Carnosaur (1993) Review

     Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to another entry of Coffee With The Cynic's movie reviews.  I've been kinda dogging it on the movie reviews as of late and I wanted to get back into them but I wasn't entirely sure just what to review.  After asking some friends over Facebook, I have a solid list of suggestions to get through and we're starting with 1993's Carnosaur, starring Diane Ladd, Jennifer Runyon, Raphael Sbarge and Clint Howard.  The movie is about a scientist (Ladd) who is able to genetically recreate dinosaurs by modifying bird and reptile DNA only to have one get loose in the Nevada countryside.  Naturally, it starts racking up a huge body count and an an environmentalist (Runyon) and a night-man (Sbarge) get caught up in the middle of things.

     Much like that other dinosaur movie turning 25 years old this year, Carnosaur is based off of a novel, this one written by John Bronsan (under the pseudonym Harry Adam Knight).  I actually used to have the novel (and given how much it fetches for now, I hope I still have it) but I remember the novel is actually quite good and would recommend anyone read it if the opportunity presents itself.  The novel was published in 1984 but the film wouldn't be released until May 21, 1993.  The movie is quite different from the book and should I relocate a copy of the novel, I'll do a comparison of the two.  However, I will be going into specifics here so if you want to watch Carnosaur first, you can watch the full movie here on YouTube.  Consider that your spoiler warning.

This guy handles seeing a living dinosaur pretty calmly.  It doesn't last.

     Carnosaur had a budget of $850,000 and was produced by B-movie legend Roger Corman.  I'm telling you this just so you can adjust your expectations accordingly if you haven't seen it.  Is the movie good?  No, not really.  That means it's bad, right?  Well, not really.

     One of the more interesting things about Carnosaur is how it specifically labels what animals went into the DNA mix to create the dinosaurs (all, like, 4 of them you see onscreen, anyway) and at least of those behavioral traits is discussed in full.  When the rampaging Deinonychus gets large enough that it can start attacking people's heads, the characters discuss later that the victim's eyes have been ripped out, which sounds more in line with a bird than a bobcat.  So they're supporting the whole dinosaur/bird connection and since one of the bird DNA strands used was a vulture, that totally makes sense.

     To tell the truth, for a movie with such a low budget and tight time frame for production, the dinosaurs don't look too bad.   Honestly, they don't look great but given how nowadays most low budget dinosaurs tend to look like this, Carnosaur is actually a welcome relief because at least for the most part, I know the dinosaurs are actually on set interacting with something, whether it be the actors or on a miniature set.  The same can be said about the gore FX, to be honest.  At least it was all practical.

The full-body mini hand puppet of the T. Rex.  A full sized animatronic was also built for the movie.

     Are there problems with Carnosaur?  Hell yeah, there's problems with Carnosaur although some may say that these "problems" are part of the charm.  Remember the involvement of Roger Corman and the less than a million dollar budget so I don't want to sound too harsh on it.

     While I wouldn't necessarily say anyone here turns in a spectacular performance (not even Diane Ladd, who also happens to be Laura Dern's mother), it also certainly doesn't help that the script doesn't give them a whole lot to work with.  Any character motivations or relationships just seem to be there because the plot dictates that they need to be.  Runyon's Thrush and Sbarge's Doc befriend each other in this movie for no other reason other than Doc probably wants to slip Thrush his meat whistle and even then it's not spelled out.  There's also one part later where the sheriff (Harrison Page) goes out to investigate some screams in town after tending to his sick wife and daughters and he's all distraught like, "I'm all there is!  Come on out, I've got nothing to lose!  It's just you and me!"  I know that his wife and kids were shown to be sick earlier on but their deaths are never really shown or mentioned other than that.  It lingers on one of their faces with their eyes open but seeing as how they were still breathing, I figured they were still alive.  What were they sick with?  Well...

     Okay, so I know any movie dealing with recreating dinosaurs uses impossible science as a plot device to get the dinosaurs back into the modern world but Carnosaur might just take the cake.  Okay, so Diane Ladd thinks that human beings are just the worst (her words, not mine) and wants to give the planet back to the dinosaurs.  How?  By engineering an airborne virus that makes women fall ill with a fever and impregnate them with dinosaur embryos so then they lay eggs but passing an egg through the birth canal tears them apart from the inside, except for Ladd's character who gives birth to a dinosaur more akin to how John Hurt gave birth to a Xenomorph in Alien.  I am not making this up.  The movie starts off with chickens exploding by laying the dinosaur eggs but then as the movie progresses, you see at least two women die from this, neither of which are the sheriff's wife or daughters.  Naturally, the government gets wind of this virus effecting only females so they scramble to keep this outbreak contained before humanity's breeding capabilities are wiped out.

     I also noticed a flaw in Ladd's character's plan.  If you want to give the Earth back to the dinosaurs, fine but...where are the herbivores?  There are only two species shown in the movie, Deinonychus and Tyrannosaurus Rex.  Both are carnivores so if you're going to bring back the dinosaurs, shouldn't you be trying to breed other species too?  I know, I know, budget and all that but still, I couldn't help but think that trying to give the Earth back to the dinosaurs but only bringing back two species may not pan out well in the long run.

I mean, they can't snack on tree-huggers forever.

     In closing, Carnosaur may not be a particularly good movie but it isn't frustratingly bad or even so bad it's hilarious.  I actually respect Carnosaur for being as alright as it is.  These guys and gals were like, "Alright, we've got a very limited budget, a not so good script and a tight window of time to get this movie done but you know what?  We're going to make the best damn movie we can!"  With those circumstances, I think Carnosaur could've been much, much worse.  I don't think I'm going to remember much of the movie come next week but with that said, I don't feel like I wasted the 80 minute runtime revisiting it.  I'm giving Carnosaur the ranking of Indifferent.

Yeah, that happened...

     The movie went on to gross $1.8 million at the box office and was received pretty negatively, with Roger Ebert calling it the worst movie of 1993.  Despite all that, Carnosaur went on to have not one but two sequels and a spin-off.  The Carnosaur sequels are on YouTube as well so when I have time, I'll be giving them a revisit.  Until then, what do you think of Carnosaur?  Whether you're talking about the book or the movie, sound off in the comments below.  As always folks, thank you so much for reading and if you like what you see on this blog, you be sure to nudge that "Follow" button and stay cynical!

     -The Cynic

The Great Wall Review

     2017 has actually been a pretty good year so far for my movie viewing experiences.  I'd only seen 12 2017 movies before sitting down to view The Great Wall and out of those 12, only 2 were duds.  I seem to recall a bit more of a balance by about this time last year so I watched this one, thinking that it might help pad out the Bad list.  I'll be completely up front with you, seeing the trailers for this movie did not make me excited one bit and Scholar and I figured that The Great Wall would end up being a hate watch, like what she did with last year's abomination Gods Of Egypt or our plans for this year's The Mummy.

