The Blu Side of the Moon

Welcome to Blu3Danny's review blog! Open for all of your review needs- The Blu Side of the Moon covers various things- from movies to games to television, Danny isn't afraid to complain about it.

[blumoontoons]

TBSOTM- Dan

it’s-a me! Dan!

He hasn’t had any radical changes since I last drew him (he basically got his major upgrade last year) aside from his shirt now getting short sleeves. Also I tried to give him a pretty dynamic pose here, and I like how it came out, but you all tell me what you think!

I know my review blog @thebluesideofthemoon has been a little bit… dead for a while. But I do have plans on reviving it, it’s just that I’m working out on a new method of basically dealing with it. You’ll see what I mean when it happens.

———————————————————————————————————– Dan and art by BluMoonToons

[thebluesideofthemoon]

A little bit of a new update to this place- this time an art piece!

[thebluesideofthemoon]

The Emoji Movie

I think my soul died after seeing this movie.

[thebluesideofthemoon]

Favourite Pixar movies?

Alright! I’ve been waiting for a question like this for a while! This is just going to be a flat list, so I won’t go into detail why I love each movie but they’re all still my favorites by Pixar.

#5. Inside Out (2015) 

#4. Ratatouille (2007) 

#3. The Incredibles (2004) 

#2. Up (2009) 

#1. Toy Story 2 (1999)

[thebluesideofthemoon]

The Wall #51: MOONLIGHT

GUESS WHO'S BACK, BITCHES?! Oh yes, it's been a loooooong time since my last review, but I haven't forgotten about this series, it just hasn't one of my top priorities after I've started working on my own other projects. So let me say right off the bat that my production on movie-related... anything, is going to be a lot slower, but I've still been seeing a lot of movies and I don't want to lose track of these, so I'll try to make these as quickly as possible. So let's start this off with the Best Picture of the year... at least I think it is. I don't know what to think after that insanity that happened a couple of weeks ago, but I have it in good faith that they made the right decision despite those last five minutes being fueled by BULLSHIT. Yes, let's see if Moonlight really is as good as it says!

(Music: Super Bomberman R- Battle Music 2)

This movie is really, really great! In fact, it's arguably the best movie that came out in 2016 and I'm happy I got my chance to see it and talk about it.

This movie is about a young black kid named Chiron (played by Alex Hibbert) who grows up terrorized in his neighborhood until he encounters a man named Juan (played by Mahershala Ali) who takes him in as almost like a foster parent, which may be for the best as we find out that his life with his mother (played by Naomie Harris) is... not very pleasant. Chiron grows up into a teen (he’s now played by Aston Sanders) and now has struggles coming to grips with his homosexuality as well as the fact that he’s still being terrorized by bullies. Everything in Chiron’s life comes to a head when he becomes an adult (played by Trevante Rhodes), so now it’s time to make all of his amends in life close, but will he be able to make it work?

Yes, Chiron is played by three different actors in all stages of his life, though so is his childhood friend, Kevin. It’s like Boyhood in that sense where we see a person’s life as he grows up and deals with, though I like this movie far better, mainly because the characters and their relationships are far more meaningful. I had a hard time predicting just where things were going to go based on how awry some of these relationships go at different points of Chiron’s life.

The movie is very intense at several points, though the end result is utterly heartwarming. This is all in thanks to great character development and phenomenal acting. If I had anything to complain about is that I find some of the direction a little bit clunky. Watching it the first time I felt like the movie had some theater sensibilities to it, such as in how the actors are blocked on the scene and how it’s directed, though it’s not something that is really distracting- at least for the couple of odd points here and there; though as it turns out, the screenplay for this movie was originally going to be adapted into a play, which would explain a lot.

I also find all three actors who play Chiron don’t really look that much like each other aside from the eyes- which is pretty telling when you get to Aston who doesn’t really resemble either Alex or Trevante. It’s not a major deal-breaker though as one they start acting you KNOW that’s still Chiron and even with all the changes he goes through it’s still him, which makes for a very rewarding viewing experience when we get to the amazing final act of the film. Moonlight is more than worth your time, it’s truly spectacular, and one of the best dramas so far this decade, so I more than eagerly recommend you all to see it. (493 words. It may be a short review, but I could have just said "GO SEE IT" and that still would have been good enough for me!)

Perhaps I'm a little rusty in the review game since it's been a little over a month, but I've got a lot to talk about, and what better way than to get back into it with one of my favorite movies from last year?

And this won't be the only positive review coming your way! Next time it's going to be Split. Will this finally be a good M. Night Shyamalan movie? We'll see but, until then, I'll see you all later! Ciao!

[thebluesideofthemoon]

[thebluesideofthemoon]

The Wall #50: THE 89th ACADEMY AWARDS

That’s right, guys! It’s time for another hangout, this time to make fun of the annual circle-jerk that is the Academy Awards!

Just like last year, if you’d like to be a part of the hangout I would like for anyone who wants to join to send me a message to my Ask Box here in this blog with the subject “89th Academy Awards/2017 Oscars” and give me your GMail account name so I can add you to the stream this Sunday! The stream will be on February 26, 2017 at 6:00 PM Central! So if you want to join now you have plenty of time to let me know in advance!

I’ll see you all there! ;D

[thebluesideofthemoon]

The Wall #49: SHEEP AND WOLVES

Welcome everybody to another entry of The Wall. On this week... your mom! Heh. Oh, I wish- I'm sure she's a wonderful lady. I said I was going to review Batman v. Superman but... eh, I then kind of lost interest and heat after a while- besides, the movie still sucks balls, so it's not like anything's changed. No, this week's review takes us on another stop of our international animated tour- Russia! The big mother of all cold herself, Mother Russia blessed us with this animated outing that was so good that it didn't get imported to the States. "Why might that be?" you're probably asking yourself, well I'll answer that right now: ... I HAVE NO IDEA! Maybe it was some sort of communication error (which wouldn't make sense as this movie has a fully dubbed English version, so... I 'unno), maybe they changed their minds at the last minute, or maybe because it's so mind-meltingly awful that they pulled the plug on its release before the studio would embarrass itself. Considering my last review it may be easy to assume that anything I would review afterwards would automatically be less positive. That may be true, but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't have good things to say about it- hell, last week I saw one of my favorite movies this year (which I'll review later), and I've been itching to gush about it here. But no, I'm going to talk about Sheep and Wolves instead because, what better way to transition into my Worst Movies of 2016 by going from one of the best animated movies of the year to one of the absolute worst? Let's dive in, why don't we~?

(Music: Undertale- CORE)

I don't mean to be disrespectful, I like to think I'm a nice person and I will give anyone a chance, unless you’re Zack Snyder, or David S. Goyer, or Warner Bros., in which case you can piss off any day now. So when I write the things I’m going to write, I don’t mean this as just me trying to be mean, but as a way to try and help a small studio like the one that made this movie understand why your product doesn’t work, so I will try to be as cold and clinical as I can to explain just what is wrong with this movie. But first the plot, and you might want to sit down for this one.

In this movie we have a wolf named Grey (voiced by Tom Felton. Yes, THAT Tom Felton) who is a goofy but kind wolf who wants to live life as a carefree spirit, that is until he crosses the path of a big bad wolf named Ragear (voiced by Rich Orlow, whom I’ve never heard of) who is adamant to become the new leader of their wolf pack since their current leader Magra (voiced by Jim Cummings. Yes, THAT one, too.). However, Ragear gets shut down by Magra by telling him that he will not be ascended to be leader of the pack unless he faces off in a duel with another wolf, who just so happens to be Grey. Grey steps up to the challenge and they’re due to fight in three days to see who is more fit to run the wolf pack. Meanwhile, Grey faces a bit of problem when a surprise he had planned turns out to dash the dreams of his girlfriend, Bianca (voiced by Ruby Rose. Yes, THAT- I’m not going to keep this gag going or we’ll be here all day), who thought Grey was going to ask for her hand (paw?) in marriage. She accuses him of being very immature and in desperate need of change. Trying to find a way to change, Grey stumbles into this caravan full of gypsies and he talks to their leader(?) named Mami (I don’t know who she’s voiced by) who gives Grey this potion to help him change, but things go south when Grey gets turned into a sheep and is not only unwelcome, but hunted down by the wolves due to sheep being their prey. So he runs away and ends up getting knocked out, only to wake up in the sheep village. He’s being taken care of by an ewe named Lyra (China Anne McClain), while being suspected of by this skeptic sheep named Zico (Ross Maraquand) who questions his whereabouts and goes on to find clues about this new mysterious sheep that just showed up in their home. Grey believes that he’s in a bad dream but then decides to blend in once he starts meeting the sheep folk. Meanwhile, Ragear becomes impatient by Magra and his ban to keep them from hunting prey like wolves (which for this universe doesn’t really make much sense), so instead of waiting for his duel like Magra ordered, he just kills Magra and ends up taking the position as the wolves’ leader and wants to lead the wolves to hunt for the sheep so they can eat… well, like wolves. Grey discovers this and now wants to protect the sheep from this possible massacre, while it becomes hard for him to keep his true identity intact with his new kin. How will all of this be resolved?

I don’t take this long trying to give a simple plot synopsis, but I wanted to break down this entire setup to give you a hint as to what’s wrong with this movie. If you want me to sum this movie up really quickly it’s just yet another “fish out of water” story, and with a twist that isn’t even that unique to this kind of movie. The movie is a bizarre combination of both Shrek 2 and Brother Bear in terms of plot, but it’s nowhere near as funny as the former, nor (while flawed) as engaging as the latter, and while I have serious problems with Brother Bear I can tell you it pulled this story off a LOT better than Sheep and Wolves.

