Reviews

Good to see the studios finally listening to what people want, and making daring, creative, unique movies COMPLETELY UNLIKE anything we've seen before!!!

SIKE!

It's not a perfect world, and unfortunately, movies are stupidly expensive to make, and the investors and decision makers generally play it safe and green-lite whatever script seems the least risky.

It's hard to blame them really. A person's got to sleep at night!

So, sadly, the studios would rather churn out sequels and remakes of anything that made a lot of money in the past. Then paste in the currently hottest stars, and rest easy with a reliable profit projection based on a bunch of data.

It's MATH people! The Hangover + Kate McKinnon + Scarlett Johansson = $

And as an added bonus, top critics will be scared to give it a bad review for fear of being labelled "SEXIST"! How can we loose!!$!$!!

OK, with that little rant out of the way, I guess I'll move on to ranting about how the film lacks a single original idea! It starts out feeling like a carbon copy of "The Hangover." Remember in "The Hangover" when the timeline suddenly jumps to the next day and the hotel room is trashed and the guys embark on a fun, mysterious adventure to piece things together?! Well, something like that was too clever for this movie, so instead it just turns into the movie "Very Bad Things" combined with a bunch of other crap that seems familiar and lazy.

The characters are mostly boring, poorly developed, and worst of all, they all feel somewhat forced. You know that epic swagger and confidence that Scarlett Johansson exhibits in the MARVEL films? None of that here. She seems slightly awkward and uncomfortable in this role, and a little unsure of who her character is supposed to be exactly.

I was about to throw in the towel and admit defeat 10 minutes in, when thankfully Kate McKinnon shows up and quickly seems to be the only excuse I can think of to keep watching.

It's not really that the movie is that bad, it's more just that it's not that good, and not that funny. It's a shame to see a very talented cast, that seems slightly un-inspired by the material and characters they are playing, and the group's chemistry was lacking. I was having a hard time relating to a single character, and I definitely did not believe that they were actually BEST friends with each other.

All that being said, the movie does have some funny moments, and is pretty well made overall. I started skipped ahead a little in the second half because I was getting bored, but that's most likely due partially to my self-diagnosed ADHD! I almost started feeling generous and gave it 5 stars when Kate McKinnon sings her song during the credits, that was pretty hilarious actually. Unfortunately, the script is pretty lazy and a lot of the dialog is bland and UN-inspired.

A Movie like this will NEVER be GREAT! It will never make a TON of money or stand the test of time. But it's also highly unlikely to fail and loose money, so this is what we get. So I guess I'll add one last memo to Hollywood... "TAKE SOME RISKS ONCE IN A WHILE, PLEASE!!!" I know, I know, they are too busy spending that remake cash on strippers and blow to have any chance of noticing this. That and the don't care :) So if this looks like the type of movie you would like, you probably will enjoy it. All others may want to steer clear. The real issue is the over saturation of these types of films coming out of Hollywood. It's a pretty decent, while forgettable comedy, but it's hard not to imagine what other, way cooler movie that this money could have gone towards instead...

This is what it looks like when you take a decent script and put it in the hands of a highly skilled and experienced director in the prime of his career.

James Wan directed the first Saw movie, as well as The Conjuring, and the Insiduous movies. He also directed Furious 7 and is currently working on Aquaman. It almost seems like he is showing off in this movie. It seems like he is having fun and pulling all his tricks out with confidence and ease to make a movie that is just plain awesome.

This is one of those movies that could have been terrible with the wrong director. The script really isn't anything all that special. It works, but there is nothing terribly new and original here, and the resolution to this movie is so bad it made me laugh out loud. (**Spolier**) This big powerful demon is terrorizing this family throughout the movie, and Lorraine is able to destroy it by "saying his name." And guess what? The demon told her what his name is... oops! I guess the demon didn't think that one through very well. To be scared of this demon for over an hour and then see the whole problem solved because she simply says his name, after he told her what it is, was kind of a let down for me. But then again, we're talking about demons here, so it's all kind of silly to begin with, and there really isn't any solution that would make much logical sense.

That being said, I don't really watch a movie like this for the plot, I watch it for the horror, and this movie has lots of it. They used a clever plot device that the demon is "hiding" by acting through other spirits. This gives the director a chance to use a wider variety of techniques and keeps things interesting. It's clear that James Wan really knows what he is doing and he plays with everything from CGI, to stop-motion, to jump-scares, and creepy sound effects. He has a lot of tricks in his bag and it makes for a movie with some great scenes.

