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popentertainment-moviereviews · 5 years

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CHILD’S PLAY (2019)

Starring Aubrey Plaza, Gabriel Bateman, Brian Tyree Henry, David Lewis, Beatrice Kitsos, Ty Consiglio, Carlease Burke, Trent Redekop, Marlon Kazadi, Nicole Anthony, Kristin York, Amber Taylor, Mia Bella, Ben Andrusco-Daon, Zahra Anderson, Olivia Poon, Hannah Drew, Amro Majzoub, Johnson Phan, Eddie Flake, Tim Matheson and the voice of Mark Hamill.

Screenplay by Tyler Burton Smith.

Directed by Lars Klevberg.

Distributed by Orion Pictures. 90 minutes. Rated R.

There has always been something a little off about the Child’s Play series. The idea of a killer doll is a pretty long-standing horror trope, therefore the concept of the spirit of a serial killer taking over a doll and wreaking havoc in the night can potentially be a winner. Of course, the reality of the film series is that while some people will find a killer doll horrifying, the specific doll they used – a small ginger kewpie doll with fat cheeks and chubby little hands brandishing little knives and making wisecracks as he mows people down – looks a little ridiculous.

There is a reason that the last several Chucky films concentrated on post-modern humor and the corny aspects of the situation rather than the horror.

Therefore, when rebooting the series – which was sadly inevitable – they had to decide if they wanted to play it as a straight horror or continue to highlight the humorous qualities of a cute, tiny little plastic mad slasher. Inexplicably, they decided to play it rather straight. Sure, there were some funny parts – it would be impossible to do a movie with this storyline without some laughs – but they were working harder at coming up with “imaginative” graphically violent and gory deaths than they were at looking at the absurdities of the situation.

That was a bad choice.

The new Child’s Play was pretty much shunned when it briefly played in theaters a few months ago – by both casual horror fans and more specifically fans of the original franchise, who were vocally unhappy about some of the changes made from the original. (More about that soon.) So now that it is getting a video and on-demand release will Child’s Play catch some fan love? After all the original films were also mostly theatrical failures which caught on with a cult audience on video and cable.

I rather doubt it. I’m no huge fan of the original series, but at least those were mostly better than this.

First of all, it was a huge mistake to change Chucky into a CGI effect. The original doll models were kind of ridiculous looking, but the new Chucky looks almost comically unrealistic. From the face, to the body, to the expressions, to the moves, there is nothing the tiniest bit scary about the new Chucky. And, yes, that was the consensus amongst the fans of the original.

The fans also chafed at the odd massive change of Chucky’s back story. Instead of being a normal child’s toy which is possessed by the spirit of a killer, the new Chucky is an AI robot-toy which has been sabotaged (for some odd rather inexplicable reason) by a disgruntled sweatshop worker. All of the toy’s failsafe protections are turned off, so this one doll leans to curse, learns to lie, and eventually learns to kill.

Okay, so they made some bad choices. Did they make any good choices? Well, yes.

The top amongst those is using former Luke Skywalker-turned-ubiquitous voiceover actor Mark Hamill as the voice of Chucky. Not that Academy Award nominated (for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) actor Brad Dourif didn’t do a good job in the original films, but Hamill’s voice work is one of the few places that the new film keeps up with the originals.

There was also some smart casting with the likes of Aubrey Plaza as the harried mom who brings the defective Chucky doll home, and Brian Tyree Henry as the smart-but-goofy cop whose mom lives down the hall. However, it was a shame to hire such good actors and give them so little to do.

And the cheesy “You’re my buddy” song that Chucky sings is a damn earworm. I couldn’t get it out of my mind for hours after seeing the movie. It was sort of like the Barney theme or the 1-877-Kars4Kids jingle – you don’t exactly enjoy it, but once you hear it you can never forget it.

