In Which I Briefly Review Movies

[909]

Cold Pursuit (2019), directed by Hans Petter Moland

Including Netflix offerings, there were five films released this week. It seemed as if at least one of these would turn out to be 2019's first good film, and the one I was interested in seeing the most was Cold Pursuit. To talk about Cold Pursuit without mentioning what Liam Neeson said is an impossibility, so I should get it out of the way. It's beyond dispute that Liam Neeson did something extremely racist, and it's fortunate that he didn't actually kill someone. However, this was also a long time ago according to him, and considering that he brought this up without prompting, it seems like something he'd been thinking about recently and was unable to let go. His apology does suffice, but I'm not one of the people he could have wronged. That being said, I think that in order for our world to move on from its racist past, there has to be some contrition for racist deeds. In order to do so, one must admit they did something racist in the first place, which is what Liam Neeson did. Where he goes from here, that isn't really up to me. He did also seek help in order to put those thoughts behind him, which I think is crucial. I think everyone knows that he did something racist, but it's everyone's own decision to decide if he should be forgiven for having those thoughts long in the past. I simply do not know what his deeds are that showed he doesn't feel that way now, now that being said...I think I've made clear before that I'll watch anyone's movies. Liam Neeson is never going to be an exception on that list because there aren't any exceptions. We have to be able to talk about these situations where nobody has been harmed so that we can learn from each other. Now, moving on...

Cold Pursuit is about Nels Coxman (Liam Neeson), a snowplow driver who lives in a fictional resort town in Colorado. He lives with his wife Grace (Laura Dern), and the film begins with him picking up his son Kyle (Micheal Richardson) on the way home. Kyle needs to go to work, so he bothers his mom's car, but that's the last time his parents will see him. While Nels is at a ceremony being awarded Citizen of the Year for his snowplow driving, his son supposedly dies from a heroin overdose, but the audience knows what really happened. A man with a code name of Speedo (Michael Eklund) took him out into the woods, probably did give him a shitload of heroin, but he was shooting at him in the first place. Point is, Speedo was going to kill Kyle anyway. The reason why may have been mentioned at some point during the film, but I'm genuinely not sure. One can only postulate as to why because I don't think it was explictly stated and it's the audiences job to realize it. Anyway, Nels' life goes into a complete tailspin after this event. It appears that Grace hates his guts because they didn't know their son well enough, which leads to Grace taking all her shit and leaving their mountain cabin, never to be seen again.

Now I should bring myself back to the start of the last paragraph. Is Cold Pursuit really about Nels Coxman? Nels has every intention of killing himself, but his son's co-worker shows up at Coxman's place of work. Coxman is subsequently told that his son was murdered by a drug cartel, which leads to...I think you know what happens. This is a Liam Neeson movie after all. Now let's get to brass tacks. It appears that there's a big problem in Colorado, with two different drug gangs having an issue with each other because of what Coxman has done to the employees of the first man, a cartel leader based in Denver who goes by Viking (Tom Bateman). This is a code name, of course. Viking has a family situation with his ex-wife Aya (Julia Jones) and his son, but Coxman has been picking off his guys. He can't have that. Unbeknownst to him, Coxman has a brother who goes by Wingman (William Forsythe), and Wingman was more than willing to provide Coxman with the information he needed. Viking seems believes that these deaths are being caused by a Native American cartel led by White Bull (Tom Jackson), they're based in the fictional town of Kehoe. Obviously, he's wrong. In the meantime, we have two police officers, a young detective we'll call Kim (Emmy Rossum) and an older guy named Gip (John Doman). Gip wants to keep Kehoe as a place without any drama, but Kim seems to see there's a drug war on their turf and wants to put a stop to it.

I'll be the first to admit that Cold Pursuit has some major plot holes and leaves a ton of loose ends open, but this is also a film that is intended to be funny and succeeds greatly in accomplishing that. The marketing is beyond misleading here and this is not a revenge thriller to anywhere near the extent that you'd think. The director is hellbent on ensuring that the audience is laughing consistently, which I was. At least, that is, when I could hear the movie over the douchebag who was snoring in the seat next to mine. I eventually had to move because of that. Cold Pursuit almost goes into the realm of satire at some point, you could very well argue that it goes far beyond that. When one of the tough guy henchmen does something...entirely unexpected in a movie like this one, I laughed so much that I was starting to feel uncomfortable. This part alone would have won me over, but there are a lot more prior to that point. For some, this may be considered overkill, but I am not one of those people. Cold Pursuit also has unexpected artistic quality in the delivery of these death scenes, but I won't spoil that either.

This is a film with some deep flaws, but the things I mentioned earlier go a long way to covering those up. This is an English-language remake made by the same director, which seems to continue a trend in early 2019. A lot of films have been an English-language remake. Yawn. This being from the same director, they probably had solid awareness of what they may have done wrong with their original film. I don't know as I haven't seen that one, so that's a bad assumption I should apologize for. Still, I'm surprised by the way this turned out. I should also mention that the plot holes about why Kyle died and how Kim's character has her investigation completely flounder are so enormous they can't be ignored. Emmy Rossum and Laura Dern are completely wasted here. However, I think that if you believe this is a revenge movie after having watched this, you've totally missed the point. It's a comedy with a cartoon level villain who was trying to do his best Jason Clarke in Serenity level performance, and Tom Bateman completely succeeded at this.

I think Cold Pursuit could be entirely subjective in the sense that one's appreciation for dark comedy may be the reason for their interest. I must reiterate that this is not a typical Liam Neeson movie, and in fact his character fades into the background a bit while the director decides to go much more comedic with things. I was a bit disappointed with some of the creative decisions, but overall I thought this was a very funny film. The first half was a good Neeson revenge story as those things are, but the second half leaned all the way in towards comedy, which I appreciated very much. Very rarely does a film with this much killing go so dark with it, but one may hate all the nicknames and goofy shit that reminded me of a 1980s movie. I, on the other hand, really enjoyed it. At least this wasn't another copy of Taken and went another route.

7/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Cold Pursuit
2. Velvet Buzzsaw
3. The Upside
4. Escape Room
5. Miss Bala
6. Glass
7. Serenity

 

[909]

I, Daniel Blake (2016), directed by Ken Loach

One night I was looking around on Showtime, and I saw that there was a very highly reviewed movie on with interesting subject matter. Obviously, it was I, Daniel Blake or I wouldn't be writing this at all. The subject matter is very unabashedly leftist, which is to say that it's the goddamn truth. I, Daniel Blake is also a great story besides that, and I've read that Loach makes a lot of films similar in theme to these. I will have to check out more of them. I think there's definitely a gap in terms of public awareness of material relating to the less fortunate, but that's mostly because people don't want to know about things they believe they cannot do anything to stop. The problem with that is that the public can actually put a stop to these things, they simply have to choose to do it. As a society, we have failed. It's really as simple as that. People like to tell each other platitudes while not doing anything about these problems. I have volunteered at a food bank before, but I don't have the means to donate. It should be the job of government to do that, but...we don't elect governments that would. I'm not sure what's to be done about this when the general public is so eager to place their heads in the sand and pretend that we don't have these sorts of problems.

Daniel Blake (Dave Johns) is a widower who lives in Newcastle and works in construction, he happens to have a heart attack. His cardiologist has not allowed him to return to work, but the film begins with a work assessment given by a company contracted by the British government. At the work assessment, he's treated like shit by someone who isn't a doctor and has no genuine knowledge of his condition. The government idiot doesn't even bother to contact the doctor, and decides to deem Daniel fit for work. There is no reasonable way in which he could ever really work a full time job again, it's too stressful and it's asking for trouble. The bureaucracy in Daniel's way is absolutely incredible, I don't know how one could bother to cope with this. He needs to apply for an appeal, but that requires him to be called about the decision which he has already received a letter about. To call this absurd is an injustice, that's a word nowhere near strong enough for this situation. Of course, there's also the massive amount of time spent off the phone in order to be told that he needs to be called by someone else.

Eventually Daniel heads back down to the Jobcentre because he's asked to do something he cannot, he has to apply for benefits on a website. Daniel has no knowledge of computers whatsoever, this is something he just can't do. While at the office, there's an issue with someone else, a single mother named Katie (Hayley Squires). Katie arrived late for an appointment because she'd just arrived in Newcastle from London a few weeks previous and had no real idea where she was supposed to be going. Her son Dylan is a bit of a terror, and I just don't see how this situation is fair to anyone. Daniel decides to tear into the employees at that place, because they're doing wrong by their fellow man after all, and they don't seem to have compassion for anyone. Katie and Daniel become friends after this, and we learn that when Katie was in London, she lived in a homeless shelter with her children. The hook for the rest of the film is that Daniel is forced to apply for jobs that he can't take because they'll kill him, and it's clear to see that the welfare state in pretty much every civilized nation is absolute trash.

This is a film that resonates across borders, and I was telling someone the other day that it's hard to present good political material on film or television. This is clearly an exception to that, it's one of the best presentations of poverty there is. I think the film is a little too short as a whole, and I do think the film isn't really groundbreaking in terms of its presentation of poverty, but those are the only flaws I can think of. The performances of our two actors are excellent, they bring real urgency. More than that, it's the presentation of the welfare bureaucracy that really lands. I do now people who have gone through a similar situation and I don't envy them at all, it's simply not right. There were things Daniel did that I thought were great, that I really needed to see for cathartic purposes. Inevitably an old person ashamed to be on the dole has a high chance of lashing out, and I was pleased that this is the way in which he did so. Sometimes I feel like I need films like this one. The realism here is off the charts, there's no cartoon villain at the welfare office, these things are presented with the reality and coldness that such situations really have.

The film feeling so realistic is its real drawing card, but this is also a hard hitting and truthful presentation on society. Perhaps it's one on the future of society as jobs continue to disappear? This is something that everyone really needs to consider. I do think this is a depressing film, but at the same time it's one that brings the hope that other people out there know about these situations and intend to force changes in them. Whether or not they'll be able to do that is something there's no way to know at this point. Some of these scenes really hurt and bring pain, especially when you stop to think that multitudes of people are going through this or worse on a daily basis. I probably will not forget this, and I know that's a horrible platitude, but the film fully leans into the reality of being poor. The horrible shit that happens to someone in that situation never stops, it stacks upon someone until they simply can't breathe or take anymore. The ending of the film encapsulates this feeling completely. Society, unfortunately, is fucked.

8.5/10

 

[909]

Battle of the Sexes (2017), directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris

It appears that tonight was time to watch another film that nearly got me out to the theater in 2017, that one was Battle of the Sexes. Why that? First of all, it's just a damn good story. Secondly, the cast for a film with this budget is quite good, particularly in terms of the film's leads. I wouldn't begrudge anyone for not wanting to see Battle of the Sexes as the story is part of America's sporting lexicon and most people are certainly aware of it. That being said, it's a story that also needs to be told on film. I have heard before that this is a movie that was made with the intention of showing a case of breaking the glass ceiling when dealing with a scumbag, and as that pertains to the 2016 election, I suppose this is a true way of looking at it. I should also point out that I did not consider this at all until I finished the movie and there was a scene where someone was holding a "Billie Jean for President" sign. Of course, if politics are on your mind all the time, you'll think about it a lot more. I do not. So, with that in mind, let's move on from this. This is a story far more about Billie Jean King than Bobby Riggs, and that was a good decision. The less we see about Bobby Riggs, the more interesting the film becomes when he appears, and this makes for a mixture of the two people that leads to a very interesting film.

Everyone at least has superficial knowledge of Billie Jean King (Emma Stone), right? If you don't, pick up a book because this isn't the place for that. Biopics are a touchy subject in this way, but as it comes to Billie Jean King, I didn't know enough that this story would have become rote. Gladys Heldman (Sarah Silverman) was a female tennis promoter, and along with Billie Jean King they both worked to create the Women's Tennis Association, the first women's tour. The movie spins a yarn that Billie had a dispute with Jack Kramer (Bill Pullman), who effectively served as a stand-in for male tennis promoters around the world. The dispute was over pay, and the women threatened to start their own tour, but Kramer didn't listen. So, instead, Billie Jean and eight other women sign up to play on the Virginia Slims Circuit, leading to their banning from tournaments organized by the USTA. None of the other women really feature throughout the film, with the exception of Rosie Casals (Natalie Morales). As the tour picks up, Margaret Court (Jessica McNamee) joins up, and for those who don't know, she was an even more accomplished player than King. Not even close.

Meanwhile, there's Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell), a huckster extraordinaire. Riggs was a famous player in his time, but at the point of the events of this film he was in his mid-50's. Bobby was more than famous, he was also accomplished, but these things all happened in the 1940s, around thirty years before the aforementioned Battle of the Sexes. Everyone knows that he played Billie Jean King in the Astrodome, but how did he get there? Bobby is married to Priscilla (Elisabeth Shue), who simply can't tolerate any of his gambling addiction. This addiction will not stand in her house, he gets the boot. After being thrown out, he decides to bring his carnival barker act into play, and challenges whoever the #1 women's tennis player shall be at the end of 1970. He'd already challenged King and had been told no. King is having some issues that the film presents as a postulation that led to the loss of her #1 ranking. She starts an affair with a hairdresser, Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough), and her husband finds out before a match against Margaret. It also turns out that Margaret is a homophobe, something which has been proven to be true in recent years.

There's no real hook here other than to see the events as they played out, with the added joy of Steve Carell once again portraying a more competent version of Michael Scott. He is completely typecast in my mind and nothing he can do will ever change this. That doesn't matter when he's in good material and this is good material. I want to see more of Steve Carell acting goofy, he's done a whole lot already but that's his thing. I also thought there was an interesting portrait of Billie Jean King here. It is very explicitly stated that nobody is able to find out about her sexuality because of the potential ramifications on the women's tour and the sponsorships they would lose. These scenes are played quite well, and this is never expressed as a motivating factor in King's play, but on some level you'd have to expect that it was. A flaw in this storyline is that Larry King (Austin Stowell) is presented as a passive observer of this and does nothing beyond a threat. I should note that this is not THE Larry King. I thought Battle of the Sexes also did a good job ensuring that people took Riggs bluster for what it was, merely bluster and an attempt to sell something. The distinction between that and of the sexism of the male promoter who feels like a true believer was also quite welcome. Movies do not often make such distinction.

It turned out in the end that King and Riggs remained friends for life, because of course they did. Really, they did. It's funny the way those things work out, because in that way it feels like both of them were in on the Riggs act and the whole thing wasn't really about that at all. The film presents the picture that it wasn't, and Billie Jean King is still alive to dispute things if that was the case, and she did not. I thought this was a great portrayal and representation by Emma Stone, and I will be the one to point out that during the real broadcast of this event, all Howard Cosell did was talk about Billie Jean King's looks. Have we come far enough where that doesn't matter in a sporting context? Amanda Nunes vs. Cris Cyborg tells me to some extent we have come that far, but I read some odious tweets from mainstream media after the fight that would dispute that notion. I don't know how far we've come when I think about things like this. Pay has certainly come a long way in terms of the differences between what women and men are paid for the same product, with the same attention on each product as is the case with MMA and tennis. It's also very difficult to watch the female athlete being treated like shit in this movie.

I think Billie Jean King said it best when discussing this film, that the film doesn't have to be entirely accurate. I've said that a lot about biographies because it's true, it's about capturing the feeling of the time and the people involved. This does that about as well as a film can possibly do. The promotion of the titular event, of the way they used old footage of athletes thoughts at the time, of the usage of Howard Cosell and his commentary, and of the ludicrous jacket Bobby Riggs wore into the Astrodome that day all made me laugh really hard. It captured the moment brilliantly. My score for the film is going to be almost entirely due to the limitations of the script, and due to this being an event a lot of people knew so much about in the first place. I am also quite partial to sports biographies. The Battle of the Sexes is something that has the issue of being too well known and not of something a lot of people would find so important that they'd have to see a movie about it, and the box office reflects that notion. However, I do think this is the kind of movie that has some rewatch value. Steve Carell and Emma Stone are great here, it's a duo I never knew that I wanted to watch together, but there is a bit of wanting them to be together more than happened in reality.

