thirtyfivestories
Joined Jun 2014
Welcome to the new profile
We're still working on updating some profile features. To see the badges, ratings breakdowns, and polls for this profile, please go to the previous version.
Ratings1.9K
thirtyfivestories's rating
Reviews63
thirtyfivestories's rating
Five years removed from the infectious first installment, comes a serviceable extension of a story that already had a proper ending. The subtitle The Second Part is surely a half truth considering how this narrative slapped together by the original writers Christopher Miller and Phil Lord seems tacked on in a "Oh let's take a victory lap then" sense. The new director Mike Mitchell is planted into a zero sum game as he tries to reignite the novelty of the first film while propelling a more mature plot that Miller and Lord insisted on being needlessly convoluted. This sequel comes off as a afterthought worthy to stand beside the other spinoff LEGO films, but lacks all of the magic of its predecessor.
The magic present in The LEGO Movie resides in the playful allegory of capitalism mixed with the earned nostalgia of the animation's medium. Not to mention the brilliant reveal of a child's imagination directing the entire story. These are all elements revisited the second time around, but the trick has already been explained by the magician. The world of Brickville goes through sufficient changes almost immediately once toddler-sized LEGO creations attack with unrivaled fury. The brick civilization reverts to a Mad Max world after the invincible fat-bricked organisms regularly search and destroy anything colorful or shiny.
Through some less-than-subtle live action mirage shots early in the film, its apparent that Finn (Jadon Sand) the boy mastermind in the first film is being plagued by his younger sister Bianca (Brooklynn Prince). Her entry-level LEGO creations clash with his more involved and complex structures, and the result is a sibling pair never learning to play in symbiosis. Of course this conflict is merely implied before the lazy live action finale that resolves the paper thin dispute, and wholly lacks the gusto of the first movie's twist. The jig is already up from scene one of the sequel, because we are aware of the children's narrative dictatorship, so none of the LEGO characters' sentience ever feels authentic.
Chris Pratt returns to voice Emmet a happy-go-lucky construction worker who retains a life of cheer in the apocalyptic wasteland. Elizabeth Banks also reprises her role as Lucy, the brawn and brains to Emmet's fumbling optimism. Lucy desperately attempts to calibrate Emmet's persona to something more appropriate to the ruined world they now live in, but he maintains the "everything is awesome" outlook that figures problematic in a much more adult environment. In a hardly tongue-in-cheek fashion, a character outright states the thesis of the movie to be "a statement on the waning affects of adolescence on imagination." This stands as the most egregious example of "meta exploitation," but several runner ups tail close behind.
Falling victim to exhausting cleverness, LEGO Movie 2 doesn't know when to edit its goofs. When you merely reformat the first film's plot to fit another child builder, new additions need to elevate the otherwise regurgitated formula. These additions include ramping up the meta meter to 11 and including two more banger tracks to hopefully burrow into the viewers' minds. The main attraction song here has a hook the repeats endlessly, "This song's gonna get stuck inside your head." Oh and I mustn't forget the cameos, which come with This is the End regularity, and if you can imagine, with far less originality.
I didn't waste your time by running you down a plot synopsis for good reason. The film plays with your expectations in a cheap and unearned fashion without offering any reasonable explanation upon the conclusion other than, "We just wanted to plant red herrings, because...reasons." Screenwriters will go to great (and absurd) lengths to make an unoriginal script appear more interesting. This parasitic sequel will deliver many chuckles and feels to audiences that have already surrendered to the committee-made trajectory of the LEGO universe, but I feel somber for those choosing to double feature this lackadaisical copy with its bold predecessor.
The magic present in The LEGO Movie resides in the playful allegory of capitalism mixed with the earned nostalgia of the animation's medium. Not to mention the brilliant reveal of a child's imagination directing the entire story. These are all elements revisited the second time around, but the trick has already been explained by the magician. The world of Brickville goes through sufficient changes almost immediately once toddler-sized LEGO creations attack with unrivaled fury. The brick civilization reverts to a Mad Max world after the invincible fat-bricked organisms regularly search and destroy anything colorful or shiny.
