In Which I Briefly Review Movies

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This is an example of what people will be getting from me:

Antlers - 6/10 - Cinematography was great, great monster, did not have the story to match up with either of these things. Also an absurd amount of gore that leads me to believe nothing will ever be rated NC-17 anymore.

Then I will post my list at the end of each month, except for this one because there's nothing to update tbh.

 

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Alright, so I don't want to do a full review of Many Saints of Newark because then I'd have to detail the plot. I do have a lot to say though.

I gave the movie a 5.

Why a 5? I felt like this was a completely unfocused work in almost every respect and was surprised David Chase would make something like this. There are a lot of very big mistakes here. I would say chiefly among them is the use of preexisting characters. Shoehorning adult Pussy and Silvio into the story while Tony is a little kid makes the movie feel inauthentic. Those guys weren't that old. Silvio is nearly the same age as Junior in this movie. I thought Chase also comes dangerously close to turning his characters into full blown pastiche. The imitations here are genuinely terrible and nauseating. There is no need for the actors to imitate the characters from the show. Do your own thing to some extent, because you can't act like this and ruin the movie. It doesn't feel natural because they're trying to hit notes that other actors accomplished. As a result Gandolfini, Farmiga, and Bernthal's performances are the only ones of existing characters to feel authentic.

There are other flaws besides just these, and they're mostly in relation to there not being a story in this film until it's too late. Eventually you see what the movie is supposed to be about, but everything before that feels almost pointless. Of course there's also Leslie Odom's character which is there for a potential sequel or television series, one which I'm sure we'll have even though I don't understand why we need to have it. I'm gonna be honest here. If I have to watch that guy pretend to be Silvio Dante again? I won't even watch any TV show related to this. Another problem I have here is that what we've learned about the characters from the original series is quite minimal. We learned that Junior had Dickie killed, but that's all we learned.

Of course there were things I liked, most of them related to Tony and Livia Soprano, but I could have done without this and would have preferred it was never made. I said before that this wasn't the Sopranos movie anyone wanted, and that seems obviously true after having seen it. It also goes without saying that any future material related to this show should revolve around Michael Gandolfini as Tony, and that should include an acknowledgment of whether or not Tony lived.

 

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Irresistible, 2020, Jon Stewart - 3.5/10 - This film is a very unfunny satire on how influential money is in politics. This film is neither timely nor amusing, and frankly Jon Stewart should know how to put together better material than this. Making matters worse is that this seems to be a response to Trumpism, but there's nothing to this and almost all the attempted jokes fall flat. Once again this is a bad movie with Steve Carell as the lead. I don't get why. Skip it.

 

[Mickey Massuco]

Steve’s career never really took off like people thought it would after the office. Some memorable roles but his career is nonexistent now and he didn’t reach any great heights.

 

[909]

Steve’s career never really took off like people thought it would after the office. Some memorable roles but his career is nonexistent now and he didn’t reach any great heights.

Steve is obviously a very talented guy, but the writers of the show were more talented than him. The directions everyone went in the aftermath of the show spell that out quite clearly. He also doesn't have much of a knack for picking good scripts.

The only leads in the show that got good/better work after The Office were Krasinski and Ellie Kemper. And in Krasinski's case he had to make his own work because nobody was going to give it to him. He also went in a completely different direction than the show. Everyone else's career stalled because they didn't have that kind of talent writing scripts or jokes for them.

 

[BUTT]

He definitely still has a career as he makes a ton of money from TV: reportedly over $1 million per episode for Space Force and around $750k per ep for The Morning Show. Whether or not he's actually producing good work I cannot say as I've never seen either of those shows and they don't look appealing to me.

 

[909]

He definitely still has a career as he makes a ton of money from TV: reportedly over $1 million per episode for Space Force and around $750k per ep for The Morning Show. Whether or not he's actually producing good work I cannot say as I've never seen either of those shows and they don't look appealing to me.

My brother said The Morning Show is good, but fuck those would be sweet gigs to get paid that much for nothing that looks grueling to work on.

