Boy

Although his humor doesn't always line up with my tastes, I love how well Taika Waititi can hit those emotional notes and make a cute, charming movie without ever coming across as overly sentimental or saccharine. Boy does so much of the important things right that it's an easy recommendation for most people, but it's not quite a polished as, say Hunt for the Wilderpeople. The acting is 95% perfect (a few over the cousins and the brother aren't great) and I really found myself rooting for and sympathizing with James Rolleston' character. Boy touches on a lot of heavy things but it does them with such grace that it's almost forgivable how much of it they hit with kid gloves. Really, my only issue is that the story as a whole is kind of lackluster and could have used some fleshing out. There are lots of plot threads that just don't get enough attention and the ending is unsatisfying considering the build up, which does kind of grow and grow and explode but then barely left a mark. Boy is an enjoyable movie that, although it never really made me laugh, is full of heart and personality.

The Suicide Squad

There certainly is a lot to like about The Sucide Squad and most of that comes down to James Gunn. Most of the acting is pretty okay (except John Cena who again proves incapable of acting be it in the ring or on the screen), the effects were passable, and the gore was over the top and fun. Everything else I put on Gunn. The humor was a little less frequent than I anticipated, but it was used well. I am honestly shocked with how well they used King Shark. I totally expected him to be all over this movie with stupid "dumb fish" jokes, but they actually use him sparingly and pretty good when they do. I felt some pacing issues and although I appreciated jumping right into the action, the way the story is told is unnecessary and I ended up wanting more backstory to the characters. I love Gunn's style and his fingerprints are all over this film. For 80% of the movie, he had me hooked, but there are certainly scenes that drag and the post-credits scene is awful and I really don't like where it's headed. I wouldn't give The Suicide Squad an Oscar or anything (although I guess if the original got one, why not), but it is a solid popcorn movie that has a new filter for comic book movies. Like a mix of Guardians of the Galaxy with Deadpool's Screw You attitude.

Ex Machina

Even if we ignore the entire plot and all of the acting I'd watch this again just to see some of those rooms again. Ex Machina has Blade Runner 2049 vibes (I know it came out 3 years later, but I saw Blade Runner first) in plot, sets, and themes. Ex Machina is small scale story that is told very well and explores some ideas that aren't exactly novel, but it does them way better than the average AI film. The main idea is that our lead is brought in to be the human element in a Turing test to determine if Oscar Issac has created a true artificial intelligence. All of the acting is solid and the effects are mostly good (there are some questionable scenes about an hour in). I don't want to ruin any of the story beyond what the synopsis would tell you, but (of course) our lead becomes attached to the android and how quickly their relationship forms is highly unrealistic. This is my biggest issue with Ex Machina; they rush the relationship and our lead makes a lot of movie logic decisions. I loved everything else, but I that part really bothered me.

