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Reviews
The Lion King (2019)
The Original is a Masterpiece that made animation history, this is very easy to forget
The first question we need to ask is "are they necessary?" This could be said about any film, but in the transition from an animated media to a live action one, several things happen. Within animation anything can happen. You're not limited by real world physics. Yet, the suspension of belief when watching cinema isn't altered. You're still whisked away into a new world and captivated, regardless of it not looking real. Without today's technology, animation was the tool to anthropomorphic characters. We could share the emotions of a deer or fox or even a bear. Mice became your best friends and could sing. The limited became limitless within animation.
Now animals can be rendered in CGI, making them look almost completely real. While you can still change their look to give them human qualities, they still can retain a life-like appearance. Suddenly, The Jungle Book can look real. Yet, does it have to? Do we need to see a realistic looking Lion taking his place at Pride Rock? Of course not. Yet, the movie was made. And the result was disappointing. I mean, what's the point in making a realistic looking Lion King if none of the characters are human? It defeats the whole purpose of these kinds of remake, not that they need much of a purpose besides banking on nostalgia.
Personally I think these animated animals look more plastic and weird than most CGI humans. That fur just don't look right. The Jungle Book and Tarzan were... okay. They had humans in them. The Lion King doesn't. It's just a ton of CGI animals in a CGI environment and the visuals are horrible. What's the point of this?
Disney's live action remakes are draining the soul from their films, and it shows the most in their villains. Jafar and Scar were lively and dramatic characters. It showed in their visual design and personality, but these feel so flat and reigned in.
I'm not feeling the muted colors either. Even with realism, dynamic use of light and color can add a sense of wonder to what is still a fairy tale. It feels like they're taking themselves way too seriously these days, and are ashamed of the fact that they used to make cartoons.
I think Jungle Book did it better in terms of light and color. It also had something Lion King does not as I said: Mowgli. A human presence grounds the story in realism making the style a more natural choice, and also gives us an emotional human face to relate to. The Lion King doesn't.
In the first film we can see Mufasa's fear. Scar's calculating gaze. The look of betrayal as his own brother throws him to his death. The design choices of the remake prevent us from reaching this same level of emotion, and the scene lose all of its impact. The infamous scene that traumatized so many generations and marked his way in the history of animation if not of all cinema history just came out in the live action as bland, generic and emotionless.
While one CAN convey a range of emotion on a realistic animal face, that is not what we saw in this movie. You can google pictures of actual live felines I found conveying a greater range of emotion than the soulless husks Disney is trying to pass off as 'realistic.' But hey, it's almost like traditional animation can do things that a washed-out blur of photorealistic CGI can't!
I must say I fail to see the point of a live action Lion King. The Lion King is an amazing movie in great part due to it being the absolute pinnacle of traditional animation.
It's even more so because they dragged poor old James Earl Jones out to do more voice acting. Here's hoping he gets paid a tidy sum. John Oliver being Zazu is not a positive, especially when compared with Rowan Atkinson. John Oliver is basically a bad reboot of Jon Stewart and his involvement with the new Lion King symbolises the mediocrity of modern movies. Donald glover is the worst, I hate his portrayal of Simba, he sounds so weird and offplace, his voice is terrible. And don't get me started on Beyonce... I never liked her "music", I like even less her attempt at acting.
Unicorn Store (2017)
Netflix be like "You dont like Brie Larson....so here's more Brie Larson!!"
Is this the movie for which a man was bullied online by a company and a movie star? Was it worth it? Of course not. There's a serious mismatch between the personality of Samantha McIntyre's script ... and Larson's directing style, which feels entirely incompatible with whimsy.
The Breaker Upperers (2018)
Embarrassing for humanity.
This movie was a terrible waste of money. So crass and no story line what so ever. Save your money. It frequently descended into random music montages that didn't hit the mark. At times it tried too hard to be controversial or offensive, but just came across as crass due to the one-liners falling short. The trailer is a pack of lies because it only shows the funniest bits with hardly a single swear word and none of the sexy porno stuff. This man will be hard pressed to go to anything with the cast in it in future.
Worst movie I've ever watched. People kept walking out of the cinema and not coming back! Avoid!
Close (2019)
This Netflix female bodyguard thriller is no cigar
Having now sat through the bodyguard thriller Close, I still can't tell you what its generic one-word title means in relation to the story. That same mystifying blandness carries over to both the performances and the plot of this unremarkable Netflix original soon to get lost amongst the streaming service's sea of content.
Directed by Vicky Jewson, the film prides itself for having three female leads, but it never manages to do much with that other than prove that women can be just as hobbled as their male peers when it comes to working without a decent script.
