Kaos' way behind movie reviews

[Saniflush]

MMM, good.
Tastes good.
Feels good.

I wouldn't worry about it.  These days his gf has probably eaten more pussy than he has.

[Snaggletiger]

I wouldn't worry about it.  These days his gf has probably eaten more pussy than he has.

That's hawt.

[Kaos]

Alpha 

The story of man's first dog.  I guess.  

Made up language and really a story we've seen like a hundred times before.  Man injures animal, animal becomes his friend.  You've all seen those movies.  Gentle Ben, Life of Pi, Racing Stripes anyone?  

Lots of really pretty scenery, a dialogue that consisted of grunts and made up words. I had a problem here, because when characters are using a fake language I try to look for continuity and is the same word said the same way throughout.  Like Dothraki or Klingon, both of which stick to the standard across the board.  Here?  Not so much I don't think.  Whatever grunting sounds occurred at the time were good enough.  But anyway... 

This was like a low-rent version of Revenant mixed with a little Clan of the Cave Bear and a little Born Free. 

I didn't hate it, but I don't think it told the gripping story it intended to tell.  

[Kaos]

Possum

One of the weirdest, least understandable movies I've ever seen.  

It was like scary Mr. Bean carries a spider around in a bag. 

That's literally all I got.  

[Kaos]

Southern Comfort

Powers Boothe at the height of his powers. Fred Ward. Keith Carradine. Alan Autry (you won't know the name but you'll recognize the guy).  

Louisiana National Guardsmen get lost in the bayou and stupidly run afoul of the cajuns who inhabit the swamps. The weekend warriors pay a heavy price for mucking around in things they don't understand. 

It's sort of a cross between First Blood and a heavy dose of Deliverance (both movies I liked) with maybe a smidge of Predator mixed in.  

This is one of those 80s movies that's always been on my favorites list and I'd forgotten about it until it popped up on Amazon Prime.  

I love the Louisiana scenery, the spanish moss covered swamp trees, and the cajun music.  This film was actually my first introduction to the zydeco sound and it's remained one of my favorite genres ever since. 

It's not a great movie and the dialogue is cheesy in a way only an 80s movie could evoke, but it's also good in a way only an 80s action movie could be.  

Highly recommend.  

[CCTAU]

Southern Comfort

Powers Boothe at the height of his powers. Fred Ward. Keith Carradine. Alan Autry (you won't know the name but you'll recognize the guy). 

Louisiana National Guardsmen get lost in the bayou and stupidly run afoul of the cajuns who inhabit the swamps. The weekend warriors pay a heavy price for mucking around in things they don't understand.

It's sort of a cross between First Blood and a heavy dose of Deliverance (both movies I liked) with maybe a smidge of Predator mixed in. 

This is one of those 80s movies that's always been on my favorites list and I'd forgotten about it until it popped up on Amazon Prime. 

I love the Louisiana scenery, the spanish moss covered swamp trees, and the cajun music.  This film was actually my first introduction to the zydeco sound and it's remained one of my favorite genres ever since.

It's not a great movie and the dialogue is cheesy in a way only an 80s movie could evoke, but it's also good in a way only an 80s action movie could be. 

Highly recommend. 

Alan Autrey was QB of the Packers in the early 70s. You may also remember him from Sparta!

I remember watching this movie on HBO when HBO first came out, as a kid. Don't mess with the locals, they can hide behind every tree!

[Kaos]

Ready Player One

Sort of had the same feel as one of Speilberg's 80s movies. 

I wish the film had paid more attention to story and detail than it did to cramming a million kitschy pop culture references into every frame.  It reached the point to where I felt like they were just throwing things up on the screen to amuse themselves rather than use those millions of references to advance the story.

The 80s were a different time.  This throwback movie felt a little out of place.  It wasn't mean/dirty enough to really be an action movie and it had a little too much splash and menace to hit the spot as a kid's movie.  In that way it was similar to say... Gremlins (not Speilberg but of the same era).  I didn't hate it, but it was ultimately unsatisfying.

