Movie Review – Page 125

Beyond The Gate

Hey who likes B movies that look straight out of the 80’s that are so bad they are good? If you said yes to that question you will probably like this movie. The acting is somewhere between bad and acceptable and the movie effects would be gorgeous back in 1986. The sound is of pretty good quality while still keeping with the time frame they were aiming for.

The story has a fun concept. Two brothers grew up with an alcoholic for a father. One is the typical loser in a small town the other left home to a bigger city meets a girl and buys a home. Of course dad goes missing for about 7 months and its up to them to reunite and clean out the video store dad bought when they were kids. Having never bought into the new scary DVD format his store is all VHS tapes. For you young people i have included a photo of a VHS tape.

Ok kids you all caught up on what a VHS tape is? Good. Anyway, a long time ago some board games came with one of these relics and you followed along. When they find one such game in dads office they are dragged into what is basically horror Jumanji. I won’t spoil the gory details, and I mean literal gory, but the movie does suffer from a few minor issues. Most notably the pacing. In a short movie, less than an hour and a half, the first hour is basically set up for what amounts to a 20 minute ending. As always thanks for joining me, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

It Follows Review

It Follows is, as weird as it sounds, the story of a sexually transmitted curse. Once you have it something will follow you and if it catches you it kills you. Now in a weird twist it then works back down the list. I know sounds weird but follow me. Person A gives it to person B. Then B gives it to C. If C dies it will then go after B then after A. The only real escape is to pass it to someone else and hope they pass it to enough people you are safe.

The acting in the movie is solid, while not scary they do a pretty solid job of keeping the suspense up there. There are also some nice plot twist and surprises as well. The real thrill in this for me is it felt like a good old fashioned horror movie. Granted the random nudity and insane body count is missing but that really just helped the movie on this one. As always thanks for joining me, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Star Trek The Motion Picture

The first star trek movie is considered by many to be one of the worst in the series. Honestly I have a hard time arguing that. It is just a standard Star Trek episode in movie form, but it does come across as rather week. The acting is what you would expect an for 1979 the movie looks outright amazing.

The story goes like this, cloud that blows up some Klingon ships then heads for Earth. The newly built Enterprise must intercept it. The usual crew is there minus spock, whom shows up later anyway to rejoin the crew. The doctor is also recalled to duty, or in his words drafted.

I know this is a short review but honestly there isn’t much to the movie. Mostly just getting used to a new ship, some minor event and a straightforward story. Not the best trek movie, may even be the worst one, but still a pretty decent movie. As always thanks for joining me and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Independence Say:Resurgence

This is one of those movies I wanted years ago. Few years later I gave up, and a few years after that here we go. As bummed as I was Will Smith was missing I happily gave the movie a chance. I won’t say the movie was bad, simply disappointing. It looks good, the acting was solid and the sounds were what you would expect. The story itself was just meh and most of the returning cast were relegated to basically being cameo level.

A few things bothered me about this movie. For example they seem tremendously surprised that there are other aliens besides what attacked in the first movie. And of course the first thing these idiots do is attack it. Another issue for me was with 20 years of prep time not a single person though hey maybe maybe an actual space battleship of some kind would be a good plan. All my complaints aside tho its not a bad movie for what it is. As always thanks for joining me and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Children

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The children is about 2 families going on vacation together for Christmas. The visuals and sound are nice and the acting itself is solid. That is about the end of nice things I have to say about this movie.

When the kids contract some sort of virus they start murdering the adults. Not sure why the adults never get sick, or why this movie felt like it took forever to watch but it did. Some times people just have to do their best with the script they are given, and this time it doesn’t matter how good everything else is, the movie simply was not good and you should avoid it. As always thanks for joining me, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Other Side of The Door

The Other Side of the Door is a typical horror movie in pretty much every way imaginable. That’s not to say its bad because it most certainly is not. The main plot is the mother and her son and daughter get into a car accident and go off a bridge. The son is trapped and can’t escape and the mother must make the horrific choice to leave her son to save her daughter as the car fills with water. After which the mother attempts to join her son by taking way to many pills, but her husband saves her. A nurse tells her of an old temple that will allow her to speak to her son one last time but there is one catch. No matter what she can’t open the door.

