In Which I Briefly Review Movies

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Spiral, 2021, Darren Lynn Bouseman, 4/10 - It's weird, I thought this movie was going to be really bad but after it was over, I felt like it was only sorta bad. I thought the grand concept here was better than expected, the execution of it wasn't very good, but that's not surprising. Chris Rock wasn't good here though. His lines were hard to believe, but I need to explain what I mean by grand concept. Guy whose dad was killed by corrupt dad killing cops = good concept. Cops who kill everyone? Poorly handled. Attempt to be relevant that fails. I haven't seen any of the other Saw movies though lol. So if you're hoping for experienced commentary or that I know anything at all, I don't. I also think that other than the tongue kill early in the movie, this stuff just doesn't go as far as I would want from a horror movie that tries to play off gonzo murders.

 

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Chaos Walking, 2021, Doug Liman, 3.5/10 - Weird one here because this is clearly an unfinished and not completely edited movie. The amount of reshoots that were done here prevented the studio from putting together a coherent feature. The concept here is that humans colonized another world. On this world, for whatever reason it's the case that men's thoughts can be heard out loud. All of their thoughts. Women's thoughts cannot. Todd (Tom Holland) lives in a town that is entirely made up of men. Some of the parts with this guy thinking out loud are super annoying and others are funny. Viola (Daisy Ridley) is a potential colonist who crashes on the planet. Turns out there's a reason Todd's town is entirely made up of men. Anarchy ensues. The movie is definitely unfinished in how quickly things come to an end, in that you don't really understand anything about the characters, but they did build this world to some extent and make it marginally interesting. That's it though. There's barely a movie here. It feels like a bad TV pilot. There was a lot of potential here to make something good, but that's not going to happen and everyone involved wishes this never happened.

 

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Tenet, 2020, Christopher Nolan, 7/10 - Seems that people either really loved or hated this one, but I'm somewhere in the middle. Tenet is a good movie that is extremely confusing. If anyone tells you that they can explicitly accurately detail the time aspect of this movie I'm pretty sure they're full of shit. Regardless this is a very entertaining picture and if anyone tells you that it isn't interesting, well I disagree with them. Movie is completely absurd. The short way of putting it is that there is an unnamed main character (John David Washington) and unbeknownst to him he's being handled by Neil (Robert Pattinson). Their job is to prevent the end of the world. The first scene at the Kyiv Opera House really pumps. So do a lot of the rest, and the exposition is whatever you think of it basically. Only thing Tenet is missing is an unexplained scene in Space to really fuck things up and make things more confusing. That all being said I'm giving this a 7 because I did understand the plot and I appreciated the ambition here.

 

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Vengeance, 2022, BJ Novak, 6.5/10 - I hate giving out the same rating for two movies in a row, and Tenet is better than Vengeance even though it's such a slight difference. So there. Without spoiling anything I'm not sure if the ending is true to the lead character here. Vengeance is the story of Ben (BJ Novak), a writer for the New Yorker who hooked up with this Texan chick who went back home after some time in New York. Unbeknownst to Ben she has been telling her family that Ben is her boyfriend. Now she's dead. Of course, the writer's natural instinct is to try to exploit this for their own gain, but the girl's brother Ty (Boyd Holbrook) wants to find out who did this (he thinks she was murdered and kill them. So now he's been provided an angle and is going to use this for a podcast. What is Texas? What is America?

What matters here is that this movie is pretty funny, but again, the ending is not true to the story being told. There's a good fish out of water story here, all of the family characters are used well, and a few of the moments here are more than just funny.

 

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The Old Guard, 2020, Gina Prince-Bythewood, 6/10 - I just said I hated doing this, but I'm giving this movie the same rating as the last. (I bumped it down after I wrote this). That's because these movies are basically equal. We have good concepts, interesting elements, and at the end things go off the rails a little bit. If I could understand what Copley's (Chiwetel Ejiofor) motivations were then I'd have to be a mind reader or some shit. Some shit I did like though. I liked the team itself, I liked the idea they couldn't die, the action scenes were well choreographed, and I thought everything here was well explained. My problem is that the character motivations are wack, I don't understand why an immortal would immediately default to killing people instead of accumulating a fortune, I also don't understand why Copley would turn the immortals over to Big Pharma even though I perfectly understand why Big Pharma would want them. But why would he turn them over and now he wants to give them shit to do?

