DON'T BREATHE review

I grew up watching horror movies. My mom was a huge fan of slasher flicks like NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, FRIDAY THE 13TH, and her favorite, HALLOWEEN. After I saw POLTERGEIST (against my mom’s wishes) when I was about 5-years-old (thank you, older sis) and didn’t have any nightmares, my felt it was OK to let me delve into the horror genre a little deeper. The way she saw it, as long as I know it’s not real and it didn’t cause nightmares, then it’s OK. And I must thank her for that. For a while, the horror genre was one of my favorites. I saw the entire HALLOWEEN series by the time I was 10. My mom and I would have movie night where we would watch scary movies together. And because of this, horror films will always have a special place in my heart.

But, oh boy, has the horror genre really fallen. After THE RING (which I really liked) came out it spawned a new age of PG-13 horror movies that completely missed why THE RING was able to pull of its PG-13 rating. And later on, the SAW movies brought in the torture porn sub-genre which completely missed the point of the first SAW movie and just tried to make us cringe. Most horror movies now don’t know how to scare. Atmosphere and tension are completely forgotten and, most importantly, characters we care about to make us feel scared for their safety is lost. It’s all about setting up the most gruesome deaths imaginable and endless, cheap jump scares.

Which is why when I saw the trailer for DON’T BREATHE refreshing. The movie’s about three, young burglars who are breaking into an old, blind man’s house to steal his money, which they are told he’s got about $300,000, and they get trapped in his house and hunted by the blind man who happens to be a retired war-vet and crazy badass. It’s an incredibly simple premise that has a lot of opportunity for creative scares and inventive scenarios to build great tension. For the most part, I was right. DON’T BREATHE (DB from now on) definitely goes back to the old-school tension and atmosphere and has some really well set up sequences. However, it’s also a great example of how a bad third act can almost completely ruin your entire movie.

One problem I knew DB was going to have is making me root for the main characters. Three burglars aren’t exactly what you would call “good guys.” But the movie does establish pretty early that they’re not really bad people. Well, two of them aren’t. One really is. But the two that aren’t are doing this for something other than greed. Well, at least one of them is. Thinking about it now, the movie does do a good job at showing who these people are without much exposition. There is some, but it does show quite a bit rather than straight up tell us. I know who these three people are and why they’re doing it and I can at least empathise with two of them. So when they’re in danger, I do care. And these guys aren’t under the guise that they’re good, either. They know what they’re doing. They’re fully aware that they’re in the wrong. And it leaves room for them to grow. Unfortunately, I don’t feel like they really developed as characters through the course of the movie. At least they got half of this right.

With a good setup and great pacing, DB never felt boring. The first act is efficient in setting everything up and showing us the characters and scenarios before quickly getting us into the the main score. While these characters aren’t really pros at this, they know what they’re doing. A lot of detail went into how they go about pulling off these burglaries. Not so much on how they’re able to get away with it, but they at least show some competence. Even before things start getting crazy there’s a good amount of tension. The very subtle score and on-point sound cues really drive home the tension that’s greatly presented in the visual design.

Before DON’T BREATHE, the director, Fede Alvarez, showed he has talent with the horror genre by directing the EVIL DEAD reboot. I really dug that reboot and he showed off that he has great sensibilities for what horror was really missing for a while: atmosphere. Every moment in the house was unnerving even before the antagonist comes along. With such a small setting he had to get creative with how to use the space given. And he does a great job with every little bit of this house. You get a decent sense of the layout and where everyone is at any given point while also being able to make you feel hopelessly lost when it needs you to.

Stephen Lang kills it as the blind man. He is both the best and worst part about this movie. To clarify, Stephen Lang is the best part, his character later becomes the worst part. It starts off great having the old man look like a helpless old man only to quickly show how deadly he is. He’s completely within his legal right to defend his home from the invading “protagonists” and the movie could have really played up the dynamic of good people doing bad things out of necessity and how these actions affect the ones they wrong as well as how they feel as people for doing this to others. And also ask the audience who they should root for in this scenario. These could have been things that the movie did in yesteryears, but this is a modern day horror movie. And we’re supposed to have a clear cut bad guy to terrorize out good guys, so the movie goes really far out of its way to show that the blind man is definitely not a good guy. And at first, I thought with him being a military vet this could bring up PTSD and the effects of being in the craziness of war and the craziness of society with social injustices with a rich kid getting away with killing his daughter in a car accident (don’t worry, this isn’t a spoiler). But nope. The movie completely tossed that aside and made it impossible to like the blind man.

