valarik564 Reviews

Robin Hood (2018)

I wanted to like it. I couldn't manage it.

[1/10 · 26 November 2018]

If anyone reads this, it's likely because you're either reading a bunch of reviews because you can't decide if a ticket is worth it, or you hated it and are reading all the 1 star reviews so you can say "thank you" multiple times when you read a criticism you agree with. If you're the latter, welcome, you're among friends. If you're the former, I'm not going to tell you that you shouldn't see or love this movie, clearly some people do, I'm just going to lay out why I can't.

It's built on clichés and one-liners, and scenes seem to be written around setting that up, if they set it up at all. Even in the credits, next to the actors name and icon, the most dramatic quotes their character had is written next to them. Most of the lines are written to serve the drama as opposed to being substantive or sensible. There's even a scene with a mildly villainous character doing the maniacal laugher ended by angry scream with the dramatic music in the background, and it literally comes out of nowhere. There was no set up for that character doing that, and it made the whole thing feel silly. Imagine a play built only on the soliloquies of Shakespearean tragedies mixed with every cliché about love giving strength in despair, but lacking any real sense of plot or structure. That is this film.

Also, the action sequences are filmed like an over the top modern war movie. There's literally a slo-mo scene where some of the characters are driving away from an explosion. I'm not saying there's no place for that in a period movie, but it was executed lazily and without much thought about how to do that and do justice to the combat of the time period.

Basically this is just a standard subpar action movie with a Robin Hood skin. Splashy effects and dialogue with no effort given to make it cohesive or new or worthwhile. I'm usually the person in a group who's more forgiving of bad movies than others are, but I just can't with this one. I kept trying to enjoy it throughout the movie, and it felt like it was fighting me the whole time.

Bad Samaritan (2018)

Decent, but with some glaring issues *some spoilers*

[6/10 · 9 May 2018]

The absolute best part of this movie was the acting from the main cast. Tenant, Condon, Sheehan, Byers, and Olivero were all great, and helped keep this movie from falling flat. For the most part, the writing was pretty good, if a bit cliched in some instances (Sean, the more-hero-than-antihero antihero, literally says "Take me, take me instead"). The storyline didn't push the plot very far out of a reasonable realm of possibility, which made it that much more compelling.

This is a long review, and you will likely finish it by thinking I hated the script. I don't hate the script, and most of it was honestly pretty well done. That being said, I have several issues with the movie that didn't ruin it for me, but not for lack of trying.

First and biggest of the issues is the role of law enforcement in this movie. The only police officer we get to know at all seems competent, if weary and cookie cutter, and even has a scene where he's questioning Cale (Tennant) in the house where the girl was supposed to have been tied up that gives all the telltale signs that he's starting to suspect something, but is savvy enough to play it off in the moment. This is apparently a wrong impression, as he immediately afterward all but accuses Sean (Sheehan) of stalking and harassment. This was very much a ludicrous turn, as Cale is very obviously lying, the cop gives all the signs of coming to the same conclusion during the interview (including the whole "Oh yeah, one more thing" thing that suspicious cops do in the movies), and then goes the complete other way.

The FBI also gets involved, as the aforementioned cop directs Sean to them to file a missing persons report (which seems odd, as I'm 95% sure police do that as well), and each and every one of them sounds like their lines were written by running every CSI episode through an algorithm that finds bland dialogue and then makes it worse. They were at best phoned in, and frankly, the plot didn't even need them. They filled in gaps, that were entirely unnecessary to know, of Cale's background, and arrested him at the end, his having already been thoroughly subdued by Sean and Katie (Condon) to the point that they became almost a redundancy.

Secondly, the plot does not have a satisfactory resolution. Yes, the bad guy gets caught, the captive girl gets saved, and we can assume that everything else went fine after that. But that isn't good enough. My main issue with this is that Sean's girlfriend, Riley (Byers), is in the hospital on a ventilator (more on that in a bit), and hates him for things that were not his fault. We can assume that things are resolved between them, but we have absolutely no way of knowing that. While this isn't necessarily a problem, the way it was handled is. There's a certain feel to a scene that is given by all the techniques of storytelling and filmmaking that tell you what to expect in that arc of the plot. The way the plot with Riley was told, the hospital scene expected a resolution that was to come, that never came. There is no ending of that arc, and it's clear (as there's no reason for it) that this wasn't intentional, it was just bad story telling. I was caught off guard by the end of the movie because I was expecting that resolution, and as I'm entirely sure they weren't just leaving it for the sequel, that's not a great thing to leave the audience with.

