Let's Cee a Movie

I knew these escape rooms were a bad idea

I want to play a game (Unmarked Spoilers)

The contestants of this Saw ripoff consist of Zoey (Taylor Russell), a quiet college student. Ben (Logan Miller), a wage slave working an awful job. Amanda (Deborah Ann Woll), a war vet. Mike (Tyler Labine), a fat guy I really liked in Reaper. Jason (Jay Ellis), a slick businessman. And Danny (Nik Dodani), a video game nerd. Together they find themselves trapped in an escape room featuring one convoluted death trap after another.

Vacation, all he ever wanted

From now on I will only refer to the Spider Sense as the Peter Tingle

I hope you’ve seen Endgame because, after the prologue, this movie opens with a list of people who “died.” With the prologue itself introducing us to Quentin Beck/Mysterio, who’s the exact opposite of his comic counterpart. The source material’s Mysterio was a supervillain, relied on advanced special effects disguised as magic and was too ugly to be an actor. Here he’s a superhero who has actual magic and the good looks of Jake Gyllenhaal. The last of which is funny because Gyllenhaal was at one point going to replace Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man 2 if the latter couldn’t recover from his back injury.

All happy families are alike

Wouldyou rather spend a night at the castle or Hill House?

Here’s a breakdown of the surviving members of the Blackwood family. Youngest Daughter Mary Katherine or Merricat (Taissa Farmiga) looks, talks, and acts like she’s the spawn of Satan. Uncle Julian (Crispin Glover) is living on a different plane of reality. Oldest Daughter Constance (Alexandra Daddario) seems to suffer from agoraphobia and has the emotional range of a Stepford (NSFW) wife. Oh, and she also supposedly poisoned the rest of the family, killing them and cripplingly Julian. Then there’s cousin Charles (Sebastian Stan), whose arrival throws the whole home into turmoil.

Here come the Men in Black

Probably for the last time though

Agent M (Tessa Thompson) is the latest MIB recruit sent to the London branch, where she learns a lot of amazing things. Like how the Eiffel Tower was the center of one of the first great alien migrations, and its builder was a founder of the Men in Black. Which contradicts the agency’s backstory established in the first movie, something particularly egregious because said backstory later plays a role in the lives of one of the main characters. Unless of course the U.S. branch was then absorbed in an earlier, European organization, but the film makes no mention of that.

I’m your friend till the end

I know they changed it to ‘you are my Buddi until the end.’ I don’t care.

Picking up shortly after the third movie left off, we find Woody (Tom Hanks) once again struggling with no longer being king of the castle. Thankfully he’s matured enough that no one ends up getting thrown out a window this time. Instead, he decides to make his new purpose helping Bonnie’s (Madeleine McGraw) new toy, Forky (Tony Hale), adjust to no longer being a spork, but being a toy. He does so by stopping Forky from repeatedly trying to throw himself away in a montage that stops being funny after the first couple of times. Eventually Forky ends up throwing himself out of a moving car, with Woody following close behind.

You’ve got a friend in me

**I know I should be mad at them for taking shots at Toy Story, but I thought this one was actually pretty funny**

Before I go on, I feel the need to say just one thing. Which is that since to some legal mumbo jumbo that I didn’t care enough to research the specifics of, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has been allowed to remake Child’s Play due to retaining the rights to the original movie. Even though the original franchise is still ongoing and has been going strong enough that series writer/creator/director Don Mancini has been talking about making another sequel and/or a television series with star Brad Dourif. So now this new franchise is potentially going to be competing with the original. That is so not cool, and it violates the number one rule of remakes. (NSFW) As both a fan of the original and movies in general, I feel obligated to hate this movie. For the record, if this were any other film, I would say that overall, this movie’s fine.

One Good Mother

One Good Mother? Are you serious? That’s terrible. I’m going to need to fire my joke person (Unmarked Spoilers)

Following an apocalyptic disaster, a lone robot called Mother (motion capture by Luke Hawker, voiced by Rose Byrne) sets about repopulation the human race. Raising Daughter (Clara Rugaard) from a small embryo, all is peaceful, and we’re treated to several cute scenes of mother-daughter interactions. At least until the arrival of the Woman (Hilary Swank), which shouldn’t even be possible due to the outside supposedly being plagued by a virus. At least that’s what Mother said. Woman says that the thing that’s wiping everybody out is machines like Mother.

An enjoyable case of déjà vu

Olivia Wilde sets the bar high with her directorial debut

This movie is very similar to Superbad. Yeah, I’m sure I just blew your mind with that observation. I bet I’m the only person to have realized that. Interestingly, watching Booksmart and Superbad is a good exercise in seeing how society has constructed gender. The main character of both films are insufferable, but for reasons that are total opposites. Seth (Jonah Hill) is that annoying person who doesn’t care about his grades because he’d rather spend his time thinking about sex. Molly (Beanie Feldstein) is that annoying person who talks about nothing but how perfect they are at everything. A contrast made more significant by the fact that the actors are brother and sister. Now can you imagine how well there characters switching traits would be? Would you find it a little strange?

Prepare for War

All he needs are lots of guns a Matrix reference

Before I go on, let’s back up a little and go over all the bad decisions made in-universe that have brought us to this point. So, Isoef Tarasov (Alfie Allen) is the son of this New York mob boss Viggo (Michael Nyqvist) and a total moron. How much of a moron might you ask? Well, he and his friends seem to be the only people within a hundred-mile radius who don’t realize that the man whose car they just stole and whose dog they killed is legendary bada*s John Wick (Keanu Reeves)(NSFW), which leads to the events of the first movie.

To think, I was just a small child when Iron Man came out

I can’t believe that makes me feel old (Unmarked Spoilers)

Thanos (Josh Brolin) has killed off half the universe, and there’s no hope in sight. Except, could the answer possibly lie in the time vortex that Michelle Pfeiffer mentioned at the very end of Ant-Man and the Wasp? I’m not spoiler tagging anything in this review, but even if I were, I still wouldn’t label that. I assume that you’re smart enough to figure that one out.