He is especially good and using cinematography and color grading to darken areas of the frame just enough that you can't quite make out what you're looking at. I can't think of many other directors who do this as often and as well, but it really works.

Another scene I really love is the one with Lorainne by herself where the painting comes to life. Scenes like that are so cool, so well directed, and so scary, that they are instant classics in my opinion. If I were teaching a class on the greatest scenes in horror films, there are a few in this movie that would make the list.

Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are no strangers to horror films. Besides being in both Conjuring movies and the Insiduous movies, Vera was also played the mom in Orphan, another great horror film. I think they were well cast and do a good job playing Ed and Lorraine. This movie relies heavily on child actors, which can be tough, but they all do a great job. The main girl who plays Janet is really the main character in this film, and she does an admirable job. I found it somewhat unconvincing at times when she was doing the different demon voices, but I don't think that is her fault.

If you are a fan of horror, you will love this movie. Don't go in expecting a great story, but you can expect to see a really scary movie with a director who has become a master of his craft and is really given an opportunity here to do what he does best.

I actually really like this movie. I applaud them for daring to try something different. There really aren't any other movies quite like this. It definitely draws closely from various movies, but its not like your average superhero movie.

I think the plot is actually really cool and is actually pretty realistic for a superhero movie. The cinematography is beautiful and the locations and production design are nice as well. The whole Japanese samurai ninja culture is always cool and it is fun to see it blended with an x- men story.

There aren't many other superheroes in this movie, which is refreshing. Especially nowadays where they seem to pack way too many characters into every movie. Besides Wolverine, I really only recall poison Ivy being in the movie, and she goes by a different name and looks mostly like a normal person.

I forget what the criticism was of this movie. I remember people complaining that Wolverine doesn't have his powers for most of the movie, but that didn't bother me at all. The story builds to a nice climax and the pace is pretty good.

I wish more superhero movies would take risks and try to be original and creative like they did here. Go see this movie if you like a good action flick or x-men or Samurai culture.

I watched this movie because I was in the mood to watch a horror film and I like watching random indy horror flicks sometimes.

Unfortunately (for me), this really isn't a horror film at all, in the way that it is not the least bit "scary." If you like chick-flicks and romantic comedies, you will probably like this. It's basically a simple love story between two young people but with an interesting twist. Our main protagonist travels to Italy after his mom dies and falls in love with a girl who turns out to be some kind of vampire/werewolf creature.

The movie stays somewhat intriguing for a while, but in my opinion, the big reveal where he first finds out she is a "monster" (the audience knows long before) is very cheesy and comical. They cut to too many close-up shots that show imperfections in the make-up and the went a little overboard, choosing to turn her into a strange octopus like creature this time around. I found myself laughing at a lot of moments that were supposed to be intense or serious.

If you are looking for an independent romantic comedy with a creative twist, you will probably like this. They have good chemistry and the acting is pretty decent most of the time. The film is beautifully shot, with a pleasant looking, artistic feel and nice simple color grading that feels natural and not over-done.

Personally, once it gets to the part of the story where she starts explaining her transformations, I just couldn't buy it and felt like the film sort of fell apart at that point. She clearly acts like a young person, and not someone who is thousands of years old and lives forever. They would have been better off leaving things un-said, than trying so hard to explain everything and open up a myriad of holes in the story, and leave you with more questions that answers.

While this film wasn't really for me, its a quality film and I can see why many people have enjoyed it. It will be interesting to see what this director does next.

Mulholland Drive has been one of my favorite movies for a long time. Some people complain that it doesn't make sense or that the movie thinks it is more clever than it really is. I personally do not agree, and I think it is a brilliant milestone in cinema.

This is a spoiler, but the way I have always viewed the film is as follows.

The first 2/3 of the movie is Naomi Watts Dream. You are getting to see a stream of her unconscious.

After the box drops and the cowboy says to wake up, we NOW get to see what the REAL world is like for Naomi Watts. Yes, it still goes into some "daydreams" but for the most part, this is now reality. We see lots of character and elements from Naomi's real life that had shown up in her dream, but her dream shows a lot about her psyche and the way she thinks abstractly about different events and people in her life.

