drjacobgrayson Reviews

How to Have Sex (2023)

Truly one of the dumbest movies I've ever seen

[2/10 · 16 January 2024]

Key takeaway: you may have a less than ideal sexual experience if you have drunken spring break sex with guys you don't know and won't see again. I hope that isn't a spoiler for readers, but if it is then you'll find this movie to be deep and insightful. Secondly, the title of this movie is misleading, as there is only about 1 minute of sex in the entire movie. What about the other 89 minutes you ask? Drinking, getting dressed up, dancing, smoking, more drinking, meaningless dialogue, passing out, hangover, repeat. You know, normal spring break stuff. The guy's mumble all their lines like they might actually be drunk, and the girls are shrill, loud and generally annoying. I paused the movie to recheck the reviews because I couldn't believe anyone would rate this higher than a 2.

Last Flight Home (2022)

Maybe the best doc I've ever seen

[10/10 · 27 August 2023]

I'm documentary obsessed so I've seen a lot and I don't think I've ever rated anything a 10. This is an up-close heart-wrenching documentary about someone ending their life, i.e. Assisted suicide. This documentary takes us inside a family's home as they care for a loved one at the end of his life. It's gripping and personal and sad and happy all at the same time. Mostly sad. It's very difficult to watch, but also impossible to stop watching. I appreciate that there were no politics involved, no discussion about the end of life rights and laws. Just a family carrying out a dying father's wishes.

The Adults (2023)

Strange in a good way

[9/10 · 14 August 2023]

You'll think this movie is either a 3/10 or a 9/10. Read on and decide... I wasn't sure what the plot was or if there was a plot. There is no real beginning or ending, no moral or message. The characters seem to have a lot of history and backstory that we dont know and that we arent going to learn. Sometimes the characters would break into some song and dance or funny voices that seem to go back to their childhood, but it was never explained . The movie doesn't fit a category like drama or romance; rather it has some of everything: charm, warmth, annoyances, humor, anger. The movie has a lot of depth but about what? I'm not sure but I liked what I saw and heard and felt.

Okay, does all that sound like a 3 or a 9?

The Year Between (2022)

Funny as hell!

[9/10 · 16 May 2023]

Normally a girl with mental illness would just develop an eating disorder or cut herself or start a drug addiction. Not funny! In this movie however, the girl awkwardly tells everyone about her problems and generally makes everyone around her uncomfortable. She has a knack for being overly blunt, crude, and truthful. She makes poor decisions and then just goes with it and makes even worse decisions. Her life is completely messed up and she just embraces that. You can never be sure from the dialogue whether she likes or hates the person in front of her. Is this dark humor or just hilarious? You will know in the first 60 seconds if this movie is for you.

El Hogar (2022)

A movie like your great grandparents watched

[4/10 · 12 May 2023]

Someone said "You know what would make a really great movie? No color, no audio, costumes from the high school drama club, and vaudevillian over the top acting. And how about we add old-timey cartoon music throughout the entire movie as well!". People have spent a century improving the quality of movies for a reason; to make them better. Now someone, whoever made this movie, wants to step us back 100 years? Why? And I wish I could say that the story was compelling or interesting, but unfortunately there's just not much of that either. Was this some sort of a university graduate students project?

Why on Earth (2022)

Hot model discovers that we torture and kill animals

[5/10 · 12 May 2023]

I fully support the message, but there's something grating about watching rich white people jet around the world "discovering" something that's been known for decades. In this case, super-hot model Katie Clearie is surprised to learn that we are killing and abusing animals in every corner of the planet, and she needs to personally go to oceans and jungles to validate this. Yep, shooting elephants for ivory does in fact impact the species. Who could have known? Farm animals are abused and tortured!? Who knew? Again, I support the message but seriously this documentary is like 10-20 years behind.

Scream VI (2023)

I blame myself

[3/10 · 30 April 2023]

Anyone watching the 6th installment of a horror franchise needs to reevaluate his or her life, and yes that includes me. The title itself shows how little effort everyone put into this movie; Someone said "is this the sixth one? Okay let's call it scream 6". I did gain some valuable insight though; I learned that I don't care who the killer is. I blame myself for wasting 2 hours my life, which is about as much time as Courtney Cox contributed to this movie. Is this really all that Courtney has left in her career? Scream 6 and more rounds of plastic surgery? 😔 I do feel bad for the younger actors though who put a lot more into this movie and had to pretend like they were taking it seriously.

