Kaos' way behind movie reviews

[wesfau2]

The Girl With All the Gifts - Zombie movie with a refreshing turn at the end.  The kid who played Melanie was pretty rad.

Hidden Figures - Predictable almost to a fault, but strong performances by just about everyone made it a movie that I really enjoyed. 

[wesfau2]

Logan

The action sequences are badass.  The little girl is a fierce ass-kicker.  The return of the prince of the Soul Glo empire was a surprising treat.

The rest of the movie (read: all the parts with Patrick Stewart) were slow and ponderous.

[Kaos]

Eden Lake
Kelly "Freckles" Reilly and Michael "This Guy has Talent?" Fassbender in a trapped-in-the-woods thriller. 

The couple drives through the English woods to a place that's supposed to be idyllic (but looks dirty and crappy) for a weekend getaway.  There, they encounter a group of surly teens.  Over time the confrontations escalate until it becomes a deadly situation for all involved. 

It tried.  It really did. It tried to give you suspense and a sense of helpless, hopeless dread.  It tried to give you the end you didn't see coming, the one that no film in its right mind would deliver. So credit for trying. But it went wrong. 

Let me count some of the ways.

1) The accent on the main rogue teen was so low class Brit that you couldn't ever really understand what he was saying.  "Ay, woo rah, yah gwa stee hah toorah." 
2) The couple treks through the woods to this dirty lake carrying a few small bags.  Supposedly they're staying the weekend.  Where's the food and water?  And later he comes out of the filthy lake in a full scuba suit, tank and all.  Where did that come from?
3) Why did she do any of the stupid things she did?  Leave. Don't just stand there whimpering. It reached the point to where you were seriously hoping she'd just die already. 
4) Continuity errors abounded. Dress is dirty, dress is clean. She's limping, she's walking, she's limping..
5) Stupid choices.  Why not just get away from there? 

It tried, but the juice wasn't worth the squeeze. 

Ah wounnna seh yah shoo wah dee wan.

[Kaos]

Shut In

Naomi Watts in a film about a woman stuck in a blizzard with her invalid son and another lost kid. 

The blizzard was never fully realized and the invalid son looked like a cross between Edward Furlong and Darryl from Walking Dead.

Her motives were odd, the way it played out was a bit ridiculous. The big Norman Batesy surprise was ehhhh.

The scenery was beautiful.  Canada pretending to be Maine.  But the movie failed on numerous levels.  Let's be honest.  Watts is difficult to look at.  She's the female version of Owen Wilson. 

[Snaggletiger]

The matching, pastel upholstered ottoman and headboard....simply put....they work here.  Very bold!

[Kaos]

The matching, pastel upholstered ottoman and headboard....simply put....they work here.  Very bold!

The Russians are tampering with the X.

Thanks, Obama.

[Lurking Tiger]

Get Out

Went to see this primarily because a) it was written and directed by someone I have seen in person and b) it was filmed in Fairhope so I was interested to see if I recognized anything.

First Fairhope.  99.74% of the movie takes place at one house. It could have been anywhere. So zero Fairhope flavor.  That was a disappointment.

The rest of the movie was well done.

The dynamic between the black boyfriend and the white bread daughter wasn't entirely convincing but that may have been purposeful. There was less humor than I expected given that jordan peele wrote and directed.

The movie can't really be classified as horror given that any horror aspects didn't really begin until the last 15 minutes or so.  Instead it was a slow burn of "what's wrong with this picture" until Peele put all the pieces together in the short (in comparison) final act. 


 A little slow in places. And some small things that bothered me which I can't discuss without revealing too much. 

Still a quality effort for a first time writer/director known primarily for dumb football names. 

Worth a look.  Don't know if it's theater worthy though.

Very well acted and great cinematography. The rest was shit. Full of cliches and one dimentional characters. A ton of plot holes and some glaring continuity mistakes. This would have been a good netflix watch. But I feel like I am out $24.

[Kaos]

Nailbiter

Still looking for the next good horror movie.  This isn't it by a long shot. 

Laughable. Pathetic. 

Mom and three daughters get trapped by a tornado and take refuge in a storm shelter at an old farmhouse. 

Let the not-so-creepy, really stupid, poorly rendered CGI, badly acted fun begin. 

Huge tornadoes come through.  No trees are down and there's no damage despite there supposedly being damage.  That was one of the many, many problems in this turkey turd.  Would take too long to list the rest.

