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Ryk Brink

Writer, gamer, any other sucker.

Dragged Across Concrete review

I really don’t know where to start with this movie, I went into it expecting the unexpected and it still managed to wow me.
I just don’t know how to even classify Zahler’s movies, they’re like if David Lynch and Tarantino had a baby raised by David Ayer. His movies sit in this weird place between cartoony violence and absurdity verging on surrealism and gritty hyper realism.
Somehow he manages to catch this almost like documentary level of gritty realism in his movies which is done purely so that he can hit you with a sledge hammer of goofy shit in the third act and it works so well that three movies in I have no idea what to predict from this guy.

It’s film making that just leaves me thunder struck nonstop and I can’t even think to react, I can’t tell if it’s just really good slocky nonsense like Taratino or genius levels of nonsense like Lynch.

His movies just leave me at a loss for words because I’ve just never really seen anything like them before and that’s high praise alone.

This is Zahler’s third movie as I’ve said, I think he did a puppet master movie but I couldn’t give a fraction of a fuck about that. I tried to get into the puppet master movies but even me, someone that loves shitty horror movies couldn’t get into it, the series is pure garbage. They’re just movies made because someone made some cool puppets then thought it would be cool to make a movie about them. None of them have enough stories to fill an episode of tales from the crypt and the characters are just garbage. They’re awful movies and I really tried to like them, I watched like four of them before I just gave up on the series.

Although if anyone can make them good it’s Zahler, so I might have to watch his version.

So his other movies are Bone Tomahawk, which is like Open range meets the hills have eyes, I’m not kidding. It turns from a totally realistic western into a campy grindhouse horror movie and it’s awesome, Kurt Russel, Patrick Wilson and Mathew Fox from lost was especially great in this movie.

Then there’s the instant cult classic Brawl in Cellblock 99, hands down his best movie. Vince Vaugn plays a stone cold mountain of a man bad ass who goes to prison and has to save his family from gangsters from behind bars. Starts off as a gritty crime/prison drama turns into a fucking grindhouse videogame by the end and it’s awesome. Like more awesome than you would think possible in this current generation. Hands down the best action movie for ten years because there’s almost no competition except marvel cape shit and fast and furious and John Wick and those movies don’t really count in my mind. They’re more like post ironic spectacle movies as opposed to actual movies. They’re self referential to the point of parody.

Is it time to discuss this actual movie now? I think so, yeah so I liked it, obviously, The end.

Ok so seriously, it’s a slow boil movie and its pretty long, I see people complaining about that but honestly it could’ve been three hours and I would’ve been fine with that, it uses it’s length really well, it never feels like it drags and you know the pay off is going to be something special, because that’s just a Zahler movie. Long build up to epic pay off, and he doesn’t disappoint.

The story is about, well it’s about three stories colliding (technically four). So the first is about this ex con who gets out of prison and I guess he’s supposed to be the main character because we’re introduced to his story first. But the guy is pretty unlikeable honestly and there was more time spent on the other characters. He’s sort of meant to be a thug with a heart of gold but he just came off as a total asshole to me haha. From one total asshole to the other.

But I guess all the characters are sort of flawed, I just identified more with the flaws of the other characters.

Obviously it goes without saying Mel Gibson is the best character, it’s fucking Mel Gibson, you put him in anything, he’s gonna be the best thing in it hands down. And he’s sort of going through a bit of a resurgence right now in the action genre, between this and Blood Father, he’s doing pretty good and I hope to hell he keeps it up. I personally want to tear down heaven and earth for the travesty of not casting him in fury road over political bullshit cuckery. I don’t give a shit what the dude says when he’s drunk you don’t just take a shit on your movie franchise to avoid ‘bad press’. Obviously dumb people still liked it because it had ‘big splosions and fire breathing guitars’ *soyboyopenmouthsmile.jpeg. I just thought it was ok and Tom Hardy just delivered his standard ‘I’m here for my cheque’ performance tippified in venom. But I mean I was never a huge fan of Mad Mad anyway, there’s like one good Mad Max movie in a list of four, it’s hardly good odds.

Mel plays an embittered old cop who’s been passed over for promotion over and over because he’s too much of an un-pc loose cannon who doesn’t know how to ‘play the game’ of politics, more acquainted with ass kicking than ass kissing. And Vince Vaugn plays his suffering partner, honestly I still want a Brawl sequel, I don’t care, bring motherfuckers back from the dead haha.

Mel gets caught on someone’s phone being a little too rough with a gentleman of colour and he’s suspended. But he’s living in shitty neighbourhood full of dark skinned gentlemen who are harassing his teenage daughter. I mean if anyone is gonna have a teenage daughter pushing sixty it’s the immortal Chad Mel Gibson. The only man to portray my favourite book character with any justice (it still wasn’t perfect but he made it his own, he was ‘Porter’ not Parker), don’t talk to me about Jason Statham’s Parker, he just turned it into a generic action movie like all his others.

