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Movie Review: Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)

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The new Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the best-rebooted horror franchise I’ve seen so far. It isn’t going to win any awards, but it is a lot of fun. This movie knows what it is, and it does it well. Texas Chainsaw Massacre goes back to its slasher roots and capitalizes on what makes the genre great. The Leatherface is blood-thirsty, and it makes for some very cool deaths. If you are a fan of slasher movies, this will be a solid revisit to the genre.

Out of the remakes I have seen so far, Texas Chainsaw Massacre has the best pacing. Everything is concise and self-contained to the town. There is no needless back story or lazy tie-ins. There isn’t a whole lot of self-service for the legacy characters or the original franchise. The movie introduces the main characters and starts killing them almost immediately. I was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t have to wait through a bunch of meaningless reinvented lore to get to what makes this movie fun.

The characters are fine for what they are, although they are a bit insufferable. You spend enough time with them to care, or not care about them. You don’t get long-winded backstories that add nothing to the plot. The acting is good for the type of movie. The plot doesn’t feel long and drawn out. The kills and action are great, and although some are cheesy, it sets this film apart from the other reboots. Overall, I don’t think this is a movie you can keep coming back to, but if you have nothing else to do, at least it’s not Holloween. You can find this movie on Netflix.

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Recomendation: The Queens Gambit and March Comes in Like Lions

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the Queen’s Gambit PosterMat

I just watched The Queens Gambit on Netflix and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Normally I am disappointed by the original content as it seems to be cheap copies of better media out there, but this is not the case with this show. If you have not seen the show, it is based on the life of the first woman chess grandmaster. I will warn you, it does start off slow but it’s all worth it in the end. The acting is great, the plot is well written, and I absolutely adored the aesthetics for the show. The sets and the costumes were all well designed. If you haven’t seen the show I would highly recommend it to your watch list.

But I am not here to review this show or even to convince you to watch the show. Instead, I am here to sell you on some anime. Now before you go and dismiss my argument and move on to another article, hear me out. This isn’t what you think. There are no super powers or weird harems. Instead what you get is a slice of life anime about a young professional shogi player and his journey to the top.

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The anime in question translates to “March Comes in Like a Lion”. 3-gatsu no raion zenpen for those who wish to watch it in the original Japanese. What makes this anime special I would argue are the same things that make The Queens Gambit so good. I would argue that they are essentially the same plot and wouldn’t be surprised if Netflix borrowed from the anime. What the anime does that the show can’t is that it expands on a lot of the elements that the show can’t address. You get an internal dialogue so you know exactly what the main character Rei is thinking. The supporting cast is given a lot more room to develop into memorable tangible characters for the audience. The show also has a lot more room to address the issues the these players go through in much more detail. Without going into too much detail, it definitely does the Queen’s Gambit a lot a more justice than the Netflix show does.

Now I understand they are not the same story, both are based in entirely different worlds and comparing live action to anime is never fair, but I believe that it is a good refence point especially for those who do not really like anime. I believe both are important bits of media in their own right and if you haven’t already seen them I would motion you to do so as soon as possible. Both are also available on Netflix. But if you have already watched the Queen’s Gambit, make sure you finish strong and watch March Comes in Like a Lion as well.

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Good Time (2017) Review

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If you want to know what it means to be anxious, watch this movie. The tension, the acting, the suspense and the pacing will have you at the edge of your seat as you watch bad decision after bad decision being made. To put it simply, you get to feel what it is like to be truly cornered by an inescapable fate and it is an amazing ride.

The movie follows Connie Nikas who is on the run from the law after a bank robbery goes wrong. Now he must avoid getting caught as he tries his hardest to get his brother out of custody. His brother gets caught after they robbed the bank. Now it is a race against time.  What makes this movie amazing is how it creates tension through small details that constantly present themselves as he tries to stay hidden. It is clear early on that this isn’t going to be easy for Connie, and it shouldn’t be. While on the run, Connie will pass multiple cops who are currently hunting him down. You learn that Connie is kind of a piece of shit, and you learn through his failed attempts to find asylum that he has no where to go. What do you do when you have no where to hide? You run! And there is a lot of running in this movie. This is a high octane; high tension movie and you will have no choice but to echo the small sighs of relief and respite that Connie finds through out his journey. And these moments are few and become more far in between as he digs himself deeper and deeper into trouble.