The main bad guy (the CEO of IOI) vacillated between cartoonish hyperbole and glaring threats.  He runs a corporation that wants to take over control of The Oasis -- a vast virtual reality where pretty much everyone exists for the majority of time.  The creator of The Oasis died and left behind control to whoever solved a series of three in-game puzzles.  The IOI CEO has huge teams of gamers working every angle, trying to figure out the answers to the three puzzles.  

I'd be remiss if I didn't state that the solutions to these puzzles would have been figured out by the IOI teams long, long, long before some random kids unlocked them.  

The movie suffered a bit from the blandness of the lead.  The kid tried, but he had very little charisma. Might have been better if the focus was on the girl he became smitten with as opposed to him.  

As for the story it was a little ridiculous.  The technology seemed muddled and the way it breezed through an explanation of how the world reached the place we found it was somewhat lacking -- although I see how it potentially could at some future point. 

Hang on... Alexa?  Turn off the kitchen lights and lock the door. 

It was an ambitious movie, but the tent pole wasn't strong enough for it to bring back the Speilberg blockbuster magic in my opinion. 

I liked the soundtrack that was loaded with 80s song references.  And even though it was too much, I enjoyed seeing essentially 3/4 of my early teenage years as background set pieces.  So there's that.

[chinook]

Ready Player One

Sort of had the same feel as one of Speilberg's 80s movies. 

I wish the film had paid more attention to story and detail than it did to cramming a million kitschy pop culture references into every frame.  It reached the point to where I felt like they were just throwing things up on the screen to amuse themselves rather than use those millions of references to advance the story.

The 80s were a different time.  This throwback movie felt a little out of place.  It wasn't mean/dirty enough to really be an action movie and it had a little too much splash and menace to hit the spot as a kid's movie.  In that way it was similar to say... Gremlins (not Speilberg but of the same era).  I didn't hate it, but it was ultimately unsatisfying.

The main bad guy (the CEO of IOI) vacillated between cartoonish hyperbole and glaring threats.  He runs a corporation that wants to take over control of The Oasis -- a vast virtual reality where pretty much everyone exists for the majority of time.  The creator of The Oasis died and left behind control to whoever solved a series of three in-game puzzles.  The IOI CEO has huge teams of gamers working every angle, trying to figure out the answers to the three puzzles. 

I'd be remiss if I didn't state that the solutions to these puzzles would have been figured out by the IOI teams long, long, long before some random kids unlocked them. 

The movie suffered a bit from the blandness of the lead.  The kid tried, but he had very little charisma. Might have been better if the focus was on the girl he became smitten with as opposed to him. 

As for the story it was a little ridiculous.  The technology seemed muddled and the way it breezed through an explanation of how the world reached the place we found it was somewhat lacking -- although I see how it potentially could at some future point. 

Hang on... Alexa?  Turn off the kitchen lights and lock the door. 

It was an ambitious movie, but the tent pole wasn't strong enough for it to bring back the Speilberg blockbuster magic in my opinion. 

I liked the soundtrack that was loaded with 80s song references.  And even though it was too much, I enjoyed seeing essentially 3/4 of my early teenage years as background set pieces.  So there's that.

you zap the fun out of watching movies...glad I watched it before you reviewed.   i fully enjoyed the movie.  it was fun, simple movie.  

[Kaos]

The Neighbor

William Fichtner as a lonely (why, who knows?) and meek middle aged man who develops an obsession for his new neighbor -- a lithe young thing with a douchebaggy husband and a flirty smile. 

The movie intended to smolder, I suppose, but what it did instead was drag maddeningly and slowly along before crawling to an end that didn't even really end.  None of the story threads were closed, no answers were provided. 

The neighbor girl is alluring enough but it's a little hard to see how she might have been attracted to the painfully awkward Mike.  And make no mistake, he was creepily, painfully, cringingly awkward. 

The new neighbors move in, Mike develops an instant mid-life lust for Jenna (Jessica McNamee, who you might recognize from Sirens or The Meg).  From that point on the movie basically rambles through scene after scene of Mike making odd faces, shuffling along, looking at plants, staring out windows and doing other creepy things.  Sometimes he weirdly interacts with Jenna and sometimes he awkwardly interacts with his wife Lisa (I knew I knew her, but had to look it up... she was the teenage daughter in Uncle Buck). Rarely he has stilted conversations with his estranged son (an estrangement that's never really explored). 

