Scrooge (Or Marleys Ghost)

A new tradition

Director: ???
Writer(s): ???
Run Time: 6 Minutes 42 Seconds

Plot: Essentially the plot of every Christmas Carol movie, except this is a silent movie from 1901. 

I'm hoping to start a tradition, in which every year on Christmas Day I post a review of a Christmas Carol film, in chronological order. I don't know why but I just think it would be nice to see every version of the classic film, from 1901 to now. There have been so many versions of the story, each trying its best to be the definitive classic, word for word, scene for scene from the book, each however, adding something new and beautiful to the story without compromising the whole story.

This short film is a lot different. For example, it was made in 1901 and is the earliest known version of A Christmas Carol. It's silent and therefore unable to be word for word but still has the overall message of peace and good will to all. So let's get into it.

The film starts with Scrooge and Cratchit working late Christmas Eve, Cratchit asks Scrooge if he can have Christmas Day off to spend time with his family and Scrooge allows him, although he doesn't seem all that happy about it. Cratchit is bowing and bobbing away in thanks and Scrooge is waving at him dismissively, like he doesn't care. Which...he most likely doesn't at this point in the story anyway. Scrooge then throws down his quill, paces for a moment and then gets an idea, puts his hat on, blows out his candle and leaves.

Next, there is a title card with the words Scene II Marleys Ghost Shows Scrooge visions of himself in Christmasses Past. There is something white in the background of the title card that I can't really make out. I'm not sure what it is but it looks like a body so in this story I guess it could really be anybody's.

In this scene, Scrooge walks up to his "door". I put door in quotation marks because it is quite clearly a set piece, and not even a convincing one. Given the time period though they didn't really have much to work with and it works just fine. Scrooge fumbles around in his coat for his keys, finds the right one and goes to unlock his door when, part of the door disappears and a head pops through, kind of like that old John Cena meme that everybody green screened into other memes. It looks like a woman but if you know the story, it's not a woman, it's Jacob Marley's ghost. I'm going to take a minute to talk about the editing and effects here because even though they're terrible, they're impressive.

This is a 1901 film, the careful and precise editing that would have gone into this one short scene would have been immense. It would have taken a lot of time, patience and skill and honestly, even though it looks cheap, it looks good. Obviously it's nothing on today's editing and effects and stuff but for it's time period, it's not half bad.

Back to the story. Marley's face seems to spook Scrooge enough that he does the classic "hold your arms out in front of you and scream because you're scared" move and then the face disappears.  Scrooge slowly goes up to his door and touches the knocker, relieved that he was only hallucinating what he had just gone through. He still backs his way into his house in an overly dramatic way but wouldn't you?

Scrooge then walks into a room that looks like a living room and seems afraid of the door separator. I don't know why, I don't even know if it is a door separator. Either way, Scrooge manages to get his jacket off and put it on the chair behind him. He takes his hat off too, puts that on a table or shelf, whichever it is and turns around to once again get scared by something, only to then continue with his routine. It looks like he's being pestered by a ghost as he picks up his dressing gown but it also kind of looks like he's just jumping at everything too. Both would be understandable, I'd be jumpy as hell if I saw my dead friends face on my door.

He finally gets his gown and night cap on, goes to his window, gets scared at absolutely nothing (unless it was snowing, that's a whole other story) and closes his curtains. On his way to his table, he seems to hear a noise, he looks at where it came from and thinks "ah fuck it" and sits at his table anyway. He eats a couple of spoonfuls of whatever it is in the bowl that was already on the table, stretches and yawns, puts his elbow on the table, his head in his hand and goes to sleep. This is Ebeneezer Scrooge right? Not a millennial teenager?

Marley comes out of the curtain with a white sheet draped over him to represent he's a ghost, 'cause how else are you gonna do that in this time period? He then points at him, Scrooge waves his arms back and Marley retreats into the table to show Scrooge some of his childhood Christmasses.

The first is, I think, Scrooge and his mother. They seem to be preparing the table for dinner. While this scene is layered over Scrooge and Marley, you can see Scrooges reaction to seeing this. He grabs his chest, and looks away, he then looks back and points at the scene before him in disbelief. As young Scrooge and the woman walk away, present day Scrooge can be seen holding his head in his hand in sadness.

The next scene shown is Scrooge meeting Belle, talking with her, falling in love with her and her leaving him. Not much is done to show why she leaves but this is a 6 minute film from the 1900's so you take what you can. While this is playing, Scrooge is absolutely hamming it up with his performance, it's beautiful to watch. He's screaming with his arms wide open and not looking at the scene playing out in front of him but he can't help but look at it. It's great. He even collapses to his knees facing away from the scene, that's how emotional he gets. As he does this, Marley's ghost walks over to the curtains. No attempt made at comforting his old friend, just a wave and a fade away, leaving Scrooge to throw open his curtain in search of his ghost pal.

Then, there is another title card. Scene III Visions of  Christmas Present Bob Cratchitt and Fred drink "To Mister Scrooge!" In this scene, a family is fussing around a table with a sign hanging above them. On that sign is the iconic phrase "God bless us, every one". The sign looks like it came from a church which...honestly I don't know how to feel about that. If it is from a church then it shows the family as the religious type which is fine, but if that's the case, why is it in their house? Is it stolen? Was it gifted to them? I'm never even going to get an answer, why bother even asking?

A young woman enters from the left side of the screen and is immediately ambushed by everyone at the table for hugs, a fairly normal christmas tradition. Everyone then starts bussling around to either sit or get food on the table when Cratchit gets home. He is welcomed with love and someone popping out from under the table...another classic Christmas move? Bob then goes over to greet his young son, Tiny Tim, and picks him up looking like he's about to launch him across the room, (it's down to where I paused it not an actual point in the story.) Instead he carries him over to the head of the table, sits him down and goes to carve the food.

The ghost of Marley and Scrooge are faded into the corner of the screen while Scrooge continues his chest grabbing, although this time it's in disbelief. "Me? The toast of dinner? My goodness I just can't believe it." This sort of acting is my favourite. These days, it wouldn't fly, nobody would have it. At best you'd be called an amateur and at worst you'd be called a terrible actor adn to never grace the stage or screen again. But looking at it for the time period, it's not bad, even if it is a little hammy. Scrooge is just loving his moment, being the toast of the dinner...even though he isn't really there.

After Scrooge looking like he's thanked God for this, we're swept away into the next scene, at his nephew Fred's house, where there is another sign which says "A Merry Xmas" which...was Xmas a thing back then? Honestly I thought it was a recent thing in dealing with cultural sensitivity around Christmas and it's apparent prominence over other religious holidays that take place at the same time. Maybe there was a specific sensitivity at the time or maybe sign makers just got lazy, I don't know.

In Fred's house, they start their toast to Scrooge at the same time he and Marley's ghost pop onto the screen, almost as if it was meant to look like an accident, Fred and the others at the table do the world's fastest toast, Scrooge and Marley fade out and that's the scene. Apparently Fred didn't deserve as much screen time as Bob.

Next comes the best part of any version of A Christmas Carol adaptation, "Scene IV  The Christmas That Might Be Marley's ghost shows Scrooge his own Grave and the death of 'Tiny Tim.'" Could have given us a spoiler warning pal, some of us haven't read the book. That weird white body thing is also floating around in the background of this title card again which is weird because it wasn't there for the last one. The scene itself opens up with a man walking across Scrooges grave, which is engraved with just his name. The man is then followed by Marley's ghost who is finding the need for that sheet in the cold wintery snowy graveyard. Scrooge walks onto the screen begging and praying and falling to his knees in anguish, he begins to cry and then the film ends.

This is the longest version I could find and apparently it must have been longer but for whatever reason, the rest is no longer available. It's quite a nice film and for the time period, it's really good. Even without speech you can follow the story which is fairly simple. Honestly, if you think you've seen all the incarnations of A Christmas Carol, you probably haven't because you probably didn't know this one existed. I'll leave a link so you can watch it and be amazed at the earliest known version of A Christmas Carol on film.

Scrooge (Or Marley's Ghost)

Anyway, that's it for today. Enjoy your day, peace and love to you all and may God bless us, every one.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

Deck The Halls

Matthew Broderick sucks but this movie doesn't.

Director: John Whitesell
Writers: Chris Ord
                Matt Corman
                Don Rhymer
Run time: 1hr 30minutes

Plot: The Finch family get some new neighbours who Steve (Matthew Broderick) sees as a threat to his perfect Christmas plans, especially when Buddy (Danny DeVito) decides he wants to be recognised for something.

Did you ever watch the live action version of How The Grinch Stole Christmas? Of course you have, for some reason that one is a classic staple of everyone's Christmas movie list, that's beside the point. Do you remember the scene where Martha May Whovier (Christine Baranski) is absolutely just one-upping Betty Lou Who (Molly Shannon)'s Christmas lights? So did the writers of this film. They remembered how truly hilarious that scene was, wrote a script around the idea and thought that this hilarity should be fronted by Matthew Broderick and Danny DeVito. Now I'm not a huge fan of Broderick, he's just boring to watch and hi voice does my head in, and I've got nothing against Danny DeVito, I'm just not a fan of his stuff, but this film actually isn't all that bad. If I'm flicking through the channels and I see it, I put it on. It's a fun little film, even if it is full of problems. What are the problems I don't hear you ask? I'm gonna tell you.

