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Reviews
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023)
If Godzilla and a soap opera had a baby, then peed on it
I'm 7 episodes in, and I have hated every single one. No, it's not because of casting. No, it's not because it's "human focused". It's because the writing is terrible. Every line of dialogue, every character decision, is a constant battery on the intellect. It genuinely feels like an AI wrote the show. It is so clearly a scam. They show 6 seconds of a CGI monster (recycling CGI models made nearly ten years ago), and all the Kaiju-heads think they've made it. When in reality it's just trailer fluff meant to keep them watching what is otherwise a vapid and meaningless corporate product meant to draw in new AppleTV+ subscribers. It's embarrassing. The writers of this show think you are stupid. They enable stupid people into believing lots of dialogue = substance, when really it's the complete opposite. Nothing makes sense, character motivations range from muddled to contradictory, the color grading looks like mulch, and the performances are straight off the Disney Channel. Do the monsters look cool? Of course they do! But 6 seconds of a CGI monster I've already seen in 3 other movies isn't nearly enough to compensate for the utter trash that is this show. It's insulting. It represents everything going wrong in corporatization of art; a soulless, careless hunk of nothing "entertainment" that was never meant to entertain; it was a half-assed replica meant to turn a quick profit by deceiving general audiences. Like faux Gucci. An entirely unlikable show. A waste of time, money, and resources. An absolute embarrassment.
Twisted Metal (2023)
Makes 'the Last of Us' look like the CW
TWISTED METAL is a heartwarming, human trauma story disguised as a crass, vile, gory relic of entertainment.
We follow two opposites who are forced to journey across a post-apocalyptic America, where they learn about the destruction of the world, and the destruction of themselves. And throughout their journeys and adversity, discover and earn love and friendship from each other.
The show succeeds by writing really good characters, casting really good performers, and hiring really good directors. We learn about characters through mostly visuals and character action, and the actors appear carry this load with ease thanks to clever directors.
I could not help but constantly make comparisons to 'the Last of Us,' another videogame adaptation, with a nearly identical plot. However, unlike 'the Last of Us,' all the actors in Twisted Metal appear to be enjoying themselves, the characters feel believable and we learn about them without having to be told, the dialogue doesn't sound like it was written by an angsty teenager, the camera work is creative and deliberate as opposed to cookie-cutter TV shooting, and probably most important, the writers of this show CLEARLY cared about.
How is the violent game about a Clown who kills folks with his ice cream truck guna be the BEST videogame adaptation? Not just BEST, but genuinely GREAT??!
Not on my bingo card for this life, but boy howdy I'll take it.
I recommend this show to literally everyone but children. While you have to be braindead and tasteless to enjoy something as dull as 'the Last of Us,' literally anyone will find something to enjoy in TWISTED METAL.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)
A Nerd's Paradise
This movie was made for nerds, and that's fine. In high school, I was part of the "theater tech" crew, aka "the indoor kids," and the entire time I was watching this movie I was thinking, "holy cow! I bet those nerds of my past loved this thing."
But I didn't. I found it inoffensive, but it also bored me and made my skin crawl with cringe every 5-10 minutes. It's the type of low-ball referential gush-fest that you see the folks at the gaming store cling to; it's easy, and it hits all the notes.
The protagonists are jerks, but they're designed that way on purpose. They're also unspeakably stupid, but I'm pretty sure not on purpose. And that's where the movie starts to fall apart. You're asked to join a group of people who are awful people to begin with, but it's impossible to love or like any of them because of how reckless they all are. This ineptitude in the character writing may have been in reference to D&D players being reckless and stupid after drinking and eating chips around a table for 6 hours, but it makes really bad character writing.
This poor writing extends to Hugh Grant being horrible underwritten (however it was more likely his material was cut due to workplace bullying), as well as characters like the Druid being one-dimensional.
Despite all that, this was a fantasy epic that neither felt epic, or fantasy. The sweeping shots of vistas was few and far between, and far too short lived, making the rest of the film feel like it was filmed in the corner of a soundstage. The VFX weren't very good (but that's what you get when you overwork that labor force), and the fights and choreography were dull and wooden, and didn't feel natural or exciting at all. It felt like stunt people hitting a mark, doing a spin, hitting another mark, rinse, repeat. Although, I did like the chubby dragon bit.