He needs money and he stumbles upon plans for some kind of robbery and decides with his partner they’re going to rob the robbers. So that’s the movie basically. I mean fuck, can you imagine making a movie with this premise in 2019. Fuck imagine casting Mel Gibson as a cop suspended basically for manhandling brown people who wants to rob people so he can live away from said brown people, this is anti political correctness they couldn’t get away with in the seventies. Even Charles Bronson had to shoot some white muggers in Death Wish. I mean come on.

So just imagining the set of balls it took to  make this movie has me at a loss. And it’s all delivered in a way that makes me feel like it’s not really trying to push a message either way or just trying to be edgy for the sake of it. It just seems matter of fact. The ending was also slightly infuriating, which I won’t spoil.

My main criticism of the movie is that I think it could’ve been longer honestly. I think the bank robber characters were well set up but didn’t have a very satisfying pay off. I wanted them to have more screen time, it just feels like that part was rushed a little and more could’ve been done there with their characters.

Ok well *spoilers* Mel Gibson dies at the end which sucks, it sucks double because the sort of unlikeable main character gets all the money and tosses his family a few gold bars to say like “sorry I killed your old man for basically no reason lol”. But it isn’t delivered in a punitive way. The movie never takes a moral position, he’s not being punished for being a naughty racist which he kind of is and isn’t. He just wants his kid to not be harassed and live in a shitty neighborhood, he never uses the gamer word or comes off particularly prejudiced. But I mean what is Mel Gibson famous for other than Mad Max and Lethal Weapon, it’s for saying crazy racist stuff while drunk off his ass haha. So you have to think his casting and in particular this role is for a reason.

He’s not playing this cuck who has to suck black dick like in some gay Tarantino cuck movie about racial vengeance, he’s just a guy trying to get some money for his family. So I never felt like the movie was political, it’s just a fun cool hard hitting movie that pulls no punches.

I really could talk about this fucking movie for days, there’s just so much there, there’s layers upon layers from the weird fucked up scene with Jennifer Carpenter to the awesome ending shootout. There’s just so much I can get into and I can already see this stretching to the 2k mark so I’ll leave it there and just say, see this movie asap.

See you…

 

0

Three ring samurai part 3 Chapter 3 ‘The part you throw away’

