Kaos' way behind movie reviews

[GH2001]

Bruges is one of the most solid movies in a long time. It and peanut butter falcon are high a top my list of movies from the last 15 years.

Finnes is an absolute riot.

[AUTiger1]

Have I missed a review on 'The Eternals"?   "Shang Ra La,La,La and the Billbo Baggins Ring Legends" was pretty solid.  The kids want to watch "The Eternals" and I need to know if it is something I will need to pay a lot of attention to or if I can catch up on Solitaire Suite on my phone while it's going on. 

[GH2001]

Have I missed a review on 'The Eternals"?   "Shang Ra La,La,La and the Billbo Baggins Ring Legends" was pretty solid.  The kids want to watch "The Eternals" and I need to know if it is something I will need to pay a lot of attention to or if I can catch up on Solitaire Suite on my phone while it's going on.

it JUST came out so not sure anyone has seen it on here. I plan on catching it, and the new Ghostbusters in the next 2-4 days.

Its MCU so its probably gonna be solid. Even if its bad by their standards. Their movies just don't suck.

[Kaos]

Have I missed a review on 'The Eternals"?   "Shang Ra La,La,La and the Billbo Baggins Ring Legends" was pretty solid.  The kids want to watch "The Eternals" and I need to know if it is something I will need to pay a lot of attention to or if I can catch up on Solitaire Suite on my phone while it's going on.

Marvel stepping into wokeness.

It’s off my radar.  I don’t like watermelon even with sugar on it.

[AUJarhead]

Have I missed a review on 'The Eternals"?   "Shang Ra La,La,La and the Billbo Baggins Ring Legends" was pretty solid.  The kids want to watch "The Eternals" and I need to know if it is something I will need to pay a lot of attention to or if I can catch up on Solitaire Suite on my phone while it's going on.

Saw it with my daughter.  I didn't really care about the characters, I didn't read the Eternals, so only really went to see how it ties into the MCU as a whole.  I thought the bonus scene in Shang Chi was going to drive the Eternals, but it didn't.  Bonus scene in Eternals could set something up that is pretty interesting, but we will see what happens.

I'd put it in the bottom tier of the MCU films, along with Captain Marvel, Thor 2, and Hulk (the last two I enjoyed more than Eternals, though - and CM had Nick Fury and that cat).

[Kaos]

The Power of the Dog

Bunkledip Clumperskin as a Montana cowboy in 1925. With Todd from Breaking Bad - Jesse Plemon - as his brother, one of the Mary Jane Watson's - Kristen Dunst - as a hotel owner, and other people you know from other things along the way (Girl Next Door nerd - Paul Dano, Chester from Law and Order the SUV - Adam Beach, Handmaid June - Elisabeth Moss, old Moria from American Horror Story-Frances Conroy, Agent Lundy- Keith Carradine- from Dexter, etc.) 

I'm not done with it, but it's (so far) not very good.  Stilted dialogue, Crimpledung's shit accent (although I've heard worse), terrible (horrible, awful, jarring) score, stupid commentary about Bronco Harry or some shit.

Several recent films have tried to revive the western genre.  There's the all black western with Idris Elba in it -- because, of course, the old west was just chock full of black folks.  (You know how I feel about re-writing history and the all of a sudden brand-new claim that a quarter of the west was settled by blacks). There's the 194-year old Clint Eastwood creaking vehicle Cry Macho.  There's the recent Apache Junction - which had some  hillbilly ass country singer in it. It's not not working. The western is dead.  Cowboys are over.

This film lumbers along, stifled by cripplingly bad performances from Crusterlump and Plemon (and frankly this guy hasn't been good in much of anything but Breaking Bad).

Basic story - Breaking Bad Todd becomes infatuated with and marries Mary Jane from Spiderman who has a freaky weirdo son much to the dismay of a badly over-acting Crinkleditch.

