Child's Play (2019) - 8/10

At first there was so much keeping me from being excited or invested in a Child's Play remake. Firstly the cliff hanger at the end of Cult, there was potential in continuing that. Secondly was no Brad Dourif as Chucky, there was hope once they casted Mark Hamill though. But here I was bored on a rainy day and decided to sit down and see it for myself and I was blown away by how much I liked it.

Friday the 13th, the first Halloween, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre were IMO the best we'd get at good or decent Slasher remake flicks but honestly IMO Child's Play was better then them. And here's the thing, Child's Play & Freddy got me into the Slasher genre but have since been overshadowed by Jason, Michael, & Leatherface easily. One thing that is a huge win for me in terms of slasher remakes is bringing something fresh, new, and different to a franchise as long running as these and Child's Play does that well.

This movie was terrifying, granted it isn't helped by how creepy they made the Buddi Dolls in this nor my discomfort in dolls in general, and the gore solidified its R rating; its probably one of the bloodier Child's Play movies off the top of my head. The humor was ok, honestly there were moments that probably weren't meant to be funny but came off that way. The characters were well written, like last years Halloween they were written well enough that we carried for them. Unlike other slashers where we're only here to see them axed off in gruesome ways, here there is one character we want to see bite it while others are well written and well liked that we hope we see make it to the end. And that is in part to the acting, everyone did a good job with what they were given but props to the kid playing Andy for carrying this movie on the human side.

As for Chucky, man oh man did Mark Hamill KILL it as Chucky. I knew going in he had to at least be one of the few good things to come from this. He was creepy when he needed to be and was unsettling when he wasn't speaking, he did the character justice. Honestly I wasn't to keen on the whole rogue AI aspect but it totally works for this movie especially with AI today and how reliant we are on technology.

With how wonderful Michael & Chucky's return to the big screen as well as Pennywise's sequel later this year I'm looking forward to the future. I just wish it was that easy as things aren't looking good for Jason, but maybe we'll see more from this rebooted Child's Play if it does well and maybe we'll see new films of Freddy, Michael, & Leatherface too.

As a slasher fan I was satisfied, as a Child's Play fan I was happy.

 

Toy Story - 10/10. A classic and one of my favorite movies. Funny story, I watched this movie so much as a kid that I actually messed up the VHS, as there was one point in the movie where a line would come across the screen. Whenever I rewatch the movie on DVD, I expect that to happen.
Toy Story 4 - 9/10. I love the first two movies and strongly dislike the third. I was super happy with this movie and thought it was a perfect send off. I broke down at the end of the movie, something that has never happened to me during a movie before.

 

Child's Play (2019) - I didn't expect a lot but this movie was quite good. Mark Hamill did a great job with the voice acting, the kills were very creative and the score is great.

 

Ratatouille - 10/10
As usual, Pixar kills it once again. Simple, yet heartwarming. Easy to sit through, yet deeper than what’s seen on the surface. They may’ve failed with Cars 2 and The Good Dinosaur, but the fact they’ve made this many beloved favourites is a miracle to the usually vapid 3D animation industry.

 

Whenever I see lists of Pixar movies ranked and this isn't at least in the top ten I immediately click off of the site. This is easily in the top 5 Pixar movies for me and is one of my favorite movies period.

 

Perry Mason Nearly Gets Murdered by Godzilla — I mean, Godzilla: King of the Monsters!

This film is a weird attempt at bringing a Japanese allegory into the scope of American audiences as a monster.

As campy and choppy as this movie is, it is still far flung from the dumb action film that Godzilla has come to be perceived as. It plays up the horror aspect, quite fittingly for a movie that references the Universal Monsters in its title (mostly guessing here, considering they were the most famous of that time and had a shared universe for Godzilla to "king" over.) Still, Raymond Burr doesn't really convey any of the terror or the "horror" of the situation and is so clearly cut in that it really takes away from it. Not to mention that none of the characters feel fully realized because we get a narration blur in place of organically going from plot point to plot point. Still, it has a bit of a documentary-news report vibe, sort of if Perry was there during Gojira and recounted the events to the world which is kind of cool and a neat play on a monster movie. A huge fucking mutant dinosaur would be pretty newsworthy.

So a movie drained of most emotion replaced with a narrator recounting ghastly events that at times do still remain just that. A decent B-horror flick.

(Also I kinda want to see an actual Universal Monsters-Godzilla shared universe type thing out of sheer curiosity)

5/10

 

3rd encounters of the third kind 7/10

 

Child's Play (With Mark Hamill.)

What a wonderful movie! From Mark singing, playing the creepy ass doll, to the Evil-Amazon vibe, to the characters, this film was a blast from start to finish. I also love how this film could still be in continuity if they wanted to.

I absolutely loved this film. It isn't perfect, but wow was it fun! 8 out of 10. Highly recommended.

