A Look at some more movies I saw that I did not get a full review up for.

To see my mid-year version of this, click HERE

Once again, I have been going to the movies a LOT because I signed up for AMC A-List in the Summer. I normally don’t go to the theater this much, so this is somewhat new territory, but this little experiment has really blessed me with some cool stuff I wouldn’t have seen on my own had I not been able to see movies for “free”. I highly recommend seeing of your theaters do something like it, because it has been awesome. Here are a handful of films I saw this year that I did not do a Full-on review for. I am sometimes too busy with this and don’t want to try to produce long reviews for everything, so these articles are where I “catch up”.

Strays

Strays is one of many comedic films that (in my opinion) falls victim to being ruined by the numerous trailers released by the studio. Almost every single one of the best jokes was spoiled long before I saw the film. I honestly should have avoided the trailers, but it’s a double-edged sword. Had I not watched them, I would have had no idea about the film, but I would have likely laughed hysterically at the theater because the trailers cracked me up. As it was, it was like I was watching a re-run of sorts, which is a real shame.

The movie follows an abandoned dog named Reggie (Wil Ferrell), who was mistreated by a cartoonishly terrible owner named Doug (Will Forte). Reggie falls in with a streetwise Boston Terrier (Jamie Foxx) and his gang of strays and other outcast dogs. Reggie and crew have one goal – to make it back to Doug and bite off his….um….“little Doug” in revenge. It was a fun send-up of films like Homeward Bound, but I really wish I knew less about it going in, but I guess that’s on me.

Jurassic Park (30th Anniversary)

It’s always a roll of the dice when something like this gets re-released. I have had many experiences with movies I absolutely adored as a kid come crashing down as I realized how mediocre, if not astonishingly bad, they are. The good news is, Jurassic Park is just as amazing as it was when I was like ten years old, and I’m glad I got to see it in theaters again. I took my family with me and was able to watch this in 3-D, which was awesome. For a movie not filmed with 3-D in mind, they actually did a wonderful job with the conversion.

One little aside that you can ignore if you want to stay away from old man meanderings – I did notice some logical silliness in the film this time around (being a nitpicky adult has its downside) – namely stuff from the book that the movie could not elaborate on, such as Dr. Grant’s theory that a T-Rex likely had vision based on movement. The movie presents it as Sam Neill just saying, all matter of fact-like, a “T-Rex can only see motion – it’s science”, which made me chuckle a bit. How in the blue hell would he be able to surmise that from fossils? I honestly need to go back and read the books sometime, because it has been a while and I recall it being better there.

The special effects, and even the CGI, are still amazing even after 30 years. It’s a real testament to show that mixing practical effects and computer effects works MUCH better than relying all on CGI – a problem we will run into later on discussing The Marvels.

Overall, a wonderful experience – glad this came out!

Blue Beetle

Even though I am hardcore suffering from superhero fatigue, I went into Blue Beetle as a cheap matinee release with my son and came out pleasantly surprised. The movie isn’t perfect by any means, but it holds a decent balance of comedy and action that harkens back to the beginnings of the MCU, long before every movie became a bloated 200+ million-dollar venture. Had Warner Brothers taken the time to do more films like this from the get-go, I feel like they wouldn’t be in panic mode trying to reset their franchises. Sadly, that impending reboot torpedoed this film before it could even find its audience because most people are likely thinking “who cares?” with these last few releases.

Xolo Maridueña was perfect as Jaime Reyes, introducing a whole new generation of fans to a classic character you don’t see too often. The supporting cast did a great job of introducing a huge family of side-characters without bogging the movie down. George Lopez practically steals the film as Jaime’s crazy conspiracy-minded uncle, and Adriana Barraza plays the gun-toting former revolutionary Nana Reyes to perfection. If anything, I feel like the villains of the film were likely the weakest part of the movie, but the action scenes largely make up for it.

The Creator

2023 was undoubtedly a year full of surprises in terms of the film idustry. One film in particular managed to captivate my attention and surpass my expectations like few others this year – The Creator. Directed by the exceptionally talented Gareth Edwards, whose impressive portfolio boasts science fiction epics that resonate with fans who crave more substance than just extravagant, big-budget spectacles at the box office, such as the remarkable film Rogue One, which I consider to be one of my all-time favorite Star Wars movies. What sets The Creator apart is its ability to evoke a similar sense of awe and admiration as films like District 9, which incidentally happens to be another movie that I absolutely adored.

