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The Gray Man (2022)
Shockingly dull
I'm not sure how a film with this team comes out so bland and boring, but it did. I think they were going for a John Wick or Mission Impossible vibe, but The Gray Man lacks the style to pull it off, instead stringing together ludicrous fight scenes and random globe-trotting in a slapdash manner. There are some funny lines and I wouldn't call any of the performances BAD, but Gosling is too deadpan and Evans is too over the top and De Armas is too stoic. Shame, since the premise sounds really cool. But we don't care about these characters or what happens to them, and Gosling has such clear plot armor that you never feel he's in genuine peril.
I literally fast-forwarded through the final fight. I never do that.
Buffalo '66 (1998)
Mind-blowingly dull
This is one of those movies that drags on and on and on, with not much happening, and at the end you just sort of sit there and wonder what movie everyone who gave this a positive review was watching. The leading man is an utterly unlikeable and unsympathetic jerk, the leading gal behaves like she has a bowling ball for a brain, and I cannot fathom why this is classified as a comedy. It ranges from boring to vaguely upsetting, and I failed to find any humor in it. It's your run of the mill "miserable, unkind loser has a young and beautiful woman fall in love with him for no reason, and it makes him enjoy life again." Waste of time.
The Town (2010)
Starts strong and quickly goes downhill
The Town starts off with a very tense heist sequence and then everything is just a sharp decline. The insta-love between our leading man and the former hostage is truly astounding, and the two actors and characters have zero chemistry. The movie tries to portray Charlestown as its own character, but fails miserably at it; apart from the accents, this could have taken place in any big city. A lot of the dialogue is laugh-out-loud bad, especially for Jon Hamm and Titus Welliver. There's a long lull in the action in the middle of the movie, while Ben Affleck and Rebecca Hall go on dates, and Ben Affleck decides he wants out of this life and talks to various people. At this point I started fast forwarding through chunks of the film.
Jeremy Renner gives a stellar performance, but it isn't enough to carry this film. Shocked and floored at the amount of praise for this boring tripe.
Late Night with the Devil (2023)
A unique and slow-building horror
After years of A24 "slow burn horror" (aka films that are utterly boring until the final 15/20 mins) and awful copy/paste Blumhouse films, Late Night with the Devil is a breath of fresh air. A great found footage, almost creepy pasta aesthetic with a steady ratcheting of tension. Very sparse use of jump scares. No over-use of language or sex (which lately seems loaded into horror films to make them "mature" and pad runtime). Great performances all around.
My complaints are small. The film wraps things up a LITTLE hastily; I think the conclusion should have been even just five minutes longer. The effects are iffy in one or two spots. The "dying cancer patient" looks healthier than I do.
Give this one a watch,
The Boys (2019)
Fun show that's hopefully able to overcome some writing stumbles
I haven't read the comics and you shouldn't have to in order to watch the show or have an opinion on it. That said.
The whole "superheroes but edgy" genre is getting a little stale in 2024, but The Boys is enjoyable enough to continue on despite this, mostly due to the absolute joy that is seeing Karl Urban (Billy Butcher), Antony Starr (Homelander), Jensen Ackles (Soldier Boy) and Giancarlo Esposito (Stan Edgar) chew up Kripke's dialogue. Fine cinema this is not, but it's enjoyable. It's violent and crude without being solely shock jock tripe.
Where The Boys stumbles is the direct, on the nose parallels between Homelander and his fans/allies and the Trump presidential campaign of 2016, which was already getting stale in 2019 when season 1 hit Prime. The references would be obvious to anyone and Kripke himself has said Homelander is supposed to be a Trump figure. It is the year of our lord 2024 (2023 when season 3 debuted) and Kripke is leaning even further into the Trump/Homelander thing. Idk about you but I 1) watch TV to escape reality, not be reminded of the political circus of the modern era and 2) am sick and tired of hearing about Trump.
Hopefully (but unlikely) Kripke starts devoting more time to the genuinely interesting things he could do with this property, instead of "Trump's an evil Nazi, ok guys."
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023)
High quality CGI and sound design overshadowed by a dull relationship drama
In full transparency, I tapped out of this show around 6 or 7 episodes in.
This isn't a show about Godzilla. It isn't a show about the other kaiju. It isn't even really a show about the establishment of Monarch (that's the B plot). This is, instead, a very boring, poorly-written, soap opera-tier relationship drama filled with smaller and poorly-designed kaiju.
The main plot: Two half siblings try to piece together how their missing (and presumed dead by some) father was connected to Monarch, dragging a few secondary characters along for the ride and somehow eluding Monarch (which functions similar to the CIA, complete with government blacksites) agents.
