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Joker (2019)
I am he as you are me as we all come together
Boring. Took a character with a perfectly nebulous back story and then gave him an unnecessary definite origin tale. Moreover that completely unneeded back story is full of pathos for a character who would gladly kill you rather than accept that pathos. The Joker is one of the all time greats of comic book villains, specifically because he is irredeemable. To turn the Joker into a sympathetic antihero is both cowardly and lazy writing. By all means make a Joker movie, but do right by this excellent villain, no pathos, no back story, the Joker is devilish so make him do the Devil's work. And have him feed some people to his pet shark.
Run Ronnie Run (2002)
Can't a man not drink his beer in silence?
The best thing Bob Odenkirk and David Cross have ever done. This movie always makes me laugh, from the first time I ever saw it up til the most recent viewing, laughter. And I am very confident that the next time I watch this movie I will laugh. The rest of this review is pure filler cause I don't need to say anything else about Run Ronny Run, so we can talk about Baseball or Football because sports are an excellent substitute for talking about feelings when a person has got the feelings but definitely doesn't want to put those feelings into words, all of a sudden and infidelity or childhood trauma can be spoken about as a baseball team's poor pitching performance.
Cropsey (2009)
You don't have to be alone tonight, pick up the phone
Super boring. All innuendo and supposition and none of it leads to anything substantive or close to evidence of anything. At no point do the filmmakers investigate if any of the abductions are even connected. The crimes must have been frightening to the filmmakers in their youth, but it seems that way only because at the time of their youth they were uninformed. As adults, exploring these crimes, none of the creepiness they felt as kids has legitimately endured. It's truly an urban legend in that once the facts are faced and examined the horror disappears. Yes there was an insane asylum, and yes a socially strange man was a one time patient there, but he wasn't the serial killer the movie suggests he might have been. Total waste of time and money.
Kyûketsuki hantâ D (1985)
The "D" doesn't stand for what you think
A crappy masterpiece. The animation is terrible and nothing is rendered well. The characters are lumpy and ill proportioned, the animals like the sheep and especially the horses are wrong and should be redrawn, the background paintings are amateurish and all the movie's colors are muted. The story is kinda stupid and the dialog is full on stupid. All the characters utter nonsensical phrases in a sort of word-vomit delivery, no one speaks naturally. The only redeeming quality of the movie is that there's nothing else like this in the world. Vampire Hunter D is unique and its singular presence eclipses many otherwise superior works. I'm on my 3rd copy of this movie and prepared to buy it a 4th time should the need arise, because I'd rather have the movie and not feel like watching it today than to not have it a really want to see its silly failings right fudging now.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
I used an analogy, you're welcome
The best Shane Black movie and this movie sucks. It features all the Shane Black greatest hits such as witty banter that is overly verbose and sexiness that comes off as immature and unexamined. It's supposed to be a detective story but those elements of working clues and solving the mystery never really materialize. It's a very typical Shane Black movie in that the movie has a lot of razzle dazzle but zero substance, the suitable analogy would be a game of three card monte, the scammer provides the illusion that you can spot the red queen with lots of talk and flourish but when you pick the card you think is right you find that you are wrong, and have been cheated.
You're Next (2011)
No headline, I can't think of anything
I hate slasher movies but I love this movie. I think it's because the main character fights back and fights back satisfactorily dirty. The pacing is fine, no scene really drags, like typically slasher movies will have a drawn out scene of a character being stalked or are in peril and don't know it and filmmakers milk it for the sake of tension or suspense, and not so in this movie. I mean You're Next, still has all the typical features of a slasher movie with the masked killer stalking his prey, but no sequence feels over long. Also it's got a song that's part of the movie and it's a great song, Casablanca did the same thing so I approve. Decent gore and the violence is also well played.
X (2022)
Two stars is pretty good compared to like negative stars
Ti West is a master of suspenseful pacing, but also his stuff is too slow and the payoff doesn't match the time spent getting there. I utilize fast forward whenever I watch a Ti West movie. Also slasher movies are profoundly boring, like boring on an existential level, like it is of Cosmic importance to not be boring in a slasher movie sort of way. Also there's this aspect of slasher movies where the Killer is portrayed in a sympathetic heroic light which I always find disturbing but not disturbing because it's quality horror, rather it's disturbing because this sympathetic killer shtick is infantile and unexamined. Ti West's characters are never memorable and neither is his dialog, and this movie is a perfect example of that forgettable writing.
From Beyond (1986)
My pineal gland!
Super economical movie in terms of total running time and what you are shown as a viewer. No sequence plays out longer than it should, even the film's climax is point A to point B, no detour in-between. Really excellent smut that just sort of appears about halfway through the movie and adds a refreshing element to the rest of the feature. For a B-movie and an HP Lovecraft B-movie in particular, the money was well spent. No special effects were short changed in order to meet the budgetary constraints, and for an HP Lovecraft movie that's a huge accomplishment. I hope they don't remake this movie because more than likely they will screw it up.
