Kaos' way behind movie reviews

[Kaos]

Uncut Gems

Didn't really know what to expect.  Don't much like Adam Sandler, but I'd read that this was his resurrection from the lazy, scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel attempts at comedy his spectacularly shitty films (yes, even the abhorrent Grown Ups) had become.  There were rumors that he was purposely making terrible movies just to see how low the movie-going populace would go.  

I've seen other comedic actors try to change their career path with varying degrees of success. I just don't think Sandler really made the seismic shift he was hoping for.  He was the same goofy, annoying schlump he is in every other movie, except he limited the lame comedic lines and didn't mug as much.  

I wanted to enjoy the movie and was semi-invested in the outcome, but the perpetual wheeling and dealing, the steady stream of shady deal stacked on top of another shady deal backed by another shady deal actually grew tiresome. The rapid-fire, talk-oriented pace tired me out. 

The biggest problem I had with this movie is I didn't know who I was "for."  

Did I want Sandler's scummy character to win in the end? 
Did I want his slutty girlfriend to come out on top?
Did I want his frosty wife and snotty kids to be the victor?
Did I want his low-life family members to win? 
Did I want his double-dealing friend to make the score?
Did I want entitled Kevin Garnett to take it home? 

There were zero likeable characters, none of whom I felt deserved to take a victory lap.  When you want them all to lose, all to fail, all to end up with nothing -- that doesn't work.  You need a protagonist.  If every character in the film is an antagonist and you don't have that one guy to root for even a little?  It leaves you hanging.  Every single character had a very small vein of okayness, but all were despicable at their core. 

One good thing?  He knocked on his neighbor's door and it was John Amos.  Guy was onscreen for less than 30 seconds.  But he was there.  Made me smile.  Beastmaster mode. 

[Kaos]

Birds of Prey

Imagine that the people behind the insipid Ghostbusters remake with Melisa McFarthy got drunk and watched a back to back marathon of Kill Bill and Deadpool.  Then imagine they smoked a little weed and decided to make a movie.  If that had happened, Birds of Prey is likely the movie that would have come from that.  

It ripped off Deadpool from the opening credits on, bouncing in the narrative, talking directly to the audience, using the opening graphics in a "fun" way.  It ripped off Kill Bill in the twisted timeline of the narrative and in the fight sequences employed by the female stars.  I truly expected Harley to turn one of the bad guys over her knee and spank him just like Beatrix Kiddo did during her sprawling brawl with the Crazy 88.  Might have been better if they had.  

The REALLY thin story focused on Harley recovering from her breakup with Joker, trying to establish her own identity, teaming up with some really terrible actresses (the worst of which had to be Rosie Perez) and fighting with some badly sketched Gotham mob kingpin (played hammily by that idiot McGregor).  

It just didn't work.  Margot Robbie tried really, really hard to breathe life into the one-trick-pony that is Harley Quinn, but her efforts were wasted in a badly-shot, badly-acted, poorly plotted mish mash of noisy dumb.  

It wasn't as terrible as Aquaman - which might be the worst superhero movie I've ever seen - but it proved once again (and perhaps for all) that DC is in bumbling hands.  They just don't know what to do with these characters.  Every step is a misstep filled with more problems than promise.  No exception here.  

It was meant to be an irreverent response to Deadpool with a ham-fisted nod to female empowerment.  It was supposed to paper over the splattering turd that was Suicide Squad.  Gum-snapping Harley gave it a try, but it's not 1/10th the movie Pool was.  It wasn't nearly as fun as they clearly meant it to be.  Everything about it was wrong, from the color palette to the cartoonish violence.  

Batman, Harley, Joker, Catwoman, Batgirl, Penguin and Riddler have a layered, complicated, tangled relationship with Gotham and its residents.  DC has consistently failed to bring that to life.  I really wish they'd scrap this entire exercise (keep Wonder Woman, please) and just start completely over.  But not with freaking Twinkle the Vampire as Bruce Wayne.   

