Aquamanatte and the Climate Allegory

Just came out, but ... eh, wasn't that excited about seeing it. But it was on, and there weren't many people, and I had time, so...

Black Manta finds an Ancient Artifact (as one does) and immediately goes on a global killing spree (in that he is killing the globe, not that he is killing a lot of people... directly). However, he ends up crossing paths with Atlantis and so our "hero" is brought into the plot. Aquaman teams up with Orm to make the movie a buddy comedy as they track down Manta, and eventually there's a big fight and Aquaman's family is put in danger.

Oh, and Mera is also there.

Jason Mamoa is just there having fun, while Patrick Wilson is actually trying to act. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II should be doing a lot, but they really trim down any scene with him and give the spotlight to Randall Park instead. And even Dolph Lundgren gets more screen time than Amber Heard!

I won't say I was bored during the movie, but there was just often big fighting scenes with lots of colour and CGI and... I couldn't tell what was happening. And I didn't care. We all know it's going to come down to the main actors punching each other, so get to that and let us get to the personal conflict (as expressed through punching).

And so ends the DC:EU... and I have no idea what the next DC movie is.

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ThanksGiven

Yes, this is the Eli Roth trailer-turned-movie... can't recall if there is one left but can't be bothered to look it up.

What if Dawn of the Dead but not subtle about its message of consumerism? That's the opening of this movie, in which several stupid deaths happen in a Thanksgiving sale, and so one year later vengeance will be taken! I will immediately give that there are some intelligent moves and people don't start with the Stupid Brain, although there definitely are some SB moments. Unfortunately, the killer has standard teleportation powers, and the ability not to look like the person who is later revealed.

Not a lot of cast I recognise. Patrick Dempsey of course, and Gina Gershon briefly. Rick Hoffman is great in every scene he is in. The others, especially the younger actors, were fine, and I may or may not ever recognise them if they end up in anything else.

Overall it's decent if typically example of the genre.

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Future Relaxed

A time travel movie? Maybe. With Rhys Darby? Okay, I'll check it out!

A time traveler comes to our present day with a plan to help make the future better. But being aware of time travel consequences, he keeps low key, hangs out with people who don't have much of an impact, but there is just one artist he can't help getting involved with. And causing problems in what should happen. But it's fine, there's someone else from the future too who is here to make sure there are no other time travelers around.

This is a comedy in that it's light hearted, and not taking itself seriously. It's not really a comedy, in that it isn't funny. If anything, it really wants to be a stoner comedy, but Rhys Darby can't do that. He spends every scene talking way too much, so any tension or even interest is drained away by the tide of words. Julian Richings is a great character actor who should be more of a focus, but he isn't on screen enough. Gabrielle Graham is the closest person we have to an actual protagonist of interest, and she fits the stoner comedy part, but again there isn't anything funny going on.

This could have been good... but it isn't.

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One Last Monk

Monk was a great tv series. It ended, as far as I recall, and that's fine. But clearly someone decided to dip back into that well, and so we get a Last Case.

Monk is not doing well, and plans on joining his wife. However, Molly is about to get married but her husband-to-be dies and she gets Monk to get involved. And we all know who the guy is. [The movie isn't subtle, the chap is a Jeff Bezos stand in.]

Who is Molly you might ask? Apparently Trudy knew her, but... I have no idea who she is. The only kid in the series was Natalie's, but that was way after Trudy died (Natalie was what... third season?), so... just agree that this character was a major part of Adrian and Trudy's backstory and move on.

We get the team back together, Natalie, Randy, and Stottlemeyer (Sharon has a cameo). Aside from the emotional beats with Monk on the verge of moving on, this is a fairly standard story. The bad guy is obvious, and the method of the death was fairly obvious too (although it is revealed way late). The ending moment is a nice touch and... is there going to be a new series? I doubt it, but the set up is there.

It's nice to be back with the crew, and this should be enough to get me to go back to watch the series, but I'm good. Nice to revisit, but no need to stay here.

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From Madonna's Unknown Heart

Clearly I am a Maddy fan, and for whatever reason YouTube decided that I need to know about unreleased songs from albums. Which is pretty cool. Here for example, are the unreleased songs from Rebel Heart.

But my question is... how did they (the video channel) get them? Or whereever they got them from? Does Maddy secretly release these on the sly? Do recording studios stockpile them and someone leaks? It's neat to hear these songs, but... does Madonna really want people to listen to songs she hasn't explicitly released?

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Dawn of the Nougat

Many years later, we got a chicken sequel... been a while since I saw the first, so let's see what I remember.

And the movie recaps the salient points from the first movie, so that's not a problem! Here we get the next step, namely the introduction of a kid, who grows up and causes trouble. Which eventually because the drive for the chickens to actually do something and where they escaped a camp last time, this time they... infiltrate a camp! What a twist! ... but yeah, that makes sense. It's not a story I think needs telling, but I'm not dismissing it now we have it.

The voices get recast, because it has been a while... and a lot of them are fine in an of themselves, but are quite different from what we got the first time. Instead of Mel Gibson we have Zachery Levy (barely a step up), and instead of Julia Sawalha we have Thandiwe Newton, and that's quite the change. But hey, Bella Ramsey as the kid, so yay!

So we have a second. Is there a sign of a third? I'm not looking for it, but I won't turn away should we get one.

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Sugar/Swan/Rat/Poison

For some reason Netflix decided to do a "week" of Wes Anderson adaptations of Roald Dahl short stories, where week equals four days.

Each adaptation has the same approach, the main characters narrate the story directly to the camera, and limited portrayals of actual events. There are very artificial sets and changes are done on screen, as if this was a collection of stage plays. And there are about five main actors who turn up as different characters across and within the stories. This works only because these are short stories, if this continued for a full movie it would be a bit much.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar goes several stories deep as it tells its tale, and while engaging the sparse portrayal of the story could do with more complexity.

The Swan is the most abstract, with even more telling not showing and walking along long hedge paths.

The Ratcatcher is more of a character piece with the title character showing what it means to go after rats. This also dives a lot into the stage play aspect as well as featuring an animated sequence that, hey, continues the trend I've been following!

Poison is one I think I might have read before? If one would skip any, this might be one, as the resolution is rather faint.

We get Ralph Fiennes, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, Richard Ayoade, and Rupert Friend across the stories, with Ralph Fiennes repeating his role as Roald Dahl a few times. All good performances, and it is clear when they swap around roles. Good makeup and costume work!

I do wonder if this could be combined as a stage performance of all these stories in one go. It would be something to check out.

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Doggy Isle

Not just Anderson, but still more Anderson animated.

It's quite the leap to suddenly declare all dogs as evil, but that's the set-up we get. Following that, we get a young boy trying to get his dog back, and there is a group of dogs that will help him, and will those dogs be able to save the day? There is also a B-plot with a young girl, but that feels so incidental that it could have been easily lifted out.

One issue with this is the stylistic approach of Wes Anderson here is great to look at for individual frames of the movie but... the dogs are more like very staged creatures, ie they aren't dogs. There is Dogs As People metaphor, but this goes beyond that to not even having dogs as dogs. (And I don't entirely follow that the dogs would act as they do here, but that's a big ask of the movie to get invested in what is going on.)

Again, good cast, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Bob Balaban, and others, but again the stilted nature of Wes Anderson does make these dogs come across rather oddly.

I did enjoy this as I watched it, but thinking back on it now... clearly I have some issues. But hey, in the time, I did enjoy watching this.

We had two animated Andersons, of which one was a Roald Dahl adaptation, so next...

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Foxy Fantastic

Time to catch up on some Wes Anderson! This time it's George Clooney as a sexy creature that gets into trouble... hang on...

Mr Fox is a clever creature that we immediately like. He's a rogue, gets away with things, and everyone likes him (more or less, his son is rather more ambivalent). However, his reach exceeds his grasp, and soon he and his companions are in over their head, and extremes are needed to get out.

I think I read this as a kid, it was a little kind of familiar, but hey, it's a fun story, and this is a great adaptation. There's a lot happening with Fox, with the two kids, with the other animals, with the three humans, and...

Great performances really come through. Even aside from George Clooney, we get Michael Gambon, Jason Schwartzman, and Eric Chase Anderson giving great voices to their characters. Which are matched by...

Great visuals. This is Wes Anderson of course, a careful study of each frame, and just because this is animated/puppeted, that makes this no less meticulous in set and execution. I will be saying that a lot.

This is on D+, so easy to catch, and it led me to the next one.

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Gojira i squared

Oooh, new Toho kaiju movie? I'm in!