Jesus Revolution (2023)

Jesus propaganda in a well-crafted package

[4/10 · 28 April 2023]

Christians have finally figured out that if they try to sell us their propaganda in their typically overt brick-through-a-window fashion, then it turns off non-christians and then, well, what's the point? This movie is well-made and professionally acted and even has a star (Kelsey Grammer)! Nevertheless, this movie is still just the standard christian Jesus/god/bible message that's just slightly more subtle than Sunday church, although it is more of the progressive youth-focused version where old people are stogy and set in their ways and young people want to learn about the Christian faith with some new vibrant energy. Yeah, so, Christians will like this movie.

The Plains (2022)

This 3hr doc could be tightened up a lot

[5/10 · 26 April 2023]

So it's about 40 minutes of content for a 3-hour documentary. That's not a lot of value for your time frankly. Much of the 3 hours is spent in silence watching a guy drive through traffic. Some of the time is spent in the parking lot just waiting for the guy to come get in the car. So this is the type of excitement you can expect. It reminded me of the days before cell phones when all you could do in the car was just look out the window and wonder how long it was going to take to get home. Having said all that, this documentary is kind of a real life exploration of everyday life, and from that perspective I could appreciate it. I just wish it hadn't taken so long.

Horror in the High Desert (2021)

Skip the first hour

[3/10 · 23 April 2023]

So someone wanted to make a horror movie with basically no money and a few friends. The budget for this movie couldn't be more than $1,000. This movie reminds me of the Paranormal Activity series in that nothing really happens for about 90% of the movie except aimless talking and shaky home video. The first hour is just a series of interviews where people more or less walk you through the preliminaries of who the main character is. Think of like a Dateline or 48 hours episode if it was made by just you and your friends at your house. To be fair, in terms of amateur movie making this movie is probably a 7 out of 10.

Linoleum (2022)

Truly original

[9/10 · 14 April 2023]

There are a lot of little stories and side plots and characters that are subtly intertwined and come together in the end. That may not make a lot of sense, but it might once you watch the movie. I can't imagine how someone could have the creativity to think of this movie, let alone write it. It kind of renews your faith in movies as a whole; a creative, original work can still be put out there.

This movie is categorized as comedy, drama, and sci-fi, but it's actually mostly drama. Also, I was expecting Jim Gaffigan to be wacky and funny, and he is quirky and humorous in the movie, but his role is mostly serious and he does a surprisingly good job.

Framing Agnes (2022)

Great topic, terrible documentary

[3/10 · 31 March 2023]

This documentary has great source material and therefore great potential, it's really too bad that whoever is in charge of this mess decide to ruin it with some sort of artistic vision. I wanted to like it, but it's impossible. The fundamental problem is that the documentary flips between real footage, reenactments, and interviews with the actors doing the reenactments. It's this last part that really caused confusion, because it becomes difficult to determine who we're talking about or who's really doing the talking. Is it an actress in character? Out of character? A researcher? After a while I had to give up. It's a shame.

Cocaine Bear (2023)

I wanted to like it

[3/10 · 17 March 2023]

I was hoping for a so-stupid-its-funny type of movie, but all it was was just stupid and unfunny. Obviously for a movie entitled "Cocaine bear", we don't need to go into plot, characters, acting, etc. So let's just ignore all that. The first hour or so was watchable I guess, but the "action" sequence at the end was just way too long and unnecessary, and this definitely lowered my rating by a couple stars. The saddest part is that this was Ray Liotta's last movie; such a pathetic ending to a great career. Well, he can read scripts so he has only himself to blame. Somehow it seems like an insult that they dedicated the movie to him in the ending credits.

Tár (2022)

Skip the first hour

[5/10 · 16 March 2023]

At 2 hours and 40 minutes, if you skip the first hour it makes an overly long and boring movie more manageable and actually fairly enjoyable. You will only miss the main character, Lydia Tar, sauntering around in custom designer outfits lecturing everyone about how intellectually and musically superior she is. This repeats in various locations: a lecture hall, an upscale restaurant, a classroom. Oh yes, she's also very wealthy, a great mother, a great wife, and her workouts are like she's competing for the Olympics. So after a long slow hour of that, then the real movie can start. And it's okay.

Die Hart (2020– )

Nobody's even trying

[3/10 · 28 February 2023]

I won't bother to list all the stupid plot bits, the moral teachings that Kevin Hart gives us along the way, or the dumb dialogue that I guess passes as character development. Suffice to say that nobody's even trying to make a decent or even average movie here. I would call this a made-for-TV movie but I don't think anyone makes movies for TV anymore, do they? Lifetime channel maybe? No wait, The hallmark channel makes Christmas movies. Anyway, my guess is that Kevin Hart wanted to make another action/comedy with the Rock, but the Rock didn't want to do it so this is the only option Kevin had left. From the actors, director, writers, clearly no one gives a damn.

