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The Last of Us: Endure and Survive (2023)
how'd this get so bad so fast
I loved episodes 1-3. I thought 4 was fairly cliche and a little boring, but thought it was a hiccup. Episode 5 is laughably bad. I was expecting and hoping for something good or at least half decent, eagerly looking forward to it. But I ended up laughing several times at how ridiculous it is. It is laughably bad. Throughout. I was constantly pulled out of the story by the bad writing. Saturday morning cartoonish good guy, bad guy, villain speech, monsters all pop out, people don't react in any halfway believable way, heavy-handed "oo that'd be cool" writing instead of the barest understanding of survival, human behavior, and combat.
Oblivion (2013)
Cliché, predictable, boring
So slow, so unoriginal, so bland. The "twist" was visible a mile away. I laughed out loud so many times and there is nothing in there meant to be funny. The plot holes are countless. I don't know how people enjoy this movie unless they're in it solely for the cool effects or they've never seen sci-fi before.
If all the Tom Cruise clones instinctively protect humans, why do the surviving humans pretend to be aliens? Other than that it's necessary for this movie's cheap trick of a "twist"? Idiotic. How does anyone watch this and think it's a good movie? And why is Jamie Lannister in there? I mean, why is the actor all dressed up like he's still in Game of Thrones? Doesn't he know he should wear sci-fi clothes for a sci-fi movie?
The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
Matrix Regurgitations: weak boring fan fic
This movie screamed weak fan fiction penned by a pack of excitable teenage sci-fi geeks. It had not one shred of originality. It was 1/2 regurgitation of past Matrices and 1/2 standard Hollywood cliche.
This review contains no spoilers because there is nothing to spoil. What is the plot? I don't know. What was the point of this movie? Shameless cash grab.
This is no comedy, but I heard some snorts and disbelieving laughs in the theater. I felt like I was watching a high school film project. I was texting on my phone for significant chunks of this movie and left to return a call. I can't believe I paid to watch such utter garbage.
The Queen's Gambit (2020)
How bored I'd have to be to enjoy this
EXTREMELY bored. This would have been an okay two hour movie. Great sets, great acting, interesting material. But stretched into eight or ten hours or whatever it was, it is booooor-ring. So flat. No arc. Loose unexplored threads. Cardboard cutout characters... including the main character! So devoid of skillful story telling.
Dig through all the high praise for this snooze-fest and you'll find much more articulate reviews about the massive shortcomings of this series.
Watchmen: A God Walks into Abar (2019)
9 star episode in midst of 5 star mediocrity
While there is certainly a lot of creativity in this series, the execution up until this point had been very weak, on par with many Saturday morning cartoons. Then BAM! Just when seven previous episodes primed me perfectly for disappointment, disdain, and disinterest, A God Walks Into a Bar hits. Very compelling and enjoyable.
2081 (2009)
Yaaaawn.....
I've never read Kurt Vonnegut. Apparently, that would have helped me have some sort of appreciation for the attempt to turn his material into film. Alas, no appreciation. Yaaaawn. That's what I have to say about it. Boring. Lifeless. Non-sensical. Looks like a bored, half-assed attempt at anti-authority angst I could have scratched out in thirty minutes when I was in high school, if I was feeling entirely uninspired.
Through the Wormhole (2010)
Painful to watch
I tried watching this with my kids. It was boring but we persisted. It was really dumb. They hated it. I hated it. We couldn't make it through a single episode. It's all fluff cinematography and semi-slick one-liners that twist the science into something that kinda sounds cool and no scientific panel would ever get behind.
It Comes at Night (2017)
Boring, unrealistic, pointless
The characters in this movie do not act as people act. It seems like it's leaving clues to an underlying mystery, but not one of them pans out. There is no mystery. The title is meaningless. Nothing happens. If it were realistic, it could be a psychological thriller. It could have been a horror movie. It could have been a pandemic movie. But it is just a half-assed it's-the-end-of-the-world-so-everyone-becomes-paranoid-and-kills-each-other-at-the-drop-of-a-hat movie. Boring. Stupid. Truly awful.
I had a bad feeling at the start just because the lead actor was in Warrior, another truly awful movie. If I ever see that guy with a leading role in a flick again, I'm immediately turning it off.
Hell Girl (2019)
Oops, wrong Depraved
Someone recommended Depraved and somehow I got Hell Girl (aka Depraved) instead of the movie I was looking for. I was thoroughly confused about why anyone would recommend this painful garbage. Looks like something that me and my high school friends might have thrown together in a week goofing around with a video camera when we were 16. Bad script, terrible dialog, bad acting, this one fails all around.
