AVP: Alien vs. Predator

A very ugly movie in every sense: it looks just terrible, the plot is nonsensical, and the acting isn't great. The action scenes aren't even fun enough to bare another watch. Especially now that we've had the two Alien prequels, this movie just doesn't work. The timeline completely ignores this film an you should too.

Ibiza

With all the other "Girl Power" movies that have come out in the past decade, I was totally expecting another loud and abrasive comedy with actress doing their best performances from the Kate McKinnon and Tiffany Haddish school of comedy. Ibiza is surprisingly reserved comedy that is actually pretty funny. Granted, most of the humor comes from unexpected reactions, I laughed a lot more during Ibiza than I did during Bridesmaids. All of the acting was decent and there weren't any terrible characters, but the plot is unfocused and really could use some condensing. I wish there was less EDM assaulting all my senses, but it does help to build the atmosphere they are going for. It's not a movie that I'm going to watch again any time soon, but it was a good experience.

The Fast and the Furious

It comes as a total surprise to me that The Fast and Furious is a perfectly okay movie. Most of the acting is fine (none is noticeably good but also none is particularly bad), the plot has a lot more depth than I imagined, and it wasn't ever boring. The entire film is ridiculously loud and stupid, but it's just entertaining enough to string you along the hour and forty minutes to the terrible, unsatisfying ending. The plot was confusing and I can't say I connected to any of the characters, but everything is so obnoxious and abrasive that you are afraid Vin Diesel will reach through your TV and punch you if you dare blink more than absolutely required by the human body. I can't imagine ever having an urge to watch it again (mainly because the awful ending and how they never bother to explain what the Hell is going on and just assume you also go to illegal street races on the weekends and car parties in the dessert every July), but it's exactly okay enough that you don't mind being assaulted with EDM, that is twice as loud as every other sound, enough to turn it off.

Bohemian Rhapsody

The only reason this movie is watchable at all is because Rami Malek is absolutely spectacular. The Academy Award winning film for Most Editing, sorry, I mean Best Editing is a terribly written, directed and edited film that fails as a biopic and a movie. There are very clear places where, even with no knowledge of the factual events, you can tell things are being manipulated to heighten drama and force unearned focus on the rest of Queen. The go out of their way to give the other members of Queen little bits of credit on tent pole songs. Yes, there is more to Queen than just Freddie, but this is clearly a Freddie Mercury story, not a Queen one. We aren't following Brian May's bands before Queen and we don't see Roger Taylor falling in love with his wife and having kids. There feels to be very obvious influences forcing the movie to divert the story threads through other characters. The amount of creative liberty that they already take with the timeline and and changing things to make things a lot more dramatic than they actually were, it's unnatural that they then put forth the effort to take moments away from the main character to highlight side characters that the audience will never connect with. In general, the story is constantly ramping up and then skipping over things, and then just ramping up again. The first half hour is a very unsettling mixture of trying to jump right onto the full speed ahead Queen train, but also trying to build the players. I read a review that said Bohemian Rhapsody is more of a medially than a greatest hits, and that is exactly the problem. We aren't just hitting highlights and making a clip show, me are getting some odd Frankenstein mashup that just doesn't flow or read correctly. The cinemtography is boring, there are too many scenes of exactly the same generic events unfolding (YMS brings up how many times we see one band member pulling a riff out of nowhere and the rest of the song just miraculously being improvised on the spot), every scene is constant camera changes to the point where it almost feel like a parody. The only things I can see as positives from this film are everything Rami Malek does and how well the crew was able to recreate the spectacle of scenes like Live Aid in both magnitude, atmosphere, and look of everything from the stadiums to the wardrobes. If we replace the script, director and editor, this could have been great, but what we have is really just a huge portfolio for Rami Malek to use when he additions for future roles.

