Nixon_Carmichael Reviews

Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver (2024)

Zack Snyder has got to be stopped.

[3/10 · 22 April 2024]

I am not a Snyder hater, by the way. I really enjoyed his Dawn of the Dead, Watchmen, Man of Steel and his Owl movie, a movie not enough people have seen.

Sadly, as Snyder has progressed forward, receiving higher and higher budgets, his films have become exponentially worse.

A follow up to the straight to Netflix Rebel Moon, Rebel Moon II picks up where the other left off, which isn't saying much.

Where the first Rebel Moon took place in different locations, with different characters, most of Rebel Moon II takes place mainly in one location with one final battle.

At the end of the day, these movies are Snyder doing his remake of Seven Samurai and Star Wars, except with a lame story.

This proves that Snyder NEEDS a quality screenplay to placed into his hands prior to rolling cameras.

Late Night with the Devil (2023)

Late Night with the Devil. Not quite horror, but still great!

[9/10 · 5 April 2024]

So it's the 1970s, and David Dastmalchian is late night TV host, Jack Delroy, a fictional contemporary of Johnny Carson and his ilk. In a Season 7 episode, Jack, lamenting his diminishing ratings, decides to pull sort of gimmick episode and has a few guests in the form of a James Randi-esque skeptic, a TV psychic medium a la Uri Gellar, and parapsychologist and her patient who is said to be possessed by a demon.

The movie is shot in two modes, the first is in the format of a 70s TV show, 4:3 aspect ration, and the second is when the "show" goes on a commercial break and we see the backstage scenes shot in docu-style black and white, and all of it is completely effective.

As the film unravels, Jack is trying to both figure out if this whole demon possession thing is real while at the same time scheming with his producer backstage to try to maximize his ratings and beat Johnny Carson.

Late Night with the Devil is thus far one of the most creative and easily one of the best movies of 2024. Not a horror aficionado myself, I would say that while this isn't quite horror in the traditional sense, it is creep enough to keep you on the edge of your seat.

This is a major win for people who are sick of remakes, sequels, prequels, re-quells, reboots and usual flair of that nature.

Dune: Part Two (2024)

Things actually happen in this one!

[6/10 · 1 March 2024]

And we're back! Following the......experiment.....that was 2021's Dune, Denis Villanueve is back with the sequel. Like the first one, this is a perfectly crafted piece of sci fi filmmaking, however UNLIKE the first Dune, Dune 2 is not a total snoozer as things actually happen on screen this time around. The shots, the music, the sound design are all top notch.

I still find myself baffled by these movies. Again, I am the super ultimate target audience for weird sci fi stuff, and I love most of Denis Villanueve's work, even with all of the whiz bang taking place in Dune2, I still found myself yawning at times. I can't keep track of any of the characters names, I have only a basic understanding of who is doing what, I am not mesmerised by Timothee Chalamet nor Zendaya's acting. They both seem kind of wooden to me. Also, by about the 17th or 18th time they push in for a super close up on Zendaya's weird face and linger there for what seemed like hours on end, I began to grow weary.

I don't know, I think I must be the problem. Everyone else in the world seems to love these same movies, so I must be some sort of freak or miscreant.

To me this is an amped up version of the first Dune. More battles and action, more sand, more death, it's just more.

Rubikon (2022)

Pretty good, original little sci fi movie.

[7/10 · 27 February 2024]

Bored, on a dreary afternoon, I figured what the hell. I had placed Rubikon into my queue over a year ago, but had never gotten around to watching it. What I found was a not bad, little sci fi movie.

Basically speaking, it is 2056 and the world governments have been taken over by a number of massive opaque and sprawling corporations (not exactly outside of the realm of possibility I know) and they have thrust the world into its end days for humanity. Aboard the ISS are a group of astronauts who observe the Earth becoming entombed into a toxic cloud of death, and they then must decide how to proceed.

