Praise4Media #55 - Speed Racer

What can I say, we’re back to the Wachowskis and this one is weird…

Speed Racer began as an animated Japanese series called Mach GoGoGo, it’s from the late 60s, when animation budgets were basically non-existent and you can tell, the animation is cheaply done, shots are reused verbatim and dialogue often takes place on a rolling background to give a sense of movement without actually needing to animate the background beyond a few frames.

The show followed the racing adventures of Gô Mifune, they needed a simpler name for the character in the US, so for reasons I’m still scratching my head on, they decided to call him, and the show Speed Racer. I’ve got all the jokes for that, but I’ll save it for the actual review.

Speed Racer (the show) was weird, it had cheap animation as previously mentioned but the season finale had him driving vehicles like planes, submarines and, most unbelievably of all, row-boats. I swear the villains only lost because they were stopping every 5 minutes to set up traps. The show lasted 52 episodes, a respectable run.

What’s weirder is that to tie in with this movie, I think, they created an animated show called Speed Racer: The Next Generation, starring the son of Speed Racer who, for reasons I cannot fathom for the life of me, is also called Speed Racer. This was released in 2008! I’ll say the animation’s better, but that’s practically a given but the show is still weird, I think this one had races that ventured into space.

But to the movie, several major actors including Johnny Depp and Vince Vaughn were attached to the project, but it wasn’t until the hiring of the Wachowskis that this film really made it off the ground. 

Now, this is based on animation from the 1960s, they must’ve known this was a niche project, so why a $120m budget? It was never going to make that money back and it didn’t, it made only $96m at the box office, making it a box office bomb, and floundered with critics, with a 40% Rotten Tomatoes Rating.

So, why am I inspecting it with my new Praise4Media monacle? Well, strap yourselves in, because this is going to be a very bumpy ride.

Guilty Pleasures #54 - Pacific Rim: Uprising

There’s something about giant robots fighting giant monsters that’s just awesome. It’s why shows like Power Rangers, Transformers, Voltron and various anime still last till this day. I said I’d be awaiting this sequel with interest, and so here we are. Pacific Rim: Uprising.

Pacific Rim Uprising had a troubled development, there was a dispute over something or another (likely budget) between the distributors Universal Studios and the production company Legendary Pictures that lead to production being delayed by a year. Guillermo Del Toro, although instrumental in getting the film off the ground, was not directing this one (he was doing The Shape of Water, he got the better end of that deal) and a rewritten script by Steven S DeKnight (who also directs), Emily Carmichael, Kira Snyder (no relation to Zack or Scott Snyder) and the soon to be infamous on Rage Issues T S Nowlin

The film had a budget of around $190m and made $270m at the box office, a significant downgrade on its predecessor and likely a financial failure for the studios. Critics and audiences gave it a mixed response with 44% and 41% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes respectively with average scores of 5/10 and 3/5. So, what is it about this one where people drew the line where they didn’t last time? Let’s take a look and find out.

Guilty Pleasures #53 - Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

Certain movies take a long time to get a sequel. This can be their benefit as the old version is less likely to be compared to it (unless it’s an absolute Classic: I’ll get to you Marry Poppins Returns later) to the original. It also offers the grounds for being a reboot/sequel, where you keep only the bare minimum on common with the original.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is a sequel/reboot to Jumanji, which we covered a few weeks ago. Its announcement came with some backlash as sequel/reboots such as the 2016 Ghostbusters had soured people to the idea (Ghostbusters 2016 isn't very good, but the hatred toward it can be extreme) plus the announcement came shortly after the death of Robin Williams and people noted it might’ve been in poor taste. But positive word of mouth clearly helped this grow roots, as it made an impressive $960m at the box office on a $150m budget. Bear it mind, it came out around the same time as Star Wars: The Last Jedi and the Greatest Showman, so this is an impressive feat.

It got a decent 76% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but with a caveat of only a 6.2/10 average score, with an audience rating at 87% averaging 4.3/5. Let’s take a gander and see what we’re looking at this time.

