snookie-6

1. Stealth - at its core this is a stealth game (imo second favorite only to Splinter Cell Chaos Theory). And it gets stealth right. It doesn't "lack" a combat system. There is no combat system because in real stealth combat means "game over".

2. Level design - an integral part to stealth is the freedom of approach. An integral part to the freedom of approach is level design. This game works because of its intricate levels. Always more than one way to skin a cat in this game. If you get stuck, there's always a shortcut or a passage that you missed.

3. Gameplay - incredibly intuitive and leaves plenty of room for improvisation. Once you get used to how things work there is nothing you can't do. No glitches. I haven't experienced a single glitch in my so far 50 hour playthrough.

4. Interface - not cluttered. Pretty straightforward. Nothing vague or misleading. "Less is more" through and through. Prompts for Amber powers appear as soon as you press the corresponding key as to not interfere with your field of view (in stealth games FOV is very important). Throwables and consumables fade out. HP bar is always there. Kind of useless if you ask me. If you're playing the game right your HP bar is always full. Doesn't have a quick load shortcut key on the controller, but they changed that in the sequel.

5. Replayability - of course. You can even replay missions within the main campaign thanks to an option in your hideout.

6. Story - it's almost too clever.

7. Style - cutscenes are without animation, but they're really beautiful pictures of the characters (imagine Hitman, but better looking).

8. Performance - it can run fast on incredibly low-end PCs and can look pretty good on high-end PCs. Not demanding at all.

9. Atmosphere - everything from visuals, to soundtrack, the overall setting is executed perfectly in my opinion.

10. Details - as Sherlock Holmes often says, details are the most important. An amber mark on Styx' back and a subtle vignette effect let you know when you're in the shadows. Almost everything of the environment is there to be used and abused - buckets and mops can raise an alarm if you trip over them, closets and chests are there to hide the bodies, plates and grog sacks are there to be poisoned, every part of the interior and exterior of every level is part of the gameplay. The game is also an NPC haven. If you enjoy taking out baddies - each level has them in the hundreds. You can do a quick passive run without being seen, but you can also spend hours methodically taking them out one by one... also without being seen.

It is incredibly fun! As a stealth fan I got nothing but love for this game!

I can't believe I enjoy dying in this game. The combat is so engaging and entertaining, once the Death screen is on I am keen on going back and trying it again.

It isn't even about defeating your opponent, it's much more about learning to master the shinobi techniques and pulling them off with the required timing.

Another nice addition to From's formula here is stealth. Crowd control has apparently always been a good idea in games like these, so incorporating stealth gameplay makes perfect sense and since I'm all about stealth - I enjoy picking off enemies one by one. I'd sometimes go back to an area and clear it out, not to grind, but just cause I feel like doing it again, maybe even solve the puzzle once more, but with a better arsenal.

As for difficulty - I really can't tell if it's hard. I would struggle so hard on a fight and then when I win, I would completely forget that I was having a hard time.

The atmosphere is also amazing. FromSoftware fan or not, please check it out.

I don't know if it's good or not. And you technically "can" play it in Germany. But it is in German, the original audio has been entirely blocked and there is absolutely no legal way to buy the game in its original form.

I am well aware that this isn't the fault of the developer. This one star rating isn't for the game itself. I just want to bring the attention to the fact that in Germany you are not allowed to play this game in its original form.

This is the most ironic case of censorship I have ever experienced and frankly I don't know how to feel about it. I would've even been okay with them removing Hitler's name and any swastikas. But the fact that it is not in English is just devastating to me.

Oh the strange times we live in... I mean, Sniper Elite is legal in Germany. What makes Sniper Elite okay and Wolfenstein not? I just don't get it...

Since I have given up on cinema and TV, I don't know if my expectations are too low or if this show is just so well made.

Could be both. To be honest, it does feel like it's been so long since I've seen good direction, good script, good cinematography and good acting (especially in TV series) that just seeing them all together in well constructed stories is such a breath of fresh air.

You got Odenkirk, Seehorn, Banks, Mando, Fabian, Esposito, McKean and honestly all the rest who are doing such a terrific job portraying their roles.

The characters are amazing. The last time I've seen characters as complex as, I don't know... let's say Chuck... probably in Deadwood. There are no heroes and no villains in good writing. And this one doesn't have any. You know every time when decent people are about to do something wrong and when horrible people are right or at least forgivable for doing what they do.