If anyone cares I did some housekeeping on this list after having time to reflect.

7.5/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Get Out
3. Logan
4. Wonder Woman
5. Thor: Ragnarok
6. Logan Lucky
7. The Beguiled
8. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
9. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
10. The Lost City of Z
11. First They Killed My Father
12. Spider-Man: Homecoming
13. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
14. It
15. Battle of the Sexes
16. Okja
17. Kong: Skull Island
18. Split
19. Personal Shopper
20. Chuck
21. Atomic Blonde
22. The Lego Batman Movie
23. Megan Leavey
24. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
25. American Made
26. Imperial Dreams
27. Free Fire
28. Win It All
29. The Wall
30. Breathe
31. The Man Who Invented Christmas
32. Alone in Berlin
33. A United Kingdom
34. Trespass Against Us
35. The Mountain Between Us
36. War Machine
37. Happy Death Day
38. Justice League
39. To the Bone
40. Wakefield
41. The Hitman's Bodyguard
42. Sand Castle
43. CHiPs
44. Death Note
45. The Great Wall
46. Fist Fight
47. Wilson
48. Sleepless

 

[909]

The Belko Experiment (2017), directed by Greg McLean

I assume that quite a few people were initially interested in The Belko Experiment because of James Gunn's script, but what I've learned over the last little while is that films don't succeed on the merit of the script, but rather the direction. That isn't to say James Gunn's script for this film was any good, because it wasn't. What we have in The Belko Experiment is a film that never could have worked for many different reasons, but the direction of the film took any potential for whimsy out of the equation. As a substitute we received a brutalist version of something that could have at the least been somewhat adequate. There are numerous scenes that feel like they've gone too far in the context of America's mass shooting problem. Maybe that was the point, but I don't really accept that. I have a taste for horror that actually works, this is something I've seen numerous other times. There are ways to do this and there are ways not to do it. One example of the good way is Battle Royale, which I think most have seen by this point. This is one of the bad examples! Sometimes with bad films I'm not able to put into words why I didn't like something, but in the case of The Belko Experiment, I damn well know why I didn't like it. That isn't a good sign for a movie like this one.

Our film has a triple start of sorts, with Mike Milch (John Gallagher Jr.) driving to work at Belko Industries in Bogota. On the way, he buys something from a street vendor. Barry Norris (Tony Goldwyn) is his and everyone else's boss, and he arrives the same day to find that the Colombian workers at the company are being turned away by security guards he doesn't know. Meanwhile, there's a new employee who I swear wasn't named, but her name is Dany (Melonie Diaz) and she arrives around the same time. She is told that tracking devices are implanted in the head of she and her fellow employees to ensure that they aren't kidnapped, which is quite common in Colombia. There are other characters as well, including Leandra (Adria Arjona), Mike's girlfriend; Wendell (John C. McGinley), a creepy fuck who has a crush on Leandra; their boss Terry (Owain Yeoman), a family man not from America like the rest of these people; Bud (Michael Rooker) and Lonny (David Dastmalchian), two maintenance workers; and lastly Evan (James Earl), the building's only security guard. The last of those things is genuinely dumb as fuck for a building with 80 foreign employees in a country with a high crime rate, but anyway, once the 80th employee shows up, there's a big problem.

A voice (Gregg Henry) comes over the intercom, and we see that nobody's in the room with the intercom, so this is not good. The voice instructs the employees to kill two of their co-workers or some bad shit is going to happen. People try to run outside, but this isn't going to work out because steel shutters have sealed off the windows and doors. They are all locked in. Everyone ignores the announcement, thinking that it's a prank, or not finding the courage to go out there and doing this, but this leads to the aforementioned bad consequences. There were people on the roof, the most important of them being Marty Espenscheid (Sean Gunn), an admittedly amusing conspiracy theorist who has a hard time believing any of this shit is happening. This shit is happening. The woman he's standing next to appears to be mowed down by gunfire, and so do a few other people throughout the building, leading to four dead. This shit is getting way more serious though. The film mostly follows Mike, who attempts to remove the tracker from his head once he and everyone else realizes the tracker exploded and killed those four people. Mike is subsequently warned that he will be killed if he continues, so he does not. After that, the group is told that thirty of them must be murdered inside of two hours, and if they aren't, sixty will die. This leads to a faction led by Mike (John Gallagher Jr.), who believes they should sit there and die. The other faction is led by Barry, who is ex-Special Forces and wants to get home to see his kids, regardless of whatever it is he must do.

There are numerous large problems with the film, but I think the worst one is that Mike is one of the most dislikable characters I've ever seen in a movie like this one. The concept is tired and played out as it is, but he's an annoying fuck. I will admit that I was hoping for someone to kill him so that I didn't have to tolerate someone who was acting like this. That's merely one of this film's problems, and I can't say more about Mike without spoiling everything. Another is that the concept is tired as fuck and beyond played out. Does anyone want to continue to watch movies based on the Battle Royale concept? I can think of some ways that I would, like for example if everyone was to die or for there to not be any protagonist at all. I can't believe Mike was the protagonist and I didn't see it that way, but he was! This was terrible. The last thing I feel obligated to complain about beyond how uninventive this is, is the way that the massacre scene played out. I've never said this before as it pertains to any other film, I think this was too far. It felt like a classic case of shock value just for the sake of it, but I didn't think this was acceptable at all. These were just random characters I don't think I'd even seen prior to this point in the film, so the scene holds no weight and is entirely unnecessary.

I know full well how morbid this would be, but one of these films really needs to have the characters follow the instructions to the letter. I'm sure one of them's out there, but hell if I know what it is as I'm not a horror expert. I wanted to see what would happen enxt once they followed instructions, we were robbed of this in a very predictable manner. The characters also bring absolutely nothing to the table on any level at all, there's no background for any of them. At least something like Escape Room that works upon a similar idea of survival (I won't say concept because that's not true) provides some background for its characters. One could lazily argue that there are too many for The Belko Experiment to properly do that, but that's when it's time to pick and choose. If they can bother to focus on some characters, which they did, we need some background. When a film doesn't provide that, why should I care? You have to get to know the characters to care about when they die, this didn't do that, and it's a shitty movie because of that and for countless other reasons. The massacre scene is something I need to have bleached out of my brain, I found absolutely nothing interesting about that scene at all.

I have a long way to go for 2017, I mean a really long way. There will certainly be a lot of bad movies along the way, but I'm not sure how many of them will feel more brazenly ridiculous than this one. I got no enjoyment out of this and I found that the film failed to pose the kinds of questions that a movie like Battle Royale did. It also frankly didn't have any kills anywhere near as interesting as the ones in Battle Royale. While the film would have the same problems, at least I would have been entertained by the ridiculous scenarios in which people's lives came to an end?

3.5/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Get Out
3. Logan
4. Wonder Woman
5. Thor: Ragnarok
6. Logan Lucky
7. The Beguiled
8. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
9. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
10. The Lost City of Z
11. First They Killed My Father
12. Spider-Man: Homecoming
13. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
14. It
15. Battle of the Sexes
16. Okja
17. Kong: Skull Island
18. Split
19. Personal Shopper
20. Chuck
21. Atomic Blonde
22. The Lego Batman Movie
23. Megan Leavey
24. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
25. American Made
26. Imperial Dreams
27. Free Fire
28. Win It All
29. The Wall
30. Breathe
31. The Man Who Invented Christmas
32. Alone in Berlin
33. A United Kingdom
34. Trespass Against Us
35. The Mountain Between Us
36. War Machine
37. Happy Death Day
38. Justice League
39. To the Bone
40. Wakefield
41. The Hitman's Bodyguard
42. Sand Castle
43. CHiPs
44. Death Note
45. The Belko Experiment
46. The Great Wall
47. Fist Fight
48. Wilson
49. Sleepless

 

[909]

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019), directed by Mike Mitchell

After having watched two of these Lego movies in January, I think it's a fair judgment to say that the novelty wore off. This appears to have been the case for a lot of people judging from the first weekend's box office receipts, which had to be painfully disappointing for Warner Bros. and for the people who wanted to turn the Lego Cinematic Universe into something that lasted for a long time. The receipts are such that I'm uncertain another entry will be made for this franchise, which on some levels is too bad, but on another level I think these films have become a little too childish. The key to any successful animated movies is to ensure that adults are interested enough for a word of mouth to build up and for people to take their kids to the film. I don't think that was achieved here at all and with good reason, the film just doesn't have that kind of hook for older people. It isn't that I hate the movie, but I don't understand its message, which is in contrast to The Lego Movie or basically any other similar animated film. What I was hoping for just didn't happen here, but I had that suspicion when I went into the movie theater. I should also note that nobody was there, which is an extreme rarity for a big release such as this one. The weather was good today too! I still don't remember being at a release of this size with no audience.

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part is a continuation of the first film, part of which shows us what happened when that movie ended so quickly. If you remember what happened, Will Ferrell said that the kid's sister was going to be allowed to go play with the LEGO's, so that's what happens. She has started taking some of the creations from the basement and combined them with her own set of Duplo bricks in her room, but to bring it back to the actual plot, here's how it went. Bricksburg had been turned into a post-apocalyptic wasteland by said Duplos, who invaded and destroyed the city. It has been replaced by aforementioned wasteland, which is called Apocalypseburg. The Duplos invade sometimes, but the LEGO's have gotten used to this and have become grizzled. Emmet (voiced by Chris Pratt), on the other hand, has not developed as a character at all and is still a goof. He wants to move into a dream home with Lucy (Elizabeth Banks), but I don't see how this is going to happen when the children in the house are constantly destroying things. And yes, the children do factor into the plot a lot more than in the first movie.

Emmet also has visions again, this time of a pending "Our-Mom-Ageddon." I did laugh at who played the mom in this, and I'll make the choice not to reveal this. Anyway, it's time for one more big invasion, this one led by General Sweet Mayhem (Stephanie Beatriz) and her Duplo army. The General announces that Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi (Tiffany Haddish) of the Systar System wants to marry Batman (Will Arnett), with no reasoning given as to why, but that's what the queen wants. That's also what she'll get. Mayhem's forces subsequently kidnap Batman, Lucy, Benny (Charlie Day), Unikitty (Alison Brie), and MetalBeard (Nick Offerman), all those characters from the first film. I'm trying hard not to spoil here, but Batman is proposed to and says yes, and it also turns out that everyone except Lucy winds up liking their new lives in the Systar System, which is supposed to be the young sister's room. I think everyone's picked up on that aspect by now. Emmet on the other hand, is entirely unaware of this. On his way upstairs, he encounters a rugged adventurer named Rex, who has every intention of helping his newfound buddy rescue his LEGO friends from upstairs.

The problem with this film compared to the other two, as you may infer from my earlier comments and from my summarizations, is that the film is too childish. The emphasis on the sister story would naturally lead to this happening even though she's around the same age as the other kid was in the first movie, but girls are also into more childish things than boys that age. As such, there are musical numbers, a few more of them than in the first movie. I didn't really have any feelings about those scenes in all honesty. Was trying to come up with something to say and I failed completely on that subject. I also thought the addition of Rex was completely stupid and it wasn't a good idea to do what was done with the character near the end of the film. It seemed as if the filmmakers completely disregarded what children would think about that ending. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part is merely an average movie due to how many of these small complaints add up. I see why this wasn't as successful as the first film financially, but it's not as if people knew the content of the film. I believe the reason for this is a lack of quality marketing and how cold most of the country is at this moment.

While average, and even though I've only listed negative things one after the next, there are numerous positives in The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part. One of those is not the obnoxious title, but Apocalypseburg was a nice touch. I didn't care for Emmet's behavior, but there were some good things here that reminded me of Mad Max: Fury Road. That was all I really wanted from this scene and it delivered. There are others with characters from franchises we haven't seen in the Lego universe yet, but to mention them would actually heavily spoil the film so I cannot. There's also plenty Batman here, and the more Batman the better. I demand more Batman, in fact. I also thought that the new characters served their purpose quite well and shook things up a bit as the last thing you'd want is for the second film to be exactly the same as the first one. I also actually did like the real storyline more than in the first film, even though the subliminal messaging of the film was off. There's some other good cameos here and I thought Rex was an oddly interesting character. These were not things I was expecting.

Unfortunately, recreating the first one is not possible due to the novelty of it. This is something Warners should have known far in advance of making this film, they should have known not to create too many of these. Instead, they absolutely did make too many Lego films or television shows, or straight-to-DVD, etc. The people involved with Lego did the same thing with the video games, and they do that with their merchandise too. There's so much of it that a lot of collectors are incapable of keeping up, they oversaturate their market across the board. There was no way the Lego Cinematic Universe would become a real thing due to the incapabilities of those entrusted with ensuring it could become a profitable venture for years. Lego stuff needed to take a much longer view in mind, one of decades instead of months and years, it didn't work out that way. I also thought that the anti-capitalist themes in the first film were completely gone from this one, that was much to the detriment of my entertainment. This wasn't bad or anything, but I didn't enjoy the movie as much as I thought it would. It was merely an okay entry.

6/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Cold Pursuit
2. Velvet Buzzsaw
3. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
4. The Upside
5. Escape Room
6. Miss Bala
7. Glass
8. Serenity

 

[909]

The Girl on the Train (2016), directed by Tate Taylor

My brother told me quite recently to watch The Girl on the Train, and he'd said he read the book and that was good as well. What he did not tell me was that the book and film are supposedly in such large contrast to one another. I didn't bother to find out myself, I don't want to read. I was figuring that the reason my brother recommended this to me was because it was at least somewhat similar to Gone Girl, which I suppose the film was on a superficial level, but I just don't see the similarities at all. It's only similar in the way that both are mysteries, but I don't think every mystery is similar just because someone is searching for something. That just doesn't wash with me. So, with that tangent out of the way, how about the movie? The Girl on the Train is a mystery, and yes, it is a murder mystery, but this is one from an unusual perspective. This is also based on a novel that sold very well, it was set in London and the setting was moved for American audiences. Fortunately there are no bad accents here and it seems to have been decided for a few of the actors to not even try to fake an accent, and while that isn't a priority, it's best to not be distracted during a mystery like this one. The real mystery for me is how the film made so much money. What we have here is a very average movie, with slightly more positives than negatives, but I don't see how this could have been a best-selling novel. Perhaps the changes in the story were too much.

Rachel (Emily Blunt) is an alcoholic, and she's going to tell her life story throughout the film. Or, at least, her recent story. She says that her husband said she had an incredible imagination, and she explains why she rides the train. Her spiel sounds absolutely insane, and it's clear that she has a tenuous grip on reality. She says she always sits in the same seat, has ridden this train for years, and she views a neighborhood every time imagining the lives of people she passes on the train. She also wonders if the people in the neighborhood ever pay attention to said train. Numerous times we see her watching a blonde woman, who we later learn is named Megan (Haley Bennett); along with her husband Scott (Luke Evans). Megan and Scott seem to have a great marriage and Rachel tells us that they have the perfect marriage, one she believes she could have had herself. We also learn that Rachel is a heavy alcoholic and drinks bottles every day, and she's also very fascinated with the blonde woman to the point of sketching her on a pad. How strange. Rachel also says that she used to live a few doors down, which explains her interest in the neighborhood.

