aequanimis Reviews

Elvis (2022)

A gorgeous, hollow shell of a movie.

[5/10 · 20 July 2022]

Baz Luhrmann's Elvis was a stunning visual feast with very little substance where it needed it.

The best parts of this movie are its visuals, which is not at all surprising as a Luhrmann film. It dazzles you with its extravagant costume design, gorgeous colors, and dynamic camerawork. There was never a shot in the movie that didn't feel like a painting. It really was a feast for the eyes.

The cast is fine. Austin Butler is an amazing Elvis in both spirit and appearance. At times, it was hard to tell when it was Butler's voice or Elvis' voice. There were some angles where I couldn't even tell if Elvis was on screen or Butler. He really captured the essence of Elvis in the best way possible.

My biggest complaints about this movie come from the pacing of the story. This is, in fact, a biopic about Elvis' rise to fame and his superstardom, but the movie felt like it just skimmed over a lot of parts. The movie kind of glances at a few personal issues Elvis dealt with without really diving into them. Elvis was a very flawed man, but this movie had an opportunity to humanize his story and remind us of the person behind the icon. As someone who only really knows about the negatives of Elvis (his womanizing habits and his abusive relationship with Priscilla), I was curious to watch this movie because I wanted to learn more. However, this movie is primarily from the perspective of Elvis' manipulative promotor, Colonel Parker, immediately isolating the audience from Elvis' inner struggles. Even if you were to look at this movie as less about Elvis' personal life and more about his rise to fame, the film really fails to communicate his struggles to make it as a musician or any artistic endeavor Elvis took on. It barely touches on his role as a sex appeal figure in the 50's (describing him childishly as "forbidden fruit") or on his blending of cultures in drawing inspiration from traditionally black music genres. It's like the movie showed you these topics that made Elvis influential, but danced around them instead of expanding more on them. This results in Elvis being made out to be a really one-dimensional person with neither positive nor negative attributes. It really defeats the purpose of making a biopic. It seemed more focused on telling Colonel Parker's story, which would've been fine if this movie was called Colonel Parker and not Elvis.

Additionally, for a movie about such an influential musician, the sound design for this movie ranges from average to horrendous. There was two times in this movie where super out-of-place modern rap music was used in a scene that took place in the 1950s, and I'm not sure why. It was massively distracting and contributed nothing at all to the scene. The concert scenes were fine when you could hear Elvis. However, most of the time, his performance cut in and out as other characters had conversations that you just needed to hear. When the audio wasn't fading in and out, there was other music playing on top of what was supposed to be Elvis' performance, which was completely unnecessary. Elvis' music took a backseat to an unrelated soundtrack often times, which is terrible when it's a movie about a musical icon. The movie also bombards you with music all the time. There was a couple of dramatic scenes that had no music, and I felt that those were the most emotionally impactful because the actors' performances were able to carry their own weight. But outside of that, there were scenes where song after song after song played after each other, providing for an exhausting audio experience as a whole.

Combine poor sound design with a disorganized method of telling a story and you have this movie. Such a shame, too, because it was a really great visual experience.

Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

Low-Effort and Forgettable

[2/10 · 27 June 2022]

Firstly, I have only seen the first Jurassic Park movie, and I watched it last year. So I will admit, I don't have as strong of a connection to the movie as someone who grew up loving this film series. However, I feel that outside of the film's nostalgia-baits, this movie is still sub-par.

On a visual level, the movie is fine. There wasn't anything particularly special about the cinematography. The CGI alternated between looking decently believable to looking entirely unrealistic and cartoonish. I think that this is probably the movie's most egregious offense, because even back in1993, they were able to communicate the immense size of the dinosaurs and their grandeur. That's part of what made it so enjoyable for many generations. But in Dominion, they never quite felt entirely there. They just felt like cookie-cutter CGI.

The soundtrack was terrible. They played the main Jurassic Park theme but in different variations like a dozen times. There was ONE dynamic, exciting track that played when Claire and Kayla were running to the plane in Malta. Only one, though.

The characters felt like stereotypes. We had Owen and Claire, the loving parents who would do anything for their child. Owen is the dad who "always comes back." Claire is the beautiful mother who always looks sexy and desirable in every shot. Even after she lands in the forest after ejecting from the plane, her hair drapes delicately on her face. Kayla is the bad-ass black woman who has witty remarks about nearly everything that happens. Maisie is the angsty teenager who doesn't feel like she belongs. Dodgson is the evil villain. Santos is the amoral, chic villainess kidnapping little girls for money and always has her lips pooched. Blah blah blah. So dull. Only made even duller by the barely acceptable performances of all the actors involved. Except Maisie, whose performance was especially awful because she apparently only had two expressions: mildly annoyed and neutral.

When the movie wasn't being so terribly predictable, it was being sloppy. So many plot points happened as a result of nonsensical decisions made by otherwise rational characters. Barry tells Owen and Claire not to talk to anyone in the underground dinosaur market because they needed to blend in, and Claire goes and talks to the first person she meets (Kayla btw). Why? When Owen and Kayla crash into the ice lake, water rushes into the cockpit, but when they emerge from the plane minutes later, they are completely dry. There are fast cuts where characters teleport magically from one place to another because the director was seemingly too lazy to explain how they would escape the grasp of a dinosaur or travel from one part of the building to another. Even the main issue of the movie (the locust infestation or whatever) is pushed aside for the majority of the movie and finally solved at the very end when BD Wong's character miraculously shows up after everything blows up and solves it, seemingly needing to "understand Maisie's DNA" but not needing her after all?

And to boot it, the movie tries to pretend that it has meaningful things to talk about when it really doesn't. It's fine if this just wanted to be a stupid dinosaur movie where we just stare in awe at the awesome dinos, but it's clear that it wanted to be more. It tried to talk about the effects of human intervention on evolution, coexisting with dinosaurs, whether or not clones are "real people", etc., etc. The problem is that it was all surface-level conversation, leaving so much more to desire.

Overall, this movie was so forgettable. I'm almost sad I paid $15 to see this in theaters because it was not worth it.

Paprika (2006)

Dreamy, fantastical, and complex.

[7/10 · 29 December 2021]

Paprika is an animated film by renowned director Satoshi Kon that blends the line between dream and reality. Basically, there's a device that is used for treating psychiatric patients by allowing researchers to access their dreams. Someone steals the devices and things go wrong from there.

