Grant's Movie Log

Incredibles 2 (2018)

(90%)
Director: Brad Bird
Writer: Brad Bird
Stars: Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sarah Vowell
Production Company: Pixar Animation Studios

The Incredibles is one of my favorite Pixar movies (if not my favorite) as well as one of my favorite superhero movies of all time. I haven't gotten a chance to review it on here yet, but I very much plan to get to all of the movies Pixar has done at some point. Anyway, Incredibles 2 does the first movie justice, but it isn't near-perfect like the first one.

Story: The story of Incredibles 2 revolves around this rich brother-sister duo who want to make superheroes legal again, so they enlist the help of Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl, and Frozone to help generate some positive buzz so that they can get the law changed. Elastigirl ends up being their main spokesperson, and she's essentially sent out with a little camera embedded into her suit that will record her as she saves lives and defeats evil. But there is a bad dude, Screenslaver, who comes into play and is the main villain. You can probably tell where it's heading from here.

The story is definitely different than the first movie. They didn't just do a role reversal and smack a 2 at the end of the title; there is a noticeable difference in how this movie plays out, at least for the first act. There's more of a focus on the family, and less of a focus on one specific character doing superhero stuff. The individual superhero sequences are still there, but it definitely has more of a family driven vibe than the first one, which I believe was the correct direction to go. As I get to in the next section, the villain is what really brought down my score for this one. The build up was good, the family dynamic was great, the humor was spot on, but the villain didn't bring that presence that I was hoping for. The finale also seemed a bit too easy for the heroes.

Characters: Jack-Jack is the star of the show here. He is the reason for most of the laughs, as he's at the center of most of the film's humor. I also enjoyed watching Mr. Incredible try to be a somewhat regular dad after always having some sort of job. It turns out even superhero dads are just...dads. It was nice to see Elastigirl get the nod this time around to be the main on-screen superhero and it was cool to see how she takes care of business. Mr. Incredible relies on his strength and determination, but Elastigirl relies on her intelligence and various stretchy abilities. The villain in this film was incredibly disappointing as a follow up to Syndrome. I was afraid that this would happen, considering how great of a villain Syndrome was, but they really went the generic route with the villain in Incredibles 2 and it disappointed me quite a bit. The villain still does its job and there are some interesting aspects to it, but...eh. Finally, I wish Frozone had more screen time in this movie...but I wish he had more screen time in the original as well.

Animation: It's crazy how great animation looks these days. I didn't think I'd notice that much of a difference between the first one and this one, but there's a lot more noticeable detail (apart from the fact that everything just looks better, more crisp).

Screenplay: Brad Bird wrote another solid one here. For an animated film primarily meant for a younger audience, he doesn't write the characters to where it feels like they're talking to children. I like that.

Overall: Incredibles 2 is a worthy successor to The Incredibles. It has a weaker villain and I feel like the finale was not nearly as enjoyable, but everything else comes together to make it one of this year's best films.

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My Letterboxd

I also enjoyed Incredibles 2. Up there with Toy Story 2 in terms of Pixar sequels, when others have been a little lackluster.

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

Yay! So glad you liked Incredibles 2, my second favorite Pixar sequel after Toy Story 3

Here we are. It's finally time for my 2018 movie rankings (so far). Keep in mind, these aren't ranked based on the ratings I gave these films when I reviewed them, but rather a combination of the rating, how much I am looking forward to watching each one again, and a couple of other factors. You can find full reviews for all of these films on the first page of this log, just click the title of the film and it will take you to the review.

2018 Movie Rankings (As of June):
1. A Quiet Place
2. Won't You Be My Neighbor?
3. Incredibles 2
4. Annihilation
5. First Reformed
6. Hostiles
7. Avengers: Infinity War
8. American Animals
9. Deadpool 2
10. Hereditary
11. The Rider
12. Ready Player One
13. Isle of Dogs
14. Black Panther
15. Solo: A Star Wars Story
16. Game Night
17. The Post
18. Upgrade
19. Blockers
20. Tomb Raider
21. Hotel Artemis
22. 12 Strong
23. Rampage
24. Pacific Rim: Uprising
25. Cargo
26. Death Wish
27. Ocean's 8
28. Unsane
29. Red Sparrow
30. The Cloverfield Paradox
31. Bad Samaritan
32. The Strangers: Prey at Night
33. Chappaquiddick
34. Fahrenheit 451
35. Truth or Dare
36. Action Point
37. The 15:17 to Paris

I like the list. But I did enjoy Unsane more than Hereditary haha

Seems like a lot of people liked Unsane more than I did. It just didn't do it for me.

