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Slim_Jack_Rabbit
Reviews
Bosch: Legacy (2022)
Excelllent entertainment
Season two of Bosch Legacy surely requires a recent (re)viewing of season one. The show is once again excellently written. With cameos from both Jamie Hector as Bosch's former partner and lance Reddick who died during its production. The show once again makes for excellent viewing. A minor complaint which should be mentioned is surely the focus on Bosch's daugher Maddie who once again falls pray to a sexual deviant and who's character is too annoying and too unbelievable as a rookie cop. Any male she would have encountered in real life as a cop, would have easily pinned her to the ground.
As plenty of things have not been fully resolved at the end of the last episode, we shall wait for Bosch to return for a 3rd season of the Bosch legacy saga.
Bring it on.
Sound of Freedom (2023)
Acting and script are atrocious
Should have been a good film, given its subject matter, yet it isn't.
Aside from the bad pacing, the film suffers greatly from the amateurish approach to it all. This becomes evident even in the first 5 minutes of the film. The horrible script is accompanied by B-movie acting which, given the subject matter the film tries to explore, only makes the viewing experience ever more grating.
The film is nothing what it was touted te be. A better cast and better scriptwriters couldn't even have saved the film due to its horrendously slow build up and bad pacing overall.
I have no Idea why such a shoddy production received the accolades it did. It makes no sense.
What Is a Woman? (2022)
Living in Clownworld
Although no one can escape living in Clownworld anymore, whether it be a lobby saying we can still do something to curb the disruptions to the climate systems, the denial of the vast indirect evidence of way too advanced technologies being detected since the late 40's, to the post-modernist take on a term that doesn't even exist outside the realm of linguistics, namely 'gender', the documentary at hand heroically takes on the latter. And it does so extremely well.
The cult of gender ideology successfully merged general stupidity, gullibility and complacency since the early 70's.
Today, at least in the westerns world our educational systems are peddling total nonsense creating self fulfilling pockets of utter derangement from an early age up.
The results of this derangement is well covered in Walsch' excellent film/documentary 'What is a Woman'. It lays bare how a cult could operate on a scale that is hard to fathom. It does so with a relevant poignancy and the obvious humor that comes along with exploring the question, at least to those who haven't been sucked in into the narrative.
The film is excellently filmed, edited and directed, maintaining a perfect balance between showcasing the idiocy/tragedy involved and the humor that can't be denied is surrounding this topic, to those who can still think for themselves.
10/10.
Devs (2020)
It's not just the bad science...
Anyone who knows anything about quantum computing, knows that you can't use it for simulations of any kind. It just produces too many errors per unit of calculation to be of any value for that.
You also can't have a quantum computer working at room temperature.
Having said that, the show is terrible beyond the ridiculously flawed science. Its glacial pace, lame story line and insufferable acting/dialog, makes you want to rip the hairs from your cranium while watching and hearing it.
It's as bad as the worst episodes of Black Mirror, of which there is a substantial amount to choose from.
This was in the face bad.
1/10.
Dark Winds (2022)
One big pedestrian cliche
Not being familiar with the books this was based on, the show itself is beyond bad.
Once again we see Zahn McClarnon as a tribal policeman being thrust into an A-team level story that literally goes nowhere. We gave up after episode 4 and couldn't even be bothered to look up the ending on the interwebs.
Like the story, the dialog is corny and there's just too much of it that's nothing but useless filler. Save for very few exceptions, the acting is also totally unbelievable and there's not one interesting or sympathetic character.
How this copy/paste factory production is rated so highly is beyond me.
Endeavour: Girl (2013)
Still don't have a clue
Who did what now?
Loved the original Morse and Kavanagh, but the writing for Endeavour just seems too random and contrived. I didn't expect a midsummer level of writing, but these stories are just way too far fetched. Literally anyone could have 'done it' in the end, including the milk man.
I'm giving this one more try, but so far, the show has been an insult to the intelligence.
A reference to the periodic table? Really???
Who writes this crap?
The Outfit (2022)
Just doesn't engage...
These sorts of films are easy to review. If a film doesn't engage within the first 20 minutes or so, statistics will tell you it probably still hasn't after an hour.
