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Bumblebee (2018)
The best live action Transformers
I don't know if I necessarily agree this is a good movie, but I do agree that this is leagues better than the other live-action Transformers movies to date. Even though this is still fundamentally the same kind of movie--teen film with a side of robots fighting--Bumblebee manages to pull off both better than the previous installments.
The teen angst angle is better written, and I was invested in what happens to them after a while. They also didn't distract from the action sequences too much, which has been one of the ongoing issues with the other live action Transformers movies to date.
The action sequences were a lot better here, too. Most of that is just due to the fact that I was able to follow what happened in this movie. The previous installments have tended to have all those obnoxious Michael Bay tendencies that lead to them being difficult to follow, so maybe most of this is just down to having a different director do this movie.
The other thing this movie did better than a pretty large chunk of the other Michael Bay Transformers is that it was only two hours long. There wasn't really a lot of baggage because of that, while previous Transformers movies have tended to drag on a lot more than they really needed to.
Still, y'know, there are things that this movie could have done better. Early on, the movie leaned in a lot to the '80s nostalgia angle and had a lot of '80s songs on the soundtrack, but later on transitioned to a fairly bog standard action movie score. I feel like this movie would have been better if it had have stuck to the '80s soundtrack all the way through, or at least used a score that was more heavily inspired by '80s action scores.
The other thing is that even though this movie does do the teen angst elements better than every other live action Transformers movie to date, it would have been nice if it had have focused more on being a robots fighting movie. Ultimately that is sorta what most people are hoping for from these movies and it'd be nice if the studio actually delivered on this front for once.
Overall though, I feel like this is the best live action Transformers movie to date. I think if this had have been the first live action back in 2007, I probably would have pretty major nostalgia goggles on for it and I'd be a lot more forgiving of its issues.
Nate and Hayes (1983)
Forgettable slop that's carried by Tommy Lee Jones' performance
This is one of those movies where you can definitely see what it was trying to achieve. What it wanted to be was this swashbuckling adventure-comedy film in the same kind of vein as Cutthroat Island would be a decade or so later.
Unfortunately, it never quite made it to that point. What it ended up being was this forgettable slop where the jokes are there, but never funny, where the action is present, but mostly dull and forgettable, and where the adventure is nominally there, but it doesn't feel that adventurous.
Most of this is just because the writing's bad. It's not even a question of maybe one or two scenes needing to go a different way or maybe one character should have had different motivations; it's just overall bad writing. They should have thrown this script out and had a new one written.
Really, the only thing that's carrying this movie is Tommy Lee Jones' performance. Everyone else involved is giving a fairly wooden performance, but Jones seemed to really want to shine in this movie. He's the only actor on set who really gave the best possible performance based on the available material.
The only other thing this movie had going for it was the naval combat at the end. While all the other action in this movie was mostly just there, this one scene at least had the good sense to attempt to be good. It probably would have been a lot better if they'd done more to build this up instead of it just being an "Oh yeah, better let the steamboat do something" thing tacked on at the end as an afterthought.
Really, this is the kind of movie you'd see late at night on a kid's channel when they couldn't buy the rights to air a better movie that weekend. Now that cable/satellite television is less of a thing, there's no reason to see it unless you're a huge fan of John Hughes or Tommy Lee Jones and want to see what they were working on before they got big.
Black Circle Boys (1997)
It's not everyone's cup of tea, but it is someone's shot of tequila
Is this the best movie ever made? No, not really. But is it as bad as everyone makes it out to be? Nah, nowhere near.
Really the big thing with Black Circle Boys is that it has a certain appeal for a certain demographic. That demographic is edgy teenagers and newly-minted adults, and that appeal is that it's loosely based on a true crime story. They're the same people who'd enjoy all those movies that are thinly veiled retellings of the Columbine massacre. If you're not a part of that demographic, then you'll either find the movie boring or laughably bad.
This movie does have its merits. The story and characters develop in a fairly natural way, and it has enough respect for your intelligence to not explain every little thing to the nth degree like some other movies would.
