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Reviews
Wunderland (2018)
Epic Fail
I get that this is a low-budget attempt at depicting a topic that has been very well done in the past (Battle of the Bulge, Band of Brothers). I don't get "why this story"? It didn't add anything to any previous Battle of the Bulge film or insight. The uniforms may have been true to the period, but they were far from true to the battle... not a stain, not a spot on them, it really detracts from the believably of the film. They all look like they just stepped out of the local dry cleaners. The Battle of the Bulge went on for 5 weeks. They slept in fox holes, and endured rain and snow. There was nowhere to get your uniform pressed and cleaned.
The battle scenes were horrendous, people just walking around like nothing is happening even when their being shot at. No one takes cover, no one shows any urgency. Wounds are unrealistic as well, and there is no real "story". The viewer is supposed to assume they know everything about the famous battle. Character buildup was also extremely thin. It's been a week since I saw this movie, and I can't remember a single character's name.
Effects... bad, but no worse than USS Indianapolis. The bigger issue is it seemed like an excuse to rent a few WWII German artillery, and drive it around in the forest. All that could be forgiven if there was any plot or story, but there just wasn't. Seemed like a college film project, at best.
Dim the Fluorescents (2017)
A long wait for a surprising end
This movie had a far more interesting trailer than the movie proved to be. The file is just about 2 hours long, and the first 1 hour 40 of that is painful to watch. While the cinema work is pretty good, the acting is TERRIBLE. However, the ending scene, (about 12 - 15 minutes of the end of the movie) delivered a surprisingly spectacular performance. It's almost as if the entire rehearsal was focused on this scene alone, and the rest was podged together. These two leading role actresses suddenly surprise with an extremely well crafted performance. The down side is, it's too little too late. The editors should have taken a heavier hand to the scissor and cut a good 20 to 40 minutes of monotonous non-story advancement, non- character development. In the end I give it a 5, though if I could split the film score, then first hour and 40 minutes gets a 2, the final scene gets a 9.
The Shannara Chronicles (2016)
In a word: Terrible
I don't see how with the other reviewers of this series, majority have this rated below 5, and yet IMDb shows it at 8.4 (Ok sure, it's based on stars not reviews, BUT... can't help feel someone is manipulating this).
Completely out of sync with the original series, even terrible dialog added that does nothing. Every character has to have some love interest (and from the series, realizing I read it almost 30 years ago) "love interests" were not at all a key plot point. It's riddled with imagery that never existed, and serves no point to advancing the story.
Overall, they've taken a wonderful and exciting story and turned it into meaningless mush... I won't be continuing to watch this tragedy unfold.