This Week: Hellboy (2019)

Fun Fact: I briefly thought, “I need to look up the year this came out so I can differentiate it from the Ron Perlman movies.”  It came out this year.  The year of our Lord 2019.

Sometimes I think I need to return my college degree.  Clearly I scammed people to get it.

Anywho, HELLBOY!  I really enjoyed this movie.  It has creepy imagery and is an action spectacle.  I think David Harbour does a great job as Hellboy.

I do have a couple of issues with the movie:
1. Although the movie does a great job in visual effects for most of the movie, there is a scene where Hellboy is fighting 3 giants and it just looks awful.  It seriously like Hellboy is just running in place in front of green screen for a part of it.  Hellboy also “clips” through one of the giant swords at one point, like it was a rushed Ubisoft game.
2.  They build up Hellboy as one of the world’s best paranormal investigators.  They even demonstrate that he is very clever in dealing with certain paranormal threats, such when Hellboy banished Baba Yaga to an alternate dimension as a way to defeat her.  The problem is that they don’t really use this in the movie.  Hellboy pretty much just acts like a red Hulk and just throws himself at a problem and hopefully manages to punch or shoot it into a solution.  I don’t know how it is in the comics, but I would have liked to see a bit more than, “Punch or Shoot to win.”

Otherwise, I think it is a pretty good movie.  I don’t think I’m going to try comparing it to the old movies, because that way lies madness.  I would like a sequel, but I think behind the scenes problems and lackluster rotten tomatoes score might hinder that.

Next Week: The Curse of Teen Spirit.  A Mexican ghost enters a cut throat singing competition.

This Week: The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part

I’m surprised we were still able to see this one in Theaters.  We wanted to see it, but at the time I think we just couldn’t make it out to movies for one reason or another and we kept putting it off.

This being a sequel, I first have to talk about the OTHER movie.  I really enjoyed the first Lego Movie.  I knew it was going to be a fun film, but like everyone else, it surprised me with how much heart it had when the “big reveal” happened.

The thing is, now all the cards are played and you have to try and surprise us again.  Guess I gotta give a spoiler tag, just in case

They kind of can’t.  It is kind of well done how you observe the age gap in the children playing by how the Legos and Duplos interact.  The Lego characters all have rules on how things work and the Duplos just make things up as they go along.

Then there is a 5 year time jump.  Now the Lego characters are all dark and brooding.  Except for Emmett.  Cause he achieved Sentience somehow and is his own Character.  I guess?

Then a different set of Legos show up from the Sis-Star System.  They are now on a similar complexity of character that the Legos were in last movie.

The Sis-Star Legos kidnap Batman, Lucy(Wyld Style), Unicat, Ironbeard, and Spaceship guy.  Emmett goes off to save them and meets Rex.  The Lego gang meet the Queen Whatevra Wan’abi and she reveals that she wants to marry Lego Batman while explaining, in song, how she is totally not evil.  Emmett and Rex manage to save Lucy while the rest of the Legos appear to be brainwashed by a new catchy song.  Emmett learns how to “Master Break” and destroys the giant wedding cake/temple that the wedding is happening at.  We then learn that the Sis-Star legos are in fact NOT evil.  This is actually all a plot by Rex to have Emmett suffer and be lost and forgotten.  Because Rex is actually Emmett from the future.  Emmett apparently got lost under the Dryer and was forgotten while he watched the other Legos get played with.  So he used his sentience to go out, change his hair, vest, and draw on stubble, and then went back in time.

In the real world situation, the boy from the first movie is not getting along with his sister.  She wants to play legos with him, but he is “more mature” and doesn’t want to play her way.  So the mother keeps telling them that if they keep fighting about this, they will put all the legos in storage.  So the destroying of the cake tower was the last straw and all the legos must be put up.

Until the Boy decides to open them back up and play fairly with his sister.  Lucy saves Emmett from under the Dryer and Rex disappears a la Back to the Future.  Ending Song.