It is just something that is so rare, it must be appreciated. Character depth is important and it seems like in this show all of the characters pass that test with flying colors. And the camera work is fantastic. Not only are the scenes gorgeous, but a lot of the frames themselves tell so much of the story.

Modern TV and cinema has somehow gotten me so used to tropes and unnecessary exposition, I have stopped giving my full attention to the screen whenever I'm watching something that came out in the last 10 years. It's good for something to be finally able to keep me invested and intrigued for 50 minutes again. I almost forgot what that feels like.

To see something that is actually interesting.

Nobody cares about the things he reviews, not even he does, as is shown by his inability to change his facial expression throughout his uninspired 10-minute monologues.

His voice is so monotonous and devoid of credible human emotion it could just as well be ASMR.

10/10 Incredible content.

This strand-type youtuber really makes you feel like Knack 2: The Knackening.

If you disagree with this review you are nitpicking and biased, I win, bye bye.

This movie is a perfect example of how creatively bankrupt bigger Hollywood studios really are.

For decades fans of certain IPs (especially superhero stories) have been complaining that Hollywood can't stick to the source material. So what does Hollywood do? In their typical out-of-touch manner they try and prove how they're "hip", "down with it" and "know what's up". On the blu-ray you even get an insulting extra feature where this bland and annoying voice counts down how much of the "Easter eggs" you got in the movie. If you are a true Spider-Man fan and see this, it would only make you laugh and cringe. It just goes to show that this wasn't really made by people who are interested in the original stories, but they felt like it would be a great selling point if they managed to half-heartedly attempt to convince you they did their homework. That is just the most disgusting approach to an audience I have ever witnessed. First of all, it seems to simultaneously try to be a critique of the way Marvel movies are made AND at the same time validate them for whatever reason (I mean it's obvious that the reason is profit and keep milking this cash cow).

The first half of this movie is exhaustingly cynical in its attempt to be lighthearted (which it didn't need to be) and funny (which it also didn't need to be). And right about the middle it decides to awkwardly change the tone from an awful cheesy blockbuster to an authentic Spider-Man story with actually heartbreaking moments.

This is why I can only give it a 5/10. Half of the movie I absolutely love. The other half I hate with a passion. It would've been much better if the movie was just bad, but no. They had to go all out with doing an incredible concept, incredible cast, incredible conclusion and then just dump some cheesy jokes (that also NEED to be repeated for some reason, doubling down on the awkwardness and cringe), appallingly needless exposition and "funny" moments that ruin the emotional impact of the narrative.

This doesn't feel like your typical dumb cookie-cutter cash-grab Marvel movie. No, it goes the extra mile to make you feel like you're being scammed. It reads like an e-mail from a Nigerian prince that wants to give you a million dollars. You really want it to be true, but you'd have to be stupid to fall for that trap.

I've always hoped Hollywood would somehow do better. With this movie, this hope is gone. Its pacing sort of reminds me of Hancock. But where I don't care about Hancock as a character, I certainly do care about Spider-Man. He is my childhood hero. And they completely ruined him.

This is my first From Software game. I avoided this developer for a very long time because I was never much of a competitive gamer. Overall I think video game difficulty is a scam. But this game seems to check all the boxes most videogames nowadays don't.

• Style - check.

• Satisfying combat - check.

• Level design - check.

• Atmosphere - check.

• Rewarding progression - check.

And even more important, this game doesn't have all the bad things other videogames nowadays have. It doesn't have a pointless boring open world. It doesn't have "side quests". It doesn't have difficulty settings. It's not pay2play. It doesn't have waypoints. It doesn't have "collectibles". The grind isn't really a grind like RPG grinds usually are. If you are grinding it's not because the boss is overpowered, but because you are not doing what you're supposed to do. There is a point to the grind.

This whole game is basically designed around the concept of making us let go of all the bad habits other videogames have left us with. The enemies in this game won't tolerate button-mashing. They won't stand for cowardice. They will not let you off easily. This game comes up in your face and tells you "you are either doing it my way, or you're not doing it at all". And as gamers, we must applaud the developer for making this game. It's not just a fun game. It's not a grind. It's not about the satisfaction of telling noobs to "git gud".

