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Napoleon (2023)
A dull, confusing, rushed, disjointed mess
When you go to a movie about Napoleon, titled "Napoleon", you have certain expectations. You expect to see Napoleon, some battles and some historical events and explanation. Napoleon barely delivers such things. It is a very strange movie that makes some undeniably bad choices in terms of what it chooses to focus on. Most of the story is centered not around Napoleon, but around Josephine. She is his wife and muse and he simps hard for her. Almost everything in the movie is bent to fit around her in some way and it turns what should have been a little sideplot into the main focus of almost every single thing in this movie. It makes this 200 million dollar movie feel like a cheap romantic B-film.
The battle scenes are few and far between. There's three in total and two of them are over fairly quickly. It's a shame because they're pretty decent. Waterloo takes a little longer but lacks the massive scale I was hoping to see. If you say there's 125.000 men, show me the 125.000 men. At times it felt like there were no more than 125. It really makes you wonder where all that money went.
The plot in Napoleon is disjointed, rushed and all over the place. It spends way too much time showing Phoenix having dull PG-13 sex with Josephine but totally skips important events that actually matter to the story. I know there's a four hour cut and I'm sure that'll be at least somewhat better, but the way they chose to cut this one is ridiculous. It is almost three hours long and still manages to tell basically nothing about Napoleon's life, his character, his rise to power, his battle tactics and/or his fall from grace. All it tells is that he liked Josephine and France.
Phoenix does okay but feels like he's trying a bit too hard to be quirky, almost Jack Sparrow-ish at times. The weird way he interacts with Josephine is offputting and he lacks any power and charisma in almost every scene. It makes it hard to believe that entire armies look up to him and would desert for him. It's not that Phoenix does bad, it's just that his type of acting doesn't feel right for the role of a powerful dictator. The rest of the cast does okay but there are no noteworthy performances. This movie might have been forced into cinemas for the oscars, but I highly doubt it'll get any.
I'm not a history buff and I'll fully admit that any historical inaccuracies have certainly not bothered me. It's usually not too blatant. And it's not what made the movie bad to me. If you áre into history, my wife has assured me you'll likely notice another full layer of awfulness that most people might miss out on. Good luck.
All in all, Napoleon is just a chore of a movie to get through. It has it's occassional moments, but they make up at most thirty minutes of it's runtime. The rest of it is either dull, confusing, bad or a depressing mix of all three.
Saw X (2023)
Decent buildup into nothing
It is impossible to explain why Saw X is such a disappointment without spoiling it, so I'm gonna have to do just that. This tenth installment in a series that should never have gotten ten installments starts off surprisingly strong. John gets scammed into paying $250k (apparently torturing people pays quite well) for a fake cancer treatment and he's not too happy about it. The setup is slow and the movie is almost an hour in when the killing starts to take off. It's definitely not bad though. The treatment story is done quite well and especially the scenes where Jigsaw and his little sidekick gather the victims are really quite good and make great use of silence and sound to build tension.
Once the traps get going, they get really intense. The first trap, the eye one shown in all the promo material, is just a little daydream John has. It's a bit of a letdown, but it's still quite brutal. The bomb-arms for the taxi driver felt lackluster, but that's forgiven when the real villains start their traps. There's some unmatched brutality in here, and it's all shown in intense, gory detail. It's what we're here for and Saw X delivers. For a little while I almost started to get my hopes up.
The issue with this movie starts in the last thirty minutes. Up until this point, the movie has been building up the main villain, Cecilia, as a pure evil being, almost laughably so. She likes killing kids, she wants to murder all her friends and she lives only for money. She's rotten to the core and you expect her to get her comeuppance in a fittingly brutal way. That would have been a fine ending to this movie. Just a brutal kill for Cecilia. It would've been cathartic and well deserved. But the writers had other plans, and they're pretty hard to grasp.
The last 30 minutes of Saw X are spent on ridiculous plot twists and double crossings that make no sense at all. As soon as Parker Sears barges in, the movie goes completely off the rails. Senseless monologues, deus ex machina kids, terrible acting by Steven Brand and worst of all: no karma for Cecilia. The villain that this movie has spent 90 minutes building up eventually gets off Scott-free by sticking her head through a gloryhole. That's it. No disembowelments, no amputations, no lobotomies. John pays off the kid he scarred for life with a bag of illegally obtained cash and they walk off into the sunset, leaving Cecilia to continue scamming and/or killing kids if she wants to. That's John's moral compass for you.
