You're gonna need therapy.
Directors: The Russo Brothers
Writers: Christopher Markus
Stephen McFeely
Plot: The Avengers team up with Spiderman, Dr Strange, The Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther and the people of Wakanda and others to stop Thanos from getting his hands on all six infinity stones.
This is a BRAVE film guys, for real, this is a brave film. It's taken 10 years of build up, multiple different tones and styles, in multiple different films that are all connected in one huge universe. It's the franchise that has inspired the DCEU, the Star Wars extended universe, the wildly unsuccessful Dark Universe from Warner Brothers. This is the culmination of a huge plan and honestly, while it causes severe emotional stress and heartbreak and anxiety and you WILL need a therapist after, it's a damn good film.
This film blends every single film together as best as it can, I say as best as it can because from what I've seen of the Avengers films and the Spiderman (link it here) film, the Guardians of the Galaxy films and Dr Strange, they all have their own very specific style and atmosphere. Avengers seems more grounded in reality with strong sci-fi influence, as does Spiderman. Guardians still has a strong sci-fi influence but instead of it being bound to Earth, it's out in the stars, battling aliens and having sick dance-offs and Dr Strange is easily one of the trippiest films based on a comic, at least that I have seen while being based in reality but also focusing on the mystical elements of life. To break it down it's like a Harry Potter fan, a Star Wars fan and a Die Hard fan all hung out together, there's a disconnect but these people have connected enough with good chemistry that it works itself out a bit better.
The film is also brave because of how many heart attacks it gave me and a good few other people watching it, and most of that is down to the death count, it's mostly down to the fake out's. While I promise not to put in any spoilers and you've managed to avoid spoilers this far but want an idea of the pain you're in for, then I can help you with that. I can give you a survivor count, I can give you a fake out count. That's all. Just numbers.
Fake out count: 4
Survivor count: 10
Also, if you're new to this series or came in closer to the end or somewhere in the middle and haven't gone back and watched it all (like me), you don't need to. The story is surprisingly easy to pick up for people who came in late or just now and that's honestly such a good quality to have in such a big crossover. While the story has been built up over the past 10 years, it's involvement has been intertwined in a lot of the stories but there is a lot of backstory and exposition to catch people up and be it's own separate thing, while also being a continuation of multiple stories. It's good to see as a lot of big build up films like this could easily just isolate new audiences but this doesn't and I love it.
Finally, most of the CGI suuuuuuuuuuuucks. Whenever Thanos is touching something or someone it does not look at all like someone is there and touching something, it's terrible. I hope there's a Deadpool 3 that can just focus on reading films for their trash CGI. Please. Or, just a thought, make it look a little more convincing, I know it's down to budget and time but if some films can do it, a film that's had 10 years to build its brand and following can do it.
Anyway, I know I'm late to this party but some people probably haven't seen this yet so I've kept this as spoiler free as I can. If you've not seen it and want to go, then go as soon as you can, it's definitely worth it. If not, I hope you enjoyed reading this anyway, if you want spoilers you may have to go look elsewhere.
That's it from me today, I hope you have a good day, peace out, stay hydrated and I am Groot.
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Thursday, 17 May 2018
Thursday, 16 November 2017
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.
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.
Thursday, 9 November 2017
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.
Sunday, 17 September 2017
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.
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.
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.
Tuesday, 8 August 2017
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?
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.
Monday, 31 July 2017
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.
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.
Saturday, 15 July 2017
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.
Tuesday, 11 July 2017
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.
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.
Monday, 3 July 2017
All Eyez On Me
1 of the 4 good films I've seen this year.
Director: Benny Boom
Writers: Jeremy Haft
Eddie Gonzalez
Steven Bagatourian
Runtime: 2hrs 19minutes
Plot: A biographical film about the life of rapper Tupac Shakur.
Finally, I got to see a good film, after the stream of shit I've gotten to see something good which is such a breath of fresh air. It's not a great film, I mean there are a few things that are a bit off and I don't mean in the "story", I know nothing of Tupac's life and the only thing I knew of his death (before seeing this) was that he was at a boxing fight that night and got shot in a car a few streets away. That was all I knew, so going into this I wanted to be a bit educated and just watch something about another human being who had a huge impact on the world. But like I said, the film itself has a few issues. I'll discuss those then I'll get back to talking about the good in this because there is a lot of good.
So the first thing that, almost took me out of the second half of the film was the framing in the first half. In the first half, Tupac is in prison due to the wrongful incarceration on charges of (I think) indecent touching and sexual assault? Correct me if I'm wrong, the film said he wasn't guilty of rape but he was guilty of something else which he got locked up for 18 months in a maximum security prison. Back to the point, he's in prison and is taking part in filming what seems to be a documentary and throughout the film, it keeps cutting from his past to talking to the guy filming and so when it gets to the point that the past catches up to the present, it makes you think that the film is almost over because, in my experience whenever a film's had a framing device like that, that's where the film ends. This felt like two films sort of sewn together, one was the filming of a documentary and looking back on Tupac's life, and the other was...a regular biopic with that important text at the end of it. Just a little confusing.
The next thing I want to talk about is just this one moment near the end of the film. Tupac got in a fight at the casino, went back up to his room, got changed, told his girlfriend he was going to the club and would be back in an hour and left. Once he left the room he stands outside the door, brooding, like a warrior who was going to war, knowing he was about to lose his life. I can 100% guarantee that is not how that moment went down, he obviously didn't know he was going to be the victim of another gun attack, he didn't know he was about to die. At the very most he was probably thinking "ah shit, might get in another scrap tonight" but he wouldn't fucking stand there like that. He'd have just left. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong if he did stand there contemplating life and death and all meaning on Earth for about 5 minutes and you back that up with some sort of evidence I'll gladly retract what I said but for now, I'm gonna say that inspirational bs didn't happen.
Finally, I want to talk about Snoop Dogg. Snoop was in the film, I know some of you who know all about Tupac and the people he was friends with are probably saying "duh you idiot, they collaborated and were friends how did you not know this you idiot" so like...one, I genuinely didn't know, I thought they would have just been separate entities in the music industry, two; I don't mean that someone was just playing Snoop Dogg in the film, I mean the guy did voice over work for the actor playing him. That's what I got the issue with. When the actor first opened his mouth, and Snoops voice came out I was blown away. This guy's the BEST impersonator, how did they swing that? Then as the film went on I just didn't feel it you know? I knew something was up and I wasn't sure. It was only on the way home that Ben said he'd noticed that at some points, the voice didn't match up with the actor's mouth so I googled it and it's dubbed. Why? Did the actor just look like a young Snoop but had such a horrid voice that he had to be dubbed? I dunno, there's just something about that that just kinda presses the wrong buttons with me.
So, onto the good. Learned a fair amount, like Shakur dated Madonna. Brave guy. He was in the Baltimore School For The Arts, I dunno why it surprised me but it did. Pretty much everything in this that wasn't the events leading up to his death was something cool that I learned.
I also loved the choice of actors, every single person cast in this looks like their real life counterparts, how do I know? I looked at side by side shots of the actors and real people. But for real, this was just so weird to look at yet you can definitely tell that whoever was in charge of casting was definitely not wanting to miscast anyone and in doing that, offend anyone.