These shortcomings, and more, makes the whole film hard to feel immersive, which is something I personally look forward to in a fantasy story. I think the moment that encapsulates this lack of immersion the best is towards the beginning: Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez (I don't remember their character names, because they were neither good nor memorable) are riding two horses through a city street, where they comment how the cit has "never" been "this crowded" due to the sun festival, or something. As they recite this line, they ride two horses down a street with zero resistance; the entire city feels less populated than Disneyland, despite "NEVER" having been seen "THIS CROWDED". And in terms of "lore accuracy", I can't even say they're incorrect, because the rest of the film these characters are never seen in a place with more than the amount of people of that scantly "crowded" street scene. For all I know, these characters HAVE never seen the city that crowded, because as far as I can tell, in this immersive fantasy world of Dungeons and Dragons, crowds may not even exist.
Is this movie an overhyped snore fest? Yes it is. This movie wants you to laugh at meta jokes while also taking it's world completely serious, while pretty much failing at both. It could have been something great had it chosen ONE of the two extremes. Either go full Lord of Rings and make an epic, or hire Wain and Showalter to write an entirely insincere meta comedy. You can't have it both ways and have it work for regular people, or at least grown ups.
That's why it needs to be said: this movie wasn't made for me, it wasn't even made for you, it was made for the indoor kids. And that's fine. But a films rating needs to reflect that realistically. I must bring balance to what the nerds have set off-kilter.
1/10. Make stupid movies, win stupid prizes.
The Flash (2023)
Nightmare City
The Flashpoint Paradox follows child groomer Barry Allen, twice, but also eventually three times, as they go all-in on Hollywood's dead-mommy=character writing fetish by making it their life's work to resurrect their dead mom. Lucky for Barry, he also resurrects Christopher Reeves, Adam West, and George Reeves, ushering in the advent of truly believable AI voices synced with dead-on realistic deepfake technology that audiences will surely come to love looking at for decades and decades and decades, and even decades, to cum. Ben Afflect shines as a Batman, finally getting to enjoy the fruitbats of his labors by getting to play the caped crusader in a production that doesn't shatter into a bajillion pieces during it's post-production period; it goes off without a hitch, as he is highlighted as the dominant Batman/Bruce Wayne, to which I'm sure has left Afflect very satisfied with how he's spent nearly the past decade of his life. Nic Cage reprises his role as Barry's Uncle, Dad, and Clooners is BACK as Superman IV. Zod brings da heat! Born again Flashheads will flock to theaters this Father's Day weekend to witness what only the CEO of Warner Bros has described as "the greatest superhero movie ever." The film is on track to surpass the $1billion mark after only 4 days, making it the greatest thing to ever happen to humans in the history of forever. But analytics by the studios' marketing team already shows that the inevitable sequels are on track to being even greater, making them greater than the greatest thing to ever happen to humans in the history of forever. So come on! Join Barry Allen, again, and finally become happy. Life is approximately 75 years, and then you're worm food. Are you REALLY guna waste all that time and NOT watch our Flash movie????!
I mean, *their Flash movie...
The Hole in the Ground (2019)
Holy Cow, what a wallop of stupid!
The stupidest mommy ever goes toe to toe with the stupidest monsters ever!
This movie had a terrific opening. The first 20 minutes are actually well crafted, well written, and make a great set up for a movie. But literally seconds before the 20minute mark, the movie immediately shows itself as another inept, cliched, and laughable horror stinker. This is another example of a horror "filmmaker" who has seen horror movies before, and that's about all the expertise he can muster.
The second Chris goes missing in the film is the precise moment the movie collapses on itself, because it is the first of many MANY instances where stupid mommy behaves in a painfully unrealistic, and incoherent way to how any compassionate person, let alone a mother, would behave.
