Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension

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As you can probably imagine, I was not looking forward to seeing Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension. I didn’t really like the fourth or fifth movies very much at all. Everything that seemed to precede this movie screamed cash grab to me, right down to putting it in 3D, which I stand by as a horrible idea for a found footage movie, and I refuse to ever see this movie in 3D. Now, let’s get into my actual experience with watching it. Within the first five minutes, this movie proved to me that I didn’t really need to give a rat’s ass about the movie’s characters. The very beginning tries to tie this one in with the third movie, almost seeming to ignore the previous two films in the franchise (or the ones that started to make this franchise suck). One thing I will outright say, is that you do actually start to be able to see the activity. Honestly, as far as I’m concerned, that takes away one of the few scary elements the entirety of the franchise had going for it. Of course, it also doesn’t help the ghost in the movie looks like the Venom Symbiote. One of the things I realized is that the movie actually bored the hell out me. I think part of this comes from the fact that the series has gotten so repetitive and predictable. At this point, the scares feel cheap, lazy, forced, and obvious. To be fair, as negative as I’ve been with this review, I will say that the actors in the movie are ok. They aren’t the best, but they aren’t the worst, either. They just kind of do their job.  Honestly, at this point, I’ve been down the road with bad Paranormal Activity sequels, so this movie can’t really make me that mad, but that still does not a good movie make. 

2 / 10 

Top 50 Favorite Movie Villains (40 - 31)

#40: Koba - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Koba has honestly got one of my favorite villain deaths ever. I have Koba on my list because he gets dissatisfied with the way Caesar leads. This will lead Koba to murder and revolt, based on his belief that all humans are evil.

#39: The Shark - Jaws: I've talked about the shark on my favorite horror movie villains list, so I'll just say that the shark's mindless feeding frenzy is absolutely terrifying. It works best because you barely see the shark, making this creature all the more memorable.

#38: Max Cady - Cape Fear: Max Cady is one of those villains who has one thing on his mind, revenge. The man is a rapist who is out to get his lawyer. Among his methods are kissing the man's teenage daughter, killing the family dog, attempted rape, and murdering the private inspector that the family hired.

#37: Ma-Ma - Dredd: Ma-Ma is a ruthless drug lord who rules over the building called Palm Trees with an iron fist, treating the men she pays and the people living inside the building as nothing more than pawns in her game. Things get even worse when two judges enter the building, and she will offer anything up to make sure they don't make it out alive.

#36: Jack Torrance - The Shining: Jack Torrance is another one of those characters I've talked about before. What I love most about the character is that he does start out as a family man. Granted, he does have a rough history, but the insanity he's driven to is chilling.

#35: Vincent - Collateral: Vincent is a character I love because this was just such a different performance for Tom Cruise. The man proves he is able to play an ice cold assassin to a tee. One line in the movie always sticks out to me. Jamie Foxx's Max is in awe after just seeing Vincent kill a man. "You killed him," Max says. Vincent's response is an emotionless, nonchalant "No, I shot him. The bullets and the fall killed him."

#34: Magneto - X-Men: I am aware that Magneto is truly a sympathetic villain. He is a victim of the cruelty of humans, being a holocaust survivor. What he wants is mutant freedom. Unfortunately, his methods of going about this goal is to kill all humans, believing that is the only way mutants can possibly be free of persecution.

#33: Alec Trevelyan - GoldenEye: Alec Trevelyan "006" is my personal favorite James Bond villain. He was brought up by agency he spent his life resenting, blaming them for the deaths of his parents. He was close personal friends and partners with James Bond. As far as I'm concerned, that kind of humanity can help make a great and memorable villain.
 
#32: Mr. Glass - Unbreakable: What's so great about Elijah Price/Mr. Glass is that, for most of the movie, you don't think he's the villain. In many ways, he helps the movie's hero understand his true destiny and purpose in life. It's not until the end of the movie that you find he masterminded all of these heinous acts for the sole purpose of finding his exact opposite. He even says it best by saying something along the lines of "You know how you know who the villain is? He's the exact opposite of the hero."
  
#31: Leatherface - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: On one hand, Leatherface seems to be the butt of his family's cruel jokes. On the ohter hand, feeling sorry for someone who kills people, skins them, and wears their faces as his own, can only be taken so far.  

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse

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Scout's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse is one of the hardest movies I've ever had to describe in a review. It's a movie about scouts trying to get to a party, all the while trying to survive a zombie apocalypse. Somehow, this movie has too much plot, and no plot at all. Throughout the movie I had to wonder something. There were plenty of jokes that I really should've laughed at. The problem with all of these jokes is, instead of cracking a smile, I was asking myself "what the fuck is happening right now?" The movie is also poorly written. It feels as though the director and the writers put the job of improv on actors who didn't know any better, as most of the time it just feels like the actors are rambling on and on. To be fair, the actors in the movie are trying, and they aren't bad, per se. What they're given to work with is. The best character in the movie, in my opinion, is a character named Denise. Basically, she's a stripper (or cocktail waitress, as she refers to herself) who has a decent amount of grace under pressure and seems to know her way around a shotgun. In the end, despite liking the acting, and some of the characters, the movie is still a mess that is poorly written and poorly directed with no laughs. That's probably what disappoints me the most. I'm a zombie fan. I liked Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead. There's no reason I should dislike this movie as much as I ended up disliking it.

