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Posts By Joy

First things first: I'm a realist.

Swiss Army Man (2016)

26/12/2016 · by Joy

I watched Swiss Army Man a couple weeks ago and I fell in love. Like, super in love. I went into this film with obviously low expectations because how good can a movie about a guy bonding with a corpse actually be? But man, was I blown away… There were flaws, as with any directorial debut, but they were so minimal compared to what I was taken with.

The plot of the movie sounds ridiculous and stupid and everyone I’ve talked about it with has been like, “I am 100% not going to watch a movie about a flatulent corpse and a crazed, lonely, lost little man,” but it’s so good. I want to watch it again and again. Sure, it could have used less fart jokes and the plot is beyond ridiculous and unbelievable, but it’s so heartwarming and so funny that I just can’t. I can’t even.

It is the most bizarre work of art that I have ever even took a notion to think about watching. It is insane and wieird. Paul Dano is amazing, Daniel Radcliffe is amazing, and they are amazing together. Watching Daniel Radcliffe play a dead man who is practically a foreign life-form in that he knows nothing about anything ever. The questions are like those you hear on a daily basis from a toddler, but they delve deeper and deeper into existential discussions. It’s.. the silliest thing that I got attached emotionally to a corpse. I was endeared by him and his child-like wonder.

The movie is titled Swiss Army Man because Daniel Radcliffe’s character, dubbed Manny by Paul Dano’s character, Hank, is literally a swiss army man. He is a multi-purpose tool good for starting fires, shooting things in the air, using as a speedboat of sorts… he’s a fountain, a compass… he’s everything someone “stranded” on an island could want or need.

And don’t even get me started on the beautiful score which I have since added to my Google Play library. It’s gorgeous and whimsical and I fricken love it.

Give Swiss Army Man a chance… like, a real… good chance. I bought it before I even watched it and I am so glad I did because I can’t wait to rewatch it.

Arrival (2016)

23/11/2016 · by Joy

Arrival may be comprised of many alien movie cliches, but it itself was not your average creature feature. It’s not for someone who’s looking for a modern-day War of the Worlds or the next Independence Day. It is emotional and, at times, visceral. I was not prepared for the number of times I would shed a tear or two (or many more) during this 116 minute long Denis Villeneuve film. I hesitate to compare films, but I feel strongly that 2014’s Interstellar surpassed Arrival by quite a bit. Having said that, it is it’s own film and I was truly impressed.

We open to Amy Adams, a linguist and a professor, reminiscing on her life and her understanding of the linearity (or lack thereof) of time. We learn that she has lost her daughter to a rare form of (probably) cancer at a pretty young age. We’re quickly whisked away into a new world where Amy Adams’ character is suddenly part of a high-level team trying to crack an alien language being spoken by aliens who have landed in vessels parked in 12 locations around the world. We learn pretty early on that she’s very good at her job and that she has previously translated things for the government. Arrival also stars Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker, which was kind of a letdown for me. I find that Forest Whitaker only ever plays… well… Forest Whitaker. Forest Whitaker is playing Forest Whitaker AS lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh (The Shield), Forest Whitaker AS Major Collins (Bodysnatchers), Forest Whitaker AS Colonel Weber (Arrival)… he only has one character and that tends to take me right out of any role he plays. And that… is pretty much my only complaint about the cast or the acting. Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner were fantastic – phenomenal even.

There were a few plot points that kind of didn’t gel with me… I don’t want to speak them aloud because that would spoil the film, but they’re pretty big, gaping holes, so from that point of view, I was kind of like, meh. But the film was beautiful. I felt empathy for the aliens, even, which you can’t expect out of most alien films which demonize the visitors.

All in all, this is a film I will probably buy on Bluray and watch when I’m feeling like something cerebral and touchy-feely… I really enjoyed it and think it’s definitely worth a watch or two!

As Above, So Below (2014)

13/11/2016 · by Joy

I took a while to work up the courage to watch this one. I have a bad habit of looking up the reviews for films before I watch them and sometimes basing whether I watch them or not ON those reviews. This one currently has 25% on RottenTomatoes, but the premise seemed super-interesting to me, so David and I took a risk… took the plunge… and we did it! We watched it! And we survived!

Honestly, 25% to me is heinously low. We started it when I was supposed to leave at 11:30. 11:30 rolled around and there was still 30 minutes left and I couldn’t drag myself away! I was totally sucked in. Absorbed, even.

