Cookie Fails to Socially Distance and Thus Caught Covid Corner - Y9 Reviews

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Said I was gonna start this Saturday, but I might as well re-post my festival reviews with grades retroactively added.

 

Bikini

Spoiler

I've made a point in the past (see my Roman Fever review from Y7) that minimalist narratives weren’t particularly my cup of tea, and so going into Kelly Reichardt’s Bikini, knowing her filmography, I admittedly walked in trepidatious. Bikini, while somewhat different from most of Reichardt’s work in that it actually features a satisfying resolution, still fits into her mold, though how blunt the overall message about gender freedom is delivered may be an acquired taste to those familiar with the director's other work. 

Zoey Deutch plays Vanessa, a young woman who refuses to let any obstacle or inconvenience get in her way, and is more than willing to defy social norms in an act of rebellion more centered around that she just wants to do what she wants than out of some greater sense of justice, even if the climactic police station scene is the most righteous (and amusing) moment in the film. Deutch delivers a very solid turn here, as does Ramy Youssef as her boyfriend Shawki, initially set up as a fearless scholar who over the course of the film’s short running time reveals that, in the end, he’s just as frightened and powerless of what the world will do to him as everyone else are (on top of being a very clumsy sailor), leading Vanessa to have to be the one to stand up for him. The latter half of the cast are just bit parts, between Beanie Feldstein’s Angie who serves as little more than a personified bookend, and James Ransone’s Officer Jim as a comic foil in the one scene he’s in.

While Bikini is not a film that would light the world on fire, it is a solid little film with clear themes and messaging, as well as a sprinkling of humor and crudeness to give it the edge it craves.

 

B

 

 

Shadow of the Comet

Spoiler

Being an animated feature is sadly the only thing that stands out with this trope-laden post-apocalypse survival drama, and no matter how much command Samuel L. Jackson lends to his vocal performance, his character doesn’t evolve past two-dimensional at best — which is a problem given how nothing the rest of the film is. The film’s sudden introduction of a bodyguard that only exists to turn on the main antagonist just as they’re about to achieve victory in the film’s climax is a real head-scratcher, as you’d think it’d be something the film would’ve bothered to set up beforehand, but I guess the studio decided that’d take too many frames to animate.

 

Ultimately, Shadow of the Comet is so rote that there’s very little to write home about either in the positive or the negative. A very disappointing animated entry if there ever was one.

C-

 

 

Death is Not My Friend

Spoiler

A film so 2000s in mood and execution the only thing missing was an Evanescence song playing during the end credits— Oh wait.

 

Death is Not My Friend wants to showcase surreal, frightening imagery while also bringing the tears, but between its two settings, an overly flawed structure emerges.

 

My issues are two-fold; For one, the film is based on a Reddit post, and it has the subtlety of one — laying on its themes overly thick to have the impact it desires most of the time. That'd be easy to look past if the story had a strong flow, but by the time the tenth or so relative has died and the red-robed figure shows up to play yet another round of artistic peekaboo, the level of repetitiveness really starts to take its toll. It probably works a lot better in the story’s original written form, but played out cinematically, it results in tedium rather than eliciting dread or tugging at your heartstrings. This, in turn, also makes the film’s actual climactic moment when Sasha, having been driven onto both her figurative and literal ledge, finally confronts the apparition that’s been haunting her seem random and sudden. The lead-in’s technically there, sure, but the way it plays out in the story proper, it doesn’t feel entirely earned.

 

Secondly, Sasha being a very passive protagonist doesn’t help answer questions one might have about how she actually deals with both trauma and the specter that’s haunting her. All of the red-robed figure’s meaning is dedicated to its presence, but I was never made to understand why it took on the appearance that it did, or what it doing the same thing over and over was actually supposed to serve. It again highlights the film’s lack of a real flow; it’s there to look scary and make Sasha upset, and… that’s about it?

 

I think the issue there is that Sasha never brings up the specter to anyone, or even questions its existence outside of the visions. It leaves the viewer thinking that these visions ultimately don’t even matter, and you could cut the majority of those scenes out and it’d have no impact on how Sasha handles grief, a subject she doesn’t bring up that much anyway as the film just moves from one set piece to the next, creating some awkwardly sluggish pacing even outside the repetition. Very few of the people Sasha is supposed to be grieving for are given the development that would make the audience care for their passing either, and so we struggle to share her pain as much as the movie wants us to. Only one death is actually effective, and that’s of her older sister, given that the bond she shares with Sasha is the strongest one in the film. Like most of the rest of the film, however, it happens and then the film lumbers on without going back to it much. I get that’s part of the point, that life moves on and we have to learn how to deal with grief, but it leaves the film cold and distant when it should be warm and introspective.

 

Death is Not My Friend, despite its intentions, is a sadly underwhelming affair, perhaps held back by its source material but whose execution leaves as much if not more to be desired. Audiences recently acquainted with grief may get more out of it, but that sadly wasn’t the case for me.

 

C/C-

 

 

Go-Kart Gottlieb

Spoiler

To those not overly familiar with New Journey Pictures's formula of studio drama films (even if this technically arrives from a studio born out of its ashes), Go-Kart Gottlieb may sound more interesting than it actually is. What’s initially sold as a perfunctory sports drama almost abruptly in the final act turns into what audiences may first assume was a fever dream they had while falling asleep in the middle of it, only to discover that no, they haven't dozed off, the madness really is unfolding right in front of them. And that's not to say it isn't a bit of a sight to be seen, full of scenes of robotic vehicle rampage interspersed with confusingly vague relationship drama.