Really, the biggest issue with Black Circle Boys is that the story doesn't resolve so much as it just ends. This is the kind of story that needed for there to either be another murder at the end or for a huge chunk of the cast to be carted off by the police to fully resolve. Unfortunately, that's not really what happens.
Ultimately though, this is a movie with a very specific audience in mind, and I feel like anyone who isn't in it won't enjoy it very much.
The Brave One (2007)
Slow to start, but picks up when the killing starts
Realistically, you sorta know what you're gonna get with The Brave One. It's a fairly generic revenge movie that doesn't contain any massive surprises.
I'm not entirely convinced it needed as much setup at the start as it got, though. If the first twenty or twenty-five minutes of this movie got cut down to about ten, it probably would have been a lot better. I think this is ultimately a pretty good example of why not every movie needs to be aiming to be 2+ hours long--this one would have been perfectly serviceable at an hour forty-five or so.
The big thing The Brave One had going for it is that the violence was brutal and it was impactful. These weren't the best choreographed or most memorable action sequences I've ever seen or anything like that, but the tension was real in all of them. That puts it streets ahead of a solid 90% of movies like this. It's just that it was brought down by a slow beginning that really didn't need to be that long.
What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (2018)
Essential viewing for any Star Trek fan
For the most part, this documentary is great. It was great seeing the cast and writers talk about their experiences on Deep Space Nine. There were some anecdotes from this that I hadn't heard before, and I imagine that a lot of people who haven't seen the special features from the DVD releases or seen a lot of the convention clips will have heard before.
Just because of that, I think this is essential viewing for any Star Trek fan, especially for those with an appreciation for Deep Space Nine.
My only real gripe with this documentary is that they felt it necessary to include a lot of clips of random fans talking about the show. I'm not entirely sure if that was necessary. Everyone who's realistically ever going to be interested in What We Left Behind already knows what the fans think of the show because they are one and have probably spent enough time in online Star Trek fan spaces and with their real life Trek friends to know what the other fans think.
I'm also not entirely sure what they were trying to achieve by having the fans talk about the show in the documentary. It doesn't add anything that they couldn't have said themselves.
Still, that's an incredibly small part of the documentary. Overall, this was extremely good and it's worth watching if you like Star Trek.
Spaceman (2024)
Excellent science fiction
This is very good science fiction. It's thought provoking, it's relevant to current social issues, and it stays the course.
In a lot of ways, Spaceman is almost like the anti-Adam Sandler movie. With a lot of his comedies, especially the ones he was doing back in the '90s, the case was that he'd see a woman, become enamoured with her, and get to be her partner just because he was the main character. In Spaceman, this isn't the case. He has to work through his issues in order to maintain his relationship, and it's not a given that he'll be able to do that.
This ends up being the core conflict of the movie. Some other reviews have compared it to Ad Astra and this is the main reason why. I disagree with their assertion that it's emotionally absent. I take the opposite view: it's emotionally there, and it is emotionally relevant. There are so, so many men who are like Jakub in this movie--emotionally distant, unable or unwilling to deal with their traumas, and always looking for a way to escape, but completely unable to understand why every significant relationship they've ever had has failed.
Dealing with this is what makes this relevant science fiction. It might not be the hardest of hard sci-fi because the actual scientific problem isn't at the forefront, but the social issue at the fore is what makes it good.
This also means it was much, much better than I was expecting it to be. Don't let the other reviews turn you off from seeing it. Spaceman is amazing.
The Predator (2018)
Actually a decent sequel/quasi-reboot
One of the big troubles with Predator sequels and reboots is that most of them are terrible. They're terrible movies and they're terrible sequels. It's usually because they're basically just the first one with different characters and maybe a different environment.
The Predator manages to avoid these traps. As a movie, it's just okay. None of the characters are particularly likable or even really memorable, but at least they have more development than some of the other Predator sequel characters. The plot is fairly bog standard action movie fair, but at least it isn't just the first one done vaguely differently.