Long time no listen to my drivel.
It’s nothing dramatic, just lots of boring day jobbing sucking up my time and soul. Still trying to find a new job, not holding much hope for that honestly but I keep soldiering on nonetheless.
Personal and work life aside, my consumption of product in terms of media is pretty great recently. My ascension to escapist sci-fi incel is complete haha. I’ve been watching farscape recently to give the expanse a rest because the seasons are short and I was running out of them now I can’t say which I like more because farscape is sort of more silly but I feel more connected to the characters and their chemistry. 
But I love the expanse for the realism and story but I love farscape for the characters and the puppets and all the physical effects which are literally Jim Henson puppets. So this is like sesame street in space except not aimed at children even remotely haha.
I would kill to see an escape of sesame street with Rygel haha.
Wait is Jim henson sesame street or muppets? Are they the same thing???
So I’m hooked on that and there are four seasons of like a billion episodes so I’m set for stuff to watch while I lift heavy things and grunt. My product consumption is set and I’m excited for next product.
On the book front I didn’t notice I did this but I actually stopped reading the Parker the books when Richard Stark stopped writing them for like twenty fucking years for some reason haha.
Just totally an accident. But I started reading his nineties books now and they’re pretty solid. They haven’t dipped in quality at all, the first one was not my favourite style of his books. I notice that he has like two styles of Parker books and considering the subject matter it doesn’t surprise me that it has these limitations. You either get a situation where Parker is just finishing a job and it went right or it went wrong then someone betrays him or it goes wrong and the rest of the book is him trying to deal with the new development and get away with the money.
Or my personal favourite where it starts with Parker getting the job and then spends forever autistically setting up the job only for it then to go wrong from some unforeseen circumstance which he then has to deal with and get away with the money. I like these ones purely for the great build up and excitement. I tend to think the first style is just laziness, where he can’t be bothered to come up with a clever heist so he just skips it and gets into the meat of the story which he’s great at and the action is always really great. But it’s just a way of getting the heist out of the way, I see why he does it because normal people are bored by ages of tedious planning and setup. But I think we’ve established I’m far from normal.
The first book is actually the peak of the first trope, a heist goes really badly wrong, his wife betrays him and shit gets fucked up haha. Watch the movie Payback if you can’t be bothered to read the far superior book. The book wasn’t about heisting, even thought here was a heist in it. It was about Parker being this unrelenting force that was going to get what was his nomatter what. It was setting up this character that would step on the devils dick to get what he wanted.
But the second book is what gave shape to the mythos in my opinion because it’s all about that anal setup, like half the book is about him getting this truck which he is used for like a few seconds to block off the view from the road in this armored car heist. But it was just this fantastic build off to an amazing pay off that really set the tone for the rest of the books as well establishing new characters and worldbuilding.
The nineties era books (I’m not sure what era they’re actually set in because Parker and his pals haven’t aged it seems) the first is the epitomy of the first kind, the book starts where they’re in the middle of the job which goes right. But then they’re betrayed and shit happens, looking back it was ok, not amazing. The next book I’m on now is like a mix of both kinds which is weird.
It starts with the action at the end of a heist that goes sort of wrong because Parker is climbing out of a wrecked car but he has the money and he gets away leaving one guy there stuck in the car. 
The real story comes in where this guy had another job set up which now falls on Parker when this guy dies. So we have all this good set up which pleases my autism all while shit from the previous job is encroaching on the latest job. So he’s really mixing it up with this one. That and he brings back a few fan favourite characters from the roster, not my favourite characters, I really want to see Grofield and Handy Mckay come back and I’m saving the Grofield books for when I finish the Parker series. I really wanna see Grofield because he wasn’t in good shape in the last book, as far as I remember he’s missing a few of his fingers. But it’s not like Stark really gives a shit about continuity I mean he brought back Ed Mackey from being literally dead without even an explanation. I guess he just forgot.
I mean I was planning to read all the Parker books again in graphic novel format but I can’t find a good place to pira- I mean buy them at an affordable and price from a reputable source.
Come on! Richard Stark is dead he doesn’t care if his books make money. I mean fuck, pirating these books about a master thief is some ultimate irony surely. The closest I come to being Parker is downloading comics for free and possibly lots of movies and games if I was a pc master racist.
So yeah content, finally some content and it doesn’t totally suck, yeah well ok it kinda does but it’s fun to write and until my unusual form of writers block passes it’s really all I can muster. My inspiration is in short supply right now and I can only church out ironic crap. But I think I’m gonna just throw all my other books either up for free or onto muddy boots so it at least gets out there and maybe makes some money. 
I hope is that my ultimate punishment is that the worst book I’ve written, the zombie book I wrote as a joke gets put up as a humiliating netflix show.
One can only hope.
See you…
–
A little boy with a blank expression stares off into the distance as his head is lathered and shaved in preparation for his training.
A crude clownface is painted over his dull lifeless face.
Sitting before the elder clown master. The elder’s legs crossed, his eyes closed solemnly puffing on a pipe, a few bubbles coming out of the end of it as he thinks to himself.
“My young one, you are now a clown in appearance but not one in spirit, a clown does not have to smile on the outside, but in his heart there must be laughter.” The old man put his pipe to one side and leaned forward. “Once you can take this nose from my face your training will be complet-“
Before he could finish the child ripped the nose from the old man’s face, the sound it made was a ridiculous honking as he squeezed it in his little hands.
“You didn’t let me finish” The old man spat “What I meant to say was ‘your training will be complete when you can take the red nose- without it honking.” He said as he took the nose and popped it back on his nose with a loud honk.
“Now the first part of your training will be to enter that tent over there-“. The old man raised a wrinkled tattooed arm pointing towards a large tent covered in strange graffiti clown markings. Lots of ‘Ha-ha’s and ‘why so serious?’s and other edgy stuff like that.
The boy quickly began to rise without changing his expression “Hey- let me finish will ya?” The old man scowled “On your hands” He smirked.
The child looked sceptical at the old man for only a moment, not sceptical but surprised and then accepting. As if he was about to listen to a ridiculous story but been told it was ‘based on real events’.
“Only those who can walk on their hands can truly say they know how to walk on their feet.” The old man smiled. “No man in that tent walks on his feet, to do so would shame the holy ground”.
–
The orange dust settled on a road side flea market bizarre selling all manner of goods and trinkets. The merchants wore long ragged clothing and hunched to display there wares on rickety stands made from refuse metal and wood. Their hands clasped as they sharply eyed customers over their long hawkish noses.
Pookie had agreed to accompany Riki on a quick supply run for the tent commune thing.
“Thanks for coming with me” Riki said over his shoulder.
“I had nothing better to do” Pookie said as he picked up a weird nick nack of a clown with green hair and yellow skin.
He pulled the string and the doll said in a strange mechanical voice “I’m crusty the clown hahaha”.
Pookie sneered at the little doll before putting it down and saying “Never heard of you.”
Riki continued looking forward and talking as if to no one. “You must be wondering about Jersey, what’s she’s doing with a bunch of guys like us.”
“Not really.” Pookie said prodding a stuffed dinosaur toy with one of it’s legs missing.
“It doesn’t strike you as odd a young woman like that would be in the company of all these men?”
“Take a look at me guy, ya think anything strikes me as odd?”
Riki turned to look Pookie up and down and said “Hmm, I guess not.” He smirked. “But you have been thinking about her?”
Pookie was flustered for a second before he said “What, no!”
“She came to us much like you did.”
“I didn’t come to you, we’re just passing through.”
“Passing through huh? I like that.” Riki laughed. “She had nowhere else to go, the wastes churn out so many like her, no families, no friends, no hope. We’re all like that in some way, but it’s good to find others, ya know what I mean?”
“Not really” Pookie said.
“Sure” Riki laughed as he turned back around and dipped his head to smiled with his arms behind his back.
Pookie let him walk on a little further while he messed with some beanie babies he had no intention of buying. With the no money he had before he heard an off putting whimpering sound.
“Look kid, I’ve already told you, I’m not a teacher and I don’t have time for this crap ok.” Riki yelled.
“Please master, I beg of you accept me as a student, I wont take no as an answer. I’ll wait night and day out in the acid rain and the radiation, I’ll do anything.”
“Try going away.”
“Good evening sir? Maam?”
“Who are you? Some other nutjob that wants me to train them?”
Pookie sighed exasperated and decided to go over and see what was happening.
The scene was an unusual one. That weird fumer kid from before was on his knees begging Riki to train him, on the verge of tears. But more pressing was the tall gaunt man standing just behind Riki in his blind spot.
He was slim and ghostly looking wearing a weird multicolored wrapping around his head with an unusual gem in the centre. His face seemed dark and brooding despite the bright time of day. Atop his lip was a neatly trimmed pencil thin moustache and soul patch below. The look in his eye was piercing but also seemed like a chameleon looking everywhere at once.
“I have heard you are very skilled, I would like to put those skills to the test in a duel.” The man said, his voice rising eloquently, a slight tinge of accent running through his words.
“And who are you?” Riki asked defiantly.
“I am but a humble warrior mystic who wishes to put his skills to the test. I have travelled all over this world and learned very many interesting techniques, I’d like to see how they stack up to someone such as yourself.”
“Is that a challenge?” Riki smiled.
“You can call it that” The man laughed.
All the while the young fumer Brandon was looked back and forth between them in some form of incomparable awe at the two figures and the aura they gave off.
It seemed as if the air pressure changed as these two unusual men studied eachother.
–
Read the rest of the chapter on inkitt.
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Here before…

