This movie starts 65 (get it?) million years ago on planet Meep Morp where a conveniently humanoid family is at the beach. Adam Driver, playing Tuvok the Dinosaur Hunter, has to tell his dying daughter that to pay for the medical treatments that’s crippling the family’s finances (Apparantly Meep Morp is a Late Stage Capitalist planet) he has to take a two year science mission off planet.
Category: New Releases
I haven’t reviewed a movie for this site in well over a year, and honestly the combination of not being able to willingly watch awful movies to make jokes about combined with the fact I’ve seen a ton of good movies lately made me even lazier than usual. (Which is about one step above comatose, anyway. Plus, good movies aren’t fun to write about.) Well, about half way through this one I felt the bile rising to “write things down” proportions.
I went into this having forgotten to even watch the trailer, so I was totally blind to what it was about outside of it must take place underwater (they did achieve this) and that it was a horror film (the terror was more my time being murdered.) In true Lazy Film Critic fashion, I can not remember any single character’s name. We start fairly quickly with Kristen Stewart’s character doing a voice over (Never a good sign when a movie starts with a voice over. Unless you’re, like, Martin Scorsese.) about life under the sea. Before Kristen can finish her pointless, not germane to the plot monologue the underwater apparatus she is in gets attacked. She starts running, and…well, whatever she’s in is too big to be a submarine. Water is crashing in, which is not good when you live underwater. While scurrying away she and her friend Token Black Horror Movie Character (who appeared out of nowhere) are able to make it to safety by closing some heavy duty doors separating them from the compromised area. Of course the doors are jammed, and she has to do some hacking to get them to close JUST IN TIME.
Here are a bunch of movies I watched, and in true form don’t feel like writing full reviews about any of them. That would require a lot of WORK and TIME. Things that I have in abundance, but choose not to do it anyway. Here we go!
Aquaman
This is one fever dream of a movie with cheesy comedy, a lot of ridiculous sea creatures fighting each other, and Jason Momoa shirtless. At one point it turns into Land of the Lost, there’s a H.P. Lovecraft creature that Aquaman rides on, and the dialog is insane. Do you think when sea people poop it kind of just sticks to their butts like when fish poop? I’ve been told that comic movies are only as good as their villains, and my sources tell me Aquaman 2 will have the biggest villain to fish of all time:
I probably shouldn’t have waited almost a week to write about this movie, because the plot was total nonsense right after I had watched it, and trying to parse it out now is basically impossible.
The short of it is Newt is not allowed to leave Britain because of his shenanigans of the first prequel. The Ministry of Magic tries to cut him a deal that he can leave, but only if he helps them hunt Grindelwald down. I think. It may have been to find this other magic guy who Grindelwald is trying to lure to him. This mysterious person is a super powerful orphan magician who is trying to find out where he’s from. Either way, it’s one of those.
Halloween
Halloween is the sequel that pretends none of the other sequels happened. Considering that outside of Halloween II they are all various states of terrible, this isn’t a huge deal. Picking up 40 years after the events of the first movie we find Michael Myers institutionalized, Laurie Strode a highly armed, paranoid shut-in, and the scourge of the Internet, True Crime Podcasters, trying to interview both of them. Myers treats the podcasters with the respect they deserve.
I haven’t reviewed any movies in awhile, but to be fair I’m the Lazy Film Critic not the Motivated Film Critic. For my glorious return we have the Tom Hardy vehicle Venom to discuss. Yes, another comic movie. Ninety-four percent of movies are now comic movies, and I don’t think I can take it anymore. Let’s power through this, shall we? Venom is loosely (and I mean VERY LOOSELY) based on the Spider-Man villain. Through various property rights chicanery Sony has created a stand alone version that looks the same if you sorta squint.
I think this is one of the strangest product placement movies I’ve seen in a while considering all the murder and mayhem that results from the group of idiots that star in the film. Let’s just fire up this stolen Apple MacBook, log onto my Spotify account, and sign this person off of Facebook so I can check my messages. Oh, I better log into Skype to video chat with all of my other moron friends from around the globe with no issues. They then go on about how clear the video is on the new laptop. Subtle.
Jurassic Park 5 Jurassic World 2 is possibly the most nonsensical movie in the franchise so far. The movie starts with the island from Jurassic Park 4 Jurassic World 1 nearing destruction from a volcano eruption, and debate on whether the dinosaurs should be saved. Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) is running a non-profit trying to lobby congresspeople to agree that the dinosaurs should be saved. When this fails, she is offered a position with the company that originally created the dinosaurs and Jurassic Park. John Hammond’s partner Benjamin L wants to sneak the dinosaurs off the island, and with Claire’s understanding of the island and how dinosaurs are tracked via RFID they can Noah’s Ark key species off the island. Most important is Blue, the velociraptor from the 4th (1st) movie. To help with this Claire gets Chris Pratt’s character Roger (I can’t remember the real name. I’m going to stop looking them up.) to join in the fray. Their relationship fell apart, and the tension is more intense than when we waited on the goat from the real first movie to get eaten. (Actually, mostly it’s boring.)
I’m going to spoil the hell out of this movie, but you’re probably not going to watch it anyway. So, don’t worry.
Upgrade tells the story of simple everyman Grey Trace (Tom Hardy’s body double) from the near SCARY future who just wants to restore old cars and listen to Skynyrd. Cars are now fully automated, police drones monitor from overhead, and houses are fully Jetsonized. With his wife in tow, he delivers a Firebird to an eccentric, reclusive tech genius weirdo (shocking) who shows them the FUTURE of technology: STEM. STEM is a computer chip that can control the human body, and also can connect to your Wi-Fi without needing your password.
Finally.
I’ll need to be light on details because major plot points early on are very important to the story, and it would be unfair to give them away when you watch this movie. And you SHOULD watch this movie. Every conversation and observation made by characters from the very opening funeral scene are important to understanding what happens at the end. People are struggling with the end because it shifts in what seems like a very abrupt way. The opening funeral is for Ellen, matriarch of the Graham family. Her daughter Annie (Toni Collette) gives a eulogy noting her mother’s reclusive nature, how difficult she was, and how she’s surprised how many people are actually attending the funeral.
What follows is a story of how a family deals with loss, and how that loss brings anger, resentment, and pain that’s been smoldering up the surface for the living and the dead in this case.