I mean, the story is a little bit lackluster, sure. But what story do you really need when your setting is the catacombs beneath Paris? Does anyone really care what the set up is for the film? It’s pretty dumb and it leaves a lot to be desired, but anyway, our main character Scarlett (2 PhDs and a Master’s and also looks like she’s like, 28) wants to enter the Paris catacombs to find the Philosopher’s Stone. She drags along her cameraman, Benji and her friend, George, and they find some locals who know their way around the catacombs like the backs of their hands. I definitely felt like I was watching a spin-off of The DaVinci Code combined with the claustrophobic setting of The Descent. I’m a super claustrophobic person and yet, I really didn’t find the claustrophobia scenes all that disturbing.

What I found really effective was the isolation. They basically go through a small hole to get to this area of the catacombs that tourists don’t normally get to see, their entryway collapses, and they’re pretty much trapped. That horrifies me.

The film is fueled by stupid characters who blatantly disregard warning after warning, dying off one by one, but rest assured, this is no pessimistic ending. It really takes advantage of the setting it has to work with and the villains are mostly hidden, which is a breath of fresh air for the found footage genre, I feel.

I really liked it and would have given it at least a 70%. I will likely buy this one to watch next Nanasween!

The Loved Ones (2009)

26/10/2016 · by Joy

I have anticipated watching this film for a really long time, but trying to get David to watch it has been quite the task. Trying to describe it to him has only furthered his reluctance to sit down with me and actually watch it. When you hear “this is a movie about prom night gone awry” you don’t immediately think “fantastic horror,” those two phrases don’t normally go hand-in-hand. I went into watching The Loved Ones with high expectations. Rotten Tomatoes has given it a certified fresh rating of 98% with an audience score of 74% – those are steep numbers to live up to. I’d have to say, though, it definitely succeeded! I am genuinely and thoroughly impressed!

To be fair, it’s riding a very, verrryyy thin line between gory shock killings and torture porn… I mean very thin. Think more hardcore than Saw but less hardcore than Tokyo Gore Police. …maybe that’s a little broad. Either way, it is not for the faint of heart or the squeamish, there’s a looot of blood spewed and shed. And it’s not without it’s minor issues – the pacing is all over the place and there is some ultra-cheesy dialogue – but the acting is surprisingly wonderful, the main character (Lola) played by Robin McLeavy is surprisingly terrifying in her insanity, and it’s relentlessly brutal.

It is Sean Byrne’s directorial debut and that shocked me when I learned it because it’s very well done technically and it’s well-written and it’s unsettling. I was invested in the “victim” and I was rooting for a safe outcome, which usually I’m pretty against because happy endings are boring and overdone!

All-in-all, this is one that I want to add to my collection pretty much immediately and will probably go on the October movie marathon roster next year.

Lights Out (2016)

09/10/2016 · by Joy

Lights Out was the perfect embodiment of a mediocre horror film. It used all the typical horror movie tropes (creepy basements, anyone?) and hit all the right notes for a semi-plausible and wholly horrifying creature. At times, the acting was corny, especially from our main character, Becca, who I couldn’t help but compare to a blonde Kristen Stewart (who maybe, sort of, almost emotes more).

It’s a decent enough film with plenty of jump scares to get those easily gotten, but it just wasn’t what I wanted it to be. Everybody’s scared, to some degree, of the dark… the foreboding… the unknown. There’s so many places that Sandberg could have gone with that, but in the end, he basically just made a film that said that people with depression should totally kill themselves. Good… job? I can only assume that’s the reason that he’s gone about making a sequel that was announced the same month that this film hit box offices – because he done fucked up.

You could call Lights Out a ghost story, but really, our antagonist is no ghost. She’s something far creepier, something that only comes about in the dark. I found that impressive, actually, that they actually explained why the creature could only approach in the dark – they actually gave a somewhat logical reason behind it. That’s a nice change, instead of just saying, “oh ghosts only happen at night time” – WHY do ghosts only happen at night time?

Diana is one of the scariest paranormal entities in a long while, I think… on par with Valak, who was a pretty darn spooky nun. I think Lights Out is indeed worth a watch (or two, in my case) and I’m intrigued to see the sequel, especially since they seemed to wrap up the loose ends pretty damn well at the end of it all. Where can they go from here? We’ll see…

Ghostbusters (2016)

09/10/2016 · by Joy

This is a film I wasn’t ever really that interested in seeing. I figured, how could they possibly improve on the original which had everything anyone could ever have wanted in a film about a bunch of people literally bustin’ ghosts. And the whole “now with women” thing wasn’t all that intriguing either. I’m all for equality and I’m totally all for feminism and empowering women, but that doesn’t mean we need to remake classically male-casted films with women. It’s fate was pretty much already set as “not as good as the original.” Despite that, though, it did an okay job of being it’s own movie. It was entertaining enough and it had it’s moments.

The star of the show, by far, was Chris Hemsworth who played the lovably stupid receptionist, Kevin. I found myself pretty much just waiting for his appearances because they were just downright hilarious. Of course, Kristen Wiig is always funny too, but I was really living for Chris in this one.