Through some less-than-subtle live action mirage shots early in the film, its apparent that Finn (Jadon Sand) the boy mastermind in the first film is being plagued by his younger sister Bianca (Brooklynn Prince). Her entry-level LEGO creations clash with his more involved and complex structures, and the result is a sibling pair never learning to play in symbiosis. Of course this conflict is merely implied before the lazy live action finale that resolves the paper thin dispute, and wholly lacks the gusto of the first movie's twist. The jig is already up from scene one of the sequel, because we are aware of the children's narrative dictatorship, so none of the LEGO characters' sentience ever feels authentic.
Chris Pratt returns to voice Emmet a happy-go-lucky construction worker who retains a life of cheer in the apocalyptic wasteland. Elizabeth Banks also reprises her role as Lucy, the brawn and brains to Emmet's fumbling optimism. Lucy desperately attempts to calibrate Emmet's persona to something more appropriate to the ruined world they now live in, but he maintains the "everything is awesome" outlook that figures problematic in a much more adult environment. In a hardly tongue-in-cheek fashion, a character outright states the thesis of the movie to be "a statement on the waning affects of adolescence on imagination." This stands as the most egregious example of "meta exploitation," but several runner ups tail close behind.
Falling victim to exhausting cleverness, LEGO Movie 2 doesn't know when to edit its goofs. When you merely reformat the first film's plot to fit another child builder, new additions need to elevate the otherwise regurgitated formula. These additions include ramping up the meta meter to 11 and including two more banger tracks to hopefully burrow into the viewers' minds. The main attraction song here has a hook the repeats endlessly, "This song's gonna get stuck inside your head." Oh and I mustn't forget the cameos, which come with This is the End regularity, and if you can imagine, with far less originality.
I didn't waste your time by running you down a plot synopsis for good reason. The film plays with your expectations in a cheap and unearned fashion without offering any reasonable explanation upon the conclusion other than, "We just wanted to plant red herrings, because...reasons." Screenwriters will go to great (and absurd) lengths to make an unoriginal script appear more interesting. This parasitic sequel will deliver many chuckles and feels to audiences that have already surrendered to the committee-made trajectory of the LEGO universe, but I feel somber for those choosing to double feature this lackadaisical copy with its bold predecessor.
Exactly one year after his last feature film that saw him ending (fingers-crossed) the outlived Insidious franchise, Adam Robitel returns to begin another franchise that surely will not have the lifespan of the one it is imitating. He delivers a pilot installment that maybe only Jason Blum would be proud of, hitting various Blumhouse beats with more enthusiasm than even last year's game-to-film adaption Truth or Dare managed. These Blumian (a descriptor I am pained to invent) tropes include characters reading aloud text like a zealous mother, a clunky ten minute group ice-breaking session that clinically checks all the expository boxes, and the "twist-ception(s)".
Six individuals all receive the same elegantly quirky puzzle box from colleagues and loved ones. Ben, a grocery boy, attempts to use brute force to open the cube, while Zoey, a physics student scribbles diagrams and notes as she unlocks what is an invitation to the world's most immersive escape room. Jason, a financial wizard, utilizes YouTube tutorials to crack his gift, and apparently the $10,000 prize for escaping still appeals to a man who initially expected a Prius key when his package first arrived. After all the participants are gathered in a waiting room of a seemingly barren high-rise, we're introduced to a happy-go-lucky trucker dad, a gamer boy turned escape room enthusiast, and an intimidating woman (her caricature is revealed later) rounding out the players now trapped in what will become an architecturally perplexing series of rooms.
The clues scattered throughout the rooms are just barely more subtle than the hints plopped into the dialogue revealing the unifying trait of all the participants. It is far from a spoiler to comment on how painfully obvious that the escape room is more a social experiment than a game. However, our gamer boy Danny tries his darndest to immerse us into the game by effectively giving a "Escape Rooms 101" lecture to the gang. Trucker dad Mike eats this up with great appreciation as will many audiences who aren't privy to the new entertainment craze. This goes beyond exposition dumping, and feels eerily similar to an in-game tutorial, which oddly enough, doesn't feel right in a movie.
Where the film lacks creativity in character development, its set design flourishes with imaginative decisions that tie into the players' pasts with relative frequency, providing a human anchor to an otherwise procedural death trot similar to the cult beloved Cube. An upside down jukebox bar steals the show by offering the most integrated use of clues worthy of an indie walking simulator game remake. But collect all the rooms together, and the difficulty curve resembles a goose bump: not challenging in the slightest. I knew that this would be where this film lived or died, and it perished early into the first room when I hacked the game's system and saw a much more efficient solution involving glasses and a couch. I effectively mentally speed-ran the rooms in an effort to milk joy from my viewing.
