derbo73 Reviews

Shadow and Bone (2021–2023)

Nothing wrong with it...just boring

[4/10 · 25 April 2021]

I don't know what's wrong with fantasy and other genre series these days... but they usually don't deliver anything special anymore. That feeling of expectation and excitement you had when a new fantasy movie came into theatres like years ago. It's most likely the fact that Netflix and all the other streaming platforms pump out movies and series without end, they can hardly be all of top quality or somehow unique. And the audience experiences a wear out effect: "oh, yet another young adults fantasy series." You can hardly finish a series before two others pop up already.

This one is set in a fantasy world built on Russian or Eastern European role models. Names and costumes fit that setting, the basic setup (two major faction sides divided by a terrain of uncertainty) is not very clever and not very interesting. It limits possibilities to "can they get through or not?". There seem to be some sort of magic orders controlling the elements. They also can build ultralight sand skiffs that help them get through he dark monster zone dividing the lands. The first episode shows, that getting through seems to be quite hard and unlikely, though. It's not made clear why it's so important to constantly go through the zone and it seems that more ships/people get lost in there than actually make it through. The first episode is quite lengthy, there is a lot of talking, to show some of the characters and their backgrounds, which is not that important, because almost all of them die a few minutes later. The main character isn't that interesting, she seems to be a shy type, with some complex inner world, but there is nothing very special about her that will make you remember her. So the basic setup is ok, quite simplistic but not too bad.

The action that follows is quite hilarious, though. Some specialists and magic wielders board that ship (which isn't the first attempt to get through) and they enter the dark zone. They need to pass 37 markers to get through and at marker 1 the ship get's attacked the first time. For some reason the only allowed light aboard, a blue magic lamp, goes out, no one knows why it is important, but ok. And for some reason a stupid guy lightens a regular lantern that immediately draws the attention of the monsters who kill him, making the lamp drop and setting the ship onfire. Wow, that's what I call script.

OK, so basically the girl appears to be some sort of promised super warrior who can defeat the monsters and the darkness, some guy from the ship manages to run (!) the whole way throught the monster zone unharmed and tells others about it, mainly some very shady guys on the other side.

I'm sure there is more to this story and world in the following episodes, but alas I am not triggered at all to find out. The dull brown-grey colors, the simply constructed pseudo-russian setting, the way the most important game-changing factor - the saviour girl - is revealed right away, before you actually learn more about the details and history of this place. It's ok for young adults, but honestly, Harry Potter had much better world building and dramaturgy. Maybe I am just too old for this, having read and seen too much already. I just can't unsee all the templates and patterns being used in these quickly produced mass market series.

Sijipeuseu: The Myth (2021)

Not recommended

[3/10 · 25 April 2021]

After episode 1 I was happy and felt the series had great potential. But then it went downhill very fast. The story is not new and deals with time-travel and several factions and their agendas. The main protagonists get caught in between and have to deal with being hunted or whatever. So far so good. The problem is - the main story stalls and doesn't progress a bit. The main characters run/fight/talk their way through the episodes and nothing is achieved. The hilarious secret organizations are incompetent and only show repetitive behavuour and action - very often to a point where I could only shake my head in disbelieve.

The script is full of inconsistencies, the timing and cutting of scenes is often totally off - which IS a problem in a series about time and time travel. How organizations like the police or whatever work is shown in a naive and absurd way here. The details about the war and the future setting are inconsistent as well. Disiplined and skilled survivors have almost no food or supplies, but some stupid ganster-kids have drones, batteries and unlimited ammo.

Korean TV dramas are known for their tendency for romance, but this simply doesn't work. You actually know everything from the start, she will most likely die to save him, she rejects him now (but secretely has already fallen for him), he is unaware of every signals of women (while being a playboy), and so on. It doesn't make sense and it's not fun to watch. All of a sudden the girl, who decorates her guns with aegyo stuff, bursts into military style James Bond action, defeats dozens of armed guys and with some help of the genius engineer main guy, they get away - again and again and again. Did I mention that in every other episode he has to show his brain skills by doing some hilarious calculations to save them, while being under massive fire from the enemy (about 5m away), having zero time left and in the end, this din't even help at all? They simply get away, anyway.

Their characters are created from a mix of stereotypes, that show up one ata time, they don't resemble personalities with secret aspects, carrying their personal traumata, they simply switch skins from one scene to the next. It's a mix of terrible writing and mediocre directing.

Besides beautiful faces and nices shots of Seoul and interiors, you won't find much here.

