Reviews

I feel pretty confident in saying that the book was better. I don't remember who said it, or where I heard it, but there's an argument against comic book adaptations because while yes, it's a visual medium, the images you see are carefully constructed. They are designed to convey power, weight, and emotion all within a single, efficient, story-moving frame. You do not need to see the connecting actions between frames because your brain fills them in for you. Imagine how a comic book would portray a noggin-smashing uppercut. On the page, you would find the punch at its most kinetic. All that is captured is the climax, and that's all that is needed. Comics are albums of photos all taken at precisely the right moment.

In a film, you have to deal with the wind-up and consequences of that uppercut. There's more room for error. The images onscreen don't match up with the ones constructed in your head. That's no criticism of the film itself, but it's an example of the inherent folly of trying to directly adapt a comic book page by page, as Zack Snyder did here.

I do think Watchmen deserved to be put on the big screen but I also think it deserved something more than a close copy. The comic is wordy, heavily rooted in its own philosophy, with frequent divergences to various characters' backstories. It is, quite simply, a novel, and copying that into a film without jumbling the structure up a little or inventing new scenes for the screen is a risky business, even if it is 3 hours long.

I'm not sure that anyone who hasn't read the story is going to know what the hell is going on for large stretches of time, as there is a ton of world building to do and no time to do it. There's no time for the audience to just sit with the page and take in all the details of the images, as you can with the comic. Things come and they go, as movies do, and this one feels a little overstuffed with detail.

It felt like the film was talking at me for 3 hours instead of easing me into the world, even as a book reader. I just think that could have been cleaned up.

When the performances are decent, the movie can settle into a good rhythm. But Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan is too weak to convey his power and disaffection with humanity. Similarly, Matthew Goode, neither in his appearance nor his performance sells Ozymandias as his physically perfect, frustratingly intelligent comic likeness.

There is a major change in the story's climax that strikes me as wholly unnecessary, but it keeps in line with the themes so it isn't outright sacrilege, but it's pretty lame.

I'm glad this exists. The original story is truly a masterwork and no amount of Zack Snyder can keep that brilliance from shining through. The film is just a bit tiring on the brain is all, and for that I am thankful I didn't decide to go with the Ultimate Cut on this viewing.

Wherein the series regains its necessary brutality that was traded for cartoonish, parodic violence in the second and third chapters, however it still fails to replicate the heart of First Blood. Rambo is supposed to be a tragic, reluctant monster, but the sequel films have had a separate worldview to push onto him that never really fit.

Here we jump into a world where John has voluntarily exiled himself to, away from top-secret missions, but still not too far from pointless, political violence. However, this is a more cynical, withdrawn Rambo. He helps no one but himself, and I wish the film spent more time on his refusal to help the missionaries, and more time spent exploring the mercenaries' own reflections of Rambo than the kind of tonal whiplash that renders all nuances of his character relatively meaningless.

He doesn't do anything unless someone is calling on him to, and I think that's a missed opportunity. Missing a Colonel Trautman, the film still pulls out a Colorado pastor to stand in for him, and gosh, that's pretty stale for a reboot set twenty years later, no?

The mayhem is on par with the previous films, yet darker and more slick, and while I appreciate it, if there were a stronger moral struggle in the first half of the film, a more-rounded villain, and a greater sense that the atrocities in Burma are knocking on Rambo's front step, I think that would make his climactic stand in the .50 cal that much more satisfying (or horrifying, or both). Everything else here is pretty light.

The blood reds, sick greens, and satanic blues of Rob Zombie's feature debut are indicative of the pure vision he brought to House Of 1000 Corpses. He's such an interesting director to me because he operates solely in the grind house, midnight movie aesthetic that was developed during his prior days fronting White Zombie. There's nobody like him out there, and while the end results can be mixed, there's usually something in his work that makes me thankful we live in a world where we can watch a shock rocker's dirty fascinations play out on the big screen.

I enjoyed a multitude of things about this film. The Firefly Clan is genuinely interesting in a Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Resident Evil 7 kind of way. Their crimes are gruesome and horrific, and because of which the sense of dread throughout its familiar premise is palpable, and that's before things take a turn for the supernatural.

