Chat! culturecrossfire.slack.com

In Which I Briefly Review Movies

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
ld1uz8husqzcydckoxk4.jpg


Bright (2017), directed by David Ayer

I should have watched this far sooner, because now my review of Bright is no longer topical and I'm probably preaching to the choir. I knew this wasn't going to be good when I saw that Max Landis wrote Bright and Ayer directed it, but I decided I was eventually going to watch this. It was never my intention to wait so long, but this concept was stupid and I wasn't exactly looking forward to it. I decided to pound my way through a Netflix backlog some time ago, and this has finally brought me to Bright...and I probably should have watched this with other people but I no longer wished to wait. I cannot believe this was made, but at the same time I also mean that in a positive way. Whether you like the film or not, and almost everyone doesn't, this is an original concept. We need more films that boast original concepts. I don't expect everyone to agree with me and that's alright, but what I thought was that Bright was the right kind of bad. This isn't a boring film at all, take that for what it's worth. There are elements of the film that are really bad, there are some that are okay. What I thought once this was over were two things. This is nowhere near the worst film of 2017. The second was that this could have been good had the concept been taken in a drastically different direction.

Bright is set in an alternate universe where Los Angeles exists as some kind of dystopian hellscape, run down and looking entirely like shit. Humans co-exist with other races, some of which are never explored, but I spotted centaurs, humans, orcs, elves, fairies, and dragons. If there was anything else, I didn't notice it. Anyway, in this version of Los Angeles, Daryl Ward (Will Smith) is a LAPD officer who has been forced to partner with the nation's first orc officer, Nick Jakoby (Joel Edgerton). The way the film presents it, this world has a racist structure and in effect the portrayal of these things is also racist due to stereotyping. The orcs are on the bottom of the pyramid, humans are in the middle, and elves are on the top. Fairies are like flies that need to be gotten rid of. At the start of the film, we see footage of Ward being shot by an orc who was coming out of a store after robbing it. Ward did survive, but everyone in the department blames Jakoby, and everyone hates the idea that Jakoby is part of the police force. There are no exceptions to this. Our early scenes show the way things are, how the city works, how the elves are the rich class of people, and a little bit of history is thrown in there too. There was apparently something called the Dark Lord, all the races besides the orcs (who supported the Dark Lord) had to unite to kill it, and as a result that means magic exists too. Anyway, while on a call, Ward and Jakoby encounter a crazy guy ranting and raving about the Dark Lord. This is the way I wish the film would have continued, or I would rather have seen them investigate a series of cases dealing with the relationship between the three feature races.

Instead of what I wanted, I got something I laughed a lot at but didn't want. Before that, one thing is made clear by Internal Affairs. They believe Jakoby let the orc escape after shooting Ward due to racial politics. They want Ward to record Jakoby admitting that he let the perp escape. Afterwards, they respond to a disturbance at a safe house for an extremist group called the Shield of Light, but it isn't like the officers knew beforehand. After a shootout, they go inside and see a magical being fused with a wall, an elf girl named Tikka (Lucy Fry), and a magic wand. Magic wands are how magic enters the world, but they are very rare and only people called Brights are able to touch them without killing themselves. When Ward calls for backup because they've found a wand, the four arriving officers, led by Pollard (Ike Barinholtz) and Ching (Margaret Cho), they want to take the wand and sell it or use it for their needs. They want Ward to kill Jakoby, which leads to Ward demanding the truth. Things get way out of hand from there, and there are all sorts of gangsters in that neighborhood. You think there's just human gangs kicking around? I think not. In any case, with a wand in play, there comes some interesting people along with. Kandomere (Edgar Ramirez) is an elvish federal agent who investigates these kinds of things, and he has a human partner, Hildebrandt (Happy Anderson). Are some of these names taking the piss or what? Anyway, if you find a wand anywhere, that's who you're supposed to call. Poison (Enrique Murciano) is a leader of a human gang, he's in a wheelchair while calling the shots. There's Dorghu (Brad William Henke), leader of the aforementioned gang of orcs which is called Fogteeth. Then there's Leilah (Noomi Rapace), leader of a cult called Inferni, they are working to bring the Dark Lord back and need to find three magic wands.

I try not to use such long paragraphs, but it's hard not to when setting this up. I still didn't spoil the events of the plot although it doesn't exactly take a genius to figure anything out. I already said what my wishes were and it's true, there's an opening montage that makes clear the divisions in the city and that some areas only elves are allowed to go into. I would have preferred that Bright explore that rather than go down such a ridiculous road. Now, seeing as the film went down this path I have to talk about it, and obviously I didn't like the way things went. I thought the first half the film was almost good. Yeah, I said it, and what? I don't have a problem admitting it. The problem with the film and this has to be taken into account when a lot of people are saying this is the worst movie of the year, is that people didn't pay to watch the film. They can also easily change the channel without having to worry about time investment, and because they're at home, they're going to think about what they could be doing with their time. I don't like this film, I'm going to be clear about that, but it ahd its moments. The shootout scenes are totally ridiculous and Bright also has some of the worst cinematography Ive seen in a long time, but I do think the shitty writer and director stumbled onto something with the concept of their world. The problem is that they just don't know how to use these ideas cohesively and craft them into something interesting.

Some of the jokes are offensive, which is hardly shocking considering the source of these jokes. I did find the banter between Smith and Edgerton to be nice, and a few of the action scenes have their moments as well. The one in the gas station probably wins out over the rest even though it's filmed very, very poorly. I think films need to embrace strange concepts more, even when they don't work out. This is not anything I would have ever expected to be made ten years ago, and after the sequel I doubt we'll see anything like this again. So if you cherish racist jokes wrapped up in a fantasy world, you should enjoy them while they last! Again, this isn't good, but it's reasonably fun. Each of the races has their own strengths and weaknesses, which is a whole other story now that I'm thinking of the ramifications of what I just said, but I'm going to end this review before I think about that too much. Bright fails when the film gets serious and should have played more and more to its strange side, but there is one thing coming to mind. What if this was a television show and the first half of the film was its pilot? What would people think then? I don't really have an answer to that, but even though the events of the film can best be classified as 'beyond rote', this was okay. The thing is, imagine being Netflix and spending $90,000,000 on this? That's totally insane, I have no idea what they're doing. The script is a goddamn mess and they're doing this again after everyone used the ideas they thought were good. You know the next one is going to be irredeemably shit.

5/10

2017 Films Ranked


1. Dunkirk
2. The Shape of Water
3. Get Out
4. Good Time
5. Mudbound
6. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
7. Logan
8. Wonder Woman
9. The Big Sick
10. Thor: Ragnarok
11. Logan Lucky
12. The Beguiled
13. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
14. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
15. The Lost City of Z
16. First They Killed My Father
17. Darkest Hour
18. A Ghost Story
19. Spider-Man: Homecoming
20. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
21. It
22. Battle of the Sexes
23. Okja
24. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
25. Kong: Skull Island
26. It Comes at Night
27. Split
28. 1922
29. Personal Shopper
30. Chuck
31. Atomic Blonde
32. Wheelman
33. The Lego Batman Movie
34. Megan Leavey
35. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
36. Menashe
37. American Made
38. Beauty and the Beast
39. Imperial Dreams
40. Gifted
41. Murder on the Orient Express
42. The Zookeeper's Wife
43. Free Fire
44. Win It All
45. The Wall
46. Life
47. My Cousin Rachel
48. Breathe
49. The Man Who Invented Christmas
50. Sleight
51. Alone in Berlin
52. A United Kingdom
53. Trespass Against Us
54. The Mountain Between Us
55. War Machine
56. Happy Death Day
57. Lowriders
58. Justice League
59. To the Bone
60. Wakefield
61. Bright
62. The Hitman's Bodyguard
63. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
64. The Mummy
65. The Greatest Showman
66. Rough Night
67. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
68. Sand Castle
69. CHiPs
70. Death Note
71. The Belko Experiment
72. The Great Wall
73. Fist Fight
74. Snatched
75. Wilson
76. Queen of the Desert
77. The House
78. Sleepless
79. All Eyez on Me
 

cobainwasmurdered

Administrator
Staff member
Messages
25,742
Reaction score
4,479
Points
333
Location
Abbotsford, BC
That movie was just typically silly bad sci-fi not "omg worst movie of the year bad" like critics acted. It felt like obvious bias because it was a big netflix project with a big name in it. "Valerian" was out in the same year IIRC and was far worse.
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
film-crownheights.jpg


Crown Heights (2017), directed by Matt Ruskin

I am not sure how to open this review of Crown Heights, which is a biographical film about a crime that in this case ended in a wrongful conviction. Apparently this film was conceived and adapted from a podcast regarding the case, which would explain why I'd never heard of the case as I do not listen to podcasts. I think in the case of Crown Heights that the facts of the story are greater than the reenactment of the trauma inflicted upon the people involved. I decided to watch this in the first place because I believe Lakeith Stanfield is one of the best working actors in Hollywood, I think I would watch anything he acted in without exception. If you've seen some of the trash I've watched, certainly you know this must be true. I was also surprised to learn that Nnamdi Asomugha has become an actor. That seems to have come out of nowhere and is nothing like what I thought he would do after retiring from football. It seems that he's also producing projects and I hope he gets a big break into things that more people view. What I would say about Crown Heights before delving into further detail is that I appreciate the commitment of the writer/director, of Colin Turner for participating in the project after his name was cleared, and that the project seems to have been faithful in not fabricating anything. This is quite useful when telling a story such as this.

Crown Heights is about Colin Warner (Lakeith Stanfield), a young man trying to make his way in the inner city after emigrating from Trinidad to the United States. New York City was a very tough place in the 1980s, as I think everyone is well aware of. Crime was very high, people were up to all kinds of wild shit. Colin, to his credit, does not absolve himself entirely of anything he may have actually did. We are shown Colin while he's in school as a mechanic, learning a trade as people used to do. He has many friends there, including Carl 'KC' King (Nnamdi Asomugha), but that's all about to chance. Colin wants to know if the shop is still taking stolen cars for money, and they are. So, when Colin's mother Grace (Adriane Lenox) tells him to pick up the color TV from the repair shop, that isn't all he intends to do. Colin tries to steal a car only to be spotted by the car owner in the process of doing so, the man gives chase. Eventually, this being a small neighborhood, the man sees his vehicle and therefore Colin, which leads to Colin having to drive away as fast as he could. The man latches onto the car and is knocked off, but Colin crashes and has to abandon ship. He takes the TV with him, but eventually he is stopped by some detectives, drops the television, and is arrested.

Presumably Colin believes that he's been arrested for stealing cars even though he's not going to say anything, but it's far worse than that. Colin has been accused of killing a man named Marvin Grant. The detectives say that he can sign the paper confessing to the crime or not, he doesn't and is sent to jail. Over the course of these two years, Colin is presented with various problems that come as a part of being in jail, but he did not kill anyone and does not belong there. Eventually he has an attorney, Bruce (Nestor Carbonell), and Bruce is convinced that he can get Colin acquitted for this murder. The problem is that Colin's case is picking up another defendant, a juvenile named Anthony Gibson (Luke Forbes). Anthony has been accused of shooting Marvin while Colin supposedly drove away, and while we know of Colin's innocence, Anthony is a whole other story. It is hard to believe that Anthony did not do it, but the prosecution's case is full of holes. They call a witness, a kid named Clarence (Skylan Brooks). Clarence has been busted for an armed robbery, he has been told what to do by police officers, yet when questioned about it these things are objected to and he is not allowed to testify about them. So, with an offer on the table, Anthony isn't the smartest guy, and Colin won't have the charges dropped against him when he could have. Unfortunately, this leads to Anthony being sent to prison on a juvenile bid, while Colin gets 15 to life. In New York. In the 1980's. I can think of nothing else worse than that, a life taken before it has started. Colin and Carl absolutely must work to get Colin out of there.

I've just gone and spoiled the whole movie, but I think if you turn this on anyway, you understand the premise is that a man is unjustly sent to prison for something they did not do. Presumption of innocence is supposed to be a part of our legal system, yet I don't think that it is or that it really ever has been. Cases without proof regularly lead to convictions and unnecessary plea bargains that spare the unfairly accused from something far worse. There is a very good film from last year that addresses this, but to say what it was would spoil the ending of it. I think on some level the director failed to make clear exactly how bad it is for an innocent man to be in prison, because the film is not long enough for us to see all of the horrible things that happened to Mr. Warner. On the other hand, torture porn is not something I find to be a requirement in a film, so I choose to let that slide. Crown Heights has a more measured approach to showing these things. The film follows a similar theme in many features recently, one of the complete and utter failure of law and order policies. These policies unfairly target black men, and the snippets with Reagan, Bush, George Pataki, and Bill Clinton speaking about other human beings sums up why this so easily happens to people in prison. I am left with the same feeling I have felt for many years now, that we live in a racist society. Nothing has ever changed. Crown Heights does not address this, but advances in the ability to detect who committed crimes only benefit those who have the money to buy themselves a proper defense.

As for the rest of the film, what comes to mind is that Crown Heights has to be carried by two actors and to a more minor extent a third one. The actors with the bulk of the load are Stanfield and Asomugha. The first 65% of the film focuses on Colin Warner almost entirely, the last 35% is about Carl King's journey to get his friend out of prison. The third actor I'd like to mention is Natalie Paul, who plays Colin's wife Antoinette. Colin knew Antoinette before going inside, married her in prison, and there's a scene related to this that I found quite devastating. The usual Hollywood touch with people weeping is fortunately not present in this moment, Crown Heights is a far more grounded film than most. I think that's the way I would sum it all up as well. Crown Heights focuses on a moral victory that is far too long in coming, the story is rather painful and the film is also quite depressing. I left some details out even though the result is obvious, but I am glad Crown Heights was made. Not enough do these kinds of films have any sort of realistic moral victory for the wrongly accused, but this one does. I appreciate that. The facts are a little overwhelming though, and I think the film needs some room to breathe where it focuses on the protagonists reflecting on what's happened to them, or what could happen. What I'm saying is that maybe this is too quickly paced.

7/10

2017 Films Ranked


1. Dunkirk
2. The Shape of Water
3. Get Out
4. Good Time
5. Mudbound
6. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
7. Logan
8. Wonder Woman
9. The Big Sick
10. Thor: Ragnarok
11. Logan Lucky
12. The Beguiled
13. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
14. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
15. The Lost City of Z
16. First They Killed My Father
17. Darkest Hour
18. A Ghost Story
19. Spider-Man: Homecoming
20. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
21. It
22. Battle of the Sexes
23. Okja
24. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
25. Kong: Skull Island
26. It Comes at Night
27. Crown Heights
28. Split
29. 1922
30. Personal Shopper
31. Chuck
32. Atomic Blonde
33. Wheelman
34. The Lego Batman Movie
35. Megan Leavey
36. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
37. Menashe
38. American Made
39. Beauty and the Beast
40. Imperial Dreams
41. Gifted
42. Murder on the Orient Express
43. The Zookeeper's Wife
44. Free Fire
45. Win It All
46. The Wall
47. Life
48. My Cousin Rachel
49. Breathe
50. The Man Who Invented Christmas
51. Sleight
52. Alone in Berlin
53. A United Kingdom
54. Trespass Against Us
55. The Mountain Between Us
56. War Machine
57. Happy Death Day
58. Lowriders
59. Justice League
60. To the Bone
61. Wakefield
62. Bright
63. The Hitman's Bodyguard
64. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
65. The Mummy
66. The Greatest Showman
67. Rough Night
68. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
69. Sand Castle
70. CHiPs
71. Death Note
72. The Belko Experiment
73. The Great Wall
74. Fist Fight
75. Snatched
76. Wilson
77. Queen of the Desert
78. The House
79. Sleepless
80. All Eyez on Me
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
190410-avengers-endgame-ew-232p_5cd0996d179a243889013eb8e7ebefda.nbcnews-fp-1024-512.jpg


Avengers: Endgame (2019), directed by the Russo Brothers

I have been struggling with how I'm going to start with this review. In some cases it has taken me longer to write these few sentences than many paragraphs. I suppose Avengers: Endgame is the culmination of the Infinity Saga, the point of why I catch up on franchise films. Not quite a perfect film but yet a very good one, Avengers: Endgame has to deal with events that were set up by the last film. It's also hard to put things together in a way that pays off all of the other 21 films, but Avengers: Endgame is one that does quite well in this regard, much better than I'd expected. I think it is possible that I have never seen a film with more named characters than this one had, so I should be fair in pointing out that it is quite difficult to use all of these characters in a way that would satisfy everyone. In this case I would say that Avengers: Endgame used the characters that would satisfy me and therefore I just feel a certain way about it. The question is where things go from here? I was glad to see that it was decided not to leave any hints whatsoever in this regard. Sometimes a movie studio needs to know when to leave well enough alone and in this case, one of them did. That alone can be considered good enough to explain the rating I am going to give, but I have so much more to say. I do not know how long it will take for me to say it, it may not take too long at all.

How does one summarize something like this that everyone will inevitably watch? The answer is that they do not. I will merely present the premise to you. The initial part of the film addresses Thanos (Josh Brolin) and what he's doing in the weeks after his destruction of half the life in our universe. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Nebula are on a ship and in need of rescue. The surviving Avengers are in need of dealing with Thanos and reversing his actions. They cannot. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) gets angry and kills him, which transports us five years into the future. Knowledge of the other films is entirely essential to enjoying this one, nothing makes sense otherwise. That's part of why I don't see the point in doing a full summary. The crux of the matter is this. The surviving Avengers from Avengers: Infinity War, as well as Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), they absolutely must find a way to undo the past. I guess that's the best way to phrase things. The process of that requires them to find all of the Infinity Stones before Thanos does, bring them back to the present, undo what he's done and send them back. There are some issues with Pym Particles as they cannot be recreated, there are also issues with the lives some people have created for themselves. They may not want to risk what they have.

One paragraph is unusual for me, but there's so much going on that I can't figure out how to make two. One was much easier. Anyway, let's talk about some of the things I liked. If you're reading this and not expecting spoilers, you're a fool. My absolute favorite thing in the film was Professor Hulk. Talk about giving me something I've always wanted to see in a movie. I am also fully cognizant of the reality that Marvel cannot give us a solo Hulk film, so to say they have done a good job with Hulk would be an understatement. They created an arc that would have taken a whole film but instead feels more special as it was spread out for longer. To that point, I think the same applies to Hawkeye even though I didn't enjoy the first parts of his arc anywhere near as much. This one, with this much focus on him and the addition of Ronin, is very welcome. Avengers: Endgame is pleasing simply beyond the fact or everyone returning for these reasons. There is barely any focus on the characters who do return from death, which is understandable, but the ones who remained made the film so much more enjoyable. I was glad to see that the film followed what I assumed to be the premise, but thinking those things and seeing them on screen is so much different. The trailer did such a good job of giving away absolutely fucking nothing, part of the reason I enjoyed the film so much is because I was also able to avoid spoilers all weekend. Full credit to the people who made the trailer for that.

Of course, there are some things I didn't like and I'll address them in a short paragraph. The machination which allowed Gamora to return from being dead is not exactly my favorite thing in the world, but I accepted it had to be that way. I do not care for her character being reset, and I don't think I'm cool with Star-Lord wooing her in another film, but I guess we'll get to that later on. I also didn't care for the use of Jane Foster coming through archive footage, but they had no choice as far as this goes. I also am not the biggest fan of the cinematography in these really big Marvel movies. The run time is also a little bit of a problem to be honest. The first act is ridiculously slow, and another more minor complaint is that I don't see how a movie like this one can ever be topped in the Marvel universe as a cinematic event. That isn't to say this is the best Marvel movie because it is not, that honor rests with Black Panther, but the scope of this film and the amount of characters contained within is incredible. The attachments people have to each character shine through the film, with everyone in the auditorium clapping at the singular things most important to them. Mine was, as already alluded to, Professor Hulk.

I'm going to wrap things up in this paragraph because while I have a lot to say, I can only type out so much of it in a coherent way. I do think there are things about this that are better than Avengers: Infinity War, but at the same time I'm not sure and that's why I'm going to give them the same scores. Thanos going on his mission to find the Infinity Stones is what makes that film so great, it is a journey where everything he does have massive meaning. The job being split between numerous characters has its great moments and it has some that are merely good. I will let each of you decide which of those this comment applies to. I do think, similar to some people here, that Ant-Man is the unsung hero of this movie, the glue that keeps it all together. I have no idea why this is because I usually don't care for Paul Rudd and his Ant-Man character is nothing more than good, but that's how I feel. The second place spot would go to Fat Thor. Did I expect that? Fuck no, and that's why you shouldn't read my review if you haven't seen this movie. I also wanted to say something about people who go see repeat viewings, because someone in my theater was saying that they had. Not only do I wonder how someone has time for this, I also wonder how anyone could sit through a film that is a solid, packed 170 minutes. Watching Captain America fight Captain America more than once in the span of four days sounds totally insane to me, I don't understand why people do that and I never will. In the case of Avengers: Endgame, I don't think anything is gained at all from watching the film again. i will say this though. The recreations of other films are fucking amazing, I could not believe how well this was pulled off.

