I haven't seen No Way Home yet, but aside from that I think Eternals is actually the best/my favorite of the new batch of MCU movies.
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Movie Time 2.0: TT mini reviews
- Thread starter Rascally Badger
- Start date
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Violentvixen
(She/Her)
Watched the new MacBeth. Still processing it as I can't quite decide about the combination of "clearly a soundstage" and "1930s German films", but I didn't dislike it and really appreciate dedicating to a direction so thoroughly. I'm not really sure how you watch it without an AppleTV (we used my mom's account) but I do recommend it if you have that or a free trial or whatever. The pacing is a little quick for me but it leaves the film at only 1h45m so can't complain.
After significant amounts of urging from a friend who adores it, I got around to watching Belle the other night. Unfortunately this film landed closer to Summer Wars than Wolf Children for me. I guess I just can't stand Hosoda's digital world obsession, they always seem to come across as dull and the stakes as artificially inflated nothingness. In this film he also mashed up Beauty and the Beast (obviously) with very strong Paprika influences, but it fell far short of measuring up to any of those parts, let alone the sum of them. The soundtrack was decent, nice electronic sound to it all, but the reveal near the end felt cheap, unearned, and then completely botched and undermined in the handling, making it seem like a cheap ploy for feels.
Nonetheless, probably should've got the Oscar nod over Luca.
Nonetheless, probably should've got the Oscar nod over Luca.
Hosoda's obsession with vehicles for telling furry-stories, and Shinkai's obsession with solipsistic love stories being such large, visible, ambassadors to the realm of anime-films makes me kinda sad tbh. I don't mind artists iterating on a constant theme, but it would be nice if these guys sought out a little bit more diversity in their projects and went through multiple phases versus living walled off securely in their comfort zones.
The Best Animated Film ghetto of the Oscars has always been and will likely always be a dumpster fire. It's nice that this year's nominees culturally represent more than just bland, default-whiteness. But it's still a category completely dominated by Hollywood's kid-centric moneyed interests at the expense of the medium.
The Best Animated Film ghetto of the Oscars has always been and will likely always be a dumpster fire. It's nice that this year's nominees culturally represent more than just bland, default-whiteness. But it's still a category completely dominated by Hollywood's kid-centric moneyed interests at the expense of the medium.
I hear the Danish animated documentary Flee might be in with a chance this year, which would be a welcome and refreshing change. But I suppose it's more likely one of the Disney/Pixar bunch will win yet again.
I also watched The French Dispatch and found it fairly fun. The bitesized nature of the stories, while presented in a very Wes Anderson mode, actually helped keep any individual story from spiraling too deeply into Anderson-isms, I found. Each little one was able to wrap up amusingly before it overstayed its welcome or got too twee.
I also watched The French Dispatch and found it fairly fun. The bitesized nature of the stories, while presented in a very Wes Anderson mode, actually helped keep any individual story from spiraling too deeply into Anderson-isms, I found. Each little one was able to wrap up amusingly before it overstayed its welcome or got too twee.
Watched Flight of the Navigator for the Octoprime Movietime club, and… it could have been great, but ultimately was not. Movie couldn’t pick a lane between being a harrowing sci-fi thriller and being a Kid on a Space Adventure movie, and while it was doing a commendable job with each, when combined it was just a mess.
Mad respect to the practical effects; the movie looks amazing, especially when the interior of the ship is finally shown, and I also loved the AI, and how much it hated this stupid, stupid child.
Then the AI suddenly starts using a Peewee Herman impression and got kind of obnoxious. Also the kid was juuuuust unlikable enough that it errors any sympathy I had for his genuinely horrifying situation.
Mad respect to the practical effects; the movie looks amazing, especially when the interior of the ship is finally shown, and I also loved the AI, and how much it hated this stupid, stupid child.
Then the AI suddenly starts using a Peewee Herman impression and got kind of obnoxious. Also the kid was juuuuust unlikable enough that it errors any sympathy I had for his genuinely horrifying situation.
