andrijj Reviews

The Kissing Booth 3 (2021)

Broke the first rule of romance genre...

[3/10 · 18 February 2024]

If you don't have a happy ending, it's just going to anger the fanbase. This ending was depressing and inconclusive, and it didn't feel like much of a payoff at all. Really, she should have decided to go to school for herself much sooner, so that if the relationship needed to be resolved, that resolution wouldn't simply be "okay, bye."

I'm not really sure what the filmmakers were thinking with this one, but they definitely should have talked to some romance novelists, because they would have told them that this ending is completely unacceptable to genre fans. Feels like this was written by someone who isn't a fan of the genre and doesn't really "get" it, either.

The Swan (II) (2023)

Absolutely terrible...

[1/10 · 18 January 2024]

I like Wes Anderson for some films and genres of film, but he's a one-trick pony and that trick did NOT work to translated this short-fiction piece by Roald Dahl, a story that haunted me as a child, filled me with terror, and probably had the biggest impact on me in terms of any piece about the cruelty of children and of bullies, at least at that age.

Anderson somehow managed to strip every ounce of genuine emotion and horror out of the piece and render it utterly empty.

Being quirky and clever for its own sake, without it lending anything to the story or the impact of a piece is just pure conceit. A style is supposed to strengthen the impact of a piece, not render it superficial and banal.

Really the absolute worst person to bring this to film, and it could have been amazing, if done right (and by someone else). I love all the actors involved too, so that just made it worse.

Blech.

Wild Orchid (1989)

So, sooo boooooring...

[1/10 · 29 November 2023]

You can definitely tell who the male reviewers are in this (and the ones who've never had decent sex)... the guy who suggested watching this for tips on how to pick-up women was my favorite. Like, wow.

But yeah, this is a boring, stupid movie with lame sex scenes and some of the worst dialogue I've ever heard. Carrie Otis' character is supposed to be an international lawyer who speaks multiple languages and she comes off dumb as a stump (again, only a guy could find that sexy). Mickey Rourke is creepy and no where close to being as cool as he thinks he is. I forgot how completely insufferable he was in the 80s-90s. And what's with the tan? He looks like he was dipped in heavy bronzer then stuck in the oven for four hours.

Just... bad. Not even funny bad, but just bad.

The Simpsons: Politically Inept, with Homer Simpson (2012) Season 23, Episode 10

Why would anyone have ted nugent as a guest star?

[6/10 · 26 October 2023]

I have no idea how to rate this. I ended up with a six since I really enjoyed it until Ted Nugent showed up. Even Homer isn't this stupid, is he? Painful. I can't believe someone thought paying this idiot to spout his gross nonsense on THIS show was a good idea in any way. Just off-putting and gross, maybe more so because I'm seeing this years late, as part of me watching all the seasons are now available on Disney+. I missed a lot of the mid to later seasons since I lived overseas.

I liked the spoof on him being a rightwing talking head (the constant crying and the gravy boats were a particularly nice touch). But yeah, it pretty much went off the rails somewhere in there.

Obsession (2023)

Why did they remake this? Why did they remake this like this?

[2/10 · 17 April 2023]

One, this didn't need to be a limited series. The movie version with Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche had MUCH better pacing and managed to happen in less than half the time.

Two, the casting on the two leads is way, way off. To say they have zero chemistry together would not be an exaggeration. I blame the direction for that in part, and the writing but some of it was just them. They weren't a believable couple. The woman wasn't a believable "everyone wants her" type character either (I mean granted, it's a little unfair to put her up against Juliette Binoche, who WAS believable in that role, but there you are).

I don't really know why they had Indira Varma play his wife, either, frankly, since she's a much more striking and beautiful woman (and much sexier, frankly) than the woman he supposedly becomes obsessed with. You never really get a clue why this father would do this to his son, or even much guilt around it until the very end... and even then, it's pretty short lived.

Just a weird take on the whole story, frankly. If you were going to spend 2 extra hours on it, it makes sense to go more into the emotional lives of the characters, to give us some reason to not hate the father especially. But at the end he's completely unrepentant and seems confused as to why he can't just go on with his son's ex-fiancee.

The whole thing is just weird and empty and not believable. Impossible to be remotely sympathetic with either lead. They are just terrible people, both of them.

That said, the people yelling "rip off" in the comments seem to be confusing plagiarism of some sort with a remake / adaptation of the same book. It's not a "rip off," they just got rights to make a different version of the same novel. It might have been wise for the producers to make that clearer in the advertising, but that doesn't make it a "rip off," but a new adaptation.

Christine (2016)

I get that it's a true story...

