We’re Not Dressing

Internet Movie Database Movie Reviews

A bunch of wealthy socialites end up on a deserted island. Hijinks ensue!

This was pretty stupid, and Mr. Otter and I mocked it pretty much all the way through. The socialites are helpless and useless, spurning the lowly sailor’s (Bing Crosby) offers to show them how to do stuff, until it becomes apparent that they literally can do nothing for themselves, and give in. The girl who owned the sunken yacht falls in love with him, and they are eventually rescued.

The only bright spot in this incredibly dumb-but-not-in-a-good-way movie was the presence of George Burns and Gracie Allen as a couple of anthropologists on the other side of the island…they were, as usual, really funny. The rest of it? sink it without a trace.

Reminiscence

Internet Movie Database Movie Reviews

In a sort-of-apocalyptic future, a PI tries to uncover the truth about a client he falls in love with.

And let me say here that I really, really, REALLY wanted to like this movie. But no.

Firstly, it’s Bladerunner lite. Dark post-apocalyptic setting where most people come out at night? Check. Anti-hero detective tormented by his past as the main character? Check. Falls in love with the girl he’s going to have to arrest? Check. Big reveal in the denoument? check.

So yeah.

The pace was slow (especially for an action movie), many of the scenes were dark and muddy, and the ending was so ridiculous that I was rolling my eyes and shaking my head at the screen.

No need to even give you spoilers, just trust the Otter, don’t even bother with this dog. You don’t need it in your memories…

The Green Knight

Internet Movie Database Movie Reviews

A retelling of the Arthurian legend, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

The huge and scary Green Knight comes to Christmas in Camelot, and offers a challenge: any knight can strike him a blow with the knight’s sword, but a year later he gets to reciprocate. Gawain takes the challenge, cuts the Green Knight’s head off, and a year later has to travel to his castle to be beheaded, but ends up proving his bravery.

Which is a famous story that has been told over and over for hundreds of years, and is a great basis for a movie. Just not this movie.

Because the story is not very long, so the filmmakers had to add stuff to pad it out. And boy, did they ever. Including a lot of pseudomystical hoohah and looooong travel shots and things that made us say, Huh? (I saw it with Mr. Otter.)

This was long, not interesting, slow moving, and really really dull.

CoyoteRambles, whose specialty is cinematography, and who is a dear movie buddy, disagrees with us; he thinks it was engaging, interesting and beautifully made.

One out of three, CR, one out of three…

Frozen II

Internet Movie Database          Movie Reviews

The second in yet another blockbuster Disney franchise.

Elsa is called to the mysterious forest by music only she can hear, and of course fixes the problem after much angst and Benji-peril. And of course Anna, Kristof and that damn annoying snowman go with her, because why leave someone behind to actually run the kingdom?

I liked the first Frozen movie, but this was just silly, annoying,  and preachy (Earth, Air, Fire and Water are imbalanced and must be brought back into harmony <rolls eyes>).

Only for little girls who are obsessed with the series. I really don’t get it, but whatever.

Cats

Internet Movie Database           Movie Reviews

From the wonderful Old Possom’s Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot

And the stage play by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

A group of cats are waiting to see who will be chosen to be reborn into a new life. Really, that’s the plot.

I am an old enough otter to remember when this show came out; a dear friend had tickets and couldn’t go, so she gave them to me and Mr. Otter, and we sat in the THIRD ROW CENTER. There were cats EVERYWHERE. And I loved the poetry, which I had never read, and got the book, and got the album, and listened to it a lot, and…got over it. Not the poetry, that’s still awesome. And in fact Jennyanydots was my cat, and if you want to hear stories about her I’d be glad to tell them, she was one of the Great Cats.

But I digress.

The thing you have to know is, we Chez Otter DO NOT LIKE Andrew Lloyd Webber. We DO NOT LIKE him with a particular and virulent passion  that we reserve for few other human beings. We don’t play his music, or go to any of the millions of the revivals of Phantom, or anything like that, and when his name comes up we heap SCORN on him. My favorite comment about this show is, yes, but he had a great lyricist…

Although I have to admit I inadvertently tear up whenever I hear the song Memories, so there it is.

So this movie trailer came out and pretty much broke the internets. I think we were all under the assumption that this would be more like a filmed version of the play, with HUMANS in cat makeup. Instead of the weird looking CGI…THINGS… that were on stage. And the movie opened to even more WTF and furor.

I turned to Ottersis. Want to go hate-watch Cats? (yes, this is a thing).

Sure, she said, and we did.

And, well. At least I had seen the trailers and read about what to expect, because WTF was a pretty mild reaction.

