finished watching Crank: High Voltage 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑
Crank: High Voltage comes as such a massive improvement that one almost wants to give the first movie more leniency for the sheer fact that it leads up to this.

This film is little to no story, all action, and is unashamed of that fact. Things in the movie make such little sense, are so over-the-top, and completely random in the best sense of the word that anything wrong with the film is vastly overshadowed by how enjoyably comedic the film is with it's lightning-pace absurdity.

Will absolutely keep this movie in mind for movies to watch with friends.

finished watching Sing 2 🌕🌕🌗🌑🌑
Despite being an upgrade from it's predecessor, Sing 2's story feels less like a narrative, and more like a sequential telling of events.

Maintaining it's corporate feel from the previous movie, the overall messaging of the film plays it safe. "Believe in yourself", "overcome your fears", and "dream big", messages that, while not to be diminished, are all too common, rub off as tacky, lack a sense of originality, and generally come off as lazy story telling and character development arcs.

On the point of character development arc, Sing 2 improves on that, adding more of them, showing more direct character struggles, and showcasing consequences for not facing them. However, Sing 2's emphasis on external conflicts as opposed to internal ones doesn't do justice to the messages it attempts to tell audiences, unfortunately leaving them to ring hollow. Had internal conflicts been more fleshed out and in-depth, the film would have landed with greater impact.

Overall, I have to give credit to Sing 2 for generally being a more enjoyable watch than the previous film. An attempt at a new story that falls flat, despite it's flaws, is still an improvement from a story that may as well been copy-pasted from another work. The corporate nature of the movie, while definitely still present, has been died down, character arcs are generally more enjoyable, and one has a better sense of relatability to the characters as opposed to the previous film (excepting Meena).

In general, overall still not my kind of film, but I absolutely can see where people would enjoy it.

wants to watch The Pacifier

wants to watch Sing 2

finished watching Sing 🌕🌕🌑🌑🌑
Despite decent song performances, Sing's biggest fault as a film is it's largely corporate feel.

The story plays the safe route in order to appeal to as many people as possible, presumably in order to make the biggest possible gain at the box office, and in doing so, creates an entirely unoriginal story rank with tropes that have been seen a million times before.

Also annoying is how the end of the film ends off in a manner that almost feels like a music playlist? In most musicals the music numbers are spread throughout the film, and while, to Sing's credit, there are musical segments scattered throughout the film, they're purposely left incomplete in order to play into the idea that they're impromptu, or are audition and practice performances leading up to the finale. The ending would likely have felt more acceptable had there been more complete music numbers scattered around the film.

Other gripes include how the characters are first introduced, the absurdity of the inciting event, the unneeded extremity of the first climax, and the entirely unrealistic reactions and interactions of the other characters with Buster after the fact.

In trying to appeal to everyone, Sing loses it's appeal to anyone wanting to watch a film with substance.

wants to watch The Office Season 1

wants to watch Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

wants to watch Napoleon Dynamite

wants to watch In Time

finished watching Crank 🌕🌗🌑🌑🌑
Despite it's fast-paced and original premise, Crank's use of public sexual violence going from nonconsensual to consensual as both a plot point and as comedic value immediately date the film from that point on. Pair that with him hijacking a taxicab and yelling "Al-Qaeda" to force an angry mob against the cab driver, a crossdressing character being killed off when the fact that they're a crossdresser adds nothing to the film, and multiple points in the movie where women are there purely as eye candy, and you get some poor messaging to film audiences about women, queer people, and racial minorities.

That gripe aside, Crank's fast-paced action is something to be desired. It's over-the-top nature is easily a guilty pleasure, the absurdity of the ending is admittedly enjoyable and fun, and while the story could easily have been more in-depth, the film makes it clear that it exists for action with a barebones story that simply serves to glue it all together.

All in all, could have been a generally great watch, but wow does the movie take a turn for the worse both with the taxi driver scene, and in the Chinatown scene and what immediately follows, leaving the viewer incredibly uncomfortable in a way that's hard, if not impossible, to redeem.

wants to watch Crank: High Voltage

stopped watching Crank 🌕🌗🌑🌑🌑
Despite it's fast-paced and original premise, Crank's use of public sexual violence going from nonconsensual to consensual as both a plot point and as comedic value immediately date the film from that point on. Pair that with him hijacking a taxicab and yelling "Al-Qaeda" to force an angry mob against the cab driver, a crossdressing character being killed off when the fact that they're a crossdresser adds nothing to the film, and multiple points in the movie where women are there purely as eye candy, and you get some poor messaging to film audiences about women, queer people, and racial minorities.

That gripe aside, Crank's fast-paced action is something to be desired. It's over-the-top nature is easily a guilty pleasure, the absurdity of the ending is admittedly enjoyable and fun, and while the story could easily have been more in-depth, the film makes it clear that it exists for action with a barebones story that simply serves to glue it all together.

All in all, could have been a generally great watch, but wow does the movie take a turn for the worse both with the taxi driver scene, and in the Chinatown scene and what immediately follows, leaving the viewer incredibly uncomfortable in a way that's hard, if not impossible, to redeem.

wants to watch The Cat from Outer Space

wants to watch Underdog

wants to watch Marmaduke

wants to watch Who Killed Captain Alex?

wants to watch Nanook of the North

finished watching R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned 🌗🌑🌑🌑🌑
Horrible. The acting is terrible, the dialogue is terrible, that this is a "prequel" when story points and the designs of the deados don't even match up with the original film is absurd, hell, even the scene transitions boggle the mind with their abruptness.

The comedy is terrible save for literally one or two small occurrences, and even then the light weight of the jokes add nothing to the movie. The main character is bombarded with an explanation of the entire premise within the first 15 minutes with the viewer being told the story rather than shown it, random plot points are added either for cheap convenience or the most surface-level character arcs imaginable, and somehow this complete waste of time has a runtime longer than the original "meh" movie.

If you thought RIPD was an alright movie, I assure you this prequel is a complete waste of time.

wants to watch MythBusters Season 1

wants to watch Final Destination 2