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Midsommar – Review

Yeah I like it, the end haha.

Ok yeah not the end erm. I went into this kind of weird because I loved Hereditary but I know lots of people hate it for some reason I can’t fathom. That movie was fucking great, it was the exorcist for the modern era, I loved every minute of it.

I guess a lot of people were split about this movie too, so I didn’t rush out and see it because it kind of got mixed reviews and I’m not a huge fan of the wicker man the movie this is obviously homaging.

I mean I like the wickerman but I’m not like obsessed with it, it’s a cool movie but I didn’t burn pictures of Nicholas Cage when he was in the remake haha.

Midsommar is a very entertaining movie, visually it’s great, the lighting and camera work is fantastic, the acting is great, the music and diagetic sound is great. The atmosphere of the movie is first class. Throughout the whole film I was in a state of almost a trance but I was also on the edge of my seat.

The movie sort of held me in a state of perpetually chill but also a state of unease, it’s not a scary film, but it’s just a constant unsettling feeling under your skin and it’s great.

Maybe that’s why people didn’t like it, they went in expecting a standard horror movie like the conjuring or annabel or texas chainsaw massacre and instead they got something that just gets under your skin. It has it’s occasional shocking horrific moments but it mostly just simmers in your subconscious.

Even though I let the ending get ruined for me because like an idiot I watched the red letter media review before I watched it, I still enjoyed it. Although I did skip the rlm review for hereditary which was a good choice. I’d definitely recommend that, watch it after definitely.

There isn’t much of a story, it’s basically about a girl who loses her family in a horrible way and her boyfriend is trying to give her the boot but then this tragedy happens and he can’t. And he’s got a trip planned to this basically religious cult to do his thesis on it for his university anthropology class.

Then horrible shit happens obviously haha. It wouldn’t be a movie if they just sat around singing kumbiya haha.

It’s really just effective and well done. I found it thoroughly entertaining throughout. The only gripes I had were when I compare it to Wickerman which is a high bar to set. My only problems were narratively because in the wickerman it’s very clear why they’re doing what they’re, the purpose of the horrible shit that happens is clear. In Midsommar it’s more murky, it’s explained less and I guess that adds to the mystery because you basically know as much as the main characters do. And in wickerman the main character is a policeman investigating and here it’s just a bunch of teens doing drugs and being retarde.

Also the weird kid with the messed up face is all over the trailers and I don’t know if that was cut or something but that kid is almost not in the movie. The amount they show him in the trailers compared to his actual appearance in the movie is weird. Makes me think some of that stuff was cut. It’s just weird that kid didn’t feature much in the movie after going through all the effort of doing the effect in the first place and showing it off.

I don’t have much more to say about it, I liked it, I was engaged, I definitely think it deserves a watch and maybe a rewatch to pick up on things you might’ve missed. I dunno people seem to like it on rotten tomatoes, the audience and the critics, I have no idea where I got this idea it had a mixed reception haha.

I really like Ari Astor as a director, he’s one to keep a close eye on certainly, I’ll definitely be following his work as he goes forward. In my mind he makes movies that deserve the praise Jordan Peele gets haha. Jordan Peele that guy who makes hacky schlocky garbage but gets praised as if it’s high art because he’s blackish and his movies are about hating white people usually or something along those lines haha. Ari Astor actually makes thoughtful well crafted movies with amazing performances and I feel like he gets sort of looked over.

Just go check it out, Midsommar, it’s on amazon prime right now so if you have that you can watch it for free.

See you…

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Once upon a time in Hollywood – review

First thing I have to say about this movie is that it’s basically not reviewable, it’s not reviewable because it’s basically not a movie.

So you know this is gonna be a short review haha.

Movies generally have a beginning middle and an end and this movie has none of those. It’s like a weird documentary slice of life of a made up person. It’s a what if history moment that asks this odd questions that is basically along the lines of ‘What if the manson family went to the wrong damn house’ haha. An interesting question but evidently not enough to make a movie on. Because the movie is like 99% unrelated filler garbage that has nothing to do with anything other than just Tarantino jacking off his love for movies and like 1% the actual idea the movie was based on.

You don’t even get a lot of time with the manson family because it’s not really about them, they’re just sort of there.

