I did entries comparing Tony Laplume's capsule reviews for 2014-2017 to my reviews, sort of as an ad hoc Siskel & Ebert. Then he did 2018 and I almost didn't do it because there were quite a few that I hadn't seen. I think by 2018 you started to get more streaming options with things like CBS All Access (now Paramount+) and HBO Go/Now (soon to just be Max) joining Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon. Plus Disney was starting to pull up stakes on Netflix and other services to create Disney+. So with all these new options adding original content and dispersing new movies to different places, it made it harder to keep up with things except for the biggest movies. As well, late in 2017 I started watching Pluto TV a lot, mostly the Rifftrax and MST3K channels and Laplume would never watch those movies because Mr. WWE Fan is too good for bad movies. [eye roll]
I did decide to compare those I remembered seeing but then the problem was about 1/3 of those I couldn't find where I'd actually written a review. I figure either I didn't write anything or I just did something on Facebook and good luck trying to track that down now. So I just scribbled something based on my best recollections.
Now on to the show!
Isle of Dogs (Laplume)
rating: *****
review: The movie that definitively made me appreciate Wes Anderson, his second stop-motion animated flick, about a nightmare scenario striking a Japanese city which exiles all its dogs to "Trash Island," and the courageous dogs (and humans!) who struggle to save the day. Packed with Anderson's trademark ability to collect great stars to his projects, including what's now my favorite Bryan Cranston performance as Chief, the unlikely leader of this pack. The whole film is amazing, including a perfect soundtrack.
Me:
Isle of Dogs: To my knowledge this is Wes Anderson's second stop-motion movie after The Fantastic Mr. Fox about 8 years ago. This is about a Japanese city in the near-future that banishes all dogs to an island of garbage because of a dog flu. One of the dogs is the son of the mayor's dog so the kid goes to the island to find him. A group of dogs finds the kid and helps him traverse the island. Like most everything Anderson does it's kinda weird but it has heart. I mean at the core it's basically a story of a boy and a cur becoming friends. Just the stop-motion and weirdness like most human lines being only in Japanese (only sometimes with translation) might throw people. Though it's on a Japanese island it features mostly white people doing the voices: Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, Jeff Goldblum, and long-time Wes Anderson alum Bill Murray. Does that count as cultural appropriation? (3/5)
Solo: A Star Wars Story (Laplume)
rating: ****
review: For most Star Wars fans, my opinions are the exact opposite of mainstream opinion. Just recently, I thought Rogue One was basically an abomination, and the sequels were brilliant. And I loved Solo, exactly what the character Han Solo needed to solidify his legacy, including an extremely clever interpretation of the old Kessel run record he bragged about in his first appearance. If ever Star Wars truly became more than just the Skywalker saga (sorry, Mandalorian fans), this is what it looks like when Han takes center stage, and exactly how it ought.
Me:
I didn’t watch this until after I got Disney+ in 2020 and then just thought it was meh. Not really a necessary addition to the Star Wars mythos. Lando perving on a droid was especially not something we needed to see or even contemplate. Ick. And Han’s surname is the result of a shitty dad joke: He’s Han and he’s solo, get it? Ugh. Han is probably the least interesting or important character in his own origin story. The Q’ira and Darth Maul scene could have set up another movie but since this flopped (in part because of post-Last Jedi backlash and in part because of its troubled production history) they did that in the comics instead. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact: you can still get the action figures from this and the last two sequel movies for pretty cheap on Amazon or at discount stores.)
Super Troopers 2 (Laplume)
rating: ****
review: I didn't really get into the Broken Lizard boys until Club Dread, so the first Super Troopers had for a long time been a comedy milestone for other movie fans. I was more than ready for this late sequel, however, especially thanks to all the Canadian humor infused into the shenanigans.