As expected in a Satoshi Kon film, the animation is beautiful and clean with intricate backgrounds that are just realistic enough to be familiar, but still so fantastical. Scenes seamlessly transition from one to another, and just when you think you're in the real world, the film subverts your expectations and thrusts you into the nightmarish, expansive world of dreams. Kon is really great at being able to blur lines between two dualities and making you question the reliability of what you're seeing in this film's world. Just as the characters themselves have no idea whether they're in a dream or in a reality, neither does the audience, creating an immersive film-viewing experience that sticks with you long after.

The characters of this movie are unique and likable (especially the titular character, Paprika). They have realistic interactions between themselves and reactions to the events around them that really cement them as reliable protagonists. However, there's a romance later on in the movie that I didn't really feel added anything to the plot and seemed just unnecessary.

Overall, I really enjoyed this movie. It was a lot of fun to watch and I felt interested and immersed throughout the entire runtime.

Dune (2021)

Stunning and powerful at times, but not entirely faithful.

[7/10 · 14 November 2021]

Dune is an epic tale of complex interwoven storylines with many themes and undertones that overlap and add depth to the world created by Frank Herbert. As such, I was immensely excited to see a new take on the first Dune book, especially from a talented director such as Denis Villenueve.

Overall, I did enjoy this movie. I chose specifically to watch this in theaters for the full cinematic experience, and I was not disappointed. The visuals are truly beautiful and representative of what I imagined the settings to look like: Caladan's storminess, its seas, its greenery. The scorching hot sun on the Arrakis desert and the huge, grey, lonely castle. The machinery and equipment have a real presence, and their massiveness is adequately communicated. The settings feel foreign and grand in the way they are supposed to as distant lands in a distant future, but familiar enough. Dune isn't a tale about a world completely unbeknownst to us, but a world with familiar problems, familiar rhetorics. I wish that the costume design would have been a little more creative, though. Especially since Dune is set in such a fantastical world with complex populations of people.

The sound design was really fantastic. The soundtrack complemented what was on screen and was never distracting (although a bit weird at times).

Timothee Chalamet was perfect as young Paul. It was a little weird, though, since Paul is 15 in the book and Chalamet is most certainly not that young. But he really portrays that combination of emotional burden, boyish handsomeness, and rugged masculinity that I imagined Paul to have. I was skeptical of certain casting choices, but overall, I was very happy with the performances in this movie.

Like I said, I did enjoy this movie and had a good time watching it, but there's a couple things that I feel hold it back immensely.

Despite the fact that it is never mentioned in any of the PR or trailers for this movie, this is the first part of the Dune story. I knew this going in, and I'm thankful that I did because I definitely would have been more confused at the end of it. I'm definitely glad they're spreading out the story over two or three parts, as I feel like that is what Dune really deserves, but this first part feels really incomplete. Usually, when movies split a story into different parts, their parts feel like standalone films with complete story arcs and a fulfilling journey. Admittedly, I don't really feel like I got that out of Dune (2021). I'm not sure what I really get out of the movie except for exposition, and that's not great especially when you've sat in a theater for 2.5 hours.

Additionally, there are a lot of opportunities to flesh out the world of Dune and its characters that I feel are really squandered despite the long run-time. While some of the important themes like the idea governments do things for political gain with no regard to the populations they governed are touched upon briefly, there's other undertones that support these large themes that really aren't acknowledged. None of the Dune adaptations that I've seen include the dinner scene that the Atreides have their first night on Arrakis, which is super important in introducing the local politics and how various characters interact with one another. The huge frenzy of religious fanaticism that bubbles when the Atreides arrived is barely mentioned, despite Paul knowing later in the movie that he will use the Fremens' belief that he is their messiah for political gain. And what about the secret that the Fremen are trying to develop a way to terraform Arrakis into a more sustainable environment for humans? And their revere for the Sandworm? What about their customs? Tradition is hugely important for the Fremens, and in the book, it was vital for the Atreides family to abide by their customs in order to forge an alliance with them. There really isn't any focus on fleshing out this world outside of pretty visuals and introductory dialogue. Hopefully, this will change with the next movie.

Additionally, I was really disappointed in how shallow every character was outside of Leto, Jessica, and Paul. Josh Brolin was a great Gurney Halleck in terms of appearance, but what of his wit? His flowery poetry? His songs? All he did was yell in this movie and be super uptight. And the lack of any sort of background for Dr. Yueh! He was greatly conflicted with betraying the Atreides family, and it ate at him every time he spoke with them! Where was that? Thufir Hawat's guilt at failing Leto and his intense suspicion of Jessica? The venomous banter between Piter and the Baron? Feyd Rautha? So many missed opportunities.

Adaptations of novels will never be perfect. There are limitations to the narrative storytelling that a film offers you, and sacrifices have to be made to make a film that is palatable to the general public while still being faithful. However, some changes I felt like were not made in the spirit of the book, and that is very disappointing.

It's hard for me to separate how I feel about this movie as a movie and how I feel about it as a book adaptation, but I overall did like this movie. I would say my exact score is ~7.2.

The Perfect Weapon (2016)

For a Steven Seagal movie, it's okay.

[4/10 · 10 August 2021]

If we're talking about this movie as an actual movie, then it's awful. But considering all of the other garbage Seagal has been in and pumped out, it's not half-bad.

What's redeemable about this movie?

Underneath pretentious big-government criticisms and "emotional" scenes of people looking glum in the shower is an idea that is interesting, but requires a little more polishing. The aesthetics of the movie are actually decent, and I enjoyed the clashing reds and blues in the majority of the movie. The fight scenes weren't terrible. The computer-screen and holographic effects were actually pretty believable, which is surprising (again, for a Seagal movie)

Where does this movie go wrong?

I think the most important place where this movie goes wrong is in its delivery of the plot. The setting is in some country under a dictatorship that is constantly surveilling their citizens after a near-apocalyptic event wipes out the human race, and the movie follows some guy who is an assassin of some sort. However, the writers of this movie clearly believe that mentioning bits and pieces of information about the time period, current events, and their setting is the most effective way to deliver exposition, and that is the only way they do it in this movie. Obviously, talking about exposition can only convey so much information and the movie's world ends up feeling incomplete and unbelievable. There was no effort put into incorporating elements of the plot into the set. They talked about "cameras being everywhere", and I saw, like, one or two. They talked about being near war and a near-apocalypse happening before, but that wasn't really illustrated in any part of the set. Everything looked like some normal city.

