You Should Have Left Review

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Synopsis
Theo (Kevin Bacon), his wife Susanna (Amanda Seyfried), and their daughter Ella (Avery Essex), take a trip in the Welsh countryside where their vacation house is not as it seems on the outside.

Review
For a long time I stayed away from any film in the horror genre. However, over the years I have found that supernatural horror is a niche that I do enjoy. When the trailer for You Should Have Left dropped just two weeks ago, it seemed like a film right up my narrow horror film alley. According to the trailer it had supernatural elements, some thriller pieces, and Kevin Bacon. Those are ll things that I enjoy in a film, so I gave it a chance. I was right that is was the kind of film I would enjoy, unfortunately it was better on paper than it was on screen.

Everything about You Should Have Left falls way short of being bearable. Firstly, the characters have little to no actual development. Theo, Kevin Bacon’s character, is completely defined by the death of his ex-wife. He does not go through any kind of growth as the film goes on, nor is his ex-wife’s death really expanded on. By the way, he was tried for and found innocent of his ex-wife’s death. You would think that would be a larger part of the Theo’s character but it hardly registers throughout most of the film. Susanna, Amanda Seyfried’s character and Theo’s much younger wife, also gets minimal development in the film. To be honest, other than Susanna is an actress, I could not tell you anything about her. Bacon and Seyfried, two great actors, are truly wasted in this film.

It doesn’t help either that two-thirds of this movie is used to set up this big mystery about the house Theo, Susanna, and their daughter Ella (Avery Essex), are staying in while on vacation. An attempt is made to create a mystery about the house, at the same time the film is also trying to build up the “troubled past” of Theo mind you, but like the human characters, building the mystery around the house simply falls flat. Even as the credits roll, little explanation is provided about the place, other than some vague remarks by a local shopkeeper (Colin Blumenau). It’s not until the final thirty minutes or so before the mystery is even begun to be explored. With little time left, the film feels like it is sprinting towards the end, finding a way to wrap up the “arc” for the characters and gets lost along the way.

For a film billed as a supernatural horror and thriller, You Should Have Left has very little of any of those elements. The scare attempts are amateurish at best; the supernatural is a little science-fiction-ish but with little explanation it’s hard to even determine which one it is; and the thriller is completely reliant on the mystery element and since that falls short, so too does the thriller aspect. I am honestly surprised a film this abysmal was made by a filmmaker with such a storied history as David Koepp.

I thought You Should Have Left was BAD 😦 I am usually fairly optimistic when it comes to reviewing films. Even in widely panned movies like the recent Artemis Fowl I can often manage to uncover some sort of redeeming quality buried within the mound of bad. Regrettably, I can’t find anything in this film that I really enjoyed. The characters were flat, the set-up took too much time, the mystery wasn’t that gripping, the reveal wasn’t even that good either, and the payoff simply didn’t exist. In a perfect world I would not have taken the time to watch this at all. The next best scenario is I would have seen this in theaters rather than on-demand because there is no price worth the admission for this film but at least in the theater, I would have payed less for such a poor experience.

Trailer

Cast & Crew
David Koepp – Director / Screenplay
Geoff Zanelli – Composer

Kevin Bacon – Theo
Amanda Seyfried – Susanna
Avery Essex – Ella
Colin Blumenau – Shopkeeper
Lown Ann Richards – Welsh Woman
Joshua C. Jackson – Production Assistant – Susanna’s Movie
Eli Powers – Susanna’s Assistant

Hellboy (2019) Review

Synopsis
When Nimue (Milla Jovovich), a centuries old witch, is resurrected, Hellboy (David Harbour) and the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense race to find the fabled Excalibur, the only weapon capable of defeating Nimue, before she unleashes her forces on the Earth.

