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Movie Reviews

Lucy (2014) Review

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If you are looking for an action movie to scratch your need for suspense and thrills, go elsewhere because you won’t get any from this movie. Nothing happens in this movie.

This movie’s biggest weakness is that the main character is too powerful. The movie is about Lucy unlocking the next level of evolution but in the first 10 mins of the movie she is already overpowered. The issue with having such a powerful character is that it removes any danger her actions might bring. The fights are boring because Lucy can end the fights instantly. It doesn’t help that Scarlet Johansson is a robot in this movie. While this may fit with the narrative of the film, it isn’t interesting to watch. Lucy realizes that the reason that humanity is unable to evolve is because they are too hung up on aspects of life that aren’t important. This would be the aspects of humanity that give people personality. This apathetic performance makes the movie even harder to watch because there is no danger and there is no emotion. The performance isn’t bad, it was just a weird choice for this already boring movie.

This movie takes a cool concept and isn’t able to deliver on it. This story works in Futurama because you have a lot more context and you get to experience the growth and change of Bender as he comes to similar realizations. This movie, there is no growth or even character establishment because it drops off all of these points and expects you to fill in the blanks. There is no character growth because you do not know anything about the character except for snippets of forcefully placed exposition that suggest that Lucy isn’t the most put together person in this universe. You also get very little context of who the bad guys are or the magic that is bringing on the transformation. The most jarring problem is the fact that whoever is responsible for this movie keeps trying to validate this movie through disproven science. They make it a huge plot point that man only uses 15% of their brain and lucy is unlocking the rest of it with the help of magic. The problem with this is that the story isn’t very sound. There are a lot of holes in this plot and that will become obvious because this movie is boring.

This film also includes random clips of nature. Partly to pad a movie they couldn’t make any longer, and partly to make it seem deep. The problem again is that it highlights the weakness of this movie. The main weakness is that there isn’t enough story for this to be a full movie. Another weakness, it isn’t that deep. The movie isn’t the worst thing you’ll ever see, but it isn’t anything impressive. It is clearly an overzealous project that doesn’t deliver what it promises.

I would skip this movie because it doesn’t really count as a movie. This story has been done a lot better in futurama, go watch that instead.

Movie Reviews

John Wick 3: Now with 200% More Dog

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If you haven’t seen any of the John Wick movies, why are you reading this? Start watching them now. This series doesn’t fail to entertain and will have you on the edge of your seat as you watch John Wick wreck mayhem across New York. Although the series doesn’t necessarily get better with each instalment, it doesn’t get worse like Taken. This movie starts off fun and will stay fun.

What I particularly like about the series is how each film builds off the other. Each film starts off with John Wick dealing with the consequences brought on by his actions in the previous movie. And this movie does have consequences. John Wick isn’t the typical inhuman badass that is ever present in movies of the same genre. John Wick progressively gets tired. You get to see him get hurt and react accordingly. He will limp and the action will slow down showing his mortality. I particularly like this aspect because it is something different. It was nice to see action scenes that weren’t cut to shit to give the illusion of fighting.

Although this film gets a bit repetitive at times, it is worth the watch. The beautifully choreographed fight scenes make up for the lack of story. Don’t get me wrong, this film has more story than other’s in the genre but the story isn’t terribly complex. Someone shoots his dog and he goes on a full rampage. The way it this was executed however is something you need to experience for yourself. And if at this point you haven’t seen the previous instalments; you don’t really need to see them to enjoy the third movie. I didn’t remember the events of the other movies when I watched it and felt like it does a good job catching you up. Although it wouldn’t be a terrible idea to binge all three in one of the most bad ass sitting you will experience.

And of course the best part, this movie comes with way more dog. I can say, you are not ready for the amount and quality of dog you will get from this movie. That alone should be reason for you to strop reading this and watch what is easily one of the best action flicks I’ve seen this year. Forget your superhero bullshit, forget your repetitive money making action trash and go see this.

In closing, love yourself and watch this!

Movie Reviews

How to be a Latin Lover (2017)

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Let me just start by saying that this movie was not what I expected. I’ll admit, I went into this thinking it was another generic romantic comedy that I was being forced to sit through. Although not transcending by any means, this film did a great job keeping my attention. That alone should mean a lot as I do not have the best attention span. And yet I found my self watching every bit of this.

