Reviews

When deciding to watch Bly, one would not be at fault for assuming that the tone of the show would be close to Hill House- a terrifying sob-fest that had a grandiose theme which was never told outright but that the viewer understood innately: grief. Watching Bly you're told every episode what the theme is: it's ok to let go of lost love. Yet, at the end of the film, you're left with an unsatisfactory ending.

Now to the review:

• the first couple of episodes are extremely overacted, the children are very annoying and the script is very forced
• the scares are few and far between
• the children's trauma over the loss of their parents is not very central to the story except for one episode with a really terrible plot device that I'll write about below with a **SPOILER** tag
• the best two episodes center around Henry and Hannah and really nail the vibe from Hill House, but again not scary
• the curse of the house explored in the second to last episode made me hate the show even more

**SPOILER BELOW**

• What really made me hate the show the most were the facts that the Lady in the Lake only killed people who stood in her way on her monorail path each night, the fact that Peter says he's been talking to the ghosts in the house when none of them have mouths, and lastly that the entire plot rests on "It's You, its's me, it's us" Skeleton-Key body swap.

The animation in Frozen 2 is top notch, vivid colors and light work, interesting character models, etc

However the movie telegraphs early on and where Frozen 1 surprised, the sequel fell flat.

the music: there are no "let it go" ear worms despite them trying to make "into the unknown" happen. It's not bad, but it's not classic.

The plot: It's curious to me what the conversation in the writers room was when developing the plot. Either they genuinely didn't know they were remaking Fifth Element, or they didn't care because they say "spirit" instead of element.

Conclusion: my kids were entertained; there are some genuinely funny parts, but there are a couple of "remember last time" jokes that seemed like they wouldn't have happened if the sequel wasn't 6-years later. Overall the story just seemed unoriginal compared to the first movie and there were no surprises.

Bonus: there is a "reindeers are better than people" redux called "Alone in the Woods" that turns into a full blown 80s rock video duet with Sven and Kristoff that had me rolling.

This movie did not have to be associated with Batman, yet they forced in the Wayne family even as far as to have a clown mask-wearing henchmen be the catalyst for Batman's origin. It felt like the writer had no idea where to take the film after Arthur shoots Murray.

This could have been a great story about a depressed person whom the system fails that cracks and commits a series of atrocities. But the fact that I was supposed to believe this guy is Batman's arch-nemesis the whole movie left me wanting. At no point did I believe this guy could inspire others to violence - his supposed attack on the elite on the subway was a guy shooting in self-defense after getting his ass kicked. There's no way I would believe that would be the tipping point to spark the riots in the last half of the movie.

And the Zazie Beetz "reveal" that she and Arthur weren't really a thing- if you believed that the romance was not a hallucination of a sick man when we are CLEARLY watching the movie from his perspective, then shame on you... but the fact that Todd Phillips felt the need to show the romance was a fabrication was an insult to the audience.

I was extremely bored in the film, didn't think it deserved the buzz it received, and it left me just feeling sad.

I just finished season 2 and I'm left satisfied, entertained, and filled with pathos.

Why Bergthal doesn't come up in Emmy talks is beyond me. That dude is Frank Castle and his range is insane; flirtatious, raw, playful, intense, introspective, and a maniac. I was fully rooting for his happiness the entire series.

I think the psychological themes from this show are the highlight; Russo, Frank, Pilgrim, Medani, and even Krista are all different sides of the same coin- how do you react to trauma, and what is your true self? Having Billy as an amnesiac stuck believing that Curtis and Frank we're still his buddies, and then having him blow up when he realized Frank cut him up was amazing. I thought Pilgrim's motivations being his kids and the fact that he was fleeing his old self and then mutually walking away from Frank was the perfect mirror to Franks life.

The story in S2 was great, I thought the main and sub stories really worked well together and had good pacing. The only weird part for me was when Billy opted to mentally break Frank instead of kill him when it was easily provable that Frank didn't kill the girls. It was also weird because Russo did already break Frank by murdering his family in S1. Also S2 relies heavily on S2 for context so if you took a break you definitely need a recap.

