Reviews

I honestly don't know why I liked this show so much. It's a simple and straightforwards good guys fight evil demonic forces. Characters are not very deep or multifacited and chibi is waaaaay over the the top in many parts of it for certain characters. Especially one character.

I was watching the latest season of Attack on Titan while watching this show and it seemed that there was not way I would get into a pretty but simple shonen show like this compared to the epic depth and human complexity of AOT.

But something just hooked me about this show. It's actually great. More of a fun and engaging popcorn action anime than anything else. It is a little overrated but at the top of the genre in straight up shonen. Also the main character is very likeable. Like a nice and kind guy with passion. A little different from the standard melodramatic types in much of shonen action.

I'm admittedly a latecomer to this show. I watched it very off and on as a teenager in the 90's/early 2000's when it was on. Liked it but didn't follow it. This just happened to be my girlfriend's all time favorite show and I began watching it for her and something to watch together that she wanted to share with me. I didn't mean to LOVE it this much! It's not even because I like Wedon's stuff, this show is extremely engrossing, fun, dramatic, comedic, dark, and many more things. It knows its town episode by episode, where comedy doesn't get in the way of drama or horror or real character moments. You just love every character for who they are and want to see them grow and struggle.

I remember it as more campy and meta as a teen but watching it now, it's much darker and more dramatic than I remember it, as well as self-referencing.

I'm really not a fan of having to go through the 90's type of TV pre streaming seasons where seasons were 20+ episodes, but each season had me hooked and not bored or wanting to skip episodes. It's very interesting how the show grows too. The first two seasons, like Star Trek TNG (my all time favorite show from my youth) were more contained episodes and the show was just coming together. And it was very much stuck in the super exaggerated high school 90's thing, but interestingly began to mature out of that by the third season. Then the show seemed to mature by the 4th and 5th seasons and on. And was not predictable.

I'm admittedly not finished, I'm half way through season 5, but I enjoy every minute, every line of dialogue. Every character struggle.

This show really snuck up on me and it easily on the top three or five list of all time favorite TV shows that I have ever seen.

It's worth putting all the latest streaming shows on hold to revisit this fantastic adventure!

Or better said, it resonates with you or not at all.

I didn't know what this was until last year when I noticed it on netflix and a friend told me to see it. I thought it was some old 80's thing at first and looked possibly really dumb.

It seemed dumb at first until I got the absurdist humor. It's like it parodies itself as it goes along.

I loved the characters and was constantly interested to see where they would go next, I could somehow hold caring about the characters while also realizing that the characters are a joke.

I can totally see how some may dislike this movie (and recent miniseries), but it really surprised me. And how many actors in it who were little to unknown at the time.

So better late to a cult classic than never.

All I remember from this piece of garbage was something about several forgettable pretty characters who should've been in a dumb slasher film, and people in rubber suits stomping around in rain in the dark.

What made me absolutely despise this film was the overly graphic deaths of several people. Notably the mothers being impregnated and the death of a child in the beginning. It's not that I'm offended or can't take disturbing gore and deaths in a horror movie but these things just had not meaning. It was like "hey look how disturbing we can make this!" When something horrible happens to someone in a movie like this, there has to be some meaning, or reason. Not just a sense of people getting off on excess suffering. Consider the other alien and predator movies, did they try and push the envelope just cause? The horror and deaths fit. In here, it's like the creators of the film were getting off on it or something. One youtube reviewer called the gore and horror in this "mean spirited"

Blah, hated this!

When I first saw the trailer of this my reaction was that it seemed so similar to Alien or Prometheus that it would have to be damn good to win me over.

I didn't hate it but found it lackluster and forgettable.

I truly thought that the end of Prometheus signaled the origin of the xenomorph but they scrapped that and made something else that just was too convenient and took away the mystery of the creature. I had felt that it was supposed to be mysterious but it now seems kind of ruined.

The characters were like a forgettable rip off of the characters of Alien and somewhat of Aliens. I just didn't get into any of them. Seemed like the same territory was tread with space jockeys in Prometheus and Alien, and done significantly better.

