Barely subsists on atmosphere and del Toros performance, ends up coming off a lot more juvenile and heavy handed than it probably wanted to. The ultra portentous vibe is something I’m usually more forgiving of (because I love it), but this telegraphs everything it’s trying to show you all the way up to 11, bordering on parody at times. Tons of slow push ins, ominous zooms, and other shots that are done in almost every scene, whether or not it…
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The Creator 2023
Tremendous visual and practical effects, immense scale and vision given the budget, just very impressive overall. The Avatar comparisons are apt, from the general ideas in the (unfortunately very generic) script to the mech designs, and other things. Yet the action in this is on a smaller scale, and less sweeping/grand and more claustrophobic/shocking (like in Rogue One, go figure). Hard to compress all of my thoughts about this into this review but I’ll just say that every aspect of this movie…
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A Haunting in Venice 2023
Fun that Branagh is still making these, even if they’re not much more than mildly diverting. The most interesting aspect is when he decides to throw in a couple of goofy wide angles and then shoot the basement sequence like The Conjuring, which was awesome. It gives a sort of anachronistic style to a movie so devoted to historical setting. Wish there was more of that.
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Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One 2023
This is a great movie with some amazing sequences, which make the negative aspects so much more disappointing. The submarine intro, the airport sequence, and parts of the Rome chase are brilliantly done. The film spends too much time monologuing though, and it feels like the pace of everything slows down too much as the movie goes on. The motorcycle jump is incredible of course but it gets cut up in the editing room a bit, as do some of…
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Edge of Darkness 2010
Campbell is miles ahead of most other directors who touch this kind of material, which is a good thing but also makes you wish there was more to the material itself. Somehow Gibson always turns out a great performance, even if I'm not 100% on board with what they are trying to do with his character.
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Full Circle 2023
Great score, really solid performances too. Soderbergh has some great direction here, lot's of claustrophobic wide angles on people running, being nervous, etc. The story is honestly a mess though, so many wierd plot holes and strange character decisions (or lack of decisions rather). I guess that makes this another case study in the fact that if the characters and the way the story is told are solid enough, you can mostly look past the story beats themselves.
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Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse 2023
Late to the party on this one but it is indeed great. I guess my only real complaint is that it's not long enough, I'm amazed that they fit as much stuff into this as they did. But I would rather a film leave me slightly wanting more than to drag too much, and there's a sequel of course so this is mostly just nitpicking.
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Extraction 2 2023
Slightly better than the first one! Love the dumb sequel bait at the end too, they decided to just fully lean into it.
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Street Kings 2008
Really dumb. Especially with that ending, was that supposed to be satisfying? I'm glad Ayer went on to make Fury, which has far more nuance than the sad attempt at it here with Keanu's character.
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The Covenant 2023
I remember comparing the trailers to the really high reviews I was seeing and thought something must not be right. I was correct; this is a decent movie but so much of the dialogue is wooden, the action effects are mostly B movie tier, and the pacing of the plot is kind of off. Not bad, just not nearly as good as I was lead to believe.