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The Perfect Date (2019) – Maybe Not Perfect, But Good

Released: 12th April
Seen: 6th May

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Yesterday I talked about a little Netflix teen comedy called The Last Summer that, while watchable, lacked a real cohesive plotline and likable characters despite the actual charm of the lead cast. It cannot be understated just how important those two things are in a teen rom-com, they basically are what will give the movie an audience that goes beyond the specific demographic that will watch every single one of those movies. So what would happen if we take a similar cast from The Last Summer, including a different Riverdale alum, but make all the characters charming and likable while also allowing them to interact through a cohesive plot that doesn’t make me want to rip my eyeballs out with tweezers? Well, that’s when you get The Perfect Date.

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The Last Summer (2019) – Luke Warm For The Summer

Released: 3rd May
Seen: 5th May

The Last Summer

 

No one really expects much from a teen rom-com. Not really, they’re so formulaic at this point that the second I say a teen romcom there’s only a certain amount of things that are going to happen. It’s going to involve either seniors or people between high school and college, all of whom are played by TV actors in their twenties. Every plotline revolves around this couple who were a cute pair of friends as children but now they have hormones so, therefore, they’re into each other, they go on several dates that they never actually call dates and talk on the phone until eventually, the conflict happens that’s brought on by one of them withholding an arbitrary bit of information that leads to a temporary break up that’s undone 7 minutes later with some massive gesture of affection that warms the broken heart just enough for it to mend itself and bring them back together. If you go through any of these teenage romcoms, that’s just a series of events that will happen and films stand out when they put a twist on that plot or add interesting characters with a lot of well-written jokes… or you could just not bother, that works too.

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Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019) – God Damn That’s A Long Title!

Released: 3rd May
Seen: 4th May

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Even though we don’t like to admit it, on some level our society has always had a fascination with serial killers. There’s a reason why we have so many crime re-enactment shows, why there are magazines sold that talk about brutal crimes, movie monsters are inspired by some of the most evil people to have roamed this earth. One of the most infamous men to have ever disgraced the earth with his existence was Theodore Robert Bundy AKA Ted Bundy, a vile murderer who brutalised over 30 women, performing acts so disgusting to all of them that it’s impossible to believe he was ever even remotely close to human. The story of his evil is so horrifically fascinating that it’s been the source of over half a dozen movies and documentaries, a recent Netflix series that became controversial almost instantly as it seemed to fail to actually offer any actual insight beyond what we already knew. Now we have a bright, glossy, star-studded film that tries to cram every strange and disturbing detail of the demonic bastard’s crimes into 108 minutes that was directed by the same man who created the aforementioned Netflix series… and god damn do I mean it when I say they just crammed it in there.

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The Aftermath (2019) – Bland

Released: 23rd April
Seen: 3rd May

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So, this one is going to be exceptionally hard to write about. In general, when a movie gives me a lot to work with it’s fairly easy to sit here and explain why it does or doesn’t work. A particularly good or bad film can almost create its own review through sheer excitement or revulsion. What’s a lot more difficult to write about are movies where I feel absolutely nothing, not a shred of emotion either for or against the film. A generic boring slog will always be the hardest thing to write about because while describing why the movie is a generic boring slog, I have to attempt to ensure that this review isn’t a generic boring slog… though it does help when the boring film shouldn’t actually be boring based upon its subject matter.

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I Spit On Your Grave: Deja Vu (2019) – This Reminds Me Of Something… Something Awful

Released: 23rd April
Seen: 29th April

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In 1978, the film I Spit On Your Grave was unleashed onto an unsuspecting public. Directed by first time director Meir Zarchi, the film was soon branded as one of the most shocking pieces of exploitation cinema to ever be released. While I Spit On Your Grave might not be the first film in the exploitation subgenre known as the Rape-Revenge film, it’s certainly the most infamous due to its brutality and the rawness of the lead performance. It’s not a great film by any means but it does earn its place in history as a piece of exploitation cinema, the likes of which we had never seen before. It was even remade in 2010 with a proper budget and filming equipment… and then Meir Zarchi decided he wanted to pick up a camera again and, since nobody tackled him to the ground while screaming ‘NO!’ loudly as they could, we ended up being saddled with I Spit On Your Grave: Deja Vu. Buckle up, this is going to hurt.

