The Meaning of J

 Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (2011)   Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked  (2011) is the bottom of the barrel as kids' movies can go. A laugh-free, painful experience with no redeeming qualities to speak. It appeals only to kids who can't say no to crap or don't have any basic thinking skills to acknowledge crap when they see it. It pains me to know this movie was an immense success at the box office while at the same time being one of those kids who watched the film. I pity the parents dragged to the theaters by their kids, forced to watch this movie to please them. (I hope the sacrifice was worth it.)    Revisiting the  Alvin and the Chipmunks  film series is something of a difficult task. Not that it's hard to judge a dreadful series of kid's movies, but to watch them again and relive the unknown cringe that came with it. But we cannot just jump into this film right away; we have to look back at the origins of this series and why this movi...

 Tom & Jerry (2021)    When a movie's development process stalls for longer than anticipated, it becomes clear that the film is stuck in development hell. This concept isn't entirely new in filmmaking, with many notable Hollywood films having gone through this process, stemming from issues that may arise during the pre-production process. While some of these films manage to escape being stuck in purgatory and see the light of day, the result will always differ in various degrees of success. Some were worth the struggle ( Alita: Battle Angel , Watchmen, Mad Max: Fury Road ) while others should have been canned right from the start ( Death Note, The Postman, The Smurfs). Sadly, in the case of today's subject, all those years spent in development were utterly wasted in what became the finished product, not being worth all the trouble to lift out of its development limbo.       Tom & Jerry is a cinematic catastrophe in every conceivable way imagina...