My Own Little World

Many films have great concepts. In fact, most films thrive on them, especially in their marketing, and especially if they’re not already part of a franchise. A good concept is the first step to making a good film. A good concept on its own, however, does not a good movie make. There has not been a film recently that shows this more than Bright , Netflix’s latest big film project. Directed by David Ayer ( Suicide Squad , Fury , and End of Watch ) and starring Will Smith and Joel Edgerton, it has a great concept – a cop action thriller in a world of both human and mythical creatures – but unfortunately can’t seem to make the pieces work. A huge part of this is the script. Max Landis wrote the original script that underwent a rewrite by Ayer, and it just doesn’t work. It’s extremely vulgar, which is not a critique on its own, except that it seems like the profanity is only there to remind you of the film’s rating. I’ve seen plenty of films that use very poor language but do so ...

What do you do when you want to like a movie so much, but you walk out of the theater bored and wanting to just sleep away your problems? I've never had to ask this question until last night. I made the always-tragic mistake of putting my hope in some amazingly well-crafted trailers and expected the world with Suicide Squad . Instead, I got a movie that bored me. A movie with some of the greatest comic book villains of all time, and it bored me. I legitimately yawned several times towards the end and was just waiting to get out of the theater so I could do something far more interesting. I also want to put a bit of a disclaimer before the rest of my thoughts: this is no way because I want to align myself with the critics. If you remember my Batman v Superman  review (if you don't, just  click here ), you'll remember that, despite the negativity critics hurled at it, I quite enjoyed it. It was something far different tonally than anything else any comic book film had g...