Kaos' way behind movie reviews

[The Six]

You clearly need to get out more.  Walking out of Neighbors was a mistake.

I get out plenty. That movie is a piece of crap to me. Not worth the time. Glad I only lost matinee price on it. 

[Kaos]

I get out plenty. That movie is a piece of crap to me. Not worth the time. Glad I only lost matinee price on it.

How do you know?  You didn't bother to watch it. 

[The Six]

How do you know?  You didn't bother to watch it.

I watched enough to know it wasn't worth finishing. If I get a burned steak, I don't have to swallow every bite to know it's not worth eating. Same with that movie. And I am entitled to my opinion about it. Enjoy dissension in the discourse, man.

[Kaos]

I watched enough to know it wasn't worth finishing. If I get a burned steak, I don't have to swallow every bite to know it's not worth eating. Same with that movie. And I am entitled to my opinion about it. Enjoy dissension in the discourse, man.

I brook none of that.  One opinion counts here.  This isn't America, and freedom of expression is stifled.

I've seen a thousand movies worse than this one.  At least half a dozen Rogen movies that make this look like the Citizen Kane of comedies. Knocked Up, Pineapple Express, Paul, The Green Hornet, Funny People, Observe and Report, Zack and Miri are all exponentially worse than this.   Hell, Bridesmaids, every Fokker movie ever filmed, all of the Hangover movies, both of the Grownups films, everything Adam Sandler has ever made, and every Jim Carey movie is worse than this. 

[Kaos]

Elysium

Tried twice.  Quit on it twice.  Neighbors was good.  This?  This is garbage.  Festering, putrid garbage.

Jodie Foster's accent is so awful I can't watch it. She's Nicholas Cage level bad.  The bad guy down on earth was unintelligible his accent was so putrid. 

And the story?  I mean really.  If they let all those mongrels up there, won't it just become another nasty earth?  Somebody needs to do population control or something down there.

Claptrap.  I won't finish it. 

[Kaos]

The Way Way Back

Was really hard to watch Michael Scott be a complete and total ass bag. 

This movie aspired to be so much more than it really was.  Sam Rockwell was good but the rest of the cast was sort of wasted in a saccharine sweet coming of age story. 

It had some good points and it was harmless enough, but it didn't quite hit the home run it wanted to.

[Kaos]

Alex Cross

A perfect example of how bad casting can destroy what should be a promising franchise. 

The Alex Cross books were once -- at least for a while -- the best of the flotsam that James Patterson puts out. 

Morgan Freeman did a good Alex Cross in Along Came a Spider but that movie suffered from other issues of its own.

Tyler Perry as Alex Cross, though?  Sweet jeeves what a disaster.   It would have been better if Perry had just put on a dress and a wig.   He was flatly terrible and his oatmeal-bland performance dragged down what should have been a quality overall cast.  Edward Burns, Cicely Tyson, Rachel Nichols, John McGinley and even Gus Fring were squandered in this hairy turd. 

One of the worst movies I've seen in a long time.  It was painful to watch.  But I made it through it, unlike the asinine Elysium. 

[Kaos]

The Impossible

Naomi Watts doesn't have much of a face to look at, but she's a good actress. 

Good movie. Tells the story of the 2004 Thai tsunami. Painful to watch, terrible for those people. 

I read somewhere that something like 250,000 people died in this thing.  That's crazy. Three full Jordan Hare Stadiums all gone in a matter of minutes. 

Unimaginable to be sitting by the pool one minute and then separated by roaring floodwaters the next second.  Kids, wives, all just washed away.   Trying to sort through hundreds of thousands of screaming, injured, dead and dying to find somebody you lost -- and maybe never finding them. 

Movie was done really well.  A lot was asked of the child actors in particular and most of them came through with strong performances. 

Will never understand the award show circuit.  Watts deserved a Best Actress nomination, but why nobody else got any notice and why the film only grossed $18 mil makes no sense to me.  Should have done better than that when you consider that dog vomit like "That's My Boy" brings in $36 mil. 

[Saniflush]

Unimaginable to be sitting by the pool one minute and then separated by roaring floodwaters the next second.  Kids, wives, all just washed away.   Trying to sort through hundreds of thousands of screaming, injured, dead and dying to find somebody you lost -- and maybe never finding them. 

I have imagined this and it was good.

[Kaos]

I have imagined this and it was good.

I'm pretending I'm Asian and imagining it now. 

[Saniflush]

I'm pretending I'm Asian and imagining it now. 

What does math have to do with this?

[Townhallsavoy]

Django Unchained:

I know I'm late on this one.  I'm usually late on all movies and TV shows actually.

But this was one of Tarantino's weaker films.  It had that Tarantino-charm and was really entertaining.  However, some of the music choices were out of place.  Whenever I'm watching a Tarantino film, I expect to be introduced to esoteric song selections that create a proper feel for the movie.  Everyone one of his films has not only achieved this but pretty much been the flagship for how other movies should create a soundtrack. 

Rap music doesn't belong in a western or a southern gothic or a Civil War film.  It just didn't fit.  I tried coming up with a reason why he chose it and all I could think was that he wrote this movie for black people to enjoy and thought they'd like to hear rap music. 

