Random3 Reviews

Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)

A mild improvement on one of the worst superhero movies ever made.

[3/10 · 21 March 2021]

I am a firm believer that creative freedom is always a good thing. Zack Snyder's Justice League is ultimately a success because it proves that with enough fan pressure, major studios will give directors complete creative control and allow them to make a big-budget four-hour R-rated movie. This isn't a focus-grouped studio-meddled cash grab. This is a director doing exactly what he wants to do, for better or for worse.

However, and this is apparently a hot take...

Zack Snyder's Justice League is not a good movie.

I'll start with the positive. Cyborg and Steppenwolf have a modicum of characterisation now, rather than zero. The awkward, unfunny, tonally inconsistent comic relief quips have all been removed, and the role of awkward, unfunny, tonally inconsistent comic relief has been given entirely to one character. However, the movie is still built on the utter nonsense from Man of Steel and Batman V Superman. It still has extremely clunky dialogue. Many of the absurd scenes from the 2017 cut are fully intact here. This is a terribly written movie where characters repeatedly say exactly what they are thinking out loud to themselves. This is a movie with hilariously inconsistent physics. This is a movie where the villain looks and sounds like a video game villain, although this time he appears to have come from a PS5 game instead of a PS3 game.

This is an ugly movie inexplicably presented in 4:3 aspect ratio for no fathomable reason. Any modern movie usually has a LOT of character and camera movement, and this is even more present in action movies. When you don't film in widescreen, you cut off 30% of the screen. There is no valid stylistic reason to do this. Justice League is not The Lighthouse. I do not understand why Snyder chose to do this for an epic sci-fi fantasy movie.

The Snyder Cut is better than the 2017 cut only by virtue of being literally twice as long, but even then at least an hour of the film is dead weight. It manages to plug a few holes in that extra runtime, but a significant portion of this four hour cut is completely redundant. This is not a complicated story, and for some reason it takes four hours to tell it. A movie being long isn't an inherent negative, but Justice League is not The Lord of the Rings. It absolutely does not need to be four hours long.

I think overall I admire the fact that Snyder was able to do this. The whole backstory as to how and why this happened is fascinating, and I fully support giving directors the chance to do this in future. I believe that The Snyder Cut is 100% the film Zack Snyder wanted to make. But regardless, Zack Snyder's Justice League is only a mild improvement on one of the worst superhero movies ever made. 4/10.

The Hate U Give (2018)

The film kept catching me out with how it was willing to do the opposite of what I expected.

[7/10 · 28 November 2018]

I was expecting this movie to be extremely biased and that it would spend the entire time shoving its agenda down my throat. Rather than being a one-dimensional rant on how cops should stop shooting black people, it was instead an interesting examination of one teenage girl and what she goes through after witnessing her friend get shot.

The shooting scene itself was actually a lot less biased than I was expecting. The cop wasn't overtly racist, and his mistake was presuming that the black man he stopped was holding a gun rather than a hairbrush. And when he realised what he had done he acknowledged that he made a mistake. It was more of a subconscious, institutional prejudice rather than him just being a racist.

The black man who was pulled over was also not presented as a flawless, totally innocent man. We know he is a drug dealer. We see him refuse to cooperate at least three times. When the cop tells him to stay with his hands on the car, he instead decides (stupidly) to reach into the car and grab a hairbrush. Because this is totally the time and place to brush your hair.

So to summarise on that point, rather than simply having an innocent teenager being murdered by a racist cop, as so many other films would do, we actually see the teenager get shot due to his own lack of cooperation and idiocy. This I think is a far more realistic and less biased way to present something like this. A black cop explains this explicitly in a later scene, that if the victim had cooperated then this would have been avoided. The same black cop also states that he would have done the same in the same situation, adding that he would not have fired his weapon if the victim had been white. The film cleverly doesn't praise or condemn this, it just is what it is.

