Fraky

Sure, this looks stupid and yet worth watching. Let's give it a go!

Basic premise is explained in the trailer: Swap the minds in the bodies of a high school student and serial murder, and have fun! The story doesn't deliver huge surprises after that set up... but then, it doesn't need to. It's a great story, well presented.

More or less. This is written by two men, so there are some dialogue choices for the female characters that made me go "uuhhh...". And the movie does rely on high school boys not being interested in Kathryn Newton (although some of that is to blame Hollywood for not being able to cast unattractive people).

The comedy is decent, the kills are... rather over the top, to be honest, considered the rest of the tone. No doubt we'll see this mixed in as part of the Happy Death Day universe later.

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F'tm'n

It's an earnest Christmas movie. However...

Chris Cringle and his wife Ruth are trying hard to make ends meet, and the annual gig just isn't as profitable as it used to be. So they have to take on an extra contract to help make ends meet. In a completely separate story, a young punk of a spoiled rich kid doesn't like his gift from Santa and so calls out a hit on him, and we see the assassin slowly track down the location of the giver. And then at the, you will believe that the two plots collide.

Let's talk about the reindeer in the room. Yes, Mel Gibson is in this, and he gives an all right performance. So your willingness to put up with him will impact on how you accept this film. On the other hand, Walter Goggins gives a great performance and is the best thing in any scene he is in.

The problem with this movie is that it is very earnest... about being earnest. Aside from that, I'm not sure what the heck this movie was going for. The Chris plot was barely an arc, and the assassin bit was completely unrelated, so yeah... what was the point of this again?

Not a terrible movie, but not one that is going to stick in the memory either.

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Gloneland

Yeah, okay, let's see this take on 2012.

A comet... maybe? It's a bad scientific phenomena they can't quite identity... is heading by Earth, only everyone is so mathematically incompetent they can't tell that the fragments are instead going to slam into the planet. And so in one night we have a small family trying to get to a shelter, and undergoing many stupid and pointless adventures as the point of the movie seems to be "civilisation is one hour away from going into chaos".

As you might be able to tell, I wasn't that impressed. This is better than 2014 in that there is at least some justification for why Gerald Butler and co might actually be involved in the end of the world, but otherwise this just feels like "how many horrible/stupid things can we have our stars deal with?" while still trying to fit it into one night. I don't know geography, but it feels like they are able to cover vast swaths of land in just an hour or so.

Oh, and there's a comet. Which feels very much an excuse for a) panic and b) for things to blow up. While listening to Plot Exposition Radio, they make it clear that science doesn't actually know what this comet is, how the fragments are moving, nor what is going on because "it came from another solar system" or some such rubbish. Try hard not to think too deeply about it, because I suspect the writers/editors didn't.

Despite the years since things like 2012, this feels like generic disaster movie, with only slightly more focus on the characters over the special effects.

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They are Desert Bus

When you read this, the latest run of Desert Bus will have started. But if you can't watch that, you can watch this documentary on it!

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New Mewtents

I still don't know why this wasn't just released straight to VOD. Probably a contract thing that it had to hit theaters first and they didn't care enough?

So, new mutant Moonstar gets orphaned and is sent to this "institution" where there are four other mutants also institutionalised, one mutant lady in charge, and... no-one else. Seriously, this is a thin cast. Yes, there are other people filling in momentary roles, but this is basically a small cast in not much larger than a locked room. ANYWAY, spooky stuff starts happening, and who is to blame? Is it the new mutant with psionic powers who just turned up? Nah, couldn't be. But hey, gives them a chance for things to happen, so we get scenes, and thus a movie.

Really, this is fine, but it certainly had a build up of "when will this get released? we need to reshoot! ... but we may or may not use those reshoots... eh, we'll get this out some time." I don't know what the full production hold up was, but I find it hard to believe it was seriously reconsidered often, and, as I said, should have just been dumped on VOD.

The performances are all right, and I often spent time trying to remember "which mutant is this?" Pro-tip, they never actually give them their mutant names, so don't hang around for that. And there's the hand puppet... booooooo! The effects are decent, but at this point that should be the default (and yet still so many effects that aren't good).

Given than director Josh Boone said "nah, don't worry about covid, go see this," well, screw him, this isn't that important. Just wait for it to finally get put out on VOD.

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Malun

EDIT TO ADD: Given the actions of the movie makers, FUCK this movie.

So I'm going to talk about the live action, but here's the thing about that and the animated movie... we have both! You may like one, both, neither, but we have both so you can choose! Having one does not erase the other, they are different things, so let's move on.

The bulk of this movie does follow the animated version. Mulan isn't the typical daughter, her father is called to war and she goes instead, has to pretend to be male... then the main difference is a lack of guys dressing up in drag... I mean there is more emphasis on girl power. To the extent of the bad guys getting their own evil Mulan!

And as its own separate movie, it's fine. There are some very pretty moments, and frankly they could have lent harder into the wire fu and more supernatural elements. The opening feels like it is trying to be more real, but then we get a kite masquerading as a phoenix before the witch goes full force and, yeah, they could have gone harder into that for some really great sequences.

As for harking back to the animated movie, the score kept throwing in bits from "Reflection". Which does hammer on the "who is Mulan?" theme, but just made me want to go full on that song! This movie also echoes some of the other songs with spoken word versions of some of the lyrics, but doesn't get as obvious as "Reflection".

The real question we will see is, what will the live action sequels be like?

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NETEN

So, can I talk about this movie? There is definitely one part I want to discuss, more from a film perspective, but it is the scene near the end, so I'll put that in spoiler space so you don't see it on the main page.

Someone said this is "temporal James Bond", and that's pretty accurate. There is a big gimmick to this movie, but that became more about filming (see below) than the story. At various surprise points where we were supposed to go "what is happening?" I was just "oh, it's that" and I was right. So... yeah, not really surprised by it.

But the main reason this film could be considered "impressive" is in the filming of it. The gimmick meant that things had to be done really careful, and, I'm sure, with much rehearsal. I'm sure CGI helped, but even then you still had to have all the pieces in place. However...

SPOILERS

In the big fight at the end (shocking: there's a big fight at the end), we have two teams of good guys, and that was fine... but as far as I could tell, the fight was just them moving forwards and shooting. Aside from one or two plot scenes around the main leads, I couldn't even tell you that there were bad guys there, let alone what they did in the fight! It just felt like filming a war but only showing one side. The heck??

/SPOILERS

So I did see this in a theatre... and because of the situation, there were less staff around and plenty of seats empty, so I'm sure a few people were in there who never paid for a ticket. (That they were in a seat booked by someone else was a bit of a giveaway.) So now there is the joy of not only balancing seeing a movie vs crowds, but also vs people you can't even account for being there!

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