Film Journal 2021

Watching a movie with this much heart come from the same animation studio under 24 hours after watching Frozen is a friggin' trip. The best example of Disney's new direction of making animated movies where the villain is inside us all along. Every song slaps and is animated beautifully and with such intensity.

Listal would really love to let you know it's feelings about Zack Snyder's Justice League because it sure keeps putting it on this list no matter how many times I delete it from it.

his was on TV on Christmas Day and my in-laws wanted to watch it on their new Christmas gift TV. It continues to be a middling film with a few very good songs (featuring at best innocuous choreography).

But hey, cheap TV panels sure have come a long way! Shit looked good!

I legitimately haven't been this annoyed by a film in a long time. I wished for the entire runtime that this would end up subverting the inherently super-capitalist premise it presents but at most it goes "Hey kids should play outside" while still shilling it's ass off for it's Apple-stand in. I hated this and I hated that it's a film made for kids.

A whole lot of fun even if the execution isn't always as on-point as you'd wish. Go into it without reading up on it.

An unfortunate wet blanket of a movie. The music is mostly poor, it fumbles on finding it's spot as a musical and there is an absolutely bonkers offensive plotline about a homeless guy. The actors and performers in this deserve better.

In the modern American nihilistic horror genre (your nu-Grudges etc) Antlers does something interesting by applying a very heavy layer of overt metaphor over the proceedings, but it doesn't really help make it anything particularly special. I wish I would've liked this more, but it has structural issues. It should either rely more on mystery or go all-out on showing the story of this kid. Cutting between these two elements just wasn't the way to go.

An unfortunately boring tirade of tropes and jokes you've probably seen before. The attitude of crime being totally worthwhile is an interesting one but, like just about anything else in this movie, Queenpins doesn't care to focus on it too much.

This has to be some sort of peak in terms of being a documentary where the person it revolves around doesn't realize they are the villain in this story. It's uncomfortable, and I wish it was a bit more confrontational to offset that mood.

The first 45 minutes or so of this script are an absolute gem. After that it gets a bit more muddled but remains very tight and on-point. It's not necessarily a multi-layered story but it is certainly a story you can see just about anything you want to see in it.

Shyamalan continues to be inept in creating tension out of a simple high concept. The (extreme, ugly) framing of shots in this film is sure going for an effect it never achieves. I suppose I was mildly entertained by the levels of nonchalant showcased by several characters throughout.

The most remarkable thing about this film is it's commitment to portraying the very 90s Carnage in the most 90s of ways, down to Woody Harrelson being an absolute embarrassment in terms of clothing and attitude.

I wish it was as funny as it thinks it is.

Lin Manuel Miranda going hard like an early career Spike Lee with 100% earnestness and it really, really works here.

I'm a sucker for deluded old action men coming to different sorts of terms with the sociopathic lives they've lived so I ate all this shit right up

They made another good Marvel-movie. This one has better action than most of the other ones.

There you go

It's quite fun to see a movie you're most familiar with due to owning a MAD magazine that had a parody of it in it as a kid. Anyhow, that means I knew the scenes Leonard Nimoy would be in, but that's about it (like, legit, I'm pretty sure 50% of the jokes in that parody were about him being Spock). Of course I also knew the ending.

However, that doesn't matter, because the terror in this movie doesn't really come from the sense of trying to beat the bad guys, or to me, even from fighting for survival. It's all quite doomed pretty early on. The terror to me is the existential threat this film presents of not only (clearly no matter what the invaders say!) death, also a sort of... posthumous erasure of yourself, as what keeps living is just an odd facsimile of you rather than an active thing. I guess on a larger scope it's erasure of mankind, really, but to me the terror is on a personal level. I feel like the original goes heavy on paranoid, the Ferrara one heavy on body horror, and this one is really the most... soul-crushing of the bunch in a sense (the -07 one being mostly about making an action movie on a budget with no action scenes).

A+ extras all around too, especially during the first 40 minutes when everyone isn't a part of the collective just yet.

For the love of God someone give Scott Adkins the part of Solid Snake

Colman Domingo screaming about a gang coming over to slit our throats is my spirit animal

Beautiful, anxiety-inducing cinematography (with the perfect aspect ratio for a paranoia-fueled film!) gets marred by a Joker-esque hodgepodge approach to mental health issues. The performances are great, and I really wish the material was too.

A very entertaining first half of what I'm sure will be a compelling story eventually.

I mean... this is a fairly impressive technical feat and as a horror fan it's really fun to see how Maury & Bustillo adapt to making a haunted house movie underwater. Some stuff is solved successfully, a fair bit is not. But it an engaging thing to follow. The story and characters are nonsensical, but it's alright since this is ostensibly a somewhat dry experimental film.

Sleek and occasionally sweet, but more often very tepid and not particularly impressive. I just kept wishing for an edge or twist to it all and it never came.