For the most part I enjoyed the movie.  I would say my one complaint is the Time Travel Emmett.  Everything in the Lego Movie sort of made sense from the “This is all a story made up by a Boy in his head.”  The time travel bit kind of breaks that making this more of a Toy Story situation where the Legos are acting independently.

The songs are catchy as hell.  A little bit too catchy.

If you still haven’t seen it, I do recommend checking it out.  It’s a worthy sequel, but not quite as good as the first.  Though I nearly died laughing at the Intermission.

Next Week:  Dumbo’s Unplanned Beach.  A flying elephant convinces 20,000 bums to get abortions, then feels guilty about it.

This week: Wonderland.

Again, I don’t care what the actual title is, it’s Wonder Land.  That’s the name of the park.  If you wanted to call your park Wonderland, then you damn well had better get the rights to call your movie Wonderland.  Or go with the original planned title of “Amusement Park.”  Going with Wonder Park too much of a near miss.  You’re half right, and half wrong, which makes it just grating on the nerves.

And apparently the Studio realized this too considering the changes they made to the second trailer.  In the first trailer, the characters all referenced Wonderland, and then the title popped up Wonder Park.  In the second trailer they changed it so all the characters call it Wonder Park, but in the movie they stuck with Wonderland, because it is easier to briefly alter dialogue in a trailer than to alter ALL THE ANIMATION including the name of the park.

Admittedly this is more of a problem with the trailers and the first and last 5 minutes of the movie, because you forget the title of the movie for the majority of the film.

This movie is about halfway to being a REALLY good movie.  Like on the same level as UP.  Unfortunately I can’t really talk about it without giving away spoilers so. . .

Basic plot, the main character is June who along with her mother create an . . .imaginary(?) theme park named Wonderland complete with talking animals as the park staff.  June is obsessed with creating Wonderland, so much to the point that she ends up building a model of wonderland that goes through her entire house.  Then her mother gets sick and June stops playing with Wonderland.  They put June’s mother on a bus and she disappears for most of the film to find the cure. June then wanders away from Math Camp and ends up in Wonderland, which has turned to hell because she stopped caring.  And because Wonderland exists in the MCU and was victim of the snap.  So June has to learn to care again to stop the sky portal of Darkness.

It’s very Neverending Story II meets Up.

From the trailers, you can tell something happens to get June to stop caring about Wonderland, and as you guess, the parent who cares most is going to die so that the kid stops believing in whatever they used to believe in and needs to learn to love again. And they pull the punch.

The mother gets sick with Timmy Thomas disease and has to go away. They have her suddenly coughing and getting short of breath, then becoming too weak to participate in Wonderland, then she visibly becomes gaunt before she is sent off. Then when she gets better, she comes back perfectly fine. So did this center she went to wait until she got her weight and energy back before returning her back to her family? Do out of state hospitals do that?

Another thing is that plot points don’t really develop, they just happen. June finds one of the missing park animals by accident. June is walking away from a wrecked ride and then suddenly just falls through random broken floor and ends up in zero gravity land, and then finds a house where the missing park animal is located. Just randomly by accident.

Where is the effort or journey for the character? What if in Wizard of Oz, instead of following the yellow brick road to the Emerald City, Dorothy accidentally tripped and rolled down a hill and suddenly found the Wizard running a produce stand?

Speaking of Wizard of Oz, there is no explanation for Wonderland. Is it another dimension? Cause June wanders into the woods, and then wanders out again. There is no, “It was a dream,” moment. She didn’t wake up at the end, she just walked out of the park, turned around and it was gone.

I would say that it deserves a watch, but wait for it to come out on Netflix or something. It is halfway there. It could have been so good, but I just don’t think it was quite organized correctly.

Next Week: The Unplanned Beach Dumbo. A stoner comedy about a flying elephant that. . . give me a moment, I need to find out what Unplanned is about, cause this is the first time hearing of it.

