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The Letter Grades Strike Back aka Cookie's Corner Y5

By cookie, in Create A Year Of Movies (CAYOM)

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Presented without context:

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Teddy flees to the bathroom. We cut to Calvin, and we hear the sound of vomiting. After a moment, Teddy comes back and brings cold drinks to the couch.

 

Teddy: I haven’t kept a meal down all month. … I swear to God, if they find whoever is responsible, I am going to kill him. I’m serious. I am going to kill him. And if he’s dead, I’m just going to kill myself. That’s the truth.

 

They sit in silence for a moment.

 

Calvin: …Yea. I totally understand. I’m sure I’d feel the same way.

Teddy: Yea.

 

We cut to a shot that dollies in on a black TV screen.

 

Calvin: Let’s watch something.

 

Calvin turns on the TV. We see a montage of a news station’s 9/11 memorial program, discussing, in stark detail, the sentiments that Americans at large still feel about the event in the current moment. After the documentary-style segments and the statements from interviewees, we cut back to Calvin.

 

Calvin: Take a nice stroll down memory lane at the nine-eleven museum…

 

Calvin stares down for a moment.

 

Calvin: Remember Drew Peterson? That cop that killed his wives? It was a big news story, way back when. We were watching a TV special about Drew Peterson one night when we leaned in and kissed each other for the first time. Now, whenever I see or hear anything about Drew Peterson, I feel like I’m eighteen in Emma’s basement again. Is it weird to feel nostalgia for stuff like that?

 

Teddy has fallen asleep. We have a montage of shots where Calvin carries Teddy up to his room and lays him down on the mattress. Calvin takes off his jacket and shirt, and puts those clothes in the laundry room. Calvin checks to see if Teddy needs anything like pillows or a blanket, but Teddy is unresponsive, so he leaves him alone. And we see a shot of Teddy smiling.

 

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cookie Global Phenomenon

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Sabrina

 

I think @Spaghetti is right on the money when it comes to the writing. What this needed more than anything was paragraph breaks. Extensive dialogue is fine, but when you can hardly tell it apart from normal paragraphs it strains on the eyes to read (a reason why I do dialogue breaks, besides enjoying writing them, is precisely because it gives me an excuse to break up paragraphs). The word count is not affected by leaving blank spaces anyhow.

 

[I think @Slambros has already learned this lesson since Yin reads much better but for future reference it bears repeating.]

 

Aside from that... I'm not even sure why it's as long and detailed as it is anyhow. The dialogue is fine but a lot of scenes are fairly mundane too. But I'm a fair man, so I won't let that affect my rating.

 

(Extra word of advice: Be conservative with using dialogue to deliver exposition outside of specific pieces. It probably works in a book but when you have to imagine people saying those lines in a script it can come across as pretty stiff.)

 

With all that out of the way...

 

* Deep breath *

 

I could make a comparison with this film to two others in this game: The first Amityville Nightmare without the horror and the Poison & Wine series without the graphic sex. What I mean here is that it sort of inhabits the flaws of both.

 

Poison & Wine, when the series wasn't completely off the rails bonkers, was stuffed with filler. Probably the worst part of that whole franchise was the twenty minute section in Truth Is where the main characters went to the zoo and nothing happened. Sabrina suffers from much the same issues, less severe but they're there.

 

A lot has been said about The Amityville Nightmare and how overstuffed it is, but to tell the truth for me that wasn't the real problem. The real issue for me was how circular and repetitive so much of it felt. It was difficult to get a sensation on if you were at a high, or a low, if it was going to escalate or if it was coming to an end... It honestly felt like it went on for much longer than it did. Sabrina also inhabits this problem, part of it is the non-linear narrative, but I struggled to get a sense of where I was in the story and what was happening a lot of the time. The graphic novel this is based on probably strings the threads together a lot better, I assume, so I chalk it up to messy translation.

 

There are longer films in this game than Sabrina, god knows I've made a couple myself, but like @4815162342 said it's important then to have a narrative that has a certain energy to it, and it's honestly lacking here.

 

There are good stuff, mostly the performances. I think my favorite is Matt Damon's cross between Art Bell and Alex Jones and his overly excessive monologuing.  There's a lot of merit in the conspiracy storyline, even if it's fairly confusing at its spots, but it was well handled for the most part.

 

I think @Slambros is really talented at what he does and it's clear he has passion for this story but I think he took on too much water in the end and the whole boat just kinda sunk. I never felt bored which is a plus, but I did feel very frustrated which is a minus.

 

C/C+

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cookie Global Phenomenon

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The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl

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Taissa Farmiga

David Tennant

Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Daniel Henney

I see your very naked attempts at pandering to me there. The downside of this is that if you screw up there's four ballistic missiles pointing at you instead of just one.

 

Anyhow,

 

MISS MARVEL IS PAKISTANI-AMERICAN, NOT ARAB. THERE IS A DIFFERENCE

 

Anyhow again,

 

This is fun. Not that much I can really say otherwise. It's kinda like the GameVerse movies but better in most respects. Its fun slapstick for the kids with some meat on its bones for older audiences. Anna Kendrick is pitch perfect as Squirrel Girl, snarky Pidge is best Pidge, Scrooge McDuck and Lucina are riots as Bullseye and Illouise respectively and the late great Stan Lee (RIP) of course sells the hell out of his role as The Destroyer in the way only Stan Lee can.

 

Outside of some minor quibbles I have no real complaints here.

 

B+

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cookie Global Phenomenon

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That concludes the Scavenger Wars round, the final grades are:

 

The Epsilon Syndicate: Union of Thieves - A-/B+

Green Lantern Corps: Rise of the Manhunters - B+/B

Sabrina - C+/C

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl - B+

Yin - A-

Wii Sports - C-

 

@Slambros is both the winner and the loser of this round.

 

giphy.gif

 

Your prize will be determined at a later date.

 

The following reviews will all be requests in random order with two exceptions. The requested films are (in alphabetical order):

 

24 Hours

Artifacts: Zephyr's Crest

Bambi: A Life in the Woods

A Woman in the Crowd

He-Man III: The Horror of Hordak

Life of Galileo

Medusa

Olive the Other Reindeer

O, Maestro!

One Punch Man *

Perfect Match

Pillars of Eternity: Never Far From the Queen *

Psyren

Scooby-Doo: Apocalypse

Splatoon

Sylvarius

Two Lonely Bounty Hamsters

 

* These two will be the final set of reviews before this thread goes dark in anticipation of the top 25.

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SLAM! Summer Tentpole

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4 hours ago, cookie said:

Presented without context:

 

 

I forgot to specify who Calvin kissed, so it sounds like Calvin and Teddy were the ones that kissed.

 

What a typo. 😬 

 

(But I feel like the review is really spot on! Yeah, I definitely overstuffed it; next time I adapt, I'll pick and choose what's important and what isn't.)

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cookie Global Phenomenon

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49 minutes ago, Slambros said:

 

I forgot to specify who Calvin kissed, so it sounds like Calvin and Teddy were the ones that kissed.

 

What a typo. 😬 

 

(But I feel like the review is really spot on! Yeah, I definitely overstuffed it; next time I adapt, I'll pick and choose what's important and what isn't.)

It's not really that it's overstuffed, it's just that so much attention is directed at filler which could've been easily summarized.

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Blankments Global Phenomenon

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5 minutes ago, 4815162342 said:

 

Why not?

 

A late 20s actor who conveys a sense of cleverness and entitlement. He fits that.

don't worry, we can write an Anya Taylor-Joy/Miles Teller romcom for the "slightly miscast"

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