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Blankments

Blanked Out Reviews, Y6

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You should know the drill by now. Monthly reviews will come until July, at which point I will go radio silent. Top 25 afterwards with reviews from July to December after that. I might be nice and put up a LiveStream 1 review during the radio silence. I'll start when I can; hopefully, i'll be done with these by the time Oscar voting begins

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January

All Kinds of Bull – a film that starts as a cute animal drama and quickly becomes something much more disturbing, despite the film never acknowledging itself as such. Not particularly good but I can’t say I was bored while watching it! 2.5/5

 

Making Waves – Kinda ludicrous in the simplest manner, while also being dull in its story. I preferred a different surf movie about fathers and sons…

1/5

 

Walking with You – A decent enough January movie, but it never gets past its generic elements to truly feel worthy of its cast and crew. If it wasn’t as underdeveloped, could’ve been something special. 2.5/5

 

The Power of Love – Tonally a mess and featuring super generic characters with an all-star cast way beyond this material, this feels like a kids movie with random adult moments thrown in. In all honesty, if this was animated, I would’ve enjoyed it a lot more, but the plot implausibilities became impossible to wave away along with the milquetoast story. The action is alright though, if a bit over-the-top for this medium. 2/5

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February

Dog Models – Cute! I love dogs and Jeremy Renner so this was a good time, if a bit derivative of Show Dogs. 3/5

 

VR Troopers – spectacularly stupid and it knows it. Loads of fun with a charismatic cast. Also, points for some pandering to me :3 3.5/5

 

Down and Dirty – “Nuff said.” No there wasn’t!! 2/5

 

Thomas Was Alone – Painfully obviously a video game adaptation, this lacks any semblance of an actual plot and loses points for the painful Keanu stuntcast. 1.5/5

 

Meme Thief – an interesting idea with lazy execution. Could’ve been something special. 2.5/5

 

Pokemon: The Cinnabar Conspiracy – A satisfying conclusion to one of the best family franchises out there. The end gets a bit too actiony, but for the most part, this is the usual breezy fun. 4/5

 

Little Black Bugs – I thought this was thoroughly campy but a lot of fun in ways only horror movies really can be. I could’ve done without the twist ending, but for the most part, I was intrigued and thought it was always entertaining. A decent time. 3.5/5

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March

Spark: A Hero’s Promise – okay. Here we go. Let’s get the negatives out of the way first. This is way, way overstuffed. It feels like a season or two of television packed into three hours of filmmaking (to go briefly out of character in this review, the writing style here still had moments where in a sentence, presumably a minute of screentime would have to take place; legitimately, I believe this around 5 or 6 hours of material in a movie, and that’s without breathing room). And yet, even with it being overstuffed, there are characters and subplots that feel woefully underdeveloped to the point where they should be entirely cut. In particular, Everett feels wasted here; the pay-off to the long Chekov gun ultimately just being

 

a way to kill a character on the hero’s side in the climax who has gotten the least amount of development

. There’s a lot of other problems here too, mainly having to do with the length. At most, this is a film that should be split it into two; there’s a time jump halfway through where it just feels pointless that the film didn’t just have a climax there. The plot of the oscillator also comes in way, way too late into the film; yes, it’s hinted at for the first two-thirds but the characters are just kinda like “oh this is a thing” rather than actively pursuing it.

I also think it’s worth noting that none of the added characters this go-around are particularly engaging. Altren is literally President Coin from the Hunger Games and I have no idea why David Tennant is in this – I get that you need two secondary antagonists... but again, if we had some development besides “here he is, btw he’s bad”, I’d might be willing to swallow it. Again, despite the length, so much is glossed over here. This said, weirdly enough, a highlight for me this time was someone who has never interested me in this franchise: Tarek. He’s finally developed to the point where he was the villain I was excited to see in scenes, and it was honestly kinda shocking to me. One final thing to be meh on is the final solution, which ultimately felt like a cheating third option to ensure a completely happy ending. It left me underwhelmed.

