Tag: Olivia Cooke

Who would have thought we would finally be getting a sequel to Big Fish. Or is Little Fish the prequel?

Really, Big Fish felt like a very complete story, so it is odd that it would have any follow up.

Oh, Little Fish is a different story. Well, shit.

Let me just take this moment to say that I don’t care what size fish you have. You can have a big fish, a little fish, a spotty fish, or a dead fish, and I equally do not want to cuddle your pet.

I am more of a people cuddler than an fish cuddler. Emma (Olivia Cooke) and Jude (Jack O’Connell) have been dating for some time, hell, they are married. It hasn’t always been easy. They are in a band. Oh, and there is a pandemic affecting the world.

No this isn’t COVID. This was probably made and developed before that. As far as I can remember, this virus seemingly affect people randomly at different levels of severity. What does it attack? The memory. It takes away memories from perfectly healthy individuals. No matter the age. Sometimes it is a slow loss, sometimes it is all in a big bunch, sometimes it is somewhere in between.

People who get the virus lose their lives, forget their loved ones, their kids, their purpose, and it is not great. And sure enough, Jude gets the virus, he starts to forget, so Emma puts all of her efforts into helping him remember, helping find strategies to fight the virus, and hope that her husband doesn’t lose all memories of their relationship and find her a stranger.

Also starring Raúl Castillo.

Surprisingly this scene has nothing to do with Covid. I know what you are thinking. “A memory wiping virus? How is that different than Alzheimer’s?”

Well, slight differences, but honestly yeah, this could be a story about that. The only difference is the sudden big wipes of memory that happens to some characters, which isn’t the most important part of this plot. Treating this like an Alzheimer’s movie that affects people of many ages helps keep it more grounded in reality, and make a lot of sense.

Early on, I didn’t expect much out of the film, but it grabbed me surely over time. I think I cried at least twice during the movie, two notable scenes involving Jude and his memory loss. A speech and a beach walk. With this sort of film, you can sort of tell where the ending is going to be, and the natural conclusion. This is true for this film, and yet despite knowing that, nothing is lost. I am there for the journey.

I loved Cooke in this role, she was so caring and raw. But is she starting to make a theme of movies of “Being in a band with a lover who has a problem affect him and she has to help him out?” At least Little Fish she is the main character and it is about her during this crisis, versus Sound of Metal where she was barely in it.  I hope her next movie is a period piece. Where she is in a relationship with someone in an orchestra, but that person she is courting ends up getting polio or something similar.

3 out of 4.

Screeching, loud, the most awful noises you have often heard, that is likely the Sound of Metal. Oh, this movie means metal music? Fine.

Screeching, loud, the most awful noises you have often heard. Har har har. Okay, I don’t like Metal, but in reality, I just don’t like screamo-metal, it does nothing to me, but it does put me to sleep which is strange given how intense it is.

In this film, the Sound of Metal it turns out will mean more than one thing as well, but I won’t get into that fact. I will say that it definitely feels like a combination of The Sound of Music and The Sound of Silence, which are famous “sound of” things. I think by the end of all of this, Sound of Metal will and should be as famous as those two as well.

The sound of drums go buhbuhbuhbam.

Ruben (Riz Ahmed) is a metal man, not a robot, just a guy who plays metal. He is a drummer, he goes into clubs, he plays it loud. He is in a band with his girlfriend (Olivia Cooke) of a few years. They live their life in an RV, traveling the US, playing gigs, getting money, and moving on. They are working on making a big name for themselves, and eventually, it might work.

But one day, Ruben wakes up with ear problems that don’t seem to go away. He can’t hear well. He tries to perform a gig, and it goes like shit, and so he sees a doctor. Apparently his hearing loss is so bad, and getting worse, they suggest he quits rock altogether. He needs to rest his ears before they can properly diagnose it, and stop it from going even lower, before even considering things like cochlear implants.

