cammymadden

The Rings of Power faces the same problems that any prequel series does. When your characters already have a destination that they must reach (both physically and in terms of character growth, motivations, etc), it's very difficult to tell an organic story because you're always forcing your characters to that destination and events can't happen that would make more sense in the moment. One rule often used by writers is to write the characters, not the plot. Allow the plot to generate as a result of the consistency of your characters driving the direction.

Amazon could have told any number of stories from any number of time periods, but by focusing on characters that we know, they have started the show with a disadvantage. We see the same thing happening with Star Wars, where any galaxy or time period could be explored. Or Marvel, where an infinite number of universes could hold an infinite number of potential stories.

Instead, Amazon wanted to rely on nostalgia to push their show - and much like with Star Wars and Marvel, that only gets you so far.

The dialogue of the show is clunky, at best. Amateur writers trying desperately to sound poetic when having characters compare rocks and boats is embarrassing.

The show is visually pleasing and certain storylines carry enough intrigue to warrant watching the 3rd episode, but unlike the movies or their accompanying games, there is little excitement about what lies next.

The first Suicide Squad move was a disaster! It lacked everything a whacky movie about villains being the heroes needed!

The Suicide Squad (2021) hits the nail on the head. From the moment the movie starts, it's fast-paced, violent, and absolutely ridiculous in all the ways that matters. Many of the characters don't make much sense, all are expendable, and the ride the movie takes you on is FUN!

Because that's the point, right? Having fun? The Suicide Squad offers emotion: highs and lows. Characters are given real depth that the first movie lacked.

I HOPE James Gunn does a sequel and finds a way to step this up a notch. Seeing this makes me think he would be a GREAT choice to direct a Deadpool movie.

I can't have been the only person who upon hearing that we were getting a Cruella movie thought, "Great, first Disney have retconned Sleeping Beauty's villain and now they're doing the same with 101 Dalmations!"

Is the character the one you know from 101 Dalmations? No!

Does that matter? Not in the slightest!

Emma Stone and Emma Thompson are fantastic leads in Cruella. It's not the best movie ever made, but it's one of the better things to come out of Disney in recent years. It feels semi-original, the soundtrack is fantastic, and the wardrobes of the main characters were majestic!

I wanted to hate this movie but honestly, it surprised me and surpassed my expectations.

This movie gave me 'The Last Jedi' vibes - a movie full on hollow conflict and convoluted story that essentially sets out to waste enough time to keep you busy until the finale.

The active villain was overpowered, had a ridiculous and mostly nonsensical origin story, and just didn't offer the connection that we've loved with previous MCU villains.

Nothing about this movie really made that much sense, including the accents.

Scarlett Johansson's Romanoff came across as a caricature of her former self. And while David Harbour and Rachel Weisz played their roles well, it's only really Florence Pugh who stood out in her role.

You could honestly skip this movie and it wouldn't remotely limit your enjoyment of the MCU.

At the moment of reviewing this, 'Point Blank' is sitting on a 7.9/10 rating on IMDB. How it has such a high rating is completely beyond me. After watching the trailer, I was genuinely excited to see this movie. The premise seemed simple enough, but I'm a big fan of both Frank Grillo and Anthony Mackie.

The trailer pegs this as being a sort of action-comedy, where two unlikely allies team up to save the day. Sadly, the comedy is minimal and the action is tame. I cracked a smile at one of the jokes and that was the upper limit of the humour this movie delivered.

Gun fights, car chases, corrupt cops...without directly spoiling the movie, I thought we'd get more than what the trailer showed us. In truth, if you've watched the trailer, you've basically seen the movie.

Nothing about 'Point Blank' was surprising, which is odd given how inconsistant the characters act throughout it. When the credits rolled at the end, I felt overwhelming relief that the toture had finally stopped. I only saw this movie through to the end because I'd agreed to review it for another website (and I'm only writing this review on IMDB to share my compelte and utter shock at the movie's current rating).

