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Castlevania: Nocturne (2023)
They added all the worst anime tropes
This has all the bones of the original series. The potential is there. But it's absolutely let down by the writing dialogue and world building.
The only compelling villain is the slave master. The show spends more time on the ridiculous sailor moon costume change sequences and Dragonball power up scenes than any of the villains motivations or personalities.
The plot is nonsense. Why does the antagonist need lackeys and minions if she can move planetary bodies around on a whim? Why can some night creatures talk? Why did the priest believe the vamps served his god? Why did grandad ditch his daughter and grandson? Why did they lose their magic? Why did Richter randomly get it back right as plot demanded like in bad anime?
There was no internal consistency. Sometimes a couple chump demons or vamps had them on the ropes, other times they carved through armies and elites like butter.
Don't F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer (2019)
Great fantasy thriller awful documentary
This is a fascinating gripping story, that glorifies a deranged failed actor and clumsy amateur criminal as some kind of impressive mastermind . Which is unfortunate because it should be an objective documentary.
It constantly misleads the viewer awkwardly cutting up the interviews to suit this narrative. Half the first ep was some dumbass advertising his reality tv show and basically admitting to being a gangster.
Giving attention to wannabe detectives from Facebook of all places. The same people who admit to inadvertently encouraging the crim and giving hime attention he craved. Focusing on the utterly clueless Canadian detective "duh, my brilliant detective sense told me rust coloured liquid near where we found the corpse was blood" no duh dick Tracy.
The worst part is that even manipulating the story the show leaves gaping plot holes in it narrative. We saw the accomplice in at least one of the videos, but no mention of that afterwords. Conveniently glossing over one of the Facebook morons having her work place doxed because they were on Facebook where that's publicly viewable to the crim. No explanation as to why the mums convinced he's innocent. No explanation of his end game or how he reacted. No follow up on how he was funding all this or getting the animals. No follow up on how he was posting this anonymously.
It's nothing but a disgusting opinion piece glorifying murders. They even go out of their way to compare him to famous serial killers. He murdered one person. But so 8s sexier so that's what they went with.
Kaleidoscope (2023)
A total mess
This should have been a movie. Theirs only 3 EPs worth watching and even then, only for the context. The only fun one is the heist.
Orange, blue, white.
Maybe you noticed what's wrong there. 8 hour long episodes of a heist show, with only 3 EPs about the heist and less than one showing any heisting.
Or the other thing. EPs arnt numbered. They intentionally put them in the wrong order because they think it's artsy. It doesn't work at all. It's impossible to follow the plot. Even watching chronologicaly they spliced in flashbacks of key scenes randomly, so that no matter what order the EPs are in the plot won't make sense till your 6+EPs in.
They then have the arrogance to exclude a proper ending. Despite having multiple episodes dedicated to the epilogue. We only find out what happens to 3 characters and 2 were side characters. They completely forgot the driver existed after the 2nd ep and completely changed his character from baby driver wannabe to just being a baby.
Which leads me to the acting/directing. They constantly forget about the characters quirks. The fence goes through like 5 different accents per scene. The driver had a compulsive tapping thing that lasted all of 2 scenes. The butcher was a coward, brave smuggler, social butterfly, escape artist whatever the plot demands in any given scene.
This was a mildly interesting concept that failed on almost every level.
The camera work was incredible. You didn't notice it did you? That's how you know it's good. No shaky cam, you always could see clearly what's happening.
The Last of Us: Long, Long Time (2023)
Fantastic Filler
This is a fantastic, entertaining short story. But it doesn't follow our protagonists. Its essentially a 30 minute spinoff that could have been entirley cut without effecting the story of our protagonists at all.
While i can't emphasize how fun of an episode this was enough, it does feel a like we are trading joel and ellie time with this and as such it's definitly filler. Given how they follow this trend in the upcoming episodes, i have to assume this filler is to make up for the parts of the game that were player controlled, padding it's run time. I just wish they had spent more time on the protagonists or world building, rather than filler.
The episode itself is sort of dark dramedy about a couple meeting and surviving the apocalypse together and intentionally parrelels joels relationship. While providing an entirley ooposite aproach to dealing with the new world, it's dangers and life in general.
Lovecraft Country (2020)
It's hard to describe because it's trying to do so many things at once
It's a story about a man searching for his dad, and 1900s racism and wizards and a secret society and coming of age and black culture and 1900s sexism and being gay and monsters and the bible etc..
The plot simarily is a series of "and then"s too. There's no pacing or coherence to scenes at all. Just flipping between characters one after for seemingly no other reason then to remind us they exist.
Half the runtime could have cut without loosing any plot. The entire boarding house arc is just filler. The only thing we learn is that strong female lead was a virgin which is entirely irrelevant and is just another dead end plot point to add to the list.