Since I’m going to dip into my issues with this movie (which is a LOT of them) I may as well get my positives with the movie out of the way, because they’re very minimal- it’s actually just one: the movie is really pretty. While it’s pretty obvious that this is a low-budget movie thanks to the very small amount of environments featured in the movie, not to mention that just like Sing it shamelessly copy-and-pastes characters and shots everywhere, the scenery of the movie actually manages to be pretty stunning. I like how the environments look, they’re vividly-detailed, very colorful, and the lighting also manages to look really good, especially when they stand out against things like grass or the fur on the wolves. The animation itself is also not bad. It’s far more lively than something like, say, Ratchet and Clank, and it has an art style that suits the animation better than a movie like The Wild Life. Even though I have HUGE issues with the character design, they managed to make a really appealing-looking movie and I do think that’s something that deserves some serious credit. It’s obvious to me that the people working on this movie have some good talent in their hands, and I’m saying this because I stop being nice right here. Because the problems with this movie are far too many for me to recommend this as something anyone reading this should watch.

Let’s start with the character designs. While the general look of the movie is really appealing and colorful, the actual designs of the characters leave a lot to be desired. There’s no real better way for me to say this, but the characters all look like how a middle-school furry artist would draw his furry wolf OCs (original characters, for those of you that don’t know) when first starting on DeviantART. They’re far more humanoid than anthropomorphic, which really stands out with characters that have more stylized and cartoony designs. It’s almost as if the characters were all designed by completely different artists, however this is an approach that worked in its favor in a movie like Secret Life of Pets, but here they stick out like a sore thumb. All the wolves are top-heavy and just look ridiculous when they run on all fours. I also had this same problem with Alpha and Omega six years ago (funny how they’re both movies about wolves), but the hair is really off-putting. Most of the wolves have pretty much anime hairstyles which just look distracting and out of place. This is really noticeable on a character like Bianca who basically looks like a human chick that just so happens to be cosplaying as a wolf. With the sheep this gets even more bizarre, as there are sheep who clearly look like anthropomorphized sheep, standing right next to sheep that have more human-like features that are kind of distracting, NEXT to other sheep who just look like they’re a human and sheep that probably fused together like in The Fly. Again, it’s highly distracting because they’re not anthropomorphic like the characters from Sing or Zootopia, and yet they’re also not animal enough to be like the animals from The Secret Life of Pets or even The Wild Life. It’s like they’re stuck in this strange uncanny valley of anthropomorphism and it’s kind of off-putting to watch. Mami is the only one who manages to make this work, though it probably helps that she’s hardly in the movie. Grey looks alright by all standards, except for his dumb Emo Peter Parker haircut.

From what I’m sure you can gather I’ve said about the story, it’s pretty much also copied and pasted from… anywhere else. It combines traits of Shrek 2, Brother Bear, The Lion King, too many romantic comedies to count, Kung Fu Panda 3, Shark Tale (another disaster full of clichés and off-putting character design)- it borrows so liberally from other movies that it even borrows their flaws as well. Shark Tale needs no explanation, it has the dopey character who is in love but cannot spit it out because God help him “he’s just awkward” (oh please), it also borrows a problem unique to a movie I reviewed not too long ago, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Movie, in which it is full of really annoying cartoony sound effects that get really, really fast. By the way, I said this movie ripped off The Lion King (why on Earth do we have TWO animated movies that came out in 2016 that thought this was a good idea?) and it does so in the Magra’s death scene. Ragear shoves him off the cliff in a way that’s not too dissimilar to Scar throwing Mufasa into the wildebeests. It doesn’t help that both just so happen to have a character voiced by Jim Cummings, which makes the resemblance even more obvious.

Though speaking of terrible sounds, the voice acting isn’t that great. I mean sure, you have people like Jim Cummings who would sound awesome if they even just read the phonebook, but much like Morgan Freeman in Ben-Hur, he’s not doing anything new. Tom Felton… I have NO idea what the hell he’s doing, it’s like he’s trying to sound American and fail horribly at it, but he’s at least trying. Ruby Rose just straight up did not care about this movie at all, she could not sound any more disinterested if she tried, which isn’t only a serious problem because it just sounds bad it also makes her character come across as really uncaring and self-centered, which becomes a MAJOR problem thanks to one particular scene from the movie that I’ll get to. Believe me, I will. Still, this is pretty bad- it’s almost as if the voice actors weren’t allowed to be given a second take or something like that.

But what’s even worse than the voice acting is the score. I’ve complimented good scores before and lambasted bad ones like Accidental Love, for example. It had a score that was highly annoying, bouncy, and would never shut up. It was trying to be a “whacky, silly” score that instead of trying to get you to laugh it only made you cringe. So yes, an overly-goofy score is one issue but thanks to this movie the opposite is also true. This movie has a score that is far more surprisingly dramatic and intense than you would think which gives me the impression that this movie is really trying to get me to take it seriously… and this is the same movie that has a Rocky-style montage of a character trying to give themselves a concussion. AND FAILING AT IT. Sure, that’s meant to be the joke, but this is much less justifiable in countless scenes of something dramatic happening only for it to get cut-off by some awkwardly-inserted comic relief. Oh God, it’s like Epic all over again.

The absolute worst part about this movie is the characters. I’m not going to spend much time on them because I could write an entire essay on just what’s wrong with this cast, and this review is getting really long as it is. So I’ll say this, they vary from being really stupid, to being really annoying, to all-around unpleasant. Grey is kind of a goofball, but other than that he’s just your generic main character and he’s one of the better characters. His best friend sheep who is lovestruck cannot say a word to her about his feelings to save his life, which is not just an awful cliché in and of itself, but his voice is really annoying and her never shuts up. The big bad Ragear is clumsy and gets beaten up a lot, so it’s pretty much impossible to take him seriously as a credible threat and the only time he succeeds at anything it’s simply because the plot just felt like it needed to keep going. Lyra is your generic “nice girl” type who pretty much has no personality aside from, well, being nice, except for one particular scene where she chews out Grey for giving her little brother, Shia, the influence to have him run off from the sheep village to fight off wolves himself, and this happened AFTER Grey saves his life as well as a scene in the movie where she scolds her little brother for being an irresponsible little shit who doesn’t listen to anybody. And Shia, oh I despise him. Not only does he have a really annoying voice and attitude, he’s one of those characters that should have died far sooner than he does (which is never- spoiler alert) because he does anything BUT listen to someone who’s trying to do nothing but HELP HIM. He’s by far one of the most irritating characters I’ve seen in any movie this year- he’s up there with Steel from Max Steel, The Enchantress from Suicide Squad, the Colleens from Yoga Hosers, and pretty much EVERYONE in Collateral Beauty- and it doesn’t help that he gives a really awful message at the end of the movie which pretty much amounts to him saying that you shouldn’t kill someone because it will make you just as bad as they are, which is normally a message that has a lot of weight to it, but when the person who is trying to kill you is DOING EVERYTHING IN THEIR POWER TO TRY AND EAT YOU, and you fight back in self-defense!

I also mentioned Bianca, and out of all of the bad animated movies with forced-in love interests she’s by far the worst. Now, she’s at least thankfully not forced into a relationship with Grey (they already have one at the start of the movie) and the way his little problem is resolved isn’t by true love (but it’s not less dumb). The reason why I hate Bianca the most is because of one particular scene where she pretty much ACCUSES GREY OF CAUSING RAGEAR FROM KILLING MAGRA AND MAKING HIM THE NEW LEADER, and all because he was trying to change himself to prove to her that he’s not an immature clown. It’s somehow all HIS fault, and at no point does she ever get called out on being a colossal bitch. Though Grey DOES call out the sheep for being whiny, pathetic, and annoying, it doesn’t really leave a very satisfying impact when it’s ruined by the scenes that precede and follow it. I HATE EVERYONE IN THIS MOVIE. This movie was just like Collateral Beauty all over again- I really thought I was going to be in for something bland, but not THIS annoying and unpleasant. I really hate this movie, thanks to its combination of terrible tonal shifts, bland story, irredeemable cast of characters, and ho-hum voice acting. It’s easy to see why this movie never made it to the States. (2,541 words. Can't believe this one took me almost a week to write, but I needed to get my thoughts collected so I could express just what the hell was wrong with this movie.)

This is a really foul movie. I don't really get this kind of enjoyment out of something that fills me with dread and hatred- I would much rather be talking about things I really love, like Zootopia, but this is the kind of movie that is not only so bad that it's wasted your time, but it'll ruin your day!

Yes, I give this movie a 2. And how appropriate because now I can make more room for my best big project. That's right guys, The Wall #50 is going to be... THE TOP 10 WORST MOVIES OF 2016 I'll see you all there.

[thebluesideofthemoon]

The Wall #48: ZOOTOPIA

Well, it's about time I got around to this. Welcome to The Wall, and I'm not going to waste any time because I'm going to have a lot to say. I feel like I don't need to say this, but just in case you haven't seen the movie (not just this one, I mean in general) I'll try to be as spoiler-free as I can. Yeah, I said "try", because sometimes I'll see something as awful as Collateral Beauty or Yoga Hosers where I have to spoil the movie just to get my point firmly across in why those movies are as bad as they are. And yeah, that's a general rule of thumb: if I consider the movie awful I WILL spoil it (So yes, take that as your premature warning that I WILL spoil Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice in the next review. ;D). Seeing as this is the movie that revitalized the series and allowed it to take off in a way far bigger than I could even imagine, I have to pay its respects and give it the proper review it should have had in the past. So, let's dive right into the literal urban jungle that is the colorful world of Zootopia!

I’m not even going to waste time by dabbling in my usual routine of building up my points in a movie of what I liked and what I didn’t because I’m going to say something I haven’t said about a movie this year since Hell or High Water- I absolutely adore this movie. Believe it or not, I wavered a lot in how I felt about this movie throughout the course of the year, but my answer is finally clear. But first, the usual- plot.

In this movie, a young anthropomorphic bunny by the name of Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin, whom I last saw in that godawful “romantic comedy”, Something Borrowed back in 2011) dreams of becoming a cop in the big city of Zootopia to make the world a better place. This doesn’t turn out to be that simple as for a bunny trying to even train to become a cop proves to be incredibly difficult, though determined to not give up she pushes on and eventually manages to graduate from her training and be moved into the central district of the Zootopia Police Department, though instead of being assigned into a highly pursued case of tracking down twelve missing mammals, she gets assigned to parking duty. One messy turn of events later allows Judy to be part of the missing mammal case, though on the condition that she only has 48 hours to solve it or she will be fired from her job. She’s stuck with virtually no resources, though manages to find one clue that takes her to one key witness that may hold the answer for the case, in the form of a red fox by the name of Nick Wilde (voiced by Jason Bateman, whom I last saw in 2015’s The Gift, which was actually a pretty good movie… and then the ending happened) who turns out to be pretty uncooperative. The clock is ticking, and the evidence is minimal, so can these two unlikely partners come together for the better of their society?