It also avoids the traps that it could have fallen into. It has an autistic child character for example, but unlike with other movies that have them, he isn't annoying and isn't the entire focus of the movie. It's just an incidental thing that he has it. I think this is a good example of what I mean when I say this movie has better character development than some of the other sequels, because even though it does inform his character, it's not his entire character.
Really, the big things this movie does well is how it does as a *sequel*. The stakes are higher, for a start. But more importantly, it feels like this movie does move the story along and do some more world building. While the other sequels have acknowledged the first one is canon, this is the first to actually treat it like it mattered and feel as if it's actually a story set decades later instead of a movie where the original incidentally also happened.
Really, the biggest sin of this one is that it doesn't ever capture the '80s cheesiness the first two had. If it had have done that, it would have made the jump from okay to legit good.
Morgan (2016)
Good concept and a good atmosphere, but needed a better script
Morgan's concept is great. Its execution is lacking.
There's a few scenes in this movie where it feels like the director and writer thought they were really doing something deep, but in reality it often was just shallow and bordering on silly. This is Morgan's biggest issue because this could have been a deep, thought provoking movie if they had have fleshed out those scenes a little more.
Otherwise, it's a decent low budget sci-fi thriller. The action scenes aren't exactly groundbreaking, but they're passable. The tension is real and it doesn't get derailed, and it takes itself seriously enough to avoid any unnecessary comic relief.
There's also not really any fat to this movie. Every scene in it needs to be there; it's not forced to be 2+ hours long like a lot of other somewhat recent movies. Really, if the script was better, this probably would have at least a solid cult following.
The Marvels (2023)
It achieves everything it sets out to do
All this movie was trying to be was a superhero movie that appeals to twelve-year-olds. It achieves that. If I had have seen this when I was twelve, it probably would have been my favourite MCU movie ever.
I can see why a lot of people were unhappy with this one because it doesn't really do much beyond that, and there have been much better ones in the last few years. However, I think people are being a bit silly if they saw this movie and expected it to be anything other than a CGI heavy movie for 12-year-olds.
For the most part, I do think this movie works, though. Pretty much all the jokes land, which hasn't always been a given in the MCU movies of the last five years or so. The action sequences are middle of the road, but you can follow what's happening and there's at least some kind of point to them.
I don't think the CGI in this movie is quite as good as the CGI in Guardians of the Galaxy 3. However, it never looks cheap, either. I also feel like they probably should have just picked an aspect ratio and stuck with it because changing the aspect ratio in certain scenes didn't really add anything. This was a problem Thor: Love and Thunder had as well.
Overall, this movie was fine. There's been much better MCU movies over the years, but this is nowhere near as bad as some people are making it out to be.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
Unnecessary and overly long
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny didn't need to exist. There's no getting around that. There was no particular desire for another Indiana Jones sequel, and whatever desire there was died in 2008 when The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came out.
I don't think this movie even really works as a sequel. I don't really think Indiana Jones, as a character, works as a washed up old man. Conceptually, it just isn't what he was for; he was always a role for a much younger man. The only way they could have bridged that gap was to have made a few more sequels 20-30 years ago or to have hired much better writers for the movie.
Beyond that, this movie is easily 30-45 minutes too long. It was also in desperate need of less CGI and more practical effects.
There's no real merit to this movie. There's no reason for it to be around. It never should have been made and I regret seeing it.
The Guest (2014)
Occasionally derivative, but never boring
At least on paper, The Guest seems like a movie that should be kinda bad. It's derivative and predictable, the characters are all pretty shallow, and the dialogue is pretty bog standard for a movie like this. A lot of the action sequences also feel like a teenager's power fantasy.
However, The Guest is able to make all of this work. Sure, all of it is true, but the movie's able to dress it up in an entertaining way. The bare bones power fantasy aspects of the movie are the entire point, and at least it's not boring or dragged out for too long.
This is a well paced, reasonably well choreographed action movie. Nothing about it is particularly notable or groundbreaking, but it's worth watching at least once if you like the genre.
