Reviews

... to the point of stupidity. Really.

No, it is not a "ripoff of kung fu panda." China and Japan are actually different places with different cultures.

This was also not someone "ripping off" Mel Brooks. He directed it! He's in it! And the role he plays is the same one he plays in Blazing Saddles.

Because it IS Blazing Saddles. The writers of the original are even credited. Given how many American Westerns were redone Samurai movies, it's a pretty established pattern.

It's definitely got some tongue-in-cheek references. It has some jokes that (as Mel Brooks movies do) push the line. But it tells a good story and has solid voice acting, so I'm not sure where some of the complaints are coming from.

An alien abduction shouldn't feel as random and off-topic as this episode does.

Seriously.

Somehow they managed to cram an off-topic encounter and use it as a heavy-handed plot device. Probably the worst cliché writing and the weakest moments in the series.

This was originally planned as Amazon's attempt to cash in on the popularity of Game of Thrones. Covid complicated this, and I wonder if some of the issues with the first season can be traced there.

What it is not...

It's not a scene-for-scene visual depiction if the books.

It is not more 90s fantasy written by white guys loaded with renaissance faire cliches.

It is not a high budget movie, or a 20+ episode season. Meaning an 800-page book has to cover 80 pages per hour.

What it is...

An honest attempt to tell a story about real people in a believable world (that *gasp* includes a continent larger than Europe with people with different skin tones)... what a lot of the fragile angry reviewers refer to as "woke casting" and the rest of us see their subtext.

An interesting highlight for some young unknown actors

A way to recreate the books visually, laying the framework for later and compensating for the surprisingly large amount to of material happening inside characters' heads

Some beautiful backgrounds. A great series of visuals.

And so on.

I'm not convinced it is everything it should be, and I'm disappointed by certain details being left out (some for budget, some for story, again... 800 pages in 10 hours...), but taken as it's own it's enjoyable and interesting. I'm hoping it gets it's feet underneath it for season 2, and it grows into what it should be. We'll see.

I'm tempted to give this a 10 to partially counteract all the trolls brigading here to drop the rating because they think anything not staunch and ignorant is "woke" and therefore terrible.

It's a fun movie. It's not my favorite interpretation, but it's better than the live-action one Disney came out with a couple years ago. But it is funny, well-acted, and interesting.

There were moments that felt like "The Great," others that reminded me of the Disney "Zombies" movies, and still others that felt like classic Disney musical shows. It definitely has an audience. Perhaps this was its primary problem - it didn't quite establish its own voice when compared to the others it resembles.

Enjoyable. Good. Not amazing. But it deserves at least a 6/10.

The 80s were the era of over-the-top insanity, of musclebound action heroes, of single token shallow female characters showing more skin than young boys could process. All because shows were explicitly made to sell toys, and the plots were unbelievably vapid.

TV has moved on. Plot matters. Monster-of-the-week plots that had no timeline so that reruns and syndication could play any episode at any time haven't been the focus for over two decades. Tokenism is passed in favor of developing characters. Anyone who wanted such a show as the original today should have known that times are different and it would never work. Tropes change. Audiences want different products than 40 years ago.

This is (just as it's predecessor was) a product of its time. Fanboys from the past who had... awkward feelings... for Teela are not going to get the same as adults (and reading the other reviews, they are hilariously FURIOUS about it!), but instead we get a look at a more balanced product. We have action, cults, some light body horror, a theme of the glory days gone past, dark secrets, the fates of the flunkies when the master disappears, the precipice of a world on the verge of going post-apocalyptic, and the effects of loss and discovery on those left behind. All themes that are a part of the world today.

The major criticism that I can understand (though it has questionable roots) is that the plot is not about He-Man. It is really about Teela. But it's not called He-Man -- he is explicitly missing from the title. The super-strong invulnerable hero who always wins is also a thing of the past - because "the unassailable is the uninteresting." Removing the old hero from the mix means a very real sense of mortality and danger for the characters who remain.

Sure, the protagonist is a woman, and one that led fans are used to sexualizing, who now sports an undercut and an adventurer's functional outfit. Thst doesn't really affect the plot. Despite how multiple entire episodes of the original show went by without a single woman doing much at all, there's more than one this follows in the footsteps of many resurrections of 80s IPs and being all about "passing the torch" to the next generation. Adam and Teela were the only young characters to focus on, and Adam's been done. Without treading old ground and getting fan-hate for not doing anything new, they picked a path and made something that can stand on its own.

The animation, like many other projects, is a little too "trying weakly not to look like anime" for my tastes, but it is detailed and interesting. The voice acting is top notch and contains numerous in-jokes from the last few decades. The plot is sturdy and suitably linked to flashbacks that do the old series justice.

Overall, it's a solid 7 that I feel I can show my kids I gave it a higher score to counterbalance the low marks of those trying to politicize a children's cartoon with their culture-war agenda.

