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 |  All in one place! A brilliant idea suggested by Annette |
One-Sentence Movie Reviews 2021 - present (in reverse chronological order) Big thanks to Lilli 🧿 ☕ for compiling this list (up through the Black Adam entry}, and of course to Annette for the idea to take my reviews from my blog, "Complex Numbers"  [18+], and shove them all into one place to save people the horror of searching through the blog to find them.The reviews are presented in their original (arguable) glory. However, some of my feelings have changed over time, as feelings are wont to do, so I've added dropnotes where appropriate. One-Sentence Movie Review: The Whale: This movie is an adaptation of a stage play, and it shows; there's basically no action and it mostly takes place within a single set, but that works with the subject matter, which is highly metaphorical and finally made me take Brendan Fraser seriously as an actor. Rating: 4/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: I suppose it would have been asking too much for this sequel to be as good as or better than the first one; it certainly didn't suck (and was very respectful to the memory of Boseman), but it's a little incoherent in parts and significantly short on action for a MCU movie. Rating: 3.5/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: Bones and All: A meaty movie with a side of mashed metaphors and symbolism sauce, this story of two fine young cannibals in the 1980s was filling Thanksgiving Day fare for me. Rating: 3.5/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: Black Adam Everybody involved in this movie, from the executive producer down to the second assistant to the 3rd unit studio janitor (except for Dwayne Johnson, who is always awesome) can at this point restore honor to their houses only by performing seppuku. Rating: 0.5/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: Thor: Love and Thunder I like comics-based movies, and I like movies that don't take themselves too seriously, and therefore I like comic book movies that don't take themselves too seriously—but this one maybe takes that concept a bit too far, verging on self-parody and making light of some very serious situations; nevertheless, despite some choppy editing in its earlier scenes, it's a fun foray into the MCU, with the best soundtrack since the last Thor movie (though not as good as the ones from the Guardians movies). Rating: 4/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: Everything Everywhere All at Once: Whatever everyone involved in the making of this movie was smoking, snorting, shooting and/or swallowing... I need it. Rating: 4.5/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: Morbius: With basically the same plot as pretty much every other comic-book character origin movie, though less well-edited than most, this film is pretty forgettable except for the excellent special effects and the way Matt Smith rules as a villain. Rating: 2.5/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: X: While the basic plot of this is straight out of How To Make A Horror Flick, this movie, which, unlike some others of its genre, contains no supernatural elements, elevates the story past simple slasher gore by confronting themes of life, death, movies, fear, love, sex, and why renting an AirBnB is never a good idea. Rating: 4.5/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: Aelita, Queen of Mars (Scored by Chris Bullock): A fascinating insight into 1920s-era Soviet Russia, wherein, true to form, you invade Mars; it features remarkable sets and costumes, and a twist ending that, really, we all should have seen coming considering the movie is nearly 100 years old. Rating: 4/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: The Batman Battinson is a more effective Batman than I'd expected, the set designs and costumes are excellent, and the action is terrific; however, the plot is unnecessarily convoluted, and like so many other movies, it's probably longer than it really needed to be -- but my lifelong crush on Catwoman continues, so I'm glad I saw it. Rating: 3.5/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: Cyrano Part stage play adaptation, part 80s music video, part Renaissance painting, this film celebrating the utter foolishness of humans is about 45 minutes longer than it needs to be. Rating: 3.5/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: Uncharted: Spoiler: the good guys beat the hell out of the bad guys (as noted above); this is a fun movie, the cinematic equivalent of a frozen pizza: filling, but without much in the way of substance, and that's okay -- I never played the video games it was based on, so it's likely I missed a lot of in-jokes, but it's enough to watch Tom Holland be something other than Spider-Man and go haring off on a classic stunt-heavy, scenery-chewing treasure hunt quest. Rating: 3/5 Note: ▼ One-Sentence Movie Review: The Matrix Resurrections: With plenty of the visually intriguing action scenes and special effects that these movies are known for, and in spite of its interludes of explanatory dialogue that will surely provide fuel for countless amateur sophomoric philosophy discussions (mostly while stoned), the movie actually moves along quite nicely, if you ignore silly things like the plot -- John WickNeo does spend an inordinate amount of time trying to resist his calling, much as he did way back in the first movie; however, it's worth watching just for its slew of sly, self-aware meta-references. Rating: 3/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: The King's Man A movie that reimagines the events leading up to and surrounding WWI and the Russian Revolution, the best thing about this movie was the character