Some people say the movie doesn't make sense, but if you think about it this way, not only does it make a lot of sense, but you can see how everything Naomi dreamt about gave further insight to how she really felt about the people and situations in her life, and you begin to see a very complex character. By experiencing her dreams and her reality, you know a lot about this woman's thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

It is a very creative way of telling a story that is, in some ways simple, and in other ways, very complex. I am a film-maker who lives in Los Angeles, so I love all the commentary about the film industry, and I love the fact that this movie explores the subconscious of a disgruntled actress in Hollywood and her perceptions of the film- industry. I think that they parallel a lot of actors experience and provide a lot of good commentary about the industry in a way that can be both serious and very humorous.

Lynch is also known for his great sound design and ambiance and it shows here. He is great at creating a mood, creating tension, and making you feel a certain way. Some scenes feel very uneasy while others feel very familiar and he achieves a lot of this through subtle sound design.

Between the creative script, the brilliant directing, and the wonderful performances, this movie is a truly an experience that should not be missed.

I've become a big fan of MCU movies ever since the first Iron Man movie came out. I went into this expecting to love it, and I did enjoy it, but for the first time in a MCU movie, the plot holes were just too glaring to over-look, and the script felt disjointed.

I did enjoy the movie, and I learned long ago, that if I'm going to enjoy a super-hero movie, I can't over-think things. I really have to suspend my dis-belief. I watched this with that same mentality, but I couldn't help feeling like things weren't right.

This movie goes to some great lengths to explain the sci ency parts of what's going on but then completely ignores the things it just told you. Like Scott is told that his mass stays the same when he shrinks... then how can a group of ants or a flying any carry a 200 pound man? How man Hank carry around a key chain of a shrunken tank that would weigh thousands of pounds?

Another thing that kept bothering me... if he can easily make ants and random objects enlarge in size, how come he only shrinks? Why does he never get bigger, or at least mention the possibility? It would seem like that would be just as useful as shrinking. Not mention the fact that ants could no way survive being that size, they would not get enough oxygen. Any when Ant-man is small his voice should get very high in pitch but it stays the same.

Another thing that made no sense, when Hanks wife or Scott shrink down to "sub- atomic size" how exactly does this stop a missile or destroy the Wasp suit, if they are really THAT small and shrinking rapidly, it's hard to see how they could do that much damage at that size. Any if he is smaller than molecules, he would not be able to breath because the oxygen molecules would be bigger than him.

Then there was the whole mission that led to the fight with Falcon for some random "tech" object, even though it was never explained what that was, or why it was necessary or why Hank couldn't just build a new one.

And then there was the strange was in which Hank recruited Scott, by planting the idea of the safe, but having a friend of a friend tell the story... What if Scoff didn't steal the suit? Why would he bother to take it anyway? There were surely a lot easier ways to recruit him, like just talking to him or offering him money. The money he gave to the girl for telling the story would have been more than enough to convince him to try it on.

They there was the question of why Scott never even questioned this whole issue of the suit "taking a tole on people" "messing with their brain chemistry" .. you would think he might be slightly worried about that... but no, not at all.

I could go on and on... even with trying to just sit back and enjoy without thinking, these questions kept popping out at me. The movie just really made no sense at all.

I will say that I still enjoyed it. I though Michael Pena did a great job as comic relief, and Paul Rudd was a good Ant-Man, but while I enjoyed this movie, I left feeling sure that it should have been better. It just doesn't quite live up to some of the better MCU movies like Winder Soldier, Avengers, or Iron Man 1.

This movie really isn't that terrible, but considering the hyper, the budget, the resources, and the fact that Marvel has been putting out such great movies lately, it seems a lot worse than it is.

First the good things... I actually thought the story was re-told in a pretty cool way at it's most basic form. The idea of traveling to another dimension, instead of out into space, I think could work very well. It leaves a lot of possibilities, but unfortunately most of these were not explored.

The movie started off pretty well. In fact, for the first half of the movie, I thought maybe it was going to be a lot better than people let on.

A lot of people on here are complaining about the cast, but I think they were okay, just poorly directed. Most of them have proved themselves to be good actors in other films. I heard Trank was telling them on set to be as flat as possibly with all their deliveries and it shows.

I'm glad to hear that they are moving forward with FF2, because I don't think there is anything about this world that has been created that is inherently bad. The movie had lots of problems, but mostly that it felt incomplete, like it was cut short and scenes were missing along the way. This shouldn't really stop the next movie from being good.