But to be honest, the story was lacking – it lacked originality, it lacked depth, and it lacked intrigue. I didn’t honestly care what the outcome was and I didn’t care about any of the characters’ fates. They weren’t fleshed out or given much backstory at all. Okay, so Kristen Wiig’s character is a professor at MIT up for tenure when her friend from yore decides to publish their book about paranormal activity which pretty much asserts that she believes in ghosts over the scientific method. I don’t care if her character gets tenure.

Clearly they had fun filming it and it’s an entertaining time, but it just wasn’t enough to captivate me and I’m sorry to say, but I simply wouldn’t watch it again.

The Ouija Experiment (2011)

03/10/2016 · by Joy

What an awful, awful experience this was. What an awful experiment, if you will. The only reason that I even ventured into watching this movie is because I didn’t have enough time to watch my regularly planned “The Shining” night because it’s Teen Mom Monday. Wow, how basic was that sentence?

Anyway, the whole garbage film felt like a high school student’s first attempt at a horror film. The acting was horrible and wooden and apparently “based on true events.” There was nothing to any of the characters, they were all wooden cardboard cutouts of each other. The scares were sad and weak… even though I rarely get scared during films, this was just a laughable, terrible experience had by all (meaning myself and my dog, Toby).

It was a movie TRYING to be scary while also inserting random Internet memes into the dialogue? It was cringeworthy, every little word they said.

I don’t even know what else to say. I am appalled. It had a budget of $1,200 and it’s 200% obvious. I haven’t actually seen anything else that the writer (and director) has written (and directed) but I don’t plan on adding any of them to my “To Watch” list. At least I know who to avoid…

Stranger Things: Season 1 (2016)

18/09/2016 · by Joy

It’s taken me far too long to get this review out.

As soon as I saw the thumbnail for Stranger Things, I knew it was something I wanted to watch. I put it off though, delaying the inevitable end of the season that would come all too soon. But we did it. My boyfriend, David, and I sat down and watched it over a couple of nights, trying to stretch it out for as long as possible.

From the minute it started, I was in love. I was in love with the familiar ’80s movie tropes, I was in love with the Spielberg vibe it was shooting off in my general direction, I was in love with the lovable characters and their hilariously witty (for children) dialogue. Not to mention, the wordmark title looks like the title of Needful Things, and I love me some Stephen King. It is a show that takes a little bit of this and a little bit of that, a little bit of E.T. and a little bit of the X-Files, and sprinkles it together in the most beautiful recipe to create a perfect homage to the ’80s – and I mean, perfect.

Apparently I’m not the only one enthralled with it either, because it’s sitting at 95% on Rottentomatoes and 9.1/10 on IMDb, so while I may be one of the only ones to actually shed tears at the end of the season, I am not unique in my adoration.

Besides all of the stylistic and nostalgic perks it has going for it, the story is also great. It’s compelling and keeps you on your toes. The pacing is great, the setting is wonderful and the characters are phenomenal. You can’t help but to fall in love with the children in the story – the lovable, gap-toothed Dustin, Will the missing child, Mike Wheeler, and of course, Eleven. This is Millie Bobby Brown’s first BIG role and she killed it, knocked it way out of the park. Some of the adult characters were just as easy to fall in love with and when I say adult characters, I’m mostly speaking to Hopper, the police chief who spawned one of my favourite quotes of ever now: “Mornings are for coffee & contemplation.” That quote in itself pretty much sums up the character of Hopper. He’s a police chief in this podunk town where very little happens… until now.

All in all, it’s a great sci-fi/fantasy show that I feel pretty much anyone will at the very least find watchable, but more probably will find it enjoyable and thrilling at times. Give it a watch and you will not be disappointed!

Emelie (2015)

11/09/2016 · by Joy

Emelie is the movie that encompasses every parent’s nightmare when hiring a babysitter that you don’t reaaaally know all that well. It’s directed by Michael Thelin, who, as far as I can tell, hasn’t directed any movies before now. It stars a bunch of “unrecognizables”, which is one of my favourite things when watching a horror movie. When there’s a recognizable actor, you can’t help but be taken out of the movie just a tad.

Sarah Bolger plays Emelie, a girl fronting as “Anna”, a couple’s go-to babysitter’s best friend. At the very beginning of the film, you learn that “Anna” is not who she says she is as we watch the real Anna, a character we haven’t met – at all, get thrown into a mysterious black car. The new “Anna” shows up at the house, sweet as pie and the parents detect nothing amiss and head out on their much-anticipated date. Before the parents leave, in some pretty obvious foreshadowing, we learn that the children are not allowed to have cell phones until they’re 13. After the parents leave, the kids are put through the ringer… they have to watch the youngest (and only) daughter’s pet hamster get eaten by the oldest son’s snake, they are forced to watch their dad’s amateur sex tape with a woman who is not his wife(?), and then they listen to a bedtime story about a girl who neglectfully kills her infant child and now needs to find a new one, referring to the new child she is on the hunt for as her “Cubby.” Creepy. Very creepy.