Continuing with my usual formula this is where I would start listing down the negatives about a movie, and this was the part that I found the most tricky was how to feel about these because I have two: Gazelle, and the ending- specifically the climax.

Let’s start with Gazelle, who is voiced by mega-famous Colombian pop star, Shakira- heeeeey, finally a movie that has someone representing my home country of Colombia that also DOESN’T suck- isn’t that right, Hot Pursuit? Anyway, she suffers from something another animated movie I reviewed (and the first movie I ever reviewed on The Wall, as a matter of fact) which I will now call “DreamWorks Syndrome”. When your movie has DreamWorks Syndrome it will feature a big name voice actor or actress playing a pretty tiny role in spite of their exposure and fame to the general public. Granted, at least Shakira gets to talk in this movie whereas in Angry Birds, Sean Penn could have been replaced by a garbage disposal and the difference would have been none in the slightest. Shakira also isn’t a bad voice actress, then again I’ve been of the belief that pop stars and voice acting is something that goes hand in hand. She’s also at least not out of place in her role, unlike Miss Almost-30-Year-Old Rhianna voicing a 12-year-old girl in Home. I can’t be the only one who thought that she was going to have a bigger role in the movie based on how prominent she was shown in the advertisements. Hell, I was under the belief that the final showdown of the movie was going to take place in one of her concerts, and I was actually right! Well… sort off. As it turns out, that’s what happened in the scrapped version of the movie, not the final one. If you haven’t seen the movie (for whatever reason), that’s not how the movie ends. I’ll get into that (as spoiler-free as possible, of course) in a bit, but I’ll finish with Gazelle and Shakira. Gazelle’s role is pretty minimal and she doesn’t really add much to the movie. She’s not in the movie enough for me to say she’s one of the stand-out characters when the best use of her character involves a running gag about two other characters in the movie fooling around with this app that allows them to digitally insert themselves (or rather, their faces) into a music video featuring her. It’s actually a really funny gag, but that’s the best thing involving her character. The other reason why she’s here is for the movie’s title (and only) song, “Try Everything”. The song is… okay-ish, it’s really put together in a way that it’s pretty much just your typical generic uplifting pop song, though at least with Shakira singing you get her pretty distinct vocals to make the song at least nice to listen to. I’ll admit I was never a big fan of Shakira (my mom and sister LOOOOOVE her, though) so this song is just a “take it or leave it” type of deals- you hear it at two points in the movie, once at a montage, and at the credits for the obligatory “everybody dances” ending.

Speaking of which, when I originally talked about Zootopia I said I noted some pacing issues with the last act of the movie, and knowing what I know about the history of this movie that turned out to be very unsurprising. This movie was basically remade from the ground up at the last minute due to the original concept of the movie being too dark for its own good- and before anyone raises any complaints about “well they should have gone with that darker version”- no they shouldn’t have, though I’ll address that later, as I want to get through the rushed ending over first. So yes, the movie had to be completely remade and that may be what ended up causing the ending of the movie to feel a little fast. To be fair, all of the elements for the climax are there, they’re just blink-and-you-miss them. They didn’t need any more extra time being established- I think even just one extra minute could have made all of the difference. It’s at least more sensible than how Big Hero 6 ended up in a giant pile of explosions and nonsense, but yes I’m aware of the issues here and they sadly have not gone away. So how much does these two things affect how I feel about the movie? I thought about this long and hard, and if I’m going to be completely and totally honest… they don’t. My flag is up- despite this movie’s problems it has a metric ton of AMAZING things going in its favor that its negatives are pretty negligible by comparison.

First of all, I have to give absolutely major kudos to the amazing animation and design of the movie. There’s something particularly special about the way this movie looks to how everything in this world is constructed. The character designs are absolutely great, the city looks amazing- all of the districts are distinctively designed, full of life, and it gives me this absolutely giddy feeling of “holy crap, I want to go there!” I rarely ever get that feeling out of many movies, and that’s one telling sign when I knew this was something special. I could make an entire college essay at how amazing the level of detail in the environement in this movie is, but I really AM trying to keep this short as I can, so let’s just put it this way: A+ for not only the design, but also the REALLY great animation! This movie is fast-paced, colorful, full of great action moments, the expressions are absolutely joyous to look at.

The characters are simply wonderful! The crazy thing is that they’re all types, but the level of development they get, how layered and fleshed out they are really is something to admire. Nick and Judy are a pair that form the typical “cynical guy/optimistic girl” pairing, however a combination of great dialogue, perfect chemistry, as well as a really great level of depth allows them to not only be great foils to each other, but also makes them highly relatable and really easy to sympathize with the both of them. Not just them, this applies to other characters such as Bogo (voiced by Idirs Elba), Clawhauser- who also manages to score one of the saddest scenes in the movie- the other secondary characters are also unbelievably enjoyable, like Nick’s best friend Finnick (voiced by Tommy Lister), or Duke Weaselton (voiced by Alan Tudyk- wait a second, how many Disney movies have you been in now, pal?), and even more bit characters get their own really memorable moments (I’m sure the wolves need no introduction. Huh, I’d say between this and Storks that it’s been good year for wolves). Again, I could really expand on these a lot more, but there’s just no room or time here.

The comedy is absolutely great. It goes between really sharp, witty banter to even the use of puns, though these are used in a much smarter way than I’ve seen plenty other movies (especially animated ones) use them- they’re pretty much background gags. They’re never in your face, and they’re pretty much used for scenery, which makes them really great to go hunt down when rewatching the movie- I certainly did.

While “Try Everything” may be really far from the best pop song (though considering how awful of a year for pop music 2016 was, it may be one of the few that actually qualifies as even “listenable”) the rest of the soundtrack is really fun. Movie scores are something I don’t usually notice because 90% of the time they’re often really generic and forgettable, and then there’s movie scores like in Accidental Love which are grating and make you want to kill yourself. But this one has a score that is really enjoyable to listen to, goes really well with the movie and adds that little extra hint of fun to a lot of scenes (like Judy giving out the parking tickets for the first time, or her chasing Duke in Little Rodentia). I wouldn’t say this is the biggest positive about the movie, but I think it’s worth pointing out nonetheless. No, if you want a REAL major positive here it is:

The movie manages to combine a lot of really great elements that makes it a really enjoyable family movie, from the comedy to the characters, but it also has some really brilliant uses of filmmaking to make the movie also a really great mystery and leave little extra touches for anyone watching the movie to notice, even when they’re not in your face, or as I like to call it the “Edgar Wright Method” (He may not have been the first one to do this, but it’s my example so shut up and read). If any of you have seen a movie by Edgar Wright- and knowing my audience, I’m going to say that’s probably most of you- this movie pulls a really nice trick of putting tiny little bits of plot littered in the background. The brilliance of this is that it allows the audience to notice things that any less competent filmmaker would have just simply presented, but with someone like Edgar Wright he just leaves things like really great, funny gags way in the back that you may catch out of the corner of your eye, or other little moments that make you go “rewind that, I want to see that again”, which happens here but in a way that sets up the final act of the movie. Seeing the movie for the first time I’ll admit, I didn’t see any of these extra details, but now that I’ve seen the movie several times I feel like I’m discovering something new every time I rewatch it. Even shots are reused to make really sharp, contrasting parallels that actually help in the intensity and drama, as well as the investment in the audience.

I love movies that feel rewarding to revisit, these kinds of movies actually acknowledge that their audience is smart enough that they don’t need to have exposition jammed down their throat, they can find these details for themselves because they’re that observant, and seeing this kind of fine crafting in an animated movie of all things is the kind of thing that I want other movies like Sing, or Ice Age: Collision Course, or hell, even movies like Kubo and the Two Strings can learn a thing or two about Zootopia- movies are a visual form of storytelling, you don’t have to talk down to anyone just because your movie is restricted to needing to be seen by a younger audience, they’re smart too, and movies like this can really go a long way into showing what animation can really do.

Oh yeah, there’s a message in this movie, isn’t there? I pushed this until the very end on purpose, because, like I said, this movie has a lot of amazing things going for it that this is just icing on the cake. The message of prejudice is something that clearly hasn’t gone overlooked- it really doesn’t take a rocket scientist to notice it. Now I did say that I don’t think that the old concept for the movie would have worked, and here’s why: it would have come across as insanely heavy-handed. The movie would have suffered from a grim atmosphere, compounding that with the message of “prejudice is bad” would have come across as a more of a “no duh” moment, rather than how it’s presented here in the way that it’s entirely possible for someone, even if they are the nicest people in the world, to have prejudices of their own. Now, I’m being very specific with my wording here- “prejudice” and not “racism”, because the thing that it seems that some people who failed to grasp the point of the movie love to connect this movie as being a movie that’s about racism, when it could really be applied to a wide variety of different scenarios. Something else I don’t think this movie gets enough credit for is the fact that it not only gets you thinking about it, but it also helps you understand it. Not to give anything away but from the way we see one certain character be treated it actually becomes perfectly understandable why they act the way that they do- which is actually something that is really scary to think about. Again, I need to stress: “prejudice” NOT “racism”. There IS a difference, and it’s a very dangerous difference at that, and the way the movie deals with it is absolutely brilliant, as well as the fact that it answers what it can be done about it. It’s a crime mystery with a good enthralling mystery, and really smart commentary that also works within the context of the world, so even if you wanted to completely eliminate the message of this movie being connected to the real world in any way (though that’d be something really difficult to do), you can- the movie still works! The idea of taking a really beautiful, utopia and showing its ugly insides is a much smarter, more clever approach to deliver this kind of message; while there’s an obvious right and wrong, the morality is a little bit more grey and that allows you to discover shades about the characters and the world and how they all grow and develop into what, I consider to be, one of the true masterpieces of the decade. (2,636 words. This has, undoubtedly become my most positive review to date- and no, Finding Dory doesn't count because I spent half of that ranting about Pixar. Music: Shovel Knight- High Above the Land)

You know, back when I reviewed this movie the first time I gave it a... admittedly, joke review, and a joke score to go with it, but that was an intentional decision to exaggerate how I felt about the movie at the time. Though... that may not have been as far from the truth as I thought.

