Totally forgot I'd even reviewed this back in 2019, and it turns out I stand by most of it, except the bit where I say Speed Racer is better than The Matrix Reloaded (and that the latter is a "misfire"), and more importantly, the subsequent bit where I say "Jupiter Ascending doesn’t feel like a movie that only the Wachowskis could have made". It's more generic than their typical directorial output, this is true, but that feels more like a…
Gets half a star for the very end—the townsfolk tossing down their own patches to Whitey would be an inspired choice in most any other movie, and it's startling to see something so heartfelt in this acrid context. Everything else ranges from run-of-the-mill to morally abhorrent. And people think Jack & Jill is worse than this? I'll tell you what, that's the dumbest fuckin' take I ever heard of.
Watched the Ultimate Edition. Like many, I wasn’t in a headspace to give this a fair shake on release, and I don’t think having seen Man of Steel would have helped matters. Five years out…well, I still don’t like it much, but I have better reasons than just spouting buzzwords like “joyless”. My main issue is that both Zack Snyder DC movies have fascinating things to be about, and then they spend most of their runtime being about anything but that. BvS should be…
2018 Robin Hood-ass production design, except 2018 Robin Hood at least had a little bit of excess (oh me oh my) to move things along. If this had been the movie I stumbled into after consuming an overpriced burger and too much hard cider at the Mall of America food court, I would have had a much, much less pleasant time. Genuinely can’t imagine how a Shakespeare adaptation could be directed worse than this? All is forgiven, Baz.
Hits and misses all around; broadly, the horror is better than the comedy, but now and again a joke’ll land (the “DO NOT SIT NEXT TO DENNIS!” prop callback nearly overshadowed the whole “Pancakes!” scene), and equally often a scare will fall flat, often due to Roth’s mishandling of horror film language (mystified as to why the camera lingers on the kitchen knife before Karen picks it up, only for her to never actually use it in the ensuing fight). Mostly, though, Cabin Fever is acceptable pastiche, with enough moments of inspiration to balance out its more groanworthy elements. Some of these gags have not aged well.
It’d be stolen valor for me to call myself a Godzilla fan, but I felt personally insulted on all Godzilla fans’ behalfs watching this. Hell, I wouldn’t call myself the biggest apologist for the 2014 film, but I could still get down with its “let them fight” ethos—and here we’ve got, what, “make them fight”? Unbelievably ill-conceived. Add in disted fight direction (Dougherty is embarrassingly out of his depth here) and one of the worst blockbuster scripts I’ve ever seen…
Not the worst Romeo and Juliet adaptation I’ve watched in the past week, but not the best Romeo and Juliet adaptation featuring the voice of Dame (you’re welcome Evan) Maggie Smith I’ve watched tonight. This would’ve been perfectly inoffensive as a 45-minute animated special, but it’s a tough watch at feature length. No wonder Disney didn’t want the company name on it.
And with that, I have completed my rather stupid goal of watching every “major” cinematic Romeo and Juliet to prep for…
It’s easy to see why people vehemently hate this one, and easier to see why others swear by it; with a film as holistic in its goals as Only God Forgives, you’re either with it or you ain’t. As is the case with most works that fall into this category, I am with it to a healthy degree, but not to the point of uncritical adoration. This was exactly the movie I expected it to be. Why was everyone comparing You Were Never Really Here to Taxi Driver last year when Only God Forgives existed that whole time?
Better than I’d been led to believe. The messianic imagery, ripe for ridicule as it is, actually mostly worked for me—the “superheroes as gods” conceit was bound to be applied to the icons of the genre on the big screen eventually, and there’s never been a more fitting director to make that happen than Zack Snyder, a man whose entire brand rests on his fixation on the aesthetics of power (Evan’s wording, not mine). He rightly treats the concept of…
Overlong, for sure—this isn’t doing anything that couldn’t have been done in an hour 40. But if every media franchise on this bitch of an Earth is destined to become a “cinematic universe” or die trying, this is a fine origin story template. And as with the Zack Snyder DCEU entries, despite not loving the movie, I find myself compelled to go to bat against its most common criticisms, because they’re all kind of bad. “Godzilla doesn’t show up until…