Movie Review: It Follows (2015) - You should really look over your shoulder for this one

Quite a few years ago, I saw a little horror film called Insidious. Now, for the first two thirds of this film, I was actually quite terrified. It wasn’t the greatest horror film I’d ever seen but it was doing it’s job fairly well…..then the last third of the movie happened, and it was the stupidest thing I had ever witnessed in my entire life. The film took such a left turn into what the fuckery that it makes the last third of Chappie look subtle. It was because of this film that I skipped paranormal activity, and basically most other horror movies because I got sick of the stupid modern gimmick of cheap jump scares.

I could go into a whole thing about this, but I’ll stick to the short version of why the jump scare sucks balls.

A good horror film builds up the tension, and then slowly but surely drags the fear throughout you and should leave you feeling genuinely terrified regardless of what happens after that.

A jump scare, basically doesn’t have to build up tension, because jump scares are designed for a quick boo rather than a sense of dread. Instead of filling you with dread, it fills you with relief that it was over quickly. Where’s the challenge in that?

It’s basically comparing an emotional beating to an emotional sucker punch.

I could go further into this, but I said I’d keep it short.

So why am I talking about this? Well, because I saw a trailer for a little indie horror flick called It Follows, and after following the rotten tomatoes score of the film for a little while I decided I wanted to take a chance and try to find that passion for horror films once again, and holy shit, this movie delivered.

Plot Summary - After the film begins by showing the last moments of a Girl named Annie, our main character Jay Height (Maika Monroe) is introduced as we see her relationship with a guy named Hugh (Jake Weary). Everything is going well for the two of them, even after one date where Hugh has a strange moment at a theatre, eventually ending up with them having sex. Hugh then suddenly drugs Jay, and when she wakes up he tells her that he was cursed and that he has now passed it on to her. The curse goes like this: An entity will follow Jay at a walking pace, and if it reaches her it will kill her and go after the previous person who had the curse. It can take on the form of any human being and the cursed are the only people who can see it. After showing Jay the creature, he drops her off at her house and leaves her and her friends to try and find a solution.

Pros: Honestly, I just loved everything about this film. It’s a great simple premise that works so well because they don’t try and make it too complicated. What else do you really need to know besides hey there’s a creature that only you can see and it wants to kill you and it will stop at nothing. That prospect alone is fucking terrifying and they pull it off so well. Even the fact that the only way to get rid of it is by having sex with people makes it even worse because not only are you passing on something terrible to someone else, if the thing comes back for you you then know you’re the person responsible for getting someone else killed. It’s the best kind of horror scenario because there’s really no way to win and it just adds on to the tension. The idea of you and you alone having to look out for this thing for the rest of your life.

I loved every single thing about this movie, and I can already guarantee you this will be in the top ten.

Cons: The bus ride getting there being over an hour, there and back.

Final Score: 10/10

All I can say is, go see this movie. Seriously. Go see it, stop reading this and go see it NOW!

For those of you still reading though, I will be seeing Furious 7 most likely Sunday, and because of a gap in my work schedule, expect a surprise review on Wednesday.

Until next time, I’ll see you folks at the movies.

Movie Review: '71 (2015) - Ireland in the 70's, what could possibly go wrong then?

I feel like every time I wanna try to get back into doing reviews, I either get really busy or really sick. I’m still also debating going into rehab for WoW, but I’m still on the part of the addiction where I’m having too much fun with it so that will most likely have to wait. Another fun fact, I was originally going to review another movie today, but I ended missing my bus going to the theatre, which also might have been closed but I wasn’t able to confirm that fact so I ended up at ‘71 instead. Also yes that’s how the movie’s name is spelled.

Before i get into the review, I feel like I have to explain the setting of the story since it’s based on true events. Now, I only have a basic knowledge of it, so if I get some details of it wrong I apologize, but it basically goes like this.

1919 - 1922: The Irish Republican Army is formed during the Irish war of independence against Britain.

