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Reviews
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)
It's Pokemon!
I think it's an OK movie. I don't think it's more than that. It's here to entertain us and we were entertained by I don't think I'll be going for a rewatch.
It's a film of set pieces and atmosphere really. The story makes no sense and the characters are wafer-thin; in fact, from the need to keep all the characters from the new cast and present all the surviving Ghostbusters from the old cast, for the fans, the film is too crowded, almost no one has very much to do. There's a vestigial attempt to give the film some heart by putting a family drama into it, but it's quite perfunctory, the film doesn't care about it and neither do we. Paul Rudd, normally a reliable film presence, might as well not have been in it.
A shout out for a couple of excellent comic performances, from James Acaster and Kumail Nanjiani. It's not too much to say Kumail Nanjiani saves the movie, you look forward to his bits.
A big boo for the barely-there contribution of Bill Murray. He has to be in it because of the huge impact of his original performance, but he's either forgotten what it takes to do a Bill Murray performance and is copying his own slacker vibe without really understanding it any more, or he simply couldn't be bothered. His turn in Afterlife was a waste of space too.
Yet I'm giving the film a 7, my standard for an OK movie, because it zips along nicely, it fills the time with spectacle, the design aesthetic is good, most of the performances are likeable for what little they have to do, it's always fun to see Dan Ackroyd's eyes light up at the thought of supernatural phenomena, and they gave Ernie Hudson a few lines this time.
A last thought - there doesn't seem to be much about ghosts; the monsters they trap are more like pokemon in their pokeballs, each with their own fighting characteristics. It's a wonder they don't set them on each other for giggles.
The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants (2018)
I really think I hate this show
I think I hate this show. It thinks it's funny and it's so damn smug. And it's really toilet-obsessed.
The source material is full of potty humour of course, before Dav Pilkey's combination of childish jokes and concerns with outsiderism and creativity received its proper maturity with Dogman and the Cat Kid Comic Club; but somehow in the books this gets by, perhaps because they're more focussed on the main adventure narrative. In the Netflix show the obvious jokes are relentless and wearisome. And for a show taken from source material which is so concerned with retribution against bullies and the nature of the outsider, it just seems wrong that here the George and Harold characters so frequently exclude, isolate and vicitimise in their comics Melvin Sneedly, who if he had his just deserts as presented would be recognised as a boy genius. George and Harold are the bullies in this show.
The movie managed the same material with a bit more depth, showing the underlying sadness of the Krupp character. In this television show, he's some kind of sub-normal whose permanent mental and character inadequacies are nothing but an object of mockery. As presented, the character should be in a home for assisted living, not principal of a school.
What can I say, my kids giggle at it. It's a real toss-up which I less like to watch with my kids, this or the absolutely worthless Paw Patrol.
Pendatang (2023)
Top class piece of work
This movie is excellent. The story is frankly terrifying, it's all to easy to see how something like this could happen in a brutalised future where resources are scarce and people chose to scapegoat the Other in society. The makers have picked a tough but important theme and run with it all the way. It's a deeply affecting film.
The acting is good, direction is good, but a special shout-out to the cinematography. The film is beautifully shot throughout, I'm really impressed by the skill that has gone into this one.
Subtitles are a must. I wonder how many people can cope with all the languages in this?
Anyway, not a fun watch by any means. Prepare to be depressed for the rest of the day.
Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning (2023)
Confusing sentimental nonsense
Nothing in this film makes any sense. It's just a set of set-pieces strung together, no logic to any of it. The writers know the effects they want to achieve, but don't put enough effort into getting there. It's a typical sentimental Japanese effort. All presentation, no content.
The story centres on the childhood trauma of some character called Lui. However, the story doesn't have the courage of its convictions and wipes it all out at the end, for reasons that aren't really very clear. Somehow this is supposed to be terribly significant for the world of Digimon, but it doesn't really come across.
4 stars for some atmospheric visuals. I'll stick to Pokemon, at least their films have plots.
Madu Tiga (1964)
Absolutely top class
I've become interested in Malay culture, and idling through Youtube came across the world of P Ramlee. This film is absolutely top class! A hilarious tale of a man who thinks he can simply manage his way through three wives - having neglected to tell each of them about the existence of the others. Of course, you just know they're going to find out somehow.......
P Ramlee keeps things on at a cracking pace, and the casual way he barefaces everyone is hilarious. But he shares the wealth around the script, with a host of amusing supporting characters. Quality performances too from the wives - the terrifying first wife, the sulty second wife, and the sweet and optimistic third wife who in the end drives the resolution. I enjoyed this end-to-end, will look out more of P Ramlee's work. A shame to read about his tragic end in Wikipedia.
