jaymakak Reviews

Speak No Evil (2022)

I love happy endings, don't you?

[7/10 · 17 September 2022]

The filmaker seems to pattern his background score much like Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's, The Shining to set a dread heavy, foreboding atmosphere If you learn nothing at all from this film, please always remember, if your child leaves behind a beloved stuffed animal, no matter where it may have been left and no matter the danger you may be exposed to in retrieving it, you absolutely must indulge your child's spoiled nature and get that toy back.

You will find that only good things happen after such an endeavor and the universe will reward you with bliss beyond measure for your efforts.

Breaking (2022)

Who doesn't like Discount Denzel?

[7/10 · 15 September 2022]

John Boyega even bears a striking resemblance to Denzel Washington while simulating the borrowed mannerisms and speech patterns he performs with great aplomb.

Michael Kenneth Williams shows one last time why his character artistry is so profoundly missed.

Not the first time this story, or one nearly identicle to it has been told, but the underlying theme bears repeating. And until the very apparatus that was created to care for all Americans who served this country can be reasonably adequate in addressing the problems assocated with modern warfare and combat in general, tragedies like this will continue to occur.

What Is a Woman? (2022)

My wife has the same plumbing as I do. He lied.

[8/10 · 5 June 2022]

I wanted to have a family comprised of a woman I fell in love with and children that we created together. But because of a new definition of 'woman,' I now find my expectations were not inclusive to a new totality of gender nonspecificity. I have found, much to my chagrin, that my own biases and personal beliefs about gender, science, truth and femininity are now wholly irrelevant when another person 'feels' they exist outside of a social construct I was wrong for embracing.

My wife and I discussed having children and decided that we would wait until after marriage to interact in an intimate fashion with the aim of procreation.

What she never mentioned was that she was born, or rather, assigned, a male gender identity at birth, by a doctor who judged and applied that construct upon her based soley on her birth anatomy. An immutable preconception that did not adequately or completely reconcile her own, self described, inate identity as female.

I, not having found any of this out until our wedding night, feel not just a little deceived and disappointed. Gone are my dreams of fathering my own children with the person I thought I knew.

And my lifelong held religious beliefs conflict entirely with this, person, who I now find myself wed to.

Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)

If you love toddler chase scenes, well...here you go!

[5/10 · 1 June 2022]

Once again Disney manages to strip away what little of the original lustre this franchise once had and just does it for the coin. McGregor is fine, when he is allowed to be, but the rainbow coalition casting-just for the sake of diversity is stilted and so very lame at this point. I guess the youngsters will feel the inclusivity of a lot of screen time given to young Princess Leia cutting her cute little monkey shines all about the palace, but a completely unbelievable 'chase scene' involving a miscast Chili Pepper bassist and two hench persons attempting to corral a Leia toddler who runs like a puppy wearing Crocs, through a forrest, is a cross between TicTok cute and head shakingly embarrassing. And there are more than one of these. I'm at Ep2 and already checking out, but I'm sure the kiddies will like it!

The Invisible (2007)

Trust fund rebel without a clue experiences personal growth

[3/10 · 12 May 2022]

But Only after life changing events.

Wow, check out Nick. He's so cool it is painful to watch. And he surrounds himself with clingy losers who he suffers with a stoic zen that rivals a Tibetan munk. Yes, uber cool Nick. Spoiled and coddled his whole life by an overbearing mother he secretly fears and loathes so much that he plans to escape to London even before his graduation ceremony. Now THAT, my friends, is C. O. O. L. Nick is so cool he approaches his High School's delinquent shot caller, and cooly attempts to settle his best friend's debt, tossing 100 dollar bills down while asking, is this enough? No, Nick. It's NOT enough. The delinquent your loser friend owes money to, is trying to teach your loser friend about personal responsibility and life's natural pecking order, because even a delinquent understands without this most basic understanding of how life really works, your loser friend won't be of any use to anyone. Least of all themselves. There is a symathetic character in this story. Someone who deserves redemption, forgiveness and even respect. But it isn't Nick or any of his NPC drone classmates ot the placeholder adults who act as bland, generic proctors. I hope you can guess who she is on your own.

