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Reviews
The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)
A generally forgettable movie made worse if you cared.
I need to stop watching licensed movies.
During Bower's piano solo, my son turned to me and whispered "this is so lame".
The story of Mario has always been a bit vague. The backstory of the mushroom kingdom never seemed really that important to the game series and existed more as a setting to facilitate strange and bizarre environments and creatures for Mario to contend with.
So, I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't this.
"Mario, you know, the story where Mario and Peach team up to save Luigi from Peach's jilted lover, Bowser."
It seemed like the script was essentially a corporate brainstorm for game references, then they arranged the sticky notes into a long list, threw the stack into some scriptwriter's lap, and said "okay, make a generic kids movie script out of this".
But the result is just this ultra fast-tempo fever dream is more than a bit cringe in a number of places.
"For the 45 seconds Donkey Kong and Mario are trapped inside the giant fish, they compare feelings of parental disappointment" W. T. F.
And then, of course, Peach is naturally way better at jumping and everything than Mario, because that's just become mandatory boilerplate.
It's just tedious. It's just more Soylent cinema; "Cloudy with a chance of Lego Minions" with a Nintendo theme.
But, growing up with these characters, I think I liked the movie less than I would have if I knew nothing about them. The joy I got from the references was overshadowed by the annoyance I felt... especially, like every time I saw Bowser. It just wasn't Bowser to me. It looked like Bowser, but the personality was just completely averse to what my mental image of Bowser was like.
I don't know what I expected, but I imagined a character obsessed with power who's determined to conquer the mushroom kingdom and is therefore is Peach's enemy. I certainly didn't imagine he was so in love with Peach, fantasizing about the lovely wedding they'll have, that he must conquer the kingdom as a means to fulfill his love. That's just totally.... Not Bower to me.
It reminds me of the Lego Batman movies that tried to make cheap comedy at the character's expense. I don't like it.
But that's what you get with these. The formula is simple. Purchase the rights to a popular IP, throw in a bunch of fan-service references, add some shallow facade of a character arc, and just assault the audience with so much visual spectacle that the thinking parts of their mind are numbed by the barrage.
Eh, might be worth a watch if you're really bored, but not one of the better ways to spend a couple hours.
1899 (2022)
I can't wait to see where this ends.
I saw a review posted which decried "mystery for mystery's sake".
I've seen shows like that before. "Lost" being a good example, where weird things kept happening with no explanation, and the ending revealed that... most of those events were just noise, made to be mysterious with no real explanation ever given.
I doubt that's where this show is headed though. In fact, I doubt that reviewer even finished the first season to have formed that opinion, but I can't truly blame them since so many mystery shows do fall flat and it's not insane to anticipate that conclusion.
But, if you watched Dark, another mystery show these guys made, which has a very satisfying conclusion, I absolutely expect this will be a mystery where the dots all do connect.
I really enjoyed the first season, and its finale really made me want to see the next two seasons.
I really hope it gets renewed.
Black Widow (2021)
Like a parody of a Marvel movie.
There's just so much ridiculous garbage happening, I couldn't maintain suspension of disbelief.
The car crashes in the subway station where you just happen to have a secret hidey-hole in the ceiling?
Black widow and another super-hero looking assassin walk into a convenience store, and the girl starts making fun of the avengers pose: the clerk doesn't bother to look up.
Forced backstory to try to make this garbage into something with genuine emotional drama just felt tedious.
There are 3 types of movies:
Good ones: that are both entertaining but poses some genuine artistic substance.
Bad ones, which may still be fun, but which are just cotton candy... sweet fluff with out any real substance.
The worst ones: Bad ones trying too hard to be good ones.
This was the third category... really, just not good. Not important, not impressive, not emotionally engaging nor stimulating.
I'm not sure if it is the worst... but it might be. Even Thor Dark works introduced an infinity stone and justified it's existence a bit.
This is literally a prequel to a sequel: a disposable waste of everyone's time.
The Tomorrow War (2021)
Soylent Film... doesn't taste right.
It's like, the programmed an AI to make a movie, and it was careful to blend up all the popular ingredients, but since it's an AI, it doesn't actually understand how anything works, and has sloppy artifacts all over the place.