1922 - 1969: The IRA performs a long string of violence and terrorists attacks in both until the group split in 1969.

1969 - 1971: Now named The Official Irish Republican Army, the goal of the group was to have Ireland removed from the United Kingdom. They attempted to do this by both attacking and defending themselves against british soldiers. In fighting also occurs between the british loyal protestant Irish and the catholic IRA, itself split up into two factions.

Now, we can go to the Plot Summary.

Plot Summary: Teenager Gary Hook has enlisted in the British Army, and his first posting is to Belfast during the midst of the war with the IRA. After attempting to help the police search houses, Hook gets separated from his squad and must try and find safety while avoiding IRA forces wanting him dead.

Pros - The film is beautifully shot, as it manages to capture the darkness of that point of Ireland’s history and express that in the cinematography. The film is also well acted, with special mention going out to Corey McKinley only credited as loyalist child. He’s in the movie briefly but my god does he manage to use that time wisely. Jack O’Connell is also wonderful as Hook, managing to capture that perfect mixture of soldier calmness and youthful terror at the depth of the situation that he finds himself in.

Cons - There’s really only two kind of glaring issues with the film. One: characters are sporadically introduced properly. I didn’t even know Hook’s name until about halfway through the film. Two: The story does get a bit confusing, but I’m not sure if that is supposed to be intentional or not giving how one of the themes in the film is supposed be about how the whole war was in reality one giant chaotic mess.

Final Score - 9/10

Normally a film like this would end up at a 8, however, and I didn’t want to list this as either a negative or a positive, when it was over I found myself for some reason thinking that this was the film that American Sniper should have been, and I’m pretty sure this isn’t even based on a true story. I guess after being disappointed by it I needed something to fill that void. Go figure.

There’s three films that I might do next, and these are them in order of eagerness to see: It Follows, Furious 7, Woman in Gold. Expect one of those three.

Until next time, i’ll see you folks at the movies.

50th Post! Netflix Review: The Double (2013)

So far early 2015 has been…..okay. A few bad movies here and there, but the good ones stand out even more because of it. That being said, there’s been a real lack of drawing power for me in the past few weeks, and with World of Warcraft dominating most of my down time I found myself struggling to keep up with my work. Luckily though I managed to break away yet again and watch a movie that actually popped up on my radar last year, a little film called The Double.

Plot Summary - Based on the novella of the same name by Theodore Dostoyevsky, Jesse Eisenberg plays both Simon James, a mild mannered office worker who is practically invisible to the world around him, and James Simon, a cocky confident who tries to usurp Simon by basically taking over his life, forcing Simon to drastic measures to try and take it back.

Pros - Eisenberg does great double duty and Simon and James, allowing him to really show off both the dramatic and comedic sides of his skills, especially in the scenes when the two talk to each other. Director Richard Ayoade also provides great direction in making the film have both funny and dramatic elements and putting both of them into a good balance. I’m also a really big fan of the atmosphere of the film as it manages to real capture both the loneliness that the characters feel as well as making the world around them seem depressing and empty.

Cons - The only real thing I think that some people might not like about it is it’s art house style approach to certain scenes. Also this film reminds me a lot of another film that came out around the same time called Enemy, not that either of those points are bad to me, I just bring them up as something people might not like about this movie.

Final Score - 10/10

I love this film, and even though it’s on Netflix I still might go out and get the DVD. It’s the kind of thing I’ve actually needed to see that will hopefully break me out of this funk I’ve been in lately.

Furious 7 comes out next week, I’ll probably go see if I can get all the Paul Walker jokes out of my system first but I know there’s one film playing that I’m a bit more eager to go and see first. I actually might do a review on it depending but until then I’ll see you folks at the movies.

Movie Review: Chappie (2015) - Johnny Five is Alive!!! Wrong movie sorry

I apologize for the lack of reviews lately, but I have two reasons as to why this happened. One: there were not that many interesting movies released in the past few weeks, and two: world of warcraft has been dominating my life lately. But luckily I managed to pull myself away from that long enough to go see the next movie review, Chappie. Made by Neill Blomkamp who did District 9, does his third film fly or flop? Wow, that was lame, to make up for that, the review.