Review
As a cinefile, I can usually find something to appreciate in every film I watch. As a movie reviewer, I don’t like bashing any film. When I watch a film, I watch it for my own enjoyment, not to critique it or find its flaws. Unfortunately for this reboot of Mike Mignola’s popular comic book character, I found very little to enjoy in Hellboy. From the get-go, it’s clear that this is going to be a different Hellboy movie than the two directed by Guillermo del Toro. Which is good. When rebooting a series, some of the most successful ones are usually tonally different. While this iteration definitely feels different, it is also a mess.

One thing I actually did like about this reboot is that it just jumped right into the world of Hellboy. In a way, it reminds me of a movie like Inception where it drops the audience into the world without hand-holding the them. However, there is not much world-building in Hellboy. There is plenty of exposition sprinkled throughout the film to give backstory to protagonist and antagonist but it is the bare minimum. I didn’t feel like there was enough to care about Hellboy, the relationship between him and his father, or the villain, whose justification for wanting to destroy humans is because of reasons. The experience felt like watching a sequel when I didn’t watch the first film.

The plot also unnecessarily convoluted. Hellboy travels from location to location and characters appear and disappear seemingly on a whim, creating a whirlwind pace for the film. Hellboy feels like it’s moving along yet still somehow manages to drag on. As I mentioned before, there was a plot thread focused on the relationship between Hellboy and his father, Professor Broom, played by the criminally underutilized Ian McShane. There was very little time invested into this thread and as a result, when this thread came to a head, I didn’t feel any emotion. And this isn’t just limited to Hellboy and Broom but also Hellboy and all of the supporting characters. Since the story jumps around and characters come and go, no relationships are built. David Harbour does a good job as the titular character but it doesn’t matter when there is no one around long enough to work with.

This film is rated R (NC-17) and takes full advantage of it. Every shooting or stabbing creates rivers of blood and gore that would make Quentin Tarantino jealous. Now, I’m not one to criticize a movie for being violent. I revel in movies that aren’t afraid to be bloody and gory… as long as it works for the context of the film and it makes sense to do so. That isn’t the case here. It felt like it was being gruesome for gruesome’s sake. Of course, it didn’t help that the CGI was atrocious, which only made things look worse. To paraphrase Ian Malcolm, the movie was so preoccupied with whether or not it could that it didn’t stop to think if it should.

I thought Hellboy was BAD 😦 I wanted to like this film, especially as a fan of the del Toro Hellboy films, but this is just a mess of a film. Character relationships weren’t properly built, the story was stifled in favor of action, and the CGI is comparable to a late 90s or early 2000s film. If this is considered closer to the comics adaptation of Hellboy, I’ll take my further from the comics adaptation back, please.

Trailer

Cast & Crew
Neil Marshall – Director
Andrew Cosby – Screenplay
Benjamin Wallfisch – Composer

David Harbour – Hellboy
Ian McShane – Professor Broom
Milla Jovovich – Nimue / The Blood Queen
Sasha Lane – Alice Monaghan
Daniel Dae Kim – Major Ben Daimio
Alistair Petrie – Lord Adam Glaren
Sophie Okonedo – Lady Hatton
Troy James – Baba Yaga
Emma Tate – Baba Yaga (voice)
Mark Stanley – Arthur
Brian Glesson – Merlin
Penelope Mitchell – Ganeida
Thomas Haden Church – Lobster Johnson
Markos Rounthwaite – Grigori Rasputin
Joel Harlow – Von Krupt

Gabriel Review

Synopsis
In purgatory, archangels and the fallen battle for the souls who have traveled there. Gabriel (Andy Whitfield), the last archangel to join the fight, must find his fellow archangels and defeat the leader of the fallen, Sammael (Dwaine Stevenson).