 

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Kajillionaire, 2020, Miranda July, 7.5/10 - I wasn't originally going to rate this so highly, but I couldn't kick this movie from my mind all day and that merits a higher rating. This is a very 90s Sundance type of movie and I feel like that's something lacking in current indie movies. They're weird and different but they don't feel this way if you know what I mean. This movie is about scammers, basically. Robert (Richard Jenkins) and Theresa (Debra Winger) once had a daughter, Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood). This name and the explanation of this name made me laugh really hard. They're all losers and have to scam their way through life because what else could they do. One day they meet Melanie (Gina Rodriguez) and these schemes spiral out of control into things that seem far more malicious than what they were doing before. The thing is, one thing in particular happens that makes me think these people were always entirely malicious, that nothing they do is with innocent intentions (hot tub). So maybe that's the case. I will say that this movie doesn't have the kind of ending a viewer would probably want it to have. You're left with no real conclusion to be drawn from this, but it isn't boring, it's different from almost everything else that's been released in the last few years, and in some ways it's disturbing too.

 

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Saint Maud, 2020, Rose Glass, 8/10 - Now we got a movie about a certified nutjob. Katie (Morfydd Clark) is a nurse who becomes super Catholic and changes her name to Maud. Maud gets a new dying patient, Amanda (Jennifer Ehle). Maud thinks it is now her job to get Amanda into heaven. Queue tons of nutjob shit. There are some great scenes here. I appreciated that other than the presence of iPhones it feels very much like a movie made in the 80s. Sets, town, costumes, all of that. I needed to see what the crazy person would do in the name of their religion and this did not disappoint. Is the religion the cause of making someone crazy or was she always that way and drifted towards religion because people acting crazy (claiming they hear things, see things, can talk to supernatural beings that may or may not be real) is more acceptable in that community? In the case of this movie it's clearly the latter as she was supposedly a sex fiend prior to her religiousness. Not that there's anything wrong with being a sex fiend but in this case it could be classified as a character flaw due to the nature of it. This is also a very pandemic feeling movie even though it was produced prior to COVID, and at least in my case I've pretty much moved on. The ending is also utterly fucked, the movie wraps up in a fashion that doesn't leave me wanting more as the story has been well concluded.

 

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Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, 2020, Jason Wollner, 6/10 - I had to wait to watch this because I knew otherwise I wouldn't laugh at all. I laughed some but this wasn't as funny as I was hoping it would be. The beginning and ending were, and so was the time they spent in Washington, but otherwise this is nowhere near as good as the first film. I haven't watched the first film since I saw it in theaters though. The scene in the synagogue feels like it's way too much, as does the scene at the debutante ball, but otherwise I didn't think this was too long or anything like that. Borat is never truly going to be old hat for me but Borat doesn't do the majority of the work here. I can't believe anyone would still fall for this shit though.

 

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They/Them, 2022, John Logan, 3/10 - I wrote down some stuff while I was watching this, and I'll have that in a paragraph below, but no I didn't like this movie at all. This is a total failure of a horror movie because it really isn't one even though I was led to believe it was.

The thing about making a movie like this or professionally reviewing such a movie is that you have to tiptoe through a minefield. I'm not a professional so obviously this doesn't apply to me, but I don't have that much to say to begin with. It feels like you can't bulldoze through the subject and stake out ground that is all encompassing in terms of 'this is how I feel and this is how it should be so get the fuck over it.' I read a review after watching this where they had to tiptoe around the fact that this is a horrible movie because the cast was inclusive. Guess what? It should be expected that every studio make movies with casts as inclusive as this. You don't get extra credit points for doing something that should be a bare minimum expectation and you don't get points for putting an inclusive cast into a bad movie. It's crazy the way people keep giving props to multi-billion dollar entities for finally making things that show what the real world look like, it's only like 5-15 years too late, but yeah give them some props. Fuck outta here. This movie fucking sucks. This is also supposed to be a horror movie and we don't get around to that part until we're an hour in. Gotta be honest I thought Jordan shoulda shot Kevin Bacon's character here, but whatever. This is a bad movie and I shouldn't think about it too much.

 

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Bullet Train, 2022, David Leitch, 7/10 - This is rare for me in that I'm shocked this movie is getting bad reviews. I don't get it. The best way I can put it is that if you liked Crank you'd like this too. Sometimes action movies really deserve to get bad reviews and sometimes they don't, but something about them makes a critic dislike it anyway. I'm not sure exactly what the reason is here but I thought this was a funny movie too. Maybe people are holding the Bruce Lee thing against Brad Pitt. Without spoiling anything there's only really one negative point that sticks out here. The CGI for the last scene is something to behold in how bad it is. Overall this movie is pretty stupid and because of that it's cool, it's easy to turn my brain off and not think about anything, and it's hard not to keep laughing throughout. The constant references to Thomas the Tank Engine or to West Ham United or to film created anime series or the cameos are very much appreciated here.

