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tilljonas
Reviews
1UP (2022)
They could've done better than that
Production value was not the problem, it was more like the story and what they try to attend with this movie. It´s about a girl who founds an all womens esports team with a few non-professional gamers. At this point you can guess the whole plot already. At the beginning the´re really bad and then they rise and get better and all that stuff...Predictable. Screenwriting wasn´t any better, some dialogues are just cringe, some actions just not fitting. Feels like a B-movie, but not a good one. But I can see it that way, that the filmmakers were given the possibility to make movie, to get experience. Nobody can expect to be pro just in a minute. That´s why I am suprised with the production value, it´s not over the top, but still high for an amateur like movie.
Acting was ok, i guess they intended to overact a little.
The main reason, why this movie is not working out is that they don´t really have choosen a target group. I mean it is about gaming, you can make movie for gamers or you can try to get non-gamers, too. I guess they tried to get the whole audience, but it´s not working out. It´s difficult to get an whole audience, Free Guy would be a good example were it worked out, but this is an another level of filmmaking. If they just focused on gamers, they could´ve focused on a more advanced plot, built tension by using all what competitive gaming contains and not just building a rivaly between teams.
But in the end they missed the gamer audience as well as the non-gamers.
Still 3/10, because I like that they tried and they had the possibility to make this movie. If they learned from it and come up with more experience it was worth it.
The Justice of Bunny King (2021)
A fight vs. bureaucracy and society
The protagonist "Bunny" has to find back to her place in the world, but since the society wont make it easy for an homeless women and institutions, who are used to help her, are failing her in any way, she's forced to find her own way by breaking a few laws.
The idea is simple, an homeless woman is trapped in a circle of poverty: in order to see her kids she has to get a home, in order to get a home she has to get work, also she has to look like "i'm-not-homess" in order to get a home or work. So it's difficult to get to her children, but she is trying anyway.
In addition to that, her niece "Tonya" experience the horror, and Bunny confronts her sister with it, but she doesn't believe her. So Bunnys mission throughout the movie is rescuing Tonya and celebrating her daughters birthday, while nobody will listen to her. To achieve that, she makes uncomfortable decisions like lying, exploiting or destroying.
The movie contains just a few characters, so Essie Davis ("Bunny") and Thomasin McKenzie ("Tonya") had to deliver and they did. I would recomment this movie to everyone who likes emotional dramas.
For me it's a good movie, I will watch it a second time some day.
Arcane: League of Legends (2021)
Not only for gamers! Almost got my 10
Well, at first I avoided Arcane because there is a lot of things to mess up with when it comes to an adaption from a videogame. I'm always afraid of such things and I asked myself: "How they wanna adapt a MOBA-game?". But they didn't. They took a piece from the world of League of Legends, few characters and...they tell a STORY. And this story isn't just for players, it would be a shame if someone who thinks so would miss Arcane. You don't need to know anything about it before you watch it, you'll get it.
So now it's difficult to structure this review, because i don't know where to start. The animation is awesome as you can see in the trailers but in the series it's even better because of the little extras. I don't know how to put this into words, I just see the effort, the passion and the quality the animators just put in, so I will look out for Fortiche in the future.
I'm not an expert when it comes to music, nevertheless I can't complain about it. The music in action sequences where truly discribing the heat, but goes never over the top. The soundtracks where unique in a familiar way and not strange or something. And I am sure you did already heared enemy by Imagine Dragons.