If you're looking for a big Hollywood sci-fi actioner, then I'm here to tell you that this is not it. The acting isn't great, but there are some good scenes and lines to appreciate. There are basically three main characters, the Russian pragmatist, played by the wonderful Mark Ivanir who looks like he literally just stepped off the set of For All Mankind. Also are two other actors with whom I am not familiar, one is the female German soldier and also a Spanish astronaut, the suicidal idealist.

At the end of the day there isn't anything groundbreaking here but it's a pretty good sci fi space movie. Worth checking out.

Argylle (2024)

Well, that was hideous. More CGI sludge. Poor Matthew Vaughn.

[4/10 · 31 January 2024]

And from Matthew Vaughn comes Argyle, probably the first legit action movie of 2024, however unlike its predecessor Plane in January of 2023, Argyle doesn't know exactly what it wants to be and the movie suffers from that.

Argyle is a tale of three movies, one is an over the top fantasy movie, one is a hyper crazy spy movie and one is well...out there. Let's just say straight away that the visual effects in this movie are a mess. I don't know if this movie is yet another victim of the near third world conditions of effects houses or if it's just bad shot creation.

Sam Rockwell and Bryce Dallas Howard bring their respective A games and there are no complaints there. Henry Cavill, in little more than a cameo, does his part admirably as well. I have to wonder if there is another version of this one where Henry Cavill has more screen time.

At the end of the day, though Matthew Vaughn has been one of my favourite filmmakers over the past number of years, this one isn't one of his better offerings. It's not the worst thing that I've ever seen, and there is fun to be had here, but I'm not going to lie and say that this is a good movie. To Matthew Vaughn I say "Chin up, go get em' next time."

Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023)

Just okay mid-2000s CGI sludge. I honestly don't know what I just watched.

[5/10 · 22 December 2023]

So here's the story with this movie, about 10 years ago, Zack Snyder went to Lucasfilm with a pitch for a Seven Samurai style Star Wars movie. Snyder laid out the pitch, Lucasfilm said "Yeah no thanks".

Then the brain trust out at Netflix said "Hey, we'll take it", so they switch some names around and voila, you've got a straight to streaming Zack Snyder's Star Wars movie.

The Good: There are some cool visual elements here. Some cool shots and fight sequences exist, but that's about it.

The Okay: some of the characters are fun to watch. Sometimes Ray Fisher makes some interesting choices and hey Tony Hopkins shows up as a robot, so that was cool. Sofia Boutella. She looks incredible and proves that she's a legitimate action hero.

Everything: screen play is nonsensical and worthless, later in the movie a lot of the green screen and VFX devolve into CGI sludge. At times you kind of can't tell what's taking place.

If you're bored and you want to have a couple of beers and watch some whiz-bang for a couple of hours then hey, there you go.

Godzilla Minus One (2023)

A surprisingly great movie that for me came out of nowhere.

[8/10 · 2 December 2023]

Godzilla Minus One is now one of my favourite movies of 2023, right up there with Oppenheimer, The Holdovers and Plane.

Directed by and starring a bunch of Japanese talent of whom I was totally unaware, I walked into this movie knowing nothing about it, aside from what I had seen in a trailer on YouTube months ago. Mercifully, this is old school film making in today's world at its best. Coming in with a production budget of "only" 15 million USD, like District 9 before it, Godzilla Minus One looked better visually than movies I've seen recently with 3, 5, 6 and even 7 times the budget. I have no earthly idea how some of these Marvel and Star Wars movies cost 200-300 million dollars and look like they belong on the CW....but that's a problem for another day.

Godzilla Minus One is one of those rare monster movies where you actually care about the story with the human characters. At the end of the day, this is a movie about PTSD. Starting off in a beleaguered post-WW2 Japan in 1945, Japan has just been decimated by the American atomic bombs, just as the country is catching its breath, Godzilla appears from the ocean like a hellbent and terrifying creature from hell. This Godzilla isn't a good guy, it doesn't help the humans fight another monster and it doesn't have a slick or rad soundtrack, no, in Godzilla Minus One, this Godzilla is a destructive force of nature.

