Colossal (2016) - 2/5

This movie has a solid pulp sci-fi setup that doesn’t know where to go with the premise. It pretends to be about abusive relationships but has very muddled messaging that wrecks the landing. Characters do dumb, out-of-character things apparently to pad the runtime, and the resolution doesn’t make up for the annoyance along the way.

Closest comparison: It’s like the small-town self-reflection of The Majestic combined with the one-note indie sci-fi of Primer.

Setting: Small Town Drama
Plot: Short Story Sci-Fi
Tone: Relationship Drama

Beauty and the Beast (2017) - 2/5

The CGI in this movie is solidy in the uncanny valley, from the Beast to Mrs. Pots. The songs they added don't feel like the original songs and sound like they could have come from Andrew Lloyd Webber's cutting room floor. Most lines they kept from the orignal have intentionally been spoken differently, I guess in an attempt to make it new, but now they sound less like real people saying real things than their cartoon counterparts did. All of that would have put it at a 3/5 for me, but there's a ton of politically motivated material in this movie. It's basically Liberal Virtue Signaling: The Movie, and it hits on enough topics that it's distracting. Every person in the movie we're supposed to like is either gay or a feminist or a cross-dresser or black or in a multiracial couple, etc. Every person who is bad is white, uses guns, doesn't read books, etc. On the whole, the movie is just about as bad as the unwatchably terrible Jungle Book (2016) live action remake, and it's just a big waste of time.