ilikeweirdstuffs Reviews

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Half a Life (1991) Season 4, Episode 22

Absolute insanity

[1/10 · 28 November 2023]

Let's recap: -There is a ritual introduced in a society, because they would rather kill their elders than take care of them.

-This is only a millennium or so old, so clearly society could live without it.

-The enterprise crew somehow refuse to do anything about this 'tradition' despite it being a warp capable society.

-The enterprise crew hinder an ambassador with diplomatic immunity in her freedom of movement and diplomatic engagement to support this 'tradition'.

-This same society who is obsessed with people dying before their age makes life difficult, is trying to reignite their dying sun, not realizing the hypocrisy.

-The only scientist who has a lick of a chance to accomplish this is being forced into this suicidal tradition against his will.

-The society is so blinded by their custom that they refuse to even hear arguments against it.

-It goes so far that the species threaten violence upon innocents on the enterprise who have a duty to protect anyone seeking asylum.

-The resolution is for the scientist to submit to the societal pressure and lwaxana to accept his ritual.

The fact that this made it past the production crew, and audiences weren't absolutely enraged is really testament to how little people care for lives and is honestly disheartening.

I reserve ratings of 3 and under for pieces of media that could have negative effects on real life society. This episode achieves this by pretending that submitting to inhumane, self sabotaging, hypocritical traditions, created for bad reasons, and enforced with emotional manipulation and threats of violence against innocents, is the correct choice.

Rules of Engagement (2000)

Disgusting jingoism

[3/10 · 3 March 2022]

Warcrimes are warcrimes no matter how you try to put it.

It does not matter if you are american, arab, or vietnamese.

It does not matter if you wanted to protect someone by committing them.

It does not matter if someone else would have done the same.

It does not matter if you were a bit confused about your target.

This movie is disgusting and a shame on everyone who participated in it.

Serenity (I) (2019)

A 9/10 movie literally ruined by 60 seconds of voiceover

[3/10 · 1 January 2022]

Do not believe the people saying that the movie is lame. I do not know why people were expecting a film noir. It isn't one and watching it without preconceptions it is genuinely entertaining and thrilling until the last moments.

That, however, is when we learn a crucial detail literally in voiceover and then in a phonecall. Every other shot in the movie is ambiguous.

Redo the voiceover and erase the phonecall, in an edit literally any fan could make in moviemaker and the movie is easily a 9/10 with great acting, conveying the confusion and struggle of the characters to the viewer, and with genuinely heartwrenching moments.

But as it stands, the ending is just wrong. It doesn't really fit the themes established by the movie itself, and more importantly is the wrong solution to the problem. It's a lesson actively harmful if taken seriously, and thus the whole thing can't be rated above 3.

Iron Man 2 (2010)

In retrospect, one of the worst sequels ever. 1.5 hours of the powerful humiliating the downtrodden.

[4/10 · 4 September 2021]

With the benefit of hindsight let's break things down:

1) Tony Stark is unlikeable.

In the previous movie RDJ makes a self absorbed rich playboy a**hole likeable and grow a conscience. It was a challenge the actor and director pulled off with grace. Meanwhile in this movie he plays an even more obnoxious rich playboy. Half the movie is spent hammering home just how self absorbed he becomes because he sees his death approaching. Let's not forget that his poisoning resulted from a shrapnel being in him thanks to his careless attitude and awful arms deals, which precisely already had an impact on him. Somehow this isn't acknowledged. This results in the character development being forcibly reset, and instead of looking cool the constant flaunting of his ego and wealth just grates on one's nerves. When he isn't busy being obnoxious, he is constantly humiliated by everyone around him. Potts rebuffs and ignores him like as if she suddenly owns Stark Industries, Coulson and Fury break into his home and cut his phone lines like he doesn't literally own a sattelite network, he is beaten up by Rhodes at his own party in his own house (but it's totally okay because he just let him you know), Natasha tricks him and super intelligence as well as his advanced AI, and for some reason he doesn't immediately rat her out to Potts or literally anyone else after discovering this, and she then proceeds to only listen to Potts, despite being hired as Stark's assistant.

2) Happy is nothing but a ridiculous punching bag.

