Category Archives: 3 Star Movies

The Lost Boys Review

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This review is of the TV-14 edited version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

It’s time for some vampires. You already know that means the film is starting off at a disadvantage but maybe it can pull through and win anyway? Wellllll…unfortunately that is not the case so I still do have to give this one a thumbs down. The characters tend to be annoying and the film can drag on at some points. The main romance with the teens also doesn’t work so well.

The film starts with Michael, his younger brother Sam, and his mom Lucy moving from a nice place over to the murder capital of the world. They’re staying with Lucy’s father and at this point the goal is really to try and make the best of it. Sam is one of those guys who is very personable and he acclimates to the new place quickly even if it is odd how two kids keep telling him to watch out for vampires. Michael sees an attractive lady who is already taken but since when has that stopped him? He flirts with her which causes the leader of the vampire group, David to show up and mess with him. Michael succumbs to peer pressure immediately and gets turned into a vampire. Can he control his urges and stay on the path of justice?

There’s a lot to unpack here and unfortunately most of it is not good. As the lead character Michael makes too many mistakes. It’s not really good form to go after someone who is already in a relationship. Yeah it’s not the same as someone being married or engaged but at the same time it makes you look desperate. It was clear that Star was leading him on from the jump so the only right answer there is to just dodge the situation entirely. She manipulates him so easily that you’re just shaking your head. Their romance really was bad.

Meanwhile Michael was falling for the illusions each time and then not suspecting that something was wrong about the vampires was a real miss for him as well. He does control the urges well at least and I can tell you right now that I have no issues with taking out any of the villains. As far as I’m concerned that is full self defense and everyone was trying to murder the vampires in order to save the town so there’s no functional difference here. Something to keep in mind since the end of the film is trying to throw a message in and it doesn’t really work.

I liked Sam a lot more than Michael. He’s a likable kid who has a positive outlook. Again, if not for the vampires he was going to get used to the new town real fast. He had a good sense of humor and is also responsible. This is the kind of kid you can count on to make your life easier. He gets a big role along with the two vampire hunters but technically it’s not like he can fight all that much so I wouldn’t expect him to do a lot of damage. The villains are just too powerful.

As for Lucy, she’s definitely a sympathetic character. She’s also been through a lot with the divorce and all. It may be a little fast to get back into the dating game but at least it’s treated like an actual dynamic among adults. It starts off with a basic dinner and nothing crazy. Usually I’d say the romance subplot had no point being in the film but this time I suppose it justified its own existence. It’s still a bit on the weak side but as a character Lucy was solid.

Then you have Max whose role is pretty fun. He is the character you will be thinking about a lot here and some scenes you can see in a different light. So he makes for a fairly solid character, certainly better than the vampire gang led by David who mostly just look like creeps the whole time. They’re not intimidating in a fun way and if anything they’re so overconfident and sloppy that this is what leads to them getting cooked all the time. As long as they remembered basic fighting techniques then they would have been okay here. The problem is they don’t have much of a goal except for spreading chaos.

I would have liked to have seen perspectives from more of the outside world. Not someone about to die but maybe a few locals talking about how people are always getting kidnapped and being murdered which seems weird. The film does establish this place as the biggest murder area in the world but doesn’t follow that up with anything. I’m sure the mayor and the cops would have something to say about that right? Adding them in with a big role would have been really fun.

Just something to give us more time away from the vampires. You already know that nobody can put up a fight against them so the nameless characters are doomed. The film doesn’t keep your attention the way that it should. It throws in quite a few jump scares involving the dogs. It’s a dangerous game since that could have easily tanked the whole movie but fortunately it avoids getting hit with the solid 0-1. The dogs end up looking fairly tough the whole time and Sam’s dog really saves the day more than once. So I appreciate that. Having a dog on screen always speeds up my heart rate a little bit but when you have a happy ending like this then that definitely helps out a whole lot.

Overall, The Lost Boys is a film that had some potential but it doesn’t live up to this in the execution. The comedic elements could have helped to raise everything up but at the end of the day it still focuses more on the vampire stuff than anything else. The characters created too many issues on their own and so in the end what you have here is a film that doesn’t give you much of an incentive to watch it. At least I did like the grandfather. His role was small but the confidence was nice. If the film had doubled down on more of the humor this could have really been a different ballgame.

Overall 3/10

White Noise Review

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White Noise is one of those desperate horror films that actually snagged an interesting idea but rushed to churn out some random product that barely made use of it. I can’t say I was all that disappointed because to be honest I had fairly low expectations going into it. The movie’s fairly bad as you would guess. The villains are overpowered with no weaknesses and the whole film is an exercise in futility. At least the film has some restraint and doesn’t go too crazy though.

The film starts off with Jonathan being married to Anna and she is even expecting a kid which is hype. Unfortunately she dies after that so Jonathan gets rather depressed. He ends up meeting a shady guy who was following him around for a while though named Raymond. He dabbles in the arcane arts and explains that Sarah’s spirit can still be heard through the computer. They just have to listen hard enough and he’s a pro at the electro voice phenomenon and has made it his life’s work. He’s been helping another lady named Sarah as well. Now she can help Jonathan a bit because Raymond gets bumped off soon after. The spirits don’t appreciate this intrusion and plan to keep on murdering people. What can Jonathan do against these demonic entities?

Nothing to be honest. Lol you thought this guy could do anything about it? These ghosts are intangible, they’ve got super speed, super strength, endless stamina, they can control your body and make you jump out a window, etc. Their abilities are basically limitless so all Jonathan can do is flail around for a while until the ghosts have had enough of him. That’s my main problem with some titles like this. You have to at least introduce a concept that gives Jonathan some kind of a chance in this fight. Otherwise, what is even the point of watching the film? It’s just pointless if his only escape is his inevitable death. At that point then what are we even doing here?