      The story behind The Great Wall, conceived by Legendary Pictures CEO Thomas Tull and World War Z author Max Brooks, is that two surviving members of a platoon of European mercenaries have traveled to China to find out the secret of gunpowder.  After a strange encounter with a creature at their camp, William (Matt Damon) and Tovar (Predro Pascal) happen across The Great Wall of China, only to find it heavily guarded and patrolled by an army known as The Nameless Order.  William and Tovar are captured and find themselves caught up in The Nameless Order's ongoing battle with a race of beasts known as the Tao Tei.  Having some emotional baggage, William agrees to help the Nameless Order in their fight in hopes of personal redemption.

     Now that sounds pretty silly, right?  Saying it out loud doesn't really do the movie any favors and the aforementioned trailers didn't help so I sat down with a big glass of Crown and Coke and gave it a watch...

     ...and Goddamn it, I kinda liked it.

Hey, I'm just as surprised as you are, Jing Tian.

      First of all, this is a pretty good looking movie.  There is a lot of sweeping landscape shots and a great sense of scale when getting good looks at both the wall and Bianliang later on, showing just how massive the threat they face is and even when the Tao Tei horde isn't featured onscreen, the cinematography is really nice during these moments.  When our characters reach the Wall, the movie receives a nice injection of color that the first few minutes sorely lacks with somewhat Blizzard-esque armor and weaponry being sported by The Nameless Order gives the aesthetic a more vibrant feel.  Kudos to Weta Workshop in this department because that looked great.

     Another thing that looked good was the action scenes when The Nameless Order engage the Tao Tei in combat.  The shots and editing used during these moments were clear, coherent and not so overdone that you couldn't see what was going on, which was good because this allowed the movie to unleash some brutality during these moments that I thought were pretty intense for a PG-13 movie.  The Great Wall doesn't really shy away from the fact that The Nameless Order are just as likely to get mass casualties just as the Tao Tei.  Naturally, it's not as brutal as something like Hacksaw Ridge but I was surprised by some of the shots showing what became of some of the soldiers during these fights.

     If I had to pick one thing that I enjoyed the most about this movie, it would be the score.  It was actually the first thing I noticed just as the movie was starting up.  Ramin Djawadi's music has the feel of your typical major Hollywood blockbuster but there was also a playful undertone to it which gave me flashbacks to Klaus Badelt's score for the first Pirates Of The Caribbean film.  I'm listening to this soundtrack as I write this review and to be honest, I would buy it.

Just wanted an excuse to show these costumes.

     However, a great movie The Great Wall is not.  One of the biggest problems I had with it, now that I think about it, is that there a couple of side characters in this movie that just do not need to be here.  Pedro Pascal and Willem Dafoe's respective characters don't really add much to the story other than an obligatory human threat to the well being of The Nameless Order and the pacing of the movie suffers whenever they're on.  Their performances are fine (actually, everyone is fine in this movie although it takes Matt Damon a few minutes to really get into it) and I don't have anything against the actors but they just weren't that interesting to follow.  Whenever Tovar and William would get into a spat, I found myself wanting to get back to The Nameless Order stuff, not because of the action and the costume designs but their ranks, hierarchy and way of life was more engaging and even then, I wasn't completely wrapped up with those characters either.  Pascal and Dafoe's characters could've been cut from the movie and I don't think much would've really been lost.

     I am also on the fence about the Tao Tei's designs.  They grew on me a bit more as the film progressed but the first good look you get at them 19 minutes in left me feeling very underwhelmed at the designs and, well, you only get one chance at a first impression.  Other than that, there's your typical blockbuster movie nitpicks: some bad greenscreen near the beginning of the film, it gets very, VERY CGI heavy at the end and it doesn't always look the best and I can imagine there's probably a lot of people who were mad/disappointed at a tease of a big action sequence that we only ever saw the aftermath of.

     

     In the end...yeah.  The Great Wall is not the wreck I was expecting it to be.  It's not a game-changer in the action movie genre, the dialogue isn't Tarantino levels and there's very little humor to be had here but it is an enjoyable, CG creature-feature war film with some pretty intense action sequences and an overall fun feel to it.  I'm not saying I'd run out and buy the Blu-Ray full price but if I found it in the cheap bins, I'd honestly pick it up.  I'm giving The Great Wall the ranking of a Fun Ride.

Wheeee!

      So folks, what did you think of The Great Wall?  As always, thank you so much for reading and if you like what you see on this blog, you be sure to nudge that "Follow" button and stay cynical!

     -The Cynic

Nine Lives Review

     As someone who really likes watching movies and listening to/partaking in discussions about them, sometimes a movie will come up that is notoriously bad, like "the reputation precedes it" bad and sometimes, against one's better judgement, a person may find themselves seeking out the film in question to say, "Okay, let's see if it is really that bad."  Well, that was me with Nine Lives and thanks to Netflix, I was able to see it and we're gonna talk about it.

     Nine Lives stars Kevin Spacey as Tom Brand, a multi-millionaire business man who is too obsessed with his company that he more or less completely neglects his second wife (Jennifer Garner) and daughter (Malina Weissman).  He goes to buy his daughter a cat (even though he can't stand them) but something happens at his office building that puts his body in a coma but his mind is now in the cat that he bought.  So now he has to save his marriage, his company and his human body while being a cat.

Yeah, I made this face reading that part too...

     So...where to begin?  Well, I noticed that the movie wastes very little time turning you off of the overall look of the thing.  After the movie opens with some cat videos pulled from FailArmy montages, the camera shoots up from two most-likely CGI kittens playing on the shore of a river upwards past the skyline of Manhattan and up to a plane Spacey is about to parachute out of and not a frame of it looks convincing.  The speed that the shot zooms up coupled with the awful green screen and CG effects make for a very unpleasant sight and it doesn't stop there.  At the 3:28 mark, everything in the movie took on a very plastic, overly synthetic look and I groaned when I realized I still had another 85 minutes to go.  Every scene transition feels just as unpleasant as that zooming to the plane shot, whether it'd be a zooming shot through the scaffolding of Spacey's new tower that would make CSI demand the movie dialed it back a little, the cartoony closing black circle transition or just the fact that the movie jumps all over the place without giving us much to latch onto story-wise.

     The cast here seems really disinterested in the whole affair.  Spacey seems alright when he's in human form but once he becomes a cat, his line reading sounds similar to the opening of The Last Airbender where it sounded like instructions being read off the back of a pizza box, specifically his realization of his situation.  It's not Matthew Perry in Fallout: New Vegas bad but it's still bad.  Garner and Weissman are serviceable, I guess but nothing really stood out about them.  I think I may have been distracted by the presence of Spacey's ex-wife (Cheryl Hines) and her daughter (Talitha Bateman), who keep popping up because Garner and Hines' characters are apparently friends but I didn't buy it.  Hell, I bought the rift between Weissman and Bateman even less as the forced conflict they had is as synthetic as the look of the film.  Christopher Walken is doing his usual Walken thing while Mark Consuelos' Ian comes off as the most cartoony aspect of this movie and the whole time he was on, I kept thinking he looked like a discount bin version of Oscar Isaac.  Robbie Amell is in this as well as Spacey and Hines' son but I never really got a sense of what his job actually was and it turns out he just basically became a plot device to thwart Consuelos in the end.