People have mentioned the pacing of the actors' dialogue, and it's true. They speak like they're at a poetry slam with every line of dialogue requiring a metaphor and dramatic pauses. You come to expect this from Steven Seagal, but Richard Tyson too? It's ridiculous. And they couldn't stand for the female character to, at any point, risk being unattractive, huh? She has makeup on 100% of the time -- even when she gets out of the shower. And she's a super skilled martial artist, too, but she doesn't have any defined muscles because that's too manly.

Steven Seagal is the other worst part of this movie, which is true of almost any Seagal film. However, his film crimes are unforgiveable in this movie. From his grumbly speeches that run together about power and truth and Asian medicine, he just overall sucked in this movie. I honestly thought it was so humble of him and such a refreshing breath of fresh air to allow himself to actually be killed in this movie, but he betrayed me. Steven Seagal wasn't killed by that bald guy -- he was killed by his twin brother (who looks exactly like him and wears the exact same clothing and stupid orange sunglasses) so that he could receive "an honorable death." Unforgivable!

The Tomorrow War (2021)

A unique, interesting, and overall fun experience.

[6/10 · 7 July 2021]

The Tomorrow War is about humanity losing a war against a hostile alien species that starts sometime in the 2050's. As a last resort, they travel back in time to recruit more soldiers to help them fight and find a strategy to win as their world population in the 2050's is dwindling. Chris Pratt is Dan Forester, our protagonist. This movie is really interesting in the sense that I feel that it blended several movie genres together to create one, cohesive, multifaceted experience.

On the whole, this movie is quite fun and very enjoyable. There's a lot of things that it did well that make it memorable. For one, the alien design (they're called Whitespikes in the film) is unique and captivating. This movie is a great example of CGI being used effectively and appropriately to create a more involving movie-watching experience. The creatures felt like they were actually present in the world, and the movie was really able to communicate their immense physical strength and speed in the scenes where they were present. There were times when I wondered if they were using animatronics or practical effects to create some of the more goopy scenes or the ones where the actors were actually touching the aliens because it seemed so real.

The characters were all likeable and distinguishable. Within a short amount of time, the audience is able to connect with even the minor characters (like Norah and Robert) and get a good sense of who they are as people. I found myself being worried for the well-being of the main characters and rooting for their survival. When people did die, it felt like a genuine loss to their team, which is how you're supposed to feel.

However, there were some things that I felt kept this moving from being really great. For one thing, I felt that there was some artificial drama being created with the whole "Oh, you left mom and I and died in a car accident" storyline. It felt really out of character for Dan to do that and overall not very relevant or meaningful to the story. The movie doesn't introduce Dan as a character who seems eager to leave his life to pursue something that will fulfill him more. In fact, he seems like he's morally opposed to that type of decision since his dad left him when he was a kid. Despite this, at the end of the movie, he says something like "I realized that the right future was right in front of me all along", which doesn't really make sense considering the character's history. I wonder if that was an arc the character was originally supposed to go through or maybe the intended impression you were supposed to get from Dan's character, but if it is, it was not communicated well at all. Additionally, the plot feels kind of thin when we get around 3/4 of the way into the movie and Dan is super hung up with this idea of going back to the future and saving Muri. Wasn't the plan to prevent the war in the past before it even happened? Why does he care so much about the future version of his daughter dying when preventing the war will prevent that version from ever existing? It's a little confusing. I did appreciate that they had a scene where the future people were explaining the jumplink to the past draftees because it seemed like they used that scene to prevent people from poking holes in the plot. Time travel is always tricky in movies, and I liked that they considered the different questions people would have. It felt a little... ham-fisted and I do wish they would've been more creative and answered those questions in a more natural progression, but it's still cool.

The sound design is weird. This movie is not exempt from the volume game that you have to play where you turn it up for scenes with dialogue and turn it down for scenes with music. However, the soundtrack was incredibly overbearing for some scenes. A lot of the battle scenes were basically montages of characters fighting the Whitespikes while the soundtrack blared over it, and that does not seem intentional at all.

There were contrasting themes of hope/optimism and despair/nihilism, which were an interesting thought, but felt inconsistent and kind of forced throughout the movie. Characters were either relentlessly optimistic or negative depending on their purpose, and it wasn't always consistent who was who. I felt like they wanted to do a bit of criticism of big government complacency, but just threw it in last minute. The scene where the president of the US (I'm assuming) refuses to fly them to the Russian glacier felt really sloppy, disingenuous, and a little comedic.

Although these things did take me out of the movie for a bit, I did like it and feel like it was pretty memorable. 6/10. A unique, interesting, and overall fun experience.

The Darkest Hour (2011)

Great idea, lazy execution.

[4/10 · 19 June 2021]

This movie is a great idea with a very sloppy execution. As many others have mentioned, the aliens being able to read human bioelectricity and generating electricity is a pretty unique concept and I was delighted to see a new approach to the alien invasion genre. However, its creativite energy is nearly entirely muffled with stupid plot conveniences, poor acting, and plot holes.

Although I really enjoyed the concept, I felt that the rules about how the aliens behaved (and who, by the way, are never given a name or anything) were never consistent. Apparently, they couldn't see human bioelectricity through glass, which the main characters use to their advantage when they hide from the aliens in the mall. However, one of the aliens can see the three girls when they are searching for supplies through the glass windows of the apartment complex? It also seemed like they modified the aliens' behavior midway through the movie for no reason other than dramatic effect. In the beginning, people seemed to disintegrate with only slight physical contact with the aliens. Yet later on, the aliens could grab onto people and drag them around (which seemed to only happen with our main characters, of course). The inconsistent behavior of our antagonists ruins their credibility within the universe and is an utterly lazy oversight on behalf of the director and writers.

The main characters are even more one-dimensional and idiotic. You are expected to believe that they are smart enough to have survived while millions others perished, because... why? They take so many unnecessary risks that put them into so much danger when they could just not? The Swedish guy was apparently the irrational one for questioning the absurdity of their decisions. For example, why did the blonde girl choose not to trust Vika on where to hide when she clearly did not know the apartment complex? There is no reason for her not to. Why do they so blindly trust the nuclear submarine prospect? Where do they think it will take them? You have found a safe community, and you don't even want to entertain the idea of maybe staying there?

And there is really not indication of their predicament on their outward appearance. They're not grungy or raggedy or sweaty or even a little bit disheveled. They're not even a little bit thirsty or hungry, even. They're all perfect-looking and they even take some time to change into a fashionable outfit (which was such a wasted opportunity for some realism). Combined with the actors' terrible acting and the attempted "jokes", this makes any type of meaningful connection with the characters impossible. I didn't care about them. I didn't even know their names by the end of the movie (except for Natalie's). The deaths of some of the more central characters are done abruptly, without even a modicum of gravity to communicate their importance. They die, and the film moves on because it was just an excuse to create a little drama.

