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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Charades (2023)
Incredibly well written episode
This episode felt like Trek ought to be. The writing was tight, the developments natural, the humor unforced, and the story made sense.
After the episode, I had a huge Spock-like grin on my face. They really nailed this one out of the park, and that is saying a lot considering the nail-biting disappointment of more recent Trek franchises.
I'm impressed with how the storylines in this episode complimented one another and there was no pointless unresolved plot strings.
And we all love seeing our (nearly) emotionless, stoic Spock being subjected to human emotion and the "sacrifice" Chapel makes to reverse something that had happened.
A scene in which 4 of Spock's shipmates imitate his Vulcan mannerisms is legitimately funny, and the chemistry between him and Nurse Chapel is fantastic.
I believed this episode, and I hope more magnificent writing shown here beams down in future installments.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Those Old Scientists (2023)
Creative, but unfunny and forced
I haven't ever watched Lower Decks, and probably won't. Too close to a "Family Guy" slapstick which feels way out of place for live action Star Trek. I did enjoy the attempt at a crossover, and the opening credits adjusted to be more along the lines of a cartoon (and the very last scene in the episode) were quite clever. A very creative approach.
I just couldn't get behind the silly, loquacious, and downright silly antics and blabber of the two characters from the future. They acted like hyperactive 4th graders at a funeral.
The female of the duo I found especially annoying. Her lines and quips were unfunny in the cringiest of ways. I found myself yelling "God, SHUT UP!" at one point after one of her endless inane interjections.
I don't fault the attempt at a crossover, but here it doesn't really work too well. Lower Decks and standard Trek are different categories altogether and feels forced when they are combined.
Mixing them together is like making Sarek the lead singer of AC/DC. Cool idea, but it doesn't make any practical or artistic sense.
Halo (2022)
Wow - not just enjoyable, but thoroughly so.
I've never played the games and knew nothing about Halo except that Master Chief is a super solider and Cortana is that hologram AI girl. The closest I've come to playing Halo is making my Waze GPS use Master Chief's voice. It's fun hearing MC give me directions and warn me about police ("Police ahead. Did you call for backup?").
I watched this just to see what all of the possible fuss may have been about. I was expecting a cheesy, hammy, tawdry series that took itself too seriously and dropped in tired tropes most people are exhausted by.
What I got was the complete opposite. This series is exceptional - that is to say, the exception. A mediocre series would have taken itself too seriously, relied on characters with little motivation or reasons for doing what they do, or tried to dumb down its message to benefit a lazy, distracted audience. Michael Bay, take notes.
Halo avoids all of this and delivers on every level. The lead actor is fantastic as John-117 and his supporting crew are believable tough, no-nonsense and you really like them. But the writers also kept a great balance between characters, their emotions, motivations and differing philosophies.
Then there is Cortana - probably one of my favorite characters. I got to see an AI programmed for a purpose evolving through the film into a sensitive, precocious, and nurturing being. Watch the color of her eyes change and the play of emotion across her face as she witnesses John and another character get intimate. She gets sassy with 117 in one scene which got me a great belly laugh.
The episodes are rife with little touches like this and make for some very satisfying, healthy, and wonderful writing. The quality reminded me of what James Cameron puts out - very clear, and logical progression of stories with strongly defined characters who make decisions because they make sense within their purview of morality.
I rarely give movies or shows a 10 rating, but Halo deserves it, hands down. It hits all of the right notes for a thoroughly entertaining, exciting, believable journey of a warrior bred (literally) for emotionless battle into a heroic and human story. I may even watch the entire thing again.
Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)
Constant try-hard "humor" is painfully unfunny
There are two characters in this movie which sum up how I feel about it. The screeching, unfunny, and highly irritating pair of goats.
Every scene they are in, they make this awful strident shrieking noise which I think would be useful torturing POWs.
Think of this and apply it to the whole movie in terms of humor and that's how you'll feel. Annoyed, rolling your eyes, and annoyed again.
About 10 minutes into the movie, I was wondering if the poor attempts at 2nd-grade level humor were going to be persistent throughout the movie. Indeed, they were.
This movie is the equivalent of a hyperactive, irriating babysitter reading you a bedtime story replete with ridiculous facial expressions in the loudest, most unlikeable voice possible. You might like it if you are 6 years old, but for adults who want to be entertained, it's simply uncomfortable.