Guilty Pleasures #52 - The Greatest Showman

20^th Century Fox – Just a smidge after Lunchtime

Time for the heads to hear yet another movie pitch, millions of dollars on the line for those who are successful. Next up we have producers Laurence Mark, Jenno Toppin and Peter Chernin, they want $84million dollars for their movie musical: The Greatest Showman loosely based on the life PT Barnum, who once publicly displayed the autopsy of his slave.

WHOOAAAAAAA

Ladies and Gents, this is the movie you’ve waited for

WHOOAAAAAAA

Historical accuracy, it doesn’t matter anymore

WHOOAAAAAAA

The money this makes is something you can’t ignore

Not a box office Bomb

Album Number One

And merchandise, we’re never done

Don’t fight it, it’s gonna make us all lots of money

Take a tragedy and make it into something funny

And some dancing, pad the movie out to make it longer

Don’t bother with a plot, it won’t make this stronger

Make the crowd feel like they’re watching a play

For several months in the cinema this will stay

There’s a formula for getting hands in their wallets, do you want to know?

This is how it’s gotta go!

Fill it with the songs the crowd will like

Even if the story’s kinda shite

Big box office figures

This film will deliver

THIS IS THE GREATEST SHOW-MAN

Hugh Jackman in the lead

Box Office Guaranteed

Who cares what we make up

It’s just entertainment

THIS IS THE GREATEST SHOW-MAN

WHOOAAAA

Who cares if Barnum really was a piece of sh*t

WHOOAAAA

If we mellow him out, this movie will be a hit

Don’t fight it, it’ll make us all lots of money

Take a tragedy and make it into something funny

Add some drama, don’t go too far off what they know

Listen carefully, this is how it’s gotta go!

Fill it with the songs the crowd will like

Even if the story’s kinda shite

Big box office figures

This film will deliver

THIS IS THE GREATEST SHOW-MAN

Hugh Jackman in the lead

Box Office Guaranteed

Who cares what we make up

It’s just entertainment

THIS IS THE GREATEST SHOW-MAN

It’ll make you all the cash you want

Satisfy your corporate greed

For the next few months or so

It’ll give us all you’ll ever need

It’ll make us all the cash we want

Satisfy our corporate greed

Keep your share price in the green

It’ll give us all we’ll ever need

ALL THAT WE’LL EVER NEED

Fill it with the songs the crowd will like

Even if the story’s kinda shite

Big box office figures

This film will deliver

THIS IS THE GREATEST SHOW-MAN

Hugh Jackman in the lead

Box Office Guaranteed

Who cares what we make up

It’s just entertainment

THIS IS THE GREATEST SHOW-MAN

Look at that dough right in front of you

May seem impossible, you know it’s true

Nothing can stop us now

THIS IS THE GREATEST SHOW-MAN

And this is the Greatest Showman review

The Greatest Showman was, and there’s no doubt about this, massively successful. Making money week after week at the box office, even increasing in the US after its opening weekend. It made $435 million by combine that with licencing deals, album sales, merchandise, DVD’s, this thing was a helluva money spinner for Fox.

Critically, the response has been mixed, it currently holds a 55% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with a 5.9/10 average score, it’s a big disparity with the audience rating of 87% with an 4.4/5 average score. So, do the audience see something the critics don’t, or is it the other way around? Well, you might be able to guess given my parody song lyric opening, but let’s dive in anyway.

Guilty Pleasures #51 - Star Wars Episode VIII - The Last Jedi

I haven’t even said anything yet!

OK, this is going to be a controversial one, but it’s time to talk Star Wars again. The Force Awakens was initially popular, but soon a backlash began to set in with people complaining that, amongst other things, it was too similar to the original Star Wars movies. An opinion that has some validity, in my opinion; whilst it does perhaps play it too safe with certain elements, I believe it does have enough differences that it stands on its own

There was no such wait for the Last Jedi backlash, people were divided on this from the start, with critics giving it glowing reviews and audiences…. Not so much. There are many complaints people have about this film, some of which I feel stem from the general direction of the Force Awakens, some that are genuine and some are… bullsh*t. Life tip: use the words ‘Social Justice Warrior’ (or SJW) in your argument and you’ve already lost it.