Finally, there was no talk of conspiracy theories. No "Biggie killed Tupac" or anything like that. When Tupac was first attacked and shot, he believed Biggie to have been a part of it, and so we saw that through his eyes. There's no definite thing on who did that mentioned in the film and I think that's good, at least it portray's that in an unbiased and honest light. They could have gone down the route of showing the gunman's face for a very split second to be discovered on DVD when people look at it to overanalyse it. Hell for all I know that could be it but I don't think so.
So that's what I thought of that, everyone did a great job in making the film, except whoever decided on the framing device, that was dumb. Anyway, that's it for today. It'll be my birthday when this goes out so like, the best present would be shares and stuff on any of my posts. Up to you like. Anyway, peace out, love you's, see you tomorrow.
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.
Director: Benny Boom
Writers: Jeremy Haft
Eddie Gonzalez
Steven Bagatourian
Runtime: 2hrs 19minutes
Plot: A biographical film about the life of rapper Tupac Shakur.
Finally, I got to see a good film, after the stream of shit I've gotten to see something good which is such a breath of fresh air. It's not a great film, I mean there are a few things that are a bit off and I don't mean in the "story", I know nothing of Tupac's life and the only thing I knew of his death (before seeing this) was that he was at a boxing fight that night and got shot in a car a few streets away. That was all I knew, so going into this I wanted to be a bit educated and just watch something about another human being who had a huge impact on the world. But like I said, the film itself has a few issues. I'll discuss those then I'll get back to talking about the good in this because there is a lot of good.
So the first thing that, almost took me out of the second half of the film was the framing in the first half. In the first half, Tupac is in prison due to the wrongful incarceration on charges of (I think) indecent touching and sexual assault? Correct me if I'm wrong, the film said he wasn't guilty of rape but he was guilty of something else which he got locked up for 18 months in a maximum security prison. Back to the point, he's in prison and is taking part in filming what seems to be a documentary and throughout the film, it keeps cutting from his past to talking to the guy filming and so when it gets to the point that the past catches up to the present, it makes you think that the film is almost over because, in my experience whenever a film's had a framing device like that, that's where the film ends. This felt like two films sort of sewn together, one was the filming of a documentary and looking back on Tupac's life, and the other was...a regular biopic with that important text at the end of it. Just a little confusing.
The next thing I want to talk about is just this one moment near the end of the film. Tupac got in a fight at the casino, went back up to his room, got changed, told his girlfriend he was going to the club and would be back in an hour and left. Once he left the room he stands outside the door, brooding, like a warrior who was going to war, knowing he was about to lose his life. I can 100% guarantee that is not how that moment went down, he obviously didn't know he was going to be the victim of another gun attack, he didn't know he was about to die. At the very most he was probably thinking "ah shit, might get in another scrap tonight" but he wouldn't fucking stand there like that. He'd have just left. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong if he did stand there contemplating life and death and all meaning on Earth for about 5 minutes and you back that up with some sort of evidence I'll gladly retract what I said but for now, I'm gonna say that inspirational bs didn't happen.
Finally, I want to talk about Snoop Dogg. Snoop was in the film, I know some of you who know all about Tupac and the people he was friends with are probably saying "duh you idiot, they collaborated and were friends how did you not know this you idiot" so like...one, I genuinely didn't know, I thought they would have just been separate entities in the music industry, two; I don't mean that someone was just playing Snoop Dogg in the film, I mean the guy did voice over work for the actor playing him. That's what I got the issue with. When the actor first opened his mouth, and Snoops voice came out I was blown away. This guy's the BEST impersonator, how did they swing that? Then as the film went on I just didn't feel it you know? I knew something was up and I wasn't sure. It was only on the way home that Ben said he'd noticed that at some points, the voice didn't match up with the actor's mouth so I googled it and it's dubbed. Why? Did the actor just look like a young Snoop but had such a horrid voice that he had to be dubbed? I dunno, there's just something about that that just kinda presses the wrong buttons with me.
So, onto the good. Learned a fair amount, like Shakur dated Madonna. Brave guy. He was in the Baltimore School For The Arts, I dunno why it surprised me but it did. Pretty much everything in this that wasn't the events leading up to his death was something cool that I learned.
I also loved the choice of actors, every single person cast in this looks like their real life counterparts, how do I know? I looked at side by side shots of the actors and real people. But for real, this was just so weird to look at yet you can definitely tell that whoever was in charge of casting was definitely not wanting to miscast anyone and in doing that, offend anyone.
Finally, there was no talk of conspiracy theories. No "Biggie killed Tupac" or anything like that. When Tupac was first attacked and shot, he believed Biggie to have been a part of it, and so we saw that through his eyes. There's no definite thing on who did that mentioned in the film and I think that's good, at least it portray's that in an unbiased and honest light. They could have gone down the route of showing the gunman's face for a very split second to be discovered on DVD when people look at it to overanalyse it. Hell for all I know that could be it but I don't think so.
So that's what I thought of that, everyone did a great job in making the film, except whoever decided on the framing device, that was dumb. Anyway, that's it for today. It'll be my birthday when this goes out so like, the best present would be shares and stuff on any of my posts. Up to you like. Anyway, peace out, love you's, see you tomorrow.
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.
Thursday, 29 June 2017
Transformers: The Last Knight
It's time to stop Mr Bay.
Director: Michael Bay
Writers: Art Marcum (Story and Screenplay)
Matt Holloway (Story and Screenplay)
Ken Nolan (Story and Screenplay)
Akiva Goldsman (Story)
Runtime: Too long for a late night screening - 2hr 29minutes
Plot: Shit was there even one? I'll just take the IMDb one because I really remember nothing about a plot in this film, something about Optimus Prime being evil to save his home planet for this mermaid robot or something but that's just a tool. - Autobots and Decepticons are at war, with humans on the sidelines. Optimus Prime is gone. The key to saving our future lies buried in the secrets of the past, in the hidden history of the Transformers on Earth.
Full disclaimer, I've only seen the Transformers films that have Shia in them and I thought they were alright. They got gradually worse but you see I was never paying attention to any of them, I knew they were terrible so I didn't care about them. This one, however, I did care about, because of Mark Wahlberg. Not for his acting, but his face and body. Don't get me wrong he's a good actor, just...not in this film, he's pretty bland so I think just having him in the film is good enough to get women in the seats. Didn't work in the screening I was in but whatever. Also, I'm aware that what I said was a bit sexist but after the comments made in this film about women, I think I've been given a free pass this once.
Let's get into it then, outside of Wahlberg's body, what else was good? Uh...well it's got a Dr Claw Decepticon and John Goodman is somewhere in there too. That's pretty cool. After looking up who was who I saw that Dr Claw Decepticon was Megatron and I know for a fact that that Decepticon didn't have Dr Claw's voice, so unless he was uncredited for another Transformer for a couple of lines I don't know. I just picked up on it and...I dunno man, I'm just kinda rambling to make this a paragraph.
