Change Your Image
wigglytoes
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Nobody (2021)
I went to see Bob O do his best John Wick inpression of Taken, and it was better than i expected
I think the title says it all.
It was my first theater movie in (it seems) forever. I couldn't have picked better.
First Man (2018)
Shaky cam, tight closesup, and an assaulting soundtrack
I like movies.
I've seen movies.
Do you like movies.
I hated this one. Within the first 10 minutes.
Shaky cam moving all over the place. Usually to land close enough to the actors so you can count their skin pores. Gosling playing the same guy as he was in Blade Runner. It could have been titled "Neil Armstrong - Blade Runner 1969'
Plus who knew that space has the same soundtrack as a low budget horror movie.
Dunkirk (2017)
An assault on my ears
I went to see Dunkirk at the very end of it's movie theater run. Therefore I've heard how great it is, and was expecting to be impressed. Maybe I was expecting too much but I was underwhelmed.
Now a day later I have found out that 'the Mole' is a dock for loading ships. Where the screen showed 'The mole, one week', 'The Sea, one Day', and 'The air, One Hour' it meant that there was going to be three different story lines occurring over one week, one day, and one hour, simultaneously. I didn't realize, while watching the film, that that was how the film was setup. (I was trying to figure out what a Mole was. It would have really helped if they said "The Dock - during one week", etc. Plus the movie continuously cuts back and forth between these story lines. So you move forward in time, then back, then forward. Throw that all together and you can see why the movie is very confusing to some.
I'm very familiar with the story of Dunkirk so the jumping around from time line to time line didn't throw me off that much. Except for when it was obviously night time in one story, and daytime in another. If I only had known that there were three movies going on at once. It would have made a lot more sense.
My biggest problem with the movie was the sound track. Perhaps this only occurred in my theater (I doubt that), but it was oppressively loud. Not just the bang bang of guns firing, that's expected in movies these days, but here there is constant background droning. Not airplane noise - just really loud single note background noise. I took a tissue and stuffed it into my ears within 10 minutes of the start of the film, and I never felt that I could take the plugs out.
The next biggest problem is the lack of a coherent story. I went with a friend who didn't know the Dunkirk story, and she had no idea what was going on. Over 300,000 soldiers were evacuated! You never would have known that through this movie. A third of the soldiers evacuated were French! You will have the opposite idea after the movie. Hundreds of small boats helped in the evacuation! The film shows about 12. The real WWII soldiers were well disciplined, and while there is always chaos in war, there was a chain of command in control! In this film there seems to be 3 people of high rank and everyone else is a private and on their own.
There are some good points to the movie. Not enough to justify the current price of admission, but it wasn't a total waste.
The Orville (2017)
For children?
I write this immediately after watching the third episode 'About a Girl', so this is more a review of that episode than anything else.
I've been watching The Orville because I have been hoping that it will be another show in the Star Trek vein, or perhaps it is going to be a spoof of Star Trek. (After all 'Orville' immediately brings up images of a comedy) Either way would be interesting to me.
Unfortunately, the 3rd episode is nothing but a moral play. (A bad one at that) Include the potty humor or soiling pants joke, and the this crewman is sooo stupid joke, and it looks like the show is aimed at a preteen audience. While there's nothing wrong with that, I'm not that young and if the show continues down this path I won't be watching.
spoilers ahead.
I disliked the entire moral lesson of the 3rd episode. Human values should be shoved down the throat of aliens! Really. Picard would have just slapped the crew of the Orville. And saying that Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer changed the complete moral compass of an alien is just stupid. The climax of using a Moclan female Ex Machina to prove the humans point was just lazy writing. I was waiting the entire show for the plot to get onto anything resembling Star Trek morals. It never happened, to my great disappointment. I expected a reveal that Moclan females died early deaths or were imbeciles or some such thing, so that the moral lesson would be that we shouldn't jump to conclusions by projecting our own morality onto aliens, but that never came. The lesson stayed at a third grade level, such a missed opportunity.
The Case for Christ (2017)
A better title would be Why I like Christ
I rented this in the hopes that it would be a thoughtful examination of why some people believe in the existence of Christ and others do not. Nope. It's really just an essay on what this one guy believes. Never looking at any opposing view, or even looking critically at his own 'evidence.' For example it starts (spoiler ahead) with a classical case of if God wasn't here a rescue wouldn't have happened. But they don't consider that if God exists then he made the rescue necessary in the first place.