Plot B: A couple scientists are charged with learning more about Godzilla and other kaiju, and Monarch is established as a small research group with presumably endless funding. We see only glimpses of Godzilla while the team focuses on smaller, less interesting monsters.
Plot C: Interpersonal drama and intrigue with our boring characters in the present day: one of them is being blackmailed by Monarch some how and seems to have some criminal ties, Kurt Russell ages unnaturally slowly, the half-siblings are torn up about their absent father, there are sparks between some of the scientists, some of the Monarch agents are having a crisis of conscience, one of the siblings has PTSD from encountering Godzilla, etc.
On top of these tangled plot threads, there is so much time jumping. So far we're hopping around in these decades: 2010s, 1990s, 1970s, 1950s.
It's confusing and boring. Even as a Godzilla fan I'd recommend people pass on this one.
Silent Night (2023)
Bold attempt that falls flat
Not only is the protagonist mute, but no one else in the film says a word. This might work if the cinematography, fight choreography, soundtrack, plot, and themes were stronger. But they aren't.
This is your run-of-the-mill story about a parent training for a brief period of time to take on a vicious gang in a revenge mission. If you've seen one you've seen them all. The first half drags as we jump between long shots of the father and mother mourning their loss (silently) and the actual incident that killed their son (long and drawn out). Finally we get to the rampage, but the choreography isn't strong enough to make up for the utterly dull first half.
The Lighthouse (2019)
A hit or miss film, more a miss for me
My issues with this film lie at the very core, the very philosophy it was built on. Eggers' film is a love letter to the "death of the author" concept, which holds that the artist's true intention for the art is no more valid that the audience's interpretation of it. Perhaps the author did not mean anything by having the curtains in the character's room be blue, but if the reader saw symbolism there, then there is significance in it. I think this philosophy is a load of crap.
It is little wonder that The Lighthouse, then, is a mishmash of scenes, symbols, references, and dialogue that have only the barest sense of cohesion. After all, why bother trying to convey a story or a message if anyone can just come up with their own valid interpretation? The only concretes are that Pattinson is miserable and is losing his mind. There's clearly some theme going on with Pattinson being divinely punished for past and current sins, but that still doesn't explain much of what takes place in the film. Eggers has said that Pattinson and Dafoe represent Prometheus and Proteus, respectively, but like the rest of the film this provides vibes only and lacks any real depth or meaning.
Pattinson and Dafoe can't agree on what this movie is about. If you search for videos and articles on this movie, you will find 50 different interpretations of what was real and what wasn't, what happened and what was a dream, what was literal and what was metaphor. For me, that is a sign of a movie that has failed somewhere. But I am in the minority.
Bone Tomahawk (2015)
Strong entry in an under-appreciated genre
Not enough Western horror out there. Bone Tomahawk is proof there should be more. Great performances, snappy dialogue, brutal kills. The plot isn't exactly full of twists and turns, but events didn't totally play out like I expected them to.
The movie does end a little abruptly, and I would have liked more answers on where these Native Americans came from, their culture, etc. I think this is one of the few films that would have benefitted from an additional half hour or so to give time for events to fully wrap up. As-is, we're still left with some questions that I think would have been better if answered.
Still a solid film and a solid recommend.
Mandy (2018)
Imagine if Joh Wick's dog didn't die until 1 hr into the movie
And you are in the right mindset to watch Mandy. I like the inventiveness, the weirdness, the gore, but this doesn't start happening until the movie is halfway over. Apart from the first half of the movie being incredibly slow, much time is spent on long shots of Nick Cage staring into space, Nick Cage walking, Nick Cage glaring, the skyline, etc. Run-of-the mill cult. Demons dispatched in short order in a brief period of time. Non-ending. And frankly, it doesn't get over the top and weird enough. Not quite enough explanation given on where this cult's power comes from, if the community knows about them, etc.
I never thought I would find Mandy boring, but here we go.
Hereditary (2018)
Strong acting, cinematography, soundtrack; abysmal pacing
Fantastic performances, cinematography, music. The overall premise (which I can't get into without spoilers) is creative. The finale is genuinely frightening and shocking.
The problem is that the vast majority of the movie wallows in the done-to-death "is she crazy or is there actually a spiritual presence following her" frame. I can list probably a dozen films that have tread this path.
Collette does a remarkable job portraying a grieving mother in the midst of a mental break. However, a woman grieving the loss of her child, a family breaking apart and screaming and crying at each other, etc. Isn't scary. It's upsetting and uncomfortable, but not scary. And that's what Hereditary spends the majority of its time on. It gets old.