Another note about Ruben? He is a former addict. Basically all drugs were his drugs, and he has been clean for four years, but this is the type of thing that will cause a man to break, and his normal sponsor can’t do much if he can’t really hear. So he gets set up in this little out of nowhere place, for addicts, who yes, also happen to be deaf. Joe (Paul Raci) takes him in, to start his process into the deaf community, to learn sign language, even though Ruben doesn’t want any aspect of it. He wants the implants. He wants to continue his rock journey with his love (who cannot stay with him for these weeks).

What is a potential rock star to do? Also starring Mathieu Amalric.

Congrats to the make up team for making Olivia Cooke look extremely homeless.

Sound of Metal is incredible. It gives us a story that isn’t done much, if at all, and really drives into the implications of the events around it. Obviously one person losing their hearing, and trying to cope with it, doesn’t affect a lot of people besides their band mates and friends/family, but there is a lot going on in Ruben’s life and lifestyle that is being uplifted. It is a scary situation for anyone to be in, despite the deaf community being very open and loving community.

In the deaf community, things like cochlear implants have a lot of divisiveness amongst it members, for plenty of fine reasons. This movie doesn’t say one choice is good and the other is bad, because that is clearly up to individuals, but the discussions are still heard and the problems that arise from these decisions are still important.

Ahmed gives a wonderful performance, wearing a lot on his face. We still get to hear him speak, but going through his trauma and potentially career ending injury, either caused by his career or something genetic, can change a lot of people. I also enjoyed Cooke, in the limited screen time she was given, and watching her own transformation. Raci was wonderful, and was a great person to lead the commune given his own real life experiences and deaf traits.

I also have to give it up to the sound editing/mixing teams. They let us go through Ahmed’s journey with him, more or less, and I love that for the most part sign language when used was not given subtitles.

Sound of Metal is hardcore, well acted, and surely one of the better movies of this year.

4 out of 4.

I tried to watch Thoroughbreds when it was still in theaters, but a lot of things got in my way. The screening was during the day. Then I got free tickets to the Alamo over spring break, but couldn’t fit it in with three other movies I was watching during that week. And after those two attempts, I knew I had to wait.

Critic friends gave me lackluster reasons to go out of my way as well.

But I still knew I had to see it. The cast was too potentially good. And I have loved plenty of films that others have not.

Now watch as I refuse to type the title, as it gives me too many spelling anxieties.

Amanda (Olivia Cooke) and Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) are not really friends. They are studying together, they are rich, but they have very different interests. They used to be friends, but things change over time. So why is Lily tutoring Amanda? To rekindle their friendship? To be nice?

No, Amanada’s mom paid Lily to do it. But they eventually found things to talk about, like Amanda’s past with potential animal abuse and the fact that Amanda is a sociopath. Fake emotions, no heart, what have you.

It turns out that Lily has the need of someone with her talents. She is fine with her mom, but her step dad (Paul Sparks) is a bit stranger. He isn’t abusive to her, but he does make her feel uncomfortable. It also turns out that he is going to put her in a boarding school that isn’t fun and kick her out. Things have got to change.

They have got to kill him.

Also starring Anton Yelchin, Francie Swift, and Kaili Vernoff.

There is so much distance between them. Physically, and emotionally.

Thoroughbreds was about two leads who were particularly unlikable. After all, one was a sociopath whose identity in this film was entirely based upon her relationship with the other. And the other is some sort of epitome of first world problems. Some of them are more relevant, but a lot of them just stem from being incredibly rich and lonely.

This is potentially the final new film that will be released with Yelchin in it. I have no idea, because I didn’t know he was in the film until I finally saw it. It wasn’t his best work and he had a small role, so it is going to be a forgettable one if it ends up being his final film.

When it comes to acting, since our main characters are already so emotionless, there isn’t a lot going on there. Cooke is really type casted into these quirky and darker roles, so it isn’t something we haven’t seen before. Taylor-Joy has certainly been better in her other recent genre roles of Split and The Witch.

