Well, this seemed to work well with my Stash Or Trash: Spider-Man Films (2002-2014) video so let’s give it a go here. I’ve been getting caught up on a bunch of movies that I needed to watch and due to time restraints, I won’t have a chance to give each one an individual review so we’re gonna lump ‘em together for some speed reviews. Each movie will have about a paragraph or two devoted to it so this post isn’t a mile long. Let’s get started!
Life stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson and
Ariyon Bakare and is about the crew of a space station studying a new life form
that they have discovered only to have it turn hostile towards them. The best way I can describe this movie is
imagine if you put Alien, Evolution (sans the humor, for the most part) and Gravity in
a blender. There’s a great sense of
claustrophobia to this movie as if you’re trapped in the narrow corridors of
this station with the crew and it’s good that the movie actually spends time
showing them off and getting you invested in them before it starts to throw
them into danger. When you watch the
creature grow larger and smarter, your sense of hope gradually diminishes until
you get to a point where you tell yourself, “They’re so screwed.” My only complaints are that some of the
dialogue gets really cheesy about an hour in and I called the ending a little
earlier than I would’ve liked to admit.
I wouldn’t consider this movie a horror film like I do with Alien
but Life is a really intense thriller with a nail-biting score, pretty
believable creature effects and investing performances all around, even if Ryan
Reynolds’ character is just a caricature of himself and I’m giving Life an
Excellent.
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| "EXCELLENT!" *guitar peel* |
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| "Yeah, that happened..." |
Alright, full
disclaimer: I never watched the original show that CHIPS is based off of
because that was before my time and I don’t think it was a big enough deal with
my parents that they would’ve wanted to show my brothers and I the reruns on TV
so I’m approaching this one just as a movie.
Dax Shepard wrote, directed and starred in the movie as a failed X-Games
athlete joining the California Highway Patrol to try and save his marriage and
he is paired with Michael Pena who plays a sex addicted FBI agent going undercover
to find a ring of crooked cops on the force.
The best things that I can say about this movie is that the catalogue of
licensed songs that the movie uses is actually pretty good and on Pena’s first
day on the force, the captain accidentally calls him “Officer Pantera,” which
made me think of Phil, Dime, Rex and Vinnie as highway patrolmen and that would’ve
made a much better film because CHIPS is awful. The film doesn’t even try to have an element
of mystery to it, choosing instead to reveal the villain very early on in the
movie (Vincent D’Onofrio, what a surprise) so it can unload a plethora of
unamusing dick jokes at the audience.
Seriously, this movie is 100 minutes long and I didn’t laugh once and
if your movie is supposed to actually make people laugh, you’re doing something
wrong. There is no chemistry between the
two leads, the humor goes raunchy for an attempt at a cheap laugh, it thinks
loud equals funny, said unamusing jokes go on for way too long, when
these two talked I found myself muttering, “Oh, shut the fuck up.” I was annoyed 25 minutes in, pissed off by
the hour mark and I’m giving CHIPS a Throwaway.
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| "Get the fuck outta here..." |
As much as CHIPS pissed
me off, I do think The Belko Experiment is the worse film. Even if done horribly, at least CHIPS had
a story to tell whereas The Belko Experiment has more of a vapid gorno
vibe to it which is disappointing because James Gunn wrote the script so you’d
think I would’ve given something of a shit about the characters, right? NOPE!
The story is these office workers are locked in their building and the
only way they can get out is to kill each other and it’s as flavorless as it
sounds. The profanity and violence serve
as nothing more than noise and spectacle, it's too...simple to be social commentary, the protagonists aren’t remotely
likeable and no one else in the cast can salvage this. I was ready for the movie to be over 45
minutes into the 90 minute runtime and that is never a good sign. I would say at least the movie is mercifully
short but the pacing of it makes it feel more like a 2 hour film and while it’s
dangerously close to a Shoot Her, I am giving The Belko Experiment a
Throwaway.
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| "Get the fuck outta here..." |
Before anyone asks, no, these two movies are not worse than A Cure For Wellness. Just wanna put that out there. Hopefully the next movie I review will better *cough*Apes*cough*.
-The Cynic
