The world-building is pretty nice, from cinematography, narrative, and characters' dialogue. However as an action flick the action scenes leaves something to be desired. There is no stake in the Judges' character as we know they will always win no matter the situation. The gun shots are kinda plain. Effects are neatly dramatic and flashy. The characters, given the short amount of time they actually interact with each other, are actually pretty interesting and I wished they could have built more on that.
Larger than life villain, a throwback to the original Bond films, but with a rather dissociatively serious tone that stands on mediocre action scenes and a very shaky plot. The plot feels like Bond is jumping from one event to another and the characters make clumsy decisions (like Bautista's Hinx randomly killing a person in a meeting). Lea Sydoux has her charm as a Bond woman but the earlier introduction of Monica Belucci made much more lasting impression even when it's brief, especially when the Sydoux's romance plot feels really forced and hurried.
With a strikingly unique visual, this film tells the daily life of drug addicts perceived from the eyes of an undercover cop Fred (Keanu Reeves), where he slowly became so involved with the drugs himself. So, expect shots of daily lives where the addicts ramble continuously, muttering paranoid talk at their backyard, messing around with each other, and forgetting what they did the day after. Along the course of 100 minutes the film quietly builds the world the characters live in, where constant surveillance reeks among each character's life.
The focus on the portrayal of daily life can make the film feels like it's slow and going nowhere for a while, especially with a rather not established roles for each character. Last 15 minutes of the film is heart-breaking though. The twist isn't expected, though not that shocking, but the best part of the film is in the ending. Monologue from the source material appears reflecting on real life situation, as then the credits roll on and Thom Yorke's song plays, leaving you with sympathetic feeling for the victims of drug abuse.
That bittersweet ending and the narrative in the whole film might have made it a really strong anti-drug film. Never once it tells you not to do drugs; it just shows the true danger of burnout and addiction.
The second episode after the fantastic pilot is the hardest part: as it has to struggle to maintain the tense and sense of amazement the pilot has achieved before. Legion's episode 2 faces exactly the same struggle, and it fares rather decently for a second episode.
In contrast with the mind-boggling shots in the pilot, episode 2 takes a more linear shots, showing the way Haller starts to make sense of his life. We are introduced to the mentor characters, Melanie and Ptonomy, who helps Haller rediscover who he really is by looking through his memories. This plot device is useful not just as the typical "discovering power" trope in superheroes films, but also a clarification for the previous episode as we here, just like Haller, start to differentiate which is part of his memories and which is not.
With the introduction of Melanie and Ptonomy, the show is getting a very Heroes (2006) -esque vibe, especially with the memory alteration plot and the government hunt after mutants and their headquarter going on. Fortunately, the show doesn't attempt to get big and impersonal as typical superhero movies do, as with the cliffhanger we're getting back to Haller and the life around him as the focus.
Arrival is an alien movie without alien as its central subject. It's more like a drama revolving its main character, Louise Banks (Amy Adams), on cracking the way we communicate and experience our life. It rests on Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that language shapes the way our mind think. Utilizing this hypothesis, the movie build on a premise that gives us an interesting non-linear technique in presenting the story and reveal a surprising twist in the end while still manage to grasp the audience suspense (without awkwardly dumbing it down like many other movies with a twist).
However, as it is centered mostly on Louise, the people and setting around her feel rather bland and weak. Major supporting character Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), despite having long enough screen time, appear nothing more than a prop to Louise. Relationship between them come off as a bit janky and sudden near the end. A number of other supporting character, especially Shang (Tzi Ma), also feel like a shallow plot device to keep the story going.
Still a good one for the interesting premise, not the best one for the execution though.
This is the kind of movie that the less you know the more thrilling it gets. Intense and unnerving from start until the end. It throws hint here and there, sometimes a bit too obvious that you might guess things, but not too obvious to refrain you from guessing correctly where it will go. It is a bit unfortunate that the tense wears off kinda quickly near the climax and resolved in one clear shot.
Overall an enjoyable sitcom with unusual setting (college dorm managers) that readily serves diverse kind of comedic potential. However it doesn't seem to be able to maintain its comedic values and character developments with the last two episodes ending in a very awkward turn.