Honestly, I would take a pass on this one. You're not missing anything that you haven't seen a million times already.

When I heard that Gibson and Penn would be uniting to tell the story of the creation of the dictionary, I couldn't have been less excited, even more so when I discovered that Gibson would once again be yanking William Wallace's soul through the dirt in his misguided attempts at successfully pulling off a Scottish accent.

However, after seeing the trailer I was certainly intrigued. So, one bored morning I decided to give this movie a shot. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. The acting by everyone (apart from one side character who is the villain to Penn and Gibson's characters in this movie) was fantastic, and I felt truly moved by their performances.

This movie does more that tell the origin of the dictionary, although it does manage to do that in an interesting way. This story is about redemption, love, frienship, and the terrible mental health practices that existed in the early 1900s. At times I felt pride, at others I felt digust and contempt. 'The Professor and the Madman' isn't afriad to get its hands dirty (or bloody), but it does so without over the top gore. Camera angles allow for excellent story telling, and allow all shocks to come from the sheer fact of any event, rather than from the sight of any injuries.

I probably won't watch this movie again in a hurry, but I'm certainly glad I took the time to watch it in the first place.

Listen, Captain Marvel isn't the worst movie to ever be made. It has many redeeming qualities that make the first-watch semi-enjoyable. If this had beena stand-alone movie with zero ties to the MCU, I think it would have been OK.

Many people are blaming Brie Larson for the quality of this movie, but I actually enjoyed her performance. The reason the movie sucks is the writing. Characters are majorly underdeveloped while some are overdeveloped, the story itself just spends the 2 hour duration screaming for attention within the MCU, and the power-level of Captain Marvel is just ridiculous. We've seen characters within the MCU who are "Gods" or hold Infinity Stones are were still nowhere near as powerful as her.

It's not really surprising that this movie has to let you know at every turn that it takes place within the MCU. Honestly, the whole way through it I barely felt like I was watching a Marvel movie (apart from the fact that Captain Marvel feels the need to shove that fact down your throat constantly, as I've already mentioned).

I started watching this movie with low expectations. I loved the Slenderman games and find them incredibly unnerving to play (particularly alone in the dark with headphones on) and when I heard this movie was being made I was certainly intrigued. I mean this is such a mysterious character. That means that the movie has unlimited options in terms of what sort of story to tell. However, once the trailer was released I knew what we were getting: a movie that is weird for the sake of being weird. But...as a fan of the games (and someone with too much time on their hands due to the recent development of insomnia) I decided to give it a watch. I checked IMDB beforehand just to see how it was being rated. 3.1! I've NEVER seen a movie being rated so poorly. But, the comments were fairly positive. In fact, many of them claimed they didn't understand why the movie was receiving so much hate. I'll tell you why: 1. The story is one of the most poorly written stories I've ever had the misfortune of experiencing. From the moment the movie starts, every single character is a cliche. Somehow, they manage to all be cliches and yet are still entirely underdeveloped. The character development is little to none and any character development that does take place is done through the characters themselves actually saying it. 2. The sound effects used in this movie are supposed to resemble the game (I assume) but they happen at random times, they don't sound creepy, and worst of all, you can see that the creators were under the impression that cheap-sounding special effects would help set the tone...they don't. 3. Without giving away any spoilers, you can actually see, moment by moment, all the other movies that this one took inspiration from (I say inspiration but it is closer to plagiarism.

All in all, rather than leaving me scared or unnerved, this movie has actually managed to make Slenderman seem less like a horror characters and more like a spoof of one. If you'd added some jokes here and there, this movie could easily have been considered a horror movie spoof because it's THAT far away from being scary!

This review doesn't have spoilers as such but does discuss the general direction of the show in each season.

I've already written soooo much about this show in my blog that I don't want to go into too much detail in this review (Ranting & Raving on Wordpress, just saying) but I can sum up my opinion on this show in three very simple points.

Season 1 was incredible. This show filled a gap that other shows had left and I couldn't have been happier with everything about it. It was gritty, it showed a very realistic side to cults/religions and the characters were all very interesting.

