Omni's Random Video Noise

I think that quote will suffice in place of the usual.

This was hardly an action movie. There's a shootout near the end, but it's in no way representative of the rest of the movie. The rest of the movie is more of a mildly upbeat cop drama starring Eddie Murphy AS THE RENEGADE COP WITH NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE. WHEN HIS BEST FRIEND IS BRUTALLY KILLED BY A CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION, AXEL FOLEY MUST GO BEYOND THE LIMITS OF HIS JURISDICTION TO BRING VENGEFUL JUSTICE AGAINST THE UNTOUCHABLE CRIMINAL SCUM, it's really a very formulaic setup.

Really the movie I think most resembles Fletch, and the best parts are when Eddie Murphy gets what he wants by lying on the spot to somebody's face. There was nothing in it that made me laugh, but there were some notable actors throughout and I was spared a traitor cop narrative in lieu of breaking some hard-nosed by-the-book-ers into more likable characters (I still would prefer cops not drink on the job though).

I don't really have much in the way of outstanding complaints, Eddie Murphy was a really weird sounding laugh, but he otherwise steals the screen as you'd expect. The supporting cast is interesting, though the villains are pretty flat, but altogether the brisk pace, upbeat soundtrack, and occasional quote-worthy moments kept my attention throughout. It's pretty decent flick. The low-end of "good" I'd say. Nothing it'd hurt to miss, but not a real waste of time either.

I'm a little disappointed that I can't knock Secretary down with this one too, with a title like "Bound" you'd hope a little rope-a-dope would find it's way in here somewhere, you know, aside from when the girls get tied up for practical reasons.

The first 15-25 minutes is some of the thickest sexual tension I've ever seen, Girly Girl meets Bulldyke in an elevator and they drag the camera and orchestra along by the dick all the way until they have sex and then their relationship serves as the totally platonic catalyst for a crime drama.

...okay.

Basically Girly Girl's presently shacked up with Mafia Dude played by Joe Pantoliano, who inexplicably seems to get more screentime than Bulldyke, and after finding himself with 2 million dollars to hand off, our Thelma and Louise decide to escape together with the money by hatching a plan to fool Mafia Dude into believing he's been set up by an archenemy who's stolen it behind his back. Basically the movie establishes their sexual chemistry, Girly Girl tells Bulldyke she wants to leave, Bulldyke comes up with a plan, and then she spends an extraordinary amount of time just listening to the movie progress next door.

The original plan is for Mafia Dude to find the money stolen and then decide to flee, but he doubles down on proving his innocence and showing up his supposed enemy up by challenging him at gunpoint, that and he questions Girly Girl's alibi. Ultimately Mafia Dude shoots Mafia Supervisor and then he has bodies to a account for when both the police and other Mafia Dudes come investigating.


The story gets a little complicated, but nothing that can't be followed, and there was little in the way of plot holes as far as I could tell. You might wonder why if they were going to shoot Mafia Dude in the end anyway why they didn't save themselves an entire movie by doing that in the first place... but you know... maybe they didn't WANT to kill anyone...

There were a couple vaguely amusing moments throughout the movie and some of the camera shots throughout were actually kinda cool. I didn't even realize this was a Wachowski Brothers (Sisters?) movie until the credits rolled, but the influence makes sense and Joe Pantoliano, who played Cypher in The Matrix, pulls a similar intensity into this movie, ironically making him more interesting to watch in the end than either of our leading ladies.

In the end it was a solid flick, kept me interested in what would happen next, even if I am a little disappointed that the drama drifted away from our main characters.

Ice Cream, Bacon, Pancakes, and a Sandwich I will bet hard money isn't vegan.

It Follows is the sort of send-up gimmicky horror movie I should enjoy, the premise here is that the Death By Sex trope is unironically played straight to a T, in that the monster in this movie literally preys exclusively on the most recent teenager to have sex in a mysteriously sourced chain of sexual transmissions, if it finds you it ****s you to death and then turns on the person who gave it to you. Basically the worst kind of STD that isn't a straight-up flesh-eating disease.