Ever feel like the only reason you're watching the sequel to be a movie you liked is because you know there's a third in the series? Finally, a movie exists that personifies that very feeling, by seemingly not caring about being a movie of its own and instead spending most of an hour (including a 20-minute slog of needless exposition at the end) just trying to pave the way for a third installment.

There were some great moments, but the purpose of this movie was not to tell its own story, but to heavy-handed my tack on a bigger picture to the original.

Perspective is important. As someone who has read comics before, but has not read The Runaways, my expectations were less grounded in wish fulfillment and more in seeing a complete and watchable show. On that note, it delivers.

Is it the best I've seen? No. By their own admission, the director/producers are going for "Marvel meets the OC" or something similar. Not my #1 pick for a mashup, but i can see where they are going with it.

The acting is solid, though, and the cast well put together and making sense. The host of recognizable smaller-part adults that have appeared sporadically in smaller roles -- such as Brittany Ishibashi, Kevin Weisman, and Bridget Brannagh -- add an interesting depth to the series. Lyrica Okano does a great job with a young girl who lost her sister and watched her family fall apart, and Rhenzy Feliz is believable in the awkward role he portrays. The first two episodes are rife with stereotypes and cliches, but it builds off of them almost immediately.

By episode 4, it really starts to define itself and its characters. It is, like the rest of the MCU, a reinterpretation of an old product instead of simply regurgitating the same old same old from the comics -- so hardcore fans are going to be confused and disappointed while everyone else will get a complete storytelling.

All in all, I'm enjoying it.

In a new house, the young son of a family discovers a machine in his closet that allows him to speak to the dead. It was left there after a prior murder, when a man used it to talk to parts of his family that were angry at his sordid past. Together, and with the help of a troubled young girl with her own secret ties to the house, they explore the mysteries and history of this device and use it to try to overcome the shadows of the supernatural world that threaten their lives.

At least, that's what it should have been.

Instead, we have an obvious ghost, no real strong scares, and the odd existence of this ghost-machine that is just assumed and never questioned, make this story disjointed and pieced-together at best.

It would be interesting to see what the movie could have been without the scatterbrained attempt to stitch it together. But, sadly, it would probably have been no better, offering nothing new to the table past the focus on the teen relationship magnifying the supernatural concepts. That's not really new, but it's the best the movie has to offer.

Besides that box. The box should get its own spin-off movie.

Skins fell victim to the same problem Coupling fell to, and The Office managed to dodge... the balance of what to keep and what to change when adapting for a new audience. In this case, the production crew decided to do what many of the adults in the original series do – treating the target audience to immature gags and shallowness instead of using the adult themes that underlie their problems, for fear that they couldn't handle it.

To start... the first episode was a slightly tamer version of the British version, point-for-point. It did a good job of making enough adaptations to set the tone for future deviations, and took some turns where unexpected in order to cater to a different audience. Then, it lost its own rhythm in the media blitz it tried to create for itself – concerning itself more with getting in the craw of the parental groups than providing reason and background for all the shocking events. When viewers realized that it wasn't actually keeping pace with the peers of its characters, and when intricate plots failed to come together with the same depth as the original, it got canceled – and most people didn't seem to care, since few of the characters were likable and worth emotionally investing in. whereas I have seen adults in their 20s and 30s moved by the expressions and voices in a simple one-sided phone call between Sid and Cass (Stanley and Cadie's alter egos), there's little to react to when MTV decided to dumb down the content.

James Newman (Tony) will be good in different roles, but he certainly cannot play the confident manipulator again in any believable way. Britne Oldford (Cadie) will also do well with a director and script that doesn't look like a fifteen-year-old wrote undiagnosed angsty-crazy (and crazy for the sake of being crazy, absolutely no match for the heartbreaking fragility of Hannah Murray's equivalent). The true shining moments come from Jesse Carere (Chris), a superb actor as well as a great hard-edged parallel to the lost stoner of the original. Sure, there are some great moments – the finale was surprisingly complete, showing character development that should have happened three or four episodes earlier (in ten episodes, you can't wait that long to try to make your audience care).

In the end, while the British version treated its audience like adults and addressed mature topics with complexity, believability, and hedonistic abandon, the American version's attention span and lack of depth makes it obvious that too many people had their hand in rewriting the script. Chalk another failure up to MTV going for scandal rather than real programming.

Don't watch this movie if you love special-effects driven gory horror movies. it is far more subtle than that.

Six friends, who seem to remember little about their childhoods except that they were all on a baseball team together (the "Crazy Eights" of the title) reunite for the funeral of one of their members. they discover the secrets that they have been blocking out, and why all of them have been having nightmares, and how these nightmares and their pasts all tie together. interesting premise, but so much more is given here.

the directing was perfect -- lighting, music, pacing, lack of showy special effects, it all served to build an excellent new take on the "haunted house" or "amnesia" style of plots. but the very pacing that makes it scary is a turnoff for people expecting a fast-paced Hollywood horrorfest. it's much more like a foreign horror movie, where technique matters over showiness. if you thought that "A Tale of Two Sisters" was scarier than its remake "The Uninvited," this is the movie for you.