By Kolin Kriner
Summertime was filled with new releases that overall left me with very mixed opinions. I liked a lot of the movies but was devastatingly disappointed by others.
To celebrate the new semester – and to mourn the passing of summer – I’d like to start off with a bang and cover a large amount of the movies I had the luxury of viewing.
I decided to add a twist to this semester and give a rating to the movies I’ve seen, ranging from zero to five. With that, I present to you my second edition of lightning movie reviews.
‘A Quiet Place: Day One’
A series that I had already started growing fatigued by, “The Quiet Place” franchise decided to drop what is undoubtedly my second least favorite (my condolences to “A Quiet Place Part II”).
Directed by Michael Sarnoski, this film had me feeling incredibly bored. I don’t think this had much to do with the main actors, Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn, but the only parts of the film that kept me attentive was Nyong’o’s character’s cat getting into mischief.
I found the plot relatively mediocre, the entire thing left to be validated only by the last five minutes of the film. It really had me sitting there thinking to myself, “wow, if only the rest of the film was as good as this last five minutes.” If that was the case, I wouldn’t have felt I wasted 90 minutes of my life for the remainder of the movie.
I give this movie a 2.5/5, as the performances were good, just overshadowed by a dreadfully boring script.
‘The Strangers: Chapter 1’
Apparently this was the summer of poorly written horror prequels, and where “A Quiet Place: Day One” at least had good performances, this one struggled in this aspect.
Directed by Renny Harlin, “The Strangers: Chapter One” successfully did everything the first movie in the franchise did, but with Madelaine Petsch. That’s all this movie is, “The Strangers” almost beat by beat. Lets play a guessing game, tell me which “The Strangers” movie this is:
A woman’s boyfriend leaves the secluded house they are staying in to run to the store. The woman realizes there’s intruders in the house. Her boyfriend gets back, and refuses to believe her until the intruders make themselves known to them.
They have a chase scene where inevitably the boyfriend accidentally shoots someone who is not the intruder that would have been their saving grace. They run around some more, get caught, tied to a chair and boom. Movie done.
Struggling to figure out which one it is? Don’t worry, I’ll tell you. It’s both.
This movie serves no point in the grand scheme of this franchise, as it’s a copy and paste of the original. The original was at least something new, and had great performances to back it up. This movie just provides you with dumb characters doing dumb things, unable to get out of a dumb, already done, situation.
I give this movie a 1.5/5.
‘Deadpool and Wolverine’
To be in line with the marketing of this film, I have decided to devoid this review of any spoilers. This movie is amazing. The funniest movie I have seen in a while, “Deadpool and Wolverine,” directed by Shawn Levy, managed to keep this franchise strong, and outlandish as ever. There’s a reason it’s almost made $1 billion, and it’s without a doubt worth the watch.
I give this film a 2.5/5 for Deadpool, 2.5/5 for Wolverine, delivering a 5/5 as solid as adamantium.
‘Despicable Me 4’
Directed by Chris Renaud, “Despicable Me 4” delivered a messy, yet fun tale. As far as things I liked about this movie, it is very funny, with Steve Carell and Kristen Wiig delivering great voice acting as always. And that’s where the likes kind of stop.
Keeping in mind that the film is made for kids, it is understandable that the plot doesn’t need to make the most sense, however the plot barely makes any sense. The film feels like the coagulation of different bits compiled together to tell this lackluster story, with a villain that serves as little purpose as his motivations.
Not to mention half the marketing was centered around the “mega-minions,” who served absolutely no purpose in the barely four minutes of screen time they received. This movie was very comedic but seemed to lose the fact that there was a plot at times.
I give this film a 3.5/5, because although very messy, I did audibly laugh at times.
CONCLUSION
It’s amazing to see the theaters start to recover post-pandemic and I am more than eager to see any film that comes out.
At the end of the day, whether the movie was amazing or not, the filmmakers still accomplished making a film, and to that I have great respect for them. I can’t wait to continue these reviews and see what else comes out throughout the semester.