Yes, you're reading that right- not a 10, but an 11. I thought about this long and hard, but I can definitively say that Zootopia has joined an elite club of movies that I would call my unquestionable favorites. There's the 10s, movies which are absolutely perfect in every way, but then there's these movies- these are the movies that go above and beyond and will forever be part of a very small pantheon of movies that I not only find truly spectacular but absolutely worth watching again and again and never get tired of it. Now, if you have any problem with this... well, I'm assuming you made it 'till the end of the review, but hey that's what the comments are for, aren't they? And if not, then you're more than welcome to drink a cool, tall glass of "Shut the Fuck Up". Either way, it ain't going to ruin the way I sleep at night. Sigh... if only the next movie I had to talk about was going to be as fun as this. Next time, guys... I destroy Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Oh yes, it WILL be a bloodbath. Until then~

[thebluesideofthemoon]

The Wall #47: LA LA LAND

I feel like I was due for this. This was originally going to be the last movie I wanted to watch last year, but due to some complications (mainly that none of my theaters in town were playing the movie for... whatever reason) that didn't happen. But hey, now that La La Land is getting serious Oscar buzz, and this IS my most anticipated movie of the year (if you've seen Whiplash, you'd know why), I'm happy that I got a chance to cover it. So, what do I think about the movie set in the land of fools who dream? Take a few steps forward and one back, wing your arms and spin on your heels- let's dance to the music of the generation and get on with the show!

You know what? This movie is good. Maybe even great, but it's definitely good. What this movie is not is perfect, and I'll explain why that is because I have some issues with this movie, some pretty big ones at that.

This is a movie about Mia (played by Emma Stone), and Sebastian (played by Ryan Gosling), two struggling artists in Los Angeles who are both trying to hit it big in their respective careers- Mia wants to be a big name actress, while Sebastian wants to open up his own restaurant and save the dying art that is jazz. After blowing it in his last job, Sebastian and Mia run into each other and continue to see each other as they keep trying out for different gigs, only to eventually end up together and trying to fulfill their dreams as a couple. However, bad luck and poor planning starts straining their relationship hard. Will they make it through on following their dreams or will the curtains forever close on their final act?

I normally like to start off with the bad stuff first, but I feel this is case where I should start off on a good note considering all of the praise that this movie is receiving, but first a bit of plot.

For one, I find this to be one of the most beautiful-looking movies to have come out this year- this movie looks amazing. This movie, much like one of my favorite movies from last year, The Revenant, is absolutely gorgeous- the combination of beautiful cinematography and editing allows for some truly stunning colorful, breathtaking shots of Los Angeles (when in the reality, the city is kind of a dump, but hey this is a movie). Speaking of which, this movie is full of really vibrant, eye-catching colors which really help convey the tone and mood of every scene, especially when it comes to all of the sequences of the characters dancing. Not a single shot is wasted, and it also adds to the fun of the musical.

Speaking of which, the choreography in this movie is also spectacular. Seeing Gosling and Stone’s scenes where they dance together is nothing short of absolutely joyful. It does manage to harken to spirit of fun in musicals where, sure, it might seem ridiculous for people to break into song and dance for no reason, but it works thanks to the choreography being fun to watch as it plays out… even if the songs are ho-hum at best (don’t worry, I’ll complain about those in a minute).

Acting-wise it’s pretty solid, though if anyone in the cast deserves the most recognition of all, it’s Emma Stone. A couple of things- one, I’m now convinced that she’s a Disney character that’s come to life, and I’m not just saying that because of her eyes. She’s really animated as an actress, and this movie is a great vehicle that shows her impressive range, from joy to sadness, to betrayal and in being in love. This is a movie where she’s playing an actress and manages to really capture the emotions that allow the audience to root and care about her. There’s a really heartbreaking scene in which Stone has lost all hope and you can see it on her face that her dreams have crumbled. She’s also a really good singer, she has an absolutely wonderful voice, and when she takes the lead of the songs my ears have nothing but my fullest attention to her. To me, she’s the real star of the show, not that Ryan Gosling is bad but he’s just… okay, that’s about it. As far as performances from him are concerned, I preferred his role in The Nice Guys, and not just because he was funny (he gets some funny scenes in this movie too), but he also plays a character that isn’t just… kind of a two-dimensional whiny asshole.

I think this is about as good a time as any to transition into the things that I wasn’t as hot about in the movie. Strap in, we have a lot of ground to cover.

Let’s start with the things that I thought were just okay- I already covered Gosling, so let’s talk about the songs. I wasn’t that impressed by them. Sure, the songs aren’t bad by any means, and they sound really nice. They can be pretty fun to listen to as well, but they just didn’t stand out to me. Comparing it to the other musical that I’ve seen this year (not Sing, because most of its songs were licensed), Moana, the songs are more fun to listen to, there’s more variety in how they sound as well as the genres that they come from make then all more unique to each other. You’re Welcome, doesn’t sound the same as Shiny, which doesn’t sound the same as How Far I’ll Go. A Lovely Night? City of Stars? These sound the same to me. Funny that the song that is meant to be played off as the “bad sellout pop song” (which is performed by JOHN LEGEND, HELLO?!) is one of the more distinct and fun songs from the movie. Though I also really loved Audition (The Fools Who Dream), which is truly the best way to cap off her plot. They’re not all very catchy, and songs don’t need to be catchy to be good, but they’re mostly unmemorable.

This whole thing about Sebastian trying to save jazz? That really goes nowhere. I don’t understand why that was even part of the movie because it’s not really that developed in the least, until it’s used a kind of cheap way to force Gosling to have a conflict with John Legend prior to joining his band in order to make some money to support both himself and Emma Stone. This is not they reason why he ends up leaving the band. I honestly have no idea WHY he ends up leaving the band, but it happens and it all goes into the true conflict of the movie… which doesn’t even start until the LAST thirty minutes. Yeeeaaah, it’s time for the big problems with the movie, and it’s three-fold:

One, the movie is too light in conflict, and too light on the consequences. For the second act of the movie, which is about a good forty minutes or so, it’s just glorified montage. We see Sebastian and Mia’s new life as a couple, which definitely seems pretty sweet and it is, but problems don’t start to arise until the end of the second act. Structure-wise this makes sense because I get that they’re trying to show that this life really is magical and wonderful like… something out of a musical. However, it goes on for too long and when we find out what the actual conflict between them is, it’s just something that happens because these two never bothered to communicate with each other. I have a serious peeve with movies in where couple don’t bother to communicate problems, but this one especially bugs me because at no point do they decide to confront each other about it until it’s too late, and even then it should been easy for them to work out but it’s not.

The second problem I have is that this movie is highly predictable. Now, I don’t have a problem with predictability as long as I’m given something like characters to really enjoy, themes that are interesting and worth discussing, or it’s just entertaining. To La La Land’s credit, it does succeed in the latter- it’s really enjoyable, but it fails at the interesting character portion because of Sebastian being a deadbeat. You know what’s going to happen, and it would be fine if they did something new or interesting but they don’t. This ties into the previous point of there being a lack of conflict when things like this should have either brewed from an earlier point, or they should have actually opened their mouths.

And the third, final, and BIGGEST problem I have with this movie by far is that it relies far too heavily on nostalgia. Did you see Singing in the Rain? Or An American in Paris? This movie has, and it’s going to remind you of that. A LOOOOOT.

I have serious problems with movies that rely on nostalgia as a tool to get the audience invested in the movie. I had serious issues with this earlier in the year with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, and I had serious problems with it in another musical, Rock of Ages, where they think that all they have to do is remind people of things from the past in order to excuse any shortcomings that the movie suffers from- which is some pretty big, nasty ones. Now, I’m sure you’re wondering how this bothers me here and not in something like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Well, for one it’s not crucial to the plot- they don’t stop the movie just to remind you of something else the audience might be familiar with just for the sake of doing so, whereas this movie does it pretty deliberately. I’ll admit, I’m not exactly very familiar with Old Hollywood, and I probably should spend more time with older movies, but even if I haven’t this movie gave me the nagging feeling of someone elbowing me shoulder and going: “remember this? Remember? Reeeemember?” and that made my enjoyment of the movie felt kind of thankless and hollow. It’s like the movie is saying that the only way I can really appreciate it is by seeing these older movies that it’s going out of its way to reference- which it shouldn’t because I can tell you for a fact those movies were better and more original than this one.

I know this is a pretty negative note to end the review on, and it’s going to also seem a little confusing considering what I rated the movie, but I want you to keep this in mind: I did have a good time watching it. There were a lot of fun moments, and I think the movie is total eye candy, not to mention Emma Stone is simply amazing through and through, but it just fell really short in what it could have been. Whiplash, this movie is not. (1,731 words. Music: Pokemon Black and White- Route 10)

By every sense of the word, I would consider this movie a disappointment. Now I did expect a good movie, and it was, but I thought that this movie was a shoe-in for my Top 10 of the year, it could have easily been #1, and at this point it's going to be lucky if it even manages to get an Honorable Mention.

This rating may still be surprising to some of you, but not to me. Yes, it's good, it's fun, I recommend you to see it, but it's really not the masterpiece that it's called out as being. If you want a better musical movie to enjoy, go watch Moana, it has stronger characters, stronger conflict, better songs, and it's also just as great to look at. Speaking of Disney... I have some unfinished business to take care of, don't I? Yes... it's finally time... next time, of course. On The Wall. Toodles.