Once I had a child

She was smiling like sunshine

She could see it all

She’d been here before

Once I had a child she was

Wilder than moonlight

She could do it all

It’s like she’d been here before

Once I had a child…

0

Alita Battle Angel review

Kinda went into this movie with no expectations, I don’t think I even watched a trailer and overall I can say it’s a very flawed movie, but altogether pretty good. I enjoyed it pretty much throughout although some niggling things stuck out to me.

The plot is pretty basic, and one of the biggest problems I had at the start is the start. It starts at the start and people are like ‘so, isn’t that where you’re supposed to start?’ yeah I guess but usually when you have a movie set in this completely alien anime world you need a lot of exposition and world building and that takes time and it can be a little boring to slog through which is why you don’t usually start your movie with that.

So the start of the movie is this weird twenty minutes of pretty boring exposition dumps and world building where Christoph Walz finds this robot head and brings it back to life and introduces it to the world and what not which is this semi fish out of water narrative. We’re introduced to the world by her experience of it.

It works but it feels like it’s rushing to get this exposition out but also there’s nothing actually happening. But eventually you get to an action sequence and it was pretty good, I like the action, the level of violence is pretty awesome and they get away with that and keeping it 12a I guess because it’s robots. Because if this was people it would be an 18 for sure because she straight up kills people. People are decapitated and maimed throughout and it’s pretty cool because even though they’re all cyborgs they have human faces and attributes so it’s not like that crappy robocop reboot where he’s just fighting faceless drones.

The thing is if I wrote this I’d have tried to put this action sequence at the start and then when you’ve got the audiences attention you subtly drop the exposition in flashbacks or something. Because setting the relationship at the start with Christoph walz’s character dates it. You see their relationship in real time and there’s no gap to fill yourself. If you left it to a flashback it implies they’ve known eachother longer so they can care about eachother.

The acting is ok, the writing is ok, the effects look alright, I have no real complaints with any of it, it was a solid if a little predictable. But predictability doesn’t make a movie bad if what you predicted is fun and interesting, which this movie most certainly is.

Honestly my biggest gripe with this movie is that it’s a movie.

I just got this niggling feeling that it would’ve worked so much better as a tv show on amazon. It wasn’t a particularly long movie but it felt like a lot of it was trying to cram as much stuff into one movie as possible and I feel like some of it was crunched and some of the scenes feel more episodic than in a typical movie formula.

A tv show would’ve really let the plot develop nicely and in a more organic way and it wouldn’t have left us with an ending which felt sort of flat. And it could’ve easily been converted to a tv show since most of the main cast are already relatively unknown television actors, you’d just need to snip the bigger names like Walz and Jennifer Connolly, two actors which if I’m being honest brought nothing of note that justified their casting. I could easily see their roles being played just as well by someone much cheaper and less well known to satisfy the budget of a tv show instead of a movie. I know people like Christoph Walz and I like Jennifer Connolly because I love rocketeer and the original hulk but are these really big names that put butts in seats? Not really.