"Why are we here, cat?"  "I ask myself the same thing, Cousin of Arrow."

     As for the special effects, remember the Garfield movies?  Yeah, when the cat is CG, I had flashbacks to that and while I do remember Garfield not being as bad as it could have been, the CG there was bad by 2004 standards as is the case here.  Sure, the cat's overall design here is more believable since when it isn't CG, an actual cat is used but the CG sticks out like a very sore thumb.  This movie had a budget of $30 million but most of that went to the cast me thinks, leaving the visual FX team very little to work with.

     

     Look, I didn't go into Nine Lives expecting anything great, or good for that matter.  Yet, I still found myself disappointed once I reached the end credits.  Why, you ask?  Because Nine Lives' greatest offense is that it is just boring, which (depending on who you ask) could actually be worse than infuriating because at least when a movie pisses you off, you feel something.  There isn't the bludgeoning of extremely nauseating CGI and acting like Gods Of Egypt, the heavy-handed obnoxiousness of Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates or even good ideas gone awry like Batman vs Superman, instead we're left with a film that almost seems like it is actually putting effort into being not interested in its own existence.  Most people walk away from a movie disappointed that they didn't like it more but here I'm disappointed that I didn't dislike this movie more.  Nine Lives is just another one of those movies where it doesn't try because it is aimed at kids, where I've said before just because you're aimed at a certain demographic doesn't mean you shouldn't try.  This movie may not have infuriated me like it has others but if you haven't seen it yet, keep it that way because it still sucks and with that, I'm giving Nine Lives the rating of a Throwaway.

Get the fuck outta here!

      Feel free to sound off below, what did you think of Nine Lives and what is your favorite or least favorite talking animal movie?  Thanks for reading and if you like what you see on this blog, be sure to nudge that "Follow" button and stay cynical!

     -The Cynic

Passengers (2016) Review (Minor Spoilers)

     Passengers is a space drama directed by Morten Tyldum and stars Jennifer Lawrence & Chris Pratt as two people (out of 5000) aboard a spacecraft in the future that is en route to a new colony on another planet.  Easy enough but the trouble is the voyage is supposed to take 120 years; Jim Preston (Pratt) and Aurora Jane (Lawrence) have been awakened from their stasis pods 90 years early.

     I remember watching the trailer for this one when it hit the web in September and to be honest, I wasn't sure what to think of it.  It didn't look bad but I wasn't exactly chomping at the bit to see it, even if it did have star power like Katniss Darkholme and Peter Grady.  I kept it in the back of my mind as one to look at once it hit rental (this opened the same weekend as Rogue One so our priorities were elsewhere) and now that it has done so, I plunked down and gave it a watch.  I'm not going to try and get too specific but I do need to address a couple of events that might be considered minor spoilers.

     Jim checking his map, making sure he isn't on the Sulaco.

     The first (and best) thing I noticed with Passengers is the score, which I absolutely loved.  Composer Thomas Newman loves his piano apparently as he fills the softer and more awe-inspiring scenes with a piano-focused but a touch of electronica score that I could not help but compare to the score from Bioware's Mass Effect series while also keeping that more traditional action scene music handy for when things really go wrong but even then, he can't keep the piano and electronica out of those.  The soundtrack here can be beautiful and ominous all at once and it is absolutely great, well worth a listen.

     

     Unfortunately, that's all I can say that I undeniably loved about this movie as the rest of it is something of a mixed bag.  I like the leads of Lawrence and Pratt and they do have some pretty good chemistry and charisma onscreen together.  Even though Lawrence is top billed, this is very much Pratt's movie as his character awakens first and it was interesting to see him go through something along the lines of the Kubler-Ross Five Stages Of Grief Model.  In fact, I wish that this could've gone on longer (or have just been the whole movie) because I thought that when Jim considers suicide via air-lock 24 minutes into the film, it felt too premature.  At this point in the story, he's been on his own (unless you count Michael Sheen's android bartender Arthur) for just over a year and I get why Jim would want to try this but it didn't feel like it had been a year.  Since the movie isn't interested in being Cast Away IINNN SPAAAAACCEEE, Aurora is introduced shortly after this scene and then the movie felt like it picked up in pace, rushing through the highs and lows of their relationship.

     Looking over my notes again, it becomes clear that once Jim and Aurora's relationship tanks the movie doesn't offer a whole lot in terms of substance.  It's not like Jim goes all psycho over the fact that he's alone again despite not being the only person awake on the ship or Aurora finds something that Jim hasn't tried to reactivate their pods, they just sort of...exist.  Another character gets introduced at the 1hr 12min mark but they're only around for, what, literally ten minutes?  I would wonder why the movie even bothered introducing this character but obviously its for plot convenience so the story can attempt to build up suspense and tension for a finale on the exterior of the ship that probably sounds cool when you hear it but lacks that sense of peril in execution.

     As far as other technical things go, the only thing that stood out was that I was not overly impressed by the CGI in this movie.  There were a few dodgy green screen moments as well as CG effects that were not very convincing and these damaged the sense of immersion that I usually feel when watching a movie.  I will give credit though to the Zero Gravity Pool sequence though, where the onboard gravity malfunctions while Aurora is swimming and she gets trapped in a floating bubble of water.  Not only did the CGI look the best here but in order to really sell Aurora's predicament, Jennifer Lawrence was tied down in a water tank for authenticity.  Method acting for the win!

"Go for a swim," I said.  "It'll be relaxing," I said...

     In the end, Passengers is a movie that I'm glad I didn't see in theatres because I feel like I would feel more bitter towards it if I had.  The quality starts to dip after the first twenty minutes or so and that's a shame.  There are moments where you think the plot is going to go a certain way but then it goes a far less interesting route and it does that a few times leading up to an ending that doesn't so much feel like an ending but an abrupt stop that'll make you say, "That's it?"  Do I hate this movie?  No, I don't feel like I want the 110min runtime of my life back but I'm not in any rush to revisit the Avalon any time soon.  I liked Pratt, Lawrence and the score but the rest of it overall is pretty "Meh," and with that I'm giving Passengers the ranking of Indifferent.

 Yeah, that happened.

     What did you guys think of Passengers?  Good, bad or meh, let me know down in the comments below.  Thanks for reading and if you like what you see on the blog, be sure to nudge that "Follow" button and stay cynical!

     -The Cynic

Nocturnal Animals Review

     Nocturnal Animals is based on the 1993 novel Tony And Susan by Austin Wright.  Directed by Tom Ford and starring Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, it follows the story of an artist named Susan who is sent a manuscript of a novel written by her ex-husband Edward.  While she is reading the book, she finds herself not only becoming wrapped up in the violent events on the page but she also begins to reminisce about her life with Edward, rethinking some of the decisions she made in her life.

