usernamewithheld Reviews

Vox Lux (2018)

A Wasted Opportunity

[4/10 · 20 December 2018]

The subject matter and overall meaning behind this story is great; a girl who is involved in a terrible, topical tragedy and finds unexpected fame as a result. It's a wonderful story to examine and discuss fame, pop culture, etc, but unfortunately the overall presentation of this idea falls flat.

The performances were strong, especially and expectedly from Natalie Portman (although I don't agree with casting the same actor for multiple parts). That's kind of where the positives stop. The inconsistent pacing and 'throw everything at the wall and see what sticks' mentality made engaging in the movie difficult. One could argue that the hectic nature of the film is representative of Celeste's thought process, but the execution seemed unintentional and rather unnecessary at times.

I wanted to love this film, and I give kudos to Brady Corbet for exploring this story, but I feel it had a lot to say and ended up not saying much.

The Nun (2018)

Predictable "Horror" Film, Without the Horror

[3/10 · 10 September 2018]

If films are going to rely on jump scares to bring the horror, they should at least be creative and unpredictable. This movie is far from that. Every cliché in the book, poor dialogue and script, and underwhelming performances, make this quite a bore to watch. There was a time when silly jump scares could carry a movie but those times are long gone. More horror, less cliché please.

Mile 22 (2018)

Mark Wahlberg yells at people for 94 minutes.

[4/10 · 30 August 2018]

That's literally it. There's no character development and no plot (unless you count the last 5 minutes where they squeeze in as much explanation for what you just watched as they can). The characters were all over-the-top, which with a poor script, just came off as awkward and cheesy. The only reason this even got a 4 was Iko Uwais. His fight scenes were the only notable part of the movie, all the other action sequences were overly-edited and incoherent. Even the dialogue scenes were far too heavily edited and felt extremely choppy.

If anything, I would've preferred following Iko Uwais' character and discovering how and why he was in that situation instead of just seeing Mark Wahlberg be a dick to people.

Not a bad, albeit unoriginal, idea, just poorly executed.

Ocean's Eight (2018)

Mediocre Movie, Poor Reboot

[4/10 · 8 June 2018]

*SPOILERS

As a standalone movie, this wasn't any worse than most of the stuff Hollywood produces (on-the-surface interesting characters who lack depth, forced comic relief, predictable plot progression) but as a continuation of the Ocean series, this falls very flat. The connections to previous movies felt like they were just thrown in so they could say it was part of the series. Why/how did Danny die? Either they left it out for a sequel (which makes bringing it up here pointless) or they couldn't think of a way to incorporate it which makes including it a poor writing decision. The only other connection it had to the previous movies were the cameos, which, again felt forced and unrealistic.

Overall, this movie lacks the character and spirit of the previous Ocean movies which is it's ultimate downfall. Were this a separate movie, it could just be chalked up as your standard Hollywood mediocrity, but being connected with the Ocean franchise, this is ultimately an unnecessary disappointment.