Reviews

Where do i start? The acting was horrendous, the story was extremely predictable, it had zero tension, and the characters' actions and lines were so stupid.

Examples: 1) Pinto's character needs to review some video footage on a camcorder, but she couldn't wait for a better time to do it, she had to do it in the middle of a house party while her husband (the bad guy) is at home! Oh she also seems to like sneaking around his office at night when she has to turn the light on, so that when hubby comes home he can see that she's in his office! And her character has the worst excuses for being in his office.

2) She discovers her husband is a serial killer and has a girl stashed in his secret basement. She tries to get her out of there but she doesn't grab any weapons in case she runs into her husband! There's a baseball bat right there!

3) When they try to escape they go for the doors, when the doors are locked they keep trying the doors! The house is built mostly of glass! Break the glass! I guess you could've smashed the glass if you had grabbed that honking big baseball bat in the secret basement, couldn't ya?

4) Also, when they finally stop the bad guy they don't make sure he's actually dead! When Pinto's character whacks him over the head with this metal ornament, he even falls into the chair where he tied up the girl! Why not strap him down so that there's almost no chance he can chase them when they escape?

This is just one of those movies that is poorly written and directed where characters make stupid decisions and you find yourself screaming at the screen and tearing your hair out. Absolutely terrible and a complete waste of time.

What the heck did I just watch? Pretty disappointed to say the least, as I've seen so many reviews saying this is Shyamalan's long-awaited return to form. This couldn't be further from the truth; the movie felt like a remake of The Happening. The premise was super intriguing, but the execution was terrible. The story was a bit bland, not much actually happens, the acting wasn't particularly good; everybody was just sort of stuck in one mode so I didn't really care for them. I know that for the characters to not really know what's the truth is the whole point of the movie, but I do wish there was some kind of closure: who or what gave the strangers their visions and ultimately their mission? Why did they carry such peculiar weapons? Why did it have to be this particular family to sacrifice someone? Why did anyone have to be killed to stop the end of the world? So many questions unanswered that they didn't add to mystery but they were more infuriating instead. In the end, it seemed like "love" was the solution to everything. Lame lame lame.

First off, great performances from the actors; I've got no problem with that. Pretty much the five actors on the poster are always reliable. I also love a good historical action movie, so on the surface this ticks all the right boxes: history, action, drama, strong women. My issue is the movie itself. Now. I know next to nothing about the history so I won't comment too much on it, but I'm pretty sure there's a lot of embellishment and artistic licence going on here. Terrible plot, storyline, characters, dialogue, action, pacing, historical accuracy, you name it; it fails on all those levels. The story is light for what is supposedly a highly traumatic and sensitive time in African history. The plotting is very uneven and clumsy; one thing happens after another without much connective flow or narrative. The characters have no space or time to actually develop, it just jumps right in and you're supposed to accept that a simple, farm girl can just 'become' an elite warrior. Said farm girl has an attitude problem and she remains that way for the whole movie; her character doesn't develop or grow, so it seems like no time has passed at all. Same farm girl also falls in love with one of the half-white, half-black slave traders without rhyme or reason; they just do. Also that slave trader just decides to turn on his friend and his people; just like that. Essentially, the characters were one-dimensional caricatures; the formidable leader of course has a chip on her shoulder and it comes back to haunt her, don't they all? The loyal sidekick who sacrifices herself, don't they all? The wise sidekick is always on hand to offer sage advice, don't they all? The rebellious young buck who has a lot to learn ends up being pivotal in the course of events, don't they all? The action was uninspired; for a movie that sells itself on the battle scenes, they were surprisingly few, and when they did happen they were tame and lacking blood; not that I'm bloodthirsty, but a bit of blood and gore in fight scenes adds to the realism and emotional weight of the battle (see Braveheart). All in all, it's a very disappointing movie considering how many people recommended it. The movie just felt like one big re-enactment for a show about African history for the History Channel.

