2017-12-28
stasis
2017-12-26
baby driver
i dunno, i like a good vehicular stunt. did i like these? well...sort of? it was all very stylized, which i think was part of the point, but it made it very difficult to just enjoy watching people push vehicles to the limits. not that you get to see a lot of that these days, what with all the effects and such. remember bullit? man, *that* was a car chase.
the truth of it is that, just like any skilled person, a good driver makes it look easy. but that does not generally make for exciting cinema, so instead we get baby driver, a film which lays the style on so thick that it becomes a substitute for the substance which is otherwise lacking.
i am sorry, i got all pretentious there. what i mean is that baby driver is popcorn. lots of fun, goes down easy, ultimately kills you. so lay off the butter already, and eat your vegetables.
baby driver gets two pairs of fancy glasses that look so awkward you might as well have just worn a mask.
bushwick
[IMDB]
interesting premise ruined by directorial masturbation. note that i said interesting, not plausible.
here is the thing, if you are going to do some fancy camera work, eg, make it look like you shot the whole movie in a single take, then you better a) make it invisible, or b) have a good goddamn reason. bushwick did neither. this whole one-take thing in particular is really driving me batshit, by the way. once you see it, you cannot unsee it, and what it is is awkward.
on the plus side, Dave Bautista turned in another understated performance that served to further secure his place as my new favorite wrestler-turned-actor. i also really appreciated the sound work, especially around gunfire. and finally, if there was anything that held this film together, it was the relentless pace paired with an unflinching look at a brutal experience. the balance between acknowledging the gore without lingering on it was exactly where i like it to be, which is to say, far away from me.
bushwick gets three fingers shot off in a gunfight.
2017-12-24
bright
bright is a painfully wrought allegorical tale about race relations in whatever century we currently find ourselves in. plus in this world everybody hates cops, apparently. so i guess that maps cleanly, in the sense that some people say they hate cops, except then the cops save the day, which allows them to be simultaneously downtrodden and heroic and secretly loved by all. except for bad people, who still hate cops, but it is ok, they will get theirs one way or another.
while i am complaining, i will also mention that the storyline was obvious, dialogue trite, characters unidimensional, special effects over/poorly used, and where the fuck were the other six races? there was a girl with nictitating membranes, was she supposed to be something? an aardvark-person, perhaps?
also, i know that will smith never dies in his movies, but if he had turned out not to be a bright, then it would have made for an instance of actual heroism, sacrifice, and character development. just saying.
so i guess what i am saying is that if you were going to really fuck up a movie about race relations, then you would do something like this. please oh please no sequels.
bright gets one elf with a dragon tattoo.
2017-11-30
the truth about alcohol
the truth about alcohol is one of those fake scientific documentaries that drives you batshit if you know how science works. eg, if you go to the sleep lab for one night to measure the effect of drinking alcohol before sleeping, you cannot actually draw firm conclusions about the measurements because you do not have a baseline. it was doubly maddening to see the interviews of actual doctors and scientists, most of whom seemed to understand that they were partaking in bullshit. the interviewer asked questions which indicated he had not been paying attention to what he had been saying for the previous 5-10 minutes, then the doctor/scientist would struggle to not cry while answering. clearly, it was one of those situations where they soiled their hands in order to accomplish a greater good.
the truth about alcohol is that it can be tasty and/or mind altering, and the only reason it is legal is that most people consume it regularly. it gets one terrible night's sleep.
2017-11-26
wheelman
the number 23
too late
2017-11-16
take me
take me is a tale about nevermind because it does not matter. the acting was just not good enough to pull this one off. the chemistry was not there, and neither of the leads held the screen very well on their own. do not even get me started on the writing. who signed off on this ridiculous premise?
i actually have a whole bunch of things i could say about running a kidnapping business, but i just cannot believe that i have to say them. i also want to avoid making any more buzz for this drek fest. so let me summarize by saying that if you are going to kidnap somebody, do try not to be such a fucking amateur about it?
take me gets one preposterously flawed turn of events after another.
the dark tower
2017-11-14
the babysitter
lol zone 2
2017-07-20
the beaver
the beaver is essentially a remake of dumbo, swapping out dumbo for a human, the magic feather for a beaver puppet, and flying for severe depression. so, a bit darker than the disney classic. alas, the beaver brings nothing new to the table, unless you count self-mutilation. which i do not.
i know the bar is low when it comes to understanding and dealing with mental illness, especially in the movies, so i should probably not be unhappy with the way the beaver portrays things, but i am unhappy with it anyway. depression is some bad shit, man. you do not just strap on a beaver and fix it in a couple weeks. also, i am pretty sure that what they were showing was a schizophrenic break, which is a whole other can of worms, but take that assessment with a grain of salt because not only am i not a trained psychologist or psychiatrist, i cannot even consistently remember what the difference is between a psychologist and a psychiatrist. one of them can give you drugs?
the beaver gets one hand saw. get it?
2017-06-13
shimmer lake
shimmer lake does a fine job of telling a mystery story in reverse. i first saw this gimmick used in memento, where it was meant to force the protagonist's condition onto the viewer, and it was definitely an appropriate storytelling device there. in the case of shimmer lake, there did not seem to be any particular reason for telling the story that way, other than for the entertainment value. luckily, it was very entertaining. the only bad spot was that they could not seem to decide whether to make it comedic or not. so the viewer suffers a bit of whiplash whenever a scene change toggles the comedy bit.
shimmer lake gets four dead bodies.
the rezort
the rezort is a ripoff of jurassic park, except without all of the parts that made jurassic park good ("unix! i know this!") and also with zombies instead of dinosaurs. the rezort had other flaws, as well, such as an obvious supply chain issue that telegraphed the climax's scandalous reveal. it would also be accurate to observe that the rezort employed zero competent security personnel, which seems particularly unrealistic to me, given that we were supposed to be in a world where billions had died from a highly contagious disease, the last known sample of which was wandering free range on this island. to be fair to the writers, it would have been a much shorter and less interesting movie if they had had proper security measures and backup systems in place.
also, if there is a zombie outbreak and your failsafe system intends to scorch the entire island, then here is a hot tip for you: do not rely on AIRPLANES FROM SOMEWHERE ELSE TO FLY OVER YOU AND SHOOT ROCKETS. instead, you need a Big Red Button which blows everything, with zero delay, via redundant, pre-placed explosives of a size that will definitely produce a mushroom cloud and leave behind nothing more contagious than some molten rock. and actually, the BRB should be a dead man switch. plus a remote trigger in case a zombie sits on the now-aptly-named dead man switch.
i mean, come on. we are talking about ZOMBIES here. a highly-contagious, blood-borne infection which turns its hosts into ravenous monsters is essentially an extinction event. you might as well make a russian roulette theme park.
the rezort gets one clandestine thumb drive.