May 20, 2024 • 52 mins
Mike is fascinated with movie numbers so this week he breaks down Deadline’s report of the Most and Least Profitable movies of the last year. Mike gives his thoughts on where the bombs went wrong and why the profitable films aren’t the ones you’d expect to be. He also shares what the Top 5 most profitable movies are of all-time. In the Movie Review, Mike gives his thoughts on IF starring Ryan Reynolds. It’s about a 12 year old who discovers she can see everyone's imaginary friends, so she goes on a magical adventure to reconnect forgotten IFs with their kids. Mike shares why family movies have a special place in his heart, his imaginary friend growing up, why the movie felt unoriginal but ended up hitting him on an emotional level. In the Trailer Park, Mike gives his thoughts on M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie coming out this summer called Trap. It’s about a man and his teenage daughter who realize they're at the center of a dark and sinister event while watching a concert…and could be his best yet! (hopefully!)
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie podcast. I
am your host Movie Mike. If you listen to this podcast,
you know I am obsessed with box office numbers. So
Deadline just came out with the report of the most
and least profitable movies of the last year. I can't
wait to dive into these numbers because there's one studio
in particular that is really in trouble. In the movie review,
we'll be talking about If starring Ryan Reynolds, and in
(00:21):
the trailer park a look at the brand new m
Night Shyamalan movie and why I think it could be
his best movie ever except for one detail really keeping
me from being fully invested in this one. So thank
you for listening, Thank you for being subscribed. Shout out
to the Monday Morning Movie crew. He Now, let's talk movies.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast,
one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like
never before in a movie podcast. A man with so
much movie knowledge, he's basically like a walking IMTV with
glasses from the Nashville Podcast Network.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Is this movie Mike? Movie Pas Deadline just came out
with the reports of the most profitable and least profitable
movies of the last year. We're gonna break down these numbers,
talk about why some of these movies did so bad,
whether or not they're even worth your time because they
are all available now for you to watch at home,
and what leads to the success of other movies that
(01:21):
you might be surprised were actually profitable. So this all
comes down to return on investment based upon how much
money these movies spent on production and advertising and how
much they were able to make back. So let's get
right into the list at number five as the least
profitable movie of last year. It's kind of weird to
be in a top five. It's really like the bottom five.
(01:43):
But at number five on the list is Haunted Mansion
from Disney, which had a net loss of one hundred
and seventeen million dollars. I think the biggest reason this
movie didn't do so well is because it came out
in the summer. It was released on July twenty eighth,
and I think the reason they did that is because
they wanted to have its theatrical run and then be
(02:04):
able to come out in the fall on Disney Plus,
so maybe this was going to be just a Disney
Plus exclusive, and they thought, well, let's roll it out
in the theaters, not spend a whole lot of money
promoting the movie, and then we'll kind of make it
up on Disney Plus and maybe people will come over
to subscribe to watch a Haunted Mansion movie that we've
already had with Eddie Murphy back in the day. And
(02:27):
I actually think this wasn't a terrible movie. I actually
enjoyed it. It came out during the writers strike, so
nobody who starred in the movie could promote it properly.
Disney also faced some criticism because this was the one
where they had their premiere and they just had people
dressing up as different Disney characters to walk the red carpet,
so it also came out at a weird time. But
(02:49):
I think at the core of it, it's a pretty
good movie with some pretty good performances, a lot of
dumb fun I thought Danny DeVito was great in this movie.
This is the movie just queue up for Danny DeVito
to really throw in, But it really tried to sneak
in there after Barbie and before Teenage Mutant Ninja, Turtles,
Mutant Mayhem, but I think that families were really just
waiting for tmn T because there really wasn't a demand
(03:11):
for this movie, and it ended up just feeling more
like an advertisement. Disney has a history of making movies
about their rides. Some of them work, some of them don't.
When you look back on the two thousand and three
movie with Eddie Murphy, that one actually had a profit,
made one hundred and eighty two million dollars. This one
lost them one hundred and seventeen million. But I actually
(03:31):
think it's worthy of your time. Maybe not right now,
but it's on Disney Plus and maybe later this year
when you're wanting to watch something a little bit more
scary themed you have younger kids that aren't really ready
for anything that straight up horror. I think this is
that good in between. So I initially gave it a
three out of five. So I think this one is
still worth your time. But if you went to go
(03:52):
see it in theaters, you probably would have been a
little bit disappointed. I can see why it lost that
amount of money. At number four on the least profit
list was Wish again, Disney taking another hit here, and
the biggest issue I had with Wish is for a
kid's movie to come out last year and not really
have a whole lot of imagination in not just the storytelling,
(04:14):
which felt really basic, but the animation style. And I'm
somebody who grew up in the nineties, the Golden Age,
the Renaissance period for Disney, and I first fell in
love with two D animation. I actually think it is
the best way to tell a story. I get invested
in the art aspect of an animated film. When you
(04:34):
have artists hand drawing every single frame, I just think
that ends up looking better on screen. The characters have
more of life, it has more of a warmth to it.
But I also know that is what I grew up with,
so I think before maybe four years ago, whenever Disney
was really kind of entering their new era, I was
saying they should go back to that two D animation
(04:55):
and make animated movies great again. And then they came
out with Wish and I saw the trailer and it
looks so flat and not very compelling that I thought,
kids are not going to like this, and as good
as the story is going to be, it is not
going to be that visually appealing. Because when you have
Pixar that's so big, bright and bubbly in three dimensional,
(05:17):
and you have Illumination doing so much effort on making
their movies really more cinematic even though they're animated. It
very much felt like a step back for Disney. And
I know it was a celebration to honor their history
of being so dominant in animation, but overall I thought
it ended up being a step in the wrong direction.
So sometimes we don't need everything that we ask for.
(05:40):
I would say this is a skip unless you have kids,
and if you do and have Disney plus, you have
probably seen this movie running on the background in your
TV for a very long time. I think kids actually
like it, but for an aging Disney fan like me,
not my cup of tea. At number three on the
list is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Disney
(06:00):
taking another hit here net loss of one hundred and
forty three million dollars, and out of this list so far,
this is one that I actually believe is a really
good movie. Not a great movie, but a really good,
solid addition to the Indiana Jones franchise, which was so
dominant in the eighties. You had the ones with Shilabuff
(06:22):
that I think a lot of people hated but I
think this one was actually a really good take on
the character and gave us some closure on Indiana Jones.
With Harrison Ford playing the character for decades, I mean,
is in his eighties now, and I thought he did
a really good job in this movie. The story was
pretty good, the ending I loved it overall, had a
(06:42):
really good amount of action. But I think this movie
kind of suffered of nobody really wanted this movie now
and you're really having to appeal to the under forty
crowd to make this movie successful, and there really wasn't
much of a hype for it. And I think even
the people who were big Indiana Jones fans back in
the eighties when you were kids, it doesn't really have
(07:05):
that appeal to it now to get people out and
want to watch this movie in theaters. I think it
was also a victim of review bombing early on whenever
it was first screen it got a lot of negative reviews,
so then failed to create that buzz. But I actually
watched it and enjoyed it. I didn't expect it to
do so poorly, but I think if you have Disney Plus,
(07:28):
it is a worthy watch. I still stand by my
three point five out of five, which I think is
pretty solid given the legacy of Indiana Jones. Were there
may be some CGI moments that they could have made
look a little better. Yes. Were there some things that
were a little bit comical and didn't really hit well now? Yes,
But overall I still enjoyed this movie, and I just
liked Harrison Ford. At number two on the list, The Flash,
(07:52):
Warner Brothers and DC suffered a net loss of one
hundred and fifty five million dollars. This entire movie rollout
was chaos. It came out still before the actors strike,
but you had Ezra Miller who was a chaotic person,
so they weren't really any help in promoting the movie.
Michael Keaton back down and did no press for his
(08:15):
role as Batman, which I thought was the most appealing
part of this movie. I never really got too into
The Flash, although I did think out of everybody in
the Justice League movie aside from Wonder Woman, the Flash
was probably my favorite. But still I didn't think his
character warranted their own solo movie yet. But still, out
(08:37):
of all the negative things going on surrounding this movie,
it still came out and it fell so flat. I
was so disappointed, really due to the fact that they
brought back Michael Keaton, who I believe is the best
embodiment of Batman, and it's probably because he is the
Batman that I grew up with, and I ended up
feeling more emotion when I first saw him in the
(08:59):
trailer then I did once he was actually on screen
in the movie. And that is another issue I have
sometimes with superhero movies that tell us so much and
reveal so much before the movie comes out that it
takes away from that excitement. I get that you want
to build up that hype of Michael Keaton returning as
Batman and use that so much in your promotional materials,
(09:20):
but once that moment hits, it just doesn't really have
any impact on you as a viewer. I think Marvel
actually did really well and not revealing any details about
No Way Home before that, because that created one of
the best theater moments for Marvel in the last five years.
DC could have done the same, but it would have
been so much harder for them already to promote this movie.
(09:44):
And then they did try to take a page out
of Marvel's book and have all these cameos from different timelines,
and it ended up looking like a CGI mess. The
director came out and said that all those weird special
effects were actually on purpose. I think that was just
Ton to kind of cover up a shoddy job. Probably
rushed everybody in their VFX department to get this movie
(10:06):
out and to get it done for a relatively lower budget.
Maybe they tried to save some money even though they
spent so much money and then lost a whole bunch
of money. So this is one that I would say
skip it if you haven't seen it at this point.
I gave it two point five out of five, and
it probably even gone down on that review because I've
had no desire to go back and rewatch this movie,
(10:29):
and I feel that overall DC movies are very rewatchable.
But hopefully we are through with this era of Warner
Brothers and DC putting out bombs now that James Gunn
is taking over. All the looks that Superman so far
look pretty good. I thought the suit was a little
bit underwhelming because it looked just like the Henry Cavill suit,
although everybody was freaking out that he now has the
(10:51):
red trunks back. But again, I just feel that with
all of these teases happening a year sometimes two years out,
we start to not only be fatigued with the superhero genre,
but just the fact that we know everything along the way.
It's like if I was making a pizza at home
and I kept checking in on it every single minute
(11:11):
to see how it was doing, it wouldn't be so
grand once it was actually done. It just feels like
we know too much about the process throughout. They're oversharing,
they're turning it into content more so than art, so
then it's so much less impactful once these movies actually
come out, because we know every single thing about it
and we're not surprised by anything, so it has less
of an emotional hit on us. And then we just
(11:32):
keep doing it all over and over, so hopefully they
get away from that a little bit. I almost don't
want to read anything else about the new Superman movie
until we see that trailer before it comes out. But
at number one on the list, the least profitable movie
of the last year was the Marvels, so Disney again
making the list here. Marvel thought they had a hit
(11:54):
on their hands at one point, and the decision to
make this movie is because the first one made one
point one billion dollars. But I think the reason that
movie did so well is because it came out between
Infinity War and Endgame and was really that bridge that
we all walked down to get across from those two movies.
Captain Marvel probably should have been introduced way earlier than this.