But it wasn't just the rap music, I didn't like the Jim Groce selection either.  Pretty much anything mainstream that would take me out of the setting, I don't like especially when watching a Tarantino film.

I didn't like the ending either.  The movie was really on a good pace and setting up serious tension...and then Schultz can't just shake the guy's hand.  I know it was supposed to show that he was a heartless bastard until he saw a slave being torn apart by dogs and that was the end of his line, but it was a bad way for the 2nd main character to go out. 

The good:

- Samuel L Jackson was incredible in this film.  DiCaprio was as well, but I thought Jackson's depiction of a head house slave was award worthy.

- The treatment of the slaves was gut wrenching. 

- I loved the stylized bloody mess of each gun fight.  Movies should be entertaining unless they're truly delving into realism. 

[WiregrassTiger]

Django Unchained:

I know I'm late

Take two ept's and if they are both positive, go see your obgyn.

[Kaos]

Django Unchained:

I know I'm late on this one.  I'm usually late on all movies and TV shows actually.

Not only are you late, but you are wrong.  Already reviewed:


Django Unchained

I like Quentin.  Kill Bill (I and II), Res Dogs, From Dusk Til Dawn, and Pulp Fiction are among some of my favorite watch over and over again movies.   Great stuff.

I wasn't a fan of Grindhouse and I thought Inglorious was so bad that he'd lost his storytelling touch.  For that reason I stayed away from Django for a long, long time.  I didn't want to see him spiral any further down. 

My mistake.

Great movie.  Enjoyed pretty near all of it.  Don't get what the uproar was over the use of the carbon word. It was appropriate for the times and used as conversationally as I remember it being used when I was a child (pre-Civil Rights movement). 

The raiding party scene with Don Johnson was quality stuff and by itself enough to recommend this movie. 

I just wish I'd seen it sooner. 

[Townhallsavoy]

Not only are you late, but you are wrong.  Already reviewed:


Django Unchained

I like Quentin.  Kill Bill (I and II), Res Dogs, From Dusk Til Dawn, and Pulp Fiction are among some of my favorite watch over and over again movies.   Great stuff.

I wasn't a fan of Grindhouse and I thought Inglorious was so bad that he'd lost his storytelling touch.  For that reason I stayed away from Django for a long, long time.  I didn't want to see him spiral any further down. 

My mistake.

Great movie.  Enjoyed pretty near all of it.  Don't get what the uproar was over the use of the carbon word. It was appropriate for the times and used as conversationally as I remember it being used when I was a child (pre-Civil Rights movement). 

The raiding party scene with Don Johnson was quality stuff and by itself enough to recommend this movie. 

I just wish I'd seen it sooner.

You really liked the sudden switch to Tupac in the middle of a gunfight in the 19th century South?

[Kaos]

Godzilla
Don't waste them money on 3d. But give this movie a shot.

It didn't do anything I expected it to.  It was a good 40 minutes too long. It invested too much in throwaway characters. It had some enormous plot holes.  (For instance where does your uniform come from when you are hundreds of miles from where you are supposed to be and didn't have it with you to begin with?) There are some bizarre contrivances. (For instance, if you can just fly the warheads in a damn sling why bother with a train?)


But overall? It worked. Truer to the original than the ferris buehler one even though some aspects were similar.

I liked it. Broke no new ground. Made superman, zod, transformers and the avengers jealous of its total destruction.  But was what it was and good for that.

[Townhallsavoy]

Argo

Uuhhhh...what the fuck?

This movie won Best Picture?  96% on Rotten Tomatoes? 

There's too much to criticize.  It wasn't a terrible movie.  Wasn't really bad at all.  But going into it, I was really excited to see a movie so lauded amongst its peers. 

But the suspense died when you already know they'll escape.  The process of setting up the fake movie was rushed.  Affleck was a really humdrum character with zero development.  The only attempt at any character development at all was the dweeby looking guy with the hot wife who doubted Affleck would save them.  Then he had the obligatory "Sorry.  You were right all along" moment at the end. 

The best part of the movie were the real news clips.  That was interesting.  Getting a glimpse of how the Iranians acted in their own country was interesting.

The plot was too easy and not worth the accolades it received. 

[Kaos]

Out of The Furnace

There's no way you could go wrong with a movie that has Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson, Sam Shepherd, Zoe Saldana, Forrest Whitaker, Willem Dafoe and the baby Affleck kid, right?

Yeah. Yeah there is. 

Saddle the characters with overwrought unrealistic emotions. Bury them in a morose fully asinine plodding story. Show them scraping their plates into the trash a few times. Give them motivations that don't ring true. Immerse them in a dingy, dour light and pile stilted dialogue on top of wooden performances. Concoct a ridiculous storyline that has something to do with New Jersey mountain people and bare knuckle fighting.   Tack on a hollow anti war message.  Mix in a hokey deer hunting juxtaposition.  Flesh it out with a laughable ending.

I went to sleep four times on this dullard movie and had to keep starting it over from the last point I remembered watching.  I finished it out of pure bull headedness, not because there was a single compelling reason to watch this load of self-important and self-involved crap. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go scrape a plate into the garbage can. 