For example, if your child was missing in the middle of the night, unresponsive to your beckon call, would you tip toe around your house and spend obscenely long moments of silence doing nothing before tip toeing into the woods because that's what the script calls for, OR would you call the cops like a rational human, or at the very least act stupid with a little haste?
Now, it should be addressed this mommy has suffered head trauma; but last I checked head trauma doesn't perfectly result in a person's behavior coinciding with tired horror movie tropes. I'm no fancy pants brain scientist er nuthin, but I'm saying it now that stupid mommy's brain injury has diddly to do with her backwards and bizarre behavior that lends itself well to cheap scares.
It was this string of unhinged stupidity that caused me to constantly root for Monster Chris (MC, to his friends). The fact that the movie appears to end without her having told ANYONE of what was in that hole is mind blowing to me. The existence of those animals(?) is like the greatest biological discovery in human existence; discovering subterranean creatures that can shape-shift would rewrite everything we thought we knew: history, evolution, biology, religion. Again, had she called someone FIRST, her entire endeavor probably would have gone a lot quicker, and a lot smoother.
But then we wouldn't have a movie! At least not the movie the filmmaker wanted to make. If you want to make your metaphorical, allegorical, mommy-horror movie, you at least gota do it right; you can't make your own rules and logic, and then just punch holes in them when you're stuck on an ending. It's almost like the hack that wrote this movie doesn't have a creative bone in his body. And as a result, lord only knows how many more victims the hole creatures have taken thanks to stupid mommy's silence.
Just an awful protagonist. A stupid mother, a bad mother, and a bad friend. Remember when the widower offered her a drink with him, over the corpse of his wife, and instead of saying, "thank you," or "of course," stupid mommy begrudgingly says, "ok..." like she's too cool for that sorta thing. I'm shocked she didn't roll her eyes at him, too.
Also, the entire movie she is consistently concerned with only herself; she does the bare minimum in terms of mothering while driving a rusted up Range Rover that looks like it belongs in Mad Max, but has the time and money to purchase a new house, move, renovate, support and school a child, burn down the renovated house, move again, and attend university. We never learn how she makes her income. She's just wildly financially lucky while also being a complete and utter useless dummy mummy, I guess.
Also, what even was the Hole People's motive? Food? Taking over the world? But why do it one at a time? Over the course of decades?
Oh just forget it.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023)
Agony
I'm not entirely convinced this was even a movie. It felt like watching human cattle get prodded around different sets, regurgitating unrehearsed dialogue, ticking the boxes, rinse, repeat. There was zero continuity and scenes that visually look like mulch. I don't think the acting can be constituted as acting; all the performances were insincere, and plastic. Nothing was fun, or funny, or new. It was devoid of joy; it was a plethora of every trope or gimmick or idea that has already gone far out of fashion. It's incredible to imagine such little effort being put into something so expensive, and yet something that has the potential to be truly great. A little bit of effort would have cost the studio nothing, while potentially affording them a box office result that isn't abysmally embarrassing. I wish I had never watched this movie. I'm sorry at myself for not listening to the overwhelming negative reviews for this corporate product. But in my defense, it's far, far worse than what any of the reviews said. In my opinion, it's agony.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
Didn't laugh once
I always felt the Antman films were a lovely departure from the rest of the MCU. They weren't perfect movies, but they first film and it's sequel both succeeded as comedies, over everything else. And it made for a really nice break after phases full of more "generic" superhero fare. It's why he worked so well in Civil War and Endgame; Antman is the pallet cleanser of the franchise.
But I didn't laugh once during this movie. In fact, I was cringing constantly; it was the opposite of comedy. It was the thing I normally got a break from during an Antman title: it was THE MOST generic superhero slop ever produced.
Safely filmed on the Volume, revolutionized by The Mandalorian, this film lacks any scope, the entire film very much feeling like it was all filmed in the corner of a soundstage. Fold that in with terrible writing, phoned in performances by actors who are clearly tired of these types of movies, and an inappropriate amount of CGI action schlock, that doesn't look good at all, because VFX artist are used like cattle in this industry.
