Hubie Halloween and The Mortuary Collection (2020)

Despite his devotion to his hometown of Salem (and its Halloween celebration), Hubie Dubois is a figure of mockery for kids and adults alike. But this year, something is going bump in the night, and it’s up to Hubie to save Halloween.

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Believe it or not I had a very hard time deciding what rating to give Hubie Halloween, I usually rip almost any Happy Madison movie to shreds due to how horrendous they are. With this movie however…I didn’t think it was quite as bad as a lot of the others? The only two things I found absolutely horrendous were the jokes and Adam Sandler himself with that terrible voice where you genuinely can’t understand what he’s saying unless you put on subtitles. A lot of it seemed like everyone involved had fun being in the movie, there was some genuine joy between everyone involved this time around. The Cameron Boyce tribute at the end also shows how an awesome person Adam Sandler really is. I will admit there were a few jokes that worked but for the most part they didn’t land. The weird thing is the acting was honestly not that terrible, I mean yes it most certainly wasn’t good but I couldn’t help but notice that it was actually better than a lot of other Happy Madison movies especially a certain one that came out earlier this year cough Wrong Missy cough I honestly don’t have anything else to comment on, as I said as far as Happy Madison movies go this one is definitely one of the better ones, would I recommend it? Absolutely not but there has definitely been worse to come out of this year.

4/10 D+

On the cusp of retirement, an eccentric mortician recounts several of the strangest stories he’s encountered in his long career, but things take a turn for the phantasmagorical when he learns that the final story – is his own.

Really got to give credit where credit is due Shudder has really picked up it’s lineup of horror movies that lead up to Halloween. It started off on the wrong foot with Spiral and Verotika but picked up with Scare Me, The Cleansing Hour and now this movie. The Mortuary Collection is also a breath of fresh air when it comes to anthology films, I recently reviewed Books Of Blood and Tales From The Hood 3 saying they both really did not offer much at all, with this movie however the segments are all pretty creative. I really appreciated the use of practical effects it added a lot to the film and actually made the segments more interesting and fun. The acting does have it’s bad moments but for the most part it’s pretty good, the writing is definitely humorous at times and is quite interesting with all the ideas shown in the film. It’s very refreshing to see an actually really strong horror anthology film, so if your a fan of the genre I definitely recommend giving this a go!

7/10 B

A Babysitter’s Guide To Monster Hunting (2020)

A babysitter embarks on a mission to save a child who’s been abducted by monsters.

How was I not informed that this movie was directed by the same director who did Freddy’s Dead The Final Nightmare? All joking aside I’m actually surprised this didn’t turn out as bad as it could have been, A Babysitter’s Guide To Monster Hunting is a movie that’s directly aimed for a younger audience and the movie really doesn’t hide that either. For what it is the movie is not terrible, Tamara Smart is actually pretty okay in the leading role it’s just she really does not have much to work with. It’s very simplistic main character role, the same can be said for Oona Laurence she’s fine enough in her role but she really does not have a whole lot to work with. There are moments where I actually thought the direction wasn’t too bad, Rachel Talalay actually builds an actual good chemistry between Kelly and Liz the two main characters. It also plays out exactly how you think it’s going to play out, it’s a very Disney channel feel type of movie that somehow became a Netflix Original. Outside of that there really is not much else to this movie, if you have kids and are looking for something new to watch this is definitely harmless enough. As for everyone else I don’t really recommend it. But I’ll give credit where credit is due Rachel Talalay has certainly gotten a lot better since Freddy is Dead The Final Nightmare.

5/10 C

Spontaneous (2020)

Get ready for the outrageous coming-of-age love story about growing up…and blowing up. When students in their school begin exploding (literally), seniors Mara and Dylan struggle to survive in a world where each moment may be their last.

Spontaneous is quite honestly one of the biggest surprises in 2020 (when it comes to film), on the surface it may seem like another high school movie with a bizarre premise of students literally exploding. However there is much more to the film the whole exploding idea can be seen as representing school shootings, those who accidentally overdosed or climate change, in the film Katherine Langford, Charlie Plummer and many others are worried, depressed, scared, develop anxiety because of seeing their friends die, which in a lot of ways is how the younger generation is reacting to the three topics I named earlier. That could be me reading a lot into the film but it definitely shares a lot of connections. As for the acting it’s pretty incredible Charlie Plummer and Katherine Langford are both fantastic, especially Langford who has really shown she has some serious talent it really makes me excited to see what she will do next! The writing is also really well done, with tons of emotional, heartwarming, cute and some surprisingly depressing moments it really adds power to the film and by the end it leaves a pretty big impression on the viewer. Spontaneous also feels very grounded when it comes to the writing, it feels like they actually got writers who know how teenagers talk and act (which only adds to what I said earlier) overall Spontaneous is a unique film that I definitely recommend giving a watch!!

9/10 A

Magic Camp (2020)

Andy, at the urging of his former mentor and Magic Camp owner Roy Preston, returns as a counselor to the camp of his youth hoping to reignite his career.