Overall, this is a film that could have had a lot of potential, but really felt like it dragged due to the longer takes of scenes and build up of suspense. I did enjoy the ending though, and can’t find too many other faults in the film itself.

2 out of 4.

I probably first heard about the Ready Player One four or so years ago, as a book recommendation from a friend. I figured I would rush right out and read it, due to their very appealing sell, but I also had found out that no, they are going to be making a movie out of it. Eventually.

So I did the right thing, and knowingly did not ready the book, knowing one day, Steven Spielberg was going to make the movie. Years later, it appeared!

Now I did hear eventually a general plot synopsis. And I did get to see parts of the book. Especially cringe worthy scenes of nostalgia for nostalgia sake, or lines that were very transphobic. All of it certainly turned me off from the book, knowing I would probably hate it at this point if it wasn’t very well written.

Sign. Somehow I became a book snob when it comes to prose. Blame Patrick Rothfuss. And let’s get on with the nostalgia.

Our star is living in a van down by the river?

RPO takes place a few decades in the future, in 2045. Life sucks by now, overpopulation, war, all the reasons you can imagine. People are living in stacks of trailers to get by and deal with the number of people. Columbus, Ohio is one of the central hubs now! Why?

Well, Halliday (Mark Rylance) and Morrow (Simon Pegg) created a game called Oasis. It is a completely VR experience, where a user is transported into a digital world where they can live their fantasies. They can be anyone. They can be tall, short, strong, fat, boy, girl, something more fluid, whatever they want. The way to buy gear and get better is through in game currency, through leveling up. If you die in game you lose all your items and go back to level one.

Anyways, everyone loves Oasis. It helps them escape their bleak miserable worlds. Wade (Tye Sheridan), our hero, is one of the people in the game hoping to find the three hidden keys to unlock and easter egg. Before Halliday died, he inputted a secret competition, so that the best of the best would compete his crazy challenges. The first one to get all three keys would gain a controlling share of the Oasis, money, and worldwide honor and praise.

But one company, IOI, is hoping to find them first, to change the Oasis into a money making ad tool, and also, do this thing with people slaves. Just general bad stuff.

Also starring Ben Mendelsohn, Olivia Cooke, Hannah John-Kamen, Lena Waithe, Philip Zhao, Win Morisaki, and T.J. Miller.

Hello, totally not Kratos thing!

Ready Player One is a CGI-fest film, taken to the next level, and is animated enough to qualify for Best Animated Film, should they want to go that route. It has obvious references to pop culture throughout it, using the fact that the main creator was a very autistic pop culture junkie, who wanted all of the biggest things in his world. Pop Culture knowledge was supposed to be some sort of saving grace for the characters in the movie, but only one example really helped save the day. Or at least, one non common example.

There is a lot of problems with this film. It is going for a pure popcorn flick, so it isn’t really trying hard on certain levels. Acting is never really believable, and they turn Mendelsohn into a cartoon villain, quite literally with his behavior. It just feels so juvenile.

A lot of artifacts are brought up and clearly used later in the film, but one has to wonder why they exist. Why would they put in an item that kills everyone in the game so everyone goes back to level one? Why? Why would someone make special real life suits for you to wear to feel everything that happens? Most people would just feel pain and hurt in the constant warring atmosphere, its popularity doesn’t make sense.

The game makes you wonder who are the real people behind certain avatars, and well, yeah, for the most part they are all average to attractive looking people. No uglies in this VR world, despite their fears. Come on, almost 30 years from now, in a land where most people just play video games all day? Where are the fatties at?!

One thing that Ready Player One had going for it is that it didn’t feel like a 140 minute film. It was relatively interesting to watch, but it is not something that made me very excited or happy or sad while watching. I just felt indifferent. Throwing a quick scene of a character I recognize into a film isn’t going to increase its grade, it is just going to distract me from the story that is relatively weak.