[2/10 · 17 April 2023]

...but omg, this is almost unwatchable.

The acting is well done, but the title character is so insanely unlikable and narcissistic it's really difficult to get through the whole thing. I get that she's dead now and that sucks, but her story is depressing, sad, and feels like it's about someone who really had no interest in anyone but herself, like most of her depression came out of extreme self-absorption. She wasn't happy for anyone else's successes, refused to learn, refused to listen to anything she didn't want to hear. If someone else was happy that was a reason for her to be bitter and angry.... even her own mother.

Again, acting is well done. Review score is strictly due to the fact that I got really nothing out of this that made my life better in any way. It's definitely not "entertaining" in the strictest sense. I don't feel like I learned anything. It just left a bad taste in my mouth.

Even her news stories bored the crap out of me, frankly, and came off as manic and really about herself and not about her audience or even responsible reporting. It's not like the reporting she was trying to do was any less exploitative than what her boss wanted of her. She was awful to the guy who started the fire, and that weird thing about domestic violence and making quasi-fictional "movies" about people's troubles was pretty awful.

So it's not like her stories were "better." They sucked. They were exploitative. They just also happened to be boring.

Anyway, maybe I'm more critiquing the person and the subject matter than the movie itself, but it was just such an unpleasant experience to watch this. I'm honestly not sure what the point of a movie like this is. It just felt like a bad use of two hours.

Blonde (2022)

I really thought I would like this...

[1/10 · 15 October 2022]

It just seems so far off from how she is in every other account I've read of her. The savvy business woman is gone. The woman who had a lot of sexual and career agency is pretty much invisible. Everything about this portrays her as a victim, and not only is it kind of disempowering and depressing to see her that way, it doesn't ring true. I guess I wanted an actual biography and this just isn't it.

I would recommend to those looking for that the podcast "You Must Remember This..." which is extremely well researched and provides a ton of great information about her life (and even more about Hollywood history more generally).

This, just... eh. I didn't like it. Not my thing, I guess.

Prey (I) (2022)

Absolutely awesome... by far the best since the original

[10/10 · 1 October 2022]

Ignore all the sadface dudebros on here who can't handle any film that might show our history realistically or have a woman as lead in an action film. Not a one of them could write their way out of a paper bag (or act... or direct... or contribute anything worthwhile to society in most cases).

This movie is AWESOME! It's so much fun, and I love the main character and her brother so much. Even the dog is fantastic. Really great, atmospheric, well-paced, well-written, riveting film. Watch it! You won't regret it!

(unless you're a little manbaby, then you might feel the need to make up things to rant about when we all know what's really bothering you)

It's definitely the most original episode in the franchise, at least since the very first film. I would love to see more in this world / time period, frankly. Such a cool idea to mix scifi with historical in this way.

The Girl from Plainville (2022)

I think the director is WAY overthinking Carter's motivations

[4/10 · 24 July 2022]

This is well acted, and the flashbacks didn't bother me like they did a lot of people. It's definitely way too long. Unlike a lot of the reviewers, I thought Chloe Sevigny and Dakota Fanning were excellent... and the guy who played Conrad III / Coco did a good job too.

Where I'm really critical is the creative license part of this. It just felt in super bad taste to me, and really taking liberties with the actual FACTS of the case... versus the stories Carter's defense team spun at the trial.

At the end of the day, I just really struggled with the vast amounts of what felt like full-blown projection by the writer(s) / director in terms of motivations of the involved persons, Michelle Carter in particular. Maybe I've dealt with more narcissists than anyone making this miniseries (difficult to believe in Hollywood, but okay), but this seems much less complicated than this film portrays.

It also makes me wonder how much that quack psychologist who testified for Carter in the trial influenced the director / writers. I don't find him remotely credible personally, and saw a number of psychologists calling into serious question his whole theory of "involuntary intoxication," which they more or less said has zero evidence to back it up, and is basically a made up condition only used in trials.

The naivete of assuming she was somehow innocent / sweet and this was all some "mistake" just really made my teeth grind. It also made me wonder how the filmmakers would have portrayed this if Carter had been, say, a teenaged black boy, or a teenaged Latina girl, etc. I really wish they'd gotten some real (no-agenda) psychologists to talk in more detail about Carter's mental state and what motivates personality types like hers. I wish they'd found at least one psychologist willing to talk about possible motives who DIDN'T testify for her case because he has some ax to grind with pharmaceutical companies. Not like I'm a fan of Rx companies, but he made it pretty clear he's a crusader and in other documentaries with the real man, he sounds painfully naive about Carter because she's young, polite, pretty, and, frankly, white.