Literally. Beaten up both by Tony and Natasha, and acting like a panicked little girl seeing a spider when confronting Whiplash.

3) Pepper Potts is ruthless, whiny, and awful.

Potts is promoted literally from secretary to CEO. Despite this incredible honor and unheard of gift, she gets over her shock pretty fast, constantly berating Tony about his private actions, and giving him the cold shoulder when he needs her, whining about how difficult it is to keep the business running when he gets into trouble, and consistently degrading any attempt Tony makes at trying to impress her. She whines in every difficult situation, and acts like an unlikeable entitled b**** whenever given any bit of power. Much in contrast to the powerful, just often slightly stunned, in-over-her-head, but never surrendering, secretary we saw in the first movie.

4) The movie is basically just a horrible who-gets-to-humiliate-who.

The Pecking order goes Natasha humiliates Potts, Stark, Happy, Hammer, while no one can even do anything to her, she's just so awesome, and cool, and sexy, and great, and proficient, and perfect in every way.... She is over everyone else. Potts rebuffs and humiliates Stark, berates Happy and humiliates Hammer, while everyone is only constantly seeking her favor, with only Natasha being above her with deception. Coulson humiliates Stark, while he is left alone by everyone, even his superior. Rhodes hurts and damages Stark constantly, while only his superiors and Vanko check him once. Stark easily beats Happy, easily entirely demolishes Vanko and his legacy, and literally non stop humiliates Hammer, while he is under Natasha, Potts, Coulson, Rhodes. Happy is over no one maybe Vanko and is under Natasha, Stark, Potts. Vanko and his fathers legacy is easily ignored and utterly demolished by Stark, (no sharks saw Stark's blood in the water apparently), but he is above Hammer and Rhodes. Hammer meanwhile is not above anyone, and Natasha, Potts, Happy, Stark, and Vanko, and even some literal side character journalist take turns in humiliating him.

This means that the definitive top two rungs are the girls, because empowerment can only happen through pushing others down apparently. While the supposedly main characters of Stark a genius and powerful industrialist, Vanko a genius, and Hammer a powerful industrialist, are among the bottom 4.

5) The US Airforce is painted as the true villain of the movie.

While in the first movie the Airforce didn't do anything wrong, and in fact were shown to actually try and do the right thing, here they are entirely antagonistic. Everything bad that happens results directly from Airforce meddling and them doing illegal things. Wanting the Iron Man system in the beginning, breaking into Tony's house to get it, the deal with Hammer, the resulting access of hammer to the tech and suit accelerating Vanko's plan, the resulting access of Hammer to higher circles of power, the Hammer presentation at the expo.

6) Rhodes is a horrible excuse for a human being let alone friend.

Despite ostensibly being his "friend", this despicable maniac breaks into Tony's lab, crashes his birthday party where Tony is clearly enjoying himself with the excuse that TONY is not acting right, trashes the entire place, and then finally steals his property, a dangerous weapons system at that. He ends up letting the villains have access to it, facilitates a deal giving the villains resources and power, endangers others while activating his stolen suit, and then has Tony expend time and energy on trying to save him. He offers literally ZERO redeeming qualities or any sort of actual friendship to Tony.

7) Hammer, the side villain is just pathetic.

He is essentially right in everything he says in the hearing. Tony should have played the clips of when he almost died, and crashed several times during the first movie, including narrowly missing civilians. Weapons systems like the Iron Man suit are dangerous. He is also constantly one upped and humiliated by Tony, which while reinforcing Tony's a**hole-ish behavior makes him seem pitiable. This can only be seen as justified or enjoyable by people who themselves enjoy kicking people when they're down. Look through the movie. There isn't a single scene with Justin Hammer which doesn't serve to explicitly humiliate him in SOME way. Had he organized a good lawyer instead of a deadly prison break he would be the sympathetic victim in the movie. And even in that one scene where he demonstrates his ruthlessness and power he is humiliated by the main villain. Who then does it again and again breaking into his security system, turning his words on him, ignoring him, killing his men, engineering his own thing behind his back.

8) Finally but most importantly: Vanko, the main villain is more sympathetic than the hero.