Fair warning, I don’t think this movie is perfect, although I have praised it in the past, so I’m gonna bring attention to the faults of the movie. But I’m also gonna point out when people are just making sh*t up!

Guilty Pleasures #50 - Kingsman: The Golden Circle

Last year, I reviewed Kingsman: The Secret Service. An over the top and flamboyant movie but with clever humour and dialogue, with good actors delivering it that made it all seem worthwhile. It spoofed some of the spy clichés, although it did revel in plenty of its own. But I was on board for every second of it.

A sequel is out, and it made about the same amount of money, around $410m although this had a slightly higher budget of $104m. Critically this movie was less well received, 52% on Rotten Tomatoes and an audience score 65%, with average ratings 5.3/10 and 3.6/5 respectively. But where do I stand? Let’s take a look:

Guilty Pleasures #49 - IT (2017) (A Strange Halloween)

A scary clown in a sinister town
Unfurls a truly dangerous world
Kids must fight, or death by fright
As if on cue, it begins anew

Now a reboot takes the stage
IT again released from its cage
Scary and funny and all things between?
The time approaches: A Strange Halloween.

OK, so what happens when you take half of book and this time give it an actual budget, well let’s find out as we conclude our ITrospective

And when I say budget, it’s not exactly high at only $35m, which it far exceeded with a $700m haul at the box office. Damn that’s good! It’s also been lauded critically with 85% of critics and 84% of audiences liking it, according to Rotten Tomatoes. With average ratings of 7.2/10 and 4.2/5 respectively.

Guilty Pleasures #48 - IT part 2 (A Strange Halloween)

Derry Maine is a dark town
It has its ups, and has its clowns
But when 7 kids enter the fray
They'll face their fears and save the day

Years have passed since the creature was slain
And now they must face their fears again
For the truth of the creature is yet unseen
IT has returned on a Strange Halloween

Last time on IT… You got the decent part of this mini-series, now for the weird part. Let’s dive into the second part of IT.

Guilty Pleasures #47 - IT part 1 (A Strange Halloween)

Tracking its pray like a well-oiled machine

IT is coming on this Strange Halloween

How better to compliment a series about kids going up against a monster than another one. This is IT, and it’s seriously it, because we’ll be doing all of it over the next 3 weeks.

The popular Steven King Novel has received 2 notable adaptations, before we get to the movie, let’s start with the mini-series. And it’s a long one so we’re going to be doing it in 2 parts. The disk I have is double-sided, we’ll do each side separately. Unlike with the Secret Empire review though, I think it’s fairer to grade them separately. You’ll probably see why in part 2

But enough of the chit-chat, let’s start this ITrospective

Guilty Pleasures #45 - Spider-man: Homecoming

Time to go back to Spider-man in his third iteration of the 21^st Century. I took issue with the Raimi Spider-man stories, mostly because of the dialogue which has aged terribly. I also don’t like the direction they went with the relationship between Peter and MJ (although it’s a million times better than selling their marriage to the devil)

The Amazing Spider-man movies are less cringeworthy when it comes to dialogue but have issues when it comes to storytelling and tone, with the second movie in particular being too busy setting up multiple plotlines and attempting to establish an expanded universe, rather than being a smaller self-contained story.

Sony were knocked back by the ‘poor’ performance of the Amazing Spider-man 2, dropping its sequels and I have no idea what they’re doing with Venom. They made a deal with Disney to incorporate Spider-man into the Marvel universe. My understanding of it, beyond merchandise which is another can of worms is this: Spider-man can become a part of the Marvel cinematic universe. Sony are still responsible for making (and financing) the movies, but with Kevin Feige, overseeing it as producer, as he is with all MCU movies. Sony do not have to pay Disney for any MCU characters they use, but at the same time, Sony do not get paid when Spider-man appears in any other Marvel movie. 

