paulofigueiredo2580 Reviews

The Night House (2020)

Dead corpses beneath your house? Better take a shower

[6/10 · 10 June 2023]

Yeah so this movie has a lot of well done dramatic tension and build up until the one hour mark. It estabilishes well the protagonist's personality and why, despite the house showing her weird things, she decides to remain in it and unravel the secrets of her dead husband's hidden life. It's all very believable until she discovers dead bodies by accident below an adjacent cabin's floor. Any sane person would flee the house and call the cops. However, for the sake of the plot, our protagonist chooses to go back inside the main house, leave a message on her friend's phone and goes for a relaxing shower. Man, i couldn'l help myself laughing out loud at this point as it completely took me out of the bleak atmosphere the movie was up until then proposing. The movie deals with loss, letting go, unhealthy attachments and dementia, but since so many suspense/horror movies have done this, The Night House had to rely on story telling and performances to differentiate itself from the crowd. Performances are overall good, however, the third act doesn't live up to the well built tension of the first hour, concluding in a forgettable uninspired note.

M3GAN (2022)

Reinforcing silicon valley's sociopathic traits

[5/10 · 9 June 2023]

The most interesting part of M3gan is that it's true that these new inventions usually come from sociopaths who are lonely, career-centric and treat social interactions as commodities. And that's why a well succeeded career centric lonely lesbian who uses tinder as her primary source of romantic relationships comes up with a doll that can replace her as a mother figure to a grieving child. Other than that, this is Chucky 2.0. There's literally nothing else to say. It's predictable, boring, not scary at all and the topic of the importance of parenthood is touched on an extremely superficial way. At least i was entertained all the way through despite all the predictability of it.

Cobra Kai: The Rise (2021) Season 4, Episode 10

I'll argue it's the worse season so far

[7/10 · 24 January 2022]

Being captivated by how well written the first 2 seasons were, Cobra Kai quickly became a favorite series of mine.

It was witty, well paced, comedic and dramatic at the same. Generally well thought out. The third season was a bit of a step back but not by much. Some filler episodes which dragged on a tad too long on teen drama with barely any real character development. Also, the characters would change their minds too often and too quickly, making it at all seem more like a soap opera.

This fourth season doubles down on this last aspect. These people change their minds just between two cut scenes, it's incredible. The series lacks coherence and it seems like that too many ideas were thrown to the table to see with sticks. The problem is that they pull these ideas out right in the next episode like they regretted them. It's confusing at times.

This makes the story not flow well at all. Terry SIlver and Eli Hawk's characters are fine examples of this. They undergo so many tweeks and changes in their personalities in just one episode that it's just impossible to understand where are they coming from when reacting to different situations. Samantha's character is another example of obnoxious development because she spends the entire season just complaining about everything and everyone.

The only interesting character development happens in the relationship between Amanda and Tory, to which i sincerely hoped we got more airplay and i hope we get more of this dynamic in season 5.

As for Johnny and Daniel they don't change one bit. Zero development honestly. Johnny at one point makes fun at pronouns and feminism, and spends the remaining season being shoved aside as the resident caveman, while depressive Hawk wins the tournament after his new found purpose in life: a girl kissed him before the fights and now he's a new man. Hilarious.

Miguel turns into a shallow character who abandons the competition to go find his long lost dad and set the season 5 in motion.

The final decision is given to the women's fight. Or did we have any doubt this is Netflix?

The ending is surprisingly ok and against the grain which i admire them for pulling it off. Silver's trap in the end is another twist in his motivations which change constantly throughout the season. So in that regard it comes out of the blue. But not really.

All in all, Cobra Kai is entertaining but bizarre. Too much fluctuation and too many diverging ideas made the series hard to follow in regards specially to character development. The worst season so far, but still, a positive show overall.

Star Wars: The Bad Batch (2021–2024)

Started great, going average

[7/10 · 27 July 2021]

The pilot deserved all praise possible. Great characters, set and action. It was pretty easy to get invested in the Bad Batch outcasts, But slowly the series turns into what the Mandalorian already showed us. Father figure/youngling relationship, with the youngster getting in trouble and needing rescue, and slowly showing special characteristics that will make the youngling turn into someone special. This is bottom line most of Star Wars stories. A young person needs a tutor to guide them into adulthood, showing the audience how important it is children to have proper guidance. However, Bad Batch slowly becomes the adventures of Omega and the group of clone misfits is relegated to a secondary role. Which is a shame, because each member has such a great personality. There is tremendous potential in this series and i binged all first 13 episodes in 2 days, but i'd hope for more of that first episode in the future.