So what is the movie about? Nothing, it’s sort of about this ageing movie cowboy and his life but there’s no message or theme with that, it’s just filler. It’s just like one unrelated scene after the other until the ending. And there’s so much in it that is just pointless and boring and I’m watching this movie and I’m thinking ‘Why does this have to be like two hours forty minutes? Why am I watching Margot Robbie go see a movie she’s in? What is this adding to the movie?’ The answer is nothing, it’s just filler. It’s just stuff that Tarantino put in his movie and an editor didn’t have the balls to tell him to cut it. Because this movie is just peak Tarantino self indulgence and he’s reached a peak in his fame where no one can give him advice so boring scenes that add nothing will stay in whereas in his earlier movies they would’ve been cut and improved the film significantly. But this movie is just 99% fluff, if someone was allowed to cut this movie you’d probably just be left with the last ten minutes and maybe the Bruce Lee fight and that would be it.

But that’s pretty much how this movie works, because I was cheering at the end of the movie like most people but most people wont stop and analyse why they were cheering. Most people will just cheer and then assume that the other two hours and thirty minutes that lead up to this point were building up to this so it was good and worth it. I don’t think that, I think the movie is almost intentionally boring us to make the last ten minutes seem better out of relief. We’re so desperate at that point for something to happen and we know it’s been building to this point so when something eventually does happen we’re hit with a wave of euphoria and relief that colours our opinion on the film overall when really it’s only the last ten minutes that are getting this response.
This is less a movie and more a hostage situation where a creepy foot fetishist film nerd is holding us hostage boring us with movie trivia and then at the end he lets us watch ten minutes of a cool movie and lets us go.

We’re not actually enjoying the movie or the ending we’re just relieved that the torture is over, we’re relieved that we’re no longer bored. It’s like literal torture, when torture is over you feel euphoria, when pain ceases you feel good, not because you actually feel good but because you’ve stopped feeling bad. This movie doesn’t entertain you, it just bores you so much that when something does happen it’s like the best thing ever. It doesn’t entertain as much as it ceases to bore, as much as a torturer doesn’t give you pleasure as much as he ceases to cause you pain.

Notice I haven’t mentioned anything actually about this movie, I can’t comment on it’s story because it doesn’t have one, I can’t really comment on the characters because there really aren’t any. I mean it was an ok movie, the ending was fun but is it worth the two hours forty minutes of your life it’s asking, not really.

I mean it’s a Tarantino movie where no one was able to tell him ‘No’ so it’s just self indulgent to the point where you question what you’re even watching and by the time the movie is over you’ve forgotten most of the film. I can maybe describe like three scenes including the ending in that.

It’s a tough recommend for sure haha. If you’re a Tarantino cultist you’re going to see it regardless but is it a good movie? On every technical level it’s a no because it literally isn’t one but is it enjoyable, I mean sure, some of it is, but not really enough to justify your time and money.

Those are the big stinkers I watched over christmas I also watched Zombieland 2 but it’s pretty unremarkable, not really worth a review it was just ok.

 

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Joker – Review

If you’re friends with me on facebook you’re probably well aware of my feelings on this movie. Been really busy over christmas but my brother hooked us up with his usual piracy and we watch Joker and a few other movies only one other I want to review the others were just ok, not worth reviewing. I only review stuff I really love or really loathe.

So yeah guess which one Joker falls into.. ah… I fucking hated it haha.

Kinda surprising because this should’ve been right up my alley, I love the character, I love the movies it’s basically copying/pastiching. This should’ve been another Logan here and honestly it could’ve been and that’s what really pisses me off about this movie. All the elements are there for this movie to have been the next Logan or even the next Falling Down or Taxi Driver/King of comedy but the writing and the direction and maybe just the editing are so weak it can’t pull it together.

All anyone talks about is Phoenix’s performance and yeah it’s pretty good but is it good enough to carry a really weak pathetic script and the director of the fucking hang over movies? No it is not. He’s almost the only character in this movie, or the only one that’s trying, every other person in the movie seems to be barely there, they have almost no development, not even Robert Deniro’s character who is supposed to be sort of the titular antagonist. He barely gets any screen time for the audience to decide if he’s a hero or a villain.