The film also gets rather boring at times. It’s good that Jonathan is super good at hearing because half the time I couldn’t even get what the ghosts were saying through the computer screen. It could be like gibberish at times and I’m someone who tends to like white noise. I use it every night to create that hype atmosphere although I’ve thought about buying a more custom noise like a rainforest sound or something. I think those could even be more fun although I haven’t tried that yet. But even so it’s not something that can carry a movie. I did appreciate that most of the transitions were done using white noise though. The general colors, backgrounds, and effects weren’t bad either.

There just isn’t a lot of them to go around and they tend to be very repetitive. Also, it goes through the annoying cliche of only the evil spirits having power while the good ones can only repeat one or two phrases like an NPC. Anna shows up a few times to tell Jonathan to run but she never gives any more details than that. Also lets face it, running’s not even going to do anything at this point although I appreciate the attempt. No, he’s doomed no matter how you slice it.

One plot point that starts kind of late is how Jonathan can quickly see into the future. He is given glimpses into different dark fates that await various characters but with enough time to save them or help out in time. He does help out a bit but I’d be annoyed with this ability because it doesn’t come with any hints or anything. He just has to run around until he finds out what is going on. It’s also usually a half victory as someone still dies or gets injured while he saves someone else.

Ultimately though, it’s all rather futile like I mentioned. Jonathan never stood a chance at winning or doing much of anything. Depending on how you interpret the ending, it’s not looking much better for the other characters either. Part of the ending is a little funny though with some more static noise showing up and we get one last line from one of the characters. Everyone looks either shocked or happy except for the driver who is over the whole thing. He just drives off looking rather annoyed and I don’t blame him because from his point of view the whole thing’s probably been a real drag. Now he’s going to have to compete with a legacy that will probably be dramatized a bit. If he was in the sequel I’d bet that things would not go well for him.

Ultimately the message here is really not to mess with the dead and spirits. Once someone dies then you’ve gotta move on and fast. No trying to contact them or anything because you’re just going to be going around in circles and contacting demons anyway. I’d also say you should never trust some random guy who’s been following you around and telling you all of these weird stories. I get that Jonathan was desperate but yeah you definitely need to be able to move on. Not rebound of course, but just keep it calm and not chase after her spirit.

The film also has a really random plot twist near the end of the film that doesn’t make any sense. Feels more like a shock value moment than anything to be honest. Lets just say there is one human villain here to make things a little more tense at the end but there’s just no point to that. We already know that the demons can do anything they want so why involve a human? Just to mess with the main character? That seems like the only possible explanation. The demons strike me as really unreasonable villains who always have some kind of a chip on their shoulders even when they are the ones who created the situation. Yeah they’re not winning any points in my book any time soon.

Overall, At the end of the day there’s not much to positive to really say about the film. It’s a very by the numbers horror film but it doesn’t have a ton of good jump scares. The computer screen moments tend to be on the boring side and you’re really waiting for some action. Unfortunately there’s not much for the main character to even fight for most of the film and by the time we get a human villain the film is ending. This is a film that should have had more fun with the electronic setup. That should have also played into the demons weakness somehow. You know, just give us something with a bit more substance instead of dwelling on the computer screen for so long. Additionally the whole sub plot of Jonathan playing superhero by seeing into the future didn’t make a lot of sense and felt shoehorned in. The film just didn’t have time to really go into this plot so it felt pointless.

Overall 3/10

The Man in the Moon Review

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All right it’s time to talk about a sci-fi film about the moon right? Wrong! This film has nothing to do with the moon and the title is only really used at the very beginning and ending. It doesn’t have much to do with anything but I suppose it’s a catchy title. Ultimately this film is about the sting of betrayal and how it’ll always stick with you. You need to be careful about making the wrong move for short term pleasure because it is usually accompanied by long term pain.

The film starts off with Dani being rather upset because Maureen is super popular around the guys but nobody takes notice of Dani. Everyone just says to wait since she is the younger sister and will eventually catch up but time is going by too slowly. Well, one day they get a next door neighbor named Court and Dani realizes that this is her chance. They bond right away and Dani is determined to become more than fiends. Court is more apprehensive about this because he feels like Dani is too young but as always in these films his willpower is about as solid as a plate of jello.

So for Dani she is on cloud 9 as she is quickly seducing the guy and her life is really starting but one day Maureen gets home early and meets Court. You have to keep in mind that Court has the attention span of a chocolate bar that was just thrown into the oven and so he immediately starts making passes at Maureen and downright ignoring Dani. Maureen knows that Dani likes Court and so now it’s her turn to say that she can’t betray her sister like that. You must always stick by family in a situation like this and it is extremely taboo to go with someone who is connected to your family.

There’s just one problem though, Maureen has no real willpower either and after her extremely half hearted attempt of saying no, decides to get together with Court right away. No need for a long romance either, they immediately hook up and aren’t super subtle about it. Karma hits Court like a truck but basically the film is really about how betrayal’s just not a good thing. You just gotta do the right thing and can’t be making little excuses on why you have to crack. It’s not the way to go…not at all. This is one of those films with no real likable characters which is unfortunate. After all you already know that this means the entire film is doomed right?

So Court is an awful character for having no real moral standards and being so flippant about who he’s with. I give him a complete thumbs down all the way. Just disgraceful tbh. Then for Maureen, I can’t really cut her any slack. The fact that she knew Dani liked this guy and still went ahead with it is no good. If Dani never forgave Maureen, she’d just need to live with it because that was an awfully big mistake. Then for Dani, she was really rushing into things too much. She should have settled for just being friends.

It’s why you always gotta be careful when someone says that they just want to be friends. Dani just said that to get Court to lower his guard and then went after him again. Ultimately that’s now really going to work if you see the person as more than friends. Yeah you can live in denial and if you have a really good poker face you can pull it off but then you have to be extra vigilant on when you hang out. Never 1 on 1, certainly not swimming together, etc. Even without the betrayals I couldn’t root for Dani and Court so it’s not like the film had an alternate exit where things turn out well. The romance was always going to be sub par.