(Watches Trailer)

WHAT THE F-

 

This Week: A Star is Born . . .Encore. . .I guess.

(dons Monocle and Hat)
We reviewing fancy Oscar Bait now!

So with this being a “director’s cut” of the 2018 A Star is Born, this officially makes it 4 versions of the movie I haven’t seen before seeing this one.

I had a slight interest in seeing A Star is Born back when it first came out, but I just never found the time.  I also wanted to check out the earlier versions first, but I never did that either.  So I don’t have a comparison for how this compares to the other 3.

I saw that it was titled ‘Encore’ but I just assumed that was just a fancy way of saying it was released again.  Apparently there is like an extra 12 minutes of movie that wasn’t in the original theatrical release.  I gotta say, they really integrated the Dewbacks and Extra Tie Fighters in really well.  I almost didn’t realize they weren’t originally there.

That was a Star Wars Special Edition joke.

For the first 30-45 minutes of this film, I thought I was just out of touch with the Oscars.  I thought the exchange between Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper was awkward and weird.  I didn’t really buy into how things progressed, and Bradley Cooper was barely intelligible in his Sam Elliot impression.  Which I thought was really funny considering later in the movie Sam Elliot accused Bradley Cooper of “stealing his voice.”  I gotta say, the only time Bradley Cooper DOESN’T sound like Sam Elliot is when Bradley Cooper is talking to Sam Elliot.

However, when Lady Gaga gets on stage and starts singing, that’s when the movie just sort of clicks into place and actually becomes really good.  You become invested in the characters, the story is believable, and the dialogue is real.

As I stated, I don’t really know much about the previous iterations of A Star is Born, but from what I understand, a lot of the problems stem from the male co-star getting jealous of the female co-star’s fame.  He feels he is becoming insignificant by her rising stardom.  This doesn’t happen here.  Or doesn’t seem to be the main focus.  Bradley Cooper’s character largely seems to struggle with his issues of hearing loss, alcoholism, and drug addiction.  The latter issues being a coping mechanism for the former.

I actually do recommend this movie.  As stated, the first half hour or so is kind of awkward as you are getting introduced to the characters and the story kind of forcing these characters to meet and try and build a believable relationship, but once you get the stretched meet-cute out of the way, it really works.

Next Week: Five State Park.  The Suspenseful thriller of aliens trapped in an amusement park being invaded by cystic fibrosis patients.

 

This Week: Captain Marvel

99% of this movie is Fanta- err. . . AMAZ- wait. . . Superior? No definitely not.

God, a good adjective will come to me.

Brie Larson is great. Jude Law is great. The story is great. Just over all a fun movie.

And the damn cat. Holy jeez the damn cat! Get that cat its own movie in Phase 4. Bump Black Widow again if need be.

The one percent that I didn’t care for in this film. . . was Nick Fury. Honestly it just kind of lacks the Bad Ass Mother F***er that we are used to from this series. He is clearly out of his depth in this movie and doesn’t have the same swagger he does in the other films. Now this can be taken as his first real foray into the unknown, and he hasn’t developed his sheer gravitas yet, but it just seems like the wrong Samuel L Jackson this time around.

But other than that the movie is. . . Uncanny? Invincible? Spectacular? Oh, I got it, INCREDIBLE!

Next Week: Captive Park Apart. The heartwarming tale of a girl with cystic fibrosis who finds a magical theme park in a world that has been taken over by aliens.

This Week: Fighting With My Family

So as the kids say, “it’s been a minute” since I was a fan of professional wrestling. I’ve seen a few pay-per-views over the past few years.  I saw SummerSlam with Stephen Amell a few years ago, and then after that I watched a few pay-per-views with my friends, but that’s about it.   I’d say from about 1998-2001 I was a big fan of the WWF, back when it was still sharing web searches with the World Wildlife Foundation.  After I got into football, Pro Wrestling just seemed too predictable.  Monday Night Raw lost the fight with Monday Night Football and I never really looked back.

