Epic historical film, just has to be epic and historical.
Also, when they fight the Germans in the beginning, they used the Zulu chant from Zulu cause the director liked that film. Wrong culture, wrong continent, but whatever.
Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched
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Also, when they fight the Germans in the beginning, they used the Zulu chant from Zulu cause the director liked that film. Wrong culture, wrong continent, but whatever.
A ★★★★ review of Satan's Little Helper (2004)
“Where did you get that coat? Looks like you robbed it from a Hasid!” This film follows a boy named Dougie (Alexander Brickel), who lives with his mom Merrill (Amanda Plummer) and father Dean (Wass M. Stevens). His sister Jenna (Katheryn Winneck) is coming home as well to take him trick or...
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Dexter's Laboratory: Ego Trip
Finished rewatching the original series in January and learned only yesterday that the movie was also made by Tartakovsky, a year after the TV show ended. Original cast is still here. Didn't remember it as vividly as the original TV show. Dexter's adventure through time driven by his ego more than any conflict (Mandark is the villain.) and Dee Dee almost not there at all, the 48 minutes are duller than the TV show (even if the humor is still there). Story doesn't make much sense. Tartakovsky was moving more towards the action that would continue in Star Wars: Clone Wars and Samurai Jack.
I thought the creators predicted working from home in the future as I saw an adult Dexter (one of three older versions of himself that Dexter meets and teams up with) wake up in his apartment, er...room. Well, they kind of did. The bed becomes a shower, his teeth are brushed, he's dressed by robot arms and then the room becomes his work cubicle in Mandark's corporate tower.
Finished rewatching the original series in January and learned only yesterday that the movie was also made by Tartakovsky, a year after the TV show ended. Original cast is still here. Didn't remember it as vividly as the original TV show. Dexter's adventure through time driven by his ego more than any conflict (Mandark is the villain.) and Dee Dee almost not there at all, the 48 minutes are duller than the TV show (even if the humor is still there). Story doesn't make much sense. Tartakovsky was moving more towards the action that would continue in Star Wars: Clone Wars and Samurai Jack.
I thought the creators predicted working from home in the future as I saw an adult Dexter (one of three older versions of himself that Dexter meets and teams up with) wake up in his apartment, er...room. Well, they kind of did. The bed becomes a shower, his teeth are brushed, he's dressed by robot arms and then the room becomes his work cubicle in Mandark's corporate tower.
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It: Chapter Two, 5/10
Turns out this isn't ultimately that much better than the 1990 miniseries, which to be honest I knew going in. The reception to this wasn't exactly rousing the masses, but I still considered it worthwhile to see the differences. This does fix most of the problems of the miniseries: the production values and moviemaking are top tier, the actors are all great, it's much more consistent throughout, and delves far deeper into the more cosmic, out there elements of the book. I always appreciate it when movies commit to the bit and are willing to go full monty into some really bonkers stuff, and this does about as good a job at it as one can hope from this story.
But as a tradeoff this version creates new problems all of its own. Some are inherent in the text, and some are unique to this movie. I just don't think this story can work in a visual medium. There's just too much stuff that's more than a bit hard to swallow no matter how seriously the movie takes itself or how well it's made. Regardless of how faithful an adaptation this is, the structure of the story just feels scattershot and repetitive: character goes to a place, Pennywise fucks with them for a bit and they escape, rinse and repeat. A lot of the horror setpieces feel like they're done for their own sake rather than being informed by the characters or furthering the plot. Why does Bev get terrorized by an old woman (admittedly the most effective horror scene in the movie) when her greatest fear has been her father? Why does Ritchie get attacked by a statue of a lumberjack of all things? Where's the connection? Like I said, this kitchen sink approach just doesn't seem to work in a visual medium, and feels for a large part arbitrary. It reminds me of what Yahtzee said about the Evil Within years ago: "Make a horror game!", "About what?", "I just said: horror, horror and horror".