Now we should address the blonde woman. We go back six months, with Megan speaking to her therapist, Dr. Abdic (Edgar Ramirez). She tells Dr. Abdic that she has had to become a nanny when she doesn't want to be, and that Scott wants her to become a mother, which she also doesn't want to be. Dr. Abdic asks her if this job helped, but no, it fucking sucked and Megan doesn't want to do it. Subsequently, we are introduced to Anna (Rebecca Ferguson), who is washing her baby Evie while the nanny is there. Guess who the Nanny is? It's Megan. There have been more and more phone calls on the telephone that aren't answered, and they speculate that...Rachel has been calling Anna's house. The reason? Rachel used to be married to Tom (Justin Theroux), who is now Anna's husband. Easy to see how all this comes together, and we are given a flashback to Rachel taking Evie at some point and running outside, Anna getting the baby back unharmed. Rachel's life is such a mess at this point that she lives with her friend Cathy (Laura Prepon), who does somewhat enable her destructive behavior. At least, that is, until one day when Rachel sees Megan and Dr. Abdic sucking face. At least, that is, until the same night when Rachel gets super drunk and decides to tell Scott about this. At least, that is, until Rachel passes out in a tunnel and wakes up with blood all over herself. The next day, it turns out Megan is missing, and she is now being investigated by the police. Detective Riley (Allison Janney) does not believe a single thing she says. What could have happened that night?

The Girl on the Train's story was moved from London to the Hudson Valley, which I suppose was a good decision in order to maintain interest from American audiences. The film made good money, but most of that came from foreign audiences, so I'm not sure it even mattered! A lot of my complaints are related to things I don't really want to spoil, and some of the positives are as well. I have read complaints that this feels like a Lifetime movie, but I would never go that far. Emily Blunt's performance here, particularly in a scene where she's drunk and saying she would attack Anna (yes, I left that out), is quite strong. Stronger than this material deserves I'd argue. I would also say that her performance does enough to keep me hanging on for the duration of the film, even when there are points where I feel like I couldn't give a shit less about any of the other characters. It's not that they're bad characters, but they are distinctly in a supporting role here compared to Blunt's portrayal of Rachel. The film revolves around her almost entirely, with the Megan scenes not really resonating with me until the last one. Oddly enough the last big one is the point at which someone should care about her, but I think that revelation belongs nearer to the beginning of the story.

The film does make mistakes similar to the thing I put down in the last paragraph, where all the pieces come together in a deluge of scenes lacking breathing room whereas the beginning of the film does not have any of this sort of action. The Girl on the Train feels imbalanced because of that. Emily Blunt is able to carry this material, but it's only so far that one can carry it. I don't know if the book was better, don't care either. The Girl on the Train is a film for women in the end, I don't think there's anything wrong with being able to point that out. There's also nothing wrong with that, but the reveal of each lurid detail, and of the numerous red herrings thrown out there, that stuff is like bait for an audience who desperately wants to see stories like this one. That's cool too. I did find all of the characters very dislikable though, and it was only my (and probably many other people's) crush on Emily Blunt that really kept this one going for me. It was interesting to see her play this role, but really, that's just about it. The material is schlock, I thought it was okay due to some performances, take that for what it's worth. I don't want to say anything else because it would spoil the film.

6/10

 

[909]

The Zookeeper's Wife (2017), directed by Niki Caro

At this point, I feel like some of my 2017 watching is list padding, but I'm not sure that entirely applied to The Zookeeper's Wife. I was interested to say how a Holocaust film could possibly tie into one about the fates of animals, and it turned out that the fate of the animals went by the wayside. I thought that was quite strange, and this wasn't what I'd expected. However, is it bad that this wasn't what I expected? That's something I intend to examine, but I have to address the proverbial elephant in the room (no pun intended). The question is whether or not a Holocaust film has to be great in order to have artistic merits, or if they are all great by default? If one isn't great, is it offensive? I'm not entirely sure how to answer any of the questions I've posed, but I think that a movie about this subject, particularly this one, does have artistic merits without being great. I still believe there are some issues with the film and I will address them all if anyone cares, but I also think that people who find such films offensive may be going a bit overboard. Yes, to some extent this does sanitize the events due to the producers seemingly wanting to get a PG-13 rating. There's a nude scene here where I don't understand how they got said rating, but anyway, I've once heard people complain about weak movies in this subgenre being offensive. I wanted to say I don't think that applies here.

Our film begins prior to the invasion of Warsaw, with Antonina (Jessica Chastain) aiding her husband Jan Zabinski (Johan Heldenbergh) in directing the Warsaw Zoo. This appears to be a very fulfilling job to say the least, and everyone seems to be having quite a good time in their roles at the zoo. Their largest help as a zookeeper appears to be Jerzyk (Michael McElhatton), who is fiercely loyal. One day, they are visited by Dr. Lutz Heck (Daniel Bruhl), the head of the Berlin Zoo, and from that point on you can see what's coming. From the trailer I don't know how you wouldn't anyway. Once the film moves to September 1939, the bombardment of Warsaw begins. Bombs kill many animals, these scenes make for tough viewing. Antonina bunkers down with her son Ryszard, they're able to live, but the zoo is thrashed. The Polish Army arrives and shoots many of these animals because they're running out into the streets, this scene is horrible. If not for the PG-13 rating, if a director had really leaned into this gruesome aspect, I don't know if I could have pushed on through this scene. Once the dust settles and the Nazis arrive, Dr. Lutz arrives to have soldiers shoot the rest of the animals, and they'll take over the zoo to use as an armory.

Jan and Antonina have basically no choice in these matters, they also have friends who have impending problems beyond human comprehension. As happened in Warsaw, Jews were going to be sent to the Ghetto, and two of their friends Magda (Efrat Dor) and Dr. Fraenkel (Iddo Goldberg) are trying to find a place for their friend's insect collection. While there, Antonina makes an offer to shelter Magda in a closet, full well knowing she and Jan may be killed because of this. After this, as you may expect, Jan and Antonina decide to use the zoo to save Jews. In order to really pull that off, they're going to need some help. They decide to speak to Lutz at his headquarters in Warsaw, at which point a trade is made. The Zabinski's want to turn their zoo into a pig farm that will feed the German occupiers, which will allow them to make trips into the Warsaw Ghetto to find garbage to feed the pigs with. At the same time, Lutz has his own wishes. He has a crush on Antonina, but what he wants to do is recreate the Aurochs as a symbol of the Third Reich and their capabilities. Jan really intends to use these trips into the Ghetto to bring Jews out in his feed trucks after pouring the pig feed all over them and concealing their bodies, but Lutz doesn't need to know that. It appears they have a deal, and the movie played out from there.

The reason The Zookeeper's Wife isn't a great film is largely down to the fact that it appears that the main character never had any arc. She was resolute throughout. It's different, but this is a little difficult because the main obstacle in the path of the Zabinski's is initially presented as quite a nice person and a man of science. This facade evaporates quickly, and Jan's character arc happens so fast that it jumps over numerous steps. The animals also disappear from the film as a necessity and are replaced with humans inside of cages that reside in the Zabinski's house, this is quite a reminder of the way in which certain human beings are treated based on small differences with one another. I also thought the film's director made a bad mistake in allowing every actor to present whichever accent they wished to do. I liked Chastain's Polish accent well enough, but this clashes strongly with Bruhl's perfect English as a Nazi occupier. I also believe this is sanitized for children, then you have Jessica Chastain's nipple in here and I don't know what to think at all. That seems to conflict with how American parents treat their children.

While not a great film, I do think this was a good film. Or rather, good enough. The scenes with the animals being bombed are absolutely horrifying, if you don't feel anything when you see that you don't have a heart. There's also the fact that this is told from a female perspective, a rarity in a Holocaust movie, but one I'm sure there will be many more of in the future. I won't say this is the first because it isn't, but these films are simply not told from this perspective. I know this was supposed to be a starring vehicle for our lead actress, but I thought the role of her husband really stood out. Jan's scenes seem to hit the hardest, but they don't hit as hard as they should, and that's the thing I keep circling back around to. The scenes in this film could have been great in the hands of someone else, this could be a great film. It isn't a great film though, and because of that, The Zookeeper's Wife feels like many other movies that we've seen before, which is too bad. One thing I was surprised by was that Daniel Bruhl once again played a Nazi, this being the second time he did so in a film that was released in 2017. I know he also played Baron Zemo, but that character was altered so that he wasn't a Nazi. There are others too. Still though, man. Don't typecast him!

6.5/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Get Out
3. Logan
4. Wonder Woman
5. Thor: Ragnarok
6. Logan Lucky
7. The Beguiled
8. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
9. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
10. The Lost City of Z
11. First They Killed My Father
12. Spider-Man: Homecoming
13. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
14. It
15. Battle of the Sexes
16. Okja
17. Kong: Skull Island
18. Split
19. Personal Shopper
20. Chuck
21. Atomic Blonde
22. The Lego Batman Movie
23. Megan Leavey
24. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
25. American Made
26. Imperial Dreams
27. The Zookeeper's Wife
28. Free Fire
29. Win It All
30. The Wall
31. Breathe
32. The Man Who Invented Christmas
33. Alone in Berlin
34. A United Kingdom
35. Trespass Against Us
36. The Mountain Between Us
37. War Machine
38. Happy Death Day
39. Justice League
40. To the Bone
41. Wakefield
42. The Hitman's Bodyguard
43. Sand Castle
44. CHiPs
45. Death Note
46. The Belko Experiment
47. The Great Wall
48. Fist Fight
49. Wilson
50. Sleepless

 

[909]

The Prodigy (2019), directed by Nicholas McCarthy

A better title for this film would have been "Georgie Grows Up," seeing as this kid was the same as played Georgie in It. It's very difficult to figure out how to tackle a film like this, because as a rule I think horror movies with creepy kids are goofy. The Prodigy is no exception to this rule, it is what I thought it would be, but it is also a film with some surprisingly good performances. The real question such a film poses is whether or not one with a bad story and good performances can conceivably be good enough for me to call a good film. Rather than draw my own question out, I will immediately respond. The answer is no. The Prodigy is a ludicrous film when taken as a whole, featuring some things that are going to be difficult for me to explain. I must also admit that I didn't head into the film with a very positive attitude. The projector in my theater was off for nearly the whole set of previews, I was starting to become unsure that I'd even get to watch this. The people next to me were becoming displeased, but right on cue, the projector came on for the one trailer I wanted to see, for Child's Play. I also noticed that Child's Play and Toy Story 4 come out on the same week, which certainly was intentional. I can't imagine how it wouldn't be! In any case, I think it's fair to say that Child's Play will be better than this, and that The Prodigy was a little bit of a bust.

The Prodigy begins with a dual opening, featuring two separate stories in a way that initially made me think one was a flash forward. Not sure which to start with, but we'll go with the one related to the serial killer. Margaret (Brittany Allen) is seen running away from a house, she is missing her right hand. Once spotted by someone driving down the road, she gets to safety, and hell comes upon the place she escaped from. Edward Scarka (Paul Fauteux) is a serial killer who removes a hand from his victims, but he will not be able to finish the kill this time. The cops come and raid his house, killing him in the process. Now, at the same time, let's flip over to the other story. Sarah (Taylor Schilling) is a pregnant woman, living with her husband John (Peter Mooney) and their dog. Her son is going to be a little early. They go to the hospital at the same moment this stuff is happening with Edward, and right as Edward dies, their son Miles (Jackson Robert Scott) is born. We are subsequently shown some glimpses of his childhood that let the audience know this boy is extremely smart to the point of being abnormal. The scenes here also serve to let us know that Miles has problems getting along with other children.

Eventually we push forward to Miles as an eight year old, with the successes continuing as well as some of the issues. His family is seemingly quite happy, and so is the dog, even though the dog is beginning to randomly bark at things. I should also note that Miles has two-colored eyes, which Sarah seems to think is genetic. It isn't. One night, his parents are out on a date and drinking beers near Pittsburgh, while he's at home with his babysitter Zoe (Elisa Moolecherry). Miles suggests they play a game of hide-and-seek before bed, she complies, and down the stairs into the basement he goes. Little does Zoe know that this kid is fucked in the head, the kind of kid who would put glass on the steps so that his babysitter could step on it. Zoe does, and she has a huge cut in her foot, and Miles claims to his mother that he doesn't know what happened. I will skip past any other such incidents so that I don't spoil the film too much. There's something not right with Miles, the opening sequence displays that quite well. You can decipher it for yourself.

The story sucks, and the main reason why is because anyone with a brain can already figure out what's wrong with Miles from the first few scenes of the film. This is a ridiculous storytelling error which is subsequently compounded by the reality that nobody has any idea what to do with Miles and how to stop his dual personality. That's hardly a spoiler, right? You'd have to be a moron to not figure out this is why the kid is evil. The solution to the story makes literally no sense whatsoever, I was having to try very hard not to laugh at everything here. I have no idea why this was decided. I did think, however, that all of these things were surprisingly acted in a way which wasn't difficult to buy into. The actors, with Schilling as the greatest example, really leaned into this role and didn't mess around. There are also some very good jump scares, one which made the person behind me freak out big time. Those last two things are what allows me to accept a bad movie and give is a better rating than I otherwise thought I would.

This isn't a particularly notable entry into the horror mix of films with creepy children, but I'm always going to be interested in seeing a movie like this one. It looks nice enough and appears to have been shot on a higher budget than it actually was, and The Prodigy also featured some good perforamnces. The ending, however, is one of the most unintentionally amusing things I've ever watched. I had to pull up my hoodie to cover my mouth as I was laughing. I think this didn't go anywhere near as far as it should have, and the blatant sequel-baiting at the end was too much for me, it made me feel like I wasted my time. There probably won't be a sequel to begin with, which is why a story like this one needs some completion. The Prodigy is also one of the shortest movies I've seen in theaters, ringing in at 87 minutes prior to the credits. There wasn't enough meat on the bone here to give a truly thoughtful review, and this lacks a scene with the kid being kicked in the face. This wasn't very good.

4/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Cold Pursuit
2. Velvet Buzzsaw
3. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
4. The Upside
5. Escape Room
6. Miss Bala
7. Glass
8. The Prodigy
9. Serenity

 

[909]

High Flying Bird (2019), directed by Steven Soderbergh

Is it really Steven Soderbergh's next career move to continue to make dramas with his iPhone? That's a foolish question I already know the answer to, and High Flying Bird is seemingly the next evolution in that concept. I did not expect there to ever be an NBA lockout movie, but that's what we have here. There are similarities to the last NBA lockout, but for the most part this is its own thing, one where companies like Hulu and Netflix are used as plot points. If you can't fathom how that works, you'll have to watch the film, which you should be doing anyway. I have to get better at watching these Netflix films on the day or day after release judging by how good some of them have become, and even when they aren't particularly great, they certainly bring something interesting to the table. High Flying Bird is just one in what is becoming a long list, and hopefully such experimental films will continue going forward. If they don't, well, that would suck. In any case, High Flying Bird is entirely unique, something I don't think we've had before, with a perspective that really could only have been filmed in the last few years. If you disagree, you can name other sports related films that tackle the idea of challenging the white ownership system that genuinely brings absolutely nothing to the table in pro sports. Go on. Explain to me how ownership in sports brings anything to the table and what it is they do that helps grow the game.

Ray Burke (Andre Holland) is a basketball agent, he has a long history with the game and is intent on ensuring that his place in it remains secure. This is set during a lockout that has some similarities to 2011, but is not exactly based upon it. Our first scene introduces us to Ray's client, a rookie who went #1 and wound up on the Knicks, Erick Scott (Melvin Gregg). Erick has made a mistake during the lockout and taken a loan, he is worried about what may happen to him because of it, but nobody's going to kill him or anything. He's guaranteed money and he's good for it. Ray isn't very pleased, but such is life and nobody's getting the money they need right now. After this scene, Reggie Jackson has cameo talking about his experiences as a rookie, and he joins Karl-Anthony Towns and Donovan Mitchell in talking about their rookie year at important points in the film. We continue on after that, with Ray getting bad news from his boss David Starr (Zachary Quinto), who tells him that the spigot for their division at the agency has dried up, so the corporate expense account is cut. Someone needs to make something happen, Ray is tasked with doing so. Some background is required on Ray, his cousin Gavin was his avenue into the NBA as an agent, but Gavin had something bad happen to him. This is a lesson which Ray has used in order to ensure his clients get what's coming to them.