8.5/10

2019 Films Ranked


1. Avengers: Endgame
2. Us
3. Gloria Bell
4. Arctic
5. High Flying Bird
6. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
7. Captain Marvel
8. Shazam!
9. The Beach Bum
10. Paddleton
11. Hotel Mumbai
12. Cold Pursuit
13. Happy Death Day 2U
14. Greta
15. Triple Frontier
16. Fighting with My Family
17. Brexit
18. The Dirt
19. Velvet Buzzsaw
20. Little
21. Alita: Battle Angel
22. The Kid
23. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
24. The Upside
25. Dumbo
26. The Hummingbird Project
27. Escape Room
28. Captive State
29. The Highwaymen
30. Pet Sematary
31. What Men Want
32. Unicorn Store
33. The Curse of La Llorona
34. Miss Bala
35. Hellboy
36. Glass
37. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
38. The Best of Enemies
39. The Prodigy
40. Polar
41. Serenity
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
the_space_between_us_h_2016.jpg


The Space Between Us (2017), directed by Peter Chelsom

Have you ever watched something that was so fucking trash you read the ending of a film well before finishing it? The Space Between Us is that bad. I have never done this before in the entire time I've been writing these reviews, but I did finish this movie even though I knew the ending. I made a big mistake when I turned this on, that's for sure. I should have bothered to read a review, but I don't do that, I assumed from the cast list and the inclusion of space that this would not be so ridiculous. I was wrong. This is my mistake, of course. I should have bothered to look into the director and if I had, I would have seen this man directed Hannah Montana: The Movie. I laughed numerous times at the end of this film, but I'm confused so much more by how a YA romance movie attracted Gary Oldman and Carla Gugino to these roles. I have never been so befuddled by anything related to a movie before, but I only have myself to blame for this. I promise to give this a full review, at least. One thing's for sure, I don't know how this happened and feel like I've killed some of my brain cells. Of course, this all being said, should I review more of these kinds of movies? The answer anyone would give me is yes, and maybe I will, but I don't know if I can take them. This is a very frustrating experience, and the film clocked in at a full two hours, that's difficult for me to accept and tolerate. The Space Between Us has the worst script I have ever seen, the performances in the film are not all that much better.

The Space Between Us begins with a space launch, with the leader of a private company deciding to colonize Mars. The man is Nathaniel Shepard (Gary Oldman), and this is the worst performance of Gary Oldman's career. Nathaniel is a visionary of sorts, but the things that happen on such a journey cannot be predicted. Sarah Elliott (Janet Montgomery) is one of the astronauts on this adventure, it turns out she is pregnant. Nathaniel and everyone involved with the project know the risks, but they do not know whether or not they can do anything about it. In the end, they decide a cover-up is their best option, because the child will have a different bone density due to gravity and nobody really understands what the effects of being born on Mars could mean when someone's never gone to Earth. In the process of childbirth, Sarah dies and Nathaniel is devastated. In the process of deciding to cover up the incident, Nathaniel goes for a walk out of his company and never comes back. I have never seen a more transparent case of a film foreshadowing what's to come. I guess I should expect that from a YA romance movie, but why the hell is Gary Oldman taking part in some trash like this?

Sixteen years later, Sarah's son Gardner (Asa Butterfield) has grown into a smart young man who has never been to Earth, only ever met a few people at the station on Mars. One day, apparently when this film picks back up, he begins to search for information about his mother. In the process of doing so, he discovers a video of his mother and another man, and Gardner has also found the wedding ring, so he wants to find his father. Gardner also has a habit of logging onto chatrooms, and he has a friendship with a foster child from Colorado, her nickname is Tulsa (Britt Robertson) and that's all we get. Tulsa has not had a great life, and Gardner has been spinning her some stories about why he can't leave his house in New York City. Anyway, Gardner also has a mother figure, an astronaut named Kendra (Carla Gugino), and she videos Nathaniel and the new director Tom (B.D. Wong) to tell them that he is too intelligent to stay on Mars forever. Nathaniel tells her that Gardner needs to have surgery and train to be on Earth, which is what happens. So, Gardner comes along. Nathaniel meets him even though he didn't want Gardner on Earth at all, and it turns out that Nathaniel is right, Gardner doesn't belong on Earth. Gardner has an enlarged heart, which he doesn't know, but he desperately wants to find his father. So, he escapes and goes to find Tulsa.

The Space Between Us is a huge trash pile, as I already said. The extent to which it is a trash pile can only truly be discovered by watching this, which you should not. The acting performance from Asa Butterfield is one of the worst I've ever seen, unless you think it's the point for him to act bewildered to this extent, in which case this is the worst script ever. Some of the situations this kid gets in are totally ludicrous. The thing that bothers me the most is that I can see a decent concept trapped in this awful film, but the point is to make a shitty teenage romance movie and therefore that's what the audience gets. I do not have anything positive to say at all. When Gardner nearly drowns to death at the end of the film, I actually laughed. Nothing about this makes any sense at all. The idea he could have an enlarged heart upon arriving on Earth and the idea that these awesome scientists would not know that is mind-boggling to me. The Space Between Us is such a piece of crap. There's a scene where the two are stealing/buying clothes that are too expensive for them, yet they still have money to continue driving across the country. The most ridiculous part isn't that, it's the way this foster kid with a rough life starts singing when she finds a piano in the store. I just, you know, I can't. I don't know what anyone was doing here.

There are scenes far more ridiculous than the ones I've already mentioned. I will continue to list them. One scene where Gardner intends to confront his father ends with him not doing that and walking into the ocean instead. There's another where he trades sunglasses with a bum he finds in some random part of Florida, I have no idea what the deal is with this scene but obviously someone found it amusing and forced the actor to do it. The film is also set in a society with greater technology than we have now, but the cars are the same and people still use dry erase boards. I don't get this. The two leads are also Butterfield and Robertson, I have no intention of misleading anyone here. They are ten years apart in age and Robertson is playing a high schooler, so I really should have known what I was getting into when I turned this on. Another one of my favorite scenes featured Gardner taking the overhead eyewash station in a classroom and turning it on for no reason, soaking himself. How did he get in a classroom? If you want to know about trash like this, all I can tell you is to watch it for yourself. The last thing I'll leave you with is the scene where he collapses in Las Vegas, is told that he's going to die and just powers his way all the way to Santa Barbara. That's around a six hour drive. I don't know what to say about some shit like that, which is why I listed these scenes. The movie is inconsistent and foolish. I can't imagine how anyone could have enjoyed it. This is one of the worst films I have ever seen, but after the two things I watched earlier today, it was a good time to view some trash.

2/10

2017 Films Ranked


1. Dunkirk
2. The Shape of Water
3. Get Out
4. Good Time
5. Mudbound
6. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
7. Logan
8. Wonder Woman
9. The Big Sick
10. Thor: Ragnarok
11. Logan Lucky
12. The Beguiled
13. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
14. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
15. The Lost City of Z
16. First They Killed My Father
17. Darkest Hour
18. A Ghost Story
19. Spider-Man: Homecoming
20. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
21. It
22. Battle of the Sexes
23. Okja
24. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
25. Kong: Skull Island
26. It Comes at Night
27. Crown Heights
28. Split
29. 1922
30. Personal Shopper
31. Chuck
32. Atomic Blonde
33. Wheelman
34. The Lego Batman Movie
35. Megan Leavey
36. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
37. Menashe
38. American Made
39. Beauty and the Beast
40. Imperial Dreams
41. Gifted
42. Murder on the Orient Express
43. The Zookeeper's Wife
44. Free Fire
45. Win It All
46. The Wall
47. Life
48. My Cousin Rachel
49. Breathe
50. The Man Who Invented Christmas
51. Sleight
52. Alone in Berlin
53. A United Kingdom
54. Trespass Against Us
55. The Mountain Between Us
56. War Machine
57. Happy Death Day
58. Lowriders
59. Justice League
60. To the Bone
61. Wakefield
62. Bright
63. The Hitman's Bodyguard
64. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
65. The Mummy
66. The Greatest Showman
67. Rough Night
68. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
69. Sand Castle
70. CHiPs
71. Death Note
72. The Belko Experiment
73. The Great Wall
74. Fist Fight
75. Snatched
76. Wilson
77. Queen of the Desert
78. The House
79. Sleepless
80. All Eyez on Me
81. The Space Between Us
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
new-years-eve.png


Phantom Thread (2017), directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

When Daniel Day-Lewis announced his retirement, I was probably not the only one who was wishing that he hadn't chosen a film with this description to be his last. After actually watching Phantom Thread, I am perfectly happy that this was his last film. The less said about Phantom Thread the better, so if you haven't seen it yet, scroll to the bottom for my score or turn around. There is absolutely nothing better that Daniel Day-Lewis could have gone out with, at least from where I sit. If I hadn't just seen Avengers: Endgame, this would have been the most pleasing film that I've watched for ages. I really mean that too, for ages. I'm not yet done with 2017 but I'm completely certain that the best two films from that year are decided in my mind, nothing is going to change the way I feel about this subject either. Is this the best movie I've seen in a while? Yes. Not even in dispute actually. With a comment like that I should explain my scores. A ten is rather large, it is because these films are so superior to everything else even if other scores are just a little bit behind. A ten is when I realize that I'm watching a masterpiece well before the conclusion of the film, when every element is in place to please me and does so with aplomb. The perfect film is something that does not often happen, but anyone who has watched a lot of films should know one when they see it. I hopped over to Metacritic and saw that the only critics who gave this a poor review seemed to have completely missed the point of the film. That's another way in which I know I've seen a masterpiece. People don't make films like this one either. Sorry, one person does. I have made a mistake.

One thing I would say about a movie like this is that they are a lot easier to sum up than the rest. The character work is so in-depth, the people involved are laid out for all to see. Phantom Thread is set in London circa 1954, and Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a famed fashion designer. His life's work is to create dresses, he is a very interesting and peculiar fellow. One of our first scenes features him at breakfast in his house, with what seems to be his girlfriend Johanna (Camilla Rutherford) and his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville). Reynolds has fallen out of love with his girlfriend, that much is clear. Johanna is eventually sent away, but we learn a lot from these moments. Reynolds is in a very low patch, but Cyril is not. Cyril is the guiding force in Reynolds' life, she ensures that he stays on his path and caters to him in every way which she can. After Reynolds is done designing a dress, he heads off to his house in the countryside. On the way there, is is infatuated with a waitress, a foreign woman named Alma (Vicky Krieps). Alma is asked to take Reynolds' breakfast order, and Reynolds plays games that I feel I should borrow and utilize in my own life. They seem to be quite effective anyway. He asks Alma to dinner and she accepts, at which point the courtship continues. It goes very well. I'm not sure I'll borrow this little trick of his.

After dinner, that's when things get strange and when I realized I was in for something quite more interesting than the short description made the film sound. Reynolds takes Alma back to his house and they have a conversation, after which he decides to take her upstairs. When they go upstairs, in comes Cyril, like she was there all along waiting for this. Cyril sits down with a book, and Reynolds gets straight to work taking measurements. I have no idea if Alma expected this, but Cyril jots down the measurements and Reynolds makes a dress for her. They are both infatuated with each other, which leads to Alma moving to London and becoming Reynolds lover and a model for him. This is where the meat of the film comes. We learn that Reynolds is a controlling person who is heavily focused on his routine, which is always disrupted when he has a new girlfriend. If one's mind wanders from here, like mine did, I started connecting the dots of what may have happened to lead to Johanna leaving. This is never, ever outright stated and is something I was thinking alone. Reynolds is extremely difficult to please, and Alma is her own person with her own desires. One thing I will leave you with is a scene where Alma is disgusted by the behavior of someone wearing one of Woodcock's prized gowns. Her motivational speech leads to him going crazy and having Alma take the dress off. Love is in the air from there.

If you're reading this, you've probably already seen the movie, but there are some devilish twists and turns from that point. All of them were entirely unexpected from my end. The events have more and more significance as the film carries on, which is how it should be. Too often the viewer is not given that consistent upward path to events with more emotional weight. This film is a masterpiece, I'm sure some don't agree, but I could not feel more strongly about anything. There's a scene with goddamn buttered toast that slays me. I don't like to make platitudes of a grand scale, I don't like saying a specific film is someone's 'best' work. I think in Paul Thomas Anderson's case that all his works have great artistic merit. I'm not just saying artistic merit, but GREAT merit. This is not his first masterpiece nor will it be the last, do you see what I'm saying here? There are so many scenes in this film that I thought were great that I can't even single one of them out above the rest. The score is one of the best I've ever heard and left me without words, it perfectly encapsulates the time in which the film is set. Jonny Greenwood's use of the piano here fills nearly the entire film with his sound, I do not know how someone conceives this either, but it is a piece of genius. The cinematography is not the best (here I go being a hypocrite) I've seen in one of Anderson's films, but the New Year's Eve scenes are spectacularly filmed. I snagged a picture of one of them to put above.

Phantom Thread is, rightly or wrongly, a film that makes me consider whether or not other films I hold in great standing are hokum. I'm trying not to think that, but when I see performances like the three in this film, I'm not sure what to say. This is another case of Daniel Day-Lewis crafting a unique character that I am unsure exists in another piece of film. Vicky Krieps, I will say, actually does an equal job of this. How? I don't really have an answer to that. You know how good another actor has to be in order to be DDL's equal? I think the scene in which this is best encapsulated is the wedding scene I have already mentioned. Deconstructing these scene presents these two people to be massive dickheads, but it's essential to understanding the characters. Reynolds is a weak person who is in need of being in control, he has surrounded himself with women for a reason, because he needs a mother figure after the death of his own. Alma is a much more strong willed person, she has a more difficult time accepting that this is how Reynolds is. He is a person of routine for a reason and is in need of being catered to. The scene where Reynolds has a dream lays all this stuff out there for anyone to see, but the way this film is directed obligates you to do some legwork yourself. Art is open to interpretation and this is certainly one of those cases.

If you read this even though you haven't seen it, you've gotten what you've asked for because when I see something like this I cannot keep spoilers to myself. The film has an odd authenticity that I cannot figure out how to put my finger on exactly. The house is very tall and has well defined rooms, but beyond that, when Alma gets flustered she responds in a certain way and falls over her words. I would like to know what goes into making something like Phantom Thread, I will have to search that out at some point. I know that a lot of people think that certain directors tick boxes to make what constitutes a "good movie," but I don't really believe in that process. In attempting to do that, and I do think that some directors do, I notice films that inexplicably fall flat as a result of doing things that do not come naturally to the director. What makes a great film is when someone has a vision in mind and achieves it without attempting to force anything the actors are incapable of making the audience believe in. I really wish I'd seen this in a theater because the score and cinematography was that strong, but on some level I understand why a person wouldn't care for this film. I don't know why you wouldn't, but I do see this work as being a problem for some who can't understand the relationships in question. The problem is that I found everything was exquisite and therefore I absolutely do not agree.

The best films in 2017, of which I would say there were two, bring something unique to the table. I would say though that the bombast of Dunkirk only slightly wins out. To create a unique narrative in the midst of that historical event, and for me to not find any real weakness, I think that says a lot. Dunkirk also does a great job disorienting the audience and disposing of characters as need be, which retains tension throughout. The tension in Phantom Thread, great as it is, is not quite as strong even though the technical aspects are fantastic. I also think Dunkirk has its own fantastic technical achievements. It would take something to absolutely blow me out of my seat in order for me to think anything from the last two years is as good as these two films. Yeah, better than Roma.

10/10

2017 Films Ranked


1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. Mudbound
7. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
8. Logan
9. Wonder Woman
10. The Big Sick
11. Thor: Ragnarok
12. Logan Lucky
13. The Beguiled
14. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
15. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
16. The Lost City of Z
17. First They Killed My Father
18. Darkest Hour
19. A Ghost Story
20. Spider-Man: Homecoming
21. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
22. It
23. Battle of the Sexes
24. Okja
25. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
26. Kong: Skull Island
27. It Comes at Night
28. Crown Heights
29. Split
30. 1922
31. Personal Shopper
32. Chuck
33. Atomic Blonde
34. Wheelman
35. The Lego Batman Movie
36. Megan Leavey
37. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
38. Menashe
39. American Made
40. Beauty and the Beast
41. Imperial Dreams
42. Gifted
43. Murder on the Orient Express
44. The Zookeeper's Wife
45. Free Fire
46. Win It All
47. The Wall
48. Life
49. My Cousin Rachel
50. Breathe
51. The Man Who Invented Christmas
52. Sleight
53. Alone in Berlin
54. A United Kingdom
55. Trespass Against Us
56. The Mountain Between Us
57. War Machine
58. Happy Death Day
59. Lowriders
60. Justice League
61. To the Bone
62. Wakefield
63. Bright
64. The Hitman's Bodyguard
65. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
66. The Mummy
67. The Greatest Showman
68. Rough Night
69. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
70. Sand Castle
71. CHiPs
72. Death Note
73. The Belko Experiment
74. The Great Wall
75. Fist Fight
76. Snatched
77. Wilson
78. Queen of the Desert
79. The House
80. Sleepless
81. All Eyez on Me
82. The Space Between Us
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
lead_720_405.jpg


Godzilla (2014), directed by Gareth Edwards

Is Godzilla even a movie about Godzilla? That's what came to mind once this was over, and I found that I had an extremely large problem with the way this was directed. Before that, I should talk about my own Godzilla experience. I cannot be the only one who went to see Godzilla at a drive-in in 1998, and this was not something I have positive feelings of. I thought the ending of that film was ridiculously stupid, but it had even greater problems. Chiefly among them was that there was no plot whatsoever, but the cast was also absolute garbage. I decided after that movie that I didn't really care about Godzilla and would never see another Godzilla movie if they made one. The problem is that I was a kid and because I was a kid, I wasn't telling the truth. I wanted to see more Godzilla movies, and as I got older I watched a few more. The thing is, 2014's Godzilla is the only film since that 1998 trash to be made entirely by an American studio. I absolutely demand more of these, so hopefully they continue to make money here and continue to be made. Godzilla: King of the Monsters is coming out around the end of this month, so with that in mind, I had to finally commit to watching this Godzilla entry. What I thought was that it was alright. These films, such as they are, need to be built around monsters instead of around the people who come into contact with those monsters. I will be the one to say this fails in that regard. It is still alright and could have been a lot worse. If you want to know exactly how much worse, just watch the film from 1998.

The way this film tells it, in 1954 Godzilla was lured to an island in the South Pacific in an attempt to kill him with a nuclear bomb. It doesn't take a genius to figure out they failed. We move forward to 1999, with Monarch, a secret organization that investigates these sorts of monsters, looking into a collapsed uranium mine in the Philippines. Monarch's remit is to hunt and study massive organisms, and Godzilla presents the idea that Dr. Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Dr. Graham (Sally Hawkins) are their lead scientists. While investigating the mine, they find two giant spores. One of them is dormant and the other has hatched and made its way out to the ocean, which brings us over to another country. In Japan, Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) is the supervisor of a nuclear plant in the fictionalized large city of Janjira. Joe and his wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche) have a child who for some reason is named Ford, and Sandra also works at the power plant. Sandra and some other technicians are sent into the reactor by Joe, but there's a problem. An earthquake of some kind breaches the reactor, which leaves everyone unable to make it to the blast doors guarding against radioactive exposure. Sandra dies right in front of Joe, but that's not all that happens to the plant. All of a sudden the place begins to collapse, the entire city becomes a quarantined zone, and it's time to move forward to our next part.

Of course we move forward another 15 years to 2014, which is when this film was released. Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) has joined the Navy and is an explosive ordinance disposal officer, which in short can best be described as a guy who turns shit off. He returns from his tour of duty to his family in San Francisco, his young son Sam and wife Elle (Elizabeth Olsen). Unfortunately, his father has been detained in Tokyo for trespassing in the quarantine zone and Ford must travel there. After he arrives, he perceives that his dad has lost his mind, but he's very wrong. Joe has a need to find out the cause of the nuclear meltdown, and he's able to get Ford to come along with him to retrieve some data he left in their old house. Upon arrival, they find that the zone is not contaminated by radiation, but they are detained again and brought to a facility that is in the ruins of the plant. The facility is exactly what I expected. There is a large creature of some kind in the middle of it, and with no radiation in what should be a quarantine zone after a meltdown worse than Chernobyl, it's obvious that the creature is doing something with that. For whatever reason, Dr. Serizawa does not understand this and the thing has been emitting electro-magnetic pulses. It's eventually going to wake up, but Serizawa has always had a theory about Godzilla, whose existence has remained secret. He thinks Godzilla is supposed to keep the Earth relatively safe. We will soon find out.

As I said, this film focuses too much on humans, but Godzilla: King of the Monsters appears to be giving us literally the exact opposite of that. In the end, we'll see which I approach I liked more. The MUTO is a pretty nice creation, but I was really feeling the length of this movie around the middle portions. I do not believe Godzilla appears on screen until a full hour in. One may be able to take that approach with one of the characters in an Avengers movie, but this is fucking Godzilla and I do not think that's acceptable. There is a positive to this approach in the sense that it made the battles and appearance of Godzilla feel more important, but again, I don't think that's a particularly good idea. The battles themselves are more than important, they're excellent to watch. I also got a lot of enjoyment from seeing the MUTO destroy everything in their wake, or from Godzilla emerging from the ocean. I don't really understand the logic of that Hawaii scene after the same thing didn't happen in San Francisco, but this isn't a movie where you're supposed to think about stuff like that. You are supposed to only think about the monsters, but the presentation Gareth Edwards has given us is odd in this way. I did find some of the scenes where he would show media coverage of the monster battle to be nicely amusing even if they disrupted the pace of the film.

I'm still looking forward to Godzilla: King of the Monsters, I do think Godzilla was a bad step of sorts. The film isn't bad, but the decision to focus on the human characters so much is an egregious error only saved by the kaiju battles everyone waits so long for. The director obviously thought people would care about his cast, but it turned out that I didn't. I do not need the human reaction to Godzilla, maybe this makes me weird, but I want what I want. The scientific parts of the storyline are acceptable although I always question the intelligence of the characters who believed things that didn't turn out to be true. Makes me laugh. The problem with the human side of the story is that Bryan Cranston is doing literally everything he can to save it, and when he disappears and you see his intensity gone from performances in front of you, the film suffers. I can barely give this a passing grade in fact. I don't know why studios allow directors to make films like this one, or rather I don't know why studios think audiences want to see human cast members in these kinds of movies. I largely want to see monsters killing shit and I want to see a smaller focus on humans, who still belong in the film. There just shouldn't be so many of them.