Moving on from one little ramble to another, it looks like someone wants to connect this universe to the Once Upon A Time series. If you've not seen it and you have some time I suggest you look at it, it's pretty good. All seasons on Netflix. So how's that work out? What evidence do I have? Admittedly, it's not a lot of evidence, but I'm not saying this is gonna be a real theory or whatever but this film involves King Arthur played by Liam Garrigan, who does Garrigan play in Once Upon A Time? King Arthur. that's all the evidence I have so that means one of two things, this guy either looks like the ideal King Arthur or someone watched the show and thought "bruh, we gotta get this guy".
Right, getting down to it now, the film has all of those Michael Bay things such as not holding a shot in a fight scene for longer than a fifth of a millisecond, the misogyny, the explosions. But with all that, comes some relatively new things. Such as adding characters, that I think you're meant to care about because they have some sort of connection with other characters which is dumb because to care about characters you have to have more than a couple scenes and have something for these characters to relate to the audience with.
The lack of being able to hold a shot literally gave me a headache and I felt pretty sick and dizzy when the climax finally ended. Throughout all the fighting and shaking camera I couldn't see what the hell was even going on I mean, I get the thing where having the camera move more than humanly possible is to give off the feeling of...panic and such, but whenever I've been in a panic I've been aware of what's going on around me. Maybe I've just not been in a situation where this much panic has taken over my body that I can't fucking see shit but...
The misogyny in this was just...weird, and I mean just outright odd. Of course, there's the complete disregard of the woman's education with a Doctorate, a Philosophy degree and some other stuff and yet her family is written as these women who don't seem to care nor are proud of her for getting all these things, rather they want her to find a man. They look for a man in the personal ads in the paper which...who does that anymore? For real, there are so many online sites they could sign her up for but whatever. This family's weird though like they're excited to find someone who has a dungeon, when she brings back Wahlberg they trash her dead father's office, probably trashing valuable artefacts and papers and such which is bad enough but then shouting practically, out of your mouth, phrases that are obviously meant to sound somewhat sexual like...who shouts that? Then her family get excited that she's brought Mark Wahlberg home (who wouldn't be amirite?) they gather at the bottom of the stairs and listen in, then one of them says she's gonna go up and check on them like...honey no, don't do that. There's a scene where she gets kidnapped by Anthony Hopkins Transformer car which she has apparently been driving for a while, but that's whatever. She's smart enough to try and free herself and she's wearing a cute and professional pants suit. Why is the pants suit relevant? Because when she gets to Hopkins castle, she fights the Transformer and in the next scene she enters in a dress which literally shows off half of her bra. Where did Hopkins get that dress from? How did he know her size? Why is half of her bra showing??? Gross.
The explosions are...overused at best, nothing all that great. Spoiler!! There is an explosion in which it hits the ground right next to where Hopkins is stood, I'm not sure if it actually hits him or not but he gets thrown a few feet in the air and dies quietly and seemingly painlessly. I reject that. He died when that explosion hit. He died on impact when he hit the floor. He was dead long before his death scene. If the explosion hit him he was dead then, blown to pieces. He was not thrown a few feet in the air. Fuck that.
Another insult to basic science is in one little moment that I just...I can't let it go. The planet Cybertron is getting closer to Earth and in the process, practically destroys the moon. No big deal right? NO that's a big deal. The Earth would be fucked. Do you know what the moon does for us? It affects the tides, it lights up the night via reflection of the sun, I think it affects the rotation of the Earth but I'm literally going off GCSE Science here but I know that if we didn't have the moon, if it was destroyed by another planet getting closer and closer to us, Earth is fucked. They say something about destroying something on this other planet but they don't seem to get rid of the actual planet in our atmosphere, in our gravitational pull. Those scientists shouldn't be celebrating. But like I said, I'm going off GCSE Science and I'm probably ignorant to the true effects, I only vaguely know the basics.
Overall, I think it was trash, but that's because this wasn't directed at me. This was directed at the 3 13-year-old boys sat in front of me and they seemed to enjoy it enough. It's not harmful or anything, it's not...the worst thing I've ever seen and trust me, I've seen some really terrible films. Apprently there are 14 more Transformers films already written, one of them tempting Bay to stick around and direct it, but as of writing this is Bay's last time directing a Transformer film. Maybe the next 14 will pick up...
That's it for today, 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 please go and support its creators by buying tickets to go see it in cinemas / buying the DVD or Bluray when the time comes.
Director: Michael Bay
Writers: Art Marcum (Story and Screenplay)
Matt Holloway (Story and Screenplay)
Ken Nolan (Story and Screenplay)
Akiva Goldsman (Story)
Runtime: Too long for a late night screening - 2hr 29minutes
Plot: Shit was there even one? I'll just take the IMDb one because I really remember nothing about a plot in this film, something about Optimus Prime being evil to save his home planet for this mermaid robot or something but that's just a tool. - Autobots and Decepticons are at war, with humans on the sidelines. Optimus Prime is gone. The key to saving our future lies buried in the secrets of the past, in the hidden history of the Transformers on Earth.
Full disclaimer, I've only seen the Transformers films that have Shia in them and I thought they were alright. They got gradually worse but you see I was never paying attention to any of them, I knew they were terrible so I didn't care about them. This one, however, I did care about, because of Mark Wahlberg. Not for his acting, but his face and body. Don't get me wrong he's a good actor, just...not in this film, he's pretty bland so I think just having him in the film is good enough to get women in the seats. Didn't work in the screening I was in but whatever. Also, I'm aware that what I said was a bit sexist but after the comments made in this film about women, I think I've been given a free pass this once.
Let's get into it then, outside of Wahlberg's body, what else was good? Uh...well it's got a Dr Claw Decepticon and John Goodman is somewhere in there too. That's pretty cool. After looking up who was who I saw that Dr Claw Decepticon was Megatron and I know for a fact that that Decepticon didn't have Dr Claw's voice, so unless he was uncredited for another Transformer for a couple of lines I don't know. I just picked up on it and...I dunno man, I'm just kinda rambling to make this a paragraph.
Moving on from one little ramble to another, it looks like someone wants to connect this universe to the Once Upon A Time series. If you've not seen it and you have some time I suggest you look at it, it's pretty good. All seasons on Netflix. So how's that work out? What evidence do I have? Admittedly, it's not a lot of evidence, but I'm not saying this is gonna be a real theory or whatever but this film involves King Arthur played by Liam Garrigan, who does Garrigan play in Once Upon A Time? King Arthur. that's all the evidence I have so that means one of two things, this guy either looks like the ideal King Arthur or someone watched the show and thought "bruh, we gotta get this guy".
Right, getting down to it now, the film has all of those Michael Bay things such as not holding a shot in a fight scene for longer than a fifth of a millisecond, the misogyny, the explosions. But with all that, comes some relatively new things. Such as adding characters, that I think you're meant to care about because they have some sort of connection with other characters which is dumb because to care about characters you have to have more than a couple scenes and have something for these characters to relate to the audience with.
The lack of being able to hold a shot literally gave me a headache and I felt pretty sick and dizzy when the climax finally ended. Throughout all the fighting and shaking camera I couldn't see what the hell was even going on I mean, I get the thing where having the camera move more than humanly possible is to give off the feeling of...panic and such, but whenever I've been in a panic I've been aware of what's going on around me. Maybe I've just not been in a situation where this much panic has taken over my body that I can't fucking see shit but...
