Ruin Me

Ruin Me has a great premise and the first third that follow it is pretty okay. I liked the "extreme haunt" clue hunt element and I wish that what the whole movie was, but of course, they quickly drop puzzles and switch to a melodramatic "Is this real or is it the game? Is she crazy or is everyone else just blind?" It starts off great, but becomes a very generic horror movie. The acing is bad, the writing is bad, the last two thirds of the story are bad and by the time the beach scene happened, I was just waiting for it to be over. All of the characters were annoying (especially the two leads) and they don't even get killed off in any cool ways. Tons of plot holes and some questionable character motivations. The camera quality is fun and the audio is audible, but that's about all I can give it. I liked it until I didn't and then I really didn't.

Candyman

Candy man is an interesting idea and I guess they though that was enough. The first half of the movie is a bunch of half-baked plots that don't quite make sense or matter. We are almost half-way through the movie before the real plot kicks in and by then, I was already over it. Virginia Madsen is not good. She is wholly unconvincing and I didn't give half a crap about her character. Kasi Lemmons is pretty good, but she's it. Vanessa A. Williams (She is credited as Vanessa Williams in the opening credits and I spent the whole movie trying to figure out where the former Miss America and Desperate Housewives star is.) was especially bad. She keeps making these weird faces that are portraying some inhuman emotion and her emotions are far too melodramatic. It's a horror movie, so I can overlook bad acting, but it's just not scary either. I guess it kind of works as a thriller, but there is nothing horror-esque here. The Candyman character, who should be your "big bad" is far more confusing than imposing and scary. Candyman communicates via ADR, but the way it sounds makes it unclear is it's in the character's head or if his voice just emanates from everywhere like when God talks in a cartoon. He's supposed to be this supernatural legend and he can teleport and appears to have some minor shape-shifting abilities, but he seems awfully human. He sleeps and lives in an abandoned building and he's just as vulnerable as a regular person. I still don't exactly what Candyman is supposed to be and every time he talks about his mythology, he just says some circular nonsense. Candyman's motive is so confusing and il-defined. He's pitched as Bloody Mary, but they add all these extra layers in an attempt at some ham-fisted social commentary. I like the bees, I guess, but there aren't nearly enough. Before I started the movie, all I knew was bees. Where are all the bees? I had assumed Candyman's power was bees, but bees are a minor plot point. I didn't care about any of the characters, the kills were nothing special, and I couldn't even root for the bad guy because his character is a big mess. Wrap it up with a terrible ending and Candyman is a huge disappointment.

The Haunting

I remember watching this on VHS as a kid and I remembered exactly two things, "Eleanor, help me. I gotta pee!" and the piano scene. As an adult, while those bits are still very memorable, I'm much more concerned with the many plot holes, bad acting, and terrible CG. The Haunting is full of issues that would be easy to fix if anyone was paying attention. Firstly, Eleanor, Theo and the others are there under the ruse that they are reporting to Hill House for a sleep study and the doctor is constantly off-highhandedly telling people that "they just need some rest" or to just go to sleep. Well duh! They all have insomnia; if they could just go fall asleep, they wouldn't be at your sleep study. They literally can't just go up to their room and fall asleep! Very quickly, one character has to be taken to a medical facility and the doctor sends one of the sleep study volunteers out to take her. He gives the guy the key to the gate to open it when her gets back, but he's never heard from or mentioned again. It's been well over a day and he's not back from the quick trip to drop her off at the hospital? Why isn't anyone concerned? Was it just to make the gate key disappear? Why not just, you know, not have anyone in the house have a key? The caretakers lock the gate when they leave before nightfall, why does there have to be another key? The movie is just full of stupid little issues that have to be a result of neglect. The acting isn't much better: Liam Neeson is half asleep, Catherine Zeta-Jones is a caricature of a slutty sorority girl, Owen Wilson is.....Owen Wilson, and Lili Taylor runs out of steam really quick and gets progressively worse. Above all of these things, I think the CGI is what most people are going to notice. Even in 1999 the effects felt dated; they look like they are lifted from a PlayStation One game. By the time the titular haunting is in full swing, we are constantly getting CG. Where did $80 million budget go? There are much worse movies out there for sure, but The Haunting doesn't offer much in the way of horror, or excitement, or even fun kills. There is some enjoyment to be had at the film's expense, but none of it is intentional. It's an easy pass.

