rchevalier-37303 Reviews

Death and Other Details (2024)

An interesting premise destroyed

[3/10 · 7 March 2024]

Locked room mysteries should be fun with lots of twists and turns. However those twists should have some basis in logic and flow and not exist solely based on the blind throw of a dart and the random acts of juvenile writing. Couple that with a vacuous and flat leading lady and a leading man whose accent vacillates every two minutes despite superb performances in other situations.

What takes nine episodes could have been better done in four with some adult writing, cogent editing and decent acting. While some believe that this is a cousin to the excellent Murder On The Orient Express or Knives Out or the really lousy Death on the Nile it is more like an unwanted child. I did stick to the end and while the tying up was ok, setting up a sequel just nailed the coffin shut.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023– )

Started well, ended badly

[5/10 · 14 January 2024]

I write this at the end of S1E10 which may or may not be the end of the series. It starts off interesting but like everything from Apple quickly devolves into pedantic soap opera with entire episodes that deliver nothing at all.

There is the Hollyweird propensity to use pretty over capable, and I expected that. I no longer blame poor acting on the cast but place that on the director and the writers.

This series has to fit inside an existing timeline which could make things very difficult because the future state is already written but given the current love affair with the concept,(although no understanding) of multiverse, actions in the show could easily be used to force a branch. Goodness knows EVER other production house has done this to death.

I was impressed by Wyatt Russell who proves to be capable of depth, something never seen in his last big outing in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier where he played an I beam with all the depth of a desert puddle. The teaming of father and son was well done, and the actors portraying the characters in the 1950s did I think a good job, but were less encumbered by woke banality than the 2015 characters, who either are barely passable actors or the victims of execrable writing and or horrible direction.

Like so many Apple productions, end this one here. Don't bring it back for more seasons as that has been regularly proven to take a passable idea and turn it into mindless sludge with no direction and crap writing.

Kill Shot (2023)

Excreable

[1/10 · 13 January 2024]

It takes a great deal of effort to write act direct and produce a film that is so truly horrible. The opening is set in Afghanistan and ranks up with the ATeam tv show as most rounds discharged with the least number of hits. Of course howlin mad murdoch's baseball cap can out act every one of these cretins. Seriously I have seen better work from a bunch of kindergarteners high on sugar. The plot meanders along in a manner of a plodding mule and we see an alleged former Seal acting as a mountain guide. He has numerous flashbacks to a life with a wife and child and we get option a where the marriage is broken because the kid has passed away and his wife is a banging the local plumber. He keeps seeing this blonde and they keep making goo goo eyes at each other. She's cute and doing a very bad waitress job but of course they will connect to go into the mountains where the morons from the opener are looking for the money they stole that has crashed in mountains of Canada. The plane could of course never have made the trip from the Mideast more likely it couldn't make it 100 miles. What follows is a near endless running gunfight in the hills that is as monotonous as watching paint dry. Just incredibly bad.

Gen V (2023– )

Infantile writing

[2/10 · 8 November 2023]

I get that I am not the audience for this show and I should not have wasted the time to watch it, particularly as I found its progenitor so laughably bad in terms of writing, acting, directing and cinematography. This show is even worse apparently measuring its success on how many gallons of fake gore it can spew in each episode. None of the characters is particularly likeable although Moreau shows some promise if supported by a good script and competent direction. The others do have some good moments but they are too few and far between. The best performer is Patrick Schwarzenegger and his character is dead, which impacts his effectiveness.

Invasion (2021–2024)

Could we drag this out longer please?

[3/10 · 24 September 2023]

I think that the principal actress was great in the first season. And then it ended and should have stayed that way. Apple Studios typical, each episode is overly long, excessively woke and exhausting. You develop no empathy for the characters and the whining children are so annoying, you start hoping that the aliens kill them The school adolescents are accurately portrayed as annoying self centred little creeps. This is much less Sci Fi and much more soap opera. Most of the characters are flat and unappealing, and execrable writing shuts down any successful character building. Could have been better with actual writers and a solid editor, but like Apple Studios' Silo turns into a sludge mess in short order.

