TyJustice

Truth or Dare (2018) is a horror film from Blumhouse that chronicles the "scary" reality of a Truth or Dare game coming to life.

Lucy Hale, Tyler Posey, and Violett Bean star as the leads in this film, and while Lucy Hale or Violett Bean's performances are nothing to write home about Tyler Posey is probably the worst actor in the bunch, if not the entire movie. The characters they portray are boring, lifeless and just silly iterations of stock horror movie characters like the "Jock", "Goodie Two Shoes", "Promiscuous Best Friend" just to name a few. There's absolutely nothing memorable about any of them and it's legitimately difficult writing about any of them despite only seeing this film last night.

The nuance of the film comes from the dumb deformed grins that shows up on characters faces when they're participating in the game, and while I found it somewhat creepy at first it got rather old fast and there was parts in the movie where it came off as just laughable rather than creepy.

The writing gets remarkably lazy as they weave through the plot and realize that they need to start kind of making up rules as they go in order to cover up the island sized plothole that realistically they could just answer Truth to everything and the movie would be a whole lot less interesting.

At the end of the day this is just a Diet Final Destination, where the major draw to this is not the characters but the prospect of seeing them die in absurd ways but the movie couldn't even do that right.

The only props I'll give this movie is there is some parts where the film acknowledges just how ridiculous it is and there's a handful of tongue-in-cheek jokes that gave me a few laughs. That's not nearly enough to say that this movie is worth checking out though.

Maybe check it out if you see it on TV or something, but this movie isn't worth spending money on.

Reflecting back on the over dozen previous entries into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it's clear that this is what we've been building toward for about a decade and it certainly pays off. From the first time Nick Fury showed up in an end credits scene and let us know that an MCU was about to takeoff, to the first time Thanos showed up in an end credit scene and told us that he was a threat to be afraid of, all the anticipation built to Avengers: Infinity War and the Russo brothers tell an awe inspiring story that makes the 10 year wait well worth it.

What may be a setback of the film for some more casual movie-goers, is that the film certainly doesn't hold your hand or spend anytime introducing you to the heroes of the MCU. You're expected to be familiar with large scale events that took place previously in the universe and the characters who are involved in it. I for one, am thankful they went this route as I don't possibly see any way that this story could have been told in it's time constraint with character reintroductions at every turn. The movie is fast paced chaos and the tone as set right off the bat.

The CGI is near perfection. Thanos, a near full CGI villain with motion capture done by Josh Brolin, is truly brought to life. It's always good to be wary with CGI villains since we so often see them fail miserably, but Thanos was pulled into our reality by the animators with every minute facial expression, squint, and wince. The brilliant voiceover work by Josh Brolin certainly helped establish the villain as well.

The performances by the massive, wonderful cast are all done to near perfection. No one misses a beat and they all stay true to their characters, which is also a testament to how well the Russo brothers worked with the task of bringing MCU characters into their film who were previously established by other minds in their own standalone films.

That's all I want to get into to spare spoiling anything, but I can't recommend this enough. If you haven't seen an MCU film prior to this one, I highly suggest checking out at least the previous two Avengers films if not the entire MCU before arriving to this film.

Kodachrome (2017) follows Jason Sudeikis' character Matt Ryder, who reluctantly joins his ill, estranged father, Ben, played by Ed Harris, on the road alongside Ben's caretaker Zoe Kern, played by Elizabeth Olsen on a trip to fulfill Ben's dying wish of getting his Kodachrome film developed before the last existing Kodachrome development studio closes for good.

Without a doubt, Ed Harris is the standout of this cast. His acting and nuance brought his character to life and provided his character with depth, and draw that made him the most well rounded character in the film. Ed Harris did a wonderful job with drawing emotions out of scenes and bringing the audience into his mind state as a character.

Unfortunately my biggest gripe with the film comes from it's cookie cutter plot and it's unwillingness to do anything we haven't seen before a million times. We've already seen plots about bitter children being forced to join their estranged parents on adventures where the overlying theme is supposed to be heartwarming and family bonding, and Kodachrome doesn't try to break through that mold whatsoever and plays it safe a lot of times throughout the plot.

As far as acting goes, Jason Sudeikis and Elizabeth Olsen's performances seem relatively phoned in. Their on screen personas don't really compliment each other well at all and it makes for very static, boring scenes given their minimal chemistry.

If you were looking forward to this movie, I wouldn't deter you from checking it out but pad your expectations.