They try, but I don't give a tin fuck about Bronco Harvey, every relationship in the film is a caricature, and it's dimly shot which is another problem.

And finally when the warning at the beginning said full nudity -- I truly didn't expect it to be Curdleclink's tiny weiner flopping in the mud.

If I were you I'd saddle up and ride right on past this one.

Edited to add:  Way past the point of no return this one nibbles around in Brokeback range.  Why it waited until 20 minutes left in the film to veer in that direction is a mystery.  Although now that I think about it, I may have completely misread one scene because I didn't exactly grasp what was going on (was thinking Clutterditch had a hard on for his brother's wife, essentially, but maybe not).  Either way..... This overly long film wasn't worth the effort.  BECAUSE it flirted around the homo path I'm willing to bet it gets assloads of unmerited praise from woke reviewers.  It gets none here.  Boring.  Late alleged twist doesn't justify the overly boring slog to get there.

[GH2001]

I think we can go on record saying K doesn't like Benedict Cumberbatch.

[Kaos]

I think we can go on record saying K doesn't like Benedict Cumberbatch.

Wrong.

I liked Blinkerduck Crinkledbitch in the Sherlock series.  Liked that a lot actually. Cumpleflag is also a good choice for Dr. Strange. 

I didn’t care for him much in the gay code breaker movie and he was the worst part of the Whitey movie with Johnny Depp.  Why ask that guy to play a short, heavyset Southie?  Thought he was a really odd and ultimately flaccid choice to play Khan in the Star Trek reboot.  The hell does he know about rich Corinthian leather anyways? 

I’m ambivalent about him generally.  He was just bad in this.  He didn’t even walk right.

[wesfau2]

Wrong.

I liked Blinkerduck Crinkledbitch in the Sherlock series.  Liked that a lot actually. Cumpleflag is also a good choice for Dr. Strange. 

I didn’t care for him much in the gay code breaker movie and he was the worst part of the Whitey movie with Johnny Depp.  Why ask that guy to play a short, heavyset Southie?  Thought he was a really odd and ultimately flaccid choice to play Khan in the Star Trek reboot.  The hell does he know about rich Corinthian leather anyways? 

I’m ambivalent about him generally.  He was just bad in this.  He didn’t even walk right.

Hell...he ain't even ole timey!

[GH2001]

Hell...he ain't even ole timey!

I happen to know that this band of miscreants here interfered with a Lynch mob in the performance of its duty!

[Kaos]

Black Widow
The first time I watched this movie I did so on a plane and the volume didn't work.  I may have reviewed it after, but don't recall if I did. I watched it again over the weekend with the volume on.  It was better that way. 

Marvel has a way of making even the most ridiculous, mundane stories palatable.  Fun even. And this was no exception.  The origin stories for the female characters -- first Captain Marvel and now Black Widow -- don't have the same fire as those of the male characters (think Iron Man for instance, a near perfect superhero movie) but they try. 

Part of it is the choice for actors - Bree and Scarlett are both kind of bland after you get past their surface good looks. Part of it is because the stories are either outlandish or kind of boring.  But both are still good movies (and sadly better than anything DC has offered to date with the lone exception of WonderWoman).

Black Widow sort of jumps into the middle of the Marvel timeline and then fills in the back story by allowing her and her 'sister'  to interact with their long-lost 'parents'.  The sister is played by the gratingly worthless and despicable Florence Pugh who tarnished her watchability for all time with her noxious performance in Midsommar -- i can't stand looking at her.  Mom is Evie from the Mummy franchise (and a lot of other things).  Dad is the new Hellboy and was apparently in Stranger Things.  His blundering faux-Russian attempts at human emotion and his need to be recognized for what he imagined himself to be were some of the best parts of this movie. 

The film's backstory is pretty flimsy and the fight scenes are over-extended, but as with all Marvel movies they figured out a way to mix drama, humor and sentimentality in a nearly perfect combination.