Yeah, I really loved that movie as a kid, and I was a bit disappointed when I rewatched it recently. I always liked the mysterious early part best, before Paul Reubens starts playing Max as a robot Pee Wee. I still have to hand it to them for that gag in the opening shot of the movie, though.
Watching the movie as an adult, it struck me as a little absurd to cast NASA as a secretive, thuggish government agency. It would have made a lot more sense if it had been the Air Force that was holding David and Max.
It’s silvery, flying metal disc—which turns out to be a frisbee that a dog catches in midair.
Watching the movie as an adult, it struck me as a little absurd to cast NASA as a secretive, thuggish government agency. It would have made a lot more sense if it had been the Air Force that was holding David and Max.
Was it actually Paul Reubens? Because it sounded like him, but I didn’t see his name in the credits.
He was uncredited, but it was indeed him!
Another thing that I noticed in my rewatch was that David’s mom was played by Veronica Cartwright, a/k/a Lambert from Alien.
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
So apropos of nothing, I decided to watch Dragon Quest: Your Story. So my opinion of this was a journey. For most of the movie it's a mix of speed running Dragon Quest V which never having played it, I can already tell makes for narrative problems for an experience that feels like it needs time, like a TV series rather than a movie. I also wasn't big on the animation, which felt like in terms of how characters moved and acted, seemed like it was going for a poor man's version of a Disney film (mainline, not Pixar) in a way that didn't do it favours. And for most of it, the story felt hollow and in trying to rush through things, I don't particularly care for the characters, I almost wish I did play the game because some of the narrative twists feel like they would have been more effective in a game. About half-way through things improve because while I still didn't feel strongly about the characters, I was happy the film actually got to slow down for a love story. Here it starts getting a bit ambitious in the same way as the game, I assume. Then we get to the last act where I was far more engaged than I was the rest of the film, particularly because the big fight against the baddie looked good.
Then... it took a huge swing. And I kind of loved it and hated it in equal measure? It actually makes a few of my earlier complaints work in the film's favour. But it also feels a bit of a pander wank after deciding to essentially pull the rug out from under the viewer. I mean, it's not like I wanted a bad ending but after such a narrative turn, it's a shame ambition somehow still turned back into dumb formula. But kudos for trying something different that is clearly meant to be a love letter to the franchise.
Then... it took a huge swing. And I kind of loved it and hated it in equal measure? It actually makes a few of my earlier complaints work in the film's favour. But it also feels a bit of a pander wank after deciding to essentially pull the rug out from under the viewer. I mean, it's not like I wanted a bad ending but after such a narrative turn, it's a shame ambition somehow still turned back into dumb formula. But kudos for trying something different that is clearly meant to be a love letter to the franchise.
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
What makes it so weird is how deeply unweird it is for most of the running time and there's like, 10 minutes left including credits to make this one last move. Like, I kind of hate the pander-y aspect (and also convenient film ending butt-pull to the crisis) but I love that it went for something like this.
It's exactly in line with a respectable lineage of self-indulgent JRPG plots and I love the ending. It would've been one thing to simply make a compressed movie version of DQ5, but no they went and made a clumsy statement about the nature of nostalgia within the greater context of the Dragon Quest cultural phenomenon by leveraging the one entry in the series that has the highest emotional resonance.
That should have been a King Metal instead...
Phantoon
I cuss you bad
I finally watched Encanto and was surprised by how good it was. It was a really excellent representation of a family falling apart. There were no villains, and all conflicts were understandable. And when the story went to dark places it didn't flinch away from it at all. It went to some shockingly dark places too.
Also We Don't Talk About Bruno is a bop
Also We Don't Talk About Bruno is a bop
ArugulaZ
Fearful asymmetry
He called himself "Paul Mall," like the cigarettes.
The sudden detour to Pee-Wee's Playhouse was pandering as hell, but the movie was made for twelve year olds, and as a twelve year old when the film was released, you'd better believe I gobbled up that shameless pandering and licked the bowl clean afterward.
