smcgilli-2 Reviews

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)

What happened?

[3/10 · 20 July 2023]

This...this was terrible! It was like fan fiction. The bloody Christmas special was better than this.

Hard to believe it was even the same cast. Acting was amateur. Barely felt like the same characters. Why was everyone yelling their lines all the time? The action was boring with no real sense of consequences, just more brash, predictable action. Even Groot was boring and seemed...different.

The CGI was bad to pretty good. Rocket especially looked good, but a lot looked no better than an average TV show now.

The villan was also dull. Warlock was a bad joke as an annoying, dumb kid. Just a brutal experience all around.

Falling Down (1993)

Terrible

[3/10 · 4 February 2023]

What are people talking about? I finally got around to watching this turd. Shocking. Acting is so bad and over the top. The motivation of the main character is weak. I thought it would be some sort of character study into a man pushed too far. This was a joke. So many tropes, so little believability. It's like a high school play with people overacting. Michael Douglas and Robert Duvall are way better than this.

I mean this is shockingly bad. How did it ever obtain such high review scores? It still has people referring to it. Yuck.

Skip this.

I would love to see this remade and done far, far better.

The Staircase (2004–2018)

Interesting story but horrible editing

[6/10 · 11 June 2018]

I wont go over the whole story here as many other have already done so. Yes, this is a tragic story and has some interesting twists. Yes, I feel that justice was not well served for this whole investigation and trial. However, this 13 episode series could have easily been edited down to 6 or 7 episodes. There is SO much fluff. There are SO many scenes that drag on or rehash the same info. The characters are just not that interesting to hear them go on and on. They even have drawn out scenes of cars parking or driving away or people walking...nothing going on. No drama. No storytelling. No point. It makes a slow story feel a LOT slower.

The Ranch (2016–2020)

How did this get produced???

[2/10 · 1 April 2016]

Wow. What a steaming pile of cow-flop. It's like an SNL skit of how bad TV sitcoms used to be.

The laugh-track is out of date, but also emphasizes just how unfunny the "comedy" is.

Brain-dead dialogue. Such obvious set ups for lame one liners. It reeks of the bad stuff from the 1980's. Ashton is, I think, a talented guy and smarter than the average person. How did he get involved in something so poor? Also very sad to see the great Sam Elliot in this mess.

Pretty much everything that makes a sitcom bad.

Also shocked that Netflix backed its production. They have been stellar with many excellent shows. This is not one of them.

Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)

So Disappointing

[4/10 · 1 June 2012]

I just got back from seeing this movie. I was quite optimistic about it. It had a lot going for it in terms of budget and cast. I wasn't too excited about seeing Kristen Stewart as Snow White, but I was willing to give her a chance. I thought that Chris Hemsworth would be great as The Huntsman.

Alas, this was not a good movie. It was a tough 127min to sit through. It started off reasonably, but just got more and more boring as the 2 hours went on. There was little to no character development in ANY of the characters. This results in my not really caring about the characters or their peril.

There was little to no chemistry between any of them either. When a romantic theme developed, it felt so tacked on and awkward. The dwarfs should have been a rousing, entertaining lot...but even they fell flat. Again, you don't get the chance to know much or anything about them so it is hard to really get attached to them.

Then we have Charlize Theron. An actress I have so much respect for. I think she is one of the top actresses in Hollywood right now. But not in this film. The blame HAS to be on the director. He has her SO over the top it seems like she is in a high school play.

The editing had its issues as well, with jolting cuts that left me confused as to what just happened.

The special effects go from really impressive to looking very dated. It is 2012 now...animated animals etc. need to look a lot better than they do here. They all stand out as being CLEARLY CGI and seeing them took me out of the movie.

The climactic battles also just fell flat. We have seen it all before and done better. The shots seem to try and be showing us "wow" events of archers raining arrows down and trebuchets firing into columns of horses...but again...I have seen it done so often now that it no longer is all that interesting. This is especially true since I have no attachment to the characters.

The ending was so lackluster. I wont spoil it here (not that is really anything to spoil) but it is such a dull climax. It tries for a Star Wars style ending, but again it felt awkward. Heck, even the characters in the movie looked like they were uncomfortable in the scene.

Overall, I would have to give this a 4/10.