The Pool (a.k.a. Swimming Pool)

A group of "high school students" break into a closed down pool for a graduation party. I'll be honest, if you've rad any of my past reviews, you'll know I tend to be on the forgiving side of a lot of slasher movies. This... is not going to be one of those cases. I like a couple of the performances, namely the performances by a young Isla Fisher and a young James McAvoy before either of them really got big. There's at least one kill in the movie I think is genuinely entertaining. A couple of scenes are directed decently enough, I suppose. Isla Fisher's character in the film is only in two scenes. The backstory given to this character feels more interesting and thought out than the backstory given to the actual final girl. Okay, even by slasher movie standards, most of these characters feel incredibly stock. A couple of them are also really hard to tell apart from one another. Literally, three of the male characters in this movie have similar build and short black hair in a buzz cut. The killer's costume also looks stupid. It doesn't look like the costume I would expect out of the villain in a slasher movie. It looks like a costume worn by a lame supervillain. 

 But, this movie commits what is perhaps the greatest sin a movie can commit. It is just plain boring, especially in the first half. I've already mentioned that I don't particularly care about most of the characters. So, that probably doesn't help that much at all. Even as someone who is a bit of an apologist for cheesy slasher movies, I can't bring myself to recommend this. It really isn't worth your time or effort. 

4 / 10 

Dolittle

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Dolittle stars Robert Downey, Jr. as Doctor Dolittle. He has to go on a journey to find something when the queen of England falls gravely ill because his home/animal sanctuary is on the line. Formulating my thoughts is surprisingly difficult. However, I will do my best. I don’t like this movie, but I was honestly expecting it to be much, much worse. Nothing about this movie made me outright angry. I just think it was too bland and uninteresting for that. I should note that I didn’t really think any of the acting was up to par. Even the usually reliable Robert Downey, Jr. wasn’t very good. The plot is weird to me. It feels like it’s trying to jump from plot point to plot point, and I just don’t care about any of it. It’s honestly pretty predictable as well. As soon as Michael Sheen shows up, I know he’s going to be the villain. A lot of the humor feels kind of out of place. OK, I don’t really have any more to say. Dolittle is bad in a bland way, despite a pretty bonkers ending. I don’t recommend it, and I think that’s that. 

4 / 10 

The Grudge (2020)

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The Grudge follows several different people as they encounter the titular grudge and the ghosts involved. This is a movie I was somewhat curious about, but I was skeptical to. This movie is a horror movie being released over the first weekend of January, a month that is pretty much reserved for movies that studios have little faith in (with some exceptions here and there). What’s interesting is that this movie really isn’t a remake. It’s sort of a spin-off that takes place in the same universe as the 2004 remake. The actors all feel like they are game. It helps knowing that most of them already have proven talent. Some of the gore is alright, too. I kind of appreciate that this movie is willing to go for that R-rating in an otherwise PG-13 franchise. The biggest problem this new Grudge movie suffers from is that it doesn’t really offer anything else that’s all that new. It offers the same style of scares as before. The characters don’t really feel all that interesting. They aren’t shallow by any means. For whatever reason though, I don’t particularly care. In the end, this movie doesn’t really seem to have a reason to exist, other than to just make another Grudge movie because there might be some nostalgia. This comes across as though they had about three or four possible ideas for a movie, and they squished them all together in one movie. It makes things feel jumbled, and hard to keep interested in. This is a movie I would best sum up in one word: mediocre. 

4 / 10 

The Lion King (2019)

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From a technical aspect, the remake of The Lion King is stunning. It’s beautiful to look at. Yet, the film just feels hollow, almost like an imitation of something better that came before. I think the Disney remake this reminded me of the most was Beauty and the Beast. Yeah, I didn’t really like this movie very much. Don’t get me wrong there are good things about the film. The voice actors do an admirable enough job. I’ve already mentioned the film’s visual effects. At the same time, I feel like the attempt to make the film look more realistic is also one of the film’s biggest hindrances. The original made the characters emote. You could understand what they were going through. Here, their faces are blank slates. What makes it even harder for me to feel any real attachment to this remake is that some of the original film’s biggest moments come across as though they have less weight and impact. The musical numbers feel restrained here, like they are being held back. The stampede scene doesn’t have the same ominous feeling because it lacks the scale and the shadows. For the first hour of the film, it’s just the original movie beat by beat. At that point, some changes come in. They’re fine, but they don’t really stand out too much. Now, I don’t normally like to compare a remake to its original. The problem is this film doesn’t do enough to stand out and be its own thing. The thing that makes it so strange is knowing how little this movie deviates, despite being a half hour longer. Overall, this isn’t the worst movie ever made, but it’s still pretty bad.

4 / 10 

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

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Out of all of the movies in the Halloween franchise, I feel the most conflicted towards Halloween 5. I have seen this movie multiple times. Yet, every time I see it, I like it less and less. It feels like, all of the flaws just seem to shine through more and more. There are elements to this film I like (namely the performances by Danielle Harris and Donald Pleasance). I also quite like the ventilation scene near the end of the movie. I have mixed feelings towards the Tina character. A lot of fans absolutely hate her. I just never cared about her one way or the other. I should also note that I don't particularly care for Michael's mask once again in this film. It looks like an alien. Ellie Cornell as Rachel feels like she's underused. I should also note that I don't like that the film kills the character off so early. I don't like the addition of the two bumbling comedic relief cops. The comedy surrounding them just doesn't hit for me. The addition of the man in black doesn't really work for me either. The film was written by director Dominique Othenin-Girard, as well as Michael Jacobs and Shem Bitterman. I bring up the writers because, supposedly, the man in black character was added as a solution when they wrote themselves into a corner, and I think it kind of shows. Halloween 5 is not a god-awful movie by any means, but it is definitely one of my lesser favorites in the franchise.

