Welcome to the Chicken Barn!

Featured by Dalton "Thunder" Cooper, posted in Uncategorized

Hey hey, welcome to the Chicken Barn! I am so happy you are here to visit. This is a place where you can read/listen to my articles and podcasts about movies, the film industry, and entertainment as a whole. This is my first effort in website building, so please excuse the mess as I continuously update and improve the Chicken Barn. I sincerely appreciate every view, listen, and comment you have to leave. If you want to become part of the flock, join our mailing list to get updates whenever I post a new review or podcast. Thanks for reading. Have a great day!

-Dalton Cooper

“No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.” -Ingmar Bergman

 

The Lion King (2019): I just can’t wait for it to end

by Dalton "Thunder" Cooper, posted in Uncategorized, Written Reviews/Editorials

The Lion King (2019) has about 15-25 minutes of ok stuff, and the rest is unmitigated awful. I’m going to go into plot spoilers here, but it’s literally a remake of an almost 30-year-old movie so yeah, Scar is still a bad guy and Mufasa still dies. No surprise here. The minute Simba grows up, the movie crashes and burns.

The animation itself, is beautiful and I am excited to see how Disney uses the technology in more competent films. The scenery and characters are truly magnificent, and any still from this movie is just plain pretty. However, none of that matters when the acting is so awful, it makes you shake your head in shame. This voice cast should be fantastic, especially since they have a good director in Jon Favreau. However, aside from Mufasa (James Earl Jones), Zazu (John Oliver), young Simba (JD McCrary), young Nala (Shahadi Wright Joseph), and Rafiki (John Kani) everyone else is horrible. This cast includes Donald Glover, Beyoncé, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Keegan-Michael Key, Eric Andre, and Seth Rogan, yet everyone just sucks. Especially Donald Glover and Beyoncé, they both sound bored and uninterested. Glover in particular has the charisma of a flat soda, and his singing is not very good in “Feel the Love Tonight.”

The music itself is nice, but because it’s music that was written almost 30 years ago. The one exception to that is a song called “Spirit,” a song sung by Beyoncé. But this isn’t a Lion King song sung by Beyoncé, this is a Beyoncé single in a Lion King movie. It comes on, and it immediately takes you out of the movie, with its processed instruments and stupid freaking clap snare hit every modern pop-star uses. Turns out that song was produced by Pharrell Williams, which makes total sense why it sticks out like a sore thumb. The only reason that song is in the movie is so Disney can release a new Beyoncé single on Top 40 radio. It’s despicable.

The comedy doesn’t hit, with one notable exception which I won’t spoil here. When Mufasa dies, I felt nothing. No emotion. And I just cried my eyes out in Toy Story 4 so me being a jaded young dude is not an excuse here. Scar is fine, but can’t hold a candle to the original, he is not as menacing as the original. The hyenas, however, are super scary and menacing, but then they turn around and start cracking jokes, which is way too jarring.

To top it all off, they straight up reuse the audio for “Circle of Life,” it is literally the original recording. I also think they reused the original audio on “I Just Can’t Wait to be King” but with new lead vocals, but I can’t be certain on that one. Plus, because of the realistic art style, the music scenes are dull and uninteresting, a far cry from the animated film with its huge numbers. The art style also limits how much emotion the faces of the characters can portray, as they all just look like neutral feeling animals. No fear, no sadness, no anger, nothing like that.

This movie gets a 4/10. I wanted it to be better, but it just isn’t. Just watch the original, save your money. It is not worth the ticket cost.

Spider-Man: Far from Home: The third “Spider-Man 2” we have had in 15 years

by Dalton "Thunder" Cooper, posted in Uncategorized, Written Reviews/Editorials

Spider-Man was my favorite superhero growing up, so I always expect a lot from movie starring him. The original line of Spider-Man films are fond memories, The Amazing Spider-Man movies are not. The current Spider-Man series has been a lot of fun, I enjoy seeing the web-head interact with the other Marvel heroes and to see him portrayed by an actual teenager (at the start anyway). Since Far from Home is the first movie to star my favorite Spider-Man villain, Mysterio, I was very excited to see it. So how was it? It’s fine.