So, after making his debut in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, Spider-man would be in his first MCU solo movie with Spider-man: Homecoming.

The movie was well received with a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (average 7.7/10) and made $880m on a modest $175m (well, modest by Marvel standards) budget. Is it deserving of all that praise? Let’s take a look

Guilty Pleasures #44 - L: Change the World

You may remember I’m not huge fan of the Live Action Death Note Movies

Yes, that one too, but we’re focusing today on the Japanese ones. Whilst they’re mostly faithful adaptations, the pacing is far too fast, and it ends up pulling shortcuts that I ultimately didn’t end up liking. That said, I probably was a bit harsh, it could’ve been the Netflix one.

But what happens when the same crew don’t have a source material to adapt? What if they’re taking a popular Death Note character and doing something entirely new with him? Well, you get L: Change the world

Guilty Pleasures #43 - Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

When Disney bought Star Wars, it was an expensive process, and whilst Merchandise will likely make them everything they paid and more, it’s good to have a few movies to provide new toys to sell, plus they generally make the big bucks. So began a series of spin-offs, a series that may well have ended with the second one. I’ll leave my thoughts on Solo for another time, but let’s resume our look at Star Wars with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Both these spin-off films are notorious for having trouble behind the scenes. Here the film was subject to extensive reshoots under a different director (which if I think of it, sounds identical to the problems Solo had). Disney wasn’t happy with the vision the original director had for it. Still the movie was successful both critically and commercially, making just over $1bn on a $220m budget, and scoring a respectable 85% on rotten Tomatoes. Does it still hold up? Let’s take a look

Guilty Pleasures #42 - Taking Earth

It’s been 9 months now, time for a Guilty Pleasures reviews review. I’m sorry it’s taken this long to back to it, but I’ve been busy with my other review types and haven’t managed to schedule one in. The good news is I have a decent backlog that goes well into 2019, with a lot of current movies likely to fall under the banner. So, let’s start with a movie you’ve likely never heard of, Taking Earth

Released in 2017, this movie had a budget of $250,000, this is about 1000^th of the budget for a Hollywood movie, and puts it within the budget of something like… Interstellar Wars. If you’ve followed my review you know I absolutely detest that piece of sh*t, so can something salvageable be made is this genre with that kind of budget, well, I did just review the Australiens, which had even less of a budget but here’s something a little more serious.

It does appear to be a passion project, one of Grant Humphries, who co-wrote, produced and edited this movie.

The critical reception to this one is pretty negative, so do I see some saving graces or is this is going to turn into Rage review on my second watch and completely ruin the comeback? Only way to find out, but beware, spoilers will follow.

Guilty Pleasures #41 - Saban's Power Rangers

We’re on a kick with Power Rangers, aren’t we? And this is what it’s been building towards.

There’s been an odd trend that of Hollywood trying to make uber-serious versions of otherwise silly franchises. The worst of these was Fant4stic which managed to be dark, boring, completely non-nonsensical and somehow dumber than the movies it was supposed be more serious than.

But the truth is, there’s nothing wrong with a light-hearted tone, as long as the serious moments are taken seriously. A good example of this done effectively is Spider-man Homecoming, which I will probably get to next year. Although most of the Marvel movies are a good example of how to do this right.

Here’s the thing though. Power Rangers, in spite of some serious ideas, is an inherently silly show. Especially during the Mighty Morphin Era which this movie is attempting to re-tell. Whilst I can at least understand the potential of a dark Fantastic 4 (that doesn’t mean I think it’s a good idea) I don’t really see what can be accomplished with doing the same to Power Rangers.

But here we are, and it’s another of 2017’s franchise ‘failures?’, boy there’ve been a few of those this year. It made only $142m on a $100m budget. Factoring in marketing and theatre cuts that’s a net loss for the studio. Fortunately, the one thing Power Rangers is usually good at is selling toys and it’s no exception here, it’s also apparently made a decent amount in DVD sales. I don’t see a sequel as likely but it’s apparently not beyond the realm of plausibility, unlike *cough*Fant4stic*cough*

But that said, Power Rangers struck an interesting chord with me, I actually kinda liked it, and I’m far from alone, this has a 45% Rotten Tomatoes rating which, whilst far from good, indicates at least mixed reception. So here is my take on the movie.

