Movies Reviews From An Amateur

OH BOY MINIONS. MINIONS MINIONS MINIONS. THE FAVORITE OF WINE MOMS EVERYWHERE. DON'T YOU JUST LOVE THAT THIS IS THE SEVENTH MOVIE WITH THE FUCKING MINIONS IN IT? (Hell eighth if you count the Minions short in front of Migration, or deeper Hell seventeenth if you count the all the Illumination Production logos.) Point is, not a fan of the Minions. I've always thought they worked best in the first Despicable Me, where they are utilized as little as possible, where they are more props for gags rather than gags themselves. But drunk middle age women and toddlers loves these fucking things so here we are. I haven't seen the other Minions movies, I know a lot about the first one because it caused psychic damage to everyone who saw it. The only thing I know about the second one is that a bunch of people wore suits to go watch it. But I actually want to check this out because they were apparently got inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos, and I was curious how.

HP Lovecraft was a massive bigot and a terrible writer. I've said that before, but it's no less true than the last time I said it. He just happened to accidently come up with some cool horror concepts while completely misunderstanding basic scientific concepts and scribbling down paranoid delusions. Occasionally his smaller stories land alright, but the real reason people think he's a good writer is because other, MUCH BETTER, writers will recognize the good concept and actually craft the story around it utilizing the cosmic horror instead of going off on tangents about how all non-white people are actually part of a secret globe-spanning cult that worships a squid-headed dragon man. So I wanted to see what this movie would do with the Lovecraftian themes. I was hoping that it would be a comedic subversion or parody of them, but the only real bar it has to clear is not being racist.

What's The Movie About?

A new tribe of Minions is out searching for a new boss, and end up in 1920s Hollywood. Two minions named James and Henry get inspired to create their own movie and summon a monster called Goomi to star in it.

What I Like.

Guys... This movie is really good. Like it's better than Despicable Me 2 and 4 what the fuck.

I can't believe I'm about to say this about a Minions movie: The characters are great. I really like the friendship of James and Henry, James being a creator who finally gets a break is super good, Ed the deaf Minion is super cute and I like that his disability is just a thing about him not his only character trait, Max the director is cool even though I was expecting him to be a real person, Goomi is both cute and conniving, The Bright Brother were a fun double act with one being outwardly mean and the other being super friendly, and the Minion who's a jerk is named Dick. A+ pun. The voice acting is also great. Everyone does a really good job matching the cartoony energy of their characters, specially call out to Jessie Eisenberg who I couldn't tell which character he was in the movie until looking it up later. Probably because they put a synthesizer on his voice but still. Christoph Waltz is in this movie! That's not as weird as my gut reaction thinks it is, but Hans the Jew Hunter from Inglorious Basterds is in a kids movie. Speaking of which, this movie snuck in a bastard. Seriously, a woman calls a Minion a beautiful bastard in this. I think they get away with it because they are remixing a scene from an old noir movie. Speaking of which...

The plot rocks. Again, I can't believe I'm saying this about a Minions movie, but I really like the time period they set for them, because it's just an excuse to for them to insert Minions into classic movie scenes. But the thing is, all of the gags in this movie are really good. See it's easy to say that they just added Minions into old movies, but they did a good job making decent slapstick within those remakes, and they inform the plot as well as being hilarious. The sight gags are great. I was laughing my ass off for so much of movie. There's so much sudden, ridiculous reactions I loved. A couple gags here or there were dumb, particularly the end credits scenes, but overall I think all the humor worked. I also really like James's plot. I've said it before, I like stories about characters becoming artistically fulfilled. They movie also did a really good job with the Minion dialogue, it felt less like gibberish and more understandable weirdly enough. I guess when the guy who has voiced the Minions for every movie they've been in is also the writer, you get some actually good Minion dialogue. Did you realize the Minions actually spoke real life languages? According to my mother who's a tiny bit of a polyglot, Minionese is a Pigeon mix of Spanish, Italian, Korean, and English. That information honestly makes it slightly more tolerable, and in this movie it's damn near great. I have to tip my hat when entire scenes will just be filled with Minion dialogue, yet I still understand what everyone is saying despite fairly minimal physical communication. The meta portions of the movie are good as well. It not just having a character talk to the screen or making references to other things in dialogue, they actually play around with the fact that this is a Minions movie about making movies. They are actually pretty cheeky with some of these gags too, like the Minions going from movie stars to completely unfilmable with the addition of sound. There are so many layers to that joke that I'm not even impressed that it's in a Minions movie. I'm just impressed period. They snuck in a Minions in suits joke in like holy hell!

MY GOD THIS MOVIE IS GORGEOUS. There's one shot in the rain that made my jaw drop with how good it looks. Illumination has a great style that actually blends cartoony designs and realistic textures that don't make me vomit. Everything is so squishy, I love it! The final monster they summon, Irene, is a giant blob monster and her texture work is immaculate. The monsters in general are fun. Goomi is very funny, and has some good quick barbs and jokes. I love that the other two monsters are named Howard and Phillips, again, A+ pun. And Irene is appropriately threatening. I really like that she's so massive you rarely see all of her on screen. Like she can't fit in the framing no matter where it camera is, that's a super fun Lovecraftian element to her design. The Lovecraft elements are pretty good. They are played straight and even for a kids movie, nothing about it is scary, but they nail the aesthetics and ideas. I'm half convinced they lifted the chanting from An actual Lovecraft story. I like that the device to free Howards and Phillips is this ancient device that rings a tuning fork, I dunno something about that just tickles me. So does the score. Maybe it's just because Backrooms has lowered by standards, but it was very nice and actually guided the emotions of the scenes. My final praise is that I really like the opening of the movie. They reestablish the lore of the Minions without retelling, if that makes sense. It's more subtle, they focus of the new information with the actual exposition but still showing off the things the audience would need to know from the first movie.

What I Don't Like.

I don't get the point of Dort. Like I understand that he's only there to wrap up the conflict of the movie in a neat little bow, but he and his bizarre subplot feel really out of place. I didn't hate them, but I just spent every one of his scenes wonder why he was even in the movie. Until the finale that is, and while it's fun, it's also stupid. I think my bigger problem is that he's anachronistic. Dort is a reference to The Day The Earth Stood Still (His name is just one letter off from the Robot in that movie.) Minions & Monsters takes place in the 1920s. The Day The Earth Stood Still came out in 1951. Now it's not like Dort is literally supposed to be the robot from that movie, and my favorite joke was a Citizen Kane joke which is a movie that came out in 1941. But his whole aesthetic is 50s style sci-fi which clashes with the general Roaring 20s/origins of Hollywood theme the rest of the movie has. I also hate that Dort has impregnated a human woman more than once, but I guess it's not a true Minions movie without a truly horrifying implication.

Final Summation.

This movie is way better than it has any right to be. Seriously folks, I recommend this movie, wholeheartedly. Even if you don't have kids. If you like old Hollywood movies, and I mean REALLY OLD, like silent movie old, or you like the general idea of the Cthulhu Mythos and not what Lovecraft actually wrote, I think you should go see Minions & Monsters.

This isn't a bit, go see Minions & Monsters. It's actually good.

No. Seriously. A Minion movie is legitimately good, not just for kids good, like actually good. You could go see this on your own and enjoy yourself.

Got a crack about how I'm reviewing a movie twice Buggnutz? Nah dude you're on your own with this one, this movie sucks. ...Huh wow I thought you always one who went with the crowd. Anyway, yes, I already reviewed Backrooms. But let's be frank, that review is one of my worst reviews I've ever penned, and that's saying a lot given my general quality control. It's even worse than when I refused to review the Mean Girls reboot to instead review a completely different movie, claiming the reboot and original were basically the same. (Way to burn that joke on your fifth review, Roan. You stumbling imbecile. You moronic halfwit. You ungodly bastard. You... FUCKHEAD.) I cut like half of my complaints in order to go off on tangents like complaining about other, unrelated series and failed to adequately explain the points I was making to instead... Make pleas to create memes? Yes, I know I'm a fucking joke, but I'm a fucking joke who's STILL KICKING BASTICHES KEEP THE HITMEN COMING.

If you have to read my other review, honestly just read the opening and the 'What's the Movie About?' section. For those who rightfully don't want to, here's all you really need to know: I tried to watch the Backrooms series again before watching the movie, enjoyed the stand alone first episode, and got bored after a few more episodes. I'm not scared or uncomfortable around liminal spaces, and I don't get why I should be. Greylock fucking sucks. I'm not trying to pick on Kane Parsons or other young, up and coming directors either here. I said it in the conclusion of my last review and I'll say it again right up front, I think both The Oldest View and People Still Live Here are great, Kane has good ideas when he's not being hamstrung by terrible source material. And even if you don't want to count Iron Lung as a similar kind of movie as Backrooms, I've only seen the first 20 minutes of Obsession and can already tell it's LEAGUES better than not only this, but a lot of horror movies that come out nowadays. I just think it's better to lay out honest criticism no matter the circumstances of a movie, rather then give passes to bad ones while tearing down good ones just because you want to like one creator over another.

What's the Movie About?

DON'T BE AFRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIID, OF LIMINAL SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE, YOU'RE JUST A SPEEEEEEEEEEEEECK, OF THE HUMAN RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE

*Adjusts key* DON'T BE AFRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIID, OF LIMINAL SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE, YOU'RE JUST A SPEEEEEEEEEEEEECK, OF THE HUMAN RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE

What I Like.

Quick speed through what I like: The soundstages look great, I specifically called out the Backrooms themselves but all indoor locations look just as good. I kind of liked that that the furniture store feels pretty empty, the therapist's house in her flash backs were cluttered, and the Backrooms itself was kind of both depending. The acting is good, not amazing, but nobody was a weak point. The cinematography, additionally, functions. I never got lost even when things got shaky and they certainly pointed the camera at what they needed too. The only shot I thought looked cool was one where they show off a hallways that was in the ceiling sideways. The opening was cool. At first. It would have been cooler if they only kept the handheld stuff for just that part, but we'll talk about it later. However the first time through it's kinda tense. The scene with the pit that's the apartment building cross section gave me vertigo, which was the closest I got to being scared in this whole thing. I get the caveman standees now. Yes I watched someone explain it, but I was right that it wasn't important to the movie. I just figured I'd give the movie credit for being clever about it. I did actually notice more little details this time. Stuff like the Clark's competitor's commercial on the TV, the way the camera in the second handheld section, and the fact that Clark's imperfect copy has a black shoe while Clark where he wears white shows that everyone who made it were really passionate about making the movie. I wish they put more thought into some OTHER THINGS, but again we'll talk about it later. And I'm feeling generous, I'll put the fact that the ending still makes me laugh hysterically in this section instead of the next one.

What I Don't Like.

Let's start with the effects. With the exception of the stages I already praised, the effects are bad. The sky looks fake. The phasing effect of people and object entering the Backrooms is terrible. I said it last time, but there is a reason movies typically put a faint blue light or shimmer effect when having objects phase through each other, because otherwise it looks unnatural. And before you say anything, not in a creepy way, but in a incomplete way. The sky looks fake. The imperfect copies are a neat idea, but they are no where near uncanny enough to work. Any asymmetry they have still looks good, like something someone who was trying to make to be appealing, not creepy. The mashed potato thing is silly, I'm sorry, I'm not scared by a person made of squashed root vegetables and I don't think it's unreasonable for someone to eat the copies. They don't do anything that humanlike, so there's no humanity to draw from and make the act of eating them upsetting. The sky looks fake. And the pirate. Oh my fucking god the pirate. Talk about a lame monster. He suffers from the same lack of unnerving presence that the other imperfect copies do (I mean he looks like a mascot costume. Not a creepy one, a normal cartoony one.), but also he's just a clumsy oaf. Oh yeah, really scary monster you got there movie. My bones are rattling over his inability to navigate doors. I tremble knowing that the only thing that can stop him is a rock and fire extinguisher foam. The sky. Looks. Fake. Yeah, I keep saying it because HOW DID THEY MAKE THE SKY, THE NORMAL, NOT PART OF THE BACKROOMS, SKY, LOOKS FAKE. WHY DIDN'T THEY JUST FILM OUTSIDE?