This complete lack of repercussions for Cecilia is just a kick in the balls and is the worst part about an already terrible ending. It ruins what could have been at least somewhat of a revival of the series and turns Saw X into nothing more than some decent gore scenes that leave a bad aftertaste because they happen to the wrong characters.
The Equalizer 3 (2023)
Not much Equalizing
It's been a while since I watched the first two Equalizers, but I remember them quite fondly as fun movies that found a nice balance between a simple yet effective story and brutal, well-made action scenes. So when I discovered that a third installmant was arriving soon, I was excited.
Today, that excitement was shattered upon actually seeing the movie. The Equalizer 3 stars Denzel Washington, of course. And he is once again brilliant. The story here is that Denzel runs into an international drug trafficking ring by accident while trying to steal back his Uber driver's pension fund. The opening is amazing, showing off beautiful cinematography and a creative action sequence in true Equalizer style. Enjoy it while it lasts, because that's the last you'll see of that.
After killing off a few mobsters, Denzel passes out by the side of the road and gets picked up by a random guy who just happens to be the son of a doctor who in turn just happens to like caring for random people with bullet wounds. Of course he is also called Enzo and he is an almost offensively stereotypical Italian. For the next hour or so, prepare to watch Denzel Washington drink tea. This movie contains more shots of Denzel drinking tea than it does of him firing a gun. In this little Italian town everyone loves Denzel for no apparent reason, to the point where random kids and grandmas walk up to him and give him gifts without even knowing him. There's a woman who basically throws herself at Washington from the second she sees him. Within a week, the people call him "one of them" and will literally die for him. It's just because he's American it seems, because he doesn't do much else. He watches the mafia terrorize the town and the people he apparently loves so much, but he doesn't actually get involved for weeks, not even when his favorite shop is burned to the ground.
Meanwhile, there's a hesitant subplot where a CIA agent is investigating the drug trafficking ring. She comes to Italy but doesn't seem too bothered with investigating the actual criminals. She just hangs around harrassing Denzel, who is not even trying to hide that he's guilty of many murders at this point. She acts like she's this accomplished agent, but literally all she does is repeat Denzel's findings to her superiors and take the credit for them. She explodes somewhere halfway through the movie and they basically give her a promotion and a medal of honor for it.
The mafia itself starts out quite menacing. They are well cast and very violent, but by the time Denzel finally starts killing them (over an hour into the movie) he immediately kills off all the good mobsters in an underwhelming 30 second shot. That's that then. Now all we have left is Victor, a stereotypical mob boss with not much character to him. He's just evil and he likes money and Ferraris. He is now real angry at Denzel for killing his brother and they have a standoff in the town square. It's quite cool and I was getting ready for an amazing shootout, but instead Victor just leaves to go eat spaghetti with his friends. I'm not kidding. This mob boss, apparently the head of five huge crime families, then goes to take a nap with only a few bodyguards around even though he knows this masterful assassin is hunting him down.
The final action scene mostly just killed my last bit of hope for this movie. The kills are dull and are just Denzel picking off guards with a knife one by one in pitch dark rooms. Victor barely puts up a fight and basically dies by getting hit by a Fiat Punto. That was it. The final Equalizer movie is now over and it contained maybe three minutes of actual Equalizing, most of which was incredibly boring. The cinematography is quite beautiful at times, the acting is great across the board, the Italian vibes are amazing and there's a few good and/or funny lines. But overall this movie was just an incredible letdown. I don't mind a slow buildup, but this doesn't build up to anything. The first half could've been great if the second half had a proper payoff, but all Denzel does is drink more tea and kill maybe five people to bring down the entire Italian mafia. The romantic subplot that is set up gets no real conclusion, the ending suddenly introduces a weird plot point that was never mentioned before and then it ends abruptly.
Not every action movie has to be John Wick with non-stop firepower, but I do expect there to be some actual action. The Equalizer 3 never really delivers. It's a very pretty display of the Amalfi coast and Denzel's acting, but that's about it. It's a shame.