The trick here is that while it always knows where you are, it only ever pursues you at a walking pace, and only those who've been infected can see it, although it always assumes the shape of a regular person, be it someone they know or someone random to blend into a crowd. It's a pretty neat and creepy idea to suppose yourself into a crowd of people and imagine for a moment that a single person in that crowd is slowly approaching you with the intent to kill at all times and they could be anybody. That's really cool. And I like that they made the creature fallible too, so they may assume shapes of people who look out of place in the area they're in.

I should also offer props to the audio and visuals, the music has a thick 80s synth style soundtrack that, perhaps on some days I might overlook, but I do appreciate in contrast to the usual fair. The camerawork, although a bit excessive with the pans at times does a great job of providing wide shots and the composition is great, especially with how it keeps the characters largely in focus, but still draws your eye to the background where you'll occasionally see the fixed pace of someone approaching, implying The Follower is near (I'll just call it The Follower).

It's an enjoyable slow burn of a movie most of the way until it peeters out near the end and a bit of retrospect really spoils what I think otherwise would be a solid movie.

Firstly, the concept alone, while cool, immediately runs into a rock and a hard place. The problem here is that either the movie simply becomes a chase movie or we attempt to resolve the conflict by one of two options: killing Boyfriend in revenge for infecting Main Girl, or letting Main Girl infect other people.

While I might have gone the path of petty vengeance, Main Girl decides to take the path of the destroyer by spreading the ****ing disease to other people. Thanks, Main Girl, I will from hereon refer to you as Douchebag.

Douchebag first infects Boyfriend #2, but he gets killed, so she then infects Boyfriend #3 before a hard cut to black raising questions about whether or not they die. I have a number of problems with this.

Firstly, who the **** would knowingly have sex with Douchebag? Okay, so Boyfriend #2 spits out some disposable dialog about how he doesn't believe it, okay that's fine, but Boyfriend #3 has no excuse! He broke a chair over the thing while it was invisible! He knows it killed Boyfriend #2, why would he sign on for that??? Not only that, but Boyfriend #2 doesn't really have an excuse either cause if he doesn't believe her, then he's literally sticking his dick in crazy and you know you're not supposed to do that dude.

Let's also consider the wisdom of training Douchebag to fire a gun who you believe to be crazy and thinks people who look like her friends and family are out to kill her. THAT CAN IN NO WAY GO WRONG, CAN IT?

Okay, so we've established that the only people who would propagate this garbage are either suicidal, or ********, so you're not really hitting me in the sympathy department here, movie. Also where are these kids' parents? Did they die? Was that their dead parents the monster was representing? **** if I know, all of the characters in this movie have this remarkable ability to all speak in Generic Low-Key Well-Adjusted-Upper-Middle-Class-Teenager-Talk so my eyes just glaze over every time one of them talks. One of them even reads a book on a hyper-anachronistic e-reader thing (wtf was that?), not that I remember what the book was called or about or cared. And that kinda sucks cause the movie ends on one of those lines so...


That sorta compounds with the rather crap ending the movie gets, and I know some people like how it ends, it's been compared to the Inception ending, but I gotta disagree. Firstly, while we can only confirm two sex scenes in the movie establishing transmission, it's heavily implied, in what would otherwise be a completely worthless scene, that Douchebag found some no name characters out on a boat and infected them offscreen. This would mean (possibly, depending on unknown rules of infection) that she did not infect Boyfriend #3, but lost her ability as a carrier if No Name Boat Guys became the new carriers. Boyfriend #3 is also shown to drive past prostitutes while he is infected. The ending shows a person following both Douchebag and Boyfriend #3 at some distance before a hard cut to black, so at the very least we have several possible canon endings, and this is assuming that The Follower only targets those in the direct chain of transmissions, and not tangential transmissions (meaning you can't **** multiple people and force The Follower to hunt and kill every one of them before it gets to you, it only cares about the first person you have sex with):

1.) Boyfriend #3 is infected and being followed.
2.) Boyfriend #3 is infected, and No Name Prostitutes are being followed.
3.) Boyfriend #3 is not infected, and No Name Boat Guys are being followed.
4.) The Follower kills No Name Boat Guys offscreen, and is following Douchebag.
5.) The Follower kills No Name Prostitutes offscreen, and is following Boyfriend #3.
6.) The Follower is following somebody else entirely.
7.) The Follower is dead.