     So in all honesty, this movie kind of fell under my personal radar as far as movie watching goes.  Sure, I had heard of it but anything I had seen didn't jump out and grab me and say, "Hey!  You need to see this right now!"  However, it recently hit digital rental and I said, "Hey, let's give it a shot."

     First, the good. I found that the score by Abel Korzeniowski was haunting, intoxicating and gorgeous and I found myself tilting up my ear whenever it was on.  It felt like it would fit right in a classic horror movie so that's always welcome, as far as I'm concerned.
     While the cast here is overall pretty good, so much that I even wrote in my notes that I would just like to see a movie of Adams and Gyllenhaal sitting at a restaurant table casually talking.  That being said, there are a couple of real standouts that I'd like to address.  First off, Aaron Taylor-Johnson.  Holy shit, I had no idea that Ford Brody/Pietro Maximoff could be so unsettling.  Johnson plays this despicable human named Marcus Ray and I could feel my fingers tightening into fists and my shoulders tensing up whenever he was onscreen.  The other is Michael Shannon as Detective Bobby Andes.  This is one cop that I would NOT want on my trail, especially later on in the movie when his motivations become a little more...laid back, we'll say.  I don't really want to go too much into it in case you haven't seen this one yet but these two deserved the recognition they received with any awards and nominations they got for this movie.
     Last thing I want to talk about the overall look and cinematography of the movie.  Writer/director Tom Ford is a fashion designer so he is able to take his know-how of catching a person's eye visually and applies it into his direction which creates some real eye candy, not just the fact that Amy Adams has never looked as good in a movie as she does here but some really great shots like where some moments of the book overlap with shots of the real world.  Really good stuff.

     As for any negatives?  Well, notice how most of the praise I gave was to the events set within the novel Susan is reading?  That's because that's when the movie is at its strongest.  The real world stuff with Susan hating her job, her overly conservative mother (Laura Linney), correctly suspecting that her current husband Hutton (Armie Hammer) is cheating on her, I get that she is going through a lot of crap but at the same time, how Susan carries herself even in some of the flashbacks, she just comes off as being a very unpleasant individual to be around and I didn't find her terribly sympathetic.  I get that this movie has two plots and you have to focus on the two as equally as you can but whenever it stepped out of the novel, I found myself saying, "What?  No, no, stop, just go back to the book."  I got just over halfway through the movie before I got fed up and wrote down in my notes, "I officially don't care about the events outside the book."  It doesn't matter how long it takes to get there, when the viewer reaches a point where they no longer care about characters they're supposed to be following or root for, that's a big problem.  Especially when in the first thirty minutes or so I couldn't shake the feeling that this movie might end up talking down to me like High Rise did (thankfully, it didn't).
     There's also a couple little things that bugged me, like some lines of dialogue coming off as a little cheesy or forced or a really silly jump scare that really didn't need to be in the movie but on a technical level, Susan says that she hasn't spoken to Edward in 19 years and yet in the flashbacks, neither Adams or Gyllenhaal look any different than they do in the present.  Don't get me wrong, they're two very good-looking people but this just bugged me that it seemed like NO effort was put into making them look even slightly aged.  I get that this is a weird thing to get hung up on but it was just another thing that really distracted me and made me want the movie to go back to the events in the book.

     In summation, Nocturnal Animals is an interesting movie to watch.  While the plot-within-a-plot structure is neat, the novel world material completely overshadows the material set within the real world and makes a part of you wonder why we couldn't have just seen a movie about that.  However, the movie ends with a seemingly open-to-interpretation final shot that really gets you thinking and I can appreciate a movie that does that.  There is an explanation to the ending that I unwittingly stumbled upon and while it does make sense, there is a certain enjoyment to letting your mental gears whir and cobble together your own explanation.  I was torn between what rating to give it and even though I had some issues with one of the plots, the other is just that damn good and engaging that I feel like I would be selling this film short if I didn't give it this rating so I'm giving Nocturnal Animals the rating of a low Excellent.

 Excellent!  *guitar peel*

     I almost gave this movie a high Fun Ride but like I said, the stuff that takes place within the book is such a good movie in its own right, it should be classified as an Excellent.  What did you think of Nocturnal Animals?  Let me know down in the comments below and be sure to stay tuned to both the blog and the YouTube channel for upcoming reviews *cough*Logan*cough*.  Thank you so much for reading and if you like what you see here, you be sure to nudge that "Follow" button and stay cynical!

     -The Cynic

Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates Review

     Look, I know I said this was going to be a video review but I'm gonna be honest with you guys: I've been having a really rough go of it at work lately.  Not reviewing, I mean my actual job.  I won't bore you with the specifics because a) that's not why you're here and b) the facility's confidentiality policies would probably result in my termination if I were to violate them but long and short of it is that I haven't felt terribly great about things for the last couple of months while I've been on the clock and found myself in dire need of a good laugh.  I don't have very many comedies on my "Movies I've Seen This Year" list and decided that even if work hadn't been the way it has, I needed to see more comedies so I took a stab at the xBox Video rental selection and wound up with Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates.

     Our story, inspired by a true one, puts us at the side of Mike and Dave Stangle (Adam DeVine and Zac Efron), two brothers who are known to get overly riled up and out of control at family get-togethers.  Their parents have had enough of their shit and don't want them to ruin their sister's (Sugar Lyn Beard) wedding in Hawaii so their father demands that the boys bring respectable dates to the event to keep themselves in check.  Unsure of how to go about this, they run an ad on Craigslist advertising a free trip to Hawaii and are answered by Alice and Tatiana (Anna Kendrick and Aubrey Plaza), two wild girls fresh off of being fired from their jobs who see the ad as a means for a free vacation.  They put on the facade of being "nice girls" and convince the brothers to take them and, as you can imagine, as soon as they reach the island, shit flies south fast.

     Not a bad setup, right?  Too bad the same can't be said about the rest of the movie.  There's no really nice way to put this so I'll be blunt: Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates is a fucking terrible movie.  I went into this film hoping for some hearty guffaws to lift my spirits and forget my troubles and was greeted by an obnoxious chore of a film that dragged along like a zombie with a broken leg.  If this film was hyped up as a milestone event film the same way movies like Star Wars: Rogue One are, I would consider Mike & Dave a fucking blight to the genre.

     Where to start?  If this movie is supposed to be a comedy (you know, those movies that are supposed to make you laugh), why wasn't there anything remotely amusing until almost 15 minutes in?  The kind of humor that the movie shoots for isn't the clever, witty writing kind but more crude and loud moments where the characters either goof off or shout for long periods of time at something disgusting, sexual or both.  Sometimes these moments would go on for so long that you feel that the particular dead horse that the characters are beating was already a fine paste before they began throwing their fists at it.  Sadly, this is something that I've noticed in a lot of comedies: apparently loud noises and exposed skin counts as a goddamn joke nowadays and the longer it goes on, the funnier the movie thinks it is.  Spoiler alert: it ISN'T.

