Reviews

I like Clive Owen's work, but this is not shot or directed properly.

The camera work frames & obectifies the actors too often instead of portraying the viewer and what they would be seeing. The camera stares centrally at characters, performs out-of-body levitation shots for no benefit to the viewer and not in setting up a new scene.

Direction is one tone, always. No social-emergency switch. Clive Owen is a master of staying cool under pressure, but here no pressure is set up at all. All characters are borderline social, borderline living in emergency.

I only viewed the first episode.

Scenery is beautiful, cars are beautiful... but the film is not artistic and real.

Like every other modern movie/show, you can't care about the main characters, and therefore can't care what happens in the rest of the show.

All lines are written robotically. Some actors appear to bring a little humanity to them, but ultimately this is 99% of the show. Contrived robotic lines.

Actors stare or speak perfectly smooth, always waiting for their turn.

All "kicks" or drama is based around betrayal, as if this is high drama for robots... no human drama is seen anywhere... such as itchy clothes, things getting in the way, team work, personal style (hair, talking, walking, motivations).

On top of the robotic script, actors, and drama, the show is also pushing gore desensitisation, and acting tough, and this is supposed to be sold to teenagers interested in video games...

Rhys Darby consistently flies in the face of cliche (acting, writing).

However there's still cliche drama in this.

Rhys Darby owns "electric" so much that he fits in with any smooth actor, providing natural drama this way no matter what the subject or story. This is true drama.

However there's still forced "frenemy" style drama. Two characters that are supposed to get along (because they live together) ignoring/twisting points of view only to generate argument.

Most of film is story based with natural social drama & character, so it works.

It's not shot to be replayed, scene length isn't right, key drama points aren't totally believable.. but it won't ruin your evening.

Solid movie up until the 27 minute mark.

Script writers want you to suspend belief that anyone can be awakened from a hypnotic trance and instead believe that people are completely "dead like zombies" after one interaction.

Too many times the "heroes" or people you're supposed to care about do nothing and act like "well they're just dead now" to their friends, coworkers, like that's normal behaviour.

Plenty of drama could have been had around "hey, hey wake up, what's your name? What's your job? What's the uniform you're wearing for?"... all skipped for a mindless generic zombie script.

Also, skip foward, and you'll notice the good guys only have one mode, victimhood, as if they have no control over their lives and no input to make it better.

The running, alone, bests most if not all $60m+ films for holding attention.

You can watch a good amount of it.

The number one problem is that the writing/screen play doesn't allow Hemsworth to be the boss of his own survival. He's painted as a victim at all times. There's more drama in letting him take the reins and giving warnings to Waltz' character and the hunters. J Lawrence would have insisted on this.

The next problem is the hunters are too warm in spirit, as if they're saying "sorry I have to do this", but their characters paid millions to be there. A lot of chances for "you know why I hate people so much" lore, missed.

Last problem is framing. Half the shots are medium length, or zoomed in to hands/feet at the start of a scene. Drama in seeing two characters standing far apart and angry at each other is missed. Overall flow of scenes makes it difficult to follow and maintain interest. It should actually be shot like a sports match with overhead running shots, constant commentary, breaks, and ads built into the film. Similar to Death Race 2000.

If you have a lot of time, patience, and don't expect it to go anywhere it's worth the time.

I'm not sure how it's sold in the preview but it plays like a Mr Bean or Pink Panther movie.

It doesn't have the emotional depth of Mr Bean, or the investigative intrigue of Pink Panther, but it does have lots of characters.

It could be shot better. For example letting the end of a scene sit with the main characters after-thoughts. The whole film is shot through fast and you're not sure what the main character is thinking or feeling.

It's mostly "this guy doesn't think or feel anything, want to see what happens when he stumbles upon a hollywood career?"

There's passive-aggressive, then there's vacant passive-aggressive.

Every character acts the same no matter what is happening.

During most of the film, acting is vacant and passive. Later in the film they become vacant and angry.

Complete disregard for anyone watching. You can't relate to anything happening. You don't want to be friends with zombified characters and be along for the ride. There's no human factor or appreciation of. There's no good guys v bad guys. There's no entriguing story. No scenery / holiday factor. No interesting engineering / design. No sci-fi / fantasy beyond the cover image.

Why sell this?

The complete absence of care.

Mario & Luigi are treated like objects. Cliche one liners. No time to breathe. Only panic attacks. Bullying each other. Doing what they're told. Rush rush.

Mario is not permitted to possess discipline, courage, imagination, heart, backbone, standards, have value in society and be proud. He hides, has anxiety, and wins by chance.

Villains are worshipped. Allowed the breathe. Parade. Be the victim.

All scenes have the single most cliche music possible.

The start of the film puts you in a panic and blows your synapses using panic music, one-second cuts, and the sense of doom. It's also shot to put you on the side of the villain - before there is even a victim introduced yet. What are you supposed to think? Doom is exciting, interesting, and worth watching?

The villains aren't shot with a backstory except for "shock & awe". Even in lord of the rings, villains were shot as slaves.