Overall I liked it and I liked some of the cameos like with Jeff Fahey playing the awesome cyborg dog bounty hunter and Nova being played by Edward Norton. But these characters just make me want this to be a tv show even more. If this were a tv show that cyborg dog guy could get his own episode or even an arc not just a five minute scene. That’s what I hate about this movie, it has so much potential I feel like is being wasted just to cram it into this hunger games style movie template because that’s what they think will make the most money.

To be honest I think the hunger games model is played out since most those trilogies just sort of fizzle out and we had this slew of teen movies after which tried and failed to emulate that. I just want to watch a full real satisfying movie with a beginning middle and end and not have to watch a sequel or a trilogy or just a non movie. I really really want to not have the only real complete movie I’ve seen this year be about a talking yellow electric rat.

Yeah I know this movie was last year I guess, like I go to the cinemas anymore. If you go to the cinema these days you’re an idiot, there’s just not enough decent movies out there these days to justify it when you have streaming services. You pay once or a monthly fee and you get to churn through all this garbage looking for the hidden gem in the comfort of your own home, what’s not to love?

Genuinely not shilling haha.

I don’t have much more to say about except I really enjoyed it, the action was super cool, I liked all the characters and the feel. It has this weird cyberpunk nineties feel which I really liked. Even down to the main love interest guy, who has this nineties haircut that makes him look like the kid from Hocus Pocus.

At it’s heart Alita is basically a love story, and not a bad one honestly. The romantic stuff wasn’t cringy or forced, it just could’ve developed better over a series of tv episodes instead of in an already cluttered movie. But it’s refreshing to see a romance in a movie these days that doesn’t feel forced. I liked it, I liked the characters, I think it all worked well. The overall plot is bog standard ‘get to the place’, the plot is completely ancillary to the characters honestly because it feels like scene to scene is more episodic.

In summary just a fun, cool movie, might be a bit violent for kids but it’s worth a watch for sure and I hope it gets a sequel, I heard it did pretty well in china so it might be getting a few more.

 

0

Missing

Always on my mind

I wonder what you’re doing

Probably smiling

 

Probably laughing

I’m missing so much, waiting

Precious moments gone

 

Careless afternoons

The sun lazy overhead

One day I’ll be there.

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Us – Movie review

I actually watched this a while ago and didn’t really feel like reviewing it because it was just kind of ok. I didn’t feel strongly enough about it to do a review, it just sort of passed over my eyeballs without really grabbing me or me really hating it. It was a solid meh.

But due to this recent content drought do to my erratic work schedule and near constant writers constipation, desperate times call for desperate measures. Which includes but is not limited to poetry examining the uncomfortable truth of my existence and movie reviews about movies that did not wow me at all in being especially bad or good.

So Us, what’s Us about? Err, clones I guess *spoilers* except not really because it’s sort of revealed in the pointless bit at the start which ruined the whole movie for me. Sorry but it did.

It’s one of those movies that has this overly long pre-ambles where something happens before the movie starts proper. But it added nothing really and the story would have been more interesting/mysterious if they’d cut it shorter or left it out. With it in it bloats the first act and forces them to cut down the bits where you’re supposed to get to know the family so you can care about them. But don’t worry none of them die, oh yeah spoilers, except who cares?

They should’ve just started the movie at the fucking start, why do movies hate to do this now? Just have the family going on vacation, give us time to set up equilibrium and get to know the family and then gradually build the to the freaky shit.

If you read my blog, (which no one does haha) you know how I feel about this director and Get Out, if you don’t I think Get Out is probably the most overrated movie in history. It’s barely a movie, it’s an overly long episode of the tales from the crypt that won an oscar or something. But we all know why, if Jordan Peele were white and the movie wasn’t about racial politics nobody would’ve given a shit. But that’s the world we live in, a silly movie like Get out about white people wanting to suck out black people’s brains so they can steal their bodies wins oscars while nobody gives a shit about Hereditary because it was made by a Jewish guy and it wasn’t political, it was just good.

So really the problem here is hype, Jordan Peele is like seen as this genius when he just made an ok b/horror movie that he made political and people had to get on board with it or be labelled an ist or an ism or whatever. And now his new movie is still kinda political but it’s more subtle, so subtle it’s audience doesn’t really get it and it’s not being lawded with the same fan fare.

Honestly if I think about it I think I liked Us more than Get Out, only because it’s a more interesting concept and the movie was sort of more dynamic I guess, I dunno. It was more entertaining as an idea, more ambitious, less silly, even though under serious scrutiny it kinda makes no sense.

It’s a cool idea, it’s basically like there’s this underground society of clone people for some reason, and they like escape… for some reason and then want to kill their doubles… for some reason.

Yeah see what I mean? So we’re supposed to believe there’s some kind of facility cloning people and a little girl get down into it by accident and there’s no guards or scientists, the clones are just hanging around under there until one day they decide to murder everyone.

These are the parts that really bother me. It’s a cool idea but that’s all it is, it’s not very well fleshed out.