This had a great premise late 1900s America in a cthulian fantasy with modern social justice instead of Lovecraft's sheltered pov. But instead it's a poorly written character drama where the fantasy and adventure take a backseat to the domestic life of our protagonists extended family friends.
Doctor Who: Flux: Chapter Three - Once, Upon Time (2021)
Booger monsters have a new contender
Pure nonsense. Jodie's doctor has always been king of plot convenience. Suddenly remembering something when plot demands or the sonic which apparently can sense and explain everything in the universe now.
This season and this episode especially dials that up to 15. Suddenly there's a whole race forced to protect humanity, due to a never explained "soul bond"(where have they been for 13 seasons?). Now sontarens can time travel... Because reasons. Etc..
And now with the Skeletor pimps we have an entire episode of nonsense. Nothing makes any sense, the villains have no motativation, the dialogue implies they are actually on the moral high ground, are they supposed to be delusional? The doctor beats them by taking the companions into stasis and entering the time stream .... Which is what Skeletor wanted. This somehow ressurects the time witches, somehow saving the gang.
Nothing is explained, the plot has been reset to the start of the episode and I will never get that hour of my life back. Literally just filler and not the fun kind with vampires in Venice. The sleepy snot monster kind.
Doctor Who: Sleep No More (2015)
Nonsense writing, awful direction, vomit inducing camerawork
Whovians are used to a bit of nonsense SciFi and potholes the size of black holes. But this one is just lazy, really.
Sentient carnivorous snot monsters spawn out of thin air when using a device that compresses a month of sleep to a few minutes. For no reason. An enemy with no motivations and no explanation. A literal and metaphorical blob. Compare this to the blobby dalek sewers, a unique enemy, with a believable origin and compelling motive made of some black gunk food dyed black entertaining and creepy.
The narrator undercuts every attempt at anything compelling. Literally telling you not to get attached to the protagonists and spoiling the plot. I assume he was a last minute addition to pad for time.
The choice to use found footage styles is fine. But they also chose to use shaky cam everywhere. It's already hard enough to follow the story with ever other scene being another new grey metal room and the camera constantly crossing the 180 line. I guess they felt the action needed to be impossible to follow for consistency sake.
This episode fails to follow very basic cinematography guidelines and does not have the writing or setpeices to prop up this weakness. This would not get a passing grade in a low level digital media course, as they simply fail to execute the fundamentals of editing, camera work or direction. Acting was also awful but I blame the direction and writing, as we've seen these actors perform brilliantly many times.
Basutado!! Ankoku no hakaishin (2022)
This is why anime gets a bad rep
Childish dialogue written by someone who's never actually spoken to a human. Kid is bawling fearing the horde of demons, then suddenly laughing cos he used a hanky?
The entire rambling monologue at the start has nothing to do with the show and is frankly far more interesting.
Tasteless boob, panty etc shots, child grooming of both sexes and plenty of other messed up immoral sexual stuff without any context, plot or character building relevance.
Girl is told a "magic spell" can be activated with a virgins kiss and as such she is forbidden from marriage. Some old guy forcing a teenage girl to remain chaste and charging her with having to kiss a young boy to activate his demon form. Wtf kind of magic system is this? Does luring kids using candy activate the fireball spell?
The plot is nonsensical blurting countless mcguffins at the viewer in the first minutes. From the contextless aforementioned spell, to the 2 battling gods, to the darkness etc ...
Just watch the first 10 mins if U must, the issues are glaring.
Cowboy Bebop: Sad Clown A-Go-Go (2021)
From mysterious murder clown to a joke
The actor did a fantastic job on both voice and acting. But the crazed legend of a clown that leaves none that seem him alive, was turned into an awkwardly justified assassin for the syndicate because.....
Originally he went after spike simply because of his mad principle of leaving no survivors and spike sought him out alone to avoid having him come to the Bebop and his friends.
In the this the clown is sent specifically after spike and beaten with the magic of friendship... twice.
I can only assume the exposition dumps were to pad runtime, which is especially egregious considering there was already a full episode written 20 years ago they could have used.
Cowboy Bebop (2021)
It's fun, but feels more like a parody then an adaptation -1st ep spoilers
Compare the first ep of this, to the first ep of the original and you won't need to read this, the problems are obvious.
It feels like the writers and director just really didn't "get" cowboy bebop and it comes across like a fan made parody. The entire thing being a lazy corporate cash grab sequalizing a beloved anime, which was explicitly anti- that sort of thing aside.
The characters fall flat completely missing any of the wit and humor of the original. With spike being more like a goofy dad, than a sly deadpan gunman. You get glimpses of their original characters, but thats all, which isn't helped the absolute mishandling of the plot, which has removed all the.. well plot and replaced it with Hollywood gunfights.