In order to understand how Ray could accomplish this, you must understand that the lockout presented in this film is overwhelmingly stacked against the players. The owners are as dug in as it gets, with David Seton (Kyle MacLachlan) serving as the Knicks owner and representative of the owners in negotiations with the NBPA, represented by Myra (Sonja Sohn). Ray's mentor Spencer (Bill Duke) is keen to press upon Ray the facts of the situation, that the NBA owners have created a game on top of the game that has been used to keep the people on the court from getting the benefits they should be receiving. Ray did have an assistant who was going to help him in this, but Sam (Zazie Beetz) got the hell out of his business and has joined up with someone else. Sam still lingers around in this film with good reason. Ray's plan is simple, he needs to find a way to upend the ownership figures and put an end to this lockout. Erick is his way of doing so, he is the #1 pick, and even though one of these scenarios is a little ridiculous, it all seems to come together quite nicely as a story. The point overall is simple, it's that Ray knows what the hell he's doing and is going to disrupt this system in order to ensure everyone gets their fair share as soon as possible.

There's lots of talk here from Ray about changing the system of professional sports, and Ray echoes a lot of things that I've been thinking and saying for quite some time. I have never understood the ownership system in pro sports and have been waiting for some time for the players to break free of these controls. One of these days it's going to happen. I'm sure that if any NBA owners watch this, they're going to think it's a load of shit. If players watch the film, on the other hand, I think they'll get the message Soderbergh was intent on sending. Even though this is a film with a message, there's more to it than that, this is a very good story and very good film even when the greater picture isn't taken into account. This kind of sports movie is something I've needed for a while, it's a look behind the veil. Even the most seasoned of basketball fans could learn a lot from how this film was done, of the problems of players, their agents, or even the simple matter of social media use. There's a lot here to tackle. I don't think films have the same impact they used to have, so in reality this will probably not pose any cultural questions. It seems to not matter how good a movie like this is because this isn't a societal priority.

I was also sure to notice that High Flying Bird continues a pattern with Soderbergh, where seemingly regular people take the power back from institutions that are intent upon keeping them in their stations. Logan Lucky and Che are the two most obvious examples that come to mind. Ray Burke is certainly no Che Guevara, but the ideas he presents to his client in order to attempt to force an end to the lockout really resonated with me. The performances are all excellent, zero exceptions. Bill Duke puts in a great performance as a figurehead of the game in New York City, one can easily see a player like Kevin Garnett filling into this sort of role as he ages. The man knows the game, understands what's at stake, and he won't take any shit! Ultimately it's the performance of Andre Holland that stands out the most, which I think is the point. This was a big starring vehicle for him, and he really pulled his role off, even though I am left with the question of whether or not he REALLY wanted Erick to take the court and play that streetball game. These are characters I would very much like to see more of in a sequel or in a miniseries, but there's no chance of either happening.

Lastly, I suppose I should talk about some of the technical aspects. Soderbergh makes some hard and jarring editing cuts that are a little bit distracting, but ultimately the focus from a technical standpoint is on whether or not the iPhone is an acceptable filming device. The answer is yes, but I found some difficulty in long tracking shots where the phone had to move too much. I am not capable of technically describing the issues, but I thought there were issues with the one wide tracking shot that was used as Ray was walking down the street in New York City. There was clearly too much going on for the filming device to properly handle the scene, and you could notice pretty much instantly that this was an issue. However, this was really the only thing I noticed that was wrong with the way this was filmed. Otherwise, I found it quite good. I have no idea what Soderbergh's fascination with the iPhone is, I'll never understand it, but he says that the device allows him to get shots that he otherwise could not achieve with a camera. Taping the phone to a wall seems like the most obvious thing, as well as one's ability to move as quickly as possible on any kind of shot with a phone. I still don't get it, to be honest. That being said, you know, it doesn't matter what I think. With the exception of that one shot, the film looked pretty good, and more to the point the story was very good. That's what really matters to me, and I thought this film was very successful in its presentation. This is 2019's first very good, possibly great film? We'll see how I feel about it in a few weeks.

8/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. High Flying Bird
2. Cold Pursuit
3. Velvet Buzzsaw
4. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
5. The Upside
6. Escape Room
7. Miss Bala
8. Glass
9. The Prodigy
10. Serenity

 

[909]

Alita: Battle Angel (2019), directed by Robert Rodriguez

There is one thing that kept going through my mind as Alita: Battle Angel was coming to a conclusion, and with good reason this kept coming to my mind. The thought was that I should remember not to take this too seriously. Is that the first time anyone has said that about a film James Cameron has written? This is beyond simply producing the film, this was something he wanted to have made regardless of how much it would cost, and trust me it cost a lot. The budget was reported as $170 million, I can only imagine what the real number is after promotion. I think this is the kind of film you make to keep James Cameron happy, and I'm not sure a bomb will dissuade Cameron from making a sequel. I'm sure he'll have lots of money after people splurge on his Avatar sequels. I'm also not entirely sure this will bomb, because let's face facts. This kind of material with tons of CGI and a PG-13 rating has the capability of drawing in lots of people. Word of mouth may be quite strong for certain scenes, and I also saw there was a Dua Lipa song tie-in. Things like the latter, I'm not entirely sure those matter anymore, but I do wonder. I also thought that the film left people a bit surprised by a cameo at the end, which I advise you to not search for if you have any intention of watching this. Those kinds of things are the right kind of surprise to leave people with, but again, I am reminded of my own thoughts. When for the last few minutes of a film I have to keep reminding myself to not take things too seriously, that isn't good!

Alita: Battle Angel is based on the manga series, and I must reiterate the word based on. I have no idea how faithful the adaptation is, nor how to explain a film like this one. Here goes. Alita: Battle Angel is set in the year 2563, many years after "The Fall", which was a war that left the Earth devastated and with only one remaining sky city, a place called Zalem. The regular citizens of Earth live in huge junky cities, not quite slums but not so glamorous either. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) is a scientist who works on cyborgs, and he's looking through the junkyard in Iron City to find something he can use. While there, he discovers a cyborg torso with an intact human brain and a ridiculously super-powered heart, but this is something Dr. Ido prefers to not tell anyone. The cyborg has no memories, not even of her own name, so once rebuilt Dr. Ido names her after his deceased daughter. She is Alita (Rose Salazar), one of the most fascinating human-CGI creations that I've ever seen on film. To call this an achievement is an understatement. The point seemed to be to ensure that people didn't confuse the character for human, of which there are many in Iron City. Alita immediately befriends Hugo (Keean Johnson), who has designs on moving to Zalem one day. He'll do what it takes to get there. Before that, Hugo introduces Alita to the sport of Motorball, which is a battle royale where cyborgs fight to the death. The ultimate champion will be called up to Zalem, getting the one thing so many people want to do.

It turns out Dr. Ido has major secrets. His ex-wife Chiren (Jennifer Connelly) is a scientist who is aware of Alita, but we'll shelve that for now and focus on his second occupation. Dr. Ido is desperately in need of credits to continue his cyborg clinic, and one night when Alita follows him, we all discover that he is a Hunter-Warrior (bounty hunter). They encounter some cyborg assassins led by a big cyborg called Grewishka (Jackie Earle Haley), and it turns out that Alita has powers only Ido is truly aware of. He decides not to tell her, so let's set up some of the rest of this. There are other bounty hunters out there, the main one being Zapan (Ed Skrein), and I will admit that the plot is a bit of a mess. After Grewishka's failure, he returns to Chiren and an enterprising sort named Vector (Mahershala Ali). Vector seems to run the motorball circuit, Hugo is in league with him on some of these schemes Vector has going. Grewishka is subsequently possessed by a man named Nova who lives on Zalem, and he tells them that they need to kill Alita. It's as damn simple as that. Interspersed with some of these revelations, it appears Alita has some rediscovering of her memories. For starters, it appears that she has been in battles on the Moon, and eventually she takes a trip out of the city with Hugo, who wants to show her something. There's a space cyborg suit inside of a spaceship that isn't from Earth, some crazy shit, and you know what I just CAN'T EXPLAIN THE PLOT MORE THAN THIS. As she begins to unlock her potential, the more people who want to use her and the more people who want her dead. There you go.

Despite the messy plot, this could have been a very good film but for the inclusion of one person, the romantic interest Hugo. The decision to cast someone who had never been in anything of value is one of the craziest things I have ever seen in a movie like this. Keean Johnson's performance here was of the quality of a wet paper bag. His plot thread is no better and James Cameron's idiotic attempt to humanize Alita with a romance story, as with all his other movies that have these shorts of relationship stories, really failed here. I think Cameron is a visionary in terms of his application of visual effects, but there are no words for how bad a plot this was. There are a lot of people who are in vehement disagreement with my point of view though. The cyborg-human love story in a tech-driven society appears to some in part because there haven't been too many of them. Fortunately, not the entire film centers around Hugo's relationship with Alita, even though there's too much of it. There should have been more focus on motorball, which is exactly my kind of jam. I need more of these scenes, didn't get them, but I enjoyed what was here.

The visual effcts, of course, are ridiculous. Anyone can see that by watching the trailer, but nothing really prepares you for what Alita: Battle Angel looks like in 3D. The colors pop, so do the costumes, and the environments do as well whether they're real or not. Some of the cyborgs, particularly Zapan, are insane to look at. I can hardly believe someone created a thing that looked like this. There are some great moments in this film, most of them center around Grewishka. Wouldn't they have to? A huge, powerful cyborg is guaranteed to entertain. The motorball scenes have to be nearly entirely CGI themselves, seeing as all the participants are cyborgs. I am left to wonder if the delay for this film's release was because it really took nearly two years to put these effects together. This has the feel of a JRPG even though it doesn't quite have the story down to the extent that it should, and Mahershala Ali's dual performance has some great moments. That's as close as you'll get to a spoiler from me. The scene set on the Moon is also absolutely incredible and reminded me of Mass Effect. I should point out that the graphics were many, many times better. A video game with this level of detail is still a long way off I'm afraid.

In the end, I keep coming back to two things. One is how much I was entertained, and the other is Hugo. Fucking Hugo, I tell you man. Hugo is by some distance the worst character James Cameron has ever written. The person who played Hugo also had one of the worst performances I've seen in a while. The lone saving grace with this character was that Cameron did ensure to give him the same double-sided motivations as anyone else in Iron City, but by that point I just couldn't handle looking at that guy anymore. The plot is a mess, and there's a truly horrendous character in this film, but I liked it anyway. It should also be noted that Alita: Battle Angel is not really a sci-fi film, it doesn't present any of those existential questions with any level of skill, but it is a film with good action and incredible visual effects. I do hope that Disney decides to throw some money down the drain and make a sequel.

6/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. High Flying Bird
2. Cold Pursuit
3. Velvet Buzzsaw
4. Alita: Battle Angel
5. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
6. The Upside
7. Escape Room
8. Miss Bala
9. Glass
10. The Prodigy
11. Serenity

 

[909]

I should also mention that if Hugo WAS part of the manga, he should have been left out like some other stuff surely was.

 

[fazzle]

From what I've seen in some basic online perusal Hugo IS in the manga, but he's also kind of a piece of shit. She loves him in the manga, but he doesn't really care about her and just uses her as a means to an end. Probably would have been preferable to the Hugo that was in the movie though, because the character was as basic as possible while the actor seemed like he was having trouble just remembering his lines. To steal a sentiment I've seen other places, they should have just scraped the Hugo character and made it a story of a girl and her dog, because she had way better chemistry with it. Motorball really was exciting even though they shared absolutely zero information about what the rules of this game were, hopefully it gets more time in a sequel, although I have my doubts.

I saw it in IMAX 3D, only the second time I've seen a movie in that format (The Wandering Earth last week was the first time) so the effects were even more incredible that way. The IMAX really adds a bunch, because I generally *hate* regular 3D, but both times I've seen IMAX 3D, it's been pretty damn good. Overall my feelings on the movie are pretty similar to yours, but I'd be a bit more generous and give it a 7. Maybe I'm just adding an extra point because I got a kick out of seeing

Spoiler

Hugo get killed TWICE

 

[909]

Happy Death Day 2U (2019), directed by Christopher Landon

It's time for a sequel, and it's a rarity that I ever review these. I think the last live-action direct sequel that I reviewed was The Bourne Supremacy, but I'm not going to bother to check that. Here's the other thing I'm going to bring up, how many sequels of not particularly great movies wind up being better than their predecessor even though they're directed by the same person? None of them are instantly coming to mind, but I'm no historian. My score won't represent much difference, but I do think there is a large difference in quality between the two movies. In part this is because of things that were done in the first film to create that situation, and the dedication to using the first cast and having them in slightly differing roles really makes matters better. I will also point out that Happy Death Day 2U is a film with too many ideas, it's overboard...but that's what makes it fun. If one doesn't care for the humor style of the first film, they shouldn't even bother to watch this because it goes a lot further. This is ridiculous nonsense that everyone knows is nonsense, but I am concerned that this is going to be made into a franchise with tons and tons of sequels. It only really needs one more.

Happy Death Day 2U begins with something I was not expecting at all, with Carter's (Israel Broussard) roommate Ryan (Phi Vu) waking up in his car the day after the time loop from the first film ended. September 18th was the day of the first loop, and it's September 19th. Ryan finds Carter with Tree (Jessica Rothe) in the room after she'd broken the loop. Everything is quite good, but it has only been the lump sum of one night. Ryan is a bit freaked out and doesn't want to stay in his car, so he goes to his quantum mechanics lab to continue work on his thesis project. Samar (Suraj Sharma) and Dre (Sarah Yarkin) are his colleagues, but the school's dean, Bronson (Steve Zissis), has decided that he wants the project shut down. It is an enormous quantum reactor, who knows what this thing can really do, but it is also opening loops in...TIME AND SPACE. So you can see how ridiculous this will be, and why I'd like it. After Bronson stops the project from continuing on, Ryan goes into an empty lab. Guess what happens? Samar tries to give him a churro, but Ryan is freaked the hell out. As he turns to leave, out comes...you guessed it, a person wearing a baby mask who subsequently stabs him and murders him.

I'm sure you can guess what happens next as well. Ryan wakes up, in his car...and he seems to realize exactly what's happening to him. He makes the smart decision to immediately tell Tree and Carter, which leads to the events of the rest of the film. Tree finally tells Ryan about her time loop, and tells him that somehow the loop has been passed onto him. They decide to recreate the day, which leads to them finding nobody in the lab. Now they go to a basketball game to ensure Ryan isn't killed, which actually leads to...someone trying to kill Ryan. I hate to use so many ellipses, but it's that kind of film. When an alarm is pulled and everyone needs to evacuate, the killer appears once again and attempts to go after Ryan, only for Tree to rescue Ryan and unsmask the killer. The killer this time is ANOTHER RYAN. The second Ryan is really upset, he seems to know exactly what needs to be done to close this time loop, and I don't think it's correct considering he already tried this once. He says that the first Ryan needs to kill himself, which leads to Ryan activating the quantum device to kill the second Ryan, and it releases a pulse that knocks everyone to the floor. Guess how things start back up? I have to say because I can't mention anything about the rest of the film without it, but...TREE HAS RE-ENTERED HER TIME LOOP. AND IT ISN'T THE SAME.

