vailsy

I watched this hoping it might be a little like the first season of The Terror .. moody, suspenseful etc. Since Dracula is in a coffin aboard an old boat it invites a little bit of that .. there could for example be surreal happenings, and there are lots of opportunities to fill in the blanks from the book with some weirdness

Instead it is jump scares at every opportunity.. really o.t.t music accentuating everything.. it's a wonder that all this excitement can happen aboard this small boat.. I mean how difficult could it be to just try avoiding the peril and that area of the vessel for as long as possible

Also Dracula looks quite bad. Very disappointing all round.

The part where she runs into 'mother' with her car is where things fell apart for me.. before that I was finding it quite creepy even though the main monster lady is not scary at all.. but the car part was laugh out loud funny

then the cops show up and act completely unlike cops

I think at this point the makers of the movie trade scares for laughs but it really does not work unfortunately.. it has music ripped from Mean Streets at the end for no reason other than to make it seem pulp and hip

This kind of thing with subterranean creatures has been done way better in movies like The Descent , and also Bone Tomahawk was way scarier. I'd recommend either of those movies over this.

I've watched this a couple of times now, once in an imax theatre which had better picture, and once in a smaller theatre which had better sound ..

the imax viewing was a rumble festival with way too much bass, but on the smaller theatre viewing I was more impressed with the sound design .. there are some very nice details like the eye lid blinking style sound of the telescope, the retracting sound of the thumper, and some really nice interior ambiences in the tent and also inside some of the vehicles. So some real subtleties which were hidden in the imax viewing, and totally covered with music in the first movie

the music has been massively dialled back, thankfully, from the first movie .. there are less of those vocal sections which I found really irritating in the first one, and other subtle synth layers can be more easily heard. I hope they revisit the soundtrack in the first movie later and dial it back in a similar way eg. Scenes like House Atreides leaving their home planet, and performances like the death of Liet Kynes would be way more powerful if left primarily to sound, with more dialled back and lower music. The music really ate up those scenes and performances

the visuals of course are amazing, especially the sand worms are incredible, and the imploding Harkonnen fireworks are a great creative touch

some slight negatives.. I found the importance of the spice goes missing, and this would only require a couple of additional scenes or sentences to rectify. Without it space travel ceases, but the audience is not reminded of this very huge detail. Blink and you will miss it in the first movie. Also the Fremen have some very sophisticated weapons and tech that goes unexplained, like huge triangular blasts and so on

some of the casting choices are slightly questionable .. I really love Christopher Walken but I was not buying him as the Emperor. He has become so well known as a funny talking new york tough guy, I quite expected him to pull out a revolver or something like that at some point, or come out with some witty lengthy dialogue before shooting the Baron in the knee caps. I fear the inevitable extra cast members that we will get in the third movie for the other houses as more and more A list actors inevitably will want to have their names on the franchise

Like with Star Wars ESB I'm expecting this to be the best of the three movies and I am hoping when Dune is completed, that Denis Villeneuve will have the opportunity to direct a third Blade Runner movie ..

(I'm someone that liked S1 best, S2/S3 not so much)

The sci fi enthusiast in me would have liked to see a bit more done with the micro-organisms storyline.. there were lots of parallels with this show and The Thing and so definitely they could have gone down that road and possibly satisfied more people.. when they look up at the ceiling in the lab and see mysterious fossils there, I thought that was where things were headed

the show doesn't take that road though, and those things are only hinted at.. as with other seasons we get the feeling that there is a bigger fourth dimensional lovecraftian story here .. there are some unexplained things like the tongue ('that's not our story'), The Tuttle organization which is mentioned just once etc

this story is more poignant than that and focuses on spirits, people and 'folklore'. Jodie Foster's characters storyline falls into focus in the final episode and there is some incredible acting by her here. This season is very women-centric and also shows the indigenous people of Alaska in a very powerful light, some people might have a problem with this, I didn't

technically, the sound in the show is very nicely done.. reminiscent of The Thing with lots of interior winds and atmosphere, they did a really good job on this

the show deserves awards in my opinion but might not get them since many people seemed to want more action, possibly more strong male characters also, not sure.

I watched this one in the theatre and was quite disappointed back then.. mainly it was the Daniel character who was overweight and not very believable anymore.. kinda not likeable actually

In light of the Cobra Kai show I wanted to take another look though, mainly for 'bad trainer', and quite honestly it is worth watching just for this. The bad guys are comically bad which ties in well with the humour of the tv show even though it was drastically out of place at the time of release after the previous movies

They really should have had a full tournament like with the first movie and gotten that super good karate guy back for some of those scenes. Rather than just one fight which feels rushed

Obviously it will always be about the first movie which remains to this day pure and wonderful, with beautiful music.