Tag (2018)

(63%)
Director: Jeff Tomsic
Writers: Rob McKittrick,Mark Steilen
Stars: Jeremy Renner, Ed Helms, Jake Johnson
Production Company: Broken Road Productions

I didn't believe this at first, but Tag is actually based on a true story. Pretty cool. Anyway, the story follows a group of friends who have played tag one month out of the year for the past 30 years, and one of the friends has never been tagged. That's basically all you need to know going in.

Tag is a fun, but inconsistent comedy. The jokes that land are damn funny, and the ones that don't are pretty bad. The story also suffers from being inconsistent. For the first half, I was all in. It was a fun story with some solid (well, most of the time) comedy. Then we get to the second half of the film and it starts to lose some steam. The story continues moving on but a lot of it starts to feel repetitive and frankly some of the second half is just kind of boring. However, it did bring back the fun at the very end which led to a satisfying ending.

I feel like I should also mention that this film does portray adult friendship (well, adult friendship for most of us) pretty accurately. The game of tag is what brings them back together, but apart from that...they don't stay in touch a whole lot. I can understand that. As we grow up there are friends that we'd like to keep in touch with, but due to one thing or another it's just not easy to do. The game of tag at least keeps them in touch for a whole month out of the year.

The ensemble works well together, with Ed Helms and Jon Hamm being the standouts, unsurprisingly. Thomas Middleditch (from Silicon Valley) also has a great cameo.

Overall, Tag is a fun comedy to watch on a free night or if you're looking for a few chuckles. I wouldn't mark it as a "must watch", though.

Love your Ranking dude! I would also have Quiet Place, Incredibles 2 and Annihilation in my Top 5, probably with Black Panther and Infinity War.

Wondering about Won't you be my neighbor, could I enjoy the movie even if I have no connection whatsoever to the context matter?

Nice! You should make your own rankings list. :P

Eh, I've talked to people that didn't really watch Mr. Rogers and still enjoyed the documentary because it's very well made. However, it'll probably just be a "good documentary" to you. It won't have anywhere near the impact on you that it had on me. It was elevated to the next level for me since I watched him basically daily when I was growing up.

I also really loved this flick, how’d you feel about the voiceover at the end explaining literally everything going on in the treehouse? I’m at a crossroads with it, I felt like it had already shown us enough; it didn’t need Joanie just straight up telling us.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)

(77%)
Director: Stefano Sollima
Writer: Taylor Sheridan
Stars: Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Isabela Moner
Production Company: Black Label Media

Sicario: Day of the Soldado is the sequel to 2015's Sicario, which was pretty well liked by both critics and viewers. Unfortunately, Day of the Soldado didn't quite land with the critics, although it does appear to be landing a bit more with viewers, with a 7.5/10 score on IMDB. I enjoyed this film. I liked a lot of aspects of it and found some of the scenes extremely well done, but ultimately the story has a few weak points that drag the film down more than I was hoping going into the theater.

Story: Day of the Soldado picks up a while after the first film, but there is no real connection to it apart from the two main characters (Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin). Take those two characters out, and this film plays out more like an anthology film than a sequel. However, because it is a sequel, they don't give us a whole lot of set up. It shows us a tiny bit of what the characters have been up to and then throws us into the plot, which deals with the U.S. Government declaring drug cartels as terrorist organizations, giving Josh Brolin's character the ability to go about taking care of them any way he pleases. So he decides to bring in Benicio Del Toro's character to help with his plan to create a war between the cartels. Eventually, though, the daughter of one of the cartel leaders gets involved, the plan to start a war with the cartels goes off the rails, and the story ultimately changes directions. I won't get into spoilers as to what direction the story does go, but for the most part this seems to be the main criticism of the film most people have. This awesome premise of setting up a war between the cartels was given to us for about an hour, and then it just pivots to a more isolated, simple story. I get the frustration. I also think that if they had stuck with the story of the first half of the film it would have turned out to be better, but I wasn't as bothered by this story pivot as it seems like most people have been. And I think I wasn't as bothered by it because the pivot made sense given the situation. The reason why the Government added cartels to the list of terrorist organizations turned out to be false, and Josh Brolin's operation went a bit haywire on its own. The whole narrative changed for the Government, and the operation wasn't going well, so it was time to cut the cord and as a result the story had to pivot. There were a couple of story elements towards the end that I felt like were a bit...meh, mostly revolving around Benicio Del Toro's character. But, overall, I was entertained by the story all the way through.

Characters: Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin's characters don't get a whole lot of development in this film. We basically have to bring the knowledge we learned from the first film into this to really understand each character's motivations and moral compass. But, they do seem like fairly simple, badass, men. So maybe that was the intention all along. Not every character needs progression in films. Sometimes, they just are who they are.