The whole film is a representation of that post-pandemic thought process "quantity over quality"; lots of nothing meant to keep you distracted for two hours, after they already have your money.
The best thing that could have happened to this movie, and Disney/Marvel, is exactly what happened:
The audience didn't fall for it; it's the lowest rated MCU installment, and made the least amount of money. The audience showed the studio that if you keep spoon feeding us garbage, we're gona wise up and keep our lips sealed at some point.
So a 10/10 rating for the audience (I'm proud of you), but a 1/10 for a really tremendous waste of time.
The Mandalorian: Chapter 23: The Spies (2023)
Things happening doesn't = Good
The Mandalorian season 3 has taken note from Book of Boba Fett, Rings of Power, She Hulk, and the Last of Us, by adopting the tactic of making the majority of your season a total snore, to scoring that "9/10" episode rating on a single episode just because something actually happens for once.
However, as we learned from previous shows, not only does this tactic not work in the long run, but it also doesn't actually make the "9/10" rated episode any good.
Lots of studios have utilized this tactic since the pandemic, and why wouldn't they? It's cheaper.
But if there's one thing I've learned, the audience is still culpable. The entertainment business is just that, a business. If you want to keep eating cheap cuts the rest of your life, keep buying them. But don't rate something a "9/10" just because you're unwilling to expand your own pallet.
1/10, plus 1, because Giancarlo is far too good for this series.
The Dead Don't Die (2019)
The audience is the punchline
This movie is genuinely great, and entertaining, UNTIL the ending ruins it, and any attempts of future rewatches.
Jarmusch does a really great job at supplanting an over-used Hollywood trope, that is the Zombie sub-genre, into the quirky, grounded, dry reality of his films. We love seeing meta-critiques of trends that have overstayed their welcome, and this movie succeeds at that for the first 90% of the film.
The problem comes in that last 10%, where an "ending" should be. But instead, Jarmusch takes his meta-critique past the point of irony, and just refuses to give the audience an ending.
To me, it felt like he was making fun of the audience for expecting the film to wrap up in a narratively cohesive, and entertaining way. All the narrative threads were there. He spent so much time establishing a connection between Adam Driver and Selina Gomez, I assumed she would show up at the end, and loose ends would be tied.
But, like everything else in the film, their relationship was clearly there just to lead you on. So that in the last 20 minutes, Tom Waits can shame you for expecting a movie to be a movie. You consumerist cows, how dare you.
So what's the point of rewatching this film? I gave it a shot the first time; I put my figurative hand out in friendship, to offer a metaphorical handshake, only to be receive a symbolic slap in the face. Why would I ever rewatch this, or recommend it?
It's sad, because like a lot of great indie talent, Jarmusch deserves whatever financial reward comes his way, despite his movies never making money. But it's films like this that give studios the ammunition they need to not fund small indie pictures: this is a "horror/comedy" from a wildly talented indie filmmaker-one of my favorites-with a star studded cast, and I WOULD NOT recommend it to ANYONE.
That's BAD! By all accounts, this movie is an absolute failure. And to those of us who are fans of the talent behind it, it's a completely disastrous disappointment.
Four Lives (2022)
Ryan Murphy, take note...
Just to get it out of the way, this series was excellent: acting, character writing, dialogue, pacing, music (or lack thereof), all of it was on point. I highly recommend.
That said, what I found the most impressive about the show was it's respect and responsibility towards the actual victims.
Ryan Murphy, the brains behind two-inch deep exploitative melodramas such as American Horror Story and Hollywood, recently made a series for Netflix about a notorious serial killer who targeted, sexually assaulted, and murder young gay men.
In Ryan Murphy's show, the focus is entirely on the killer, even naming the show after him. The show attempts to make commentary on crimes against LGBT+ people systematically overlooked by law enforcement, but unfortunately loses all credibility due to the distasteful nature of how Murphy exploits, and even fetishizes, his evil protagonist (who was a very real evil person who did very real evil things).
In an interview made after the release of his series, Murphy noted how when he tried to contact the families of the victims, "not one responded." Murphy makes this remark as if the families had no interest, when in fact it's very clear the level of tone-deaf on Murphy's part.
