HOWARD THE DUCK (1985) - I remember watching this movie on VHS with family as a young lad and feeling both confusted and irritated. Who was this fucking movie made for? Kids won't get half the references and there's not enough fun stuff happening to hold their interest. Anyone over the age of about 8 is going to feel like their intelligence is being insulted. I actively tried to find things to like about this movie, and it's tough! Even with some fun, goofy SFX, garish sets, and Tim Robbins babbling and emoting like he's living on a strict diet of pixie stix and adderol; it's just not enough. There's something off-putting about it (aside from the obvious). It's too stupid for adults and too horny/smarmy to be for kids. It reminded me a bit of an extended cereal commerical where everyone is talking in an overly loud and cheerful voice but nobody's saying anything important. I guess you could take that and run with it from a subversive surreal nightmare angle and convince yourself it's pretty good, but that feels like stretch. I really wanted this movie to entertain me. It did not.
RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY (2021) - I always enjoyed the Resident Evil video games, if for no other reasons than for the over-the-top escalation of the lore and the hillariously baroque and complex puzzle sequences. I love that the Resident Evil games are supposed to be this gritty "survival horror" experience, but it is common for places like Police Stations to have quadruple-locked steel doors with the only keys disguised as the four Aces of a desk of cards and these keys are hidden inside potted plants and chandeliers and guarded by four mutant zoo animals based on signs of the zodiac. I am only slightly exagerating. For the most part, the games never felt like they should be taken too seriously, but a lot of people were upset with the previous series of Resident Evil films starring Mila Jovanovich because those films were rather unserious. Certain beardy parts of the fanbase seemed to assume that outsiders would look at a video game series featuring mutant zombies armed with rocket launchers battling elite super soldiers in a place called "Raccoon City" and think to themselves "This requires a measured approach. We must treat this material with the gravitas it deserves." Well, they did. That's how we got a bunch of aggressively stupid action movies about mutant clones in leather jackets doing motorcycle acrobatics while the internet raged and seethed.
This is supposed to be a more serious, horror-driven reboot of the series. And it is! And it's OK! There are some nice scares and well-executed scenes of carnage. There are lots of little shout outs to the fans, and I'm sure that I missed a ton of little easter eggs. The sets are cool. There are neat parts and none of the performances are embarrassing or anything. It's fine! Everything about it just feels kind of late. I mean, it probably would have been nice to get the Masters of the Universe movie remade in, like, 2001. But by then the fan base moved on and nobody had any shits left to give about He-Man. That's what this felt like to me. It's a perfectly fine Resident Evil / zombie survival movie that came along about 15 years too late to cash in on Resident Evil or zombies.
DUNE (2021) - Well, shit. This is about as good a Dune movie as you're going to get. I had a genuninely great time with it. My only real complaint is that it made me feel old. I mean, most things these days make me feel old, but Timothee Chalamet's perfect cheekbones piss me off in a vague way. Intead of relating to his version of Paul, I related a lot more strongly with pool old Duke Leto. Everything kept going to shit for him, and all he wanted to do was take care of his family, do good things, and potentially take a nap. I bet his back hurts when he coughs, too.
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