Review
Within the first few minutes, I was able to guess the time period of Gabriel‘s release. My initial guess was around 2004. Its actual release date is 2007. I bring this up because this movie’s style is such a product of its time. Not that that is a bad thing but all this movie has is style. The action scenes are clearly influenced by movie like The Matrix and Equilibrium but it doesn’t understand what made the action work in those films. The fight choreography in Gabriel was good and exciting. Unfortunately, the movie tries too hard to add flare to the cinematography of these scenes that it becomes detrimental the scene itself. I couldn’t see what was happening half of the time. For example, one fight scene takes place in a club with a strobe effect, one fight scene takes place in a hallway where the characters could only be seen through the door frames, and another takes place during a thunderstorm where the only source of light is the lightning. Frequently, there were many weird lighting choices that made the scenes hard to see and difficult to follow. And that’s not including all the cutaways, an obvious influence of The Bourne Identity.

Ignoring the poorly filmed action scenes, the story doesn’t do this film any favors. There is text and exposition in the opening to set up the concept of the fight between archangels, the fallen, and their fight in purgatory. It sets up rules for the fight between the light and the darkness and for the souls of those in purgatory but isn’t clear about what needs to be done to save those stuck between heaven and hell. Also, the revelation at the end was obvious and I called it halfway through the film. Maybe I’m thinking too much about this and should have just shut my brain off and (attempted to) enjoy the action sequences but there is too much about the story that wasn’t made clear that I just wanted to understand.

I thought Gabriel was BAD 😦 For an action movie, the action sequences are, while well choreographed, poorly filmed. Plus the story is mucky and unengaging. Unless you’re a fan of bad B-films, chances are you won’t find much in this film that is worth your time.

Trailer

Cast & Crew
Shane Abbess – Director / Writer
Matt Hylton Todd – Writer
Brian Cachia – Composer

Andy Whitfield – Gabriel
Dwaine Stevenson – Sammael
Samantha Noble – Jade
Michael Piccirilli – Asmodeus
Jack Campbell – Raphael
Erika Heynatz – Lilith
Harry Pavlidis – Uriel
Kevin Copeland – Ahriman
Matt Hylton Todd – Ithuriel
Brendan Clearkin – Balan
Goran D. Kleut – Moloch
Valentino Del Toro – Baliel
Amy Mathews – Maggie
Paul Winchester – Marcus
Richard Huggett – Max

Transformers: The Last Knight Review

Synopsis
Transformers are banned from Earth but keep arriving more and more frequently. Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg), on the run and hunted by the authorities for assisting Transformers, comes across a ship containing a Transformer who gifts him a mysterious amulet, which the Decepticons are searching for as well, putting Yeager in their crosshairs. Meanwhile, Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen (voice)) finds his creator who reveals to him a way to save his dying planet: destroy planet Earth.

Review
I’ll let you in on something: I am somewhat of a sentimental person. Having grown up with several Transformers television series over the years, my childhood friend and I have made it a tradition to see the Transformer films together. We go no matter what because it has become a tradition that neither one of us wants to break. Regardless of the quality, we go anyway, for better or for worse. This time, it might have been more towards the latter.

First, I’ll start with the positives of Transformer: The Last Knight. The end credits were very very short. I’m guessing it was sub-two or -three minutes. We were at the end of the credits before we could finish looking up if there was something at the end of the credits or not. That’s unheard of in a film these days, let alone a blockbuster like Transformer!

… Oh, were you expecting more? Because that’s about all the nice things I have to say about this film. I could say that the young Isabela Moner, as Izabella, was great. For such a young actress, she was tough, she was believable, and she was emotional. However, she was criminally underused. Izabella is a mechanic like Cade (Mark Wahlberg) and could of become like a second daughter to him since his actual daughter didn’t make an appearance in the film. There could have been an existent emotional connection between characters or, you know, a plot that actually had some emotion to it. But who wants that when there are explosions!?

The Last Knight shares many of the pacing problems as Age of Extinction. It moves along at such a breakneck pace that there is no time to settle down. For as much explosions and action and giant robot fights were happening on screen, I was… bored. I never thought I would find myself using that sentence to describe an action movie but there it is. My buddy told me after we left the theater that he almost dozed off once or twice. I honestly didn’t go in with high hopes after the last film in the series but I also didn’t expect to just stare at the screen blankly, not really giving a shit.