The Pope's Exorcist (2023)
Unintentionally hilarious trash
It's the 80s and Russell Crowe is now an exorcist. He is quirky and excentric. He also ignored a mentally unwell woman who told him she was being sexually abused by a priest but that's okay because he's quirky and excentric so it's okay.
Then there's a demon bullying a poor American family and only Russell Crowe can help, so he hops on his Vespa and drives all the way from the Vatican to Spain (I'm not kidding, the movie seriously implies this). He drinks some whiskey and starts talking to the demon. The demon is apparently the king of hell, but he is less active than the average housecat. Despite not being tied down, he mostly just lays on the bed spouting nonsense and puking up baby birds every now and then. The mother doesn't seem too concerned by her son puking up baby birds and soundly sleeps through most of the movie while both her kids are being possessed.
The actual exorcism in this movie is slow and inconsistent. Russell Crowe has a Spanish sidekick, another priest with many sins under his belt and who doesn't know how to pray properly. He chokes a kid at one point but it's okay because the kid said something mean to him. They both just stand by Henry's bed and mumble some prayers while the demon shrugs them off and keeps giving everyone cliche horror visions of dead loves ones. There's not a lot of progression to it all besides the forced character arcs of the priests confessing their horrible sins and being washed clean of them way too easily.
Then Russell Crowe uses his priest senses to find a hidden well full of skulls from Spanish inquisition victims. He finds this really funny, taking one to throw at people as a funny prank because he is quirky and eccentric. The movie goes out of it's way to say the church was not to blame for the Spanish inquisition because the ones giving the orders were possessed at the time, which of course makes total sense.
But back to the exorcism. Russell Crowe finds the demon's name in the magical well of exorcisms past and he goes back up to Henry, who does a few cool party tricks, suddenly being way more active just so the movie can throw in the cliche backwards spider walk. Russell has to be the hero and sacrifices himself to the demon to save the random Americans. This is when his trusty sidekick suddenly becomes competent and runs after Russell Crowe into the magical well of exorcisms past to save him. A truly hilarious encounter ensues where they both hold up a cross and the demon just kind of goes "oh noes" and dies. The ending is Disney/Marvel style happy and positive with everything falling into place and even setting up a franchise possibility.
The whole movie has an offputting vibe of glorifying the catholic church. The priest characters are terrible human beings, which in itself is fine, but they are portrayed like Marvel style superheroes by the end. On top of this, the random mix of languages gives it an even weirder vibe. Russell Crowe was only paid enough to learn a little bit of Italian so everyone else has to adjust to him because they couldn't just hire an Italian to play an Italian. Even the pope talks English to himself which makes zero sense.
The Pope's Exorcist is a mess. It's hilarious at times, but it doesn't feel like it's trying to be. It is mediocre at best at being a horror film and it sucks at everything else. Russell Crowe is okay but the only acting that is truly noteworthy is Peter DeSouza-Feighoney as the possessed kid. He saves this film somewhat from being utter trash.
If you're a catholic who wants to see a horror movie that confirms your worldviews, this is for you. If you're anything but that, avoid.
Wild (2014)
A false picture
Wild is a movie full of good performances and potential but is let down by an unredeemable main character and cheap emotional tricks. A lot of characters in this movie are charicatures and the movie barely tries to hide it. There is no reason for the first guy she meets to act creepy about picking up a piece of licorice. It's just because the movie wants to tell you something about the dangers of a lone woman on a trail. And that's fine, it just doesn't really hit home if it's done this cheaply. A lot of characters Cheryl meets are this way. They are there to give a message and they do so in ways that rarely feel like natural interactions between human beings. Besides strange character choices, this movie is also no stranger to using animals and children to tug at your heartstrings in a cheap, unnecessary way.
Acting is amazing. Witherspoon and Dern are great and their perfomances save this movie somewhat. However, Cheryl is one of the most unlikeable, unredeemable characters I've seen in a long time. But the movie wants to paint her as somewhat of an antihero. Especially the way the three young hikers near the end treat her as a literal goddess just for writing pretentious book quotes down in a register is almost sickening because she is so unworthy. Cheryl is a bad person in all her actions. She's burdening others to "find herself" on a trail where all she does is work towards her set goal: forgiving herself. Not think about the damage she's done to others or how she's going to make up for the emotional traumas she's caused her loved ones. Or the horse she needlessly killed. No, she's there for herself. She needs to be forgiven and others should send her packages and heartfelt letters to support her even though they are hurting too because of her selfish actions.