Oh boy.

I was really enjoying the first two acts of DB. The set pieces were finely crafted and had a sense of urgency to them. I wanted to root for the main characters, but at the same time, I can’t say I was completely on their side. I wanted to, but I didn’t quite feel they earned the right to win this battle. And when things started to push me to their side the movie takes a hard left turn in the third act that really made me cringe.

Now, there was a part in the second act that made me question where the movie was going. That part I talked about the PTSD possibilities… Yeah, I can’t get into it without spoiling, so I won’t. But it was an odd thing that they could have made sense out of, I guess, if they tried. But what they went for was completely absurd. In about 5 minutes I was completely turned off after almost being fully on board. This one scene utterly destroys Stephen Lang’s character. A damn shame, too. Before this one scene, he was the best part. Everything he does afterwards is just as good as everything before this. But the bad taste left behind made it nearly impossible for me to enjoy any of it.

It’s not just Lang’s character. Without giving it away, the main characters had a couple opportunities to show some growth. To learn something from all their perilous struggles and to walk away as better people because of this horrific event. But this also handled poorly. I’m not sure if it was originally scripted this way or if the writers intentionally made it so they don’t want the main characters to learn anything. And at first they tried to make the answer to this question a bit ambiguous then decides to wipe away any doubts. This could have been a redeeming moment for the movie especially after that atrocious scene before. And what remains afterwards is still clever. But there was no enjoyment to be had.

I really wanted to like DON’T BREATHE. I was excited for there to be a really good atmospheric horror movie. I was getting what I wanted for a good hour and fifteen minutes. But this just goes to show how important your final act is. That's incredibly unfortunate because there's a lot of incredible filmmaking that went into this movie. But it doesn’t matter how great your movie is if the ending is terrible. The most important part is how your audience feels when the screen goes black. That’s the feeling they’re going to take home with them. Mine was disappointment.

NOT RECOMMENDED for the most part.

But if you want to see how you can create great atmosphere and tension using a very simple premise and being really creative, then it's worth at least checking out once it gets to Netflix.

Original post HERE

KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS review.

I’ve been a fan of Laika ever since Coraline came out in 2009. Coraline was directed by Henry Selick who also directed NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS and JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH with his team as well as doing freelance work for movies like CORPSE BRIDE before they started making motion pictures in their signature stop-motion style. So far, Laika is batting 1.000 for me. CORALINE was incredible. PARANORMAN was a movie that was made for me. And THE BOXTROLLS didn’t have that same captivating magic to it, but it’s still a solid movie. In December of 2014, Laika announced they were doing a new movie in the style of Japanese folklore, I knew I had to see it. I’ve been excited ever since. Now that KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS is finally here, I wasn’t disappointed.

KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS is a gorgeous film. The stop-motion animation is beautifully done. Laika is probably the only studio keeping this format alive. And KUBO waists no time showing off the capabilities of this team. The opening scene sets the tone and the stakes and immediately gets you attached to the main character.

Something that’s fun about KUBO is the way they treat the mythical elements of the story. This story is loosely based in ancient Japanese folklore so when magic happens it’s just treated as normal. There’s no explanation for the magic and it’s just accepted as reality. I really dug that element.

I’ll get the two main flaws of the movie out of the way before I get back to singing its praises. First, the story itself is pretty thin and, for the most part, predictable. It’s a hero’s quest, or a video game story, moving from one object to the next with a boss fight right at each of the 3 main quest items before going to the big, bad final boss. There’s also a reveal which doesn’t come as much as a surprise especially after the first one is shown. And because the movie is so compact they do a lot of telling rather than showing for some key details.

