Omni's Random Video Noise

And that's how you get transgenders.

Cats, Birds, Nazis, nah, I'm kidding, nazis are cool.

About what I expected. Lots of visual gags, slapstick, wordplay, unfortunately this felt pretty tame and at times, slightly juvenile. I got, I think, one small laugh out of the movie and I don't even really remember what it was I found funny.

It was mildly amusing enough to mostly keep me engaged, but I was pretty bored, honestly.

The topic itself is, honestly, a goldmine for humor, but unfortunately they play it too straight at times and even though the nazis are initially presented as petty tomato thieves, the movie really doesn't mind talking about decapitating people and martyrdom and concentration camps.

I've read that Chaplin wasn't aware of the extremes to which cruelty was inflicted during the war, but COME ON, you're casually talking about soldiers going out into the streets to blow up people's homes out of hatred and the only tinge of humor to it is Chaplin is slipping on roof shingles trying to escape. That seems pretty tone-deaf to me.

At the very least there's a pretty bomb speech at the end (no pun intended). A good way to wrap it up and sober any of the chucklers still in stage seating.

It's seems genuinely difficult to me to square the financial support of this sort of movie since doing so rather implicitly gives a pass to using dogs as critical plot devices.

I really didn't know where the movie was going to go after it's flashforward and I was disappointed to find that after Wick goes on his killing spree to avenge his first dog, he ends the movie by replacing it with another. That's SO ANNOYING because it's probably the most transparent way they could have possibly objectified dogs.

Guy needs emotional support. Gets a dog. Feels better. Dog dies. Gets another dog.

There isn't even any mention of the fact that you can't replace something with sentimental value AND EVEN THEN we're saying a dog has sentimental value because of it's status as GIFT.

BIGGEST complaint of the movie, easily, obviously, even debatably worth saying at all, but it really is the one thing that holds this movie back for me because otherwise I thought this was a solid flik.


The gunplay and CQC was tight and varied, this is much more the Hard Boiled school of shootouts where engagement comes from a power fantasy character smoothly transitioning through a chaotic environment, disabling and executing baddies one by one.

As a power fantasy character, John Wick isn't even that hard to empathize with, even given his criminal background and even given his extremely questionable relationship with dogs (especially given that ending). That's rather tough to pull off and I would attribute a good amount of that to a combination of tone, pacing, and world-building.

We spend almost double the standard 15 minute sell-me window to root this movie in an emotional well before we really get our first shootout and by then we've fairly established the characters, their motives, and the excuse to hit puree with the rest of the movie. The conflict is established fairly well. I really can't complain.

The world-building is somewhat subtle, but I much appreciated the odd moments of inferrable jargon and reference to established constructs that comprise this underworld that John's a part of. It's that little bit that presses the movie forward.

I suppose I shouldn't neglect the mix of B-list actors either, even Willem Dafoe who gets a short turn as an uncertain ally is a much appreciated inclusion. Most everybody pulls in for a good time.

I'm also pretty big on the music which was unafraid to adopt the ambient synth/rock backing from the club or bathhouse to accompany it's action scenes. The tone's consistent and it gels well with the action. Far better than the nonsense you'd get in Haywire.

Really, I liked the movie, and I'd be plenty content to say I'd have no regrets seeing it again, but interweaving the dog into the plot was really damaging. It doesn't leave a good taste in my mouth.

Squid Ink and Lobster.

Take Independence Day, E.T., Back to the Future, and The Matrix, mix it all together, heat it up just long enough to burn all the good CG away and serve with Japanese actors, you got Returner.

The biggest complaint I read about Returner is that it's derivative, and that's completely true, there's scarcely an original bone in it's body, but unlike some movies that simply ape their source material trope for trope, Returner seems like a genuine attempt to cram all of those influences together and produce something appealing on it's own, and personally I think it succeeds, even if it is incredibly flawed.

The CG looks ugly, the dialog is, at times, cheesy as all hell ("GO! The future is in YOUR HANDS!"), a couple characters being possessed to speak for the aliens is cringey as ****, and you'd think the villain must be extremely fast to silently run all the way across the deck of a ship out of site and onto a helicopter in a matter of seconds, THAT IS, until you realize the protagonist can be eating and keel right the **** out to sleep in even less time.

It's a goofy stupid movie, but it's one saving grace, if there is only one, would be it's actors and their characters.

The plot involves an alien invasion on the brink of destroying humanity's last stand when protagonist Milly escapes back in time through a time machine humanity just happened to having hanging around in order to kill the first alien which is told to have summoned the invasion of Earth. She immediately encounters Miyamoto, a sarcastic and skeptical mercenary, who she compels to help her by blackmailing him with an explosive to his neck. Thus follows a far-from-entirely-serious relationship which involves a lot of fun interplay between them.

I don't think I can really do them justice with words, so here's a clip:


Turns out while Milly's after the alien, Miyamoto's after the Big Bad named Mizoguchi. Mizoguchi's a great villain because he MUGS THE CRAP OUT OF EVERY SCENE HE'S IN. He's a very entertaining sleazebag and I daresay he's got an excellent death scene if you think about it a little bit.



The music has bursts of genuine quality, the story, while prone to surface-level scrutiny like "why are they burning time at a salon when they gotta save the world?", and you naturally run into about the same narrative failures as Back to the Future when it comes to the time travel aspect, but if you can forgive the movie for it's obvious influences and it's very pedestrian CG, I think it's a pretty touching movie by the end with an ending that features reincorporation that's foreshadowed, but still surprising.

I really like this movie. This is one of those that I totally concede has pretty significant issues, but would also certainly regret not having in my personal collection.