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The Foreigner (2017)
Revenge Plot, BUT OK/VeryGood Acting, and Some Twists
7.5/10
The title says it all. There have been so so so many revenge movies about someone deciding to become full-vigilante and kills a bunch of bad guys. This movie does a better job at mixing the subtle with the trope.
As a Jackie Chan fan, I was very impressed by seeing some semblance of his old-school choreography. The fights are actually pretty good.
Another enjoyable aspect of the movie was that falls and fighting seemed to show the toll that it took on the people evolved in the action. Reminds me of the one-shot scene (this isn't one shots) from dare-devil.
Jackie Chan's mourning father acting, seemed very accurate. The strange and persistent behavior made more sense post seeing his exceptional-fighting-skills as it becomes more very obvious that he is more than a restaurant owner. The explanation is satisfying because it makes sense, and in a typical revenge plot, you might just have and angry dad that kills a bunch of thugs, but context matters and this move did a good job.
I marked this as spoiler because I went into this movie blind, and I probably enjoyed it more for having known nothing about it. I think this movie probably deserves a 7.5 out of 10. I only gave it an 8 to push it in that direction. I hope you will also enjoy this movie.
Guns Akimbo (2019)
The Beautiful, The Ugly, & The Worse
This Movie had good things going for it. The premise is humorous enough.
You could remove the "villain" and it would be the same movie, maybe even a better movie. Style is what drove the movie, in a borderlands beat'm-up shoop'm-up killm'up kind of way. Plot was never important. So when the movie presents us with it's ugly stupid, not well thought out plot, it's kind of offensive. They should have stuck with the slap stick. Not all the humor landed, but most of it was okay. The "twist" was basically a retcon, and there were several things in the movie that a good editor could have caught, like angles that characters leave scenes etc. This is a bad movie. It had promise, it was funny, but it was bad.
Lego Masters: Movie Genres (2020)
Good Show, Small Problems, Lacks Polishing:
This review is composed of a bunch of mini critiques.
10/10 - Why should you watch this?
Obviously it is to see talented lego scultors create masterpieces. It really is amazing what these contestants can do.
1/10 - Editing
The start of episode 4 begins with the host Will Arnet, announcing it is episode 3. It's not. Bad writing, or editing, either way it made it to air. To pick on editing a bit more, the previous episode presented a forced-drama of
(spoiler-start) the to-be-eliminated crew being oblivious to having their backs turned with expected judges expecting them to give their "sales pitch." This was cheesy and unbelivable. (spoiler-end)
3/10 - Will Arnet
Whether it is the writing or the voice-actor become host, his humor is cringy and even if the purpose of it is to be forced, it is not entertaining. The Office does a good job at presenting awkward situations in a humorous way. But everyone laughs and acquiesces to whatever awkward thing Will imposes upon them. It makes me feel bad for him.
7/10 - Challenges / Reality-TV-Show-Gimmick
(spoiler-start) Mashing up movie genre's like "thriller" (which alone is difficult to portray in Lego's) and "romance". I'm impressed the contestants figured out what to do at all. (spoiler-end)
7/10 - Judges
The Judges give constructive feedback at least more than half the time. The other half they just give thumbs downs to what people are doing without acknowledging that if they someone's build and they have to restart that it's going to be awkward/redundant later for them to appear to obliviously commentate on how that particular contestant chose to start over. Probably bad writing.
6/10 - Golden Brick Mechanic
The use of awarding this benefit is inconsistent, and the mystery of when it might come back into play takes away from the competitive component of the show and replaces it with RNG (chaos) making it seem like it doesn't matter who has the best build.
10/10 - Learn Lego
This episode introduces a brief segment explaining a brief technicality for building. It is probably something they should have done in previous episodes top help viewers better understand the challenges of the contestants instead of simply ooh'ing and awe'ing at the finished spectacle.
FINAL SCORE 6.3/10.0
This show has a lot of promise. I don't know if Will is just not a good fit, or it needs better funding for the writers. I'm sure it's difficult to script a reality TV show around Lego's, but announcing the wrong episode shouldn't make it to air. The Creations Are Beautiful and I have a lot of hope that they show will get better in time.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (2019)
Difficult to Learn Easy to Master
This turns on it's head the typical philosophy in the gaming world: Easy to Learn Difficult to Master. Once you "get it" all the pieces seem to come into place, and in the context of your very, VERY, VERY! frustrating struggles -- there is a HUGE sense of satisfaction when you "get gud" and absolutely destroy the foes who used to give you a hard time.
The game usually gives you multiple ways to achieve your goal, and also allows gives you multiple paths to pursue so if something appears to difficult and you die an embarrassing amount of times you can always just work on one of the others paths until you either get better or acquire better stats/gear.
The combat, though initially and maybe post intially, and maybe post-post initially is very frustrating, once you finally get it -- it's truly a masterpiece and makes you feel good for having mastered it, and successfully employing it against your foes. The introduction of a "posture" system is novel and I wish for new games that they would just straight up copy it, IP forgiving.
The game is nuanced, Even though you can look up how-to's and guides online that can teach you these things it's very satisfying to learn them yourself. On my second play-though I was still learning new things towards the end of the game that impacted the entire game.
The game trains you to look for secrets and be very observant. This doesn't become an annoying or tedious task, and you never feel cheated for having missed an item or special location.
I would give 10/10 BUT, the way to complete some of the endings, seems so convoluted and confusing that you are very unlikely to discover this on your own without having been told how to do it by someone else. Also There are some areas of the game that are just so dark and there appears to be no indication that you are safe to travel to, when the entire game teaches you that jumping into black or any kinda abyss is a bad thing there are some instances where you need to make a "leap of faith."
Good Luck!