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Drive (2011)
Above Average
Not going to be like the 1 * people and act like this is the most boring thing in the world, it's a good action film but it's not a 7.8/10 to me, it's just "good". Not really sure how it was nominated for so many awards, none of the acting was bad or anything but none of it was award-worthy either, just regular good acting. Same can be said about every aspect of this film, the technical side of things like directing, cinematography, editing etc down to the story itself. All good but nothing great or amazing. You won't be bored or upset watching this film, but if you're going purely off the ratings on this site, you may end up like me where you think "how was this rated above American Psycho, Zodiac, The Nice Guys? On par or nearly on par with movies like Nightcrawler, Edge of Tomorrow, both Blade Runners?"
Just not in the same league in my opinion, and I'm not the type of person to give ratings based on genre. Something can be good "for an action film", but that doesn't mean it should get bonus points and be rated/compared to only other action films, it should still be compared to comedies, romance, drama etc.
This movie is much more of a 6.5 - 7.0/10 than it is to being nearly an 8/10.
A good action-drama, not much substance and nothing amazing but enjoyable nonetheless.
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023)
Pretty good, occasionally frustrating characters
So the technical side of things is all very well done except maybe the heavily CGI opening scene, which was done well, you can just kind of tell it's all CGI. The story for the most part isn't bad, it's more the characters. Whilst the near-death experience of Godzilla almost ending your life would be traumatizing, the main character seems to struggle to even function normally or make rational decisions and the PTSD seems to be used as more of an excuse for the kind of bad decision making that you'd often see in something like a typical horror movie. At this point "hacking" scenes are just eye-rolling but everyone does it so whatever. Acting is good, nothing wrong with it.
I've only seen the first 2 episodes at time of writing so I'm assuming the story will only get better and more exciting, I'm just hoping that the characters aren't too annoying along the way.
Fool's Paradise (2023)
An interesting movie that feels like it misses the mark
Quick Summary: Despite a lot of the technical stuff being well above average (though nothing outstanding), and some great acting from everyone, the script unfortunately drags this movie down as it's simply not funny or interesting enough.
So, many people that watched this and left 1 star reviews seem to be fans of Charlie/Always Sunny. This is definitely a departure from the kind of comedy he's normally a part of and I think that contributed to the disappointment all the overly negative reviewers felt. I'm also a fan of Charlie and especially Always Sunny but I'm going to try and be as honest, fair and unbiased as possible.
Charlie plays a mute whose mental diagnosis by a doctor is so flimsy it might as well not as have been included, easier to just have him introduced to the world as a random mute man, but whatever. He basically wordlessly stumbles his way through Hollywood and into stardom, failing to make any connections along the way because everyone in Hollywood is too self-serving and self-obsessed. The satire is very on the nose and obvious in a way that often makes it less funny and more confusing, mostly because a lot of the "commentary" isn't new to the general audience and is in fact fairly stale by this point. Greedy business people, movie stars in love with themselves, people desperate for fame and their slice of the pie, all of it's been done before since a while ago. There are the occasional funny details that could go unnoticed (3 adopted children with 3 different latin nannys in one scene, kind of the the background/side) or just funny parts/jokes but they're fairly few and far between and mostly in the first half of the film.
The acting is all well done for the most part, as is the directing, screenplay, cinematography etc, nothing outstanding but definitely more than competent, but the main parts that fail are the script and possibly the editing (but it's also possible the editor simply did the best with what they were given). Charlie does fairly well as a mute character who's in reality enough that he can't exaggerate his facial expressions too much, but it's also fairly one-note as his main expressions are either confusion or just kind of looking around. Ken Jeong does well as a loud mouth publicist with a few emotional scenes though one of them in particular I couldn't tell if it was meant to be funny-not-serious-emotional or just serious-emotional. The rest of the star-studded cast are basically just cameos, other than Adrien Brody, Ray Liotta and Kate Beckinsale who all do great with what they're given.
Other than the occasional funny parts, there doesn't seem to be much of a "point" for this movie. It's not a vanity project, maybe a passion project for Charlie Day but not one he managed to pull off as well as the movies that inspired him. And other than him, I did often find myself wondering, who exactly is the target audience for this movie? It doesn't feel like something a younger audience would enjoy, definitely not the Always Sunny audience, so I'm guessing older generations but only a section of them that would be amused or appreciate this sort of niche film?