 

Tom Holland as Spider-Man is fun and is spot on for the character. Zendaya as this new version of MJ (they won’t call her Mary-Jane, but come on, we all know that’s who she is) does her character really well, and she is at her best when she is in the middle of a weak moment. Together, they make very good on-screen chemistry, and I like them together. Jake Gyllenhal as Mysterio/Glenn Beck is a perfect fit, and I loved seeing him come to life on screen.

 

The special effects and cinematography were very good, particularly the Mysterio fight scenes. The music was above par for these kinds of movies, it actually stood out to me, which is great. Production design was fantastic, as was the majority of the acting, the one detractor from that being JB Smooth as Peter Parker’s lazy science teacher.

 

All and all Far from Home is not a ground-breaking film in any respect, but it is well made and well done. It is not as good as Into the Spider-Verse, but it is better than the Amazing Spider-Man film series and better than Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3. I recommend it for all Spidey fans and all movie goers. 7/10.

Halloween: The sequel to Halloween…this is gonna get confusing

by Dalton "Thunder" Cooper, posted in Uncategorized, Written Reviews/Editorials

I love slasher horror movies. The cheesiness, the tropes, the villains. I love them. “Friday the 13th Part 3” and “Nightmare on Elm Street” being among the best in the genre. Slasher films had been around, but they did not get popular until “Halloween (1978)” and the emergence of Michael Meyers. But to be honest, I’m not a fan of Michael Meyers. Meyers, at the end of the day, is a human. If you shoot him in the head, he will die. Yet, he always found a way to survive every gunshot, car crash, and fire he ever suffered. Heck, in “Halloween 2” both his eyes were shot out, but he could see just fine in “Halloween 4: Return of Michael Meyers”. I always found this to be a cop out. Freddy and Jason survived crazy stuff, but they are paranormal in nature, unlike the completely human Michael.

Blumhouse pictures has taken the reigns for Michael’s newest outing (which makes this the fourth series continuity change) which serves as a direct sequel to “Halloween (1978)”. That means there was no Laurie as Michael’s sister, no psychic niece, no Kungfu Busta Rhymes, no “H20”, none of that. This is a good thing. With that being said, “Halloween (2018)” has a ton of throw backs and nods to those films. This is really fun for fans, and isn’t ham-fisted in anyway.

In this film, Michael comes back more brutal and more bloodthirsty than ever. The first on screen kill is a young boy, only around twelve years old. Michael does not slow down from there. The effects and the score that punctuate Michael’s kills are stunning and beautifully well done. However, I kinda wish Michael had a reason to kill. In the first film, he just wanted to go home, and when he was home, he saw Laurie babysitting a young boy, and that reminded Michael of his sister, so he needed to kill Laurie and he only killed those who got in his way. The whole series was his quest to kill Laurie, who ended up actually being his sister. But in this film, while he wants to kill Laurie, he goes out of his way to kill others for no reason.

Laurie Strode (Jaime Lee Curtis) was not explored enough in my opinion. She’s just a super paranoid grandma who is alcoholic. It’s basically a better written version of her “H20” character. The granddaughter, Allyson, is clearly the future of the franchise, but they need a better dialogue writer for her and her friends. The love triangle subplot is just cringey as hell and needs to go away.

Overall this film is very well made and knows what it wants to be. But its bad to mediocre dialogue and somewhat hammy acting from other supporting characters holds it back from being a masterpiece. I give it 7/10 above average. I hope it gets a sequel, and I hope Michael’s slasher cohorts find a way to be revived in similar manners.

Venom: Sony…just stop.

by Dalton "Thunder" Cooper, posted in Written Reviews/Editorials

I knew this movie would not be good. It was a matter of “how bad will it be?” Honestly, that is a very difficult question to answer. “Venom” is not a good movie. Yet, it has its moments that shine. But those moments are surrounded by a complete misunderstanding of the character Venom and a complete lack of a little important detail in movies called plot.

