drummerboy-42635 Reviews

Apocalypto (2006)

Would be 10 stars if they had better puppets

[9/10 · 4 January 2023]

Historically accurate or not, this is one of the most gripping stories ever put to film. One the action begins, it does not slow down until the very end. The suspense is brilliants and it is almost impossible to look away from the screen.

My only gripe with this movie is the animal puppets. Normally, I tend to prefer tangible effects over cgi but the puppets in this film were especially bad. I felt as if I was looking at stuffed animals. They obviously had enough of a budget to make everything else look great so it begs to question why couldn't they fork out a few extra bucks to make the animals look better?

Troll (2022)

Strong 1st act but weak 2nd and 3rd

[4/10 · 4 December 2022]

The start of the film started out great. The plot was solid and mostly original. Unfortunately things started going downhill when it turned into your typical monster movie with a lack of plot and idiotic characters.

When the troll first escapes the mtn. There are many witnesses and we even see phone footage from one of them but that plot line ends there and somehow news never spread of a massive troll despite all of the people that would have told the media about it.

Then when the government/ military find the troll they attempt to kill it with small weapons when they could have easily called in an airstrike and safely destroyed it while it was in the middle of nowhere with no casualties or collateral damage.

When this fails, they also fail to evacuate the local towns and the troll wanders into a theme park. I get that maybe the government wanted to keep it a secret to avoid public panic but it was inevitable for a King-Kong sized troll to become world-wide knowledge. They could have easily evacuated the towns by using any number of believable lies or just by using the truth.

When the troll is in the theme park the military "attacks" it with bells. They literally pull a "Kong" and fly the helicopters straight in the face of the Troll and he easily knocks them down (except the one the protagonists are in of course).

This does at least let them know that the troll is sensitive to sounds but they dont use that information to help defend the capitol until he's already inside.

Then this troll travels all the way from the wilderness to the Nations capital and they dont try to stop it until it gets well within the city. They try using rifles and tanks again that obviously don't work and the soldiers all die.

It's not until the troll is already in the middle of the city and surrounded by millions of people that they decide to use some sort of nuke. Apparently they have tanks and nukes but they dont have anything in between that would have worked much more effectively.

In the finale, the girl turns off the lights, endangering all of the soldiers in a foolish effort to save the troll. The stupid soldiers draw their rifle's because they think that will somehow defend them.

The cherry on top is that the royal family (or whatever they're called) apparently knew about the existence of trolls the whole time and kept it a secret instead of studying their fossils or assisting in the defense when one arrives.

The protagonists also manage to load a massive troll scull by hand into the back of a really old pickup truck even though it probably weighs 10x the weight of the truck. The truck magically operates just fine under the weight and outruns the troll at high speeds

Some girl also manages to magically hack into the governments missile system in 5 minutes and remotely take control over the analog buttons inside a jet.

The protagonists plans always involve them running right under the trolls feet and hopefully not getting smooshed.

Their special plan is to trap the troll and surround him with UV light to kill him. But they wait until gets their to set up the lights so thankfully he holds still for them for several seconds so they can finish getting ready even though they could've easily been prepared the entire time. And thankfully he stands still in the light for several more seconds instead fleeing as he burns.

The protagonists also love to play God and do whatever they want and endanger everyone's lives with their spur of the moment whims because they're arrogant and think that they know best and dont care if other people get hurt because of it. She tries to reason with the monster that was trying to kill her seconds before and because this is a stupid movie.....it works... almost... except time fast forwards from midnight to sunrise in 10 seconds so that the sun can dramatically kill the troll.

The assistant also "resigns" and then regrets it.... What I mean by that is he regrets "resigning" instead of quitting.... He regrets his word choice. Then at the end of the film he goes to his boss (Prime Minister) and says "when I said I resign, I meant I'm quitting this job to go be a writer" -paraphrasing here- and this is maybe the dumbest part of the whole film.

Toy Story 4 (2019)

Unnecessarily Sad

[6/10 · 6 August 2022]

Toy Story 3 had a happy ending that seemed fitting for the story. It was very sad but beautiful at the same time. I don't mind that they made a 4th film but the ending was very sad for no reason. Woody was planning on bring Gabby with him to be with Bonnie... so why not Bring Bo and the others?

I also don't like how little screen time all of the other characters have, especially Buzz. Woody was clearly the main character in this. For me personally, it didn't really feel like a Toy Story movie without the involvement of the other characters. That's just my personal complaint though.

I did enjoy Key & Peele and I thought they could've had more screen time too.

The Quarry (2022 Video Game)

Love/hate

[5/10 · 27 June 2022]

This game is right in the middle for me. I really like the plot and theme but there's a lot issues.

My biggest complaint is that the writing and acting doesn't seem realistic in many scenes. Most of the characters don't really react to the horror and danger in a reasonable manner. There's literally a horrifying thing that is trying to kill them and they know it but yet they walk casually through the woods at night having lighthearted conversations about crushes and high-school drama.