Hellraiser (2022)
Satisfactory
Easily the best of the Hellraiser movies because it's nothing like the other Hellraiser movies, and because Clive Barker had nothing to do with this movie as a filmmaker. Clive Barker is a genius author but an imbecile filmmaker, every movie he's made has been a foolish departure from his own source material and it's like dude you wrote this how did it become this movie? Okay, so this movie succeeds because the acting is way better than in any other Hellraiser, also the sets and the lighting and the special effects are completely superior to any other Hellraiser. There's no stupid typical dark hallway scene, there's no stupid fetishistic devotion to a scene of a cenobite murdering someone and for once the cenobites come off as mysterious rather than as actors in bad costumes and bad makeup effects.
Naked Lunch (1991)
Church youth group approved!
Naked Lunch is about looking into a mirror and not liking what you see so you paint over the mirror with tarry black paint, then you smash the mirror into many hundreds of razor sharp pieces then you take that broken heap outside to your backyard and you burry it there, then later that night your sleepwalking body gets up from bed and goes outside to your backyard and digs up each and every shard cutting your fingers in the process spilling so much blood that the ground turns to mud, then your sleepwalking body carries the broken pile back inside back to your bedroom where while still asleep you reassemble all the shards back into the original shape of the mirror and only then you awake confused and horrified by your bloodied fingers and ask out loud to your reflection hidden and waiting beneath the black paint, " who did this? "
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
I gave this movie 6 out of 10, that's super generous
A lot of people ask, "what's wrong with Star Trek the Motion Picture?" and if people aren't asking then they should start, because many things are wrong with this movie. I'm only going to list 4 of the many errors because I'm lazy and nobody is paying me. William Shatner is a professional actor but not in the same way talented people are professional actors. This movie is about sex but doesn't go about getting to the sex in any satisfactory manner. Instead the movie is all about V'GER using some bald chick's body so that Decker goofball can get it on on her, which is way too complicated. For no good reason Spock is extra Spocky and doesn't dial that shtick back for over an hour. And speaking of wasting time, huge amounts of running time is just characters staring at the Enterprise or ogling at V'GER, you all need some fast forward.
The Flash (2023)
What went wrong with the Flash, by Jesse Gehrig
Thrilling fast paced intro full of danger and impossible near misses, that is so very boring. The CGI looks terrible, like the CGI looks so bad maybe stop doing CGI or like start learning how to do it way better. If AI wrote this movie then we have nothing to fear from AI, that or AI is going to kill the human race with mediocre writing. Ezra Miller, there are so many cruel totally objective statements I have to make about his acting, I mean like zero subjective personal opinions, all objective observations devoid of ego or agenda, that I feel bad for Ezra Miller because without having writ one of these observations, I feel like he's already suffered enough.
El Topo (1970)
Unwatchable
I wouldn't say this movie is disappointing so much as it is utterly deflating. Like the director missed the point in a profound way, as if he had never seen a western and was unfamiliar with the purpose of movies. There's no soundtrack, no cinematography, no dialog worth remembering, no performance worthy of repeated viewing, and it was billed as a psychedelic western and it definitely did not deliver. I'm willing to admit I came in with certain expectations that may not have been fair to the movie, but in my defense it was supposed to be the work of a genius. El Topo is not the work of genius.
Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
Double you are eye tea ee
Features fear-based writing: instead of letting the story happen on its own, the fear of box office failure wrote the story. Committee decisions based on investor tastes replaced creative decisions made by a writer, which lead to mediocrity both as a movie and in ticket sales. Never let the money write the movie, always have the writer write the movie. It sounds simplistic but that's cause people are Goddamn stupid. Making movies is inherently a high risk investment, if you absolutely need to get a decent return, don't make movies, sell cocaine. Also maybe don't mind rape any characters in your next Star Trek movie because no one wants that ever.
Short Circuit (1986)
I'm okay with No.5 not being alive
I have made plans to never see this movie again and while those plans contain no specifics, those plans are definite. People often make children watch this movie under the premises that watching Short Circuit will kill time and that the children forced to watch the movie probably won't hate it. Short Circuit does kill time but not nearly as well as simply closing one's eyes and waiting, which can kill the same amount of time but without a terrible movie being involved. And I can't speak for other people but when I was a child and forced to watch Short Circuit, by the second viewing my hatred for this movie was forged in steel.
Dracula 3D (2012)
Way to go?
Dario Argento is one of my least favorite horror movie directors, and this movie is terrible and it is far and away the best Argento movie. Okay, he is super bad at filmmaking, like Argento uses sets that look like movie sets then lights those sets to all the more appear like a fake cheesy movie set. He consistently scores his movies with the ugliest cheapest music, and this one is no different. Like the dialog is always wooden forgettable words, and the acting is always stilted, like sort of mechanical. No for real, I'm legitimately baffled by almost all of Agento's directorial and artistic choices. I fully support his right to make lumpy off-putting movies and to be fair I've made 0 movies compared to any of his.
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
Yall done good
I was wrong. I thought this movie was not good without ever having seen it, flash forward to 2024-ish, just saw it and I was thrilled. This movie is great and it manages to do the impossible if not improbable, surpass or at least match the anime original. Scarlet Johansson delivers a precise performance, giving me the viewer exactly what I was looking for. That might sound like a coldly analytical statement but what it means is she could have played Major in a variety of different ways but she stuck to the recipe and the quintessential character was brought to life. The action scenes were equally the proper measure of visuals, editing and pacing.
