Kaos' way behind movie reviews

[Kaos]

Screw that anti gun asshole making money off of  guns.
Not one red cent!

He pees his pants a lot in real life.

[GH2001]

He pees his pants a lot in real life.

Same with Costner. The gun part. Not sure if he pees his pants.

[Kaos]

Jurassic Something: Dumbination somwhere

One of the worst movies I've ever seen. 

I'd rather watch VelociPastor. 

It was so, so, so, so, bad. 

Laura Dern and Sam Neill looked like they were ashamed to be there, but needed the paycheck. 
Chris Pratt looked like he'd be happier with a fake raccoon.
Dallas Howard looked like Opie. She chubby.
Goldblum's eccentricity was the only thing that held it together and even that felt forced. He's better in the apartments.com ads.
BD Wong? C'mon man. Don't debase yourself.

Story:
Giant bugs eat all the crops, dinosaurs, clones who get pregnant without a man, afterthought dinosaurs.  Oh, the movie is over so let's do a voice-over for five minutes to wrap it up. 

GARBAGE.   Give me $93 and two rolls of toilet paper and I could draw a film better than this.  They had $93 million and this giant pile of bronto turds is what we got?

[Kaos]

 Oscar Nominations

Once again I've seen almost none of the nominated films/actors.  Of the ten films nominated for Best Picture, I've seen one.  Banshees if Inisherin (reviewed on Pg 164 of this thread). 

Avatar? No. Elvis? Fuck no. Top Gun? No, but probably will. All Quiet on the Western Front? Maybe in the 70s or something. Everything Everywhere All At Once? Nope, never heard of it. The Fablemans? Nope, sounds shitty. Women Talking? Fuckity fuck fuck no. Triangle of Sadness? Or whatever Madonna calls her poon these days....NO. 

Small blessing that Disney's disastrous Wakanda wasn't given a sympathy nod I suppose. 

But back to Banshees. 

It's taking all the glory that In Bruges truly, honestly, deeply deserved.   It's 10x the movie this one is.  Banshees is nominated not only for Best Picture, but also Best Actor (farrell), Supporting Actor twice (Gleeson and some other dude), Supporting Actress (Kerry Condon), Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing, Original Score... a total of nine nominations. 

All of that belonged to In Bruges.  Actor Gleeson or Farrell, Supporting Actor Fiennes, Supporting Actress Posey, and so on.  That film got ONE nomination -- Screenplay -- while Oscars that year went to Slumdog Millionaire and fucking Jeff Spicoli for playing a gay guy named Milk. 

I won't watch the Oscars - what's the point.  This film will win nothing, and even if it did, it can't make up for the failure to honor it's better older brother In Bruges.

[GH2001]

Avatar? No. Elvis? Fuck no. Top Gun? No, but probably will. All Quiet on the Western Front? Maybe in the 70

FWIW - I didnt think any of these were bad.

Oscar worthy? No. But not bad at all. The Elvis one is...."different" but if you've ever seen or heard anything Baz Luhrman has ever done, its about on par with his MO. Ironically, I thought Tom Hanks was the WORST part overplaying Col Parker.

Top Guns decent nostalgia that did its job.

Avatar gets props simply for creativity and the visual spectacle.

All Quiet was solid to me albeit old fashioned. It is prob the best of those 4.

But Banshees should win among all those listed.

[Kaos]

Violent Night

Rarely do you watch a film thinking you know what you're going to get, but once it gets rolling you end up with something so much greater, more fun, more surprising. Movies like Pirates of the Caribbean and Krampus come immediately to mind. Add Silent Night to the list. I thought I knew what it was going to be, but it went so far beyond that. It was significantly more entertaining than I anticipated. It was so much better than I hoped. 

Christmas and horror aren't always a good mix. I've seen so many films that tried to make it work. Black Christmas - only the first was any good and it could have been set at any time of the year. Red Christmas, Silent Night (two versions), Silent Night/Deadly Night, Mercy Christmas, All Through the House, Christmas Bloody Christmas, All the Creatures were Stirring all tried to find the combination and failed for various reasons -- usually a $4 budget and crap actors.

