When all you have to say about a movie is eh  

 

KNIVES OUT - 7/10

Spoiler

It was a quirky and curious little mystery, like watching an adaptation of an Agatha Christie work.

Mysteries haven't been in vogue for some time, so it was a refreshing change IMO after all the action adventures from comic books.

The story was well-written though just a bit over-complicated over the medicine switching bit. But I was able to more or less follow things through okay.

Daniel Craig and Chris Evans had a lot of fun being a Southern detective and a jerkoff.

 

Star Wars (1977) - 9.5/10 (maybe even 10/10)

Rewatched the original Star Wars film for the first time in several years, this time with an unaltered VHS tape. I believe this is the first time I've seen the unaltered version in it's entirety. The only negative is that it seemed to have been a cropped version (4:3 aspect ratio). Although it's possible I had the TV settings adjusted wrong, because the package didn't say it was cropped.

Still my favorite movie of all time. Exciting, funny, romantic, imaginative, and adventurous. It might not be the greatest or deepest film ever, but I view Star Wars as the ultimate blockbuster. It has all the ingredients to make a fun ride, and it blends them perfectly. It has characters we like and a story everyone can get invested in. It has snappy editing that moves the adventure along. Everything is great, right down to the visual style and worldbuilding. It's just such a fantastic movie.

Tale of Despereaux - 7/10

I had never seen this before. I thought it was better than the Rotten Tomatoes scores (audience and critic) made it out to be. It was fun and worth watching. But I can't say it really left me with anything new. I'm not sure I'd rush to watch it again, but I would give it a mild recommendation.

 

Star Wars: The Last Jedi- 6.5/10 perhaps?

This movie isn't as great as critics made it out to be, nor is it as bad as many fans think it is.

I'll start with the good first:

-Luke Skywalker and his story: Fantastic! This alone keeps the movie from being in "bad" territory in my book.
-The relationship between Kylo and Rey is interesting.
-The scene with Luke talking to Rey about the Force, and about it being within spaces and within living things; balance. That scene is amazing.
-The Finn vs. Phasma fight was better than I remembered, as underused as Phasma was in the two movies she appeared in.
-Much more coherent than RoS. I actually LIKE complex plots when they're allowed to build, but RoS's story just jumps around all over the place. This movie is more focused.
-It's always good seeing Chewie and Leia.

As for the negatives...

-My main problem with the Sequel Trilogy is how the fictional universe has not changed since the OT. The core story with Luke is great, but the universe around them is exactly the same as ESB, with many scenarios ripped straight out of ESB! Show me something different about the galaxy decades later, please, because as shown it's a rehash of the OT universe! This movie, like TFA and RoS, doesn't give much thought to "a galaxy far, far away."
-The "humor" in this movie sucks at times. The joke about Hux's skin tone fell completely flat.
-That choreography when Rey and Kylo fight Snoke's guards seems really off to me. Like ridiculously off. It temporarily took me out of the film.
-What's up with DJ's stuttering?
-I don't care for most of the aliens' designs in this one. The Prequels had much more creative alien designs I feel.


And a mixed bag:
-This film, while not bad visually, is not as beautiful-looking as RoS, which while a mess story-wise, is the closest visually to what a modern SW film should look like. I wish this film was a little more colorful besides the use of the color red.

I'd even wager that without my first negative, this would be a great Star Wars movie. The positives are too great to make it bad, but the negatives are too much to keep it from attaining greatness.

 

Suzumiya Haruhi no Shoushitsu 8.5/10 it was such a great movie.

 

Just saw Weathering with You. Great story and characters. Beautiful visuals. Really good follow up to Your Name with a nice little nod to that movie.

10/10

 

Wait, Michael Corbin? Oh man, for a second there I thought that was the same name as the hybrid from Ubderworld. But his name is Michael CorVin. Close!

 

Don't delete! Instead, Shrekognize!

 

Terminator: dark fate 7/10

best sequel since T2. i know that’s not saying much. i really enjoyed Arnold and Linda’s characters, the newbies were all right.

 

DoLittle (2020)

So, this Doctor DoLittle Movie film, I saw. It's not nearly as bad as people are making it out to seem. It's not great either. But, it certainly does animal expressions and making the animals characters better than the Lion King film did. I see nothing about this movie where people are calling it dogshit for, other than trying to get clicks for films they know not many people are going to be interested in seeing.