Then for more drama, we also had Dani’s mother getting injured when running around during the storm. I was really glad that the film didn’t go down the extra edge route of losing the baby or something. Would have dropped this film close to a 0, let me tell you. That said, we didn’t need the part where Dani’s father takes it out on her. This family sure is really emotional in this film. If they could all be a bit calmer and more rational about things then most of the film wouldn’t have even happened.

Even if we take all of the awful romances and betrayals out of the mix, I don’t think this film was going to ever be anything great. Mainly I say that because the story wasn’t very interesting. You have scenes of the grownups talking like Dani’s mom and her friend about the old days and it’s all a bit on the cringe side. the friend apparently liked the guy that the mom married and jokes about how she got lucky. Yeah it’s just banter between friends…but I’d be getting a bit defensive about having her around to be honest.

Then we have the party where it turns out that the guy Maureen went with was a creep and then his father was also being rather iffy. It seems like every movie I watch lately reminds you to never take a drive with a guy unless you know him super well. I wouldn’t say that this even adds anything to the film either and I would have at least liked a scene of those two being told off but we never got that. The film really put all of its eggs in one basket with the whole love triangle and when that failed, there was no plan B. It just meant that the whole film went down with it and that’s unfortunate.

Overall, Man in the Moon is a film that I would advise against watching. Often times these “Coming of Age” movies tend to be on the negative side. It’s as if the average movie creator figures that to grow up you gotta go through some kind of tragedy and get burned in the love game. Why don’t we get one instead about a kid who doesn’t want to grow up and just tells the world this is how it’s gonna be. Something like…I dunno Peter Pan. Now there’s a character who was always on top of things. You of course can pull off a dramatic film like this but you’re already stacking the deck against yourself by trying to throw in a romance plot because the characters just feel too young for that. You already know it’s not going to be anything too serious and it’s way too young to be worrying about fighting over a guy. Leave that kind of plot to the pros like Nisekoi.

Overall 3/10

Still Alice Review

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It’s time for the marathon of film reviews where I’m absolutely devastating these films! The higher reviewed ones will be coming up but I thought that this made sense as a theme. This film tends to be on the sadder side. It’s not super objectionable or anything like that but at the same time it’s definitely not a film where you will walk away grinning. I definitely would have tweaked the ending a bit with one of those miracle cures but that’s just how it goes.

The film starts off by introducing us to Alice who is a genius. She is very well spoken and conducts herself as a true professional. She is a professor and has a happy marriage with her husband John. All 3 of her kids are doing well within their fields…well one of them is having a bit of trouble with theater but it’s a happy life. Unfortunately one day Alice is diagnosed with early Alzheimer’s and the genetic results say that she has a 0% chance of stopping it. It will gradually continue to get worse and worse until she dies. Particularly to Alice where her intelligence was something she took a lot of pride in, this comes as a big blow. She’s not sure how to really deal with it or if she even wants to continue dealing with this. What can she do?

Alzheimer’s is definitely one of the tougher ailments out there for two real reasons. One is the lack of a cure right now. Yeah, medicine continues to go a long way and you can generally slow this down but as a rule of thumb once it goes to a certain point there’s not much that can work. There’s also still a lot of mystery around how it works but you can actually see the pathways between neurons get cut off and there is currently no way to restore them. So the best thing you can hope for is that you only lose memories that you don’t need but it’s a scary way to live.

The other difficult part which in a lot of ways is the worst part is that there is no real way to have prevented this from happening. When it’s genetic, you were pre determined to have a higher chance to get this when you were born. In some cases they’ll know right away so you can be a kid and know that it will happen to you once you reach a certain age. It’s definitely a tough situation to be in. So these are all the things that Alice has to deal with.

She works on leaving herself notes and lots of little tips to help her remember what she has to do but these don’t always help. Additionally long lengths of time will go by where to her it just feels like a day. One tough moment was when she lost her phone. She thought she lost it a day ago but 6 months had actually passed. It’s definitely easy to get depressed at that point. Everyone does their best to help her out through this period but to see someone slowly deteriorating like that is definitely tough.

So then what you’re wondering is…when does the film become fun? Well the answer is that it doesn’t and that’s the problem. Much like Alice, we have to watch the film’s entertainment value slowly deteriorating along with it. It seems to be a fairly realistic take on what Alzheimer’s is like so I can give the film that credit but at the same time it doesn’t make for a good film. It plays out like something you would read on the news where it’s a tough tragedy but you aren’t able to do anything about it so you just feel bad the whole time.

That’s exactly why I would have had the film give her some kind of a cure. It doesn’t have to go into the range of sci-fi, just say that she’s getting better because the condition stabilized. Maybe she lost the first 30 years of her life but she will remember things going forward for a while. It doesn’t have to be a 100% crystal perfect happy ending or anything like that but I think this would go a long way. The film opened the door for this a few different times with how Alzheimer’s doesn’t always result in 100% mental failure. There are degrees to it but ultimately the film went all the way.

As for the supporting characters, there’s not much for them to do here. The kids for the most part are understanding although one of them always seems rather harsh. They all know that Alice is having memory issues and yet she gives her a hard time about it. The main daughter who wants to work in theater is easily the most patient and does everything that she can in order to help. Alice’s husband is also solid there but since he has a job he’s just not able to be there for her quite as often and has to run off to Academia and move to a new location as well. At least before she went all the way gone, Alice was able to give one last speech in a big professional setting so that gave her one last big hurrah. This kept the film from going to the next level of being mean spirited. I was worried when the notes fell to the ground that she was not going to be able to give the speech at all which would have been pretty mean.

Overall, Still Alice is definitely an emotional film. I wouldn’t recommend it if your family has a history with Alzheimer’s since it will just cause extra stress in the meantime. I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re looking for a fun or entertaining film either. Ultimately there’s just not a whole lot here for you. It’s a film that just gets sadder the more you watch it and that’s tough. You can do sad films in a way where they are still solid but typically those will involve stories with some kind of hope or a fun journey in the meantime. This one just can’t do that because of the nature of the plot and so ultimately you are just doomed.