Season 2: Changes direction completely and while still being entertaining to watch, is no longer anything special. It feels like the show loses its purpose and doesn't hugely acknowledge the events of season 1.

Season 3: Just no. Honestly, I couldn't be more disappointed by this season. There's no consistency with characters from episode to episode. Each story arc is ridiculous and apart from one, all of them spring from nowhere. If you want to see what it would be like if Jessie Pinkman had a psychedelic trip where he saw himself become a modern day Jesus, then you'll probably enjoy season 3...no, that actually sounds kind of cool. Hell, that would have been a better story that season 3. Sigh! it sucks, let me just say that.

I gave this 6/10 but id probably rate season 1 as 9 or 10, season 2 as 7or 8 and season 3 as 4 or 5 so I decided to round it up a little from 3 or 4 to 5 just to acknowledge how good the show used to be.

Contains Spoilers!

So there isn't a great deal that can be said here that you wouldn't have guessed simply from the direction the last film took the series in. Basically: money-hungry bosses decided to squeeze another film out of an already dead film series. Dead Men Tell No tales? More like Dead Franchises Tell No Tales!

The storyline at a base level could have been pretty interesting: The backstory of Jack was certainly an entertaining moment but the poor writing just opened far too many cans of worms and ultimately couldn't pull it off. I mean the emphasis on the compass at the start implied that it had something to do with the dead being imprisoned yet that was never explained. I mean maybe I just missed something but to me, the compass was the same compass we'd seen throughout the films already. The story of Barbossa felt forced and the scenes with him and his daughter were revoltingly cringe-worthy. Another thing that the film seemed to skip over is why a woman who doesn't believe in ghosts or anything supernatural is searching for a magical trident that controls the sea? Speaking of which: how did the red coats know that they were racing for the trident since nobody had got that far through the clues other than the girl?

Don't even get me started on Jack. Anyone planning on watching this film for the same entertaining Jack from the previous ones better give it a miss. Instead, we are forced to watch this bumbling idiot who quite honestly was more like a pirate version of the mad-hatter than Jack Sparrow. He wasn't witty, he was barely funny...it was sad actually.

I can only pray that they end it at this one! How long before Davy Jones is brought back on some revenge mission? Maybe we'll see another previous advisory being raised from the depths of hell. Also the Will and Elizabeth scenes added nothing to this film. I'd actually have preferred if they hadn't been in the film at all. I mean isn't the Dutchman meant to ferry the dead across to "the next place". So why wasn't there some involvement in the story of this film? The Dutchman could have intervened at any moment and made everything a whole lot easier.

Basically this film is a plothole riddled with plot holes where all your favourite characters have gone to die!

Contains Minor Spoilers

So I hadn't really heard or seen anything about the film Life other than it was pretty good and was a sci-fi film. So I was pretty open minded going into it which is hard to do considering the rate at which they are pumping out sci-fi movies these days...just when you thought the superhero genre was being milked dry...

Anyway, as my summary states: Life is exactly what you expect it to be but not in a bad way. This isn't the first film and it won't be the last to adopt the idea of a space crew who find something that then tries to kill them. Even the "twists" in this film are about as predicable as the phases of the moon's cycle!

That being said, the acting in this film (with a couple of exceptions) is pretty spot on! The special effects are very good and while the storyline itself is wildly overplayed, the excitement and tension still manage to be raised to a pretty high standard.

I found one thing that this film did very well was make me feel uncomfortable. Whenever you watch a film with bugs and you get that feeling of something crawling on you. Imagine that but rather than a bug it's an alien species. The death scenes are brutal and add to the sense of discomfort I felt by watching this film (in comparison I can watch the Saw films while eating food and not remotely feel put off).

I'd say if you've come looking for the next Interstellar then you should keep looking...but if you enjoyed Alien (or the millions of sequels/prequels) or Sunshine or any of these sort of films then you should definitely give this one a go.

