robbotnik2000

"Monkey Dust" is a 3 season 18 episode series of a compendium of animated shorts. The animation is cheery with the bright primary colors and jaggy moves of good computer animation, combined with revisited dark and perversely humorous themes which get revisited and played upon. Themes such as badly broken relationships, implied moronic violence, and skewed motivations are rapidly brought up and dispensed with. Characters are often killed a la "They've Killed Kenny!" (reference to Southpark. There are sometimes ideas buried in the mini-plots, there are some disturbing images, but within 60 seconds you'll be off to something else. There is political critique, social observation, but if you want to gaze thoughtlessly at the moving bright images, you'll know shortly whether this is the entertainment for you. Broadcast in the early 2000s, some of the presentations are understandably dated, particularly as regards homosexuality. If you gathered from the above that the show is not for children, you are correct. Elementary school aged, preteens, should not be exposed to this.

Another show which is less in-your-face, wilder in themes, but has less perversity and reference to sex, and ranges deep into philosophical issues if you care to follow, but not totally unlike this show would be "Xavier, the Renegade Angel". If you like Monkey Dust, you might want to check it out.

Just saw this incredible crapfest which is more montage than movie: The high points are the bad guy is played by an actor, Pablo Pascal, who can go from cheesy to sleazy to creepy and then incredibly sad. The plot revolves around a wish-fulfillment crystal with a premise that could have been interesting if treated with respect, but nothing plotlike is respectable in this assembly of action and digital sequences which show no respect for inertia or gravity, like the earliest of the Batman movies where he could web swing with infinite speed and no sense of mass, here we have a golden lasso and it seems to be infinitely long and grab airliners except when it is too short coming off of a telephone pole and runs out.

Kristen Wiig is the other most talented person here, a comedian who can act, but her character has no solid basis, starting at comically inept and suddenly, due to the wish-fulfillment crystal, given some? all? of the powers of our heroine who she knows as Diana Prince, not Wonder Woman, but when she makes one wish she gets the whole package somehow. And then her awful lines. At one point she says "I want to be an apex predator!" And the movie apparently calls her CHEETAH. If you know anything about apex predators, cheetahs are NOT.

The best description of the movie in general is it starts over the top and goes on from there. If you are happy with that, go for it.

Gal Gadot has to do more acting in this sequel, and she fulfills the description "She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B." Chris Pine gets to be her re-animated lover from the first movie, who died then but is returned due to crystal wish action. Nevertheless the makeup job done on him makes him look like a creep. The chemistry between them is nonexistent, partly the writing and partly the acting.

There is some attention paid to show cars and some references from the 80s, but other than some confusing clothing references it simplifies life for the director and cinematographer to not have characters able to send communications via cellphones or internet. And what about all the great 80s music and top songs that could have been incorporated to give this some flavor. The orchestrated music was unimpressive, just the usual fast notes and crescendoes that go along with all the other repeatable 'action' movies. Otherwise, why this is set in the 80s seems to be as random as pretty much every other character and plotpoint in this, yes, I'm gonna say it again- CRAPFEST.

I ended up liking this more than the average reviewer star-giver, and that is a rare occurrence. The story does not so much center on as hover over various members of an inbred and self-aggrandizing art world, attractive people on the outside, but semi-aware of their corrupt practices of stealing each others' clients and assuring a nice return off their wealthy clients. As attractive and well maintained as it is immoral. Into this self assured world come the works of an outside artist, apparently deceased, whose work is brilliant (And very reminiscent of the actual artist H.R. Giger, who gave the Alien francise its unique look). It offers what several of our favorite characters believe to be a free ride, major returns from ignorant clients on the work of an artist who can't complain and is safely out of the picture (they think).

Our actors form a picturesque ensemble: Rene Russo as the owner of a gallery, Zawe Ashton and Natalie as workers, Toni Collette as an art expert making the move from museum drudge to highly paid consumer representative. Artists played by Daveed Diggs, and John Malkevich; and our main character, Jake Gyllenhaal as an oh-so-precious art reviewer who can make and break your ordinary artist by his mastery of relational high-sounding artistic gibberish.

The writing is good. The music and soundtrack selections well placed. I found the movie quite entertaining. The horror theme is somewhat pasted on and not totally seamless with the plot.

I think those most critical of the movie might place more importance on the criticisms/ satires of the art world that are part of the movie. Also maybe if they are more serious about their horror. For me, I enjoyed the action, the interplay of relationships and the devolution of people into the horror element.