The Follower is dead is a controversial ending because while it seems to be implied with the long unresolved delay following the pool trap the kids set up, we've established that The Follower can withstand not just a bullet to the neck, but bullets to the head. The only difference between shooting it in the head on both occasions was whether it was submerged in water. Why should water deter it's ability to immediately recover from a gunshot wound to the head? The only foreshadowing of this I can think of is that it doesn't immediately enter the water upon reaching the pool, and instead attacks Douchebag indirectly by throwing things at her. If there were some other nod to this earlier in the movie, that water is somehow it's kryptonite like in Signs or something, but I can't think of one.

Frankly, the ending just comes so abruptly and with no apparent wind-down, the twist being literally the same question that kept the rest of the movie on slow burn in the first place: "Are they being followed?" Good ****in' question, lemme just back you up and hour and the start the movie over again for you because we're back at square one in terms of narrative development. Literally all this movie is is a random cross-section of a supernatural event. We don't know how it starts and it doesn't conclusively end. It just happens, and some forgettable jagoff teenagers are involved. Whoop-di-freakin'-doo.

Also, let's me just unironically mention how I won't bring up that totally not immersion-breaking moment early in the movie where we've established that The Follower isn't dumb, but it will gladly assume the shape of a ****ed up looking lady (their dead mom???) in their kitchen, scaring away it's target immediately on sight, even though they're mere feet away and a more innocuous disguise would have probably elicited enough pause to grab her, kill her, and end the movie prematurely.

Like, how much credit should I be giving this monster? Enough to envisage and disguise itself as your family members just to mess with you, but also simultaneously too dumb to know that doing so when they're vulnerable is just a giant ****in' waste of an opportunity?

I dunno, cool monster. Disappointing ending, painfully mundane and stupid characters. Meh.

The most enjoyable mystery stories are those featuring a closed circle of suspects, these are the stories where the murder takes place at a location or time which limits the possible perpetrators to relatively small group of people, making the investigation into evidence largely secondary to taking and cross-examining testimony. These are the mysteries which fuel the likes of Sherlock Holmes, Clue, Case Closed, and the Ace Attorney series, all well known for creating suspenseful mysteries and challenging the reader, viewer, or player to solve the mystery before the detective does. It's extremely tempting to draw parallels to Sydney Lumet's 12 Angry Men here because both involve seeking justice through the cross-examination of information from a limited number of diverse and dubious characters. Taking on the elements which made 12 Angry Men great and elevating them from the deconstruction of evidence to the reconstruction of a crime sounds like a truly fantastic idea.

Sadly, this is where I sideline my optimism for an actual review.

The reason the movie Clue has 3 endings is transparently simple: They had at least 3 endings they really liked and they couldn't pick just one so they went with all of them. It's easy to imagine the difficulty in choosing between a murder mystery in which 1 person is responsible, really forcing the viewer to narrow their considerations down and commit to one suspect, win or lose, versus a murder mystery in which everyone is responsible, providing a clean narrative with no lose ends at the expense of that viewer participation. When everyone is equally credible as the murderer and no hard evidence damns any one person, the audience can't come to it's own autonomous conclusions.

While I totally understand the desire to have all of your fun characters ultimately the murderer in an OCD kinda way, in doing so you deprive the audience of what should be the biggest central selling point of your movie: solving the mystery yourself. Sure, the movie sprinkles evidence all over the place for you to form your own conclusions, but when the cups are lifted and the balls revealed, it's like finding out it was a dream all along. Nothing mattered. Your speculations and conjecture were a waste of time because everything was orchestrated from the beginning.

Granted, a third of the Clue's endings is this ending, but Clue was also a comedy, so it had that going for it much of the way. Murder on the Orient Express plays it's murder mystery straight, which forces me to compare it to other like mystery stories such as Case Closed. Case Closed is a seemingly endless anime and manga series with each installment featuring a different closed-circle mystery and a range of suspects each with their own alibis and possible motives. Most of the time, only one or two people are responsible for the murder (or faked suicide) and the series gives you most of the information up front for you to solve it. Consider for a moment what it would mean for a series like Case Closed to feature a mystery in which every suspect was in fact the murderer.