This is one weird film. I very rarely feel comfortable directly questioning the intentions behind making a film, but this one feels like the filmmakers themselves were unsure or uncomfortable in creating it. There's a very tacked-on theme of mob justice that leads down a path that's very well-worn and exceedingly melodramatic and problematic, perhaps even downright offensive in it's portrayal of mental illness.

It does do a fair bit with the lore. I enjoyed seeing all these characters (often for no reason) and the flashbacks as a complete nerd excited about any installment in this series (despite Colin Mahan super not nailing that Loomis voice), and the weird-ass teleporting ending and talk about a window spot causing it is absolutely fascinating. The slow build Green & co. are taking to introducing more mythological aspects to Myers is welcome and fun.

What isn't as welcome and fun is how they've changed the color grading to shit along with making Myers significantly more sadistic, which also translates to downright ludicrous gore that breaks the tone and is in clash with the idea of Myers as the anonymous killer.

All in all it's an odd direction for sure and this film isn't very much fun, but it certainly piqued my interest in terms of what is to come.

A somewhat hollow attempt at exploring the immigrant experience that contributes to unfavorable stereotypes on all sorts of sides of the issue.

Big ups for a very, very (pointlessly) elaborate Dark Souls -ass monster design.

Byrne and Lee are swinging hard and it mostly hits. The music is fantastic. There are occasional misfires in the blend of the sound mixing and cinematography, but they are few and far between.

Finnish review: laajakuva.com/rakkautta-anarkiaa-2021-osa-1/

One of the most harrowing explorations of the emotional landscape the unexpected suicide of someone close to you will cause

... until it isn't, but it spends like 85% of the runtime in that mode, and for that time, it is fantastic and gripping.

How the hell am I this bummed out by a CGI Tony Todd at the end of this movie where it is by far the least of the points where it bites off more than it can chew

Impressive in how it effectively creates a somewhat unique cinematic language so it could present you with a very effective final third. The lead performances are incredible.

I was as surprised as anyone else that the movie that seems tailor-made to be a non-stop meme fest about vidya games turns out to have a pretty thoughtful and deeper approach to the relationship between programming and programs.

James Wan took all this money and made an incredibly stupid pastiche of Italian horror from the late-80s to the first half of the 00s and I fucking loved every single moment of it. What an incredible feat.

The dumbest film I've seen all year.

I loved it.

So the second movie places Lang's character firmly as the protagonist. It has no direct connection to the first movie outside him being in both as the same character. Lang somehow has a 10-year old or so daughter who he trains to survive in a remote house that's a lot like the Myers house in Halloween 5 with a lot of chutes and big hallways and rooms and shit. Anyhow, one day some home invaders come in (they murder Lang's only contact to the outside world before that). Turns out the leader of them is there to steal away the daughter because he's her actual father, whose meth lab burned to the ground 8 years ago, and from which event Lang stole the daughter and then raised her as his own. He eventually succeeds though Lang kills the shit out of some people, and steals the daughter away, leaving Lang to die (he obviously lives). Turns out the only reason he wanted to get her back was because her mother, his wife, is dying from all the meth fumes she inhaled during that fire, so he wants the daughter to give her heart so her mother may live. They have a doctor to do the transfer and everything! However, just before slicing the girl open, Lang comes in, cuts the power, kills everyone, and saves her. He then has a monologue about being a rapist monster and dies (though the daughter forgives him).

The big fucking eugh about this movie is clearly that Lang in the first movie is the villain who is raping a woman he has locked in his basement repeatedly to get a daughter out of her (and then tries to do the same to Jane Levy's character when the first woman dies) so when this movie starts with him having this daughter and we don't know where she came from for the first 50 minutes and Lang super doesn't want to talk about it with her there is literally only one way of looking at it so you spend 50 minutes thinking jesus fucking christ is this really the movie or is this a prequel) and well yeah, they reveal that hey, at least he didn't rape his way to get this daughter, but like, it doesn't make it any more fun to have him as the protagonist. So the movie is basically him doing Liam Neeson -esque dad action murdering to keep his daughter safe and he gets a lot of heroic moments of murdering people

The movie eventually tries to subvert what it itself has been doing for 100 minutes by having Lang do this sad monologue about how he's a rapist monster who deserves nothing and having a breakdown about it before getting stabbed to death but like legit it's so little so late it feels like the biggest wasted potential in forever. Like you could totally do this subversive film about these absolutely terrible people being terrible and being broken down to soulless husks because of it but flipping that switch when you have five minutes to go is like putting a band-aid on a meth-lab fume infused heart and it feels so fucking lazy

But legit I'm most upset about how the movie just ignores the name of the movie and has like zero blindness-based horror setpieces as you're always following Lang and know what he's up to so you're really just watching a terrible fucking monster kill other terrible fucking monsters and it's just... it's the sleaziness of that first movie turned up to 1000% and it's just so unfulfilling to watch.