It's not the best Marvel movie, but it's not disappointing. I'd watch it again.

[Kaos]

The Unforgiveable

Overly long. Overly dour. Overwrought. The Unwatchable. 

A Sandra Bullock vehicle, one I'm sure she hopes will bring her Oscar consideration.  She plays a woman incarcerated for 20 years who wants to reconnect with her baby sister upon release. 

What great acting!  She wears no makeup!  She doesn't wash her hair!  She frowns and pouts through the whole movie!  She looks like the dirty lovechild of Toy Story's Woody and Joan Rivers!  And she brings just as much realism to the role as a dirty string puppet would. 

The few times she breaks out of her dour mope and explodes in some "heartfelt" outburst have zero authenticity.  There's not a single character interaction that has any legitimate emotional resonance.  It's all manufactured and bogus. 

Terrible movie that wastes a lot of moderate talent as it watches her slog drearily through her sad existence. She's supposedly convicted of murder in this movie.  She should be convicted of killing Walking Dead Shane, L&O:CI Detective Goren, Abileen from The Help, and John Boy Walton -- all victims of appearing alongside her in this dull tromp.

Have I mentioned that her surgically butchered pinch face visage is sickening to look at?  I've seen enough of her.  No plans to watch anything she's ever in again.  She's a worthless turd. 

[Kaos]

Ghostbusters: Afterlife

I despised the "reboot" of the franchise with the doughy, unfunny turd, the leering lesbian and the shrieking black woman. I hated everything about it.  That being the case, I was inclined to appreciate this course correction - one that completely ignores that abomination and veers back into the original lane. 

It wasn't a bad movie. It wasn't a great movie. It was a leisurely nostalgic stroll through all the pieces and parts that made the original Ghostbusters the cinematic icon that it is.  Truth be told, the original Ghostbusters wasn't a great movie either, it was dragged into significance by the performances of Ramis and Murray (see also Stripes) and to a lesser degree Dan, Ernie, Sigourney and Rick.  That and the epic (for the time) special effects carried the film. 

This movie suffers a bit because while the kid characters are pretty good, they don't have the easy, snarky charm of Murray, the deadpan absurdity of Dan, or the nerdy focus of Ramis (although the girl channels that extremely well).  When the orginals show up ready to get back into the fight -- some in an extremely odd way -- it's the same kind of emotional charge us old timers got when Han and Chewie walked into the Falcon. I wish they'd been given more to do, but they did look pretty old and stiff so....

Storyline is pretty simple:  Egon disappears into the spirit world leaving all his possessions (a decrepit house and weird farm) to his daughter and her two nerdy kids.  Financially bereft and facing eviction, they move to his dilapidated digs, the nerdy daughter meets Ant Man, and they discover that all these years good ol' estranged dad/grandpa was obsessed with Gozer and her minions.  His life was dedicated to preventing her return even as almost everyone decided he might be crazy.  But maybe he was right. 

Along the way, the movie folds in almost every facet of the 1984 touchstones -- Ecto1, the traps, Gozer, the dogs, "are you a god", proton packs -- there are so many references it would be impossible to list them all.  That's what keeps this movie afloat.  It will be interesting to see if a planned sequel can hold up on its own without the nostalgic trappings. 

The cast is solid.   The nerd girl kid was completely believable as a Spengler grandchild.  She was the best part of the movie. She and her snarky podcasting sidekick held it all together. The nerd boy I didn't like as much.  The mom (Carrie Coon) I found oddly attractive even though she's really plain. She wasn't bad.

I generally don't care for reboots or re-launches.  This one, though, was done about as well as it could possibly have been.  It was faithful to the original and crafted a story that honored that legacy while opening doors to a future beyond it.  In a lot of ways it felt like a legitimate passing of the torch. 

NOTE:  The one thing I didn't see in the film was Slimer -- which leads me to believe he held out for more money and is waiting on the inevitable sequel. 