The movie is rife with unfunny, forced, ham-fisted jokes which feel completely out of place or were written by mediocre minds who wanted the movie to feel like Airplane or the Naked Gun but failed abysmally. I wanted to stop watching halfway through and see if anyone else on IMDB found the constant barrage of eye-rolling corniness as annoying as I did.
Almost every review I've seen so far points out this exact thing. The movie tries too hard to be witty and cute, but comes off as contrived and forced - so much so that I didn't care for the plot.
The only redeeming feature of the movie was the main villain played by Christian Bale. He nailed down the role, I enjoyed his expressions and motivations. Other than that, the constant "fist bump" humor was tiresome 10 minutes in (can we please get rid of that annoying rock sidekick?) and we got nearly 120 minutes of it.
Not against humor, I'm against it being used out of place or out of balance with the rest of the movie. This movie could have been good if there were more counterbalance - weigh the humorous moments with more ponderous ones.
This is something director Waikiki has yet to grasp. I almost feel like he's whacking me in the head constantly with Stormbreaker with all the unfunny jokes.
Dark (2017)
Good, clever, paradoxical
Good on the writers for interweaving a very interesting story spanning nearly 99 years. It's a very mysterious, engrossing journey into time travel, the meaning of life, and the battle between fate and destiny. Definitely one of the more interesting series I've seen.
Only a couple of minor gripes - there are too many shots of sour faces, and the pauses are overly abundant. When people talk, they tend to stare at each other for 9 seconds before responding. I suppose this is for dramatic effect, but it tends to get tedious.
Would be nice if they mixed up the feeling of the show. It's quite somber, and it seems most of the characters are only able to muster up two basic emotions: 1) fear and 2) consternation.
I feel it could use a larger range of emotion, and less emphasis on long, awkward pauses between characters when they talk. I get that this is a drama, but effective drama can also include humor. Maybe sprinkling in a joke, or even a smile or two here and there would balance out the constant gloominess.
And what is the deal with Hannah's house? Why does everyone knock on her door like maniacs then come marching in as if they own the place? That was tried once in Germany, didn't go over well, if you know what I mean.
In any case, it's a good series. Just don't expect a lot of joy, and the scenes can get a bit drawn out with all of the pauses. Every episodes would probably be cut down to 20 minutes each if they got rid of the conversational lingering.
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Puts the "Amazing" in "The Amazing Spiderman"
Absolutely wonderful movie. I didn't expect it to be this enjoyable. The story is incredible clever, hilarious, poignant, and very emotional without becoming sappy. It hits all the right notes in the best way. They managed to weave together our favorite heroes and villains in one beautifully layered movie without becoming scattered or obtuse.
I'm still fresh off of viewing it for the first time and I'm certain to watch it again. It is probably one of the most emotionally-charged Spiderman movies to date, and the interactions of previous incarnations of the webslinger (as more than mere cameos) was incredibly well done.
I'm fairly jaded when it comes to movies these days but this one they really hit out of the park. Definitely a 10/10.
The Marksman (2021)
Standard fare for a Liam Neeson movie with interesting character quirks
Not bad, but not memorable. Interesting thing about the bad guy is how they portray him feeling victimized, underprivileged, and wanting more. Didn't expect that. It's subtle, and Raba (the actor) delivers the sentiment well. It was a nice touch to the usual "I am the irredeemable bad guy so you'll be pleased when I die." There is just a tiny bit of humanity that seems to glimmer through his twisted self.
Then again, he kills Liam's dog, so he pretty much deserved what he got.
Invasion (2021)
Plodding, too much exposition... where are the aliens?
Updating my review since I watched another episode. I really, really, REALLY hope the aliens succeed in whatever they are trying to do, which apparently is to just kill everybody. And I really, really, REALLY want them to kill the main female character.
She has got to be the most annoying, shallow, idiotic character I've seen onscreen in a while. The decisions she makes are idiotic and she reacts emotionally to every single thing with the same emotions - shock and fear. When she isn't screaming or making rash decisions which would get any sane person killed, she is running somewhere in a panic. I'm rooting for the aliens to take her down, but it likely won't happen.