The game's most clear and much needed message is "this is what makes video games amazing". Yes, it could be easier. Yes, you can probably get lost if you're not paying attention. Yes, a few pointers would be nice. But then again, they'd ruin it too. Perfection will never be achieved through conformity. The only reason this game is so punishing is because it is a great game and it is great only if you play it the way it was meant to be played. If you compromise this with an Easy mode, you are stripping this masterpiece of its full potential.

In a weird way, it's not even that hard. It just doesn't forgive mistakes. Mistakes that other games are too tolerant of. If video games were music, From Software games are jazz. It rewards improvisation, but leaves absolutely no room for you to break the rules. By the end of it, you're not even fighting these enemies. You are dancing...

There is so much to say about why this movie is the best Batman movie (not counting the animated movies) ever made so far, but it's way better if I just do a really quick rundown on all the previous attempts which fail at all the things this one succeeds in.

Tim Burton - great Gotham, great Bruce Wayne/Batman, Nicholson is a pretty decent Joker in my opinion... all the rest is really bad. And it really didn't age well.

Joel Schumacher - oh god no. Batman directed by Adam Sandler.

Zack Snyder - good god please no. At least Schumacher's Batman movies are funny...

Christopher Nolan - this one is wild. A great cast, but they don't really do anything remotely close to their respective characters. His movies don't feel like Batman movies, but more like Nolan movies somewhat inspired by what Christopher Nolan has heard about Batman. I'm not even so sure they hold up as just movies, let alone Batman movies. The worst type of mediocre is the one that really tries to convince you it's actually good.

And as for this one:

• respect for source material
• respect for the characters
• respect for the story
• respect for the setting that is the city of Gotham
• respect for the psychological depth of the dark knight narrative
• good dialogue
• 90% good acting. I'm a fan of Colin Farrell, but first Bullseye... and now this... I'm sorry, he sticks out like a sore thumb among all the other wonderful performances. I'm not even sure it's his fault, but... no... Oswald Cobblepot deserves better.

• actually a pretty well made movie overall. Camerawork, pacing, acting, script, the plot itself, good stuff...
• the music could've been better. A lot of the atmosphere of Batman just doesn't click if you don't do the dramatic orchestral thing that has been otherwise done in all the previous movies (and the animations... and the video games...).

So yeah. This one is worth it.

When I think of stealth, I think of Splinter Cell, Styx, Dishonored, Hitman, Aragami, Mark of the Ninja, Blades of the Shogun and now this one.

The big games that are being released the last decade are something I try to avoid like the plague. Third person open world action games have become such a cookie cutter nightmare, I keep thinking I'm stuck in limbo replaying the same game with reskins and mods.

Of all the sins committed in this industry, one of the worst to me is forced stealth. Ubisoft made the perfect formula when Chaos Theory dropped and by the time Assassin's Creed was out, the stealth genre was murdered. Some good games like the Arkham Series, Shadow of Mordor, Mafia 3, Spider-Man 2018 and Ghost of Tsushima make a decent mix of stealth and action, but real stealth is still overlooked.

I'm glad I played this game. You sneak. You count your ammo. You strategize. You make every shot count. You study the NPCs. You keep inspecting the layout. Incredibly satisfying stuff.

On stealth alone - 10/10.

One star down for incredibly stupid story and awful voice acting. One star down cause it's just short. And one star down because of glitches. Nothing game breaking, but it can be a pain in the ass having an NPC stuck in a wall or see you through a wall. Game doesn't really tell you how the system of the enemy finding bodies works. Sometimes they just wander off and find the bodies , even though you stashed them. Sometimes you drop them in a river and a reload respawns them at the edge of a map. Sometimes the bodies just disappear when reloading a saved game. But honestly, the worst is the story. Would've been better if there was no story. Killing nazis is incentive enough. And the voiceover is sometimes insulting. That mafia boss... Whoever voiced that character thought that an Italian accent is-a just-a talking-a like-a that-a the entire-a time-a...

So yeah. Shoot some nazis. Hide the bodies. Don't leave a trace. Fun times.

Red Fox out.

Three seasons seems to be the perfect amount for any TV show to do great.

They do the impossible here - establish the characters in a well-written screen adaptation. The actors are phenomenal. But the writing really steals it.

When you watch this kind of show you always expect cheesy out-of-touch dialogue, annoying sarcasm and characters who are stupid for the sole reason of advancing the plot.

