Category Archives: Doc’s Movie Reviews

Damsel

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Millie Bobby Brown has had success with her movie role choices since her breakout performance on Stranger Things. This weekend saw her brand new film, a fantasy film, debut on Netflix.

According to IMDB, “A  young woman who thinks she is being married to a perfect prince is thrown into a pit where she discovers she’s not going to be a princess after all, but a sacrifice to appease a bloodthirsty dragon. Trying to survive long enough until someone can save her — she soon realizes that no one is coming and this “damsel” must save herself.“

Led by Brown, the cast of this film was solid. Robin Wright, Angel Bassett, Ray Winstone, Nick Robinson, Brooke Carter, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Milo Twomey. However, Millie Bobby Brown spent a lot of time on screen and the other powerful actors were supporting for sure. This is definitely Millie Bobby Brown’s movie.

The special effects/CGI of the movie were pretty good, specifically the look of the dragon, which was on screen a lot.

The story was fairly simple. It was a survival tale, bit it took the concept of a “damsel in distress” from fantasy movies and flipped it on its head. She did not need anyone to come rescue her.

I did enjoy the voice of Shohreh Aghdashloo as the dragon. Aghdashloo, who I remember from 24, has a very distinctive voice and it gave that dragon a strong presence.

There is a lot of fun in this movie. Brown is very charismatic and easy to root for. It may be a simple film, but that does not mean it is a bad one.

3.4 stars

Imaginary

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2024 must be the year of imaginary friends. The film IF with Ryan Reynolds is out later this year, and this weekend dropped the latest horror movie featuring the idea of the imaginary friend.

According to IMDB, “a woman returns to her childhood home to discover that the imaginary friend she left behind is very real and unhappy that she abandoned him.”

Here is the thing with Imaginary. I was fully engaged in the first 2/3rds if this movie. I was invested, surprisingly so. Then, in the third act of Imaginary, everything absolutely fell off the cliff. The last third of this movie absolutely crushed the enjoyment from the first part of the film and brought this rating way down.

So what went wrong in that third act? Without talking in spoilers, the problems are varied. The movie suddenly falls into exposition. It starts to explain things and doesn’t seem to stop. SO MUCH EXPLAINING!!!! And it was multiple scenes.

Not only are they over explaining things, they are explaining things that we just saw happen, as if we were not smart enough to understand what had just happened. There was one scene in particular where once the action ended, the characters told us what we had just seen. I do not like to think the movie thinks I am too dumb to understand what I am watching. This sure as hell is not Dune 2.

The third act became ridiculous. The story was convoluted and then everything had to be explained. Things happened that did not make sense. The special effects were okay, except for the look of the bear. The monstrous bear known as Chauncey looked like a fraud Bigfoot on a poor video recording.

The acting was, at best, passable, but the writing was extremely weak and the dialogue felt wooden in a lot of times.

They used a bunch of jump scares in the film because they could not really create the type of horror that built on it normally.

I was enjoying the first two acts, despite the fact that it was a little slower. But that third act just drove the film into the ground. I went from being invested to laughing at the scenes. It has been a long time since a movie took this hard of a turn into badness for me.

1.5 stars

Kung Fu Panda 4

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All across the realm of social media the last few weeks, the clip of Jack Black with Tenacious D, doing a cover of the Britney Spears hit, Baby, One More Time, thrived. It was everywhere, and it was the song to play over the end credit scenes of the fourth installment of the animated film from the DreamWorks franchise, Kung Fu Panda.

That was my favorite part of the film.

Kung Fu Panda 4 was okay, but it definitely felt like the franchise had stretched farther than it should have.

Jack Black, however, is a treasure as always. He completely embodies Po, the Dragon Warrior and commands the screen with his voice in every scene that he is in. Awkwafina voiced the character of Zhen, a fox who was a thief looking for a specific score. Awkwafina was just okay in this film. Dustin Hoffman resumed his role as Shifu and Po’s two fathers, voiced by James Hong and Bryan Cranston, were back as well.

