Cookie's Corner - Year 2

[cookie]

Little Demons

 

What.

 

The.

 

Fuck.

 

Part 4.

 

I was warned about the racism in this but

 

 

I mean holy shit, all that was missing was for one of the kids to turn to the camera and go "and remember kids, don't ever trust a Romani person, for who knows, it might happen to yoooooou". This is a case of An Ethnicity Should Sue. And no, pretty stop-motion and Danny Elfman songs don't save this trainwreck, if anything they only amplify the bafflingly wrongheaded direction the whole thing took. This shit is Sweeney Todd if it was intervened by UKIP. No wonder it was buried.

 

At least the other What. The. Fuck.s were just stupid and funny, this makes me feel unclean.

 

F

Edited January 26, 2018 by cookie

[Hiccup23]

2 hours ago, cookie said:

Little Demons

 

What.

 

The.

 

Fuck.

 

Part 4.

 

I was warned about the racism in this but

 

 

I mean holy shit, all that was missing was for one of the kids to turn to the camera and go "and remember kids, don't ever trust a Romani person, for who knows, it might happen to yoooooou". This is a case of An Ethnicity Should Sue. And no, pretty stop-motion and Danny Elfman songs don't save this trainwreck, if anything they only amplify the bafflingly wrongheaded direction the whole thing took. This shit is Sweeney Todd if it was intervened by UKIP. No wonder it was buried.

 

At least the other What. The. Fuck.s were just stupid and funny, this makes me feel unclean.

 

F

I knew I should have changed it up. I'm mad at myself. Could have been a Oscar contender 

[cookie]

6 minutes ago, Hiccup23 said:

I knew I should have changed it up. I'm mad at myself. Could have been a Oscar contender 

It's easy to fall into the trap where one doesn't take a step back and consider how it reads from a distance. I've had that happen a few times myself.

[Ezen Baklattan]

That happens to me so much of the time. 

[cookie]

49 minutes ago, The Shape of Pasta said:

That happens to me so much of the time. 

Well that explains Closed Domain.

[Ezen Baklattan]

Bring on What The Fuck Part 5! 

[cookie]

So I'm going to fast-track October and November reviews so I can put up actuals for both months today but it'll come with a few sacrifices:

 

1. No Amityville review until after November is done. It's simply way too long for me to do in one sitting (ironic coming from me, I know).

2. No Parvelli Reunion review either.

3. May happen that I'll simply post grades on smaller films unless I feel I have something I think is worth mentioning.

 

So here we go.

[cookie]

Closed Domain

 

"In a much lighter movie, this is where the credits would roll and we'd all be happy. Yeah.......there's still quite some time left. Sit down, people. This is where things get even crazier."

 

Right. And it got so much fucking stupider too.

 

I wouldn't necessarily call the first two thirds great, but they were solid. The fourth-wall breaking and obvious ties to the year its set in (Spider-Man, get it? Lilo & Stitch, get it?! Eminem, GET IT?! Because it's 2002!) got a bit on my nerves but I liked where it was heading.

 

Then Marcus wins the election and we come to the cinematic equivalent of this:

 

 

From Regina's baffling reveal to Deus Ex Alligator (no movie, that was not a crocodile. Crocodiles do not exist in Alabama) it's not often you see a movie blow its chunk in such rapid succession. What a mess.

 

C+

 

And @The Shape of Pasta, I tend to avoid picking on these things, but you really need to check your work more often. The mistakes made here are too many to count.

[Ezen Baklattan]

Yeah....I reviewed much of Closed Domain and the third act was straight-up a trainwreck. I wrestled with this film for so damn long, but rest assured my review process will be much more thorough in the future. 

 

That said....good to know even the stricter critics liked the first two thirds, and that review makes it seem like it was gonna be way worse than a C+, haha.

 

[cookie]

11 minutes ago, The Shape of Pasta said:

Yeah....I reviewed much of Closed Domain and the third act was straight-up a trainwreck. I wrestled with this film for so damn long, but rest assured my review process will be much more thorough in the future. 

 

That said....good to know even the stricter critics liked the first two thirds, and that review makes it seem like it was gonna be way worse than a C+, haha.

 

It would have been a B leaning on B+ if the movie help up like the first two thirds did. But that ending really is some D territory.

Edited January 26, 2018 by cookie

[Ezen Baklattan]

2 minutes ago, cookie said:

It would have been a B leaning on B+ if the movie help up like the first two thirds did.

I did want to make it a cooky comedy, admittedly, but I probably should have made that clear from the start, where it was far more grounded in reality.

[cookie]

Samurai Pizza Cats

 

I feel the same with this as I do with last year's SWAT Kats (and that's ignoring the amusing but random Ryan Reynolds cameo already in the film); it's entertaining while it lasts, but really feels like it's stretching its premise to feature length, resulting in an overextended first and third act and a close to non-existent second act. That's fine for a 20-minute episode but for a 86-minute movie you're gonna stare at your watch more than a few times.

 

C+

 

 

Isolation

 

Sort of your average Liam Neeson thriller IN SPACE. Eh, I guess that's good enough.

 

B-/C+

 

 

Midnight in the Afghan Valley

 

I sort of feel similarly about this like @The Shape of Pasta does. What is there is solid, I just wished I could've had more of it. A bit more character, a bit more of that touted moral complexity (outside of the last act it doesn't come up very often) and maybe a higher emphasis on the boredom and paranoia of being deployed that I thought the first half did a fantastic job of setting up. Very solid, but just misses the level of great.

