Category: Movies

Good Watch: #Hush @netflix #GoodWatch #QuarantineLife

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The premise: A deaf and mute writer (played by Kate Siegel) lives in a home in the woods. She enjoys the isolation over her former life in the city. A man in a mask arrives threatening to kill her. Hush is less than 90 minutes long, so it’s no surprise that on 25 minutes in, you see the killer’s face. There’s no time to spare. 93/73

Her disability didn’t seem to play an important role in the movie other than to add a bit of color to the story. This had me thinking: What it would be like if the movie had absolutely no audio? The protagonist is deaf, and we’re supposed to step inside her shoes and feel her fear. What better way to relate to her than to experience the events from her true perspective?

Overall, the cast is good, but the writing fell flat, and I felt like they ran out of things to say, which would explain its 82-minute runtime (includes credits). We’re never given the killer’s motivation, but he’s so incompetent it appears he doesn’t want to win. Fortunately for him, everyone was incompetent, making all the wrong moves at almost every step. Perhaps that was necessary, as the slightest bit of competence would have cut the movie length to 15 minutes. The killer is played by John Gallagher, Jr., who I’ve always liked, but he’s never played an intimidating character as far as I know. There’s good reason for that. I wasn’t at all intimidated despite the neck tattoo, which was obviously a cheap attempt to buff him. At least the character he played was self-aware in this regard.

I don’t understand why it received such good scores on Rotten Tomatoes (93 from the critics and 73 from the audience), but I seem to be alone on this one. What do I know?

It wasn’t clever, original, or scary, which is all it tried to be, but in the time it took you to read this post, you could have watched the movie. As always, YMMV, and cats don’t give a shit.

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Good Watch: #Fractured @netflix #GoodWatch #QuarantineLife

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Sam Worthington has done a few movies for Netflix. I haven’t enjoyed any of them until now. This one I did. Worthington plays a man on a Thanksgiving road trip with his wife and daughter. There’s an incident, and he has to rush his daughter to the hospital. He’s told only one of them may go back with the daughter during treatment, and he defers to his wife. After a brief nap, he wakes up and asks for a status report. The doctors and staff say that his wife and daughter were never there. Then the real story begins.

This didn’t end the way I was expecting, and while a bit of a strain on logic, it was a refreshing change of pace. As always, YMMV.

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Good Watch: Circle @netflix #GoodWatch #QuarantineLife

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It’s hard to discuss this movie without engaging in spoilers. It’s a cast of mostly unknown actors (I vaguely recognized a couple of them) who are standing in a room. They realize that every minute or so, they must vote on which one of them is to be killed. There’s no way of knowing how many will have to die for the sick game to end, nor is there anything more than conjecture as to how they got there and who put them there.

I shouldn’t have liked this movie because it requires far too great a leap in logic. But I did. I certainly didn’t like the ending. It was trite and answered no question. Everything is left to interpretation.

But for some reason, I liked it. As always, YMMV.

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A Summary of the #MCU Leading up to #Endgame @MarvelStudios

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Sundays are now lazy days for me. Going forward, I’m just going to re-post other people’s work. Today, it’s one hour and 14 minutes of some of the most important moments in the MCU leading up to Avengers: Endgame.

Maybe watch it at double speed.

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Garbage Watch: The Ritual @netflix #GoodWatch #QuarantineLife

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I’m not a fan of the horror genre. I find the writing lazy, relying on poor decision making on the part of the characters in order to move the flimsy scripts forward. So, take this with a grain of salt.

This movie was atrocious. It took far too long to develop, and once it did, it moved very quickly because there was absolutely nothing clever about the story or the characters. Moreover, the big reveal was rather lame. I was rooting for the bad guys because only one of the protagonists didn’t earn my ire, and he was the first one to die. If you watch this movie, you won’t deserve to have been blessed with the 94 minutes of life that you will have just wasted. You’ve been warned.

Whoever suggested that I watch this is lucky I don’t remember they did so. As always, YMMV.

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Good Watch: Look Who’s Back @netflix #GoodWatch #QuarantineLife

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The premise: Adolph Hitler is magically teleported to 2014. He quickly makes his presence known, and people mistake him for a comedian. The show starts out rather slowly but quickly becomes interesting. While there are genuine comedic moments, this is not a comedy. It’s a satire on how Hitler came to power. If you doubt its authenticity, note well that there are several scenes where the actor stays in character in dealing with ordinary Germans (i.e., not actors). Some laugh it off, and one guy actually doesn’t think the joke is funny at all, but some express support. This reminded me of what Sasha Baron Cohen does. I’m a fan of his work as well; sometimes creating comedy, and sometimes exposing the dark side of society.

As always, YMMV.

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Black Widow Dies #MCU @JeremyRenner @MarvelStudios

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Sundays are going to be lazy days for me. Going forward, I’m just going to re-post other people’s work. Today, it’s one of the best sacrifices in the MCU. As I’ve said, I don’t know if the relationship between Black Widow and Hawkeye was the best thing in the MCU, but it’s pretty damn close.

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Good Watch: How It Ends @ForestWhitaker @netflix #GoodWatch #QuarantineLife

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There’s an apocalypse. A man has to travel from Chicago to Seattle to get to his fiance. His companion is his disappointing father-in-law played by Forrest Whitaker. The movie isn’t science fiction, because it’s not actually about the apocalypse. It’s about how humans react to it, and it isn’t pretty. Sadly, I think it’s accurate. In times of stress, people will turn on each other, even though cooperation would maximize everyone’s position. It’s yet another example of the prisoner’s dilemma.

It was worth my two hours, but as always, YMMV.

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Guilty Pleasure: Priest @Paul_Bettany @KarlUrban @MaggieQ @lilycollins @CamGigandet @netflix #GuiltyPleasure #QuarantineLife #priest

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Over on Rotten Tomatoes, Priest earned scores of 15 from the critics and 46 from the audience. Not many liked it. I bet some the actors I copied will not be happy I did.

The 2011 movie takes place in a post-apocalyptic Earth in which warrior-priests are the first line of defense against a race of vampires. While there are similarities — fangs, superior senses, vulnerability to sunlight — these vampires are different from what we see in other media. They’re barely even humanoid. The critics criticized the movie as just trying to throw a bunch of pop-culture elements together in a way that hasn’t been done, and it created a mess. You may criticize its execution, but trying to carve a novel path isn’t something deserving of such criticism. I won’t hold that against them. By no means do I like this one as much as many of the other guilty pleasures about which I’ve written, but it’s okay.

This movie is nothing more than a shoot-em-up, and sometimes thats all I want to see.

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Horrible Watch: The Wandering Earth #GoodWatch #QuarantineLife

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This was bad. Really bad. The sun is expanding and will (relatively) soon engulf Earth, and eventually the entire solar system. The governments of Earth ‘come together in an unprecedented way’ (how many times have I heard that?) to build engines in the Earth that will propel it through the solar system and beyond to a star that’s 4.2 light years away. I guess that’s Alpha Centauri, which on average is 4.3 light years from Earth.

Oh no! There was a miscalculation. Or malfunction. I wasn’t paying attention at this point. Earth is heading straight for Jupiter. That is, unless a rag tag assortment of soldiers, nerds, unqualified kids, and the requisite comic relief can save humanity. What  will happen?

Who cares? Seriously, there were moments that were written clearly to evoke sympathy due to the sacrifice of a supposedly beloved character, and I couldn’t care less. I was kind of hoping the Earth would be destroyed.

Please don’t watch this, but as always, YMMV.

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