My Blog

My thoughts on The Substance

I don't like horror movies, but I decided (foolishly?) that maybe The Substance wouldn't be so bad? It wasn't at all scary, but there was lots of medical stuff - injections mostly - and lots and lots of gore. It is about the misogyny and ageism of the movie/tv industry and how once a woman reaches a certain age, she's tossed onto the scrap heap and replaced with a younger replacement. Such is the case with the protagonist of this movie - she hits 50 and the head of the network wants her replaced with a 20something. She discovers "The Substance", a wonder drug that can unlock a younger better version of herself. And it doesn't quite work out how she plans.

The transformation into her new version was not at all what I expected based on what you see in the trailer. Very gory. Very traumatic. The prosthetics effects are amazing, or at least I'm guessing they're not CGI. Moore looks amazing, which just hammers home the daftness of the disgusting character that Quaid plays. Not a movie I'd probably watch again, but I think it was good - just not my sort of thing. #MovieReview

I watched Lee...

I went and saw Lee in the cinema and thought it was very good. It's about a celebrated WW2 photographer who despite the sexism of the time, managed to make quite the career for herself. And she took lots of photos that opened the eyes of the folk back home to the horror of that war. I've little interest in WW2, so wasn't aware of her, but now I am I guess. They did an amazing job of recreating the scenes she'd have taken photos of which made for a bit of a grim watch in places, but not entirely unexpected. What was unexpected, was...well it'd be a spoiler to say, but I did find that it was what made me really like the movie. #MovieReview

I watched The Crow so you don't have to

I saw The Crow remake a few weeks ago and it is truly as bad as you've heard. The original isn't a masterpiece, but what it did do right was be a good solid movie - being simple where it needed to be and expansive of the complicated parts. The remake is however does the opposite and is a bloated mess. It wastes at least 40 minutes trying to convince us that Shelly and Eric are in love...and misses the mark entirely. The goons that murder them are forgettable, their deaths equally so.Gone is the symmetry that had (for example) Tin Tin dying from being stabbed by his own knives. They add on a whole bunch of scenes where Eric is in the afterlive to explain his powers. The crime lord in charge might have been the most interesting part of the movie, but they didn't really flesh him out enough. All in all, even some of the straight to video sequels they made of The Crow were better. Maybe that's the problem - every time they make a new one, the quality diminishes?

My thoughts on Blink Twice

So I watched Blink Twice and I think I liked it, but I'm not sure it is something I'd want to watch again any time soon. Not because it isn't a good movie - I think it was very well written, acted etc - but because the subject matter is way darker than anything else I've seen recently. The movie is even prefaced with trigger warnings, which I think was a nice touch, but a bit late, because by that point you've already bought tickets and sat through 30 minutes of ads and trailers. You really need to know going in if you're going to have any difficulties with the subject matter...whilst at the same time not having the whole movie spoilt for you. Cos the whole point of having a twist in a movie, is that it is a surprise when it happens.

Thoughts on the new Alien movie

I have to say, the new addition to the Alien franchise is pretty good. It isn't doing anything original admittedly - it has the usual face huggers, xenomorphs, milky androids and corporations making foolish decisions. But it does have a whole new cast of snacks for the xenomorphs to chew down on though, rather than defrosting Ripley for the umpteenth time. Overall, it looks pretty, has plenty of jump scares and the plot makes some sense, even if some of the decisions made by the characters is dumb as hell. They are only human after all.