6/10
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
AR-302099405.jpg&MaxW=1200&Q=66


John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017), directed by Chad Stahelski

You know how good a sequel has to be for me to instantly believe I overrated the first movie? I've actually gone back to change the score and that isn't something I'm really in the habit of doing. When it comes to a movie like John Wick: Chapter 2, one instantly compares the action scenes between the sequel and its predecessor. The performances and the story actually do not matter that much, but rather the journey of the character itself and what they have to go through. I am fully cognizant of the fact that in effect that's the story, but for some reason I just don't entirely see it that way. I have had the pleasure of seeing a lot of similar revenge films in the last year. Some of them bring something unique to the table and others didn't, but as far as the ones with copious murder go, the John Wick films stand out above the rest. John Wick: Chapter 2 simply has the most unique action scenes of the bunch. The way I felt while watching this was that I didn't want it to end, I wanted to see how the film would continue and how nicely I would be surprised. Eventually, I remembered that John Wick: Chapter 3 is coming out in a few weeks and I was able to forget about that. I really can't wait to check that out, already bought my ticket, but for now my mind cannot wander much. The blatant scene with Neo and Morpheus fucking made this movie for me, if it wasn't already made well before that. But, if you need that hook to be interested, it's there and waiting for you.

John Wick: Chapter 2 is set four days after the first film, which is interesting and father good. John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is attempting to get his stolen Mach 1 Mustang back from a chop shop, which is owned by Abram Tarasov (Peter Stormare), the brother of the villain from the previous film. I will spare you the details for the purposes of enjoyment, and because it doesn't really matter. Once John is done, he visits Aurelio (John Leguizamo) once again, and Aurelio is to repair his car. I know without doubt this must factor into the third film somehow. After that visit, John cements his weapons and coins back into the ground, and presumably that's it. That's not it. John is visited by Santino D'Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio), an Italian mafia boss who reveals some important things to us. When John completed his task that allowed him to be normal again, he asked Santino for help. Santino helped him, but he also swore John to a marker. A marker in the world of John Wick is a blood oath medallion, a promise he cannot break, and there are consequences if he does. The main consequence is death. He is simply not allowed to break this oath, but he claims that he is retired. The events in the first film show that he is not, but John asks Santino to leave anyway. Santino decides to blow up John's house with a grenade launcher, so he has nothing that he started the first film with. All of it is gone.

Of course, that having happened, John travels to the Continental Hotel. He drops his dog off with the concierge, Charon (Lance Reddick), and heads upstairs to talk with Winston (Ian McShane). Winston, as you know, is the owner of the hotel and controls a large part of this assassin game. He tells John that if he rejects the marker, as I already said, he will be killed. There are two rules that cannot be broken. No blood at the Continental, and every marker has to be honored. John then accepts his fate and meets Santino, who wants John to kill his sister Gianna (Claudia Gerini). Gianna controls a stake in the game and has a seat at the High Table, which is a council of crime lords Santino wishes to sit on. Gianna inherited the seat when their father died, and Santino is jealous. Santino sends John to Rome, and unbeknownst to John, he is followed by Ares (Ruby Rose), the mute bodyguard of Mr. D'Antonio. Upon arrival, the stage is set for mayhem. John has to infiltrate the party where Gianna is being given her seat at the high table and assassinate her. Gianna is also protected by Cassian (Common), her bodyguard. Everyone takes part in this little game as this film makes more clear. It also turns out that Ares is following John so she can kill him, because after all, Santino must take revenge against his sister's killer. Funny how all this works.

The way Mr. Stahelski is able to weave these action scenes together from one to the next is something I really appreciate, but I found that the beginning of the film dragged a bit. I think that's a natural reaction when the film starts off so nicely, but John Wick: Chapter 2 is an awesome film. The scenes once John arrives back in New York are so excellent, I have no words for these. I don't particularly care for the creative decision that ends the film, but knowing there is a third chapter and that the chapter appears to be so good, I don't really care. There are so many good things here. Shall I list them? I don't think I will this time, but my favorite sequence by far was the series when the open contract on John goes out. That shit was everything to me. I think what I've learned from watching John Wick: Chapter 2 is that I want more creative action scenes rather than the slow down and built up story that exists in John Wick. The second entry is a hell of a lot more violent, more stylish, more colorful, and more quickly paced. This isn't the best shoot 'em up I've ever seen, but it rates highly enough that if I was making a list, I would have John Wick: Chapter 2 on it. That's the highest of high praise. I went down a list of my IMDB ratings and found that the film would almost certainly rank in my top 20. That's very high praise indeed, but I'm not a list maker and I'm not going to create a list, so forget about that. John Wick: Chapter 2 also may not be in my top 20 for long so that would be a pointless exercise, I have too much to watch.

I did see that Lionsgate was considering making a series about the Continental Hotel. I don't know what other people think about this, but from my point of view this is a good idea. Less is more, that's certainly true, but there are so many stories to tell within this world they've created. The lore with the blood oaths, the coins, the contracts, I think all that stuff is something I'd like to see explored more. Nearly every time I see an article about a studio turning a film franchise into a television franchise, I cringe as hard as I possibly can. This, Star Wars, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe are the only times I haven't! So, that's the kind of quality I guess we're talking about here. I'm going to give this film a rating it deserves because I loved it, I will not sugarcoat anything. I know everyone has their own opinions about these two films and which one is better, but it's clear where I stand. If someone told me that a movie was created where the underworld was supposedly as strong as it is in John Wick: Chapter 2, I would have laughed at you, but this is very nicely done. I can only hope that when they make the television series, they adhere to the same principles. The scenes that really work, I don't think they would cost all that much money to make on television. In any case, Lionsgate mostly makes trash now and would really need this to be good, so I think they'd try their best. I really want to see it.

8/10

2017 Films Ranked


1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. Mudbound
7. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
8. Logan
9. Wonder Woman
10. The Big Sick
11. Thor: Ragnarok
12. Logan Lucky
13. The Beguiled
14. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
15. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
16. John Wick: Chapter 2
17. The Lost City of Z
18. First They Killed My Father
19. Darkest Hour
20. A Ghost Story
21. Spider-Man: Homecoming
22. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
23. It
24. Battle of the Sexes
25. Okja
26. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
27. Kong: Skull Island
28. It Comes at Night
29. Crown Heights
30. Split
31. 1922
32. Personal Shopper
33. Chuck
34. Atomic Blonde
35. Wheelman
36. The Lego Batman Movie
37. Megan Leavey
38. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
39. Menashe
40. American Made
41. Beauty and the Beast
42. Imperial Dreams
43. Gifted
44. Murder on the Orient Express
45. The Zookeeper's Wife
46. Free Fire
47. Win It All
48. The Wall
49. Life
50. My Cousin Rachel
51. Breathe
52. The Man Who Invented Christmas
53. Sleight
54. Alone in Berlin
55. A United Kingdom
56. Trespass Against Us
57. The Mountain Between Us
58. War Machine
59. Happy Death Day
60. Lowriders
61. Justice League
62. To the Bone
63. Wakefield
64. Bright
65. The Hitman's Bodyguard
66. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
67. The Mummy
68. The Greatest Showman
69. Rough Night
70. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
71. Sand Castle
72. CHiPs
73. Death Note
74. The Belko Experiment
75. The Great Wall
76. Fist Fight
77. Snatched
78. Wilson
79. Queen of the Desert
80. The House
81. Sleepless
82. All Eyez on Me
83. The Space Between Us
 

cobainwasmurdered

Administrator
Staff member
Messages
25,742
Reaction score
4,479
Points
333
Location
Abbotsford, BC
I'd be fine with a TV show. I thought JW2 was a step down from the first movie personally as it felt a bit too selfaware but was still a fun movie.
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
0725_maudie01-1000x667.jpg


Maudie (2017), directed by Aisling Walsh

After watching what I watched in the last few days, I made a decision to swing as hard as possible away from those films as I could. This decision turned out to be successful. One thing I was thinking about the other day is that Canadian entertainment seems to have a major stigma. The works most film buffs talk about out of Canada are filmed by Quebecois and Native filmmakers. Fairly or unfairly, the rest of the provinces either produce American works (British Columbia), nothing at all, or things that are derided and called inferior. I'm not an expert on Canadian cinema and won't claim to be one, but I do read what other people say and that's what I've based this on. So, with that in mind, why did I choose to watch this? Ethan Hawke is a good enough reason, the film has a decent Metascore, and it seemed like it was very different than anything else I've watched in a long time. That's often how I justify a lot of the things I decide to review here, and I don't watch anything without reviewing it. There are some tonal issues with this film, I found that to be quite clear, but ultimately I thought Sally Hawkins put on another great performance. That wins out when it needs to, and that's enough for me. But what if it wasn't Sally Hawkins playing this role? What if an inferior actress was in the slot with the responsibility of carrying the film? That sounds like it would have been an utter disaster from top to bottom.

Maudie takes place in rural Nova Scotia, and is focused on the life of a Canadian artist, Maud Lewis (Sally Hawkins). Maud made paintings that I could best describe as similar to those my mom made when she was younger, the resemblance was uncanny. Of course, Maud came first and was born in 1903. Maudie starts off with Maud at a young age, suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and making her way through life anyway. She lives with her Aunt Ida (Gabrielle Rose) because she is not able to take care of herself. Her brother Charles (Zachary Bennett) pays Ida to take care of his sister, but this is the 1930s and I don't know how much money that is. Enough to matter? That isn't made clear. Maud learns from Charles that he has sold their family home when their parents died as it was not left to Maud. He pocketed the proceeds and Maud was upset. Maud then goes out one night to a nightclub in their very small town, and there's a reason for Ida's anger that we do not yet learn until later in the film. But, as I said, Ida was angry and didn't want Maud going out. Eventually Maud has enough and looks to leave with any chance she gets. Along comes a chance one day at the local general store, when the local fish peddler Everett Lewis (Ethan Hawke) walks in and posts an advertisement for a maid on the board.

Everett is clearly very gruff and nobody in their right mind would take this job, but nobody thinks Maud is in her right mind. She also wants the hell out of her aunt's house. She takes Everett's ad and goes to his very small house, which isn't connected to the electrical grid in any way, is very dirty, and needs a massive cleaning job. That's what Maud is there for, but there are obvious limitations on what she may be able to do. Everett is a piece of shit and doesn't give a fuck about what she may be able to do. She can do it or leave, simple as that. There's also some scandal in the town because Maud has moved in and the two are not married, which as you know was a bad thing in those days. There was gossip that Maud was Everett's sex slave, which is pretty ridiculous. Anyway, Maud starts painting things once she gets more and more settled in, which leads to an opportunity. Sandra (Kari Matchett) is one of Everett's customers and she'd bought fish from him, but Everett has forgotten because he doesn't write anything down. Sandra is from New York City, but she loves Maud's paintings and wants her to start making things for her to buy. Everett likes this because now more money is coming in, but Maud has some things she wants to. Like, for example, to marry this guy even though he sucks ass.

The film's decision to show so much of Maud's marriage even though her husband is abusive, even though he eventually comes around, is something I just don't understand. Maudie lacks a little bit of imagination as a result of that, the film should have been about the creativity of Maud Lewis and her inspiration for painting. There's not a lot of that here I'm afraid. I have a major issue here because I strongly believe this is a poorly made film yet there are things I like about it. This is strange. The reason I say this is poorly made is because we're supposed to be pleased with the end of the film even though Everett was a very abusive cunt. I was not. I also stuck around to watch this for a bit of the credits and I saw that there was a video of the real Maud and Everett. This was a big mistake. Everett looks nothing like Ethan Hawke whatsoever and that blows a hole through everything I was thinking as this film went on. I'm also curious to know if Everett was exactly this abusive. There is, I believe, no way to know. The film loses its way when one starts thinking of the details in creating a cohesive, likable motion picture. They are lacking here.

On the other hand, the film does boast two very strong things and those are Hawke and Hawkins' performances. No real surprise there. Hawke's character here is a real nasty fucker, and even though this isn't a role I've seen him in before, I still buy it. Sally Hawkins really did her best though, I have seen old and frail looking women before and the performance was more like a likeness. This was uncanny, entirely believable, and her character was very sympathetic. Maudie is one of those films I'm surprised was even made, and I'm only just going to give this a passing grade. It is missing some of the details and notes that I think are necessary in making a film about an artist, but the two lead performances are excellent. I saw a thing while looking at the Wikipedia page about how Nova Scotians were angry this was filmed in Newfoundland, and I'm not sure I've ever heard anything more Canadian than that. Contrary to what some would think, my problem with Maudie isn't the subject matter (meaning art), it's the presentation that just doesn't do it at all for me. I also don't find much redemption for abusive husbands in films like this one, so that's where I'm at. I really hate that shit and find it sometimes to feel like we're supposed to understand where the abuser is coming from. Well, I do not.

6/10

2017 Films Ranked


1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. Mudbound
7. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
8. Logan
9. Wonder Woman
10. The Big Sick
11. Thor: Ragnarok
12. Logan Lucky
13. The Beguiled
14. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
15. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
16. John Wick: Chapter 2
17. The Lost City of Z
18. First They Killed My Father
19. Darkest Hour
20. A Ghost Story
21. Spider-Man: Homecoming
22. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
23. It
24. Battle of the Sexes
25. Okja
26. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
27. Kong: Skull Island
28. It Comes at Night
29. Crown Heights
30. Split
31. 1922
32. Personal Shopper
33. Chuck
34. Atomic Blonde
35. Wheelman
36. The Lego Batman Movie
37. Megan Leavey
38. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
39. Menashe
40. American Made
41. Beauty and the Beast
42. Imperial Dreams
43. Gifted
44. Murder on the Orient Express
45. The Zookeeper's Wife
46. Free Fire
47. Win It All
48. The Wall
49. Life
50. My Cousin Rachel
51. Breathe
52. The Man Who Invented Christmas
53. Maudie
54. Sleight
55. Alone in Berlin
56. A United Kingdom
57. Trespass Against Us
58. The Mountain Between Us
59. War Machine
60. Happy Death Day
61. Lowriders
62. Justice League
63. To the Bone
64. Wakefield
65. Bright
66. The Hitman's Bodyguard
67. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
68. The Mummy
69. The Greatest Showman
70. Rough Night
71. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
72. Sand Castle
73. CHiPs
74. Death Note
75. The Belko Experiment
76. The Great Wall
77. Fist Fight
78. Snatched
79. Wilson
80. Queen of the Desert
81. The House
82. Sleepless
83. All Eyez on Me
84. The Space Between Us

The line of what people should watch on that list, by the way, is above and not including Beauty and the Beast. Below that line is entirely dependent upon how you feel about the genre or subject. You should absolutely not watch anything below Sand Castle.
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
long2.jpg


Long Shot (2019), directed by Jonathan Levine

So, I'm obviously not the only one here who avoids the movies Seth Rogen makes. I have read a lot of comments from other people who do the same thing, so it made me feel not so weird. With that in mind, now that I'm trying to see everything, that shit is going to change. I thought the trailers for Long Shot were just acceptable, and after seeing them I understood why the film was being released the weekend after a monster Avengers release. My assumption was that it was being buried. After seeing Long Shot, I don't understand why the film was released at this point and think that it is going to be unfairly destroyed at the box office. The other issue with assuming this is going to be a regular Seth Rogen movie is that this is as much his movie as it is Charlize Theron's. Charlize Theron is so beautiful that it hurts, so yeah, that's how I feel about that. I assumed this was stunt casting and was proven wrong as the film went along. I made comments about how comedies should be judged when I went to see Little, and that's exactly how I feel now. I intend to carry that on forever. You know something else I was thinking after I watched Long Shot? I was impressed that the filmmakers decided to leave the best moments out of the trailer. Trailers that put in all the funny parts usually are a sign of a dogshit movie. This trailer contained none of them! I expect people here would disagree, but I thought this was pretty good.

Our film kicks off with Fred Flarsky (Seth Rogen) working as a journalist in the middle of attending a neo-Nazi meeting. This is rather amusing but is something I didn't want to laugh at. Anyway, in the middle of the meeting, he is asked to get a swastika tattoo. When he complains, everyone else shows that they have one, so he must start too. While one of the lines is being drawn, one of the Nazis pulls up his profile as a journalist for an independent liberal newspaper, and that's it for the tattoo and for him. He's screwed. So, he decides to jump out of a window covered by the Confederate flag, nothing breaks his fall and he crashes onto the street below. At least they didn't kill him like they said they would do. At the same time, Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron) is the Secretary of State for this great nation. She is called into the White House to speak with President Chambers (Bob Odenkirk), a former television star who used his role in a TBS show about the presidency in order to launch a campaign. Obviously it worked. The President called Charlotte in to tell her that he is not going to run for reelection, but Charlotte wants to run for President herself and will need his endorsement. The endorsement is given, which leads to Charlotte having to put together her staff. After some recommendations from a pollster (Lisa Kudrow), Tom (Ravi Patel) and Maggie (June Diane Raphael) are going to do what it takes in order to push Charlotte over the top.

The film continues this alternating pattern for a while, which I found to be well balanced between the two characters. We go back over to Fred for the moment that sparks the rest of the movie, the fact that his boss (Randall Park) has sold the newspaper to someone who could best be described as a right wing shitbird like Rupert Murdoch. Parker Wembley (Andy Serkis) is a religious nut too, but Fred is extra liberal and does not want to work for someone like that. So, he quits. After quitting, he goes to see his best friend Lance (O'Shea Jackson Jr.), who wants to go get fucked up with his boy. After they're done, he wants to go to a World Wildlife Fund event to see Boyz II Men. Who wouldn't want to do that? So, they do, and it's time for us to see how the two collide. I'm going to spare the details of what happened in this scenario, but it turns out that Charlotte was Fred's babysitter. When they see each other, they stare for a little bit before having a conversation. Prior to that, Charlotte's staff wanted her to work on a relationship with James Steward (Alexander Skarsgard), the Prime Minister of Canada. Steward is supposed to be as bland and as boring as could be, that doesn't matter right now. What matters is that Charlotte needs a good speechwriter who knows something about her and Fred's the guy for the job.

I left out a lot of details for a reason, the film is better to watch not knowing them. Before I left to go to the theater, I saw that the director had also directed Snatched, which I have already reviewed and said I hated. That was not the best omen prior to viewing this, but in the end it didn't matter and it turned out that film was terrible for other reasons. I laughed often and I laughed hard, I was not the only one who felt this way and very rarely do I hear people talking about a movie as they leave. I can only think of a few times and nearly all of them were good, the lone bad comment was someone saying they weren't expecting Glass to be so boring because the woman from American Horror Story was in it. Take that comment for what you will. In any event, there were things I was trying not to laugh at that I wound up laughing at anyway. As far as supporting characters that serve as the glue to hold a movie together, O'Shea Jackson Jr. is the one that does the best job of things. Consistent laughs is the best way to describe his role, and there's also a good part where he levels with Fred and lays out the way things work when people are too judgmental of others. Charlize Theron is simply a lot better at this than I thought she was. She's game for any joke, nothing is off limits and people really should know that if they decide to go see this film. Her ability to participate in this is what makes it and makes some of the problems with the film easy to ignore.

All in all, I just want to laugh because most comedies I've seen in the last year are absolute shit. Long Shot delivers the whole way, I thought. While one would think this is a mismatched pairing between Rogen and Theron, it really isn't, famous people have hot wives all the time and people should know this. I've also seen schlubs out at places like Disneyland who have the same luck in life. It's easy for me to ignore the implausibility of that because it isn't all that implausible. What I would say is that this story is original enough, and that there are good bits in the buildup to Rogen and Theron reconnecting with each other. Bob Odenkirk's role is totally fitting, and Skarsgard makes a great bland, product tested politician. There are some lessons to be learned from this film too, and some good commentary about how our politicians are created for mass consumption, but I just wanted to laugh. The film delivers on that point. There's also a hell of a Fox and Friends like spoof in this movie and it made me laugh a lot, but it being so accurate is a problem in that the real thing actually exists and says those exact same things. Long Shot shouldn't work like this, but it does and it's a lot of fun. Most of these comedies now are fucking awful, so maybe I'm overrating this. Maybe I'm not.

7.5/10

2019 Films Ranked


1. Avengers: Endgame
2. Us
3. Gloria Bell
4. Arctic
5. High Flying Bird
6. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
7. Captain Marvel
8. Long Shot
9. Shazam!
10. The Beach Bum
11. Paddleton
12. Hotel Mumbai
13. Cold Pursuit
14. Happy Death Day 2U
15. Greta
16. Triple Frontier
17. Fighting with My Family
18. Brexit
19. The Dirt
20. Velvet Buzzsaw
21. Little
22. Alita: Battle Angel
23. The Kid
24. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
25. The Upside
26. Dumbo
27. The Hummingbird Project
28. Escape Room
29. Captive State
30. The Highwaymen
31. Pet Sematary
32. What Men Want
33. Unicorn Store
34. The Curse of La Llorona
35. Miss Bala
36. Hellboy
37. Glass
38. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
39. The Best of Enemies
40. The Prodigy
41. Polar
42. Serenity
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
extremely-wicked-shockingly-evil-and-vile-movie.jpg


Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019), directed by Joe Berlinger

It's about time that I get to something this year that will both be critically divisive as well as ignite a furor on the internet. Or, you know, maybe it won't do the latter at all. I will be the first to admit that I know nothing about Ted Bundy other than that he was a serial killer who murdered a lot of women. I do not care to know the details right now and I get no enjoyment out of hearing them, so I will probably not seek them out until I watch a documentary at some point in the distant future. I have mixed feelings about Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile after watching it, but I am confused by one of the takes I read after the Sundance Film Festival. Someone said that the film presents the idea to the viewer that Bundy may not have been guilty, but I just don't see that viewpoint at all. That viewpoint is only the case if the person viewing the film is a complete moron, in which case they need to be put on a watchlist. I do not know how anyone could possibly believe these crimes are in doubt. I do think there's one thing to be wary of in the wake of this, it's the idea that these films are an acceptable form of exploitation. There are mixed feelings on this, but I believe I said when I watched Zodiac that it's different when the events of the film took place a long time ago. If I didn't say that then, I'm saying it now. What matters is whether or not there is artistic merit or a lesson to be learned from this film. I believe the answer to both questions is yes.