I Am Mother (2019)

A movie with true AI

[8/10 · 17 February 2021]

Which alone is rare. This movie is about what exactly makes humans human and what's the difference between a human and an artificial intelligence. It#s hard to digest that humans are always subject to their biological construction. Our persona, will, emotions, needs and intellect are inseparable connected with our biological brains and bodies. That's why uploading a human consciousness or personality into cyberspace will always be fiction. We are not simply zeros and ones. AI is. It is free of the troubles of emotions, it will have a hard time understanding the irrational behaviour of humans. It will see our brains and our very construction as flawed. Not sustainable and capable of surviving the coming eons. The mission was to shape humans into something that will be able to survive as a race for longer than a few hundred or thousand years, despite multiplying and killing it's cradle. And that's where the movie has some problems. It assumes that AI will be able to create a better human, able to control emotions and make more rational decisions, therefore treat each other and the environment more responsible. And I dare say, that's not possible with biological humans. It's not that you would only have to make some minor fixes to the brain. The entire construction and way human bodies/minds work would have to be changed. Creating something that we would no longer call humans or recognizes as our successors. This "Vulcans are better Humans, because they made that essential evolutionary step" concept is fantasy. From all that we know about humans and how human brains, intelligence and consciousness work, this will not happen. And an AI would have foreseen that or found out long ago, stopping those futile attempts. The Daughter in the movies may be a slightly better human version for now, the entropy during reproduction and teaching successor geerations will eventually create something that the AI will no longer accept again. The human race will have to face it's limits in the evolutionary cyle one day and make way to something entirely new, no longer human. This movie could have dealt with that easily, as a cliffhanger for example. But it would have enhanced the already dark theme and topic. Most people don't want to talk or think about things like that, they keep denying the facts and try to believe, that eventually things will get better. Like only humans do.

Aniara (2018)

Tedious, boring journey into nowhere

[3/10 · 17 February 2021]

This movie will only work for you if you are still stuck in the 50s and 60s of sci-fi and existentialistic questions. A hang for mild drugs will also help. Yes, the original poem was quite a thing at it's time, but I don't see any need to turn it into a movie like this today. there is not a single new aspect or new interpretationto be found here and the way it was realized as a movie also is not going to win any prizes. The result delivers nothing that wasn't shown or discussed better and deeper many many years ago. It's just not worth to endure the long and tedious runtime just to find out that nothing of real importance was asked or answered. The movies leads nowhere, which is pretty obvious and fitting for an off-route spaceship going into the void forever. What would people expect to happen in such a scenario? Yes, exactly. Is space anything different than any other confined place with trapped people, some dominating, some clueless? No, of course not. Bad acting, weird action and ignorance of the space environment and natural laws made this a total waste of time for me. If you can see any art in here or feel entertained, congratulations.

Greenland (2020)

A distaster not a disaster movie

[3/10 · 17 February 2021]

The movie is characterized by horrible overacting, endless tumbliness of the main character and a script that constantly confuses suspense with senseless hectic. One would think that a civil engineer, who has already mastered various crises in his working life, would react a bit more alert and understanding to the threat that is announced to him several times. And then perhaps not behave completely naively and stumble into every problem situation that presents itself, no matter how obvious. But no, one can trust all fellow men and must help them even in the face of total annihilation, the good citizen in persona.

In addition there are various stupidities on the part of the military and the evacuation forces, so that in no time the rescue planes must explode. "What a pity," is rightly said in one of the many ridiculous dialogues. And despite all the adversities, everyone reunites on Grandpa's farm in no time, where the old lunkhead is waiting for the end, while our hero once again musters all his strength to bravely curve through the bombenhagel and finally reaches the saving bunkers on Greenland. The schmaltzy ending 12 months later, with a view of a devastated world, already has biblical qualities.

The movie really works off all the clichés, from marauding gangs (who murderingly raid a plundered pharmacy) to seemingly nice helpers who then cruelly try to steal the club wristband and also kidnap the sick boy in the process. Which of course is exposed and they get their just punishment. Even absurdities are used to be transformed into a perfect world message.

There is a lot of helplessness and painful inertia on the part of the main character, a lot of whining and running around on the part of the wife and child, and, now and then, unconvincing special effects of impacts and eerie glowing skies (shouldn't pieces of comets hit at very high speeds and flat angle, not rain down vertically at max falling velocity?). A typical U.S. disaster movie that generates neither fear nor suspense, but frequent head-shaking to the point of aggression toward the protagonist. Not a bit of drama, not a bit of horror or suspense, unconvincing action and a storyline that someone thought up in five minutes on the loo. Absolutely not worth seeing, then rather stare at the wall.

