Tag: 1 out of 4

I remember when the first poster for The Hitman’s Bodyguard came out, everyone just naturally assumed it was a joke. There wasn’t prior knowledge of some mysterious Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson movie, just a poster and a lot of laughs. It was a parody of the poster for The Bodyguard, but you know, dudes. Hilarious.

And then a trailer came out and confirmed everyone’s worst or best fears. This movie was real, and it was an action comedy, and it might be amazing. It could be the next The Nice Guys for all we know, with two talented comedic leads who also know their way around an action movie. A perfect pairing, if you will.

Little did I know, technical issues would get in the way of a good laughing.

Joke about dicks and guns.

Michael Bryce (Reynolds) used to be one of the best bodyguards in the world. Dignitaries, foreign leaders, high CEO level people would hire him in dangerous situations to make sure they made it through safely, especially if someone wanted them dead. He was incredibly thorough with his work, always detailed, meticulously planning every job to ensure the best for his clients.

But eventually, one of his clients got shot despite doing everything right. This put him on the straight spiral downward. A bodyguard is only as good as his rating, and letting a client die puts a hamper on your rating. So now he is a mess of a man, doing shittier jobs. He still does them well, but his heart isn’t into it anymore.

An ex lover, Amelia Roussel (Elodie Young), who works for Interpol one day shows up at his door needing help. It turns out they have in their custody Darius Kincaid (Jackson), one of the greatest hitmen known to man, with incredible aim and very ruthless. He isn’t being charged with a crime, but he is being brought in as a witness against Vladislav Dukhovich (Gary Oldman), a tyrant being charged with crimes against humanity. Apparently Kincaid did a few jobs for him, so he has the inside scoop and is the only person alive who can testify to the deeds.

So of course people want Kincaid dead. And it is going to take an expert to get him there safely, while also dealing with his reckless behavior. Unfortunately, these two gentlemen are also bitter enemies, with Kincaid being the one who killed Bryce’s man those years ago. Oh how will they put this rivalry behind them?

Also starring Salma Hayek, Yuri Kolokolnikov, Tine Joustra, and Joaquim de Almeida.

The more explosions the better, I guess.

I’d love to give a real review of this movie. I’d prefer if I saw it in perfect conditions to really judge or appreciate the film, but alas, I did not.

The screening I saw had very jacked sound quality. Early on it was terrible. Everything that made a sound was louder than the dialogue, so it started off hard to follow. Later on it got better, but it turns out it was just due to less explosions. By the end, it was again an inaudible mess of just sounds and hard to decipher words. It was fucking pointless.

And I have to judge the movie entirely by this fact. Because I am not going out of my way to see it a second time to see if it was fluke. The people working didn’t say it was a mistake and try to fix it. We just got wrecked and they didn’t care, so I didn’t care either. I didn’t know when I would ever publish this review, because it feels pointless. But hey, I published my review of King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, which had even worse issues in my theater, so why not just rail against this movie?

Hayek was fantastic in this film though. She stole the show. Good on her.

Without a doubt, snowmen have always been scary. We had that Jack Frost horror movie, and that other Jack Frost horror movie, all about snowmen!

My first real interactions with snowmen and music however, have also been terrifying. After all, in Cannibal! The Musical we were given the hellish tune of Let’s Build a Snowman, multiple decades before Frozen came onto the scene with their snowman song.

Apparently this one was based on a book, but I am sure The Snowman was supposed to be scary as well.

Is this an alien snowman? Is this movie actually supernatural?

Norway. Winter. It’s cold everywhere, it snows all the time. Basically, everyone is a snowman if you think about it.

And Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender) is a detective for the main Norway police people, and yes, that is his name. He is good at his job, but he also is a bit of a drunk and going through a life slump. A new recruit to their agency is Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson), who has a lot of spunk and drive. She thinks a series of disapperances are similar to a few done years ago in a different Norway town, so she is ready to investigate!

Aw, so young and naive. And maybe oh so right.

A few murders, a few snowmen based deaths, and sure yeah, I am sure someone is behind it and just fucking with them all. And to think it is happening as they are trying to finish a bid for some non Olympic winter games event too.

Also starring Michael Yates, Ronan Vibert, Chloe Sevigny, Charlotte Gainsbourg, David Dencik, Jonas Karlsson, Toby Jones, Val Kilmer, and J.K. Simmons.

