CGI_ Angel – Google

I’ll say it a million times: THIS IS SIERRA BURGESS DONE RIGHT!!!! You can have a catfish story that isn’t COMPLETELY manipulative and creepy…. While cat-fishing itself is an inherently creepy thing on its own, you have to learn to walk the line between a simple lie that spirals before the characters can stop it, versus a lie on top of a lie on top of… Well, you get the picture. During the course of Sierra Burgess’s movie, she comes across as selfish, delusional and even downright psychotic. A list of examples include: pretending to be deaf, (and trust me, as bad as it seems without context, it’s not much better with.) Kissing a boy without his consent, and blackmailing a supposed friend for a kiss she didn’t even want or ask for, because it’s some sort of “betrayal” in Sierra’s twisted mind. Yeah so… when the “bully” of your movie is a better person than the quote unquote, main character… And had the better character arc, it’s probably not a good movie. But I’m getting off topic: Love hard, better balances it’s humor with frustrating situations, rather than downright infuriating characters. It plays such a ridiculous story in almost more of a comedic lens, than a purely romantic one. And this works in it’s favor. The writer’s are aware that this cat-fishing situation is a ludacris idea, and they embrace the ridiculous side of it. Both characters learn from their mistakes and try to right them. The Cat-fisher Josh Lin, learns that while his interactions with the other character may have been real, he was still deceiving her. And that he set them both up for disappointment. Natalie Bauer (the other character) realizes that the actual guy in the photo she thought she met online, Tag, doesn’t hold a lot of the same ideals and interests as she does, and kind of bores her. I appreciated this movie because it didn’t try to excuse the characters for their awful behavior, and had fun with it’s crazy premise. While also surprisingly handling it better than the movie that DID take itself extremely seriously. I would have given this a higher rating, but one thing did really bother me, and that was when the main love interest would at times veer scarily close to incel (#killallincelsplz) territory. Luckily he never crossed that line, but he came way too close for comfort.

Monkeybone is a story of a cartoonist named Stu. Who suddenly runs into a little bit of fame after dreaming up a character named, "monkeybone". A character that best represents all of his sexual repression and libido. I don't know what I wanted from this movie... maybe a surreal and slightly unnerving deconstruction of a creator falling out of love with his creation, and slowly growing to despise the very thing that put his name out there in the first place. Instead what I got, left me a bit disappointed. I loved the idea of a man falling into a coma and living in a twisted world of nightmares starring his least favorite, (yet most notable) creation. It genuinely sounded like my PERFECT brand of weird. But when it really came down to it, it felt messy, unfocused, and certainly littered with cringe-worthy scenes. I'll admit that the doctors chasing the gymnast's runaway corpse at the end to harvest organs was funny, but few things could make up for the fact that it felt oddly paced and... At best uncanny at times with a David Lynch inspired lens. I felt it missed a great opportunity with all the nightmares they could have conceptualized and conjured up for people, with their "nightmare juice". I liked the city in a "hand" design. Yet most the residents were ugly and unpleasant to look at, (which I suppose was kind of the point. But it didn't take staring at them any easier.) I liked the fight in the sky, while desperately hanging onto an air balloon. But Monkeybone himself was just so intolerably annoying and awful that he almost tanked ANY amount of enjoyment I could have garnered from this strange movie— By the end of it, I wanted to write him out of existence too. All that being said, I didn't hate this movie, it just wasn't for me. I think Phantomstrider summed it up best in his YouTube review: "I can't guarantee monkeybone will be an enjoyable, pleasant experience. But I can guarantee you— it'll be... AN experience."

Milk is a great historical movie, based on some of the events that went on in San Francisco during the 70s. It shows these events from the first openly gay elected official in the history of California's eyes, and what he was able to accomplish during his lifetime. He inspired a lot of people, and his legacy continued on even after his demise. It's such a shame that his life was cut short, but a short life doesn't equal a meaningless one. And I thought this movie did a good job of showing that. (Josh Brolin and Sean Penn are great in this too.)