[Kaos]

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Maybe I should have paid attention to the X-Man canon.  Perhaps knowing the history and backstory might have helped me understand or care about the characters or what was going on. 

I liked looking at Jennifer Lawrence's blue belly and booty. But as a key component of this movie, she just didn't carry her weight. Her performance was eclipsed and overshadowed by anyone and everyone on the screen, including extras. She had no magnetism (insert Magneto joke). The film would have been better had it eschewed the big name star and cast someone in this role who was more dynamic. Lawrence alternates in the real world between some really great performances (Winter's Bone, American Hustle) and some sleepwalking, duds where she just has no presence and wilts on the screen (House at the End of the Street, the blank-faced Hunger Games movies).  Her performance here was far closer to her dim-witted turns as Katnips Everteen in those awful Hunger Games films.  When you're going to be completely blue, you need the ability to emote with your expression and your eyes and Lawrence's face (while pretty) looks like it's been botoxed into a wax figure.  She just doesn't have an expressive face which would have been a real benefit here. 

I liked the 70s attire. I liked the sly Nixon inside joke.  I liked James McAvoy's performance because I think he's a good actor. I liked seeing Tyrion Lannister in a role that wasn't angry or elf.  I really liked the ten minutes Evan Peters (from American Horror Story) was on the screen. His segment was by far the best and most creative part of the movie.  Too bad the rest didn't maintain the same fast-paced tone.

I'm not a fan of the "go back in time and create a new future" concept when it comes to movies. That gets really muddled for me, particularly when you have characters occupying two different spaces at the same time.  This movie didn't give me any reason to change my mind. 

Never been a follower of X-Men to begin with.  Always felt like they were just a ripoff/spinoff of the Fantastic Four anyway. This movie tried hard, but it didn't win me over to the X-Men universe.  When it comes to Marvel the pecking order still goes Avengers, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Fantastic Four, Blade, X-Men (and any of the associated Wolverine movies, etc.), Daredevil/Electra, Hulk, Ghost Rider, Punisher, Howard the Duck and Spiderman.  Just don't care for the movie versions of the webslinger.  I liked his comics, but the films are bubbling turds. 

If you're an X-Men fan, this might be good.  But there were so many nuances I probably missed because this is the first and only X-Men film I've ever watched completely, I didn't understand the significance of a lot of what was going on. 

The destruction was extremely limited compared to other recent superhero films.  Entire cities were not reduced to rubble, no skyscrapers fell, roads did not buckle, explosions didn't engulf entire buildings and there were no earthquakes or volcanoes or machines designed to remake the world in the image of some alien race (Godzilla, Superman, Transformers 3 and so on).  I felt like the film tried to be more cerebral than simply celebrating mayhem, but as a non X-ophile I didn't really know what they were cerebreing about a good bit of the time. 

So, in short? X-Men follower?  Pretty good movie I'd wager with the exception of a disappointing Mystique. Non X-Men fan looking for big budget action?  Not so much. 

[Kaos]

Argo

Uuhhhh...what the fudge?

This movie won Best Picture?  96% on Rotten Tomatoes? 

There's too much to criticize.  It wasn't a terrible movie.  Wasn't really bad at all.  But going into it, I was really excited to see a movie so lauded amongst its peers. 

But the suspense died when you already know they'll escape.  The process of setting up the fake movie was rushed.  Affleck was a really humdrum character with zero development.  The only attempt at any character development at all was the dweeby looking guy with the hot wife who doubted Affleck would save them.  Then he had the obligatory "Sorry.  You were right all along" moment at the end. 

The best part of the movie were the real news clips.  That was interesting.  Getting a glimpse of how the Iranians acted in their own country was interesting.

The plot was too easy and not worth the accolades it received.

In case you were unaware, the "plot" was reality.  That's what happened.  To complain that it was too easy is like watching a replay of the 2013 Auburn-Georgia game and being aggravated with the fact that Auburn threw a long pass at the end and didn't dramatically drive the field. 

Reviewed October 2012:

Argo

Very good story, timely considering the state of the Middle East and well played by everyone involved.  it moved a bit slowly in places but overall it was intriguing and maintained your interest even if you knew the eventual outcome.

Complaints?  It had to skew toward the "US is the bad guy" in its simplistic opening explanation.  It could and should have depicted Ayatollah as the raving lunatic he was, but it glossed over that in a broader effort to portray the Shah as an Americanized Marie Antionette.  Not big on revisionist history and there was some there. 

While skewing it also tried to help Jimmah Carter redeem his pussified legacy by trying to glom some of the credit.  His weak-ass pandering is what got us in the situation in the first place.  People -- like my kids -- who weren't around for his pansy administration won't recognize that it was the perceived strength of Ronald Reagan which led to the release of the hostages.  In Carter's post-script voice-over he tries to steal the credit when he says "we got the hostages home..." and then brays some fairy-whore glitter about maintaining the integrity of the US.  What's sad is that measly, weasly fudge actually thinks he was a great statesman and president.  (Just like the current jug-eared fop.)

Still a good movie.  Worth watching.