Reviews

A bunch of young people go into a forest/river area, to film an adventure video with a vegan sausage somehow shoehorned into it. Everybody communicates as if it was their first time among other people. There's some mysterious flower blooming in the forest, that seemingly makes these people even weirder, a nut of a "sheriff" who tells you, that you can't urinate in "his" forest..so apparently the answer to a lifelong question "does the bear $h1t in the woods" - is a "No!", at least in this particular location. Who knew. There's another bunch of strange individuals, conducting some sort of iffy business and some other, cabbage fermenting gentleman and his wife. Two people wear a nose clip of some sort, but nobody else...there's not one normal person in the whole film. The film is a salad of random ideas - inserted - again, at random - minor characters, their stories and dialogues, shots, that add absolutely nothing.

There seems to be this trend, of making movies, especially "horror" movies, without any real conclusion, or even if it has some sort of ending, they don't show you, how it got there.

It's not as cute, as they think it is. Quite the opposite.

Imagine watching Star Wars where there would be no spaceships, no lightsabers etc shown. They would tell you - "yeah, so we travel between galaxies and stuff and we fight, but we won't show you how. Just imagine it, or whatever - and do our work for us - in your mind, it's cheaper that way and we don't have any ideas anyway."

Yeah, it wouldn't work very well, would it?

Almost everything would be half passable, meh acting, but it's low budget, so you expect that, even the non-ending would hurt way less, if it wasn't for the unbearable dialogues!

The fact, that non English speakers (maybe the actual actors themselves) dubbed the dialogues into "English", is totally fine, it kind of adds to the character. However, should you really write dialogues in a foreign language just using Google translate? Without having ANY native speaker to at least read through the script, before doing the voice-over.. Because that's exactly how the dialogues sounded. Maybe in Latvian, or whatever the original language was, it all sounded right, but in English it just didn't.

Don't get me wrong - all the words used in the film do exist, I've heard them all before, but never in this order. You know what they're trying to say, probably most of the time, but it's clear, that they've picked the wrong words and made up their own expressions.

I will put it this way - if you watched this movie on mute and without any subtitles, just for the visual, you'd probably get way more out of it. You'd try to imagine, why people act the way they do, you'd try to figure out what they're talking about - and you'd do a much better job, than the filmmakers did.

It looks like at this point, they're just begging us to stop watching this show. The main characters are either dead, or not main anymore, Julianna is literally barely there, John Smith is, but his main duty is dealing with his teenage daughter (who apparently is played by the same actress as always, but I've never noticed what she looked like, because it just doesn't matter). There's a bunch of new characters, now there's apparently no Resistance in the Pacific West, now it's just black communists, who are suddenly on their own. Wyatt is being pushed, but at least he's somewhat established from before..Childen doesn't recognise him, they honestly have never met in Denver? And who cares about Kido's son, if we didn't need him for the first 3 seasons, why do we need him now, same goes for all the Japanese higher ups. Tagomi being killed off screen is pathetic, he obviously didn't want to be in this anymore, which is a shame (but understandable..), he was such a likable character. There have been some very questionable subplots and developments before, weird characters, even the last season wasn't all that great, but seeing these two episodes, I really don't think I am going to finish this series.

...and that's where my praise unfortunately ends.

I thought my expectations could not have been any lower, but I was wrong. I honestly went to see this movie saying to myself, "it's probably going to be bad and cringey, as the kids say..but what the hell, it's a Poirot".

It's called A haunting in Venice, obviously, it's going to take place in Venice, Italy, they'll find a reason why Poirot would be there - he travels a lot, it will make sense. It didn't.

He apparently wanted some peace and quiet, so he retired..to Venice.

Not English countryside, not any other countryside, Venice. (He reaaally doesn't want to be bothered - in this crowded city...he literally hired a bodyguard, to keep people away from him - in this crowded city..This bodyguard even beats up random people, that try to approach Poirot for help and only the pastry baker is allowed near him, twice a day.) Could have been worse, I guess, they could have made him retire in the walled city of Kowloon.

This is one of the many totally nonsensical elements in this film.

1947, Italy - how many Italian characters are actually in the film? The bodyguard/ex policeman, the pastry baker, the guy who wants to see Poirot, because his family is dead..and? The extras? The children that visit the palazzo on Halloween are Black and Asian...in 1947 Venice. In 2023? Absolutely, 100%, wouldn't question it a bit. In 1947? Yeah, nah.

The Hungarian/Gypsy "siblings" are so obviously not even remotely related, it's not even funny, their names are "Desdemona" and "Nicholas" - "Holland"? - sure, typical Hungarian and Romani names.

And then there's "Mrs Reynolds". Are you kidding me?? A lovely Asian lady, with a lovely English accent..and with a lovely non-Asian name..in 1947. Again, if it was set in the last 30 years, sure.