Here's some solid examples. In the original spike would often cause collateral damage, generally due to his impatience, benevolent schemes to subtly help people and recklessness. In this adaptation hes shown to be straight up malicious and even enjoying murder and carnage. Spike was rarely so outward, we got to know him through his actions and the contexts of his environments. But in this he practically blurts out what hes thinking like it's some childrens show.
Fay valentine went from badass self reliant con artist that always tried to act superior and always got her way, to a pathetic whiny brat, that literally took to begging within her second scene. The original fay would be embarrassed at the new.
Jet is actually fairly similar in character to his original, but still feels off, because so much of his character relied the dynamic between the crew on his namesake ship, which he desperately tried to control. He also shares this awkward new malicious streak of spikes, which really rubs against his more sensible traits.
The subtle humor and style is all gone. The reveal of the pregnant fugitive that abused Spikes nostalgia for his lost love, being pregnant only with a stash of drugs, in the original was subtle and slightly funny even to spike. In the new it takes place in the middle of a pointless gunfight and elicits no real reaction from spike, who has openly expressed that hes protecting her.
In short, it's just worse than the original and doesn't do anything unique. So why watch this when the original is available?
Midnight Mass (2021)
i enjoyed the show until i stopped to think about it.
This is not a horror, more of a slow mystery. The monologues drag on and no ones motivations are clear to the viewer.
Its made well and the acting is fantastic. Apart from shaky cam and ridiculously dark scenes(as in i couldn't see what was happening), the technical side was done really well. The monster and gore particularly impressive. The creature looked real, which is something even the biggest budgets like marvel haven't achieved. Largely owed to the practical effects.
The plot was utter nonsense, reminiscent of a Simpsons Halloween episode or rick and morty plot. With completely insane cult like Christians all getting swept up in an isolated phenomena. Its fun idea, a priest mistaking a bat like vampire for an old school angel. But then he straight up abandons all his beliefs to violently spread this vampirisim and has the gaul in the closing minutes, as an entire island literally burns, all it's citizens turned murderers soon to burn with it and ask for forgiveness.
After all this we still have no idea what he even wanted or expected to happen, same goes for most other characters. Not to mention the so called protagonist.
Her friend and possibly love, committed suicide to prove to her she was in danger and he wanted her to leave to save herself. Instead she stayed and did..... nothing. She warned one person, gave up and did absolutely nothing useful until the very end where she managed to maim the creatures wings while being eaten. The priest was more of a protagonist, hell her 80 year old mother was a better protagonist and actually managed to save one person atleast, helping the priest see how mind numbingly insane he was being.
The show felt very out of touch, the most horrific part is that the writers and directors actually believe people talk and act like this. Big metaphors taking bible quotes out of context to haphazardly apply them to the situation.
Black Summer (2019)
Some the greatest cinematography, acting and editing ever to bad they forgot to hire a writing and directing team
Everything looks great, shots are long easy to follow and give the viewer a fantastic idea of the local environment, your rarely left confused as to which room or building you are in or where each character is. The stunt co-ordination for action scenes is top notch, no obvious extras randomly flailing to look busy, no shaky cam or crossing the 180 degree line to confuse everyone.
Where it falls short is the writing, the world building and character actions especially. The world makes little sense, there seems to be way more healthy humans than zombies, fully stocked grocery stores, weeks or months into an apocalypse, complete with electric motion sensor doors. Wounds are super inconsistent one guy might bleed out from a bullet hitting an artery in his leg, as you would expect, while another does a week long hike, survives a fist fight, fleeing from zombies etc.. with an untreated bullet wound in his gut and suffers only a slight cough.
Characters are mind numbingly stupid, constantly dropping or leaving behind weapons and supplies for no reason. Leaving lights on, windows and doors open and unlocked, sitting around awkwardly staring at each other, when they could be securing the building, sleeping or packing supplies. We see them score consecutive headshots on humans at decent ranges, but seem to always aim at the zombies torsos.
Then theirs the dialogues and boy they might be the worst ive ever seen, generally characters will spend minutes just sitting and staring at each other, and i don't mean we cut to a few minutes later, no, we are subjected watching them do nothing for minutes at a time. In fact, the entirety of episode 7 is just silently following characters around, watching them sleep, have dinner and talk absolute nonsense.
90% of their issues would have been solved if they just communicated, but then the lazy ass writers wouldn't be able to crowbar in the drama of people turning on each other arbitrarily.
This feels like alot of very skilled people from the more technical side of filmmaking got together and made a movie, utterly ignoring the importance of story and characters. If this was a game i would call it a tech demo. Something that will look good on the cameramans resume, but hardly a finished show.