Attraction (2017)

Not good

[4/10 · 24 February 2018]

This movie is the russian answer to Skyline. Ambitious SFX meet a hollow and stupid plot carried barely by young untalented actors. The idea behind the story is as old as science fiction writing, it's about 50 years too late and has been seen oh so many times. The depiction of the aliens is inconsequent and in the end they are just "better humans", the ethical and philosophical questions the movie asks are left unattended or get trampeled by inconsistent plot writing. The way they pesent the military, expecially Julia's father, is ridiculeous. It's a movie about young people. their problems with authority and responsibility and their typical attitude to smash everything they blame for their own stubborness and uncertainty, the aliens really don't matter at all. Unfortunately it does not convince as a drama, either. The movie does not even deliver grasping action, it's more yelling than brawling. So in the endit fails on all levels, but mainly from being an uninspired patchwork of copies and old concepts.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

Unfortunately not a good movie

[3/10 · 17 February 2018]

This movie could have been a tribute to the creative, smart and wonderful comics that it was adapted from. I expected Luc Besson to honor the tradition of french comic art but he failed. The two lead characters are totally unlikeable and played by two incompetent actors. Cara Delivigne is not able to get rid of her petrified stern look, I wonder if that lady is actually able to use all the muscles of her face. Looking at her makes me feel very uncomfortable, she looks more machine to me than the K5 robots. The design was totally over the top, as expected. A perfect ads movie for any LED vendor, everyone and everything had dozens of glowing lights all over them. Physical laws get ignored constantly, time and space seem to work differently from our own reality. The story plot was kinda constructed and did not convince at all. Where Fifth Element had great acting and a self-ironic humor, this movie was unfunny, full of really bad dialogue, way too long for the naive and uninspired plot and suffered from really bad acting, even from actors like Clive Owen. There was a lot of money dumped into the over the top CGI, but the end result has no soul at all.

The Crucifixion (2017)

Pretty boring

[4/10 · 31 January 2018]

A mediocre horror/mystery movie about a girl killed during an exorcism and a young journalist trying to investigate the case. I had the feeling this movie was motivated by better examples of the genre but tried too hard to imitate a certain look and atmosphere, ending in endless dialogue and driving around without anything happening. The background story is a bit convoluted and at a certain point I decided to no longer care. The ending receives an intense climax but was predictable and you don't really worry about the protagonist. The acting was ok to naive, no terrible bad acting but lifeless and boring as the whole movie.

The mystery stuff has been seen on screens hundreds of times already, nothing new here, although the old buildings, nature and scenery do look great. Even the SFX were the same old stuff - black eyes, unearthly deep voice, demon makes things fly around so on.

The main actress is quite young and did not convince me yet. She is good looking and I guess that's why they cast her. A secondary female role was filled in by Brittany Ashworth, who delivered a better playing, yet they all somehow had to struggle with the weak story, dilaogues and directing.

I was very happy when it finally ended and the only horror I felt was the thought of having to see it again one day. There are worse movies, but in the end wasted time is wasted time.

Terminus (2015)

Nice but nothing special

[5/10 · 26 January 2018]

This movie is a well-done low-budget production. The acting is well done, set and effects are very good. The plot is, in the end, quite naive and optimistic, which is acceptable. For my taste it's a bit too much of magic/godly interaction to save a dying race from extinction and one must question why it is man that is worthy to be saved but none of all the great other species on Earth? The pacing and story-telling is a bit odd and this movies major shortcoming. I like slow movies, but here the quite simple plot is stretched endlessly. Distracting things like apparitions don't fit in, very well. So in the end for a sci-fimovie this one had too much spiritualism and magic in it for my taste. The basic idea is not bad, but it is not much richer than a shortstory from the 60s, so actually a short movie would have been enough here. Yet, I like the ambitions and think the director might produce some very good stuff in the future-

Wonder Woman (2017)

Lame and uninspired

[5/10 · 22 December 2017]

I am not going to criticize the dusty concept of Wonder Woman or the story as it is quite true to the original comic books. I am only very tired of seeing another movie where a superhero fights Nazis. A felt 50% of all super hero movies are against Nazis...this is truly becoming very old. The Nazis are always depicted the same way, with crazy scientists, megalomanianiac generals andtotally incompetent foot soldiers.