My point being: Ryan Murphy's series is what you get when you want to tell a true crime story like this the WRONG way.
In FOUR LIVES, however, the role of the killer is an afterthought. His name is not mentioned in the title; he is never seen on screen without it being from another characters perspective; there is no long winded monologue where we are designed to understand or empathize with him. The actor portraying the killer, who is easily the most "A-list" of the entire cast, isn't even top billed. In fact, his name doesn't appear until near the end of the credits, and his face does not appear on the one sheet poster advertising the film. The only focus on the killer is made within the context of those he negatively affects.
Because we aren't here to embolden the persona of a person who doesn't deserve it.
Instead, the show strictly follows the perspective of those directly affected, first and foremost, the families and loved ones of the four victims: they are the protagonists, not the murderer.
Instead of gawking at the grotesqueness of the murders, and the pain, and the suffering of the victims, we follow the victims who are still here; the ones who "have to live with it" as one character so eloquently puts it. And it's about that struggle, not just to go on, but find justice and closure in a waking nightmare.
That is how these types of stories should be told. Fetishizing and exploiting the evil actions of one individual, for shock value, is about as tasteless and vile as you can get when creating entertainment. A responsibility comes with making this type of content, and I was very very pleased FOUR LIVES, and it's filmmakers, took that responsibility as a priority.
What you get is a very very good series about a very important topic that still rears it's ugly head to this day.
Nice Dreams (1981)
Fun until the rape punchline
Nice Dreams was the first C&C movie I had seen. I watched it when I was in college, when I was first getting into grass.
The whole film has a great vibe, and while the jokes don't always land, the movie feels like a time capsule, in a way, which makes it fun to watch in the 2020s.
Unfortunately, the past has a way of being problematic, and the bit where Cheech rapes an unconscious woman, before breaking the fourth-wall to have the audience justify him, is about as tone-deaf as it gets. And it ruins the movie.
The fact that he is a protagonist, and a "beloved character," is as self-destructive as it gets. Not only does he commit the act, but then turns to camera, admits to the audience that what he did was wrong, but then completely exonerates himself by pointing the finger back at the audience, saying, "you would have done it too!"
See? You can't get offended, because you would have raped too.
There's so much to unpack. It's all very problematic; and while the excuse "it was a different time" will always be thrown around to defend works like this, I think history will show that nobody wants this kind of film.
After all the former stoners from the 70s/80s die off, no one will be scrubbing through HBOmax looking for their next Cheech n Chong experience.
They'll probably look for something without horribly dated rape jokes.
Love, Death & Robots (2019)
If the writing is bad, it's just a tech demo
I don't care how good your animation is. I don't care how good your texture mapping is, or your pre rendered lighting, or your production design. Unless any of it supports a well written story, it's a glorified tech demo.
And that's all this show is. It's a bunch of short "films" mimicking things the "filmmakers" have seen before without any concrete understanding of why it worked in the first place.
The shorts are made by visual effects artists, not writers. The focus and effort was clearly on the animation WOW factor, and less delivering quality content, that people are paying for.
I think the episode that finally broke the camels back for me was the episode in season 2 when the giant washes up on the beach:
It looked gorgeous; the concept was completely original. THEN they have a TERRIBLE voice actor recite TERRIBLE, cliched, pretentious lines of dialogue that add NOTHING. Everything the narrator says can be SEEN on screen. Has this episode been dialogue-less, it would have been near perfect. But these films weren't made by story tellers, they were made by 3D effects artists. So none of them heard of the lesson they teach YEAR ONE in film school: show, don't tell. And on top of that, the dialogue is the most nonsensical lofty noise I have ever heard; a pretentious British voice actor reciting lines he doesn't understand, but they threw in a bunch of "smart" words, so that means the writing is intelligent, right?
Really embarrassing. 2/10 because the animation is very good in all episodes, but none of the episodes themselves are good because the writing is poorer than poor. And I'm reviewing this as a SHOW, not a tech demo. Which is clearly is.
2/10.
