thunderboltway

Pros: Amazing sets, costumes, art direction. Doubles down on its feminist themes. Is both bluntly comedic and has teeth. An interesting pair of villains. A naughty adult fantasy film. Really interesting character arcs. Great acting by Stone and Ruffalo. Music is super noisy and avant-garde. Cons: A little meandering. Slow-ish middle section. Script can sometimes be redundant or beat a dead horse with the same type of tone and jokes. Would have liked to see certain areas expanded or others compressed.

Good: Environments, Bird-world, Symbolism, Mystery & Intrigue, Colors, Imagination, Scary, menacing, creepy stuff Bad: Pacing, Animation quality varies a lot, Music is a little goofy at times, Has a hard time finding balance, Favors worldbuilding over story, Cute stuff seems phoned in

The mumble rap of horror. Revolutionary, tedious, easy to love, hard to like.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Great concept but messy. The audience understands “the rules” of the film right away, and is locked in and ready for them to be broken. Only, the film immediately meanders, has trouble finding villains (goblin food), and turns the sweet-natured husband into a simpering fool, hinting at a better movie buried somewhere in the directorial mess. Indeed, it’s one thing to depict milquetoast impotence (I.e.Straw Dogs) and another entirely for us to suspect it as a trait in your very film production. The only saving graces as expected, with such wet-noodle protagonists, are a naughty Irish home repair team and of course, the little guys. By the time the bold and chaotic third act rolls around and ventures into A24-lite, you wonder where this manic glee had been hiding the whole rest of the movie. Unfortunately, the arc / needs / wounds of the protagonist are not fleshed out, so she comes off as annoying, and with a DOA male lead for counterbalance at times feels like a movie without a soul. Having said that, would gladly watch a sequel now that that the wobbly filmmakers have found their sea legs at last, and earned a few well-deserved bonus points at the end.

If it were merely bad, I'd have forgiven it, but because it's a good premise buried in a terrible movie, I absolutely hated it. Wonderful lore. Gripping pace, mostly. FX a mixed bag. Terrible music. Annoying cast. Sloppy direction. Predictable. Shoddy writing. Clunky acting. Nonsensical character decisions. Amateur hour. Surprisingly cheesy and unlikable overall. Looks like a Ford commercial. Gore is meh.

Entertaining and fulfills its basic premise but maybe not the most groundbreaking or logical story - never quite drags but perhaps a few minutes would have been better served on lore expansion rather than teen angst and boyfriend drama. It plays much better than It Follows in that at least these kids felt worth saving. A few punishing scenes, scary premise, and quite good in-camera makeup effects made this worth it for me. As far as A24 goes this is in the range of Blackcoat’s Daughter, which is quite good.

This movie asks women and men to laugh at themselves. I was able to. Many are not able.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Pros: -Amazing Art Direction & Animation Grab-bag -Fan favorite villain -Stylish camera work -Delivers on the Multiverse premise (unlike Marvel’s stuff) -Soundtrack goes hard -Strong central characters -Moments of brilliance -Rich presentation -Amazing character acting / voice acting -Natural Dialogue -Killer First and Third acts Cons: -Flabby -Over-produced / Overblown / Over-serious / Overwrought at times -One gag requires viewing of the butt tier Venom movies -As suspected, Act 2’s Spider HQ was a snoozefest - feel free to go to the bathroom here -Borrows a twist from Twin Peaks: The Return -Minor logic issues -Flimsy plot -Familial conversations a drag (pacing) Overall: 9/10

Pros: Effectively sharp satire Nice behind-the-scenes look at media & politics A few good rants ala Network (1976) Great cast Cool CGI Smart Cons: Preaches to the choir Not an equal opportunity offender May hit too close to home for some Clever, and anxiety-inducing — but not necessarily funny, save for Jonah Hill Verdict: Finds plenty to satirize in our culture, punching up and down, but picks political sides in the battle for our minds - could’ve gone further (and more punk) to make a more surprising and balanced jab in the ribs

