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Reviews
Castlevania: Nocturne (2023)
What's with the opera singing?
If you liked Castlevania, you'll probably enjoy the fight scenes and vampire transformations. Pretty colors, but that's about it. The vast majority of the plotline and cast are pretty basic and uninteresting. Save 4 hours of your life and just watch the fight scenes and vampire transformations on YouTube.
The story of Castlevania: Nocturne follows the five main characters: a freed slave, an opera singer, a descendent of Sypha and Trevor Belmont, his adoptive mother, and her daughter Maria. Flat out, this show would be way better without the opera singer. His plotline was unnecessary and weird, and the singing was just annoying. It's obvious that the voice actor is not a trained opera singer because he's always way off-pitch, but his wailing goes on for multiple minutes nearly every episode. Apart from Maria, the speaker's daughter and Belmont's companion, the other main characters are all very marginal. This includes the main antagonist, who is based on real-life supervillain Elizabeth Bathory, a sadistic Hungarian Countess who liked to bathe in the blood of virgin girls. For obvious reasons, she became known as the blood countess. Basing the most powerful vampire off of her is an amazing concept, but they didn't pull it off. Everything about her is pretty meh, even though she's supposed to be "God" and all that jazz.
Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre (2023)
Initially excited, but quickly disappointed
Junji Ito's work is peak horror and psychological thriller. He's a true literary and illustrative genius that's given the world so much to explore and delve into. So many good ideas and stories to be told... too bad that the producers of this show did not tell them. Things were said, but no story was told. This show is incomplete, clearly rushed, and lacking in nearly every sense: the animation is dull and simple, the voice acting in some characters is downright annoying, and the storytelling is absolute trash. Super sad, considering the sheer volume of source material and potential to be something great. But it isn't. It's just meh.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023)
Easiest 1/10 ever given
Book to movie adaptations have a habit of cutting out character development and worldbuilding, which is to be expected due to time constraints. This wouldn't necessarily be a problem if they hadn't decided to completely erase some of the MAIN characters. The few people mentioned by name in the movie were rewritten to the point that it makes their characters seem like entirely different people. In the books, Coriolanus Snow is a sociopath who is downright evil and worships his father, who is basically American Hitler. In the movies, he comes off as sympathetic. The directors rewrote lines, added lines, added scenes, deleted scenes, and threw stuff around until they made a jumbled-up mess of the original. It's like the director and writers read the plot points on SparkNotes instead actually reading the book. Out of all the movies I've seen, this one was one of the biggest letdowns. There are so many fans who have waited so long for this movie. Money is not the problem. And neither is time, considering people have waited this many years already. Either Suzanne Collins did not have the ability to offer much input for this movie or she did not care to correct them. Because this movie is a hot mess. Spectacularly terrible adaptation.
Fog City (2023)
When Disney actors grow up
And try to star in a horror movie... it doesn't go very well. The acting is bad, the directing is weird, and the whole idea has already been done multiple times. Fog takes over a town and makes people go crazy. Fog takes over a town and brings monsters. Fog takes over a town and everyone dies. How many more fog movies need to be made? I really don't even know what would make this movie 'better'. Maybe in another decade, when there aren't a dozen 'fog' movies and TV shows. Maybe if there were better actors or a decent director... maybe. Idk. 1 star. Boring cliche movie. I'd rather watch Scary Movie for the dozenth time - at least those ones are funny and know not to take themselves too seriously.
Get Out (2017)
A Dystopian (possible) Reality
We tend to think of technological progress as good. Innovation alone often seems like an improvement, but some things are better left undiscovered. Some inventions better off never being invented.
"Get Out" shows how frightening people can be when they wield technology beyond most people's comprehension. Hypnotism aside, the plausibility of transferring one's memories and personality may be very real. Indeed, many scientists are already considering head transplants.
When humans perform their first brain transplant, this movie will become a plausible reality. It's a horrifying reflection of possibilities technology.
(500) Days of Summer (2009)
Boring and Predictable
A textbook example of a heteronormative romance told from a straight, cis white man's point of view.
It's predictable and as a result, boring. It opens by explicitly stating there are only two kinds of people in the world: men and women. The narrator then introduces the woman's name and describes her as "average" in every regard before the audience first sees her, just to let us know she's not anything special. When we first do see her though, the guy falls in love with her the instant he sees her. Of course.
But unlike the classic get married quick scheme most hetero romances pull, this movie comes with a twist. That is, they don't end up together but it's okay because the woman got married and the man is happily seeing another co-worker.
Zooey Deschanel is fantastic as always and the movie has its moments, but it's just way too predictable and pretty boring even though it's only an hour long. Watch it if you're a fan of classic romance or the cast, but if not: don't. Save more than an hour of your life and just don't. Sidenote, it also (1) objectifies/vilifies women and (2) glamorizes some aspects of toxic relationships. But a lot of media does that anyway, even today.