The chase scenes are terrible. There's two, and neither are scary or interesting at all. It is interesting that they fail in completely opposite ways though. The first is Clark being chased by some unknown thing, which is implied later to be the pirate. But whatever it was, it doesn't even get close to Clark, so there is absolutely no tension. You had enough time to fuck around with a tiny door across a big empty room without whatever's chasing you even walking in the room, I think you'll be fine dude. The second is the finale chase with the Therapist and for sure the pirate. And that's not scary because the monster is completely unthreatening. Sure it gets closer, but that's mostly because the Therapist is a dumbass and took the most circuitous route away from this thing. The chases are brought down, like the rest of the movie, but the abysmally awful score. Again the idea is decent but the execution is dreadful. It's mostly droning, which could be good to set an uncomfortable atmosphere, if there weren't also whimsical notes to inspire curiosity. Those two tones clash. Am I supposed to want to leave the Backrooms because they are spooky or explore the Backrooms because they are magical? Because what I'm left with is no emotional connection to anything that happens. Music is fucking powerful. You need to to guide the emotions of a scene properly, because it can make the audience invested without having to do any heavy lifting in the writing department. But this score doesn't, so I'm not. The implementation of the handheld portions irrationally annoy me. The movie's opening scene, like I said early, is pretty good. The first time watching I was kind of annoyed that they didn't explain what was going on, but I just appreciated it this time around for being the only part of the movie with any tension. I hate the middle act. First of all, it's the main part of the movie with the annoying teen character. (Or college kids however old they are I don't care.) Second, everyone keeps talking about how great they referenced the Christmas tree room, but I have to hard disagree. Because it's not a reference. It's a reuse of almost exactly the same shot. Third, it's another scene that's supposed to be scary, but just isn't. This for this scene I think it's the slasher movie problem, where instead of being terrified that a character I like might not make it out, I'm ambivalent to a character that annoys me getting killed. They also all die off screen. Guys I think horror of the unknown is dead, killed somehow by a 10 foot tall pirate that trips on it's own feet.

Let's talk about the characters. Clark is, begrudgingly, fine. It works for a villain. It definitely could be done better, but as a fall from grace it's not the worst I've seen. The problem is there's no one else for the audience to root for. The two teens are both annoying, poorly written, and are just fodder. And I have no idea what's going on with the Therapist. I don't even know if she has a name but besides the point. So I get that her mom was crazy, and I guess her not getting help is what leads the Therapist to the conclusion that some people are beyond saving, leading to Clark's resolution and cementing his descent into madness. But what does that have to do with her house being destroyed? Or the rock she keeps with her until the end? Smashing it against the pirate is obvious symbolism about moving on from the past, but then why does she reflect back on the Backrooms at the end, a place literally built off of memories? What narrative purpose did that cut away to her at a party serve? See that's the real problem with Clark's character arc. Since he's an asshole who's final point in the story is being even worse, he's not a character to root for. The Therapist is a lost cause in terms of attachment since I don't know what her deal is at all. So who else does that leave? The kids that work for Clark? The electrician? Phil? Fuck no they're barely in the movie. And before you say it, no, I get no tragic catharsis from Clark's story either. There's nothing likable about him even at the start, so I don't care about his fate.

The Therapist's backstory isn't the only thing I still have questions about. I still don't understand why the Backrooms is taking over the real world. I guess the Doylist explanation is so that it give a reason for Clark finding the Backrooms, but there is no attempt at a Watsonian reason given in the movie. (Don't fucking tell me to watch the web series it'll be explained there, if it's important in needs to be IN THE FUCKING MOVIE.) I get Async are like the main characters in the web series, but why are they in the movie? They don't do anything! And I know they wear hazmat suits because it's easier to have good looking animation with those than regular people when on a lower budget, but I still don't understand why. This is particularly annoying because it could have been fixed with a single line of dialogue. Have Phil tell the Therapist after Async black bags her that she's be exposed to some contaminant or something so they are keeping her in quarantine. SEE HOW FUCKING EASY THIS IS? Now to completely reverse my last point, let me explain why the Backrooms aren't scary. Hell, it doesn't even pass the Mary test we talked about in the Leviticus review because there's nothing particularly dark about the concept. Maybe the idea of you getting lost and starving to death, but as we all should know by now, "The best part is you can eat them!" There's a couple of reasons the scariness is non-existent for me, some we already touched on. The monster sucks, the atmosphere is confused, and there doesn't appear to be any immediate threat to anyone exploring them. But the main reason is because I know how the Backrooms work. A lot of people want to call this movie weird and surreal. Hard disagree. See for me, a pretty weird person, surrealist is the blending of the familiar with the alien. It's something you recognize through a context you can't understand. It's the neighbor you see everyday suddenly exclusively walking backwards and speaking a dead language. The Backrooms kinda has that at first, but once you know that it's just an imperfect copy of reality, there's suddenly nothing unknown about it and all surrealness is lost. Why are there chairs sinking into the floor? Why is there nonsensical room and door placements, why are the people here made of mashed potatoes? It's because the Backrooms is just a copy of reality that's slightly different. Oh. Okay. Shit, I'm comprehending this incomprehensible space.

I actually had some thoughts on other things I'd change. I don't want to make this it's own section like I've done previously since a) it's only a few minor things and b) I don't think it would save the movie, but here we go. Why don't we see any of Clark's backstory? There's like four flashbacks for the Therapist that make no sense and don't really connect to the Backrooms, but I guess I'm just supposed to assume Clark's ex-wife has red hair otherwise why would he cut off the one copy's hair and stick on the Therapist's head when he's forcing her to roleplay as her. So that's the first change. The scene where they roleplay in the Therapist's office. That's a flashback being narrated with the same dialogue as the movie. I'd also not only make the actress playing Clark's wife the same as the actress playing the copy Clark shaves, but have the wallpaper in his house be the same wallpaper in most of the Backrooms we see. It makes the Backrooms a more personal reflection on Clark, the only guy we have any chance to get attached to in this movie. Likewise, I'd make the guy he scoops mashed potatoes out of be a copy of the electrician. I'd also like it if the Backrooms had more rooms based on locations we had scene in the movie. Maybe Clark could find the copy of his store in his initial exploration, and when the Therapist is being chased she could end up in the imperfect copy of her childhood home. That would only make fucking sense, wouldn't it? I think that would reframe the weird final shots into a tragic regression of the Therapist instead of... Whatever they are supposed to be in the movie as is. Those are the only specific ideas I had, obviously I could say more vague stuff like "Make the monsters look scarier!" or "Make the music better!" but it's easy to say that but harder to explain how.

Final Summation.

God I use blue way too much for the headings don't I? But look what I'm working with here, it's not my fault. Oh hello everyone! Our year of sci-fi continues yes this counts with the sequel/spin-off of last years phenomenally good Superman. Just because of that, I was looking forward to this. I was a bit worried after the first trailer. It wasn't very colorful and the line "My cousin sees the good in everyone, and I see the truth." had me concerned that they were going to complete 180 on the colorful hopepunk that made Superman so good. The second trailer assuaged those fears a bit, but one question you might have is, "Will this be as good, if not better, than Superman?"

No. It's simply not possible for Supergirl to have a better movie than Superman. Misogynist. It's not misogyny Buggnutz it's simply a fact that Clark Kent is a better character than Kara Kent, or Kara Zor-El, or Linda Lee or whatever he name is in the comic in question. Because that's the thing about Supergirl, she has no consistent characterization. She's been everything from a traumatized young woman, to a rebellious punk, to basically Superman but with 2 X chromosomes. Writers just don't know what to do with her all the time (which might actually be because of misogyny now that I'm writing this down) so let's just put down the comparison right away and judge Supergirl on her own merits.

What's The Movie About?

After Krypto gets poisoned, Supergirl reluctantly agree to help a young girl track down the man the killed her family to get the antidote to heal her dog.

What I Like.

Krypto should be in every DC movie they put out. He doesn't need to be a big part like in this movie, but he should just show up at least. Like Stan Lee before he died. All of the characters are great. Milly Alcock is so good in the role of Supergirl, and was able to take a character that could have easily been obnoxious and make her a really compelling lead. (Even if the city she was from should have been called Kandor I mean come on the reference was literally right there.) Kara is more cynical than Clark, but not only does the movie explain why through her backstory and it makes complete sense, but she's still highly motivated to help people and be a good person. It gave me shades of what they did with Superman in the Absolute Superman comic, but not as tragic. I was also pretty impressed by Eve Ridley. She's in a lot of the movie and I thought she was good throughout it. Lobo, also, is a lot of fun. Jason Momoa is pretty damn good in the role and is clearly having a lot of fun playing this character, and while in the comics Lobo can be pretty obnoxious, he's used just enough in the movie and brings the proper amount of chaos to the action scenes he's a part of.

The movie looks really good. My concerns were a little founded, there is some grey and brown that takes over scenes, but the colors that are their pop really well, and convey the emotion of the scene when they need to most. I like the detail of the different planets they go to having different types of suns. Not only does it give each world a different color of light that helps make them feel different, but since Kara draws strength from different types of sunlight it keeps the stakes of the movie interesting. The green sun is an interesting addition, I don't know if that was pulled from comics but it feels like it is. The action, also, is a lot of fun. All you really have to do is make sure the hits are cleanly shot and full utilization of a Kryptonian's powers are on display and I'm happy. I could have used a super breath scene but I'm happy with how cool and practical they made the laser eyes without them just being Superman's version of a gun. *cough ZACK cough* The effects are awesome. Again, thank you for having and crediting so many digital artist movie, it not only is the right thing to do, but it makes these movies so much more interesting to watch! The aliens are a good mix of practical and CGI that blends together well, and I fucking love the designs. Everyone who doesn't look exactly like a human is a weird shape made with prosthetics and it SO COOL. When the most in-between-y the aliens get is Lobo, and they gave Lobo glowing red eyes that fluctuate on his temperament, you know it's good stuff. The stand out sequence is a slow-motion scene at the climax that is, of course, set to licensed music. But the song is a female cover of one of my favorite songs all time, so I don't care if I'm predictable it was awesome. Nyeh.

What I Don't Like.

Alright let's get the complaint that makes me sound like a massive asshole out of the way, why do so many female-lead action and horror movies feel like they have to prove their heroine is so tough by defeating and/or killing rapists? This goes back to what I was saying with Leviticus but on much more shaky ground since I am not and have never been a woman, but we can have a fantasy about a female hero being tough without having to deal with misogyny, right? I'm sure there are plenty of women who just want a fun flick without being reminded that they are in danger from a system that treats them as lesser. But unlike my "there's no gay movie that doesn't deal with homophobia" bit, where the only example I can think of that does is the Netflix She-Ra show, I do think there are examples of women-lead media that don't feel the need to bring up such heavy subjects. It's just that ones that do vastly outweigh the ones that don't It's pretty silly in this case too, since the villains being child rapists is pretty auxiliary to the plot. Did I think it was cool that the brides rose up and harpooned that one dude at the end? Of course! But besides that the only reason they are there is to give Kara someone to save in two actions scenes, and to establish that the bastards that killed an entire family for no reason in the opening are bastards because they kidnap and sexually assault children as well. It's handled well, but completely unnecessary.

Speaking of the villains, the main villain is... weirdly established. His character is fine, they give him a couple scenes to chew the scenery. But I can't tell if he's supposed to have powers or not? Like he mainly uses a crossbow with trick bolts and at one point he's fights Supergirl one on one, but not only was she maybe suffering from the effects of Kryptonite but he always wears this armor, so does he have super strength or is it the suit? Or does he not have any at all? The story for the most part functions fine, there's some good one-liners and it very effectively strings together interesting set-pieces for action scenes, and the emotional beats are pretty good. But there is a twist at the end that I'm crazy conflicted about. No spoilers, I just have to sit on it for a bit. It's probably not a great thing that my favorite parts of the SuperGIRL movie is the parts where SuperMAN shows up, but they kinda were because they gave David Corenswet the most authentic and characterized lines. Sorry.

Final Summation.