Me:
Super Troopers 2: This was one of those movies Kickstartered--or actually it was some other site that was the same deal--by fans and released for a few weeks in theaters. Because Disney moved Avengers 3 back a week it ended up coming out a week before that and thus being obliterated. Which might be just as well. Most of it is just a bunch of moldy cliches about Canadians and/or French Canadians as the doofus cops from the first movie are brought out of being fired as city cops to patrol a part of Canada being annexed into the US. The funniest parts were when they dress up as Mounties and mess with people on the road and "the Fred Savage Incident" that's referenced but not shown until the credits. (And the gag reel during the credits.) If you haven't seen it, you're probably better off. (2/5)
Gringo (Laplume)
rating: ****
review: A classic ensemble farce lampooning corporate nonsense. Another movie that demands a much wider and acclaimed reputation. This year was full of 'em.
Me:
Gringo: This Amazon movie from 2018 is about an African guy who goes to work as a middle-manager for a Chicago company. One of his biggest jobs is going down to Mexico to check up on things down there. Learning his job is about to be cut and his wife (Thandiwe Newton) is having an affair, the guy decides to fake a kidnapping to get the company to pay him. Except the company doesn't have a kidnapping insurance policy anymore, so to save money, the CEO (Joel Edgerton) sends his brother (Sharlto Copley) down to Mexico to extract the guy. There are a lot of twists and double-crosses and things like that. If you like those early Guy Ritchie movies like Snatch or Revolver then you'd like this because it's the same blend of violence and dark humor. (3/5) (Fun Facts: For some reason Charlize Theron plays a bitchy, slutty executive; it just seems like she could have done something better. Nash Edgerton directed this so you have Australians starring in and directing a movie about an American company employing an African guy to go to Mexico. It's a small world after all.)
Tag (Laplume)
rating: ****
review: Famously the movie that broke Jeremy Renner's arms (he's had some terrible luck, okay?) and limiting his resulting chances to be featured heavily in the later Avengers movies (but was that really ever going to happen?), but well worth it. A classic comedy.
Me:
Tag: Based on a true story there's a group of guys who for one month of year play an epic game of tag. They get in disguise and stuff to tag each other, but they've never tagged their friend Jerry (Jeremy Renner) who is getting married. So they all go home for the wedding hoping to tag him, but he won't make it easy. It was amusing but a little long. In the credits they show the real guys this was based on and some of the stuff they did was better than the movie. One guy dressed up in a bulldog mascot costume so he could tag another guy at a basketball game. That would have been cool in the movie. Also during the credits Jeremy Renner with the other guys as backup sings the old Crash Test Dummies song Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm--however you'd spell it. (2.5/5)
Sorry to Bother You (Laplume)
rating: ****
review: LaKeith Stanfield had a breakthrough year (he also had a small but striking supporting role in The Girl in Spider's Web), headlined by this wicked satire.
Me:
I know I watched this but I can’t find a review. I liked it up to a point. Where it starts getting into turning people into centaurs (or something like that) it goes a bit too far for me. (3.0/5)
Ant-Man and the Wasp (Laplume)
rating: ***
review: Paul Rudd is such a great hand, it's easy to forget why he's generally not really considered a leading man. This is even more obvious in the recent third installment, but in this second one, there's plenty of assisting parts, including an upgrade so Marvel could claim it used its female characters better than its record had really stated by this point.
Me:
Ant-Man and the Wasp: A Marvel sequel that is fun and mostly focused on its own little corner of the MCU, though the cookie scene does have a huge impact on Endgame. Bringing back Hope's mother was something I was surprised they didn't do the first time, but I guess they wanted to spend more time setting up that quantum realm thing. And adding another old Batman movie alum to the MCU with Michelle Pfeiffer! Ghost is less forgettable than most Marvel villains and in this case not even really a villain so much as someone trying to save herself. (3.0/5)
Mission: Impossible - Fallout (Laplume)
rating: ***
review: Ah! Right! The infamous Henry Cavill role that produced the mustache! Tom Cruise had developed a nasty habit in this series to curb the wider appeal of any potential usurpers (Jeremy Renner, previous victim, Ghost Protocol), and Cavill's best scene, preparing for a fight in a restroom, showcased in the trailers, is relegated to much less impressive results in the film itself, and of course a reveal as one of the bad guys. But I really do love this series.