[thebluesideofthemoon]

The Wall #46: ASSASSIN’S CREED

What the hell is this? Sudden Garbage Awareness Month? Between Collateral Beauty and now Assassin's Creed I feel like I'm getting punished for doing something wrong. Yeah, I'm sure you can tell I didn't have the highest of hopes for this movie but what did you expect? It's a video game movie, these things universally SUCK. Well, I'll tell you what: I did not expect to finish out the year saying that of all the video game movies that came out this year that Angry Birds was the best of them. I don't get you, 2016. I just don't get you.

You know what? I'm very disappointed in this movie. This movie just doesn't reflect the Assassin's Creed experience accurately, I mean where are all the bugs? All the game-breaking glitches? All the laborious, tedious gameplay? I'll tell you this, though, this movie does have overly-complicated and nonsensical stories down pat.

So what's the plot of this movie? Honestly, I'd love to tell you except I have no idea what the hell is going on here. So they need to get this Apple of Eden… even though they put an actual apple on the table to show as an example of the apple, so they strap Michael Fassbender into this… thing to send his mind into the past where his ancestor was an assassin back in the Spanish Inquisition, so he can lead them to that apple… which will somehow stay there for the next five hundred years, and they need this apple so they can control the will of mankind so they stop… fighting? What? I-I just… w-what? What is- I don’t- whaaaaaat?

This plot is a nightmare to figure out, and it’s sadly not really helped by the actors, pretty much all of which look like they’re either lost, or confused, or both. Michael Fassbender looks like he got kidnapped in the middle of the night and was forced onto the set. He constantly has this “what the fuck is going on here?” look on his face- hell, he even asks that word-for-word only to be given a twenty-thousand word expository monologue on what the hell he’s doing in a place where nobody in the audience really gives a shit about, and get lost in the sea of meaningless bullshit because this movie is so busy trying to cram in as much unnecessary information and fanservice from the game as possible, yet is conveyed in such a poor way that it’s impossible for care about- hell it’s even worse than that because it constantly makes you ask yourself “is this something that I need to play the games for to understand?”, not unlike the dullwad of a turd that was Warcraft, except the problem is the opposite- they offer LOTS of information… we just don’t know of WHAT. Why is it so difficult for these movies to make a lick of sense about the world they crate? And you know what? It’s really sad when a movie like Angry Birds- which has, let’s be honest pretty much zero mythology whatsoever manages to create a much more comprehensive and engaging world and characters than a game franchise that has loads of information and background to cheery-pick from, yet they choose not to do it… because that’s just these movies roll, I guess.

Okay, maybe this could be more bearable if the action was any good. And you know what? It actually is. The choreography is really impressive… or it would be if the action scenes weren’t cut and edited by a monkey. Not unlike Tak3n, the editing on these scenes is rapid-fire, slapdash and too close, so you can’t tell what’s going on half the time. Not helping is the fact that, again, like Warcraft and… pretty much every DC movie that came out this year, this movie just looks ugly, I mean did they get Zack Snyder to pick the color scheme for this thing. In the present there’s nothing but these cold, metallic blues, and in the past everything looks like we’re looking at it through a piss yellow-colored filter. This movie is an eyesore, and I’m pretty sure it’s entirely possible to make a movie like this more appealing to the eye. The Nice Guys could do it, and that only had a fraction of the budget that this movie did. Yeah, that’s not the same kind of movie, but do you WHAT is? The Three Musketeers- the 2011 one. Yeah, it’s not a good movie either, but it at least managed to look more appealing to the eye than this movie did.

So does this movie have anything good going for it? Well, to this movie’s defense it’s so heavy in deep “don’t care” mode that it might at least be unintentionally funny, especially with Fassbender’s confused expressions at the absolute ridiculousness of everything going on around him. It’s worth for a couple of laughs, though with this movie pushing to being two hours long it wears out its welcome increasingly fast. So I may as well have just started and finished my review with: It’s just another shitty video game movie. What else did you expect?

(761 words. Music: Crash Team Racing- Cortex Castle)

And to absolutely no-one's surprise: "video game movies STILL suck"? Yes. Yes they do. They always have, and they always will.

Happy holidays, everyone! I'll see you all next time on The Wall with something... that hopefully doesn't suck ass. Until then, see you later!

[thebluesideofthemoon]

[Teaser] The Top Ten Worst Movies of 2016

It's almost getting to be that time of the year again. Ooooh boy, this year was sure quite something, let's just say that.

[thebluesideofthemoon]

The Wall #45: COLLATERAL BEAUTY

Okay, I did say that the Zootopia re-review was going to be next, but this is something I need to get out of the way right now. Yes, I saw this movie, Collateral Beauty, a while back actually - it was the last movie I saw last year (I saw it in vacation), and my family are all big Will Smith fans, and I do love me some Will Smith, so this could have been a real treat, right?

HOOOOOOOO BOY. THIS is a BAD movie. This is the kind of bad movie that becomes legendary by its sheer shittiness.

So this movie’s plot is that Will Smith dealing with the grief of having lost his daughter to a horrible accident and is coping with it by sending these letters to the concepts of Death, Time, and Love, only for those concepts to then become personified and help him deal with his trauma.

Now, I know this sounds like a weepy, kind of corny, melodramatic movie that comes out around this time of year to try to tug at your heartstrings and maybe attempt to nab an Oscar or two. I’m not the biggest fan of these kind of movies because I find they just do nothing but try to be as emotionally manipulative as possible while giving you a cornball script and pretty shallow execution- it only succeeds because the themes in and of themselves are sad, and they only play them with the one note of sadness. This isn’t always the case, as a movie like Son of Saul works wonderfully by giving us far other emotions than just sadness- it also has fear, hope, suspense, it actually gets you to connect with the characters, so it’s not just sad for sake of being sad, there’s a lot more to it that allows it become more than “just another Holocaust movie”.

It may sound like I’m going off on a tangent, but I need to make this clear for a reason- I know these kind of movies exist, but if they don’t have much more going for them there’s no reason for me to see them, but at the very least they have the dignity to know what they are, and get in and get out. I thought this was going to be one of those. I thought I would just say that “yeah, I know some people will find this sort of thing sad, but it’s not for me. 4/10” and that’s where the story would normally end.

… unfortunately, not for this. To give the movie the very little credit it deserves it absolutely surprised me, blindsided me, you could even say it shocked me because it turned out to be absolutely NOT what I was expecting. What this movie DID turn out to be was one of the biggest, most pretentious, absolutely vile, mean-spirited piles of shit I have ever seen in my life.

For one, the plot of the movie that you see in the trailers (as I detailed above) is A BIG LIE! Yes, Will Smith does have to cope with the grief of losing his daughter, but two things: 1. He’s actually not the main character of the movie, it’s actually Edward Norton, Michael Pena, and Kate Winslet, his friends. 2. The plot involves them GASLIGHTING Will Smith. Eeeeeyup. What actually happens is that they all work for an ad agency where Norton and Smith are partner owners, and now that Smith is depressed they’re losing their clients because Ed Norton is pretty useless at dealing with them. So he, and two other co-workers, Pena and Winselt, all form a plan to sell the company under Will Smith’s nose- thanks to an offer they were given to have the company bought out by $17 per share (which is easy to remember when the movie only mentions it a measly twenty or thirty times throughout the movie’s run time)- by making him look crazy by hiring actors to play the abstract concepts of Death, Time, and Love (played by Helen Mirren, Jacob Latimore, and Keira Knightley, respectively) so they can get Will Smith fired. All while these actors all tie into in a “metaphorical way” to these three characters because one of them is dying, one of them has a daughter who hates them, and the other one works too much to the point where they ignore having kids, even though these people are some of the most cruel assholes in New York City history.

That sure does sound like a fun movie, doesn’t it?! Where… the fuck… do I begin?

The story is by far what gets on my nerves the most. For one it’s a movie that it’s basically built on conveniences for 90% of the time; the tension of the movie hinges on nobody, aside from Will Smith, being able to see that these actors are there. So everyone else around them just pretends that these actors aren’t there to keep the illusion that they are visions that Will Smith is seeing to prove that he’s gone crazy. One of the most egregious examples of this happens when we see through a digital camera Will Smith talking with Helen Mirren but she’s somehow removed from the footage even though EVERYONE ELSE AROUND THEM KNEW THAT SHE WAS ACTUALLY THERE, because apparently these concepts can decide to interact with other people just because they can. In NEW YORK CITY. Because Will Smith just accepts that these concepts are real, and not once bothers to find out if this is true, even though this is a plan that could have easily backfired. So did these three scumbags also hire everyone else in New York to act as if they can’t see Death, Time, and Love because that would ruin the illusion? No explanation given on that at all! The movie also has two particularly awful twist endings, which I’ll get to once I go through the rest of things wrong with this abomination of a movie.

Not since Movie 43 have I seen so many good actors completely wasted on such awful material. Most of the actors are directed like they were on a middle school play, and this is one of those movies where it was clearly only given the direction of “act sad. No, sadder. No, REALLY sad, because we need to wring out every single piece of emotional manipulation out of this wretched piece of trite”.

Yes, I know that movies by nature are manipulative, but there is a way to have a movie tug at your heartstrings in a genuine way that is earned when the characters and conflict are that well fleshed out and allow you to get invested because you want to see these people succeed- a movie like Anomalisa pulls this off because even though the main character himself isn’t necessarily a completely good person, they flesh out his dilemma so well that you completely understand why he goes through what he does- you can feel the emotions, you can connect with him, you can relate to the situations because they managed to make them feel completely and absolutely real, and when those sort of real emotional situations get pulled off in the way that something like Anomalisa does it, it sticks with you, it weighs on your mind, it makes you feel a rollercoster of emotions and it really hits home!