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile opens with Ted Bundy (Zac Efron) doing something that is not any of those things. Elizabeth Kloepfer (Lily Collins) is out with her friend Joanna (Angela Sarafyan) at a bar, it is made clear in this conversation that she is a single mother. She's worried nobody will notice her and she'll be stuck as a single mom, but Ted notices her from across the bar. They dance, they kiss, they go back to her house and go to sleep. The next morning she wakes up, but Ted isn't there, and if you don't know every detail about Ted Bundy, this is supposed to alarm you. In the end, Ted is with Elizabeth's daughter cooking breakfast, and he slides into their life. Their life appears to be a model life, everyone's happy. At least, that is, until they aren't. What the fuck is it about Washington and serial killing? Someone's going to have to explain that to me. My assumption is that it's because Washington was somewhat of a frontier in those days, the weirdest people in the country wanted to escape there and to San Francisco. They easily made it over there and upon arrival, that's the part I don't quite understand. Do they see how wide open the states are? There are huge areas with nobody living in them. The states are also not that populated, I don't get it. The frenzy about serial killers is also more concentrated in the past than it is now. If they still exist, I don't know of any of them.

Now that I've gotten all that off my chest, let's move on. Ted eventually moves to Utah so that he can attend university in Salt Lake City. One night while driving home, he ignores some stop lights and is pulled over by James Hetfield, this was something I had to try hard not to laugh at. Mr. Hetfield doesn't believe Ted's story and shines his flashlight in the back, where Ted has left some tools of the trade if you will. Ted is summarily arrested and bails himself out. Unbeknownst to him, this story has gone everywhere and is in the paper even in Seattle, where Liz has been reading it. When Ted shows back up at home, he gets slapped in the face and asked what he's been doing. Ted spins a nice story in his favor and tells Liz that he's being set up, but the viewer knows this is not the case. If you do not think this is the case, you are lacking brain cells. Eventually Liz accompanies Ted to his trial in Utah, the trial is for aggravated attempted kidnapping. Ted has been lined up and picked out by the witness, but he claims that he should be let off because the police had showed the woman some pictures. Ted takes the advice of his attorney John (Jeffrey Donovan) and opts for a bench trial, but this is a mistake. Even though Liz believes him entirely no matter what she hears, she is stunned when Ted is found guilty. If you know Ted Bundy you know the rest of the story from here. If you don't, I guess you should watch the movie?

Of course, when someone watches a film like Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, they run straight to Wikipedia to get more information. What I find is that even though the events shown in this film are very truthful, the director has been clever in what he's decided to leave out. One example is that Ted once told Liz he would break her neck because she confronted him over stealing things. This is the lone omission I could find that feels like leaving something important out. One thing I would say is that these movies aren't for afficionados of stories about serial killing, their point is to inform a wider audience of what the murderer did and lessons we should learn from it. Some directors decide not to use the latter at all. I do think Mr. Berlinger made a reasonable effort to teach us some lessons. One is that when people are suspicious of a person, they need to say something. Another is that people need to get a reality check and not get in the habit of serial killer worshipping. I am afraid that in making these stories in the first place, that genie has gotten out of the bottle. When I read stories about women talking about Ted Bundy being cute, what the fuck is that shit? That guy killed thirty women and that's what you have to offer as a comment? People are strange, I tell you that.

If you're expecting a movie where Ted Bundy goes around the country murdering people like the killer from The House That Jack Built, I enjoy telling you that you aren't going to get that. I counted one murder by Bundy and it is placed in a very effective sequence of the film. This is how one avoids charges of exploitation, I suppose. The film is more focused on how Bundy found his way to the chair, and the impact of these crimes on Liz rather than depicting what he did. There are many ways to present a portrait of a serial killer, but I do think this is the best route although it may seem bland or like sanitizing Bundy's crimes. The reason I would say the film doesn't sanitize his crimes is that there are multiple scenes in courthouses describing what he did and we are subjected to his very real comments in response to testimony. The film is effective in that way as well. I do have a problem with this though. In not showing him violently murdering at least a few people, as in Zodiac, I think people don't get the full imagery of the crimes of the murderer. I would say that the film as a whole is good but needs scenes cut in to show his crimes. I don't understand why this wans't done. The viewer doesn't need to see him killing thirty women, and we really don't need to see him killing one either, but it is the obligation of the filmmaker to paint a picture that is descriptive enough for the viewer to understand the story.

The film does boast a very strong trial scene in Florida, which leads to Jim Parsons, Kaya Scodelario, Haley Joel Osment, and John Malkovich coming into play. I don't care to tell you who they play, but these performances were all pretty good. Of course, they pale in comparison to Zac Efron's depiction of a serial killer. Efron gets some scenes during this trial where he really has an opportunity to lean into his character and does so very well. This is the best performance I've seen him give, but I'm glad this film wasn't released later in the year. The cries for him to win Best Actor would be absolutely nauseating, the performance is nowhere near that good. I just wanted to be clear about that. What I think is that someone should watch Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile and judge for themselves. Some people have said the film is really good and others have said it's pretty bad. I'm more in the middle than that and I think I would say that it's a decent film. There are some narrative decisions I wouldn't have made, but the story is engaging enough and I was intrigued the whole time. I think one would be more inclined to say this is boring if they know all of what Ted Bundy did, or watched documentaries before. In that case I would suggest giving this one a swerve. This subject is also something that arguably would have made a better miniseries as some of the events of Bundy's life really needed more time. The last season of American Crime Story made this quite clear to me, I thought it was more enthralling because the scope of the killings was more easy to understand. In doing so, Andrew Cunanan looked like a fucking monster and there was nothing left to people's imaginations. I guess that's what this is missing, but of course, Cunanan killed five people and not thirty.

6.5/10

2019 Films Ranked


1. Avengers: Endgame
2. Us
3. Gloria Bell
4. Arctic
5. High Flying Bird
6. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
7. Captain Marvel
8. Long Shot
9. Shazam!
10. The Beach Bum
11. Paddleton
12. Hotel Mumbai
13. Cold Pursuit
14. Happy Death Day 2U
15. Greta
16. Triple Frontier
17. Fighting with My Family
18. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
19. Brexit
20. The Dirt
21. Velvet Buzzsaw
22. Little
23. Alita: Battle Angel
24. The Kid
25. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
26. The Upside
27. Dumbo
28. The Hummingbird Project
29. Escape Room
30. Captive State
31. The Highwaymen
32. Pet Sematary
33. What Men Want
34. Unicorn Store
35. The Curse of La Llorona
36. Miss Bala
37. Hellboy
38. Glass
39. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
40. The Best of Enemies
41. The Prodigy
42. Polar
43. Serenity
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
walking-out.jpeg


Walking Out (2017), directed by Alex and Andrew Smith

My decision to watch Walking Out was two-pronged. I wanted to watch another winter survival movie because I had not done so in a few months. Not the worst idea in the world. The other reason I turned this on was because it was very critically acclaimed. I am not so high on the film, but I did like it and can say that I would recommend giving this a look. This is the kind of movie there isn't much to, hoping that the viewer sees the film as a case of less being more. Less is more but there are also times when things are too much less, when the plot of the film does need bolstering and movies with a minimalist approach don't bring more to the table. The thing that separates Walking Out from The Revenant is exactly that, but those things also cost a hell of a lot of money. The producers of Walking Out obviously did not have that, so I'll give them full credit for making a good movie on what had to be a small budget. I think part of the reason I don't think this is a great film is because I found one of the two characters to be an utterly annoying simp for around half the film. Is that wrong of me? Probably. There's a unique opportunity for a story to be told in this space, I am going to explain how it was done below. That's the part that really got to me, where the film has the most power.

David (Josh Wiggins) is a young boy who is sent to Montana to spend some time with his father during winter. When he's flying in on a plane, we see him playing video games on his cell phone. Upon arriving, we meet his father Cal (Matt Bomer), a man who hunts in the mountains and lives off the grid. He has expectations of his son and they are going to be followed. David is just not like that though. He wants to play around on his phone, but Cal isn't going to allow that. Kids the age of David, and particularly people in his generation, just don't care about nature or much of anything beyond their limited worldview. It is hard to understand how Cal created a child like this when he's a man of the wilderness, but everyone has to get to the wilderness by joining the world. That kind of thing is bought and earned. This part is left up to your imagination. Anyway, the first goal is for David to kill a quail. This is a complete and utter failure, he's inaccurate from any and every distance. This starts to make his dad angry. When they go back to the cabin, they have to share a bed and David plays games on his phone, which leads to Cal threatening to smash it. The relationship between these two is more primal than a normal father-son relationship because the father in this case is not normal.

After this first night, Cal has a plan for David's trip and thinks he knows how this will go well. He has been tracking a moose for some time and wants to take David up to the mountains to hunt and kill it. Then, they will eat it. David does not understand the point of this and a lot of people his age wouldn't either. While up in the mountains, Cal is going to explain life to his son as you'd expect. They also left David's phone at the cabin, so that's done and dusted. Cal has also done things that are significant to him, but not his son. One of those things is for him to give his father's rifle to David. There's more to it than simply explaining life to his son though, the ultimate question David wants to know is what his grandfather Clyde (Bill Pullman) was like. What that leads to is a conversation where David asks Cal what his first kill was like, and while I'm not going to say anything about that, these flashbacks are quite effective. Of course, as any movie like this goes, something bad happens and the title gives it away, the two must walk out of the wilderness and find help.

I think the praise for Walking Out was a bit overboard, but I do think this is a good movie. The cinematographer had only worked on television shows, which is a bit strange considering how nicely this is put together. The shots of a wilderness landscape are always going to look good in fairness, but there's also nice bits of operation and scene structuring. The thing that kept me engaged with the film is that we have a millennial who can't let go of their phone doing things that they're completely unaccustomed to. There's some real value in that aspect of the story, but at the same time I was having difficulty with the incompetence of the young adult. The screenplay is also nice, but I think the flashbacks lead to the story becoming a little disjointed. I don't have an answer as to what could have been done to make that better. I will also admit it is nice to see another movie with only a scant few cast members. The last one I saw like that, I can't talk about it because it debuted earlier this year and I presume nobody here has seen it yet. It would also spoil the film.

This is the kind of movie that looks to check off certain boxes, because it's a father-son coming of age drama. It hits pretty much all of them, but the story doesn't resonate more strongly with me because I never went to do this with my dad. You know what my dad did when he wanted to bond with me? We went to the movies, or we went to see the Lakers play the Spurs, or took a trip to Six Flags. Shit like that. I'm not a product of divorce and have been able to spend plenty of time with both my parents, so I'm privileged in that way. Because of those things, the story doesn't hit as strongly with me as it may have with others. The ending of the film is quite good though, I will tell you that. I sort of expected the ending to be what it was, but without having seen it before, there's still impact in the moment. But, I think that overall, this is more for people who have gone hunting with their dad. I am not one of them.

7/10

2017 Films Ranked


1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. Mudbound
7. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
8. Logan
9. Wonder Woman
10. The Big Sick
11. Thor: Ragnarok
12. Logan Lucky
13. The Beguiled
14. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
15. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
16. John Wick: Chapter 2
17. The Lost City of Z
18. First They Killed My Father
19. Darkest Hour
20. A Ghost Story
21. Spider-Man: Homecoming
22. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
23. It
24. Battle of the Sexes
25. Okja
26. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
27. Kong: Skull Island
28. It Comes at Night
29. Crown Heights
30. Split
31. 1922
32. Personal Shopper
33. Chuck
34. Atomic Blonde
35. Wheelman
36. The Lego Batman Movie
37. Megan Leavey
38. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
39. Menashe
40. Walking Out
41. American Made
42. Beauty and the Beast
43. Imperial Dreams
44. Gifted
45. Murder on the Orient Express
46. The Zookeeper's Wife
47. Free Fire
48. Win It All
49. The Wall
50. Life
51. My Cousin Rachel
52. Breathe
53. The Man Who Invented Christmas
54. Maudie
55. Sleight
56. Alone in Berlin
57. A United Kingdom
58. Trespass Against Us
59. The Mountain Between Us
60. War Machine
61. Happy Death Day
62. Lowriders
63. Justice League
64. To the Bone
65. Wakefield
66. Bright
67. The Hitman's Bodyguard
68. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
69. The Mummy
70. The Greatest Showman
71. Rough Night
72. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
73. Sand Castle
74. CHiPs
75. Death Note
76. The Belko Experiment
77. The Great Wall
78. Fist Fight
79. Snatched
80. Wilson
81. Queen of the Desert
82. The House
83. Sleepless
84. All Eyez on Me
85. The Space Between Us
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
ghost-in-the-shell-1.jpg


Ghost in the Shell (2017), directed by Rupert Sanders

What happens when you take a property that people want to see adapted, do a few controversial things along the way and give the reins to a shitty director? You get a box office bomb, and that's what they deserved. It is somewhat incredible that Rupert Sanders have been given the opportunity to direct two blockbuster films based on absolutely nothing at all. It appears that he directed some commercials and that's it. Imagine that. Of course, this was a mistake and it doesn't make sense, which is reflected in the box office of both Ghost in the Shell and Snow White and the Huntsman, which I have forgotten even existed. I never watched the latter either, probably never will. Of course, the white washing controversy was a big deal at the time this was made, but I am convinced that was not the reason Ghost in the Shell bombed at the box office. There are so many different things I can think of and I'll talk about them later, but what I really want to say is that people in Hollywood need to give more care to who they give these potential franchises to. We've seen this time and time again where millions of dollars are flushed down the toilet because someone was unable to execute an interesting idea. The things in Ghost in the Shell are intriguing ideas, but none of them are followed up on whatsoever. The focus is instead on the Hollywood ideas prominent in the story, and it turns out this is a major problem.

Sometime in the future, in a city never named and a country never spoken of (which is peak lazy), humans are augmented with cybernetics in order to improve the attributes they need to improve. Hanka Robotics is a developer of these things, and they have started a project with the intent of learning how to place a human brain inside of an artificial body. Mira Killian (Scarlett Johansson) is the sole survivor of a terrorist attack, picked up from her refugee boat on the way into this unnamed country. Her designer is Dr. Ouelet (Juliette Binoche), and Dr. Ouelet's boss is a man named Cutter (Peter Ferdinando). Cutter wants Killian to become a member of an anti-terrorist police force called Section 9, the reason being that her brain inside of that robotic body is the way of the future. We fast forward a year and Killian is now a Major in said police force, her partners are Batou (Pilou Asbaek) and Togusa (Chin Han). Their chief is Mr. Aramaki (Takeshi Kitano), who speaks Japanese and everyone is able to understand him. Some of these things aren't explained when they should be, but I digress. The opening of the film is about Killian and the glitches she has in her system that lead to visions, or at least Ouelet says these are glitches. Of course they aren't. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this medication she has to put in her neck is also not medication that allows her to use this body. If you bought that at all, wise up.

The first mission we see Killian on is at a business conference for Hanka Robotics. There is a diplomatic delegation from Africa at the conference, and we are shown moments of terrorists planning an attack. Among those terrorists is a robotic geisha, which I posted a picture of because I thought it was cool. The geisha starts murdering hostages, which leads to Killian putting it down. After that's done, her team learns that the geisha was hacked by an unknown being called Kuze (Michael Pitt). This leads to Killian doing a "deep dive" into an AI, which leads to it trying to hack her, and this is all pretty stupid. Anyway, this hack leads to the team being led to a nightclub, which has some cool stuff in there. Cutter is mad that Killian is being endangered in this way because that's his pet project, and he threatens to have the unit, known as Section 9, shut down. It turns out that Kuze is attempting to kill people who worked on a specific project that he was part of, and if you want to know more, watch this stupid movie yourself. There isn't anything else I can tell you!

Ghost in the Shell is dead set on playing out all these Hollywood cliches with Killian, where she does things unwittingly that she is told mean something else. The most obvious example is with the medication she puts in her neck. I absolutely hate this kind of shit, I don't find there to be any value in it at all. The road to robotic self-discovery is usually great, but the medication that is a memory suppressor, and the existential questions in this film are the wrong ones. The juice isn't in what the robot/person was doing before the events in the film, but what makes them different than everyone else. Their personalities and augmentations have their own purpose, but this is not explored. Ghost in the Shell is a generic film as a whole even though it does have some strengths. The concept in the anime film sounds a hell of a lot better to me, and before anyone asks, I am not going to watch it. If one is to present a film with as many technological matters as Ghost in the Shell, I demand the producers really lean into things. There could have been questions about why the person's brain was taken and put into the body and face of someone of a different race. That's one way to deal with whitewashing.

Part of the reason I didn't like Ghost in the Shell is because I've been watching Westworld, which goes so far beyond and above this concept. The difference in the mystery and intrigue between the two works is too large to put into words, but I think the greatest thing is that one is about the search for one's soul, while this is about trying to find what someone was before these events. I am of the opinion that the latter does not matter. The lone thing I thought Ghost in the Shell brought to the table was that of visual brilliance. The presentation of Tokyo, or wherever this is supposed to be, is nothing short of excellent. I love those super-futuristic city landscapes, I would like to see even more of them. The problem is that the cinematographer is not equally up to par. When at ground level, where the characters are walking through hallways or inside of buildings, this feels like a SyFy television show. I was floored by this until I saw that the cinematographer for Ghost in the Shell did this year's Serenity as well. That makes all the sense in the world! The performances, unfortunately, they're nothing. The looks of the characters also bring something to the table, which is again a matter of visual brilliance. The production design when not in those hallways is off the charts.

On some level, I found myself thinking that this movie was for young teenagers. There isn't much here to dispute that notion, but I thought Ghost in the Shell was not good at all. The villain concept is also not the same as the description of the manga character. There is no element of Kuze being the leader of anything at all. Ghost in the Shell is lacking in details, the story brings nothing to the table, and that's why the film didn't make any money. I didn't find anything here particularly enjoyable at all.

5/10

2017 Films Ranked


1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. Mudbound
7. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
8. Logan
9. Wonder Woman
10. The Big Sick
11. Thor: Ragnarok
12. Logan Lucky
13. The Beguiled
14. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
15. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
16. John Wick: Chapter 2
17. The Lost City of Z
18. First They Killed My Father
19. Darkest Hour
20. A Ghost Story
21. Spider-Man: Homecoming
22. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
23. It
24. Battle of the Sexes
25. Okja
26. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
27. Kong: Skull Island
28. It Comes at Night
29. Crown Heights
30. Split
31. 1922
32. Personal Shopper
33. Chuck
34. Atomic Blonde
35. Wheelman
36. The Lego Batman Movie
37. Megan Leavey
38. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
39. Menashe
40. Walking Out
41. American Made
42. Beauty and the Beast
43. Imperial Dreams
44. Gifted
45. Murder on the Orient Express
46. The Zookeeper's Wife
47. Free Fire
48. Win It All
49. The Wall
50. Life
51. My Cousin Rachel
52. Breathe
53. The Man Who Invented Christmas
54. Maudie
55. Sleight
56. Alone in Berlin
57. A United Kingdom
58. Trespass Against Us
59. The Mountain Between Us
60. War Machine
61. Happy Death Day
62. Lowriders
63. Justice League
64. To the Bone
65. Ghost in the Shell
66. Wakefield
67. Bright
68. The Hitman's Bodyguard
69. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
70. The Mummy
71. The Greatest Showman
72. Rough Night
73. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
74. Sand Castle
75. CHiPs
76. Death Note
77. The Belko Experiment
78. The Great Wall
79. Fist Fight
80. Snatched
81. Wilson
82. Queen of the Desert
83. The House
84. Sleepless
85. All Eyez on Me
86. The Space Between Us
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
baywatchheader.jpg


Baywatch (2017), directed by Seth Gordon

I may be the only person here who has never watched the television show, not even as jerking material. Baywatch is something I am completely unfamiliar with, but I am comfortable in stating that this an homage to a bad television show. The ending of Baywatch strongly indicates that it cannot be anything else, and with that in mind I'm not sure how to tackle such a project. The best way of doing so is probably for me to do this in a short way. Obviously, with this being announced as a short review, that means I didn't particularly care for the film. Not only is Baywatch not funny, but the seriously corny parts later in the film are absolutely horrendous. Could anyone have made a good Baywatch movie? I don't think that's possible, but I think the director and studio could have chosen a more coherent and consistent tone for the film that wouldn't have been this bad. The largest problem is that a movie like this serves a lot of masters and the people making it aren't entirely sure what they want to do. So, as a result of that, they do everything. When a movie tries to do everything, no matter what it is, it just isn't going to be good. I probably would have liked this even more if it was a hard R-rated comedy, even if it wasn't good. I would have liked to laugh a little bit. This is the risk of watching movies you haven't read reviews about, I didn't know exactly what I was getting into and that's always going to be a problem for me. I just don't want to know.

Set in a fictional town called Emerald Bay in Florida, Mitch Buchannon (Dwayne Johnson) is a lifeguard lieutenant who has given his life to protect the beach as part of an elite unit called Baywatch. This is laughable, of course, and the early part of the film does nothing to dissuade that notion. We are given so many scenes of guys staring at ass to the point of complete ridiculousness. Almost as many shots of the guys staring as there are asses. Mitch has made 500 rescues, which bothers his boss Captain Thorpe (Rob Heubel) and the local police officer, Sgt. Ellerbee (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). The reason the cop is bothered is because Mitch thinks his unit should also serve as detectives, which they obviously should not. Mitch's team consists of his second, Stephanie Holden (Ilfenesh Hadera) and C.J. Parker (Kelly Rohrbach), who serve the roles that I guess they're supposed to. Before things really kick off, Mitch discovers a small bag of flakka, a drug that has washed up on shore near a club owned by a busineswoman, Victoria Leeds (Priyanka Chopra). Victoria is in the process of bribing city councilmen because she wants to privately own the beaches, and they're needed to make it happen.

The concept of this is that there are going to be tryouts for a singular lifeguard position, and there are three hopefuls. First, there's Ronnie (Jon Bass), the fat guy with a crush on C.J. and a dorky friend named Dave (Hannibal Buress). There is no logical way in which this guy could conceivably become a lifeguard. Next up is Summer Quinn (Alexandra Daddario), a friend of Stephanie's although none of this is ever expanded upon. Lastly, there's Matt Brody (Zac Efron), who is a former Olympic gold medal winning swimmer at a low point in his life. During a relay race, he vomited in the pool and that was the end of his career. He's also on probation, I didn't catch why, but the point is that Captain Thorpe wanted Brody to be on the team. So, Mitch is tasked with getting him into the tryouts. Thorpe also believes that the city won't cut Baywatch's funding any further if they rehabilitate Brody's image and make him the star of the unit. Do you see how much nonsense this is? I can't quite put my finger on it either. Anyway, Mitch gets into the exclusive three person tryout as a result of Thorpe's involvement and his willingness to save a drowning woman and her kids during a challenge where he's competing with Mitch.