Midsommar

I feel like Ari Aster got the wrong idea about what people liked about Hereditary. Midsommar has none of the subtlety of Hereditary and instead doubles down on trying to shock audiences. The cinematography is beautiful and the setting allows for some great shots that can contrast with the events we watch unfold. I liked having to rewatch Hereditary and look into the mythology to fill in the gaps I had after the credits rolled the first time. Midsommar has way too many things that are plainly foretold, not even foreshadowed, but just "alright, let's just go ahead and tell everyone what's going to happen." I loved all the acting of the real characters, with Florence Pugh being the just outstanding (I'd see Will Poulter in anything though), but there seems to be a lack of direction for all the extras. Even when the scene is super serious and 99% of the actors are portraying that, there is usually at least one that is inappropriately smiling. I don't know if it's a language issue, but there a definitely some people that don't understand the tone of the scenes and they are probably too elaborate to re-film because that lady is having too much fun with the chanting to keep a straight face. The presentation of Midsommar is almost perfect, but the story leave a lot to be desired. There is way too much focus of trying to pop an OMGWTF! instead of telling a compelling story with real payoffs. I was prepaired for a slow burn, but even when it catches fire, Midsommar never burns even half as bright as Hereditary. Like Hereditary, Midsommar isn't really a horror (even though that's what every trailer paints it as), but Midsommar is less drama and a lot more about building a general feeling of unease and anticipation that they blow off with something horrifying. It's been well over a year since I saw Herediatary and I can still remember so many scenes other than just the scary/shocking ones. It's been about 30 minutes since I watched Midsommar and I can't recall much other than the tent-pole gruesome scenes. This is at least partially because no much really happens. We have so many irrelevant plot threads that get time when they really don't deserve it. It's worth noting that the film takes place in Sweden and they selectively provide subtitles for the Swedish dialog, so I feel like there is an entire level of the film that I can't experience without learning Swedish or translating line by line. It's not like when you don't understand an alien language in a Sci-Fi movie because those aren't clues to a puzzle. With Hereditary, by the end you knew that there were many little clues that you could have put together to anticipate where the movie was going. Midsommar abandons that and has literal signs pointing you in the exact direction. After the first half, there is very little left to surprise you. With Hereditary, I was clueless up until the last couple of minutes; everything was an unexpected turn. Midsommar blows it's wad forty-five minutes in and by that point you already have the rest pretty mapped out. The movie started filming in July of 2018 as was already premiering in July of the next year and I think a big chunk of the blame lays there. While Midsommar is great visually and almost all of the acting is top notch, the story just isn't as well crafted. It's like watching Logan and than Aquaman; both have there values, but one definitely got more care. If I put Hereditary aside and pretend that Midsommar has no obvious counterpoint, it's a unique take on a film we've seen before. The directing and acting are great and Aster explores well trodden paths in a new light, but it's just missing that intangible X-factor. Midsommar never hits the highs that it promises to. Shock and awe can only push a movie so far before the story has to bare the weight and Midsommar's story just isn't strong enough.

