Steve Stebbing

1. Uninspired horror – Does it feel like good horror is a dime a dozen? With John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place currently killing it at the box office and with critics it feels like a good time to address all the cheap pandering films in this genre that don’t make the cut of even being a passably scary movie. Just look at Blumhouse’s latest one Truth Or Dare, a story that takes its inspiration from a handful of more successful movies to forge in glued together identity. Oh, a guy lured everyone to a place to get an unseen evil’s focus off of him and on to someone else? Seems like you lifted the beginning of It Follows a little. I feel like I’m being a little focused on this one movie, so let me bring up another one from last year, Happy Death Day. The movie basically rolls Mean Girls into a Groundhog Day style plot but fails to make any sort of original stride with this premise. My overarching complaint is that mainstream horror has been resting on its laurels for too long and we need better original horror. Especially Blumhouse. This is what you were made for!

2. The diminishing role of critics – This may be slightly self-indulgent of me to rant about this but it is becoming increasingly difficult to get the coverage on films like we used to in this industry. Now, for me to bring this up publicly is a bit premature as I have only been involved in an official capacity for around three years but those who have been doing this longer have voiced this concern as well and it really does seem that for a lot of us, the writing is on the wall. The position is frequently unpaid, we receive endless hate for our opinions and now the studios are actively restricting movies from us for review. Disney is the biggest culprit as Rogue One was the only new Star Wars film to get an advance screening and neither or the Episodes were shown. This has now stretched as far as the Marvel movies with Avengers: Infinity War being screening-less on the West Coast. Film appreciation in the media is nearing extinction and as a person who is passionate about it I feel the weight of my decision to get into this at the worst possible time.

3. The Gunman – Ever take a look at those Liam Neeson films like Taken, Unknown or Non-Stop and think “I wonder what Sean Penn would be like in that role?” Well, you are the only one and you’re weird but, that aside, it’s already been done in 2015 by, ironically enough, Pierre Morel, the man behind Taken. Well, the movie is new to Netflix this week and I know you’re asking what’s the problem? Is it Penn himself? No, not really. The big issue is the movie is boring as hell, predictable and not enough action bite to even warrant it to be considered part of the action genre. Fantastic character actors like Javier Bardem, Idris Elba and a pre-Oscar winning Mark Rylance star in the film but are so ineffectual and forgettable that they must have just come in, collected a paycheck and left. Again, just like most films in the last few years, I saw this one in theaters and still look for the day that I can get a full life refund from Morel and company, including Penn himself, who served as producer additionally. Make that cheque out to cash please!

With all the movies out there, some of them surely have to be terrible. My job is to make sure you don’t waste any time on them so here are my dumpster fires this week:

1. Father Figures – I know I brought up this movie last week for my little rant about terrible photo shop but I have now gotten a look at what’s in the box and, folks, it’s not pretty. The film is centered around Ed Helms and Owen Wilson as two fraternal twin brothers who find out at their mother’s wedding that the man they believed to be their father was not, sending them on a road trip to track down the real one. The problem is that their mother, played by Glenn Close, was quite promiscuous at the time of their conception, making the search that much more difficult. If that lazy premise still has you intrigued, let me dispel that by informing you that the laziness doesn’t stop there. Wilson and Helms both rely on what their known for, the former’s “Oh Wow” bewilderment and the latter’s uptight nature, as well as constant “your mom’s a slut” jokes. Leave this one in the Walmart bargain bin, friends.

2. T.J. Miller – Is it even alright to say you enjoy this guy’s comedy anymore because it feels like he throwing every roadblock at us to be an absolute pariah. Now, I’ve been a fan of Miller for years. His stand-up comedy is hilarious, plus his memorable turns in Extract, She’s Out Of My League and Our Idiot Brother all made him someone to look forward to no matter how large or small his role was. It’s hard to believe when you look at him in Deadpool that he started as the cameraman Hud in Cloverfield and now I can’t even make any Erlich Bachman Silicon Valley jokes without thinking about his sexual harassment allegations, his general terrible attitude reported on the set of that aforementioned HBO series and this new bit of information about him calling in a fake bomb threat. Seriously, I should have completely wrote him off when he praised his film The Emoji Movie.

3. The I Feel Pretty trailer – Now, this one doesn’t actually apply to the film, as I haven’t seen it yet, but directly at the Cineplex theater chain as well as the film distributor, eOne. The story is that a father in Langley brought his 9-year-old daughter to a Saturday matinée of the wholesome sports film The Miracle Season, a G rated film in Canada. Prior to the film, a trailer for the new Amy Schumer movie ran, one that is rated PG-13 for sexual content, partial nudity and language. This also includes a wet t-shirt contest that appears in the trailer. Now, this certainly seems like a total mistake by a rushed studio trying to get eyes on their film. The trailer will be removed from any other screening of The Miracle Season but the method in which the outrage snowballs is due to the echo chamber that is the internet. This is a small snafu that could have been resolved quietly but instead it blew up big enough to be a feature story on news sites in the lower mainland. That’s kind of ridiculous. The only other real problem I have with this dad is that he also took some offense to a trailer for the new film On Chisel Beach, which has a far more progressive message but that’s a rant for another dumpster fire.