That would end the series. Or at the very least it's a gambit you couldn't pull twice without seriously jeopardizing interest in your stories. Why read when you have no incentive to try and pick out the murderer?

Now, you might argue that MotOE gave you enough information to solve the mystery and thus isn't quite the cop-out I take it to be, but really consider the leaps the movie goes to in order to draw it's conclusions. For you to solve the mystery you'd have to, independently, be familiar with the Russian alphabet, accept that "lawyers" is an Americanism for "solicitors", and apparently need only a fraction of a name on a burnt piece of paper to conclude that the person who burnt it is in fact operating under a false name and secretly a mafia gangster and murderer of the person who's name is on the paper.

Unless of course I missed something which is entirely possible because the main character speaks rapidly and in a thick accent throughout the entire movie so I pick up, what, 70-80% of the dialog?

Honestly, by design, you can't really incriminate everyone unless you specifically propose evidence suggesting that it could only have been done with everyone else's mutual knowledge. You might as well ask who DIDN'T kill the guy because you have approximately as much wiggle room to make such assertions. I mean, imagine if Poirot illustrated his second solution, accusing everyone on the train of complicity in the murder and there's like ONE GUY he's accusing who was completely in the dark. Seems totally possible to me.

I will grant that Sydney Lumet does manage to distinguish these characters similarly to how he does in 12 Angry Men, but many of their personalities and mannerisms never really manifest in the proceedings and the likes of Sean Connery and Michael York get precious little time onscreen to flex.

Honestly, if I were to point to any one particular thing I liked about MotOE it'd be the setting. Not the atmosphere, but the setting, something about an intercontinental locomotive and that time period, with all the smoke and suave suits, the bitter luxury... ah. It gets me. I wish I could've been in that time.

Though I hear Scarlet Fever wasn't too fun, so maybe not.

The Babadook is a truly remarkable movie, in that I don't think I've ever seen a movie in which one of the protagonists is scarier than the monster itself.


Take a look at this child. Just IMAGINE the sheer pants-****ting horror of sitting in the same vehicle as this little piece of ****. Screaming, kicking the back of your seat, would you believe me if I told you this elementary schooler is ****ing ARMED?

Yeah, apparently this kid puts Macaulay Culkin from Home Alone to absolute shame for the amount of weapon engineering he's mastered in his single-digit years on earth. He personally built a shoulder catapult, owns a literal crossbow, and has the inexplicable ability to acquire white doves and explosives offscreen. He disrupts his classes, he breaks the noses of neighbor kids, and he disobeys his mother on a regular basis because she's just a massive ****ing floormat.

The basic premise here is Single Mom and Child From Hell discover a mysterious book which essentially threatens it's readers with vivid horrific popouts and descriptions of what The Babadook will do to you, and sure enough after reading the book it begins to haunt their home to harass them. It's decently creepy for maybe half the movie until it's "revealed" to be a solid black stop-motion paper thing that makes generic stock monster sounds before outright possessing Single Mom, totally eradicating any tension the movie had because now your villain is front and center on the screen in bright light.

Not only that, but it's a breath of relief when The Babadook turns her into a sour bitch that isn't afraid to verbally abuse her ****awful son. Granted, she snaps the dog's neck (sorry, DoesTheDogDie.com, that would be a confirmation), but that's about all she does before her kid inexplicably traps her in the basement, frees her, and after some totally vacuous showdown her son is "reformed" only to saddle her with another uncooperative screaming monster of a child, The Babadook, in her basement.

Well that's just swell. This really does seem like you've worked through your problems for no reason whatsoever.

"People don't like me cause I'm weird."
"Sometimes people say things that aren't true."

No, Mom, stop treating him like a special ****in' snowflake and tell that little **** that he IS weird, he's a violent little troll that got kicked out of school by his own ****in' fault, all your friends hate his scheevy little guts, and he's got no friends because he's an annoying little ****bag who nobody wants to spend time with for good ****in' reason. Stop reading him books, stop stuffing him full of ice cream, and stop apologizing for him, BE A PARENT, put your foot down, or shove it up his ass, whichever keeps him from putting glass in your food and breaking other childrens' noses.


