Tag Archives: Sucks ass

These movies are to be avoided at all costs. The only good thing about them is probably our review.

Bright

What’s worse than being flat, derivative and uninspired? Being all those things, showing a tiny bit of promise in spite of them, and then throwing the interesting parts away in search of a flashy climax and tidy resolution. That’s Bright.

The concept is sound – what if there were Elves and Orcs and magic in our world? It’s not a new idea and that’s fine. The hodgepodge of fantasy elements forming the basis of this world are standard fare as we bright_unit_06597_r_wide-67b1f15cb792c81ccc1359a7e8a2e6c0bce7b718-s900-c85 ll, straight out of Tolkien or World of Warcraft. Orcs are brutes with sharp teeth, Elves are beautiful and rich, magic wands are super powerful but not everyone can use them. The script, complete with minority and 1% allegories, practically writes itself.

The problem is, it feels like no extra effort was put in to creating Bright. Like, at all. Like, I’m pretty sure Will Smith was quoting himself from Men in Black every time he let a sarcastic quip fly. Not incidentally, well over 90% of his lines in Bright are sarcastic quips. Either stop phoning it in or stop being in movies, please.

Joel Edgerton doesn’t phone it in like Smith but he is totally unrecognizable and totally wasted here as the sensitive Orc sidekick. He had no chance of saving this mess. Full disclosure: this is a recurring exchange between Jay and me:

Jay: We should go see [small indie movie]. Joel Edgerton is in it.

Me: Who’s Joel Edgerton again?

Jay: The guy from [slightly older small indie movie that we saw a few months prior].

Me: That was Joel Edgerton?

Jay: We literally just had this conversation when you made me watch the Star Wars prequels.

Me: JOEL EDGERTON IS IN STAR WARS?

Jay: I hate you.

It happened again in Bright only I swear, this time it was not my fault. It was David Ayer’s, and Bright is proof that we should have cut Ayer off long before Suicide Squad. Thanks for writing Training Day, really, but that goodwill was used up long ago. A glimmer of promise and then an avalanche of mediocrity and disappointment – just like Bright.

Santas For Everyone!

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My Santa

Santa’s son Chris is on the prowl. He needs a wife, for some reason, and he’s searched thirstily in “Chicago, New York AND Miami” – which seems like an unusually wide net, though I suppose if a humble little Asshole such as myself could have visited all of those gleaming metropolises, I guess Santa must have at least as much access. Anyway, the point is he’s hard up, until he meets plucky single Mom Jen, who’s bitter about Christmas ever since her ex chose that exactly holiday on which to leave her. Anyway, the more Chris falls for Jen, the more magical Santa powers he inherits from his Dad – like uncooking turkeys, and upcooking cookies, that kind of thing, super logical stuff.

Anyway, Jen’s heart remains unconvinced until her dead mother sends a sign, and then guess what: she becomes Mrs. Claus? Yeah, I don’t know: but fun fact – Chris is played by Matthew Lawrence…you know, Blossom’s Joey Lawrence’s younger brother? Star power!

Dear Santa

As you know, every good Christmas movie needs one of two things: a single mom, or a dead mom. In this case, there’s a dead mom, with the mom slot open and waiting to be filled – that’s the one and only thing Olivia is asking from Santa this year. And so it turns mail fraud into a fortunate situation! It just so happens that on the very day Crystal is cut off from mommy and daddy’s vast fortune, she happens to find Olivia’s note to Santa on the sidewalk (thanks a lot, negligent mail carrier!), and since the only way she can think of to fund her lifestyle is to marry, she decides to pursue the widower for all he’s worth.

The hilarious thing is that handsome widower Derek “owns a soup kitchen” cause, you know, that’s a thing that people own. Just the kind of small business that would keep a family comfortable. So spoiled Crystal sets about impressing Derek by donating her best fedoras and Walmart-brand spices to the homeless – and then competing shamelessly and degradingly against another woman she believes to be a love interest of Derek’s. It’s a humiliating movie for women and humankind, but a real boon to the makeup and costuming departments, who outfitted all the homeless extras with real nasty teeth. But fun fact: it’s directed by your teenage crush, Jason Priestly.

