Wow. This is...not good. Way too long and way too stupid. Seriously, who approved the final script for this one? Other than the occasional bit of humor, it is an absolute mess. How can you be entirely derivative and still screw it up this badly?
A nearly perfect movie of the sort that most writers, directors and the like seem to have abandoned these days in favor of pretty much the exact opposite in terms of characters, motivations and plot. I'm incredibly glad that Team Cruise reject that mindset here. My only question -- which might get answered when I rewatch it at some point (and I WILL be rewatching this one) -- is why they didn't just use a synchronized missile strike on the target instead of using it on the airfield and runway located elsewhere. Sure, that would negate the need for Maverick's team to do their thing, but you'd think that the writers could have come up with SOME legitimate reason for why the human element was required here. It's possible that I just missed something that explained this, but I thought that I was paying pretty close attention...
Wow. A Marvel movie that attempts to do more than just rehash the same old plot elements for the 1,843rd time. And it succeeds at it far more often than it fails. Color me impressed. I wasn't expecting much from this one at all, and I ended up being pleasantly surprised.
I liked this one WAY more than I was expecting to like it.
The story: A-
The atmosphere and mood: A+
The supporting casting: B-
Pattinson and his approach to moping/brooding: D-
This one is more flash than substance from beginning to end, starting with a thoroughly derivative story idea. Any hope that it had with me died a horrible death in the third act, mostly because of the utterly unbelievable and stupid devolution of the female protagonist. I was almost rooting against her, given how she sets herself up for everything that happens to her. Just an incredible series of bad decisions on her part. And really, the only casting decision that worked for me was the sister-in-law.
This one is better in a lot of ways than its predecessor, but a few glaring questions have me rating it lower, anyway. Specifically:
Very early on, we're told that "But in 1978, there was one survivor." And then we see that an entire busload of kids actually survived. And the future sheriff. And more. So that's all kinds of confusing to me.
How did Adult Ziggy know so much about Cindy's actions (she's narrating things, after all) when she wasn't there to see them? I would've had the same essential question here if the plot twist at the end hadn't happened, in which case I would've been asking how Cindy knew so much about Ziggy's actions.
How did Ziggy manage to keep ANYONE from finding out about her identity switcheroo? Or are we supposed to believe that other people knew about it and they ALL kept it a secret?
Not bad. Hugely derivative, but not bad.
This outing is surprisingly not horrible. Or maybe it's just that I watched it so soon after watching the latest Halloween debacle with Team Curtis. But I like the two sisters here and most of rest of the new cast, as well, and it was great to see Sidney and Gale team up. The other nods to the past and to the genre overall were solid, too. Still, I'd probably have a different opinion of the whole thing if I were a current or former Woodsboro sheriff....
Not quite as stupid as its immediate predecessors, but close. The biggest narrative problem here is the devolution of the Big Bad, which is poorly handled in a rushed and uneven way -- and one that largely makes Michael a footnote in his own sendoff.
And on an entirely different point, I particularly don't like how Curtis took Laurie from being a tough but classy character to being a coarse and foul old lady. Of the many examples of it to be found here, perhaps none encapsulates it all as much as "show grief your fucking tits." That line strikes me as being pure Curtis, who seems to have been committed to sending off Laurie as someone only marginally better than white trash.
The good: An appealing protagonist. Good visuals.
The bad: A lackluster and uneven script that starts out incredibly slowly and takes a VERY long time to get any traction. A soundtrack that, with only a couple of exceptions, is full of instantly forgettable and lightweight tunes.
It's time for Team Branagh to stop assaulting Agatha Christie. Long past time, actually. It's almost painful to see how easily those without Christie's talent can damage her worlds even as they probably think that they're improving on her efforts. But there's a reason why she's Agatha Christie and they're...not.