There is a twist about two thirds of the way into the movie that kind of turns this tired old plot on its head and got the action going, but it is simply unacceptable for a movie to be boring for the majority of its runtime. This is not a "slow burn" it's just boring. The film would have been much better if this revelation came 30 or 45 minutes into the film, but because Aster is determined to make Hereditary a shallow and obvious metaphor for mental illness and family trauma, we have to wait 1 hr and 30 minutes for things to get interesting.
The Pope's Exorcist (2023)
Only use is to pass time on an international flight
It commits the worst sin a horror movie can commit. It is bad without being funny-bad. And it's boring to boot. The possessed children are laughable (but not actually, because you must remember this movie isn't funny). Father Amorth is a baffling character, hailed as the best exorcist around but strangely blase about his faith and his profession, seeming to take neither very seriously. Very few attempts at scares. The movie takes a couple stabs at being shocking and consistently fails. Both priests seem to have a combined IQ of 70. All characters are paper-thin and poorly developed. If I wasn't on a plane I would have stopped this halfway through.
Oppenheimer (2023)
Nolan fatigue
Fantastic performances. Cillian deserves an Oscar. Great cinematography and score. Stellar casting. Gorgeous effects. Very effective portrayal of the frenetic pace of the Manhattan Project and the existential dread that comes along with the invention of these terrible weapons.
There are several flaws that are often present in Nolan's films. Swelling score drowning out important dialogue. Artificially fast-paced and complex dialogue filled with smug jargon. Unnecessarily complicated plots. The latter two are especially, unforgivably egregious in Oppenheimer without Nolan's well-shot action scenes to distract from them.
There is no reason to be jumping between different timelines, there is no reason for so many characters, and there is no reason for Strauss' plot to be actually portrayed on screen rather than just alluded to. This is an 8/10 film dragged down to a 6/10 because Nolan thinks he's too clever for us mere mortals and is determined to shove a miniseries' worth of content into a theatrical film. I never say this about Nolan films but there really is no reason to see Oppenheimer in IMAX. It's 95% people talking to each other.
I have long suspected that Nolan would be better served by making big-budget miniseries and Oppenheimer confirms that.
Monster (2022)
Fantastic portrayal of Dahmer that goes off the rails in the final episodes
Not enough praise can be heaped on the leading cast. Evan Peters gives an unsettling and nuanced performance, and Richard Jenkins blows it out of the water as a horrified yet still devoted father. I could go on for paragraphs about the strength of the main characters in this show, in both portrayal and script. Although some of the victims' families take offense to this show existing, it is unfortunately part of the territory when you're attached to shocking events, and I felt this show was more respectful than most serial killer fare. Never does it stoop to exploitation or cheap shocks (many of the more gruesome details of Dahmer's crimes are omitted), and care is taken to portray the victims as real people with lives and families. Dahmer himself is not one-dimensional, but neither is he really sympathetic. The show avoids trying to explain why he is the way he is, which I really appreciated.
It is to be expected that liberties will be taken with these real events to condense things, provide better pacing, etc. Most of the changes I thought were fine. Where things began to kind of go off the rails was around episode 6 or 7. After Dahmer's arrest, the show begins to focus heavily on the court proceedings, race relations, and the domestic drama of the grieving families, the latter two delving into straight fiction. At the risk of sounding callous, I found it boring. I don't care that a victim's mother took umbrage at a tasteless comic starring Dahmer and mounted a lawsuit. Dahmer was a killer of opportunity and did not go out of his way to kill minorities, nor did he specifically choose a minority neighborhood to live in. The police did not ignore tips/warning signs about Dahmer because the neighborhood was mostly black, but because of homophobia (an actual issue the show could have explored more). I do not believe cops were making racist crank calls to victims' families, and the man who killed Dahmer was a raving lunatic who murdered someone for $15, not the righteous hand of justice.
Would have been an 8/10 or 9/10 without the drop in accuracy and quality post-episode 7. Still worth a watch if you enjoy this sort of thing.
Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)
A little torn
Bodies x3 is an enjoyable experience, but I was left not quite sure what to make of it. Parts of the movie are obviously intended to be funny, but other parts... not sure if they were meant to be funny or not. Is it supposed to be funny that one of the characters says there are no guns in the house because the owners' "politics check out?" Is it supposed to be funny that even when a killer is stalking them in the dark, all of the female characters can't stop talking about their sexual history with each other, groping/sniffing panties, or spilling each others' drug-addiction and cheating histories? I couldn't really tell you. Is the twist ending supposed to be funny or tragic? Are we supposed to find it funny that pretty much all of the characters are unlikeable? Even Bee was too much of a lying, weird horndog for me to truly sympathize with. This grey area between seriousness and satire is what keeps this from being merely enjoyable. Worth a watch but probably not worth a movie ticket.