They changed several things about the growth and character of the creatures for plot convenience that was simply inconsistent.

I don't feel the effects were bad at all like some reviewers have complained about. But some creature parts at the end looked like CGI from a video game.

To me it was similar to Spectre in the James Bond franchise. Rehashing what has been done before by the franchise with unnecessary layers of back story we never seemed to have asked for. Just feeling like a retread.

I really don't mean to hate on this movie. It's of course Ridley's excellent direction but I just didn't feel anything for this. Love the xenomorph itself though. Still one of the greatest and most menacing creatures of all time.

You know, I used to walk by this as a kid at my local Blockbuster and look at it and for some reason never wanted to see it. Now I feel a divine hand was at play to keep my love for E.T. and all that is good in the world from being emotionally sodomized.

It's truly beyond words how much I hate this advertisement and movie that would've been horribly sued if it hadn't bombed.

Throughout this movie I was let down each time the grotesque stupid creatures didn't die a horrible, torturous death.

The people were just generally bad actors and uninteresting.

I just can't respect this as a real movie. It's soooooo much ET and such a blatant advertisement for diabetes water: coca cola, and MacPoop food.

And those aliens... those horrible animatronics and faces that are disturbing to look at. It really highlights how amazing that Spielberg's movie could make an alien that could be seen as almost grotesque, lovable.

Man, these producers in the 80's must've really, really thought children were stupid.

Do not see this whatever you do. Save yourself!

Watching this through a second time, this show is just one of the best pieces of story telling and animation in general of the new millennium or any time.

It just all works. The characters, story, every bit of drama, action, comedy. Although it has anime influences, it has more of the feel of a western cartoon but has much better pacing and goes into some heavy themes. Such as war, death, interpersonal drama, and struggling to find oneself.

Seriously, it's up there with long fantasy journey sagas, such as Star Wars and Lord of The Rings.

Usually, I'm not super excited about new shows on netflix when they pop up on there. But this one seemed alright, so I gave it a shot.

And ohh my God was this a phenomenal show!

I read a review that described this show as a mix between Steven King and Spielberg's works from the 80's and it totally feels that way.

It is a mix of genres, drama, horror, mystery, sci-fi, supernatural thriller and so on. But knows what it is going for and what it is about, so it is more of a synergy than a hodgepodge of genres and tones.

There's a certain metaphor that runs through the season with the kids that I found brilliant and comedic at times. It sort of tied the series and its events together, but I can't give any more details.

The acting was superb, from the kids to the adults. No weak performances whatsoever. The direction was also excellent.

This had real weight. You cared about the characters and their interactions and attachments with each other. You felt the drama. It wasn't just thrown at you trying to make you feel something like many dramas can do.

What I found original was that there was three layers of main characters, each with their own part to play in the mystery. The adult main characters, the teenagers and the kids. And each with their own arcs in relation to the other characters in their level of age.

I loved the synthesized soundtrack, that truly set the tone and setting.

If I had to nitpick, I would say that the bullies were the standard antagonists to drive the plot and drama with the kids, but the actors in those roles still acted well and they were secondary characters.

This is one show that truly deserves the hype and ratings it is getting.

I don't know who these Duffer brothers are, but they may be destined for more.

Like many of my generation, I have been bit by the bad movie bug by MST3K. But so many bad movies are just bad: boring, uninteresting, not laugh out loud hilarious.

It can be said that comedy cannot be comedy if it is forced, it must be spontaneous to be real comedy. There is no way this movie was originally intended to be bad like this, it took a work of mad genius to create this.

And it is mad.

Most of the "dialogue" is exposition. Characters are described by others and not shown who they are through what they do. Everything's incorrect about filming. I'm not a film student or anything but there's a certain feel about when it's correct in a place of dialogue to cut to the other person. There's a way people interact that's natural, even with bad lines. But these lines are not just delivered badly, they're insane! It's almost indescribable.

After viewing this, I've struggled to find other bad movies that are so entertainingly hilarious but I seem to end up just finding boring-unengaging junk, such as battlefield earth. Foodfight! seems like another contender.

