Kong: Skull Island

Kong: Skull Island does a lot of things right. The movie looks great and the CGI was better than I had expected. There is a lot of solid action and it's spaced well enough that the movie never dragged for me. Aside from a great performance from John C. Reilly (there are some clear Steve Brule references) everyone does an okay job, everyone but Samuel L. Jackson and Brie Larson. I have never seen Jackson do anything other than the same loud character he does in every movie. There is no real acting going on in his performance here: he has no emotion in any of his lines, there is never anything conveyed through his dead facial expressions, and I'm pretty sure that they either cast him because he's a popular name (for some reason) or they really like it when he says "Mother Fucker!" and felt that that was something they needed in their film. Brie Larson is just there. Her character is unnecessary and she seemed to embrace that. A good chunk of the cast are less seasoned, but I was pleased with everyone else. Jason Mitchell did well with what little they gave him and Shea Whigham feels like he was straight out off Full Metal Jacket or Apocalypse Now. The story is fine. There were a few elements that I was unprepared for, but for the most part, Skull Island is exactly what you would expect. Skull Island probably won't top any "Favorite Movie" lists, but it's a fun popcorn movie and I'm interested to see how the "Monsterverse" builds from here.

13 Eerie

13 Eerie is a painfully vanilla horror movie that (other than the totally terrible ending that would have better served the film as the opening) does nothing well, but nothing too bad. The acting is bland but acceptable, unless they need to express fear or pain. The effects are fine, if often overdone to the point where they don't quite make sense anymore. The plot is cliche, but not awful, although the pacing is way off. If they did at least on thing well, I could recommend it as a harmless background movie, but it doesn't. For a straight to video horror movie, it's about what you would expect. Nothing here is special.

13 Eerie

13 Eerie is a painfully vanilla horror movie that (other than the totally terrible ending that would have better served the film as the opening) does nothing well, but nothing too bad. The acting is bland but acceptable, unless they need to express fear or pain. The effects are fine, if often overdone to the point where they don't quite make sense anymore. The plot is cliche, but not awful, although the pacing is way off. If they did at least on thing well, I could recommend it as a harmless background movie, but it doesn't. For a straight to video horror movie, it's about what you would expect. Nothing here is special.

Blade Runner 2049

Ready for some sacrilege? I did not care for the original Blade Runner. I don't hate it, but I don't like it either. Blade Runner 2049 wasn't a movie I was particularly excited for. The near three hour run time was my biggest concern, but surprisingly Blade Runner 2049 doesn't feel like a "long" movie. Aside from a few bits of bad CGI (considering the shear amount of CGI in this film, I can forgive 5 seconds of terrible snow before they move into a better snow animation) and a terrible performance from Jared Leto, Blade Runner 2049 is amazing. The story has a simple main story that develops on so many levels and had me fully engaged. Most of the CGI is great and the score that isn't manipulative, but complementary. The highlight for me, is easily the sets. I was actually more looking forward to seeing what the next location looked like than whatever Ryan Gosling was doing next. Every setting was a beautiful melding of future-tech with simple design elements that reminded me of ancient Rome (Obviously I don't know anything about interior design or architecture). I love the color pallet (it was the soul reason I saw Hotel Artemis) and all of the acting was top notch. There were definitely some things they could have simplified and a couple of sequences were too long, but it's great overall. You don't need to have seen the original Blade Runner (it certainly helps and you'll be missing a few details without it, but it's not mandatory to understand and enjoy it). There is one glaring issue with Blade Runner 2049 that I can't overlook. Without spoiling anything, the last quarter of the movie has a sequence that I had assumed set up the final act, but instead, I guess, is either a red herring because they hate us or they were establishing a sequel just to save time when they get around to it. I have no idea why it's there. Blade Runner 2049 didn't live up to financial expectations and it's been over a year with no concrete news so chances for a sequel don't look great, so I may never know.

