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Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), Captain America: Civil War (2016), or X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)?
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The Shallows (2016)
Nifty, well-crafted shark thriller boasting a strong lead performance by Blake Lively.
The Shallows knows exactly what it is, and that's the best praise I can give it. It's barely 90 minutes long, has a small cast, and only one location. Its only purpose is to give you a thrill-ride during that time; an adrenaline rush based on an ubiquitous fear among humans: being stranded in the ocean with a shark. However as the title suggests, this doesn't take place in the middle of the ocean. This woman is stranded only a couple hundred yards from the shore, close enough to potentially shout for help. What The Shallows does so well is establish this sense of isolation and hopelessness for our main character, and her situation of being so close yet so far from safety.
Blake Lively is great in this role. It's mostly a reactionary role - not much dialogue aside from some early establishing conversations to develop her character. For the majority of the film Lively is terrified and fighting for survival against a deadly shark. This thing is huge, like the Jaws' shark's father huge. And it's interesting to see how she follows its patterns and observes its behavior, allowing her to act accordingly without being trapped. There are some far-fetched scenes, sure, but Jaws had them as well and it's hailed as a classic. Now I'm not saying The Shallows is as good a movie as Jaws, because it certainly isn't. But again, the movie knows what it is, and as a short shark thriller appealing solely to our primal fear, it gets the job done and then some.
Now, it has its faults. The electronic music during the surfing scenes was immediately off-putting, and there are some slo-mo shots that definitely did not deserve to be in slo-mo. But the directing as a whole is well done - gorgeous sweeping shots of the open ocean, the slow build up before the initial attack, showing the shark only when it's most effective. The writing is clever and practical, relatable to the point that you feel for this character's predicament, and the acting as I said is top notch. The Shallows doesn't break any new ground, but it does exactly what it sets out to do - give the audience yet another reason to avoid the beach.
The Pact II (2014)
Its jumbled mess of a story and lack of memorable scares plague this sequel.
The Pact was a good movie. Great even, but why it got a sequel is beyond me. The Pact 2 is connected by the fact that the killer from the first one, Judas, has a copycat going around and it's somehow tied to this forensic cleaner. The lead is fine in the role, quite good actually, and the main girl from the last movie makes an appearance. There's also a creepy FBI agent who's the guy who plays a creepy character in basically everything he's in, and he's fine, and then there's the main character's love interest who is a cop. This dude is a terrible actor and unfortunately a good amount of the plot rests on his shoulders. The plot itself is so ludicrous though it's impossible for anyone to save it. They tie a supernatural element to the whole thing, combined with a murder mystery and psychological drama and it just bites off way more than it can chew. After a while it gets convoluted to the point that you just want to see it end.
The scares are mediocre at best. There are a few cheap jump scares, but a majority of the movie is atmospheric and slow burning. Unfortunately slow burning comes across as boring when trying to piece together a plot that makes absolutely no sense. I wouldn't say The Pact 2 is an awful movie. There's some promise here, but it's muddled in messy storytelling and a lack of quality scares. Maybe worth watching on a drunken night if you've seen the first movie. Even then, The Pact 2 is a sloppy and forgettable sequel.
AlienÂł (1992)
Frustratingly dull, devoid of suspense, and lacks the fleshed out, likable characters of its predecessors.
The premise behind Alien 3 is interesting: Ripley is the only survivor when her ship crash lands on a prison planet full of murderers and rapists while an alien that somehow survived from Ripley's cashed ship starts wreaking havoc on the inmates. The scary thing is that there are no weapons on this planet. It's a throwback to the suspense of the first movie where all they had was a flamethrower, except in Alien 3 they don't even have that. So as you can assume, they're f*cked. Well unfortunately, so is this movie. It's really bad, and it pains me to say it; even the assembly cut. David Fincher disowns this movie because of the constant studio interference, but even then the worst part of the movie is its script. It's horrendous. Apparently they were doing rewrites as they were shooting the movie and you can tell. None of the characters are relatable (sans Ripley of course), and any time they start to build a character, they kill them off soon after. They're all one-dimensional to the point that it's impossible to care when the fifteen nameless bald guys get slaughtered, partially because you can't even tell them apart.