...What? Buggnutz the month's almost over, what are you talking about? Do you want me to review like... A gay movie?

Yeah alright.

Leviticus Review

Okay I don't know what this is. I was looking at the showtimes for Death of Robin Hood, since I was planning to see that. But I spotted this in the listing and changed my plans at the last minutes. Not only is it more appropriate for the month, but Death of Robin Hood is an A24 movie so there was like a 60% chance that the movie sucks. And I just watched Masters of the Universe. I want a break from badness.

What's The Movie About?

Two queer teens in small Australian town go through a ritual that sets a monster upon them, a monster that takes the form of who they desire most. Each other.

What I Like.

I was talking with my friend Mary from the Video Booze podcast (yeah I keep name dropping those two they are like the only podcast I listen to and they are both awesome) about the sorry state of some horror movies, and I was complaining about how a lot of them I just don't find scary. She posited that she judges a horror movie by the mind set it leaves her with, if she leaves with her mind clouded by dark thoughts or in a more dour mood, then the movie did it's job. If we are to judge Leviticus by this metric, then it's the best horror movie I have ever seen.

Leviticus is a frighteningly authentic and surreal encapsulation of the queen experience, perfectly nailing the fears, anxieties, and tragedies many of us go through and suffer for the crime of daring to love a member of the same sex. The combination of the monsters appearing as a person you desire and the fact that it's a punishment from a Christian priest, well I can't even call it a metaphor for conversion therapy. It's literally a more deadly and fantastical version of it. The Australian teen parts of the movie feel very authentic to me as well, I am not Australian and I grew out of my teenager issue years ago, but there are little moments that feel very specific to the characters that I feel like can't just be ass pulls from the writer. I guess this is my nicer way of saying I believe that Aussie boys would flirt by chucking massive rocks at each other. The surreality comes from the intersection of the monster and these real-to-life small town vibes. There are moments where the reality and fantasy of the situation blur together, and eventually the moments where things don't start behaving they way they should inspired so much dread, because I knew the monster was about to show up.

The craft of the movie is immaculate. The acting is so natural and seeing the actors switch between the normal characters and the monster taking their form is a lot of fun. The monster is also brutal as hell. I had this experience a few times, settling into a more romantic scene getting ready to watch some boys kiss, but then one starts throwing the other around and beating them up in a definitively unsexy way. The gore effects are great, there's some fair amount of subtlety to some, but there's also a scene where someone get's almost an entire arm shoved down their throat and they all love disturbing and real. The directing, editing, cinematography, it's all really good. I don't have any specific praises, but it's also not simply okay so I wanted to mention it at least. The writing is a highlight for me, the movie has minimal dialogue and as always, I think it works really well. I could almost see a version of this movie told entirely in gibberish and it being just as good, which is a fucking weird compliment but the movie is great at the visual exposition and acting so it's a high one. The score is also great. The droning tones can be both understated dread as well and overwhelming terror, but there's also a fair amount of romantic sounding songs, again totally appropriate and beautifully cut off when it turns out the monster was in the scene the whole time. I also quite like the ending. It's not entirely a happy ending, but it does lift up the bleak lead up just enough to make the entire movie feel hopeful and inspiring.

What I Don't Like.

I don't really have any. I was confused for a bit about how the monster functioned or why the parents of the teens afflicted by it would consent to go through the process of the having their children get stalked and killed, but the movie does explain it eventually. I did find myself thinking it's a shame that every queer movie ever has to deal with homophobia against the characters, at least a little bit. I get why, it is unfortunately a universal experience for us. But I would definitely love a movie where it's just not an aspect to the movie at all, textually or subtextually. It's a fantasy, but a nice one.

Final Summation.

This is not this weeks review. I refuse to let it be. I'm either gonna watch this A24 Robin Hood movie or a gay horror film, but I decided to check out Masters of the Universe since almost everyone I've talked to said it was fun. I originally was gonna watch three movies and wait to review them until the end of the year. But not only did I bail on the other showings after watching THIS, but I need to talk about it.

What's The Movie About?

He-Man grows up on earth and then comes back to Eternia and fights Skeletor, I don't know. What, you gonna make something about it? I am the god of this domain, you have no power here!

What I Like.

Well the movie looks pretty. The costuming, sets, CGI, other effects, they all look good. The action is fun, especially when He-Man finally shows up. I wish more of this movie was action. Skeletor is pretty funny, even though they got his voice completely wrong. Yeah. One of the best parts of this movie is cult leader and noted asshole Jared fucking Leto.

What I Don't Like.

The writing in this movie is ATROCIOUS. The main character has two character arcs, one is about becoming the man his father wants that is just dropped randomly when his dad dies, and the other is just Thor's character arc in Thor Ragnarok but completely shit since there was no build-up implying the power was inside all along. I don't know why He-Man needs to start on Earth. That's not a thing in the original cartoon as far as I know, and it could have been just as easy to make it so that He-Man is in hiding and constantly on the run, which is why he doesn't know how to fight. The only other character with an arc is Man-At-Arms. Kinda. Maybe? Honestly I wasn't paying attention, I was too busy cringing at all the jokes. The humor in this movie is just awful. They are all super obvious, go on way too long, and often repeat themselves to ad nauseum. I sure hope you think calling all the characters' names stupid is a joke that never gets old, that's like half of the comedy. Their are slower character bonding moments that I wanted to like, but then I remembered, "Oh yeah. All of these people are boring." What a waste of strange character designs. No one has a memorable personality except for Skeletor, and he's just a really generic villain. He-Man starts out as a lovable wimp, but as soon as he gets back to Eternia he's just a guy. Not even like a stereotypical action hero, he's just a regular dude. He's kinda dumb I guess but other than that he's as bland as wonder bread. Teela is action woman, see her fight with her dad like whole movie. Man-At-Arms is like every version of the grizzled mentor rolled into one characters, and none of the other side characters or henchmen has even a single personality trait to call their own. Hell, the other mainstays of the cartoon, like Cringer, Orko, and the Sorceress are barely in the fucking movie, probably because they would have ballooned the budget being CGI characters. The one exception to this rule is Evil-Lyn, Skeletor's right hand... lady. Her personality trait is... Sigh. Her personality trait is that she's super horny.

Why is this movie super horny? Is this a thing? Is there a contingent of He-Man fans that are super hot for the characters and want to watch them fuck? I get She-Ra's appeal but why the He-Man cast? Not to kink shame but they all look like you stuck an air-pump into them and pumped just enough so they could only waddle. Hang on lemme check something in another tab... 2500 HITS!? Well I guess if you're one of those freaks you'll love this movie, because their is some much weird kinky shit in it. Leaving aside that the main character is dressed like the domme version of Conan, I really didn't want to know that the right hand of Skeletor get's off to him choking her. I thought I was watching a feature film, not a fucking Brazzers parody. All this fisting talk is uncomfortable, I know its the guy's name but it doesn't change the fact that the movie makes the same fucking joke about his fucking name 6 times! There is a giving head joke, sir this movie is for 12 year olds! [EDIT: Research has revealed that Masters of the Universe has always been horny. I'm still uncomfortable by the way this movie does it but I guess I can't really complain that it's there at all.]

Speaking of 12 year olds, who is this movie for? Not for kids! Jesus Christ please don't show your kids this. Not only because of the aforementioned sex stuff, but I'm pretty sure this will stunt your emotional growth. This movie has a weird hate for conflict resolution that isn't punching people in the face before stabbing them with a sword. It's also full of toxic masculinity! There's so many scenes about being a "real man" and how it means being a strong physical fighter able to protect others and FUCK OFF HE-MAN. The last person I would take advice from is a guy in a loincloth! My next guess would be for He-Man fans, but the amount of jokes about how stupid everything about the premise is is frankly insulting. Marvel movies need to get this through their skulls as well, yes, there are aspects of your source material that are stupid or silly. WE LIKE THOSE PARTS. THAT'S WHY WE'RE FANS. Even if it is an ironic enjoyment, you drawing attention to how stupid it is ruins the fun! So general audiences? Eh... Masters of the Universe is in a bizarre situation about its weirdness. It's weird, but like standard weird. It alienates normies who thing "A green tiger being ridden shirtless magic man? PERPOSTEROUS!" but actual weirdos like me can see right through its bullshit. He-Man is corporate weird. It's made up by a bunch of out-of-touch suits trying to be weird. But even if I'm wrong about that. I know I'm not wrong about general audiences not being into the "traditional masculine values", and Mattel should know this as well. One word, Barbie. Yeah, what this really comes down to is that this movie feels like it's targeted to the audience who complained about Barbie being too "woke". You know, the worst people on currently on earth.

Final Summation.

And the Year of Sci-Fi continues with Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day, a movie so many people are convinced is a secret sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and after watching that movie for the first time I don't really see why. Yes, both are indeed about aliens and the government covering them up, but a theme in Close Encounters is that only a selected few are allowed access to the aliens, whether its because they work for the secret world government or because the aliens themselves chose the people to be here. Watching Close Encounters only after it has saturated pop culture is weird. I had no idea that one scene that everyone knows the movie for was literally the last scene. I always assumed that was the hook to get butts in seat, "Come check out this movie where we talk to flying saucers with music." I had no idea government cover-up are a major part of the story.

Steven Spielberg is a very famous and talent man, clearly. I think he and Martin Scorsese are the last of that stable of filmmakers that's still making movies, I know Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis is only a few years old but I'm pretty confident in saying that's FFC's last movie. Try to act surprised about this next part: I haven't seen most of Spielberg's movies. There are a few here and there, like the first two Indiana Jones, The Adventures of Tintin, and I saw like half of the Goonies last Christmas. But Jurassic Park, haven't seen it. Saving Private Ryan, nope. Jaws, hell no. If I watched every movie that everyone has already seen, how else would I be able to call myself an alternative reviewer who's cooler than you? I mean, how many Detective Dee movies have you seen?

What's The Movie About?

A team is working to expose the existence of aliens and government mistreatment to the entire world, all the while being tracked by a corporation trying to cover up their own corruption.

What I Like.

Man it's a real shame everyone predicted the twist at the end before the movie fucking came out. It downgrades a insanely awesome ending into a simply phenomenal one, but ah well. I really like the emotional breadth of the movie, this idea of everyone coming together in empathy is incredibly stirring. I just really love the concept of an alien species viewing empathy as the greatest evolutionary trait, it not only effortlessly explains why they would make contact with humans but leads to even more fun first contact conceptions. The two leads being two pieces of a puzzle to translate the aliens language is phenomenally fun. The underlying subtext of them both basically being autistic was a pretty nice touch, if it was intentional I think they handled it super well. Another cool this is the villain having a device to have him make mental contact with certain people, allowing him a semblance of mind control but also see through their eyes and force them to answer his questions. Not only is that a fairly terrifying ability, but using it has this really awesome effect where the villain and the victim switch eye colors and hot damn it looks awesome. The craft of the movie is obviously excellent. The acting, very good. Emily Blunt has a really good American accent, I'm pretty impressed. Both her and Josh O'Conner had nice chemistry together. (And mercifully, it wasn't romantic at all. One of my least favorite things about Close Encounters is that the Richard Dreyfuss cheats on his wife with Teri Garr before taking off in the UFO. Real cool dude.) Colin Firth is great in the villain role, I really like how he's usually quietly menacing instead of over the top, but can go into full bombastic villain without feeling out of place. I wish there was more of him and Colman Domingo, those two character felt a little gay to me and I wish the movie leaned into the that instead of giving the villain a dead wife. The cinematography is very clever, some scenes had a lot of fun sweeping movements and creative angles, especially when the villain used his mind-melding gadget. The movie also knows when to dip into handheld camerawork to create a realistic atmosphere, rather than obscuring any action. The movie isn't afraid of being silly at times as well, I got a real kick out of the goons and how inept they were.

What I Don't Like.