Does anyone proofread the episodes? There are so many things wrong with how things play out. For instance, a character enters a house which is apparently empty. What does a normal person do? Of course, they start screaming and yelling at the top of their lungs in a panic. Nobody responds, so she continues to scream and yell in terror. Who knows why. Maybe she has separation anxiety.
Anyhoo, finally, a hand reaches through the ceiling and voila - the other survivors are in the attic!
But for some reason, we are now told we have to be extra, super quiet because the aliens will find us if we don't! This is 30 seconds after she just got done shrieking all throughout the house for almost a full minute.
At least we got to see more aliens in this episode, but not much. We never get a truly clear shot of one. They look like a very badly barbecued piece of ham with impaled with half a dozen skewers. Looks like a bunch of tubular legs glued to a football. Also, it has a big mouth, because big mouths are scary.
I'm going to watch more because it's become a series I love to hate.
Previous review:
The first couple of episodes were OK, but in a series about an alien invasion, you would expect aliens to be, well, invading.
Instead, what we see are endless examples of unusual events for the first 3 episodes.
Yes, I understand something weird is happening planet-wide. It shouldn't take 3 episodes to hammer this point home, but Invasion does exactly this.
It takes almost 4 episodes to get a glimpse of what (might?) be an alien or an alien weapon of some kind. 6 episodes in and we still don't get to see an invasion - which is the title of the show, if you haven't noticed.
I'm not sure why Hollywood feels the need to pad series with so much melodrama and silly sub-stories. Perhaps because then it would only be 1 episode long?
Other shows employed this tedious same approach of too much exposition and an extremely slow build. Colony is guilty of this. Was an OK series, but come on... show us the INVASION, already!
Kolskaya sverhglubokaya (2020)
Could have been a lot better with editing
Production was good, sets pretty grim and realistic, soundtrack was appropriate, but the movie plods along from one overlong scene to the next. Characters just stand around or look at each other without saying anything for 10-15 seconds. Trim out these unnecessarily long silences between characters and you'll have cut out 30 minutes from the movie.
There were also a few unexplained occurrences and actions the characters took which defied all logic, but I suppose you need to do that when you want to advance the plot.
If the movie were tightened up in the editing department, I would have given this 7 stars or so. It wasn't horrible, but could use some polish.
Infinite (2021)
Tried too hard to be deep and edgy
Felt like I was watching a watered-down version of the Matrix meets -insert any Michael Bay movie here-. It was trying to be deep but doesn't hit the mark. Acting was overdone and hammy. I get what they were trying to do here, but it simply falls flat into "oh look, another forgettable sci-fi action movie".
Oxygène (2021)
Not bad once you get past the constant screaming and crying in the first 20 minutes
Was about to turn this off - the first twenty minutes were unbearably annoying. All the main character did was scream, cry and pound the ceiling of the container she was in.
But once past that, it's not a bad movie. The main character did a good job, effects were good, story interesting enough, if not done already in other movies.
Some of the decisions she made were maddening and stupid and she sure wasted a lot of time on emotionally-based stuff instead of things which would actually solve her problems, but I guess it would be a boring movie if that is all she did.
Not too bad, but it's also a one-off movie you probably won't watch again.
Army of the Dead (2021)
Watch this if you want to be even more braindead than the zombies
Bad:
- The daughter: one of the most vapid, annoying, unlikeable characters in the movie, even more so than one of the characters who is SUPPOSED to be unlikeable. I wanted to slap her a few times - just a pessimistic, ungrateful runt who plays to the overtired, one-note "I hate my dad who is trying to patch things up with me" trope. Her only purpose in the movie is to be as annoying as possible.
As a side note - Hollywood: can we PLEASE abandon the "I'm coming with you" trope? How many times must this awful device be hammered into audiences? It's been done to death for decades now, and it is shallow, lazy, everyone expects it and just tells us you can't be bothered with writing better scripts.
Anyway, I couldn't find a single engaging thing about her and was hoping she would be one of the first to die. That would have been an interesting departure from the Hollywood schlock.
- Acting: yeah, I get this is a zombie flick, but is it possible to hire actors who don't overdeliver their lines? The the dialogue can be partly to blame for this, which leads us to...
- The dialogue: even when you take away the vomit-inducing conversations between the father and daughter, most of the lines are terribly written cringe fests. When there are attempts at humor, it's try-hard and equally cringey.