If predictability is the film's greatest sin, then the dialogue is the lesser sin. The performances from the auxiliary characters are particularly rigid, but this too can be blamed on down-right lazy writing that at one point has a college professor give our wiz kid Zoey an extracurricular homework assignment of "doing one thing that scares you". Yet I'm still fearful of a potentially greater sin lurking in the closing moments of what I'll call the fourth act of an otherwise brisk movie: the sequel(s) option. The same blue-balls Netflix original series "binge me some more daddy" gut punch arose, and now SONY's plan was revealed. Once again, I do not view this as being in the spoiler family, because what is inevitable is inevitable.
Now only time will tell if they can rise to sustained success that Twisted Pictures basked in with the 8-film series chronicling a sinister puzzle designer. The difference here is tragically obvious, Escape Room's puzzle designer is totally morally deprived. There must be a method to the madness, this mastermind only has business propelling their madness, which I'm saddened to report doesn't generate the intriguing tension between torturer and victim that its gorier predecessors at least attempted to balance. Speaking of gore, my first "so PG-13 is what we're going to do?" badge of 2019 goes to this gem for copying the formula, but diluting it in the process. A worthy excuse to create a dungeon crawler thriller I will admit, but contrary to gamer boy Danny's hilariously ignorant exclamation after barely evading flames, this one is far from immersive.
Six individuals all receive the same elegantly quirky puzzle box from colleagues and loved ones. Ben, a grocery boy, attempts to use brute force to open the cube, while Zoey, a physics student scribbles diagrams and notes as she unlocks what is an invitation to the world's most immersive escape room. Jason, a financial wizard, utilizes YouTube tutorials to crack his gift, and apparently the $10,000 prize for escaping still appeals to a man who initially expected a Prius key when his package first arrived. After all the participants are gathered in a waiting room of a seemingly barren high-rise, we're introduced to a happy-go-lucky trucker dad, a gamer boy turned escape room enthusiast, and an intimidating woman (her caricature is revealed later) rounding out the players now trapped in what will become an architecturally perplexing series of rooms.
The clues scattered throughout the rooms are just barely more subtle than the hints plopped into the dialogue revealing the unifying trait of all the participants. It is far from a spoiler to comment on how painfully obvious that the escape room is more a social experiment than a game. However, our gamer boy Danny tries his darndest to immerse us into the game by effectively giving a "Escape Rooms 101" lecture to the gang. Trucker dad Mike eats this up with great appreciation as will many audiences who aren't privy to the new entertainment craze. This goes beyond exposition dumping, and feels eerily similar to an in-game tutorial, which oddly enough, doesn't feel right in a movie.
Where the film lacks creativity in character development, its set design flourishes with imaginative decisions that tie into the players' pasts with relative frequency, providing a human anchor to an otherwise procedural death trot similar to the cult beloved Cube. An upside down jukebox bar steals the show by offering the most integrated use of clues worthy of an indie walking simulator game remake. But collect all the rooms together, and the difficulty curve resembles a goose bump: not challenging in the slightest. I knew that this would be where this film lived or died, and it perished early into the first room when I hacked the game's system and saw a much more efficient solution involving glasses and a couch. I effectively mentally speed-ran the rooms in an effort to milk joy from my viewing.
If predictability is the film's greatest sin, then the dialogue is the lesser sin. The performances from the auxiliary characters are particularly rigid, but this too can be blamed on down-right lazy writing that at one point has a college professor give our wiz kid Zoey an extracurricular homework assignment of "doing one thing that scares you". Yet I'm still fearful of a potentially greater sin lurking in the closing moments of what I'll call the fourth act of an otherwise brisk movie: the sequel(s) option. The same blue-balls Netflix original series "binge me some more daddy" gut punch arose, and now SONY's plan was revealed. Once again, I do not view this as being in the spoiler family, because what is inevitable is inevitable.