Anyway, those are the negatives. However, that doesn’t change the fact that this is a Spark movie, with characters I’ve grown to love over the past three films. The climax, once it begins, is breathtaking, although a tad convoluted, and there are moments throughout the film where the signature humor and character moments really shine. The coda is genuinely a nice ending, and one where I felt remarkably content while reading. I’ll be honest, despite all I’ve said about, I genuinely enjoyed Sp4rk for the most part. It’s a film designed for nitpicking though, as it makes several baffling decisions throughout to get to its ending, despite having enough story material for an entire trilogy. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this more than this review would have you think, and the coda honestly makes me bump it a half star. This was truly a riveting saga in this film, and although this is flawed, it concludes the story in a mostly satisfying way. 4/5

 

The Fairly OddParents – a mediocre family film that becomes downright abysmal as various rules within the narrative of the film are broken whereas longstanding elements of the property are ignored for the sake of a generic narrative. There are aspects here that make me question if the creators had even seen a single episode of the show, and the entire film is a mess even ignoring that aspect. Shockingly horrid. 0.5/5

 

The Con Gone Wrong – a bit too sympathetic for my liking, this does a decent job recapping events that were pretty well documented in the media already. It’s fine. 3/5

 

Thermal – the disaster movie goes totally nuts this year. It took a while to get going but once it did, it did not disappoint. I was a little bummed, as usual, that not many characters survived, but this mostly delivers with its insane hypothetical. 3/5

 

Irreplaceable – Beyoncé. Sure, it’s serviceable, but that’s it. 2.5/5

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I'll take it!

 

As I think about it....this is definitely a film I think I got too invested in and couldn't take a step back to see what wasn't working. I got maybe too invested into this world, and I definitely didn't follow the "kill your darlings" rule as closely as I should have, nor did I really do enough to address if something was truly working. Hell, pretty much all the reviews, this included, are saying the same thing about it. In hindsight, a structure closer to Harry Potter would have been better, where the main threat is introduced in volume 4, but there's still a bunch after that.

 

That said, for all its flaws (and there are a LOT), I'm still proud of how it turned out. It represents the messy, imperfect, yet hopeful and sincere storytelling that I've intended in the franchise from the start, and I thank you @Blankments for the otherwise strong review. Also, I'm really happy with the reception because the feedback here feels legitimately constructive in a positive way, and one that I can work with if I want to extend the story into other mediums.

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April

Super Mario Bros. – Actually thought this started fine but then it became horribly paced, with a true lack of sincerity for most of the humor, which made it impossible to buy into the messages it tried to implement. Had the film not been so going for the easy jokes, perhaps it’s anti-xenophobia storyline would’ve resonated rather than feeling like corporate wokeness.

 

In particular here, the love stories are genuinely offensively underdeveloped, making both Peach and Daisy feel like genuinely retrograde female characters; we never have a reason for them to fall in love with Mario and Luigi, it simply happens because it must. In particular, Mario has a scene early on after immediately meeting Peach that rubbed me entirely the wrong way. Of course, it’s not like I’m watching a Mario movie to be like “wow, I feel enriched” but this film spends so much lipservice at themes that ultimately don’t matter that I feel like them not mattering must matter for this review.

 

Another flaw that I won’t talk too much about since I know others have covered it is it seems like the film is winding down until it suddenly has another three act story forced into the third act of the film. Still, there are aspects here that are fun, particularly with the realization of the core game mechanics in the story and some fun setpieces here and there. I also genuinely liked the very end, but not enough to fix all the other problems this clearly has. Ultimately, this feels much too derivative and overplotted to make a true impact. 2/5

 

Pandas – Typical nature doc. These generally are fine, but do nothing for me. 2/5

 

Home Invasion: Part II: Abduction – enjoyable when it falls into campy B-movie goodness, but the PG-13 rating limits it from being really fun. 2.5/5

 

The Pixies in the Back Yard – far too simplistic to enjoy; it throws you into a fantasy world with little explanation despite generic qualities. 1/5

 

Jane and Tony – solid enough melodrama; I liked the part where Tony died anyway, made me chuckle. For real, this is a solid if unassuming time at the movies. 3/5

 

The Blushing – an astoundingly stupid plot that devolves into repetitive boredom. I’m confused who thought this was a good idea. 1/5

 

Nights into Dreams – cool ideas devolve into a generic fantasy children’s story. Boring! 1.5/5

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May

Mass Effect: Ascension – a perfectly enjoyable blockbuster. It’s a bit overlong at points but the new material here (as in new characters and concepts not in the original film) is a true highlight and it tells a rollicking tale very well. Not much to say or critique here other than it’s the definition of solid bigbudget filmmaking. 4/5

 

Brickleberry: Armoogeddon – No. 0.5/5

 

Facepaint – Not sure if Aster was a good pick here, but a nicely erotic horror film for this summer that genuinely feels sexy and thrilling. 3/5

 

Lumberjanes: Secret of the Eye – let’s get this out of the way first: Niki Caro is an insultingly bad director choice for this. She’s someone who specializes in realistic dramas and was hired for her upcoming blockbuster to add some realism to the story of Mulan. This revels in being wacky and is the exact opposite of Caro’s mission statement.

