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An error has ocurred. Please try againI have written full reviews for each of these movies, in case you want to read them. Again, these are just my opinions.
If you love or hate any of these movies, that is fine, I'm just sharing my opinions. I'm borrowing the title from the essay "Good Bad Books" by George Owell. This is not to be confused with so-bad-it's-good movies, i.e. "The Room."
Reviews
I Can't Sleep (2020)
Clever and fun
Let's get the obvious out of the way - this was made on a very low budget, no big stars, not the greatest photography. Get over it.
Leonore is an aspiring writer who has trouble finishing her stories, and one night while trying to finish one she sees a man outside her house. Or thinks she does. She calls the police and an officer come to help.
The story is about an alien invasion. However, like the movie "Another Earth" with Brit Marling, Leonore's story uses an alien invasion as a backdrop to tell a much more personal story, about a young woman who does not fit in. And we gradually see why Leonore felt the need to tell this story.
Why can't people sleep? In Leonore's case, it is anxiety, and she can only get through it by writing about it. She has difficulty trusting people, and it shows in her story's plot twists.
"I Can't Sleep" is a movie about turning your pain into something productive, and to stop feeling ashamed of your vulnerabilities.
The Secret Life of Suckers (2010)
Delightful Silliness
This is a series of short films featuring toys that come to life and do silly things while in the back of cars. The main character is Travis, a monster-ish thing with an uncanny resemblance to Domo-Kun. He has suction cups on his hands that he can use to climb the window, and he has a dog named Constantine. His friends in other cars include a Goth doll named Kawaii, a robot named MC Speaker, a Panda named Panda 8, and three wrestlers known collectively as The Vandross.
Travis acquires items such as a paddleball, a TV, a boat, a yo-yo, a toy car with race tracks, and experiments with them. I don't know where these things come from, and I don't care. There's no speaking, no plot, hardly any lesson or point to it. It borrows elements from Toy Story, and like I said Travis feels like a copy of Domo - bit torso with no head, big mouth but never speaks, monstrous yet adorable, super curious about things.
It's the kind of show we could all use once in a while. It doesn't try to be any more than it is, and I think it actually manages to be a lot more pleasant and imaginative than some of the other cartoons we get these days (i.e. The Angry Birds Movie). I am very glad they made this show.
Terminator Genisys (2015)
Gets worse the more I think about it
This movie takes the Terminator franchise and turns it into a corny action comedy. You can argue it's more of a failure as a sequel than it is as a film. It has constant callbacks to the other movies, repetition of previous themes, and a ridiculous overuse of CGI. None of this is toxic filmmaking, but I was constantly asking myself: "Why did they make this? What does this add to the franchise?"
The story is confusing because of how much time travel occurs in it, and how it creates dual pasts for Kyle Reese. However, there is one major part of this movie that makes no sense, and it took me a long to put my finger on it.
Toward the beginning, "Alex" (the embodiment of Skynet, played by Matt Smith) infects John Connor with "machine phase matter," turning Connor into the T-3000, a super-powerful new Terminator with weird particle matter. Like Bloodshot, I guess. Not only that, but Connor immediately joins Skynet and works to serve it. Somehow the "machine phase matter" either convinces him or coerces him to serve Skynet.
Now, this raises a huge question: if Skynet has this "machine phase matter" that can turn a human being into a super-powerful servant that does Skynet's bidding, then why doesn't Skynet just infect lots of people with it?
We've seen in the previous movies that Skynet kept human beings as prisoners. If Skynet had done this experiment on lots of people, then it would have had an army of unstoppable new Terminators that no laser gun could stop. Maybe this experiment with the "matter" does not work on everyone, but even it only worked 1% of the time, then Skynet still could have created an army, given all of its human captives.
All of the Terminator movies had at least a few flaws. But this is the biggest plot hole in the franchise. This movie creates a super-strong antagonist with surprising ease, so it raises the question: why aren't there more of these guys?
As I said, there are lots of other problems with this movie. Coupled with this one gaping plot hole, I really think this is the worst in the whole series.
The Free Fall (2021)
Has to be seen to be believed
This was an amazing exercise in insanity. A young woman has a melodramatic conversation with her sister right before visiting her parents, then suddenly has a vision of pure horror. She wakes up in bed, suddenly has a husband, can't remember anything, gets weird visits from a bearded guy who might or might not exist.
I burst out laughing at least once every five minutes. Everyone is trying so hard to be serious, and the story is trying so hard to be terrifying, that I could feel the movie collapsing under the weight of its own incoherence. When is this supposed to be taking place? I noticed the rotary phones and the typewriter. Yet there is no sense of setting in the story, the old-fashioned props are just there to make things look gothic. Same with the grandfather clock.
So many times, Sarah would see something or experience something and then wake up, as if it were all a dream - to the point where I had no idea if anything was really happening or not, so I found it impossible to take anything seriously. What difference does it make what happens in this scene? She's just going to wake up again. And then we get so many bizarre shots of Sarah seeing Sarah. A different Sarah? An evil Sarah? A Sarah from the past?
Sarah and her husband have many conversations in this movie. But they do not sound like human conversations. Nick says that he wants to protect Sarah, and Sarah insists that someone is invading the house. Rinse and repeat. There is also the framing device of pig meat - early in the movie we see bacon, and toward the end we get a whole roast pig. Interpret that however you like.
Oh, and the photography. My god. Constant blur effects, and switching back and forth between different visions, to create the sense of confusion. I could feel the director grabbing camera and shouting into it, "THIS IS SCARY! I'M DOING SOME WEIRD THINGS HERE!"
"The Free Fall" is incompetent, preposterous, and insane. If it had been a little more fantastical and done a bit more with practical effects, it could have been another "Troll 2." I know this is a terrible movie, but I was mesmerized. You don't get unintentional hilarity like this just every day.