Small Town Santa

Dean Cain is small town sheriff Rick (real heroes don’t wear capes – wink) and a real Christmas grump. When Santa “breaks” into his house on Christmas Eve, he pulls a gun on him before throwing him in the clink! But Santa’s got his number: Rick wasn’t a good husband and is maybe even deluding himself about being a good dad. All his daughter wants this Christmas is for him to be around but he’s too busy feeling sorry for himself to come through for her.

Can “Doctor” Santa successfully shrink sheriff Rick from inside his cell? And can he escape it in time to deliver presents to all the good boys and girls the world over? And why is he wearing acid-washed jeans? It’s nail-biting thrills, thrills, thrills. AND WILL ANYONE FIND JESUS? (He’s missing.) A not-so-fun fact I’m totally stretching for: this movie co-stars Christine Lakin, one time star of Step By Step, a forgettable part of ABC’s TGIF Friday night lineup.

So what we’ve learned today: Christmas movies must have a single mother or a dead mother, and both if they’re serious about it. Some sort of eviction\foreclosure scenario is also preferred, as is some sort of 90s teen sensation you forgot existed. But if your standards are low, low, low, you just might find yourself entertained for the holidays. But probably not.

El Camino Christmas

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I count Die Hards 1 and 2 as two of my favourite Christmas movies, so I’ve seen a hostage situation or two play out on-screen during the holiday season. But El Camino Christmas proves that not all hostage situations are created equal, mainly because not all cops are Bruce Willis. Some cops are Dax Shepard or worse, drunken Vincent D’Onofrio (who is either a very good actor or has a serious alcohol problem, or maybe both). El Camino Christmas is the opposite of a how-to hostage negotiation video, as things start bad El-Camino-Christmas-feature and somehow get worse.

With Dax Shepard involved with the film, I expected some dumb comedy but El Camino Christmas seems to not even be trying to be funny. And if it was trying, well, it failed miserably.

On the “plus” side, if you have been suffering from Tim Allen or Jessica Alba withdrawal, El Camino Christmas will give you a shot of both. Neither needed to be here but they both showed up anyway for a little Christmas green. Really, why not say yes, when Netflix is throwing money at everyone else?

Some of those other Netflix originals have been pretty good but El Camino Christmas is not even middling. It’s a totally predictable, cliched, and boring film. It’s not the least bit entertaining, not even unintentionally. There is really nothing to recommend about El Camino Christmas. It is bleaker than a stocking full of coal, so just watch those Die Hards again instead. Especially if you can catch the dubbed for TV versions for the true holiday experience. Yippie-ki-yay, Mister Falcon!

The Worst Thing on Netflix

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There’s good stuff on Netflix, and plenty of bad, and then there’s the stuff that only Sean could find during his endless scrolling – find, and watch. What he subjects me to on Netflix could probably be defined as spousal abuse, and there’s no better evidence than Pup Star: Better 2gether.

Now, as the rest of you can probably guess from the “clever” use of the number 2 in the word together, this is a sequel. Have we seen the first? No we have not. Did we even know that a first one exited? No we did not. Did we start with the first? Of course we did not: we jumped right in to the complex world building of the Pup Star universe and took our chances.

Tiny is an adorable little Yorkie who apparently in a previous film, won the hearts of MV5BZTk4MjMwNWEtMmVhNy00YTdmLWIzNmYtNWE5MDU5OGNmYWU5XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMDQ0MDI4OA@@._V1_SX1777_CR0,0,1777,999_AL_ America and the Pup Star singing competition. This film she’ll have to defend her championship BUT some gangsters are getting in her way! They dognap Tiny and replace her with a street-smart rapping Yorkie who looks identical, called Scrappy. Scrappy says “yo yo yo” a lot, usually in front of “rap lyrics” that sounds like they’re being read directly from a Hallmark card. But anyway, Scrappy’s a ringer who will pose as Tiny only to throw the competition at the last minute. Meanwhile, Scrappy gets pretty comfy cozy in Tiny’s lavish lifestyle, and Tiny makes some new friends hanging with Scrappy’s rap crew.