While the miniseries was a lot of the time too comedic (both intentionally and unintentionally) or melodramatic, this version goes overboard with the spectacle, and feels overindulgent as a result. It's only like 20-25 minutes shy of the runtime of the miniseries, and a lot of it could frankly have been cut out. There's several setpieces, including one very on the nose The Thing homage, that could be cut out wholesale and the movie would be better for it. There's also next to no tension in the setpieces, because of their aforementioned arbitrary nature, but also how Pennywise seems to be in almost complete control. It seems he can do anything, anytime, anywhere, which robs the characters of agency, and the movie feels like it's just spinning its wheels without going anywhere as a result. The abundance of CGI to bring all the grotesqueness from the book to life only ends up reinforcing the "less is more" rule in horror. The movie, much like the first part, doesn't seem to grasp whatsoever that horror is all about subtlety. Every scare is punctuated by a loud music cue and they're very predictable. The last act is mostly accompanied by bombastic, booming orchestral tracks that only take away from what is supposed to be a desperate situation. It's just not scary.
I wouldn't call this a swing and a miss, more of a disappointing half-hit that leaves the batter confused if they should start running to base or not. I kind of wish I'd hated it, because then I could call it Shit Crapter Poo, but it's nowhere near that bad. Now I'm genuinely curious to read the book to see if this balls-out weirdness can actually work in written form, because represented visually it just comes across as hokey. I did start listening to the audiobook some years ago, but when I got to the part where getting domestically battered made Bev really horny I went "Ew, what the hell am I listening to?" I know there's even grosser stuff in there, but in a book you can at least skip lines.
Turns out this isn't ultimately that much better than the 1990 miniseries, which to be honest I knew going in. The reception to this wasn't exactly rousing the masses, but I still considered it worthwhile to see the differences. This does fix most of the problems of the miniseries: the production values and moviemaking are top tier, the actors are all great, it's much more consistent throughout, and delves far deeper into the more cosmic, out there elements of the book. I always appreciate it when movies commit to the bit and are willing to go full monty into some really bonkers stuff, and this does about as good a job at it as one can hope from this story.
But as a tradeoff this version creates new problems all of its own. Some are inherent in the text, and some are unique to this movie. I just don't think this story can work in a visual medium. There's just too much stuff that's more than a bit hard to swallow no matter how seriously the movie takes itself or how well it's made. Regardless of how faithful an adaptation this is, the structure of the story just feels scattershot and repetitive: character goes to a place, Pennywise fucks with them for a bit and they escape, rinse and repeat. A lot of the horror setpieces feel like they're done for their own sake rather than being informed by the characters or furthering the plot. Why does Bev get terrorized by an old woman (admittedly the most effective horror scene in the movie) when her greatest fear has been her father? Why does Ritchie get attacked by a statue of a lumberjack of all things? Where's the connection? Like I said, this kitchen sink approach just doesn't seem to work in a visual medium, and feels for a large part arbitrary. It reminds me of what Yahtzee said about the Evil Within years ago: "Make a horror game!", "About what?", "I just said: horror, horror and horror".
While the miniseries was a lot of the time too comedic (both intentionally and unintentionally) or melodramatic, this version goes overboard with the spectacle, and feels overindulgent as a result. It's only like 20-25 minutes shy of the runtime of the miniseries, and a lot of it could frankly have been cut out. There's several setpieces, including one very on the nose The Thing homage, that could be cut out wholesale and the movie would be better for it. There's also next to no tension in the setpieces, because of their aforementioned arbitrary nature, but also how Pennywise seems to be in almost complete control. It seems he can do anything, anytime, anywhere, which robs the characters of agency, and the movie feels like it's just spinning its wheels without going anywhere as a result. The abundance of CGI to bring all the grotesqueness from the book to life only ends up reinforcing the "less is more" rule in horror. The movie, much like the first part, doesn't seem to grasp whatsoever that horror is all about subtlety. Every scare is punctuated by a loud music cue and they're very predictable. The last act is mostly accompanied by bombastic, booming orchestral tracks that only take away from what is supposed to be a desperate situation. It's just not scary.
I wouldn't call this a swing and a miss, more of a disappointing half-hit that leaves the batter confused if they should start running to base or not. I kind of wish I'd hated it, because then I could call it Shit Crapter Poo, but it's nowhere near that bad. Now I'm genuinely curious to read the book to see if this balls-out weirdness can actually work in written form, because represented visually it just comes across as hokey. I did start listening to the audiobook some years ago, but when I got to the part where getting domestically battered made Bev really horny I went "Ew, what the hell am I listening to?" I know there's even grosser stuff in there, but in a book you can at least skip lines.
