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The Beekeeper (2024)
Disappointing and Nonsensical
Horribly-acted, DEI-friendly, implausibly-scripted action movie. And the action is pretty good. But that's the only reason to see this one.
To buy into the plot, you will need to believe the following:
1. That there is a secret group of ultra-elite warriors sponsored by the U. S. Government but not answerable to them in any way - The Beekeepers.
2. That the most badass of all these warriors retired and became an actual beekeeper renting barn space from Claire Huxtable.
3. That Claire Huxtable was victimized by an online scam conducted by the son of the U. S. President, losing millions, and subsequently committing suicide, thus bringing down the wrath of the elite beekeeper/ultimate warrior on the President and her family.
4. That nearly every senior staff member of nearly every government agency is either black, hispanic, female, or some combination thereof.
And you can believe me when I tell you, NO ACTOR in this movie is going to make you believe anything. Not even Jeremy Irons, who seemed quite comfortable relegated to the role of the incompetent second banana. I guess he was too old to play the other white male role on the antagonist side, the sneering, amoral, narcissistic son who comprises the Gen Z version of a super-villain.
I would say this movie is worth watching for the action sequences. But I wish I had my 2 hours back.
Think John Wick meets Escape From LA produced by Kathleen Kennedy.
Edit: And oh yeah just one more thing, and this is like a SUPER-SPOILER ALERT (as if this plot could actually be spoiled) - at the end of the movie, when the little pint-sized super-villain is holding his mother hostage, he actually seems to visually make a decision and says, "Goodbye, Mother," as he moves the gun in the direction of her head? Really? He figured shooting his mother at that point was his best strategy? I mean I can see why he might take her hostage - after all, she was The President of the USA and also the only person standing close enough to take hostage. So up until this point in the movie, the kid's motives have been at least somewhat clear, even valid from a villainous perspective. But to actually do it, to shoot her...why? Then it's over, you have no hostage. The point of taking a hostage isn't to actually KILL the hostage, it's to put a live barrier between you and the guy who wants to kill you. The threat is the ONLY thing that counts. Absolutely shameful plot contrivance. I guess all the other excuses for the hero to shoot the villain right between the eyes while he's holding a hostage had already been used in other movies.
Donnie Darko (2001)
Great Movie But Not That Complicated
Donnie Darko is both way less complex and way more complex than most people seem to think it is.
For those who say, "I don't know what I just watched," it's simple: Donnie Darko died early in the film, when the jet engine crashed into his room. Everything you see after that is a tangental/alternate reality visualized by Donnie himself in the afterlife. Only by piecing the truth together from clues culled from his own formidable insight is Donnie finally able to reconcile with reality and contend with his own death.
The moral and metaphysical questions it raises are certainly profound. But no answers are given.
Really top-notch story-telling by Richard Kelly. The characters are interesting and developed enough so that all the trivial (and in fact, non-occuring) events that take place from the time Donnie dies to the time he realizes it are thoroughly entertaining in their own right, which is a damn good thing since that's 98% of the movie.
Wonka (2023)
Just go ahead and watch it - you won't be disappointed
I suppose it's possible Gene Wilder spoiled everyone. But I thought Chalamet made a great case for being the 2nd-best Wonka.
I loved this movie. The villains are villainous, the hero above reproach, it's easy to enjoy - certainly not an intellectually-challenging movie. Normally I might say that as an insult but not this time, Willy Wonka isn't that complicated a character and the writers and director accepted that and ran with it. Willy is into candy. In a big way. There's your story.
Hugh Grant as the outcast Oompa-Loompa is the best casting I've seen this year.
I don't normally like musicals. But the music here is poppy, generic, and contains enough story-telling elements to hold my attention.
I am going to watch it again tomorrow.
Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)
Not What It Wanted To Be But Pretty Damn Close!
This is an excellent adaptation of the Biblical tale. Christian Bale is perfect as Moses - not as perfect as Charlton Heston of course but that would be asking a lot. The "plagues" are put into scientific context (for the most part). "God as a child" is kinda old-hat but I guess it's better than Russell Crowe as God. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, though it's not quite up to the level of The Ten Commandments. As with all Ridley Scott films it veers toward realizing the miraculous, as opposed to simply accepting it - which is cool, but the Red Sea Parting in TTC was MUCH more dramatic than in this movie. I'm going to give it 9/10 though it is essentially an 8/10, but the current 6/10 rating is WAY too low.