Well of course this wench opens the damn door and releases her now evil sons spirit into the world where it proceeds to kill people and terrorise his still living sister. The plot is pretty standard but the visuals are nice and so is the creepy sound. Strong acting also helped quite a bit. While not some amazing movie, its worth a watch. As always thanks for joining me, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Last Exorcism

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I don’t want to be that guy, I really don’t but doesn’t the fact there is a Last Exorcism 2 kind of negate the title altogether? I know, I know, but what we needed that out of our system before we proceed. So I’ve heard many a mixed reviews for this particular found footage film and I went in to this without much expectations of it being good but it was expiring on Hulu so why the hell not.

So this is the account of the Rev. Cotton Marcus who is a Louisianan preacher who doesn’t believe in god, but is damn good at preaching anyway. He believes posessions are a mental thing and the devil doesn’t exist so he provides “exorcisms” in exchange for money in return for the victim and there loved ones safe peace of mind; he finds the accidental deaths that have come of them in the past vile and unnecessary. So him a couple others go out to a small farm in the rural outskirts of the state to visit a 16 year old girl named Nell, who is believed to be possessed after a string of grisly animal mutilations. Her brother Caleb throws rocks at Marcus after warning him to turn around. The Father, Louis is deeply religious and strict, especially with sweet hearted Nell. Marcus performs a bogus Exorcism after believing it would put an end to all the commotion. Suddenly Nell appears in his motel bedroom, miles and miles away from her home. Nell becomes increasingly more malevolent and violent as we begin to see the madness lurking within the family…

Overall it’s a fair horror film. I’ve heard complaints the acting ain’t great but I have to say where I’m from and what I do for a living, the people in this movie seem like people I would meet in my day to day life. There is a good plot that does keep you guessing if the possession is legit or not and there are pretty creepy moments and some good imagery. A big fault I have is that while I understand why this movie is made to be found footage, I believe in the end it would have been better as a regular movie.It begins to lose it’s potency when a piece of footage we are supposed to believe is real has a faint score and jump scare noises in it…sure, which leads me to the biggest downfall. The ending sucks. The last ten minutes of if say screw this and become Paranormal Activity 3 and 4, which hey, least we know where they got there inspiration from.

In the end, see it if found footage or possession stories are your thing. It’s worth a good once over. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

( second opinion) Suicide Squad

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So here we go friends, a second opinion on the follow up to Batman vs Superman- Suicide Squad. So if one didn’t piss you off, the other probably did. After a epic ass-load of negative criticism for the previous installments overly dark tone, we get Suicide Squad trying to do Hot Topic Guardians of the Galaxy ( they played Spirit in the Sky for damn sake). So I do find it more enjoyable and entertaining than BvS, but I agree with Savior, don’t think about the plot of this movie too hard or your nose might bleed. Waller bases this whole idea of putting our villains and anti-heroes together for the sole purpose of defending us against a Meta-human or someone of Superman level threat, well truth be told Batman kicked the asses of 80% of your crew, a rich dude without powers. The Captain Boomerang scene with the Flash scene illustrates most of there chances against a Meta-human; what chances do a sniper, a chick with a bat and gun, a guy with boomerangs, a crocodile man, and a army dude do against someone like Superman? If they were going to grind in that point so hard they should have considered rogues like Captain Cold, Deathstroke, Poison Ivy, Bane, Cheetah, Black Manta, or Killer Frost just to name a few- characters that have caused more devastation to the Heroes that would form the JLA. As a positive, I think the movie’s biggest strength was that all the main villains of the Squad were played terrifically- especially Will Smith as Deadshot, Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, and Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang. What killed the Film was a wooden Rick Flag, ridiculous hula magical hula girl (I mean Enchantress), and Jared Leto’s obnoxious and annoying Joker. In the Extended cut Joker has some better scenes and I do enjoy the scene where he convinces Harley to jump but that’s where it ends for me. The Batman cameos were welcome and Flash’s made me grin. My biggest problem besides those three characters was that I felt a huge GOTG vibe from it as I stated above, which works for the film but came off as trying too hard to be cool a couple times; the tone is jarring if you watch all the DCEU films in secession. But, at the end of the day, it’s a fun, dark action comedy with good music and some cool characters. I do recommend the extended version much more than the theatrical because it flushes our main characters out more and we get more interactions between them, and a lot more, alot better Joker material- not great but better. Thank you for checking out our split opinion reviews for this and BVS, and may the gaming gods bring you glory