 

Unfortunately, the film falls victim to where other post-Yin NJP films have themselves gone off the rails, in that the surprise is pretty much there for the hell of it, perhaps as a last ditch move by the writers to make what they perceive as a lacking story more noteworthy by throwing a sudden supernatural twist at it to see if it'll stick, jumbling the narrative instead of enhancing it. Depending on how invested you were beforehand, it could either make a boring drama entertaining on a trashy level or a compelling piece instantly crash and burn.

 

Go-Kart Gottlieb leans towards the former, but only by that much. The third act mayhem does make for an entertaining finish, but it is simultaneously undercut by the PG-13 rating leaving out any carnage that would’ve allowed it to at least achieve some sort of grindhouse cult status.

 

Go-Kart Gottlieb isn't among the worst of its kind (Higher Ground and White Wyvern are both worse, in my opinion), in part because of that ending, but there’s very little to dig into besides that, despite the go-kart setting acting as a blunt stand-in for the German motorsport scene.

 

C/C+

 

 

The Next Good Day

Spoiler

As the second of two Phoenix Fire Entertainment submissions dealing with loss and grief, The Next Good Day takes a smaller, more intimate approach than Death is Not My Friend, and succeeds better than it, if only up to a point.

 

While one can see its main twist coming from a mile away, and coming close to derailing the story at its most melodramatic intervals, Tom McCarthy’s more understated direction and some fine performances from its limited cast help pull the film back up to a respectable level. Dunst as Levi’s psychiatrist is the stand-out here, keeping a level head even as our protagonist exposes more and more of his fractured personality the further their interactions develop and the parallel timeline with his sibling begins to sync up with the present. For as well as the film flows otherwise, the parallel structure can lead to a few hiccups, but nothing that results in any derailing to the overall experience. With that said, some of the cameos, particularly of a recognizable face appearing in a throwaway bit at the very end, prove a bit unnecessary and risk to distract rather than add, but the film is courteous enough to not linger on them for too long.

 

The Next Good Day is solid, dealing with its subject matter in a suitably levelheaded way, even if I  didn’t walk out finding it anything spectacular.

 

B/B-

 

Edited August 2, 2022 by cookie

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Okay, I said I was going to read everything in posted order, but after hearing both the film's title and a fellow player's reaction to it on Telegram, I felt I had to read it early.

 

 

Socksucker

 

 

This feel less like an actual film and more like a lost segment out of the likes of Movie 43.

 

The Movie 43 comparison I don't make lightly, either. Socksucker features a commercially successful director and two decent-at-worst actors who are presumably forced at gunpoint to act out a scenario designed to make anyone who watches it want to run for the hills. The fact that the sentence "Written and Produced by Peter Farrelly" is nowhere to be found in the credits makes me suspect the Producer's, Writer's, and presumably the Director's Guild were all defrauded somehow.

 

Whatever point the film may have had about respecting your partner's desires is thrown out the window when you're forced to watch Emma Watson degrade herself worse than when she had to autotune her way through Beauty and the Beast — and I'd assume John Boyega would rather be back on the set of Pacific Rim: Uprising than have to deal with this. Any claim that this is supposed to be a sweet romantic comedy also rings rather hollow when you remember that the movie is deliberately titled so to evoke a highly derogatory phrase.

 

If this isn't my top candidate for the worst film of Y9 by the calendar's end, then I will be suprised.

Edited July 22, 2022 by cookie

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Fatal Error

 

I mean... when the very first sentence is an open admission that your movie is a rip-off of one of the most iconic J-horror properties but "goes off in a different direction", it's so blatant it kinda feels like an attempt to pull a reverse psychology on the audience, isn't it? It may have potentially worked if the "different direction" the film takes in the third act wasn't both nonsensical and openly admitting to ripping off another J-horror property.

 

Heck, you would've been better off going full meta with it and ripped off a whole bunch of J-horror films all at once. At least the bloated hydra that spawns from that would be something to behold.

 

Instead, it's just nothing. There are no stakes since the characters matter so little they don't even get names. We don't even get anyone to follow until the third act, and that person exists just to lose, get depressed, and then die. The gluttony of visual effects happening in the final act are all hampered by the film's low budget, so it can't even fall back on that to at least provide some enjoyment.

 

Socksucker remains worse because it's an embarrassment for everyone involved, but Fatal Error is by far the more cynical venture, on a level even the Monster Bug Wars pair from last year would scoff at.

 

F

 

 

Guinea Pigger

 

Movie: So you wanted to know what "The Power of Fresh Lettuce" entails?

Me: Yes.

Movie: You want some absurd lore that's actually kinda hard to follow to go along with that?

Me: No.

Movie: K, but I'm gonna toss it in anyway.

Me: I'd rather you don't.

Movie: Too late.

Me: Darn.

 

D/D-

 

 

Whinge & Cringe

 

There was a lot of whinge but very little cringe. Instead, it's just lame and boring. #Where'sTheCringe

 

D-

 

 

Hearts of Fire: Vengeful Heart

 

If the first Hearts of Fire felt generic at times, this one is just rushed and confusing. The surprise kill at the beginning may catch some people off-guard, and Hayek performs admirably through her various action sequences, but Vengeful Heart is little else but a rote sequel that stretches what little material its predecessor had in order to squeeze out a film so the studio can earn a few additional bucks. Save this film for when you go bargain bin shopping.

