Solo: A Star Wars Story

Solo is what happens when you give Ron Howard a Star Wars film. It doesn't often feel like a Star Wars film rather than a generic, stand-alone Sci-Fi movie. Being a prequel certainly limits what can and can't happen, but with the un-canonization of the extended Star Wars Universe, they had a lot of room to play with, however, after the first 30 or so minutes, Solo is incredibly predictable. For the most part, Solo is exactly what I imagine 85% of people expected it to be. The Marvel influence can be felt with the terrible "jokes" and now obligatory girl-power characters. The writing is surprisingly solid, but the acting is terrible from most of the cast: no one expects a good performance from Emilia Clarke, but she does a sufficient job for her under-written character, Woody Harrelson plays a shade of the same character he's played for the last decade so he does okay, and a few of the supporting characters are fine. The problems come with Solo and Lando. I've seen all the Star Wars movies and endulged in the novels and video games of the (now irrelevant) extended Star Wars world, but I'm not a hardcore Star Wars fan. I don't care that Alden Ehrenreich is not Harrison Ford and doesn't even make an honest effort to even capture an air of Ford's version of Han Solo and with as detached from the Star Wars Universe as this film feels, it's hard to even connect them as the same character. I liked Ehrenreich's character and he grew on me as the minutes past, but Ehrenreich is a bad actor; nothing he said felt real and all his emotions were unauthentic. As bad as Alden was, Donald Glover was so much worse. Glover's version of Lando was even farther from the Lando of the original trilogy, but again, i don't care. My issue is that Donald Glover isn't even trying. Glover sleeps his way through his scenes and lacks the swagger and attitude that his character is obviously supposed to have. Aside from the acting, i don't have any real issues with Solo beyond some stylistic choices (which mostly come from having Howard direct a film so different from every other Star Wars film), barely written characters, and pushing too many minor characters into such a small story. For all these issues, Solo is a surprisingly enjoyable movie; it's not a great movie, but it is a fine film. It has some really fun action sequences, beautiful and exotic scenery (although the CG was really bad in some parts), and wasn't bogged down with exposition like the prequel trilogy. Watching Solo, I was always interested, not invested, but interested. While the box office reception paints a pretty bad picture of Solo, I found it thousands of times better than Episode 7 & 8. The bad parts of Solo can be overlooked for the pure sake of enjoying the film. It's a pretty decent Sci-Fi adventure movie that happens to have some Star Wars characters in it (even though it would probably be better without them).

Cat in the Brain

I know nothing about Lucio Fulci or his movies, but from what I've read after watching Cat in the Brain, this film is essentially on of those clip show episodes that sitcoms have to fill in an off week. Cat in the Brain is loosely sewn together scenes from Fulci's previous movies, telling a sort of meta story about Fulci himself. If you had never seen of ever heard of Friends, but watched a clip show from season 6 not knowing that it's a clip show, you'd be pretty confused as to what exactly is happening. Cat in the Brain has some beautifully gory practical effects scenes that I love, but without a working knowledge of Luci's filmography, those scenes were all I could enjoy.

Aliens vs Titanic

Aliens Vs Titanic was more recently released as Predator World, assumingly in hopes to trick people into believing this to be a part of the Predator series. This movie seems like it was written and dirrected by a High School Nerd and frat bro. AvT is half porn-parody and half cliche Sci-Fi B-Movie. The acting is all awful, the CGI is atrociously bad, 80% of the dialog is terrible ADR, everything is awful. Most of the actors are clearly porn stars (one is even credited as Jin N Tonic) and have zero acting ability. The effects include the worst CGI aliens ever and what is clearly a department store mannequin, and they end up on a random planet that I guess is supposed to be really hot because they have the ripply heat effect for most of the duration, but this effect is also used to bulge things fun-house mirror style instead of using CG. There is a fair amount of humor and some of it is actually okay, but most is just penis jokes (because there is a random drug that looks like the pink Good N' Plenty candies that causes severe arousal). There are continuity errors and no attention to detail. I realize that some of this is on purpose and Wild Eye Releasing seems to exclusively put out terrible movies, but It's unclear how much of this is purposefully bad and how much is just incompetence. AvT offers some enjoyment as a bad B-Movie, but the gratuitous nudity that serves zero purpose other than to have nudity and the extended musical sequence that is clearly only there to promote a strippers new single and many, many technical misgivings are to egregious. This is a borderline soft-score pornography "movie" that oozes sexual frustration and the day dreams of a 4th grade nerd who has watched too much black and white Sci-Fi. A terrible movie that is meant to be terrible is still a terrible movie.

