246. Crazy Rich Asians (2018) - September 3rd
This was an utter delight. Skillful and earnest telling of a formulaic story that's supported by cultural recognition and reinforced by heavily stylised filmmaking made this really exciting. My full review can be found here. - 8/10
247. Blood Fest (2018) - September 3rd
I really used to love Rooster Teeth's work, but between this and Lazer Team they're becoming synonymous with outdated and shallow genre savvy storytelling. The overall package isn't offensively bad, but it does come across as very lazy. From obvious and plain-faced call-outs of tropes to nonsense reveals and a baffling ending, this whole thing feels more like a Scary Movie successor than Cabin in the Woods, although its comedy has even less energy than the former and its horror doesn't even approach the latter. I really wanted to like this, and for a few brief moments I did, there are some jokes in this that are real gut-busters and a scene where the meta-commentary is genuinely inspired, as well as consistently excessive and entertaining splatter gore, but those factors barely balance out the film's weak points to make something really middling, and none of what the film brings to the table is unique enough for it to overcome its mediocrity. - 5/10
248. Non-Stop (2014) - September 5th
This, on the other hand, manages to do its sort of throwaway mystery schlock well enough for me to like it. It's not quite the best of its kind, but Non-Stop manages to keep its momentum at all times as Neeson's Bill Marks literally barrels from one end of the plane to the other. There's some attempts as solemnity that go over okay, (Neeson's scene with the little girl is sickeningly cute and I love it, and the reveal about his own daughter being dead goes well enough specifically because of that) and attempts at social commentary that nearly get off the ground, but everything from the cheesy twenty minute timer to the claustrophobic intensity of Neeson's performance, to the obvious fake-outs and the moments where the movie tries to be clever, it all sort of works, if never quite fitting together as well as it conceivably could (The Grey does exist, after all). I've heard people call this the film equivalent of an airplane novel, which could not be a more fitting comparison. - 6/10
249. The Titan (or Titan) (2018) - September 8th
If only films were as good as their ideas; I like slow and thoughtful sci-fi that asks questions about humanity and existence, but everything in The Titan feels half-baked at best, leading to most of its intriguing initial ideas becoming little more than obvious cliches with no real drive to them. The movie sets the mood and suggests greater drama in the future, but it never really capitalises on that, seemingly unsure of where to go until it ultimately decides to fall back on body horror and corruption of science. It's as if the writer had a great concept but ended up writing it as they were making the film, not really cementing story beats and relying entirely upon the performers as the film begins to shift focus from one main character to another. Unfortunately, Sam Worthington, while watchable, doesn't do enough to elevate this material, and is mired in the sheer lack of direction as everyone else. That said, on a personal note, I can't help but bring to mind Mute as I watch this, another bad sci-fi from this year, which fails for completely different reasons. This is less about the quality of the movies, and more about how films like these two sometimes bring me to adjust or reconsider how I rate movies. Ratings in general are an obligation I dislike a lot, it puts all the pressure of a review on a single number and does nothing to further potential discourse, and with films like this and Mute they feel almost useless, especially when the two are put side-by-side. My instinct was to give this a 4/10, whereas all those months ago I gave Mute a 3.5/10, and that sort of difference can be both nothing but minutia and a world of separation. However, both of those ratings are predicated on different sets of criteria; Titan is lifeless and tries too little, while Mute tries too much and ends up failing at everything. One of those is certainly a more easily watchable film, but the other is far more interesting. Does that sort of difference make one a better movie than another? Some might have a hard and fast answer, but after 989 films and counting, I'm still never sure. I'm only really bringing this up because these are both films that try to ask big questions and use a sci-fi frame to help them explore those questions, but I suppose even in that regard these two aren't really comparable. The pacing, the style, the structure, they're all completely different, and even these aren't enough to define entirely why they both fail in such contrasting ways. Do the ideas of a movie, even if poorly explored, elevate it? Does a painful structural failing completely invalidate a film's goals? Maybe I'm I'm overthinking it, but it's really hard to gauge the value of a film that suggests good concepts without exploring them, just as hard as it is to gauge the value of a film that fails at everything it tries to do but tries to do essentially everything. Then, perhaps to invalidate that entire thought process - 3.5/10
250. Lake Placid vs. Anaconda (2015) - September 8th
So, there's yet another Lake Placid movie that's just released, and I've never been able to get my hands on a copy of Lake Placid: The Final Chapter, so I skipped straight past it to the follow-up to the final chapter (I love that horror movie franchises do this; it's always "this is your last chance to see this monster on the big screen" but then they make a bunch of money or someone buys the rights to the title super cheap and we get more. I love that the Friday the 13th series did this twice, and I'm both glad and slightly disappointed that the Halloween series didn't quite pull this).
Anyway, this was a complete waste of time and largely disposable garbage with no real connection between most scenes and is largely an excuse to put two franchises together so that giant crocs and snakes can fight, with CGI so poor that you can hardly imagine how they thought it was worth it; in short, it's slightly better than Lake Placid 3. - 1.5/10
251. Lake Placid: Legacy (2018) - September 8th
Here's the "yet another Lake Placid movie". It's almost as worthless as its predecessor, elevated only in the way films of its ilk like Three-Headed Shark Attack are, in that the film tries to be about something, even if it fails at it entirely. It's almost cute how this film uses its cheap croc horror to make some statements about ethics, but when a movie is this terrible that sort of attempt is a very thin line to walk. Done right, this becomes slightly better than the worst movie ever. Done poorly and you get Deep Blue Sea 2. I mean, all of this is done poorly, but when you get down to this level and watch these sort of movies often enough you find yourself grading these films on a sort of curve, and being slightly more pleasant and thoughtful than Lake Placid vs. Anaconda makes this film not the worst thing ever. At least the pain it inflicts by existing is short, which even technically elevates this stuff above the likes of Transformers: The Last Knight, but I'm not here to rant about that. - 2/10
252. Ocean's Eight (2018) - September 8th
Another case where effort to plot doesn't seem to have gone much further than the premise, the flimsy story of this film is held together and elevated by the combined performances of its leading ladies, who all have a fun time with it and drop a few moments where they remind you how great they are. Bullock and Hathaway are both great and Banchett is never not perfect, with the rest pulling their weight without stealing the show and making the most of what they're given. and that's enough to get over the fact that the movie feels about twenty minutes longer than it should and introduces problems that don't have real thought put in to their solutions. - 6/10
Published September 10th, 2018
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