A movie that never justifies its existence.
I have a lot of respect for what John Favreau did with The Jungle Book.
He managed to do something that every remake should aim for, but usually fails to do: improve upon its original.
This, however, is the exact same movie.
There was zero effort put into improving things, or even do anything different, for that matter.
And to some degree, I get it: the original is almost sacred to some people, and they’ll act autistically if you change too much.
There’s also an upside to that, which some critics don’t pick up on: if a story works in 1994, it still works in 2019.
But you could at the very least try some different shot compositions, or different music cues, or anything to not make this movie completely creatively hollow.
Yes, it looks just like a Discovery documentary.
At the same time, the realism strips the expressiveness of the animals away, so those things cancel each other out.
There’s just no reason to watch this over the original.
5.5/10
So, I assume Vincent meets Thanos in the sequel, right?
I want one of those umbrellas.
This is still a very solid show in just about every regard.
I like how this season gave arcs to characters who hadn’t been highlighted before.
In some regards, the characters you expect to be the most important almost take a backseat during this season.
A welcome change, in my opinion.
Also, some of the dialogue in the show is just amazing.
Bauman’s car monologue during the penultimate episode might just be my favourite moment of the whole season.
The biggest problem still remains the show’s unoriginality and predictability.
You’ve seen this type of story a million times before.
But because it’s been a long time since you’ve seen this type of story, and the show very cunningly plays into that with its overuse of nostalgia, the Duffens trick you into thinking that their show is a lot better than it actually is.
Furthermore, this season in particular had a few storylines too many, which made the story lose its focus.
Ultimately, everything converges in the fantastic final episode, but they could’ve excluded the David Harbour/Winona Ryder storyline for the first 7 episodes, and you would only lose some exposition that was already made clear by other storylines.
Still, this show is just too competent and well made in order to dislike it.
Technically, it’s one of the most brilliant shows out there.
Visually stunning, a great score and well paced.
The characters are all still very likable, and the acting is solid (particularly from the younger cast).
Bring on the next season!
7/10
Hot take incoming.
This is technically very impressive.
Visually, it's absolutely breathtaking.
The acting is impressive all across the board.
The make up, holy shit, take notes Walking Dead.
Thematically, it's very solid.
I even think that if you watch it as a documentary series, it's very good.
I acknowledge all of that.
But, this is a narrative series, and I have to judge it as such, meaning that story and characters come first.
And I just don't think it works on that level.
The characters in this are flat and uninteresting, and the story isn't told in a very engaging way.
It's a series that reminded me a lot of the movie Dunkirk, especially in the sense that it's more concerned about depicting the event it's covering accurately rather than engaging you.
Dunkirk in itself isn't a very special story, and Nolan didn't give any of his characters development either.
But here's the difference: Nolan's actually aware of that.
He also knows that messing with time, and making a puzzle box out of something like Dunkirk is a way to make the story more engaging.
Chernobyl doesn't do that, and keeps everything fairly linear, and to be frank, it doesn't do any attempt to engage the viewer at all.
It just assumes you're interested because this is important and recent history.
Unfortunately, that alone doesn't do the trick for me.
5/10
Yes, it’s utter trash in just about every regard.
But, you can have so much fun with it, especially with the right amount of friends and alcohol.
It’s also the ultimate time capsule of the early 2000s.
A brilliant concept that’s wasted by very weak acting, especially from Himesh Patel and Ed Sheeran. Moreover, it thinks it’s a lot funnier than it really is, doesn’t take the premise to its fullest extent, and has characters that are extremely dickish for no reason whatsoever.
4.5/10
The definition of a movie that’s competent but devoid of anything interesting.
3.5/10
Great, but this Lila character wasn't a good idea, even with her pardoned tits.
I’m kinda baffled that the critical response to this has been so much better than Bohemian Rhapsody.
Yes, its presentation is more honest and creative than that film, which alone makes Rocketman better.
But other than that, it makes the exact same mistakes by being extremely cliched and having mostly uninteresting characters.