Unbreakable

Unbreakable is a unique take on the super-hero movie. Unbreakable is often labeled as a "slow burn" movie and it certainly is slow, but the burn really only builds to room temperature before the final half hour. Unbreakable has a great last 15 minutes, but the rest is very slow; an hour and twenty minutes of introduction and filler with terrible acting and decent at best cinematography. Perhaps 18 years of hype built too high of expectations, but Unbreakable didn't live up to it for me. It's a great idea and M Night's obligatory "twist" was legitimately unexpected, but Willis does very little acting and Jackson plays a less yelly version of the same character he plays in every movie, the story is 80 percent exposition, and beyond the twist Unbreakable is unmemorable.

Watership Down

Watership down is a truly beautiful movie aesthetically. Many sweeping shots look like museum worthy art. The animation is easily ten out of ten for the style, but it shows its age with uneven animation and I noticed one instance where they didn't draw a character into a panel, so he disappears for a second and pops back in the next second. Watership down also shows its age with the sound, both in quality and the voice actors. The voices aren't particularly well done (not terrible, but not worth noting) and it sometimes sounds two voice actors are in the same recording room, but one is right next to the microphone and the other guy is 12 feet away in the corner of the room; some voices are way to muffled and quiet. I can overlook these details because Watership Down is from 1978. The story-writing, however, is inexcusable. The novel is more a series of events than a story and this film takes that idea and makes the equivalent of a greatest hits. If you haven't read the novel, I imagine this film would be hard to follow; characters have very little to no back story, the world gets almost zero explanation, and they barely even bother to transition from plot point to plot point. We rush through the story an break neck speed, and poke a few things, but don't really play through any. Either they needed to do even more cuts to the story and fully explore maybe three events or split Watership Down into multiple films. This film doesn't do the book justice and doesn't really work as a stand alone experience, the animation is wonderful, but that's really all there is.

The Witch

Lysa Arryn and Dagmer Cleft Jaw from Game of Thrones are Puritans who have been exiled from their crappy village and have to make it on their own on their new crappy farm. The Witch is a horror movie, but not a 20XX horror movie like Annabelle or Paranormal Activity. The Witch is first and foremost a film and it also happens to have crafted story that builds tension and dread with fantastical elements; they didn't think of jump-scares and make up a story around them. The Witch has great acting, storytelling, and cinematography, but the pacing sometimes feels off as we rush parts I wanted to spend more time with and drug on minor details. The Witch isn't a blockbuster horror and if you aren't in the mindset to watch an actual film and be required to pay attention, The Witch is boring and largely uneventful. If you have the energy to watch The Witch like you'd watch something like The Shape of Water (the only comparison I am making is that it's not a "popcorn movie" but something more), The Witch is 90 minutes of edge of your seat uneasiness and suspense. The script and dialect are representative of the time, but in 2018 it feels odd hearing characters use a colonial vocabulary, but that's just part of the setting. The Witch is distributed by the same company that later gave us Hereditary, which is a better comparison to The Witch than other recent horror films.