 

[Zetterberg is God]

I'll add he did get an Oscar nomination as well.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

I'd say Steve Carrell's has been fine considering he was already in his mid 40s by the time he was able to become a movie/TV star. He had a solid 5-10 year run of starring in movies that were decent-ish in late '00s-early 2010s. I think he's picked absolutely horrible projects the last decade. No one should feel bad for him on the baiss of that sweet Despicable Me money alone.

 

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Scream 2, 1997, Wes Craven - 5/10 - I've never seen the sequels to Scream before. Most of the time sequels to these kinds of movies aren't good and make money anyway, and that's what we have here. The movie is decidedly less gory than its predecessor and the motivation for killing is completely ridiculous. The end piece and the beginning are pretty good compared to the rest of the movie.

 

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Last Night in Soho, 2021, Edgar Wright - 7.5/10 - While I think there's some validity to the claim of style over substance, I thought this film was wildly engaging. It's also hard for a movie like this one to remain interesting throughout, but I thought it did. Main problem here is that nothing compared to how good the first dream sequence was. Nothing possibly could, it was an amazing set of scenes. Of course in some way that hurts the rest of the movie. The point of all this is to expose the past for being what it is, that we shouldn't idealize the past because the past is filled with rotten, seedy moments just like today. I also dug the twist and thought it was obvious, but obvious doesn't always mean bad.

 

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The French Dispatch, 2021, Wes Anderson, 8.5/10 - When it comes to movies it is clear I am becoming very difficult to please. When it comes to a Wes Anderson movie that usually flies out the window. The production design on these films is so great that it always goes without saying. What I dig here is that this is an anthology movie with three stories that are relatively comparable in humor, wit, engagement, excellence, etc. This is also a movie that's supposed to be an homage to old journalists, but if you don't care about that it stands on its own merits. Jeffrey Wright's facsimile of James Baldwin was really good though.

To put it kindly if someone didn't like this movie I'd probably think they were stupid.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

Jeffrey Wright's facsimile of James Baldwin was really good though.

I didn't think it was possible for me to sold on seeing this movie even more and yet---

 

[alkeiper]

The French Dispatch was a lot of fun. Probably won’t see a more esoteric mainstream movie.

 

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True History of the Kelly Gang, 2020, Justin Kurzel, 7/10 - This is not true and as a result isn't history. Instead this is an adaptation of a book that told an alternate history of famed bogan Ned Kelly. I liked this movie a fair bit. I don't know any of the actual source history or anything. What this movie tells me is that Ned was a kid who had a hard life. He grew older, his mother got treated like shit, he couldn't handle it. Ned subsequently bugged out and started killing folk. The key component here is that the movie isn't told from some distant kind of detached perspective where Ned is a passive observer to his childhood. The filmmaker effectively paints a picture of what he thought Ned's early life was like, and he ran with it. The ending bombs out a little bit, but this was a pretty good flick.

 

[muzzington]

I'd say Bushranger before bogan, that's a more modern term for a low class kind of person.

 

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Spencer, 2021, Pablo Larrain, 7.5/10 - I hate the Royals, and this movie is straight up my alley as a result. This is a fictionalized portrayal of Princess Diana (Kristen Stewart) deciding to end her marriage and cease from associating with this nonsense. The movie isn't perfect by any stretch, but I find this to be a very accurate portrayal of how it feels to be around people you hate. Bearing in mind that this isn't supposed to be complete truth, I thought the portrayals of Diana and Charles (Jack Farthing) were excellent. Charles only has three or four speaking scenes, so the performance won't amount to awards, but Charles was portrayed as the sniveling dickhead he is. One key component here is that it's impossible to understand how anyone could be this way, and there are people who actually choose to do it despite how sickening it is. Go figure.

The direction also bears mentioning here, even though again, this movie is not perfect. Quite a few of the things that happen on Boxing Day feel like they're aimlessly thrown into the movie just because they could do so.

 

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Share, 2019, Pippa Blanco, 6.5/10 - Alright, I'm sure nobody knows what this movie is about so some description is needed. This is the story of a young girl named Mandy (Rhianne Barreto) who was in a video taped by some of her high school classmates. In this video, she was passed out on the floor and clearly someone had their way with her. She doesn't know what happened, and the film focuses on her learning the events of that night, as well as dealing with the consequences of having reported the crime. This film is almost too restrained if anything, and as a result feels longer than it actually is. Share is not a long movie though. I do appreciate that the film gives the perspective of the victim rather than those attempting to chase the perpetrator, but I feel like the end of the movie starts to repeat events and feelings we've already addressed.