The twists in Close aren't very twisty and its thrills aren't particularly thrilling. The film can be easily summed as: women getting smacked around by cartoon bad guys before finally getting payback. Not really my cup of thea.
The Arroyo (2014)
The movie liberals don't want you to see
N inundated border. Victimized children wandering through the desert. Ranchers being hung out to dry. And a population finally mobilized to fight back against their corrupt and venal pro-amnesty politicians.
All of it was predicted in Jeremy Boreing's The Arroyo.
As the fallout continues from Rep. Eric Cantor's (R-VA) defeat in his primary at the hands of unknown economics professor David Brat over Cantor's support for immigration reform, Boreing's The Arroyo looks more timely than ever.
The film tells the story of Jim Weatherford, a rancher in Arizona whose property is being used as a thoroughfare by drug cartels smuggling illegal immigrants across the border. After being stonewalled by his Congressman and the police, Weatherford decides to take matters into his own hands, leading to a climactic showdown with the cartels - and a popular voter insurgency against the Congressman.
"Listen, I understand that you're frustrated," the Congressman tells his constituents after a brutal slaying by the drug cartels. "I'm frustrated too, but most of these people are good, law-abiding folks-"
"And nobody blames them," a citizen shoots back. "We blame you - for not sealing the border."
Another citizen shouts, "If you don't do it, we will."
City of Lies (2018)
The search for the truth among murders, rap and lies
The screen turns on. The voice of the commentator speaks of incidents in the crowd, confusion and pepper spray: it is the story of the funeral of Notorious B. I. G., in March of 1997. Even before the start of the film, City of Lies forces us to confront a bitter reflection of past and present, between United States and Italy, between the needs of control and large crowds gathered in tight spaces.
Even in those distant 90 years there was talk of crimes linked to rap: B.I.G. was killed just a few months after Tupac Shakur, his former friend turned worst rival. Two facts of blood on which, after more than 20 years, has not yet been made bright light, in a web of lies and red herrings in the midst of that City of Lies. The book from which the film is based on is called The Labyrinth, with the capital letters to indicate Los Angeles, and the feeling is actually being in a maze full of dead ends and without an output defined. The film is based largely on the performance of the actors Johnny Depp and Forest Whitaker, but fans of rap will be especially thrilled by the times when the screen appears Voletta Wallace, mother of rapper of Brooklyn, to portray herself and her eternal struggle to uncover the truth about his son's death.
City of Lies collects new ideas on unsolved cases of Biggie and Pac and tells the investigative cases human dimension parallel to that of the people who are still investigating. But the reason why I recommend the vision is its testimony on the role that the rap and its stars have now assumed in global society. Even dramatically, when rivalry and huge economic interests are paid in blood.
The deaths of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. were of huge losses from an artistic point of view. Both disappeared before they were 30 years old, they had time to leave an amazing legacy on which rappers of 2019 continue to build. Interested in the truth about their end does not mean chasing justice through the courts or guilty by whisking in the electric chair. It means seeking the historical moment of "beginning of the end" of the golden age of rap, and try to prevent the seeds of violence and stupid, blind greed continue to generate casualties among us and among our listeners.
Bumblebee (2018)
As I predicted, the only good part is the 5-minute part on Cybertron, the rest is boring Earth
They don't seem to get the fans at all. For years we complained that we did not want annoying humans around, we just want to see the giant robots punching each other and what do they give us instead? A movie that has even less action and more humans than the predecessors. Michael Bay knew better than listen to bloggers. The previous Transformers movies have action, big explosions, sex appeal, etc. Sometimes that's all an audience wants on a Friday night, especially boys. Because that's what Transformers is, a franchise for boys. And instead they tried to make this movies appeal to girls. The main character is a girl, the movie is more about the girl social struggles than action and war, the male characters are just sidekicks, even the villains are females, action is almost absent and special effects are 10 years behind the previous chapters.
Transformers movies until TLK have been shovered with money. Like it or not, only the fans want to see more character development, story quality and world building. The avarage action fan is happy with what it is served to him: just look at Fast and Furious. TLK was a failure exactly because they tried to change approach. Ironically, an attempt to make Transformers more serious would only make the franchise less succesful. The success of the first Transformers movies was that they did not take themselves seriously. They were just explosions, beautiful girls barely dressed, racing cars, lot of swearing and CGI. What a teenage boy loves to see as Michael Bay said. What does Bumblebee does instead? It tries to appeal to an audience that doesn't exist, not for Transformers.
Mowgli (2018)
CGI, darker themes sever 'Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle' from Disney classic
Gross, vaguely threatening and surprisingly complex, "Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle" is nothing like the Disney film. Directed by Andy Serkis, this modern take on the classic tale "The Jungle Book" is dirty, bloody and surprisingly mature for a children's story.