Me:
This is another one I know I watched but I can’t find a review. Anyway, if you asked me to differentiate this one from the previous 2 movies, I would find that a Mission: Impossible. Just like if you asked me to identify which woman was in which movie as Tom Cruise’s side piece (or even his wife from the third one), I would also have no idea. And at this point if you ask me what this movie was about, also no idea. But Henry Cavill has a mustache! That was the most memorable thing. And Tom Cruise does some crazy stunt--again. (2.0/5)
Avengers: Infinity War (Laplume)
rating: ***
review: Elsewhere on this blog you can see where my original thoughts were considerably more positive, but hindsight places the best sequence, and the only one I really think fondly about, in Steve Rogers' dramatic comeback. Otherwise, dramatically underscores all the failings of the MCU to be anything more than throwaway entertainment.
Me:
You can read my full, super-grumpy review here. Or here’s my shortened version from my ranking entry, “Avengers: Infinity War: A long, dreary slog that's largely devoid of plot logic. I went through all that in my grumpy review of it. I mean, why not just use the Time Stone and go back to kill Thanos? Or at least keep him from from getting all the stones?” I mean since they used time travel to fix things anyway, right? No, we can’t time travel then but we can time travel later. [eye roll] (2/5)
Venom (Laplume)
rating: ***
review: Hey, I'll follow Tom Hardy anywhere! Typically great performance. Rest of the film around him...well, it's there, anyway.
Me: I can’t find a review but I mostly liked this. I didn’t have very high expectations for a Venom movie that couldn’t have any Spider-Man elements in it but they made it work well enough. Indie movie darling Michelle Williams is largely wasted as the love interest--except when she briefly gets to be Venom--while the bad guy was a pretty decent Elon Musk-type asshole rich guy. I still haven’t seen the sequel to see what they did with Carnage.
Here's my comment on Facebook: This was surprisingly not bad. This version of Venom is obviously an improvement over Spider-Man 3. I like how they give the symbiote some personality, one that sort of mirrors his host.
(3.0/5)
Aquaman (Laplume)
rating: ***
review: I just haven't really gotten around to revisiting it. I love Jason Momoa's Aquaman. But he doesn't feel as electric as he does in (either cut of) Justice League, here. Role of a lifetime all the same.
Me: Aquaman: The first movie after the disaster of Justice League and it did a good job of changing the narrative by largely ignoring Justice League, ditching the grim-n-gritty Snyder tone, and taking its cues from Black Panther and Thor. The end result is a decent popcorn movie on par with a lot of Marvel efforts. (3.0/5)
rating: ***
review: The novelty of Ryan Reynolds getting to have the first one made overlooks that the results are seriously obnoxious, without anything around the performance remotely capable of or interested in balancing it out. This second one has Zazie Beetz as Domino. It's pretty much enough.
Me:
Deadpool 2: It's OK, but not as good as the first one. It does one of those annoying sequel things by killing off the girlfriend in the first 20 minutes. Then at least they make fun of that in the credits, so at least they recognize it's kind of lame. The "X-Force" thing is kind of a fake out. I'm sure there are some fans who are really annoyed about how Shatterstar and some of the others are used. Josh Brolin's Cable is OK but in the comics I guess he has a lot of other powers and stuff. The funniest parts were actually in the mid-credits scenes. Who would you trust less with a time travel device than Deadpool? If you haven't watched it yet, there's no end credits scene. I'm just saying. (2.5/5)
Tomb Raider (Laplume)
rating: ***
review: Goodness, Alicia Vikander deserves a far larger legacy than she ended up getting. This take on Lara Croft is far more credible than its two cinematic predecessors, and not just because it's based on later entries in the game series that grounded our hero more in the real world. Last year's Uncharted shows where this one really fell short of the mark: besides Vikander, there's not much else to see.