5.5/10
This is, without a doubt, one of the hokiest shows of all time.
And yet, it can be stupidly fun at times.
It's one of the best guilty pleasures out there, that's for sure.
This is mostly stuck in second gear for the entire runtime, it’s very bland and poorly directed. Interestingly, despite having a different director at the helm a lot of the problems from X-Men Apocalypse carry over. There’s once again visible cheapness in the costumes and make-up, Lawrence phones it in, Sophie Turner can’t pull off what she’s asked to do and the story feels muddled. The new elements it adds on top of that don’t really work either, for example Jessica Chastain gives the most lifeless performance of her career as the villain of this film. Generally, it just looks and feels like a cheap tv show, Kinberg clearly wasn’t ready for this. Due to it’s smaller scale it never becomes as schlocky as the worst moments in Apocalypse, X-Men Origins Wolverine or The Last Stand, but this movie feels unambitious next to all of those films. I’d be fine with the approach if it had genuine good writing and interesting direction, but what’s being served here is not cerebral, emotional or exciting.
3.5/10
This one doesn’t sit well with me.
So we should blame big tech companies for making us addicted to their products, and the nasty consequences that come of it?
I very much question that morality.
Addiction is a problem of the individual, something you have to fix by yourself (with the help of others).
It’s not something that a company, seeking to make profit, should be held resposible for.
After the 2014 Godzilla film, people demanded a dumb monster movie.
The result is something that joins the ranks of Jurassic World 2, Pacific Rim 2 or Rampage.
Happy now?
Pro's:
- Creature design/VFX.
- The set up for the 3 main human characters (the idea that drives them).
Con's:
- Massively overblown (especially at the end).
- Too much exposition and way too plot driven. Emphasizing the plot is never a good idea when you make a film like this.
- The dialogue in this is awful, and does the actors no favours.
- The characters are hollow shells, and constantly act in unnatural ways. Especially what they did with Vera Farmiga's character felt lazy and not earned.
- It overuses the orange and teal look to a degree where Zack Snyder would be jealous of it.
- If you thought the final season of GoT had a lot of deus ex machina and 'plot armour' moments, just know that you've seen nothing yet.
- The action scenes in this are incoherent and underlit, and therefore hard to follow.
I find it funny that whenever we get one of these, the take away for most always seems to be: too much focus on the humans, not enough on the monsters!
Well, here's the thing: you can't really develop characters like Godzilla or King Kong, so watching them for 2 hours walk through buildings and punching things is going to get dull very fast.
Therefore, you need the human focus.
You know which director knows this? Steven Spielberg.
You know which movie knows this? Jurassic Park.
So instead of demanding more shallow elements for the next one, let's maybe ask for the filmmakers to develop the characters for once, and stop focussing on a plot we've seen hundreds of times at this point.
2.5/10
It’s Superbad mixed with some of that Community type of humour and creativity.
Really well done, I’d recommend this to just about anyone, even if you’re not close to its target audience.
Go and see it!
8.5/10
Conceptually interesting, but we’ve seen it done better in other movies and even tv shows at this point.
Yes, I certainly can’t deny that the acting and visuals are brilliant.
Also, the action scenes and worldbuilding are magnificent.
Can you tell it was made in the early 2000’s? Absolutely, the cyberpunk look is ever so present in a lot of scenes, but that’s not bothersome. In fact, I think it’s awesome.
Furthermore, this story goes in directions you don’t expect.
It takes a while for the real adventure part to kick in, and only then you’ll realize that the first act was just a lot of character development.
This film fails on a point where Spielberg hardly ever failed: tone.
As you probably know, this film was originally intended to be directed by Stanley Kubrick.
His dark touch is felt, and it really doesn’t mix with Spielberg’s whimsical style at all.
For example, do PG-13 Ted and an Einstein cartoon played by Robin Williams feel as if they belong in the same movie as where a mother leaves her own kid behind in the forest, and cries her eyes out for doing that?