I kept waiting for something to happen, waiting, waiting, waiting.  And then in the eight point five seconds that something sort of did happen, there was no payoff. 

I liked the cast. I thought Fichtner overplayed the part, but the rest was decent enough.  The movie just ended up having nothing at all to say and took seemingly forever not to say it.  Runtime was 1:45.  It felt like 5:41. The trailer is the entire movie and it does it better. 

[Kaos]

Uncle Buck

Seems fitting that since the movie I reviewed yesterday had the teenager from Uncle Buck as one of its leads, I should go back and give my take on Uncle Buck itself -- as I had watched that movie a week or so ago as well. 

I'm a sucker for John Hughes movies.  He knew how to do subtle, intelligent humor that still maintained an immature, childish bent at times.  He also knew how to layer on the schmaltz and sentimentality that hides at the core of who Kaos really is. 

Doesn't matter how many times I watch Christmas Vacation there's something about Clark sappily watching the home movies in the attic that touches me.  I get a little hitch when he looks at the sky and says "I did it.." at the end.  Same thing when the old neighbor reunites with his son in Home Alone.  Same when Del is at Neal's home at the end of Planes, Trains and Automobiles.  Hughes knows where Kaos lives and grabs me in those moments.

Uncle Buck fits that same mold even if it is a little more uneven around the edges.  Hughes knew how to draw the best out of John Candy (Vacation, Great Outdoors, Planes, etc.) and give his larger than life persona room to breathe. 

In Uncle Buck as the emergency babysitter for his brother's kids, Candy is perfect in the role of a guy who never really quite made it, but has enough real world living experience to be a valuable source of knowledge and understanding for the rebellious teen and her bratty but funny siblings (one of whom is Kevin McAllister before he ran the house in Home Alone).

The movie is heavy on family-focused sentiment as each of the characters in the film learn what being a family is all about.  It's sweet, it's funny, it's endearing.  It's like the comfort food of movies.  And I enjoy the heck out of some comfort food.

It's the kind of movie Hughes specialized in and that gently sentimental touch is something that's sorely missing in filmmaking today.  Uncle Buck isn't the best of the Hughes library, but it's still a pretty good representation. 

Here's a quarter. Now buy a rat to chew that thing off your face!

[Kaos]

Our House

A lukewarm attempt at horror probably aimed more toward the 18-21 set than an older demographic. 

The movie took elements of Pet Semetary, Flatliners, Back to the Future and splashed them around in the Blumhouse template (even though this was an IFC release and not Blum) to concoct a story about portals into the netherworld. 

In an effort to develop wireless electricity a college kid unwittingly creates an electromagnetic (I think) field that allows evil spirits from another realm to slowly work their way into the world of the living.  The death of his parents and their subsequent supposed ghostly reappearance as he tinkers with the machine that creates the electric pulse provides the impetus for him to continue trying to make it work. 

The little sister who first sees the apparitions is fantastic.  She's got a natural presence that separates her from the sack full of other child actors who've been haunted in other movies. 

It's a decent movie, but it reins in the scares to the point that it's a little bland.  There wasn't enough meat for the bare bones of the story.  No, let's be honest. It's a lot bland.  It just didn't offer enough tension or spookiness to stand out in any way. 

On top of that, the science was a little wonky and that bothered me throughout.  He had a lightbulb clipped into a test tube stand in order to see if his electric-generating contraption.  But if the device was supposedly firing off wireless electricity that could light up a random bulb just sitting there, wouldn't that same force field have also set every other electrical device within its sphere aglow?  What possibly could have made it focus on that single bulb in a room filled with things that ran on electric power?  I honestly missed parts of the movie puzzling that in my head. 

No sex. No profanity (that I can remember) and just a few random vapors that, while well done, didn't generate much fear.  Lukewarm is the best word to describe it. 

[wesfau2]

Into the Spiderverse is so fucking fun.