A scared man lands down at an aircraft repair base.. and Godzilla attacks! With that, he is trapped in his own war, as signified by this giant dinosaur like monster, but having external demons doesn't help with internal demons.

This is going back to Godzilla as the atomic war metaphour he was before, and, moreover, actually gets presence on screen, unlike other Godzilla movies! Toho knows what we want!

And this is shot brilliantly. We are with people as they face dealing with post-war life on a small scale, as well as having to battle this giant stomping devastating analogy monster. We get a good balance of scope, and while some moments you can spot comings, it's still wonderfully portrayed.

Although note that this is subtitled, so some people might be upset by that. It's a Japanese movie, what did you expect? At least we didn't get a reedit with an American journalist badly inserted into it...

I'm not expecting this to reboot a whole new series of Godzilla movies... but I wouldn't say no.

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one Dara Ó Briain

In my (apparently) continuing trek to see British (and adjacent) comedians, I attended the show of Dara Ó Briain!

Now I'm not going to repeat his material, because a) it's his, and b) I would do it crappily. But there were two hours of laughs, so in short, it was great! It was basically a few big stories, but he had plenty of time to talk with audience members, which made me glad I wasn't in the front row. I hope those people had an expectation they might be picked on, because if you are there, you are in the firing line.

He said this wasn't one of his usual shows (because of a certain world wide event that interrupted his usual process of gaining material - basically by living it), so I guess I need to check out one of his "usual shows" next time he is in town.

As expected, a great show, so if you have the chance...

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The Kreater

So is John David Washington getting stereotyped as the guy you have in your overly long science fiction movie with lots of effects?

Humanity is immediately a terrible species and deserves to die entirely. Fortunately, the AI robots have this thing whereby they have an extreme MacGuffin that can solve the situation (rather finally). And so we have the movie which is "protect the MacGuffin" while humans are terrible and there are a lot of robot effects going on to deal with.

Which, while glib, doesn't portray the movie's content, which is rather enjoyable. This is over two hours, with no real need (there is a LOT of travelling from one place to another which could have been abbreviated), and we aren't talking startling plot points that you can't immediately tell from the trailer, but I was actually watching the whole time, despite watching this on my computer. (Which isn't to say I wasn't distracted at times, but hey I got things going on.)

Good casting there, and nice to see Allison Janney as Evil Military Lady.

This might be a big movie at the moment... but I don't see this having lasting power.

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Oppy Heimer Style

So this is the other half of that event. At least I could control the sound assaulting me.

This is the big event as through the eyes of one of the big men involved. With splitting (sic) between getting to the bomb, and the other part dealing with the fallout (sic). And... it goes on and on.

It's not surprising that this didn't need to be three hours. A lot of scenes could be cut and still get the point. With this sort of movie, the physics don't really matter, so you can skip a lot of that to get the emotional point. [And don't tell me they didn't abridge the physics. I don't care Nolan modelled a black hole, there's no way you are spending time educating people on quantum physics enough to understand everything, so if we are able to skip some detail, we can skip more.]

As we are post-bomb, while this movie is starring Cillian Murphy, this is also Robert Downey Jr.'s movie. There are quite a few big names here, and as for the women... wow, Nolan has trouble with woman, but basically we have Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh, and that's about it. I do wonder if Pugh would have agreed to this script if it wasn't Nolan, 'cos I'm not sure we needed those scenes with her either.

This is two (related) movies shoved into one. To be honest, I found the second one, the trial, far more interesting that the first, the bomb. No doubt the first one had to be told, but as background to the second, compress it and explode the second.

Oh, and speaking of Nolan, I still need to watch Dunkirk...

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Teh Mavrels

I waited a day or two so I could see this in IMAX... can't say that I felt I got a special experience from that.

What's the plot of this? From watching the trailers, there is something about Rambeau, Danvers and Khan switching with each other, but the plot apart of that... watching this movie, I had no idea of what to expect, so had no idea about anything that turned up and if it was important or not. I will say the Kree are back, because of course they are, but they are nearly background to the emotional story of Marvels... but that said, I have a big complaint about the story.

It is a mess. It's almost like a different writer wrote each different scene, to the degree that I wouldn't be surprised if the writers changed per line! The tonal whiplash between moments is amazing, and the comedy of Khan is competing against the earnest story of Danvers and Rambeau... even in the same scene! And whenever Khan's family is on screen, expect them to dominate whatever is going on, so much that it's good to know that a comedy Pakastani family can defeat Kree troops.

This also comes through with continuity, in that I'm not sure this movie has any. There were many moments where I was "hey, that doesn't make sense" which is not what you want during the movie. Afterwards, sure, but not during.

I'm not crying "this is the end of the MCU!" or anything, but this could do with a serious re-edit (and I understand it has already gone through reshoots). I was kinda worried when I heard this was delayed that there would have been plenty of time to muck around with it, but I do wonder how bad it was if this is what we ended up with.

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Grant Urismo

Hey, look, it's an ad... and a documentary... an adumentary!

Jann is a kid that likes to drive on the most recent version of the car game (which he didn't actually have at the time) and gets to be in a competition. He wins by the blur of his car, so goes on to race, gets in a terrible accident, but goes on to win big!

Mostly... at least, that's what the movie portrays, the actual order was slightly different but that wasn't as flowing a story for the movie. Eh, these things happen, and it could be worse what they did. The movie abbreviates a lot of events and characters, but that's de rigour for these sorts of things.

While Archie Madekwe does great work as Jann, he's completely overshadowed whenever David Harbour is on screen. And Orlando Bloom is just there for kicks, as far as I can tell. There are other cameos from big names, but the main stars is... the game!

I mean the car! There is a lot of car graphics in this, and yes, they are really well done. Jann originally played on the PS3, so there's no way they look as good then as they do now. Especially with the money now behind them (and no doubt the latest games, which this is an ad for, likely had more money spent on it that on this money).

If you like car racing, this is a great movie for you, and as "based on a true story" it gets more cred for being a good movie than other general car racing movies.

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Exorcism Belieber

Remember how in the Exorcist movies/books, it's all about the battle between good and evil, what are they, can you believe in god? How about we just throw some demon possessed children in there and call it a day?

Two girls go missing, and when they turn up, they seem a bit weird. Then they seem a bit possessed... which is glossing over the first hour of this movie quickly, because the movie certainly doesn't. The point is the discussion of what the demons mean, not spending an hour getting to the point where there is a demon!

You may recall from previous discussions, that I am interested in seeing other religions represented and how the myths of one would deal with the practices of the other, and the answer is... Super Easy, Barely An Inconvenience! Everyone gets together and tolerates one another, and there is no discussion of what differing beliefs might mean. Phew, the movie nearly had something interesting to say! (Not to mention how easy it is to get two seemingly mentally traumatised children from the hospital, did no-one think that was a problem?)

There are some cameos here from the earlier movies, and... it just shows that according to this movie, the trappings are what's important, not the content. But hey, money to be made, so let's churn 'em out!

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Fiv Nits at Froddys

I have never played the games, but I watched others do so, and watched far too many Theory videos, so I know too much lore going into this.

It's possible knowing too much lore is useful, so I know that Mike is important, and what happens in his history is important, without the movie needing to tell me... which is handy, because we only get the basics in the movie. Vanessa turns up, and we can go "Hey, it's Vanessa!" as we know who Vanessa is, and she is very basic in the movie. Then Freddy and co turn up, and it's all them! And finally we get the reveal... and how the hell do the protags just jump to that as the answer? We know it from the movies, but there is nothing in the movie to lead Mike and Vanessa to know what's going on, but they do...

Speaking of Freddy, I will say that the animatronics look damn good. These are full puppets, by the Jim Henson company, no CGI creatures there. Very well done, and about the only real decent thing in the movie to see. Otherwise, the story takes too long to get going, and the odd cameo isn't going to help pass the time.

No doubt this will be successful... but as it went straight to VOD, that will undercut money it could have made. Scott has a second and third movie in mind, so we might be back here yet...

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I Saw it Ten

Did we need another one? No, but it was a successful series, so of course why not make more?

John Kramer gets scammed by the medical equivalent of faith healing, so goes on a revenge streak. But of course he isn't to blame, they are their own victims, he's not the one making them hurt themselves to get out of the traps he puts them in! He's completely innocent!

Or so this movie pretends. He's not, and this movie doesn't even really get there. There are moments when the players should be winning, but the script and the expectation of gore is against them, so of course people have to die. Although I will give a lot less gruesomely than we have seen in previous movies. Are the writers maturing? Certainly there is a lot more set up here to get to the expected traps than in other movies, because this has to be more self-contained that suddenly trying to shoe-horn in previous characters (although that is done too).

