ninjawaiter Reviews

Road House (2024)

Ooof

[1/10 · 22 May 2024]

Let's get this out of the way. The original film was DUMB. Really dumb. But it was carried by Patrick Swayze's almost superhuman charisma and charm, with entertaining turns from several other cast members. It also told a coherent, logically and emotionally progressing (if laughably silly and unbelievable) story about cleaning up a roadhouse bar against local forces of corruption.

This remake loses the magic of Patrick Swayze, the good supporting performances, and the coherent, logically and emotionally progressing story. Which leaves us with DUMB, laughably silly, and unbelievable. If only it just stopped there. But no, then Connor McGregor shows up. For what might be the stupidest, most nonsensical, most horribly delivered performance in the history of cinema. Unfortunately, even that isn't rock bottom (although it sure feels like it at the time). Nope, rock bottom is the big "finale," where absolutely everything in the film gets turned up to eleven, especially the DUMB, laughably silly, and unbelievable.

I know a lot of people think the original was fun. Personally I didn't care for it. But I really have to question anyone who thinks this garbage remake lacking everything appealing from the original is somehow fun. This is trash filmmaking dragged through the dirtiest gutter they could find.

In the Blood (I) (2014)

Ooof

[3/10 · 15 May 2024]

Came for Gina Carano. Stayed for Gina Carano. Came for Gina Carano. No typos, I typed what I typed.

But seriously, this film. It feels more like a student film than a professional production, although they secured some well-known actors. The acting isn't good, and I say that still loving Gina Carano. The plot is garbage. Seriously, garbage. There's a twist, but it's such a dumb twist you'll wonder why they didn't stick with the obvious plot instead. There were several really good opportunities to make use of things they'd built into the story, and every time they went with something stupid instead. There are also some really obviously stupid contrivances, like when some random stranger in a restaurant hands Gina a baby, just so it can prompt a conversation about whether she'll make a good mother. Really, really stupid stuff. The ending is pretty awful too. It's hard to find much to praise here, and believe me, I'm trying.

On a lighter note, I love Gina, but Cam really should've gotten that prenup. Everyone should have a prenup, but especially if you go into a marriage with lots of assents, and my god does Cam's character apparently have assets. I know he and Gina are going to last forever, but you always get a prenup. It's just common sense.

The Vow (2012)

It's a cute romantic film and you should watch it...

[6/10 · 14 May 2024]

...but my god Channing Tatum's character is the most inconsiderate, unsympathetic jerkweasel imaginable after the incident, with absolutely no sense or empathy. That part of the film is insanely cringe, and you just have to sort of endure it to get to the rest of the film.

Also, for the record, their little "meet cute" would only work if you LOOK LIKE Channing Tatum. Anyone else chasing the girl to her car holding her parking permit and commenting on the fact that they apparently live near one another would get pepper spray to the face and a restraining order. These are professional actors: do not try this at home.

Minari (2020)

Worst Wife Ever and waiting for Chekhov's Snake

[7/10 · 13 May 2024]

It's a good film. It's slow, character-driven, and very well acted.

That having been said, I still have no idea why it's called Minari, or what the Minari is apart from an easy-to-grow herb. Why was that, of all things, the name of the film? Obviously I missed some symbolism there.

While we're on the subject of symbolism, let's talk about Chekhov's Snake. The first time the kids go with Grandma down to the stream, the girl is worried about snakes. The second time the boy is down at the stream with Grandma they see a snake. The final scene they are back down at the stream, and I was expecting a snake. You don't put a gun on the mantle in act 1, reference it again in act 2, and then not do anything with it in act 3. WTF, mate?

Anyway, it's a good, believable story, but part of it being believable is portraying the wife as just absolutely awful. We're given hints that she comes from a family that was urban and well-off before being devastated by the Korean War, but she married "for love" a country boy without any money, and she obviously has unrealistic expectations for the life he ought to provide for her.