Honestly that’s kind of how I feel about the Joker in general. I feel like the entire movie is walking this line with his character where it wants him to be this pathetic character who then becomes a strong anti-hero in his mind but really he’s a villain. And the trap there is if you do that wrong he’ll just become a hero and then you’ve fucked up and made batman’s greatest villain an anti-hero instead and lost everything that made his character fun. But the script is so fucking juvenile it’s like he’s not likeable/relatable enough to be an anti-hero like D-fens in Falling down or Travis in Taxi and he’s not really evil enough to be a straight up villain like the actual Joker. He just wallows in this pathetic obese of nothingness the whole movie punctuated by a pretty weak speech at the end which boils down to “People are mean” basically a fucking tumblr post before he throws a ballistic tantrum. If you compare that to the scene it’s copying from the dark knight returns comic you can see everything that’s wrong with this depiction of the joker.

He’s kind of pathetic and not smart or calculating or amoral at all. He basically puts on this cool evil Joker persona at the end but it’s just guise, it’s not really him and it kind of comes out of nowhere. I didn’t feel invested in his downfall, it doesn’t feel very organic or interesting and every.
This is not a Joker that could ever be a threat to Batman, they basically turned the joker into an impotent pathetic school shooter and it’s not a good look. I just never liked this Joker, I never felt invested in him and I felt like I was watching a movie, it never sucked me in. It’s not gritty or intriguing, it’s just maudlin and sort of boring. Like there’s so much in this movie that just feels like padding that could’ve been about another character like I dunno… Batman. There’s a shocking idea, put Batman in a Batman movie haha. But obviously the way this movie is written and the time its set wont allow for that but there’s just so much dead air in this movie it only ever feels like it starts when he becomes this movies idea of the joker and then it ends.

I kinda could’ve seen this movie working if it was part of another movie but on it’s own it’s fucking boring. The story of the movie is just ‘he sad goes mad’ it’s not a story, its just a bunch of stuff happening, stuff mostly stolen from older better movies. It just doesn’t feel like it goes anywhere or does anything with it’s time and it pretends like it has something to say but it’s like some kid trying to make a speech just falling over itself having no idea what to say and how to say it. The message in this movie is so weak, it’s so noncommittal and safe, it’s like “err, fuck rich people, I guess, people are mean!” and it’s almost like the director knew it was being too safe and just threw in random acts of violence and the ending to spice it up and it seems to have won over most people but to me this movie was just garbage wrapped in tinfoil.

The themes of the movie are sort of shitty and uninteresting because what basically happens that starts this weird like faux 99%er rally is he *spoilers* shoots and kills these white wallstreet guys who are drunk riding the subway just being generally annoying. I mean yeah you know how it is, you get off your job on the wallstreet and then you get drunk and harass random people on the subway for kicks, I mean it’s like the purge kind of except not interesting or realistic.

I feel like the main premise of the movie is apologising for the start of the movie where he basically gets beaten up by a group of ethnic children. That was their only source of edginess and they used it up in like the first ten minutes. And then the rest of the movie is him taking revenge on white rich people to apologise for being beaten up by poor ethnically diverse people haha. I mean if he was really a villain he would’ve gone after those children, just saying haha.

I can’t really get into more without going into major spoilers but the movie is just not very good, there’s nothing really in that makes it stand out in any way. I didn’t feel anything while watching it except sad and bored.

I really think the hype behind this movie is just because it’s the Joker and it’s Jaquin Phoenix playing him. I think if this movie was called “The Jester” and it was played by some no name actor no one would give a shit, this movie would hit some streaming service and no one would even know it existed. It’s being carried by memes and the title and a strong performance and nothing else, it’s emperor’s new clothes shit. Literally because I got people on my facebook saying “Bro you just don’t get it bro” to which I obviously asked “Ok bro, well explain it to me, what don’t I get” which of course either doesn’t get a response or gets a response like “Ok bro you’re just too retarded to get it”. People don’t know what this movies about because it’s not about anything, it’s made by the guy who made the hang over movies, this isn’t David Lynch, this is a stupid comic book movie edgy enough to impress fourteen year old boys and idiots but it’s not entertaining in any way. I don’t even really like comic book movies but I would much rather watch any other comic book movie than watch this ever again.
I think the last comic book movie I watched was Spiderman far from home and that movie wasn’t amazing but it was fun, it’s what you expect, it wasn’t this pretentious mess, it knew what it was.

Ok well to stop me going around in circles I’m just gonna leave it there haha.