The only redeeming feature of the entire film was an adequate performance from one of the daughters.  The other two daughters made up for whatever spark of talent she had by being absolutely fucking abysmal.  Terrible.  They should have their acting privileges revoked. 

Don't waste your time.

[Kaos]

Don't Knock Twice

Shit.  Don't knock at all. 

The cinematography was good and in the first half it built a decent amount of horror-based tension with some creepy enough choices. 

And then it descended into a ridiculous sprawl of mumbo jumbo that included taking down and burning the doors of the house. 

Starred Starbuck of the new Battlestar Galactica who is proving that about all she can or should do is that role. 

The last half of the movie was spuddled shit. 

[Kaos]

Havenhurst

Watched this attempt at a horror movie only because it starred Dexter's wife Rita, aka Julie Benz.

Poor Jules.  Her range is so limited.  She plays mousy and soft spoken even when it's not warranted.  She did it in Boondock Saints II (yes, that exists) and she does it here.  Downtrodden, beaten, timid, shrinking. This role just needed a stronger presence. 

Here's the setup.  Woman played by the always welcome Fionnula Flanagan  owns Havenhurst, a huge, swank skyscraper in New York where she allows recovering addicts to live (rent free, it appears) so long as they stay away from whatever it was to which they were addicted (sex, drugs, booze, kids).  Fall off the wagon and get an eviction notice -- which means something more sinister at the Hurst.  There, you get evicted from the face of the earth.

Rita (or whatever her name was here, she's always Rita to me) leaves rehab and gets a place at Havenhurst.  She's given the same room once occupied by a friend of hers from rehab who has disappeared leaving all her shit behind.  That gets Rita to thinking and leads her down a stumbling path to investigating the disappearance. 

That's where it gets a little silly.  The decision she makes as a method to find her lost friend is asinine.  Soo, too, is the monster lurking in the shadows part of the story. 

The end is a little less than satisfying, but at least it was a somewhat decent attempt at swirling things around a bit and handing you something you maybe didn't expect.  There are just so many gaping gaps in the story, things that are roll-your-eyes dumb in places, that the movie ultimately implodes on its own missteps. 

It's a B movie which appears to be Julie's wheelhouse these days.  She's still just so adorable, though. 

[Kaos]

Way of the Wicked
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2483208/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_15

The search for a decent horror movie is turning into an exercise in abuse.  Way of the Wicked is yet another turkey and one that really leaves you disappointed.

A horror movie should contain some elements of horror.  This one doesn't.  It's a lot of talking and misplaced emotion.  Like all just talking and brooding.  Nothing ever happens.

Here's the gist.  Priest (Christian Slater seriously slumming) chases kid he's convinced is the antichrist due to some of the most ridiculous religious mumbo jumbo in history.  "See?  He was born on the same DAY!" he screeches at one point.  Ignoring the obvious fact that about 350,000 babies are born worldwide every day, of course. 

His antichrist is being bullied as a third grader and one of the meanies mysteriously chokes to death during the fight.  That's enough to set Father Slater off on his crusade to .... well... nobody's sure exactly what he intends to do other than lurk in the woods and watch him. 

Fast forward ten years.  The kid's now a high schooler and looks like a sloped-forehead gorilla. He's also really short and stupid looking.  He's still carrying a torch for one of the girls who watched him get beaten up, who happens to be the daughter (no accent) of an Australian police chief (heavy accent) who maybe drinks too much because his wife died.  She's got an unwanted suitor who incurs the wrath of the brooding possible antichrist and ends up dead.  Aussie dad is, of course investigating, daughter dearest gets hot and bothered for the short apeish little man and .... ummm....  nothing really happens.

There's surprise ending that's bungled so badly it makes you wonder if maybe the filmmakers just ran out of film and decided to shut it down. 

Emily Tennant, the girl, is semi-sorta cute and not the worst I've ever seen. Potential antichrist (Jake Crocker) is numbingly bad.  I wonder if he was the director's son or something because there was zero reason to cast this guy.  He was awful.  His bio says he's 5-7 but I'm guessing 5-3. His head is shaped like an ape's.  His hideous haircut in this movie should have had its own billing. Looked like he cut it with a cheese grater.

But here's the thing.  Buried in this talk-heavy shitshow was the nugget of what could have been a really good story.  Better script, better pacing, more action, better actors?  There was something that could have been a winner here. 

