azuraring-84989 Reviews

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

Fun Insane Watch Like the First

[7/10 · 17 October 2024]

The absurdity and comedy are still very present. They did not tone much of it down and still retained much of the original film's energy. Thankfully, it isn't a total rehash or anything. Instead, it uses some of the elements of the first film while creating something new with the plot.

As evident, Tim Burton's direction retains that gritty but fun and energetic vibe to keep our eyes amused. The actors help this with all the wonderful surreal hokeyness they can do, such as returnees Winona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara, and Beetlegeise Beetlegeise Beetlegeise Michael Keaton, who still steals much of the show with his crazed insanity. However, some newcomers, including Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, and Willem Dafoe, also do just as good of a job. Altogether, it creates a sense of style and emotion in horror and comedy, with the visuals being stunning, eerie, and all over like eye candy. The music by Danny Elfman is as good as ever. Elfman rarely misses it and still has that energy contained through the original, such memorable orchestrated beats.

I liked most of the characters, and seeing much of the Deetz family again was lovely. It continues with some of the stuff left in the original, such as Lydia's struggles and trauma towards Betelgeuse. Still, she also tries her best to have a positive relationship with her daughter Astrid, who has some similar rebellious vibes as Lydia used to have. However, Delia doesn't believe in ghosts and other mythical things. At the same time, Lydia's supernatural beliefs and insanity through public media cause Astrid to be more or less of an outcast, a great clash between the two with similar personality traits. Beetlegeise is there to steal the show; he's still the same crazed, creepy lunatic as the first film, and he pulls out the punch of what he's gonna do next, some similar motives but also different ones.

Delia also has some excellent laughs, especially with her incompetence of "defanging" vipers that she inadvertently killed herself through a recorded video relating to her now-dead husband Charles, which is where much of the plot starts as it's the centerpiece to all the madness. His death was due to an accident, with some excellent stop-motion animation to show what happened as a cutaway, and we see his ghost in the aftermath; hilarious stuff there.

Even the new characters are just as amusing to watch. Rory's embarrassing cowardly greed to try and marry off Lydia through her media presence is a common thing to happen with others. It also makes you feel bad for Lydia, as she clearly has no idea what she wants to do but wants everyone to be okay. The ghost-cop Wolf has this incompetent, egotistical feel to him, especially when he talks about how great his past was as a B-movie action star; it's just funny gags both on visuals and dialogue. Bob's also another addition, practically Beetlegeuse's assistant, a shrunken-head zombie unsure of what he wants to do. You can't help but feel bad for him, but he's just a silly man.

Despite all that, I feel the story jumbles a little too much, much more than the first. We get moments where it shifts to who it wants to focus on in a pretty inconsistent way. Sometimes, it's too short and rushed. I've mentioned before that much of the plot focuses on Deetz's family surrounding Lydia's struggles toward Betelgeuse as she tries to get to a more positive relationship with her family and Astrid; in between that comes Rory trying to quickly marry Lydia at Halloween to milk on the ghost "myth." Much of which came in through Charles' death.

However, they also throw in a subplot surrounding the fact that Betelgeuse had an ex named Delores, which they met during the Black Plague, and Delores' being a cult leader kills Betelgeuse with poison, as he quickly realizes and kills her before dying. I like the idea, but it's not explored enough for me to care as much despite making her a big deal throughout, as she's barely on screen and doesn't add much until the final climax, mainly since it doubles down on what it's primarily focused on, focusing on the Deetz's struggles with one another.

It's also the case with the plotline surrounding Jeremy, a person Astrid meets after she unintentionally crashes into his fence during an argument. I felt Jeremy's character was the weakest aspect of the writing. He mostly comes off more like a plot device for Astrid to learn about ghosts through a romantic twist, which also kinda comes out of nowhere, as they only met for about a day or two. Knowing that his actual plan is to return to the real world by taking her soul, the romance bit feels a bit tacky. Some excellent lore surrounds his bloody past, but he has little character to be invested in. Eventually, when he's ready to return, he's immediately "killed" permanently by the time Betelgeuse intervenes. Weirdly enough, it's sorta involved in this weird dream sequence at the near end of the film, which I'll admit is pretty awkward, but it fits Betelgeuse's screwed-up nature; let's not forget what he did in the first film when Lydia was still a teen.