The Walking Dead: Diverged (2021) Season 10, Episode 21

The Boring Dead

[1/10 · 30 March 2021]

These last episodes have been the worst of TWD ever. Entire episodes dedicated to one/two characters with absolutely no development to said characters or overall story is disgraceful. All these episodes do beside bore people to death is suck the wind from the sails and perpetuate the long slow inglorious end of the show. Nothing meaningful happens, characters sod and depress, destroy stuff and imagine things. The writing skill of the people in charge of these series is abysmal and should just quit in shame. So much potential wasted in the hands of incompetence. Go watch the movie Crash for example or Babel, or Traffic, on how to tell compelling multidimensional stories without losing pace, character focus and the interest of the viewers. Who in their right mind would give this and latest 3-4 episodes a positive review? I don't know, and honestly I don't care. This show is completely buried.

To the Lake (I) (2019–2022)

The walking irritables

[5/10 · 3 February 2021]

Want to be irritated by every dialogue and decision of every character of a tv series? Watch this. There's a armed gang of rapist pillagers after you? Might as well waste hours shoving everything from the house into your cars, might as well have family discussions in the middle of the road, might as well take the main road instead of a shortcut, might as well walk around slowly with hands in your pockets when one of the cars breaks down because you got the wrong fuel and instead of shoving the passengers in the other vehicles and move fast, you prefer to dialogue. The walking irritables manage to be as obnoxious as they can possibly be in their decisions and unidimensionality. The ex wife manages to tick every box of unstable mess of a human being and by episode 2 we already know who is going to trigger the plot knots. These people also manage in 8 episodes to run into almost every danger imaginable. Feels like a videogame where we go from boss to boss, one worst tham the other. The first episode was great until the armed gang appeared. There was this regular people perspective of a terrible pandemic, but towards the end it turns into another regular apocalyptic action series. This series has potential, I just hope they're able to dose things up better for season 2. There's no need to throw every card on table at once.

The Walking Dead: World Beyond: The Tyger and the Lamb (2020) Season 1, Episode 3

Not getting any better

[3/10 · 19 October 2020]

First and second episodes were complete trash. But we know that sometimes tv shows start slow, progressively introduce their characters and after the first few spins, things start to get interesting. However, this third episode brings once again nothing truly appealing. The writers created a second hand world with cliche characters and problems/dilemmas very similar to the ones we've already seen in TWD and FTWD. This spin off is bringing absolutely nothing new to the table, besides recycling everything done before. It gets tiring really fast, even more when the writers/producers seem blind and deaf to the criticism surrounding TWD and FTWD of being severely dependent on long exposition dialogues that slow horrendously the pace of action. In World Beyond, there's even a slow motion sequence when someone's life is at stake, which tries the emphasize the moment, but instead makes it even more ridicule. Not to mention the cheesy narrated monologues during tense action scenes. It would help them a lot having a look at the comments here. They could have an idea of what's wrong and what people truly expect from a tv series like this. Instead, these people seem to live in a bubble, impervious to critique. This is still not enough. By a long shot. You have the chance of making this a very interesting series, all you have to do is listen to your audience and look for good sources of inspiration. And oh that British flag and semi-dictator with british accent were are huge unintended comedic relief...