Malignant (2021)
It's not the same old thing...except, it is
I genuinely feel guilty writing this review, because this movie went pretty over-the-top at times and I make a point of respecting that. "Malignant" took risks, it had some great choreography and photography, and it even had a few moments of hilarity. I respect James Wan. But I cannot respect this movie.
"Malignant" is about a woman named Madison who starts having visions of a humanoid creature dressed in black committing murder, and each of her visions turns out to be a real event. The first half of this movie focuses on her confusion as she tries to understand where these visions come from. On paper this sounds a lot like "Minority Report," but in this movie it comes off as less scientific and more gothic and more specifically connected to the protagonist. Then we get the inevitable twist, and Madison realizes why she has these visions.
Apparently several people (including Wan himself) have defended this movie by saying that it is intended to be unique rather than perfect. And again, I respect this initiative. I have given positive reviews to "Fatman" and "Serenity," movies that were certainly flawed but they were dedicated. They went for broke. Chris Stuckmann, a reviewer I admire very much, says that this movie shows a return to "camp" in film, and that the movie is deliberately outrageous. But it is inconsistently outrageous, switching back and forth between a plausible sci-fi scenario and a guns-blazing action fest that has written itself a blank check for supernatural abilities.
The creature in black - is it related to the devil? Is it immortal, impervious to bullets? Can it turn invisible? Can it teleport? The movie implies all of these things, but it could not make up its mind. The creature consistently had the ability to manipulate electronic devices, but the movie gave no explanation as to how this was possible (and it added nothing to the plot). One aspect that made movies like "Alien" and "The Terminator" so terrifying (I mean the first of each, make what you will of the sequels) was that they were grounded, plausible, and consistent with the rules they set up. They felt like they could happen in the real world. In "Malignant," we eventually get a backstory that is actually pretty realistic and gripping, but then Wan has to resort to long, repetitive action scenes and buckets of gore that serve no purpose except to remind us that every supernatural creature can conveniently acquire special powers at Villains'R'Us and secretly takes kung fu lessons in its spare time. Beware! I recently watched "Vivarium," another offbeat horror movie, and while I also found that movie to be inconsistent and repetitive at times, it did not rely on shock value or gore. The scariest scenes in "Vivarium" were just shots of human beings, acting unnatural.
And so we come to the problem: "Malignant" really is the same old thing, mostly. It takes a decent premise and turns it into an over-the-top action-horror flick. I think one of the reasons why this movie fails to utilize its premise is because it just didn't have much character development. Who is Madison, really? What does she do for a living? What interests her? How did she meet her husband? If Wan had taken the fairly intriguing premise, and applied it to a character whom I could actually relate to, he might have had something. Instead we just get the "average attractive white woman has creepy stuff happen to her, and she screams a lot" setup, the same problem I had with "The Invisible Man." If you just gave the characters a bit of personality, an attitude or an edge or a viewpoint, that can make the movie stick, but Wan didn't put enough thought into that.
As with a lot of corny horror movies, this movie had no message except "you have to survive." But, again, the basic premise of this story could have meant something more. "The Sixth Sense" told us that you have to try to make connections with the people around you (even if they're dead). "Vivarium" was a cautionary tale about everything that can go wrong when you buy a house and start a family. But there was no lesson in "Malignant." It didn't create anything. It just portrays evil as a certainty in life, and tells us that we have to be ready for it. How? By concentrating really hard? If the villain had possessed a consistent array of abilities and weaknesses, or if the protagonist had possessed some tangible character strengths, then their conflict might have meant something to me.
"Malignant" was imaginative and pretty well-made. And yet, somehow, it actually reinforces some of the problems with the film industry: characters who ring hollow, over-reliance on shock value, and a desire to thrill the audience rather than to make something meaningful to the filmmakers themselves. I have a difficult time believing that this movie actually pleased James Wan. He delivered something different, but it wasn't personal. The greatest source of uniqueness is not the diverting of expectations; it's your own personal experiences. I don't want a filmmaker's nightmare; I want a filmmaker's dream.
If you like campy movies, fine. I think "Malignant" needed to choose between being a plausible sci-fi thriller and a self-parody, because the individual scenes swerved between one and the other; it clearly was not trying to be both at once (you could argue that "Starship Troopers" tried to do that, though I did not like the end result). I am glad that some people enjoyed this movie, but I felt no connection to it.
Vivarium (2019)
Stimulating Horror, Disappointing Story
Some parts of this movie genuinely disturbed me, and with originality and minimalism rather than with gore and jump-scares. Visually it's a masterpiece - they made a world of concrete surrealism that overwhelms you by how self-satisfied it is.
The main problem is that, for much of the second act, the movie actually gets pretty boring. For a while, not a whole lot happens, it just hits you over the head with how isolated Tom and Gemma are from the rest of the world. I know that's the point, but you can only repeat a motif so many times in a movie before I start groaning.
Another problem was the bits of intrigue in the movie that don't go anywhere. The book in a weird language. The television with its one channel that looks like Wassily Kandinsky meets Istvan Banyai. The strawberries that have no taste. The grass suddenly shriveling up. The robotic nature of the salesman. The weird clouds. You can interpret the symbolism as you like, but there wasn't much payoff or explanation.
This movie had a very small cast, and that can be a problem if the actors are no good. Thankfully everyone did an excellent job.
The filmmakers definitely had something here, but it didn't feel like a complete story. It works as a horror movie, but I think there was a deeper story here that really could have knocked our socks off, and it didn't quite surface.
Serenity (2019)
Astonishing Disconnect
Imagine if they made "Blazing Saddles" as a straight drama, without changing any of the story. That is how "Serenity" plays out. The plot of the movie is ludicrous, the dialogue is laughable, and yet everyone plays it like it's Film Noir.