Overall 3/10

65 Review

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It’s time for a film involving space and dinosaurs. An intriguing mix to be sure but ultimately it just didn’t work out. With dinosaurs it can already be hit or miss depending on how that plays out and then this film made the mistake of having a very small cast. The problem with this? There just isn’t a lot of dialogue or character dynamics to go through. It means that we are absolutely sunk because the film goes by very slowly.

The movie starts off with Mill getting ready to go on a 2 year journey. This one’s so long that he will really get to miss his daughter growing up and it’s rough because she’s already quite sick. Unfortunately the family does need the money so he goes aboard the spaceship. Everyone dies after an asteroid strikes the craft and Mills lands on a planet infested with dinosaurs. He has his energy gun which can take them all out but he also has to look out for a girl named Koa. Turns out that someone did survive after all. Unfortunately she doesn’t speak the same language that he does so communicating is difficult. Can they survive long enough to get off of this planet?

So you already see the dilemma here with there only being two characters and they can’t even communicate with each other. It means there are a ton of silent scenes as the characters walk around and their conversations can’t go beyond anything too basic or they can’t understand each other. It’s an original dynamic but not one that is going to be super interesting which is the main problem here.

At least Koa is a lot more likable than the average kid in these films. She is fairly resourceful and doesn’t panic all the time. Yeah Koa does have a few times where she breaks down and slows everyone up but it doesn’t happen too often. I can allow for it to happen a little bit. She’s still not a great character or anything but she’s not too bad. Meanwhile Mills is a decent lead but he gives up awful quick. He was about to end it all early on and I felt like that moment was a bit rushed. There were still more options and exploring to do surely. You only throw in the towel like that when you’re really on your last legs and don’t want to die a slow death of starvation or being eaten by dinosaurs. Yeah the last one isn’t super slow but it would definitely be painful.

One of the mistakes the film makes early on is that it just isn’t very fun. This is a very dreary film of the heroes wandering through the jungle and shooting up a bunch of dinosaurs. Occasionally there is a joke thrown in and the characters get to have some fun but this doesn’t happen often and it fades quickly. The backgrounds and areas don’t have much variety and so that doesn’t really help matters. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the soundtrack either.

Of course the big thing here is all of the violence against the dinosaurs. Whether this is the same as animal violence or not tends to depend on how realistic the effects are and how much the creatures look like animals. In this case they definitely look like animals all the way so seeing them get shot or pounded with blunt objects is never any fun. I would also argue that the gun is way too overpowered in this film. One shot can murder almost any of the dinosaurs in this film so there’s not even a lot of danger. The whole time you know that he can definitely secure the win if he just takes out the gun. That’s all he needs to do and it takes away from the survivor angle.

So now that’s weakened and without the gun there would be less dead dinosaurs as well so that would be a plus as well. Look, the dinosaurs have been on this planet for a long time and are just defending their turf so it’s rough to see them all getting mowed down the whole time. This is not how it was supposed to go. So there aren’t many positive aspects of the movie to think about once we’re done with all of this. I will also say that the film gets a bit needlessly grim in what happened back on the home planet while Mills was gone. Is there really any point to the final twist there? It feels like the film just wanted to make sure that there wasn’t almost anything to be happy about by the end.

There was only one avenue to success for this film and the downside is that it could possibly get a bit boring. Redo the film except there are no dinosaurs. So it’s just about the two characters bonding and learning how to communicate without talking. Then you have the humans show up as part of the rescue mission, except they want to murder the kid so our hero has to protect her. It would be a much more engaging film once the opponents show up and the first half can maybe get by on being wholesome. That’s how I would pitch it at least.

Overall, I suppose the film isn’t too long so that’s a good thing. In the end I would say that it just doesn’t deliver on being a really fun summer blockbuster kind of film. There’s no real reason to rewatch it and other dinosaur films like Jurassic World are better. Unless they make a sequel about aliens and cool battles or something then I think this franchise is basically doomed. There are many better sci-fi films for you to check out so I recommend going ahead and doing that instead. This one can definitely wait.

Overall 3/10

Primrose Path Review

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Now when you see the score you may be thinking that’s pretty harsh. This isn’t a horror film or anything like that so what gives here? Well, the main problem is this movie really brings out the worst in all of the characters as far as the romantic context is concerned. I’ll dive into this in a moment but you just can’t picture there being a happy ending for anyone.

The movie introduces us to a family that is in a rather toxic situation. The father is a drunk who is out of a job and has basically given up on ever doing anything productive with his life. His wife goes off cheating on him constantly in order to bring home some money so they can have some food. The grandmother basically hates happiness and so she has a personal vendetta against everybody. The youngest daughter is incredibly spoiled and rude to everybody. Finally you have the eldest daughter who serves as the main character, Ellie. She has never really seen any guys who interested her and she does her best to help support the family by finding clams and such to eat. Unfortunately one day she is hit on by a guy who works at the local deli and he steals a kiss. She is now unable to focus on anything else and decides to emotionally blackmail him into marrying her through a web of lies and a false suicide attempt. How can this romance go wrong?

It’s hard to know where to start with this one but it’s clear from the jump that this romance is a bad one. Lets dive more into how she ropes Ed in. Basically Ellie pretends that she has been kicked out of the house by her family and will have nowhere to go if Ed doesn’t marry her. Additionally she acts as though she is doing to drown herself if he doesn’t go with her. It puts him in an extremely difficult position and the worst part is of course she lies to him about the family in general. As far as he knows they are all upstanding citizens but the problem is that everyone else knows the family’s true personalities and status.