The creature emerges from the ocean and dispatches untold horrors on the people of Japan while the rest of the world says "Yeah.....good luck with all of that".

This is one of the great movies that I hope everyone gets a chance to see in theatres. This restores my faith in the movies and is a breath of fresh air from all of the Marvel CGI sludge and excrement visited upon audiences over the past couple of years.

Easily one of my favourites of the year, despite the fact that the whole thing is in Japanese and I don't speak a word of the language.

Expend4bles (2023)

Who did they make this movie for?

[2/10 · 23 September 2023]

Expendables 4 is easily one of the worst movies I have ever seen, and that's saying something as I actually work in the industry. When will they learn, putting the number of the movie in the movie is always going to lead to atrocity and failure (remember Fant4stic?).

They should not have released this movie.

It is almost as though they were writing cringeworthy dialogue on purpose. There is a "twist" that they set up in the first act in the movie that is so obvious that it's almost offensive. Megan Fox is at her absolute worst here, and sadly Andy Garcia, Sly Stallone and Jason Statham aren't any better.

I should have seen the new Michael Jai White movie, Outlaw Johnny Black instead. That decision will haunt me forever.

Expendables 4 is a miserable display of cynicism and despair.

Clerks III (2022)

I have no idea what Kevin Smith is going after these days.

[3/10 · 20 June 2023]

Once upon a time, Kevin Smith was kind of an avant garde filmmaker, who made film based on his life, kind of. These days, Kevin Smith has basically resorted to making home movies.

The newest and perhaps last entry in Smith's View Askiewniverse (Kevin Smith, to his credit, created a shared cinematic universe of characters and events decades before Marvel entered the fray)

Clerks III picks up after the events of 2006's Clerks II. This time Dante and Randall are middle aged owners of the very convenience store that was the central whirligig of Clerks (1994). After one of the pair suffers a massive heart attack, they have an epiphany and decides to make a movie about his own life. The movie then defends into home movie territory. Perhaps there are a subset of Smith movie fans who will get a kick out of the meta self reference, but personally it didn't work for me.

There are a couple of real scenes in the movie where it gets a little bit serious, and those scenes work somewhat, but I don't know that the rest of it is very watchable, especially if you're not in on the joke.

There is one joke that works pretty well, and it's a throw away line where Kevin Smith takes a little bit of a poke at Seth Rogen, and I actually got a little bit of a chuckle out of that as well. The movie does have a rad soundtrack though.

Fast X (2023)

Pretty enjoyable action romp if you don't have more than 2 or 3 brain cells to rub together.

[5/10 · 19 May 2023]

Fast X. The Fast and Furious crew is back in yet another dare-deviling, death defying astronomical adventure. Vin Diesel returns once again as Dom Toretto, the one-time street racer and DVD player hi-jacker, who now had evolved into the dare-devil super spy,

Fast X picks up after the gravity defying events of Fast 9, but the plot and characters are springboard off of the now "classical Fast 5, inserting new addition, Jason Momoa into the footage of the previous entry. The Fast series loves to play fast and loose with continuity, inexplicably carrying on as though Paul Walker's Brian is still alive in the Fast Universe, despite the actor having died in a fiery and harrowing automobile crash in 2013.

The Fast crew is now up against Jason Momoa's Dante, the son of the Fast 5's previous victim. Dante is channeling Jared Leto's Joker, a conniving and manically clever criminal out for revenge against Dominic Toretto and his band street racing super spies.

At the end of the day Fast X is yet another nonsensical actioner that gets really big and stupid in the end, but it can be a fun ride if you turn off all but one or two brain cells.

4400 (2021–2022)

This may be the worst television series ever.