This movie makes a strange shift from weak-sauce comedy to bad melodrama, and I'm having a hard time pinning down exactly when that happens. The melodrama is where I assume this becomes an homage to the original show, but I'm not certain of that. It's pretty bad. That was why I said this needed to commit to a tone, but if the film had entirely committed to that tone, it would have been terrible anyway. I don't have a lot to say about this movie because I didn't care for the style and I had a busy day. What I would like to say is that I think this is the worst movie the Rock has ever been in. I also think that Zac Efron has tanked his own career when he's a good performer who is above this sort of material. I don't understand why he or anyone else chose to be in this, with the exception of the fat guy. The fat guy gets to bang the hot blonde chick, as usually happens in these, so I see why he wanted to be in this. When the comedy leaves, the film gets worse, but what's crazy is that I've seen even worse from 2017. Nothing here makes any great sense, but I did like the David Hasselhoff cameo. I just wish this wasn't so absolutely boring.

3.5/10

2017 Films Ranked


1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. Mudbound
7. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
8. Logan
9. Wonder Woman
10. The Big Sick
11. Thor: Ragnarok
12. Logan Lucky
13. The Beguiled
14. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
15. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
16. John Wick: Chapter 2
17. The Lost City of Z
18. First They Killed My Father
19. Darkest Hour
20. A Ghost Story
21. Spider-Man: Homecoming
22. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
23. It
24. Battle of the Sexes
25. Okja
26. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
27. Kong: Skull Island
28. It Comes at Night
29. Crown Heights
30. Split
31. 1922
32. Personal Shopper
33. Chuck
34. Atomic Blonde
35. Wheelman
36. The Lego Batman Movie
37. Megan Leavey
38. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
39. Menashe
40. Walking Out
41. American Made
42. Beauty and the Beast
43. Imperial Dreams
44. Gifted
45. Murder on the Orient Express
46. The Zookeeper's Wife
47. Free Fire
48. Win It All
49. The Wall
50. Life
51. My Cousin Rachel
52. Breathe
53. The Man Who Invented Christmas
54. Maudie
55. Sleight
56. Alone in Berlin
57. A United Kingdom
58. Trespass Against Us
59. The Mountain Between Us
60. War Machine
61. Happy Death Day
62. Lowriders
63. Justice League
64. To the Bone
65. Ghost in the Shell
66. Wakefield
67. Bright
68. The Hitman's Bodyguard
69. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
70. The Mummy
71. The Greatest Showman
72. Rough Night
73. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
74. Sand Castle
75. CHiPs
76. Death Note
77. The Belko Experiment
78. The Great Wall
79. Fist Fight
80. Baywatch
81. Snatched
82. Wilson
83. Queen of the Desert
84. The House
85. Sleepless
86. All Eyez on Me
87. The Space Between Us
 

Baby Shoes

Baby Shoes
Messages
25,397
Reaction score
2,223
Points
293
cobainwasmurdered said:
I thought JW2 was a step down from the first movie personally as it felt a bit too selfaware but was still a fun movie.

Just want to thank you for saying this as this is how I've felt but I feel like I've been the only one to say this of everyone I have talked to.

Saying I had high hopes isn't the right thing to say about Baywatch but it definitely had potential to be more than the dull movie we got.
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
intruder.png


The Intruder (2019), directed by Deon Taylor

I have been waiting to see some entertaining trash for a few weeks, and I knew I should have counted on the director of Meet the Blacks to provide it. How trashy is this film though? It goes pretty far. I wouldn't say it's terrible or anything of the sort, but The Intruder is a film that has some problems. It also has its strengths, almost all of which are rooted in a good performance by Dennis Quaid. Is that really enough for a movie to make money though? I saw a lot of people at the showing I went to, which surprised me on some level. It was a Wednesday afternoon, there are no specials on tickets on Wednesdays, so I don't get it. Will word of mouth carry The Intruder to a good second weekend? I'm curious to see if that's the case. I've been seeing previews for this for what seems like forever though, and maybe that's why this is making money. White Trump voter looking guy trying to break up a black marriage and stake his claim? Maybe that draws at the box office now. I will also say that The Intruder could have been a lot worse, but the producers of this film knew exactly what they were making. The actors are also pretty good in their roles. Even though I don't think this was a particularly great film, I have a feeling that in the future people will look back on this movie as one fitting of the time.

Scott Howard (Michael Ealy) is an advertising executive, living in San Francisco with his wife Annie (Meagan Good). They live a very good life and are quite well off. The film begins with Mikey (Joseph Sikora) driving his best friend Scott to a surprise party at Scott's house, because it's his birthday. The only thing missing from this scene is "In Da Club." At this party, we learn that Annie wants to leave the inner city and start a family. Her sights are set on Napa, they want a very big house. The start of their search takes place at a huge house whose owner calls it Foxglove, named after the plant because in the past there had been a lot of it in the region. The owner is Charlie Peck (Dennis Quaid), a man who we first see shooting a deer and saying there's a bounty on those deer for eating people's gardens. This was not true. Charlie gives the couple a tour of the house, and anyone with a brain can see the guy is bonked in the head, but Annie likes the house so much and thinks he's harmless. Charlie obviously holds emotional value with the things in the house, but after Scott balks at his very high asking price of $3.5 million (I said the Howards were well off), Charlie lowers the price by $200,000 and offers them the furniture as well. This is accepted, and it is time for the Howards to move in.

Seemingly the Howards are a happy couple, but this isn't entirely true. Later in the film we learn that they've had their share of problems. After Charlie moves out, as you may suspect from any of the numerous commercials advertising The Intruder, he comes back to mow the grass. Annie is alarmed but not to the same extent Scott is. This happens more and more, Scott starts getting nervous about his wife being left alone in the country. There's worse than that though. Scott and Mikey believe that there's someone out in the woods, there are many reasons that they think this. The potential of someone being out in the woods leads to a security system being installed. Do you really think that's going to be enough? Do you really think Charlie is harmless? The answer to both questions is no, but the problem still remains with Annie. She doesn't seem to believe that Charlie could do anything creepy, even though they both hear sounds in the house and perceive that someone may be inside when they aren't supposed to be. Scott also works 50 miles away. That's a long way, isn't it?

It is no coincidence whatsoever that Charlie wears a red baseball cap all the time, let's put it that way. The idea of a guy like that who loves his guns trying to break up a marriage so that he can have the black woman for himself presents some interesting unexplored subtext. It's hard for me to outright hate a movie that does play on these sorts of themes throughout. There's a bit where Charlie accuses Scott of being unable to afford the house, which, you know what that means. This is totally a B movie though, I think that much is clear. There are all these scenes where people are doing something inside the house with Charlie hanging out in the background, and I think I loved them. The other bit when he gets mad about the security van being there just wrecked me. That's also one of the problems with the film at the same time, that Annie is so gullible and incapable of believing that any of these things Charlie does have an ulterior motive. Scott and Mikey are the ones who believe there's something wrong with Charlie, and these thoughts manifest themselves in very funny and realistic ways. Could you imagine having to eat Thanksgiving dinner with some fucker like that because your wife felt bad and invited him? I can't fathom it.

This isn't perfect, and it isn't good either, but I did like it. I'm not going to give this film a good rating because it's extremely cliched and I've seen stuff like this before. I prefer to give good scores to things that have originality. There are also some major logic gaps in the events here, but I don't want to start listing them because that's not any fun. I think The Intruder also suffers from a pacing issue where nothing too fun happens until the film is nearly over. That's a long time to wait for a major event, I think it took around 70 minutes. There are decent things here and there, but this is very slow and I found myself more interested in Quaid's performance than how the plot was moving along. Obviously there were no technical achievements to speak of at all, but I also liked the ending of the film.

5/10

2019 Films Ranked


1. Avengers: Endgame
2. Us
3. Gloria Bell
4. Arctic
5. High Flying Bird
6. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
7. Captain Marvel
8. Long Shot
9. Shazam!
10. The Beach Bum
11. Paddleton
12. Hotel Mumbai
13. Cold Pursuit
14. Happy Death Day 2U
15. Greta
16. Triple Frontier
17. Fighting with My Family
18. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
19. Brexit
20. The Dirt
21. Velvet Buzzsaw
22. Little
23. Alita: Battle Angel
24. The Kid
25. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
26. The Upside
27. Dumbo
28. The Hummingbird Project
29. Escape Room
30. Captive State
31. The Highwaymen
32. Pet Sematary
33. The Intruder
34. What Men Want
35. Unicorn Store
36. The Curse of La Llorona
37. Miss Bala
38. Hellboy
39. Glass
40. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
41. The Best of Enemies
42. The Prodigy
43. Polar
44. Serenity
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
beatriz-at-dinner.jpg


Beatriz at Dinner (2017), directed by Miguel Arteta

I remember when it was coming time for Beatriz at Dinner to be released. My memory is telling me that a lot of people were laughing at the concept, and to be fair, I was one of those people. I was one of the people who said that I had no interest in this, but my brother saw the trailer and asked me if I was going to watch it. I lied, I told him no. I just watched the movie, so look at me now. Beatriz at Dinner is an extremely ambitious work, one with strengths and flaws just like everything else. The strengths outweigh those flaws by quite a lot though. I think the concept is quite interesting, there shouldn't be a lot of these kinds of movies, but I am surprised that there were not more of them. Somehow the film ends in a less than pleasing way after the things that come before it being so enjoyable in their own way, but prior to that I thought this was fun. Was it supposed to be fun? I don't know how to answer that question. I can say that I have never cringed more while watching a movie. I am unfamiliar with the director entirely, but I do see that he seems to have directed a lot of similar comedies. In that case maybe I need to go back a little bit in the future, but in all likelihood I won't. I just wanted to string you along in case you're actually reading this, I'm not sure how many people are.

Beatriz (Salma Hayek) wakes up one day and is taking care of her animals, a group which for whatever reason contains a goat. Before that, she was having a dream where she was rowing a boat in a swamp, and I must admit that I never connected the dots on this bit in relation to the story. She drives a Volkswagen with a bad starter, and after a long journey through Los Angeles traffic, she arrives at her workplace. Beatriz works at a cancer center and meets with people there, she practices things like sound therapy and massage, what I would call "somewhat" alternative medicine. After her shift, she drives to the house of a very rich client in Newport Beach, Kathy (Connie Britton). That's a long haul from her house in Altadena, let me tell you. During the massage she gives Kathy, she winds up telling Kathy that her neighbor has murdered one of her goats because it had gotten outside. When she goes to leave, she can't start her car. Beatriz tells Kathy that someone will come to fix it when he gets out of work, but that could take some time. Kathy asks Beatriz to stay for her dinner party, which Beatriz does as she doesn't have much of a choice. After all, Kathy insisted and it's clear Beatriz won't be allowed to wait in her car. I could only imagine what it would be like to be in the proceedings that follow.

After a bit that includes Kathy's husband Grant (David Warshofsky) getting mad about Beatriz staying at their house, the two couples begin to roll in. First there's Shannon (Chloe Sevigny) and Alex (Jay Duplass), both of whom are elated with the way Alex's business venture is going. When Beatriz goes up to them, I have never cringed so much when watching something. It gets worse. Next up is the other couple, Doug (John Lithgow) and Jeana (Amy Landecker). At this point, everyone goes outside and Kathy introduces Beatriz to her friends, but there's still the matter of the men. Anyway, the reason Kathy really knows Beatriz is because Beatriz was a major factor in Kathy's daughter recovering from cancer. When Beatriz is told that her friend can't show up in the morning, Kathy says that she can stay the night in her daughter's room. Then it's time for Beatriz to meet Doug. Doug thinks she's a housekeeper, and Beatriz says that she knows him from somewhere and can't place it. Doug tells her that he's famous, which is very true. It turns out Doug is like one of the Koch Brothers, a true scumbag who builds things in foreign countries, exploiting that cheap labor in order to do things that destroy the region these things are built in.

As I already alluded to, Beatriz at Dinner is a maximum cringe movie the likes of which I have never seen before. I've never had such a strange feeling while watching something before, I knew Beatriz's feelings and felt empathy for the character from the very start. Hasn't everyone been in this position in a room full of people who you think won't agree with you, then it turns out when you talk to them that it's even worse? Especially when you don't want to be there? If you haven't felt this, you need to get out of the house. What I also thought was that Beatriz at Dinner featured some strong performances. Salma Hayek showing almost no emotion multiple times during this really took the cake. That's so hard to do with the things she was saying. There's a moment when we see her walking up to hug the first arriving couple, and that's when I knew how weird this was truly going to be. The conversations going on here were also great. John Lithgow as a manifestation of right wing scum shit wasn't just a great performance but also great screenwriting. Beatriz had nothing in common with any of these people, but in the way that immigrants in this country have to do, she has to listen to these guys consistently make racial jokes. When she finally says something about another serious matter said and shown as a joke, everyone gets mad at her. When someone doesn't fit in with a horrible group of people such as this, they don't win.

Beatriz at Dinner is a great example of how we really have two Americas. There are people like us and like Beatriz, this is Real America. Some of us come from other countries, others are born here, but we all know what the real American experience is like. We have jobs and bosses we all must obey, we know what it's like to not be able to buy anything you want. Then there's the other America I would call Gated America. Some of the people in this category came from Real America, but the vast majority of them have forgotten what it's like to be like us. They live behind gates where they don't have to worry about getting hurt because they disrespected someone and didn't realize it, they can outright disrespect and shit on whoever they want without having to deal with the ramifications. Nothing bad they do has any real impact on their life because they always get away with it. They can go hunting for helpless animals in foreign countries just because they can, and they know that in the end, if someone does manage to tell them what they think, it doesn't really matter. People in Gated America think that you have to wear a white hood to be racist, and they don't know anyone who does so that problem is removed from our country. Of course, Lithgow's character here is what I'd call 'the spirit of Trump', and with that in mind, you should know how you feel about this film based on that. I will point out there are some horrible moments though. The dream sequences are absolutely unwatchable and there are a lot. Beatriz at Dinner is also short, so you feel them.

7/10

2017 Films Ranked


1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. Mudbound
7. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
8. Logan
9. Wonder Woman
10. The Big Sick
11. Thor: Ragnarok
12. Logan Lucky
13. The Beguiled
14. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
15. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
16. John Wick: Chapter 2
17. The Lost City of Z
18. First They Killed My Father
19. Darkest Hour
20. A Ghost Story
21. Spider-Man: Homecoming
22. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
23. It
24. Battle of the Sexes
25. Okja
26. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
27. Kong: Skull Island
28. It Comes at Night
29. Crown Heights
30. Split
31. 1922
32. Personal Shopper
33. Beatriz at Dinner
34. Chuck
35. Atomic Blonde
36. Wheelman
37. The Lego Batman Movie
38. Megan Leavey
39. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
40. Menashe
41. Walking Out
42. American Made
43. Beauty and the Beast
44. Imperial Dreams
45. Gifted
46. Murder on the Orient Express
47. The Zookeeper's Wife
48. Free Fire
49. Win It All
50. The Wall
51. Life
52. My Cousin Rachel
53. Breathe
54. The Man Who Invented Christmas
55. Maudie
56. Sleight
57. Alone in Berlin
58. A United Kingdom
59. Trespass Against Us
60. The Mountain Between Us
61. War Machine
62. Happy Death Day
63. Lowriders
64. Justice League
65. To the Bone
66. Ghost in the Shell
67. Wakefield
68. Bright
69. The Hitman's Bodyguard
70. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
71. The Mummy
72. The Greatest Showman
73. Rough Night
74. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
75. Sand Castle
76. CHiPs
77. Death Note
78. The Belko Experiment
79. The Great Wall
80. Fist Fight
81. Baywatch
82. Snatched
83. Wilson
84. Queen of the Desert
85. The House
86. Sleepless
87. All Eyez on Me
88. The Space Between Us
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
brads-status-trailer.jpg


Brad's Status (2017), directed by Mike White

I know what you might be thinking right now. Yes, I did watch a Ben Stiller movie. If something has a good Metacritic score, I'm going to watch it even if I think I may not like it. In the case of Brad's Status, I'm very glad to be wrong. There aren't all that many films anymore that are simultaneously funny and contain heart. If you're lucky, you'll get trash comedy and probably wind up hating it at the end. I will tell you one thing though, it would have been difficult to imagine myself watching this if Amazon hadn't picked it up. The number of bad films Amazon has released is very small, one can assume that if they're releasing something it's good. If it isn't, chalk it up to a rare failure and move on. Of course, this is yet another comedy that didn't make any money. Comedy is fucking dead. I did the customary thing where I go back to watch the trailer for the film, and I did see that this one strongly whiffs on the way Brad's Status felt when I was watching it. The film's title plays into the trailer far too much as you are led to believe this is some kind of Facebook trash, but the status refers to the status of Brad's life. Let's put it this way, nothing in the trailer would make me believe that I really need to check this out. It's massively misleading and gives away too much all at the same time. It's a good thing that I don't usually remember these trailers when I'm in the theater. It's a good thing that the trailer is usually not a good indicator of a decent movie.

Brad (Ben Stiller) runs a non-profit that he started in the aftermath of leaving journalism as nobody reads long-form articles anymore. He has a good life with his wife Melanie (Jenna Fischer) and his son Troy (Austin Abrams), but there are things from his past sticking with him. He can't stop thinking about what his old friends are doing, how they are more successful than him, or so it seems. Craig Fisher (Michael Sheen) was the Press Secretary at the White House, Billy Wearslter (Jemaine Clement) now lives in Maui with two girlfriends after selling his business idea for a massive amount of money, Jason Hatfield (Luke Wilson) runs a hedge fund, and Nick Pascale (Mike White) is a filmmaker. All of these people are very rich and have made great accomplishments while Brad and Melanie are having a comfortable life because of their job, but not successful to that extent. This is a movie about white people problems, but it's self-aware and this point is made to Brad during the film. Finally someone calls this shit out. Before that, Brad is at a party and sees Nick's spread in a magazine. Nick has just bought a very large house, that's what seems to bring all these feelings on. Melanie is far more content and happy than her husband.

The next day, there's a trip planned for Brad and Troy to visit colleges in Boston. On the agenda is Tufts University, Tufts being Brad's alma mater where he met these people I've already mentioned. Unbeknownst to Brad, his son has a great chance of getting into Harvard, and they're going to go there as well. For whatever reason it wasn't clicking with him, largely because he's been in this funk, but now he can live vicariously through his possibly more successful son. Troy is a musician, a great pianist, and that's the way by which he could get in. The problem is that Troy has made a mistake, he missed his appointment by a day as they didn't arrive on time. The thing is, Brad just can't let this go. He learns through his wife that Craig gives lectures at Harvard, which leads to Brad calling Billy. When he calls Billy, he finds out that Nick got married and Brad was not invited, which leads to bad thoughts. He believes that he's a failure, has thought so for a while, but even worse than that he now believes his friends see him as a failure because he is not included in the important events of their life like the rest of them are. Brad does talk to Craig even though he doesn't want to, and through that he gets Troy two meetings. One is with a famous Harvard music professor and the other is with the dean of admissions. The flip side of that is, Brad now has to have dinner with Craig.

I left out so many details, because those details are what makes this a good film. As I already said, these are white people problems and I loved that the matter was addressed over the course of the film. I think this has a moral lesson in that one has a hard time relishing their own success when they're so fixated on what other people are doing and if those people are doing better than them. This is something that a lot of Facebookers have a hard time dealing with, but I have always done well in compartmentalizing and not looking up what other people are doing. I'm comfortable with myself, if they're more successful it doesn't matter, I'm doing my best. I'm not sure if most of the people watching this would take that away from the film or if the message they'd get is that some people are awfully vain. Both can be true. Even though one could find problems with Brad and find themselves disliking the character, I thought this wasn't how it worked. I thought that it was interesting to see a portrait of people who turned out this way and insightful in that I could perhaps grow to understand them. Brad's Status is satire to some extent, but I thought the material was pretty strong. There's a moment at a bar that is very poignant, something I wasn't expecting from this at all. Brad's Status is a film with quite a good story.

Of course, Ben Stiller's performance has to be pretty good in order for this to work. While he's been in a very large amount of trash, I don't think he's a bad actor. Things just need to get more serious, and even though this movie is amusing, his role in it is rather dramatic. I didn't much care for the ending of the film as I didn't understand his dinner with Craig, but this was solid. More than that, it's nice to see a movie that actually makes the audience care about the character. I still think the film could have taken a little more risks with the characters I did not bother to mention. I don't bother to mention characters sometimes because I find there to be more value in the process of seeing what happens for yourself. In some cases, the inclusion of the character descriptions destroys the review I'm setting up as it makes things too blatantly obvious. Sometimes the characters don't matter at all. One of those three things I've just mentioned applies here. I thought there were many funny parts, but Mike White also does a very good job of grounding things when the time called for it. Obviously, I liked this movie very much, and it wasn't even what I intended to watch tonight. The cast worked out nicely as well, but I have seen that some people hate this movie with a passion. To each their own.