Happy Death Day 2U is the kind of film that I really don't want to spoil, because I laughed a lot at the surprises in this, so I'll be brief in this last paragraph. The changes are without exception very funny, but I thought there was a few issues with whether or not Tree would decide to come back to the real timeline. I'm doing my best not to spoil and I can hardly resist. Happy Death Day 2U throws so many ridiculous concepts from other movies at you so quickly, all in an obviously joking fashion, and you'll either like it or you don't. This is actually hardly even a horror movie, I should point out. It's a comedy and it's one that I laughed at a lot, much harder than I'd expected. The death scenes are always funny, and with a great lead actress there's really nothing else to ask for from something like this. That being said, I am a bit wary of the idea of potential sequels. In addition, that thing I said about Tree coming back to the real timeline, it's an enormous flaw. I just don't want to spoil. I'll cut myself off and this is one of my shorter reviews, but this is a sequel that directly recreates the plot from the first movie. There is not a lot I can say about something like this, and I don't want to ruin the movie from anyone else. All the pleasure is in the surprise.

6.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. High Flying Bird
2. Cold Pursuit
3. Happy Death Day 2U
4. Velvet Buzzsaw
5. Alita: Battle Angel
6. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
7. The Upside
8. Escape Room
9. Miss Bala
10. Glass
11. The Prodigy
12. Serenity

 

[909]

1922 (2017), directed by Zak Hilditch

In 2017, there were a lot of Stephen King adaptations. Some were for the theater, others were streaming, and there were some that were aired on television. I've only reviewed It, but there will be quite a few more coming. I think I have one more this month, but for now, it was time to watch 1922. I was hardly able to concentrate after seeing tonight's Elimination Chamber match, but in the end this film hooked me more quickly than I'd expected. A lot of Stephen King adaptations are very difficult to bring to the screen, but that's because they attempt to cover too much ground when it's difficult to do so. 1922, on the other hand, is a much more simple story. It is filmed in a way where only an idiot would struggle with the concept or with how things work, and if you are that idiot you shouldn't out yourself. I'm not familiar with the source material, so I must admit that I was unnerved when there were all these rats over the place. I wish I'd known! The subject matter, as you might expect, is quite morbid. There are rats that are supposed to make you feel sick. 1922 also features a great performance that makes a slow burner like this one work. It seems as if the source material needed to be padded by such a performance, and that's what we got. Bad shit was going to happen, and it's a lesson about unforeseen consequences.

1922 starts with a flash-forward featuring Wilf (Thomas Jane), a farmer in Nebraska who has went to a hotel to write a confessional letter. What has the man done? We take no time to head back to 1922, where Wilf lives on a farm with his wife Arlette (Molly Parker) and son Henry (Dylan Schmid). Henry is 14 years old and becoming a man, and with life expectancies what they were, Wilf is worried about what his son will inherit in the future. Arlette and Wilf are having some serious marital problems because Arlette did not take to life out on a farm, away from a city and away from all those people. Arlette wants to sell an adjacent 100 acres of land that she inherited from her father, with Wilf owning the other 80 acres and farming them both. Wilf has no interest in this plan whatsoever, the thought of it makes him sick. He hates city life and hates the people there even more, his land is the source of his pride. The problem is that Arlette wants to open a dress shop and will divorce Wilf. She does not care to live at their farm any longer and has been seeking a lawyer to sell the land to a pig farm and slaughterhouse, which would render Wilf's land unable to be farmed as blood would flow down the stream and ruin crops. This cannot happen.

Wilf decides to plot against Arlette, using some of the scummiest things I could imagine, and I'm going to spoil them. Wilf believes that he needs to convince Henry to help him murder Arlette so that he does not lose his land or his son. His plot is quite devious, he knows that Henry has interest in their neighbor's daughter, a girl named Shannon (Kaitlyn Bernard). Arlette wants to take Henry with her to Omaha to open that dress shop, Henry doesn't want to go. Wilf consistently plants thoughts in Henry's head to get him on his side. When Henry isn't paying attention, it's time to fill Arlette's head with thoughts of Wilf actually appeasing her and moving to Omaha with the family. This makes Arlette very happy. Once Henry sees his mom happy, drunk, and talking shit, that's going to be it for him. He can't handle it. Wilf and Henry summarily do the deed, but there are lots of unforeseen consequences. I really mean there are lots. There are also lots of rats, and I also mean there are lots. Wilf and Henry must figure out how to adjust to their new life without Arlette, work the farm, and they also must ensure they are not caught.

Deciding how many details to reveal for a film like 1922 is one of my favorite aspects of these reviews, and I think I cut myself off at the right time. This is one of those films that takes a great approach of building up minor transgressions until something really fucking bad happens, and when it does happen, I found those scenes to be enthralling. Of course, the scope of the film is extremely limited, but the director does a great job of turning Wilf into a complete character. We see and hear all his motivations, his actions, understsand what makes him tick. He has an accent that makes him sound like a complete idiot, but he reads all the time and is a true deceiver. That's his deal. People like this guy always find the faults in others, and they usually use that information to tear someone down and make them into what they want them to be. They also don't always realize the consequences of their actions. Wilf, for example, didn't think that his son would become so rebellious without a motherly influence. He thought wrong. Maybe the things with him would have happened anyway? There's no way to know, but he did something wrong and there was no coming back from it.

The supernatural aspect of a film like 1922 isn't my absolute favorite thing in the world, but I thought there was enough room for interpretation that one could come to a conclusion that Wilf went insane and his insanity kicked into overdrive the longer he lived after killing his wife. That sounds right to me. People are often unable to shake what they've done. I also thought it was interesting how much of the film centered around Wilf being by himself, and I thought Thomas Jane did such a good job with this scenario. It's very difficult to act alone, as many actors have said before, but good actors do it in a way where you can't see their difficulty through the lens. I'm going to watch something a little longer tomorrow as these stories I've been watching lately don't always have a large scope, with a few exceptions. That isn't a negative, but it's a factor that serves to make these reviews a bit shorter. You could tell this was done on a small budget as it seemed the editor decided to use the same piece of music, but I'm not a particularly musical person and I could be way off on this one. In any case it was strange and I thought that was another weakness of the film, but otherwise this was very good. I was trying to explain my rating a little bit here, but make no mistake, this is worth watching.

7/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Get Out
3. Logan
4. Wonder Woman
5. Thor: Ragnarok
6. Logan Lucky
7. The Beguiled
8. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
9. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
10. The Lost City of Z
11. First They Killed My Father
12. Spider-Man: Homecoming
13. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
14. It
15. Battle of the Sexes
16. Okja
17. Kong: Skull Island
18. Split
19. 1922
20. Personal Shopper
21. Chuck
22. Atomic Blonde
23. The Lego Batman Movie
24. Megan Leavey
25. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
26. American Made
27. Imperial Dreams
28. The Zookeeper's Wife
29. Free Fire
30. Win It All
31. The Wall
32. Breathe
33. The Man Who Invented Christmas
34. Alone in Berlin
35. A United Kingdom
36. Trespass Against Us
37. The Mountain Between Us
38. War Machine
39. Happy Death Day
40. Justice League
41. To the Bone
42. Wakefield
43. The Hitman's Bodyguard
44. Sand Castle
45. CHiPs
46. Death Note
47. The Belko Experiment
48. The Great Wall
49. Fist Fight
50. Wilson
51. Sleepless

 

[909]

Icarus (2017), directed by Bryan Fogel

It often turns out that with good documentaries, the intent is to make a film that winds up entirely different from the finished product. This is the case with Icarus, which I'm certain was not supposed to be a movie about the Russian doping program during the Sochi Olympics. Both subject matters are patently absurd, the documentary is completely ridiculous, and yet it's all true. Could Bryan Fogel ever have imagined his subject would take him to Vladimir Putin. The answer to that question is obvious. There are so many ways to feel about Icarus, but the one that I'm left with is Vladimir Putin's willingness and capability at engaging in numerous international conspiracies. This is a man with a vision so far beyond anything I'd expect from another human being, and the most hilarious thing about these conspiracies is that all of them have been found out. Or have they? There's an endless amount and there's probably even more, but he's not particularly good at managing the after-effects of his machinations. The subject matter is no exception to this. The funniest part about Icarus is that the initial story would have likely never seen the light of day, so this is a case of great fortune. It's also a case of Bryan Fogel doing a great job of piecing together the events and ensuring that they're easy for the viewers to understand.

Bryan Fogel seemed to be fascinated with Lance Armstrong and with amateur cycling, and had the intention of documenting his progress in an amateur cycling competition over in Europe. I'm also fascinated with Armstrong and that's why I've reviewed two films about him, but Fogel was far more obsessed. He did very well in his first time running the Haute Route, which is a very difficult race in the French Alps. Fogel finished 14th out of 440 without using drugs. His goal for the documentary? It's time for him to win the race. If he can cheat and get away with it, anyone could do it and compete. His findings are shockingly not so great. After a very long doping program, one where he wasn't caught, he gets to the race and has a mechanical issue on one of the first stages. Fogel is never able to recover from this, which shows there's also a psychological aspect to winning said races, as well as the possibility other people are cheating too. Plus, the race is pretty damn hard, and even though he'd made huge gains in his capabilities, there's just so much more to competing than that. Or is there? Maybe it's just that the mechanical problem put him too far behind to recover. There's no way to really know.

While preparing for the Haute Route, Fogel is rejected by another doctor who doesn't want to ruin his reputation, even though this is supposed to be a documentary exhibiting how doping controls can be defeated. Instead, Vogel is passed on to Russia, to someone who runs a goddamn anti-doping lab. There's no real way to know this person's motivations in helping Fogel, particularly with what comes after the race, maybe this was his intention the whole time? I genuinely don't know. Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov was the director of Russia's national anti-doping laboratory, but he's telling Fogel exactly how he can beat the system and possibly even win the race. My suspicion is that Rodchenkov did this with the intention of cultivating a relationship with an American who could bring him here, which would allow him to reveal everything he knew and not die in Russia as tends to happen to people who do those things. Eventually, Rodchenkov becomes good friends with Fogel, and he decides to tell Fogel that Russia has a state-sponsored Olympic doping program which he oversees. Most people at least know some of the details of this, but you can't possibly understand how a state-sponsored program could work and be successful without watching this documentary.

It's difficult to understand how this actually works until you realize that WADA has decided to clear Russia in the wake of this. It's a matter both of not wanting to know and not wanting to do anything about a problem once someone knows about. I am left with the idea that the concept of anti-doping in sports is completely bogus and that someone could beat tests if they had a doctor who knew what they were doing. Make absolutely no mistake, these doping conspiracies are not unique to Russia, this is merely one that we know about. There have been more of these kinds of scandals than I can count. The fact is that people don't really want to know. Cycling has been forced into exposing these because the French are infamously anti-corruption, but that is the only sport with fans who really do want to know. It's a fact that we accept these miraculous recoveries from injury, the long careers of certain athletes, and their wonderful athletic abilities simply because we want to believe they are naturally possible when most evidence shows us that it is not. It is conceivable that many athletes could have a doping program if this regular guy could have just a little assistance in pulling it off.

The Olympics were supposed to be pure sport, but the wool has been removed from the eyes there, the lipstick off the pig. The IOC appears to be an incredibly corrupt institution itself, as Icarus shows us. A lot of their executives did not want to believe and in the end they allowed Russian athletes to compete, claiming that politics was getting in the way of sports. This is one of the most brazen and easily disproven lies I've heard. What I liked was the way that this film laid all the cards on the table and was willing to tell the truth about how athletes are a pawn in these political games, which is what international sport really is at times. The Olympics is one of the most political events going and everyone should be able to acknowledge that these days. The lone flaw with the film is that Fogel takes a bit too much of a central role in the documentary when Rodchenkov should have been given the complete focus of the events, but in some respects this is unavoidable. Rodchenkov was left unable to travel and could not participate in all of these meetings, nor did he want his voice on the phone because he was paranoid. The reasons for his paranoia are all laid out here, with the most obvious one being that Rodchenkov's friend who participated in the doping program mysteriously died after Rodchenkov's disappearance.

8/10

 

[HarleyQuinn]

Been waiting a while for you to tackle Icarus so glad you finally got around to it

 

[909]

Polar (2019), directed by Jonas Akerlund

I must admit that I broke my own Netflix rules when I decided not to watch Polar right after it came on the service, but I saw all those bad reviews and was tempted to avoid the film entirely. Instead of avoid it entirely, I decided to watch it tonight. Polar is very much what I hoped for, I knew this would be trash as too many sources said that it was, but it was my kind of trash. There are only a few films as ridiculous as this one made in any given year, with actors you'd know deciding to take on roles that are beyond stupid, but they're in this movie anyway. Some of the people who reviewed this had said that this was done with tongue in cheek, which I think it clearly was, but a tongue in cheek look at the source material doesn't automatically mean the film is good. I am left to think about how many people gave this film a 0, and I can't completely disagree with that outlook. This was like something out of the 1980s, but with far more realistic blood and cinematography. Take everything I've said here for what it's worth. This is trash to the maximum, sleazy, and most of all highly amusing. I can't say that I didn't enjoy this, because I did. The problem is that Polar runs for much too long after what should have been the ending, and there are also bad creative decisions that didn't work for me.

Polar begins with a man named Michael Green (Johnny Knoxville) being killed by a group of assassins at his home in Chile. These assassins are from the Damocles corporation, which is a private security firm that always attempts to kill its assassins once they reach the age of 50. You can tell exactly how stupid this is from what I've just said. The scheme is for Mr. Blut (Matt Lucas) to raid the pension accounts of those old assassins to pay off debts the company has racked up over the years. Why would anyone kill for this guy? Who knows. Anyway, the team of assassins all have unique personalities as these movies tend to do. Sindy (Ruby O. Fee) is the hot one who works as bait for the team, Facundo (Anthony Grant) is their leader, Hilde (Fei Ren) is another hot one who works as a gunman, Karl (Kurrgan) spends a lot of time on the toilet, Alexei (Josh Cruddas) is some guy who looks like Sheamus, and Vivian (Kathryn Winnick) usually hangs out at Damocles assigning these people missions. Their next mission is going to be against yet another old assassin, but Duncan (Mads Mikkelsen) is more than up to the task. He doesn't know they're coming, so he's at quite a bit of a disadvantage.

In order for us to understand how old Duncan is, we're shown some scenes of him getting a prostate exam. After that's over, Vivian says that Blut wants him to travel to Belarus so he can find out who killed Michael Green. That isn't something he wants to do. Instead, Duncan leaves some money behind with his accountant, and disappears to Montana to go retire. Duncan seems to have psychological issues though. The biggest one is related to nightmares, and he has two really bad ones. After one of them, he kills a dog that he bought that day. After the other, we see that he had a botched hit and nearly killed an entire family. Duncan settles in Montana as well as he can, and one day he notices his neighbor Camille (Vanessa Hudgens) chopping wood. She's having a hard time, so when she leaves, Duncan decides to chop the wood for her. Eventually, Vivian contacts Duncan again, this time doubling the price for the assassination in Belarus related to Michael Green. Duncan travels there, but nearly instantly he realizes that Damocles wants to have him killed. After taking care of the problem, Mr. Blut dispatches the hit squad to find Duncan and kill him, so we have our movie.

To say this is the bottom of the barrel would be the most appropriate way of addressing a movie like Polar. That isn't to say I thought it was worse than a standard bad movie, because I'm not going to give it worse than the usual rating I give to really bad movies. To be worse than a 3 is when a film is beyond explanation, but that isn't the case here. The sex and gore in this is off the charts, and it's just for the sake of being shocking and has no real material value. The performance Matt Lucas gives as Mr. Blut is one of the worst things imaginable, I am very certain I won't see anything worse all year. It's not possible for other actors to be this bad, or at least it shouldn't be. The entertainment value of Polar is strong, but this is all trash. I thought that Vanessa Hudgens and Mads Mikkelsen did their best, but this was totally ridiculous. I understand the possibility that this was a parody/satire, but come on. The amount of blood is unbelievable here, so if you're all about that, this film is all about you. The torture scene also sends the wrong message, I thought it was funny more than anything else.

