Tag: Madison Wolfe

I haven’t met a giant in my life yet, but I would be sad if I had to meet it then immediately kill it. They seem rare, and I can’t imagine they are all inherently evil.

But I Kill Giants is a film that definitely has a specific message and propoganda attached to it. Who kills these giants? An elf? A regular human? Is it maybe a collective “I” which doesn’t really makes sense as a type it?

Needless to say, I better see a damn giant in this movie. Or if not a living breathing angry giant, at least a dead one.

Yes, be on the look out for those Zombie Giants. They are the worst.

Barbara Thorson (Madison Wolfe) is not considered to be one of the cool girls at school. She is incredibly nerdy, including being a fan of dungeons and dragons. Besides believing these dragon forces to be real, she also is quite certain that giants are real.

Not just above average people or Sasquatches. But large forces of nature meant to cause harm. Most people don’t open their eyes enough to embrace these threats, and just blame them on tornadoes, earthquakes, or various storms. But they are there. And there are worse giants! There are titans, even bigger and meaner, and yes like the ones from Greek Mythology.

Barbara spends most of her time in her town, setting traps and bait out to track giant movement. She has saved her town a few times and given up grades and a social life to do so. But a new girl in town, Sophia (Sydney Wade), from Great Britain befriends her and helps her on her quest, despite all of the doubt.

While this goes on, a new guidance counselor at the school (Zoe Saldana) is set out to make sure she can actually help Barbara instead of just discarding her as crazy.

Also starring Imogen Poots, Rory Jackson, and Jennifer Ehle.

With a weapon like that, who’s crazy now?!

I Kill Giants is the type of film that feels like when it was written, it was extremely creative and original and a lot of people would have loved its ambition. But then A Monster Calls happened. It happened at the end of 2016, and it is extremely similar. It deal with grief, and large fantasy creatures to help deal with that grief. It involves kids, and parents, and bad things.

I feel bad for I Kill Giants, because I think I would have liked it more if I didn’t already love A Monster Calls. I am not saying there isn’t room in this very specific genre for more films. It is just it wasn’t different enough for me to love it as much as A Monster Calls.

We have a different gendered main character, who does an amazing job (You go Wolfe!). Some different fantasy lore, but overall, the motives behind the fantasy are almost exactly the same.

In other good notes, Poots does a great job as older sister trying to hold everything together, despite limited screen time, and this is possibly the best Saldana has ever acted.

In the end, if you liked A Monster Calls, you will probably like this one as well. If you haven’t seen it, then just think of this as a girl version of A Monster Calls and make a decision to watch at least one of them before you died old and cranky.

(Insert introduction about meaning to watch this film sooner).*

I mean, shit, Mr. Church is supposed to be Eddie Murphy‘s comeback! Or at least that is what I heard one guy said. He can only voice the donkey so many times. And A Thousand Words was really, really bad.

What he really needs to do is to get into some good old fashioned NOT FAMILY comedy films again. They made him great, and he can still do it. This drama rut is slowing him down. But oh well, maybe Mr. Church will change my mind.

And let me drift off into the wind as I ponder this question.

Marie (Natascha McElhone) has cancer and is going to die in about six months. That is what the doctor told her. She has a young daughter, Charlie (Natalie Coughlin) who got randomly selected to be in a better school for rich kids, but their family is poor, and dying won’t help. But then, Mr. Church (Eddie Murphy) shows up in their kitchen.

Turns out he was hired by her ex, who is also now dead. He set aside money for Church to pay for groceries and small expenses. He just has to work there until she dies, and he gets money for the rest of his life. Apparently that dude was loaded. So Church spends a lot of time there cooking, reading, and making life enjoyable.

But that damn Marie just doesn’t die. She doesn’t die until senior year of high school, many years later. Now Charlie (Britt Robertson) is all grown up, still hanging out with Mr. Church and still okay with life.

Well, eventually she does die. And Charlie goes to college. But things go weird, and hey, at least she knows the secretive Mr. Church who is finally ready to live his life the way he wants. Oh man, these two are inseparable.

Also starring Xavier Samuel, Madison Wolfe, Lucy Fry, and Mckenna Grace.

Surprised that Mr. Church just didn’t put a pillow over her head after the first year.

Mr. Church is a very strange film. It is one that feels like it came a few decades too late.

It is also strange in that it feels like it was made to be emotional and perhaps bait some Oscars, but it forgot to tell an actual good story. If you watch it, sure, you might feel sad at some points. You might connect to the main girl character. But it lacks a lot of motivation and purpose for the story.

The story is about a mysterious colored gentlemen showing up at a poor white person’s house, to be their practical servant, who teaches them about goodness and great housekeeping. The mystery man is a savior and helps raise the potential of a little girl. And it just feels…I am not sure, but maybe insulting?