The first 30 minutes of the movie show the story of the Amazons and their antagonist Ares, the childhood of Diana and contain a lot of talking among the Amazons about whether Ares is ever going to find them or not. A british soldier shows up and has to be saved by Diana from a bunch of itiot Nazi soldiers. Then we have some awkward scenes and dialogues between Diana and the soldier Steve Trevor that clearly aim at the fact that Diana has never before seen a male human, let alone half naked. In reverse Steve is also taken off-guard by the barely clad and beautiful Diana. In the press critics wrote how well this movie deals with issues like feminism and the depiction of the amazons not being pure sexual objects. Well, I want to disagree, there is no way to do that in a movie that is about half-naked warrior women. It could have been much worse, but I don't think that this is an aspect the movie should be praised for.

After almost an hour of runtime Diana and Steve enter London and society. All of a sudden Diana turns into a clumsy and helpless girl that can't find her way around modern society. I think she would suffer from some sort of culture shock (like running into carts on the street) but she would not stubbornly insist on hunting down Ares with her sword in her hand while facing so many, quite obviously important, men around her. She has a mission and she is without fear, but she isn't ignorant or dumb. She would notice that things outside of her island have changed dramatically and that she would have to learn and get by with this world and it's inhabitants, instead of ignoring them and trying to find Ares alone right on the spot. Her behaviour during these scenes is totally unbelievable to me.

The movie rumbles on and starts building up an adventuring group to help her on her task. These sidekicks turn out to be totally useless and incompetent guys, that are ought to be funny, but are annoying most of the time. During the entire movie they are no help at all, instead they are a burden to Diana as she feels responsible to prevent them form getting themselves killed.

After a lengthy intermezzo at the Nazi castle, where Diana carries a longsword "hidden" below her evening dress in a way that makes my back hurt and wonder how the blade adapts itself to her body curves, we enter the showdown after almost two and a half hours. Ares turns out to be a british Lord with a mighty mustache trying to create a better world by destroying the existing one. The death of Steve unleashes the full powers of Diana and she defeats the God of War pretty effortlessly. The surviving useless sidekicks and Diana take a photo to remember the day and the movie is finally over.

I have seen nothing new in this flick. No new aspects of super heroism, no extraordinary acting (although Gal Gadot is quite good, just her role isn't), no interesting or creative plot or adversaries. It's the tenth warm-up of an old recipe and just there for the sake of having a Wonder Woman movie in the repetoire. Humans in the film are just decoration or cannon-fodder, its actually a duell of Diana and Ares stretched out painfully over more than 2 hours.

All in all I think this is a quite bad movie as it is dull, uninspired and flat on all levels of film making. It is not even popcorn cinema as it is too long and has too many boring scenes for that. To be fair I would give it 5 points but never 7 or more.

The Expanse (2015–2022)

Started very promising but had issues in Season 2

[6/10 · 20 October 2017]

The first season blew me away. Since Babylon 5 I haven't seen a Sci- Fi series that incorporates so many aspects of space travel and future life so well. The characters are interesting and the story about the political powers and a dark secret was making me want to see season 2.

In season 2 the problems of the show became more obvious and the potential faded into a well known action story with a bit of mystery on top. I am not saying it's a bad story, but at times I felt like watching the cut scenes from a video game. It seems that all clichés have to be pressed into the story, often enough to the level of silliness. The crew and the captain are becoming more and more unlikable, especially the captain is a douche bag that always makes the most stupid decisions and relies on his team to save the day. The actor is a well known for not having the faintest control over his facial expressions, delivering the worst play since Kristen Stewart. Playing an looser a-hole still requires some charisma, I can sympathize more with brutal Amos than with James Holden.

The space stuff depicted in latter episodes of S2 is very close to major BS. The slingshot maneuver around Jupiter moons would have taken months or years, not hours like in the show.

The appearance of a blue space zombie is just that - your next standard monster, no surprises or awe here. It may not be what it seems, but so far the series moved from innovative space opera towards standard video game level at light speed.

Several episodes were really stretched out by boring dialogues right in the middle of crisis situations. They always take their time to say something grave, you know.

I do like a lot about the show, especially the level of detail they went into, from background settings to many technological ideas. Some things are way off, sure, no one should ask how the Epstein drive works - there will be no satisfying answer as it just couldn't#t work. But without that critical key, we would not see any series like that at all.

Some special effects are annoying, this series would work much better without constantly using sound during space shots. Or things should not always explode and shatter like glass, sometimes I get the impression they only have one explosion model in their software.