They put people in full-body fur suits and CGI’d over them to make them…kinda…look…like…maybe…cats? They more looked like people in tight fur suits, because PEOPLE ARE JOINTED DIFFERENTLY FROM CATS and (as the man says) there’s no doing anything about it. So even thought they tried to look like actual felines, it failed, and looked wierder than if they were just people dancing like people.

The furry ‘suits’ were really odd, the worst of both worlds. On the one hand, they CGI’d the actors’ bodies to look more like cats, but all they ended up being was amorphous shapes…no boobs (hmm, cgi’ing 6 nipples on Taylor Swift might have been interesting…) and of course no boy bits on the boy kitties, although (as I said to my sis) at least they had the good sense to neuter these travesties so they don’t reproduce…! Their fur is fur, but doesn’t really look like cat fur, it more looks like thin soft rabbit fur. This makes the actors even less catlike than they would have been if the feline-ness were just suggested. Didn’t work for me.

And they had them on overlarge sets to make them look like they were cat-sized, but the relative sizes of the stuff around them wasn’t consistent, so it was just wierd as well.

To (I guess) make it more of a story/experience/worth the money, they rewrote it and added a lot of plot that wasn’t originally there…including at least one more song, which was completely MEH. The new (way overwritten) plot was stupid, and there was WAY too much overproduction…more sets, dancing cats, fancy effects, you name it.

At its core, this is a simple musical that shows off Eliot’s brilliant poetry to great effect; all the boom and whango of the movie doesn’t add anything to that, and distracts from it. It would have been SO much better to pick a really good production of the play (or hire the actors to do one) and present that…but no.

I understand that this has already become a cult singalong movie…have fun, kids. I have so many earworms from this show (even as I type) that I don’t dare go see it again for fear my head would explode…

 

Anything Goes

Internet Movie Database         Movie Reviews

Two song-and-dance men on a sea cruise rehearsing a new show with two women, plus gangsters. Hijinks ensue.

This is a pretty badly done remake of a sparking and wonderful Cole Porter musical. Not only did P G Wodehouse co-write it, but Sidney Sheldon, he of Sexy Potboiler Thriller fame, had some kind of hand in it…and the script is just awful, even for a 50s musical.

Plus extra songs were added in, which OF COURSE don’t stand up to the original brilliance of Cole Porter.

Bing Crosby and a VERY young-looking Donald O’Connor (but he always looked young, come to think of it) are mugging their way through this thing, trying to be upbeat and doing what they can to keep up the pace; a woman named Zizi Jeanmaire (and who did very little else in her career) and Mitzi Gaynor are the female leads.

There are a few good moments, but you have to sit through a lot of bad ones to get to them. Give this one a pass.

Justice League

Internet Movie Database        Movie Reviews

There are a few small SPOILERS here, but you already know what’s going to happen in this movie…a bad guy appears because of shiny powerful boxes, starts destroying cities, the good guys get together and…

Oh, wait a minute, that’s The Avengers.

Um, there are short intro segments about several superheroes who end up banding together to…

Nope, Avengers again.

There’s a bad guy somewhere beyond Earth that’s come back to take over…

Oops. Avengers.

Bright shiny boxes of dangerous stuff from the beginning of time.

Nope. Ditto.

A bunch of superheroes who don’t get along but have to work together?

Been there, done that.

Joss Whedon.

Sigh.

You know how in a lot of families, there’s a smart and charming and successful kid, and then they have a sibling who wants to be just like them but JUST DOESN’T GET IT? That second kid is DC. Oh my god, they want to be the Marvel Universe SO BADLY.

Emphasis on the BADLY.

Wonder Woman was great. I liked many things about Suicide Squad. The TV show Gotham is way amazing, and we love it, Chez Otter. But otherwise? Even when Marvel SHOWS THEM HOW TO DO IT (the aforementioned Avengers movies) they JUST DON’T GET IT.

Now, I have to admit, they are not working with a great palette…I have never been a fan of Superman, and Batman is only as good as his foils; my favorite part of the Batman universe is ancillary stuff that take place in Gotham (which is one reason that I’m enjoying the TV show so much). In this movie, Wonder Woman was fine, The Flash was cute and funny, the cyborg guy was the smart-but-conflicted-and-bitter one, and Aquaman…well, we’ll get to him.

And I have to say right now, I hated Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, and didn’t much like Man of Steel either. And I knew when Superman ‘died’ that it couldn’t be permanent, because why would DC shoot themselves in the foot like that?