It's not all peaches and roses, as Zombie sets up the exploitative habits in this film that haunt his entire career. Even though that's kind of the point of Rob Zombie's filmography, it's just hard to stomach at times mainly because its morality errs towards the dehumanization of anyone and everyone. It seems that the movie is saying that we are all just meat, and the only people worth a damn in the world of the Fireflies are those who use the body as a toy box for bloody sadomasochism. Rainn Wilson's punishment for undergoing a project of anthropology is to be fused with an alligator, leading to this idea that ink doesn't impress on the page, only blood.

However, Sid Haig as Captain Spaulding is the best, most inspired bit of the film. His early scene standing off with a couple would-be robbers is a showcase for Zombie's ear for colorful, fun dialogue, and Sid Haig seems born for it.

Zombie also shoots the film like it were a music video, connecting scenes with home movie asides of various characters, and I'm split on it. It's jarring, but still in line with the thematic content, so I'll give it a pass. I think I enjoy this movie the most for how experimental it can be, and I'm always a fan of filmmakers who choose to push the envelope in any way they see fit. There are a lot of good, promising choices here, and a lot of others that don't quite work, but ultimately I wouldn't leave it out of any compilation of interesting horror films.

The well had already dried up fourteen years ago when The Devil's Rejects sent everyone's sorry behind out in a hail of gunfire, so to return after so long, with less resources, less commercial enthusiasm, and even less ideas tells us that it's not just Hollywood that's scraping the bottom of the barrel.

It's a tale of two movies, neither of which fit together, nor are they worthy of the continued exploits of the surviving Firefly clan. The first part is a meandering hangout film while the second seeks to distract you by being some kind of Fear And Loathing In Mexico while it grasps wildly for an antagonist behind the curtain. Put the two together and you've got an overlong movie with nothing to say and no consequences to bear on its characters.

The only thing I like about it is how easily Bill Moseley slips back into being Otis. He gets all the best screen time in this movie. Each time Zombie accidentally writes some decent dialogue it's usually Otis's. I don't know what he did to Baby, but boy, all I can do is give credit to Sherri Moon Zombie for trying. Even she gets tired of the crazy shtick and gives up on it halfway through.

It's not funny, not amusing, looks like poop, the camerawork nauseatingly shaken, and overall not a good time. I'll leave with this: in the behind the scenes featurette shown after the film, Zombie describes how he doesn't want to do sequels unless the idea is right. Regurgitating catch phrases and all that may be good on opening night, giving your fans what they want, "...until a month later you realize, man, that movie's just a hollow piece of sh_t."

I really didn't enjoy this. All I found interesting, technically and thematically, about House Of 1000 Corpses has been stripped out in favor of a washed out, sadistic road movie that "fleshes" out these characters in unsurprising ways. All that there is to do for them is to cause mayhem, and boy, does Mr. Zombie like to drag out his mayhem to uncomfortable levels.

Lionsgate asked Zombie to do a sequel and he obliged. I don't know why people prefer this boring, unimaginative trek through the desert over the previous film, because it never once feels like any of this was ever planned. It's an endless cycle of go here, things gets messed up. Escape here, then things gets messed up. That's just what they do! They're the Firefly clan! Gotta love 'em!

The film is titled The Devil's Rejects because even he thinks they're trying too hard.

The same exact movie as before except everyone is so disconnected from each other that it only makes it all worse. Which is the poorer choice, the fact that the first 5 minutes is just the final scene of part two played again, even though it means nothing for this film, or that the protagonist doesn't even cross paths with Jason until only 20 minutes are left?

At the very least, he's beginning to look like himself. The portrayal isn't quite there yet. The way Jason kept luring people to the barn gave me strange Of Mice And Men vibes. I'm looking forward to the point where he abandons all pretenses about the element of surprise.