Jay S. Jacobs

#Child's Play #2019 #Movie Review #Mark Hamill #Jay S. Jacobs

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allthefilmsiveseenforfree · 5 years

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Child’s Play (2019)

Well it’s Friday, so that means another classic horror franchise is getting rebooted. This time it’s Child’s Play - you know, the one about the spirit of a serial killer that gets trapped inside a talking doll and terrorizes the neighborhood? Well, serial killer spirits are SO 1991, so the 2019 version has updated it to a “smart” doll capable of operating all your wireless devices and there’s no supernatural mumbo jumbo going on here - just a disgruntled factory worker pushing back at unjust labor laws by removing all the safety protocols in ONE doll and shipping it off far away. You know, as most labor disputes get resolved. So Chucky (voice of Mark Hamill) comes to be best friends with Andy (Gabriel Bateman) and soon starts disposing of anyone he believes might be compromising their friendship. I think we all remember how upsetting it was when our Teddy Ruxpins started to do the same thing. So is this AI bringing in a new wave of “smart” horror reboots? Well...

God I hope not. It’s a mess. There’s some ok stuff in here, but wow I have a lot of questions for the director, the screenwriter, and the design team.

This is the worst character design I’ve ever seen. His eyes are both too big to be like a standard doll, but too small to be in the Bratz or anime-type range. Also, he suffers from the Jack Nicholson problem. For as brilliant as Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is, its casting is truly epically terrible. Jack Nicholson looks crazier than a shithouse rat at the very beginning of the film, making his descent into madness feel a little less like a descent and more like a very level straight line that you could use to hang a picture frame. Same thing with ol Chucky blue eyes here. He looks so uncanny valley creepy right from the get go that when he goes full murder spree it’s like “oh no he’s...doing exactly what his face indicated he would be doing this whole time who could have possibly predicted.” I’m all for the use of animatronic puppetry over CGI but...I just feel like the design here really missed the mark.

I’m sorry, I’m just so pissed at the inciting incident for this whole thing. Why would your revenge against your shitty boss be to remove all the safety protocols from a microchip going into a device that is shipping halfway across the world from you? What’s the endgame here? Seriously. THE most plausible line of reasoning is “This doll will malfunction and cost this company I hate working for $39.95.” Well, that doesn’t impact your shitty boss. The only OTHER plausible line of reasoning is “This is going to make a murder doll that will malfunction and kill people on the other side of the globe.” That STILL doesn’t impact your shitty boss AND it means this guy is a total sociopath with a diabolical scheme on a level Chucky can’t even dream of. Why isn’t the movie actually about him???

It’s weird to see Aubrey Plaza playing a mom but I kind of love her snark being melded with maternal instinct here. Although, honestly, she does feel more like Andy’s big sister than his mom.

As for Andy (Gabriel Bateman), he’s actually a really solid leading man in this. Even when he has to break down into hysterics over Chucky’s bad behavior, his performance never veers into whiny or shrill. He’s got a lot of charisma and plays Andy as a fundamentally sweet kid who maybe just doesn’t have many friends because he hangs out with his mom and sucked into the vortex of his phone too much. I was impressed, because he has to carry 80% of the movie by himself talking to an animatronic Annabelle.

I will say, Chucky’s horrible design aside, Mark Hamill does a phenomenal job as the voice of Chucky. Even when he’s repeating the same phrases over and over again, he injects a level of pathos and humanity into Chucky that’s really impressive. I know this isn’t a controversial opinion, but he really is maybe the best living voice actor of our time.

Full disclosure, there is some violence done to a cat that is very distressing, not once but TWICE. The cat dies :( And it’s particularly egregious because not only do you get faked out once thinking “oh this cat is gonna be ok” but THEN after the gruesome part, Chucky uses the sounds of the cat to emotionally torture Andy and the audience. That shit is fucked up.

Um, I’m not sure what lack of googling this screenwriter, Tyler Burton Smith, did but these literal children are not millenials, they are generation Z, GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER.