While this isn't necessarily the movie's problem, I was disappointed with how they silently dropped off the Maitland couple. The only mention of them was that they moved out, but that can be easily avoided.

Despite those, I still found the overall film very enjoyable. If you love weird, absurd comedy with horror elements, you'll get a kick out of this. It's an entertaining movie and a satisfying sequel to the original.

• 7/10.

As the Fly Flies (1944)

A director required to make something he disliked

[3/10 · 22 June 2024]

The funniest thing about this cartoon is how the director, Howard Swift, initially disliked the story and gags he was given to this but was practically forced to use them anyway, because rejecting a story at the identity crisis Screen Gems studio would mean you'd be behind schedule, goes to show how low the budgets were at the time.

Short has nothing going with it with lethargically slow pacing. It basically involves a soy boy Luigi esq professor hiding and whining as Columbia (gee get it?) interviewers and paparazzis want to know what machine he's making. It takes about two minutes to even get to that as we get tiredly unfunny gags inbetween like the professor riding a unicycle, wearing a Napoleon hat, and looking through a pipe like a submarine periscope.

Eventually the professor explains what his machine is, a FLY machine, which for some reason is this humongous large contraption that has a whole room and everything on the inside, but all we see of how it works is a very small portion outside at the side of the machine, both literally and metaphorically. We see a phoney female fly of a small little house luring its victim through a door, as the professor lights a match with a wheel of fireworks, setting off a gun with a bullet that's shot inside a french horn as it lands on a button, activating a conveyer belt that moves the small house into the swatter. This is all we see of how this machine works and it appears to be a small portion of the actual thing.

With about 2 minutes and 30 seconds left, we enter into the machine itself, the professor's "laboratory", but all he does is explain a brief historical explanation of killing flies before, unsurprisingly, an actual fly (is it female?) comes into the laboratory and starts pesting the professor which angers the guy and spends the rest of cartoon trying to a shoot a fly with his gun, but keeps destroying his machinery despite the rest pleading not to. Predictability doesn't listen, destroys the machine, thinks he killed the fly but the fly turns out to be alive as we go back outside of where the cartoon starts. Oh yeah since this was made around the height of WW2, gotta force in that V for Victory stuff as the fly hums Beethoven's 5th Symphony.

Voice actor Harry Lang does a fine job with what he's given for the dunded professor, however John McLeish feels unneccesarily over the top with his deliveries as the interviewers, which he fared better before with Jack Kinney and Chuck Jones. There is some nice animation provided by Grant Simmons and I think an uncredited Volus Jones in certain scenes, however they cannot save such first draft material.

3/10.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

Nice start to a second era

[8/10 · 11 May 2024]

It's a nice start to a second era of films centered around the new Planet of Apes films.

The apes now have separate clans and have partly forgotten their past of Caesar with his belief that humans and apes shall co-exist and not harm or kill apes. Unfortunately, a corrupt king named Proximus partly uses that name to brainwash his fellow kind of the past with propaganda, he has his most loyal members kidnap ape clans to find great knowledge of technology the human elders created that's hidden beneath a large door they cannot open. As they kidnap humans they hope can speak or have knowledge of technology. Of course, it's rare due to a virus causing most of them to become mute or killed, with that same virus causing apes to become smart. Meanwhile, humans are finding a way to contact one another without any ape's whereabouts resulting in heavy confusion and lack of trust between the two species.

The primary focus is centered around Noa, a chimpanzee who's the son of the leader of the Eagle clan who struggles to find his footing but wants to help his kind while further learning how he runs the eagles. The other is Mae, one of the last known surviving humans who's able to speak and have knowledge surrounding their planet but keeps it secret for a while until she has gotten enough trust. A supporting character in between their adventure is Raka, an orangutan who knows most of the past surrounding Caesar, and allows Noa to see the good in humans and their struggle for survival, but overall his impact gives much development between the two and their venture throughout the story.

Still, other characters go along such as Noa's friends Soona and Anaya, and his father and mother, Koro and Dar, each are solid characters that is part of the story's venture, although I do feel some of their material, especially the parents, feel a little lacking at times. Proximus is also a fun intimidating antagonist and his ways of commanding and manipulating his apes are devious and provoking as he wants a piece of destructive technology that people like Mae fear over, his loyal members like Sylva are also engaging enough to keep it going, and Sylva's hatred for Noa is reasonable since Noa's the one who was able to survive and help the others who are on the threat.