Then there was Krampus. Really good film and now part of my standard Christmas fare. Violent Night now joins that rotation. It's one I'll watch again when the holidays roll around.

David Harbour was a great Santa. He's the Santa we need, not the Santa we deserve.  His performance truly elevated the film.

The film was funnier than I expected, wedged in a unique (but somehow believable) Santa origin story, had some saccharine moments (required in any Christmas movie) and possessed a depth I wasn't prepared for.  It wasn't just "oh, how shocking! Santa's a killer!!"  Violent Night gave a reason and rationale for it and made Saint Nick's run as a bludgeoning marauder something the audience could get behind. 

Good production values, beautifully shot. I loved how it wove in elements from other Christmas movies - particularly another favorite - Home Alone.  Any film that can make you laugh and cringe simultaneously at over-the-top mayhem gets huge credit in my book. That happens multiple times over the course of this movie.

The only flaw was the obligatory and forced injection of the bi-racial family. That part just didn't work at all. Everything else? Simply fantastic.

The villains - Scrooge, Krampus, Gingerbread, Peppermint, Candy Cane, Jingle, Frosty - were all humorously violent, particularly Krampus. 

It was so much more fun that I could have hoped for.  I avoided it during the holidays because I was afraid it would be another failed entry in the Christmas Horror genre. Another film where a blood-soaked Santa was all it had to offer.  That was a mistake. I wish I'd watched it while the tree was still up and the smell of evergreen lingered. Exponentially better than I ever imagined it could be. 

Highly recommend.

THIS is the kind of movie that should win Oscars. Harbour's turn as jolly old Saint Nick is far better than Collin Farrell being Collin Farrell in Banshees (although I love Farrell). 

In case you missed it, I really/really/really/really like this movie.  I'm going to watch it again tonight. 

[Kaos]

The Harder They Fall

I don't mind a little creative license. I understand that sometimes you have to change a few things up to give a film a compelling narrative. But this? No.  It's too much.

The director plucked a bunch of names from history and then blackwashed the entire thing.  Filled old west towns with nothing but black people. Turned American Indians into black characters. Created an entire history that simply didn't and doesn't exist. It's too much. The Old West wasn't rife with black trans/les characters. The Old West wasn't loaded with black sheriffs, black outlaw gangs, or any of that. It's absurd to pretend it was. 

That's bad enough, but the director (or directors) apparently think of him(them)selves as a modern day Quentin Tarrantino. The problem is they don't understand at ALL what makes Tarrantino films work.  It's not overly long, and overly verbose soliloquies.  It's not slow motion blood sprays. It's not camera angles and lighting.  But that's all they've got here.

It's kind of sad, really, because I like many of the actors in this movie. 

Idris Elba? Goes without saying. He's done some great work. This? Was ridiculous. He's playing Rufus Buck, head of a real gang in the Old West, but who was also an Indian - Elba isn't that.

Lakeith Stanfield? Thought he was great in Sorry to Bother You. Here? He's a black guy playing a character who was white/Indian in reality and doing it badly.

RJ Cyler? Outstanding in Emergency. Completely miscast here. There was a real Jim Beckwourth, but he wasn't a cowboy gunslinger. He was a fur trader and explorer.

Zazie Beetz? Sweet work in Deadpool. She plays Stagecoach Mary. In real life, Mary was an ugly, foul-mouthed disgraced nun who made a living washing clothes and running a mail route. She was NOT a top-hat-wearing, saloon-owning, singing, gun-slinging siren of the west.

It goes on and on.  Nothing in this film bears any resemblance to the reality of the times.

Even so, take the utterly absurd historical blackwashing out of the equation and the movie is STILL completely unwatchable. I won't get to the end.

The overly verbose and emotionally fraudulent script, the over/under acting performances (among the worst of every character on the screen), and the poorly plotted and vacant plot put this movie in the pile of the immediately forgettable.