The first ten minutes of “Venom” are a good indicator of where Sony’s heart was during the production of this film. That place being their wallets. They make several allusions to Spider-Man’s world in a movie where Spider-Man doesn’t exist! The son of J. Jonah Jameson (the angry editor-in-chief of the Daily Bugle newspaper) makes an appearance, and the Daily Globe (the Daily Bugle’s rival) is mentioned for example. But ok, you aren’t a nerd like me. I can hear you saying, “Dalton, I have never once picked up a comic book nor do I intend to. Stop being a nerd and tell me about the movie itself.” Alright, I’ll do that. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Spoilers ahead.

“Venom” starts off showing the main character, Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) doing his job as a reporter who attempts to root out corruption and human rights issues. This is an attempt to get you to like Eddie Brock. But then, Eddie does the worst thing he could do, stealing information about the main villain of the film from his lawyer girlfriend’s confidential laptop. He then confronts the main villain, who is an Elon Musk type billionaire/scientist, with this privileged information, even though Brock was specifically told not to rock the boat on this one. As a result, Eddie’s reputation goes down the drain and his girlfriend is fired from her law firm. Which further leads to her breaking off their engagement. Brock winds up in poverty as a result.

So when we cut to Eddie six months later, we are supposed to feel sympathetic for the guy. A guy, which I must stress here, has no one to blame for his problems other than himself. He is not a likable guy. He gets a second chance to take down our main villain (whose name I cannot remember and I refuse to look up because if Sony wanted me to know it they would have tried harder), and he then messes everything up again. Except this time, he gets to bond with the alien symbiote Venom.

Venom takes control of Eddie’s body and begins a bloody rampage through San Francisco, complete with the consumption of police officers. After some boring chase scenes, Venom finally introduces himself to Eddie and tells Eddie that Venom’s species will come down to eat humanity to extinction. But if Eddie cooperates, Venom might let him live.

More boring stuff happens. Then, inexplicably, Venom informs Eddie that Venom wants to stop his boss, another symbiote known as Riot who has bonded with main villain, from bringing the rest of the symbiotes to Earth. Venom only says “you changed my mind” to justify this change of heart. Venom and Eddie have only known each other for at most two days, and this is somehow enough for a carnivorous alien to turn his back on his entire species and culture.

Of course Eddie and Venom succeed, because Sony wants to make a universe around this. This leads to the worst end credit scenes ever in movie history. Eddie interviews an unnamed man in San Quentin Prison, who is wearing the single worst Raggedy Anne Doll wig of all time. Then, the man turns his head and it’s Woody Haralson who says, “I’m gonna get out of here, and there will be Carnage.” Which means my prediction was right, they want Carnage to be the next bad guy. The, this movie has the balls to show an entire scene from the upcoming “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” movie with a tag of “Meanwhile, in another universe…” as a way to one day try and connect Venom with Spider-Man.

I can’t say I hate this movie. I hate the ingenuine place it came from, I hate Sony for being so dumb and predictable with this movie, but the movie itself isn’t bad enough to hate. But I can’t say I like it either. For every decent action scene, there’s a dumb one that looks straight out of a Transformers movie. The more I think about it though, the more I dislike it. So, I’m going to give “Venom” a 4/10, slightly below average. A lot of people are probably going to like this film. I am not one of them.

Announcing a new review series: “Test of Time”

by Dalton "Thunder" Cooper, posted in Test of Time

Hey everyone! I know I’ve been away for awhile, and I apologize. I’ve been busy with life and whatnot. But I am very excited to announce a new review series. I call it “Test of Time.” I’m going to be watching some older films to determine if they hold up in the eyes of a modern film critic. Will the classics still shine? Or has the luster faded? Keep an eye out for them! I’ll of course still be covering modern releases, I’m just adding more content for you guys! Thanks for reading.

Slender Man: #RealMenHaveCurves, #RealMoviesHavePlots

by Dalton "Thunder" Cooper, posted in Written Reviews/Editorials

I am offended over how bad this movie is. This movie insulted me. I hesitate to even call it a movie. “Slender Man” is what happens when the screenwriter, director, editor, and producers do not care about the final product. “Slender Man” is what happens when a production company realizes that they have the film rights to a popular character after that character winds up in the news. “Slender Man” is what happens when you waste every single opportunity to make something good. “Slender Man” is awful.

