The Last Crapshoot: Everything I know is Wong

One of those moments when bad movies make you question basic truths of your world.
These 3 movies that I have bore witness to in the name of rounding out my annual cinematic experience by evaluating the worst received features of the year have tested my patience, sanity, and perceptions of bad perhaps more than anything that I have seen in the last 8 years of writing this series.

They have made me question the standards of theatrical release, how bad a product can get with triple A ingredients, and bizarrely enough, what constitutes a bad movie be it the absence of certain elements or the presence of others.

And shockingly, they all run the gamut quality both surprisingly moderate and appallingly low.




Discussing the heyday of MoviePass is somewhat surreal when you consider just how quickly they went from being a new theater industry standard to an artifact constructed of bad business gambles in a matter of mere months.

It's particularly odd for me considering my early adoption of AMC's A-List service compounded by personal credit card issues that cropped up just before I dropped them ostensibly saw me smoothly transition away from using them without being suckered by their underhanded reopting clause that would have soured my memories of the service.

MoviePass will tragically be remembered for its hubris of a service that was far too good to be true and while I miss having my pick of theater experiences, that may have perhaps been for the better as I'd rather be aware of their shady practices then sitting through their embarrassing attempts at original cinematic content.

Starring John Travolta in the title role, telling the story of New York's last great Mafia boss and the crumble of his life of crime, it truly boggles me to no end that somebody with clout thought that "Gotti" was a feature that was worth releasing on the big screen.

That isn't to say that the actual story of John Gotti isn't one conceptually worth cinematic exploration; indeed on a concept level, watching a man embrace the disgusting nature of his work while passing the fortune onto acts of good will towards the community and balance it all with the life of a loving family man has stupendous narrative potential.

Unfortunately, it takes a mere 15 seconds to realize just how much of that potential has been thoroughly squandered.

"Gotti" is an absolute failure of the technical areas of filmmaking in almost every capacity possible.

Perhaps some version of this film could have existed where Travolta’s talent could have buoyed a compelling feature but drowned under cinematography so bland and nonexistent that it would make Disney Channel Original movies look like Oscar Nominees and editing so jarringly choppy that it would have failed undergraduate videography courses, it's borderline hilarious.

The number of bizarre quick cuts, lacking in any sense of atmosphere or serving any purpose, make every scene almost perversely fascinating to watch unfold as the production does nothing but draw attention to the limp script that nobody in the cast can manage to bring to life.

Even Travolta struggles to carve out a real human being in this cavalcade of Mob film caricatures.

Similar to the "praises" I offered to "Venom" earlier this year, the nicest thing that I can really say about the movie is that it's such an ineptly made caricature of other films of its type that it's almost so earnestly entertaining as such that for it to be any better would almost make it worse by virtue of being downright boring.

I almost feel foul for laughing at such over the top Italian-American stereotypes but between accents and slang that just don't let up only being reinforced by editing so terrible that its handling of the death of a child had me in stitches, I can't honestly say I was bored even as the mess dragged on past its welcome.

For the seekers of Schadenfreude in that regard, I almost wholeheartedly recommend "Gotti" as a Friday evening beer with friends watch.


 

"Gotti" was a formula for a decent movie in which everything on the execution level went horrendously wrong.

In a divine miracle that could almost turn an atheist into a wholehearted believer "God's Not Dead" is a bad formula that somehow went right in ways I’m legitimately struggling to grasp.

I’ve spent the last 5 years watching Pure Flix rise and wane on a wave of popularity with crowds of non-discerning middle American religious Christian moviegoers, centralized on preaching to the choir of a privileged lowest common denominator that’s struggling to accept the fact that their world isn’t as culturally homogeneous as they would like to believe.

Although that sounds fairly harsh I dare anybody to sit through this series’ perception of theological debate, so laden with straw man rhetoric and stereotypical opposition to an insipid and self-righteous argument that can’t comprehend multiple belief systems publicly coexisting unless one dominates the other, to the point where the evil liberals of the school board feel like Illuminati lizard people in a far more interesting B-Movie, without questioning the beliefs of anybody that holds a sincere and unconditional adoration for these films, on some level.

The success of “God’s Not Dead” 5 years ago in a month of no substantial competition however has emboldened this franchise to achieve trilogy status but the only cosmic joke funnier than the word’s “God’s Not Dead” trilogy referring to something that exists, is that the final entry in a series of glorified propaganda up to this point is actually not bad at all.

