mindgem Reviews

Barbarian (2022)

Wow. First good horror movie in 15 years.

[8/10 · 21 April 2024]

This movie came as a shock to me, I had zero expectation, I didn't even know it was a horror flick when I put it on but man did I have a blast.

The movie isn't flawless and at times silly when characters make dumb choices but all in all this is a superb horror movie. It's scary, it's strange and it holds together from beginning til end.

It has those lovely Slow moments, shooting a dark corridor for an extended period of time like the did when film was great. Example in The pet sematary when the old man tells the tail on the porch and they show the dark trail leading into darkness for a long time. It gives your brain time to get scared by imagination, you fill in the blanks and that makes it scary.

The movie also have strange, almost delirium periods like the wacky neighbourhood in Vivarium.

The intro of the character is superb. I'm trying to be as vague as possible not to spoil anything.

All in all I rate this movie 8/10. Great film, im going to watch it many more times. In todays terrible movie times where nothing comes out except for super hero movies, this is a welcome contribution to real cinema.

Dream Scenario (2023)

Wow, did you expect Nick Cage to be this good?

[7/10 · 31 December 2023]

It's not a bad movie at all, great concept. Although it would have been better as a 24min episode of The Twilight zone rather than a 90min feature it holds up and the best part is that Nick Cage is actually great. Really good. Not his usual hysterical outburst and overacting stuff but a withdrawn somber guy who allows his character to take the back seat.

It's not a bad movie at all, great concept. Although it would have been better as a 24min episode of The Twilight zone rather than a 90min feature it holds up and the best part is that Nick Cage is actually great. Really good. Not his usual hysterical outburst and overacting stuff but a withdrawn somber guy who allows his character to take the back seat.

There's also a few good laughs.

7/10. Best performance Nick has done since Leaving Las Vegas.

Leave the World Behind (2023)

All you can wish for as a premise but left you stranded

[3/10 · 29 November 2023]

Three 1980s icon stars. Julia robers, ethan hawk and kevin bacon in a world disaster movie. Wow, i want to see that.

But it gets worse and worse over time. Leaving tons of plot holes and ending in a no ending.

It falls apart so hard that you feel kinda stunned, like someone must have snuck in and just ended the movie before the real end.

They talk a ton about the wife but we never get to see her so why did they push for it so hard? The son claimed to be stung by a bug and his teeth fall out, no explanation. They go to the neigbour for meds although they have no clue if the meds will somehow cure him and then they have a flashback from 2 seconds before...its a mess. Everything is a mess in this movie.

You will be able to list 100 left plot points that leads nowhere and was just sort of forgotten about. Its a terrible movie with a great premise.

Fool's Paradise (2023)

Its listed as Comedy?

[3/10 · 13 July 2023]

So Charlie Day wrote this thing and I have a feeling it was suppose to be something else. I was hoping his character was going to be a Charlie Chaplin-esk dude in modern era where he doesn't speak but he has the whit to progress his story.

Turns out he doesn't do anything. He doesn't advance at all. Other characters advance his story and its so boring. There's no jokes, it's all crap. He brought in every single cast member from Always Sunny.

I think he is trying to be the new Adam Sandler of pushing crap but that's not a good role model.

The movie has no classic 3 acts either, it just ends with him saying "i love you too" to the dusche that used him for personal gain without contributing nothing to his own well being.

Nope, this was garbage. I think he would have done all his friends a favor by not including them because now their career is tained with this piece of trash of a movie.

American History X (1998)

Who is the actor that rapes Edward Norton?

[10/10 · 16 April 2023]

No where can I find the name of this actor. He has many speaking scenes and is the second in command in the Aryan prison gang and rapes Derek.

Can anyone tell he who he is?

He is not credited anywhere, not even in the stills from the movie, pretty strange to not credit the person in the picture but instead just have the caption "from the film American History X" He is not credited anywhere, not even in the stills from the movie, pretty strange to not credit the person in the picture but instead just have the caption "from the film American History X" He is not credited anywhere, not even in the stills from the movie, pretty strange to not credit the person in the picture but instead just have the caption "from the film American History X"

Who is he?

Stockholm (2018)

They got everything wrong, even what Stockholm Syndrome means

[2/10 · 15 October 2022]

Stockholm Syndrome suppose to mean that the hostage eventually bond with their capture but first after either threats and violence or if an opposite reality seem worse, like in this case where the cops wanted to throw in tear gas or storm the building or bomb the building with the hostages inside which for the hostages seem worse than to be let out alongside the robbers and then be set free provided they trusted the robber.