The reality is, not everyone can be empathized with because not everyone has empathy. "Normal" people looking for a motivation they can relate to from a narcissist or someone with another antisocial personality disorder aren't going to be able to find one. This feels like a forced attempt to give her a motivation that "normal" people can relate to, and I'm sorry, but it's not credible. It feels made up, by people who AREN'T sociopaths and who are looking for a motivation that makes sense to THEM, not to someone who has this kind of disorder.

I feel like the narcissism of white women / girls (especially PRETTY white women / girls) is totally invisible most of the time. I think antisocial personality disorders are hard for non-professionals to spot anyway, due to the inability for normal people to discern motives that make no sense to them, but with women it's even MORE invisible.

It's just another form of sexism, frankly. As a white woman myself, I've suffered at the hands of female narcissists and it's shocking how many people just refuse to believe a pretty white suburban girl / woman would do something like that. I'm here to tell you, some of them do. Some who pretend to be feminists, or Christians, or whatever other guise they decide to hide behind do. I don't know if Carter is one of those, but frankly, I find it easier to believe than this convoluted attempt to find meaning where there just doesn't seem to be any. It strikes me as a huge stretch, and more about the writer / director than the actual perpetrator of this crime. Sometimes the simplest answer really is the right one.

The Staircase (2004–2018)

He did it. Nice try, though.

[1/10 · 18 April 2022]

It's rare to see such a biased documentary, one that doesn't even TRY to show both sides of the evidence chain. They barely address the evidence at all, but go off down rabbit holes and circumstantial hand-waving that would have done OJ proud.

What a load of crap. If this "documentarian" thinks this is showing some miscarriage of justice (and anyone who watched this who believes the same based on this biased load of nonsense filled with compromised witnesses and very little actual hard evidence... not to mention almost NO interviews of actual police or forensics experts who aren't there to try and get him off, or looking for ways to skew the evidence to give reasonable doubt)... then I have a bridge I'd love to sell.

This definitely shows what's wrong with the legal system, but not in the way the documentarian seems to think.

The best defense money can buy. I'm surprised he didn't have Alan Dershowitz on there, spouting sociopathic nonsense.

Invasion (2021–2024)

Intelligent sci fi with great characters and interesting ideas... ignore the trolls

[9/10 · 10 April 2022]

Amazing how many 1-star "reviews" I see on here with the exact same wording and headlines under different accounts. I am so tired of sites like this not policing their comment sections for trolls. A ton of people less savvy about the internet are missing out on great shows and content that wasn't made for emotionally immature teenagers with attention-deficit issues. This is great intelligent sci-fi if you like that sort of thing... in the same oeuvre as Contact, Arrival, etc. Not "pew-pew" science fiction, but something based more on the human psychology around and likely reactions people would have (in realtime) while an invasion was going on. More like "Contagion" than "Aliens."

Ignore all the idiotic bots. I hope the show has a second season!

Catching Killers: True Lies, Part 2: The Happy Face Killer (2021) Season 1, Episode 4

insane incompetence + laziness on the part of the police

[9/10 · 6 April 2022]

It's really shocking to see the attitude and dumb, egotistical stupidity of the Deputy D. A. in this case. He clearly cared a lot more about being "right" in his own mind than in actually finding the truth and stopping a serial killer who was murdering women. The fact that he didn't even READ the investigative report by the journalist is just insanely gross. What a lazy buffoon. They all came off as rubes, but he came off as maliciously stupid. I mean, god forbid any evidence be found by a JOURNALIST. No, let's just take the confession of a proven liar who gave us four different, conflicting stories with zero hard physical evidence instead.

Because... reasons.

Just maddening. That someone would put their own ego and prejudice ahead of finding a serial killer is evil.

Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel (2021)

Really unethical documentary

[1/10 · 24 March 2022]

There are some awful, not-credible people being taken at face value in this "documentary." One of them was labeled a "historian," which I find extremely unlikely in any true sense of the word. Full of non-factual, pure fantasy, and overly excited speculations about what was obviously a tragedy.

Really shows how gullible people are, honestly, and how few people really understand what "evidence" actually entails. Some of the theories of the internet sleuths on. Here are so completely irresponsible, so obviously just made up out of whole cloth, supported by the same kind of b.s. Verbal tics used by Fox News and others... "a lot of people believe," and "people are saying" and "such and such is OBVIOUSLY true" and "X+Y = Z" with no actual evidence of causality, and just complete nonsense and sloppy thinking.

The sad thing is, a lot of people will believe it, or not have enough critical thinking skills to recognize how poorly reasoned most of these "theories" are.

Do better, Netflix. There's enough nonsense out there already... you don't need to produce more.