John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)
If you liked the other three, you'll like this one
John Wick 4 is pretty much everything you'd expect a John Wick movie to be: it's violent, and it's almost nonstop violence. There isn't really anything here that's going to disappoint you, so long as you liked the previous three movies.
This one is a little more story-heavy than the previous movies. As much as I'd like for it to have been ten minutes of plot and then 2.5-ish hours of violence as some reviewers have suggested it was, that wasn't the case: this one had a much more even split between the two than previous movies. However, I think it more or less managed to do this without the plot scenes being overly boring or simply unnecessary, which is one of the problems a lot of plot-heavy action movies run into.
Still, I'm not entirely convinced that this movie really needed to be as long as it is, given that the plot isn't really that much more complex than what was in the previous ones. The action sequences, while lengthy and entertaining, also weren't more complex in their setup either, so it's not like there was anything there that really required such a long runtime.
Overall though, I think that's kind of a nitpicky point. John Wick: Chapter 4 is advertised as a shoot-em-all movie with well choreographed fight scenes, and that's what it provides.
In the Shadow of the Moon (2019)
Decent sci-fi thriller, but doesn't lean into its premise too much
So there's two things happening here: one is the time travel element, and the other is the commentary on terrorism. In the Shadow of the Moon manages to have a fairly interesting take on time travel, but I don't think it really leans into its intended commentary as much as it could.
I know there's been some criticism of this movie because the time travel elements tend to be a bit wonky if you dig deep enough into how physics actually works, but that isn't really the point. There's a lot of wonky science that can be forgiven in a sci-fi movie so long as the messaging is on point.
The core messaging here is on point (i.e., the line between terrorism and justified violence is thin and context heavy), but I'm not sure if it really goes hard enough on this to really do it well. It definitely tries, but it never quite makes it. This is a shame because most of the elements of a good movie are here; it just doesn't quite connect the dots well enough for it to be a cohesive statement.
Infinite (2021)
Bad, but not irredeemable
There isn't a whole lot of pretense with Infinite. It's a very generic sci-fi/action movie about reincarnation and the end of the world. Occasionally, it'll pretend it's a little deeper, but for the most part, it knows it's just a stupid movie.
I think if this movie had have come out twenty years ago, most reviews of it would be a lot more forgiving of its faults. Some of this is because a lot of its problems would have been written off as just a thing that happened with action movies back then ("Of course the CGI stands out like a sore thumb; it usually did back then"; "Of course the women didn't have a lot of agency and occasionally had to be bailed out by the men, it was 2003"), but I think it probably would have been a nostalgia thing to some extent, too. Nowadays, however, most people sorta have a higher standard for sci-fi/action stuff.
I think a lot of the problems with this movie stem from how Wahlberg's monologues towards the start and end actually could have been a fairly reasonable subtext to include in something like this. You really could have a movie that's explicitly about building upon your life's work one step at a time, and the reincarnation elements could add some extra flavour to that story. Unfortunately, as it is, it just ended up highlighting how simple and shallow the movie is and how much more it could have been.
Masters of Horror: Homecoming (2005)
Okay horror and good political messaging
As a horror story, is this any good? It's debatable. On one hand, it's not really any more terrifying than some of the things that had already happened in American electoral history up until the point this episode was made. On the other, most of the best horror stories are at least partially based on a premise that could actually happen.
As political commentary, this episode is pretty good. It's not exactly subtle, but nothing in Masters of Horror or its spin offs, Masters of Science Fiction and Fear Itself, are particularly subtle. A lot of the best political commentaries, especially when it comes to genre fiction like this, are very direct with their messaging, too.
The other plus side of this episode is that it has some of the best acting of the series. A lot of the other episodes in this show tend to have less-than-stellar acting typical of network television in the '00s, but this episode had better acting than that. It wasn't the best television acting of all time or anything like that, but I'd give it a solid B.
I get why this episode is fairly contentious, though. A lot of people aren't huge fans of political messaging in entertainment, especially if it's a message they disagree with. However, I happen to agree with the messaging and I think entertainment should be more political, so I liked this episode a fair bit.