I used to always prefer Mad Max 2 but over the years I have really come to appreciate the first movie which is immense, has incredible chemistry between Mel Gibson and Joanne Samuel, and has the fabulous Toecutter

Mad Max 2 is a different type of movie, much more action, car chases and some incredible stunt work. Unlike the first movie there are no silly super sped up sequences and everything is as it was filmed or thereabouts, and when you look at the speed they are travelling at and swerving at, even when sat up high on vehicles with minimal protection, it is mind boggling

The bad guys are awesome including Lord Humungus who is visually interesting and has a great voice which is usually coming through a loudspeaker, and also his second in command,'Wez', is fantastic played by Vernon Wells who you might recognize as one of the main bad guys in Commando

The gyrocopter guy is also great.

Fury Road is more or less a remake of this movie in terms of it's structure and Mad Max 2 comes highly recommended on it's own merits, and also as a movie to watch as a double bill alongside Fury Road to contrast old school with new.

I like the Wizard of Oz and don't need it dissected .. eg. Did you know that dorothy kills someone at the start of wizard of oz... oh really? You mean the feet sticking out from under the house and the explicit references to this in the movie. Well, yes I did, but thanks for letting us know. Did you know the wizard of oz has dark undertones? Er, yes you mean the super scary wicked witch and flying man monkeys? Yes, I did notice. Thanks

I also like David Lynch and don't need his work dissected either.. generally I just like his work to float over me and I don't need to know more, in fact I don't even like to fathom the linear meaning of his work, or any rationale at all since the obscurity and dream-like qualities seems to be the artistic point. So.. did you know lynch was influenced by wizard of oz and has wizard of oz themes and references in his movies? Yep i did, it's quite obvious actually and also sometimes very explicit and impossible to miss

Ok, so thanks. Now begone, before somebody drops a house on YOU.

..the exact question my daughter asked me just now on the second musical number 25 minutes into the movie (English version)..

Such an obvious issue and done way more seamlessly in movies like Moana, which is also a much more epic movie and so big musical parts don't feel misplaced

there is nothing wrong with the performances and people singing the songs, they just don't match the characters or the setting, also sonically/spatially most songs don't fit, and so it takes the viewer out of the movie. Something to consider as feedback if they make a sequel

the makers should consider making a cut of the movie minus the musical sections and make that available for streaming instead of or in tandem with this and they will likely fair better. Without them i'd score the movie higher

she is otherwise still quite enjoying it and currently on the gargoyle part.. same question on Cat Noir's number though, also 'why is everybody singing?' for Hawk Moth. Also 'that's a weird sound' on the very exposed Wilhelm scream (do people still do that?) on the rollercoaster part.

Plus on Ladybugs next song which completely destroys the pacing of the rollercoaster scene.... 'she sounds so different.. she sounds like Billy Eilish when she's old' ... oh dear (she laughed at the melon joke though and is into the romance. The duet also works and if this were the only song it would be enough. She also sniffled at the sad part with Hawk Moth toward the end so things seem to come together during the latter parts of the movie as things reach a more emotional cruscendo!)

Emily Blunt acted overly vexated throughout, Robert Downey Jr was not able to deal with the subtle changes in his character later in the movie and ultimately he became dastardly and laughable, Florence Pugh deserved better and spent 60% of her 5 minutes screen time with no clothes on including a bizarre scene where she and Murphy are naked sitting opposite each other on arm chairs (as one does..), going all austin powers and covering their private parts strategically, Matt Damon was not terrible but I found him unconvincing (especially his delivery of '.. this is the biggest thing to ever happen in the history of the world!!' was most disappointing), Casey Affleck acted like he was an imperial officer in a Star Wars movie

One of the few people who surprised me was Josh Hartnett who I did not expect much from but who I thought was pretty solid. Cillian Murphy didn't surprise me at all since he was awesome as expected. Some of the younger cast were also quite good, but with a main cast like that I totally get why Murphy stayed in his hotel room and ordered uber eats