The Last Duel (2021)
A Bit Tedious
The story is a very interesting one. The question of whether it is interesting enough to be told from 3 different viewpoints over the course of 2+ hours is one you will be asking yourself. If nothing else it does remind one that there are two sides to every story, or in this case three. I will say that over the course of it, I did find myself pondering over some events from my own past, and thinking about how they were likely perceived differently from other viewpoints.
It's quite well-made, Matt Damon and Adam Driver are excellent. Didn't care much for Ben Affleck as the effete French count. He wasn't terrible but it was a poor casting choice, I never once forgot that I was watching Ben Affleck play an effete French count. Jodie Comer is lovely. The duel itself was well choreographed, but the ending a bit unsatisfying. I found myself feeling that no outcome for any of the characters had been particularly earned, nor did anything feel like justice. Which, okay, that's how real life is. But that's not why we escape to movies.
I'm giving it 6/10. I enjoyed it, I learned a little about myself from it, but the structure probably seemed like a better idea on paper than it was on the screen.
Apocalypto (2006)
Brutal and compelling
I don't care what anyone says, or even what I say, about Mel Gibson. The man is a damn prodigy, and the planet Earth is lucky he's on it. What a moving cinematic experience is this movie! See it and be transported to a different time, a different place, and a different culture. Historial accuracy be damned - I mean, can anyone really say with any authority what mid-millennial Mayan culture was like? We're altering our own history right now today, so don't even start with that (I'm talking directly to the historians of course).
Whether this movie is historically-accurate or a totally-fabricated piece of fiction, it's a genuine masterpiece of storytelling - one that is 100% accurate when it touches the human condition.
Yesterday (2019)
A fantastic idea, squandered
I'd like to wake up in an alternate universe where no one had ever seen this movie, so I could re-make it completely with the original premise and turn it into an all-time classic.
It's a good movie, it really is. I enjoyed it, and it was so sweet I actually feel kinda bad for saying anything negative about it. But I've never seen a movie before during which I second-guessed the writing choices so often and so vigorously.
The first half is very well-done. Everything leading up to the point that Jack goes to L.A. to make his record is quite on-point and really builds the excitement for the second half. I was giddy as a little girl at Disneyland when I THOUGHT I realized where the movie was heading. When Jack was in his room assembling all those Beatles songs from memory, I wanted to shout the lyrics at him through the screen so we could move on to the shining, wonderful second half, in which Jack Malik becomes the greatest musical superstar in history and has amazing adventures.
But it comes on you slowly. You're watching, and waiting, and then you suddenly realize - "Oh. They're doing this instead."
I'm giving it 7 stars because I love the Beatles and I liked the movie. But it could EASILY have been a 10 with better plot choices.
Ip Man (2008)
Classic Revenge Story Done Right
This is the best kung fu movie I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of them, including, of course, all of Bruce Lee's movies.
What Bruce Lee's movies always lacked, this movie has - proper motivation for the lead actor. Bruce Lee fought for...let's just call them trivial...reasons. In his handful of great martial arts movies, he fought for:
- The honor of his fighting style over other fighting styles
- A restaurant troubled by hooligans
- Someone breaking his mother's amulet
- Victory in an illegal martial arts tournament
Nothing too heavy there. But Ip Man is next-level stuff. The backdrop is the Japanese invasion of China in WWII. The occupiers are heartless and cruel, the occupied starving, treated as slaves. The peace-loving Ip Man, who lives by Confucian principles, is drawn into conflict with the invaders against his will, and every fight is important for its own reason. You will find yourself cheering for Ip Man not because he's a great character, though he is; but because his motivation is your motivation.
The action sequences are just terrific. You want your hero to be invincible, and he is, in the most satisfying way possible.
This is a great movie and I highly recommend it, even for people who aren't into the martial arts genre.
Punk's Dead: SLC Punk 2 (2016)
Disappointing but not awful
What seems obvious to me is that this movie was definitely written with the return of the Matthew Lillard "Stevo" character in mind. All the secondary characters from the first movie who returned for this one claim an uncle-type relationship with Ross, the son of Bob, who is the main character in this movie. But none of those guys had particularly close relationships with Bob, or Trish, the mother, in the first movie. The only character who did was Stevo. So yeah, the subtext here is, the movie was written for Lillard but he decided not to do it.