As a character, Connie is brilliant. He only cares about two things, himself and his brother and it is echoed throughout the movie as he does whatever it takes to get his brother back. He does so even if it means hurting and using both the people he knows and strangers. Connie is smart, despite his continually making bad decisions. When faced with a problem, he is quick to make decisions. The lies he forms, the quick change in appearance, how easily he seems to move from one problem to the next suggest that he is a veteran at his craft. But he is not the traditional cool headed, or even hot-headed action hero thief as seen in similar films. As he gets more and more cornered, you see him start to break. You can see the toll the chase is taking on him. He is tired, he is thirsty, he is desperate and that makes him human. Being human is important because it adds to the tension in the film. You feel that at any moment, his journey will end with one mistake. And as his journey progresses, you can see that he is learning from it. The key is that through all this chaos, he does experience personal growth and he ends up at the end of the movie changed by the outcome, even if it isn’t the traditional bad ass that we have become accustomed to. Robert Pattinson’s performance alone should be reason to watch the film.

If you haven’t seen this movie, I would definitely recommend it. If you saw Uncut Gems and liked it, then you should watch the far better older brother. It’s a great movie for those who love thrillers but are tired of the same tired formula.

Movie Reviews

Stuber (2019) Review

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It’s another buddy cop movie, and not a very good one at that. Even worse, it’s an update to the movie Taxi. Same general idea but surprisingly not as good. If you can get this one for free, go for it. It isn’t a terrible sit, but I wouldn’t pay for this movie because It’s not really worth it. It is incredibly generic save for the forced politically correct jokes that it will interrupt the flow of the movie with. There are scenes where they will play these jokes as an odd nod to millennials and it does not work. Is this a new trend? I saw a lot of this in the newest Men in Black movie and it was honestly distracting. I do not have an issue with these types of jokes mind you, but I do have an issue with how they are delivered in these movies. Often times it will be in the middle of a random scene where the politically correct token character will stop the scene in order to correct something insensitive that was said. Once in a while, sure this might be a funny jest and get a decent chuckle but when it happens every time it loses it’s effectiveness. And in this movie, it becomes a little preachy. I don’t want to be preached at when I am watching a comedy.

Kamail Nanjiani is a token in this movie. His role could have been casted by anyone with a similar build. He is wasted in this film. The acting is not terrible, and you will get some chuckles out of it, but you will not remember watching this movie. The movie does very little to stand out, save for constantly mentioning uber. Batista plays a big dude and they will take every opportunity they get to point that out. Nanjiani is a skinny loser and they will take every opportunity to make sure you know that he is. Like every other movie, they will not get along but because of their journey together they will ultimately forge a lasting meaningful friendship. That is to say, they will become friends because the script says they should.

There isn’t anything deeper to this film and I know that I shouldn’t have gone into this film expecting such but I at least expected some kind of story. Instead what you get is just these caricatures being moved from joke to joke as they are forced to grow closer to one another as is tradition with this genre of film. All this is loosely inter-weaved into some drug case that I honestly forgot was a thing until the very end. The driving force behind this whole adventure merely comes forth in small segments in between all the jokes about uber and bickering between the lead. In the end, several plot points are breezed by and some of them are forgotten if not hastily tied together because they have to remind you what UBER is again.

All in all let’s call this film what it really is, a giant commercial for UBER. The films will stop multiple times to explain different aspects of the app on both the rider and driver side. Take these out and the PC jokes and the movie sadly becomes hollow because there is nothing more to this movie. Who wants to pay money to watch an UBER ride? All in all it is not the hardest sit, there are worse out there, but don’t pay money for this. This is a movie you throw in the background while you do chores or Netflix and chill if that is still a thing.

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

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

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.