The Batman

While it's not too far from the Nolan trilogy, this one trades the over the top action for a much slower story with flashes of detective work. The cinematography is great and I loved the use of lighting, but this really needed to be rated R. To make a big deal about Batman pounding some dude's face into soup and having there be zero blood really undercuts what they're trying to say. It's not as violent as the Nolan movies, but it's darker and it really needed some realism in the fight scenes at least. Pattinson does great with what he's given, but most of the characters feel under-written. I don't know how we can have a nearly three hour movie and do so little for the characters. We get a lot of plot and I liked watching it unfold, but they take some real liberties with the source material that raise a lot of questions that they don't address. There were some bad effects (mainly during Batman's "flight") but they were mostly alright. This was a solid first entry, but if we're going to do "dark and gritty" Batman again, it needs to stand out more from the Nolan movies. Make the violence violent and spend more time developing the detective work, this time it felt like we saw the steps, but little of the process.

Firestarter

The book wasn't great, but it had a lot of potential. The original movie was terrible, but it was an adaptation of the book and just needed some tweaking to be tolerable. This new Firestarter isn't really an adaptation of the book. This feels like someone was listening to two strangers talk about the book in the opposite corner of a Starbucks and left five minutes into their conversation. There are very few pieces of Firestarter here and what they do use, they use terribly. They change so much that this is more "inspired by" the book than any real adaptation. Every single character is neutered (minus the mom who has a lot more power in this version for no real reason) with Rainbird being totally stripped of all his scenes and The Shop stuff being all but eliminated and replaced with a very generic version. At a certain point, it felt like they were changing things just to change them (like Andrew McGee not being his real name or giving Rainbird powers). I don't just want to rant about how terrible this is compared to the book, because this film is plenty bad in a vacuum. The acting is terrible, the effects look awful and easily the most horrific part of this "horror" film is the pacing. This movie is almost half an hour shorter than the original, but this one feels twice as long. There are no big action scenes, this new story is very generic, and the characters are super-underdeveloped. I never bought Efron as a father and I never bought the girl as a human. I'm sure they are both doing the best that they can with this terrible script, but it was all terrible. For some reason, every scene in their house looks like the room is filled with smoke, even when there had been no fires in the house for years. This isn't supposed to be a smokey within the context of the movie, so I guess it's a stylistic choice that just makes things harder to see. The score was okay, but that is the only credit I can give it. This movie is so bland and and boring. There are so many great scenes in the book that they could have plugged in, but instead we just plug along slowly towards a very disappointing ending. This was a terrible film if we treat it as an individual film, but as an adaption of the book and a reboot of the original movie, this is so much worse. Firestarter is a C+ book and the 1984 movie is a D+ movie, but this one is a solid F. There is nothing better here other than the camera quality. They eliminated all the best scenes and took all of the character out of the characters. There is nothing here that validates this movie existing.

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Compared to Far From Home, this movie is a masterpiece: there is a lot less Zendaya, the story is streamlined, and the pacing is much better. I was looking forward to seeing how they continued after such a game changing event as Spider-Man's identity being revealed, but what they did was ultimately disappointing and leaves a lot of logistical plot holes (especially the ending). The multi-verse stuff was interesting, but I wish we spent more time with the "visitors", especially since this movie kind of serves as an epilogue to the Rami and Webb series. I guess I won't spoil too much (although I feel like everyone knew all the "surprises" before the film ever even came out), but I was happy with all of their acting, even ones that I really didn't care for the first time around. I did like that since this movie had so much more to do, we didn't have to spend so much time with stupid little side stories and we got a lot less MJ than the last film. Zendaya s still easily the worst part of the movie (of the entire series, really), but she's in it a lot less, so we don't have to put up with as much of her terrible acting as before. The ending is a big issue, as it opens up a whole bunch of logistical issues and I'm sure the nest Spider-Man movie is just going to ignore them and move on. I see a lot of other reviews talking about there being a lot of twists and turns, but I found this very predictable; all of the excitement came from the action and the characters, not the actual plot. Jon Watts does a terrible job again, giving us the most boring cinematography and there is a lot of weak CGI. As a whole, this is a great super hero movie (so long as you've seen the other MCU Spider-Man films), but the film making is kind of bland.

American Beauty

This movie is always pitched as a sick movie about a man who has a crush on his teenage daughter's friend, but it is so much more than that. There are so many characters that they develop so well and I can relate to on different levels. Each character we touch has their issues and it's much more of an ensemble movie than just a Kevin Spacey movie. The cinematography is beautiful and the pacing was just perfect. If this movie didn't come out the same year as Office Space, I would have assumed that Alan Ball had decided to make his own (much more dramatic) version. American Beauty has plenty of symbolism if that's what you're looking for, but I enjoyed it on a literal level. My only issue is that they create this mystery right at the beginning telling us that Kevin Spacey is going to die and by the end the mystery isn't hard to unravel. I'd much rather have it either been less obvious or even left open ended. The story is so expertly structured that, for me, the ending was kind of a let down.

