mesaxi

This horror comedy failed to deliver on the horror or the comedy for me, but I enjoyed watching it. I'd really describe it more as a supernatural thriller, like a Stephen King book where there are tense moments and a lot of mystical mumbo jumbo but it's not exactly scary.

While I think the technical aspects of recreating a 70's late night show could have been done a touch better, I did appreciate some of the details that were inserted. I particularly liked the James Randi-esque skeptic who offers up a check for proof of the paranormal, even if Randi was less snide about it. I appreciated some of the subtleties related to their hints towards the Bohemian Grove as well. It wasn't overly explained, but if you know about that stuff they did use it effectively. I particularly liked the way the film ended. It went a bit off the rails for a second, but the ultimate ending was solid.

Definitely not for everyone, probably not even so much for it's intended audience, but some people will appreciate this movie...whatever that means.

I'm being very generous with a 4 because it's Caitlin Cronenberg's first film. I think she shows promise, it's hard to see but it's there. Whereas her bother takes his concepts more seriously, Caitlin took a very silly, tongue in cheek approach to this movie which is more reminiscent of the greatness of their father.

In broad strokes: Humane quickly glosses over the improbable scenario of every country agreeing to eliminate 20% of it's population to stabilize planetary resource consumption before you have a chance to pick it apart too much. It goes on to present a family whose wealthy father invites his amoral and/or underachieving children to a dinner to announce that he and his wife (not their mother) have agreed to do their part for society and be euthanized, but...his wife got cold feet and ran off. The government euthanizers show up and the father goes through with it, but they were called for two bodies and won't leave without a second. So the question then becomes which sibling will step up and be the one who dies?

Enrico Colantoni's performance is what makes this film watchable, most of the other performance were very rough and that's my biggest criticism for Caitlin Cronenberg. Gallagher, Colantoni, Baruchel are all more or less pros who can hold their own, but she didn't get equal performances out of the other actors and there was a contrast. The film did look good though, and the pacing was pretty good too (maybe a couple of lulls).

Something to put on if you want to kill some times. It's about even with, maybe a little better than the recent Shyamalan movies.

The saving grace of Baby Reindeer is the short episodes, it really is a quick watch. And if they left you with more time to really think about "Donny", the more you will find him unsympathetic and not care what he has to say. Had this been a longer show I doubt I would have finished.

The show was terrific when it stuck to the subject of Donny and Martha. The show falls apart for me when it reaches the parts about Darrien. Even when filtered through the lens that Gadd presents, it comes off as an unsympathetic scenario. For starters, being that there are no names being named he can choose to take whatever liberties with the stories that he likes, so Darrien may be entirely fictitious let alone the events surrounding him. Moreover, I have my doubts about the naivety he presents himself with. In the end the story felt like it was saying "I made a bunch of mistakes, pity me". But the guy was a bit of a jackass so it's a tough sell.

Jessica Gunning was great, the overall production was great, but....meh.

I really wanted to like this movie. I like Rose Glass, I thought Saint Maude was great and this one was mostly good, but it had such an unbelievably stupid ending that I cannot recommend it to anybody.

Overall the movie felt A LOT like the Jim Thompson story "After Dark, My Sweet". You have the wandering meathead Jackie who rolls into town and gets tied up in the shenanigans of local nogoodnik Lou and her father, Lou. Katy O'Brian stood out here, she was very good. She's not just some Lou Ferrigno type that they hired for the muscles, she has some skill as an actress. The material had her doing silly things, but I can't blame her for script issues. Ed Harris is always great, and it was worth seeing for his crazy skullet alone. Kristin Stewart wasn't bad, wasn't great. She always seems like she'd rather be somewhere else when she's acting.

The big issue I had was not just how ridiculous the ending was, but how it detracted from the strength of Jackie as a character. There was a good moment when she took the job at the gun range and said she doesn't like guns, she'd rather know her own strength. That would have been the PERFECT opportunity to bring that back and they went out of their minds instead. There were some other flaws with the movie, but that ending was just epically bad and I can't remember them.

I checked this out after reading the synopsis. I was hoping this would have some cool sci-fi ideas or something, but this is Sci-Fi like Dragonball Z is Sci-Fi. It's fun and imaginative at times, but it's absolute nonsense.

