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GilesEnsor
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The Undeclared War (2022)
Not as Bad as Many Are Making Out
Okay, yes, there is some bad acting, but it's mostly Hannah Khalique-Brown who, quite frankly, sounds like my teenage daughter when she's having a sulk. Mind you, the way she is treated by her line managers would be grounds for a discrimination case in most normal companies, so I'm not surprised she's a bit grumpy. The rest of the cast aren't noticeably bad, so I'm not sure why the acting is taking such a drubbing here.
As for the story, I think it's rather good. It's relevant for the time, and reasonably entertaining. It does plod on a bit, and the story probably could have been compressed into fewer episodes, but the people saying the show's boring must get their entertainment from TikTok to have such poor attention spans.
The only real complaint I have about the entire series is the rather tedious lesbian story. There really isn't much point to it, and the two female stars could easily have been just friends, without turning them into a bit of cheap titillation. However, it's doesn't overly distract from the main story, so it's not really a big deal.
Definitely worth seven stars. However, with a bit more money and effort, I would have given it a couple more.
Den blomstertid nu kommer (2018)
Not bad, but far from great.
I thought I'd leave a review because I had to read the reviews to make sure that I hadn't missed the entire point of the film. Reading the other reviews, I realised that I hadn't missed the point, because there didn't seem to be a point.
What happens in the move? Who knows? Who invaded Sweden? I think it was Russia, but I'm not sure. Why is the main character so unlikeable that you're wishing him dead after about 10 minutes? I can't believe it was unintentional, so why make him like that. In fact, why is almost every character so unpleasant? Is this a Swedish national trait, or is it just this lot?
In the blurb on Netflix, it says, "Reminiscent of Cloverfield". Is it? Well, Cloverfield had a bloody great monster in it, this film doesn't, which is a pity because if it had a bloody great monster in it, we might know what the film was about..
I won't comment on the acting, script etc because I'm not Swedish, so can't really judge. I read other reviews saying the script was dire, but the subtitles obviously do their job, as the dialogue seems fine.
I think the one-star reviews are a bit unkind and the higher starred reviews must be from some of the people who donated to the making of the film. I think it's not too bad overall, but if Alex had died in the opening scene, it would have been a lot, lot better.
47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019)
A Lot Better Than I Thought It Would Be
So, I'm about 75% through and I thought I'd start writing this review because who cares about the ending, right?
The good stuff. Overall, it was a pretty good effort. The acting was decent, the special effects were fairly good, and the story was quite fun, although the ending was a bit silly.
Now the bad. Like at least one other reviewer, I know how to dive, and the ridiculous amounts or stupidity involved means that you really have to suspend belief. However, it's a movie and if they didn't do the stupid stuff, there would have been no point making it.
However, my biggest complaint is the one I always have with these types of movies. Once sharks have eaten, then there is no reason why they would continue to attack. I don't want to add any spoilers but at one point, all the girls were still alive and I reckon at least three other characters had been scoffed down. Surely, that's enough for even the hungriest of sharks.
Finally, there were so many jump scenes that it just got boring after a while. Two or three, fair enough, but anymore than that and your basically telling the audience that you had no other ideas except making the audience jump. That's pretty lazy film-making in my book.
Still, I gave it 5 stars because it really wasn't that bad and I knew the lake they were diving in before I saw the movie, which was cool.
Virgin Cheerleaders in Chains (2018)
NOT a friend of the director!
This is a pretty useless effort all round. There is nothing frightening about it and the story is boring. There's a bit of gore but it's film school stuff. Plus, there's an annoying white guy doing a bad Rastafarian act the entire way through. However, there is one amusing scene in the film, which includes the annoying white guy, so he gets a half-pass. It's also the only reason it got one extra star. Avoid this 'film' like the plague.
Atomic Zombies!!! (2016)
So Bad They Couldn't Even Get the Editing Right
Bizarrely, the acting for this one wasn't terrible, but so much else was that it couldn't stop the one-star review.
The fight scenes were horrendous, the 'special' effects were laughable, and the editing must have been during a day of drinking copious amounts of alcohol in a state where smoking wacky-backy is legal.
Don't bother.
Clownado (2019)
Truly Terrible in Every Way - Not One Redeeming Feature
Now, I'm a sucker for any film ending in -nado but this was so appalling on so many levels that the Asylum boys should sue. Script was non-existent, acting was so bad (and not in a funny way), and the gore was just pointless, and I'm a big fan of anything with 'zombie' in the title too.
Don't waste your time, even if you are desperate - you'd have more fun disabling your wifi and playing that dumb jumping dinosaur game on Google Chrome.
Roadkill (2011)
Better Than Average from SyFy
I know this is about 8 years late but I thought I'd write a review anyway.
Not such a bad film all things considered but it unfortunately lost its way about two thirds of the way through and just got sillier and sillier. The story line was okay, as was the acting (although Steven Rea, which is one of the reasons I watched it, was in it for all of about 5 mins), but overall it was, as I said, just a bit too silly to be a good movie.
Still, 6 out of 10 for effort.
Loophole (2019)
Never Forget to Look at the Rating!!!!
So, I was looking for a movie to watch and I was searching IMDB for various titles of the movies online and scrolled down to the reviews. For some reason, the review of this one was one of the good ones, presumably written by a friend of the director, and so, after making the schoolboy error of not checking out the rating, I started to watch. Here are my thoughts.
If I were drunk, with no script, no plan, and only children to use as actors, I would have made a better film than this. The story line is ridiculous, the acting is worse than the films made by the Asylum guys, and the script is as vacuous as the actors.
What's even more unbelievable is that it was based on a book, which I can only assume was some self-published Kindle rubbish that sold about three copies, and I'm being generous with the number of sales there.
There's also a mid-credits scene that I couldn't work out whether was real or part of the movie, which is basically a promo for Christianity. If they made this film in the hope of converting a few atheists, I'm afraid they must have been bitterly disappointed.
The Broken Key (2017)
Adding My Twopenneth Worth to Balance the Ridiculous 10/10s
Well, I feel somewhat heroic in the fact that I lasted longer than some but, as with all the other realistic reviews, this was truly horrendous, and I love movies like Sharknado, so I don't exactly have high standards.
The acting was terrible, the script was complete nonsense, the music destroyed almost everything, and it just made no sense.
Normally, I would add something like, "Watch it for the laughs", but it was not even possible to laugh at how terrible it was; it was just that bad.
Returned (2015)
The Worst Film of the Year?
This might possibly be the worst film of the year so far. It is so badly shot, I thought it might have been filmed with a hand phone. I think the 'director' was going for a documentary style film in some scenes but it just ended up making me feel seasick.
The acting is truly atrocious. The hospital scene towards the beginning of the film might be the most badly acted scenes in the history of badly acted scenes. Although the bar scene might actually be even worse.
The 'actors' don't seem to be actually trying. They are just talking their lines. Now this might work with some actors but not with these ones. They just sound like kids in a class when they have to read the lines of a play out loud.
The writing is also horrendous. I think my favourite line is when someone said, "We don't have any room on this team for incompetency." Apart from the fact that the word should be incompetence, I was thinking, "Oh, the irony".
I'm also unimpressed with the special effects in the 'sci-fi' bits. I am absolutely sure that pretty much every idea was stolen from some other film. Even the music seems to have come from 'Prometheus'.
I could go on but it is not worth my effort. This is where IMDb really needs to have a zero star rating as I felt my 1 star was way too generous.