The core idea of Brightburn is excellent; a perfect, if obvious, inversion of the current superhero canon that so desperately needs shaking up. Brightburn has the rare ability to change the course of its genre, pushing it to new heights. However the film's potential is all that it has going for it, and it's impressive how little time it takes for the film to fall into safe, unimaginative rhythms. It was already going to be unimpeachable in the box office. Why not try something crazy? Why, when the mere mention of the film's log line is enough to excite an audience, rest on your laurels? Why refuse to take advantage of an opportunity to surprise, confuse, or challenge said audience? Everyone already knows what's going to happen. The difference between remembering it years from now and forgetting it next month is all in how these events are framed.

Ironically, the very same exciting log line is a simultaneous red flag, as "Superman but bad" doesn't exactly inspire the most confidence in the end result, at least not from me. In practice, just call it a major whiff. Every plot device is transparent, set up and then knocked over in only a few minutes, all for the sake of narrative expediency. It's just not satisfying at all. There was a chance for the film to zero in on Brandon and draw a parallel between puberty and him discovering his power. If you just take all the scenes from the first half of the film, stretch them out, and then rearrange them in a less linear order, then you could have a pretty decent story. As it stands, it shucks character development, ignores logic, and goes for emotion where there is none for the audience to tap into.

Everything about the writing screams "We must make this movie before anyone else does," and by the gods, they went and done it. But are they proud of it?

It gets off to a strong start, exploring a political rumbling of our current moment before unleashing a volume of threads that continually intertwine, tying its characters together in one big Midwestern Depression Knot™. There are smart choices in the script that allow its ambitious structure to coalesce, and it's anchored by some very good lead performances.

There're a lot of attempts to connect to something that isn't there, thematically, or something on the horizon that isn't quite clear yet. It's easy to connect to, and the film does a good job at slowly yet steadily introducing a little bit at a time. Coupled with production design that lends this authenticity that is vital to the tone of the film, it's a very impressive micro-indie feature. This is the Midwest by a Midwesterner, and its important to remember how much the setting plays into each character's personal desolation. Don't worry though, it keeps a sense of humor the whole way through. It has good dramedy bones.

However I do wish it didn't fetter out as it reaches the end, unable to wrangle all of its threads into a meaningful ambiguity. The final moments hinge on a character whose development feels like it should have been introduced earlier, among the other supporting characters of the film. Its first major character, Chris, I wish was the sole focus of the story, but what we lack in satisfying arcs is somewhat made up for in a mood that you wrap around yourself like an old blanket.

This is the kind of debut from a director that says to me, "I didn't have a plot or budget that supports a plot, but to prove myself here's a movie anyway."

Willem Dafoe leads his gang of 50s goths on a journey of minimal introspection even as they are stuck in a one-horse town, trying to get down to Daytona for the 500 (I will never not geek out over casual NASCAR references in film). Not much happens besides the gang trading quips back and forth in their ancient teenspeak, which reminds me a lot of the merry band of molokos from A Clockwork Orange. Here it's kind of grating to the ear to watch and listen to everyone underact their persona.

It's at least nicely shot, and approaches something of a story when the bikers cross paths with what amounts to this town's oil baron. In its final act, it's almost pretty likeable, but stilts on a feverishly dark ending.

Deep down it's a film about outcasts, but less about them causing trouble than being caught in a pot where trouble's already been stirred. If you wanna see Dafoe's junk, come take a ride.

Maybe I'm just not watching the right movies, but I wonder where all the action flicks centered around the President Of The United States are? An average American's ideal POTUS is near-mythology at this point, what with consistent talk of our own "founding fathers" and how they'd be "rolling in their graves" at the directions our political system take with every passing day. Harrison Ford here is about the closest you can get to apple pie American onscreen, being soft-spoken and humble, a lover of college ball, and most importantly, a war hero.

The fantasy and premise here is so perfect, or perfectly groan-inducing, that it's probably best for everyone that it came out so average. There's enough triumphant action to satisfy its escapist nature, but its leveled against enough 90s cliche to make you say, "That'd never happen" in order to temper your expectations when you inevitably have to return to the real world. It's worth a watch to justify making a bucket of popcorn, inoffensive enough to be immediately pushed out of your mind by the latest news update from your phone.

