there was no need for scene setting or anything of the sort. I don't know how you talk about a movie that deals with things like this. The film moves at a very brisk pace, this isn't meant to be taken seriously, and that's about all anyone needs to say. The movie is driven by Tom Hardy and without him this would all be a completely horrible nothing. The Venom stuff here is great, when the movie starts focusing on Carnage I care a whole lot less and there's a lot of that focus here. If all you want is mindless action, this is for you.

5.5/10

2021 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. The Card Counter
2. Judas and the Black Messiah
3. Pig
4. The Suicide Squad
5. Nine Days
6. A Quiet Place Part II
7. Candyman
8. Stillwater
9. Wrath of Man
10. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
11. Godzilla vs. Kong
12. Nobody
13. Cruella
14. Black Widow
15. Blue Bayou
16. Jungle Cruise
17. Those Who Wish Me Dead
18. Old
19. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
20. Venom: Let There Be Carnage
21. The Little Things
22. F9
23. The Protege
24. Profile
25. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions
26. Snake Eyes
27. Mortal Kombat
28. The Forever Purge
29. Don't Breathe 2
30. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

 

[909]

Alright, so I'm back from DC and I'm going to announce that this thread is permanently finished. I don't know if anyone cares, but in case they do, I'll explain what happened. The fact is that I shouldn't be spending 30-45 minutes writing these reviews every time I watch a movie. It cuts too much into my free time. I'm also going to be making other lifestyle changes but none of that should affect the board except this thing. I had a great time there and realized all of this, so yeah. At one point it was a good thing mentally to get all my thoughts out, now it's easier for me to not spend so much time doing that and I'd rather spend my time doing other stuff.

 

[AA484]

Alright, so I'm back from DC and I'm going to announce that this thread is permanently finished. I don't know if anyone cares, but in case they do, I'll explain what happened. The fact is that I shouldn't be spending 30-45 minutes writing these reviews every time I watch a movie. It cuts too much into my free time. I'm also going to be making other lifestyle changes but none of that should affect the board except this thing. I had a great time there and realized all of this, so yeah. At one point it was a good thing mentally to get all my thoughts out, now it's easier for me to not spend so much time doing that and I'd rather spend my time doing other stuff.

It would be highly appropriate if you did Many Saints of Newark as your final review considering your reviews basically started with the Sopranos re-watch.

 

[909]

It would be highly appropriate if you did Many Saints of Newark as your final review considering your reviews basically started with the Sopranos re-watch.

Alright, will do.

I am going to keep doing the TV thread because it takes way less time.