Some thoughts about Cats with a Grudge living Underwater in 1917
I haven’t had the time to write anything about the movies I’ve seen recently because of personal issues in December and more recently work. But things have finally calmed down a bit, so I wanted to get back to it. Since it’s not timely I’m going to quickly run through the movies I’ve seen since I’ve last posted.
Cats: Fortunately, or unfortunately, Cats was the last movie I saw in 2019. Prior to watching it I heard about all about it. But nothing could have prepared me for how weird the movie was. The human faces on the CGI cat bodies made me physically uncomfortable from the first scene and it was just hard to watch the movie without just this feeling of repulsion. I have never seen the play but I knew some of the songs and to be honest the movie was not horrible in that regard. The songs were all well done and the choreography was pretty good too. But there was absolutely no story, which apparently was the case with the play as well. I think this movie is the embodiment of the Jeff Goldblum meme “they were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” I think if they had gone with actors in cat suits or simply animated cats voiced by the actors the movie wouldn’t have been so bad. It was just hard to enjoy because of the “digital fur technology” that caused some weird uncanny valley feelings. But I did have “NEVER HAS THERE EVER BEEN A CAT SO CLEVER AS MAGICAL MISTER MISTOFFELEES” stuck in my head for days afterwards. I’d give it a watch just for the novelty.
The grudge: Unfortunately The Grudge was the first movie I saw in 2020. The movie is a sort of sequel to the Japanese movie about a vengeful spirit that makes people in the house do bad things. The original 2002 movie followed an unconventional structure to tell the story by jumping back and forth to show different incidents that connected to the house and the curse. This version tried to do the same thing but it was executed so poorly that each jump to a different time was so jarring that it takes a second or two to process what happened. For a horror movie it was incredibly boring. There were a few telegraphed jump scares but that was about it. The movie felt like the writer and director thought they were much more clever than they actually were. After seeing this I thought I had seen the worst movie I would see all year. But alas my luck would not be that good as we’ll see with the next movie I saw. If you see this movie on a shelf somewhere as a courtesy to society you should destroy the DVD, jail time or arrest be damned.
Underwater: Underwater is going to be a strong contender for worst film I’ll see in 2020. The movie follows a few survivors of an accident in an underwater drilling facility in the Mariana Trench. The survivors attempt to reach the surface but are foiled at every turn by plot. Eventually there’s underwater fish monsters but they suck; in both design and story concept. The entire movie felt like the writers wanted to write a rip off of Aliens but studios refused to make it so they changed the setting to underwater rather than in space. But for some crazy reason they already made these space suits. They’re underwater diving suits now!
See this movie is so bad it’s not getting one run on paragraph. Nora (Kristen Stewart) is a mechanic for this underwater drill and apparently even though she was not that experienced somehow knew how to work every single mechanical thing in the movie. There was also a character played by TK Miller that didn’t seem to have had a real job on the drill prior to the events of the movie. His character didn’t do anything but make jokes. Then there was another character played by Jessica Henwick that couldn’t decide if she wanted to have a British accent or not. The accent changes were incredibly jarring.
This one’s getting a third paragraph! The plot and characters for this movie were the worst part. So essentially the whole movie. The captain of the ship (Vincent Kassel) delivered his lines like a man ordering a pizza he doesn’t even want to eat. At first, he doesn’t seem to care if anyone else survived besides the main cast of the film but then when they see a stranded escape pod, he decides to put his crew in danger to go check for survivors. Motherfucker you left the main area with the main cast that randomly just showed up without checking it for survivors now you wanna look for survivors? Then there is another scene where 3 of the survivors are wandering around in the dark outside of the drill using oxygen tanks that are supposedly very limited and are attacked by monsters. They’re separated and Nora somehow finds an abandoned facility and gets inside. She has time to cry in the shower, explore the abandoned facility, consult a map, find a flare gun, and repair a new suit to use before she goes out looking for her “friends.” Even if you did all this quickly, I think 30-45 minutes would be extremely generous. She finds her friends as soon as she goes out looking and miraculously they didn’t run out of oxygen or get attacked by the monsters during the entire time Nora was in the facility. Then when they’re trying to sneak by the sleeping monsters her suit begins beeping to say that there is low oxygen.
The entire movie just didn’t make any sense. Why didn’t a multi-billion-dollar company send people down there to do damage control immediately if they knew something was wrong. What were they even drilling for? The movie mentioned something about energy. Once part of the hull was damaged how didn’t the pressure just crush everything? What an awful nonsensical waste of time.
1917: I’m going to level with you and say I had 0 interest in this movie before it won a golden globe. Then out of curiosity I wanted to see what the fuss was about. I have to say it was not worth the hype. The movie is about a boy whose brother is in another military unit that is going to walk into a trap so the general tells the boy to get to his brother’s unit and relay this information. The movie just follows the journey. The big selling point is that this movie is a long shot but it’s really not. The first like 15 minutes are and they are fantastic but after that there is a lot of camera pan trickery and the like. The movie looked beautiful but the story itself was pretty shit. I think the main takeaway from the movie is the age old “war is hell” adage. It explores nothing new about the nature of war, but it looks pretty, I guess. If you’re not a fan of war movies this won’t change your mind but it’s worth a watch.