We're shown that the husband is the absolute best at his job, but he wants something more for himself and his family. So in addition to being the best at his job, he breaks his back 24/7 to try to improve their lives. Meanwhile all the wife does is complain and give him grief. She does zero to assist with the farm, and complains about literally everything, including their church and their fellow Korean immigrants. Not only does she never support him, but she fights him at every turn, making every difficult task ten times harder because of her constant negativity, complaints, and lack of belief in her husband. The scene in the parking lot just before the big climax just puts all of her garbage fully on display. She is an absolute witch. (The only good thing she does is actually try to get better at her job, which apparently she succeeds in after much trying.)

Watching her drove me nuts the entire film, which is a brilliant credit to the actress, who pull the role off perfectly.

Anyway, that's pretty much all I have to say about this film. So watch it. It probably won't blow your mind, but it's a good story well-told and excellently acted.

The Killing Fields (1984)

The Irony!

[6/10 · 26 April 2024]

This is a good film. You should watch it. It starts a bit choppy, but really gets good as it goes, and tells an excellent true story (as close to true as you ever get from Hollywood films, I'm sure).

But there's something we need to talk about, and it's really pretty bad. At the end of the film we get updates about some of the real people from the story, as well as the "current" situation in Cambodia (circa 1984).

And playing over all of it is John Lennon's anthem and love song to Communism, "Imagine." Seriously. What the hell was director Joffe thinking? This is literally a story about Communists committing one of the worst genocides in human history, 1.5-2 million people killed, roughly 25% of the entire population of Cambodia, and they decided that the appropriate song to play as they describe the genocide is a love song to the very Communists who were responsible for killing all those people?

It's rare that words fail me, but I'm not sure what else I could say about this. How do you make a film drawing attention to (yet another) Communist genocide, and then play a pro-Communist anthem over the closing shots? Talk about mixed-messaging. This has got to be the most bizarre and perplexing choice in film history.

The Family Plan (2023)

Nope

[4/10 · 20 March 2024]

I wanted to like this silly, mostly family-friendly road trip/secret assassin mashup, I really did. I was even hoping that this was an indirect sequel to Mark Wahlberg's 1998 The Big Hit where a much younger Mark played an assassin. Unfortunately it's just not very well done.

Mark and Michelle Monaghan have great chemistry in their scenes, and none of the actors are bad per se, but the script is hokey and silly, and the kids' subplots are so cringe it's painful. Like, agonizingly painful.

More importantly, the emotional beats just never land properly, and neither does the comedy. They even steal the "but they were all bad," line from the VASTLY superior Arnold Schwarzenegger film True Lies (1994), and all it does is emphasize just how much worse this film with a very similar plot is.

I like that Mark Wahlberg is making family-friendly films now. I've enjoyed a few of them. Just not this one. This one you should probably avoid. It's definitely not the worst thing you'll see this year, but it's not good either.

Sharper (2023)

The Entire Premise Falls Flat

[1/10 · 12 March 2024]

This is going to be all SPOILERS, because I'm going to explain why the entire plot completely falls apart and the ending couldn't be any stupider. If you haven't seen it and intend to, this will ruin the film, because for the people who enjoyed this film, they liked the tension and mystery and twists and turns. Personally I found it pretty boring, but the central premise is definitely where the whole thing falls apart whether you were enjoying it or not.

So, SPOILERS: Madeline and Max con the billionaire out of some money, but Madeline bails on the plan and actually marries the billionaire. Then Madeline recruits Max (who recruits Sandra) to run another con to discredit the billionaire's son in his father's eyes, so he'll leave the billions to Madeline. And it works. The billionaire's will leaves over 9 billion dollars to Madeline. Then the son's investigators find Sandra, and she threatens to blow up the entire scheme.

Except, what can she possibly blow up at this point? The money legitimately belongs to Madeline- it was left to her in the will.

Even if they prove Madeline "conned" her way into the billionaire's good graces, it is completely irrelevant. He left the money to her.

It's hers. Lying in the process of gold digging isn't actually illegal.

And Madeline hasn't done anything she can go to jail for. She didn't steal any money from the billionaire- he paid off Max to leave. She didn't steal the money from the son, Sandra did that. They could try a conspiracy charge against her, but since Sandra never even met her, it would never hold up. And anyway she has over 9 billion dollars to fight it with. Billionaires don't go to jail. And there's no way she wouldn't know this. They've already shown that she's smart (clearly smarter than the film writers).

