Ursa Guy's Film Reviews

I realized that it was probably for the best that I start one of these, so I can share my thoughts on all of the movies I watch. I am known to my friends as the guy that will watch pretty much anything, from blockbusters to chick flicks to cheap horror, and everything in between, whether the film at hand is making big box office money or you've never heard of it before. I watch every animated movie to be released, because I see it as a medium rather than a genre and refuse to classify all of them as kids movies. Hopefully there's a wide range of stuff here so everybody can enjoy something. I will generally only be talking about more recent movies. I started getting into cinema in 2013, and theres plenty left to see from that era.

Cool. Looking forward to them.

I'm surprised this won an audience award at Sundance. Documentaries aren't my thing, but I thought this was really boring. The movie is about a family of 7 kids that isn't let outside their house for the first decade and a half of their lives by their strict father. In that time, they watch and reenact movies like The Dark Knight and Pulp Fiction. This premise sounded interesting to me, but the father stuff took priority over the movie stuff. After the first 35 minutes, the fact that movies are involved at all is merely coincidental, and everything after the first 35 minutes is really dull and not deserving to exist as a film. It's with the pretense that it's their first time in the real world, sure, but at the end of the day the last 50 minutes of movie is teenagers walking around New York City having fun at the beach and the theater. As a teenager living in New Jersey, I can and do participate in those activities relatively often. I don't really care about oversized kids having experiences for the first time because I did those myself, and it was way more fun than watching someone else. Boyhood had a similar problem, but it worked well because it had 3 hours to develop this one character. The Wolfpack gets 1 hour and 20 minutes to show 7 characters, and big surprise, it fails in that regard. None of the teens have a personality distinct from the others that you can get across in 80 minutes.

There's also some conspiracies going around that this film isn't a real life documentary. I do not know if the film is true or not, but I can definitely see why some people call ********. The basic, indisputable facts are that neither of the parents work a real job (both get government money), and they are able to put food on the table for 9 people, plus buying a thousand DVDs. The finances don't add up at all. I'm not saying that makes it fake, but I think it's worthy of suspicion. Regardless of the film, what is definitely, undoubtedly, 110% total fake ******** is the director's story. She says that she was walking through Manhattan one day, saw the 7 kids running by her, and chased them down figuring that there must be a story. Just give me a ****ing break to laugh my ass off at that one. Once again, as your SNL-style NYC teen correspondent, groups of 7 teenagers walk together in Manhattan literally every second the Earth has turned in the 21st century. Most of them have absolutely no documentary worthy story. They're probably trying to catch a subway or going to a private place to smoke some weed or celebrating after the Knicks won today. Maybe the story is true and the kids wanted someone to make a movie out of it, but this director story is so obviously fake that it casts a shadow of doubt over the whole thing. You can pick a street corner in NYC and follow every group of teenagers you see asking them why they're running and where they're going, and go through hundreds a day without any kind of interesting story behind it. Just thinking about this hack makes me want to lower the score, but the first 35 minutes were interesting enough. If you regularly watch documentaries, and not just 2 or 3 a year that are getting Oscar buzz, you're more qualified to tackle this than I am, but any casual viewer who thinks the premise looks cool should skip this because the cool part of the premise is dropped less than halfway through.

The Wolfpack seems interesting but yeah 80 minutes sounds way too short. The director really said that's how she came up with it too? Lol cmon.

Make sure you click the checkbox that says "Suggest this post for inclusion in the Reviews area (how's this work?)" for each review you do. You will get it put up where all the others go when you click the Reviews button. I think you can edit your post to do it, but I always just click it before I post

When I write about a movie that actually played in a theater I'll do that.

Yeah Wolfpack was frustrating. Ebert always said that no bad movie is too short, but if it were half an hour longer and actually let the boys be interesting people that I knew about it wouldn;t be bad.

Thanks to Yoda for getting my first big review in!

Some good reviews in here...

Keep up the good work and consistent pace!