Eventually, we learn that this operation is clearly bigger than Emelie alone when the parents get t-boned by an oncoming car on their way home from their date. As Emelie and her mysterious suited man’s death toll rises, the three children are fighting for their lives and Jacob, the oldest, is fighting to keep his younger brother from being kidnapped.

In a disturbing twist of events (to the parents, since we already know this), they are driven home by a cop, but on the drive back the cop gets a radio call letting him know he needs to head back to the crime scene as OH MY GOD, a body was found in the trunk of the car – the body of Anna Coleman.

This movie was tense, I’ll give it that, albeit a little farfetched. If I had children, it would probably make me think twice about who I’m leaving my children with. But come on, if I knew who the girl was, I’d have looked her up on Facebook to confirm her identity before leaving my children with them at the veeeery least!

Overall, a decent thriller (with surprisingly okay child actors) that I probably wouldn’t venture to watch again, at least for a long while!

The Conjuring 2 (2016)

05/09/2016 · by Joy

James Wan is becoming one of my favourite directors. First, we had Saw, which you can’t argue became one of the most overdone franchises in horror history, but still grossed $873 million at the box office worldwide. Then he did Dead Silence and that was like, okay we’ll just pretend you didn’t do that. Then came Insidious, which, while not one of my favourites, was a satisfying horror. In 2013, 3 years after Insidious, he hit the motherlode with The Conjuring. With 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, it quickly became one of my favourites (ever) to watch. There’s just something about Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson’s sincere performances and a family with like, a thousand daughters, being tormented by a spirit from the Great Beyond that makes a horror fans’ every hair stand on end… with glee.

Since then, he’s had Insidious: Chapter 2 which I haven’t yet ventured to see, Furious 7, and most recently, The Conjuring 2. So of course, as soon as I heard it was out, I was so excited to see it. I waited (tensely, excitedly… breathlessly) until my favourite movie-watching friends (HI ANH, MEL, JULIE & RHIANNON, MISSING BRANDI & SPECIAL FEATURING KATIE & GREG) were ready and hurriedly rushed over with anticipation.

What I expected was a Conjuring 1-like retelling of the Enfield haunting. What I got was something very much like the first film, but also, so much different. The vibe was just a little different, I think because it’d been done before, it followed the same formula (children experience strange occurrences, parent(s) don’t believe them, something happens and the parent(s) witness it…) but then the formula changed. First of all, all of those usual things happen so fast – we were into the action in like, half an hour, it felt like. Then after those things happened, the family did a thing… a thing I’ve been waiting for a family to do – they fled the house. I mean, they went back near immediately, but still they tried to flee the house for a split second before “coming to their senses” and returning to Hell. I’d be lying if I said that The Conjuring had the same effect – it definitely has lost some of it’s ‘wow’ factor and I think a big part of that is due to the fact that you actually see the ghost’s face so often. It just becomes a little overdone. There’s no mystery. Whereas in the first one, the ghost’s identity is kept a secret until you absolutely MUST know it, in this one, you semi-sort-of know pretty quick off the bat.

For that reason, I didn’t enjoy this movie as much as the first. I still enjoyed it, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t find myself saying, “WOW, what a good horror movie” at the end. My other big criticism is that it felt long – especially during a number of sappy, out of place scenes that I guess were supposed to be… romantic(?) between Ed and Lorraine Warren. I’m sorry, but this is a horror film… horror and romance are two genres that just don’t jive well together at all. I personally could not care less about their weird, ghost-hunting relationship and I super don’t want to imagine what they’re doing after the ghost-hunting is over when they’re not in separate beds any longer. Ew.

While it’s true, there were more jump scares and tense moments than the first, I don’t think they were used as effectively. Maybe for those who are extreeeemely easily scared (Julie), they are, but there are so many and they are so constant throughout the whole film that it gets exhausting after a while.

All-in-all, it was an enjoyable movie and you could tell that Wan put a lot of thought and effort into an elaborate plot that keeps you thinking and guessing from start to finish (well, up until a long scene of Ed and Lorraine embracing to Elvis??? anyway) Had they kept the ghost’s visage a bit more under wraps, I think it would have been that much scarier and that much more successful than the first. I can’t get over that, because seeing a ghost TOO often kills the mood – kills the mystery – kills the scare-factor.

While I felt the first film deserved the 86% it got, I think I’d probably give this film a full 10% less, placing it at 76%, and I’d call it fair.

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