The Walking Dead: World Beyond: The Blaze of Gory (2020) Season 1, Episode 2

Uninteresting spin off

[2/10 · 12 October 2020]

The 2 stars I'm giving are basically for visual and special effects, because everything else is a complete waste of time. Unlikable characters, unconvincing actors, a plot so thin that could exhausted in half an episode, even the make up and clothes departments are completely missing the point of what a post apocalyptic time would be. It gets really tiring to see TWD tv universe keep on making their actors look spotless and clean. Their clothes always stainless and tailor made. Hairstyles on point and full make up treatment. The black haired actress looks more like a insta influencer than a character in a post apocalyptic zombie world. People in charge of these issues should take a look at the movie The Road and draw a bit of inspiration from it. This series also suffers from the exact same problem TWD and FTWD are facing: the issues the characters face are created by themselves and their stupid decisions. I wonder how these people would survive in a world like this when their survival instincts are an absolute disgrace. Your path leads you to a huge crater filled with zombies, abandoned cars and buses, there's dust, smoke and fog that makes visibility really hard. What do you do? Go right through it, or find a way around it? Of course you go through it...without stupid decisions there would be no TWD universe, right? When you force characters into unreasonable scenarios and you make them do things that are completely dumb, you lose the interest from your audience. How do you expect people to relate with your characters when all they do is contrary to common sense? These kids look like they're trying. Also the idea of having them cross a lot of country might be promising. Let's see how it goes from here, but they need to do a whole lot better than this.

Captain Marvel (2019)

Writing this while watching the movie

[1/10 · 20 September 2020]

It's a good hint on how boring it is. I care not for the "female empowerment" thing, I only care about watching a decent movie and Captain Marvel isn't one. There's absolutely no character development, only a black box that restores memory and becomes a decisive change of events. Dialogues are simply atrocious, sometimes it feels like I'm watching a bad sitcom. The main actress was so good on "The Room", here she becomes an overpowered lifeless wooden plank. This movie is completely forgettable and it will go down as one of the worst moments in the MCU. Oh the credits are rolling. Thank God.

The Handmaid's Tale: Baggage (2018) Season 2, Episode 3

Subverting expectations as a modus operandi

[1/10 · 3 April 2020]

It was still during the first season that I came to the conclusion that this show would use this mechanic plentiful, as I saw the same situation occurring over and over. Ex. a maid would stand against the system and would face consequences, always some kind of horrific torture. In the first episodes this was necessary to explain to the viewer how brutal the system in fact was and how awful punishments were. However, quickly this turns into the series modus operandi. There's no true development to the story. Just isolated character development. The story itself has stayed the same since the beginning. Characters will do something against the system and the system punishes the transgression with more torture. This is pretty much what we were getting. The first episode of season 2 brought us a welcoming breath of fresh air, as our maid finally sees the light at end of the tunnel. The whole first 2 episodes elaborate the situation, leading us to a 3rd episode exclusively dedicated to an escape sequence. The unnecessary frequent cuts on the action, insisting on more or less interesting flashbacks, pave way to a "subverting expectations" apotheosis, where everything goes back to the same point where the first episode starts. If this is what they call storytelling nowadays, I prefer sticking with the classics. If you like masochism, this is the right tv show for you. I'm done with it.

The Theory of Everything (2014)

Was really the movie about Hawking?

[7/10 · 20 August 2019]

Don't get me wrong, it's a good dramatic movie with great performances, but in the end i couldn't stop asking myself why in the middle of all that melancholia, the character that has more development is actually his wife? She ends up having most moral dilemmas, character development and actual screentime than Stephen. It was like the movie was trying to send the message that if it weren't for her, Hawking wouldn't made it. In fact, behind a great man there's always a great woman and vice versa, but since we were seeing a biopic about Hawking, kind of would made more sense for the argument and the camera to spend more time with him and less with his wife, particularly spending so much time around the obvious infidelity, of which we are deprived to see acomplished probably out of virtue signaling from the director. From a "i love you no matter what" we come to the conclusion of "i have loved you", once again giving Jane almost a moral power over Hawking. Something like "you couldn't done it if it weren't for me, so i'm free from all my sins". It's a subversive dialogue of a woman having power over a crippled man. And it all happens when Hawking admits God exists, giving Jane a triumphant final moment. Hawking seems to come to the conclusion, that she stayed more out of stubborn faith than for love. All these dilemmas together with stellar performances, made this movie a very gratifying watch, even if i don't agree with paths taken.

