Wataten! An Angel Flew Down to Me. 7/10 if was a cute fluffy movie.

 

Creed Marathon
Creed (2015) - Chuck Norris/10
Creed II (2017) - 8/10
Creed III (2023) - 7/10

 

Terrifier-Holy shit some of those deaths were brutal! X(

 

65:
Well, lucky me. It screened in my country a little earlier than the rest of the world so I got to see it earlier.

It's a sequence of events with a start and finish. The dialogue is minimal and doesn't waste its time figuring out what the planet is or what the creatures are The "Dinosaurs" were also barely a note with probably 5 minutes of screen time in total.

Spoiler

Adam Driver is a space explorer from another planet in a time before mankind, so it's not a time travel plot, but a human looking alien from another planet who crashed on prehistoric earth. The focus of the movie is Driver's character "Mills" trying to reach an escape pod that got separated from his spaceship with a little girl who he found in the last working cryostatis pod. The girl speaks a different language from him so they can't rely on words to communicate.

Note the movie was pretty short at 1 hour 35 minutes. We spend the majority of time seeing our 2 characters moving from point A to point B. All creatures encountered were more nuisance than life threatening since they have all the space tech and gun ready for everything. Ironically it was nature that tried to kill them more than the dinosaurs. Insects, trees, rocks, sandpits almost killed them more than once. Everything else just shoot at it to kill or scare.

The dinosaurs that looked like dinosaurs were okay like the raptors, Oviraptor and Tyrannosaurus, but then you have the weird 4-legged reptiles that looked too alien for the world with their extremely long and thin limbs Ironically it was the Pterosaurs that looked the best

5/10

 

Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins

Alright, let me talk about this. If it wasn't for the fact that this movie is based on source material then perhaps critiquing it would be different but since it is then a lot of things can be said. The good thing is that this G.I.Joe movie is actually pretty well-casted, yes that includes Henry Golding. Henry Golding can be a scarred and trauma-induced individual but the movie never settles for any of those characteristics and just banks on his good looks which adds more to the absurdity of his character. To add to that, they obviously should have reversed Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow's roles. Snake Eyes can be bitter and vengeful but he has grow more as a character who cares and seeks purpose instead of the treachery the movie puts him through; while Storm Shadow can still be the honorable and wants to do good guy who falls victim to his tendencies and ambitions. It can work... But the movie didn't do it well.

The Japanese setting is pretty authentic which is nice and before I get into the rapid editting and shaky cam, the material arts stuff looks to be well performed and it helps when you have people like Andrew Koji and Iko Uwais. But sadly, the movie fails to live up to these actor's previous work where material arts choreography is well respected. One thing I think that also should have been left out were the mystical and even some of the technological aspects; I don't need stuff like a power jewel; 3 giant snakes or holographic futuristic touch screen technology for this movie to work. The Arashikage would feel a lot cooler if it stuck to grounded roots.

I can't say I'm that disappointed because I'm not the biggest G.I. Joe fan but something awesome was definitely missed so I'm still sad but I can let go.

5.5/10

 

Knives Out: Glass Onion
9/10

I was engaged. I thought it was entertaining. It sometimes leaned too heavily into genre conventions, but that’s what genre pieces do. But the actors all made me 1) believe them and 2) convince me they were enjoying their jobs.

I will admit that I kept thinking about The Last Jedi…

 

Rocky Marathon
Rocky (1976) - Chuck Norris/10
Rocky II (1979) - 6/10
Rocky III (1982) - 7/10
Rocky IV (1985) - 8/10
Rocky V (1991) - 2/10
Rocky Balboa (2006) - 8/10
Creed (2015) - Chuck Norris/10
Creed II (2018) - 8/10
Rocky IV: Rocky vs. Drago - The Ultimate Director's Cut (2021) - 8/10
Creed III (2023) - 7/10

 

Yeah, from everything I’ve read, it’s strictly a movie for gore hounds and no one else.

 

And even some gore hounds had their stomachs turned. It seems like the movie was made just to do the most offensive things possible and everything else a distant second. Sometimes shock and awe can be fun, but sometimes it's simply unnecessary to the point Terrifier 2 is.

 

The recent sequel that came out is even more graphic. Some audience members passing out, or throwing up...

Not for the faint of heart.

'Terrifier 2' director on reports that horror sequel is making people vomit and faint

 

Creed 3: 9/10

Excellent entry in the Rocky/Creed universe. Fight scenes were well filmed, and I really enjoyed all the family scenes with Apollo, Bianca and Amara.

 

Yeah, that movie is not realistic enough.

 

Drugs aren't funny. Drugs are bad m'kay

 

Black Panther was just on TV, and it’s still really good. It’s crazy how it’s only been five years and so much has changed in that time.

I have to say that both this film and Wakanda Forever have their strengths and weaknesses. The first film is a compelling race drama with an inimitable antagonist in N’Jadaka, to the point the film could be called The Tragedy of N’Jadaka much like how Lucas called the OT and PT “The Tragedy of Darth Vader.” The second film dials down the sociopolitical commentary because it has, well, other things it needs to focus on.

The second film vastly improved the effects and action for the most part in regards to the climax. I think the action in the first film is fine outside of T’Challa and N’Jadaka’s final duel which is hilariously bad. At the time, Marvel’s VFX we’re usually top notch so we all were able to overlook it. Ironic that by the time of the sequel, Marvel’s VFX reputation was in the toilet, yet Wakanda Forever notably, and thankfully, doesn’t look like shit.