Even my favorite shows are guilty of this. This seems to be a glorious exception that manages to remain consistent in its narrative and somehow even ties up its loose ends in a spectacular way. Characters are surprisingly complex and human. I don't know if I'm exaggerating this because my standards have dropped so low after I've tried to sit through half of the MCU movies, but it honestly caught me by surprise how much character depth this show has, how invested the writers seem to be in establishing Hell's Kitchen, Daredevil, Kingpin, Punisher, the whole setting, all of the secondary characters...

Jon Bernthal is a perfect Punisher. D'Onofrio is amazing as Kingpin. Charlie Cox is phenomenal as Daredevil. In fact, he is so good I'm having a hard time being convinced he is not blind in real life. Bethel as Bullseye. The people who played Wesley, Sister Maggie, Father Lantom, Ben Urich, Ellison, Page, Nelson, Electra. Incredible. So much potential for cringe in some of these characters, but all of it dodged like they were dodging bullets. Heart-warming moments, heart-rending moments, every scream in this series has a purpose. Every emotion has value. Every line of dialogue is full of context and weighs on the viewer as if he is in the middle of the scene. Every season ends on a satisfying conclusion and every next one is better than the previous one.

Yes, the fighting is also very good, the choreography and camera work are great, but the fighting is the least impressive thing about the series.

It is so good I still can't believe it exists. Just finished it last night and I will try to hold on to that feeling you have when you watched something for the first time that completely blew you away.

There aren't many of those nowadays.

So, everyone has seen Anchorman and it is weird to see the guy that made it tackle serious issues. The Big Short was this drastic change in tone for the director and he pulled it off so nice, when I heard he's making Vice about Dick Cheney I couldn't help but say to myself "okay, this guy's pushing it" Vice was just as insightful, hilarious and tragic at the same time with wonderful performances and an incredible script.

So seeing the trailer for Don't Look Up, I couldn't help but say to myself "okay, this guy's pushing it".

This movie didn't miss a beat. It's like he pulled all of the stops on this one. There isn't a single minute in this entire two and a half hour experience where you don't see a reflection of the reality we are currently living in.

This movie is pretty much my generation's "Network". It is an incredibly insightful political satire and incredibly human as well. You rarely see the two intertwine even in cinema - politics and humanity. But by presenting all of the flaws our modern society has it really subtly is able to show the counterpoints and give a profound message to the viewers (as all good satires do, really).

Here's the thing though. Despite its incredible cast, its good script and the good message that it gives, I feel like this movie is greeted with an inevitable criticism. This has gone around since the times of Shakespeare, probably even before. You are not gonna see critics praise a satire, because it often hits too close to home. And the articles I've read so far are insultingly flat. It is sad to see that a so called critic's best argument is "I didn't understand it". It's just incredibly insulting for all the great work these people have done with this movie. But I guess it is an inevitable thing for movies with as straightforward a message as this one.

I really enjoyed the end of the world and Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Jonah Hill and really everyone else should be commended for their performances of such convincingly despicable figures we've all seen too much of in our day-to-day lives.

This one, like the previous two, just raises the bar even higher which means I will probably be even more skeptical of McKay's next project. And I can't wait for him to surprise me once again. It is a wonderful feeling. By the end of the movie it's all so life-affirming. Some Douglas-Adams-tier tears were shed... Thank you, Adam McKay!

Honestly, without even having played the original Mafia back when people were so nuts about it, I know how it looked like. I know what people thought of it. And I can even get people's frustrations who were hardcore fans. There could be changes in the style which understandably left a few people disappointed.

But this is a remake done extremely well. First of all, Mafia 2 and Mafia 3 don't hold back when it comes to storytelling. People take issue with boring gameplay. It's not bad, it's just more or less the same in all three of the games. You drive. You shoot. You watch the story unfold. You drive. You shoot. You watch the story unfold. Oooh! Check this collectible out! Drive some more. Shoot some more. Watch the story unfold.

I'd get it if you don't like that. But the gameplay isn't bad. It's just not as diverse as we expect from AAA games nowadays. But, what is even more important, the story is PHENOMENAL. Finally watching where it all started, after knowing how it turns out in the next two, I can only catch myself at the edge of my seat with every next cutscene. And thanks to the visuals, it practically looks like a movie.