 

However, I will only deduct a half star, despite being tempted to deduct more. After all, that would make this end up at 0.5/5 which seems cruel. Frankly, this is one of the hardest reads in recent memory in CAYOM. It features all the hyperactivity I dislike about Hourglass Pictures’ animated offerings while being inexplicably in live action. I hated every character int his and thought the world was mind-numbingly stupid due to its complete inability to have any form of consistency. It’s simply way too much and by the time the credits finally hit, I’m glad because it was a chore to read all the way through. Honestly, one of the worst blockbusters I’ve read in CAYOM. 1/5

 

Green Arrow – the opening scene of this reminded me of Expedecade, lol. This is a solidly entertaining film all around, although marred from either a misinformed director choice or a forced restraint to keep it PG-13. Hopefully the sequel goes for the R rating Stahelski would clearly want to go for, but this is a solid foundation. 3/5

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June

Teyonnah and the Renegades: A Righteous Sextet – two of the segments here are pretty bad (the animated one and the musical one), but the rest are excellent, righteously angry at the world as is. It might be a bit obvious but I genuinely appreciate the tenacious ambition of this, along with being genuinely entertained outside those two segments. 4/5

 

Pikmin – huh. This is a weird beast in that it genuinely feels like a Let’s Play at points, but the contemplative moments and stop-motion animation makes it weirdly compelling. I’m not necessarily sure it’s “good” per say, but it’s interesting. 3/5

 

Jeremy Renner Presents... The App – The Jeremy Renner App – The Movie! – legit was cackling for most of the runtime. This did not disappoint, being frequently one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in recent memory. 100% my kind of humor although it’s certainly more of a joke than anything else. 3.5/5

 

USS Seawolf – a solid little caper. In general, this falls under “not my kind of movie” but it’s fairly riveting and genuinely tells an interesting story that’s very thrilling. The ending also is weirdly satisfying in a way one wouldn’t expect. Enjoyable. 3.5/5

 

Forgiveness – genuinely a really cool idea that is clearly rushed and vague about a lot of the details. The random genre parodies are a bit much, but the foundation here is really great to the point that with a lot more polish, this could’ve been one of the best films of the year. 3/5

 

Rhino Riders – sadly generic despite the unique premise. I enjoyed aspects here but for the most part, it ends up being way duller than it should be. 2.5/5

 

Bummer Camp – Keanu deserved better. (Seriously, I’m so confused why so much effort was put into something designed to be mediocre. It’s not even enjoyably bad; it’s just a boring movie all the way through that’s a struggle to finish. As a film, this would get 2/5 but seriously, I don’t know why this was as long as a read as it was and as such...) 0.5/5

 

Time for radio silence...

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4 minutes ago, Blankments said:

Pikmin – huh. This is a weird beast in that it genuinely feels like a Let’s Play at points, but the contemplative moments and stop-motion animation makes it weirdly compelling. I’m not necessarily sure it’s “good” per say, but it’s interesting. 3/5

 

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de Blob - Oh great, not only did the SJWs get Star Wars, but now they stole my beloved de Blob from me! Canonically, de Blob is a man; it's de blob, not she blob!! Margot Robbie, renowned feminazi, has cucked me and the audience of the world from a good de Blob movie. And let me make it clear, if this was titled she Blob, I would've been better with it. It's Ghostbusters 2016 all over again. It features an emasculated villain and vague gender politics that are clearly anti-man. This is liberal propaganda of the highest level; do NOT take your kids to see this. -532/5

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10 hours ago, Blankments said:

de Blob - Oh great, not only did the SJWs get Star Wars, but now they stole my beloved de Blob from me! Canonically, de Blob is a man; it's de blob, not she blob!! Margot Robbie, renowned feminazi, has cucked me and the audience of the world from a good de Blob movie. And let me make it clear, if this was titled she Blob, I would've been better with it. It's Ghostbusters 2016 all over again. It features an emasculated villain and vague gender politics that are clearly anti-man. This is liberal propaganda of the highest level; do NOT take your kids to see this. -532/5

Ok boomer

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