The Emoji Movie (2017)

Sometimes I just feel like watching shitty movies so that I can have fun writing a review late on. Today was one of those days and, having heard and read so many awful things about The Emoji Movie over the past year, I made it my mission to sit through it. It was not easy, I'll tell you that as this is one of the most dreadful animated films I've seen. And I've seen a lot of dreadful animated films. 

Set inside a smartphone, the film follows Gene (voiced by T.J. Miller), a meh emoji with a problem, he doesn't feel meh and always has another expression on his face. Determined to become a normal emoji, Gene enlists the help of his new friend Hi-5 (voiced by James Corden) and a notorious Emoji hacker, Jailbreaker (voiced by Anna Faris), and they embark on a journey through the apps on the phone.

Though calling it a plot should be punished with death penalty, The Emoji Movie's plot makes no sense whatsoever as every single obstacle the main characters face could have been easily avoided, it's beyond predictable and bland, and completely lacks originality as it is yet another story about a misfit, someone who does not fit in. This film basically tries, not so hard, to be a combination of Wreck-It Ralph, The LEGO Movie and Inside Out. 

The characters are just as bland and non-sense as the plot. Every single one of them is one-dimensional, even Gene who is supposed to be a little deeper but has the same depth of the others, none, and most of them are mean assholes. These are characters representing emotions and yet they deliver absolutely nothing and I couldn't care less about any of them. The voice work, at least, fits these characters to perfection as it is bland and uninspired, just like everything else in the film.

Columbia Pictures

The humour, however, is probably the worst aspect of The Emoji Movie. It is a hundred percent garbage. There isn't a single funny joke unless you consider poop emojis making a joke about washing their hands after using the toilet funny. Yep, that's the level of humour here, cringy and at times insulting. I read on IMDb's trivia section that, in Saudi Arabia, this played as a double feature with Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie. It does not surprise me one bit. 

In addition, The Emoji Movie can also claim dumb as fuck dialogue, a lot of product placement and ads --the whole movie is basically a huge ad--, and an overuse of catchy pop songs which only angered me. The animation is pretty good though, I'll give the film that.

DAILY CALL SHEET: JUNE 2, 2018

Virgin High (1991) Horndog poses as priest to infiltrate his girlfriend's Catholic boarding school. So lame even atheists probably won't laugh at it. TIL: Sacrilege is a physical assault on a sacred object or person. So, sacrilegious no, irreverent maybe, unfunny definitely.

Your daily dose of culture courtesy of Caltiki, The Immortal Monster (1959) - "Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy." - Franz Kafka

Elsewhere on the Web, the Bible Films Blog puts the beatdown on the old Dudley Moore vehicle, Wholly Moses! It “shows a staggering lack of originality” is just the beginning of the commentary.

Also, Catholic Skywalker has some ideas on why Solo: A Star Wars Story is underperforming at the box office, despite the fact that most people who see it generally walk away satisfied.

Lolita (1962)

I finally read Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita in February so I thought I'd watch this film too. I had really high hopes for this, not only because I loved the novel, but because Stanley Kubrick directed it and Nabokov himself worked on the screenplay. What could possibly go wrong? Many things, as it turned out.

Humbert Humbert (James Mason) is a middle-aged, divorced European professor of French literature who moves to the US for a job at Beardsley College, Ohio. Before he begins his post, he decides to spend the summer in Ramsdale, New Hampshire and rents a room in the house of a widowed woman, Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters), after he meets and falls for her teen daughter, Dolores "Lolita" Haze (Sue Lyon).

I think the main problem with Kubrick's Lolita is that it was made in a time where one could not make a movie about paedophilia. And that's a huge problem since Lolita is a novel about paedophilia. Because of the censors --I don't want to blame Kubrick nor Nabokov-- the plot is boring and unfocused and instead of focusing on the main plot, the love affair between Humpert and Lolita, the film focuses on all the other less interesting subplots. Had I not read the novel or never heard of Lolita, I would have never guessed the kind of relationship that develops between the old man and the young girl.

The plot isn't the only problem. The characters didn't translate well either. Actually, Humbert's character was completely lost in translation. I'm not going to complain about the fact that instead of being a French with a (beautiful) French accents, he is a European with a British accent. In the novel,  though he is a pervert, sexual predator, a paedophile, Humbert is a man so fascinating that he manages to make us care about him. He convinces us that he is more than a child abuser. As suggested by his name, Humbert Humbert, he is a man with two different natures and they are well delivered in the book. In the film, he comes off as an old man who is not in love but obsessed with a young girl. His backstory, his complexity, it's all gone.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

As for the character of Lolita, she comes across as a spoiled brat seducing Humbert on purpose. She is annoying and obnoxious almost as much as her mother, Charlotte. And she is older. While in the novel she has barely entered puberty, in the film she is 14-years-old. The innocent child of the book is nowhere to be found. There's nothing for Humbert to destroy, she is already broken. And where's the character development? Two and a half hours should be a decent amount of time to do that.

The performances aren't that good either. Actually, most of them are bland and uninspired. There are only two exceptions. The first is Shelley Winters who gives a very good performance as Charlotte Haze, Lolita's lonely and desperate mother. The other is Peter Sellers who gives a very good, hilarious and yet strange performance as Clare Quilty, a hyperactive, witty man, and easily steals the show.

Kubrick's Lolita works definitely better on the technical aspects. The cinematography by Oswald Morris is atmospheric and its use of greyscale is excellent. The editing and pace are rapid and effective, and Kubrick delivers one of the greatest opening scenes ever.