     As far as the characters themselves go, they can go piss up a rope.  I was not invested in any of these characters to want me to root for them to get back into the swing of things, to grow as individuals and let go of their own insecurities or anything like that.  Many of them came off as so astoundingly douchey that I couldn't believe that we were actually supposed to give a damn about their personal problems which play out so predictably that you can call the outcome of the film mere minutes into the runtime.

They never explain why Mike and Cousin Terry (Alice Wetterlund) have such animosity towards each other and it keeps popping up in the plot like a floater that won't flush.

     There are two more things that I would like to address about this movie.  First, the movie takes place on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, the same island where some of Jurassic Park was filmed.  Of course, the movie brings this up when Tatiana suggests that they go on this ATV Movie Tour where they ride quads around where Jurassic Park was shot (namely the Gallimimus paddock).  At this point, I had come to the conclusion that I hated this movie and my reaction was, "HEY, FUCK YOU!  LEAVE JURASSIC PARK OUT OF THIS!"  However, it did give me the idea to look up whether or not this is an actual thing you can do and if that's the case, I'd totally get in on that.

     Second, there are three moments in the movie where the characters try to do the right thing and actually show some growth to an extent for a sincere moment.  Yet when you feel like you like you just might consider the idea of actually liking these guys and gals, the script comes along and does something ridiculous that not so much pulls you out of the moment but more like stomps on you like you were a bag of flaming dog shit and laughs at your expense.

     Final Verdict: I gave this one a fair shot, ladies and gentlemen.  I really did.  I went in with an open mind and walked away with my skin crawling.  20 minutes in, I came to the conclusion that this wasn't a movie for me with the official "I fucking hate this thing" coming 15 minutes later while I still had another hour to go.  Tatiana has a phrase in this movie that she uses a couple of times, "Man, fuck it in the dick."  Surprisingly enough, that's how I feel about this movie.  Fuck this movie in the dick!  Fuck it in the dick so hard that said dick splits down the middle like chopped firewood.  While I am having a hard time deciphering whether or not this was worse than Gods Of Egypt, Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates is right up there as contender for "Worst Of 2016" and I hope that anyone who has not seen this movie yet chooses to keep it that way.  I am giving Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates the rating of a Kwik-E-Dog Special.

"Put down the Kwik-E-Dog!"

"I DON'T WANNA LIVE ANYMORE!"

*continuing arguing and screaming* 

     Well folks, there's my thoughts on this particular dumpster fire.  Did this one fare better with you and what is your favorite comedy movie in the last ten years?  As always, thank you for your time and if you like what you see here, you be sure to nudge that "Follow" button and stay Cynical!

     -The Cynic

The Jungle Book (2016) Review

     Good evening, everyone and welcome to another entry of Coffee With The Cynic's movie reviews!  Tonight we are taking a look at 2016's The Jungle Book, directed by Jon Favreau (Iron Man, Chef) and starring Neel Sethi.  Based on the book published in 1894, we follow Mowgli (Neel Sethi), a young boy raised by wolves in the jungle and mentored by a panther named Bagheera (voiced by Sir Ben Kingsley).  During a drought, a truce is called between all species of the jungle but the tyrannical tiger, Shere Kahn (Idris Elba), claims that having a "man-cub" is forbidden and vows to kill Mowgli once the rains return.  Mowgli decides to leave his wolf family for their safety and begins his trek to the a human village while bumping into creatures of all walks of life along the way.

     Am I familiar with this story?  Sort of.  Who hasn't seen the 1967 Disney classic?  However, it has been a really long time since I've seen that film (so much that I don't really remember much) so going into this new version of The Jungle Book felt like going into a fresh, original film and I wouldn't find myself being distracted by drawing comparisons to the 1967 animated movie.  How is it?  Pretty damned good.

     To say that this movie is visually incredible would be an understatement.  The film was shot in a Los Angeles studio on a blue-screen sound stage using a few rough puppets and actors in mo-cap suits to represent the various animal characters and give Neel Sethi something to act off of and I could count on one hand how many shots of this movie actually let that on.  The rest of the movie looked and felt like you were in the jungle with this young boy interacting with wolves, panthers, bears and the lot of them even though everything around him was brought to life with CGI (I swear, there are more than a few shots that I thought I was looking at real animals).

     Speaking of Neel's acting, this boy has one acting credit prior to this film and for the most part, he carried himself very well through this movie.  There were only one or two deliveries that made me cringe a bit but I don't think it was so much the actor but the dialogue as these lines didn't feel natural to hear a child say them but a child living in the jungle being raised by wolves isn't natural either so you could probably chalk this up as a nitpick.

     

When scenes like this hits you in the feels despite being a kid acting against pixels, you know you're doing something right.

     So Neel Sethi does well but what about the celebrity voice actors?  They also do well.  Again, for the most part.  My personal favorite was Bill Murray as Baloo because his wit and snark he brought to Baloo reminded me of the Bill Murray we've been missing for all these years (think less Lost In Translation and more 1984 Ghostbusters) and I found myself having a good laugh at a lot of his lines.  Idris Elba as Shere Kahn was a close second for me because the voice that Idris gives to this tiger made me absolutely terrified of him yet you couldn't look away whenever he was on screen.  Scarlett Johannson was fine as the python Kaa for the one cameo scene she was in and Christopher Walken as King Louie (who is interestingly a Gigangopithecus instead of a run-of-the-mill orangutan) was delightfully odd and being summoned via cowbell was a humorous nod.  The only one I found myself feeling ho-hum about was Sir Ben Kingsley as Bagheera as it felt like he just wasn't as into his role as everyone else was in the film.  It's not terrible but not up to par with the rest of the cast.

"He's an ugly little spud, isn't he?"

"I think he can hear you, Mowgli..."

     So is there anything outright bad about this movie?  Not much, really.  As mentioned before, there are couple of shots where it is a little more obvious that the movie was filmed with blue-screen and the odd slip-up from Neel Sethi or Sir Ben Kingsley's performances but the only other thing I can think of that stood out was the way the end credits played out featuring the same book that opened the 1967 classic flipping back and forth between pages while Walken's King Louie sings "I Wanna Be Like You" as it felt pretty out of place as far as tone goes but by this point, its the end credits so who cares, right?  Still felt more in place than the end credits to White Noise.

     Final Verdict: Jon Favreau's The Jungle Book is pretty damn good.  Is it Best of 2016 material?  My list-in-progress would tell you no but I would not fault anyone in the slightest for giving it that particular title.  The movie is absolutely breath-taking with the animation and jungle recreations, is entertaining with its characters and is quite thrilling with its climactic finale between Mowgli and Kahn.  Am I kicking myself for not seeing this one in theatres?  Yeah, a bit but hey, that's life.  Any negatives that I listed here are not crippling hindrances and I would suggest that you folks check it out if you haven't already now that it is on Blu-Ray.  The Jungle Book is most definitely Excellent.

