It took a minute longer than I wanted but the laptop has risen from the dead!!! I have a backlog of reviews just waiting to be put up, but Riot's back in action....again. Many thanks to everyone still reading. Let's get to it.
Riot’s Rapid Reviews
Argylle: Whoo boy where to begin with this one? Honestly, there is a ton of reasons I should have liked this movie and considering my aspirations to write fiction novels, the entire concept was very intriguing. A spy-thriller, normie author being confronted with people/events pulled directly from her books could have been a banger of a film. But this is not the first time an interesting concept was pounded into sand by poor execution. Primarily, Argylle is way too long. For an action movie, the way the story drags out is unbearable. It spends an inordinate amount of time throwing down flashbacks and exposition that inevitably all lead to the most mind-numbing and predictable conclusions. It relies heavily on bad CGI (I’ve already expressed my disdain for fake animals multiple times) and leaves the audience begging the question of whether or not it was worth the money. Even if I could give credit to the acting, the hokey dialogue only serves to take you out of the moment. Each subsequent action scene goes progressively off-the-rails, culminating in a massive battle involving a pair of knives, an oil-covered floor, and a beyond improbable body count that makes Rambo movies look tame. The counter-argument is going to be something along the lines of, “Riot, it was meant to be silly.” Even if I could believe this as a premise, the thought is immediately dismantled by how serious the film sets out to be. I’m not talking about the over-dramatized plot points from Elly’s (Bryce Dallas Howard) fictional world, but her real-world encounters with Aiden (Sam Rockwell). Though there are comedic elements throughout, it’s not until well past the halfway point that the action scenes go off the rails and everything in the film becomes one big joke. The chemistry between the two leads just wasn’t there and while I will still concede that Sam Rockwell is the most surprising action hero in a long time (check out Mr. Right for a much better version of him as a spy), it wasn’t enough to keep me interested. They even saved their final nail in the coffin for the end credits scene (which I won’t spoil) that ironically fully explained why this movie was such a disaster and made all the nonsensical plot points even more infuriating at the end.
Riot’s Rating: 5/10: If you can turn your brain off and stomach the endless Apple product placements, maybe this is one to check out. I don’t recommend you do.
Spaceman: Growing up with SNL and movies like Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, and The Waterboy, I was as surprised as anyone else when Adam Sandler started putting himself into very serious, dramatic roles. The move itself was surprising enough, but perhaps even more shocking was that he was actually killing it in these types of stories. As far as his full filmography goes, I’m probably batting around 70-75% and am for sure a Sandman fan even though my watch percentage drops for his serious roles. With Uncut Gems being the absolute masterpiece that it is, I was looking forward to checking out another of his runs at the dramatics and with Spaceman throwing in the Sci-Fi element, this seemed right up my alley. Then I caught the Netflix preview and first laid eyes on Sandler’s co-star, an enormous CGI spider creature. Here, I’m already torn. While I don’t suffer from arachnophobia by any means, I’m not exactly their friend either and as I’ve mentioned before, I’m certainly no horror fan (which was an assumption I was making without evidence by the way, it is not a horror movie…well, I guess it depends if you ask someone with arachnophobia lol). But I held my breath and dove in anyways and man I’m glad I did. The overall story is pretty simple but is made complex in the way it deals with regret, love, motivation, and trauma. The spider, whom Jakub (Adam Sandler) names Hanush (Paul Dano), due mostly to its unsettling look/design keeps you perched uncomfortably in your seat, subconsciously wondering the entire time whether or not things really will devolve into a horror story after all. Dano seems to have the market for unsettling performances (I think of The Batman, There Will Be Blood, and Swiss Army Man) cornered, disclosing just enough emotion in his flat, monotone line delivery that the audience starts empathizing with a giant freakin’ spider! Everything in the film is ethereal and uncomfortable but not in an actively negative way. It’s just enough that you’re forced deeper into the simple, but complex evaluation of a love story between Jakub and his left behind on Earth wife, Lenka (Carey Mulligan who I think actually was a little underused considering her relevance to the plot). The movie closes with some truly incredible space CGI and a tragic payoff that leaves room for an open ended sense of hope.
Riot’s Rating: 9.2/10: I was happy to see Kunal Nayyar in a new role. I thought he was awesome.