I think this is the first time I have ever seen the :/ used in any real context.

In The Snowman, there is a good mystery plot in there, somewhere. A lot of it may have been on the cutting room floor, or it may have never gotten shot. According to the director, he talked about why the movie was terrible, before it was even released in America. It was released a week early in Europe and met with so many bad reviews he just had to admit the whole thing I guess.

It quickly went from a “I can’t wait to see this film!” moment to “Oh man, how much of a train wreck will this be? Can’t wait!” feeling. And trainwreck it was.

Which is a shame, because Fassbender isn’t acting bad in the film or anything, it is just the plot is so shitty. There are motivations behind the characters, but the herring is so red it should almost be a scarlet herring. Or bloody herring. So much side plot is technically relevant, but so badly explained it just feels slightly shoe horned. And when we get our big dramatic reveal (which isn’t too hard to guess), it is explained so poorly it just feels. Well, badly written.

Which is a shame, because the novel by Jo Nesbø I am sure is really swell. He has written a lot of books, so he must have some talent. But now my introduction to his work just smells of…wait. Herring. Yeah, it smells like old yucky herring.

The Snowman is poorly put together work of film, despite some cool elements. Probably just avoid this one forever and read the book instead.

Hooray the Coen brothers! Their last picture was Hail, Cesar! Which I have a 4 out of 4 to, but in retrospect it was a weak 4. It was just so bizarre and atypical for films that I couldn’t hate it.

So I had pretty high hopes with Suburbicon. It is set in the past, it has quirky characters and a murder plot so fowl. It is probably going to be similar to Fargo just with worse accents.

I really wanted to see it but I was surprised at the lack of, well, anything about the movie. Advertising was basically nonexistent for this film, like it was meant to be buried before it even premiered. And damn it, George Clooney is the director, his name used to mean something.

Maybe some elements will also bring us back to Falling Down.

Welcome to Suburbicon! A community set in the 1960’s or early 70’s. Life is perfect here. There are jobs, there are families with husbands and wives, there are kids who play baseball in the lots. There are no big fences between their houses, there is no crime, and everyone is happy, happy, happy.

And then a new family moves in, the Mayers (Leith M. Burke, Karimah Westbrook, Tony Espinosa). They are black. This sort of thing really shakes up their community, as apparently most of the families left their homes to move here just because of how white it is. They think this family will ruin their community and will go out of there way to make their stay miserable until they decide to leave.

But that is only one small part of the movie. The other part deals with the Lodge family. Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon) is running his own business, living with his wife Rose (Julianne Moore), who is in a wheelchair, and son Nicky (Noah Jupe). Sometimes her twin, Margaret (Moore), also stays with them. After Nicky ends up playing baseball with the new neighbor’s son, the Lodge family are woken up by two goons (Glenn Fleshler, Alex Hassell) who are threatening and mean.

This leads to a death in the family, which is only the first of a series of weird things to occur after their new neighbors arrive. It turns out that this area might not have been as happy as everyone had imagined.

Also featuring Oscar Isaac as an insurance man.

I’d let him give me an insurance adjustment anytime.

There is something odd about Suburbicon, in its core, that makes it really hard to get into for a really long time. With wonderful dark comedy writers at the helm, you would think it would be a surefire hit, or at lease a cult classic. But this will not be either of these things and it will be promptly forgotten in the annals of cinema.

Is it like Fargo? Yeah, a bit, but Fargo had charming characters that you could invest in on both sides. This movie basically has a little kid and a neighbor family that is a distracting subplot.

And maybe that is a bigger problem with the film. As the intro goes, it is clear that the ideal utopia place to live is super white. It is clear that there will probably be a black family to move into the neighborhood and force some issues. And these things do happen, but only to provide a rather large and awkward distraction of the main plot.

I’m an America as racially divided and tense as it is right now, how could they decide to treat a real issue facing people now as some sort of fluff piece? It shows real anger and scary situations, but every time it heads back to the main family with their insane plot it reminds the viewer that “no, they are not important. This white family is really the important one.”

The reason for all the chaos makes sense. By having it in the background, we are able to give a reason why all of the film’s plot can take place without too much notice. But even if it makes sense, it is still an incredibly insensitive and poor choice for the creators to make.

The acting is fine. Some of the twists are fine. Oscar Isaac was great in his two scenes. Top notch. It slightly saved it from a 0.

