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.
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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.