First problem, and it's a big one. There is only one person that cares about what's going on, and he's made out to be a complete dick, that guy, is Broderick. The film acts like he's being unreasonable about all these lights being shone at all hours but...he's not. He's an eye doctor, that shit's important, and if you blind your town's eye doctor 'cause you want to be seen from space, then who's the real loser here? Also, if you're constantly blasting out shit loads of light, you can damage people's sleep cycles, you can really mess with the birds and other night animals which is just fucking selfish, Personally, I don't care if you mess with other peoples sleep cycles (unless they're the few people I love in my life, obviously), but if you fuck up an animals sleep cycle, you're in the bad books kidda. I hate to say this, but I'm definitely on Brodericks side with this, don't be fucking obnoxious in the pursuit of someone elses dream.

Another problem, some of the humour just falls flat, it's either predictable or jokes don't land like, for example; the Finch's young son, Carter (Dylan Blue) is looking at an almost naked painting of Tia Hall (Kristin Chenoweth) from back when she was a model for live painting. Tia says something along the lines of "I was just so sick of dating boys" then waves her hand at Carter saying "no offence". I get that it's supposed to be a cute little joke but...it's not funny. There's another joke where the daughters from both families are doing a performance at the winter festival, a la Mean Girls, and Broderick and DeVito are just catcalling their daughters, shouting "Who's your daddy" at them. They turn around and of course the joke is the guys are their daddies. Hahahaha catcalling your daughter is hilarious. Comedy gold people, comedy gold.

Also, DeVito's character Buddy, what a stupid name by the way, is a complete dick. I really hate this kind of character in live action films, in animation it doesn't bother me as much because it's not as tied to reality, you don't see Mickey Mouse providing for a family and paying the mortgage do you? No, 'cause he's gotta teach those kids morals, so the follow your dream narrative is fine in a cartoon because it encourages kids to follow their passions and set kids up for the fall into the abyss that is adulthood. In a live action comedy, targeted mostly towards adults, this sort of behaviour doesn't fly. He decides that his family can survive off the attention the fairy lights are getting him, he gives up his job and does increasingly stupid things to spite his neighbour. It's a wonder his wife even went back to him after he pawned one of her most treasured posessions. If my boyfriend sold off one of my mum's rings, my dad's chain or hell, even got rid of little Ted, he'd be gone forever. Wouldn't have it, and Tia shouldn't have stuck around when he sold off her grandmothers vase. Maybe I'm just a bitch and won't take any shit from anyone but, that's just me, I couldn't forgive something like that, maybe she could with the spirit of Christmas in her heart and such.

Onto the good stuff now, the title is hilarious to me. Deck The Halls? Let me explain if you're not seeing what I think is so funny. There's the obvious meaning behind it, deck the halls, decorating the houses, the main characters are called the Halls, it's cute. What's cracking me up is the fact that "deck" is a word used for multiple things; wooden patio, a part of a boat, knocking someone out. Yeah, not in keeping with the Christmas spirit but in at least the North of England it means to knock someone out. So Deck the Hall's makes a pretty funny title considering all Steve wants to do is knock them out. I find it funny.

Another good thing is that it's not too full on with the message of Christmas which, y'know, it's not suble by any means, but it's nicely slid in there. It gets a little bit too tedious when Christmas films try to shove the message down your throat, when you can do that yourself at Christmas dinner. It's just a good thing.

The rest of...everything is pretty pedestrian, typical "neighbours at war" story but with a Christmas message. It's a good film though, I know I've not sung its praises or anything spectacular but that's because the film itself isn't anything spectacular. Should give it a watch though, it's on Netflix for the Christmas season which...is very short at this point, however you should still watch it, if you've not already.

Anyway, peace out, stay warm, stay hydrated, see you soon.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

Scrooged

A more cynical telling of A Christmas Carol

Director: Richard Donner
Writers: Mitch Glazer
                Michael O'Donoghue
Runtime: 1hr 41 minutes

Plot: A TV Exec, who lives a parrallelI(ish) life to Ebenezer Scrooge, goes through a similar experience with the three ghosts.

I really like this movie. It's dark, it's funny, it's Bill Murray, it's a Dickens classic all dressed up for the modern world, it's just good. I don't know how else to praise it except for going into it so...here we go.

Let's get the bad out of the way first. There is a moment towards the end of the Ghost Of Christmas Present segment, where Frank (Murray) has come back after his experience with the Ghost of Christmas Past and is on his way down to see how the rehearsals are going for his show. This isn't just any rehearsal mind, it's the final dress rehearsal for a live TV performance. That's a stressful rehearsal, it's got to be perfect so that the people behind the scenes can feel comfortable that what they're putting out there is good. Now then, before Frank comes into the scene, we see how the rehearsal starts off. First with the words "Last dress rehearsal guys", then with the man playing Scrooge getting stuck on one of his lines and breaking character. BIG ol' no no. Don't do that in your last dress rehearsal. What happens after this? The cast is rewarded with an hours lunch. When this happened I just paused the film for a moment and thought "is this real life?" Is this really what writers think final dress rehearsals are? You fuck up a line and you get an hours break? No honey. In my experience with final dress rehearsals (I've not done any for TV but I've done for stage), you get your lunch when the final rehearsal is done. You mess up a line, you carry the hell on, you don't get lunch 'til your final run through is done. I don't know if they did things like this in the 80's but...I don't know, it just sounds weird to be that laid back.

Looking back on my notes, that's the only negative thing I wrote down worth making a point of, the rest are just easy jokes and aren't even that bad.

With that said, onto the good stuff, which amazingly, also has very few notes.

First good thing, the transitions between Frank and the ghosts in wherever they are and then Frank back in the real world are really good. They flow really well with the final moment of the previous scene and the start of the current one which...transitions should do really, but here they're almost flawless. Almost, because nothing is perfect, even in 80's Christmas.

Another cool thing is that the names aren't the same as the classic characters and I can think of two immediate reasons why. One, because in this universe, the story of A Christmas Carol already exists, it'd be a little too obvious to have your main character, who loves an almsot parrallel life to Scrooge, be named something similar. It's just easier to go with the classic Frank than...Edward or something. The other reason, so that you can separate this version from A Christmas Carol. Don't get me wrong, this is still a variation of the classic story, however, it's a very cynical version of the story and, honestly, I don't know how dark the original material is but everyone sees this as a warm story in which a man sees the error of his ways and comes to love Christmas as a time for Joy. This film kind of goes the same route, just not as family friendly, even with Bill Murray leading it. There are sex jokes, there are jokes about the temper of the Ghost of Christmas Present, there's a man holding a gun on an entire room to help Frank reinforce the ideals of Christmas. It's great.

Finally, I want to talk about the ghosts. They're not the classic versions of themselves and that's good, helps the film get more of its own identity rather than someone just going "oh the past ghost is a calm and patient being" "oh the present ghost is someone who just adores christmas" "well well well would ya look at that, the Ghost of Christmas future is dressed like death". The ghosts in this film seem to reflect Frank's experiences with people in the time periods he sees them in.

The first ghost, the Ghost of Christmas Past (David Johansen) is a very rough, New York taxi driver, in a reflection of his childhood and his father. His father was a dick and if you disregard the jokes about a 4 year old being unable to get a job...

Franks mother: Earl, he's only 4 years old
Franks father: All day long, I listen to people give excuses why they can't work. "My back hurts" "my legs ache" "I'm only 4"

This guy's a real dick, just how many people would see a New York taxi driver, looking the way he does, that's what you assume of him.

The next ghost, the Ghost of Christmas Present is hilarious in her representation. She represents the idea of Christmas hitting you in the face with it's happiness and love and joy and I know that happiness and joy are basically the same thing but she's just double happy. I wrote down in my notes that she was the "Ghost of Christmas abuse" which...really, Christmas is pretty abusive. Don't get me wrong, I was listening to Jingle Bell Rock back in August, I love Christmas, but the second it turns 00:00 on November first, Christmas is everywhere it gets fucking exhausting. There's just so much of it everywhere and it can feel like if you try to escape it, you get a slap from all the decorations or marketing people.

Finally, there's the ghost of Christmas Future. There's a scene after Frank gets dropped by the Ghost of Christmas Present and he almost immediately sees the costume of the Ghost of Christmas Future for the live show and has a bit of a breakdown, more than he already is. Which then transitions into him going into the elevator and coming across the actual ghost, who is dressed in a similar way. The costuming looks cheap but I promise it isn't. It's actually pretty clever, he's literally just seen something that scared him and because the future is uncertain, and the Ghost of Christmas Future is generally ambiguous due to the fact of it being uncertain. This being took the form that scared him the most and decided to take that form and run with it, scare the hell out of him and do what needs to be done.