While Polar is full of logic gaps, I must admit that I was interested in the film until the ending took too long to wrap up. Why? It's one of those projects with ridiculous title screens when introducing a new character, which is just classic trash of the best kind. The twist at the end is entirely predictable, and the film takes way too long in getting to the point. The more interesting characters also die far before their time, and the plot struggles as a result of that. I don't know what to say about a movie as bad as this one and I've exhausted my thought process. It's hard to come up with the right words for Polar, but I may have liked this when I was 15 years old. That's a very damning critique, and Mads Mikkelsen shouldn't be in projects like this one. One of the sex scenes is such that I think it may have been his entire reason for participating in the film. Polar is still somehow not the worst film I've seen this year, that spot might be wrapped up. I should have given Serenity a 2.5 and will approach the rest of the year like I did, I don't know how anything's going to beat that. At least Polar made me laugh for the right reason a couple times.

3/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. High Flying Bird
2. Cold Pursuit
3. Happy Death Day 2U
4. Velvet Buzzsaw
5. Alita: Battle Angel
6. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
7. The Upside
8. Escape Room
9. Miss Bala
10. Glass
11. The Prodigy
12. Polar
13. Serenity

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

I must admit that I broke my own Netflix rules when I decided not to watch Polar right after it came on the service, but I saw all those bad reviews and was tempted to avoid the film entirely.

"instead I got CWM to watch it with me." I think that's the go to in this situations. Mr Blut and Ruby O Fee's character were the highlights. Ruby needs to be in every trashy netflix movie.

 

[909]

What Men Want (2019), directed by Adam Shankman

Perhaps I should immediately address the elephant in the room, that this is yet another female centric remake of a very successful comedy. To say What Women Want was a success would be an understatement, I don't think any comedy in our current climate could make $374 million at the box office. You have to go back a very long time to the last time that happened. I suppose The Hangover Part III was the last really successful comedy, which feels like a joke. I guess it isn't a joke. Gender switching and movies probably doesn't work in terms of creating a film that gets lots of people to the box office, but it doesn't really matter to me if I see one of these kinds of movies. I think there's plenty of new ground to cover outside of the gender swapping aspect, and I thought What Men Want did that to a reasonable extent. However, when it comes to a movie like this one, with a redemption story being what it is, the story has to actually make sense. This one does not. A bad director will often find an inability to put the entirety of their story together, will often leave things out and have them happen off-screen or on a television screen, and that's exactly what happened here. Look at what Adam Shankman's directed before, this was never going to be great.

Ali Davis (Taraji P. Henson) is a sports agent in Atlanta, and she's driven to absolute success. The first scene of the movie features her waking up at 3 AM to stay on top of things, then her assistant Brandon (Josh Brener) arrives to help her get to work. Brandon is a pushover and Ali is perfectly willing to run him over entirely, and once they arrive at Summit Worldwide Management this is even more clearly the case. Ali has been working hard to become a partner there, but she's also focused on her neighbor (Kellan Lutz) because she wants to have sex with him. Ali is tired of him ignoring her and Brandon thinks he's gay, but anyway, let's talk about the meeting. SWM is full of guys as you might expect, led by Nick (Brian Bosworth), lead agent extraordinaire I suppose. Ali thinks she'll become partner, but she's wrong. Nick instead announces that some guy named Eddie has been named the partner, and that it was because Ali wasn't unanimously selected by everyone else. Ali also doesn't have any clients in MLB, the NFL, or the NBA, so she's going to have to do something to get a promotion. Her idea is to announce that she'll sign the future #1 pick in the NBA Draft, a kid named Jamal Barry (Shane Paul McGhie).

There's a few obstacles in front of Ali's plan with Jamal, though. The first is that Jamal's day, a Lavar Ball clone named Joe Dolla (Tracy Morgan), is insistent on running/ruining his kids career. Some of the lines he's given are funny and others are too ridiculous to be real, much like the person who inspired this character. Anyway, Ali goes to a bar with her father Skip (Richard Roundtree) and encounters Will (Aldis Hodge), a single father who it turns out has a wife who has died. Ali doesn't know that, but they go back to his house and have sex while she acts crazy, which leads to the next morning where she discovers Will has a son. She also discovers the picture of Will married, freaks out, and leaves. Now, as to the important part, Ali needs to connect with Joe Dolla and with Jamal or she's screwed and will never be able to achieve her goals. One night, she joins up with her best friends for a bachelorette party and they've hired a psychic played by Erykah Badu. First, she reads Ali's fortune, and Ali tells her about how poorly her job is going. Eventually, Badu gives her some funky tea and Ali starts to feel sick, which leads to her hitting her head after getting drunk and passing out. You know the rest of what's coming, SHE CAN HEAR MEN'S THOUGHTS.

I think everyone who went to see What Men Want knew that this wouldn't be good, you'd have to be stupid to think otherwise. I think the film wasn't too bad and that it achieved its goals both of making me laugh and presenting Taraji P. Henson as a star. That seemed to be the entire point of this, and it also seemed that someone really wanted to fit a Lavar Ball character in the film no matter what. This entertained me enough but I'm not going to be overly effusive in praise. This doesn't make sense and the ending scenes are poorly structured, making things feel like they're dragging on for much too long. The film also plays on stereotypes as you'd expect, but those are the kinds of things I wanted to laugh at. They didn't disappoint too much, that's for sure. I'm also a little bit confused as to what the moral of such a movie was, but I've come to the conclusion that it didn't really have one. I can't make heads or tails of the idea that Ali didn't understand men at all, because I wouldn't understand how she had clients or a job in the first place. The film goes way overboard with this idea to its detriment.

I should note that I didn't really care for What Women Want, but I do think What Men Want was a slightly better film. That isn't to say it was good or anything, but I'm judging by the standard of which movie made me laugh more. I don't think a person is supposed to take something like this seriously, but I did think that Taraji P. Henson did a great job with this character. I left out some of the appearances for a reason, but I think that in the end this is a film that basically gave the viewer exactly what they were expecting. Another minor issue is that the best laugh in What Men Want is something shown in the trailer for theaters they've been showing for months. Take everything I've said here for what it's worth, but there aren't many comedies in the theater in the first place these days. This one was acceptable enough and there was the added benefit of looking at someone more pretty than Mel Gibson. Shocking, I know. In any case, this will make money which is rare for a comedy, and this is the kind of movie that lots of people will watch on TV for years and years. At least, that is, when they edit out the copious amount of cursing.

5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. High Flying Bird
2. Cold Pursuit
3. Happy Death Day 2U
4. Velvet Buzzsaw
5. Alita: Battle Angel
6. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
7. The Upside
8. Escape Room
9. What Men Want
10. Miss Bala
11. Glass
12. The Prodigy
13. Polar
14. Serenity

 

[909]

It Comes at Night (2017), directed by Trey Edward Shults

I remember a lot of people being angry that It Comes at Night wasn't a real horror movie, whatever the hell that means. After watching this, I do see how it isn't much of a horror movie, but I thought this was a psychological treat just the same. The low IMDB rating tells me that a lot of people feel differently and that's fine, people shouldn't agree on everything. After seeing Krisha a little while ago, I was looking forward to finally getting around to Shults' next effort. This movie is in some ways similar to Krisha. The drama with that film comes all at the end, when you know something bad is going to happen, and that's the case with It Comes at Night. These films are still radically different, obviously. Krisha is about someone's own demise, It Comes at Night is about what could happen in a post-apocalyptic scenario, about trust, and obviously about family and what it actually means. Obviously we are going to see a lot more going forward from this director, but I hope that his future works are of the quality of his first two. For me, the science-fiction aspect of It Comes at Night is what makes the film.

Our film begins with Bud (David Pendelton) dying of a mysterious sickness, the sort which lets everyone know that this is yet another post-apocalyptic work. This disease is very highly contagious, so after our characters kill Bud out of mercy, they burn his body. Paul (Joel Edgerton) lives with his wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo), and Bud was her father. Paul and Sarah have a son, Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), and he's plagued with horrendous nightmares. It is very difficult for Travis to sleep, but I'm sure it's even more difficult considering that he was there when his grandfather was put down. The family home is fortunately very deep in the woods, but they're isolated and some element of paranoia has crept into their activities and thought process. It is made very clear they are correct. The next night, there's an intruder attempting to break into their house. Who knows the reason why, one can only guess as to the real reason. There's a shortage of supplies and of potable water, and Paul's house is also really nice and easy to defend. Paul captures the potential robber and ties him to a tree to see if he's suffering from the disease, which fortunately it turns out that he is not. The stranger is Will (Christopher Abbott), a man with a wife Kim (Riley Keough) and a son Andrew, who says he was trying to find fresh water.

After much interrogation, and after Will sits there for a day or so, it is decided that Will is not sick. Will also says that he didn't know the house was occupied, and that he has things to trade for water. He has some goats and chickens, and says that he was staying at his brother's house after his brother died. Sarah suggests that Paul bring everyone back to their house as it would be easier to defend themselves. Paul doesn't love this idea, but he does think it works for them. We come to learn that Paul is a deeply distrustful person and with good reason, people in this version of the world are very fucked up. Travis continues to have worse and worse nightmares as well, including one of his father spilling black bile out of his mouth. So, Paul decides to take his truck out of the garage and go with Will to find Will's family, but there's a problem. On the way there, they are ambushed by two guys with guns, a very big surprise indeed. Paul's distrust is such that he believes Will set the attack up, which serves as a reminder that this film could really turn out all sorts of different ways. I forgot to mention that Paul is so careful that his family has to wear gas masks and gloves whenever they may come in contact with another human being, which it turns out is quite a smart decisino.

I think most of the people here have seen It Comes at Night, right? This is a simple story featuring the themes I pointed out at the end of my first paragraph, the point is that nobody in the family wants to get sick. This is a thought that consumes their being, they will not have this happen to them no matter what it is they have to do. It's a life or death situation, one which leads people to have to make horrendous decisions. The viewer is naturally meant to question whether or not they'd do these things in order to keep their own family alive, and I think in this situation I'm on the side of Paul. I know Paul is a dick to his kid and I wouldn't go that far, but the way he approaches the situation makes the most sense to me. I'm all about the common sense of the situation and don't have much thought for idealism and waiting to see what happens. You have to do something in scenarios where you very well could die. I thought the ultimate resolution to the story was brilliant and I'd also add unexpected. Didn't see that coming at all. The details of the story, as well as the nightmares, are also very well placed throughout the film.

I do think there are burgeoning problems with how many films are deciding to inhabit this genre, and at this point there are far too many post-apocalyptic or post-breakout films. It was ridiculous quite a long time ago. That being said, It Comes at Night is one of the better films in this genre because its story is so intimate and doesn't attempt to haphazardly explain how this all came to happen in the first place. We also don't have any characters deciding that they want to go live inside of trees, or deciding to kill their whole family out of paranoia. Sorry if I've spoiled. My interpretation of the ending was not one of paranoia but rather of common sense, although there is a goof in terms of my inability to understand how the door was opened. I also thought It Comes at Night was a little too slow in building its story, and that the slowness was too apparent throughout the movie. This was only around 90 minutes long, so being a slow builder is a bit strange to me. There are some unanswered questions, but ultimately there aren't too many of them, and this was a good film.

7/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Get Out
3. Logan
4. Wonder Woman
5. Thor: Ragnarok
6. Logan Lucky
7. The Beguiled
8. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
9. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
10. The Lost City of Z
11. First They Killed My Father
12. Spider-Man: Homecoming
13. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
14. It
15. Battle of the Sexes
16. Okja
17. Kong: Skull Island
18. It Comes at Night
19. Split
20. 1922
21. Personal Shopper
22. Chuck
23. Atomic Blonde
24. The Lego Batman Movie
25. Megan Leavey
26. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
27. American Made
28. Imperial Dreams
29. The Zookeeper's Wife
30. Free Fire
31. Win It All
32. The Wall
33. Breathe
34. The Man Who Invented Christmas
35. Alone in Berlin
36. A United Kingdom
37. Trespass Against Us
38. The Mountain Between Us
39. War Machine
40. Happy Death Day
41. Justice League
42. To the Bone
43. Wakefield
44. The Hitman's Bodyguard
45. Sand Castle
46. CHiPs
47. Death Note
48. The Belko Experiment
49. The Great Wall
50. Fist Fight
51. Wilson
52. Sleepless

 

[909]

What We Do in the Shadows (2014), directed by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi

There were many reasons I decided to watch What We Do in the Shadows, and it's tough to narrow things down to one. Some of the more obvious ones are related to the fact that there's going to be a television show based on this film, which I thought I was going to watch. I still am. Another reason was that I wanted to know how Taika Waititi made the jump from filming movies in New Zealand to doing something for Marvel. This film did go a long way towards answering that as this kind of movie is completely different than almost everything I've seen before. Another of these many reasons was an intrigue as to what a New Zealand movie would feel like. I don't think I've seen one before that wasn't obviously produced for worldwide audiences. Local humor is the kind of thing I'm always interested in, but I'm not certain that this was really local humor. There's also the fact that I rarely watch things that really make me crack up, and that it's interesting to see vampire life in combination with a modern society. I also thought it was funny how What We Do in the Shadows was co-directed, but more than anything else, I think I watched the film because it was leaving Amazon Prime.

I do not often watch mockumentaries, but What We Do in the Shadows is one of the best of these kinds of films. The last one I checked out was Borat. A documentary crew who are wearing crucifixes is following four vampire roommates who live in Wellington. Vladislav (Jemaine Clement) used to be a tyrant and has amazing powers, but as he has gotten older (862 years old), these powers have begun to wane. Viago (Taika Waititi) is 379 years old and fashions himself as the leader of the household who assigns chores to everyone and keeps things in line. This guy is a dork. In Viago's previous life, he was a noble of some sort and those characteristics have sustained for all those years. Deacon (Jonathan Brugh) is the youngest, he is 183 years old. He's rebellious because of that status and enjoys some really weird shit. Most of all he wants to be cool. The oldest is over 8,000 year old, he is Petyr (Ben Fransham) and he is very much like Nosferatu. This guy is creepy and has a great makeup job and cool set of hands. He really doesn't like to talk to the other vampires and prefers to keep to himself, sleeping in a tomb in the basement. We don't see much of him.

Alright, so with all that in mind, everyone's completely aware of the general vampire rules, right? We get to see a lot of that stuff here, and I thought it was highly amusing to see how the quartet has not adapted to the way life is now. Petyr in particular will not go outside at all, and when you see how he looks, obviously that's for the best. Deacon is lucky enough to have a familiar, which is a nice way of saying he has a slave, Jackie (Jackie Van Beek). Jackie does the vampires work that they don't want to or don't know how to do, but she hates that Deacon won't turn her into a vampire when she'd asked for it. One day, Jackie is tasked with bringing some virgins to the flat for the trio of vampires (meaning not Petyr), one man and one woman. She brings Nick (Cori Gonzalez-Macuer) and an unimportant random woman, but Nick isn't too receptive to the plans and really wants to leave. They also weren't virgins. I should point out that the plans are to drain him of his blood and kill him, which he seems to catch onto once the vampires begin to do weird things to him. When Nick tries to leave, the vampires chase him down and attempt to kill him. All of a sudden, Petyr shows up and attacks Nick, and at a later point it is revealed that Nick has been made a vampire. Nick prefers to keep his friend Stu (Stu Rutherford) around, but from that point on, the film takes on the extra focus of a young vampire learning how to live that way.

