insidious the last key

If you're a fan of the Insidious franchise of movies, it's premise, it's mythology, and the character of Elise Rainier, then you may as well see "The Last Key." Part of the appeal of this series of horror movies is the overarching stories that connect it all together, and this one should interest the fans since it fleshes out more of Elise's backstory. Lin Shaye is fantastic as always playing Elise, and truly she is arguably the primary reason to feel attached to this series. 

As for the scary horror aspect of the movie, I thought there were some clever suspenseful creepy scenes. Unfortunately that cleverness do not translate to the rest of the scary scenes, which admittedly relies too much on the jump scare formula. The fact that a lot of the scares in this one feel like you've seen them before, gives the movie a certain sense of staleness to the whole thing. It doesn't help that the demon that is featured as the primary antagonist is uninspiring and not that interesting at all. 

What also doesn't help are the supporting cast surrounding Lin Shaye. Any kind of fun that included her sidekicks in the previous one; Specs and Tucker, seem to have gotten lost. They are the comedic relief for this movie, and they simply were more annoying than funny, so much so that it started to feel really embarrassing to watch. Even the inclusion of some new characters didn't really help either, as I just didn't care much for them. I did like Tessa Ferrer's character though, so I'll give it that one positivity. 

"Insidious: The Last Key" could have been a great addition to the franchise, especially considering it's importance to the overall story. The opening flashback sequences were really good though, and I genuinely like the idea for the story, but unfortunately the rest of the movie was just all over the place in quality. Some of the stupid illogical stuff that happened during the second half also bugged the heck out of me. Sad to say, but this is my least liked installment of the whole franchise by far. 

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mudbound

blade of the immortal

creep 2

all the money in the world

molly's game

call me by your name

i tonya

It's the night of Christmas Day, and I'm still a bit on a vacation mood. Apologies yet again, but I'll get back to you on a review for this movie sooner than later.

the post

if you're reading this,..... Merry Christmas!!! Apologies, but I'm taking advantage of the holiday for a bit, so this review for "The Post" will be written up at a later time. It won't be too long though (unlike those other reviews...). 

the greatest showman

You would be forgiven if you decided not to watch "The Greatest Showman," due to the fact that while it proclaims to be inspired by a true story, it greatly seems to be rewriting history by making it more palatable. There are many out there that don't think too favorably to what P.T. Barnum did in his life time, and this movie seemingly wants to ignore most of that. There's also the whole subject about people getting exploited for profit to consider, and this story just gives a lightly serviceable take on that matter. Without a doubt, this film can be accused of being yet another fake Hollywood take of actual history.

The story is filled with tons of derivative cliches, a bit emotionally manipulative in multiple occasions, and it's important thematic messages are handled in very superficial ways. Now let's ignore all that for a second and judge this purely as a movie musical. Well just based on the first act, I was ready to dismiss it as being much too bombastic, over-produced, unnecessarily too flashy and loud. It seemed a little too full of itself and I wanted it to take things down a notch. To my surprise, it actually did just that, and then I started to genuinely have fun with it. 

One of the main saving graces of this movie musical is the soundtrack. The songs are catchy! Sure the topics cover your typical fare of being inspirational, self-affirming, uplifting, and emotionally moving. Did I mention that they are all pretty catchy? It helps that the majority of the cast actually sings their songs too! Combine all those songs to some very well choreographed sequences, and we've got ourselves a movie that does indeed work as a musical. 

Besides the songs, the other element that absolutely wowed me was the whole cast. Yes, Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron, Zendaya, and Keala Settle, are all already known to be talented song and dance people, and they get to show off their craft on screen rather well. However, I was also highly impressed with everybody else in the supporting cast roles, from the rest of Barnum's circus-folk, the bartender, to even the daughters. I'm willing to re-watch this movie just for the song and dance scenes alone. 

There are clearly issues with "The Greatest Showman" of being uneven in it's overall quality as a story and as a movie, but I still can't deny that I ended up liking it anyway. The highs this movie musical has are pretty high, and that made a difference to me. So even though there are enough reasons not to support this film, you would be forgiven if you did anyway. 

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