However, there was no sign of the Furious Five, as the characters were off on their own adventures.

Our new villain, voiced by Viola Davis, was The Chameleon, and was quite a letdown. The character had some great design and looked awesome in the animation, but there was just not enough done with her, leaving a lot of potential untapped.

The story was just so obvious that it was quite the drawback. It was pretty clear what was going to happen and it felt as if it was something that I did not want to see.

The animation, though, was beautiful as always for this franchise. Po looked great and all of the characters were designed wonderfully. There were some very creative animated spots throughout the film and the film looked excellent. Plus, the animation of the action scenes were really well done.

The involvement of Po’s two fathers, Mr. Ping the goose and Li the panda was one of my least favorite parts of the story. It made little sense and they felt as if they were shoehorned into the story so they could have Bryan Cranston in the movie more.

I found this to be okay. I expect that the kids of the world will enjoy the film way more than I did.

However, I did love that Baby One More Time cover.

3 stars

Spaceman

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So this must be the weekend for science fiction.

I watched Spaceman, the third sci-fi movie of the day for me. It is also the one that I am the most conflicted about.

It is very well known that I am not a fan of Adam Sandler. However, he has had some more recent, serious movie roles that I have enjoyed, so seeing this still left me with some hope. After watching it, I am just unsure what exactly I watched.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, “Six months into a solitary research mission to the edge of the solar system, an astronaut, Jakub (Adam Sandler), realizes that the marriage he left behind might not be waiting for him when he returns to Earth. Desperate to fix things with his wife, Lenka (Carey Mulligan), he is helped by a mysterious creature from the beginning of time he finds hiding in the bowels of his ship. Hanuš (voiced by Paul Dano) works with Jakub to make sense of what went wrong before it is too late.”

This is most definitely a slow burn sci-fi movie, which I do not mind. I have always enjoyed a good slow burn character piece, and this is definitely a film that embraces the pace.

Adam Sandler does a decent job in this performance, but it does feel strange at times. I have to say, I did not realize that he was supposed to be an astronaut from the Czech Republic until midway into the film. There was not much about Adam Sandler or his performance that screamed Czech.

Then, things go really weird when the creature voiced by Paul Dano arrives and begins a deep, psychological and internal discussion about just about everything in Jakub’s life. I don’t want to spoil the creature, but your acceptance of this creature will depend if you think the film is a decent sci-fi film or a silly facade.

There are things about Paul Dano’s character that I would like to discuss, but I can not go into it without spoiling some specifics so I will not do so. Let me just state that one of the big themes of the film deals with the loneliness and isolation of Jakob and how that might affect his mental state, and I’ll leave it at that.

I went back and forth with Dano’s character, so it is the reason why I am unsure how exactly I feel about Spaceman. This is the central relationship that we focus on and I am mixed on it. I found it more interesting overall than silly, so there is that.

There was an interesting use of flashbacks to tell the story of Jakob and his life. I did enjoy the manner in which the movie displayed the flashbacks and how the story on earth maintained a different visual style than the scenes in the spaceship or from the flashbacks. I thought the direction of these scenes especially, from director Johan Renck, was solid. I am not sure that I got enough out of the scenes to understand some of the decisions made by Jakob, especially in the area of Lenka. Carey Mulligan has some good moments, but not enough of them to really matter.

I do think the film missed some opportunities to really take this into a strong character piece and deal with some heavy ideas and themes. What they did was okay, but I think there is an outline of something that could be truly good.

You should check it out on Netflix. This is one that I think you could hate, but I found enough here to be engaged by it.

3.3 stars

Code 8: Part II

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It was quite a weekend for sci-fi part two films. The biggest, of course, was Dune: Part Two in theaters, but the other is a film that arrived on Netflix called Code 8: Part II.