The basic premise is that we terraformed mars with moss and cockroaches, but the roaches evolved into massive humanoid beings whose only evolutionary purpose seems to be punching people's heads off. Luckily the humans have serums they inject themselves with that imbue them with the advantages of certain insects, but how a child might think of it where it's like very specific superpowers.

It's entertaining in a silly kind of way, but it's incredibly stupid.

Let's start with my first criticism: Pointless. This was famously Zak Snyder's attempt at making a Star Wars movie but Disney was smart enough to turn him down, so he very thinly disguised the Star Wars elements and made it anyway. So it's just bad Star Wars. But beyond that his whole new idea to freshen up the Star Wars universe? A bad Seven Samurai remake. So something that's already been done mixed a something else that's already been done. Pointless.

Now saying it was Underdeveloped is a soft criticism. Snyder has his own extended cuts of these films that may correct some of the TERRIBLE pacing, but I can't see that being enough. This felt like someone shot an entire 8 Episode series and condensed it into 2 movies. And frankly, Snyder is just not a good writer. In fact, he's quite bad. I think he is a great director, he can make things look good, but this was just embarrassing at times. The battle scenes felt like a bunch of 8 year old's playing war in their back yard. So much of this movie was stuff presented as being very important with nothing to make the audience feel that way. There are cinematic cues that imply a feeling, but no information. Like all of the stuff with the robot being presented all dramatically. Who was he again? Someone who was mentioned for 3 seconds in the first movie? You can cue the music and people can gasp, but I'm still confused.

Maybe I'll give em another try when Snyder releases his versions, but as it stands these two movies are just bad.

I'm not sure what the point of this show really is. There was a moment in this recent episode where Stanton said Wilkes wanted notoriety so he would do everything he could to prevent that. But here we are watching a TV Show telling the guy's story nearly 200 years later, seems a bit self defeating.

Menzies and Boyle are both very good, I liked Linklater's Lincoln. Matt Walsh as Mudd was a strange choice. I like him, but I know him as a comedic actor so I kept waiting for a punchline. The whole bit with the ex-slave who works for him is where the whole show get's muddy. I'm fairly certain that entire part of the show is fictionalized. I actually read a little about Mudd out of interest and he was a fascinating figure, much more-so than Booth in my opinion.

Overall the show is pretty much what I expected, but there are sections that feel outright amateurish in execution and it gets a little heavy handed with the messages. (Did you know slavery was a bad thing? I for one am glad this show was here to teach me that)

I've heard of this book series for a long time now, but something has always kept me from reading it. When the show came out I figured it would be a quick a little easier to digest, which it surely was but I regret watching it without reading it. There are a lot of elements that are quickly glossed over with a hand wave that I'm sure had a lot of painstaking detail in the book. Much of the series felt underexplored, a lot of peoples actions or attitudes didn't feel properly motivated, and none of the super scientists felt like people who understand relativistic physics. Maybe the mopey guy, if he wasn't all mopey.

Not a total loss though, the show was very entertaining. It looked good, there was some good excitement, but I could tell all of the actual hard sci-fi was just ignored as much as possible.

I'll start by saying that Constellation may be the first show I've seen try and use quantum mechanics as more than a hand wave explanation for the impossible. I mean sure it's still nonsense, but the implication that metaphysics is tied into quantum physics is a fun one.

The show is a mystery, not quite in the stupidity realm of Lost but equally as baffling. This show at least has answers for what's going on, not just more questions (though I still have a lot of questions). It involves the death of an astronaut in space and a mysterious effect that very few people are aware of.

My biggest issue with this season is how much of it focused on the daughter. The girl was actually an impressive actor, but focusing on the child continually dragged the show into a overly sentimental place when I want answers to the mystery. The stuff with Henry/Bud was fun, and darkly funny on a certain level. It's a good role for Jonathan Banks. I would accept that last episode as an ending, but I would also watch another season if they came back.

People need to stop saying "Road House was a great movie". Road House was always trash, but it was a lot of fun and it captured the period it was made in well. That's why people love it and I feel like this achieved the same thing. This isn't exactly a remake, it's a modern reimagining of the same overall story: Road House being threatened by rich crime boss gets mysterious new bouncer and chaos ensues. There are a few of the same beats in there, but it's mostly a new movie. Conner McGregor is not exactly a good actor, but he looked like he was enjoying playing the role and that's more important in a movie like this.

I don't have much else to say. It's a little better than I expected. If you enjoyed the original Road House and understand that this isn't going to be the exact same thing I recommend it.