It feels haphazardly thrown together. The pacing is terrible - it's slow and never gains any momentum. There's also nothing quotable in this movie. Nothing. The first two movies had countless quotable lines. This movie has exposition and boring conversations to fill in the gaps between the alien attacks. The alien itself looks like ass - they show it running around a couple times and it looks horrifically bad. They also show POV shots of the alien hunting these guys down which sucks away all the suspense. How can I be afraid of something when I know where it is the whole time? The atmosphere itself is drab and dark, which I wouldn't be opposed to if the movie itself wasn't so boring.
On a positive note, the acting is quite good. Sigourney Weaver is great as usual, the preacher and the doctor (the two characters they try to flesh out) are very good. Even the nameless dumb bald guys are decent. The problem is when they say words. The dialogue is excruciatingly bad and the plot is a mess. Ripley isn't nearly as badass as she used to be; I don't care about anyone else so everything they say is just a waste of time. Because of this the movie feels like it's three hours long. The ending is okay I guess; I like how Lance Henriksen was used, and there are a couple scenes that showed promise. But as a whole, it's physically draining to watch. It's especially painful watching it after Alien and Aliens - both of which were riveting from beginning to end - and this dull piece of crap comes along and sucks the life right out of you. In short, Alien 3 is exhaustingly bad. I recommend this only to Alien completists, and even then you'd probably want to forget this one ever happened.
Last Shift (2014)
Sloppy and derivative demonic horrorshow.
I have to give credit to Juliana Harkavy because if not for her convincing performance, I would not have been able to finish this heap of garbage. Last Shift follows an officer covering the final overnight shift of a police station that's closing down. It's one of those isolated, creepy slow burn movies that can get under your skin. At least, that's what it could have been. What Last Shift lacks most is subtlety. There are jump scares *everywhere*. There's one sequence where it's just "boo!" after "jump!" after "ahh!" and it's just f*cking annoying after a while because none of it works. This wouldn't be such an issue if the story was relatable but it's not. The creepy cult angle has been done a million times before. Last Shift also features every haunting trope in existence - doors slamming, dead people hallucinations, whispering, singing - it's freaking exhausting.
The way the story is told is even worse. They introduce characters solely for the purpose of exposition. Instead of trying to push the narrative forward with some character development or any semblance of humanity, these characters just say exactly what's going on and then leave. Nothing is left to the imagination. The movie plays its hand right off the top and forces us down this rabbit hole of insanity and stupidity for an hour and a half. Another thing is the protagonist isn't relatable. Harkavy gave a fine performance given the material but her character is a dumbass. She should've hauled ass out of there twenty minutes into the movie but no, staying and protecting this abandoned sh*thole of a police station is more important than keeping her sanity. Yeah, no.
There's nothing salvageable here. The subject matter is inherently disturbing but it's exploitation in its purist form. It doesn't go into the psychology of cults or having a family member tied to a heinous crime. It's just like, hey, sh*t happens. Surface level scares that don't even scratch the surface. After a while of bashing you over the head with jump scares you're so desensitized to everything it becomes a waiting game for the movie to end. I guess Last Shift succeeds as an exercise in patience - how long can you sit through every poorly constructed horror cliché known to man? I recommend skipping this shift, even if it means losing the job. Whatever they're paying, it's not worth this.
X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)
Grounded in its storytelling while gorgeous in its pandemonium, Apocalypse is yet another winner from Bryan Singer.
While I prefer First Class and Days of Future Past, Apocalypse truly surprised me. It has the grandest scale of any X-Men movie, and possibly of any superhero movie period. It revolves around the first mutant born tens of thousands of years ago, En Sabah Nur, hailed as an all-powerful god in Egypt before a mutiny in the ranks caused his pyramid to collapse, burying him in the process. Fast forward to the '80s and we see Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) investigating a cult following of this mysterious mutant. Unbeknownst to her, only the smallest amount of sunlight was needed to awaken En Sabah Nur who subsequently causes an earthquake that is felt across the globe. The beginning of this movie is slow, and rightfully so. It shows the origin of Apocalypse, at least how he came to be trapped for all these millennia, and proceeds to show the individual X-Men characters in their respective settings. Magneto has a wife and child, Mystique is rescuing captured mutants like Nightcrawler and Angel, and Professor Xavier is teaching classes in his school. Soon enough, Scott Summers enrolls in the academy and meets Jean Grey. This sounds like a lot to cram into a movie, and it is, but this background was necessary as a foundation for the story to build upon, and boy does it ever.