- Zombies: I might get a lot of flack for this, but the whole "look I'm a zombie, I'm going to writhe around and screech for 20 minutes straight in a closeup which shows my scary, scary eyes!" got old 15 years ago. I found the sub-plot of the "kingdom" to be very silly. I suppose this is where the title of the movie comes from.
Good:
I'm struggling here... Bautista was OK, much toned down from what we've seen in his Guardians role. Some of the action scenes were cool, but this isn't saying much.
I struggled to watch the whole way through and stopped 20 minutes short to write this review. Don't think I'll watch the rest. It is just too vapid and mediocre a movie for me to wonder how it all plays out.
I'm surprised this came from Zack Snyder's direction, the same guy who created Watchmen which I deem as close to a masterpiece. AOTD is a far, far cry from that level of direction and storytelling. Watch this only if you want to be as braindead as the zombies.
Mortal Kombat (2021)
Not bad if you don't take it too seriously
It's a movie based upon a video game from nearly 30 years ago, important to remember that while watching. I liked the characters, pacing, special effects - they even made the storyline work pretty well. All characters embodied their roles, and we get some humorous and nostalgic throwbacks, e.g. Famous soundbites from the video games.
At the same time, I felt like I was watching a somewhat updated movie from the 1990s, but not sure why. This can work for or against your opinion of the movie. But all in all, it was enjoyable, not too cheesy and it even pokes fun at itself. The line where Cole questions the spelling of "Mortal Kombat" is pretty funny in and of itself. I wouldn't mind watching the sequel if they make one.
So sit back, turn off the inner critic and enjoy this one. It's fun!
Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)
Fun, but the greatest weakness were the kids
I thought this movie had the most interesting developments with the Hollow Earth Theory and exploring it. We also get to see a much more emotive Kong in this one. The battle scenes are what you'd expect, and I think a bit more intense (more buildings getting knocked over, etc). Very well done in that regard.
But the weakest part of the movie was the absurd sub-plot of the dynamic trio kid caricatures. They find themselves in top secret facilities with ease and are stupidly lucky enough guess passcodes and passwords and dodge death at the last second... you've seen it before. They do the exact right thing at the exact right time to get to the next contrived plot point. Very predictable and silly. But at least they prevented disaster, if you don't count leveling an entire city in a fight between three titans, but nevermind that.
If the human characters were as interesting as the titans in this movie, I'd give it a couple more stars. It's a step up from the ultra-corny "family first" 2nd part of the trilogy and is a far cry from the first one which was amazing, but it's still decent and watchable if you can get past the formulaic and ridiculous sub-plots and forced acting.
Wrong Turn (2021)
Was going to quit 30 minutes in, but then something interesting happened...
Short review: the first 30-45 minutes are annoying and mediocre, but keep watching - it gets better.
Longer review:
Was struggling to watch past the first half hour of this movie, what with it being saturated with trope after diversity trope and annoying, unlikeable characters who whined and shouted all of the time. Not another one of these...
But then a funny thing happened. Around the 45 minute mark, the movie actually got better. It became more interesting in terms of pacing, story direction and even acting. I didn't really know what to expect at that point.
But I was not expecting my displeasure with the first 30 minutes to be abated - I was convinced it was going to be yet another mediocre, self-congratulatory millennial fest of tawdry predictability, but I was pleasantly surprised by the switch in quality and overall delivery of this film about halfway through. Very unusual to have that happen.
The acting also seemed to get better. I don't know if this was due to the lack of other screeching banshee characters being killed off or if there was a new director halfway through, but the protagonist had me believing her role much more toward the end of the film than at the beginning. She seemed to have found the character and became much more comfortable with it.
Originally, I was going to rank this one as 2 stars simply because of the nauseating "diversity" checklist Hollywood likes vomiting into movies these days and the 2-dimensional meat target characters we are supposed to like, but if you can stick it through beyond the first 30-45 minutes or so, you may be pleasantly surprised by what turned out to be a well-done movie.
There are also a couple of small twists towards the end - not badly done!
The Equalizer (2014)
Enjoyable, even if the main character is a little too "immortal".
It's satisfying seeing bad guys get what they deserve, and the Equalizer delivers on this premise very well. If you like seeing nasty, arrogant criminals getting their comeuppance, this movie (and the sequel) is for you.