The Northman (2022)

Welcome to Malhalla

[4/10 · 21 April 2022]

As many have stated, this film is a travel brochure for all things Nordic. It truly looks fantastic and the scenery seems to be post produced as if it were all run through some magical reel enhancement process, but the pacing is snooze enducing to the point I alomst became Somnambulant Man. Luckily the story is peppered with enough graphic violence to jar most back to a state of wakefulness before the close of the 3rd act. By the time the finale finally rolls across the screen I too was fully prepared to make my passage and I felt strangely, wanting.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)

Finally, A TCM with a happy ending. I am glad.

[4/10 · 20 February 2022]

I am glad that chainsaws can be stored inside walls for decades and fire up on the first pull.

I am glad Leather Face can leap out of water just like a Sea World Dolphin.

I am glad that, once programmed, self driving cars can never be stopped.

I am glad the producers of this film used every known horror cliche, minus the jump scare cat, in the making of this film.

I am glad I'll never have to watch this film again.

Ever.

The Woman in the House (2022)

Agatha Thirsty!

[6/10 · 31 January 2022]

It's not Agatha Christie, but If you wanted to see how Veronica Mars might have turned out in a different dimension of the multi-verse, here is your chance. Only now, she is a grieving mother who has lost her only child during a horrible Daddy-Daughter work day, "accident"?

In this alternate incarnation she is a wine swilling, pill popping, intimacy craving, novice crime sleuth. When I say this gal likes her grapes, she really, really likes the vino, and there is a huge bowl of dead soldier corks on her kitchen counter to prove it.

The plot is largely rehashed crime thriller hackery, but it is presented in top tier Lifetime Entertainment quality, and that being said, If you haven't guessed who the killer is by the end of episode three, no smiley faced participation trophy for you!

Kristin Bell is adorable eye candy no matter what, so, they had me from the get go.

Don't expect too much and you might not be too disappointed when you see a blatant second season setup occur at the end of episode 8.

Lamb (2021)

I will explain the ending to you-Only if you have already seen the movie.

[7/10 · 27 December 2021]

Billie(The Man), Ada's father, incensed by the murder of his Doe lover/wife, kills Ingvars dog and then murders Ingvar in an act of pure revenge. The closing sequence shows the look on Maria's face as she accepts the revenge and out of her love for Ada, reconciles herself to becoming Billies wife and Ada's step mother.

Yellowjackets (2021– )

4 eps in and nothing remotely horrific aside from the stilted dialog.

[3/10 · 6 December 2021]

Oh well. Iv'e wasted more time on less entertaining endeavors, but I would like my 4 hours back, please.

This show spends more time plodding through boring, anti climactic flashbacks and tedious subplots than exposition on what this show is purported to be about.

It is becoming obvious that modern writing technique is tantamount to making sausage. It mainly consists of taking a mediocre storyline, filling it with loads of fluff and scraps while tossing in random sex and violence as a cook does cayenne pepper or smoked paprika, but only enough to keep the rubes coming back for more. It is how they turned The Walking Dead into little more than a afternoon soap opera with zombies.

I had hoped for a rework of William Golding's Lord of the Flies with an added contemporary horror angle. I guess that will emerge in season 2. Sadly, I won't be around to find out.

On the positive, if you are a huge fan of 90s pop and the "F" bomb, you will get plenty of both..... Enjoy, I outta here.

The Secret of Sinchanee (2021)

Abandon hope all ye who seek a cogent plot here

[3/10 · 9 October 2021]

The location is nice. The backstory that you will read during the opening credits is interesting. The lighting, scenery, camera work and sound are all right where they need to be. The players are in character and what starts out as creepy, in a good way, flicker of a horror tale's ember, slowly grinds to a meandering and confused object lesson on how not to make a movie who's plot appears to be about awakened, evil indian spirits, who are super miffed over a purloined arrow head.