(12:18):
It almost felt a little bit crammed in there. And
the reason they did it is because Captain Marvel did
play a pretty significant role in how Endgame starts and finishes,
so they probably put it out then to really cash
in on the hype going into Endgame. And I actually
think Captain Marvel is a great character. I find bre
Larson really likable, But when it came to the story
(12:40):
and the Marvels, I think they got it completely wrong,
and I felt like I didn't really have the advancement
of her character development in this movie. They really jumbled
it trying to introduce two new characters. One you had
to be familiar with WandaVision in order to even understand.
So I feel like this movie was the real victim
of everything than connecting between the Disney Plus shows and
(13:03):
all the Marvel movies, and also being so far from
part one and not really having any connection with any
of the MCU characters that are so well known and
so established. Other issue I had with this movie is
it came out after Secret Invasion, which I think is
the worst Marvel project maybe ever, because it was so
(13:23):
terrible that I could not finish that TV show. I
watched the first episode, and I watched the last episode,
and I'm glad I did not watch any other episode
of that because their obsession with the Scrolls got so
annoying to me. Their characters I don't really care about.
And I also feel that as the viewer it's kind
of a slap in the face to say, Oh, it
(13:44):
wasn't really the person he was, he was a scroll,
Like that's such a cop out. It's like at the
end of TV shows when you find out everything was
a dream. It is just a cheap way to get
out of situations and try to create more of a
storyline that is not there. I also think a source
of so much hate for the Marvels is that any
female led project, especially in the superhero space, has such
(14:08):
an uphill battle to fight just to prove that it's
worthy of your time and your money, which I think
is completely unfair. I think there is such a demand
for good, keyword being good female led superhero movies, and
there's such a void there that there needs to be
more of them with female directors. I think DC has
(14:30):
probably done a better job of that, with Birds of
Prey really being a movie that I feel is underrated
on the DC side, and it checks all of those boxes.
But I think a big reason that people don't give
those movies a chance, or you have all these nerds
fighting in the comments on YouTube, is because I don't
know why you're threatened by a female led superhero movie
(14:50):
directed by a female director who I actually think have
a more refreshing approach to the genre. So we should
be seeking those out more, and we should be supporting
more movies like this, because I think that is another
direction that the superhero genre needs to take in order
to survive, not be so repetitive, and reduce some of
this fatigue that everybody is feeling. Unfortunately, the Marvels did
(15:14):
fall victim to that, losing that two hundred and thirty
seven million dollars. But I still think this is a movie.
If you haven't seen it yet, it is worthy of
a Disney plus watch. I actually think this one would
have done better as a series than a movie. It
had a little bit of a lighter tone that I
feel like if you could have wrapped up in twenty
to twenty five minute episodes and shorten it all down,
(15:35):
it would have been a solid mini series because I
feel like they tried to cram too much story into
one movie and it fell all over the place. So
that was the least profitable movie up the last year.
Let's get into some positives now and talk about the
most profitable movies, and I think we're gonna see a
trend here because at number five is Evil Dead Rise
(15:55):
from New Line. It had a net profit of forty
six million dollars. And this is why so many people
get into the horror space, because you can make a
movie for a relatively low budget, and even though you're
not raking in Marvel, DC or Disney money at the
box office, you can really get a good return on
your investment. And that is what happened here with Evil
(16:17):
Dead Rise because it was originally just going to be
an HBO Max movie, but they decided to pivot and
take the movie and put it out in theaters. So
originally they were working with that HBO max budget. But
the thing about horror movies, for the most part, you
can't really tell if a horror movie has a lower budget.
A superhero movie you can tell completely because they rely
(16:40):
a lot more on the effects artists, and horror movies
tend to use a lot more practical effects. Evil Dead
Rise in particular, where they use a lot of fake blood.
Depending on the type of movie, it might not even
be a CGI monster, and through the use of really
great makeup artists, you can make it look really scary.
You can also film these movies in a much shorter time.
(17:01):
And the thing that people can always agree on when
going to the theater, if you're into horror movies, it's
fun to be scared, and it's something that going to
a theater sitting in a dark room is fun to experience,
and for me, I feel it's hard to replicate at home.
So one of my greatest joys in life is going
to a horror movie, usually alone, because Kelsey will not
(17:22):
watch any single horror movie, especially in theaters, because it
feels even freakier to her. But I love going sitting
in the front row of like the second section, middle
seat and just watching a movie with the intention of
having the crap scared out of me, and I am
somebody who was an anxious person. Kelsey will literally walk
from one room to another and I'll freak out because
(17:43):
I'm really jumpy because of the anxiety I have. But
for some reason, when going to watch a scary movie,
that doesn't apply, and it takes a lot to scare me.
Evil Dead Rise did give me that feeling because not
so much that it's creepy horror scary, but it's so
bloody and really sinister that I felt uncomfortable at times
(18:04):
watching this movie. It also had a great trailer that
really enticed me to want to go see it in theaters.
One of my favorite horror movies of last year. I
gave it a four out of five, So if you
haven't seen it yet and you love horror movies, if
you were a fan of the Sam Raimi originals, you'll
definitely enjoy this one. At number four is Scream six
from Spyglass and Paramount, which had a net profit of
(18:25):
sixty million dollars. Scream continues to be a big brand
in the horror genre, and unlike some of the other
what I would call Mount rushmoor'es of horror. I would
also put Friday the Thirteenth Movies up there, Halloween Nightmare
on Elm Street, and I would put Scream probably in
that fourth slot. They continue to reinvent themselves and make
(18:48):
them appealing to younger audiences, having stars like Jenna Ortega
be the face of this movie. She is the modern
day Scream Queen, really solidifying that with her role as
Wednesday Adams in the Netflix series which I'm waiting for
that season two. But with her, they were able to
have an interesting reboot on the screen franchise where it's
(19:09):
both a reboot but also a continuation to the storyline
created in the first few screen movies and then kind
of picking pieces apart from different storylines and different screen movies.
And this movie also did really well with the Hispanic
and Latino audiences, So maybe that's also why I love
these movies. And I was really excited for this one.
(19:30):
The trailer made it look like it was going to
be a much more sinister, hard to kill ghost Face,
but then overall I felt the plotline became a little
bit over dramatic, felt a little bit soap opera esque,
and it almost felt at times like a parody of itself,
because if you watch the first trilogy and Scream, they
make a movie about what happened in the first movie
(19:52):
called Stab. This felt a lot more like Stab than
it did Scream. And the issue they have now is
Jenna Ortega is out Melissa Baretta is out, so they're
going to have to make another movie without their two
big stars, and I think people are not going to
be invested in the next one. They'll probably bring back
some more og stars and make some reasons why they're
(20:14):
still around. So unless you were a huge fan of
the original screen movies, probably not the best thing to
jump into right now. I gave Scream six a two
point five out of five. I still stand by that
the movie is good fifty percent of the time. At
number three is The Nun two, which had a net
profit of eighty five million dollars from Newline and Atomic Monster.
(20:34):
This is one that I was not expecting to like.
The first Nun was okay. I really was only interested
in that one because it is a spinoff of one
of my favorite horror franchises, The Conjuring. I think The
Conjuring was my favorite horror movie of the twenty tens,
and they have this entire Conjuring universe now that I've
(20:56):
become oddly invested in just because once I watched one
of the spinoffs, I feel like I have to watch
every single spinoff just to know the full story to
find out which one is going to be the best.
And I actually think the Nun two is much better
than the nun To one. Maybe it's because I went
into it with pretty low expectations, but I actually think
they did a better job at making the character scary.
(21:16):
And I feel like there's this genre of movies that
has been greatly influenced by the Conjuring to focus on
these weird, spiritual characters that have this eerie backstory, but
they also really rely on jump scares, which I feel
can be pretty cheap at times, and I felt like
the Nun two did have its fair share of jump scares,
(21:36):
but they also did a better job at just making
the Nun creepier overall a little bit more violent. And
I didn't rewatch The Nun before watching the Nun two
and kind of forgot what happened in that movie. I
would say, you don't have to know anything about the
nun To enjoy this one. I gave it a three
point five out of five. I think it is worth
it if you are into the Conjuring universe. At number two,
again proving how profitable the horror genre can be, is
(22:00):
Insidious The Red Door from Sony Blumhouse. In Stage six Films,
I had a net profit of ninety two million dollars.
If The Conjuring is my number one horror movie of
the twenty tens, Insidious would probably be my number two
when it came out in twenty ten. This movie blew
my horror mind. It's also one that is rated PG thirteen,
(22:23):
and really watch that line of being an R rated
pig thirteen rated movie. So I think growing up I
would always seek out those movies because they would be
ones that I could actually go to the theater and
watch and not have to have my older brother claim
that he's my guardian. So I have a bit of
a soft spot for any PG thirteen horror movie that
can do it right and still scare you without having
(22:46):
a vast amount of blood and language. But overall, as
much as I love the first one and chapter two
has its moments, Insidious is a franchise. I believe really
fell off, especially after number two three. I don't really
remember much that happened in The Last Key, which came
out in twenty eighteen, so I didn't really have high
(23:06):
expectations going into Insidious the Red Door, and I would
say overaul still very underwhelming. So I would say skip
this movie altogether. But props to them for making a
net profit of ninety two million dollars and at number
one on the list. It's not a horror movie. It's
a movie I saw last year, really enjoyed, gave it
a four at a five, and now you can watch
it on Netflix. It is anyone but You from Sony.
(23:30):
Columbia Pictures had a net profit of one hundred and
three million dollars. This movie is all marketing. It was
Glenn Powell and Sidney Sweeney really leaning into their alleged
romance before this movie was released, which they both have
admitted that they did that on purpose. They weren't really
a thing at any point. They were both we at
(23:51):
least at the time Glenn Powell I think was in
a relationship. Sidney Sweeney isn't a relationship now still, But
they kind of knew to get a buzz around this movie.
They had to play off their chemistry that they had
so well on screen, and they took that and did it.
In all the promotional material. They were literally inseparable while
promoting this movie, which really added to the hype because
(24:13):
it allowed us to all build up this fantasy in
our heads that they were going to be a thing
in real life and therefore, hey, I want to see
how that plans out in the movie, which is one
of the best rom coms I've seen in theaters in
a long time. I think the other movie I would
put close up to this one would be Ticket to
Paradise with Julia Roberts and George Clooney. Who I mean
(24:34):
you put them together. They are legendary actors and they
can still sell a rom com. But I think Glenn
Powell and Sidney Sweeney might be that new rom com
power couple to see both of their careers really kicking off.
Glenn Powell is about to be in Twisters. Sidney Sweeney
is taking every single role being thrown at her right now.
I did see her recently talking about addressing some of
(24:57):
the criticisms that she got from Madam Webber, which is
also a Sony movie, and she was clarifying the timeline
of when she did that movie. It was long before
she did Anyone But You, and that was really her
establishing a relationship with Sony. From making that one, it
led her to making Anyone But You, which she believed
a lot more in. So she wasn't directly dragging the movie.
(25:20):
I know at times she made some jokes about it
how everybody thought it was awful, But I think she
probably got less heat from that, not being the star
like Dakota Johnson, whoof It's gonna take a little bit
for her to recover from that. But I feel like
it was more of a business decision from Sidney Sweeney
still being an actor on the rise, to establish good
relationships and not burn bridges with Sony that led her
(25:43):
to doing this movie, and there probably, if it hasn't
been announced yet, going to make another Anyone but You.