Now imagine, that this character was actually portrayed like a mysterious Asian/Oriental lady medium, with a proper Chinese name, who would speak in broken English - how much more depth and mystery that could add. Instead we got something like "'ello, my name is (insert the most generic name you can think of, like : Jennifer Smith..or how about "Mrs Reynolds"), hello, I'm Julie, or whatever Reynolds, and I be your medium tonight".

So very and unnecessarily inauthentic.

It's almost surprising, that when the phone rang, it wasn't an iPhone.

The rest of the cast is also quite meh. Jamie Dornan and the mother bothered me the least. The "Poirot" actor/director obviously hates the character, makes him look like a total buffoon. Yes, Poirot is quirky, but come on.

Yeah, like Poirot, with his perfectly manicured moustache, would let this strange woman, place a mask over his face, cape over his head..yeah, right..and to walk over to the giant bowl, to submerge his entire face...to fish out an apple with his teeth! Poirot doing something like this? It's like Superman burning down a shack full of cute little bunnies and puppies.

Moronic writing. I don't remember Ms Oliver being American and a despicable person, she is weird and of course, like I said earlier, Poirot is weird too in the books and other adaptations, but there's a limit to their weirdness.

All the characters are actually excessively weird.

The only positive points I can actually think of, are the scenery, which is very nice, and overall, the cinematography is great. These two thing make it look like it should be a really good film, unfortunately, the film is quite abysmal.

Acting overall is just over the top. Everybody. And it's really annoying. The "Mrs Reynolds" lady spinning around and yelling is eye roll inducing, some of her other scenes are not bad. Except for the "listening".."listening"..."listening"..and again some more "listening". Just enough already... Angry "Poirot" is trying to be an angry David Suchet Poirot...but at least he's copying the second best Poirot (BBC's John Moffatt is always no. 1), Peter Ustinov is 3rd and this current one probably somewhere around 57. I wouldn't hate him as much, if he wasn't also the director. He's not playing the character like someone else wants him to play it. He plays it like he wants to. This is how he sees it. That's just sad.

I can see how people, who have never actually read the books, listened to BBC radio plays, or watched some much better versions of Poirot stories would like the film much better than I did, but I've spent decades loving this character, so for me this movie was very boring, shameful and embarrassing.

In a very good way. It all depends what you expect, I guess. I expected the kind of a film I've seen a million times, but it was quite different from almost anything.

The dramatic music and loud noises in the beginning - I could have been without, especially, since there wasn't much happening yet. They probably wanted to let us know, something is about to happen soon enough.

The story is about puritan family in an exile (voluntary), away from other people, due to religious differences. They are however not holier than th... anybody else. As pretty much anybody, who thinks and tries to portray themselves, like they're better than others. They have their fair share of troubles - with honesty, faith, kindness, they deceive each other, blame each other, hurt each other.

The land is hostile, the crops are bad, nothing is actually going very well at all. And then, as if that wasn't bad enough...there's this vvitch.

Eventually, even the father realises, he should have been a bit more humble and stayed in the settlement. A bit late for that though.

The scenery is great, haunting, acting is very good - kudos to those little children, other than having slightly different accents than the older family members - but that's absolutely nitpicking, they did fantastic, especially for this kind of movie.

If you're expecting to see a slasher horror, monsters running around all the time, slime and liters of blood gushing everywhere, this is not the film. You will have a bit of that sort of stuff, but really, only a bit. It's more of a psychological film. It's scary enough, but mostly in a different way.

If you foolishly expect a 45 minute documentary, about Nazis looking for the actual Holy Grail, you're foolish indeed. Just like myself.

They do talk about a German individual (Otto Rahn) working for Himmler, looking for the actual Grail in France - spoiler alert, he doesn't find it (thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week). They talk about the Cathars, that allegedly had the Grail in their possession. This is 5-10 minutes of the whole documentary.

After this, they talk about other German individuals believing in Atlantis (Herman Wirth) and looking for origins of Aryan race, also working for Himmler.

The Nazis conduct several expeditions around the world, Scandinavia, Iceland, Tibet (Ernst Schafer) looking for symbols, artefacts, measuring people's faces, etc., in quest for origins of Aryan race.

They want to replace Christianity with Nazi religion, based on old mythology, which is interesting, since they're looking for the Holy Grail, closely associated with Jesus, yet they apparently refuse Christianity, because they say it's essentially Jewish. OK.

Then they talk about Holocaust and show clips from the Holocaust.

They show the same photographs and short clips from the Nazi Germany over and over again throughout this documentary. You will probably see the exact same photos and clips like 4-5 times. They also tell you what they're going to talk about, talk about it and then repeat the same thing, to fill out the time.