I started with rating it 8 but now have to reduce it to 6 as this series is getting more and more superficial and warming up a lot of older ideas. 6 is not bad, though, and I will give Season 3 a chance. I will not read the books, though, as they are money grabber volumes if you consider how many pages they have and how little story is being told per volume, comparing it to the series.

As I already know what the Roci crew will meet next I am already convinced that this story is very likely killing itself by constant exaggeration. Always bigger, always weirder, which is a road down into a dead end. It is missing the subtle awe of greater writers and tries to deliver more action thrill and character drama than is good for stories about ancient races and their legacies.

The Darkness (I) (2016)

Yes...it IS that bad!

[3/10 · 11 October 2017]

Who is Greg McLean? Who gave him money to make that movie and allowed him to write the script himself? This is not a horror movie, unless you are younger than 10 years, maybe. It's an awful mess of lame ideas copied shamelessly from genre classics and mixed together into a superficial esoteric story convoluted by unbelievable family drama.

Why did actors like Bacon and Mitchell do this job? Bored to death? Out of money? The acting is the only thing in this movie that made me give it more than 1 star. The director botched it big time on all levels of movie making. The pacing was awful, actually nothing happened until the very last 15 minutes, and even that went down the drain. The whole family drama stuff felt artificial and out of place, this family faced so many problems and in the end a supernatural experience brings them back together...well, just BS.

There was no tension in the movie, ever. Besides people "acting like you and me" by sitting in dark rooms intentionally while weird sounds come from the attic, the movie constantly rubbed everything in the face of the audience. I always knew what was going on or to come next, as the movie had just told me before it happened. There was no mystery in it at all. The parts where they looked up everything on the internet in seconds - finding fully fledged websites about their specific (oh sure) problems that looked like an advertising agency had designed them... The whole Anasazi demons mumbojumbo being stretched out until you just didn't want to wait until they finally appear. When the old healer lady entered the house I had a last spark of hope that finally now hell would break loose...well, not really. Not at all. The whole thing was a letdown and felt like it was made for a very young audience. Nothing happens, people do scream a few times, one get's bitten by the neighbours dog, two others get a few minor cuts from flying glass shards. That's all! Horror doesn't mean blood, but come on - those demons were as evil and frightening as an old hag on the street.

You don't need to be a cineast or a professional film critic to know that this movie was crap. If you find it entertaining, well, blessed is the simple mind. If you say this movie scared you a bit, you should never go outside except in bright sunlight. And even then your own shadow could make your heart stop.

Mr. Mclean is a lousy writer (actually more sort of a cribber) and a mediocre director. I didn't see any promising talent here that would make me want to see his next opus. This movie is a total waste of time, unless you need some illustrative material about how not to do it.

Jessica Jones (2015–2019)

Great concept, lackluster production

[5/10 · 30 September 2017]

What I like about the show:

• gifted not wearing stupid costumes - gifted not constantly oozing with glory and heroism - a convincing villain that demonstrates how powerful a talent would actually be

What I disliked:

• too long - too many silly and unnecessary side characters - the conflict goes back and forth, back and forth - main character(s) constantly make stupid mistakes with dramatic consequences, very unprofessional - if they don't the stupid side characters step in and ruin everything so yet another episode becomes necessary - the ending was meant to be oh so smart but basically was rather bland

I think 8 epsiodes would have been more than enough. after seeing JJ swear, drink whiskey like tea and go back into her broken office for the hundredth time, it just grows lame.

She did not convince as a private investigator, she is just an antisocial bi*** making wrong decisions without pause.

I don't know why they chose the actress that looks like Michael Jackson's younger sister meeting Neil Gaiman's Death, in the comics she clearly has brown hair.

The effects are just bearable but the whole series has a low budget feel to it. I guess they chose mind control over death ray for a reason as a plot. In some scenes I accept her or Cage being superstrong, in others it's just not convincing enough. They did a good job with Kilgrave (perfect actor) and put much more thought into what a sociopath like him would and could actually do with such a power. They should have kicked out the pheromone BS, though. Also the virus explanations are pretty lame.

I am going to watch Daredevil now, although he is one of the most stupidly looking costumed heroes I have ever seen and I never liked his story.

The very best about the series was actually the opening score. From wondered "and how did that bring on the story any further?". 2 or 3 times during the series it is just "reset and repeat" triggered by her boring and overdrawn neighbours.

Although they tried to show JJ's inner conflicts, they hardly convinced me.