Spooky: In a Dark, Dark Box... (1983)
Absolutely terrifying
I saw this when I was young, the memory of it has never left me. It's absolutely terrifying! I've found it since on Youtube, and the fact that I'm older, more experienced, more critical, has done nothing to diminish its weird power. Really effective.
It's about a little boy staying with a lady who may or may not be as beneficent as she seems as his grandmother, and visited by ghosts of the past. Of course it's for kids, so it's a 'safe horror', no murders and blood, nothing to terrorise you in real life, just an invitation to be enjoyably scared. As an entertainment I welcome it all the more for that. I'm waiting for my kids to be old enough that I can scare them with it as well!
I notice that the author worked thereafter mostly in soaps and popular drama. I don't know if she ever looks up her old work on IMDB. If so, I hope she reads this, knows that at least one young kid was enthralled by this product of her early career.
Trolls Band Together (2023)
I laughed a lot
I did enjoy this film a lot, the Trolls series overall has been surprisingly entertaining. It's not destined to be recognised as a childhood classic, as I think Puss in Boots: The Last Wish one day will be, but it's very well made and consistently fun. With one exception, I was very impressed by the attention to detail - there's something to look at enjoy in every scene, it's a dazzle of action and colour, and the characters are beautifully realised and animated. The jokes are funny. I'm not much for boyband music but the occasional interweaving of more classic pop was very effective.
The one exception is the story, which barely existed; also the bergen sub-plot held no interest at all, I think they only put it in because they needed a second strand from the main story, to cut away from it occasionally. The character arcs are quite perfunctory, you can tell it's all been mechanically worked out beforehand based on screenwriting theory and they didn't put the work in to smooth it out. The final set-piece, lacking a good story build-up, was underwhelming. No matter, with this film it's the journey, not the destination. And what a journey!
Five Nights at Freddy's (2023)
A solid film for its target audience
I very much enjoyed this, much against my expectations. I took my 12-year-old son to it as he's a big Five Nights at Freddy's fan, am grateful that the horror aspects were pitched to a level where I could take him, it's made well for its target audience. He was comfortably scared but not terrified. There's a place for this kind of movie. I wouldn't have taken my young son to see Ichi the Killer, for example.
What engaged me as a parent was the narrative of the Matt character fighting to keep his sister. A lot of the reviews have focussed on it being slow, but I didn't find it slow, I thought it well-paced in providing a solid and credible grounding for the world, in a way that anchors what would otherwise be a rather silly concept. The real-world horrors visited upon Mike and his family get metaphorical expression through the ghosts in the creepy abandoned pizza parlour, and I would not have been interested in the one without the other. Excellent performances from all the participants, particularly Josh Hutcherson, Matthew Lillard, Mary Stuart Masterson and the hilarious lawyer guy. Devastated to find the Voice of Shaggy playing such a horrible guy though!
It's not perfect - the revelations seem pulled out of thin air. How does the hero suddenly know that it's ghost kids' spirits the animatronics? Plus what did Vanessa's father really want and shouldn't Matt's brother be one of the ghost kids, or did he just get murdered separately for reasons completely unconnected with anything? Doesn't matter, it's a well-made film, there's a lot of attention to detail in the direction, I think Scott Cawthon should be pretty satisfied with what they made of his franchise. I came out satisfied.
Alice in Wonderland (1951)
No, I don't rate it
As a father, I've come to appreciate the Disney classics; from Snow White to Sleeping Beauty to Song of the South, my kids have sat down in front of them, little faces aglow. So I don't disparage what Disney has to offer. We watched Fantasia twice.
But the magic doesn't work for this movie. Beautifully animated, yes; colourful, yes; but ultimately pointless. On screen it's just a collection of encounters. The underlying text is grounded in the fact that it is a satire or parody of Victorian childhood experience. Here, with all Disney's elaboration, it's just random stuff. Jokes on the page don't come off as throwaway dialogue. I found it tedious.
Alice's voice doesn't suit either, the voice of a governess rather than a young girl on an adventure. Always a pleasure to hear Ed Wynn, though.
Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965)
Worthless
I don't know what I was hoping for, some campy classic like Casino Royale, maybe. And possibly this is the style of film that Casino Royale was going for, with a hugely bigger budget. However, this Dr Goldfoot is a worthless effort, feeble jokes and poorly executed slapstick by unskilled performers (Vincent Price suaves his way through, of course, but even he can't make the thin material come alive). It's really not worth anyone's time, not even if you enjoyed the James Coburn Flint movies.
What really surprised me was how deeply ingrained was the sexism. Perhaps that is naive of me, and we shouldn't judge works of the past by the standards of the present etc. But this film takes it for granted that women's behaviour fits into little boxes that are defined by men; the robots work in their interactions with film characters because they offer the expected behaviours. Frankie Avalon is all keen to seduce the first robot he meets; when she tries to seduce him instead of the other way around, he is shocked and retreats. When Goldfoot accidentally creates a robot that has some strength or independence, it's rejected as a monster. I wouldn't show this to my kids.