The tone is wildly uneven. It’s not funny enough to be a horror comedy, and it’s not really scary, just jump scares and being creeped out by Chucky’s fucking face. Also, the film can’t decide if we’re meant to feel bad for Chucky being a victim of his programming and his shitty preteen masters showing him a bunch of campy slasher movies OR if we’re meant to be scared of him because he’s a murderous monster doing things of his own free will.

Why are there watermelons in this man’s yard? And the line “a white guy dead in a watermelon patch - poetic” ... what fucking poetry are you reading? Listen, I have two degrees in English literature, and I don’t remember Samuel Taylor Coleridge ever writing anything about any fucking watermelons.

Another weird choice - the movie is pretty gory but not in a fun or campy way. I think sometime around 2010, movies lost the ability to do buckets of blood in a fun way? I know that sounds fucked up, but this isn’t campy or silly, it’s just kind of gross - both trying to be gleeful and also taken way too seriously. At first, when it’s only super pervy or abusive dudes that are getting whacked, it’s like, ok, there’s a comeuppance factor here, this is gross but fine. But then it starts extending to characters that have done nothing wrong and that we’ve been pushed to love and empathize with. So then it feels a lot less fine but still very gross.

One major highlight - I will watch Brian Tyree Henry in anything. He’s just so so good at everything, and this is no exception.

Also - BTH plays a detective and Andy is literally trying to hide evidence made of human remains in the detective’s apartment. For dayyyyys. Let that sink in. Do you think that shit doesn’t smell?? And he keeps disposing of evidence and things he doesn’t want to deal with in the trash chute of his own building. Where the detective also hangs out. There are other dumpsters, my dude!

If you’re making a murderous doll movie and a guy who looks like Jack Black (Trent Redekop) perving around in a basement is the creepiest thing that happens, that’s probably not a good sign.

Speaking of Not Jack Black, everything in his death sequence makes no sense. Why would you stand on a table saw to get away from literally anything? Why would your table saw have a “smart” functionality? Take this as a warning kids, if Google starts making smart table saws, that’s when we draw the line.

There is one (1) cute dog, and Chucky is uninterested in him. He escapes the movie unscathed and appears to be a Very Good Boy.

Did I Cry? Fucking no, oh my god, not at all.

This is just a real uneven mess. Some performances shine amidst the terrible material (BTH, Mark Hamill, Gabriel Bateman) but overall, I had a lot more fun with the playfully wicked marketing campaign (coming out the same day as Toy Story 4, the film leaned into the gag by creating a series of posters depicting some gruesome ends to our favorite Toy Story characters, with Chucky being responsible). If this had been more comedy, less uneven revenge porn, this might have had a fighting chance at being something really interesting. As in most things, though, I have to advise you stick to the original.

If you liked this review, please consider reblogging or subscribing to my Patreon! For as low as $1, you can access bonus content and movie reviews, or even request that I review any movie of your choice.

#119in2019 #child's play 2019 #child's play #chucky #mark hamill #aubrey plaza #gabriel bateman #brian tyree henry #movie reviews #film reviews #horror #horror review

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unfortunate-events-season-2 · 7 years

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A series OF unfortunate Events Fan Site

Hey there ! I’m James and this is my love For A series OF unfortunate Events which is one of the biggest netflix hit of this year. I have never seen anything like A Series Of unfortunate events Season 2 Release date it and I do think that this could be the best series of all time in the future.

The cast

About

Neil Patrick Harris… Count Olaf (8 episodes, 2017)

Patrick Warburton… Lemony Snicket (8 episodes, 2017)

Malina Weissman… Violet Baudelaire (8 episodes, 2017)

Louis Hynes… Klaus Baudelaire (8 episodes, 2017)

K. Todd Freeman… Mr. Poe (8 episodes, 2017)

Presley Smith… Sunny Baudelaire (8 episodes, 2017)

Will Arnett… Father (8 episodes, 2017)

Cobie Smulders… Mother (8 episodes, 2017)

Tara Strong… Sunny Baudelaire (8 episodes, 2017)

Usman Ally… Hook-Handed Man (7 episodes, 2017)