All I can say is I know they’ll probably do a sequel of this and I can’t wait to see how they fuck it up haha.

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Men in Black international review

This movie surprised me taking the lofty title of ‘most okayest movie ever’.

I didn’t really know what to expect when I went into this movie, I’ve seen all of the MIB movies but never been that impressed with any of them bar the first one and even then I just thought that movie was above average.

And then of course I stumbled on all the political bullshit surrounding this movie as it appears that Tessa Thompson is trying to topple Brie Larson from atop the totem of ‘most wokest person in hollywood’ which you’d think would be easy since she’s a woman and mixed race and is probably some made up gender she hasn’t fully made up yet (probably waiting on focus group testing for that one). But you’d be wrong, as nothing will top a huhwhyte wamen and her shrill white guilt from being the most woke person on earth nomatter how many african babies she has to adopt and then turn into some kind of gender experiment, looking at you Charlise Theron *shakes head*.

Yeah she was being a total nob and I guess trying to kick up controversy by saying it should be ‘People in black’ or something lame like that, you know just trying to ungender the language for some reason. When in reality ‘men’ is actually a neutral term which just means people and they added ‘wo’ to it to single out the distinction in people. Men classically is just a collective term for humans, you use women when you want to get specific on the type of human from the bog standard to the special one that creates other humans.

Putting the fedora away for a moment, that shit doesn’t really matter because facts never matter when you’ve got an agenda to push. But in all honesty the movie didn’t have a lot of politics in it, of course there were politics in it, can’t get a movie without it in these days in some form or another. It’s always there looming in the background of all movies in a way.

There are the odd subtle reference to immigration, well Tessa Thompson’s character at the start helps this cute little alien escape alien ice (MIB) and spoilers for this epic twist which is almost completely inconsequential to the rest of the movie and totally obvious to anyone five and above; the little alien is mildly relevant to the plot later. In that he’s like the enforcer to an alien arms dealer and because she helped him he helps her escape the arms dealer.

So I guess the moral of the story is you should help illegal aliens escape the law so when they become hired killers for other alien criminals they’ll maybe remember you and spare you when you end up in the clutches of said alien criminals. Not the best argument for immigration I’ve heard, but it’s up there.

Also not sure about this in the other movies but they referred to the aliens a lot as ‘refugees’. I don’t really get why alien refugees would want to flee to earth of all places when earth seems to be the focal point of a lot of alien fuckery and the first part of the movie is about how Hemsworth’s character has to take this alien dignitary around and show him some fun or his people will grind the earth into dust. So tell me again why it’s such an alien hot spot, of all the places in the galaxy why pick earth a planet where most of the people aren’t even aware of aliens? And also why aren’t people aware of aliens? What harm could it be to let people know that aliens exist? I mean aliens are aware people exist and they’re pretty chill about it, I don’t get why humans are the only people in the universe not allowed to know they’re not alone, it’s just levels of contrivance that shouldn’t be possible.
I was just thinking what would really change if people knew about aliens in this universe and the answer really is ‘nothing’. There’s a bit where they’re riding this alien hoverbike thing through the streets of morocco and they take the time to neuralise some of the people who initially see them but then they’re driving through the streets not bothering and I was like ‘so what was the point of neuralising those people if you don’t also subsequently neuralise everyone around you now?”. It’s just contrived and silly and like why bother neuralising people at all when there are supposedly aliens everywhere. It makes me think that people do know aliens are real but the MIB are just so stupid they don’t know everyone knows and people are just pretending they don’t know to humour these total retards who think camera flash bulbs erase people’s memories.

I get the whole point of it is to make us think that the MIB could be real and they’re keeping the existence of aliens from us but does that ever make it seem more real? Not really. I mean you had people planning to storm area 51 recently hoping to bone green women, do you think anything would surprise these people anymore?

Jesus fucking christ, I didn’t think I’d have anything to say about this movie and I’m already almost a thousand words in and haven’t said anything about it really haha.

Ok well, I kind of enjoyed it, I guess, it’s an ok popcorn flick to turn your brain off to, some of the jokes are ok, kind of post ironic humour bleh, but passable. The contrived origin story of Tessa Thompson’s character sucks though and I wish they’d skipped it, but it was thankfully very brief.