In this movie however they let Ethan Hawk play Clark as a humain, nice guy who cares so much about his hostages and That's not a Stockholm Syndrome...its so messed up.

Another huge aspect they completely lost in this story is that the prime minister of Sweden called the shots in this bank robbery. It is totally insane that a politician would have anything to do with police work but this was actually the case, furthermore there are phone recordings of this insane minister saying things that made it clear that he didn't give a hoot about the hostages. They should have brought that in as a very strong case why the hostages would take their captors side but nope..they played the prime minister as a super nice guy which he wasnt at all.

Another thing that sticks out to me is Clark being "american", sure, he might have gone in with that cover to mask himself or whatever and it is understandable that they all speak English in the movie for the sake of the audience but they elaborate this to the extreme where they mention the vietnam war...swedes were not in the vietnam war. What is that all about, don't just add in a lot of fictional things in a movie that is suppose to be a dramatization of a real event.

Other than that they made this movie so dull, nothing happens and its not like they didn't have material, the real story is packed full of stuff they could have added, the real deal himself has told the story in detail and then the hostages and others have their story out there but they hardly picked up on any of the events.

No, this is a really bleak boring dull movie about the origin of the Stockholm Syndrome which they misunderstood completely. 2 stars!

Nope (2022)

It has the ingrediences for a feast but came out a soup

[5/10 · 13 October 2022]

There are a ton of flaws in this movie that I just want to get off my chest but let me first say some positives.

The photography and miljoe is great, fantastic color grading and settings. Love it.

No problem with the acting, nice to see new faces introduced. There are some interesting plot points made, the beginning is great. Falling random made made objects from the sky..what is that about..so the plot grabs you from the getgo.

Now let me point out some stuff I didn't like.

First of, keys and coins falls from the sky, kills the dad. I would be so curious of what that was all about and probably so would the cops since this wasn't an accident but there's no cops involved and the son does nothing to investigate, I would have loved to see a scene right after he got home where he searches and find more objects...at least so we can get into his mind of whats going on. He seem uninterested.

Furthermore..the main guy..why is he so slow. It worked for him in Get Out but here he warped that to the max and almost walk like a slug...its unrealisticly slow, always.

Then the very strange wild west carnival place, it's really unrealistic to have a place with lots of visitors in the middle of nowhere but still. Even if it was, what was the story with the monkey. We got the info of what happend but it seems so out of place at that point, its like they abandon the idea with the falling objects to move on to something else. To weave that into the plot they should have made it differently, it feels disjointed.

Then the main guy sells his horse Lucky to the carnival dude. But later he just says, Im going to get Lucky...as of what. Is the viewer to see that as him being irrational and just go back to steal Lucky back or what was that. Lucky was in the middle of an event at the carnival..so strange.

Then when he gets there the place is abandoned and he again does the super slowmotion zombie shuffle so you get irritated, no one acts like that in real life, its surreal.

Alien ship comes and I dunno..does nothing but knock him out for some reason. He wakes up and just head on home..so weird. I would have called the cops at many times..but ok. Sure, we dont want cops in the movie but at least act like your scared or something because you SAY you are scared in other ways but you don't act like it at any point and you do nothing to avoid the problems...

Then this strange director with a camera from the 1800s is needed...because of no modern cameras work...and then a motorcycle dude..i dunno...at this point i was so lost. I didnt know why or who anyone was. I stopped and left here. Total mess.

So my scoring goes for the cinematography.

Elvis (2022)

Bland, bad editing, only hiphop music, sync fails

[3/10 · 27 August 2022]

A story of Elvis and only 2 short clips of remakes of Elvis songs and they were really bad, the accent of this guy is wack. The rest of the movie is filled with modern hiphop rather than finding similar music or at least same era music. I can understand that they didn't have budget to license any Elvis songs..clearly that was the case but why would you put in modern hiphop. That takes you out of the story.

Other problems is that the guy playing Elvis is so wrong, he got the pelvis moves but Elvis was equaly known for his lip, the facial expressions as he performed but this actor is like a stone face, it's so weird seing him perform with a blank ghost look plus the audio is out of sync so often throughout the movie.

The editing is so bad, I mean terrible. At one time they mix 3 color gradings with 3 different music bits at the same time, Its a disaster.

A somewhat easy story to pull off made terrible.