Still one of the best 90s horror films and certainly among the more unique of the bunch. The score, milieu and themes really elevate this.

Yeah Camila Cabello is way too talented for this but she, Porter doing Pray Tell for a scene and Pierce Brosnan not being allowed to bust out his real singing chops just can't raise this from the muck it creates with the nonsensical world-building, thoroughly unfunny comedy and absolutely dogshit arrangements of various pop hits of the last few years.

The best part about it are the indoor sets that have this very "what a Jesus Franco cheapo lesbian vampire movie would look like if you shot it in real crisp 4K" -vibe to them.

This is definitely much more a "real" film than the ilk of Slenders and whatnot it gets associated with due to memeification and time of release. It has some fun setpieces that don't manage to be outright scary at any point (honestly how could you be scared by a demon who relies on you not reading the terms of service of an app) but are enjoyable to follow. I even liked the super on-the-nose dialogue throughout.

Look, this movie writes itself and even with that caveat they couldn't be bothered to add jokes to it.

The Netflix content mill almost reaches a point of self-parody with the incomprehensibly lazy climactic dance-off though.

While I hesitate to call this a great film, it's certainly one I enjoyed most of with zero difficulty. The camerawork and look of it is fantastic, and Barret's hyper-pragmatic protagonists make a very cool and collected comeback. The score is terrific too. The money is also spent super well for what must have been a shoestring budget. I mostly wish it spent a bit more time just soaking in the mood of it all and less time... well, talking.

The less you know the better. It's worth the watch.

Sort of falls flat on a multitude of ways but I can sort of appreciate the occasionally rousing way it throws itself at most things it does.

I guess this is the best you could make one of these and it's... good? The nature of a suicide squad sort of inherently forces you to create character arcs for shitty sociopaths who need to stay shitty sociopaths so as to not betray the very nature of the film which is an unfortunate limitation for someone as good at bringing found families together as James Gunn is. As such this is fun with occasionally functional character arcs but not exactly a fulfilling experience. The segments within are rarely bad though which is a nice experience in the genre.

Yeah I'm here for some Alexandre Aja melodrama with a great score by Rob even if I don't appreciate the hamfisted worldbuilding.

Possibly the most elaborate way of combining Klaus Kinski and Metallica?

A lot of fun! The well-written and executed dialogue-based humor is the highlight and here's hoping the next movie these people make sticks even more to that rather than the absurdist setpieces.

Despite an incredibly rocky start this thing turned out fine. Beltrami & Drubich are on their A-game in this one and the structure finally does something interesting. That being said, I couldn't help but feel that this will be so much better when someone eventually fan-edits it to a 3 hour feature instead of this bloated 5 hour chunk.

I wish this was a bit... more. It either needs to lean way heavier to it's humor (which is mostly jarring with a few glimmers of hope) by making it more crass and timing it out with a bit more thought, or actually take the time to be an action movie. Instead the comedy peaks early on when two people enter an apartment numbered 9 to have sex only for the number on the door to slide down to sort of form a 69 due to the imprint of the actual number's place and the action never gets beyond cutting to Kate Beckinsale's back whenever her stunt doubles need to punch some people.

Also I know this is a weird thing, but this whole thing relies on Beckinsale doing extraordinary things, but she mostly just punches people pretty good and, in the most extraordinary feat of the film, scales a giant building by squeezing herself between two walls and just going up like 100 stories or so. It just doesn't feel that special in an action movie when the world is full of them, but on the other hand in the universe of the film it doesn't need to feel special in that context, but I dunno. I was somewhat bummed out that they didn't take the extra steps to make the audience feel as impressed about her actions as some of the characters were.

A lot more fun than the first one! The filmmaking admirably shifts to a slightly calmer 80s slasher vibe along with a wonderful Manfredini-esque score.

For being a German Netflix production I really didn't have high hopes for this so I was positively surprised when the script comes in real hard and heavy, making a sort of companion piece to Let the Right One In (specifically the American version). A lot of the emotional and thematical content here is left unsaid but presented clear as day which is really cool and makes up for the relative lack of intensity and abundant melodrama.

As a sucker for subversive takes on prominent film tropes I loved a lot of Pig and it really made me wish it would go even further down that road by cutting even the little pulp it had left out of it's system.

What a terrifying study on fascism and abuse. It is rare to see a film nowadays that you could not have imagined in the least beforehand.

Cool to see the director of Rabies (a film that isn't very good but shows quite a bit of promise) get to make an incredibly well-cast action movie with a budget. He definitely brings in a unique flavor as this is yet another film from him that takes place in a very, very unspecified time and place to the extent where I could see the intentionally sparse amounts of world building being a turn off for some.

The movie is fun but has a hard time straddling the gory action with the general Goonies-esque comedy adventure vibe it has going. It's an odd combination and it never quite figures itself out despite everyone giving it absolutely everything they've got.