I am honestly at a loss of where to start here. I guess I should start about the things I liked. The lead actresses (Joey King, Julia Goldani Telles, Jaz Sinclair, and Annalise Basso) did a good job saying words. Javier Botet was a good casting decision to play Slender Man. That’s about it.

Everything in this movie is just wrong. Seriously, everything from visual effects to editing isn’t just bad, it is objectively wrong. Let’s go through the “plot”.

“Slender Man” centers around four friends who watch a YouTube video to summon Slender Man, a mythical being who lives in the woods, because they heard some boys were watching the video. After watching the video, one friend goes missing during the school field trip to a graveyard (do you get it, kids, it’s foreshadowing), and the other three girls must find out how to get their friend back.

So right off the bat in this movie, every single horror movie cliché is hit as though the director (Sylvain White) had a checklist on set that Sony mandated he follow. The very first scene features the character Katy say “I want the demons inside of me”. Well, we as an audience know she’s dead. Sure enough, she is the character who gets taken by Slender Man. This movie also takes place in Horror Movieville, USA. What I mean by this, is that this is the same town as every hack horror movie where the characters leave school at the end of the day and it’s bright and sunny. But by the time the characters get to their friend’s house, it is pitch black night time. Also, no parents or police exist in Horror Movieville, USA. So, as the kids, actual literal high school children, start to disappear, nobody cares. They just go “poof” and I guess the police are like “I want to help find the missing girl. But the script says I have to stay at the station and eat more donuts”. These girls stop attending school and there isn’t a single call to the parents asking where the students are? If I had a doctor’s appointment in high school and was gone for an hour, my parents got a phone call about it. The same parents who checked me out of school to get me to the doctor. But that doesn’t exist in Horror Movieville, USA. Because logic is dead, and so is this movie’s credibility.

Honestly, the thing about this movie that makes my blood boil the most is the missed opportunities. There were decent ideas here, even a couple of clever shots. But they never follow through on those ideas. I am going to go more in-depth on my podcast because the best way to explain this is verbally, but just know there are more wasted chances to be great than a Cleveland Browns depth chart.

I mentioned in my review of “Truth or Dare” that I laughed out loud in the movie theater during a scary part. In this movie, I wasn’t the only one laughing. The whole theater burst into hysteric laughter during a hallucination scene where our hunky male (crowbarred in) love interest’s face gets twisted up and he ends up having this super derpy orgasm face that is played up to be horrifying and intense, and it just falls flat on its face. Honestly, the whole scene is put together as though the editor had a seizure while moving the footage around on Adobe Premier Pro, only to have the director walk in, see the final product and proclaim, “My God…it’s brilliant!”

I am honestly physically disgusted the more I think of this movie. I love the character of Slender Man, I love the old Slenderverse web series, I love the old “Slender: The Eight Pages” video game, I do not love the official Slender Man movie. In fact, I hate “Slender Man”. I hate it more than I hate any other movie I’ve seen this year. I have seen Ted Nugent hunting shows with more thrills and intense moments. I have seen more excitement come from a crowd of residents at an old folks’ home, where people dump their loving parents to die. I have seen more energy from an amateur golf tournament. I have seen better CGI and visual effects in porn films (hey man, if it’s a film, I’ll review it). I have seen more sincerity from a Hooter’s waitress pretending to be into the customers, so she can get a better tip.

Honestly, I was going to give this movie a 3 or a 4, until the previously mentioned derpy orgasm scene occurred. After that happened, I dropped the score down to a 1, and “Slender Man” is lucky I am giving it a 1. This is like watching Petronius Maximus accidentally leave the gates Rome open for the Vandals, except this time it was Sony throwing open the gates for garbage to continuously flow out of their back lot. 1 out of 10. I hate this movie. Go watch Marble Hornets for free on YouTube instead.