There were black cops that were just as bad as the white cops. There were also both black and white cops that were presented as just doing their jobs. Starr's white boyfriend Chris explains why when he sees black people he doesn't see their colour, whereas Starr's father immediately sees Chris as a "white boy". A black cop explains why he would have done the same as the white cop when he shot the black teenager. The film kept catching me out with how it was willing to do the opposite of what I expected. And it made the film infinitely better by presenting multiple sides to a complicated issue, instead of treating its audience like idiots and preaching to the choir.

__________

Now, my problems with the film:

The film literally opens with a black man telling his family how to behave when a cop inevitably pulls them over for no reason. Thankfully, the rest of the film wasn't quite this blunt.

The soundtrack, at least for the first 40 minutes or so, was very distracting. Maybe it is beacuse I don't like or listen to "trap-hop" (if that is the correct name) but I also think it was excessive to have such a huge number of songs in such a short amount of time. Every minute or two they blast another song at you. As I enjoyed most of the rest of the film this is really a nitpick and probably is more down to my music taste than anything.

The subplot with the gangsters was totally unnecessary. The main source of conflict in the second hour could have easily been avoided. Additionally, the gangsters didn't seem to want to kill Starr so much as mildly inconvenience her.

There are some silly arguments between Starr and her white friend that were pretty pointless, especially given how good the other discussions in the film were.

The ending was also very silly and didn't suit the rest of the movie. When dealing with a subject like this, having a happy ending rarely works. This is part of what made American History X so incredibly powerful. In The Hate U Give, the ending felt very artificial, almost like they changed their minds and reshot the last five minutes. __________

And a couple of other things to note:

I found it interesting and, again, unexpected that the film showed how a peaceful protest can easily become violent.

I found it quite brave and, again, unexpected for the film to show Starr being sickened by seeing white teenagers holding Black Lives Matter banners in a protest.

I found it very amusing how the characters get held up in traffic due to a protest.

The characters are consistent. Rather than existing to project the films agenda to the audience, they usually exist to present a certain viewpoint. The film does a very good job of exploring this.

Overall, 7/10.

The Night Comes for Us (2018)

A trashier version of the Raid, and I loved it mostly.

[7/10 · 30 October 2018]

A trashier version of the Raid, and I loved it mostly. First off, this movie is incredibly bloody and violent. It makes the Raid movies seem tame by comparison. There were more than a few moments that made me cringe. It was ridiculous. I liked how the film used, as far as I could tell, real squibs and real practical body parts for the scenes when people are annihilated, whereas one of my (very small) flaws with the Raid films is that they almost always use CGI blood. I totally understand why, because with the extensive martial arts sequences you will need to film them god knows how many times, and having real blood spatters just makes everything vastly more complex than it already is, so here it was a surprise to see them double down on good old fashioned blood and guts.

However, the focus of the film, in contrast to the Raid, was on blood and guts rather than presenting the fight scenes. In the Raid we might have an extended hand to hand fight scene in which a character is disembowelled very quickly before the fight ends, in The Night Comes For Us the entire purpose of the fight scene would be to show a character get disembowelled and then focus on that for a few seconds. This isn't entirely a problem, just a highlight of the differences between the two. I did appreciate some of the very cool long takes, camera angles and creative use of handheld which again very much reminded me of the Raid. Overall what made both Raid movies better than The Night Comes For Us was that they were more consistently great to look at, had an extra layer of polish in pretty much all areas, had actual characters (however thin), and were I guess more creative overall. Taking the fight scenes as they are, they are basically at the same crazy high level of quality, but the film as a whole is not as good as either Raid movie. Still enjoyed it a lot. 7/10.

The First Purge (2018)

The purge in the movie is as much of a failure as the movie itself.

[3/10 · 5 October 2018]

Worst one of the four, easily. I didn't like the first or third films, the second was semi-decent because it remembered that movies are supposed to be fun, but this one was the worst.

The only good thing here is there was a reasonably well done fight scene that was in one shot. Well actually two shots, because they tried to hide a camera cut right before they swap the actor out for a stunt guy to throw him down some stairs.

So the setup for the film is the same as the others, but confined to a single island. They are doing a trial run of the purge, whereby any and all crime is legal for 12 hours. People who live on the island are paid $5000 to stay during the purge, and are given incentive to go out and commit acts of violence. This trial run doesn't work for them, because the only person who purges is a man who calls himself "Skeletor".