This is NOT a cartoon, folks. They’re real dogs with moving lips superimposed onto their faces. They speak English and are understood by humans. There are dog characters with racially-based personalities and names like Guido and Rasta. There’s a disconcerting amount of human-based slapstick. And there’s a very confusing ‘cameo’ by Dave Coulier. I found I could only take the nonsense for a max of about 10 minutes at a time so we actually watched this movie over a series of 7-10 nights, over a period of maybe 2 months.

Why though? Especially when we have our very own cute and cuddly Yorkie at home.

That’s Fudgie. He was a unicorn for Halloween. He’s an amazing dancer.

What’s the worst thing you’ve been duped into watching?

A Christmas Prince

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This movie is so fabulously, unashamedly horrible I want to go into an eggnog-induced coma after slitting the throats of all involved with reindeer antlers and mistletoe whittled down to shivs.

It is EVERYTHING you know it will be, every damn cliche in exactly the right order. An American editor-wannabe-journalist for an unimportant magazine is for some 7ab3c50a33e196331a602d78c376a5996e35266b reason sent to a fake European country for her first big assignment to cover some royal crisis. Last year on Christmas the king died, leaving his throne vacant. It should rightfully go to his son, who never wanted it. He’s spent the last year being a shitty playboy millennial across the globe and but he’s only got until Christmas this year to claim the throne or risk it going to his cousin, who actually wants the job and only seems to be marginally less a dick than Prince Richard.

Meanwhile, Amber’s big, serious journalist tactic is to lie her way into the palace and pose as a tutor to Richard bratty little disabled sister and then surreptitiously take pictures of the royal family with her iphone while wearing Converse to prove she’s quirky AND relatable AND out of her depth! And she’s accident prone, the plight of all beautiful heroines because it’s the only flaw that doesn’t cause ugliness. Of course she falls for the Prince because not only is he blandly white boy handsome, he’s also kind to orphans! But her lies are quickly snowballing and she’s also not very good at her job so her cover could be blown any day now – especially with a conniving Lady Something or Other trying to make sure she’s the next crown Princess, no matter which dude becomes King.

I know you’re wondering this so let me get it out of the way: YES, there’s a makeover. Yes there are horses. Yes there’s a cookie baking montage.

So get your ass in gear, A Christmas Prince isn’t going to watch itself! Then come back here and use the comments section to roast, roast, roast.

Daddy’s Home 2: A Bad Dads Christmas

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I made up the subtitle to this film, but the sentiment stands. Just like A Bad Moms Christmas, Daddy’s Home 2 takes a middling comedy and churns out a sequel that nobody wanted or deserved, and sets it during the holidays just to ruin one more thing while they’re at it.

MV5BZmZiNjE1YWMtNzZhNy00OTdkLTk4MWQtNTUxM2U5OWJhNjdhXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjA4MDAzNTg@._V1_ Brad and Dusty are in a pretty healthy place since we left them in the last movie. They’re successfully co-parenting their collective brood. But when the kids complain that two Christmases tend to halve the joy rather than double it, they plan a “together” Christmas that will likely be the death of them all – especially because their dads get in on it too.

Will Ferrell’s dad is played by John Lithgow and Mark Wahlberg’s dad is played by Mel Gibson and together they got one single laugh out of me, and spoiler alert: it’s the same exact laugh from the trailer. There’s just the one in the whole damn movie. The fact that the other audience members laughed at all made me wonder if they weren’t all ringers, plants Paramount to trick me into thinking this was a slightly better film than the piece of complete crap it is. I’d rather get coal in my stocking than this movie on Blu-Ray.

Justice League

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“What movie are you seeing?” the waiter asks.