I Feel Pretty

In general, I like Amy Schumer's movies. As a person, I do not like her and she's not a great actress, but the type of movies she makes, I like. The problem here is that I don't think the movie understands its message. I Feel Pretty is essentially Shallow Hal, but if Gwyneth Paltrow started to see herself as beautiful instead of Jack Black. The issue is that we never see what Schumer sees. We see her feel her thighs and marvel at how toned they are and smack her stomach and talk about her rock hard abs. Cool, but that goes so much beyond the scope of what should be happening. In Shallow Hal, Paltrow is breaking chairs because she is still morbidly obese in real life. Schumer hits her head and now sees herself as beautiful, but somehow when she touches herself it doesn't register correctly. That's a pretty solid theme for the whole movie. The constantly confuse their body-positivity and self-esteem messages. The idea is supposed to be that the confidence Schumer gets from thinking she's hot is what gets her ahead, but they make her too unlikable. In the beginning she whines about how unfair it is that she's fat and ugly, then she thinks she's hot now and becomes an insufferable brat, then she decides that it's okay to be an average person. The whole movie is a giant cliche and honestly you already know beat for beat what happens. Their ham-fisted misfired message takes over the entire movie at the expense of the humor. None of Schumer's lines were funny and the only real laughs were for uncomfortable sequences and not real humor. The only character I found to be actually funny was the love interest, who it should be noted is easily the best actor in the film. Rory Scovel plays the only real character. Schumer doesn't understand her character and she isn't a great actress, so she's a dark spot, but Michelle Williams is pretty awful too. If you were hoping for a comedy, I Feel Pretty has nothing to offer. If all you want is to be told that you are perfect no matter what you look like for almost two hours, go visit you grandma; at least she has cookies. The technical elements aren't bad. but there is some pretty terrible lighting and the sound gets too quite. I Feel Pretty has no real audience. I assume most people are hoping for a movie like Trainwreck, not movie that is a train wreck.

Spider-Man: Far from Home

Spider-Man: Far from Perfect is one step forward and threes steps back. Jake Gyllenhaal is easily the highlight of the entire movie. The story is very messy, but Gyllenhaal elevates the film a lot. Tom Holland does the best he can, but they don't give him much opportunity to be Spider-Man. He doesn't get any snappy one-liners and his plot-line with MJ takes up way too much time and is cliche and awful. Samuel L. Jackson is terrible, but he always is, so it's expected at this point. The effects are a mixed bag. Far from Home is the 23rd film in the MCU, so there is no excuse for bad CGI. Most of it is pretty good, but there are a few scenes that looked really bad. The plot for this one is okay, but they give too much time to stupid side plots and they make some really bad decisions with plot directions. There are far too many really interesting concepts that they undo. The movie is bloated with too many characters, most of which could easily be eliminated, and the entire idea of this film being "abroad" is largely irrelevant. They made a big deal in the promotion of this film about it being filmed on-site all across Europe and in the end it doesn't really matter. We see very little of what makes each location unique and historic and there isn't a compelling reason for the movie to even be there. I like Gyllenhaal's portrayal of Mysterio (minus some very spoilery stuff), but the ending is very lame. Really, most of the action scenes are anti-climactic, which is a mood-killer for a Marvel movie. We're supposed to leave an MCU movie with vivid memories of big action scenes, but it's been about fifteen minutes since the film ended and I'm already having trouble recalling anything from them. With just these issue's, we could still have a passable Marvel movie that falls in the bottom half , but the biggest flaw knocks it down to the bottom quarter. MJ is a terrible character, Zendaya is an awful actress, and her entire role in the MCU Spider-Man films is a sad place-holder for a real MJ, Mary Jane Watson. They call her MJ and she's Spider-Man's lover interest (although I have no idea what he sees in her), but "Oh, she's not Mary Jane. We named her Michelle Jones so that you can't complain about her not being a good Mary Jane. The initials are just a silly coincidence; isn't that weird?" No, you are clearly reinventing MJ and your version is the worst. She adds nothing to the story and there is zero chemistry between Holland and Zendaya. Every scene she is in just gets all of the energy sucked out of it. None of her lines are funny and none of her scenes are remotely convincing. I understand that the MCU is separate from the comics and they are free to do what they want, but what they want sucks. In general, even the things that I did like in the first half of the film gets totally ruined by the ending. The first post-credit scene is interesting, but I have big concerns about its impact in the future and the second scene takes what should have been the best part of the entire MCU and makes it a stupid joke (that makes zero sense after you've seen the movie). Spider-Man: Far from Home is the most disappointing Marvel movie yet.