The film follows an incredibly unlikable character Maximo who spends the whole movie trying to find a sugar mama so he doesn’t have to work anymore. Maximo is an asshole, but Eugenio Derbez truly makes him a likeable one. Maximo lives a life of luxury where people constantly wait on him. This means that he will act in the selfish way that we would expect a character of this to act. Although you never truly root for Maximo in his endeavors, Derbez makes him bearable. His and Salma hyaks performance alone is reason enough to watch this movie. The on screen chemistry between Salma Hyack and Derebez. The time the spend on screen together is almost enough to see it just for the banter. And the way they incorporate being bilingual is so natural and made this movie truly a unique experience. Being bilingual myself, I was happy to see people who not only looked like me but also talked like me. It was a nice change from the movies I usually sit through and that’s a good thing

As a tip, don’t go into this film expecting something deep because it is comedy. The story is pretty flat, but it is unique enough that it will keep you entertained. If you want a date night movie, look no further. Even if you are bored at home, this is a great watch. It has a certain charm that you should experience.

Movie Reviews

Hellboy (2019) Review

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              I am not too familiar with the source material for this film unfortunately, so my review will focus on the movie and its story and not the comic book it is based on.

              This film was an interesting ride. It didn’t do anything extraordinarily bad, but it did little to make the film remarkable. The film is a super hero movie and thus it will follow a lot of the already established tropes. It also follows a familiar story that you have seen so many times so the fact that it doesn’t add anything to make this story feel fresh and new is a bit disappointing. Hellboy will constantly recite cheesy one liners, and most don’t really land. You will have a lot of scenes that try desperately to establish Hell Boy as a bad ass but it becomes a bit distracting. How many times can we watch a hero pretend like he doesn’t care only to find out that he does at the end? I take it not much longer and this movie will probably one that will become obscure over time because it’s the same story.

              What hurts this film is the CGI. This story might have been better if it were animated. The cgi in this film isn’t the best and the fights look ugly on the big screen. There were multiple times where I didn’t know what I was looking at because of how cartoonishly bad action scenes would play out. This comes as a huge disappointment because there are a lot of cool designs of demons and monsters that would have looked a lot better if it were all animated. If you want to watch this for the action, wait till you can watch it on a smaller screen, it might look better.

              Another issue with this movie is the acting. Maybe it is the scripts fault, but it seems like most people sleep walk through this film. Some of the acting is out right wooden and it kills a scene because if the actors don’t care, I don’t either. You can tell that this was another paycheck for most of the people here. If you are looking for a good story, go elsewhere because this one will feel generic. I honestly don’t know how this film got a theatric review when it feels like a Netflix original. It is a shame because I have seen how cool of a story can be, and I wanted to like this movie so bad but it just doesn’t do the series justice.

              I say skip this one. Don’t pay theather price because it isn’t worth it. Wait for it to come on Netflix but even then it would be for background noise as you will probably lose interest in the story. It’s not terrible, but it’s not good. 

Movie Reviews

Little (2019) Review

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              Where can I start off with this movie, if you can even call it that. Little is one of those comedies that you just have to sit through. This movie will name drop better movies of its genre, making you regret not being home watching those instead. If you’ve seen the movie “Big”, you’ve seen the better version of this movie. Hell, if you have seen the trailers for this, you’ve seen the better version of this movie as it does not add any new jokes. You aren’t missing much.

              First of all, this movie is incredibly shameless about its product placement. You can’t miss it because every scene stops in order to plug in its product placement. Lyft should seriously have a bigger acting credit than Regina Hall as it has more screen time than she does. It is a shame that movies, at least the shameless popular ones, seem to be giant advertisements and are losing their ability to tell a story effectively. I understand that a movie like this probably wouldn’t get enough funding with out such shameless product placement, but when it is this bad, just don’t make the movie.

              The jokes don’t always land, and yes you will have to sit there through entire scenes that are not funny because they had to pad out the run time somehow. And the few moments that do make you laugh are not enough to merit a viewing at the theater. How this movie got a theatric release astounds me. This should have been a Netflix original.