Lastly, some plot point questions and grumbles:

1) Riley gets her head smashed into a brick wall twice, and then is thrown down some stairs, landing on her back/neck. She is later seen in the hospital, when Sean goes to visit her to try and explain things. She is conscious, with no neck brace, is able to freely move her head, and is of a mental and physical capacity to reach for and write normally upon a notepad. She's also hooked up to a ventilator, implying that her trauma made it hard for her to breathe. All of that combined seems immensely implausible, especially as it's indicated that Sean would've gotten to her within a few hours of the incident, having been summoned by a call from her phone made by someone going through her emergency contact list. Came across as lazy writing.

2) Cale blows up his house after setting a trap for Sean, who he (correctly and reasonably) assumed would come back after seeing Riley in the hospital. He does this by turning on his gas stove, letting it spread through the house, and setting up a bomb in his oven with a timer, and remotely locking all of the doors once Sean is in the house. A few points on this: Sean gets in through a window, which is not remotely controlled, and could easily be used again, though it isn't; if you're a bad guy trying to get away and possess a sophistaced level of smart home functionality, setting up a bomb instead of just an innocuous ignition source, seems poorly planned; if you're a bad guy trying to trick someone into a house that's going to blow up, you probably don't want to give away the game with more than 30 seconds to go before the explosion, nor would you put a bomb with a timer that's easily visible and inherently gives useful information to your would-be victim; where did Cale get sticks of dynamite, and who makes bombs that look like something a Looney Toons cartoon would have? It's just silly on its face.

All in all, I think that someone had a good idea for a movie, had some genuinely good ideas for making the script come to life, and then filled in the gaps with whatever came to mind first. So, good, but not great, and a little disappointing on reflection. It had a lot going for it in cast and general plot, but the little bits hold it back.

I Feel Pretty (2018)

It doesn't try to be anything that it isn't. And that's kinda the point.

[8/10 · 20 April 2018]

You're going to see a lot of reviews on here say that it's predictable, silly, probably a few other criticisms that are perfectly fair. But this movie knows what it is, and the authenticity makes it enjoyable. It has a genuinely sweet romance, great comedic moments, and good messages. It's a silly romcom with a lot of charm and heart, and it's worth a couple hours of your time. Give it a chance.

Chappaquiddick (2017)

A solid meh.

[5/10 · 19 April 2018]

Finding the right words to describe my experience with this movie is difficult. It isn't a bad movie, but it suffers from, for want of a better phrase, almost an unwitting weightlessness. It's an odd thing to say considering the topic of the movie, but it genuinely felt, not so much monotone as playing against the line of atonal.

Ed Helms did a fantastic job, and plays the only character that I felt had any depth and humanity. I would love to say that this was the point, that the movie intended to highlight the sociopathic dissection and handling of this scandal, but it misses the mark of giving the story that kind of weight. There isn't enough of an exploration of the polarity between Helms and everyone else, just a series of one off exhibitions of it, each of which then naturally falls flat. No disrespect to Jim Gaffigan, but his character was more or less irrelevant. He did absolutely nothing the entire time, had minimal dialogue, and went along with whatever was happening with as little a sense of existence as possible while still being one of the most seen characters in the film.

I wouldn't recommend investing in seeing this movie, as much as I hate to say something like that. I saw it in theaters with a movie pass ticket, going in with the mindset "eh, why not?", and that seems about the best way to experience it. The actors all did a great job, and the script seemed perfectly fine, but the direction did not give enough definition or weight to the story.

The Greatest Showman (2017)

It isn't perfect and it isn't for everyone, but it is truly spectacular.

[9/10 · 22 January 2018]

I am a huge fan of musicals. I'm an actor, I went to school for theater, and am intimately familiar with the works of Sondheim, Webber, Tim Rice, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Larson, Miranda, etc. I absolutely love musicals on both stage and screen.

Firstly, what you'll hear a lot in other reviews is that it's pretty simple and straightforward. This is absolutely true, but it's not necessarily a negative. This is a PG Disney movie, so set your expectations accordingly.

Secondly, it also isn't strict in its biographical take on P.T. Barnum. It plays with the story, and turns it into something closer to a fable than a documentary. Again, this is not a negative, unless you were expecting a documentary style movie.

With both of these things in mind, this is why I love this movie: because it is incredibly clear that everyone working on it did, too. This movie ends up being a splashy, live action, musical fable about the wonderous possibilities of chasing your dreams, and being careful not to let them run away with you. It's filled to the brim with striking choreography (including one of my absolute favorite bar numbers), splendid visuals, and energetic and uplifting music. It has its share of low moments throughout the movie, careful to avoid both inaccurately showing Barnum's or the performers' lives as being perfect and unchallenging, and being incessantly happy for a two hour musical.

Ultimately, this movie shows itself to be nothing more or less than a two hour love letter to the musical genre, set to a dazzling take on the life of a great entertainer, and built on the message of being true to yourself and proud of it. It is the definition of a feelgood movie, and there isn't anything wrong with that.