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An error has ocurred. Please try againBecause this was the decade where I was between 3 and 13 it's the one I had the most time to watch movies in, especially kids movies, so yeah there's a lot more movies here than the other ones for now.
My tastes change a lot and I probably forgot some great movies so list is subject to a lot of editing.
Reviews
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Girls Disappeared (2014)
Weirdly off-tone for the series
This is a weird episode in that it isn't outright bad, but it doesn't feel like an episode of SVU, new or old. The bizarre musical montage in the middle was really the nail in the coffin for me. Not a bad story, and full of the sorts of dramatic and personal twists I've come to expect, but the way its shot, edited, and put together doesn't really make a ton of sense. There's some odd character moments too, as some of what Finn and Nick are up to, even if explained, are acted so different than their characters have been through the rest of the series. Most episodes of SVU kind of blend together for me in a relatively pleasant way - this is a show that's familiar, and though dark, there's a certain comfort to knowing the formula. of the series. Episodes that have broken that formula are the ones that stick out in my mind, either because they're above and beyond what I've come to expect, or because they feel out of place. Unfortunately, for the most part, this feels more like the latter than the former.
We Bare Bears: Burrito (2015)
A surprisingly emotional ride
This episode is honestly just pretty fine until the very final moments. While the formula of "friend makes new friend, is leaving old friends behind" is a little worn out, the twist that the new friend is an inanimate piece of food does make for a couple fun moments. This review is so positive, though, because of the final few moments, where an emotional twist takes an episode from forgettable to something I've had to show a lot of others now. Every moment that we have seen the origins of the baby bears, with this and Yuri and the Ice Bear especially, are surprisingly poignant, and make for great TV.
We Bare Bears: Pizza Band (2018)
A little cliche, but fun
The trope of "we became a band but every member wants to make different music" is pretty worn out at this point, but this is a fun take on it. Smash Mouth does a surprisingly good job providing the tunes, and a couple great lines really save the show.
Boku no hîrô akademia: Hero Notebook (2017)
Bad even by filler standards
Every show like this is going to end up with some padding and some filler, but good lord this was just a waste of time. It clipshows through things we already saw en route to an episode that goes nowhere and feels like it developed nothing from what was already known. After finishing Season 1, I was really hyped to keep watching, and was rewarded with this as my welcome back gift. There's just nothing here that felt worth watching, the only reason I give it a 3 and not a 1 is that even though it's a waste of time, there is still some level of quality in what is being reshown. I'd skip this if I was watching again.
Dead Space: Aftermath (2011)
A bizarre mix of styles that fell flat for me
Let's get this right of the bat - the CGI animation is awful in this. It looks bad, it moves bad, it syncs to the dialogue bad. And the dialogue really isn't great either, there's some really clunky exposition early on, and some of the back and forths just really don't make sense. The occasional attempts at humor fall flat, and it feels very much like it's written by video game writers, with a lot of the dialogue sounding fine if this was the occasional in between battle banter, but back to back to back it just feels extra clunky.
The pros are occasionally impressive. The 2D animation flashbacks are really well done stylistically, and the movement is pretty good. The dialogue versions of PTSD really don't work at all, with the character who lost his daughter really not sounding that sad or crazy, just pretty flat, but the visual representations of his hallucinations are impressive.
But every time the movie started to impress me, it switched back to the 3D style that looks worse than student projects I've seen. I'm not sure if the dialogue is really worse during these scenes than the flashbacks or if I'm just so turned away by what I'm seeing that it feels worse, but I can tell you several of the worst clichés occur during these CGI scenes.
The worst part is that the 3D scenes add *nothing*. Adding about 5 minutes of dialogue to the flashbacks and making them more chronological would've produced something cohesive and probably in the 7/10 range. As is, though, most of the attempts to create anything "scary" or impactful are done in awful CGI, which just takes so much away from the viewing experience that I did not have any sort of a pleasant time.
Getting That Girl (2011)
I'm not sure if this is serious, or if it's a satire, what it's satirizing. So bad it's good?
Let me preface this by saying I've been seeking answers, like anything at all, that would suggest what this movie is supposed to be.
Disliked stoner is this main character. (Note that the actor says that this character is the most popular guy in the school, despite the fact that no one except himself ever suggests that he has any value.) The girl that he falls for is a new girl at the school, who falls for him instantly and has oral sex with him basically right off the bat, eventually ending up in with the popular girls and at a variety of parties. (Note that the actress who plays this character refers to the character as "the good girl".) This trend continues even for the most minor characters, every actor got interviewed about their character and offered some summation or fact that doesn't line up with how they were actually presented in the movie. I'm not sure if they were supposed to be in character and the narcissists they are in the film, or if this explains the strange characters.
Imagine if John Hughes decided to make another rom com, but set in 2011, and knowing nothing of modern youth except what he sees on Dr Phil, Nancy Grace, etc. Even the director acknowledges the "modernized John Hughes" idea, but he also writes himself in as a weed dealer.
The actors call the script "pretty accurate" but "a little bit more intense" than reality. The actors also say they recognize the "absurdity" of some scenes. Call it something you "can't take too seriously".
And really, what I've been avoiding in this review is what happens in the movie. The attempted rape, halted only momentarily by a nerd yelling "STOP THE MADNESS!", the near-Shakespearean performance of a teacher, walking through the halls, only to find the main character cheating on his girlfriend. Why was he cheating, you may ask? A girl accused him of having a penis that felt like "warm cheese". The dildo, given by a character who may or may not be actually mentally handicapped in the film to another character that he had spoken maybe 3 lines of dialogue to. Teachers cussing in class. The entire character of "Ferrat Barret", whose room is plastered with pornographic magazines he cut apart to customize (dude knows photoshop is a thing, yeah?). The popular girl - not someone trying to look popular, mind you, the one who actually is popular - being quoted as saying "Smoking's the best, dude. Especially when it's like a big fat joint, the bigger, the better". Bizarrely enough, none of these are really main plot points, but I've marked this as spoiler-y just because the attempted rape was one of the only genuinely surprising moments in the film.
One of two things happened here. The first is that the director is so far removed from reality and youth that he through darts at a board covered in cuss words, stapling them together haphazardly while blowing most of the film's budget on fake (and, I think, real) drugs. The film does officially call itself "A high school love comedy, which authentically depicts the lives of today's ever- evolving and parentally subversive youth culture."
The other is that this is intentionally bad. This is the scenario that lets me sleep at night. That the director decided to make satire and present as reality for a shock value. And if you take the movie like this, it becomes something more interesting. The humor is already at levels of "so awkward it's good", whether intentional or not, but the commentary may actually be something interesting. Either the director is pointing out that teen movies, as they are directed by people far removed from that world, will never be accurate, will always be cheesy, and that this is the result, or he's satirizing the way that concerned parents view their kids. In actuality, there aren't many high schoolers actually doing as much cocaine, smoking as much weed, having as much sex, cutting as much class, etc. as is shown in the film, but a lot of parents have it in their head that that's what every kid does today.
So if this was a satire of how adults view the youth, bravo, you've made something special. If this was actually a serious film, you've missed the mark entirely, but made something great for laughs.
I've seen the movie 3 times now, watched the cast commentary, the trailers, etc., and I still can't decide which it is. Watch this for yourself, and you decide.