I'm sure Tobin Bell is willing to do this, but the other actors look like they are putting up with being in this rather than enjoying it. [Still, if I had the chance to die in a Saw movie, damn skippy, I'd sign that acting contract!]

In the end, this is seriously mediocre, and no doubt we haven't seen the last of this series.

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It Lives Inside

Hey, how about a horror movie based on Hindi ideas? Yeah, it's good!

It's tough being an Indian-American teenager, especially when your previous best friend keeps turning up carrying around jar and being really weird. There is a monster inside, and soon it threatens her. Will anyone be able to help?

And that is one thing that is really weird about this movie... she talks to adults, and they listen and try to help! What's up with that? Adults never understand! They just either abandon their kids to a grisly fate, or get grisly fated themselves... But not here!

That is just one aspect of why this is a really good movie. This is well shot, well acted, and the CGI and monster effects... are on screen. Yeah, okay, not the best, and the monster does look a little goofy, but the atmosphere generated works great.

Thumbs up for this directorial debut!

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Expender 4 Boys

I thought Three was fun, other people disagreed, so was kinda looking forwards to watching this.

We start with the Expendas having a casual time, mucking around, and flying a long way over countries... and in the same time, Bad Guy Minion attacks an army and gets his hands on some MacGuffin devices, and then the Expendons turn up. After that scene, we get to the need for a more personal mission, and eventually we get the long second act that is the rest of the movie.

When you think Expendables, you think a bunch of big names, they show up, do a thing, get a decent time on screen.. and other famous actors get to have random cameos. However, this movie... this is Expendables: Jason Statham edition. This could easily have just been a Jason movie with a minor script changes to accommodate a scene or two with the others in them. Now, we get some good names in there, Garcia, Gox, Jaa... but really, did the rest of the cast not want to be involved? Certainly Stallone checks out for most of the picture.

Hang on... scans through trivia... "Was originally intended to be a spin-off film from The Expendables, starring Jason Statham as his character Lee Christmas. It was to be titled "A Christmas Story" until it was reworked to become the fourth Expendables film." Well, that explains that.

And apparently this is the start of a set of trilogy movies... so we'll be back here again some time.

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The Nuun

Sure, why not continue this prequel to the sequel to the main series?

Picking up from the previous movie, the Nun is about and hunting after... a complete McGuffin of an item, to be honest. And Sister Irene from the first movie is also in this, as are some other characters, and we have a surprising revelation about her past that is as believable as it is baldly inserted into the script.

We spend the first half of this movie with characters experiencing all sorts of visions, so we are prepared not to believe anything we see.. and then spend the second half of the movie running away from things that are there. Not much really happens (although a lot more happens, in a far more interesting way, than in the first movie), making this movie feel like a lot of filler in the bigger arc. If you are going to have the Nun around, and know that it appears in the (second?) Conjuring movie, you know that whatever happens here is a stopgap at best, so while we have the fight to see if these current characters can survive, we know the "big bad" will only be mildly inconvenienced. And we do get the hint at the end that this sub-franchise will continue.

Still, there's adequate performances all around (no-one is really standing out) and hey, I see that Susan Pensieve grew up! Apparently the magazine sequence was done practically, so well done for that.

I'm not sure who will be wanting to see this, but there are worse ways to spend time.

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Final Demeter Trip

This is making a large mountain out of a molehill...

Dracula travels from Transylvania to London via ship... and from that an entire movie was made. Watch we are introduced to a whole crew of people, of whom we already know who survives.

Actually, that is a point. Are people seeing this who don't know the story, at least in a general sense? How many people are seeing this as some "ship with monster" story without knowing where it originated? I doubt everyone who sees this has read the original, but likely know that this is Dracula by osmosis... although this movie never names him as such.

What we get is a slow stalking of the crew, and they are picked off one by one (or sometimes more than one). Dracula is very much in beast mode, which doesn't really jibe with the book, but clearly the makers thought this more cinematic. However, usual beast stories end with the beast being dealt with in some way or another and a Final Girl getting away, but as I mentioned, this isn't that story, so we are not getting out with happy feelings.

And yet, I can't bring myself to get to invested, as this is making much out of a few lines in the book, so these are completely original characters that the movie wants us to care about, but again we know nothing will come of them... unless the movie really wants us to invest some spin off series with "the one man who stood against Dracula... despite never having been mentioned before." [Now Dracula is public domain, so the movie can do what it wants, but it's already decided to dabble in the exact dialogue of the book for the main "plot" of the movie, so odd it would think this is the way to go.]

More excited Dracula fans that me may be into this, but from looking at the rating on IMDB, I don't think we'll be getting a Dracula-verse just yet.

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No One Could Save You

What if Signs... BUT GOOD????

It's a small town, and one young woman is being shunned by the town... but then aliens arrive! I haven't seen any ads for this, so I don't know what is given away, but I wasn't expecting that... Sure, okay. And I know there is an Ending Explained movie, so I did also expect METAPHOR, and I think I got it...

But I don't really want to say more. This is a really good movie, good creatures, actual tension, and stuff definitely happens...

I'll just link Amanda's video here as inspiration.

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Meg Up To The Trench

Finally got around to watching this, 'cos I'm chasing the latest fads!

In the first half of the movie, we see a group of idiots go under water and immediately everything goes wrong as a meg escapes with no problems what so ever, then the Bad Guys do Bad Things because they are Bad Guys. Characterisation? Who needs it? Then in the second half, they repeat what many other movies have done and do "what if we increased the body count?" and here's an island to attack with sharks.

There's nothing new here that you couldn't predict from just guessing. Apparently this is based on a novel "The Trench," although I have no idea how much of an adaptation it was, especially as they needed to incorporate all the characters from the first movie... at least I assume so, I remember sod all of the first movie aside from it had Jason Statham and the young girl and basically has a lot of features China would like... that is basically this movie too.

Do I sound like I'm not impressed? It just had a hard time holding my interest as, as I say, it didn't do anything we haven't seen elsewhere. It's fine, I guess, but... it's just fine.

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Maddy Can Dance

The latest "album" from Madonna is Finally Enough Love, which contains (if you get the extended version) 50 different singles of hers remixed. Which reminded me of another remix album of hers: You Can Dance.

What is weird is that the Vinyl, CD and Cassette (yes, we are back in the days of vinyl and cassettes) all contain the main seven songs. However, the CD has three extra tracks... but the cassette has four different tracks... and they are different extra tracks to what the CD has! The CD has "Dub" versions of Holiday, Into The Groove, and Where's the Party, where the Cassette has "Dub" versions of Spotlight, Holiday, Over and Over, and Into the Groove.

So if you wanted all those remixes... you had to get the CD and cassette... which I did (although no idea where they are now).

I did wonder if those remixes might have been released on Finally Enough Love, but those are different mixes again.

But none of them have my favourite remix:

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Colourful Cockroach

Yes, I know a beetle is not a cockroach, but it's more alliterative.

After spending time with the Reyes family, Jaime just happens to be in the right place to be near the beetle, and it happens to choose him... but this is superheroes, so that's about as much an origin story as you get. After flailing around, he and Jenny get a hold of a lot of backstory, and then they are dragged into the third act.

Like, literally, he gets dragged into the third act, and it's like the movie just wanted to move onto the next part after spending a LOT of time just getting to know the Reyes family, and then info-dumping. Am I saying this could be tighter, but certainly it feels unbalanced.

I was aware of some parts of it before I saw this, in particular that Jaime says "no killing" and then his family does killing. I could nearly forgive it except a) they spend time humanising the henchman, and the others can suck it?, and b) at one point they go "20 points!" after killing someone... Nope, fuck you movie, you don't get any credit for pretending to go a non-violence route.

This movie is... all right. Apparently James Gunn intends to keep Jaime around, so we'll see what evolves. There is an obvious mid-credits scene, but dammit give me Jenny Blue Beetle!

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Haunted Venice

Remember the classic Agatha Christie story everyone talks about? No? Well, here's a movie of it anyway.

It's Halloween in a haunted house... that happens to be in Italy. Poirot happens to be there and there's a murder... because of course there is. But there are also spookiness, spirits, ghosts and goblins. After the inciting incident, we get the classic interviews and then... accidentally Poirot solves the case! Huzzah! (Like I'm giving away that he does that...)

This feels more like an excuse for Kenneth Branagh to film a spoopy story... and to be fair, he films it well. There are some nice touches, and great shots... but as a Poirot story, it feels like it's missing something. Because outside of that there haunted aspect, there isn't much too it. There are some leaps of logic that only Poirot gets, of course, otherwise the audience would be ahead, and Agatha would never have that... although she reused enough plots that you could work out some of her stories ahead of time.