Secondly, the main villain is just kind of there. The Moon King is talked about from the opening scene of the movie, but we never really get to see him until really late in the movie. We mostly spend time running away from the two henchmen, the Moon King’s two daughters (I’ll talk more about them in a little bit), but the big, bad guy just kind of felt like he was there. Other than being responsible for the hero to be in the situation I never really got a sense of why I should be fearful of him until he shows up in the final act. And for a film that leads up to the “final boss” it should have spent a little more time building him up. Also, it was a bit too reminiscent of THE AVENGERS… You’ll know when you see it.

Having said that, the two main villains, the sisters, are fantastic. They’re not really developed, but they are menacing. Every time they come on screen it feels like something terrible can happen. And almost every scene they’re in, something terrible does happen. Right at the turn from the first to the second act, when the sisters make their appearance, it is immediately tense. They are creepy as hell. At times it feels like they could just wipe out Kubo in an instant but decide to pull as much enjoyment from the torment they cause as they can.

Laika has made nothing but PG films, but they do not shy away from putting disturbing and dark imagery on screen. I love that about them. They treat their audience, especially the children, with a level of respect most studios don’t even put in their hard-R films. Yes, a lot of what happens in KUBO is scary. But they believe you can handle it. Without actually showing scary or bad things happening we can’t truly appreciate the consequences, both good and bad. And we grow more attached to the characters because of this.

While the plot and story of KUBO is on the weaker side, the characters were a lot better. The three main characters, Kubo, Monkey, and Beetle, were all interesting and different. Kubo, of course, gets a lot more development and set up than the other two being the main character. Monkey shows up right at the beginning of the second act. She’s cold at first. Keeping Kubo on track and making sure he stays on track for his quest. But she has a lot of these small gestures to Kubo that show that beneath all that she does truly care about him. Beetle comes in around half way through the movie and every moment he’s on screen is fun. Very straight forward character, mostly there for one-liners. He doesn’t get much development at all, but he was really fun to be around. The play between Monkey and Beetle may seem annoying for some, but it was a nice break from “main quests” seriousness. It does actually lead somewhere, whether or not it feel like it will. And while it wasn’t as satisfying as the movie may want it to be, it is nice.

Whether or not you get invested in the story or characters, one thing’s for certain, the visuals will keep you interested if nothing else does. Laika’s animation department, all done in painstaking stop-motion animation, is masterful. The amount of detail in each shot is nothing short of incredible. Whether it be magical origami to the guitar strumming, or an intense sword fight in a storm, the choreography and shot composition grabs your attention and won’t let go. Each of these set pieces also adds to either the story or the characters. Each scene is also very unique. The world built by this team is fascinating.

Probably a big part of what makes everything feel so engrossing is the music by Dario Marianelli, who also did the music for Laika’s previous film THE BOXTROLLS. Whether it be the magical shamisen (traditional 3-string Japanese guitar), the background music to a magical duel, or the subtle lingering notes when our characters are having an emotional moment. Every musical beat hits the right emotional note.

I was captivated from start to finish with KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS. Even clearly seeing the flaws didn’t take away from my enjoyment. It hit all the right emotional notes for me as well as being the most visually stunning movies of the year. And while the final, big, bad boss didn’t carry the weight that it should have, the movie takes a really smart turn with the climax. I love the ending to KUBO. It’s kind of hard to talk about why I love this ending so much without talking about spoilers. But without giving anything away, the movie both deflects the expectations of how it’s going to be resolved while doing a nice callback to a scene in the first act. There’s a moment where Kubo as this revelation and I just warmed up inside. Then to see the rest of the film play out and get to the final shot was about as satisfying as any final shot could be.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Original post HERE

SAUSAGE PARTY review

You are not prepared for SAUSAGE PARTY.

“Oh, I think I ca-”

NO! You are NOT ready for this movie! I thought I was… But, oh man… And where to begin?

The first trailer for SAUSAGE PARTY was amazing. When it dropped posing as a poorly made family film only to start dropping F-bombs I was laughing hysterically. The premise was bonkers and seeing these cute little food items swear and be brutally murdered was just too absurd. I knew I had to see it. After that I avoided watching any other trailers as I wanted to see if the movie had any more of those surprises that the first trailer had. Now, after having watched SP, no amount of trailers can prepare you for what’s in store…. Pun intended.

