Tag: liev schreiber

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (2018)

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Before I start on this review I have to give out the biggest negative about it, and it’s one that will stop many people seeing the film. This film has intense flashing lights, so if you have epilepsy, or have sensory processing disorder, this might not be the film for you. That’s actually really annoying that that was not publicised. I mean, shouldn’t films that do that have a warning? We have warnings for “contains mild peril”, but not this. That’s…..really fucking weird and needs changing.

Now, onto the film…..this film loves the character of Spider-man, you can tell this by the way it mocks him sometimes. It’s like the lego batman movie in that way, it does make fun of previous films, but it’s done with such knowledge and love. This is a different kind of comic book movie, for one thing it’s REALLY weird. It’s a film for kids that deals with multiverse theory, didn’t get that in Thor (well you might have done but I didn’t pay attention because it was awful, or Thor-fal if you’re the type of person who feels the need to cram puns in where they don’t fit). It’s incredibly meta, but not too much so. None of this would matter if the actors didn’t put effort in, but the voice work here is great too. The film-makers didn’t skimp when it came to casting, you’ve got real talent here: Hailee Steinfeld, Lily Tomlin, Nicholas Cage, Liev Schreiber, Kathryn Hahn etc.

I mentioned the intense flashing lights earlier, apart from that this film looks SUPERB. The animation is some of the best you’ll see, with multiple styles displayed across the film, each incredibly distinct and gorgeous. The fight scenes are done brilliantly too, you never lose track of whats happening, the final fight in particular is a masterpiece of surreal film-making that plays out like a AAA video game boss level.

The soundtrack too, is amazing. It really suits the film, the songs are not only great but they go perfectly with the images. It does what a soundtrack should do, it complements the film perfectly. It also features what has to count as the best and most heartbreaking Stan Lee cameo ever. This is the first film released after his death (not counting the Deadpool 2 re-release), he appears on screen after Spider-man dies and says “I’m going to miss him”. F*cking heartbreaking. The most depressing part of the film, and there’s quite a lot of them, I mean, the original Spider-man gets killed early on, and all the alternate spider-men/pig/women are haunted by a death of someone, they’re defined by guilt about who they could not save. This is the best time to mention the characterisation of the different universe characters; they are all fully fledged characters with motivations and back stories. This could be a film to launch a franchise.

I honestly believe this might be the best Spider-man movie ever made, it’s VERY close. But yeah, the no warnings about flashing lights of that nature is hard to look past.

I Scream Monday: Scream 3

On By troubledproductionsIn I Scream Some DaysLeave a comment
  • For a long time, this was the only one I owned on DVD (yeah, I know, I’m odd) so I’ve always had a soft spot for it. A lot of people hate this film for some reason and see it as really weak, so I hope this rewatch doesn’t open my eyes to its suckiness and ruin it forever. That was the downside of the Musings On Marvel series, it really opened my eyes to a lot of issues those films have and made it slightly harder to enjoy them. Doing these is like dissecting a frog, you cut it open and accidentally kill it.
  • A great horror movie should make you feel uncomfortable very quickly. This film starts with the logo for Dimension Films, an offshoot of The Weinstein company. So, erm, job done, I guess?
  • So since the last film Cotton has become a talk show host, apparently the number one rated one in the country, but they all say that.
  • A jump scare utilising the scariest sound in human history; a song by Creed. Terrifying.
  • “okay Cotton, you know I don’t like your Stab games”. Wait, what exactly does Cotton do with his girlfriend at his house? Does their sexual roleplay involve murder? That’s……….not normal is it?
  • Cotton removes his jacket for seemingly no reason, almost just to show that Liev Schrieber had been working out. Actually, if rumours are to be believed that’s the exact reason that happened, he insisted on it.
  • This film came out at a really weird time, Hollywood was terrified of receiving backlash for seemingly causing the Columbine massacres so was keeping a watchful eye on violence in cinema. It got to the point where the producers wanted no blood at all in this film, how exactly would that have worked? I mean, you can do that in a new franchise but to go from 50 gallons in the first film to nothing in the third? You would have noticed the complete tonal 180 and it would have ruined it, which the producers would then blame on everybody except themselves.
  • “If we stop making horror movies, all the psychos would retire?” I doubt it, they don’t have the greatest pension plan.
  • “he was making a movie called Stab, he was stabbed” is used as a reason for police to believe the killing of Cotton was linked to the film. Which kind of makes me want to twat Robert Downey Jr. round the face with an Iron, man.
  • “you think serious black actors can just throw away jobs?” to prove his point he then mentions Usher and LL Cool J, who nobody takes seriously.
  • Jay and Silent Bob make a cameo appearance, that’s….odd to think they exist in this universe.
  • Scream goes for a random ghostly jump scare. It’s weird as this is the catalyst for Sidney returning from her self-imposed exile, which was the killers plan all along, but the killer can’t force this hallucination on her, so what would he have done if this never happened? His entire plan was focused on drawing her out, yet the only thing that does so is something he can’t control and is based entirely on luck.
  • “how are we supposed to learn our lines when there’s a new script every 15 fucking minutes?”, weren’t you just complaining that you’re only in two scenes? So no matter what changes it’s not as though you have a lot to learn.
  • “who gets killed third? You do”, and there we have the worst line reading in the history of the series.
  • So because of all the deaths, the films get cancelled, which is kind of odd as they’re based on real murders that happened about 6 months prior to the films being made. So really they’ll probably just delay it and use it the murders as inspiration for the third film. Speaking of which, why the hell is there a third film? The first Stab film was based on the murders in the first Scream film, which Gale Weathers wrote a book on (which was used as the basis of the script), presumably, the second one is based on the second set of murders, so what’s the third one based on? And as the person who wrote the book which (at least) the first one was based on, wouldn’t Gale know the third one is being made and the details of it?
  • Not-Dewey gets blown up by checking a fax in the dark by using a lighter in a room full of gas. So many ways this is basically just luck, what if he had a torch? What if he left the house then looked? What if nobody cared what the fax said?
  • Sidney finally comes back to meet the other characters. It takes nearly 50 minutes for Scream to Scream.
  • Hey, it’s Heather Matarazzo, a.k.a the girl who’s not Julie Andrews or Anne Hathaway from Princess Diaries.
  • Hey, Jamie Kennedy is back by oddly prescient videotape. I suppose that’s one way to kind of bring the character back without it feeling cheap.
  • And there goes Heather Matarazzo, shame, she should be in it more, just because she’s awesome.
  • Carrie Fisher cameo, playing someone who looks like Carrie Fisher and was nearly in Star Wars but wasn’t in it because she refused to sleep with George Lucas. So a film made by a company that’s an offshoot of Weinstein company has a scene where an actress loses out on a part because she refused to sleep with someone? Well, this just got a lot fucking creepier.
  • Okay, the producer of the Stab films is talking about sexually exploiting/raping women to get them parts in films. Talking about how “you have to play by the rules in this town”, and blacklisting actresses who won’t do it or who try to report it. Again, this is a film distributed by an off-shoot of the Weinstein company. This is…..uncomfortable viewing. Like that kind of creeping sensation you get where you feel your skin tightening, or like a hundred spiders are walking up your back.
  • “looks like Stab 3 is back in production”. That is not how to announce “crazy psycho killer is in the house”, rather flippant.
  • “I did not fuck that pig Milton just to die surrounded by second-rate actors like you”, yet another reference to a producer using his power to sexually exploit young women. This film is making me feel awful.
  • Dewey thinks someone is being killed behind a wall of mirrors, so he slowly shoots every single mirror, as opposed to just shooting one then walking through the gap.
  • So when the killer takes the mask off he needs to hold the voice changer to his mouth to change his voice, yet he wasn’t holding anything to his face during any other point, is there one in the mask?
  • Oddly tweet music accompanying the killer reveal, it sounds like Home Alone music.
  • So the killer’s justification is that Sidney gets all the attention that he craves? He’s a Hollywood director, she lives under a fake name in the middle nowhere, he’s definitely the more famous one of the two. Kind of odd as apart from that his motive is pretty logical, even his methods were logical, very few of the deaths are superfluous, even the ones you think are turn out to be “well otherwise they wouldn’t have told people” later on.
  • Kind of nice moment when the killer dies holding Sidney’s hand, sort of sweet.
  • Random fact, when Sidney stabs the killer with the ice pick, she missed the pad she was supposed to hit, and instead hit flesh, the second time in the series that’s happened.
  • And that’s the end of that, and I feel disgusted with Hollywood.