The only pitfall is a minor one. The protagonist played by Washington is a wee bit TOO untouchable. He's never really in any imminent, life-threatening danger that isn't easily handled by his "Manchurian Candidate" situational awareness combat mode. He's always the one dealing the cards and in 100% control of every situation.
In other words, he walks into a situation and always comes out unscathed. This smacked me as a bit too watertight.
One of the appeals of a hero/vigilante story is their story arc - rise, fall and rise again. It seems to me the main character has no real fall. It's more like he's reached the top and there is no bottom. He's basically a demi-god of sorts.
Would rate the story one more star, possibly even 10 if they'd managed to make the main character less than immortal. There is a thrill seeing them overcome seemingly insurmountable odds, but it seems there were no odds for the Equalizer to surmount - he had it all figured out before the conflicts even started which is the movie's only weakness.
Otherwise, outstanding acting by everyone involved, pacing was great, and overall a good story.
Hard Kill (2020)
We are low on guns and ammo, so let's leave the enemy guns and ammo behind.
This movie's logic:
1) Soldiers say they are outgunned, low on supplies and can't win the fight without more ammo and guns
2) Same soldiers manage to beat 3 enemy soldiers with guns and other supplies
3) Soldiers LEAVE THE GUNS BEHIND... as in, they don't requisition them for their own use.
Really? Wasn't that awful trope abandoned somewhere in the 90s??
Combine this maddening kind of thing with the wooden, trite "stare down" "acting" that is so overdone in Hollywood and you have an eye-rolling fest barreling at you faster than Bruce Willis can say "paycheck, please".
The last straw was when the main bad guy emerged in clear view where these "soldiers" had a clear shot at him but didn't take it. Couldn't stand watching such implausibility anymore and quit 30 minutes in.
I really hope Bruce Willis does another Die Hard or something - with the exception of Glass, the movies he stars in have been crap for a while now.
Terrible!
Glass (2019)
Well done, but feels unresolved and abrupt
Well-paced, great story, lovely to see our main villains and protagonists return. Many nods to the original Unbreakable and a nice segue from Split.
Towards the end of the film, things became a bit too rushed and (spoiler), the death of the 3 main characters felt unceremonious and unresolved. It didn't feel complete or even necessary to take it that route. I liked the movie, but I looked at the scrub timer to see if there were going to be any outros or followups to the main characters' demises. None to be found. So I was left scratching my head.
I really enjoyed the movie, I just didn't like how it concluded. Their deaths felt out of place, premature and a little bit forced.
Other than that, it was a clever, well-written and directed conclusion to a well-known trilogy. And boy, James McAvoy has some acting chops!
Monsters of Man (2020)
Was hoping the robot would kill everyone within the first 10 minutes
Bottom line:
Not terrible, not wonderful.
Good:
- Effects (not saying much as most effects these days are believable)
- Best actor in the film was the little Cambodian kid. He had a couple of scenes which genuinely pulled at my heartstrings.
Bad:
- Whiny, strident, screeching, 2-dimensional characters played by actors who think that hyperventilating is the best way to convey fear, excitement, and nearly every other emotion.
- I didn't care if anyone of them died. In fact, I was rooting for the robot to clean house and just blow them away.
- Some of the "acting" felt really forced and try-hard, like a 9-year-old was trying to impress their parents with a dramatic reenactment of what they saw an amateur do on TV.
I've noticed this trend in recent movies - this forced kind of acting, even in huge budget movies like the most recent Star Wars installments. Take note of how many times the actors hyperventilate when they are afraid, excited or just trying to talk to someone. Forced and one-note.
If you want examples of fear expressed wonderfully, watch Ripley in Aliens when she first discovers the queen, or the scene when Tom Cruise pulls off his mask in the middle of a gigantic room full of menacing masked onlookers in Eyes Wide Shut. These are great examples of believable fear emoted without having a damned asthma attack.
I feel like writers and actors of today don't understand nuance or subtlety. It's all over-the-top popcorn variety schlock. Just fill the screen with screaming meat targets and that should be enough to make the audience to feel sorry for them when they die.
They think the way to invoke tension is by directing actors to shriek and shout at everything when things get a little tense. They don't know how to balance it out with some humor or downtime.
Millennial writers and actors could learn a lot from old school classics to learn how to better their craft and make characters relatable and even likeable.