A few times in the movie I also felt like there was missed opportunity for more comedy. Like the main character getting married, but they skip over the whole wedding, but maybe showing how a mute is somehow able to survive a hollywood wedding could have been funny? I don't know, is the point to be funny or to satirize Hollywood, because in the end it felt like it was trying to do both but barely managed to do either. Maybe I just didn't "get it", but it really felt more like there just wasn't much to "get".
Fantastic acting, directing etc all of which is let down by an occasionally funny but mostly sub-par and aimless script, bringing the overall score down to the average 5/10.
100 Bloody Acres (2012)
Nothing special but still enjoyable
An enjoyable Aussie horror-comedy with the usual twisted sense of humour we're known for. A small, local compost business uses a certain type of road kill (people) as the secret ingredient in their compost mix, which they then sell to the local farmers, producing fantastic results. They haven't had a fresh batch in a while, it seems so lucky them when the younger brother Reggie stumbles on a car crash with a dead body at the scene.
On top of this, he picks up 3 hitchhikers with the intent that maybe they could be part of a fresh batch as well.
I've seen some people criticize that the main villains aren't scary or fleshed out enough as they should be and comparing it to Wolf Creek but I think the point is that they a) have only ever done this once before and it was with 6 dead bodies and b) are way in over their heads, especially with living people now.
The older brother Lindsay could definitely make a case for being your typical cold-blooded killer type, but he's unable to realise his full killer potential because he's too busy picking up after the mess Reggie makes trying to show some sort of initiative. It's because of Reggie that the situation goes on a constant, slow downward spiral of chaos and Lindsay isn't able to get a control over it. This is where a lot of the comedy and cringe comes from and it works well.
In fact, whilst nothing is outstanding, everything works fairly well; acting, cinematography, writing, directing, editing etc. There's nothing to complain about on the technical aspect in my opinion, nor the creative aspect. If you have a love or appreciation for gardening/horticulture then that'll definitely help with some of the humour.
The only way you might be let down is if you go into this expecting some kind of game-changing movie. This movie wasn't made to wow you in any way, so if you go in with the realistic expectation of just being entertained for 90 minutes then you'll be happy.
Bonus was the inclusion of Fairyland, a unique and kind-of terrifying place that's now sadly been closed due to vandals and lack of popularity after doing so well in the 70s and 80s.
Booksmart (2019)
A solid, good movie if you're able to let yourself enjoy it
Not really original, some cliches are broken and many stay the same. The gay guys are overly sassy, the timid girl is timid, there's an argument between the best friends as is apparently necessary in every single one of these movies etc etc
There's a decent amount of jokes and most of them are pretty good. Some made me laugh fairly hard, others not much. Also was a bit cringey because it's another one of those high school movies where no one is a realistic highschooler, they're all clearly high school characters written by adults. Sometimes it works but most of the time it's a bit cringe.
But it still manages to be pretty good in my opinion, if you're able to forgive the usual stuff that's wrong with this type of movie, it's still better than a lot of high school comedies.
Mortal Kombat (2021)
Pretty great but would work better as a series
So 8 stars because of how much I enjoyed this movie though I should note that I'm a Mortal Kombat fan so I'm a little biased in that sense. However, the choreography was excellent, the fighting and fatalities were great, there was cheese but not too much (have to expect some from Mortal Kombat though), the actors (especially Kano) were all great.
There are definite flaws though. The CGI was mediocre, presumably due to budget constraints, but hopefully with the success of this movie we'll get a slightly larger budget for the next one that will hopefully lead to some better CGI.
The other main flaw was the script. Now I wasn't expecting anything mind-blowing and yet, they teased me with that opening scene. Handled fantastically in every possible way, script including, I was then hoping the rest of the movie would keep up that pace but it kind of hit a bump with the introduction of Cole & all the other characters and setting up the MK world. It was that weird kind of thing where certain aspects seemed rushed (not enough backstory about anyone to care too much about their fate) yet other aspects made it all feel a little dragged out (trying to unlock their powers).
There's too many details to go into here about it but the simple way to word my conclusion would be that this would actually work very, very well as a series. Most of the problems with this film and script and pacing/editing and I feel like a lot of that could be solved if it was episodic instead of trying to cram it all into an average-length movie. They could still do some films, like about certain characters or rivalries, but the main chunk of the universe and even the tournament itself, should all be part of a series in my opinion.