Look, it is July, and here is a review of a foreign movie! Usually these reviews happen really late or really early in the year, and usually for award reasons. It is hard for me to go out of my way normally, unless something really captivates me, or I hear good things, or I am in the right mood.

And then I found Cave, which really fits none of these categories. But it was under an hour and a half, on Netflix, and about a subject that had some interest to me.

This movie out of Norway has only a handful of actors and the description implies a lot of thrills, so it seemed like an easy no-brainer for the site. However, going into it I want it to be warned: Despite being a Norwegian film and the language being Norwegian, this movie is in English dubbed. Or Spanish! Netflix didn’t have the original language as an option with subtitles.

Fuck, from this image, this movie might as well be French.

Time for a reunion for three friends, Charlie (Heidi Toini) (a girl), Adrian (Mads Sjøgård Pettersen), and Viktor (Benjamin Helstad). They are all war veterans and have been friends longer than before that.

In fact, Viktor and Charlie used to be a couple. Now, ten years later, it turns out that Charlie and Adrian are a couple. Only awkward if you make it awkward.

They decide to go cave diving together as a sort of reunion, to reconnect, because it has been some time. They are going into a cave where the exit has not been mapped out yet in its waterways, so as adventurers, they are going to check it out and try to be daring! Hooray!

And then some bad stuff happens, some dark secrets in those dark caves. Oooh, scary.

Also starring Ingar Helge Gimle as another extremely minor character.

This is not a spoiler because you can’t fucking tell what is happening.

Although normally I am a component for dubbed films and don’t care about the dubbed vs subtitled debate, this film suffered more from dubbing. We got three middle aged, probably in their 40’s old war people going cave diving in the middle of nowhere. They are gruff and experienced. And the two guys sounded like surfer dudes in their 20’s. Even if the film on its own was decent plot wise (it wasn’t), I couldn’t take anything they were doing seriously.

Nothing screams out real when surfer guys talk about the war and how serious being in a cave is. So much early just felt like a sarcastic joke, that the film felt like it was dragging despite its incredibly small run time.

The plot itself is pretty bad. It has appropriate foreshadowing to figure it all out, but it never really feels tense. You just feel that the characters aren’t actually as smart or believable as they say they are. I don’t know a lot about going into caves or cave diving, but I am pretty certain they make a lot of obvious mistakes and don’t look like professionals.

More importantly, there is a lot that goes unexplained in the film. Maybe they were hoping for a sequel. (Oh hey look, Cave 2 on IMDB, and one of the actors is listed again but with a new character name. What?) Maybe they were hoping we would draw our own conclusions, which I thankfully did do. A conclusion that said that this Cave movie stunk.

So many January films, so little time. In January, most of my reviews were of Oscar quality films, trying to catch up before the Awards ceremony of everything that would be nominated. So I missed a lot of January releases, and to be fair, a lot of them didn’t even have prescreenings.

The Bye Bye Man had a prescreening, it just wasn’t worth me leaving my house for.

January horror films can be some of the worst things to sit through. For some unknown reason, they really want to make January the second scariest movie after October. They really don’t have to try that hard though, given the quality of the movies that come out in that month.

It would be hard to find someone that isn’t scared of how bad things like I, Frankenstein are.

Yeah, still not as scary as The Legend of Hercules.

A long time ago, some weirdo with a rifle decided to kill his friends and family in a small suburb, then he killed himself. He kept saying “Don’t Think It, Don’t Say It.”

Now lets fast forward to the now times. A group of kids in college, ready to take over the world. We got Elliot (Douglas Smith), his girlfriend Sasha (Cressida Bonas), and their friend John (Lucien Laviscount). They get a house together off campus, you know, for college things.

Eventually, Elliot starts seeing some weird things occur with a coin they find in a night stand. This night stand is something they just bought in a sale and brought over to furnish the place. It is full of strange writing, erratic, “Don’t Think It, Don’t Say It,” like a crazy person.

Blah blah blah, a seance happens in their place, from another friend (Jenna Kanell), and things get even more trippy. The friends start to hallucinate, thinking of this Bye Bye Man fellow (Doug Jones), with a dog, and train sounds. Just acknowledging his existence is enough to get him to mess with your life, and so the more people you talk to about him, the more people who will die or get killed. Hooray!

Also featuring Carrie-Anne Moss, Erica Tremblay, and Michael Trucco.

