Ura horâ

Found out about this Japanese horror today, so I watched it today.

This is an anthology of shorts... like really short. Like we are talking five minutes here. Just enough set up to get the idea, then BAM, a horror sting! On the one hand, great, let's get on with it. We know a lot of tropes, we don't need the hour backstory to "this is a creepy place," let's move. However, on the other hand, the horror moment is "look, it's a creepy thing" or "look at this image!" Indeed, a lot of them end on "here's a strange image to consider" which isn't really all that horrific, even outside of the J-Horror set up.

The basic set up is "found footage" with lots of tapes being "this was not aired, but we have it here for you now". And don't worry if you can't tell when the big moment is coming (and again it's not like these stories hang around for a long time for you to wait to) as there is always a moment of "proceeding further is not advised" shot.

Since it is so short, I can't really point out any actors, but two listed directors are Yôhei Fukuda and  Kôji Shiraishi and... hey, we recognise that last name!

And finally... you can see it for yourself!

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Implausible Reckonation

This is it, the final of the Running Man who Runned and did Stunts!

The Entity is nearly everywhere, and once it gets everywhere, then everywhere will become nowhere! ... 'cos it will destroy everything. Fortunately, the US can exactly determine a ticking clock to follow, with enough time for Ethan Hunt to go through some action sequences and long scenes of just talking and not doing much.

Seriously, for an action movie, there is large chunks of just nothing happening. And even some action scenes where there are large chunks of nothing happening... while being an action sequence!

This is definitely a "culmination" movie where they link several events from movies past, including a lot of links to the first movie.

The cast is pretty much the same as in Part One, and... yeah, several of them definitely are looking older now. No wonder Tom Cruise has bowed out of more movies, I can believe a few others putting their roles down... and, on the other hand, this isn't concluding anything, and the series can continue on and on and on...

This movie passed the time, but it didn't need to be the length that it is...

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Final Bloodlination

Sometimes, you just want to see a dumb movie.

This is what, the sixth movie? We start with an initial death sequence set piece... but it turns out that was a dream! But the young woman having the dream is seeing it at a nightmare, and goes in search of her family... which does technically lead them to start dying, so it is kind of all her fault, and if she hadn't done anything, they would live (longer). Also, it was a dumb kid's fault for some part of it all, so don't let kids do anything fun.

This series varies between horror and comedy, although the length of the mechanations that Death goes to and the final practical effects have always bent it towards comedy for me, and this one is definitely on the comedy side. Decent practical effects (I assume) or at least not obvious to me that it was all computer imagery.

The main cast are fine, but I can't say I know any of them from anything in particular. Aside from Brec Bassinger, last seen riding a stick, and of course...

Farewell, Tony Todd...

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A MineChicken Jockie

Okay, I definitely was going to watch this, so that's now done.

Steve YEARNS for the mines, so ends up in the Overworld, then encounters piglins. Because of that, four other people from our world enter Minecraft, and then all sorts of shenanigans happen. There's a suggestion of character arcs of the kid learning to trust himself, of Jason Mamoa learning to be more emotional open, of Jennifer Coolidge getting over her ex-husband by fucking a villager... it's a lot of small blocks put togther.

Into a complete mess. Like, this is a TERRIBLE movie. So many elements are explained by "tell don't show". And half the cast are irrelevent. I'm not saying this is a male movie, but the female characters could have been entirely removed and you would never notice. And as for the Minecraft elements...

I recognise them, but I don't care. But that's all right, because the movie doesn't care about them either. Just random excuses for things to happen for the audience to go "they did the thing", let alone all those meme moments that people are now going to this movie for audience participation for, which don't need to happen. You can say that this is for the kids, but let's respect them as well as when we cater to them, eh?

I'm not the only one who thinks Jack Black should have been in a different, and he and Jason might have been a great duo to see play off each other, but not this vehicle for that. Still a lot of New Zealand actors in here, although Rachel House is largely getting herself stereotyped here.

This made buckets of money, so they don't care about my opinion, so it's apt that I don't care about this.

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Hert Eeys

It's a "romantic comedy slasher"... only, not good at any of those.

So every Valentine's Day, there's a slasher who goes around slashing couples... so if you think people would take the obvious step of just not doing romantic things on that day, especially if you hear he is in your town, then you don't know people, you DO IT HARDER! Our romantic couple (the romance is in the comedy of how they say they aren't a couple) is forced to deal with the killer, and when it seems like they have... they haven't!

The comedy is obvious, the romance is banal, and the slasher was obviously trying to be the overly graphic comedy kind. This seemed like it had potential, and I will freely admit I didn't see the third act twist coming, but this still felt overly long and not worth it.

It didn't feel like anyone was trying with their acting, which does match the quality of the film. The mask, which is about the only notable thing, doesn't really have much going for it as doing anything other than being a mask.

Just overall a more meh movie than I was hoping.

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Skinners

Lot's of people have talked this up, I finally decided to see it.

I can't recall the trailer, but anyway, two slick talkers come back to town, and set up a juke joint... but then evil monsters are around, and we aren't even talking about the klan! [My main too logical thought I had during the movie was "how do the monsters avoid the problem of exponential growth?" and it turned out the answer is "they are really stupid".]

Michael B. Jordan is doing the key work here, being two different characters. I'm sure filming that was tricky, but Ryan Coogler clearly had a lot of fun doing this, particular in that music scene. Miles Caton gave a lot too, and actually played the guitar for real (and yes, I stayed until the very end of the movie). In fact, not surprising from a Coogler movie, there are great performances all around!

While this is a decent movie, I admit I'm currently distracted about thoughts of people in that era because of The Reformatory.

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Thunder Thunder Thunder Bolts Ho!

Latest MCU, yadda yadda...

Yelena is a sad girl, not happy with her shady dealings, and wants out... as it happens, the best way to do that is to kill everyone, a ploy that has never ever gone wrong... and then the Thunderbolts form, and Bob...

I really don't know what to say. There is a lot happening here that is really generic... but I don't remember it being revealed in the trailers? So I don't want to spoil stuff, but there's like ten minutes of story stretched over 120 minutes of movie.

Florence Pugh is the key to this movie, and she gets the lion share of character development and screen time... which does low key shade the idea of this being a team movie. The other actors did a fine job, although Lewis Pullman's face looked odd to me and kept taking me out of the movie. That all said, I love what they did with the Void's costume.

Some people are saying this is a great return to the greatest of the MCU but... eh, this is good, but I wouldn't say it was that amazing.

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