And speaking of Agatha, we have Tiny Fey as Agatha Christie Ariadne Oliver, but I always felt like Agatha self-inserted herself with more care, and certainly more subtlety, than what we get here. There are less big names in this one, at least less that I recognise. Aside from Michelle Yeoh of course, living out another Evelyn.

At not even 2 hours, this doesn't outstay things, but still feels like there could have been some trimming. I can't say that I fully recommend seeing this in a theatre, but I did get in for the advance screening, so I'm not the best poster boy for waiting.

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Rising of the Biggie

Yeah, it took me a while 'cos I just didn't care...

The Maximals... okay, let's just pause there for a moment, that's a stupid name. Like, it was done way back in the '80s or whatever, but it sounds silly, 'cos it is silly. Anyway, the Maximals fails to stop Unicron, so they go to Earth and will later fail to stop Unicron then. Meanwhile, the Autobots are on Earth because... they are, and instead of Bumblebee being the main car we follow, we follow Mirage instead as he hooks up with Noah Diaz and it's all very gangster and hip hop and all them other things to show that this movie is down with the hood. And then they will fail to stop Unicron's minions. Failure all around, until they fail as one at the end.

This movie felt... just not much really. Not a lot happens, and amazingly lots of people fail to notice transforming robots all over the place, to protect the surprise of later movies, I assume? But when big cargo planes can just drop down anywhere and no-one notices, I just go "fine, whatever, I don't care".

At least the humans aren't as annoying as previous movies, even if a lot of happenstance has to happen to a) get them into the movie, and then b) make them relevant to anything that happens in the movie.

I'm glad I didn't bust myself getting to see this, because it is easily a "wait for home release" picture.

[END]

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Teenage Mutant Mayhem Ninjas

I'm not really a Turts fan, but this is what the kids are talking about.

For the Nth time, we get the origin of the Turtle, who are now just teenagers that just want to hang with humans. (Clearly, they haven't met us.) But small problem, there's a weird creature stealing things... I mean, they are turtles and supposedly everyone reacts with horror when meeting them. But hey, maybe sorting out that stealing things will solve problems? And no more problems were ever faced again..

I don't really know Turt movie stuff, so I guess this is fine? This certainly feels like a decent enough take in this year of our pandemic that it works for them being teenagers, and for them being mutants, and expanding on the whole mutant creature thing. People's opinions does turn quite easily, but this is a simple movie, we aren't spending hours on random character development.

There are quite some names here, mainly is the other roles. I gather they actually have kids voicing the turtles so... they will do well until they age out? This movie ends up with an easy sequel hook, but no doubt any sequel will be driven purely by profit.

It's a movie about the turtles, sure. Speaks to a lot of people and they seem happy with it.

[END]

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Whose Land?

Maori land? As is pointed out at the end, Maori own under 5% of the land currently.

[END]

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Elementalary

I gather this is the biggest movie ever since Frozen?

She's a bit rock and roll, he's a bit country, she's a bit Capulet, he's a bit Montague, she's fire, he's water. Can they come together and overcome the problems of their families? Well, that's not really the picture. Her parents are rather insular (to put it politely around water), and his are rather accepting (if rather condescending). They face a common problem and must work together, although secretly, to help her father...

Which, when put that way, does paint the father as somewhat of a villain. He is about the closest we get, but once again, this is the sort of movie that would be simpler if people just talked to each other, but then the movie wouldn't happen.

This is based on the director being a part of an immigrant family, so from that aspect there is a certain aspect of "you can't complain about this actual experience", and certainly there are many parallels. But also there are some actual problems I have with the world of "what exactly resists being set on fire? and resists water? and clearly there are plenty of other materials around which aren't the elements/sentient?" Not the point, but where analogy leads to questions and things break down, this lead to me questioning the story more than enjoying it.

Until around 80 minutes in, when emotions took over, because this is Pixar, and then actual tears at 90 minutes...

While this is a Pixar movie, and so starts from a high benchmark... this is a low tier Pixar movie. It may be doing well, but it's a slow burn (sic) movie.

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CobbyWebby

This is what we need, a movie where a child is turned against their parents...

Although when your parents are played by Lizzy Caplan and Anthony Starr you are already behind the ball in getting a decent outing. Still Woody Norman does a fair job at being Peter, who hears strange noises in his room, then talking, but he parents don't want to hear about it.

I'm not a big fan of gaslighting, and this movie heads deeps into that "no, you didn't hear anything". And, as with a lot of movies, there's a lot going on here because people just can't tell the truth and need to hide anything. (On the one hand, if they didn't there wouldn't be this movie, on the other hand, perhaps it might lead to a better movie?)

This is supposedly based on The Telltale Heart, but I'm not sure I entirely follow it. This is more House of Usher. Although it has been a while since I read either.

And then after an hour, it changes into a different movie, which is just to show off their effects budget (and it doesn't quite work, keeping to the shadows is fine, but they couldn't sell the reveal).

I heard some good anticipation for this... but it doesn't do it for me.

[END]

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Late Night with the Devil

So very nearly good.

Jack Delroy has his own Late Night Show in the seventies, but just can't compete with Johnny Carson. After some upsetting personal issues, he has a big Halloween show planned. First a mentalist, then a skeptic, then an interview with a dark demon from the demon dimension. I'm sure nothing can possibly go wrong.

I did go into this with some expectations, especially thinking back to Ghostwatch. I was expecting a slow build over time, and we kinda get it, and while there might be some easter eggs hinting at later events, I was looking out for them and didn't see anything. There is the big climactic moment... and then it continues for another beat, and that was rather a let down. In Ghostwatch, we got the climax, everyone went "AAAAGH!" and it ended. In this, we get the climax, and then everyone goes "AAAAAA... *checks watch* AAAAA... takes breath... AAAAAGH!" and things are revealed that were quite obvious and it just goes on too long.

David Dastmalchian, a "that guy!" actor, does a great job as Jack, and other actors are good too. There is very much the aesthetic of 70s live tv late night show, although some of the effects are a bit too modern looking. In general it's well done.

So yeah, so close, but let down at the end. And I need to watch Ghostwatch again...

[END]

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#Manhole

There's a man. There's a hole. There's a holeman.

The night before his wedding, Shunsuke has a bit of a celebration with his colleagues... and wakes up down a hole. He isn't doing well, and no-one is returning his calls except for one old girlfriend, who is rather reluctant. Fortunately, he has the internet to help him, and that's never gone wrong before. People are on it, and clearly he will now be safe, no need to watch more.

This is largely a one hander with all the attention on Yûto Nakajima and at best his phone connection to the outside world. We get a few flashbacks and flashsides, but otherwise we are down in this underground room, Which gets very unpleasant indeed.

Described simply (on IMDB) as "A situational thriller depicting the struggle of a man who fell into a manhole." this is indeed quite the thriller, and has some very good beats to the action.

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Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV

If it's on TV, it might be real right?

Have you heard of Nam June Paik? Do you want to know about Nam June Paik? Then this is the documentary for you. He was a Korean that left Korea when he could. He learnt classical music, was going to be a pianist, then encountered John Cage and had his eyes opened. Then he saw TV and thought about what he could do with that. Which was a lot, and not what people expected.

There's outsider art, there's avant garde... and this is a perfect representation of that. Someone who did things differently, mixed media in unusual ways, and caused people to go "...what?"... but also hook into it. (I was quite taken with the moments we saw of Experiments With David Atwood.)

This is one of those situations where I wouldn't have known anything about him, but good documentary is a great way into it. And I now know a little something. Score!

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How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Yep, that indeed one way to do it.

This movie follows a group of disaffected youths, who are pissed off that there is so much going wrong with the world, that they decide to make a statement. By, as you might be able to guess, blowing up a pipeline. We flash back to get brief moments of their lives as we see what lead them (individually) to this, and we also see some of the consequences.

I did think this was going to be a documentary, but that is more because I didn't fully read the description. Although it is based on a book, and I have no idea if the book is more factual or is this narrative? [IMDB says that the book is non-fiction and this movie is a narrative adaptation.] But you can easily identify with them of doing something is better than doing nothing... although I am personally far too lazy to do something like this.

This is well put together, and decently acted. Will it inspire others to follow in their footsteps? ... I can't entirely argue against that.

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Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power

Male Gaze? You're looking at it!

Nina Menkes takes us through a look at various movies and how, basically, they depict women, and not in a good way. There are more than enough examples of how women are treated as an object and how this leaks though to how people have internalized viewing women this way and how this is nearly the default movie experience. People (in particular female directors) are particularly aware of this, but trying to do something about it is hard when it's still a man's club out there.