We are then told that the island was chosen because the population is entirely poor people. Because this film is all about subtlety, the entire population of this town is also black. It turns out the whole idea of implementing the purge was to reduce the population of poor (black) people because reasons. So because they haven't started killing each other yet (apart from our friend Skeletor) the government decide to send in help from the outside. So they send in two groups of people who are known for killing black people: the police, and the KKK.

So now we have the police force and the KKK going around this island murdering black people. All of the Purge movies have been "political" to a degree, and have been trying to provide some level of social commentary (even if all attempts at this have been completely retarded) but this film takes it a step further by adding race into the mix. Now we have white people killing black people, and we are supposed to feel sad and/or outraged. Then the black people rise up and cathartically kill the evil white man, and we are supposed to feel satisfaction and happiness. What I actually felt was more that my head was starting to go numb from having "THIS IS WHERE AMERICA IS HEADED" pummelled into my face for 90 minutes.

So the purge in the movie fails absolutely. Only like two or three people actually commit acts of violence outside of the law. Remember our friend Skeletor? Despite being a comically overacted and unhinged psychopath, he turns up at the end to save the day. At the end of the film however, we are told "The purge has been a great success! We will be doing them again over the whole country!"

The purge in the movie is as much of a failure as the movie itself. And, like the entire concept of "purging", once you stop to think about it for five seconds, the movie doesn't work.

Hold the Dark (2018)

The film is more concerned with tone, atmosphere and theme than it is with character or plot.

[7/10 · 29 September 2018]

I loved Green Room, but this was a very different movie. I don't really know what to make of it, because it is a film that doesn't have much of a plot, has characters that rarely speak, and is quite a slow burn. This is the kind of film that if you half-watch whilst doing something else, you would almost certainly hate it.

So the setup for the film doesn't matter really because within the first 20 minutes it has gone off those rails, but the setup is that a woman's child has been taken by wolves (the third child in the town to have gone missing) and so she writes a letter to a wildlife expert and author to come to Alaska and hunt down the wolves that did it. The film takes so many twists and turns very suddenly and abruptly that by the time it ends you kinda forget that this is how it started. The film is more concerned with tone, atmosphere and theme than it is with character or plot.

As expected the film is pretty damn violent. Not quite Green Room-level, but when it happens you feel it. It also happens very abruptly and suddenly, with little to no hint that anything is about to happen.

Overall the film reminded me of so many other films, but stands on its own as something unlike any of them. It had elements of Wind River, The VVitch, The Grey and Prisoners, but it really is a unique movie. It is somewhere between a 6/10 and a 7/10 for me but it is interesting and unique enough for me to say 7/10 for now. Definitely need to rewatch it.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Good, but far from the best of the MCU films.

[7/10 · 26 April 2018]

***SPOILERS AT THE BOTTOM***

The good: -The film should be commended on managing to make a watchable film that brings together characters from the previous Avengers films, both Guardians films, Black Panther and Doctor Strange. It could have been a complete mess and thankfully it wasn't. -Thanos is possibly the best MCU villain so far, although I know that isn't saying much. He had clear motivations, conflicts, personality, you know, all the things that go into a good character. He wasn't generic bad guy #7. -As expected the film was pretty funny. Most of the jokes landed.

The bad: -Although the film wasn't a mess, there were a fair few characters that did almost literally nothing. Kinda understandable when you have 35 or so characters but even so, it is still a negative. -There was no single clear driving force in terms of plot. Instead we had three different groups of characters doing their own thing, and occasionally meet one of the other groups. -Tonally it was kinda like watching two films at once, largely due to the integration of the Guardians characters with the Avengers. -This film features a faceless CGI army for the heroes to dismember.

***SPOILERS BELOW*** SPOILER: And my biggest problem with this film is the ending. Throughout the film there are three characters (should have been four!!) that die and it is very clear that they are actually dead and Marvel isn't going to bring them back. They die for a reason. At the end of the film however, probably half the characters from the entire film die. So the way I see it is that one of two things happened, and one is infinitely more likely than the other.