This was a film that I had no idea even had a Part I. Apparently, this is a sequel to a sci-fi film that came out in 2019 and on Netflix in 2020 featuring Robbie and Stephen Amell.

According to IMDB, “After witnessing the murder of her brother and subsequent cover up, a teenage girl with abnormal abilities seeks the help of an ex-con (Robbie Amell) and his former partner-in-crime (Stephen Amell). Together, they face a unit of corrupt police officers who deploy advanced robotic technology to prevent themselves from being exposed.”

The mix of super powered individuals and the science fiction robotics is very intriguing with this movie and leads to some interesting scenes with the different characters. I did like the young girl, Pavani, played by Sirena Gulamgaus. I thought she pulled off her character with some gusto.

The relationship between the characters played by the Amell brothers were shaky at times. It was unclear the relationship between them and it was inconsistent. Perhaps this is a drawback to not seeing the first Code 8 movie.

The story is okay. I wouldn’t rave about it, but it does have a good flow and the idea of technology being corrupted by human is definitely a regular one in sci-fi.

I liked this film. I have seen reviews stating that this was a step down from the original, but as that is not an issue for me, I would say I liked watching this. It may not be the best Part II of the weekend, nor the best sci-fi film of the weekend, but it was a worthy watch despite that.

3.5 stars

Dune: Part Two

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I have heard so many glowing reviews about Dune Part Two that I went into this movie with high expectations. I re-watched the first Dune last weekend to review what happened. I still found it to be fine. I did not love the first one.

I did not find the second Dune to be as brilliant as it seems everyone else did, but I did like it more than the first one. It is clearly a beautiful, epic science fiction film with several amazing performances. I would not be honest if I said that I wasn’t confused about some of the things that were happening here.

Denis Villeneuve completed his second film, and the second film feels like a more complete story. One of the criticisms of the first film was that it ended suddenly and did not feel like a complete end. The second film had more completion to it.

The special effects are absolutely astounding and the shots of this world were breath-taking. It is one of the most visually impressive films I have seen in years.

Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya are wonderful together, with amazing chemistry and a powerful connection. This relationship is at the center of the movie and makes the ending of the film even more difficult.

The cast is excellent. Everybody bring their A-game to this film, including Dave Bautista, Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Florence Pugh, Christopher Walken, and Stellan Skarsgård. Special shout out to Austin Butler, who played the David Bowie role from the first film. Butler was sinister as Feyd-Rautha and he created an absolutely brilliant antagonist to Chalamet.

The fight choreography of this film was exciting and wonderful. Some of the one on one fights of this movie were dramatic and so beautifully put together. The battle scenes of the war are great and make the energy of the film elevated.

I have never really understood the world of Dune and that has been my biggest struggle of viewing the film. I wonder how much more confused I may have been had I not done the re-watch last weekend?

There are a ton of things about this movie that make it an amazing cinematic exercise, and my issues are not enough to derail this amazing piece of work.

4.5 stars

Drive-Away Dolls

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I did not plan on going to this movie. It came out last week and it was not a draw for me to go to the theater. However, it fit nicely into the schedule this week before Dune Part II and there was only one showing, so I decided to give Drive-Away Dolls a chance.

Sadly, I did not enjoy it very much.

According to IMDB, “Jamie regrets her breakup with her girlfriend, while Marian needs to relax. In search of a fresh start, they embark on an unexpected road trip to Tallahassee. Things quickly go awry when they cross paths with a group of inept criminals.”

Written in part and directed by Ethan Coen, this is a raunchy comedy that, unfortunately, I did not find very funny.

I did find our two main leads, Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan, to be fairly charismatic. I thought both of them did a decent job, but I just did not find much of what they did as funny, and for a comedy, that was a big drawback.

The storyline was weird and so very Coen-like.

And I felt bad for poor Pedro Pascal.

There was a lot of sex and nudity and that is fine. There was just so much lacking in-between the sex scenes. There were so many stupid things that the characters did and it annoyed me badly.