Ready Player One is a convenient movie (one where things just keep lining up nicely), that relies on nostalgia and an average story and flashy effects to sell the tickets. Easily something that can be better watched at home.

2 out of 4.

My first introduction to Me and Earl and the Dying Girl was described as “Like, The Fault In Our Stars, but better!”

Well, shit. Because I liked The Fault In Our Stars. It felt realistic, well acted, was surprising, and of course I cried. So I guessed this one was another teenage romance about dying kid(s). Or at least, this time the girl is the sick one. And judging by the actress, I can guess her fate since she seems to be type casted.

Regardless, this movie has an excellent title. It has a nice flow to it. So that gets my loins revved up regardless of any other factors. BRING ON THE DEAD TEENAGERS.

I meant literally dead. Not bored brain dead.

The titular character here is Greg Gaines (Thomas Mann) and he is a senior in high school. He is your typical high school movie loaner. You know, under the radar, tries to please everyone yet stay invisible. His best “friend” is Earl (RJ Cyler). Very similar despite their different upbringings. They like old classic films, are generally weird/antisocial, and have secret parody films of classics that they make together.

Nerd alertttttttttt.

And then there is Rachel (Olivia Cooke), the dying girl. She has leukemia now, and leukemia generally sucks. Greg and Rachel were never really friends, but their moms are, and Greg’s mom has DEMANDED that he hang out with Rachel and make her feel better.

Kind of awkward. Making someone hang out with a person just because they have got the cancer. But he has to do it. And this is the story of Greg, Earl, and a Dying Girl.

Don’t worry! There are more than just those three characters. After all, Greg has TWO parents (Nick Offerman, Connie Britton), and DyingGirl has a mom (Molly Shannon). There are other school kids, like Ill Phil the Drug Dealer (Masam Holden), Scott Mayhew (Matt Bennett) leader of the Emo kids, and Madison (Katherine C. Hughes) a hot girl whom Greg tends to get nervous over.

And everyone’s most hated actor from The Walking Dead, Jon Bernthal, plays the history teacher that everybody loves.

Fuck, that kid can’t smile in anything.

I guess the easiest way to describe this movie, after seeing it, is like The Fault In Our Stars, but better.

I kid. They are pretty different. They might fall under the same overall genre, but The Fault In Our Stars is clearly heavily romance based and this one is definitely closer to the discovery of friendship.

I cant even begin to describe all the things I liked about this movie, but I will attempt anyways because this is a review and that is the point of a review. Mann gives a great performance as the lead, his best yet. Cooke hasn’t been in a lot of films/shows, but she is usually decent and she gives a very raw performance here. This is the first real thing for Cyler and he was hilarious in this as well. But literally everyone is great in this movie. Every single person. Well acted all around, good unique characters, and a touching story.

But that’s not all! The cinematography in this film is great. So many well shot scenes, conveying emotion through just the character spacing alone. Because the two males love old movies, the parody films themselves are brilliant as well. It is clearly a movie that loves movies, and as a movie lover, your experience will be even more gratifying. And of course, my personal favorite, some long, one shot scenes with some intense arguments throughout.

At the end of everything, I think I am mostly surprised at how funny the whole thing ended up being. I laughed throughout, even just a bit during the very sad points. I love a good comedy. This is actually Mann’s second comedy/drama film dealing with intense subjects. I also suggest giving It’s Kind Of A Funny Story a chance.

4 out of 4.

Since the Transformers franchise, Hasbro has realized it can print money by having their product turned into loud explosive military forces commercials. So they started to branch out. G.I. Joe movies happened and people were either disappointed or okay with them. Okay. Sure.

Then they said, screw it, let’s turn board games into movies, not just toys. And that is why we have the atrocity that is Battleship.

And maybe after all their action films, they realized that action doesn’t have to be their only go to genre. Why not horror? That is what the kids love these days. Maybe a nice soft PG-13 horror, to get more money and revitalize one of their games. So we all hope that means they are making a new Clue Movie (that could never be as good as the original)? Nope. We are getting fucking Ouija.