But the movie isn't perfect. The early relationship scenes are oddly intense, like is it really a big deal that the male lead's girlfriend was a nun? What's even sillier is that the lead in question is Josh O'Conner, and the last movie I saw him in he was playing a priest. A lot of character seem to immediately jump to extreme conclusions when it comes to the aliens, which I found a bit confusing. Literally a character is shown a video of one getting tortured and immediately labels it a higher being capable of toppling humanity's faith in god. I feel like an actually higher being wouldn't allow itself to be vivisected while still alive and conscious, just saying. Also the CGI is... Obvious. Yeah I dunno if I can describe it better than that, everything made with is is well designed and meld fairly well with the scenes they are in, it's just completely clear that it is CGI. The cabin scene looks really artificial, I did some cursory research and nothing I saw said AI was used, but I wouldn't be surprised if that one scene was. If that ends up being the case, I take back everything good I said about the movie.

Final Summation.

Let's see, what movies are out this week? Masters of the Universe? Nah, don't give a shit about He-Man. Amazing Digital Circus: The Final Act? I beat up internet horror a ton last week, I better pretend I don't know what that is. Scary Movie? Actually fuck off.

Oh here we go, a feel good dramady starring Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas heavily featuring rock music! (Probably.) This looks right up my alley! I quite like both actors, one of my favorite things movies do is integrating good music into the flow of a scene, and hey! The poster has a lot of positive words on it! It might be flying under the radar a bit (My theater didn't even have showings listed until the night before it came out.) but after last week I really want to watch something good.

What's The Movie About?

Rick Power is a washed up rockstar who's song gets stolen by a washed up boy band star Danny Wilson after they have a drunken jam session together.

What I Like.

One of the least anticipated parts of watching dramas for me is seeing how well it implements the character's personalities and charisma. You need to make it both believable that a character would be stupid or irrational enough to instigate the drama, but still be charming enough that the audience won't want to throttle them. Power Ballad achieves this. Rick is a great character for this story. Admittedly it's mostly because they are using the Paul Rudd cheat code, he is one of those effortlessly charming actors that makes the worst characters tolerable, but Rick is a my favorite kind of characters, a stubborn dreamer. He is passionate about art, constantly writing and creating new songs even if everyone around him is disinterested or hostile to the idea. But he's also supportive of other people's artistic ambition and by the end of the movie the real issue he has with Danny stealing his song crystalizes and it really improved the already high opinion of the character I had. As some one who wants to be an artist, the plot and Rick's character progression really resonated with me. It's also pretty impressive how well Danny is written. He's obviously the villain, but I spent the entire movie really wanting him to put is insecurities aside, tell his manager to go fuck himself, and become Rick's friend so they can continue to help each other write music. But he keep making decisions that justify his comeuppance. The comedy is great. I love the dry wit that is common in productions from across the pond, but I had several laugh out loud moments from visual gags and funny reactions. the music is pretty great as well. It is mostly cover songs, but not only is the song that is the focus of the plot good enough to listen to over and over, but both of the leads are excellent singers. Yeah that's obvious for Nick Jonas, but I was shocked at how good Paul Rudd is at singing. Man, singing, acting, practical magic, this guy is a one man talent show! However, let me establish this over anything else: Power Ballad has the most satisfying ending of any movie I've ever seen. Obviously I won't spoil. Watch the movie.

What I Don't Like.

Honestly, nothing, but twist my arm I can find a few very minor complaints. I find it kinda weird this movie take place mostly in Ireland. Not because Ireland isn't cool or does have a rich musical history, but neither of the main characters are Irish, and there's not a single Irish sounding song on the soundtrack. (Which of course I mean there is no bagpipes.) It's not a dealbreaker, and honestly I was imagining this movie taking place in like Tallahassee or something and it was definitely worse off for it. A more substantive complaint is that, ending aside, this movie is incredibly standard. You know what you are going to get going into it. The first plot beats you think of when you read my synopsis are the plot beats of the movie, and I would give you 50:50 odds of guessing the outcome of said beats as well. The music is good, but not transcendent through most of the movie. The acting is nice, but I know both leads can do better. The comedy is great! If you like wry witticisms typical of British and British adjacent stylings. Honestly, the most this movie shakes up it's humor is the joke where Rick's best friend chooses playing a cool guitar over flirting with a girl. Like the set up is Rick tells him not to get distracted, implying that he is a horndog, but it turns out he just likes to shred. That's not that out there of a twist.

Final Summation.

But doing the expected isn't a problem when everything is done well. Power Ballad is fantastic, and easily a movie I can recommend. It's just a real fucking shame that no one is gonna see this movie. The nerd are all going to see Masters of the Universe, the fucking weirdos are going into that Digital Circus thing, and considering I saw a bunch of middle schoolers dressed up when I was leave the theater I guess it has the kids too. Normal people are gonna watch Scary Movie for some fucking reason, and all of the muckamucks already saw this movie when it made the festival circuit. Who's left?

I probably don't need to introduce the Backrooms to anyone on the website, or even the internet as a whole. It is the staple example of the Analogue/Digital Horror genre, maybe the Mandela Catalogue or Local 58 would have something to say about that, but I don't see them getting movies anytime soon, do you? (Wait the Mandela Catalogue is getting a movie sometime in the next two years? And the creator of Local 58 was the guy who made the Candle Cove creepypasta that then got turned into a SyFy show called Channel 0 in 2017 and they two stories are vaguely connected? Why would you invalidate my point like that?) The point is now is my time to complain about analogue horror genre in a public space.

NOW DON'T GET ME WRONG, AH is very much more interesting that 90% of horror movies that come to theaters. The top three biggest AHs are so vastly different from each other story wise, and because the internet has less censorship, it is possible to explore more extreme topics which does make it easier to incorporates scares. For better and worse. The medium is also more flexible with how to express the story. AH can be done through animation, live action, text appearing over creepy photos, video games, fake websites, fucking puppets, again, for better or worse. Heck, even the old-school VHS artificing isn't necessarily required anymore. Some might claim that makes the story in question Digital Horror and not Analogue, but they are very similar not only in the way they are presented, but also in tropes they employ and themes they discuss, so they are close enough in my book. (Also splitting hairs between Analogue and Digital Horror leaves pieces like the Backrooms in a strange liminal space between them, which makes it impossible to talk about one without the other. I'm trying to cut my word count actually.) But let's stop beating around the bush, every single one of it's strengths is also a weakness.

Analogue Horror is a genre pioneered by independent developers. AH can explore some deep and hard-hitting topics! It can also lead to incredibly cringe-worthy attempts to shock the audience. AH is able to present itself in interesting new ways, leading to a greater engagement from fans! And greater disengagement from folks like me, who don't want to do a bunch of homework for a relatively simple plot. The stories are bizarre and unique! Well they were. I hate to sound like a hipster, but since AH blew up as a genre, there have been a lot of derivative works that are just a copy of the works that made it popular in the first place. How many series are just fake television shows like Local 58? How may are based on fuckin' Five Nights at Freddy's? I could honestly go on about how the genre has changed and who's to blame about the worse aspects becoming staples of the genre, but I can really just get my point across with this: For every series or video I enjoy, like Angel Hare or Blue Channel Thalasin, there's a terrible attempt at shock horror like The Painter or Tryred Witness Archives, a completely hostile viewer experience like Greylock or CH//SS, a shockingly horribly paced series like Harmony and Horror or Greylock again, or is fucking AI slop like Angel Engine or the Itch. It's a very hard genre to love. Enough of AH as a general concept though what about the Backrooms specifically?

So first I was excited. The Backrooms is a really cool and unique concept, being a level of reality adjacent to our own that is made of entirely liminal spaces and you can fall into completely randomly. And the Backrooms Movie an A24 film make 100% sense. I may not like A24 very much, but I can't deny that their movies are almost entirely the vision of their directors. Given the AH's strong indie roots, that's a good sign. But then I rewatched the Backrooms series. Actually series is generous, I watched the first 8 episodes. The first episode is fairly good, probably because it is self contained. It's not scary. The monster is just the squiggle man, kind of hard to make that frightening. But it's got good pacing and tension building, and the ending is weird enough and mysterious to keep me thinking about it without being so obtuse that it becomes stupid. Nothing happens in the next six episodes. Well, to be completely fair, a thing happens per episode. It's just super boring. Either it's a static shot of the Backrooms with people talking incomprehensibly, or it's the one episode where they open the portal to the Backrooms and nothing else happens. I got annoyed at episode 8 and stopped watching all together. A crew of ASync (They're a company that wants to exploit the Backrooms. Don't worry, neither the web series nor the movie really explains what their deal is.) guys in the hazmat suits are exploring the Backrooms... I'm getting bored of typing the name, I'm gonna start calling it the Fuck Den because I'm secretly twelve years old. Guys in hazmat suits are exploring the Fuck Den when one guy hears a crowd of people, goes to investigate like a foot down a different hallway, tries to get the rest of the team to follow him but they like can't hear him or remember he exists or something? See, that's bad intrigue. With the ending of the first episode, they don't explain what happened or why, but you get some ideas of what could have possible lead to the circumstances the video ends on. Here, I'm not even sure what happened, let alone a speculation of why or how. I'm sure if I went to a website that was hidden in the video's source code I could try to decode a blurry document using a cypher that hasn't been used since the fucking Cuban Civil War that barely explains this scene, but I don't want to do that! I'm sitting down to watch a bunch of spooky shorts for free, I don't want to have to become a Navajo Code Talker with a PHD in astrophysics and working knowledge of all computer science to get told that the Fuck Den is a spooky place to get lost in. Also, doesn't matter anyway, because then the POV character gets fucking TELEPORTED? WHEN COULD THE FUCK DENS DO THAT?

That seriously killed what little horror I had with the series. Like the Fuck Dens was already working an uphill battle for a reason I'll get to in a minute, but when it turned our that people apparently get lost not because the place is confusing and similarly laid out, but because the place can just decide to yoink you somewhere else, I was done. You lost all sense of hope about survival, and that makes horror impossible. See, before there was a sliver of hope. You (or the character you're watching whose struggle you're getting invested in) have a chance to escape. It's a slim one, but you have that chance. Maybe you'll track your movements and clip back out, maybe you'll become one of those survivalists the fans like to make up, but either way it's sad and scary when the Fuck Dens overcomes you. If it can just decide, or has a random chance, to throw you into a monster or hell, teleport you down a pit or something, how can you possibly escape or survive? Personally, I wouldn't even try. I'd just let the squiggle man kill me. That's not scary, that's just depressing!

The other, bigger thing isn't anyone's fault but my own. I don't get liminal space horror. At all. I heard people explain what's supposed to be scary, and I still don't get it. The only people who have made sense to me on this topic are Destructo Disc. This isn't me being a jackass and saying I'm too cool to be scared like in most of my other horror movie reviews, I honestly do not understand why empty hallways are supposed to be frightening or unnerving. I may not think other horror movies succeed at the one thing they are supposed to do, but I at least understand conceptually what's supposed to be frightening about something like a serial killer or a demonic possession. I get being chased by a monster, but all the Fuck Den monsters are stupid. When it's not the squiggle man it's smile.png or other vague shapes that feel like what an AI would come up with if you told it to make a creepypasta. Honestly though, that's just one more reason I wanted to watch the movie. I figured this is the best chance for me to get why liminal space is scary. I don't like being the living embodiment of that fucking Spongebob meme, GIVE ME NIGHTMARES DAMMIT!

What's the Movie About?

A pirate finds an entrance to the Fuck Dens in the back of his furniture store, and the more he explores it the more insane he goes. He eventually tries to turn his therapist into his ex-wife before getting eaten by his AI doppelganger and the therapist gets black-bagged by an MRI company.

...What? Beside of my childish insistence to keep saying Fuck Dens, all of that is technically correct. The best kind of correct!

What I Like.

Well some of the shots were cool. I don't know how much of it was actually stagecraft and how much of it was CGI, but the Fuck Dens themselves looked pretty good. Uh... The acting is pretty good I guess, some character that got on my nerves didn't stick around long. I was laughing my ass off at the finale.

What I Don't Like.

Man I never get what I want.