I can't get over the fact that we're living in that time where we could watch what used to be a bunch of awkward animated blocks turn into almost lifelike cinematic experience. It is beautiful. And well voiced. And with this definitive edition, I think the trilogy is surely one of the best trilogies out there. Not for everyone! But IT IS good!

The only thing good about The Golden Age Arc is that the animation is sort of better.

Especially since the most important part of this story is the "ending" (which as most people in these reviews apparently don't know is just the beginning of the manga).

The voice acting is nothing compared to the original. And the score was awful. And while it would still have the shock factor, the anime from 97 feels a lot better. Since the ending is so controversial it is very important to do it justice, which they didn't.

I remember wanting to see how they would remake it when it was coming out and then being seriously disappointed as soon as I saw the Nosferatu Zodd fight. Berserk still remains the reason I got into anime. The storytelling is incredibly mature and to this day remains probably my number 1 favorite anime. The 1997 one!

And just to give you a hint of how good it was... after finishing the old one I spent half an hour replaying the Gatsu piano theme and staring at the ceiling, thinking about what had I just seen and thinking how everything else I watch from now on would be judged more harshly. The music, the acting, the images, everything was haunting and surreal.

This feels like a cheap remake and all of the great moments are (at least to me) ruined...

In many ways, what a lot of takes on this genre are missing is the human part. Movies can really take a lesson from video games.

The most recent I've seen that touch on AI, the Westworld series, Her and Ex Machina have led me to believe that in writing artificial intelligence, a lot of writers just decide to throw away anything remotely human from the get-go. For some reason writers love being childishly cynical, desperately trying to avoid clichés, but ironically recycling even bigger ones in the process.

However, it is the best of ironies that with so many live action movies, motion capture animation is the one to nail perfectly what it means to be human. I can't believe how much easier it is for an actor to convey real human emotion in front of the camera and yet all it took was an incredibly painful and tedious process of refining every single microexpression in the avatars of those actors that devoted themselves to this project.

This video game, this virtual experience feels more human than any actual movie I've seen on the subject. Because of good writing, good acting, good animation and because it was made with love and care. And as Quantic Dream games go, I think this one has the most plot diversity. Halfway through, if you're playing it a second time, you might fool yourself that it's all more or less the same. But no. At about the middle of the story some crucial decision completely change the way everything unfolds. And even though it changes, the characters remain true to themselves. No matter what decision you make, the characters remain faithful to their stories. And you really need to play it at least 3 times to get the full picture of what this story has to offer. It is only by pushing the limits of all characters in the game that you can get to (sorry for using a Westworld reference) the center of the maze...

I am so sad that there isn't a Hollywood movie that was able to make AI as human as David Cage made it here. Play Detroit: Become Human! It is an incredibly rewarding experience. It is unbelievable how much lines of code can really get to you. How Kamski's Chloe that greets you every time you open the main menu can look right inside your soul from the screen.

I can't believe this movie is an hour and a half long and it feels like forever.

Stop making artsy movies.

45% exterior, 45% interior, 5% dialogue, 5% soundtrack and the rest is actual plot.

I'm quoting a friend of mine... in the last decade has there ever been a famous film where the main character doesn't take 20 minutes to find his keys? At some point some director was sitting bored out of his mind at home and he saw literally the most mundane thing imaginable and he was like "hmm... I could make a movie about that".

Why would I care about a guy cleaning his bath? What is the story there? What's the point of that scene? What's the point of any of the scenes? I don't care that your fridge is disgusting. Give me something that even remotely resembles pacing. Nothing happens in movies nowadays. You're just sitting in front of an eerie slideshow that tries to convince you it is going anywhere... We get it, you like Drive. Or Taxi Driver... Or any of the other way better movies where almost nothing happens. But at least they are interesting. First 10 minutes of this and there's literally nothing to hold me as a viewer.

Life is too short to be watching long boring scenes of a kitchen where a guy and his mom are singing some alphabet song... And no, imdb, this review doesn't contain spoilers, since NOTHING EVER EVEN HAPPENS IN THIS FILM.

I think a lot can be said about this game, but I have a non-gamer girlfriend and I always try to find ways of expressing my fascination with games with as little words as possible.

"Kurosawa mode" seems to pretty much speak to everyone about the quality of the game.