Hairspray

Boring, bland, slow, stale. The acting is fine (there is one exception I'll bring up in a bit) and I guess the singing is okay (same exception). The sets are acceptable and there are no glaring cinematography issues. There is nothing spectacular about the movie. It is the most saccharine, cookie-cutter musical for moms. The screenplay is full of unbelievable characters making illogical and irrational decisions. Every song has overly corny lyrics and sung in the most uninteresting way. I understand that it's a musical so you have to hold it at a distance from some expectations, but it is a film; it is not a play. As a film, it tries really hard to be a safe, feel-good movie with a message, but it is so wildly over-simplified and watered down, which is especially surprising since it feels so long. It's almost two hours long, but it feels like it is easily over three. It is so slow and drags it's feet through 20 minute musical numbers and 20 minute dances breaks featuring bad and lazy choreography. I can credit Nikki Blonsky for being a decent singer and an acceptable actress, but her dancing is bad. In general the dancing is wildly underwhelming. The worst part, without any question, far and away is John Travolta. I saw a quote from Dana Stevens of Slate Magazine that said "How you feel about Hairspray will depend entirely on your reaction to this performance." I found Travlota's portrayal as the worst acted, most tacky, and tone-deaf I have seen in a long time. His acting is awful and his singing is worse. He is absolutely terrible and it shows the worst in whatever kind of accent he is trying to do. The fact that they sought out Travolta for the role souly because of the success of Grease is a perfect example of the kind of movie they have made. Without ruining any plot details, they managed to make a generic movie in every way. There is nothing to praise and (other than everything John Travolta does) nothing to hate. Hairspray is milquetoast through and through. Nothing is memorable; not the songs, not the acting, not the story (which is on par with that terrible Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad which cured racism with a can of Pepsi). Aside from everything Travolta, I won't remember any of this in 24 hours.

Behind the Walls

From the writers of such cinema classics as Snake Out of Compton and Airplane Vs. Volcano, who also directed Jurassic Galaxy, comes one of the laziest and most nonsensical wastes of 90 minutes I've ever had the displeasure of seeing. As much as I want to break down the litany of plot holes, piss poor CGI scenes, and terrible script, I don't want to spoil the story in case any of you make the terrible decision to watch Behind the Walls (It's not even a good/fun bad movie. It has no value in any way), so I'll keep it to generic notes. The plot makes no sense. The background of the family is vaguely mentioned and we get zero story for the house/ghost/monster/whatever does the "spooky" things. It's like if we never leaned that the Good Guy doll in Child's Play is possessed by the soul of a serial killer and we just jump right into the murder doll or if Magneto just hated regular humans for no reason. I know just as much now as I did before I watched. No nobody gets any character progression and even though I feel like we are supposed to empathize with the mother, I actively rooted for her to be killed off. The first half hour is packed with flashbacks that took place at an unestablished time and are shown to us for no particular reason. The entire movie is riddled with plot holes makes no sense. It's hard to explain exactly how bad it is without spoiling anything, but I'm not sure the writers reread the script after they finished writing or watched the film before they sent it off. Beyond the absolute shit show of a script, there are many technical issues as well. The sound mixing is terrible. The audio levels are all wrong. The only thing that is at a regular volume is the cheap jump scare sounds. You have to turn the volume way up just to hear the dialog and even then a quarter of it requires you to turn it up another ten or so levels. Had I seen this is a theater, I'd have missed at least half of the story because they couldn't be bothered to check their sound levels. There are scenes where I assume we are supposed to be able to read letters, but we can't because they are out of focus. The scene where the boy gets in the shower, they try to keep only his top half in frame but when he lifts his leg to get into the tub, we can see he's in his underpants. Why wouldn't you just pull the camera up when he moves? Why didn't you just zoom in on his face or the top of the set. Why would you put in the effort to frame his top half until he goes to take a shower with clothes on? It's a simple thing and a stupid mistake. Why did you even have to show that? Nothing important happens between him entering the bathroom and being in the tub, so what was the point at all? This is just one of the many stupid little things that would have taken no effort to fix. For a film with two independent production companies, I don't expect top level CGI, but Behind the Walls looks atrocious. We get what appears to be stock footage during transitions ( like generic water ripples or dust clouds on a black background) and any time they do original CG, it is exactly what I would expect from the people behind a film like Snake out of Compton. This is Asylum level garbage. The one thing I can give them a little credit for is that the acting is better than the average shit horror film. The child actors aren't absolutely terrible (they aren't good though and they have zero chemistry with anyone in the cast) and the two adult leads are okay sometimes. Beyond that, everything else is abysmal. I was hoping that if Behind the Walls wasn't a good movie, that it would at least be a "So Bad It's Good" movie. It's not fun as a horror movie as the only horror comes from the worst jump scares that don't even make sense. If a character sees a spooky in the mirror but they don't blink or look away and look back and the only thing that changes is the camera, the spooky would still be there. The whole look back and it's gone thing only works if they take their eye off of it and look back and it's gone. Literally the only thing that changes is that they switch to camera 2 instead of camera one. They even do one that looks like what happens on those flash mazes that you friend tricked you with in 2002. It totally fails as a horror movie and it offers no redeeming qualities as a Wish Upon or The Room type garbage movie. It's poorly paced, boring, uneventful, confusing, bland, and they put as little effort into the movie as possible. I can't recommend Behind the Walls to anyone, ever.