The graphics are pretty good but the eyes and the water are terrible. The water looks like something from a PS2 game and they should've tried to avoid water scenes with their low-budget. The characters' eyes seem to be unfocused and staring off in random directions and not towards the other characters that they're interacting with.

This is a somewhat minor complaint but the dialog repeats itself sometimes. I would guess this is a problem with the game trying to piece together all of the different scene possibilities and sometimes results in an overlap of lines.

There's not a lot of free roam in the game but when it is, the viewpoint is very frustrating. It is neither 1st or 3rd person. Instead, it seems like your viewpoint is from a random angle that constantly changes and makes roaming difficult. Not to mention that you can hardly see anything. You also spend a good chunk of tome wandering around mostly empty rooms that have little to nothing to find.

My last complaint is that you don't seem to have much control over your characters. Your "path choices" are always limited to 2 options and sometimes both options are awful and don't make any sense. Most choices are also just dialog options and sometimes seem like it doesn't matter which one you pick because the line that your character ends up saying sometimes sounds like a mixture of both options.

Despite these problems I still find myself wanting to keep playing to get to the end of the story. I might even replay it to try out a few different choices. I'll definitely be going on YouTube to find out all the different endings there are. I do like this horror movie genre of game and I really love the summer camp theme. I'd like to see a few changes in the game and writing and then I think it would be amazing.

The Batman (2022)

Mostly good.

[8/10 · 26 March 2022]

The best part of the movie by far was the cinematography. The music score was good too but in a 3 hour movie it did get repetitive. There were some scenes that dragged on too long.

Why didn't they arrest penguin? He tried to kill multiple people, dealt drugs, and had a dead girl in his car.

Romance between batman and catwoman was forced.

Batman is a master detective but couldn't predict catwoman kicking a dude off the building when she literally held her foot up to his chest.

The final climax was cheesy. Stop pretending like batman is gonna die when you know he will always be saved at the last second.

The riddler won but everyone acted like he didn't. He literally flooded the whole city.

The GTA car jump was so cheesy.

Batman is dumb. His strategy for half of his fights are to run into the middle of a group of henchmen and then get overwhelmed when we can't punch his way out.

Batman should have died like 3 times in the movie at least. He got shot a thousand times and had no damage whatsoever as if his entire suit was 100% bulletproof and his face wasn't exposed. Then he flew down from a building and smashed his head against a bridge at full speed and suffered no injury. He should've been dead right on the spot.

In the end of the movie he jumps on a cord and cuts the cord above where is hand is so that he falls.... just cut the cord below you..... idiot.

Also he'll throw people off of scaffolding into floodwaters but won't shoot someone.

The Adam Project (2022)

Terrible climax

[6/10 · 26 March 2022]

The movie was decent but the climax at the end was awful. Tell me how a giant magnet is powerful enough to completely stop a bullet mid flight and change it's trajectory mid-flight at a perfect 90 degree angle, but not powerful enough to pull the gun (with more bullets inside) out of the hands of the shooter?

To All the Boys: Always and Forever (2021)

60 minutes of build up, 5 minutes of conflict/resolution

[5/10 · 22 March 2022]

The majority of the movie is a build-up to going to college but they never go. LJ decides to choose NYU over UC Berkley but her connection to NYU seems fake and rushed. She attended one house party at NYU and now she "loves it" and it's unbelievable. When she tells her bf that she is going to move 3,000 miles away, he has a very mature and calm response where he is sad for a day, then breaks up with her, and then changes his mind a day later after having a 5 minute conversation with his dad. It's the quickest and most boring conflict and resolution of any movie I've seen. It's one of those movies that ends and leaves you going.... "That's it?"

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

Wish it was longer.

[10/10 · 17 December 2021]

This move had enough plot points and characters for a 3+ movie or a 2-part story. It's an absolutely fantastic movie but I feel like they kept it from reaching it's full potential by compacting such a large story into only 2 hours. My only other complaint is that I feel like the entrances could've had a little more pizzazz, maybe a meme-able moment or two. Also I really hope that Spiderman will return!

Brüno (2009)

Hour and a half of sexual harassment

[2/10 · 11 November 2020]

Sacha Baron Cohen sexually harasses unknowing people for and hour and a half and calls it a movie. Not funny, not pro lgbtq. Idk how he can legally even make this video. This guy literally sexually harasses people and then makes videos trying to give people moral advice.

Gemini Man (2019)

The best and worst CGI

[2/10 · 9 October 2020]

Apparently 99% of the cgi budget went to the face of young Will Smith, because all the other cgi was horrible. The fight scenes had terrible cgi and were extremely fake. Clive Owen is a good actor but has a bad American accent.

Designated Survivor (2016–2019)

Interesting but incredibly unrealistic

[6/10 · 20 May 2019]

Many things in the plot are unrealistic and characters act irrationally.