Hereditary (2018)
Boring, meandering, unbelievable, sometimes laughable
I have no high expectations for any movies these days. Most of them are garbage. But I do often enjoy horror movies, even if the characters don't act as human beings would and there are loose threads and there's no compelling story telling.
I enjoyed Midsommar, The Witch, Babadook, The Conjuring, It Follows. Even though they all had plenty of faults, I was genuinely spooked and creeped out and intrigued.
Hereditary was truly awful. It was meandering and lost at times, boring, annoying, and sometimes laughable. Plus it had more than the average number of faults that plague Hollywood movies.
It had a high rating, so I persisted instead of shutting it off halfway through. I figured it must have some sort of compelling ending to earn a high rating and make up for the long, meandering, boring crawl. But the last quarter of the movie was the worst part of it. I groaned and I laughed and then groaned some more. Truly terrible.
I won't go into all the details. It's not worth it. I'm just truly baffled how anyone could like this movie.
A History of Violence (2005)
Haven't laughed so much since The Room
What a bizarre film. Very reminiscent of The Room. Unchanging soft bland music that comes with every scene whether it's tense, light, sexy, violent, or a family scene. Strange frequent U-turns in character personality. Super cringey sex scenes. Dialog written by AI trained on nothing but old movies and soap operas. Script written by an alien familiarized with humans only through TV and radio transmissions in space. Yet strangely magnetic and compelling.
I haven't laughed so much at a movie since I saw The Room a few years ago. I highly recommend it to anyone who appreciates earnest, cringey, laughable movies.
Black Mirror: Striking Vipers (2019)
This is the opening episode for the season?
ZZZzzzzzzzz.....
Huh wha... is it over yet? NOT a good sign of things to come.
Interesting concept for an episode, I have no problem with that. Execution was terribly unimaginative. Characters were stiff cardboard. Black Mirror needs to hire a writer or two who understand basic storytelling and character development.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
Braindead doctors and wasted potential
The beginning of this movie was great. But after it was perfectly 100% obvious to anyone in the world except these two braindead parents that Martin had poisoned the kids, I could not stay in the movie. My mind kept spinning around asking, Why has no one even said the word "poison"? Why are the parents not enlisting the help of poison specialists? Why is Martin not in police custody being grilled about which poison he used? Why are the parents not researching poisons themselves? Why have they not demanded that the police search Martin's home for poisons?
This stupidity ruined a potentially great film. It makes no sense. Great concept. Horrible execution.
A Quiet Place (2018)
so many sins
Sins:
1. Newspaper says, "It's sound!" So they figured out killer creatures attack every sound and promptly ran very loud newspaper presses to announce it. And loud delivery trucks.
2. This family has survived when hardly anyone else has, so obviously they know how to stay quiet and know how important it is. Bare feet. Sign language. Path of sand. So there's no way the kid is going to sound off a loud toy. There's no way he's not going to know it's a huge mistake. There's no way he's not going to be terrified of loud noises. There's no way if something in his hands starts making loud noises that he's not going to throw it away from himself.
3. Power. Hmmm. Who's running the loud power plants? Who's doing the noisy work of maintaining the grid? Or did survivors invent perfectly silent generators?
4. Newspaper says, "THEY CAN HEAR YOU". Duh. Is this happening in a parallel universe where people typically assume creatures can't hear? Isn't the relevant fact: "ALIENS BLIND"?
5. Ok, so... Talking in anything about the barest whisper: No. Moving regular hard pieces around a Monopoly board: No. But walking down a flight of creaky steps: Yes?
6. Let me get this straight. They're setting up an old, creaky, above ground, non-barricaded house to have a baby in? Having a loud, crying, screeching baby is crazy enough, but if they're going to do it wouldn't they set up in a fortified, underground bunker of some kind?
7. Zzzzzzzzz..... jesus this is slow.
8. Jump scare! Wheh! Something happened.
9. You know what this needs? More sign language instead of dialog.
10. Zzzzzzzzzz
11. The tension between daughter and father might be interesting if we had any clue what it was about.
12. The creek is making noise. Why aren't the creatures attacking it?
13. Learning more now. If you make a noise, then wait in that exact spot for a while, a creature will come and attack you. And if make a noise and then take three steps to the side?
14. They just leave the doors open? How did the creature silently enter?
15. So the creatures can hear low talking from a long way away, but if they're in the same house as you they can't even hear loud breathing?