This movie's pretty cliche too, I mean seriously, you're gonna give us the whole doubletake-cause-you-see-something-in-the-background-but-it's-gone-now-oh-well-let's-forget-that-happened schtick? Shove off.

The best thing about this movie is the creepy art in The Babadook book, and that's not worth the price of admission.

Interesting. But a bit predictable.

ACfW offers an odd pairing of beautiful landscape shots and cinematography with some really sceevy ****. I mean, you see a tube forced deep down a guy's throat moments before a dirty jar full of leeches(?) are poured inside him.

I mean, on one hand I'm thinking, "Wow, that's my fetish.", but on the other hand I'm thinking, "Wow, this movie looked really pretty before."

Premise is this: In the world of Matrix Vision, dude at a scummy company is pressured into retrieving an employee from a rehabilitation center out in the middle of nowhere in order to scapegoat his own failures onto him. Turns out the place is just a teeny bit too clean and a teeny bit too happy and a teeny bit too obviously a cult and- you know what? Let's just leave.

Doop-dee-doop-dee-doo-


Oh ****, now I got a broken leg and a physical representation of my inability to leave, who could have possibly forseen this? Let's heavily emphasize all the water people are drinking with lingering shots and passing comments about how we should drink more water, HOLY WOW I'm feeling sick all of a sudden, I wonder why? You know what, let's just sign ourselves into the clinic here I can't imagine that coming back to bite me in the ass later.

I was never really frustrated watching this movie, but perhaps that's because I was quelling the constant plot contrivances with a more pressing worry that the movie would go all Shutter Island on me.

And Shutter Island sucked. Just sayin'. That ending is so cliche I find it ridiculous that it got the critical appraisal it did. Must be cause it's a Leonardo DiCaprio movie.

Anyway, ACfW never goes full Shutter Island, but it repeatedly reminds us how much it would love just to take all it's clothes off and disappoint us, so the main character, after stupidly signing into the clinic in the first place, is not only persuaded that all the bull**** conspiracy stuff is a figment of his imagination ONCE, but TWICE, and seriously? Really? Ya ****in' kidding me with this?

We get this whole elongated backstory about "the Baron wanted to marry his sister who was infertile, but not, so the townsolk burned down his castle and killed her and her baby, but didn't, which was deformed, but wasn't" and really all of this elaborate MASSIVELY expensive rehab treatment facility **** was all for the sake of this Baron guy who's still alive after 200 years and wants to **** his tween(?) daughter and everyone is totally on board with that because reasons.


Okay, LOTS of questions, but HOW exactly is he even alive? They never explain this. Obviously he lived through the arson, but how did he live beyond that? We keep drawing attention to this "vitamin" stuff we eventually find is squeezed out of people filled with leeches or whatever, but what does that do? Did EVER establish what that stuff even is or what purpose it serves? I think it's only ever used by Main Guy, Big Bad, Incest Daughter, and the staff, so what does it do? Does it extend their lives? Does it prevent them from becoming de-hydrated and losing their teeth because drinking the water with leech stuff in it somehow drains them? Was THAT ever established?

Are they even leeches in the first place? They look like eels! Eels are not leeches! What is even the life-cycle of these Eelches, you drink them when they're microscopic in your water, pee them out still microscopic offscreen, and so they grow in your toilet, except they don't cause that's just a recurring hallucination AND WHY WOULDN'T YOU LIFT THE TANK UP AND LOOK INSIDE THE FIRST TIME YOU SEE THE TOILET HANDLE JIGGLING!?!?

I dunno somehow, "Surprise, I'm a 200-year-old blood puritan who's been experimenting on hundreds of people under the facade of a professional medical facility just so I can have bondage incest sex with my 200-year-old underage daughter next to the eel bath" is a bit of an anti-climax.

Was gonna call this "Meh...", but no way does this movie hold up in retrospect.

I saw zero bothans. Am disappoint.

Rogue One I think is helped by framing itself as a deliberate spin-off of the main series which allows it the creative liberty to really branch out and explore new concepts such as new planets, new aliens, new technology, but really the best part of the movie is seeing how it, like 2011's The Thing premake, pays hardcore nerdy homage to the original movie.

