milk-carton-reviews

When I saw the trailer for this movie, there was no doubt in my mind that this would be a complete miss for me. However, I'm happy to say that I've actually had some fun while watching this movie and that I actually laughed several times throughout it.

The biggest problem of this movie is the beginning, where everything feels just so forced, and none of the jokes really land. It's a good 25 minutes of dick jokes and campy, frat humor that I didn't care for at all, and honestly got me worried about sitting through the whole thing. A horribly, horribly weak start. It's pretty damn bad up until they actually kill the stripper - at that point, the movie takes a drastic turn for the better. I'm not talking about masterpiece level direction, but it actually becomes charming and entertaining to watch. The best part structurally is the fact that these are in fact grown up women each dealing with their own problems and though clearly stereotyped, it's the actresses really that bring their own thing to these girls. If it wasn't for the charming performances by everybody, I don't think this movie would have worked at all. For the most part, the script is pretty weak and with lots of awkward information dumps, and the emotional parts wouldn't have been nearly as effective without the actresses that we got in the end product.

My favorite performance out of the bunch was Zoe Kravitz, followed closely by Scarlett Johansson. Zoe plays this classy, rich girl, but never manages to feel like the stereotype we all know from similar movies. I think that despite the pretty bad script, the characters were written very well. There is a scene near the end where Scarlett Johansson confronts Jillian Bell and audiences can actually get where both of these characters are coming from, which makes for a fairly interesting watch. Their fight actually has weight to it. I liked the fact that Jillian Bell's character started off as a typical, jealous, annoying friend, but actually ended up as a character that, I feel, had a lot more to her that we didn't know and made all of her actions make sense. Ilana Glazer is just fun to watch as always, I had a slight problem with Kate McKinnon because at times she was being a bit over the top, but I'm willing to look over that since at other times she is utterly hilarious. Scarlett Johansson was just lovely, I enjoyed watching her because she is "the mom friend" and she's dealing with all of these things, it's great. The parts where her fiancé is trying to get to her were pretty funny. In fact, all of the casting choices were great, because I know for a fact that all of these people have proved themselves to be funny before.

Now, the reason I gave this movie a 5/10 is because it has almost an equal amount of negatives as it does positives. Firstly, the script, as I mentioned before. Some of the lines are just excruciatingly forced and kind of hard to watch. The jokes don't always land. There were actually quite a few jokes that just didn't get a laugh out of me whatsoever. Secondly, it's nothing we haven't seen before. This concept has been done times and times again, so generally, this movie is going to be forgotten by everybody who saw it pretty soon. The first act of the movie is almost intolerable.

In conclusion, if you're just looking for a fun movie to watch and then forget about shortly after, this is the one for you. It will make you laugh, it will entertain you, and there's nothing wrong with enjoying a bit of campy humor every now and then. However, if you're interested in watching something with the same type of humor but better, I'd point you to the show "Broad City", which actually has the same writers as "Rough Night" but with much better writing.

Let me start this review off with what everybody already knows: the amazing choreography, action scenes and gun-fu. The action in both John Wick movies is definitely one of it's biggest virtues, often being dubbed as the perfect video game movie adapted from a video game that is yet to exist. And honestly, this movie is just a perfect mesh of beautiful action, neon colors and Keanu Reeves kicking some major ass.

I will say, however, that the first movie was a tad bit better. It had more room to breathe in between the action and was more character driven. The character of John Wick was always something fascinating to me, because he is a morally gray man with a shady past, which has definitely been done before, but John Wick is just so... Interesting. He is so close to falling into the so called "Gary Stu" category, since he is basically a flawless assassin that can do anything, yet he is never portrayed as perfect and as a man he is deeply flawed, which never gets boring. Basically, my small regret with this movie is that they decided not to focus on his character so much. What I really enjoyed, however, was the development of the secret organization that we found out about in the first movie. It was really cool to finally learn all about how things worked in this John Wick world. I'd love to see more of that in the next sequel. Another pleasant surprise for me was Ruby Rose. I didn't know she would be in this movie going into the cinema, and although her role in the movie is relatively small, she manages to bring this presence to her character, and as always, it's just really nice seeing her.

I believe that if you were a fan of the first movie or a fan of Keanu Reeves (he is such a delight, honestly), you are going to love this movie. Go check it out.

Being a huge X-Men fan, I really hoped this movie would be good and all of the trailers looked amazing, so I went into the cinema with impossibly high hopes, even preparing myself for tears. What I got, however, was an actual punch in the stomach and, like, an hour of crying. This movie exceeded every hope I ever had entering the cinema.

I'm actually having a hard time finding any negatives in this movie whatsoever. I wasn't particularly crazy about Dr Rice, but he's such a minor presence in this movie that I barely even noticed him. There are several villains in this movie, Dr Rice, Donald Pierce and X-24, but what I genuinely believe is going fairly unnoticed in all of the reviews I've read is Donald Pierce and Boyd Holbrook's portrayal of him. Honestly, I don't believe we've had such a good X-Men villain since Magneto, and that to me is really important now since we barely get any good villains in movies these days. Villains can be the most interesting part of a movie. I'm excited to watch Boyd's show "Narcos" now, and I plan on following his career from this moment on. X-24 is also a much better villain than I expected, serving as a sort of a shadow to Wolverine. Another highlight of the movie was Dafne Keen, the little girl that plays Laura. She is absolutely amazing, and I can't stress that enough.

I want to briefly discuss the R rating. Honestly, it adds so much to the movie, and it's amazing to finally see Wolverine cut loose, swearing and slicing people up, it's amazing. And there is a lot of blood and swearing in this movie, which just adds on to this gloomy, gritty feel that lingers over this entire film, further pushing the notion that the dream is dead, that this is the end of the X-Men. It's truly depressing seeing this world where all of your childhood heroes are dead. In a way, I'm almost angry with the creators for twisting the X-Men so out of what we're used to, and that's another thing that I sort of have a problem with, even though nothing really could have been done about it. I don't really feel like the message of this movie, to give up after so many years of fighting, to just kill off everything goofy and colorful about the X-Men and shatter all of our hopes is necessary in a time like this. I think that as goofy as they are, X- Men movies and superhero movies in general just need to do what they were created to do - to raise hope in people that things will get better if we all work together and that we can find a family no matter how different we are. That's an important part as to why X-Men were created in the first place, to show minorities that they're not alone. Now we have a movie that shows mutants, a minority already hated by most of the "normal" people being killed off by the government, and I really don't think that's the message that was needed right now. However, "Logan" is a typical example of the director giving the audience what they want (a nostalgic, gritty Wolverine road trip movie) instead of what they need. In this case, it absolutely works because everything is so masterfully crafted, the cinematography is beautiful, the performances are amazing (Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman should seriously be up for an Oscar), the action, gore and script are ridiculously good, there is a compelling villain and it managed to hit an emotional nerve for me. I can't even consider giving it a lower than perfect score.

I'm excited to see what Logan means for the superhero genre. It's definitely up there with the likes of "The Dark Knight". However, this movie can stand alone as something more than "just a superhero film", and as I've heard so many times before, superhero movies get old. It's time for a little change in the genre. While I can't say I'm particularly happy with the implied direction that the X-Men movies are taking after "Apocalypse" (even though the X-Men are my favorite superhero group ever, though people tend to forget all about comic books and animated series), I'm more than excited to see if they will ever again reach anything close to the masterpiece that is "Logan".