That’s it really, it has some cool bits, but it’s really just kind of a mess and it has no stakes or tension because Peele isn’t ballsy enough to let any of his characters actually die, in a horror movie.

Oh sure he lets the white family get slaughtered, that’s fine but his self insert character. They didn’t even seem to be that bothered that their friends were murdered. And neither do we because they weren’t developed to have any other character traits but being rich white assholes.

You could’ve at least killed the dad in the main family to add a level of suspense and danger, the families protector. But no, I mean if you cut out the gore you could’ve made this a pg13/12a. How can you convey fear when you know none of the main characters can die.

It reminds me of Hereditary *spoilers* that shattering moment when the little girl dies, it shakes the whole film. It’s heart rending and horrifying and it changes the whole film because you know if they can kill this little girl and in such a horrifying way, no one in the family is safe. *spoilers end.*

It’s just kind of like a safe bleh horror movie skating on Peele’s name, there’s no real substance to it, it has no real bite. I hate to compare it to Detective Pikachu but I feel like I’m going to be comparing every movie this to year to that movie about a little yellow electric rat that talks.

That movie had a satisfying pacing, a beginning middle and end. If you saw that in the cinema you’d feel like you got your moneys worth, like you’d gone on a journey. But Us just kinda feels like it didn’t have enough content or structure to be a film. It kinda gives me hope for his twilight zone show if it isn’t too woke. Because he has these good ideas but they don’t seem to have enough flesh on the bone to be films and they might work better as tv show episodes instead.

That’s all I have to say really, if Jordan Peele hadn’t been hyped up to be the second coming of fucking Hitchcock this probably wouldn’t be worth talking about. But I mean really, I’m harsh on the guy but what else is there in horror these days? Those shitty conjuring/annabelle/insidious movies that are just awful trash they keep churning out. Compared to those garbage movies Us is a fucking masterpiece.

So I’m not saying it’s bad, it’s just not great. Is it worth a watch? Sure, I think, so is Get Out, much more than Annabelle origins or whatever or the nun. But I’m much more looking forward to seeing Midsommar by the guy that did Hereditary, I think that’s going be my horror movie of the year. But I don’t want to get my hopes up.

 

 

4

Music from a random anime

Recalling a time

Seems so very long ago

When I felt careless

 

When I didn’t know

Before you were even real

Before I knew love.

 

Part of me wishes

I could go back to that place.

But I never will.

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The Kid (2019) – review

Hey there,

I didn’t really want to review this because it was just sort of meh but I thought I needed to let people know that I didn’t die haha. Just been busy with work and trying to find a new job and stay sane.

I watched this movie for a couple of reasons, I liked Dane Dehann despite the shitty spiderman movies and Valerian being bleh. I really liked him in Chronicle and Place beyond the pines, those are amazing movies that really grabbed me and in the case of Place beyond the pines, really moved me.

So when I see his name I think it could be ok and then I saw Chris Pratt’s Ethan Hawke’s name in a western together and I get horrible magnificent seven flashback and full body shudders. If you haven’t seen the magnificent seven remake, keep it that way, you’re not missing anything.

That discouraged me a little but then I found out this movie had an R rating which peaked my interest again, thinking this would be a balls to the wall actionfest.

Turns out I was wrong about all these things.

Because at it’s heart this is a movie about absolutely nothing.

I don’t know why this movie was made, I don’t think even the people that made it know why it was made. It just exists.

The movie starts with this abusive father beating his wife to death and his kid kills him and they run away from their even more abusive uncle played by Chris Pratt and somehow run into Billy the kid for no reason.

I thought it started kind of slow but there was some gore so I figured the movie was just building up to the action like Open Range. If you haven’t seen Open Range, it’s this really slow movie that climaxes in this awesome gun fight for like the whole third act, really great Kevin Costner movie. In fact there aren’t many Kevin Costner movies I don’t like, yes even waterworld and the Postman. I actually liked Waterworld more than mad max, heresy right. I just think overall there are more bad max movies than good and the good ones aren’t that good.

See this movie is so shitty and boring I’d rather talk about mad max.

Ok so they meet billy the kid for reasons and then a bunch of talking and nothing happens until he eventually escapes with the help of this kid because his sister gets kidnapped by the evil uncle who steps in and out of the movie when it’s convenient for the script. I always hate that, I hate when a villain just steps in and out when it’s convenient and I always sight robocop as a movie that did it right. In robocop the main villain almost has his own arc, he has his own scenes just to establish him and you follow him almost as much as robocop, the same for robocop 2 actually, now that I think about it and the villains were really relateable. That was a good sequel, SEE, see this movie is so boring and uneventful I’m talking about robocop now.