“Justice League!” I answer with all the enthusiasm of someone who has been waiting for this night and all the sheepishness of someone who is fully aware that this movie is going to suck.

“I didn’t even know that was out yet. Are you a fan of Marvel?”.

“DC,” I quickly correct him.I remind myself not to be offended, that it’s an easy mistake for anyone with a life to make.

“Whatever,” he replies.

That’s the thing though. It’s not whatever. For many comic fans, the rivalry between the two publishers is as bitter as that between Star Trek and Star Wars. And I’m a DC guy. It’s not that I can’t admit when Marvel does something right. I can admit that their movies- especially within their respective shared universes- have generally been much better than DC’s. It’s just that Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and Spider-Man will never mean as much to me as Superman, batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Cyborg, or even Aquaman.

I’m such a DC guy that I could even find something to love in the colossal messes that were Batman v. Superman and Suicide Squad. I have rooted for this universe since it began with Man of Steel and celebrated when they finally did something amazing with Wonder Woman. But there’s something about Justice League that’s hard for even me to defend.

Maybe I’m just getting tired of making excuses for mediocre movies. Or myabe it was just different sitting next to Jay. I couldn’t help putting myself in her shoes and worrying about how painful this must be for her. Because a fan can find lots love if they’re feeling generous but those who haven’t read the comics are sure to have a harder time. Those who are unfamiliar with the Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg are counting on this movie to give them a reason to care about them and it’s here where Justice League fails the most.

Ben Affleck continues to be a much better Batman than I ever would have expected him to be and he’s in most of the film’s best scenes. Wonder Woman continues to feel like a fully realized character mostly thanks to Gal Gadot’s performance and all the good work that she and Patty Jenkins did in her much better stand-alone film. The new characters are a little more awkward. Ezra Miller’s charm goes a long way in making Barry Allen/The Flash likeable (although, for the record, TV’s Flash is better) but his backstory feels vague and rushed and we don’t know nearly enough about who he even is or what makes him special. Aquaman and Cyborg get barely any introduction at all. They’re just there.

The good news is that Justice League is shorter and more focused than Batman v. Superman and Suicide Squad were and is almost never boring. The bad news is that it’s not nearly as exciting as it should be, especially considering what a dream come true this big-screen live action team up really is for me and so many others. There’s just not nearly enough attention paid to what makes these characters great and what’s worse is that there is even less attention paid to their relationships with each other. The Zack Snyder era of DC movies has not ended on a high note.

The Square

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Sometimes, I walk out of a movie and wonder why a director decided to insert a scene that didn’t seem to add anything to the film. With The Square, I walked out wondering why the majority of the scenes had been included. Even the film’s poster gets in on the act, blatantly photoshopping Elisabeth Moss into a scene in which she doesn’t appear. That is a fitting allegory for her role in the film as well as for a lot of the movie’s scenes. Moss didn’t need to be there in the poster picture but someone went to the effort of adding her anyway, for no obvious reason. The same thing seems to have happened with many scen The-Square-movie-poster es in this film, the latest from Ruben Ostlund, who previously directed Force Majeure.

The Square centres around an obnoxious, entitled museum curator (Christian, played by Claes Bang) who makes more than a few mistakes in promoting his museum’s new exhibition and, on the side, searching for his stolen phone, wallet, and cufflinks. The fact he sees himself as a pretty good guy only makes things worse for him and everyone he comes into contact with. In between his missteps, we are treated to some truly bizarre scenes involving a human pretending to be an ape at a dinner party, a real ape acting as a third wheel at Moss’ character’s apartment, and a cheerleading performance by one of Christian’s kids, none of which advance the plot in any way, despite a lot of effort being put into staging and filming these scenes. But to what end? The Square repeatedly left me feeling like I had missed the point, but it happened so many times I had to conclude there was no point.

That is The Square: an overlong mess of ideas patched together into a two and a half hour long feature. The movie starts well enough but doesn’t know where to go once it gets started, and certainly doesn’t know how to wrap up what it’s laid out.