Black Widow

There is so much about Black Widow that feels so wrong. This keeps getting pitched as both an origin story and a sendoff for the Black Widow character, but it doesn't really do either. First issue is that this movie feel like it was meant to be released right after Civil War and not just because that's when it takes place. This film should have been released four or five years ago, where the stories were smaller and this movie had more wiggle room to do important things without having to worry about continuity issues or having the tension undercut because we know hoe certain things have to shake out because we've had eight films between here and Endgame. If we pretend it's 2016 and we're a few months removed from Civil War, Black Widow is a cute little side quest that introduces some new characters but is very small in the scope of the MCU, has no consequences on anything outside the film, and is totally skipable. Age of Ultron already gave us most of Natasha Romanoff's backstory and we don't get anything groundbreaking here. We get a quick little episode from when she was a preteen(?) and then jump to post-Civil War. I don't think the preteen stuff felt like it was out Black Widow and I was kind of beginning to fear that something went wrong and Disney+ was showing me the wrong movie because it was was too cutesy. The main story is about dealing with a figure from Natasha's past. We don't really explore much untouched ground as far as an origin story goes and she kind to takes a back seat too often to feel this was any kind of goodbye. I liked Florence Pugh's character and of course Rachel Weisz is a great actress, but we spend a lot of time establishing Pugh instead of savoring our last two hours with Natasha. As a story with virtually no stakes for the MCU as a whole, it's fine although sappy and David Harbour is terrible (his scenes have the worst attempts at humor and his "acting" has always been awful). It feels like when an anime series has an OVA that you could just plug in anywhere in the middle of the story an be okay because it's self-contained and inessential. Pugh has some solid jokes and easily has the best Russian accent. Really, Pugh is the best part of Black Widow and the only thing worth praise; everything else was average, vanilla. Their take on Taskmaster is boring and really strips away what makes that character interesting. They mention that Taskmaster can replicate/mimic other people's fighting styles to the point that it's like fighting a mirror, but beyond one quick scene where they tease that Taskmaster is going to use Black Panther's move set, they never touch it. I was ready to see Taskmaster grabbing a shield and hurling it like Captain America or maybe a little Hawkeye action, but they do nothing with it. Taskmaster is just another boring suit with no personality, nothing to make them special, much like the entire movie. There are all of the usual movie logic moments we'd expect along with the uninspired cinematography and fight choreography. Black Widow ends up painfully average. It really doesn't even feel like a Marvel film. Sure, I watched it in my living room and not in an Imax, but I've seen most of the MCU movies on my couch and they still had the gravitas and that epic feeling. I saw Infinity War in both and it feels grandiose either way. Even smaller scale movies like Dr. Strange or movies I don't even like like Captain Marvel or Antman still feel like big Marvel Movies. Black Widow feels like it is to the MCU what Luca was to Pixar; it's just something we plopped on Disney+ for free, except I paid $30 to be mildly entertained by Black Widow and I got to be disappointed at Luca for no more than my monthly subscription fee. Unless you are one of us who feels obligated to see every MCU movie or Natasha is one of your top five superheroes, I'd wait until after October when it's free on Disney+; there isn't anything here that's going to be a water-cooler moment or something your friends are going to be talking about for weeks. We get a great performance from Pugh and a shit one from Harbour, those are the big notes, the rest is just there. After all this time talking about how Black Widow was going to be our big send off for Natasha, I can't help but be disappointed. We don't get any of the callbacks that they gave Iron Man or Captain America, we don't get to see a new side or deeper side of her, and it could be debated that she's not even the main character of her own film. Had this been just another Phase 2 film in in the 2010's, it would have been a neat little film about what Natasha was doing while the Avengers were dissembled, but in 2021, hearing them talk about the Sokovia Accords and Thaddeus Ross again makes it feel dated and most of the people I was with couldn't even remember what/who those are. This either needed to be a true origin story with either Natasha in the KGB or how she got out or it needed to be a true sendoff with all of the fanfare an fan service the character deserves. What we got is like a bonus chapter that is in the back of the Target exclusive hardcover that covers an event that was originally cut because it wasn't important enough to keep in the real book. Natasha deserved better, Scarlett Johansson deserved better, and for this being the first MCU movie in two years, we deserved better.

This Is Where I Leave You

I can really only criticize the sound mixing, which is terrible; the dialog is often way softer than the soundtrack which is overbearingly loud most of the time, causing constant need to change the TV volume. The story isn't unique (I wish they went further) and the ending is a little too loose, but the acting is perfect and there weren't any scenes that I felt didn't land.

