There are going to be few notes here that aren't exactly reviews. It's mostly because I've rewatched a movie and didn't feel like writing a whole thing on it so I just made really short reviews for Letterboxd and then gathered all of those here.
2.12. Now You See Me 2 (2016) - 4 / 10
Something was missing compared to the first one. It's like they wanted to just cram so many plot twists into this movie it eventually ended up feeling like not that big of a deal.
2.12. Gone Girl (2014) - 9 / 10
Most people are such idiots in this movie, like I think I'd do better than Nick in this film. Like most of all I'd be able to keep my amazing beautiful wife.
But this movie is still so fucking good.
10.12. Ratatouille (2007) - 7 / 10
"Ratatouille is a peasant dish and you want to serve it to the food critic???" she asked THE RAT.
12.12. Blades of Glory (2007) - 5 / 10
We started watching this in the 7th grade and never finished, but I had to watch it now, six years later, because I'm thirsty for Will Arnett.
So the year is ending. It's been a tough year, but there has been many good things about it too. Here's my positive summary of 2016.
This year I've been really into: Quentin Tarantino, Will Smith, Will Arnett, The Lego Movie, BoJack Horseman, Audible's Comedy Show Show, and comedy in general.
Other high points of the year: I graduated, I applied to schools though I didn't get in. I was in the cool Tarantino theme night and I saw Ennio Morricone live. I was drunk for the first time and I started at my internship I'm starting to like more and more.
I've seen about 119 movies in 2016. Here are all the films I saw for the first time and rated 8 or higher.
Written by: John Hamburg, Ben Stiller, Nick Stoller & Justin Theroux, and Drake Sather & Stiller (character Zoolander)
Derek and Hansel are lured to Rome to start modelling again, and they find themselves as a target of a bigger conspiracy.
I saw the teaser and the trailer for this movie when they came out. I especially loved the teaser, and definitely wanted to see this movie. Still I somehow missed in the theatres, or was it even in theatres here? Anyway, I missed it, and all of a sudden it was on DVD, but still I managed to rent it only today.
Zoolander 2 captures you from the very beginning. There's a thrilling chase scene, and very dramatic line: "You can't kill us all. We'll protect the chosen one". I never expected to hear that from Justin Bieber, and I'm not just saying a character played by Justin Bieber, I mean literally... Bieber said that and was shot dramatically. If there's a weirder and hilarious way to start a movie, I'd like to know what it is. (Before you think I'm saying Oh, this is the best beginning ever, I'm just saying it's absurd and the kind of "What the fuck did just happen?" kind of beginning.)
Like the first one, Zoolander 2 is just a blast of weird absurdity that makes you laugh but also makes you wonder why the hell are you watching this. It's ridiculous, but it's the entertaining kind of ridiculous instead of frustrating.
One of the weirdest things I've read about this movie is that it's almost exactly like the first one. Yeah, obviously. Has there ever been a sequel that would be for some reason really original and not at all repetitious? Come on! Yeah, it can be annoying if the same shit is repeated over and over again, but to be honest I'm not the right person to say if the same jokes are starting to get boring, because I've seen the first movie once over a year ago. I barely remember all the jokes.
Yes, the plot of this movie is obviously similar to the first one. The structure is similar. It's just not the first Zoolander movie. The same structure is used in many other comedies, it's just different each time. There are several very predictable plot points, but hey, the movie is fun. Isn't that what's the most important thing when watching comedies?
Zoolander 2 is as good as any sequel. It's funny, it's weird and the cast is amazing. It's a bit updated but still has the same amazing faces. If you like the first one, and aren't too serious about how similar a sequel is, watch it. It might be worth it.
Written by: Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec & Evan Daugherty and Peter Laird & Kevin Eastman (characters created by)
A reporter tries to get proof of vigilantes in New York City and stumbles onto four mutated turtles fighting the evil Foot Clan .