The frustrating part is that many of the ideas in the film have the potential to make for good satire, but the movie can’t figure out how to unlock their potential or say anything meaningful, aside from pointing out how much idiocy and chaos can be created by a self-entitled boor, which we are all way too familiar with in our real lives right now.

All in all, The Square never amounts to much. Just like its protagonist, it is aimless, clueless, and we’d be better off if it went away quietly.

Transformers: The Last Knight

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I wrote a whole other review of this horrible, awful, infuriating movie and then accidentally deleted it. Honestly, my review was unremarkable for the most part so it’s not a huge loss. This movie makes no sense, it’s the fifth movie in a tired franchise that was only ever enjoyable if you, like me, liked seeing robots decapitate other robots in slow motion (and which stopped being awesome four movies ago), and it’s got Mark Wahlberg doing his usual “acting” by which I mean that he talks really fast in a whiny voice when he is under pressure and otherwise just stands around flexing his biceps and looking confused. In short, it is the why-critics-say-transformers-the-last-knight-is-2017s-most-toxic-movie (1) worst Transformers movie yet, and the next one will probably be even worse.

But there was one part of my review worth saving, and it’s this: Mark Wahlberg was clearly born to be in Michael Bay movies. It is the perfect match of all perfect matches. These two eventually found each other, but there are so many Wahlberg-less Michael Bay movies, and isn’t that a shame?

So…what if Michael Bay made special editions of his back catalogue, George Lucas style, and digitally inserted Wahlberg into all his “classics” as a way to link all his movies together?

Think about it! It would be the greatest shared universe of all time. We could have Bad Boys fighting bad robots under the supervision of Wahlberg and his good friend Joe Pantoliano, the space shuttle in Armageddon could be a robot who owes a favour to Wahlberg and who figures out a way to save Bruce Willis as payback, and Wahlberg could help bring Sean Connery and his estranged daughter Claire Forlani together while at the same time helping Nicholas Cage foil Ed Harris’ plot to steal that face-meltingly-deadly VX gas, this time without losing Michael Biehn’s whole SEAL team. And then Wahlberg could assemble a team of one million Ewan MacGregor clones along with the time travelling pilot duo of Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett to destroy the Transformers once and for all, saving us all from ever having to see Transformers 6: Shia’s Revenge.

This needs to happen.

TIFF: Downrange

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A group of 20-something kids are driving through some deserted part of California when they experience a tire blowout. They’re carpool strangers but the sniper\serial killer hiding in a tree doesn’t care about that. He’s going to ruthlessly pick them off one by one whether they’re going to die in the arms of strangers or not.

Welcome to Midnight Madness at TIFF, folks! Director Ryuhei Kitamura is back with another offering and he promises that this one is buckets and buckets of a bloody good time.

Anyway, what more can I even say? 6 actors, an untold number of bullets, and a sadistic MV5BYzgwM2Q2YzAtM2M0ZS00MGNiLTkzNWYtNDg3ZmI5MTJhODBlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjEwNTM2Mzc@._V1_SX1777_CR0,0,1777,801_AL_ director who loves to really probe each and every gaping wound. It’s not enough to kill them, we must make them suffer, and the audience along with them. Every hole blown into every body must be explored. Former body parts hang like meat curtains. Quick deaths are verboten. Noisy, sucking, death rattles are preferred. And even dead bodies are not safe: there are still plenty of ways to disrespect them, hard.

That said, I felt like the director oversold the insanity of this piece. It takes a while for the killing to start but once it does, there’s absolutely no tension in this film. The onslaught is relentless but it’s so consistent you’ve really got nothing to worry about. It’s hard to be properly scared of something so unequivocal. There is, however, plenty of syrupy prop blood to soothe your black soul, and all the bugs to go along with it. Plus, a score actually derived from the rhythmic firing of a rifle. If you don’t like gore, you won’t like this film. If you don’t like bad acting, you won’t like this film. But if you’re the kind of person who just wants to pass the day watching strangers get brutally slaughtered, Downrange is an obvious choice.