Moon Knight: The Friendly Type (2022)
This show is staying exceedingly dumb
I was super excited for this show. But after three episodes I still don't know what is going on, still don't know who any of these people are, and most importantly why I should care.
Steven is a socially awkward person whose only motivation is getting a girlfriend, which is weird, outdated, and creepy. He also can't seem to ask obvious questions or speak obvious defenses that would have saved him from half the "scenes" that divulge into really dull, klunky action or dialogue.
Marc is a former military? I don't know anything about Marc.
Layla is an exposition machine, and that is all.
Harrow is the only one with an understandable motive, and he's the villain. Affectively the only character the show has to "root" for.
That isn't a very good start to a new beloved character. I find myself relieved when scenes with Ethan Hawke show up, because I know I'll have something to grasp. Scenes involving just Steven or Marc or a combo of both make my head hurt. The actor who plays Layla is not very good, and has her situation made worse by delivering exclusively expository dialogue. It's agonizing.
Then when things couldn't get worse, this 3rd episode introduces literal Gods who can't smell a conspiracy happening right under their noses, and believe a single human's testimony that lasts all of 2 minutes. That's embarrassing, and suddenly these seemingly powerful beings look like complete fools.
There is also a "fight" scene upon a rooftop, utilizing green screen I can only compare to the "hai mark" scene from The Room. That's bad. This is a Disney/Marvel show. The visual effects should not make me think of the vfx from The Room.
Beyond the offenses of this episode, the whole show in general has some of the worst writing I've seen, especially in the MCU. The "British" characters were clearly written by Americans, who make sure to throw in every British slang or saying they can pull from whatever stereotypes they have in their heads, causing even the British actors to sound like caricatures of themselves. This fact causes Oscar Isaac's performance, when playing Steven, to almost always be distracting and laughable.
Between this and the new Star Wars films, I feel like Oscar Isaac needs to quit Disney. The only times he has waned as an actor are in these two products. It's not good. And a character I was very hyped up for I now find myself resenting.
I don't care or like Steven. I don't care or like Marc. I don't care or like Konshu. I understand Harrow, but he's a psychotic murderer. What else do I have to hold into? Layla's mind numbing expository dialogue?
Super Mario Bros. (1993)
Fails as an adaptation, Succeeds everywhere else
You. Stop pretending this is a bad movie. Is it perfect? No. Is it a good adaptation of a beloved brand? NOOOOO!!! Is it a classic in it's own right? Absolutely. Don't believe me?? Go watch it, and forget it's an adaptation, and you will find yourself pleasantly surprised.
Lots to admire: the performances, sets, and cinematography are three of the most impressive elements of this movie. I also found the writing to be actually quite good. Sure, the dialogue is pretty bland at times. But the movie does a great job of establishing the relationship between the brothers, and where each of them fills in the other's short comings. This feat is only made more enjoyable with the casting of Bob and John. The fact the movie makes me care I think speaks more than it's bad reputation.
I could go on, but I don't feel like it. You should just try to find a copy to watch, and watch it, or re-watch it. It really is fun, sweet, silly, and as 90s as Pizza Hut and Moon-shoes.
The Prince & Me 3: A Royal Honeymoon (2008)
Not as great as number 2, but greater than the first one.
i don't understand why everyone is bashing this movie. it is a sweet tale about true love between two lovers: a king, a some normal chick. it's really great. there are some moments when it was really great. it was really heartfelt, and great, because it was about a battle for her heart between the prince and that other guy. Scott I think. he was great.
on a more serious note, i think this movie is great for the careers of Kam and Chris, because they were great. it shows how great their acting abilities are. some of the other British folk were great also in terms of acting. i thought the sword fight was great too. it was pretty great and awesome, almost to the degree of the pirates of the caribbean movies. the part with the snow mobiles was pretty awesome and great too. i thought it was cool how they used them. i had a pretty great experience with that scene. that great scene.
this might not be for people who are haters of great movies. however, if you're just sitting around one night, and you wana have a great time, watch this movie. it really is great. i'm not kidding.
just please watch it. i'm serious.