Me:
Tomb Raider: I've never played the video games and I only watched the Angelina Jolie movies once maybe. Like Pacific Rim [Uprising], this was OK but didn't really feel all that epic or fun like the previous movies, Indiana Jones, or even National Treasure. I guess to pad the run time it starts out with a pointless kickboxing scene and then some extreme bike riding. Simon Pegg's frequent cohort Nick Frost shows up in a cameo as a pawn shop owner who gives Lara Croft money to go to Southeast Asia and get a boat to a mysterious island. It's funny how the boat captain she barely knows is like instantly ready to lay down his life for her. I guess she's attractive, but I wouldn't sacrifice myself for her in like ten minutes--at least not without getting some first. (Oink, oink.) Anyway, eventually she has to stop a bad guy from unleashing one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I'm not sure if there will be a sequel or not. Maybe they can put more effort into the script. (2.5/5)
Black Panther (Laplume)
rating: **
review: I still don't get why the character of Black Panther itself isn't considered hugely embarrassing, but it seems a sizable portion of both black and white audiences prefer a fantastical vision of Africa, and an African hero, to represent the best hopes of black people in America, than anything else. In any other setting, this would work much better. As the most famous and successful black superhero (at least at the movies), I just don't get it. Might still end up the most enduring artifact of the MCU era. If so, its legacy should grow accordingly. As part of the MCU, it's just ridiculous.
Me:
Black Panther: The first Marvel movie that actually had any social relevance. Until then they all revolved around white males, many of whom with superpowers. The only two black heroes, War Machine and Falcon, were sidekicks. Like with female superheroes, Marvel got shown up by DC and so finally did what they could have done years ago. And while the plot largely follows the traditional Marvel formula, it introduces us to the whole new world of Wakanda that seems like an alien planet even though it's on Earth. Killmonger is one of the better Marvel "villains," a villain who is in a way a hero as he wants to right the wrongs done to black people over the centuries. In the era of Trump and police shooting black kids routinely, who can blame him? There's also some fun and humor provided thanks to the banter between T'Challa and Shuri and the hapless CIA agent played by Martin Freeman. Andy Serkis chews a bit too much scenery, but overall it's definitely one of the best MCU films. (3.5/5)
Robin Hood (Laplume)
rating: **
review: A fun update but decidedly a lower register than the Kevin Costner and Russell Crowe versions that preceded it. I mean, is Taron Egerton ever going to be considered to portray a father figure to Superman???
Me: Another I can’t find a review of but I know I watched it and thought it was better if you think of it as a superhero story vs. a Robin Hood story. But better than the Ridley Scott one and at least Taron Egerton can speak with an English accent. (2.5/5)
Death Wish (Laplume)
rating: **
review: Bruce Willis's last shot at a mainstream hit is a remake that doesn't really know how to spotlight him.
Me:
Death Wish (2017): This is a remake of the 1974 Charles Bronson movie that pretty much started the whole NRA revenge fetish porn industry. In that movie Bronson's character was an architect whose wife is followed home from the store by goofy punks led by a young Jeff Goldblum. In this version Bruce Willis is a doctor (lol) who goes out to dinner with his family one night. The valet gets the location of his house from his car's navigation system (good thing I'm too poor to valet) and gives the location to some crooks, who then break in when the family isn't supposed to be at home but the wife and daughter are. The wife is killed and the daughter put into a coma. So after the cops come up with zip, Bruce Willis gets a gun to play vigilante. Unlike the 1974 version he actually finds the right people to get revenge. Willis gives a B+ effort while Vincent D'Onofrio cashes a paycheck as the brother who never really contributes anything and Dean Norris basically reheats Hank from Breaking Bad. While this tries to be socially relevant by taking place in Chicago, which has had a lot of gun violence the last couple of years, the problem is since 1974 this formula has been used time and again in a variety of ways like Robocop, Darkman, The Crow, Chance of a Lifetime--oh wait that's just in my head. Anyway, so unlike 1974 this feels pretty generic. (2/5) (Fun Fact: Elizabeth Shue is Bruce Willis's wife in the movie, so her and Vincent D'Onofrio have an Adventures in Babysitting reunion. That movie took place in Toronto-as-Chicago about 30 years ago.)
Annihilation (Laplume)
rating: **
review: Much buzzed about, but mostly a wasted cast in a movie of total nonsense.