Either a) Marvel legit killed off 15 of its characters in one scene or b) they wanted the audience to think they did so they could have a cheap cliffhanger. The problem is that if option A is correct, everyone is going to be thinking they actually went for option B! The way the scene is played is very straight, very emotional, loud music + slow motion etc so they are very clearly trying to make you care. But the problem is, regardless of whether these characters are going to remain dead, I spent the whole scene thinking that they would almost certainly all come back via Time Stone magic in the next film.

Had they killed off maybe two or three primary characters then it would have been believable but you can't kill off half your franchise in a universe where the Time Stone exists and expect me to care.

So overall, a mixed bag but generally positive. 6/10.

Justice League (2017)

The Most Marvel-y Film to Never Marvel...

[3/10 · 4 December 2017]

DC are now five films into their Cinematic Universe and they still haven't figured it out.

It made me laugh throughout because of how Marvel-y the film is. They have dialled back the dark depressing moodiness from the previous Superman films and replaced it with silly one-liners that feel horribly out of place. Rather than have the balls to stick to their guns but try to make it, you know, not trash, they decided to backtrack and make something that was done infinitely better by Marvel 5 years ago.

And it even fails at doing that properly. Rather than integrate the various superpowers organically into the plot of the film, three out of the five members of the Justice League could literally be anyone else. Batman does some Batman stuff, and there are a couple of scenes where someone needed to move really fast, so Flash was useful every now and then, but there was nothing in here that specifically used either Wonder Woman, Aquaman or Cyborg's superpowers, other than needing "a guy who is really fast and really strong". So if you went into this film with no preconception of who was who and what they could each do, you would be seeing a guy dressed as a bat with some cool gadgets, an annoying teenager who can run really really fast, and three interchangeable characters who can all punch people really hard.

That is my main problem with the film but here are a few other spoiler-free bullet points:

-90% of the comic relief was from the Flash, and the only times I laughed were at non-Flash related bits.

-Think of the least interesting villain possible. I guarantee you the villain in this will be less interesting than that. He was literally "evil guy who wants to do evil with magic MacGuffins and destroy earth."

-Sick of seeing infinite armies of faceless robots/aliens/insects/zombies that are decidedly non-human so that we can show the heroes decapitating and dismembering them without affecting the PG13 rating? Well, Justice League has you covered! They have an infinite army of faceless robot-alien-insect-zombie things all at once!

I am kinda ripping this film a new poop-hole but it wasn't as bad as BvS or Suicide Squad. It was watchable but in a "this is trash" kinda way. Much of the film felt like scenes taking place in a vacuum, with nothing connecting them. Most of these scenes on their own were entertaining enough, but as a film it didn't do anything for me. 4/10.

For anyone curious I would rank the DC films as follows:

1. Wonder Woman (5/10) 2. Man of Steel (5/10) 3. Justice League (4/10) 4. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (4/10) 5. Suicide Squad (3/10)

Mother! (2017)

Unique, absurd, disturbing, and extremely well made.

[7/10 · 20 September 2017]

The reason why this film has an F grade on Cinema Score is because this film is impossible to market. There is no feasible way to convey what this film actually is in a 30 second trailer. The trailer makes out that the film is some kind of horror film, which is absolutely not the case. There are horror elements, sure, but it is not a horror film. So this leads me to believe that the reason it has received such polarising responses is because a large percentage of the people going to see it are expecting "Jennifer Lawrence in a horror film", and those people will have been sorely disappointed. Everyone sitting near me at the cinema was remarking how bad the film was, and how much of a waste of time it was, and to be honest I don't blame them. If you go into it as a casual movie-goer, and you see a mainstream actress like Jennifer Lawrence is in a horror movie, that alone may be enough to convince you to go and see it. Hence the F grade on Cinema Score, and the extremely divisive response to the film.

As for the film itself, I had my theories during the film but I found afterwards that there is a single metaphor that the film conveys. There are however multiple ways of interpreting a lot of it, and there is no single "right answer", which is something I appreciated. Any of you considering seeing it, I do urge you NOT to research what the film was intended to be about beforehand as it serves to make the film much more interesting on reflection.