The whole thing feels laboured, with actors thinking they are actually in the 50's, acting like the actors acted back then. Stagy.
The movie just doesn't flow, and the script simply can't pull its weight, making the viewer constantly reaching for the fast forward button.
This isn't entertainment, it's a chore...
Longmire (2012)
Unrealistic 'procedural' with flawed characters, acting and script.
Recently windowed county sheriff and Rainier beer enthusiast Walter Longmire solves murders in Absaroka, Wyoming, with his bumbling band of deputies.
The show takes far too much liberty when it comes to realism. Only 3 deputies policing an entire county which is fraught with crime, is simply not believable. Especially when the deputies and sheriff are pretty much all bumbling buffoons with a total disregard for police procedure, forensics and what have you.
The acting and script writing of Katee Sackhoff in her role as police-chick 'Vic' is abysmal and would have already ruined the show on its own. And if it hadn't, surely Adam Bartley's character as the chubby dimwit 'The Ferg', would have done the job for her. Lou Diamond Phillips either can't act or was coerced into playing his part over money issues or incriminating footage involving minors. His acting could not have been more wooden if he'd made it a point.
The stories and script also leave much to be desired. The outcome of an episode can easily be guessed half way in and the overall script would better fit a day time soap than an actual crime show. This particular issue goes from bad to worse after season 3 when the writing completely starts to derail and borderlines on the ridiculous.
There's some nice scenery to behold, if the camera isn't shaking too much that is. But overall, the show is a complete dud with zero pay off in its season finale.
Hunter Killer (2018)
Unwatchable
Another dumb submarine film action film. C grade at best.
Enemy (2013)
Fascinating people give this more than 1 star
This movie succeeds in what bad movies don't get right: totally suck at every level one can think of.
There's barely 5 minutes of plot in this -let's call it a- project. What is left is an hour and a half purely meant to fast-forward consisting of poorly shot scenes, often without any dialog, trying to push a plot along that doesn't exist, will not exist and paradoxically makes it a point to not exist.
This is a typical first year student's attempt at creating film. If I would send my mum out to film doing her groceries, you'd probably get a more compelling and psychologically complex watch.
Think I'll watch the DC of Donnie Darko again just to rinse this crap from my retina.
Irreplaceable You (2018)
The writing is just awful
No idea what anyone saw in this script, It's laborious, tedious and boring. Hope someone got fired over this nonsense..
Star Trek: Picard (2020)
Star Trash: Stewart
Enough has been said about this pile of nonsense. Lazy and puerile writing, one-dimensional characters and an uninteresting, random story line and limping progression to boot.
No idea what anyone saw in this, pre-production. Even standing on its own, it's an aimless show with no meaning or purpose nor any entertainment value.
8.2, my barren arse.
A Touch of Frost: Hidden Truth (2003)
Too convoluted for its own good
While making sure a star witness will make it to the courts alive, Frost seems to have lost his lottery ticket, presumably worth a tidy sum of money, running in the millions.
The story is too convoluted for its own good. Motivations of key characters are lacking, as well as any logic to the policing of the proceedings. Although the episode has its usual Frost flair, it amounts to little else than a farce, at best.
At the end, the writers of this debacle try to fuse Frost's lack of filing skills to the fact that the winning lottery ticket wasn't even bought in the first place, which sums up the lack of thought that went into the screenplay.
There are other, even more convoluted episodes in which logic wasn't allowed to guide the writers of them, but this one would rank in its top 3.
3/10
Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood (2019)
Bring a pillow..
QT's ninth installment and hopefully his last, is the crowning of a legacy that after Pulp Fiction, should sadden any movie lover.
With no story to tell, the film is nothing more than an expensive, well produced brain fart, made without any peer review, story arc, editing or green lighting process. It's a joke on the society we currently live in, with glorifying reviews from people who obviously couldn't tell the difference between quality and pulp. People who give this a ten star review but indicate they were bored with the movie. As a culture, we have reached a total dead end here.
The film glaringly lacks the most basic feats that make any film passable - pure amateur hour- yet scores an 8 on this website, as I write this.