[Kaos]

Bleed For This

This is what Rocky MCMVXII should have been.   Good story, true story of a kid with more heart than talent and a single-minded willingness to risk his life for something he wanted -- and the only thing he was really good at.  It's also what Rocky MCMVXII didn't need to be:  flat, leached of emotion, cardboard, dead.  With the Rocky movies there was a good enough backstory that made you care about the characters.  Here?  There was really nobody to like.  Maybe that's reality. But maybe it needed more.

Told the story of boxer Vinny Paz (he legally changed his name to this) and his return from a horrific car crash that left him millimeters away from being paralyzed with a broken neck.  Against doctor's recommendation and the advice of everyone around him, he rejected neck fusion surgery which would have guaranteed he could walk but not box and opted for a metal halo which gave him the slim chance to get back in the ring.

The cast should have been first rate including Miles Teller, Aaron Eckhart, Katey Sagal, Ted Levine, Ciaran Hinds.

Teller, as Vinny P,  was good and the fight scenes were realistic enough. More true to form than Rocky.

Sagal didn't have much to do. Her role could have been played by a chicken finger with no noticeable loss.

Eckhart left something to be desired as the paunchy, bald Kevin Rooney.  Just didn't have the right spark. 

Levine (it puts the lotion on its skin) was supposed to be Lou Duva but did so by making a peculiar squinched up face that was distracting and didn't have the ring of truth.  Bad casting. 

Hinds was a complete mess. I usually like the guy, but he was awful here.  Bad directing maybe? 

I liked the movie okay but it just didn't reach the emotional depths I needed it to.  I wanted to like Vinny (Teller's character) but other than the fact that he just wanted to fight, there wasn't much about him to get behind.  He wasn't likable.

I also noticed several liberties the movie took with the truth that were completely unnecessary.  Most of the movie was fairly accurate, but why -- for instance -- change the scores the judges submitted for a fight that went the distance?   Use the real damned scores.  That wasn't part of my general letdown during the movie, but it made me think less of it after the fact. 

The director shoehorned music in and out with some abrupt and jarring transitions.  A song would just stop in the middle for no reason.  The overall direction was clunky and ham handed.  Made me wonder if this was the guy's debut film, because he made numerous seriously bad choices that detracted from the film.  I checked. He's done a few films, but this was his baby.  Wrote it, did the screenplay and directed. So the failures all land at his feet. And there were more than a few.

After I finished the film I looked up the real Vinny P and found him to be even more unlikable than the Teller version.  He was a dumb punk  with nothing going for him but a brash mouth-overloading-his-ass personality.  Nothing appealing about him at all.  Again, that didn't color my initial impression of the movie, but it absolutely made me care less about it looking back.  It's not something I'd watch again. 

[Kaos]

Power Rangers

The year was 1993 my first born was a curious and active three year old. Enter the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. For a couple of years she became Kimberly.  Every afternoon we would watch essentially the same show as the Rangers teamed up to battle the minions of Rita Repulsa, Goodar and eventually Lord Zed.  They'd fight putties.  Then a bigger monster would show up. They'd try to battle it for a while before figuring out they were better as a combined team.  Then they'd form megazord, kick some monster ass and save the day.  Go go power rangers.  My daughter's obsession with the show was such that she wore Kimberly gear to preschool, assigned ranger roles to her friends (one of whom she still calls Billy to this day) and proceeded to gang kick the shit out of other kids who had no idea they were goldar, Rita, Grumble, fang or a putty.  There was a broken arm -- hers from leaping off the top of some playground equipment so her pink ranger could help the red ranger tackle an unsuspecting lord zed -- a concussion, numerous scrapes and bruises and the dreaded parent conference. Still we watched.  And went to live shows. And the movie.

So it was with no small amount of nostalgia that she and I went to see the new Power Ranger movie.

It was okay.  It took the "cool kids become heroes" storyline and dirtied it up some.  No longer the good kids from angel grove the new Rangers were the fallen and the outcast.  They avoided the obvious stereotyping of the black ranger being black and the yellow ranger being Asian. But they also had to toss in an ambiguous lesbian reference which was unnecessary.

The film followed the same basic script as the tv show once it got the obligatory and lengthy backstory out of the way.  Fight putties. Fight solo. Team up. Save the day. 