Ok so his sister gets kidnapped and I guess the story is about coming clean, or his arc is about admitting he killed his father but no one really cares about that. So the kid wants to free billy to go after his sister, which would’ve been a cool story line, I mean I want to see that movie. Where a kid saves billy the kid and then billy the kid does some bad ass stuff and saves the girl and has like a redemption arc. Does that happen? No he escapes and then just dies in a really underwhelming way and then Ethan Hawke sort of becomes the main character I guess, although this movie doesn’t really have a main character. It sort of goes between billy, the actual kid and ethan hawke, but none are really that likeable or interesting. It’s like having three bowls of underwhelming luke warm porridge to pick from.

Then after billy dies, which me and my brother thought was a joke, and there would be like a tarantino-esque history bending, but no he’s just out of the movie. Then the kid confesses and entrusts ethan hawke to save his sister and he does, the end.

And is the gun fight at the end epic? No it lasts like three second and it’s really underwhelming and boring.

All that happens is Chris Pratt gets his third and final scene in the movie, he just reappears for the purpose of dying and establishing he’s really mean because he let someone rape his niece. I mean he didn’t rape her, that would be weird. And then you have this cringe scene like five minutes later when she shoots her rapist in the dick and we’re supposed to be like ‘”Yeah you go girl!” maybe not that obnoxious. But there was no emotional resonance because this all happened in like the space of ten minutes.

It’s like a movie that takes ages to do nothing then crams all it’s emotional plot into like ten minutes and we’re supposed to feel anything for these characters, why? The only emotion I felt while watching this was boredom and I don’t even think that’s emotion. I sat down expecting a blood soaked semi historical western and got absolutely nothing.

This movie is a big nothing burger, it’s not about anything, it stands for nothing it’s just nothing.

Westerns in the past, movies in general in the past had morals, they had messages, they told stories and parables, they were about something, they didn’t just exist to swallow an hour or two out of your life.

It just goes back to this feeling I have that people just don’t know how to make movies anymore and it’s sad that the only movie I’ve seen recently that feels like an actual movie is about a talking yellow electric rat voiced by Ryan Reynolds.

 

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3 Ring samurai part 3 Chapter 2 ‘Silver children’