Overall, the plot is bland. Aliens invade, they fight to survive, they find some people, people die, etc. With such an interesting concept, you would think the plot would've maybe focused more on creating a little more depth to these characters? Maybe fleshing out the aliens a bit, maybe even giving them a name? Nope. Every character is introduced and then you just watch them do things. The most interesting character was the Russian guy on a horse. And the cat.

One last thing that really peeved me, which is more of a personal pet peeve than an actual movie flaw, is that yes, this film is set in Russia. You may ask, what does this add to the story? And the answer is nothing. This film could have been set in Germany and nothing would have changed. There is no reason to keep emphasizing that they are in Russia. "Oh, but what about the language barrier?" Nope. Half of the Russian characters they meet speak English, and the only tiny bit of struggle they have regarding a language barrier is trying to translate a Russian radio transmission, which is solved in less than 10 minutes of movie time. It is a redundant piece of information that is continuously emphasized for NO reason. But some people might not care about this, so I don't exactly blame the movie for it.

Overall, I had high expectations for this movie and was disappointed but this is just my opinion. My partner did enjoy this film so if you enjoy it, more power to you.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)

The movie equivalent of white bread.

[3/10 · 10 June 2021]

God, this movie is so terribly bland.

In terms of technical aspects, everything is average. Some camera shots are nice-looking in the way that most shots in movies are as long as the director uses a decent camera, but there was nothing that particularly stood out to me. The scares were your classic horror movie scares -- everything goes quiet while a character is looking intently at something and then suddenly gets loud when a rat scurries off or two girls walk by. The CGI is... okay. You can definitely tell when it's being used in a scene, but it's not laughably obvious. Soundtrack? Uhhh... It was there. There was this weird, out-of-place, actiony theme that played sometime in the middle of the movie that just really sucked. Everything else? Meh.

The plot is okay. It's interesting enough to make you want to keep watching, but not enough that it kept my attention throughout. I kept checking my phone to see how much time had passed.

What really drags this movie down is how wishy-washy it is with everything. The movie has a lot of great opportunities to create some creepy, unsettling lore or backstory, but it just decides to justify every single plot device with some vague explanation. Literally, the woman who is performing this curse or whatever is referred to as only the "Occultist" or the "Satanist". The "satanists" performed "human sacrifice rituals" that gave them "power". The "Satanists" worshipped "Satan and his Demons". They showed Arne's lawyer some unspecified thing that convinced her demonic possession was real. The Catholic church used this book to "identify witchcraft". It's all so awfully bland when just a little bit of extra detail or some extra research could have made the film's universe so much deeper and more involved for the audience. Also, some guy taps on a glass door and breaks it with his cane because the characters needed to get into this morgue and that's apparently the best and most rational way the writers of the movie thought they should do it.

Additionally, the characters also suffer from the movie's laziness. Who is Debbie? She's Arne's girlfriend, and she helps with the dog boarding house. Who is Arne? Debbie's boyfriend, and he gets possessed. Who is Lorraine? Psychic woman who has visions. Etc., etc. All of the characters can only be described by what they do in the movie instead of who they actually are, disconnecting them from the audience completely. They're just vehicles for the plot, not an actual part of the film's universe.

This combined with the forced, unoriginal dialogue create such a bland movie-watching experience. There's so much room for improvement that it's painful to watch this without pointing out all the ways it could have been better. I am very easily scared, so I will admit that the jump-scares did scare me. But I think that's the only good thing I think I can come out of this movie with.

Unhinged (I) (2020)

Definitely kept me entertained.

[5/10 · 4 April 2021]

This movie is pretty average in all regards. I definitely felt entertained, though. It managed to build a serious, tense tone and maintain it throughout which is impressive. Average camera work, average soundtrack.

I felt that this movie was trying to kind of make a statement about road rage and technology, but overall came off quite forced.

I wish this movie would've been a little more thoughtful about the car crashes. They're great for shock value, yeah, but then they just get ridiculous. If you think too much about the physics of the car crashes (especially at the end when Rachel rams her car into the guy's minivan), you'll find that they don't really make sense and it just takes you out of the movie.

The plot of this movie is pretty simple and filled to the brim with plot conveniences. I mean, the whole movie could've been avoided if Rachel had locked her car before she went into the gas station. Or if she had not entertained a phone conversation with a weird psychopath for like 10 minutes and called the cops immediately. Also, where does she live? The city with the worst traffic ever when she's on her way to her kid's school and no traffic ever when there's a car chase? Most apathetic people in the world who don't bat an eye at a guy ramming some person's car in the middle of a traffic jam? Worst police response ever?

Anyways, it was okay. Interesting to see Russell Crowe in a villainous role.

Starlet (I) (2012)

An Intimate, Realistic Slice of Life

[7/10 · 19 February 2021]

This movie is a great example of a project where an audience can really get a sense of how much heart the director and actors put into this project without spending extravagant amounts of money.

There's only a handful of settings used throughout the movie, but the world the characters lives in feels large and robust. I couldn't tell you where exactly this took place (at some point, they're in LA), but the tight neighborhoods reminded me of where I grew up.

The characters are distinct and real, and the audience soon gets the feeling that they already know them from only having watched them for a little bit. You find yourself wanting Sadie to accept Jane's friendship and for Jane to get something better than her current circumstances.

The soundtrack gives the movie a different sort of vibe that I can't put my finger on. Overall, a very intimate portrait of people living their lives and trying to make it in the world.

The Little Things (2021)

Cyclical in a bad way.

[5/10 · 7 February 2021]

I saw the trailers for this movie and was actually looking forward to watching it as it seems like an interesting thriller revolving around detectives looking for a killer. Unfortunately, I was disappointed.

This movie is very well-done in a lot of technical aspects. The soundtrack is involving, surreal and very fitting to the meticulous tail-chasing work that Deacon and Baxter have to do throughout the movie. When scenes were fast-paced, it worked well with the action on-screen to give a good sense of movement and adrenaline. The cinematography was wonderful and lead the audience's eyes to what it wanted you to focus on.