Otherwise few surprises.. predictable ever present atonal music all over the place which made sense in Dunkirk for example but not in this much more talky and narrative driven movie. Quite predictable sound design which was largely ear abuse (I wore ear plugs in the theatre and still it was too loud); crazy loud resonant dialogue all over the place, and token silent bomb detonation scene with jump scare after effect, and other random extremely loud Sauron style bass sections spread throughout the movie. The subtle elements were more interesting eg. The Foley and breaths during the bomb blast and I hope the mix for home consumption is better as was the case with Dunkirk for example

The nuclear detonation scene was underwhelming and needed more time, and I'll take David Lynch's version any day. Also Chernobyl was far more interesting in meshing sound and music for tension building

A deeper movie would have been nice too, eg. More science instead of distant formulas on a chalk board, and more about his philosophical side would have given the movie more depth, instead of the legal focus and losing his security clearance etc which I'm quite sure Oppenheimer did not care about.

Not a terrible movie by any means but I had higher expectations for this one. Cillian deserves to win awards for his performance, though he does not strike me as someone who gives a toss about those, maybe a bit like Oppenheimer..

This movie is a bit overhated in my opinion, I always liked the music in it, and the chemistry/romance between the two leads (and cindy and sandy!). Also factual elements like the impossibility of keeping great whites in captivity which still hold true today. This movie actually got me interested in diving and living that quite free travelling lifestyle hinted at here

If you remove the bad sfx and accept that it was made for 3-d, also some of the sillier moments like the shark smashing through the glass.. the underlying story is not actually bad, a great white getting into a lagoon marine park.. could make for a very high quality movie actually, (the first hour or so of this one are pretty good), and this surely inspired movies like deep blue sea

certainly better than sharks falling out of the sky and other such nonsense that has been around more recently

the smug guy and sidekick (P. H. Moriarty from The Long Good Friday) with bad 'Australian' accent are a bit annoying though

watch the 4th one at your peril, since the core story for that is utterly ridiculous, but I won't say that about this one. (also just saw the extra Overman scenes that were cut in the uk, didn't know that until just now, cool!)

Some beautiful very close sounds of EO really gives the audience the opportunity to feel close to the creature.. I was fortunately listening on headphones and it was even more apparent on those. I'm not sure if they tried some binaural techniques with that to really make you feel at one with EO, but however they did it the result was very effective. You really feel the intimacy when he is with his favourite person Kassandra and with the person that is nice with him later on, and it heightens the emotion

also some wonderful ambiences are present and this is all weaved together with some beautiful music and some quite surreal and creative sound design moments including the part with the waterfall

if you are into sound this movie is worth watching just for this element.

I was really enjoying this show and was very invested in the characters and the actors playing them, especially Milly Alcock who I thought was outstanding.. such a strange decision to change everything in episode 6 and I can't imagine what it would have been like had that happened in Game of Thrones, surely fans would have been up in arms

Game of Thrones has so many narrative threads also, of which House of the Dragon would have been one .. this show really felt like it was going somewhere but then episode 6 is like a reset and the same ground is covered again.. many characters don't look or behave at all like their younger selves which is not true to life, especially Rhaenyra goes from being super spirited to completely lifeless and resigned

Also some things make no sense.. for example a knight is allowed to bash someones brains out at a wedding party without any consequence.. surely he would have been executed. Instead he freely walks out has time on his hands to nearly perform seppuku, and gets a promotion

I am also not sure why they use the Game of Thrones music in the opening/closing of the show since this is a different show with a different feel, and deserves an alternative theme or arrangement

On the plus side lots of really beautiful ambient sound, as good if not better than Game of Thrones.

So a game that was developed shortly after the walking dead came out and would not have been made had the walking dead not been around, gets a tv show just a few months after the walking dead seemingly and finally finishes (about 8 years overdue), and with the inevitability of countless spinoffs from that show. Poor timing in my opinion

there are so many similarities here.. joel is just like rick for example. The tone is very similar with that southern twang and music, and it's so similar to every zombie apocalypse story out there, of which there have been many many over the past decade or so. The only difference being the fungus element, which is not a big enough detour from the zombie formula

i think we need a break from this type of thing, at least for 5 years or maybe even a decade, then make a last of us show. Maybe.

I quite liked the others, esp the last one was alright even though it got bad reviews..

but vhs in 1999, nobody was using vhs in 1999, just tells you that the people making this have no idea

all the actors are 2022 style, all talking like 2022 but with vhs effects

really very ott and badly done vhs glitch style effects and just like the 'franchise' has been taken over by the kardashians or similar

the second segement is the worst.. the girl has a large camera but can turn it around inside a coffin and get herself in focus no problem just like if she had an iphone, makes no sense whatsoever

just shows that the people making this have no understanding of what they are doing.