Watched Get Out for the first time. That was some creepy shit. It's a really interesting shift (for me, in the cultural majority) to see one's own culture portrayed as the creepy, unsettling, sometimes terrifying "other". Also humbling to notice I was hoping for the couple white folks who managed to speak and act like actual humans to be the only ones not in on it, but no, someone being good at outward signifiers of humanity doesn't necessarily mean you're safe. Anyway, great film.
We also watch The Lobster about which I have no idea what to say other than that was a thing that happened.
We also watch The Lobster about which I have no idea what to say other than that was a thing that happened.
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
Get Out is good at that and while unfortunately a lot of Peele's Twilight Zone remake was extremely hit and miss, some of the better ones hit this kind of note well. Really looking forward to Nope.
This weekend I watched a few. I watched The Cat Returns, which was... fine. Just fine. It's a fun little treat but it feels kind of slight. Cool cat, though. I guess it's also a spin off of Whispers of the Heart, which I know very little about.
Last night I watched Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn and it is super good. It's a shame that the first Suicide Squad was apparently a dud because Margot Robbie rules at the character and even as the lead in this story, like in the Suicide Squad, I feel like they know to let other characters have their breathing room. And even though he's not exactly a rich character, this is the most interesting I'll ever find Victor Szasz. I also appreciate that even though it ends with these characters stories going on, the structure makes me feel like the film isn't actually trying to set up more movies, it's just trying to be one good movie. Also, I love Mary Elizabeth Winstead as someone trying way to hard to be cool and is disappointed when she is undercut.
This weekend I watched a few. I watched The Cat Returns, which was... fine. Just fine. It's a fun little treat but it feels kind of slight. Cool cat, though. I guess it's also a spin off of Whispers of the Heart, which I know very little about.
Last night I watched Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn and it is super good. It's a shame that the first Suicide Squad was apparently a dud because Margot Robbie rules at the character and even as the lead in this story, like in the Suicide Squad, I feel like they know to let other characters have their breathing room. And even though he's not exactly a rich character, this is the most interesting I'll ever find Victor Szasz. I also appreciate that even though it ends with these characters stories going on, the structure makes me feel like the film isn't actually trying to set up more movies, it's just trying to be one good movie. Also, I love Mary Elizabeth Winstead as someone trying way to hard to be cool and is disappointed when she is undercut.
The only real connection is that The Baron is in both of ‘em.
The Matrix Resurrections (HBOMax) – Lana Wachowski didn’t particularly want to make this movie, so rather than making a real movie, she made a long string of Fuck Yous to a bunch of different people and institutions, starring all of the actors she likes. (Seriously, half the cast of Sense8 was in this.) It was also pretty surprising how little bullet-time there was in the action sequences; they were fairly generic. It was absolutely not necessary for this movie to exist and it doesn’t really add much to the original trilogy, but clearly some people had fun making it; and it’s inoffensive as such things go.
Soul (Disney+) - I think this was aimed at my generation; it certainly wasn’t aimed at kids. Not because there’s anything offensive in it, but because I don’t think anyone younger than college-age would get either the emotional beats or half the humor. It tried to do for music what Ratatouille did with food, and did an okay job with it; and had a general theme that appeals to lost 30-somethings who were sold lies about dream jobs.
Encanto (Disney+) - Lin-Manuel Miranda is the hot shit right now, and I just…don’t like his work that much? I mean, it’s generally good, I can see why he’s successful, but I don’t have the love for it that so many people do. There are good songs in this and I can see why it’s going to be the next Frozen as everyone refuses to talk about Bruno. But the songs didn’t actually stick in my head and I’m not interested in listening to the soundtrack repeatedly (which is the same reaction I had to Hamilton). Still, we could do a lot worse than a movie about a big latinx family where the moral is you need to actually talk about your needs and problems rather than hiding them.