A main character doesn't have to be likeable, obviously. But Wild falls into the trap of wanting you to like her and it fails miserably, leaving a bad aftertaste of being presented a false picture of a bad person.
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
Empty beauty
James Cameron brings the biggest disappointment of the year. Avatar 2 is nothing but empty beauty.
We start with a hurried introduction to the plot through some narration. Jake is a happy dude and he's made some kids somehow. None of this is explained well because apparently it doesn't matter. People are here again and they're evil again, for reasons. Jake flees to a beautiful water world and we never hear of the forest world after that. It's probably being destroyed, but who cares about the genocide of their former tribe? Jake doesn't. His son is touching a whale he shouldn't touch so that's way more interesting. For some reason humanity sends Miles' clone after Jake, spending massive amounts of money to hunt him down even though the objective was only to stop Jake from creating an uprising, which has already succeeded. Jake was laying low in hiding but for some reason they hunt him down still.
For a three hour movie, Avatar 2 feels rushed quite often. Subplots are introduced or hinted at and then get thrown away without resolve and big plot points feel rushed, but we do get to spend half an hour watching a completely unnecessary whalehunt. We're supposed to get attached to Jake's new kids but the only one that shows some depth of character is the one that gets bullied and punished for it over and over, even by his own father. It's very hard to feel attached to any of the characters because they're all shallow husks. Dialogue is absolutely horrendous and rarely gets any deeper than "Come on bro, we gotta do this bro, it's for family bro". The overuse of "bro" is maddening and brings the already terrible dialogue down to sub-zero levels. None of the interactions feel natural. Spider as a character is the epitome of this. He is not only horribly cast but added absolutely nothing to the plot. All he did was politely ask Miles to stop killing a few times. The character in this movie that shows the most depth and development is a whale. I'm not kidding.
The ending is extremely lackluster. The new water tribe is just discarded entirely. There's no big fight where the water tribe helps out their new friends in their cool watery ways. They join Jake on the ride there and then they just disappear and we get a rehash of the beginning fight with the same five people we've been watching for the past two hours doing the same things they've always done. Once again, the only character saving this fight is that same whale. In the end the new waterworld setting and all the people in it are nothing but a beautiful background instead of something that actually plays into the plot and characters.
Is it all bad? No. Avatar 2 looks amazing. The action scenes are stunning and the water world with all it's majestic creatures is beautiful. But that's all there is. It's empty beauty with no substance at all. And to me, that might just be the biggest disappointment of the year, movie-wise.
Archive 81 (2022)
Unlikeable main characters kill emotional involvement
I binged this show in one bed ridden flu day and I did actually enjoy myself quite a lot. It is tense and interesting throughout. We follow Dan, a film restorer who gets a job fixing some old tapes by Melody detailing some odd activity in a burned down building. Dan starts out pretty cold and emotionless and basically stays that way throughout. His best friend Marc repeatedly endangers himself for Dan but gets no gratuity whatsoever. Dan uses him, keeping up a pretty toxic friendship.
Melody starts out very nice but gets less and less likeable as the season progresses. Maybe this was intentional as madness sets in. She starts ditching her friends, leaving people while they're in desperate need of help and literally leaving a trail of hospitalizations and death as she goes, all in pursuit of her own selfish goals.
All this made it kind of hard to get emotionally involved with Dan and Melody. I didn't really care what happened to them and was more invested in some of the genuinely nice side characters like Marc, Annabelle and Jess.
As for the story, it kind of starts out slow and then goes crazier and crazier near the end. I kinda liked it, but if you're looking for something subtle, this ain't it. The ending is left open and doest feel very satisfying, leaving many loose ends.
Give it a watch if you're hungry for some occult horror. Leave it be if you're looking for a good story or emotional involvement.
Don't Look Up (2021)
Hits hard, misses hard
Don't Look Up is a strange movie that seems to not entirely know what it wants to be at times. It's message is bright and clear and when it stops trying to be funny, it really hits hard at times. The ending was amazing and iIery obvious, is really well done at times. Some scenes, including the ending, are truly haunting and beautiful.