One thing that's really going for it is its hard-R factor, making it more brutal that you'd probably expect with a premise like this, but I think they could have gone farther with that. That's my fantasy at least, to see our President as an avenging angel drenched in his enemies' blood, but this movie is good too, if only to hang onto the now slippery idea of a President who is respectable to the very core, instead of one who's, say, incoherent and mean, or an affront to ideals of democracy or basic decency any time he opens his mouth.

Definitely an improvement over the first, however, it takes your prior familiarity with the characters + style of the first film for it to land like it does.

It's much more confident and breezy this time around, and you could accuse it of simply coasting on the first film's goodwill, however, Soderbergh pushes himself behind the camera. Different filmic influences drive how scenes are shot; at times it's almost documentarian. Selling the ease at which the camera operates is the chemistry between the expanding cast of characters and cameos. While this is definitely a heist film, what makes the Ocean's films sing are the actors' unwillingness to play up the dramatics, therefore taking away a major reason for you to care about the heists themselves. It honestly sounds like an anti-movie, and in many ways it kind of is, but that's probably why it's kinda brilliant. The movie is so hyper-aware of this that a major beat of the plot is centered around an encounter with Bruce Willis, playing himself.

I wasn't totally sold on either the original or this year's Ocean's Eight, as Soderbergh just isn't quite there for me as a director, but I think he found the formula's sweet spot with this one.

It's both a movie's movie and an anti-movie. Opinions seem divided on whether or not that's a good thing.

Falling victim to just about every hokey horror cliche to pad its run time, it's really only worth watching for every frame that Art The Clown appears, who himself is the most well thought out of anything here. His appearance lends itself to a few pretty frightening images, and his total silence extends to movement; it's unsettling to hear not even the creak of his bones or a rustling of fabric.

It's also horrifically violent, heavy on facial mutilation, and I liked how the movie didn't restrict Art to any one tool, it gave him a trash bag to lug around just about anything with a sharp edge or blunt force.

However these small decisions regarding Art are exceptionally lacking in the film's other aspects, which include bland actors, cheap lighting, and no grounds on its sense of place. The bulk of the movie happens in some gross, nondescript apartment/warehouse hybrid, and it just looks like total poopy. It'd be impressive for a student film, only in that it actually got made.

Overlord's opening minutes pay small dues to Spielberg-backed WWII epics such as Saving Private Ryan and Band Of Brothers, which I find odd, seeing as the energy and premise of this bloody action horror feel lifted straight out of the world of video games. The first spoken line of dialogue coming from the company sniper is a total paraphrase of a scene from Private Ryan, specifically Private Jackson's declaration that if he had 400 yards of clear sight to Hitler, the war would be over.

It's interesting to see this film try to juggle both these influences at the same time, but in the end, it takes way long to get going. It's not as if we want to sit around and listen to these characters talk, they're all very thin, playing some worn-out archetype (including that company sniper, his entire arc is concerned with getting him to like a child). Had the film been more obsessed with the church and what lies beneath, there would have been more opportunities to pit them against the Fourth Reich, which here is only displayed as a curiosity; essentially it's a project in the beta phase.

Or, if the film wanted to continue to pay its respects to more historical accounts of the Second World War, the journey to the church could have taken on this Band Of Brothers-esque journey as the soldiers of the 101st fight for every advantage they can get, behind enemy lines, against impossible opposition. They claw and die to reach the church, only to be tested further by a second-to-third act twist that throws everything they've learned out the window.

This is all wishful thinking, as we get a movie that's caught in between two wildly different depictions of the Nazi regime, and while what's here is good, it's hard not to drift during the film and wonder what could have been if we didn't spend so much damn time in that girl's house. Check it out!

Tense and scenario-driven, it's a collection of war stories with loose threads laid between them, much like a military-themed game that pays little attention to the quiet time between set pieces. It's superbly suspenseful; I think that each day in Bravo's rotation builds on the last in satisfying ways, further straining the EOD squad in new ways. I wouldn't call it realistic per se, as the story takes a couple fantasy turns (though not entirely out of the realm of possibility) in the interest of raising the stakes, but there never really seem to be meaningful consequences that follow. None of these guys ever really face condemnation from anyone but each other, and whether or not that's a comment on the lawlessness of foreign military outposts is unclear.

