Kaos' way behind movie reviews

[Kaos]

Jurassic World, AKA Product Placement Land

There are some movie moments that stay with you forever.  When the star destroyer (or whatever that was) crawls from the top of the screen in the opening of Star Wars it changed the way people saw movie CGI.  It had depth and enormity. You knew at that moment that Star Wars was a bigger film than you'd anticipated. It made you believe. 

About 16 years later Jurassic Park did the same thing.  When those dinosaurs rose over the plain and charged around Damien (whatever his name was) the CGI was so breathtaking that you believed that dinosaurs could actually exist in this time and space.   

Since then we've seen a lot thanks to the wonders of CGI. We've seen the White House destroyed in Independence Day. We've seen Transformers morph from cars to enormous robots. We've seen entire cities leveled by Batman, Superman, Avengers, Spiderman, Godzilla and others.  We've seen liquid terminators. We've seen worlds populated by weird blue people. We've seen Sandra Bullock adrift in space. 

That original wonder, the shock and awe of dinosaurs walking the earth and trying to eat Jeff Goldblum was what made Jurassic Park so compelling.  And that's what's missing in this movie.

We've seen dinosaurs tromping around in the original film and its sequels. We've seen bigger and badder CGI since.  For this film to be a triumph it needed a solid original story and a good cast. 

It had a great cast.  Hard to imagine that Andy from Parks and Rec has become a box office hero. The Law  & Order dudes are good in what the script let them do.  The corrections officer from Orange and the Cop from Let's Be are mildly amusing (and could have been so, so much more).  But the story is essentially the same as it has been forever.  It really needed a new twist, something other than dinosaurs eating people and fighting each other. Something other than bullets and helicopter crashes and sweeping views of the remote island.  It needed something other than tourists in some sort of mild peril.

It was a good movie, reasonably well acted and beautifully rendered. It had all the pieces, too bad it didn't do more with them. 

Yeah, it will make an asston of money. I'm not saying don't go see it (I think this is the kind of movie that only works in a theater) but don't go expecting a transformative reboot.  Expect the same thing you've seen several times before wrapped in a different package.

It just didn't have the magic and emotional resonance of the original.

If you go, take a pen and paper and write down all the instances of product placement.  It got to be so prevalent that I started counting the number of different products and brands I saw on display.  I counted at least 40 and I didn't start counting until half an hour or more into the film.

In fact, I'd like to create a comprehensive list of the products that are portrayed at some point. 

[Jumbo]

That beaver movie looks fucking awful.

[Kaos]

The Woman In Black 2

The Woman In Black was one of the worst horror movies I've ever seen.  Didn't keep them from making a sequel and to my chagrin I watched it. 

I'd rather watch Zombeavers again than this slow-moving turd.  A few random jump scares, some silliness about the war and some mistreated orphans was about all this bowl of brown molasses had going for it. 

PG-13 is not conducive to horror and this terrible movie proved that again. 

Abysmal. 

[Kaos]

The Judge

It's official. Robert Downey Jr. is the one actor who elevates any film he's in.  Grizzled veteran Tom Hagen (or Robert Duvall if you prefer) can't keep up with Downey.

The movie laid on the emotional syrup just a bit too thick for my taste, but the crackling animosity between Downey and Hagen was pretty good for most of the film. 

Didn't much care for the horse-face side story.  Sick of seeing that Vera Farmiga woman portrayed as something men would lose their scrotum hairs over.  I wouldn't give her rangy Mr. Ed ass a second glance and I'm not nearly in the same category as Downey.  That's one good looking man. 

Too much idle twisting on the heart strings with the mentally challenged brother and the physically handicapped brother, too.  Both of those stories were essentially unnecessary to the film except to set up other scenes and confrontations.  I was struck by how uncomfortable Vincent DiFornicatio (the L&O CI guy) was in this role. It was like he had no idea whatsoever how to play it so he went with befuddled. I typically like his performances, but here (and in Jurassic World) he didn't fit the part. 