So that should be the end of the film, but instead Madeline becomes an idiot and worries about Sandra. For no reason. So they all meet up, and then the son springs his little "trap," pulls a gun, and arranges things in a way he couldn't possibly have predicted so that Madeline shoots him in what is obviously self defense. And again, that should be the end, because a billionaire who shoots a mentally unstable person who pulled a gun on her and then attacked her won't even get charged with a crime, let alone see the inside of a prison cell. And Madeline would again have to be the stupidest person on Earth not to know this.

Madeline would ALSO have to be a complete idiot not to realize that this guy who "died" right in front of her isn't actually dead. It works in a movie because the camera can stay away from his corpse, but no one would mistake a living person faking being shot and dead for an actually shot person in real life. Because we have eyes.

But the writers really are that stupid (on both counts), so instead Madeline signs her billions over to the trust that the son controls and agrees to leave and disappear.

And Sandra goes back to the son (who is obviously not dead), and the whole thing is revealed to be an elaborate, stupidly impossible con.

It's a sad thing when you realize the people who made the film you're watching are idiots. But yeah, the people who made this film are shamefully stupid, and thus the film is shamefully stupid. And now I'm just mad I wasted my time on it.

Life (I) (2017)

They should have named the film "Stupid" instead of "Life"

[2/10 · 8 February 2024]

Seriously, if real astronauts were a millionth as stupid as every single character in this film, we'd never have "slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God."

Hell, if the average person on earth was as stupid as the characters in this film, humanity would have gone extinct millennia ago. The entire plot of this film is driven by characters making obviously terrible decisions, one after another. A single good decision in the course of this film would have ended the story, because all that was required for the humans to "win" was to just not be completely, utterly, and overwhelmingly stupid at every turn.

Others have broken down the endless parade of stupid decisions that drive the plot, so I'll spare you and keep this spoiler free. The only word you need to describe this film is STUPID, and the only thing required for you to enjoy this film is to start off by lobotomizing yourself with a power drill. Without a brain this thing might be watchable.

For the film itself, 1 Star is too good for it. But the special effects were great, so I gave it a 2.

Stranger Things (2016–2025)

Keeping the Rating, but wow did this show lose the plot

[10/10 · 7 February 2024]

I've decided to keep the 10 star rating because the first season was absolutely mind-blowingly fantastic. I am one of the harshest critics out there, and this show was a masterpiece. 10/10

WAS.

The Second Season was Good. Really Good, except for a few things. The entire subplot with Nancy & Jonathan was just the Duffer Brothers responding to the "What about Barb" internet meme campaign from Season 1, and it was basically a boring, pointless distraction. It had literally zero impact on the rest of the plot. Thankfully it didn't take up too much of the season.

The subplot with Eleven going off on her own (I won't say more to avoid spoilers) was absolutely TERRIBLE. Not only did it add nothing to the story, it was distracting and bad in almost every way imaginable, and it literally occupied an entire episode right as things were ramping up late in the season. Again it had literally zero impact on the rest of the plot, but instead of being boring, it was just terrible and actually did significant damage to the existing worldbuilding.

And the final complaint for Season 2 has to be Erika, Lucas' little sister. She is far and away the worst character appearing anywhere in this series for any amount of time, and every second she is on screen is like someone driving an ice pick into one's eye. It's not the actress' fault. I don't know whose idea it was to write her like that, but they should be shot. Thankfully she doesn't appear much.

Apart from those three things though, the Second Season was excellent (not as good as the first, but excellent). I'd probably have given it another 10/10 if not for those things. Instead it's an 8/10, leaning toward 9.

But then came Season 3. It was like the writing went off a cliff. All of the characters became garbage versions of themselves, and any suspension of disbelief with regards to the plot became impossible. I can't talk about the plot without giving away huge points, but suffice it to say that Seasons 1 and 2 were paranormal stories existing in an otherwise believable real world. Season 3 appears to exist in some bad cartoon version of reality where nothing has to make sense or be even remotely plausible. And sadly that's not even Season 3's worst sin, because what they did to all the characters is WAY worse.