 

D+

 

 

AeroMobil: The Future is Now

 

There's probably a lot of criticism to be laid towards this documentary for being basically a feature-length promotional video for the company and their product, but the dash of optimism it provides makes it at least a watchable ninety minutes. Plus, it's a cool car.

 

C

 

 

Molly and Emmett

 

Molly and Emmett is a low-budget family film that skirts by on being mostly harmless — I say mostly because Samantha taking until the third act to apologize for a rather crude thing she did to her friend renders that character very unlikable — but it is also nothing at all to write home about. The lack of a voice cast you can even Google makes it difficult to tell if they fit in their roles (not sure why The Workshop and its Fossil Record affiliate keeps doing this, it's not like hiring voice actors is all that expensive), but at least its breezy plotting and cutesy antics should prevent the very young children it's obviously meant for from getting bored. Anyone above the age of five will probably start asking if they can check their parents' watches, though.

 

C/C+

 

 

Raven Island

 

Again with the voice cast you can't even Google. At least half the cast in Molly and Emmett were little kids, but this one's roster are all teens and up. This makes me think Fossil Record is extremely cheap when it comes to their labor.

 

Which is a shame, too, since this one has a lot more going for it than Molly and Emmett — or it would seem that way, until you remember that the movie is nearly two-and-a-half hours long yet doesn't think to spare any of that girth for downtime, character development, or even much worldbuilding. Instead, it seems to spend all that time on tediously paced sequences that render the film a massive slog rather than an enticing adventure. The use of old drawings coming alive as fantasy creatures to fight has the potential to lead for some entertaining moments, but not when it's all taken at such an awfully slow speed. Maybe the idea is that we're supposed to soak in the atmosphere, but even that would get old after a bit. It bogs down what could've otherwise been a decent little film, and making it all the more of a headscratcher in the process.

 

(I want to emphasize that a family animated film being 139 minutes isn't the issue. There's been multiple family films in CAYOM that have gone beyond two hours and have come out just fine. It's just that here, the plot as written is pretty thin, and so I don't understand where the runtime comes from.)

 

C

Edited July 24, 2022 by cookie

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Fore!

 

Fore! is not what one would traditionally call a "comedy." I mean, yes, it has "comedy" in it, but what you're actually witnessing is the perspective of someone slowly going insane. Either that, or that person has awoken to the fact that we're all trapped in the Matrix, and is putting this insanity in theaters to try and set the rest of us free.

 

I kinda want to give away what it is that caught me so off-guard about this film, but I feel like people should just read it and see for themselves. It is best experienced when you're not prepared for what is about to unfold.

 

B-

 

 

Among Us

 

Mighty sus.

 

*Review continues below, but spoilers beware.*

 

Spoiler

Quote

Lime Green states that if there’s a killer “among us,”

Ayyyyyy

 

Among Us ultimately plays more like a feature-length PG-13 Rick & Morty episode than it does a James Gunn picture (I'm not saying this because Justin Roiland plays one of the crewmates, it was apparent even before the cast list was revealed at the end). The film's attempts at sincerity, particularly in its final moments, ring rather hollow, and so the film has to rely on its humor to carry it. This is easier said than done when the film is rather hit-and-miss in that department as well, but when the jokes hit, they're at least worth a chuckle. The gimmick of hiding the cast members' identities until the very end is an interesting play, but too many of the crewmembers are archetypal stock characters that could've been played by almost any actor, making it pointless to even try to guess.

 

I think my main disappointment is that Blue is outed as the killer too early. With half the crew still left, there's still a lot the film can do to build on the suspense of who is going to turn out to be the killer in the end, especially as things become more desperate for the surviving members. Instead, however, the film decides to just up and reveal who it is and thus evaporate any remaining tension. The reveal itself is rather unsatisfying as well, as is when the bug monster decides to unleash its final attack on the surviving crewmembers, being taken down with just a few gun blasts.

 

I also feel like having Red do a fakeout death just so he can later return and confirm the killer's identity — while also making a suddern proclamation that killing the aliens earlier was a bad thing — was a bit of a copout, even if Adam Driver getting to continue lecturing the rest of his crew on what idiots they are isn't the worst proposition in the world.

 

In the end, Among Us is a goofy who-dun-it space murder mystery that doesn't fully commit to its premise all the way through, electing for a half-glass-full type experience that, while entertaining enough, could've done way more with what it had.

 

B-

 

 

Tumbleweed

 

You know the plastic bag scene from American Beauty? Imagine if, instead of Wes Bentley spending three minutes monologuing about the plastic bag's importance, we have Gus Van Sant trying to force a 97-minute movie out of what should've been a ten-minute short. I realize that Van Sant's filmography has never been to my particular taste, but this is an especially egregious example of some of his worst traits as a filmmaker. There are long stretches of the film where you might derive more enjoyment out of exiting the theater and watching an actual tumbleweed roll by than having to be cooped inside watching a simulated version of it.

 

Only in its last third, when Tumbleweed decides to have a faint semblance of a story, does it get mildly interesting. That's only enough to pull the film out of the pit that the likes of Sea of Trees and Touching Spirit Bear fell into, however, and not make it anything actually worth sitting through. If viewed at as a parody of itself, it might be possible to elevate the film slightly higher than that, but that is also dependent on the viewer finding the joke funny enough for an hour and a half. I don't see it as a joke, though.