Atmospheric directing. Bewitching music. Both make you feel like you're enchanted into the mysteries waiting inside the institution. However, the story makes little sense, especially with the long 2,5 hours that could've been cut shorter to tell the same story. The climax goes rather too fast for a very long build up. It actually has an interesting theme that reminds me of Foucault's analysis of biomedicine - "if you are ensured you're sick, why would you want to leave?" - however it is not deployed around a coherent structure.
The directing and shooting though make that long hours bearable. So at the very least you could be enthralled into the atmosphere as if you're Mr. Lockhart himself, lost in the unnerving labyrinth of plot of the health institution.
This season only has two excellent episodes out of 16: the premiere (of course) and the episode with Eugene (showing the gray area TWD has been good at, antagonists are not evil and protagonists are not saint). There are also other two... well, good episodes.
The rest of it... let's say it's decent but it's not worth the 45 minutes. It moves rather slowly. It's a drama of course so I'm not expecting some fast-paced action, but all too often TWD fall to the same trap over and over again: a whole episode dedicated on exploring one character or bonds between two only with unnecessary long still shots and cheesy dialogues. Those episodes have some great moments once in a while, but most of the time you'll find it a bit dull.
A Rick-Michonne bonding episode with throwback to previous elements used in TWD ("dumpster", "on top of tank while surrounded by zombies", etc) that goes off for too long. Should've spent half of the time instead of a whole episode. The throwback also makes the tense caused by such situation seem much more trivial.
The events in the Scavenger's group is interesting. Particularly the armorized zombie, it's a nod to the zombie genre once again. Pollyanna McIntos's performance as Jadis (the Scavenger's leader) leave a strong impression for this new group: a distinctively group isolated from everything else that's been going on, with a peculiar, cautious approach to outsider.
Unfortunately Scavengers' introduction is as isolated as their aura in the film: it is a bit janky and deus ex machina-ish, with them being suddenly introduced with no prior foreshadowing that they existed. In a huge pile of rubble in the middle of the woods-laden zombiescape, even. The deal they made with Rick and co's is also unnervingly pragmatical. Why would they trust a group of strangers to bring loads of gun into their territory? More so with Rick's group. Why would Rick trust in giving such a large group with such a big loads of gun? What would not prevent them to scavenge Alexandria in return with that mass of power? Season 3 played this tense very well - distrust, cautiousness, distance. This season has been downplaying that human element in an attempt to sprint for the fateful showdown with Saviors, and it seems to show its worst part with this the Scavenger's plot.
Satisfying action and zombie-fest after a while with the tripwire scene. However the way Rick attempts to mobilize people to fight Savior kinda puts off the suspension of disbelief - it's not convincing. Especially so with the case of Hilltop residents, there is no previous portrayal that they were under stress in Savior's pressure. It shouldn't be too easy to put them to a fight when they already have a decent life.
There's a plenty of pop culture reference in this film, and occasional snarky remarks which make you grin a little. But even as a vulgar outlandish comedy - which usually I enjoy pretty well - Ted 2 only comes off as gross, repetitive, and boring. It rehashes the same comedic element over and over again to the point you might be wondering, "heck, I swear I've heard/seen that for the 10th time."
The romantic plot and motivation feel really forced. They should have made Jessica Alba as Statham's long lost or past lover, but I guess they don't use that idea since Statham has been in movies with that plot for at least four times. Anyway, Alba's performance is terrible here too: in one scene she is an able fighter (as she is playing a former marine), but in the next scene she is a damsel in distress whose voice doesn't sound slightly distressed at all - she keeps pleading "Bishoopp!!" for help but in a rather monotonous, bored tone.
Unfortunately, even if we put aside the plot, the action - the big deal of this film - is barely satisfying. Especially as a Mechanic movie, it's not satisfying at all. Statham's action performance in Resurrection lacks the wit and tactical efficiency that makes The Mechanic great to watch. Statham is still shown as an able engineer to support his kills, but the action he's involved in give little to no room to employ such excellency. Except for the smart kill on the swimming pool, Resurrection is just a B-class action film with unlimited bullet spam, disposable henchmen, and weak main villain (by weak, I mean in terms of character writing, combat ability, and wit).
