A superficial blend of a handful of different films (Tinker Tailor..., Drive, Boogie Nights, Children Of Men, Skyfall) with a bland, meaningless story of spies who all seem to know each other and their secrets and yet trundle on regardless. A veneer of 80s neon and predictable song choices doesn't elevate it. There is one impressively long one-shot action sequence which is fun, although it's stylistically incongruous in its Hardcore Henry-level cartoonishness.
Rating: Bad
Saturday, 27 July 2019
Wednesday, 17 July 2019
Alien: Covenant (2017)
Stupendously bad.
It's like the writers thought, "Right, why didn't people like Prometheus? Because it was too cerebral. So let's make this the dumbest, cheesiest, tackiest version of an Alien movie ever!" It still had all the origin bullshit and people acting like idiots from Prometheus, but then it was like AvP Requiem levels of shitty horror for the rest of it, with people having sexy showers before they get killed and painfully obvious 'oh no he's the real killer!' twists, and big dopey action sequences where everyone's bouncing around like it's a Pirates Of The Caribbean movie.
They had Alien POV shots - a mistake not even the shittiest of the previous films made - where it's revealed that it sees everything exactly the same except with a kind of wriggly snot filter.
And the origin stuff is even more stupid and makes even less sense now.
Embarrassing.
Rating: Awful
It's like the writers thought, "Right, why didn't people like Prometheus? Because it was too cerebral. So let's make this the dumbest, cheesiest, tackiest version of an Alien movie ever!" It still had all the origin bullshit and people acting like idiots from Prometheus, but then it was like AvP Requiem levels of shitty horror for the rest of it, with people having sexy showers before they get killed and painfully obvious 'oh no he's the real killer!' twists, and big dopey action sequences where everyone's bouncing around like it's a Pirates Of The Caribbean movie.
They had Alien POV shots - a mistake not even the shittiest of the previous films made - where it's revealed that it sees everything exactly the same except with a kind of wriggly snot filter.
And the origin stuff is even more stupid and makes even less sense now.
Embarrassing.
Rating: Awful
Tuesday, 11 June 2019
Dark Phoenix (2019)
Surprisingly good! Much better than Apocalypse, better than Last Stand, not as good as the others. It had a story that tied in with the X-Men, and with mutants' place in society, some great action scenes, and new places for the characters to go. Downsides were that, like Apocalypse, felt less standalone and more serialised, and though there were lots of differences it was still going over old ground with the Dark Phoenix storyline. It also left a lot of stuff open despite likely being the last X-Men movie in this version, which is a shame when DOFP looped stuff around so nicely.
Rating: Good
Rating: Good
Monday, 10 June 2019
Good Omens (2019)
Sheen and Tennant are great, but in general this can be characterised best as irritating.
In general, it's just so meandering and fumbles a lot of scenes by going on too long, and it's really unclear about story rules and character motivations. But it's full of little things like:
The narration has a H2G2 feel to it, but where that show stopped the story for little asides, this one crams the narration in at the edges and also uses it to tell us stuff they're showing us anyway.
Those setting cards really bug me - why are they like that? Little signs that flap up with condensation on the camera?
All the stunt casting is incredibly distracting, and a lot of the general casting is just wrong. It all feels very 'school play'.
There are near-constant cheap jokes revolving around a character saying "oh God" or "I'll be damned" or (in bad weather) "it's hell out there".
IRRITATING.
Rating: Bad
In general, it's just so meandering and fumbles a lot of scenes by going on too long, and it's really unclear about story rules and character motivations. But it's full of little things like:
The narration has a H2G2 feel to it, but where that show stopped the story for little asides, this one crams the narration in at the edges and also uses it to tell us stuff they're showing us anyway.
Those setting cards really bug me - why are they like that? Little signs that flap up with condensation on the camera?
All the stunt casting is incredibly distracting, and a lot of the general casting is just wrong. It all feels very 'school play'.
There are near-constant cheap jokes revolving around a character saying "oh God" or "I'll be damned" or (in bad weather) "it's hell out there".
IRRITATING.
Rating: Bad
Sunday, 28 April 2019
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Not great.
It didn't have the usual 'overstuffed/too much arc plot' issues - it actually felt quite streamlined and propulsive, and the arc plot is the point here so it's fine.
But the action is still terrible, and that's even harder to ignore on one of these big team-up movies. (There's a scene early on where it's hard to tell what's going on with all the shaky-cam, whip-pans and fast edits, and all that's happening is two characters sitting down playing shove ha'penny, it's ridiculous.)
The main problem was the time-travel rules: they pick like three different rule-sets and break all of them. It's hugely confusing and distracting, it really muddies all the stakes, character arcs and narrative up. But also, there are a lot of character arcs fizzling out or repeating themselves, character powers being wildly inconsistent; the kind of thing that a film franchise so praised for creating a huge ongoing, sprawling and interweaving story should really not be dropping the ball on.
Not as good as Ragnarok, or Avengers 1, or Iron Man 1, or a lot of Game Of Thrones, or Back To The Future 2.
Rating: Fine
It didn't have the usual 'overstuffed/too much arc plot' issues - it actually felt quite streamlined and propulsive, and the arc plot is the point here so it's fine.
But the action is still terrible, and that's even harder to ignore on one of these big team-up movies. (There's a scene early on where it's hard to tell what's going on with all the shaky-cam, whip-pans and fast edits, and all that's happening is two characters sitting down playing shove ha'penny, it's ridiculous.)
The main problem was the time-travel rules: they pick like three different rule-sets and break all of them. It's hugely confusing and distracting, it really muddies all the stakes, character arcs and narrative up. But also, there are a lot of character arcs fizzling out or repeating themselves, character powers being wildly inconsistent; the kind of thing that a film franchise so praised for creating a huge ongoing, sprawling and interweaving story should really not be dropping the ball on.
Not as good as Ragnarok, or Avengers 1, or Iron Man 1, or a lot of Game Of Thrones, or Back To The Future 2.
Rating: Fine
Sunday, 3 March 2019
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)
Okay. Solid performances, nicely shot. Just felt very flat - barely anything happens, no character progression, no risk or consequence.
Rating: Good
Rating: Good
Friday, 15 February 2019
Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
Terrible. I didn't know anything about the story going in, and for me it was just two solid hours of clunky exposition. There's no narrative throughline at all. The visuals don't feel fresh (I liked the glimpses of future Mexico, wish Rodriguez had done more with that setting) or awe-inspiring, and look quite cheap in parts. None of the actors get anything to do. The action-scenes are more Transformers than Desperado (the bar fight worked quite well, though). I wish Cameron had directed this, frankly, because whatever Avatar's failings, the direction was never overwhelmed by the VFX.
The film was shot in real 3D and it's noticeable in about 3 shots. 90s Rodriguez would have had a lot more fun with the 3D.
Rating: Bad
The film was shot in real 3D and it's noticeable in about 3 shots. 90s Rodriguez would have had a lot more fun with the 3D.
Rating: Bad
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