Well anyway, let's make this movie a meme! It's hilarious! The monsters are soo fucking goofy, how could anyone take this seriously? There are several lines like are perfect ironic joke fodder, please internet I need this. Seriously, if I can't find a GIF of Chiwetel Ejiofor scooping mashed potatoes out of AI John Goodman's stomach because "The best part is, you can eat them!", I'm resigning from the internet. I keep calling the monsters AI because I think that was the intention with there design, but don't worry they were clearly made by a human designer. They are no where near uncanny enough to be actually AI generated, which is great for getting a human a job and not destroying the planet more, but terrible for the horror prospect! And yeah, I still don't find empty rooms and slightly dim hallways scary. The movie doesn't even have the monster chasing you thing going for it since the main creature in the movie is a cartoon pirate whose animation looks like shit. A lot of the movie kinda looks terrible. The sky looks fake in every scene. I don't mean like a fake sky in the Fuck Dens, I mean the scenes that take place outside look like they are shot in front of the shoddiest green screen they could find. They must have been proud of the effect of entering the Fuck Dens, because they showcase it like three times. Too bad it's super artificial looking. There's a reason movies usually add an addition effect when something is phasing through another thing, like a blue glow. Because otherwise it looks unfinished.

So I'll be giving the movie a Recojection, right? Nope. The finale is very funny, yeah, but the first hour is super goddamn boring. Do you want to watch a drunk furniture salesman go to therapy? Yeah me neither. My buddy Chuck from the Video Booze podcast said that he one of the only things he liked about the movie was the atmosphere, but I honestly don't get what he's talking about. It's definitely trying to be creepy, and it would have had a better shot at it than the web series at least. Unfortunately the music sucks my grotesque smelly ass. It's trying to be both creepy ambience and also have element of whimsy, which clashes so hard all I'm left with in every scene is ambivalence. I also don't like the characters. The pirate is a drunken wreck who's character arc ends with him admitting he wants to be insane before getting killed, he has two college kids help him film the Fuck Dens so they can emulate the web series (which I'm pretty sure is the only reason this movie takes place in 1990) and they are super one-note and annoying before being unceremoniously killed off, and the therapist is just a confusing addition to the plot. There's also ASync, with one of their scientists who occasionally pops into the story. They are so axillary I honestly would have preferred if they just left them out entirely. It's not the most soul-crushing of slogs I've had to go through, but I do not want to do it again anytime soon.

To the Fuck Den's credit, it is keeping the spirit of Analogue Horror, and by that I mean it's convoluting a simple plot with details that aren't explained and by telling it's story in an immensely roundabout way. It fortunately doesn't make any dialogue hard to hear or make you bust out your fucking decoder ring, but I still don't understand what anything beyond the pirate's character arc was supposed to be. Why did we keep flashing back to the therapist's childhood, and what was her mother afraid of the outside for? Why are the Fuck Dens suddenly trying to encroach on reality if it's an incorrect copy of reality? Since it is an incorrect copy of reality that's apparently been around for all of time, does that mean there's like a prehistoric version of the Fuck Dens with T-Rexes with three heads or something? Why does ASync send their scientists into the Fuck Dens in hazmat suits when normal people can breathe and behave fine without them? (Assuming they can escape the monsters.) Who the hell was that guy in the opening scene? And what the fuck is with the caveman cardboard cutouts? Like we see that ASync has a bunch of them in a room at the end, so I assume they put them out to lure the monsters away from their exploration teams, but why do the cutouts have recorders that speak like four different non-English languages? Some of this stuff probably just weird for weirds sake, but they must be doing something wrong if I'm left annoyed instead of intrigued. But the bigger criticism is that, on reflection, I don't actually care about finding answers. Don't come at me with some bullshit about a hidden message if you play the last ten seconds of the credits backwards on a spectrograph that explains that the Fuck Dens are expanding outwards because Azathoth is getting an erection or some shit.

Final Summation.

ALRIGHT!

Let's talk about Disney and Star Wars.

The Walt Disney Company is an animation studio that was founded in 1923, creating many iconic and groundbreaking animated features before branching out even further into live action movies and television shows, stage plays, theme parks and real estate, even creating and maintaining their own cable channel longer than all children's channels, second to Nickelodeon. This far reaching success has allowed them to purchase and incorporate many large and successful film franchises into their company, such as the Muppets, The Marvel Cinematic Universe, and of course, Star Wars. They are also COMPLETELY EVIL.

Okay! Am I nostalgic for Disney? Of course I fucking am. There's probably not a single person on earth who has access to some form or media who wouldn't recognize Michael Rat. I barely grew up with television, and I still have Disney movies and shows that drill deep into the core of my being and refuses to dislodge itself no matter how many shows Disney cancels for fascist reasons. But it doesn't change the fact that the company is abusive to employees, works every legal loophole it can to profit as much as possible, snaps up whatever IP they can get their grubby disgusting mouse mitts on despite only having a 50% chance of them actually knowing what to do with them, and isn't afraid to screw over the creators of everything they own for transgressions as little as making fun of the president. Or being gay. Remember when Disney said they were gonna start putting shows made by AI on Disney+? Remember when Walt Disney himself reported animators trying to unionize to the FBI as being suspected Communists?!

I think nothing embodies the Disney corporate mindset and complete lack of audience awareness than the Mandalorian. The first season of the Mandalorian is AWESOME. It's incredibly atmospheric, and great exploration of the interesting worlds of Star Wars in a perspective we barely got from the movies, it understands economy of dialogue, and it's got a puppet who's an adorable magic baby. Sure it's just a rehash of Lone Wolf and Cub, but all of Star Wars remakes stuff. What's important is that it remakes it with lasers and aliens. The best part in my opinion is pretty that it's pretty self-contained. Yeah you probably need to know what a Jedi is, but the second episode the magic baby uses telekinesis so I think non-fans can get the gist. The second season needs you to know about Star Wars and it's a problem. To be fair it's still good, but it's not as good as season one and it's mostly because of the expanded nature of it. You gotta watch the original trilogy and the Clone Wars show if you want to know who certain people are, and like half of the plotlines are just set ups for other shows, most of which I didn't bother to watch! And the ending is so dumb. Like obviously the Jedi was going to end up being Luke, but having him show up and rescue all the actual characters of the show made me roll my eyes. Then the ball was completely dropped for season three. I heard. I didn't watch it specifically because I heard it was bad.

It's so disappointing. I'm not the only one to point this out, but the set-up of the Mandalorian is so basic and open-ended that if could have actually gone on forever. The over-aching plot of the first season is just "Space Dad has to take Magic Baby to his people but gets attached to Baby and keeps him". Every episode is just the main characters going to a new planet and facing off against a new alien or environment. And despite what people who claim to love the series say, you can do basically anything with the Star Wars. It's science fiction, but barely since it never sticks to any science so frankly it's more like fantasy. I already mentioned that it's borrowing plots from samurai stories, but you know what else does that and has a large connection to space? That's right, westerns. One of the good things the Prequels does is showcase a ton of different kinds of worlds, thus opening up the environments for any kind of story. You need a tundra environment? Hoth has got your back. Want to make a noir mystery? Well Coruscant is basically just Blade Runner suspended above a lava pit. Hell, there's like 50 desert planets, literally the blank state of environments for action stories. As long as the writers keep it relatively separate from the movies, the Mandalorian could run until there's no viewers left. Additionally, the stakes of the Mandalorian season one are pretty low. Every episode of season one and most of season two are just "we need to survive a hostile environment" or "we need to help someone out so they will help us get to the next pitstop". That is not a bad thing what so ever! It not only differentiates itself from the main movies in which every decision changes the fate of the galaxy apparently. The lower stakes and consequences lets the audience understand the plot faster, so we can focus on the characters and the worldbuilding, the two most interesting parts of Star Wars! So naturally Disney ruined the show by connecting it to like fifteen other shows and making the main character the new king of Mandalore or whatever.

Wow Roan, you must be a pretty big Star Wars fan. Buggnutz, say that to my face so I can beat you to death for a third time.

Yes, I would not consider myself a fan of the Stellar Warfare. And it's not because half of the franchise is terrible. I mean, it is. Despite being in the age bracket and watching the Prequels when I was a kid, I'm not one of those lunatics who thinks that they are good actually. I don't even think they are better than the Sequels. Rise of Skywalker is better than both Phantom Menace and Clone Wars, anyone who says otherwise hasn't watched any of those movies recently enough. There's probably way too many shows, I can't keep up with them to be honest. Besides the Mandalorian season 1 and 2, the only other show I watched was some of the Clone Wars early on and Book of Boba Fett. Both of which I liked but didn't love. No, the reason I don't call myself a Star Wars fan is because I don't want people thinking I'm completely irredeemable as a human being.

Let me list the reasons I fucking hate Star Wars fans. One, they are way too entitled. The amount of times a SWF's childhood has been ruined, you think they were the whole kindergarten growing up. Nowadays, if Star Wars tries anything different, and I mean ANYTHING, there will be about 100 white guys (AND IT IS ALWAYS WHITE GUYS) bitching incessantly about Star Wars is over and Disney ruins everything and blah blah blah blah. Yeah some of it is disingenuous hatemongers that farm outrage attention on social media (Hey, remember when the first Super Mario Movie came out and all those people were "mad" because Princess Peach was doing stuff like fighting or wearing her racing outfit, and then the movie made a bunch of money to they had to awkwardly switch narratives to the reason people enjoyed it was because the Mario brother are two white men?) but a lot of it breaks into the popular discourse for some reason. And unfortunately, Disney took notice. The Rise of Skywalker is terrible, and it's terrible because it's a reaction to shitty people complaining about The Last Jedi.

Second, SWFs act in the petulant, bratty way possible. While it would be easy to blame it on the prevalence of the internet, but this has been going on for a while. I'll say it, I feel bad for Harrison Ford. He just wants to play pulp adventures like Indiana Jones or that Call of the Wild movie, but all anyone wants to talk to him about is about fucking Han Solo. Don't get me wrong, if I was say being passionate is a problem then I would be sent to the furthest pits of internet hell to be 144p of all eternity for being a hypocrite. BUT I'VE NEVER BULLIED A CHILD INTO HAVING A DRUG ADDICTION. Nothing proves that spite is the best motivator than the movie The People vs. George Lucas. I'm not surprised the guy who played Jar Jar almost killed himself. Are you fuckers proud of yourself? YES, PROBABLY. THAT'S THE FUCKING PROBLEM.

Third, and this is a real conspiracy theory, so listen closely, there appears to be some sort of hivemind among the Star Wars Fandom. This is evident in not only in the amount of insane passion that apparently they all have (Most fandoms have people dressing up in cosplay or writing fanfiction as the activities their most obsessed members perform. Star Wars has an honest to god RELIGION.) but it really feels like they have specific opinions you MUST HAVE to be a real fan. I kinda liked Book of Boba Fett. Apparently that's wrong and bad and I deserve to be drawn and quartered for that opinion. You want to know how disconnected I am from the STF mindset? My favorite Star Wars movie is The Last Jedi. It's really good and interesting, you are all just being overly anal about the set-up. Does it have stupid moments? Yep, absolutely. JUST LIKE EVERY STAR WARS MOVIE. Star Wars is a dumb pop miasma of sci-fi and fantasy that is at it's best story-wise when rips off old samurai movies for plots, the only times it is truly interesting is when it subverts the concepts and tropes it built itself on. Two movies do that, and Last Jedi does it better. Just because you're too much of a pissbaby to be challenged doesn't mean you're right. And if me saying that aloud makes you mad, GOOD. BE MAD AND FUCK OFF.

TL;DR Disney and fanboys will ruin everything you love, and only the power of apathy will save you. Needless to say, I'm probably going into this movie with the worst mindset I can have for something that is supposed to appeal to me.

What's the Movie About?

Mando and Grogu are set on a bounty by the New Republic to return Rotta the Hutt to his aunt and uncle, but twists, betrayals, and kidnappings follow the pair across the galaxy.

What I Like.

So anyway, the movie is pretty good. Yeah, I know, after all of that and Mandalorian and Grogu is a lot of fun. It kind of goes back to the basics I was praising season one for. It's a straight forward plot with plenty breathing room for character acting, cool looking effects and fights, and a low economy of dialogue that makes the atmosphere sing. I was struck by just how fucking weird Star Wars is by this movie. Yeah I know, only now. but the amount of just bizarre things that exist with no explanation is pretty cool all things considered. There was a scene in a Rebel hanger, everyone is just relaxing in their orange jumpsuits and khaki vests, and in strolls Mando all decked in chrome with a Muppet Baby on his shoulder to talk to Sigourney Weaver. They actually got her in an X-Wing, and while she's clearly bored out of her mind, I still liked it. There are scenes with Grogu and these even smaller alien mechanics wandering around talking mostly gibberish to each other. Honestly those might be my favorite scenes in the movie.