Suicide Squad

First let me preface this guy saying the movie was better than I thought it would be, tho thinking about the movie or analysing it in any capacity is a bad idea. But this, for me, was easily the most over rated and over hyped movie of 2016. Also the best part of this movie that didn’t include Margot Robbies shorts being so small they were basically a thong was Will Smith playing Deadshot. The soundtrack was also amazing from beginning to end so much so that i’m pretty sure it cost half their budget. Also if one more person tells me they want a relationship like Harley and Joker may get smacked. The story itself is rather mundane and has a plenty of issues. Like I said, don’t think about this movie. It also happens to be pretty fun with a body count that kept me, a guy that loves horror and 80’s action flicks, very happy. As always thanks for coming, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

(2nd opinion) Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice

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When we think of how bad ass it would be to see our favorite superheroes clash, what’s usually the first pair we come to think of? What two are so conflicting both in ideology but to an extent we can can sense the turbulence between man and god, night and day, a cold scowl against a kind smile? None other than Batman and Superman come to most minds: The Dark Knight and The Man Of Steel. In several comics they’ve clashed verbally over several issues, come to blows most famously in Frank Millar’s legendary graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns (for which must of this movie either references or tries to loosely replicate) as well as several others. And for better or worse, we got our silver screen version last year. So my good friend, partner, and brother from another mother Savior covered his thoughts on this and the follow up in the DCEU Suicide Squad, so I’m just gonna talk about some nerd shit with it and give my final thoughts on it.

So first thing I’d like to say is structurally this movie is a grade A clusterfuck. It is a sequel to Man of Steel, a solo Batman flick, a Justice League prequel, an adaptation of Dark Knight Returns and Death of Superman, with 20 minutes of Wonder Woman, Easter Eggs relating to Steppenwulf, Darkseid, some random Batman villains and Red Hood (we can only dream). This movie is stuffed like a turkey’s ass on Thanksgiving. If you are a hardcore DC fan you may enjoy some of this but it does come out bloated. On a positive, the movie is visually sweet, using a lot of dark imagery from the comics to paint one hell of a dark picture. Ben Affleck thrives as both a weathered but composed Bruce Wayne and a cruel, angry Batman. As Batman he has a truly threatening presence that would make me think twice before jaywalking in Gotham City. Gal Gadot is also great as Diana Prince and Wonder Woman; she plays Diana as very poised and ladylike while infusing a raw rage into her fighting as Wonder Woman, either way her segment was much welcomed and loved. Henry Cavill was fine as Superman but he was too brooding for my taste, losing a bit of the relatability I had gotten from his previous go in the iconic role. Though how they are presented was kind of lame, I enjoyed the files debuting Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg. Jeremy Irons was a interesting Alfred while Amy Adams felt mostly tacked on as Lois Lane. Jessie Eisenburg played a good character in this movie but hot damn was that character not Lex Luthor; I feel Eisenburg would have been a great Riddler or Mad Hatter or, dare I say, a fair Joker, but not Lex Luthor. Finally, what kills the movie for me as well as I’m sure many others, was Doomsday. Dammit All, what the hell did they do to him? He looks like a Putty from Power Rangers on steroids. I understand Doomsday is a fan favorite but so poorly done it defeated the purpose. There is a lot of cool moments, great acting from Affleck and Gadot, and dark imagery but there are flaws. Apart, these characters are great; mashed together, well…clusterf#$k . Overall, it’s fair but you won’t watch it everyday, but hey it ain’t Batman & Robin so that’s a plus.