Usually filmmakers are admonished for churning out bad movies but this movie deserves an applause. I was literally screaming and howling through this. So many "what just happened?!" moments.

And that flower shop scene, wow. Possibly the pinnacle of film making.

And why does this feel like a bad mid 90's made for TV movie? Everyone and everything seemed 90's.

Go see this movie!

On paper, this show appears to be a number of clichés of the supernatural anime subgenre. Youths going to an exorcist academy to fight demons and the drama and hijinks that occur along the way. 9/10 times I find that type of anime to be very standard and underwhelming, but this series seemed to execute those cliche's in a manner that made this series surprisingly engaging.

I have a family member who went through film school who has told me that you can have the most derived and clichéd story, but it still can be superb, it's all about the execution.

Now this series was not even close to the stand out originality of series such as Cowboy Beebop, Attack on Titan, Trigun, and such but it stands on its own because of an engaging cast of characters, especially the two main characters. The twins.

This series may not go into the depth of some of the above mentioned series but it has great themes of friendship, being an outcast, family and such.

And I'm not much of a fan of the chibi thing, and it didn't at all get on my nerves or unnecessarily break from the drama as I've found in other shonen series with chibi.

Overall, not one of the top animes out there but highly recommend watching for any anime fans out there.

I remembered that this was on Netflix, so I popped it on, not having seen it since my teenage years and this movie came out in 1982, the year I was born, so it has been a while.

Viewing this movie through adult eyes was a powerful experience. I was of course reminded of the movie from my childhood having watched it dozens of times, but I didn't anticipate how drawn in and emotional I would feel over it.

Everything about this movie was perfect, every beat of events, every line, every scene.

I was powerfully drawn into the lives and interaction of the three siblings, as if I was there with the family. E.T. felt like truly an empath as a creature.

And the acting with the siblings and especially the Elliott character was exceptional. I can't recall any other child performances from a child that age which was so real and brilliant.

I'm the type that does not become emotional at movies, almost no matter what movie or what occurs, but I was no good at the end, even knowing every scene by heart. It just drew me into the felt experience of virtually every main character.

The one criticism was that I felt as a critical adult, that the flying bikes seemed like too easy a plot point but hey, it's a somewhat family movie anyways. Although it's a little heavy for a standard family film.

This is one of the greatest, most perfect pieces of film making every to occur and I hope that the younger generations can appreciate ET as my generation has.

Although I originally had this pegged as somewhat below Attack on Titan for one of the best anime series I've seen in the past decade, the second time through it entertained me just as much.

This is about a future humanity fighting aliens in giant mechs. Wow, that's an anime cliché that usually goes south and needs superb execution to be something decent. This series does just that. Executes this premise in a way that has a unique feel, despite appearing derivative and cliché on paper.

This is a very grown up anime, no real chibi here. Although not at all the dystopia of Attack on Titan. In my experience, Sidonia was built up as this amazing place, almost a character itself with many sides and mysteries, that draws you in. I felt like I wanted to be in this world and share in the adventures and drama.

I found the action to have real weight. The humans and even main characters feel vulnerable, and have to really struggle. No real deus ex machina to make everything better in the end. People die and there are real consequences for the actions that occur in the battles.

There's an interesting dynamic about the aliens, where some characters have interesting hypotheses on them and why they're fighting, which may lead to some great plot twists later on.

I loved the love stories, which take time to develop as well as the character interactions. Although there were a few clichés, each character ends up with their unique characteristics, hopes, wants, and dreams.

There are real themes of love, loss, war, friendship, political intrigue and manipulation of power, and so on. There's also a real sense of humanity.

There are a few flaws in this, but hell, there are a few flaws in Attack on Titan: a near perfect anime in my opinion. The first one is that the main character Nagate, although truly likable, can come off as that quintessential anime protagonist nice guy that the girls are all into for some reason. But with his background, it makes sense that he's out of it and socially inept. But he was still a character that was much more than a cliché by the end.