DC doesn't get it.  They just don't.  The characters are there.  Better characters than Marvel, really.  But they just can't make it work.  It's disheartening. 

[GH2001]

Uncut Gems

Didn't really know what to expect.  Don't much like Adam Sandler, but I'd read that this was his resurrection from the lazy, scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel attempts at comedy his spectacularly shitty films (yes, even the abhorrent Grown Ups) had become.  There were rumors that he was purposely making terrible movies just to see how low the movie-going populace would go. 

I've seen other comedic actors try to change their career path with varying degrees of success. I just don't think Sandler really made the seismic shift he was hoping for.  He was the same goofy, annoying schlump he is in every other movie, except he limited the lame comedic lines and didn't mug as much. 

I wanted to enjoy the movie and was semi-invested in the outcome, but the perpetual wheeling and dealing, the steady stream of shady deal stacked on top of another shady deal backed by another shady deal actually grew tiresome. The rapid-fire, talk-oriented pace tired me out.

The biggest problem I had with this movie is I didn't know who I was "for." 

Did I want Sandler's scummy character to win in the end?
Did I want his slutty girlfriend to come out on top?
Did I want his frosty wife and snotty kids to be the victor?
Did I want his low-life family members to win?
Did I want his double-dealing friend to make the score?
Did I want entitled Kevin Garnett to take it home?

There were zero likeable characters, none of whom I felt deserved to take a victory lap.  When you want them all to lose, all to fail, all to end up with nothing -- that doesn't work.  You need a protagonist.  If every character in the film is an antagonist and you don't have that one guy to root for even a little?  It leaves you hanging.  Every single character had a very small vein of okayness, but all were despicable at their core.

One good thing?  He knocked on his neighbor's door and it was John Amos.  Guy was onscreen for less than 30 seconds.  But he was there.  Made me smile.  Beastmaster mode.

Snags prefers them all to be "uncut"

[Kaos]

The Gentlemen

This is the kind of movie they don’t make any more.  Which may be why I liked it.  

It was a meandering, talkative gangster-ish film with a British sensibility.  

Matthew McCongaheyhey as an American with the U.K. weed market sewn up.  He’s ready to retire. The film follows the bloody trails of the rivals with designs on taking him out.  

Clever performance by Hugh Grant. Collin Farrell (don’t know why I like him but he’s good again here) as a low-level street hood who gets drawn into the fray.  Some guy with a beard through whom the story threads wind (my girls knew him I had no idea.  Charlie Hoffman or something).  

The story moved along at a good pace, things weren’t always what they seemed and the misdirection was both well placed and well handled.  

The guy who directed Sherlock Holmes (with Downey Jr) and Snatch amidst a pot full of real stinkfests did this movie.  

I thought it was good and didn’t get the attention it deserved. 

[wesfau2]

The Gentlemen

This is the kind of movie they don’t make any more.  Which may be why I liked it. 

It was a meandering, talkative gangster-ish film with a British sensibility. 

Matthew McCongaheyhey as an American with the U.K. weed market sewn up.  He’s ready to retire. The film follows the bloody trails of the rivals with designs on taking him out. 

Clever performance by Hugh Grant. Collin Farrell (don’t know why I like him but he’s good again here) as a low-level street hood who gets drawn into the fray.  Some guy with a beard through whom the story threads wind (my girls knew him I had no idea.  Charlie Hoffman or something). 

The story moved along at a good pace, things weren’t always what they seemed and the misdirection was both well placed and well handled. 

The guy who directed Sherlock Holmes (with Downey Jr) and Snatch amidst a pot full of real stinkfests did this movie. 

I thought it was good and didn’t get the attention it deserved.

Agreed.  Not flashy, but a solid film with a great cast.

[Kaos]

Dr Sleep
There’s no real middle ground when bringing a Stephen King novel to the screen.  The two choices are to make it so long that it borders on interminable or leave gaps in the pursuit of brevity. 