of Rasputin; other than that, it's pretty standard political/spy stuff that thinks it's more clever than it actually is, but also features several great fight scenes. Rating: 3/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: Spider-Man: No Way Home It is not easy to write a review that does this movie justice without spoiling the best surprises; all I can really say is that if you're already a fan you'll love it, and if you're not, you'll have no idea what's going on, but if that's the case you're not going to a comics-adapted movie anyway, and you should probably go see Licorice Pizza instead (which I haven't seen yet but looks artsy as hell). Rating: 5/5 Note: ▼ One-Sentence Movie Review: West Side Story: Absolutely gorgeous movie of the Oscar-bait variety (not that the Oscars have been worth a damn for many years), but I'm not sure there's anything new to the story, and the whole "horny teens create unnecessary drama and widespread collateral damage" thing has been played out for at least decades, if not longer. Rating: 4/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: House of Gucci Even the brilliant performances of Adam Driver (who miraculously manages to keep his shirt on the entire movie), Lady Gaga (who doesn't), Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Jared Leto, Salma Hayek, and Lady Gaga's breasts were not enough to keep the plot from being choppy or the story from being way longer than it needed to be; still, it's worth seeing for those performances, excellent camera work, and a soundtrack that features, among other things, an Italian cover of a Monkees song. Rating: 4/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: Ghostbusters: Afterlife: Although this movie won't make a lot of sense if you're not a fan of the original Ghostbusters, I think the three people who aren't won't bother with this one, anyway; and while I'm glad I saw it in the theater and parts of it are a lot of fun, the movie suffers from several missteps in pacing and editing, with some real head-scratcher shortcuts. Rating: 3/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: Eternals Eternals distinguishes itself well from other comics-derived team movies; it's gorgeous with plentiful effects, solid camera work, and decent acting, with each character well-defined, and it earns its extended runtime (cue "eternal" jokes) by giving us time to get to know each player in the large cast, but somehow it manages to fail to live up to its hype — though that's probably more a fault of the hype than of the film itself. Rating: 4/5 Note: ▼ One-Sentence Movie Review: Last Night in Soho: It is rare to find a movie outside of one of my preferred genres that is so well-made; it's artistic without being pretentious and tells a great story that's suspenseful and twisty but not gimmicky -- other reviewers might hedge their reviews, knowing that someone out there is going to disagree with them, but that's not a problem for me. Rating: 5/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: Dune: Watching Dune is like viewing a painting at a museum... for three freakin' hours; they were too busy making it look visually stunning to make me care about any of the characters, and too busy setting up a sequel to actually resolve anything. Rating: 3.5/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: The Last Duel I keep going back to Ridley Scott movies in the vain hope that at some point, one of them will come close to the greatness that is Blade Runner: The Director's Cut; this hope is inevitably dashed, but The Last Duel, unlike some of his other historical fiction movies, doesn't completely suck -- it's longer than it needs to be; Matt Damon has already been in France once before this year; and Kylo Ren has already gratuitously taken his shirt off approximately 143 times, but the acting is superb and the movie is surprisingly topical for modern audiences despite being set in medieval France (which the director doesn't let you forget even though everyone speaks American English, because you keep seeing shots of Notre Dame de Paris under construction). Rating: 3.5/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: No Time to Die While previous Daniel Craig Bond movies didn't do much for me because of their impenetrable plots, this one is notable not just for the acting, stunts, and more straightforward story, but because it features some of the best camera work I've ever seen -- almost enough to distract from the actual content. Rating: 4.5/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: Venom: Let There Be Carnage Don't expect high art here; this movie is a CGI slugfest, and if that's your expectation going in, you probably won't be disappointed -- though you should definitely see the first movie before doing so, or it will make even less sense than it already does. Rating: 3.5/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: Rush: Cinema Strangiato - The Director's Cut You can either accept that Rush was unique, and one of the greatest bands of all time, or you can be wrong. Rating: 4.5/5 One-Sentence Move Review: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings I enjoy martial arts flicks and MCU movies; this one combines good stuff from both, though the Marvel tie-ins aren't nearly pervasive enough to shut out anyone unfamiliar with those films, and I feel like it can stand alone -- though one might not get the full effect from some of the in-universe references, there's plenty of action, fights, SFX, and even car chases to keep your mind off what you might be missing. Rating: 4.5/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: Reminiscence Strip the movie of its science fiction, detective, crime, mystery and action elements, and you're left with a story