Despite its incorporation of inhuman characters throughout the storyline, The Creator manages to infuse a profound sense of heart that is often absent in many modern science fiction films. This, along with its surprising affordability compared to other similar productions in the genre, raises questions about Hollywood’s reliance on endless half-billion dollar sequels as the formula for infinite financial success, echoing sentiments I previously shared in my review of Godzilla Minus One.

The narrative of The Creator, together with the impeccable casting choices and great special effects, combine to create a truly spectacular experience. While the central premise may not be entirely original, bearing resemblances to thematically similar works like The Animatrix and even Terminator, the film distinguishes itself by shifting the setting to Asia and exploring the intricacies of its own meticulously crafted world. However, it is worth noting that The Creator faced the unfortunate circumstance of being released during a period saturated with discussions about corporate-based artificial intelligence, which had become somewhat of a buzzword among the tech crowd. In a time when AI was alternately hailed as the savior of civilization or condemned as a harbinger of doom, the film’s exploration of this topic could have potentially led to some audience fatigue or skepticism. As of this writing, the film has made a slight profit, but nothing astounding in any way – although long-term sleeper hits have been the norm this year.

I firmly believe that The Creator possesses all the necessary ingredients to eventually achieve cult classic status. The upcoming release on Hulu presents a fresh opportunity for the casual viewers who may have missed its initial theatrical run to discover and appreciate the movie.

The Canterville Ghost

Not a ton to say about this one – an adequate children’s film based on a classic novel with a stellar voice cast held back a bit by the low budget animation. While I’m not a stickler for everything looking incredible, this honestly does look like a twenty-year-old CGI Nickelodeon show. This had a weird limited release where there was literally a single theater in the entire Kansas City area that randomly had this at 9 AM on a Sunday (and as far as I could tell that was it)! With this being a British film, I’m sure the US release was not a priority, but I haven’t seen something sent out to die quite like this in a while.

A Haunting in Venice

When it comes to Halloween movies, this year it seemed like the lion’s share of non-gore filled “spooky movies” all came out long ago back in the summertime. I mentioned this in my previous round-up, when discussing films such as Haunted Mansion, and was confused by their timing. Since I have moved somewhat past watching modern horror films due to my distaste for what I would consider “jump scare” movies, I eventually settled on watching A Haunting in Venice. This is the third film in the new-ish Kenneth Branagh-helmed Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot film series, and it may just be the best one yet.

When I was younger, I used to watch a lot of PBS, and as a result, I would occasionally watch episodes of a show called Mystery that aired throughout the 80s and 90s. It very well could still be on today, but I am not certain. While Mystery was just a way to repackage British television shows and films of the time, in a similar way to another popular show called Masterpiece Theater, certain parts of the series resonated with me even at a young age. I absolutely loved watching Hercule Poirot stories (then starring David Suchet). With these new films, there is an opportunity to jump in and reacquaint myself with a character that I have always enjoyed.

A Haunting in Venice is an interesting movie that revolves around ghosts and curses and other topics that are fairly atypical for a somewhat skeptical character such as Hercule Poirot to handle. There are long periods of time where the audience is asked to consider that something paranormal is actually afoot when in the back of your head, you know that it’s gonna be some explainable thing such as any good mystery story, including the likes of Sherlock Holmes and Scooby-Doo. By avoiding the lavish, and very expensive, ensemble casts of the previous two films and shifting the tone to more of a claustrophobic spooky feeling, this really captured the vibe of the original books. Even though I had already solved a decent portion of the film halfway through, I enjoyed every second of A Haunting in Venice and was still surprised at how certain things unfolded.

The Holdovers

The moment I saw the trailer for The Holdovers I knew I had to see it. In a world of endless CGI superhero films, here was a movie that stood out simply due to how old school it looked. And by old-school, I don’t mean in a gimmicky hollow way. In fact, the entire presentation, the way the film is shot, and many more aspects scream that this was a film made in 1970, not 2023. It has a deliberate old-school sensibility that I appreciated and walks the fine line between being a drama and a comedy that is right in that sweet spot for me. I don’t go out of my way to see Christmas movies too often, but despite the setting The Holdovers stands out because it forgoes all of the clichés of many holiday films.