That last paragraph felt like it should have been in an English exam, wow. Anyway, I really like this film, it's funny enough and dark enough for me to want to watch it again, probably if nothing else is on or if I'm just lounging about and bored. That does happen a lot though. So I'll probably watch this a lot over the next week or so.

Anyway, that's it for today, should get on it, it's on Netflix for now, I guess it will probably stop being on there after the Christmas period so go on. Peace out, stay hydrated kids. Have fun, love you. Bye.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

Hush

This is a fucking sick film!


Director: Mike Flanagan

Writers: Mike Flanagan

               Kate Siegal

Run time: 1hr 12minutes

Plot: A deaf woman finds herself trapped in her secluded home, fighting for her life with a manic trying to kill her.

Important issues first, there is a cute little cat in this film but don’t you worry, it’s ok, it survives to the end so if you watch this film after you’ve read this review then you won’t have a mini heart attack. With that out of the way, let’s get to the other important thing here, the film. Hush is in the critically acclaimed section of Netflix, and rightfully so, it’s pretty damn good and is the film that spawned my love for John Gallagher Jr. I may have mentioned before that I love this guy but I’m not sure, either way I love this guy. He’s a good actor and it sucks that he’s not in the mainstream eye all that much. Then again if he’s doing smaller films like this maybe it’s best he stays out of the big ol’ spotlight. Besides the point. The point is, this is a great film and I’m gonna tell you why.

It’s an almost silent film. How can nobody appreciate that? It’s rare as hell, in fact the only thing I’ve seen lately that’s a quiet / silent film and that’s the upcoming Emily Blunt and John Kraninski film (name of movie here). The only thing you can hear in this is Maddie’s (Kate Siegel) breath, the sounds being made around the house and John Gallagher Jr talking every now and then. The almost absence of sound absolutely draws you in. You’re listening out for Maddie as if you could help her and tell her where this psycho is. You’re listening out for everything for her because...honestly there’s no boring dialogue to sit through, no overly talked out exposition giving us the characters backstory, their grandmothers backstory and a random rocks ancestry. It’s a nice break. Genuinely.

Another pretty cool thing to do with this film was to make the main character deaf. Everybody’s always talking about representation for everybody and this is a damn good representation of a woman who will not be held back by her inability to speak or hear. There are some crazy things this girl does which is dumb but I won’t hold it against her because she’s a fucking badass. At one point guys, she’s been shot in the leg with an arrow and she carries the fuck on. Later on in the film she dips into her hole in her leg, gathers some blood on her finger and writes on the window, daring her tormentor to kill her, calling him a coward. If she’s not a character to look up to then I got no idea who is.

"The Man" is also the smartest killer I've seen in a long time in film. At one point, Maddie writes on her window that she won't tell the police because she didn't see his face. So what does he do? He takes his mask off and tells her that he's going to mentally torture her until he can be bothered killing her. I love it. And his motives are never explained which is the best thing about the character. It's scarier to leave things to the imagination. It's scarier to believe that he's just doing it because he can, not because he had a messed up childhood or whatever it is that films blame the development of murderers on.

Finally, and this is my absolute favourite thing about the film is that it's so realistic. You know how in horror films, if you've seen enough of them, you're complaining that the characters are always doing the exact wrong thing so that they don't get caught? Well in this, Maddie thinks through her options, she tries her best to work out the best way to get herself out of the situation. There are a few things that do mean she's following the ways of the normal horror films, however, she still manages to come out the better horror heroine.

As much as I've had to say praising this film, it does have its drawbacks which, thankfully, there aren't many of.

First of all, the acting in this film is fantastic, I love it...from almost everybody. Emma Graves who plays Maddie's sister, Max is terrible. She's just so wooden in this and it's almost like she just doesn't care because her role is filmed over a webcam rather than right in front of the cameras. I don't know if this was her first film or not but hopefully, if she's been in anything else she's gotten better.

Another thing that goes against the film is just general things such as getting shot in the leg with an arrow and bending your legs back to lie down. Then taking the arrow out of your leg while it's bent. Problem 1 with this, you probably wouldn't bend like that if you had just been cross-bowed in the thigh. Problem 2, common sense dictates there is more risk pulling out the arrow than keeping it in your leg, you could rip an artery leading to a faster death, you could make the injury worse, if there was poison on the tip you could risk moving it around your system faster than you would just keeping the damned thing in your leg. Problem 3, if you do decide to take out the arrow, don't take it out while your leg is bent in a way that would push all your blood out.

Finally, there's a moment where Maddie tries to get the cat to come to her by rattling the cats food. Fair enough right? My cat comes bounding out of nowhere if he even hears me go to the kitchen. Problem being she continually moves away from the cats eating place and from what I've seen in cats, they hear their food they go to where their food usually is. They won't play "find the dish" they'll sit there yelling at you like a petulant toddler until they get their food. So in Maddie wandering about, she could be losing the cat easily.

The absolute worst thing about the film, however, is that Maddie names her cat Bitch. Poor baby, although I suppose it's a better name than Shits (The real name of the cat my friend used to have until she recently passed away. The cat not the friend.)

Anyway, that's it for today. This film is pretty fucking cool and I love it and you should watch it and love it too. Pretty much everything works in the films advantage and it's just so tense to watch this deaf woman with basically no sensory or physical advantage take on a maniac who is just determined to kill her. It's a great watch and it's back up on Netflix in the Critically Acclaimed section so you go ahead and watch it. Stay hydrated and have a lovely day. Peace out.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

What do we know about the Fantastic Beasts Sequel?

It's officially out there, Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them has its sequel release date and a name and people into Harry Potter are going crazy for it, myself included. I'm already planning to get the 16th of November next year off from whatever I'm doing that day to go to the cinema and watch the hell out of it.

So what do we know?

We know it's not about the animals, the first one wasn't about the animals and that was quite upsetting, but this time it seems to be a lot more about the OG dark wizard, Grindelwald, played disappointingly by Johnny Depp. Hopefully, Depp can step his game up because from what I've seen him do in recent years in regards to his acting, he's not 100% been giving his all. If he does step it up then this is going to be interesting as hell because who wouldn't want to know about this guy in a film titled Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald.

We know who's going to be playing young Dumbledore and that honour goes to Jude Law who I've not seen in a lot of things so I can't really comment on the acting ability for this role. However, he definitely looks the part and if his looks are anything to go by for his ability to play Dumbledore then he's gonna be fine.

Eddie Redmayne along with Katherine Waterson, Alison Sudol and Dan Fogler will return as their respective roles which is awesome because even though I adore Eddie Redmayne and he can do no wrong in my eyes (as an actor obviously) Dan Fogler and Alison Sudol as Jacob and Queenie are the cutest couple in current cinema and I'm so happy they're coming back so we can watch their relationship grow. (Hopefully). All I want now is for Colin Firth to come back and we got a good wholesome team.

All I've wanted since I first finished watching Fantastic Beasts, is for Ezra Miller to come back as Credence Barebone and honestly, even though the characters death looked fairly...final, I could see a way for him to come back. And it looks like he will come back. Yeah, according to an article by BookBub at least. If this is true I may cry. I loved Credence as a fairly developed character for how little screen time he got and I absolutely fell in love with Ezra Miller portraying the character.

Of course, there will be some little acknowledgements to the original Harry Potter films, this story predates that one so some "historical" things mentioned in the Potter series will possibly be part of the storyline or any future storyline. It'll be cool to find out some stuff in more detail, even if it's just more evidence that Dumbledore is a terrible, terrible character who shouldn't be admired in the slightest.

There were originally only 3 films planned for this series but now it looks to be 5 which...you know is great, and would be fantastic if the films were named in relation to the plot or if the plot had anything to do with the title. It seems to me that the Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them will definitely be more focused on the relationship between Dumbledore and Grindelwald but, why? My guess is that there was a plan to have it be mostly centred around Newt Scamander and him finding these animals and trying to work them out and being all over adorable. But it's now not, and I get that the story of Grindelwald is way more interesting but it's one of those things, can't change the name now can you? No, you're stuck with finding beasts and trying to make it a metaphor for finding the beasts in your life and battling them. I'm onto you Warner Brothers, I see what's going on.

We now also know that this won't be a direct follow on from the previous film as J.K. Rowling has already confirmed on Twitter. We know it won't jump as far as 1945 because we all know that's when Dumbledore finally defeats Grindelwald so unless I was wrong about the title of the series and the plot not matching up then we can safely assume it'll take place way before that date.

The film won't just be set in America either, in fact it will jump around from London to Paris to possibly anywhere else in the world which will be cool. I mean, seeing other magical communities? Seeing which countries may or may not have them like England does? I just hope they're careful with it because too much jumping around leads to exhaustion and nobody wants to be exhausted watching a film.