Mark Waters continues down a terrible path, it’s unbelievable that he is the same guy who directed Mean Girls and Freaky Friday (2003) lately he’s been struggling to make a good film Vampire Academy, Mr Popper’s Penguins, Bad Santa 2 and now this movie are truly awful. Magic Camp is something that would have been on the Disney channel back in the early 2000s, there is absolutely nothing to this movie that tries anything different. It’s a very below average underdog team movie but with a magic theme, the only thing going for this movie is Adam Devine which is strange considering how much I don’t like him. But here he is actually giving it his all, the rest of the movie is filled with terrible jokes that aren’t funny, poor acting and way too many predictable moments. It’s worth noting that this movie was shot back in 2017 this was back when Josie Totah didn’t come out as transgender (who has since come out) something that really did not age well at all was Jeffrey Tambor..who in 2017 was accused of sexual harassment and verbal abuse (which explains why it took so long for this to release). Making a lot of scenes in this movie extremely awkward, the direction of the movie is very uninspired it really doesn’t have any identity to it. Magic Camp could easily be mistaken for some other underdog team movie Disney has done, if you have seen any other underdog team movie you have already seen Magic Camp. I really don’t know what else to say, it’s a terrible movie that nobody is going to remember by the end of the month.

3/10 D-

Artemis Fowl (2020)

Artemis Fowl, a young criminal prodigy, hunts down a secret society of fairies to find his missing father.

To say Artemis Fowl is a disaster is the understatement of the year, this movie is the next level of bad. First off let’s talk about the cast, while yes the cast does seem pretty good they are all wasted or just give downright awful performances! One in particular that stood out from being terrible was Josh Gad, why on earth did he look like a cross between Aragon from Lord Of The Rings and Hagrid from Harry Potter? Can somebody please explain that to me?? Alright moving on…the writing was garbage, I genuinely can’t believe someone actually sat down and wrote this. A lot of it makes little to no sense, feels like it was written in less then two seconds and it just feels like the writers didn’t give a crap. The director of this movie is Kenneth Branagh who previously worked on Murder On the Orient Express (2017), Cinderella (2015), Jack Ryan Shadow Recruit, Thor and a few others. Which is baffling because some of the films I mentioned I quite enjoy, but the direction with this movie was just horrendous. Again it feels like there was no amount of effort at all, in fact that pretty much sums up this movie. Effort is nonexistent in Artemis Fowl, at least with some bad movies you can see that the people working on them at least tried. You don’t get that here with Artemis Fowl, it’s one of Disney’s biggest disasters in recent memory if not THE biggest disaster in recent memory with Disney. In terms of the story there is not a whole lot to say here, but from what I’ve heard that got fans of the book really angry was that they completely changed the story…and turned it into uninspired Sci-Fi story because of course they did. The story is just not interesting at the slightest, it’s a story that has been done to death numerous times and has been done better as well. Overall Artemis Fowl is a horrendous movie which I have to say is so far THE worst film of 2020

Disgrace To Cinema F

Bloodshot (2020)

After he and his wife are murdered, marine Ray Garrison is resurrected by a team of scientists. Enhanced with nanotechnology, he becomes a superhuman, biotech killing machine – Bloodshot. As Ray first trains with fellow super-soldiers, he cannot recall anything from his former life. But when his memories flood back and he remembers the man that killed both him and his wife, he breaks out of the facility to get revenge, only to discover that there’s more to the conspiracy than he thought.

Bloodshot is about as lame and horrendous as a action film can get, it doesn’t help that Jeff Wadlow or all people was one of the screenwriters (director of Truth or Dare and Fantasy Island.) Vin Diesel seems like a very nice guy and I’m sure he is, but my god he just can’t act, outside of a few performances. But this happens to be one of his worst, his character shows absolutely no emotion even when some scenes are supposed to be sad or shocking he always has this one emotion and that’s it. Combine that with the horrendous direction that pretty much says “who gives a crap” and you have a long painful experience in your hands, the writing is just horrible and feels like a stock action movie that doesn’t do anything new for the genre. None of the characters are likable like at all, none of them have any amount of character development, the only thing I can actually say that was okay about this movie was the action scenes and that’s pretty much it. Some of them were actually kind of fun for what they were, but then you get a very drawn out story that’s just not interesting at the slightest. The movie feels like it’s trying to do way too many things at once but completely fails at all of them, maybe if this movie had better writers, a better director and better vision this could have been decent.

1/10 F

Star Wars Episode IX The Rise Of Skywalker (2019)

After Palpatine mysteriously returns, the Resistance faces the First Order once more in the final chapter of the Skywalker saga.

Before I begin as always this will be a NO SPOILER REVIEW hope you enjoy! Let me just get down right to it and say this was the biggest disappointment of 2019, I’m not saying the movie is bad. In fact it does have some good things about it that do standout, the problem is this movie completely ignores everything on what made The Last Jedi and partly The Force Awakens so great. I’ll start with what I liked, the acting was overall not too bad. That goes for pretty much everyone in the film, they all did a really solid job Adam Driver and Oscar Isaac being the standouts. The filming was just as good as it usually was with these movies and the action scenes were pretty well done and a lot of fun to look at. Unfortunately what holds this movie back is a number of problems stacked up on each other….the writing, way too many plot holes and completely scrapping everything on what made the previous movies great. The writing seriously felt way too safe, I often complain about movies being way too safe with the writing but this is the biggest example of it. The movie doesn’t really explore any characters all that well as The Last Jedi did, sure there are a few character moments here and there but just not as much as the movie needed. The writing led to several plot holes which is very unfortunate, since the movie does pretty much scrap everything from The Last Jedi it leads to a lot of plot holes that are never explained. The fan service got old way too quickly, it’s perfectly fine if you want to throw in a few Easter eggs or some fan service into your movies, however when you overdo it that’s when it becomes a problem. It felt like the fan service took over the movie and that was pretty much what the movie was riding on, which again is not a good thing. Overall like I said before I wouldn’t necessarily call The Rise Of Skywalker a bad movie just a very disappointing movie that I seriously wanted to like badly..

5/10 C