I sat down for this movie expecting a train wreck. I was not disappointed.
The best part of this film was easily the first act. The introduction to Reed and his whole situation was fine. No great, but fine.
Things fall apart upon act two, when they go to the dimension zero. The lines were just really poorly written. They start throwing around all these science fiction terminology and plot points which really didn’t have any foundation. It was just one jarring, emotionless scene after another.
Score: 2.5/10 There’s a lot of good ideas here. Act one and the horror elements were good. It just wasn’t put together very well. They definitely needed some rewrites.
If you’re walking into this film expecting a reinvention of the wheel, you’re going to be disappointed. At the same time, there are enough differences that it is not exactly a female version of Bill Murray’s Ghostbusters movie.
What you have here is a heavily formulaic remake. Watching this film was like watching someone checking off boxes to a list of requirements for a “hip” Ghostbusters remake. Gender bended the cast? Check. Guest roles for each member of the last Ghostbusters movie? Check. A big villain reminiscent of the marshmallow man? Check. And a long list of jokes that wink at scenes from the old film are present, too.
At the same time, there are a number of new ideas. Some work, some really don’t. They have new weapons. That’s kind of cool. Off the top of my head that’s about it.
Score: 4.6/10 All right movie. Kind of soulless. It’s mainly for a sort of different, sort of same walk down Ghostbusters memory lane. I sort of enjoyed it.
This is what happens when you have a film that gets too big a budget and too much support.
I imagine that when they pitched this movie to the studios and the oodles of A list actors in this movie, they gave the familiar pitch of a film based on a book base upon a true story. This was probably a short time after the success of the Wolf of Wall Street and all parties involved wanted to recapture some of the success of that film, to inhale some of that movie’s fumes. And each time they signed up another well known actor, they did it by dropping the names of each A list actor already signed onto the project, giving false hope of how successful this movie would be. Too bad this film was not a success.
And there are a lot of famous faces in this movie. Off the top of my head, Brad Pitt, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Marissa Tomei, Amelia Pond from Doctor Who, that weird Jewish guy from New Girl, and a lot of others I’m sure I’m missing. It’s a star studded cast. Too bad the plot is shit.
You can see what they are trying to do; a hard hitting drama conveying the injustice of Wall Street, the American finance industry and of residential mortgage backed securities. Despite the convoluted plot, the main problem is the attempts of the film to explain the financial crisis and CDO’s to the audience. See, The Big Short fails to understand something that The Wolf of Wall Street understood very well: people are idiots. At least most people in the movie theater. We don’t want to think about complex financial instruments or systemic problems in our society, we want to watch an entertaining story. Movies are escapism at its finest and when you try to educate an audience when they seek entertainment, you get a movie like this. This is a movie that does poorly at both educating and entertaining.
Additionally, there are noteworthy appearances by Anthony Bourdain, Selena Gomez, and Margot Robbie in a bathtub drinking champagne.
Score: 4/10 Only watch if the entertainment value of a movie depends entirely on the big names that are in it. I know there are many who can enjoy a shit movie if you put their favorite actors in it. While not complete shit, this is a movie for them.
Details: About two hours long. Stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard.
What the hell did I just watch? Once again, Rotten Tomatoes has deceived me on how entertaining a movie is.
This movie is ridiculous. In the films defense, I generally hate these kind of scare movies because of how stupid the characters act. In my real life, I often have to deal with people who do things completely devoid of all caution or rational thought so when I see that kind of behavior on screen, it instantly sucks me out of the experience and reminds me I’m watching a badly written story. Even so, the characters in this film make stupid decisions and pay for it.
It’s hard to watch this film and not compare it to the first Jurassic Park, what I consider the gold standard of dinosaur movies. The build up of tension, the constant terror, and a rewarding climax at the end with meaningful themes strewn throughout. This film is not like that. This is your standard popcorn chewing action movie with no real explanation and some memorable set pieces thrown in. It checks off all the boxes for a B movie and that’s okay in a way. It is entertaining in its own right, if you don’t take it seriously. However, I just found it to be a half-assed rehash of the first Jurassic Park. There were also tons of product placement.
Worth mentioning is Chris Pratt. Pratt shows again that he can act with charisma no matter how thin the plot is. Applause.
Score: 4/10 I’m rating harshly because I expected more when I shouldn’t have. Jurassic World can be an entertaining movie. Just prepare yourself for some cheap thrills and turn off your brain before viewing.
Details: War drama starring Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, and Logan Lerman. Run time is two hours and fourteen minutes.
The movie was okay, but not worth its ticket price.
I’m not a fan of Brad Pitt or Shia Labeouf. Shia Labeouf’s public image is odd and makes his characters unconvincing. Brad Pitt has no range. People may enjoy looking at him, but he is the same character in every movie. He had no business being in Twelve Years A Slave. He was tolerable in this movie.
I will say Jon Bernthal was great. Actually, all the performances I’ve ever seen from him have been great. Walking Dead, Wolf of Wall Street, Bernthal adds credibility to a film and he does so here.
There are a number of ways to view this film.
It can be viewed as a poorly executed attempt at a historically accurate World War Two movie that tries to show the horrors of war.
It can be viewed as tank porn for tank-o-philes.
It can be viewed as an action B-movie with an excessive amount of violence.
If any of these appeal to you, then watch the movie. Otherwise, avoid wasting your time here.
Score: 4/10 Some of my friends enjoyed the movie after I told them it was bad. They likely enjoyed it because I set their expectations so low.
Muse Bank 