Apocalypse is one of those villains that has only one goal: world domination. Has it been done a thousand times before? Absolutely. Has it been executed as well as this? Probably not. If there was ever a practical motive for a villain to want to push the reset button on Earth, this is it. The guy's name is freaking Apocalypse and was hailed as a god in his time, and having seen how corrupt the world has become, he believes it's time for some new leadership. He has a huge ego and even huger powers to boot. He recruits some mutants, including Storm, Angel, Psylocke, and eventually Magneto, to help fulfill his global extinction plan, and it's exactly as destructive as it sounds. This might be the most catastrophic and destruction-filled action I've ever seen in a superhero movie. Cities crumble into dust, the Earth itself collapses from the inside, every nuclear warhead launches simultaneously across the world. It's pure pandemonium.
The acting is superb across the board. There's no need praising McAvoy or Fassbender as they've proved themselves many times over. The newcomers are the real shockers here, especially Scott Summers played by Tye Sheridan and Jean Grey played by Sophie Turner. Both are brilliant in their roles and have great chemistry in the scenes they share. Oscar Isaac is excellent as Apocalypse. The material he's given is fairly vanilla but he pulls it off with both charisma and restraint, acting exactly how you'd expect a ten thousand year old god to act in the modern age. And the guy is just menacing to look at. He has a magnetic, commanding presence, and suitably so, being the most powerful villain ever put to screen. Evan Peters kills it as Quicksilver yet again and is given more screen time, plus another show-stealing scene for the fans of his DoFP debut. It's a large cast but it never feels unbalanced. The characters that need to shine do indeed shine, and even the background characters have their rightful place in the movie. It wasn't cluttered like it could have been. Rather, some of the best scenes in the movie are quiet character building moments.
This was officially the last straw for me in regards to the credibility of critic scores. Just because it's not as good as Civil War doesn't make it a bad movie, and their criticisms of "a cliché villain" and "underwritten characters" are asinine and nitpicky. We needed a villain like this. Galactus was the closest we got to an apocalyptic villain but he was raped, mutilated, and morphed into a fart cloud in The Silver Surfer. It's about damn time we get a guy literally called Apocalypse to bring the world down to its knees. The characters are "underwritten" only in the sense that they don't spend twenty minutes going through each of their backstories and that's because they didn't have to. The movie captures their unique personalities and quirks within five minutes of them being on screen.
X-Men: Apocalypse isn't a perfect movie but it's the epitome of a great summer blockbuster. The visuals are stunning, the chaos is immense, the humor is well placed, the pacing is spot on, the music is great (Metallica and Beethoven anyone?), and the entire film builds up to an explosive climax that delivers everything you'd want in an X-Men movie of this magnitude. If you're a fan of superhero movies, do yourself a favor and take the critic scores with a grain of sand. This is a must-watch.
Honeymoon (2014)
Suspenseful and engrossing, but as the mystery slowly unravels, the movie does as well.
Honeymoon reminds me a lot of The One I Love which came out the same year. They're both about a couple who go on an isolated retreat and end up getting more than they bargained for. It's a good premise and one that promises potential, but it's entirely reliant on the execution of the mystery. Something is wrong with Bea, the wife of the recently married couple. The first night of their honeymoon, she wanders out in the middle of the night and Paul, the husband, goes out to find her naked in the woods with no memory of what happened prior. From then on she acts distant - hiding things from him, lying about trivial things - something just isn't right. And the way the movie is set up is very well done. For a good hour of the movie I was totally into it. I had no idea what the threat was and was eager to find out. Then you do find out what it is and it's quite horrifying, but you can tell the filmmakers didn't exactly know how to end the movie.
