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Tenet (2020)
Poorly managed spectacle
I was immediately hooked by the concept and the characters. The intro scene is amazing. The two mains work together so well and are perfectly casted.
I don't know how to explain it, but it just felt lacking compared to its heady cousin Inception. It made what could have been a cool and simple idea into something convoluted. The main mechanic of the film is truly something to behold, but Tenet gets caught up in trying to make sense of it all instead of just letting the idea run.
The set pieces elevate what should have been a masterpiece of storytelling. In the end, I was left dejected because of needless big brain talk. Show don't tell is a saying for a reason
The Endless (2017)
An unfortunate ending
Low budget isn't an issue when you have a phenomenal story and some really well casted actors. This movie had me gripped...and then the ending came.
I was so disappointed with the mess of cgi that really detracted from the emotion. They played it so smart earlier on by hiding the cosmic forces. I think it was just ambition over ability, and unfortunately it made the movie flatline.
Lovecraft Country (2020)
A complete for storytelling and horror
The slow burn that this could have been disappears in the first episode where you're already seeing monsters and magic. Where's the build up to the craziness? It makes no sense to set up the possibility of fantasy and then blow your load with it in the first episode.
The second episode requires many leaps on logic at best and complete nonsense the rest of the time. I went in trying to separate my feelings from the excellent book, and lucky for me, it didn't matter.
Jordan Peele and JJ Abrams have shown with Twilight Zone and the new Star Wars trilogy that they lack the ability build a coherent plot without relying on wild leaps in logic or leaning on crazy situations that hope to turn off the audience's brains.
Truly lackluster and a real insult to the well thought out source material
Color Out of Space (2019)
What were they thinking
This movie is just baffling decision after baffling decision. An absurd script, horrendous over acting, and a plot that completely abandons what makes the original story so eerie and mysterious.
What an absolute waste of amazing source material.
1917 (2019)
Not what was advertised
I wanted to love this movie. I wanted it to be the next great war epic that the trailers convinced me it would be, but in the end, it was a slow, methodical trip across the countryside with next-to-no combat and a focus almost entirely on dialogue. While that may be enough for some people, I look back to Saving Private Ryan and other masterclasses of the genre that save the character driven moments until after they have already shown you the horrors of combat. For me, the quotables and the character arcs did not feel earned, and the journey ended in a puff of smoke that dissipated unrealistically quickly.
It Chapter Two (2019)
What a mess
The two aspects of this movie that do the most damage to it is the writers strange and nonsensical choices and the over-use of cringey cgi.
The story was already written for them. Sure some things could be changed to the adaptation into a movie, but the changing of key events and motives really showed a lack of interest in the source material. In my opinion after seeing It 2, the writers had no reverence to what made the book so effective. This story tarnishes the evil created in the novel and, even as a seperate story, fails to create anything close to enjoyable for the audience.
While that alone made me want to walk out time and time again, nothing bothered me more consistently than the constant, bad cgi. The creators think a goofy monster running and shaking its head is horror, and man are they wrong. The movie is ugly and devoid of any real suspense because of their insistence on showing instead of telling
I gave this a 2 because of a few good jokes, a single decent scene with Pennywise underneath some bleachers (before he becomes a cgi mouth), and my own silly want for this movie to be better than the 1 that I think it really does deserve.
I have to be honest, this movie made me angry. It tore apart my favorite story and my favorite characters, turning them into something that was just too hard to look at. I hated It 2. I would tell the director that. I would tell Steven King that. He approved this travesty, and I wish I went with my instinct and hadn't seen it at all.
Toy Story 4 (2019)
Concept over story
These four movies have largely had the exact same plot which revolves around lost toys finding homes and strangers seeking companionship. While the third really elevated the simplicity of these movies for me by showing the darker emotions that stem from being cast out, the fourth is such a weak return to form that it leaves me wondering why it even needed to exist.
The plot is only there to service the statement that the creators wanted to state, which I will leave out if you haven't seen the film yet. A non-existent villain, weak time constraints, a very on-the-nose new character, and a whole lot of melodrama about growing old that is not unique to this movie make me wish that the final "revelation" about the toys was fit into the third entry or just ignored altogether. It's something that sounds sweet outside the movie, but the point is hammered into your brain so blatantly that it loses the deftness with which Pixar so famously tells their stories.
All in all, the film felt mediocre and served as a weak goodbye to these characters that already cemented their friendship powerfully in the previous movie.
The Night Comes for Us (2018)
A bunch of people standing around
While this movie is obviously trying to imitate The Raid in its combat scenarios, it fails immensely by not understanding what fundamentally made that movie's combat so enthralling. The Night is plagued by fight scenes where assailants stand doe-eyed in the background waiting their turn.
One of the worst examples of this occurs in a 2 on 1 fight where the 2 take turns attacking the 1. What they do when it's not their turn either involves the pantented "whipe blood from my mouth" or act tired for a moment even though they are trained killers that wouldn't get winded after a punch to the face.
The single most egregious mistake involves a massive group attack reminiscent of the Raid 2's bathroom scene where a small cast is faced with a near-never ending force of combat fodder. While this scene has some great practical effects, I was immediately taken out of the world of the movie, when the group stopped abruptly at the door, swinging their machetes around with literally nothing in front of them. It's like they were stuck at some invisible wall you would see on the border of a video game, each all being allowed through when someone else had gotten dispatched.
The reason the Raid and it's sequel succeeded with scenes like this is that every background character had something realistic to do. Either fight each other, writhe in pain, or be dead. It gave a sense of realism that The Night completely lacks.
The story may be better than average in my opinion, but if the combat is this much of a failure in an action movie. I can't pass a good number on to it. Go watch the Raid and it's sequel.