• Great visuals and style. Spent just as much time playing it as I did in Photo Mode.

• Perfect gameplay. The combat in this game reminds you of simpler times when older games would actually have interesting and engaging gameplay and it would make sense, anything would fall into place without the game having to fill your screen with pointless hints.

• Great story, voice acting and characters. One of the best villains in video games. The voice actors are pretty good and the story is perfectly paced.

They made this game like a japanese swordsmith would make a katana.

When I was growing up, I had two favorite pastimes. Watching cartoons and playing on my Sega Mega Drive and later on PC. I've seen The Animated Series, I've played TAS on Sega, I've played Activision's Spider-Man from 2000 ("Welcome, true believers and newcomers alike!"). I've even managed to buy a bunch of comics throughout my life. I had toys, I used to draw Spider-Man in class and a lot of spiders and webs. I've seen the Spectacular cartoon, I've seen all of the films, played all of the games (Shattered Dimensions used to be my favorite until this one)... And when I first played this one on my brother's console, knowing that it had a lot of the Arkham series' gameplay mechanics I was skeptical, but also excited to see what they've done with it.

I'm also a huge fan of the Prince of Persia trilogy, so Yuri Lowenthal's voice was one of the first things that struck me. BUT... from the first five minutes this game just slaps you back into childhood. I don't know how they managed to do it, but Insomniac really made a masterpiece.

Of all things Spider-Man, I think this is the one that every single Spidey fan can shake hands on. This is the one. It's the best game. It's better than the movies. It's better than the cartoons even. And not only that, but it is riddled with homages to literally each and every one of those.

If you love Spider-Man - this is Spider-Man.

I don't get people who say this game is repetitive.

I do have minor annoyances with some of the decisions they made, like weirdly unintuitive controls (skipped so many cutscenes cause X apparently means skip, all the doors open with a square, except for when you're in a car and the garage opens with the down button on the D pad, you beat people with a circle and you jump with the triangle... why...?) Also I hate when games decide to have customizable characters AND prerendered cutscenes. Just do one or the other, 2K, don't pander to youtubers who are constantly complaining about things nobody cares about. In that sense Mafia III is a downgrade from Mafia II.

But the story is incredible, the gameplay is pretty nice and I think a lot of the decisions for this game came from the backlash from Mafia II being "boring".

This was perfectly predictable. Mafia II comes out "boring, nice story, too linear, not enough to do in open world". Mafia III comes out, you have side missions, better gameplay and more collectibles and people are like "too long, too much stuff to do and they're all the same, Mafia II was way better".

I blame video game reviewers. It shouldn't be a thing. They definitely don't improve the medium with their constant drivel but for some reason some developers actually pay attention to that feedback.

And I really don't get it. I prefer playing a game that does one or two things right, than to just play any random Ubisoft, EA or you-name-it franchise that tries to cram everything good from other games into one mess of a game just cause they need the money. And yeah sure... for some this game may be boring, but playing through it, apart from the minor annoyances all I get out of it is the impression that they put a lot of effort into it.

I also love this game as a stealth fan, so yeah... You have the areas. You get the objectives. You have the means and they give you a pretty good scope on the layout of each area. You can do whatever you like for each mission. You have plenty of approaches and a good arsenal for each mission.

If you're bored playing this game - you're probably playing it in a boring way...

I must've been 13 or 14 when I first saw this movie. After watching it the first time, I rewatched it a couple more times immediately with a bunch of friends. At a certain point we must've memorized a lot of the scenes and kept repeating it in get-togethers like crazy. I kept revisiting the "Be Prepared" song online and then I forgot about it for like a decade.

Many things happened and recently I'm showing my girlfriend the same song. So she says she never watched it.

We dug it up somehow and it honestly still holds up. It is a great fun childish and goofy animation. It is the perfect amount of weird, it's hilarious, doesn't take itself too seriously and it has something that a lot of animations lack - it doesn't treat you like an idiot. Even though it's obviously made for kids, it's not too formulaic about it. It gives a surprisingly grown up twist to the classic fairy tale characters, but in an oddly weird and funny way. The voice acting is pretty good and the pacing reminds you of a simpler time when movies were able to hold your attention for an hour and a half.

Of all the youtubers that have ever youtubed, he certainly is one of them.

Can't wait for the movie!