Reynolds is as likable as ever here, but his shtick just doesn't change at all from movie to movie. At this point, he's not even really playing a new character here; he's just playing himself pretending to play that character, and the novelty is definitely wearing off for me. As for the main crew of three here as a whole, they do solid work and have a good rapport, but the script is as derivative as can be and the tropes are constantly flying. All in all, it's enjoyable, but not remotely memorable. It's more than just a cash grab, but not by much.
The incredibly likable characters and the nostalgia are the selling points here for me, especially since the story is pretty derivative. It is also great -- and increasingly rare -- to see adult characters who aren't complete idiots worthy of nothing but mocking and contempt from the younger generation. And as for that younger generation? Hey, even before things go completely pear-shaped, they have far more on their minds here than just TikTok and getting laid -- again, and increasingly rare thing.
It's probably not a good sign when I'm perfectly happy to stop a movie and finish it on another occasion. It's probably ALSO not a good sign when I'm perfectly happy to break a movie down into THREE parts on three separate occasions. In short, this thing REALLY dragged for me. Maybe I just need a break from the Marvel formula...
The movie has a strong start and an even stronger finish, with a satisfying twist and a separate surprise reveal at the end. But the second act is a bit dodgy at times and it's mostly the pacing that suffers as a result. The cast members provide solid performance all-around, but by far the best part of this one for me is Thomasin McKenzie, who is a new-to-me young talent and an incredibly appealing one. In the end, this story wasn't quite what I was expecting, but that turned out to be just fine.
Are any of the people (not named Michael) in this film NOT idiots? Is anyone who ran up against him NOT incredibly stupid in terms of the decisions made both before AND after running up against him? Because in the movie that I watched, there was a Darwin Award finalist every five minutes or so. And you know how sometimes good acting can save a bad script or vice-versa? Yeah, neither of those things happens here. Not even remotely. Finally, let's not forget that ALL of this is the result of Laurie -- for no reason whatsoever -- abandoning her Big Plan the moment she crossed paths with Michael at the end of the last film. And it's as if everyone in this one saw how stupid THAT was and said, "Hold my beer."
For a movie that plays the "People are stupid" card so heavily, the setup for this entire movie requires WAY too much stupidity of its own.
A decent lead and some strong supporting actors almost save this one despite its paper-thin plot, but not quite. Adding to the problem is a major info dump in the second act, and that heavy-handed exposition really hurts the pacing at that point. But seriously, you're paying for about 15 minutes' worth of story here, and Marvel seems to be getting really good at this sort of thing. $ave it for the $equel, right?
I'm not gonna lie. I initially decided to watch this because I am a complete-ist. It wasn't out of any deep desire to see it, and I had very low expectations as a result. But now, having watched it, it was a LOT funnier and more entertaining than it had any right to be, gore and all. The entire cast does a great job, but none better than Elba, who is pitch-perfect as the VERY angry and put-upon reluctant leader of this band of idiots.
Okay, sure, various parts of this one were done better by an archaeologist, a mummy hunter or some pirates, but taken as a whole, it's still pretty solid if you ignore the weak and formulaic script and the cut-rate CGI that should be beneath a Disney effort. (The mummy movies, for example, did it better some 20 years ago.) It scores as well as it does with me because of the thoroughly likable and fun main two characters (and Johnson, in particular), along with the way that the production as a whole evokes the sense of a Saturday afternoon matinee adventure, which is something that will ALWAYS bring a smile to my face. The resolution is a bit too Disney for me, as well, but what can you expect? So yeah, I SHOULD be grading it lower, but I just can't bring myself to do it.
This one seemed like it took a bunch of discarded bits from other Pixar films and decided to combine them into a movie. It struck me more as a sequence of vignettes than a single whole. Even though the characters are likable enough, it was a real slog for me and it took me several nights to get through it. Of the last three Pixar films, only SOUL did a good job of hooking me right out of the gate, so I'm hoping that this trend stops and I regain my faith in the company. But for now, I'm left to wonder if someone influential and high up behind the scenes might have left the company five years or so ago since that seems to be when I started to notice a change in things.