One last thing, I really like how many digital artists are credited in the end. Project Hail Mary did the same thing, and while I'm sure there's plenty more who haven't been given the accolades they deserve, it's good to see the corpos relenting a little bit on the "be as selfish and evil as we possibly can" mindset.

What I Don't Like.

Man the effects on the Hutts look baaaaaaaaaaaaaad. I guess they are kind of stuck with them looking like massive slugs, but it's kind of uncanny that Rotta is super buff now, and all of the fighting with them looks like someone getting suffocated by a slimy sleeping bag. The finale might go a little crazy with Deus Ex Machinas. I'm not too annoyed by that since Star Wars is so driven by that particular trope they give it it's own special name. (It's called the Force. Prove me wrong.) The camera could shake a little less too.

Final Summation.

I have no idea what this movie is. Much like They Will Kill You, the only thing that is drawing me to this movie is the title. The poster I saw didn't even have all of the actors and the tagline, it was literally just the women standing on the burning card. The miniscule amount of research I did revealed that this was a play that got converted into a movie. I generally have a positive opinion of that, Rocky Horror is one of my favorite movies, Little Shop of Horrors is fun, and I have never seen a Tom Hooper movie. Yeah I hate Wicked but the book is bad, of course everything built from it suck.

But we're not reviewing this movie. I'm breaking from the format, and you know what that means! I didn't finish Is God Is! Now it wasn't because I hated movie... I kind of hate Is God Is, but I don't necessarily think it's bad movie. If the elevator pitch of a Critic Movie about a pair disfigured twins getting revenge on their dad what did the disfiguring at the behest of their mother who they call God and it has themes of going to far in the pursuit of vengeance sounds like your jam, I think you'll like it a lot. Or here's an even simpler test: Do you think the sentence 'Is God Is' is a profound and worth examining closer? Or do you think it just sounds stupid? Because your reaction to that will be your reaction to the movie.

There is stuff I like. The atmosphere of certain scenes have a very surreal and Grimm fairytale vibe I was digging, which is mostly in the flashbacks. While they are horrifying, the flashbacks do a excellent job of establishing the villain, and I like how they both never show anything explicit and never show his face. I also like Vivica Fox as God. All the acting is good, the craftsmenship of the movie (cinematography, editing, sound, plot, etc...) is all perfectly fine, I just calling her out because I like saying the Vivica Fox is God. My favorite part was actually the lawyer who had his tongue ripped out. He was really funny.

My biggest issue is twofold. First is the dialogue. I'm too white for the dialogue. Does that make me racist? Yes. I also don't like the main characters. The twins have some cool elements, I like that they basically have telepathy. But not only are one of them just extremely abrasive and aggressive, the majority of the movie is just them arguing about whether they should kill their horrifyingly abusive father and everyone he knows, and it's very tiresome because the argument never evolves. One twin says they shouldn't, one says they should, and then they get attacked by someone and have to run away or beat them to death. The moment of no return for me was when the movie set up Janelle Monáe as the dad's third victim, and through a series of awfully stupid interactions one of the twins knocks her face in with a rock in a sock. At that point I knew exactly how the rest of the movie was going to play out, and bailed.

Dammit I didn't want to do this one. Not bekause the movie looked bad, no. The trailers were aktually very good. First, it looked extremely kolorful and used the old 90s Mortal Kombat song, which is very appealing to me and my child-like sensibilities. Second, it has Karl Urban, a great actor I like a lot, playing Johnny Cage as the new main kharakter seemingly. I'm not a huge Mortal Kombat fan, but I know enough to know that Johnny is the perfect leading man for a movie like this. He's a komplete outsider to the setting so he needs everything explained to him, thus making perfekt exposition fodder. He's hilarious, which makes it easy for the audience to enjoy his kompany. And his whole kharakter is being a washed-out celebrity, so even though he embodies the machismo the games are built on he's still sympathetik since he's pathetik. Also, the whole marketing push is about how they are making this movie more like the games, and they are listening to fan feedback about what people didn't like from the first movie. I haven't seen any other Mortal Kombat movies, but I know enough about them from other people talking about them. That isn't why I didn't want to see this movie, I think the best sequels kan stand on their own as good movies for the most part. No, I didn't want to see Mortal Kombat II bekause I wanted to watch Sheep Detectives instead! Like every reviewer is already gonna review this movie, what kould I possibly add to the diskussion? Plus, it's a movie about a flock of sheep that try to solve their shepherd's murder! That sounds great! But the theater I go to got a korrupted kopy sent to them, so they had to kancel all their showings the day I went! DAMN YOU UNIVERSE, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO GET OVER MY ANIMAL FARM TRAUMA NOW?!

What's The Movie About?

Shao Khan, the evil ruler of Outworld, would like to konquer Earth Realm and must defeat the champions chosen by the Elder Gods to do so. His "daughter" Kitana works with the heroes of Earth Realm to defeat him, keeping Earth Realm safe, freeing Kitana's home plane of Edenia and Outworld. Also Johnny Cage is there so everyone kan explain everything to him and he kan make movie jokes.

What I Like.

Okay despite me kind of dunking on him in the movie synopsis, I aktually really like Johnny Cage. Shocking, right? Unlike what the trailers imply, he's definitely the sekondary main kharacter, but he still goes through a pretty good kharakter arkh and I like that it's about him being cheesy and over-the-top being the key to viktory. Plus, Kitana being the main kharakter just makes a ton more sense, and I'm surprised she's never been a fokal kharakter before. (Okay, not THAT surprised.) Adeline Rudolph is excellent as the kharakter, and easily stands toe to toe with Karl Urban. All the akting in the movie is pretty awesome honestly, I really like Tadanobu Asano as Raiden. Kano is hilarious, Baraka looks amazing and I love that he idolizes Johnny at the end of the movie. Honestly, the lesser kharakters are only not as good because they just need to have less screentime, which in inevitably when you have a massive kast. I think the only aktor who did a bad job was the aktress playing Sindel, but one she's barely in the movie, and two it's kind of a legacy that Sindel's aktress sukks so I wouldn't be shokked if they had her akt badly on purpose.

Speaking of Baraka's face, oh my elder gods are the effekts in this movie fantastik. You can tell right from the trailers they are taking more designs from the games, and it looks so good. The kolors pop, which helps keep the kharakters in fokus during the excellently khoreographed fight scenes. The love for the games goes even farther than giving the fighters their proper kostumes and weapons, there's shots that looks directly pulled from the games, and they have fights take place in klassik stages. There's even a nod to a defeated opponent staggering and falling unconscious if you take too long to perform a fatality! Being the kasual fan I am, I was very pleasantly surprised about how much I rekognised. I even kaught the Ed Boon kameo!

I briefly mentioned it, but the fights are SOOOO GOOOOOD. Which is good, bekause the plot is pretty much just a big exkuse to have a bunch of kool showdowns. My personal favorite fight of the movie was probably Kung Lao versus Lui Kang, which even though I was missing kontext of the first movie, felt incredibly dramatik as well as just having just amazing wire-fu style kombat. But none of the other face-offs are slouches either! Well, one is, but it's intentionally bad since it's a scene one of Johnny's movies. The gore in the movie is pitch perfekt, they even get the squibs from the game down pat. I don't know why I wasn't expekting it, but I was surprised by the brutality of the movie! There are some very kreative kills, probably direktly taken from the games but it was fun none-the-less.

The best part about Mortal Kombat is that it is a shokkingly well made movie. Obviously the visuals and music are good, but I mean more like the story structure. Yes, the plot is simple and mostly takes a bakkseat to the fights. But what is there is very klever. The dramatik parallels between Johnny and Kitana in the finale are just, ugh, I kan't say enough about them. Johnny's kharakter in general is so good. Maybe this is just something that specifikly tugs my emotional center, but watching a self-doubting person realize that their traits they are insekure about are aktually their superpowers is so moving, and the fakt that it's Johnny being a kornball aktion star from the 90s, a time when movies didn't take themselves as seriously and the kolor pallets weren't all washed out, that is what he's insekure about is just the cherry on top. Kitana's kharakter arkh is a stokk martial arts revenge plot, but the visuals of the scene where her father dies and all the flashbakks to it make it so much more memorable. The exposition, perfektly done. There is rarely repeated information. The movie trusts that the audience kan grasp a koncept after the first time it is explained. There is a moment at the end which I won't spoil bekause it's a great moment of visual storytelling which the movie DOESN'T RUIN by having someone explain what just happened. They set it up earlier in the movie, and trust that the audience understood what they had been told and kan put the pieces together. Even the way they retkon the previous movie is elegant! Cole, the ancestor of Scorpion they made up for the first movie, returns. And since no one likes him, they kill him off in the middle of the movie. (I'll spoil that since it's pretty obvious that the movie was gonna do that. I mean he's barely in the marketing.) But he's not treated as a joke in the movie, they don't roll back any relationships with other kharakters and all of his friends get sad when he dies, he's not depowered at all. Hell, he even gets a badass death holding his own against the main villain with god powers! I respekt the fukk out the movie for this choice. It would have been so easy for them to dump all over Cole so fanboys feel vindikated, but they took the smart route and the movie is so much better for it.

What I Don't Like.

Most of what I dislike are just fanboy nitpikks. I wish Shao Khan's voice was more like the games, since that's a super ikonik element of them. Kano never gets a cybernetik eye, even though they have a perfekt opportunity to give him one. They never kall the resurrekted Sub Zero Noob Saibot, which I get why, but they adapted so many other silly things from the games it would have been funny if they dropped it in there somehow. Honestly, all that is fine. The change other aspekts of the games for the movie and it is mostly for the best. But the one change I refuse to abide by is Johnny Cage using stunt doubles! The whole idea of his character is that he's an actor that does all of his own stunts, and in the original game he joins the tournament to show off. They don't even change this part of his bakkstory for a good reason! It's just a throwaway line for a gag! They bring up he has five blakkbelts and as a world champion, so it's not like they changed it so he kan't fight at all. He's pathetik and the weakest kharackter in the movie, but it's bekause he hasn't unlokkd his superpowers yet. Why change Johnny is this stupid way? There was a kouple other things I was konfused by. Some of it was bekause I didn't watch the first movie, but when Jade switched sides I didn't even realize that's what she was doing. I'm also unclear if there was supposed to be romantic tension between certain characters in the movie. Like I know Johnny and Sonya have a kid in the games, but are they going for that in with these versions of the kharakters? Johnny seems like he's thirty years older than Sonya, that might be why that's weirding me out. Are Kitana and Jade supposed to be a thing? My projectionist friend didn't think so, but Jade literally sits in the king's konsort chair next to Kitana on the throne at the end of the movie, so kome the fukk on! It also feels like they are implying Kano is bisexual now. I hope that's the kase bekause you rarely see bi men in pop kulture.

Final Summation.

I went into this movie in the worst way I possibly kould, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time watching Mortal Kombat II. The biggest knokk against it is that if you're not even a little bit of a fan of the games or the premise, there's nothing for you here. But why would someone like that even konsider watching this movie or reading this review? But if you are even slightly interested in this movie, I rekommend you chekk out

MOOOOOOOOOOORTALLLLLLL KOOOOOOOOOOOMBAT! (You know I had to get one in there.)

...Look you guys know I wasn't gonna like Devil Wears Prada 2, and it would be for the same reasons I hate Mean Girls or Wicked. That's not interesting to talk about! But what would be potentially interesting is the Andy Serkis directed adaptation of George Orwell's Animal Farm that modernizes the story, which was apparently so bad that the only studio that would release it was Angel Studios, a Mormon alt-right movie theater know for almost exclusively religious propaganda! This is gonna be a disaster! I CAN'T BE WRONG ABOUT THIS THREE TIMES IN A ROW!