This is inevitably going to blow up and Ellie shouldn’t have led off the way that she did. Yeah she probably would not have gotten him to marry her but if you have to force that into action then it’s not a true romance. Meanwhile Ed also does a lot of bad stuff here. For starters he is way too aggressive when he first meets Ellie. Taking a kiss was completely out of bounds and the same goes for taking her clams which forced her to accept his offer of a drive. The fact that she is so cautious about getting into another man’s vehicle is a good thing but here he is trying to tell her that she shouldn’t be so stuffy.

Additionally he doesn’t handle any of the twists very well either. One of the first things he does upon learning that she was lying is “Revenge Cheating” by going to the club and having an affair. If a guy goes that extreme so quickly then there is really no going back from that. Prior to that maybe both characters could talk things out but you can’t take back cheating. Once it happens then it’s all over. He also went and scratched her name off of the boat he was building and humiliated her in front of the whole club. Again you can’t really take these things back.

It leads to another cycle of revenge as Ellie goes out with another man to make Ed jealous and it becomes a whole scene. Basically when you have drama in a romance it can be fairly serious but you should never do something that is impossible to come back from. This film was just too mean spirited the whole time so that their making up by the end is incredibly unrealistic. You won’t believe it and none of the characters should in the slightest.

I was also expecting some kind of a redemption arc for the father but it never happened. That was surprising but I guess it goes to show that the family just isn’t going to change in the slightest. If anything I dare say that Ellie shouldn’t have returned in the first place. By the end she is definitely obligated to help but before that it was a clean split and one that I don’t think she needed to try and fix. Her decision to head over to the house at all was baffling because with all of the lies in place, did she really think that Ed wouldn’t have found something out? These weren’t small lies, they were big ones.

The whole lie of the family kicking her out for example. That is bound to come up during dinner as Ed would make sure that it did. So the writing here was a bit awkward. In general the writing could also be a bit repetitive but in part that’s due to the way Ellie and Ed talk to each other. It’s like they have to repeat each other’s line as a statement each time and so they don’t make a lot of progress sometimes. The film’s story can still be interesting but I found that it went way too far every time. I’d argue it should have just gone for the sad ending at that point since it already had the perfect setup for that. I prefer happy endings of course but you can’t just reverse on a dime and expect it to work.

Overall, Primrose Path is not a particularly good romance film. It’s not a particularly good film in general. It makes way too many mistakes the whole time and the characters are too far gone. The only likable character is the old man who helps Mary out when she needed a ride and is generally supportive the whole time. In fact I would say he was the only character who didn’t have a bunch of big flaws the way that the others did. He was someone you could count on. So yeah definitely skip this film and check something else out instead.

Overall 3/10

Day The World Ended Review

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It’s time for a really sloppy movie which is why this one does not fare very well. The poster’s actually pretty exciting but the monster barely even appears in the movie. I suppose it’s not false advertising per say but it’s certainly on the border right there. You see that poster and it just makes you shake your head because the vibe the poster’s going for will not reflect your experience with the movie in any way.

The film starts off with Jim and his daughter Louise taking refuge in their house. Most of the world has been irradiated after a big bomb attack and the only reason they have survived is because Jim knew this day would come so he has enough supplies for the two of them and the house is in the perfect place where the winds are kept out by the nearby caverns. Unfortunately a few people stop by and Louise lets them all in despite Jim’s protests. There isn’t enough supplies for all of these folks and as they all get hungry, these “nice” strangers may prove to be deadly. Also there’s a monster running around.

The movie really has a Twilight Zone kind of feel to it for the opening act. It’s a very strange circumstance after all and we’re thrown into the mix without much of an explanation at first. So as more people pile into the house, you know that something’s going to give way and fast. It’s inevitable that there will be big fights and disagreements when everyone is hungry and irritable. The movie is at its best during these opening moments when everyone is suspicious of each other. Where the film falters is after that and I’ll get into it more in a second but basically it breaks the atmosphere for a lot of action and thrills except it’s all very poorly written.

The first issue here is just how much of a villain Tony is. Now at first as the viewer you’re upset with Louise for letting everyone in but hey they would die without coming inside so you get it. The first thing Tony does though is break through the door and hold Jim at gunpoint. That should be enough to immediately say that this is not going to work right? If this guy is so willing to use a gun then it’s time to take him out. He takes out the gun and makes threats multiple times. He attempts to murder Jim, Rick, and other people in the house numerous times.

Often times they will beat him up and he’ll say that he’ll try again later once they are asleep. Tony is not subtle at all. Then he’s always trying to force himself on Louise and he’s abusive to his sort of girlfriend Ruby but nobody does anything about this. Time after time they just threaten him some more. The heroes will literally say that they’ll shoot him next time to Tony calls their bluff and each time they don’t do anything. Right now they are at the brink of life and death with how bad the situation is, there’s no way they should be tolerating this.

The whole film feels supremely unrealistic. To put this another way, there are many times where Tony goes for Jim’s gun but Jim insists on just leaving it on the couch all the time. Inevitably there comes a time where Tony grabs it and you’re just wondering what is going on. You’re hoping that it’s somehow part of the plan but it really isn’t. Then Jim has all day to shoot Tony but doesn’t seem to want to do it. He only fires as a last resort after the body count has gone up enough.

All of the characters look awful as a result and this comes down squarely on the writing. It makes absolutely no sense to put up with so much from Tony. They should have finished him off or at least tied the guy up a long time ago. By not doing anything they’re putting everyone else in danger for no real reason. You just can’t be doing that sort of thing. Then there is the injured guy who mutates into a monster hybrid who goes out at night to eat animals. This guy also has veiled threats the whole time and is generally creepy but the heroes don’t do anything. They just go to sleep as normal.

For this guy I’m not saying you take him out per say as he’s not obviously evil the way Tony is but you figure they should do something. This guy talks about the future of mankind and how his mutated kind will rule which is as ominous as it gets. That and when he says that they’re all going to be killed shortly. Makes you think a little right? Of course this is referencing the monster which barely appears. The monster really should have shown up more, that would have made everything a bit more exciting. Yeah it takes away from the spooky Twilight Zone atmosphere but that was already starting to break anyway.