 

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Dune, 2021, Denis Villeneuve, 8.5/10 - I don't have much to say that hasn't already been said, other than to say I really enjoyed this. The film is bold, it's indulgent, it's all that kind of shit I would want from a movie that's the first of many parts. I should also mention that I knew people who really didn't like the ending to the first LOTR movie for the same reasons people didn't like this one, so this isn't something that I'm not used to. I thought a lot of the visual tricks were great, the events felt like a spectacle the way they should, and the plot matched up with that. That being said Dune is super slow and I can see why people had some problems here.

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

The LOTR ending felt a lot more natural because it actually was the stopping point in the books. I didn't have a big problem with it stopping where it did but I do think it felt a bit stretched.

 

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No Time to Die, 2021, Cary Fukunaga, 7.5/10 - If you've been waiting for a Bond movie that has stakes, that has payoffs, that has an old school Bond villain, I think this might be the one you were waiting for. As with the other Bond movies during Craig's run, this movie picks up where the last one left off. One of the flaws of this run is that you do need to watch the other movies in order to understand this one, but I'm fine with that. The new 007 was also a nice nod to some of people's complaints. But most importantly this is the end of this Bond run. It ended in very definitive fashion and it was a good ride getting there. I also should point out this is a very long movie, but it isn't one that felt like it dragged. Should also point out the movie is also mostly deadly serious.

 

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Scream 3, 2000, Wes Craven, 4/10 - The law of diminishing returns brings us here. This movie is decidedly worse than the previous one, which was worse than the one before that, and I bet the 4th one will be worse than this. That being said I think people have forgotten how culturally significant these movies were. I remember everyone dressing up like Ghostface CONSTANTLY. Not just on Halloween, but all the time. There aren't many other horror movies that caused such a reaction. That being said, this is a bad movie. It's supposed to be satirizing things where evil relatives come out of the woodwork, but that doesn't make it any better. Parker Posey's character here was really good though and a big highlight.

 

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The King of Staten Island, 2020, Judd Apatow, 6/10 - This is a good movie that is way too long. Simple as that. The King of Staten Island also fails to stick the landing the way that Apatow's more memorable films do. Despite those issues this is a movie where Bill Burr and Pamela Adlon give a good turn. Pete Davidson isn't bad either, and Steve Buscemi has a good role here too. The movie is funny but not overly so, and again, this is way too long. There are quite a few scenes at the restaurant that are worth slashing from the movie as well, so it isn't like there aren't obvious cuts. I also thought this was fun despite the fact that Davidson's character is unlikable. I feel like I know what's wrong with this guy, but he really needs to get his shit together. The story does a good job of moving things along that path, so it's not like this was a waste of time or anything.

 

[Big Papa Paegan]

re: Scream 4
It's...not that bad, really. The first is clearly the best, but the 4th one does some fun turns with it, and it's the final act where it starts to go off the rails and fall into "really?" territory.

 

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Black Christmas, 2019, Sophia Takal, 3.5/10 - Look, literally all there is to this movie is a song scene. The scene is on YouTube, seen here

I haven't seen the original movie, so I don't know what's in it. In this one, a frat house full of perverts gets off on randomly sexually assaulting women. You know, like the real world. Despite that I really don't care for the gender politics contained in this film, and I think they're reductive and rather harmful, but I'll continue. Riley (Imogen Poots) has previously been sexually assaulted by one of these fraternity members. The fraternity is also a cult intent on stalking the sorority sisters who constantly make fun of them, and they take the sisters out one by one. This movie is also PG-13, so big fucking yawn there. This is a satire that just does not work. That being said the song I posted is pretty good.

 

[RedJed]

I really disliked that Black Christmas remake.....in fact I think I may have posted prior that it was one of the worst remakes of the horror PG-13 bunch (and there are plenty of bad ones). Just really no value there. I think there was a much better BC remake done in around 2005-2006 that was fucking eons better than this total dumpster fire of a film.

Ultimately, nothing compares to the original but the 06 version did a much better spin and attempt at it.