Unfortunately, they don’t, which results in bizarre tonal shifts throughout the film.
Moreover, I found the choice to have the AI act like our stereotypical imagination of robots a mistake, as it makes it harder to connect to the characters, or understand certain choices of human characters in the first act.
Finally, certain scenes were, in the larger scope of the story, unnecessary (e.g. Brendan Gleeson’s circus show). Removing those scenes would’ve sped up the pacing and shortened the runtime, something this film needed.
5/10
And here it is: the end of the biggest television show of all time.
Seasons 1-4 are (close to) perfect.
Seasons 5-6 are where some of the cracks start to appear, with some filler episodes that don't build a lot of character. However, they're still great seasons nonetheless.
Seasons 7-8 are good, not great. They have certain pacing (rushed developments, teleportation of characters) and writing issues (plot armour, unsatisfying & unearned conclusions etc.). It is especially the level of production that elevates these seasons above average television.
Am I also unsatisfied with how they handled certain characters at the very end? Absolutely.
Do I think, however, that they mostly stuck the landing? Yes.
S1: 9.5/10; S2: 9/10; S3: 9.5/10; S4: 10/10; S5: 8/10; S6: 8/10; S7: 7/10; S8: 7/10
Overall rating: 8.4/10
Ahead of its time in terms of subject matter, but really dated in terms of execution and style. The script is too dumb to be the statement against surveillance culture it wants to be, but Scott still manages to squeeze quite a bit of tension out of this material.
5.5/10
I don’t get the appeal of these.
Yeah, the stuntwork’s great, but I see no redeeming qualities besides that. The acting sucks, the dialogue’s corny, the story is schlock that’s presented way too seriously, the characters are uninteresting, there’s little to no tension because the main character is an invincible cartoon, the music’s unmemorable and generic, and most of the film is just plain damn boring.
All the good stuff that this has to offer is also offered by franchises like Mission Impossible and Fast and Furious, and more on top of that.
You’re not getting the clever intrigue or fun gimmicks of the MI franchise here, nor the tongue in cheek comedy or creative, over the top insanity of the F&F franchise.
This is so boring by comparison to me.
4/10
Good world building, I would've preferred it the Pokemons looked more like animals and less like cartoons, but this Roger Rabit approach will do. Also, decent cinematography and score. But, the script’s complete ass (conveniences, unnecessary exposition, uninteresting characters without development, extremely predictable storyline etc.) aside from some of Pikachu’s snarky lines, so you’ll probably get bored at some part.
4.5/10
Damn, it must really suck to have been snapped while being on a plane.
Pros:
Cons:
6/10
It’s a Milla Jovovich movie.
What the fuck were you expecting?
Great movie, but what exactly are you trying to say, Peele?
How do I make sense of the weirdness in your film?
Are you trying to say that those who unite to build a wall, those who use their scizzors to divide other people in half, can’t see the light in the ‘US’?
Is the twist meant to indicate that we can’t be sure who’s on which side?
In other words: is this a big political metaphor, a critique against republicans?
Then again, you can also find themes about capitalism and class here, it’s so ambiguous and broad that it’s not being very precise on a subtextual level. Not that a movie has to, but this is a little too broad for my taste.
Still, great craftsmanship, really well acted, memorable, scary, funny, it’s very good.
The whole 300 million people are living underground reveal might be a little too much of a leap, I don’t think the movie was that fantastical up until that point (a similar problem that I have with Get Out, where the brain replacement twist kinda feels a little too out there compared to the movie preceding it).
7.5/10
Man, so much potential.
Dare I say it, based on the cast and crew alone: best movie of the year potential.
And there's definitely a lot of good in it.
This movie is one of the few examples that teaches us how to get action filmmaking right.
The cinematography, the editing, the locations and their atmosphere, the action scenes, the tension and the soundtrack are all great.
On the other hand, it's simply not that special, because it follows exactly the formula you'd expected from a film like this.
And that's a shame, because it wasn't necessary.