However, this movie wants you to focus on "the little things" (like the headlines on a newspaper in the foreground or Sparma's car in the background) and doesn't really leave room for the audience to take notice of those things on their own. Instead, it hamfists it into your face such that you really can't ignore it, and believe it or not, that's not good storytelling. Deacon was supposedly a great detective who let a case overrun him, but that's really only said and not proven by anything else. Denzel Washington is a great actor, but for the most part, he seemed like a man who was bored out of his mind rather than tragically burdened. It's like the movie kept introducing elements that were all supposed to tie together at the end but didn't give them enough time to really sink into the audience, so it all just ended up seeming like random information that they were telling you is supposed to be important. And every time I saw a new element like that, I just thought, "They're gonna show that again at the end." And I was right.

I left the movie feeling like there were some big themes that I was supposed to walk away with. Not because I actually feel like there are, but because it kept insisting that I should walk away with something. When a movie keeps telling you what you should feel, the result is an uninvolved and unfulfilling movie experience which is exactly what I got.

The pacing of dialogue is, at times, atrocious and awkward. I felt like I was watching a movie set in some parallel universe where no one knew how to properly speak and all their sentences would just run together in some giant lump of conversation. It was basically impossible to watch this without subtitles. Also, what's the deal with the animosity between all the characters? Is this also a universe where everyone hates each other? Or is this was the director thinks "police banter" is?

Denzel Washington and Rami Malek are good actors. Their performance in this is... not great, but acceptable. I think Jared Leto thinks he is good at playing mentally-ill, deranged characters, but he's not. His character, Sparma, was insufferably goofy from his mannerisms (like that weird limp walk?) to every line of dialogue that came out of his mouth.

Overall, even the plot of this movie is unsatisfying. What's the message here? What did the characters learn? Time repeats itself, I guess, since Baxter ends up doing exactly what Deacon did. Or that being dedicated to a case is an excuse for sloppy detective work? I don't know.

There's a lot that this movie could have done and did not do. My real rating is a 4.5/10.

Into the Sun (2005)

My boyfriend asked me in the middle of this movie: "Wait, what's the story again?"

[3/10 · 11 January 2021]

As I make my way through Steven Seagal's filmography, I noticed that his most recent films tend to be lazy, cookie-cutter garbage films that Walmart sells in their $5 bins. However, I think this film is an odd example of a movie that both the director and Seagal put effort into but still didn't quite hit the mark.

This film is similar to another of Seagal's films, The Patriot (1998), in the sense that Seagal's character "adopts" a culture that isn't his own and is considered an expert/a native within that culture. Except the thing that kills this movie is that it shoves this in your face over and over again by telling you that Travis Hunter grew up in Japan and he is familiar with the Yakuza's ways. There is nothing about Seagal's performance or anyone else's performance that would have given me this impression, which weakens his character's credibility. Does Seagal's Japanese seem believable? Sure. Do they do and show things that are important in Japanese culture? Sure. But that's not enough because it's inauthentic and forced, which doesn't exactly convince the audience that Hunter really, really knows Japanese culture and instead makes him seem like an American who thinks he knows another culture.

The film's sloppiness also kept me from enjoying Into the Sun as much as I enjoyed The Patriot. Why did the two main Asian bad guys constantly speak in English to each other when they didn't have to? It's implied that they're more comfortable with Japanese/Mandarin. Why did supporting characters start speaking in Japanese to Hunter and then switch to English midway through? Does the director think this is a believable thing that bilingual people do in everyday conversations? Why did the bad guys make fun of Seagal for fighting with swords and then have the guards to their little lair all armed with swords? It's an unforgivable mess from start to finish with inconsistent behaviorisms all the way through.

This doesn't even touch on the convoluted storyline and the jumble of characters that Hunter visits and has a brief conversation with and then they later die because... emotional impact? And having such a jumble of characters that all run together does not allow for ANYONE (no, not even Seagal's character) to develop and grow as a character. The personalities of every single character remain stagnant throughout the film. No one grows or learns anything. Not even the bumbling American CIA agent who, despite being assigned to a case in Japan, knows absolutely no Japanese or anything about their culture and seems disturbingly unprepared and dim for a freakin' CIA AGENT. You'd think that one-dimensional, cardboard cutout characters might make the story a little easier to follow, but no, it doesn't. There are still characters whose role in the story I can't really even explain. I don't even know what the purpose of the opening scene was. To show you how awesome and moral Hunter is? And that he used to be a CIA agent? All I know is that there's Seagal's character and the two bad guys who are, like, really bad. And also the Yakuza and drugs thrown in there somewhere.

Despite this all, I do feel like the actors tried. I feel like there was some sort of effort put into this movie, which makes it all the more tragic that it still sucked. Overall, meh.

Highlander (1986)

An enjoyable movie with a LOT of 80's cheese

[6/10 · 3 January 2021]

In this movie, a special group of immortal people must fight each other until only one remains for a fabled prize. It is an interesting idea that works surprisingly well in this movie.

What I liked about this movie is that it was able to really flesh out this group of individuals and deepen their background without being overly complicated or boring. It handled showing the passage of time well and made this special group really seem believable within the film's universe. There seems to be a coherent system of logic that the characters follow and a reasonable explanation for how they managed to hide their true identities. The soundtrack is also well-done and works together with what's happening on-screen instead of hindering it. Also, I like swords so that's a plus.

Outside of that, it is cheesy and it IS from the 80's, so the effects really aren't that great (compared to what you've seen from modern movies) and the acting is dramatic and overblown. Clancy Brown is really great and plays a genuinely unsettling character.

Overall, a good movie-watching experience.

Saving Silverman (2001)

90 Minutes of Nothing

[4/10 · 22 December 2020]

I sort of thought this movie would be one of those mindless comedies you put on and enjoy without thinking too hard about it, but it ended up being even less enjoyable than that.

Jack Black and R. Lee Ermey are really funny and likeable characters, but everyone else is either pointlessly dumb, mean, or naive. Also, it didn't even feel like the characters had any connection between them whatsoever. I felt like I was watching a group of actors pretend to be childhood friends/lovers/whatever, which is bad.

Some things were funny. Not worth it.

Yes, God, Yes (2019)

Nostalgic and Real, but Flawed

[6/10 · 18 November 2020]

"Yes, God, Yes" is basically about this 15 or 16-year old girl named Alice who begins experiencing feelings of arousal and struggles with how to reconcile what she feels with her religion. She goes to a Catholic youth retreat to try and find her way back onto the "path to God" and hopes that'll help her.

As someone who grew up in a strict Catholic household and was fed many of the same sex-ed "wisdoms" that Alice encountered, this movie felt like rewatching my early adolescence. Natalie Dyer did really well at portraying a girl grappling with the weird mixture of guilt from one's budding sexuality and the ensuing frustration when people were so quick to judge and condemn you in a religion that preaches tolerance.

