Category: Movie Reviews

Movie Review: ROOM – terrific performances from Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay, but I needed less of the first half of the movie and more of the second.

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The human mind is a complex thing.  Where it resides is the great unfathomable mystery, and is as much a debate for philosophy as it is for science.  We will one day fundamentally change as a species once customizable DNA becomes commonplace, something which, as a transhumanist, I welcome.  But the body in comparison to the mind is simple.  A biological vehicle piloted by the human mind, the real “us”, it’s no more than a complex Lego set.  But the mind is subject to very subjective stimuli, from an astonishing array of sensory input to organic chemistry.  No two people are alike inside, behind the everyday screen we put up, showing people what we want to see.  It’s perhaps the most fragile part of us, easy to damage, hard to repair.

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Movie Review: THE MUMMY – a horrendous script could jeopardize Universal’s “Dark Universe” franchise before it even gets going.

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Like me, you were probably wondering WHY?! When you heard Universal was going to make The Mummy, with Tom Cruise, even.  I remember hearing the news two years ago, and I didn’t believe it at first.  Other than the original Karloff classic, and Christopher Lee playing the title role in the 60s, the most memorable version is the Stephen Sommers trilogy headed by Brendan Fraser – and when I say memorable, I don’t mean in a good way.  I didn’t like these lame PG-13 CGI fests whatsoever.  The first one is the best of the series, and the others are not worth talking about, but I really objected to the content.  To take a recognized, classic horror property and beef it up into a plot-driven, faintly Indiana Jonesesque action movie was an awful idea.  This latest version is no better.

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Movie Review: A CURE FOR WELLNESS – what starts as an intriguing, Shutter Island type mystery, ends up a sloppy, overplotted mess.

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I saw two movies this weekend, both undone by serious overplotting.  I’m reviewing A Cure For Wellness here, but I’ll get to The Mummy all in good time.  The difference between these movies is that The Mummy is mostly bad throughout, and for a number of reasons.  A Cure For Wellness doesn’t become bad overall, but the plotting ruins what starts as a good movie.

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Movie Review: SWEET, SWEET LONELY GIRL – flat, bland, and dull, this “horror” movie fails to capitalize on its few good elements.

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I’m hard to please when it comes to movies, I admit.  But I’m not an unduly harsh critic, I don’t think.  I know what I like, and I know what works for me in a movie, especially in the horror genre.  In my recent review of Lavender, a “vengeful ghost” movie, I said that entries in the horror genre need not terrify, but they should at least have a noticeable “creep” factor.  Let’s face it, it’s tough to actually terrify an audience these days, which is why so many horror movies rely – too much – on the jump scare.  Done right, it enhances a horror movie, but in many cases, lack of atmosphere and good, old fashioned decent writing leads to the jump scare to carry the weight of the horror movie on its weak shoulders.  But what happens if you create a horror movie that has neither atmosphere, nor jump scares?  You end up with a movie like Lavender, and one I watched the other night, Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl, written and directed by A.D Calvo, who I’d never heard of before.

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Movie Review: LIFE – shameless A L I E N ripoff, with characters acting so stupidly you’d think you were watching Prometheus.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews6 Comments

Dumb movies are everywhere, it’s a sad fact.  In many cases, the box office reflects it (the recent flop known as Baywatch, for example), because the trailers are completely crap.  Other terrible movies will make a pile of money theatrically because of gee-whizz CGI, like the punishing Transformers series, but those kinds of movies tap into a different kind of vibe.  Sometimes people just want a burger and fries, and don’t care about the content.  While the Transformers movies are not my thing, I’ve had a burger myself a time or two, so I understand the appeal.  But what if you’re not trying to make $1 billion at the box office?  What if you’re trying to make a horror movie to do business in the $150M – $350M range?

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