Guilty Pleasures #40 - Kingsman: The Secret Service

I’m doing it because the sequel’s coming out, sue me

Kingsman: The Secret Service released in 2014 to somewhat mixed reviews but a decent profit, making $400m on a $90m budget. But screw what other people think, I love this movie! But that doesn’t mean I can’t try and analyse it and be nitpicky, let’s dive in

Guilty Pleasures #39 - Suicide Squad

Hope you enjoyed my little skit, just something I wanted to try out. But to the actual review. This is Suicide Squad

The next in the line of DC movies following Batman v Superman: Dawn of Awfulness, Suicide Squad had a rough production history, with the editing being handled by a trailer house and an effort made to inject more humour into what was a serious movie and only 6 weeks given to the writer to script it.

The end result was divisive but profitable none-the-less, and here’s how I weigh in on it.

Guilty Pleasures #38 - Sequel Month - Now You See Me 2

Now You See Me was my first Guilty Pleasures review and of course in June of last year a sequel came out. Do I like it as much as I did the first one, in many ways, actually kinda more but I will explain that later.

Now You See Me was a dumb movie, dumb but extremely fun to watch because of character dynamics and spectacle. Now You See Me 2 was not as successful either critically or commercially as the original. So, what does the sequel have in store? Let’s take a look

Guilty Pleasures #37 - The Pirate Movie

Pirates are a fun topic for a movie, swashbuckling, sword fights, exotic locations, everything you could dream for in a movie and one that doesn’t get bogged down by realism. Pirates of the Carribean, whilst far from perfect movies that often get a little too convoluted for their own good, are a shining example of what you can do with it.

Captain Sabretooth was an attempt to market an icon, it fell largely from trying to make the hero the resident good guy, despite the fact he really isn’t.

But then we have the simply titled ‘The Pirate Movie’ which is a movie adaptation of the musical, The Pirates of Penzance. The film had a budget of only $6m (in Australia) and was rushed into production when another adaptation of the play was announced. It wasn’t exactly successful, only managing $9m at the box office, although far more than the film it was rushed to beat. It holds a paltry 9% on rotten tomatoes. So, why is this under guilty pleasures? Let’s take a look.

Guilty Pleasures #36 - Time Month - Day of the Doctor

Note: The Bulk of this review was written shortly before the passing of John Hurt. I have made minor alterations since but my opinion of this special is unchanged

It’s time Month!

And I’m still not recovered from Time Shifter’s awfulness I need something half decent to review.

Of course! Doctor Who is staple when it comes to time travel and the like, so tackling something like Doctor Who is an inevitable part of the month. And where Steven Moffat tends to excel is using time tricks in writing episodes, rather than just using the ability of time travel to have an episode set anywhere and any when.

Day of the Doctor uses a couple of those time tricks, it was also a special that celebrated the 50^th Anniversary of Doctor Who, so it’s worth taking a look.

Guilty Pleasures #35 - Superman: The Movie (1978)

I’m just gonna put this on-record for everyone. Brace yourselves, this is a controversial opinion that I’m never gonna be able to take back...

Man of Steel sucks and Batman v. Superman sucks. I’ve already gone into detail about what I hate about Man of Steel in my review (plug) and I’ll be reviewing Batman v. Superman later this year. But before we do that, let’s take a look at the movies at the other end of the scale.

Superman: The Movie is one of the best rated superhero movies on Rotten Tomatoes, 93% puts it up there with the Dark Knight, Guardians of the Galaxy, Iron Man and the Avengers. Note how The Dark Knight is the only other DC movie in the 90+s on Rotten Tomatoes. But we’re not here to judge the ratings, I’m here to judge it for myself, using modern sensibilities because I think it'll be funnier. Let’s dig into Superman: The Movie and see what this has to offer.