What I like about this movie is the dedication. They were not just putting together something silly, to market to the lowest common denominator. This movie took itself seriously, it has some nice photography and earnest performances, and it sticks to its outrageous plot points. I have no doubt that the filmmakers and cast recognized the inherent weirdness of this project, but they still put a lot of effort into it.
A movie is a form of art. A lot of people have criticized this movie because, objectively, it is unrealistic and difficult to relate to. But I like this movie, precisely because it took a very strange story and treated it with extreme devotion. A lot of people also found fault with the outrageous plot twist, and while I agree that twist is derivative and silly, the movie stuck to it to the end. This movie affected me, because it was different.
I'm tempted to say that "Serenity" is like the new "The Room," so poorly conceived that it is unintentionally hilarious. But I also think "Serenity" is kind of ahead of its time, because it tries to show us how little control we really have over our lives. The characters have motivations, but we see that they are just reacting to larger forces. This movie challenges us to ask questions about how we fit into the world.
I know it's not for everyone, but I genuinely recommend it and I did not find it boring at all.
Fatman (2020)
Oddly Brilliant
I don't know how this movie got made, but I am really glad it did.
This is a sick, violent, sophisticated thriller, and at the same time it is a dark comedy that had me laughing out loud, and at the same time it is a Christmas movie. In fact, it is one of the most poignant Christmas movies I have seen in years.
Christmas has become commercial, because we have become commercial - we know what we want, and we just want more and more of it. So this movie shows Santa's workshop as an elaborate business, one that we are squeezing and taking advantage of. Santa is tired of it, but what can he do? He cannot ignore his omniscient view of people's morality (or their lack of it). He must adapt. But of course the greedy spoiled children of the world do not approve. They expected him to be a blank check, and one disappointed little boy finally goes too far and actually seeks revenge against Santa Claus.
I have seen Christmas movies lately that tried to be dark comedies and ended up perverted and ugly ("Krampus," "Better Watch Out"). But this movie does not lose sight of the moral that the best Christmas movies strive to achieve, the moral of morality itself, of goodness and care and simple compassion. Like the Grinch, like Ebenezer Scrooge, the Santa Claus in this movie has a kind heart that we can appreciate after he has rediscovered it.
Does this message belong in a violent movie? Absolutely. In fact, that was what has been missing from so many soulless, choppy action movies these days: a heart. It's the heart that makes action movies like "Die Hard" and "Terminator II" so enduring.
This movie is far from perfect, and yet it works almost seamlessly. The hitman didn't have much depth to him, he was almost a caricature, but I think that made him a good foil to Chris himself, who has a wife and a team of workers who respect him. I dislike Mel Gibson as a person but I have admitted that he makes some great movies, and he throws his all into this one. The comical absurdity of the movie made it seem preposterous at times, and I went with it. Like Julie Taymor's "Titus," this movie goes over the top and knows it.
I honestly wish they had come up with a better title for this movie, because when I first heard of it I just thought it sounded like a fist-brained parody of a Santa Claus origin story. It is not that, at all. I'm not sure what would have been a better title - "Harder than Coal"? I know titles can be tough, but "Fatman" really doesn't fit.
I had trouble motivating myself to watch this movie, but I genuinely enjoyed it. This is one of those movies that knows it is too ridiculous to be perfect, and it just throws itself out there for you, take it or leave it.
Better Watch Out (2016)
The Most Manipulative Movie I Have Ever Seen
Is this what we have come to? A horror movie that destroys our ability to connect to one another, just for the sake of subverting expectations?
Fine, I know I'm no connoisseur of horror movies. But in every horror movie that I have actually enjoyed or admired, we ended with a sense of renewed faith in humanity - because horror, like an abyss, can bring us catharsis. Looking at something horrific that should not be allowed to exist, we realize how important it is to connect with our fellow human beings. "Alien," "The Cabin in the Woods," "The Thing," "It Follows," even "Resident Evil" managed a smidgen of that.
But "Better Watch Out" just portrays evil and laughs at it, because it mocks us! Ha ha ha! It portrays the lazy, self-contented n'er-do-wells of American society. I cannot believe that I sound like such an old man as I write this. But I feel as if this movie tried, in quite a unique and ingenious way, to suck the soul out of me.
Doubtless many people will dismiss this review as the ramblings of a prude. But watch the movie and see for yourself how manipulative it is. I reserve the 1 star rating for movies that genuinely offend me, and this one did.
Hoodwinked! (2005)
Near-perfect animated film
At first glance this movie looks like it's just slapped together - mediocre animation, a lot of one-liners, a very derivative storyline (Little Red Riding Hood, with a Rashomon approach). But this movie is brilliant. The story fits together surprisingly well, several people actually have character-arcs and learn from their experiences, and the animation is fun and colorful if lacking in detail.
The voice talents in the movie are mostly excellent. James Belushi is apparently supposed to be doing a German accent, but it does not sound German AT ALL. The songs are a little sentimental and/or preachy at times, but they are fun and fit the moods of the story.
I know that we have gotten a lot of CGI-animated movies that parody different genres, and this one parodies the fairy tale. But "Hoodwinked" shows how it is supposed to be done: characters with unique personalities, dedicated acting, and a story that takes the original fairy tale material and builds on it, while also making fun of it.
Sweet Home Carolina (2017)
This was not a Story
Now, I have definitely seen worse movies. But this movie had no plot. It was one of the most predictable movies I have ever seen, because it was simply cobbled together from a bunch of different cliches, and the writers did not bother to orchestrate any transitions so that the different events made sense together.
We start out with the the single mother "Diane," working like mad in an office, trying to take care of her two daughters, afraid to answer her calls or open her mail, about to have a nervous breakdown, and her boss tells her to take a leave of absence. The first five minutes of the movie are tense corporate scenes, in a huge building, with legal jargon. The tone completely changes after Diane leaves her job. Kind of a misleading opening.