Dr. Sleep — the follow up to Stanley Kubrick’s (greatly overrated) version of The Shining — lands in the latter category.  It’s not bad as a stand-alone movie but because it didn’t have or take the time to fill in some of the blank spaces it didn’t resonate as well as it could have. 

Just one for-instance.  The movie didn’t give me nearly enough insight into True Knot - the semi-eternal traveling crew of vampires of the psychic who feed not on blood but fear (maybe? But that doesn’t much explain their hunger for people with psychic abilities).

And another... it only briefly glossed over grown Danny Torrance’s work in a nursing home and the death-sensing cat azarel before just abandoning that entire storyline. 

Overall it was fairly well done.  It’s just not a good enough story, really, to carry the weight of a feature film. 

Ewan McGregor was his usual terrible, worthless, sack of sawdust self. His lackluster performance really helped drag the movie down.  I don’t know why anyone takes him seriously as an actor. He’s just not good.  In anything.

On the flip side there was something so raw and plainly sexy about the leader of the True Knot (Rebecca Ferguson) that I kept watching just to see her.  Don’t know what it was about her but I think i would have to let her eat me. She just oozed it.

The story was so sparse and the rules of engagement so arbitrary that too much of it made little sense. 

Still, it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen and not the worst of King (Maximum Overdrive or the almost unwatchable Rob Lowe/Gary Sinese version of The Stand come to mind).

There is a nice shoutout to something that appeals to me early on when drunk Danny is leaving the apartment of his hookup whore.  I may be the only person on earth who caught it.

[wesfau2]

Dr Sleep
There’s no real middle ground when bringing a Stephen King novel to the screen.  The two choices are to make it so long that it borders on interminable or leave gaps in the pursuit of brevity. 

Dr. Sleep — the follow up to Stanley Kubrick’s (greatly overrated) version of The Shining — lands in the latter category.  It’s not bad as a stand-alone movie but because it didn’t have or take the time to fill in some of the blank spaces it didn’t resonate as well as it could have. 

Just one for-instance.  The movie didn’t give me nearly enough insight into True Knot - the semi-eternal traveling crew of vampires of the psychic who feed not on blood but fear (maybe? But that doesn’t much explain their hunger for people with psychic abilities).

And another... it only briefly glossed over grown Danny Torrance’s work in a nursing home and the death-sensing cat azarel before just abandoning that entire storyline. 

Overall it was fairly well done.  It’s just not a good enough story, really, to carry the weight of a feature film. 

Ewan McGregor was his usual terrible, worthless, sack of sawdust self. His lackluster performance really helped drag the movie down.  I don’t know why anyone takes him seriously as an actor. He’s just not good.  In anything.

On the flip side there was something so raw and plainly sexy about the leader of the True Knot (Rebecca Ferguson) that I kept watching just to see her.  Don’t know what it was about her but I think i would have to let her eat me. She just oozed it.

The story was so sparse and the rules of engagement so arbitrary that too much of it made little sense. 

Still, it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen and not the worst of King (Maximum Overdrive or the almost unwatchable Rob Lowe/Gary Sinese version of The Stand come to mind).

There is a nice shoutout to something that appeals to me early on when drunk Danny is leaving the apartment of his hookup whore.  I may be the only person on earth who caught it.

Mostly agree with this, but I thought this was a rare instance of the movie that is better than the book, if only at the end.  The cinematic ending (with all the Overlook's creepy crawlies) was FAR superior to the book's psychic showdown.

[Kaos]

Mostly agree with this, but I thought this was a rare instance of the movie that is better than the book, if only at the end.  The cinematic ending (with all the Overlook's creepy crawlies) was FAR superior to the book's psychic showdown.

Agreed on that.  

The book was forgettable, honestly.  I didn't remember the ending.  I'm sitting here at my desk now looking at Under the Dome and Duma Key on my bookshelf.  I know I read both, but can't remember the first thing about either.  

[Kaos]

Honeyboy

Shia Lebouf is an enigma.  The guy clearly had issues, but from his first appearances on Even Stevens as the goofy Louis Stevens it was obvious he had talent.  