That doesn’t happen when the main characters are all slimy scumbags who want to screw over their friend majorly (whom, by the way, is apparently depressed enough by his daughter’s death that he pretty much becomes a vegetable, yet still manages to keep himself fed, well-kept- sure he has a bit of grey in his hair, but he’s still WILL SMITH), not really caring about his well-being because they are in actuality really shitty people- not that the movie ever calls them out on it because it’s too busy being really fucking proud of itself on how clever it is, and how much it’s trying to get you to cry. It’s monotonous at best, and it feels really underhanded at worst because it’s a movie that is trying to get a rise out of its audience in the cheapest way possible. It’s the reason why I absolutely despised movies like Home and Remember Me so much because they tried to pull the card of trying to make you feel emotional investment on a movie that doesn’t really warrant it! But at least those movies only did them in bits and pieces, NOT THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE FUCKING THING!

And the dialogue! Oh God, is it terrible! Most of it is either talking about selling this building, it’s really stilted, or it means absolutely fucking nothing. They mention the phrase “collateral beauty” so much in this movie AND IT MEANS NOTHING! It’s a meaningless statement that wouldn’t get irritating if it wasn’t for the fact that they mention it SEVERAL IN TIMES IN THE MOVIE! It’s by far the worst title drop I’ve seen in any movies since, oh gee, THE LAST MOVIE I REVIEWED THAT STARRED WILL SMITH. “How could this movie get worse?” did you ask? I will tell you because this movie offers a very special deal: TWO shitty twists for the price of one, which I’m going to spoil because, fuck this movie.

The first twist is that the actors who played Death, Time, and Love… ACTUALLY ARE DEATH, TIME, AND LOVE! They were actually helping Michael Pena, Edward Norton, and Kate Winslet with THEIR problems instead of Will Smith… because that makes a lot of sense, it’s not like they’ve been fucking him over this entire movie. They also do end up taking their money ($20,000 each) for their services, which is admittedly the one genuinely funny thing about the movie (whether or not that was intentional is hard to tell because this movie fucking sucks).

The second, and by far WORSE, twist comes in the form of Howard (that’s Will Smith’s character) meeting this woman named Madeline (played by Naomi Harris, who appeared in Skyfall and Spectre, and another 2016 movie that I will talk about later, Moonlight) who works at this support group, to which Howard comes into and constantly interacts with her. Evidently she too lost a daughter in a tragic accident, and talks to him about how her ex-husband sends her notes that say “if only we could be strangers again”. However, it turns out that Will Smith IS her ex-husband, and she was talking about the same girl that they both lost the same way. At no point in the movie do you ever get a hint that these two used to be in a relationship of any way because they literally act like strangers around each other. Also, she’s completely okay with her ex-husband saying things like he just had a conversation with Death and Time.

DOES THIS MOVIE LOATHE ITSELF?! DO THEY GET OFF TO THIS?! IN WHAT PLANET DO THEY THINK THAT THIS IS HOW HUMANS INTERACT WITH EACH OTHER?! I DON’T GET IT! THIS MOVIE IS FUCKING INSANE!

Collateral Beauty is disgusting. This isn’t a movie like Anomalisa, or Son of Saul, or Her; those movies play with your heartstrings like a cellist with a perfectly smooth, fine-tuned bow. This movie plays the heartstrings like a lunatic ax murderer with a bloody, rusty hacksaw. This isn’t just bad, it’s offensive. It’s vile, it’s repulsive, and it may just very well be the worst holiday movie ever made. This is Oscar Bait done way, WAY wrong. (1,855 words. Music: Undertale- Battle Against a True Hero)

I hate this movie. I absolutely, thoroughly, and very, VERY vehemently hate this movie. If not for Yoga Hosers, then this might be the worst movie I've seen this year, though to give Yoga Hosers a bit of credit, at least that movie never pretended to be anything more than stupid, unfunny bad movie. I was a bit conflicted on what to rate this movie, but I think I've got it.

Though this is VERY close to being a 0, this movie can still kiss my ass. It is THAT awful. Maybe I wouldn't hate it so much if it wasn't so dishonest, but this movie can rightfully fuck off. Well, I sure hope you guys enjoy this review I sure didn't! And I'll talk to you all next time on The Wall!

[thebluesideofthemoon]

The Wall #44: DEADPOOL

Now it's time to get around to a movie that I should have reviewed but never did- Fox's Deadpool. Deadpool is a really special movie for a couple of reasons. Now I'm sure every one of you and your grandmother has seen this movie, it's the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time (Take that, Fifty Shades of Grey!), and it may have finally been the shake-up that superhero movies have long since needed. Did it work? Let's find out.

This movie is pretty good, pretty fun, and pretty funny!

Now the movie itself works in a non-linear narrative, but what happens is a wisecracking mercenary who cracks down on low-life jerkbags for a living, until one day he discovers that he has a fatal case of cancer. So in order to cure himself and live a happy life with his girlfriend Vanessa- played by Morena Baccarin- he undertakes a sketchy regeneration experiment to cure himself off his cancer. However, not only does this end up severely scarring him, it’s also not very pleasant as the place is run like a torture ring under the supervision of FRANCIS (played by Ed Skerin), whom was trying to get the experiment to work, and thus showed that Wade’s condition worked, however Wade Wilson chases after him in demand for a cure for how he looks. Now the chase is on for Wade (who now goes by Deadpool) to find Francis (who goes by Ajax), while he goes after Vanessa in order to take revenge on Wade for ruining his experiment.

Like I said, a lot of what makes this movie work is that it runs on Rule of Funny. Deadpool is a very anarchistic, reckless, smartass, but he also manages to be charismatic and even a little bit sympathetic, and it’s all thanks to Ryan Reynold’s great performance. The man has charm, really great comic timing, as well as the physicality to pull off a character like Deadpool right. Most of the performances are actually really great, and the actors do a great job bouncing off each other, especially Reynolds and T. J. Miller as Weasel, and thank God he was this good, it definitely redeems Miller in my eyes after being part of that abomination that was Transformers: Age of Extinction.

It’s going to be tough explaining why the comedy works so well without giving away the best jokes, but the movie has a great knack for poking fun at everything- even itself. It’s not distracting or even overbearing, it just flows very well in the movie. And again, it’s also really funny- the laughs start out as early as the opening credits, and they just keep going. There’s never any lulls in the comedy, and the movie never takes itself too seriously, and yet it manages to have genuine moments of tension and drama that allow you to actually care about the characters and follow through on Deadpool’s quest to kick Ajax’s ass. Now, it never gets too serious, as I said, this movie will never tug at your heartstrings or make you cry, but the movie does a good enough job with the romance to make Vanessa feel like a three-dimensional character worth saving. There’s also Deadpool interacting with the X-Men (all two of them, and one of them isn’t even a man), they are Colossus (played by Stefan Kapicic) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (played by newcomer Brianna Hildebrand), and they work amazingly well off Deadpool thanks to their highly contrasting personalities to him. Their scenes together are great comedy, and they manage to make a good, small kickass team at the time of the climax.

It’s also really violent, they do not hold back on the body count at all, but all of the really violent scenes are also played for laughs and, again, thanks to brilliant timing, they also manage to be laugh-out-loud funny. There’s a great joke in here involving Deadpool making a sign out of Francis’ name, but I won’t say how. It’s a great gag.

The movie isn’t without its issues. For one, it’s not exactly as clever as subverting the current streak of superhero clichés as most superhero movies have been lately as, much like Sausage Party, it follows a very familiar structure that it never deviates that far from. It is non-linear- there movie constantly cuts back between what happens in the past and present, and we only get to following the movie from the point where it left off all the way to the end about two thirds of the way in. It at least makes the movie more unique in that sense, though by the time it gets to the climax it’s nothing that you haven’t seen before from other superhero movies.

Ajax is Generic Bully #375. He’s no different nor more threatening than the villain from Ant-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, or even Doctor Strange. He’s at least not as bad as in that clusterfuck of a movie Suicide Squad, but he’s not worth caring about. This isn’t even from the same studio as Marvel, and yet this movie still suffers from the same problem. Francis has the benefit of at least being involved in funny scenes, but it’s pretty obvious to everyone involved that he only exists to get killed by Deadpool in a brutal fashion by the end of the movie. I prefer Angel Dust for the antagonist because she’s at least easier on the eyes. She’s… oof, a real doll. I mean, oh mama…

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, the movie. That’s all I have to say for Deadpool. It feels at least refreshing enough, and it’s definitely funny enough to be worth seeing, but I don’t think it’s quite as smart or clever as it could have been. It’ll be a great thing to see at parties, though, and it made really smart use of its small budget. Also, this may have the best stinger to any superhero movie ever, so definitely stay until the credits.

(923 words. Music: Valiant Clash- Mega Man 10- Blade Man Remix by E-Tank)

This was a really fun movie, the first movie from 2016 that I had a great time watching, and one of my favorite superhero movies. It's far from my all time favorite, but I had an absolute blast watching it, and I don't think any of you out there will be disappointed by it.

There you go, Deadpool. You did good for your first movie- now don't blow it on the second one. Though now that I have one good movie out of the way it's time to talk about something even better. Oh yes, one of my favorite movies of the year- Zootopia. Oh boy, I can't wait to give this the proper review it deserves. Until then, I'll see you all next time in The Wall!

[thebluesideofthemoon]

The Wall #43: FIFTY SHADES OF BLACK

As much as every single neuron in my being is screaming at me to not do this, I'm going to because I saw the movie and I wanted to kill myself. Yeah, I'm sure that after that highly optimistic opening statement that you're all excited to hear what my opinion on this movie is going to be, because it could totally go either way. Ah, but don't you guys fret because I'm going to clear up any ambiguity that comes our way right this second in my review of the January masterpiece that is Fifty Shades of Black. ... this one's gonna hurt.

So, I don't know how many of you guys are aware of my little... history with these "parody movies" but let me sum it up in one simple sentence: I FUCKING HATE THEM. I hate them because they are painfully unfunny, brainless, cheaply-made messes that rely heavily on stale pop culture references that are at least 90 billion years old as "jokes". They hardly even do what parody movies are supposed to do which is... well, parody. Their jokes (and this goes for Wayans Brothers' and Seltzeberg movies) are: bathroom jokes, sex jokes, pop culture references and that's it. The earlier ones were at least more tolerable thanks to the fact that they used to have good and genuinely funny actors in there that knew how to work with really piss-poor material, but then you get to things like Disaster Movie, or Vampires Suck, or Scary Movie 5, or Haunted House 2, and they're just nonsense. They wouldn't be as infuriating as they are if it wasn't for the fact that these movies are the KINGS of running jokes into the ground. They are so repetitive and tiring, and I will probably get repetitive and tiring in this review because these movies DO THE SAME SHIT AGAIN AND AGAIN.