Then, within 48 hours of this event, we get a wonderful coincidence - Diane's aunt *just died*, and she totally left her house in South Carolina *to Diane*, with the stipulation that Diane lives there for a year. Wow, really? If you're going to drag Convenience itself onscreen, at least give it one layer of clothing. Diane's bratty 19 year-old, Andrea, does not want to go because she has no concept of necessity or responsibility, but she has no choice. They arrive in South Carolina, and the first three minutes there suggest that the locals are not friendly at all, but that quickly changes because, movie.
I would say the single greatest weakness here is the abject lack of transition. Things just suddenly change, without much warning. The Carolinans start out hostile, then they're friendly. First Penny the stewardess is a cautious hawk, then she's the welcome wagon. Andrea has never had a job before, then suddenly she's a veteran antique salesperson. Aubrey hates dogs, then she loves their dog - because, of course, "Mister" is the sweetest dog in the world and everyone loves him and he just happened to come with the house because, movie. We are told that "Troy" is in college and he's really smart (and reading "The Brothers Karamazov," interesting choice), but he rarely seems to do anything at his job besides Put His Feet Up. And then of course he and Andrea become close, with music playing in the background in place of dialogue so the writers didn't have to come up with actual chemistry between them.
The dialogue was Just. Plain. Boring. Expressions of true and undiluted love. Complaints about a lack of attention. Being torn between two places. People helping out with everything, Out Of The Sweetness Of Their Hearts. I'm not saying these are terrible things, but when you strip down a romance to just pretty people doing pretty things for each other, it turns into a barrage of cornball compliments and tear-jerkers. Almost every scene suffered from one of three problems: someone was being self-obsessed, someone was misunderstanding another person, or there was no conflict and everything was rolling along too smoothly.
I guess what I mean, when I said the movie had no plot, was that the characters had no ideas of their own, and so we never saw any of their ideas come to fruition, Fate just blew them along and they were either happy or unhappy. Sure, things happened, but the characters didn't make them happen (at least, not onscreen). And I think I can speak for most audience members when I say that passive characters do not make a movie engaging.
The performances were passable. I think everyone did their best to emote, but they just had so little to work with. I have a soft spot for Lexi Giovagnoli, but here she played a spoiled brat who did nothing but whine for the first half of the film, so that got old pretty quickly. Elayna Grace was cute, it's a shame she has not done any movies since. Starla Christian and Kiersten Warren were fun to watch. Paul Greene's character had virtually no personality, so I don't know what to say for him. On a technical level the movie was fine, and it actually looked pretty nice. Also the music was decent.
Like I said, this movie was not terrible. It was just boring. I know we already have a thousand cheesy romance movies that just stick to the "love is where you didn't expect it" formula, and we'll probably get a thousand more. Penny even mentions how she watches cheesy romance movies and cries, within this movie. Were the writers being ironic? Or was Kiersten Warren crying out for help? Either way, this movie did not escape from the worn-out formula that somehow propagates itself every year against all odds.
I would like to add that "The Brothers Karamazov" is also a story about a broken family with an irresponsible father figure, but most of the family members still get along because they know they need to, because as a family it is their responsibility to love each other. I guess I could see tiny hints of that in this movie, but like I said, the characters were mostly passive. We keep getting the same old formula because, let's face it, this pattern satisfies our needs. We need compassion and a sense of belonging. But make the characters deserve it, please.
3 Times a Charm (2011)
Help is where you find it
This movie was about diverting expectations. It's about about a straight-A student who finds out that she does not understand the people around her as well as she thinks she does.
I'm just going to say it - this movie would seem really surprising to, say, a 14 year-old. The plot points in this movie are clever, but they are clever in ways that we have already seen before, and we've already seen done better (watch "Groundhog Day," "Rocky," "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure," and "The Breakfast Club" for starters). This movie acts against the expectations that it sets up, but it is still not terribly original. The acting was good but could have been a little more serious. Some scenes just felt too silly and sentimental.
But I enjoyed this film. I've read a lot of people dismiss Lexi Giovagnoli as an amateur, but I like watching her. Carlo Marks, by comparison, was kind of weak. The others were okay, fun if a bit two-dimensional.
It's no coincidence that Chris needs help with a history test, because history is about people making decisions and then other people living with the results of those decisions. "3 Times a Charm" is a movie about learning more about the people around you, and learning to make decisions that will benefit those people. In the end the movie felt a bit underdone and underwhelming, but at least it tried to show us that lesson, because a lot of movies these days do not.
Naughty & Nice (2014)
Diverting
This movie had a lot of potential, and I think it didn't use all of it because it was trying to be something it's not. It tried to be a romance, and ultimately it did not feel very romantic to me.
First, the good things. The casting was great. Tilky Jones had the wisecracking radio-host schtick down perfectly. Haylie Duff (whom I was getting tired of, up until now) surprised me with her warmth. Eric Peterson was delightfully goofy, Tyler Jacob Moore did a good job as a nice guy who clearly only plays it safe, and Terrence Cooper was the right combination of wisecracking and just wise. I thought every single actor was in character.
The script was sharp, and it was not too sharp. Some moments genuinely touched me. The part with the room full of packing material, to look like snow - that was so corny, and yet they played it right. This movie did not cost much to make, and yet a lot of the sets had a personal touch that made them memorable. Even the photography worked pretty well.
Alas, the movie also wanted to be "French Kiss," two people with very different backgrounds who fall in love, and I wasn't feeling it. Sandra and Pepper start out having virtually nothing in common, and yet the ice melts pretty quickly between them. I confess I did not understand what they saw in each other. I think this lack of chemistry shows in the way the scene would suddenly fade out just as they were having a moment. It felt like a sign that they did not really know what to do with each other.