 

C-/D+

Edited November 14, 2022 by cookie

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Man of the Jungle

 

As much I love Disney's Tarzan and am thrilled to see it brought to live-action, this was definitely an odd duck adaptation-wise, mainly due to several structural and casting choices that don't really seem to gel.

 

The film tries to add a racism angle that doesn't amount to much outside of giving Jason Isaac's Professor Porter — a bizarre composite of Professor Porter and Clayton from the original — a rushed arc about learning to see past Tarzan's skin color, as well as provide the slightest inclination that Tarzan's family may be runaway slaves (I say slightest because the movie barely hints at it and then doesn't touch on the subject ever again). It feels like the filmmakers tried to subvert the dated racial politics of the Edgar Rice Burroughs novels, but instead of telling an original Tarzan story where that could be put front and center it instead crams it into the context of remaking the Disney film, which notably steered clear of the subject as much as possible. All it really does is confuse the narrative (are The Professor and Jane supposed to be afraid/curious of Tarzan because he walks like an ape and talks like an ape, or because he's black? Or are we supposed to conflate the two ideas and make it even more problematic?), especially since it's never given much thought or development past those few scenes. Not that the film is poor because it tries to have a message about racism, but the way it is executed is rather slapdash and comes across as unnecessary as a result.

 

Another choice I found head-scratching was the decision to make the leopard the sole villain. On the one hand, this makes sense on a structural level, as it leaves the remake with one antagonist instead of two and make it feel like one cohesive piece instead of two halves of a story like the original. The problem is that the movie then tries to give Tarzan an arc about how he'd only perpetuate the cycle of violence by taking his revenge on the leopard for killing both his human parents and his gorilla brother. Not that this, much like the racism angle, is an issue in and of itself, but the movie goes through the expected motions of Tarzan learning to forgive, only to then suddenly hard pivot towards killing the leopard in the final act anyway as a moment of triumph that all the characters cheer on. It's like the movie couldn't decide whether it wanted to be black and white or shades of gray, and so it settled on some bizarre in-between that, much like the racism angle, just bungles the narrative.

 

I realize that all of this is a result of the film being rushed for the sake of filling up the schedule, and so its finer details clearly weren't thought through, but they stick out like a sore thumb nonetheless. CAYOM live-action adaptations of animated films have always had their iffy additions and subtractions (if they weren't just carbon copies of the originals), but Man of the Jungle proves to be by far the sloppiest, and thus cannot get a recommendation from me no matter how much I love the original.

 

C/C-

Edited July 28, 2022 by cookie

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Tongue Tied

 

Yeah, this isn't very much an Armando Iannucci film. If anything, it's a diet Shrek.

 

That's not to say that Tongue Tied is bad, but it sets certain expectations with the directorial choice that only pay off superficially at best. Iannucci knows how to assemble a large cast of talented actors and let them play around with medieval fantasy caricatures to their heart's content, but the story we're given bears none of the satirical bite of films like The Death of Stalin or In the Loop and comes across more like he was working from a rejected DreamWorks screenplay. It's such a strange choice when there are plenty of other comedy directors that would've suited this just fine, and it ends up detracting rather than elevating the experience.

 

The film also shoots itself in the foot by being rated PG-13 for no real reason. A couple of intimate scenes may be seen as a bit risque for a younger audience, but the movie otherwise lacks any real profanity or violence that isn't slapstick, and a lot of the humor is so juvenile that anyone over the age of eight is unlikely to find it all that funny (a running gag involving the film's antagonist constantly slipping on a banana peel, as if this was a low-rate Hanna-Barbera cartoon, serves as a shining example). The film's meta-humor, sparse as it is, is treated as if this indeed were a film aimed at children, with only the lightest jabs at America's Top Model bearing any fruit.

 

And that's not getting into the Starbucks product placement that serves no purpose other than being there for the sake it.

 

Are there elements that work in spite of its peculiar setbacks? Of course there are. I can't say I was bored by it, and it plays with the "Princess and the Frog" narrative in a few clever ways that made me want to know how it was going to play out. It doesn't make the best use of its cast (Jessica Henwick is given a mostly thankless role as a bowman whose main contribution to the film is an admittedly cool scene where she humiliates the villain and a brief action sequence towards the end, and Jessie Mei Li's Phoebe gets a lot of the story devoted to her before she's then bizarrely sidelined before the final act even begins), and some of the humor is overly juvenile, as said before, but to say that it's completely lacking in good laughs would be disingenuous—and even when a joke doesn't land, there's still enough of an infectious charm to the overall film that you're willing to forgive it and keep going.

 

The message is also pretty strong, although once again highlights how this should've been a straight-up kids film rather than the half-and-half it tries (and stumbles) to be. If you go in treating it as such, it's an enjoyable time, but if you go in expecting anything more than that, you're probably going to walk away confused.

 

B-

Edited December 9, 2022 by cookie

[4815162342]

just checking if you'll make any more reviews

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3 minutes ago, 4815162342 said:

just checking if you'll make any more reviews

I'll get to it next week, probably. Might only review the bigger stuff from now on to save time.

