Monday, August 15, 2022

Men/Lightyear

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In case you haven’t seen the intro from my entry dated 1/26/19 (it’s in my archives whenever you want to read it), I’m no longer going to review every single movie I see.  I’m going to review one, with the occasional bonus, and just give ratings for the rest from now on (unless I decide to pick it up again in the future).  You can always ask me why I gave the ratings for the films without reviews though (via comments or the e-mail addresses under the ‘About Me’ section).
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Men                                                                             OK/G
After an incident involving her soon-to-be ex-husband in London, a woman travels to the English countryside.  Eventually, things get weird and truly bizarre by the end, often making me think I was watching a David Lynch movie (Alex Garland directed it, who also directed Annihilation, which I was a big fan of, and wrote 28 Days Later and Never Let Me Go; check out my review for Annihilation here---https://vampireclown82.blogspot.com/2018/03/mooby-reviews-3818.html).  I’ll admit I did look up explanations afterwards, even watching a making-of featurette, and one was very close to my interpretation (the director even alluded there may be different conclusions in that featurette).  There is nothing quite like this movie out there, at least in execution, and, for that, it deserves some recognition.  Of course unique doesn’t necessarily mean acceptable, but I found much of this to be oddly transfixing (hence the David Lynch reference).  It obviously won’t be for everyone and will likely instigate discussions, polarizing or otherwise, but try and keep them civil (like always) as this is only a movie and people are different (needless to say).  8/10/2022

Lightyear                                                                     EH
This is essentially a movie-within-a-movie, this movie being part of the Toy Story universe, as we’re informed in the beginning that this is the movie that made Andy want a Buzz Lightyear toy in 1995.  Did we need a standalone Buzz movie?  Judging by this film (currently available on Disney+), absolutely not!  I thought Toy Story 4 was unnecessary (my review is here---https://vampireclown82.blogspot.com/2019/06/childs-playtoy-story-4.html). What’s next?  A Woody standalone movie?  I’m not a fan of westerns, so I don’t know if I like that idea (perhaps a TV series depicting all the major toy origins might work instead of feature films?).  I’m not a fan of space movies either, but this was just a big dumb action movie that, quite frankly, bored me and I couldn’t wait for it to be over about halfway through (it’s over 100-minutes).  I did like the cat (Sox) though, and think it deserves its own movie.  If the target audience is the younger set, I believe much of this will go over their heads.  As for the adults that will watch it with them and/or are fans of the series, they might be bored like I was.  What do I know though?  What do I ever know?  I know film criticism is entirely subjective, but, once again, Rotten Tomatoes disagrees with me, there being (as of this writing) 75% positive reviews out of 303 critics (well, at least 25% of them agree with me).  For a better animated movie featuring a giant robot, watch The Iron Giant (which recently had its anniversary).  8/8/2022

Other movies and TV show(s) I’ve seen and their ratings (see above):

Are You Afraid of the Dark?:  Ghost Island  >>>EH
            (Nick; 4 episodes)

Escape the Field  >>>EH/OK

Framed!  A Sicilian Murder Mystery  >>>OK
   (Netflix; 6 episodes; In Italian with subtitles)

Gone in the Night  >>>OK

---Sean O.
8/15/2022

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