The Uninvited

I can make some excuses for a movie from 1944, but there is only so much that I can overlook. The acting isn't great (not nearly as bad as I'd expected), the plot is poorly written to the point that I'm not really sure what I just watched, and the characters are hardly characters. Everything is just so weird. To start with, two grown adults are on holiday together when they somehow find an abandoned house, climb in through a boarded up window, fall in love with the house, know exactly who owns the property, and buy it together. The whole sequence is full of major plot conveniences, but with the assumption that this is a young couple, it's not a huge deal to just let them have that to get the story going. There is, however, a problem; our main characters are not a couple, they are brother and sister. Why on Earth are adult siblings vacationing together (just the two of them, mind you) an buying a home together to live in? The two actors are fine, but the relationship is very muddy. They both get love interests of questionable age difference, but the tension between the siblings come off a little more strongly. Again, Why are an adult brother and sister buying a home and vacationing together. It's not a family vacation, it's just the two of them. As far as the technical aspects, there is nothing concerning bad or notably good. I've seen people praise the cinematography, but all they ever mention are the sweeping shots in the cliffs and the ocean. The establishing shots are fine, but there are no fun camera angles or shots in the entire movie. Showing is an entirely too long shot of the ocean isn't beneficial to this movie at all. The effects are pretty good for a film from the 40's and are honestly better than some of today's terrible CGI films. My biggest issue is that the film is only an hour and a half, but the pacing is so bad and there is so little going on, that I was incredibly bored most of the time. The Uninvited (which doesn't even make sense as a title for this film) has historical value, but doesn't offer much to a contemporary audience.

It Comes at Night

Having heard (over and over) the joke that "nothing comes at night", I was prepared for a much more psychological thriller kind of movie than a blockbuster horror movie. The acting is great (minus Kelvin Harrison Jr., but that is more that he has a shittily written character and not a knock on his abilities) and there was some really fun cinematography and the first hour was a solid start. The last thirty minutes is where 100% of my problems arise. I really don't want to spoil anything, but It Comes at Night really needs more time. The first hour feels like a pilot episode and the last half hour feels like the network told the crew that the show is canceled so they have one more episode to close everything down. We slowly and carefully build the premise for sixty minutes and then we turn the corner and realize we've run out of track (like in a cartoon) and drive right off a cliff. I can deal with unanswered questions and ambiguity, but It Comes at Night just kind off rocket-boosts through the final act in the most unsatisfying and haphazard way. If all you want is to be able to write a dissertation about what the "It" is that comes at night, than good for you, enjoy the movie, but my first priority is the plot, which gets thrown into a paper shredder and just kind of ends. There needs to be more, not necessarily more answers, but more plot, more story. Not enough happens and there is the distinct feeling that there is supposed to be so much more happening between beginning and end. I figured I was maybe almost halfway through the film and I checked and saw there was only ten minutes left (including credits). I can't even make the blue balls allusion; it's sixty minutes of lighting scented candles and struggling to get your phone to connect to the blue tooth speaker so you can start the romantic playlist you spent all day curating and then after your dinner of aphrodisiacs and fancy wine, she tells you she has an early morning meeting with her boss at work so she's going to bed right now. Baby, we just barely laid the groundwork for loving and now you're just going to skip the sleeping? Trey Edward Shults lays a great foundation, but just doesn't build the house. It's a great slab of concrete, darn near perfect, but I wanted a house. Give me a house.

Marriage Story

There is so much to appreciate and love about Marriage Story: the acting is perfect, the cinematography is beautiful, and the script is great. for two hours, I was constantly vacillating between who's side I was on and Noah Baumbach made is incredibly difficult as both leads were incredibly well developed and believable characters that have so many glaring flaws yet we are never given all of the answers. We see actions, but we don't always receive clear visions of intentions. Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver are incredible in their roles and Baumbach's script flows and feels so real. Marriage story is often simultaneously hard to watch and fully enthralling. The only issue I have with the script is that Laura Dern's character just doesn't feel authentic. Dern does a great job with what she's given, but her character is the only one that I wasn't buying wholesale; she's far too dramatic and over the top for such a grounded movie. There are also a few scenes that feel equally over-dramatic or unrealistic, but I think it was supposed to feel like a stage play at those parts or at least remind us of them. There are too many scenes were suddenly a character is alone or is talking at a normal volume and no one acknowledges them. If that was the intention, I can understand the allusion, but I hated it. Everything feels so real and serious and then we get hit with these kinds of scenes that just come off as goofy. Part of me was just waiting for the lights to dim and Driver to start his third wall breaking monologue to the audience. I haven't seen another Baumbach movie (and looking at his filmography, I'm not surprised), so I don't know if this is just one of his "things" or not, but it really killed the immersion for me. I don't want to be reminded that I'm watching a movie, especially in such a brutal and emotional film.

Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You!

I hesitate to even call this a movie. There is a beginning and an end, but in between is almost a clip show and not a real story. I Choose You! is the first movie in (what is apparently being called) the alternate Timeline series and it re-imagines bits of the Indigo League season into an hour and a half movie. I won't spoil which moments we see, because saying "Hey! I remember that!" is literally the only fun to be had with this film. There is no coherent story and the characters are barely more than placeholders. The voice acting isn't great either. Why is Ash given what is clearly a woman's voice? There are tons of great female voice actors that can do a convincing 10 year-old boy voice (or they could just get a boy to do it). The movie just doesn't jive with Pokemon lore(?) either. They open with Ash watching a battle between two trainers having a Pokemon battle, but one is using a Pokemon who is weak against the type of the other Pokemon and that seems to be entirely irrelevant to the battle. A Blastoise and a Venusaur, and grass moves are hitting Blastoise just as hard as water moves hit Venusaur. The strength and weakness system is totally ignored the entire movie. The three legendary dogs all appear separately in the movie, even after they took the time to tell us that they are incredibly rare. Ash fights a fire Pokemon with a Fire Pokemon. Team Rocket show up from time to time, but have zero impact in the story. My biggest problem, though, is just how disorienting the story is. Ash gets his second Pokemon and then we jump to him getting his third badge. The time line is so inconsistent and so much happens between scenes that each time we get a new one, it takes a bit to establish where we are in the story. They obviously cut out the vast majority of what happens in Indigo League, but they really needed to cut out even more and focus on one specific plot line. The movie was just terrible. I can't even say the animation was good, as it gets jumpy and the animation style isn't constant. The only thing that I can see any Pokemon fan enjoying is the small bits from the original show. Anyone not a Pokemon fan has no reason to watch this. It's so boring and the plot is more like Cliffs Notes book-ended by small plot events. For the love of Pokemon, I recommend you avoid this movie at all costs. I hated Detective Pikachu, but I'd rather watch that twice than have to deal with this again.

Back to the Future Part III

It's essentially the exact same plot they used with the other two movies except this time they pretend to be cowboys for two hours and nothing fun, funny, or exciting happens. The effects, acting, and plot are still terrible and they still break their own time travel rules constantly. It was bad enough that they expected me to believe that MJF was in high school, but here years pass and no one ever looks any older. They had all that terrible makeup they used on Lea Thopson to make her look fat, but they don't bother to age their characters? I guess this is the worst of the trilogy, but I didn't hate it as much as I hated the other two, this one committed a much worse sin; it's incredibly boring. In the second film, it was kind of cute that they reused the same gags and characters as the first, but at this point it's just old and lazy. The change of time frame in the first two kept things fresh, but this movie is 100% poorly executed Wild West. Part III is a disappointing conclusion that really only serves to lower expectations as it goes in hopes that you don't ask questions about the plot holes in ending.

Beavis and Butt-Head Do America

This is an 80 minute episode of Beavis and Butt-Head with Bruce Willis and Demi Moore doing voice-acting (surprisingly well) If you've seen the show, you already know what to expect. If you haven't, two moronic teenagers just want to watch TV, but their set got stolen, so they spend the next 75 minutes trying to watch TV and have sex across America, inadvertently becoming the FBI's most wanted. It's very stupid and immature in all the right ways. They spend five minutes starring at petrified wood making boner jokes. The visit the Hoover Dam and Beavis asks if it's a God Damn. Beavis eats a bunch of caffeine pills and runs around with his shirt over his head calling himself Cornholio and demanding "T.P. for his bunghole". The animation is fine, the sound track kicks ass, the voice acting is great, and the story is tight. There are definitely some low points, but it never really loses momentum and is always exciting.