 

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Eternals, 2021, Chloe Zhao, 6/10 - I like this more than some people did, but it's only just decent. There are some major tonal issues here and some instances where you can clearly see the studio interfered to make this movie less serious than it should have been. It's just me but when your friend of 7000 years dies, it's probably the end of joke cracking time. Of course the Marvel overlords probably aren't cool with making a super serious movie even though this needed to be one. I did like quite a few things though. A lot of the characters were great, but there were too many of them and most don't get the attention they needed. This is going to have to be something fleshed out in the TV shows because none of the movies will have the time to do it. I also liked the ending and epilogue quite a bit. They left a gigantic loaded gun in this movie ready to go off whenever they need it to. They really went out there with the mid and post-credits. But at the end of the day this is a movie that could have been great and it isn't. The filmmaker tried to break the formula and clearly they weren't allowed to.

 

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Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, 2021, Johannes Roberts, 5/10 - This is a really tough one for me. I loved the first two Resident Evil games when I was a kid and this movie is extremely faithful to those games in a lot of ways. In other ways they completely fail to tell the story of those games, in some part because you can't shove that into a 100 minute movie. The CGI here is also very noticeably bad in certain moments where it is required to not be this bad. The movie is also way too dark in that you can't see shit. The thing is, I'm giving this a five because there are moments that counteract this level of badness. The easter eggs here are nice to see, the zombies are quite faithful to the game, and I appreciated the restraint in not showing them for such a long period of time. Problem is that video games just don't adapt to movies.

I decided that I'm not gonna get back to seeing EVERYTHING in theaters until the turn of the year. So for now, you get what I give and I'm going to play catchup with what I missed. Haven't posted this list in a while, so:

Spoiler

1. The Card Counter
2. Dune
3. Judas and the Black Messiah
4. The French Dispatch
5. Pig
6. The Suicide Squad
7. Last Night in Soho
8. No Time to Die
9. Spencer
10. Nine Days
11. A Quiet Place Part II
12. Candyman
13. Stillwater
14. Wrath of Man
15. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
16. Godzilla vs. Kong
17. Nobody
18. Cruella
19. Black Widow
20. Blue Bayou
21. Eternals
22. Jungle Cruise
23. Antlers
24. Those Who Wish Me Dead
25. Old
26. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
27. Venom: Let There Be Carnage
28. The Little Things
29. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City
30. The Many Saints of Newark
31. F9
32. The Protege
33. Profile
34. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions
35. Halloween Kills
36. Snake Eyes
37. Mortal Kombat
38. The Forever Purge
39. Don't Breathe 2
40. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

 

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Ghostbusters: Afterlife, 2021, Jason Reitman, 7/10 - I read a review about this movie that I thought was really accurate in terms of what it was saying about society, but I don't agree or care with their take on this movie. It's usually not a good sign for a society to continue to develop when everyone looks backwards on nostalgia and treats society like it can't create anything of equal value to that nostalgia. That being said this was a great nostalgic trip, but even beyond that I liked this movie. Third act is a bit overdone, this is pretty funny though. Most child actors are really annoying and these ones were not. I also cracked up during the Walmart segment and found it quite poignant. It's okay that there are people who feel the opposite of all this, because like I said, our society is becoming way too over-reliant on nostalgia. Major cultural problem IMO.

 

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The Platform, 2019, Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, 8/10 - This is a fucked up little movie we have here. Netflix tried to make me watch the dubbed version of this, but instead I went for the real one. This shit is wild. The concept is a classic trickle down situation. This is a prison with many levels. Food is served on a large platform starting on the first level. People have two minutes to eat what they want, then the platform goes down the next level, rinse and repeat. You are not allowed to keep food on your level after the platform leaves. Obviously there is going to be a point at which there's no food. Those people are left to their own devices for 30 days. They have one cell mate, one item they were allowed to bring, and every thirty days people are randomly changed through these levels. This movie is somehow hilarious despite how gross all this is. People shit in the food, they piss in it, bleed in it. They still have to eat it once a day because that's their only chance to eat. My shorter format allows me to not spoil the movie other than to say that everyone should watch this. The trickle down situation, obviously that's reflective of modern society and capitalism, I don't think I need to spell that out. Watch the movie.