Luca

In typical "New Pixar" fashion, there are some technical things that Luca does very right and some story things that they do terribly wrong. Let's start with the obvious, Luca looks amazing... most of the time. Just like with the last couple of Pixar movies, backgrounds, nature shots, textures and motion on inanimate objects are all great. There were I couple of water frames where if you had shown it to me with no context, I'd have thought it was real. Water motion looks great, way better than what Disney does by themselves. As great at everything else looks, again Pixar fucks up their character models. It's very jarring to see this beautiful Italian village that looks almost photo-realistic and then have these DreamWorks looking characters traipse through. If everything looked animated it wouldn't be an issue, but what is the point in putting so much effort into making a brick look real if this shiny, flat video game character is going to stand on it? Again, I wouldn't care if the water looked animated too, but it only draws more focus to how unrealistic the character designs are. Putting that aside, the rest of the technical aspects are all fine, although it never really feels like the dialog is coming from the characters we are seeing. The voice acting itself is fine and (surprisingly) I have no one to complain about, but it feel disconnected from the visuals. The big issues here are the terrible world building and a cliche and uneventful story with an ending more unrealistic than fish people. We start with Luca living underwater with his family who appear to do absolutely nothing all day. Luca herds fish, I guess but we never get any idea why or to what end. His parents only exist to make sure he stays underwater and his grandmother sits there. In a movie with fish people, I expect to spend most of the world building to be about the fish people and not the humans living in a normal village. We get better backgrounds on the villagers than anything about fish life. We know absolutely nothing about what these "sea monsters" do and all we ever hear is that the surface is dangerous. Okay, is there going to be a story about some cousin who got caught in a fishing net or an uncle who has harpooned by humans? Nope. We learn that the village seems to have a fetish for being afraid or "sea monsters" but do we get a story about a fish-man committing a crime or a fish-lady peaking through windows at night? Nope, they are afraid just because. I'm not even sure any of them have seen a fish-person because of all of the many sculptures, posters, fountains, paintings, etc. dedicated to the hunting or fear of "sea monsters", none of them correctly capture what one looks like. The main story is very loose and really only hits a couple of beats. The actual plot scenes are very cliche with a lot of dead space in between. It's kind of boring and none of the humor really hits, but if that were all, it would be a C movie. Depending on how well you can just shut up and ignore terrible movie logic and plot convenience determines if it gets worse from there. As much as I don't want to be, I 100% am one of those people who is going to pick apart a movie about fish people complaining about "Why don't they just _____" and "What happens if___" issues. I'll spare you my nitpicking (like how contact with water makes the sea people revert to "sea monster" form, but they can eat and digest pasta and nothing happens, as if there is no water in any of it), but I do have to bring up one thing. All of the media and press I've seen for this, their entire ad campaign, pushes the Italian aspect of Luca. We have tons of interviews of the voice actors talking about pasta and small little fishing villages on the Italian coast, but nothing about this movie feels Italian. I'm seeing tons of reviews mentioning little homages to Italy or references to Italian culture, but I'm really not getting that. Underwater, there is nothing Italian at all. You assume at some point the two groups interacted, but all the sea people feel very white bread American. When we get to the village, we get a couple of side characters and background characters speaking Italian or having the accent, but a lot don't. Arguably our third most important character is just another American girl as far as I can tell. What is supposed to be Italian about this village? They eat pasta? Is it that the mention olive oil? In five minutes you could change this to a Polynesian village or any European country with a port. As much as I hated Moana, at least it used the Polynesian theme. Luca feels very American and nothing would change in any significant way if we moved the story to a small harbor town in New England. Every aspect of the story is under-developed to the point of frustration. The characters are all right, but it's hard to connect with people we know so little about. The only reason any of it works is because they hired capable voice actors. I understand the message of the movie (which has been done thousands of times and done better hundreds of times and is going to be interpreted in tons of different ways), but things work out way too quickly and unrealistically. In a movie about "sea monsters" that transform into human form when they leave the water, the ending is the most unrealistic thing. It's way too convenient, simplified, and fairy tale happy ending. I liked it more than Soul and it's probably a better movie than Onward, but it's easily in the bottom half of Pixar movies. It doesn't even really feel like a Pixar movie; it's missing the charm and the adult appeal I've come to expect.