I think this movie needed to take more risks. Don't try to please the same crowd over and over again. Surprise us! Show us something that makes us realize it wasn't the genre we were expecting. For a movie in which two people come to care for each other but also realize how achingly different they are, watch "Princess Mononoke."
Christmas Belle (2013)
Dull Take on a timeless theme
Okay, this was clearly "Beauty and the Beast." Lots of easter eggs - girl named Belle who lives with her father, arrogant suitor, big house with scary reclusive owner, roses in a private room, gorgeous home library, even fancy candlesticks. I don't mind a variation on an old story. Shaw wrote "Man and Superman" based on the Don Juan myth, and it came out great.
But you have to breathe some life into it.
This movie had almost no emotional range, very shallow characters, monotonous music that played again and again in scenes that it clearly did not suit, amateur photography, and scenes that just dragged on and on with no apparent aim. Take for instance a scene where Belle digs up a homemade edition of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" that Hunter put together himself when he was seven. And he sits and reads it to her, and we just hear him reading it. We don't even get to see the book itself, which could have added a personal touch to the scene. We already know how "Twas the Night Before Christmas" goes! We don't need to hear him read it - unless he read it in such a way to imply that he felt a personal connection to the story, which he didn't.
Belle's father was a complete twit. This feels like a step down from the other versions of "Beauty and the Beast," where the father at least knew how to take care of himself. And Tony, the "Gaston" figure, was a self-righteous, self-obsessed, self-deluded dunderhead. Anyone can see that. And yet, somehow, Belle's father and Hunter both trust every word Tony says, whenever they need to believe him in order for the plot to go in a certain direction. Lazy writing.
Some bad movies can shock you (i.e. "Birdemic," "Garbage Pail Kids"). This movie was just plain boring. We knew it was based on the fairy tale, so we knew how it was going to play out, and it did not give us one surprise. The dog was cute. It's a bad sign that the dog outperformed everyone else.
If you can't be original, then at least try to understand what made your source material interesting in the first place. What do Belle and the Beast believe in? Where are they coming from? A derivative story can branch out experimentally ("Hoodwinked," from "Little Red Riding Hood"), or it can examine its roots ("Ever After," from "Cinderella"). This movie does neither, it just trims away any fantastical elements and then tells a minimalist, impersonal story that is as forgettable as it is harmless.
Head Over Spurs in Love (2011)
Muddled Comedy
Half-hearted acting, predictable story, not much of a point to it. A man is about to marry a woman who loves him, and the marriage will benefit him, but then his old girlfriend shows up and he realizes that is making a mistake. Seriously, how many times have we seen this?
If I had to pinpoint the main problem here, I would say that the movie was not funny enough. It was clearly meant to be a comedy - Hal Ozsan and Chip Joslin got a few laughs out of me - but overall the movie was low on humor, and was too awkward to be a feel-good film. It certainly was not well-made enough to be taken seriously.
For example, we are told that seven years went by after a scene in which Daisy looked about ten years old. But now she clearly looks like she's in her twenties, which kept me from understanding at first that this was supposed to be the same person (Jen Lilley is actually about 14 years older than Kaylee Dodson, rather than 7 years older). Another problem was Joe's dishonesty, which seemed understandable at first, but after a certain point he started to look like a real snake, and I felt like he never even admitted to himself that he was hurting people.
Like I said, I found a few moments of this movie amusing, and I think it might have worked if it had included some more slapstick humor and mistaken identity. As it is, this movie did not work.
Her Minor Thing (2005)
Bizarre Mess
This movie had several different storylines: (1) Tom accidentally says on live TV that his girlfriend Jeana is still a virgin, (2) Jeana gave him $6,000 for cruise tickets that she now wants back, (3) a photographer named Paul accidentally meets Jeana and falls in love with her. I'm not saying a movie can't be complex, but the threads don't really connect here.
Everything about this movie was half-baked. Why was Tom talking about the fact that his girlfriend was a virgin? Why is this so important? Why do people start a movement over this, championing women's rights to keep their virginity? I'm not arguing against it, but I found it bizarre how the movement started so suddenly because of one guy running his mouth for ten seconds. Oh, and I totally believed Estella Warren was still a virgin. Yeah. Especially after the camera lingered over her perfect legs for about one third of the movie. And showed her in a bikini. And showed Paul taking pictures of her. Again, I'm not saying a woman has to lose her virginity, but, really?
Sadly, Warren's beauty does not translate into acting skills. This movie came out a bit after Planet of the Apes and Kangaroo Jack, but she still did not know much about emoting, or character. Not that the film gave her much to work with. She's supposed to be a firefighter/computer nerd, but I could not tell that at all from her demeanor. Michael Weatherly was at least in character - he was a womanizing pig. Christian Kane was decent as Paul, sort of conflicted in his personality.
But this movie tried to make statements on feminism, media's effect on people, the role of fate in your life, men's conceptions of women - and none of it went anywhere. The movie had one crazy scene with a violent, embittered lawyer, and then we never saw her again. Jeana seems to be furious with Tom, but she never actually tries to break up with him. Tom seems to begin a new relationship with another woman, and it was not clear to me how he made the transition. The points just don't connect. This movie had a few semi-interesting weird ideas in it, but no one sat down and figured out a coherent story to demonstrate those ideas.
This movie felt a lot longer than it was, which usually indicates poor structure. I can touch upon the different ideas here, but I couldn't give a definitive answer as to what the movie was "about." I feel like a romance writer skimmed the first chapter of a sociology book and decided, "I'm going to make a movie about how love works in today's society!" I guess there was an original statement lurking somewhere. I couldn't see it.
Lust for Love (2014)
How to Build a...Man?
This movie is kind of like Moulin Rouge - very silly, no structure, things just kind of happen. And, yes, it was very formulaic. Nerdy guy tries to learn how to be outgoing. We saw it in "Hitch" and "Crazy, Stupid, Love." So, there was nothing really original about it. So why did I like it?