The Terminal List (2022)
Predictable and somewhat cheesy but not bad for background noise
I've just wrapped up the 6th episode and am not sure if I'm going to continue. It's the same kind of boomer fare you expect from something like this. Bosch, Reacher, etc. Are in the same boat. It's not utterly shameless boot-kissing for the military but at times it gets close. And as someone in the govcon industry I feel perhaps I have a bit more of a real world understanding of the issues in this show than most.
Pros:
- Strong performances from Chris Pratt, Taylor Kitsch, and Constance Wu
- Action scenes are well shot
- Surprisingly violent at times which is what a revenge story like this needs
- Contractors and the government are very slimy, it's true, and they 100% bump off people occasionally
Cons:
- Weak writing/dialogue (take a shot every time someone says "brother" or "operate/operators")
- Cartoonishly evil government contracting villains, cartoonishly heroic military
- Way too many people are ok with throwing away life and limb in service to Pratt's revenge rampage
- The conspiracy itself is a bit ridiculous. Govcon was experimenting on service members and ended up giving a bunch of Navy folks brain tumors. When you join the military you basically give the govt and contractors carte blanche to experiment on you with various vaccines and surgeries, and you have no real legal recourse if things go south. This scheme to kill Pratt's platoon would be entirely unnecessary.
- I don't care if Pratt is a Commander, even a Delta Force operator wouldn't have the connections and get-out-of-jail free cards this man seems to have. Running to Mexico and having enough strings to have sicarios ID'd and gunned down for you, are you serious?
The childish and narrow portrayal of the military is summed up well in one of Pratt's lines, somewhat paraphrased: "It's our job to look evil in the eye and confront it. Most people can't do that. All you have to do is pay your taxes and stay out of our way." As if the military isn't responsible for as many if not more horrors than govcon.
Annihilation (2018)
Surreal, horrifying, beautiful, and definitely not for everyone
I can understand why this film had a mixed reception. The first half is slow, and probably boring to some. The main character isn't that likeable. The ending is open to interpretation. Some of the side characters' writing and performances are mediocre.
But if you like weird, unsettling, Lovecraftian stories, this is highly recommended. The final 20/30 mins are wild. I watched this after reading the book and I honestly think this is a better story. The book leaves a little TOO much up to interpretation/the imagination and the audience is left with little to hold on to. A lot is changed in this version, and I think it's overall for the better.
Jurassic World Dominion (2022)
Underwhelming ending to an already underwhelming trilogy
Jurassic World was a poor remake of the original Jurassic Park. Fallen Kingdom was some nightmarish combination of Lost World 2.0 and cobbled-together ideas from the failed franchise refresh in the early 2010s. They at least felt like JP movies. This feels like a straight-to-Netflix globe-trotting spy flick with a dinosaur paint job.
This film is riddled with glaring ethical issues, more so than any other film in the franchise. The loss of life and property resulting from allowing these dinosaurs to roam the world is massive. We're supposed to just be ok with Owen and Claire kidnapping a child who surely has next of kin looking for her. A massive corporation re-kidnaps that kid instead of just stealing her hairbrush for some DNA samples. We're supposed to rejoice over predators (the trained atrocaraptors and the giga) being slaughtered for natural/trained behaviors.
If your kids were a big fan of the "hero" dinosaurs in the previous films (Rexy and Blue), prepare to see them for about 5 combined minutes of screentime. They're barely in this movie. Blue's child, Beta, has 0 reason to be in the movie and could have been written out entirely. She's not even cute for selling toys so I don't see the point.
The original cast is dragged back into the fray for nostalgia-bait. Although their plotline (sneaking into Biosyn to gather evidence that they're releasing genetically-engineered locusts into the world to slash agricultural competition) has absolutely nothing to do with dinosaurs or JP, it was far more enjoyable than seeing Owen and Claire run a gauntlet of pointless, barely-connected action setpieces on their quest to re-re-kidnap a kid.
Biosyn's motivations are baffling. Won't even bother trying to unravel that.
The promotion for this movie crowed about using practical effects, but the puppets and animatronics are legitimately worse than what we saw in the original JP. The CGI is passable but nothing all that impressive.
The only positives in this movie are that there are some cool action setpieces and FINALLY we get to see some weird variety in the dinosaurs. Therizinosaurus, some feathered dinos, more variety in smaller dinos.
Kids will like it but I'm just glad that this disrespectful travesty of a trilogy is over.