The film's overall world-building is wonderful. It gives a sense that while it's mainly forested and filled with animals, primarily apes living in their world, it's still filled with a lot of old rusty technology and other human-made subjects that have died off in the face of time. Still, it isn't impossible as long as the right kind uses them wisely. Noa is a compelling and intriguing protagonist who wants to help his clan throughout while also seeking kindness from others outside, Mae's also really complexed through her morals and decision-making, as she begins to locate things that the apes have yet figured out. These factors of knowledge also clash back with the non-hostile apes' beliefs in the end, as they try to find a solution to it all. The direction is no Matt Reeves, but Wes Ball still manages to provide a decent sense of drama and action to play out during the story and characters, the pacing and character moments can get a little hefty at times, but it's mostly good enough to keep things at a nice rate, helps whenever oddball twists like Mae knowing how to speaks are given enough question to help make the characters develop naturally.

Overall, it's a fun first entry to this new arc for this ongoing apes series and I hope to see more of it when it comes.

8/10.

Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Fantastic; even if you're not into Godzilla

[9/10 · 26 February 2024]

Godzilla: Minus One I'd say is more of a war drama about a post-traumatic kamikaze pilot that just happens to have Godzilla in the plot, but a really good one. The characters have actual depth and development throughout the movie that makes it emotional, for example, the scene in which Koichi reveals to Noriko his past events with what we saw in the beginning with shame while unable to see if he's worth staying alive made me kinda tear up a bit, just felt real.

I also liked how they used that to build up near the climax as Mr. Tachibana, while he didn't fully get over his grudge, he was still able to work with him to go against the threat that was coming, showing actual proper character development.

A lot of the characters in general show a heavy amount of development as the years pass by, some may had a disdain for Koichi's cowardly actions before, such as Sumiko, were able to grow over it and see the good in him, part of which helped Koichi let go of the guilt he struggled to get over. The overall message was great, that we can still finish a battle without needing to sacrifice our lives, even if the threat comes back.

For additional material to enjoy; while it's a serious picture, there are still some elements to help make it fun so it doesn't feel too grudgingly bleak, such as the moments between Koichi and his new friends Kenji, Shiro, and Yoji as they work as minesweepers, each showing their ways of working together with their strengths and weaknesses as we can see throughout the film.

If there was anything I were to criticize, I felt the city destruction scene could've had some changes, I felt the Ifukube Godzilla theme was a little forced in and would've been a little more impactful if there was no music for most of it. Also, the part when Noriko saves Koichi as she supposedly gets herself killed looks like she could've easily saved herself with Koichi, I feel like there could have been another way for that scene to work for the later half, but other than that, it's wonderful, by far one of the best Godzilla if one of the best recent movies we've gotten.

• 9/10.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

A True Supernaturally Great Horror Flick

[8/10 · 9 November 2022]

Ladies and gentlemen, here we have an R-rated series a lot of you guys know well, even for non-horror flick guys, series is otherwise, A Nightmare on Elm Street. It started on a very high note with this first film directed and written by the great late Wes Craven, a man incredibly talented with the horror genre, from the studio of New Line Cinema, which was close to bankruptcy at the time in the year 1984.

The film involves mid-western teenagers falling prey to Freddy Krueger, a disfigured midnight mangler that goes after and kills the teenagers in their dreams, which, in turn, kills them in reality. Freddy Krueger himself is played by the great actor Robert Englund. He does a fantastic job here, showing some terrifying presence while at the same time having some slightly humorous moments, which is something most horror-movie villains lacked at the time.

After investigating the phenomenon, Nancy, played by Heather Langenkamp, who does a great deal of acting here and shows how her character feels through all of this, begins to suspect a dark secret kept by her parents. Don, played by the great John Saxon, who also does a fantastic job with his role, just wants to keep everyone safe from danger. Marge, played by Ronee Blakley, does a great job displaying emotions and so forth, later explains Freddy's dark origins to Nancy when she learns more about Freddy himself in her dream.