This part is amusing if you imagine Abe Sapien from Hellboy coming at you instead.

You know what, if I was just analyzing the plot, or the acting, or the characters themselves, this would be an easy 0 out of 4. But I was intrigued by one, and only one aspect of the movie. The camera work was top notch. The opening scene really sort of drew the viewer in, with a few longer takes, having this random guy take a rifle and shoot his family and neighbors.

I really enjoyed the opening, which had a tragic moment happen in the bright sunlight, it felt fresh. And when it got modern, the film got darker. More scenes took place at night, or with tinted lenses to really give that…modern edgy look or whatever to them. Because now we are dealing with college students, living on their own, party party! The film got notably uglier, but the camera work was still pretty decent from my point of view.

And yet, that is the only positive notes. As I already said, plot bad, acting bad, characters bad. Tone was bad too. Mythos for The Bye Bye Man was all over the place. It really made writing the whole movie quite easy when you can just say the characters hallucinate whatever with extreme detail to get them to do anything. It feels lazy.

Also our star, Douglas Smith? Honestly, he has such an uncharismatic face, it is annoying to watch him for most of this film. Which is mean. I don’t hate you as a person Douglas Smith, but you don’t match the role that you were given.

This film is an easy pass, but it will probably have thirty sequels, because YOLO.

Oh my damn. Here we go. A continuation of a bad franchise, hitting its trilogy mark after an equally bad spinoff. Does that sound familiar? This summer is Deja Vu-ing.

I will be honest when I went in with the lowest of expectations with Despicable Me 3. I mean, how could it get worse? It really couldn’t. It would just be more of the same, probably.

But it was announced over a year ago that Trey Parker, of BASEketball, Cannibal! The Musical, and yes, South Park fame would be voicing the villain. Parker! Crude humorist! Apparently it is something a lot of R rated people do, voice a kids movie so that their kids can finally see something that they have done.

At first I thought it was just another rando-celebrity signing instead of a nice voice actor. But then I remembered that Parker is a voice actor, he voices a shit ton of characters. So it won’t just be his regular talking voice, but an actual character! Hooray!

And that character ends up sounding up mostly like Randy Marsh.

And if you look closely, it should look a bit like a Randy too.

For whatever reason, this franchise still exists with the title of Despicable Me, because as we all know, Gru (Steve Carell) is now a “good guy” taking care of his girls and his wife, Lucy (Kristen Wiig), who needs no taking care of. They are both members of the Anti-Villain League, and you know, trying to stop the bad guys.

After a failed encounter with Balthazar Bratt (Trey Parker), an 80’s kid TV star whose show was cancelled due to puberty, and now world villain playing his character as an adult and relying on 80’s themed reference weapons, Gru and Lucy are fired from the AVL! Boo new director (Jenny Slate).

Sad times, being fired and jobless. But he promises to not resort back to villainy, for his girls (Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier, Nev Scharrel. Note: the last one is new, Agnes used to be Elsie Fisher but I guess she got too old). Also, hey look at the timing, he gets a notice that his long lost twin brother is looking for him. Apparently his parents got divorced when they were babies and they decided to break up the twins. The fuck, right?

Blah blah blah, his brother is Dru (Steve Carell), super rich and lives in a land that is like Denmark, or Northern Europe. It is time for Gru to learn about the family business…being a bad guy! His dad was a famous bad guy, and now Dru wants Gru to teach him how to be bad. Oh no.

Also featuring the voices of Steve Coogan, Julie Andrews, and Adrian Ciscato.

Don’t worry, Dru also speaks in a high pitched voice to help tell them apart.

Despicable Me 3 is basically as bad as I had imagined, but not worse. For those keeping track, I am saying that Despicable Me 3 is a better movie than Cars 3. It had issues, but not as many. It had some better moments, but not too many.

It is another franchise that decides to keep adding permanent characters to keep things interesting, instead of just making an interesting story with the characters we have. Last one we got Lucy, now we have a now twin brother Dru. However, having Gru’s father being a very famous villain/criminal who was super successful, is shit. They show photos of him in the new lair, and yes, he looks like Gru. So somehow Gru, master villain himself, has never heard of another bad guy who is older than him but looks almost identical? Unheard of. It is such a cheap cop out to introduce sudden new family members, and quite lazy.