What's The Movie About?

Tired of being abused, the animals of a farm overthrow the humans and start running the farm on their own. The Pigs, lead by Napoleon, become greedy and start taking advantage of the other animals to become the new humans. AND THEN a female Elon Musk corrupts him even more to build a dam or something.

What I Like.

Some of the voice talent is good. Jim Parsons I think is a stand out, and while I don't like that they turned him into basically Trump, Seth Rogan works for this version of Napoleon. Likewise, sometimes the animation looks nice. There where clearly moments they knew exactly what they wanted it to look like and I'm sure they were the first thing that were come up with when the movie was being visualized. One of those moments was Boxer's death, which I'm not only surprised they kept in but they didn't really pull any punches with. Like they straight up sell him to a glue factory, no innuendo or nice metaphors, Lucky even straight up calls out the other pigs for sending Boxer to his death. I respect that.

What I Don't Like.

There's not a single thing this movie doesn't fuck up somehow. The story, the pacing, the acting, the animation, the dialogue, the editing, it's all bad. There is no moment of grace either, as soon as the movie starts it pulls down it's pants and takes a massive shit directly into your face. The animation has moments, but the models are incredibly ugly when I don't think they were meant to be. When we first meet the human villain (BECAUSE FUCK THE ORIGINAL POINT OF THE STORY) they do all these close-ups of her arms and she's covered in hair that looks way to shaggy to be regular arm hair, giving a very uncanny look. The pigs and Boxer have similar body hair issues, which works when they are trying to make the pigs grotesque but makes the loveable Boxer very gross to look at. The backgrounds are kinda massively ugly as well. It's very flat and not a lot of detail, I think the only exception to that was the waterfall where the animals put their waterwheel and the starry sky used as a representation of the animal's hope. The animation has no stand out moments. Maybe when the pigs are trying to teach themselves to walk on two legs, but I got distracted by the out of place uplifting music they play during that scene. I can't even tell if it was being ironic, I think the sound editor probably thought it was supposed to be a happy scene and no one told them otherwise. There's a lot of sound problems as well. There's "licensed" music, which is in quotes because I do not recognize the songs even slightly and might have been made for the movie itself, I don't know and frankly don't care enough to figure out myself. Dialogue is abysmal in nearly any way that it can be. For one, characters just don't stop talking! They take the "if we just keep talking people will think it's funny approach" to nearly every scene, and it made me want to rip my eardrums out. I swear, it's so bad I think they stitched together multiple takes for every scene like this. The other reason I suspect that is because these scenes don't properly end. They just... stop. Like they fade out mid conversation. It's inexplicably bizarre and leads to a ton of pacing problems in the movie.

Do you think this movie is the reason Donkey Kong doesn't make an appearance in the Super Mario Galaxy Movie? Or did Seth Rogan not get a callback and got spiteful? Either way, I think he regrets that decision now! I bet a lot of voice talent in this movie regrets that decision. Most of the cast you can't really tell it's them, Steve Buscemi especially. Apparently Lucky is Dustin from Stranger Things. I had no idea until I had to look up the cast to spell Steve Buscemi's name. Glenn Close is the human villain, and she literally sounds like she's dying with all of her lines. She was probably shot by the casting director within eyesight of Woody Harrelson, because he sounds like he has a gun to his head being both Boxer and the narrator of the story. But hey, at least Kathleen Turner is there playing the only character that's allowed to swear for some reason. Yeah, in a movie where they can't say alcohol and instead have to call it "naughty juice", but they have the donkey saying "I got your ass!" like three times.

You know what was missing from the original Animal Farm story? Fart jokes and a rap version of Old McDonald, duh. I can't believe George Orwell didn't think to put a mall scene where Lucky tries to hook up with one of the girl pigs while Napoleon gets obsessed with a sports car in his original book, what a hack. Even if these terrible attempts to appeal to small children weren't in the movie, it would not save the story. I get the impulse to want to criticize capitalism as well as communism, BELIEVE ME IT DESERVES ALL CRITICISM, but the original Animal Farm is a very direct analog to the rise of the USSR. Like you can map certain characters to real life figures, prominently Napoleon is supposed to be Stalin. It's not subtle about it, but with the exception of the very ending which is a very striking and stark visual, there's nothing explicitly spelled out. But because apparently every person who makes a children's movie thinks kids are stupid, they have a narrator not only explain every single event that we literally saw just happen, not only spell out the themes of the story, and not only inserts more cringy-worthy slang that I'm not even sure is modern anymore, BUT LITERALLY FLASHFORWARDS BEFORE THE FINALE OF THE MOVIE TO REASSURE THE AUDIENCE THAT THE STORY WILL END HAPPILY. THAT IS INANE. Not only are you ruining the most memorable part of the original story with the pigs becoming indistinguishable from human while the other animal toil until their deaths, but you're removing all the tension from the finale you made up since I know no more of the good guys are gonna die and I don't give a fuck about whether your villains survive! Yeah I guess the father-son relationship thing between Lucky and Napoleon is supposed to be the dramatic confrontation, but it was pretty clear from the beginning it was Napoleon is just using Lucky so the dramatic tension is more like unemotional slackness.

Honestly just... Don't even bother comparing this movie to the original story. I know I just did a bunch but trust me, this migraine is not worth it. There's a couple superficial similarities, sure. Characters generally (and I mean very generally, and we also have to exclude Napoleon Squealer since they turned "Nepopo" into El Presidente complete with his characteristic crowd-pleasing insulting and braggadocios speeches, which means his second in command is the exact opposite of book counterpart) have the same personalities as their book counterparts, and the few iconic elements like the pigs becoming indistinguishable from humans, taking over the farm, and corrupting the rules to allow them to do what they are is there. But they change the context of all of these scenes and ruin their original purpose. In the novel, the final moment is the non-pig animals realizing that they could no long distinguish the pigs from the humans, showing how the corruption of their ruling class made them no different from those they rebelled against originally. In the movie, the similar moment happens before finale, and it's Lucky realizing that the other pigs and humans look the same in his eyes now. But not only does that muddle the metaphor, Lucky is still a pig. why would he envision a human becoming something like him? And it's not a dark coda to end the movie on (as previously mentioned, they gave Animal Farm a happy ending, which is easily this movie's most grievous sin), it instead is a catalyst to make Lucky repent and team up with the other animals to take down Napoleon. Instead the "Oh no things are dark now" moment is Napoleon, giving a speech to a crowd of humans (all wearing hazmat suits to they could copy-paste the same model for a whole crowd, naturally), where he drops the "Some animals are more equal than others" line. Which makes absolutely no sense in that context anymore. Why is he saying that to a crowd of humans? Why is the movie treating this like the all is lost moment? I don't even have a speculation on why they thought this would be a good idea. In the book, that's one of the rule changes the pigs make to justify them breaking the other rules. It's a point of no return, sure, but it's halfway in the book, not at the end. The more annoying part of all of that is that they could have kept that order, with Napoleon looking like a human to the other animals during his speech and the moment that Lucky gets disillusioned being when the pigs add "But some animals are more equal" to the rules. But instead they just ruin both. And honestly, I don't think that's on the editor or the studio here. My friend compared the movie to the Ship of Theseus, but I think a more fitting metaphor is that this movie is a serial killer, wearing the skin of one of it's victims and trying to pass off as them despite barely knowing who that person was and how they acted. It feels like whoever wrote the adaptation was doing it based off the SparkNotes.

Final Summation.

Yeah I know, this is late, but I was not only sick last week, but there was an RPG convention where I was showing off the game I'm writing. Also, I owe you nothing because there is no one reading this. I had three choices for movies this week. One was Michael, and I heard it was kind of lame. Like they sanitized the King of Pop's story, and I didn't want to make an entire review making infantilization jokes. The other movie was Red Mary or Red Mother or something, horror movie, I see so fucking many of those now and I don't know why. I don't even like horror that much. The only thing I knew about Fuze was the premise, which sounds fun in a dumb action movie kind of way, and that it was from the guy who made Hell or High Water. I've never seen that movie. My friends at Video Booze reviewed it and really liked it, and while one of them is a Terrifier fan I generally agree with what their opinions.

What's The Movie About?

A bomb is uncovered in London, which a heist team uses as cover for robbing a bank.

What I Like.

I. Love. Heists! The details of the planning, the thrill of the heist itself, and the anxiety of the inevitable twist throwing everything into question, whether it's showing off how competent the main characters are or it's a case of the plan going completely tits up, they are always thrilling, exciting, and fun. Fuze is no exception. They drop you right into the action immediately, which gives the audience a wonderful sense of mystery about what is part of the robbers plan and what is everything going wrong. The pacing never lets up, only pausing for breath halfway through the movie. That may seem way too intense, but both the heist and the bomb defusing are surprisingly subdued. The music is understated, and almost every issue each half runs into seems to resolve immediately. But that's all part of the movie's trick. When the bomb explodes and the robbers get away, you realize the movie is only half over and you're still not sure what one had to do with the other. It's dramatic and interesting. Everything on the technical side is very well done, all the acting is good, cinematography, editing, etcetera. But the story is the highlight and it's really good.

What I Don't Like.

I guess this isn't the most characterized movie. Since the movie just throws you into the thick of things, all characterization has to be done with dialogue and set details, which means they can't give enough to everyone in the movie. The main players get barely enough, it's the one thing about the movie that makes me worry that it'll get passed over, if not just the public but also by my memory. I just have a gut feeling this could be another Monkey Man, a movie I enjoyed but only think about it in the context of "Man, I never think about Monkey Man." I was kind of confused why the movie takes place in London. Like I get that the bomb is supposed to be a WWII bomb from the Blitz, but other than that there's really no reason for it. Ah well, at least we get Aaron's terrible British accent for the entire movie, that's cute. One sec... *Gets handed a note from off screen* THAT'S HIS REAL ACCENT?

Final Summation.

This week, selecting a movie was easy. Because only one movie came out. If it weren't for that fact, I probably wouldn't be watching this. Those trailers looked kinda lame, and Blumhouse is very meh for me. Also, more than half the movies I've seen so far this year have been horror. I swear I watch other types of movies. I also have no idea who Lee Cronin is. If I had to guess, he's probably a guy who made something a lot of horror buffs love but I would hate. Hang on, lemme google it....

Hmm hmmmm, hm hmmmm...

Wait they made more Evil Dead movies than the original trilogy?! Like I know about the remake, but I thought the only thing tied to the Sam Raimi movies was that Ash television show.

What's The Movie About?

Chase Cannon, who has a name distractingly similar to a character from porn I'm aware of, is a reporter in Cairo when his daughter Katie is kidnapped by a witch. Eight years later, Katie is recovered in a plane crash in an ancient sarcophagus. What happened to Katie, and will his family make it through?

What I Like.

This movie has maybe the only gross-out scare that worked for me. Normally I just roll my eyes or sneer at disgusting stuff in horror movies. It usually just feels like the creator is being crass because they think it'll be taboo, I'm not sure if that makes sense but I feel like I can tell when the creators add something they don't think is actually scary or gross but they think other people will. I don't want to spoil what this movie has in store because the body horror is actually one of the things that really works about the movie, the effect are pretty gruesome especially in this one scene in question. Let's just say my toes curling was very appropriate. It actually plays into a really neat twist about the Mummy concept, which again I won't spoil because I think it's the neatest thing the movie does. And while the mystery is somewhat spoiled by the fucking TITLE, it's alright. There's enough twists and it's more about how the mechanics of how this particular mummification works than finding out Katie is one.

The editing and cinematography are pretty good. I can really see why this guy was tapped to make two Evil Dead movies. The slight tilt to the camera brings a nice unease to scenes, and the sound detail of normal soft noises being extra loud was pretty nice for building tension. Similar to the Evil Dead movies, there are some goofy moments that I quite liked. I have quite a bit of respect for movies that can be both funny and scary. I will admit that I was the only one laughing in the theater again, but unlike some previous trash it felt more like I was the only one getting a joke rather than being the only one not immersed into the horror. I do wish the movie leaned more into the Evil Dead comparison. Yeah I'd probably ding it for being unoriginal, but there was a scene at a funeral that was perfectly set up for carnage and I was disappointed that it wasn't the finale.