A story that has been told in dozens of ways before, and most of them better. But this film drags on, until Mr. Church will eventually die and in the third stage of Charlie’s life that we get to see. But thank goodness her character had Mr. Church to make all of her hardships go away, because now she knows how to cook like a pro.

* – Intentional bad joke.

Just three years ago, The Conjuring was a big deal. It was my favorite horror film of the year, which is surprising because it was such a main stream film. For the most part, horror has been dominated with the unique indie horrors running around the last few years.

But that isn’t the only reason it was a big deal. It was also noted that it was rated R, not for gore, violence, nudity, language, or anything else. Just R for being too scary. Now, obviously, there are a lot of problems with the people who rate films. But that is still a rather unique reason to give something an R reason and hasn’t really been done much at all before or since then.

The Conjuring had a lot of hype behind it. So much hype that they didn’t just announce The Conjuring 2, but several spin-off movies, which is why we now have the shit fest that is Annabelle. It’s badness didn’t ruin the doll from the first film thankfully.

There is a lot of pressure on James Wan the director, because he can’t go and make a PG-13 sequel. Nor can he resort to gore just to force the R. He had to try and make something just scary enough without cheap methods to get his rating. And well, going into it, I only know that it received the R for “terror and horror violence.” Good job Wan. I hope I am shaking in my boots.

Good thing I have a nun fetish, or else this might have terrified me.

Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) are a ghost exercisting (?) power couple, kicking ass and taking names. You know that, you saw the first film. They also helped all of that Amityville stuff, which you will see parts of early on in this film. During that, Lorraine gets a bad vision that shuts her down for awhile, but they still keep chugging along, albeit at a slower pace.

Across the pond, however, in the Enfield borough of London, England, a family is about to have a real bad time. The Hodgson family is a poor family, led by their mom (Frances O’Connor) who is raising four children on her own, because the father has walked out on them for another lady. Jeez. Her oldest are daughters, Margaret (Lauren Esposito) and Janet (Madison Wolfe), and then two sons, Johnny (Patrick McAuley) and Billy (Benjamin Haigh).

Things begin to go bump and clang in the night. Toys play with themselves. At first you assume poor stuttering billy will be the child in danger, but nope, it is Janet, who starts to sleep walk and yell at unseen demons, getting sick and quite violent. Oh shit, demons and a haunted house, again!

And the Warrens are the couple, reluctantly, who will help make things better. Man, it is really hard to kind of hype a haunted house / demon possession plot line. There are a lot of them after all.

The neighbos in London are played by Maria Doyle Kennedy and Simon Delaney. The local ghost expert is Simon McBurney, a different more skeptical ghost expert is Franka Potente (Hey, that’s Lola!), and Bob Adrian plays the main mean ghost guy!

And those pajamas were played by the same cloth that used to used to be a sail on a pirate ship!

James Wan is a really clever dude. He is consistently making better quality horror films than anyone else out there. I don’t even really like the Insidious films, but I recognize the passion and quality that went into them. I mean, he made the first Saw film! What a scary dude!

And he keeps the scares coming in this sequel. This is not like Annabelle. Fuck Annabelle. This is scary, this is well crafted, this has heart.

Horror films tend to start off of slow, a rare scare here and there, with moments in between scares to calm yourself down, usually before a hectic finale. Well, the scares are everywhere in this film. When I found myself in a time between scares to settle, it sometimes had scares of their own, keeping me on my toes. Hell, it had so many scares, I was even afraid to just hold onto my cup for a drink, thinking I’d shriek and spill it.

And when I say this is well crafted, I can’t believe the camera work for what is a mainstream horror film. The first time we see the house, the camera pans around with the family going about their day, zooming in and around rooms, around furniture, up the stairs, everyone feels like a big open house where tons of mischief can take place. The scenes are so well set up it is a delight on the eyes, even when there is something ghastly on the screen. The best scene was between Wilson and the demon, all one nice long shot, with a single focus and a lot of creepy atmosphere.

I was also excited that the polished look of the film didn’t take away from the fright. If something looks too produced, it can take someone out of the film. And in a lot of horrors, they make it look grainier, or extra dark, or whatever. But this movie wants you to see everything and it adds so much to the overall experience.

And sure, yeah, there are jump scares. But these are high quality jump scares. Jump scares you can see coming and have appropriate build up and aren’t completely random just for the cheap thrill. And audio based jump scares as well. The sounds? They will make you squirm.

Despite my rating, it isn’t perfect. I thought a few lines were cringe worthy, and Farmiga wasn’t on her A-Game. Which is a shame, given how excellent she is in Bates Motel.

I think the only reason I wasn’t scared going to sleep after watching this movie, is because I have had a shitty sleep week and couldn’t help but pass out despite glaring at the shadows in my room.