I think this movie would have been most effective without the monster or mutations. Just the heroes surviving as they slowly run out of food and have to decide what to do. Do they make a run for it and try to find some food, stay in until the last moment and hope the radiation leaves? A lot of good ways to have some tension in there and the film doesn’t go for any of that unfortunately.

So yeah back to the characters. Tony is super evil yet nobody does anything about it. Ruby is also super annoying because it’s clear that Tony doesn’t love her and will just keep on using her but this never sinks in. The guy does everything short of murdering her and she still thinks they have a chance of being together. Ultimately this really doesn’t go over well and the whole subplot is just really annoying.

Jim is a pretty bad main character for all of those scenes with Tony where he doesn’t do anything. Jim talks a tough game but when the chips are down he’s just not leadership material. Louise allows Tony to go free by not reporting what he was doing to the others. She needed to mention immediately what he did and have the team destroy him. She takes too many chances and lack of communication is a big reason why the heroes are always falling behind in situations like this. You really need to be warning others and prepping for what is coming up.

I’m afraid that I have to take shots at Rick for the same reasons. Even more than Jim, Rick doesn’t want to shoot anybody. Jim even tries to talk him into it a few times and he refuses. Look, it’s great to not want to murder someone but when they keep on trying to murder you, you’re now putting other people in danger. It’s a selfish ac at that point and he doesn’t do a great job of protecting the other heroes as a result. I just expected way better out of this guy.

Another knock against Jim and Rick for going along with it is how Jim decides that it’s time to continue the human race. He encourages Ruby to go with the abusive Tony to have some kids and wants Louise to forget about her missing fiancé and hook up with Rick. Really now? As someone who’s never liked the idea of arranged marriages, telling someone to get together to protect the future of the human race is crazy. It’s way too much of a dramatic leap in logic. We don’t yet know that everyone is doomed and if they are, why bring a baby into this? The babies will now be all on their own if something happens and without any civilization around, there’s not much that can be done if anything bad happens. It’s just a net loss all around.

This film isn’t even that long but it sure drags on at times. There’s also some dead animals that pop up because of the whole eating animals part which doesn’t go over well either. If the film could make a mistake you can bet that it did. It’s a shame because I do think that the premise is really solid. It’s just been done way better by other titles including the Twilight Zone itself. There is really no reason to watch this one.

Overall, Day The World Ended is a very disappointing film. Particularly because I thought the ending was really strong. I was seriously impressed by it the whole time and yet it all ended up failing miserably by the end. The characters’ actions make absolutely no sense and so the drama felt forced. Tony should have been taken off the board way sooner and the longer he remained with the group, the worse it got. You had a hard time seeing him just enjoy the music and sleep soundly with the group when he was constantly trying to murder them. Maybe if this was a parody it could work but it’s all played straight. Yeah the writing here was brutal.

Overall 3/10

The Revenge of Frankenstein Review

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It’s time for the return of Frankenstein! I have to say that this one is marginally better than most of the previous films in the franchise. Not to say it’s a good film or anything because of course that’s not the case but yeah it definitely beats some of the others because we don’t have the classic monster here. Instead we have Frankenstein styling on everyone and the film mainly just has to get around its rather violent body horror type moments and new monster. Oh…so yeah I guess it was doomed anyway.

The movie starts off with not explaining how Frankenstein escaped his impending death at the guillotine. He escaped to a remote town where he practices as a doctor and does rather well at it. So well in fact that the illuminati of scientists have been unable to shut him down or force him to join their cabal. This means they are constantly upset but one young doctor realizes that this new practitioner is the legendary Frankenstein. He blackmails the main character into accepting him as a sidekick and both are super wary of the other. Still they make for a good team and Frankenstein lets Hans know of his plot to transfer Karl’s brain into a new body. Karl is a hunchback with an arm that doesn’t work well and this transfer will prove what a genius Frankenstein is. Karl is also on board so it’s not a secret or anything. The only possible obstacle is a girl named Margaret who basically forces herself into being a nurse/assistant at the clinic. Will she end up destroying everything?

All right lets talk about some of the good aspects of the movie first. For starters I actually think that Frankenstein himself is a really good character for once. The guy is actually engaging and entertaining. He is always a few steps ahead of the other characters and I like how rude the guy is. He straight up doesn’t care what the other characters think of him and is just determined to keep making advances in science. He’s not dumb about it either. The guy legitimately became the best doctor in the land with a ton of valid surgeries and operations so that he could subtly take a few extra limbs here and there for his experiments.

Everyone respects him outside of the council and nobody except Hans ever suspected a thing. He holds his own in all of the questionnaires until the end and so for once he actually did feel like a full genius. I also liked the tension between him and Hans the whole time. They’re both basically villains here who are willing to use each other and so they each have to watch their backs. It made for a pretty good dynamic the whole time. I tend to really enjoy reluctant partnerships like that.

Hans may have been a little out of his depth but he was a solid character too. The guy stayed his ground even through the obvious threats that Frankenstein tossed his way. Not just anyone could have done that. Also Karl was good at least until he started to lose his mind. The guy has been through a lot and was willing to do what he needed to do in order to improve himself. I mean he is playing along with this whole scheme that he had to know was sinister so I am by no means calling him a hero or anything. He definitely shouldn’t carry that moniker but he was a character you could really feel bad for the whole time.

Margaret was a character who was much less sympathetic. It felt like she was really throwing herself into trouble the whole time and had no reason to really do so. I mean the film makes it clear why she wanted to jump in but yeah she definitely was not doing herself any favors here. I suppose she at least means well later on like when helping Karl out but ultimately even then she sets everything back a bit and is just responsible for more carnage and destruction.

The movie certainly had better writing and more thrills than most films in the franchise but this is about where the positives start to end. For the negatives we have the usual here. The film can get rather violent once Karl is actually a monster and starts to destroy everyone. We learn that the transfer has the side effect of making its victims turn into cannibals so you can probably guess how that goes. The worst part is that Karl wasn’t even that bad at first but then we get an over eager security guy who starts beating him up which triggers the transformation. The whole scene felt rather forced to be honest.