The X-Men films are always difficult to review because the universe, the characters and usually the special effects in the films are all incredible and for the most part it is the storyline that fails to pack a punch. The Wolverine films have been part of this same flaw and while Origins was somewhat interesting, it was also incredibly underwhelming. Don't even get me started on how boring the second Wolverine film was...so here we are after a whole series of average films with what people view as the best so far.

I have to say I probably agree with them. Within the whole series, Days of Future Past is probably my favourite film but this would be a close second. For those of you who have stuck with the films over the years, you know going into this film that they're not at their best: the trailer alone shows both Charles and Logan having aged and it's always quite an emotional time when characters such as these begin to show their mortality.

I do however, have to disagree with many of the reviews on this site: first of all, as far as films go this is not "the best film ever" nor is it the best Marvel-based film either (obviously I mean from Marvel comments as we all know that the Marvel universe is somewhat divided due to legal issues). For me, almost all the MCU films trump the X-Men films by a long shot and this film is no exception.

I've still rated this film pretty highly (7) because it is definitely a good film. I just think all those aboard the hype train perhaps need to slow down a little, catch a breath, and come back to the reality where X-Men films are average or slightly above and will probably never succeed beyond that (with the exception of Deadpool).

*May Contain Spoilers*

Over the years we've been victim to the regurgitation of horror classics as well as sequel after sequel (to be fair, this is an aspect that has always existed within the horror genre) and to be honest, I haven't seen a horror for a long time that has made me feel even slightly creeped out, never mind scared!

That being said, The Conjuring 2 certainly starts off well with some very chilling moments and plenty of tension building. Luckily it doesn't fall into the trap of relying solely on jump scares which have recently become the norm. I did find myself during the occasional scene actually holding my breath in anticipation to see what would happen.

The issue arises later in the film where we get a very boring ending and a whole "prophecy" aspect that is ignored (perhaps it will be addressed in a later film). Not to mention that the ending had a somewhat rushed feel to it that deviated from the earlier pace of the film.

So I've given this film a 7, not because I think out of any film would would deserve a 7/10 but because taking the last decade or two of horrors I think it certainly did a better job than most. So my 7/10 is solely as a comparison to other horrors rather than a representation of earlier films.

Given the disgraceful nature of other infamous game titles that have been adapted for the big screen, Assassin's Creed manages to fare pretty well. When you compare it to say, Prince of Persia, it is actually a semi-successful attempt.

That being said, it really isn't a good film outwith such comparisons. I feel like the film was always at a disadvantage: even if you take the story from the games up until AC3, you have at least 30 hours of story line. How could a 2 hour long film possibly do the series any justice within such a small amount of time? Even if you repeated the story line from the first game it would still be longer than 2 hours (a route I feel would have led us to a much better film and actually have managed to stay within the preset universe).

I feel that what really let the film down is it's lack of commitment. It's like they couldn't decide whether to make it appeal to non-game players or to make it for the fans. Ultimately this led to a hybrid of the two which leaves the viewers in the position where playing the games puts you at an advantage because you understand what Abstergo is, the history of the Templars, what the Assassins are fighting for, the pieces of Eden, etc. The film briefly touches on these topics but ultimately falls short on any real explanation. However, it also puts you at a disadvantage for knowing this very same information as the film goes against plots from the games. I'm ignoring the obvious difference in the animus and its capabilities because I feel like such changes were necessary for the film. My biggest issue is without a doubt the apple of Eden. I was desperately hoping we would see one of the characters use to properly. This does of course ignore the fact that within the game story line one apple is destroyed and the other is in the possession of the Assassins (I believe). I therefore feel like the film really should have selected a completely new (or briefly mentioned) piece of Eden in order to avoid such contradictions.

In the end, I found this film entertaining to watch but as a fan of the series I definitely feel let down. The worrying thing is that the ending (which in itself was completely moronic and went against the core beliefs that had been set up for each character throughout the film) leaves it open for a sequel. Unless they pull their finger out, I hope they leave the AC film franchise as a one off. I mean isn't killing the game series enough?