Script: I'm a HUGE fan of Taylor Sheridan. He's my favorite screenwriter working today and is a rather large influence on my own writing. He'd written three movies before Day of the Soldado, and I felt like Sicario was the weakest out of the three. Now, I believe this one is the weakest out of the four he has written. The film starts off a little abruptly and takes a few minutes to find its feet, and then the multiple storylines just don't work as well together as they should. All of the storylines are good on their own, but the connections between them are a bit weak. There are also a few elements later in the script that I feel like are a bit weak, but there were some rumblings that the studio messed with his original third act of the film and changed some things. He apparently wasn't super pumped on that, just like he was pretty pissed that they forced a name change from Soldado to Sicario: Day of the Soldado. But hey, that's the movie business. I still think the screenplay is serviceable, but it's definitely not his best work.

Cinematography: There were some great shots in the first Sicario, but Stefano Sollima doesn't quite reach that level of cinematography in this film. However, he does capture some fantastic action scenes that were on par with the first film.

Overall: Day of the Soldado is a solid watch for people that are interested in the subject matter, but it doesn't reach the same level of its predecessor.

I definitely don't think it was needed considering how it basically explained everything throughout the movie. I feel like they included it because they were concerned some casual viewers would be confused without it. It is what it is.

Plans for the Remainder of This Week (Wed.-Sun.):

For sure watching:
- Uncle Drew (2018)
- Swiss Army Man (2016)

Might watch:
- The First Purge (2018)
- Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

Uncle Drew (2018)

(66%)
Director: Charles Stone III
Writer: Jay Longino
Stars: Kyrie Irving, Lil Rel Howery, Shaquille O'Neal
Production Company: Creators League Studio

I really, really didn't expect to like Uncle Drew at all, but I came out pleasantly surprised. The story is simple enough: a young man pays to enter his team into a big street basketball tournament, but his whole roster leaves his team for another so he is left trying to find replacements. Enter Uncle Drew (an old man who we see show up a younger player on a public court), who the young man convinces to play for him, leading to Uncle Drew rounding up all of his old friends to play as well. This film is pretty dang funny. The jokes that land aren't just deserving of a snort, they're deserving of an audible laugh. Further, while several of the main characters in this film are not played by professional actors, I thought the acting was solid for the most part. Sure, there are a few scenes where you can tell they aren't exactly the most polished out there, but they did well working out of their normal element of playing professional basketball. However, this film stumbles whenever it tries to add in some drama with the comedy. It just doesn't work. It comes off as forced and really brought down the film more than it should have. There are also plenty of comedic cliches at work in Uncle Drew, but I can't say I didn't expect that. It's not like they were going for a groundbreaking comedy here. Overall, Uncle Drew is one of the funnier comedies I've watched this year. It scores pretty high as far as comedy goes, but it slipped up in other areas that keep it from being one of my overall favorite comedies of the year.

The First Purge (2018)

(41%)
Director: Gerard McMurray
Writer: James DeMonaco
Stars: Y'lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Joivan Wade
Production Company: Blumhouse Productions

The First Purge is the fourth film in the Purge franchise, but technically the first in the timeline as it's a prequel, which you probably figured out given the name. This film follows the very first Purge, which wasn't actually nationwide but instead only held on Staten Island. And, man, this one is a bit of a stinker.

Story: I very much like the Purge franchise on a conceptual level. I think that the idea of the Purge offers up a very interesting premise that could be turned into some great movies. Unfortunately, though, the Purge movies (outside of the first installment) have not been all that great. They've been decent flicks to watch if you're bored one afternoon or just want to eat some popcorn and watch people die, but that's about it. Anyway, as I said, the story of this one follows the cast of characters on the night of the first Purge. Given this, I figured that the beginning of the movie would give us a somewhat detailed look at how the decision to have the Purge came about. We are kind of given that, I guess. We get an incredibly cringey interview at the beginning between a doctor and a potential Purge participator that basically gives us the origin of the name, and the rationale behind the decision to have it is explained as well. But after those little tidbits, the film dives straight into setting up the characters.

I like a lot of the elements of The First Purge's story: how the New Founding Fathers' motivations factor into the experiment, how the people on the island initially act when the Purge starts, and how the Government gets involved later on. It did what a prequel should: add more to the movies that come after it in the timeline. However, this film tries to be so, so timely with its social commentary, and it gets to be a bit much at times. And that heavy handedness really brought down my enjoyment of the film more than I expected. Also, outside of the Government being a bit more involved this time around, The First Purge turns into just another Purge movie around the halfway point. There's some nice action, and some death, but otherwise it's nothing new. The concept here was good, the execution...not so much.

