Imaginary (2024)

A little girl befriends a vintage bear named Chauncey who proceeds to make her to do bad things; meanwhile, her tortured stepmom appears to be plagued by repressed memories of the past. This one only really gets good towards the end, but it never manages to fulfill the potential of its limitless design. You'd think for a movie dealing in the untapped power of imagination, it would be a lot more creative and colorful, but it ends up looking very low budget and murky on the screen. So yeah, kind of a mess, but basically what you'd expect from a diluted PG-13 horror flick.

I kind of can't get that Chauncey jingle out of my head, though...

1½ M.C. Escher staircases out of 5

KICK-ASS 2 [2013]

For the sequel to Matt Vaughan's highly entertaining, hyper-violent comic book film Kick-Ass, Jeff Wadlow steps into the director's chair.
It's a little darker, bloodier and deals with some fairly serious subject matter but still manages to toss in some out of place one-liners and juvenile crudeness that will surely please the youthful minded.  I love the idea of these losers in life joining together to form a Justice League of their own only to be rivalled by a team of super villains who turn to be quite deadly.  It doesn't have the same shock-factor as the original did, so they wisely don't try to recreate that and instead opt for some interesting background to the Hit-Girl character, while Kick-Ass himself is left to wander around aimlessly.  Not as fun as the original but will probably please it's league of off-kilter fans.

3 sleepy shark tanks out of 5