My immediate feelings were that it did not feel like Star Wars, more like Blade Runner or Battlestar Galactica... that it focused on the wrong character, should have been Jyn Erso, and that I hated the music

By episode 6 and now 7 though it is starting to feel like Star Wars.. episode 7 we see Storm Troopers for the first time, probe droids etc and it's apparent now as I suspected, that initially the outer rim was being policed by a less serious and more bumbling force, and that now the Empire is getting seriously involved with it's most elite military. So that process adds definite depth to the Star Wars universe since all we normally see are the top brass and elite troops

There are some serious actors in this show.. my favourites so far are Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly), Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgard) and Dedra Meero (Denise Gough)

I still hate the music.. it's nice on it's own but way too boards of canada for Star Wars but I am willing to tolerate it and I admire that they are trying something different here. Highly recommended.

I was quite enjoying the movie to be honest but once they decode the alien relic and go inside it gets absolutely ridiculous.. 3 people die earlier but they go back since they have a hunch that they are onto something about dna

then they go inside and take their helmets off.. literally 10 minutes earlier the womans husband kills himself by taking his helmet off so it's very unbelievable that she would do that or allow the others to do that.. the door could open again for example

then it kinda turns into willy wonka's chocolate factory after this.. senise turns into a small child like charlie bucket and decides that he wants to take the glass elevator up to the stars etc etc

the aliens are all nice, smiles and emotions.. yet if you are not humanoid and didn't decode their silly puzzle they would have executed you outside

senise finds that he can breath in their water and again acts like a small child

he does a fly-by past the others as they are leaving the planet and there is all sorts of cheese here

Jerry O'Connell also suddenly becomes a lot more present during the end of the movie and reveals himself clearly as the worst actor in the room

such a let down in the end.

Fortunately not too much time for all the usual disney/marvel 'comedy' which is so annoying.. this movie gets a bit more serious in the final two thirds and benefits from this enormously

Tobey Maguire who is my least favourite Spider-Man did great in this I thought, he did not do all the silly mannerisms and did a more subtle and authentic performance whereas Andrew Garfield who is my favourite Spider-Man was lost here and acted totally differently to how he did in the two Amazing Spider-Man movies

Willem Dafoe was absolutely brilliant.. finally we get what Spider-Man 1 should have been which is the green goblin without the silly helmet since Defoe facially is the green goblin. Dafoe acted like he had just come off of shooting Spider-Man 1... straight into the same character. Amazing. Really impressive

What I realized in this one though was that Zendaya really held these movies together, without her the three movies are a bit messy really. She was the glue that held them together.

The movie tries very hard with a realism approach to batman but gets a lot of small details wrong.. Catwoman goes into the super exclusive 'club within a club', teeming with criminals, and is talking (obviously to someone) while she walks around. Nope i don't think so

the Penguin is a race car driver ..

Also I found catwoman's advances toward batman very unwanted and forced.. maybe an embrace at the end of the movie but all the kissing seemed forced and I didn't feel any chemistry between catwoman and batman at that point

the final 10 minutes were not needed.. finish on the airlift rescue of the kid. Instead we have an unnecessary introduction to the next movie with the joker and then some awkward romantic motorcycle excursion with batman and catwoman

what was good about the movie? Batman, The Riddler, The Penguin. Batman's car

what wasn't good about the movie? A bit too dark. Nirvana in the soundtrack? Kurt Cobain would not approve. Weird slasher movie soundtrack. Serkis reminded me a bit of Gollum when he was injured in hospital (but was otherwise solid)

.. in the first movie Kurt Russell was awesome as santa with a really sassy performance .. not always nice, smart talking, edgy

In this second movie he becomes Mrs Claus' footstool.. she runs the show and he loses a lot of his personality as a result .. mirroring what happens to lots of people after they get married.

For me that is the fundamental problem, and the cause is the storyline

I don't think it was necessary to have Kate in it again, she also was not as spirited in this, again limited by the storyline. Santa could easily have worked his magic with some new kids.. although Kate and Teddy were terrific in the first movie

Not a terrible movie by any means but mostly I think Kurt Russell should have been given more free reign to re-explore his CC1 character

So quite a few issues compared with the first, even before we mention the 'B' word.