Gladiator is one of those films where looking at it in its historical context makes its acclaim make a lot more sense. Historical epics weren't really in vogue at the time (the outlier being Braveheart and maybe Titanic if you stretch the definition), and so called "swords and sandals" movies in particular hadn't been big in decades. Ridley Scott's last true big hit at the time was Thelma and Louise nine years prior. Shakycam as a technique was basically in its infancy, and CGI had taken huge leaps that could be used to bring history to life in a manner few people could even have imagined. At the time Gladiator was genuinely unlike anything people had seen before. It was also hugely influential, indirectly giving us a new era of historical epics like Scott's later Kingdom of Heaven, Oliver Stone's Alexander, and Troy. If one wants to go even further, you could say that it also primed audiences for more historically themed fantasy movies such as little indie darlings Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean.
A ★★★½ review of Scooby-Doo (2002)
“I’m Mary Jane.” “Like, that is my favorite name!” As some casting trivia, Jim Carrey was originally attached to play Shaggy when the movie was first conceived in 1996, and Mike Myers also expressed interest in the role. Lochlyn Munro also auditioned for the role, and apparently made enough of...
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Don't Move
A lady is kidnapped by a serial killer and injected with a paralyzing agent that renders her mute and immobile for approximately all of 90 minutes. It's produced by Sam Raimi, who previously put his name on Don't Breathe 1 & 2, but here the gimmick falls short of the premise. I posit that a person who is desperately not trying to make a sound (and failing) is more interesting to watch than a person desperately trying to move (and failing). There's no inherent tension here.
The actors are ok-ish but they have almost nothing to work with. She's a suicidal mom grieving her child, he's a killer who kills because he kills. See if you can figure her arc by the time he nabs her and the title drops.
And there's too much mandatory stupidity. He tasers her, ties her up with zip ties and loads her in the back of his car in the middle of nowhere, yet somehow misses the SWISS ARMY KNIFE in her pocket. Minutes later she's secretly freed herself in the back as she's chatting him up and he's driving, and somehow misses the easiest backstab in the history of pointy things because she has to do a windup animation while banshee shrieking before taking a swing. Bleh.
A lady is kidnapped by a serial killer and injected with a paralyzing agent that renders her mute and immobile for approximately all of 90 minutes. It's produced by Sam Raimi, who previously put his name on Don't Breathe 1 & 2, but here the gimmick falls short of the premise. I posit that a person who is desperately not trying to make a sound (and failing) is more interesting to watch than a person desperately trying to move (and failing). There's no inherent tension here.
The actors are ok-ish but they have almost nothing to work with. She's a suicidal mom grieving her child, he's a killer who kills because he kills. See if you can figure her arc by the time he nabs her and the title drops.
And there's too much mandatory stupidity. He tasers her, ties her up with zip ties and loads her in the back of his car in the middle of nowhere, yet somehow misses the SWISS ARMY KNIFE in her pocket. Minutes later she's secretly freed herself in the back as she's chatting him up and he's driving, and somehow misses the easiest backstab in the history of pointy things because she has to do a windup animation while banshee shrieking before taking a swing. Bleh.
Troll: A'ight / Great
A paleontologist gets called in by the Norwegian government when the nature of an apparent explosion on one of their mountains has them perplexed. She notices from some footage caught during the explosion what no one else in the room wants to acknowledge: that along with the inexplicably large crater, massive footprints are leading away from it...
A decent monster flick. The story is mostly eyeroll-y, but the effects and sound design are really good.
A paleontologist gets called in by the Norwegian government when the nature of an apparent explosion on one of their mountains has them perplexed. She notices from some footage caught during the explosion what no one else in the room wants to acknowledge: that along with the inexplicably large crater, massive footprints are leading away from it...
A decent monster flick. The story is mostly eyeroll-y, but the effects and sound design are really good.
“What was Dandy from AHS doing on the mountain anyways?” was my first question. Gotta admit, I kinda dozed off the last half hour of it here and there, so maybe I missed some ‘splaining. It also really irks me how often these suspense flicks do the thing where the bad guy is down by clearly not out, and no one takes the opportunity to make sure he stays down.
So many other nonsensical, conveniently illogical things happened that make this one feel like the writers let down what could’ve otherwise been something decently original.
Don't know the dude but get him when they cast the Josh Brolin biopic.
I was dozing off early on during the cabin scene (the fire woke me up), and that was the last time anything exciting happened.
I'm willing to tolerate certain tropes where the protag fails at basic stuff, but there's tripping while you're running, and then there's going out of your way to make things way harder than they need to be.