I guess because, ultimately, this is a movie that reminds us how important it is to have friends. It shows us a bunch of somewhat likeable, idiosyncratic characters who all find ways to relate to each other. This kind of movie gives me hope. I don't mean, it inspires me to go out womanizing. It inspires to go and meet people and maybe at least some of those people will be worth talking to, just for the sake of talking to them, because in the end that's what life is about: communicating with people.
Apparently this movie had a lot of cast in common with the series "Dollhouse." Well, I assure you I have never seen that series, so I can say without any bias that I enjoyed watching these actors. Maybe their prior experience with each other aided them in having such good on-screen chemistry, but prior experience in something is not a crime.
Like I said, the story did not have much structure. Lots of little conflicts never really got resolved, it felt as if the characters just forgot the conflicts happened. That sort of glossing-over is lazy storytelling. But, in a movie that's just supposed to be a good time, I suppose I can forgive it. At times I found Astor just astonishingly stupid, as if he had never had a real conversation with another human being in his life. I think he learned his lesson by the end of the movie, but his slowness to catch on struck me as implausible.
No, this is not a great movie. But it's fun and I think it achieves what it wants to achieve, without a large budget or a world war as a historical backdrop. It reminded me, most of all, of the book "How to Build a Girl" by Caitlin Moran (made into a movie recently, but I have not seen it). That was another experiment in extroversion, where a total novice tries to learn how to get along in society. The process is painful and awkward, even cringe-worthy, but it can work out because the world is not all bad. Maybe I have trouble believing that sometimes. Movies like these give me a bit of reassurance.
Married by Christmas (2016)
Stunted at birth
So, a woman is trying to win over her stolen birthright by getting married. Confusion of business in the place of love. What we get is essentially a variation on "A Christmas Carol," a person who realizes that heart is more important than profit, except it takes her an exceptionally long time to learn her lesson.
As her sister puts it, Carrie is smart and yet so stupid. She fails to understand anyone on a personal level. In my opinion she does not really redeem herself in this movie. In fact I felt that no one learned much of anything.
Surprisingly, this movie was very well executed. The performances, script, and photography were quite convincing. Sadly it was lacked structure and originality.
Slightly Single in L.A. (2013)
The talent was there but the thought process wasn't
This movie was basically a product, it told a story that we already know we are "okay" with. Insecure female protagonist, been let down in the past, so she's afraid of a real relationship. This premise is hammered into us over, and over, and over again. We see the perfect guy for her in the first ten minutes of the movie! Dale reflects on how she feels like a victim, again and again. Do you need us to spell it out for you?
The editing of this movie both impressed and annoyed me. It's flashy and fast, often treating the audience as if we have the shortest possible attention span. The movie feels like its own trailer sometimes.
I have to admit that the acting was pretty good. Nothing great, no really deep personalities or stirring emotional moments, but I commend the good casting, and I think everyone gave it their all. They looked like they were actually enjoying themselves, too.
But the story had nothing to say, and we just ended up seeing a bunch of really attractive people flirt and fight and commiserate and make kissy-face. No conflict ever got resolved, we never saw anything play out to its logical conclusion. A few times I felt as if a character was just doing something really stupid, and I knew this person could have done better. But I think self-awareness is taboo in movies like these.
Love's Last Resort (2017)
The Scariest Rom-Com I Have Ever Seen. No, Seriously.
This movie was never meant to be taken seriously. It was very silly. So are movies like "Airplane" and "UHF." But those films did not make me cringe, the way this one did.
I have no idea what any of the characters was thinking in the course of this story. What did Chloe see in Eric? How could a doctor be so clueless? What did Eric do for a living? What did Alyssa do for a living, for that matter? Is Chloe the first attractive and (semi)intelligent person whom Hunter ever met? Hunter is the manager of a HOTEL - wouldn't he meet a lot of attractive women? How did it take two people ten years to realize they were not right for each other? Why did Hunter continue to like Chloe, when it was clear that she did not know how to "use her powers for good?" Did Eric's mother did have some kind of medical condition? I don't mean to sound rude - I have a brother with a disability - but everything that came out of the mother's mouth sounded like an aging drag queen trying to channel Ed Wynn's Mad Hatter.
I just don't understand how this ever sounded like a "movie" to anyone, cast or crew or producers or even the janitors, during production. This movie made no sense, and it was not funny. It was painful. Does it amuse an audience to watch characters make really stupid decisions over and over again? Was this supposed to be a satire, on the way some people will get obsessed over a product (in this case, a TV sitcom), and they just let it guide them through life like a book of philosophy? This brings to mind the 1998 movie "Pleasantville," which actually poked a lot of fun at sitcoms and ended up critiquing sitcom-culture a lot, while simultaneously admitting that sitcoms do have their charm.
I just don't know. This movie baffled me with a persistent idiocy that never quite became aware of itself. I did laugh out loud, once, toward the end when Chloe was sobbing over the lesson she had finally learned - but it was the wrong lesson! You're supposed to let go of the things that don't help you in life, not cherish them! Set goals in your life, not settle for other people's standards when their standards mean nothing to you!
I guess the point of this movie is that different people enjoy different things. People grow up, and they surprise you with how they develop. We don't always *know* the people we think we know. And just because a person changes, that doesn't mean you can't still be friends with him. But these characters were shallow, shortsighted, irresponsible - I don't know if I could trust any of these people to do so much as fix me a drink! Yet one of them is a published author, one of them is a hotel manager, and one of them is a practicing physician. Was this movie trying to blackmail the publishing industry, the hotel business, and the American Medical Association, all at once?