So yes. DC is trying to be Marvel but just failing miserably, and this movie was no exception. Sure, Gal Gadot is a really good Wonder Woman, and they actually gave her a couple of good moments. Ben Affleck as Batman…well, he was in there trying, but he didn’t have much of a part; he divided his time between being Dark and Serious, and trying to cajole everyone into staying together. The cyborg guy (whose name I just don’t remember because he was really not memorable) was there so they’d have someone to be super smart, and The Flash was the cute funny kid who makes the smartass comments.

But all of their character traits are superficial. Like they’re holding up signs saying, I’m the genius and I love my dad or I’m cute and funny and will learn to be brave when it’s needed. But nothing they do really tells us about their personality, it’s just fitting them into the boxes.

Aquaman. Yes, he’s kinda hot, and he can kick ass, but what the hell was he doing in this? The baddie stole the shiny box from his people and he was righteously angry, but he has no special powers on land, aside from looking awesome and being strong. He got ONE SCENE where his water powers were useful, just by chance, and that’s it.  And what was up with that whole thing where he was talking to his mom the Queen underwater, in their castle in Atlantis and…THEY NEEDED AN AIR BUBBLE TO TALK? Even in a comic-book universe that makes NO SENSE AT ALL. There were plot holes one could drive a Mack truck through, but of all of them that was the one that made me go, Huh?

Speaking of stupid plot holes, if I were waking a preternaturally powerful being (Superman) up from the dead with ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA whether or not he’d be insane or evil or even kind of homicidal to the guy who did him in, I wouldn’t rely on his love interest to focus his attention on the Light Side, I’d damn well have a big ol’ hunk of green kryptonite ready to go JUST IN CASE. Duh.

And DAMMIT even though he’s been dead since the first movie, they still managed to work Kevin Costner into this movie. That’s THREE TIMES I’ve seen him when I swore I’d never see another movie with him in it. Dammit.

This was ponderous and slow-moving. The villain was stupid and not scary or even interesting; he was so generic that Schwarzenegger could have played him (and sometimes I could have sworn he was…). The ‘boxes that can end the universe’ thing was kinda stupid, especially since even though they were put together, the good guys (of course) managed to pull them apart at the last minute at no actual cost to themselves. The banter was dull; the only person who got good lines was Alfred, which (much as I like Jeremy Irons) is just sad. And I really got tired of the ‘pose shots’, where they’d stop for a second in a heroic pose. Once in a movie is okay. Maybe twice. But that’s it.

And Joss Whedon. He kind of plays both sides of the fence, Marvel and DC. When Zach Snyder (writer and director) had to step down, Whedon took over for the last six weeks of shooting…and gets no director credit. But he DOES get a screenplay credit, which according to The Rules means at least 33% of the script is his. Interesting. But even Joss Whedon couldn’t save this turkey.

This is a SUPERHERO ACTION MOVIE, folks. What it should be is fast-moving, fun to watch, and full of action balanced with character development. What it should NOT be is dull and ponderous, with characters who have no chemistry together. And of course as soon as you bring Superman into the mix, it kind of ends any suspense the viewer might be feeling about whether or not the universe will be saved; there is no chance of mission failure.

On the other hand, the mission is the movie…and the movie is a failure. But this is an ‘epic’, so…EPIC FAIL.

 

 

Geostorm

 Internet Movie Database          Movie Reviews

There is a grid of weather satellites controlling the weather all over the world…but of course things go horribly wrong…

I would normally put a SPOILERS warning here, because I’m going to give away the name of the bad guy (as if you can’t guess it from the cast list) so if you really care, stop reading. And do yourself a favor, don’t watch it either; really, you will thank me for this advice.

So yes. Climate change and all, so the nations of the world actually work together and put up a continuous sphere of satellites, controlled by an international space station, to control the weather.

So let’s allow this ridiculous premise, that anytime this century (much less soon) this would even be feasible, much less possible. The science police are out to lunch, and we won’t tell them.

The footage of this web of satellites doesn’t just have all of them in geosynchronous orbit…no, they are PHYSICALLY CONNECTED by lines of some kind of metal into a grid. Really? What kind of stupid is that, to think that that’s more believeable than just spacing them in orbit? Plus the space station is OUTSIDE this net, and shuttles go up and down. Could they have left a couple of big holes for this? no, the shuttle has to get through the spaces, which don’t really look big enough.

Then…the station was built under the aegis of, and control of, the US, but will soon devolve to the United Nations, and of course somebody doesn’t want it and is sabotaging the weather (over specific cities, we’ll get to that later) but has left clues and things so the Good Guys can Figure It Out. I’m tired of villains who are stupider than I am. And of course it’s Ed Harris, as soon as you see that he’s in the movie you know he’s the bad guy. Because Ed Harris.