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Avengers: Endgame (2019) – No Spoiler Zone

Released: 24th April
Seen: 24th April

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On the 25th of April 2018, celebrating a decade as a cinematic universe, Marvel released Avengers: Infinity War. A true box office smash, the film broke records and defied expectations and at the 2-hour 5-minute and 41-second mark, Thanos snapped his fingers and eradicated half of the MCU in a sequence that was instantly one of the most iconic things in modern cinema. It was meme’d into oblivion; it was a moment of cultural shock that is easily the ballsiest thing that a movie studio has done in a long time. They made us love every single character, and then they killed them in front of us in a 3 minute sequence that was designed intentionally to destroy the audience… and then they said “Come back in a year, we’re not done tearing you apart yet” and sure enough, they came back and they were not even close to done tearing us apart.

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Long Shot (2019) – Exactly What It Says On The Tin

Released: 2nd May
Seen: 23rd April (Preview screening)

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Just scroll back up a little and look at the poster again, I’ll wait. Do you notice that it’s basically the exact poster you expect it to be for almost any rom-com? Seriously, picture the standard rom-com about an awkward guy who’s a little rough around the edges (or even just completely made of edges) who falls for a woman who is so far out of his league that it’s almost funny. Sitcoms thrive on this, King of Queens, The Simpsons and Married with Children just to name a few. It’s also a big trend in movies, Adam Sandler basically made a career out of it until Seth Rogen came out and played the everyman stoner who falls for the insanely attractive woman and they fall for each other. Do you enjoy those kinds of movies? Great, then you’ll like this one and no longer need to hear my lengthy diatribe on why I also enjoy this movie… but please keep reading anyway, page views give me validation.

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The Upside (2019) – There Is No Upside

Released: 19th April
Seen: 21st April

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In 2011, the film The Intouchables was released. A French film based upon real events, it told the story of a wealthy quadriplegic and a poor black man who come together and change each other for the better. The movie was a box office smash, netting 400 million worldwide and gaining enough critical acclaim and love from the audience that, at the time of writing, it ranks 39 on the IMDB list of top rated films of all time. It is a film that has resonated with its audience… but it’s in a language other than English so by the laws of Hollywood, they have to remake the film for audiences who don’t want to bother reading subtitles and in the process make a film that… exists?

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The Curse Of The Weeping Woman (2019) – Big Ghosts Don’t Cry

Released: 18th April
Seen: 19th April

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The Conjuring universe is one of the strangest cinematic universes that we’ve had in recent years. While other cinematic universes, like the one that Marvel has basically defined over the last decade, will have several standalone films that build up to a major event picture, the Conjuring Universe does things a little differently. It has the main central series which follows Ed and Lorraine Warren in their paranormal haunts (while never actually addressing the legitimate criticism that the Warren’s are basically doing an elaborate carnival act and preying on people’s fears) and then they put a creepy monster of some kind in those Conjuring movies and that monster will spin off into its own origin movie. Those origin movies tend to be painful to watch, with Annabelle being a snoozefest with no logic and even less thought put into it that basically relied on the movie Annabelle: Creation to salvage the concept while The Nun was basically average if I was being kind and if I were to re-review that film today I’d probably put it at 2.5/5 instead of a 3/5 but hey, that’s the fun thing about seeing every movie you can. The more you see the more you look back and have different opinions on different films. I have a distinct feeling though that when I look back on this film I’m going to still think it was basically a waste of time while also being a horrific waste of potential.

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Sunshine Blogger Award

Introduction

 

Sometimes you wake up and find out that, as you slept, you got nominated for something big and important like a Nobel Peace Prize… othertimes you wake up to see you’ve been nominated for the Sunshine Blogger award, which is actually latin for “Fun silly listicle where half the work was done for you by the person who nominated you” which in this case was by the amazing The Blog Complainer who is just generally a great reviewer who you probably already follow, or at least you should. Go on, go over there and click the Follow button, I’ll wait.

 

So basically this is one of those “Do a thing and then get 11 others to do a thing” lists which in general I have avoided in life but… well, it’s free content, this one looked like enough fun that I could enjoy it and I get to come up with a bunch of questions at the end so let’s see how this goes.

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