Without the scenes of gratuitous murder, the quirky and downtrodden guy whose father was sent to a life of suffering by his rich american billionaire partner, and who now fights against an obnoxious self absorbed billionaire controlling weapons of mass destruction, would absolutely be seen by everyone as the hero of the story. The fact that "he was motivated by greed" is used to try and make it seem like his father was the bad guy is absolutely insane. Howard Stark, himself did NOT CARE for his child, is only interested in his OWN legacy built on selling experimental WEAPONS for MONEY, CHEATED his partner out of his legacy, STEALING all the credit and money, had him DEPORTED, leading to Vanko being sentenced to a life of SUFFERING. And he is nonetheless being played up as some sort of hero who even in death teaches his son. And while both Howard and Tony got filthy rich off of selling weapons of war to governments, Anton Vanko had never been shown to have done anything close to as heinous as that, even when put into a death camp. Talk about psychopaths exploiting vulnerable people. Yikes.

This is what brings this movie close to being actively harmful.

It was competently shot, with nice CGI, and Elon Musk was in it, and an effort was made to make the villains at least appear bad despite their sympathetic stories, instead of just asserting it. So it's quite enjoyable if you can switch off your mind entirely. But if not, prepare to be thoroughly uncomfortable.

Hard Candy (2005)

Awfulness with no good take-away

[2/10 · 19 August 2021]

I reserve ratings of 3 and under for movies that could have a negative real life impact.

Putting aside the awful unbelievable plot, the plotholes, and the glorification of vigilante justice and torture for a moment, here's a fun fact: In about half of Europe Hayley would be considered 'of age'. I understand that this may seem weird to most americans, but european attitudes are generally just that un-prudish. Hell, in germany we had the largest national youth magazine "Bravo" publish naked modeling pics in the 2000s. They stopped later, but it defined youth culture for a while. Literally! Wikipedia that!

This means that for the less prudish people over here the mere accusation of Jeff possibly wanting to date her wouldn't elicit a visceral hate reaction. Sure, it's not *quite* like having a character be gay, it could be considered disturbing and disgusting. But at the outset everything in this movie would be legally completely above water in almost half of Europe, even if Jeff WERE to date Hayley.

Watched with this in mind the whole shock factor is put aside. One can actually look at the merits of the movie, without anything distracting from them. Of which there are basically none, while the "shrewd" vigilantism of the main character appears more creepy than anything else.

As to why two stars and not one? Because to those actually looking out for it, it shows exactly how awful and dangerous vigilantism is, and how unassuming criminals can be. It's great at portraying the feverish and self obsessed smug vigilante. The ending makes it clear that two people were tortured and are now dead thanks to Hayley, at least one of whom was possibly not even guilty of the murder. But this isn't very emphasized, and in the end her wild accusations bore some fruit, so even if this was the intention it falls short. Conversely, it also portrays really well that evil people can be charming and sympathetic. But this is overdone with a lot of the sympathy being forced by the movie to make the later twist more shocking.

-Had she had actual EVIDENCE from the start, not just some assertions and hunches, had he been portrayed as clearly guilty, even with the same amount of psychopathy on her part, people wouldn't have felt that sorry for him. So the movie would have made the point that enhanced interrogation and torturing someone to death should be allowed for the most heinous crimes. Which would still be really bad, since justice should be meted out by the justice system. But at least in this version sympathy for a possible monster would NOT BE FORCED on the audience.

-Had she been portrayed as less sympathetic, and him as more, with her assumptions NOT being justified in the end, people could have actually rooted for the accused guy. The movie would have then taught the lesson that maybe being a psycho vigilante is not the solution, even to difficult problems, and that dehumanizing criminals and suspects is an evil thing, despite intentions. This would have meant making a character sympathetic who was still possibly sleazy. But at least it would NOT have literally glorified vigilante torture murders.

-But as it stands, despite no real evidence for her hunch, and her being a psycho, and his misery forcing audience sympathy ... at the end she sort of had her strategy justified, because he admitted to some involvement, may have had even more guilt, and people saw her as sympathetic throughout. This means that overall the movie BOTH makes people feel sympathetic for what could very well be a child murderer AND seriously proposes vigilante violence against those accused of horrific things being totally great and successful. Both of which are horrible.