With this one in the books, I hope the shit-splattered Chubs McFarty version from 2016 will be burned from existence and never shown again.   

[The Six]

Ghostbusters: Afterlife
It was faithful to the original and crafted a story that honored that legacy while opening doors to a future beyond it.  In a lot of ways it felt like a legitimate passing of the torch. 

To quote you: Pffffffffffffttttttttttttttt!

[Kaos]

To quote you: Pffffffffffffttttttttttttttt!

Somebody missed the after credits scenes. 

[Kaos]

Candy Corn

Somebody wants to be John Carpenter.  And his name is Josh Hasty.  Who is Josh Hasty?  He's the writer, director and star of this horror film that borrows (steals perhaps is a better term) from Carpenter. 

Why did I watch it, you ask?  Because PJ Soles is in it, I loved her in Stripes (like loved loved) and thought she was adorable in Halloween (78). She's coming to Pensacon where I plan to see her in all her current swollen, aged non-glory so I decided to give this a try.  The film also features the original CandyMan(92) Tony Todd and Malachai from (84) Children of the Corn.  So it's got that era of horror as a pedigree.

Here's the thing.  It had some good points.  The production values are really good.  It doesn't look or sound like it was shot on somebody's Iphone 3 like so many low-rent movies do.   The acting isn't terrible.  It's bad, but not terrible.  And the story isn't completely asinine as so many are.  It has some gruesome and creative potential.  Even with all that it's just not good/compelling.  With most horror movies there's somebody to sort of root for.  There's nobody here.  There's nobody to identify with. 

Story:
For reasons unknown a bunch of kids (30-year olds playing teens) decide to torment a mentally handicapped guy.  It goes awry and the abused guy dies.  He's resurrected by the dwarfish leader of the circus freak show that's in town (played by the dwarfish Hasty) and becomes an avenging pumpkin who seeks out and slaughters the people who abused him. 

Toward the end, in one of the kill scenes, you understand the movie's title. 

So much was ripped off from Carpenter's Halloween that it detracted from the film.  Hasty tried to write his own soundtrack, but he's no Carpenter and it doesn't have the eerie resonance of the Halloween themes.  He borrowed the Halloween font for the titles, borrowed the colors, borrowed the way the shots were staged.  There is a point where an homage (which I think little Hasty intended this to be) becomes a ripoff and this crossed that rubicon. 

Still, it showed potential.  I think Hasty should stay out of the music studio, stay off the screen and hire some additional writers for his next project.   Stay behind the camera and be a part of the process -- not THE process.

[Kaos]

Blow The Man Down

I had some expectations for this.  From the trailers I expected a Fargo type, fast moving black comedy.  Instead I got a kind of slow-moving, not really engaging slog though the snows of coastal Maine.  The story didn't elevate itself past familiar, telling a story that's been done better in other films before. Repeatedly.

Two just orphaned twenty-something sisters in a going-nowhere town run into trouble and run afoul of a local business woman, who's conducting the oldest business in the world.  They get some unexpected "help" with their predicament from a cadre of old biddies who used to be agreeable to the town's business but have since become tired of the shenanigans. 

The old biddies are good enough -- including a 92-year old June Squibb, formerly attractive (I think?) Annette O'Toole, and Marceline Hugot who you've seen but you won't remember where -- and the "lady of the house" Margo Martindale, who you will also know but not remember where you've seen her, is better than that. 

The problem is that the sisters are emotionally flat, the hooker - you only really see one - have zero presence and the rest of the cast is vastly underwhelming.  There was the opportunity to make this fun, but it just laid there like a dead cold fish and didn't wiggle. 

I wanted to like it but it didn't come close to living up to its promise.  It wasn't funny when it should/could have been. There was never any real sense of peril, which was necessary.  Margot's performance was so understated she didn't carry the weight of menace she absolutely had to have for it to work. And if you've seen her (and you have) before, you know she has it in her. The emotional resonance it required just wasn't there. 

