Logan

Logan may star Wolverine and Professor X, but this feels nothing like an X-Men movie. Right away, Logan earns its R Rating with a strong amount of blood and gore; it's not over the top and obnoxious, but the blood and gore are leveled up to match the stronger violence level. Wolverine is slicing hands off and X-23 is matching him beat for beat. The story itself isn't really anything new and I wish there was more plot, but it makes for a solid send-off to a few longstanding characters. To be fair, I love the X-Men movies, possibly more than the Avengers movies, so Logan starts off on a higher pedestal and it earns its keep. I hated the score, but the action is great and I believed the chemistry between Xavier, Wolverine, and X-23. For the most part, the story is fine, but there are some unnecessary scenes that would have been better spots for more plot development and the ending is super unsatisfying and we are left about twenty minutes short of where I'd have assumed we'd go. The movie just sort of ends. We've reached a conclusion of the main plot, but we don't really finish the story. In a world where Disney doesn't destroy everything that it touches, I could see Logan as a strong jumping off point for a new breed of super-hero movies. Instead, we have strong coda to some of my favorite characters with so much left untapped.

Shrek

It's been a long time since I watched Shrek and I was ready for another Madagascar scenario where I realize that I had terrible taste in movies as a kid and finally see a garbage movie as a garbage movie. Shrek is surprisingly good. The animation is pretty solid for a 2001 movie, with a few issues when we see characters just a little too close and a few of the "nature shots" look pretty great. The voice acting is all stellar, although Diaz is a clear weak link, and the characters themselves are fairly well fleshed out. The only big issue is that it's an hour and a half, but we fly through the story so fast and there really isn't that much story to begin with, so we get too much filler. Had Shrek's journey had a few more kinks, the filler wouldn't stick out as much, but if you only have 90 minutes, the five or so minutes spent on Shrek pro wrestling feels like too much. The beginning drags and the end just isn't a big of a climax as I had hoped. If we cut a few things and add in some additional obstacle, Shrek would be great, but it's still a solid family film that has a lot to offer to both kids and adults. It's no Monsters Inc., but it's fast and fun without being stupid and gaudy and that means a lot in a family film.

The Bye Bye Man

In an alternate timeline, where Penner told a different writer about his idea, we may have an okay movie. There are kernels of good ideas here and there in the version we got has nothing else to offer. The Bye Bye Man makes no sense and goes out of its way to make sure you never really understand what the Bye Bye Man is or how he works. I get that he's a wrinkly man in a hooded robe with a bad CGI dog, but beyond that, I really don't know. Nothing else is much better as our lead and his girlfriend are terrible actors as are everyone but the librarian (who was kind of okay), the effects are awful, the pacing is off the wall, and the script is offensively bad. Penner himself plays the worst character, an offensively bold stereotype of a gay florist. There isn't even much to make fun of as a "good bad" movie. It can be semi-creepy at times, but on the whole it isn't worth the hour and a half.

Onward

Onward is a post new generation Pixar movie, which means that its goal appears to be painfully average in every way. The animation is pretty great most of the time, but the character models don't quite hit the early Pixar bar. There were times where the scenery looks almost life-like, but anything else isn't nearly as good. The story is kind of boring with far to many obvious set-ups, forced conflict, and a very unsatisfying ending, but the biggest issue with Onward is the two leads. I love Tom Holland and Chris Pratt, but neither one really meshes with their character and there was zero chemistry between them (or anyone else really). Adam (from Your Movie Sucks) mentions in his review that it feels like they wrote the lead characters for different actors than we got and it 100% feel that way. I really hate Jack Black, but Barely is clearly a Jack Black character and Pratt feels like he's doing a poor Jack Black imitation. Holland can act, but he doesn't bring anything to Ian. I'm assuming that Disney execs said "No one is going to see a movie just because Jack Black's voice is in it; he isn't big enough. Who do we have on the Disney payroll? My daughter likes that Spider-Guy; let's get him. What about Metal-Man? No, Robert Doweny Jr costs too much. Oh, my son likes the Justice League of the Space, can we get the squirrel or the tree? Well, what about Batista? Fine, I guess Space Lord will do." I wasn't invested in anything they were trying to do: the world building is half-assed, the humor is a big miss, and there are far too many lulls in the flow of the story. Onward feels like a good attempt from Illumination, but it's not great as a real movie and even worse as a member of Pixar's catalog.