The misogyny in this was just...weird, and I mean just outright odd. Of course, there's the complete disregard of the woman's education with a Doctorate, a Philosophy degree and some other stuff and yet her family is written as these women who don't seem to care nor are proud of her for getting all these things, rather they want her to find a man. They look for a man in the personal ads in the paper which...who does that anymore? For real, there are so many online sites they could sign her up for but whatever. This family's weird though like they're excited to find someone who has a dungeon, when she brings back Wahlberg they trash her dead father's office, probably trashing valuable artefacts and papers and such which is bad enough but then shouting practically, out of your mouth, phrases that are obviously meant to sound somewhat sexual like...who shouts that? Then her family get excited that she's brought Mark Wahlberg home (who wouldn't be amirite?) they gather at the bottom of the stairs and listen in, then one of them says she's gonna go up and check on them like...honey no, don't do that. There's a scene where she gets kidnapped by Anthony Hopkins Transformer car which she has apparently been driving for a while, but that's whatever. She's smart enough to try and free herself and she's wearing a cute and professional pants suit. Why is the pants suit relevant? Because when she gets to Hopkins castle, she fights the Transformer and in the next scene she enters in a dress which literally shows off half of her bra. Where did Hopkins get that dress from? How did he know her size? Why is half of her bra showing??? Gross.
The explosions are...overused at best, nothing all that great. Spoiler!! There is an explosion in which it hits the ground right next to where Hopkins is stood, I'm not sure if it actually hits him or not but he gets thrown a few feet in the air and dies quietly and seemingly painlessly. I reject that. He died when that explosion hit. He died on impact when he hit the floor. He was dead long before his death scene. If the explosion hit him he was dead then, blown to pieces. He was not thrown a few feet in the air. Fuck that.
Another insult to basic science is in one little moment that I just...I can't let it go. The planet Cybertron is getting closer to Earth and in the process, practically destroys the moon. No big deal right? NO that's a big deal. The Earth would be fucked. Do you know what the moon does for us? It affects the tides, it lights up the night via reflection of the sun, I think it affects the rotation of the Earth but I'm literally going off GCSE Science here but I know that if we didn't have the moon, if it was destroyed by another planet getting closer and closer to us, Earth is fucked. They say something about destroying something on this other planet but they don't seem to get rid of the actual planet in our atmosphere, in our gravitational pull. Those scientists shouldn't be celebrating. But like I said, I'm going off GCSE Science and I'm probably ignorant to the true effects, I only vaguely know the basics.
Overall, I think it was trash, but that's because this wasn't directed at me. This was directed at the 3 13-year-old boys sat in front of me and they seemed to enjoy it enough. It's not harmful or anything, it's not...the worst thing I've ever seen and trust me, I've seen some really terrible films. Apprently there are 14 more Transformers films already written, one of them tempting Bay to stick around and direct it, but as of writing this is Bay's last time directing a Transformer film. Maybe the next 14 will pick up...
That's it for today, 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 please go and support its creators by buying tickets to go see it in cinemas / buying the DVD or Bluray when the time comes.
13 Reasons Why - Episode 11
Clay's tape...
13 Reasons Why
Episode 11: Tape 10, Side A
Ya girl's back, I took an extended break from the series because I knew this episode was next and I didn't want to see this character hurt and I didn't want to know of Hannah's reason for it even though I kind of already knew what it was. Either way, I avoided it because I wasn't looking forward to it but you can't keep running from your commitments.
Episode Plot: Clay finds out how "he killed Hannah" and...it's equal parts stupid and heartbreaking.
Opening credits: These are still some ugly, headache inducing opening credits. The music, however, does seem to fit with the tone of the show. The music is a little uncomfortable and the topics of suicide/teen suicide/blaming everyone around you for your choice to end your life are uncomfortable and in the case of this show, controversial. I stand by what I said in an earlier review that Th1rteen R3asons Why is still fuck ugly and shouldn't be a thing that they continue into the second series.
Go away: What did Clay do to Hannah to kill her then? He did as she asked. They were alone together, getting ready to do the do but then she gets flashbacks to everything that's happened to her before and she freaks out and gets upset. Fair enough, Clay asks her what's up and she just tells him to leave her alone and that she doesn't wanna see him. So he does as he's told, he respects her wishes and leaves her to it. How does Hannah manipulate the situation for her to be the victim? She says Quote: "But you walked out the door like I told you to. Why did you have to leave?" ...??????
Excuse me, honey, no man is psychic in fact a lot of them are idiots but half of the time I think that's down to us not explaining ourselves. If you wanted to be left alone but not then just ask him to sit with you for a bit, maybe he would have sat and calmed you down, told you he loved you maybe. This is such a problem with people, mostly girls but some guys do it too where they say one thing but mean another, there are memes about it and it's not a healthy thing to do. Do not expect anybody to read your mind when you say one thing but mean another. If you want someone to leave you alone but stay with you then say that and lay out the boundaries, if you're hungry and know what to eat don't say "I don't know" then shoot down every option you're given unless your option is given. Don't do that, what do you achieve in doing that? It seems pretty manipulative the more you think about it, doesn't it? You're controlling whoever you're doing this to and it makes them feel bad when you call them out on it when...you're the one being an ass. Just my opinion tho, if you wanna be that kind of person then you go for it, nothing I say is gonna stop you.
I love you: This episode made me cry, I won't deny it, I'm human. I cry at everything lately I mean...the other day I said I'd fight someone or something, Ben said no you're too soft so I was like nah, I'm not soft I'll fuckin fight and he said, out of his mouth, to my face "no, you're more like a liquid". Man, that set me right off, I was in tears from being called a fucking liquid. Point being, my boyfriend gave me the weakest insult and I cry over the smallest things.
The scene that made me cry in this episode wasn't a small thing, it was a scene in which Clay was thinking about how things could have gone differently, how he should have pressed Hannah for an answer to see if she was ok and what was up, how he should have told her he loved her, how she said "why couldn't you say that when I was alive" and...fuck man it's just heavy. Like it's heavy because if you've gone through any kind of loss, whether it be falling out with a friend, to ripping a plastic bag to death, you can spend a hell of a lot of time just dwelling on what you could have done differently, what you could have said differently to ensure things go down a different path. It's heartbreaking to just watch this scene, even worse to see Clay stand on the edge of a cliff wanting to jump off because he was too scared to tell Hannah he loved her and because he believes he was the one who killed her.
Texting the victim: Moving on from sadness we get some anger. Justin gets into an argument with his step-dad/mothers boyfriend and leaves, heads over to Bryce's house where he finds Jessica, a little drunk and playing cards with her rapist. In an attempt to upset Justin further she sits on Bryce's lap and Justin reacts by dragging her the hell out of there, she's like "go on, say it bitch, tell me what my drunk ass knows" and he does, he tells her Bryce raped her and she fucking slaps him. I understand that but like...shouldn't you have done that to Bryce too???? Then, later in the night, Jessica is crying on her bed, obviously trying to come to terms with what's happened and you know what happens? Fucking Bryce. Bryce has the balls to text her saying something like "hey you ok?" Like, no, that's gross and inappropriate and I hope you get what's coming to you butthead. Fuck off.