[2/10 · 7 March 2023]

The 4400 is a remake of the 2004 USA series of the same name. Essentially, the premise is that over the past hundred years or so, 4400 hundred people have vanished off of the face of the Earth, without a trace. Like the original series, all 4400 people return inexplicably in the same place at the same time, and after a while they begin to display some unusual capabilities...

Where the original series then proceeds to engage in character development and world building, the new one......does not do that..

I am not even going to get into the plot, because there isn't much of one. I believe the writers are trying to make s political statement of some kind, however what that is I have no idea.

I get the feeling that this was written by rookie graduates or potentially someone's nephew/niece, or maybe interns? I'm not certain, but it's really bad..... but then there's the casting... good lord. The cast of this show is devoid both of talent and chemistry. I actually can't believe that they even used some of the takes that were left in the episodes.

I do not recommend that anyone watch this show under any circumstances whatsoever. It is really, really quite bad. I don't know if the writers were paid for this show, but maybe the network can get the money back? Or maybe it was a pyramid scheme or money laundering endeavour of some kind. It's hard to say.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)

What has happened to Marvel?

[3/10 · 17 February 2023]

I don't mean to be disrespectful to anyone involved, I know that nobody sets out to make a bad movie. Yet again though, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is yet another PG13, CGI mud fest.

So when we pick up, Paul Rudd's Scott Lang is walking down the streets of San Francisco underneath the theme song from Welcome Back, Kotter....

After a quick voiceover the characters are inexplicably flung into the throes of a Star Wars, CGI, acid trip. Even though some of the visuals are interesting, this movie has no discernible plot. It is literally just one, big CGI mud fest after another. If you told me that this movie was written by a third grade boy on a sugar, I wouldn't fall out of my chair in the shock.

The true crime here is that for months on end, Marvel have touted Quantumania as "An Avengers Level Event", which was clearly a blatant lie. At the end of the film, nothing has taken place.

It's a crying shame.

Plane (2023)

Plane embraces the olde school 1990s action movie vibe. This movie rules.

[7/10 · 15 January 2023]

Plane comes from French director Jean Francois Richet (Assault on Precinct 13) and stars Gerard Butler and Mike Coulter. This movie just works, with no shaky cam and minimal but seething score behind it, Plane rumbles right through at a taught 1:47, and I just got a huge kick out of it.

Though the trailer tells you exactly what the movie is and boy do they just run with it.

The minimal cgi and VFX May baffle modern audiences but this works a throwback to the 1990s with clear and propelling action scenes with great camera work as well.

Plane has a great action, a surprisingly full cast given the premise, and Jean Francois clearly knows what he's doing.

See this in the theatre if you can. 7/10.

The Gray Man (2022)

I wonder if Netflix can get some of the money back that they paid for this atrocity.

[2/10 · 24 July 2022]

It was kind of impressive, how bad this movie was. It is almost like Netflix, though they make great tv series, they go out of their way to hire a-list talent for their movies, intentionally blow hundreds of millions of dollar on them, and then purposely make bad movies. Like MOST Netflix movies are distractingly bad, and many of them have budgets that are 2 or 3 times the budget of major studio theatrical released films. I really hope someone was fired after this one. They gave Joe and Anthony Russo 200$M dollars to make this and having seen the movie I have no earthly idea where the money went. Lol. Laughably stupid. Terrible writing, and looks like hell. It's almost unwatchable. The opening scene is a flashback dialogue scene between Ryan Gosling and Billy Bob Thornton and it's almost unwatchably terrible. I can't believe they actually used that take. I think the movie was a literal money grab/pyramid scheme/money laundering operation because I cannot imagine on what 200$ M were spent. Even the action scenes were distractingly bad. It appeared to have the same production quality as 1980s pornography movie, but less interesting and with a worse score/soundtrack.

Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

A tale of three movies. 70% horrific, 25% nostalgia and 5% decent film.

[4/10 · 9 June 2022]

Another baffling entry in the Jurassic Park sequel franchise. A big point of consternation with the movie, is the fact that the writing as well as the production seem to be done by committee. There are a couple of scenes that are absolutely breathtaking and poignant while some scenes, the majority, seem to be have written and shot for the CW or a weirdo app like Pluto or something.

