Category: Movie Review

Occupation (2018)

Occupation is the story of an alien invasion gone right, at least for the aliens. The movie starts out in a small town where people are pissed over an overpass being built, and it isn’t long before they have an entirely new problem. At a towns I believe rugby game, I am not sure since it takes place in Australia and I know nothing about their sports. Could be Aussie rules football I suppose.

The alien attack comes from nowhere, and their armor is damn near impenetrable and their weapons are far more advanced. This scene is full of explosions and death, which is quite honestly a rather good scene and sets things up nicely for an underdog story.

The rest of the movie is primarily a story of guerrilla warfare against the alien occupation with occasional infighting amongst our heroes about how to handle things, such as one captured alien that serves no purpose except to reveal through a map they have been watching humanity for thousands of years and when one man beats it to death a few get pissed off.

The entire movie poorly developed, all the characters are mundane and never really grow. But here is the thing, if you like action films, and I mean old school action films full of explosions and passable routine stories, this film is for you. Seriously check out its Rottentomotatoes scores. It has an abysmal 38% from critics but a massive 94% from audiences. This is the perfect example of a movie that critically may not be the best written or put together, but damn is it fun to watch. Action fans will want to see it, but most others will find it overly long and ambitious with not much to offer. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Captain Marvel trailer 3

I keep getting impressed every trailer I see for the upcoming Captain Marvel. To help you catch up on the latest MCU installment, here’s a link to my reviews on Captain Marvel trailer 1 and Captain Marvel trailer 2 ; while we didn’t see her in the Avengers 4 trailer , it’s safe to say she may be the key to beating Thanos. The only issue I see is I can see the MCU formula prominent so I can see it feeling much like the others but no doubt it’ll be epic as hell. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Haunting of Sharon Tate

 

You ever see something that simply made you scratch your head in total bafflement? I can’t even say I’m shocked a movie like this is coming out, especially after watching American Horror Story: Cult and the passing of Charles Manson but seeing Lizzie Mcquire all grown up staring in a movie about one of the most shocking crimes in American history, that’s what stopped me in my tracks. And if that wasn’t the weirdest thing, it is a good, creepy trailer. I seriously mean that, the trailer I found creepier than most of the trailers I’ve seen in the past year or two. I hope the best for this movie and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

Back in the 1990s, there was a sudden revival in horror movies with movies like Our Favorites Day7: Scream and this one, I Know What You Did Last Summer. The story of kids getting drunk, hitting a guy with their car, tossing him in some water then finding out a year later they are being hunted down for what they did.

This honestly sounds like an extremely simplistic explanation of the story, but it really isn’t. That is the plot of the movie. The real thing that makes this great is how well it was done. With great talents like Sarah Michelle Geller, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and Freddie Prince Jr, it is no wonder it was well loved and received at the time, tho the internet seems to love it much less with Metacritic giving it a 52%, rotten tomatoes a 36% (40% fan) and IMBd a 5.7. That being said I remember it coming out and people raving about it, this is clearly an example of a movie that age was not kind to but nostalgia was. I still enjoy the movie, but having seen hundreds of movies since the release of this one it is easy to tell where the weak points were, and there are many. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Hellraiser Judgement (2018)

Hellraiser Judgment is an odd movie. As the tenth movie in the series, a series that admittedly seems to have steadily gotten worse as the years have gone by I really was not expecting all that much from it. Some cheap kills, a bit of gore, maybe some nudity and of course a half-baked story about Pinhead loving pain again.

The movie did deliver all of those things, and I have to say it was much better than I expected. That isn’t to say the movie is all that good, it has 50% on Rotten Tomatoes and 4.3 on IMBd. It just so happens to be that I wasn’t expecting much. The story was simply two cops chasing a serial killer, and it plays out much how you would expect. This is where the crossover with Pinhead comes in. He and his friends are once again doing their job of judging and punishing people which of course plays into the story.

Obviously, this is an oversimplification but I don’t want to spoil things for you guys. The downside to all this is, well the story is pretty bland and everything about it is easy to see coming. Even the ending isn’t all that special or hard to predict. I enjoyed it and it was pretty entertaining, but it was as basic as basic gets. Fans of the series will enjoy it to an extent, but most people will want to avoid it. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Child’s Play 3

childs play 3

One thing I have to say I love about horror sequels, many come to a strange point where they make you ask WTF? Maybe it’s Jason X or Leprechaun in the Hood or I don’t know, Chucky the killer doll at a military school- that kind of WTF?

So 8 years after Chucky was destroyed, the Good Guy plant reopens and while disposing of Chucky’s corpse, some blood gets into the molten plastic and I guess we get a new Chucky who kills the company CEO and goes back to tracking Andy down again. Andy is 16 now and enrolled in Kent Military Academy after years of failed foster homes. Chucky mails himself to the school only to be found by a junior cadet named Tyler who swears Chucky is his friend. It’s up to Andy to stop Chucky once and for all…

Child’s Play 3 isn’t bad but its just not that memorable. There’s not any real gory moments and Chucky is mostly funny in this. The dude that plays Andy is pretty decent and I like that his story is basically him trying to stop the past from repeating itself. The supporting characters are kinda bland and I have to say Chucky looks kind of like Trump in this movie which is weird. Child’s Play 3 is meh, you can take it or leave it and be ok either way. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Child’s Play 2

childs play 2

Well, I hope everyone out there had a good first day of 2019. So to start the year let’s talk about a lovable, foul mouthed killer doll. Namely Chucky, before we get the remake. I covered Bride of Chucky as well the original for this past year’s Halloween special ( Our Favorite Movies Day 12:Child’s Play )