She’s just someone who saw an alien once and wanted to be in MIB and she’s ‘muh mary sue super wamen genius!’ and they have to let her in the MIB for reasons. She basically just shows up at MIB headquarters and they let her join for reasons. I thought it would’ve been more fun if they neuralised her and she had to remember and get back there. But this movie can’t be bothered with origin stories, because they have a bunch of other origin stories in a row to tell. Right after her origin story its Chris Hemsworth’s turn and then like a quarter of the way in it gets into the villains story. The villain was sort of bleh honestly. Just these two guys who looked like (and probably were) backing dancers in a *insert modern popstar idiot*’s music video.

But I expected Liam Neeson to be in it for like five minutes and he’s actually in it a lot longer than that. I liked some of the action, Chris Hemsworth is always pretty watchable and they actually cut some of the cringy stuff that was in the trailer which was great. Back to the political shit, there was a shit bit where the chick who is the leader of the U.S MIB is implying she’s trying to change the name to be more gender neutral and I don’t remember it being in the version I watched so that’s cool.

So the basic plot is Chris Hemsworth is basically 007 but goofier and with aliens and Tessa Thompson is his new rookie partner and they’re doing stuff. It’s not the best, the plot is mainly serviceable but it didn’t drag or feel poorly paced. I didn’t feel bored or unsatisfied. It’s length was just right in terms of it’s act structure, the characters were enjoyable, effects looked good.

Maybe I was just expecting it to be really bad and was just pleasantly surprised because I rather enjoyed it, it was just a fun popcorn movie. I’d probably never watch it again but I can think of worse ways to waste an afternoon.

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John Wick 3 review

IT WAS OK.

I find it hard to review these movies, which is probably why I didn’t review all the others haha. I dunno because I enjoy them but I can’t help feeling like I enjoy them ironically. Like I’m watching a school play version of an eighties action movie and it kind of resembles those movies but it’s a cartoonish self-referential post irony abomination.

And bare in mind I enjoyed this movie, but I can’t help think that if this came out in the eighties or early nineties people would laugh at it, it would be a blip. Rather than being something interesting with a unique spin on eighties/nineties action movies like The Guest or Upgrade (see these movies, they’re fucking awesome), it’s just a kind of an amalgam of that and a kung fu movie I guess where the weakest aspect is always the world building. The difference being those movies are usually set in the real world.

Whenever I’m watching a John Wick movie I have to take special care to ignore the stupid world building. Why the fuck wasn’t this movie just based in the real world? Why do you have to set it in this cartoony parody world where everyone and their nan is an assassin? It’s just totally immersion breaking and lame. It’s just fucking silly and makes the world kind of goofy and it takes away from a lot of the gore and violence because it just makes the whole thing a great big cartoon. I mean what’s so special about these magical coins and all this nonsense? What does it add to the non-plot?

I mean yeah these movies are meant to be dumb, there’s not a scrap of storyline you could cobble together from any of the films, the world building is weaker than in the Wanted movie where they get their assassination targets from a fucking sewing machine (which is less silly than the comic I might add). And it’s all set in motion by a dead doggo.

They’re less movies, than they are action set pieces strung together with light plot elements. And don’t get me wrong the action is awesome, the fight scenes and effects are masterful. Especially in regard to their use of physical and digital effects. They seem to use them seamlessly, where you have real squibs and then digital over the top for the more fucked stuff like stabbing people in the head. But it’s really just mindless violence without a plot holding it together.

So what’s this one about? Well John Wick has to survive or something, and I dunno Halle Berry is in it for some reason and she has lots of doggos and there’s like more really shit world building (ye-yaayy). Where he has to go see this ‘Elder’ who’s literally a guy that looks the same age if not younger than Keanu Reeves and do some stuff which he sort of doesn’t do and there’s another hook for a sequel. Which is fine, I’m glad they broke out of the trilogy bullshit. I was half convinced they’d do that stupid bullshit where it turns out someone killed his wife for reasons and tie it back to the first movie for a shitty conclusion.

I expected in this movie for John Wick to tear down the whole shitty house of cards world they’d built up which he doesn’t do but it makes me feel like they’re setting up for him to do that in the next movie and that makes it ok, I guess.