But the movie did really well in theaters. And it's
hard to get audiences out to watch a rom com
because it feels more like something you would watch at
home on a Friday night. But people were going to
see this movie. And then it was re released again
this year for Valentine's Day, so you had more of
(26:05):
a boost there. It is doing really well now on streaming.
Now that Netflix has it, it's going to introduce it
to an entirely different audience. So once they make this sequel,
there's going to be this big fan base waiting to
see the continuation to this story. So that shows you
if you want to make money in movies, make a
horror movie or make a really great rom com and
(26:25):
create some buzz. And for comparison, I do want to
share overall the top five most profitable movies of all time.
They're not the highest grossing of all time, but like
we've been talking about, these are the ones that have
had the top five return on investment. At number five
is Titanic, which had a three times return a budget
of three hundred and thirty seven million dollars and ended
(26:46):
up having a profit of one point four billion dollars.
But that's also due to VHS sales, and also they
re release that movie in theaters probably every couple few years,
and every anniversary they kind of shove it down our
throats again. It has also had a fantastic life on streaming.
At number four is Gone with the Win from nineteen
thirty nine, which had a twenty five times return on
(27:06):
their investment. It went on to have a profit of
two billion dollars. Crazy. At number three from nineteen seventy
seven is Star Wars, with a budget of forty seven
million dollars, went on to have a net profit of
one point three billion. At number two with a four
hundred and eighty times return on their investment is the
Blair Witch Project from nineteen ninety nine, with a budget
(27:27):
of sixty thousand dollars. It went on to profit two
hundred and forty eight million dollars at the box office.
That is crazy, That was the number one movie for
a long time until two thousand and seven. Paranormal Activity
had a seven hundred and ninety one times return on
their investment. The movie costs fifteen thousand dollars to make
(27:51):
one five zero zero zero. To make a movie for
five figures is unheard of. It went on to have
a profit of one hundred and seventy million dollars and
also created an entire franchise where they kept that same format.
Still were able to make them for a relatively low
budget and make millions of dollars at the box office.
(28:13):
So there you go, Well, come back I'll give my
review on If, and then we'll talk about the new
m Night Shyamalan movie Trap. Let's get into it now.
A spoiler free movie review of If from writer and
director John Krasinski, who you would know from the office.
He's also directed movies like A Quiet Place. And this
(28:36):
may surprise you, but I am not a kid, and
you're gonna ask, why is this thirty two year old
going on about a kid's movie? Why is he so
passionate about it? As a former kid, I hold these
movies to a high regard anything in the family and
kid category, because really, childhood movies were my first love.
They were all of our first loves. It was the
(28:56):
reason I fell in love with movies initially. Later down
the line, when I was probably like sixteen, two thousand
and seven was the year that really defined my love
of not just movies, but quote unquote film or I
started to really develop my taste and that was really
what solidified me in wanting to watch and also discuss
movies with other people. But there is a moment in
time that you can't get back as a kid, and
(29:19):
it's all those movies I remember from watching when I
was five to eight, maybe even ten years old, that
have stuck with me over my lifetime that I can
go back to now as an adult and want to
relive my childhood and experience that again. I have these
great memories from great movies that I either went to
see in theaters or watched on DVD. I think that
(29:39):
is such an important time in kids' lives, and that
is time you can't get back. So I don't want
any movie to rob any kid of that experience. You
can rip me off as an adult, you can sell
me a bomb. I go watch a movie and I
hate it, that's fine, I'm an adult. I can take it.
But for a kid to go to a theater to
experience something that they want to take them out of
(30:00):
this world, or to help them understand maybe something that
they can't learn from their parents, or they're struggling, maybe
don't have a parent, A movie can do that, and
a movie can be powerful in many ways. So that
is why I hold these movies to such a high regard.
I don't review these as the thirty two year old me.
I review them me as a kid sitting in that theater,
but also taking the cues and the emotions that I
(30:23):
feel in the theater. So that is just my little
preface here, But what the movie is actually about. You
have this girl named Bee who is going through a
traumatic experience. She just lost her mom and now her
dad is in the hospital. And during these times, as
she is interpreting all these emotions, she's twelve years old,
she starts seeing other kids, imaginary friends. She has this
ability to see them, no one else can see them.
(30:46):
So it is her mission now throughout the movie to
pair up these imaginary friends who no longer have kids
to play with, and find new kids for them so
they can continue to live on. Kaylee Fleming plays Be,
who really dominated this movie my favorite performance from a
young actor, probably since Violet McGraw and Megan who also
(31:06):
carried that movie. I feel like we've gotten a little
bit away from letting kids lead movies, and I feel
like her performance in this surpassed Ryan Reynolds and even
surpassed the als voice actors that were voicing all the
characters in this movie. So what she is struggling with
even though she's twelve years old, she doesn't want to
be called a kid because she's experienced life. She's experienced
heartache and loss, and she acts so much more mature
(31:31):
than she actually is. Meanwhile, in this time, her dad,
John Krasinski, who's in the hospital, is doing all these
really playful things to keep the spirit really a light,
to kind of keep her mind off of why he
is actually there. She's like, Dad, stop doing that. I'm
not a kid. I don't need you to coddle me.
For her to have that kind of emotion really reminded
me of me as a kid, because as far back
(31:53):
as when I was in elementary school, I remember my
teacher telling my mom that, hey, this kid acts way
more mature than he actually is. He doesn't really like
all the more childish things. And I had a real
hard time just being a kid because I was always
more mature. I had a brother and a sister who
were seven nine years older than me, so I think
it was me always trying to be cool in their
(32:14):
eyes that I didn't allow myself to be a kid.
Probably past like eight or nine years old, I always
wanted to be like them, so even at eight or nine,
and I was probably acting more like a late teenager.
So that part of the movie really resonated with me,
because there are kids who have to grow up faster
because of the things they experience in life, and I
really haven't seen that represented in a movie yet, so
I think kids now being able to identify with a
(32:36):
character like that is really important. The other thing I
identified with, which is more of what the movie focuses on,
is having an imaginary friend. Because Bee is connecting with
all these imaginary friends, they all have different personalities, and
I think seeing this as an adult reminded me of
my imaginary friend. I created him because I was really lonely.
(32:57):
I grew up in a trailer park and it was
it was really hard for me to make friends. I
had two really solid friends in the trailer park that
I made on my own. I also had a cousin
who was like a built in best friend. And in
the trailer park I lived in, everybody would eventually just
move away and you would never see him again again.
This was late nineties early two thousands, where internet wasn't
as prevalent as it is now. Once somebody left the
(33:20):
trailer park, they were gone. My first best friend moved away.
And the ultimate move away from a trailer park is
you get a house. That was the ultimate goal to
go from living in a trailer park to having a
brick house was the dream, so Zach was the first
one to do that. My other friend Eric moved away,
my cousin moved away, and it was just me by myself.
(33:40):
It was hard for me to make new friends. When
more kids would move into the trailer park, I always
felt like they were younger than me, so it was
hard for me to find kids my age. And I
was also just really awkward and more mature. So I
created an imaginary friend. I don't really remember a whole
lot of details about him, probably because it was created
at a trauma or something, but I remember the last
time playing with my imaginary best friend. It was raining.
(34:02):
We were sitting on some steps and I think he
just evaporated, and that was me saying goodbye to my childhood,
I guess.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
So.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
I think watching this movie as an adult will transport
you back into your childhood, especially if you had an
imaginary friend. The big problem I had with IF is
it felt really unoriginal, and it also took a really
long time to get going. It was probably forty five
minutes until anything really big happened, and that is hard
(34:28):
to do in a kid's movie. I felt the audience
getting a little bit restless because you need those big,
fun moments that kids are gonna get invested in, and
I think that was overall what this movie struggled with.
It very much felt more like an adult telling the
story to kids and thinking, oh, this is probably what
kids like instead of what I like. In kids and
(34:51):
family movies, you forget that an adult is even involved
in the process. It feels more like it's a kid
at the helm calling all shots, and it feels like
a kid movie being told from the perspective of a kid.
I think that is when a movie like this truly shines.
It reminds me of watching Nickelodeon as a kid, and
that channel very much felt like there was no adult influence.
(35:14):
It felt like cartoons being made for kids by kids,
and all the adults were lame. A little bit of
that memory has been tarnished with quiet on the set now,
but I'm choosing to remember just the animated chosen, the
really early Nickelodeon stuff. So overall, I felt like it
was more of a movie made for adults. The overall
message of the story was don't let yourself forget to
(35:39):
be a kid, don't be afraid to be a kid,
and it felt like it would resonate more with adults
watching it than it would kids. The characters themselves weren't
really anything that you would grasp on to Aside from
Steve Carell's character, who is the big purple character named Blue,
which is a joke in the movie, all the other
characters are really forgettable. The movie comes to us from Paramount,
(36:00):
which it almost felt like they were all placeholders for
different characters they were going to use later on. Maybe
the thought was, hey, we could use some characters that
we have the rights to from Paramount. Maybe you throw
a Ninja journal in there, but it all just felt like, hey,
this isn't Many Mouse, this is Winny Mouse. And overall
(36:20):
they were so forgettable that I don't think a kid
is gonna watch this movie and grasp onto one specific character.
It just felt like all the imaginary characters never really
bonded or went through anything together and never created this
big team effort. And another thing was this movie felt
inherently sad for no reason, which was another emotion hard
to process. And again, not every kid's movie needs to
(36:41):
be shining rainbows and fun all the time. I can
respect a movie that goes on an emotional level to
really teach kids that, hey, things get hard. Sometimes life
is hard. Sometimes you're gonna feel sad and it's okay.
But even me watching this as an adult had me
feeling pretty sad because you don't really have a lot
(37:02):
of moments of triumph. It takes a very long time
to get there, so it is a really high investment
to get to feeling good. For me, it wasn't fully
enjoyable until that last hour. But that being said, it
was a really strong last hour. All of the movie
really paid off in the third act and it hit
me in those emotional feels. And the thing about a
(37:23):
movie like this and really any movie, is you always
remember how it left you feeling. At the end. That
last bit of emotion is so important because it can
eclipse everything that came before it. If it leaves you
feeling really warm and fuzzy inside and feeling good about life,
and you leave that theater thinking, oh, I feel good now,
(37:44):
you kind of forget that it was slow in the
beginning and that it took a long time to get
there because the payoff was so important. But another thing
I also hold to a high standard when it comes
to kids and family movies is rewatchability, because I think
that is so important to go and see a movie
in theat and want to go and rewatch it more
and more times. That is the sign of a true hit.
(38:05):
I think this one is just gonna really scrape by
as being an overall mediocre movie that maybe we forget about.
It doesn't really have any appeal to me that it's
gonna build a big franchise, even with having a pretty
soft opening of thirty five million dollars. Isn't the best
and I think this movie is kind of right there
in the middle of the road, and the characters themselves
(38:28):
aren't really that appealing to sell this movie, which I
think was the big struggle of the marketing of this movie.