It is really quite bad. I spent a lot of time wondering what went wrong, until I looked at the end credits and there it was, screenplay by Emily Carmichael (No relation). Emily is a writer, the likes of which, I refer to as The Destroyer of Worlds. These are writers who weasel onto a sequel project and completely upend what made earlier entries in a property or franchise work.

The truth is, the people who made the movie clearly have no idea what they are doing. It's almost as if the filmmakers and crew were winging it.

Unfortunately when you look further into the credits, that seems to be the case.

This is a hundred million dollar student film, basically. There are dinosaurs I guess, and nobody is running up a mountain in high heels, there's actually a plot point where they zoom in on Claire's feet to show that indeed she is not wearing high heels this time.

Morbius (2022)

A profoundly bad movie. Sony is 100% guilty of false advertising. Early review.

[3/10 · 31 March 2022]

This is an early review. There are no plot details (spoilers) here, however if you want to go in completely clean, then skip the rest of this review. Not that there is anything to reveal.

The basic set up as depicted in the trailers and advertising is that Michael Morbius is a doctor in the Marvel Universe who is afflicted by a rare and gruesome blood disease. Setting out to find a cure for himself and others of his ilk, he winds up becoming a vampire and proceeds to go head first into adventures in the same vicinity of Spider-Man. This is all in the marketing material that has appeared over the past two years.

Speaking of the trailer, there is zero connection to other Marvel movies nor the MCU in this film. Essentially everything you saw in the trailers does not exist in this movie. Like at all. This is studio executive meddling and false advertising at its pinnacle.

In terms of technical filmmaking, this is a mess. The action is a disaster. It harkens back to the disastrous comic book entries from the days of yore, a la the horrific Fan4stic, X-Men Origins Wolverine, Thor2 and Green Lantern. It's just one messy CGI PG13 cut scene after another. I don't know if the director, Daniel Espinosa or the studio are to blame, however, given the fact that Tom Rothman, the Perpetrator in Chief of Sony, was also head of 20th Century Fox back when they were churning horrific movies, my money is that the disastrous production that is Morbius is to be blamed on Tom Rothman and his henchman suits at Sony.

The 355 (2022)

Essentially a big and silly version of a Charlie's Angels episode.

[3/10 · 9 January 2022]

Looking at the wattage of the cast one might wonder how on Earth a project like this could go so horrifically awry, but then you have to remember that it is directed by none other than Simon Kinberg. Kinberg who is a talented and successful producer unto himself has demonstrated once more that he requires a high caliber screenplay to be placed into his hands prior to rolling cameras.

The 355 is sort of a version of a mixture of a Bourne Identity flick without the gravity and a Mission Impossible movie without the craftsmanship. Lead by Diane Kruger, Penelope Cruz, Jessica Chastain, Fan Bingbing and Lupida Nyong'o, on paper, in a film with these performers operating at a high level and with a slick score by Junkie XL, one would think that this movie would be a hit with ease, but again we have to remember one thing, at least at this point Simon Kinberg does not have the wherewithal to be the helmsman of giant, globe sprawling action movie.

The Book of Boba Fett (2021–2022)

More like The Brochure of Boba Fett.

[3/10 · 29 December 2021]

After having seen only the first episode, my first impression is that this will be more like and unto the Disney+ Marvel shows than The Mandalorian. So far, what we are getting are super short episodes with barely above Cos-Play production quality. Oh, and we are now retconning the original Star Wars trilogy in the span of a 24 minute episode of a low quality show on a steaming service. I will stick it out and give it a fair shake to see how this unfolds, however as of episode one, a Jedi seeks not these things.

Hawkeye (2021)

Least interesting thing that Marvel had done since Disney+ launch.