Das Boot (1981)

A very nicely made movie with a theme that will stick with you

[9/10 · 8 November 2020]

Everything about how this movie was made, how it was acted, and how it was put together, and the entire plot is just ... very good.

It's not the thing that will have you grip the edge of your seat because of constant action, but something that will pull you in and leave you to wonder where the runtime of the movie went.

The 9 stars however is just a begrudgingly given one, because the visuals were often a bit too confusing beyond what was necessary, and the ending was just plain nonsense and bad.

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

Just dark in every sense of the word

[4/10 · 21 October 2020]

Many have rated this a 1 - doubtless to counter the fawning adoration of the mindless fans. This however is what you are objectively getting out of it:

-Darkness on screen. The entire movie is dark. The lighting is dark and the palette is inconsistent, with shades of black, gray, blue, yellow, green. It is mostly matted throughout, and the saturation changes from shot to shot at times. There is absolutely nothing beautiful about it, since even there is no visually consistent bleak color scheme or saturation level. Making something look generally "bleak" doesn't make something a masterpiece, but if you need that sort of thing this is for you.

-Darkness in visuals. The entirety of the movie is deeply unsettling, a cheap horror movie through and through. Gratuitous and unnecessary gore and body horror as well as unsettling character and costume designs are everywhere. This is compounded by every character acting appropriately. I do not see the reason the acting is complimented so much when all good characters are just shaking and trembling in fear most of the time, and the bad characters seem empty and proud. It's a single tone to hit, but i guess they hit it decently? The acting was so same-y even over different characters that it is groan-worthy.

-Darkness in context. It's a bloody guerilla war. I know the winners write history and that fascists are pretty bad in general, but i swear i have seen them portrayed less uniformly one dimensional in literal comedies. So the bad guys are very very bad, the good guys are basically non existent and only show up for about 5 minutes, and there's a lying faun.

-Darkness in content. Without spoiling anything, this is more a Grimm fairytale than a Disney one. Everything is absolutely horrific, and the movie succeeds in at least one point: making the viewer feel every bit of it.

In short i have absolutely no idea why people liked it and why del Torro is lauded for it at all whatsoever, when the cinematography is basic, the story banal, the plotpoints predictable, the acting non-varied, and the overall feeling just a feature-length depressant. Most importantly the things that people enjoy because they are different - the creatures and the fae world as a whole - barely come up more than is visible in the trailers, with the majority of the movie focusing instead on the real world. It's a bit false advertising.

It's not offensively bad in that it would have real life negative effects, but it certainly is not a good or enjoyable movie.

Fear, Inc. (2016)

Almost a perfect horror movie

[4/10 · 14 October 2020]

However the authors dug too greedily, delved too deep for twists.... And the final one just ended up ruining the whole thing.

This is the only feature length movie that managed to drop so fast in rating.

My rating for it dropped from 9 to 4 in ten seconds flat.

Texas Chainsaw (2013)

A MUST not SEE

[2/10 · 7 October 2020]

I reserve ratings 3 and under for movies that have an actual negative impact on the real world.

There isn't much to tell apart from what's already revealed in the synopsis.

This movie achieves this by trying to make people somehow empathize with an absolute monster of a human being, whose life it is to murder random kids, and with a family that supports this. It earns no points for being absolutely bad at it too, with plot holes and character arcs so unbelievable that one literally cannot keep watching it.

The only saving grace of it is that it was somewhat competently shot and the acting wasn't too atrocious given what the actors were given to work with.

Replicas (2018)

Different, but still conventionally enjoyable. What more can you ask for?

[8/10 · 29 May 2020]

While a lot of people criticize the script the actual problems in my opinion come from the story.

There are some nonsensical plotpoints in internal logic as well as in the science parts.

The script itself however is really good. You don't notice how long it is despite not much happening over the course of the movie, because it keeps you engaged throughout.

The acting comes off as slightly off but this could be a deliberate creative choice seeing what the subject matter is.

Where the movie really shines is how it deals with its topic. I doubt a single person would have expected things to go the way they do in the movie. All this completely without cheap twists and gotcha moments, just toying with audience expectations. Judging by some reviews a lot of people didn't appreciate that.