 

Toy Story 4 - 9.5/10

 

Rocketman - 8/10

 

Into the Spiderverse - 10/10

My God, this film is amazing.

 

Airplane!- 9.5/10.

 

Jurassic Park- 9/10

Police Academy- 8/10

 

Mobile Suit Gundam F91 - 5/10



This is an alright anime movie and it's watchable, but the pacing of this movie feels incredibly rushed and there are a lot of things that didn't really makes sense. I heard that this movie was originally supposed to be a full 49 episodes TV anime and was forced to be compressed into this movie due to various reasons, and it really shows. I don't really care about F91 much, and even then I wish that this "movie" could be fully realized into an actual TV anime as it supposed to be.

 

On a bad movie binge:

Mothra vs. Godzilla

Cheesy and full of ham. Not the worst Godzilla film, far from one of the best. Godzilla rising from the soil was a very cool moment.

4/10

Avengers: Age of Ultron

This travesty of a movie puts on display why I can never call myself an MCU fan.

Joss Whedon is a crap director who produces bland action and terrible, flat characters with flat performances. Everyone is simply a copy of what Whedon finds funny, including the titular Ultron who does not really usher in a new age but more throw tantrums and get his ass kicked. Only characters with some variation are Banner and Wanda, the former because Ruffalo can muscle his way through a bad script. As for the latter, Olsen tries but she just couldn't win. She looks like someone mildly startled her with Freddy glove when she first sees Ultron.

Queen of bad acting is Scarlett Johansson, who still has a ways to go from when she finds her sea legs in Avengers: Endgame. Part of this is definitely Joss.

Joss who made a sequence wherein thousands of people were threatened with being hurtled toward earth as part of an extinction-level event a chance to place in a ton of sarcastic banter. The main event is not the Avengers being heroes, but apparently being sociopathic jackasses who just don't care about the direness of the situation and only offhandedly save everyone. There are no stakes, just forced humor. (Gunn and Whedon should just get together and make Scooby-Doo 3... nah, Joss would botch it... just Gunn like the others) Nobody even stops to try to help the folks whose cars flipped earlier in the movie before the climax.

Second worst excuse for an action blockbuster ever. Yes, even worse than Kong: Skull Island.

2.3/10

The Frighteners

Actually kind of liked this one. I don't buy Michael J. Fox in this as a guy who lost his wife to a car accident, though. He was just being Michael J. Fox.

This was a weird, dark and quirky film with a pretty unique premise dare I say. There was a lot of black comedy and hamtastic performances. The bland romantic interest thing really dragged down what might have been a pretty fun film.

6/10

 

Yea, while it is a remake, it's also taking place in the present year, with a different doll origin story,

Spoiler

with no ghost Chucky. Just a robo-AI Chucky. So, theoretically, the original Chucky-Buddie could exist in this universe too. Being that this is a newer version of that doll. A new version by not-Amazon.

Because of all that, they could totally just slap it in at the end of the others.

Spoiler

Have ghost Chucky and AI Chucky team up, or go against each other or something. Plus, since it is an AI, it changes the story somewhat from the original. With Chucky being able to connect to everything like smartphone can.

As for the TV show, I could see it having a very Strangers Things/It vibe.

Spoiler

This one had basically a bunch of kids roughly the same age as Andy teaming up to beat to fight AI-Chucky. At the end, they destroy the Chucky doll, but, he's now in a new Buddie doll, with an army of Buddie dolls to control.

I could totally see how a TV show could work with this setup from the movie.

 

Toy Story 4
I'm not convinced it was worth making another Toy Story movie even after seeing the film but it's good enough for what it is. I still consider Toy Story 3 as the end of the series, it's just that if you ever want to see or recommend the next installment afterwards, and it does exist now so you either watch it or purposefully ignore it, it's a fairly enjoyable movie too even if to me it still feels superfluous. The first 5 minutes of this one is maybe the most brutal scene I've ever seen any movie though, holy crap.

The climax of the movie feels a little rushed and unearned but it's pretty fun overall.

 

Natsume’s Book of Friends the Movie: Ephemeral Bond - 8.5/10

The Old Man & the Gun - 6.5/10

 

Toy Story 4 - 7.5 or 8/10

I thought it was solid, but not as good as Toy Story 3 or 1. Those are masterpieces of animation. Toy Story 4 meanders a bit and isn't as tight, but it's still a really fun movie, and one of Pixar's better sequels in recent years. There are a few things I'd change (including one major thing that brings the movie down a bit for me), but I'd still give it a recommendation. The animation is gorgeous, and really shows off how far Pixar has come.

 

Black Panther: 7.5 out of 10

Maybe the hype train got me on this one, but I expected it to be better. I mean, it was still good. But it didn’t blow me away or anything. The final battle between Killmonger & BP was so chock full of CGI, that it was practically cartoonish. It was always obvious when they switched out the actors for the CGI models.
Still- plenty to like & I enjoyed it.