I really don’t want to say too much in this review. I could just say that this is probably the most mess up movie I’ve seen in years, possibly ever, and will probably make my top 10 films of the year and leave it at that. But I won’t.

SAUSAGE PARTY starts out basically how the trailers show it. It opens up with the store opening and the food is singing merrily along. Only difference between the trailers and the movie with the opening is SP doesn’t wait very long to start the profanity. Other than the profanity, the first 15 minutes or so is like any other family animated film with mediocre animation. Fun, happy-go-lucky characters and bright colors galore. Having seen the trailers I knew what was coming, but I wasn’t necessarily waiting for it to just get there. Everything was silly as hell, but it was enjoyable. And, oh man, the food puns.

One thing I was worried about watching the trailer was how much they can do with the premise. Sure, it’s hilarious and everything, but how long can you stretch out the humor in food being murdered? Luckily the movie proves to be much smarter than that. When the plot starts moving it already takes some deviations from what the trailer leads you to believe. There are several tropes going on including a subplot involving some douche trying to kill the main characters… yes, you read that correctly. Yes, that’s intended to be a pun on the movie’s part. But the main focus of the story is much more philosophical than that. Yes… a vulgar-talking-food-being-brutally-murdered movie’s main point has to do with philosophy… Absurd, right?

If I were to overly simplify SP I would say it has to do with religion. It isn’t outright anti-religion, but more an examination as to why religion exists in the first place and whether or not it’s the right way to go about life. Sometimes, even if it’s a lie, religion can be a sense of hope to make it so we don’t lose ourselves to depression or that feeling that nothing matters. If we’re all going to die no matter what we do, then why live at all? What’s the point of all of this?

*long awkward pause*

But hey, that sausage just said the “F word!”

I can’t really say the religious/philosophical aspect of the movie was gracefully handled. It’s pretty in-your-face about it. But it’s just so absurdly presented that I can’t help but love it. And that could be said about everything in this movie. SP is so jam packed (yes, another pun) with wild jokes from start to finish in a way never before presented that it makes up for just about any shortcomings the movie may have. It just keeps getting more and more ridiculous all the way until the end. When you think that it can’t get any crazier, it does. Oh, man. Never, at any point think you know how far the movie is willing to go. When it gets to the climax… That last 15 minutes will haunt my dreams for months… For god’s sake, don’t take your kids to this movie…

HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION.

Original post HERE

DEADSHOT AND FRIENDS.... I mean... SUICIDE SQUAD reivew

A big problem of SUICIDE SQUAD, if the word ‘round the campfire is true, has to do with the failure that is BATMAN V SUPERMAN. I really disliked BVS, as did many other people. With such backlash against it, DC went into panic mode and called for a lot of reworking of SUICIDE SQUAD. Now, studio interference isn’t anything knew. One of the biggest examples of studio interference taking a huge toll on a movie is X-MEN 3. Other examples being HANCOCK (another Will Smith movie), the recent FANTASTIC FOUR, and ALIEN 3. Because studios make such a big investment they feel the need to get involved with the movie, even against the director’s vision, and try to make the movie more appealing to the general audiences. However, this can, and often does, lead to movies feeling messy, incoherent, sloppy, and incomplete. SUICIDE SQUAD definitely feels like a movie that was tampered with from its original vision and suffers heavily from it.

SUICIDE SQUAD feels like two different movies cut together into one with a little side movie thrown in as well. Throughout the movie it can’t decide whether it wants to be serious or not. It has this sense of urgency with everything going on but it also feels like there’s too much forced humor. I’m sure a lot of the jokes were there from the beginning. With characters like Harley Quinn, you’re bound to get some laughs here and there. But many moments in this film feel like there were a part of those re shoots that we heard about.