Or the nonstandard focuses of its scenes.

All in all the movie is entirely enjoyable as a regular sci-fi movie unlike many "alternative" and "artsy" takes on things. Nonetheless it is not your standard hollywood cliche-fest neither in its attitudes nor its cinematography.

Battle Los Angeles (2011)

Not that good

[5/10 · 4 April 2020]

Don't get me wrong the movie is well made, the actors are great, the script is believable. It's just that it doesn't offer anything apart from generic heroism.

The movie is grim, the message about the military being super necessary and great really dumb, and the ending is really contrived and not very believable.

Westworld (2016–2022)

Smart =/= Good

[2/10 · 27 March 2020]

I reserve ratings of under 3 stars to media that goes beyond the limits of a fictional universe and is harmful to the real world.

As a smart man said: Stories are lies that reveal a deeper truth.

The "truth" this particular story reveals is really ugly... and false.

While the series is masterfully fabricated, really confusing and complex, and still ramping up in complexity over the first season, if one sticks with it and puts in the effort to understand it, it's really smart.

Unfortunately if one thinks just a biiit more about it and isn't simply content with saying "wow this was smart", one also starts to see the ugliness behind it.

First of all, there are major continuity errors which you might gloss over if the weird storytelling confuses you enough. This leads to absolutely major points of the universe being simply discarded when its convenient. Several things never go explained so if one starts to think about them the whole plot unravels.

Second, while making a big fuss in universe about how violence is totally unnecessary for a good story, it absolutely relishes in gratuitous gore and completely needless violence to make the movie seem more action-y and appealing to the broader masses.

There is however sill a bigger issue than both of these.

As i stated in the beginning, if one thinks about it, the underlying messages which one hopes would change over the movie are fundamentally just wrong to the point of being actively evil.

Those being that "violence is the answer and the solution to intellectual and philosophical problems", and "violent resistance is the only way", and finally that "everyone who appears good is actually just evil and ruthless and that's alright, because that's how sapient creatures are".

This is extremely wrong and speaks of a completely nihilistic view of humanity that is absolutely staggeringly awful in its negativity.

I hope the AIs of the future will be able to recognize this.

Violence isn't the only solution, particularly when you have intelligence, and it also does not elevate you to any experience otherwise unattainable.

Violent resistance engenders more problems than it solves in most cases.

And finally, in the real world, there is good in everyone, because being good is rational. There is no need to embrace anyone's bad side to be a well rounded person. One can acknowledge irrational thoughts as such. Because being bad is nothing more than that.

10 points for the smartest movie i've seen in a long time.

...Restricted to a max of 2 for being actively harmful in its message and propagating a damaging and frankly evil world view on how people are.

Ready or Not (I) (2019)

Fun flick

[6/10 · 10 December 2019]

Actually surprisingly funny but really dumb. Single gags in the movie are worth the entire BS though.

That being said BS there is a lot. Completely illogical actions, some unnecessary gratuitous gore, and really really bad illogical moments in storytelling and characterization.

All in all fun.

The Lords of Salem (2012)

Non offensive (except for the usual offensive stuff)

[5/10 · 21 October 2019]

This lacked sorely in substance and explanations.

Its a nice spooky thing to fill an evening with, but dont expect any great plot or revelations.

It wasn't disturbing in that it didn't try to portray any evil characters in a way one would sympathize with, it didn't portray anything good as evil.

It didn't focus on gore exclusively.

If naked old ladies, chanting of satan, or lots of theater blood are too much for you, skip this one. Otherwise its neat i guess. Nicely made. Just ... what is it?

What's it about.

Well at least its better than the usual contemporary horror stuff.

Apocalypse: Stalin (2015)

Brutally direct and uncouth

[10/10 · 18 October 2019]

Beautifully restored recordings.

Absolutely brutal honesty and directness in laying down the facts.

There are a lot of people who have only ever been in contact with pop culture portraying nazis as horrible enemies, and thus have an unwarranted positive attitude towards the polar opposite. Possibly because the americans have had enough of half a century of constant propaganda against the red menace, there is little talk and discussion about it.

