GLASS (2019) - Review

     I was telling a friend of mine this morning that I'm glad I didn't Tweet out my first thoughts after seeing GLASS, the latest film from plot twist master M Night Shayamalan. If I had, you would've seen a Tweet from @MrGBIZ saying: 


"Even though I HATED the ending, I still think this movie is somewhere between OK and pretty good." 

    Then I went to bed thinking about it and when I woke up, I gave it some more thought. Now, even though I'm still mad about the ending, I realize there's no other way this movie could've ended. 

     I'm getting ahead of myself.


 Quick review before I go into details that, depending on your movie knowledge, may or may not be entering spoiler territory. So I'll keep it quick, simple and painless. Bruce Willis gives us the same typical every-man acting job he gives in, honestly, almost every movie he's ever been in. If you're a fan of every-men movies, movies where the heroes and heroines are your typical average Joes more like than unlike me, then you know this is not a complaint. The same is true for Glass as well but the irony is he's far from an everyman in this movie. He's a vigilante who is trying to to track down a serial killer known as the Horde (James McAvoy, who does more acting in this movie as a man with 20+ multiple personalities than Bruce Willis has in 40+ roles) who has just kidnapped four girls. David Dunn (Willis) has the early advantage in the fact that Kevin Crumb (McAvoy) doesn't even know Dunn exists, much less think that any body could stop him. Kevin's multiple personalities are aware of each other but one personality is much more dangerous than all of the others combined. Dunn manages to find where Crumb has the girls hidden and frees them but not before Crumb has returns. Crumb and Dunn do battle but are interrupted by a doctor who's intrigued not only by Crumb but by Dunn as well. 

     That's about as far as I can go with the plot details before we get into spoilers so let me stop right there. The action I go into detail about above all happens within the first 30 minutes. The rest of the movie is about Dr Staple's (Sarah Paulson who I thought could've been used more) attempts at getting Dunn, Crumb, and a third patient Elijah Price aka the eponymous Glass (Samuel Jackson, who's face in this movie alone may have out-acted Bruce Willis) to realize how delusion they really are. 

     Let me tell you this is a fairly gloomy movie. A lot of the early scenes are shots of Dunn on the Hunt for Crumb in the daytime but it still seems dark. Ditto once the movie moves to the mental institution that Staple runs and there's plenty of light's inside but I still felt the lighting was off. Maybe intentional? I don't know. It didn't take away much from the film. The acting was great too, even though Bruce Willis was just Bruce Willis'ing, I felt that was perfect for this movie. Jackson & McAvoy definitely did the heavy lifting here but again, let me add that Sarah Paulson was criminally underused. 

     Before I mention any other actors in this movie, let me do something I hate doing and be a little spoiler-y.  

Besides Paulson's Dr Staple, most of the main characters first appearred in previous Shayamalan movies. 

If you've seen Shayamalan's second movie UNBREAKABLE, you've met David and Elijah already. If not, stop reading this... waitwaitwait! Before I say that, let me tell you that you may have met Crumb too, in Shayaman's last movie SPLIT. 

Three other characters from those two movies pop up here as well. Spencer Treat Clark plays David's son Joseph and it wasn't until after I looked up Unbreakable that I realized he played Joseph in the original but his role here is a little meatier this time around. Charlayne Woodard also returned from Unbreakable as Elijah's mom. Last and most confusingly, Anya Taylor-Joy aka my new favorite Scream Queen returns as Casey, the Final Girl from Split. 

No, Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), baby what are you doing?

There's no clear cut reason for her to return and whenever she is on the screen she is doing the exact opposite of what I think she should be doing. I did not buy Casey possibly, improbably, suffering from Stockholm Syndrome after all she had been through. 