And speaking of actors, how sad is it that it looks like 300, as awesome as it was, is probably the zenith of Gerard Butler’s career? And I say that not having seen most of the stuff he’s done, but now he’s in a high-budget dog like this? Sad. Just sad.

So yes, high budget. Really amazing sets and (at least in the trailers) mind-blowing special effects. Except…there were more or less 5 cities that got destroyed…and it was…well, not very exciting. Plus there was no indication that when each of these catastrophic events happened they would have repercussions outside the specific area of that one city, which was even more unbelieveable than the rest of this turkey. They were individual cities, and you saw cgi footage of stuff happening, but since there were no characters we knew involved, and the damage was limited to one tiny area, it was…just cgi.

And that (aside from the predictability and the stupid science) was the problem with this movie- for a thriller and a special-effects disaster movie, it was kind of boring. The plot was not very good (at least  they tried to give an explanation for there being a self-destruct device on the international space station) and none of the characters was really more than stock- the smart girl with a gun who is in love with someone she shouldn’t be in love with, the maverick who built the thing who is going to have to die to save everyone except he won’t die, the bad guy who turns out not to be the bad guys because (surprise) Ed Harris is actually the bad guy, the maverick’s daughter who is in the movie SOLELY to try to make us care whether or not the maverick survives the self-destruct thing, etc. etc. etc.

Meh. Skip it. Not worth even watching for free.

The Revenant

Internet Movie Database
CinemaSins         Movie Reviews

“Based in part on” the novel The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge by Michael Punke

Guy gets mauled by a bear, left for dead, returns (title, get it?) to take revenge. Wonder how it’s going to end?

This won a SLEW of awards, including Best Actor, Director and Cinematography awards, and was nominated for even more (both Golden Globe and Academy awards). And…well…I’ll give you cinematography and even director.  Leo didn’t have to do more than stumble around looking half dead, so although he’s an excellent actor, there is no way I would agree that he deserved best actor for this; it was probably just, oh, here’s Leo again, we’ll give it to him so he’ll stop bothering us. And you notice that neither of these august bodies offered this movie best screenplay.

And why? Because it was AWFUL.

Yes, I came out and said it. One of the most talked about and lauded movies of the year (2013) that it was made…is just appallingly awful.

And there are SPOILERS ahead, so if you really do want to watch this tedious and annoying movie without knowing what will happen (but you really do know what will happen, trust me…there are no surprises in store) then stop reading here and come back after you’ve wasted TWO AND A HALF HOURS OF YOUR SHORT LIFE on this thing. You could have read my review in five minutes and then picked up a good book, but no. You have to show how you know better than I do. Go ahead. See where it gets you. Prove me wrong.

I’ll just wait here.

(2 hours and 34 minutes later)

So. Now you know. Aren’t you sorry you didn’t listen to the Otter?

I was at the Red Cross, doing apheresis, which means that I spent nearly three hours in a chair, covered with warm blankets, needles in both arms while they took out all my blood, drained the plasma and platelets, and put it back. And I get to watch a movie. I picked this one.

Oh my god. Tedious, moody, serious as all hell. Very very very predictable. Sudden flashbacks to tell the backstory (about his Native American wife, which explains why his young son is with him (because their village got torched by Bad Men and she died in the fire and they were the ONLY TWO who survived)). Then he gets mauled by a bear. Oddly enough, him surviving this is one of the few parts of the story I DON’T have a problem with; it did happen from time to time. Not likely, but possible. But the bad guy (Tom Hardy, excellent as always, although (as another reviewer pointed out) he is a serious mumbler…) gets tired of waiting, decides that Leo won’t make it, and ends up killing his son, then mostly burying Leo because he’s mostly dead anyway. Cue revenge music.

So of course Leo survives (and at one point puts gunpowder on the wound in his throat and lights is to cauterize it…THAT made my disbelief take a serious nosedive.) Then he is chased by the Bad Indians and (he has gotten a horse by this point) he and the horse jump off a waterfall, the horse dies, but he manages to get to safety, and cuts the horse open to A) eat it and B) crawl inside to keep from freezing.

But he continues down a frozen river in winter. In north Missouri. In WINTER. And he doesn’t die, get frostbite, or pneumonia? I found this impossible to believe; his extremities would have been GONE.

There are a lot of People (mostly white males) Being Evil To Each Other (mostly to Native Americans). Not untrue at all, but heavy handed. Oh, and remember the part where he set off gunpowder in his throat wound? so after the first half hour of the movie, he CAN’T TALK. Most of the movie is scenery, heavy breathing, flashbacks and sign language. Gaah.