I wasn't much a fan of DV's first Dune movie, largely for the seemingly unnecessary changes and trumped up action scenes. This one was much better, even though it had seemingly unnecessary changes and trumped up action scenes.

The fact is that I can get past your changes if you give me a well paced feast for the eyes. They're still annoying, but I'll be a lot more forgiving. The most glaring change was Chani, someone in production felt like the movie needed a stronger female character or something, if so they completely misunderstood get the balance of powers in the books. The change to Alia I can write off as them wanting to give Rebecca Ferguson a meatier role, which is fine.

Just an amazing film visually, proving once again the DV has the vision even if his writing lacks. I still worry about him being attached to Rama because he's too willing to compromise and make alterations, even though I know he would be the absolute best choice visually.

Masters of the Air started out rough, but once it got going it became a little more focused. Every moment that the characters are inside a plane is great. The rest of the show has a tendency to drag, attempting to make you care about characters that you haven't been given much reason to care about. One of the most glaring difference between this and Band of Brothers (which it will inevitably draw comparisons to) is the lack of training. In Band of Brothers you got to meet all of the characters in training, see how they met, get to know them and how they are as a team. This show started right off with deployment. And then because of the nature of air warfare, many characters disappeared when they were shot down and the show had to focus on new characters. Once I got used to that pacing the show felt better, and as the war escalated the show had less peripheral detail and focused more on the war.

I did enjoy the show overall, and it got better as it went along so don't let the early episodes turn you off. 10 second skip can be a good friend.

I thought this was supposed to be a Henry Cavill movie, but the guy was barely in it. He had like 2 actual scenes and then a few flashes where she think she sees him here and there. Instead you got Sam Rockwell who was MUUUUCH better. I was about to turn the movie off until he popped up, I didn't even know he was in the movie. He got me through the movie, but it really wasn't good. This was not quite as ridiculous as the Kingsmen movies, not as serious as the Mission Impossible movies. It falls somewhere in the middle. As a man in his 30's I don't think I'm the audience here, this seemed like a movie aimed at teenage girls.

It's an entertaining movie and it's mercifully short, I love a good dark comedy, but this movie missed the mark. This was actually my second time watching (been at least a decade) and I did not enjoy it as much as I remembered. It has a horribly dated execution that feels a little callous in the darker moments. Particularly with Graham's obsession with his male dominance and "power over women", it has very dated concepts of masculinity that weren't tongue in cheek enough. It's also dated aesthetically, as it has that pure early 90's sleekness. The saving grace is the ever charming Michael Caine, and he's always worth watching.

I think this is a movie that's prime for a remake, something that could be updated. Not so much for a "modern audience", it doesn't need any social messages, but it could use some modern edge and humor.

I was hoping for some sci-fi fun here and man was this movie a drag. Adam Sandler moping about how he's a bad husband for following his lifelong career towards the razors edge of discovery instead of suddenly dropping everything and staying home with his pregnant wife. It's indistinct just how much she knew going into their relationship about his career path, likely intentional because a little thought makes it extremely unlikely that she'd be in any position to object by the time a mission like that is undertaken.

The movie is filled with little nitpicks like that, which will drive an actual sci-fi fan crazy. This isn't real sci-fi, it's nonsense. Do they introduce an alien? Sure. Does it's being an alien matter in any way? No, it might as well have been a ghost. In fact, it could be interpreted that it was a hallucination all along when you think about it. Did his being in space matter in any way? No, it could have been any job that caused the husband to be away instead of at home with his wife. Soldier, oil rig worker, some sort of arctic scientist, etc. All of the "sci-fi" elements were nonsensical and only served to push the plot in the direction the writer wanted, they didn't make any real sense.

This felt like a bad version of Project Hail Mary, if you thought this had potential but failed on an intellectual level I recommend that book.

There are certainly challenges in adapting a 50's pulp novel and bringing it up to date, but James Foley handled it well. The key is to simply ignore all of the things that have changed, except for the things that are too glaring to be ignored. Luckily the basic themes of Thompsons stories are timeless. Greed, lust, and deception don't change much over the years. I particularly appreciate that they left Collins' character alone, because his simple mindedness is what made the character great. The only real problems with the film come with the low budget. Cheesy music and empty boxing arenas are a dead giveaway, but the low budget also helped. The movie feels stark, barren, empty, just like the characters. I really enjoyed it.