I genuinely feel frantic as I write this review. I like movies. I just don't understand why this movie got made. It had no chemistry, no logic, no turning point, no cleverness, no surprises, no substance. I did not believe that these were real people. I have trouble believing that the producers of this film were real people. And I am sorry that I am being so scathing here, but I am frightened. This movie undermined my grip on basic human reason. It did not offend me, but it dragged me so far away from reality that I'm not sure where I am anymore. "Howl's Moving Castle" is more firmly based in the real world. "Dark City" disturbed me less, because it knew the difference between optimism and pessimism. This movie terrified me. I never knew a happy-go-lucky romantic comedy could be so distorted, surreal, and manipulative.
A Cinderella Christmas (2016)
How Refreshing?
I will admit this movie tried to give the "Cinderella" story a fresh spin, with a plot twist that occurs about halfway through the movie. But when you have to examine the plot with a microscope to see the originality, you're selling yourself short as an audience member.
Painfully selfish and unpleasant stepsister (or cousin? sorry, I just don't remember), hunky rich guy who hesitates to take any responsibility for himself, repressed kitchen maid who works nonstop but isn't good at keeping a secret. Some scenes went on too long, some things got glossed over, the movie tries to be realistic but we still have to stretch plausibility for the "love-at-first-sight" schtick.
I was very indifferent to this movie. The acting was passable and I'll admit that was quite a dress she wore. I liked the subtle reference to the "fairy godmother" with the dressmaker, I wish they had done a little more with her character. Too much of this movie was either bland or awkward. I recommend "Ever After" instead.
Accidental Engagement (2016)
Cowardly Attempt at Romantic Drama
This movie falls under the new genre of "Butcute." More on that later.
I want to start by confessing that I thought Lexi Giovagnoli (Clarissa) gave a pretty good performance. A lot of people seem to think she emoted as much as a wax dummy, but somehow I did not mind her. She was subtle, maybe a little underwhelming, but I felt like it worked, both because she is a bit of an introvert and because her character is an actress (and so she knows how to control her emotions and facial expressions). The two male leads were also fairly believable and dynamic. However, aside from the three of them, not one performance convinced me. The bride (Maya) was fragile and sensitive, the maid-of-honor (Kelly) was prickly as a briar patch, the other bridesmaid (Veronica) was so vapid and garrulous that I saw her as a racial caricature, and the publicist (Suzie) was the most obnoxious and unlikeable female character I have encountered since Lucy Steele in Sense & Sensibility. I don't know who deserves the blame here, the actresses or the writer or the director, but each of these characters was a one-trick pony. No depth, no character-arc.
The story: people start thinking that Clarissa is dating this handsome movie star dude named Chas, due to one picture on the Internet. Chas's mistress (Suzie) gets him to use this misconception to their advantage: Chas pretends he is with Clarissa in order to buy time while Susie tries to get a divorce from her husband. This movie emphasizes the effect media has on people, getting them obsessed with the lives of famous people so that the gossip takes on a life of its own. Clarissa goes along with this gossip-driven fantasy because she does not want her friends to realize that her acting career has been a total failure so far. So, she lets the lies replace reality, until it comes crashing down, you can see where this is going.
One thing that really bugged me was that the entire plot hinged on something that I did not believe for a second. Suzie is Chas's publicist and his mistress; she is having an affair with him while she is married. Suzie appeared with Chas in a handful of scenes, and I did not detect the vaguest whiff of chemistry between them. Neither of them seemed even slightly attracted to the other. Suzie came off as a truly dreadful person, so I don't know if anyone could ever feel attracted to her. But, the movie tells us that Chas plans to break up with Clarissa, publicly, in order to draw attention away from Suzie, so that Chas and Suzie can avoid a scandal. So - Chas is going through an enormous amount of trouble, i.e. buying Clarissa an engagement ring and going to her best friend's wedding, with the ultimate goal of ending up with Suzie. But I did not believe, at all, that he cares about Suzie. Every time he's onscreen with her, he looks like he wants to slap a muzzle on her. I feel like Suzie could have been a more interesting character if Meredith May had played her up as a villain we love to hate, someone who has a charming way of always getting what she wants. Something like Cruella de Vil, or Regina from "Once Upon a Time," or Commodus in "Gladiator." Suzie's lines were dumb, but I think a better actress could have had fun with them.
However, all of these flaws failed to add up to an amusingly bad movie, and here is where we get to the real problem. This movie took no chances. It was safe. It was cowardly. It was pretty. It glossed over the details before it could flesh out any of the real conflicts involved, because this is a "Butcute" movie - it doesn't want to be anything but cute. I have seen movies that failed spectacularly, on high budgets and low budgets alike ("Gigli," "Manos the Hands of Fate," etc.). I have seen movies that took familiar themes and tried to mix in some wacky subplots that don't go anywhere. Not this movie. "Accidental Engagement" is the opposite of its title - nothing happens in it by accident, and it fails to engage. I saw hints of chemistry between Clarissa and Chas, between Maya and her groom, and I saw a deliberate lack of chemistry between Graham and Kelly that sort of stood out by its absence. But most of this chemistry just materializes, with little or no development onscreen. Because this movie wanted to keep everything cute.
A struggling actress accidentally gets mistaken for a big star's girlfriend? Great. Another movie about attractive people who get what they want, by "accident." We see Clarissa giving forced exposition about waiting tables and studying in college and getting fired. How about actually showing some of that? You know - desperation, sweat, grime, anguish, the kind of stuff that goes well with a dark Beethoven theme playing in the background. Nope. The movie doesn't show that. Even when the characters feel ruined and pathetic, even in their lowest moments of despair, they still look like movie stars.
I could not bring myself to hate this movie, because it looked nice and I still think the leads did a passable job. I saw some potential in this movie, and the filmmakers did not have the courage to follow it through.