Don't worry I haven't spoiled anything. It won't make much sense to you either.

The more your own imagination fills in the plot holes the production never bothered to address, the better the chances will be that you may possibly find this movie watchable.

Bonus: Just as the final credits are ready to roll, a non shocking, sophomoric and hackneyed stab at a twist ending lands so flat that any redeeming qualities you may have manufactured out of charity for this wretched time waster, will fade into the same dark crevasse the plot of this film disappeared into, almost two hours ago.

Dave Chappelle: The Closer (2021 TV Special)

They won't all be killers, but most of them have been...

[6/10 · 7 October 2021]

Dave Chappelle has been on a slowly building, almost imperceptible climb to the top of the comedy game. A methodic slouch towards a Bethlehem of satire that began after what seemed a lengthy hiatus if not a complete withdrawl from the entertainment industry itself, following the unceremonious abandonment of his ground breaking Comedy Central hit, Chapelle's Show, just prior to the release of it's 3rd season.

And while It was reported (most notably by The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly) that Chappelle had flown to South Africa on April 28 to stay in an undisclosed psychiatric facility, Chappelle emphasized that his trip was a "spiritual retreat" intended to keep his sense of reality outside the bubble of intense pressure and fame and to keep his humor fresh.

Chappelle broke his silence in 2006 during an interview with Oprah Winfrey, explaining his untimely exit was due to the stress and burnout resulting from 20 hour work days and the inability to pursue his live performance schedule(among other things).

Now free to immerse himself in full blown comedy tours, Chappelle spent the next decade honing his craft in comedy bastions like the Laugh Factory as well as packed venues throughout the world until signing a multi-special, package deal, with Netflix.

Honestly, I wasn't particularly 'blown away' by this specific performance, as Chappelle has set the bar so very high of late. Most of the topics in "The Closer" have already been addressed or at least touched upon in other of Dave's works, making this 'new' material appear to be all but derivative.

I am, however, confident that Surely some revelation is at hand; A new and vast image out of Spiritus Mundi that Chappelle has drawn from so effortlessly in the recent past will soon follow to overshadow this not-entirely sucky bit of mediocrity.

There are far worse things you could do with your time.

Foundation (2021– )

Today's writers have honed an ability to turn everything into soap operas.

[6/10 · 26 September 2021]

Started out with good pacing in episode 1, ending with an explosive finale.

Episode 2 makes it clear that this series is more about space travelers falling in love that it is about Harry Seldon forestalling the collapse of a galactic empire into chaotic ruin.

When modern writers proved they could captivate an audience of myriad slack jawed dolts for 11 years with a soap opera about a zombie apocalypse, they knew beyond all doubt that they could soap-op any genre.

Jesus wept.

Kate (I) (2021)

Don't read this review. You won't like it.

[3/10 · 13 September 2021]

Woody plays mentor to a lass he trains, from a young girl, into a seasoned, hired killer of men. And we know she is seasoned, because even despite overwhelming discrepencies in muscle mass, weight, physics and biology, she can kick the living cra*p out of men. I mean to say, multiple, grown, rage filled, testosterone powered pschopaths, with an ease that only comes from really good 'seasoning'.

Anyway, she is compelled, by virtue of hitperson code, to kill a Yakuza chieftain in front of his daughter, thus forcing her to reevaluate murder for hire as a fulfilling vocation.

So original, no?

She then informs her ever faithful mentor and trainer, Woody, of her decision and newfound longing to "retire". He seems measurably nonplussed and this is the very moment we realize we are watching a plot so trite; so commonplace; so threadbare, so hackneyed. That I won't even continue to use any more of the same words Google used to define 'hackneyed'.

Kate then dutifully finishes her last "job" and rewards herself by hiring an American Kagema(look it up) Oh, I left out that the story takes place in Japan, only because I knew most of you would simply intuit the fact because I already used the terms Yakuza and Kagema.

Very presumptuous, and lazy, of me.