 

B+

 

 

Blood and Fur 2: Maul-Ma Mater

 

Bill Hader ain't no Al Pacino, but he's a fun replacement. It's kinda like the first film with a bit more character development for the leads, but with some of the novelty gone it is not as singular and exciting as it was last year, but it's still a riot, in part because you get some more inventive kills than the first one. And Hader's glorious demise is the cherry on top.

 

That Al Pacino tease tho

 

 

A-/B+

 

 

Lenny Lipton and the Super Scary Sleepover

 

It's a cute Halloween distraction for kids, but not much more than that.

 

B-/C+

[Hiccup23]

I can rest in peace now knowing one of my films managed to get over a B, lol

[cookie]

Treasure Planet

 

I'm probably one of those people who think the original is good, but not great. Honestly if you asked me about early 2000s Disney 2D animation that isn't Lilo & Stitch or The Emperor's New Groove I'd probably pick Atlantis: The Lost Empire over Treasure Planet.

 

So how's the live-action remake? Well I guess I feel the same as I did with the original, in part because the changes made are minimal (the only thing I could make out was different was the random dinosaur encounter on the planet... seriously, what was up with that?). Bit disappointing that a filmmaker as playful as Taika Waititi didn't do more with the material. But what he does do, even if what you're seeing is close to a carbon copy, is solid enough. Plus they removed those early 2000s songs that always irked me in the original so they got that going for them.

 

B-

 

 

Sitting Ducks

 

Is this the year where talented filmmakers that can do really great things just decide not to? Rich Moore, Taika Waititi, now Andrew Stanton? Sure John Carter is far from perfect but it and his Pixar projects show he has ambition. This is just a low-tier Dreamworks movie that he somehow got involved in. I mean really?

 

C

 

 

The Island

 

...This is the CW version of the Legion pilot mixed with Sucker Punch and Shutter Island, isn't it?

 

And the less said about the double rape scene and the WTF King Arthur connection at the end the better.

 

C-

Edited January 27, 2018 by cookie

[Hiccup23]

The Island didn't get bashed completely 

[cookie]

10 minutes ago, Hiccup23 said:

The Island didn't get bashed completely 

I was on the "I guess it's good enough" train before the double rape (I'm not going to argue about that) and the King Arthur twist (that I can argue with because I still don't know what the hell that was about).

Edited January 27, 2018 by cookie

[Xillix]

Waiting for that A+ for Airport 2018

[cookie]

9 minutes ago, Xillix said:

Waiting for that A+ for Airport 2018

Oooh I have a lot to say about that one 

[cookie]

Storm Hunters

 

Sydney is not the capital of Australia first of all.

 

Gareth Edwards does a solid job with the disaster sequences and the characters while not deep in any way aren't too bad, but it's not anything to write home about if you're not into stuff getting blown away and/or destroyed. Good for a matinee if nothing else.

 

B-/C+

 

 

Deathsgiving

 

So this is pretty much You're Next if it was more comedic on a surface level. The ending is amusing but I didn't really get many laughs beyond that.

 

C

 

 

The Encounter... Airport 2018

 

What.

 

The.

 

Fuck.

 

Part 5.

 

After Rollercoaster, The Towering Inferno and Damnation Alley, THIS is how you treat Airport? Christ, even Airplane! wasn't as ridiculous as this and that was supposed to be funny. What a goddamn waste.

 

D

 

 

My Life to Waste

 

That first act is so downbeat I half expected Lego Batman to turn up and go DARKNESS. NO PARENTS. 

 

And no movie, Sam wouldn't suddenly be over his parents' deaths when they turn out not to be his real ones. He still spent almost his entire life with them. They matter more to him than his biological parents ever did. All this does is make Sam all the more of an asshole than he already is.

 

And it doesn't stop there, it just gets dumber and dumber and dumber in service of getting a OMIGOD IT'S SO SAD reaction from the audience. Well I see through your manipulation, movie.

 

"[Sam] says that he feels really bad that he beat [Rachel] after the summer party."

 

Wait, when the fuck did that happen?! I even went back and checked if I missed something but all that happens is that the two have sex. Where did the beating come from?!

 

Man, and I thought Touching Spirit Bear was some bullshit.

 

PS: I'm pretty sure Sam would be on trial for reckless endangerment if not possible manslaughter for causing Michael's death. WHY IS NOBODY CALLING THE POLICE?!

 

D-

 

 

Ho! Ho! Ho!

 

...

 

I've got nothing.

 

D

 

 

Edited January 27, 2018 by cookie

[Xillix]

@cookie

 

FYI - The Encounter is based on the ACTUAL IDEA the producers had for a fifth Airport movie, had The Concorde... Airport '79 not flopped. Except they were going to call it Airport 2000 to be uh... "futuristic," and presumably George Kennedy would've been in it again (probably with a completely different job again like in all the preceding films where he went from a TWA mechanic at a Chicago airport to the Vice President of a completely different airline to a Navy liaison at an unspecified company to a Concorde jet pilot for a THIRD airline).

 

I'm not sure if you've seen The Concorde but it's arguably more ridiculous than The Encounter, even without aliens. It's a real fun watch when you're half-awake with a bowl of popcorn. So this wasn't so much a glorious return to form/homage as an intentionally terrible "what-if" following the franchise's natural progression