I'm not a huge fan of the character.  Peter Parker's nebbish anti-hero just doesn't ring my bell.  I like the latest cinematic iteration with Tom Holland, though, but mostly because of Tom and the shift in the groundhog-day marketing strategy to finally bring him into the Avengers storyline.  But I digress.

The animation is stellar.  The soundtrack is fun.  The voice cast is perfect.

Lots of familiar villains to go along with (for a verrrrrrrrrrrrry casual comic fan) a fun cast of Spiderpeople.

Good story...lots of heart...fun jokes...AND a post-credit scene that will make anyone familiar with popular internet memes laugh audibly.  Or, at least I did.

[CCTAU]

Uncle Buck.

I use that line all the time when watching movies!

Here's a quarter. Now buy a rat to chew that thing off your face!

[Godfather]

Happy Death Day
I didn't expect much from this movie.  I was pleasantly surprised.  Don't get me wrong, it's no cinematic classic, but it does what it does well enough to be entertaining. 

The basic storyline is exactly as the trailers show:  Birthday girl dies every day and then wakes back up where it all began to start the day over again.  Yes.  Groundhog Day but with a murder tossed in.  The movie smartly even references its own ancestor toward the end. 

Along the way this trifling little film offered some deeper observations about how a person might view his own life if given the chance to fix the little mistakes that plague our everyday relationships. 

The central character, played by Jessica Rothe (who will soon star as Julie in the remake of one of my favorite 80s teen movies Valley Girl) does a pretty adequate job of displaying the appropriate emotions as she gradually transitions from self-absorbed sorority whore to a more selfless, honest, real person over the course of the same day on repeat.  It's a pretty neat trick for a character you want to just die early on to bring you around to her side and even move you just a little with some contrived emotional scenes.  Watching her grow from a miserable bitch to a reasonably happy person was well done. 

The movie has a handful of amusing moments and keeps the identity of the true villain under wraps about as long as it possibly can. 

Not a great movie.  Had its flaws.  But it was better than I expected.  I'm glad I watched it.  It's assloads better than The Snowman.

BTW I'm in love with this girl.

[Kaos]

The Predator 

This recycled reboot doesn't approach the cheesy 80s magnificence of the Arnold Schwarzenegger original.  That film boasted Arnie, Apollo Creed, Bad Bill Duke, Governor Ventura, Sonny Landham, a good looking latino woman, the Sandman from Metallica's Enter Sandman video.  It also gave us our first look at one of the baddest creatures ever to grace the screen. Arnie's ultimate battle of wits and brawn with the Predator was one of the best action sequences ever filmed.  Amazingly very little CGI was used to create the creature or the sprawling brawl.  

This film recycled the background music of the original (which was great) and kept the basic sound of the Predator which ranks up with Chewbacca's roar as one of the most distinctive creature sounds ever created.  It retained some of the same weaponry, particularly the hand knives and the triangle laser sights from the shoulder and helmet weapons.  Kept the basic physical structure of the predators.  

It also contained a few sly references to the original including a polar opposite "mother-f***er" reaction to seeing the creature's actual face.  Arnold called it "one ugly mf" while Olivia Munn termed it "one beautiful mf" 

Beyond that?  It was a completely different movie altogether.  Arnie, Apollo, Bill, Body and the Chief oozed muscular testosterone.  The A-Team here relied far more on comedy than it did on beef and brawn.  It gave us an unintelligible (and wasted) Theon Greyjoy, a tourette's-laden Thomas Jane, a possibly psycho hipster, a suicidal CO, and Key (not Peele).  I wasn't expecting comedy but I got a lot more of it here than I could ever have imagined possible.  And it wasn't bad.   I also got super scientist Olivia Munn (yeah.. right, not buying it) and the always charming child actor Jacob Trembelay.  He wasn't bad with a pretty weak script.  

Other than Munn's laughably lightweight scientist performance, one of the biggest problems was the lead.  He didn't have the gravitas to effectively carry the role. And his hair was bad. He was supposed to be some cocky badass super soldier but he just wasn't believable at all.  

Another problem was some of the ridiculous stunts.  Nobody jumps on top of a moving bus that's sliding around corners and maintains their feet.  The third problem was an unnecessarily bumpy script. It didn't need to be nearly as convoluted or murky as it was.  It could have been a lot tighter. 

