Author: wd

i cant guarantee im always around, but when i am, consequences will never be the same.

Jay’s Take: Escape Plan 3

twobuffdudes

We are in to uncharted territory here; something that Escape Plan 3 knows nothing about. I was disappointed with the new Lion King because the cold, realistic tone of live-action took away from the visual imagination of animation. There is no visual imagination in Escape Plan 3. Ninety-percent of the film takes place in a vile, puke colored prison (the same where Shawshank was filmed!) whose inhabitants notice the bloodied and crispy linens. In this high-security Latvian prison, Devon Sawa (the boy from the first Final Destination movie! That’s where I knew him from) has kidnapped the daughter of a wealthy Chinese tech mogul for some reason (the copy I watched had no English subtitles, but I can tell you it all felt terribly dramatic). THEN he goes and kidnaps the daughter of Sylvester Stallone’s security expert Ray Breslin – presumably to lure him out of hiding – which as we all know is a BIG MISTAKE. Breslin’s specialty is breaking out of prisons to test their weaknesses, but will this mission push him to his own breaking point? STAY TUNED.

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Jay’s Take: The Lion King 2019

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I saw this on the 19th and have really been dragging my ass to post something about it. What is there to say? Can anything be said? Is it worth it to say it? Disney is beyond criticism at this juncture. Because really, why is it necessary to remake these movies with little more then updated window dressing, a modern celebrity roster, and minor tweaks that will date the movie twenty years from now even more then the twenty-year-plus old original? Other then to sucker a new generation of young parents to buy their obnoxious children more useless merch? No I did not like The Lion King remake. It was ghastly watching the opening sequence remade with CGI and its edgy, realistic tone. No more pomp during the musical numbers: that wouldn’t happen (kitties are colorblind, remember!). No visions from the heavens: just cloud formations that are up to interpretation. And no metaphysical displacement from Rafiki: he gets his news from, literally, shit. It wasn’t fun. It felt like the Jon Favreau who I’ve known since Swingers had finally given his virgin asshole to the train of lizard people waiting for him in the Disney boardroom.

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Jay’s Take: Men in Black 4

rbsh

Ah, the drive-in experience! Something I never got to do as a kid, something I never choose to do as an adult. We drive a 2016 Mazda CX-5 that has to be the biggest piece of shit on four wheels and completely unsuited to sitting idle for more then 20-minutes without whining that it hasn’t got enough attention (that and the brakes, and the transmission, and the suspension, and the mileage, and the warranty, etcetera etcetera). But when we do go, we only have one within 100 km or so of our house, since you know it’s old-fashioned enough to drive an hour to get there but not enough to not trend like crazy when something like Avengers comes out. Oh my god have you been to the drive-in lately? There’s still a drive-in? What’s a drive-in? Tonight there was no Avengers. There was, however, Men in Black 4 and Annabelle 3. Oh joy! All I could think about when sitting in the lot was how long it had left before the property became condos.

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Jay’s Take: Always Be My Maybe

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That non-licensed free-use Netflix logo (that I made myself, thank you) will have to do until I watch more Netflix. Netflix Netflix Netflix you can’t get away from it. More than fifty-percent of the film and television production in my area is for Netflix. Now they are advertising on bus shelters. That’s how my partner and I agreed to watch it: because we were bombarded by this ONE choice on a service that I can spend minutes scrolling looking for content that appeals to me and find NOTHING. My partner loves the service though, especially those dime-a-dozen “teen vampire academy being attacked by werewolves from another dimension” shows. So it isn’t my first choice to pick something there. But like I said, there was NO OTHER OPTION. Even with the bus shelter poster being vandalized it proudly proclaimed that even you, yes YOU, can watch this NOW on Netflix. Fuck why not try it for free? You have NO EXCUSE. Okay okay okay I’ll watch your Ali Wong romcom if you’ll just stop annoying me. But they don’t stop. Now they know. My carefully-curated list of Shark Tank and Star Trek TNG is RUINED.

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Jay’s Take: Midsommar

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Out goes Shaft and with it the possibility of another franchise (but maybe another remake in twenty years) and in comes the latest horror/exercise in dread from Ari Aster, the director of Hereditary. I thought Hereditary was too long; not scary enough; and that its ending was derivative (see The Skeleton Key, Tale of the Mummy). But I did like its atmosphere and its chutzpah: killing Collette’s youngest so early and so unapologetically was a nice touch. Midsommar raises the same complaints for me that the previous did: it’s too long; it wasn’t scary; and the ending was derivative. But damned if it didn’t drip atmosphere and tension for a good chunk of the running time, and have the chutzpah to dispose of its roster of deserving idiot victims in such a contemptuous way.

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