Anyway, if I get more information on this I might do another post, I mean, it's fresh information and new things will be coming out pretty fast. Either way, I'm so super excited for the information we have now, the new information to come and obviously to binge watch everything again before going to see this about 40 times at the cinema. So cast aguamenti and stay hydrated kids, peace out.

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut.

I like this.

Director: Trey Parker
Writers: Trey Parker
                Matt Stone 
                Pam Bradley
Runtime: 1hr 21minutes

Plot: The residents of South Park blame a Canadian R-rated film for their children using foul language. The children shouldn't have been admitted to the R-rated film but it's easier to blame Canada than the actual problem. 

What can I even say about this? I mean, it's South Park and it's a film. There are good points and bad points and what the hell points and we're gonna talk about them today.

I'm gonna get the bad out of the way because...there's honestly not that much bad stuff in this really. First off, the animation sucks. I've said this to people before that I couldn't get into South Park for so long because the animation just sucked and it was nothing but, for lack of a better word, shit and unfunny jokes. The film does have terrible animation, both the 2D and CGI does look pretty terrible, over time it has improved, I mean this film came out in 1999 (alongside the absolute masterpiece Wild Wild West) so...the animation wasn't gonna be the best but I'm still not a fan.

That's it, no more negativity here, moving on to the what the hell stuff and there's so much "what the hell" in this. First off, there's a scene where Kenny is getting some sort of medical help after lighting himself on fire, the George Clooney Doctor (formerly George Clooney as Stan's gay dog) goes to put Kenny's heart in the microwave and there's already a spud in there which...is funny but why the hell is there a microwave in an operating theatre, why was there an uncooked spud in it? I dunno, just kinda messes with me. Another thing is the amount of fucks this film gives. Don't get me wrong, I love swearing, it's probably my favourite past time, love it, love all swears and apparently so does this film with 146 fucks given. Yeah, 146. I couldn't do that in a day...maybe 130 if I get up early but my lazy ass ain't gonna do that.

Finally, for a "what the hell" thing, you find yourself strangely rooting for Satan...not that plenty of people already do these days. Can you say Tories are still in power? Grim. But yeah, Satan is clearly in a relationship with Sadam Hussein that's definitely one sided and you just want him to get out. You root for Satan to get his ass out of this abusive relationship and it's just such a weird position to be in but...depending on each individual person's perspective of what they see in that, can probably speak volumes about the kind of person they are. If they think Satan should stay with Sadam who is just using him for his own gain because it's Satan and Satan's evil, get that person out ya life. (Don't listen to me, I'm not an authority figure on this subject.)

And now for the good stuff. The whole story and message in it is just great. If your kid manages to sneak into an R rated film that they're too young to see and picks up some language that you don't want them speaking, take it up with the cinema, or the kids or whatever. Do not blame the film makers because...it's not their job to protect your kids and stop them seeing films that weren't intended for them anyway. In an extreme situation like in this film, it could start a war. I like it because...it's so obvious and yet people don't think to blame the place where these kids saw these films, they blame the people who made it which is just so dumb.

This is also a musical which I love, I don't know why they decided to make this a musical and some of the songs are a bit bleh but that doesn't really take anything away from they story or the viewing experience or anything like that so it's all good. In fact, a couple of my favourite songs from this are Blame Canada (Academy Award nominated by the way), It's easy m'kay, and La Resistance. Also, while I was looking up the titles for these songs, I found out RuPaul sang Super which...I never would have guessed y'know?

Alright well...that's it, I wrote it longer before but I didn't save it and I just fucking suck so I'll just leave you with that because I don't remember what I wrote. I'm sorry. I will do better. Thank you for being patient. I'm gonna leave you with that and also a link to my absolute favourite scene in the film. Peace out, stay hydrated guys.



 Kick the baby 

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

Bernie

A weird "true story" film

Director: Richard Linklater

Writers: Skip Hollandsworth (Based on the article in Texas Monthly & Screenplay)

                Richard Linklater (Screenplay)

Runtime: 1hr 45minutes

Plot: The nicest man in town, befriends a widow (who's husband he performed the funeral of) and lives the high life with her until he kills her, it's not as malicious as it sounds.

Bernie (Jack Black) is such a sweet murderer that you really do feel for, and this isn't a work of fiction either. Granted some things in the film are probably the work of fiction, such as the little moment where a couple of teenagers are killed in a head on collision and some dude is in the background dressed as death and while it's funny, it may not have actually happened. The film is pretty funny, despite its dark content and is something I really recommend you watch, it's on Netflix right now but I don't know how long it's gonna be up there for. Why is it worth watching? Let's get into it?

First of all, that dude dressed as death that I mentioned before was hilarious, if that was something that carried through to the murder of Mrs Nugent (Shirly MacLaine) it could have gone down well, just have the guy walk past in the background or something and not really interact with the situation but then again, from what I read about the family of Mrs Nugent not being 100% on board with the portrayal of Bernie Tiede maybe it wouldn't go so well.

Another thing that I like about the film is just how precious Jack Black is as this guy, you literally would never think he could kill someone by shooting them 4 times in the back. Literally, every other note I made on this film was "bless this little nugget" and honestly...he's a precious little nugget. I can't find a problem with this guy as a character, he's a Christian who wanted to be an evangelist but decided to go into funeral directory's which is cool, could probably make good money being in that business considering what we paid for my mother, hell I should give up on this and go into that business. Besides the point, irrelevant. Bernie is also into musicals and Broadway shows and just into helping people in general and it's so cool. He does also have his negative points, like...he's an idiot. There's a moment in the film where Mrs Nugent asks Bernie for her pills before eating and he's like "what pills?" and...given the length of the amount of time these people have known each other (at least a few months) he would have remembered that she takes pills before eating y'know? Just a silly thing to put in there but...y'know.

Mrs Nugent, pre-death, is insanely relatable to me. She's a cold-hearted bitch who is tight with her money, has a tantrum over small disagreements citing that the person she's arguing with hates her, and she's very petty. For example, there's a moment where she's mad at Bernie for being late to pick up her dress from the dry-cleaners and they go to brunch and she chews her re-fried beans about 40 times just to irritate Bernie. That is a level of petty I would like to get to when I'm her age. Absolutely perfect.

Finally, I want to talk about Bernie's trial after murdering her. Everyone in town sticks up for Bernie, they all claim he was pushed to do it, he felt trapped and everyone had thought to kill her anyway, just give him a lighter sentence. All that fun stuff. Well, because of that, the trial had to be moved out of town because they most likely wouldn't have gotten a fair trial. Once that's been done and the trials on, Danny Buck (Matthew McConaughey) asks Bernie some stupid questions, trying to say that Bernie likes the finer things in life. Questions like "what wine would you say goes well with fish?" I'm pretty sure it's common knowledge that it's white wine that goes with fish right? I don't even drink wine and I know this, plus, I'm broke as hell, can't even afford to get myself a blue WKD to go with Asda's own Mac & Cheese (which is a great combo btw) so judging by that logic, I enjoy the finer things in life because...I know white wine goes with fish? Another thing to prove that Bernie likes the finer things in life is that he knows how to pronounce Les Miserables...let's go back a couple paragraphs. "Bernie is also into musicals and Broadway shows". Need I say more?

I honestly can't think of anything especially terrible about this film other than those little nitpicky things, it's not the worst thing I've ever seen but it's not the best. Jack Black is...Jack Black and what can you say about him other than he throws everything he has into everything he does and whether that's good or bad, it's something interesting to watch. That's it so as I said, you should go watch this film, it's pretty good. Peace out and stay hydrated.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

Annabelle

It's a possessed doll so of course it's scary.

Director: John R Leonetti
Writer: Gary Dauberman
Runtime: 99 Minutes

Plot: A young couple experience some supernatural shit after the daughter of their neighbours is taken in by a cult, kills her parents and tries to kill them, failing to do so she kills herself and possesses a doll, ultimately forcing the young woman to make a terrible choice.

It's a dumb film. There are so many points where you think it's gonna be cool and you're going to love what you've seen and then it just manages to go back and unravel what it's done. This was a terrible start to spooky month and I don't know why I didn't just watch Creepshow or something first. The acting isn't good, the scares are cheap, the creepy doll was creepy before it got possessed soooo....let's just get into this shit.

So first, the acting is crap. The actors are attractive enough to bring in an audience based on "oh he's so cute", "oh she's gorgeous" but outside of that, they have no chemistry, are more boring than the smell of wet cardboard and are putting way too much effort into whatever it is they're trying to do. I will say that the writing has a severe impact on the way that Ward Horton and Annabelle Wallis deliver their performances but damn, they tried too hard for this to sound like a real conversation but there is no way that could be possible. Own that cheesy-ness and you'll have a better movie.