Cyst (2020)

It's Terribly boring but still

[5/10 · 7 July 2022]

This movie is of course extremely bad and boring but I do like that the acting is so boring it reminiss of the b movies from the 80s plus the poster is nice.

I give it 5/10 which in my opinion means "worth a watch"

The Beta Test (2021)

It's Not bad at all

[7/10 · 4 July 2022]

I was dang surprised. I thought it was going to be a super cheesy movie but the acting was great. I'm definitely going to see what else this actor is up to.

The story works but lacks ending and Mcguffins along the way.

Anyways, it's a mix between 50 shades of gray, American Psycho, The Game and Gone Girl. Not as good as either of them but up that same alley.

Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

How did they manage to make the CGI worse than for 30 years ago?

[1/10 · 4 July 2022]

The CGI of all the animals are soo bad, it's irritatingly bad. Back in the early 90s there were clunky 8bit renditions of animals with more realistic movement than this so I stopped watching after a few minutes.

Infinite Storm (2022)

complete garbage waste of time

[1/10 · 4 July 2022]

Starts out with the woman going up on the mountains for a hike or for possible resque, fine. She falls in a cravasse and it takes so long she starts to flashback to her kids before she finds the strength to get out of the hole...this has nothing to do with the plot and nothing happends in the hole besides her getting a lot of plastic snow in her mouth which looks comical.

Then she fins the foot prints of a sneaker up on the mountain in the storm. Ok this is intersting..who would go up there in sneakers and why. Now we have a plot.

She finds a guy that seem unresponsive, she must resque her. So now starts 45min of her silly resque where she treats him like a baby and he reacts like a baby. She says, "are you ok John", don't eat snow John", "be careful John" and he just weeps and cry and start running away from her and in the next scene he is running towards her and in the next he wants to commit suicide jumping off a cliff 1 meter off the ground.

Ok so she finally gets him down and he just bugger off, not saying anything. And we get to see her just sitting around her house for weeks, nothing happens, she just sits there. Suddenly she hear something on the radio, what is this. A big broadcast of her resuqe of the man but we as the viewer have no idea who made the story or who got her picture when she was up on the mountain because she acts as she has no clue of the story.

In the end she meets up with the man...she asks nothing and he tells nothing. Complete waste of time. My god. Its based on a true story but the story was so lame, they could have made a 1min piece of it instead.

The Haunting of Hill House (2018)

Good things and really bad things

[3/10 · 30 January 2022]

First the good things. The quality of the shots, the acting and the horror are good. But the bad things take over and makes this series impossible to watch. The whole thing is set up like sketches rather than building and building up to a climax. So one scen has the gorl sleeping in bed, someone walks in and crawl into bed with her, then she turns around and the person i sgone. Ok. Then scen switch and this is never mentioned again. Next scen maybe is the mother embalming a corpse and a spider crawls out from her mouth. Scar. Next scene and never mention it again. So the whole series is built up like sketches. So bad.

Tusk (I) (2014)

This Movie Could have been!

[6/10 · 23 January 2022]

This movie could have been a similar classic to Hostel or Ruins or movies like that where the low budget and restricted scenes makes the story.

The problem I have is that they had a weird conflict between making a comedy and a horror movie. Neither felt complete. The Horror part is great, it could have been a good movie if they stuck to horror alone.

But then formatted it into a comedy movie and an embarringsly boring comedy, worst than Adam Sandler. A cock-eyed Johnny Depp as some kinda investigator similar to the Pink Panther. All jokes fall flat.

No, this movie failed because they didn't stick to the horror all the way. This Movie Could have been.

After Life (2019–2022)

What is this series about?

[4/10 · 15 January 2022]

It's listed as comedy but there's absolutely zero jokes, there's no dark humor either. I don't get it.

The main character is despicable, is that what the viewer should feel about him? I'm very confused because it's a story of a man who lost his wife and he can't let it go so usually that would mean you kinda feel sorry about him but he is just being so rude and horrible to everyone so what am I suppose to feel. I don't get this series at all. Its terrible.

Don't Look Up (2021)

Utter garbage in every way

[3/10 · 24 December 2021]

They can't decide what category of movie to stick to, it's tries to be a comedy but sprinkled in with horrific trauma drama.

The script is a disaater, it leads nowhere and makes it all confusing all of the time. There are scenes in this movie that are misplaced, not for comic relief but just bad editing and no double check. Like at the dinner table near the end the guy is talking and all of the sudden there is a still image of him eating ice cream. Things like that is all over the movie. The graphics is so bad a first grader does a better job in Blender. All in all this is a terrible garbage movie.