The Batman (2022)
Overall solid film
This is a slow, brooding movie. I enjoyed it, some might not. This is a depressed, possibly mentally ill Bruce Wayne. Some great costumes/makeup and some very good performances. The movie's greatest weakness is probably it's length. It's not overly padded/bloated, but there is imo just too many characters and plot threads for an introductory film. As she is in almost all her iterations, Catwoman is dead weight. Her character serving only as a mediocre foil to Batman's straight-man act. Would have been better to just briefly introduce her in this film, then save her for a sequel. The Riddler is also portrayed a little too manic and Joker-like for my tastes.
Otherwise no complaints. Pattinson is my favorite Batman by far.
Halo (2022)
Middling sci-fi miniseries, poor Halo adaptation
The CGI and dialogue are a bit rough. The plot's a bit contrived. That's not the main issue.
This isn't the John-117, Cortana, Halsey, or Covenant we've known for decades. Some liberties with the lore is alright but our main boy is downright unrecognizable. His tagalong Kwan ruins moments of gravity and seriousness with her quips and screams. Some humanizing of Master Chief is fine, but he shouldn't spend most of the show walking around with his helmet in his hands. And don't get me started on the Covenant having a human in a position of power.
The Haunting of Hill House (2018)
Far more of a family drama than a horror story
Well acted, well shot, good ghost design. The problem is that this is 75 - 80% family drama with very little spooks. Not exactly what I was hoping for. You also have 5 or 6 siblings all with personal beef and trauma that is slowly unraveled as we hop back and forth between the present and different points in the past. It's a lot to keep straight and to be quite honest I didn't care a whole lot. Couldn't make it past episode 4.
Morbius (2022)
Worst Marvel movie since the early 2000s
Shoddy CGI, horrible editing, a boring and laughable script that gives the decent actors in the film nothing to work with. If this had been rated R and leaned further into horror, we might have had something interesting. How do you tell a story about a villainous vampire without showing hardly any blood? How do you give a scientific explanation for why this man can turn into a fanged and clawed monster on a dime, fly, control clouds of bats, and echolocate? His origins in the comic books be darned. At least Suicide Squad (the first attempt) was halfway interesting.
The ties to the MCU are tenuous at best so you won't be missing anything by skipping it.
Midnight Mass (2021)
An atmospheric, well-written, and well-acted show with a few flaws
Pros:
- Great acting from the majority of the cast
- Good atmosphere and building of tension
- Some genuinely shocking and horrifying moments
- Probes questions about God, fate, death, etc.
- Ends without S2 bait
- Interesting take on vampires
Cons:
- Some of the age makeup is really, really bad and gives away a big part of the plot
- The story and themes revolve heavily around Christian belief, yet every time a supposedly devout Christian goes on a monologue about their belief they manage to get some of the basic tenets of Christianity wrong which is bizarre. I. E. "It's not a sin because it didn't feel like a sin" or "When we talk about God we mean the universe and everything in it as a whole." Sounds like something you'd hear in an undergrad religion course, not from a small-town church congregation or a Catholic priest.
Recommended because we need more shows that relish their atmosphere and are built to be one-and-done seasons.
Dune (2021)
Astounding visuals and sound, everything else falls flat
This movie is an auditory and visual spectacle, I will not lie. But every other aspect is mediocre. We have some real acting powerhouses here (Chalamet, Ferguson, Isaac, Momoa, Brolin, Skarsgard, Bardem) who are trying their best, but are given so little to work with. Batista is serviceable, Zendaya has nothing to do in the movie and is a meh actress anyhow, Momoa is lackluster as always.
I've never read Dune but I have a basic knowledge of the plot and it strikes me as something that would be best served as a TV show, and with some heavy plot reworking to get some B plots going while the A plot is still slow-rolling.
The plot is slow and meandering, with many pointless scenes and lots of talking about nothing. Things don't start HAPPENING until the last act. Ferguson spends most of her time crying, Chalamet spends most of his time smirking, whispering, and having dreams of Zendaya standing around. There is no climax, the movie just ends with the assumption you'll go see Part II. Give this one a pass.
Malignant (2021)
Yes, it's intentionally campy. That doesn't make it a good movie.
I wish the entire movie had been as gross and silly as the last third or quarter or so. Instead, the movie is slow and serious up until things kick into high gear around the last act. That's why so many people are reacting poorly to the absolute insanity that is the final act -- nothing else in the movie indicates that things are headed for this level of insanity.
Yeah, there are a ton of references to other slasher franchises. Doesn't change the fact that this movie is tonally inconsistent, starts slow, has a stupid looking villain, and a nonsensical plot.