Bruce Willis and Spencer Treat Clark in UNBREAKABLE

All that said, if you've never seen 
any of those movies, go watch them both. Unbreakable proved to me that Shayamalan might have mastered the plot twist even more so than his breakout movie THE SIXTH SENSE did. Split technically has TWO twists you're not supposed to see coming but that second twist (sorry but yeah... SPOILER ALERT!) is the fact that it's continuing the story started in Unbreakable. Furthermore, if you've already watched the trailer for Glass, you might be able to figure out what that first Split twist is from that. Sorry. Had to be said.   

     Now, if you've only seen one movie and not the other or neither, you don't necessarily need to see those movies to get this one. In fact, I'd be willing to bet you'd like this movie more than I did because you're not expecting anything. I expected... nevermind. Just know I didn't get the ending I felt this trilogy deserved. 

     As far as the ending... Well, if you're familiar with a Shayamalan movie, you KNOW there's a twist coming because that's what he does and he carries on with that tradition here. Do I feel like he stuck the landing with this twist? Admittedly, I didn't. At first. In fact, let me repeat, I HATED it. Then when I woke up this morning and gave it further thought, I realized that this ending is perfect, not the ending I wanted nor expected and I still HATE it but it's spot on, that much I can't deny. In fact, there's usually just one route that Shayamalan could have chose to take Dunn, Crumb and any other individual who has extraordinary talents, but trust me you've seen those movies a thousand times over already so the movie was wise not to go that route. I loved the fact that Shayamalan chose to go the opposite direction. Needless to say, I didn't see this plot twist coming.      

Escape Room (2019) - Smokkee's Review

Most of my readers know I'm a sucker for a good mystery and stories whose plots starts off with lines like "6 strangers...", which means I most likely would have been a bit more anxious to see this movie than I was. Admittedly I went into Escape Room with low expectations, knowing next to nothing of the plot when I went to see it. I hadn't even watched the trailer, partly because I didn't know this movie existed. To top it off, "Escape Room" is the kind of cheesy title that has "direct to video" written all over it. I expected to at best be mildly entertained by it or, at worst, hate that I let another bad movie still 90 minutes from me. I love it when a movie surprises me in a good way. My only problem with this movie is I'm not sure I can recommend it.

I guess Zoey (Taylor Russell) never seen Hellraiser.

After an opening scene which depicts a man begging to be let out of a shrinking room on the verge of crushing the man to death until it's interrupted by the title screen, we're introduced to our six strangers. We meet ne'er do well  Ben also the guy who was getting crushed at the beginning (Logan Miller), while his at work at a Home Depot-ish type store, then a college student named Zoey (Taylor Russell) and finally a businessman named Jason (Jay Ellis) as they all in various ways receive a gift in the form of a puzzle box. These boxes would give me too many flashbacks to Hellraiser's Lemarchand Configuration cube for me to fool around with it but these people's curiosity gets the better of them. We watch them figure out the puzzle boxes until they each get rewarded with an invitation to win $1 million if they can manage to escape the Escape Room. Essentially, the Escape Room is an interactive entertainment experience akin to a Murder Mystery Party featuring a series of locked rooms where the participants must use clues to help them exit. Each winds up in a nondescript waiting room where they meet the other three participants Danny (Nik Dodani), Amanda (Deborah Ann Woll, Daredevil's Karen Page), and Mike (Tyler Labine, who had me kicking myself for not recognizing Dale of Dale And Tucker Vs Evil fame). After a few minutes of getting familiar with each other via a few antagonizing comments, they realize the game had already gotten started and soon after that, they realize the stakes are a lot higher than expected. 

And here's where I have to stop. Not much more I can tell you about the plot without spoiling it. Also, I was giving myself a headache trying to make sense of what happens. The fact that I've been thinking about it lets me know I was entertained but will anybody else be? 

  I liked this movie in the same way I love Smoking Aces, Way of the Gun, and the Saw series. In other words I was entertained throughout however there are so many plot-holes that become even more apparent once you know more about what's going on that if you tried to give this movie much thought, then like me you'd probably give yourself a headache too. If you liked any of those movies I just mentioned then you'll most likely like this movie too but if you're a stickler for coherent plots, you might want to skip this one. I say go for it.