Overall, this movie was a raw representation of coming-of-age and all the nitty-gritty that it entails. The interactions between characters were, at times, a little extreme as most people in a Catholic environment were not so readily hateful (from my experiences), but I have met all of these characters. I've met the grouchy school administrator. I've met the young, judgmental priest (who always looked weird when he wasn't in a cassock). I've met the "cool" youth leaders who were always up to no good when they weren't praising God. I, too, experienced that weird double standard between boys and girl when some unsubstantiated rumor circulated. I even sympathized with Alice rewinding the sex scene in Titanic (except for me, it was a scene in 300). It felt like looking into the mirror and seeing all the things I wanted to forget, but eventually just embraced as a part of my adolescence.

It was funny, awkward, and a little uncomfortable, just like growing up usually is. However, one of the reasons I liked this movie was because I related to it. The person I watched it with did not grow up in a religious household and wasn't as impressed, so I think that the nostalgia really plays a role.

This movie wasn't perfect. I find that when a short film is adapted into a longer movie, there tends to be lulls in the plot that I don't really encounter in other films. There were times when I would get distracted because there wasn't really a whole lot happening to keep my attention. The scene in the bar with the lesbian bar owner was nice, but felt weirdly forced and a little disingenuous? Like yeah, that's a really easy way for Alice to resolve her guilt: by meeting a wise, older woman who grew up just like her and happened to be within a mile radius of where her retreat was and was willing to dish out some sage advice.

Overall, this movie is good. It's cute, but a little forgettable. I might rewatch it in the future, might not.

The Divide (2011)

Lots of opportunity to be a good movie, but somehow failed anyways

[3/10 · 8 November 2020]

Overall, I think this movie did a lot of things right and a lot of things wrong. The things it did wrong just happen to outweigh the things it did right. Is this a bad movie? Not necessarily. I didn't like it personally, but that doesn't mean you won't or that you shouldn't like it.

What did this movie do right? There were lots of elements in this movie that I found to be surprisingly well-done. The bomb shelter setting felt very fleshed-out and appropriate to the story, and they managed to do a lot with the limited space they had. I could keep track of where each scene took place and could picture the layout of the shelter. The soundtrack really highlighted the emotions of whatever scenes it played in without distracting from the content (especially at the end of the movie). The cinematography was really good. When Eva is scheming with Sam to get the gun in the panic room, there's a couple instances where the camera followed her from above and provided a great perspective shot, which I enjoyed. The actors are clearly very skilled, but when you have great actors and a terrible script, you get terrible characters.

What did this movie do wrong? Most importantly, the characters were unlikeable and unreasonable. From the beginning of the movie, it's like no one except Mickey could comprehend that a nuke had been dropped on them and had potentially decimated their city which would then be filled to the brim with harmful radiation. They complain about the food, seemingly unaware that their mere existence is something they should be grateful for, considering the millions that were evaporated above. The movie uses the premise of a nuclear apocalypse to explain why the characters are then traumatized and fall to the clutches of insanity, and then proceeds to have the characters completely irrational from the get-go. It's absurd. The women in the film have one purpose and it's either to be sex toys or to sit and pout, which I guess is part of the movie's attempt to critique human behavior. The men are hyper-aggressive and self-interested, and any attempt to deal with the situation rationally is met with resistance because that's how humans are, apparently. There's this really cool idea for a subplot when the men in the Hazmat suits come in and steal Wendy, which then leads Josh to venture out of the shelter in search of her (so he says) and discover weird government experiments. Except the movie shows it to us, and then does nothing with it? The Hazmat guys just weld the door shut right after and that's it? No further explanation. Their lab set-up is gone by the end of the movie.

I get what the movie wanted you to think about. The idea that humans have conflicting interests in an organized society but also seizing power, and that situations like this devolve into chaos because of those conflicts. It was interesting, yes, but ultimately ineffective. There is no depth to this thought, because the characters' motives and their personalities have no depth.

I think this is a hard concept to execute, and the movie did a decent attempt at trying to wrangle a multidimensional idea into a 2 hour film.

Room (I) (2015)

A Surprisingly Well-Done Movie about Trauma

[7/10 · 21 August 2020]

Room starts off by introducing us to Joy and her 5-year-old son Jack and their lives as captives inside this small room (that they cleverly call "Room"). I went into this movie expecting it to be entirely about their lives within the Room and about their eventual escape. However, I was pleasantly surprised that it actually tackled Joy and Jack's life after Room and their adaptation to life after a massive trauma.

Instead of flawlessly embracing freedom from their captor and captivity, Joy and Jack struggle to assimilate back into their lives, back into the real world. Things, understandably, changed from how they were before Joy was kidnapped, and it follows her as she tries to understand those changes. As it usually is in these kinds of situations, escaping a man who has kidnapped and raped you for years doesn't mean that life after escaping is perfect. I like that it showed their initial happiness with escaping and their gradual downhill fall as they (Joy mainly) have to face the emotions that come after the fact. Throughout it all, Jack has romanticized Room as a safe haven against the huge world (and eventually has this romantic fantasy shattered at the end of the movie). Joy wrestles with frustration with herself and Jack, asking why she isn't happy now that she's free. I thought the movie did a great job of portraying how people really are after events like this happen and how complicated life after can truly be. I wanted Joy and Jack to be happy, but it just wasn't that easy.

Brie Larson was really great as Joy and gave a genuine, heartfelt performance. Jacob Tremblay was pretty good, too, which is fairly rare for a child actor.

Overall, I was really impressed with this movie and would definitely rewatch sometime.

The Patriot (1998)

An Okay Movie

[5/10 · 21 August 2020]

In The Patriot (1998), Steven Seagal plays Wesley, a genius scientist and mythical healing man who only uses "natural" medicine, who must save his small Montana town from an outbreak and his young daughter Holly from the clutches of a group of neo-Nazis.

This movie is full of plot holes and conflicts that only come up through convenient plot devices. And of course, because this is a Seagal movie, Wesley is not only an intelligent, sensitive, spiritual dad but he is also a bad-ass aikido master and there is no real threat posed to his character. There's also this weird Native American aspect of his character that didn't even come up until the middle of the movie, so there's that, I guess.

However, as illogical as this movie is, you can ignore some of the inconsistencies and Wesley's impervious nature and still enjoy this movie a little bit. I think Steven Seagal actually tried with this movie and you can see a little bit of his acting skill in some scenes. There's a surprising amount of blood and gore, too, and it all looks fairly realistic. The characters are relatively likeable.