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

Crank was only like 61% fresh on RT so critics weren't going ham on it

 

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Bloodshot, 2020, David S.F. Wilson, 4/10 - Blew my mind that this movie got similar reviews to Bullet Train. I watched it for the specific reason of comparing and I don't think there is any comparison. So maybe people just have automatically baked in opinions of action movies and it doesn't really matter what the content is? The content here, such as it is, is not any good. There's one unique twist but there's nothing fun about this. Bloodshot is a movie that takes itself as seriously as the most serious Oscar dramas. The fact that you know Vin Diesel's character can't die also doesn't help this. There's no tension that can be created. Another issue here is that I think Vin Diesel fatigue has set in for me. His work isn't interesting, the best part of his work in other projects died, and his work/this movie are just full of cliches. There's one after another after another and well someone's gonna have to explain why they think Bullet Train is worse than this movie because I don't get it.

 

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Unpregnant, 2020, Rachel Lee Goldenberg, 6.5/10 - This is a strange review for me in that there's a far superior abortion related feature that came out in 2020. I reviewed it before and you can read the link I supplied if you want to. Anyway, this is a different take and goes the more unrealistic and amusing route of telling truths about an ugly subject. Both movies tell those truths so there's no issue in that sense. Cranks are gonna crank so you can't take any largely sampled rating about the movie seriously as they're tilted negatively for obvious reasons. This is a road trip movie, it's one with comedy and overly blown caricatures of anti-choice people who probably actually would do something like they do in this movie if given a reason to. But yeah dude, you shouldn't have to travel all the way across the country to get an abortion no matter your age. Tell the fascists to shove it up their ass if they don't like it. Go find your nearest Planned Parenthood and do it, you'll feel a lot better about yourself for distracting a fascist while a girl or two can sneak into the building peacefully behind you.

 

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Sound of Metal, 2020, Darius Marder, 8.5/10 - I was very surprised to learn this was the director's first movie. It's a hard hitting debut, and as I've said before, I'm a believer that a director's first feature is the true exhibition of themselves. It's what they put out before Hollywood gets their hands on someone and changes their mentality or gets them to adapt their stories or adopt differing worldviews to their own. This debut movie is them. I feel that I shared an experience with the lead character here as well. Ruben loses his hearing, I temporarily lost my sight. I could not see properly for a month. This encapsulates a lot of the feelings that you go through when you lose one of your senses. The sound here, or lack thereof, is great. Paul Raci is too good here and the scene where Ruben is made to leave the deaf community is a masterpiece of acting. He just couldn't accept that this was the way it was going to be, instead he kept on chasing what he had before and couldn't do anything about it. You can't do anything about it.

 

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Freaks, 2019, Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky, 7/10 - This is another first feature even though these two guys directed a ton of Disney Channel stuff. So again, same thing as the previous movie. Freaks starts off really slow and makes you think that it's going to be a generic story about a girl whose father doesn't want her going outside for made up delusional reasons. Then my expectations were entirely subverted and this turns into a good film that kept me on the edge of my seat. So what's it about? Apparently in this version of the world there are people who have super powers. Upon discovery of those powers society immediately moves to kill them. In a lot of ways this is a more accurate portrayal of super powers than anything else is. I don't want to spoil anything but a lot of events in the second and third act come out of nowhere, so this is very much appreciated and retained my attention throughout.

 

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Emily the Criminal, 2022, John Patton Ford, 8/10 - Man this one is a ride lmao. Emily (Aubrey Plaza) has had a rough life. She went to school and caught an assault charge for beating up her boyfriend, as such she dropped out and has an insane student debt problem. So she does gig work like a lot of us have to do. The felony conviction keeps her from getting a better job but you can do just about anything and still be able to deliver food as long as you haven't gotten busted with a driving violation. One day, her coworker sets her up with this guy who says she can make $200 in one hour. She has to do something illegal though. Judging from the title that would appear to be no problem. Like I said at the start, this movie is a ride. Everything here is better left unsaid, but you learn a whole lot about Emily's personal character and suddenly all these things that add up throughout the movie begin to make sense. It's great. And once again this is the director's...first feature film.