There was pretty much nothing else I was going to end this month on.
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A ★★★★½ review of Halloween (1978)
“It was the Boogeyman.” “As a matter of fact, it was.” This film actually was conceived, at first, as a sequel to Black Christmas. While Bob Clark expressed disinterest when John Carpenter approached him, Clark did suggest what he would see as a potential follow-up, with Billy breaking out of a...
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Finally watched The Karate Kid, the original one.
There's probably nothing I can say about it that hasn't been said a million times since 1984, so I'm not gonna.
There's probably nothing I can say about it that hasn't been said a million times since 1984, so I'm not gonna.
Did you personally like it?
I did, a lot. I've rewatched the "Sand the floor!" scene on youtube a lot.
I'm watching Cobra Kai on Netflix. Went one season too long IMHO but well worth watching, fun deconstruction of the 1984 movie (Season 1 is largely from the POV of "bad guy" Johnny from the 1984 movie.
ITMT: I just watched The Wild Robot on Prime (rented for my daughter and I watched as well). I like "Iron Giant" more but this was fun. It was clever and has great visuals.
My daughter summed it up by saying it is about a robot that exists to serve, becomes lost in the wild so relishes the 1st task given, which is to raise a runt goose so that it can migrate before the next Winter. B+
Madame Web, 3/10
Color me sorely underwhelmed. I'd heard this to be a new so bad it's good classic, up there with the likes of Catwoman. Turns out it's just a dull, lazy snooze that's not even bad enough to warrant a recommendation. It's even got a few fairly competently executed elements: I like how the protagonist seeing the future isn't signaled when it happens, so we're just as confused as the character herself. There were a few actually funny jokes. Beyond that it's just a cheap-looking block of nothingness. The acting's not bad enough to laugh at, the effects are sparsely used so you can't laugh at them, there's no disastrous filmmaking like Catwoman's editing, it's just nothing. There's some cringe laughs to be had at how hard the movie tries to avoid saying the word "Spider-Man", so it ends up looking and feeling like a fan film on Youtube than anything. Granted I did watch this one drunk with friends so I wasn't really paying attention.
Color me sorely underwhelmed. I'd heard this to be a new so bad it's good classic, up there with the likes of Catwoman. Turns out it's just a dull, lazy snooze that's not even bad enough to warrant a recommendation. It's even got a few fairly competently executed elements: I like how the protagonist seeing the future isn't signaled when it happens, so we're just as confused as the character herself. There were a few actually funny jokes. Beyond that it's just a cheap-looking block of nothingness. The acting's not bad enough to laugh at, the effects are sparsely used so you can't laugh at them, there's no disastrous filmmaking like Catwoman's editing, it's just nothing. There's some cringe laughs to be had at how hard the movie tries to avoid saying the word "Spider-Man", so it ends up looking and feeling like a fan film on Youtube than anything. Granted I did watch this one drunk with friends so I wasn't really paying attention.
Smile 2: *Sigh* / Great
It's Smile... again. Without the mystery.
They did exactly what I knew they would do: fuck it up for fucking it up's sake. Smile was a perfectly serviceable horror film that built its mystique and left us to our imaginations without answers. Smile 2 is that again, but adds literally nothing to the overall. We DO get the trope of the one "crazy" person who understands what's happening and tries to aid the protagonist being haunted by the smiling demon, but it only serves to cheapen the whole experience when you see the film trying to find the rails it wants to ride. It's nothing but a bunch of cheap jump scares without the intrigue (we already know the demon's M.O. from the first film) which is the vital element that made the first film as good as it was. Waste of time for everyone involved, including the audience.
It's Smile... again. Without the mystery.
They did exactly what I knew they would do: fuck it up for fucking it up's sake. Smile was a perfectly serviceable horror film that built its mystique and left us to our imaginations without answers. Smile 2 is that again, but adds literally nothing to the overall. We DO get the trope of the one "crazy" person who understands what's happening and tries to aid the protagonist being haunted by the smiling demon, but it only serves to cheapen the whole experience when you see the film trying to find the rails it wants to ride. It's nothing but a bunch of cheap jump scares without the intrigue (we already know the demon's M.O. from the first film) which is the vital element that made the first film as good as it was. Waste of time for everyone involved, including the audience.
Yes, I enjoyed it a lot. I found it very endearing and uplifting and it made me nostalgic for those distinctly 80s movies about unlikely friendships.
