Opening Everywhere: Snitch, Dark Skies
Opening Nowhere: Stand Off
FilmDrunk Suggests: Organize a neighborhood game of Kick the Can and let me know where it is, because I’ll come play. Or you can go see what one critic called “Dwayne Johnson’s best role yet” in Snitch and then look at his IMDB page and just mumble, “Well yeah.”
Snitch
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 51% critics, 82% audience
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
“Despite its apparent compromises to noble finger-wagging (initially) and requisite fist-pumping (eventually), Waugh has fashioned a sturdy character-first entertainment out of Snitch.” – My good friend William Goss, Film.com
“Dwayne Johnson tries so hard to be taken seriously in the ponderous and preposterous drama Snitch that it hurts to watch him in much the same way it hurts to watch the weightlifting competition at the summer Olympics.” – Mary F. Pots, TIME
Armchair Analysis: I can joke for days about “Dwayne Johnson’s best role yet” but I have to admit this film doesn’t look terrible. I’m not going to rush out to the theater to see it, and I’d probably see A Good Day to Die Hard again, so I can freak out for a second time about why there was no fight scene between John McClain and that giant Russian bro. Seriously, what the f*ck was the point of showing that shirtless monster and his CCCP tattoo if HE DOESN’T DO ANYTHING???
In conclusion, The Rundown is still Dwayne Johnson’s best movie. Doom is a close second because it has Rosamund Pike, who is a very special person.
Dark Skies
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 36% critics, 57% audience
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
“Writer-director Scott Stewart doesn’t want to play his hand too early. By the time the movie is over, it’s easy to see why he kept his cards close to his chest. He’s not really holding anything.” – Adam Nayman, Globe and Mail
“Dark Skies is an alien-abduction thriller where the biggest acts of appropriation involve the lifting of plots from other – and often better – films.” – Linda Barnard, Toronto Star
Armchair Analysis: This film looks like it was originally written about a creepy kid being possessed by a demon, until one day a producer looked up from his giant mountain of cocaine and said, “My God, that’s been done to death. We need to change this. We need to be original and create new films with new plots and pay talented writers a lot of money to write us suspenseful scripts that will truly scare people and make them appreciate the movie they just spent $12 to watch” and then he snorted another line and said, “F*ck it, make it about aliens.”
Stand Off
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: No critics score, 100% audience (AKA Brendan Fraser’s family)
Gratuitous Review Quotes:
None available. So here’s the trailer and some YouTube comments:
Brendan Fraser’s hair piece is epic,
this looks so awful
Go home George of the Jungle, you’re drunk
Armchair Analysis: What do you think about people paying money to watch your movies at this point, Brendan Fraser?