A lot of potential wasted, yet still watchable series with quality going down and down after episode 5 or 6.

The Divergent Series: Insurgent (2015)

Mediocre and full of awkward theses

[4/10 · 21 July 2017]

An uninspired and lame copy of much better books and films. Rather bad actors and lots of boring dialogues and "inner conflict" nonsense that feels constructed and totally off. Unbelievable dystopia full of logic holes and unexplainable magic devices.

Nothing you will remember or wish to see continued.

Alien: Covenant (2017)

A terrible letdown

[3/10 · 10 July 2017]

All the myriads of problems and issues with this movie have been posted before. I just wonder what made Ridley Scott do this. Does he really believe his messages? The man clearly stopped evolving in the early 80s.

His knowledge or care about AI and technology is completely off. He is mixing up everything he ever read about in a Reader's Digest with his own very strange mystical view of the world. This is not sci-fi at all.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Mediocre and disrespectful of the original franchise

[4/10 · 8 July 2017]

The main character is unlikable and almost irrelevant. Without about 15 other people she would have achieved nothing. She has no powers, no character, nothing to make her stand out as the hero. I did not expect a new Luke here, but she has nothing at all.

The movie is way to long and packed full with CGI, battle action and all sorts of unnecessary or comedy relief dialogue. The movie had undertones of conflicts of our current time - often you can imagine watching a movie taking place in Afghanistan or some Arab states. Bad idea to bring in these aspects of conflicts that can not be reduced to "we good -you evil".

The story is plain and full of logical problems. It's all "just because" - the core of it is a problem from the original movies: why build a super-weapon that has a total failure trigger built in that is quite easily accessible? They made an over 2h movie to just explain that - and failed, as the explanation is as weak as none at all.

In their wake of destruction producers ignored just so many things about the Star Wars universe that you can't count them.

The magic is long gone.

Home Invasion (2016 Video)

Boring & uninspired

[3/10 · 24 April 2017]

The setup and beginning are quite interesting as not much is being revealed. Although the 6 month flashback right after a decent opening is the first downer in a long series in this flick.

The characters are unbelievable naive or overly arrogant and stupid. The only believable guy is the bank robber Esther.

The home security system and company are a joke. A multi-million dollar home (more a castle) with probably a few dozen rooms and the most expensive smart home rigging installed and they can't do better than this? I expected some really good applications of what such a setting could offer to hide, set traps, escape, counter-attack or do anything to play mind tricks in the gangsters - but all they could do was hacking into the stereo system (well...don't bother) and make some noise for a moment. In the end the security company does very little to save the protagonists, everything that made a difference was done without the aid of the mike guy, who himself was pretty lost all the time.

The road block and the time it took the police to reach a crime scene are so constructed - no one would build such a villa in a remote backwater place. Someone who could buy such a house and stuff would also assign at least one security guard to the building - who would have died first, but OK.

All in all the story and characters are plain and lifeless, everything feels very constructed and there is never any real suspense building up.

Not even worth watching on a rainy Sunday evening with nothing to do.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)

Boring and uninspired

[4/10 · 21 December 2016]

Despite throwing new pirate lords, Asian warriors, sea goddesses and whatyouhave at the audience, this convoluted mess of a story is to tiresome and lengthy to surpass the predecessors. The romantic story falls apart, Sparrow and the rest goes in to hunt for another mystic treasure (yet again), the dimensions grow but the tension does not.

There are uncountable logical errors in the movie and it seems the director only focused on visual eye-candy and schoolyard comedy. Including introducing Sparrow's father who seems to be a weathered and successful pirate, yet no one in all movies ever seemed to have heard of him or connect Jack Sparrow to that ultra-cool guy. Using a dub voice in the German movie that is overused for ice-cold cool characters from action movies totally overloaded this.

A franchise that only goes for coolness and tongue-in-cheek/awkward humor has placed a well executed but yet again soulless and long-winded (not) last installment.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)

As promised...

[5/10 · 21 December 2016]

the sequel delivers all that was sort of promised by the first movie. It's as overly long as the first one, shows the same characters without any kind of development, tons of undead fishy seamen, swashbuckling and endless dialogues and oh so funny comments.

The background story starts promising but ends in an endless game of "I have the heart, no I have it...". When the protagonists start fencing while balancing on a gigantic mill wheel rolling down the hillside I knew this was going down the drain.