At other times, it tries really hard to be a comedy, completely missing the mark. Jonah Hill's character is the worst, playing a terribly written charicature of a millennial, ruining any sense of immersion and dread in any scene he is in. There are more characters that are too charicaturistic to be taken seriously (Ron Perlman's springs to mind), and the movie tends to overshoot it's message this way. It's a shame, because when it does put some more effort into it's characters, it does so quite well.
Don't Look Up is really well shot and has a great soundtrack. At the start it does a fun little 'The Big Short' fourth wall breaking thing, but that suddenly stops not too far in. The cast is obviously amazing, although some talent (Ron Perlman and Jonah Hill especially) is really wasted here.
By the end I was left impressed despite it's obvious flaws. It could've been more, but what it is, is still very impressive and definitely worth a watch.
Bumperkleef (2019)
Almost makes you root for the killer
Rarely have I seen a film with such an unlikeable cast of main characters. Especially the dad is just an absolutely awful person. The movie is pretty tense and shot quite well. Even the acting is decent, especially for Dutch standards, but they can't save the movie from being mediocre at best thanks to the terrible characters and their equally terrible choices.
House of Gucci (2021)
A strange movie
Let me start by saying I am not at all into fashion or the world of high-end designers. I have no clue about the "True Story" this was based on and went into it with that lack of knowledge expecting a fun biopic.
What I got was just that, at least for the first half. The movie starts out very fun, introducing us to the main characters Mauricio and Patrizia. As you probably have heard by this point, Lady Gaga does great. Everyone does great, basically. The Italian accents are quite painful and feel unnecessary. Italian would've been best, but plain English would have been a lot better than this slapstick accent stuff.
After the first half, things go a bit wrong. Characters that are set up a certain way suddenly change overnight. Character development in this movie is more an on/off-switch than a slider, with characters going back and forth between polar opposites constantly. The character Paolo was a terrible attempt at introducing comic relief. He feels like a slapstick comedy act, talking about poop and massively overdoing the acting and the accent to the point where it's just painful to watch.
The second half is just kind of a mess. It's still nicely shot and the acting is great so it's never a mess you want to walk out of, but a mess nonetheless. My suggestion: wait for it to land on streaming platforms.
Adventure Beast (2021)
Give it some time
This show made the mistake of starting out with the worst episode. I felt no need to continue, but my animal-loving girlfriend enjoyed it so we watched a few more. As the show continues, it gets more enjoyable for sure. The characters are actually pretty likable and there's still plenty of funny jokes left amongst quite a few misses. I liked the chaotic pace of the show, constantly changing scenery, and the animal facts make it just a tiny bit educational. The artstyle and voice work is very decent, making this a fun watch in my book.
Halloween Kills (2021)
From the perspective of a non-fan
I haven't seen any Halloween movies since the first many years ago. There was literally nothing else in cinemas tonight we hadn't seen yet so Halloween it was.
The film kind of assumes you've seen the previous ones ut I can hardly blame it for that. There's flashbacks at least trying to explain what happened so I wasn't fully in the dark. Everyone in this movie is immensely stupid and this is reflected in both their actions and their dialogue. They all try to kill Myers with a cheese knife or a paperclip, getting as close to him as possible and letting him escape for no good reason but forced suspense.
So obviously, everyone gets killed. This was okay with me as I had no connection to these characters at all. In between the killing, the movie tries to act like more than it is, hitting us with "profound" messages like "maybe we were the monsters all along". It feels silly, laughable and most of all unnecessary. The impact is especially low when a crowd kills an innocent man and everyone just forgets about it seconds later, shrugging it off as a little mistake.
The gore is fun but the kills are pretty uncreative. Everyone just gets knifed endlessly, surviving a hundred stab wounds just to gargle dramatically.
All in all I enjoyed my popcorn more than the movie. 9/10 popcorn. 4/10 movie.
Midnight Mass (2021)
It's just... Decent
Is it slow? Yes.
Is there maybe a few too many long monologues. Maybe.
Is it perfect? No.
Is it worth a 10? No.
Is it worth a 1? Nooo.
