The Ballard of Buster Scruggs

There are some interesting themes and visuals in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and of course a lot of great actors, but overall, it's just not my thing.

The Coen Brothers are hit or miss with me, and The Ballard of Buster Scruggs falls squarely in the category of "meh."

Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins are great, and Dracula's character design is cool, but the movie is still way too cheesy.

I liked Bram Stoker’s Dracula slightly more the first time I saw it. Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins are still good, and the costumes are cool. But the rest is a little weird. It's way too cheesy and over the top.

Wind

Wind is a sailboat-racing movie from 1992. The interpersonal stuff in it doesn't really work, and some of the sailing parts go on for a bit too long, but I guess it fits the bill if all you're looking for is a movie about boating.

I hadn't ever heard of Wind. I don't remember seeing any of the actors in anything else. It's kind of a weird movie. It's mostly about sailing, so I guess it's a good movie if you're into that.

Matthew Modine had a weird vibe going on. He was super charismatic, but also kind of creepy.

Gladiator

I have a history of not liking Ridley Scott movies, and there's nothing in Gladiator for me. The time period reminded me of Titus (the Anthony Hopkins movie, not the comedian). I’d recommend watching that instead.

Gladiator came out the same year as Snatch. I guess I'm on an old movie kick. Like Snatch, I saw Gladiator back then, but I had completely forgotten all of it, and for some reason, I never saw the ending of Gladiator. It's widely regarded as a good movie, I guess. One of the people I was watching it with kept saying "this is such a good movie" during it, but I didn't share that sentiment. I think I'm pretty safe in saying I just don't like Ridley Scott's movies.

The opening fight scene reminded me of Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. I guess Gladiator came out first, so it should be the other way around. It's not a very feminist movie. There's not really anything for women to identify with or like.

A Quiet Place

The concept of A Quiet Place is great, and I'd love to see it executed without the characters constantly making maddeningly thoughtless choices.

I have a lot of problems with A Quiet Place. First, the fact that the family didn't really seem to understand the importance of staying quiet.

What We Do in the Shadows

I liked Flight of the Conchords, but What We Do in the Shadows is profoundly not my thing.

I liked Flight of the Conchords, but I didn't have any interest in seeing What We Do in the Shadows. The version I watched wound up having the opening text in a language that was similar to German, so I missed out on a bit of context there, but looking it up now, I see that it wasn't critically important.

I'm starting to think that Taika's sense of humor just isn't my thing. There's something off about it. It's sort of flat, and cringey, and not funny.

My Neighbor Totoro

My Neighbor Totoro is super simple. It's pleasant enough to watch, but I wouldn't exactly call it a must-see.

I've been wanting to see My Neighbor Totoro for a long time, and I finally did it. Out of the five or so Miyazaki movies I've seen, it's definitely the simplest. Totoro himself is kind of creepy. He roars a lot, and his teeth are disturbing. The scene with him standing in the rain with the leaf on his head, holding an umbrella, is pretty iconic, though. The cat bus was creepy, too. And Mei was really weird-looking. That was hard to get past. I liked how there was a musical cue for everything that happened, though, like even a butterfly flying around.

Blade Runner 2049

The entire atmosphere of Blade Runner 2049 isn't my thing, a lot of the musical cues are totally off, and there are some really annoying scenes where you know exactly what's going to happen.

I didn't like the original Blade Runner, but it's been about a decade since I've seen it, so I don't remember why. I did give it a 3/5, so I guess I didn't hate it.

Blade Runner 2049 was okay. It was kind of long and boring. I wasn't really interested in it. I had a problem with the first half, because with most AI movies, there's a moral dilemma. But with this one it was so cut and dry. The replicants are humans, so we don't have the right to kill them, end of story.

Dawson City: Frozen Time

Dawson City is about the history of the town, and how the last remaining copies of hundreds of film reels wound up being preserved. It sounds cool, but the way they presented it is actually pretty boring.

Dawson City is a documentary about old film reels. In the early 1900s, silent movies were recorded on explosive film. And this town in Canada was the end of the distribution line, so most of the reels stayed there and never went anywhere else. In the '70s, they wound up having about 300 reels that were the only surviving copies of those movies. So that's pretty cool.