“God’s Not Dead: A Light in the Darkness” isn’t afraid to wear its agenda on its sleeve and coupled with a level of production that remains far from top notch, I really struggle to call the film good when it continues to stay in the realm of television movie quality with a lack of depth or nuance towards the issues of globalism that society has to grapple with.

With all of that said however, the rest of the film shockingly goes above and beyond the call of duty.

Facing the issue of having his church evicted from the nearby university’s land over concerns of cultural bias after an accident leaves the building in a state of disrepair along with the shockingly tragic death of his best friend and fellow pastor Jude, David rallies his friends and resources to protect the church while undergoing a journey of self realization regarding whether or not protecting its physical location is a worthy endeavor in the face of properly spreading its message.

“God’s Not Dead: A Light in the Darkness” studies a scenario that would legitimately test a person’s faith while keeping David thoroughly sympathetic but doesn’t let him off the hook regarding the perceptions surrounding his faith that the previous movies seem to want to so desperately overlook.

The past and present transgressions of faith’s institutions really get put to the test in discussions of scientific advancement answering questions of the world around us, freedom of religious practice for non-Christian religions, and even issues of classicism and racism faced by the church itself.

None of this is to say that the movie is particularly hard hitting; the film in fact occasionally leaves backdoors open to dip out of arguments that it seems to almost be aware can go to deeper places out of its favor. It also does not, however, settle on straw man caricatures to makes its points.

It wants its audience to feel good about their faith and reaffirm their religious beliefs but is bold enough to suggest they remember the benevolent intent behind them more than the superficiality of the iconography they’ve built around it.

In doing so, the film ironically sells a message of the damage that perpetuating the perceptions of a “culture war” can bring to an audience most fixated on the notion that a “culture war” is being waged to begin with.

From sensible discussions of balancing tolerance with scripture to an unexpected take down of David’s crusade by a Black preacher offended by the successful white man’s suggestion that he doesn’t know struggle, in which my viewing audience and I had to pause and applaud the movie in disbelief, “God’s Not Dead: A Light in the Darkness” is so shockingly not bad that I questioned whether or not to even write about it.

Then I realized that I couldn’t keep the surprise of this one bottled up. If Pure Flix has landed in a capacity that’s ensuring its security for years to come, I have to at the very least let them know, in any way I can, that this is what they need to be doing more of.




Never have I had my patience tested by a film in the ways that “Life Itself” tried me.

After at least 3 failed efforts to stream it in the comfort of my own home, I have finally managed to subject myself to every second of its patronizing, overwrought, pretentious, hollow, and sloppily presented existence with little to show for it in the way of critical presentation or personal enrichment.

“Life Itself” follows the lives of 2 different couples and their eventual children under some guise of the threads of fate connecting us in ways that we could never possibly imagine to present the life as the ultimate unreliable narrator of our personal stories and their inevitable conclusions.

If that sounded vague, nondescript and borderline shapeless than you’ve already pieced together what “Life Itself” has in store.

Despite a strong cast attempting their damnedest to inject legitimate emotional depth into this monstrosity with their A-game chops, this is a film that arrogantly makes the decision to ooze style over substance without even having a worthwhile sense of style to begin with.

The film’s saccharine pontifications of life’s randomness never develop beyond the type of funny coincidence talking points that one would be over in friendly conversation after a few minutes and what you’re left with is a schizophrenic editing catastrophe that thinks telling a story out of order makes it more meaningful rather than infuriatingly incoherent.

Perhaps if the film had some sort of thematic that it wanted to connect, this would all be excusably experimental but the movie has the audacity to namedrop works of Tarantino as inspiration for its own disjointedness as if such reverence makes it excusably meta.

None of this is the case.

“Life Itself” is a smattering of great performances in pockets but very little in the way of cohesively powerful drama and while I’ll give some credit where its due for director Dan Fogelman clearly trying to do something experimental, experiments still need to yield some results to be worthwhile.

It’s “Cloud Atlas” if that film lacked a clear chronology with thematic frameworks increasingly evident on subsequent viewings. It’s “Pulp Fiction” without the intrigue of a web of events rearing to a palpable head. It’s “Snatch” if the lovably engaging rogues filling out its cast were instead melodramatic clichés proto-hipster douche bags.

Above all else, “Life Itself” is one of the worst films I have seen all year and a film that asks Oscar Isaac to bear his soul onscreen that can be called that has misstepped royally.