And finally why the fuck is Hollywood (or whoever) insisting on ramming Dax Shepard's zero talent monkey ass down the viewing public's throat?  The guy was adequate in Employee of the Month playing an arrogant no-talent dickhole.  But he has shit the bed and wiped his dirty ass with the covers in everything else he's been in.  He's fucking terrible.  I'm sorry he's married to Kristen Bell.  Actually, I'm not. I find them both to be massively annoying and devoid of any talent whatsoever. They deserve each other.  Dax fucking sucks. His presence in this movie very nearly destroyed the credibility it sought to achieve. 

Long story short, son disappoints father with his reckless ways and then to spite the old man becomes a success. I can relate.  Son feels estranged from the family but when dad needs a little help he returns to his roots to try to save the day.  Dad and son argue over everything and eventually try to patch things up. 

The first part of the ending is saccharin to the point that it drives the everything before it almost off the rails.  It was an "awwwww" moment that felt shoehorned in. 

The final final act is ambiguous. Although I typically detest ambiguity (because if I wanted to write my own script I would) I had no problem with this particular ending.  It was probably the best way to handle it, honestly. 

The movie was worth watching just for Downey, Jr. 

[DnATL]

Dax fucking sucks.

Snags may cu.... oh, did Snags just get punk'd?

[wesfau2]

Jurassic World, AKA Product Placement Land

There are some movie moments that stay with you forever.  When the star destroyer (or whatever that was) crawls from the top of the screen in the opening of Star Wars it changed the way people saw movie CGI.  It had depth and enormity. You knew at that moment that Star Wars was a bigger film than you'd anticipated. It made you believe. 

About 16 years later Jurassic Park did the same thing.  When those dinosaurs rose over the plain and charged around Damien (whatever his name was) the CGI was so breathtaking that you believed that dinosaurs could actually exist in this time and space.   

Since then we've seen a lot thanks to the wonders of CGI. We've seen the White House destroyed in Independence Day. We've seen Transformers morph from cars to enormous robots. We've seen entire cities leveled by Batman, Superman, Avengers, Spiderman, Godzilla and others.  We've seen liquid terminators. We've seen worlds populated by weird blue people. We've seen Sandra Bullock adrift in space. 

That original wonder, the shock and awe of dinosaurs walking the earth and trying to eat Jeff Goldblum was what made Jurassic Park so compelling.  And that's what's missing in this movie.

We've seen dinosaurs tromping around in the original film and its sequels. We've seen bigger and badder CGI since.  For this film to be a triumph it needed a solid original story and a good cast. 

It had a great cast.  Hard to imagine that Andy from Parks and Rec has become a box office hero. The Law  & Order dudes are good in what the script let them do.  The corrections officer from Orange and the Cop from Let's Be are mildly amusing (and could have been so, so much more).  But the story is essentially the same as it has been forever.  It really needed a new twist, something other than dinosaurs eating people and fighting each other. Something other than bullets and helicopter crashes and sweeping views of the remote island.  It needed something other than tourists in some sort of mild peril.

It was a good movie, reasonably well acted and beautifully rendered. It had all the pieces, too bad it didn't do more with them. 

Yeah, it will make an asston of money. I'm not saying don't go see it (I think this is the kind of movie that only works in a theater) but don't go expecting a transformative reboot.  Expect the same thing you've seen several times before wrapped in a different package.

It just didn't have the magic and emotional resonance of the original.

If you go, take a pen and paper and write down all the instances of product placement.  It got to be so prevalent that I started counting the number of different products and brands I saw on display.  I counted at least 40 and I didn't start counting until half an hour or more into the film.

In fact, I'd like to create a comprehensive list of the products that are portrayed at some point.

After reading your review, I was prepared to be put off by the product placement.  It's not half as bad as you make it out to be.  The story is set in a theme park...where you will find all manner of consumable goods and products with a trademarked name pushed at you from every angle.  That said, they even joked about the pending deluge of product placement with the "Verizon Wireless presents..." line at the new Rex display early in the movie.