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I don't like Melissa McCarthy. I only needed to look at her for a few seconds to hear every joke in Tammy. Haha, she's fat! Fat people falling down are funny! Fat people screaming are funny! Fat people being sad and alone are funny because they're fat! Maybe she's a talented comedian, but all I've ever seen of her is low brow physical humor. The Rotten Tomatoes score for Spy is 95%, which I think was high, but what really caught my eye was the critic consensus: "Simultaneously broad and progressive." What was progressive about Spy? Unattractive people get degraded for being unattractive only to save the pretty people? This entire film is founded on stereotypes and does nothing to deconstruct them other than a happy ending.

The plot felt like a decent Austin Powers setup. The CIA has been leaked out, so they need to send an inconspicuous nobody to do the job: out of shape Melissa McCarthy. The mission is supposed to be a follow and report job to help gain intelligence, but McCarthy runs headfirst into danger, getting herself into trouble. The story was far more engaging than I thought it would be. This isn't paced like a comedy, for sure. Comedy gets put aside quite often for some really good action scenes and tension building. The villains are really threatening, and that allows for a dramatic payoff. The stakes exist arbitrarily as a nuclear bomb being sold to hit New York, but they are also present on a more personal level. The spys are getting themselves in and out of various jams.

Everything written here so far describes an average film, without me feeling an emotion either way. What pushes it positive is the hilarious supporting cast. Rose Byrne plays Rayna Boyanov, an Eastern European with the bomb currently in her possession looking to exchange it to a middle man. She's essentially a spoiled college girl that happens to be the leader of a mob, giving her the ability to murder everybody that looks at her wrong or gives her a mediocre bottle of wine. Her best moments are the constant verbal abuse of McCarthy for being fat, which I would hate, but Byrne is such a snob about the whole thing that it's still fun to watch. Peter Serafinowicz, who I guess is best know for being Darth Maul but hasn't been in a big movie in over a decade, is awesome as a British and/or Italian lover of McCarthy. His pursuit of McCarthy lasts the whole film, and the end reveal that his accent was faked really got me. But by far the man who steals the show is Jason Statham as rogue ex-CIA agent Rick Ford. The script is magically perfect when it becomes Ford's turn to speaks, and Statham has the conviction to pull it off. He has a lot of conversations with McCarthy, because they're both chasing Rayna, and most of them feature a ridiculous story about his former spy work. Apparently the 10 craziest CIA stories all belong to him. He impersonates Obama in blackface and participates in an underground poison ingesting ring and literally every single joke out of his mouth was a huge hit for me.

This film is 2 hours long. That's fine for an action movie, but pretty hard to sit through for a comedy, which is why it's a great thing to let the action shine in the last half hour. I was surprised at how good the action is. The fight choreography was pretty solid, the car chases were fun (-1 for hitting a fruit stand in Italy, though), and the violence was realistic-ish without being gory. If you're a fan of the McCarthy/Fieg brand of humor, you will probably think that this is nearly flawless. It's a very god film because even if you're not a fan, there are still a lot of funny jokes and it gets to have and eat its cake by being good at what its parodying (Austin Powers, the most obvious comparison to Spy, is a really good parody but not a good serious spy move). R rated comedies have had a rough year, but this is a step in the right direction.

Really enjoyed that last review over the rest. I was on the fence about watching Spy but decided against it because McCarthy isn't that funny to me. I should probably stream it sometime soon.

EDIT: Rose Byrne is great too, I really like her.

I didn't want to get repetitive, but if you're on the fringe about watching this, watch it for Statham. He is so great.