The performances are fairly decent. Robert Downy Jr. does a pretty good impression of a crazy Scrooge McDuck in this film. Which is the best way I can put the accent he's trying to do. Micheal Sheen is amazing as the villain. Giving by far the best, most over the top performance of the film. Which makes it the best performance of the decade so far! His character's only motivation is defeating Doctor DoLittle no matter what. And, that's his entire character. He reminds me a lot like Robbie Rotten. Instead of having a big huge chin, he's got almost no chin. Something that they poke fun at with this film.

The animals are alright in it. Nothing bad about them. They are each certainly distinctive. The kids both did alright. I really think the girl should have gone with them. Instead of being stuck at home. As the trailers really made it seem like she was going to be an important character too. Turned out she's not.

The effects are certainly decent. Again, I don't see anything wrong with the film to the point of calling it "dogshit." It's not great, but I'd still say it's an above average film. I give it a C. A very firm C. It does everything it's supposed to do, but doesn't really go beyond that. The best I can put this film is, it's like watching a modern 3D animated cartoon movie from one of the lesser studios, that's live action.

7 out of 10. A solid C. Not bad, not great, but it was an enjoyable film.

 

Parasite. Can you vote higher than 10/10? Amazing movie.

I think it’s a near perfect movie, great story, every actor is completely on point and convincing. It’s shot beautifully. Really movie of the year. Between this and Last Train to Busan what’s going with S. Korea’s movie scene.

 

Pokémon Detective Pikachu - 9.5/10

 

Sharpe - 9/10

This is an overall ranking for about fourteen tele-movies. The series that gave Sean Bean his start, and is often joked that the reason he dies is so much stuff afterwards is to balance all the outrageous shit he survives as Sharpe. Its a great set of movies, minor niggles here and there - like some truly risible fight choreography and a very limited scope and scale for the Napoleonic wars - but solid acting based on good books make the whole thing gripping watching regardless.

Spoiler

My only major complaint is that the series doesn't seem to end. Like, the last shots are Sharpe leading his regiment at Waterloo towards Napoleon and canon and shot going off everywhere. Bam. Cut to credits.

 

Aquaman - 8/10

Yeah, I'm a bit late to the party on this one.

It's ridiculous, has plenty of flaws and gets a bit too "fantasy" for my liking....but you know what, I bloody enjoyed how daft the fish man movie turned out to be!

It would've been a 7/10, but the enjoyment factor and the randomness of 'Mystery Girl' by Roy Orbison being inserted into the middle of the movie's soundtrack bumped that bass up to an 8.

 

Just watched Color Out of Space....oh...my....god. Easily the best horror film to come out in many years. Instantly in my top 5 of all time, and it takes quite a bit to impress me like this. Effortlessly earns a 10/10 from me.

 

Underwater - Very generic but not necessarily boring. Nothing I see here hasn't been done before in any of the sci-fi horror films I've watched. 5/10

 

Son of Kong - 6/10
Sequel to original Kong. Story is weak, special effects are not as good as the original. Just a far cry from the excellent 1933 film.


Sully -8/10
Miracle on the Hudson story. Hanks does great, but the way it us told throws you a bit. Starts with nightmare of what could gave happened. Then the first inquiry, then it jumps around. You gave after the crash, then flash back to him as a teen, then back to before the crash, back to after, then another flashback, the crash, then after we started, etc. still well acted. Had a lot of "Oh hey it's ____" with actors. Anna Gunn, Mike O'Malley, Micael Rappaport.. threw me out a bit..

 

Brightburn - 7/10
I actually enjoyed this movie. I thought it was a cool take on the sort of "what if" superman origin. I kind of wish we saw more of him learning his powers but overall I thought it was a good watch.

 

Power Rangers 2017... 2 out of 10.
After all this time, I hadn't seen it yet. Then it started playing on SyFy. A couple months ago my sister told me she and her kids watched it and they got scared. I don't blame them, High School was very scary... Seriously though it's like the movie forgot it was based on a cheesy tokusatsu franchise until the last 20 minutes and even then it was boring... I'd rather watch "Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills." At least there was something funny about how terrible it was.

Gamera Heisei Trilogy. 9/10 all three. I always enjoyed the campiness of the original Gamera movies, and I see how the 90s Gamera movies were superior to the Heisei Godzilla movies. Scope, production, story, and animatronics. Top it all off, and coincidentally there's a Museum exhibit for Gamera happening right now. Amazing to see how well the props and puppets have survived compared to all of the Godzilla suits which have rotten away over the years.

“平成ガメラ三部作”と“大映特撮”がテーマ！「特撮のDNA」展、1月26日まで東京・蒲田で絶賛開催中!!