Fear the Walking Dead (2015–2023)

210 Words Per Minute

[4/10 · 19 August 2019]

As I'm writing this I just finished the 10th episode of the season 5 and I must ask a serious question: who writes this thing. It follows a simple phormula. For every 15 seconds of action you get 10 minutes of boring dramatic dialogue. It's like what made The Walking Dead such a boredom fest came claiming lordship over FTWD. People who write this need to understand that a soap opera tone doesn't go well with horror and zombies. Yes the drama involving the survivors and their struggles are important, but you need tension and actual moments of peril to convince us that the post apocalyptic undead world is still a threat. Without it, zombies are just cannon fodder with no relevance to the series.

Wayward Pines (2015–2016)

First good season, awful second

[5/10 · 6 August 2019]

Finally binge-watched Wayward Pines and i must say, for the first few episodes i was extremely thrilled by it. Great story, performances, mysterys and overall concept. Everything was interesting and compelling. However, the last few episodes it kind of let me down, mostly because i think the answers were given way to quickly. I was less engaged because the characters weren't progressing well (in one episode they're fanatics, in the next they're suddenly rebels!) and the story felt rushed. The end is somewhat satisfactory, although not perfect. It left a lot of things unadressed and lose ends. Still, i enjoyed it a lot and it deserves easilly a 7 out of 10. The first 4 episodes, are 10 out 10 worthy. Now the second season is a whole different story. It lacks everything the first had and adds in illogical screewriting and a ton of nonsense. The deaths of long beloved characters in such emotionless ways, just to dispatch them from the series. The introduction of new characters that without any kind of development, suddenly are taken big decisions. But nonsense is the keyword here, without any doubt. Motivations, solutions, decisions... simply some of the worst screenwriting i've ever witnessed. Some actors end up saving the season with compelling efforts. Such as the characters of CJ, the doctor and Kerry shine in their shoes, and if something kept me from turning off the damn thing, it were them. I won't spoil the series for you, even if it's a 4 years old tv show. It deserves a watch, give merit to the first 4 episodes of the first season, and lower your expectations for the remaining thing.

Fear the Walking Dead: The End of Everything (2019) Season 5, Episode 5

Going downhill

[4/10 · 1 July 2019]

I enjoyed the first few seasons of FTWD. I even at one point had the opinion that it surpassed TWD in all parameters. However seasons 4 & 5 are going downhill with new found emphasis on sloggy episodes that add little to nothing to the characters or their development. It's like they were envious of FTWD growing success and applied the TWD recipe to drag it down a awful notch. Season 5 has been terrible in all senses. Barely any action sequences, development story wise is pretty much non existent and there's this feeling that the characters are literally stranded not only in a physical location, but actually being held hostages of a flawed script. Everything that's been said and done in these 5 episodes could easily took at most 2. The series is grinding the wheel, waiting for the so called apotheosis in the last two episodes. Until then you get these slow, boring episodes of two women getting a lesbian moment out of the blue, because... why not? We all know that this agenda has been forced into our entertainment, we as well just accept that somewhere along it's journey, our series will have lgbt representatives. It's like forcing for the sake of inclusion and diversity, and not because it fits the narrative. In this case, the sole purpose of this episode was that kiss towards the end. Not that the series needed to tell us that she's gay, (we already knew) or that it was truly important for the plot. It was solely for the sake of "hey we have gay kisses in a zombie apocalypse. We're veeeery inclusive". When a series goes as far as using success as a background for other purposes other than to tell the story itself, it's when it all falls to pieces. There are better options out there in terms of entertainment. I hope this shows gets on track very soon.

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

Just my opinion

[6/10 · 26 April 2019]

I absolutely loved Infinity War. It is without any doubt or second thought, the best Marvel movie and among the best superhero movies ever. With this said I was super hyped to see where the second part would go history wise, after such epic ending of the first film. And what they do? They kill Thanos in the first 15 minutes. I know it served the plot somehow, but the emotional connection with the main villain was completely gone.

After this they proceed with a dull series of events portraying depressed heroes and coming up with this "quantum realm time travel" thing to give the remaining heroes a chance to turn back time and revive their fallen comrades.

Scattered around the world, the solitary, remorseful, depressed, suicidal or obese heroes get together and devise a plan to get the Infinity Stones again.

From this point onward until the last roughly 40 minutes the movie turns into a deja vu trip. We get to see a little bit of previous MCU movies, they mess with the past, even giving Loki an escape path. They intertwine realities and dimensions to get the stones and finally Thanos realizes what happens in the future and intervenes.