 *guitar peel*

     So what did you think of 2016's The Jungle Book?  Is this your favorite version?  Let me know in the comments and as per usual, if you like what you see on this page, be sure to nudge that "Follow" button and stay cynical!

     -The Cynic

     P.S. I am doing a Give Away on the YouTube channel with some Dinosaurs Attack merchandise up for grabs.  Click here for details!

High Rise Review

     High-Rise is a seriously fucked up movie.  I know that I usually have the usual "Good (insert part of day this review was written)" intro but I just want to cut straight to the chase so let me say it again: High-Rise is a seriously fucked up movie and I'm not saying that this is in a particularly good way either.  Let's delve into this thing.

     High-Rise was originally a novel by J.G. Ballard published back in 1975.  I had never heard of it so naturally, I've never read it but it is about a luxury high-rise building where the divided-by-class residents eventually fall into chaos.  I got wind of this movie reading a Joblo.com article showing the trailer for the movie adaptation, starring one Tom Hiddleston.  I've liked Tom Hiddleston's work in the Marvel movies and he was the best thing about Crimson Peak and the premise of this movie sounded interesting.  It premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival but never heard anything more about it until I went to rent The Killing Joke on xBox TV & Movies and saw that High-Rise was available to rent.  Looking into it, the film supposedly had a wide release in the UK in March 2016 and a limited release in the US in May 2016 so despite it premiering at TIFF last year, I'm qualifying this one as a 2016 release.

     So the plot?  Tom Hiddleston is a doctor in a dystopian 1970s who has just moved into the 25th floor of a high-rise building, complete with its own supermarket, gym, pool, etc so residents have little reason to leave the building except to go to work.  He begins to mingle with the other residents of the building, including having a relationship with a single mother (Sienna Miller), partying with a married couple (Luke Evans and Elisabeth Moss) and playing squash with the architect (Jeremy Irons) of the building.  While hanging out with the architect, he gets stuck in an elevator during a power outage.  While this is a minor annoyance to the wealthier residents in the higher levels, it is far more problematic to the lesser residents on the lower levels.  As these interruptions in utilities continue and escalate, it leads to class warfare between the rich and the poor.

     Sounds pretty cool, right?  I don't want to sell this movie short so let me go over what was good about this.

     First and foremost, the acting is top notch.  Everyone involved puts in a high-caliber performance that doesn't make you think of other characters they have played in previous films and at least would've kept you in this film were it not for other elements (more on those later).

     The other thing that I really applaud High-Rise for is its cinematography and its set pieces.  When these two are put together, if nothing else this movie is absolutely gorgeous to look at in that regard.  It didn't matter if the scene was set in the swimming pool, a tenant's balcony or the architect's meadow on the top of the building, the scenery was beautiful even when the shit hit the fan (although there were a few parts where it would cut to an inanimate object that had nothing to do with whatever was happening and then cut back to the scene).

     There was one little thing I noticed during a scene where Hiddleston is invited to a party being thrown by the architect's wife (Keeley Hawes) and he shows up in a tuxedo with a bottle of wine, only to find the party is actually an 18th Century themed event and he is mocked by the higher ups.  Disgusted by the events, he takes a cigarette out of the pack and proceeds to light it up.  I don't know if it was intentional but the cigarette was bent slightly, the end dipping towards the ground slightly.  I couldn't help but wonder if that was supposed to be a symbol of his esteem after the exchange he had with the hosts but if this was intentional, good job, High-Rise.

Oh, and this happens too, if this is your thing.

     For those positive points I mentioned, they were rendered moot for two very crucial things.

     The first being the pacing.  High-Rise certainly takes its sweet time to get the ball rolling and while I'm not usually one to knock a movie with a slow buildup and a good payoff (Gareth Edwards' Godzilla, for example), there needs to be something happening within the story to keep me invested in these characters.  It wasn't until for reasons that are never explained, a character commits suicide (not a major character, don't worry) 45 minutes in that I really got something resembling progression of the plot but by then, the movie was already starting to lose me.  When the residents of the high-rise start becoming more hostile towards one another, it didn't really do anything to pull me back in and in my notes, I even wrote, "20 mins left, I want the movie to be over."

     The second is the script.  There are things that happen in this movie that seem to just come out of the blue with little rhyme and reason and the movie just expects us to go with it.  It is one thing to have characters do things but when we don't understand their motivations as to why they're doing things, it just comes off as bloated and confusing.  Say what you will about the characters in Jurassic World but at least you got a basic cookie-cutter motivation behind them.  After the minor character commits suicide, the movie seriously falls the fuck apart.  I get that the lower classes are pushing back against the higher classes but it becomes so muddled and cloudy, it felt like nothing was really happening.  I actually stopped taking notes as to what was happening on screen because I could no longer follow the story.  Here are the last few notes I wrote (left a couple out to avoid spoilers):

     -1hr 07min in, I seriously don't know what's going on.  I feel like nothing's happening.

     -Really feeling like I should've read the book...

     -I am so fucking lost.  Orgies in the top floor penthouse, Tom banging Wilder's pregnant wife, no indication of what the dystopia of the outside world is...

     I suppose one could make the argument that our feelings of confusion by the events onscreen not making sense is supposed to reflect the emotions of the characters effected by said events but it came off as resoundingly pretentious and it felt like the movie was so far up its own ass that I was just left in the dust.  Don't go where I can't follow you, High-Rise.  It doesn't end well for anyone.

Save your enthusiasm, Luke Evans.

     Final Verdict: Perhaps I've been spoiled by the summer blockbuster scene (after all, my top 3 favorite movies fall in that category) or perhaps I'm not intelligent enough to wrap my head around what High-Rise was trying to accomplish but I gotta call it like I see it: High-Rise is a fucking mess.  For all of the stellar performances and great looking set pieces, those two elements don't amount to much when the movie moves like molasses in January and the script leaves you more confused and frustrated than enlightened and entertained.  I don't want to jump the gun and say that there is a reason why I don't watch movies that have more of an artsy feel than the blockbuster, popcorn entertainment because High-Rise had an interesting premise to it.  It's just the delivery of said premise really didn't work for me and you shouldn't be surprised if this ends up on my "Worst Of 2016" list.  I wanted to like this one but High-Rise is a Throwaway.

 Get the fuck outta here.

     So guys, have you seen High-Rise?  Was it easier to follow for you?  Let me know in the comments and as always, if you like what you see, be sure to nudge that "Follow" button and stay cynical.

