Change Your Image
chipmonkey75
I'm going to try and rate things consistently...
8 and up will be things with re-watchability. If I rate a movie a 10 I'm sure I've seen it a handful of times and I'm still super happy with it.
5-7 are things I'm not unhappy I watched, but I won't watch again. Maybe worth your time.
Lower than 5 I'm just not recommending.
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Lists
An error has ocurred. Please try againReviews
Uglies (2024)
Despite the rating, please make the sequel!
It shouldn't be a spoiler to make sure you know this is a cliffhanger and part 2 hasn't been made yet. So watch it at risk that it may never get made (thank modern Hollywood). Someone remind me to update this when/if that gets fixed because I'd TOTALLY watch a sequel!
Joey King does a great job with a movie that is a weird take on the dystopian future teen drama thing. They just sort of took the "perfect" Master Race / Eugenics style thing to a conclusion so on-the-nose that it's really distracting from an otherwise straightforward story in line with Allegiant, Hunger Games, Maze Runner, and the like. Nefarious bad guys, sub-plots, teen romance, coming of age struggling with grown up decisions from people you don't know you can trust. They miss some opportunities to struggle with taking up arms or emotionally intelligent depth but hey, teen drama.
A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)
Solid movie but nothing new
Solid horror film, would have been a great standalone movie, and it's really quite good as part of the Quiet Place series. But it just doesn't add enough to the lore to get a higher rating. It's nice to see the "origin" story of the invaders, I suppose, but we don't learn too much.
Worth watching; Lupita Nyong'o is excellent, and worthily supported by Joseph Quinn and the awesome cat (which I guess was two cat-actors). I was a bit disappointed in Djimon Hounsou's limited role (just the scope of it - he's great when he's on, he just had limited screen time).
If this was the only movie in the series it may have actually been better than A Quiet Place; I'm definitely a little more critical of sequels (and, er, prequels). Definitely glad I watched it.
The Invitation (2022)
Excellently typical vampire flick
"The Invitation" is perfectly worth watching if you need a good Vampire fix. Lovely sets, the usual family intrigue going back centuries that a beautiful young woman must unravel as she realizes what she's gotten herself into. Irresistible dracula-like figure and their cadre of lusty relations; throwaway background characters for food. The usual.
And it does these things well enough. The cinematography, sets design (love the dragon statue), and sound keep you interested and engaged, and the editing doesn't leave any holes. The pacing is quite excellent and you can feel like you're following along the emotional roller coaster and self doubt that Nathalie Emmanuel telegraphs so well in the lead role of Evie.
But there's nothing major to set it apart in a world with quite a few vampire movies. It does give the leading lady a modern flair typical of modern cinema but perhaps missing from older vampire tropes, touching lightly on issues of race and gender delicately and delightfully.
Perfectly worth your time.
A Simple Favor (2018)
Solid psychological thriller
This is a movie worth watching, but I'm not sure I'm going to come back and watch it again.
Building a friendship between two people with such different paths in life was pretty well done; it was interesting to watch the interaction between two mothers who had pretty much nothing in common from their husbands, life, career paths, to their friends and parenting styles. This was written well, but at some points rushed in order to get to the meat of the story.
And the twists, when they came, well, they weren't predictable, which is nice, but they weren't particularly original either.
Still, there are good elements of mystery and the usual intrigue that goes with a good thriller, and some good pointers on how not to parent. :)
Ma (2019)
Fun take combining a few good horror tropes
I really enjoyed this movie. It's a slow escalation that combines a few typical horror elements led by a perfectly creepy Octavia Spencer and a super collection of supporting acting.
It DOES get pretty brutal, but each individual sadistic decision is surprisingly well thought out. "Why did _this_ evil get inflicted on _that_ character" always has an answer.
Well, there were a few unanswered questions. Who is Genie's father? Does it matter? Guess not. But that's ok, the movie writers decided not to include that in the plot and it doesn't really suffer for it, just a question I have outstanding.