The Road to El Dorado (Amazon, rewatch) - Tumblr loves this movie for being the most bisexual, polyamorous cartoon ever made. While there is, of course, zero text that Miguel and Tulio are actually lovers (while the "they're both interested in Chell" text is loud and clear and we're all just reading subtext), I’ll note that Miguel and Tulio get the standard breakup/makeup romance arc. I'm sure lots of people read a love triangle, but "do we stay in El Dorado vs go back to Spain" is the actual wedge between them, and Chell plays as much role in that as the goddamn horse does, as just being someone to represent a side of that divide. This is a poly movie especially because it divorces love for a life partner completely from sexual attraction. Whether or not Miguel and Tulio bang (and whether Tulio and Chell bang) is immaterial to their deep loving companionship, how well they know each other and work together and would clearly give up their own dreams to support each other.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage (Amazon) – A movie that knows what it is: A comic love story between a man and his alien parasite that happens to have a bunch of CGI fights and explosions. Ann and Dan do a wonderful job as the long-suffering but still caring ex trying to fix her boyfriend’s new relationship and her new boyfriend who doesn’t want to deal with the drama but does for her sake. The first movie wasn’t quite sure why the audience was there. This knew and really ran with it, and it worked.
Free Guy (Disney+) - A formulaic-but-fun “character in a video game becomes real” story that ignores a lot of things about the actual functioning of MMOs (and how servers work) but gets terrible video game studio management perfectly (played to a T by Taika Waititi). (There are several plot holes Beowife pointed out that can be easily addressed with, “Antwan is an idiot.”) It’s a little longer than it really needs to be, but the cuttable stuff is mostly funny cameos and entertaining action sequences, so that’s forgivable. If you like watching Ryan Reynolds have a good time and appreciate humor in the form of sarcastic and witty asides, it’s a fun film. I’m glad I didn’t brave the theater at the height of the pandemic to go see it, though. It’s perfectly fine on a home screen.
Soul (Disney+) - I think this was aimed at my generation; it certainly wasn’t aimed at kids. Not because there’s anything offensive in it, but because I don’t think anyone younger than college-age would get either the emotional beats or half the humor. It tried to do for music what Ratatouille did with food, and did an okay job with it; and had a general theme that appeals to lost 30-somethings who were sold lies about dream jobs.
Encanto (Disney+) - Lin-Manuel Miranda is the hot shit right now, and I just…don’t like his work that much? I mean, it’s generally good, I can see why he’s successful, but I don’t have the love for it that so many people do. There are good songs in this and I can see why it’s going to be the next Frozen as everyone refuses to talk about Bruno. But the songs didn’t actually stick in my head and I’m not interested in listening to the soundtrack repeatedly (which is the same reaction I had to Hamilton). Still, we could do a lot worse than a movie about a big latinx family where the moral is you need to actually talk about your needs and problems rather than hiding them.
The Road to El Dorado (Amazon, rewatch) - Tumblr loves this movie for being the most bisexual, polyamorous cartoon ever made. While there is, of course, zero text that Miguel and Tulio are actually lovers (while the "they're both interested in Chell" text is loud and clear and we're all just reading subtext), I’ll note that Miguel and Tulio get the standard breakup/makeup romance arc. I'm sure lots of people read a love triangle, but "do we stay in El Dorado vs go back to Spain" is the actual wedge between them, and Chell plays as much role in that as the goddamn horse does, as just being someone to represent a side of that divide. This is a poly movie especially because it divorces love for a life partner completely from sexual attraction. Whether or not Miguel and Tulio bang (and whether Tulio and Chell bang) is immaterial to their deep loving companionship, how well they know each other and work together and would clearly give up their own dreams to support each other.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage (Amazon) – A movie that knows what it is: A comic love story between a man and his alien parasite that happens to have a bunch of CGI fights and explosions. Ann and Dan do a wonderful job as the long-suffering but still caring ex trying to fix her boyfriend’s new relationship and her new boyfriend who doesn’t want to deal with the drama but does for her sake. The first movie wasn’t quite sure why the audience was there. This knew and really ran with it, and it worked.