The performances were top-tier, as expected, the cinematography and the set design, which isn't something I usually pick up on, was incredible. The whole film takes place in this one (large) house, so you get to know the house pretty well by the end.

As far as criticism goes, the pacing is weird. On reflection this is necessary for what Aronofsky wanted to do, but while you are watching the film you will likely be WTFing multiple times. Although there is a general sense of unease and threat throughout the entire film, there are some scenes which are very slow and borderline boring, and entire segments of the film are very slow to build. By the time it reaches the last 30 minutes, the film has become literal insanity, with absurd and extreme things happening too fast to keep track of.

Another thing to mention is that some of the content in the last 30 minutes is disturbing and arguably excessive. I was fine, but my girlfriend was unable to watch the end of the film.

Overall, it gets a solid 7/10 from me. Unique, absurd, disturbing, and extremely well made.

Alien: Covenant (2017)

A perfectly functional thriller/monster-movie, but sadly nothing more.

[5/10 · 13 May 2017]

Starting with the good:

Michael Fassbender is the best thing about this movie, hands down. He plays both David from Prometheus and another identical android who arrived aboard the Covenant. They aren't just two identical characters despite looking the same, they are totally different characters and are both played extremely well.

Apart from Fassbender the standout was Danny McBride. This film is proof that he is actually able to act, rather than play a (hilarious) exaggerated caricature of himself as he does in everything else I have seen of him.

The film generally looks very good, although not as good as Prometheus. The set design and environments are great, but not particularly memorable.

When the sh*t hits the fan it is very intense and thrilling. There is a LOT of blood and guts. They definitely did not hold back.

Whilst the crew of the Covenant don't seem to be incredibly intelligent, there are thankfully no face-palm-inducing moments of stupidity like Milburn vs the death worm in Prometheus.

_____

And now the bad.

Simply put, the film was not scary. Intense, yes. Thrilling, yes. Scary? Unfortunately not.

CGI seems to have been favoured over practical effects when creating the various alien creatures. Some shots used guys in suits, and some used motion capture, but sadly the majority blatantly looked fake to me. It wasn't painfully bad, but when compared with the mostly convincing practical effects from the first two Alien films and Prometheus in particular it was disappointing to see them depart from this.

There is a twist ending which I saw coming.

The script was nothing special. There was no memorable dialogue outside of the first scene.

There are repetitions of some of the musical themes from Alien and Prometheus, but apart from that the music isn't memorable at all.

I won't spoil anything but let's just say the alien creature's life cycles have become a joke, and are accelerated to the point of absurdity.

Very little sense of wonder and awe. Think back to the scene from Alien where the crew discover the engineer. Think back to the first half hour of Prometheus. There is very little of that here.

They show too much of the aliens. Virtually every shot is a full body CGI shot of the creatures running around. Scenes that may have been intense are neutered by the fact that we can see everything. There is no "Jaws" philosophy here, everything is on show.

The alien creatures appear to have been reduced to dumb animals. Whenever they are defeated it is because of their own stupidity rather than the heroics or bravery of the human characters.

The third act is tacked-on, nonsensical and blatant fan-service.

______

So to sum up, it stands on its own as a perfectly functional thriller/monster-movie, but sadly nothing more. It avoids most of the philosophical meanderings of Prometheus for better or worse, and is focused more on the monsters. To enjoy this I really think you have to turn off your brain.

Here's where I would place it when compared to the other Alien films:

Aliens – 10/10 Alien – 10/10 Prometheus – 7/10 Alien 3 – 6/10 Alien: Covenant – 6/10 Alien: Resurrection – 5/10 Alien vs Predator – 4/10 Alien vs Predator: Requiem – 3/10

Doctor Strange (2016)

An extremely flawed exercise in visual overindulgence...

[5/10 · 2 November 2016]

I'll preface this by saying I have seen and enjoyed almost all of the MCU films so far. I saw Doctor Strange in 3D in Coventry UK. I have not written a film review before but I felt compelled to do so as I didn't feel my experience was in line with any of the other reviews that have been posted. This was my first experience of the character of Doctor Strange.