I'll start by saying I'm not a fan of the way Japanese filmmakers handle drama, Kurosawa aside. They're great at action, horror, I've enjoyed Japanese comedies, but their dramas always feel contrived and overly emotional.

This film begins as a bit of a mystery from the perspective of a mother about why her son is acting out. Then it starts over from the perspective of the teacher, who has been accused of causing her son's behavior. Then it finally goes to the son's perspective for a supremely disappointing reveal.

*Soilers below*

The film sets itself up as a suspense thriller, the first two stories end on sort of cliffhangers to be explained in the third segment. Did the child kill himself? Did the teacher? Has the boy's friend been manipulating the situation all along like some sort of sociopath? (I was hoping for that one, I would have enjoyed a "The Good Son" type ending). No, instead it suddenly becomes a gay drama. I mean, it's sort of vague but the context is all there. It almost felt like an after thought too, as there was nothing really to imply that beforehand. And what about the building the kid burned? No consequence for that because love conquers all? How about the Principle and the accusation that she killed her grandchild? A lot was left on the table.

This is the sort of movie we're just drowning in right now. "You need to treat ____ better because they're really misunderstood" heartstring dramas. I mean I supposed I've never seen one from Japan, especially about Homosexuality, but this could have been so much better. It was 3/4 of the way to being a really good thriller and it just turned into another gay drama.

I was worried that this would be a "grumpy guy learns the error of his ways" type movie. I was hoping for something like Krippendorf's Tribe with a pessimistic edge. What we got was somewhere in the middle. The satire was on point, if a little blunt. The humor hit about 60% of the time. The biggest issue I had was that this satire about a very specific topic kept devolving into a family drama, and the entire plot about the author and his false identity began to feel like an afterthought. In the end, nothing was really resolved. Jeffrey Wright is always excellent, and he was well suited to the role. It's just a shame it wasn't a more substantial movie, because when it was on the story about the false identity it was good. It just kept trying to become a different movie for some reason.

The film starts out as a standard movie about a boy in The Bronx who has more potential than his circumstances allow for, and it plays like a standard version of that movie with a couple of unnecessary changes that end up flipping the message in an unintentional way.

The kid is neglected, has no father, has a dead brother, Mom for some reason just lets him do whatever while judging him from a distance. The twist in that scenario is that the brother was not killed by inner city violence, he died in an accident. What does that add to the movie? I guess a little sad backstory, something for the kid to be upset about, but it doesn't really say anything about his circumstances.

The kid gets into graffiti art and is part of a crew, who apparently rob people to fund their graffiti art? I've known a few graffiti artists and they weren't involved in anything like that, don't know if that's how it works elsewhere but that seemed a little much. The leader of this crew is an art-school dropout with a chip on his shoulder, who recognizes the kid's potential and wants to hold him back out of spite for the art world or something. Very underdeveloped portion of the plot.

The kid ends up trying to rob Luis Guzman who instead gives him a meal and some money and becomes something of a mentor to the kid. Suddenly half way through the movie it's revealed he's a terrible alcoholic, which didn't seem to show itself at all up to that point. Him and the kid get into a fight and then Guzman's time on set must have been up because suddenly he was dead. Felt like something was missing there.

Ultimately the movie seems to be one of those "Sure the hood is rough, but this is our home and our culture" movies. Instead the message seemed to be "The hood is a bad place, the people in it are failures trying to hold you back, get out at all costs. Oh yea, and graffiti art is for criminals with underdeveloped talents". I don't think that's the message they intended, but that's sort of what they wound up saying.

I'd give this a 7.5, but I'm rounding up for being short and to the point.

This is an extremely Japanese movie. The look, the feel, the Shintoism, the soundtrack, everybody working together to solve a problem, the efficient production, and even the sci-fi element felt straight out of some kind of anime. It explores the idea of people in a small area being stuck in a 2 minute time loop, and takes a very light hearted approach on the subject. Even the darker moments are done with a bit of a smile. I particularly enjoyed the development of the main characters facial expressions every time she reset.

A joy of an indie film, but be ready to pay attention because it's almost all dialogue.