              Don’t waste your time or money and skip this movie. This isn’t even a fun bad movie to make fun of. It is just a bad long commercial with few barely funny jokes sprinkled throughout. Just watch the trailers or watch big as it will be a better sit. If you are curious and want to watch this movie, wait till you can stream it. Cheers.

Movie Reviews

Captain Marvel (2019) Review

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It is no secret that I am not fond of Super Hero movies. At least I do little to hide my indifference towards them. For the most part, these films aren’t able to create a captivating narrative. Most of these movies rely too much on gimmicks instead of using an actual story to tell narrative. These gimmicks are what carry over from the old tired tropes that we’ve experienced in action movies too many times. There is too much lore in super heroes for there to be an effective narrative. Because these movies need to have action, often story needs to be sacrificed and replaced by heavily edited and disorienting fights. The issue with origin story movies, like Captain Marvel, is that her character needs to be introduced and the action needs to be sacrificed. I don’t think that film is the best medium for this because you end up with a rushed narrative and a sloppy outcome.

This is where captain Marvel suffers. A brand-new character needs to be created. I’ll admit, I am not familiar with the source material. And not having the entire series committed to memory, I was lost a few times. The story itself is easy enough to follow, it just isn’t interesting enough to sit through. If you are here because you want to see some action, look elsewhere. You will have to sit through multiple layers of flashbacks that unravel too slowly to be worth the price of the ticket. By the time you do make it to the action, it is heavily edited, and it looks bad. The worst part of super hero movies is the action because of how disoriented it is to watch. The camera constantly shakes the poorly choregraphed fights to give off the illusion of action.

The story itself is rather bland. Captain Marvel doesn’t do enough to stand out and be unique, instead she falls into a generic action movie star in a movie that has very little action. There isn’t anything terribly unique or engaging about this movie and you can tell it was just another cash grab.

This movie is shameless about its product placement. Product placement has been a part of cinema for a while, but it seems lately that product placement has become a huge part of the narrative. This movie will stop it’s narrative to plug its product placement. It’s already a slow movie, it doesn’t need any more stops and the product placement in this movie becomes distracting.

All in all, I would say to hold off on this one. It is in not way the worst super hero movie, but it isn’t worth the movie theater price. It doesn’t look good on the big screen and the story isn’t compelling enough to add to any must watch list you might already have. HOLD OFF

Movie Reviews

Next Gen (2018) Review

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Next Gen is a poor man’s Big Hero 6, and given the choice, you should probably go watch that instead. This more poorly written knock off is a Netflix original that you probably won’t miss if you don’t watch it. This movie attempts to be an edgier version of Big Hero 6 through its plot, design and music, it fails to entertain. It doesn’t push the envelope hard enough and has more holes in its plot to make it work. Granted I might not be the target audience, but you can still make a movie geared for kids that is still entertaining to other groups.

This is a movie about a trouble teen, Mai, who lives in a world where robots are a part of everyday life. The problem is that she hates robots. The movie suggest that her dislike of robots is due to her distant mother’s obsession with robots. The movie will suggest a lot to give the illusion of plot and character development. As these movies go, she is also troubled by a past you get in small bits of dialogue and flash backs. Because her father left at a young age for whatever reason, she is now unable to trust anyone and therefore forces herself to be alone. Her sad past is what makes her destined to be this movie’s hero. And as this movie’s hero, nothing bad will happen to her.

This is one of those movies where things happen because shitty writing. That is to say that they will make shit up to write themselves out of all the plot holes and it isn’t subtle. For example, her encounter with the robot of the movie, Project 77, as so credulous. She is able to sneak past all of these security robots which makes me believe that robots in this universe are useless if they can’t stop a single little girl from sneaking into a secret lab. Even more troubling is the lack of consequences in the movie. Just reaching Project 77 she causes enough property damage where she should have at least been fined, but of course nothing ever comes of it. Maybe they forgave her because they knew she was destined to save the world.