We also have all of the body parts lying around that the film puts a whole lot of detail into. It’s definitely pretty gross to see them all just lying around and the film does not look away when it comes time for the operations. I’d even say that the film is practically gloating about this because the scenes did not need to be nearly as long as they were. It’s not like they really add anything to the film since by that point we already know what’s going on.

As a final note I will say that the film’s ending is really solid though. I was not really expecting that and yet it does make a lot of sense in hindsight. It’s another moment that makes Frankenstein look like a genius while also buffing another character. Unfortunately the next film would not follow in this one’s footsteps which was a massive mistake as it starts to sink all the way down again but we’ll go more into that later on.

Overall, This is a film that I would not recommend. Yes it is better than the average Frankenstein title as focusing on the scientist over the monster was a superb idea. Any scene with him talking to the doctors tends to be really good. I also liked the really smug custodian. I didn’t talk about him much but the guy also seems to be a few steps ahead of the others. There’s just a lot of really strong character interactions everywhere. They aren’t enough to save the film once it enters the second half with all of the monster action but it is enough to be memorable and still give me some positive things to say about it.

Overall 3/10

Children of Men Review

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This review is of the TV-14 edited version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

It’s time for a dystopia film with the end of the world approaching but not due to some kind of giant twister or meteorite attack. No, this time it’s because the world just isn’t generating new humans anymore and so that’s an interesting take but this is more of a dreary kind of adventure as opposed to a thrilling escape film on trying to find a way to survive. It brings up some interesting ideas but ultimately couldn’t quite turn the corner.

The movie starts off by explaining the plot. At some point women stopped being able to get pregnant and the cause of this was unknown. It could have been anything from radiation, vaccines, just a natural end to this cycle, etc. Regardless of the cause, that means humanity will slowly begin dying out soon. Just about every country on the planet has fallen except for the United Kingdom and so there is a huge immigration issue. Everyone wants to go there and so they have basically shut the kingdom off and all immigrants are basically treated like slaves.

The film centers around Theo who has a fairly good job and likes to keep things low key. He stays out of the media and plays along with what people consider to be big events like the world’s youngest person dying but he doesn’t really care about any of that. One day he is kidnapped by his wife or ex-wife…I forget if they had split up or not officially but she is now a high ranking member of a terrorist organization. Why does she want him? Well there is a girl named Kee that they are trying to protect and they need Theo’s help. She doesn’t actually trust the other terrorists so he is her absolute last resort play. Theo doesn’t want to help but circumstances basically force him into the picture. Can he protect her?

Theo doesn’t exactly have much combat training or anything so it won’t be easy. Additionally, there is a specific reason why Kee is a super big priority target for just about every force on the planet. There are tons of people who want her for both good and bad reasons. That means there is now a big target on Theo’s back. He does suggest at one point that they should turn themselves in but this is the only area where I have to agree with the villains in thinking that this is a bad idea. I have no doubt that she would immediately be experimented on and would effectively lose her freedom/life in short order.

There are no great solutions to this though. One idea is keeping her in hiding for say 10-20 years so you can show off certain results with a bit more safety also in hopes that other people appear or you make her a central figurehead for the terrorist group from a safe location. I’m not sure exactly where would be considered safe at this point though and even if it appears to be for a good cause…I don’t think anybody would want to be the figure head for a terrorist group.

As with most of the dilemmas in this film, your only choices tend to be bad or worse. Theo has one real friend in the film who is an old guy trying to take care of his sickly wife and from the jump with this kind of film you know that’s not going to go over very well. I don’t even get the logic of his final scene. The guy was super prepared for everything including poison pills and lots of other kinds of things so at least he wouldn’t be captured and tortured. There is even a plot element to this involving the past which explains why he would want to be wary of such a thing. Yet when his time comes, he only gives two others the poison pills and doesn’t take any safe guards for himself. If anything he actually gets off really lucky here comparatively speaking.

Aside from making things rougher on Theo this just didn’t make sense. There are lots of scenes in the film that are pretty much here to remind you how bad the world has gotten. People are being led up to a firing squad, the whole being tortured as a backstory, we see the bad living conditions, everyone starts dying near the end, etc. Even with the ending I wouldn’t exactly say it’s a very positive one. You have to assume that while things may get marginally better later on, they may not.

In a way the whole film follows this theme of hopelessness. At the end of the day no matter what the characters choose to do, they’re all going to die soon. There is no saving the world or some big enemy to defeat. Every person who gets murdered during this adventure is just one person leaving early but everyone will eventually be dying with no heirs to continue. The first half of the film is much more interesting in that sense though as it’s interesting to see what happens but once we enter the thriller aspects it’s ironically not as engaging. It’s more of a classic everyone getting shot and running through the destroyed towns but it’s all rather gritty and not meant to be very fun. Everyone’s constantly in pain and the film does give us a rather long birthing scene which makes sense as it could be the last one ever seen but I’d still have rather that had beem off screen as it always looks and sounds so painful.

Meanwhile the ending only holds hope for the world if the circumstances with Kee can be reproduced. If they are unable to figure that out then it won’t matter. Even if they do figure it out, if the circumstances are not practical then it won’t matter there either. So there’s a lot of ways this could go sideways and only a few possible positive routes. Personally I don’t see it working out, the world is way too far gone. At this point even if things do start to turn, society itself may as well be collapsed.

Theo isn’t a particularly good main character either way. The guy comes across as selfish and it takes a whole long time for him to get on board. He doesn’t care about much which is fine but it also means that it basically takes the most extreme of circumstances to get him to do anything like a lot of money. I can’t say I was a big fan of Julian either though. She feels a bit manipulative. It doesn’t look like she actually likes Theo all that much but was just using him for her own means which was risky in itself.