about a guy who really, really should just get over a girl and move on with his life, which he won't because otherwise there's no plot; nevertheless, those genres are blended smoothly together with the romance aspect, and despite its utter lack of anything approaching comedy, it's absolutely worth watching if you're into any of those things. Rating: 4/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: The Dark Crystal No CGI, no frenetic pacing, no jump cuts, no catering to people with short attention spans; this slow-paced movie focused on plot and character design, so it's probably not going to appeal to modern audiences, but taken in the context of the time it was produced, it's a showcase of creativity. Rating: 3.5/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: Free Guy Free Guy is a nonstop action comedy movie full of enough reference jokes to appeal to hardcore and casual gamers as well as other entertainment fans; the CGI is as lush and striking as you could possibly expect, and the writing and acting are right on target, and it even manages to dance around some interesting philosophical concepts -- it's no spoiler to reveal that this movie features a video game NPC gaining sentience and trying to save his world (it was in all the previews), but in the end, the most unrealistic bit in the movie is the romantic subplot. Rating: 4/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: Stillwater This Matt Damon-led movie that you probably never heard of is surprisingly good -- what it lacks in plot advancement, it makes up for in acting, character development and scenery and I got through the slow parts by seeing if I could understand the spoken French without looking at the subtitles (it's set mostly in Marseille; the dialogue is mostly in English but I think the director wanted to demonstrate that the main character started out knowing maybe two words of French, so there are some French conversations and I understood about half of them). Rating: 4/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: The Suicide Squad If, like me, you're a fan of comic books, movies derived from comics, action, and dark humor, this movie is for you; I loved every damn minute of it. Rating: 5/5 One-sentence Movie Review: Old While I can certainly understand anyone's trepidation for seeing another Shyamalan movie, this one is done well, with brilliant acting, seamless effects, and remarkable camera work, although it does stumble a bit in some places; the trademark MNS "twist" isn't the movie's whole gimmick, and while it's not what anyone would call realistic, that's never been a requirement for a horror movie. Rating: 4/5 One-sentence movie comedy special review: Bo Burnham: Inside Funny and relatable as all hell, this guy's genius is all over the place, and it's totally worth seeing in the theater or on streaming -- but some comedy is best shared with a large group of like-minded strangers. Rating: 4/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: Black Widow While you will need to have some familiarity with the Marvel Cinematic Universe to fully understand some of the references in the movie, there are enough gun battles, fight scenes, car chases, explosions, and special effects to make the film shine on its own, along with an actual plot with a satisfying mix of humor and drama; many of the scenes are unrealistic, but come on, it's an action/adventure science fiction movie based on comic book characters, so no one should go into this movie expecting adherence to the rules of physics or biology, just the Rule of Cool. Rating: 4/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: In The Heights Almost as good a musical as Cats. Rating: 3.5/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard This film has almost everything I look for in a movie: Samuel L. Jackson, Ryan Reynolds, Salma Hayek, other big stars, gunfights, chases, explosions, great stunt work, snappy dialogue, and marvelous dark humor; in fact, the only thing it doesn't have is anything more than a basic plot -- the lack of which barely diminished my enjoyment of the spectacle. Rating: 4.5/5 One-Sentence Movie Review: Cruella I probably wouldn't have appreciated this movie as much if I hadn't spent the time, earlier this week, to watch both the original Dalmatians cartoon and its live-action remake; as it is, while my expectations were fairly low, it turned out to be a fun movie about the perils of working in the cutthroat fashion industry -- and maybe a few other, minor themes like betrayal and revenge -- consequently, as much as I desperately wanted to describe the movie as "spotty" to make a really, really bad Dalmatian pun, I cannot, because it's pretty tight, just like the outfits it features. Rating: 4.5/5 (but probably more like 3.5 if you haven't seen or don't remember 101 Dalmatians) Note: ▼ One-Sentence Movie Review: A Quiet Place Part II . Rating: 3.5/5 One-sentence movie review: Raya and the Last Dragon This solidly-plotted, excellently-animated, and beautifully-voiced fantasy action movie from Disney succeeds in telling a compelling story; however, I question the appropriateness of the movie's central lesson (which seems to boil down to "trust your enemies;" a hell of a thing to teach a kid), and besides, I couldn't stop thinking that the movie's multi-pastel-colored dragons closely resemble My Little Ponies. Rating: 4/5 A one-sentence movie review of Wrath of Man While you can't go wrong casting Jason Statham, and the movie has an impressive body count and excellent gunfight scenes, there exists in the film a serious lack of car chases and explosions, two things that can elevate a film from merely good to a cinematic masterpiece. Rating: 4/5 |
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