Fargo is a story of bunch of stubborn people attempting to perpetrate a crime for money, only to find out its implication is bigger than they can handle. Which seems to be a pretty accurate portrayal of your average Joe and petty criminals. In real life they are not street smarts with tricks and calculated actions. Nor the police solving their case a dedicated crime investigators like police drama depicted to us.
The film is brutal and quirky with occasional dark humor. Fargo has this catchy accent lasting a cultural impact. It can be tense sometimes, with Macy (Jerry Lundergaard) and McDormand (Marge Gunderson) brief but tenous encounter. However it is also laden with slow-paced cinematography and cumbersome - sometimes unnecessary - dialogue. The film apparently forgets to employ Chekhov's gun; barely relevant subplots keep creeping through the story. It could've lasted for just 60 minutes instead of 90 minutes. So it can take patience to watch sometimes, but in the end, still worth it.
Very engaging performance from Johnny Depp as Jimmy Bulger. Even a slight change of facial expression marks a really different tense coming from the character, displaying a cold-blooded, frightening gangster Bulger is. It is unfortunate Black Mass has a bit too many unexplored subplots, particularly Jimmy's relationship with his brother, Billy, and the tense relationship John Connoly has with his wife that we see only a glimpse of it. Even the dynamics between Jimmy and John Connoly isn't played well enough that despite their close relationship that come of as beneficial to each others - the red line between Bulger's life and Connoly's life - they don't come off as anything but mere accomplice.
A silly stylish action film and has to be watched as such. In the last half of the film the plot stops to make sense, but the bullet-bending and overall action sequences are nice, save for the rambo part of it.
Interesting premise, unusual setting, good actors, terrible execution. This film is a jumbled mess of shallow writing, terrible long scenes, shaky cams, incomprehensible dialogue, and unwarranted comedy in a supposedly life threatening situation.
The first half of the film is the worst. There is no build up whatsoever and we're just presented to a revolt with nothing seems to be at stake, save for some random violent deeds and random kidnapping of children who we hardly know and care. We then are given action scenes filled with... odd cruelty and long shot for pointless axe swinging (10 seconds just for showing how good a guy can swing his axe? Seriously?). All that with incomprehensible banter by some of the main characters. The characters talk a lot but what they're talking really don't make sense in bringing up the atmosphere. Any character's death within this first hour doesn't give much impact at all as we aren't given enough reasons to care for them.
The second half of the film is actually much better. It's like they switched directors. Less unnecessary long shots, and the action sequences are more intense. The characters never really grow on us but at least we see them interacting, which puts something at stake when they are at odds. The rather short scene on children's classroom perhaps is the best scene out of this film, as it portrays an unnerving feeling of oppressive train regime in a lot more effective way than the film attempted to do in its first half.
However, the last 30 minutes fall short again, with a rather sudden plot change pointing to a different direction. The action scenes are done only for the sake of making the situation more tense without actually making sense at all (what's with the party goers suddenly becoming zombie-like and a dead guy literally walked on the train again?). The ending was anti-climactic and leave you with the unsatisfying question, "so... what's next then?"
It's hard to figure out what genre this movie actually is. At first glance, Interstellar looks like a space epic: a quest of galactic discovery and exploration. On the other hand, which you might have realized after less than an hour, it also feels like a family drama. Interstellar might be both though, which seems to explain why it has difficulties on building up the make believe the venture to space exploration.
Crop failures, disasters, and pestilence were the reasons why humans in Interstellar opted to do space travel. We can see this through the the situation presented in Joseph Cooper's (Matt McCounaghy) family. However, rather than setting up the build up for a necessity on space exploration - mankind's desperate attempt to save humanity by traveling to unknown regions - we get lots of family drama instead. Which, if done artfully, should be good.
But it didn't.