The 15:17 to Paris Movie Review

The 15:17 to Paris (2018)

Rent The 15:17 to Paris on Amazon Video // Buy the Book
Written by: Dorothy Blyskal (screenplay by), Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone and Jeffrey E. Stern (based on the book by)
Directed by: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Alek Skarlatos, Anthony Sadler, Spencer Stone, Judy Greer, Jenna Fischer, Tony Hale, Jaleel White
Rated: PG-13
Watch the trailer

Plot
An attempted terrorist attack on a Paris bound train is prevented by three courageous young Americans. Their friendship was their greatest weapon that saved the lives of those on board.

Verdict
The gimmick is that the real life heroes play themselves. They aren't great actors, and while that's obvious the glaring problem is that the dialog is incredibly dull. It does nothing to flesh out the characters. The actual event wraps up in just a few minutes, devoid of any tension. There's no reason to watch this, but if you do, start at the sixty-five minute mark and then check out when you're ready.
Skip it.

Review
The easy move for an action move like this is to open on the precipice of the big event and then back track. I'm glad this doesn't do that so blatantly, providing just a hint. It's a good opening that doesn't have a good follow up. The movie then tracks all the way back to when the three leads met.

 

I suppose this wants us invested in the characters so that when danger unfurls we care. It's a neat bullet point that they have the real people, but their performances are noticeably flat.
I don't know if it wants to make them average joes or screw ups.  Stone and Alec join the military where Stone seems to fail at every endeavor. Alec leaves his ruck stack at a village causing his unit to return. We don't know what Anthony does. All we know is that he likes to take selfies.

 

The dialog is sparse. It's a lot of "What's up dog." That's the extent, and even when Anthony and Stone are traveling, their dialog doesn't go any deeper. It's like someone focused the camera on them and asked them to remember what they did on the spot but they don't really remember. This doesn't shape the characters at all. That fault is beyond the actors and is completely the script. This is Before Sunrise stripped of all dialog and replaced with "Hey bro!" "I'm hungry bro!" and "Snap a selfie bro."

Even the plot structure is strange. The movie flashes back randomly, but it would be nice to have logical cut points. Have each of them flashback when they are on the train and in danger, thinking about their lives and reliving memories. Or the attack triggering memories. The plot could create a patch work of memories that form the story of these guys, but what we get is bland. That connection from past to present just isn't thee.

We don't get to the train until two-thirds in. In most movies this would be the first scene. I assumed the movie would build this event up and make this intense, but it doesn't. I don't want a cookie cutter movie, but this isn't innovative. It would help this movie to show us a little bit about a few people on the train as the focus slowly shifts to what's about to unfold.
The attack happens so quickly I was left wondering if that was it. I don't know if this was trying to be faithful to the events and/or book, but it's just not built to be a movie.

DAILY CALL SHEET: JUNE 1, 2018

Uninvited (1988) Kids get stuck on a yacht with George Kennedy, mafioso, and a mutant killer cat that has a smaller mutant killer cat living inside it. Never accuse Greydon Clark of being unoriginal. TIL: Who knew the old saying about evil coming in small packages was so literal?

Your daily dose of culture courtesy of Eyeball (1975) - "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness." - Matt. 6:22-23

Ready Player One (2018)

I almost used my free birthday ticket to see Ready Player One but then I saw A Quiet Place was on and went with it instead. I'm glad I made that choice because Spielberg's latest film was quite a disappointment. 

In the year 2045, much of humanity escape the harsh reality and desolation of the real world in the OASIS, an immersive virtual world where anyone can go anywhere, do anything and be anyone. When its creator, James Halliday (Mark Rylance), dies, he releases a video in which he challenges all the users to find his Easter Egg, which will give the finder the full ownership of the OASIS. An orphaned teenager, Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), finds the first clue and, with the help of some virtual friends, he tries to complete the game before a large company of virtual reality hardware run by Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) do so.

I haven't read Ernest Cline's novel upon which the film is based on --I'm pretty sure though it's a faithful adaptation since Cline co-wrote the script-- but the film's plot is paper-thin, predictable and there are plot holes and convenient moments everywhere. I was okay, kinda, with all the people involved in the action being from the same area of the real world despite the fact that people play from all over the world, after all, every single time something bad happens in a movie, it happens in the US. But I was not okay with the characters immediately recognizing each other in the real world. Sorrento found out who Wade was in real life because he was stupid enough to say his real name in the OASIS and then tracked him down; the others, they just met and know who they are.

The characters aren't that better than the plot. I didn't see a lot of development here neither. There are a lot of one-dimensional and shallow characters, either defined as good or evil. I couldn't find a reason to care for the hero of the story nor for his friends, nor did I have a reason to root for Wade instead of Sorrento. Actually, I would have loved to see Sorrento triumph because he's a pretty good villain, way too good for this film. And the credits entirely go to Ben Mendehlson as the character is poorly written, just like the rest of them.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Ultimately, the problem with Ready Player One is that the filmmakers cared more about throwing pop culture references everywhere than writing a solid script. I liked the references that I got and the nostalgic soundtrack is pretty awesome, but I'd take a better script over those any day.

Then there are the visual effects. Being half of the story set in a virtual world, the film looks a lot like a video game, but not a visually appealing video game, but an ugly, cheap video game. With the kind of technology involved in creating a virtual world like that, I think they'd work on graphics a little bit more. Also, I found the virtual world action sequences pretty bland.

WRITTEN REVIEW: Yuletide Terror - Christmas Horror on Film & Television

By CORY CARR

If you are a regular listener to the Slaughter Film Podcast, then you should know how much we love talking about holiday related horror films, especially during the Christmas season. They're a fun way to celebrate the holiday and it's traditions while also subverting them. And no matter how good or bad the films are, they prove to reward horror junkies with the curiosity of killer Santas, demonic folklore, deadly creatures injected with holiday magic.

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