Now only time will tell if they can rise to sustained success that Twisted Pictures basked in with the 8-film series chronicling a sinister puzzle designer. The difference here is tragically obvious, Escape Room's puzzle designer is totally morally deprived. There must be a method to the madness, this mastermind only has business propelling their madness, which I'm saddened to report doesn't generate the intriguing tension between torturer and victim that its gorier predecessors at least attempted to balance. Speaking of gore, my first "so PG-13 is what we're going to do?" badge of 2019 goes to this gem for copying the formula, but diluting it in the process. A worthy excuse to create a dungeon crawler thriller I will admit, but contrary to gamer boy Danny's hilariously ignorant exclamation after barely evading flames, this one is far from immersive.
The sophomore effort from actor turned director (boy is this becoming a trend) Brady Corbet is dying to be inventive. The ambition to break conventions certainly plays as charming, but in the "look at the adorable child ad libbing this karaoke song" brand of charming. His experimenting begins early on with half of the end credits appearing over a long shot documenting a static scene of our protagonist bathing in the tragedy that will ignite the jumpy life events shown later. This is only a couple scenes deep into the movie, and it is also ineffective (partially because there's no apparent intended effect). Even so, this quirk remains the most forgivable of Corbet's decisions.
The voice of Willem Dafoe acts as a Virgil figure narrating Celeste's (Natalie Portman) fortunate misfortunes that led to her pop stardom. Celeste's crucible event occurs in a middle school classroom with musical notations plastered all over the walls. She sits attentive and diligent, eager to be trained by her clarinet-totting teacher. A boy adorned in glam mascara and eclipsed eyes enters, interrupting the roll call with more than words. What follows has been labelled as "birth" by a handy title screen demarcating the film's Act One. Divided into a prologue, two acts, and a finale, we're hardly treated to an essential utilization of the segmented narrative that filmmakers such as Lars von Trier have perfected.
Teenage Celeste is played by the rather mechanical Raffey Cassidy, who also plays (drum roll, kind sir) Celeste's daughter Albertine. This would initially appear as rather cunning way of allowing a substance-dependent adult Celeste to be maternally reminded of her squandered youth and innocence, however, the film makes no effort to support this surrealist reading. In fact it has the gumption to re-use yet another actress once the timeline shifts from 1999 to 2017. Eleanor, Celeste's older sister, is played by the less rigid Stacy Martin both as a teen and a 30 plus year old adult. To recap: Celeste gets to hop into a Natalie Portman body after 18 years, but Eleanor stays put. Much credit to Martin here for differentiating teen from adult in tastefully understated ways; the growth and grime that Celeste shoves her through shines through as adult Eleanor withstands verbal barrages one moment, then caresses her tormentor sister's head backstage in the next.
The young sisters compose a song to perform at a prayer vigil being held for the community torn asunder by the act of evil that has placed Celeste in a neck brace, an accessory that will change into scarfs and chokers as her fame blossoms. Eleanor deserves total writing credits, but Celeste is the one being wheeled out onto the church's stage. Local news recording the vigil cracks open the lid of possibilities, and the sisters have an anthem on their hands once they adjust the lyrics changing "the I's to we's". Immediately (and I mean immediately; no transition) the girls are led into a recording studio by The Manager (Jude Law). This is actually how he is credited, signifying how one-minded he acts in relation to Celeste. He uses all means necessary to build and maintain Celeste's pop royalty. Celeste's father appear once, and his face is obscured nailing in the reality of no parental nurture available to the budding star.
Her legal guardianship is ultimately pushed onto Eleanor, who will also take on that role for Celeste's own daughter. The film plants this as one of several consequences when one decides to sell their image. This act of self-marketing is compared curiously to radical nihilism with Dafoe decoding the film's intent over well executed camcorder montage footage implemented to advance the sister's slide into a vicious cycle of reliance upon one another. Celeste is nothing without Eleanor, completely unstable without her caring touch and intimate knowledge of her sister's greatest curse. Eleanor, however, is entirely supported financially by her hollow sister, and Albertine might be the only daughter she may ever have. All of Eleanor's talent and wisdom isn't stolen by Celeste, but given away freely. Reminiscent of the documentary Whitney revealing the relentless blood pact within the Houston family, the sister's entanglement carries the emotional heft of a film that otherwise blindly stabs at shocking imagery.