The transition between Cooper's family drama to the quest of space venture went a bit abrupt and janky - which seems to continue on even after Cooper jumped to other galaxy. In space, we get another drama between characters in the team. However, rather than making the dangerous space mission feels like a mission where a group of humans go at all cost to save mankind, it feels like amateur hobbyists delving to deep to the unknown.
First, most of the crews never experienced actually space flight, save for Cooper - which is why he was selected to go there. This is justified in the movie as resources have been scarce for several years, which actually would make this space quest even more desperate and urgent, but the movie fails to portray that urgency.
Which brings us to second point: characters behave stupidly for reasons very incomprehensible considering what's at stake. One stupidity: a character died because the person just stands there doing nothing while impact is incoming. Another: when the crew decides which planet should be more potential to explore, they seem to forget what's they're risking and opting to think with emotional instinct. Someone thinks a planet is better because their loved one went there. Another thinks abandoning mission is more critical than guaranteeing humanity survival. This can be actually be done artfully if we can see the emotional dilemma, the depth of character's thought - but nope. One person even childishly shut themselves in after the debate, what a professional.
Between the tedious crew drama and back-and-forth Cooper's family drama on Earth, we sometimes still get the epic space exploration feel. Brilliant planets, beautiful unknown landscapes, the quest of going into something unknown, and discovering unexpected surprises. We get to scenes portraying the risk of space travel and difficult decisions they must make on solving that. There are beautiful moments, accompanied by Hans Zimmer's titular composition - a few touching moment between characters and just the feeling of unknown curiosity that brings that marvels the galactic wonder. The ending - albeit feels a bit rushed for the built up when Cooper's daughter realized the truth - is especially excellent, serving as a closure after the journey the characters went.
But it is mixed up with shallow character's writing, awkward plot decisions, and sometimes the too-much-is-going-on directing/cutting (especially the back and forth scenes), so that Interstellar leaves me with a familiar yet uncomfortable feeling.
Stunning characters, but not a memorable film. It's okay but nothing special. The film spends quite a time to portray Max and Marianne's relationship (Pitt and Cotillard) but it doesn't give enough impact to the ending.
That was a long episode. The scenes with Carl and Negan feels a bit janky, especially in the start when Carl jumped out from the truck. It feels like Carl is holding something. One time he's so mad and furious, another time he stays silent letting all that chance slip when he actually have the chance to kill Negan.
As others have said, Negan really let himself on zero security. While there might be reasons he's doing that (seems like his over-confidence), the fact that Carl attempted to do nothing about it makes the whole scenes with Carl and Negan feel janky. All in all we are only presented Negan's interaction with Carl's hateful glare in the background. For someone who is badass enough to slip into the enemy's lair in earlier minutes, all the silent shots Carl is having is really dampening his earlier murderous rage. On the other hand, I understand that the episode attempts to portray Negan in more humanistic side, but the jankiness on his interaction with Carl makes this kinda difficult to watch.
This episode kinda shows up abruptly. I even forgot that Tara and Heath were going outside.
Tara is an underdeveloped character; while it might be a nice idea to give her some spotlight, giving a whole episode to her seems a bit too much. I get the impression that this episode tries to do two things: 1) playing the allegory on what is necessary and what is evil (as seen through the Heath and Tara dialogue at the beginning of the eps and Cyndie and Tara later) on WD's apparently moral dilemmas; 2) setting up new community for a backup army against Negan later. However I feel like it doesn't get it right.
The former, to me, is presented in a rather in-your-face way, as if the audience isn't smart enough to realize it. Even more, this problem is brought up to the screen without the necessary buildup. It seems like something's lingering in the character's head but not in audience's. As for the latter, while I think showing this up sooner is better than jotting them up randomly in the heat, I'm not sure how would the series handle it with the already too many communities present at the same time. Each we have seen only the surfaces, with its superficial character (Kingdom being feudalistic and Hilltop being gullible). The challenge would be how to present those as a real, thriving community, not just bunch of people who gather in one spot for the sake of plot progression. This episode itself seems to be already showing this superficiality: look at how the conflict is managed about Tara's coming to the community. People were getting along together so quickly (offering her a place just because she spared someone's life there? While still being deeply suspicious?), conflict is resolved only by a handful of people so quickly.