I heard stuff was cut from the movie, so I'm not really sure what the script looked like, if maybe things were cut afterward that make the story seem non-sensible, but the script as it is in the movie, is pretty bad. The characters aren't properly developed and it really seems like a bunch of random pages got deleted throughout the film, but they continued using it anyway.

As far as the whole "dark, gritty" thing, I think it kind of works, but I'm not sure if this is the best superhero story for that. I feel like Fantastic Four is one of the more far-fetched superhero stories. I could buy the idea that they go to space (or another dimension) and come back with some sort of mutation. Chances are it would be negative of course, like some sort of cancer, but for the sake of entertainment, I could but the fact that cosmic radiation causes a beneficial mutation. But 5 completely different, random, and really cool mutations that are all completely different from one another?? Yeah right. If anything, they would all have the same or at least similar powers. That being said, this doesn't seem like the type of story that really needs to be taken super seriously. That's why I rather like the fact that Avengers and most of the other MCU movies have so much humor. Captain America and Iron Man have much more believable origin stories than Fantastic Four, so it seems silly to me to pick this one to make super serious, but had the plot holes been filled in and the movie been directed better, it could have worked.

I just read a bunch of reviews for this movie on IMDb and they all seemed to be negative. I definitely think they were being over harsh, most likely because they had SUCH high expectations going into this film. For how hyped up this movie is and how much money was spend, there are some things worth criticizing, but it certainly doesn't make it a bad movie. If you like superhero blockbusters, you will most likely enjoy this film.

I was torn between giving this a 7 or an 8. If I could be more precise, I would have said 7.4 or something. There are some really cool scenes, like the hulk-buster scene in Africa, I liked Andy Serkis in Africa, I thought vision was pretty col. The climax was pretty exciting and epic. And like many Marvel movies, there are lots of little things to notice which make it fun to re- watch.

One of the main criticisms I read people citing, was the over use of humor. This didn't bother me at all. It creates a completely different tone than a movie like "Dark Knight," but I think it works. Some of the jokes I actually thought were pretty funny, like at the beginning when Iron Man says "Good Talk" and one of the men yells "NO it wasn't!" Something about the delivery is very funny to me. Also when Dr. Helen Cho is invited to the party and asks if Thor will be there. Her delivery of that line was great. Robert Downy Jr is always funny and charismatic, and he delivers here as usual.

On the downside, the character development in this movie isn't great. I think they can get away with it because it ties in with all the other Marvel movies, so they think they can skip it, plus with so many characters, it's just not possible to really develop everyone, but some of the characters seem to act in a way that contradicts previous films. Iron Man, Captain America and Thor all seem to disregard much of what happened in their recent films. But most notably, Black Widow and Dr. Banner's romance does seem forced, and was never hinted at in previous films. Black Widow seems to have a new hero to flirt with in each film, and Dr. Banner doesn't really seem interested in her at all, even in this movie. They could have probably made the romance between them work, but they just went about it the wrong way.

Then lastly there is the issue of Ulton, his motives, and the jumbled plot surrounding his existence and his plan. It is a pretty cool story, but it really makes very little sense. It never is explained why he hates the avengers and he sort of explains why he wants to destroy Earth, but not in a very clear or logical way. Both he and vision come about so suddenly, and they are both instantly cracking jokes and coming up with grand schemes. It's not very easy to believe.

Also, the climax is sort of weird. Ultron seems like this invincible force that can live in the internet and change and multiply bodies and now has a vibranium body. But then at the end of the film, Vision "locks him out of the internet" and Hulk punches him, and now he is destroyed??? Lots of build up to suddenly take care of him really easily.

The whole movie does kind of have a weird mix of scenes trying to hard to be emotional surrounded by intense action and comedy. The first Avengers movie was much better at finding this balance.

The CGI was mostly great, however the first long shot of the Avengers invading Stryker's research base had some very fake video game looking stuff, but that must have been a pretty difficult shot to make look real. The CGI toward the end with the city rising was cool.

While there are some flaws, it takes some analysis and possibly a few viewings to really let them start bugging you. If you just turn off your brain and enjoy the action, its a cool movie. And in reality, all super hero movies are completely ridiculous, so I don't think these flaws warrant calling this movie a complete failure.

The first Avengers movie I can watch over and over, while this one I lost interest in after a few times, but I still enjoyed it very much and had a lot of fun watching it.