Whereas you could fairly complain that The Force Awakens retreads old territory narrative-wise, Rogue One takes old characters and casts them into a new story, specifically all of those side characters whose names you don't remember, but have seen Star Wars so many times that you instantly recognize like "Oh, **** THAT guy! I remember that guy! I don't remember his name, but he totally had like 1 or 2 lines in the original movie!"

Most of these characters are surely just reenacted by lookalikes, and they mimic their counterparts serviceably, but there are at least two characters in particular who are so major in New Hope and have such distinctive faces and are now dead that they had to be recreated in CG.

The CG is really good, and I'm sure that there's other characters that probably fooled me, but when it comes to Tarkin and Leia, there's just no way I'm not going to immediately recognize that they're CG, since they both seem veeeeeeery slightly off. Not that I'm really complaining though, I'm glad they're in the movie, they both really run home the idea that this all takes place hot off the heels of the first movie and I like that concept, it's what made Halo: Reach and interesting setting for a game: "Let's tell the untold story of those guys who died offscreen in their epic last stand to set off the events of the main story."

It's a cool idea, and all those teeny tiny cameos of side characters sprinkled throughout the movie, not in-your-face, but actually playing their roles like they belong? I liked that.

That said... I found this movie very boring. I know people have been saying this was better than Force Awakens, but I disagree, it's a fresher story, yes, but Rey, Finn, and Kylo were way more interesting co-protagonists and villain than Main Girl, Main Guy, and Tarkin's Bitch in this movie. And you know, I thought Rey was pretty flat in Force Awakens too, that ****ing sucks dude, I've been wanting to see some really kickass leading ladies with a rockin' personality to boot. At least Rey has unchecked force powers to show off with, Main Girl here just seems like a walking plot device.

She immediately gets orphaned after being given a necklace (Which is super cliche already, but what is it made of, one of those saber crystals? Wouldn't that have been cool for her to have used that for something?), she avoids the Rebellion, but gets roped back into it by chance, she doesn't want to cooperate then she does and then we're supposed to feel really proud of her for having transitioned from zero to hero despite there being nothing to justify that character arc beyond a video recording from her Dad which is WAY too conveniently addressed only to her even though it wasn't sent to her and they haven't seen each other in over a decade so...

Main Guy's even worse. They set him up as an ******* and make a big thing about how even The Rebellion has done awful things, but then he's just super nice and helpful throughout the rest of the movie like he's drunk the "I gotta make the audience like me now" potion offscreen.

Best characters are easily K-2 and Donnie Yen, because apparently the best written Star Wars characters are robots now and Donnie Yen is a blind martial artist in Star Wars and how can you NOT just imagine how that board meeting went down:

"We wanna make a spin-off Star Wars movie, but who do we cast?"
"Make Donnie Yen a blind dude who sees **** with the force and beats the **** outta some stormtroopers."
"YOU MOTHER****ING GENIUS, yes let's do that, who else?"
"Ehh... I dunno throw Forest Whitaker in there, **** if I care..."

Also Vader's in the movie, cause why not. And he gets the most ridiculous onscreen killing spree of I think any villain in the series to date. Good stuff.

But really, the movie focuses much of it's time on our main characters and they're just uninteresting and the plot that unfolds is oftentimes inarticulate and largely just seems like a road map of "okay we've talked to this guy, now we gotta go here...", I dunno, I see a crew of badasses on the poster and I sit and watch the most of the movie just kinda drive by, not even really developing it's characters, until it finally gets around to the big heist at the end and I can't help but just shrug as everybody dies.

Okay. So that was a thing.

Really feels like a waste considering everything the movie had going for it. I dunno.




...you know? Browsing Google for images to add to this I think it occurred to me what this movie was missing. You pitch this movie like we're gonna be getting the Rebellion's most daredevilish black ops team of characters in for a suicide mission to save the galaxy, yet it's just a mish-mash of characters mostly not even related to the Rebellion where only 2 or 3 of them feign any level of chemistry up until some sort of rallying speech in the third act from our main character who we've only just recently established doesn't even want to be a part of any of this.

It feels really forced, and considering the fact that the Halo series was never particularly strong in it's narrative or characterization department yet it outclasses Rogue One here? That's unacceptable.