I'm generally fine with a sketchy story line that exists only to string together an entertaining movie, but Army of the Dead was distractingly bad in its story/plot holes. I feel like they could have edited together a shorter movie that cut a lot of the stupid parts of the plot, but Jesus Christ a lot of it was dumb. And not dumb in a "hilariously bad B-movie" type of way, just in a ridiculous, "why did anyone think this was a good idea?" kind of way. Nearly every character involved is so mentally handicapped that I'd be surprised if they could brush their teeth without poking themselves in the eye. Sub-plots are introduced and ignored, or introduced and resolved immediately. Random items were sprinkled into the background or side stories that made no sense. E.g. Spoiler The casino chase scene had robot zombies? Why? Where did they come from? And if the reason is because the thing was too cool/interesting/funny to leave out, why not just feature it? Main plot points often made no fucking sense at all. E.g. Spoiler Why do they want the queen zombie's head? It's been established that all she can do is create more shamblers. Which, you know, a bite from literally any other zombie does. I guess it just didn't hit the sweet spot for me. Too much eyerolling and the zombie murder sequences weren't sufficiently impressive to overcome it.
Totally agree. I mean the zombies can Spoiler have sex and reproduce (yay, zombie fetus held high!), the alpha can figure out wearing an iron mask stops bullets, and they can ride zombie horses . . . and they choose to stay inside the container walls, and didn't have enough sense to get out of the sun? And, I guess the vault Spoiler protected the dude from the nuke, but I don't think I understand how radiation works, since he just walked out of there.
I thought the iron mask thing was hilarious. A metal mask makes him invincible. I mean, nevermind that the squad has machine guns and fucking RPGs, and that zombies are still constrained by basic physical laws like, "no legs = no walking," or that these guys can all headshot moving targets with a pistol, on the run, from a hundred yards away, but can't hit an eye with a sighted automatic rifle from inside fifteen feet. Nope, if you can't land a single bullet in the middle of his forehead, there's nothing they can do. Pack it up, folks, they solved the one weakness. Spoiler The vault thing was stupid for so many reasons. He's apparently invulnerable to radiation, but I guess they also dropped the nuke and shrugged, figuring, "probably everything is dead now." Anything that survived is fine to just walk right out of the city, we won't watch it because there's definitely no way a zombie managed to survive the one bomb. Just an aggravatingly bad movie plot. "Why would he possibly go into that basement" is a path to a funny cheesy movie. "90% of the world only exists as selectively-applied plot devices" is just bad writing.
I will bet you ONE American dollar that they weren't robots at all and it was just a reference to WWZ, where they talk about the incendiary rounds making the zombie eyes light up.
You can see one with glowing blue eyes all on its own before it’s been shot, like a wight from GoT. I thought their eyes glowed blue in the dark, then I realized that no, they were completely different. They were mechanical inside when they were shot.
That would actually be a pretty hilarious prank for someone like Netflix to pull on April Fools or something... just randomly pick something someone is watching, make a "crack" sound over it, and then show some dead streaks in the glass for the entire Neflix experience. Of course once you got out of Netflix, everything is back to normal... because they can't control that.
In The Heights It was just okay, but definitely worth watching if you like musicals. It was too long. I think LMM's attachment to the songs kept him from letting an editor do what was necessary to make it a better film. Unlike Hamilton, they didn't just film stage performance. They made a movie, and it should have been treated like one in the editing room. I thought the dialogue-into-song transitions were often clunky. The positives are the music and the dancing. The songs are good, though they didn't quite have the polish that Miranda showed later in Hamilton. You definitely want to move your hips while watching, as the Latin beat and horns are infectious. Plus, holy crap, Melissa Barrera is freaking gorgeous in a bikini, and the outfits showed off her sexy midriff plenty. The culture and things like illegal immigrants trying to get green cards isn't my story, so I didn't connect with that very much. But, it didn't bother me or seem to heavy-handed.
Good on Paper Iliza Shlesinger turns a 7 minute stand stand-up routine from "This Isn't Happening" into a 90 minute "based on a true story" feature. At 7 minutes it's a tight set that's well worth watching. At 90 minutes it drags and needs a fictionalized ending to pay off the time debt it incurs getting you to the end, and doesn't land it. Stick with the routine. 4/10
The Tomorrow War is a decent popcorn movie, if a bit predictable. Figure Aliens meets World War Z and throw in some time travel. Pratt was decent, but in my opinion, played a similar character as he did in Jurassic World. I think Yvonne Strahovski's character was played well, but written a bit flat. My favorite was J. K. Simmons. What I thought was predictable: Spoiler As soon as they pointed out the kid that was obsessed with volcanoes, it seemed pretty obvious that factoid would come into play, although I figured that would be how our heroes killed the monsters instead of how to go about locating them. When J.K. Simmons's character was introduced, they made a point to call out the C-130 and that came into play as well. Like Aliens, it was also funny to see those in charge not listen to the people that know what was going on and then taking credit for the victory. 7.5/10
Wow. Giving that dreck anything above a “zero” in generous. Fuck Iliza Schlesinger, fuck her shitty stand-up, fuck her rich parents who keep throwing money at her career, and fuck whoever keeps throwing her contracts for specials, shows and movies—- All which have been nothing less than utterly unfunny garbage. She sucks, she is bad at comedy, I don’t know why people see this Laugh Factory tablescrap as some sort of star.
Sad, such a crazy premise. This is one of those, sometimes reality is scarier than fiction, incidents. It could easily be done as a horror ala Get Out.
I think the problem is that the true story is much more pathetic than it is scary; it's ultimately a guy who wishes he was something he's not. If they wanted to go the horror route they'd have to throw out almost everything except the bare premise, at which point you're basically just remaking Gaslight or Catfish, so why do you need Shlesinger's story at all?
Nah, not really. Guys think she’s hot because of the lack of attraction when it comes to female comics. She’s Office-Hot at best. And the fact that she’s a fucking piece of shit to other female comics (who are far funnier than her) makes it even less. I think she’s a clinical narcissist. They keep trying to give her clout and she’s the last type of person who should have it. however, your point stands. Her being “hot” allows her to float like a feather and prevent people from calling her out, something she’s been used to since birth.
I think rating The Tomorrow War at a 7.5 must be grading on a curve. It's definitely a 7.5 in, "movies that work if you shut your brain off and don't take them seriously at all." Which is a totally fine genre of movie, and frankly I enjoyed it while I was watching. But it's dumb. Really dumb. Between the plot holes you could fly an alien spaceship through and the hamfisted way they treated... well, everything... I'm pretty sure they started with, "hey, I have a cool monster design," and constructed everything from there. I liked the monster design, the movie was entertaining enough that it didn't feel long or unwieldy. Chris Pratt stars as Himself. Just make sure you turn off your brain before you press play, because the stupidity will drive you nuts otherwise.
I agree with everything you wrote, and will add the "not as bad as I thought it was going to be." When, I saw the trailer, I literally laughed out loud because it looked so stupid. But, for just dumb entertainment, it was aight.
After a few days and thinking on it more, I agree. Especially with things like the weapons they chose. And, is it just me, or would you have wired the alien ship to blow up before injecting any of them?