The Sad Case Of The 5th Wave

On By troubledproductionsIn NewsLeave a comment

Confession time: I actually liked this film. Okay, the “romance” moments were really bad but the rest of the film was good. The destruction scenes were very well done and really showcased the horror that’s going on. There’s very little “implied” deaths here, they’re shown, and shown in detail. For example; during a scene where an earthquake induced tsunami where the wave washes through a building, rather than just show it from the outside, or show people getting knocked down, the wave actually knocks someone off a balcony and they land (painfully) on a rail below. The plot itself was really tight as well, it held together beautifully and I’m genuinely invested in the characters and want to see what happens next.

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Which makes it even sadder that it’s not doing well at the box office. It’s just about managed to claw back its budget in the US and considering it was only out in a lot of UK cinemas for a week it doesn’t look like it’s going to do too well here. So why is this? It’s got a semi-established name in Chloe Grace Moretz, Liev Schreiber is usually pretty solid, and you’d think people would be interested in what Maika Monroe does after It Follows.

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Turns out “look amazing”

I think the big problem is the marketing, in that there really wasn’t any. I haven’t seen any posters for it anywhere, nor any trailers, which considering how often I go to the cinema (thank you Cineworld card) isn’t a good sign. I’ve seen the trailers for Spotlight, Concussion and Dirty Grandpa so often that I can probably quote them word for word.

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although it can be hard for me to watch this trailer through the red haze of anger at how awful it looks

So how would I have marketed it? Well, I would have made sure trailers were actually shown at cinema for one thing, if it wasn’t for checking the listings at cineworld website I wouldn’t have had any idea this was even on. Also, I would have done a 5 part video game. I’m not talking an extremely complex XBone or PS4 game or something, just a simple online game made of 4 parts, all based on old video games. One could be like a space invaders clone, one could be one where you have to go around shutting off all the electricity towards the building. You stagger the releases and on the final one you reveal that you are actually aliens invading humanity and causing their doom.

I admit that’s not the most definite way, there’s no way it will guarantee success but at least you’ll be trying. Their entire marketing section on wikipedia is “An international trailer was released on Sony Pictures official youtube account on September 1, 2015”. I just went on the website and it’s pretty standard; cast and crew, videos, gallery etc. But there’s one section labelled “defining the waves”. I saw that and thought “ah, this could be good, maybe it provides a lot of background detail or is some kind of viral marketing campaign. Maybe I was wrong. Nope, it’s literally just a sentence describing each wave of attack. As I used to say whenever I was playing someone on Fifa and they messed up; Wasted opportunity there.

But yeah, if you get a chance, go and see this. It may not deserve you buying it, it may not deserve your adoration, but at the very least it deserves your attention.

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Also, go see Room, because it’s f*cking spectacular

That’s it for today, don’t forget to like, comment or subscribe (button available in the left menu). Enjoy