Maximum Overdrive (1986)
It's a so-bad-it's-good movie from the '80s
Is this a good movie? God no. Should you see it anyway? Yeah, of course. While Maximum Overdrive never quite gets to Killer Klowns From Outer Space levels of so bad it's good, it's still pretty safely in that kind of territory.
The bad: This movie is a pretty good representation of what Stephen King was like generally during his druggie years. When he was on point, he was really on point, but on his off days, he'd be cooking up stuff that make you wonder how cognisant he was of anything. This is also very much the kind of movie where you have to already either be a pretty big fan of Stephen King or even just a fan of bad movies generally to even want to see.
The good: A kid gets killed by a steam roller, several trucks are destroyed by a rocket launcher, and several other people are run over by trucks. If you ever wanted to make a list of all the ridiculous ways in which a person might get run over by a truck, this movie will certainly help you get started.
But yeah, see Maximum Overdrive. It's certainly something.
The Puppet Masters (1994)
A middle-of-the-road movie, but a bad adaptation
I don't think anyone's really going to be happy with The Puppet Masters.
Die hard Robert A. Heinlein fans aren't going to be happy because while this is one of the most faithful adaptations of his work ever made, it cuts a lot of what was in the book. What could have been a pretty interesting take on the alien invasion genre (at least for films) has been watered down into a pretty generic movie.
However, people who like to see Heinlein's work parodied (as happened with Starship Troopers) or at least just treated as a suggestion to be built upon (as happened with Predestination, adapted from the short story All You Zombies) won't be pleased, either. While The Puppet Masters isn't exactly the most faithful film adaptation ever made, it's still the most faithful *Heinlein* adaptation.
Just based on the movie itself, there isn't anything wrong with The Puppet Masters, aside from its questionable quality as an adaptation. The acting, action, cinematography, and dialogue aren't amazing, but it's not going to be tattooed in your memory as exceptionally bad, either. Really, its biggest sin is that it's a middle-of-the-road movie that would have been a lot better if they'd tried being a good adaptation.
Patton (1970)
A good movie, but could have gone a lot further than it did
Patton might be the single most frustrating war movie I've ever seen.
On one hand, it avoids a lot of the obvious missteps I've seen in other war movies, especially those centred around actual people. Unlike in Hacksaw Ridge or American Sniper, Patton focuses on his role in the war itself without too much padding about his life before or after the war. The battles manage to be well staged affairs that aren't just unfocused messes, and they also avoid dragging on too long. Best of all, there's also a lot of focus of the command politicking that inevitably comes with high profile commands such as Patton's.
On the other, all of this only serves to highlight some of the problems with the movie. While it focuses heavily on the drama and not on the action, it also glosses over some of Patton's worst traits. It acknowledges his disdain for the Russians, it acknowledges his tendency to speak without thinking, and it acknowledges that he wanted to follow World War II up with an Operation Unthinkable-style campaign against the USSR. However, it ignores that Patton was often just as antisemitic as the Nazis he'd defeated in combat, and that his views on race were, while not atypical for the time and not completely without nuance, also deeply racist.
Because of that, it's hard to not feel that this is a borderline propaganda movie. It might not have gotten funding or technical support from any branch of the US government, but it still attempts to gloss over some of the more extreme elements of Patton's personality. This is in spite of a near three-hour runtime, and scenes focused on Nazi commanders discussing him that could have easily been switched out for scenes delving deeper into his extremes.
All of this is very frustrating because on a pure technical level, this actually is a good movie. Just based on its merits as a movie, it's one of the best war movies I've ever seen, even. However, I can't help to feel that it should have gone a lot harder than it did.
Cradle 2 the Grave (2003)
I wish I'd seen this when I was ten
Cradle 2 the Grave is a pretty simple movie. There's no real surprises in plot or character development; no real subversive elements to it.
It's just a simple action movie, to the point that it's basically a little kid's idea of what an action movie is meant to be like. For that alone, I sorta wish I'd seen this when I was ten or so, because I think that's about the age you need to be to really enjoy this. If you see it at that point in your life, you'd probably grow up to either see this movie as being so bad it's good, or see it with nostalgia goggles so thick you can't admit it's bad.