Those were the big points for this episode. It's a heavy one but an important one and it made me cry. Peace out, see you tomorrow.
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 episode/series. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this series then go and support its creators by watching it again on its platform.
13 Reasons Why
Episode 11: Tape 10, Side A
Ya girl's back, I took an extended break from the series because I knew this episode was next and I didn't want to see this character hurt and I didn't want to know of Hannah's reason for it even though I kind of already knew what it was. Either way, I avoided it because I wasn't looking forward to it but you can't keep running from your commitments.
Episode Plot: Clay finds out how "he killed Hannah" and...it's equal parts stupid and heartbreaking.
Opening credits: These are still some ugly, headache inducing opening credits. The music, however, does seem to fit with the tone of the show. The music is a little uncomfortable and the topics of suicide/teen suicide/blaming everyone around you for your choice to end your life are uncomfortable and in the case of this show, controversial. I stand by what I said in an earlier review that Th1rteen R3asons Why is still fuck ugly and shouldn't be a thing that they continue into the second series.
Go away: What did Clay do to Hannah to kill her then? He did as she asked. They were alone together, getting ready to do the do but then she gets flashbacks to everything that's happened to her before and she freaks out and gets upset. Fair enough, Clay asks her what's up and she just tells him to leave her alone and that she doesn't wanna see him. So he does as he's told, he respects her wishes and leaves her to it. How does Hannah manipulate the situation for her to be the victim? She says Quote: "But you walked out the door like I told you to. Why did you have to leave?" ...??????
Excuse me, honey, no man is psychic in fact a lot of them are idiots but half of the time I think that's down to us not explaining ourselves. If you wanted to be left alone but not then just ask him to sit with you for a bit, maybe he would have sat and calmed you down, told you he loved you maybe. This is such a problem with people, mostly girls but some guys do it too where they say one thing but mean another, there are memes about it and it's not a healthy thing to do. Do not expect anybody to read your mind when you say one thing but mean another. If you want someone to leave you alone but stay with you then say that and lay out the boundaries, if you're hungry and know what to eat don't say "I don't know" then shoot down every option you're given unless your option is given. Don't do that, what do you achieve in doing that? It seems pretty manipulative the more you think about it, doesn't it? You're controlling whoever you're doing this to and it makes them feel bad when you call them out on it when...you're the one being an ass. Just my opinion tho, if you wanna be that kind of person then you go for it, nothing I say is gonna stop you.
I love you: This episode made me cry, I won't deny it, I'm human. I cry at everything lately I mean...the other day I said I'd fight someone or something, Ben said no you're too soft so I was like nah, I'm not soft I'll fuckin fight and he said, out of his mouth, to my face "no, you're more like a liquid". Man, that set me right off, I was in tears from being called a fucking liquid. Point being, my boyfriend gave me the weakest insult and I cry over the smallest things.
The scene that made me cry in this episode wasn't a small thing, it was a scene in which Clay was thinking about how things could have gone differently, how he should have pressed Hannah for an answer to see if she was ok and what was up, how he should have told her he loved her, how she said "why couldn't you say that when I was alive" and...fuck man it's just heavy. Like it's heavy because if you've gone through any kind of loss, whether it be falling out with a friend, to ripping a plastic bag to death, you can spend a hell of a lot of time just dwelling on what you could have done differently, what you could have said differently to ensure things go down a different path. It's heartbreaking to just watch this scene, even worse to see Clay stand on the edge of a cliff wanting to jump off because he was too scared to tell Hannah he loved her and because he believes he was the one who killed her.
Texting the victim: Moving on from sadness we get some anger. Justin gets into an argument with his step-dad/mothers boyfriend and leaves, heads over to Bryce's house where he finds Jessica, a little drunk and playing cards with her rapist. In an attempt to upset Justin further she sits on Bryce's lap and Justin reacts by dragging her the hell out of there, she's like "go on, say it bitch, tell me what my drunk ass knows" and he does, he tells her Bryce raped her and she fucking slaps him. I understand that but like...shouldn't you have done that to Bryce too???? Then, later in the night, Jessica is crying on her bed, obviously trying to come to terms with what's happened and you know what happens? Fucking Bryce. Bryce has the balls to text her saying something like "hey you ok?" Like, no, that's gross and inappropriate and I hope you get what's coming to you butthead. Fuck off.
Those were the big points for this episode. It's a heavy one but an important one and it made me cry. Peace out, see you tomorrow.
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 episode/series. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this series then go and support its creators by watching it again on its platform.
Tuesday, 27 June 2017
Lucy
It is definitely not 100% acc-u-rat.
Director: Luc Besson
Writer: Luc Besson
Runtime: 1hr 30 minutes
Plot: A woman in China / Japan / Taiwan (never specified) gets pushed into being a drug mule for a mob boss. After a series of events happen she is able to unlock 100% of her brain.
What do I even say about this? It's such a half and half film. It's a good idea but just falls on its face, it's got a pretty good couple of leads but it does nearly nothing with them, it acts like it like it has something important to say but then...doesn't. There's a difference between leaving something open ended and just tagging on a "philosophical" ending.
Let's just get into it, positively speaking this was a short film, only 90 minutes meaning it didn't drain as much of my life as some other films, I felt blessed to have gotten to watch a film that's short but then while I was paying attention, the shorter run time meant that character development and building a connection between characters was sacrificed. All we know about Johansson's character Lucy, is that she dated the guy who got her into this mess for a week or something, she has exams coming up, doesn't speak the language of the land she's on and has a roommate who is an actor who also can't read the language of the land she's on. What do we know about Morgan Freeman's Professor character? That he's a professor who's written a fuck load of pages on the human brain and that he's Morgan Freeman. What do we know about the antagonist? Fuck all. That's a huge fucking problem, in order for us to root for the protagonist we have to make some sort of connection rather than just have exposition thrown at us. We need to relate to them and feel threatened by the villain but that's not what we're given here. We're given dull fuck characters with no connection to the audience, just exposition. Fuck character development right?
The plot? As I said before, it's a good idea, what could we achieve if we unlocked the full capacity of our brains? Problem is, this film explains it in a way that makes the audience feel like they're in a lecture rather than wanting to learn more about this myth. The science in this film is definitely not correct and in fact, the whole idea this film is based on has been debunked. Honestly, the biggest problem this plot has is wasted potential. It's rushed, giving us no time to fully understand what's going on, we just see Lucy go through this stuff and because her brain capacity has increased she knows what's going on with herself and yet...the audience doesn't really get an explanation. Actually no, I say that she knows what's going on but she both does and doesn't know what's happening, one minute she's all over her own case, she knows what's up and can deal with it, then at other points, she has no fucking idea what's occurring.
Lucy is such a problem as a character, as I said before we can't connect with her because we know nothing about her, yet what we do know is a problem. She doesn't know the language of the land she's on, we don't even know the land she's on. It looks like Tokyo, her roommate says she can't read Chinese and later in the film the French police guy gets a call from Lucy in Taiwan? Like??? Did I miss a scene telling me where I'm at or something? Did I have to read the script to know where I am? It's like playing a game of Where's Wally except I'm in the dark...and blindfolded...and I wasn't given the book. Another problem is just the way she deals with what's happening to her, anybody would be freaking out with no bounds. Nobody would be this calm, even with their brain capacity enhanced. She's just not a real person and that stresses me the fuck out. Lucy also says she has exams coming up, exams for what? What are your interests girl? What are you studying? What are you sacrificing? What do you have to lose? How did you go to your classes without knowing the language of the land you're on? Fuck.