So, then Kate's Kagema slips her the old Polonium 204 cocktail. No, that is not a euphemism, it represents a fictional deadly poison for which there is no known antidote.

Fun fact 1: There is a real radioactive element, Polonium 210, that is lethal in very small amounts(thanks Madame Curie).

Fun fact 2: Vladimir Putin has long been rumored to use Polonium 210 to neutralize political opponents and journalists and people he just doesn't agree with, who inexplicably chose to voice thier contradicting views publicly.

It is only after Kate accepts her fate that she embarks on a journey of self discovery, therapeutic-restorative interpersonal bridge building and ..... I mean to say, Kate kills anyone who can't help her find the person who is responsible for poisoning her, and she does it in a demostrably measured and unflappably serene manner that would leave Dexter awestricken.

And, after some well shot, yet entirely predictable, fight scenes, car chases, obligatory arterial spray and beautifully choreographed parkour, a final showdown scene so unimaginative, so made for TV, so very basic, simple, banal and anti-climactic that it's not even worth my time to spoil an ending everyone had already predicted 20 minutes into the film.

Woody did it.

Shadowtown (2020)

Insomnia, you have met your match. This is visual melotonin.

[3/10 · 7 September 2021]

Someone said this film starts with a bang...I can only assume they were watching this film as a truck drove by, loudly backfiring as it passed.

This could have easily been a third rate Lifetime or Hallmark Channel made for TV melodrama.

The pacing is maddeningly lethargic, crawling to an anti-climax that could have been reached in 1/2 an hour. Not the 84 minute runtime it wasted.

The plot is both banal and inane....banane.(inanely banal) You will feel cheated of time and money, if you actually paid to view this.

Old (2021)

Another non-surprise ending from the king of the big reveal

[4/10 · 1 August 2021]

A medical research organization uses a resort as a front to test experimental drugs on its oblivious guests by sending them to a strip of beach discovered to have "magnetic properties" that accelerate the passage of time exponentially.

One afternoon will add decades to your age, making it the perfect place to conduct drug trials in a fraction of the time it would normally take.

The only problem is that the psychopaths running the facility send entire families to their deaths just to test one person. So if mommy has a tumor they are testing a cancer drug on, the whole family will perish from old age so that the data can be gathered on the one specific drug being tested.

We are supposed to be torn by the fact that the medical research is a net good for humanity, while the resort itself is just a for-profit slaughterhouse.

As with any Shamalamadingdong production, a lot of ridiculous events occur for no reason and there is a happy ending, of sorts.

So strap in and try not to laugh yourself into a coma, because that beach isn't a real place and you won't be cured by any of the Flumazenil and naloxone knock offs that might have been able to wake you back up.

Horror in the High Desert (2021)

The best found footage movie I have ever viewed

[7/10 · 23 July 2021]

This film just oozes believability, almost effortlessly.

All of the characters, with the exception of the private investigator, are earnest and authentic in their portrayals of real people, and in the current age of YouTube bloggers, the story is entirely plausable as well.

I don't mean to disparage any of the actors skills, but certain scene's dialog just seemed to lose authenticity in their delivery.(blame the director)

In 99.9999999 percent of pseudo documentaries there are several moments that just give the game away. Either from bad acting, contrived cinematography or just directorial ineptitude, the suspension of disbelief is forever shattered and the mood is ruined.

This movie rarely breaks character and when it does I think most people will simply write it off as docu-realism.

It doesn't overstay its welcome and many of us will actually hope for more.

A Classic Horror Story (2021)

This movie makes a lot more sense if you read this...

[5/10 · 14 July 2021]

Hear me out.

This film is a lot more fun to watch if you pretend it's actually the sequel to Revenge (2017). "Jen", has stopped her promiscuous romps with married men and is returning home in shame and with child. She has dropped her Tender profile and reverted to going by her given name, Elisa.

Elisa has joined a group of fellow carpoolers on an RV ride to her home town when the driver overcompensates trying to avoid colliding with a dead animal in the roadway, crashing and rendering the motorhome undrivable.

