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Reviews
Lady Ballers (2023)
Excellent Comedy, Mostly Hilarious Well Made But Some Weak Parts
I strongly recommend this film. Great writing, directing, production, acting, but most importantly, it's *actually* funny, and willing to take risks potentially offend people in service of creating laughter. Such risks are so valuable when every other movie these days is lacking them.
This film really doesn't pull it's punches. Not a lot of studios would produce a movie like this, with obvious "offensive humor". Thank god they did, all the funniest movies are "offensive" and as a result this film seems like the funniest live action comedy in years.
I was impressed by the excellent cast, great work from with leads. Main protagonist and villain both played pretty much perfectly for me. Some side characters (like the wife, her boyfried and the kid) are played very well too.
My only complaint... there's a few unnecessary scenes that drag on or are based on gags I didn't find funny. Additionally there's a couple over cliche jokes that definitely could have been done differently or somehow better.
Great film still, because it's tons of laughs! The few slow, flat, or unfunny parts are worth sitting through... because the good parts are truly comedy gold.
Go watch it!
Misc Other Notes:
I won't be specific to avoid spoilers, but here are some vague comments that although don't spoil, some people find spoiler-adjacent. If that worries you, stop reading now!
There's a twist "joke" introduced to a comical relationship that they seem to thought would add humor but really just takes it away. Really makes that whole running gag less funny.
Some good grains of wisdom in it too, has in its serious parts actual excellent life advice.
Finally... This film has a great climax+ending! The resolutions and way they deal with the issues near the climax and before the end is brilliant. I wasn't sure what they'd do to get it cleverly working out it, but they picked a perfect idea for the resolution leading towards the preend and it worked.
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (2022)
Good Character Growth Without Contrived Conflicts
Really excellent film. Touching, clever, great characters dialog, and especially the acting was superb. A good example of how to do character growth well.
Lucy Hale does a great job in her role, but the performance of the male lead, Kunal Nayyar, really does make the film. I now want to try.to find more movie featuring his acting.
The love story is a lot less contrived than most. It doesn't suffer from the same contrived manufactured drama (problems/conflicts) that so many love stories do. The problems that exist make sense given the characters. It's refreshing since I dislike most romantic comedies based on the way they seem to force problems into the story. As a result, in this film it seems less like the characters are following a script. (In reality of course, there is a script, just a much better and more believable one than the average rom-com script.)
Highly recommended!
Bad Things (2023)
Its momentary glimmers of potential and its brief scenes generating interest, only makes its ultimate emptiness and disappointment more frustrating.
Watching this movie is like watching a car fire across the street. The only reason you keep watching is to see how bad it really is. You might hope it could become "so bad it's good", but no... it's just bad, but shows signs of possibly having had potential and that only makes it worse. I watched all the way to the end, unfortunately.
It feels like another film maker could have made a decent version of this film. There's some promising moments. (e.g. A super interesting "haunted" scene with a bunch of customers who probably aren't real.) However, the moments that are interesting only add to the disappointment of how bad the film ends up being, as a whole.
There are interesting characters here, none of whom are likeable because they are so terrible to each other, but that could have used somehow. Instead It's all just squandered opportunities.
I would have rated it a 1 except that a couple of the performers do a decent job. So, I'll give them points even though they can't save the script. (In the end I just felt embarrassed for them, having to have been in such a bad movie.) I'm sure the people playing the main character's trans/lesbian love interests could do well in other films. I'll actually look them up. I'd bet they are in better movies where their performances aren't wasted by bad writing/direction.
Better directing and writing could have resulted in a good movie, but in the end, this film just sucks. Its momentary glimmers of potential and its brief scenes generating interest, only makes its ultimate emptiness and disappointment more frustrating.
Halo: Inheritance (2022)
Whole Episode Of Worst Character
This "Kwan" character is just incredibly annoying and uninteresting. Please, have her die a horrible death... Maybe as a way to make the villain more evil, he can decapitate her or something. Sure, I'd cheer, but it would help his ruthlessness, and be of way of demonstrating that characters on the show aten't safe.
At this point I'm sorry Master Chief saved her at the begining if the show.
I didn't hate her at first, but in every episode she got more and more annoying. It became less believable that shep have survived this long or that she's succeeded at anything.
Please axe this character.
Babylon 5: Believers (1994)
Great Episode
This is the best episode I've seen. It's not exciting, but it is compelling and heart felt.
It reminds me of what good scifi can be, exploring difficult questions and forcing characters to make hard choices, all with their beliefs being in conflict.
It doesn't preach at the audience, and it doesn't insult them or talk down to them. Whether or not it "teaches a lesson" depends on who you ask. I'm sure that even among viewers who would agree it had a lesson, many viewers would disagree entirely on what that lesson was.
I definitely think there is a valuable takeaway for the viewer here, something about arrogance, perhaps something about shortsightedness.
Some kind of deeper wisdom is subtley on display.
Every member of the audience will have to decide, on their own, what that wisdom actually is.