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The Fate of the Furious - Review

4/14/2017

Release Date: April 14, 2017

Smacking into the Pavement

The Fate of the Furious is the eighth instalment in the Fast and the Furious franchise. The direction of said franchise, changed lanes to become the box office juggernaut that it is today with its fifth instalment. From there it has been one crazy adventure after another, until Furious 7. That movie not only was Paul Walker’s last movie, but probably the best of the franchise so far. It was crazy, funny, and the biggest heart string pulling thing that the Fast and the Furious franchise had achieved, granting it entrance to the billion dollar club. Not only was the movie good but it had weight that powered everyone to bring their A game and give their best performances. So how do you continue the 10 movie series without one of the main characters in your movie? Simple, let’s get even crazier.

There is no limit to the destruction that the writers for these movies can dream up. Now with hacked cars creating an army, to a submarine with a nuke firing torpedoes so Dwayne the Rock Johnson can push it across a frozen ocean. This movie is more crazy than it has ever been but it does bite off a little more than it can chew. There are just some sequences and instances where I cannot actually believe that our main characters do some of the things they do. Like getting into a firefight against trained military combatants and not getting shot. If they were in vehicles I would have bought it, but they were just walking around. The whole movie acted as this weird bag of mismatched things that were good and bad.

The movie seemed like it was slightly off its game, not really reaching its full potential like it did in Furious 7. All the pieces didn’t fall together, but it still tried really hard. The writers did an admirable job trying to give this movie depth and meaning behind the destruction porn, but it ended up falling short. This in itself was a big missed chance because of how they tried to get the audience to get into it, but the overall tone was to blame for the inconsistency. The movie tonally played like a Marvel Studios movie, the ones from Disney. So many jokes throughout the movie, but unlike the Marvel Studios movies, it couldn’t transition to more serious moments. It is actually more similar to a Marvel movie than it might appear to be from a writing perspective. The continuous streams of jokes that for the most part don’t land very hard, with the added bonus of the failed deeper moments. I do have to give a small clap for the writers trying to give the action substance, but it ended up failing in the long run.

Some redeeming factors of the movie are the more surprising elements that you just didn’t see coming. One sequence in particular really was a treat and I didn’t even know I wanted it. Other than that one sequence that I will not spoil, there wasn’t too much to the movie that was really cool to see. Sure, CGI explosions and jokes are nice but nothing grabbed me. There were a couple of nice throwbacks and new faces that added a nice mix to the movie, but overall I think the franchise needs to drop more people. Too many people make the movie slightly crowded and makes the story lose focus on what's important.

Overall there were a couple editing gripes that I had with the movie and some major lack of enthusiasm for the story. It does deliver some fun action sequences, but nothing truly worth labeling ‘spectacle’. The main missing ingredient is actually Paul Walker which is a shame. I hope that the writers can somehow fill the void in the next two movies, but we will have to wait and see.

7/10
The devil's bum hole

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Ghost in the Shell - Review

4/8/2017

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Release Date: March 31, 2017

Has Your Ghost been Hacked?

Ghost in the Shell is a visual and audio wonderland. The creativity that went into bringing the world to life was boundless. From the costume design to how the world was depicted, visually Ghost in the Shell is a treat. The score for the movie was also very good too. The music really helped the movie along with get compositions and song choices.

Other than some fantastic CGI work and nice music there is not much else to enjoy about Ghost in the Shell. The main fault of the movie’s failure is fall directly on the screenwriter and director. The movie was not well written. It tried to inject a meaningful story into the shell of action but none of it resonated. This failure to capture the audience comes solely from a lack of letting the movie breath. The editing is the culprit here too. Jumping from scene to scene with little to string the movie together, it comes across as segmented rather than a cohesive experience.

Since CGI has become so inexpensive and a massive market, it’s really easy to make your movie look good. To distract the viewer with a cool fight that serves no real purpose. It has become so easy to mask a bad movie with some great CGI work. This is why it is so rare for a movie to be truly terrible in my book, at least for big budget productions. There is still so much to like about the movie, but what really should matter, the story takes a hit. The story doesn’t make you feel, in the sense that you don’t care for the characters in the movie. It tried to be deep but I just wanted the movie to get on with it. The movie felt long even though it has a short runtime, but the end felt rushed.

All in all Ghost in the Shell was not only a disappointment to me, but to everyone excited for a new direction in Hollywood. The only people to blame are the screenwriter and director. Sure the white washing was distracting, but if the movie was good no one would really bring it up.

6.75/10
I don't know any jokes to put here

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Teen Titans: The Judas COntract

4/4/2017

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Release Date: April 4, 2017

It it Good?

Nope. Teen Titans: The Judas Contract is not good, it’s really bad. The animation quality for all the feature length DC animated movies suck for some reason, at least since 2014. The television animation from Warner Brothers is very good but they were not able to achieve that here. Some of the detail work and textures were good on occasion, but overall the art was pretty bad. The actual animation, movement of characters, was a little better but still a little janky. If you were to compare this to Young Justice, the most recent Warner Brothers animated television show, that has a much higher quality to it.

Beyond the visuals is the story and it suffers. It seems this movie was made as an attempt to bring children back to animation since the focus is on a group of younger kids. This is executed very poorly because it takes a generic take on what probably could have been a much better story. With the inclusion and slight focus on a moody teen who just wants to be left alone, I could think of a thousand of different tropes that could have been used better here. The story is rushed at the beginning trying to include so many different subplots that it sucks. Just watching the movie is painful. It doesn’t really pick up until 35 minutes into the movie. Even when it does pick up, it is still hindered by all the subplots that it tries to maintain throughout.

The quality of the whole story is pretty poor with one character even talking about sexual attraction which seems to be a main plot point for the movie as well. There is also a hint of child sexual relations in the movie where an adult has a sexual relationship with an adult. It’s so creepy and weird that when the sexual relationship between adult characters happen it all just seems like an oversexualized bad story all together. The movie tonally is so off that most of it goes by with you scratching your head. In one scene, a girl is on edge because she is about to be attacked, but 10 seconds later she is crying and a montage of pictures flashes across the screen. How did someone being angry lead to crying then a montage of a party?

Other than the atrocious story, the voice acting is also pretty bad. Different characters have different qualities of voice acting which throws the whole movie off balance. Just another problem to throw on top of the pile of garbage this movie is.

Overall I would not recommend this to anyone to watch. If you like DC animation, I still would not recommend this movie. It’s hot garbage. I really wish that Justice League Dark was going to be the turning point for the Warner Brothers animation studio, but we just get more trash.

5/10
A piece of wood stopped a bullet

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The Fate of the Furious - Review

Ghost in the Shell - Review

Teen Titans: The Judas COntract

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