Second, the characters make some dumb decisions. First John (Ward) buys a doll and says that they will be behind on the rent for a while which if you knew you would struggle financially once you bought that thing, why buy it? You have a baby on the way dude, don't make dumb financial decisions like this. Then, when Mia (Annabelle) decides she doesn't want the doll anymore due to everything that went down which, y'know, a crazy cult lady comes in and tries to kill you and your unborn baby, then dies holding that doll, you're not gonna want that thing anywhere near you. The problem with her wanting it gone is that John decides to just trash it. If that thing cost as much as he implied it did, I'd demand that shit got sold for his money back or at least a fraction of it. Maybe he wouldn't have had a lot of interest in it but...it's an apparently very rare item and will always have interest.

The scares in this film, as I mentioned before, are so cheap. Count how many times a door closes or there's a jump scare. I don't even mind jumpscares in a film, but I think it's just a little too easy to do to get a reaction from an audience. And personally, I don't think seeing a door open/close all by itself is even scary. We know this is a scary film, we know there's a demon or whatever so why does it constantly close doors? How is this scary? How does it build tension? It doesn't and it's stupid and it's gotta stop.

Finally I'm just gonna talk about the actual Annabelle doll and how this movie version are nothing like each other. The real doll is actually a Raggedy Ann doll and while I completely understand why they couldn't use a Raggedy Ann, why would the people behind that creation want their product to be involved in a series about demons and cults? I know I wouldn't. So faced with this problem, the design team needed to create something from scratch and they came up with something that was absolutely nothing like the original. This doll is already piss yourself scary and it makes a person wonder why anybody would buy it, whether it be in it's clean, new condition or whether it be the absolutely fucked version at the end. They could have at least made it look more...innocent.

I dunno, I can't really find anything that great in this, the only thing that really stands out is the basement scene in which Mia is trapped in some seemingly alternate dimension where she can't escape the basement and honestly, it's a pretty good scene. Builds tension nicely and gets you on the edge of your seat. Shame it's in this movie where literally everything else sucks.

But that's it, I know this is a fairly underwhelming start to spooky month, I was thinking about just posting my IT review to start it off but I just had to get it out there. I promise the rest of this month will be better and, enjoy spooky month pals. Peace out, stay hydrated and bye.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

IT 2017

Ya girl got a lil' spooked.

Director: Andy Muschietti

Writers: Chase Palmer (Screenplay)

                Cary Fukunaga (Screenplay)

                Gary Dauberman (Screenplay)

                Stephen King (Novel)

Runtime: 2hr 15minutes

Plot: A group of children is terrorized by a killer clown that only they can see while also dealing with problems at home and a fairly unhinged bully. The kids come together, calling themselves "the losers club"  in an effort to kill the clown.

DISCLAIMER: I haven't yet read the book, I will eventually when I have about 5 or so years to spare to get through that brick of a book. Don't hate me. I'm broke and constantly exhausted, I will get to it at some point I promise.

I don't know what to think of this film. I wasn't expecting much considering King adaptations are pretty hit and miss, especially with remakes *cough cough" Carrie was too pretty in the remake which made it totally unbelievable that she was the plain girl so despised as described in the book and the '76 film *cough cough*. But I went because...it's almost Halloween and I'm down for any attempt at filling in for Tim Curry and the trailers looked a little more hardcore than the mini-series. I wasn't expecting to see it with Ben considering he isn't the horror movie type. I wasn't expecting to be as spooked as I was. And I definitely wasn't expecting to not know how I feel after watching it. I still don't know how I feel after a few days after watching it so...maybe once I've written this out I will. Probably not but we'll find out, right? 'Kay, let's get to it.

First, we're gonna talk about the elephant in the room. Tim Curry as a cultural icon as Pennywise. Tim (to me at least) will always be the best Pennywise, it's just more believable that kids will want to go with him into the sewer and die rather than this genuinely freaky guy who occasionally looks like he's lost his memory and his eyes float in random directions. Kids have incredible intuition, they're not stupid, if they get a bad vibe from someone they're most likely going to combine that with "stranger danger" stories (I'm certain the 80's would have had them to a degree) and kids would stay away. Tim Curry is the better clown in the technical sense to lure kids in but...credit where it's due, Skarsgård is a scary clown. Just gotta pick your poison. (Tim is the best.) The film definitely didn't forget about Tim, and in a scene where Richie (Finn Wolfhard) is trapped in a room full of clown dolls, there's a Tim Curry Pennywise doll hidden in the back.

With that out of the way, let's get praising this thing. The tense scenes are done extremely well. There's a build-up where you know what's going to happen, a jump scare, but the way it's built up you can't exactly predict when it's going to happen and it waits until the exact moment you let your guard down, get you. Very effective. Especially in this one scene not fully shown in the trailers but...holy hell man, it is scary when that trailer scene carries on in the film.

Another good thing is character development and accurate representation of kids. The kids grew as they should have the way they should have and even though some (most) of the time it's on Bill (Jaeden Lieberher), Beverly (Sophia Lillis) and sometimes Richie, it works enough.



CGI. If you've been keeping up with what I write then you'll knowI'm not a huge fan of it. I feel like it's a cheap and lazy way to throw in jumpscares and I'll admit, you can do some things with practical effects some of it has to be done with computers. It looks pretty good in some places, hell in some places I got a bit scared of what was going on. There's a scene towards the end where IT is opening it's mouth and it looks so reminiscent of Geena Davis' scary head in Beetlejuice which I thought was pretty good and looks like there was a lot of hard work that went into this.

Now for the good stuff...The bad stuff...



Why doesn't this clown just take these kids out? I get that he likes to get the kids as scared as they possibly can be but...I think that scene with the projector woulda done it. Sunlight shouldn't have stopped this guy eating everything up. He just keeps fucking with these kids instead of just eating them. Also also, why did Pennywise attack Georgie? This kid was just a little scared because his brother made him the boat and thought he'd kill him. Did the clown fuck with Georgie for a while too or was he just that hungry? Man, I don't know. It's probably explained in the book.



Barely any time was dedicated to Mike (Chosen Jacobs), like...at all. There was this really interesting afterthought of him learning to work on the farm and get over not wanting to put a bolt through a sheeps head. Honestly, most of the focus was on Beverly and Bill and, while I'm not against it, I would have liked to see more of the kids. Go into why Richie was scared of clowns (I think?), I'd have loved to see more of Ben's life considering it just looks like he's getting bullied because...he's new and has no friends and he's fat I guess. There may have been an actual reason but I really don't get it. As I said before these kids did develop the way they should have considering the time given to them, it's just a shame that we don't get a lot of time with all of them.



Speaking of time actually, if most of these scary scenes where Pennywise is just terrorizing the kids for the sake of it, went on for another minute or so to properly get their reactions after the event. It feels like it cuts away just a little too quickly. If there was just this extra moment of calm down time it'd be great, better than what it is.



CGI time again. As I said earlier, some of the computer generated stuff looks good, but some of it looks like it was hashed out in half an hour for a creepypasta I mean...look at this.

What the fuck is that? Take a minute to absorb how terrible that is, go on, I don't mind. Take as long as you need. I'm aware it looks like a drawing but it isn't. I mean...that looks fucking terrible. CGI is canceled 'til you guys learn how to not make it look...like that. I mean it's not the worst in the world, I've seen worse I promise you, but you know, could have tried a little harder. I mean it is only on screen for like half a second but, people are law breakers these days, they film and take pictures in the cinema. This stuff gets out faster than it should.



Pennywise the dancing clown is also a fun little...thing. Whether it was meant to be scary or just silly I don't know but I saw a clip of it on Facebook a day or two before I saw the film and I thought "Wow...that can't be in the film, looks so stupid and looks so fake. Nah, that's not in there." And to mine and everybody else's pure joy, it was. God bless Hollywood. Why is it in my negative notes? Because it's dumb. Next.



Pennywise's movements while scary in a cool mechanical sort of sense in some scenes also looks fucking hilarious in others. Like when he runs and violently shakes his head and body, man that cracked me up. It looked so terrible. At first I thought it was just something in the trailers that looked a little weird but nope. That's his attack method sometimes and it looks so stupid it's hilarious.

The final thing about Pennywise, what's the reason for him going a little dead-eyed sometimes? Maybe it's in the book but it looks like he's having a senior moment every now and then. I suppose it comes with being an age-old evil entity but...I didn't get it.



That's it from me with this, I still don't know how I feel about it but I'll definitely go see it again and get a definite opinion. I love the miniseries and this was a good gory / less camp update on that but at the same time I don't know how into it I was. Not like my opinion matters. The only person's opinion who really matters on this is King's, and he apparently loved it so much he went back and saw it again. I would advise you go see this though, regardless of King's and my own opinions. Just don't see it if you're not down for almost cat murder and big ol' clowns.

Anyway, that's me done, peace out, stay hydrated and remember, we all float.



This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film please go and support its creators by buying tickets to go see it in cinemas / buying the DVD or Bluray when the time comes.

The Emoji Movie

The reviews are correct and God is dead.

Director: Tony Leondis
Writers: Tony Leondis (Screenplay & Story)
                Eric Siegel (Screenplay & Story)
                Mike White (Screenplay)
Runtime: 1hr 30 minutes

Plot: A "meh" emoji can make a lot more faces than just "meh", screws his job up by sending out the wrong emoji and has to get a "hacker" emoji to fix him as a just "meh" emoji so he won't get deleted.