What We Do in the Shadows is a bit of a corny movie, but it is also very funny and I laughed quite a lot. I also thought the film was as weird as it needed to be, with every character fitting into the plot perfectly and some of the others not overstaying their welcome. There are some obvious logical issues, but this is also the point, and one shouldn't be stupid about it. Who expected a vampire comedy? Certainly not me, didn't even know that one existed until a little while ago. I only wish I'd seen the film much sooner. I was also left with the thought that we desperately need another Nosferatu movie as people have become enthralled with the concept of the beautiful vampire, which isn't something I think should continue on forever. We need more weird, as campy as the character may look. I think the goal of a movie like this one is to bring consistent laughs, and I thought this was ridiculously successful in doing so. The way every scene is played with a deadpan face is incredible and I'm sure the actors had to do tons of takes, the things in this are too ridiculous and I'd go so far as to say someone should be careful not to have a drink in their mouth at any point here. My lone complaint is that Petyr eats it, but to achieve this on a budget less than $2 million is incredible.

The comedy scene is so unbelievably dogshit that anything good is prone to being overrated, but I don't think it's possible to overstate how successful the humor in What We Do in the Shadows really was. I was assuming that the introduction of Nick's character would ruin the movie, or that the werewolves would do the same, but neither of those things happened. I also thought it was ridiculous the way Viago would feed on people and mess up every time, and you know what, this is just too much. I simply can't see how the television show won't be an enormous success. I must assume that a lot of people don't know that this even exists, but they better figure it out soon! To miss out on watching What We Do in the Shadows is actually pretty bad, I needed to stay current on film for far too long, and once I smash through some recent years it will be even easier to do it the way I am currently attemping to. One thing's for sure though, I can't believe that a film like this actually exists. It's not because the material is overly provocative or anything like that, but the creativity here is off the charts. Very rarely is anyone able to pull something like this off, and I thought having two directors didn't make any sense, but that doesn't seem to matter. The filmmakers also said they shot enough footage for three different cuts, and I'd like to see the other two at some point.

I don't think they'll make a sequel now that they're making a TV show, but this material desperately cries out for an update on the original trio of vampires. I demand one.

8.5/10

 

[909]

Fighting with My Family (2019), directed by Stephen Merchant

Has anyone ever went to see a movie in theaters before that you were there for the filming of? Such was my experience with Fighting with My Family, I was there when they filmed the match that ends the movie. As such, it's very strange to see these things placed into a somewhat cohesive event when I saw it myself and know that it wasn't. Considering one of my complaints about the film is its ending, you guys should know where I stand and part of why I may be complaining. Subconsciously this may be the reason I didn't like the ending. My initial impression when I saw the trailer for Fighting with My Family was that this would be a garbage movie. After seeing the film, I think MGM should fire whoever cut the trailer. Very rarely have I seen a trailer as misleading as this one, which totally misses the tone of the actual film and makes it look as corny as a film could possibly be. While Fighting with My Family is somewhat corny, I would never go so far as to say this is as corny as the trailer made it look. That would be wrong and that was ridiculous. I was left with the thought that very rarely has there been a film about wrestlers that actually captured the mindset of a wrestler, and that Fighting with My Family was one of them. I also thought the casting for these roles was spot on.

Fighting with My Family is about Paige (Florence Pugh) and her journey to WWE, as everyone here undoubtedly knows. Our film begins with footage of Paige and her brother Zak (Jack Lowden) as children, watching WWE and wishing they will one day be able to accomplish their dreams. As we know, one of them did and one didn't, which it appeared a lot of people in the theater did not realize. The first few scenes establish Paige's home life with Zak and their parents Ricky (Nick Frost) and Saraya (Lena Headey), who go by their ring names at most times. They work in their own promotion, an indy in Norwich called the WAW. This is a family operation and they're struggling, there's no bullshit here about how well they're doing. Zak and Paige (sorry, I can't see her with any other name) also have a half brother Roy (James Burrows), and Ricky tells us that Roy is in prison after failing a WWE tryout. Zak and Paige also have a job with WAW training aspiring wrestlers, as there are lots of neighborhood kids around who have nothing going on and need something to do. Anyway, after sending in tapes for a while, eventually WWE gives them a call.

Hutch Morgan (Vince Vaughn) is a scout with WWE, and there's going to be a Smackdown taped in London which will lead to a series of tryouts. Zak and Paige are supposed to be there, with Paige not yet having that name yet and being called by the name of Brittani. Hutch wants her to lose that name and eventually she does, but there's the tryout. There are many wrestlers there, and potentially many wrestlers could succeed, but only one of them does. It's Paige. Zak is destroyed as this is his dream too, and Paige thought she'd be going to Orlando with him all along. Zak isn't going to come though, and Paige is left to decide if she'll go without him. I don't really need to tell you what happens next. It turns out that actually getting into WWE is much harder than Paige thought it would be, that she can't make any friends, and ultimately she's having a much more difficult time without her brother than anyone could have expected. Hutch is also a hard driver and wants to push these aspiring wrestlers to their limits, and Paige has a difficult time with that too.

The first thing that comes to mind is that WWE has never been successful in making a propaganda movie before, but there's a first time for everything and this is the first time. The reason why this is a success is completely down to Paige's story actually being worth telling. The casting director did a fantastic job picking the four Knight family members, and I thought that the depiction of Saraya was a little flattering to Saraya at first, but the makeup director did a good job of making Lena Headey...look more like Saraya. The depiction of Ricky is also spot on and couldn't have been chosen better. All in all, I thought this was more of a comedy than anything else. The attempts for emotional moments didn't work on me because I already knew the story, but they seemed to work on other people who were sitting there. In that way, Fighting with My Family is a very successful film. I thought Florence Pugh made a great Paige, even though there isn't much facial resemblance I bought the transformation almost completely. Vince Vaughn on the other hand, it is very difficult to believe him in anything now. True Detective happened, there's no putting the genie back in the bottle there.

Fighting with My Family is a film that is also very heavily reliant on the viewer not questioning the story as it is laid out, which I should point out is massively lacking in truth. With that in mind, you very well may dislike this film massively. The lack of truth in this film is astounding, Paige's entire NXT tenure is distilled to training at the performance center and doing a house show or two in Florida. That's it. The last match is also presented with the idea that it isn't a work when the rest of the movie well establishes that wrestling is all a work, which actually made me laugh. I will point out one thing though. There are very few movies like this about younger women. The lack of training montages featuring younger women who girls could aspire to be is something that remained in mind while I was watching this. I'm sure someone is going to make a joke about Paige's sex tape, but the thing is, that doesn't change the fact that now it is believed that becoming a female wrestler is something girls can now aspire to do.

With all that in mind, this is a good film but not a completely special one. It is still very strange to see a movie like this one where there are lots of people in the theater to watch something that is effectively very successful WWE propaganda. The director did a very good job placing these things together, but I must point out that people here who have knowledge of the story are going to find some problems with it. In any case, I was surprised that this wasn't completely terrible and that the Rock's involvement in front of the camera seemed heartfelt. I'm sure there will be more of these WWE movies going forward, and the Hulk Hogan one with Chris Hemsworth is just one of many. Nobody should be surprised by that either, there's so much ground to be covered here and it seems that people really enjoy watching it.

6.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. High Flying Bird
2. Cold Pursuit
3. Happy Death Day 2U
4. Fighting with My Family
5. Velvet Buzzsaw
6. Alita: Battle Angel
7. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
8. The Upside
9. Escape Room
10. What Men Want
11. Miss Bala
12. Glass
13. The Prodigy
14. Polar
15. Serenity

 

[Hawk 34]

What I have noticed is that people who don’t know anything about professional wrestling enjoyed this movie way more than those who follow the wrestling industry with a critical eye (this board as an example). I personally found it annoying as a wrestling follower they skipped a large chunk of her career and also the fact that Rock apparently runs the company but hey, it’s his movie.

The best part of the movie as expected was the family dynamic of a bunch of weirdos and honestly, I’d love a follow up movie with just Nick Frost playing Ricky, doesn’t even have to be wrestling related.

 

[909]

Avengers: Infinity War (2018), directed by the Russo Brothers

I must immediately point out that sometimes there are films so big that you can't possibly review them. Or, at least, it seems like there are going to be movies that big. I can't think of one quite as big as this movie, but maybe there are going to be movies like that going forward. I did not expect I would ever really catch up on these Marvel movies until I forced myself to do it. I have been a procrastinator forever in this way, that's just how I am. Anyway, I got around to this as fast as I could. I have been waiting for some time to see them do an Avengers film correctly. I hated the second one and thought the first was just okay, but this was some distance beyond that. That being said, I do not think this was better than Black Panther, which is a sentiment I've heard expressed so many times in the lead up to this year's Oscars. People should quit with that. I'll explain why I feel this way, I always try to do that, but with something like this you never know how to describe things. Anyway, with a cast like this one, I'm going to eschew my usual summing up of the event and I'm going to summarize them my own way. With the box office being what it is, I'm sure everyone's seen the movie to begin with. So doesn't everyone know that shit anyway?

There's Thanos (Josh Brolin), the character attempting to accumulate the Infinity Stones we've all come to know from the universe. His lieutenants all play their part here, but this is a film with at least fifty characters. That isn't an exaggeration either. Every Avenger you'd want to see is here besides Hawkeye and Ant-Man, and we're at a point where it's super hard to actually address the events. The Infinity Stones are all increasingly more difficult for Thanos to acquire. The most difficult are going to be the Time Stone, Soul Stone, and Mind Stone. The Time Stone is in the possession of Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), and he is able to deduce that there's only one way this can actually end positively for the universe as a whole. We'll see exactly how that works. The Soul Stone, Thanos is not exactly aware of who has it or where it is, but he seems to be drawn to Gamora (Zoe Saldana). Gamora asks Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) to kill her if Thanos should encounter her, as she knows she will be forced into revealing the location of the Soul Stone. This is not good. The easiest one of these three to acquire is in theory the one on Vision's (Paul Bettany) head. Vision and Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) have been off in Scotland, seeing as they're on the run with the other Avengers who didn't have things go their way during Captain America: Civil War.

Thanos actually acquiring these stones, on the other hand, is going to be a very difficult task. As you may have figured out, the Avengers and the other superheroes that haven't officially joined the Avengers are extremely resourceful. They know what the hell they're doing. There's also the other Guardians of the Galaxy, and yes, all of them factor into the film. But there's also so many other characters from the other movies, and with not all of them having died, you can never really know when anyone will show up at any given point. When it comes to Avengers: Infinity War? I mean ANYONE. The action never lets up, and you should expect the worst as the worst is going to happen.

As far as the worst goes, I was genuinely not expecting Dr. Strange to have envisioned that scenario and decided it was the only way things would actually work out. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It's very difficult to juggle all of these characters and give them what someone would consider to be fair screen time, so the only way to get around that is to inundate the film with action and prevent slowing down. Avengers: Infinity War does that as well as I've ever seen a film do so, but nothing else has had such a critical mass of talent on the chess board. Juggling these things is even more impressive than the story itself, the balancing act allows the director to do things that may not make sense that are easy not to think about. The visual effects also work to this end, and so does the ending. Making half the cast disappear like this seemed to be perfectly planned in order to get maximum crowd impact. Star-Lord is a love or hate him character, and for some Spider-Man (Tom Holland) is too. Then, you have characters that everyone really likes and they all just disappear. This was chosen perfectly, I couldn't believe that shit. Obviously, a lot of it will be reversed. But what?

The problems with Avengers: Infinity War are few and far between, the most obvious one being that there are some major instances of poorly timed humor. This is prevalent for far too much of the film, but not for the final battle when it feels like things really matter. I think everything should matter to that extent though. The humor is the main reason I think Black Panther was a better film. I also have to say that I love Peter Dinklage, but his casting as the giant Eitri was not a good decision. I was extremely distracted during all these scenes and had a very hard time paying attention, which was a problem because those scenes had an incredible payoff that I did not initially understand. In the end, to be honest, I don't really know what to say about any of this stuff without being questioned. There's so much in this movie, so much to the story, and so many crazy character interactions that I'm a bit overwhelmed. The stakes matter, people die and you think some of them are definitely going to stay dead, but who knows? I'm eagerly anticipating the next film, as well as what comes next in the Marvel saga. There's absolutely no way to know what could be next.

8.5/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Roma
2. A Star Is Born
3. First Reformed
4. The Favourite
5. Widows
6. First Man
7. BlacKkKlansman
8. Blindspotting
9. Black Panther
10. If Beale Street Could Talk
11. The Sisters Brothers
12. A Private War
13. Avengers: Infinity War
14. Stan & Ollie
15. Green Book
16. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
17. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
18. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
19. On My Skin
20. Private Life
21. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
22. Mid90s
23. Eighth Grade
24. Sorry to Bother You
25. Vice
26. The Old Man & the Gun
27. Suspiria
28. Vox Lux
29. Boy Erased
30. Bad Times at the El Royale
31. The Other Side of the Wind
32. Searching
33. A Simple Favor
34. The Hate U Give
35. Bumblebee
36. Mary Poppins Returns
37. Creed II
38. Hold the Dark
39. The Land of Steady Habits
40. Halloween
41. Mary Queen of Scots
42. Aquaman
43. Outlaw King
44. Overlord
45. Ben Is Back
46. Monsters and Men
47. The Mule
48. On the Basis of Sex
49. Bohemian Rhapsody
50. White Boy Rick
51. Papillon
52. Game Night
53. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
54. Instant Family
55. Alpha
56. The Front Runner
57. The Predator
58. Apostle
59. The Angel
60. The Commuter
61. Beautiful Boy
62. The Nun
63. Operation Finale
64. The Equalizer 2
65. The Spy Who Dumped Me
66. Bird Box
67. 12 Strong
68. Venom
69. Skyscraper
70. The Meg
71. Assassination Nation
72. The Girl in the Spider's Web
73. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
74. 22 July
75. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
76. The Little Stranger
77. Tomb Raider
78. Night School
79. The 15:17 To Paris
80. Peppermint
81. Mile 22
82. The First Purge
83. Hunter Killer
84. Kin
85. Hell Fest
86. Proud Mary
87. Robin Hood
88. The Happytime Murders
89. Slender Man

 

[909]

Allied (2016), directed by Robert Zemeckis

It appears that as it relates to Allied, I'm in the minority with my opinion of the film. I believe that I liked this much more than the majority of people who watched it. I will do my best to explain why, but it seems that I'm going to have a difficult time as I'm already running into writer's block. One thing that was coming to mind as I first turned on Allied were the rumors that Marion Cotillard had an affair with Brad Pitt. These weren't true and have been denied by all parties, but they're the kind of thing that comes to mind repeatedly when those stories were so prevalent. I am of the belief that these kinds of things play on the minds of people when they analyze the work related to said rumors. At least that's how I felt about it. I could be wrong on this one. Perhaps my favorite thing about Allied was that the story turned on a dime from one thing to the next, but this is the kind of thing that seems to bother a lot of people. But what about that not bothering me? Everyone has their own tastes, I have mine, and that's how it is. I should point out though, that I do prefer movies that have lasting consequences as a result of the actions of the characters, and it seems that Allied is one of those films. Who would've thought? Robert Zemeckis has went completely off the rails the last few years, some think this is one of those movies, but I don't agree.

Allied starts in 1942, obviously during World War II. Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) is a Wing Commander who serves in the Royal Canadian Air Force, which serves as a point to explain away Vatan's lack of accent. Vatan is serving out intelligence duties, and he has traveled to Casablanca in order to assassinate a German ambassador. His mission leads to a partnership with a French Resistance fighter, Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard), and they present themselves as a married couple to the locals in order to further their cover. Marianne has escaped from France after her resistance group was compromised, so her path to Morocco was not exactly great. The two agree that becoming close is a problem and that in their line of work, it could very well lead to their death. Marianne has worked herself into being trusted by the Germans, and through that she has secured an invitation for Vatan to go through with conducting the assassination. When they calculate their odds of survival, they decide to have sex in a car out in the desert, because that's just how likely it is they die. They can't help themselves. Without spoiling what exactly it is that happens, both Marianne and Vatan survive and escape to England.