4 / 10 

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

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Godzilla: King of the Monsters is the sequel to 2014’s Godzilla. This time around, Godzilla has fight King Ghidora for dominance over all monsters. Now, when the movie is about Godzilla fighting it out with other monsters, it is genuinely entertaining. The human cast is composed of solid actors. The cast includes the likes of Millie Bobby Brown, Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Ken Watanabe, Bradley Whitford, and Charles Dance. But, everything else about the movie doesn’t quite work that well for me. The pacing just feels off. It isn’t really easy for me to explain why. A lot of it just doesn’t quite come together. But, the movie’s biggest problem is the characters. They are played by good actors giving good performances. The problem is: most of these characters just aren’t written very well. There isn’t really anything about any of them that honestly stands out. Their motivations don’t feel that well defined, almost as though the motivations for most of these characters is designed to fit a given scene, so they are incredibly difficult to define. If it seems as though I’m being particularly harsh, it’s because this is one of the movies I was the most excited for this year. The final product is easily in the running for my biggest disappointment of the year. It has good elements (namely the actors, effects, and action). But, the characters, writing, and pacing really let the movie down for me in the end. 

4 / 10   

Anna

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I didn’t know anything about this movie’s existence until I saw a trailer on Youtube a couple of months ago. Going into this movie, I had no idea what to expect. The movie stars relative newcomer Sasha Luss in the title role. Anna is a woman who was offered a chance to work as an assassin for the KGB. The first thing I have to draw attention to is that the plot kind of difficult for me to explain. Part of the reason is probably because the way the first half of the film is structured  makes it hard to follow. What I mean by this is that is the film will jump from one point in time to five years later to three years prior to this five-years-later-interval. One of the biggest problems I have with this is it actually makes it hard for me to pay attention, or even feel that invested. There is another possible reason I don’t find myself that invested in this film. I don’t find myself that interested in most of the characters, because it doesn’t really feel like the characters have that much to them, at least from my perspective. Yet, the actors do feel as though they are all putting effort in their performances.The action scenes are also pretty fluid. I don’t necessarily think Luc Besson’s direction lets this movie down, so much as his writing does. For example, the action scenes are genuinely pretty fluid, and well done. Overall, I don’t think this movie was inherently awful. I wasn’t expecting much of anything out of it either, so I couldn’t really be that disappointed. I think this is going to be one of those movies that will come and go from any memories, should it leave any impact at all.

4 / 10  

Wonder Park

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Wonder Park is about a young girl named June who helps a group of talking animals re-open a defunct amusement park (that all may or may not just exist in her imagination). Going into this movie, I wasn’t sure what I was going to make of it, or what to expect. The trailers didn’t really do that much for me, and the film has a 32% on Rotten Tomatoes. Those aren’t the signs the really bode well for an animated movie like this. I suppose I should start with positives, however few there are. First-time actress Brianna Denski as the voice of June is probably the highlight. This girl is clearly putting her all into her voice work, even she does seem to be the only one. From a story telling standpoint, I kind of enjoy the first 15 minutes or so. OK, they weren’t anything groundbreaking, but they were good enough. However, there’s something said around the 20 minute mark that honestly renders both what came before and what came after completely ineffective. At this point, I should talk about the things in this movie that really didn’t work at all. I can’t really go too much further into this because that would be going into spoiler territory. The jokes are not funny either. I don’t know if there’s a single joke that I can easily say works. They aren’t the worst jokes I’ve ever heard, but that doesn’t stop them from falling completely flat. The animation is mediocre. It isn’t Foodfight levels of awful. However, it isn’t Pixar levels of amazing either. The lead actress aside, all of the other voice actors just don’t work. All of them sound like they are half asleep. Perhaps the worst offender of this is Mila Kunis (somebody who actually has legitimate experience in voice acting). Overall, while Wonder Park most definitely isn’t the worst movie ever, it is still a bad movie. This is best described as movie that starts off well, but quickly falls into mediocrity and never really rises back out of it. 

4 / 10 

The Silence

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The Silence follows a family as they try and survive an attack from prehistoric creatures that hunt by sound. If you couldn’t tell already, this film has some striking similarities to the movie A Quiet Place, right down to one of the family members being deaf. I have to admit that I didn’t exactly go into this with particularly high expectations. Sure, the cast is pretty good (perhaps the best element of the film as a whole). But, the film was directed by John R. Leonetti. The man’s directing credits include Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Annabelle, and Wolves at the Door. He truly has yet to make a film that legitimately impresses me. Sadly, this film is no exception. The acting from the main family is the only thing I can say truly works. A lot of the other actors don’t work well in this film at all. The creatures really don’t look good. Much of the film’s special effects make you fully aware that you are watching movie. More than that, you can always tell that they are bad CGI effects. A couple of the jump scares work—which is something impressive considering my opinions on jump scares. The characters in this film really don’t feel like they have much in the way of development. The most developed character is probably the character Ally played by Kiernan Shipka. She is a teenager who was involved in a car accident that killed her grandparents, and left her deaf. In many respects, the film is hard to talk about. I officially watched this film a couple of days ago on Netflix. I have a feeling that I will find this again in a few weeks and say to myself: “Oh yeah, I did watch that.” Is The Silence one of the worst films I have ever seen? No. I found to be just sort of mediocre, and I’ll probably forget about it completely before too long. 

4 / 10