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Reviews
St. Agatha (2018)
So, so bad
I gave it one star more than the minimum because at least Carolyn Hennesy seemed to enjoy playing Mother Superior. But it's abysmally bad. The writers didn't know or seem to care what they were doing. They continually made decisions that insulted the intelligence of the audience. These nuns would never be able to overpower a bunch of grown-ass women so easily - their methods would have worked on children or very young teen girls, not women. That is the first mistake and it's downhill from there. The flashbacks stall any momentum. The climax is unsatisfying. The villainous nuns are all paper-thin as characters and we never see a motivation for them to do what they did (all of which was insanely risky and illegal) beyond "money." Compare this to a top-shelf horror/thriller like Get Out and you'll see just how badly it fails. Time is precious and no one deserves to suffer through this movie.
Another Life (2019)
The writing is an insult
From the premise, this show had potential ... but the writing is some of the worst I've ever seen. The writing is extremely manipulative; everything seems done to get a cheap emotional rise out of the viewer. In the first episode there is a violent mutiny, and while the captain survives the mutiny, there are no consequences ... NOTHING happens to the people who violently attacked her and took control of her ship and almost killed everyone on board in the process. It's actually insulting to viewers, and that's just the first episode. I can't imagine the torture it must be to watch the entire season.
Ai qing wan sui (1994)
Lonely Taipei in the 90s
I've seen a lot of movies and this might very well be my favourite ... it just gets me, probably because of how much I identify with Hsiao-kang and May Lin. It was my first taste of "slow cinema" and of minimalist film, and I loved it. I've seen it many times now. It's meditative and sad and funny. Nobody does loneliness and anomie like Tsai Ming-liang.
But please be aware of what you're getting into before you watch this film and leave a 1-star review. Slow cinema is not for everyone. For some people, watching this movie will be like picking up difficult poetry when all they've ever read up until that point was popular fiction. Vive L'Amour is not the most inaccessible work from Tsai Ming-liang, but it is not accessible to the average person who expects a certain level of pacing and noise and motion from a film (there is barely a line of dialogue in the film's first 20 minutes). Ideally, audiences should dabble in more accessible art house films before coming to slow cinema. Or they should check out Tsai's Rebels of the Neon God before this.
The Haunting of Hill House (2018)
Severe flaws that become more apparent as the series unfolds
How on earth does this thing have an 8.9/10 rating (as of Nov 2018)? This was one of the most frustrating viewing experiences I've had in years. I wouldn't have guessed it from the first few episodes, which I enjoyed despite some misgivings, but by the time the last one rolled around I was saying "Oh god not another monologue" every ten minutes.
There are some impressive storytelling flourishes - I'll give it that, and a lot of work obviously went into the production. But that can't save a series that feels bloated, self-indulgent, overly verbose and melodramatic and stuffed with monologues.
It also features many of the frustrating habits of horror films - parents that don't listen to children and dismiss whatever they say; adults that repress supernatural experiences despite overwhelming evidence; poor communication between characters (there would be no show if these people spoke to each other); characters who ignore all the signs and engage the supernatural by themselves in the dead of night without telling anyone else, etc. And it's not that I don't like horrors. I love a good horror - but with this one (and with so many modern horrors), the overall arc of the storytelling feels cheap and pointless. Never again will I trust the hype around a show without doing some research myself.