Movie wasn't terrible, but this trend of mediocre acting doesn't help the its rating.
Tenet (2020)
Felt like I sat down to a movie halfway through... for the entire movie.
I read some of the other reviews. I was fully expecting most of them to be gushing "Nolanites" brownnosing the director. Was surprised to see even the fanboys were disappointed with this mess.
Like the other reviews have said, this movie is much too dense and difficult to follow. It is so layered as to be pretentious. I felt like I sat down to watch it halfway through - for the entire movie.
One would argue it's so deep as to need multiple viewings. For me, it's so deep as to be suffocating. Within the first ten minutes, I was asking myself what the heck was going on and never really got an answer to my questions. I understood they needed to stop the Russian meanie and he was using time-based elements to do bad things, but most of the events surrounding it I did not comprehend.
The characters weren't interesting at all - vapid, 2-dimensional, taking themselves too seriously. I really didn't care what happened to any of them except for the Russian dude - naturally I wanted him to get his comeuppance for being such a despicable human being.
But Nolan could do with a little bit more light-heartedness in his films, as in, humor. Let us breathe for a few minutes - it balances the film out. Take a break from the "thought-provoking" stuff and balance it out with a quip or joke now and then. Or at least give the audience some time to think about the complex ideas set forth. Quit firehosing the audience with philosophical/expositionary layer cake, please.
There is thought-provoking and then there is thought-is-choking. Tenet falls squarely into the latter category.
Won't be watching it multiple times to figure out what happened. It was too deep and I felt like I was drowning.
Ay Lav Yu (2010)
Pretty cute, but makes Americans looks like complete idiots
I'm learning Turkish so decided to watch this to help in that regard. It's tough learning a new language, but this is one way to do it.
Obviously, I understood the English dialogue and characters, and even understood the American girl when she spoke Turkish. It seems like a funny movie - cute, doesn't take itself seriously.
Just note that the Americans in the movie are portrayed as utter morons from the first shot to the last. In the very first scene with our bumbling idiots, the father (Steve Guttenberg) starts complaining his "navigator" (GPS) isn't working, his compass is out of focus (surely every American carries one of these when they travel abroad) he forgot his cellphone charger and that they are travelling with "a very weird priest" in a hearse in a god-forsaken country.
Sounds like every American I know. Professional complainers about 1st world problems while traveling abroad. That's sarcasm, in case you weren't certain.
First line out of the American woman's mouth - "Where can I get a diet Coke?"
Not one of the American circus save for the daughter speaks any Turkish, nor has bothered to learn even basic phrases. Merhaba, selam, iyi geceler - could go a long way with your Turkish friends should you visit but have no intent in learning their language.
I understand the need for exaggeration, but painting the foreigners as this willfully oblivious to their surroundings and the customs of Turkey is very much on the nose and silly. It almost feels like they are surprised to be in Turkey in the first place. And it doesn't stop there.
At one point, we are shown the unfortunate events of September 11th on a TV while they are visiting their new Turkish family. Guttenberg's character sees Osama bin Laden on the television, looks at the dede (grandfather) of his host family, looks back to bin Laden, back to dede... GASP, they look alike! WE ARE BEING KIDNAPPED!
Who wouldn't come to this conclusion?
This is like Hollywood or some mainstream news sources treating typecasting all Muslims as terrorists, but I digress.
In any case, I didn't take offense to this portrayal, I found it funny at points. it's a cute movie so far and I don't want to judge it solely upon how Americans are portrayed. It's a comedy, anyhow and probably has a lot of hidden gems.
Plus, I didn't understand much of the Turkish. I'll re-watch it in a year or two after I've acquired more of the language then adjust my star review accordingly.
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
Smoldering fun
Thought I would give this movie a chance, glad I did. I did not expect to enjoy it so much. I went into it thinking it would be some cheesy movie for 14 year olds (Power Rangers, anyone?), but found myself grinning the whole way through. The jokes are genuinely funny and really well-placed (smoldering, anyone?), not overdone or cringey, and delivered perfectly by all of the actors. Great chemistry, comedy writing, story and delivery.
It's rare I'm pleasantly surprised by a movie. They really hit this one out of the park and the positive reviews definitely do it justice. Very enjoyable, still grinning as I write this!
