Finally saw Black Adam. Not bad and very by the numbers. The kid was annoying though.7/10

 

Moving Violations (1985) - 7/10
Has some good bits, but overall only ok.


The Jerk - 9.5/10
Lots of great bits. A real classic

 

Infinity Pool
Super hyped for this one! I ended up not liking it much at all. It is right up my alley with it being directed by Brandon Cronenberg, who I enjoyed his previous 2 films. But this one just didn't do anything for me. The psychedelic portion was really cool and when we got the body horror it was very nice (as in disgusting) however it wasn't enough. It seemed to spin its wheels too much. Great soundtrack and shot well but over all not a fan. I am still eager to see his next film, though.
5.5/10

 

I went and saw this with my buddy last Friday. Yeah, I was pretty excited for it also with how much I liked Possessor, but yeah...this one fell short. Visually gorgeous, but the narrative didn't really go anywhere. Hope his next one is a banger though.

 

Straight Outta Nowhere: Scooby-Doo Meets Courage the Cowardly Dog

Yeah, that's the title. I wanted to watch some good Scooby-Doo in the coattails of Velma and this one finally managed to find its way to my house. Heard good things about it. So, is it good?

Well... it's much better than anything I remember from the last ten years of DTV Scooby-Doo movies. There's guest stars but these ones make way more sense than any of the others besides maybe Elvira (who was wasted anyway.) It didn't feel like the Scooby gang was differing to some random celeb trying to stroke their ego/sell themselves because this was a return of an old show and meshing together two horror comedy cartoons with cowardly dogs just feels natural. Not like fucking Giana de Laurentiis doing kung fu moves in a Scooby movie—seriously, what kid gives a fuck about professional chefs? This is a funny cartoon dog who Scooby can relate to.

There's actually moments I found really funny in this one too. Like the creepy butler and chef who pop up several times or Scooby, Shaggy and Courage having a talk about the things that scare them. The movie's really unabashed about the random supernatural bullshit that goes down in Nowhere and uses that for a good gag too.

Still, there's some problems. For one thing, the voice acting. Namely Kate Micucci who continues to be a shrill sounding overly nasally Velma whose voice just doesn't match. And Jeff Bergman wasn't the best choice for Eustace. I know that the original voice actor has left us, but Bergman just sounds really flat like he can't act through the voice that he's putting on. There's also a really hard to sit through scene where Eustace raps that really shows how bad Jeff is at this one. For another, Courage was out of character; it rubs me the wrong way how he hangs out mostly with Shaggy and Scooby even though there's danger to protect Muriel from and seems to be less likely to take initiative. For the last thing, going into spoilers...

Spoiler: Culprits

Katz and Le Quack are a great way to meet halfway with the unmasking while also not dissing the world of weird in Courage. But Fred and Velma seriously couldn't believe that Katz and Le Quack were real? They have a fucking talking dog who lives in a van with them. These are pretty much the same thing. Plus there was a giant dog vs giant cicada fight so I don't even know why they'd try to unmask the cicada anyway. This gag and reveal just doesn't completely land.

Still, this might be the first Scooby project in forever that was made with love and not out of obligation to crap out a movie or to push some celebrity on us. Fingers crossed that they can keep it going though I get the feeling HBO's Velma will need to die first.

6.7/10

 

Black Panther Wakanda Forever
2.5/10

 

TF: DOTM - 2/10

A lot worse than I remember.

 

The Menu. 8.5/10. One of my favorites from last year.

 

Shark of the Corn - wtf?/out of 10.

 

Sonic the Hedgehog 2
7/10
The kids had fun & it was enjoyable enough. But despite the movie looking & feeling even more like the games, it seemed to be lacking something that part 1 had. Also, all the extended scenes of the bride-Zilla could’ve been cut or trimmed way down. That scene just kept going & going & it’s like, when are we getting back to our main characters?
Still a fun movie, just not quite as tight as part 1. Oh yeah, and loved Tails in this.

 

The Black Phone

Not as creepy or terrifying as I wanted but it is a movie where you can root for the victim in the story. Plus Scott Derrickson being a horror veteran himself knows that the less you know about an antagonist, you can trust the audience to make a scary backstory in their head which is the case for The Grabber. Being adapted from a short story in an anthology novel is also a quite a feat since you're plucking out one simple tale and turning into a feature length film. Don't see that get done quite often.

The child acting is pretty incredible here and you do get a grasp of them as to who they are in their lives. The supernatural element doesn't always work for me due to convenience it serves for the plot but most of the fear is piled on escaping the Grabber and what he intends to do with his victims. So the movie was still a good watch.

7.5/10

 

Finally got to watch Babylon my god Margot Robbie is so hot 10/10

 

You People - 0/10:

This was the most unpleasant, mean-spirited, distasteful movie I've seen in a long, long time. Shame on everyone involved for being involved.

I know Eddie was just playing a role, but I don't like him mean and he's downright cruel at times in this movie. I get it, he's a dad who's worried about his daughter's future and she seems to be marrying a loser, but that's enough to tell the story. Bringing racial and religious issues into it just made it incredibly worse. It was bad enough as it is, but to add two deeply fundamental issues into it and try and turn them into jokes...FFS, no. It was incredibly crass, tasteless, and completely pissed all over the point the movie should be making.

I can't say much more than this as it will violate board rules and I'm not getting banned or warned over this stupid movie. I am, however, warning YOU not to watch it. It's one of those rare times in which the audience and the critics agree (the audience hated it more, actually!) and they're 100% right.