This just makes me not want to floss. Are you out to ruin our teeth too, Hasbro?!

Everyone knows for Ouija (/spirit) boards, they only work if someone knows they don’t work and they make their hand move the piece around. You can trick your little bitch friends and get a laugh out of it. Haha, big joke. Well, Debbie Galardi (Shelley Hennig) never really got over it when she played as a kid. She has always felt haunted by it. And now she is in a house alone, found the board in the attic and played by herself, which is a big no no. Next thing you know, boom, she hanged herself. Hey now, it’s just a shitty game.

Needless to say, people find this news troubling. Especially Laine Morris (Olivia Cooke), Debbie’s best friend who also introduced her to the game a long time ago. Eeek. Oh, and I guess Debbie’s old boyfriend, Pete (Douglas Smith), who was in a sexual relationship with her. He is beating himself off up over this for not seeing the signs.

Well, Laine wants to just try one thing before she is willing to let her friend go. And we know what she wants to do. She wants to Ouija board it up to see if they can speak to her, because she thinks something is up.

So she gathers her boyfriend (Daren Kagasoff), her sister (Ana Coto), their friend (Bianca A. Santos), and Pete and they Ouija it up. And hey, someone answered.

But is it Debbie or someone that contacted Debbie?

Come on, you know it’s the latter. Let’s not forget Lin Shaye, she is in this movie like a lot of recent horrors. But we can forget Sierra Heuermann, because I don’t like typing out her last name and want to not do it anymore.

This is the worst depiction of a Lens Of Truth that I have ever seen.

PG-13 (or lower, if they exist?) horror movies are a bane to the genre. We aren’t say that you need swearing, tits, or gore to be scary, but disturbing violence and terror is something they have given to make a movie R before, and I have to assume PG-13 would just be slight or mild terror.

If I had to describe the terror in this movie, I would call it extra mild. Like, no one should find any part of this movie at all scary. Nothing about the board itself is scary (It moves!? It moves with no fingers?! Ahhh!). The entire thing relies on some jump scares between some ghosts that haunt the house and the kids who love to die. The deaths themselves are not creative and don’t come to anyone as a surprise.

But worse than all of that is how incredible boring the movie is. It takes awhile for them to even get their Ouija on to contact the dead friend. It felt like a third of the movie had already passed. Then a longer time before anyone even starts dying. Everyone knows you need deaths throughout a film to keep up the fear. All at the end is pointless.

Once it was over, I was glad. But then I realized how much money this movie made despite its low budget. We are going to eventually get a Ouija 2, and it will suck. Hasbro is going to make movies about Candy Land, Monopoly, and Hungry Hungry Hippos, and they too will suck (not a joke). The only one that could be good is Hungry Hungry Hippos, but only if it is a serious African drama about a herd of scary ass Hippos eating all the things.

Olivia Cooke is being typecasted into these shitty horror movies. The Quiet Ones and The Signal were bad. Here only other real role, that is horror based, is Bates Motel. I hope she sticks to horror TV shows and gets out of these terrible movies before she has no career.

0 out of 4.

I actually had the opportunity to watch The Signal in theaters when it came out. For free. There was a pre-screening one whole day before it came out to make you feel special and I had tickets to go. The only issue was it started four hours after I got off of work and I didn’t want to wait around for the random movie. Hell, even the director told me I should go see it.

But apathy took over, and even the random picture didn’t help.

The only thing that drove me to watching this movie at this point was having the time and nothing better to do. (Which is relative. I had less than 2 hours of time and nothing to do. Plenty of other movies I wanted to see above it).

How I picture the face of William Eubank when he found out I didn’t go.