16. And the house doesn't have a bunch of safe rooms?
17. All that fancy equipment, but they have nothing rigged up to attract the creatures away from the house with loud noises at the flip of a switch?
18. Got the answer: Yes, they just leave the doors open.
19. Wow. Fast labor! Was that 30 minutes from water breaking to birth? Amazing.
20. And to keep the creatures out of the basement... a small mattress covering a big hole in the floor! Brilliant! Won't the alien be surprised when it walks across that!
21. A blind creature with no heightened sense of smell. Interesting.
22. Day 485. "Promise me. You will protect them." Ummm... what? Fathers protect their children generally. Apparently this father has been doing it for 485 days, and probably long before that. I'm starting to prefer the sign language to the dialog. The dialog is retarded.
23. Lol. Another jump scare. Kid suddenly grabs sister from under a tractor. Is he trying to make her scream?
24. Wait, what...? Is she dreaming? Suddenly there's two feet of water in the basement safe room from a faucet left on. And there's a alien swimming underwater in it. And the first thing she does with the alien a few feet away from her is make noise entering the water. Who took the lid off the baby box and oxygen mask off the baby? The mother or the alien?
25. "They're smart. They'll find a safe place." So when he goes looking for these smart kids in their safe places, the first place he looks is in the cornfield?
26. Ah, the safe place was not the cornfield. It was the top of a grain silo where if you step in the wrong spot you fall in and suffocate under the grain.
27. Ok, so this family survived while most everyone else is dead. So... everyone else is even more stupid than this family?
28. Fun fact. Humans sink in grain. Aliens do not.
29. Fun fact 2. Walking in shoes: too loud. Running barefoot: a-okay! Jumping 20 feet to the ground: a-okay!
30. Where the hell is the gun?! Why did he only have it for that one short scene?
31. The alien can soundlessly tear a huge hole through the side of a steel grain silo in a second. But the roof of a pickup truck? The alien struggles with that one. Ford tough.
32. Man does whatever it takes to survive 485 days. But when he needs a noise to distract an alien away from his kids, what does he do? Screams, stands in place, and waits to be killed. Doesn't throw something. Doesn't run. Doesn't swing his axe. Uh huh.
33. Sound of truck rolling down hill doesn't attract nearby aliens who have been attacking every other sound. Okay.
34. Close the damn doors you morons!
35. Maybe the device that drives aliens away would work just as well without painfully wearing it against your head. Moron.
36. Alien plays dead.
37. "Indestructible" alien killed by one bullet.
38. Final showdown cut. Time at waterfall included. Time dancing included. Time shopping included. Final showdown cut.
Hostel (2005)
5 minutes in and already want them dead
Rule #1 of horror: The audience must connect with the main characters, must like them and/or relate to them, and must feel like they're real people. That's what makes good horror so horrific. If you like people and can imagine yourself in their shoes and want them to be well, the events of the movie are terrifying. On the other hand, if the main characters are two-dimensional badly-written annoying actors, you don't care what happens to them. Or worse, you start hoping they die just so they're not in the movie any more.
Hostel breaks this rule. The characters are stereotypical American college men saying stereotypical college dialog. Five minutes in and already I want these annoying twats executed. I would keep watching for the satisfaction of seeing badly written characters tortured, but I have better things to do with my time.
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)
First half pulled me in, second half left me wretching
I watched this film in two halves over two days. I enjoyed the first half and eagerly anticipated the rest of the movie. I enjoyed its quirkiness, its beautifully convincing sets, its interesting subjects. I wanted to see how the story would unfold as the scent-obsessed man continued down his path of collecting scents and creating perfumes. His accidental killing of one woman and subsequent impulsive murder of a second seemed within the boundaries of good story telling and fit in with his compulsion to collect all scents and create a perfect perfume, and I was not put off by the dark turns.
The second half had a completely different tone for me. The obsession with collecting all scents vanished and instead the guy went on a murder spree set to whimsical music, apparently to create a perfume of which all 13 scents in all 4 parts were body odor. Apparently he thought the body odor of attractive young females is their soul and is love and apparently the movie's second half says that he was right.
With tires screeching the movie banged a hard right down a dark alley into a stinking rubbish heap. Stalking, murder, absurdity, more absurdity, a massive pointless out-of-place orgy, more absurdity, and the stupidest ending I've ever seen.
At first I gave Perfume a 5-star rating, the average of a 10 first half and a 0 second half. But on further reflection, the painfully void and meaningless garbage second half, by not fulfilling any of the promise of the first half, destroyed the first half's meaning too. I give it two stars for the beautiful set work and nothing more.