*sigh*

It's not . . . bad, exactly—there are a coupla genuinely tense moments and the ending manages to raise the bar of the previous hour considerably—but what a bummer. It's like someone put this movie together as a deliberate contrast to everything that makes the original BWP so special.

Where the first one felt so believable precisely because it was so lo-fi, this one ceases to feel real almost instantly because of the number and quality of the cameras being used. Where the first one runs almost entirely on improv and is thus imbued with a wonderful and terrible organic quality, this one is scripted to a fault and allows almost no room for spontaneity. Where the first one was stark and spare, nothing but the two cameras and their often subpar audio, this one is scored in places and contains an irksome number of edit-jump sound effects. We also get jump scares galore as opposed to the original's staunch refusal to be cheap with its frights.

Add to that the fact that it has far too many characters, which means we never get a sense of anyone as a person like we did with Heather and Josh and Mike; the incredibly lame fact that the justification for going out to the woods again in the first place has next to no thematic resonance or purpose; and the general try-hard atmosphere of trying to one-up the scares of the first film (which completely misses the point), and we're left with a movie that in isolation is a meh film with some pretty good moments but as a sequel to one of the most perfect horror films ever made is headache-inducing.

Also, let the buyer beware: there are some things that happen in this film that I think will genuinely blunt some of the impact of the original for me.

I watched the Ladies Ghostbusters film and liked it well enough, DiF talked on their commentary for the original film about how the guys were basically given a budget and a release date and left to it, this is totally the opposite in every way.

The plot could have done with some improvement, the jokes certainly could and whilst the cast was pretty flavour of the month Melissa McCarthy somehow avoided derailing the whole thing with her usual "I'm fat and vomiting" persona. which is quite the achievement.

Is it a touch on the original? not by miles, is it actually a bad movie? No. I had fun.

See, I turned Spy off about an hour in.

You are right, it does feel like a sitcom, which is not helped by the fact that all the cast are from one sitcom or SNL and usually turn up in the same handful of mainstream comedies.

I did think it odd that nothing in the first hour happened at night and the subway sequence did seem rather off.

"Ooh, that's pretty."
"Man, this score is rather pleased with itself."
"God, this is pretty."
"...seriously, this score needs to knock it off."
"Is there a single human being in this movie?"
"Ooh, that's even more pretty."
"Am I sure this isn't a bad dub from the Italian?" *checks internet* "Oh, wow. Okay then, guess I'll just have to deal with the awful ADR."
"Still don't seem to be many humans walking around."
"PRETTY"
"This score thinks it's making the movie scarier and it's really not."
"Man, this acting sucks but I can't blame them with the lines they're bring given."
"Oh gross."
*sigh* "Well, it sure... is... pretty."
"OH WHO GIVES A SHIT?!"

So, yeah. Gorgeous images can't compensate for an utter lack of tension and human characters. A pity.

Without this movie we'd probably never have gotten stuff like Mulholland Dr., and that'd be a shame. But I'll choose to admire it from a distance (and occasionally borrow it from the library again if I just want to run really vivid images on my TV for 90 minutes).

Last edited by Abbie (2016-10-09 05:53:25)

I'm with you. By the end of the movie, I was thinking:
"These would be some pretty badass action figures." and
"Wait, what?"

Finally saw Captain America Civil War and got a chance to write my thoughts done about it.

First of all, the opening is well done an interesting, showcasing the Avengers as a team, working to prevent (insert action set piece here). And I like it because it makes nods to "Age of Ultron" and consequences for a lot of different characters from across the films. Which, ok, if you're going to have a "cinematic universe" that's a good way to pay that off. It also introduced Black Panther which I thought was the most enjoyable of characters. He actually had an arc too, even. Also, Spider-Man was in it and he was fun.

But, the way the consequences play out actually start out very big and world impacting and go to incredibly small, for some weird reason.

So, starts out strong but the ending feels so poorly done that I'm left more confused by the result. Sorry if this has been talked about before, but this is one film that I not only left feeling extraordinarily confused but felt didn't even work as a film by the end.