Then, the horror begins and Jen/Elisa is forced to do what she does so well.

She settles the score.

The Tomorrow War (2021)

Only if you are the type who just must see Chris Pratt in something, anything.

[3/10 · 5 July 2021]

"The Military" recruits people from the past to fight a war in the future instead of sending people back in time to prepare for the war with plenty of time to spare.

After Pratt's character is launched forward in time just long enough to fulfill a plot obligation, he is thrown back to his own time, where his wife figures out the aliens must have been here all along, so Chris, instead of going to "The Military" with this info-goes instead to ask his estranged father( a survivalist gun nut type who also happens to be a pilot) to ask for a plane ride to Russia to preemptively find the alien stronghold and end the war.

All it takes is some C-4, that Chris' pop has oodles of, to blow the mothership that is buried in the ice, to smithereens.

Mostly, The End.

But there is also an obligatory boss fight with the alien 'Queen' who somehow escaped the massive explosion.

I have put as much effort into crafting this review as the writers of The Tomorrow War did in fabricating its nonsensical storyline.

*Super Spoiler* I would bet my last scrap of self respect that the writers of this movie truly wanted to tie this into a "man's greed destroys the earth and awakens demonic beasts from the bowels of an innerplanetary hellscape", but the writing team for Underwater already beat them to it.....

The Seventh Day (I) (2021)

Exorcist buddy film for the ages, ages 10 and younger.....

[4/10 · 1 July 2021]

R. L. Stine's Goosebumps with foul language.

Boy plays with ouiga board, summons denizen of hell, boy becomes possessed, kills family, is locked up.

Catholic church sends wearied master exorcist and his trainee-assistant to gather facts of the case and visit boy in jail.

Demon/boy turns invisible in interrogation room, cops rush room and are summarily disemboweled. Demon/boy reappears, runs amok in police station, killing several while lights strobe earily.

Boy's personality remerges with amnesia of his violent acts while exorcists briefly confront their own insecurities and fears before launching into the obligatory, stilted, overwrought, possessed kid restrained on a bed scene.

Pseudo religious mumb-jumbo nonsensicals are spoken.

Boy then manifests badly processed "demon voice" utterances and the battle begins, over the boy's soul and the trainee exocist's ever dominant spanish accent.

My money was on the accent.

What began as an exorcism, morphs into a badly scripted training session with the exocist/instructor gruffly offering encouraging phrases like, "it's up to YOU to fight this, what are you waiting for?", "Finish it, Daniel. You're almost there. You're DOING IT!"

And finish it he does. But not on the boy, ON HIS EXORCIST INSTRUCTOR!!! DUH DUH DUMMMMMM!!!

You could have easily missed the clues to this reveal if you naturally dozed off while watching.(it happens)

But it just keeps on going.....and going.....until the most anticlimactic, predictable showdown scene you've viewed in a while.

After vanquishing the spawn of hell, our trainee hero returns to his middle management exorcist supervisor and is given the files of all the other "trainees" his mentor surely infected with his demotosis (I made that up, it sounded better than demonitis) so that he can ostensibly exorcize those poor souls as well.

Our hero slides into his trusty exor-mobile, furtively glancing into the rearview mirror as if to portend a possible sequel?

Pray that it doesn't.

Lisey's Story (2021)

A long tradition of not so good Stephen King offerings continues

[3/10 · 10 June 2021]

No horror to speak of here. Just dream sequence after dream sequence after dream sequence.

If you like hearing the name "Amanda" repeated 77 times, you are really going to love this foray into the mediocre.

It must be hard for a past his prime author to simply not know when not to adapt every derivative scribbling in his repetoir to a meadering telelplay.

Since this is Stephen King story, and there are women in the story, they will certainly have been mistreated during their formative years by a trusted male family member.

What visual dreck this way comes. The first episode should draw the viewer in-not lull them to sleep.

Infinite (2021)

Lots of explosions,cars, guns and swords, just very little in originality.