None of the characters feel unique to it. The story
doesn't feel unique. It really feels like Toy Story three
had a challenger situation with Brave Little Toaster and inside Out,
and somehow through that challenger situation they had a Muppet's baby.
(38:49):
That is what this movie ended up being. It felt
like it was doing an impression of another good kids
movie and the result of that was a mediocre kid's movie.
There weren't really funny moments throughout that I feel you
really needed to win those younger kids over. There was
maybe two or three times that I actually heard other
people laugh, and one of those was a fart joke.
(39:10):
That's the easiest thing you can do. Kung Fu Panda four,
did it? You throw a fart joke in there and
everybody is going to laugh. That's a really cheap laugh,
especially coming from John Krasinski, who was also accused of
ripping off a Quiet Place from a novel called The Silence.
Even though A Quiet Place came out first in theaters,
The Silence came out on Netflix and everybody thought The
Silence ripped off a Quiet Place, But that was based
(39:32):
on a novel that came out before it. Not that
The Silence was a good movie at all. Pretty terrible
Netflix movie, but still can you have an original idea?
So overall, for if I give it three point five
out of five Big Purple Monsters, it's time to head
down to movie.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Mike Traylor, Paul.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
M Night, Shyamalan movies are hit or missed for me.
Last year would not get the ca That was his
first good movie in a really long time before that
old bad Glass was bad. He had a run of
bad films, but that movie made me think he still
has something left in the tank. He's not a one
(40:15):
trick pony. He doesn't have to make these movies that
just have some kind of weird twist at the end
to get us all to go, oh, I see what
he did there. That one showed me he was a
really great filmmaker. And after watching the trailer for his
new movie, I think this could be his best film yet.
There is a major red flag that I'm going to
(40:37):
get into when talking about this movie. But what trap
is about what I love. First of all, it has
such a simple premise that you learn so quickly by
watching the trailer. But his father played by Josh Hartnett,
and his teen daughter go to a concert by this popstar.
They realize then that they are at the center of
some weird, dark, sinister event. Turns out, Josh Hartnett's character
(41:00):
is a serial killer, and he has people hidden somewhere
in his house, and this entire thing was set up
by the police because they knew he was going to
be there. But by the looks of the trailer, they
don't even know exactly who they are looking for. They
just have some kind of tip that the butcher is
going to be there. Great premise and I think also
(41:22):
one of m Night Shaumalan's most simple premises. So I
want to dive into this trailer because I think it
is M Night just getting back to the basics, just
making an all out, really good horror movie. I'll give
you my full thoughts in just a second, but right now,
here's a little bit of the trap trailer.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
Cooper, Jamie, what's on plice trucks, outside, the cameras everywhere, Jamie,
you know, the butcher, that freaking nutshot that goes around
is jumping people up the fens or whatever.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Heard that he's gonna be here today. So they set
up a trap for.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
This whole concept. It's a trap for the watch and
all the exits check it. Everyone that leaves, there's no
way to get out of here, and.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
That is where the trailer leaves us. After that, you
see Josh Hartnett go back to meet his daughter who
is watching this pop star perform. He has this glazed
look on his face as he realizes that, oh man,
not only is my daughter going to find out that
I'm a serial killer, but I'm probably not going to
leave this place by my own will. I'm probably gonna
(42:29):
get arrested, and then my entire operation is going to
be found out. I think probably the hardest thing for him,
given the fact that at the beginning of the trailer
paints him out to be this really nice guy, even
more so than him having any regret towards his victims,
I think the thing that is really good away on
him is disappointing his daughter and finding out through him
(42:50):
getting arrested that he is a monster. And I find
the way that just in this trailer that Josh Hartnet
is playing this character is interesting. He almost has this
dead pain delivery that he seems to be acting a
little psychotic and very dry. So I think Josh Hartnett
is a great actor who got his start in horror
(43:10):
movies actually and became the heart throwbu of the late
nineties and early two thousands. His first movie ever was
Halloween h two O and is actually one of my
favorites in the franchise, even though at times the movie
has some really awful cgi and overall probably not the
best representation of the Halloween franchise at the time. When
(43:31):
that movie came out, it was really significant to me,
and among all the movies and the Halloween franchise, aside
from the first one, it's probably the one that I
revisit the most. He went on to do movies like
The Faculty, Thirty Days of Nine forty Days, and forty
nine's Black Hawk Down and has kind of had a
bit of a comeback. He was also in a really
(43:52):
great episode of Black Mirror recently, so I feel like
there is kind of a resurgence of these people who
were famous and the late nineties early two thousands now
being able to step back into the spotlight and can
do a little bit more of refined work.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
Now.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Seeing him as the father figure in a movie is
a little bit different because he was always like the
hot honky guy, but especially after seeing him in that
Black Mirror episode, I think he will do a fantastic
job in this movie. Also in this movie, you have
m Knight Shamalan's daughter, Selika Knight Shamalan, making her acting debut,
and in real life, she is actually an artist. She
(44:29):
did some of the music for his movie Old also
his TV series on Apple TV Plus. So she is
playing the character Lady Raven that you see throughout the
trailer that is the concert that they are going to
the night Shamalans are actually taking over because his other daughter,
Ishana has a movie coming out later this summer on
June seventh, called The Watchers. Maybe you've seen the trailer
(44:50):
for that one too, And there's actually an easter egg
in this trailer. At one point where you see all
the police cars coming to the venue, there's this little
banner across one of the overpasses that says the Watchers.
So he has his daughter in the movie and also
his other daughter's movie featured in the trailer for his movie.
A great connection there, Nepotism at its best, we Love Ourselves,
(45:14):
and Nepo Baby. This movie was filmed entirely in Toronto,
actually at the Rogers Center where the Blue Jays play.
Actually been to Toronto, beautiful city. I remember driving in
and seeing this stadium by the Big Tower. Had a
great experience in Toronto because everyone there is so nice.
But I do love the trend of horror movies that
take place in one location, which I feel like has
(45:37):
re emerged a little bit since COVID. Back when well
you couldn't really have a big production. You wanted to
scale back not only the cast but also the crew,
So I feel like this trend has kind of re emerged.
M Knight also did it with Knock at the Cabin.
He also wrote the story for Devil, which all takes
place in an elevator. And I am a fan of
(45:58):
movies set in one location. I think they are probably
extremely hard to do for a director because you rely
so much on your leads and then it all comes
down to the pacing of the film to keep the
audience's attention because you can't go to other locations to
break things up. But when it comes to horror movies,
it also creates that claustrophobic feeling for the viewer, so
(46:19):
I think it's a really powerful tool. So it forces
you to get really comfortable with your storytelling skills as
a director. Now, looking historically at some of my favorite
movies that take place in one location, oftentimes what happens
is these movies tend to have shorter run times because
you probably have less of a budget that you're working with,
(46:42):
which is another big reason to set a movie entirely
in one location, because you can do it for cheaper
and if you're able to have success at the box office.
Therefore you have a greater profit, lower risk, higher reward. Devil,
which I mentioned earlier, has an hour and twenty minute time.
The Guilty with Jake Jillenhall, where he plays a nine
(47:03):
to win to one operator, has a run time of
ninety minutes that not only takes place in one location,
but for the majority of the movie is just Jake
Jillenhall's face on the phone. But to be able to
keep my attention and really have me invested in that
story for ninety minutes was a feat within itself. That
was one of my favorite movies to come out of Lockdown.
(47:23):
That is how you do it. Another movie called Buried
with Ryan Reynolds, where he is literally buried alive, has
a run time of ninety minutes. Phone Booth with Colin
Farrell was one of my first favorite movies that took
place in one location. That movie has a runtime of
one hour and twenty minutes. So why I'm telling you
all this is because Trapp has a run time of
(47:44):
two and a half hours, and I was all sold
on the idea of this movie until it came to
that runtime. Because the trailer looks really solid. It also
really kind of tells us the entire story that is
going to unfold. I don't know how, just based on
this trailer that is going to warrant a two and
(48:05):
a half hour runtime, making it M Night Shyamalan's longest
movie to date. Knock at the Cabin was an hour
and forty minutes, and I think that runtime led to
me really enjoying that movie because it left me wanting more,
got into the action, quickly, ramped up, had a resolution
before I knew it it was over. That is what
(48:27):
worries me that it's going to get to that final
maybe forty five minutes or even that last hour, and
it's maybe gonna go on a bit more of an
existential ride. And this is giving my history of M
Night shyamalan movies, which I hope is in the case.
Hopefully it is Josh Hartne's character finding these different ways
to throw the police off of his trail. Maybe he
(48:50):
starts framing other people at the concert. Maybe he finds
a way to escape and we actually do get away
from the venue towards the end of the movie. But
with such a great premise, with such a great lead actor,
all M Night Shyamalan has to do is Land the
Plane on this movie. And if it wasn't for him
having so many misses in the later half of his career,
(49:12):
I wouldn't be as hesitant. But still this is one
I'm really looking forward to again. This movie is coming
out on August ninth later this summer head.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
That was this link's edition of movie Mi Tramer.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Par and that is gonna do it for another episode
here of the podcast. But before I go, I gotta
give my listeners shout out of the week. How do
you get a listener shout out of the week, Well,
you can send me an email movie Mike dat Gmail
dot com, dm me on Instagram, comment on my Facebook page,
on TikTok go, subscribe over on YouTube and leave a
comment there. You can always find all the links to
(49:46):
all my social media and YouTube channel in the episode
notes of every single podcast. And this week I'm shouting
out to Nicholas Ramer, who is Bell's Old Glory Shop
on Instagram, listener of this podcast and a listener of
The Big Show, The Bobby Bone Show, and as somebody
who outside of these shows I've connected with and been
(50:06):
able to DM and talk with and through me talking
about on this podcast. Of my recent love and hobby
of collecting comics. I've been doing it now for almost
two years, and it was something early on that I
was a little bit hesitant to share because it is
a bit of a nerdy hobby, and as much of
a nerd as I am and I'm comfortable with sharing things,
(50:28):
I felt that was going to another level for me,
and I've never been cool with my life, but for
some reason, I felt like sharing the fact that I
collect comics and I'm so into researching them, finding out
different values, finding key issues, and just spend a lot
of my time now collecting and reading them. I thought
it was going another level, But what I found is
(50:49):
I'm connecting with other people who also love collecting comics,
and it's been a really great tool for me to
just be able to talk about the thing I'm really
passionate about outside of movies and find this other little community.
So it kind of reminded me of whenever I really
first got into reviewing and talking about movies and discussing
(51:11):
them with other people and finding other creators on TikTok
and Instagram and having like this instant bond. So that's
why I decided to share it here on the podcast.
I posted a lot about it on my social media
and Nicholas was so nice to send me this entire
package of really awesome comics, including one that, if you're
(51:31):
not familiar with comics, may make no sense to you,
but it is a secret Wars number one, a graded comic,
and I only have one of those so far that
Kelsey got me for Christmas, and now I have too,
So it was really unexpected and just felt like a
reminder to me that always talk about the things that
you are passionate about, no matter how nerdy they seem,
(51:54):
because there's probably somebody out there who is into the
same things that you are. As long as you're I'm
not hurting anybody. There's nothing you should be ashamed about.