Plot Summary - It is the year 2016, and South Africa is being controlled by an army of police droids known as Scouts. When the scouts creator Deon (Dev Patel) manages to make a robotic consciousness, he ends up having to steal a damaged police scout for a test subject, but gets kidnapped by a group of thugs including Ninja and Yolandi (of Die Antwoord fame) who plan to use the robot to pull off a heist. When Deon loads the program up, the robot is given the name of Chappie (Sharlto Copley), and ends up being raised by the thugs while they try and keep Deon away.

Pros - Sharlto is very good as the child like Chappie, doing both the voice and motion capture. Although I know nothing of Die Antwoord both Ninja and Yolandi are pretty solid in the film as well, with Yolandi playing the loving mother to Chappie and Ninja who just uses Chappie at first but ends up coming around to Chappie’s side. Dev Patel is good, I just sort of wish he had more to do. The look and story of the film hold up as well for the most part too.

Cons - Hugh Jackman is also in the film as a rival to Deon, and while he is good and he does get some good scenes, he really doesn’t do anything until the third act and even then he only serves as a plot point. Also, the story sort of takes this weird turn in the third act when Chappie realizes his damaged battery will run out soon and that he will die unless he can get a new body. I won’t spoil it, but it left me kind of befuddled at the idea of it.

Final Score - 8/10

I sort of compare this to Kingsman in the sense that Kingsman had more minor flaws, Chappie has a few “major” flaws that don’t really tank the rest of the film. While Kingsman was the better film, I don’t think either of them will be on the best list, they will likely get honourable mentions.

*Sighs* I might end up having to go see Cinderella if I can’t think of anything else to see. I’m not looking forward to it. Until next time (and yes I will try to get back into updating this more often) I’ll see you folks at the movies.

Movie Review: Kingsman The Secret Service (2015) - Well it certainly isn't a James Bond film

Welcome to the final part of our (accidental) three part series of movies that were delayed from last year. So far we’ve seen a butchered nightmare in Jupiter Ascending and an unoriginal after thought in Seventh Son, how will the originally made for the summer spy movie do in the cold month of February? Honestly, surprisingly well.

Pros - The first thing that comes to mind is the sense of humour. If Daniel Craig was right when he said Austin Powers killed the idea of humour in Spy Movies, this would be the movie that could bring that element back. It mostly plays itself as both a send up of the old british spy films and a bit of a straight man routine while also quietly tackling ideas such as the gap between the social classes and global warming. Eggsy (Taron Egerton) is basically the comic foil to the Kingsmen’s serious tone. All of the actors we’re pretty good as well, but Taron Egerton and Samuel L. Jackson to me were the stand outs amongst the group.

Cons - Mixing all those elements together works for the most part, but the movie does have a couple of off moments. Combine that with being a send up of british spy films which means they do have to have some of the more cliche moments mixed in as well. Now, I’m going to disclose something that truthfully I’d thought I’d never have to disclose. It’s rare that when I see a movie that I suffer from lowered expectations but after the last couple of movies I feel that I should disclose that on this occasion that there was a bit of this when watching it. The movie is still good, but I’m not going to let that slight bias affect my judgement. That being said though…..

Final Score: 8/10

it’s not quite a homerun, but after those last two outs, I think it’s enough to get a triple. Okay shitty analogy I know but honestly this might be the last good movie until at least March. Also for anyone curious I WILL NOT BE SEEING FIFTY SHADES OF GREY UNLESS I HAVE A GUN POINTED AT MY HEAD. Even then, I think i’d rather choose death.

I’m mostly sure I won’t be seeing any new movies next week, so expect one of my retro reviews and also a netflix review as well. Maybe a DVD review as well, I got a few on my shelf. Until next time, I’ll see you guys at the movies.

Movie Review: Seventh Son (2015) - We waited a year for this?

