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The King of Staten Island (2020)
The King of Staten Island (2020)
2020 | Comedy, Drama
Incredible
An amateur tattoo artist is forced to grow up when his mom (who he is living with) falls in love with a new boo.

Acting: 10

Beginning: 7
The very first few moments sees main character Scott Carlin (Pete Davidson) driving on the highway with his eyes closed, seemingly trying to off himself. It’s a powerful scene followed quickly by Scott and his friends tripping out with the typical hilarious banter you find in a Judd Apatow movie. While both great scenes, you still don’t get a full sense of where the story is going after the first ten minutes hence the score.

Characters: 10

Cinematography/Visuals: 9
Shot in a memorable style that brings out the best and worst of Staten Island at the same time. Director Apatow has a knack for capturing extremely impactful moments, especially the awkward ones. Every scene, no matter how short makes the most of its time and tells its own story. It’s such a hard thing to do yet Apatow finds a way to do it repeatedly.

Conflict: 10
It’s funny, I can’t look at Scott’s character without thinking about my 16-year-old son. He’s kind of drifting about in the same aimless way and, like Scott, doesn’t seem to understand how his now actions will affect his later. The beauty of having a character like this is the ability to be able to drive external conflict through Scott’s internal growth. He is struggling for selfish reasons. He wants his mom to be happy, but not at his expense. The dynamic of conflict is perfect.

Entertainment Value: 9

Memorability: 10

Pace: 8
The story flows along pretty smoothly, although I wasn’t happy with the 147-minute runtime. That’s a bit extensive for a comedy in my opinion. Again, I was impressed about how time was maximized for the most part, but there were a few spots where I felt things could have been trimmed.

Plot: 7
The movie does cheat to meet its end, but I was ultimately ok with it because the rest of the story was pretty incredible. The cheat is a blip on an otherwise quality story that really enhances the growth of the characters. Every scene really does come together well to tell a great story.

Resolution: 10

Overall: 90
From jump, The King of Staten Island hits you in the mouth and keeps you entertained. I enjoyed this movie for multiple reasons, but mostly because it checks all the boxes. Even the things it falls short on is just slightly missing the mark. Highly recommended.
  
Scooby Doo: Return to Zombie Island (2019)
Scooby Doo: Return to Zombie Island (2019)
2019 |
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Characters – Scooby-Doo and Shaggy have both become tired of solving mysteries, they want the team to stop and get their way, they win the holiday for the gang which sees them going to an old location needing to decide whether to let the group solve the mystery on the island. Fred has sold the Mystery Machine, he is having daytime dreams of it returning to him, where he judges most other vehicles for not being on the same level as his beloved. Daphne is here, though we don’t see anything we haven’t seen before from her, while Velma has a blog showing us just how the character has evolved for the time, which does show the frustration here character has when she can’t solve the mysteries anymore. Most of the new characters are left to feel just here with only Alan the hotel manager and Seaver being properly introduced.

Story – The story here follows the mystery inc gang who get invited back to an old location to solve the mystery from their past, only to find themselves needing to fight cat people once again. The story tries to be self-aware of many of the previous films, which has worked before, but for some reason doesn’t quite click this time. The fact we have seen the evolution of Velma and not the rest of the characters disappoints, which also seems to play along the idea of being a film within a film, that just again puts too much wink, wink, nudge, nudge to the audience. If you are a Scooby Doo fan, this story is everything you need, even if it does have a couple of flaws along the way.

Adventure/Comedy – The adventure does see the gang return to one of their most famous locations, which is different to much of what we have seen before, while the comedy does land in a couple of places very well.

Settings – The film does take the gang back to Moonscar island to face a new host of enemies in one of the most famous locations.

Animation – This does have the typical animation you are used to seeing for the Scooby Doo movies, it never lets down and works for the slapstick side of things.


Scene of the Movie – The big jump.

That Moment That Annoyed Me – Daphne is almost just painted background character.

Final Thoughts – This isn’t the best Scooby Doo animated movie, it disappoints in a lot of places with how it handles certain decisions in the story and too many wink wink nudge nudge moments.

Overall: Basic Scooby Doo.
  
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