I also have many many issues with Lucy's roommate, despite the fact that she's only on screen for like 5 minutes or so. She's an actor, apparently looking to make it...wherever she is, saying she can't read Chinese which...as an actor, script reading is a pretty important thing to have to do. No wonder she wasn't getting any callbacks, she's riding on her looks to get parts but honey, if you got the part then you'd have to read a damn script. Unless it was a silent film, but then wouldn't you have to be able to speak the language to be able to communicate with those on set? Bitch you gotta learn shit to get places, especially if you're living in a foreign country and can't read/speak the most common language there. I know I keep going on about that but it's important. Communication is important. Damn.
I'm aware I've just gone on and on about what a naff film it is due to the characters being bland and not knowing shit, but overall it's a well put together film with a good idea behind it, it's just too flawed for me to be able to enjoy it. If you can just switch off your brain and just look at this film and enjoy it for what it is then great! I'm a minority of people who apparently didn't like this according to Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic which speaks something for my opinion but whatever.
Hope you enjoyed reading this, I know I went on and on about a couple of specific points but like, there's more stupid shit in this film that I couldn't get into or I'd lose a brain cell. I'm gonna leave you with this quote from the film's main character when she thinks she's about to die and speaking to her mother on the phone, peace out guys. Quote: "I remember the taste of your milk in my mouth."
This was also a requested film and 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.
Director: Luc Besson
Writer: Luc Besson
Runtime: 1hr 30 minutes
Plot: A woman in China / Japan / Taiwan (never specified) gets pushed into being a drug mule for a mob boss. After a series of events happen she is able to unlock 100% of her brain.
What do I even say about this? It's such a half and half film. It's a good idea but just falls on its face, it's got a pretty good couple of leads but it does nearly nothing with them, it acts like it like it has something important to say but then...doesn't. There's a difference between leaving something open ended and just tagging on a "philosophical" ending.
Let's just get into it, positively speaking this was a short film, only 90 minutes meaning it didn't drain as much of my life as some other films, I felt blessed to have gotten to watch a film that's short but then while I was paying attention, the shorter run time meant that character development and building a connection between characters was sacrificed. All we know about Johansson's character Lucy, is that she dated the guy who got her into this mess for a week or something, she has exams coming up, doesn't speak the language of the land she's on and has a roommate who is an actor who also can't read the language of the land she's on. What do we know about Morgan Freeman's Professor character? That he's a professor who's written a fuck load of pages on the human brain and that he's Morgan Freeman. What do we know about the antagonist? Fuck all. That's a huge fucking problem, in order for us to root for the protagonist we have to make some sort of connection rather than just have exposition thrown at us. We need to relate to them and feel threatened by the villain but that's not what we're given here. We're given dull fuck characters with no connection to the audience, just exposition. Fuck character development right?
The plot? As I said before, it's a good idea, what could we achieve if we unlocked the full capacity of our brains? Problem is, this film explains it in a way that makes the audience feel like they're in a lecture rather than wanting to learn more about this myth. The science in this film is definitely not correct and in fact, the whole idea this film is based on has been debunked. Honestly, the biggest problem this plot has is wasted potential. It's rushed, giving us no time to fully understand what's going on, we just see Lucy go through this stuff and because her brain capacity has increased she knows what's going on with herself and yet...the audience doesn't really get an explanation. Actually no, I say that she knows what's going on but she both does and doesn't know what's happening, one minute she's all over her own case, she knows what's up and can deal with it, then at other points, she has no fucking idea what's occurring.
Lucy is such a problem as a character, as I said before we can't connect with her because we know nothing about her, yet what we do know is a problem. She doesn't know the language of the land she's on, we don't even know the land she's on. It looks like Tokyo, her roommate says she can't read Chinese and later in the film the French police guy gets a call from Lucy in Taiwan? Like??? Did I miss a scene telling me where I'm at or something? Did I have to read the script to know where I am? It's like playing a game of Where's Wally except I'm in the dark...and blindfolded...and I wasn't given the book. Another problem is just the way she deals with what's happening to her, anybody would be freaking out with no bounds. Nobody would be this calm, even with their brain capacity enhanced. She's just not a real person and that stresses me the fuck out. Lucy also says she has exams coming up, exams for what? What are your interests girl? What are you studying? What are you sacrificing? What do you have to lose? How did you go to your classes without knowing the language of the land you're on? Fuck.
I also have many many issues with Lucy's roommate, despite the fact that she's only on screen for like 5 minutes or so. She's an actor, apparently looking to make it...wherever she is, saying she can't read Chinese which...as an actor, script reading is a pretty important thing to have to do. No wonder she wasn't getting any callbacks, she's riding on her looks to get parts but honey, if you got the part then you'd have to read a damn script. Unless it was a silent film, but then wouldn't you have to be able to speak the language to be able to communicate with those on set? Bitch you gotta learn shit to get places, especially if you're living in a foreign country and can't read/speak the most common language there. I know I keep going on about that but it's important. Communication is important. Damn.
I'm aware I've just gone on and on about what a naff film it is due to the characters being bland and not knowing shit, but overall it's a well put together film with a good idea behind it, it's just too flawed for me to be able to enjoy it. If you can just switch off your brain and just look at this film and enjoy it for what it is then great! I'm a minority of people who apparently didn't like this according to Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic which speaks something for my opinion but whatever.
Hope you enjoyed reading this, I know I went on and on about a couple of specific points but like, there's more stupid shit in this film that I couldn't get into or I'd lose a brain cell. I'm gonna leave you with this quote from the film's main character when she thinks she's about to die and speaking to her mother on the phone, peace out guys. Quote: "I remember the taste of your milk in my mouth."
This was also a requested film and 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.
Thursday, 22 June 2017
13 Reasons Why - Episode 10
I'm so super extra mad about this.
13 Reasons Why
Episode 10: Tape 9, Side B
At the time of writing, it is 4:02 am and I have barely slept this whole week, however, through my sleep deprived enlightenment I have worked out the formula to this episode. This episode has a specific formula to it. It's filler, then a bombshell then rinse and repeat. It's not a good formula, it's not even an ok formula. The bombshells were kind of hit and miss and one of them was just plain horrible. Let's enjoy this...whatever the hell I type out about it.
Episode plot: It's Sheri's turn on the tapes, I think, the episode is more about Jeff (Brandon Larracuuente)'s death...I think. Honestly, I don't know what the hell happened to this one.
Murder...kinda: After witnessing Jessica get raped Hannah stays at the party and is kind of zoned out of reality, to the point where Sheri offers to take her home. Hannah accepts as long as Sheri isn't drunk and to prove that, Sheri does a cartwheel. Fair enough. Hannah says she can't go home drunk because she'll get lynched by her parents so Sheri says she can stay at her dad's with her. Hannah goes to either call or text her parents but sees her phone is dead so asks Sheri if she can use hers, Sheri says go for it and starts looking for her phone, takes her eyes off the wheel for a second and knocks a stop sign over. This is probably responsible for the car collision which kills Jeff.