Demon House

Demon House is the most boring episode of Ghost Adventures stretched out to "fill" an extra half-hour. Zak Bagans bought the Demon House, but doesn't have the "rights" to the Demon House family's story, so we get an hour of Zak pestering people who spent time in or new people who had spent time in the house, spliced with terrible reenactments. The other 30 minutes is 20 minutes of Zak and crew dragging some random people through random tours of the house and we climax with the obligatory overnight investigation which is over 8 hours long, but condensed into 10 minutes (not an exaggeration, that tells you how much "evidence" they get). Demon house isn't scary; people in the film are consistently terrified, but nothing is every scary. I don't want to ruin any plot points, but Demon House is a terrible "documentary" but a wonderful comedy film. Demon House is the best comedy of 2018. Demon House has way more to offer in the vein of Scary Movie than it does as a scary movie. The "documentary" opens with a warning that insinuates that the spooky demons can possess you if you watch this and tells you to view at your own risk, if that made you smirk, Demon House is 90 minutes of hilarity, If you got a chill when you read that, Demon house is going to disappoint you so much. Again, trying to to spoil anything, but a house that makes people mad and confused isn't worth making a 90 minute feature on. The overnight, which is always the most exciting part of a Ghost Adventures episode, is presented as 10 minutes of Zak roaming around and laying in a bed with none of his spooky ghost tools, no spirit boxes, weird cameras, or even his stupid EVP recorder. If you were saving Demon House for a late October night, don't bother, your better off watching whatever "haunted location" show Travel Chanel will be spinning.

Beach Rats

I can imagine what Eliza Hittman was trying to do, but unfortunately her inexperience shows, or maybe she just thinks she's made art so none of the elements of the film matter. The plot is terrible and stumbles around in circles, going nowhere and ending up only a few inches from where we started. Nothing really happens and then the film just ends with no ending, no resolution, nothing, just roll credits, we're done here. The casting was terrible and all the male characters feel like someone found a Ralph Lauren ad and peeled the guy off the paper, I don't mean they found the model, I mean they literally have the piece of paper casted as the main character. Harris Dickinson has a blank look on his face that only changes to extreme nausea (although he doesn't ever actually become nauseous) and he has no chemistry with anyone: his friends, his family, the random dudes he finds, or the pretend girlfriend. His friends are equally bad actors, but they aren't main characters so it's less offensive. With all this garbage, we also have a complete lack of characterization for every character, no one has a personality, no one is unique, no one is interesting. Not even the cinematography works. We have close ups of characters that don't matter during scenes they have nothing to do with and they keep going into the crappy "found-footage cam" that is laggy, grainy, and way too dark. We also have many scenes that have no point and drag along. Shots are out of focus and framed awkwardly for no reason. Beach Rats feels like an attempt to ride wave of gay coming of age films like Moonlight, but without any effort or respect for the material. I don't think anyone gave half a crap when they made the film, the actors don't act, the director appears to have not paid attention to the filming, and the studio must not have watched this before they sent it out. I appreciate that this isn't a by-the-numbers coming of age story, but that's only because this is barely even a story; it's a collection of scenes staring the same characters in the same world. Beach rats has nothing to offer to anyone.

Fight Club

It's been a long time since I read Fight Club, but this film hits all the right notes that I remember. For a film clocking in at almost 2 hours and 20 minutes, Fight Club has excellent pacing and flies by. The acting is great (even from Edward Norton, who I've never been a big fan off) and David Fincher has some really unique shots and techniques that leave an impression. Fight Club has a great balance of grit and and 90's neon and still manages to capture the feeling of a Chuck Palahniuk novel.

The Little Stranger

The Little Stranger is being marketed as a horror movie, but it is definitely not. There are some tense moments, but this is a 1940's drama. The acting is great, minus Domhnall Gleeson (I'm not how much of his character s supposed to be wooden and how much is bland acting). The cinematography is fine, but uninteresting. Had I known what this film was beforehand, there is no way I would have seen it. A doctor visits a patient at a historic estate he fell in love with decades ago and befriends the daughter of the owner and things go wrong. There is a good amount of tension in a handful of scenes, but The Little Stranger is primarily a very slow, plodding film that drags and drags. The Little Stranger isn't a bad film, but it needed a better editor and more honest trailers.