Free Guy (Disney+) - A formulaic-but-fun “character in a video game becomes real” story that ignores a lot of things about the actual functioning of MMOs (and how servers work) but gets terrible video game studio management perfectly (played to a T by Taika Waititi). (There are several plot holes Beowife pointed out that can be easily addressed with, “Antwan is an idiot.”) It’s a little longer than it really needs to be, but the cuttable stuff is mostly funny cameos and entertaining action sequences, so that’s forgivable. If you like watching Ryan Reynolds have a good time and appreciate humor in the form of sarcastic and witty asides, it’s a fun film. I’m glad I didn’t brave the theater at the height of the pandemic to go see it, though. It’s perfectly fine on a home screen.
I watched Evangelion 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone on Amazon Prime. I have no prior experience with the TV show or movies.
The animation both traditional and CGI were very impressive. The overly dramatic characters I found grating in parts, but on the whole I liked the film.
This is a series that I've heard a lot of thing about but have not checked out until now. I think the burden expectations probably lessened the experience for me a bit. If it was possible to go into the watch with no prior pop culture knowledge I'm sure I would have liked it more. I often think about how impactful it would be to see the first Alien movie with no pop cultural knowledge going into it.
I will probably watch the rest of the movies at some point.
The animation both traditional and CGI were very impressive. The overly dramatic characters I found grating in parts, but on the whole I liked the film.
This is a series that I've heard a lot of thing about but have not checked out until now. I think the burden expectations probably lessened the experience for me a bit. If it was possible to go into the watch with no prior pop culture knowledge I'm sure I would have liked it more. I often think about how impactful it would be to see the first Alien movie with no pop cultural knowledge going into it.
I will probably watch the rest of the movies at some point.
This is me just now realizing I've been conflating this movie and Emperor's New Groove in my head for years (and I really need to watch both).
Emperor's New Groove has the greatest himbo of any cartoon, but isn't particularly bisexual. (And also it has Eartha Kitt being glorious.)
Purple
(She/Her)
Because I have a close friend who likes werewolves and laments the dire lack of good werewolf movies out there, we just finished watching every Ginger Snaps movie, which I will now try to briefly summarize:
Ginger Snaps was a sort of sleeper hit/cult movie from 2000 about 2 very misanthropic, possibly suicidal goth sisters, Ginger and Bridgette (think Lydia from Ghostbusters but in a worrying way not a fun way), the former of whom gets bit by a "werewolf" and doesn't deal with that well, while the latter teams up with a local drug dealer to try and work out a cure. I put "werewolf" in quotes because I think the term gets thrown out at least once but like, zero werewolf lore applies here. Full moons aren't relevant, silver isn't relevant, there's no changing back and forth, and the ultimate monster form doesn't even look particularly wolfish. Just this big pale lumpy monster on all fours one gradually turns into over the course of... I dunno 2 weeks maybe if some contagion gets into an open wound. And their injuries heal pretty quickly but that's more just so we can have some upsetting self-harming/self-surgery imagery than unkillability. Like, the original "werewolf" that bites Ginger just gets hit by a truck and dies maybe 10 minutes into the movie. There's a lot of subtle-as-a-brick puberty metaphor stuff, but what it's mainly actually about is Bridgette gradually working out that Ginger is just a really horrible person she doesn't actually really have anything in common with and has just kinda been going along with her whole life because that's how abusive family dynamics go, and that angle of it really does play out quite well in less of a sudden realization way and more a slow burn admission that she was totally talking about killing people and suicide pacts and such even before turning into a big lumpy monster and turning down the cure just kinda proves she's using the whole thing as an excuse. I don't LOVE it but it's a solid movie worth watching, and largely feels like a much better take on a lot of what Jennifer's Body was going for. Oh and it's worth noting to anyone considering watching it that in addition to the self-harm stuff, "werewolves" seem to just really really have it out for pet dogs so... there's a lot of that.
Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed has absolutely no right whatsoever to be anything but a terrible sequel whose premise doesn't work and at best is a sad retread of the original with a new cast or something, but somehow manages to make perfect sense and be honestly quite great. The first movie ends with Bridgette having voluntarily infected herself for diplomatic reasons, that failing, having to kill Ginger, who has killed drug dealer friend, but having the cure they made (which was kind of accidentally tested on the only other person Ginger infected and proven to work) so there are no loose ends and the titular character is dead. Seems like there's no real way to move forward from that, but we go with it turning out that the whole inject a barely-non-lethal dose of wolfsbane directly into your veins cure worked out in the first movie isn't actually a cure, just a treatment to temporarily suppress symptoms, so between that, various corpses around her house, and being kind of a sketchy misanthrope to begin with, OK we've got a character worth following, we have Ginger "back" via the whole movie-visualization-of-negative-thoughts-in-the-form-of-dead-abusive-family thing, and oh we retroactively do have a lose end still at large "werewolf" because that one random dude never really had a chance to get filled in. And then we change up the setting to a big spooky half-abandoned medical facility/prison because this other "werewolf" is stalking her/killing people/smashing stuff and she's found at the scene of a thing with no ID, unconscious, and a kit for literally just injecting herself with poison, so she gets committed to an underfunded treatment center. So, neat setting, room to introduce a bunch of new characters with their own things going on, including a really unpleasant will sneak in drugs for patients for sexual favors creep and a charmingly weird nerdy spooky girl played by a teenage Tatiana Maslany. And then somehow this completely different unrelated movie manages to come out of nowhere and plow into the whole thing by the end which really shouldn't work but totally does and I can't think of another movie where I was both grinning and sputtering indignantly to this degree as the credits rolled. And the title is just a terrible pun because why not.
And finally there's the ambitiously titled Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning, a "prequel" set in the 1800s, starring the same two girls as the original as a different pair of sisters with the same names and appearances. That also sounds like it couldn't possibly be anything but pure garbage, but hey, the sequel sounded awful and turned out great, and this was shot back to back with it and released the same year so maybe that lightning struck again? And no. No it did not. This is just a terrible schlocky direct to DVD piece of garbage with no actual connection of any sort to the two good movies and it mostly isn't even amusing schlock just dull scenes where nothing happens. There is ONE fun scene, where a doctor suspecting someone of having been bit by a werewolf forces him to stick a leech on himself as a test and the leech immediately starts getting giant and hairy but it's like a 2 second scene and we never revisit the concept of non-human werewolves again. There is also a hilariously inappropriate Tween Romance Hunky Boy who absolutely does not belong in this sort of movie and is extra weird because he never becomes anyone's love interest and everyone keeps treating him like the scary intimidating Native American Other while he's just standing there doing nice things and smouldering. Past those the only thing remarkable about it is how it might set some sort of record for introducing angles and dropping them immediately. Like we were sitting there after looking back over it trying to find literally any scene that set up anything, even the most mundane basic plot structure, and remembered to pay it off later.
The only possible explanation I can think of is that the script was a direct, zero-edits adaptation of a fanfic that was originally posted as a series of single paragraph "chapters" uploaded weeks apart by someone who never once bothered to reread what she'd previously posted to conclude the cliffhanger. Which would also explain why the lead characters are completely passive and never actually do anything but get repeatedly rescued by Hunky Boy or Sad Proxy Dad over and over, and it would ABSOLUTELY explain the ending where rather than kill Ginger as maybe foretold in a super vague prophecy I'm pretty sure is just a fancy way of saying "how the first movie ended" she decides she just loves her sister too much to do that and they just go off to be werewolves together, fix-fic style. Which, you know, fanfic origins or no is a mind-blowing level of completely missing every single point that movie was making in the most unsubtle ways possible.
So yeah. Good movie, great movie, piece of garbage so bad and dull I genuinely don't understand why it was greenlit or why it was released because it's not even like there was a demand to keep a franchise going it was literally shot back to back with something worth watching.