Twisted Pair

Twisted Pair is peak Neil Breen, in the best and worst ways. Obviously, the acting is awful, the effects are terrible, and the story is absolute nonsense, but Twisted Pair just has too many Breen monologues. The first fifteen or so minutes is just Breen talking over generic stock footage of scientists and technicians poking CGI computer menus and it's so boring. None if it makes any sense and I think Breen just googled "Technology words" and tried to form sentences because he clearly doesn't understand what AI or any of the things he's talking about means. Fateful findings didn't have a main plot, but at least I understood the story Breen was trying to tell. Twisted Pair is three or four separate plot lines its trying to juggle only to end after kind of addressing one. There are far too many plot threads that have zero resolution. I don't want to spoil any of the absolutely ridiculous mess that is Twisted Pair, but just to give the uninitiated a vague idea of what this movie is, I have to paint you a picture. One of the first scenes is entirely Breen in front of a green screen. What we see is clearly paused stock footage of three soldiers in a ruined building. In comes crouching Breen (again, clearly green screen) walking past them with ADR (his mouth never moves and the sound quality makes it clear that it's being added in post) telling them to follow him because he can not be hurt and he will protect them at which point the stock footage plays and the soldiers walk towards the camera. The sequence ends a few minutes later with Breen leaping (a terrible CGI animation that he reuses for jumping up and jumping down) from the building as it gets explosion animations pasted on top. I'm not sure if the soldiers get out, but that's clearly not the purpose of this scene, so Breen doesn't care. Every couple of minutes everyone watching with me is asking questions because there are jut so many terrible things in Twisted Pair. Between the awful CGI, the tons of stock footage,, 90% of the film being filmed on a college campus (meaning every laboratory and head quarters is a classroom and the dirty alley is just a homeless man and his rubber rats sitting against a railing on the campus sidewalk), the terrible props (including a fake mustache where we can literally see the tape holding it on), and unaddressed plot lines. Breen makes the perfect "good bad" movies and Twisted Pair is no exception. The only thing holding Twisted Pair back from being a perfect terrible movie are the constant dull monologues where Breen says nothing of importance and just drones for no reason. I don't need to hear Breen blurt out "Technological warfare. Technological DNA. Cybernetic terrorism." over and over. If he spent that time addressing a few of the many, many questions we are left with, Twisted Pair could be perfect. It's hard to not talk about my various issues with the plot, but half of the fun of a Breen film is experiencing the insanity for yourself, so I won't. How do you even rate/review a film like this? Obviously it's terrible, but it's terrible in all the best ways. Hell, just being able to watch the movie is a trip. Breen owns the copyright for all his movies and refuses to put them on streaming services or sell them through third parties. You have to order Twisted Pair through http://www.twisted-pair-film.com/ and Breen will burn you a copy and send it in a generic jewel CD case. Breen's first two films are totally unavailable because "Neil Breen, the sole legal owner to all rights to the film has taken it off the market. It’s not for sale anywhere." Breen films are a totally unique experience that I recommend to everyone. Between the two films I've seen, I prefer Fateful Findings, but Twisted Pair is still great.