The movie tells the story of an unlikely trio of people stuck at a prep school over the holiday season in 1970. Paul Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, a teacher who has been instructed to essentially babysit a number of students that have nowhere to go over the holiday season. These “holdovers” might be foreign students, kids whose families are gone, or kids whose families are just too busy. One such student is Angus Tully, as played by Dominic Sessa, a troubled young man who is one incident shy of being forced into military school. Paul and Angus have a rocky start but bond over the holiday with the school’s cook Mary Lamb, as played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and make the best of their predicament.

For a film that most people don’t even have on their radar, The Holdovers is easily one of my top five films of the year and an instant classic.

The Marvels

Let me just get this out of the way right off the bat-I did not hate the marvels, I just wish it was a little bit better. The marvels has become the convenient whipping boy for the entire film industry at the moment largely due to the fact that it cost and astronomical amount of movie to make and somehow came across looking much cheaper than it actually was. Considering how unpopular the first Captain Marvel movie was with certain segments of the American population, one would assume that blowing nearly $300 million on a sequel was likely a bad call. Unfortunately, Disney did not do this and faced one of the biggest box office flops of the entire year. Personally, I think this is somewhat unwarranted because I have seen much worse films this year, hell I have seen much worse marvel movies this year. But in a year when every big budget spectacular coming from these large studios has utterly flopped it seems that the goose that laid the golden egg is starting to die.

First let’s talk about the good things about this movie. Brie Larson, the accress that portrays Captain Marvel seems to finally be able to portray a character that is at least somewhat likable. They explained the personality shift within the movie as her memory being slowly unlocked as she reverses years and years of Kree conditioning and mind control that left her a uncaring unemotional cardboard cut out of a person. I actually really liked this because I was previously aggravated that the character was portrayed that way in these movies considering the fact that she is not really like that in the comic books. The inclusion of ms. Marvel, Nick Fury, and monica rambeau really flush out the cast and all of the characters work well together most of the time. The movie tries to stay fun and lighthearted throughout the duration of the runtime which is somewhat refreshing considering how bleak some of the last few Avengers related movies have been.

With that out of the way let’s talk about the problems I had with the movie. For the first time in any marvel related property I was utterly flabbergasted at how bad the computer generated effects were in this film. Many fans will recall that the first Captain Marvel film had a scene where her pet cat “Goose” was revealed to be a horrific alien creature with grotesque tentacles deep within its goal at that can grab and ingest anything within about a six foot radius. While the special effects for this were not the best, the scene was very fast and was pretty funny. Now imagine that exact same scene except goose has had hundreds of kittens that all proceed to do the same tentacle attack no matter how bad it looks multiple times. It was one of those situations that easily could be summed up as “less is more”, but some poor overworked VFX artists were likely forced to do what they could with some absurdly small amount of time and we ended up with what we ended up with. Parts of the plot are also not the best that particular scene I was talking about comes out of nowhere for the most part and seems like it’s just in the film to give nick fury something to do. The main villainous of the movie is interesting but doesn’t really stand out very much and some of the rules established in the movie are kind of vague. I will say, though, the marvels did have a post credit scene that rivaled most of the post credit scenes that I’ve seen so far considering what is shown and how much I was a fan of this property as a child.

If you keep an open mind don’t mind the movie looking kind of bad the marvels was pretty fun albeit a pretty average movie all around.

Next Goal Wins

I know this movie did poorly and was not received well, but I loved it. It was the right sort of quirky fun with a heart that I enjoy in a sports movie. In many ways, this movie feels a LOT like an American Samoan equivalent to a movie such as Cool Runnings. Just swap bobsledding for soccer, John Candy for Michael Fassbender, and add a colorful array of wacky characters all based on real-life people. The film follows the notoriously bad American Samoan national soccer team, a team so bad that they lost a qualifying match for the World Cup 31-0 in 2002 to Australia. Fassbender plays Thomas Rongen, a hot-headed coach who has been basically punished by being assigned to the team. Their goal is a modest one – to score at least one goal – that’s it!

Next Goal Wins has the same sort of weird humor that Taika Waititi puts in a lot of his films, and although the jokes can be a bit over-the-top at times, they made me laugh. That’s definitely something I can’t say for a lot of comedic films I’ve seen this year. The movie shows a bit of the culture of American Samoa including the island’s religiosity and their acceptance of trans issues that may shock some people. While some of this is obviously farcical, it’s done with heart and ends up making a fun movie that many missed out on.