I did not find this the worst thing I have seen, but there were too many things that bothered me compare to the positives.

2.6 stars

Madame Web

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Oof.

When the trailer for Sony’s Madame Web first came out, it looked like all kinds of hot garbage. Then, there was a lot of negative reviews for the flick. I saw it today and it was absolutely one of the worst movies of this year.

Sony keeps making these Spider-Man adjacent movies and none of them seem to be good. Let’s not forget Morbius from a few years ago. Of course, Morbius is a much better movie than Madame Web.

According to IMDB, “Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson) is a New York metropolis paramedic who begins to demonstrate signs of clairvoyance. Forced to challenge revelations about her past, she needs to safeguard three young women from a deadly adversary who wants them destroyed.“

There are simply not much to say about this movie that is positive. I guess Adam Scott did the best he could with what he had. He played Ben Parker, who, I guess, was also a paramedic.

This movie has some of the worst, most wooden dialogue that I have ever heard in a big budget movie. In particular, the villain of this movie Ezekiel Sims, played by Tahar Rahim, had the absolute worst lines and delivery of the lines as I think I have ever seen. There was also a strange overdub of his dialogue in some scenes that did not synch up very well with his lips. Ezekiel Sims has to be considered near the top of the list for worst comic book villains of all time.

Dakota Johnson is a very great actor, but she does not look to give two craps about this. I do like the way the last scene with her in the movie (at least the way she looked).

There are so many things that are so stupid about this movie. Plot holes abound. Characters do things that do not make any sense.

So you know, there are no post credit scenes at all, so you can take off before the credits. I waited until the very end.

The three young actresses, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O’Connor, are implied in trailers to be spider-based super heroes and that is not true. We see them in costumes in a vision of the future, and that is all. The whole movie features these three girls as teenage girls without powers. It does feel like some false advertising.

This movie is very dull too. There is so much missing from this. All that this was for was to throw some poorly written Spider-Man Easter eggs and and a sad attempt to take advantage of the Spider-Man’s success. This is a terrible movie.

0.75 stars

Bob Marley: One Love

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I do not know much about Bob Marley’s music. There are a couple of them, of course, but for the most point, I am unfamiliar.

The music was the best part of Bob Marley: One Love.

This tells the story of Bob Marley’s life. However, I did not feel as if there was much cohesive story in the film. It felt very much like the typical music biopic that we always get. There was nothing much new or different about this Bob Marley film.

Kingsley Ben-Adir played Bob Marley and he does a very decent job. Lashana Lynch played Rita and she was excellent as well. The acting overall of the film was pretty decent.

The main problem of this movie was the story. It was slow and plodding and I was just bored through much of it. The music was great and helped keep things moving.

The trailers focused on the shooting of Bob Marley in Jamaica, and that piece was done in the first ten minutes. I thought this was going to be the key focus of the movie, but it was not. I wish they would have focused in on a smaller section of his life.

The movie was not terrible, but it was not good either. I did enjoy the music here. Did I mention that already?

2.6 stars

Lisa Frankenstein

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If I am being honest, I did doze off for a short time at the beginning of the new movie, Lisa Frankenstein. Sadly, I was awake for most of it.

According to IMDB, “After suffering an unspeakable tragedy, Lisa finds herself at a new school her senior year in 1989, struggling to fit in, despite her “sister” Taffy trying to get her to conform to her more typical cheerleader vibe. When a freak accident reanimates a corpse from the abandoned cemetery where she was spending time, she must keep his arrival a secret from her family and classmates, all while deciding how much she wants to help him, and at what cost.”

I really did not like Lisa Frankenstein. I found it unfunny, mean-spirited and filled with characters that I just did not like. Lisa, played very well by Kathryn Newton, was a protagonist that I found so unlikable that I did not know why I was supposed to be cheering for her. Maybe I wasn’t.