So as a result, I wasn’t very familiar with Paige and the Women’s Revolution. However, when trailers for this movie started coming out, I decided to invest a little research.  I saw the debut fight between AJ Lee and Paige and did a brief review of Paige’s history in the WWE.  I didn’t research much more because I wanted to let the movie tell me the story.

Honestly, it’s a pretty good story. I’ll concede it isn’t much different than your standard poverty to stardom underdog story that you see in most sport biopics.  However, those stories are inherently intriguing, so that’s why they keep popping up.  All the actors are just top notch.  Every actor disappears into his or her role.

A few problems with the film mainly come from it being a biopic of a story that is almost 10 years old. For example, 13 year-old Paige/Saraya makes a cardboard WWE Diva’s Championship belt.  The problem is the Diva Championship belt was created in 2008, 3 years after Paige/Saraya made her belt.  In 2011, Paige’s dad makes a Hunger Games reference.  Which is fine if he is referencing the book, but the first Hunger Games film didn’t come out until 2012, so it wouldn’t be a good pop-culture reference at the time.  A slightly bigger issue is how they sort of gloss over Paige’s NXT career and Paige’s WWE debut.

The movie kind of makes it seem like Paige got tapped for her debut out of nowhere. NXT in the film seems less like a buildup federation and more like boot camp training.  So there is very little focus on her competing in the NXT and is mostly just a training montage.  Then boom, she gets inexplicably chosen to wrestle the Diva’s Champion on Raw. She goes up and freezes when she has the mic and then they have a 5-10 minute fight where Paige starts out briefly getting beat up, then starts laying a but whooping on AJ Lee before countering AJ Lee’s submission hold into a slam called the “Paige Turner.”  After Paige wins [Spoiler], she then stands tall in the ring, grabs the mic and gives her speech that she could not make before the fight.

Anyone who watched Paige’s ACTUAL debut knows it went quite differently. Paige was already NXT Women’s Champion when she debuted on Raw.  So it wasn’t out of the blue, she was likely already a fan favorite in NXT and it just made sense to jump up to the WWE.  Then in her debut on Raw, she does do some talking on the mic and although starting out sounding like she was going to make a tough challenge, just decides to congratulate AJ Lee and say she wasn’t ready to fight.  AJ Lee then decided to make it a match and it is only about 2 minutes long.  AJ Lee beats down Paige for a little bit then locks in a submission hold, that Paige Counters into a slam, and pins her for the win.  Paige then runs for her life as AJ Lee’s bodyguard comes in to beat Paige’s ass.  Paige is shocked she won and leaves with the belt.

So they drastically change how the fight goes and even went with completely different outfits than what Paige and AJ Lee were wearing in the actual fight. I get they did the other changes for dramatic story telling and current references, but changing costumes for the final fight just seems unnecessary to me.  Whatever, standard biopic fare.

In the end, the trailers should be a good barometer of whether you will enjoy this film. If you liked the trailers, you’ll probably enjoy this film.  If you are not a fan of Pro Wrestling or underdog sport stories, then this might not be your cup of tea (they’re British, it works).

I just don’t recommend going to the 11:30pm showing when you have work the next morning because you won’t get enough sleep.

Next Week: Captain Marvel.

This Week: How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

So this is the first movie of 2019 to live up to not disappoint me. This wraps up the story of the How to Train Your Dragon series fairly well.

I kind of want to avoid spoilers so there is not a lot I can say about it other than it is good.

It’s cute, it has heart, it might make you cry. If you were a fan of the other movies in the series, you’ll like this one. If you weren’t a fan of the other movies, you are a being with no joy in your soul and can’t enjoy good things.

Next Week: Madea’s Family Greta. Big ol nope.

This Week: Alita: Battle Angel

or

Uncanny Valley: The Movie.