Jefferson Airplane - Go To Her

While I understand some criticisms of the movie in terms of it maybe belittling or misrepresenting certain anti establishment movements of the 60's .. I think this needs to be looked at in more simple terms as a story about someone who lost his little girl

Personally I'd like to have seen a story where the girl in question just gets involved in 'radical' politics and doesn't start blowing up things... I think the story would have been just as powerful on those terms and it would have given Dakota Fanning more to do in the second half of the movie.

I didn't really like seeing what happened with Jennifer Connelly's character, but then I rarely do! I usually have reservations about Ewan McGregor but thought he did good in this

Worth seeing for the score alone in my opinion, and some beautiful scenes also, especially the nighttime/urban shots.

.. where the little girl knows exactly how to use the recording studio to hook things up and go on air (with elaborate ceiling switch) while being hunted by a monster

it would take me possibly an hour to figure out an unfamiliar studio by myself and definitely i would not put my hand up in the air and confidently/magically find a switch like i'm turning on a light in my home. As soon as she did it i said to myself 'how would she know where that is' .. i can suspend disbelief for the big stuff, but the small things have to be right

that moment was a result of them trying to stuff too much into one movie .. often 3 things going on when actually all that was needed for the latter half of the movie was focus on 1 thing; the girl and the guy (the best characters by far) trying to get to the island. Then there would have been time for the story to breath a bit

like the first one, the sound design is very high quality .. still not exceptional since it makes no sense to have zero nature/ambience .. clearly these creatures cannot go around killing all the crickets and small noise generating insects in the world. It also somewhat abuses the ears of people watching the movie with very heavy creature movements and jump scares

still an entertaining watch nonetheless.

I first heard the story about the Death Star plans in the radio adaption of Star Wars so the plans back story has always been a part of Star Wars for me since the beginning

Rogue One is different to that radio adaption but it's really well done .. great casting, everything feels super authentic like the original trilogy, really nice effects, original music etc

The only negative for me are the facial cgi effects for Leia and Tarkin .. they looked less than stellar on release and are destined to age badly unless they redo them later. From a technical perspective they are very impressive but once made why not be humble enough to then use them to make super realistic distance shots. I don't understand the need to have close ups

It also would have been far more epic to have a distance shot reminiscent of the first one we see of Leia in a new hope with r2d2 . The final scene could have also then been slower.. it feels very sudden and rushed at the end of Rogue One

Overall this is still the only movie that feels like part of the original trilogy.. far better than all the prequels and sequels. I'd happily just watch this and the original three unless they make another as good as this in the future.

This is an otherwise very good movie but bad accents kill it for me and Jeremy Irons just sounds like a British guy doing a bad German impression .. rather than a German guy doing a British accent which is the way it should be and the way Rickman delivered it

We have lots of V's instead of W's and other slapstick nonsense like a person might find in an episode of Fawlty Towers

Die Hard with a Vengeance would be better if we were to only hear him on the phone (preferably with a noisy connection) leading Willis on a mad goose chase Speed style until the very end of the movie

Samuel L Jackson and Willis are an excellent combination and the movie is otherwise very solid, just a shame about Jeremy Irons

I first saw Department S perhaps twenty years ago while doing work experience at a studio in London dealing with dvd restorations.. instead of watching what the audio guy was doing I spent more time enjoying this great show

I liked it even more once i realized Peter Wyngarde (Klytus from Flash Gordon) was Jason King and so purchased a really great restoration of Department S by network just recently, and what a treat it is.. it has cleaned up really well and is just a perfect snapshot of the late 60's

I'm a big fan of shows like The Avengers too but I actually prefer the lesser known Department S a little more now since the storylines are a tad more serious and more James Bond / Ipcress File styled

The 3 main characters are all great, the head of Department S who appears sometimes is also excellent

The production values of the show are high class.. good sound and dialogue, lovely late 60's interior designs. Attention to detail was even paid to things like making the views outside moving cars look reasonable and consistent given what else was going on at the time

Department S also has good humour and is of course lusciously retro

I was fully into this movie up until just after Mandy burns.. had the movie continued on as a reasonably serious vengeance story then this movie could have been a classic

unfortunately it's a case of haha we gotcha and then Mandy takes a major detour into silliness with Cage losing it in the bathroom and then forging a sword etc , after this it just becomes a totally different spoof movie

Everything that was built in the first half really was undermined for me at that pivotal moment. Prior to the bathroom scene it even had a slight texas chainsaw massacre vibe about it

maybe I missed something and the second half is just one big hallucination, or the first half was clear spoof and I missed it.. but either way it didn't work for me