Migration

In the week between Christmas and New Years Day I had some time off as did my son, so we decided to see some movies that we had missed. With something like fifty films coming out during Christmas week (of course I’m being facetious), we had a lot to catch up on. The first film in this run was Illumination’s new animated feature Migration. I loved the first Despicable Me film, but somewhat got tired of Minions at one point, so this sisn’t a studio I generally keep up with. That said, Super Mario Brothers was really good, and Migration turns out to be a pretty well-made kids movie as well.

The film tells the story of a family of mallard ducks that seem destined to stay in their small pond they have always lived in for the rest of their lives. They watch as other ducks stop by on their way to wondrous vacations in the south, but Mack Mallard, as played by Kumail Nanjiani, has put his webbed foot down. It is not until Mack realizes that he is destined to follow in his Uncle Dan’s footsteps (Danny DeVito) of being a loser that lays in the mud all day sleeping, that he relents and allows his wife and children to finally go outside. While nothing crazy, considering it’s a kids’ film, it is an adequate film that has a fair share of thrills and laughs.

This film was paired with a short film starring Despicable Me’s Vector and the Minnions.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

I’m torn here because in many ways Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is probably the better of the two films in this duology, but is mired by external tomfoolery (like The Flash was) and is coming out as a last whimper before the entire slate of DC film franchises is reset, making this film seem somewhat unnecessary. By “outside tomfoolery”, I of course am talking about the continuously discussed three-ring circus that was the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp court battle, Warner’s attempt at minimizing her role in the film despite Elon Musk trying to assert some weird rich guy power on the film to keep her in, and an overall backlash and boycott that I’m sure the film will not recover from. Costing something like 200-300 million dollars, this is yet again another bloated comic book film releasing to a tepid response that nobody cares about.

Notice I said it was the best in the duology? I absolutely LOVE Black Manta, and this was a great showcase for that character and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as an actor. Many felt Black Manta was “chumped out” in the last film, and he gets his due here. Unfortunately, a lot of the film built around that central plot is somewhat of a mess due to the above editing, and it almost seems like a series of vignettes loosely connected together. There’s too much globetrotting and CGI stuff going on to really get a sense of realness here, and this honestly looks more like an animated film than most comic movies today. They try to create the same sort of forced ally vibe that you see in a Marvel Thor/Loki movie with Aquaman and Ocean Master, but with the characters being so different it thankfully comes across better than a total rip-off of that dynamic. Patrick Wilson is great as the straight man to Jason Mamoa’s silliness and their dynamic is one of the better parts of the film.

Despite its numerous flaws, I had fun with this movie, but am confused as to why this came out so late? Surely just releasing this last year would have avoided the problems the film is having with so-called “superhero fatigue”, and maybe it wouldn’t be so much of an afterthought.

Wonka

Before I saw this film, my entire thought process was “WHY?”. Was Charlie and the Chocolate factory, as a franchise, really something that needed a remake like fifteen years ago? Not really. How about an ill-advised prequel in 2023? Even less! That said, my son wanted to see this, and I was intrigued as to how this would even work. Timothée Chalamet was really good in Dune, so I was willing to give him a chance as Willy Wonka, but held my breath and went in with zero expectations. After watching this, I have to say that I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

Wonka serves as a decent prequel to the original film from the seventies, has a charm with it’s songs, and actually captures the essence of any Roald Dahl story much better than the Tim Burton film did. It does rely a bit too much on sight-gags and has a lot of unnecessary CGI, but it’s not too over-the-top with either. I can now see why this film is doing so well as it is one of those family films that everyone can love and somewhat fleshed the backstory out for a beloved franchise. I’m glad I saw this.

Trolls Band Together

On December 31st, for my last movie for the year, my son and I caught a matinee showing of Trolls Band Together, and while it really wasn’t for me, he loved it and wanted to see it again. I’m not really into the boy band scene of the late nineties / early 2000s, but I’d assume of you were, this movie would be amazing considering all the little nods to that time in music and full-on musical performances like an *N Sync reunion of sorts. Solid kids movie, but for me one of the weaker ones I’ve seen this year. Like most Dreamworks kids films, just has a lot of gags and not much substance.

Conclusion:

I had a crazy year with movie watching this year! Here’s a look back at most of the films I saw in the theater (I’m sure I’m missing some), and we’ll see how 2024 goes. With 2023 signifying the beginning of the end for superhero movies (potentially), and the rise of low-budget blockbusters, it could be a crazy year for filmgoers! Stay tuned for more because I still have that AMC A-List pass, and there are still films I want to see!

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