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stevemcintyre
Reviews
Poor Things (2023)
Probably the worst movie I've seen in decades
I walked out after an hour, I just couldn't take any more of this garbage dressed as art.
Plus points: it looked gorgeous. Emma Stone's performance was first class in what must have been an incredibly difficult part.
The bad points: literally *everything* else.
The trailer suggested we might get a pretty, stylish, steampunk-style sci-fi/fantasy. It lied.
Instead, we got a grotesque, OTT mess. It was difficult to watch, but that seems to be the main idea this director has. Scene after scene of ludicrous weirdness and shocks for the sake of it.
And finally: lots and *lots* of nudity and sex. Sex featuring a character that we're told has the mind of a very young girl, and the men in positions of power around her. Shudder.
Nope.
The Creator (2023)
Looks beautiful, but everything else sucks
Stunning visuals and artwork. Excellent use of themes, from rural SE Asia to futuristic space station. A very well done opening sequence, initial exposition as a newsreel. But then things started to go downhill.
I was hoping for some good treatment of ethics/morality as hinted by the trailer, but that went out of the window, lost to messy action sequences.
OK, let's hope we can get a workable thriller then? Nope. Not so much plot holes as an abyss where a plot might go. Nothing made sense. We got a sequence of (great-looking!) set pieces, but there was nothing to link them together in any meaningful fashion.
What a shame, this movie promised so much then failed to deliver.
Expend4bles (2023)
Utterly terrible
I really enjoyed the earlier installments in the Expendables franchise. They're never going to win awards, but for silly check-brain-at-door action movies they were good value. The cast and crew weren't taking themselves too sensibly. The plot was paper-thin, but they were *fun*.
This one just didn't gel for me at all. The action felt pedestrian, with far too much CGI. Very little of the previous banter, far too much seriousness and way too little fun.
And then my biggest problem with the movie: Megan Fox. Seriously, how does this woman ever get work as an actress? In the previous movies, the cast at least had some action movie chops. Fox just ... doesn't. Pumped up lips, caked-on makeup, unwatchable. Ugh.
Curfew (2019)
Abandoned after 2 episodes
Interesting-looking ideas suggested and good cast displayed in the trailers. Yay!
In reality - it's incoherent garbage. Boo :-(
After 2 episodes, there's no explanation of anything. It's messy flashback after messy flashback with no attempt to engage the viewer. The mass of characters are mostly missable - why would I care about any of them enough to keep watching?
And the effects are *appallingly* bad. Just dumped the rest of the series off the PVR, I've got better things to spend my life on.
The First (2018)
Mis-sold, badly targeted snooze-fest
This looked awesome in trailers: a new bit of sci-fi documenting man's first trip to Mars. It was even advertised in the cinemas in the UK alongside First Man, the story of Neil Armstrong. Yay, let's have more of that!
A few weeks later I've picked up the series from my PVR. I'm bored to tears. Massive amounts of family melodrama (the kind of thing you'd commonly have as sub-plots in many shows like this) spreading across 8 episodes. Approximately zero actual space exploration stuff. Killing this now.
Horrendously mis-advertised, cynically so even.
Assassin's Creed (2016)
Bloody awful movie - avoid
I'd seen reviews of this film already that should have warned me, but I went anyway.
It felt like almost the entire movie was in the dark or in smoke. It's not clear if that was to hide bad CGI, to hide some of the violence to get a younger rating(?) or just bad direction. It was genuinely difficult to see what was going on in lots of the movie.
For no good reason in an *action* film large chunks of the dialogue were in Spanish with subtitles. Why? The plot was worse (and worse explained) than the normal AC backstory I've seen in the games, and the exposition bits were so disjointed and badly written that it didn't hang together in any way.
I can only assume that Ubisoft offered Fassbender, Cotillard and Irons a *lot* of money to be associated with this.
Transformers (2007)
Truly, utterly abysmal
I honestly can't think of a worse film that I've seen in some time.
The plot (as was) was execrable, the dialogue astoundingly bad.
The film hit self-parody before it got going (teen romantic comedy!) and didn't improve from there. I waited it out in the hope the expected climactic fight scenes might compensate, but then they were too fast and confused to make any sense - in many places it was impossible to distinguish the combatants. I'm not expecting realism in a film about transforming robots based on kids' toys, but that's not an excuse to get even the simplest basics wrong.
I didn't expect much after early reviews, but I was hoping to at least see a passable check-brain-at-door action movie. *sigh* I'll know better than to see another Michael Bay movie in future.
Underworld: Evolution (2006)
Awful
I quite enjoyed the first film - some interesting plot, fight scenes and some good eye candy.
This sequel was the first film in a long time where I was tempted to walk out early. If I wasn't stuck driving people home, I would have left.
The film was almost one long fight scene, but the action sequences were boring and predictable. The plot (as was) was linear, with no surprises or interest. Extra negative points for slow-motion close-up shots of special-effects combat looking wrong. Add in large plot holes and sketchy/non-existent justification/explanation of some of the major plot points, and the result is a thoroughly missable movie.
I expected little - I can be a sucker for a silly action film. I was still disappointed...