This movie is no different. In this movie… the plot is exactly the same as Fifty Shades of Grey, except now it’s Marlon Wayans in Jamie Dornan’s place as Christian Grey (Chrsitian Black in this case because “hurr hurr, I can make black jokes because I’m black!”) and he’s trying to be the charming millionaire to try and get into this chick’s pants… only with 250% more bathroom humor and 150% more pointless cutaway jokes.

Part of what makes this movie so infuriating is that I know for a fact that Marlon Wayans isn’t a terrible actor- hell, he can be GREAT, just look at Requiem for a Dream, but he’s a godawful writer. I guess splitting off from his brother to work with some yahoo that is a hack and a half, has managed to make some of the worst comedies of the decade. It takes effort to make a movie that’s more despicable and less funny than Fifty Shades of Grey. I only say this because, as far as acting is concerned, Marlon Wayans, at points, can be actually charming, so much so that it makes me wonder how this movie could work with Marlon Wayans in the lead, only for him to quickly take a 90 degree turn into Stupidville by screeching and yelling like he’s done IN EVERY OTHER MOVIE LIKE THIS FOR THE PAST 15 YEARS. Not that all the other actors any better, they’re highly obnoxious.

This movie seems far more mean-spirited than other previous “parody movies”, mainly because of how many of the jokes are the characters (mainly Marlon Wayans) just insulting each other for no absolute reason. It actually gets pretty uncomfortable as the movie goes on. And of course, annoying because most of the jokes are “You ugly!” “You smell like shit!” “You fat!” and these people got paid ACTUAL money for that. At one point in the movie Marlon Wayans torments his girlfriend by reading the Fifty Shades of Grey book (which is also a very easy joke to make, so you get no points for creativity) and he exclaims that it was written by a third grader. I wouldn’t disagree with him except that YOU CAN’T MAKE A JOKE LIKE THAT WHEN YOU’RE RESPONSIBLE FOR WRITING FIFTY SHADES OF BLACK!

Oh, and how about those pop culture references? I bet you this movie was written in a month on some used toilet paper, because if the jokes are not terrible sex or poop jokes, they’re highly topical (and ultimately dated) jokes about Donald Trump, or Bill Cosby, or Kim Kardashian. Oh sure, those haven’t been run into the ground or anything. This reminds me so much of Vampires Suck in the sense that, sure, these assholes are picking on an easy target of a movie to make fun of, but at the very least there’s millions of possibilities for jokes and they take NONE of them. Same for this! Also, even though this movie is shorter than Fifty Shades of Grey, it has an ending that goes on and on, AND ON, AND ON. Why do these terrible comedy movies FEEL LIKE THEY NEED TO DRAG EVERYTHING OUT TO BE FUNNY EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE OBNOXIOUS BEYOND BELIEF?! I hate this movie. I hate this movie, I hate these kind of movies, I hate Marlon Wayans for keeping this kind of movie still alive in 2016, and I hate that I have to say that Fifty Shades of Grey is a both a better comedy, and a better movie than this piece of dogshit.

(804 words. Music: Mario Kart: Double Dash!!- Mushroom Bridge/City)

Do I even have to say anything else? Do I have to give you any more reasons why I want to swing a wrench to the heads of the people responsible for doing this?!

I do not miss you, 2016. If this movie didn't have the actors actually trying, and one or two jokes that actually amused me, this ALSO would have been a 0. I hate this movie on the principle THAT THIS KIND OF MOVIE SHOULD BE EXTINCT BY NOW. How does a movie THIS awful still exist in the late half of the 2010's?! How?! HOW?!

HOW?!

I'm done with this abomination. Thankfully, the next movie I'm going to review is actually pretty good! Next up: Deadpool! Until then, I'll see you all later!

[thebluesideofthemoon]

The Wall #42: KUNG FU PANDA 3

Time for the next review, another January animated movie about a talking bear, but this one is INFINITELY better in every single way, thankfully. Does that mean that Kung Fu Panda 3 is good, though? I talked about this movie already in my Top 10 Most Disappointing Animated Movies list, so I'm sure you already know what's coming. Now, my review is going to be a bit similar to what I said in that list, but my thoughts have expanded to be more balanced and cover both my positive and negative criticisms about the movie. Let's roll!

Kung Fu Panda 3. At some point this was one of my most anticipated movies of the year and as it turned out it was a big letdown. Now, is this a bad movie? No, not really- it's an okay movie. But that's just kind of it.

In this movie Po (voiced by Jack Black) is now going to be promoted to being the master of the Jade Palace, as well as the master of the Furious Five. However, Po turns out to not be very good at this job. As he contemplates how he can actually prove himself to be a master he encounters a mysterious figure that turns out to be his long-lost biological father, Li Shang (voiced by Bryan Cranston), who's been looking out for his son and wants to take him back to his home in the panda village. Po's adoptive father, Mr. Ping (voiced by James Hong) doesn't take this so well as he's raised Po as his own son all his life. He lets Po go with his biological father so they can catch up and bond, but not without tagging along with Po in secret. This becomes a battle of the dads to see who's the better father and who is fit to raise Po.

Also, there's some bad guy voiced by J. K. Simmons who comes back from the Spirit World for revenge or something, I dunno.

Let me get the good stuff out of the way- for one, the animation is absolutely breathtaking. There’s clearly a lot that went into the animation, and the detailing on the new settings, as well as even the design of Kai and the Jombies (Jade Zombies, for anyone curious) is really neat. I like the character development between Po and… well BOTH of his dads, not to mention their chemistry is pretty enjoyable. It's a pretty lax story compared to the other plot going on involving Kai, but it works. The story between the three of them is actually genuinely heartwarming.

There’s some enjoyable bits of comedy here and there, most of it thanks to the animation; it's very well-timed, and the slapstick is worth some good laughs. I can't remember any really funny lines, except from J. K. Simmons and that's all thanks to his great delivery. I do remember some really great facial expressions which are amusing to watch.

I also like how the movie feels like a grand finale to the series. However, that’s also where my problems with this movie begin.

My overall issue with this movie is that it’s just a weaker version of the first movie. It is INSANELY repetitious to how the first movie is that even the message is exactly the same, and it’s pretty telling because of how this movie is pretty Po-centric, so much so that the rest of the characters get the demoted from secondary characters to supporting cast, and some of them (like Monkey and Viper) could have been dropped from the movie entirely and nothing would change. I mean, remember how the second movie started to build on the relationship between Po and the Furious Five (namely Tigress), and how their strong bond would show just how much of a kickass team they all made, and yet it ALSO showed just how and why Po is the most special out of all of them? Well, DreamWorks sure doesn’t, because the Furious Five get their asses handed to them pretty quickly. Also, I can’t be the only one who is getting tired of seeing them get defeated so easily.

Do you want to know what’s another major downgrade in this movie compared to Kung Fu Panda 1 and 2? The villain. I like Tai Lung, I LOVE Shen, but Kai doesn’t hold a candle to either one of them. For one, for a character that is supposed to be the big threatening bad guy and has some pretty terrifying powers, he’s hardly in the movie and he’s usually just spending his time wisecracking and making remarks about how fearsome he is. I almost feel like the Furious Five were dumbed down just to make this guy look like more of a threat. It doesn’t help that he’s hardly in the movie and, despite having all the tools to be a really fleshed out and interesting villain, he’s pretty much just another big obstacle that Po has to get through because the plot said so.

Also, considering what the ACTUAL plot of the movie is about (that is Po and his dads), this ends causing a very jarring shift in tone from goofy and lighthearted to "OMG, this guy could kill us" but we really have no reason to buy that when there's no build-up to Kai or his character. He's just a two-dimensional asshole AT BEST, but for the most part he's just the big bad monster of the week for Po to fight so he can show how "great he is" in a really predictable and cheesy way- it's TOO cheesy and silly even for this series which, need I remind you, is a send-up to the same kung fu movies that inspired it.

Even if some of these movies weren't that heavy on the plot, and even recycled it straight up, you watched them for the great, expertly-choreographed, BRUTAL action scenes, and want to see the hero beat the villain in a really satisfying manner. This series took elements from those movies but developed into something that was really refreshing, unique, colorful, and fun, but at this point I have seen ALL of these clichés before and this movie hardly brings anything new that even warranted going on the big screen in the first place!

Another thing, I said that I liked the feeling of finality the movie has, but I also have to ask: why would they do this in the first place? Because this series is apparently supposed to keep on going, but HOW could they when by the end of this movie, just WHAT can you do with Po now? Also, if this series is going to keep on going, I really question what could they do for a plot when this movie is just Kung Fu Panda again, while Kung Fu Panda 2 was the first movie again on a much bigger scale. So I have seen this movie three times already, all with different, more colorful coats of paint, and by this point it’s getting really tiring. It’s pretty telling that I have no plans to revisit this movie anytime soon when I have the first two movies and they are pretty much superior in every way, save for the animation getting better (though the first two movies STILL look pretty damn good, so that’s not even a strong recommendation for the third one). It’s pretty sad when a movie turns out to be bad, it’s another thing when a movie makes you feel pretty tired of its franchise, because it clearly wrote itself into a corner and has nowhere else to go. (1,177 words. Music: Mario Kart 8- Dragon Driftway)

Look, I love this series, so if it seems like I'm being overly harsh it's because I waited five years only for them to give the same movie again, while also taking a major step back in development. Sure, it's good in the sense that it's harmless, entertaining, and even fun- anybody can watch it, but for a series that is pretty much the poster boy of "blowing past everyone's expectations", this movie left me pretty cold.