The first episode begins by battering you with cliches until you want to turn it off, and then is saved by some spectacular battle scenes, and then goes back to the nonsense. Every moment outside of a plane is very dry and feels contrived, none of the actors feel natural. I believe one actor has a thick Australian accent that they tried to cover with a New England accent and I was laughing because it turns out they are pretty close. I'm not particularly a fan of Berry Keoghan or Elvis, and selling the idea that they're some sort of rough and tumble pilots isn't working. There was one part where Pendleton said "Thank You" and I swear to god he did the Elvis voice. I think part of the charm of the original Band of Brothers was you got a bit of the characters training, this just jumped in with both feet and starts with deployment.

Overall it's a shaky start, but I'll stick with it for a bit. The most worrying scene to me was the "gears up" landing, which they tried to blow into this edge of your seat scene with loud suspenseful music. First of all, less is more, but more importantly if that's where the kind of thing they try to make exciting it tells me there isn't going to be much action. I hope I'm wrong.

I know this movie went through production hell and rewrites and reshoots and everything, but woof! The major edits are clear as day, because they're marked by extended voiceovers explaining things that either got edited out or never got shot because it wasn't in the original story or whatever. They almost cut Amber Heard out of the movie entirely, which isn't so bad, if only they could have figured out a way to cut Jason Momoa. Now I don't hate the guy, but he's been wrong for the character since day one. He hasn't exactly improved as an actor in this one so much as he has gotten comfortable being a bad actor. He just had fun with it, he wasn't trying so hard. But this was just a mess in every conceivable way.

And you want to be my Cthulhu salesman.... I suppose it's not Wan's fault I just wanted to make that joke.

The film was very capably directed, very capably acted, the production was beautiful, but it was still a bit off. The problem was either in the screenplay, or it was in the edit. There were either too many parts or not enough, depending on how you look at it.

I went in expecting a very gritty tale about a violent land dispute, but what I got instead was a very thoughtful tale about about a classist society and man trying to rise to nobility in a corrupt system without being corrupted himself....and then suddenly it turns into a gritty tale about a violent land dispute...and then back to a somewhat unnecessary epilogue about the life of this farmer in the aftermath of it all.

I think what it needed to balance it out a bit was a battle scene in the beginning, showing the hells of war the Kahlen had struggled to only to deal with someone like De Schinkel. Then maybe a little bit less of the Ann Barbara story, which I understand is the focus of the book it's based on, or just cut the gypsy kid out to tighten it up.

And I have to praise Simon Bennebjerg's performance, he brought a lot of character to a very unlikeable creep. He and Mikkelson were a great contrast of stoicism and hedonism. There were no poor performances, not to an English speaker's eyes and ears at least.

The season finally draws to a close in a predictably annoying manner. Hawley's strawman story of vengeance against his imaginary political rivals, depicted in a typically shallow manner, ends with prison rape jokes and a full on swastika neck tattoo in case you weren't getting the message he was beating you over the head with. I for one am sick to death with people wedging their politics into these shows, even when I agree, and this one was just nauseating. The worst part to me is that note it started on was "Why is everybody at each others throat in this country?" and then proceeded to patronize and demonize in a relentlessly biased manner. And didn't Fargo used to be about...cops? That's totally out the window.

I can't say there were any poor performances this season, but I wasn't particularly fond of any of the characters. Munch was okay, except for the mystical magical metaphorical bits. It's also a little odd that the hired assassin got the redemption arc. Also...if Dot had just gone to the police in the first place and asked for help a lot of lives would have been saved. She's not a sympathetic character at all.

I think it's time they call it. If Hawley can't stop trying to preach at his audience, and ignores the basic format of the show to do so, there's no point to go on.

I cannot really recommend The Curse to anybody. I can say there were a lot of great moments, a lot of dull moments, and it drew to an utterly insane conclusion that I enjoyed but it didn't exactly feel satisfying. Considering how uncomfortable the show truly gets to be, you want something satisfying to justify that amount of cringe. I can read into that ending sure, but I don't think there was enough to extrapolate any definite meaning from the season as a whole. It felt like a lot of ideas that were never fully fleshed out.

The acting was fantastic. I mean I love Emma Stone and she made me want to hurt Whitney at one point, that's great acting! And Bennie Safdie blew me away, he stole the scene a few times. I had no idea he could act, but there you go. Nathan Fielder can create an awkward moment like none other. I also need to mention the excellent soundtrack, which I have to assume was done by Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never).

I dunno, overall I feel like I should be giving this a higher rating. But when I think back at a lot the season I just ask, "what was the point"? There was so much set up for a payoff from another universe.