This is definitely an adult movie, we get rather graphic full frontals, of women. Of young women. Of girls, really. But this is what we have over the years, this was just the way things were done. Yes it is rather uncomfortable, but that's somewhat the point in that these days, we do recognise it as uncomfortable (unlike back when it was filmed).

I don't have much more to say about this other than... we should do better. And this is a good documentary to open your eyes to us needing to do this.

[END]

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Close to Vemeer

This is a Vemeer... or is it?

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam wants to set up an exhibition of Vemeer paintings, and so we follow them as they set about collecting some. They visit a few museums and we watch as they look at paintings, we are introduced to them, learn about them, and discuss them. In particular, there are a few paintings where the questions is: is this a Vemeer? Some say yes, some say no.

When they discussed how Vemeer painted, I was reminded of Tim's Vemeer, in which we see Tim Jenison replicate Vemeer's style. While this doesn't mention that venture, we get a repeat of a lot of how Vemeer made his pictures and how he saw his images, namely camera obscura on transparent paper. And a lot of corners of a room.

A lot of said about his particulars in how he painted faces (green undertones) and the folds of clothes, which led people to confidently claim yes or no. But there is debate, and amusingly one museum is titled with having "3 or 4 Vemeers", depending on who you ask.

We see the exhibition being set up, but not the full exhibition itself. But hey, it does make one want to visit an art gallery some time...

[END]

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Goodbye Ruby Gillman

Hnmmm... I suspect there's a puberty metaphor in there...

A young girl is facing the terrible ordeal of the school prom, and she also finds out she's a kraken and there's a whole epic sea war she's a part of. Which is kind of a lot. ... but this isn't the movie I thought it was from the trailer.

Although watching the trailer, there are lines in there that aren't in the movie. I was thinking we would be presented with mermaids being adored by everyone and being in public, and the actual hero (our kraken lead) was hiding away. That sort of happened, but... the mermaid was hiding as well. So there is a different movie out there that is what I was thinking of, but this isn't it.

As mentioned, there's the puberty metaphor, and a lot of mother/daughter dynamics, and there is a movie that happens around it. To be honest, I think I prefer Turning Red's take on it (but then that is Pixar and this is Dreamworks, so that's kind of a given). ... so is this Dreamworks churning out their own take on this following that movie?

Feels a little too generic and targeted to be an "it movie of the moment", but then I'm not the target audience. Nice enough watch, but not one I'll be remembering.

[END]

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Take me down to Asteroid City

I'm slowly coming around to Wes, but this is not going to rate the highest.

This is a movie about a grieving father who ends up in a small town that an alien visit. But it's actually about the movie itself as a play and how it was put on. But it's actually about...

This is very Wes Anderson, with perfectly framed shots and very deliberate acting choices. But this is also Wes a bit more up his arse than some of his other movies. He was going in a great arc up to French Dispatch and this... goes a little too far. Dial it back, Wes.

Still, amazing set design as ever. And great performances too. ...

But I think, ultimately, I didn't really get it.

[END]

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Barbie Girl!

Of the two, I saw Barbie. I have no interest in seeing the other one.

Woo! I'm glad I saw this. This was great... for the most part. Barbie comes to the real world, and finds out what a trash fire life is. Yay! Fun!

And it is fun. There are tons of references to all sorts of things (I wonder how many kids will get the 2001 intro? Or the keyboard demo music??) I laughed a lot.

But there is a lot of thinking here too. What is the woman's role in life? Why is it so hard in the world of patriarchy? What is Ken?

...which is a point. Ken takes over the movie at one point, and I was wondering "hey, isn't this supposed to be about Barbie? Why is it about the guys now?" Let alone... what's the point of Will Ferrell and co? They are in the movie, and then we get to the end of the movie and... there they are... wha?

No, this is not going to be considered a deep movie... but it's still a great movie.

[END]

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Running Impossible: Part First

Ethan Hunt... now looks older than the entire franchise! Yet, he still runs well.

There's a new computer AI called The Entity, because humans are good at naming things. And so we spend the entire movie trying to get the McGuffin that might be linked to doing something to the Entity and.. that's the movie. This is definitely part one (but doesn't end as cliff-hanger-y as other Part Ones recently), and there is a lot of moving parts... but not a lot going on. Go to new location, have an action scene, go to different new location, rinse and repeat.

And while yes, Tom Cruise could easily beat my arse with both hand tied behind his back, he is getting on, and a lot of his fights do feel like they are slowed down a little / having less energy to allow him to do them. Although it's hard to say anyone is giving too much energy, with most of the cast on the higher side...

That is to say, most of the male case. The female cast is about half their age, it seems, so they are perfectly capable of doing things, but aren't given much to do. Hayley Atwell was great as Agent/Captain Carter, but here she is barely more than a pretty lamp with good thief skills. She can brawl, get her into a good fight! And Pom Klementieff is clearly having fun as a bad gal, but as such she can't win all the battles.

The big set pieces feel like they are stretched out a bit, probably because this is Part One, and once again we get car chases that go on a little too long. [Although this does lead to my favourite note in the credits re the Spanish Steps.]

Part One down, now waiting for Part Two. Let's hope they have the script fully worked out (aside from "put random set piece Tom Cruise wants to do here").

[END]

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Amazing Morris

I've seen a few adaptations of Pterry's work, and this is one of them.

This is based on the idea of the Pied Piper with the conceit of: what if the rats are in on it? From there, we go with Maurice and his rodents as they come to a town where the nastiest rats in town aren't the ones that just arrived. Mixed with that is the idea of identity and what does it mean to be intelligent.

This is an odd adaptation, in that a lot of the focus moves from the rats to the humans. And there is a strange narrative device of who is the narrator that adds... nothing that I can tell, other than portentous framing that doesn't help.

That said, there are some great voices in this, Hugh Laurie, Emilia Clarke, David Thelis, David Tennant, and many more! The animation style is that kind of weird skinny humans that take some getting used to, but it's fine.

I hoped for more about the rats, but this is more of a standard version of this story, so there is more that could be done as a possibility, but there are worse realisations than this movie.

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Dail of Density

Is this what the kids call "mid"? It definitely wasn't high action.

I never saw any trailers for this, so I have no idea what about the plot is revealed. With that in mind, I'm gonna be careful what I saw, but I do want to point things out, so you may just want to skip over this.

We start with a bit of early Indy in which Harrison Ford is CGI'd into his younger self as well as Jackson was for young Fury in Captain Marvel. We then go to current day and Harrison is barely able to move about the scenes... which really plays hard with the "big action sequences" in which... they used to be high action, but now they are medium action as Harrison can't do the things he used to. The movie tries to make it exciting, but it is all lower key music and scenes and it just doesn't work.

This movie is two and a half hours long... (of which 15 minutes is end credits, you don't need to stay through those). And it could be cut down so easily. All those big "action" pieces? They just go on too long, and they aren't fun. Just the same beats over and over. Cut them down.

And as for the plot gimmick dial... that is barely worth it either. It is entirely a macguffin, it doesn't have any specialty to it, and the end scene it leads to... it wastes that too.

I know people hate Crystal Skull. I think that's fine, but I can see people comparing this to that and this coming off better... but this movie is just so "meh" it isn't worth bothering with.

I gather people are waiting for it to hit D+. Yeah, I can agree with that.

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Fwash, Aaa-aah!

I'm gonna say it...  despite all the controversy and such... I found this a fun film! And a better send off to the Synder-verse than it deserved.

In that classic story line that seems to dominate Barry's origin now, back in the past his mother was killed and his father sent to prison. So what else to do but go back in time and change that? And see a lot of badly CGI'd people around you at the same time. Like, it takes time for effects and they put the effort in, but that was really bad CGI there... Anyway, as you expect, changing the timeline has some problematic results, and so Barry encounters previous movies and sees others that never happened, until he has to accept that he is the biggest monster of them all.

Having complained about the CGI I will compliment that they did really well with compositing Ezra in both his places. It sold me all the time, and I was looking for discrepancies! (A common one is eye-lines not actually acknowledging that the other person is the same height, but didn't pick up on any problems there.) That would have been a lot of work so well done on all concerned for getting that right.

Michael Keaton as Batman... moderate success. He just looked old and over it, so when his action scenes happened, you could tell it was more stuntman than birdman. And I did have a hard time buying Sasha Calle as Kara. Yes, she was a more beaten up version, but... it really felt like "we don't have Superman, but perhaps you won't notice".

And yes, I laughed at the alternative versions. I hope we were supposed to, because they were injokes galore, so I got them!

