Extinction Is Dreadful Science-Fiction Fare That Puts Dumb Twists Before Everything Else (SPOILERS)

MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR EXTINCTION

I assume Extinction is the result of two people having very different ideas for science-fiction thrillers, with one idea being about a guy who sees's visions of an impending disaster and the other concerning a family trying to survive an alien attack. So taken away with both of these ideas, the two people decided to merge them into one movie without figuring out first if the two separate ideas would actually work together properly as a singular property. Turns out, mushing these two concepts into one movie, along with shoving in a nonsensical climax overstuffed with big twists, results in a total dud of a movie, one that just gets worse the longer it drags on.

There's Lots of Well-Done Fun To Be Had With Ant-Man and the Wasp

As the great mid-20th century philosopher The Cat In The Hat once proclaimed "It is fun to have fun, but you have to know how." That's oh so true under any circumstance, but it's especially relevant when talking about making movies that are supposed to be just light-hearted fun. If you make these kinds of films well, they can be oh so enjoyable, but if you make them in a rushed or otherwise subpar manner, you end up with something empty that's grating rather than entertaining. Just compare the best Will Ferrell comedy vehicle like The Other Guys to his worst comedy vehicle like Daddy's Home, both movies are aiming to be entertaining yukfests, but one shows craftsmanship in creating its comedy, whereas the other is a lazily constructed cash-grab that just bores rather than delights you. Both are aiming for fun, but only the one that's actually well-made hits that target.

The Painless But Messy LEGO Ninjago Movie Needed to Show More Discipline In It's Storytelling

Walt Disney once said "For every laugh, there should be a tear." A large swath of modern animated family movies have taken that axiom to hear, particularly the films made by PIXAR which frequently leave adults sobbing as much, if not more so, than their young offspring. The LEGO Ninjago Movie is an example of taking this saying too far, an odd occurrence given how well the other two LEGO movies (The LEGO Movie and The LEGO Batman Movie) were at deftly mixing wacky humor with heart. But that's just happened, as this feature film adaptation of the LEGO Ninjago toys shoves far too many badly-executed attempts at tugging on the heartstrings into its story.

12 Strong Goes to The Front Lines of Forgettable Cinema

It's January, so the massive box office success of both Lone Survivor and American Sniper dictates it's time for another action war movie based on a real-life incident that occurred to U.S. armed forces (or mercenaries in the case of 13 Hours) in the Iraq War. 2018's entry in this subgenre is 12 Strong (the trailers add the sentence The Declassified True Story of the Horse Soldiers to the title), which is all about a group of U.S. soldiers called Task Force Dagger that's led by Captain Mitch Nelson (Chris Hemsworth). Nelson, whose only led the team in training situations, has recently taken a desk job that'll allow him to spend more time with his wife and young kid but those plans take a turn once the World Trade Center attacks occur.

CHiPS Will Drive You Up The Wall With Its Abysmally Unfunny Attempts At Comedy

Look, when I said I wanted Michael Pena to headline more movies, I didn't mean....like this.

There's a lot of things that one could describe as odd about CHiPS on a basic conceptual level beyond the fact that human beings funded a major feature film adaptation of the 1970's TV show CHiPS in 2017. Most notably, the screenplay for CHiPS, which has its script credited solely to Dax Shepard, who also directs and headlines the film, seems to be channeling classic action/comedy cop movies (the kind Shane Black popularized) with extended action sequences, most notably one introducing us to the films antagonists played by Vincent D'onofrio, that are played entirely straight-faced. It then moves into the kind of raunchy foul-mouthed humor you'd expect from a D-grade R-rated American comedy in 2017.

The LEGO Ninjago Movie Trailer Has Some Serious Daddy Issues

Considering how franchise crazy Warner Bros. is these days, you'd have to be crazy to think they were only gonna follow-up their smash hit feature The LEGO Movie with only one or two direct sequels. They're going spin-off crazy with this one, with this Friday bringing The LEGO Batman Movie and this September unleashing the LEGO Ninjago Movie on the populace. Now, I'm completely unfamiliar with the LEGO Ninjago franchises history beyond knowing that it was a TV show on Cartoon Network and also knowing that my younger brother was obsessed with it for a brief period. It appears the movie version of that property is giving itself its own mythology, so check out the first trailer for it below to get a first glimpse of this new take on the Ninja LEGO characters.

Collateral Beauty Aims To Be Uplifting And Ends Up Being Only Extremely Disturbing

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS ONLY IN THE SENSE THAT THE ACTUAL PLOT OF COLLATERAL BEAUTY, WHICH IS REVEALED SUPER EARLY ON IN THE MOVIE, HAS BEEN HIDDEN BY THE MARKETING.

I have no idea what was running through the minds behind the people in charge of the screenplay and initial concept for Collateral Beauty, but good Lord, but I can only assume they had some disturbing thoughts rattling around in their cranium that could only be worked out by way of writing up a script that dressed up its creepy and disturbing plot in the guise of an inspirational feel-good weepy drama. That's the only reasonable explanation I can concoct for what Collateral Beauty even exists, because if human beings actually thought this was gonna work as a straightforward inspirational drama, well, they're very optimistic, I'll give them that.

End Of Watch Review (Classic Write-Up)

Me and the works of David Ayer haven't really gotten along up to this point. The two films I've seen from Mr. Ayer are....well, flat-out messes, honestly. Fury is a confused movie that wants to be a deep introspection on how brutal war is and then turns into a video game at the end. Suicide Squad is an out-and-out disaster, though that one I blame less on Ayer since the studio meddling on that one is so obvious and immense it's hard to tell where his influence begins and ends. So imagine my shock at finding End Of Watch to actually be quite a strong movie, a character-focused action film with two top-notch lead performances.

The Poster For Ant-Man Continues Marvels Trouble With Posters

Much as I love Marvel Studios, whose films like Avengers: Age of Ultron and Guardians of The Galaxy have provided endless amounts of entertainment for me and moviegoers worldwide, it must be said that their posters for their movies, frankly, tend to suck. Oh sure, the teaser posters for Ant-Man, Guardians of The Galaxy and Iron Man 3 had an effective use of simplicity to it, but just look at the main poster for Avengers: Age of Ultron. That things got so much damn stuff going on, and very little of it makes sense (I still can't figure out what Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are standing on in that poster). That kind of cluttered atmosphere runs rampant in most Marvel posters, and that tradition somewhat continues today.

Fury Review

In The Army, Yes You Can Be In A Brad Pitt Movie, In The Armyyyyyyyy

Movie stars are a rare thing these days, but I think it's safe to say Brad Pitt is one of the few we have today. He has the stunning good looks, a romance the entire nation fawns over and he's got more than a few big movies under his belt. When he's fighting zombies or being a baseball manager, audiences can't get to his movies fast enough. His darker features though, like Killing Them Softly, do tend to falter at the box office.