Jacqueline Robbins… White Faced Woman #1 (6 episodes, 2017)

Joyce Robbins… White Faced Woman #2 (6 episodes, 2017)

Matty Cardarople… Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender (5 episodes, 2017)

John DeSantis… Bald Man (5 episodes, 2017)

Sara Canning… Jacquelyn (4 episodes, 2017)

Cleo King… Eleanora Poe (3 episodes, 2017)

Daniel Handler… Fish Head Salesperson (3 episodes, 2017)

Don Johnson… Sir (2 episodes, 2017)

Alfre Woodard… Aunt Josephine (2 episodes, 2017)

Joan Cusack… Justice Strauss (2 episodes, 2017)

Aasif Mandvi… Uncle Monty (2 episodes, 2017)

Catherine O'Hara… Dr. Georgina Orwell (2 episodes, 2017)

Rhys Darby… Charles (2 episodes, 2017)

Patrick Breen… Larry (2 episodes, 2017)

Dylan Kingwell… Duncan Quagmire / … (2 episodes, 2017)

Avi Lake… Isadora Quagmire (2 episodes, 2017)

Luke Camilleri… Gustav (2 episodes, 2017)

Timothy Webber… Jimmy (2 episodes, 2017)

Chris Gauthier… Phil (2 episodes, 2017)

Rob LaBelle… Taxi Driver (2 episodes, 2017)

Loretta Walsh… Norma Rae (2 episodes, 2017)

Patrick Keating… Town Father (2 episodes, 2017)

Trent Redekop… Cesar (2 episodes, 2017)

Keith Dallas… Truck Driver (Evander) (2 episodes, 2017)

Mary Black… Sweet Old Lady (1 episode, 2017)

Matthew Walker… Ticket Seller (1 episode, 2017)

Jack Forrester… Albert Poe (1 episode, 2017)

Kaniel Jacob-Cross… Edgar Poe (1 episode, 2017)

John Stewart… Zombie Snowman (1 episode, 2017)

Darcey Johnson… Trolley Man (1 episode, 2017)

Kim Turnbull… Ballerina (1 episode, 2017)

Daniel Letto… Lime Salesperson (1 episode, 2017)

Garrett Quirk… Stage Manager (1 episode, 2017)

Elizabeth Bowen… Dill Salesperson (1 episode, 2017)

Wayne Stewart… Blind Man (1 episode, 2017)

Mark Brandon… Veronica (Newsman) (1 episode, 2017)

Stefania Indelicato… Vincent (Newswoman) (1 episode, 2017)

Nick Urata… Wedding Band Leader (1 episode, 2017)

Gerardo Barcala… Iguana Handler (uncredited) (1 episode, 2017)

Andrew Tait… Trolley Passenger (uncredited) (1 episode, 2017)

Directors

Series Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld…(4 episodes, 2017)

Mark Palansky…(2 episodes, 2017)

Bo Welch…(2 episodes, 2017)

Series Writing Credits Emily Fox…(1 episode, 2017)

Daniel Handler…(8 episodes, 2017)

Tatiana Suarez-Pico…(1 episode, 2017)

Joe Tracz…(1 episode, 2017)

Storyline

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a-series-of-unfortunate-events-2 · 7 years

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A Series OF Unfortunate Events -Introduction

A Series Of Unfortunate Events Sequel release date is by far my favorite Netflix Series. I love it so much that I have dedicated this whole blog to it. The style, the story and the actors - I love them all. The main reason why its different from others is its unique style. Remember those magical-looking houses ? Same goes for trees, trains, phones & A Series Of Unfortunate Events Season 2..

A Series OF Unfortunate Events Cast

The series also features an amazing cast that doubled the overall experience. Although only one season has aired till now, the character development made it longer.