Edited January 15, 2023 by cookie

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Xenoblade Chronicles: The Power of the Monado

 

...Huh. That ended on a pretty abrupt "to be continued", didn't it? I know the game's story is fairly dense, but to end with little to no resolution on any of the character arcs (thin as they were) is a pretty ballsy move for a film that otherwise doesn't have that much going for it. Sure, it looks nice visually, and Wes Ball knows how to direct a man vs. machine fight scene, but I feel like at the same time I'm getting a cliff notes version of the first part of the game with little space to get attached to anything that's going on, which makes the barrage of sci-fi/fantasy mumbo-jumbo that takes up so much of this film a bit harder to swallow. I wouldn't say I was bored, but I would say I was confused.

 

C/C+

Edited January 15, 2023 by cookie

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The Queen Who Never Was

 

This is not a particularly accessible film if you don't know your A Song of Ice & Fire (aka Game of Thrones) lore. The movie casually introduces Westeros and the presence of dragons and royal families with little time spent on getting the causal viewer caught up with any of it. Within the first ten minutes, we're introduced to what feels like fifteen different characters (many with similar names) and four different subplots that'll soon be running side-by-side across constant time skips both forwards and backwards, the latter of which does get increasingly annoying the more it happens. The film's first half is densely plotted because of this, and so it becomes a bit of a grind.

 

When the timelines catch up and the film starts to focus on a more singular, cohesive plot line in its second half (and the character who's supposed to be the POV, but gets little play up to this point, Rhaenys, finally takes center stage) does it get both easier to follow and more compelling overall, even if the last third of the film feels like it ends on a bit of a sputter with it deciding to focus on politics and succession rather than do a more crowd pleasing action finale. That doesn't make the movie bad, and George R.R. Martin's dialogue gets to shine when it's allowed to stand on its own for a bit, but it does call into question the film's overall commercial viability (I still think it'll open strongly on account of the brand, but legs will probably be shortened) — especially when the film's last chance at providing spectacle, Viserys's attempt to tame the oldest and fiercest dragon in Westeros, is bizarrely and disappointingly treated off-screen.

 

Weaving is solid as Rhaenys here, but my personal MVP would be Kenneth Branagh as Jaehaerys, in part because it reminds me so much of House of the Dragon's own MVP, Paddy Considine as an older Viserys (even if Khoegan isn't bad here as a younger version of him, may Viserys's presence be sorely missed in season two). Jaeherys carries a lot of the same stubbornness as his future heir, but in a more detestable sense, feeling resentment towards family members whom he feels have either betrayed or abandoned him — a resentment he ends up bringing with him to his grave. Jessie Buckley as his promiscuous daughter Saera is also a highlight, though her storyline takes up a lot of space for something that only has a nominal impact towards the end of the film. I also found a lot of enjoyment of Domhnall Gleeson as Vaegon, especially in his brief but impactful appearance towards the end, though some of the other minor characters like Maegelle and Septon Barth ended up feeling superfluous.

 

I wouldn't go as far as to call The Queen Who Never Was a slam dunk, in part due to its copious use of flashbacks and somewhat underwhelming finish, but its highs outweigh its lows, and given that it's nearly three-and-a-half hours long, the pacing was actually rather solid once the storylines became less jumbled. I may have to debate a bit more where I'll ultimately land on this, but for now, I'll say:

 

B/B+

Edited January 21, 2023 by cookie

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Kirby and the King's Caper

 

Honestly wasn't left with that much to say about this one. It's cute, it's colorful, it's fast, but it's also pretty slight outside of the cartoon antics and Kirby's episodic encounters with various Dreamland residents and foes. The movie kinda tricks you at first by making you think that Kirby's father/son-esque relationship with Chef Kawasaki is going to be the heart of the story, but Kawasaki is immediately sidelined once Kirby departs on his quest, and the only other real emotion comes when Meta Knight has an abrupt change of heart after giving Kirby a harder-than-intended slap. That leaves most of the film feeling like a less annoying Illumination feature, where the plot and emotional core aren't that important compared to whatever antics the main character(s) get up to.

 

Still, it's harmless, it's nicely animated, and I got more than a couple of chuckles from the main cast (the infamous "nectar" line made me guffaw as I encountered it, though. Bound to go down as a CAYOM all-timer). You can do a whole lot worse, really.

 

B/B-

Edited February 19, 2023 by cookie

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Sleepy Hollow

 

This, uh... this was kind of a mess.

 

*Spoilers below*

 

I honestly have to echo @4815162342's sentiment that the stop-motion employed here is perfunctory at best and actively becomes a hindrance at worst. Aside from a mine cart sequence, a couple of hallucinations, and a few Horseman chases, the film makes very little actual use of it, and the Pleasantville aesthetic that's supposed to contrast some of the darker set pieces only ends up hampered by it.

 

Speaking of Pleasantville, I don't understand why the "1950s town that time forgot" setting was even necessary if a) that's not what the original story was about, and b) nothing is really done with it. You set up all these expectations with this type of environment that the movie then actively pivots away from, instead saying that "oh no, Sleepy Hollow is actually a super progressive place when it comes to women, POC, and gays, it just doesn't bother treating its laborers as people rather than a commodity to be controlled and exploited!" — Like, if this was a comment on capitalist liberalism, why then evoke imagery more linked with hard-right conservative ideals but then strip away most of the politics associated with that? All it does is making the film confused as to what it is trying to satirize.