I don't really want to spoil the thing that turns the movie on its head, so let me bring things back a little bit. In order for Marianne and Vatan to pull this off, they have to deal with a lot of factors that nobody could possibly be aware of. There's the fact that German intelligence officers could easily see them both prior to the attempted assassination, the fact that Marianne needs training with the weapons Vatan has brought to Morocco, and the whole thing about their life inside of a city full of spies. Now, once things return to England, we fast-forward quite a long time. Vatan decides to bring Marianne to England as his wife, and the two do get married. We learn that Max has a sister, Bridget (Lizzy Caplan), and she's in the military too. Max and Marianne have had a baby girl, born during a bombing raid, and this is done in typical Zemeckis fashion with all kinds of ridiculous effects. I didn't think anything was special about that part to be fair. Max also now works from home, and his Col. Frank Heslop (Jared Harris) is a non-descript character. I thought his appearance here played on viewers knowledge of Mad Men due to the lack of details given to his character. Anyway, the war isn't over, the Germans still have bombing raids, and that's all I want to say!

The point about actions having consequences is what sticks with me, and this film definitely has that. I do think, on the other hand, that it's very difficult to create a film like this one that has two stories. Both stories are good from my perspective, but many people disagree with me. That's cool. I thought Marion Cotillard was excellent here, Brad Pitt a bit less so, but he was solid. I think I might be a bit of a sucker for romance stories when they don't have some corny ass ending. There you have it. I thought the film was successful in the way that Zemeckis decided not to use music to ratchet up tension in scenes that don't need pointless sound. I do think that there needed to be more romance scenes, though. Those scenes were required in the last half of the movie and they simply aren't there as often as they needed to be, but the first half is loaded with them. I think the hook they use to twist the story inside out is quite a good one, and I think it's one we've all seen many times before, but the large budget of the film allows for extra tricks. I'm a little surprised Brad Pitt made so many movies where he played a soldier, though. Seems to go against his politics in basically every way, but he is playing someone younger than his actual self. I suppose that's the appeal.

One thing that I did find strange was how narrow in scope the story was when the budget for the film was so large, but I actually don't mind this. For the most part I am getting sick of films with enormous casts. Sometimes there's a need to trim things down, and I think that's yet another one of the hooks for me. I don't think this is a great film, that's going too far. It is, however, quite good in my opinion. The romantic scenes are believable to me (which makes one wonder about rumors), and there's some decent war action as well. Any movie where Nazis get shot up is going to make me feel something, but I did think there should have been just a bit more of this. When I'm thinking of war films shot by directors in the same generation, one that comes to mind is Bridge of Spies. Bridge of Spies is a slightly better film, but I think that it's one that seems to give the easy way out when playing with the emotions of the audience. Allied does not do that, and that kind of commitment to the story is something I found welcome. I wanted to watch something tonight that was nominated for an Oscar in the past, and even though Allied was merely nominated for Costume Design, it fit the bill.

7/10

 

[909]

Arctic (2019), directed by Joe Penna

I'm trying and failing to come up with an opening line for Arctic, but that isn't because there are a shortage of things in the film to discuss. I think the best way to begin things is by pointing out that Arctic is a very simple, small-budget film, the kind which usually doesn't get released in theaters. Its content is commercially unappealing and that is reflected in its box office, but the idea that Arctic is going to lose money is very difficult for me to fathom. Survival movies shot in the cold are actually few and far between, there's a pretty good reason for that. Finding actors that want to do these kinds of films is quite difficult, and writing a story that doesn't feel similar to other survival movies is also difficult. There are some things in Arctic that do borrow from other survival movies, but this is a feature that ensures we aren't inundated with terrible moments where our lead character is a failure. No, this is very much different than that, the lead character here is someone who actually knows what they're doing. The problem is that he's in the Arctic Circle, it is bitterly cold, there is no easy way back to civilization because none actually exists. What a person is supposed to do in this situation, I do not quite understand. However, people do have to deal with these situations, and the way they do so is the embodiment of the human spirit. Most people just will not give up.

Overgard (Mads Mikkelsen) is a man stranded in the Arctic Circle waiting for rescue. He has clearly been there for quite some time, at least a month or so judging from his beard length. His life in the Arctic is difficult, as you might expect. He has a decent little setup though. His cargo plane is what crashed, but it is also relatively intact. There's some mystery in this situation as you don't know exactly what happened, you have to put the pieces together yourself. Attention is the key. Overgard spends a lot of time trying to get rescue, going to different ridges and small mountains in order to head up top and signal for help. He also has a nice ice fishing thing going on, but the catches are quite small. He is clearly dying, there isn't very much that he can actually do about this situation. Stuck is the word. There's also an encroaching problem he can't do a hell of a lot about either, a polar bear. His storage for the fish has been disrupted and there are huge paw prints in the snow, there's only one thing that could have caused that. There's something I should note, though. Overgard is doing everything by the book, he hasn't fucked up or made any bullshit science that went his way, this is simply unfair.

One day, Overgard heads out to start turning the crank and signaling for rescue, and oddly enough, there's a helicopter out there. There is also a massive storm and this is a big problem, the helicopter cannot land. Overgard is devastated, but not compared to what's going to happen because the helicopter can't land. The helicopter also can't get any air, and it meets its inevitable end in a very shocking scene. When it crashes, Overgard stands there in shock like a real person would do. Once he lumbers down the hill, he finds the pilot is dead. However, the other person onboard is not, even though she (Maria Thelma Smaradottir) has a major wound in her torso that Overgard is forced to staple together with the medical kit from the helicopter. This is an unforeseen wrinkle in his plans though. It's impossible to know what he was going to do before this point, but there's only so long that he has alcohol to put on her wound to keep her from dying, and only so much fish to feed someone. The woman also cannot sustain her life inside of Overgard's plane. So, Overgard has a plan. There is a base that is many days walk away, they are going to go there or die trying. Simple as that!

There's quite a bit of ground to cover here, but the first thing coming to mind is that this is quite an impressive first feature film. I was thinking last night that there needed to be an Oscar given out to films that qualify as a director's first feature film. Arctic would certainly be a contender if this was a category next year, but most likely it will not be. There should also be a category for rising stars but that is not related to this at all. Mads isn't a rising star, obviously. Instead, this is an enthralling tale that plays on the audience's recognition of the actor in order to tell its story. The vulnerability of the character here shines through the screen. What we get to see from Mads is a very strong application of survivalism, it doesn't work out for him because the elements cannot be accounted for, but this isn't a film with bullshit. Arctic is a film with such few words, it's believable because we don't have a man endlessly speaking to himself. The MacGyver type shit is left to a minimum here, but the character is someone who had training in anticipation of this potentially happening while they flew the cargo plane.

I have read that Arctic does have a few digital effects, but I think it's an accomplishment that I couldn't tell exactly what they were while watching the movie. In hindsight, it would seem the plane is one of those effects, and obviously the helicopter as well. It's incredible though that effects have gotten to this point where the untrained eye can't tell without already being very skeptical. I will say that the film is a slow one, as you might expect from a minimalist survival drama. However, Mads Mikkelsen puts in arguably the best performance of his career, one which will probably not receive any recognition from those who hand out trophies. That's too bad. There's a good story about how this film was originally set on Mars and not in the Arctic, which probably would have been a huge mistake. The atmosphere here is much more realistic, obviously. Arctic is also very nicely shot, it looked like a much more costly film. The moments in this film actually carry weight, but as I already said, this is a very straight-forward film. I think everyone would prefer I review a movie this way instead of revealing too much. I don't know what more I can say about a work like this one, but I think this sets an early high bar for the competition to clear.

8/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Arctic
2. High Flying Bird
3. Cold Pursuit
4. Happy Death Day 2U
5. Fighting with My Family
6. Velvet Buzzsaw
7. Alita: Battle Angel
8. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
9. The Upside
10. Escape Room
11. What Men Want
12. Miss Bala
13. Glass
14. The Prodigy
15. Polar
16. Serenity

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

The interesting thing about Infinity War is that Thanos is very much the main character of the film. It is all about his quest, and he's the one with the greatest character development.

I'm not sure that has been true for a superhero movie since the Tim Burton Batman films, so it was certainly something different and fresh.

 

[909]

Queen of the Desert (2017), directed by Werner Herzog

Deciding that my first Werner Herzog narrative feature would be this one was probably not a good decision, with hindsight being what it is. Foresight also should have told me this wasn't a good decision as Queen of the Desert was slaughtered by reviewers, that only happens for a reason. When a film starts filming in 2013 and is released in the USA in 2017, that's a very bad sign. Queen of the Desert is simply a very dull and boring film that gets the focus on its subject all wrong. Did anyone need a movie about Gertrude Bell where her focus was almost entirely on other men rather than what she was hoping to achieve? When I phrase it that way, I realize exactly how bad this film is. It is one I am surprised anyone would give $36 million in funding for. That is truly incredible, and the gross was just $2 million, which means this was a truly horrendous bomb. How does this happen? Is it that nobody would dare tell a filmmaker like Herzog that they don't have the ability to make exactly what they want to make? I believe the last question is also the answer, and it is also the only explanation as nothing else makes any sense. I think Herzog should just stick to documentaries.

Gertrude Bell (Nicole Kidman) is the kind of subject one would make a film about if they had the carte-blanche to make anything regardless of potential financial gain, or if one was hellbent on making a female centered epic biography. This, unfortunately, does not feel epic at all. Queen of the Desert begins with a scene where men are whining about the possibility of Gertrude being a kingmaker in Iraq after World War I, which I'm sure is something that actually happened. It is still weird. We then flashback to the things leading up to that, the first of those being Gertrude at home in England. She graduated from Oxford and really hates being at home trying to find a suitor as her parents would want her to do. As a result, she is allowed by her parents to travel to Persia, taking residence at the British Embassy in Tehran. Her uncle Frank (Mark Lewis Jones) is the Ambassador to Persia, he's also quite the dickhead. I have no idea why the film would focus on this, but we are subsequently introduced to Henry Cadogan (James Franco), the apparent love of Gertrude's life until she found another one. Their romance is less than inspiring to put it nicely and there's no chemistry between the two, but regardless of that, things continue on their path.

Henry is interested in Farsi poetry and as this film tells this, he is a motivating factor in Gertrude's fascination with Bedouins. This is an incredible pile of piss. Anyway, Henry eventually proposes to Gertrude in the lamest fashion, and she says yes. With it being the custom of the day, Henry must ask Gertrude's father Hugh (David Calder) for Gertrude's hand in marriage. Not only does Hugh refuse due to Henry's station and heavy rumors of gambling debts, but he calls Gertrude back to England and she has to come. While there, Henry simply cannot take that and kills himself. I must point out that Kidman has aged very well and I genuinely couldn't spot the age difference even though I knew it existed. With Henry out of the way, we are still not spared from a portrayal of a truly trailblazing woman reduced to a fascination with men as the driving of her spirit. For the rest of Gertrude's life, she is dedicated to exploring the Middle East. Along the way, with her guide Fattouh (Jay Abdo), they encounter some notable individuals from the era. T.E. Lawrence (Robert Pattinson) makes an appearance, so does Winston Churchill (Christopher Fulford), and Charles Doughty-Wylie (Damien Lewis). Even though Charles is a married man, he continues on an unconsummated affair with Gertrude through love letters. Said love letters are prominent in the film even though she goes to Arabia, Syria, and Jordan.

When I critique a film for the focus being unfairly placed on men, you should know that it's pretty bad. I don't think I've ever done that before. This film is an absolute mess. There's no drama, no impetus behind the story, and the romance is garbage. This is one of the worst screenplays imaginable, I think. I'm genuinely at a loss for words and even though I don't know that much about Gertrude Bell, I know that this is the definition of bad history. There are historical things jammed together and out of place, a book would deal with this subject much better. The important things Bell did were not shown here at all and I do not think this is remotely comprehensive. I did laugh very hard at how King Abdullah and King Faisal have a tiny role in the film at the very end. Like, are you serious? This is totally ridiculous on every level. Imagination is out of the equation and Queen of the Desert is beyond boring, I cannot believe I made it through the movie. I was struggling badly at points.

Unfortunately, any historical examination of her actions is gone, and one has to consider that she is responsible for the Middle East being what it is today, both good and bad. Mostly bad. This movie is sad, and when Herzog decides to place so many names and details in the film, he should actually be sure to get all of them right. Werner Herzog of all people should know better than that. Queen of the Desert is also a plodding, very standard Hollywood film, but one where the actors other than Kidman do not have true belief in their own material. One of the standards by which I judge biography movies is if the subject would be angered by it and for what reason. Sometimes, the subject being angered would be a good thing. That is not the case here. This is absolutely nothing like any description of Gertrude Bell that I've ever heard. My favorite part was the way James Franco's accent faded in and out and it seemed that nobody noticed this, so they have scenes full of this wavering accent. Yikes. That's damning enough, but I think the worst thing I could say is that nobody should watch this. There are zero redeeming qualities, the only reason I'm not giving the film a lower score is that I was not reduced to laughter at any point. My list ranking supports the idea I can handle bad comedy much easier than bad drama...or whatever the hell this was. There was no drama in this film and no story beyond showing that Gertrude Bell explored some stuff.

3/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Get Out
3. Logan
4. Wonder Woman
5. Thor: Ragnarok
6. Logan Lucky
7. The Beguiled
8. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
9. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
10. The Lost City of Z
11. First They Killed My Father
12. Spider-Man: Homecoming
13. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
14. It
15. Battle of the Sexes
16. Okja
17. Kong: Skull Island
18. It Comes at Night
19. Split
20. 1922
21. Personal Shopper
22. Chuck
23. Atomic Blonde
24. The Lego Batman Movie
25. Megan Leavey
26. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
27. American Made
28. Imperial Dreams
29. The Zookeeper's Wife
30. Free Fire
31. Win It All
32. The Wall
33. Breathe
34. The Man Who Invented Christmas
35. Alone in Berlin
36. A United Kingdom
37. Trespass Against Us
38. The Mountain Between Us
39. War Machine
40. Happy Death Day
41. Justice League
42. To the Bone
43. Wakefield
44. The Hitman's Bodyguard
45. Sand Castle
46. CHiPs
47. Death Note
48. The Belko Experiment
49. The Great Wall
50. Fist Fight
51. Wilson
52. Queen of the Desert
53. Sleepless

 

[909]

The interesting thing about Infinity War is that Thanos is very much the main character of the film. It is all about his quest, and he's the one with the greatest character development.

I'm not sure that has been true for a superhero movie since the Tim Burton Batman films, so it was certainly something different and fresh.

I think it had to be that way. Post-credit scenes simply aren't enough to establish a character, no matter how many of those scenes there are. Another weakness in the movie I neglected to mention, even though it shouldn't matter, is that I believe movies need to have some kind of resolution. As much as I loved Infinity War, and I really did, there was no resolution.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

The interesting thing about Infinity War is that Thanos is very much the main character of the film. It is all about his quest, and he's the one with the greatest character development.

I'm not sure that has been true for a superhero movie since the Tim Burton Batman films, so it was certainly something different and fresh.

I think it had to be that way. Post-credit scenes simply aren't enough to establish a character, no matter how many of those scenes there are. Another weakness in the movie I neglected to mention, even though it shouldn't matter, is that I believe movies need to have some kind of resolution. As much as I loved Infinity War, and I really did, there was no resolution.

I actually do think it has a resolution, just not one you would normally expect. Now granted we all know there is going to be a sequel, but as far as the story being told in Infinity War it has an ending. The only thing really hinting that it isn't over besides what we know from how these franchises work is that one line from Dr. Strange. Where I have more of a problem is the other side of the film, the beginning. This is a film that doesn't stand on its own in that respect. It completely requires you to know not just these characters, but what exactly happened in the previous films. I don't know how to get around that given that this movie is long as it is and they have to squeeze everything in, but you basically have to watch 10 other movies for this one to make any sense.