What Lies Beneath

What Lies Beneath is a compelling thriller that really needs some trimming to fix its biggest issue, the terrible pacing. I'm all about "slow burn" movies, but What Lies Beneath is a slow burn followed by a big spike, followed by more slow burn followed by a big spike, ending with more slow burn ending in thirty minutes of madness. That first spike in the drama feels great; you've waited half an hour for the thriller elements to kick in and you get a reward. But... then we mill about and the movie lulls for half an hour, and rinse and repeat. Everything I want to talk about falls into mild spoiler territory and the entirety of the enjoyment I got out of the film was watching it unfold, so I won't ruin the story, but it went in some unexpected directions, some great and some that really only took up extra time. What Lies Beneath is over two hours and I can't help but feel that the biggest fault here is that it was written by Clark Gregg (Agent Phil Coulson in the Marvel Extended Universe), who doesn't quite seem to understand how movies should work. He also wrote an adaptation of the book Choke, which had none of the charm of the novel and totally misunderstood the message an then most recently wrote Trust Me in 2013, which he also directed and stared in as the lea and no one has ever heard of. Robert Zemeckis gets some really fun shots and he does a good job with the screenplay he's given, but you can only elevate it so far. Pfeiffer is fine and Ford is three Ambien deep as he trudges along giving it his best C+ effort. If the screenplay was given to a team of real writers for retooling, What Lies Beneath has some serious potential, but what we got is a decent thriller.

The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia

The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Electric Boogaloo is a much, much worse story with much, much worse effects. I love Chad Michael Murray and he does fine and the girl, Emily Alyn Lind, does a good job for a child actor. Thus ends the positives. The two sisters are wholly unlikable and the actresses are awful. The plot has a few interesting kernels, but it doesn't do anything with them. I did not care for the first Haunting in Connecticut, but that was mainly because it just did not work as a horror movie; The Haunting (not) in Connecticut 2 doesn't work at all. It's boring and it's not interesting or scary. This movie isn't worth 100 minutes of your life.

Fateful Findings

I though I knew what to expect. I was prepared for terrible acting, bad effects, and lots and lots of Breen nonsense, but I was not ready for how crazy this movie is. There isn't really a plot and scenes just jarring hard cut to a new scene. Plot lines are constantly dropped. Time is irrelevant. The entire movie, all 100 minutes of it, are constantly raising new questions that we never get answers to: who was driving the car, why does he have four laptops that are never turned on, why did the emergency room attendants put an oxygen mask on his face over his large mask of gauze and put the nasal cannula on his nose, again, outside the mask (there are no holes, they just sit on top of three inches of gauze, what is the trash bag room, why does his male therapist conduct his sessions in a boardroom on opposite ends of a 12 person table and his female therapist conduct hers in a broom closet on metal folding chairs so close that their knee touch, what is that ghost thing, how long has he had these powers, etc. The entire movie has no attention to detail and no real follow through on anything. Breen just constantly adds elements and plot threads instead of continuing original ones. Breen's character, Dylan, has marital problems, but Breen seems to get bored with that and introduces Dylan's best friend and wife who also have marital problems. Soon enough, Breen grows tired of them too, so he introduces the best friend's daughter who doesn't know that you have to put the stopper in in order to fill the tub and instead just dumps a gallon of bubble bath down the drain. Nothing ever makes sense. I think if you watch the first seven and last seven minutes, you would understand more than I do. I watched it with my sister and when the credits finally rolled, we had tons of questions. The entire movie we had no idea what the main story line was and really, I still don't. I have to assume that Breen just tried to pack Fateful Findings with symbolism, but forgot that they need to symbolize something. Breen doesn't understand how to tell a story and her doesn't know how to film it either. Blood doesn't make any sense, things just happen for no determinable reasons, and he just keeps adding mysteries that he never resolves. What Fateful Findings does do right is that I was legitimately captivated the entire time. While it certainly gains points for being one of those rare "good bad" movies, I actually want to know the answers to all these questions. Who are those ghost people, what are the governments most secret secrets, what is that large book supposed to be, what is with the storage lockers, what is the black cube, how come Dylan and Leah look like there is at least a ten year age gap between them, who is the guy in the black dress shoes? What is great is that I honestly believe that Neil Breen makes his movies completely serious, unlike crap like The Incredible Bulk that are obviously made with the intention of being bad. You can feel Breen's passion in Fateful Findings, even though the movie is objectively not a good movie, I can feel his love in the film. Bren wrote, produced, and directed this film, in addition to acting in it, and doing the lighting, catering, sound, everything. Fateful Findings is unlike anything you've ever seen and I recommend it for all the reasons you usually would avoid a film.