Again I enjoy John Wick movies, I just cringe everytime we have to cut to a room full of tatted grannies dressed like greasers working a switch board for assassins. So it’s like a world where everyone is an assassin, like surely we don’t need that many assassins? This is like anime logic, if everyone from the people who shine yours shoes to the people who make you sushi are assassins surely being an assassin is pretty mundane. It’s like someone who works as a waiter talking about his screenplay. “Oh yeah so I work here but my real dream is being the worlds top assassin, just waiting for my big break ya know.”

Every time I’m just like why? Why not just set it in the real world? It’s like trying to make it the matrix for assassins where it’s half in the real world and half in a shit anime and I’d almost like these to be a weird matrix spin off where neo and morpheus choose to re-enter the matrix as new people. Just remembering how bad those sequels were and retracting that statement.

And every fucking character he meets just imposes back story on him and is like “I’ll never forgive you for x thing that you did at y time, I’m really mad and you owe me or I owe or plot plot plot”. It’s tiresome, it’s like the movie is so aware how it has no story so it’s trying really hard to convince you to meme you into writing it in your head and you just can’t be bothered you just want him to shoot more people over a dog. So the John Wick universe could be amazing if only you could use your imagination and will it into being but you don’t because you’re shit and hollywood already stole all your imagination and sold it back to you as a snappy t-shirt.

It’s basically like the John Wick movies are a reboot to a once great franchise that doesn’t exist and expects you to make up in your head. So John Wick is basically skipping a phase, you’re supposed to make a series of popular movies before you make the shitty soulless cash grab reboot, this is just starting with the shitty reboot fanservice and expecting you to work backwards and think on fondly of a series of films that doesn’t exist in a genre that sort of doesn’t exist either anymore.

Because let’s face facts, action movies as a genre are pretty much dead, that’s why these movies are so popular because the only alternative are these neutered sterilised cucked capeshit movies where they can’t show blood and can only say ‘fuck’ once not in the context of actual fucking. And we get the odd throwback to when all big movies weren’t made exclusively to sell happy meal toys with Logan and to a lesser extent those garbage deadpool movies (yes they’re garbage, and if you like them your opinions are garbage and belong in a dustbin with all the other garbage, in fact why don’t you live in there with your garbage opinion?). But it’s not the same.

So again, I have to say I like these movies, I just have to add a caveat, you have to switch your brain off, you have to give this movie a pass on how fucking dumb it is, you have to watch it with beer goggles and just not notice the shit world and the stupid/non-existent plot.

These movies are like an exercise in learning to enjoy things. Just look at Keanu Reeves nice face and watch him brutally murder people because of a doggo and don’t think about it too much. CONSUME PRODUCT, GET EXCITED FOR NEXT PRODUCT.

Of course I’ll watch the next one predictably, but only because I like Keanu Reeves and it would make him sad if I didn’t. (Which is also why I’m going to watch the new Bill and Ted movie and force myself to like it, if it actually can meme itself into existence.)

 

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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…

 

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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.

 

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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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Black Panther – Review (meh-tier savagery)

As always I’ve been a naughty pirate and late to the party as usual but not having paid for it makes me less angry. Because if I paid money for this utter pile of garbage I would have asked for it back and made everyone uncomfortable.

So yeah I didn’t want to like this movie no not because I’m an evil racist bigot- well there’s that, come on guise, one of my best friends is black *sweats profusely*. Just my usual loathing for stuff everyone likes and fauns over and my building disdain for marvel movies. And sometimes I eat crow and have to concede that the thing everyone likes is actually good and I liked it despite not wanting to. But this time I get to bask in the deliciousness of being totally justified in hating this dumpster fire of a movie people are hyping up purely for political reasons.

It is the newest of the emperors new clothes, an empty invisible nothing burger of a movie. Boring, badly acted, poorly written, with sloppy cheap looking effects it all in all comes off more like a bad panto than a blockbuster comic movie.

The movie sort of just starts, fuck, it was so boring and unimportant I’ve actually forgotten how it starts and I literally just watched it the other day haha. Just some boring unimportant fight scene to introduce a pretty pointless character that is kinda meant to be a love interest but now that I think about it there’s literally no romantic subplot. There’s just a girl there, that’s it. “Hey here’s that girl you loved and still do” Then pretty much nothing for the rest of the movie.