 

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The Informer, 2020, Andrea di Stefano, 5.5/10 - It's funny when movies with this straight to DVD quality feel wind up having a cast full of name actors. It's also funny when movies like this put together a great first act only for things to slowly descend into the realm of the unrealistic. Usually I like movies like these as a rule too, so it's too bad. The story here is that Pete Koslow (Joel Kinnaman) was released early from prison as long as he joined a Polish organized crime group. He does pretty well and it comes to be the day that they're all busted and he can finally go free. That's not what happens. His FBI handlers burn him and he's left to be investigated by the NYPD with no cover from them. The third act of this movie is so laughably bad and unrealistic that I don't know what to say. The first act on the other hand is pretty tense and well worth my time. I was surprised this was released during the pandemic because I remember seeing a trailer for this movie way back in January 2019. It's just too bad the movie doesn't end well.

 

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Babyteeth, 2020, Shannon Murphy, 7/10 - This is an Australian movie and is far more amusing than expected. This is the story of Milla (Eliza Scanlen), this random guy Moses (Toby Wallace), and her parents Anna (Essie Davis) and Henry (Ben Mendelsohn). More notable cast than I'd expected. Milla is terminally ill with cancer, it has spread and her parents don't like Moses because he's a drug thief and dealer. But what do you do when you want to make your dying daughter happy? As a lot of people would do they let her do whatever she wants. This leads to funny outcomes but the ending of the movie is devastating regardless because how could it not be? I said she was terminally ill so you know exactly how the film ends. That being said this movie doesn't delve too deeply into psychological aspects of dying or anything else similar to that. It's mostly a comedy and there's some good laughs here.

 

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The Climb, 2020, Michael Angelo Covino, 8/10 - Have you ever had a friend who does bad stuff to you and keeps on doing it but you can't quit being their friend? That's what's going on here. This starts while they're riding their bikes and Mike (Michael Covino) admits to sleeping with Kyle's (Kyle Marvin) fiancee. This starts a cycle of events that ends badly for both guys and it never stops ending badly until sometime around the end of the film. This is a much funnier movie than you'd think. It's a great look at friendship and what that means, and how some people are okay with being treated however as long as they can still have the things they want. I also thought it was nice that the film didn't treat the viewer like they were stupid and left some shit for you to figure out yourself.

 

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Beast, 2022, Baltasar Kormakur, 6/10 - I like these kinds of movie as a rule and this wasn't an exception. There are a few key components to making a decent man vs. animal movie. One is that the animal has to be believable. Second, you need a great lead to carry these scenes and this film has Idris Elba. These movies do have a ceiling though in terms of how good they can be and this one is at its maximum capacity. The movie is short because it needs to be, but there's a distinct lack of back story and it doesn't matter anyway cause I want to see a lion wreck shit. What you get here is a lion wrecking shit. Beast barely justifies its R rating but it does so with violence. There's not a bunch of cursing or anything, but there's quite a bit of blood and dead people. Maybe there's not enough substance here but that's cool.

 

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Fatale, 2020, Deon Taylor, 4/10 - Alright so, I was gonna approach this like any other regular movie until I realized that this director was the same guy who directed The Intruder. In case you don't know, The Intruder is a movie about a crazy guy breaking into a black couple's house and terrorizing him. Well now clearly for some reason this director has a thing about people breaking into others houses. Specifically he has one with this actor playing the guy whose house gets busted into! The concept is really funny though. Derrick (Michael Ealy) is a sports agent gaining fame and renown. He's married to Tracie (Damaris Lewis) but he thinks she's fucking around on him. So he goes to Vegas with his business partner Rafe (Mike Colter) for a bachelor party, but while there he runs into Valerie (Hilary Swank) and he bangs her. Later on his house gets broken into and it turns out Val is an LAPD detective and she's gonna figure this all out. This man was gonna fuck his whole life up over some crazy white lady bah gawd. Best part is that we never get any definitive answer on who broke into Derrick's house. It was some white dude that Val claims was hired by someone else but this bitch is nuts so you can't believe her. This is one stupid ass movie but it's also kinda enjoyable. I wasn't bored and I don't feel like I wasted my time. You can see every turn coming and some of the dialogue is extremely bad, but lol.

 

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The Quarry, 2020, Scott Teems, 5/10 - This was just some standard movie that Michael Shannon had to try to give life to. He couldn't and there's really not that much to say about this. It's a Boardwalk Empire reunion here. Shea Whigham plays an unnamed character who kills a traveling preacher and assumes his identity. He's not a believer but he preaches as long as he can before his house of lies comes slowly tumbling down, but in the end he's never truly exposed. This slow burn feels like it doesn't have a pay off. It also feels like Whigham's character wasn't comfortable with the things he's done and he's not a psychopath who enjoyed it. It feels like killing these people may not have been his intention but well, it's too late now. When he kills the preacher he is tested and cajoled into doing it, the preacher keeps telling him that he's going to tattle even though he doesn't have a clue what's happened. By the way whenever you think a person did something wrong, like commit a crime? Don't tell them that you think they did something wrong.