Lioness (2023– )

Just another soap opera

[2/10 · 24 September 2023]

I had marginal hopes for this series. The concept is based on a real program and what I had expected and hoped for was a military drama. However, what it really is is another soap opera with so much woke, it could have been made by Apple. The characters are two dimensional and with respect, Zoe Saldana is not a good actor. The primary plot lines are weak and the secondary plot lines are mostly sobbing dramas. While the filmmaking is good, the editing needs to be much more aggressive because each episode drags like a front wheel drive car with no rear wheels. It could have been great, but it's not, and is indicative of the lack of quality writing coming out of Hollywood in recent years. Flat and tiresome.

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

Sorry bad writing and making Thor campy doesn't work

[5/10 · 10 September 2022]

I was worried that this would build on Ragnarok in all the wrong ways. Where Ragnarok had writing to provide a framework for the comedy, this film doesn't have that. The story is weak and fragmented. Bale is excellent but he cannot carry the film on his own. Hemsworth has gone from a believable hero to a chemically enhanced gymrat. It's like all the steroids removed his personality. More Kiev is too much. He should be comic relief not a vehicle for Waititi to "act". Portman seems tired of the whole thing. Just waiting fo r it to end. And while it is not ridiculously long it is long to watch. Some of the effects especially at the beginning are really lousy and look like high school CGI. It needs an editor badly to keep things moving. It's like they kept way too much filler. A setup for a fight with Hercules sounds both boring and a reach. Jane arriving in Valhalla is a nice touch but it took a long time to get there. They say Thor will return. Hopefully in a better movie.

One Way (I) (2022)

Did not make it to the end

[2/10 · 4 September 2022]

There was only one surprise in the 17 minutes that I lasted into this movie and that was that Colson Baker aka Machine Gun Kelly did a better job than expected. Not a lot of depth but better than anything his girlfriend Megan Fox has ever done. Other than that what was supposed to be suspense was really just tedium. Bouncy cinematography and questionable shot angles don't help. Artsy like film school work without the experience needed to make it work. I saw no evidence of actual director work. I also don't think much of the colourist work. Too much focus on dark blue LUTS which is tiring for a viewer.

The Old Man (2022– )

Great start lousy finish

[6/10 · 1 September 2022]

I had started listening to the audiobook just as this came on Prime. I stopped listening to the book because the series forked away from the novel quickly. Now I doubt that I will finish the novel.

Lithgow and Bridges are excellent. Brenneman starts strong but the writers then botch the character and I kept waiting for her to get killed off. As it is we have no idea what happens to her and I don't care.

Unfortunately the episodes become overly wordy and tiring to watch. I took a break after episode 3 as I was close to packing it in. This could have been done in six episodes with some decent writing and effective editing. Lots of pointless loops that don't add to the story at all and just provide space for more talking.

What finally killed it was episode 7. The twist could be seen coming for miles so it wasn't particularly twisty and the entire episode was rushed to complete the series and all in a bad way. It's like producers called and said we're out of money, wrap it up where the writers were ready to drag it out even longer. I don't know if the director changes over the series but it seemed to me that it has. It started well, slowed to glacial and then accelerated into an unsatisfactory ending with prominent characters vanishing or being killed off like pointless cannon fodder.

The good mark is for the start and the potential plus the primary actors. Otherwise it would be a 2. So very disappointing.

Day Shift (2022)

An excellent fun little vamp movie

[8/10 · 16 August 2022]

No award seeking nonsense. No wile stupidity. Just simple fun. Foxx is good fun. Snoop Dogg is a blast and much taller than I expected.

There's no deep story, no emotional anguish, it's just pretty mindless fun and I think that's great. Plus the villain is properly villainess, the spunky kid is indeed spunky, the ex wife doesn't get the guy and the Union rep is played perfectly.