Characters: Dmitri (Y'lan Noel) is not only the best character in this film, but he's really the only character worth anything. He's the only one with any real depth, and it also helps that the actor portraying him has some real chops. All of the other main characters are completely two dimensional and are not particularly likable, either. I also have to say that I guess Blumhouse wanted to have as many crazy Purgers as possible in this film, but they are so over the top that they come off as people pretending to be crazy. One of the main "crazy" Purgers, Skeletor, is laughably bad. Without Dmitri, this cast would have been extremely weak. And, to top things off, Dmitri is a drug dealer...and he was the most likable character in the film despite not changing much by the end. That's something.

Script: The writing for most of this film is horrendous. Extremely cheesy dialogue, but that's nothing new for the Purge franchise.

Cinematography/Effects: Blumhouse is known for making decent looking movies on a super low budget, but I think that The First Purge may be their first film in a while that actually shows its low budget quite a bit. The sound effects are often recycled and sound like they came from a cheap sound pack, and some of the visual effects are downright terrible. If you see the film, watch for the blood effects in the scene that involves smoke grenades. It's not good. Cinematography wise, there's nothing special here, but it's decent.

Overall: I was entertained by the action and most of the story of The First Purge, and I liked the character of Dmitri, but outside of those things this film is barely passable as a popcorn flick, even by my relatively low standards for Blumhouse movies.

@GrantD2 glad to see you’re not in agreement on the end of Sicario II. I would have liked it so much more had it ended 10 minutes earlier. The last scene just felt so Marvel-Post-Credit-Sceney that it left a bad taste in my mouth.

Granted, it still wouldn’t go above a 3 for me personally.

That's one of the coolest things about reading reviews from other people on this site. Ratings can vary greatly from person to person. I completely understand your rating after reading your review.

Exactly. I always just take a review as an evaluation of an experience. I may not always agree with someone, but I think most reviews do at least a decent job of this.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

(58%)
Director: J.A. Bayona
Writer: Derek Connolly, Colin Trevorrow
Stars: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall
Production Company: Amblin Entertainment

When the first details of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom's story were published long before the film came out, it didn't exactly give me hope for the quality of the film. The concept of Jurassic Park/World is fantastic, for one movie. Past that, it gets a bit hairy and it has always seemed like that they weren't exactly sure how high quality the sequels would be, but they knew they wanted to make money. Fallen Kingdom falls into that same rut. The premise of the story isn't that bad: Owen and Claire agree to go back to the island to rescue some of the dinosaurs because the volcano on the island is about to erupt. But, inevitably, the film quickly disposes of this premise and moves on to a different storyline that I would call "Jurassic Mansion". I really couldn't believe that the rest of the movie took place in one location, a mansion. Sure, it's large and everything but...I wasn't a fan of this choice at all. Not to mention that the story really loses steam once they reach the mansion and falls into the common tendencies of previous Jurassic films. Lots of dinosaurs escaping, killing people, and almost killing main characters but somehow failing to do so. There is about eight metric tons of fan service in this film as well. It's basically projected to the audience to think "Hey, that reminds me of Jurassic Park! Hey, that reminds me of The Lost World!" during certain scenes because it's so damn similar. Typically with films like this I don't go in expecting a masterpiece, but I expect to have fun and be entertained. With Fallen Kingdom, I was entertained at times, and I had fun at times, but it was never consistent. The production and acting of Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard (not the nerdy computer guy and the female doctor...I found them to be incredibly annoying and unnecessary in many of their scenes) is top notch, as expected, but ultimately Fallen Kingdom failed to reach even a satisfactory level of entertainment.

Three Identical Strangers (2018)

(83%)
Director: Tim Wardle
Stars: Silvi Alzetta-Reali, Eddy Galland, Ron Guttman
Production Company: RAW

Three Identical Strangers is a documentary that tells the remarkable and rather disturbing story of a set of triplets that were separated at birth by an adoption agency and placed in three different households, but by complete coincidence two of them find each other when they're around 19 years old, and then the third enters the picture after seeing his two brothers in the newspaper. Unfortunately, that's about as far as I can go without getting into spoilers, which would really ruin the experience with this film. The story telling here is quite good. They do a great job of setting up a happy story about three brothers re-uniting after growing up separately before delving into what is really a dark story. Every time it seems like it's reached an end there is more to be told and uncovered. There are a few moments where it seems like the mystery is hyped up a little bit more than it needs to be, but that's a rather small nitpick. It's very well made and is better than your run-of-the-mill TV/Netflix documentary. I think it's well worth the watch.