So then he makes it back to the fort, finds out that Tom Hardy made it back, and gets ready to take care of business, which (of course) has to be done before he rests or recuperates from his ordeal. And this was the part that really cooked my pemmican.

Because during this knife fight (in the snow and freezing river near the fort) there is a scene where Tom Hardy stabs Leo through the hand with a knife. And you see the blade go through his hand into the snow/ground on the other side. And the blade of the knife (which is about an inch and a half wide) is perpendicular with Leo’s fingers. See where I’m going with this? The knife blade ( and you can see the wound on his hand) HAD to have cut muscles and tendons through his whole hand. And HE USES THE HAND TO FIGHT AND HIT WITH. And of course wins, finally.

And there I am in the Red Cross, with needles in my arms and earphones on, saying loudly, NO WAY! There is NO WAY he is using that hand for this fight and probably NEVER AGAIN! No! That hand is TOAST! and the nurses are walking over to see what I’m talking about and laughing at me and nodding in agreement.

So yeah, I guess it’s an okay movie of revenge and perseverence, but it takes itself waaaaay too seriously, is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too full of modern sensibilities and has WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY too much Leo doing totally unbelieveable things that are just ludicrous.

The otter would like to bury this one alive and not let it come back for vengeance.

Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice

CinemaSinsInternet Movie Database
CinemaSins         Movie Reviews

Um…Batman and Superman have problems getting along and try to resolve them the old-fashioned way, by whining and punching each other until a smart female shows up and they realize how stupid they’ve been…right?

I guess you could say that there are SPOILERS here, but really? don’t worry, if you read this whole review I’m hoping you won’t go see this movie, or care if I tell you how bad it really is…

This was yet another attempt by DC to jump on the amazing freight train that is Marvel Comics’ multiplatform superhero series, and yet another chance for viewers to watch DC being thrown under the wheels and crushed into the ground.

Seriously, I was excited about this movie. I’m not crazy about Henry Cavill as Superman; he’s pretty, but he doesn’t have much personality…and it seems to me that more than most superheroes, Supes NEEDS to be relatable for viewers, him being a godlike alien and all. But Ben Affleck as Batman? Hellz yeah. I really do like him, have since Dogma (an Otter Family Favorite Movie) and was sorry to see his acting career come to a careening halt after Gigli. So I thought this might really do it for him, bring him back into the whole movie/acting thing.

And although I’m not a fan of Superman, I really like Batman and a lot of the Batman stories, especially the ones that take place in Gotham that Bats is only peripherally involved in. I also liked the look of the previews, and the seemingly intelligent handling of the moral problem of how one calls a superpowerful being to account.

But you know why I’m saying all this, right? to build up to how EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED I was in this movie. It wasn’t intelligent. It wasn’t insightful. Heck, I would have been happy with ‘well written’, ‘witty’ and ‘full of good character development’. It was none of those things.

What it was was dark. Disjointed. Whiny. Sometimes nonsensical. And kind of dull.

Except for the ten minutes when Wonder Woman shows up (although she’s been there all along, incognito). She is literally the only good thing about this whole movie, and that’s sad. Because she was awesome, and because the rest of this huge overblown overproduced overhyped steaming pile of ick is so much worse in comparison.

I saw it with my friend Spider Jerusalem, who had sent me this Scott Kurtz comic:

 

And luckily we were the only people in the theater, because every time there was an angsty flashback or ANOTHER wierd dream sequence where Batman was yet again having problems with his orphanhood, we both said this loudly and with feeling. And laughed. None of which we should have been inclined to do, but there was FAR too much whining in this movie.

And speaking of things there was far too much of, I have yet again broken my vow never to pay to see Kevin Costner in ANYTHING again. He DIED in the Superman movie, dammit! I should be safe from him! But no, Superman had to have an angsty dead parent flashback too, just to show that he was as screwed up as Batman. Seriously, the movie was like this.

And there were far too many people (title characters included) doing incomprehensible things for ridiculous reasons. More than once I turned to SJ and said, What the HELL is he doing that for? and it was never explained. Just, you know, reasons.

There were so many great reviews on the interwebs about why this was an absolutely terrible movie that I don’t have to hit it point by point…here’s a good one from cracked.com, there are lots of others. Just, seriously, don’t do it. Even if you think you might like it, there are so many better ways to spend two and a half hours. Go do something you like and leave me to try to heal on my own. But (I promise) without flashbacks or dream sequences. Thank you.