 

And speaking of politics, the motivation of the villain is a jumbled knot of its own, even if it ultimately boils down to protecting his wealth of natural resources. For someone who employs hallucinogenic chemicals to keep workers in line and invents a mythic serial killer to deal with the people who don't, that both him and the town then welcomes Ichabod with open arms when he arrives doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. If you want to keep your stuff hidden, going as far as preventing any use of modern technology or communication with the outside world, shouldn't there be more of an active effort to put a stop to an outsider who feels compelled to snoop around once strange things start to occur? I mean, they try to have the horseman kill him when he first crashes his car in the woods, but once he arrives at Sleepy Hollow, the villain's scheme abruptly stops targeting him, even though he keeps moving closer to uncovering it. Only in the last act is any real action taken from the villains' side, and by that point Ichabod and Catalina have already figured most of it out.

 

Putting aside the muddled plot, the muddled aesthetics, and the muddled politics, the film does have its bright spots. It has a game voice cast, and whenever the stop-motion is actually used to the film's advantage, it does produce some effective and atmospheric imagery. When you put those sequences aside though, the main mystery ends up being kind of a slog, since there are long stretches of red herrings and local politics that, while they help flesh out the world, don't end up amounting to much in the grand scheme of things.

 

Full disclosure, I read several reviews and @YM!'s response to one of them before writing this review, so I have a fairly clear grasp of what the point behind Ichabod's character arc was — A man whose failures to work past his desperate need for validation being what proves to be his downfall. The movie itself doesn't make that point entirely clear, though, and the ending trying to imply that this may have all been something he hallucinated while stumbling around in the woods after his car accident at the very beginning feels like a copout, especially since the lack of setup beforehand makes it strenuous to believe he had somehow imagined all of that.

 

So in the end, if you were looking for an adaptation of the classic tale, you're not gonna get it; if you're looking for a subversion, you're getting a hodgepodge of ideas clumped together without the cohesion necessary to really make it stick; and as a stop-motion animated film done by one of the greatest in the field, its own animation ends up underutilized. On the one hand, I commend Endless Animation for taking a real swing at this, but the story really needed another pass at it. It worked a lot less for me than I hoped it would.

 

C+

Edited February 19, 2023 by cookie

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Warmth

 

Ultimately too much on the slight side for my taste, but a solidly made exploration of guilt and exorcising your demons with some neat visual flourishes nonetheless. I think there could have been a lot more meat to its bones, as the "lessons" and discussions mainly consists of platitudes and hints to past demons, never going into as much depth as I felt they should have. Would've been more compelling if there were talks about why these men were originally so gung-ho about doing the terrible acts they did, what made them realize they were wrong, and the consequences that led them to were they are today. I suppose the movie makes up for some of it by allowing the viewer to take in more of the surrounding landscape, but I think they still could've done more with the 95 minutes they had. Cute doggo, tho.

 

B-

Edited February 19, 2023 by cookie

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The Mirage

 

The Mirage follows a lot of the same playbook as much of Studio Groundswell and its predecessor New Journey Pictures' previous output, birthed from the success of Yin. A coherent plot isn't that important here, as the film instead plays out like a fever dream of sorts, featuring only the vaguest of explanations as to what's going on and leaving a lot of it up for the viewer to interpret through subtext. Unlike something like Go-Kart Gottlieb or Higher Ground, however, The Mirage is consistent in its weirdness all the way through, and it manages to seep in a lot of amusing black comedy that prevents the atmosphere from getting too overbearing.

 

The "horror" aspect comes in mainly through the main character's increasing desperation in getting the job done, plus some effectively done sequences involving claustrophobic imagery (the cacti scene illustrating it the most). Some of the other sequences, such as the motorcycle chases, the giant spider, and the zombie coyotes, play out more like excerpts from action thrillers, but they keep the tension going all the same. The final chase does feel like it sputters out a little bit too early, but other than that the film uses its limited scope to its advantage.

 

Glen Powell excels here as Ralph, encapsulating a lot of the film's subtext about fragile masculinity. Ralph's introduced as a bounty hunter who's nostalgic about the lawlessness and wide open vistas of the American frontier, particularly in the scorching hot desert, thinking there isn't a problem he can't solve with a loaded gun. He chases his bounties—often young women—like damsels to be rescued, painting himself as a John Wayne-type anti-hero who'll swoop in, shoot the bad guy, and ride off with said damsel towards the sunset. When that proves to be far more difficult than he expected, even experiencing his first real loss along the way, Ralph's brittle underpinnings are quickly exposed. This is a coward who would throw the damsel to the wolves if it meant saving his own skin, and in the film's final moments discovers a sudden change about himself that causes him to snap into maniacal laughter, having been turned into the very thing he spent the whole movie claiming he wasn't. It's a brilliant turn on Powell's part and should come up in the Best Actor conversation by the year's end.

 

The Mirage's weirdness doesn't lend itself to everything it does, however. The idea of reincarnation introduced by the motorcyclists I feel tries to add too much mythology to a setting that didn't really need it, and so when they take center stage in the final act is when I found the film a little less engaging. Not enough to significantly hamper the film, but the pseudo-comedic tension and claustrophobic sequences in the earlier parts of the film is where I found it to be at its strongest.

 

The Mirage isn't exactly on the level of Yin for me personally, probably because it doesn't have the same surprise factor as that film did, but I still found myself impressed with how the film manages to do so much with so little, using its barest of bones to warp into an effective thriller that reminds me almost as much about The Grey as it does other neo-westerns. Impressive work.