Speaking of characters, there are too many and therefore not enough plot for all of them. Like poor Edith, I think that is the middle kid. She just exists in this film. She has a handful of lines, but doesn’t have her own story like the other two girls. Their stories Margo and Agnes, are incredibly minor though and just feel like filler because of too many characters.

The movie has the minions leave Gru, because they need to be bad things and need a villain, but he doesn’t want to. Hooray less minions right? Nope. Two of them stay behind so we get to have them with Gru still, and we get to see their minion adventures as they wander the town and prison.

I guess I don’t have a lot more else to say. With Despicable Me 3, you get a lot more of the same. The plot is weak, the sideplots are weak, some catchphrases to get people quoting the film, the animation is kind of shit (where the characters are all extremes, like too thin, too fat, etc), but that has been the norm. Just another bad animated film in the year with a lot of bad animated films.

The “of the Planet of the Apes” films have been met with some pretty critical acclaim in the last few years, especially after the rebooted Planet of the Apes film was so dismal.

And hey, for Rise? I totally agree. An amazing film, great acting and a plot that made me cheer for Apes instead of just humans. Just a silly romance subplot stopped it from being a great film.

Unfortunately, Dawn just didn’t really do much for me. It was an okay film, but I believe it received more praise for being a pretty standard plot, but with Apes instead of tribal humans. Some cool moments sure, but it was also forgettable.

I had no idea what to expect for War, but I would hope with a long run time, it would put an end to humans once and for all, so the Ape society can begin to grow into what we already know is the end goal.

Which is horses and apes riding horses in the future, right?

War is set only a few years after Dawn, where the apes have mostly gone into hiding in the woods. Koba (Toby Kebbell) is the one who started the fighting with the humans, and Caesar (Andy Serkis) ended it. A few apes are still pissed off and left to rabble rouse, but the rest of the apes just want to live alone. However, humans don’t give a fuck, blood was spilled, and they want revenge. So they keep venturing into the woods, hoping to take out Caesar and the rest of the apes will scatter.

Thanks to a scouting mission, a few apes found a desert on the other side of the mountain where the apes would be able to flourish. Humans are super dying out so they are likely to leave them alone.

But leave them along they don’t. A small raid enters their compound hoping to get Caesar, but get some other apes instead. Boo, hiss. Caesar mad. Caesar wants revenge on the soldier in charge of the humans in the area (Woody Harrelson). So he takes his very small band of soldiers on a potential suicide mission.

Starring Gabriel Chavarria as a human soldier, Amiah Miller as a human deaf girl, and a whole lot of people as apes. Like Judy Greer, Steve Zahn, Terry Notary, Aleks Paunovic, Devyn Dalton, and Karin Konoval.

“Well, are you feeling lucky…Ape?”

Trilogies usually go one of three ways. There is the the rare but incredible trilogy that is amazing with every iteration. There is the more common trilogy where the sequel surpasses the first and the last film is a let down. Or there is a trilogy where it starts off good, and each iteration loses a bit of its soul, giving us a worse and worse film.

And a lot of you would assume this might be the second trilogy because people loved Dawn, but to me, this is the third type of trilogy. Dawn was okay, War was kind of shit.

At almost 140 minutes with War in the title, you would expect a giant battle to, most likely, bring about the end of mankind to start this whole Planet of the Apes thing. Maybe. Well, the Caesar journey with his band takes awhile to follow the humans. On the way, they have another Ape who can talk who joins them, and a deaf girl. This part drags, and even when they make it to the human encampment it drags. I found myself falling asleep, despite being an early screening and having finished an energy drink before it.

The ending is about the apes being enslaved and needing to get to get broken out of a prison system where they are slaves, and the humans are fighting with each other. There is also a new iteration of the Simian Flu, that causes humans to lose their voice and potentially become aggressive, reverting them back into a more primitive form.

The ending break out is not a brilliant plan. It involves the humans being incredibly incompetent. When plot necessary, apparently no one is standing guard at the military compound, so a little girl can walk in and have a long conversation. When necessary apparently a guard will behave like someone who has no military training, and no one else will be on guard duty. When necessary, the fighting between humans will stop enough so that the humans can fire on some apes that none of them were able to notice even escaped. This scene includes a soldier that is so upset with these apes, that he cannot stop firing despite a looming other human threat, that he cannot turn around to get his own grenade launcher. When necessary, an ape looking for redemption will use a weapon to take out a single human, instead of just doing the more obvious move to complete the task that Caesar was trying to complete. When necessary, a giant deus ex machine straight out of Mulan will save the day, but this time no daisies are involved.