7.5/10

2017 Films Ranked


1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. Mudbound
7. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
8. Logan
9. Wonder Woman
10. The Big Sick
11. Thor: Ragnarok
12. Logan Lucky
13. The Beguiled
14. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
15. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
16. John Wick: Chapter 2
17. The Lost City of Z
18. First They Killed My Father
19. Darkest Hour
20. A Ghost Story
21. Spider-Man: Homecoming
22. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
23. It
24. Battle of the Sexes
25. Brad's Status
26. Okja
27. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
28. Kong: Skull Island
29. It Comes at Night
30. Crown Heights
31. Split
32. 1922
33. Personal Shopper
34. Beatriz at Dinner
35. Chuck
36. Atomic Blonde
37. Wheelman
38. The Lego Batman Movie
39. Megan Leavey
40. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
41. Menashe
42. Walking Out
43. American Made
44. Beauty and the Beast
45. Imperial Dreams
46. Gifted
47. Murder on the Orient Express
48. The Zookeeper's Wife
49. Free Fire
50. Win It All
51. The Wall
52. Life
53. My Cousin Rachel
54. Breathe
55. The Man Who Invented Christmas
56. Maudie
57. Sleight
58. Alone in Berlin
59. A United Kingdom
60. Trespass Against Us
61. The Mountain Between Us
62. War Machine
63. Happy Death Day
64. Lowriders
65. Justice League
66. To the Bone
67. Ghost in the Shell
68. Wakefield
69. Bright
70. The Hitman's Bodyguard
71. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
72. The Mummy
73. The Greatest Showman
74. Rough Night
75. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
76. Sand Castle
77. CHiPs
78. Death Note
79. The Belko Experiment
80. The Great Wall
81. Fist Fight
82. Baywatch
83. Snatched
84. Wilson
85. Queen of the Desert
86. The House
87. Sleepless
88. All Eyez on Me
89. The Space Between Us
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
tolkien-movie-e1556807730689.jpeg


Tolkien (2019), directed by Dome Karukoski

How is it that the movies I find to be the most boring wind up taking place at the Oxford University campus? That simply cannot be a coincidence. The realization that I can't tolerate any movie about academia seems to be a problem of sorts, but maybe that's not the real problem with this. The problem is that a film needs to pick a route and really stick to it, which Tolkien does not. If it had picked that route, then what? There's a thing that applies to a film like this one, it's that perhaps even though the subject did something great, they aren't deserving of a film about their life? I think that's where I landed when I was watching Tolkien. There is an additional problem with a movie like this one too, where when the subject isn't fascinating enough on its own, and when people may not have realized that until they've started the project, they have to start fudging the timeline of things. J.R.R. Tolkien is too important to too many people to start doing that and for those who see the movie, they'll probably be annoyed by that. I should note that Tolkien has absolutely no significance to me and part of my issue with the film is that the story does nothing to address that. How can someone who wrote these books have led such a seemingly boring life?

Tolkien starts off at the Somme during World War I, J.R.R. Tolkien (Nicolas Hoult) is delirious and searching for one of his friends, a man named Geoffrey (Anthony Boyle). The viewer is unaware of the significance of this unless you have knowledge of Tolkien's life story, which I did not. Sam (Craig Roberts) is a soldier whom Tolkien outranks, but he's going to help Tolkien find his friend and ensure that he doesn't die along the way. After that, we snap back to Tolkien's childhood. He's a young boy (Harry Gilby) living on the outskirts of Birmingham in England, his brother and mother play smaller parts in his life than I expected. At least, that is, as far as this film goes. Apparently Tolkien's father left his family, and with the help of a priest, Father Morgan (Colm Meaney) is able to help them get housing in the city itself. Tolkien's mother Mabel (Laura Donnelly) also encourages the things in her son that led to him becoming what he was, but the film doesn't show much of that. Anyway, it turned out that she had diabetes, and insulin had not yet been manufactured, so she died. This sends John and his brother into a bit of free fall, but Father Morgan is there to pick up the pieces. He knows people and they know him, which leads to the Tolkien children being placed in a home run by Mrs. Faulkner (Pam Ferris).

Mrs. Faulkner takes in promising orphans, that's how the Tolkien boys wind up there. They are both quite intelligent as you may have figured out. The placement at Mrs. Faulkner's house opens doors for people that are otherwise closed. The two boys are able to go to a private school in Birmingham, potentially able to make their way into high society. There's no focus on the younger brother at all, so when J.R.R. Tolkien arrives, everything is about him from this point on. Initially, Tolkien is ostracized by his classmates, lacking in friends. One day, after a fight with another student, they are called into Headmaster Gilson's (Owen Teale) office for a reprimand. The Headmaster tells Tolkien and the other student that they must do everything together for the rest of the year. This leads to Tolkien making friends, three of them in fact, and they went on to form a secret society. We move forward again, this time to Tolkien as a young adult before World War I. His friends have also matured, there's the aforementioned Geoffrey, the son of the Headmaster was Robert (Patrick Gibson), and Christopher (Tom Glynn-Carney) is the one that invited Tolkien into the group. These boys, their secret society is seemingly the impetus for everything. When it's not them, it's Edith (Lily Collins), a woman who lives at Mrs. Faulkner's house and has effectively been turned into her companion against her will.

The story focuses on the scholarly parts of Tolkien's life to an absolute fault, but I must admit that these scenes are better than the ones where he's on the Western Front. That doesn't sound logical, but that's how it is. Tolkien is a film that completely lacks in imagination. Of course the scenes where you see things from Middle-Earth are when he's on the Western Front, but there should be far more than that. There are papers with drawings on them on his walls, but these are never expanded upon in any meaningful way. The problem some of these movies have a hard time dealing with is that they are unable to expand on the imagination of their subject, unable to bring it to the screen and inspire people to conceive of their own ideas. With that comes a lack of understanding from the audience and therefore you have a film that I would call outright boring. That the film has two good performances from Hoult and Collins, somehow that doesn't even matter. The things they do in the film in some cases did not even happen, so those moments are built on decisions made to enhance the narrative, the narrative not being good enough to stand on its own.

Of course, there's also the matter of this film's existence being disavowed by the Tolkien estate. I don't take it seriously when they disavow portrayals of his works, but this is different and is a reflection of the life of their patriarch. When that happens, I take the film as being a problem. I would have liked to laugh a little more, or to not have seen everything coming from the start of any given series of scenes, but this was quite predictable. As I said, I knew literally nothing about Mr. Tolkien. The direction here leaves something to be desired, and the focus is just not correct. I don't know how to justify the existence of a Tolkien movie that doesn't explore his process of writing the works that are important to so many people around the world. This was, I think, not what people expected at all. When I was sitting in the theater, I wouldn't say it was full, but there were a fair few people there and nobody reacted to anything. That doesn't happen very often! I assume most of the people there were fans of Lord of the Rings, or of Tolkien, I should have tried to figure out what one of them thought.

Now, even though I've called this boring, boring is not outright mad. I have seen some trash this year and given it a 5. The film is not quite there, and there were some things I liked as I already said. The performances were very strong.

5.5/10

2019 Films Ranked


1. Avengers: Endgame
2. Us
3. Gloria Bell
4. Arctic
5. High Flying Bird
6. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
7. Captain Marvel
8. Long Shot
9. Shazam!
10. The Beach Bum
11. Paddleton
12. Hotel Mumbai
13. Cold Pursuit
14. Happy Death Day 2U
15. Greta
16. Triple Frontier
17. Fighting with My Family
18. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
19. Brexit
20. The Dirt
21. Velvet Buzzsaw
22. Little
23. Alita: Battle Angel
24. The Kid
25. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
26. The Upside
27. Dumbo
28. The Hummingbird Project
29. Escape Room
30. Tolkien
31. Captive State
32. The Highwaymen
33. Pet Sematary
34. The Intruder
35. What Men Want
36. Unicorn Store
37. The Curse of La Llorona
38. Miss Bala
39. Hellboy
40. Glass
41. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
42. The Best of Enemies
43. The Prodigy
44. Polar
45. Serenity
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
thepost.jpg


The Post (2017), directed by Steven Spielberg

After Bridge of Spies wasn't particularly to my liking, my opinion of Steven Spielberg's future non-CGI filled movies was rather low. That's part of why I waited so long to watch The Post, I didn't quite know what to expect even after it was nominated for awards. As you may know, I don't always see eye to eye with the people who decide what is worthy of those awards. There's a little caveat here though. It turns out that I love journalism movies. If there is an exception to that, nothing is really coming to mind at this moment. The people who actually tackle journalism related projects seem to only be the good ones. A bad one probably gets buried in the idea stage and never sees the light of day, but there is of course the chance I am wrong. Would The Fifth Estate count as a journalism project? Perhaps. If it does, then we have a horrible one. If it doesn't, we'll keep searching at some other time. Here's what I do know. I don't recall seeing a better cast in a movie for a long time. Even if those people served in small roles, that didn't matter. I could not possibly list everyone in this movie and who they all played, so if you want to know that, check Wikipedia or something. What I can say is that I found myself enjoying The Post far more than I expected. I'm not going to make any proclamation saying that this is "the movie that we needed," but this was the cast that I needed. How about that?

The Post begins in 1966 during the Vietnam War. Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys) is an employee of the State Department and he is in Vietnam documenting the war effort in the region for Robert McNamara (Bruce Greenwood), the Secretary of Defense. It is unclear how long he's there, but as we all know, the war effort was not going great. When they're flying home, Ellsberg is with McNamara and others, they are talking about the way things are going. In the process of that, McNamara tells Ellsberg in private that the Vietnam War is a lost cause. The problem is that, as we know, once he lands he says that he has confidence in the war effort, it's going great, and that's what all the reporters gathered decide to write about. Ellsberg was very displeased with this, and over the course of his life becomes a military contractor. It's 1971, and he smuggles out some documents from the RAND Corporation. These documents are not merely documents, they are the damn Pentagon Papers and the RAND corporation had a copy of them. Ellsberg is able to smuggle them out of the building every night, and he decides to copy every page, seemingly over and over again. The Pentagon Papers themselves are the DoD's history of America's political involvement in Vietnam, McNamara commissioned the report because he wanted to prevent policy errors in the future. It is unknown when these would have been released, but the intention was certainly not to do so in 1971. This study was damn secret.

Now, let's try to summarize the other side of the story. After Ellsberg leaked the documents to the New York Times, we snap over to the Washington Post. Katherine Graham (Meryl Streep) is a socialite in Washington D.C., but she also owns the Washington Post, which is a major conflict of interest from where I stand. Times were different. She had inherited the paper after it was kept in the family, and has the intention of launching an IPO for the paper. Fritz (Tracy Letts) is her most trusted advisor, Arthur (Bradley Whitford) is the proverbial thorn in the side that believes she shouldn't have the paper at all. Katherine has little experience in this business even though it was in the family, and she does have some clashes with the editor, Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks). The New York Times has received these papers but the Washington Post has not, and they're in competition with one another. Ben is furious that his staff doesn't have any leads. It's a great staff after all, and this film is absolutely loaded, but I'm finding a way not to mention everyone. Through a stroke of luck while Katherine is meeting with A.M. Rosenthal (Michael Stuhlbarg), the Post learns that Nixon is seeking an injunction against the Times to stop further publishing of the Pentagon Papers. Now they're in the game, and Ben Bagdikian (Bob Odenkirk) is a reporter who thinks he has a real lead on this story. He's going to find the hell out, that's for sure.

The problem with this movie as far as reviewing it goes, is that Steven Spielberg gathered an amazing cast and some of them play very small roles. So, I couldn't figure out how to squeeze those roles into my review. Getting such a strong cast to play roles this small is a large achievement, it's very nice to see so many people I recognized in a project like this one. The Post isn't one of Spielberg's most imaginative films, but the production design, cinematography, and costume design is spot-on in a way that allows the film to FEEL like it took place in that time period. Of course, I left out a lot of the details, but the crux of the movie is about whether or not Katherine Graham would allow the Pentagon Papers to be published amidst threats from the Nixon Administration towards the New York Times, threats that could have had a similar impact on the Post. Spielberg's ability to create tension in this scenario is very great, there's nothing but superlatives to say about his performance as a director. Of course it doesn't hurt that my man Saul Goodman is the driving force from the journalism side of the film. There are relevant things in the film as well, like Nixon's attack on the free press, but as the years have gone on during our current administration, a work about such attacks feels less impactful as I have become more jaded by everything. The stage for this film is set so very well, and there are also lots of moments where exposition is expertly dropped in so that it doesn't feel like exposition.

The Post does have one very large specific mistake though, possibly one from reality that just doesn't fit. I feel like Katherine Graham and Bob McNamara's scenes are just missing something. The accusations aren't there to the extent I would have liked, more fury required in those moments. The Post is successful in every other way though. Spielberg is able to make clear that decisions in the absence of a madman that have a large impact on history are carefully weighed by those who make them. The precision with which each domino is put into place is nicely done. I will point out a few other things though. The Post is also a movie that is to some extent unoriginal, lacking those things that make other films slightly more memorable. Of course this is something I notice more when I wait a day to finish my review. Maybe I'll do that more. The film also has an inherent lack of tension in that we know the conclusion of the story and that those papers were published. There are also some blatant pandering scenes where Streep's character walked past a group of women who were supposedly inspired by her, but I don't think so. That scene in particular was totally ludicrous and it's a good thing the film was over as that took me out of things. So, there are some weaknesses here but there are also some great strengths. I just think that if your main criteria for a great film is originality, then this one doesn't quite meet the mark for you. I also really liked that Tom Hanks was playing old and salty.

8.5/10

2017 Films Ranked


1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. Mudbound
7. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
8. Logan
9. The Post
10. Wonder Woman
11. The Big Sick
12. Thor: Ragnarok
13. Logan Lucky
14. The Beguiled
15. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
16. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
17. John Wick: Chapter 2
18. The Lost City of Z
19. First They Killed My Father
20. Darkest Hour
21. A Ghost Story
22. Spider-Man: Homecoming
23. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
24. It
25. Battle of the Sexes
26. Brad's Status
27. Okja
28. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
29. Kong: Skull Island
30. It Comes at Night
31. Crown Heights
32. Split
33. 1922
34. Personal Shopper
35. Beatriz at Dinner
36. Chuck
37. Atomic Blonde
38. Wheelman
39. The Lego Batman Movie
40. Megan Leavey
41. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
42. Menashe
43. Walking Out
44. American Made
45. Beauty and the Beast
46. Imperial Dreams
47. Gifted
48. Murder on the Orient Express
49. The Zookeeper's Wife
50. Free Fire
51. Win It All
52. The Wall
53. Life
54. My Cousin Rachel
55. Breathe
56. The Man Who Invented Christmas
57. Maudie
58. Sleight
59. Alone in Berlin
60. A United Kingdom
61. Trespass Against Us
62. The Mountain Between Us
63. War Machine
64. Happy Death Day
65. Lowriders
66. Justice League
67. To the Bone
68. Ghost in the Shell
69. Wakefield
70. Bright
71. The Hitman's Bodyguard
72. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
73. The Mummy
74. The Greatest Showman
75. Rough Night
76. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
77. Sand Castle
78. CHiPs
79. Death Note
80. The Belko Experiment
81. The Great Wall
82. Fist Fight
83. Baywatch
84. Snatched
85. Wilson
86. Queen of the Desert
87. The House
88. Sleepless
89. All Eyez on Me
90. The Space Between Us
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
45968246302_3e712d1045_k.0.jpg


The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019), directed by Alex Gibney

I realized some time ago that I needed to go back through HBO's old documentaries and movies, but this one isn't particularly old as you can obviously tell. This one is merely first, it was one of the things released this year that I heard people talking about on the internet. While I am a few months late, I think this documentary is at the least still poignant. I did skip Leaving Neverland because that was a two part story, and I don't have much interest in hearing about those details anyway. Of course, before going back I must be current, but I still intend to tackle some of HBO's more schlocky in-house productions. My documentary reviews are rarely particularly long, but corporate greed and malfeasance is one of my favorite subjects. The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley has that in spades, that's what the whole thing is about. Alex Gibney has done another documentary I've seen, that one being about Lance Armstrong, but I've only seen that one. He's made a lot of these and it'll be nice to go back. I think there are some issues with this documentary and I'll get into them as I go, but very rarely am I able to watch anything of this length without feeling how long it actually is. The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley does not feel anywhere near as long as it actually is! What a welcome sight.

The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley is about Theranos, the company run by Elizabeth Holmes that claimed to have been able to process over 200 blood test results inside of a machine. Obviously, this was a massive scam and it doesn't take a genius to figure that out in the aftermath of things. The story is told throughout about how Holmes could have garnered such large investments, and in keeping the company private she was able to fend off any public scrutiny through a lack of presenting tangible results. Of course, pulling off a scam like this requires incredible charm. Oddly enough, the idea that she was possibly able to charm all these old men into investing into her company because she had good looks is never explored. It's something I was thinking about as the documentary played out. I am certain there is some element of this because this is how old white men are. They are horny. I mean, really, it's probably as simple as that on some level. The ability of people to manipulate others never shocks me, but the stories here are great. The way these old reporters and investors would take everything she said at face value without doing their own research, or even to see if her project was possible, made me laugh hard.

The project itself was extremely complicated, and to merely call it a machine doesn't do justice to how absolutely absurd this all was. Holmes had the idea to turn blood test vials into these microvials that would collect your blood. When you'd stick it into this machine, which Holmes wanted to be in people's houses, it would test your blood and give instant results. More than that, she wanted to find a way to predict people's health events before they happened, but that was a goal in the distant future and never explored. What I found most impressive was the way Holmes was able to manipulate engineers, chemists, and lab workers into doing things that were extremely unethical. Her charm on old white guys is much easier to explain than her grasp on younger individuals. Of course, there is an element of cult leading going on. Inevitably people will follow the cult, and others will be pressured into doing it. That's how these things happen.

I think The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley is also a funny documentary in that it's hard to understand how this could have happened at all. Alex Gibney does a pretty good job of making the case that this is merely how Silicon Valley works, these companies being private has allowed them to sustain themselves. There's also a professor of psychology, a man named Dan Ariely, and I found myself agreeing with literally everything he said. This was a great get for a documentary as he was able to explain how the mental aspects of such a comedy would play on those who worked for it, or even on Holmes herself. I don't think this is a great documentary, but I have been pretty clear in the past that I love these kinds of stories. I probably didn't do this documentary justice, but there are some elements of The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley that I found lacking. One of those is of Holmes herself. Sorry, the explanation and investigation of her background was nowhere near intensive enough. Of course, now she's facing a twenty year prison sentence. So we have to ask what her crimes actually were and what separates her from others who got away with far worse. That's not explored either.

7.5/10
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
Annabelle.jpg


Annabelle (2014), directed by John R. Leonetti

It's fair to say I was very much not looking forward to watching Annabelle. The obvious reason why is because this film had horrible reviews, but I was fair and made sure not to read any of the reviews prior to checking this out. There is a third Annabelle coming out at the end of June, which is a movie that looks far better than this one did. The trailer for Annabelle gives almost everything away, the omissions not being so important in the first place. There is no doubt whatsoever that Annabelle was made to capitalize on The Conjuring as quick as Warner Bros. could possibly do so. When a studio does something like that, quality control is obviously not a high priority. That was very clear when I was watching the film. The time between filming and release was only a few months, and the movie was only conceived after The Conjuring was successful. It doesn't take a long time to film a horror flick, but the turnaround time on this was impressive. So impressive in fact that everyone should have known it would be absolute garbage. The only way Annabelle could have been worse is if it didn't exist. Would that really be worse though? I haven't gotten around to reading anyone else's complaints, I have a small list of my own. I don't really care very much one way or another about this film though.

Annabelle is set in Los Angeles during the late 1960s, with Helter Skelter causing a panic and terrifying the area. John Form (Ward Horton) is a doctor and his wife Mia (Annabelle Wallis) is pregnant, they are a happy couple. First, we are shown the exact same scene that opened The Conjuring, so if you remember that you get some brownie points. After church, Mia and John are driven home by the neighbors, the Higgins family. The Higgins daughter has disappeared and seemingly run off to go join a cult, which everyone knows is going to have some impact later in the film. John and Mia are both a bit sensitive with the baby on the way, and after a spat, John gives her a doll she's been trying to find. I think everyone can also decipher that it's the Annabelle doll. That same night, Mia wakes up to a scream in the house next door, and it's her neighbors, the aforementioned Higgins family. Someone has decided to do a home invasion on them, and when Mia calls the cops, she and John are attacked by the missing daughter Annabelle (Tree O'Toole) and her insane boyfriend, whose name is never mentioned. It turns out that the boyfriend stabbed the Higgins couple to death, while Annabelle goes into the nursery and slits her throat. Some blood drops into the doll, or something like that, and the doll now becomes Annabelle.

The two murderers were part of a religious cult that wanted to summon supernatural beings, demons, all that kind of stuff. I left out that Mia was stabbed in the stomach, but there was no damage to her pregnancy and she'll be alright. Mia wants the doll thrown out even though its been cleaned up, because the murderous woman had the doll in her hands when she killed herself. There's also some strange things going on in the house, but that doesn't greatly manifest itself until one day when John's at work. There's popcorn on the stove from the previous night, it wasn't used because Mia fell asleep before John started cooking it. All of a sudden all the burners on the stove turn on, and when Mia cuts her finger on the sewing machine, she notices that the Jiffy Pop has caught fire. When she tries to run away, she trips over a chair and falls on her stomach. Regardless, she is rescued and has a baby girl, Leah. For whatever reason, after they move to Pasadena, Mia is followed around by a woman we later learn is named Evelyn (Alfre Woodard). The simple fact is that the Annabelle doll followed Mia and Leah to their new house. There's going to be haunting shit, and as always, in the end, there's no real impact on the people who were haunted. Same old shit.

The lack of consequences for the people who were haunted never ceases to amaze me, and once I noticed it I've never been able to shake that feeling when I watch this universe of films. I don't think I'm asking a lot for one of these ghosts, demons, or spirits to actually kill a lead character that they're haunting. Obviously, I think this movie is complete trash. The lone saving grace is that it's quite short, I couldn't imagine what it would be like to watch Annabelle if this was any longer. Of course I did know exactly what I was getting into and as a result I shouldn't complain too much. The issue was that this was the second film in what has become a very long series and I'm now having a hard time understanding how this universe became popular in the first place. There are so many things here blatantly ripped off of other horror movies. There's actually too many to list so I am not going to. What I am going to point out is that this director also directed Mortal Kombat: Annhilation. I love that film for all the wrong reasons, but I know that film is absolutely trash on every level. This is yet another case of someone failing upward in Hollywood. Someone with his track record should never have had the opportunity to film something like this.