Further, the movie was dragged down by a bug-eyed one-note effort by Stirling Brown as the government baddie.  I don't know who that guy is, but I've seen him around and he's absolutely terrible here.  Utterly worthless. He costs the movie half a star or more by himself. 

The asinine horse manure about global warming killing all of earth's population in a generation or two and heat-loving predators coming to take over the planet could shove it where the sun doesn't shine.  I don't appreciate the subtle political push of a fake crisis.  

And finally... CGI.  There were places where it was really obvious and jarring.  Just don't.  

It may sound like I hated it, but I didn't.  I enjoyed the movie overall. It was enjoyable enough on the whole that I'd maybe watch it again if I run across it. It just wasn't what I was expecting and because of the flaws I listed it didn't have near the impact of the original.  Not that it could. 

[Snaggletiger]

12 Skrong

May have been reviewed a while back.  Just my take on it.  Chris Hemsworth plays a soldier leading a team into Asscrackastan immediately after 9-11. Their mission is to hook up with an anti-Taliban group and locate pockets of terrorists, then call in air strikes to that position.  Semi-okay, nothing special war flick until the end when it just lost me.  If you haven't seen it, what I'm about to say doesn't ruin it for anyone. It's a war movie.  They kill bad guys.  But it turns into a Marvel/DC super hero action scene when they come riding into the Taliban camp on horses, facing hundreds of sheet heads with machine guns, tanks, and various other weapons of mass destruction.  9 million rounds are fired and the only ones who get shot are the terrorists...by U.S. soldiers.....on horses. 

Look, if it's Rambo, you know that's what you're getting.  If this is loosely based on a true story, then it's veerrrrry loosely based....with a side order of cheese.  

[Godfather]

12 Skrong

May have been reviewed a while back.  Just my take on it.  Chris Hemsworth plays a soldier leading a team into Asscrackastan immediately after 9-11. Their mission is to hook up with an anti-Taliban group and locate pockets of terrorists, then call in air strikes to that position.  Semi-okay, nothing special war flick until the end when it just lost me.  If you haven't seen it, what I'm about to say doesn't ruin it for anyone. It's a war movie.  They kill bad guys.  But it turns into a Marvel/DC super hero action scene when they come riding into the Taliban camp on horses, facing hundreds of sheet heads with machine guns, tanks, and various other weapons of mass destruction.  9 million rounds are fired and the only ones who get shot are the terrorists...by U.S. soldiers.....on horses.

Look, if it's Rambo, you know that's what you're getting.  If this is loosely based on a true story, then it's veerrrrry loosely based....with a side order of cheese. 

http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/12-strong/

[Snaggletiger]

http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/12-strong/

I had heard it was based on the real deal.  The movie was okay, not worth watching again by any means.  However, my "very loosely" comment was aimed more at the final scene than anything else. 

Is the final battle in the movie depicted accurately?
No. "The battle at the end was not depicted accurately," says the real Bob Pennington. "We dispersed the team at several positions along the ridges of the Tiangi." He points out that the word "Tiangi" actually means gap, so when they refer to the "Tiangi gap" in the movie, they're actually saying the gap, gap.

Pennington said that with regard to the enemy vehicle (BM-21) launching rockets in and around the Tiangi, it did happen, several times. "They weirdly are a formidable force that will continue to fight, no matter what."

The last battle scene was epically stupid.

[Kaos]

Mandy

Nicholas Cage going all Nick Cagey in a twisted tale of bloody revenge.  I was actually looking forward to his over-the-top performance in an unhinged splatter fest.  I figured it would be campy, gory and fun.  

Oh holy balls was I wrong.  This was the worst melted crayola smear attempting to be a movie to which I've ever been subjected. It set standards for pure awfulness that may never, ever, ever, ever, ever be reached again.  It was so creatively bad that I'm struggling to come up with words to describe just how stunningly horrible it was. 

It's so weird because this movie was positively reviewed by the majority of reviewers.  I saw four and five star raves all over the place before I made the leap into this eleventh level of roaring hell.  Here's the thing. I think it was so unapologetically awful that all those positive reviews were people just telling themselves that nothing could possibly have been that bad on purpose so let's praise it so we don't look stupid.  

