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Reviews
Reptilians (2024)
Straight from the Internet to you screens!
To be fair, I was unable to sit through the whole thing. The director sitting there saying he saw a "star destroyer" like object in the sky when he was a kid was a red flag. That's in the first few minutes, I had to turn it off after about 20 minutes because little did I know, this was about to take a very stupid turn.
What I did watch was basically exactly what you'd expect to see in a conspiracy theory facebook group. A bunch of people spouting off nonsense and trying to pass it off as, in the best case, a hypothesis to explain something, and at worst, the absolute truth.
What really made stop watching was a woman, who of course did not want to be identified. Her whole "theory" revolved around the world being exactly as old as christianity tells us, and that Adam and Eve and the whole garden of Eden thing was a factual telling of the beginning of time. Guess what, the snake in the garden of Eden? A reptilian. And the church removed books from the bible to hide from us the "knowledge" we need to fight the evil reptilians, who are of course, the debil.
Impossible to take seriously unless you've already lost your mind.
The Woods Are Real (2024)
Ugh...
I came into the movie thinking, ok, an independent, possibly supernatural thriller/horror featuring rich people getting messed with in the woods. Something I can wrapy head around. What I got was some kind of thinly veiled christian propaganda that would have been halfway decent to watch had it not been for the awful soundtrack, poor writing, and mid-level acting.
Generally speaking, ending a story like this usually includes maybe a lesson learned by those involved. Instead, the people who made the movie gave us one protagonist who murders his best friend, another who just totally finds it cool to sacrifice the fetus they're carrying for a religion they initially didn't believe in, and "god" rewarding them for attempting the sacrifice by, you guessed it, the Abraham special (ie, basically just saying "jk, don't do that" right before the guys swings a log at his wife's uterus). *Fade to black
But that wasn't enough. Instead, they finish with the protagonists back home in Brooklyn with the 8 year old the woman was apparently carrying the whole movie in her womb. It's his birthday, and as a special treat, daddy reads from the book of Job.
To be fair, the acting was pretty good aside from the "farm ladies" and the best friend at the beginning. But the writing painted the actors into some very tight, sometimes just awful corners. Not to mention making the entire point of the movie being redemption after sacrificing something you love, then just letting the two main characters off without sacrificing anything.
The woods ARE real, and this film should be buried in the most remote part...
Next Goal Wins (2023)
Hilarious, Heart Warming, and Genuine
I came into this completely ignorant of American Samoa's soccer past, but as a viewer who cannot get enough of Waititi's work. Before watching, I looked into the real past of the AS soccer team, the players highlighted in this film, and Coach Rongen. And while the story loses some heaviness in the delivery, I think Waititi certainly hit all the right notes with the style of storytelling.
People tend to forget that movies, specifically comedies, are not for telling an exact representation of a story. Movies are for entertainment, and Next Goal Win is engaging, entertaining, funny, and emotional. For all those reasons, I'm giving it a 10, I left this movie happy, and isn't that what this is all about?
Night of the Missing (2023)
Mama said if you can't say one nice thing...
So I'll start with the one nice thing I can say, the cinematography was actually really well done. Ok, now that the one nice thing is out of the way, let's talk about what these other reviews don't. The writing, awful in most parts, but specifically bad during all of the "sheriff" scenes.
By the description, we're supposed to believe that all of these stories are the sheriff's crimes. Using that as a baseline, then this sheriff is a supernatural entity a 'la Pennywise, who can become a clown with Mr Fantastic stretchy powers, shrink people and force them to live in a miniature town, force people to relive working as a 900 number sex worker in 1989, and I guess turn into two drug dealers, kill a guy's girlfriend, then get killed by a ghost, and... You know what, no... Just no.
So, next I look at what these other reviews said, and ok, yes, it's an "anthology" style film, but literally none of the stories have any sort of connective tissue. Missing persons seems like it's the intended theme, but then you have a final story that ends with a person wearing a GPS enabled, court ordered tether, shooting themselves in the head in their own house. Please explain to me how that person is "missing".
Disjointed and poorly written, the actors truly did their best (for the most part), the only reason I was able to sit through this one was the fact that it was EXTREMELY short. Oh yeah, and I have to mention the final scene involving dismemberment, we get a gorgeous opening shot with a dissonant version of O Holy Night, and a good look at the Sheriff's department, prominently, and permanently displaying the words "Police Department #84". Sheriffs don't work at police departments.
The Secret Kingdom (2023)
That was rough...
The twist is obvious from the beginning, the acting is really rough, and the story feels like it was written on ChatGPT. I grew up in the 80's, a wasteland of bad entertainment, and I don't think even as a 5 year old I would have enjoyed this mess. One other reviewer said the "visuals" were amazing, they are most certainly wrong. Half the time the Pangolin's voices don't time right with their mouths moving. The villain is the go to lazy villain for when you don't want to write anything interesting, a black cloud that represents the main character's fear. Australia, you can do better, I've seen you do better...