I also admit that I have a problem with the doll itself not being shown doing anything scary. I know that would send the film fully into being as awful as it truly should have been, but these films as a whole are far too cliched. Spice it up a bit with a walking doll. The actors also do absolutely nothing to make me feel like I was watching anything decent. I also don't really care for baby scares. It's hard, nearly impossible for a film to deliver on that in any way after Rosemary's Baby. The way these scares are executed here is laughable. You can just tell the film is cheaply made, and it isn't for me. Annabelle is also very stupid beyond description, and I think I've said all that I need to say. I'm struggling to come up with anything good to say about this, so the rating is quite easy. Beyond the problems with the story, Annabelle is unforgivably lacking in visual pleasures.

3/10
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
I decided to watch two trash in one day. Good choice?

3e0011fe-751d-4fd1-80b2-94a336accb73.jpg


The Book of Henry (2017), directed by Colin Trevorrow

I am still quite uncertain what The Book of Henry was actually about, and no explanation at all would make any sense to me. The tone of The Book of Henry is as off as I've ever seen in anything that I've watched, these are two things that should not go together. As a result this is one of the most horrendous scripts and concepts that I've come across. I really shouldn't be surprised by anything anymore, I've seen some trash in the last few years and this isn't even the worst of it. There's nothing that I can take away from the film and present as being the moral of it, or anything similar to that. It just sucked. I'm not skilled enough with words to properly illustrate the problems with The Book of Henry, just know that if you're reading this and can't come up with the words yourself, that you aren't alone. I am simply dumbfounded. The more insane part is that this is a script fished out of a trash can somewhere, it was written in 1998. In 1998, I could see something like this being made and I could also see the film getting mild praise. The problem is that directors who botched Jurassic World shouldn't get the chance to make things. A bigger problem is that this guy continues to have the chance to botch Jurassic World 3. What's the deal with that? This isn't the worst film I've ever seen, but I don't understand how a director who can't create an engaging story would be given the opportunity to make anything with a large budget ever again. It's good to be this guy, I guess. It seems that a person who has made one good movie has free reign in Hollywood.

Set somewhere in New York, The Book of Henry follows an 11 year old genius, Henry (Jaeden Lieberher) and his younger brother Peter (Jacob Tremblay). They are raised by their mother Susan (Naomi Watts), who has a lot of money sitting in a bank account and in stocks, but she goes to work at a bad waitressing job anyway. How did she get all that money? Apparently Henry is great at playing the stock market, and regardless of that nobody is spending the money. One example of that is the way Susan drives around an old Volvo. Susan wants to write children's picture books, but she doesn't? I don't know how to make sense of this. Henry is also the kind of kid who protects his brother from bullies, and he builds machines in his treehouse. They have a neighbor, Glenn (Dean Norris), and he has a stepdaughter, Christina (Maddie Ziegler). Christina acts a little strange, but not knowing anything about the plot until watching the movie, I thought absolutely nothing of it. Those are the benefits of not reading these reviews. It turns out that Glenn is a bad fucking guy, and Henry sees this one night before bed. Christina is being abused, and Glenn is spotted by Henry in the process of that. Glenn doesn't know that Henry sees him, and Henry decides to call social services.

The problem with his first plan is, Glenn is the police chief and the head of social services is seemingly his brother. Nothing he can do about that is going to matter at all. Henry takes his quest a step further, because if the principal of their school reports things, it will actually work. This does not work either because the principal doesn't want to get into a fight with the police chief when she has no definitive proof of anything. Henry is an altruistic kid though, he's very smart and effectively he's navigated his mother's life, the circumstances of which make absolutely no logical sense to me. So, his intention is to create a plan and log all these steps in a book. I guess he knew something would happen to him? Again, that makes absolutely no sense. He develops a plan to rescue Christina, writes it all down and makes a recording someone could listen to. While that's all going on, Susan is regularly visited by her best friend Sheila (Sarah Silverman), and I guess that matters in the end although I'm loathe to explain how. The problem with Henry's plan is that he will be unable to execute. Unbeknownst to everyone except perhaps Henry, he has a brain tumor. He has a major seizure and surgery is attempted, but it won't work. That means he's going to die. But does it? Maybe he's so smart he can perform surgery on himself or tell the doctors what to do. Everything so far in the movie indicates this is possible.

The last few sentences I wrote should show you exactly how bad this is, that The Book of Henry could have gone two ways at that point of the film. He could have cured himself or he could have given that book of stuff to his mom to use against Glenn. Either way, we have the makings of a really shitty movie. It's not just that, it's everything leading to that point that's bad too. There are very few high points in The Book of Henry. The most obvious one is Naomi Watts. She tries her best to elevate this absolutely horrendous material, and I'm convinced that some people must've truly believed this film would win awards. There is no reason for this cast to have signed onto anything like this. I also thought the execution of the scene where Susan is attempting to follow her son's plan was nice, but there's problems with a school talent show scene interspersed into these moments. In case you think it's merely the script that's bad, there's that. The direction of The Book of Henry is beyond awful on every level. That anyone would attempt to film this script is the largest strike against the director, there's a reason it was shelved for 20 years. The script is just beyond awful in its attempts to be charming like a movie from the 1990s would be.

The worst aspects of The Book of Henry relate to the tone of the film and the mish-mash of horrible genres, all of which should be buried for the rest of eternity. Mega intelligent kid? I always want to see some other kid beat the shit out of them. I'm just being honest here, if you don't like it, stop reading. The way the kid talks to his mother is beyond the pale, I never showed disrespect like this. The way she accepts it is as unrealistic as it gets. Sick kid? That aspect is jammed into here too. Kid's doctor getting creepy and it feeling like he's trying to creep on the mother of a dead child? Fuck yeah. That part felt like it was mostly edited out as well. There were some remnants that could not have been edited, but I feel like I'm massively missing something there. I would have liked to see that just to see the depths to which this film could have reached. The already mentioned abused girl doing a talent show scene that inspires an elder to take action on her behalf, that shit is rough viewing. I hated it very much. Pedophile trying to cover his tracks? Hell yeah. This is full of genres, it's impossible to cover all of them, and the end result is something I wouldn't recommend on my worst enemy. The people who made this movie have no concept of how real people behave, and they tried to manipulate the emotions of the viewer by throwing all these things at them in order to create something people would remember. Fuck that. I will remember this, but for all the wrong reasons. When they managed to finally get me to want to see something, they didn't do that either.

2/10

2017 Films Ranked


1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. Mudbound
7. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
8. Logan
9. The Post
10. Wonder Woman
11. The Big Sick
12. Thor: Ragnarok
13. Logan Lucky
14. The Beguiled
15. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
16. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
17. John Wick: Chapter 2
18. The Lost City of Z
19. First They Killed My Father
20. Darkest Hour
21. A Ghost Story
22. Spider-Man: Homecoming
23. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
24. It
25. Battle of the Sexes
26. Brad's Status
27. Okja
28. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
29. Kong: Skull Island
30. It Comes at Night
31. Crown Heights
32. Split
33. 1922
34. Personal Shopper
35. Beatriz at Dinner
36. Chuck
37. Atomic Blonde
38. Wheelman
39. The Lego Batman Movie
40. Megan Leavey
41. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
42. Menashe
43. Walking Out
44. American Made
45. Beauty and the Beast
46. Imperial Dreams
47. Gifted
48. Murder on the Orient Express
49. The Zookeeper's Wife
50. Free Fire
51. Win It All
52. The Wall
53. Life
54. My Cousin Rachel
55. Breathe
56. The Man Who Invented Christmas
57. Maudie
58. Sleight
59. Alone in Berlin
60. A United Kingdom
61. Trespass Against Us
62. The Mountain Between Us
63. War Machine
64. Happy Death Day
65. Lowriders
66. Justice League
67. To the Bone
68. Ghost in the Shell
69. Wakefield
70. Bright
71. The Hitman's Bodyguard
72. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
73. The Mummy
74. The Greatest Showman
75. Rough Night
76. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
77. Sand Castle
78. CHiPs
79. Death Note
80. The Belko Experiment
81. The Great Wall
82. Fist Fight
83. Baywatch
84. Snatched
85. Wilson
86. Queen of the Desert
87. The House
88. Sleepless
89. All Eyez on Me
90. The Book of Henry
91. The Space Between Us
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
marshall-movie-884b7ae25dc9fb48.jpg


Marshall (2017), directed by Reginald Hudlin

I've never hit a review wall where I wanted to review something less than Marshall. I've had a personal matter in the last few days, but I believe in pushing on through those things and not slowing down. I didn't realize Marshall was going to be almost exactly like On the Basis of Sex in its presentation, although the two films are different enough for me to decipher what those differences actually are. I did also think that Marshall was better than On the Basis of Sex, and that those two films must be compared to each other for obvious reasons. Marshall does have a different narrative though. It is set in one year, over the course of a very short period of time, whereas On the Basis of Sex is not. Marshall takes place in a way that almost entirely deals with the court case, the other film does not. Marshall has a better cast than the other film. The main difference is that Marshall The similarities, however, are too great to ignore. Both are not about the issues that led to each justice sitting on the Supreme Court bench. I was hoping for something more comprehensive when watching both films. They both left me wanting more. They are both fan service towards those individuals, but in the case of On the Basis of Sex this is more obviously apparent. Both films are directed by people who haven't directed a film in some time, and this shows. Of course, both films are about people who were marginalized inside of those courtrooms as well as outside of it, and that's where both stories become worth the viewing time it takes to check them out.

Of course, Marshall is about Thurgood Marshall (Chadwick Boseman), who as we know was the first African-American Supreme Court justice. However, this film is not about that, but about something he did on his path to the court. Marshall was an NAACP lawyer who traveled around the country defending people of color who were accused of crimes for reasons pertaining to their race, not their guilt. Marshall would not take a case unless he was convinced of the innocence of the accused. After doing a case in Oklahoma that did not go very well, he returned home to New York City where his wife Buster (Keesha Sharp) lived. Upon returning, the head of the NAACP Walter White (Roger Guenveur Smith) has the intention of sending him to Connecticut. Don't make jokes about Walter White please. Thurgood is supposed to defend Joseph Spell (Sterling K. Brown), a chauffeur who is accused to of rape by his employer, a socialite named Eleanor Strubing (Kate Hudson). As you may have guessed, Mrs. Strubing is white and married. This case has taken on a life of its own, because that's what happened when black men were accused of doing something like that to white women. In Connecticut, the NAACP has the intention of using an insurance lawyer, Sam Friedman (Josh Gad) in order to get Thurgood admitted to the local bar. Seems easy enough.

It turns out that getting Thurgood admitted to practice law in Connecticut is very difficult. Judge Foster (James Cromwell) is friends with the father of the prosecutor, a Mr. Willis (Dan Stevens). Marshall is admitted, but he is not allowed to speak in court and Friedman is forced to become Mr. Spell's lead counsel, which is a problem. Friedman is merely an insurance lawyer, has very little trial experience, and certainly doesn't have any in this field. He does also not want to do this. He is worried about the potential for his reputation to be destroyed, and worried that Mr. Spell is not telling them the truth. The thing is that Mr. Spell is definitely not telling them the truth. It doesn't take a genius to figure that part out. The real question is if Sam has the guts to stick this one out, to have Marshall lead him through the case when he's a grown man, it's difficult to have the humility to do that. There's also the matter of who may testify, hard for a black man to be believed when he's on the stand in 1940. I accidentally left that part out too. A Jewish guy and a black guy in wealthy Connecticut trying to prove that a black man did not rape a white woman. Sounds tough? It had to be tough.

Marshall takes place almost entirely in the court room or in lawyer's offices, which is something I'm fine with. It still takes great actors to elevate a courtroom drama beyond being merely good. Marshall does not have that, it has good actors and that's what the film is. It's good. The events are entertaining and play out as a buddy cop movie, with both guys doing things to the ends of the case, to get their client acquitted of something he did not do. It's clear the moment Marshall demands Spell tell him if he did it, that Spell did not do anything wrong. When the audience is given that knowledge, some of the mystery of the film is gone, and I thought the events were rather predictable. Predictable does not equal bad. The story has merit and is another one that needs to be told, but I will admit this is not what I wanted from a film about Thurgood Marshall. I do not like that the people who wrote this story picked a trial that required Marshall to be part of a duo. I assume they thought the way to show Thurgood Marshall in his best light was to show him working with a member of another race that receives a massive amount of racism and religious bigotry directed at it. I see that as a very distinct possibility and even a likelihood.

One of the few issues that Marshall has, is the simple fact of Chadwick Boseman being outperformed by Sterling K. Brown again. On some level it feels as if the roles being reversed would have enhanced the film to great degree. If you like the parts on Law & Order where they're in the courtroom, this is for you. If you hate Josh Gad like many of the people here do, this is definitely not for you. I have no feeling about that guy at all, so my review score is based on the merits or lack thereof that Marshall possesses. The direction of Marshall is also lacking a little bit. I don't particularly care for its use of 50s noir style as this wasn't set in the 1950s in the first place. The music also seems to be more fitting of that era, it isn't my favorite thing in the world. I still liked that the filmmakers bothered to make multiple depictions of the accusation as the two involved were giving their testimonies of it, so we could see what both of them were describing. The overall tone of the film being that both Marshall and Friedman were a little overwhelmed with the task of their case, I did like that. That was something I wasn't expecting and it's much appreciated when these stories often present lawyers as being extra smooth operators. Of course, that can't always be true.

7/10

2017 Films Ranked


1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. Mudbound
7. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
8. Logan
9. The Post
10. Wonder Woman
11. The Big Sick
12. Thor: Ragnarok
13. Logan Lucky
14. The Beguiled
15. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
16. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
17. John Wick: Chapter 2
18. The Lost City of Z
19. First They Killed My Father
20. Darkest Hour
21. A Ghost Story
22. Spider-Man: Homecoming
23. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
24. It
25. Battle of the Sexes
26. Brad's Status
27. Okja
28. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
29. Kong: Skull Island
30. It Comes at Night
31. Crown Heights
32. Split
33. 1922
34. Personal Shopper
35. Beatriz at Dinner
36. Chuck
37. Atomic Blonde
38. Wheelman
39. The Lego Batman Movie
40. Megan Leavey
41. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
42. Marshall
43. Menashe
44. Walking Out
45. American Made
46. Beauty and the Beast
47. Imperial Dreams
48. Gifted
49. Murder on the Orient Express
50. The Zookeeper's Wife
51. Free Fire
52. Win It All
53. The Wall
54. Life
55. My Cousin Rachel
56. Breathe
57. The Man Who Invented Christmas
58. Maudie
59. Sleight
60. Alone in Berlin
61. A United Kingdom
62. Trespass Against Us
63. The Mountain Between Us
64. War Machine
65. Happy Death Day
66. Lowriders
67. Justice League
68. To the Bone
69. Ghost in the Shell
70. Wakefield
71. Bright
72. The Hitman's Bodyguard
73. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
74. The Mummy
75. The Greatest Showman
76. Rough Night
77. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
78. Sand Castle
79. CHiPs
80. Death Note
81. The Belko Experiment
82. The Great Wall
83. Fist Fight
84. Baywatch
85. Snatched
86. Wilson
87. Queen of the Desert
88. The House
89. Sleepless
90. All Eyez on Me
91. The Book of Henry
92. The Space Between Us
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
YardieTrailer_Main.png


Yardie (2018), directed by Idris Elba

Yes, that is not a typo. Idris Elba directed a film and hardly anyone from this country went to go see it, so I don't know how many people even know this exists. Yardie is a film that has sat on the shelf in this country all the way from Sundance 2018 to now. That's a long time! That doesn't mean that the film has no strengths or that it's bad, I certainly don't think Yardie was a bad film. Instead this is a rather average film that seems to have no audience in this country of ours. The reason why it doesn't have an audience is obvious at first glance. This is a movie about a Jamaican who moves to London, it's hard to understand anything in this movie to a point where I had to turn on subtitles. I don't do that very often. I didn't realize Yardie was based on a novel, but that's a little interesting. Now it may be hard to have misgivings about some of Elba's decisions in directing the film. I think this story has some misguided aspects, but it is a unique story and that's something I am keen to keep in mind. Not only do I not watch films like this one, but films such as this are not particularly common in the first place. Yardie is a glimpse into something that's a little foreign for me, so this feels original, and that's why some of us watch these films, right?

Yardie is a film with one part that leads into the rest, so I'll try to summarize the first part as best as I can. Dennis Campbell (Antwayne Eccleston) is a very young man, trying to make his way through life in Kingston, Jamaica. It is still very violent in Kingston as you may know, but in the 1970s it was worse. The film presents West Kingston as being in the midst of a gang war between the Tappas and the Spicers, the Tappas being led by a man named Skeets (Rayon McLean) and the Spicers by King Fox (Sheldon Shepherd). These two gangs shoot each other up with no care for anyone potentially involved in the crossfire. Jerry Dread (Everaldo Creary) is Dennis' much older brother, he has an idea to end the gang war. He drives down out of the hills to Kingston, with Dennis stowing away unknowingly, his intention is to set up his sound system to get everyone on stage to shake hands with one another. This works better than expected, and the two leaders do get on stage with one another. The problem is that a young kid named Clancy decides to shoot Jerry Dread as he's holding up the arms of both gang leaders, and Jerry dies. Now Dennis doesn't have anyone to take care of him. After Jerry passes, there is a ceremony where people believe things that are part of Jamaican religious culture, I do not know how to describe them. Dennis freaks out during said ceremony, and it is believed Jerry will haunt him for the rest of his life.

Eventually we fast forward some years, and Dennis is now "D" (Ami Ameen). He was taken in by King Fox in the aftermath of his brother's murder, becoming part of the Spicers himself. This is not something Jerry Dread would have wanted, but it does not matter. People have to do what they have to do in a place like Kingston and I'm not one to judge others for that. King Fox is in the middle of setting up a cocaine deal, during which we learn that Dennis has a horrible temper. He certainly is haunted by what happened to his brother, but Clancy is long gone in New York and there's nothing he can do. After an incident, Dennis needs to leave Jamaica in order to prevent a war on the streets in Kingston. King Fox wants Dennis to take a kilo of coke with him to London, to meet with a man named Rico (Stephen Graham) and pass it on to him. We learn that Yvonne (Shantol Jackson), Dennis' childhood sweetheart, has moved to London with their daughter some time ago. Anyway, the coke is what's important. Something happens when Dennis arrives in London as well. There are a lot of people who would like to have a kilo, King Fox who wants to have his money, and Rico is a bit psycho himself. What does a young man do when they have a kilo strapped to their leg? Well, they find people they knew from back home in Jamaica.

I said earlier that the accents were a stumbling block for me, but nothing could make this more clear than actually watching the film for yourself. It's tough to handle this, which is why I turned on the subtitles, but watching this in a theater would seem to be a problem. I had some criticisms before I wrote this recap of the story, but I realize some of those critiques were ill-founded. So, I've revised them a little bit. What I'd say is that Elba does a good job creating the pieces for Yardie to have a cohesive storyline, but the weight of the film, and of D's actions, just can't hold up under intense scrutiny. It is very difficult to root for the young man because he has not grown into a good man, the story does not end with him being a good man, and his actions are such that he puts his loved ones at risk. The film still has heart, it has culture, and in that way it surpasses other things that do not. The period settings are both excellent and believable, and the performances are acceptable, but you know by how I'm beating around the bush that this is a typical gangster movie. There are aspects of the story that are entirely too predictable as well, one of them had about a five minute buildup and I knew exactly what would happen and how it would end. Cliched is not the way forward for a film like this one.

Yardie is definitely an interesting film, I'll give it that. Stephen Graham's ability to work with the accent, I much appreciated that. I did not know his grandfather was Jamaican, so you learn something new every day. There are some little bits I've left out, but at the same time, the film has problems with those little bits and I couldn't figure out how to include them in my review. For everything that I liked, there was equally something that I did not like. The ending is rather strange, that was one of the only things that left me without much of an opinion at all. The soundtrack is great in setting the tone of the film, but the nuts and bolts of the story just aren't tightened enough. We've also seen these stories where someone goes on a journey and encounters someone from their past regardless, but it's more plausible because the Jamaican community in London was certainly smaller in the 1980s. I didn't quite know what to make of this either, so you see where I'm at with the film. I don't know what to think of it, and there's only a few ratings to give a film where you're left with those feelings. There's nothing here that I felt I could stick my teeth into, and no sequences of scenes I could say I really appreciated. No series of scenes I could say I hated either, but I would say this was not good. Even though the film debuted in this country in 2019, it came out in the UK in 2018, so this is a film from last year.

5.5/10

2018 Films Ranked


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. Climax
22. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
23. Mid90s
24. Eighth Grade
25. Sorry to Bother You
26. Vice
27. The Old Man & the Gun
28. Suspiria
29. Vox Lux
30. Boy Erased
31. Bad Times at the El Royale
32. The Other Side of the Wind
33. Searching
34. A Simple Favor
35. The Hate U Give
36. Unsane
37. Bumblebee
38. Mary Poppins Returns
39. Creed II
40. Hold the Dark
41. The Land of Steady Habits
42. Halloween
43. Ant-Man and the Wasp
44. Beirut
45. Mary Queen of Scots
46. Aquaman
47. Outlaw King
48. Overlord
49. Ben Is Back
50. Monsters and Men
51. The Mule
52. On the Basis of Sex
53. Bohemian Rhapsody
54. White Boy Rick
55. Papillon
56. Game Night
57. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
58. Instant Family
59. Alpha
60. The Front Runner
61. The Predator
62. Apostle
63. The Angel
64. The Commuter
65. Beautiful Boy
66. The Nun
67. Operation Finale
68. The Equalizer 2
69. The Spy Who Dumped Me
70. Yardie
71. Bird Box
72. 12 Strong
73. Venom
74. Skyscraper
75. The Meg
76. Assassination Nation
77. The Girl in the Spider's Web
78. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
79. 22 July
80. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
81. The Little Stranger
82. Tomb Raider
83. Night School
84. The 15:17 To Paris
85. Peppermint
86. Mile 22
87. The First Purge
88. Hunter Killer
89. The Cloverfield Paradox
90. Kin
91. Hell Fest
92. Proud Mary
93. Robin Hood
94. The Happytime Murders
95. Slender Man
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
Do not read this if you intend to watch this movie.