Midnight Mass is a slow burn. The tension is built from the start by the atmosphere and the location. The characters are interesting for the most part, but some subplots are not touched on much. Not loose ends necessarily, but they just don't really matter in the end and don't have much of an impact on the story or the viewer. The only one they really bothered me involved mass animal death and felt very unnecessary to the story.
I kept watching for the atmosphere, the acting, the cinematography. I didn't get bored like many people seemed to, and the monologues, although many, weren't as terrible as many people make them out to be. They don't feel natural at all because people don't talk like that in regular conversations, but some were good regardless.
If you have patience and can live with a whiff of pretense as long as it's made up by atmosphere, you'll enjoy this. I sure did.
Katla (2021)
It's not about solving the mystery
People seem to get really caught up on characters not solving the mystery right away. Do a DNA test! Ask the date! Yes, that all makes a lot of sense, but it's not the point of the show.
The entire show is about dealing with loss, guilt, death, mourning and sickness. The last episode made this all too clear: these replicas are there for a reason. They are there to help the characters that manifested them.
Grima manifested her sister to deal with her loss. The parents manifested their lod to deal with their guilt. Gunnhild was manifested to rid her older self of the guilt of a failed abortion. And contrary to popular belief I feel like the second Grima wasn't manifested by Grima, but by her husband, who missed the way she used to be before the tragedy.
Looking at this show as an emotional character drama instead of a mystery thriller is the right way to go into it without disappointment. I actually liked the characters and the acting. It's stiff, but that fits the tone.
The cinematography and the locations are absolutely stunning. I watched the entire season in two insomnia fueled nights and never got tired of the beautiful aerial shots. It's worth trying an episode or two just for that alone.
Give it a shot. If you're frustrated by characters not hastily solving the mystery of where the clones are coming from, this isn't for you. If you like the emotional character development, stick with it.
Springsteen on Broadway (2018)
Irrational reviews as usual
Rationality is, as per usual, hard to find in these user reviews. It's always either a 1 or a 10, whereas the reality lies somewhere in between. People call it either a great masterpiece or a self-centered POS. Well, it is quite self-centered, but what do you expect out of a one man show?
The thing is: Springsteen knows how to tell a story. As a European fan, I like the little travel capsule his music and this show give me into a regular American life that I sometimes dream of. This very much does that, diving into Bruce's youth, his parents and his hometown. It's standard Springsteen material and no matter how many times it's repeated, I still gobble it up. There's some real touching stories in there.
Now the songs... I can't say I was a fan of the stripped down versions. I love me some acoustic, but this was different. The lyrics were there but the entire songs were changed to the point some were hard to recognize and it didn't really sit well with me for most. Tom Joad was nice and Brilliant Disguise was decent but those were really the only two where I didn't feel weirded out by how much the songs stray away from the flow and style of the originals. You could see this creative approach as positive, but to me it really wasn't.
At 2.5 hours, it's a little on the long side and I caught myself yawning here and there, but all in all it manages to feel shorter than it is and it usually stays interesting enough with a decent mix of story and song.
Conclusion: If you don't like Springsteen, this won't convince you. If you like Springsteen, you won't need convincing and you'll probably enjoy it.
Ready or Not (2019)
Not worth the 1s, definitely not worth the 10s
I see a lot of 1s on here, but honestly this movie isn't that bad. What it is, is just a very mediocre dark comedy horror flick. One very important thing is that you do not take this movie seriously at any point. The concept is pretty original and fun, but it never really takes advantage of it. It just turns into a standard "you're next" type movie with a dark comedy overtone.
The comic relief really is hit or miss. There were a couple of funny bits but also quite a few cringeworthy attempts. Samara Weaving does great as the main character and is a joy to behold when she turns into the sneaker-wearing murderous bride. The rest of the cast does a well enough job, never really standing out.
It mostly is a case of missed opportunities though. The ending is very disappointing and really missed a chance for some proper revenge action. The entire concept of the hide and seek game could've been a lot more, but is in the end no more than an excuse for the characters to kill each other. The movie could've been a lot more fun, unique and original than it is now.
The whole movie is certainly enjoyable as long as you do not take it seriously. Don't think about the plotholes. Ignore the sometimes downright moronic character decisions. Just grab some popcorn, turn your mind off and you will probably have a decent time. Wait for a streaming release and give it a shot if you're bored.