I can't emphasize enough how much this show is carried by the characters. Audiences absolutely fell in love with the main cast in Season 1, and Season 2 let them all shine in different ways. There are no good characters in Season 3. Not a single one. Every character is transformed into a worse version of themselves. Some are only a little worse, others are a LOT worse, and some are absolutely orders of magnitude worse. Even Erika, whom I wouldn't have believed could possibly get any worse, actually managed to get worse. And then they made her a major character for the season as well, which should probably be classed as a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. If these had been the characters in Season 1, this show would never have gotten a Second Season. They're not even likeable, let alone loveable, and that's hard to accomplish when audiences already loved them from the first two seasons.

Everything about Season 3 was a travesty. If it stood on its own I might have given it a 2/10, but considering the damage they did to what came before, Season 3 is an absolute 1/10.

Which brings us to Season 4 (current as of this review). Sigh. What to say about Season 4?

We'll start with the good. They fixed the characters. Like, they got the feedback from Season 3, realized they royally messed up, and they actually righted the ship. Every character is improved, some of them dramatically, back to where they were in seasons 1 and 2, or even better. The one new main character kid added in Season 2 (if you've watched it you know who I mean) was far from my favorite back in Season 2, but really comes into her own in Season 4, and I actually like her as much as the others now. The one new main character they added in Season 3 I wasn't originally a fan of either, but is actually a good, very likeable character now as well. And the one new main character they added (in Hawkins) for Season 4 is also great. Really well done. And yeah, I'm going to say it: EVEN ERIKA IS BETTER. She's still a little obnoxious, but I don't hate her anymore. Yeah, they actually improved the characters THAT MUCH from the previous season.

Continuing with the good, everything that happens in Hawkins this season is phenomenal (with one exception I'll get to). All the characters and plots in Hawkins (except that one) are every bit as good as the best parts of Season 1, and if this had been the focus of the entire season, I would have given Season 4 a 10/10. Unfortunately the Hawkins part is only about 1/3 of the run time, and the rest varies from boring and pointless to REALLY BAD.

So, starting in on the bad. First we'll talk about the one aspect of the Hawkins thing that wasn't good. Obviously it was the whole subplot with the basketball team. If you've watched it you'll know what I mean. It was stupid and overdramatic to the point of challenging the suspension of disbelief (nothing like Season 3 though), and added nothing to the story. Thankfully it didn't take up that much time.

What took up a lot more time was the California/Road Trip subplot. It wasn't terrible, it didn't break anything, it was just boring and pointless and added nothing to the story (kind of like the Nancy and Jonathan subplot from Season 2). Actually, its real crime was taking some of the main characters out of the story for the whole season. Well, that and the other new character it added. He certainly wasn't on the level of Season 2 Erika, or any of the characters from Season 3, but he was still a really poor addition, especially when they fixed and improved everyone else.

What took up EVEN MORE time, and was way, WAY worse than the California thing, was the subplot with the adults. I can't describe it another way without giving away too much plot, but all the adults we usually follow have their own subplot this season, it is a holdover from Season 3, and it is every bit as stupid, pointless, and terrible as Season 3 was. Suspension of disbelief? Gone. And one of the characters who was a normal, believable person for the previous 3 seasons suddenly transforms into Rambo or Arnold Schwarzenegger or some other nearly-invincible 80's action hero, completely out of place in the Stranger Things universe.

But none of those is Season 4's worst sin. That would be the Eleven subplot. The starting California bit is actually a little bad on its own, but oh boy does it go off the rails. I've been doing my best to avoid any spoilers, so the best I can say is that the plot of Season 4 is driven by things related to Eleven's past, but in order to do it the Duffer Brothers have completely rewritten Eleven's past, destroying the events and setups we saw in Season 1 (and to a lesser extent, season 2). And the character they bring back and try to rehabilitate? Well, it could only possibly work if you hadn't watched Season 1 since it came out in 2016 (7 years ago) and can't actually remember the details. I can't say more without spoilers, but the plot of Season 4 actually does so much retroactive damage to the previous seasons that it's hard to reconcile the good ideas it entails with the havoc it wrecks with what went before.