But, as I said, overall I enjoyed the story. I thought it was well done, without introducing random villains for moments that would have had them had this been a TV series (Hello CW Flash... who sadly didn't get a reciprocal appearance...), but now that people have had their final cameos, let's move on to other pastures.

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Honour Amoung Thievus

It took me a little, this wasn't top of my list, but yeah, I did get around to seeing the D&D movie.

It's a DND adventure, but where someone is telling you their idea, and it's never as much fun as playing it yourself. Chris Pine gets a party together, gets captured, then has to get another party together to get payback on the first party he got together. And in doing so, encounter a lot of DND references.

And I got them. Displacer beast, yep, meteor storm, okay, different classes, of course. But this isn't an entirely faithful depiction of an adventure, as battles are not done in initiative order, instead one person can act like they have tons of action points. One at a time might make for a more boring battle, or you could take it as a challenge to show off properly! Or just have standard fighting, I guess we can put up with that too.

But my main complaint is the thieves side. Why do we always have to focus on the disreputable people? When Star Wars put out its recent RPG, it started with the scoundrels. And so when this rpg reboots, we go into the conmen side of things. Where's the heroes actually fighting evil? Now, fine, the PCs are murder hobos, but that's not the story we tell others. Just seems like a miss to get into the good vs evil easy story, and no doubt if there are more of these movies, they'll be all about Chris Pine, and so we're going to stay on the ignominious side.

Anyway, aside from complaining, yes, I did enjoy this, even if I thought there could have been better aspects.

[END]

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Cross the Spdr-vrs

I saw Part One last night... it is definitely a Part One.

Hmm.. there is a lot of this movie that hasn't been revealed in the majority of the trailers I've seen. There are definitely things I can mention that are right at the start of the movie, but I know people, and they will complain, and since I have seen this long before most people, I'm just gonna say nothing.

This is certainly a progression of Miles' story, and there was far more connection to the first movie that I was expecting. But this story does get really meta. I don't see the average movie goer getting a lot of this story, it expects you to know a lot about Spider-Man history. Now, a lot of us do, but the average movie goer? I'm not so sure. (Not that I'm the best barometer of that, as I do know more than most people do.)

[Which also means I got some of the really deep cuts they threw in there. And enjoyed them!]

Good performances throughout, and the animation styles are fitting.. although there were a few sequences I really wasn't sure what they were doing with the backgrounds.

I'm not entirely sure I recommend this ahead of waiting for Part 2 to come out, but at over two hours it's not going to be a quick rewatch before that happens.

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Super Brothers Luigi Movie

Now, I'll be upfront, I'm not a Nintendo fanboy. In fact, I don't think I've ever played a single Mario game, although I've certainly seen enough Let's Plays, especially of... that one... with the doors and stars? So, it's no understatement to say I'm not the target audience for this.

Mario and Luigi muck around in Brooklyn for a long while, and get into antics with a dog for... reasons? Eventually, they are transported to the Mushroom Kingdom, where Luigi is sidelined like usual, and it's all about Mario, as usual. He teams up with Princess Peach, then with Donkey Kong, and all together they transport everyone back to Brooklyn for a final battle. You know, as is usual in Mario games.

As mentioned above, I'm not that conversant so while I got some stuff, I have less than no doubt that I missed many, many, many (if not all) of the references. But hey, I do like the animation, I thought it was really spot on, and very faithful to the games. (Aside from Princess Peach's face. I don't know what it is about it, but it just looked odd.)

There is much about the plot that confuses. What is with the dog? Why go back to Brooklyn? Is the Mushroom Kingdom now just a transit stop away from there? (It seems so.) And yeah, that very weird philosophical blue star at the end... no doubt there are many many youtube videos explaining everything, but I'm not watching those.

Not for me, but there are plenty of people who enjoyed this.

[END]

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XFxaxsxtX

So, cars eh? And Family I gather. And Jason Mamoa's been here the whole time!

Back in Fast Five there was a new dangling plot thread and now we have this movie! Jason Mamoa is out to take down the Family and with all the characters we need to service, there are lot of scenes of people doing things, with some action sequences. With all that, it felt hard to actually establish much of a connection, because as well as different character scenes, there was also a vastly different tone. Dom was all serious stuff, Roman and co are all jocularity, and occasionally we get others as well with their own goings on.

The car stunts were as stupid as this series gets. And even though the movie itself calls out how they deny gravity, that doesn't make this any less nonsensical. [How is Dom's car still working after all that??]

Overall, I think this will work better when you binge watch them in order to actually remember who is who and how they connect, but things are left here set up for definitely another movie.

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Pop's Exercist

Have you ever seen an exorcism movie? Then you've seen 90% of this.

Back in 1987 a kid gets possessed, and the Pope's own personal exorcist is sent to take care of it. Because... because he does. As it happens, this is the most powerful demon evah and only Russell Crowe on a mini motorbike can deal with it!

As I said, this is just like 90% of other exorcism movies. The other 10% is the lore of this movie, in which we find out that the devil has been inside the church all this time. And that this is supposed to be from the exorcist's personal files. Although we start with the exorcist doing an exorcism that is more theatre than actual exorcisng, and that he says only 2% is actual evil, this of course happens to be the 2%. According to him. Do we have independent validation of any of this? I haven't looked, but I doubt it. [Again I ask that if this is still happening, why is it not better documented in our world of technology?]

There easily could be a whole series of these films, but let's hope they actually do something interesting with the concept.

[END]

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Rise of Evil Dead

The reboot had a sequel. Seemed to be well received, but this is my review!

In a random basement, a kid finds a book, and lo, are demons unleashed. That's all the setup we need, or get, and from that point on it's about the horror of family members being taken over and becoming evil. Although people largely immediately leap to "you aren't that person" and dealing to them, so that theme doesn't stick around, but that's what they were going for.

Now this is from a franchise that people liked, and the reboot movie.. happened. And this movie... also happens. Like, it is entirely independent of the previous movie, and about the only relation is that there is a book (not even the same book, just another random evil book) that incites things. And from that point on, this could be any horror movie in any franchise or any one off.

Which isn't to say this is a bad movie. It's well done, the effects are good, the story builds well (given it's a horror movie), but at no point am I saying "Hey, this is Evil Dead all right!". Not even a shotgun or a chainsaw is doing that.

Army of Dead could basically be considered unlinked to the previous cabin based movies, so it's not like they can't change up the formula/location, but if so, lean hard into this becoming an anthology series and don't pretend there's any kind of continuity worth acknowledging.

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Gone to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo

Last month, I had a day off (as did other people), and so went to the Wellington Zoo. Definitely wanted to see the new snow leopards! As it happens, you can see animals before even getting into the zoo itself, as if you go the cafe there, at the back of the cafe you can see the Pygmy Monkeys. Cute wee things, and you can eat right in front of them (fair's fair, they also eat in front of you).

After entering proper, I was a little disappointed that there seemed to be less animals around, as the zoo is going through some display changes. Even more annoying they closed one of the paths off, so there was more backtracking that I was expected.

I did see a snow leopard... kind of.

There was one, sitting on the ledge at the end of the enclosure. Did not look to be having a lot of fun there. Still, I did see one.. sorta.

Some other animals were of full display. The lions where having a great time.

And here, have a big picture of a cock!

Other animals can be seen in my pictures here. (I hope the links work, photobucket changed their urls that all those ones on the side likely no longer work, but I haven't bothered trying to fix them.)

[END]

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Screammmmmming

It's a franchise. You know it's a franchise, because they say it's a franchise, and who would know better?

Something something kids from the previous movie are under threat again. Something something ghostface killer kills a lot of people. Something something it's people close to them...

As much as they go on about how this is a franchise, and everything is bigger and better, this is exactly the same as the rest of the movies. Aside from plundering their own history (somewhat literally!) you could close your eyes and lose track of what is supposed to be happening specifically in this movie.

I couldn't remember who did repeat, actor wise, from the previous movie (aside from Courtney Cox), but that probably speaks more to me not paying that much attention the previous movie, BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL THE SAME!

No doubt there'll be a million more, it's an easy cheap formula to cash in on, so hey ho, bring on the next one...

[END]

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Paranomally Wellingtony

Paranormal Wellington is a tv spin off of What We Do In The Shadows. It's a silly spooky cop show about paranormal events in Wellington.

Paranormal Wellington RPG is a silly spooky RPG based on the tv series, and created by TaleTurn, aka Morgan Davies! We knows him!

I haven't talked about my RPGing. I do a lot on SteamSteelMurder (go to the Live Tab), and just the other day, as a one off, we did Paranormal Wellington. And here it is!