Child’s Play 2 picks up directly where the original leaves off. Andy Barkley finds himself in the system after being  separated from his mom and his story covered up. The Good Guy toy company seized Chucky’s charred corpse and remakes him ( for reasons?) and that’s enough to revive the murderous doll, who follows Andy to his new foster home, making the kid’s life a living hell and dropping bodies a long the way in his quest to put his soul in Andy’s body…

In a time where the titans of horror Michael, Jason, and Freddy were all getting stale fast, Child’s Play 2 is a pretty good sequel. Andy is still a really sympathetic victim and you do feel for this poor kid; his foster sister Kyle was a good addition and her and Andy’s relationship feels genuine. Chucky is still funny and still badass. The kills are kinda tame until the last act when they fight back against Chucky, then there are some pretty awesome moments and how he finally dies is pretty damn sweet. All in all while not as good as the first, it’s a pretty good simple slasher  movie I’d say is worth checking out. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

hellboy 2 There are a few rare times in life where I’d say a sequel is just as good as the original. Many try being bigger and better and failing. Hellboy was a cool superhero movie and 4 years later came the sequel, indeed bigger and more badass but does Hellboy 2 still keep the magic of the first?

Life is changing for our lovable, stone armed demonic hero. Abe stumbles on the secret Liz is keeping that she’s pregnant with Hellboy’s son; Hellboy has a new boss after years of breaking cover and damages in the strict and peculiar Dr Kraus and Hellboy has to deal with being exposed to the public. Meanwhile Abe discovers love with a Elven princess on the run from her twin brother, who plans on unleashing a unstoppable army on mankind. Can Hellboy and his friends stop this dormant evil?

Whether the second Hellboy movie is better than the first is up for debate; they’re pretty damn close in my opinion but I like the second one just a little more. The action is indeed bigger and better with a more compelling villain. The characters we knew from the first grow and we do feel for them. Del Toro’s strange art style comes out in full and it makes it feel more wondrous than the first. The only little gripe I have is that it does feel a little more mainstream than the first movie. I don’t think the tones and plot structure hurt the movie at all. I think it’s one of the better sequels I’ve ever seen and I do recommend it. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Hellboy

hellboy

As we often do here on the blog, when something ” new” comes out ( I say “new” in quotations because how much do we get in art anymore is actually new really) we tend to look back at what came before. what launched me to look in this uncanny place was the Hellboy 2019 first trailer . Also, I don’t normally begin reviews this way but I am today- Ron Pearlman will always be Hellboy to me in the category of RDJ as Iron Man, Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, or Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool. He is simply awesome.

Hellboy is a strange kind of hero. His father, Professor Trevor Broom finds him during a paranormal operation during WW2; a little red boy with horns, tail and a stone arm breaches his way into our world from another. Decades later, the child has grown into pretty much a normal dude that just happens to be the destined bringer of doom, look like the devil, and work for the government fighting all sorts of cool supernatural shit along with his friend and psychic fish man Abe Sapien, and dealing with his rocky relationship with volatile pyro-kinectic sweetheart Liz and together they face Rasputin, who brought Hellboy here and is out to start the end of days…

Hellboy is a pretty damn unique superhero movie in a lot of ways. The characters are strange and humanly flawed, there’s a meta edge to the film and the comics it’s based and there’s a good balance between light and dark elements. As I said, Pearlman is fantastic as Hellboy and the supporting characters are pretty solid. I must say the villains are bland by comparison and a rare occasion where the heroes way outshine the bad guys. This was the movie that made me a fan of Guillermo Del Toro, who was a perfect fit for the strange world and he clearly appreciated the source material. In the end, Hellboy was a cool superhero movie that I feel deserves more credit than it got and definitely deserves a watch. May the gods bring you glory.

Bird Box (2018)

The movie starts off like most movies, a lonely woman finding out she is pregnant. Why this is such a popular starting point I will never know. They always have friends and someone to knock them up so you couldn’t have been that lonely. Either way Bird Box doesn’t waste much time. It isn’t long before a hospital trip for Malorie (Sandra Bullock) sees a woman slamming her head off the hard glass of the hospital window. This is where people start seeing something and killing themselves. Yes, it is essentially The Happening at this point.

The movie is set up almost as a series of flashbacks between when everything started and Malorie’s journey with Boy and Girl to the safety of a new community. Yes, those are the children’s names, Boy (Julian Edwards)and Girl (Vivian Lyra Blair). The bouncing back and forth is actually done really well, at no point are you ever confused as to what is going on or when. Both points are self-contained with the past explaining how Malorie ended up where she is at and the present explaining where she is going, why she is going there and why she chose the manner in which she is doing it.

The movie is entertaining and suspenseful but I do have a few complaints, none of which are the fact that it is essentially The Happening or A Quiet Place as many have compared it to and rightfully so. No, I don’t mind those things. Hell, the Lion King is essentially Hamlet. Stories are often retold. My issue is the many things the movie doesn’t do for example show what is causing these deaths or truly explain why some batshit crazy people are immune to it.

This movie is a love it or hate it situation. It has a 50% on Metacritic for example and a 68% on rotten tomatoes (65 critics 75 fans) and it is mostly from some people saying the movie is amazing and others saying it is a flaming pile of turds. Except for one person from The Root that thinks the movie is about racism, but I think this person didn’t actually see the movie. One of the things they claim they didn’t explain in the movie is quite clearly explained, and some of their ideas are quite the stretch which is sad since the page is usually quite well informed and well written (especially Mr. Harriot)

All in all tho, the movie isn’t all that new or different and each person will view it differently, whether you love it or hate it, or even see it as an inditement about racism in America, give it a watch and see what you come up with then let me know what you think. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.