My mind wants to keep focusing on the best parts of Season 4, ignoring the bad stuff, and give it a good rating. But I can't. There was far too much bad, and far too much damage done to what came before. I'm going to very generously give Season 4 a 4/10 because the parts that were good were SO DAMN GOOD. I might have even given it a 6/10 if it hadn't done so much damage.

In Summary: Season 1: 10/10 as good as television gets Season 2: 8/10 most of it was excellent but a few things dragged it down Season 3: 1/10 absolute garbage in every way Season 4: 4/10 a really mixed bag of amazingly good and pretty bad, plus does damage to the worldbuilding from the original seasons.

Ted Lasso (2020–2023)

Seriously, what the hell happened?

[4/10 · 7 December 2023]

The first season of this show was an easy 10/10. It was unique, hilarious, relentlessly upbeat and inspiring, and totally different from all the other cynical crap out there. So what happened?

The first few episodes of season 2 kind of coasted along on season 1's greatness, but by midway the entire thing took a wild nosedive, like they fired the entire writing staff and started over with a bunch of talentless hacks determined to turn this completely unique show into exactly what every other crap show is, jammed full of in-your-face political statements, cynicism, absolute garbage storylines, and side characters taking over the entire show. Season 3 only got worse, and that's saying something.

Do yourself a HUGE favor. Watch season 1, it is amazing. Pretend they wrapped there. You'll thank me.

In conclusion... Season 1: 10/10 Season 2: 4/10 (and that's being generous) Season 3: 2/10.

Heat (1995)

How can a movie this dumb get so much praise?

[3/10 · 18 November 2023]

Let's just start from the start.

The protagonist criminals have a plan so specific that they knock off an armored car and sort through its contents to get exactly one item (a packet of bearer bonds), and yet they never bothered to ask who these bonds belonged to? These are our "genius" criminals?

One of their team is slightly more of a murderous psycho than the others (not by much), so they decide they're going to kill him after the job. DeNiro has him on the ground at gunpoint, but doesn't want to shoot while there's a cop driving by. But DeNiro is so utterly incompetent that he actually takes his entire attention off of the guy long enough that this guy who is ON THE GROUND DIRECTLY AT DeNIRO's FEET is able to somehow slip away and completely disappear. Wow, DeNiro's character is a master criminal!

Then they decide to try to sell the bonds back to the person they robbed (Fichtner), who is apparently a well-known criminal, and while they do have some "security" in place for the meet, it is basically only dumb luck that DeNiro even survives, combined with the fact that idiot Fichtner only sends 2 incompetent schmucks to try to kill them. The meet spot was established a day in advance. If Fichtener had sent a team of a few more guys instead of just 2 goons: end of film. By all rights the film should have ended right there (and we'd all have been better off).

Somewhere in between we get into all of these miserable, awful characters' private lives. Kilmer tells DeNiro "the sun rises and sets" with his wife. But y'know, not enough to not casually cheat on her repeatedly. Not enough to try to clean up his gambling addition. I don't think those words mean what he thinks they do.

Thankfully we next get a scene where DeNiro catches Kilmer's wife cheating, and threatens to beat her up and/or murder her if she leaves Kilmer. Isn't it fun to root for the bad guys? Yup, we'll get to that. Beating and killing women is awesome!

We're treated to an absolutely ridiculous "love" subplot for DeNiro's character as well, but the less said about that hot garbage the better. Unfortunately we'll be returning to this later as well.

Pacino's team of dedicated cops are all over DeNiro's goons, but DeNiro is too smart and actually sets the cops up to expose themselves. That part actually wasn't bad at all. Not even remotely realistic, but finally made DeNiro not look like a complete chump. And of course DeNiro the super-criminal has people inside the LAPD who can give him all the info about not only who Pacino is, but his entire personal life, because that's the kind of thing that's in a personnel file.

And then we get to the much-praised but absolutely worst, stupidest scene in the film, where dedicated cop Pacino confronts and sits down with multiple-murdering DeNiro to have a conversation about how much he admires the murderer, how he'll feel bad if he has to take him down, and tries to talk DeNiro out of continuing his crimes. This despite Pacino talking about (in this scene!) how he has recurring nightmares featuring all the murder victims he's come across in his career, while DeNiro expresses that he is completely happy with all the innocent people he's brutally murdered.