I remember the good old days, the days where James Corden was a really good comedian and generally just a nice guy and Patrick Stewart was a dignified and respected actor. That all changed August 5th, 2017. The day myself and my boyfriend saw The Emoji Movie. That day, the sun stopped shining, the birds stopped singing and we saw a lot of good talent abused and misused, an hour and a half of our time slip through our fingers and £21.60 (plus what everyone else paid plus the cost of actually making this movie) get flushed down the toilet. I see nothing good in anything anymore. We can now prove, with the evidence provided that there was a God, there maybe much more but we definitely know there was one. This God(s) took care of us and looked after us and our world until it was taken away from us far too soon at the conceiving of this film. This God is dead, we have nothing to watch over us anymore. We live in a lawless wasteland now.

You might think that as dramatic but...if you do go to see The Emoji Movie y'all are gonna feel the same way, but to save you that trouble, I'm gonna tell you about the film, this...could be a long one because I need to get this out there, I cannot hold anything back when it comes to this...this thing.

This was a waste of talent, James Corden, TJ Miller, Anna Farris, Patrick Stewart, Steven Wright, Maya Rudolph, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Coolidge, Sofia Vergara, Rachael Ray. All of these people are in this film and honestly...they're all given parts that are perfect for them, except obviously Patrick Stewart as Poop. That's just fucking sad. But everyone else is given a decent role, the best voices for their roles are definitely Steven Wright and Jennifer Coolidge as mama and papa meh. Everything wrong with these voices in this film is to do with the script, they're not given anything good to work with. And it's a shame, it really is.

James Corden as high five is a dick head. Honestly, such a dick could have easily cut him out of the film and nothing would be missed, could have shaved a good 5 / 10 minutes off the film too. Don't get me wrong like, I love James Corden, he's so funny, he's a good actor, good singer, good guy and fuck, this character is I think supposed to be the comic relief but he's literally just on this ride to get himself put back on the favourite emoji list so he can be popular again and like...that's such a selfish character. I don't know why TJ Miller's "meh" and Anna Farris' "hacker" go and save him from the trash app which...does that even exist? I don't have it on my phone but I dunno, just seems a little convenient to the plot.

Speaking of apps, you know exactly where the funding for this film came from. It's literally up there on the screen and it's disgustingly obvious that this is product placement. It's worse than Asda with all the product placement. Literally. If I had to guess, the one company that definitely paid the most would be Dropbox, the amount of times that gets said is appalling.

The film has a scene in which high five takes meh to the "loser lounge" which is a room in which every unused emoji hangs out, and is a room that high five hangs out in too. Now then, that's either a severe fall from grace or this character is a little too over dramatic. That's beside the point, the emoji's that I remember being in there was an old lady emoji, a cactus, a tree, a...I think it was a fish cake with a colour on it, a graph and the eggplant emoji. I know that this is a kids film, but every single person in the world knows that the eggplant emoji, is not an unpopular emoji. And with this emoji being in a teenage boys phone...ya damn well know he's using that emoji and not for its eggplant-y purpose. Whatever an eggplant-y purpose is.

I almost forgot about the teenage boy in this film, he has a crush on this girl and he can't work out what emoji to send her because Quote: "Emoji's are the most important form of communication ever invented." And yes, that is a line from this movie. Someone took the time to sit there and think of that line, write it down and have it put through all the editing and drafts that came after it and allowed it to be in the film. That's what we're teaching to kids these days. Grim. But as I said, this kid has a crush on this girl and he's got to find the right emoji to send her to make her like him, but he can't seem to do it. He apparently just wants to send one emoji, when he could have sent a few in just one text. Or he could have typed out a message. Or spoken to her. Or written her a note. Or used smoke signals. This kid could have literally done anything and he chose to go with the singular emoji. This kid's an idiot.

Patrick Stewart plays Poop in this film. I said that earlier but...I just have to say it again. And he said about 5 or 6 of the 8 jokes based on toilet humour. I dunno if that's what a poop emoji's job is, I dunno how much Patrick Stewart was paid to do this. I don't know if he even was paid. Maybe there was a meeting where someone hired a private investigator to dig up something on him and they found some dark stuff and they brought him in and said "Yo, Sir Patrick Stewart, it seems  like you're a highly regarded actor, do you wanna be in the role of a lifetime?" and he would cautiously say "go on..." and they say "How would you like to play the poop emoji in our upcoming summer blockbuster The Emoji Movie?" and he would rightfully tell them to get bent but probably a lot more profane and they would say "Well, we tried to be nice about it but it seems like we're gonna have to do it the hard way, you see we found this in your past, it would be a terrible shame if it were to get out into the public and damage every single thing you've ever worked for in your entire life." And he had to do the movie. That's the only conceivable way I can see this actually happening.

There's a scene what everybody knows already and that's where the characters play Candy Crush, there's a moment where they can't get the meh emoji out of the game and they have the option to either combine him with a special yellow candy and get him sent to the candy jar or blow him up and they show what it would look like if he blew up. The animation on that few moments of screen time where they show this emoji blowing up and his yellow....I dunno is it insides? Do emoji's have insides? I dunno but whatever it was got blown up and onto high five and the hacker emoji and that's just fucking scary. I'm always down to scare kids because they're gonna need that later in life but don't fucking do it that way.

There are no actual jokes in this film, it's just puns. Puns based on the emojis. I'm sad there was no dick innuendo when it came to the eggplant emoji. I would have so forgiven it a little more just for that. There is nothing actually funny, at all, during this film. Actually no there is there's a moment where high five goes to click his fingers and hits himself in the eye. That was kinda funny. Outside of that..there was nothing.

This also such a rip off of Inside Out and you can see that Sony so desperately wants to be Pixar. They want to be Pixar soooooo badly that there was even a short at the beginning that was better than the actual feature. Granted the short was a Hotel Transylvania short which was honestly so good. And given Adam Sandler's reputation for just being poison and having his short be the highlight of the whole experience is amazing. Well done you Sony. Well done you.

The message in this film is just hammered the fuck in. You should always be yourself. I like you the way you are. There's nothing wrong with you. You're perfect the way you are. You shouldn't change yourself for others. There's a scene where high five is accidentally sent to the trash with the Just Dance app and there are internet trolls in there and they're bullying high five saying nobody's coming to save him and nobody loves him and stuff and when he gets saved he shouts at them "I have friends, I'm not upset, look how not upset I am, I am loved and you're not" and it's like...don't hammer it in more, you've beaten the dead horse to mush, replaced with a second dead horse and are beating it with a dead horse strapped to another dead horse. Stop it. We have had this message so much.

The weirdest thing about this film is how it's so cynical about its audience and...how much it praises its audience. There's a definite thing where someone who wrote this wanted this film to go one way and someone else wanted it to go another way. This was such a mess of a script in terms of direction. I don't know how else to explain it, this script definitely needed someone to look over it and tell the writers they have no fucking direction. It goes out of its way to not be relatable to anyone.

The only person who actually seemed to enjoy this film was this one woman in front of us, like literally the row in front and a seat to the left and she very obviously didn't get out of the house much. I mean, just bless her but she was cackling at nearly every single "joke" in this film, the kid that she came with was looking at her as if to say "mam, what the fuck, calm down and get yourself a life hun". I mean I'm glad she got some enjoyment out of it.

I don't know what the ultimately cringiest scene was in this film but there's an "Emoji Dance" which is horrific. I've done some embarrassing shit in my life which makes me cringe hard to this day but I've never cringed so hard until I saw this dance. I wanted so much to be a tortoise and just shove my head into my shell and never return. I felt every single hair on my body stand up and I felt my soul leave the Earth.  I've heard there's a 20-minute dance scene during the credits, I don't know if that's true or not because we just wanted to get the fuck out of there, you couldn't have paid us to sit through more of that. You couldn't pay me to sit through that again. No way sir.

The animation seemed a little lazy too, it was the sort of animation that had to always be moving and not stop to really take a breath. The character design was boring and unoriginal, granted the emoji character design couldn't change all that much because...they're already animated with designs set in place for them but when it came to the human characters, it's just very run of the mill generic. The worlds they visited were boring as hell too and looked like they could have had a creative boost. It just looked boring as fuck man. I just don't know what else I can say about it other than...it also looked a little ugly.

Finally, and this is the most tragic thing. Do you not find it suspicious that Chris Pratt and Anna Farris have split around the time of this film's release? I mean it probably has nothing to do with it but it just seems a little too coincidental. Personally, I think this film ended one of the best marriages in Hollywood.

Honestly, there were two positive things to come out of this film, the credits showing their face after what felt like a good couple years and the scene where they're in the Youtube app and there's a cute video of a kitten. You know the one where someone's tickling this precious baby's tummy and they come away and the kitten holds its arms up and it's one of the most famous and cutest kitten videos. Easily the best thing and an instant stress reliever for this movie.