This is the kind of movie that you would rent from Hastings when you're bored and then watch while you eat dinner and forget about the next day. So, I give it a 5/10.

Sniper: Special Ops (2016)

Something Just FEELS Wrong About this Movie

[3/10 · 21 July 2020]

Truthfully, I didn't have high expectations going into this movie. I wanted to watch something that I could make fun of and also not think too hard about, and the terribly-edited cover art, bland storyline, and Steven Seagal made this movie a top pick. However, it really is as bad as it looks.

I don't know a whole lot about the military or guns, but I kept feeling like something about the way these actors were portraying the situation felt wrong. Their decisions in a time of crisis felt wrong. The way they were holding their guns felt wrong. The way the gunshots sounded felt wrong. Nothing in this movie seemed even remotely genuine, which is an impressive feat. It takes real skill to make a movie this hilariously unreal.

Realism aside, the conflict isn't developed or explained. When I reflect on the movie, it feels like a sequence of gun fights where nothing really feels like it's at stake and some bland dialogue in between. I couldn't even really differentiate between the beginning, middle, and end of this movie.

The acting is as bad as you think it would be. It's hard to describe the personalities of any of the characters with more than just one word because, for the most part, it seems like they didn't really have any. Don't expect to shed any tears or make any meaningful connections to them either.

For a movie with a $5 million budget, it feels like something I could make with $1000 and a camera. It's fun to laugh at, though.

Brightburn (2019)

The Darker and More Boring Superman

[5/10 · 12 July 2020]

Brightburn is basically a retelling of Superman's origins, except with a twist. A mysterious baby boy (Brandon) arrives on Earth via a flying object and turns out to have superpowers, to the amazement and horror of his loved ones. However, the difference between Superman and Brandon is that Brandon will come to use his powers for less benevolent reasons and become more like Superman's antithesis.

What I liked about this movie was that it chose to tell this tale about a superhuman boy who descends into violent rampages any time he wants to or feels like he needs to without resorting to a miraculous solution that would either A. kill the boy or B. turn the boy into a "good" guy. The movie ends with the outcome that everyone dreaded, the one that leaves the film's world bleaker and more hopeless, the one where the bad guy gets away. It was a refreshing experience. I also liked how disgusting and disturbing the gore was, but also how well distributed it was throughout the film. It occured just often enough to be jarring, shocking, and grotesque each time I saw it on-screen. The guy with the broken jaw in the car accident is definitely something that will stick with you. A lot of people seem not to appreciate the pacing of the film, but personally, it wasn't a big problem for me. I think that the boy's transformation from pure to wicked was indeed rushed, but each scene felt like it happened when it was supposed to.

What I didn't like about the movie is how much Brandon's adoptive mother, Tori, coddles her son. When Brandon crushes (literally, crushes EVERY bone) in his classmate Caitlin's hand, he faces no punishment besides some counseling. In fact, she cannot even offer a sincere apology to Caitlin's mother, Erica, except for a cold "Sorry for your daughter." and is taken aback by Erica's albeit brash criticisms of her son, even though Caitlin's hand had been COMPLETELY SHATTERED. When their chickens abruptly end up brutally slaughtered, Tori cannot fathom the idea that Brandon may have, in some way, been involved, despite his behavior getting weirder by the second. When she finds out Brandon's lie about playing soccer with his buds on the night her sister's husband was KILLED, she stops her husband from even yelling at Brandon. This incessant coddling is what indirectly leads to the deaths of many people who did not deserve to die and only one person who absolutely did deserve to die --- herself. It is so very hard to relate to Tori or to even feel sympathy for her because of this, which makes her struggles throughout the film and her well-deserved death even more anticlimactic than they already were.

Additionally, Brandon's switch from a happy, normal boy to a raging psychopath is only ever explained by some larger "purpose" or message the ship sends, which is to "take the world". He has no struggle embracing this larger purpose, no struggle with morality, no struggle with his love for his adoptive parents. He's only vaguely surprised when he discovers he has superpowers. It strikes me as an oddly one-dimensional approach to a character that I wanted to be more complex and wished I would've liked more. Watching Brandon is like watching some spoiled kid throw murderous tantrums for no reason other than because the ship he came in told him to and he apparently has no will of his own. Or because his mother raised him to always get what he wants.

This movie is, unfortunately, a very forgettable watch, with only the special effects keeping me from forgetting it the night I watched it. The acting was decent (except for Brandon's actor, who only had two emotions: brooding and apathetic), but the characters are all-around unlikable and unrelatable. It's an above-average movie that'll only kind of spice up your movie night. If I could, I would rate this a 5.5/10. Slightly better than average, but not by much.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007)

More Like a High School Film Project

[3/10 · 11 May 2020]

The Poughkeepsie Tapes is an interesting take on the "found footage" genre, which presents itself as more of an analysis of a serial killer's tapes and his bloody tirade that takes place over the course of decades. It has more of a documentary-style and tries very hard to play as a legitimate, real-life production. The style is interesting, but I found that I just couldn't take The Poughkeepsie Tapes seriously.

Firstly, and most importantly, the actors were are all terrible. Throughout the film, we occasionally see snippets of characters who can be put into two categories: people with personal experiences with the killer or the Tapes themselves and "experts" who offer insight into the killer's mindset, who he might be, and who break down the elements of the Tapes. Each of the so-called "experts" felt like the writers of this movie took all the "forensic-agent-detective-doctor" stereotypes they could think of and all of the key catchphrases this archetype tends to utter and mashed it all up and tried to spread it out onto each of these characters. There was even the token Asian doctor who just HAD to have the broken English and thick accent, because Asian doctors tend to have that, right? These characters felt like they were barely able to deliver their lines, much less actually be believable, reliable figures within the film's universe. The other category of characters in the film were even less believable. The most notable example is Cheryl Dempsey's actress. Her attempt to appear as a damaged, meek victim of horrific abuse and untold horrors only came off as if she was just a shy, two-dimensional cardboard cutout. They likely told her, "Pretend like you have no will of your own," and she sure did, but in the worst way possible.