Caveat (2020)

It's good but it's also Bad

[5/10 · 10 July 2021]

I thought it was going to be schlok but it turns out to be actually creepy and good. However 50% of the movie is filmed in total darkness with only a flashlight at most which is too dark, I mean, it's not bringing anything scarry to the table but it just makes you drift away from the movie, when the guy walks around the house with a flashlight for 30 damn minutes straight...you can't see anything, I turn off. Didn't finish it even. Up til then it has great potential.

Army of the Dead (2021)

A superboting Heist/superhero movie disguised as a zombiemovie

[1/10 · 23 May 2021]

This is not a zombie movie at all. Its a template heist movie where all characters and all zombies are super heroes. Its only set in a zombie world to try to lure a bigger audience. Its also called army of the dead but you never see an army. First 40min you see a single zombie. Rest are a few.

Game Over, Man! (2018)

Much worse than Workaholics

[3/10 · 13 April 2021]

Workaholics is a TV show starring all three of this movies heroes. The show is good, it's low brow but smart at times and it has an atmosphere.

This movie however is just like all Netflix movies, it's super bland, they hire a ton of really bad writers and they have no sense of character development.

The movies is just Die Hard straight up, the three bone heads gets caught right in the middle of something bad and have to save the day.

So the characters are so bad, why they have to make every single person to be "funny" is beyond me. Its so much better to let the heroes be funny and the rest to be straight guys.

Now the manager of the hotel is some kind of excentric crazy guy that takes attention for no reason, the rapper is "super funny" doing something to take attention, the "celebrity" I guess..some guy they mentioned by name as if ppl knew who he was and his only scene was to stuff his face with food and spit it out. Super funny. I don't get it. This is some kinda circus where everyone needs to top eachother to be as unfunny as possible.

Since they ripped Die Hard right off, the plot is standard, ramp up til they save the day, that's it. Other than that the movie is so boring you might as well sleep thru the thing.

I'm sure Netflix is mostly to blame for this travisty because these three dudes are funny on Workaholics but they did Nothing funny in this movie so I dunno.

Coming to America (1988)

Best black comedy by a longshot

[10/10 · 22 January 2021]

One of the best comedies ever. A clear 10/10 rating from me. Just a perfect Gem of a movie.

Suspiria (I) (2018)

You saw the cover, you saw the trailer. that is all.

[1/10 · 5 November 2020]

This is a tradegy of a remake. It's an artsy fartsy movie. No plot, just modern dance and incoherent actors. On the upside, if you're in the mode to watch a horror movie you should see this one because it's nausiatingly bad and you'll sure to get a headache and it will turn your stomache from withstanding 3 hours or crap.

Tag (I) (2018)

They've tried this before, didn't work then, doesn't work now.

[2/10 · 5 November 2020]

Back in the 80s they made a movie called Gotcha! The movie is about adults playing paintball out in the world acting serious about the game. It's a gimmick that didn't work then and tag with adults out in the world doesn't work now. It's too silly, there's no rules that make this remotely interesting.

This movie is about as fun as The Big Year. The Big Year is about bird watching where three guys compete over who can spot the most rare birds within the season but the flaw is that there's no rules so it's honor system which makes the movie completely boring..almost like bird watching.

I mean guys...implement some rules so the audience can get into the game rather than just being a bobble head at a tennis match.

The Karate Kid (2010)

The fact that they practise Kung Fu in Karate Kid gives this movie 1 star.

[1/10 · 2 September 2020]

Somehow I wish people couln't buy out franchises like this. take the good name of Karate Kid and make a cashgrab thing, not even related to Karate at all.

Visioneers (2008)

This is not Brazil nor dark humor

[1/10 · 2 September 2020]

I assume they had Brazil in mind and I assume they cast Zach so they could spin in as a comedy but you just sit there and wait for a joke or something...but nothing. Not a single joke. No deep underlying motive. Nothing.

Avsolutely nothing happends in this movie. 90min of complete boredom.

Cobra Kai (2018–2025)

Okay im very surprised. This is actually good

[7/10 · 30 August 2020]

Of course you would assume this is a really bad money grab thing from a well known franchise. I even thought that the two guys from the original only would appear in the trailer and then they would transition into some young bucks.

But they are the actual lead rolls and both of them are doing a good job. I've binched 5 episodes now and still think it holds a very high standard.

This coming from a guy born 76 so Karate kid was a staple movie for me.