‘Far From Home’ puts Spider-Man front and center of MCU

Posted on July 10, 2019 by reelentropy

Worst secret identity ever. Images courtesy Sony Pictures Releasing.

7/10 Is Spider-Man: Far From Home good as an individual, stand-alone movie? Eh, who cares.

After going toe-to-toe with Captain America, being shot into outer space and turned into dust by a weirdly hot wannabe-nihilist with a scrotum on his face, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) briefly puts down the mantle of Spiderman to go on a school trip abroad, where he hopes to hit on his weirdly hot wannabe-nihilist classmate, MJ (Zendaya). His romantic ambitions are held back by giant, elemental-themed monsters from World of Warcraft that just keep showing up wherever he goes. The elemental monsters are easily defeated by Magic Man from Adventure Time (Jake Gyllenhaal), and Parker has neither the interest nor the realistic ability to help, but SHIELD director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) insists on keeping him around, telling Parker he’s “the new Tony Stark.”

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‘Yesterday’ not the Beatles movie you were looking for, still quite thoughtful

Posted on July 1, 2019 by reelentropy

Images courtesy Universal Pictures.

7/10 If you came in looking for a Beatles party, Yesterday will disappoint, but do stick around for the movie’s thoughtful story and a menacing performance from Kate McKinnon.

In Yesterday, struggling musician Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) is about to go back to teaching when, in an unexplained freak event, the power blinks off all around the world. When it comes back, Malik discovers he is the only one in the world who remembers the music of The Beatles. Malik plagiarizes the quartet’s legendary tunes, and as his star rises, he must leave his manager and longtime love interest Ellie Appleton (Lily James) for “the poison chalice of wealth and success” offered by bigshot manager Debra Hammer (McKinnon).

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‘Conjuring’ series somehow keeps getting even worse

Posted on July 1, 2019 by reelentropy

Light and color are so absent in Annabelle Comes Home that it is made into a gimmick in the one scene where it’s present. That’s how bankrupt this movie is, this fundamental aspect of filmmaking is relegated to “that one scene where we did colors.” Images courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

1/10 I’ve seen some truly regrettable films over the past decade, but Annabelle Comes Home is the first time I’ve ever honestly wanted my money back.

After a scene explaining the doll’s possession that’s been repeated three or four times across different releases, known charlatans Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) bring the Annabelle doll home and secure it in their haunted vault, then ditch the movie so Warner Bros. won’t have to pay them too much. Their daughter, Judy (Mckenna Grace), her babysitter Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman) and Ellen’s bratty friend Daniela Rios (Katie Sarife) are left alone with all the haunted antiques, and Rios insists on going and fooling around with them like the entitled, snotty runt she is. The trio of inexpensive actors must face the Warrens’ entire backlog of spooky haunted objects, which apparently consists of just three or four ghouls that, between the group of them, apparently pose no tangible danger to a group of teenage girls.

In a procession of crimes against photography and storytelling, The Conjuring franchise somehow continues to get successively cheaper, thinner and worse.

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‘Child’s Play’ a solid update

Posted on July 1, 2019 by reelentropy

Despite a small role and this being a small part of the movie, much of Child’s Play’s iconography revolves around this scene of Plaza held captive. Images courtesy United Artists Releasing.

7/10 Child’s Play is everything you want out of a remake and a grossly satisfying slasher.

In a Vietnam sweatshop for the Kaslan Buddi, an artificially intelligent doll that can coordinate all of your Kaslan products on command, an employee disables one doll’s safety protocols in retaliation for being fired before jumping out of a window to his death. Later in Chicago, impoverished single mother Karen Barclay (Aubrey Plaza) keeps the defective doll after it is returned to the department store where she works as a gift for her son, Andy (Gabriel Bateman). The doll names himself Chucky (Mark Hamill) and, for a time, cures Andy of his post-move loneliness. But after seeing how much joy is brought to Andy by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and how much pain by his mother’s suitors, Chucky begins a gory and gleeful homicidal rampage.

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‘Toy Story’ came out when I was 3 years old and the world is a very strange place

Posted on June 29, 2019 by reelentropy

Images courtesy Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

8/10 Toy Story 4 was

Man, I don’t fucking know anymore. What do people want from movies these days?

We’re obviously living in the Golden Age of Television, and there’s a lot of uncertainty right now over the future of movies as a storytelling medium and what role theaters will serve.

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