What carries Honeymoon is the acting. The two leads are excellent and have great chemistry throughout, so when the weird things start happening, you believe the husband's growing concern and the wife's pleads of innocence. And the pacing is spot on. Atmosphere is front and center from the start. The setting is a cabin in the woods, and as cliché as it may be for a horror story, it can be thoroughly effective with the right ambiance and Honeymoon delivers in that regard. The mystery itself is unraveled at a good pace as well, leaving breadcrumbs for the audience and throwing a few twists and turns along the way.
Now I'm giving the movie a lot of praise, and that's because I consider 6/10 an above-average score which is precisely what Honeymoon is - an above-average horror mystery. It's nothing revolutionary. The One I Love did a better job with this premise, but that doesn't mean Honeymoon isn't worth checking out. If you're in the mood for an engaging edge-of-your-seat thriller, you're looking in the right place.
We Are What We Are (2013)
A dull set-up prevents this movie from leaving the lingering impact it could have.
We Are What We Are is my kind of movie. It's brooding, slow-paced, has little to no jump scares, features disturbing subject matter, and it's about freaking cannibals. Believe me when I say I really wanted to love this movie. The truth is, the first two acts of this movie are a chore. A real chore. I fell asleep the first time around the 20-minute mark because of how boring it was. It begins by showing a family tragedy and their subsequent grieving period. The family obviously has a secret but we already know what it is so we're just watching them do stuff. I understand it's a way to develop the characters and set the mood but it completely failed to grip my attention. You also know where the movie is going right off the bat. It shows its hand too quickly and doesn't let the suspense linger long enough for us to wonder what the hell's actually going on.
The third act really saves this movie. It's thrilling, it's tense, borderline silly at times but it's all in good fun. It's definitely a worthwhile climax, but I don't know if it's worth the first hour of a slogfest to wait for. It's like waiting in line for five hours for a roller coaster ride and you finally get on and have a blast, but was the wait really worth the few moments of enjoyment? In this case, it's entirely up to you. The movie certainly has its perks. The acting is excellent across the board, the daughters in particular, and the cinematography is superbly crafted to give you the eerie vibe necessary to pull off this subject matter. Production value wise, We Are What We Are is quality stuff.
I'd recommend it to horror buffs, specifically those who prefer a slow burn over cheap jump scares. We Are What We Are just happens to be the particular slow burn that's slow to the point that it produces more of a flicker than a fire.
The Sacrament (2013)
A predictable, creepy found-footage romp that is a cut above many.
The Sacrament is a fairly straightforward movie. It's about a group of guys who are part of a documentary film group and one of the guys' sister moves into an isolated commune and the film crew wants to know the full scoop. You'll know exactly where this movie is going as it progresses, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. It gives a chance for director Ti West to establish some character background and vague insights into the religious group while slowly turning the creep dial up until the movie's climax. The acting is good across the board, the standout being the Father (Gene Jones) who is suitably charismatic as the cult's ominous leader. For a found-footage movie it's shot well, but of course there are the typical issues that come with the turf - impossible angles, how the footage was even found - but these are things you'd know going in. The movie itself is a well executed, suspenseful slow burn.
The biggest fault in The Sacrament is its predictability. Again, it's not a bad thing, we just know what's coming at every turn. Creepy cult, innocent people poking their noses in places they don't belong, an underlying dark scheme that slowly unravels to the protagonists. If that kind of stuff interests you and you're willing to forgive the tropes that come with the genre, The Sacrament is a worthwhile watch.
The Thing (2011)
Pales in comparison to Carpenter's classic with nothing new or interesting to offer of its own.
It's hard for anything to compare to John Carpenter's The Thing. It's one of the greatest horror films ever made, some would argue *the* best. Thankfully, they didn't go the remake route here and instead opted for a prequel that depicted the events that happened in the Norwegian camp prior to the '82 version. In that regard, this movie does an impressive job at tying some knots like showing how the two-faced thing came to be, as well as the origin of the dog from the start of Carpenter's Thing. Sadly, that's where most of the praise ends.