My guess is, Lillard wouldn't do it because he read the script, which is...unreliable. I enjoyed the random elements of the first movie. For example, when the character Mark (played by a young Til Schweiger - later Hugo Stiglitz), the independently wealthy European drug dealer, left town and never came back, even though he was one of the more well-developed and interesting characters. I loved that. People actually do sometimes leave town and never come back. James Merendino just gave Mark up to the void. He could have kept him around for the whole movie and thereby kept the door open on all kinds of interesting antics, but he had a real story to tell and Mark's part was over. I like it when a writer's not afraid to leave a good character behind for the sake of the story.
No such artistry here. The only character who really gets left behind is Lillith, Ross's first love, who was not developed at all. So when she ended up making out with some other guy in some dark corner of a bar and obviously breaking Ross's little heart, I for one felt nothing, even though this was supposed to be the seminal moment in the movie that sent Ross off on an entirely new path in life. By the way, it's pretty obvious that at some point in his real life, Merendino had a girlfriend and caught her making out with another guy, because the same scene happened to Stevo in the first movie. Does this happen that often in reality?
Also missing from this movie was any kind of counterpoint to the youthful rebellion that is punk. Christopher McDonald as Stevo's father in the first movie was a vital (not to mention hilarious) representation of the kind of vapid, money-motivated society that punk kids want no part of. But what are the kids rebelling against here? There's one nonsensical scene in which the female lead Penny runs into her father at a gas station and he slugs her in the nose for drinking and carousing. But how the hell did that happen? They were taking back roads all over Utah and they just happened to pull up at a gas station where her redneck father was getting gas? Very contrived. There were a lot of parts of this movie that were obviously contrived, which is, again, disappointing.
Still, I enjoyed the movie for nostalgia's sake. It was good to see Bob narrating from the afterlife. Unfortunately it kept reminding me that the first movie contained some real substance. I actually cried when Bob died in the first one.
Overall, I'd recommend it for people who loved the first SLC Punk. I can't imagine, though, the boredom that would probably be felt by someone viewing this movie as a stand-alone comedy-drama, with no frame of reference from the original. It really isn't even in the same category. The original SLC Punk was a very insightful commentary on the conflict between youthful idealism and the reality of transitioning to adulthood. This movie? Just a road trip to nowhere.
I'm giving it 5 stars. I don't want to encourage or discourage anyone about seeing it. Those who saw the first one won't need any encouragement, and those who didn't should probably stay away.
Arrival (2016)
Meh
Amy Adams is absolutely captivating, as always, to the extent she demands your attention and never, ever lets go. She is infinitely watchable. It's not genius, unless it's contrived by her. It's just her unique form of charisma, one that is to be applauded and treasured, and is worth watching any movie to see.
Sadly, that is most of the reason to see Arrival. The movie itself tries very hard to be mysterious, seductive, and interesting. But in the end, it fails because its philosophical and scientific kung fu is weak. Arrival utterly ignores such well-known time paradoxes as the Predestination Paradox and the Bootstrap Paradox and ultimately conspires to have you ignore common sense. To swallow the sugar-sweet ending (and you'll want to), you will have to pretend that an entirely new, completely unexplained paradigm of non-linear time is possible - one that defies reason and is passed without adequate...you know, I want to say "without adequate" but in truth it's without ANY explanation.
I couldn't pretend to believe it, and that's why I'm giving this movie 5 stars. Amy Adams gets 10.
The Lobster (2015)
Don't waste your time
I kept watching because Colin Farrell's screen presence kept my attention. I assumed that at some point, one of the characters would display some level of cognizance of the ridiculous plot in which they were immersed. It turned out to be a waste of 2 hours.
This movie is nothing more than a vapid romp through someone's dull subconscious. I theorize it was written by someone who one day had the random thought that if he had to be transformed into an animal, he'd like it to be a lobster. Unfortunately, not all random thoughts deserve to be expanded into a screenplay.
The characters are uninteresting - robotic and ultimately boring with no relatable human qualities. In Orwell's 1984 dystopia, at least we understand why the outer party members are so accepting of their situation - fear. There appears to be no motive for the citizens of the society in this film to accept submission to their ludicrous circumstance. This fact alone undermines the entire premise. Temporary suspension of disbelief regarding the characters' basic humanity and motivation turns into permanent suspension before the film is a quarter done.
If this film is indeed allegory, I missed the hidden meaning entirely, and I've not read any other reviews that have gone further than merely to state, "This is allegory," or, "This film makes you think." Really? What is the subtext then? What's it making you think about? Pretentious babble.
A very bad movie. I'm giving it two stars because I watched it all the way through, though I am perfectly willing to stop watching a movie after 20 minutes if it's truly awful. The film-makers get credit for making me believe they were going to deliver some substance before the end.