For everyone else, the issues with it are going to be glaringly obvious. Cradle 2 the Grave features just about every problem a bad action movie from the early '00s will have. The cuts go so fast that there's some scenes that gave me motion sickness, the soundtrack sounds like it should be in a low budget computer game, and the action scenes are often so generic you'll forget them within a few hours of seeing them.
While the movie never drifts off into The Room level awfulness, it's also not a good movie in any way, shape, or form. The only reason you should ever see it or rewatch it is if you grew up with it or if you're trying to get your kids to develop a love of bad movies.
Deus (2022)
Not unforgivably bad, but it's never good
Deus is in a very similar vein to Event Horizon, both in terms of its plot and the end result. Both are science fiction movies trying to be somewhat philosophical about the possibility of life outside of the known universe. And while both are trying to be that, neither of them really achieve what they set out to.
The big difference is that Deus isn't ever going to have the cult following Event Horizon does, nor does it deserve to. It doesn't go deep enough into its themes to really be as thought provoking as it thinks it is, and it lacks the horror elements to keep horror fans enthused.
That being said, Deus isn't a complete waste. It does have decent production values for something of its budget, and the acting isn't godawful like you might expect. It also never really insists upon itself, so while it's not really as deep as it thinks it is, it's also never particularly obnoxious about it. And while it isn't deep, the times it tries to be do give you something to think about, so you can occasionally see what the movie might be like if it were actually good.
Really, I feel like Deus' biggest sin is that it never really breaks away from its television feel. This feels like an episode of television made somewhere between the late '90s and mid '00s by a production team that was competent, but never brilliant. The movie may have even achieved what it set out to be if this had been what it was because you could talk about the themes in the broader context of the show.
As is, I think this is worth watching if you're looking for a movie that could be good but never quite makes it. It's worth watching if you're a fan of Event Horizon especially, or just a fan of the genre in general. Otherwise, skip it--it won't have anything for you otherwise.
The Village (2004)
The twist was frustrating
The Village is a deeply frustrating film. On one hand, the performances, the cinematography, and the music are all basically as good as you could hope for in a movie like this. In fact, in a lot of other movies, The Village's merits would probably take it from being an okay movie to being a really good one.
Plus, I think The Village does a better job at hiding what the twist is going to be than a lot of other movies like it. This is different from a lot of other Shhyamalan movies, where the twist is very clearly telegraphed throughout the movie.
This is both a blessing and a curse, though. On one hand, yeah, it does mean it's harder to outsmart the movie, but on the other hand, it does make it feel like the twist sorta came out of nowhere to some extent.
This ends up being the big thing that drags the movie down for me. It has a lot of build up, a lot of it is good, but it doesn't really earn the payoff the same way The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable did.
The Menu (2022)
The commentary is pretty basic, but worth watching anyway
The underlying commentary of The Menu is pretty basic, and I think most people have seen variations of this commentary elsewhere: the rich are greedy and vapid, and nobody really likes working with or for them. There isn't really any new nuance that The Menu adds that hasn't been provided by plenty of other movies throughout the years.
That being said, The Menu is a good presentation of an old idea. The editing is slick, the acting is good, the writing is solid, and the story is great. While the commentary it provides is shallow, the presentation is rock solid.
I think the one thing this movie does very well is that everyone in it gets their just desserts. A lot of the time with movies like this, there'll be one or two characters who probably needed a solid eff you but never got one, either because it was inconvenient for the plot or because someone on the writing team was worried about muddying the waters. The Menu acknowledges that everyone in it needs to be told that, and they get it at some point or another.
The backstories for most of the characters are quite thin, but by the same token, I think that works for this movie. Nobody here is really meant to be super relatable or sympathetic, nor are they meant to be uniquely awful. There's definitely hints of what certain people did to deserve what happened to them, but to actually develop it further would have required ten or twenty minutes of dialogue amounting to "...and then the guy at this table did this awful thing, which sounds awful, but wait until you hear about what the guy at the next did; it's just as bad."