Spy Kids

Spy Kids is a very 2001 movie: the CGI is just awful, the child actors suck, the plot is unreasonably confusing, everything is so stupid, and it comes off like the general feeling creating this movie is "Screw it, it's a kids' movie, no one cares." There are so many plot holes that it makes the story hard to follow and what I can follow is just nonsensical. I love the idea of a kids' movie about children with spy training kicking butt, but they don't really kick butt and I'm uncertain if they have spy training. They've been skipping school and they reveal to their parents that they are spies, but am I supposed to connect that they have been receiving spy training outside of their parents' knowledge and also never remotely suspected that their parents were spies? Who is training them then and why? Plus, they have some random bits of gymnastic ability and the boy can mimic voices, but they are hardly spies. Sure, kids aren't going to be as concerned with the plot, but is I'm not sure there is enough interesting stuff going on to keep them on the line. I think they think Spy Kids is a funny movie, but the only bit that got me (other than the laughably bad CGI and dialog) was a poop joke and they got a shock reaction for the multiple times where they tease that they are going to use profanity, but stop just short. Spy Kids is okay, but it reeks of 2001 and it should probably stay there.

Aliens vs Predator: Requiem

It's a little ironic that the first AvP felt like a hybrid of an Alien and a Predator movie and AvP:R features a hybrid Alien/Predator but feels like a generic alien (lowercase "a") invasion movie. I didn't hate everything about AvP, but it did have little flairs of what I liked about the Alien series and the Predator series. AvP:R stars the titular beasts of both series, but at no point did I ever catch a glimpse of what I liked about either series. Everything was very cliche and predictable, I couldn't possibly care about the characters any less, and any flying vehicle or vessel or any kind looks absolutely terrible. I wasn't ever bored, but the plot just doesn't make sense and I was more than ready for it to be over at all times. I did like some of the gorier shots and the knock-off some people I didn't expect them to, but none of it would entice me enough to watch it again. The Alien and Predator series both act like these movies don't exist and it wouldn't be a bad decision if you did too.

Frozen II

I unashamedly love the first Frozen. As an almost 30 year old man, I recognize that I'm not the core audience for these films, but the first had so many bright spots. Frozen 2 is slightly above room temperature. The biggest problem is that their just isn't enough plot for an entire movie here and what we do get is incredibly weak and doesn't have any real narrative thrust. The voice-acting is still all great and the vocals on the songs are stellar, but we again run into the problem of songs only existing for exposition dumps. Frozen 2 adds even more filler songs an honestly, filler everywhere. We have entire sequences that only exist to get to a song that we don't need. The actual plot really should have been a short, like Toy Story does. There isn't 100 minutes of real narrative story here; there is maybe 30, perfect for something like Toy Story That Time Forgot or Toy Story: Hawaiian Vacation. The little story we do get is poorly done and the bulk of the story is just Elsa; it's like 65% Elsa, 40% Anna, 5% Kristoff and none of it is particularly interesting. Else has important, serious business to take care of, Anna thinks she needs to go too even though she has no abilities of any note and is just a huge liability, and Kristoff tires to propose for 100 minutes. Elsa is easily my favorite character, so I didn't mind her getting most of the screen time, but they absolutely waste Kristoff. I understand that they really want to push the Girl Power element of the Frozen Franchise, but they cut out everything Kristoff was in the first movie to make him a clumsy goof who is bad at being romantic or whatever. Without spoiling the big events of the plot, I can say that it makes no sense and really only raises even more questions and it ends with a terrible decision for Arendelle and the series as a whole (should it continue). The first Frozen could have but out the rock troll people and been almost perfect; Frozen 2 doesn't even need to exist. It doesn't further the story or even answer the questions that it raises. I liked spending more time in Arendelle and getting more of a glimpse at the things beyond its gates, but they could have done three or four shorts and sold that as a Blu-Ray. As disappointed as I was with this sequel, I'll certainly watch another, but I really think that they (again) finish on a note that should end the larger series and leave the space open for shorts or spin-offs, but please, no more rock troll guys!