OMG, imagine a MCU marathon. Hours (eventually days!) of PG13 WWE-esque consequence-less punching. Go to the can, to the fridge, have a nap, check social media, run some errands, return to the couch, and they're still punching (in between quips and sky lasers)

This is probably one of the first Marvel films that left me with more questions than anything else. Yes, I'm sure that sounds odd, given this community. But, with  most Marvel films I'm either annoyed by the end or thoroughly entertained. Even with the ones that are "meh" I can at least have some fun at the film's expense.

But, with Civil War, it had some great moments and then a really fun scene and then spiraled downward until it became a spectacular wreck. Seriously, what are you doing, movie?

The whole Riddick thing continues to be this fucking mystery to me. What a bizarre series of rungs to try to build a single ladder out of.

I personally still like Chronicles of Riddick more than any of the other films, but yeah, it is weird. I really wish Chronicles had been the start and laid the foundation a little bit differently, going full space opera from the beginning, while than having the sci-fi horror of "Pitch Black" and then space opera and then survival, with tie in properties. Well, the video game was fun.

Also, Teague, people like Prometheus and think it works perfectly as a prequel. Please figure that one out.

Prometheus had me totally fooled on my first viewing (its beautiful imagery is quite seductive; the only stupid thing I noticed was the "that system has a sun" line), but subsequent viewings and the DiF commentary have revealed many problems.

Alien: Covenant can still salvage this franchise, but the script must be really solid. Ridley Scott can take care of the visuals (he was always great in that department), just don't let him screw up the story.

The Day the Clown Cried

This is the Jerry-Lewis-is-a-clown-at-Auschwitz movie of legend, you might have heard the story: couldn't pass the laugh test, Lewis tried hard to bury it (succeeded for the most part) but recently someone's pieced together a thirty-minute or so version from random available clips. Stuff that was shown as promotional material in the '70s on various TV shows around the world, some re-enactments from the original actors, even a few places where the shot you're watching is actually taken from behind-the-scenes footage of an editor who's watching playback of that shot, etc.. It's assembled from scraps, it's entirely in German, the version I watched had sporadic subtitles, and it's at most a third of the actual movie... but it's enough to get a sense of the thing.

I dunno, maybe I was over-prepared to cringe, but this wasn't nearly as offensive as I was expecting. I mean, yes — Jerry Lewis plays a down-on-his-luck clown who crosses the wrong guy and gets sent to a camp for political prisoners, adjacent to a concentration area for jews, where he takes to doing impromptu juggling/tumbling shows for the kids next door until the guards come down hard on him for fraternizing with 'em. Spoiler alert, if you care: he eventually is given an ultimatum by which he can either A) help the guards lead the kids into the gas chamber and then leave, or B) not help the guards and join them in the gas chamber. He seems to submit to the ultimatum at first, but once he's led them to the gas chamber, a little girl gives him "aren't you coming with us?" eyes and he decides to go in with them. Door closes, roll credits.

(In this version, at least.)

Here's where the major distinction lies, and my whole read of the movie is centered on it, so if I'm mistaken with this then my whole read is wrong: I'm pretty sure this isn't a comedy and wasn't conceived of as one. If you say "and the whole thing is played for laughs!," then of course it sounds grotesque, but... to me, this simply reads like bad taste — like the proverbial "going full retard" — not grotesquery. It's not a holocaust exploitation comedy, in other words; it plays like Lewis just wanted play a tricky dramatic role that needed to be played by a comedian ('cuz clown) in what's actually a "serious" movie, meant to ask questions about moral quandary and whatnot, and it just fell flat.

I mean, they buried it for a reason, it is pretty fucking horrifying. But it's not evil or bewildering; it's mostly just a poorly-written misfire. The hype I've heard from the likes of Patton Oswalt and Harry Shearer seemed completely alien to what I saw; I'm not sure if they were drawing from a different sample, or were more just... you know, excited to tell a weird Hollywood story that most people wouldn't have an opportunity to investigate for themselves, and they got carried away with the superlatives.

In any case, let mine be another opinion you've heard: this isn't salacious enough to care about.

(Hat tip to Seth Brower.)