My favorite thing about the movie was the family dynamic. Chase and his kids have a really fun a believable relationship, I like the banter between the family a lot. Maybe these aren't the most realistic kids, but they had some really witty lines. The acting is pretty solid as well, once again I praise the kids especially. The family has good chemistry, I kind of buy that they would fall for some of the Mummy's tricks where it pretends to be Katie again. There is once scene that is an exception, but we'll briefly discuss that later. I do like the idea of the Mummy tearing the family apart and turning them against each other, I think it could have been implemented better but at least it makes way more sense to do this plot with characters that are an established family than a pregnant woman with a distant boyfriend and comatose mother. Just saying.

What I Don't Like.

My biggest problem with the movie is again something I don't want to spoil, but in vague terms this mummy movie is really more like a different type of monster movie, one which I'm very much less enthusiastic about. There's also a big problem with pacing, set-up, and resolution thought the movie. Scenes where scary stuff happen just kind of end without a resolution, and they jarringly shift into a really intense dramatic moment between the parents without any build up halfway through the movie. The ending is really dumb. At first I thought they were ending with a kinda silly but at least poignant tragic note, but then a character that we thought was dead is still alive, and they transfer the mummy's curse to her? It feels tacked on, and we don't even get a happy family reunited part. Also, this may be a me thing, but this movie is maybe sort of racist. I mean all mummy movies are anyway, since the baseline has the heroes pretty much only be white people and the monster is obviously Egyptian. But at least the usual set up is that the white people are being cursed because they stole stuff from the mummy's tomb so they deserve what's coming to them, in this movie the witch lady just kidnaps Katie for no real reason. The Cannon family didn't do anything to deserve it except just be in Cairo, I guess? I also don't understand why the Mummy's Curse needs a living inhabitant when they say that the seals are what's keeping it at bay. Unless I missed something, can't they just leave it on a corpse and just not check up on it? And to be fair on the racism thing, the cop and witch's daughter were pretty strong and noble characters even overcoming intense physical injury to help out, the Cannons are half Mexican, and they actually hired Egyptian actors for once. That set up just seemed like a weird change to me.

Final Summation.

Okay, look, it was either this or You, Me, And Tuscany this week, and I think I've made my opinions on romantic dramadies quite clear before. So even though I was pretty sure I wasn't gonna like Faces of Death (2026), I figured it would be more interesting to review. I knew the original FoD by reputation only before going into this one. Apparently it's one of the most shocking movies ever, got banned in a bunch of countries, and a lot of extreme horror fans got mad that the gore in the movie was fake, because apparently there actually is a whole contingent of movie goers that are actual psychopaths. So yeah, this whole thing was giving me major Terrifier Vibes, which is not a good thing! Will this at least surpass that?

What's The Movie About?

Margo is a content moderator on a site like TikTok, and she finds a series of videos that appear to mimicking the death scenes from the movie Faces of Death. (Like the original mockumentary one. This isn't like an ouroboros of gore.) Can she prove they are real to the authorities before more people get killed?

What I Like.

I enjoy the characters for the most part. Margo is pretty cool, I liked her drive and her backstory is so fucked up it made sense why she would act in the ways she did, even when being irrational. I got pretty bummed when her roommate died, he was cool. The killer was pretty entertaining, especially during the end. When he spouts his philosophy it's pretty cool because he's just so full of shit but thinks he's super cool that it was kinda funny. The cat-and-mouse game that he and Margo play is the big draw of the movie, and it had me hooked. The two character's thought process and actions were pretty entertaining, it's not that one smart and one's stupid, or that they are both smart/stupid. It's more that they both act appropriately dumb and brilliant when it made sense for them too, if that makes any sort of sense. I kind of like how they implemented the original use of Faces of Death. See since the killer is obsessed with the original movie, they play a lot of clips of people watching it so audience members like me who haven't seen the original, you can get the references. Might be a bit lazy, but it's sprinkled throughout the movie at appropriate moments I felt. The cinematography is pretty decent. There's a real fun scene where Margo and the killer are trying to track each other online, and they go with a split screen that was well implemented. Also a couple shots of the killer stalking his victims were pretty damn creepy. The whole cast does a good job, but Dacre Montgomery does a great performance as the killer. The way they use the internet in this movie was really interesting. It's both a good thing and a terrible thing, just like real life! And I kind of got a kick at seeing the juxtaposition. The gore effects are well done. Nothing insanely creative (especially since they are just redoing kills from different movie), but hey. It was better than Terrifier 3. Not that it's that high of a bar to clear.

What I Don't Like.

This movie is so ham-fisted with it's messages. I'm not joking, but there are three separate instances where Margo or the killer literally say out loud what the meaning of the movie is supposed to be, and all of them I was rolling my eyes. At least there was a point to all the violence. I guess. I was getting annoyed with how stupid the cops are. Like, fuck the police, but also the amount of weird stuff they just overlook because Margo is somewhat overbearing is really fucking stupid. Again, I'm not joking, but there is literally a part where the cops don't bother to check the killer's house because Margo is freaking out and telling them too, A COMPLETELY REASONABLE RESPONSE FOR SOMEONE IN HER SITUATION. I get the killer is muddying the waters by claiming she was stalking him, but at least take a look around inside as procedure! THERE WAS LITERALLY A KIDNAPPED GIRL RIGHT OUT OF THEIR EYELINE! I actually thought that scene was where the movie was gonna end, and if it did, holy shit. If it did, I might of had to recommend this just for the audacity. Speaking of which, I'm not sure about the ending. I like the last few seconds, but a lot of the rest is filled with screaming and more of the killer spelling out what the movies about. I did laugh when he called Margo a cuck though. I'm pretty sure he doesn't know what that word means.

Final Summation.

I saw the original Mario Movie in theaters. I actually saw it the same day I saw Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, which probably explains why I didn't remember much about it. Rewatching it, it's a pretty alright kids movie. The animation and action is great, the game references are on point, the story's a bit rushed, and I didn't really like most of the comedy. It also has some of the worst integration of licensed music I've seen in a movie, which is especially crazy because the orchestral version so the various songs used in the game are my favorite parts of the movie.

I was surprised that Super Mario Galaxy was in theaters so soon. I knew the sequel was coming, but when I first heard about it I was disinterested simply because they jumped straight to Mario Galaxy. That idea just seemed like it should be the last movie in the series, not the second. Like am I nuts? If I was in charge, I would have done Super Mario World second, then a movie where Mario and Bowser team up against a different villain or something, then Galaxy, but what do I know I guess. I didn't even realize the movie was gonna be out so soon, I mostly saw all the various merchandising and only saw the trailer when I looked it up myself. And admittedly it was pretty cool. This movie is actually what convinced me to try this "review 1 movie a week" thing, since I missed doing reviews and a bunch of movies I wanted to see were coming out within weeks of each other. But was my initial gut reaction correct?

What's The Movie About?

Princess Peach is recruited to save Princess Rosalina from the clutches of Bowser Junior, who is building the perfect world his father read him bedtime stories about.

What I Like.

NOPE. The Mario Galaxy Movie is excellent, and better than the first movie I think. Is it because they fixed my two complaints with the first one? Partially, yes, but a lot of other stuff is great. One, this movie is so much more creative in the first, a hard task because the first one was very interesting! At least in terms of worldbuilding. This movie goes nuts with the gravity defying architecture and filling every inch of the screen with weird creatures doing silly things. And not to spoil anything, but holy crap the cameos in this movie. I haven't even played most of the games they reference, but it was amazing to see certain characters appear. Not gonna be spoiling any of them, and I hope to Rosalina that others follow in my footsteps and keep it a secret as long as possible.

Speaking of her, I really like the characters introduced in this movie. The weakest is Yoshi, he's just kind of there to look cute and be a third character to fight with the Mario Bros, but he is cute and he kicks butt. Rosalina's not in much but it makes sense to keep her limited when she's literally the Mario universe version of God. And she continues the Mario Movie propaganda of princesses being the most badass characters in the movie (The last sentence with added exclusively to upset the rage-bait YouTubers who were mad at the first movie for making Princess Peach kick butt.) But the character I was most worried about was Bowser Junior. Bowser Junior is my second favorite Mario character. (After Princess Daisy, which they teased like three times int he movie but she's not actually in it. Stop sleeping on Daisy Nintendo, she's awesome.) And I wasn't wowed by what I saw from the trailer. His voice sounded too old, and the eyes were weird. But after watching the movie... I think the changed work. The eyes make him fit much better with the other characters, and eventually I just didn't notice them anymore. As for the voice... Well this is clearly an older Bowser Junior. In the games, he's like the Koopa equivalent of like 6. He's character traits are: He is a spoiled brat, and he really loves his dad. For the movie, they drop the spoiled brat part, and instead make him really clever and inventive. A change I think totally works, I mean in Smash he rides the Koopa Car and he is tied to the paint brush as his weapon, it makes sense to turn him into a gadget guy. Speaking of which, his paint is kinda freaky in this movie. I think if I was a kid, I would get some nightmares from it. My stomach dropped when I heard Bowser say he was bad dad, but the relationship between Bowser and his son is pitch perfect. It's not unique to the movie, but the characters of Bowser and his kids reveling in their brand of evil is great.

I know I briefly mentioned it, but this movie is really funny. Sure, there's a couple of dumb jokes in the same vein as the first movie, but it's mostly great gags. There's a lot more visual humor as well, and since Luigi is more of a presence in the plot they let Charlie Day have more bits, it's a lot of fun. And just like the first movie, the orchestration is SOOOOO GOOOOD. I've not played Mario Galaxy, but even I could recognize several themes and musical stings and felt that swelling in chest that all good movies give me. They also reveal some interesting stuff in regards to the canon of the Mario games, including a BIG reveal about the relationship between two characters which of course I won't spoil. At first I was pretty shocked, but the longer I thought about it the more I think I liked it? Evaluating it I think my shock more comes from having to reorganize Ship Charts and not the actual relationship being a surprise. Speaking of which, I think this might be the most Nintendo has made Mario and Peach romantically interested in each other, and I think it's kind of sweet actually. They feel like a timid couple, it's not a dynamic I expected but I think could be fleshed out if they decide to make a third movie. (My apologizes to the Powser fandom, your theories were insane but I think it's all but squashed now.) And yes Tumblr. There's more Bowuiji stuff in the movie. Seriously, even I, diahard LuigixDaisy fan, was like "They are totally ship-bating."

What I Don't Like.

Maybe this is just because I've been spoiled witch movies that are the perfect length recently, but I feel like this movie should be longer, maybe about half an hour? There's way more subplots than I was expecting in this movie, and even though the movie does pay off all of them, I wish there was a bit more fleshing out of them. They completely wasted Donald Glover as Yoshi. To his credit, he does a great job as the character, his voice is spot on. But literally all Yoshi says is "Yoshi" and make exertion noises, why are you hiring a celebrity for that Illumination? Hopefully he got paid well for this performance. The action is not as interesting as the first movie. Again, it's good, but the first movie is pretty unique because of its focus on acrobatics and the power ups. The only fight in Galaxy that focuses on that is the final fight, which is unfortunately not as epic as the last movie's ending with the Power Star. The plot also a little less straight forward, I'm not really bothered by it in this case but they do split up the characters only to have the middle part of the movie trying to reunite them. Yeah, like A Minecraft Movie. Also, and slight spoilers, but there are several moments where the scene shifts into pixel art, which I think is cool! Except when they do it in the last scene of the movie. For the rest of the movie, the pixel art is represented as computer screens, and they don't really replace the events of the movie with the limited animation, it simply supplements the 3D stuff. They replace it in the ending. It feels like the movie ran out of budget.

Final Summation.

I'm starting to see a flaw in the "Choose one new movie to watch each week" premise, which is all I watch now is good movies. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is great, whether you are a kid, a parent, a fan of the games, or just interested is pop culture institutions in general. It's great fun! NOW PUT DAISY IN THE NEXT MOVIE YOU COWARDS IF SHE'S JUST A CAMEO I SWEAR TO ROSA-