This film is...not good, all I could do while watching it was just see myself smashing my head on the seat in front of me, I wanted Heath Ledgers Joker to come out, put a pencil in front of me and smash my head onto said pencil. I'm ashamed I spent money on this thing, I'm ashamed I sat through this thing, I'm jsut ashamed of this thing and I'm ashamed of every single person involved in its creation. This film....I have no idea what else to say about it. It's tragically terrible, and I loooooove bad films. I really do, but this one was really pushing it. I knew it was gonna be bad, hell I think everyone did, but we all at least thought it was gonna be bad in the sense it was gonna be just a boring, generic kids movie. Hell, I've read and watched some reviews where people have said they hoped it would be like The Lego Movie where it looked like a cash grab but also turned out to be good and they seem to be the ones who were the most disappointed.

My advice for this movie?

• Don't see it.
• Don't let your kids see it.
• Don't let anyone you know see it.
• If you have to see it as an adult get drunk and forget to see it.
• If you remember to go and see it get extra drunk and hopefully you'll forget you saw it.
• Do. Not. See. It. 

That's it, I can't write about this trash anymore, peace out, stay hydrated and go see a better movie. 

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film please go and support its creators by buying tickets to go see it in cinemas / buying the DVD or Bluray when the time comes.

47 Metres Down

Can we just...not?


Director: Johannes Roberts
Writers: Johannes Roberts
                Ernest Riera
Runtime: 1hr 30minutes

Plot: A girl is on holiday with her sister instead of her boyfriend because "he's working" when in reality they broke up because she's boring. When her sister finds out she takes her out and they meet a couple of guys who offer to take them cage diving with sharks. The chain breaks when they're inside and they end up 47 metres down in the ocean, trapped with vicious, evil, monstrous killing machines (sharks) and low oxygen. 

First off, Sorry I've not posted in a while, I'm trying to build up a backlog for when I'm back at uni and I'm not very good with time management to be able to write my ass off for posting and backlog, regular posting will be back soon I promise. Second, don't waste your money, your energy or your time on this film. It's not worth it, I promise. It's worse than Amy Schumer's latest film and boy is that some feat. Third, I blame Spielberg for this film being a possibility. Let's just get into it because I just wanna forget this thing.

So the other day, I was at Ben's and we were just having a fun day really, we were in Tesco's car park discussing what we were gonna do that night and considering we always go to the cinema, we decided to not break a habit and go to the cinema. He looked up what was being shown and he mentioned that, read out the plot and it sounded pretty good. I don't think it had great things written about it but what was written was just general trashy reviews for a bad film and...that's fine, we've seen enough crap and didn't think it was gonna be the worst thing ever. We went into Tesco, got food and a DVD which was incredible trash and I will write about it because it's just perfectly bad. We thought that was gonna be the worst of the two films. We were wrong. I genuinely cannot remember anything good except for this film ending so...this isn't really a review, more a "what's wrong with this" piece.

The first problem with the film, shark hating. I don't know if it's because I love sharks and think they're just great and stuff but...people seem to think that sharks, especially Great Whites are the most vicious and evil animals in the ocean that will just attack for no reason. They don't. Sharks are precious and beautiful and while they are great predators, they can't tell the difference between a human and it's natural prey. I'm not sure if there has been any record of a shark intentionally attacking a human out in open water.

Personally, I do blame Steven Spielberg for this, if it wasn't for Jaws instilling a true fear of sharks into people and creating this thing where people think sharks are the evil bosses of the ocean. There a way scarier things in the ocean, like Angler Fish. I thought one of them would have shown up at one point because there was this light not doing anything and it would have been cool to see one. There's the Giant Squid, a Sarcastic Fringehead (which is already a great title for a film) the list goes on. Can we do something different other than demonising sharks? Please?

The second problem with the film, the main character of the film doesn't follow her instincts when she sees the very small and ratty looking "business" of this shark cage diving thing. She doesn't trust her instincts when the little boat drives all the way out to nowhere, she doesn't trust her instincts when she sees the rusty ass boat. She doesn't trust her instincts when she sees these people chum (cut and ground fish) the water which is a dangerous thing to do as it can make the sharks associate food with humans, and she doesn't trust her instincts when she sees the size of the sharks (20ft) or the rusty ass cable. She doesn't trust her instincts which could have saved lives all for the sake of getting a few pictures to prove her (ex)boyfriend wrong about her being boring. I suppose being petty is worth the two lives that were taken.

The third problem, underwater physics don't apply in the world of cinema apparently.

Fourth problem, the main character in this is an idiot. If you know that you're trapped underwater with sharks and your leg is trapped under a rusty cage after having this cage land heavily on you and you're in excruciating pain, 1, don't try and get your leg out, it could be bleeding which will attract the attention of the sharks. 2, don't try and get your leg out, it could be bleeding and you might bleed out. 3, If you do try and get your leg out and it is bleeding and possibly broken, don't get out of the cage and swim. You may leave a blood trail and your injury will leave you moving slower and easy prey for a shark to come get you. 4, don't shoot yourself with a fucking spear gun. 5, if you're asked if you have any scuba experience and you lie about it then give off evidence that you don't know anything about scuba diving and the business owner still allows you to take part in the activity, don't do it. And finally, 6, don't go against every single piece of advice you're given in this situation, you're not gonna get anywhere acting like you know what you're doing in a life or death situation.

The fifth problem, there's a "fake out" when the main characters are given a second tank of oxygen and are told to keep an eye on each other in case they start to hallucinate. A shark takes the head off the main characters sisters body (sorry, spoiler there) and as soon as the main character takes her first hit off the new tank, her sister starts speaking to her, acting like the shark only got her leg. It looks like the sisters manage to make it out of the ocean and danger after a few sharks attempt to murder the both of them and when they're on the boat, bleeding, the main character looks at her hand which looks to be still bleeding but underwater. Normally, I'm not bothered about a fake out if it offers something about the story or characters but....this one doesn't. This is just there to pad out the runtime and make its audience angrier that it has to sit an extra five minutes to the end of the film. I think I heard a few groans from the people surrounding us and I completely understand them.

The sixth problem, this was a wasted potential of a film. It could have been really scary with its darkness and the fact it's 47 metres down in the ocean. This could have been extremely creative and very scary but it just relied on jump scares in the darkness and "ooooohhh no, sharks are evil bad guys, oooohhhh" which is dumb and make this extremely boring. Turns out, the film we watched earlier that day Zombiesaurus, hell we watched Cars 3 last week and even that was scarier than this.

Now I know this sounds extremely bias against the film and it is just my opinion here which...is great if you just want one person's opinion but because 1, I'd like to be backed up on this and 2, I saw how eager this guy was to get out of the cinema, I think it's fair that Ben gets a say in this one too. So I asked him to write a short paragraph basically giving his opinion on the film.

"47 Metres Down was a sickening waste of $5000000, although there are a few moments within the film which was tense and arguably entertaining, it does not overrule the sheer disappointment this film is. After watching this movie all the way through the only thing I came out with was the feeling of disappointment and an extensive knowledge of the bends. A few things which made no sense was the way that a Great White shark is able to rip through a metal diving cage like it was made of marshmallows but was unable to tear a single limb from the main character over the multiple times the shark attacks her."

Look at how professional my boy wrote that, gonna put me out of business.
Anyway, that's it from me peace out, stay hydrated and don't waste your money going to see this film, spend it wiser and buy yourself some water or something to eat. Treat yo' self.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film please go and support its creators by buying tickets to go see it in cinemas / buying the DVD or Bluray when the time comes.

Spider-man: Homecoming

Singularly the scariest Marvel film I've ever experienced.

Director: Jon Watts

Writers: Jonathan Goldstein (Screenplay and Screen Story)

               John Francis Daly (Screenplay and Screen Story)

               Jon Watts (Screenplay)

               Christopher Ford (Screenplay)

               Chris McKenna (Screenplay) 

               Erik Sommers (Screenplay)

               Stan Lee (Based on the comic)

               Steve Ditko (Based on the comic)

Runtime: 2hrs 13minutes

Plot: Peter Parker does his best to become an Avenger by going against Tony Stark's advice...

I'm gonna get this point out first. I'm sorry I didn't post the rest of my stuff this week. I didn't do that because I literally couldn't, I wrote everything up in a day and a night, I exhausted myself, I worked my fingers to the absolute bone and you wanna know what I did? My dumb ass didn't save shit so when it came time to post stuff, I had nothing to post. I suck. To make it up, I'm gonna write about the new Spiderman film even though I was planning on holding off on writing any Marvel film up because I wanted to wait for the series to end and then marathon it and just get it all out in one go. But oh well, here we go.