Titane

This is easily the most uncomfortable movie I've seen. It is visually astounding with beautiful color palettes and amazing cinematography, but man, was it hard to watch. The story is incredibly cringe inducing, not in a "cringe compilation" way, but in that it constantly has you wanting to cover your eyes because you're just waiting for bad stuff to happen. For the first third, I was mostly just confused and uncomfortable and the final two thirds it got even worse. I'm sure there was tons of symbolism that I didn't pick up on and I'm sure everyone is reading this movie in whatever way they already decided it was meant to be read, but I'm just floating out here in open water, totally confused as to what I just witnessed. I went in totally blind, only knowing that it's from the director of Raw and I'm not sure if that was the best idea. Titane really feels like two separate movies that were fused together but the seams weren't polished. For the first third, I thought I was watching a crazy horror movie but then it morphs into a sick family drama. It feels like it's trying to say too much and ends up with a bowl full of word vomit. What was I supposed to get out of this? This was a very unique movie that I really enjoyed, but I don't know that I'll ever want to watch it again; it's too emotionally exhausting. The biggest disappointment is that we never get the reveal that we've been waiting for.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The only thing this movie succeed in was creating the most annoying, punchable character in a long time with Melody. The rest is pure awful. The acting is garbage. The story is full of holes and cliches The characters are all bad and the kills are uninspired. At points, it felt like a parody movie lampooning Gen Z or something, but I think that's giving it too much credit. Although this movie is intended to be the a sequel to the original, it's barely related and feel totally different. I absolutely hated the original and this one at least had some actual horror elements, but they are executed all wrong. I loved the final 15 seconds before the credits, but the rest was either unintentionally funny or painfully bad. There are no real characters, the script is terribly written, and the story had some potential as an idea, but totally wastes it.

Santa's Little Helper

It's essentially just a WWE Hallmark movie. Miz does a decent job and is surprisingly probably the best part, but man does the rest of the cast drag this down. There is no suspense here because everything is very predictable and cliché. It's not terrible for a Christmas movie, but it reeks of ultra low budget (and lower effort) made-for-TV movies (especially with the soundtrack).

Spiral: From the Book of Saw

This feels a lot more like a long episode of NCIS or something than a Saw movie. They do bring back the awful Rob Zombie music video effects sometimes, but they feel so out of place in this corporate version of Saw. Without spoiling anything, the traps are uninspired and the whole vision of the movie is just antithetical to what Saw is. I don't mind the new killer and I didn't hate the new voice, but this really doesn't feel like a movie from someone who has seen a Saw movie. For as much as Rock and the director claim to love the franchise, I am not convinced that they did more than watch a clip montage, which is pretty baffling, because this director directed three Saw movies. The worst part of this movie is super abrupt ending. Of course there is a twist (because there has to be in a Saw movie) and as soon as we hit it, we have another 15 sloppy minutes and Boom! credits. Give me another four hours and I'll have forgotten 95% of this movie.

Halloween Kills

With a third movie already announced, the stakes are got a low. This kind of feels like we are just treading water for 100 minutes. The CGI is very spotty, but they definitely had the guts not to wimp out on the gore (even if they don't understand blood splatter at all). The worst part is the over abundance of "movie logic" to the point that it just goes too far. Every single character has no though process; they have zero brain activity. I can suspend disbelief pretty far for a slasher with a (near) invincible antagonist, but this film pushed me too far. Of course the acting isn't great (Curtis is just phoning it in at this point) and they gave up on giving characters character, but I liked some of the new people. What is really jarring is that we start right and the end of the previous movie, but this one feels nothing like that one. We are constantly getting flashbacks and clips from the original Halloween so often that it's almost more of a clip show tribute than it's own movie. It already has serious middle movie syndrome where all we really do plot wise is set up for the third movie, but we spend a lot of time being reminded about events from the previous movies, as if they don't expect you to have ever seen a Halloween movie before. In ten years, after I've long forgotten these films, I could easily just jump from the 2018 Halloween right to Halloween ends.

Malignant

This is the first horror movie in a very long time that I actually enjoyed. I had a blast the entire way through and I'm ready to watch it again. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Malignant is a good movie in that it is a well made movie, but it is a true pleasure to experience. The CGI is just terrible the entire time and the story is awful and the acting is kind of crap and the score is like a generic rock version of the Bones theme song. This movie is crap, but it's fun crap. It's a big, dumb, stupid horror movie and it knows it and revels in it. At no point did I think the movie was taking itself seriously; it was just screwing around for two hours. No spoilers, but the plot is so stupid but it's just ridiculous enough that I'm thinking "Holy crap, they're really doing this!". There are tons of set-ups that go nowhere and tons of stupid little movie logic things, but it kind of just works. Again, this is not a good movie like Fincher of Kubrick film or whatever, but it's pure, unbridled James Wan having fun. There is a debate about the intention of the film and how much of what I love about it is intentional. Is this a parody/homage to crappy B-movies or is it actually a crappy B-movie itself. Does James Wan think he's making a real movie or is he was he just out to make a bat-shit crazy, fun movie? Are we laughing at his ineptitude or is he in on the joke? To me, it's obviously just supposed to be a fun movie with little winks and nods towards awful horror movies. There are far to many things like the opening scene, which feels like a terrible set up for an 80's sci-fi movie, and the opening credits which could easily have been from any of the generic CBS police/fire/detective/etc shows. If I was judging this impartially, it's like a two at best, but my heart wants to give it a five. It really is the first time in a long time that I've watched a movie and had this much glee the entire time. I really can't undersell how much fun I had with this movie. The hitch for you is just how far into stupid territory you are willing to go. It's kind of like the Fast & Furious of horror. With F&F, I felt it was taking itself too seriously for the outrageously unrealistic and nonsensical crap it was showing me. Malignant knows that it makes no sense and is one more popped eyeball away from being a big budget Troma movie. It's easily my best film of 2021.