Why make the film?

Any topic that's weird topic that would normally be a human, adult conversation, in this film is a chance to misunderstand, mock, degrade, form gangs about, and create psychological barriers so no one says or thinks anything about the associated topic without threat of being socially outcast.

People can relate to the idea of when power corrupts in the film 1984, but in this film people police any and all weird social topics. How is the viewer supposed to relate to this?

Mocking as humour doesn't work no matter what the topic is, and it paints the characters as trolls and gremlins... What is a movie with just trolls running around...

Very easy to watch and well rounded after the first act.

Most of the film is about perfection meets good luck or bad luck, but it needs well rounded characters to work, and the first third of the film misses that until you meet Bob the cat (Simon Pegg).

There are many other lovable characters that draw a good picture of good luck / bad luck. Some cliche but watchable. The dragon often comes across like a Karen who gets everything she wants, so this leaves the bunnies looking like good slaves, but still overall it's easy to watch.

Animation is superb. Music is great. Very smooth, easy to watch.

Christoph Waltz commonly plays characters with a human quality but here his character is written to be careless, narcissistic, power hungry.... he plays it poorly because he's naturally too human & sensitive.

The supporting characters (who start off the series) are all these things... careless, narcissistic, power hungry, clown-like, trickster... and they play the "good guys" poorly.

The show is written to follow the narcissistic workers who act innocent, as if that's who you relate to, while hating the sensitive and human Waltz who is written to be evil.

It would have made more sense if the roles were reversed. Somebody (anybody) playing human and sensitive to follow through the series... while narcissistic, power hungry, grinning teenagers played the evil role.

I was excited to see Rhys Darby, but the writing here is terrible. One re-edit from a passionate story teller was all that it needed.

The Acting: Only Rhys Darby is acting like he's in the movie, everyone else is doing a quick draft read. You don't care about what happens to any of the characters because of this.

The Writing: Stede Bonnet originally got into piracy with anger, gusto, revenge, as well as needing a holiday. There is no need for cowardice written into the script at all... A coward would have succumbed to everything in his current life, and his very name is a mantra for a sturdy horse.

Stede would be better played as a proud man and a thinker. His pride leading him to hunt down every ship, isolate weakness, succeed, but also to take higher risks, and ultimately be destroyed by other proud men.

Basically a camera moves through crouds of people being soulless, and/or hangs on one or two people being soulless. Then the movie ends.

There's no point to the story and you don't care about what happens to any of the actors because the performances aren't real.

The sad & serious characters are too lost and detached (no self preservation) to follow what they mean and what their story is.

The electric/cocaine fueled characters are too maniacal (no self preservation) to follow what they mean either - you don't care if they run into a wall and you never see them again.

The only reason I can think of why the film is made at all, is because everyone hypnotised each other with shock & awe.

This movie is a culmination of the ideas of; (1) rich kids with parents who treat them as a disappointment, (2) male models, and (3) jealousy about Pierce Brosnan as the new James Bond.

None of them individually wire you up to be a killer - but what does is trying to be apart of a group (to survive) and not being able to time and time again.

The movie shows nothing about personal failure, and failure to survive, except business card comparison.

Last, the split personality that develops while trying to fit into a group that will never accept you is massive and obvious. In the movie he mostly speaks smoothly and down-to-earth, even while flipping out.

I live Livingston, but the writing appears to be stamped out of a machine.

Two people enter a scene, both forget about preserving relationships in social groups/society, then both start attacking each other, making sure never to understand the other side otherwise the faux drama is over. After x amount of time, the scene changes and the whole thing starts again with two other randomised people.

The benefit of starring Livingston is that he's one of the best at playing a human being, amongst many others in this series, but here the script means he's a robot-chicken-zombie that stages arguments. Why is this series produced?

I don't know if the actors behave like this in real life, but every performance is contrived, pretentious, forced... including trying to break it with forced laughing, dancing, tricks...

Messages in the film are pro-war and negative, such as desensitisation to extreme gore (an autopsy with the persons face in the same shot, performed by doctors having a "loving" yet fighty conversation - this is early in the film to deliberately make it hard to walk out on, and big names in the film also encourage you to love & sit through it).

Characters only talk to each other as 'pretend fights' with no self preservation and preservation of relationships. Christian Bale is better at being a real person but you still can't care what happens to him.

Mike Myers plays a 'yes man' and any spirit he has is squashed by the script, screen play, and bad acting of all involved.

Every scene is a cheap action shot of victimhood, bullying, and some awe-stuck hero worship.

The writer read about the Karpman Drama Triangle and applied it, with no sense of the real world, what constitutes real drama, holding short & long term drama throughout the film, tension between characters over time, what arguing characters really want.

All of the cheap drama is done with in seconds, so the camera often focuses on the bully at the end of the scene, or a helpless face, or hero worshipping faces (as if that's what the viewer wants to see). There is no sense of real drama and friction as mentioned, and you don't care about the characters.

I would give it a 10 but rewatchability is difficult. Everything is set up as a "new shock" moment.