I think it also falters in its emotional beats, as it's presenting a war psychology 101 viewpoint on its impact on the soldier, stating its conclusion before the movie even starts, almost undercutting anything that happens in the next two hours. It's a very enjoyable two hours, but Jeremy Renner's character is an enigma that's already solved. I don't know what I would have preferred in these minimal scenes of downtime, but none of them made me scoff and go, "War is hell", because, well, duh.

Bigelow's camerawork is the secret star of the show here, the same style she would go on to use in the equally-intense Detroit. It's all a bit shaky for my taste, but it excels in the meat of this movie. It sells the paranoia and confusion the characters experience in middle of these city squares, as a silent chorus of onlookers watch the before, perhaps expecting the after, as if they're protected by an impervious sheet of plexiglass. At times it almost feels like a horror movie, and every second that goes by without any new information takes a visible toll on the squad, put in a near-impossible position of battling an unseen (or seen?) enemy.

Reminds me of last year's re-imagining of King Arthur except a heist film this is not. Robin Hood gets his umpteenth retelling yet the film insists it's telling a new version of the story while also basically covering all you already know about the man himself. Steal from the rich, give to the poor; it's not complicated, and open to a million different interpretations of that core loop, yet here we are.

For a movie to tease some promising themes at the start (if you ignore the awful opening bit of narrative catch-up that mismatches the film's tone with twee voice over and the weakest relationship setup imaginable) only to glance over them for flat characters is a little mean, because it makes you think it might not be half bad for at least a half an hour. It could have opened with the first major action sequence, which may be the best part of the film, as it is a far cry from where the action goes from there. Robin, of course, is a man of great character, even before his transformation into a thief proper. Where the film immediately goes wrong is establishing a context to the conflict he is drafted into fighting, which clearly includes rampant racism, imperialism, and intolerance of ideology. Like I said, promising themes at first, but Ben Mendelsohn as the Sheriff of Nottingham is not a person you'll come to understand. He could hardly get more cartoonish, and during his growly monologues I wondered if this movie was actually intended for children.

I think it is and it isn't as it's suitably violent but without blood which in some instances appears to have been intended. Robin himself racks up quite the body count in his efforts to steal from the absurdly rich Sheriff, dragging presumably innocent lives into his own personal vendetta (which is fueled by Jamie Foxx, who goes back and forth between playing Jamie Foxx and Jamie Foxx's vague interpretation of an "Arab", quotes included). But because he gets results, the community rallies around him. Off screen, mostly, so that when it comes time to rally the town against the Sheriff (though one wonders why they never left if they were forced to give everything they owe to the war) they all get behind him.

There is a lot of conflicting or lazy character choices in the film, too many to get into great detail, but they keep resetting any feelings you may develop naturally when a movie is--how you say--consistent. On top of that, accents are a complete afterthought. The lead actress, an Irish actor, can't even keep an accent in her native tongue for more than a sentence every other scene she's in. The rest of the time she's speaking plain American English like everyone's afraid to remind her of her character's betrothal to another Irishman, Jamie Dornan. Oh yeah, he's in this, and his character's arc is, in order: nonexistent, then confusing and script-serving, then literally Two-Face from The Dark Knight in a categorically stupid franchise setup that promises to tell the exact same story again next time.

Any sort of personality or wit the film has is lost in the incompetent action scenes that are a complete joke. Its costuming is interesting, but feels weird and ultimately ephemeral. At times it was like a cross between Game Of Thrones and The Matrix. I also thought the film was going to end after a particularly large set piece (which includes a horse-drawn cart being driven through a wall) because the inane plotting felt sweetly dumb enough to be mercifully short, but it kept slogging on for maybe 45 more minutes. I wouldn't give this one its franchise money, if only so that Taron Edgerton can put his alright charisma towards something else.