Movie Review: Lights (Bored) Out (Of My Mind)

So, I had to sit on this one for a few days to really understand how I wanted to talk about it.  Last Sunday, I took my nephew Kris to see Lights Out. He was in visiting from Tennessee so what better way to enjoy out time together than with a good scary movie, right? That was the plan anyway. 

So basically, the plot is, a shadow person lady comes to haunt some folks for reasons initially unknown.  What followed was about an hour and 20 minutes of cinema.  One of the only positives I can give it is that it was technically cinema. So let's go down a legit positives and negatives list and see what did and didn't work.

Positives is going to be pretty short, because this movie was, for lack of a better word or words, hot garbage. With that being said, there's always some good with the bad right?  Nothing is all bad.  Not so much in this case. To me, the best part about the movie was the run time. At an hour and 21 minutes, the director had to have known that to bore us and not scare us for any longer would be criminal, so he was nice enough to keep it short.

Now we can move on to the fun part.  The negatives.  First off, it wasn't scary AT ALL.  Jump scare movies are not scary. Being startled briefly and being scared are completely different animals. Imagine going to see a movie where there was no sound except for the slow cranking of a jack in the box.  Every 10-15 minutes it pops out, and then is placed back into the box for the process to repeat.  This is, in a nutshell, how Lights Out and many other newer scary movies play out. If I wanted to be mildly startled every 10-15 minutes, I'd tell that weird guy down the hall who breaks into my apartment every night to watch me sleep to shake me and go booga booga every now and then.

Next, It was boring. 80-90% of the scary moments occur in the trailer, which wasn't that great either, so you sit through the boring parts just to get to the scares, and you already saw them for free on YouTube in 2 minutes. The story was bland and tired. As a self proclaimed horror aficionado, I took this entire experience as a paint by the numbers, slap in the face.

Finally, the acting was just not good.  The little boy that played Martin suffers from the same ailment as most child actors in scary movies, he can't act.  He just wasn't inspired at all. What a shocker that he was also in Annabelle, another steaming pile. The sister, Rebecca, was as wooden as a new deck addition to an old house.  It's as if they cast Kristen Stewart to play a caricature of Kristen Stewart playing a character in a bad scary movie. I've started to put the word scary in italics because using that as a descriptive in this case is a little skewed and hard to comprehend, just like text in italics.

I don't know who watched this movie and rated it so high on Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, and Meta Critic, because it was awful. I would question what made it so special?  It isn't a triumph to make a short, boring, not-scary scary movie. There is nothing revolutionary about it, other than it was a revolutionary waste of $9. My initial thoughts were that the movie was about as scary as watching that YouTube video of the panda scaring itself by sneezing, but I think that takes away the true terror of that video.

This gets a pretty low rating because nothing is redeemable.  Lights Out is a pretty accurate title though, because I did almost fall asleep a few times while viewing. I am so sorry Mr. Movie, but you get a 0.5 shoe boxes from me.  Hang your head in shame and promise to never do it again. Longest hour and 21 minutes of my life.

2 Reviews in 2 Days?! or Review 2: Electric Boogaloo

 

Starting a revolution here.  So a few days back I watched Swiss Army Man, which was actually what gave me the idea of doing a review stuff blog thing at all. I figured it would give me a place to get my voice out there, and force at least someone to read what I had to say, even if it was just someone's cat who accidentally stepped on a keyboard, or the hundreds of people who stalk me and feed on my every word like a symbiotic parasite.  That's real right?  Like, I didn't dream that up, did I? 

I don't know if you're like me and get legitimately excited for upcoming things that you're interested in, but I really do and I tend to tell people about it, so I can get some sort of (hopefully positive) response. In the lead up to watching Swiss Army Man, I explained to several people how excited I was at getting to see 'Harry Potter play a dead farting corpse with super powers,' and in hindsight, I see that not everyone has my unclouded vision for good things, so I would probably go back and just say that it's a cinematic experience the likes of whcih havent been witnessed so far.  I'm not going to BS you though, and the movie is beginning to end dick and fart jokes quite literally, so it's only fair to give you realistic expectations.

The theater for this one was pretty bare, as you can imagine. It was just me and one other fart fanatic, which is fine.  We don't need pencil pushing normals ruining our quest into the land of oddities. It played in one of the smaller theaters at Aksarben, which worked well as it wasn't necessary for it to be in a larger venue just due to the type of movie it was.  