Wonder Woman (2017)
Can't believe that this is a sexist movie.
I was surprised on how many typical male/female stereotypes were NOT broken. About the only box NOT checked was the heroine being blond. Up until the end it felt like a Chris Pine movie. Also amazed at how many cheap childish laughs the writer went for, and missed. How would you handle an island of Amazons meeting men. In this case the producer said "channel your 8 year old inner child".
Divergent (2014)
Not so bad, up until the 3rd act
I was actually enjoying the film, but as I got closer to the ending the film got stupider and stupider. Classic good guys can aim, bad guys can't. Bad guys chasing you - why not stop and have an emotional moment. Worst was the last 10 minutes, when the logic floor dropped completely away.
Grimsby (2016)
Finally a comedy that makes you laugh
I just finished watching this movie, and I say it all in my summary. After comedy after comedy that makes you grin slightly it was refreshing to see a movie that makes you laugh out loud. Often. There was one point where I was literally worried that I would die laughing. No joke. My health hasn't been the best, and I was laughing so deeply that I gave a little worry that my heart or lungs would pop. I stiffled myself. Didn't know what would happen if I just let it roll.
I'm sure that I will remember some things tomorrow that will make me want to take away a star or two, but right now I can't think of a way to make the movie better.
The two stars were a perfect match for each other. Their interactions actually made this movie work more than the laughs. Probably because they never do what you would expect them to do. I rarely like a movie where the next move is easily predicted.
This is easily the best comedy that I've seen since Borat. I get the feeling that Sasha and I have the same sense of humor.
The Good Place (2016)
Didn't the show creators pay any attention to Jane Lynch's last show?
There's very little on TV that's worth watching, so going in I was hoping that this show would be something that I could look forward to watching each week.
Unfortunately that isn't the case. The main premise of the show has been done to death. (That's a pun, son) It's the old - someone dies, but there was a mix-up in the postmortem sorting and our hero has gone to the wrong place. Hilarity ensues as a ripple in the Force is created by the odd ball's presence. At the same time our oddball tries to remain in the 'good place' through deceit and enlistment (corruption) of others, while she is slowly turned into the good person that she was supposed to be in the beginning. Which just makes you wonder how incompetent the powerful being that created every blade of grass really is. It looks like this will be a recurring theme each week, which will get old fast.
I'm a fan of the primary actors, and they do a good job. Unfortunately so did Jane Lynch in her recent Angel in the rough show. That show was yanked after 4 or 5 episodes. I hope that this new show does better, but I don't have high hopes.
In the opening scenes I kept thinking $.35, $.35, $.35 from Father Quido Sarducci's 1980 LP Live at St. Douglas Convent. And if you can't handle some PC in your soup, you probably won't love this show.
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
I was hoping for more
It's a typical action, action, action movie. To me that means that the movie is just a collection of action sequences, without must thought given on how to get from one action sequence to the next.
The good part of this movie is that the glue holding the action sequences together is fairly well done. They use a lot of humor, which is why some people have enjoyed the movie. And some of the cast are 'characters'. You know - interesting beings.
The downside is that 20-30% of the action sequences are fluff. Totally unnecessary to the story. At one point I leaned back, and considered how I could while away the time until the current action sequence was over. IE it was boring. Zoom, zoom, bang, bang. Seen it.
Another part that I disliked was all the time that went into setting up for the sequel. Leaving some loose ends is one thing, but this could have just as easily been called "Part 1".
Godzilla (2014)
So very bad that it's good (as a comedy)
Sure it's a really really bad movie. In the vain of just a bunch of action sequences strung together without much thought given to continuity or logic. But when the starting premise is that there exists a gigantic super powered monster that just popped into existence, then you have to give them some slack.
The truth is that I loved it. I think the trick was to walk into the viewing expecting absolutely crazy stuff. Anything goes. Kind of like a dream. Just random firing of brain synapses. Nothing made sense, but it was fun watching what was thrown on the screen next. It was so absurd, you have to laugh.
I don't think this gives away anything. But if you like to yell at the screen here's a line that I came up with half way through the movie. "Look out Godzilla - they have machine guns". Every time that you see someone with a machine gun - shout that. It'll have you rolling in the aisle.