An okay but overlong first act setup is followed by a solid and action-packed second act, which in turn is followed by a meltdown of epic proportions. Everything about the setup to that climactic covert mission ts beyond stupid. Every single thing. They. Have. The. Toxin. Sadly, they also have a false and almost laughable sense of urgency because...well, DRAMA!!! Between that and the trite epilogue, this thing really limps to the finish line. The only reason why I'm grading it slightly above average is because the second act, in particular, is so entertaining. But that third act? It would get one star, and only because I can't give it zero.
This is a thoroughly underwhelming cash grab on the part of all involved, complete with (1) a weak script and plot with many indications that it was being done on the fly; (2) a cast that is clearly having fun but not remotely interested in treating this as anything more than the aforementioned cash grab that it is; and (3) a whopping -- based on a subtitle search for "fuc" -- 194 f-bombs. That averages out to almost two f-bombs per minute of run time, and it seems like even more than that. The one bright spot? The jokes in the movie spare no one, and no class or group of people is given any sort of a protected status, which, for my money, is how things SHOULD be, but rarely are these days. Overall, though, given the talent behind the thing, it's the kind of movie that seems to want to make people even more cynical than they already are about the future of film. Definitely not a keeper.
Despite my fondness for Disney, I realize in retrospect that, for whatever reason, I really wasn't expecting all that much from this one. Just another dragon fantasy, or something, perhaps. But the humor saved it, as did the likability of the heroine, who was incredibly easy to root for. In the end, I was pleasantly surprised by this one and enjoyed it quite a bit.
Yelena is beyond awesome here. It's probably not a good sign when you immediately like the newbie sister of the established lead character more than you've ever liked the lead character herself. Beyond that, this one is ridiculously light on plot (even for a Marvel movie), but makes up for a lot of it with terrific humor. On the other hand, Alexei is the only one of the main characters here who's more than just a normal human being, right? Because if that's true, then both sisters should've been dead from their injuries within about the first half-hour of the start of this one...
Oh, look. Another script written by a bunch of Ritalin-deprived teenagers who know that all that really matters in the end in a movie like this -- one where the title makes about as much sense as the "science" -- is the visuals for the kids seeing this sort of movie for the first time. And the visuals are nice, but there's nothing new there. There's also nothing new in the two-dimensional cardboard characters or their motivations. Heck, the only thing that makes this movie slightly above average for me is Team Bernie, and mostly Bernie himself. And even THAT stuff is entirely derivative. In the end, I always ask myself of sequels: why did this movie get made? What new elements are introduced to the series to make it matter? And the answer to the latter question here is absolutely nothing, which makes it that much easier to see that the answer to the former is nothing but the Benjamins. Again.
Some impressive moments and decent acting get buried in a sea of wasted potential. And that ending? Wow. There's not sticking the landing, and then there's not sticking the landing.
Vastly inferior to the first film. Disjointed. Uneven. Some spotty special effects. An overlong and, frankly, over-indulgent epilogue that -- along with a lot of the rest of it -- is so simplistic and shallow that it could have been written by middle school English composition students. On the acting front, Gadot is great while Wiig and Pascal (in particular) seem to be getting paid based on the amount of scenery that they chew. Pine, OTOH, is uneven, sometimes seeming to be focused on turning in a good performance and sometimes seeming to be treating the entire thing as a joke. It is...very weird. Overall, I'd say that 60% of the problems here are with the script while the actors and director split the other 40%.
This movie isn't altogether bad, but there are many missed opportunities to be found. The way that everything was interconnected at the end raised things at least a star for me, both for the movie's own efforts and for the fond memories that it brought back of the classic (to me, anyway) TRICK 'R TREAT, even though it lacks the charm and dashes of humor of the older film. Really, though, the biggest negative for me is that they essentially made a movie using a TV cast, and that lack of any real star power doesn't help matters. The acting is serviceable and sufficient, but nothing stands out on that front. In the end, the combination of okay but not great writing with okay but not great directing and acting results in an okay but not great film.
