Knives Out, again... love this film. Daniel Craig is amazing in it. Not uncommon for me to see a movie several times, but really dig this. Love the dialogue, characters are all pretty great, written well and acting across the board is good.
The Upside........6/10 not bad for a Sat evening flick while sitting on the couch, better then I thought
Jay and Silent Bob reboot - 0/10 lazy, terrible acting, awful script and just unnecessary film. I liked the 2001 version and not necessarily allergic to the genre so I’m not biased in that regard. The Post (2017) - 9/10 awesome film, really had me on the edge of my seat and crazy Streep didn’t win any big award for this. Loved how it was about the woman’s struggle in a man’s world and how she finally stood up to everyone and showed she can lead. The only reason it’s not a 10/10 is the inaccurate Nixon portrayal. Jexi - 6.5/10 it has potential, but at some point the phone becomes annoying AF and the relationship with the main guy just freaking weird. Prior to that it was kind of funny, especially Wanda Sykes who is underrated and just honestly rude, but could’ve done much more w/ the concept. Adam Devine is also just not a great actor who can carry a movie, always the same role with that annoying voice. Different actor w/ more genuine funny bits w/ the phone talking would’ve gone a long way to make this better.
Awake - 2 out of 10. On Netflix. Awful, awful film. Maybe a 2 is being too kind. Poor acting, poor writing. Starred some forgettable actor as lead and Clint Eastwood's daughter (not anywhere near attractive enough to overcome her acting failures). The only noteworthy part of the film was marveling at how badly William Forsythe has fallen apart (fat, worst dye job ever).
I just watched the trailer. The bad acting peaks through there even though they try to hide it with sound effects and editing lol
6 Underground - 9/10 Man I don’t know why imdb is so harsh, this was a hellavu movie! Plot might have some holes, very unlikely it could go down like in the movie - I would’ve liked a half hour more to see more planning, build suspense- but hey: it’s Michael Bay! This was all about action and it damn sure delivered. Ryan Reynolds is solid, his jokes every now and again are funny and supporting cast is good too. Lots of crazy scenes, gory and jam packed with explosions and camera angle switches. If you don’t like that then it’s probably not your movie. One thing bothered me though: the ending, too easy to represent Middle-Eastern people like that. You know when you see it.
I'm not even sure how I would rate this movie, but I would love to hear someone else's opinion. I rented it at the RedBox I will say I avoid most horror movies because I usually find the scripts too unbelievable to scare me. I didn't realize this was a horror movie, nor a black and white movie when I rented it. I love the sea, and just thought it was a drama movie. I didn't read the movie synopsis or watch the trailer before I rented it. This was one strange movie. I will tell you that much. It kind of had that Hitchcock feel to it.
Charged, the Eduardo Garcia Story 8 out of 10. Amazon Prime. Never heard of Garcia nor his story. Wow. Watch it. Documentary of an outdoorsy chef who gets electrocuted, sustains truly horrifying injuries, and his physical and emotional recovery helped by an amazingly supportive partner, his family, and his own positive spirit.
A Simple Favor (7 out of 10) on Amazon Prime. Lots of fun movie highlighted by Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively (yum!). Basic plot: Kendrick is a nerdy, overly nice vlogger and Lively is the hardened, extremely sexy women that becomes friends with. Lively disappears... and anything more will give too much away.