This dark secret involving Freddy that they keep hiding also applies to her friends' parents and may be the key to unraveling the mystery. However, can Nancy and her boyfriend Glen, played by Johnny Depp in his first movie role, solve everything else before it's too late?

The movie has some significant build-up within' each scene, all of which are memorable, some of these include the school hallway and bathtub sequences building up to what Freddy Krueger is about to do, each kills that Freddy does against the teenagers, for example, Glen's death is very memorable and pretty new and aspiring for the time, although the final scene is pretty laughable. Many memorable quotes are also in the movie such as "This.... Is God!" and "Come to Freddy!"

The characters are very memorable for a slasher horror film like Nancy Thompson, who is the primary focus and who we root for and can relate to her fear and desire to stop Freddy. Don Thompson, Nancy's father, wants to protect everyone from awful situations while denying Freddy's existence. Freddy Krueger, arguably the best character, is a scary menace that can kill you in your dream and causes you to die in real life. Glen Lantz, Nancy's boyfriend, and the others trying to solve the case with her. Marge Thompson, Nancy's mother, eventually reveals some of the origins behind Freddy Krueger. Tina Gray, the first person killed by Freddy Krueger, leads some becoming aware of his existence. Lastly, Rod Lane, the boyfriend of Tina, is falsely accused by the heads of being responsible for murdering Tina.

The acting is fantastic in this movie, each character feels believable, and you can easily feel the emotion, fear, and terror they have in the movie, which makes you help but feel sorry that these people that you can easily like get killed. However, the best part about this movie is none other than the Freddy Krueger actor himself, Robert Englund, his performance as Freddy is easily the best and gives out a terrifying scary presence in this movie, with some memorable moments in each scene he's in whether it's something visual scenery or a quote he may say.

The characters are pretty smart, which is unusual for most horror films around this period. In most horror films, the characters often stupidly get themselves killed by the murderer coming after them after they try to figure out ways to stop Freddy's madness while also trying to figure out why everything is going out this way. One exception is Tina, played by Amanda Wyss, who does an alright job with her role, whose character stops running after Freddy tells her to watch him cut off his fingers before killing her.

The settings in the movie itself are beautifully executed in this film, with this film while there are two settings within' the world, those being the real and dream worlds. However, it gives you that feeling where at times you cannot entirely tell what's happening whether it's happening in real life or happening in someone's dream. Especially when the dream sequences usually are often set around real-life settings so anything could happen if this were to possibly happen in real life. The film's premise seems to revolve around the struggles between dreams and reality, which are manifested by the lives and dreams of the teens in this film, which is truly able to toy toward the audience's perceptions between the boundaries of imagination and real life.

The special effects are astonishing when they're used, whether showing the dream sequences, the gore effects, or any fantasy-like effect such as whenever Freddy's around. The designs of each costume and makeup are great, particularly with Freddy Krueger who looks pretty terrifying, especially when he's in the dark, giving out a dark and mysterious look behind him as we're not entirely sure of what he truly is if he's real or just a legend. The lighting is especially nice, with the dark stuff being very dark though you can still see nicely, this especially applies to Freddy Krueger, who looks pretty unsettling to look at with this.

The music in the film is extremely memorable and truly captures the fear and scare factor between the dream sequences when the teenagers are pleading for help as Freddy's coming, or when tension comes in between the two worlds, the music fits well when it's necessary with the scene to create a huge impact with the scene itself.

There are some flaws that I have against the movie, but they're incredibly minor, so they don't ruin the movie that much. One example is how oblivious the character Tina can be. Some slightly noticeable errors in some scenes like how Freddy's hat may appear in one shot but disappear in the next shot, as well as the other way around for it. Some of the special effects also didn't entirely age well like some of the scenes during the last bit of the film where it's a dummy used and it looks pretty laughable.

Overall, I highly recommend it to anyone that isn't scared of horror movies or is just a big horror movie fan in general, it's one of the best horror films in the entire horror genre of all time. However, if you're neither of those, this is not a movie you'd enjoy, it has some genuinely scary scenes that can make you feel worried or jump easily. In the end, this movie is an outright fantastic horror flick and one of the best in the slasher and supernatural genres of horror, but also the horror genre as a whole, you horror flick guys will love it!