Hmmm, where to start? First of all, I would just like to point out that I hate that these martial arts TV shows think that Chinese and Japanese are interchangeable. The makers of Iron Fist is totally guilty of this sin; mixing Chinese, Japanese and any number of other Eastern cultures together as they see fit, and hoping the audience won't notice. What also irks me is that in these shows, anybody who dons a pair of boxing gloves and hits a bag (with terrible technique I might add) suddenly becomes super proficient in fighting and will be more than able to take out gangs of thugs. Or taking a couple of boxing lessons means that anybody can suddenly become capable of fighting the main character who's supposed to be a kung-fu master - who also happens to be terrible at fighting (more on that later). These are just some of the clichés that this show has in abundance. I'm not even going to talk about Finn Jones playing Iron Fist because that's just a stupid argument for why the show is crap because Iron Fist IS white. That brings me to another gripe: he spends the entire season saying he's the Iron Fist; so what the heck is the Iron Fist? So far it seems the Iron Fist is just Jones holding a light bulb and hitting people (again, with terrible technique) with it - I can't really tell to be honest because the Iron Fist only shows up a couple of times in the season. Jones' acting is terribly wooden (same as all the other actors) and his range of emotion seems to be dopey kid or kid throwing a tantrum. The character of Danny Rand is so unbelievably dim-witted, he spends the first few episodes trying to convince everyone he's really Danny, but he doesn't offer up any evidence to prove it. Also, he doesn't seem to get the hint who the bad guys are: if they're shooting at you or trying to cut you up with a bloody great big sword, there's a good chance they're the bad guys, but no, he takes a good few episodes to let it sink in, even by the end of the season I'm still not convinced that he really knows who the bad people are; this happens repeatedly. Other characters are also stuck in their own little loops, Colleen really has no use other than stepping in to fight every so often. Ward is repeatedly getting the rug pulled out from under him. Joy can't decide if she's good or bad. Harold is just a seething bag of revenge. Claire, well Claire she's just constantly getting herself into trouble. For some reason Claire in Iron Fist is very irritating, whereas the Claire in Daredevil was very likable. She keeps complaining about how she's tired of all the killing and violence, but then she always asks to tag along! The fight choreography is utter crap, I move better when I'm getting out of bed in the morning; instead of just simply punching or kicking someone, they'll do a flying double-somersault, triple-reverse, spinning back fist: completely unnecessary. I know Iron Fist is supposed to be a martial arts master but this is just taking the mick. Dialogue is clunky, clumsy, devoid of all emotion, and completely laughable. A lot of the lines spouted throughout the show sounds like the writers just downright ripped them off from Robin Sharma's "The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari". Bottom line: this is just poorly-produced, lazily-written, badly-acted, eastern- mystic, mumbo-jumbo, hocus-pocus, fortune-cookie nonsense. I'll probably still watch the next season though.

Pretty disappointed to say the least; it all felt so mediocre and pointless. This is very very substandard for Pixar, there's a complete lack of story, plot, characterisation, creativity and most crucially imagination. It doesn't really show us anything that we haven't seen before in other movies such as The Land Before Time or even Disney's Dinosaur from 2000; actually, those two movies were way better than this one. Heck, it doesn't even have the usual Pixar charm to win you over, all the characters were pretty annoying - including the main character - he's just this moany, whiny, spineless weakling who's scared of EVERYTHING, and it's his chicken sh*t antics that get his dad killed. Oh, and the dad is annoying too - he's self-righteous and condescending, the siblings are obnoxious, and so on. The only character who was of any interest was Spot - he had more charm and more character than anyone else - and he didn't even say anything!

Oh man, this was absolutely horrendous - even worse than the first one. The characters are paper-thin, the actors are terrible (except Jamie Foxx, more on that later), the lines are cringe-worthy and the story makes no sense at all. Oh, and it's also very, very clichéd; Peter finds his dad's secret lab in an abandoned subway line, he even needs a special coin to make it come up out of the train tracks! WTF??? The story has more holes than Spiderman's web, for example: how come Spiderman seems to be impervious to Electro's shocks? What does Peter actually do except for hanging around looking cool with his big hair and hipster style? What exactly was wrong with Harry? Peter's relationship with Harry Osborn is pretty random and rushed, but Harry somehow expects Peter to do everything in his power to help him. Dane DeHaan playing Harry is just a rehash of his character in Chronicle, but this time he's a spoilt rich kid who didn't get enough hugs as a child. Man, how I miss James Franco's Harry, I actually felt for Franco's Harry: he was likable and you totally felt his pain. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone have absolutely no chemistry at all, despite them actually dating in real-life at the time the movie was made, if they're on-screen relationship is so flaccid, I can't imagine what their real one must be like! Their lines are probably the corniest, cheesiest tripe I've ever heard, every time they spoke I gagged! It's "I love you" every second word, they toss those words out so casually that they don't mean anything and lack impact. With Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker, you can actually feel his struggle precisely because he doesn't say he loves Mary Jane after every second word. This brings me to Peter Parker himself, Garfield plays him with such swagger, cockiness and bravado that I really don't like him, and I find it really difficult to root for him. Tobey's Peter was a fantastic balance of vulnerability, geekiness and determination that you can't help but cheer for him and you can relate to him. The one saving grace was Jamie Foxx's Electro character - we actually understand his plight and we feel for him; who hasn't ever been trampled on by everyone and wished you had the means to fight back? When he does become Electro, he's probably the coolest villain ever i.e; when he turns into pure electricity and disappears into a power socket. He's actually a very scary villain and I wish they kept him somehow instead of cooking up some bullsh*t way to kill him. Another note on cliché: the scientist who runs the institute for the criminally insane where they keep Electro is an over-the-top neo-nazi-scientist type, he's even German!

Not as bad as I thought it would be, I kind of expected another Twilight or Hunger Games; although Divergence does have it's Twilight moments. The movie does actually make me think and is pretty smart in parts, especially the Tris vs Jeanine scene towards the end, despite it's predictability. To be honest, I rather enjoyed the movie until all the corny lovey-dovey scenes between Tris and Four; the movie minus the Tris and Four "romantic" parts would've raised the movie's stock in my book. Another thing that would've helped was to revise the completely lame ending, which doesn't quite make sense, is totally anti-climactic and is obviously screaming out: "SEQUEL!". Lastly,I was hoping there'd be some explanation as to why they had to live within the boundaries of the city, apart from Tris narrating at the beginning that there was a "war" - which I don't fully believe, so I hoped there'd be a twist ending, but it never came. Actually the more I think about it, the more I dislike it and the more critisicism i can think of. So in the end, yeah, I didn't like it.