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Tales from the Loop (2020)
Has a distinct mood, but in the end just boring
Spoilers...
So this show has a peculiar mood. It does manage to capture the milieu of Simon Stålenhag's paintings that admittedly inspired the setting of the show. Sadly however it becomes little more than a "book" of visuals and mood it self.
Contrary to the prologue of the first episode there is no overarching plot and the main message seems to be that of ancient Heraclitus: "panta rhei". Most of the episodes revolve around the philosophic pondering of moments passing or not passing, happening or not happening and nostalgia. (At one episode some characters profoundly cross a frozen creek as if a direct reference to Heraclitus.)
There are a few exceptions though. The observation of a frozen moment of a sexual intercourse was interesting in a way. Similarly the episode where two friends switched bodies was also interesting. This latter managed to be an overarching story line but in the end it proved to be a dead end unfortunately.
I liked the soundtrack but it could have been a bit more varied. It was mostly the same (albeit catchy) melody over and over again.
In the end it was not bad, had a certain mood. But it wasn't that good either. I'd describe it as "boring" or "melancholic".
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Full of plotholes
Warning, spoilers ahead!
I'm genuinely shocked by the high ratings for this movie. It's not bad, but just barely. The reunion of spidermans is fun of course, but anything else just falls apart.
- who switched off the Stark infrastructure just like that? Especially since gaining control over it was the main plot point of the last episode.
- I'm annoyed by the main plot problem anyway. Superheroes can generally protect their secret identity. That's a major suspension of disbelief point like since forever. Would a pair of glasses seriously protect Superman's incognito? Would no one ever happen to see as Spiderman flies into or out of his home window? Isn't it a security risk that everyone is just using plain smartphones to communicate all the time? Etc. I don't know, it doesn't sit me well to target this already weak and blurry area and blow a main plot drive out of it.
- There's already a Spiderman movie about parallel dimensions, it's called Into the Spider-Verse. So this is not a very original idea even within the Spiderman world.
- Why did a spell that supposedly affects people's memory pull in entities from parallel realities again?
- Why does Peter uttering anything affect the spell Strange is casting anyway? It seems to me that his last interruption along the lines of "just let anyone who knows Peter Parker is Spiderman retain that knowledge" - was what caused the collapse of realities (again, why?). But Strange didn't even react to that, and it wasn't Peter who was casting the spell.
- Only after reading a few articles did I realize that the figures behind the collapsing sky were supposedly other super villains. I thought they were some kind of super-dimensional gods or something.
- If there are an infinite number of alternate realities then there should be an infinite number of Green Goblins for example. How come only one appeared?
- How did Peter and friends free the otherworldly prisoners from Strange's cells all by themselves???
- How did both Peter and his friend Ned know that the ring was used to open portals? Ned supposedly learned it by accident. But then why did he wear it in the first place? Why did Peter take it from Strange? Why doesn't Strange carry a bunch of spare pieces? If I were a wizard and my ability to open portals relied on the possession of a little brass ring, I'd surely make sure to have a couple of extra rings in my pocket.
- The loooong loooong dying scene of May was beyond cringe. It reminded me of that "dying" scene in Jim Carrey's Mask...
- I can accept that the arcane device is capable of reversing the botched spell. But why would casting a totally different memory-affecting spell reverse the effects??? Why don't the alternate-reality newcomers just stay in this world but now without any memory of Peter Parker???
All in all it was lazy writing. If you're to touch such brain heavy subjects as alternate realities, you'd better show your work and think your plot through! I'm not looking for Primer-level thinking, but it'd be nice to at least reach that of Back to the Future.
The Killing of Two Lovers (2020)
False advertising
I have mixed feelings. I expected a gut wrenching family drama / thriller and what I got was... reality.
The title simply can not be justified. Spoiler: there's not a single killing in this movie.
Interestingly the suspense is there during the whole film even the ending - mainly thanks to the strange, unnerving sound effects. That part is brilliant btw: throughout the movie we hear sounds that should simply not be there (e.g.: car doors slamming, various knocks and bumps) and subconsciously we're trying to decipher what could've been the source. This creates uncertainty and nervousness in the viewer.
Some parts are really well made and highly realistic (e.g.: the car ride with the kids to the park).
Some other parts are a bit wtf (e.g.: lawyer guy effortlessly knocking out manual laborer guy who is carrying heavy things all day).
Also, the wife is a bitch, I would've long decided, ok, let's divorce if I were in the husband's shoes. This half separated, half together, we're trying to solve it while we're sleeping with other people is a recipe for disaster...
A disaster that the movie simply skips. Due to an unseen turn of events the couple get back together and every problem is swept back under the carpet. Nothing is solved, and the movie just ends.
Kölcsönlakás (2019)
This deserves a better score
I think this movie deserves a better score than its current 3.9.
Yes it's a bit slow and it could use more background music.
But I laughed myself to tears towards the end - and unfortunately that rarely happens watching most of today's comedy films.
All in all it's totally watchable. It could be better, yes. But the characters are likeable and the finale plays out well. It's worth a viewing.
Dune (2021)
Half-movies should be titled as such
I'm so tired of unadvertised part-movies.