But that was super awesome and if you watch my
reviews on YouTube you will now see it featured in
the background where I have all my coolest comics behind me.
It was so cool I instantly put it up on
the wall. So thank you Nicholas, Thank you for listening.
(52:17):
Hope you all have a great rest of your week,
and until next time, go out and watch good movies
and I will talk to you later.
Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie podcast. I
am your host Movie Mike. If you listen to this podcast,
you know I am obsessed with box office numbers. So
Deadline just came out with the report of the most
and least profitable movies of the last year. I can't
wait to dive into these numbers because there's one studio
in particular that is really in trouble. In the movie review,
we'll be talking about If starring Ryan Reynolds, and in
(00:21):
the trailer park a look at the brand new m
Night Shyamalan movie and why I think it could be
his best movie ever except for one detail really keeping
me from being fully invested in this one. So thank
you for listening, Thank you for being subscribed. Shout out
to the Monday Morning Movie crew. He Now, let's talk movies.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast,
one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like
never before in a movie podcast. A man with so
much movie knowledge, he's basically like a walking IMTV with
glasses from the Nashville Podcast Network.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Is this movie Mike? Movie Pas Deadline just came out
with the reports of the most profitable and least profitable
movies of the last year. We're gonna break down these numbers,
talk about why some of these movies did so bad,
whether or not they're even worth your time because they
are all available now for you to watch at home,
and what leads to the success of other movies that
(01:21):
you might be surprised were actually profitable. So this all
comes down to return on investment based upon how much
money these movies spent on production and advertising and how
much they were able to make back. So let's get
right into the list at number five as the least
profitable movie of last year. It's kind of weird to
be in a top five. It's really like the bottom five.
(01:43):
But at number five on the list is Haunted Mansion
from Disney, which had a net loss of one hundred
and seventeen million dollars. I think the biggest reason this
movie didn't do so well is because it came out
in the summer. It was released on July twenty eighth,
and I think the reason they did that is because
they wanted to have its theatrical run and then be
(02:04):
able to come out in the fall on Disney Plus,
so maybe this was going to be just a Disney
Plus exclusive, and they thought, well, let's roll it out
in the theaters, not spend a whole lot of money
promoting the movie, and then we'll kind of make it
up on Disney Plus and maybe people will come over
to subscribe to watch a Haunted Mansion movie that we've
already had with Eddie Murphy back in the day. And
(02:27):
I actually think this wasn't a terrible movie. I actually
enjoyed it. It came out during the writers strike, so
nobody who starred in the movie could promote it properly.
Disney also faced some criticism because this was the one
where they had their premiere and they just had people
dressing up as different Disney characters to walk the red carpet,
so it also came out at a weird time. But
(02:49):
I think at the core of it, it's a pretty
good movie with some pretty good performances, a lot of
dumb fun I thought Danny DeVito was great in this movie.
This is the movie just queue up for Danny DeVito
to really throw in, But it really tried to sneak
in there after Barbie and before Teenage Mutant Ninja, Turtles,
Mutant Mayhem, but I think that families were really just
waiting for tmn T because there really wasn't a demand
(03:11):
for this movie, and it ended up just feeling more
like an advertisement. Disney has a history of making movies
about their rides. Some of them work, some of them don't.
When you look back on the two thousand and three
movie with Eddie Murphy, that one actually had a profit,
made one hundred and eighty two million dollars. This one
lost them one hundred and seventeen million. But I actually
(03:31):
think it's worthy of your time. Maybe not right now,
but it's on Disney Plus and maybe later this year
when you're wanting to watch something a little bit more
scary themed you have younger kids that aren't really ready
for anything that straight up horror. I think this is
that good in between. So I initially gave it a
three out of five. So I think this one is
still worth your time. But if you went to go
(03:52):
see it in theaters, you probably would have been a
little bit disappointed. I can see why it lost that
amount of money. At number four on the least profit
list was Wish again, Disney taking another hit here, and
the biggest issue I had with Wish is for a
kid's movie to come out last year and not really
have a whole lot of imagination in not just the storytelling,
(04:14):
which felt really basic, but the animation style. And I'm
somebody who grew up in the nineties, the Golden Age,
the Renaissance period for Disney, and I first fell in
love with two D animation. I actually think it is
the best way to tell a story. I get invested
in the art aspect of an animated film. When you
(04:34):
have artists hand drawing every single frame, I just think
that ends up looking better on screen. The characters have
more of life, it has more of a warmth to it.
But I also know that is what I grew up with,
so I think before maybe four years ago, whenever Disney
was really kind of entering their new era, I was
saying they should go back to that two D animation
(04:55):
and make animated movies great again. And then they came
out with Wish and I saw the trailer and it
looks so flat and not very compelling that I thought,
kids are not going to like this, and as good
as the story is going to be, it is not
going to be that visually appealing. Because when you have
Pixar that's so big, bright and bubbly in three dimensional,
(05:17):
and you have Illumination doing so much effort on making
their movies really more cinematic even though they're animated. It
very much felt like a step back for Disney. And
I know it was a celebration to honor their history
of being so dominant in animation, but overall I thought
it ended up being a step in the wrong direction.
So sometimes we don't need everything that we ask for.
(05:40):
I would say this is a skip unless you have kids,
and if you do and have Disney plus, you have
probably seen this movie running on the background in your
TV for a very long time. I think kids actually
like it, but for an aging Disney fan like me,
not my cup of tea. At number three on the
list is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Disney
(06:00):
taking another hit here net loss of one hundred and
forty three million dollars, and out of this list so far,
this is one that I actually believe is a really
good movie. Not a great movie, but a really good,
solid addition to the Indiana Jones franchise, which was so
dominant in the eighties. You had the ones with Shilabuff
(06:22):
that I think a lot of people hated but I
think this one was actually a really good take on
the character and gave us some closure on Indiana Jones.
With Harrison Ford playing the character for decades, I mean,
is in his eighties now, and I thought he did
a really good job in this movie. The story was
pretty good, the ending I loved it overall, had a
(06:42):
really good amount of action. But I think this movie
kind of suffered of nobody really wanted this movie now
and you're really having to appeal to the under forty
crowd to make this movie successful, and there really wasn't
much of a hype for it. And I think even
the people who were big Indiana Jones fans back in
the eighties when you were kids, it doesn't really have
(07:05):
that appeal to it now to get people out and
want to watch this movie in theaters. I think it
was also a victim of review bombing early on whenever
it was first screen it got a lot of negative reviews,
so then failed to create that buzz. But I actually
watched it and enjoyed it. I didn't expect it to
do so poorly, but I think if you have Disney Plus,
(07:28):
it is a worthy watch. I still stand by my
three point five out of five, which I think is
pretty solid given the legacy of Indiana Jones. Were there
may be some CGI moments that they could have made
look a little better. Yes. Were there some things that
were a little bit comical and didn't really hit well now? Yes,
But overall I still enjoyed this movie, and I just
liked Harrison Ford. At number two on the list, The Flash,
(07:52):
Warner Brothers and DC suffered a net loss of one
hundred and fifty five million dollars. This entire movie rollout
was chaos. It came out still before the actors strike,
but you had Ezra Miller who was a chaotic person,
so they weren't really any help in promoting the movie.
Michael Keaton back down and did no press for his
(08:15):
role as Batman, which I thought was the most appealing
part of this movie. I never really got too into
The Flash, although I did think out of everybody in
the Justice League movie aside from Wonder Woman, the Flash
was probably my favorite. But still I didn't think his
character warranted their own solo movie yet. But still, out
(08:37):
of all the negative things going on surrounding this movie,
it still came out and it fell so flat. I
was so disappointed, really due to the fact that they
brought back Michael Keaton, who I believe is the best
embodiment of Batman, and it's probably because he is the
Batman that I grew up with, and I ended up
feeling more emotion when I first saw him in the
(08:59):
trailer then I did once he was actually on screen
in the movie. And that is another issue I have
sometimes with superhero movies that tell us so much and
reveal so much before the movie comes out that it
takes away from that excitement. I get that you want
to build up that hype of Michael Keaton returning as
Batman and use that so much in your promotional materials,
(09:20):
but once that moment hits, it just doesn't really have
any impact on you as a viewer. I think Marvel
actually did really well and not revealing any details about
No Way Home before that, because that created one of
the best theater moments for Marvel in the last five years.
DC could have done the same, but it would have
been so much harder for them already to promote this movie.
(09:44):
And then they did try to take a page out
of Marvel's book and have all these cameos from different timelines,
and it ended up looking like a CGI mess. The
director came out and said that all those weird special
effects were actually on purpose. I think that was just
Ton to kind of cover up a shoddy job. Probably
rushed everybody in their VFX department to get this movie
(10:06):
out and to get it done for a relatively lower budget.
Maybe they tried to save some money even though they
spent so much money and then lost a whole bunch
of money. So this is one that I would say
skip it if you haven't seen it at this point.
I gave it two point five out of five, and
it probably even gone down on that review because I've
had no desire to go back and rewatch this movie,
(10:29):
and I feel that overall DC movies are very rewatchable.
But hopefully we are through with this era of Warner
Brothers and DC putting out bombs now that James Gunn
is taking over. All the looks that Superman so far
look pretty good. I thought the suit was a little
bit underwhelming because it looked just like the Henry Cavill suit,
although everybody was freaking out that he now has the
(10:51):
red trunks back. But again, I just feel that with
all of these teases happening a year sometimes two years out,
we start to not only be fatigued with the superhero genre,
but just the fact that we know everything along the way.
It's like if I was making a pizza at home
and I kept checking in on it every single minute
(11:11):
to see how it was doing, it wouldn't be so
grand once it was actually done. It just feels like
we know too much about the process throughout. They're oversharing,
they're turning it into content more so than art, so
then it's so much less impactful once these movies actually
come out, because we know every single thing about it
and we're not surprised by anything, so it has less
of an emotional hit on us. And then we just
(11:32):
keep doing it all over and over, so hopefully they
get away from that a little bit. I almost don't
want to read anything else about the new Superman movie
until we see that trailer before it comes out. But
at number one on the list, the least profitable movie
of the last year was the Marvels, so Disney again
making the list here. Marvel thought they had a hit
(11:54):
on their hands at one point, and the decision to
make this movie is because the first one made one
point one billion dollars. But I think the reason that
movie did so well is because it came out between
Infinity War and Endgame and was really that bridge that
we all walked down to get across from those two movies.
Captain Marvel probably should have been introduced way earlier than this.
(12:18):
It almost felt a little bit crammed in there. And
the reason they did it is because Captain Marvel did
play a pretty significant role in how Endgame starts and finishes,
so they probably put it out then to really cash
in on the hype going into Endgame. And I actually
think Captain Marvel is a great character. I find bre
Larson really likable, But when it came to the story
(12:40):
and the Marvels, I think they got it completely wrong,
and I felt like I didn't really have the advancement
of her character development in this movie. They really jumbled
it trying to introduce two new characters. One you had
to be familiar with WandaVision in order to even understand.