The rest of your review is pretty spot on: fun, but not groundbreaking, movie.

Minor spoiler: I predict that the Rex fight will far surpass the Batman/Superman fiasco coming down the pike.

[Tiger Wench]

Minor spoiler: I predict that the Rex fight will far surpass the Batman/Superman fiasco coming down the pike.

The nerd word on da skreets is that the Bat/Supe movie is gonna be an epic clusterfuck. My nerd friends who are media connected say the scuttlebutt is not good. Afleck sucks.

[Kaos]

After reading your review, I was prepared to be put off by the product placement.  It's not half as bad as you make it out to be.  The story is set in a theme park...where you will find all manner of consumable goods and products with a trademarked name pushed at you from every angle.  That said, they even joked about the pending deluge of product placement with the "Verizon Wireless presents..." line at the new Rex display early in the movie.

The rest of your review is pretty spot on: fun, but not groundbreaking, movie.

Minor spoiler: I predict that the Rex fight will far surpass the Batman/Superman fiasco coming down the pike.

Where I started noticing product placement was when Dude was by his motorcycle drinking a coke out of the bottle and he made sure the label was pointed at the camera.  After that it became a sport. 

[AUJarhead]

Jurassic World, AKA Product Placement Land

This review was spot on, and brought you you by Verizon Wireless.

[wesfau2]

Inside Out

Girlfriend is a huge Pixar fan, so we went to see this on Friday afternoon.  Theater was packed with unruly children, mostly under 10 with the vast majority of them younger than 5.

THIS IS NOT A MOVIE FOR KIDS.  IT IS A MOVIE ABOUT A KID.

The bright colors and goofball visualizations of complex emotional/memory concepts kept the little bastards mostly entertained, but they obviously couldn't grasp the overall meaning of the story.

It was a very good movie about the maturation of a young girl and the complex evolution of emotional responses and personality traits as we age. 

Just don't go to the 12:55pm showing...shit will be a daycare zoo.

[Godfather]

Inside Out

Girlfriend is a huge Pixar fan, so we went to see this on Friday afternoon.  Theater was packed with unruly children, mostly under 10 with the vast majority of them younger than 5.

THIS IS NOT A MOVIE FOR KIDS.  IT IS A MOVIE ABOUT A KID.

The bright colors and goofball visualizations of complex emotional/memory concepts kept the little bastards mostly entertained, but they obviously couldn't grasp the overall meaning of the story.

It was a very good movie about the maturation of a young girl and the complex evolution of emotional responses and personality traits as we age. 

Just don't go to the 12:55pm showing...shit will be a daycare zoo.

Did you get any head though?

[wesfau2]

Did you get any head though?

She lives by the book.

[Lurking Tiger]

She lives by the book.

Neva got movie head. Got a couple hand jobs. Bravo to you sir.

[GH2001]

She lives by the book.

How much did that cost ya?

[wesfau2]

How much did that cost ya?

Matinee tix: $12
Popcorn and lube butter: $8
Going all Jackson Pollack on the theater upholstery: Priceless


Note: I never said that she made with the head in the theater. 

[wesfau2]

Jupiter Ascending

I could tell when this was released that it would stink on ice.  But, the group prevailed last night and I was outvoted, so we streamed this steaming pile.

Knowing that it would be bad, I thought to myself, "Self, you should get Cheech-stoned for this and maybe it'll be amusing."

I was so wrong.  Nothing could save that abortion of a film.  The CGI was laughably bad, the acting horrible, the makeup/wardrobe were asinine and the story abysmal.

Mila was the only redeeming quality...and only because she's smoking hot.  Her acting is JLaw bad.

[GH2001]

Matinee tix: $12
Popcorn and lube butter: $8
Going all Jackson Pollack on the theater upholstery: Priceless


Note: I never said that she made with the head in the theater. 