Secondly, it's hard to take this movie seriously when the so-called genius serial killer, who is made out to be an amalgamation of Ted Bundy, Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy, and all the terrible killers ever imagined, except he has the brain power of Albert Einstein, comes off as the sloppiest, doofiest human to ever walk this Earth. He's apparently so elusive, so smart that the investigators can't even properly profile him, because... that's how elusive and smart he is. Except... he abducts little girls in broad daylight, compromises his identity by directly and publicly confronting the mother of his hostage, likes to spontaneously kidnap people like Girl Scouts who are likely being expected by their parents and live near him, and makes no effort whatsoever to even wear gloves or clean up his crime scenes a little bit? Is that the super genius I'm supposed to believe evaded custody and came up with an elaborate scheme to frame another man using his donated sperm?

There were other aspects of this film that felt cumbersome, but I could ignore. There were some ill-fitting music choices that really took away the gravity of the content being shown on-screen. There are two major flaws to this movie that killed it for me and made it feel like someone's film class project. But I don't think it's impossible to enjoy this film. It's definitely interesting, and I'd like to see more films take a similar approach to this genre of film.

The Love Guru (2008)

Off-Brand Mike Myers

[3/10 · 1 March 2020]

I only recently discovered the Austin Powers movies, but I personally loved them. As such, I won't be the first to tell you that Mike Myers is a talented actor, director, and writer, and that he CAN have charisma on-screen.

I saw this movie as one of the "Similar to" movies that came up when you searched for Austin Powers, and I thought that it looked like classic Mike Myers antics. After watching this movie, I felt that it didn't live up to the expectations I had.

All throughout the movie, I felt like I was watching a movie that wanted to be like Austin Powers, but couldn't conjure up the comedic genius or the iconic protagonist. The Guru is annoying, cocky, crude (and not in the funny way), and overall forgettable. His backstory isn't interesting, the plot isn't intriguing, and the comedy just doesn't fill in the gaps. There's jokes that are funny, sure, but occasional jokes that make me blow air through my nostrils aren't enough to hold this movie up, especially when it's a comedy.

The acting feels particularly terrible as well. The Guru switches between having an Indian accent and a slightly-British accent? Everyone fawns over the Guru, but nothing feels genuine. Verne Troyer isn't even good, either.

This movie is supposed to be a parody, and parodies are fun! That's the reason I and everyone else love the Austin Powers series. But this feels like it's trying too hard to find things to parody. Comedy cannot be forced, but this movie really wants to try and shove it down your throat. If you like it, you like it. If you don't, you don't. All I can say is that if you wanted the same charm as Austin Powers, you'll be disappointed.

Backcountry (I) (2014)

Kind of Dumb

[3/10 · 19 January 2020]

There was a lot of things about this movie that I felt held it back from being a slightly better movie.

The main characters were unbearable. The dialogue between them sucked, their personalities weren't really memorable or all that distinguishable, and their overall relationship dynamic sucked. Like, the girl invites this dude who's obviously into to eat dinner with her and her boyfriend, and then puts her boyfriend into an uncomfortable position when the weird dude keeps challenging her boyfriend and she just idly sits by while it happens? Or the dude coerces his obviously-scared girlfriend into staying on this remote camping trip just because he's been looking forward to it and he just KNOWS she'll love it? Come on. I didn't really care about them at all throughout the movie, and that made it really hard to be into the big climax, or any part of the movie honestly.

The storyline was meh. Most of the movie was following them around while the implication of a bear being nearby looms in the air (something Mr. Idiot keeps from his girlfriend until the middle of the movie), and then the climax happens and we follow the girlfriend as she struggles to survive. And then, for some reason, the day is saved by the jerk Irish guy from before, because... reasons. One thing I will give this movie is that it's pretty scary to be lost in the woods, and it did a pretty good job of showing just how confusing it can be to navigate your way around an area like that. Other than that, it was really more frustrating than anything to watch the characters make stupid mistakes that draws them closer and closer to the bear until the thing everyone is expecting finally happens.

The cinematography was pretty meh, too. I wish I could've seen what was going on during the bear attack a little more clearly, because all I could see is the camera shaking, Alex screaming, Jenn screaming, some blood, and an occasional shot of the bear growling. The gore, though, was really good and very convincing.

Don't expect too much from this film, but truthfully, you could either love it or hate it.

Battlefield Earth (2000)

A true iconic classic.

[2/10 · 7 April 2019]

As a legitimate movie? This movie is a solid 1/10. As an awful movie to watch with drunk friends and laugh about its awfulness? 10/10, would watch again.

I think underneath Travolta's awful acting, the unrealistic lack of blood, the amateur scene transitions, and the absolute lack of logic any of the script seems to have, there lies a movie that could be somewhat average. I think I would've felt more inclined to take it seriously if the scene transitions alone would've been better, but alas!

On serious notes, one of the biggest things holding this movie back was that characters constantly felt the need to tell you what was going on instead of letting you come to that conclusion on your own. It's annoying when characters in movies unnecessarily narrate their actions and explain their motives because people don't just do that in real life. There's more subtlety. Additionally, all of the action sequences are quick-cut, nonsensical messes. You must be a genius if you can keep track of what the characters are even doing in any of the action scenes, because I could not for the life of me keep up with them.

To sum it up, this movie truly is an experience; not to be seen, but to be felt in the depths of your soul. A quick insight into the beauty of this movie: I'm pretty sure the word "leverage" is said more than 50 times.

Cashback (2006)

A film with lots of potential, but ultimately falls flat

[5/10 · 5 April 2019]

I remember watching this movie a couple years ago and really liking it, but now that I watch it again, I find it hard to stay captivated and to not think about how truly creepy our protagonist's actions are.

The film continuously prods me to ask "what now?", and the feeling that it was a bit too long stuck with me long after. There's a fairly long scene in the middle of the movie that felt unnecessary and out-of-place, and it was hard to be drawn back into the movie afterwards. This may be a result of the film originally being a short-film and not having enough substance to be a feature-length movie, or just a shoddily put-together movie.

Additionally, I found it hard to take our protagonist's rants about beauty and women seriously when I really thought about how creepy it was the he felt no hesitation to undress women in the supermarket when he froze time. I love discussions of beauty, and I think that there is something beautiful and wonderful about nude bodies, but ultimately, undressing unsuspecting women strikes me as predatory. I think that if the movie had followed him as he drew women with their clothes on when he froze time, it would've been a different story and I would've felt more comfortable accepting this movie's analysis of beauty. However, that didn't happen, and it was a major part of the movie that kept it from being a great movie.

All in all, there were scenes that were really well-done and that I really enjoyed. This movie can be fun to watch at a surface-level, and the soundtrack was pretty great. However, the depth of its "analysis of beauty" really is only surface-level, and doesn't really provide much if you try to look deeper into it.