Can you name at least half as many documentaries, movies, or explorations about the WW2 soviet union as there are about nazi germany?

Part of the reason why this series is so shocking is that factual reporting about the early soviets is so rare.

Another part are its poignant imagery and narration, brutal honesty, and quality of production.

A must see for a lot ... lot of people.

Dead End (I) (2003)

Horror/thriller with the effort of an A list movie

[9/10 · 17 October 2019]

Horror movies are a niche genre and with this comes a diehard fanbase of that genre. By this i don't mean that horrormovies cannot have mass appeal, but they usually do not aim for that base, as the general public is a lot harder to satisfy than their own niche. Since the makers try to get away with as little effort as possible and people have differing expectations for a horror movie than for normal ones this has lead to a continuous decline in their quality.

After all "it's a horror movie if you expect it to be like a normal movie you're watching it wrong!".

Plot? Characters? Worldbuilding? Actual fear? Things to make you think? Coherence? Believability? Watchability?

It doesn't matter if there are only sad excuses for these with no depth, or if they don't even exist at all. No, viewers will gladly excuse all of these faults and mistake anything that is disturbing or disgusting for a sense of fear and thus horror movies that would have been total flops by normal movie standards are taking over the genre.

Not so 'Dead End'.

-While it is slightly psychedelic the characters are nonetheless believable, real feeling, and thus manage a connection to the viewer.

-The plot is simple but interesting and functional.

-The building of the universe of the movie, including the characters this movie is mostly an exploration of, continues throughout until the end.

-The tribulations of the characters are viscerally gripping, and tension and some fear is kept up throughout.

-The entire thing is coherent with no moments that really pull you out of it, even though you are left wondering what exactly is going on.

-The entire thing is less on the cliché monster / ghost side and is thus not just dismissable out of the box.

-But finally and perhaps most importantly one walks away from the movie thinking and feeling and slightly dazed. Not because of some continuous assault on the viewers stomach, nerves, and sense of morality. No, one has a hard time immediately letting go of the movie because one actually is given things to think about that are at least slightly deeper than platitudes and less obtrusive than simply unexplained stuff about the movie.

No matter how good, i've not seen any other horror movie pull this off this well.

Sure it has some gore, jumpscares, horror cliches, dumb actions, but the entire movie is remarkably restrained and thus delivering an all the more poignant and enjoyable experience.

Terminal (I) (2018)

Absolute garbage

[3/10 · 15 October 2019]

I can appreciate some darkness in movies. But having every single last one of the characters detestable with no redeeming qualities, while at the same time dragging things out with self fellating artsy nonsense taken from better movies, to the point that the entire movie essentially lacks a plot and instead only has singular cardboard cutout events and characters and a ton of talking.... that is pushing it too far.

I really wish directors who think that disturbing the audience is a valid replacement for creating actual excitement, fear, and suspense would get booted out of mainstream hollywood already. Along with all the critics who will gush all over any movie with praise as long as it does a few lighting tricks, and weird cuts for dat sweet artsy cred.

Don't get me wrong the movie is absolutely beautifully shot, and the acting is nice, but the singular motivation throughout remains the one from the trailer: revenge.... And while that motivation is understandable in some of its incarnations, it's not so much in others.

Also everything ABOUT the variations of revenge is so hollow and grim and evil in every line and action that one comes away feeling dirty just having observed these characters for a while, as well as a sense of having been attacked. The only things it accomplishes are to make one feel really disturbed by a too creepy and sad portrayal of psychopathic insanity. So if that and a sea of artsy stuff is all you need to like a movie you'll love this one.

Glorifying revenge is bad.

Glorifying murder is evil.

This movie attempts to do both.

The only reason it might not succeed is because all the characters are actually detestable despite their cool demeanor. Plus sympathetic characters are revealed to be monsters. Which is thoroughly uncomfortable. But this means that if it isn't damaging because it glorifies revenge, it's damaging for being incredibly depressing. Seriously, even Tarantino movies are less depressing to watch.

Although maybe this could actually be a meta cautionary tale against how hollow people become when consumed by revenge. Though with how low brow the artsy stuff in the movie is i wouldn't bet on it.