I was so disappointed when about one and a half hour into the movie I realized that the plot was not moving fast enough, that this was going to be yet another movie cut in half. And of course I was right.
I'm tired of publishers wanting to bait and blackmail me into watching the other half of their movie - for another full price.
I don't think I will. I'll read the book instead.
All in all, the movie wasn't bad, but cut in half like that... I'll cut my rating in half to reflect that. Half rating for a half movie.
I think I still prefer the 1992 computer game Dune 1. Especially the soundtrack. Look it up: Dune Spice Opera.
Love, Death & Robots (2019)
Season 1 and Season 2
It's a shame that I can only review the two seasons bundled together.
Season 1 is absolutely fantastic. Even the episodes that I enjoyed less have a story and something to make you think about. Great stuff, really! Graphic is great, many different styles.
Season 2 is trash. NONE of the 8 episodes has any merit whatsoever. The episodes are way too short, they have but a basic (often cliche) idea and even that doesn't get unfolded. Graphic is of course great but it's mainly game-like 3D (showing a rendered face from up close is apparently the rage). A huge let-down after Season 1. I'm shocked that critics love S2 so much.
Season 1: 10
Season 2: 1
Average: 5.5 (rounded up to 6)
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
Watch trolololo for 2 hours...
I feel tricked. My brother recommended this and usually he recommends movies that are worth watching. But this one? I was waiting the whole time for some overarching plot to emerge that'd somehow connect these small fragments of rather anticlimactic stories but it just never came.
Interestingly the illustrious cast, the rather qualitative execution of screenplay, scenery, music and costume only add to the disappointment. Even the setups are promising. All of them. Then the plot is just dropped dully and we move to the next unfulfilled promise till I can't help but wonder: is this intentional? Did they really just film this for trolling?
Spoilers from here.
So we have this singing gunslinger with a (for me) peculiar accent and manners. I'm slowly getting curious: what is his story? What are his motives? Why he refuses to play the hand of the leaving gambler - even though those are pretty good cards for as little as I know about poker. Then he gets shot. Ah well. (Well ok, now that I think of it there is a very pale connection to the last story regarding how you're supposed to play your own cards, but still, that's not enough for me.)
The next guy attempts to rob a rather odd banker, then he almost gets hanged. Later he gets hanged for real. Ta da! (Again, a hint of Zen here as he appreciates the beauty of a random girl at the last minute. Again, not enough.)
Guy without legs and arms makes a living reciting an incoherent lengthy speech as a traveling performer. Well my English is far from perfect and I could only make out that there are excerpts from the Bible and maybe the American Constitution? He always seems to tell the same story and he never speaks outside the performances. Then he gets dumped into a chasm when his partner? employer? buys a chicken instead that seems to be able to count numbers. We never learn if he was scammed? Or is he taught the trick to make the chicken seem to be able to count? Or can somehow that chicken really count? Nothing. End of story. (Scent of very meh analogy of how "important thoughts" get dumped for easy entertainment. Meh. Pffff.)
The old gold digger finds a big chunk of gold. Actually his quest, his struggle is pretty well executed. Again, I get interested. He's old. What are his plans? What would he do with all that gold? He seems too old to gain anything else than a peaceful last few years. Then he gets shot - but he doesn't die, instead he defeats the other guy then he walks away. And we learn nothing more about him.
A settler girl is in a downward spiral of events then everything seems to turn good, but during an indian attack she kills herself not to fall captive. Though it later turns out that she shouldn't have.
Last is a lengthy scene with a bunch of people traveling in a cart. It's a rather straightforward analogy of the transition to the afterlife. Still two of them are bounty hunters and there is a corpse at the top of the wagon. Why is he a corpse? Why are these other people alive? I don't get it.
And that's it, movie is over. Trololololololo.
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Be wary of the high rating! This isn't a good movie.
Warning: spoilers.
There is not much one anticipates from a superhero movie. Spectacle (with lots of CGI), iconic characters, some basic story arc, and saving the world in the end.
Infinity War didn't deliver. And I hate to utter that. I hate to command movies to stay within they genre... But if they don't, there must be reason. There must be good reason. The makers stripped this movie of the most important superhero-flick-features and what remains, just falls apart.
First of all, there are way too many characters (could this have been the reason behind the "end result"?). And then the story arc: it's a downward spiral. The heroes try to stop the villain(s) at multiple locations only to fail one time after another, letting the villain march through with his plan and collect each and every one of the stones. And finally the world is not saved. The end. Cast. Oh, wow. Thank you.
Now for the spectacle: that was ok - though most of the fight scenes were too shaky and chaotic for me. I would have preferred less and more detailed scenes, but I don't complain. It a little bit felt like a Japanese anime though, where one combatant pulls a big ass weapon only to have their opponent pull an even bigger ass weapon, and on and on, until one time an entire moon (!) was dropped onto our heroes...
For the positives: we did have some good laughs, and the main villain is well detailed (for a superhero movie). Also, Peter Dinklage!
Lastly I hate to be blackmailed to watch next episode like this. So no, I will not watch the next one, at least not in the movie theater.