Then you get the weirdest abusive relationship in cartoon history. Project 77 imprints on Mai and the rest of the movie is Project 77 trying to break through Mai’s hardened character. The issue is that Mai only keeps him around to hurt the ones who hurt her. This is one of those movies where the character has to have the saddest life so everything is wrong with her. Now project 77’s quirk is that he only has a limited amount of memory and he must erase certain memories to keep making new ones. And you never really care because Mai isn’t a nice person. You can argue that her past, the one that was poorly written for her, made her act this way, but I didn’t feel bad for her. I didn’t want to follow her around. She was extremely generic, as characters of this genre often are, and the relationship between Mai and 77 wasn’t captivating like that of the Iron Giant or Big Hero 6.

The other big issue with this movie is the plot. The villain of the movie is ridiculous. His plan to take over the world is to mass produce these robots that he gives to everyone. He plants bombs in these and his plan is to activate them to blow up and destroy humanity. The problem is that these explosions do so little damage that by the end of it you wonder if it was even necessary for Mai and 77 to get involved. Like I have mentioned before, this movie has no consequences and therefore, you will never really care for this movie.

This movie is bland. Netflix seems to be pumping out movies for the sake of pumping them out. These knock offs are not content and instead we get our feed bombarded with crap they keep labeling as original. I wish that instead they would spend more time between releases, so they can make watchable content. They have the ability, I have seen some Netflix content that I didn’t mind but lately it just seems like they are churning cheap rip offs of shows and movies that were successful. The problem with this is you get content with very little substance that panders and it is getting harder and harder to justify paying for the subscription when good content is diluted with this crap. Skip this so they don’t keep making crap like this.

 

Movie Reviews

The Greatest Showman (2017) Review

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Recently re-watching The Greatest Showman I can say that this is one of those movies that you can only see once. The first time watching it, I was mesmerized by all the pageantry, the singing, although the plot still leaves me unimpressed. The plot follows a young boy who grows up poor that falls in love with a girl who is a different social class. Because of his own status, it makes this love one that is frowned upon and now Hugh Jackman makes it his life’s goal to become a man that is worthy of his love’s affection. To do this, Hugh Jackman’s character gathers a group of “misfits” and creates a show of oddities. A circus if you will. But, as he becomes more successful and is no longer poor, he is never fully accepted by high society. This need for acceptance becomes an obsession for Hugh Jackman’s character and we get to watch as his motives are no longer to earn the affection of the woman he loves, which he has from the beginning of the movie, but rather to gain acceptance in a society that he doesn’t really want to be a part of. Because of his obsession, he ends up forgetting why he started the show in the first place and hurts the only people that had faith in him.

As plots go, you aren’t watching this movie for the plot. You are watching it for the singing, so I will excuse all the holes and some of the bad dialogue in this film. And as far as the singing goes, I have seen way worse musicals. The issue is that on second viewing, this movie lost all its charm and I was bored with it. Maybe it was watching it on a smaller screen with weaker speakers, but it didn’t hold the magic that I remembered it having when I watched it first.

I wish that they had gone a little more over the top in this film and not try to be as serious. I wish that they didn’t use so much CGI in this film. And I wish that Hugh Jackman’s character wasn’t such a dick. I get it, the premise was clear, but I didn’t spend enough time with his character to forgive him being a dick when he turns into one. My biggest issue is how quickly all of the drama in the this film is solved. Again, I can excuse this because of the genre of the film but it doesn’t change the fact that this is one of those movies that you can only view once or twice. I don’t see this movie having a long shelf life like other films of the genre because the story and the songs aren’t extremely memorable. Maybe I am not the target audience, maybe I don’t know enough music to fully appreciate it but I couldn’t get into it the second time around.

If you haven’t seen it, I recommend watching it. It’s a good sit the first time around. If you have already seen it, you should know where you stand. Check it out.

 

Movie Reviews

Murder Party (2007) Review

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Murder Party is the film you’ve never heard of that should have stayed a play. The movie starts off with a man finding a mysterious invitation to the murder party. It name drops within the first five minutes of the film. The man decides to go to the party without knowing anything about it. There a lot of obvious warning signs that the man shouldn’t go to this party, the biggest being that it is being held in the outskirts of town. There is a moment when he runs through the empty creepy streets to some abandoned warehouse. Little does he know that the party was a plot by the most pretentious art students to commit a murder. It is when he gets to the party that the shenanigans begin as he is going to be the victim of this murder party. But, luckily for him, the killers are idiots and are picked off one by one by terrifying slap stick. Now you get to watch as the group unravels as they fail to go through with the murder.