Here's another review for a movie I'll never see, ala Cats: Just weeks after the spectacle of Cats, the same studio, Universal, has brought us Dolittle, a reported $175 million budgeted CGI extravaganza whose release date was pushed nine months while it underwent 21 days of reshoots. This despite Dolittle having been directed by the Oscar-winning writer of Traffic and director of Syriana, Stephen Gaghan (!!!), who either lost a bet or just really wanted to trade drug cartels and mideast politics for farting dragons and Antonio Banderas in extravagant eyeliner. Whatever the case, the financiers’ loss is our gain, as we once again get to play one of our favorite games — Plot Recreated With Reviews — in which we attempt to recreate the entire plot of a movie using nothing but expository quotes from real reviews. Because sometimes it’s more fun to hear a movie described than to actually see it. — ACT ONE The story finds Dolittle a hermit, shut up in his estate, grieving the loss of his wife, who disappeared on one of her adventures. (LA Times) He’s getting over the loss the only way he knows how: hiding, crying and growing out a beard. (ThePlaylist) Downey’s Dr. Dolittle, a gruff man with a faltering Welsh accent (one of several baffling performance choices by Downey Jr.), is playing chess where mice are the pieces and communicating with his opponent, a gorilla, through a series of grunts. (Observer/The Atlantic) When he wants to take off his coat, birds do it for him. When he wants his morning coffee, an ape brings it to him. (ThePlaylist) One day, an intrepid young man, Stubbins (Harry Collett), and an annoying young girl, Lady Rose (Carmel Laniado) (LA Times) — the very Victorian combination of a child aristocrat and a plucky boy in a newsie cap — (AV Club) stumble through a wall of overgrown vines and enter the Eden-like preserve. The birds chirp their morning song. Animals frolic in the fields. A polar bear is devouring blueberries in a bush. (ThePlaylist) They arrive at his doorstep, drawing Dolittle out of zoological retirement by invoking the also very Victorian value of loyalty to his monarch (Jessie Buckley), who’s been stricken with a mysterious illness and needs Dolittle’s help. (If you’re asking yourself at this point, “Isn’t Dr. Dolittle a veterinarian?” the answer is, sort of. He can treat humans, but he prefers not to.) (AV Club) His mission, you see, is to save Queen Victoria, who has fallen into a coma, possibly because she’s being poisoned by her aides-de-camp Blair Müdfly (Michael Sheen) and Lord Badgley (Jim Broadbent). (The Atlantic) Dolittle rushes to her bedside only because his land, deeded as a nature preserve, will be signed off to the treasury upon the queen’s death. Nothing like a real estate quibble to get the blood pumping. (LA Times) “I knew I shouldn’t have had monkeys proofread the contract,” I think Dolittle says. (The Ringer) THE QUEST The only way to revive Her Majesty is to retrieve a magical fruit from a hidden kingdom. (The Atlantic) The crux of the narrative here is simple: Dr. Dolittle has lost his mojo, and sets off on an adventure to get his groove back. What’s unexpected is how grimly riddled with death that narrative is. (Daily Beast) “I don’t care about anyone or anything anywhere anymore,” I think Dolittle says. (The Ringer) ROBERT DOWNEY JR. This particular vision of Dr. Dolittle is wildly disheveled (before various animals groom him back to respectability pre–Buckingham Palace), kids-movie eccentric (with a flamboyant 19th-century-English-or-maybe-Irish accent that sounds vaguely pornographic), and possesses a bizarre tendency to mumble, to whisper, to wheeze, to flirt shamelessly with total incoherence. (The Ringer) He has settled on a performance that can only be described as anti-charming; he’s more of a collection of tics and grunts than a human being. His Welsh accent is absurd—when it’s audible. (The Atlantic) He sounds like Tom Jones visiting a friend’s tiny apartment while an infant sleeps in the next room. (Observer) His accent is sort of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins meets Captain Jack Sparrow with a leprechaunic lilt (Daily Beast) (with a soupçon of Gandalf) (Vanity Fair) …which occasionally (and I’m assuming inadvertently) slips into Irish, Indian, and Jamaican intonations. (Vulture) Aside from being geographically unplaceable and often unintelligible, it is entirely different every time he speaks. (Daily Beast) Worse, much of his dialogue seems to have been overdubbed, a likely component of the movie’s extensive reworking in post-production and reshoots. (AP) More often than not, Downey Jr. looks bored, unamused by the CGI antics swirling around him, and even less interested in whatever flimsy action he’s supposed to be driving forward. (The Atlantic) GENERAL INCONSISTENCY The perilous journey requires the involvement of almost all of Dolittle’s furry friends, including an ornery polar bear who’s always cold, (John Cena), a wisecracking ostrich (Kumail Nanjiani), and a cowardly gorilla (Rami Malek). (The Atlantic/Chicago Sun-Times) Transitions have been lost along the way, so we’re thrown from location to location with no context. (LA Times) Sometimes Dolittle is in the whimsically ramshackle mansion where he lives with his various bestial patients and nurses a broken heart over a long-lost love; sometimes he’s on a boat sailing the high seas, or in an oceanic pirate nation, or in a mysterious dragon-guarded cave (The Atlantic) How he gets to these places is mostly unclear, though some very eager narration by a parrot called Polynesia (played by Emma Thompson) tries to explain away every storytelling inconsistency. (The Atlantic) During one scene, a character pulls a knife and I’m pretty sure it was presented in three different cuts — and in no shot did we actually get a clear look at the knife. It was almost as if we were watching stolen documentary footage of the real-life actor pulling a knife on set, demanding to be freed from this unholy production. (Vulture) This is a problem for the animals as well, whose dialogue doesn’t quite match their CGI lips, and whose voices don’t sound like they’re coming from any part of the film’s physical space. (Vulture) “We have far less important places to be!” crows John Dolittle as he waltzes out of Buckingham Palace. (The Ringer) cont...