Yeah, he kind of pissed it away with some bad role choices (Transformers, while good didn't give him much to do and he was flat in the Wall Street do-over) and some even worse personal decisions.  But it was still there.  This movie is a semi-autobiography that helps explain so much of why he turned out the way he did.  

Lebouf plays his own father, an erstwhile rodeo clown and a hovering stage-nanny who drove the child actor in an effort to validate his own sad existence.  

The movie doesn't quite get to the razor edge it should given the lunacy Lebouf experienced as a child, due primarily to his eventual reluctance to portray his own father as the monster he probably really was.  But it's bad enough.  Drugs, alcohol, hookers, abject poverty, violence, rage and abandonment were all part of Shia's formative years.  It's a wonder the kid is still alive, honestly.  

My take is that he's a vastly underrated actor primarily because he brings an easy nonchalance to almost every role.  You forget he's acting, and isn't that the point?  This movie and Peanut Butter Falcon are two that really give him a chance to stretch a little beyond the comedic goofiness that was Louis Stevens and Sam Witwicky and exhibit a little humanity.  

I liked the film and I'm impressed with his chops. 

[Kaos]

Vivarium  and
The Room 

Two very similar movies, but told completely differently.  

In Vivarium, Imogen Poots (who walks like a man, trust me) and Jesse Eisenberg go house hunting and end up in a cookie-cutter neighborhood where all the houses look alike.  And there's no way out. 

In The Room, two Belgians pretending to be American purchase a new secluded home in Belgium which is pretending to be upstate New York and discover a strange room hidden behind the wallpaper.  

Jesse and Poots try their damndest to get out, driving, walking and digging only to continually end up in front of the same house.  An attempt to burn it down fails and they wake up amid the ashes to discover a baby delivered to their home with instructions to raise it to gain their freedom.  

The Belgian couple discover that the room can grant wishes and after a decadent spree where they wallow in champagne, cash, clothes, rare paintings and other craziness, the childless woman decides to ask the room for a baby... which it promptly provides.  

From there the stories sort of run parallel tracks.  Both couples are raising a child that isn't theirs.  Both children (for different reasons) age much quicker than normal and neither has appropriate human behaviors or reactions.  Both children develop odd sexual attraction to their mothers.  Both mothers are initially defensive of the child, both fathers immediately reject it and want it gone. After a series of battles with the un-human faux kids, both parents eventually determine to find a way to escape the monstrous children and the trap of their existence.  

While escape from the home and the child is the object for both, each set of parents devises a different method to achieve it.  Neither completely find their way back.  

Of the two, I probably liked The Room better, but only because it took a slightly different path.  The final act of both movies is somewhat lackluster given the situations created that led up to it.  The Room does suffer from Belgians trying to pretend to be Americans and getting the feel of it all wrong.  I still don't understand the decision to set a movie in upstate New York when it was filmed entirely in Belgium, directed by Belgians, with Belgian actors and a Belgian interpretation of how Americans must surely behave.  Vivarium, on the other hand, suffered from the colorless, flat constant monotony of existence in the cookie cutter world.  I know it was done for effect, but the effect was numbing.  I think Vivarium would have been much better had there been other families fighting the same battle for Eisenberg and Poots to interact with. 

[GH2001]

no one seen any movies since Labor Day eh?

[Snaggletiger]

no one seen any movies since Labor Day eh?

I watched Anna Does Anal I, II and III last night.  Didn't see the need to review any of them because "Anna" taking a lot of cock up the ass is pretty much the plot in all 3. I thought the titles were self-explanatory.

[GH2001]

I guess Ana liked it the first two times.

Threes a charm

[AUJarhead]

Not a movie, but anyone watched The Right Stuff on Disney+ yet?

[chinook]

I watched Anna Does Anal I, II and III last night.  Didn't see the need to review any of them because "Anna" taking a lot of cock up the ass is pretty much the plot in all 3. I thought the titles were self-explanatory.

You spelled Andy wrong.  