I'd say you came out good on that one. In more than one way.

[Godfather]

Jupiter Ascending

I could tell when this was released that it would stink on ice.  But, the group prevailed last night and I was outvoted, so we streamed this steaming pile.

Knowing that it would be bad, I thought to myself, "Self, you should get Cheech-stoned for this and maybe it'll be amusing."

I was so wrong.  Nothing could save that abortion of a film.  The CGI was laughably bad, the acting horrible, the makeup/wardrobe were asinine and the story abysmal.

Mila was the only redeeming quality...and only because she's smoking hot.  Her acting is JLaw bad.

Verdict: You may need to find a new group

[djsimp]

Jupiter Ascending

I could tell when this was released that it would stink on ice.  But, the group prevailed last night and I was outvoted, so we streamed this steaming pile.

Knowing that it would be bad, I thought to myself, "Self, you should get Cheech-stoned for this and maybe it'll be amusing."

I was so wrong.  Nothing could save that abortion of a film.  The CGI was laughably bad, the acting horrible, the makeup/wardrobe were asinine and the story abysmal.

Mila was the only redeeming quality...and only because she's smoking hot.  Her acting is JLaw bad.

The kids wanted to watch this, so, we did. The kids got bored. Nuff said.

[Kaos]

Inside Out

Girlfriend is a huge Pixar fan, so we went to see this on Friday afternoon.  Theater was packed with unruly children, mostly under 10 with the vast majority of them younger than 5.

THIS IS NOT A MOVIE FOR KIDS.  IT IS A MOVIE ABOUT A KID.

The bright colors and goofball visualizations of complex emotional/memory concepts kept the little bastards mostly entertained, but they obviously couldn't grasp the overall meaning of the story.

It was a very good movie about the maturation of a young girl and the complex evolution of emotional responses and personality traits as we age. 

Just don't go to the 12:55pm showing...shit will be a daycare zoo.

Watched this last night.  We were the only people in the theater with the exception of a lone woman in her 20s-30s sitting against the wall on the left who began quietly weeping about the time the volcano started singing and sniffled and chuffed until the movie credits rolled.

Disney/Pixar does as good a job as any at navigating that fine line between kid-friendly fare and grown-up entertainment.  This movie was no exception even though it meandered through some of the same coming of age sappiness that Toy Story peddled so well.

Toy Story was great.  Seriously great.  This movie was merely good.

The film was beautifully rendered when it came to the interaction between the lead character and her family (aka the real world).  The brief clip of the family driving through the west was particularly stunning to me, having actually been there just the day before.  I was struck by just how realistic the animation was. 

I think the animation was lacking in the portrayals of the competing emotions in her brain.  I wasn't impressed with the look of Joy or Sadness.  It didn't meet the high bar set by films like Toy Story or Nemo or even Rango.

The voices were uniformly good.  Amy Poehler as Joy was fantastic. So was Phyllis from The Office as Sadness.  Lewis Black's Anger was pretty good too. Didn't care as much for Bill Hader's Fear. 

The story was very similar to Toy Story except here the character doesn't grow apart from toys, but has to learn to deal with competing emotions as she ages.

The realization that the world is more than just joy is a heartbreaking one for kids.  It's a terrible thing to learn that there is fear, anger, sadness, regret, hate and all the other swirl of emotions that make us human. It's awful to take the rose colored glasses off and step outside that cocoon of safety and security that parents provide. 

This movie does an outstanding job of portraying that even the best memories are tinged with sadness and nostalgia. 

Yeah, it lays it on a little thick and tries a touch too hard to yank at the heartstrings, but the emotions rang true enough.  What's the purpose of a movie?  First, to entertain.  This one did that easily.  If it can go beyond and inform and make you think, then it's elevated itself. This one did that too.

I wish I'd seen this movie when my own daughter was eleven.  It might have changed the way I dealt with some of the emotional mazes she wandered through.