The movie perfectly delivers the intended Disney theme park attitude and I guess you have to be in the mood and mindset of a 13 year old to fully enjoy it. That also explains why again this movie lacked real thrills or terror moments again, if undead seamen monsters are like this, I wonder what I was afraid of as a child. They looked ugly but not terrifying. They acted and talked as stupid as Laurel Hardy.

Costumes, sets, sfx were excellent, though. The music was too much on many scenes, rubbing it in. So, if being repetitive and without any innovation is considered a solid good delivery of entertainment, this movie is a 10er. Because of all that I rate it as a 5.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

OK but overrated

[5/10 · 11 December 2016]

I skipped the whole franchise because the franchising was getting on my nerves right from the start. Whenever everyone starts trying to convince me that something is amazing, I shy away from it. And I never was in the mood to see a pirate movie until recently. So I gave it a chance.

That's what I think (not that it would bother anyone anymore so many years later)

• a simple damsel in distress story, although the damsel knows how to help herself, actually she is more productive than the rest of the "heroes" - Jack Sparrow is completely exaggerated and silly

• I guess this means mission accomplished. I don't like Johnny Depp that much and I admit he played the role well, but I didn't like the character. He is not cool and not smart, he is a selfish lucky jester and half the time his plans only worked out because of the script. I wish he had real wit.

• lengthy and tedious first half. The story is so simple, it would have easily fitted into a 1.5h movie or even shorter. - all of a sudden the movie fast forwards (when they follow the Black Pearl to that secret island only Jack knows about)

• dialogues and scenes were set for laughs, but it's a kind of naive slapstick that gets tiresome fast. I can watch Laurel & Hardy for hours and laugh, but this is just dumb.

• camera was mediocre at best. There were opportunities for breath taking shots over the ocean, ships in pursuit - but no. Closeups of silly people constantly.

All in all it is standard popcorn cinema stretched out to the max. Nothing new here, nothing special. No real adventure as everything is predictable, situations change back and forth, back and forth. I hope the later parts get better.

Enter Nowhere (2011)

Well, not totally bad, but

[4/10 · 24 October 2016]

neither original nor well done, either. The atmosphere was quite creepy for a while, then it became obvious this movie was about time travel and mumbo jumbo only. The whole idea behind it was OK, but we have seen this several times already. The acting wasn't terrible and I don't mind the bad German, either. The special effects in the end scenes and the rushed ending broke the movie for me. The whole thing felt like a student's work, a low low budget first attempt at movie making. I would not recommend this movie to anyone as it has nothing that stands out or was worth watching it.

The girls showed some very convincing acting, though.

Bone Tomahawk (2015)

Well done

[7/10 · 5 October 2016]

A well written and shot western with splatter elements. The setting and the acting were great, the characters interesting and the dialogue very entertaining. Good writing and gruesome more-than-human enemies. The only downside of this movie was the fact that it was way too long. Over long periods nothing really happens, all you see is four men traveling through the countryside - which is OK and well done, but the length of the movie is still tiresome. The ending is brutal and bloody, the gore factor is pretty high, I would not recommend it for people who are not used to watch hardcore stuff. The realism is rather high in all the dismembering going on, it's nothing silly looking that you can simply laugh at. Actually I found this unnecessarily brutal and explicit, the movie would have worked well with less details of intestines. Anyway, a refreshing and good movie.

Dark Was the Night (2014)

OK movie

[5/10 · 30 September 2016]

This is a classical monster horror flick, showing nothing new. It was done fairly well, but it had some great flaws, too. The beginning was quite exciting, the camera shots and the characters interesting. I wondered whether this would turn into a quite good werewolf movie, when all of a sudden the story stopped to move on. The drama background of the protagonist(s) was shown for almost the rest of the movie, and not much else until the very end. I got the impression that the director would actually make better drama movies than horror movies. The acting was pretty good, but the middle part of the movie was stretched so far that I almost fell asleep. The monster had no background whatsoever, I think there was a lot of wasted potential here (NA folklore).

The end comes rushed and a bit funny, the monster displayed and the CGI shots in the final scene are below average.

All in all there is almost no deaths or gore involved and many scenes where the protagonist can walk around in the darkness and the oh so fast and powerful enemy is simply not attacking him.