Wakanda Forever feels like a more mature movie, and maybe that’s because it focuses on Shuri who is irrevocably changed by the tragedy she endures. No more “what are those” jokes for sure. It also focuses heavily on Ramonda who is enduring the loss of her son and having to lead a broken nation under the threat of annihilation by a punk ass from the ocean.

Namor is a good, menacing antagonist who is still with the upper hand by the end of the film, but he’s still a step down from N’Jadaka, and maybe because he’s just not that evil. He’s just selfish, quick to anger, and doesn’t mind being, again, a punk ass. Namor won the physical argument because his people could’ve easily wiped out Wakanda, but N’Jadaka won the philosophical, moral argument. And it’s all the more compelling that even he doesn’t give that much of a shit about it since his entire goal is to burn the world for what T’Chaka took from him.

On the other hand, Wakanda Forever suffers from the obnoxious bloat from Julia Louis-Dreyfus. She’s so fucking annoying, but Marvel acts like she’s the visiting royal we need to kiss the feet of just because she’s a 90’s sitcom star. Whoopee fucking Doo. Also, Richard Schiff gets a “special guest star” credit for briefly portraying another American asshole. I prefer Schiff to Dreyfus, even in regards to their characters, but it’s still weird.

Anyway, there are many films where I end up preferring the sequels because I prefer the directions they took, plus they have the new story and characters. Not every series; I can still deeply enjoy first installments of series like Shrek and Toy Story. Black Panther is still an important cultural landmark, a gripping race drama, and a great action movie with great characters. Wakanda Forever had another situation to deal with entirely, so I don’t think it can be judged by the same criteria. In many ways it’s better than the first film. But I think that, if the effects of the first film were retouched, then it would be pretty much a perfect film. Wakanda Forever is a bit sharper, but I think Black Panther still suffers from less obnoxious issues than Wakanda Forever does.

Still gets a 9/10 for me, and it’s still in my opinion the single best MCU film, with only Infinity War being second.

 

A League of Their Own-Always a good film.

 

Trucks and I can't recommend it!

Terrible take on Stephen King short story which was done better with Maximum Overdrive which was made like 10 years beforehand!

1.5/10 that one point five is due to one of the funnest horror movie kills ever!

I kid you not a remote controlled Tonka truck kills a postman. It is right up there with the shark eating the passenger jet in those terrible shark movies!

 

Guillermo DelToro's "Pinocchio" 8.5/10

I liked this adaptation of Pinocchio a lot better than the live-action Disney one that also came out last year. Christoph Waltz as "Il Volpe" was a great villain(he's pretty much "Stromboli" and Honest John from the Disney version rolled into one character... but a LOT better) , and the bit with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (this adaptation takes place in Fascist-era Italy, unlike its Disney cousin) felt like right out of a Wes Anderson film with the absurdly long limo and Mussolini himself being ridiculously short. Giving Lapwi- sorry, "Candlewick" a character arc was a bold move, but I liked how he wasn't just some punk kid we're automatically supposed to pity once he starts metamorphosing into a literal jackass. David Bradley is amazing as the voice of Gepetto, giving the kindly woodworker a bit of a haggard edge to go with the feature's more serious tone. Ewan McGregor is great as Sebastian J Cricket, our narrator (who's totally not Pinocchio's Conscience this time). It was surprising to hear Ron Perlman doing his Fallout 2 "War Never Changes" voice as the Government Official.

 

Scream 6 - 10/10

I watched Scream 5 and loved it , and before that i had seen one other scream movie although I can’t remember which one.

but I absolutely loved this one. It was just very entertaining and thrilling , the stabbing and killing was great in my opinion. Excited for the next.

 

Solo: A Star Wars Story - 8/10

Bumping this one up a bit. This movie had a lot working against it when it came out. It came out half a year after the extremely controversial Last Jedi (and probably the height of the Fandom Menace stuff too), it flopped at the box office, attempted to recast a Harrison Ford role, and kind of paled in comparison to what Marvel was doing that summer with Infinity War. At the time it was an easy movie to be cynical about, and there was a general cynical feeling towards Star Wars as whole. But revisiting Solo five years later with all that baggage stripped away...it's honestly a really easy movie to enjoy (with a couple asterisks).

I think the overall adventure and sequence of events is really fun and engaging. I like the lower stakes plot, and the little twist at the end. There are also a lot of laughs and chuckle moments. I'd actually say it's a pretty smartly written movie overall.

A lot of my original complaints are still present, but they've died down a bit for me. L3 is still obnoxious, albeit has less screentime than I remember. The scene where Han gets his last name is still stupid. I don't really get into Qi-ra's character at all, and don't really get why people want to see her return. And while it's a small complaint...I still think the title is lame.

And although I've grown to like Alden's performance, I do kind of wish they cast someone a bit younger or younger-looking, so it's more believable that he grows into Harrison Ford. As it is, I kind of buy him as an alternate universe version of Han, but not a young version of OT Han.

But overall I've grown to enjoy this movie. Maybe not love it in the same way I love Mandalorian (which IMO is still peak modern Star Wars), but I definitely think the initial cynicism towards it was overblown. It's a good try at a Star Wars spinoff film. Don't know if I really need a sequel, but I wouldn't mind a 'spiritual successor' in the form of a Dash Rendar movie or something.

 

Tár - 7/10

Great performances but it’s light on story and basically nothing happens. I was told the last 10 -15 minutes is mind blowing and redefines the entire movie, but it doesn’t. The first 30 minutes is a series of monologues about musical composition and conducting which were interesting, but I was always waiting for the story to start.

Mark Strong’s silly hair almost makes it an 8.