This film feels like a community theater play. Not a terrible one, but one that shouldn’t have been put to video. A lot of the acting, dialogue, the scenery all belong on stage. The acting is over the top, and while I have seen places where it works, it gets annoying real fast in this film. I get that the over the top acting fits the tone of the movie, but it makes the already unlikable characters less likable. The characters in this movie are archetypes of eccentric art students, each one representing a unique quirk. The problem is that none of the characters are likable and spend most of the time arguing. The movie gets hard to sit through when you don’t care about the characters. Most of the dialogue is frivolous bickering and don’t really add anything to the plot. And this movie forgets it’s plot for the sake of this bickering and of course the slap stick.

The worst part is the slap stick. This movie has to invent silly ways for the characters to die so the innocent man can escape. It is because of their incompetence that they all meet their ends. One characters dies form catching fire after dousing himself with alcohol when he was drinking. None of these characters posses the ability to function in normal society.

This movie also makes a statement about the art community, I think? All the people who are in this mysterious warehouse are pretentious art students working on their art. They will argue amongst themselves constantly about their art and will talk about a huge project that they are working on. This whole film seems like a pretentious art project made by someone in this film. It tries way to hard to be dark, and funny, and gross that it doesn’t really tell a good story. I wouldn’t mind the acting and cheap production if the movie told a good story. Instead you get to follow a bunch of characters you don’t like being annoying. There are whole scenes where all they do is bicker. This isn’t plot.

If you like weird movies, check this out. It is something you have to see to know that it exists. I do not recommend this for the average viewer because it is way too artsy and pretentious. I’d say skip this if you are looking for something entertaining to watch. I give this a 3 out of 10. I did like a few scenes and I appreciated that it is different from all the other movies I have seen, but it is not for everyone.

Movie Reviews

Geostorm (2017) Review

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Geostorm is a generic apocalyptic movie that came a little late to the party. The concept is simple enough, after a series of storms that almost end earth, scientist get together to make a network of weather controlling satellites. This saves the earth and now the people of earth live in seeming safety as the weather is controlled by the United States. For a while, things are good. The system, named Dutch Boy, works as intended and everyone is happy until one day it malfunctions killing a small town in Afghanistan. The more people start to investigate on the issue, the more the audience realizes that someone is using Dutch Boy to take over the world. Now it’s up to Gerard Butler tries to save the world from the very thing he created.

This movie is a waste of time. It tries desperately to be bigger than it actually is by making claims about the corruption of government, the dangers of playing god, and the dangers of technology to name a few. The issue isn’t that it makes these claims, but rather that it does so poorly. These topics alone are too big for this movie and as a result, the movie will spend little time making these arguments. In fact, it will flat out tell you these arguments in the form of poorly written dialog and it slows the movie down a lot. Had it focused on one theme and developed it a little more, maybe the movie could hold up better.

Another issue that I had with the movie is the acting. People in this movie seem to be sleep walking for their pay check. Other suffer from playing poorly written characters. It’s hard to bash on the acting of this movie when the script isn’t any good. None of the characters were memorable and worst off are the characters that were written in for the sake of cameo.

The biggest flaw of this movie is it’s lack of focus. There are so many plot lines for a movie this short. No one cares about Gerard Butler’s daughter that it will cut back too when you forgot she was in this movie. No one cares about the love plots for the two brothers. No one cares for the main plot to take over the presidency because the movie keeps cutting between them abruptly. Because of this, you don’t really have a connection with the characters because you spend so little time with them and you know less about them by the end of the movie than you did when you started watching this film. The plot itself doesn’t make any sense because of all the holes it has. But don’t worry, it will try to fill these holes with shitty writing.

I can’t recommend this movie because it is boring. It is a movie that suffers from coming out too late. Had it come out back when this genre was popular, I can see it doing better. But even still, it isn’t a good movie. It is too similar to the other movies of the genre but not as fun. I like some movies of this genre that cheesy, but this one doesn’t do anything that held my attention. Skip this one, I give a 2 out of 10.