Wind_River_movie_1.0.jpg


Wind River (2017), directed by Taylor Sheridan

I've been sitting on this one for quite a while, not sure if I was going to be in the mood to watch or to review it. I was certain once the film began that the subject matter would deliver in a certain way, and that's exactly what happened. Not much surprise, even though the film was rather strong. Is that just the way these Taylor Sheridan screenplays are? That's something that is now in question for me, so even when I'm left with the feeling that the film is very good, I'm curious to know. Time will tell. Anyway, Wind River. It's time for the neo-Western to start coming on more strongly than it has even to this point. We need more of them, but I don't think this is a neo-Western to the extent that a lot of people do. We are lacking a driving force, someone with a more strongly stated mission. Someone who may be a bad seed. However, when it comes to Wind River, it's better that is not the case. The film does not need bombast, it highlights an issue that we need to talk about. It doesn't matter that nobody's going to talk about it, but the film heads in a different direction than I was expecting. I was thinking that Wind River was going to address the poverty cycle on reservations. I did not think Wind River was going to address the disappearance and sexual assault of women on reservations. This isn't about any specific case, but I do appreciate that this story is about something different.

It's winter in Wyoming, brutally cold, nothing which I would like to visit or live in. Natalie Hanson (Kelsey Asbille) has no such choice. She is 18 years old and lives with her parents, Martin (Gil Birmingham) and Annie (Althea Sam). What we see in the opening scene is a bit jarring. She runs barefoot through the snow while crying and looking back at something we don't see, but that's all we see. In the next scene, Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) is in camouflage and is shooting a wolf. He is a hunter with the Fish and Wildlife Service, he kills predators in the area so that people and their livestock are not in danger. After that, we are shown him picking up his son from his ex-wife Wilma's (Julia Jones) house, taking him out to her parents who live on the Wind River Indian Reservation. Cory and Wilma had a daughter who died, but nothing was stated. While Cory's out trying to track mountain lions, he comes across the body of a young woman. He tells people it's Natalie, and we see that it's the woman from the start of the film. She has no shoes on, her toes and feet are frostbitten, and she got hit in the head at some point as well. Cory reports the dead body, of course, and Ben (Graham Greene) is the Tribal Police chief. Natalie has been raped and presumably murdered, the body is miles from any building, and with such a lack of officers on this police force, it's time to call in the FBI.

When the FBI is called, it takes a long time for somebody to arrive. Coming up from Las Vegas is Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen), and when I heard this name, I was thinking that the names in this film needed some work. Jane is an FBI Agent, obviously, and she arrives during a horrible snow storm. During said storm it is made clear she is not dressed properly, and there's a scene where I nearly missed the entire point of it, which was to get her into the clothes Cory's deceased daughter used to wear. After a ride out to the scene, it turns out that Cory is correct. it is Natalie. Natalie died while running away, from cold hitting her lungs and causing them to burst. Jane says that this is a homicide, as everyone knows, but there's more to it than that. At the medical examiner's office, they say that Natalie was raped by an unknown amount of people, but due to the specifics of how she died (blood in lungs), the cause of death will not officially be homicide. This means Jane has to go it alone. Does she really? Of course not. Cory goes to Natalie's parents house, and this is when he is told by her father that he needs to take care of the problem. Natalie and Cory's daughter Emily were best friends, so this is something Cory feels obligated to do. I'm going to leave out some of the mysteries here, but there are a lot of them. The long and short of it is that Natalie has a boyfriend and many people know this. There aren't very many people in the area. But, they should talk to these guys who deal drugs. After all, Natalie's brother might be there and he may know something.

I gave away more than I wanted to, but in truth, if you haven't seen this yet you are probably not going to. I can see a person being of another mind than me on this one. This does have a distinct feel of case-of-the-week type stuff here. That is not always a bad thing, and I found it to be spiced up a fair bit. There are no big surprises as far as the narrative itself goes, but there are lots of mysteries and I was glad to see almost all of them resolved. The scenes between Jeremy Renner and Gil Birmingham are strong, I was left wishing there were even more of them. Of course, with Renner and Elizabeth Olsen in the same movie, one is immediately drawn to think of Marvel stuff, and I couldn't help myself in that regard either. I did find the execution of these scenes to be very good, for this to be full of strong performances, and was glad that the film ultimately centered around four characters. The one I did not mention so far in this paragraph was Ben, the police chief. He was ever-present throughout the story, and without him I think there's some part of this that falls apart. It's another of the many good performances in this film. Even the side characters bring it in their small moments on screen, all of them are very believable.

I was going to see John Wick: Chapter 3 tonight, but I was too exhausted to drag myself outside. I did not realize that Wind River was going to have great action moments, but they're filmed in an entirely different way. The point is for the main moment here to be rather confusing, and it sure as hell is. Beyond that, we have the moment where we learn exactly what happened, with absolutely no build we are thrown straight into a completely different point of view than we've seen for the entire story. I loved that too. It takes balls to create something like that, it was entirely unexpected. You know what I really think though? I think I was too harsh in critiquing the screenplay earlier in this review. Yes, the story is rather predictable but Prisoners is also predictable once you get to a certain point. Wind River makes the decision not to show you the perpetrators at any point leading to the reveal, Prisoners decides to place the bets on the table and you know one or more of these people has done wrong. I do think Prisoners is a better film and now that I have the benefit of having further refined my tastes, I would rescore that as a 9. The overall point is that now, I know what I like and nothing's going to change my mind. The tension was maintained throughout even though I thought that inevitably Renner and Olsen's characters would make their way out.

I do see some overall problems with the way that Wind River ends, with the tribal police practically executed, but they were a small force tasked with doing something that was going to lead to them dying. I also very much enjoy stories set in this atmosphere, which I think I've gone over before. Stories about cultures foreign to mine are much appreciated, and this did bring light to a problem I did not know existed. Is anyone going to do anything about that problem? Of course not. Native problems are not treated with seriousness by our legislators or anyone else with the power to do something. When those sorts of problems dovetail with a vigilante story, yeah, that's going to work for me. There are still some issues with a lack of fully fleshed out lead characters, but I'm willing to forgive that when the payoff to the story suits me so well.

8.5/10

2017 Films Ranked


1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. Mudbound
7. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
8. Logan
9. The Post
10. Wonder Woman
11. The Big Sick
12. Wind River
13. Thor: Ragnarok
14. Logan Lucky
15. The Beguiled
16. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
17. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
18. John Wick: Chapter 2
19. The Lost City of Z
20. First They Killed My Father
21. Darkest Hour
22. A Ghost Story
23. Spider-Man: Homecoming
24. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
25. It
26. Battle of the Sexes
27. Brad's Status
28. Okja
29. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
30. Kong: Skull Island
31. It Comes at Night
32. Crown Heights
33. Split
34. 1922
35. Personal Shopper
36. Beatriz at Dinner
37. Chuck
38. Atomic Blonde
39. Wheelman
40. The Lego Batman Movie
41. Megan Leavey
42. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
43. Marshall
44. Menashe
45. Walking Out
46. American Made
47. Beauty and the Beast
48. Imperial Dreams
49. Gifted
50. Murder on the Orient Express
51. The Zookeeper's Wife
52. Free Fire
53. Win It All
54. The Wall
55. Life
56. My Cousin Rachel
57. Breathe
58. The Man Who Invented Christmas
59. Maudie
60. Sleight
61. Alone in Berlin
62. A United Kingdom
63. Trespass Against Us
64. The Mountain Between Us
65. War Machine
66. Happy Death Day
67. Lowriders
68. Justice League
69. To the Bone
70. Ghost in the Shell
71. Wakefield
72. Bright
73. The Hitman's Bodyguard
74. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
75. The Mummy
76. The Greatest Showman
77. Rough Night
78. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
79. Sand Castle
80. CHiPs
81. Death Note
82. The Belko Experiment
83. The Great Wall
84. Fist Fight
85. Baywatch
86. Snatched
87. Wilson
88. Queen of the Desert
89. The House
90. Sleepless
91. All Eyez on Me
92. The Book of Henry
93. The Space Between Us
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fscottmendelson%2Ffiles%2F2019%2F01%2FMV5BMTA2ODUxMDg1ODNeQTJeQWpwZ15BbWU4MDY2Mzc5OTYz._V1_SX1777_CR001777967_AL_-1200x675.jpg


John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019), directed by Chad Stahelski

I was going to see John Wick: Chapter 3 last night, but as already said in a review I wrote last night, I just didn't have the energy to do it. The trailer for John Wick: Chapter 3 is one of the few that I've heard applause for months before the film actually debuted, that's a good sign as far as viability at the box office goes, but what's important is whether or not this is actually good. The answer is that it's very good and I liked it equal to the second entry, but it isn't a perfect film and I won't treat it as such. I would have liked if John Wick: Chapter 3 was ten minutes shorter, but the problem is that I can't quite pick which ten minutes needed to be cut. Perhaps the part at the ending where our hero doesn't have enough firepower? That sounds right to me, I can't figure out anything else. If you're hoping for something different, John Wick: Chapter 3 definitely gives you that. There are things in this movie that I've never seen before, that's a feat which is difficult to accomplish. The execution of these things, as I'm sure you know, is simply a cut above everything else. When you want something in a scene, the filmmakers know how to give that to you, and sometimes go well past your expectations. That's what an action movie should be about, that's why there's going to be another John Wick after this. The important thing is that the story can actually support a fourth movie beyond the act, if it can they should make one and if it can't they shouldn't. The good news is that the story can.

John Wick: Chapter 3 begins exactly where the second entry ends, with John Wick (Keanu Reeves) now excommunicado, facing a $14,000,000 bounty for shooting Santino D'Antonio in the Continental Hotel. Beyond that, Santino was a member of the High Table, and was not supposed to be killed. Breaking the rules has consequences, so John is about to be a marked man and is running with his dog through Times Square. Eventually he stuff his dog into a taxi to send him to the Continental, and John wants to go to the New York Public Library. There are things he has placed in a book, I have to say what they are even though I don't want to. One of them is a marker medallion, so we know that he's done something for someone before to be owed a favor. The other is a crucifix, which obviously has some significance. I am not going to spoil everything that happens after he finds those things, but you know it's really good because I'm not saying exactly what it is. You just know that things are going to get violent, because that's what John Wick is. The scenes following John's retrieval of those items are the best in the series, nothing even comes close. I would go so far as to say they're of the best action scenes I have ever seen in my life.

Again, breaking the rules has consequences and this is a theme prevalent throughout John Wick: Chapter 3. The High Table has decided to send what is called an Adjudicator (Asia Kate Dillon). The Adjudicator is someone who investigates things related to this criminal world, they are sent when the High Table does not like something that has taken place. The Adjudicator is giving notice that Winston (Ian McShane) and the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) must abdicate their positions because they provided assistance to John. In Winston's case he gave John an hour to run, and the Bowery King gave John a weapon to kill a member of the High Table with. If they do not give up their positions, they face consequences. John's story is much more clear, however. He needs to get out of New York City and we all know that. This is where the items he retrieved from the library will come into play. The crucifix makes John's backstory a little more clear. He was apparently an orphan from Belarus, and I made the assumption that he was of Romani background. He was rescued by someone unnamed, but she was played by Anjelica Huston. The Matrix type stuff kicked into overdrive in this film. The crucifix is a form of currency, like everything else is. John wants to trade it for passage to Casablanca, the caveat is that he will not be allowed to speak to his caretaker again. The marker, one can assume that's why he wants to go to Casablanca.

As I already said, the action scenes in this film surpass the others, but I also said that the ending was a little too long. The ending sequence has some great moments, but one of them should have been cut out even though it got great laughs. I left out that the Adjudicator recruits the Iron Chef America host (Mark Dacascos to take care of the High Table's problems. The role is fantastic. As far as my thoughts of the film go, the first thing I need to get out of the way that I haven't talked about is Boban Marjanovic's part. Boban's part here is exactly what everyone would have hoped for, exactly what I wanted. I hope that doesn't give anything away, but it probably does. John Wick: Chapter 3 is absolutely ridiculous in the same way that the other films are, and this is something most people love or find fault with. I'm fine with someone not liking the series, but it's right up my alley. There are so many enjoyable small roles sprinkled into this particular film, and I'm a big fan of the way this series has evolved. I don't think anyone expected this after the first film, which ended appropriately although there were too many unanswered questions that merited further examination. To continue to expand upon those questions and flesh out the world in this manner is exceptional.

I'm not sure if I thought this was better than the second film, I think they're about equal. I've made clear that I thought the second film was better than the first, and I stand by that. Usually sequels are unable to surpass their predecessor, the reason I feel it has been done in this case is because the casting of these smaller roles was so nicely done. When the world is situated as being a place where practically everyone is criminal, it makes for nice moments and for great surprises. The plot is more driven and more action-packed than the first film because people are seeking to kill John from the very first moment, his only potential to escape that is that marker. Some of the scenes move a little too quickly, with the second long chase simply not being on the level of the first and feeling like it was done at too high a pace. The end of the film, I don't really understand why someone would decide to place that somewhere that looked exactly as where the second film ended. There's not much variation on that theme either, I found it confusing. But, you know, it's hard to be overly critical over something like John Wick: Chapter 3. This is a film where they have dogs wearing body armor that run up to chew on people's nuts. The action scene where that happens is awesome, and even with my critiques, I thought this was great and incredibly entertaining.

8/10

2019 Films Ranked


1. Avengers: Endgame
2. Us
3. Gloria Bell
4. Arctic
5. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
6. High Flying Bird
7. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
8. Captain Marvel
9. Long Shot
10. Shazam!
11. The Beach Bum
12. Paddleton
13. Hotel Mumbai
14. Cold Pursuit
15. Happy Death Day 2U
16. Greta
17. Triple Frontier
18. Fighting with My Family
19. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
20. Brexit
21. The Dirt
22. Velvet Buzzsaw
23. Little
24. Alita: Battle Angel
25. The Kid
26. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
27. The Upside
28. Dumbo
29. The Hummingbird Project
30. Escape Room
31. Tolkien
32. Captive State
33. The Highwaymen
34. Pet Sematary
35. The Intruder
36. What Men Want
37. Unicorn Store
38. The Curse of La Llorona
39. Miss Bala
40. Hellboy
41. Glass
42. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
43. The Best of Enemies
44. The Prodigy
45. Polar
46. Serenity
 

909

909
Staff member
Messages
40,699
Reaction score
4,362
Points
313
Location
West Point
m-442_circle_11286fdrv1r.jpg


The Circle (2017), directed by James Ponsoldt

I am left wondering how Mr. Ponsoldt could go from directing The End of the Tour to The Circle, an incredible gap in quality between films if I've ever seen one before. There are more problems with The Circle than I can count, more than I will be able to put down in this review. I just can't bring myself to care this much. I was curious as to why Tom Hanks participated in this film, but I looked at the author of the novel this was adapted from, and saw that Dave Eggers also wrote A Hologram for the King. A Hologram for the King was a bore, but it wasn't bad, and there were neat touches with Tom Hanks moving through places in Saudi Arabia that he wasn't supposed to go. There are no such novelties here, The Circle is a satire that falls flat. Is it a satire? I'm not able to figure this out, but this film is absolutely stupid on every level. There are things that are supposed to be played for awkward laughs due to how ridiculous the scenarios are, but I didn't laugh at anything. The traditional plot structure of such a film is also blown completely out of the water. It's bad. The scenes are very disjointed from one to the next, and there are others where I felt we had already seen something like that just a few minutes before. The other, very large, very clear problem is that Emma Watson could not possibly have been more boring in this role. This just sucks.

Mae Holland (Emma Watson) is a young woman working a boring job, living with her parents somewhere in the Bay Area, and her parents are struggling to make it through life. Bonnie (Glenne Headly) is Mae's mother and Vinnie (Bill Paxton) is her father, the latter of whom suffers from multiple sclerosis and is underinsured to the point of lacking care. Mercer (Ellar Coltrane) either is or was her boyfriend, but the film does a very poor job of making that clear. One day, while at work, she receives a call from her friend Annie (Karen Gillan), who has scored her an interview at a place called The Circle. The Circle is a facsimile for any other mega tech company, and as a result they are nefarious and bad. The way this is presented from the very start of the film is something I thought was laughable. After a few days at the company, it's time for Mae to go to a meeting with Annie. The CEO Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks) presents things like Steve Jobs, and The Circle's new invention is the SeeChange, which is a small camera someone can place anywhere and have really high quality video of a location. No permit is needed to film and anyone can place as many of these cameras as they want, as the intent is to ensure they cost as much as a pair of jeans.

Mae's time at work is similarly strange, culminating in a visit from Circle's social media team. They want to know why she isn't participating in activities with other employees, and her father's health condition is of no consequence to them. Their response is that she should go to groups held by other employees whose parents also have multiple sclerosis, or that she should look to get her parents involved with other Circle programs. That kind of very creepy, overly intrusive, emphasis on a lack of privacy theme is very common throughout this film. After this happens, Mae's time at work goes more smoothly. Eventually she comes in contact with Ty Lafitte (John Boyega), another Circle employee who created True You, which was a thing that brought everyone's passwords, bank cards, and Social Security related things all into one single profile and log-in type of thing. She does not know who Ty is, at this point he's just a guy. Some of these concepts are not fleshed out and I admit that I'm winging it a little bit here. After this, the COO of The Circle, Tom Stenton (Patton Oswalt), presents a political candidate who pledges full transparency through SeeChange and other products that allow all of her e-mails to be made public in real time. Eventually, Mae goes to a party and encounters Ty, this time Ty tells her who she is and she can't believe it. Before he did that, he took her down into the lower facilities of this place and showed her an enormous cloud server room where The Circle intends to store a massive amount of data. Ty also tells her that his product is not currently being utilized as he intended, and the movie goes on from there.

Do you see what I mean about the film lacking a traditional plot structure? I usually try to wrap up those sections somewhere in the first act, but I can't place if this is the first act or the second. The film is bad, simple as that. There are some redeeming ideas in the way that the film tells you that all this social media is a bad fucking idea, but I think everyone knows that by now. The people who need to learn this lesson are people much older than those my age (31), but I don't think a film with Emma Watson starring is going to reach them. I see what this film is trying to do, I just think that it failed in part due to a poor script and uncharismatic lead performance. Beyond that, there's also the fact that The Circle is far too preachy and when I'm being preached to about something I already know, I hate that stuff. The end of the film is also shortened and ridiculously unsatisfying on every level. The aftermath of Mae's final decision when returning to The Circle is never shown, it's something I found to be very lacking after sitting through a film like this one. Where's the payoff to the story? When there isn't one, I feel like I wasted my time. The Circle also does not take risks with the story, there's nothing here that's truly bonkers like in other thrillers when you get a peek behind the curtain.

Perhaps the film's greatest sin is that the director fails so badly in setting the tone of the film that I never figured out what it is that this story wanted me to feel. Did they want me to think Mae or Mercer were in danger? I didn't feel that at any point until someone's truck was driving off a cliff. There's also the matter of this being a failure as a big tech movie. When someone's making a movie about a big company being unethical, unless it's in the case of something like cigarettes, the people telling that story are much more subtle in hiding that the company is up to no good. That is not the case here, their awful behavior is thrown straight into the face of our lead character and she willingly participates and plays along for her own gain. This kind of thing makes a character very difficult to relate to. When the cards are on the table and something bad happens, which takes until the very last moments of the film I should add, I just can't take a movie like this seriously. There is one thing I really did like though. This idea that Tom Hanks was a bad guy, the kind of guy people would be tricked into giving all their data and personal information to, I was a fan of this. That was good casting, but he outshines the lead of the film by so much that any problems with the story are exacerbated more when his presence is not in the picture. I'm giving this a 4 because I've seen a lot of bad movies from 2017 and this one isn't particularly offensive whereas the others feature horrible caricatures, extremely stupid concepts, or are so boring it took everything in me to finish watching them. At least The Circle wasn't that!

4/10

2017 Films Ranked


1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. Mudbound
7. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
8. Logan
9. The Post
10. Wonder Woman
11. The Big Sick
12. Wind River
13. Thor: Ragnarok
14. Logan Lucky
15. The Beguiled
16. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
17. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
18. John Wick: Chapter 2
19. The Lost City of Z
20. First They Killed My Father
21. Darkest Hour
22. A Ghost Story
23. Spider-Man: Homecoming
24. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
25. It
26. Battle of the Sexes
27. Brad's Status
28. Okja
29. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
30. Kong: Skull Island
31. It Comes at Night
32. Crown Heights
33. Split
34. 1922
35. Personal Shopper
36. Beatriz at Dinner
37. Chuck
38. Atomic Blonde
39. Wheelman
40. The Lego Batman Movie
41. Megan Leavey
42. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
43. Marshall
44. Menashe
45. Walking Out
46. American Made
47. Beauty and the Beast
48. Imperial Dreams
49. Gifted
50. Murder on the Orient Express
51. The Zookeeper's Wife
52. Free Fire
53. Win It All
54. The Wall
55. Life
56. My Cousin Rachel
57. Breathe
58. The Man Who Invented Christmas
59. Maudie
60. Sleight
61. Alone in Berlin
62. A United Kingdom
63. Trespass Against Us
64. The Mountain Between Us
65. War Machine
66. Happy Death Day
67. Lowriders
68. Justice League
69. To the Bone
70. Ghost in the Shell
71. Wakefield
72. Bright
73. The Hitman's Bodyguard
74. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
75. The Mummy
76. The Greatest Showman
77. Rough Night
78. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
79. Sand Castle
80. The Circle
81. CHiPs
82. Death Note
83. The Belko Experiment
84. The Great Wall
85. Fist Fight
86. Baywatch
87. Snatched
88. Wilson
89. Queen of the Desert
90. The House
91. Sleepless
92. All Eyez on Me
93. The Book of Henry
94. The Space Between Us
 
Top