Kee was a good character. She was really thrown into a really tricky situation and did her best but this was probably the roughest for her in a lot of ways. When you’re just trying to survive but going through an ordeal nobody even knows about, that has to be pretty rough. Then we have Luke who is one of the more interesting characters. Definitely the kind of guy who can really turn on a dime though so you can’t really trust him at all. The guy shows some warning signs right out of the gate and they only get worse. From his point of view it probably all seems worth it like he has to do it but there’s no way to really justify his actions.

The worst character would have to be Syd though because in the end he’s just a really greedy guy who will absolutely turn on his own convictions for the right price. In a lot of ways he’s worse than someone like Luke who at least has a logic to his actions. I don’t believe that Luke could ever be bought by anyone while Syd is just too weak. The guy’s annoying because there were such high hopes for him.

Overall, I think Children of Men is a very interesting film. There are definitely many parts to it that feel really realistic and if the planet did ever enter a period where children could not be born anymore, I expect there would be massive chaos. It would be like knowing that everyone was going to die soon and not being able to do anything about it. Society absolutely would collapse and it’s a scary thing to think about. So while it is a very interesting writing prompt, it doesn’t work as well in a movie like this. It’s just more depressing than anything with no real breaks. It can get rather disturbing and even a little violent as well. I would have preferred a film that focused more on the societal impacts from the government’s point of view like a drama version of this without the thriller aspects. Even the most kind people would have a lot of things to worry about if they’re the youngest and know that nobody will be around to take care of them when they get old. So I don’t recommend the film but the plot is very unique and if you’re curious about diving in, the film has no shortage of traumatic imagery to present to you.

Overall 3/10

Europa Report Review

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If I had seen this film in the theaters I would have been so disappointed. It’s not thrilling or terrifying. That slogan makes no sense here because it’s anything but that. I found the film to be rather boring with very slow pacing all the way through. Part of the issue is in the found footage way they filmed this, another issue is how they keep jumping around as if this is a poorly directed documentary, but the main issue is that the film just didn’t seem to have much point. It felt like 10 Cloverfield Lane where the whole film is just a set up to the final 5 minutes of the film, only make that the final 60 seconds in this one. So this one was definitely a swing and a miss.

The film starts off halfway with everyone panicking because the cameras are going out. There’s tons of panic and then the screen goes dark as we find out that we lost connection with the space group for over 11 hours and counting. They’re probably dead but then we flash forward to someone saying that they found the tapes so what we’re about to see is the untold story. So then we jump to the beginning where we see that the team is going on a trip to space to find any signs of life on one of the moons near Jupiter. We then flash forward again to the crew getting obliterated and then go back to the start. This time we finally stick to being linear for the most part…but not totally as we’ll cut forward several times for one of the scientists to talk about how scary this was and all of that.

So I had a lot of problems with the film but one of them is all this jumping back and forth because it doesn’t make sense. If the company is finally showing this to people as a documentary, wouldn’t they edit it so this is all chronological? Why show the same scenes multiple times when you’re going back and forth? Sure if you wanted to make the whole thing more dramatic then you could do that but it doesn’t make sense if you’re trying to clearly explain what happened. That’s what I don’t like about the film, the whole story breaks apart the more you start to think about it and that should not be the case.

This is presented in such a way as if it was meant to be a thriller film which takes you out of the immersion because it doesn’t make sense with how this was crafted. I mean the whole thing is pretty hard to buy anyway with how they even got the footage after all this had happened but hey we can endure that I suppose. This is just where you sort of have to draw the line after a bit. Then my other big problem is the whole found footage style of camera work in general.

It’s just not an appealing way to watch the film. The screen is too small and there’s not enough freedom of movement. At least they didn’t throw on shaky cam in addition to that for the most part but this kind of style can at most be bearable if the characters are amazing. If you have a 10 star cast who just dazzle you with their quick wit then maybe you can survive but otherwise with characters that are mainly just generic and a bit lifeless this doesn’t do wonders for them. I need some cinematic camerawork and I needed it right away. The film is losing a lot of points right out of the jump due to this.

Then we come to the main problem which is just that nothing really happens here. The film isn’t even that long but it sure feels long with the crew doing endless safety checks and looking at the monitors. When they finally go outside it’s not like we can see all that much because it’s always very dark and gloomy out there. Yes it’s realistic but most importantly…it’s not that fun to watch. So the film has to take a big L there which is unfortunate. A film’s top priority is to be entertaining to the viewers and so when that goes wrong there really isn’t anything to save the experience. That is absolutely rule number 1.

None of the characters ended up being interesting either. Sometimes I wonder if this is a side effect of the found footage style because in all of those movies everyone tends to come across as really boring which doesn’t make any sense. Sure they tell some jokes here and there, they have disagreements about what to do, but they just barely feel like characters. It feels like the same dynamic you’ve seen in just about any space movie. At the end of the day they get distracted when they see something sparkly and end up getting crushed. Also what kind of a space station doesn’t have a decontaminating room.

That whole sequence made no sense. So some space junk got on one of the guys so he can’t go back onto the ship. Okay….but the whole point of the mission is to land on the planet and do some exploring/mineral gathering. So nobody realized that there was a possibility they would pick up something or touch something contaminated? Cmonnnnnn this just felt like they wanted to go for some drama. The classic moment of one guy having to drift off and slowly die in space is definitely a common one that is used a lot but it’s not something that would enhance a film.

Overall, This was a pretty bad movie if you ask me. Just the fact that it was really boring is enough to doom it but throw everything else in and it’s really a wrap. I did like the visual we got at the end of the film so if they make a sequel that’s an invasion/action thriller title then I would check it out. Otherwise this one tried way too hard to be super low key and while you could do that as a comedy, it doesn’t really work so well as a serious space thriller. There’s just nothing to get thrilled about and seeing the characters start to cry or break down mid documentary makes the whole film feel like it’s trying too hard.

Overall 3/10