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GGGuardians of the GGGalaxy

I could have seen this on Wednesday but I wanted too late to get tickets, so I had to wait until Thursday! Oh no, the agony!

Rocket gets hurt and so starts the plot to save Rocket, which involves going into the backstory of Rocket. If you've seen some scenes already on YouTube, you know this is going deep into the animal harm side of things and...

Animal abuse is a bad thing. Let's get that out of the way. But this is entirely presented in a very PG way, and with CGI animals (because doing anything with real animals would be insane), so while yes it is terrible... it feels a lot of "tell don't show" (and showing is not a good idea), but the movie very definitely beats us around the head about it without letting the audience just get there on their own. Fine, but if you already get that message, this is just shouting in your face.

We also get the issue of overloading the characters. As well as the main Guardians, we have all the other characters that the movies have included over the years, and they need to get their own character arcs (which might be brief and obvious, but they are still crammed in there). Some plot lines could easily have been excised and only improved the overall pacing (eg the entire Warlock thread).

I've already heard a lot of people love this, and I'm sure Marvel are already wishing James Gunn would hang around, but DC have him now, so time for them to put out good movies.

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Ghost Ted

It's a romantic comedy with a surface veneer of action!

A man and a woman get together, and when the woman ghosts him, he decides to stalk her. But she's a working woman and doesn't have time for love, but can he get beneath her tough exterior and will they end up together? ... which is presented as a good thing to want...

Oh, and there's an "action" movie layered over this, with agents and fighting and wanting to get some MacGuffin or another and all that that really means is a) the occasional five minute scene of fighting, and b) cameos by actors that Chris Evans knows. [And Ryan Reynolds, 'cos he seems willing to cameo in anything.] Adrian Brody does his best, but he's only getting in the way of the romance we are following.

So I'm coming across as a bit down on the action side and.. yeah, frankly I don't know why they really bothered. Was it to trick people into thinking "we're gonna get a big budget action sequence" and watch it that way? It's on Apple, it's not like they are needing to sell tickets to this. They could have just gone into the romantic comedy stuff, and people will watch because well... Chris Evans and Ana De Armas (and he is definitely getting higher billing that she did). It's fine, but just drags the movie out longer than it needed to be.

There's a core of a decent movie here that could have worked, but someone decided to pitch it as something else.

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War with Madonna

Madonna('s video channel, operated by... who knows, some corporate hire) has just released the director's cut of American Life. You might recall the video for that, it has Maddy in front of a lot of flags, and a minor bit where she raps about her terrible life where she has three nannys and a chef and stuff.

But this is that one. This is the original video, planned and filmed. Which is slightly... political message. Which the entire album was supposed to be, but she didn't quite get there. Still some good songs on there.

But yeah, this is what she started with, before it got pulled.

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Creeed 3

Just noticed that Creed continues the Roman numbering scheme. Huh.

Jonathan "Dame" Majors gets out of prison (a fact that may precursor real life events, we'll see), and gets together with his old buddy Creed to do some boxing. Because they were big friends back in the day, in a backstory that we only found out in this movie, but that's standard for sequels. But Dame fights too hard, so Creed gets out of retirement to have a scrap, as they have decided that boxing is the way to settle this, even though they've proved by that point that they are willing to actually fight in real life so willingness to deal with it in the structured rules of the ring is a bit of a "this is how the movie works".

Good performances around, from Michael B. Jordan and Jonathan Majors. Others are also in this movie, such as Tessa Thompson, but frankly the movie is all about those two so the rest of the cast are a bit of an add on.

The story is rather basic, just a few big moments, although I am surprised this is the shorted Creed film so far, it feels long. And I can't recall the previous movies, so call backs to that, and returning characters, went over my head. Perhaps a rescreening would have been useful? But then the movie should be able to stand on its own.

Decent enough movie, certainly a worth entry in the series.

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Aavvaa-tay-tah

I only saw the first movie once, not in the theater. So far, keeping that streak alive!

In the first third of the movie, we meet JakeSully and family in their forest surroundings. Then in the second third, they head out west to the sea. Then in the last third they get into a watery battle.

So, there was that one bit where the blue kid did something, and then there's the other bit where that blue kid did something, and the blue kid did a thing. Can you guess that I couldn't really tell who was who? Yes, that is correct, and I don't care. In that I couldn't bring myself to be invested in any of this. We didn't need three hours of this, and it felt rather generic, and the main reason I knew what was going on is that I watched other people talk about it so I knew who various characters were.

Is this an impressive use of technology in all its CGI ness? They say the best CGI is when you don't notice it's CGI, but there's no change of that happening here. I was more wondering how well the human actors were given guidance for interacting with all the blueness as I saw some eyelines didn't quite work. But hey, I might just be picking on it because I can.

Lots of people are excited by this. I'll sit back and wait for the next one and just watch from afar.

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Tetrus

It's that movie based on the video game that everyone is talking about!

This is a documentary in the same style that Argo was, to whit, a dramatisation of events. To whitter, there are some moments that genuflect towards the actual events, and then a whole lot of Hollywood is added on top to make it more exciting. (Especially that ending, which really reminded me of Argo!)

I knew some of the history of Tetris, but can easily believe it's as convoluted as what is presented here. Certainly, I know that Alexey Pajitnov got hosed nearly completely, so that certainly is realistic. I gather the KGB was more subtle about their machinations, in that they were involved, but not quite as overt and antagonistic as what we get here. But I'm guessing the majority of the story is accurate.

Taron Egerton is the main lead, but it doesn't feel like this movie needed him. We are supposed to be here for the people, not the actors. That said, it's nice to see Toby Jones doing things... but I can't say I recognised the others.

Decent movie overall, if somewhat hyperbolic. If you aren't reading history of Tetris books, this gives the ideas.

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Miss Sing

Everyone says "this is the spiritual sequel to Searching". And while true, it deserves to be considered as its own thing.

A teen is fed up with dealing with her mother, but when her mother goes on holiday but doesn't return, she starts asking questions. And so we have our search via computer to trace back what happened, with websites and facetime with people to provide the people talking. And... I'll admit, I did not see the plot twists coming at all. Like, none of them. They all work, but caught be completely by surprise, and yet they all flow naturally from what we've been given. No mean feat, that.

It's all on Storm Reid to hold this movie, and she does excellently. While I might have questions about the justification for seeing her on screen, she gives a great performance and keeps you watching what she's going through next. We also get Ken Leung and Joaquim de Almeida, so we definitely have star power in this as well.

If you liked Searching, definitely check this out. If you didn't see Searching, definitely give this a go. If you didn't like Searching... try this anyway! Thumbs up all around!

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Just Cause 3: The Onliniest Game Evah!!!11!

Then there is the worst part of this game. It has a CONSTANT need to be online. Like whenever you boot the game up, it logs onto the servers. And when the servers are busy, it disconnects, and then insists on asking if you want to try logging in again. No matter what you are doing. Ultimately, you might decide to go into OffLine mode, but as soon as you something, such as look at the map, boom, it's reconnecting again. And why? So it can tell me that "puppygod22 did something better than you". I Don't Care! And this also brings home the point of "what if the servers go down?" Fortunately, there is offline mode, but it will still likely keep trying to connect. I don't fancy facing that day.

Still, I did about everything. 47 hours in all. There are various challenges I can't be bothered to do, so I'm definitely not getting all the achievements here. Still, I did a lot, but now I need to do something else.

Until Just Cause 4...

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Just Cause 3: It collects!

But...there is a lot to do outside of the main missions. All the areas to free, various encounters to do, lots of challenges, and... the collectibles. So many collectibles. (Although from memory JC2 was WAY worse.) In this game, you need to "pay" to use fast travel (once unlocked), although if you do all the Shrines in the region, you can then fast travel for free there. Aside from looking them up, or stumbling across them, you aren't going to fine the shrines naturally. Fortunately, after you free an area, you get markers for where the collectibles are, including the shrines... and, side bonus, you can travel for free from that area now. So yeah, by the time you get all the shrines, you don't need the shrines. But I got them, and all the other collectibles anyway.

And there are extra side missions, aka the DLC. You can tell which bits are the DLC because the main story doesn't ever refer to them, and the cut scenes are just static images instead of full blown animated bits. They also are the same of "start the DLC mission, free areas (similar to everything else), then do the last mission". Also, big bonus, you basically get game breaking items. One mission gives you free flight. One mission gives you a big mech. And one mission gives you a big gun. Like I cruised through the last story missions easily because of that gun. Game breaking indeed. (But, hey, if they didn't want me to use it, they shouldn't have given it to me.)

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Just Cause 3: It Begins!