Elizabeth Banks enjoyed herself as Rita. Fun to watch.  The new rangers didn't have quite the same easy chemistry as the tv version.  For fans of the series there were several nods to it including a sentimental recreation of part of the show's opening sequence and a cameo or two.

There was also a product placement so blatantly obvious and over the top that it was funny. 

There were a couple of crude references I could have done without.  Kimberly wasn't as good as the marvelous and lovely Amy Jo Johnson of the original and Bryan Cranston didn't add as much as I'd hoped as the digitized Zordon.

Worth watching for nostalgia's sake if your kid was ever a ranger or if you've got a 5-10 year old who wants to be one. Otherwise?  Nah.

[wesfau2]

Ghost In The Shell

Beautiful movie (seen in Imax/3D) with great action sequences and visuals.

Plot?  Meh.  You've seen this movie before.

The nerds are up in arms because of the whitewashing of two main characters, but I don't have any relationship with the source material, so it wasn't a problem for me.

[Kaos]

Room

Interesting movie. 

Some of the pacing is odd, but I can understand why Brie Larson won the Academy Award for Best Actress. I don't understand, however, why the kid Jacob Tremblay wasn't even nominated.  He was every bit Larson's equal and the made the movie as appealing and emotionally resonant as it was. 

It's essentially two stories.  In the first, mother and son survive captivity in a shed with a single skylight. She was snatched off the street at 17 and held there for years before she managed an escape.   The second movie is about how she and the child cope in a world that's moved on since she was captured.  It's here that the boy is such a force.  Learning to live in a wide open space after five years in which his only world was a tiny room he does a really good job conveying how even the simplest things are overwhelming. 

Nancy Allen is decent as the mom and William H. Macy does little as the now-estranged dad. 

I'm still trying to figure out what the movie was trying to say.  I assume there was some deeper emotional meaning I was supposed to get, some emotional lesson I was supposed to learn.  That part eluded me. 

I enjoyed the movie, though.  It was worth the watch.   Glad I didn't do it in the theater.  It moved too slowly for that. 

[Kaos]

Maggie

Very different kind of zombie movie. 

An epidemic is unleashed.  Get bitten and over a period of time (six to eight weeks) you turn into a flesh craving zombie. 

Where this movie veers from the usual zombie fare is the six to eight week span and how you cope with the realization that a family member is doomed and will become a danger to you and the rest of your family. 

Arnold Schwarzenegger finds out that his daughter, Abigail Breslin, has been infected.  As the infection progresses he's got three basic options.

1) Turn her over to the quarantine squad.  She's taken in with all the other zombies and basically thrown into a pit where they gnaw on each other.
2) Give her the drug cocktail that puts them down.  It's allegedly slow and painful.  That part's not really explained. 
3) Put her down himself.   

This is one of Arnie's better roles.  He's not blowing things up and dropping corny one-liners.  He's not awkwardly stumbling through a comedy.  He does a pretty good job of conveying the emotional pain endured by a father who is slowly losing the one thing in life that means the most to him. 

As I watched this movie I couldn't help but think of parents who watch their children dying of cancer or some other horrible disease.  How helpless and powerless they must feel as the disease slowly takes control. 

What would you do if your child was becoming a monster and you couldn't stop it?  How far would you let it go? How far would you go to protect her? How much danger would you put yourself in?  How would your friends and family treat you?  How would they treat your dying child?  Those are the themes, slowly and thoughtfully considered here. 

Breslin does an okay job as a zombiefying teenager.

It's a very slow moving film. Not horror by any stretch.  Very contemplative. 

The ending was a little cheap in that it didn't force Arnie to answer the primary question.  How far would he have gone?

[Saniflush]

What would you do if your child was becoming a monster and you couldn't stop it? 

I have often considered this. 

I mean if they became bama fans, I think the right and just thing to do is to put them down.

[Snaggletiger]

I have often considered this. 

I mean if they became bama fans, I think the right and just thing to do is to put them down.

My brother went to Bama.  I tried to shoot him as he drove away but the gun jammed.

[GH2001]

My brother went to Bama.  I tried to shoot him as he drove away but the gun jammed.

Damn sand and moisture.

[Kaos]

Star Wars: Rogue One

Well....

I don't like it.  I've tried three or four times and I can't make it through the thing. 

Forrest Whitaker -- aka Jefferson from Fast Times -- is terrible here.  The story is muddled.

I just don't like it. 

I'm not going to even finish.