Road House: You all know by now that I like to review with as much transparency possible, so in keeping with that thread I must shamefully admit: I’ve never seen the original roadhouse. From what I heard in the lead-up to this remake’s release though, the new Road House wasn’t going to be very reliant on the original story, if at all. As to my interest in seeing this one, sometimes it doesn’t take much more than a good lead actor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and the promise of high-octane fight scenes to get me to give it a chance. And to be perfectly honest, I was really curious what Conor McGregorwas going to be like on the silver screen; the man is an entertainer after all. So with no expectations and a few hours of free time to kill, I sat in sort of a stage of bewilderment with this movie. It was jam packed with action to be sure, but followed a storyline that was so thin, it’s hard to say there was one at all and that is not mentioning the complete lack of character development throughout. The film relied on a few scenes of CGI’d vehicle stunts which y’all know I hate and the acting across the board was severely lacking, even from a performer like Gyllenhaal. Body transformation aside (dude is absolutely jacked) we have already seen him go to extreme physical lengths for a role that still required an incredible performance (go watch Southpaw). This time around, his lines were so monotone, short, and bland that there was no room to explore what his character’s motivations even were (I honestly still don’t really know). McGregor turned in the performance I expected, giving me the same dissatisfaction I had with the villain in The Beekeeper or even Elysium. Now that being said, my earlier bewilderment was due to the fact that no matter how much distaste I had with the storyline and acting, the hand to hand combat scenes in this film were on point. I would have almost preferred McGregor to be a mute in this story, because his one on one fight scenes with Gyllenhaal were everything you want from an action movie. No matter how much each scene bumbled from one to the other, once the fisticuffs began I was absolutely floored. The writers could have saved so much of the film by simply granting more time to Gyllenhaal’s character journey and cut nonsensical stuff like his useless love story plot with Daniela Melchior. I will give some extra points for: having Joaquim de Almeida involved, the newcomers who worked at the Road House, Arturo Castro in his hilarious role as Moe, the stunning scenery/film locations, and for making Post Malone (who seems like a real gentle giant type) look like a total badass at the beginning of the film.
Riot’s Rating: 6.3/10: P.S. I’m trying to find time to watch the original. I’ll get there lol.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire: Considering my mostly negative outlook on the Godzilla vs Kong movie, I’m sure it’s a little surprising that I took another dive into what I’d argue has been an overall lackluster world of Kaijus. Because I was a little late to the party for this one, I had enough time to be slightly swayed by the positive online reviews that were coming out for the newest iteration, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (Hollywood needs to start reigning in their working titles don’t you think?). In a lot of ways, I do think this film was a big improvement but when placed against the background of (what I considered to be) a masterpiece like Godzilla Minus One it’s difficult to deny the flaws. Much like GvK, New Empire suffered mightily in the way of consistency and storyline. The already massive gap of human influence in the plot only grew and because they were relegated again to their role of observer and exposition machines, the audience experiences the same amount of disconnect and a sort of disinterest in the way the story was being told. While Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire was able to make a human translating hieroglyphs/petroglyphs interesting by animating them, GxK goes back the old movie trope of showing flashing images overlaid with read-from-the-script exposition. One of the problems, if not the biggest, GxK had was letting the story expand too far into the unexplainable, mixing in elements of off the rail Sci-Fi and inexplicable spiritual ritual (if I can even call it that). The expansion of the Hollow Earth theory is so ridiculous by the end, it arguably would have been better just to make the Earth’s “portals” literally be linked to other dimensions/planets, much like Pacific Rim did. Almost every other sequence of the film opens up a multitude of questions that are literally never answered and with each passing scene leading up to the final conflict, the human element gets more and more unnecessary. The creator’s attempts to humanize Kong more with every film iteration almost begs to have the actual human involvement excised completely. Legitimately, they might as well have pulled a Planet of the Apes by now and just let the monkeys talk already. I’d mentioned before in my previous review that I’m not really for this whole “Godzilla and Kong are the good guys” plotline and after this film, I still maintain that perspective. Now, surprisingly, The New Empire has something really big going for it that I didn’t expect and that was some pretty convincing CGI combined with some epic Kaiju battle scenes. The designs on Mothra and the new baddie “The Scar King” were far more impressive than I was expecting and the scenery design looked more tangible than previous films. I’d be lying if I said the animation improvements and more complex fight scenes were enough to fill the gaping plot holes, but I found myself more entertained this time around.
Riot’s Rating: 6/10: Grab a bucket of popcorn, switch off your brain and just go along for the ride if you want to really enjoy this one.
Arthur the King: Being a lifelong cat person (because they’re superior in nearly every way, come at me bro lol) I was only really compelled to check this film out cuz the wife wanted to go. I’ve mentioned before I have a strained relationship with “based on real life events” types of stories, but by all appearances this seemed to just be a feel good story that I wouldn’t regret spending a date night watching. Turns out that was the right assumption. I vaguely remembered seeing Arthur the King’s story in the news, but it was fun getting a little more insight to the story and using Google to match up fact vs. fiction at dinner when the film was over. As one might suspect, there wasn’t anything groundbreaking on the acting front, outside of the fact that it must have been quite a task to film all of these physically intense race scenes (I also read that Mark Wahlburg hurt himself on day one and continued filming through his injury). Wahlburg’s supporting cast (Simu Liu, Nathalie Emmanuel, and Ali Suliman) turned in strong performances as well and the landscapes of the Dominican Republic rounded out an entertaining watch. Outside of some awkward cinematography and blurry/shaky shots that were kind of nauseating, there really wasn’t a whole lot to say or complain about; it’s a sweet story.