The good:

All of the performances were decent as expected. Tilda Swinton was the highlight.

The tone through most of the film had a unique feel which distinguished it from the other MCU films. If I hadn't known before hand I wouldn't have guessed it was part of the MCU at all. This was mostly a good thing, however there were two off-hand references to The Avengers which felt slightly out of place when spoken by a matter-manipulating wizard.

The first half hour showing the character pre-superhero was genuinely moving. It wasn't anything particularly new, but it was played out very effectively.

The climax of the film, whilst absurd, was definitely a breath of fresh air in the superhero genre. No portal in the sky, no expendable alien army, and no extended emotionally-charged 1v1 showdown.

The bad:

The comedy. There were two scenes that made me laugh, and a handful of others that seemed like they were supposed to. However, other people in the cinema were laughing when I wasn't so take this with a pinch of salt.

Strange becomes a super-wizard too quickly. There isn't even a montage or other indication that time has passed. In one scene he is struggling with very basic space magic, and then next scene he is a bad-ass who can suddenly fight multiple fully-trained evil space wizards.

As soon as the science meets the fiction it becomes extremely jarring. There is a scene in the film where Strange, now able to manipulate time and space, visits an old neurosurgeon colleague to get himself patched up. What follows is a scene involving a character performing physical surgery in the real world interacting with two astral projections having a zero gravity fist fight. This sounds cool, and indeed it did look cool, but it made no sense. Why are astral projections able to physically fight each other? If they can move through walls then why are they able to throw each other into things? Why is the neurosurgeon not questioning any of this? This dissonance peaks when the climax of that fight scene tried to blend science with magic in a physical way which didn't make any sense.

There is a part of the film where Strange uses a particular type of magic to save the day, which we are told is "forbidden". We aren't shown why it is forbidden. There are no consequences for him using this particular power. We are told that it is "against the natural order", with no explanation as to why all the other destructive magic is allowed, but this isn't.

My biggest complaint was with the depiction of superpowers in the film. There was no consistency, minimal explanation, and multiple logic gaps as a result of this. If you have seen the trailers or the film, you will no doubt have been drawing similarities to Nolan's Inception. I will not claim that the films are similar beyond the visual, but the best way I can explain how poorly the superpowers were explored in Doctor Strange is to directly compare it to Inception.

In Inception, we have a bunch of characters who are able to manipulate the world around them. The film spends about an hour and a half meticulously explaining what is and is not possible. It has it's own set of rules and logic. We as an audience understand who can do what and why. When the proverbial sh*t hits the fan in the second half of the film, there is tension and a grounded sense of reality as a result of this.

Doctor Strange also features a bunch of characters who can similarly manipulate the world around them, both the "real" world and various alternate dimensions. The difference here is that the film spends 5-10 minutes explaining a portion of the superpowers, and then every fight sequence from then on was totally devoid of any tension or sense of realism because none of the characters have any established limitations to their powers. It was like watching fights take part in a vacuum where physics and logic don't apply. There is no tension in these scenes because we don't understand what each character is capable of.

Most non-fantasy action films don't have these problems because the characters are using weapons we are inherently familiar with, such as guns or knives. When Hans Gruber points his gun at Takagi in Die Hard, the audience understands the consequences of this action. When Voldemort points his wand at Harry Potter, we understand what he can and can't do because the films established this fact. When Kaecilius threatens Doctor Strange, we feel no tension because the film hasn't explained anything. Both characters could potentially do any number of fantastical things. As a result the confrontations do not work. In Inception, the "superpowers" were an integral part of the plot. In Doctor Strange, the superpowers were seemingly made up on the spot by the animators to make a visually entertaining sequence.

Let me close by saying that I did not hate the film, but I was disappointed with it. I paid to see this in 3D soon after release because it looked very enjoyable. I felt compelled to write a review of this film because I don't understand the praise it is receiving. It isn't terrible, and a lot of it was enjoyable. However, in my view it is an extremely flawed exercise in visual overindulgence which unfortunately tarnishes the better aspects of the film. 5/10.