Speaking of Harley Quinn, Margot Robbie is fantastic. She really nails everything there is about Harley Quinn. Even her voice at times is spot on with the voice I’m so familiar with from the animated series from when I was a kid. It’s definitely her own take on the character, but the inspiration definitely shows. Harley is one of the few really well developed characters. She has a wide range of emotions and even has a decent arc. She definitely would fit as one of the main characters of the bunch with the other one being Deadshot.

I’m not a huge Will Smith fan. Yes, I love him as the Fresh Prince, but beyond his comedic roles, I don’t think he’s a very strong actor. But he’s got this charisma to him that makes you want to like him and it makes up for any shortcomings he may have. It does play great in his role of Deadshot. His motivations are really clear and he has something we can connect with, unlike all of the other (except maybe one other) members.

One of the big problems with ensemble films like this one is getting enough set up with each character for us to care about them. Deadshot gets the most, by far, set up. Harley gets a flashback sequence explaining how she got here as well. But all the other characters are severely underwritten. Diablo does get a nice bit near the end of the film. It is a good one, but it’s a bit too late. I figured it out beforehand, but it doesn’t really plays too much in to his character through most of the movie. Killer Croc and Captain Boomerang get close to no backstory other than maybe 3 sentences each. And Katana just kind of shows up and doesn’t really do much or go away.

While we don’t really get to know these characters too much, they all do have their own very unique personalities. It is kind of fun from time to time seeing these characters be them, but there’s really not a whole lot of time dedicated to the squad. Now that I think of it, there’s really only one scene where all the characters actually feel like they’re really interacting with each other as a whole. And this scene is so late in the movie and too brief to really make enough of an impact for me to really care about them. Which really sucks because there’s supposed to be a great character moment in the following scene which falls flat because I saw it coming a mile away. I would have liked to spend more time with these characters because they all do seem very interesting. This movie just takes way too long to get them all together and let them do anything. Oh, and there’s one other character that’s brought in just to establish some stakes before leaving the film. Also saw that one coming a mile away.

Notice I haven’t said anything about the Joker. Well, I just wish he wasn’t really in this film. I’m not saying Jared Leto is a bad Joker. I’m just saying the scenes with him are all pretty bad. Jared Leto seems like he may be an interesting Joker, but I can’t really say for sure. He does certainly seem very menacing and crazy. But there’s just something off about him in this movie. It’s not the look, the look didn’t bother me. But more his persona. But like I said, none of his scenes were good. They could have all been removed and the movie probably would have benefited from that. It also takes away from Harley’s character as it makes it seem like the entirety of her character is entirely dependent on the Joker.

“But what about the action?” Hold on. I’m getting there. The reason I always hold off on talking about the action is because if I don’t care about the characters then generally I don’t care about the action. You can give me the prettiest action set pieces ever filmed, slap them in a 100-minute movie, and I wouldn’t care if there weren’t characters I cared about in the middle of all of that. Other than Deadshot, I didn’t care about any of the characters. So when the bullets went flying and the fits and bats start hitting, I was yawning. There are some cool visual aspects of the film. The action is set up fairly nicely despite lighting and framing issues.

The coolest part was the destruction. I’m not talking about the explosions, but there’s this weird look to everything that’s destroyed by the main villain’s brother/henchman. I couldn’t tell you his name, so I won’t try. I don’t care to look it up, either. It’s almost as if the metal melted then dried as it was being pulled out of the object. The Enchantress, the main villain who is barely in the film, also has this cool other-worldly look. The style of this world is incredibly and major props go out to the design team on this movie.

One other big problem with this movie is the soundtrack. Oh, god, there were several scenes in this movie that were almost completely ruined by the music choices. Way too many pop songs and music instead of an actual score. There was one scene where 2 songs played back to back with less than one minute between the two. It really took me out of the movie even if I wasn't really into it to begin with.

Ultimately, the major flaw of this film is it was boring. It was sure as hell miles beyond BVS in every aspect. But that really isn’t saying much. I can see hardcore DC fans having a lot to like about this film as well as a lot to complain about. The studio meddling is apparent and I kind of wish I could have seen David Ayers original vision for this film. I guess that’ll never happen, though. As is…

HESITANTLY RECOMMENDED for fans NOT RECOMMENDED for everyone else.

Original post HERE