When you're watching it, you *do* laugh because some of the dialogue is hilarious...in that moment. Especially the awkward and uncomfortable scenes. You're laughing because it's a mix of "wow...they went *THERE*" and "Hah. Hang on, the punchline and message is coming, you'll see. Just be patient, hang on." It doesn't, though. There is no message, so it never comes. There is no punchline worth laughing at. When you get to the end of the movie, you're *ANGRY* they went there, you're mad at yourself for laughing, you're mad at them for making it into a joke, you're mad that the movie is offensive and pointless in the end and that the film (as well as the audience) *IS* the punchline, but the joke was never actually funny to begin with.

The issues presented in the film are deadly serious and have wide-ranging implications and affect people's lives on a daily basis. That's not funny, that's something that should be addressed and handled with tact and a deft hand. This film should've been about making peace (the ending was shoehorned in), but instead, it was about making people of all melanin levels feel uncomfortable in their own skin, begging to crawl out of it and the room and to never look back.

The dialogue was horrible. There's a certain word (y'all know it) hurled around like you wouldn't believe. It would make Tarantino drench with sweat because he didn't get a chance to use it that much in one of his movies. And doggone it, we all know he *LOOOVES* using that word in his movies. It wasn't quite this bad: "I would like a hot (word) dog, my (word). And yes, I'd like my change in (word) dollars and cents, please. Thanks, (word). You're one of the good (word), you know that?" but dang close. It was clearly thrown in so they could say it as often as they wanted in ways they wanted that were outright stupid and offensive. Reminded me of when Oprah was interviewing Don Cheadle and this topic came up and she said she hated that word and he said it's his word, he uses it (I disagree with neither side, both have valid points. It *is* his word, she has every right not to like it), and man...her head would've exploded by the end of this film. Honestly, the goo left behind would've exploded as well. Don might even be like "Guys. You're wearing it out."

The cast were excellent, their performances were quite good. I don't want to give the impression that they were terrible as they were not. Eddie made you hate him, the mark of a good performance. Even though he was awful, he carried the scenes he was in. Same with Julia Louis-Dreyfuss. If it wasn't for them, the film would have less than the zero that it does. Gosh, I'd have probably burnt my TV down for having shown me the film at that point.

Aside from the cast, this was just a terrible film and our two love leads had ZERO chemistry together, you couldn't even imagine them being together, let alone trying to get married. It was utter bull and offensive bull at that. Please do not give Netflix your viewership on this one, please.

And shame on Kenya Barris and Jonah Hill for writing this, shame on them both.

 

I don’t know why, but I always mix up Jonah Hill with T.J. Miller. Maybe because they were both on How to Train Your Dragon together.

 

The movie was as offensive as TJ Miller is. So you're not far off the mark, here.

 

The Howling-It was a werewolf movie. It was okay I guess.

Encino Man-I love this movie. 7/10

The Wolfman (original)- It was a werewolf movie,it was fine. I liked Larry Talbot and Maliva. 6/10

 

Knock at the Cabin: 7/10

Interesting, but I was hoping for a more spectacular final act.

Oh, and Bautista's cranial's texture is disturbing.

 

Black Panther: 6/10

The movie just goes on and on and on. There are like 6 different stories in it and none of them are woven together very well.

• There's Namor and all his back story baggage.
• There's Riri's under cooked story
• There's Nakia's story
  
• There's Okoye getting fired thing - which stuck for like whole 5 minutes. Seriously, WTH was even the point??
• And let's not forget the whole CIA "will they, won't they, oh wait they already did" sitcom with Ross and Fontaine. Which , if we're being honest, couldn't have been completely removed and no one would have cared, But Disney's gotta keep pushing that upcoming Thunderbolts story.
  
• And there's Queen Ramonda's grieving mother which BTW
  Spoiler

  killing her off was just about the worst mistake this franchise could make! She's a friggin' amazing actress! Why squander her in the movie and then, like a bad Whedon script, kill her off just to give the protagonist a cheap motivation. Now they've got no Boseman and no Basset, leaving us with only Shuri to carry this series? Noooo!!
• And then of course there's Shuri becoming Black Panther. Even though she's never shown any sign of martial arts training and she never went through the ceremony to earn the right to become the Black Panther as demonstrated in the first movie. There were at least three other people in that movie that were better suited to become the next Black Panther than her but she gets all the powers because she's royalty. [sarcasm]Oh great another story where somebody born into wealth who didn't earn anything gets all the power. How exciting [/sarcasm]

 

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (74) First time watching any of these films. It was grimy, uncomfortable, and made some weird as hell noises. I did kind of crack up, when the well meaning truck driver decided to get the hell out of there after Leatherface stood back up from cutting his own leg. I don't understand why he did some kind of bizarro dance with his chainsaw in the middle of the street? Two of the people she was with were stupid. It was a good film, the camera work was excellent.

 

Black Adam 3/10

A thinly veiled attempt at smashing Black Panther and Infinity War together. Some of the performances were fun and others were monotone, but the writing, direction, and plot did not do it for me at all. Watching this sober was a mistake.

The Menu 9/10

A breath of fresh air. In a sea of overdone franchise sequels and remakes, The Menu is a lighthouse of delightfully sick plot and wonderfully twisted characters. No one's safe, no one's a hero, but the film revels in them getting exactly what I was too polite to admit they deserve. I had a ball. Couldn't stop chatting about it all the way home.