So I played a lot of Just Cause 2, and was always going to get around to Just Cause 3. And now I have. One thing about JC2 is that I cheated to have infinite health and ammo, and I came damn close to doing so again, but there was one aspect of the difficulty setting that never quite tipped me over (although I got damn close).

There is no difficulty setting. What you play is what you play. But I'm bad at video games, so won't I die over and over again? Yep. (I have no idea if the game made things easier in the background with lessening guards, etc., after dying. It might have done.) But one thing the game explicitly did: keep your progress. When you free bases/towns, you blow up objects (not fuel stations this time) and sometimes people. But once you've ticked them off the list... that's it. If you die and come back (with ammo replenished) you can keep going. Purely by attrition you can free the various bases/towns until you win! Some of the missions didn't quite work that way, but the open world stuff did, and that made it bareable.

(Outside of load times that is. I don't know if the program is bad, my computer is bad, or I should have used an SSD, but when you die, and you just want to get back to blowing up things, you have to wait for it to reload everything. Although that's not the worst part, more later.)

The story is the same as this and the Far Cry games... there's a dictator at the top, and you need to slowly free the various places from the bad guys until you've done enough for the story missions. The actual story is Rico (the hero) going back to his home country and freeing it, but aside from the setting, this is rather generic. And the ending fight is just silly (like I recall from the previous games).

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Johnathon Wickman the Fourth

This has indeed been a series, and this is Chapter Four!

The story continues as John has to deal with the consequences of the previous movies... which makes it just like the previous movies! This is very much the continuation, but the producers have to do a some more things to take it to the next level...

Which, on many levels, makes this a slog. This has never been the cheeriest of movies, but this just felt like "we are going to throw men after men into every scene" without any real sense of them needing to be there other than we need people to fill out the kill quota of fights. In one scene I was thinking "what is the point of this room (other than as a different place to have a fight)?" In another "whelp, this is a fight sequence we are having now."

Ultimately, I would like to watch all these in a series (although not in a theatre 'cos my bladder), as I didn't watch the others before this so only have vague memories, but... I can wait for that.

Oh, and this movie was decided the Lance Reddick. Yep. He will be missed.

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Rose De Gwire

Guy Ritchie has made several good movies. And then he also made this.

Let's not mess about, this movie is just Guy Ritchie and friend fuck about. He wants to have a holiday in Turkey and Qatar, fair play to him to get his mates in and do it under the guise of making a movie, but don't pretend there's an actual plot. It's just get some big names, then filming enough footage to call it a movie.

There's a pretense of a story where we start with something being stolen. Literally we have no idea what it is to begin with, but when we find out what it is... it does not matter a little, and may as well be a wheel of cheese it has that much to do with the story, a pure MacGuffin. The scenes we get are:

• Jason Statham doing stunts around fighting people.
• Aubrey Plaza sitting looking cool, or standing looking cool
• Hugh Grant chewing not only his scenery but everyone else's as well.

This will likely make it's money back, and yes, could be a franchise, but frankly it isn't trying that hard to be a proper movie so I'm not going to try that hard to care about it.

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Shaz 'Am Again!

In their move to clear their slate, DC still put out it's previous made movie that is a sequel to a widely popular movie, so let's go!

Billy/Shazam is expressing doubt about how well he is keeping is found family together, and then we see that they are barely keeping together at all. Fortunately, there's an external threat to turn to gather them together, only the movie has decided that only two characters, Billy and Freddie, are actually worthy of a full plot line, and the rest of the family are mainly there for padding and exposition.

Like, there's a lot of exposition. And padding. I'm sure a lot of scene transitions could be trimmed down and maybe my bladder wouldn't be so full at the end...

But the big threats are supposedly gods, which are basically beings with lots of power, and I'm not really sure what makes them gods in any sense of no-one worships them and they just have lots of power? These characters are invented by the movie, ie not from the comics, so there's a lot of backstory they have to put in to make them have sense, but then they just slap the "god" label on and expect that to cover a lot.

Anyway, there's a big fight sequence and the characters that are supposed to be important to the message aren't there for the final climatic thematic moment, and we get a rather irrelevant character thrown in because they were available in the plot to be there.

Does this sound like I dislike this movie? A bit, but mostly this is just a big meh. DC doesn't seem to have put a lot of effort into advertising this, and indeed I've already seen that this release has caught people by surprise that it is happening now.

It very easily sits in the camp of "this is another movie".

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TerrorTome!

As well as starring in a supernatural hospital drama, Garth Marenghi is also an author, and produced Garth Marenghi's TerrorTome!

This is basically three different stories, with a connected through line. The first is a pastiche of Hellraiser, then we get a classic bad 70s science fiction horror, and finally a very subtle dig at Stephen King.

Now, while this is comedy, it's comedy from a very pedantic view of very carefully and precisely stating exactly what is going on, and treating it with extreme gravity, especially when it is ludicrous. While is fine to start with... but by the third story it was really wearing quite thin.

I got the audiobook, and Gareth Marenghi himself is narrating it. It's great to hear that cadence and while I'm not saying the book reading peoples will be missing out on anything, there is a distinct way he says things that would be missing for those who can't get that voice quite right in the head.

It's amusing, but overstays it's welcome. At least with the book you can more easily take breaks between the sections as opposed to pausing the audiobook and doing something else.

Fun, but choose wisely.

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Luther The Fallen 'Ardcase

Can't remember if I mentioned it here, but I watched Luther, the BBC detective series starring Idris Elba, in which he did what he had to do, regardless of the cost. Just recently they came out with a TV movie that was in theatres for a bit, then released onto Netflix.

Luther is in prison but is taunted by a serial killer, and so he has to get out and go after him. I can't recall if the series ended up with him in prison, or if this was a quick set up of the movie to set some piece of plot going, but given of what I recall from the tv series, it doesn't surprise me he is in there.

Andy Serkis is the villain of the piece, and boy is he having fun, as he often does, but his character is a real piece of work and this movie goes hard and dark with him. And whoever did the costuming made a decision with that hair piece.

This is not a pleasant movie. And while that is in keeping with the series, either I didn't remember the series fully, or the writer went extra for this movie, 'cos this is very hardcore.

Definitely one to watch if you like the show, but don't expect the warm fuzzies.

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Knock at the Knabin

Okay, MNS, I will watch your movies eventually, and this is the eventually for this movie.

Actually, I'm not sure I ever saw the trailer for this, certainly I had no idea of anything before I went into this movie, so I'm not sure what I can talk about even with my bad recapping of the plot. There is certainly a cabin, and there is indeed a knock, so we can check the title as accurate. Beyond that, it's one big idea that plays out over the movie, so do I give it away? Am I giving anything away? Does everyone who saw the trailer know what's up? Okay, sure, I could watch the trailer, but where's the fun in that?

One thing this does remind me of is Signs, in that MNS is back on his "belief is important" bullshit. Belief is the only thing that matters, so belief must triumph over everything else. Maybe that gives this away, but this movie gives up on any sense of subtlety and ambiguity by the end, so I'm not going to read deep into it.

There are great performances in this from all the cast. Even the child actor isn't annoying! Everything in the cabin is well done, although the effects on the tv are obvious effects on the tv. But everything else is real and on screen, and well delivered all around.

Catch this if you have easy access, but I wouldn't suggest putting in a lot of effort to do so.

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Birdumbic 3

There was the first one, no-one could believe it... there was a second one, no-one wanted it... and now there's the third one, and I hear a fourth is being planned.

Two extremely white people get together and wander around encountering badly acted exposition characters (including an extremely "subtle" [as in not subtle at all] person standing in for one Elongated Musky and everything brilliant he will do) and footage from other movies/documentaries. And spouting a lot of facts about Vertigo. Like seriously, James Nguyen really likes Vertigo and wants you to know this. It's vitally important that that one fact is driven home, if no-one else is taken away from this movie. Vertigo is the best film ever, you guys.

While the first movie had a "wonderful" song about making out with your family, this one has an upbeat song about how the planet is dying! Get down and boogie!

Finally, after two thirds of the movie (and after the obligatory "sex" scene, although I will give this couple did spend a lot of time together so their relationship is more believable), the Sea Eagles attack! By which I mean the terrible sea eagle graphic, because why not just lean into it at this point? And lo... did the white people drive around and get attacked by birds until they didn't...

The first one was Nanar. The second one, he tried for Nanar and failed miserably. This... this is just bad. It's not offensively bad like the second one, just that James Nguyen is either just that bad a director or if he is leaning into it, he's pulled back on the worst excesses and is coming across as merely incompetent.

It's too late for me, I'm condemned to watch these things, but there's no need for you to suffer. Just ignore it as hard as you can.

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