So I’m going to have to preface this one by saying SPOILER ALERT because there’s one scene in particular that I want to talk about that kind of SPOILS one of the “big moments” of the movie, but I need to talk about in order to point how stupid and unoriginal this movie is. Yeah it’s going to be one these kind of reviews.

Originally slated for release last year, Seventh Son was apparently delayed multiple times times to “touch up on the digital effects.” Judging from what I saw they mainly did that to try and make it look better for the post production 3D conversion that they clearly tacked on to this in hopes to try and make more of their money back. I’m just gonna go straight into the pros and cons from here because it’s my blog I’ll do what I want.

Pros - The character designs of the villains were really cool, even if one them was kind of a rip off of the Hindu God Vishnu (I have no idea if it’s spelled correctly if it isn’t I apologize.)

Cons - The best way to describe this movie is this: Imagine if somebody made a list of every Medieval Fantasy Adventure movie cliche, and then decided to make a movie out of them. This thing does not have a single original bone in it’s body, and it honestly wouldn’t surprise me if this was just a rewritten version of season of the witch. Don’t Remember that movie? good on you it was boring. But the SPOILER moment I want to talk about was possibly it’s dumbest moment of all: They ripped off Star Wars. The good Star Wars movies. “But Ryan, it’s a fantasy movie how could they rip off a Sci Fi movie? I’ll tell you, remember in Star Wars when the ghost of Obi Wan Kenobi talks to Luke about his father? Yeah, that's the scene they ripped off. Okay, the main character’s mother is revealed to have been a witch who betrayed the main villain of the film, but she gets killed when the main villain attacks a village where one of her associates was killed. So later on at the part of the movie where his master gets kidnapped and he is presumed dead, she appears in ghost form to tell him to keep going. That’s right folks, she is Obi Mom Kenobi. Just…what the fuck man?

Final Score - 1/10

Without a single unique original idea in it’s story, it makes the whole movie as boring as the day is long, and a boring movie to me is just worthless.

Kingsman The Secret Service is out on Thursday, I actually am really hopeful for it and I hope I can get a review out the day of, so keep an eye out for that.

Until then, I’ll see you folks at the movies.

Movie Review: Jupiter Ascending (2015) - Yeah it just crashes and burns.

This one is gonna bug the crap out of me. I was already worried when it got delayed from last year and now I can see why. I place the blame solely on Guardians of Galaxy, not because it was bad, but because it was so good I’m guessing Warner Bros. who funded the thing wanted the movie re-edited to try and compete with that instead of letting the film keep the clearly much bigger ambition it had in mind instead. This one smells of studio manipulation but first let’s get to the positives shall we?

Pros - The movie looks really cool, the set designs are amazing as well as some of the character designs. The action scenes are also really well done (they should be as they literally take up 85 - 90% of the movie.)

Cons - There’s no easy way to say this: This movie feels like a transformers movie, and I HATE THE TRANSFORMER MOVIES! However, I will say that this is a better looking and smarter Transformers movie, but it’s still basically a bunch of action scenes strung together by, in the case of Jupiter Ascending, what feels like a very heavily edited plot cut down to try and streamline it. Also Eddie Redmayne as the villain in this reminds me of Hayden Christensen in the Star Wars Prequels, and I HATE THE STAR WARS PREQUELS, SURPRISINGLY LESS THAN TRANSFORMERS, BUT STILL A GREAT DEAL! and yet despite all that, I will add an addendum to the final rating.

Final Score: 2/10 (Theatrical Version.)

From what I could scavenge off of the remaining story, there seemed like at one point to be a great amount of potential and some really big ideas in the original cut of the film. So the score for today only applies to the theatrical version, on the condition that if there is a Director’s Cut made of this film I’m gonna watch the shit out of that to see if they can salvage any of that potential.

Now I know the last time I posted I said I’d have five Retro Reviews coming up, I still do, but I plan to post those out on weeks when either nothing is playing or I’m too busy to go to the movies. But until then, I’ll see you folks at the movies.