I will preface this with stating that I have not seen any of the other iterations, but read wiki enough to understand - Man falls for rising star as his fades due to alcoholism, conflict ensues, he dies either by walking in the ocean or driving drunk, and the despondent rising star finds a last token of his love that gives her the strength to carry on.

Now, given that synopsis, there are two things I would expect to see in the film; either his jealousy ruins their marriage and sends him into further decline, or their love lasts through it all but he can't kick the addiction and takes his life when he realizes how much he's hurt his wife.

I think that where this version went wrong is that this version tried to do both, and ended up not doing either well; the love story was sloppy, and conflict was hinted at but never essential, and the story ended up being about the man and his addiction rather than the love story.

Love story was sloppy: There was a scene where the two ride out to Arizona on a bike, no words, a flash to them kissing at a gas pump, Jack's feet in sand, and then he punches his brother in the face. What could've been a scene where the couple talk about his anger, her fear that he would overreact, etc, we just see her standing in the background as Jack and his brother yell at each other. I call the budding romance via music montage the "twilight effect" because you never actually hear these people share there souls with one another. I also felt like we only saw things from Jack's perspective; a cut-over to a new scene, and Ally was at the next phase of her career. It had no meat, they were just head over heels and we were supposed to believe it.

Conflict: When Ally goes on SNL and does her "ass in them jeans" song, Jack's anger is shown when he calls her ugly later on, but we never see the compromise from Ally's perspective- again it's hinted at with the dance class and her saying "it was supposed to be one song". I would have wanted to see her making the decision to "not say anything" and the early conflict with Jack about the new direction... instead we get reaction, repair, and then it's forgotten. There were also other ways they could have shown his light fading - paparazzi not wanting a candid of him, and only wanting Ally, him acting out and punching them - a quick 5 min of film and we could've seen his frustration.

A story about an addict: At the end of the day, Lady Gaga is just a set piece in this story about an addict who can't stop despite having people who care for him and his physical reason for taking the pills being gone - that was the emotional anchor of the story - no matter how many times you scream at Jack to not take a drink or pop a pill. What we got was a rich backstory of a boy who had already tried suicide but whose alcoholic father didn't even notice, a boy who became a rock star whose brother gave up his dreams to keep him alive.

Sadly Cooper didn't seem to agree that's what the story was about, and instead we got a movie that tried all the things and ended up not doing any of it well.

I know a movie can't be perfect but i was this close to giving IT a 10.

The imagination of the scares was great. Bill Skarsgaard plays an incredibly menacing Pennywise. The scenes with the kids bonding told the story succinctly without a lot of film.

I loved the pacing, that the writers kept much of King's source material.

At no point did it feel cheesy, I was fully expecting it to be but was pleasantly surprised.

The effects were incredible, little Georgie mutating at the end of the movie into Pennywise was effing fantastic.

I'm sure on a second watch I'll change my mind, but at first glance this film is outstanding and a top contender for scariest movies this decade.

I'll start with the CGI- on my UHD 4K 1080p Set the CGI looked like a cartoon. Steppenwolf looked like a video game villain. Cyborg was the worst thing I've seen since Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern.

The direction- the opening credits with life shots of normal people was a waste considering people are not really a concern in the movie. The Snyder slow mo effect was expected and tired.

The script- I almost had to mute it. It was like a high school play. They each had terrible lines, but AM took the cake, with WW second... the whole "she closed off herself" speech between her and BM was just unwatchable.

The plot- I had no idea what the hell was going on, a box, mother? Unity? Darkseid? What was the big plan? Also BM in the comics wouldn't show up as Bruce Wayne to get a team together, he would do something awesome to wow the recruit. And the end credits with Luther making his own team??? How is that a bigger threat than an alien trying to wipe out the planet?

I had really low expectations coming into this, but this movie surpassed them all. There was so much potential with the DCU but time and time again they screwed the pooch by trying to catch up to marvel's 10 years in less than 3.