I will briefly mention an intriguing reading introduced by the narrator in the film's closing minutes. Without giving any detail, it's one of those scapegoat twilight revelations that can give Corbet an out for some of the issues I have expressed here. Strangely enough, I am grateful for this bit of spice for it allows the mind to wonder, combing through all the previous events. You're encouraged to view them with a surrealist lens, and some devious theory might pop up. This by no means corrects all the prior flaws, but it does allow you to imagine a better film within the otherwise static one that was ultimately delivered. Special mention to the pop songs crafted for Celeste by Sia, providing the vapid lyrical representation of a genre designed "to make people feel happy". What is unknown is that these hit-makers are far from happy.
The voice of Willem Dafoe acts as a Virgil figure narrating Celeste's (Natalie Portman) fortunate misfortunes that led to her pop stardom. Celeste's crucible event occurs in a middle school classroom with musical notations plastered all over the walls. She sits attentive and diligent, eager to be trained by her clarinet-totting teacher. A boy adorned in glam mascara and eclipsed eyes enters, interrupting the roll call with more than words. What follows has been labelled as "birth" by a handy title screen demarcating the film's Act One. Divided into a prologue, two acts, and a finale, we're hardly treated to an essential utilization of the segmented narrative that filmmakers such as Lars von Trier have perfected.
Teenage Celeste is played by the rather mechanical Raffey Cassidy, who also plays (drum roll, kind sir) Celeste's daughter Albertine. This would initially appear as rather cunning way of allowing a substance-dependent adult Celeste to be maternally reminded of her squandered youth and innocence, however, the film makes no effort to support this surrealist reading. In fact it has the gumption to re-use yet another actress once the timeline shifts from 1999 to 2017. Eleanor, Celeste's older sister, is played by the less rigid Stacy Martin both as a teen and a 30 plus year old adult. To recap: Celeste gets to hop into a Natalie Portman body after 18 years, but Eleanor stays put. Much credit to Martin here for differentiating teen from adult in tastefully understated ways; the growth and grime that Celeste shoves her through shines through as adult Eleanor withstands verbal barrages one moment, then caresses her tormentor sister's head backstage in the next.
The young sisters compose a song to perform at a prayer vigil being held for the community torn asunder by the act of evil that has placed Celeste in a neck brace, an accessory that will change into scarfs and chokers as her fame blossoms. Eleanor deserves total writing credits, but Celeste is the one being wheeled out onto the church's stage. Local news recording the vigil cracks open the lid of possibilities, and the sisters have an anthem on their hands once they adjust the lyrics changing "the I's to we's". Immediately (and I mean immediately; no transition) the girls are led into a recording studio by The Manager (Jude Law). This is actually how he is credited, signifying how one-minded he acts in relation to Celeste. He uses all means necessary to build and maintain Celeste's pop royalty. Celeste's father appear once, and his face is obscured nailing in the reality of no parental nurture available to the budding star.
Her legal guardianship is ultimately pushed onto Eleanor, who will also take on that role for Celeste's own daughter. The film plants this as one of several consequences when one decides to sell their image. This act of self-marketing is compared curiously to radical nihilism with Dafoe decoding the film's intent over well executed camcorder montage footage implemented to advance the sister's slide into a vicious cycle of reliance upon one another. Celeste is nothing without Eleanor, completely unstable without her caring touch and intimate knowledge of her sister's greatest curse. Eleanor, however, is entirely supported financially by her hollow sister, and Albertine might be the only daughter she may ever have. All of Eleanor's talent and wisdom isn't stolen by Celeste, but given away freely. Reminiscent of the documentary Whitney revealing the relentless blood pact within the Houston family, the sister's entanglement carries the emotional heft of a film that otherwise blindly stabs at shocking imagery.
I will briefly mention an intriguing reading introduced by the narrator in the film's closing minutes. Without giving any detail, it's one of those scapegoat twilight revelations that can give Corbet an out for some of the issues I have expressed here. Strangely enough, I am grateful for this bit of spice for it allows the mind to wonder, combing through all the previous events. You're encouraged to view them with a surrealist lens, and some devious theory might pop up. This by no means corrects all the prior flaws, but it does allow you to imagine a better film within the otherwise static one that was ultimately delivered. Special mention to the pop songs crafted for Celeste by Sia, providing the vapid lyrical representation of a genre designed "to make people feel happy". What is unknown is that these hit-makers are far from happy.