So I feel like this movie was the real victim
of everything than connecting between the Disney Plus shows and
(13:03):
all the Marvel movies, and also being so far from
part one and not really having any connection with any
of the MCU characters that are so well known and
so established. Other issue I had with this movie is
it came out after Secret Invasion, which I think is
the worst Marvel project maybe ever, because it was so
(13:23):
terrible that I could not finish that TV show. I
watched the first episode, and I watched the last episode,
and I'm glad I did not watch any other episode
of that because their obsession with the Scrolls got so
annoying to me. Their characters I don't really care about.
And I also feel that as the viewer it's kind
of a slap in the face to say, Oh, it
(13:44):
wasn't really the person he was, he was a scroll,
Like that's such a cop out. It's like at the
end of TV shows when you find out everything was
a dream. It is just a cheap way to get
out of situations and try to create more of a
storyline that is not there. I also think a source
of so much hate for the Marvels is that any
female led project, especially in the superhero space, has such
(14:08):
an uphill battle to fight just to prove that it's
worthy of your time and your money, which I think
is completely unfair. I think there is such a demand
for good, keyword being good female led superhero movies, and
there's such a void there that there needs to be
more of them with female directors. I think DC has
(14:30):
probably done a better job of that, with Birds of
Prey really being a movie that I feel is underrated
on the DC side, and it checks all of those boxes.
But I think a big reason that people don't give
those movies a chance, or you have all these nerds
fighting in the comments on YouTube, is because I don't
know why you're threatened by a female led superhero movie
(14:50):
directed by a female director who I actually think have
a more refreshing approach to the genre. So we should
be seeking those out more, and we should be supporting
more movies like this, because I think that is another
direction that the superhero genre needs to take in order
to survive, not be so repetitive, and reduce some of
this fatigue that everybody is feeling. Unfortunately, the Marvels did
(15:14):
fall victim to that, losing that two hundred and thirty
seven million dollars. But I still think this is a movie.
If you haven't seen it yet, it is worthy of
a Disney plus watch. I actually think this one would
have done better as a series than a movie. It
had a little bit of a lighter tone that I
feel like if you could have wrapped up in twenty
to twenty five minute episodes and shorten it all down,
(15:35):
it would have been a solid mini series because I
feel like they tried to cram too much story into
one movie and it fell all over the place. So
that was the least profitable movie up the last year.
Let's get into some positives now and talk about the
most profitable movies, and I think we're gonna see a
trend here because at number five is Evil Dead Rise
(15:55):
from New Line. It had a net profit of forty
six million dollars. And this is why so many people
get into the horror space, because you can make a
movie for a relatively low budget, and even though you're
not raking in Marvel, DC or Disney money at the
box office, you can really get a good return on
your investment. And that is what happened here with Evil
(16:17):
Dead Rise because it was originally just going to be
an HBO Max movie, but they decided to pivot and
take the movie and put it out in theaters. So
originally they were working with that HBO max budget. But
the thing about horror movies, for the most part, you
can't really tell if a horror movie has a lower budget.
A superhero movie you can tell completely because they rely
(16:40):
a lot more on the effects artists, and horror movies
tend to use a lot more practical effects. Evil Dead
Rise in particular, where they use a lot of fake blood.
Depending on the type of movie, it might not even
be a CGI monster, and through the use of really
great makeup artists, you can make it look really scary.
You can also film these movies in a much shorter time.
(17:01):
And the thing that people can always agree on when
going to the theater, if you're into horror movies, it's
fun to be scared, and it's something that going to
a theater sitting in a dark room is fun to experience,
and for me, I feel it's hard to replicate at home.
So one of my greatest joys in life is going
to a horror movie, usually alone, because Kelsey will not
(17:22):
watch any single horror movie, especially in theaters, because it
feels even freakier to her. But I love going sitting
in the front row of like the second section, middle
seat and just watching a movie with the intention of
having the crap scared out of me, and I am
somebody who was an anxious person. Kelsey will literally walk
from one room to another and I'll freak out because
(17:43):
I'm really jumpy because of the anxiety I have. But
for some reason, when going to watch a scary movie,
that doesn't apply, and it takes a lot to scare me.
Evil Dead Rise did give me that feeling because not
so much that it's creepy horror scary, but it's so
bloody and really sinister that I felt uncomfortable at times
(18:04):
watching this movie. It also had a great trailer that
really enticed me to want to go see it in theaters.
One of my favorite horror movies of last year. I
gave it a four out of five, So if you
haven't seen it yet and you love horror movies, if
you were a fan of the Sam Raimi originals, you'll
definitely enjoy this one. At number four is Scream six
from Spyglass and Paramount, which had a net profit of
(18:25):
sixty million dollars. Scream continues to be a big brand
in the horror genre, and unlike some of the other
what I would call Mount rushmoor'es of horror. I would
also put Friday the Thirteenth Movies up there, Halloween Nightmare
on Elm Street, and I would put Scream probably in
that fourth slot. They continue to reinvent themselves and make
(18:48):
them appealing to younger audiences, having stars like Jenna Ortega
be the face of this movie. She is the modern
day Scream Queen, really solidifying that with her role as
Wednesday Adams in the Netflix series which I'm waiting for
that season two. But with her, they were able to
have an interesting reboot on the screen franchise where it's
(19:09):
both a reboot but also a continuation to the storyline
created in the first few screen movies and then kind
of picking pieces apart from different storylines and different screen movies.
And this movie also did really well with the Hispanic
and Latino audiences, So maybe that's also why I love
these movies. And I was really excited for this one.
(19:30):
The trailer made it look like it was going to
be a much more sinister, hard to kill ghost Face,
but then overall I felt the plotline became a little
bit over dramatic, felt a little bit soap opera esque,
and it almost felt at times like a parody of itself,
because if you watch the first trilogy and Scream, they
make a movie about what happened in the first movie
(19:52):
called Stab. This felt a lot more like Stab than
it did Scream. And the issue they have now is
Jenna Ortega is out Melissa Baretta is out, so they're
going to have to make another movie without their two
big stars, and I think people are not going to
be invested in the next one. They'll probably bring back
some more og stars and make some reasons why they're
(20:14):
still around. So unless you were a huge fan of
the original screen movies, probably not the best thing to
jump into right now. I gave Scream six a two
point five out of five. I still stand by that
the movie is good fifty percent of the time. At
number three is The Nun two, which had a net
profit of eighty five million dollars from Newline and Atomic Monster.
(20:34):
This is one that I was not expecting to like.
The first Nun was okay. I really was only interested
in that one because it is a spinoff of one
of my favorite horror franchises, The Conjuring. I think The
Conjuring was my favorite horror movie of the twenty tens,
and they have this entire Conjuring universe now that I've
(20:56):
become oddly invested in just because once I watched one
of the spinoffs, I feel like I have to watch
every single spinoff just to know the full story to
find out which one is going to be the best.
And I actually think the Nun two is much better
than the nun To one. Maybe it's because I went
into it with pretty low expectations, but I actually think
they did a better job at making the character scary.
(21:16):
And I feel like there's this genre of movies that
has been greatly influenced by the Conjuring to focus on
these weird, spiritual characters that have this eerie backstory, but
they also really rely on jump scares, which I feel
can be pretty cheap at times, and I felt like
the Nun two did have its fair share of jump scares,
(21:36):
but they also did a better job at just making
the Nun creepier overall a little bit more violent. And
I didn't rewatch The Nun before watching the Nun two
and kind of forgot what happened in that movie. I
would say, you don't have to know anything about the
nun To enjoy this one. I gave it a three
point five out of five. I think it is worth
it if you are into the Conjuring universe. At number two,
again proving how profitable the horror genre can be, is
(22:00):
Insidious The Red Door from Sony Blumhouse. In Stage six Films,
I had a net profit of ninety two million dollars.
If The Conjuring is my number one horror movie of
the twenty tens, Insidious would probably be my number two
when it came out in twenty ten. This movie blew
my horror mind. It's also one that is rated PG thirteen,
(22:23):
and really watch that line of being an R rated
pig thirteen rated movie. So I think growing up I
would always seek out those movies because they would be
ones that I could actually go to the theater and
watch and not have to have my older brother claim
that he's my guardian. So I have a bit of
a soft spot for any PG thirteen horror movie that
can do it right and still scare you without having
(22:46):
a vast amount of blood and language. But overall, as
much as I love the first one and chapter two
has its moments, Insidious is a franchise. I believe really
fell off, especially after number two three. I don't really
remember much that happened in The Last Key, which came
out in twenty eighteen, so I didn't really have high
(23:06):
expectations going into Insidious the Red Door, and I would
say overaul still very underwhelming. So I would say skip
this movie altogether. But props to them for making a
net profit of ninety two million dollars and at number
one on the list. It's not a horror movie. It's
a movie I saw last year, really enjoyed, gave it
a four at a five, and now you can watch
it on Netflix. It is anyone but You from Sony.
(23:30):
Columbia Pictures had a net profit of one hundred and
three million dollars. This movie is all marketing. It was
Glenn Powell and Sidney Sweeney really leaning into their alleged
romance before this movie was released, which they both have
admitted that they did that on purpose. They weren't really
a thing at any point. They were both we at
(23:51):
least at the time Glenn Powell I think was in
a relationship. Sidney Sweeney isn't a relationship now still, But
they kind of knew to get a buzz around this movie.
They had to play off their chemistry that they had
so well on screen, and they took that and did it.
In all the promotional material. They were literally inseparable while
promoting this movie, which really added to the hype because
(24:13):
it allowed us to all build up this fantasy in
our heads that they were going to be a thing
in real life and therefore, hey, I want to see
how that plans out in the movie, which is one
of the best rom coms I've seen in theaters in
a long time. I think the other movie I would
put close up to this one would be Ticket to
Paradise with Julia Roberts and George Clooney. Who I mean
(24:34):
you put them together. They are legendary actors and they
can still sell a rom com. But I think Glenn
Powell and Sidney Sweeney might be that new rom com
power couple to see both of their careers really kicking off.
Glenn Powell is about to be in Twisters. Sidney Sweeney
is taking every single role being thrown at her right now.
I did see her recently talking about addressing some of
(24:57):
the criticisms that she got from Madam Webber, which is
also a Sony movie, and she was clarifying the timeline
of when she did that movie. It was long before
she did Anyone But You, and that was really her
establishing a relationship with Sony. From making that one, it
led her to making Anyone But You, which she believed
a lot more in. So she wasn't directly dragging the movie.
(25:20):
I know at times she made some jokes about it
how everybody thought it was awful, But I think she
probably got less heat from that, not being the star
like Dakota Johnson, whoof It's gonna take a little bit
for her to recover from that. But I feel like
it was more of a business decision from Sidney Sweeney
still being an actor on the rise, to establish good
relationships and not burn bridges with Sony that led her
(25:43):
to doing this movie, and there probably, if it hasn't
been announced yet, going to make another Anyone but You.
But the movie did really well in theaters. And it's
hard to get audiences out to watch a rom com
because it feels more like something you would watch at
home on a Friday night. But people were going to
see this movie. And then it was re released again
this year for Valentine's Day, so you had more of
(26:05):
a boost there. It is doing really well now on streaming.