They try and avoid the Uncanny Valley CGI feel by having Alita have unusually large eyes, so that she inherently seems slightly alien and our brains are more able to readily accept her. However, the way Alita acts, reacts, and behaves is just a hair off from natural, so that’s where the Uncanny Valley feeling comes from.  Which kind of works to an extent.  She is intentionally someone who is not fully human and does not necessarily know how to act human.  Not quite the robot baby from the TurboTax commercials, but in that general area.

She also has a creepy scene where she is LITERALLY TRYING TO HAND OVER HER HEART TO HER BOYFRIEND and it seems very much like the Overly Attached Girlfriend meme.

Oh and the Dog Dies. You don’t see it, you just see the guy make a stomping motion, and everyone make, “Oh no he killed the dog” faces, and then Alita SMEARS THE DOG’S BLOOD ON HER FACE before making the “I won’t stand by” speech.

Your mileage may vary with this movie. I personally felt this movie lacked some necessary heart to get me personally invested in the movie.  The action scenes were awesome, but I kept comparing this movie to Speed Racer and Astro Boy, which I just enjoyed those ones so much more.  And they are surprisingly apt comparisons.  Speed Racer for the “Motor Ball” scenes, and Astro Boy for the general Robot learning who they are premise.

The Biggest problem with this movie is it sets up a sequel, but I don’t have faith that it will get one. The side cast is fantastic, the main character is forgivable, and the effects are all phenomenal.  Like I said, it just lacks some much needed heart.

Next Week: How to Train Your Family: The Fighting World

This Week: BumbleBee

*radio screeching* 🎶This is how we do it!🎶 *radio screech*

History time, these are my basic reviews of the previous Transformers movies:

Transformers= I loved it.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen=I was still on the edge of my seat. There were some stupid scenes, but I think this movie didn’t deserve the hate it got.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon= F*** THIS MOVIE! I didn’t see it in theaters, I watched a dvd copy that my parents bought. It was garbage and I refused to watch any more movies with Michael Bay and Shia LeBouf.

Transformers: Age Of Extinction= Okay, no Shia, and the trailer had Optimus riding a Robot Dinosaur wielding a Sword and Shield. Alright, I’ll see it. (One in theater viewing later) OH MY GOD! YOU MADE IT BORING! ROBOT DINOSAURS WITH EXPLOSIONS EVERYWHERE AND I AM BORED!

Transformers: The Last Knight= Nope. Didn’t see it. Screw you, I’m done.

So when I heard about this movie, I said it would suck and paid it no mind.

Then the trailer dropped. Oh my god. This looks good. I don’t trust it. I’ve been hurt too many times before.

But I was legitimately excited. So this became my Birthday movie. And it paid off.

THIS is how you make a Transformers movie. It started off with proper Gen 1 looking Transformers in the beginning, battling it out on Cybertron! Holy CRAP! And all the Transformers are visibly different. Our lead character is bright yellow, and the two bad guys are Bright Red and Bright Blue, so when Bumble Bee is tangling it up with these guys, you can see who is fighting who and what moves he is using and who is winning!

Unlike other Transformers movies where two grey and black masses of metal start rolling around and eventually one walks away as the victor.

This is a great movie and I recommend if anyone is on the fence due to being hurt and betrayed by previous transformers films, Go see this and revel in the joy that is BumbleBee.

Next Week: Holmes and Vice of Sex

This Week: Once Upon a Deadpool

Okay, Parents, they toned it down, but they didn’t make it THAT PG-13. They say shit over 20 times. I was counting for a while, but they left the Juggernaut song in, and they say Shitballs SO MANY TIMES!

Still good, the Fred Savage scenes are worth it, but outside of that and the one old person scene they put in, there is not a lot of additional content. I think it is worth seeing(AND I HOPE THEY PUT IT ON BLURAY).

Also there is a nice Stan Lee tribute at the end. Because they are assholes and want to make us cry.

Next Week: Bumble Bee