I felt that Titan balanced the many secondary characters better and there are several in Sidonia who seemed to come and go and by the time they're reintroduced, you've forgotten who they are. But this didn't really matter as there are 5-6 main characters who were integral to the plot, that were focused on.

There was one character who was just about to have an arc when something happened to this person in the second season, that was neat as a change but kind of left me hanging.

Much of the political story that gives you small bits at a time seemed confusing but made more sense the second time through.

Overall, I found that this show was truly addicting and serial watching it never became a chore, I couldn't wait to see the next episodes.

Can't recommend highly enough.

It's not just that this movie failed to draw from the excellent source material, it was just plain bad and forgettable as a stand alone movie.

The first problem I noticed was a terrible delivery of lines. Then the characters not feeling like the characters from the show. They were so brooding and angry. Katara and Sokka especially. Like B movie level line delivery in a high budget film. Seemed totally incongruent.

The next thing was that they attempted to put too much into one film. Compressing an entire season of the show into it. It make a pace of skipping around as if the movie was simply trying to get it all over with.

Even if you didn't have a reference for the bending from the show, it was just absurd how much movement the characters had to make for one little effect. A whole kata to move a rock or make a tiny fireball.

I did find the sets and art in the film pretty. The CGI was alright but could've been better.

Uuugh. How did such nauseating acting get past the director and editing?

Blame MST3K but I'm highly entertained by epically bad movies such as The Room and Caligula.

Viewing many of the youtube reviews of this title, I thought it would make that list. But I simply found it boring and uninteresting. The acting was generally bad, especially the lines by the love interest.

The special effects were dated, even for the time, when CGI was not as well integrated with practical effects as it is now.

The sets looked like the same old abandoned warehouses of post apocalyptic movies with a lesser budget, making much of it very unconvincing.

The story and setting seemed like it was trying to be a 90's epic but didn't quite make it to the next ledge of that canyon and fell into nothingness.

Whereas the Room keeps you on the edge of your seat, excited for what badness lays right around the next corner, this moving was like a boring drone of badness.

Couldn't even finish.

Guess I won't be converting to scientology any time soon.

I confess that I'm not a huge comic book or superhero fan, I'm more of a scifi nerd and can sometimes find god-like superheroes to be unrelatable and without weight to their action and stories, something about their demigod nature takes the visceral feel and characterization away. And I'm honestly burnt out with all the superhero oversaturization and was not excited about yet another Marvel series.

But I was completely blown away by this series. It's not the lighthearted, CGI action of the Marvel movies, or the indulgently dysphoric type of show like The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones, where it exists simply to attempt to one-up itself in more and more shocking moments with nothing redeemable.

This show is dark and gritty without it being about shock value at all. It really sort of reminds me of a D.C. version of Batman as Daredevil/Murdock being a conflicted and troubled hero with principles.

One of the greatest aspects to the show is that there are several characters other than just Murdock who have their own story and development and are just as important has he is.

Kingpin has a characterization in season 1 almost as compelling as Murdock's.

I find the acting fantastic, the action well choreographed and with true weight that you can feel.

I'm to the latter half of season 2 right now and I'm just as entertained with this season as the first. And they've introduced some other characters in this universe very well.

I also appreciate the smaller scale of this series compared to the Justice League, X-men, Avengers, where the heroes are so powerful that they need to keep just fighting god-like villains and it's always the world/universe in peril to the point where I just don't feel it anymore.

Daredevil is about people. Yes, some are quite unique, but they're people, and it's the city, neighborhood and everyday life that matters. It's a superhero show but it's a crime drama as well, similar to Batman.

I just can't recommend this show highly enough... Love it!

I have been a Star Trek fan ever since I was sat down in front of a TV in a dark room in 1987 at age 5, completely enthralled by Encounter at Farpoint.

So I of course grew up with TNG and watched the original series afterwards, but also grew up on the movies but never felt the TNG made it on the big screen very well.

So despite my love for the first two series and casts, I absolutely loved DS9.