At the end of the day, this movie punches above it's current IMDB Rating. If you want a dark high-school themed psychological thriller that escalates to well deserving its R rating, give it a watch.
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
I just can't get past this writing...
Scientist known for leaving no trace: touches baby dinosaur, freaks out parents, immediately complains to other people about "contaminating".
Same scientist who also studies parental instincts of dinosaurs, having just proven that dinos protect their babies: "Baby screaming T-rex has a broken leg... let's bring it back to our bus and set it." What could go wrong?
Paranoid scientist: "No, no, no, don't bring that baby screaming dinosaur in here". 5 seconds later: "why would we leave, this is the safest place anywhere"
T-Rexs who are apparently very smart: decide to push bus over cliff. Stop halfway. Disappear. Guy comes to site, Dinosaurs reappears, eat guy. Bus falls the rest of the way. More people come, Dinosaurs have disappeared again.
And the list goes on.... these are all pretty early in the movie. I just can't.
Army of Thieves (2021)
So little resolution...
I know this was a prequel kinda, but I was really longing for a nice strong ending, maybe some good twist. But instead just the blandest possible ending to set up the next movie.
Even that aside, while this had moments of being a cute heist movie, and I enjoyed the acting and international flair, it just didn't hold up. How did people catch up to each other when they had hours long head starts? Particularly the lone agent guy? Why not take like a LOT more money when you could? Why a sense of urgency sometimes and not others?
I usually wouldn't rip a movie but this was SO CLOSE to sbeing much better. Just a shame.
The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
Great Nostalgia Wasn't Enough
I'm tired of movies that seem like they should be good but just fall short of their promise. The first half is actually phenomenal; it pulls at the heartstrings, really starts well and asks some interesting questions, brings back some nostalgic characters (although not enough, missing Laurence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving), even makes fun of itself at a very meta level... but still manages to just fail to deliver any punch at the end. Not only is there no resolution, but it seems to ignore some of the implications of the end of the third movie (despite referencing the events... shame we can't just wish that away).
In fact, all the Matrix sequels have failed where the original shone brightly. This one is even worse because it has so much potential.
Neil Patrick Harris is awesome, though, even if his character is poorly explained. And Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss still deliver on their original vibe. While the rest of the cast's acting is on point, the characters just aren't developed enough.
I suppose if this is the start of another trilogy, maybe I'll come back in a couple of movies and revisit. But for now, this just failed to land. If it was a standalone film, yeah, maybe it'd be a few points better, but everything in it has been done - in fact the best part of this film is references to the original. So save yourself the trouble and just go watch the Matrix again.
Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)
Beautiful and flawed
Sometimes I think I set my standards too high for Disney, but in this case, Raya just did not hit the mark for me.
It's a cute movie, with a fine moral, standard storytelling, a few interesting if under-developed characters, but too many "why?" moments. A few spoilers follow...
Why, when fleeing the Drunn, was Raya the only one to go into the water? Why doesn't anyone comment on Sisu's name -- being, you know, named after the most famous dragon ever. When the Druun walk through trees and grass, why doesn't it die instantly, the way people turn to stone?
Why was the scroll so important... it wasn't a map; it showed the rivers, but they all connected to the same body of water so the hint about being at the end of a river didn't get much benefit from the map. How did it seem so obvious to Raya and Sisu that putting the stone back together would wake the dragons, when it didn't do that the first time around? Why did it, after all?
How did the baby get their pants back?
Why tell everyone that they can't help with the quest once they know what it is, when it didn't seem to be a problem letting them help when they DIDN'T know about the danger?
What happened to the "bad" leaders of the tribes, once they weren't stone any more? I suppose they all become nice happy people, but some story there would be nice.