The interesting stuff is in there, but it never gets the attention that it should:
- there's an interesting social angle (military soldiers breaking bad because they didn't feel they got the respect they deserved), but they don't play it up enough.
- there's a fantastic cast, and they all do a good job, but they're not given the dialogue or character development to make something special out of it.
In fact, only two people in the film feel like actual human beings (Affleck and Isaac), but they don't get nearly enough development to make them feel like fully fleshed out characters.
Also, the third act drags.
And finally, I don't quite know if I liked the ending. A part of me found that they handled out of character, another part of me liked the fact that they did something different.
5.5/10
This really is 2 different movies squashed together.
One part is a satire of the pretentiousness within the art world, and it is really great.
The other part is a horror film about moving paintings, and it is generic and boring.
It only gets interesting when the moving paintings are used to delve into Jake Gyllenhaal’s character.
The other characters are just not that interesting.
5/10
Intouchables meets Driving Ms. Daisy.
Not bad, but not original or creative enough to be truly great.
Glass, is pretty ass.
Look, M. Night knows what to do with the camera, and the music's not half bad.
And to his credit, the dialogue isn't nowhere near as painful as it was in Split.
But that's about it.
We have one actor who's overdoing it to the extent where it becomes laughable, one actor who's phoning it in, and one actor who's actually pretty good, but stays silent for about 75% of the film.
We have a short first act that's okay, but nothing special.
We have a second act in which Sarah Paulson tries to convince everyone that superpowers aren't real.
Now why should that be interesting? We've seen Unbreakable and Split, so that's not a relevant discussion whatsoever.
Therefore, I was thinking: maybe it's more about her persuading the characters then?
Nope, the movie doesn't really do anything with it, and pretty much drops this plot point by the time that the third act starts.
And then there's the goddamn third act, where this movie just completely drops the ball.
First, we have Samuel L. Jackson pointing out how everything unfolds like a comic book.
Storytelling like this has been done to death, and especially in this movie, it doesn't feel authentic, or even fresh, anymore.
It feels like a means for Shyamalan to cover up for his own, as Deadpool would say, lazy writing.
Second, there's the big finale with the James McAvoy and Bruce Willis characters.
Think about the most unsatisfying ending you can imagine for these two characters, and you're probably pretty close to what actually happens.
Finally, as for the twists, there are a few. Most of them are not earned and feel lazy. However, there's one that worked for the story of the trilogy and brought it all together in a sense (SPOILER: talking about the twist that James McAvoy's dad was on the same train as Bruce Willis ).
3/10
Great storytelling and concepts, it may be weird and even inaccesible for some folks, but it’s also very creative, original and bold. The characters are fantastic and well rounded, and they all inhabit a NY that’s captured it in a very unique way. That’s mostly a result of the animation, which grasps the attention immediately because it’s so boundary pushing and atmospheric. It’s just hard to find any weaknesses in it. The comedy is strong and tasteful, it doesn’t drag, the voice acting is excellent and all of the different Spiderman add to the story in their own way. I’m not as much of a fan of some of the bland autocrooning in the soundtrack (that’s probably the biggest thing that might make this seem dated in the future), though I generally still like most of the musical choices made here.
8.5/10
It’s not immediately clear what it’s building towards.
But if you stick with it, you’ll find yourself watching one of the best films of the year.
This is mostly just bad kitsch.
James Wan’s trying really hard as a director and ends up succeeding in many regards, but it just doesn’t bring much to the table otherwise.
Some of the practical action scenes look good, but the characters and story are severely undercooked, unfocussed and messy.
It’s good that they’re not taking themselves too seriously, but the costumes still look kinda goofy and lame, the dialogue is inexcusable at points, and the actors are far from charming or funny. In fact, the leads of this film straight up suck, and don’t have the acting skills or presence to carry a franchise like this.
It’s trying to look expensive and vast, but a lot of it ends up feeling like one of those cheap Russian knock offs of a superhero movie.
4/10