The story is about the main character (not attempting to spell his name so from now on I will refer to him as ‘Timmy’) … Timmy and he’s taking over being the black panther and ruler of wakanda from his dad…

What is wakanda you ask, well it’s basically a super high tech african secret village that mastered some magic space rock and they’re super advanced but still decide who their king is by fighting with spears naked- ok.

So he goes through this whole process to strip his powers to fight his challenger and of course he wins blah blah vision quest blah blah generic south african villain blah blah blah maguffin. Jesus christ this movie is almost too tedious to review. How much money did this movie make ten billion squillion dollars – fuck people are stupid, this planet is doomed.

So they go to korea for some reason to do some stuff and then they do some stuff and there’s a really boring action sequence with spears and a magic metal car that’s bulletproof.

Oh I forgot to mention there’s like a james bond q sequence where he gets these stupid gadgets, I think one controlled a car and then it was his suit and that was it. They couldn’t even imitate james bond in an interesting way. It’s just middle of the road, so run of the mill. It’s dull and paint by numbers and one thing that really irked me is accents.

I’m actually from africa, I can tell different african accents and for being an insular secret city with alien level technology they sure do seem to have a slew of different accents even spanning the same fucking family. Timmy clearly has something like a piss poor like west african accent like some interpretation of nigerian or ugandan trying to sound like Eddie Murphy from coming to america but his own blood relation sister has a South African accent. How is this fucking possible??? It just completely took me out of the movie, destroyed immersion for me or at least it would have destroyed immersion for me if the concept of wakanda hadn’t completely decimated it already.

I get it, super magic metal make technology… good. But the levels of tech in this movie are so stupidly advanced they might as well be magic. I mean you get that in sci-fi, but it usually always skirts the line between tech and magic, this just jumps over and might as well be a fantasy movie. You have magic plants that give people super powers and magic beam spears and space ships and did I mention magic blankets that shoot blue force shields?? Did a five year old write this? Also giant war rhinos. I checked out long before they showed up though.

The story is pointless, entirely throwaway and in fact it doesn’t even start until a good hour of time wasting into the movie. ‘Your father killed my father now I’m mad’ wow.

And I’d heard reviews shitting on this movie praising Michael B Jordans performance as Killmonger but I just thought he was a generic thug. His back story and character felt rushed (probably because he was at the start and then disappeared for an hour to reappear when the filler villain died). This whole movie I felt like these people are just on a stage pretending, this is panto, it feels fake, the accents, the fights, the costumes, the sets, the conflict, I’ve never been more aware I was watching a stupid marvel movie before this.

I never really felt any emotional drive from any of the characters. Killmonger just wanted to rule wakanda and take over the world I guess, generic bad guy stuff. Send black people magic guns to liberate them from their ‘oppressors’ whoever they are. Pretty sure if they’re in african countries their oppressors will be other black people, maybe chinese now.

And there’s this constant trope of having the main villain in a marvel movie just being the main hero but evil; Ironman/ironmonger, thor/loki, antman/locust? And I’m fine with that as long as they’re distinct. When they have the same or similar powers it’s tense because they’re on equal footing and they need to be smart or lucky to win. They pull ahead with heart and guts.

But in this movie their costumes don’t even look distinct, Ironmonger was atleast a giant cool looking iron man suit. Killmonger’s suit is literally just black panthers suit but with a gold trim and it’s all cg anyway so who gives a shit? The end fight is boring and looks bad because it’s just two identical cg guys fighting over nothing. And there’s this ‘big battle’ going on outside between the bald chick and the blanket shield guys with rhinos which starts ‘because movie’ and then ends ‘because movie’.
Nothing is earned, nothing is worked for in this movie, even the end fight between panther and killmonger, panther just wins ‘because’ movie. Ironman beat ironmonger because his suit was better tested and he out smarted him with the icing problem on the suit. Panther just wins because it says so in the script.

It’s a lazy stupid arrogant movie, which I could forgive if the acting were good or the action were entertaining but it’s not. I can say I enjoyed parts of Batman vs Superman because of the action and some of the visuals while still panning it as ultimately uninspired. It still took some risks, black panther is just mindless, a bubblegum movie lacking in any nutritious content with a trite sickly sweet message at the end that felt tacked on.

I’d say save your money but you already done spent it, it’s just another marvel movie that serves no other purpose but selling action figures and happy meals and pushing sequel bait and this just the latest and laziest entry in that pile of movies that history will ultimately forget.

See you…

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