You're definitely going to feel the burn. You definitely will not make a sound in the theater. You will appreciate our freedom to be loud AF. The movie does a great job with all, and the acting/directing by John K was top-of-the-line. However, as with any other-worldly movies, you start to wonder the rules of the world, and you see some details that the director caught, but catch the details that seemed obvious and got left out. For example: The creatures can hear small sounds from far away, so the family has to whisper and walk on beach sand everywhere.... but Near a waterfall they can speak... and The creatures can't hear them because something nearby is louder... With that logic... why can they hear a whisper from hundreds of yards away when there are thousands of bits of noise between them and the noisemaker, yet they can't hear a heartbeat from a terrified human? Inevitably in these kinds of movies we always get the "we never tried that" mechanic to kill the creatures, which sure enough they do. I know it's hard to wrap up these kinds of movies, but why does it have to? I would have loved if Emily Blunt and the kids united together against all odds to continue living even though John K dies... that kind of ending would have made me give a 9.5.

TL;DR - great acting, great concept, funky rules, predicatable ending

I really wanted to like this movie, but Angelina Jolie's storytelling caused me to lose the connection to the main character, Zam, once he and his friend Phil are separated.

From hearing about the book, I know that Zam goes through years of substance abuse and revenge plotting against the Japanese people for what the torturers did to him, but I never felt that in the movie.

I also never really understood why Zam was singled out by The Bird, and I never felt like he or any of the characters were in mortal danger.

I honestly only felt impressed by what he went through during the ocean scenes and the first imprisonment. The narration of the movie kinda felt like this: "I competed in the Olympics, my brother taught me to never give up, I survived 45 days at sea (long anecdote about the perils of the sea and losing my friend), I came home after being in a Japanese POW camp for two years."

I'm sure that the cliché "the book is better" applies here, and I know that Louis Zamperini has his own book that is considered better than this movie's namesake.

I wanted an emotional, unbelievable story where I cared about the characters... I got that for half a movie and proceeded to become unattached as the movie dragged on.

Score: 5/10

They probably could've gotten away with calling this something else. Only a couple of devices from the original made it to this version; the fantasy sim company called Rekall (sic) and a few character names. Oh, and a black guy named Benny.

The original was so much more mysterious; ancient alien technology, aliens, and mutants. This version had none of the above.

It had some easter eggs for fans of the original, but A) there was no need for the triple breasted woman, we are not told that there are mutants, and there is no story behind any body being mutated, so it was stupid and didn't have the comic impact of the original. The other easter egg was B) the disguise Arnold wears in the original- the red- headed woman... you'll see her in the new version. But it's just a shout out to the original, and it's basically where similarities stopped.

I enjoyed that it wasn't a carbon copy and thought the espionage part was done well and the action sequences were OK.

I was able to shrug off the "Fall" and its defiance of physics until it became a major plot point:

SPOILERS

For one, I don't need science (as others have already used) to know that GB is not directly on the other side of the world from Australia, which is fine, but the Fall goes strait through the core in the movie. I also don't need science to know that the pressure would be crushing for anything to move through the core, and that it would also be too hot for anything to be near without melting (ie the shaft that the fall elevator goes through and the actual elevator). Also, I'm pretty sure building a super structure that spans the entire globe would collapse under pressure or change the magnetic characteristics of the planet.

I also don't need science to know that it is highly improbable for a person to set a 30-minute bomb before reaching the core, and it not go off until 4 minutes after reaching the surface... there are vehicles that fast, but our elevator in this movie was going slow enough for people to WALK ON ITS SURFACE WHILE IN MOTION. That's when this guy dropped from a 7 to a 4 for me, there has to be some realism in sci-fi or the movie loses its suspension of reality and becomes nonsense.

The Fall elevator also led to the worst part of the plot: "Let's put our entire militia and leader/president on one vehicle with one entry point and try to invade a city". It was ridiculous.

SPOILERS OVER

Overall it was visually impressive, but the plot jumped the shark and I couldn't forgive it.

4/10