Now that Netflix has it, it's going to introduce it
to an entirely different audience. So once they make this sequel,
there's going to be this big fan base waiting to
see the continuation to this story. So that shows you
if you want to make money in movies, make a
horror movie or make a really great rom com and
(26:25):
create some buzz. And for comparison, I do want to
share overall the top five most profitable movies of all time.
They're not the highest grossing of all time, but like
we've been talking about, these are the ones that have
had the top five return on investment. At number five
is Titanic, which had a three times return a budget
of three hundred and thirty seven million dollars and ended
(26:46):
up having a profit of one point four billion dollars.
But that's also due to VHS sales, and also they
re release that movie in theaters probably every couple few years,
and every anniversary they kind of shove it down our
throats again. It has also had a fantastic life on streaming.
At number four is Gone with the Win from nineteen
thirty nine, which had a twenty five times return on
(27:06):
their investment. It went on to have a profit of
two billion dollars. Crazy. At number three from nineteen seventy
seven is Star Wars, with a budget of forty seven
million dollars, went on to have a net profit of
one point three billion. At number two with a four
hundred and eighty times return on their investment is the
Blair Witch Project from nineteen ninety nine, with a budget
(27:27):
of sixty thousand dollars. It went on to profit two
hundred and forty eight million dollars at the box office.
That is crazy, That was the number one movie for
a long time until two thousand and seven. Paranormal Activity
had a seven hundred and ninety one times return on
their investment. The movie costs fifteen thousand dollars to make
(27:51):
one five zero zero zero. To make a movie for
five figures is unheard of. It went on to have
a profit of one hundred and seventy million dollars and
also created an entire franchise where they kept that same format.
Still were able to make them for a relatively low
budget and make millions of dollars at the box office.
(28:13):
So there you go, Well, come back I'll give my
review on If, and then we'll talk about the new
m Night Shyamalan movie Trap. Let's get into it now.
A spoiler free movie review of If from writer and
director John Krasinski, who you would know from the office.
He's also directed movies like A Quiet Place. And this
(28:36):
may surprise you, but I am not a kid, and
you're gonna ask, why is this thirty two year old
going on about a kid's movie? Why is he so
passionate about it? As a former kid, I hold these
movies to a high regard anything in the family and
kid category, because really, childhood movies were my first love.
They were all of our first loves. It was the
(28:56):
reason I fell in love with movies initially. Later down
the line, when I was probably like sixteen, two thousand
and seven was the year that really defined my love
of not just movies, but quote unquote film or I
started to really develop my taste and that was really
what solidified me in wanting to watch and also discuss
movies with other people. But there is a moment in
time that you can't get back as a kid, and
(29:19):
it's all those movies I remember from watching when I
was five to eight, maybe even ten years old, that
have stuck with me over my lifetime that I can
go back to now as an adult and want to
relive my childhood and experience that again. I have these
great memories from great movies that I either went to
see in theaters or watched on DVD. I think that
(29:39):
is such an important time in kids' lives, and that
is time you can't get back. So I don't want
any movie to rob any kid of that experience. You
can rip me off as an adult, you can sell
me a bomb. I go watch a movie and I
hate it, that's fine, I'm an adult. I can take it.
But for a kid to go to a theater to
experience something that they want to take them out of
(30:00):
this world, or to help them understand maybe something that
they can't learn from their parents, or they're struggling, maybe
don't have a parent, A movie can do that, and
a movie can be powerful in many ways. So that
is why I hold these movies to such a high regard.
I don't review these as the thirty two year old me.
I review them me as a kid sitting in that theater,
but also taking the cues and the emotions that I
(30:23):
feel in the theater. So that is just my little
preface here, But what the movie is actually about. You
have this girl named Bee who is going through a
traumatic experience. She just lost her mom and now her
dad is in the hospital. And during these times, as
she is interpreting all these emotions, she's twelve years old,
she starts seeing other kids, imaginary friends. She has this
ability to see them, no one else can see them.
(30:46):
So it is her mission now throughout the movie to
pair up these imaginary friends who no longer have kids
to play with, and find new kids for them so
they can continue to live on. Kaylee Fleming plays Be,
who really dominated this movie my favorite performance from a
young actor, probably since Violet McGraw and Megan who also
(31:06):
carried that movie. I feel like we've gotten a little
bit away from letting kids lead movies, and I feel
like her performance in this surpassed Ryan Reynolds and even
surpassed the als voice actors that were voicing all the
characters in this movie. So what she is struggling with
even though she's twelve years old, she doesn't want to
be called a kid because she's experienced life. She's experienced
heartache and loss, and she acts so much more mature
(31:31):
than she actually is. Meanwhile, in this time, her dad,
John Krasinski, who's in the hospital, is doing all these
really playful things to keep the spirit really a light,
to kind of keep her mind off of why he
is actually there. She's like, Dad, stop doing that. I'm
not a kid. I don't need you to coddle me.
For her to have that kind of emotion really reminded
me of me as a kid, because as far back
(31:53):
as when I was in elementary school, I remember my
teacher telling my mom that, hey, this kid acts way
more mature than he actually is. He doesn't really like
all the more childish things. And I had a real
hard time just being a kid because I was always
more mature. I had a brother and a sister who
were seven nine years older than me, so I think
it was me always trying to be cool in their
(32:14):
eyes that I didn't allow myself to be a kid.
Probably past like eight or nine years old, I always
wanted to be like them, so even at eight or nine,
and I was probably acting more like a late teenager.
So that part of the movie really resonated with me,
because there are kids who have to grow up faster
because of the things they experience in life, and I
really haven't seen that represented in a movie yet, so
I think kids now being able to identify with a
(32:36):
character like that is really important. The other thing I
identified with, which is more of what the movie focuses on,
is having an imaginary friend. Because Bee is connecting with
all these imaginary friends, they all have different personalities, and
I think seeing this as an adult reminded me of
my imaginary friend. I created him because I was really lonely.
(32:57):
I grew up in a trailer park and it was
it was really hard for me to make friends. I
had two really solid friends in the trailer park that
I made on my own. I also had a cousin
who was like a built in best friend. And in
the trailer park I lived in, everybody would eventually just
move away and you would never see him again again.
This was late nineties early two thousands, where internet wasn't
as prevalent as it is now. Once somebody left the
(33:20):
trailer park, they were gone. My first best friend moved away.
And the ultimate move away from a trailer park is
you get a house. That was the ultimate goal to
go from living in a trailer park to having a
brick house was the dream, so Zach was the first
one to do that. My other friend Eric moved away,
my cousin moved away, and it was just me by myself.
(33:40):
It was hard for me to make new friends. When
more kids would move into the trailer park, I always
felt like they were younger than me, so it was
hard for me to find kids my age. And I
was also just really awkward and more mature. So I
created an imaginary friend. I don't really remember a whole
lot of details about him, probably because it was created
at a trauma or something, but I remember the last
time playing with my imaginary best friend. It was raining.
(34:02):
We were sitting on some steps and I think he
just evaporated, and that was me saying goodbye to my childhood,
I guess.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
So.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
I think watching this movie as an adult will transport
you back into your childhood, especially if you had an
imaginary friend. The big problem I had with IF is
it felt really unoriginal, and it also took a really
long time to get going. It was probably forty five
minutes until anything really big happened, and that is hard
(34:28):
to do in a kid's movie. I felt the audience
getting a little bit restless because you need those big,
fun moments that kids are gonna get invested in, and
I think that was overall what this movie struggled with.
It very much felt more like an adult telling the
story to kids and thinking, oh, this is probably what
kids like instead of what I like. In kids and
(34:51):
family movies, you forget that an adult is even involved
in the process. It feels more like it's a kid
at the helm calling all shots, and it feels like
a kid movie being told from the perspective of a kid.
I think that is when a movie like this truly shines.
It reminds me of watching Nickelodeon as a kid, and
that channel very much felt like there was no adult influence.
(35:14):
It felt like cartoons being made for kids by kids,
and all the adults were lame. A little bit of
that memory has been tarnished with quiet on the set now,
but I'm choosing to remember just the animated chosen, the
really early Nickelodeon stuff. So overall, I felt like it
was more of a movie made for adults. The overall
message of the story was don't let yourself forget to
(35:39):
be a kid, don't be afraid to be a kid,
and it felt like it would resonate more with adults
watching it than it would kids. The characters themselves weren't
really anything that you would grasp on to Aside from
Steve Carell's character, who is the big purple character named Blue,
which is a joke in the movie, all the other
characters are really forgettable. The movie comes to us from Paramount,
(36:00):
which it almost felt like they were all placeholders for
different characters they were going to use later on. Maybe
the thought was, hey, we could use some characters that
we have the rights to from Paramount. Maybe you throw
a Ninja journal in there, but it all just felt like, hey,
this isn't Many Mouse, this is Winny Mouse. And overall
(36:20):
they were so forgettable that I don't think a kid
is gonna watch this movie and grasp onto one specific character.
It just felt like all the imaginary characters never really
bonded or went through anything together and never created this
big team effort. And another thing was this movie felt
inherently sad for no reason, which was another emotion hard
to process. And again, not every kid's movie needs to
(36:41):
be shining rainbows and fun all the time. I can
respect a movie that goes on an emotional level to
really teach kids that, hey, things get hard. Sometimes life
is hard. Sometimes you're gonna feel sad and it's okay.
But even me watching this as an adult had me
feeling pretty sad because you don't really have a lot
(37:02):
of moments of triumph. It takes a very long time
to get there, so it is a really high investment
to get to feeling good. For me, it wasn't fully
enjoyable until that last hour. But that being said, it
was a really strong last hour. All of the movie
really paid off in the third act and it hit
me in those emotional feels. And the thing about a
(37:23):
movie like this and really any movie, is you always
remember how it left you feeling. At the end. That
last bit of emotion is so important because it can
eclipse everything that came before it. If it leaves you
feeling really warm and fuzzy inside and feeling good about life,
and you leave that theater thinking, oh, I feel good now,
(37:44):
you kind of forget that it was slow in the
beginning and that it took a long time to get
there because the payoff was so important. But another thing
I also hold to a high standard when it comes
to kids and family movies is rewatchability, because I think
that is so important to go and see a movie
in theat and want to go and rewatch it more
and more times. That is the sign of a true hit.
(38:05):
I think this one is just gonna really scrape by
as being an overall mediocre movie that maybe we forget about.
It doesn't really have any appeal to me that it's
gonna build a big franchise, even with having a pretty
soft opening of thirty five million dollars. Isn't the best
and I think this movie is kind of right there
in the middle of the road, and the characters themselves
(38:28):
aren't really that appealing to sell this movie, which I
think was the big struggle of the marketing of this movie.
None of the characters feel unique to it. The story
doesn't feel unique. It really feels like Toy Story three
had a challenger situation with Brave Little Toaster and inside Out,
and somehow through that challenger situation they had a Muppet's baby.
(38:49):
That is what this movie ended up being. It felt
like it was doing an impression of another good kids
movie and the result of that was a mediocre kid's movie.