In preparation of watching Sharknado 3, I will be talking about the surprise hit Sharknado. I'm still not totally sure why this is the Syfy film to catch on. Syfy and The Asylum collaborate on monster B movies with ridiculous titles all the time, but this was the ridiculously titled monster B movie to gain mainstream attention. I would think that the biggest help might be that they cast actual actors. Most of these films plug in people with virtually no experience, but Tara Reid and Ian Zeiring are both actors that were decently big names in their heyday. It's also under the public belief that these films are so bad they're good, and that the people making it are not in on the joke. I sort of agree with this, but I sort of don't. Obviously the concept is supposed to be ridiculous, and the effects are intentionally bad. They're not trying to make a good film, they're trying to make a film called Sharknado. And the reason for that positive rating above is that Sharknado does Sharknado well, much better than a lot of wannabe Oscar movies try to be Oscar movies.

The acting on display is of jarringly varying quality. Ian Zeiring, our lead actor named Fin (that's an intentional joke), is actually quite decent. He portrays emotions competently. I believe that he is an estranged father of 2 that has a lot of knowledge about the ocean that would help him survive a hurricane. I also really liked Cassie Scerbo playing Nova, Fin's employee and pseudo love interest. I like how the writers gave her a backstory which gives her a reason to be so emotionally involved. It's simple, sure, but it's there and it's executed fine. She has a character that I can relate to, and she's not the protagonist, and I can say that about virtually no other Syfy movie. John Heard was believable as a drunk old pervert. I'm not sure how much of it was actually acting, but it makes for a good show. I probably will never review Sharknado 2, but the short version is that dumping most of the original supporting cast, especially Nova, made me enjoy it a lot less.

When the acting dies, it dies hard. Tara Reid is awful, but in this context that adds to the entertainment factor. That's where the unintentional humor comes in. Nobody wanted to go viral by making Tara Reid use just one tone of voice in every context and never react with an emotion, she's just that untalented. Chuck Hittenger, playing the son of Tara Reid and Fin, clearly gets his acting talent from his mom's side. He always sounds like a 10 year old kid that got his favorite toy taken away, which makes it hard to sit through his action scenes near the end but makes for great comedy when using that bratty and exasperated voice to say things like "Now I really hate sharks!"

I might call this a great B movie, but the constant continuity errors and lazy cinematography really dragged it down, and that makes it only good. Keeping the time of day consistent isn't something that comes easier to those with a higher budget, like how I can give them a pass for not having realistic sharks. Scenes happening concurrently should have the same amount of light in the sky. It's a simple concept that is constantly botched. The film uses way too many establishing shots of settings, which accomplish nothing but fill time. Also, I don't need a gorefest, but a film about killer sharks should probably show some killer sharks. Sharks are eating at legs from underwater, or flying by to take out somebody's head, but we never really get to see a shark attack a person with a focused and steady camera.

The plot and science are stupid, but if that's your argument for why this is a bad movie, it's obviously not for you anyway. I was actually impressed by the writing for the most part. Context matters, and while the writing would be terrible for a Fincher film, way more effort was put into fleshing out motivations and histories and relationships than a lot of 'legit' disaster movies, like older Godzilla movies or 2012 or more recently San Andreas. The second film got too caught up in its own spectacle, and it removed a lot of dialogue scenes for more sharks eating people in bizarre ways, and while most of the audience for Syfy movies might appreciate that I think it took a lot away from the fun of it all. And for me, Sharknado is definitely a fun movie. That makes it good at doing its job, and that makes it a pretty positive review in my book.

You've put some thought into these reviews ... but... for Mall Cop?
I'd rate it a solid ... which is 1-10% in my own % ratings. It's an awful movie.


Good review of Sharknado though but it is a movie I wouldn't even review tbh. It's not the sort of film, bad or good, that deserves the time and thought that someone like you obviously puts in.


I'd like to see a review from you on one of my Top 10 though
Be as brutal as you like etc, or big it up... either way, I'd like to read up on something from you that means something to me.

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1) For me, something has to be actively offensive to land a 1/10. Being unfunny and boring doesn't get there, no matter how much of those 2 things a film is, and especially when there are portions of it that I found funny and enjoyed.

2) I'm of the belief that every film deserves time and most deserve thought. I'm not trying to claim that Sharknado is some kind of misunderstood masterpiece, but being dumb does not mean being mindless. There is some cinematic merit to be found.