Who are we supposed to root for later on... Raya doesn't trust Sisu when she says that she can trust Namaari, but every time Sisu has trusted someone so far in this movie it has gone wrong (she brought gifts to the old lady who fed her to the Druun, and sprung a trap trying to be nice at Spine); so when Raya reacts to Sisu appearing to pull the trigger, it's hard to disagree with her. Why, with her love of Dragons Namaari wasn't pointing the crossbow at Raya instead is a mystery.
Anyway, I've gone on long enough.
I can let some mistakes go by, but the best Disney films don't suffer this much from storytelling gaffes.
The animation is exceptional, the colors are lovely; it is easy to find some brief comic relief, and I hope it did a good job being true to the culture it represented (I'm not a capable judge), but it just didn't hold any particular movie magic.
Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993)
Simple, elegant, Powerful
A coming of age story of a chess prodigy is maybe an unlikely place to find a movie of this depth and entertainment for some, but I may be biased - I was playing chess in high school around the same time as the real life kid on whom the movie is based.
For me this is a rare perfect movie.
It captures complex relationships between children and parents (and children and children), and explores the awkwardness of childhood and the excitement of learning and exploration that it's hard to feel when you're not a seven year old kid.
It does so while being educational if you're interested in some chess history, and super sharp, with the dialogue and acting to carry a great story (note the ensemble cast counting the background chess players) while still moving at a nice even pace.
Milosc do kwadratu (2021)
Cute and sweet
This is a sweet little romance with just enough underbelly of side plots to make it interesting. Tested loyalties from fiends, families, and co-workers drive some sub-plots.
The whole "school teacher with glasses" unrecognizable as a supermodel as Clark Kent is as Superman is played just believably funny enough to not worry about disbelieving.
Not a ton of depth - plenty of pretty people with the movie-typical flexible moral fidelity. But some decent family relationships pull it through.
Fun little film. Worth a watch, but I probably won't need to watch it again.
I Care a Lot (2020)
Amazing start, unfulfilling payoffs
The pace and setup of this movie are fantastic from the start. The idea is fairly original as they go, and the players are set up for an epic battle of wills.
Then it all falls apart. Most of the setups don't really pay off and I'm left very unfulfilled at the end. I assume the authors were trying to be unpredictable, but sticking with a more expected ending or more well thought out twist may have gone better.
Dianne West's character had so much potential, and the scenes she's allowed to play against Rosamund Pike's chilling exterior are great, but they don't add up to much - in a movie about ruining old people's lives, the most prominent old person just gets basically nothing. Most of the very specific threats, on all sides, which could have been foreshadowings just fall flat. No real winners, lots of innocent losers. Two of the early characters (the lawyer and the brother) just drop off the face of the earth with little consequence, wasting my emotional investment in them and anything they did.
The main bad guy is upset that her opponents are resorting to murder rather than face her in a courtroom. Huh? And the Russian mob is wildly (but not at all comically) incompetent... rather than learn from the "thousands of men" who threaten her (what happened with the two that anything came of it by the way?) the main character isn't much prepared for anything, and just sort of lucks into not being killed repeatedly as does her girlfriend.
I wish this were better. It FELT like it would be, it had all the right elements; I can't fault any of the acting. But the story just arced nowhere.
Lockout (2012)
Prison Break in Space? Sure, ok.
President's daughter gets caught on a prison in space, tough guy being framed for a murder gets the chance to save her. Chaos ensues.
A bit of good fun, and an ok addition to the prison/conspiracy genre with a few fun twists. No glaring plot holes or anything annoying like that.
Not immune from a few Sci-Fi quibbles... when you're attacking a space station that has guns, you don't actually have to fly really close to it doing intricate maneuvers to reach the hole on the bottom (you can just start there) and that sort of thing, but nothing too ridiculous.
Seungriho (2021)
Solid take on some common tropes
Snarky AI Robot, specialized crew with a past doing low rent space jobs, playing the good guys just on the edge of the law, interstellar space bureaucracy of questionable ethics, deep conspiracies child in danger...
Overall a pretty fun jaunt through space with a few fun twists and turns.