The Thing suffers from what plagues many horror movies these days - underwritten characters and overwhelming CGI. One of the scariest things of Carpenter's version is the practical effects of the "thing". They were horrifying. Here, all subtlety is thrown out the window in favor of huge CGI monsters. It's effectively used in a couple scenes, but the monsters lose their scariness after a while and it just becomes gratuitous. The characters themselves are paper thin. What helped make the '82 version so fantastic is that we got to know the characters, their quirks, their personalities, and we were able to empathize with their situations. In this movie, half of the characters are interchangeable. I didn't even know most of their names. And worse yet, I didn't care about any of them. There's one particular scene that calls back to Carpenter's infamous blood test scene where I realized that most of these people are really dumb and I don't care if any of them die. That's not good in a horror movie. By that point it was just a waiting game for them to get picked off one by one.
The lead performances are strong. For the material they were given, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton do a fine job. But that simply isn't enough to carry a movie like this. The Thing is supposed to be scary, and for the most part, it isn't. That's a failure by horror standards. There's some face-value entertainment to be had here, but if you're looking for a substantial prequel to Carpenter's masterpiece, you'll be sorely disappointed.
Captain America: Civil War (2016)
The Winter Soldier has competition.
The Winter Soldier has competition for being the best Marvel movie. There's no other way to say it: Civil War is phenomenal. Marvel continues the trend of upping the stakes by pinning our favorite heroes against each other: Captain America and Iron Man. There are a lot of other characters, so much so that it feels more like an Avengers movie than a solo movie, but the story is told in such a way that the spotlight is always on Cap and Bucky.
Civil War is tonally different from Winter Soldier in that it's more bombastic in its storytelling. Again, there are a lot of Avengers in the movie (more than the freaking Avengers movie). While Winter Soldier was a relatively grounded, dark political thriller, Civil War is a louder, more colorful take on the political theme, and a much more personal one as well. This time it's a matter of morals and ethics, and it's amazing how the movie pulls off giving each side of the argument weight and credibility so you could argue about who's right and who's wrong all day.
Steve wants to protect his best friend Bucky who was brainwashed by Hydra and is now a fugitive from the law. He doesn't trust any form of government faction. He saw how far up corruption goes and he's not willing to lose jurisdiction of the Avengers to yet another corrupt governmental body. Tony wants everyone to sign an agreement for the UN so they won't be seen as a threat by the world governments due to their track record of leaving behind messes and casualties. It's a terrific plot, very thrilling and character driven. At its core it's a very personal story between Steve and Tony. The other characters are written as complimentary pieces to one puzzle. It's not gratuitous at all. You understand everyone's ideologies - why they disagree with each other, why they're on the sides that they're on, why they're fighting for what they're fighting for - and they're each given enough screen time for us to care. And the action scenes are TWS level. Nothing quite beats the first confrontation between CA and WS, but the end of the second act of this movie has an action sequence that is absolutely mesmerizing. It's the civil war. Seeing all of these superheros go against each other is exhilarating, and their interactions are hysterical, especially since a lot of them are meeting each other for the first time.
The new characters are excellent - Black Panther makes a hell of an impression as a sophisticated Wakandan diplomat, and Spider-Man is easily the best live action interpretation of the character; major props to Tom Holland for sounding exactly how you'd expect Spider-Man to sound like. It's an absolute joy to watch. One aspect of Civil War I find especially fascinating is the use of its villain, Zemo. You have no idea what he's plotting for a good chunk of the movie. He shows up intermittently as the first couple of acts are playing out doing cryptic stuff vaguely involving Hydra, and finally the third act converges on Zemo and why he's doing what he's doing, and it's about the simplest thing: vengeance. It's incredible to watch this ordinary man - no powers or abilities - just a smart, patient man, have a conceivable shot at destroying the Avengers. And the actor is excellent too. It's a nice change of pace from the invincible demigods and dull dark elves we've been getting in previous installments.
Civil War is an expertly made film all around. The acting is top notch as always, the directing and the writing are masterful, I can go on and on. It's a political, personal, and powerfully conveyed story with tons of popcorn blockbuster appeal, rivaled only by The Winter Soldier in the MCU. Highly recommended.