We had our little post-Halloween marathon over the last two nights:
Critters
Gremlins but with a 1950s saucer movie twist (I could've done without the prison planet intro). A family in rural Kansas fights off carnivorous tribbles from Planet X while two shape-shifting bounty hunters wreck havoc in town. They're supposed to be badasses but by my count they score a single kill against a critter that's already lodged halfway down a toilet. Dee Wallace, who was the mom in everything in the 80s, gets the highest kill count.
I enjoyed the movie. It's the little character touches that did it for me, like the dad taking his son to go explore a strange noise, and the mom reading a book and watching TV at the same time, and the kid being friends with the town drunk. Also M. Emmett Walsh. Just like we don't get movies about unlikely friendships anymore, I miss movies about whole families uniting against an outside threat (Us is the only recent one I can think of). Something to mull over.
Child's Play 2
I think the first movie was good enough, and the sequel needlessly undoes the happy ending by discrediting the cop character, sending the mom to the loony bin and putting the kid in a foster home. I mean, who cares about the continuum of Child's Play (which apparently keeps going on via recently-axed TV series, minus the remake), but still.
So the gaslighting continues: Andy keeps getting blamed for Chucky's crimes, with the twist that all the while he's trying to cozy up to the doll to prove to the adults that he'd not acting on PTSD (ironically, Chucky has replaced a regular doll). The jig is up, as far as mystery or ambiguity are concerned (we already know pretty much everything about Chucky), so the movie doubles down on dark humor and leans heavily towards camp. I did feel the foster parents meet an unusually cruel end though. And how the hell did they swing Jenny Agutter into the set of Child's Play?
All Hallow's Eve
A sitter and two kids watch an unmarked VHS cassette on Halloween night (they somehow have a VCR on the ready in 2013 - courtesy of Lightning Fast VCR, I'm sure). The tape is made of three horror shorts about dudes in cheesy Halloween rubber masks often chasing, raping and/or mutilating young women. It's atrociously acted and the dialogue is empty calories level of trying to pad the running time.
I give you that Art the Clown looks scary, the way a heavy metal album cover or early internet creepypasta look(ed) scary.
Terrifier
The director of All Hallow's Eve took the one thing that worked - creepy clown makeup - and made a geek show out of it. What if, he asks, a creepy clown murdered a bunch of women? Scary, right? He hangs one upside down and saws her in half, from the vagina all the way to her skull, in the movie's proudest display of gore. But we're just sitting there going, there's no way that flimsy fucking hacksaw bisects a writhing bag of meat and bones like that.
I don't get much out of clowns or gore but here we are in 2024 and Terrifier 3 becomes the highest grossing unrated movie ever, with x30 office returns on a 2 mill budget. Chalk it to Blumhouse boring the tits out of people and A24 being too kino.
Critters
Gremlins but with a 1950s saucer movie twist (I could've done without the prison planet intro). A family in rural Kansas fights off carnivorous tribbles from Planet X while two shape-shifting bounty hunters wreck havoc in town. They're supposed to be badasses but by my count they score a single kill against a critter that's already lodged halfway down a toilet. Dee Wallace, who was the mom in everything in the 80s, gets the highest kill count.
I enjoyed the movie. It's the little character touches that did it for me, like the dad taking his son to go explore a strange noise, and the mom reading a book and watching TV at the same time, and the kid being friends with the town drunk. Also M. Emmett Walsh. Just like we don't get movies about unlikely friendships anymore, I miss movies about whole families uniting against an outside threat (Us is the only recent one I can think of). Something to mull over.
Child's Play 2
I think the first movie was good enough, and the sequel needlessly undoes the happy ending by discrediting the cop character, sending the mom to the loony bin and putting the kid in a foster home. I mean, who cares about the continuum of Child's Play (which apparently keeps going on via recently-axed TV series, minus the remake), but still.
So the gaslighting continues: Andy keeps getting blamed for Chucky's crimes, with the twist that all the while he's trying to cozy up to the doll to prove to the adults that he'd not acting on PTSD (ironically, Chucky has replaced a regular doll). The jig is up, as far as mystery or ambiguity are concerned (we already know pretty much everything about Chucky), so the movie doubles down on dark humor and leans heavily towards camp. I did feel the foster parents meet an unusually cruel end though. And how the hell did they swing Jenny Agutter into the set of Child's Play?