I hate certain trends and there are two trends in movies, series and arts in general that I particularly despise. Usually I hate discussing them with people, because they devolve into circlejerk cliches, but I also hate this third thing I've only recently found myself in - the new Hollywood. The Hollywood in the past 10 years that wants to try too hard to persuade you that it is K I N O.

Well this ticks off all three on my list. I mean I didn't need movies in the last ten years to tell me Joaquin Phoenix is a good actor, I already know that. BUT ALSO...

Trend 1: I hate romantic movies. There's literally nothing in a romantic movie that I've ever felt the need to be told. The most romantic scene ever to me is when Patricia Arquette's character faces Gandolfini's character in True Romance to protect the protagonist. Out of love. It's beautiful and it lasts like 3 minutes. Anything else for too long is just cheesy, unnecessary and boring. There are just things about everyday life that no matter how hard you try to make them cinematic, they're just gonna be intolerably meh. And to me, romantic movies are just one of those things.

Trend 2: I hate general superficial dismissal of technology. Artificial Intelligence is a very serious topic and if you know of a thing called logical fallacies, almost all of the movies I've ever seen covering the subject can be described with one in particular... "appeal to nature". You hear this about watching TV. You hear this about facebook. You hear it about video games. (another weirdly laughable hollywood portrayal in this movie, as if I'm surprised) You hear this all day, everyday, everywhere. PC is bad. AI is bad. Love is good. We get it. Technology is the devil's work and humanity is doomed. What I don't understand is, since all of these hollywood writers are so smart, how come they never manage to pick up Asimov, Adams or any other great sci-fi writer that wrote AI ten times better than they did DECADES AGO?

So , if you're not like me, you hate your iPhone and you're lonely - sure give this movie a chance. But if you're like me, you're tired of being so criminally underestimated as a viewer and you just can't sit through yet another overrated tear-jerker that sounds like a 2 hour long tumblr post... just don't watch it. Literally nothing you've never seen before.

It's a shame you don't get to see such well written and beautiful over the top movies. Hollywood has become increasingly pseudointellectual and artsy in the last 10 years or so and you rarely get to see something that goes straight to the point and gives you what you didn't even know you were looking for. It's not the best acting you'll see, but the script is so good. I wouldn't give it a 10 if its rating wasn't already so low. It's not formulaic, it doesn't take forever to explain itself and doesn't even find the need to do so. It is what it is and you'll either drop it in the first half hour or you'll be glued to the screen (me being the latter).

Most boring Batman I've seen so far, and I've watched Killing Joke's first half hour. Uninspired voice actors play ruined characters in a Jack The Ripper narrative that wrongs plenty of source material aside from DC. "As my mentor once said, (insert the cheesiest, most out-of-context Sherlock Holmes quote they could literally find on the first Google search result)" - Bruce Wayne, probably the only somewhat authentic character in this story. You know the writing's poor when you have a story set in London in the 19th century and every single character is an overused cliche. Cockney orphans ("cockrobins"? SERIOUSLY?!?), pompous elite, everyone acting like "the monopoly guy" from Ace Ventura. Top that with a ridiculously pointless and insulting plot twist and congratulations - you wasted 70 minutes of your life. Not only was this NOT Batman, it wasn't anything. Also I can't believe in the year 2018 they made a Batman animation where the bad guy gives a bad guy speech. Adam West's Batman has more depth.

I had watched this back in 2015 and I remember it being the last movie James Gandolfini starred in. I love James Gandolfini in everything I've seen him and I was also on a roll of great Tom Hardy movies, so I felt so excited to see this 5 years later to see if it "aged" well.

I'm not going to reveal any spoilers, but I have to say - knowing how it all turns out, I found myself still being at the edge of my seat, mostly because of the incredible acting. The pacing of this movie is flawless, the dialogue is great and the characters have such depth, it honestly catches me off guard.

It's also a beautiful movie. The camera work really compliments the intensity in a lot of the scenes.There are so many movies in the thriller genre considered "classic", but I can honestly say that this is one of the most suspenseful and chilling experiences I've had. I wouldn't say this is Tom Hardy's greatest role (mostly because I believe it is entirely too subjective), but I would say he's just as perfect and precise in it as he is in Legend, Lawless, Bronson...Schoenaerts is also incredible. And so is Rapace. And John Ortiz.

Just watch the damn thing!