Case and point, lady walks out of time rift and addresses the stadium. When did she get a mic? You can't just address a stadium with your voice alone?
I'm sure noble protagonist with cute daughter and estranged father was going to do all sorts of popular movie cliches after that, probably culminating in emotionally compelling character growth and redemption after a close call with unimaginable tragedy, but that was enough for me.
Luca (2021)
Pretty darn boring.
I felt pretty strange even putting the spoiler tag on there, because the events of the film are so non-consequential that I doubt a description of the whole movie would have any effect on the enjoyment of it.
But if you can't get into the basic premise that two merkids really want a Vespa, there's not a lot to hold you in your seat.
I love Pixar, but this felt like a short film that they just tried to stretch into a feature. I really don't know how this film was ever the best idea they had.
Widower tries to fly his house to an exotic waterfall.
Toys try to find their way home after being donated.
A fish tries to find his son that went missing.
And now... a mermaid kid want's a Vespa?
Anyway, this was a real snooze fest. I just couldn't find any interest in the outcome or motivation to keep watching it.
Zah-A Pizza Movie (2009)
A great comedy
This was one of the most surprisingly excellent films of all time.
I have no idea what this movie's budget was, but it couldn't have been more than a couple grand. In spite of that, this movie really capitalizes on one of the most universal truths never told on film: Everyone loves pizza. This guy loves pizza... dare I say it... too much? Indeed, it's the story of a man who's love of pizza tears his life apart.
The premise alone is funny, but the movie backs it up with plenty of hilarious situations and a full linear narrative. There were a few spots where the budget broke through in a bad way, but for the most part, it succeeded in being a great film, and a very funny movie.
Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
A plot that would choke a goat.
The script was terrible.
To enumerate everything that was illogical about this movie would take all day.
The plot was just ridiculous and every scenario presented seemed unbelievable.
My least favorite thing about the movie. The protagonists just seemed lucky. They didn't seem as though they were surviving these situations on account of any ingenuity on their part, but rather they just get lucky time and time again.
Sure the kid from the IMAC commercial can "hack" but they frequently find themselves in situations where they're being shot at in the most precarious situations and they simply survive.
Did they fashion bullet proof vests to put under their shirts...? No the bullets just missed.
Did they lock themselves in an armored car to survive the explosion? No, it just didn't kill them enough.
Did they get the control room to CALL OFF THE FIGHTER JET! No, IT JUST MISSED.
It's not that I wouldn't accept the hero surviving tough situations but you've got give me at least some sort of ingenuity on the part of the protagonist.
For instance: In Die Hard 1, as the bomb on the roof was about to explode, McClain jumped off the roof with a fire hose to escape.
The explosion did not simply "miss".
In this movie everything seems to just "miss" in absence of any sort of ingenuity on the part of the protagonists.
This lowers it to the level of the film to that of mid 80s action fluff ie. Segall and Van Damme. I however would be more forgiving of such movies for not wasting my time.
I'm not saying that movies need to be realistic, but you've got to make me believe. This movie failed to make me believe anything that was going on was remotely possible or likely, but also that the characters involved were in any sort of danger.
I just didn't buy it.... at all.... and it became laughable to that extent.
Into the Wild (2007)
One of the most tedious movies I've seen in the theater
A 3 hour Pearl Jam Video chronicling a spoiled kid's quest to get back at his parents for an unpleasant childhood.
I just felt like it was so totally pretentious. It seemed like I was being preached to by someone who's most notable achievement in life was running away from home and freeloading off of hippies.
Add a generous portion of man crying, soap box philosophy, and slow-mo shower scenes, all built on this rickety premise that somehow this quest for revenge was a philosophical journey, and I was hardly able to sit through this one.
Pardon me if I'm venting, but I didn't want to say anything bad about it to my girlfriend because I never like the movies she makes me see, and she's typically very nice about the movies I make her watch. After all the positive reviews I just had to say my mind.
If he hadn't died at the end, and if it had turned out that he'd spent the rest of his life writing books about his experiences than this would be one of the most hypocritical and pretentious movies of all time.
In stead, it is the story of those who've survived him desperately trying to weave meaning into what could only be described as the trite and meaningless life of Christopher McCandless