Either people are as dumb as they come and are completely out of tune with reality, or 90% of these 10 star reviews were created by bots.
Whatever it is, the joke's on all of us.
Just depressing, really..
Inception (2010)
I just don't get it.
Di Caprio plays Cobb, an expert in extracting information from people's minds by infiltrating a target's dream. In return for a new identity, which will allow him again to go to the States to be with his kids, Cobb is challenged to now plant an idea in someone's mind in stead of retrieving it.
The premise of the film is rather silly but it's the execution that truly ruins the film. The major issue is without a doubt the exposition ridden dialog which didn't progress the overall plot or added anything in terms of character development. In stead we get the most expensive cast doing little else than yammer on and on about the totally uninteresting and far-fetched technical methods that are involved in dream infiltration as Nolan's showcases his unimaginative and clueless take on the Sci-Fi genre. In between these witless and thoroughly boring expositions, we get treated to the action clichés from every Bond movie that has ever graced the silver screen in the past 3 or 4 decades while the pounding soundtrack gets louder and louder simply with every subsequent scene.
Where was the conflict in this story needed to create viewer involvement? Who exactly were we expected to root for? Why was everything happening in this film without exception utterly implausible? Why do people find this movie to be complex when the film spends about 95% of the script explaining what is going on. And why wasn't this hapless script nominated for a couple of Razzies?
The fans are right, I don't get it.
Drive (2011)
Running stationary
Ryan Gosling plays a Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights as an escape car artist for local thugs. He gets involved in the life of his next door neighbor, her kid and the husband who owes money to the mafia boss Gosling's character happens to works for.
The film plays out terribly as the murky and meager plot is all over the place and the pacing of the film so off, it just beggars belief. The many scenes just showing Gosling's blood stained clothes are so slow and stretched that you can see the changing of seasons in the background. And every time our hero starts to talk there's a standard 6 seconds delay before he actually starts to mutter his script lines. Pause in a conversation can add drama to the moment, but I shouldn't have to be tearing the hair from my cranium while watching it.
Action sequences are few and far between and the story itself is done completely by the numbers; excavating only stereotypical behaviour and gratuitous violence from the flimsily drawn out characters. Think of a Tarantino movie you liked, then strip away the interesting characters, the music, the daring plot and sharp dialog. What is left is good cinematography and an incredibly cool choice of font for the end credits.
I'm seriously left dumbfounded as to what prompts people to vote on this miserable excuse for entertainment with more than 6 stars. Perhaps it is the overall quality of films nowadays which seems to be in a hasty decline, rendering people clueless as to what rating to give to a film. But I can safely say that this project is as lifeless as it is artless and I would recommend the 1999 movie Ghost Dog in stead. A movie that shares many parallels with 'Drive' but which is made with far more authenticity, humor and overall class. Not to mention it having an actual silver lining and point to it.
30/100
The Road (2009)
An unimaginative and pointless fair.
I have no idea what it is I just saw. But considering the praise it has gotten, this sure was a big disappointment.
The movie tries to be bleak and depressing but really only succeeds in being dull, plodding and repetitive. And you can add unimaginative and implausible to that list as well. The Biblical references are needlessly tacky and emotionally manipulative to the point of being crass. The character of the boy is, apart from being terribly overacted, appalling and the way he acts is completely out of tune considering the circumstance of an entire life of survival. Another minor complaint is that he looks far too healthy, but that can be forgiven if the movie offers some interesting ideas to sink our teeth in. Of course, it never does.
The movie mostly fails, as is so often the case within this genre film, to offer the viewer protagonists we can care about. The father is an obsessive paranoid and the boy a whiny wimp with apparently no survival instinct at all. To add insult to injury, most of dad's decisions make absolutely no sense and only help to further the alienation of the viewer. Already Half way through the film, I wished for the kid to be slaughtered by one of the cannibals so dad could finally commit suicide.
Why is it so hard to think up some interesting and realistic ideas when exploring the post-apocalyptic Earth? Why do we once again have to suffer through two hours of poor decision making, bleak and boring visuals with, in the end, no resolution?