MIT students come in all shapes and sizes. Like Nic (Brenton Thwaites) who has muscular dystrophy, (which chrome wants to auto correct to astrophysics…foreshadowing?!). He is helping take his girlfriend, Haley (Olivia Cooke) to school, along with his MIT friend Jonah (Beau Knapp). Those two are in trouble with MIT because a hacker named NOMAD hacked into MIT servers using their IPs or something, so MIT rightfully assumed it was them.

But outside of that, Nic wants to end the relationship, because long distance + deteriorating disease = not a good time.

While almost to California, they get strange signals in the middle of nowhere Nevada. In fact, they think it is Nomad. They kind of want to show them a piece of their mind.

Next thing they know, people start flying around, darkness, scares, loud noises. Boom. Waking up in a very white room with people wearing protective hazmat suits around them. And at the center of it all is Damon (Laurence Fishburne), who tells them they have been in contact with aliens and need to be studied. Well screw that. They aren’t lab rats. He wants to get out of there. Hopefully he feels less diseased and more powerful after that alien encounter.

Hopefully.

“Da fuq mate, don’t come near me with your ectoplasm.”

Sorry director who tweeted me. But I am glad I didn’t waste four or so hours of my life waiting to see this movie and then watching it. It had some unique moments in it, especially near the end. But the first 4/5 of the film just felt so weak and underwhelming. I can blame this solely on the actors involved too. I like Olivia Cooke in Bates Motel, but her character wasn’t given a lot to work with. It was mostly Nic with a lot of Damon and neither of them impressed me. They were pushing me towards sleep almost.

It is definitely unique, in a few ways. Lets not take away that aspect. And it is for sure Science Fiction. Some nice turns along the way and a lot of not nice ones.

It is hard to explain just what it bad about this, outside of just being super boring. The side romance plot was also weak, and the other best friend, he can just get out of this movie completely for all I care.

If you had to see a movie about signals, go see Contact.

1 out of 4.

The Quiet Ones is the second horror movie released this month but one that I don’t think was advertised that well.

I saw only the trailer only once the week before it came out. So up til then I knew it was just some random horror movie. Which is how I like it! Let’s not have half of the scary stuff spoiled in the trailer like normal.

But one cool thing is they found a younger Christina Ricci clone.

Alright, this movie takes place in England! Oxford University! In the 1970s. Yes. It has been well noted that cell phones are ruining horror movies, because they have to add in a line about how they have no service where bad things happen. One way around that is to set things in the past.

This story, “inspired by actual events” which means jack shit. It is about Professor Joseph Coupland (Jared Harris), a researcher on abnormal psychology who wants to prove that all the spiritual brouhaha dealing with possessions is baloney. No, he thinks it is simply people with telekinetic powers who have to learn to harness their powers.

So he thinks if he can fix just one person, he can fix all people when the truth is finally revealed.

His patient is one Jane Harper (Olivia Cooke) that he saved from the foster system who believes an Evey is messing with her.

His crew involves two students to help him conduct studies (Rory Fleck-Byrne, Erin Richards), and Brian (Sam Claflin) an audio visual person looking for work.

Also there is a doll. Fuck that doll.

The Quiet Ones goes a lot of places. But one place it doesn’t go is onto my future Blu-Ray rack.

The type of movie allows for some of that fun shaky cam horror stuff, but even more old school, because the 1970’s. We have a classic exorcism like plot, but with “science” instead of exorcism. If I didn’t look it up, I would have assumed this was a James Wan movie based on some of the stuff that occurred.

The film has twists, turns, but unfortunately parts of the plot are so confusing that none of them have any effect. There is a breakthrough moment where Brian sees some of her past files and runs off. It becomes a huge moment, and of course! But we have no idea what he saw. In fact, we never learn. It doesn’t seem relevant at all to what he did.

But yeah, the movie isn’t that great. The fears are all a bunch of jump scares. The ending is a lot of who gives a shit as well.

Just so much about this movie is uninteresting, I don’t think I could suggest it to anyone. Not to mention the title is mentioned just once, and not really relevant to the movie in the slightest. Good times, shitty movie.

1 out of 4.