Ready Player One (2018)
A very enjoyable movie
It's been a long long time since I last enjoyed a movie this much.
Supernatural: Jus in Bello (2008)
One of the all time best episodes of the series
I don't have much to say, but I decided, if I write a review of the worst episodes (out of frustration) then I should write one for the bests too.
For context: I'm rewatching the series in 2018 and I think this one is one of the best episodes in the whole show.
I don't want to spoil anything, do watch it!
(And I laughed out loud on the joke.)
Supernatural: Ghostfacers (2008)
Worse than the Christmas special, and that's something
A very bad episode.
I could barely watch due to the sickening hand camera movement. The intro was just painful to endure: some totally irrelevant, annoying guys goofing around with a camera for a looong looong time. There was exactly one surprising moment for me in this episode - and I'm not going to spoil it should one decide to spend 40 valuable minutes of their lives on this crap.
Supernatural: A Very Supernatural Christmas (2007)
Love the show but this episode is just bad (with spoilers)
Me and my wife are rewatching the series from the beginning (as we didn't see each and every one when it aired) thus I'm writing this in 2018.
Generally I don't like Christmas specials. I'm not religious but I cherish the festive mood and my childhood memories of it.
If anything, I could imagine a Supernatural Christmas episode where no one dies (for a change) and we see a little deeper character interaction between key characters. E.g.: I liked the flashback to Sam and Dean's childhood Christmas eve (hence the score of 3 instead of 2).
But this blatantly obvious (self-serving) bashing of Christmas is uncalled for and (for me) typical, boring and disgusting. (They even managed to show a guy stabbed with a Christmas tree, yay! I mean, come on, who needs this crap?)
The story of the episode in itself is lame and flat. The unnecessary torture scene is, well, unnecessary. And watching small kids getting traumatized for life (and on Christmas moreover) makes me uneasy and again - it's unnecessary and slef-serving.
I know this was made during the infamous writer strike, still, this episode is highly disappointing. Especially, since the first few episodes of season 3 were all great!
Black Mirror: Metalhead (2017)
Actually, this one is really good!
For those who don't understand the episode and call it empty or stupid:
Ignorance is bliss. This is our future, people. The next war will be fought by drones and robots. And (as usual in wars) humans will be slaughtered.
Edit: someone questioned, why would a killer robot guard an abandoned warehouse and why would it so relentlessly kill anyone in sight? But that's exactly the point here. You all know how much pain and death leftover landmines cause years sometimes even decades after a long passed war? Now imagine what would a leftover of a carpet-bomb of killer AI units cause...
The Following (2013)
awful, bad, and potentially dangerous
Hi all,
I specifically registered on IMDb to down-vote this series. This is that awful and I'm that annoyed. It has just started to air in Hungary (where I live) yesterday. Btw, sorry for my bad English.
To provide some perspective to my opinion I briefly list some of my movie-experiences: - The worst film I ever saw was: Der Skipper (aka Kill Cruise) - The best film I ever saw was: Adam's Apples - For example movies I disliked: Alien vs Predator 2 (can't seem to find it on IMDb. The '2' is important, the 1st wasn't that bad.), Alexander, Djungo Unchained, Matrix 3, The Cell - For example movies I liked: The Village, Pulp Fiction, Star Wars (all), Matrix 1, American History X, Brat 2, Stardust
I just saw After Earth today, and after all it wasn't that bad...
But back to "The Following". Honestly, I do think that this piece is so bad that it's bad and dangerous for people. I'm kind of fed up already that all series in TV got to be about doctors or coroners or serial-killers - doesn't matter as long as there is an excuse to carve humans on screen. "Bones" is bad enough being nothing more than a vacuous soap opera placed in an environment where they carve corpses. Needless to say I don't watch it but my wife does, so I happened to see a few episodes. One featured a brutal murder which was committed because of some really puny motive and the show didn't even aim to explain it. The murder and the investigation was clearly just the background to let the characters interact in a very soap opera-ish way. I don't like that approach because it suggests that brutal, unprovoked killings are just part of life and not even worth noticing on an emotional level. It's interesting that when I checked the forums afterward no one was pondering the ridiculous weightlessness of the motive. Everyone was just talking about the characters and their relationships. This has a bad effect on society I think.
But what "The Following" does is a hundred times worse. And now come SPOILERS (if you haven't seen the 1st episode).
There is this mad serial-killer that somehow acquired a whole bunch of followers that are like willing to live for 3 years pretending to be a homosexual couple or put a knife through their own eyes just because he says so. How he achieved that? That's apparently not important to the makers. Policemen are slaughtered left and right while guarding a house. How? By whom? That's not important again. There is a previous victim that was attacked once before by the killer but she was saved at the last moment. We get to know her, how she tries to pull her life back together, and then she gets kidnapped from a house full of policemen and has her eyes cut out by the same killer that attacked her many years before. Only to have her eyeless corpse literally thrown at us. I mean, come on. What's the point of all this? There is no story. Zero. All there is is nauseating brutality. This show can only induce fear or perverted ideas in it's viewers. There is nothing enjoyable about this product.
I was going to write more but forming my thoughts in English is tiring and this series just doesn't deserve the effort...