Here's what I liked about it.  The acting was spot on, as both Daniel Radcliffe and Paul Dano did an amazing job delivering performances that were at the same time funny, sad, and able to draw our empathy. It weaved in humor to discuss topics that a lot of us have felt throughout life, such as loneliness, depression, social anxiety, and lack of self worth. You spend a lot of the movie trying to figure out if this is all a dream, or if Hank really is talking to and interacting with a semi-sentient corpse, but in the end, does it really matter if either he or the audience grow as a result? 

The underlying theme for the whole movie is that Love is the answer, and you cant really be anything at all until you believe in yourself, and believe that you're worth it. It seems silly to think that a movie that includes a dead guy's dick being used as a divining rod, of sorts, could tackle a complex issue like that, but it does a good job of it. Without throwing out any spoilers, I will say that the ending is something like you've not experienced before, but well worth the price of admission. 

I didn't really find much wrong with Swiss Army Man.  It was simple and likable, crude yet endearing, and a lot of fun to watch.  Since it is quite the surreal experience, it's almost like you go on the adventure with Manny and Hank as they try to get Hank home. Along the way, they grow and gain a greater understanding of relationships and the people in general, and if you take the time to see it, so will you. This gets 4.5 out of 5 shoe boxes for being weirdly awesome. 

Red Band Trailer to excite, appaul, and confuse: Swiss Army Man

A New Day: The First Review

 

First blog post!

So I decided to make a blog thing and review stuff like movies or food or whatnot with the caveat of only reviewing things that I haven't already seen or tried.  That way it'll be fresh and I won't be drawing on past experiences.

The first movie to review is the new Ghostbusters movie, which I got up early to watch before work today.  I didn't know what to expect, what with the buzz being either overwhelmingly positive, or extremely negative, but I tried to go in with a clean slate and an open mind.  I'll try to break down pros and cons without spoiling anything major.

  

Firstly, shout out to the  Aksarben Cinema for the six and change ticket for the early morning show. The theater was mildly crowded and we watched it in ACX, which is sort of like the Aksarben version of IMAX.  Bigger screen and higher quality audio.  The presentation was top notch as always. Skipped the popcorn and soda since it was just before 10:00 AM and I was still, by law, asleep.

Jumping into the things I did like: I'll start this with the best part about the movie.  Chris Hemsworth stole the whole movie in his ~10 minutes of screen time. Think of him as Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber, but he looks like Chris Hemsworth.  His comedic timing was spot on.  He should really jump on the comedy train and do a few titles in between those comic book movies.

The dynamic between the four leads was also good.  This is just me personally, but a lot of the jokes didn't hit me as laugh out loud funny, but there were times when the theater was filled with laughter from the other patrons, so someone thought it was funny. That point in itself is sort of a grey area of a good thing and a bad thing.  It's good because when some jokes fell flat and didn't work, which was the case, 2 or 3 minutes down the road, something else did work and a majority of the people there were right back into it.

Some of the things that I really didn't like include the villain, cameos, and how some actors were used.  Let's take the villain for example.  At no point in the movie, do we ever get a clear idea why he is doing the bad things he is doing.  Not even a little 2 minute flashback to justify his upcoming planned apocalypse.  It is shrugged off as 'People were mean to him, and now he is mad", which isn't even acceptable in a small budget, independent movie, much less something with the scale and scope of this.

We all like a cameo or two, here and there.  It gives us that 'gotcha' moment of Hey I get that! Done right, cameos can really add to fan service and the overall experience you have, especially with something as well received as the original Ghostbusters. The overall pacing of the movie was good.  It reels you in and keeps you right where you need to be throughout, but every 8-15 minutes, you get a new cameo, which basically says 'Wait just a minute. I know we're in the middle of this movie, but let's get off track for just one second because HEY LOOK BILL MURRAY,' and that really doesn't do justice to the movie they are trying to present.

I like Leslie Jones on SNL, but in my opinion, she was playing one large stereotype, and that did her a disservice as a performer. She has a lot more to offer than the cookie cutter boisterous, loud, over the top black lady that spews one-liners that is seen in a lot of movies. If they do make a sequel to this, expanding her character with more depth and range would be a great way to improve on where they are now.

In the end, I am sort of meh on Ghostbusters.  I didn't have much of a pre-opinion going in and it didn't wow me, but it didn't make me openly weep into my hands either.  I got about what I expected: A watchable and overall fairly entertaining popcorn flick that had some good points and some definite areas of improvement. I'll give it 2.5 out of 5 shoe boxes. Enjoyed, but not immensely.  Probably wouldn't sit down and watch it again.