The movie opens with a graphic scene showing an abandoned baby boy covered in dirt and alone in the jungle. Then, the humble, but eerily rugged and wild-eyed, panther Bagheera grabs the child and brings him to a family of wild wolves, who take him in and refer to him as a man-cub named Mowgli.
The wolves are very kind to Mowgli, but as the boy grows up, he learns the hazards of being a human child among wild animals. He's beaten up, thrown around and faced with bodily harm that is at times hard to watch.
Even harder to watch is the intensely detailed animation. The CGI animals in "Mowgli" are intricately graphic, and it is clear Serkis sought to make them look wild and dangerous. Baloo the bear, a loving mentor to Mowgli, is nightmare-invoking; he is heavily fanged, very dirty and completely unnerving. His hungry eyes and guttural voice make it difficult to see him for the good guy he is.
Baloo's cringe-inducing, overdone appearance doesn't come close to matching that of Shere Khan. He is the tiger who hates humans and is on a mission to destroy Mowgli. He is scarred, walks with a hideous limp and is always followed by a mangy-looking, agitatedly smiling hyena.
Along with the dirt, blood and shock, the movie's mature themes make it worthy of its PG-13 rating.
There is an unforgettable human complex in this film that pulls it into a new level of understanding. Throughout the movie, Mowgli struggles to find his identity and where he belongs. He's just a boy trying to choose between two families who both need him: his family from the jungle and a human village he grows to love.
"Mowgli" also brings in the idea of man versus nature through the appearance of a British poacher. The animals Mowgli considers family are all in danger of hunting, deforestation and other modern problems. The animals fight for their lives, and they need Mowgli's help.
From that conflict comes another theme: nature versus nurture. Mowgli battles with his inherent want to be with his own kind and his loyalty to his jungle family and upbringing as a wild animal. Does he side with the human village or with his jungle family? These are questions that even most adults wouldn't be able to answer in a similar situation, much less a young boy.
With its disturbing graphics and overall mature themes, "Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle" is not a movie meant for the Disney classic's original audience. This movie took the idea of a children's story and re-envisioned it, gearing it toward more mature viewers. Although the animations were at times difficult to watch, in the end, like a Disney movie, it was heartwarming and satisfying.
Bravo Mr Serkis! Well done!
Dragged Across Concrete (2018)
No actor teeters between mesmerizing and maddening like Mel Gibson
Anchored by three brilliant central performances, Dragged Across Concrete is an interesting, unpredictable movie that presents two plots that feel like we've seen them before and then zigs when we expect it to zag. Mel Gibson is a singular voice in cinema, one who is willing to take pulp concepts and craft them into unflinchingly violent features.
Widows (2018)
Don't listen to the good reviews
Notice how the good reviews are either one-liners or just repeat the same thing: the cast is great, the politics are progressives.. meanwhile the bad reviews actually highlight all of the film content which happen to be poor in every single aspect. The plot has been done multiple times and it never becomes more believable when you see it again, the plot holes are endless, the cliches even more.
The thing with all female action movies is that none really watches them, even the feminists don't... they just go "awesome! keep it up!" and forget about it
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018)
Tchaikovsky Is Rolling In His Grave
Slow torture for kids and grownups alike, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms gives a bad name to the very concept of family entertainment. What went wrong? Where to begin?!? On the surface, this Disney debacle seems like a no-brainer for the holidays: It's an 1816 gothic fairytale by E.T.A. Hoffman and a ballet with music by Tchaikovsky. What we have here is simply a botch job with two directors - Lasse Hallstrom (My Life as a Dog) for starters and Joe Johnston (Jurassic Park III) for reshoots - and absolutely no personality of its own. Dance fans can look forward to a pair of all-too-brief appearances, including one over the end credits, from ballet great Misty Copeland. After that, composer James Newton Howard smothers the sounds of this perennial seasonal favorite in aural swill.
It's Christmas Eve in in Victorian London, and clever Clara Stahlbaum (Mackenzie Foy), the 14-year-old embodiment of female empowerment, is in a funk. Her mum has recently died (there goes Disney again with the dead parent thing) and neither Clara nor her siblings are in the mood to follow their mopey dad (Matthew Macfadyen) to a lavish Christmas ball. Not to mention that her father insists she wear dead mum's dress - creepy, right? Mum has left gifts behind for her children. Clara gets an egg-shaped box with no key to open it. Frustrating, yes? So is mum's note: "Everything you need is inside." At the party, the young woman seeks out her godfather Drosselmeyer (Morgan Freeman in paycheck mode), a toymaker who zaps her into another dimension. If only he could zap audiences out of the multiplex.