When I started watching this movie, I knew it was going to be bad. I expected nothing else, I knew I was going to hate it. But sometimes you got to watch bad movies. They make you more grateful for the good movies. Also there is always that one actor who makes you willing to watch everything they have been in. You know how these things are! Also I hate typing the whole name of the movies, so I'll try to avoid doing that.
Right before I started watching this movie my friend Lauri mentioned he had seen it. He told me the whole movie had the vibe that it's mostly meant for 10-year-old American boys, which is like painstakingly clear from the beginning. The jokes are super crude and everyone is kind of gross on very many levels. That alone makes this film quite cringe-worthy.
It's obvious this movie was made mostly because superhero movies were and still are so in. TMNT is like those superhero movies: it's at least somewhat entertaining even at it's worst. It's like a bad superhero movie: It's bad, but you can just play it in the background while thinking about something else. The action sequences are not great however. They are definitely way too long. They are supposed to be visually nice, but they really aren't, at least not without 3D, and with 3D they would probably be even messier.
Watching the turtles also makes it very clear that there's no reason for you to make a live action version of TMNT. The CGI is horrifying and all the CGI-characters look so bad. Who looked at these and thought yeah, that's a good idea, let's make a movie?
The turtles caused me some other confusion as well. I've only seen one episode of TMNT when I was like six years old. It is incredibly hard trying to tell the difference between the four turtles. Like sure, their masks are different colours but apart from the weird one and the nerd one, how was I able to tell the difference between the other two? Their personalities seemed the exact same to me.
I complained about this movie more on Twitter, and I think I can summarise those tweets: The dialogue is awfully dumb, and of course really crude. Characters keep making stupid decisions. There's something good in this movie, it comes mostly from the characters April and Vernon and the way April wanted to find out what was going on, but I just didn't want the turtles there and also I felt like the martial arts were a bit bastardised - but I'm not 100% sure about that.
I knew this movie was going to be bad and it was exactly that. So I'm not disappointed, I watched a stupid movie but I was able to admire absolutely mesmerising Megan Fox and super hot Will Arnett, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.
Two fledgling criminals kidnap a pizza boy. They strap a bomb onto his chest force him to rob a bank for them.
I haven't been very active in December, and I'm sorry. It's mostly because I got an internship and my time has been consumed by stress and writing articles. The internship is at a local newspaper. There's been talk that the newspaper might want someone to write about movies there. The editor in chief hasn't said anything about it, but one editor mentioned they have been discussing it. So if I get to do those I'll let you know, and probably upload them once the paper has come out.
But as for now I'm sticking to the reviews and posts I'll do for this blog and this blog only. Well, apart from letterboxd and IMDb, but I prefer doing these here, because then they feel more like my own. Also I can add useless stuff like these two paragraphs. I don't think this kind of useless chatter would be tolerated on IMDb reviews. Or maybe it would be, I'm too afraid to try.
Anyway, the first week at a new job is of course unbelievably stressful. I feel like I don't know how to do anything, I feel useless, all that. So when Friday comes and I finally get home, I just want to watch a fun movie and not think about it. (I have to think about it a little if I want to write a post about it.) What was more important than watching a fun movie was not choosing a movie. I just picked the first movie on my list and went with it. And that movie happened to be 30 Minutes or Less.
I'm starting to really like Jesse Eisenberg as an actor. Yeah, he isn't that great, but the movies are great and the characters he plays are fun. I also like Aziz Ansari, mostly because I like his stand up and I like his show Master of None on Netflix. Those two were the main reasons I was interested in this movie - them and the plot seemed interesting.
Of course after reading about it online, the story of the movie seems more and more wrong. I don't know how many of my readers are aware of the death of Brian Douglas Wells. I only learned about this now, mostly because I was seven at the time it happened and wasn't exactly following news. I'm not sure if I've quickly read through something about the case, but I wasn't really that aware of it. And even if the makers of the movie claim the case of Brian Douglas Wells hadn't inspired the movie, it does feel pretty bizarre how similar the situations are, and how they kind of made that situation into a comedy.