All Hallow's Eve
A sitter and two kids watch an unmarked VHS cassette on Halloween night (they somehow have a VCR on the ready in 2013 - courtesy of Lightning Fast VCR, I'm sure). The tape is made of three horror shorts about dudes in cheesy Halloween rubber masks often chasing, raping and/or mutilating young women. It's atrociously acted and the dialogue is empty calories level of trying to pad the running time.
I give you that Art the Clown looks scary, the way a heavy metal album cover or early internet creepypasta look(ed) scary.
Terrifier
The director of All Hallow's Eve took the one thing that worked - creepy clown makeup - and made a geek show out of it. What if, he asks, a creepy clown murdered a bunch of women? Scary, right? He hangs one upside down and saws her in half, from the vagina all the way to her skull, in the movie's proudest display of gore. But we're just sitting there going, there's no way that flimsy fucking hacksaw bisects a writhing bag of meat and bones like that.
I don't get much out of clowns or gore but here we are in 2024 and Terrifier 3 becomes the highest grossing unrated movie ever, with x30 office returns on a 2 mill budget. Chalk it to Blumhouse boring the tits out of people and A24 being too kino.
Boy Kills World
Like a third person version of Hardcore Henry. It even has Sharlto Copley in a supporting role! Beta Skarsgard plays a deaf-mute on a quest to arcade brawler his way down several hallways, warehouses and kitchens in order to murder the family of fascists who took his family away when he was a kid, and are in charge of running a sketchily-defined dystopia.
It's... actually not as exciting as that may sound. Right off the bat the tone is broadly comedic in a very unwelcoming way. H. Jon Benjamin (Archer) incessantly narrates "Boy's" stream of consciousness and 5 minutes in it was simply too much, man. It was like being with a friend who interjects a funny line ONCE over a movie and then will not shut the fuck up. No, actually, it reminded me of the terrible American dub for Kiki's Delivery Service, where they had poor Phil Hartman butcher the quiet moments by having him constantly voice the cat's thoughts where there was no dialogue in the original. It was as disconnected and annoying as that.
Adding to that disconnect is that the movie essentially starts in media res with a series of montages and doesn't do much to establish anything or get you to participate or feel much investment in the character or the story. There's actually a reason for this, kinda, but I'm not convinced it was worth scuttling the sense of thrill and engagement out of your action comedy.
Then we get to the action, and I give you that some parts look neat and there's clearly good choreography involved, but the sweeping crane shots and the constant cutting took me out of it. The movie would've benefited from a more grounded or limited approach to the action instead of turning the set-pieces into what felt like a flamboyant but not particularly exciting stage show.
TL;DR Monkey Man was better.
Like a third person version of Hardcore Henry. It even has Sharlto Copley in a supporting role! Beta Skarsgard plays a deaf-mute on a quest to arcade brawler his way down several hallways, warehouses and kitchens in order to murder the family of fascists who took his family away when he was a kid, and are in charge of running a sketchily-defined dystopia.
It's... actually not as exciting as that may sound. Right off the bat the tone is broadly comedic in a very unwelcoming way. H. Jon Benjamin (Archer) incessantly narrates "Boy's" stream of consciousness and 5 minutes in it was simply too much, man. It was like being with a friend who interjects a funny line ONCE over a movie and then will not shut the fuck up. No, actually, it reminded me of the terrible American dub for Kiki's Delivery Service, where they had poor Phil Hartman butcher the quiet moments by having him constantly voice the cat's thoughts where there was no dialogue in the original. It was as disconnected and annoying as that.
Adding to that disconnect is that the movie essentially starts in media res with a series of montages and doesn't do much to establish anything or get you to participate or feel much investment in the character or the story. There's actually a reason for this, kinda, but I'm not convinced it was worth scuttling the sense of thrill and engagement out of your action comedy.
Then we get to the action, and I give you that some parts look neat and there's clearly good choreography involved, but the sweeping crane shots and the constant cutting took me out of it. The movie would've benefited from a more grounded or limited approach to the action instead of turning the set-pieces into what felt like a flamboyant but not particularly exciting stage show.
TL;DR Monkey Man was better.
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A ★★ review of Superman III (1983)
I ask you to kill Superman, and you're telling me you couldn't even do that one, simple thing." While this film's production wasn't as bad as the other films in the series, it still wasn't completely smooth. Due to issues with time commitments, Gene Hackman was unable to return as Lex Luthor...
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