Neither girl reports the incident at the time, mostly because Sheri is driving her father's car and is scared she fucked it up and wants to just get home whereas Hannah's guilt from not doing anything about Jessica's rape and feels a sudden urge to do the right thing here and when she does get a chance to call in the incident, someone has already beaten her to it. Of course, she thinks it's just about the stop sign but, big shock, Jeff is dead.
Bombshell No.1: So remember when I said that someone had beaten Hannah to calling in the incident? Of course you do, you read about it like 10 seconds ago. Turns out, it wasn't the stop sign being knocked over, it was the car accident which killed Jeff. This is nowhere near as impactful as it should have been and let me tell you why. Hannah is, at first, devastated and understandably so. She couldn't stop a rape and then she indirectly caused the death of one of her schoolmates, hell if I went through that I probably wouldn't be able to drag myself out of bed. She tearfully goes to Clay, I'm guessing to try and tell him what went down, and he just tells her outright that she has no right to be this upset because she hardly knew him and she always has to make it a melodrama about her.
I kind of see where he's coming from with this I mean, one of his close friends died and a girl who seems to make a drama out of everything comes up to him in tears. He's clearly feeling a fair amount of grief and doesn't need another drama on top of what he's going through so from his perspective at the time, it's understandable. He wants to deal with the death of his friend before having to deal with what he think's is petty melodrama from Hannah.
Who called it in?: Clay. Clay was the one who called in the death of his friend which is probably one of the most panic-filled moments of this kids entire life. He's seen death and he's known that person. That shit stays with you for a long time, and it makes Clay's reaction to Hannah approaching him a little more understandable.
Jeff's death: What I don't understand about this is that...I should care, even with my own experience with death, I should care that Clay found his close friend dead in such horrible circumstances. I don't. Why? Becuase there was only a basic connection established between the Jeff and Clay and there was also nothing that gave me any sort of connection to Jeff as a character. This guy's death literally felt like it was just shoved into the story just to serve Hannah and her journey to her death. This should have been a scene where you can feel something with Clay rather than for him and it just doesn't come across that way.
Bombshell No2.: Breaking news. Clay killed Hannah!!! Now let me tell you why I'm mad about this. If Clay did kill Hannah, why wouldn't she just make him one tape, just for him to tell what a scumbag he is? No. She made all of us waste our damn time on these tapes. Add to that, if she really wanted to be the ultimate sadist (which she has proven herself to be so far) wouldn't she have made him the very last tape? I dunno, fishy as hell.
Padding: This episode's biggest problem is that it's nothing especially important aside from the end, it's just padding, and nobody likes padding. I've heard that the series is based on a book where the events take place in just one day so transferring it to a series with 13 episodes is gonna need some padding but still, it's like they took all the padding from every episode in this series and the upcoming second series and just threw it into this episode. That might be an exaggeration but I don't care.
Fun story: It took me over a month to finish this and I genuinely thought I only had about one or two paragraphs written but I was farther than I thought. Thinking about it, this may not have been a "fun story" more, a stupid anecdote but I'm exhausted and slightly dehydrated and I don't wanna take a bath or shower because I'm a girl and love my showers/baths scalding hot. Don't feel like landing myself in a metaphorical hell rather than a real life one.
That's it folks, see you in the next one. Peace out and stay hydrated x
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 episode/series. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this series then go and support its creators by watching it again on its platform.
13 Reasons Why
Episode 10: Tape 9, Side B
At the time of writing, it is 4:02 am and I have barely slept this whole week, however, through my sleep deprived enlightenment I have worked out the formula to this episode. This episode has a specific formula to it. It's filler, then a bombshell then rinse and repeat. It's not a good formula, it's not even an ok formula. The bombshells were kind of hit and miss and one of them was just plain horrible. Let's enjoy this...whatever the hell I type out about it.
Episode plot: It's Sheri's turn on the tapes, I think, the episode is more about Jeff (Brandon Larracuuente)'s death...I think. Honestly, I don't know what the hell happened to this one.
Murder...kinda: After witnessing Jessica get raped Hannah stays at the party and is kind of zoned out of reality, to the point where Sheri offers to take her home. Hannah accepts as long as Sheri isn't drunk and to prove that, Sheri does a cartwheel. Fair enough. Hannah says she can't go home drunk because she'll get lynched by her parents so Sheri says she can stay at her dad's with her. Hannah goes to either call or text her parents but sees her phone is dead so asks Sheri if she can use hers, Sheri says go for it and starts looking for her phone, takes her eyes off the wheel for a second and knocks a stop sign over. This is probably responsible for the car collision which kills Jeff.
Neither girl reports the incident at the time, mostly because Sheri is driving her father's car and is scared she fucked it up and wants to just get home whereas Hannah's guilt from not doing anything about Jessica's rape and feels a sudden urge to do the right thing here and when she does get a chance to call in the incident, someone has already beaten her to it. Of course, she thinks it's just about the stop sign but, big shock, Jeff is dead.
Bombshell No.1: So remember when I said that someone had beaten Hannah to calling in the incident? Of course you do, you read about it like 10 seconds ago. Turns out, it wasn't the stop sign being knocked over, it was the car accident which killed Jeff. This is nowhere near as impactful as it should have been and let me tell you why. Hannah is, at first, devastated and understandably so. She couldn't stop a rape and then she indirectly caused the death of one of her schoolmates, hell if I went through that I probably wouldn't be able to drag myself out of bed. She tearfully goes to Clay, I'm guessing to try and tell him what went down, and he just tells her outright that she has no right to be this upset because she hardly knew him and she always has to make it a melodrama about her.
I kind of see where he's coming from with this I mean, one of his close friends died and a girl who seems to make a drama out of everything comes up to him in tears. He's clearly feeling a fair amount of grief and doesn't need another drama on top of what he's going through so from his perspective at the time, it's understandable. He wants to deal with the death of his friend before having to deal with what he think's is petty melodrama from Hannah.
Who called it in?: Clay. Clay was the one who called in the death of his friend which is probably one of the most panic-filled moments of this kids entire life. He's seen death and he's known that person. That shit stays with you for a long time, and it makes Clay's reaction to Hannah approaching him a little more understandable.
Jeff's death: What I don't understand about this is that...I should care, even with my own experience with death, I should care that Clay found his close friend dead in such horrible circumstances. I don't. Why? Becuase there was only a basic connection established between the Jeff and Clay and there was also nothing that gave me any sort of connection to Jeff as a character. This guy's death literally felt like it was just shoved into the story just to serve Hannah and her journey to her death. This should have been a scene where you can feel something with Clay rather than for him and it just doesn't come across that way.
Bombshell No2.: Breaking news. Clay killed Hannah!!! Now let me tell you why I'm mad about this. If Clay did kill Hannah, why wouldn't she just make him one tape, just for him to tell what a scumbag he is? No. She made all of us waste our damn time on these tapes. Add to that, if she really wanted to be the ultimate sadist (which she has proven herself to be so far) wouldn't she have made him the very last tape? I dunno, fishy as hell.