 

A-/B+

Edited February 19, 2023 by cookie

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Inspector Gadget & Penny

 

Despite the title, Inspector Gadget & Penny opts to focus much more on the latter, leaving Gadget himself rather underdeveloped as the goofy-but-stern father figure. It feels like an over-correction from how sidelined Penny was in the live-action Inspector Gadget films released by Disney at the turn of the millenium, and so the film is a bit less fun than it could've been. That said, it's still got its heart in the right place, and it delivers some decent slapstick and middle school angst from Penny and her new "frenemy" MADdie. The highlight turn goes to Dr. Claw who steals every scene he's in, particularly during his attempts to kill Gadget during the dinner scene. All in all, the movie is a decent timewaster for kids, but not a particularly impressive stamp on Endless Animation's catalogue.

 

B-

 

Edited February 19, 2023 by cookie

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Vixen and the Castle of Doom

 

The first Vixen film was an interesting experiment in artstyle and mood, but I remember not thinking that much of it afterwards, probably because as a story it was pretty slight. Its sequel is far grander in that regard, having an actual voice cast and dealing with some rather heavy topics for a children's fantasy film, but that does make it more interesting to watch as an adult. The movie does end up feeling a bit baggy for a 90-minute feature, probably because so much of it is spent on debating wether it's right for Vixen to rid the world of the dragons or not, but the father-daughter conflict that takes up the final act does lend itself to some pretty engrossing character drama, which the Van Gogh-style artwork helps enhance to an extent. Despite being technically shorter than its predecessor in runtime, Castle of Doom feels like a bigger, more confident sequel than The Flaming Feather, and so earns high praise from me.

 

B+

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American Spy

 

I again have to echo some other sentiments here: The pacing becomes rather laborious in the middle, as we go from one convo to another where some of the same points feel like they're being repeated a few too many times using different words. Perhaps this would've been alleviated a bit if I felt more of Smollett and Sy's chemistry, but given that most of their romantic dialogue is centered around the political aspects of Sy's character, turning him into a figurehead more than a person, it does feel like we're just jumping from one scene of exposition to another whenever Smollett has to return to disclose her information to either Damon or McConaughey, depending on what point of the film she's in. Perhaps if we saw more of what Sankara does as a leader rather than just have it explained to us, it would've worked a bit more for me, but there were a good few stretches of this where I was wondering wether or not we weren't just spinning in circles.

 

Smollett herself is very good here, putting on a respectable and restrained performance that nevertheless hides a lot of family trauma, pain, and self-doubt underneath, finding herself torn as her feelings grow for the man she's supposed to be deceiving. Sy does show a fair bit of command in his scenes, and Damon has a bit of depth to him once the twist surrounding his motives are revealed, but McConaughey is a bit too subdued in his scenes for my liking.

 

I feel like the movie could've done more to compress some parts and perhaps replace them with more varied and engaging sequences, particularly around the middle. Maybe have Marie explore Burkina Faso as a place more, or have more scenes that put her in tense situations she has to use her wit to get out of, as those are the scenes that worked best for me. There's a fair amount of this that is fairly commendable, and the film ends on a strong note, but I do wish it was stronger as a whole package.

 

B/B-

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Cookie's Corner's Most Broken Films of Y9

 

These are not the worst films of the year. Some of these even border on being quite alright. These are instead films I find either to be incredibly disappointing given what they set out to do or, as the title implies, are broken in some way that I feel is worth mentioning. Some of these I have reviewed before, so I'm not going to repeat myself too much.

 

And none of these made the top 25 anyway, so if you do see a film you hoped would score higher here... I'm sorry. It just didn't do it for me.

 

#5

Spoiler

 

Man of the Jungle

 

Not sure what I can say about this one that I haven't already said. The racism angle is poorly implemented and unintentionally problematic, the decision to make the leopard the sole villain is sound on paper but bungled in execution, and the whole thing feels like it was rushed to fill a spot on the schedule (which it was). Given that Disney remakes already have a mixed tracked record in CAYOM (and even more so IRL), this landing at the bottom of the pile isn't helping, especially when it's a lousy reimagining of one of my personal favorites.

 

#4

Spoiler

 

The Boy Who Hated Books

 

I was planning to score this a bit higher, but having read @YM!'s take on it... Yeah, there's nothing I can really say to argue against that. I'm sure it wasn't intended to come across as it does to people who have or know someone who has dyslexia, but noble intentions can't pave over poor execution. It's a bit of a shame too, since it's a solidly constructed film otherwise.

 

#3

Spoiler

 

Sleepy Hollow

 

I've gone over this one in-depth as well, so little need to repeat myself. It's a film that appears to be confused about pretty much everything it tries to do, from the setting, to the plot, to the satirical elements, and even to the choice of animation. Endless Animation has done much more tightly focused films than this, and I hope the mixed reception to this hasn't discouraged them from continuing to branch out into adult animation.

 

#2

Spoiler

 

Second Dimension: Last Hope

 

I really don't want to harp on formatting or grammar issues, but this was especially straining to read. I feel like if you have the time and capacity to write something as beefy as this, taking a couple extra hours to fix some of the more glaring issues isn't that big of an ask. I honestly don't think it was the best idea to post this in the state that it was, and if the writer is planning to do more in the future, I hope there's an effort made to improve with the next one.