Also I keep seeing other people talk about these as having lesbian themes which is super weird and unsubstantiated? Like, yes, every goth werewolf girl I know in my personal life is extremely gay, and it would plug like 5 plot holes out of 1000 in the "prequel" if they were actually pulling a Sailor Moon "cousins" ruse, but it's like people making the same read on Frozen, which seems to just be "Hey there was a perfectly good guy right there and neither of them hooked up with him? Must be couple of lezbos!" Now, if you want to talk about there maybe being trans themes in the movies where puberty is both literally and metaphorically treated as a source of horror and we've got girls taking bi-weekly injections to not grow facial hair and improvising a way to keep a tail from tenting a skirt with tape, that's... honestly probably coincidental but there's ground to stand on.
Ginger Snaps was a sort of sleeper hit/cult movie from 2000 about 2 very misanthropic, possibly suicidal goth sisters, Ginger and Bridgette (think Lydia from Ghostbusters but in a worrying way not a fun way), the former of whom gets bit by a "werewolf" and doesn't deal with that well, while the latter teams up with a local drug dealer to try and work out a cure. I put "werewolf" in quotes because I think the term gets thrown out at least once but like, zero werewolf lore applies here. Full moons aren't relevant, silver isn't relevant, there's no changing back and forth, and the ultimate monster form doesn't even look particularly wolfish. Just this big pale lumpy monster on all fours one gradually turns into over the course of... I dunno 2 weeks maybe if some contagion gets into an open wound. And their injuries heal pretty quickly but that's more just so we can have some upsetting self-harming/self-surgery imagery than unkillability. Like, the original "werewolf" that bites Ginger just gets hit by a truck and dies maybe 10 minutes into the movie. There's a lot of subtle-as-a-brick puberty metaphor stuff, but what it's mainly actually about is Bridgette gradually working out that Ginger is just a really horrible person she doesn't actually really have anything in common with and has just kinda been going along with her whole life because that's how abusive family dynamics go, and that angle of it really does play out quite well in less of a sudden realization way and more a slow burn admission that she was totally talking about killing people and suicide pacts and such even before turning into a big lumpy monster and turning down the cure just kinda proves she's using the whole thing as an excuse. I don't LOVE it but it's a solid movie worth watching, and largely feels like a much better take on a lot of what Jennifer's Body was going for. Oh and it's worth noting to anyone considering watching it that in addition to the self-harm stuff, "werewolves" seem to just really really have it out for pet dogs so... there's a lot of that.
Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed has absolutely no right whatsoever to be anything but a terrible sequel whose premise doesn't work and at best is a sad retread of the original with a new cast or something, but somehow manages to make perfect sense and be honestly quite great. The first movie ends with Bridgette having voluntarily infected herself for diplomatic reasons, that failing, having to kill Ginger, who has killed drug dealer friend, but having the cure they made (which was kind of accidentally tested on the only other person Ginger infected and proven to work) so there are no loose ends and the titular character is dead. Seems like there's no real way to move forward from that, but we go with it turning out that the whole inject a barely-non-lethal dose of wolfsbane directly into your veins cure worked out in the first movie isn't actually a cure, just a treatment to temporarily suppress symptoms, so between that, various corpses around her house, and being kind of a sketchy misanthrope to begin with, OK we've got a character worth following, we have Ginger "back" via the whole movie-visualization-of-negative-thoughts-in-the-form-of-dead-abusive-family thing, and oh we retroactively do have a lose end still at large "werewolf" because that one random dude never really had a chance to get filled in. And then we change up the setting to a big spooky half-abandoned medical facility/prison because this other "werewolf" is stalking her/killing people/smashing stuff and she's found at the scene of a thing with no ID, unconscious, and a kit for literally just injecting herself with poison, so she gets committed to an underfunded treatment center. So, neat setting, room to introduce a bunch of new characters with their own things going on, including a really unpleasant will sneak in drugs for patients for sexual favors creep and a charmingly weird nerdy spooky girl played by a teenage Tatiana Maslany. And then somehow this completely different unrelated movie manages to come out of nowhere and plow into the whole thing by the end which really shouldn't work but totally does and I can't think of another movie where I was both grinning and sputtering indignantly to this degree as the credits rolled. And the title is just a terrible pun because why not.