Madame Web (2024)
Next time check with me first?
I saw Madame Webb for free and I want my money back, no I kid, and I know a lot of people have said it was a bad movie but y'know what, they were right. The movie teases throughout that the main characters are going to become powerful and significant, meanwhile I watched a movie about boring characters that don't do anything cool. Okay so I don't know if the screenwriters thought about this but why not tell the better more exciting story? Madame Webb, according to your story, your characters are destined to become cool, like write that part totally skip ahead to the good stuff. Why would you show the boring part?
Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006)
If I watch it again it will at least be on mute, maybe I'll play some music over it
Error after error, an unrelenting series of miscalculations that someone filmed and then edited. I don't understand why things happen. Sometimes the movie was a musical. I think the movie was trying to be raunchy and hilariously inappropriate, different unintended things occurred instead. The real horror and gore had to have been behind the scenes, when the cameras stopped rolling that's when the monsters came out. Check out Kate Graham's IMDb page, it's got no photo of her cause she ain't working in acting, her bio's one paragraph listing the three things she was ever in- now I'm not making any sort of substantiated claims, but I'm totally gonna lay all the blame at this movie's feet but I'll use fancy language to hide my intentions, genius.
Hercules (1983)
Movie review written by mentally ill man, what could go wrong
Hercules, in ancient Greek means, he who cannot find pants or a shirt. This movie is about a hero's journey to find suitable clothes to wear out in public and he fights like robotic monsters for some reason. And nobody at any point in the movie seems to notice that Hercules just walks around in like a sweaty loincloth and some sandals, and it would have been hard not to notice because Hercules is a big dude. So I don't know what was going on on olde timey Greece but they were not paying attention to whether people had clothes on or just wearing like their underwear and a sword, I mean it's like maybe that's why crazy stuff happened in olden times because people had no standards?
Barbarella (1968)
Have you ever heard that Doors song, "Touch me babe"?
People are always asking me what is Barbarella about, and I tell them, okay take your left hand and with your thumb and forefinger pinch them together and make a circle, now you take your right hand and with your forefinger insert it into the circle you made with your lefthand thumb and forefinger, stick your right finger in and then withdraw it then reinsert and then withdraw, repeat the process several more times and that is what Barbarella is about. The plot is you dim the lights lie in bed and imagine Barbarella in various stages of undress whilst using your hands to touch up all over your human body.
Rupan sansei: Kariosutoro no shiro (1979)
My summary counts as an eleventh star, so really it's rated 11 out of 10
First off, the soundtrack is exquisite, like late 70's Asian jazz stuff, smooth. My favorite Miyazaki movies and I would argue it's the best but yes I am also fully aware of Spirited Away, so I will just say it easily one of Miyazaki's best. The colors are so pure, each character is rendered in an elegant unforgettable color scheme, an example would be Cagliostro's red/black/violet color scheme. It's a classic Lupin the 3rd story, where like halfway through Lupin has to team up with Zenegata and Fujiko makes an appearance offering Lupin much and delivering on little. But the real prize of the movie is Miyazaki's action scenes, I always forget it's animated when I watch Lupin barely escape each successive danger.
Manhattan (1979)
Talky talkin'
I guess I'm still deciding what's this movie's deal. It utterly depends upon dialog but also nothing said by any character has any real meaning. Like it's just blather filling up every scene and no one is likable. Woody Allen put forward a considerable amount of effort into the dialog so it's curious to me how unnecessary every word is, so now I gotta wonder if he did it on purpose, put in all that useless blather and then repeatedly save each scene with the cinematography. Because Manhattan is a beautiful movie, had it been shot in color it wouldn't have harmed the film a hair regardless of what the black and white lobby might suggest. The city was sanctified by the cinematography or at least is was shot to seem that way.
The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
This is a movie review
The fashion industry is dependent upon slave labor, specifically vulnerable women and orphan kids. How is that not awesome? That the least among us deserving to toil uncompensated can work night and day to make you your pretty shoes! We live! Oh the glories a cracked whip can afford you, for the mere price of blood, sweat and tears and also dreams differed, you can be fashionable. How does that taste to you? Did you enjoy the flavor of a child's suffering? Just think, enslaving women and children to make clothes has been going on for tens of thousands of years like some grand unlimited evil forever perpetuated for the sake of someone you don't know telling you, " nice shirt."
Get Him to the Greek (2010)
Jesse Gehrig's 2024 vindication tour
They said I was a comedy-snob because I rejected this movie outright. They said I was weird because I thought Russell Brand was a creep. They said I didn't know what I was talking about when I said Sean "Puffy" Combs didn't belong in movies because there's a flaw within him, I mean I'm paraphrasing some this. But my overarching theme here is I was made to feel wrong for thinking this movie was garbage. But you know, I did finally sit down and watch Get Him To The Greek recently and I was RIGHT! Oh my God! You people and the nonsense that comes out of your mouths and I let you lecture me about giving stuff a chance instead of trusting my instincts.