 

But I'm not gonna let that affect what I thought about the story itself, and... it didn't really do it for me either. The film as it stands isn't that hard to follow and moves at a decent clip, with some rather sweeping action sequences scattered about, but it's all hampered by a barebones plot mostly concerned with setup, an underutilized cast, and as @MCKillswitch123 pointed out, a lot of male gazing for a movie directed by a woman. Maybe wherever this eventually leads to will be more fulfilling, but that's not going to improve this chapter in retrospect, much like I don't think whatever Denis Villeneuve does in Dune: Part Two is going to make Part One any less dull — Sorry if you liked Dune: Part One.

 

#1

Spoiler

 

Raven Island

 

Raven Island shows how you can break a film where the thing that breaks it isn't even in the text itself. Why is the movie nearly two-and-a-half hours long when the plot is thinner than Twig's antlers? It's such a colossal yet easily fixable mistake that I didn't really have any choice but to put this at #1. Sometimes people point out stories that have too much girth for their stated length, but Raven Island is the exact opposite — Too much stated length for its (lack of) girth.

 

Edited February 22, 2023 by cookie

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Cookie's Corner's Worst Films of Y9

 

And now for the actual garbage.

 

#8

Spoiler

 

The Talons of the Hawk

 

I have a high tolerance for dumb, but this was a DUMB movie. Setting aside how the movie does barely enough to fill an hour of screen time, let alone 108 minutes, it's the kind of movie where things just randomly happen and the filmmakers just expect the audience to go along with it. Not gonna happen by my count.

 

#7

Spoiler

 

Hearts of Fire: Vengeful Heart

 

The original film was just whatever, and the sequel turns a rote premise into something even staler. Salma Hayek barely keeps this dullfest above the absolute bottom rung.

 

Not that any movie that has the gall to use the word "Heart" in its title twice was ever going to have that work out in its favor.

 

#6

Spoiler

 

Tumbleweed

 

Gus Van Sant pulls an active prank on the audience with his latest and dullest venture, daring anyone who watches it to try and find meaning in it. Don't take the bait.

 

#5

Spoiler

 

Guinea Pigger

 

To be honest, my headcanon regarding "the power of fresh lettuce" was that the guinea pig pooped in that one girl's mouth or something. I didn't expect to involve some ridiculously complicated lore for something that's supposed to be filler trash.

 

#4

Spoiler

 

Whinge & Cringe

 

People say this movie is cringe, but I honestly found it to be staggeringly lacking in cringe. Whinge goes around doing a few lame pranks and that's about it. Why not have him go around and do some edgelord mass murdering or whatever to at least make it spectacularly embarrassing rather than quietly embarrassing?

 

#3

Spoiler

 

Father III: All Hell Breaks Loose

 

Now, don't let this film's ranking discourage you — This is some glorious trash all the way through, much like its predecessor. Rarely does CAYOM manage to produce an actual "so bad it's good" disasterpiece that's actually very enjoyable to read, but full props to the insane Father trilogy for managing to pull it off for three movies straight.

 

#2

Spoiler

 

Socksucker

 

You thought this was the worst of Y9? Think again.

 

#1

Spoiler

 

Fatal Error

 

The more I thought about this one, the angrier I got. You know, Socksucker at least isn't trying to piss the reader off, but Fatal Error literally starts by saying it's a ripoff of probably the most iconic J-horror property out there and expects you to just sit there and take it, all in the promise that it'll eventually go in a "different direction". Well, you know what, the "different direction" was just the movie ripping off another J-horror property and doing it in an equally lazy and cynical way. The filmmakers are just making a mockery out of their audience at that point. It's the Monster Bug Wars pair from last year all over again, and I frankly won't stand for it a second time around. This is easily the worst film of Y9.

 

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Cookie's Corner's Top 25 (but really 30) of Y9

 

So how this works is that I will rank the top 30 films I've read this year, but since the CC thread only allows 25 films to be ranked, #30 to #26 are what you could call the "honorable mentions". I decided to include them in the ranking since I had already made the list that way.

 

In this post, I'll rank #30 to #26. No gimmicks involved, just simple ranking. Let's go.

 

#30

Spoiler

 

Fore!

 

Yes, this is stupid. Yes, this movie was obviously made as filler trash. Yes, it could have been made a lot weirder than it was... But I had a really good laugh reading it. And yes, I did say the same about Father III: All Hell Breaks Loose which I put on my worst list, but I feel like that movie would be proud to be on the worst list, so why deny it that honor?

#29

Spoiler

 

HOOOOOPS

 

Glory to the great nation of Bailee Bucketstan for finally bringing this film into the world. That it's actually a decent time is icing on the cake.

 

#28

Spoiler

 

The Boy Who Hated Books

 

It's really a shame that the clumsy handling of the topic of dyslexia casts such a big shadow over all of this, since aside from some overly saccharine moments, the rest of the film isn't that bad. Could've even been really engrossing if it wasn't so problematic.

 

#27

Spoiler

 

Mechamen

 

I like giant mech movies, even when they're filled with as many stock characters and weirdly problematic elements as this one. Just give them something interesting (and coherent) to do next time.

 

#26

Spoiler

 

Rocket Hero

 

A film that excels on its action and Cruise and Malek being a good pairing... and practically nothing else, including the lacking conclusion. It's a good enough time-waster, at least.

 

Edited February 22, 2023 by cookie