*Contains spoilers*

Having enjoyed the previous two films I found myself not remotely excited upon seeing the trailer for Inferno. You could tell from that alone that the film was going to just be another race against time with a cheesy ending.

There were several moments within the first half of the film where I almost gave up watching due to the poor direction of the film. The plot was made to seem intricate and complicated but was in fact the most simple and clichéd one ever. Inferno certainly seems to have been given the Hollywood stamp of approval to put itself up there with the steady stream of mediocre releases we've seen over the past year.

Personally, I was hoping for the film to end the way it should have: with the release of the virus. I haven't read the books but from what i've seen in the reviews, that's the way the book ended.

With films such as this, there is often the risk of expectations being too high before the film is even released, ultimately resulting in the film being disappointing when it doesn't live up to all the hype that was generated. Luckily, this film had Man of Steel and Batman V Superman to kill everybody's hopes for it being any better than these. As more trailers were released, we got to see the characters and ultimately the "Suicide Squad" were painted as this group of villains who would be blackmailed into doing some good at threat of having their heads blown off. In an attempt to keep this review spoiler free (something I tend not to bother doing with other reviews) all I will say in relation to the storyline is that we're not dealing with villains and despite the constant misuse of the term "sociopath" which gets thrown around like a hot potato, these "villains" unfortunately fall victim to the biggest threat of all: Hollywood clichés. This film works if you're half asleep, don't need any real storyline or interesting character development, or really anything that makes sense in any way. If you're looking for an original film (especially a comic book film) then I'd advise searching elsewhere because it's not this film. Much like Deadpool, despite everyone claiming on the run up to release that this film would break the boundaries of what we consider the "superhero franchise", it (much like Deadpool) ends up being EXACTLY like your basic, most typical comic book film ever! Back when The Dark Knight Trilogy was fresh on our minds I always considered the Marvel vs DC debate to be fairly balanced, maybe even tipped more towards DC but certainly in terms of films, Marvel is now so far ahead that even The Flash would have a hard time catching up. DC are seriously going to have to rethink their approach to films if they want to stay relevant.

This is a spoiler free review!

I found myself watching this film with very, very low expectations. I'm a big fan of the original film and Bill Murray is one of my favourite people ever so you can imagine why I was hesitant to watch this film given how badly received the trailer was.

Nonetheless I put it on and tried to go into it with an open mind. I can't say it took particularly long before the film had become some sort of man-hating feminazi, ball-punching propaganda film.

South Park's new season comes to mind: Cartman tries to sarcastically show that women just aren't funny and puts females on the spot saying "make jokes about your weight and vagina" (just for the record, I find plenty of female comedians highly entertaining and female actresses as well). Yet this film is exactly what that South Park episode was talking about. Maybe in the same way that some guys find dick jokes funny, there is a small percentage of women who find vagina jokes funny but for me, it was just weird.

All the males in this film are either as dumb as it gets (Chris Hemsworth) or they act like scared little children. I found that men in the film often used the term "girls" to refer to the group just before something bad happened to him. I won't mention how the film ends but lets just say it sends a pretty strong message.

There were moments in the film I enjoyed but the man-hate just clouded over all of that. Not to mention that the cameos from the remaining living cast was like a ghostly hand reaching through time to punch the child version of you in the stomach.

I would maybe have given this film a 3, possibly even a 4...but the reason i've gone for a 1 is because I'm sick of all these failed remakes and reboots.

*Spoilers after first 2nd paragraph*

Given how awful the last Bourne film (The Bourne Legacy) was, I can't imagine I was the only one with low expectations going into this 5th Bourne film. The story had ended nicely with Ultimatum and I'm pretty sure most fans were content with leaving it as a trilogy.

Unfortunately within the film industry, you don't stop making a series until it starts losing you money so a success such as the Bourne series has to be milked dry. For this film, that includes what I can only describe as the laziest writing I have ever witnessed. I mean they really pulled out every cliché on this one.