But now lets move on to the story. No worries there wont be spoilers at all. So what did they do in terms of storytelling? I don't freakin' know. They doesn't do that typical hollywood thing or "This is a series, which is gonna be streamed on Netflix for the fans so just treat them with everything we have!". They were aware of the're going to adapt a game with a huge community, they were aware of the're going to stream on a platform which has viewers all over the world...and they didn't put just some LoL content to make the community happy and they didn't tell just a story to make the viewers happy. They created something I didn't expect from a game-adaption-now-on-Netflix-thing...and this was something I desired. Not just moneygenerating stuff like I expected it. So let's start:
When it starts in the first episode with dead parents and now I have to protect my little sister in a dangerous enviroment, I was like: "omg this will be boring, a almost generic flashback where someone lose their parents and now becomes some bad*** and so on...". But it wasn't just a flashback, they takes their time to tell the story. You meet the first characters, you see where they have to live and the realtions and tensions in a two-class-society. It will move on to relations between sisters, fatherfigures, friends & enemies (sometimes the same person as well), politicians, scientists and more. The writing just bring everything in balance. So don't expect something from Arcane, just watch it and it will built up itselfs, which goes along with you really watching it. You can't do something else besides watching it, otherwise you'll really miss something. Arcane accept us as an intelligent viewer, so they don't overexplain or just point a finger to a subject. We can really experience this world and we're not treated like stupid beeings who only swap through streamingplatforms to consume any stupid thing we can get. And here, finally, an example for Disney, Netflix and Co., we can handle intelligent writing. Not only that, we want intelligent writing. I hope they will admit that.
Anyway, the're some voices who says things like: "Huuuhh no character development....mmmmmm I don't get it......why everybody is hyped so much". So here is my opinion. There is of course not much character development, but who needs character development if they are already interesting? The characters interacting with eachother is also a way to watch a series and this got lost a bit in the last centuries. The characters don't need to move on everytime, at least in Arcane they don't have to. I see the're people who only watch series to get emotional close to characters, to see them grow and developing, to identify with and so on. Because of that the're series with endless seasons and episodes but Arcane wont fulfill them. Which I on the other hand love. It's self-contained, not endlessly stretched and you don't need a bond to every 2nd character. You have interesting characters, an intersting enviroment and everything just move on...and catched me.
So why not 10/10? Despite the key characters are well written, I have three characters who feels like that they just have to fill a space. This aren't really important characters and they fulfill their duty in terms of the story, and I know you can't make everything and everybody perfect. But anyway it's -0,5. The other half goes to the politics in the series. Of course it's wonderful that they bring politics in it, combined with the rest of the series you get very different perspectives about all happenings. But overall the politics here were a bit too simple to me. We are talking about curious topics like 2 class society and other things (don't gonna spoil ;)) and of course there is corruption and so on, but in the end it was to simple...it was ok, not great but ok. Would the politics be a bit more complex it would get 10/10, but maybe I just watched too much House of Cards :)
I highly recommend Arcane, it has a beautiful setting and a high quality animation, the atmosphere and the style talks for itselfs, it can stand by it owns and is beautiful written. I would say you have to watch the first three episodes and than you're able to decide by yourself, if it's worth watching.
Nobody (2021)
Better than John Wick?
Everybody heared it before they go into cinema: "It's like John Wick." And I have to admit, if you like John Wick, you will probably like Nobody, too. There will be action, there will be one man in a so called "mid-life-crisis" who kills some bad people. But now I have to say, it's not a copy from John Wick just with other cast. I think Nobody can stand for itself, all that relations to John Wick were obviously marketing decisions (author from JW). If I compare it to John Wick, I have to mention two points: 1. Nobody has less action than JW (but still a lot). 2. Therefore Nobody is a bit more brilliant in terms of filmmaking. Nobody takes a bit more time to tell the story, which doesn't feel
unnecessary. There are no flashbacks to his past, they reveal things about him in the right time and you will have some moments of "Oouh, yeah that makes sence". They made a good harmony between story and a lot of action. Even if there is a lot of violence, it's somehow justified. In order to that I have to mention, that the trailers are a bit misleading, because the trailer shows a 'Nobody' who was someday a somebody who is now willling to do some action (but isn't that tragic anyway). NOW we have to talk about music and editing.....TEN out of TEN!!!!!!!!!! Unbelievable, really. So well paced editing, no matter if you look on that montage at the beginning or at the action scenes through the movie, they did it goddamn right. They are on the right spots slow, they are on the right spots fast. They improved that movie and impressed me. That in combination with the music by David Buckley was a dream of a idk-what-to-say.
So, is Nobody better than John Wick??? Well, that depends on the viewer. If you just like pure action with a badass guy with some badass moves, you will like Nobody, but love John Wick. In my case, I like John Wick but love Nobody, because it has that little extras that I mentioned above. So for these extras it's for me okay, that the kill-count isn't that high like John Wicks.
My opinion: Nobody>John Wick (WOW that sounds like a play on words)