The ending is a mess, the middle is a bore, and the beginning is predictable. I didn’t even get into the ridiculousness of the Simian Flu change, and deciding to have a girl who was deaf for real, not deaf for flu reasons. War for the Planet of the Apes is a waste of a film that tried to go a deeper, personal route, and just left feeling a bit superficial.

Havenhurst came about on my radar because, like at least 50 reviews on this website, my flashdrive was left at home and I needed something.

But I will admit I liked the name. It could technically be considered a calming or warm sounding place, but at the same time, the opposite of all that. It brings up the idea of a haunted house, thanks to those double H’s. It could really draw up some fears of isolation or claustrophobia.

Then again, the main draws for me for this film were the short run time and the fact that I recognized a lead. I am but a simple sheep, at the end of the day.

Havenhurst harks homeless hotties and heinous harbingers of hazard. .

Jackie (Julie Benz) loooooves her alcohol. In fact, she is an alcoholic. But she is trying to get beyond that, going to those meetings and getting her life back on her feet. Thankfully, there are many opportunities for her.

One of them is Havenhurst, a hotel/apartment esque building that offers homes and rooms for those working on recovery. They can stay there as long as they need, unless they return to their vice, whatever it is. Then old Eleanor (Fionnula Flanagan) will evict them, no questions asked, and they are on their own to make mistakes, never again to return.

Well, Jackie had a friend there, Danielle (Danielle Harris), but she went missing. She might have been evicted and gone somewhere else, but she hasn’t seen her in so long she suspects maybe some foul play.

The hotel seems to change over time, some of its hallways, and she hears screams occasionally. Thankfully she has a foster kid sidekick (Belle Shouse) and a cop friend (Josh Stamberg) to occasionally have them listen to her theories.

Also featuring Toby Huss, Douglas Tait, Dendrie Taylor, and Jennifer Blanc-Biehn.

“Oh no a bad guy, get him little girl!”

Havenhurst opens with a death of a character. Sometimes horror films take awhile to get scary, Havenhurst said no, death first, then plot, then more death. The death just felt silly though, without context, putting me in a mood ripe for making fun of the film. It doesn’t help that this film attempts to maintain some levels of mystery so that the viewer can sort of play along with our hero, except that right away we know that yeah, there is some murders afoot, so she isn’t crazy.

And a film has an uphill battle if it wants to maintain some suspense while also basically letting the viewer know a whole lot more than the characters. Usually mysteries are from the point of view of the protagonist with a few teasing moments.

I am annoyed at how un-seriously I took this film. Because when it revealed a bit more information (in a pretty silly way), I loved the idea they presented. Again, it was presented in a bad way, in more ways than one, but the connection to American lore was top notch.

Havenhurst has below average plot, acting, thrills, and more. Thankfully it is short and we can all move on from this film.

When did The Space Between Us come out? Shit, I don’t remember. This year maybe, or last year and I am super far behind. [Editor’s Note: It was this year! First week in February, I am not super far behind!]

I think I received an invite to this one, but a better looking movie was at the same time. I didn’t know anything about this film either, based on a book, some sci-fi romance plot, and that is it.

Poor Asa Butterfield, he is getting typecasted into a lot of weird roles. And if he had kept his mouth shut, he’d be Spider-Man probably (which is also, technically, weird). It’s good to be able to follow your passions when you are this young, I guess.

Riding on a motorcycle without a helmet is not a good passion to follow.

At long last, humanity is going to reach a new level! We are going to Mars. Not as visitors, but as new tenants, to terraform parts of the area. To live, and study and make a viable new home for mankind. It has long been the dream of Nathaniel Shepherd (Gary Oldman) since he was a child, and now he is at NASA leading the expedition from home. A team of astronauts, led by Sarah Elliot (Janet Montgomery), are willing to dedicate their lives to getting there and staying there, for science and shit.

Except Sarah had a secret, even from herself. She was newly pregnant. So on Mars she gave birth to a boy, Gardner (Asa Butterfield), and died during childbirth. The first human born not on Earth, amazing. But also a PR disaster, so NASA agreed to keep the boy a secret. Being born in a weaker gravity would mean that the bones would develop also more brittle, and he likely would never be able to come to Earth. Keeping him a secret was the best way to save their mission and the boy.