[Kaos]

Antlers
Finally got around to watching this movie (reviewed on pg 159 by GH). 

Horror is my genre.  Because of that it's where I'm the most critical.  It wasn't an awful movie.  It didn't paint by numbers. It left enough to your imagination that the story spun out in ways you might not have expected. 

Like the prior review noted, though, it was sloppy in places.  I have a real problem with movies that have characters behave in ways their personality or position would never actually perform.  No school teacher is leaving the school in the middle of the workday to go out to a student's home in the middle of nowhere and that teacher is not going into the open house to look around -- no matter what.  No principal is going to a student's house in the middle of the school day and even if he/she did they would not go into the house, not open locked doors, not go up blood soaked stairs saying "hello" and using their cell phone flashlight.  Fuck almighty no. As soon as they saw the blood, they'd nope the fuck right back out the door to call the cops.  Those kind of unrealistic things always, always, always kick me out of the movie. 

Another huge problem here is Todd from Breaking Bad. The guy is horrible. In everything but Breaking Bad he's swollen hot garbage.  No exception here. 

It had a lot of potential.  The whole "wendigo" angle was kind of wasted. The creature effects weren't terrible, but they were amateurish at times. 

Still... even with all that, it was a lot better than many of the horror films I've seen over the years. 

[Kaos]

The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Kind of hard to forget the smarmy, greedy, oozing piousness of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker if you were around to witness that makeup and gay smeared spectacle. 

I could never, ever, ever, ever understand how anyone with a modicum of awareness could be taken in by those obvious hucksters -- then again, people allegedly voted for Potato Joe and Cackling Ho, so I guess you shouldn't underestimate the ignorance and gullibility of some portion of the population.  How these two charlatans were able to build a tens of millions of dollar empire on the backs of poor people who coughed money they couldn't afford to support their "ministry."  That whole bunch (Falwell, Robertson, Swaggart, etc.) of evangelical phonies did more to damage the public perception of Christianity than anyone in history with the possible exception of the corrupt medieval popes.

This film chronicles the rise and fall of Tammy Faye (played by an unrecognizable Jessica Chastain) and her evangelist husband Jim (played by a former Spiderman).  Chastain does an admirable job of channeling the faux naivete of Tammy but the film isn't nearly, nearly hard enough on her.  It portrays her in a more flattering light than she deserves.  Forgettable Spiderman is far less convincing as skeevy Jim. He doesn't radiate nearly enough of the vulgar oiliness the real-life Bakker oozed.

This film also glosses over much of the story, never getting deep enough into their real lives. It doesn't provide any truths, it only airs the questions and leaves them unanswered.   Was Bakker a closet homosexual? The movie doesn't give a definitive answer.  Everything it showed could have been done better simply by airing newsreel footage.

Tammy Faye was a freakshow.  I understand that she somehow became a gay icon (perhaps because she looked like a drag queen?) and that this film was heavily influenced by that adoring sect. Still, it should have given a more honest portrayal of who she really was.  In that, it failed miserably.  Great makeup, flimsy story.

[Kaos]

Free Guy

About what I expected from the trailers. 

Video game minor character breaks out of doing the same exact loop every day and shakes up the game.  Ryan Reynolds attempts to escape being Deadpool by being a  subdued, much less profane, blue-shirt wearing version of Deadpool.  The thing is, though, Reynolds does that act so effortlessly that makes an easy watch. 

The movie didn't change the world. It didn't speak anyone's truth. It didn't have some great deeper meaning. It just told a relatively entertaining story in a reasonably fun way.  That was appreciated. 

The heroine of the film - Millie - was played by Jodie Cormer of Killing Eve who somehow magically vacillated between kind of hot and well, maybe not.  I liked her, though.

It was a sweet, simple story of finding your heart in the both real life and virtual reality. It's not something I'm putting on my shelf to watch over and over, but it was an enjoyable watch once.