The Hurt Locker

I've seen hundreds of horror and thriller movies at this point and none have filled me with fear and dread more than The Hurt Locker. What this film does best is build each scene with so much tension that I'm almost recoiling from the screen because I have legitimate concerns for every character in every scene. Of the roughly two hours of this film, I spent at least an hour and forty-five minutes of it bracing myself for someone to die. You watch Halloween, Friday the 13th, Mission Impossible, Fast and the Furious, and all of those movies have many scenes where you feel safe, where you know nothing is going to happen or at least nothing is going to happen to these couple of characters. Every time Jeremy Renner is on the screen, I'm bracing myself because I just know he's going to die, this is going to be the scene. His first scene, I'm thinking "These bastards put him in the trailers and movie posters to mess with me; they're going to kill him off right now and it hasn't even been fifteen minutes!" Every scene is incredibly tense and just seconds from boiling over. It helps that the acting is prefect from everyone except a few child extras who didn't seem to understand what emotion there were supposed to be expressing. Really, I have exactly one issue with this film and it's one that really bothers me. I hate the cinematography. We get some neat shots and the tone is set just fine, but we, seemingly randomly, switch between unnecessary shaky cam, handheld held by someone who can't stand still, scenes that are shot like a documentary, and professional looking shots. Within the same scene, we'll have the camera sway left and right, jump around as if we are walking/running alongside the characters, switch to a stationary shot, aerial shot, and the something straight out of The Office including the zoom into a character's reaction. I get why action movies do the shaky cam thing, but the camera is so inconsistent that it gets really distracting. It's not like every time our characters run we get the shaky cam or every establishing shot looks like the Planet Earth crew shot it. It's ridiculously inconsistent. The characters are so deep that I want to focus on them and analyze what must be going through their heads, not wondering why this scene is shot like we're watching a squirrel bury his nuts on a Discovery Channel show. The movie does get a little repetitive because there really isn't a plot, but more of a "we follow these characters for a while and these are some things that happen" movie, but I was still fully immersed in the movie until we get another stupid camera switch and now some drunk guy is holding the camera while he tries no to fall down. All I needed was Kathryn Bigelow to calm down and just stick with the same shot for a little bit.

Play Misty for Me

Play Misty for Me does a lot of things right; a lot of important things right. Play Misty for Me also gives hints that this is Eastwood's directorial debut and that he wasn't quite in his groove yet. Easily, Jessica Walter is the best part of this movie (had I not looked her up, I'd have had no idea that it's Lucille Bluth) without question. Her character has some creative flaws, but every line of hers is spot on. We kind of unravel from there. The core story is a lot of fun and it takes a few turns that I wasn't ready for (it was probably even more novel in 1971), but the pacing is pretty terrible in a few places. Eastwood and Walter's relationship makes no sense. I understand the obsessed fan angle. but we go from zero to sixty way too fast for it to be logical. The movie seems to think we have a background for these characters, but we really don't. Eastwood has a former love return and the entire time I feel like I'm missing thirty minutes of exposition explaining who she is and who she is to Eastwood; why should I care about her? Her importance to the plot is clear, but I hesitate to even call her a character, as she has no real personality and we learn nothing about her. Walter's character has almost the opposite issue, with her coming on way too fast and too hard. It's not a spoiler to say that the obsessed fan is going to go crazy; that is right there in the trailer. I was just hoping for something more subtle and gradual. There is never a point where we are getting hints that something isn't quite right with her or little bits of foreshadowing that something is wrong here. Play Misty for Me just skips from the meet cute into crazy woman with no foreplay, no slow burn, no ramping up. This part of the story really needed more room to breathe. While that plays out too fast, we get a very long sequence of Eastwood and his old love traipsing through the forest, skinny dipping, and such that feels so out of place. It just goes on and on and there is no reason for these scenes to even exist. It's like fifteen minutes of fluff, of filler, and it really drags the movie down. Although the movie is kind of repetitive, I felt like it was flowing pretty nicely in every scene that doesn't involve Eastwood's old love. We're rushing the stuff that I want to see and spending an inordinate amount of time just watching Eastwood and her be together with no character or relationship development, no drama, and no story purpose for even existing. It doesn't help that these are two of the weakest acting performances in the film. Clint Eastwood is a great actor, but he doesn't have a huge range. While his directing was capable, he just was not a good fit for his role as the lead here. He's still doing his tough guy gravel whisper voice and it doesn't work for this character. The only emotion I'm ever reading from him is anger and the role needed an actor more suited for a dramatic role and not an action one. Clint Eastwood is great in the right roles, but this was not one of them. He is trying at least, which is more than I can say for Donna Mills. There also is an extended sequence filmed at the real life 1970 Monterey Jazz Festival that, again, really has no place in the film and goes on way too long. Story wise, there is no real reason for them to be there and certainly no reason spend so much time focusing on the festival instead of the characters. Both sequences I mentioned came off like someone had too much creative control and really wanted a sex scene and really wanted to show off some extra Jazz. Even though I hate Jazz, if you would have plugged anything else in there it would still be a waste of time for this film. You could replace it with my favorite band performing my favorite song and it still wouldn't validate it's spot in the runtime; this is a story about Eastwood and Walters, Jazz is the soundtrack but it doesn't need to be a character. As a whole film, Play Misty for Me was enjoyable and exciting most of the time, but Eastwood's inexperience as a director shows and the screenplay needed retooling.