I would have enjoyed a two hour rant about sequels and cash grabs. I would have enjoyed a blockbuster. I would have enjoyed a low-budget cw matrix show. I would have enjoyed a clip-video of highlights from the previous matrix trilogy. I would have enjoyed a Charlie Kaufman-esque meta-narrative. I did not enjoy a film that tried to be all of these things at the same time. Wu Ping sorely missed. Hugo Weaving sorely missed. Lawrence Fishbourne sorely missed. Lighting and cinematography crew sorely missed. Comparisons to The Last Jedi are far too kind. This is the Star Wars Christmas special of Matrix films. I’m not the worlds biggest Matrix fan, but if I *was* the world’s Matrix biggest fan this would cause me to reenact the plot of Misery on the screenwriter

While Ramy Malek's character lacks menace, motivation, and logic, he only really shows up in the third act. The set pieces surrounding him look great, so it's easy to overlook his unimpressive threats, as he appears to pose no real danger to anyone in particular. Having underlined that serious flaw, I gotta say: good god, man! the rest of the movie was AMAZING! So good that you often keep waiting for it to run out of steam, and so it does eventually deflate a little as the film funnels the otherwise surprising script into the stereotypical Bond villain/lair/monologue setup, but I absolutely loved how it got there. As much as it pains me to say, a watch of the mediocre 4th film SPECTRE definitely helped my understanding of this film, so watch them back to back if you (dare) want the full experience. First Two Acts: BRILLIANT Third Act: A mixed bag Daniel Craig: Knocked it out of the park Rating: 8.5 plus .5 bonus points for the A. De Armas scene alone

Pros: Dreamy slo-mo sequences, well-thought-out compelling action, mostly coherent storytelling, amazing special effects, unique somber tone, twisty plot, mindblowing scenery, epic scope, cool makeup and costumes - often looks fantastic - first hour is particularly strong and ending is fairly satisfying. Cyborg being given the spotlight in the film was a good choice. Cons: Writers got fatigued 2/3 in, cringe-worthy phoned-in "banter," plenty of bad CGI for balance - especially in action shots involving super-speed dashes), militaristic characterization of heroes and plot at odds with their solo movies, bad emphasis on macguffins, in-movie acceptance of truly weird plot points (not nearly enough lampshading), flabby sequences could have used some trimming, some distracting needledrops, fan service at all-time high All in all, I wasn't expecting a perfect movie, and what I got was slightly worse than I expected it would be, but it was weirdly fascinating and perversely self-indulgent, which I totally dig

Pros: Cool Monsters. Pretty set pieces and some neat fantasy creatures. Awkwafina’ s dragon form is unusual and impossible to take your eyes off of. Dragon-shaped kingdom: interesting. Occasional nice use of blue, green, and purple (cool). Maybe the best CG water I’ve seen? Music by James Newton Howard is quite good. Adequately dark climax. The evil plague sweeping the land is maybe a little like Facebook, which is clever. Cons: 2/3 of the film is clunky exposition. The film would have been stronger without most of it. 9 year olds with 30 year old voice actors. Tran is a talented orator, very Shakespearean, but she doesn’t sound like a teenager. Very distracting and unconvincing voice performances. Awkwafina needs to lay off the cigs. Way too much plot, way too little audience interest in said plot, way too many paper-thin cutesy sidekick characters (ten?). Painfully unfunny. Can’t pull off its own faux-tough, faux-Kung fu, faux-lesbian love story with zero romance and zero stakes and zero timer. Absolutely horrendous storytelling and morality. While it’s nice to see Disney try something new, they fail, backpedal, and it can be a shame to see Disney forget how to Disney. Would have garnered a five for the visuals alone if it weren’t for the inclusion of quite possibly the worst animated short I’ve ever seen (Us Again) before the film. This double feature literally gave me a headache due to all the cringe.

Pros: Great cast, good chemistry by the leads, engaging script, charming, twisty Cons: viewers may be sick of time-loop movies by now, it could have explored the concept just a tad more

With eye-popping visuals, but cutesy-wootsey in places, the new Emma adaptation is a masterpiece of aesthetics that seems to "get high on its own supply." Every frame jumps off the screen and begs to be painted. As someone with an interest in art history, I was in love with this Easter basket and the various bunnies hopping around the lawn.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]