3) I've definitely got the impression that I could be doubling my reps if I picked a film that more than 5 people have seen, but I really enjoy watching a wide variety of genres and obscure films. Tomorrow I'm writing about Sharknado 3, and Friday I'll do something for Rise of Apes because I haven't seen that yet.

Really good movie but pretty much a build up film for the next one. I would understand if people wouldn't enjoy it but I personally liked the build up and it made me enjoy the 2nd one even more.

****. **** you. **** you movie! What the **** are you doing? This offends me as a fan of B movies, as a fan of horror films, and as a fan of Sharknado. ****.

Let me get some positives out, because every movie has its merit, right? I like the beginning. Mark Cuban is fun. I like the end, because that was ******* insane. Seriously, what the **** was that? A shark is hurtling to Earth from space with Tara Reid inside. Tara Reid gives birth. A baby comes out of the shark. It surprised me, and good for you if you can surprise me. I never saw that coming. It got a huge laugh out of my entire family. I also like a 30 second bit, where a presumed shark prop hanging upside down is actually a real shark and eats a man posing for a picture with it. That was clever. If this was a straight horror film, that would be a great kill.

Literally everything else is embarrassing, pathetic, and a ridiculous case of jumping the shark, pun ****ing intended. I don't know where to start the description. The plot? ****. There is no plot. Fin kills some sharks, meets Nova from the first film, goes to Florida, kills some sharks with Tara ****ing Reid who has a ****ing chainsaw for a hand, finds his father, goes into outer space, and fires a space laser to destroy the tornadoes, only for the sharks to come into space, forcing Fin to use a space sword to kill the sharks. What the actual **** did I just type? It's a series of scenes thinly stitched together. I might think the second Sharknado is really, really bad, but at least its events formed a cohesive narrative. This story is just meandering, filler, padding, and then out of ****ing nowhere a ****ing space laser.

The characters? **** them right in the ******* too. Nova has disappeared for a year to form a militia of Sharknado killers. Ian stops acting to just **** some ****** sharks up. Tara Reid, the primary instigator of being so bad it's amazing, keeps getting her role relegated, to the point where she isn't even in the first half hour of this 80 minute "movie", as I guess I'm expected to call it. Fin's son once again isn't even in this movie. No characters introduced in this chapter live to the end, making the whole thing worthless.

But I'm sure this film is worth quite a bit. It must be worth a lot to Universal Studios Orlando. **** you and your mother****ing product placement. It's a ******* commercial. I'll be sure to visit Busch Gardens the next time I'm vacationing in Florida. This film is too busy advertising Universal rides to do literally anything. Every character that starts at Universal could have been excluded from the film and absolutely nothing would change. Tara Reid didn't need to be there, her daughter didn't need to be there. Every single death was predictable. The unnecessary and impractical sexualization of Nova was a joke. A funnier joke than anything else. There were no moments that were so bad they were funny, it was so bad it was boring. It wasn't "haha, that line read was awful", it was "ugh, this **** has no structure and Hasselhoff just drones on and on with no point and this ****ing science mumbo jumbo is meaningless."

There isn't a single memorable line, or scene, or kill, that was genuinely good or good in a goofy way. I feel insulted at the abuse of this cash cow. Sharknado currently exists as nothing more than a viral marketing tool for whatever brand or C list celebrity wants to jump in on it. This wasn't a film, it was a ****ing commercial. I feel betrayed. It's less good in the cinematic sense and it was less fun. This is a ****** ****ing movie, it's a ****** ****ing usage of my time, and it was even a ****** ******* mother****ing Sharknado. I said above that Sharknado was better at doing its job than something like Big Eyes or Into the Woods was at doing its job. Sharknado does ****ing Birdman's job better than Sharknado 3 does Sharknado's job. I'm going to grab multiple bottles of Dos Equis, watch The Room, and hope I don't kill myself tomorrow. FÜCK.

Well... that was interesting.