I will give the movie some credit in the fact that it did take some big swings and did not fall into the typical steps. I like the idea behind a lot of the film, but I just did not like the execution of these original ideas. I did enjoy the character of Taffy (Liza Soberano). She was a character that we have seen dozens of times and is always portrayed in a certain way, but this film took this character in a completely different direction. That was welcome and she was easily my favorite character in the movie.

Cole Sprouse was fine as the Creature. He did a solid job without any dialogue for most of the movie. 

I can say that I did not think that the actors were part of my problem with this movie. 

I found it to be cruel, filled with mean scenes toward the people of the film and I just did not appreciate it. I may have chuckled a few times during the movie, but, overall, the writing of it just did not inspire me in any manner.

This was another movie that I was disappointed by since I had been looking forward to seeing it since the trailers. I would say that as of February 10th, this is my least favorite movie of the year (although Madame Web is coming next week).

1.5 stars

The Greatest Night in Pop

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A great new documentary arrived on Netflix that featured the story of the recording of the classic 80’s song, We are the World.

There was a lot of recorded sections of the actual archive recordings with all of the artists involved in the amazing night. Starting after the American Music Awards were done, the recording session went the rest of the night and into the morning hours. 

Lionel Richie was one of the first interviews the doc had as he was a major factor behind the creation of the song. He and Michael Jackson wrote it, despite trying to get Stevie Wonder to be a part of it.

The artists interviewed for the doc included Richie, Bruce Springsteen, Kenny Loggins, Huey Lewis, Cyndi Lauper, Smokey Robinson, and Dione Warwick.

One of the interesting tidbits in the doc included the section with Sheila E talking about Prince and the desire of the people in charge to have Prince as a part of the song. 

Watching the process of these legends of music trying to put together this epic song in the limited time they had was fascinating. Seeing Bob Dylan struggle to get the line of the song out was amazing. You had Huey Lewis and Cyndi Lauper express their doubts and insecurities over being included with people that they looked up to for their whole lives.

Another awesome moment was when Quincy Jones thanked Harry Belafonte, whose idea led to this night’s work, and the whole crew broke into a version of The Banana Boat Song. That was an excellent moment from the doc.

This was a fantastic peek behind the curtain of one of the most amazing nights in music history. 

4.3 stars

Orion and the Dark

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A new animated movie from Dreamworks dropped on Netflix this weekend that had been around for awhile. It arrived after a tough schedule last year and just appeared. It featured Jacob Trembley as the main character, Orion.

Orion is afraid of just about everything, but nothing more than the dark. When Orion was carrying on about his fear, the personification of the Dark (Paul Walter Hauser) showed up in Orion’s room and took him on his job through the night, introducing him to the other beings responsible for the night.

The voice cast is strong. Besides Jacob Trembley and Paul Walter Hauser, the cast included Colin Hanks, Angela Bassett, Ike Barinholtz, Nat Faxon, Carla Gugino, Matt Dellapina, Mia Akemi Brown, Natasia Demetriou, Aparna Nancherla, Sky Alexis, and Werner Herzog (yes, Werner Herzog).

As the film was going, the scene shifted to Orion with his daughter in the future, and he was telling her the story of this night. I actually think this dropped at the very beginning, but my Netflix copy skipped it because it felt very out of place where this was dropped.

The story was sweet and had a good message. It was a quick watch and had some clever ideas. It felt like Inside Out but with the night. 

3.7 stars

Argylle

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Here is the first real disappointing film of 2024. 

I have been looking forward to this movie since I first saw the trailer in 2023. It sounded great and the cast was outstanding. I avoided online reviews as much as I could, but I knew they were trending negative. Still, I hoped that the film would be one of those that may be in the middle with critics, but that would be still be entertaining.

Sadly, will Argylle was not terrible, it was not good either. Meh is a very good way to describe this film, the newest from director Matthew Vaughn.