3 / 10

The Gunman

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The Gunman is one of those movies I wanted to like more than I did. The director of the movie is Pierre Morel, the man who directed Taken. The cast includes Sean Penn, Javier Bardem, Ray Winstone, and Idris Elba, all of whom are actors I genuinely like. Perhaps, The Gunman’s biggest issue is that is just not interesting. Even after a half hour, I was struggling with the desire to watch the movie. The rare moments where my interest would actually be able to peak were with the few action sequences. The plot would often meander in areas that I just don’t care about. Pierre Morel is pretty good with his direction of the action sequences. For me, it’s his handling of the rest of the movie where he suffers. I can tell he’s trying his hardest to have The Gunman do for Sean Penn what Taken did for Liam Neeson. Admittedly, I do think Sean Penn gives a pretty solid performance. On the more negative side of performances, it pains me to say that I didn’t care too much for Javier Bardem in the movie. I can’t really say why, but I just didn’t like his performance in the movie all that much. The female lead Jasmine Trinca does her best, but doesn’t seem to have been given enough material for her to really inject personality into her character. On the opposite end of the spectrum was Idris Elba, who was really able to allow his natural charm and charisma to shine through and give the movie's absolute best performance. I think the most irritating thing about the movie is that, watching it, I could see the potential for a much better movie. The action sequences, Idris Elba, and Sean Penn were the things I liked most about the movie. Everything else just failed to grab me. 

4 / 10 

Top 50 Favorite Movie Villains (50 - 41)

#50: Smaug - The Hobbit: Smaug was easily the best thing about both The Desolation of Smaug and The Battle of the Five Armies. Smaug is the giant, fire-breathing dragon that does anything to protect the gold it sits on under the mountain. Couple the dragon's determination with Benedict Cumberbatch's chilling, cold delivery, and you get a pretty damn memorable villain.

#49: Deacon Frost - Blade: What makes Deacon Frost (and Stephen Dorff's performance) so good is that Frost himself is the definition of a pretty-boy douche-bag. However, he's a vampire with no soul, heart, or remorse. He views humans as nothing more than cattle, all the while planning to merge himself with a god and take over the world.

#48: Patrick Bateman - American Psycho: I almost left Patrick Bateman off the list because the ending leaves it ambiguous as to whether or not he actually did all of the heinous acts he claims to have done. But then I realized, if it all was in his head, then the man has some sick thoughts, and could potentially be pushed over the deep end.

#47: John Bennett - Commando: Bennett is memorable because he's your typical prick of an action movie villain. The man shows that he likes what he does, and has no qualms with the idea of murdering a child if it means he gets what he wants in the end. The only thing he forgot was that he was the villain in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

#46: Edwin Epps - 12 Years a Slave: This should really be a no-brainer. Epps could easily make my favorite villains list simply because he is a slave-owner. However, what puts him on the list is the disgusting amount of verbal and physical abuse he heaps on the slaves he owns. The man is the definition of a slave-owner who views his slaves as nothing more than property.

#45: Chucky - Child's Play: There's absolutely one thing that earns Chucky a place on this list. To put it simply, Chucky is the soul of a serial killer inhabiting a child's plaything, which can be a pretty scary thing when you really think about it.

#44: Colonel William Tavington - The Patriot: Tavington is even considered an extremist and a villain by his own people. To describe just what an asshole this guy is, he orders his men to burn down a church filled with innocent people, rationalizing that because they turned on their country, then they are godless and deserve to die a traitor's death.

#43: Mickey - Scream 2: Out of all the Ghostfaces in the Scream series, my personal favorite is Mickey. My reasoning for how much I love Mickey as a villain is simple. He has my personal favorite motive, which is to get caught and blame the movies.

#42: Aaron Stampler / Roy - Primal Fear: What I think makes Roy as good of a villain as he is isn't so much that he does a lot of horrible unspeakable things, it's more that he's able to fool everyone into thinking he has a multiple personality disorder, right up until the very end when he reveals that the kind, sweet, unassuming Aaron never existed.

#41: Colonel Nathan Jessep - A Few Good Men: Jessep is a decorate military soldier who will do whatever he deems necessary to protect his country, even if it means ordering the code red that led to the death of a marine corps private who was supposed to be under his watch. The silence that follows the words "You're goddamn right I did!" speaks volumes.              

Spectre

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I really felt that there was a lot to like in the new James Bond movie. Once again, Daniel Craig shows that he is one of the best Bonds. He's still fairly suave with the ladies, and clearly still has the damage that Craig's previous outings as Bond have shown, though it seems a bit more hinted at here. The action set-pieces were all pretty solid in my opinion. There weren't very many of them. Fortunately, the mystery element that came in between those action scenes was interesting enough to keep me going. The acting was pretty solid. I have to give props to Christoph Waltz and Dave Bautista. Waltz doesn't get a lot of screen time, but when he is on-screen, he's fantastic to watch. He delivers his dialogue with this cold, calculating menace. Meanwhile, Bautista manages to be memorable with only one word of dialogue, mostly thanks to his physically imposing demeanor. There's a subplot in the movie that a lot of people have compared to one in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation. Yeah, I kind of see it. However, it was just different enough that it didn't really bother me. Spectre probably isn't likely to convert non-Bond fans, but those who do like James Bond, then I definitely recommend this movie.

9 / 10