Restaurant (2020)

Unfunny Remake that insults the original Tenacious D Skit

[1/10 · 14 October 2022]

Alright so here we have a "remake" of Drive-Thru of Tenacious D made on the app known as Platagon, a cheap way to make your own "animated" shorts and movies, with practically almost nothing with the original Drive-Thru script changed up minus a few alterations and removals that ultimately just weakens the joke, which worsens it due to the poor limits of Plotagon as well as the emotionless TTS voice, which BTW every single character here clearly uses the Rod TTS voice, so hearing all of this without screen may seem like we're just seeing the same guy talking to himself over a stupid issue, which BTW the different people, emotions, characterization, etc. Was something that made the original work so well, but with here it doesn't at all, thus making a lot of the humor fall flat. Oh and the new humor that was added by the person who was responsible for this are some of the most forced in unfunny jokes I've seen, such as that random pointless meta humor joke with one of the background characters as well as a forced line after the ending of the short. Overall, if anyone that's into Tenacious D and enjoyed the original Drive-Thru skit, I highly doubt you may like this "remake".

Getting Sketchy (2021)

Too much Woody abuse

[1/10 · 11 October 2022]

So here we are, having a movie that had almost no plot whatsoever, with almost everything going way too all over the place, the best I could even think of with this plot is that the characters are trying to make a movie but failing but even then everything else just makes illogically nonsensical that I can't tell what they're even doing anymore.

The characters are some of the most basic and forgettable stuff period, like does any remember the random remote that just suddenly happens to be a character, most of them have like almost no personality and half of them barely show with a few just existing for a guest voice or a terrible joke, like why all of a sudden does the cameraman just become a character all of a sudden halfway through the movie.

Speaking of the jokes, the jokes are some of the most repetitively unfunny stuff I've seen, with almost half of the jokes just being the Woody doll and sometimes another toy being thrown to the ground cause... we need laughs fast, and the voice acting alone by a lot of the crew flat out sucks and feels rather annoying and forced.

The editing is god awful and horribly inconsistent with each other, especially when the other people start filming their scenes and god does it clash terribly with the main editing, also parts of the editing feels like I'm watching a god awful acid trip cause i swear I can't tell what's going on, and the overly incoherent nonsensical plot pretty much worsens the whole thing altogether, making this whole movie come off as an absolute mess.

The filler is absolutely horrendous with some plots just come and go but never even contribute to the main plotline which half of the time even I couldn't tell, and in all honesty, this really seems like it was originally meant to be a short but the crew decided "Nahhhhh lets make this all a full length feature film", seriously why is it almost 2 hours long, was it really THIS important to be such a "BIG epic plot", then again it isn't too surprising when there's like 6 credited writers, like why not just 2-3 regular consistent writers, cause a lot of them clearly had no idea what they were exactly trying to do with this story here.

Overall, this movie is absolute garbage, do not watch this overly long garbage fest that clearly had no consistent plot, editing, acting, etc. Whatsoever, not even laughably bad either, just actual trash.

Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972)

A Very Cheap, Boring, and Predictable Movie

[2/10 · 26 May 2020]

This movie is incredibly boring and predictable to watch, it reuses the same villains, aliens, or whatever being from another planet wanting to take over the earth, but not in a unique and interesting way as shown on Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974) or beforehand, it's basically just random giant cockroaches taking over the bodies of dead humans, kinda feeling like it's taking elements from Invasion of The Body Snatchers, and trying to make Earth as their planet because their own planet was destroyed by an overuse of pollution and garbage which is weird since cockroaches usually like to be around garbage and such like that, at least from what I know.

Most of the movie is entirely boring as well with the characters acting pretty stupid at times and actually being tricked by the giant cockroaches, even though looking at the base and other stuff, it's pretty obvious they are actually aliens (cockroaches) trying to take over the Earth.

Also, it's takes a LONG TIME for the monster action to even begin (with the exception of a pointless scene of Anguirus going out to see and getting attacked by the Military) as it doesn't really start happening til about 45 minutes into the movie which the movie in total is about 89 minutes, basically only having about 44 minutes of the monsters doing something. Even then, half of it is just the humans doing their plans to stop the cockroaches and their plans to take over the Earth and half of the time goes very slowly.