Any hope that things will pick up are quickly dashed when Clara enters "the four realms," where it turns out her mum was once queen. Hope you like headache-inducing vistas that can leave you in a digitally induced coma! And good luck figuring out why the leaders of the realms are at war with each other! Searching for answers, Clara teams up with a Nutcracker soldier named Phillip (Jayden Fowora-Knight), and an animated mouse. It seems like Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren, reduced to mugging) is evil. Or maybe it's flower-covered Hawthorne (Eugenio Derbez) or icy Shiver (Richard E. Grant)? Or how about Sugar Plum, who seems to be having a squeaky-voiced meltdown in the welcome distraction of Keira Knightley's helium-high portrayal of toxic cotton candy.
Any description of what follows, including a battle of tin soldiers, clowns on the attack and a swarm of killer mice, would only evoke other, much better films such as The Wizard of Oz, The Chronicles of Narnia and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. What this Nutcracker offers is so overproduced, so mechanical and so indigestibly whimsical that it won't just be two-year-olds who want to puke it up. Clara is told that the four realms represent a parallel world where time moves faster. Not in this movie, which slows to a crawl in the act of boring you breathless.
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018)
Another reboot that is straight up misandrist
Netflix's take on Sabrina the Teenage Witch is dark-so dark that you can't actually see most scenes. And it's aimed in a dangerous direction. This show glorify violence toward white males and justify it by saying that society oppress women, people of colour, people who don't accept the body in which they are born etc... it is an act of mediatic terrorism. How else could you define it? No, the western society is not misogynistic, on the contrary it is far too tolerant otherwise shows such as these won't even exist. If feminists desire so much to fight for women issues then they should aim their hatred at places where women are actually oppressed like India or Iran. Most male students do not sexually assault female students, if that happens the police is out to stop them and women are not denied jobs or rights based on their sex.
Yes, my culture, and all the wonderful things it has to offer to the world, is under threat. Because angry feminists are trying to emasculate white men and always make them appear as scum. I'm tired of seeing myself and my kin portrayed always as villains. This is not equality, this is hatred.
Halloween (2018)
IMDB has become like rotten tomatoes: full of fake/paid reviews
How else would you expect hype and praise for this corny mess? What once seemed creepy now just seems campy. I'm sorry to report that in the 2018 Halloween, the howls sound more like giggles than screams.
Titans (2018)
What's with all these duplicates and insulting reviews?
The production design looks cheap, the fight scenes perfunctory and forgettable, and none of the character make much of an impression at all. Titans is not fun. It's relentlessly adult so much so that it's alienating, and so slow in developing the plot and bringing the characters together that it's frustrating.
Suspiria (2018)
We should left the old movies in the past
Every scene in Suspiria is like a Instagram post rather than a movie. The beauty try to compensate for the lack of substance. We find master strokes from Guadagnino and a nano-thin plot that is an excuse to throw sumptuous visuals at the viewer. Argento was right. Remaking Suspiria was a bad idea to begin with. The movie by Dario Argento was maybe a child of its own times. It's very delicate; almost childish. It' just doesn't translate to modern cinema and the attempt came out as very bland, boring and without a soul. Simply try to recreate what worked in the past is not a safe way to success. We would do best to remember that.
The Predator (2018)
Garbarge that eat garbage
So bad. The attempt at comedy was stale, the story was stale, the performances were stale... the screenplay sounded as if it were written by 5th graders and even the visual effects had a 'Star Trek: Next Generation' feel to them... do yourself a favor and watch something else.
This good reviews must come to people who watch marvel movies and think action films should be filled with childlish jokes and bad acting.
I Feel Pretty (2018)
If this is comedy..
Short take: A boring "comedy" that is poorly developed and severely confused in its message.
Long take: 'I Feel Pretty' is supposedly a comedy. The issue is I didn't laugh once. The four other people in the large theater laughed twice. It just wasn't funny which is bad since it is a comedy.
The characters are so poorly developed. Not one person seemed realistic. Which is a shame because the entire crux of this film was a relatable girl learning that self-esteem and confidence is better than the conventional Hollywood beauty. Instead we are left watching characters that give us no reason to love them or laugh at their mistakes. The most horrendous character of them all is Schumer's character Renée. Throughout the movie, Renée can only focus on herself: what she looks like and what the world thinks of her. Even when she is playing up her friends, she can't help but comment on herself. Or when Renée, a growna** woman, learns that even conventionally pretty women struggle with self-esteem. How has she not realized that practically everyone deals with some insecurity? Has she only thought of herself in her 25-30+ years of life? In this type of movie, the editing doesn't matter all that much to me, but it was just so bad here that I couldn't help but care about it. The sound editing made it feel like I was watching an ABC family original movie. It was all cheesy and felt forced. And now I have freakin' Meghan Trainor stuck in my head.