Don't know what people were expecting otherwise.

The Siege of Robin Hood (2022)

Quit after 7 minutes

[1/10 · 2 August 2022]

This was so bad I gave up after the final Saban films acknowledgement at the beginning of the movie. No spoilers no reviews I just gave up because the first seven minutes were so awful.

Code Name Banshee (2022)

Would be Jane Wick. But isn't

[2/10 · 2 August 2022]

Let's be clear. The is a Banderas drive by. His screen time is minimal. Guns never need a reload, and while King makes an effort she blinks on every shot and has no actual shooter training. She shakes so much she couldn't hit the broad side of the barn. Very slow to start to get to the last fifteen minutes of action which tries for Wick like choreography and fails. There is no real colour so plainly the colourist either forgot to do any correction from the flat captures or applied a LUT designed to achieve the look of uncorrected log footage. There is a side story that is supposed to support the film that is cut so badly it makes no sense at all. I was hoping for a decent time waster. This film does not rise to that level.

Elvis (2022)

Great performances, needs editing

[9/10 · 30 July 2022]

All the actors do a great job in this film. Butler is completely believable and Hanks is hateable from minute one. If you don't want to shoot Colonel Tom Parker in the face you aren't really alive.

Whether the performances are due to good direction I cannot say but some of the sequences are awkward and add nothing to the film. And that's the big downside. It's too long. By about 30 minutes that a good editor could have removed without hurting the story at all. Too bad really because I was quite exhausted by the end not from an "emotional roller coaster" but from sitting through a film that needed to move along better.

The Gray Man (2022)

Better than expected

[8/10 · 23 July 2022]

Gosling surprises in this film. I still don't see him as the Court Gentry from the books but he does a decent job. His Gentry is more the directors' than Greaney's. Evans is successful breaking the link to Captain America but the character might as well be a cartoon twisting his moustache like Snidely Whiplash. Thornton and Woodard are the most credible actors. The actor playing Carmichael is weak. De Armas is good although not as good as her Bond film role and her accent changes with each scene. All that said it passes believability early in favour of big destruction which is not like the books. Also this Gentry is overly inclined not to go to guns in favour of a long hand to hand fight. Not in keeping with the books. The origin of Sierra Six portrayed is completely changed and the most recent novel does a superior origin story. It's setup for sequels and I expect they will come. Not unlike the Chris Pratt Terminal List series.

Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

Too bad there's no story

[4/10 · 18 July 2022]

As pleasant as it is to see popular characters again, they need something more than endless Dino chases to create a story. The plot where fragments exist involve yet another maniacal business person who is willing to destroy the world to rule it aided by an odd band of thugs including a blond Asian woman with focus on fashion sense and appearing evil. In fact I kept expecting to hear Dr Evil's mwahaahaa from her mouth whenever she appeared. This role will not help her career. Fortunately Bryce Dallas Howard has proven herself a credible director as her scenes involve a lot of resigned fear and scenery chewing. The utter moral reversal of BD Wong's character stinks of retconning.

It feels like it was written and directed by Michael Bay and there is no compliment in that.

It's passably ok although long and tiresome as a time waster but I do hope that we've reached the end of this series. With decent writing and an actual story it could have been better.

The Terminal List (2022– )

Excellent adaptation

[9/10 · 7 July 2022]

Having read all the Jack Carr books before this I was cautious going into this because of the butchering done to stories generally when they get made into episodic TV or movies. This adaptation is different from the book in sections and order but at a high level is very similar. The book is both more violent and has much less time wandering in flashbacks. I felt the flashbacks were overdone and the series could have benefitted from tighter editing.

I will say that I preferred the treatment of Ben and Hartley as a viewer despite the big differences from the book which is more emotionally satisfying. Pratt's Reece is a different Reece definitely softer. It's not bad just different and those who don't read the books will not know.

In the end the series sets viewers up for the next book in the series presuming that there is one.