I Wanna Hold Your Hand

It's a goofy teen movie about Beatlemania. It's not clever or particularly unique or well made, but it is a lot of fun. Each character has their own arc and while none are fleshed out or well-written, there is a character here for anyone to relate to. This is not a movie to think about, it's just a fun 90 minute movie that does offer a bit of history to those who missed Beatlemania but requires no actual knowledge of it.

Army of the Dead

I was all ready for Neon Las Vegas Heist Zombie Movie, some of my favorite things. Army of the Dead doesn't really deliver on any of theses things. The color palette is generic gritty zombie movie (minus the like two short scenes that take place on the casino floor. The heist is very under-developed and lacks all of the important heist movie. The zombies are incredibly inconsistent, with their movement, strength, abilities, goals, etc. The fact that this is Las Vegas is barely relevant and it could easily have taken place at any casino anywhere. The plot has potential, but the potential is all related to it being a Neon Las Vegas Heist Zombie Movie. It's just a dull movie that drags along occasionally hitting plot points, but mostly just meandering along. They introduce a weird zombie culture that they don't really use and what we do get is kind of stupid. Apparently, there is a zombie hierarchy and there are "Alpha" zombies that are (allegedly) intelligent, but there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to who becomes an "Alpha"; why is a random show girl a zombie? This isn't a person who was any kind of special, so why did is she not just another brain dead zombie? We have a few zombie animals that act exactly the same as regular animals. Zombie horse is just a regular horse with some CGI added. There is a countdown element that doesn't math out, which is ridiculous because they are the ones telling us how much time is left. The acting is mostly bad. Matthias Schweighöfer, Garret Dillahunt , and Omari Hardwick are great, but the rest are terrible. Dave Bautista is a phenomenal actor in the right role, but this was not one of those. I'm just not buying it any time he has to have an emotion. Guardians of the Galaxy? Perfect as Drax. Blade Runner 2049? A small role, but an impressive outing. Leading man with stereotypical estranged daughter plot? Just doesn't work. I do have to credit Tig Notaro for doing her best. She's a great comedian, but not an amazing actor and having her do her scenes out of context with green screens and CGI is a very rough job. I couldn't have expected any more from her given the scenario, but it's just bad. It definitely feels like her scenes don't belong and that she really needed someone to work off of. Still, as bad as all this is, the effects are easily the worst part. There is a zombie animal that we are introduced to pretty early that looks great (it's in the trailer, so I don't really think it's a spoiler, but I won't ruin it for you if you haven't) and the insertion of Tig Notaro looked seamless to me, but every single time there is blood, gore, or an explosion is maddeningly bad considering that this is a $90 Million movie. I've seen YouTubers do better CGI is stupid little skits; these guys have actual money and (I assume) professional effect artists and it looks like crap. Two and a half hours of poorly paced, poorly written cliche. All I needed was for it to deliver on one part of the Neon Las Vegas Heist Zombie Movie. Hotel Artemis wasn't great, but that neon color palette was beautiful, so I was hooked. Ocean's 8 had none of the charm or X-factor of Ocean's Twelve, but the heist was enticing, so I kept watching. Army of the Dead is just kind of boring; I hated most of the characters (especially the daughter) and the plot just wasn't interesting. To each their own, but I don't think Army of the Dead does anything positive for the zombie genre and I wouldn't even qualify it as a heist film.