I was in that camp.  It was so weird and horrible I wondered if maybe I missed something and needed to be high to really get it.  So I got that way and gave it another shot.  The high didn't improve the movie at all. 

It was bad. Bad bad.  So bad. 

If you want to torture yourself with this be my guest.  Before you do, let me give you a dozen reasons to opt out. 

1) Cage is a bad actor.   Here they let him uncage the Cage and that resulted in some of the worst performances of his career.  The goofy faces, the lunatic grins.  It was just horrible. 

2) Mike Cutter's baby bird.  Cutter, the former Law and Order Assistant DA (Linus Roache) plays the long-haired leader of a religious cult (think Charlie Manson with a dash of Jim Jones).  He's nearly as bad as Cage, but the crowning achievement of his hideous performance is a semi-jesus pose with his nest, baby bird and eggs just flobbed out there.  

3) Quentin Tarrantino.  Q didn't direct this garbage, but the guy who did was clearly influenced by his style. The movie's visual style was a palette of over-tinted grainy cuts. It was intended to look like a pulpish film from the 70s or 80s. It just looked like a smeary mess. The director also stole Tarrantino's penchant for having chapters in his movies, but there was no continuity or cohesion (or sense) in the chapter segments. 

4) The Beastmaster.  I loved the Beastmaster. Terrible movie with forced dialogue, but I used to love it.  The crazy snarling bad guys loyal to Maax (pronounced Ma-axe and performed by Rip Torn) were recreated here and mixed with a little Mad Max and a splash of Hellraiser.  Blow some weird rock and they show up on four wheelers to drink blood and do bad things.  Yeah, that. 

5) Overly cliched bad guys.  Some of the worst acting ever. 

6) Mandy.  She looked like Olive Oyl had a baby with Skratt from Ice Age.  Nothing to rationalize Cage's adoration of her or the obsession Mike Cutter had with her when he saw her staggering wide-eyed along the side of the road in what may or may not have been a dream sequence. She was a soft-spoken, mumbling weirdo. 

7) Zack Snyder.  No, Zack didn't direct the movie.  But the amateur who did clearly borrowed some of the worst traits Snyder displayed in Sucker Punch.  Sucker was not a bad movie, but all the director of Mandy took from it were the very worst parts. He retained none of the good. 

8) Heavy Metal.  Ever gotten high and watched that 80s classic?  It's a trip. Hearing John Candy's voice coming out in various parts of that surreal cartoon is trippy just by itself. The rest of Heavy Metal is a total mind bender.  This Mandy movie inexplicably bounces off into occasional super funky Heavy Metal-esque cartoon sequences that are useless and senseless. 

9) Wait, multiple multi-colored moons?  Whaaaattt..  I need more drugs. 

10) The boredom.  This movie lasts more than two interminable hours.   The vast majority of it is spent wandering around slowly in mind-altering splashy color palettes that are so poorly acted and so choppily filmed that they make no sense. They don't connect. The dialogue doesn't connect.  Even when high, you just sit there awash in color wondering why any of it exists.  The first hour and a half could honestly have been condensed to maybe 15 minutes and lost nothing.  

11) Bill Duke. I honestly thought Duke had died years ago.  Hadn't thought much about him since his glorious turns in Commando, Predator and Action Jackson.  He's wasted here in a scene that has no connection to anything that happens before or after he pops up.  Bill looks bad and this color-soaked turd did him no career favors.  

12) The regret.  To maybe, possibly, potentially get anything out of this movie you'd have to drink a lot more than I did or take a big bucket of drugs.  And you'll STILL regret the time you spent getting over-saturated color washed in the glow of this terrible thing.  About 30 minutes in we considered pulling the plug but decided to ride it out in the hope that the vengeance payoff at the end might be worth it.  We were horribly disappointed.  This movie is so bad, I've been barred from picking a movie for 45 days.  I cannot recommend, suggest or select the movies we watch until my sentence is up.  

I suffered through this so none of the rest of you have to.    

[Godfather]

You had me at Nicholas Cage