According to IMDB, “Elly Conway, an introverted spy novelist who seldom leaves her home, is drawn into the real world of espionage when the plots of her books get a little too close to the activities of a sinister underground syndicate. When Aiden, a spy, shows up to save her (he says) from being kidnapped or killed (or both), Elly and her beloved cat Alfie are plunged into a covert world where nothing, and no one, is what it seems.”

The definite standout of the film was the performances of its two main protagonists, Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell. Don’t be fooled into thinking that Henry Cavill, who is featured heavily in the marketing, is a main character because he is not. He does not appear in much of the movie, mainly in the opening scene which was used quite a bit in the trailers. 

In fact, I hated the way Cavill was used after that opening scene. He was basically a figment of Bryce Dallas Howard’s imagination moving on and would show up to give her a pep talk.

Bryan Cranston is the main antagonist of the film and he is a basic villain without much development for his character. He was always just kind of menacing and that was about it. Catherine O’Hara played Elly’s mom and she had a minimal amount of screen time. She was more used than John Cena and Ariana DeBose, though, who were basically cameo rolls. Samuel L. Jackson was limited to watching a Lakers game for much of his time in the movie.

The movie was too convoluted with its plot and it tried to fool the audience several times that just served to confuse many and mess up the story. When it was just Howard and Rockwell on screen, the film was considerably better.

It was also way too long at almost 2 and a half hours. This needed to be trimmed considerably so it was between 1:45-2:00 hours at most. You could feel the length of the film.

The CGI was not good either. There were times when the cat, named Alfie in the film, was just ridiculous looking. There were plenty of moments too that you could see the green screen.

The film had a major reliance on exposition too, as there was a major info dump in the middle of the film when the twist arrived. The film had to explain things to us way too much and it slowed it down even more.

I was very disappointed with Argylle as I was hopeful that this could be a really fun spy adventure. Sadly, though there were some things positive to it, it is not a film that I would want to see again.

2.6 stars

Monty Python’s the Meaning of Life (1983)

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And so we have reached the end of the 2024 Genre-ary DailyView: Musicals. After a full month of classical musicals or stage shows shot as a film, we wrap up this year’s Genre-ary with EYG Hall of Famers Monty Python and one of their funniest, if not chaotic films, Monty Python’s Meaning of Life. 

Monty Python consisted of six main individuals: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. 

This film stitched together a series of sketches featuring the immense talents of these six men. It was shocking at times. At times it was raunchy. At times it was offensive. Above all else, it was, at all times, really funny.

Admittedly, there was a scene including vomit jokes, which I have NEVER been a fan of, but this was about as funny as I will find these scenes. 

There are some absolutely brilliant songs involved too including “Every Sperm is Sacred,” “Penis Song (Not The Noël Coward Song),” “Galaxy Song,” “Christmas in Heaven,” and “Meaning of Life.” These are uproariously funny. I love “Every Sperm…” and “Penis Song.”

Some of the skits do not work as well as others, but there are so many outstanding moments that I really was pleased that I scheduled this to conclude the Genre-ary. 

Topsy Turvy (1999)

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The penultimate night of January brings us the second to last film in the Genre-ary DailyView here at EYG. On Max tonight, I watched the musical from 1999 Topsy Turvy. This film has a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Sadly, I just was not into it.

I do love Jim Broadbent, and he is great here. The movie was a biopic musical about Gilbert & Sullivan. They are great too.

I just did not find myself into the film. It had a hard time keeping my attention and I struggled to keep watching.

According to IMDB, “After their last production meets with less-than-stunning reviews, the relationship between Gilbert and Sullivan is strained to breaking. Their friends and associates attempt to get them to work together again, which opens the way to The Mikado, one of the duo’s greatest successes.“

It felt very long, even longer than the actual runtime of 2 hours and 40 minutes. 

I felt sad that I could not get into this movie. It just never grabbed me and, despite the wonderful Jim Broadbent, I was just not actively engaged in the film.