 

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The Roads Not Taken, 2020, Sally Potter, 4/10 - I'm having a bad string here but it's not like I didn't know these movies were kinda shit. This one features Javier Bardem going through stages of dementia that I assumed were actually mostly real until the end of the movie. Except they weren't, but the narrative here is so thin that I found myself grasping for something to hang onto. This film is also beyond slow. Like I said The Quarry was slow but this is levels slower than that. Feels like the next movie I watch is going to be something I think has a frenetic pace. But anyway, these last three movies I watched, you don't have to go ahead and watch those. I don't know why I did.

 

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Freaky, 2020, Christopher Landon, 6.5/10 - Alright, this was pretty funny. I didn't expect to be laughing at a horror movie so much but seeing Vince Vaughn act like a teenage girl was pretty good. He also makes for a good psycho killer in this kind of movie. The ending is a bit overdone but I thought this was a great way to spend 90 minutes before the joke got old. There's no sweeping statement or interesting filmmaking or any of that going on here. It's a comedy horror and it is funny while it lasts.

 

[Mickey Massuco]

Box Office: August Revenue Tumbles 43 Percent From Pre-Pandemic Times

The slowdown caps what was otherwise a golden summer for Hollywood and theater owners as the box office recovery boomed, and (gulp) moviegoing almost hit normal levels.

www.hollywoodreporter.com

Can’t find the box office thread but yikes

 

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Box Office: August Revenue Tumbles 43 Percent From Pre-Pandemic Times

The slowdown caps what was otherwise a golden summer for Hollywood and theater owners as the box office recovery boomed, and (gulp) moviegoing almost hit normal levels.

www.hollywoodreporter.com

Can’t find the box office thread but yikes

Almost literally nothing came out. Just a bunch of indie movies. I don't understand Hollywood because like the article said things were almost normal. Then they killed the box office again.

 

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She Dies Tomorrow, 2020, Amy Seimetz, 5/10 - I was gonna just bury this and not review it at all, but I think I gotta say something. This is one of the most overrated movies I've seen in my life. There's a good ending here, but this movie is so fuckin slow, people read all kinds of shit into it that isn't really here to read into. That being said, the film was released during the pandemic and people were searching for anything to latch onto, so I guess I understand why this film has good reviews. I don't agree with them though. There's not a lot of elaborating on my part just cause I don't see the reason for it. I don't think the film has the depth to merit doing so.

 

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Samaritan, 2022, Julius Avery, 4.5/10 - Unfortunately it's hard to talk about this movie without really spoiling it, so I'm going to get straight to my opinion. This movie plays everything far too basic in hopes of gaining mass appeal. That being said you can't gain mass appeal without making something really good, which isn't going to happen when you play everything down the middle. The creative decisions here also lead the movie to be boring. Everything is black and white instead of being gray. The movie also doesn't have someone strong enough to be opposing Stallone's character. They're annoying instead of imposing, which is a big mistake. Doesn't help that Stallone plays things the same way he did anything that he made in the 90s.

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

I watched that a week or two ago and thought it was about what you did. I also thought they essentially gave away the "twist" in the opening lines of the movie.

 

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Jungleland, 2020, Max Winkler, 6.5/10 - I didn't think I'd like this movie because the Metascore was pretty low, but I'm far on the higher side of that. While not a movie for everyone, Jungleland fits into a specific genre and does pretty well with it. We have two lower class brothers from Massachusetts; Stan (Charlie Hunnam) is the guiding force in this relationship and Lion (Jack O'Connell) earns the pair money by fighting in underground bouts. Lion loses a fight and they're already into a guy for some money, so they get stuck with a job they don't really want even though it has potential. Lion can fight in this underground tournament in San Francisco, but they both have to transport this girl Sky (Jessica Barden) across the country to Reno. You find out why and all that shit and I thought it was a good ride. I found the pairing to be very believable and I felt like they got to a very complicated ending without pulling any rabbits out of hats. Yes this does have a lot of cliches but I thought this was well acted and again, believable. The 2 on 1 fight here was pretty funny but overall this really adheres to the tone laid out from the start.