     -The Cynic

Suicide Squad Review

     Good evening, everyone and welcome to another entry in Coffee With The Cynic's movie reviews!  Alright, here we are with another entry into the DCEU (Detective Comics Extended Universe) in Suicide Squad.  My exact feelings on this one seemed to be all over the place leading up to its release.  When the original trailer from Comic-Con 2015 was uploaded last year, I thought to myself, "Oh...this might be worth checking out."  The darker, bleaker tone that the DCEU was shooting for (if Man Of Steel was any indication) could really work with these characters considering it is a team of villains and all.  I mean, sure, I wasn't sold on the new look of The Joker (Jared Leto) or Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) but I was still curious to see how it played out.  However, with each subsequent trailer and promotional image, it seemed as if the movie had taken a radical change of tone, moving away from that dark, gritty tone like The Dark Knight and opting for something more colorful and wacky like Guardians Of The Galaxy and I actually found myself less and less enthusiastic towards the film and stopped watching the promotional material for it because I didn't want anything to push me over and make me say, "You know what?  I don't want to see this.  I'll just do something else on my vacation day I took for this movie."

Good thing, too.  I literally just watched the SDCC 2016 trailer and that would've pushed me over.  I can't quite put my finger on why, though.

        In case you aren't overly familiar with the Suicide Squad (I'm right there with you), there have been a few different incarnations of it but this film is using the modern take on the term for its story: a team of incarcerated supervillains that is being used by the US Government as a covert deniable strike-team for black-op missions that is under the supervision of Amanda Waller (Viola Davis).  In this case, being led into Midway City to stop Enchantress (Cara Delevingne) from unleashing ancient mystic arts to mold the Earth into something a little more preferable to her needs.

     First, the good.  The casting is really good for the most part and quite entertaining.  I really liked Will Smith as Floyd Lawton/Deadshot, giving both that dramatic flair that he's been doing lately in the scenes involving his daughter and being that classic charming but smart-ass Will Smith from Independence Day that we've been wanting back for so long and even though there isn't really a main character in this movie, I totally get why Will Smith has top billing.
     Viola Davis as Amanda Waller is just about perfect and probably the best casting the DCEU has done to date.  I'm mostly familiar with Waller through the Justice League cartoon that was on during the early 2000s and the film Superman/Batman: Public Enemies and the live-action Waller is pretty much exactly how I remember her from those properties and I loved every second of it.  I would even go so far as to say she's probably the best thing about this movie.
     As for the rest of the Squad, they did what they needed to do and that was fine.  Joel Kinnaman was serviceable as Rick Flag, the Squad's direct commander and Waller's errand boy, Jay Hernandez added some emotional humanity as the team's pyrotechnic pacifist Chato Santana/El Diablo, Karen Fukuhara was pretty badass as the masked Katana, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje under pounds of prosthetic makeup delivered the big screen's first interpretation of Waylon Jones/Killer Croc and Jai Courtney was pretty likeable as Captain Boomerang.

Sure, this was the first movie I've seen the guy in but I haven't heard anything good about him in other projects.

     The action sequences were also a lot of fun and kept me entertained (hey, there's that word again).  The fights between the Squad and Enchantress' zombie-like army were pretty clear and easy to follow even if there were a few really quick cuts throughout and I really enjoyed the confrontation between El Diablo and Enchantress' brother Incubus (Alain Chanoine) closer to the end of the film with that particular scene getting an exclaim of, "Holy shit," from me.  There's also a couple of cameos from other DCEU films (stay for the mid-credits stinger, FYI) that felt far more organic than they did in BvS and playfully acknowledged that Suicide Squad is indeed part of that universe instead of shoving it down our throats with no regard for subtlety or creativity.

     I can hear you guys, "You haven't talked about Joker or Harley Quinn yet!  How dare ye!"  I'm saving them for their own sections.  Relax.

     First, Harley.  Harley Quinn is sort of a middle ground for me in this movie.  While I did enjoy Margot Robbie's portrayal of the character, even going so far as to say that she almost nailed the original Harley from Batman: The Animated Series' personality perfectly, I still hate her costume in this movie.  This was Harley Quinn's big-screen debut and there is a quick shot of Robbie in the classic harlequin-style jumpsuit with the pom poms and everything but instead they went with the white t-shirt and minuscule booty shorts.  I always found that Harley Quinn was a nice balance of looking hot and intimidating and sadly I never got the latter from her look.  While her performance helped soften that blow, all I'm saying is that you can have Harley Quinn look hot and alluring while she's still in pants.  If not the original jumpsuit, how about a variation thereof, like what she wore in the game Batman: Arkham City?

For Suicide Squad 2?  Please?

      Alright, I just want to address a couple of things that bugged me before I get to the big tamale.  At the beginning of the film, we're given these little exposition scenes introducing each member of the Squad.  While it was neat that each member was given their own song during this scene, the cartoony stat cards that came up on the screen were a bit off-putting, making me feel like I was watching an episode of Ultimate Spider-Man instead of a multi-million dollar feature film.  While the licensed songs worked in this bit, the film keeps throwing more at every given opportunity which made me wonder if composer Steven Price called Warner Bros. and said, "I just don't feel like composing today, guys.  What do you have in your licensed catalogue?"  Much like how the soundtrack in BvS was jarring, it eventually got to that point here and felt like it was trying too hard to be the soundtrack to Guardians Of The Galaxy.

     Another thing I noticed here was that there was that feeling, again, like BvS, that I wasn't seeing the full picture here.  Not that things were going over my head or I just wasn't "getting it" but I felt that there was a lot cut from the movie.  I'm wondering if that was due to the reshoots the film underwent earlier this year but it just feels like I'm being double-dipped to get the full film experience and it does hurt the movie a bit.

     I also felt that the addition of the character Slipknot (Adam Beach) was completely pointless.  I don't want to spoil anything but all I'm going to say is that he's basically here the same way KGBeast was in the animated Batman: Assault On Arkham (which follows a similar plot to this).  Of course, when he was introduced as Slipknot, I couldn't help but think, "Hey, he's not nine masked guys in coveralls from Des Moines, Iowa!  What are you trying to pull here?"

     Alright, you want to know what I felt was the worst thing about this movie?

Yup.  This guy.  Right here.

     I really did not like Jared Leto's take on The Joker and I don't just mean his appearance.  Sure, I still think the tattoos and the pimp jacket were an ill-fit with Joker but Leto's performance just did not do it for me.  He never came off as particularly threatening or amusing, just eccentric and weird and his laugh is just weak compared to literally every other incarnation of this character.   He really doesn't have much presence in this movie but I've heard that a lot of his scenes were cut for whatever reason.  I am honestly not terribly heartbroken over that as it gave us more of the characters we actually gave a crap about.  Leto's Joker is remarkably forgettable and I honestly can't remember any lines of dialogue he had in this movie.

     Final Verdict: Well, I guess the third time was the charm for the DCEU because Suicide Squad was actually entertaining!  Absent are the abundance of mopey bring-downs of Man Of Steel or the overcrowded pretensions of BvS and instead we have the kind of movie that you can just sit down and have fun with.  Yeah, remember when we were allowed to go to the movies to do that?  This will remind you of those times.  Suicide Squad is far from perfect, especially since I'm left feeling I didn't see the full film but the positives truly outweigh the negatives on this one.  While I cannot bring myself to say I'm gonna rush out and buy the Blu-Ray, I would be down for a viewing of a Director's Cut and I don't think we wasted a 90 minute drive to the theatre and then the two hour run time.  I was never outright bored with Suicide Squad and I did have an entertained smile for a good chunk of it so with that, I'm going to give Suicide Squad the rating of a Fun Ride.