Well, a decade and a half later, Gardner is weird and lonely, the only child still on Mars. He has the internet and communicate with people of Earth, but he knows the severity of keeping his secret. One girl he talks to, Tulsa (Britt Robertson), seems like his dream girl, but long distant relationships are terrible. And with enough begging and pleading, they finally decide to bring him back. He has a lot of surgery to add stuff to his bones, but this is the future so whatever. He flies back to earth, and has some issues.

BUT HE DIDN’T COME BACK TO EARTH TO BE TESTED. He came back for love. To find Tulsa. Also to figure out who his daddy is, that too matters. And he won’t let anything get in his way, gravity, nothing.

Also featuring BD Wong, Carla Gugino, and Scott Takeda.

And he won’t let a lack of gravity keep him from getting dat kiss.

Where’s that Hercules disappointed gif when you need it? This could have been an incredibly amazing movie. One that brought all viewers to tears, with its beautiful actual star crossed lovers story. But it was driven down in mediocrity.

At the beginning of the film, there was potential. Sure the whole thing looked incredibly cheesy. Like a hallmark send off to Mars instead of how it might actually look. The interview with the crew before where Sarah awkwardly answered questions and no one else spoke was uncomfortable, but still, the story was a really great one.

And then he got to Earth. And then it wasn’t just awkward it was just a let down. They were on the run from the NASA security trying to get him back, because of course, his body was failing him due to disease, gravity, whatever. But it just failed to reach any deep or meaningful level.

And damn it, it was so close to an amazing story. Well, the idea was close to an amazing story. What was delivered was just trash. This might actually be an average movie, but I left with a worst taste in my mouth just because of how badly it presented a good idea.

The day after watching it, I could hardly recall anything of note. It just is not a film that will stay with you based on how incredibly underwhelming the whole thing ends up being.

When the first trailer for Monster Trucks hit the scene, the internet latched onto it and immediately made it feel bad for existing.

I was a bit excited. Yeah, it could have been a shitty kids movie. It could have been made as a concept just to sell toys. The fact that it came out in January could mean something.

But I was just impressed that they came up with an original concept. Good or bad, clearly this is them trying SOMETHING different. Something that could be cool. Something that could spawn them a television series and make them money.

Who knows, maybe this movie will be so good on a minor level that it will try to run for president one day. What do I know?

Oh no a selfie? Clearly this is a work of millennials and must be made downtrodden!

Tripp (Lucas Till) is your average high school kid. In that he is bad at school and works in a junkyard shop. Not entirely sure if that is average or not, but it has a high percentage of appearances in movies. His dad (Frank Whaley) is an oil field worker, this is North Dakota by the way, and his mom (Amy Ryan) is dating the town’s sheriff (Barry Pepper) who is always on his ass.

Well, while junking in his yard, a mysterious amphibian looking animal scares him! Ahh! Miles away, at a fracking site (and thus, evil), while drilling under a lake, and these creatures came out of the drill site and messed things up. This company, led by Reece Tenneson (Rob Lowe), is able to capture two of them, but one of them escapes, as we know. And there is also a geologist (Thomas Lennon).

Anyways, basically this alien or prehistoric lifeform that likes oil becomes friends with Tripp. And he merges into Tripp’s big truck that he is building that doesn’t have an engine. And through prehistoric lifeform magic, he lives happily around the truck and it is used to help them run from the bad guys. You know, typical stuff.

Also featuring Jane Levy, Danny Glover, and Holt McCallany.

How could they do that just go and have an alien orgy in a PG movie like this?

Monster Trucks, honestly, could have been a really fun film. But they took the creatures and did what? Well, hid them in a truck mostly. They made a truck behave cooler than normal and that on its own isn’t fun.

If that truck shot out laser beams or had rocket boosters? Maybe. But this thing could like, jump higher. Higher than normal trucks, because trucks on their own don’t jump without ramps.

And yeah, this film is just a complete drag. The conflict is all of the same, shady people trying to get their monster back, kid doesn’t want them to get the monster back. I am not saying he is in the wrong, it is just. Yeah, boring.

Monster Truck should have done something to really give more to the monsters in the movie. Slightly abnormal trucks are not worthy of their own movie.