And finally there's the ambitiously titled Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning, a "prequel" set in the 1800s, starring the same two girls as the original as a different pair of sisters with the same names and appearances. That also sounds like it couldn't possibly be anything but pure garbage, but hey, the sequel sounded awful and turned out great, and this was shot back to back with it and released the same year so maybe that lightning struck again? And no. No it did not. This is just a terrible schlocky direct to DVD piece of garbage with no actual connection of any sort to the two good movies and it mostly isn't even amusing schlock just dull scenes where nothing happens. There is ONE fun scene, where a doctor suspecting someone of having been bit by a werewolf forces him to stick a leech on himself as a test and the leech immediately starts getting giant and hairy but it's like a 2 second scene and we never revisit the concept of non-human werewolves again. There is also a hilariously inappropriate Tween Romance Hunky Boy who absolutely does not belong in this sort of movie and is extra weird because he never becomes anyone's love interest and everyone keeps treating him like the scary intimidating Native American Other while he's just standing there doing nice things and smouldering. Past those the only thing remarkable about it is how it might set some sort of record for introducing angles and dropping them immediately. Like we were sitting there after looking back over it trying to find literally any scene that set up anything, even the most mundane basic plot structure, and remembered to pay it off later.
The sisters lie about being stranded in the woods because they were traveling with their parents who died, but then we never learn their actual backstory. A mysterious old woman talks about some prophecy about girls with their hair colors showing up, this goes nowhere. She gives them matching skull necklaces, this goes nowhere. We hint at all this "Native Americans know what's up with werewolves" stuff, and directly contradict it with a throwaway lines about werewolves being brought over from Europe like smallpox (I am still cackling trying to come up with sensible logistics for that). A dead werewolf falls in the only well, this has no consequences. We keep implying some sort of ongoing siege, there is exactly one attack and then people keep opening the gates and never fix the big hole in the wall. Someone demands the sisters leave, then we IMMEDIATELY cut to them planning how to escape. There's a big mutiny, then it's just not a thing. There's some you have to kill the werewolf that bit you thing (which directly contradicts the real movies but we're so far past that), which somehow mutates into Bridgette has to be the one to kill Ginger, which somehow manages to be introduced during the "the seer has summoned you here to discuss how to cure Ginger and Bridgette was never bit... but DOES have to drink vision quest juice, which doesn't lead anywhere. And like, that's just me recapping maybe a 15 minute stretch of it.
So yeah. Good movie, great movie, piece of garbage so bad and dull I genuinely don't understand why it was greenlit or why it was released because it's not even like there was a demand to keep a franchise going it was literally shot back to back with something worth watching.
Also I keep seeing other people talk about these as having lesbian themes which is super weird and unsubstantiated? Like, yes, every goth werewolf girl I know in my personal life is extremely gay, and it would plug like 5 plot holes out of 1000 in the "prequel" if they were actually pulling a Sailor Moon "cousins" ruse, but it's like people making the same read on Frozen, which seems to just be "Hey there was a perfectly good guy right there and neither of them hooked up with him? Must be couple of lezbos!" Now, if you want to talk about there maybe being trans themes in the movies where puberty is both literally and metaphorically treated as a source of horror and we've got girls taking bi-weekly injections to not grow facial hair and improvising a way to keep a tail from tenting a skirt with tape, that's... honestly probably coincidental but there's ground to stand on.
Malignant was pretty fun.
The Eva Rebuild movies are a curious experiment, and the relationship between audience expectations, audience enjoyment, and audience knowledge is a fascinating thing to me. Your hypothesis that you'd have enjoyed it more without any expectations or knowledge might be true. But it's also very specifically a film that was made with the assumption that most of its audience would already have a lot of knowledge and experience with the prior productions going into it. I can't imagine what watching the final film would even be like without knowing anything about the original series.