Padding: This episode's biggest problem is that it's nothing especially important aside from the end, it's just padding, and nobody likes padding. I've heard that the series is based on a book where the events take place in just one day so transferring it to a series with 13 episodes is gonna need some padding but still, it's like they took all the padding from every episode in this series and the upcoming second series and just threw it into this episode. That might be an exaggeration but I don't care.
Fun story: It took me over a month to finish this and I genuinely thought I only had about one or two paragraphs written but I was farther than I thought. Thinking about it, this may not have been a "fun story" more, a stupid anecdote but I'm exhausted and slightly dehydrated and I don't wanna take a bath or shower because I'm a girl and love my showers/baths scalding hot. Don't feel like landing myself in a metaphorical hell rather than a real life one.
That's it folks, see you in the next one. Peace out and stay hydrated x
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 episode/series. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this series then go and support its creators by watching it again on its platform.
Wednesday, 21 June 2017
Psycho (1998)
The amount of times I've tried to watch this and been unable to get through it is amazing.
Director: Gus Van Sant
Writers: Joseph Stefano (Screenplay)
Robert Bloch (Novel)
Runtime: 1hr 45 minutes
Plot: A young woman steals from her boss and ends up at a hotel, meeting the strange Norman Bates, a man who runs the hotel with a strange love for both stuffed birds and his mother.
This is something that did not have to happen, and I mean that with every fibre of my soul. The original was about as close to perfect as you can get a film to be. I'm not 100% sure as to why this was remade, maybe it was to see how audiences would react to the exact same film, but in colour and with (obviously) younger actors. For the most part, the reaction was what you'd think it'd be; "Don't touch that classic" However, while reading what people thought about it on Rotten Tomatoes it seems like a lot more people enjoyed it, including the fact that Vince Vaughn was a good replacement for Anthony Perkins as the deranged Norman Bates. I will strongly object to that til the day I die.
Time for the good because I have to start this off nicely and the good thing about this is the idea of doing the shot-for-shot remake of a classic like this. It's a pretty good idea...in a sense. The idea of taking something that already exists, and making it all over again for a new generation, but the exact same thing. I love the concept of seeing how audiences would react if this was put out in the modern day. I love the unoriginality of it, I see what the people involved were trying to do, but this just felt like the kid at school who asks to copy your homework but doesn't try hard enough to change it to be their own thing. I'm always down for unoriginality if something new can come from it, that's a weird thing to say but I hope I got it across clearly.
Now for the bad, Vaughn as Norman Bates is creepy in all the wrong ways. You'd think having a creepy Norman Bates would be great, genius even but you see the thing is, Anthony Perkins was creepy but in that "I have no social boundaries because I wasn't allowed out of the house as a kid but I'm working on it" kind of way whereas Vaughn just...kinda...gives off that "I'm going to either molest, rape or murder you, or all of the above, you have no choice." And that's not something you want for a suspenseful thriller with a twist, you want someone who's strange but not blatantly a serial killer, you want to be able to kinda guess there's something off about him not think he's an escaped convict or something. Fuck. Can we just agree to never put Vaughn in a serious film again? Leave him to his below average comedies, he does well enough in those.
Looking through my notes, I noticed one good thing about Vaughn's performance. When he bursts in toward the end with that dress on and the knife, man...fucked if that's not one of the funniest scenes in all of history. He looks way too pleased to be in that dress, not deranged, more like he'd found his calling as a cross-dresser rather than an actor. Not that you can't be a cross-dresser and an entertainer but y'know.
Back to the bad, this film was made in colour and while I understand why, y'know, modifying it for a modern audience, it doesn't seem to carry the same impact. We know what colour blood is, yet it seems so much scarier in black and white, I don't know exactly what it is but it just brings some sort of tension that colour blood doesn't bring.
I think that's about it, it's taken me about 16 or so hours to write this because today has been disgustingly hot and it got cool around 11 at night and I'm just flat out exhausted. I hope this film isn't someone's first introduction to the Hitchcock thriller because....obvious reasons, this film doesn't work as it's own thing. I'd advise this be watched after watching the original to compare and see which you like better. That's it for today, peace out guys.
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 short. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this short then please go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.
Director: Gus Van Sant
Writers: Joseph Stefano (Screenplay)
Robert Bloch (Novel)
Runtime: 1hr 45 minutes
Plot: A young woman steals from her boss and ends up at a hotel, meeting the strange Norman Bates, a man who runs the hotel with a strange love for both stuffed birds and his mother.
This is something that did not have to happen, and I mean that with every fibre of my soul. The original was about as close to perfect as you can get a film to be. I'm not 100% sure as to why this was remade, maybe it was to see how audiences would react to the exact same film, but in colour and with (obviously) younger actors. For the most part, the reaction was what you'd think it'd be; "Don't touch that classic" However, while reading what people thought about it on Rotten Tomatoes it seems like a lot more people enjoyed it, including the fact that Vince Vaughn was a good replacement for Anthony Perkins as the deranged Norman Bates. I will strongly object to that til the day I die.
Time for the good because I have to start this off nicely and the good thing about this is the idea of doing the shot-for-shot remake of a classic like this. It's a pretty good idea...in a sense. The idea of taking something that already exists, and making it all over again for a new generation, but the exact same thing. I love the concept of seeing how audiences would react if this was put out in the modern day. I love the unoriginality of it, I see what the people involved were trying to do, but this just felt like the kid at school who asks to copy your homework but doesn't try hard enough to change it to be their own thing. I'm always down for unoriginality if something new can come from it, that's a weird thing to say but I hope I got it across clearly.
Now for the bad, Vaughn as Norman Bates is creepy in all the wrong ways. You'd think having a creepy Norman Bates would be great, genius even but you see the thing is, Anthony Perkins was creepy but in that "I have no social boundaries because I wasn't allowed out of the house as a kid but I'm working on it" kind of way whereas Vaughn just...kinda...gives off that "I'm going to either molest, rape or murder you, or all of the above, you have no choice." And that's not something you want for a suspenseful thriller with a twist, you want someone who's strange but not blatantly a serial killer, you want to be able to kinda guess there's something off about him not think he's an escaped convict or something. Fuck. Can we just agree to never put Vaughn in a serious film again? Leave him to his below average comedies, he does well enough in those.
Looking through my notes, I noticed one good thing about Vaughn's performance. When he bursts in toward the end with that dress on and the knife, man...fucked if that's not one of the funniest scenes in all of history. He looks way too pleased to be in that dress, not deranged, more like he'd found his calling as a cross-dresser rather than an actor. Not that you can't be a cross-dresser and an entertainer but y'know.
Back to the bad, this film was made in colour and while I understand why, y'know, modifying it for a modern audience, it doesn't seem to carry the same impact. We know what colour blood is, yet it seems so much scarier in black and white, I don't know exactly what it is but it just brings some sort of tension that colour blood doesn't bring.
I think that's about it, it's taken me about 16 or so hours to write this because today has been disgustingly hot and it got cool around 11 at night and I'm just flat out exhausted. I hope this film isn't someone's first introduction to the Hitchcock thriller because....obvious reasons, this film doesn't work as it's own thing. I'd advise this be watched after watching the original to compare and see which you like better. That's it for today, peace out guys.
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 short. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this short then please go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.
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