The movie lays out the history of the town, ever since it was started, and the gold rush, all the way up to the '70s. There's also some footage of the films they found, and newsreel footage. The weird thing is there's no narration. Maybe they did that in homage to the fact that all of the movies they found were silent movies. There was some music in the documentary, but it was really terrible, and I was dying to hear someone say something.

I didn't like having to read all the information, and it was super boring. The most interesting part of the whole thing was after it was over and one of the special features talked about the people who found and restored the films, and showed where they're stored now.

They had to have the military transport them through part of Canada, because no one else would touch them. And when they brought the American ones to the United States, they took them to a building that had just burned down because of all the film that was in it. I was surprised they took them there. They obviously didn't have very good storage practices.

The actual old film footage turned out to not be very interesting. It was kind of cool learning things about the town, like the fact that the business district burnt down every year for the first nine years after they built it.

11 Minutes

11 Minutes isn't exactly fun to watch. It does succeed in creating a feeling of tension, but I'm not sure that really pays off.

11 minutes is a Polish movie. The concept is that you see the same 11 minutes from the perspective of several different people. It opens with sort of "found footage" of cell phone and security cameras. I was kind of concerned that it was going to stay that way, but luckily it switches to regular camerawork fairly quickly.

It's a weird movie. It's super confusing trying to figure out what's going on all the time. The score is frequently abrasive and unnerving. There's some kind of black spot in the sky that's never explained. And there's always just a general feeling of tension.

I wonder what the movie is trying to say, exactly. I wish there were a commentary for it. It would probably be interesting to go back and watch it again, being able to understand more about it. It does get some "interesting" points just for being set in Warsaw. I always like to see things in different countries.

Swiss Army Man

Swiss Army Man is a weird movie. It makes a valid point, but the presentation is pretty rudimentary.

Swiss Army Man didn't pique my interest when I saw the trailer for it. I think any reviews I saw about it said it was "okay," which certainly didn't motivate me to see it. When I started watching it, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it starred Paul Dano. I remembered that Daniel Radcliffe was in it.

They kind of beat you over the head with the theme that we're really all the same, and we all do embarrassing things that wouldn't be embarrassing if we would stop making people feel bad for doing them. It's a valid idea, but the way in which it was conveyed wasn't terribly entertaining.

The Dark Tower

It's baffling why they even made this Dark Tower movie. It has nothing to do with the books. The characters and plot are completely different. That makes it pretty painful for someone who's read the series, and I'm not sure there's anything there for someone who hasn't.

I knew The Dark Tower wasn't going to be good, but I figured I might as well see it anyway. I read all the books, but it was a while ago, so I don't remember much about them anymore. When I saw the trailer, my reaction was, "what was that, there was nothing there." Reviews said it was just painful to watch because there was so much potential, and they didn't do anything with it. I definitely agree with that.

2010

I'm not really sure what anyone was supposed to get out of 2010, the sequel to 2001. It was just kind of weird.

I didn’t really have any interest in seeing 2010 (the sequel to 2001), and I was really tired when I watched it, so pretty much the entire time I was just waiting for it to be over. It was kind of weird.

Assassin's Creed

I wound up not 100% paying attention to Assassin’s Creed, but the general feeling I got was that it’s not that good. It’s a little hollow, and there are some weird plot and editing choices. It does look pretty good, though.

I’m kind of fond of the Assassin’s Creed games, even though I’ve never played them. But I’ve seen them played through at least partially and they look cool. And I like Michael Fassbender, so I wanted to see this even though the reviews weren’t good. I wound up not really being able to pay attention to it, but I think I can tell it wasn’t good enough to be worth watching again.

It did look cool, for the most part. Not cool enough that I regret not seeing it in the theater, though. I liked the character design for the past. The clothes and tattoos were cool. They did seem to be doing a lot of superhuman stuff for no reason. I was like wow, people’s abilities were a lot different in the past. I kind of missed what they were talking about with how the assassins first got created. That might have been interesting to know.

Storks

Storks is mostly insipid and pointless, but it does have a few funny moments.

I had zero interest in seeing Storks. The trailer made it look like Tulip was really annoying. And it turns out, she was. The whole premise of the movie is silly. And it’s just kind of dumb in general. Although for some reason I thought Pigeon Toady was basically the funniest thing ever. Brah. And I just got the joke of his name now that I see how it’s spelled. That makes so much sense.