This also doesn't help the fact half of the footage used in this movie is nothing but stock footage (keep in mind most, if not all of the stock footage with a lot of the monster action is all from previous films that set around day time while the new footage takes place during the NIGHT, and they did an extremely poor job even trying to make it seem it's actually taking place in the night), in fact, in one of the stock footage that was used in the film, you can briefly see Mothra (in her Larva form) that's from Ghidorah the Three Headed Monster (1964), and they didn't even bother removing her, like they didn't preview the damn movie before releasing as Mothra isn't suppose to be in the movie, plus a lot of the new monster action in the film, mainly the scenes were they're around the Godzilla tower has them mostly just standing around doing absolutely nothing.

There's also really weird scenes of Godzilla and Anguirus talking, with the Japanese version containing speech bubbles, while the English version has the monsters speaking in this low pitched weird ass sounding voice that sounds like a dying cow choking on the necks of Scar and Bowser that barely have any purpose and could just be done with body language and whatever, at least with All Monsters Attack (1969), Minilla talking was all taking place in a dream, as well as with Ghidorah, The Three Headed Monster (1964), the twin Shobijins were translating it all with the monsters talking in their usual roars, and even then there's a scene of Godzilla talking to Anguirus during their fight with Ghidorah and Gigan at the near end with no speech bubbles (I assume), and no random weird sounding voices whatsoever, making this entirely pointless.

Also, it's clearly shown that the movie is rushed, even without the damn stock footage, like Ghidorah flies like a plastic model and for some reason his eyes are red for whatever reason when he's standing on foot most of the time, his eyes are completely normal so IDK what was going on, plus around the ending, you can notice the Godzilla suit constantly falling apart, primarily the back side and the arms of the suit, mainly because it was used in so many movies, plus while looking at the production, you can see several children that are most likely going on a school bus trip and the backgrounds and minatures and shown to be at the near end so I can assume they did a lot of the entire scenes by one or maybe a few takes and trying their best to impress the children or something, I have no idea exactly, either way, it's still pretty bad.

Literally all of the music that's done by Akira Ifukube is all taken from other Toho films, as well as a few soundtracks from some places such as Expo '70 with only about 3 music tracks that were actually entirely new with a different composer (aka the same guy that composed All Monsters Attack), with only ONE of them being used at the end of the film, which goes to show how lazy they were with trying to make a good soundtrack with this film.

While there are a few good things about this film such as some of the miniatures are quite decent such as the inside parts of the Godzilla Tower, as well as the cockroach designs (primarily their shadows), but most of the film is just mostly nothing other than plain garbage. I know this was during a time that TOHO was in financial troubles and such, but that's no excuse for how lazily the film was finished as and such. At least with Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973), the following Godzilla film, it was fast paced, and a lot of the scenes of film easily made it come off so bad it's good and you can easily get a laugh with the film, but this one is just slow paste and boring as hell.

The only way I can recommend you guys to watch it is if you really want to watch all of the Godzilla films either from the first to the latest film, from best to worst, or from worst to best, aside from those, I highly recommend you just skip this one, it's not really that good unfortunately.

Reptile 2001 (1999)

This movie is a really horrible remake.

[2/10 · 29 November 2018]

This movie is just bad, I just don't know how the CGI is THIS BAD!!!!! It looks like it was done by the same people who made the CGI of Spawn from 1997.

This has gotta be one of the worst remakes I have ever seen in my entire life, and it's even worse than it's original 1967 counterpart.

Yongary (or Yonggary or Reptilian) looks nothing like his original counterpart and looks like if Zilla (the 98 Godzilla) fell in love with a lizard and a triceratops at the same time.

The people acting in this film is downright awful (except for Harrison Young imo), which they all act like they just want to not be in this film.

Also, apparently this was claimed to be the most expensive film of South Korea at that time but it looks cheap as heck.

I heard there were two versions, one in 1999 and the other being in 2001 (which is what most people have seen), but I think the 1999 is as bad as it's 2001 version because I've seen clips and commercials for the 1999 version and the CGI was still awful.

Finally, I just want to say, this is awful and don't watch it at all, if you want to see a film about Yongary that's better than this, then watch the original 1967 version, though that film is not really good either but it's A LOT better than this abomination.