Holes in the Sky: The Sean Miller Story (2021)

Any review above a 2 is fake

[2/10 · 21 January 2023]

This mockumentary has a budget of a few thousand dollars and it looks like it. It's about the same as what you could do at home with your phone. After the first 15 minutes I had to recheck the IMDb rating which is above a 6 amazingly. I figured it must get better or something for the ratings to be that high. So I watched another 15 minutes before checking all the reviews and I see that mostly there are 1s and 2s and then incredibly a bunch of 9s and 10s. I kind of checked out when the crew had a long conversation in the car about sad love songs or something. I finally gave up when they spent several minutes spooking themselves out about "unexplained phenomena" which was a light turning on or off.

Troll (2022)

Norway's Godzilla

[4/10 · 7 December 2022]

Does this sound familiar, i.e. Like every Godzilla movie: A giant creature comes out of nowhere to angrily stomp on everyone while the military helplessly fights it with their puny ammunition. The crazy guy provides the whole backstory to explain how it all makes sense. The science girl has a improvised plan to save us all from certain death. The monster is just misunderstood, he's not really a bad guy.

I can't criticize Norway too much for making a generic monster movie since the USA is pretty proficient in that category. But couldn't they give the troll like a superpower or something? Godzilla can breathe fire; why not go with that?

Mr. Harrigan's Phone (2022)

What a mess

[3/10 · 11 October 2022]

It's telling that the title is Mr. Harrigans phone, but Mr harrigan doesn't even get a phone until we're a third of the way through the movie. It should be entitled Mr. Harrigans *iphone* because there are shameless plugs and product placement from apple throughout. I'm thinking movie execs said "ok you can make this trash movie if you find a sponsor to pay for it". Once Mr harrigan finally got his phone I kind of expected the movie to start. Professional actors, professional production, there must be a movie here, right? But most of what happens falls somewhere between "dumb" and "who cares".

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021)

Your girlfriend will probably like it

[5/10 · 9 September 2022]

If you're over the age of eight and you use pronouns like he and him, then this movie is probably not for you. Note the liberal use of the words cute and adorable and heartwarming in some of the other reviews. It should give you a pretty good hint about the target audience.

The movie summarized: Marcel putters around the house talking baby talk and doing cute little things like gathering food, having conversations with grown ups, sharing innocent interpretations of the world around him, is scared by dogs and squirrels, and is generally wondrous and wide-eyed about the world around him. This animated one-eyed shell is basically a baby that can talk.

Nope (2022)

An incompetent UFO obsesses over a few people

[3/10 · 30 August 2022]

You've seen movies where aliens try to take over the world or demolish a city. But what about a movie where a UFO just tries to (unsuccessfully) vacuum up 3 or 4 people on a horse ranch? Well, you're in luck. The aliens' attempts to kidnap humans are thwarted by the simplest means, such as by simply staying inside. Also horses seem to give them a lot of trouble, which is unfortunate given that the aliens have chosen a horse ranch as their location of choice. Go to 1:57 of the movie to see the dumbest ending ever. Or if you actually decide to watch the whole movie, notice that the inside of the UFO looks like a bounce house you rent for kids birthday parties.

Watcher (I) (2022)

So basically nothing

[3/10 · 30 June 2022]

Any movie about women fighting back against abuse, exploitation, threats or harassment almost automatically gets strong reviews, so that explains the high scores for this movie. It's about an hour and a half of nothing followed by 3 minutes of action.

The Bob's Burgers Movie (2022)

It's like a long BB episode

[5/10 · 30 May 2022]

A few jokes (not a lot), some danger/action (do you really think they're going to die?), and songs (too many). I left the theater 15min ago and I've already forgotten most of it. So kind of what i expected, but hey, it's a family movie, so I guess it's fine, whatever.

The Northman (2022)

game of thrones with less nudity and without the dwarf

[4/10 · 23 May 2022]

Medieval kings and queens, warriors in armor, and lots of grubby dirty people milling about. Various plots to kill one another. Yeah, so, like GoT basically.

The Lost City (2022)

A less entertaining Jumanji

[5/10 · 14 May 2022]

You've seen plenty of these movies: Misfit characters exchanging comedic banter within a life-threatening adventure. It's just less of all that for this particular movie. Sandra Bullock is pretty hot considering shes like 70 years old.

The Grandmother (2021)

Excellent (if you don't mind subtitles)

[8/10 · 9 May 2022]

In the horror genre I give a lot of points for originality. This slow-burn movie doesn't have the fast-paced action of a slasher movie but has a continuous creepiness that held my attention.