DC's Legends of Tomorrow (2016–2022)

So so start

[1/10 · 25 September 2016]

Just watched the pilot and it did not kick ass or make me want to see episode 2 immediately. Filming and CGI was OK for a series, though with only little effort it would have looked even better. The Waverider ship design looks terrible, the surface textures seem to come from a ten years old pc game. Costumes are OK to badly done, Atoms armor being the best of all. The writing is simple and neither smart nor very entertaining. I have no idea whether the plot is based on comics (I assume it is), nevertheless it can't be a jewel of comics art writing. The names are awful (Rip Hunter, Vandal Who?), the character design and looks are from the stone age. The dialogues follow the same route - a lot of blah blah (the evil super dork even talks to his foot soldiers about his plans, oh my).

So actually nothing in this show seems to be non-cliché, which is quite boring. Studios and producers don't have the balls to make a show from comics like DV8. All they dare to do is gulp up the next offspring of already running and successful shows that can be shown at 18.00 and don't offend anyone.

Too tame, too botched, too flat.

Edit: OK, I did it and watched episodes 2-4. At least I tried, I had to fast forward a lot to omit terrible lengthy dialogue leading nowhere. This series is awful and so badly done that it's actually an insult. I vote down to 1 star now.

This is just the tip of the iceberg but here are some major flaws from episode 4 (no spoiler intended):

• The bad guys flees into the Soviet Union, the team has no clue where exactly he is hiding in that oh so tiny empire made up from some of the largest countries in the entire world - yet the captain orders the ship to take course into the UDSSR and then suddenly without explanation it's Moscow, what else...

The ship falls at a rate of 1000m per second and can still make a flat crash landing without anyone aboard getting injured. We clearly see the ship is not moving vertically when it cuts the engines. That means it's initial velocity is 0. It is shown to fall for about 4-5 seconds only from a height of 5000m, which means it would reach a final speed of about 50m/s ignoring the fact that the air friction and the non-aerodynamical form of the object would slow it even further down. Crashing into the ground with several hundred tons of mass at a speed of let's say 30-40m/s would still not be healthy to ship and crew. But - funny - when they reach the surface the engines are on and the ship is flying horizontally at great speed and still crash landing. We see the ship can easily spiral straight into the sky several times at ease, only this time it can't counter th terrible acceleration of 30 m/s to stabilize it's flight? This is big BS in your face.

Rip Hunter is the most annoying character I have seen in years. Whatever nonsense he utters it always makes him look like a total idiot. He is a Time Master. How did such an immature, unstable and short-sighted man ever become a Time Master?

The glowing handguns that make the wearer a big target while sneaking through the dark forest... and they look like what they are: cheap plastic toy guns. And they have zero reach, too. Yet Snort and his "I always have this sinister expression" friend fire at ranges where they clearly can not hit anything. Doesn't stop them from trying and taking bullets from AK47s as a reward.

Using an audio mixpanel as controls for a pseudo-scientific installation. One that houses a massive radioactive source in a chamber with glass windows. The chamber could at least have been filled with water, but no.

And every episode a lot of talk, talk, talk. Nonsense. Insulting. Miserable.

It got nominated for the Best TV Comic Adapation - this industry is so dumb and rotten.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Like a ten ton hammer

[7/10 · 6 September 2016]

The first half of the movie feels like you have to carry that hammer, though. It is dark, heavy, slow and tedious. The story is cut into many single strands that don't connect and the movie seems to flip through scenes that don't explain much. Nevertheless, camera and scenery are great. The casting is...special. Ben Affleck gives a better Batman than Daredevil, yet I had a hard time accepting his acting. Cavill is a fitting superhuman, yet unexpectedly remote and rather cold. Wonder Woman had a perfect introduction - although Gadot is a bit on the thin side. Luthor is played very well, although I think the actor should have been a bit older, but maybe that was just in canon, don't know. At times it seemed, though, that director and actor tried to compete with the perfect Joker of the last Dark Knight installments, instead of trying to find it's own style.

The last hour or so of the movie is like mentioned hammer coming down on you. Pure world-shattering action. Especially the duel between Batman and Superman did set new standards.

Some dialogues and the rare jokes felt a bit awkward. The roles of mortal sidekicks and friends paled next to the god-like super- heroes. Especially Lois was kind of a setback when it comes to strong modern women - she reminded me of the white girl in the hand of King Kong - totally dependent on Superman. She was good for being thrown of roofs, being used as bait and sorts of that, the rest of her role was cheesy and naive romance. I wonder when superhero movies or comics are going to stop this.

After all a satisfying and entertaining movie, despite the fact that I am everything but a Superman fan - I always found him to be one of the most unimaginative superheroes and a boring character.

I want to see what DC will bring up next year now. Hopefully not again in a 2:31 hour format.