Last Seen Alive (2022)

Decent film for a quiet night

[6/10 · 4 June 2022]

Gerard Butler is quite good. His real accent slips out and it makes him more real. He's also not mr super warrior which is unusual and pleasant. Jaimie Alexander is hardly in the film and that's ok because the character is tiresome. The detective is well played but the rest of the supporting cast are really just there.

Cinematography is ok. It drags at the start and so feels much longer than it actually is which is not a good thing. My biggest frustration is the colour work which is very greenish and flat. Personally I find it off putting.

I would have liked it more with different LUTS and more of Butler's actual accent.

Memory (I) (2022)

Neeson does a decent job but...

[5/10 · 30 May 2022]

Not awful and Neeson plays onset Alzheimers very well. That is depressing and the story doesn't carry well. Pearce is strong and believable. The beautiful Monica Bellucci is less convincing and turns in a weak performance. It's not time lost but it's also not a rewatch.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

Weak story, jumbled edit, just not good

[2/10 · 30 May 2022]

Actors followed direction I expect but the film was just long and tedious. It needs a good editing, a good story and good direction. Won't be a repeat viewer.

Morbius (2022)

Ok time waster

[3/10 · 17 May 2022]

This is not a festival of acting brilliance or even great writing. It's tightly edited so it keeps moving along well but the overall story is weak and completely oredictable. You know Milo will be the bad guy, that Martine will be killed and resurrected as a vampire. The looping in of Keaton's Vulture is rushed and has no explanation or point.

Morbius is a sad figure or should generate pathos on the part of the viewer. This doesn't. There's little to make one care about the character. The FBI agents are there like traffic cones but with less impact.

For all the hype it's underwhelming.

Operation Mincemeat (2021)

Well done and well acted

[7/10 · 16 May 2022]

I first read the book about 47 years ago. Much information was still covered by the Official Secrets Act. This film opens up some of the missing parts. The core story is true and the ups and downs sound right. I don't know if the romantic subplot is representing reality or not, and don't care because I find these things tedious. Forth is excellent. Macfadyen is directed to be a bit of an ass and he is tiresome when he is forced to be the jealous whiny jerk Jason Isaac plays his usual conniving asshole role. Annoying and forgettable, one of the film's downsides.

Still things considered it's a good film and I recommend it to those interested in spy world of WWII.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)

Long and tedious

[4/10 · 16 May 2022]

This is not a Magical Harry Potter movie. This is a political movie with some magical elements. It needs an actual screenwriter and an actual editor. I'm sure that the people doing those jobs followed directions well but this movie is sleep inducing and by the end you probably don't care one way or the other how it ends. Story continuity is horrible. Mikkelsen is a solid actor but it's so political he's barely the bad guy. Too long too flat.

The Batman (2022)

Okay. Didn't get emotionally engaged

[6/10 · 20 April 2022]

The director's intent is a dark and cold film and he succeeds. The characters are very two dimensional and none create a connection to me as a viewer. I'm distanced from the story and while the film is ok I won't rewatch it.

It's also very long, too long I think. Normally this is due to poor editing but in this case the story is too long and convoluted. That's a writer issue. Sorry folks not a winner to me.

The Contractor (2022)

No significant story

[5/10 · 5 April 2022]

The film documents how governments treat their military when the military person is no longer useful to some ranking idiot. This is a known truth and is not the reason for the film only a setup to make the protagonist available for a bad situation that takes a long time to arrive. From that point on there's action but the story is weak and for the most part the actors are leaden. Sutherland phones his work in. Direction and editing need a lot of work. Pine is capable but doesn't deliver.

Moonfall (2022)

Pretty decent science fiction disaster movie

[7/10 · 2 April 2022]

The actors do a good job, the story is fun and of course unbelievable but if you just sit to enjoy it's good fun. If you are looking for deep meaning you're in the wrong place. If you just want some escapist fun with a cool science fiction twist this is for you.