Look, I love this series, so if it seems like I'm being overly harsh it's because I waited five years only for them to give the same movie again, while also taking a major step back in development. Sure, it's good in the sense that it's harmless, entertaining, and even fun- anybody can watch it, but for a series that is pretty much the poster boy of "blowing past everyone's expectations", this movie left me pretty cold. Yeah, I hate to do this to a Kung Fu Panda movie, but a 5 you deserve. Well, at least it's the best movie to have come out in January of that year, because now I have to go through Fifty Shades of Black and... oh dear, am I so not ready. Until then, I'll see you all later.

[thebluesideofthemoon]

The Wall #41: NORM OF THE NORTH

Happy new year, everyone! I sure hope you all had a really great and safe New Year's party, and I for one welcome our new year with open arms! Things can only go up from here, folks. But I'll save all of the formalities for later because there's movies to review! Ahhh yes, it's January and, for me, that only means one thing: IT'S CATCH-UP MONTH (Not "ketchup", you freak, "CATCH UP")! That is correct, for the entirety of January all I'm going to do is catch up on 2016 movies that I missed and talk about them here. Now, I have talked about a few of these before, but not on The Wall, so just for the sake of making it official I'm going to be covering them here, so you can expect to see me re-review Zootopia, Batman v Superman, The Jungle Book, Ratchet & Clank, and The Witch pretty soon, as well as other movies that I saw but never got a chance to talk about. Also, because it's January, AKA the month of supreme shit, let's talk about one of the shittiest movies of 2016: Norm of the North. Yeah, I've already talked about this movie in detail, so I'll try to keep this one short. This is the first actual 2016 movie that I watched and... man, that is not a movie you want to open up the year with, to put it mildly. So why did Hell freeze over to give us this turd? Let's find out.

This movie is a literal piece of excrement. Norm of the North is simply foul.

In this movie a talking polar bear, voiced by Rob Schnider, goes on a big, wild adventure to the foreign land of New York City in order to stop this corrupt environmentally-unfriendly asshat named Mr. Greene (Geddit?!), voiced by Ken Jeong who wants to build condos on the arctic because… I have no freaking idea WHY he wants to do it! He just wants to do it because “hurr dee durr, dis iz a green movie and zave the envairomen”. He also has to rescue his grandfather whom he thought was dead, but was actually kidnapped by Greene. There’s also this “subplot” about this marketing lady voiced by Heather Graham who is trying to get a recommendation from Greene so that her daughter can go to his own alma mater because all other schools are not intellectually challenging. If this description of the movie sounds like a mess it’s because this movie is a fucking mess.

There is so much wrong with this movie, but the worst thing about it is the plot. As I made clear from this description, this movie has a plot that feels like a bunch of stories that were mashed together in the script just to make the movie meet the standard running time to actually be a movie. I mean, the movie starts talking about Norm and his poor hunting skills and how he’ll become a better hunter, but then it switches to this plot about trying to save the Arctic and keep people from living here, which is also one of the stupidest ways to cram in an environmental message because it makes no sense! Even the movie acknowledges that living in the arctic is a stupid idea! This gets even worse when it turns out that Greene’s plan to make condos in the arctic was doomed to fail anyway just because his popularity was down the tubes, but Norm actually HELPS Greene get more popular in a stunt where Greene attempts to SHOOT NORM IN PUBLIC (and keep in mind that everyone in New York thinks- for whatever reason- that Norm is just a dude in a polar bear costume), WHERE EVERYBODY RECORDS WHAT HE DOES, YET BECAUSE NORM SOMEHOW STOPS HIM GREENE BECOMES MORE POPULAR AND PEOPLE WANT TO BUY HOMES FROM HIM?! Why no, this doesn’t make a lick of goddamn sense, thanks for asking!

To say that the people behind this movie didn’t think the plot through would give them the credit to think that there was a shred of thought put into it in the first place. No, this plot was shat out and stitched together Frankenstein-style just to make this movie meet the standard running length of a movie. This wouldn’t piss me off so much if it wasn’t for the fact that ALL THE PLOTS ARE ABSOLUTELY POINTLESS. The plot involving this mom and her kid? You can cut it out and not miss a thing. Norm’s grandfather? It’s not even brought in until halfway through the movie, and even then it doesn’t feel like it adds anything so you may as well just chuck that out the window. Hell, the plot about Norm trying to save the arctic is only complicated by the fact that Norm actually decided to go to New York to become Greene’s marketing tool to sell the arctic to the population of New York.

In other words, this is a movie whose conflict COULD HAVE BEEN RESOLVED EASILY IF NORM LITERALLY DID NOTHING!

As if that’s the only thing wrong with the movie. Sure the plot sounds insane but it’s held together by the power of incredibly tired clichés. They even have the obligatory subplot of giving Norm a half-assed love interest and they don’t even do this RIGHT- Norm’s love interest is in the movie for less than SEVEN MINUTES, most of which are spent at the very beginning of the movie, and then at the very end where, FOR NO REASON, now she’s the mom to Norm’s children. All this for one character who is a complete buffoon, and someone who we know absolutely nothing about save for her name, and that Norm likes her a lot because he, of course, has to act like a tongue-tied idiot. This movie also holds one of all-time least favorite clichés- the one where the kid wants their parent(s)’ attention by quitting their job simply because they work too hard. That cliché can go dive into a volcano and die of a slow, painful, boiling incineration as it carcass erodes into nothingness for being one of the most godawful clichés to EVER exits, AND THIS MOVIE DOES IT BECAUSE IT WAS MADE BY SATAN HIMSELF!

And this movie also features song and dance numbers because why the hell not? One of the songs featured is “Shut Up and Dance” by the band Walk the Moon. A song about ROMANCE featured in a sequence that has nothing but dancing. So the people who worked on this movie couldn’t even be bothered to have listened to a three minute song to understand its context- who am I kidding? No they couldn’t. It’s only in there so they could have a song to sell on the shitty soundtrack that nobody’s buying.

Oh, and this is just a minor nitpick, but the animation sucks hard. All the characters move like they’re made out of rubber and have no weight to them, almost everyone does the same over-the-top wild gestures that were clearly only done because “kids love crazy shit”, and not because it’s an actual performance by a character or anything. The worst offender of this is Greene himself who is always moving in really annoying ways. The man movies like a noodle, and it’s so not fun to watch. This movie just doesn’t have the budget- and for sure not the talent- to do a wild-energy cartoon because its elements don’t allow them to. Comparing this to something like Storks, that has very fluid animation and knew how to keeps its timing varied up to keep the movie’s energy from becoming stale or irritating. Also, it had a far more appealing art style, unlike in Norm where everyone looks like a cheap chew toy you’d buy for your dog.

This movie is filled with so many problems that I didn’t even get to talk about another infuriating aspect about it- the Lemmings. These guys are by far the most blatant example of ripping off that I’ve seen in quite some time as they are an obvious cash-in on the Minions, except with less personality, the Lemmings only have four different designs total, and they can literally do anything regardless of how little sense it makes. At some point Heather Graham’s character remarks that these Lemmings are both “cute and marketable” without a hint of irony. In some ways I’ve got to give some respect to this movie for having the balls to be this openly blatant about its shittiness and borderline plagiarism, but if the movie wasn’t so infuriating to watch I would be saying this as a reason to see it, but it’s soooo not worth it! It really says a lot that the fact that this movie has a twerking polar bear in it is the LEAST of this movie’s problems.

Sadly, the only positive- and this is a big stretch- that I can say about this movie is that at least the voice actors are trying even though they have absolutely no funny material to work with, and it’s pretty clear that they were given absolutely no direction aside from “Ken Jeong just scream all your lines” or “Schnider just be yourself but with a slightly higher inflection in your voice”. This movie was absolutely miserable to sit through. It’s a big slog, the plot is beyond insulting, the message is completely worthless, the movie is just a big eyesore, and the saddest thing of all is that it’s not even a shocking level of bad to be memorable, aside from the fact that those who (unfortunately) DO see it only discover how awful it truly is.

(1,370 words. Music: Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex- Arctic Antics).

I fucking hate this movie. It's easily the second worst animated movie I've seen this decade, one of the worst movies ever, period, and the fact that it was going to be released as a straight-to-DVD but was pushed to go to the big screen just as a glorified advertisement for the DVD really does make my blood boil. But at least nobody in their right mind would ever defend this abomination. It really says something when not even a little kid can get a shred of joy out of watching this.

If not for things like Yoga Hosers and Foodfight!, then this movie would have been an easy 0, but make no mistake, Norm of the North is one of the most wretched animated movies ever made.

Well, that's one movie down... and I've got a bajillion more to go. Joy. I'll see you all next time.

[thebluesideofthemoon]

The Wall #40: 2016 ANIMATED MOVIES IN REVIEW

Timestamps:

0:00- Setting Up 7:20- Welcoming the hosts 30:50- Introduction 40:10- Norm of the North 1:01:55- Kung Fu Panda 3 1:25:28- Zootopia 1:49:39- Ratchet & Clank 2:06:36- The Angry Birds Movie 2:20:00- Finding Dory 2:38:28- The Secret Life of Pets 2:52:12- Ice Age: Collision Course 3:02:00- Sausage Party 3:17:20- Kubo and the Two Strings 3:25:39- The Wild Life 3:33:15- Storks 3:46:20- Trolls 3:52:45- Moana 4:05:51- Sing 4:20:25- CLXcool's Favorite/Least Favorite Animated Movies of 2016 4:21:33- Dokemon's Favorite/Least Favorite Animated Movies of 2016 4:22:00- WindyCityPuma's Favorite/Least Favorite Animated Movies of 2016 4:22:30- MasterBerry's Favorite/Least Favorite Animated Movies of 2016 4:23:30- Blu3Danny's Bottom 5 Animated Movies of 2016 4:28:00- Blu3Danny's Top 5 Animated Movies of 2016 4:30:00- Bonus Ramblings 4:39:50- Closing

The Hosts:

Blu3Danny DeviantART: http://blu3danny.deviantart.com/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Blu3Danny Tumblr: You’re here! YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqBc5nJGNQHI_Vc4PVz01ZQ

CLXcool DeviantART: http://clxcool.deviantart.com/

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