Tribes of Europa (2021)
It's like one of those cheap Australian pseudo apocalypse shows for kids
This has some minor spoilers, but they are so minor even the show forgets about them after the intro.
The world building is garbage and opening text really sets the quality. Where it simply tells you theres a bunch of distinct tribes.
The world makes no sense, they had a Y2K situation one or two generations ago and have somehow had complete loss of cultural, despite most adults being alive prior to the catastrophe. Which just makes all these tribes seem like cults taking advantage of the children that don't know better.
However they've not only regained nearly equivalent tech and infrastructure of the modern world, but one tribe is full on sci fi.
The catastrophe was that all tech malfunctioned or broke and yet tech is featured everywhere and somehow this erased all culture from everyone, including those alive before the catastrophe. It just makes no sense.
The characters are ridiculous, flip flopping from one stereotype to another, to fill whatever overdone trope the plot is calling for at the time.
The action scenes are sickening with full on shaky cam and the camera jarringly flicking or cutting away whenever a strike would actually land. These concepts arn't inherently bad, but are not done well here.
Stowaway (2021)
So much potential, so little movie
The beginning is fantastic, you can tell they put effort into getting as much scientifically correct as possible (not perfect, but nothing ever is).
Then you get to the not so surprising twist (it's a stowaway, who would have guessed?). This is where everything starts falling apart. The stowaway is bleeding and unconscious, someone has welded a metal sheet over him trapping him in the utility crawlspace (between walls, amongst wiring and pipes). Ooh thrilling drama! Except the crew never even acknowledge this and the last thing he remembers is just working on the ship as normal.
And that's a wrap on that character for the most part, some random engineer ws knocked unconscious and intentionally imprisoned on a space shuttle just before launch and nobody even questions it, more than asking to no one in particular "how does this happen!?" one time.
The rest of the movie is just lazy. Freeing the stowaway breaks the only life support system on board and they have 0 backups or spare parts. The rest of the movie is just pure sci fi nonsense and mid day drama level ridiculous crisis.
We go from elite astronauts, emulating real life procedures fairly accurately to clumsy Hollywood drama of.. climbing a pole, very slowly. Which other than avoiding the solar panels should be perfectly safe for even the average person. But no, these elite astronauts aren't even smart enough to tether themselves to a the pole, literally just drop the oxygen canister for no reason dooming at least one of them to death and randomly forgetting that gravity exists and refuses to use their climbing tool because...
Then we get to the worst part, the ending. They had to end their oxygen recovery mission early due to a solar storm. Which guarantees a very slow and painful death if your caught in it. So the "elite" astronuaght that seemingly threw away the last oxygen canister and tried to commit suicide by refusing to use the climbing gear to save herself (who appears perfectly fine despite falling about a hundred meters in about 1g-5g gravity (earth gravity is 3.8), volunteers to go back out and get more oxygen.
Back out, into the deadly solar storm, after massively botching the previous attempt in every way possible. Then instead of actually rescuing the oxygen, the just sits down and waits to slowly die of radiation or asphyxiations. Credits roll seconds later
Did she just condemn them all to death and commit suicide?
Is it supposed to imply she somehow teleported he oxygen back off camera?
Who shanghaied the stowaway engineer?
Why was a multi billion dollar 2 year light to mars, so poorly supplied and planned?
Why were there no spare parts or back up life-support?
Why was the rocket that was out full suddenly have enough hydrogen to provide oxygen for 2 ppl, whilst leaking?
How on earth did the botanist pass the basic physical exams. He couldn't handle a Ferris wheel and yet is going sty in a rotating box for two years straight? And the doctors stamina is easily 4x his.
Why did the captain have 0 understanding of what the botanists job even was, she literally only has 2 people to look after and it seems like she didn't even read her own mission statement, let alone a single brief about the botanists research.
Who knows, i honestly thought this was lazy sequel bait, until i looked into it, ut no, the writers must have just quit 40 minutes into the script and had the intern finish the rest.
It's a pity, because other than the stowaway, the acting is phenomenal and the first 30 or so minutes proves they can make a good movie, but just chose not to for some reason.
Criminal: UK (2019)
Great Acting and production value let down by everything else.
A varied cast and believable cast, while not being obnoxious pandering. The actors did a good job despite the horrendous writing.
Their proof makes no sense and is full of holes, yet the crims instantly fold and confess, explaining their ridiculous convoluted Disney villain plan.
But then the episode still has 20-30 minutes left, where they just repeat everything over and over, before we see the weird anti-social detectives, akwardly complement each-other, then passively aggressively insult each-other and then introduce some new character we have no reason to care about.
Its like they just took all the boring bits that normally get cut out of copy shows, the tedious repetition of procedures and paperwork, the awkward sitting around waiting for a confession and then just recorded that with no editing or direction.