 Wheeee!

     So folks, I leave the floor open to you.  Have you seen Suicide Squad and what is your favorite anti-hero?  Let me know down in the comments and, as per usual, if you like what you see on this blog, you be sure to nudge that "Follow" button and stay cynical!

     -The Cynic

Double Review: BvS: Ultimate Edition & Batman: The Killing Joke

                Hello, everyone and welcome to another entry of Coffee With The Cynic’s movie reviews!  Originally this was going to be a video but Windows 8.1 isn’t cooperating and won’t let me open Movie Maker to edit the raw footage so I will provide you with a transcript here.  Sadly, this will probably be the case until we get upgraded to Windows 10 but we hope to get that done as soon as humanly possible.  Now, on with the show…article…whatever.

                Tonight we’re going to be doing a double bill review, starting off with the Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice Ultimate Edition, or as I like to call it, Batman vs Superman: Bat-Ass Edition as well as the animated film Batman: The Killing Joke.

                Batman vs Superman: Bat-Ass Edition

                Okay, so if you’ve been watching my videos, you’ll know that I really did not care for the theatrical cut of BvS and up until I watched Gods Of Egypt, BvS was actually the worst movie I had seen all year (so far).  When I heard that the Blu-Ray was going to feature an extended, “R” rated cut, I figured, “Alright, we never got to see the complete picture.  I’ll give the director’s cut a chance, maybe those extra thirty minutes will add something and who knows, maybe even knock it down a few spots on my ‘Worst Of 2016’ list.”  So I got around to watching it and I gotta say, “My eyes!  Ze thirty minutes, they do nothing!”

                The only thing I really noticed that the director’s cut “improved” the theatrical version was how it made it more coherent, dare say obvious, that someone was framing Superman.  Sadly, that was about it.  What was good about was still really good (Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Jeremy Irons) and what was bad about the movie was still really bad (still way too many plots that would’ve been better as their own films, Jessie Eisenberg, the title fight comes in too late and ends too quickly).

                As for the “R” rating?  This movie didn’t need it.  Oh, you drop two “fucks” throughout the film?  Fuck-a-doodle-doo.  Extra CGI blood thrown in?  Wasn’t that intense, even when the thug’s head leaves a streak of blood on the way down after getting smacked by a crate.  This was a waste of an “R” rating.

                I was hoping that the extra thirty minutes would clear a few things up, that it would make the movie better and I would sit there like, “Okay, yeah, that’s a step in the right direction, guys!”  Sadly, my opinion of BvS still has not changed.  How can a movie add so much to the runtime without adding anything to the story?  It’s still a jumbled clusterfuck of a mess, focusing too much on catching up with other and more successful competitors rather than on being a good movie in its own right.  It’s still the second worst movie I’ve seen this year and it’s still a Throwaway.

Get the fuck outta here!

GOD, this is disappointing.  Like I said, I liked things about this movie but the things I didn’t like did so much damage that this just leaves me frustrated and hurt!  This hurts!  These characters deserved better.

Batman: The Killing Joke

The Killing Joke is the long-awaited animated adaptation of the famous comic written by Watchmen scribe, Alan Moore.  Prior to watching this film, I had only read the comic once and thought, “Yeah, it was alright.”  I didn’t get really attached to it or fall in love with it the way that it seems almost everyone else did but I was up for reading it again.

What got me interested in this one was the casting with Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill returning to reprise their roles as Batman and The Joker, respectively.  In our household, Kevin Conroy is Batman and Mark Hamill is the best Joker.  Period.  I gotta say that these guys still got it as they are both amazing in their roles, be it Conroy’s powerful yet stoic voice or Hamill’s ability to sound both amusing and chilling at the same time (a couple of parts actually did make me shudder a little).  It never fails to amaze me how these two have been playing these roles for over twenty years and they still truly love being in these characters’ shoes.

A lot of people seem to have issue with the first half an hour of this movie involving Barbara Gordon/Batgirl (voiced by Tara Strong), whether it be they found her annoying or just because it wasn’t in the original Killing Joke comic.  I can understand why they feel this way but it didn’t bother me so much because, like I said before, I’m not strongly attached to the original comic and the film did need to flesh her out before the events of The Killing Joke so that she can be a full-fledged character instead of just a plot device.  That being said, I would be outright lying if I said I didn’t think it went on a little too long or if I didn’t say it felt like another movie added to the beginning of The Killing Joke but good things come to those who wait.

As far as adapting the comic goes, once it actually starts into The Killing Joke, it is pretty much the comic word for word and somewhat frame for frame.  It was like the executives were wondering, “Okay, how do we adapt this comic to animation,” and one of them flipped open the book, showed it to them and said, “Do this.”  Granted, the color scheme of the film is closer to the rerelease of the comic where the color palette was more modern as opposed to the flashy, carnival color palette of the original comic.

As for the rating?  This is DC’s first animated “R” rated feature so that was exciting in its own right and I will say this: this film earned its “R” rating more than BvS: Bat-Ass Edition did.  That being said, it isn’t a hard “R” like Heavy Metal or anything like that.  Probably closer to a 14A, if we’re being entirely honest.

I really like the DC Animated Universe and the movies and series released therein so I was interested to see how the animation in this one fared against the animation from previous entries.  The animation by no means is terrible but I did find it a bit stiff in some areas when a character would turn their head or one shot in particular when the CGI animation blended poorly with the 2D stuff.  It’s not a deal breaker but don’t expect animation as smooth as Batman: The Animated Series here.

Final Verdict: Basically, if you like the comic, you’ll probably like the movie or at least once the movie gets to the comic’s story.  I personally didn’t mind the extra stuff at the beginning but I can get why others might.  My feelings for the movie mirror my feelings for its source material: I liked it, I’m not head-over-heels in love with it the way many others are but after watching this movie, I read the comic again and watched the movie again, putting them both at two views and I wouldn’t turn my nose up at the idea of revisiting either in the future.  I love watching Conroy and Hamill reprise these roles and I had fun and felt good watching The Killing Joke (which is kind of morbid, I know) and in the end, I will say that Batman: The Killing Joke is A Fun Ride and I would recommend checking it out.

 Wheeeee!

So folks, let me know in the comments: what did you think of either of these movies, for better or worse?  Also, keep your ears to the ground on this blog as we are seeing Suicide Squad tomorrow and will be doing a review of that, as well as a review of a film I never got to see as a kid, Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm.

Thanks for your time and if you like what you see on this blog, you be sure to nudge that “Follow” button and stay cynical!

-The Cynic

-The Cynic