[3/10 · 28 November 2021]

Hawkeye is another entry into Marvel Cinematic Universe, proving once again that the further Marvel and Disney get away from the double whammy that was Infinity War/Endgame, the less interesting it gets.

Hawkeye picks up after Endgame following the completely unlikeable character of Kate Bishop played by the otherwise lovely Hailee Steinfeld, who somehow was roped into this pile of garbage.

Another issue is the blatant false advertising, call me crazy but if you're going to have a show named "Hawkeye", then perhaps maybe it could be a good idea to have the character Hawkeye in the show itself?

This is a waste of time. It's basically a back door pilot trading on the name of a major MCU character in order to introduce a new filler series without having to actually write or produce a quality show.

Dune (2021)

A beautifully made and well crafted snoozer.

[4/10 · 23 October 2021]

Dune is the remake of the remake of the Frank Herbert novel of the same name, from the 1960s. Denis Villanueva masterfully crafts this movie as meant to be seen on the biggest screen possible, the problem is that it's a nearly three hour slog.

The pacing of Dune is not a slow burn, it's a no burn. Also problematic is that this current version only covers the first half of the first book, in which nothing happens.

Think of this as the cinematic version of Season 1 of Game of Thrones, in space.

The acting, cinematography and score are all top notch, the problem is that the screenplay is a disaster. It is three hours of world building with absolutely no pay off at all, like whatsoever.

See it on the biggest screen possible if you must see it, just for the spectacle itself. Watching this on HBOMAX would be an exercise in futility.

Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)

Clearly the brass at Warner Bros have no idea what they are doing. Zack Snyder's Justice League.

[9/10 · 19 March 2021]

There is information in here that SOME people may deem to be plot details (spoilers), I do not believe that is the case, however, take heed.

So a lot of people are aware of the saga that was Justice League. Long story short: in 2016 Zack Snyder sought to make a Justice League movie that would bring together the DCEU heroes from his own Man of Steel and Batman V Superman, as well Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman. After having completed photography and editing on the film, the director underwent a devastating family tragedy at which point WB decided to, instead of pressing pause on the production, remove Zack Snyder from the movie, bring in Joss Whedon to reshoot and rewrite almost the whole damn thing and curtail the movie down to two hours. It was a super colossal disaster. A devastating mess of epic proportions, 2017s Justice League was a financial tragedy as well as ostracized by critics and fans alike. The studio had the world believing that prior to Whedon's involvement, the original version of Justice League was an unwatchable mess and only brought in a new director in order salvage what was entirely unwatchable and god-awful in order to delivery "something" resembling a movie to theatres. Fine fair enough, I guess.

In 2021, however, we know better now don't we? Is Zack Snyder's JL a better movie than the theatrical release? Yes. Far and away this is a better movie, both in terms of storyline as well as craftsmanship. IS ZSJL a cool movie in its own right? It is. I am a weird freak, and so I got a kick out of Man of Steel as well as Batman V. Superman, flaws and all. The truth is that if you like enjoyed Snyder's DCEU, Wonder Woman, Man of Steel and Batman v Superman, then you'll like this. If you gasped in terror at those movies, well then you're not going to like Justice League either. It's all fruit from the same tree. However........ I found myself asking "WHY IN THE HELL did they even bother getting another director to reshoot the movie?" Let me explain without getting into plot details:

This is, on a fundamental level, THE SAME movie as the theatrical release. There is A LOT more in here yes, it is bloodier, has more foul language and mercifully it is shot on film, however the overall plot points are the same. Superman is dead, Batman is going on a mission to gather the team, Batman goes to recruit Aquaman and Barry Allen, Diana goes after Cyborg, Steppenwolf shows up to steal mother boxes and raise hell, the League gathers together to resurrect Superman, Superman comes back and is kind of crazy, the League has a fight with Superman, Superman takes off with Lois, the League goes to Russia to deal with Steppenwolf by themselves only to get their asses handed to them, Superman shows up, kicks Steppenwolf's ass and saves the day, Bruce buys the bank that held the mortgage to Mrs. Kent's farm and here we are. That is the GENERAL plot of the 2017 movie and that is the GENERAL plot of the HBOMAX movie. Yes, the 2021 version is far and away better in every imaginable way, but the overall story arch is the same. So why in THE HELL did they have to bring in another director to screw around with everything? A kid with an iPad Pro could easily edit this four hour epic down to two hours in an afternoon.