I'm all for independent movie making, but if this is the crap that keeps getting made, I'd rather prefer the overproduced War of the Worlds or I am Legend. At least these films have enough entertainment value that you can see passed the obvious plot holes, contrivances and silliness. They are also better casted. I mean, what the hell was Robert Duvall doing in this movie? That useless bit could just as well have been played by Ed O'Neill..
Despite the high ranking, not recommended at all.
El laberinto del fauno (2006)
The wheels on the bus go....
I'm not much of a wardrama movie fan, but sometimes a genre film can raise itself through a good or original storyline and or sub story. Labirinto doesn't do this at all. It offers nothing more than a meandering tale about the evil of men (set in the easiest of environments to make it work, namely war), which's obvious message is brought far too straightforward and clunky to make any impact whatsoever. People that spout off this movie being a fairytale should consider watching the movie again with a timer. Perhaps only 7% of this movie deals with what can vaguely be described as a fairytale, although I would rather like to call it fable-imagery. We didn't call Kill Bill a Manga movie either just because it had some Manga scenes in it, now did we.
Although it was beautifully shot and occasional featured some good acting, this movie was rather vapid and over the top in it's depiction of violence at the same time. At no point are you required to think because the movie overexposes everything it tries to touch. The characters are all, note all, two-dimensional which makes it impossible to relate to them. If this movie had been made in Hollywood in the same quality with an English-speaking cast, it wouldn't have survived 4 weeks at the theaters. It was just that year's foreign cinematic darling and the audiences slavishly and ignorantly followed suit. This is one of those cases where the naked emperor didn't even bother to show up.
3/10
Children of Men (2006)
Just ranks with any shooter action game
How utterly bizarre to see a movie like this getting so much credits. I tried to understand it from the reviewers point of view here on this site and found nothing comprehensible.
Realistic plot. Where? If it's likely that women will stop giving birth all of a sudden, then we can toss aside everything we know about biological science. 'The convincing future world' which results from the premise as being a totally chaotic world, almost reads as wishful thinking on the part of the reviewer. 18 years go by with no women getting pregnant and without any known cause, one suddenly gets pregnant? And this obvious fluke is supposed to be interesting enough to carry a whole movie and provide a feeling of hope in such a desperate world? And besides, surely any type of future world with this kind of scenario going on, has got some more interesting to tell than what is shown in this movie. And surely Great Britain wouldn't be the only country to be able to sustain that premise. Rubbish, fairytalestuff, unmitigated Hollywood bull-crap.
Excellent acting. Where? Owen certainly didn't impress, hes just doing his zombie-thing once again. The support cast and especially Ashity (Kee) made me laugh and being annoyed at the same time throughout the entire film. This movie certainly did not impress acting-wise, surely for everyone to see. Caine's cameo was the odd one out and made me feel like watching a completely different movie every time he's making an appearance.
Good story/complex story. Excuse me? It's just a plodding chase-story with zero depth, nothing realistic and about as complex as the basis of your average video game. One doesn't bring a child to a war-zone just because some drugged out old fart suggests that, especially when it's presumably the only one alive in the world. What made the story 'complex' was that nothing was explained about any of it (writers cramp?). Yet, this is considered one of the film's best traits!
Great cinematography. The natural look of the film, the documentary style if u will, was ultimately not what made the feel of this movie a positive or convincing one. It made me feel distracted from the events that were displayed and made me be aware of camera's and actors. They should have used that in portions of the film, but not in the whole of it. All the chase sequences seemed overpractised and what was up with the 'run after the car and get smashed by the door'-gimmick?
Comment on the world we live in today. Well, this movie didn't point out anything that can't be seen in any Newsprogram or documentary on the subject. Most of the theme's we saw, like the Islam-protest, seemed hopelessly and needlessly dragged in.
Dramatic ending. Yeah sure, if you consider vapid and cliché open endings which didn't give the film some sort of closure it desperately needed a dramatic ending, then by all means people...
The movie seems to want us to see a possible world future, and that's all fine. But why would I want to look at that grim and dismal future for two hours following a story-line with absolutely zero plot, no humor, no sfx, no build up of tension nor a decent soundtrack.
3/10