MovieWarfare

  Nimona is the next in animated movies that are better than whatever Disney and Pixar put out in 2023. Funny enough this was in production at Disney’s Blue Sky Studio but got pushback because it was too gay for them. It is their loss because Nimona is a magnificent movie. It has a very unique and lively animation. A great subversion of the fairy tale fantasy genre with its futuristic and fantasy blended world. Wonderful set of characters with a stand-out vocal performance from Chloe Grace Moretz as the titular character. An awesome score with well-thought-out uses of pop and rock songs. To top it off, an emotionally weighted story with a lot of depth. The only criticism I have is that the laughs can feel a bit like the forced humour you see in a lot of movies and they are very hit-or-miss. Nonetheless, I wish to see more of these unique types of animation films in the future!

  They Cloned Tyrone is a compelling and clever mystery movie. It has a very witty and fun script with an exceptionally strong chemistry between our main trio. John Boyega gives a great performance as the main character, Jamie Foxx and Teyonah Parris are both very charismatic and funny. There is also a strong visual and costume direction with a great score as well. It does unfortunately get very predictable in the 3rd act and feels a bit of a sudden rush to the end. Nevertheless, a very charming and fresh take on the mystery genre.

  The first Meg film was a dumb fun shark attack movie. I was hoping for something similar with the sequel. However, the new director here doesn’t seem to understand the assignment. They instead created a fast and furious movie with a Meg. It is just mostly 90 minutes of forgettable human conflict, with some fun Meg action (and a land Dinosaur and Kraken for some reason?) near the end.

  Elemental is the first Pixar movie where the trailers did not interest me whatsoever. It didn’t help to know that this was directed by Peter Sohn who was the director of the most forgettable Pixar film; The Good Dinosaur. Despite that, I gave it a chance. Unfortunately, it seems I was correct in all my worries because this movie is very generic. The story is so unimaginative and lacking in any originality, its world-building feels overly complicated and questionable in all logic, the character designs look weirdly unappealing, and the message is so heavy-handed and not well executed. What it does do right though, is our two main leads. They are great and I enjoyed the moments of them together as it was very charming. The music score by Thomas Newman is terrific and it does enjoyably tell the generic story at least. I expect better from Pixar next time though…

  The plot is bland, the characters are forgettable, the stakes are incredibly low and the writing is incredibly dumb. The most noticeable problem with this movie that you will notice straight away is the atrocious and ugly CGI. There is so much CGI in this movie to the point of feeling like it is being overused. It doesn’t help how poor the CGI looks with it feeling like CGI from 20 years ago. I like John Cena but he lacks the chemistry that Chris Tucker and Owen Wilson had with Jackie Chan. Nevertheless, there is some fun action choreography from both Jackie Chan and John Cena. Jackie Chan’s action scenes is very reminiscent of his older films which were nice to see. It’s dumb, shut-your-brain, popcorn entertainment and that is fine to kill time with.

  One of the most important things about a comedy is being funny. Joy Ride is just not that funny. It is just overly raunchy and cringe which made this movie painful to watch. The 4 main characters are just not that likeable or interesting. Ashley Park and Stephanie Hsu give a decent performance but the other 2 are just not that great. However, the last act of this movie is genuinely heartfelt and made me wish that this tone was the whole movie instead of what we actually got.

  The Flash is a hero I adore from the comics. It is crazy that it took this long for him to have a live-action movie. Unfortunately, the DCEU Flash movie went through development hell. It had multiple directors leave the project, multiple delays, multiple reshoots, the Ezra controversy, and constant changes in leadership at WB. Despite all these shenanigans, does this movie manage to deliver a great Flash movie? Firstly, they do deliver some strong and emotional moments. It’s hard to be angry at Flash for wanting to save his mother and prove his Dad innocent. Seeing Flash cope with the unintended butterfly effects of going back in time and saving his mother, is a great concept. Barry’s desperation to save this timeline because his mother still lives is powerful stuff. It has a heartfelt story of grief which I liked. Funny enough, Ezra has great chemistry with himself. Ezra plays the original and new timeline Barry who both interact with each other throughout the movie.