V/H/S/2

As with any anthology film (especially these horror anthologies with different writers and directors on each story) some stories are going to hit harder than others and some just aren't going to be as good. Like the first V/H/S/, the frame story is stupid, confusing, and unnecessary. This one is much worse, but it's the stories that really matter. Some of the titles are a little spoilery so I'll just refer to them numerically. The first one was a solid idea with terrible execution. It feels way too rushed and felt like I was watching a highlight reel and not a real story. Nothing is explained and there are far too many loose ends. The second, has a great premise and as soon as I saw where it was going, I got very excited. Naturally, they squander the potential and I was unsatisfied. Most of the story is shown through a helmet mounted Go-Pro, which is terrible for action scenes because we get far too close to the other people and everything is too fast, shaky, and blurred. The third story is the only story that worked. The acting isn't the best, but everything else is great. The fourth story feel like an after thought. It's really just one big action scene with zero establishment, consequence, or effort. All of the stories are unpredictable and their ability to surprise me is easily the strongest element here. Aside from the crappy frame story, every story was at least exciting. Really, the only story worth the time, though, is the third one. From all the stories in the first two V/H/S/ anthologies, this story is unquestionably the best. There is some unnecessary drama, but I'd rather watch this story four times than watch the whole movie again.

Demonic

Demonic is a surprisingly boring movie. It's a horror movie with a vaguely interesting plot, the acting isn't always terrible, the sets are fine, and it still managed to put me to sleep. I had to re-watch multiple scenes because I was hoping the information I was missing was in the two or three minute involuntary nap (it wasn't). Even after re-watching what I missed, just getting the whole picture, the plot still just doesn't make sense. There are pieces here that could work in a better film, but the script just isn't good and the pacing makes it even worse.

Hardcore Henry

Hardcore Henry is a nausea inducing first-person action/sci-fi movie that is stupid in all the right ways and confusing in all the wrong ones. The story itself is needlessly complicated and it only gets worse as it goes. I spent most of the movie either wondering why characters are doing what they are doing or trying to figure out what exactly is happening. The entire movie is clearly just a vehicle to test the first-person gimmick and it shows. The issue is that seeing everything in first person often makes it hard to decipher action scenes, which are most of the movie. The action is well choreographed, but any fight with more than two characters gets confusing, as we are only seeing a part of the action and from a very narrow lens. For a two million dollar movie, it looks pretty good. In general, gore and explosions are impressive, but there are a few scenes that are clearly entirely CGI and they look terrible. There is one scene that literally looks like it could have been a cut scene from a PlayStation One game. The dialog is also an issue, not because of the writing (which is pretty bad, but I don't expect much from an action movie and it delivers what it needs to), but because much of it is in Russian and there are no subtitles for it. The subtitles for the movie are only for the English parts and there isn't even a "Speaking Russian" cue that pops up. I'm not sure if I am just expected to know Russian or if I m supposed to not understand a third of the script. I get that it is a Russian-American film, but it's an odd choice not to translate the Russian for us and especially to not even mention is the subtitles that speaking was even happening. I watch every movie with subtitles and if I was actually deaf or hard of hearing, I wouldn't even know someone was talking if they were out of frame and speaking Russian because the subtitles never even bother to tell you. For what it is, Hardcore Henry is a fun experience, but it is not a good movie. The story is stupid and the ending doesn't really make sense when you consider the events of the entire movie. It is definitely worth noting that the first person view point can certainly affect some viewers. We get a lot of shaky cam, which made me nauseous and gave my sister a headache. I wouldn't say it causes motion sickness, but you've ever had to look away from an Imax screen, be prepared.

Freddy Got Fingered

If you have ever watched any iteration of The Tom Green Show and sat through an entire episode of your own free will, this movie is for you. It is easily the dumbest movie I have ever seen. The plot is pure nonsense and 80% of the scenes have no purpose at all. The mere fact that this movie exists is an atrocity, but I am so glad that it does. It's hilarious and compelling unlike any other film. Things don't happen to advance the plot or establish backstory. The only reason scenes exits are too shock, confuse, entertain, and waste fourteen million dollars. Freddy Got Fingered cost fourteen million dollars to make. Part of the fun is seeing just how much ludicrously irresponsible spending Regency Enterprises let Tom Green get away with. This movie, this fucking movie, has real actors and celebrities. The soundtrack is full of hit songs by actual musical artists. They have a fucking helicopter for no reason. They filmed an entire scene where Tom Green stops his car just because he sees a horse and wants to masturbate it. They barely even use any of the footage they shot, but Tom Green got to play with a horse dick, so whatever. This probably just barely qualifies as a movie. Tom Green was given fourteen million dollars and had a buttload of fun spending it on stupid shit. Again, if Tom Green is your boy and his brand of childish, gross-out, randomness works for you Freddy Got Fingered is going to hit all the right buttons and you'll be quoting it for months. If you hate sophomoric comedy and shows like Tim and Eric, The Eric Andre Show, and Jackass, you will hate Freddy Got Fingered with the fervor of a thousand suns.