Bridal Boot Camp (2017)
Not even "Full Bridal Jacket" - this movie should come with novocaine
The screenwriter was asleep at the wheel. This story went all over the place - suddenly sticking profound insights into people's mouths with no warning, painfully stupid dialogue, badly disguised flirting, no chemistry among any of the characters, bizarre plot twists that could break a viewer's neck.
I hated everything about the floral designer, Casey Connor - he constantly intruded on Andy's life to the point where I thought he was going to gas her and stick in the back of a van, he claimed to have feelings for Andy but I honestly could not tell if he really did or he just was using her for a good time, and I thought the actor was quite bad. I've never seen Sandvig in anything besides "Easy A," but here he had one facial expression, which he basically stole from Gene's parents in "The Emoji Movie."
None of the acting did much for me. The two lead actresses were sort of cute but I did not believe much of the drama from them. And the "drill sergeant" of the boot camp was, well, not all that intimidating! I'm not saying she should have been R. Lee Ermey, but she could have had more presence, to spoof the genre of "boot camps" a little more. I was hoping, from the title, that this would be a kind of "Full Bridal Jacket," but everything about the camp was understated and silly (not to mention, most of the exercises were stuff that the brides could easily have done on their own).
Andy's fiancé was barely developed at all. He hardly showed up in the entire movie! He just worked a lot - is working some kind of crime, incompatible with true love? I guess so! Screenwriter didn't care.
This movie was not funny, either intentionally or unintentionally. I didn't get any romantic feel from it, either - and I like "The Wedding Singer" and "The Princess Bride," just in case you were wondering. Andy is supposed to be a dressmaker, but we saw almost no scenes with her creating a dress. They could have tied that in with the story more. Not one character convinced me that she or he was the person that the movie told us she or he was. Like I said, the movie failed to spoof the "boot camp" aspect, and it had no other surprises in store for me. None.
I only gave this movie 2 stars rather than 1 because it didn't offend me. It couldn't even rise to that occasion. "Bridal Boot Camp" was awkward, unimaginative, forced, and in spite of what some of the characters later claimed, I don't think anyone learned anything from it. At least a real boot camp would have been rigorous and life-changing.
The Wedding Pact (2014)
Laugh-out-loud bad
Okay, this movie failed on several levels: originality, structure, acting, casting, photography. Those were the aspects that caught my eye. The first third was just plain boring and stupid. But as the movie progressed, it became increasingly over-the-top idiotic and I actually enjoyed it.
I recently watched "Love, Rosie" with Lily Collins and Sam Claflin, which really wasn't much better but it had nice production design and the two main characters had good chemistry, and overall everyone just looked pretty. That movie knew that it had nothing new to say, but it was at least attractive. "The Wedding Pact" failed at this completely (with the exception of Haylie Duff). Why did they cast a man in his forties to portray a college student and then the same character in his early thirties? Why did they give him the world's worse wig to make him look like a freshman? What was with the aging bed'n'breakfast hostess giving subtle signs of nymphomania? And certain scenes were framed and edited poorly, drawing attention to this or that detail that actually had nothing to do with the scene. I wouldn't label this movie as "ugly," but at times it looked painfully fatuous.
Then we had the scenes that popped out of nowhere, and/or went on too long. The scene where Mitch and Elizabeth talk about a hot dog buffet they attended in college, and Mitch actually spells out that three hot dogs are fewer than twenty-seven hot dogs. The scene where the girl in the tube top pops into Mitch's car and her boyfriend follows her, and Mitch acts like a relationship counselor (is that his job? what is his job??). The towel whipping duel. The "Heaven's Angels" cult. The mix-up with Elizabeth's address so that Mitch almost gets on a plane to Hawaii. The Coppola-esque scene between Jake and his rich, domineering father. Where were these scenes supposed to go? Some of them seemed like they just existed for the sake of one punchline, or one jump-scare, or just forced exposition to tell the audience how we are supposed to feel about a certain character.
I have seen worse acting, but there was not one performance here I would call "good." The story was about these two star-crossed lovers who are made for each other but keep missing each other, surprise, shock, surprise, shock. It touched all the time-worn bases: the moment of attraction, the realization that it's love, the painful inability to express that love, the determination to come together, the rekindling, the conflict, the breakup, the reconciliation. I know you know this already, I just cannot believe they still make movies that actually go through all of these ancient steps with so little variation. Even Jane Austen would ask people to switch it up a bit.
But I give this movie 5/10, because in the last third, I laughed out loud several times. After a certain point the script stopped trying to make sense, and events just happened whether they had any reason to or not. I will admit this movie also had a few legitimately funny moments. Kelly Perine was probably the best casting decision, although his character often had nothing to work with. And, I will say it again, Haylie Duff looked attractive. I could see some careful attention to her makeup and wardrobe; I wish they had given the same amount of attention to the photography, or the acting (or any sense of logic in the story itself, but we all know that's not going to happen).
I do look for more in a movie. But in a world where big-budget bad movies pander to an audience they can count on (i.e. "Disaster Movie," "The Emoji Movie"), this low-budget bad movie was inane in an amusing way.
The Screaming Skull (1958)
Starts off like Rebecca...
This movie starts off like "Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier, turns into "Diabolique" (or maybe "Gaslight"), and ends like "The Tell-Tale Heart."
We begin with a husband and his new, second wife in their home that seems to be haunted by the husband's first wife. Strange things happen that indicate the first wife's spirit, and the second wife starts to fee like she is losing her mind. But it turns out the husband is actually doing it himself, because he wants to drive his new wife insane and then kill her (making it look like a suicide, so that he inherits her money). THEN, the first wife's spirit actually does appear and has her vengeance on the husband.
I have to admit, I did not expect these three plots to form into a reasonably coherent story, and the movie did have some genuinely creepy moments. That is not to say it's an especially good movie. Mediocre acting and script, combined with terrible photography and minimal production design. But from a writer's perspective I thought it was an interesting project.