But this is not the real Thanos. It's a mere copycat to whom we didn't develop emotional attachment to. We didn't see him going through character development, like our heroes did. The only difference between this and the real old Thanos is that this one now aims to destroy the universe and create a new one. So the drive and ambition of the first Thanos which turned him into such a great ambiguous villain is now radicalized and he ends up becoming another regular villain with thirst for power. This completely disconnected me from the novie.

The main fight sequences are great, the return of the fallen heroes from the first movie was expected but pretty well done. The all-women moment defending Spiderman was unecessary, Captain America worthy of Thor's hammer was lame as hell and passing the shield to a black guy instead of Bucky felt politicized.

I'm kind of glad Cap Marvel ended up having little importance in the whole thing, and the protagonism went all to the old timers. They deserved the protagonism.

All in all, I think this movie was almost weaker copy of the first, with the difference of who snaps the finger in the end. Even the humor is 10x worse. They lost a chance to do something unforgettable, and ended up with an overly dramatic rehashed sequel.

I saw Infinity War four times. This one I won't even see a second.

Doctor Strange (2016)

Strange movie

[5/10 · 1 November 2016]

I had fun seeing this movie. It's an overall good popcorn flick. But if you are, as i'am, a little demanding about movies, you'll feel in the end that they gave a great amount of attention to the digital/special effects aspect of the movie and very little to the screenplay. In the end, if you're one of those weirdos who stay and watch the credits out of respect for the crew who made the movie possible, you'll notice that digital, cgi and special effects have huge teams of dozens of computer geeks who master an art that fills 90% of today's action movies. That's saying a whole lot of the movies industry these days.

The movie has a relaxed tone to it, almost like Green Lantern. The protagonist is egocentric and stubborn. His confidence is often mistaken for arrogance. The jokes are of bad taste. The dialogues are light and deprived of any seriousness. Even in the event of an eminent apocalypse, Dr. Strange manages to throw his puns and bad jokes. The multiverse of presented almost as a gratuitous event, a mundane truth accessible to anyone of travels to Kathmandu. There's no secret, no effort to achieve it. You only need to knock at their door, and the Ancient One will teach you right away the secrets of the astral plane. There's no sense of urgency, like for instance the urgency that drives Neo to find the truth about the Matrix and his decision to swallow the red pill.

This plot is old and recycled. It takes the Hero's Journey myth and put it to practice. And we've seen it a thousand before: Talented yet self centered person is set to trial and loses his talent/strength. Seeking redemption, finds a tutor. The tutor teaches humility and new found power. An enemy emerges. Tutor dies in fight. Apprentice seeks revenge, wins battle, takes the tutor's position. More or less, this formula is old and we all know it.This movie is academic in this sense. But it somehow works. It's light mood dialogues and absence of seriousness makes it digestible.

Well... at least until the last battle. Dormammu (one of my favorite marvel villains) is so poorly portrayed. Worst only Galactus in Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer. And the battle, the solution found by Dr.Strange to defeat Dormammu makes absolutely no sense. The Eye of Agamoto controls time in a dimension where time exists, but the the Dark Dimension of Dormammu there's no such thing as Time. So, how could the Eye even work in a dimension where the concept of time does not exist. How did even Dormammu succumbed to a concept to which he was not captive of of? Did the Eye of Agamoto invented time in the Dark Dimension? Of course not. It's just a bad plot decision. It's simply lazy writing.

The way they confuse so many time the realm of metaphysics with hard science like quantum mechanics, is astonishing. Like they were trying to mask the comic book nature of Dr. Strange (a sorcerer who is able to travel between dimensions with his magical powers) with quantum physics Wikipedia vocabulary. The confusing and unnecessary discussion between Strange and the Ancient One about the nature of the Multiverse, shows an attempt to minimize the "magic" of movie and make it sound more ... "scientific". Dr. Strange, in the book, is a magical entity. His powers are far beyond known science as he can do things modern science finds impossible. So the attempt to rationalize such character is in my opinion a big mistake.

Overall, is an entertaining movie, with cool special effects, pleasant acting and light atmosphere. Good Saturday evening flick. Don't expect lots of brains in it.