You can tell that no effort was really put into this storyline whatsoever. In an era of cybercrime and privacy debates, what is a modern spy film without some NSA style cover up going on. Of course we don't get much of an insight into this as it's barely explored despite being regularly mentioned. We also needed some weird revenge twist so lets throw in a guy who was tortured as a result of Bourne's actions in the previous films...oh and wait, let's make Bourne remember that this man killed his father on the orders of a guy who has literally never been mentioned before.

Films these days are really below par. I gave this film a 5 only because I think some of the sequences are cool. So if you enjoy weak storyline and character development but some cool action sequences that don't really make a lot of sense then this film will probably suit your viewing.

*Warning: Minor Spoiler Ahead"

I gave this film an 8 although I do feel it deserved a 7.5 but I decided to round up. I had been a bit reluctant to watch this film initially because it seemed like it would be hugely predictable and overall rather boring but after watching several somewhat random films, I found myself watching it and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised.

I feel like with Red State, you have to begin watching it in a certain frame of mind, knowing that the plot will be rather straightforward but also frighteningly possible. Despite referencing the Westboro Baptist Church as being "less-violent", it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to notice the similarities between their family and the one featured in Red State. You begin to wonder how far a brainwashed group such as this would go in the name of religion.

The ending (which I'll try not to go into too much detail about) was bittersweet: while it ends in a rather comical fashion, I couldn't help but wish that there had been a huge twist at the end i.e. God was actually reaching down and beginning the crazy stuff from the book of revelations (I'm not religious at all so my longing to see a film end like this is entirely based on entertainment value).

That being said, if you're in the mood for a rather crazy and violent film about a groups of religious nutjobs and some sex-craved teenagers then this is the film for you.

Warning: Potential Spoilers!

When I first saw the trailer for 10 Cloverfield lane, I can't say I was hugely excited after the rather disappointing Cloverfield (2008). This film had been described as not a sequel but simply a "blood relative" of the previous Cloverfield film.

Firstly, this film does not adopt the shaky 'found footage' camera style as the previous one which was certainly a relief. It also does not show the creature from the other Cloverfield film which was meant to be similar to Godzilla in terms of its origin story. This was also a relief.

I would have given this film a higher rating had it not been for the ending. I don't want this summary to be super-spoilery so I'll stop short of just telling you what happens but we go from being in a semi- realistic situation that involves three people trying to survive together in a bunker to just complete ridiculousness. The actual reveal at the end isn't in itself awful, it actually could have been rather interesting. However, the way events unfold in the last 15-20 minutes of the film were just moronic and nothing more than a film trying to add some action when it wasn't needed.

I found the suspense and mystery during the majority of the film to be compelling and intriguing but rather than sticking to that style with the ending, I think this film was ruined by an attempt to add excitement and an excuse to use special effects.

This post won't contain much in the way of major spoilers but it may mention a few small things.

It seems that Zoolander 2 is following the film industry's recent step- by-step guide on how to make a sequel: Step 1 - Take a film that doesn't need a sequel such as Zoolander, Horrible Bosses, Ted, Hot Tub Time Machine, Grown Ups (just to name a few). Step 2 - Make a note of all the parts of the film that people laughed at. This could be anything from certain jokes or character traits. Step 3 - Come up with a moronic storyline that ultimately makes little sense and creates an unlikely problem or scenario simply to allow the sequel to exist. Step 4 - Take your jokes and stuff from step 2, copy them and then paste them into the script. Sometimes changing details, sometimes leaving them EXACTLY the same. Step 5 - Find as many willing celebrities to appear in your film either as a main character or simply as a cameo role. The more your gather, the more money your film is likely to make. Not to mention all the attention you can generate with trailers showing these people.

In case it wasn't already clear, I view Zoolander as one of the many sequels that quite simply should not exist. The big names in these films certainly don't need the money and quite frankly I could bang my head off a keyboard and come up with a more compelling storyline.