The Twilight Zone (2019)
Well, I tried.
Gave this series 8 episodes before I threw in the towel. Just about every episode is a preachy, SJW-laden allegory caked with shallow social commentary and metaphors which are about as subtle as a Mack truck ramming into a mile-high stack of dynamite.
It feels like an unwanted moral cheerleader wrote the episodes. They won't stop espousing the virtues of "woke" culture for nearly 40 minutes at a time. I just want to watch thoughtful science fiction blanketed in mystery and thoughtfulness, not a Hollywood "orange man bad/man bad/political" expose. Examples:
Episode - The Wunderkind: a ludicrous, vapid, nonsensical attempt at providing a situation wherein a child runs the USA. Seeing as this series was created by someone who despises Trump, it's clear this episode is all about him. The episode is sloppily written and too incredulous for even passing consideration.
Episode - Replay: good episode until the very last 3 minutes. Then it turns into a vomitfest of corny, hamfisted writing. My eyes rolled so many times I was dizzy for half an hour afterwards. Think of the cheesiest ending you can to an already overtired moral dilemma, then add some extra, moldy Parmesan to the mix. The entire episode was ruined by a self-congratulatory social message nobody wanted or needed. The only redeeming factor here was the very last shot in the episode, but this, too, was still weak and steeped in the usual kind of theme Hollywood is addicted to.
Episode - Point of Origin: Once again, no subtlety. This episode metaphorically explores the immigration issue in such a way that makes Will Ferrell look subtle. Immigration and immigrants good, opposition or dissent bad! Good, good - bad, bad. Black, white. Oops, is that racist? Why don't they make a Twilight Zone episode out of it?
All in all, this is a poor series with weak writing and overly fluorescent social justice pandering. The acting is fair, cinematography good, production excellent, but fails on an overall level of vision. It's an incredibly shallow series, not at all befitting of the original.
Advice to the writers: please stick to mystery and sci-fi and don't ram "woke" nonsense down my throat at every opportunity. I'm interested in thought-provoking ideas, not watered down cultish sophistry set forth by Hollywood elites who feel they have the moral high ground on every social issue.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)
Stupid, stupid, stupid
This movie has characters whose stupidity rivals the sheer size of the protagonist monsters. They make decisions which make no sense and find themselves in situations rational people wouldn't find themselves in, supposedly for the sake of the plot.
For instance, one example of many - the "bad guys" find themselves in Antarctica at one of the Monarch facilities. Bad guys storm the place, kill everybody, and the leader and his hostages walk in effortlessly to take command of it.
Nevermind they would probably need access keys, things would be locked down, and they would actually need to search the place to find what they need to use it effectively. It would also be much more heavily guarded since it was an outpost with a huge secret.
But nope, not here. They immediately know how to use everything and where everything is located. They walk in like they just re-signed an apartment lease. I'm not asking for uber-realism, but this is just lazy, sloppy writing.
Another plot device, one of the main characters finds themselves at Fenway Park. The whole city is under martial law, and hundreds of people are being sheeped away by armed soldiers in plain view.
But not the main character. Somehow, she just happens to find the area she needs to do something important. Of course, it is unlocked, unguarded, and of course, she knows how to use it right away.
Another scene - there was an electronic device that the characters needed to reprogram (for whatever reason, I wasn't interested anymore at this point), and of course, they did it right smack in the middle of a battlefield between two giants in a city. And of course, they just happened to have the tools necessary to fix it. And of course, they were working on a circuit board with parts exposed IN THE RAIN (there is a closeup shot of all of the parts getting soaked), but it works fine anyway. I never knew circuit boards could remain functional after being doused in water.
At this point, I was actually yelling at the screen. Come on. If you want to make a movie good, don't insult the audience with unbelievable situations or a lack of basic common sense. And there were many other examples of gaps and incredulous actions taken by the characters. Can't the writers do better than this?
The first movie was brilliant, believable, clean. I remember seeing the trailer and getting chills. That feeling persisted throughout the movie.
This movie, not so much. The monsters are incredible and look amazing, especially Mothra when she comes into full bloom. But that's about it.
The other characters were vapid, annoying, uninteresting "we're a family after all!" plot device filler used to expand an hour and a half movie into a 2+ hour feature of Michael Bay mediocrity and Independence Day schlock.