There weren't really funny moments throughout that I feel you
really needed to win those younger kids over. There was
maybe two or three times that I actually heard other
people laugh, and one of those was a fart joke.
(39:10):
That's the easiest thing you can do. Kung Fu Panda four,
did it? You throw a fart joke in there and
everybody is going to laugh. That's a really cheap laugh,
especially coming from John Krasinski, who was also accused of
ripping off a Quiet Place from a novel called The Silence.
Even though A Quiet Place came out first in theaters,
The Silence came out on Netflix and everybody thought The
Silence ripped off a Quiet Place, But that was based
(39:32):
on a novel that came out before it. Not that
The Silence was a good movie at all. Pretty terrible
Netflix movie, but still can you have an original idea?
So overall, for if I give it three point five
out of five Big Purple Monsters, it's time to head
down to movie.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Mike Traylor, Paul.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
M Night, Shyamalan movies are hit or missed for me.
Last year would not get the ca That was his
first good movie in a really long time before that
old bad Glass was bad. He had a run of
bad films, but that movie made me think he still
has something left in the tank. He's not a one
(40:15):
trick pony. He doesn't have to make these movies that
just have some kind of weird twist at the end
to get us all to go, oh, I see what
he did there. That one showed me he was a
really great filmmaker. And after watching the trailer for his
new movie, I think this could be his best film yet.
There is a major red flag that I'm going to
(40:37):
get into when talking about this movie. But what trap
is about what I love. First of all, it has
such a simple premise that you learn so quickly by
watching the trailer. But his father played by Josh Hartnett,
and his teen daughter go to a concert by this popstar.
They realize then that they are at the center of
some weird, dark, sinister event. Turns out, Josh Hartnett's character
(41:00):
is a serial killer, and he has people hidden somewhere
in his house, and this entire thing was set up
by the police because they knew he was going to
be there. But by the looks of the trailer, they
don't even know exactly who they are looking for. They
just have some kind of tip that the butcher is
going to be there. Great premise and I think also
(41:22):
one of m Night Shaumalan's most simple premises. So I
want to dive into this trailer because I think it
is M Night just getting back to the basics, just
making an all out, really good horror movie. I'll give
you my full thoughts in just a second, but right now,
here's a little bit of the trap trailer.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
Cooper, Jamie, what's on plice trucks, outside, the cameras everywhere, Jamie,
you know, the butcher, that freaking nutshot that goes around
is jumping people up the fens or whatever.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Heard that he's gonna be here today. So they set
up a trap for.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
This whole concept. It's a trap for the watch and
all the exits check it. Everyone that leaves, there's no
way to get out of here, and.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
That is where the trailer leaves us. After that, you
see Josh Hartnett go back to meet his daughter who
is watching this pop star perform. He has this glazed
look on his face as he realizes that, oh man,
not only is my daughter going to find out that
I'm a serial killer, but I'm probably not going to
leave this place by my own will. I'm probably gonna
(42:29):
get arrested, and then my entire operation is going to
be found out. I think probably the hardest thing for him,
given the fact that at the beginning of the trailer
paints him out to be this really nice guy, even
more so than him having any regret towards his victims,
I think the thing that is really good away on
him is disappointing his daughter and finding out through him
(42:50):
getting arrested that he is a monster. And I find
the way that just in this trailer that Josh Hartnet
is playing this character is interesting. He almost has this
dead pain delivery that he seems to be acting a
little psychotic and very dry. So I think Josh Hartnett
is a great actor who got his start in horror
(43:10):
movies actually and became the heart throwbu of the late
nineties and early two thousands. His first movie ever was
Halloween h two O and is actually one of my
favorites in the franchise, even though at times the movie
has some really awful cgi and overall probably not the
best representation of the Halloween franchise at the time. When
(43:31):
that movie came out, it was really significant to me,
and among all the movies and the Halloween franchise, aside
from the first one, it's probably the one that I
revisit the most. He went on to do movies like
The Faculty, Thirty Days of Nine forty Days, and forty
nine's Black Hawk Down and has kind of had a
bit of a comeback. He was also in a really
(43:52):
great episode of Black Mirror recently, so I feel like
there is kind of a resurgence of these people who
were famous and the late nineties early two thousands now
being able to step back into the spotlight and can
do a little bit more of refined work.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
Now.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Seeing him as the father figure in a movie is
a little bit different because he was always like the
hot honky guy, but especially after seeing him in that
Black Mirror episode, I think he will do a fantastic
job in this movie. Also in this movie, you have
m Knight Shamalan's daughter, Selika Knight Shamalan, making her acting debut,
and in real life, she is actually an artist. She
(44:29):
did some of the music for his movie Old also
his TV series on Apple TV Plus. So she is
playing the character Lady Raven that you see throughout the
trailer that is the concert that they are going to
the night Shamalans are actually taking over because his other daughter,
Ishana has a movie coming out later this summer on
June seventh, called The Watchers. Maybe you've seen the trailer
(44:50):
for that one too, And there's actually an easter egg
in this trailer. At one point where you see all
the police cars coming to the venue, there's this little
banner across one of the overpasses that says the Watchers.
So he has his daughter in the movie and also
his other daughter's movie featured in the trailer for his movie.
A great connection there, Nepotism at its best, we Love Ourselves,
(45:14):
and Nepo Baby. This movie was filmed entirely in Toronto,
actually at the Rogers Center where the Blue Jays play.
Actually been to Toronto, beautiful city. I remember driving in
and seeing this stadium by the Big Tower. Had a
great experience in Toronto because everyone there is so nice.
But I do love the trend of horror movies that
take place in one location, which I feel like has
(45:37):
re emerged a little bit since COVID. Back when well
you couldn't really have a big production. You wanted to
scale back not only the cast but also the crew,
So I feel like this trend has kind of re emerged.
M Knight also did it with Knock at the Cabin.
He also wrote the story for Devil, which all takes
place in an elevator. And I am a fan of
(45:58):
movies set in one location. I think they are probably
extremely hard to do for a director because you rely
so much on your leads and then it all comes
down to the pacing of the film to keep the
audience's attention because you can't go to other locations to
break things up. But when it comes to horror movies,
it also creates that claustrophobic feeling for the viewer, so
(46:19):
I think it's a really powerful tool. So it forces
you to get really comfortable with your storytelling skills as
a director. Now, looking historically at some of my favorite
movies that take place in one location, oftentimes what happens
is these movies tend to have shorter run times because
you probably have less of a budget that you're working with,
(46:42):
which is another big reason to set a movie entirely
in one location, because you can do it for cheaper
and if you're able to have success at the box office.
Therefore you have a greater profit, lower risk, higher reward. Devil,
which I mentioned earlier, has an hour and twenty minute time.
The Guilty with Jake Jillenhall, where he plays a nine
(47:03):
to win to one operator, has a run time of
ninety minutes that not only takes place in one location,
but for the majority of the movie is just Jake
Jillenhall's face on the phone. But to be able to
keep my attention and really have me invested in that
story for ninety minutes was a feat within itself. That
was one of my favorite movies to come out of Lockdown.
(47:23):
That is how you do it. Another movie called Buried
with Ryan Reynolds, where he is literally buried alive, has
a run time of ninety minutes. Phone Booth with Colin
Farrell was one of my first favorite movies that took
place in one location. That movie has a runtime of
one hour and twenty minutes. So why I'm telling you
all this is because Trapp has a run time of
(47:44):
two and a half hours, and I was all sold
on the idea of this movie until it came to
that runtime. Because the trailer looks really solid. It also
really kind of tells us the entire story that is
going to unfold. I don't know how, just based on
this trailer that is going to warrant a two and
(48:05):
a half hour runtime, making it M Night Shyamalan's longest
movie to date. Knock at the Cabin was an hour
and forty minutes, and I think that runtime led to
me really enjoying that movie because it left me wanting more,
got into the action, quickly, ramped up, had a resolution
before I knew it it was over. That is what
(48:27):
worries me that it's going to get to that final
maybe forty five minutes or even that last hour, and
it's maybe gonna go on a bit more of an
existential ride. And this is giving my history of M
Night shyamalan movies, which I hope is in the case.
Hopefully it is Josh Hartne's character finding these different ways
to throw the police off of his trail. Maybe he
(48:50):
starts framing other people at the concert. Maybe he finds
a way to escape and we actually do get away
from the venue towards the end of the movie. But
with such a great premise, with such a great lead actor,
all M Night Shyamalan has to do is Land the
Plane on this movie. And if it wasn't for him
having so many misses in the later half of his career,
(49:12):
I wouldn't be as hesitant. But still this is one
I'm really looking forward to again. This movie is coming
out on August ninth later this summer head.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
That was this link's edition of movie Mi Tramer.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Par and that is gonna do it for another episode
here of the podcast. But before I go, I gotta
give my listeners shout out of the week. How do
you get a listener shout out of the week, Well,
you can send me an email movie Mike dat Gmail
dot com, dm me on Instagram, comment on my Facebook page,
on TikTok go, subscribe over on YouTube and leave a
comment there. You can always find all the links to
(49:46):
all my social media and YouTube channel in the episode
notes of every single podcast. And this week I'm shouting
out to Nicholas Ramer, who is Bell's Old Glory Shop
on Instagram, listener of this podcast and a listener of
The Big Show, The Bobby Bone Show, and as somebody
who outside of these shows I've connected with and been
(50:06):
able to DM and talk with and through me talking
about on this podcast. Of my recent love and hobby
of collecting comics. I've been doing it now for almost
two years, and it was something early on that I
was a little bit hesitant to share because it is
a bit of a nerdy hobby, and as much of
a nerd as I am and I'm comfortable with sharing things,
(50:28):
I felt that was going to another level for me,
and I've never been cool with my life, but for
some reason, I felt like sharing the fact that I
collect comics and I'm so into researching them, finding out
different values, finding key issues, and just spend a lot
of my time now collecting and reading them. I thought
it was going another level, But what I found is
(50:49):
I'm connecting with other people who also love collecting comics,
and it's been a really great tool for me to
just be able to talk about the thing I'm really
passionate about outside of movies and find this other little community.
So it kind of reminded me of whenever I really
first got into reviewing and talking about movies and discussing
(51:11):
them with other people and finding other creators on TikTok
and Instagram and having like this instant bond. So that's
why I decided to share it here on the podcast.
I posted a lot about it on my social media
and Nicholas was so nice to send me this entire
package of really awesome comics, including one that, if you're
(51:31):
not familiar with comics, may make no sense to you,
but it is a secret Wars number one, a graded comic,
and I only have one of those so far that
Kelsey got me for Christmas, and now I have too,
So it was really unexpected and just felt like a
reminder to me that always talk about the things that
you are passionate about, no matter how nerdy they seem,
(51:54):
because there's probably somebody out there who is into the
same things that you are. As long as you're I'm
not hurting anybody. There's nothing you should be ashamed about.
But that was super awesome and if you watch my
reviews on YouTube you will now see it featured in
the background where I have all my coolest comics behind me.
It was so cool I instantly put it up on
the wall. So thank you Nicholas, Thank you for listening.
(52:17):
Hope you all have a great rest of your week,
and until next time, go out and watch good movies
and I will talk to you later.
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