Me:
Annihilation: Like the director's previous Ex Machina, this is a sci-fi movie that is not extremely action-packed, but is tense, gorgeous, and hard to pin down. (And both feature Oscar Isaac--bonus!) Basically a meteor or something hits a part of the southern coast by a lighthouse and starts mutating all the life in the area: grass, trees, animals, and even people! Natalie Portman's husband Oscar Isaac (so yes, Star Wars nerds, Padme Amidala hooked up with Poe Dameron!) was part of an expedition to explore "the shimmer" and disappeared. Until he comes stumbling home with amnesia and then passes out. So she agrees to join 4 other women to explore the Shimmer. The place is just crazy with all the mutated stuff. And naturally the people are not immune either. Anyway, if you're more a fan of sci-fi like 2001 or Solaris than Star Wars or Transformers (Michael Bay version) then you'll probably like this. And I guess if you're a fan of women in movies who aren't taking off their tops or wearing skimpy costumes. (4/5)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Laplume)
rating: **
review: Great animation (of the kind later put to equally stellar work in The Mitchells vs. the Machines), but otherwise lost in spastic storytelling.
Me:
Into the Spider-Verse: This movie combined two comic book storylines: the Spider-Verse story by Dan Slott and the Ultimate Spider-Man reboot introducing Miles Morales by Brian Michael Bendis. The movie focuses on Miles, who is bitten by a spider and gains most of Spidey's powers and some new ones. When the original Spider-Man dies, Miles is left to try to find a way to save the world--until he meets an older, out-of-shape Peter Parker from another world. And then he finds out his new friend Gwen is a Spider-Girl or Spider-Woman or whatever. And then Spider-Ham, Spider-Man Noir, and some weird Japanese anime Spider-Man thing show up from other universes. Since this was animated, it had a lot more freedom creatively than the live action movies. So it could finally give us a big screen Spider-Ham, plus the others, plus Kingpin, and a gender-swapped Doc Ock! The end result is a brilliant movie, whether you're a fan of Spider-Man or not. (3.5/5)
Bumblebee (Laplume)
rating: **
review: A lot of viewers thought this one corrected the mistakes of the Michael Bay era. But the results are basically exactly the same as the Michael Bay era. But without the Michael Bay magic. So...
Me:
Bumblebee: A Force Awakens-type movie as it largely follows the formula of the 2007 movie of a boy girl and his her robot car. It simplifies the plot a lot more than the 4 previous movies on this list. The robot designs also looked a lot better, with most of the existing characters on Cybertron actually looking like their G1 versions. The new characters looked pretty good too. I was disappointed that I couldn't find a toy version of the one that turned into a Harrier jump jet and another that turned into an F4 Phantom fighter plane. The former they only seem to make in car mode and I don't know about the other. The thing I didn't like about most of this movie were the almost constant music cues reminding us it was the 80s. I mean, really, I got it the first time; I don't need you to drum it into my head 100 more times! (3.0/5) (Fun Fact: They did eventually sorta make the two figures I wanted, but they screwed up both planes so neither looks accurate. I did get the Harrier one on clearance, but the fake F4 just looked stupid. How hard is it to Google planes, Hasbro?!)
Ready Player One (Laplume)
rating: **
review: Modern Spielberg is desperate to please, and here's his shot at adapting a popular book. It's not Harry Potter.
Me:
It's not that the movie was bad; it just wasn't as good [as the book]. The book goes a lot more into this world. And there are a lot more 70s/80s references than 90s/2000s/2010s ones. As I said in an entry a few months ago, this was a mistake because the "gunters" were supposed to be so obsessed with the creator that they completely immersed themselves in everything he was into back in the early days of video games. There was also a lot more in the book about Wade's home situation and his parents and also him going to online school and such.
I'd say to read the book if you really want the full experience or just watch the movie if you don't care. (2.5/5)
The Hurricane Heist (Laplume)
rating: *
review: My first viewing suggested a surprisingly amateurish experience. Wanted to be kind of like the Fast & Furious films. Fell well short of the mark.
Me: I’m pretty sure I watched this but I can’t find a review. Basically I think it was a cheap straight-to-streaming movie that was OK for its 90-ish minutes but not really great for a heist movie. (2.0/5)
I think at least this time we had more disagreements about these. That always makes it more interesting than if we agree on everything.
Friday we tackle 2019 AND 2020!
1 comment:
I gave up on that guy's reviews when he complained about a movie he admitted he never watched. On the other hand I agree with most of your reviews especially "Ready Player One".
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