Out of all the documentaries that I've seen, this is one of them. But seriously, it's more about Nazis in general, their ideology/mythology, rather than about the Holy Grail. Unless the Holy Grail is the Aryan race, in which case, they still don't offer you any conclusion.

Weaver plays a character, that is very smart, looks very good naked, apparently speaks every language under the sun, a very strong personality, she's obviously super educated with her PhD from Harvard, yet she earns next to nothing while working in London, because "she likes living abroad". Oh, OK then.

She lived and worked in China, but now she's an expert on Middle East relations. Same difference, I guess...?

Despite being brilliant at everything, and despite living in London (not exactly unimportant city) and mingling with people from her field and lots of important people, there's no universities or colleges she could work for, no magazines or newspapers worldwide, she could contribute to, that could save her from living in a dumpster (not a literal dumpster, but not exactly a desirable location, with a shared bathroom down the hall) and be more appreciated. Na-ahh, she becomes an escort, as you do.

Then she complains, that men use her as an object. Oh well, here you are, strong, very very self assured, charming, educated lady, expert on the Middle East, and the only way you can move ahead in one of the top capital cities in the world in the 80s, is to be a prostitute.

She turns some men down at first, after dinner, she doesn't seem to turn down anything or anyone after that.

She even uses her real name including her "Doctor" title as her escort name. Guess it's handy, since you're hanging out with the exact same people during your day job and at your second job.

Michael Caine plays the usual (this time a Lord/diplomat), but he's also kind of....he's got this thing going on, for this lady being used by all the other men - it turns him on, when she talks about them and if she doesn't talk about them, he'll ask.

There's this secret plot going on, the Doctor finds out she's being used in more ways than one and seems surprised. A gullible genius with a hot body indeed.

I had no idea what this film was going to be about, but Caine/Weaver combo seemed very interesting. It's a bit disappointing, to see both the lordship/important diplomat and the hot Harvard genius, being played like a fiddle by some very weak (although somehow also very cunning) wannabe assassins.

The only people, who seemed to be on top of things in the end, are the secret service and the police.

This movie could have worked, I guess, if Weaver wasn't portrayed as brilliant at almost everything. How about she's not a Harvard graduate, how about she's just a young (yeah, I know) foreigner, trying to get her foot in the door. Her character is already standing in the doorway, has no flaws, no morals, no clue. Or is that her weakness? A clueless expert?

Mom: "no, we already have Indiana Jones at home" Indiana Jones at home: ************** The film really tries to copy Indiana Jones, it's painfully obvious, but not quite as painful, as trying to watch it - they just didn't copy it well enough.

With a cast like that, they could have done way more than this. Unfortunately, the script is all over the place, it just makes no sense, even as a light hearted comedy adventure film. Those little subplots and stunts are just done for the sake of it (if you're hanging from a rope, with your partner hanging onto you, why shoot at the gold symbol for the split ground to close again, when you can obviously just climb back up anyway - which he did - and then push the symbol once you're up again? Getting yourself potentially squished by the closing ground as you climb, or closed inside under the path, makes a very little sense.)

The score is good, way too good for the film actually, scenery is nice, because of these two reasons I would almost give it a 4, but the special effects are very poor, the plot and the storyline development is just sad.

It was almost half bearable until they found the Lost City, but the acting got even worse, the new characters even sillier, and it all made even less sense than before.

Poor writing and directing unfortunately made this into a waste of time and resources - unless you're 10 years old, or have fond memories of watching this as a kid.

What's wrong with the original story?

Do these schlubs actually think, they can do the story better than the original? We'll, clearly not!

I mean, they clearly can't, but they may think they can.

Here's an idea - you want to make a movie/series about certain event, person, a known story - how about you stick to the facts?

Do you need your creative licence, because you simply can't stay within the lines, you're a super "creative genius", you're just an amazing filmmaker, storyteller, "you've got so much to give"...here's an idea - make up your own story and don't butcher history and classic literature!

"give me tree fiddy".

Hey, I am pretty open minded. I liked Erich Von Daniken since I was a kid, still listen to old Art Bell Coast to Coast episodes, I do enjoy paranormal stories, UFO's, vortex, I like Graham Hancock theories..and all the rest.

I find some of the theories, or stories just fun, some interesting.

This episode was neither. It wasn't entertaining and it wasn't interesting. Just some least believable people they could find, talking totally unconvincingly about a Bigfoot, skinwalker, orbs.

Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that all those things actually exist and that these people have experienced/seen these things. Nobody sane would ever believe them. "Yeah, so this Bigfoot was standing on my porch, trying the door handle, I opened the door (..as you would..) and he ran away. Then he came back and tried the door handle again and we went like this back and forth until the morning", sure hon.

I am actually surprised that they've wasted time and resources to even film this episode. I don't know if these people have mental issues, are just trying to lie and this is the best they could do, or are just so unconvincing, that they come off as liars with mental health issues.