But before I learned about that I actually did enjoy the movie. It is thrilling and funny. Best part of the movie is the dialogue. It's the best kind of dialogue in an action comedy. It's weirdly casual and natural yet it suits the unusual situation. However the plot does have so unfortunately typical plot points we'd all rather just let die. They are easy to predict and frustrating and frankly they are getting old.
I enjoyed this movie. It's okay for an action comedy - action comedies don't need to be good, they just need to be entertaining, and 30 Minutes or Less definitely is. The key note is: it could've been better. Everything about this movie could've been way better, but either the filmmakers didn't think that, or they were satisfied with the decent movie they made.
I've been procrastinating on these trailers, and I have so many trailers on my subscriptions I still haven't watched, which is kind of sad. I've mostly been busy while watching random movies with friends and National Novel Writing Month. I finished my story and ended up with over 72 000 words.
Also last night I went to see Ennio Morricone and the Czech National Symphony Orchestra live. It was astonishing. I would've done an independent post for the concert but I have no footage of the concert so I feel like just me telling it was amazing isn't worth a full post.
But let's watch some trailers!
First one I want to talk about is Old Stone, the first full-length feature film of the director Johnny Ma. It's a psychological thriller about a taxi driver battling bureaucracy and legal manipulation in China.
The trailer is extremely dark. You can see it's going to be extremely thrilling and agonising, while also it seems artistic. It reminds me of is Oldboy by Chan-Wook Park, mostly because of the dark almost brutal shade the trailer has.
I'm not one hundred percent sure what it's going to be about. The plot summaries online are very short, and everything else that's on the trailer is there very quickly and shortly. But still, this movie seems astonishing. It seems brutal in a psychological way and political and just everything that makes a perfect thriller.
Apparently it has come out in USA already, I just hope I'll have the chance to see it in theatres here in Finland as well, but also I think it's just going to end up on a DVD with little publicity, so I'll look forward to renting it.
The next trailer I thought seemed interesting is for Nobody Walks in L.A., which seems to have come out in April already, so I have no idea why the trailer is on my subscriptions. Like why did the channel decide to upload it now? Did it come out on DVD recently? What? Anyway it's about two friends who walk around L.A. Yes, seriously, that's the plot it seems. They talk about their lives and rediscover the city and each other. Sounds lame right?
But wait, if I'm so cynical, why would I want to talk about it? Well, it caught my eye, and if I'd only choose movies I'd be 100 % into, these would be boring. "Oh this movie seems awesome! I'd go see it!" "Oh this movie seems awesome!" over and over again. Who'd care?
To be honest the name of this movie is the reason it caught my eye. It's a bit long, sure, but it's also the kind of name which people notice better than a movie that has a one word like Stone. Seeing a movie titled Stone and Nobody Walks in L.A., which one would you be more interested? Also for some reason the name and the start of the trailer made me think of an amazing Netflix Original series called Flaked.
Eventually the idea of two people is boring if nothing really happens, but it also seems calming. Like It feels like this is the kind of film that makes you feel good about life and it gives you new energy and positive attitude. It doesn't necessarily do all that, but the trailer is so light and fun... It's like sunshine, which is something we need in dark December (holy shit, it's December already?). The trailer makes promises and you hope the movie is able to make those promises come true. Like there will be conflict, but eventually after 93 minutes everything is okay. And I think that's exactly what I need right now, and which is why I definitely want to see this film.
Reasons I'd watchOld Stone: It is a dark, brutal psychological thriller, and that's the best kind! And if you're not afraid to watch movies in a foreign language (and obviously that note is for everyone who doesn't speak Mandarin), go see this. I have a feeling it's going to be amazing, yet it's probably not going to receive the attention it deserves, so give it attention.
Reasons I'd watch Nobody Walks In L.A.: It seems light and fun yet deep, and like the whole movie is going to bring sunshine into my life. It's exactly what I need right now, since it's always dark outside and I don't know how my life is going to turn out. It's like this movie might make everything okay.