I wouldn't really recommend this film to anyone although it does have a couple of funny moments but I would simply say watch these bits on YouTube or something similar rather than wasting an hour and 45 minutes of your life watching this film. I'd say if you are considering watching this film simply watch the first 10 minutes (that's when I realise it was doomed) to get a general taste of what is to come.

Many of the other reviews of this film sum up exactly how I now feel about it having just finished watching 'Tusk'. A film that on the surface sounds like a bizarre combination between a disturbing horror and a comedy, ultimately winds up being not much of either.

While the film does have a few perhaps laughable moments, they do not make up for the all the other areas it falls behind. Similar to the Human Centipede (1, 2 or 3) this film is nothing more than bizarre torture porn that simply leaves you feeling regret...at the fact that you just wasted an hour and 45 minutes watching it.

If you have absolutely nothing (and I mean literally nothing else to do at all: no wet paint to watch dry, no grass to watch grow, no water to watch boil) then I'd perhaps recommend giving it a watch simply because it is such a bizarre film.

*Potential Spoilers*

There is a lot to be said about a film such as Spotlight. There is no action, no murders, no special effects, no explosions, no knife- wielding psychopaths...and yet this film manages to reach down deep inside your mind and grip it tightly throughout the entire film.

I found it rather odd having to mention that there could be spoilers in this film as it isn't really a film with a traditional sort of twist to it. Watching Spotlight, I found myself feeling many emotions towards the characters in the film as well as towards the institutions in real life: you can't help but feel empathy towards the victims within this story, while feeling anger, disgust, contempt towards the "villains".

The biggest issue, the biggest fear-causing moment in this films is at the end. After watching any other film, the credits would roll and you would tell yourself "It was just a film"...but with Spotlight, your brain keeps thinking about how awful and real this story is.

I would recommend this to everyone and anyone but I would especially recommend it to anyone who follows faith blindly. Anyone who believes that they are doing Gods will by abandoning any moral principle because a fellow believer explains that it is what God wants.

6%...

*Doesn't contain any huge spoilers: just one scene*

After literally just getting back from seeing The Revenant, I decided to share my opinion of it prior to the Oscars before it becomes even more hyped up.

While Leonardo DiCaprio does deliver an incredible performance, making the audience feel his pain and helplessness in certain situations, I found myself often comparing his facial expressions and noises to the scene in The Wolf of Wall Street where his character consumes some surprisingly powerful quaaludes ultimately dropping him directly into the "cerebral palsy phase". I found it somewhat difficult to contain my laughter after making this comparison during the film. Putting that aside, his portrayal of a character determined to have his revenge was impressive.

That being said, even within the opening scenes of the film I found myself focusing more on Tom Hardy's performance. Whether it was his character or his acting that caught my attention, I couldn't tell you. Following the "evil" character in the film added a sense of dramatic flare that we don't always see. Watching as he deals with each and every consequence as it unfolds, watching how little effect this has on his conscience. Short of putting any real spoilers in here, Tom Hardy in my opinion played an essential role in the success of this film.

Overall, I would certainly recommend this film to people because it is a great watch but I also won't be rushing to purchase the DVD upon its release. The story tends to drag in points and many aspects of the story that would have been interesting to see are left unexplored. Perhaps this was to add a degree of mystery to the film but I think it would have helped flesh out the story a little more.

Personally, I don't understand how Kung Fu Panda 3 has a higher IMDb rating than the first or second films. Maybe as more people rate it, that number will drop but don't take it as representing the quality of the film.

I could rant endlessly about what was wrong with this film but instead I'll just say this: If you've seen the first two films, then just assume that you've seen this one as well. Apart from the addition of Bryan Cranston, this film hasn't changed much.

Even the humour in this one appears to be sadly lacking in relation to the previous two. This sequel makes the same error that all sequels are making these days. They follow a formula to make this film exactly the same as the previous ones, just with a slightly altered storyline e.g. a new villain who has never been mentioned previously.