Lights Out
I forgot that I had already seen this movie. The short film is not only more succinct, it’s a better film through and through. The amount of padding they stuck in this tiny little story is astonishing. Just go watch the original on YouTube, and enjoy its brevity.
LIFE
Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, and Canada’s favorite son, Ryan Reynolds. An interesting alien is rendered in unevenly applied to CG efforts. Clearly a tremendous amount of production effort went into this, with all of the actors appearing in zero gravity consistently.
Many friends said this movie is incredibly dumb and not worth watching. Some of these people have even seen Prometheus and Covenant, and did not call those movies stupid as vehemently as they did this one. However, I will admit that the sequence of shots leading up to the twist at the end make it virtually impossible for that twist to occur. Films should at least play by their own internal rules.
Velvet Buzzsaw
Another Jake Gyllenhaal movie. This time with John Malkovich, Toni Collette, Renee Russo, Natalie Dyer, and other notables. An impressive concept, mired down in overly explicitly showing how each victim is killed. Good performances, mediocre movie. Perhaps its greatest conceit is keeping its title as a “Rosebud” moment for the end of the movie.