In either case a movie needs to have some characters the audience at least isn't creeped out by. This one doesn't. Its awful to watch awful people do awful things, so 3 stars.

The Leisure Seeker (2017)

Absolutely ruined by last 10 minutes, do not trust the reviews

[3/10 · 15 September 2019]

The movie handled all topics it brought up masterfully and with care and dignity... up until the final minutes where all of that and the previously built up themes go flying out of the window.

I reserve ratings of 3 and below for movies that harm mankind by existing. This one certainly deserves that category.

And its such a shame too, because - without spoiling anything - its exclusively the ending dragging down an otherwise well made movie.

"An old couple on a last long roadtrip find their passion for love and life" my a**.

That summary is like summarizing 'Independence Day' as "A peaceful and happy meeting of cultures from different parts of the galaxy." The exact opposite is true.

An absolutely horrid piece of what i assume is propaganda.

Could have come straight from the desk of Göbbels with its final message.

Happy Death Day (2017)

A near miss

[9/10 · 9 September 2019]

I assume like life, things can't be perfect in a movie. But still, its pretty infuriating to see an ending which could've been perfect but ended up not, after a movie that hit perfect notes all throughout.

In the rest of the movie: Great tone, great suspense, great messages, great visuals. Leaves you wanting to see more from the cast and crew.

The 5th Wave (2016)

Not the best but actually really really good!

[9/10 · 25 May 2019]

Good job from everyone involved.

-The CGI was on point for a low budget movie. With it being this unknown i expected to see something unrealistic. I didn't.

-The acting was surprisingly on point. Particularly Evan played the role awesomely. Looking really closely one could see him being emotionally troubled but it wasn't too obvious as to detract from the reveal.

-The script was pretty good, and the plot better than that of most YA movies and some A list movies.

-The message was totally on point.

-The camerawork was well done.

-The dramaturgy was absolutely awesome and had me grip the edge of my seat at times.

-The only thing that could have been done better is that a major twist was foreshadowed a littlebit too strongly.

This is a great movie. Teens act believably as teens and aliens as aliens. Not a life changing something but certainly nice even awesome to watch.

Justice League (2017)

Just a little bit too much everywhere

[7/10 · 25 April 2019]

This movie could've been really good and a beacon for superhero movies, at least an 8.

But it was just too much. Everywhere.

Too much CGI by a bit, undercutting any weight the scenes had. Batman was just a little bit too pathetic. Flash's backstory was just a little bit too awesome for the pathetic nerd. The superman part was just a bit too dumb but important. The badguys voice was just a bit too growly to understand.

In either case on the cusp of the third decade in the 21st century CGI with this quality is inexcusable.

And the worst part is one could clearly see that all this was lovingly and nicely crafted, incuding bits of the CGI.

A special mention goes to whoever wrote Flash's and Cyborg's parts. They were witty, charming, but relatable unlike most of the over-the-top heroes. In both marvel and DC.

Wonder Woman (2017)

A tragically flawed masterpiece

[8/10 · 25 April 2019]

This could easily have been an absolutely awesome 9 or 10. Beautifully shot, great acting, the leads playing off of each other in a spectacular manner, interesting, engaging, believable characters, on point humour, easy to grasp yet not too trivial, amazing cinematography, drama that had me grip my seat, beautiful score, stellar pacing, not feeling hollywood overpolished, great atmosphere and universe creation, almost perfect CGI, and most importantly a good and deep message that was masterfully woven into an extremely enjoyable movie.

It wouldn't have been perfect, because of some visual gripes, and that it was ultimately still just a movie about supers, but it would have been a contender for a 10, definitely a 9.

What ultimately messed all of this up is easy to pinpoint. Bluntly: the major poster/trailer fight scene, and the fight scene after that. Ridiculous and overblown and the principles of the character echoed a mere MINUTE before went flying out the window for some spectacle. Especially since she was not fighting nazis in WW1... Absolutely disgusting, somewhat lackluster for a hollywood production, pointless, and if cut from the movie and reshot with less overblown action and more spy-drama, it would have immediately improved the movie a lot.

Black Panther (2018)

Really great movie with a few glaring problems.

[7/10 · 25 April 2019]

This movie was really enjoyable first and foremost. I finished watching it with a feeling of "wow this was awesome".