...cont THE ZINGERS The film’s humor reeks of after-the-fact punch-up prompted by negative test-audience feedback. That is to say, Dolittle is full of anachronistic pop culture references and poop and fart humor, jokes delivered in suspiciously low-impact style by the film’s animated animals. (A/V Club) 90 percent of the dialogue consists of bargain-basement sitcom zingers delivered by ducks and squirrels. (The Atlantic) The voice cast has been reduced to lowest-common-denominator jokes and modern colloquialisms that make them sound like Millennials at 4:20. “I got your back, Doc!” “It’s showtime!” “Don’t worry guys, I got this!” (San Francisco Chronicle) Michael Sheen’s villain at one point yells, “Read the room!” at an underling. (The Wrap) Dolittle is the sort of movie in which a skittish gorilla overcomes his various fears and saves the day by kicking a vicious tiger (voiced by Ralph Fiennes) in the nuts. (The Ringer) …In which a gorilla named Chee-Chee covers his face with his hands and yells, “I am not a prisoner to fear!” (The Atlantic) …a blustery squirrel (voiced by Craig Robinson) cries “I’m too beautiful to die!” shortly before Dolittle begins treating the squirrel’s gunshot wound by giving the animal mouth-to-mouth (The Ringer) At one point, Dolittle and company are welcomed aboard a new boat by a bearded man who announces “I’m Jeff!” and is never seen or mentioned again. (The Atlantic) The parents in my theater laughed loudest when a squid, asked by Dolittle in squid language to explain why the queen has fallen ill, responded with, “Snitches get stitches.” (The Ringer) A duck voiced by Octavia Spencer clears a room by announcing, “Do you understand the words that are coming out of my bill!” (Observer) …a tiger gets kicked in the crotch, a dog wipes its arse on the floor (The Playlist) …a polar bear voiced by John Cena says, “My dad said he was going out for a pack of seals and never came back.” (The Ringer) [Editor’s Note: To be fair, that is a really good joke] At one point in the film, an orangutan with a British accent who can’t stop dancing shows up and I chuckled at him, but then he disappears from the movie as quickly as he arrived. I’m thinking of you, dancing orangutan, wherever you are. (Vanity Fair) None of them have any character to speak of; they’re there for increasingly weak jokes, which culminate in a scene revolving around a dragon’s flatulence. (AP) Did we really need to see Dolittle pull a bagpipe out of a dragon’s butt? (ThePlaylist) EDITORIALIZING This is a movie in which most lines are delivered from offscreen, goofy animal jokes are used to paper over an incoherent structure (The Atlantic) …a series of malfunctioning screen savers in which Downey Jr. twitches his head left and right while animals gallivant around him, complaining of various ailments while tossing off hacky one-liners. (The Atlantic) The movie is essentially one and a half hours of celebrity voice-overs finding different ways to say, “That’s gotta hurt!” (The Atlantic) The C.G. animals are watchable if transparently artificial, a plus. No real giraffe (polar bear, etc.) needs to be abused to create another fantasy in which nonhuman creatures behave like cutesy, cartoonish versions of people. The charm of this fantasy has always been dubious and will presumably fade as the natural world continues to disappear and more and more species become extinct. Increased awareness of our contemporary environmental crisis may explain why, unlike the Murphy movies, this “Dolittle” is set in the past. Because if animals really could talk, they wouldn’t be pleasantly cooing and chatting us up as the world burned. They’d be screaming. (New York Times) — Sheesh, that got grim at the end there. Who’d the New York Times get to write that one, Manohla Darkness? Oh well, Robert Downey Jr. pulling a set of bagpipes out of a dragon’s ass is starting to sound like a nice distraction. And as I’ve said, it’s never too early to start teaching your children about impacted colons.
John Wick 3 - 6/10. I didn't like it as much as the others. Felt like there was more plot armor invincibility with aimbotting. There were so many times John could've been shot and killed, but the assassins never did and instead rolled over to let themselves be killed. The movie just seemed to be too over-the-top unbelievable and bordering Michael Bay territory with cheesy dialogue.
slight movie kick lately with daughters home from school and work. The Irishman -- improves on each viewing, have seen it three times. 9/10 Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- even better than The Irishman, although different obviously. Have also watched this three times. 9.5/10 Blinded by the Light -- pretty corny to start with, finishes much stronger than it begins. Okay video movie, maybe a 6/10 Eddie the Eagle -- about the British ski jumper. good performance by Taron Egerton. Everyone enjoyed it, probably a 7.5/10 Rocketman -- this was great. Really surprised how much we enjoyed this. Egerton is amazing in this. 9.75/10