Geostorm (2017)

Jeez, it's just not that bad

[10/10 · 27 October 2021]

Unbelievable that people thought this was somehow WORSE than Armageddon and some of those deeply horrible disaster films of the past. I actually thought this was a step up from those, and very entertaining. The idea of a weather weapon-grid is common in conspiracy theories, but I've never seen a movie about it so that worked for me. Rating a few stars higher to compensate for all of the butthurt trolling, especially since a lot of it comes off as political and totally about the reviewer, not the movie. So tired of all the troll accounts / reviews on here. It makes the reviews basically worthless for any movie that might anger the far-right brigade.

Mr. Corman (2021)

I can't really give this a star rating...

[13 August 2021]

It's very well made, written, acted... but it's absolutely not what I need right now in my life (personally). More anxiety, stress, despair, depression is not what I need from my entertainment when my state is on fire (California) and we're in a pandemic and teetering towards fascism. That mixed with the "life of despair" element to this, where he's clearly not feeling happy or satisfied with his life... yeah, after 2 episodes, I had to stop.

Again, extremely well made. Just not what my brain (or soul) need right now. It's hitting a little too close to home, given everything.

But I don't want to rate it for the same reason...

Who Killed Nicole? (2019)

Utter, utter garbage... insultingly stupid

[1/10 · 29 April 2021]

I'm 8 minutes in, and they're already doctoring the 911 calls to make them fit their narrative. The investigators are already so insanely NOT credible I'm highly doubting I'll make it through more than 20 minutes.

Pure, unadulterated garbage.

Child 44 (2015)

I don't get the negative reviews... at all

[10/10 · 15 July 2020]

Absolutely loved this movie. I don't understand the negative reviews, unless there are a bunch of butt-hurt Russian trolls on here (wouldn't be surprised, frankly, since they are pretty much everywhere else on the internet). Definitely worth the watch as an excellent period piece and slow-burn suspense movie.

Pet Sematary (2019)

Really, really bad

[2/10 · 4 July 2020]

The two stars are really only for Jason Clarke, who did the best he could with the material. The little boy was okay. The mom was completely forgettable. The little girl was pretty awful, honestly, although I feel bad saying that about a child actor. With a kid that young, I blame the director mostly anyway, but yeah, she was a little too precious even before she went full zombie.

I'm not clear why they left so much out of this one. It meandered so much more. They didn't have any of the tension with the wife's parents, which added an extra layer of horror / grief to the original. It didn't really work having an older kid die... the toddler thing was super creepy because toddlers aren't fully formed people yet, so they either love totally or go feral totally, which was much more affecting. They could have switched the ages of the kids (had the little girl be the toddler) and maybe that would have worked, but as it was, this was pretty terrible.

I actually went back and watched the 1989 one after seeing this, just to compare the two.... I hadn't seen that version since it came out in the theater. It was SO MUCH better it was kind of shocking, honestly. Sure, it was schlocky and low-budget, like all horror movies were back in the 80s, but it was actually more affecting in terms of the emotional content. Fred Gwynne actually made a much better next door neighbor (and a much more sympathetic one). John Lithgow was kind of creepy from the beginning in the role for some reason, which was an odd choice.

In all, yeah, not well made. Didn't emotionally connect. They didn't seem to get the heart of why this story is so terrible and affecting, in terms of what the loss of a child does to a family.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)

Such an underrated and under-appreciated movie

[10/10 · 25 April 2020]

I got a chance to rewatch this again recently and remembered why I loved it so much the first time I saw it. Such a beautiful, nuanced, and timely movie, in so many ways. Given everything going on the world right now and the rise of demagogue leaders and proto-fascism, the subtlety of the portrayal of the rise of a sociopathic cult leader is so well done. I think showing how people fall in with these cults of personality is just well done and so prescient.

Grindelwald is such a great character. I want to see the next chapter of this, and I hope the American audience's seeming intolerance for subtlety and nuance doesn't mean we don't get to see the end of this story.

Plus, just having an adult story in an adult version of this world is such a gift. The world building itself is amazing as always and the production design is absolutely gorgeous.

I'm a little sad more people don't seem to appreciate this.

Black Panther (2018)

Absolutely loved it...

[9/10 · 18 February 2018]

Ignore the negative reviews... we all know the agenda of the vast majority of them. This is an awesome movie. I hope they do another at least a few more standalones with the Black Panther (versus a huge Avengers movie, where you can't get into the individual characters much at all). I wanted a lot more about this world and these characters! The fight scenes are awesome, the plot is interesting, the female characters rock, there are a lot of complex real-world issues raised. My only bummer was that they killed a character I really wanted more story from.