Objectively, it was darker with more continuation of it's stories. Unlike TNG where Picard is an adventurer philosopher, a master and commander in space, DS9 is an ongoing drama with a coherent universe. This is where the TNG universe came together. In the original series and TNG, the Star Trek universe felt somewhat fragmented. It was a universe put together through fragmented episodes.

In DS9, the characters were fantastic. They played off each other significantly. For example, Odo and Quark seemed to need each other to be who they were, despite acting like they hated each other, being polar opposites.

After this series, I was disappointed by the next two series, Voyager felt like Start Trek "lite," and Enterprise seemed like a prequel I didn't really care about.

Although I pop on a good TNG or original series episode randomly, DS9 is constantly pulling me in to watch multiple episodes to follow it's brilliant stories and universe.

Wow, I was interested in this show when I read an article about it sometime in late 2014 but didn't expect it to be this good.

Excuse my rant, but we live in a cynical age and there is a trend of these high production dramas that are simply dysphoric. Horrible events follow more horrible events while every redeemable character eventually dies or does something horrible. For example, shows such as Weeds, The Walking Dead, and Game of Thrones. Even The Shield could push the envelope with the actions and choices of the character while keeping them likable in the end.

I am feeling refreshed by Sense8, in that it can be heavy and dramatic with completely human and complex characters who you simply fall in love with and identify with. I am not easily moved by movies and TV shows, but I am deeply moved by almost every episode. And I am riveted by the humanity of the characters. Especially the human moments where the characters are innocently exploring their connections with each other.

It has elements of a J.J. Abrams show or Heroes. Except unlike Lost or Heroes it seems that the creators truly know where it is going and it has more of a sense of direction, albeit slow moving, and coherence.

There was one scene where the characters were all sharing an uplifting experience, which brought an involuntary smile to my face.

Do yourself a favor and watch this show!

Being that this is basically the forgotten Arnold film, I had to check it out. It can't be worse than Commando right? Ohhh it's worse.

What I didn't realize was that Arnold was still an up and coming action star until the late 80's, early 90's when he was in Predator, Total Recall and the other infamous films of that era which exploded his popularity as an iconic celebrity, and not simply that 70's bodybuilder champion who attempted acting in some early 80's films.

In this film, Arnold is acting much more and I don't fault him on any acting ability at this time. He found his own more and more and despite not having beginnings as a professional actor, his charisma has carried him alone in film. And he has improved. Hell, I thought Daniel Radcliff was horrendous in the first two HP films but improved dramatically from then on.

The problem with this pile of moldy dung was that they set up this fascist future and this need for some big epic rebellion only to have it be about Arnold and his love interest surviving in some game of death that I could care less about.

The effects were terrible, the one liners were painful to hear, the acting was over the top, that background synth music was one of the worst themes of the 1980's. The game show aspect of it was annoying and so on.

I'm a big fan of Arnold. Even this lesser films, but this one was at the bottom of the list.

Although I grew up with TNG and watched Encounter at Farpoint when I was five years old and was hooked, I had found the original cast to translate into movies much better. Although the movies were generally excellent with the exception of V which was more like a parody of Star Trek, this movie was absolutely superb in every aspect.

The music gives a sense of intense suspense and foreboding. I mean, this is one of the greatest scores in a sci if next to Star Wars. The emotion of first seeing the signatures of the original cast in the credits is etched into my memory. I see no weak point in this movie. Its script is strong the acting is superb, the story and plot are coherent. Everyone in the case is playing themselves and the three main characters: Kirk, McCoy and Spock are highly reflective on themselves and where they have come.

Being set against the end of the cold war makes this movie utterly powerful.

General Chang is an excellent villain. Not just the stereotypical dumb and angry Klingon, he is cunning and intelligent, quoting Shakespeare through his scenes.

Spock's successor did not turn out to be just a female Spock and that was an interesting twist.

The only gripe I have is that they were able to make this torpedo to follow the gas of the bird of prey at the end. Well, why don't they always do that if it was so effective? It should have traced the neutron energy surge or something particular to that prototype. But just a detail.

I cannot believe that this movie only has a 7.2. Maybe people didn't want such a dark send off to the original cast?