Hey there, back again with more insane typed pen wiggling that goes nowhere and no one reads haha.
But that’s half the fun right.
Nothing new to report, just getting increasingly black pilled as the world just seems to be an endless nightmare where I don’t get to see my child on fathers day or her birthday or ever for no other reason than that her mother is a petty vindictive scumbag with no soul. One unfortunately that I think I’m still in love with despite loathing them to their core, but you can’t control your dreams. I’m not really afraid of saying that because I’m pretty sure they stopped reading my blog.
Despite all this I’m still trying to get to the country she lives in so I can be with my daughter, the daughter she wont let me see over skype and I have no legal right to. But maybe if I move there and make enough money I can hire a lawyer if she won’t let me see her.
I dunno, even if I get a job there, it probably wont go right and I’ll just end up even more miserable in an alien country, miserable in paradise surrounded by people that probably hate me. But right now I feel like anything is better than this, this endless emptiness and loneliness. But I get this sinking feeling that I’ll never get there and I’ll just die stuck here, I don’t think I have enough vital skills that they want or they can’t just get there. I feel like anybody that would hire me would do so on novelty alone and that’s not a safe bet.
I don’t like my chances but I have no choice but to keep trying until something else comes along, it’s my only option.
Either that or I’m stuck in this shitty job surrounded by people I hate making peanuts and going nowhere just playing videogames to medicate the emptiness and sorrow I feel.
K that went to a dark place. Fuck it, I need to stop writing this blog and look for a job I can fantasise about and never get.
See you…
–
After a long journey of awkward silence and farting poorly veiled by coughs they arrived at a ramshackle squatters camp. Made from a series of tarps turned into makeshift tents, it appeared as a boil on the horizon.
They got out and Riki lead to the biggest tent. The sound of the strange puttering vehicle had alerted their presence and lifting the flap of the tent a slim woman emerged. She thankfully looked normal and was an actual woman with long brown hair. Although she looked young her expression was weather beaten. She was pretty but there was a heaviness to her features that suggested something more to her. Her clothes were simple and looked homemade. A long flowing skirt and a earth coloured blouse with a flower pattern.
“Riki, you’re back!” She said as she hugged Riki, her smile was one of relief but then she wrinkled her nose as if she smelled dog shit on his shoe “Who are these guys?” She said with notable disdain.
Riki looked back smiling awkwardly revealing deep laugh lines. “Oh these guys, they kinda helped me on the road.”
“Kinda” Canard said.
“Yeah not really” Pookie said.
“Jersey, we can feed these strays right?” He smirked as if it was a challenge.
She looked at them but her eyes were far away like she was looking past them at the trouble coming behind them on the wind. “Sure” she said sucking her gums.
–
Not more than a minute later Pookie and pals were shovelling some stew made of a questionable meat into their mouths.
“What meat is this, tastes kinda…” Canard said poking his gums with his pinky.
“Rubbery?” Jersey finished his sentence.
“Your words” He smirked.
“Don’t worry it’s not people” She said pulling an unconvincing smile as she slopped some more of whatever it was into his bowl.
“Err thanks” He said.
Riki dipped bread into his stew and ate quickly without speaking. When he was done and the bowl was empty, and he looked full and happy he said “I guess you’re wondering about our super interesting backstory?”
“Not really” Pookie said without looking up from his stew.
Riki looked at Canard and Efron.
“Nah” Canard said.
“No” Efron said absentmindedly.
Riki looked at the dog like creature and it just barked.
“I thought so” He said. “Well you might not believe this but we all actually used to be in the circus, a long long time ago. But we split, “creative differences” and we never looked back. Now we work for ourselves, just entertaining folks, no killing necessary.”
“That’s fascinating” Pookie said unconvincingly as he leaned back in his chair. He closed his eyes almost falling asleep looking very full.
“What, the Ringmaster just let you up and leave?” Canard asked pointedly.
“Nah this was before his time.” Riki said.
“I see” Canard said, not sure what that meant.
“Well I guess you guys wanna get some rest” Riki said getting up from the table. “We’ve got some spare cots, it’s not the ritz but it’s better than sleeping with your dick in the dirt.” He laughed.
“What’s the ritz?” Efron asked.
–
The next day Pookie and the gang were fitting in as well as a gang of freaks can fit in in a group of geeks and beardy weirdies wearing dresses and make up. They were gathered in the big tent eating some breakfast, some kind of ok tasting slop made from grain and some kind of milk. The origins of which they didn’t want to press.
When suddenly out of nowhere, carried on the morning wasteland dry cool wind a strained broken voice called out.
“MY NAME IS BRANDON BERGBLATZSTEIN AND I SOLEMLY DO SWEAR MY UNDYING FEALTY TO YOU MASTER!”
“Huh?”
Riki and all the other performers emptied out of the tent confused and ready for anything as they came out to see what all the ruckus was about.
And what they saw deeply confused them all.
Kneeling in the wasteland dirt was a young guy. His head shaved and cleaned and bowed like a penitent monk on a pilgrimage. His clothes simple and baggy.
It was the kid from the other day, one of the fumers that attacked Riki after his performance.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
The kid looked up and there was something in his eyes, a deep emptiness. A loneliness he couldn’t express with words and as he spoke it seemed like he was on the brink of tears. “Please, will you be my master and train me in the ways of tranny fu?”
“Tranny what?” Riki said.
“Please master, make me your apprentice.” The young lad asked.
“This some kind of trick, how’d you find me?”
“No trick, I followed you here.” He sighed “I- I just came here to learn, please I beg of you” Brandon said as he crawled on his knees taking Riki by the hand.
“You ‘beg’ of me?” Riki said confused. Riki drew his hand away. “Look kid, I’m nobodies master, I can’t teach you anything.”
“Please, I’ll do whatever you say!”
“Does this look like a school to you?” Riki stuck his tongue out of the side of his mouth as he thought to himself. “Look kid, it’s not happening, just get on out of here.” Riki walked away and gestured for everyone to return to their breakfast leaving the kid still kneeling there.
Pookie stared at the kid as all the others went back inside.
–
Later that night Pookie lay awake in his makeshift cot thinking.
He remembered being a kid. His head shaved as short as it would go, before he had the tattoos on his face. It seemed like yesterday he waited outside a brightly coloured tent with a group of other kids. Through the wind and rain they waited for days, some left, driven away by hunger or boredom or the acid rain until only a few remained.
Pookie remained, an expressionless child with no parents and no past.
Until on the third day the tent opened.
A jovial old man with a broad smile hunched over a cane. On closer inspection his smile was actually painted on and his mouth was almost completely obscured by a huge moustache. His face painted completely white with over-exagerated eyebrows arching all the way up his bald forehead. His head was bald but for a top not at the back painted red and at the side his hair puffed out. To top it off he wore a big red nose.
The children looked up at him with a mix of wonder and awe.
“Walk this way” The hunched old man said.
The old man turned and began to walk in an odd crabbing movement almost like a monkey or like his legs were made of wood leaning on his cane. The children followed him into the vast tent walking normally except for Pookie who took it upon himself to mimic the old man’s walk.
The children turned and laughed at Pookie who didn’t seem to understand. The old man too had noticed this from the corner of his eye and he stopped and turned to face the children.
“You’re all dismissed” He said.
The children seemed stunned and upset.
“Leave now” The old man said softly.
The children, upset bowed their heads and did what they were told. Pookie too bowed his head and began to follow the last child out.
“You there” The old man said. “What’s your name?”
Pookie looked up at the old man, his face heavy and emotionless he said “I don’t have one”.
“Hmm” The old man stroked his moustache and said. “Why did you walk that way?”
Pookie sniffed and looked about himself at the inside of the strange multi-coloured tent. Looking back at the old clown he said “Because you told me to”.
The old clown laughed and patted the child on the head. “Then you have passed the first test”.
Pookie looked up, his eyes filled with wonder but still he could not smile.
–
If you want to read the rest of this absolute nonsense  head on over to inkitt.
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