Michelle Yeoh plays a smooth, level headed leader in otherwise a totally electric family, with many electric things happening (story related). It's very watchable, real, and has a natural dramatic contrast so never boring.

Easy to watch, acting is real, but many scenes are soley electric aggression after a while and it's Michelle's characters role to untangle them.

The movie as a whole needed more structure and break moments, and a simpler ending. Too long was spent on emotionally strong scenes that weren't resolved properly (characters never really getting what they want, or agree'ing to compromise). Many scenes ended with Nihilism and/or revisited multiple times.

Wildly better than any movie made in the last five years.

Steve Carell & John Malkovich lead the show as well as being great actors, sticking to character, along with Diana Silvers, Don Lake, Lisa Kudrow.

Ben Schwartz and others fall in and out of character as jesters.

There's many appearances of actors you may know from the 90's-2000s.

Writing becomes lazy towards the end of both seasons. Season Two takes a dive mid-way through as writing and acting descends into gang/pack mentality, personalities mix together, and everyone acts grateful for no reason.

Topics can also be divisive and political, and comes across as preachy/patronising, instead of real. Lots of skipping required.

The acting: Everybody except for Christoph Waltz and Willem Dafoe chose cheap smooth accents for their roles, and tried to "fake it til they made it", but it just looked like they didn't care about acting properly.

Waltz and Dafoe held presence of mind, a sense of reality, consequences, survival instinct etc well.

The camera work often showed zoomed in faces talking smooth - completely missing body language drama, size differences, etc.

Editing often lingered too long on scenes that should have been moved on from with quick pace. The feel of many fast paced scenes were destroyed. Slow motion was added into a horse riding scene shot from a distance, but it's shot as if it's in real-time.

The Writing of the people you were supposed to care about made them look like soulless egomaniacs or general villains. No clear distinction between good guys and bad guys. No one to care about in the film. No reason to watch to see what happens.

Apart from being made from re-used ideas, the movie is also badly toned.

What should be serious (to the plot, the characters) is played sarcastically.

Keanu Reeves character was supposed to be played light-touch and serious, but was played flippantly, as if the story is a joke.

An announcer introducing a temporary villain character came across homely and attracted to the villain, even though their image was supposed to create fear and worry for the good guys, not attraction for the villain and doom for the good guys.

A scene involving excessive love/patronising of spongebob by many characters for more than 10 minutes, including the love of failure, drawn out with tears, sympathy trophies. Later, a song & dance that's completely tone deaf.

Everything at the end is basically a break down of all character roles into an "it's okay to fail, everyone loves everyone", full stockholm syndrome moment, then happy dance music plays.

The "pick yourself up and dust yourself off" message should have been a 5 minute segment, and the characters should have been themselves.

Who allowed each character to smile gratefully all the time? Why does the camera "worship scan" everyone? Why does no one portray hard work, true drive, and passion?

To sum up the film in a sentence... Grateful, smiling, people who have never worked a hard job in their life all share the same personality, sometimes have fake, motiveless arguments, then high-five at the end while someone with real soul sings a song to it (Lady Gaga).

Miles Teller is the actor who competes with Cruise's character. He and many of the other young actors pretend to have ego and passion, but energetic scenes more resemble gang mentality and acting out, rather than individual drive and success (which is the point of an elite training school).

There is real mystery and wonder in a futuristic city like this, but due to the story telling, characters, drama, you never witness any of it.

It should start by showing someone that you can personally relate to, coming into the city for the first time. Instead, it starts with hero shots of unlikeable villain characters.

There's lots of opportunity for multiple characters to have relatable stories so you're not stuck deciding whether you like an initial main character or not. Instead, multiple characters pick fights, grumble, troll, and groom each other.

Lots of opportunity to show the mystery of city, people trying to surivive. Instead, you have one to three second flash shots, so you don't understand anything.

I wasn't expecting much, but it's funnier, better structured, and better written than almost any movie made recently.

All characters stick to their character story, arc, and drama is natural.

It would have been better to see them drive or behave insecure/overly-reserved/overly perfect as their natural "down state", instead of staying monotonously crazy and then going to "cornholio" mode. Many people are actually like this, but they're not crazy the whole way through.

Few scenes dragged on. You can eat nachos and expect the same kind of zingers in the movie as in the taste of the cheese.

Professional voice acting. Fine tunes.

Will Forte stars as a troll's troll in a military setting.

This is a perfect comedy set up, however everyone just goes along with it instead of providing it's opposite contrast - Eg. Stiff military bosses testing him and giving him more work to do.

Everyone plays a straight face, and either trolls or accepts the trolling, waiting for their turn to say their line... A total disconnect from reality.

I was excited to see Fishburne attempt to play an opposite to MacGruber, but his lines don't allow frustation to emerge, so they both look like they're in different films.

Any scenes involving MacGruber... the premise is great for comedy, as the natural friction is off the charts, but every scene is played smooth like butter and no friction ever emerges, no comedy ever emerges, and everyone looks like they're waiting in line.