It also amazes me how much they are ignoring their own continuity. The story is becoming like the X-Men franchise with such a confusing and convoluted continuity. Now, I am a guy who likes a nice clean continuity (which sometimes drives me up a wall when dealing with comic book continuity), and the fact that with only five movies the continuity is as big of a mess as it is drives me insane. I’m sure that there are lines that take the characters between the films but they are not made clear in the movie, and like I said, that gets on my nerves.

I thought Transformers: The Last Knight was BAD 😦 I wasn’t expecting any kind of a masterpiece, especially after Age of Extinction, but I have never checked out of a movie so fast. The characters were shallow, no relationships between them were developed, the plot didn’t make any sense, and it moved too quickly to understand where it was going until it got there. Flashy visuals will only get you so far and the Transformers franchise has become an example of that.

Trailer

Cast & Crew
Michael Bay – Director
Art Marcum – Screenplay / Story
Matt Holloway – Screenplay / Story
Ken Nolan – Screenplay / Story
Akiva Goldsman – Story
Steve Jablonsky – Composer

Mark Wahlberg – Cade Yeager
Laura Haddock – Vivian Wembley
Anthony Hopkins – Sir Edmund Burton
Isabela Moner – Izabella
Jerrod Carmichael – Jimmy
Josh Duhamel – Col. William Lennox
Santiago Cabrera – Santos
John Turturro – Agent Simmons
Gemma Chan – Quintessa
Peter Cullen – Optimus Prime (voice)
Frank Welker – Megatron (voice)
John Goodman –Hound (voice)
Ken Watanabe – Drift (voice)
John DiMaggio – Crosshairs (voice) / Nitro Zeus (voice)
Jim Carter – Cogman (voice)
Omar Sy – Hot Rod (voice)
Jess Harnell – Barricade (voice)

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Lightning Review: Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd

Synopsis
Before they went on a trip across the country together, Harry (Derek Richardson) and Lloyd (Eric Christian Olsen) first met in high school. Their high school principal (Eugene Levy) give Harry and Lloyd the task of finding “special” students for their class. Little do they know, the class is a scheme by the principal to con money for him and his girlfriend (Cheri Oteri).

Review
I think it is safe to say that Dumb and Dumber was a bit of a surprise hit. On paper, the premise and characters sound ridiculous but it works because it has a lot of heart. That’s where Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd fails. It lacks the heart that makes the first film work. Like any comedy follow up, it tries to make similar jokes as its predecessor since that’s often part of what made it work in the first place. This time, they fail to hit their mark. The film wasn’t nearly as funny and I barely laughed. When I did, it was often because of how absurd it was, and not the good absurd that Dumb and Dumber is. It has moments that are marginally tolerable but they are mere drops in a bucket of dirty water. One redeeming quality I can see in this movie is Derek Richardson and Eric Christian Olsen did a good job of imitating Jim Carrey’s Lloyd and Jeff Daniel’s Harry, respectively. The biggest problem with this prequel is that it does nothing to expand on the characters that we see in the first film.

I thought Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd was BAD 😦 With the exception of a handful, the jokes fall flat and it doesn’t have any sort of redeeming qualities that I can see. I guess this kind of poor quality is what happens when a studio goes for a cash grab on a property and the guys that made the first film a success are not included.

Also read my reviews for Dumb and Dumber and Dumb and Dumber To.

Trailer

Cast & Crew
Troy Miller – Director / Screenplay
Robert Brener – Story / Screenplay
Eban Schletter – Composer

Derek Richardson – Harry Dunne
Eric Christian Olsen – Lloyd Christmas
Mimi Rogers – Mrs. Dunne
Luis Guzman – Ray
Rachel Nichols – Jessica
Eugene Levy – Principal Collins
Cheri Oteri – Ms. Heller
Elden Henson – Turk
Josh Braaten – Toby
William Lee Scott – Carl
Michelle Krusiec – Ching Chong
Shia LeBeouf – Lewis
Teal Redmann – Terri
Brian Posehn – Store Clerk