At this point it is clear that the leadership at WB have no idea what they are doing. The company is being run people, ostensibly, who have no clue about the movie business. They may be "business people", but they certainly do not know anything about filmmaking. My recommendation is that if you have a free afternoon or evening watch this movie. Do yourself a favour and forget that the 2017 version even exists.

Debris (2021)

I have no idea what I'm watching or why, and yet here I am.

[7/10 · 16 March 2021]

Yet another creepy snd brooding series from NBC, a la Manifest, Debris is another series with a sci-fi backdrop whirling around another impossible premise. A couple of agents from some alphabet branch, one a phenomenally attractive black lady with posh British accent, the other- a dude from a bunch of other NBC shows rocking a mustache and a leather jacket, are apparently bound to cris-cross around various reaches of what I'm assuming is Vancouver BC, investigating floating metal which causes people to do weird stuff like get zapped and then float around in a coma forever.

Fair enough. Debris is at this point, Episode 1, a puzzling sci-fi show that has it all, creepy music and imposing music, a scary kid with a strange haircut, a millennial Mulder and Scully and an impossible premise. I'm in for now.

If it builds towards something then cool, if it turns into a LOST-style wild goose chase or a Heroes-esque decent into perfunctitude however, then I'll pull the ripcord. Here's to giving it a shot.

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

Transgressively bad, when compared to the first WW movie.

[4/10 · 26 December 2020]

In 2020, with Harley Quinn/Birds of Prey squarely in our rear-view mirror and Zack Snyder's Justice League looming on the horizon, Wonder Women 1984 charges into the tail end of 2020 to prove that it can be worse than all of them combined.

Where Wonder Woman 1 succeeds in both visual storytelling and screenplay, falling apart only at the tail end, WW84 is a brightly lit, 80s themed bonanza, like an episode of Miami Vice or the Six Million Dollar Man.

The Good: The score is terrific. I could listen to Hans Zimmer's DCU scores for the rest of my days. Pedro Pascal, Gal Gadot and Kristen Wiig turn in good performances as well.

Everything else is bad. I've seen teenagers produce more convincing visual effects on YouTube. The bad is guy Max Lord who becomes bad finding a magical rock and wishing for more wishes and a magical light that lasers up into the air YET AGAIN.

It's just one of the most transgressively bad movies I've seen in a while.

The Stand (2020–2021)

CBS All Access have no idea what they are doing

[2/10 · 22 December 2020]

The Stand, a seminal work by author Stephen King, has been attempted once again, this time from the network responsible for the destruction of the iconic Star Trek franchise. I am not a person who believes that a series or movie based on a previous has to be 100% like the book, by definition, adaptations are versions of books. However, and call me crazy, I feel that if you're going to make a series called The Stand, based on the book, then it should have at least some elements of the story. CBS Access' The Stand is The Stand in name only. If the series were at least well crafted or engaging in some way then I could defend it, but this is yet another title from CBS AA that exists for display purposes only. I hate everything about this.

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (2019)

If you can't say something nice...........

[3/10 · 9 April 2020]

The thing here is that Kevin Smith is incredibly like able as person, but some of his newer entries just aren't movies. Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is a sequel to 2001's Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Where Strike Back was legitimate road movie with a few in jokes built in, Reboot is one big in joke, with a little bit of a plot peppered in and out at various points. If you look at it as a love letter to fans, then I guess it's a no harm/no foul type of situation. Kevin still wears his heart on his sleeve like a badge of honor, but lack of any discernible plot really takes the wind out of the sails here.