Baywatch (2017)

Summer Quinn: Did you just, uh, look at my boobs?
Matt Brody: I… was not my intention. I didn’t, uh, stare directly at them.
Summer Quinn: You’re looking at them right now.
Matt Brody: Now I did, because you’re talking about them.

Short: Eye candy-slanted towards the ladies, bawdy jokes, and nothing else. Nothing.

Long: I'm glad I was trapped on a plane for this. I would have stopped watching if I had really had a serious choice. Basically, I think Baywatch was destined to be rebooted. The formula is crazy simple. The expectations of the target audience  are low. Quality acting talent is not a prerequisite, and filming is cheap; No CGI. No difficult sequences. Any beach will do. Any back office or standard location will do. Cheap.  Oh and you don't need quality writers.  B+ grad is AOK.  So, in someways Baywatch was a perfect movie. It aspired to very little and met or even exceed expectations. (because they were very low.) Know thyself -An Baywatch clearly did.

Point 1: The Rock was clearly the best actor in this nonsense. Not even close. Give him a little more acting respect please.
Point 2: Zac Efron is too jacked now. It's strange and gross- this is personal opinion.

1.7 out 5 

Wonder Woman (2017)

Diana: This is Ares!

Short: Wonder Woman is leaps and bounds better than its predecessors in the DC Universe. Finally, a DC feature that understands that violence is actually the least interesting part of a story.

Long: I can't say that Wonder Woman was an excellent "Hero pic". It doesn't break the mold. But, it is a serious step forward for Zach Synder-esque sludge and for female led features. I do think that it is a double standard at least in terms of storytelling, casting, writing that a woman hero must be "attractive"; but I attribute this as certain parts, believability (especially given that the story is set in 1918), economic incentives, and social inertia. My own thoughts on progress bend towards radical/structural equality.  Chris Pine was acceptable, a little unbelievable, -but with a fun sacrifice. What didn't make Wonder Woman a home-run for me was the final battle with Ares. It lost all sense of space, time, and meaning in addition to the design of Ares missing the mark. It made me only think of Prof. Lupin as a slag wagon.

2.98 out of 5 stars.  

Sydney White (2007)

Lenny: Did they really make you sing Celine Dion?

Short:  Don't. Just don't. I watched this and this now makes me part of the problem.

Long: So Sydney White (SW) is basically a rebuke to originality and a cliche wrapped in banality and soaked in stock bromide. Yet here it is. It exists. It had producers, actors, musicians who all worked to make something that has so clearly been done before. I cannot exactly say why. The strange thing about having now watched it on Netflix is to consider that SW is just as out of date now as it was to my own college experience 10 years ago. (Go MAC!!) My really only thought was that there was some idea that if they made a Snow White illusion into a 15 year old girl's expectations of what going to college would be like and threw in Revenge of the Nerds for -ya know- its morals. Yup.

2.0 out of 5. 

*oh and I would like to actually praise Jeremy Howard for a shining performance. IMDB