[GH2001]

You spelled Andy wrong. 

Well. He USED to be Andy. 

[CurtisEvorm]

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I saw this movie in the theater several years ago.  Got up and walked out in the middle.  Your taste in movies is for shit.

[Kaos]

Spell

Still in search of the next great horror movie.  This one hit  close, but (not being racist)with an all black cast and a black director there was a level of flow, some narrative gaps and some logical stupidity that fit the framework of a Tyler Perry type movie. And that limited the film. I don't know why all black movies struggle to portray realistic human reactions and interactions, but they do.  And they always jam nonsensical racial tropes in there.  Movie was written by a white guy, so there's that. 

Basic story: Super successful black attorney Marquis and his super cool upper crust urban family get called to the mountains of West Virginia (not sure) for the reading of his estranged father's will.  Plane goes down. Guy wakes up in the home of some voodoo cultists who control him to a degree with a boogity (voodoo doll made of hair, skin and other bodily fluids collected from Marquis) and their hoodoo magic. 

There are elements of the far superior Misery in the story of the chuckling hoodoo priestess Eloise's confinement of Marquis.  Eliose is great, but the director kept her far too reined in.  The boogity was potentially terrifying but completely underused. 

The guy playing Marquis was also pretty good, but the whole time I kept thinking he was a low-rent Idris Elba and it would have been so much better with the real thing. He was really good in a few scenes, but just not consistently good overall. 

The idea of being at the mercy of someone deranged who may or may not have magical hoodoo power seriously works for me.  It's a good setup.  It's a shame the execution was just so ham-fisted.  

All the pieces were there, but Madea-level performances by the kids and wife and some significantly lazy storytelling (really stupid decisions) kept this from making the cut.  

[Kaos]

Porky's 

I watched this movie in theaters when I was a teenager and remember laughing so hard at parts of it, I had to go back and watch it again to catch up on what I missed. 

I don't think I've watched it in its entirety since. Until this week. 

It was a much more solid movie than I remembered.  The first thing I noticed is that the movie is from the same family as A Christmas Story.  Bob Clark helmed both of them.  They were his "life stories" from what I understand. 

Once I found that out, it was very easy to see the similarities in the two movies in the pacing, the casually authentic interactions of characters who were caricatures to a degree but realistic enough that you knew those guys when you were growing up.  You might not have been a Mickey or Meat, but you knew them. 

It's not great cinema. But there's an easy natural flow to it that is reassuring. Yeah, it's gross and vulgar in places. It's bawdy and lewd.  And it's so politically incorrect in today's asinine climate.  I have to admit, it did my heart good to see boys being boys/girls being girls and not having the police called, their lives ruined and #metoo social media war being waged against them. It did my heart good to see men/boys being men/boys and not being branded as some kind of deviant. It reminded me that there was a time not so long ago that we weren't all so up-fucking-tight that damn near everything was an affront.  Maybe I miss that. Maybe I wish it would come back. 

Porky's set the table for a series of similar-genre films that followed.  Fast Times. Last American Virgin. Private School. Breakfast Club. Valley Girl. Weird Science. Risky Business. Zapped. Ski School. Real Genius and so on.  Some of those were great. Some were awful. But all owe a debt of gratitude to Porky's for blazing the trail.  

A few things stand out: 

Kim Cattrall is at the absolute height of her (long since waned) sexiness. Not beautiful, just sexy.  OoooooowwwwOOOOOOHHHHH!  

If you can get through the scene where Beulah is asking for a tallywhacker lineup while the coaches break up in the background without laughing at all?  We're not going to agree on much. 

Embedded in the layers of over-the-top comedic setups are some subtle lessons in racism and friendship. Not treacle and without beating the viewer over the head with it.  This movie really shows you how that can be done. 

Despite the naked bushes, the hinted penii, the bare asses and other vulgarity, the film really deserves to be remembered in a much better light than it probably is.  Again, it's not a great movie but it struck a much needed nostalgic tone with me.  


"I've done this so many times I'm practically a doctor."