About

Neil Patrick Harris... Count Olaf (8 episodes, 2017)

Patrick Warburton... Lemony Snicket (8 episodes, 2017)

Malina Weissman... Violet Baudelaire (8 episodes, 2017)

Louis Hynes... Klaus Baudelaire (8 episodes, 2017)

K. Todd Freeman... Mr. Poe (8 episodes, 2017)

Presley Smith... Sunny Baudelaire (8 episodes, 2017)

Will Arnett... Father (8 episodes, 2017)

Cobie Smulders... Mother (8 episodes, 2017)

Tara Strong... Sunny Baudelaire (8 episodes, 2017)

Usman Ally... Hook-Handed Man (7 episodes, 2017)

Jacqueline Robbins... White Faced Woman #1 (6 episodes, 2017)

Joyce Robbins... White Faced Woman #2 (6 episodes, 2017)

Matty Cardarople... Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender (5 episodes, 2017)

John DeSantis... Bald Man (5 episodes, 2017)

Sara Canning... Jacquelyn (4 episodes, 2017)

Cleo King... Eleanora Poe (3 episodes, 2017)

Daniel Handler... Fish Head Salesperson (3 episodes, 2017)

Don Johnson... Sir (2 episodes, 2017)

Alfre Woodard... Aunt Josephine (2 episodes, 2017)

Joan Cusack... Justice Strauss (2 episodes, 2017)

Aasif Mandvi... Uncle Monty (2 episodes, 2017)

Catherine O'Hara... Dr. Georgina Orwell (2 episodes, 2017)

Rhys Darby... Charles (2 episodes, 2017)

Patrick Breen... Larry (2 episodes, 2017)

Dylan Kingwell... Duncan Quagmire / ... (2 episodes, 2017)

Avi Lake... Isadora Quagmire (2 episodes, 2017)

Luke Camilleri... Gustav (2 episodes, 2017)

Timothy Webber... Jimmy (2 episodes, 2017)

Chris Gauthier... Phil (2 episodes, 2017)

Rob LaBelle... Taxi Driver (2 episodes, 2017)

Loretta Walsh... Norma Rae (2 episodes, 2017)

Patrick Keating... Town Father (2 episodes, 2017)

Trent Redekop... Cesar (2 episodes, 2017)

Keith Dallas... Truck Driver (Evander) (2 episodes, 2017)

Mary Black... Sweet Old Lady (1 episode, 2017)

Matthew Walker... Ticket Seller (1 episode, 2017)

Jack Forrester... Albert Poe (1 episode, 2017)

Kaniel Jacob-Cross... Edgar Poe (1 episode, 2017)

John Stewart... Zombie Snowman (1 episode, 2017)

Darcey Johnson... Trolley Man (1 episode, 2017)

Kim Turnbull... Ballerina (1 episode, 2017)

Daniel Letto... Lime Salesperson (1 episode, 2017)

Garrett Quirk... Stage Manager (1 episode, 2017)

Elizabeth Bowen... Dill Salesperson (1 episode, 2017)

Wayne Stewart... Blind Man (1 episode, 2017)

Mark Brandon... Veronica (Newsman) (1 episode, 2017)

Stefania Indelicato... Vincent (Newswoman) (1 episode, 2017)

Nick Urata... Wedding Band Leader (1 episode, 2017)

Gerardo Barcala... Iguana Handler (uncredited) (1 episode, 2017)

Andrew Tait... Trolley Passenger (uncredited) (1 episode, 2017)

Directors

Series Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld...(4 episodes, 2017)

Mark Palansky...(2 episodes, 2017)

Bo Welch...(2 episodes, 2017)

Series Writing Credits Emily Fox...(1 episode, 2017)

Daniel Handler...(8 episodes, 2017)

Tatiana Suarez-Pico...(1 episode, 2017)

Joe Tracz...(1 episode, 2017)

Storyline

After the Baudelaire parents die in a terrible fire, the Baudelaire orphans search for their families secrets and get them and their fortune away from the terrible grasp of the sinister Count Olaf as he moves with them between different guardians in disguise.Written by Nate Hoey

Plot Summary | Add Synopsis

Taglines:Secrets will be revealed, one unfortunate event at a time.

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