Overall, I think this movie did a good job with everything. The commentary was a bit shallow, but unless they were going to do a movie about the horrors of one specific industry, there wasn't really any way for this movie to go deeper without ruining the pacing.
Heart of Stone (2023)
Good spy thriller
I know this one has a low score right now, but honestly, I liked it. It's not my favourite spy thriller of all time or anything, but it's better than a lot of them.
It's not the smartest spy thriller, but by the same token, it's also not actively trying to outsmart the audience. There's twists, but they don't come out of nowhere and everything more or less makes sense given the general flow of the movie. I think this is probably going to end up being one of the more contentious points for this movie because people are probably expecting it to be like a James Bond movie, but this is one or two tiers down the intelligence totem pole.
The action scenes aren't the best ever made, and I wouldn't even argue they're the best action sequences in a movie this year. However, they're not bad, either. The tension is there, Gal Gadot's character never gets a free pass and has to struggle to win, and they all further the plot. So while the action scenes aren't exactly groundbreaking, they're also well constructed and well executed.
In terms of acting, this is probably the best dramatic performance Gal Gadot has ever given. While she's always been a better action actress than a dramatic one and probably always will be, I wouldn't be too surprised if this ends up being remembered as one of her better performances overall.
All in all, Heart of Stone is a good movie. Nothing about it is amazing, but it all gets a solid B. I think most of the people giving it a low score have set their expectations too high.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)
Mixed feelings--good movie, but maybe not the best conclusion to a trilogy
I've marked this as having spoilers, but they're very minor ones.
As a movie, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is fine. It has a lot going for it, even. The action sequences here are some of the best the MCU has had in years, and I think in places even better than in the previous GotG movie. The emotional core is fine, and actually a lot deeper than most previous MCU movies in the past decade or so. Even the concept itself is a solid basis for a GotG movie.
A lot of my contention comes from whether or not this is a good conclusion to the GotG trilogy. If this was going to be an ongoing thing where they did two Peter heavy movies, two Rocket heavy movies, and on and on down the list to make use of the full ensemble like that, it'd actually be a really interesting creative choice. However, this is the final film in what's traditionally been the Peter-heavy trilogy.
Because of that, I'm not really sure if having a Rocket-centric movie was really the best choice here. If they were gonna do the Rocket-centric movie no matter what, then they probably should have replaced a lot of the flashback scenes with scenes emphasising Peter's character arc being wrapped up here. That would have helped emphasise the passing the torch ideas at the end, too.
The other thing this movie did well was that it did wrap up a lot of Peter's ongoing issues. Like yeah, he did have issues with treating women (specifically Gamora) as if they were obligated to be the solution to his problems, and that's been the ongoing thing he's needed to work on through these movies. Getting him to a point where he changed course was always going to have to be a part of the final film and it's good they managed to do that.
So this is one of those things where I think this movie has a lot going for it; I'm just not convinced it was the best final film of a trilogy.
Pet Sematary (1989)
Good horror in places, but uneven
There's parts of Pet Sematary that are very good horror. The last twenty or thirty minutes were actually genuinely horrific--both in what happens, and in the implication that despite what's just happened, Louis had learned nothing from it. The makeup and prosthetics they used for Zelda were also really cool.
On the other hand, there were definitely parts of Pet Sematary that dragged the movie down. A lot of the performances from the adult actors were very uneven--in places, they were passable, but in others, they were horrible. The kid they got to play Ellie was so awful and so annoying that I'm glad she wasn't a huge part of this movie.
Some other reviewers have said that this isn't the worst Stephen King adaptation, and they're right to say it. It's been a hot minute since I've read the book, but this is pretty accurate to what the book was like from what I remember. It's also not the absolute worst in terms of its actual quality as a movie.
However, it's also far from the best. I don't think anyone's gonna argue that this should be the first King adaptation you see instead of Carrie (1976) or Misery. It's more like the one you watch after you've already seen the cream-of-the-crop King adaptations.