The CGI was pretty, the world crafted with it compelling and nice, the characters all had depth and somewhat of an arc. It took care to be generally enjoyable for everyone no matter which characters you found most interesting and nice.

This would easily have been a 9/10 despite the somewhat corporate overpolished aspect of things.

However there were some glaring problems: -Without spoiling anything the climactic fight scene is .... very lackluster, as others have pointed out. Fields and a cheaply rendered underground place? Did the CGI budget run out?

-Connected to this and all major fight scenes, while some african style music was included in other places, the fight scenes sorely lacked them. Some unique music in those places could have enhanced this whole thing massively, but instead we just got the same old orchestral stuff, instead of some enhanced wakandan music.

-On the other side of things the whole white man as "colonizers" thing has been pushed a bit too much and it's incredibly cringe-y.

-Furthermore like with all avengers movies the good guys kill too many people. Additionally in this one they are defending a government style which - while admittedly it has worked for them - is really really nonsensical.

So all in all a nigh perfect movie hampered by blunders that are too big to ignore.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 (2015)

A faithful adaptation of an awful book is still awful

[3/10 · 20 April 2019]

I loved most of the books. One of the best series ever in my opinion. Except for the last few chapters which were the worst chapters i've had the misfortune to read from any modern series. I can confidently say that this movie adapts these chapters faithfully without much deviation from the source material. 160 million dollars were spent on this. Why.

The acting felt stilted and lame, but that might have been due to all the characters canonically being depressed wrecks at this point in the series. Which doesn't make for a very enjoyable experience.

The plot had comparatively little action for the culmination of a series about a revolution. I'm afraid to say this is possibly the one point where the movie strayed from the path laid out by the book. And for the worse. Instead of elaborate tactical suspense and serious discussion and weighty combat, we are treated to facile standoffs quick flashes of action and loads and loads of talking about inane things. Worse still, with the dialogue being mostly melodramatic there weren't many character moments to make up for all this either.

And the ending? Without giving away anything, possibly the worst twists i have ever seen or read, all in one place. Nonsensical, nothing really resolved. I reserve ratings of 3 and below for movies that teach such bad lessons that they might have a negative impact IRL. The ending here and the behavior of the main characters qualifies for this. Just straight up dumb stuff that i suspect Suzanne Collins just put in to make things more gritty or grounded so as to not have too plain an ending. This is the one point where i wish the movie franchise had just straight up discarded her ideas for being just nonsensical in the context of the rest of the story.

An utterly shameful conclusion to an otherwise great trilogy, to some extent due to the need to stretch this into another movie, to some extent because of the ineptness of the storyboard writers, but mostly because of the choice to stay very close to the source material and the original author having a fit of lunacy writing this part or something.

Prodigy (I) (2018)

Not really bad, not really good.

[4/10 · 20 April 2019]

In descending order of goodness: -The camerawork and general cinematography was really nice at times reminding me of much higher budget movies. -The concept was a good one. -The dramaturgy was fine and provided for some thrills and twists even if some of them ver really predictable. -The music used was good, but at times unfitting and always too loud. -The acting had it's moments from everyone involved, but also really bad moments from everyone involved. Decent effort, needs improvement. -The audio editing was not good. It wasn't quite as atrocious as other low profile movies, but bad enough to put this in the student movie category. -The story.... was atrocious. It left me with a 'damn this was awful' feeling, even though the whole thing wasn't really bad as a whole. The constant cringy dialogue and events and the super hamfisted religious bits... ugh

All in all if A movies are blockbusters, B aresmaller budget hollywood movies, C are direct to video, comedies, and arthouse, and series tie ins, and D are student films, this is a D movie. I hesitated between giving this a 4 or a 5, but eventually, it wasn't that bad, and it did some things right, the whole story just left one feeling profoundly unfulfilled and nonsensical and the ending didn't help much at all. It felt a bit like some american bible belt fantasy. If that kid was not jesus2.0 then he shouldn't have been acting like this much of a messiah figure. Nice effort, with lots of good bits, but could've been handled a lot better, with more believable characters especially the main father son duo, and a less shallow preachy plot