TL: DR: Cats is worth watching for novelty. The grudge was boring as fuck. Underwater is awful everything. 1917 is not worth the hype but worth a watch.
Cats: Fortunately, or unfortunately, Cats was the last movie I saw in 2019. Prior to watching it I heard about all about it. But nothing could have prepared me for how weird the movie was. The human faces on the CGI cat bodies made me physically uncomfortable from the first scene and it was just hard to watch the movie without just this feeling of repulsion. I have never seen the play but I knew some of the songs and to be honest the movie was not horrible in that regard. The songs were all well done and the choreography was pretty good too. But there was absolutely no story, which apparently was the case with the play as well. I think this movie is the embodiment of the Jeff Goldblum meme “they were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” I think if they had gone with actors in cat suits or simply animated cats voiced by the actors the movie wouldn’t have been so bad. It was just hard to enjoy because of the “digital fur technology” that caused some weird uncanny valley feelings. But I did have “NEVER HAS THERE EVER BEEN A CAT SO CLEVER AS MAGICAL MISTER MISTOFFELEES” stuck in my head for days afterwards. I’d give it a watch just for the novelty.
The grudge: Unfortunately The Grudge was the first movie I saw in 2020. The movie is a sort of sequel to the Japanese movie about a vengeful spirit that makes people in the house do bad things. The original 2002 movie followed an unconventional structure to tell the story by jumping back and forth to show different incidents that connected to the house and the curse. This version tried to do the same thing but it was executed so poorly that each jump to a different time was so jarring that it takes a second or two to process what happened. For a horror movie it was incredibly boring. There were a few telegraphed jump scares but that was about it. The movie felt like the writer and director thought they were much more clever than they actually were. After seeing this I thought I had seen the worst movie I would see all year. But alas my luck would not be that good as we’ll see with the next movie I saw. If you see this movie on a shelf somewhere as a courtesy to society you should destroy the DVD, jail time or arrest be damned.
Underwater: Underwater is going to be a strong contender for worst film I’ll see in 2020. The movie follows a few survivors of an accident in an underwater drilling facility in the Mariana Trench. The survivors attempt to reach the surface but are foiled at every turn by plot. Eventually there’s underwater fish monsters but they suck; in both design and story concept. The entire movie felt like the writers wanted to write a rip off of Aliens but studios refused to make it so they changed the setting to underwater rather than in space. But for some crazy reason they already made these space suits. They’re underwater diving suits now!
See this movie is so bad it’s not getting one run on paragraph. Nora (Kristen Stewart) is a mechanic for this underwater drill and apparently even though she was not that experienced somehow knew how to work every single mechanical thing in the movie. There was also a character played by TK Miller that didn’t seem to have had a real job on the drill prior to the events of the movie. His character didn’t do anything but make jokes. Then there was another character played by Jessica Henwick that couldn’t decide if she wanted to have a British accent or not. The accent changes were incredibly jarring.
This one’s getting a third paragraph! The plot and characters for this movie were the worst part. So essentially the whole movie. The captain of the ship (Vincent Kassel) delivered his lines like a man ordering a pizza he doesn’t even want to eat. At first, he doesn’t seem to care if anyone else survived besides the main cast of the film but then when they see a stranded escape pod, he decides to put his crew in danger to go check for survivors. Motherfucker you left the main area with the main cast that randomly just showed up without checking it for survivors now you wanna look for survivors? Then there is another scene where 3 of the survivors are wandering around in the dark outside of the drill using oxygen tanks that are supposedly very limited and are attacked by monsters. They’re separated and Nora somehow finds an abandoned facility and gets inside. She has time to cry in the shower, explore the abandoned facility, consult a map, find a flare gun, and repair a new suit to use before she goes out looking for her “friends.” Even if you did all this quickly, I think 30-45 minutes would be extremely generous. She finds her friends as soon as she goes out looking and miraculously they didn’t run out of oxygen or get attacked by the monsters during the entire time Nora was in the facility. Then when they’re trying to sneak by the sleeping monsters her suit begins beeping to say that there is low oxygen.
The entire movie just didn’t make any sense. Why didn’t a multi-billion-dollar company send people down there to do damage control immediately if they knew something was wrong. What were they even drilling for? The movie mentioned something about energy. Once part of the hull was damaged how didn’t the pressure just crush everything? What an awful nonsensical waste of time.
1917: I’m going to level with you and say I had 0 interest in this movie before it won a golden globe. Then out of curiosity I wanted to see what the fuss was about. I have to say it was not worth the hype. The movie is about a boy whose brother is in another military unit that is going to walk into a trap so the general tells the boy to get to his brother’s unit and relay this information. The movie just follows the journey. The big selling point is that this movie is a long shot but it’s really not. The first like 15 minutes are and they are fantastic but after that there is a lot of camera pan trickery and the like. The movie looked beautiful but the story itself was pretty shit. I think the main takeaway from the movie is the age old “war is hell” adage. It explores nothing new about the nature of war, but it looks pretty, I guess. If you’re not a fan of war movies this won’t change your mind but it’s worth a watch.
TL: DR: Cats is worth watching for novelty. The grudge was boring as fuck. Underwater is awful everything. 1917 is not worth the hype but worth a watch.
Comments