I'd also like to get this out of the way too, this is the scariest Marvel film I've seen. My heart fell right out of my arse about three times throughout the course of the film. It managed to find out what two of my biggest fears are, and threw them onto the screen for my dumb ass to sit through, I'm only glad I didn't see this in 3D or else it wouldn't have just been my heart that fell out of my arse. Do I wanna do spoilers? Nah, it'll be fine if I just talk about two scenes. The first scene that scared me: there's a scene where something happens an elevator and it falls, the cables break and this thing just starts to fall. Obviously, Spiderman (Tom Holland) saves the day, and I knew that was coming, but I did not breathe at all through that scene until everybody in that scene was safe. The second scene that scared the hell out of me was where this ferry gets split in half, I breathed a lot better during that scene but I swear that's scary as hell too if you're terrified of a Titanic disaster scenario. Finally, the reveal of the connection of Michael Keaton's Vulture villain to Peter Parker is very well done in terms of engaging the audience in a tense kind of fear. That fear where you think you heard a noise downstairs while you're in the shower but you're too scared to move because you don't wanna die but at the same time, you know there isn't shit to be scared of, it's probably the cat knocking something over. That kinda fear.

Speaking of Keaton, he is so damn good in this, I mean he is a great actor anyway and to have him go from a hero where he was hella perfect, to being a villain for the "rival" comic series is even better. He can be threatening, he can be kind, he can be relatable, his motivations are understandable and of course, he's fucking funny. I'm so happy he's getting work still, he's so good and I'm so glad his character doesn't get killed off, in fact, he even gets the after credits scene which is...not what I expected really. After credits scene is a different post altogether.

Putting praise on hold for a moment, I wanna complain about the Marvel opening credit which shouldn't be classed as a credit at this point, it should be just a scene all of its own. Seriously, Marvel, you take half an hour of my soul away with that long ass credit, your old one was fine, you know it's gonna get longer with the more films and characters you're adding. Quit while you're ahead. Please.

Back to praise, there are these weird short video thing where Captain America is doing these kinda PSA things which...are/were those a real thing? Like...they're very weird, borderline uncomfortable but the coach's reaction to them being "state required" to watch them and just not caring is great. Speaking of the coach, he's played by Hannibal Buress who...honestly if you put him in the right thing he's pretty funny. He's got a deadpan sort of comedy where it's almost like he doesn't care if you find him funny or not, which is cool but can come off wrong with the wrong script.

Uncle Ben doesn't make an appearance, you'd think he would considering his death is a big thing for Peter Parker's character development but...in this film, it's just kind of glossed over in a line said by Aunt May. Hell his name isn't even said, all May says is something along the lines of "you're going through a lot" which could possibly be in reference to him? I dunno. I didn't see Civil War so if it's brought up there then I guess it's covered for this film but y'know. I don't know whether I like that Uncle Ben isn't really...a thing in this, I guess Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr....took me 10 minutes of thinking "Bruce Willis" before I looked it up) takes on the "Uncle Ben" role...kinda...but he doesn't die and just issues some tough love for this kid just dicking about in an expensive and highly technical suit which is fair enough like.

What else is there? Oh right yeah Deadpool. So, if there's one thing I would like for Disney and Fox to sort out, is a Deadpool / Spider-man / Iron Man film. Think about it, Tom Holland as Spider-man is precious, he's just a precious little naive kid who's just getting used to his shit and is a geek in a school for geeks. Ryan Reynolds Deadpool is the cockiest thing living outside of the fourth wall. The story could be Peter Parker has a fall out with Stark and the rest of the Avengers and falls into the hands of Wade Wilson, shit happens, it's all fun and games, they fight villains and shit and then Stark comes in and just balls them both out for all the wanton destruction they've caused while Wade is just cracking jokes about the Iron Man suit and the rest of the Avengers and oh man. I know that this probably doesn't happen in the comics and may never come to light due to the fact that two different companies have rights to different characters but you know what, I can dream. It'd be kind of like a Cat In The Hat sort of thing except...not. I'm gonna end up rambling and I could do an entire post about it and my whole idea that would never get picked up, which I might do...hmm.

Anyway, that's it from me for today, this is a really fun film to watch even if it does kind of expect you to know about the character of Spiderman and stuff, but y'know what, I don't think it matters really for those who haven't read the comics or seen the previous films. It still does well and is fun to watch, even if it is scary as hell. Ok, I'm done, go see this movie peace out. 

Also if you're wondering why it's called Homecoming, it's because there's a Homecoming dance in it which has no relevance to the rest of the story other than containing a moment that's semi crucial to the plot but it still kinda doesn't matter.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film please go and support its creators by buying tickets to go see it in cinemas / buying the DVD or Bluray when the time comes.

Birdman (Or the unexpected virtue of ignorance)

What has to happen in a person's life for them to become a critic anyway?

Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Writers: Raymond Carver (Play)
                Alejandro Gonzláez Iñárritu 
                Armando Bo
                Alexander Dinerlaris Jr
                Nicolás Giacobone 
Runtime: 2hrs

Plot: An old comic book actor tries to make his mark on the stage but his past seems to bother him more and more.

A special request from May 21st that I just...did not get around to until the other week and then I had to do a buttload of research on too because this is just such an interesting and cool film. I'm sorry it's taken almost 2 months to get around to this Lewis, but...here it is.

First off, I wanna talk about the parallels between Michael Keaton's career as Batman and Riggan Thompson as Birdman. That sounds weird but as we know, Michael Keaton was Batman from 1989 to 1992 in the two Burton films. This film makes a lot of comparisons to the man and the character, for example at one point Riggan (Michael Keaton) is doing a press thing for his adaptation of Raymond Carver's short story What we talk about when we talk about love he mentions he hasn't played Birdman since 1992, just as when Keaton stopped being Batman. There's another moment where Riggan is talking to...I don't know whether to call it a mental health issue or just an over obsession with the character or maybe just an emotional connection based on nostalgia that he can't get rid of. But there's a scene where Riggan is talking to...whatever that is but in Birdman form and it's telling him he should do the third Birdman movie, which Riggan had rejected doing, just like Keaton had done in the past. There's a fair amount of other little things such as the design of the Birdman costume looks a hell of a lot like Batman's costume but...looks more like a bird with feathers than a leather outfit with a headpiece that restricts head movement. Both look hella cool tho.

Also, I love how much of an exaggeration of the reports that Edward Norton is a dick to work with had contributed to the character of Mike being such a pretentious dick of a method actor. Disclaimer: I have nothing against method actors, just this character being a dick with it.

I have a problem with how I went into this film being told and thinking that this was a "one-shot" film. Obviously, there would have been cuts and stuff for time and editing purposes and stuff but you see...it's not. There's a moment towards the end where the "one shot" thing just gets completely abandoned and it just kinda took me out of the whole film, I know that sounds stupid and I know that what I'm talking about is a "dream sequence" I guess, and it's near the end of the film but like...I dunno, you wanna advertise your film as a "one take" thing and then have a scene where you have multiple cuts? Seems a bit off to me. There were a few other obvious cuts such as a day to night thing but they at least made that look like time was passing and stuff.

There's a fair bit of critic bashing in this too, which I get because most of the time artists and their respective critics aren't always the best of friends, for example, Adam Sandler gets absolutely slammed for near enough every project he takes part in. Hotel Transylvania is and was a very funny comedy based on classic horror movie monsters with a message about love and letting go and stuff. Go look at the reviews for it, the poor guy got absolutely rinsed for it. The point is, this film took a look at critics, saw that some are just dicks who don't like anything and when they do they're probably bribed to write something good and it shows here. Quote: What has to happen in someone's life for them to become a critic anyway? Is a phrase said in this film and...I see where they're coming from when you see the mindset of the woman playing the critic. She thinks film actors aren't artists and for them to try and do stage work is an insult to theatre. In my wonderfully young, naive and unprofessional opinion, she's wrong as hell. Yes, theatre is an art form and to get a performance perfect and do it better night after night after night, one after the other is hard as hell. But once that play is done, it's done, the only record of it happening is playbills and reviews. Film is also an art form, and with film actors, there might not be pressure to get it perfect the first time but once that film is out in the public there's a hell of a lot of pressure to get that film seen to at least get the studio their money back. There's pressure on their public image, their career and so many other things. They do have to give a good performance but if that film doesn't do well then their career can take a hit and studio's may not want to give them a chance again. I don't think it's fair that some people don't think about this sort of thing because they should at least take it into consideration when comparing the two. For as much as I don't like some actors, it's nice to see they still get work and I'll always appreciate the work these people put in. (Unless you're Rob Schnieder, please find some other work to do, as long we don't see your face or hear your voice on screen again I'm happy, hell be a director or producer or something just...fuck man.)

I think that's all I've got to say about it, it's a good film, very good in fact. I don't know how I'd never seen it before, but I guess it's just a case of it being out there just waiting for people to watch it and if they're not gonna watch it they're not gonna watch it and that's fine, it really is, it's what freedom of choice is all about. Speaking of freedom of choice, go watch it if you liked what I said about it and have a good ass day guys.

(I'm very sorry to Lewis because this was so late)  If you wanna request something for me to look at then drop a comment here or hit me up on any contact method listed on my Contact info page and I'll put whatever it is on my list for next month, unless it's already on my list for this month but y'know.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.