[2/10 · 10 June 2021]

Marky Mark is quickly morphing into how John Cena would look if his barber were were a sleep deprived meth afficionado. And if that seems interesting to you, this film is right up your totaled-copcar strewn alley.

As has already been mentioned by an earlier reviewer, Infinite is a blatant mashmix of the first Highlander film and any one of the F and F franchise you care to pair it with. Sprinkle in some Matrix, Underworld and X-men elements in with the first two, and you get Infinite.

Film begins with Marky, having almost completely concealed his usual pseudo Boston Brahmin, revisiting his Max Payne narration style in order to explain in a disinterested monotone, what most of us will likely turn off in the next 20 minutes.

Provided you don't mind a glossy, formulaic, mass produced, shoot em up rehash, you may dig this movie.

A Quiet Place Part II (2020)

They know how to attract and kill the creatures but prefer not to.

[4/10 · 1 June 2021]

As we discovered in part 1, amplifying Regan's earpiece drives the creatures to near suicidal rage thus openeing their armor clad craniums to a well placed shotgun blast. Bye Bye creature.

But even knowing this, the Abbotts would still rather not clear out a safe living area around their home and be able to live normally again. No, instead they would rather just flee from the one area on earth they know is now practically creature free.

Makes sense huh? No, it's just Stupid.

Just one of several inane plot devices used in this franchise milker.

I wish that before they left their hidey hole, all the Abbotts had severed an artery in their feet on the nail on the staircase they curiously, simply refuse to remove or even render harmless by pounding flat.

Inexplicably, The Abbotts choose to leave relative safety and plod blindly into the unknown, chasing a smoke signal from miles away where, when they arrive, they are rewarded for their trouble with the introduction of a few well placed boobie traps.

Why would someone beckon people with a smoke signal if you really don't want them to come?

I guess it is just a reason to keep Cillian Murphy's character around. I mean he did survive 28 Days and 28 Days Later, after all.

The Abbotts even provide Cillain/Emmett with a well executed display of their creature eradication technigue. He hardly notices, preferring to hide in an airtight incinerator that he can only remain in for short periods of time before suffocation sets in.

He has cleverly timed how long he will be able to breathe in his cast iron safe space. It is less than a minute.

Later, after he saves Regan from certain death in a derelict traincar, some other nonsense occurrs that forces a showdown on a pier where we learn that the creatures cannot swim.....AT ALL.

But we also learn that they are excellent seamen and boat navigators, as they follow our hapless duo (Emmett and Regan) to a completely creature-free island paradise where the inhabitants welcome the newcomers with open arms to a seemingly never ending bbq, totally unaware that

salty Captain Creature has deftly followed our heroes, makes landfall, and then sets about the rampaging task of nearly destroying everyone and everything until Regan deploys her now perfected eradication method, and brains Captain Salty with a piece of aluminum conduit that might have weighed 8 ounces.

Now, I am leaving out quite a bit of John Kranzinski's hack storyline because it just wouldn't be fair to give away all of the banal, paper mache-constructed edifaces he "borrowed" to draw out the runtime of this third rate offering.

And yes, there will be a third iteration of this soon to be forgotten sequel.

Army of the Dead (2021)

Why didn't Mr. Tanaka just give them the combination to the safe?

[1/10 · 18 May 2021]

As hackneyed and sophomoric as this film is, the stupid never seems to end. Even in the contrived and stilted first sequence of a head on collision where the military personnel transporting the top secret shipping container, are simply too catty to stop yammering at each other like school girls for 1 minute to see the headlights of the oncoming vehicle, continuing to the scene where " I never do leg days" Batista is assembling Ocean's dumbest 11, because he needs the "best" safecracker he can find-for some reason.....

Exactly why do they need a safecracker, pray tell? Tanaka, the man who hired "I skip all leg days" Batista, must have just wanted to jepardize the entire operation by withholding the damn code to the safe.

Finding the flaws in this piece of visual sewage is as challenging as an Easter egg hunt in an empty parking lot.

Army of the Dead Plot.