Star Wars

After watching this for the first time since I was a child, I have more appreciation for Episode IV, but there are still some glaring issues and it being 2020 means I have no idea how close what I saw this time is to what I saw two decades ago and to what the theaters saw in 1977. Speaking only for the version of the film that I saw this time, the acting was perfect, the story was strong, and the effects were pretty good. The acting and story are the only parts that I know haven't changed, so I'll address them first. While I'm sill not a fan of Ford or Fisher, Ford was great here and Fisher was fine. Hamill is the easy standout for his first big role. Hamill and Guinness had great chemistry and I really wish we would have gotten more of them later in the movie than we did in the first 30 minutes. This leads into my biggest issue. Those first 30 minutes were so drawn out and uneventful. Honestly, multiple times in the first 30 minutes, I fell asleep and when I woke up they were doing the same thing. We don't need the sand people scene to be that long and while I love the world building, we don't need that much time in Mos Eisley and the fight scene in the cantina makes no sense and is never explained. The best thing about the film is the world building, but it really needed to be spread out more and not condensed into a couple very lengthy scenes. The last thing I want to bring up is the effects, which are the most murky. I loved the re-addition of the Jabba scene and I thought it looked pretty good. Really, all the CGI looks pretty good; it's not 2020 CGI, but it looks pretty good. The laser blasts look pretty bad and they don't really line up with the origin or trajectory they should, but it's forgivable for a 1977 film. My issue is that I don't know what effects are from what version. Lucas has eddited and redone so many things in this movie that I don't know how many of these effects deserve a break because they are 1977 effects and which deserve harsher judgement. All I can really do at this point is judge the version I saw this time and the effects that are clearly form 77 aren't terrible or bad enough to be distracting and the clearly updated CGI did kind of look like PS1 graphics, but they looked okay.. Did I like A New Hope better over two decades later? Absolutely, but it's certainly not a perfect film.

The Circus

There were times when I forgot that I was watching a silent film because the actors' facial reactions were so loud. Almost ninety years later, The Circus is still hilarious, beautifully acted, and there were some fun effects that actually looked fine. The story was more like a series of sequential scenes than a real through-line story, but it helped keep the pace up with the constantly changing focus of the story. After slugging through Nosferatu, I am thrilled to get an example of a good silent film. At the beginning had me wishing for more text cards, but the enunciate enough that it is easy to read lips most of the time and the facial expressions were big enough that I could get the big ideas, but not so big that it felt annoying. The Criterion edition looked great for a movie that is edging towards a century old, so if you decide to check it out, that's the version I'd recommend.

AVH: Alien vs. Hunter

I knew exactly the kind of "movie" I was getting when "The Asylum" came across my screen. AVH is a little different than the usual Asylum mockbuster, but the quality is just the same. Alien Vs Predator was kind of a culmination; we knew who the Xenomorphs were and we were familiar with the Predators. AVH just assumes that we are going to care about pitting their Alien against Hunter. Guess what, it's an Asylum film, so there is no real characterization for anyone, the acting is terrible, the CGI is just terrible, the action is either just off screen or shot from so close up that we can't really see what is happening. There is a unique twist in the story, but the rest of the story is garbage. The writers seem to forget were things are, where the characters are, and that every town has a huge system of sewer tunnels with 15 foot tall ceilings filled with tons of conduit and no water. Even if all of this was good, what really matters in a movie like this is how awesome the Alien, the Hunter, and the action are. As a spoiler to no one familiar with The Asylum, these things are awful. The alien is a man in an okay looking costume when we see him close up, but from farther away, they CGI it, because it's like a centaur, except replace the horse part with a giant spider and the top part with a vaguely Xenomorph body. It looks really bad (no surprise) and looks hilarious. The Hunter looks like a robot with one eye and a rice patty hat. All of these complaints pale in comparison to the absolute worst part of this movie, the color grading. I guess the really didn't want to film at night, so night time scenes are colored blue. I spent a long time thinking that maybe there were giant blueish spotlights, but no, they clearly just color corrected the scene in make everything look blue. They do the same with red and yellow in other scenes, but the blue is the worst. Could they not figure out how to light the sets or did they not know that if you wait a few hours, the sun goes down and it gets dark. It could be a budget thing, because it is also clear that they don't have more than one microphone (there are scenes where one character is talking, but we can't hear them because they are too far back) and they seem to avoid redoing scenes at all costs (characters flub lines and talk incomprehensibly and they leave it as is, but then again there are an equal number of scenes were 100% of the dialog is poorly disguised ADR). AVH is almost a "good bad" movie, but I refuse to believe that The Asylum makes movies that they think are good. I hate movies that are purposefully made to be bad movies. Birdemic and The Incredible Bulk are absolute garbage because they were never made to be real films; they were made with the single purpose of creating a terrible movie. AVH falls in that category. Beyond the last 2 minutes, this movie is pure trash.