Suicide Squad

 Suicide Squad had a lot of promise. I like the world of Batman (especially without Batman in it), a lot of the characters were cool, and there were some funny moments. But the Joker was atrocious, a lot of the dialogue didn't work, the plot started out as nonsense and only got worse, and the editing was a mess.

I've been hearing hype about Suicide Squad for like two years now, starting with the big reveal of Jared Leto's makeup. And let's just start there. What a horrible Joker he was. I don't get what was with the teeth. They looked so awkward. The hair color didn't work at all, the lipstick was crazy. The voice he went with reminded me of Bruce Jenner. We never really got a feel for what his character was about. It was just so random when he killed people, which I guess might be the point, but it didn't work for me. People complained that he wasn't in the movie enough, but I hated all of his scenes, so it was more than enough for me.

I knew going into it that people said the movie was terrible, but I had some hope anyway. I did like the colors of the logo a lot, and the art they did at the end to represent the characters. Harley's outfit was interesting, and I liked her accent. She was a pretty cool character overall, although I was really confused by Dr. Quinzel. She wasn't very believable. Deadshot/Will's performance was interesting I guess.

Rise of the Legend

There are some cool ideas in Rise of the Legend, but they aren't carried out well. The action looks fake, there's a bizarre fascination with poorly done CG fire, and the plot is dull.

I keep watching these Well Go movies, and they're always terrible, but for some reason that doesn't stop me. I saw the trailer for Rise of the Legend, and I thought it might have some interesting action scenes. I guess it did. There was one in water that was kind of cool. And I liked the idea of the fire one more than anything that really happened during it. The dialogue was horrendous, but I think that was partially the fault of whoever did the subtitles. The story probably would have been better if it had been translated differently. All the "F" names were confusing, with Fei and Fiery and Fa, and the first time I saw them I wondered if the subtitles were just messed up (they did refer to Fei as the "forth adopted son" for the entire time). 

I didn't recognize Eddie Peng from Tai Chi Hero at all. He seemed a lot better-looking in this movie than that one. Maybe he was just surrounded by people who weren't as good-looking in this one, though. Overall the action was pretty flat. It all seemed super fake. Even the giant "thoom" sound effect every time somebody got kicked was a bit much. 

Misery Loves Comedy

Misery Loves Comedy starts getting interesting about 3/4 of the way through. It's not as insightful as the trailer leads you to believe; it's mostly just common sense observations.

Misery Loves Comedy wasn't as interesting as I thought it would be. There were a lot of "duh" observations like "comedians like to hang out with each other at parties." I'm pretty sure people of any profession probably have things in common and talk to each other at parties. I watched it in bits and pieces over a couple days, as I usually do with documentaries, and I'm definitely glad I didn't spend an uninterrupted chunk of time on it.

It's interesting to see the comedians, but there's not much that's really insightful. It actually started to get interesting in about the last quarter, so they should've done more stuff like that.

I guess they save the fundamental question for the end, which is "do you have to be miserable to be funny." And I think the answer is, not necessarily miserable, but you've got to at least have something to complain about. You never hear anyone making jokes about how everything's awesome and nothing's wrong or uncomfortable.

Suburban Gothic

Suburban Gothic is pretty much a throw-away. The main character is likeable and interesting, and there are a couple funny scenes, but that can't make up for the vacuity of the plot and the other characters.

The reviews for Suburban Gothic weren’t that great, and I probably should've listened to them and not watched it, but it looked like it could be funny and/or interesting. It had a really weird vibe that didn't quite work, though. Raymond had an intriguing look. I was kind of mystified by the fact that Becca never smiled, which is actually one of the main problems I had with the movie - everyone was so much a caricature, you couldn't take it the slightest bit seriously.

Synecdoche, New York

Synecdoche, New York follows the proud tradition of Charlie Kaufman movies that I don't enjoy. His characters are always unlikeable, and I can't get invested in them. There are a lot of things about it that could be funny if it weren't so depressing as a whole. I can appreciate it, but it's resoundingly not my thing.

2008 seems like a long time ago. It was only seven years. Maybe anything before 2010 registers as "a long time ago" for me. Charlie Kaufman is not my favorite writer. I could appreciate Being John Malkovich, but I didn't like it. I found the characters to be really unlikeable, which was the same problem I had with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I generally hate surrealism, and that movie is pretty out there. Plus if you don't like the characters, it's just really hard to be invested in what's going on.