With only two episodes left for this season, I'm not sure where it's going, but I hope it would still be enough before we go to the main event in Season 8.
@toke oh wow I've just read this comment. "Evangelion adaptation"? What a joke. It's obvious that this movie does not attempt at all to adapt Evangelion, or even mecha movies. It tries to adapt the Japanese monster film genre. You think where did they get the name "kaiju"?
This episode gives spotlight to Dwight, but we were not given enough reasons to care about him. Only by partially showing his background and his interaction with Daryl in this episode that we were given reasons, but not enough prior to warrant our attention in one episode. Daryl's torture scene seems to be a little confusing at first but it starts to make sense as the episode progresses.
All in all not really a bad episode actually, but it can be spent much shorter.
Who would expect what Negan did? Abraham's death was expected, and it put audience to relieve. It was a terrible death, yes, but "at least it's not Daryl/Glenn". However, Negan's first swing is a false flag. The producer surely knows this, and Negan swings his second swing: toward Glenn.
Like this is not enough, Negan pulls another stunt. That is, if Rick wants to have the remaining crew alive, he got to cut Carl's arm. When Rick finally put himself together to have his son's arm cut off, suddenly Negan stops him, pulling a Binding of Isaac-esque situation: "you don't have to cut his arm, Rick, you just have to obey me, your god."
Even after months of gap between Season 6 and 7, this episode can bring the intensity, the brutality, and the hatred toward this Negan character. It's a needed start for this season.
Like in its previous installment, Rogue Nation has fast, gripping action while still maintaining its clever plot progression by utilizing gaps between scenes. But I would say Rogue Nation falls a bit slightly from its predecessor for its lack of proper characterization.
Unlike Ghost Protocol, Ethan (Tom Cruise) mostly work by himself here, letting only a little room for his dynamics with the other team members. Especially the new cast Luther (Ving Rhames) and the female protag Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson). The relationship with the latter is especially important because by 3/4 of the movie the plot started to progress with Ethan orienting himself toward Ilsa and the other member of his teams.
While this is not necessary a bad thing, but the lack of development with other characters make the film a bit rushed toward making the impression that Ethan already bonded that much with someone he barely know. The villain Lane (Sean Harris) motivation and goal also remained unclear until the end of the movie, making Ethan's goal himself in the last half of the movie seems kinda fuzzy - which seems to explain why other characters have to mention it several times, we're being told a story here, not being shown.
I personally see this film as bridging Ghost Protocol to the next sequel, a trend that I seem to see from movies out in this year (Suicide Squad, Age of Apocalypse), as the ending seems to suggest. So while I'm not completely satisfied on how Rogue Nation turns out to be, I'm looking forward to the next MI installment.
Pretty decent animation. Captures a lot from the manga (Mozgus' expression, Guts x Casca, Puck Spark) though not flawless yet. Things like character's movement could be better, also the scenes can be a bit longer (Guts x Casca hug, Mozgus' last moments, Isidro's act, Farnese being horrified) to give more impact, but it's good enough I guess. Mozgus' rock form animation is pretty solid. Music fits nicely.
This episode only makes much more sense if you've read the manga. It cuts a lot of things and compressed a number of subplots into shallow scenes. You know this happened and that happened, but you can't really understand why it happened and what is its relevance.
Under-rated thriller movie. The first half of the movie is intense, as we are brought into confusion as much as Beth (Radha Mitchell) experiences throughout the film. The movie spray a little hint here and there, but it's not obviously clear who is who until the second half of the movie.
This second half though, while still maintaining the intensity, have some scenes which don't really make sense. Like the scenes with the cops and villain, and the final scene where Beth face the villain (when somehow she became suicidal). When better options were available, the characters chose the worse.
Still worth a look though for a low budget movie.
Still a bit too fast-paced here and there, but generally an improvement from the previous episode. Some dialogues seem to be hurried without enough break, but the CGI is overall well done (except a few parts) and there are a number of hand-drawn scenes. There is no awkward music playing in inappropriate moment, and the sound effects isn't jarring like before. Not bad!