Even with the poorly developed characters and awful editing, the most frustrating part of 'I Feel Pretty' was its mixed message. The trailers portray a movie that is about confidence and self esteem. This was the message of the last 10 preachy minutes. However, the rest of the movie sang a different tune. One full of fat jokes and stipulations on insecurities. Really what this movie is about is a narcissist learning to love herself. If this movie was funny, then these faults would not have been as glaring and 'I Feel Pretty' would be an okay, guilty pleasure type movie. But, Schumer and Co. fail to make the audience laugh (their one job), so we are left to dissect the failure that is 'I Feel Pretty'
The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)
Garbage
This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
A pointless attempt to milk the franchise
Don't waste your time with this. It lacks everything, from a soul to a compelling trama, to appealing characters. What else could have been? Disney is trying their best to milk the SW alien cow as that scene in TLJ showed. The conclusion of the movie is stale, filled with clichés, and tries too hard to set the foundation for future 'Solo' movies by featuring one of the most random cameos you'll ever see in a movie. Solo wasn't the worst Star Wars movie (that title goes to TLJ) just the one with the least compelling reason to exist.
Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)
Piece of junk
What can you expect from those Disney heathens? Their whole disgusting saga is like a curse! Born from the nosense hatred for the prequels, this movies seek to destroy everything the saga worked so hard to build. They are not ones of us. This is not Star Wars and never will be. Let this garbages be eradicated and retconneted out of cinema history.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016)
Burton was the right guy and we know it
Miss Peregrine is a movie made for Tim Burton. Quite simple, if you appreciate the director and the genre you're gonna love it. It is a solid and placid story kept together by a very great acting (especially if you think they mainly are children but you're gonna love the way those children act) and you can tell he must had fun making the movie all over it. After a long run of hipster movies for teenagers, Burton know how to make cinema fresh again. I'd take this over any Marvel/DC movie or Disney live action remake. This was also the first time I felt actually immersed in the 3-D effect of the movie. It was the first time in a long time that I felt like that extra $4 was worth it.
The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar (2015)
They should have never done this
This series is an absolute abomination. Disney totally ruined their best movie/franchise by making this awful series with cheap animation, horrible voice acting, no-sense my-little-pony-themes and plots and more discontinuities with the main movie than the X-Men movies. The Lion King is by far my favorite movie and Simba is my favorite Disney character. They have both been disrespected and ruined by this no-sense cartoon. This is not The Lion King. The characters from previous movies are completely OOC or disrespected or doing pretty much nothing for all the episodes, the new characters are stereotypathed annoying children- cliché, there is not even half of the epicness from the original movie. Disney forgot that what made The Lion King so successful and beloved is the epic tone of the story and the characters. This is cheap-animation, not worthy anyone's time.
Fantastic Four (2015)
This make the first movies looks so good
Worst superhero movie of all time. And don't say we didn't warn you. Josh Trank messed up with Marvel's first heroes from the moments he touched them. An horrible cast, horrible plot and horrible CGI screw up what were once incredible characters. There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING of the Fantastic Four and the whole movie is a useless bunch of scenes ripoff from Insugernt, Ender's Game, Halo and (surprise) Chronicle. These are not the Fantastic Four we know and love and it's not even a good movie perse. Give the rights back to Marvel if you're not interest in making a proper movie. Like Constantine, Elektra, Batman & Robin, Dragon Ball Evolution and many other messed-up, this movie shows off once again that you can't just screw up the original source like you are better than them. If you're not interest in Fantastic Four neither you know them at all then don't make a Fantastic Four movie in the first place. And like I said, even if it hasn't the name of F4, this movie would be absolutely horrible, boring and just cheap everywhere. Save your money.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)
The greatest and most magic of the journeys.
It is with a mixture of anticipation and sadness that I will watch this middle earth (including LOTR) journey come to and end. However thank you Mr Jackson for evoking memories of a 9 yr old back in '69 listening to her English Teacher read the Hobbit when heard Golems voice on screen. Thank you for taking us all away from the constant doom and gloom of the current state of the world and allowing us into waorld where Good always triumps over Evil and where heroism, friendship, and contributing to a cuase bigger than ourselves, still means something. I can appreciate that artistically Peter Jackson may wish to explore other paths but I hope that one day that he will want to retun to making another mythical epic to cheer our hearts one day.