Anyway, thanks to the endless badly-executed comedy I doubt they'd watch it if they did. It's not even on a par with a Disney teen sitcom for laughs. I'll give it a few points for the shots of San Francisco, and for the fact that Goldfoot's fembots walk around in gold lame bikini's for no good reason.
Choses secrètes (2002)
Dialogue so poor you instantly know the director wrote it
This film would like to be important. It wants to say something about aspiration, desire and appetite, winds up as a silly melodrama with ponderous dialogue.
It is amusing that the director imagines that, if there's a big business, it must be run by driven and corrupt people. I don't think there's a real person in the whole film, apart in from a brief scene at the start between the heroine and her disappointed mother.
I do admit the director has some skill in the staging and the shooting, although the lighting is rather overdone. He's not incompetent.
Don't waste your time with this. Go watch Tinto Brass instead. At least he'll show you his philosophy, not have his characters talk it endlessly.
La ragazza di Trieste (1982)
Nonsense from the start
Wretched movie. A middle-aged man's fantasy, some beautiful young girl and her madness appear principally so that the aging self-satisfied male lead can have an important and intriguing emotional upheaval. Not quite as egregious as Jean-Claude Brissau's Les anges exterminateurs, where the poor misunderstood put-upon director believes he should be loved by angels because of the importance of his libido, but not far off.
Ornella Muti is excellent though, deploying a lot of skill to rise above the material.
The background music is awful. At least the subtitles (in the version I saw) can't be blamed on the director. They appear to have been done by machine translation.
Floor Is Lava (2020)
Hey! It's OK!
I like this show. Give it some credit for what it's trying to do - it's a bit of fun for young kids, semi-staged or perhaps fully worked out in advance.
Some low-stress mock-tension, some intra-team banter, some adults doing stuff kids can relate to. I'd much rather my kids watch this than some post-modern cartoon pabulum. At least it's real people doing real things, even if any adults watching will know it's not really for real. When I was a kid, my parents didn't appreciate the Adam West Batman show either.
I also watched endless amounts of Cheggers Played Pop, which was more obviously put together for real, maybe, but much less inspiring of excitement. Kids do have better stuff these days.
The New Avengers (1976)
It's nonsense
I don't understand the affection for this show in the other reviews. It was cheap-looking nonsense. (So were many of the later series of the original Avengers, to be fair.) Gareth Hunt was a strong action figure, I'll give you that, when given some action to do. But I always found Joanna Lumley a bit smug in this.
Deserves its poor reputation, in my opinion.
Hardwicke House (1987)
Just as bad as its reputation
I remember seeing this at the time and hating it. Nothing to enjoy, no character to engage with, no hope anywhere, endless juvenile cynicism. It deserved to be pulled.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022)
Watch it for Jim Carrey
Terrible script, belabouring its messages like it was written by the 10-year-olds it was intended for. But all kudos to Jim Carrey and his weird charisma, it was a star performance. The film lit up when he was onscreen, him and his giant monster robot. I could barely be bothered with it when he wasn't.
Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (2017)
Disturbing
I can take the books but the movie is just too much. Potty humor just isn't funny to me, and to hear the name "Poopypants" repeatedly is just...Irritating. Even the closing song had that name.
Plus, it felt like Professor P was being bullied.
It also had a weird story line.
However, I liked the animation style, and all in all, the ending was nice and I suppose it was a kids movie.
STORY:33
PERFORMANCE:65
Pros:
+Nice Animation
+Happy Ending
+Interesting for Kids
Cons:
-Professor P was bullied
-Too much Potty Humor
-Bad Story Line
Total:3*
Dragon Ball Z (1996)
The BEST anime ever!!! ( too bad its only popular in Japan. Well, mostly )
Now all the characters are well planned in this anime and the animation quality was pretty good if you think about the fact that it was still being hand-drawn in those times so you've got to have some respect for them. Some times the power levels get a *little* too high and over-inflatable in the strain to find new enemies if you know what I mean. Pretty much nothing else is wrong in the plots except for some of the sagas like Future Saga ( you know the one with the androids and Cell ) except for the fact that sometimes the times get mixed up and make it hard to remember the sagas correctly.
Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (2018)
Hmm... it was VERY funny but the story isn't the BEST
So... where to start? Ah yes, first up: Slade said that once the hypnosis was activated and everyone hypnotized, the effect would be permanent. However, they still managed to solve the problem. Other than that it is excellent but a lot of it is directed to kids ( as you can see from Robin before the credits ), choose horror or romance if you want for adults. A lot is extremely funny and can make adults laugh. I love the accent of Balloon Man. The only thing that prevents it from getting 10/10 is the hypnosis problem.