Riot’s Rating: 8/10: Good date night/family movie.
Some quick television opinions! I know right? I never do this!
X-Men: ’97: I won’t get too deep into the weeds on any of these and especially not on this show in particular because I’ve already gone on long enough. But I never shy away from the opinion that overall, Hollywood did not do a good job with the X-Men. Multiple studios and multiple directors have tried and none of its iterations seemed quite right (I’d argue the two exceptions would be Logan and lesser so, X-Men: First Class). So I wasn’t particularly excited about a reimagining of the beloved 90’s cartoon I grew up watching. Although my opinion remains unchanged that they (Marvel) need to just let the IP go and stop beating a dead horse, I didn’t hate X-Men: ’97. I thought it was a bit reckless with complex storylines, sure, but so was the original cartoon and I thought it was fine to play around with the darker overtones of the plot. But the animation was fine, the fight scenes were designed well, and having the original voice actors return for some of the roles was a good choice. I’m interested to see how far this goes, but I would venture a guess that it won’t be around very long.
Riot’s Rating: 7/10
Invincible Season 2: Like many people I know, I am entirely new to the world of Invincible. The brutal clips floating around social media from Season 1, plus the general word of mouth got me watching the first season and inevitably digging around the internet for more information on where these storylines were going. Much like when The Boysdropped, my IG feed was lit up with pictures and frames from the comic books and while I haven’t broken down and purchased them just yet, they are still on my mind. The current market is clearly hot for more anti-hero based stories and that naturally ends up involving a lot more blood/guts that aren’t typical of our grandparent’s heroes (I already owned The Boys comic series, so I was less surprised when I watched it). Invincible sets itself apart from a lot of comic adaptations by utilizing clean lines and a softer color palette. The cleanliness of the visuals makes the ruthless fights scenes and dark overtones of the story even more visceral for the audience. Combine that with solid voice acting and you have a recipe for success. I’m not sure their formula for episode release is a great idea and I wasn’t a fan of them using episode time for self-deprecating “meta” (barf) humor to explain away their production delays. Still, it’s one of the better cartoons out there but is certainly not for the faint of heart. Enjoy with caution.
Riot’s Rating: 9.4/10
Avatar: The Last Airbender Sesason 1: I have to admit, I was fully prepared to skip this one. The original cartoon series holds a special place for me as it was one of the shows that my wife and I followed closely when we were dating. Like most people in the fandom, I was mortified by what M. Night Shyamalan did with the first live-action, The Last Airbenderand I was certainly worried about a repeat scenario. As the teasers began to roll out, I was softened in my outlook by what appeared to be a better adherence to the source material, but I found myself still unwilling to give it a shot. It wasn’t until a few co-workers insisted that I cover the show that I finally gave in and overall, I was pleasantly surprised even if the show was not without its faults. Primarily, the costume and set designers earned the highest praise. Design-wise, almost every element seemed to be ripped straight from the cartoon and it was especially rewarding to see places like the Northern Water Tribe and the city of Omashu fully realized on screen. Many other elements of the show fell into a mid-range category as I saw it. Strong plotlines from the cartoon got mashed together with some of the weaker ones, emphasizing that the stronger stories probably should have just been fleshed out on their own to do them justice. I understand taking creative licensing and not doing a one-for-one shot remake, I just think they could have been a little more careful. Casting was also a little spotty with standouts (Iroh, Sokka, Suki, Ozai, Jet, Ty Lee, Katara) being contrasted by some questionable choices (Azula, Aang, Zuko, Zhao, Bumi, Mai). The overall acting is shaky to start, which is expected for such a young cast, but progresses well as the episodes go on and the gained experience starts to show. Finally, I’m split on how heavily the show leaned into the darker overtones of the story. I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad choice, but I think one of the things that made the cartoon such a standout was its ability to explore the emotionally heavier aspects of the kid’s journey while maintaining so much of the humor that made the show what it was. I’m fine with the decision at the end of the day, I just think it could turn a lot of fans off if they’re not ready for it. After all, there’s a massive difference in implying how the Fire Nation kills people and actually showing it happen.
Riot’s Rating: 7.5/10: Glad I checked it out and interested to see where the creators will take things. Hopefully the edges can get smoothed out and their budget will support fleshing out the original storylines a little more.
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