Fortunately the entire criminal team is able to slip their police tails at the exact same time, so they can go on with the heist, except Danny Trejo drops out for reasons we'll learn later. The thing is, if I were him I'd have dropped out even sooner. Of the four criminals on the team, he's the only one who gets literally zero characterization. Even in the team's heart-to-heart conversation about deciding whether to go on with the heist, where everyone else gets a long sequence about why they should or shouldn't do it, Trejo waits to the end and then just says, "Sure, I'm in!" But if you think getting no characterization is bad, wait until I remind you that they didn't even bother GIVING HIS CHARACTER A NAME. That's right, Danny Trejo's name in the film is... Trejo. Just wow.

And now it's time for the big bank robbery/shootout, and before we get too far in, we have to talk about the GLOVES. That's right, these goons walked into a bank in LOS ANGELES wearing leather gloves. You think a lot of people walk around LA wearing suits with leather gloves? Why not just tattoo "I'm A Bank Robber" on their foreheads and be done with it? They'd have stood out less wearing bright red clown noses, but that's pretty much what they looked like to me- a bunch of clowns. Kind of like the people who made this film.

That's to say nothing of how they casually walked into the bank all somehow concealing fully assembled and loaded M-16s (or full-auto AR-15's, does it really matter?). 30-round banana clips sticking out, too! I guess they used magic, the same way they use magic walking back OUT of the bank with the long guns just slung over their shoulders under their jackets, as if it would be possible for even the most unaware person not to notice that and react.

And then there's the shootout. Forget how implausible it is - it's a movie, I'm fine with implausible action in movies, it's what makes them fun. I do have to wonder how the criminals were all carrying 200 lbs of ammo in addition to their gigantic bags of money and magically concealed M-16s, but I guess they were magically concealing that too. But hey, it's actually a fun sequence if you completely turn your brain off.

I love how during this massive shootout none of the civilians actually run away. Instead they're constantly running back and forth between the cops and criminals like they're trying to get shot, or at best cowering two feet off to the side, still easily within the line of fire. And while Pacino is chasing DeNiro, everyone stays out of DeNiro's way (because obviously he's a dangerous criminal with a rifle!), but they're constantly running TOWARD Pacino, right up to him so he has to shove them out of the way, even though he's ALSO carrying a rifle and is wearing NO POLICE MARKINGS. I guess those people had all been watching the film with us so they knew which one was the cop. Magic!

Sizemore grabs a kid as a human shield, so of course we're still super conflicted about who we should be rooting for, right? We'll get to that at the end. But first an honorable mention for Jeremy Piven's mustache - definitely my favorite part of the film by far. DeNiro steals the shirt Piven's kid gave him for Father's Day, and we'll never forgive him for that. Jerk.

Pacino is tried of being a cop, so he breaks into a guy's apartment without a warrant and assaults him, like you do. Fichtner has been hiding behind security in his office for weeks after failing to kill DeNiro with those 2 pathetic goons earlier, but now that he sold DeNiro out to the cops and all the news is reporting that DeNiro escaped AGAIN, he decides it's time to leave the security behind and go home by himself. I'm almost surprised he didn't mail DeNiro a personally engraved invitation and leave the front door open for him.

"Good guy" DeNiro admits to his new soul-mate that he's a murdering, cop-killing psycho, and when she runs away he chases her down and physically restrains her, continuing his pattern of treatment of women. What a romantic love story subplot! Fortunately for him, she suddenly and for no reason decides she likes murderers, cop killers, and woman abusers, so she decides to join him as he runs from the law. Feminism!

But wait, the film is about to take a turn for the stupidest! Kilmer shows up to an ambush but gets warned and tries to leave. The cops stop him, somehow don't recognize him even though they 100% know his face and the ambush was set up specifically for him (using his wife). They also don't put together that he's so pale and moving stiffly because he got shot earlier, even though multiple cops saw DeNiro dragging him along after he'd been shot. Yup, it's that kind of stupid.

And because this bloated runtime wasn't bloated enough, let's throw in Pacino's step-daughter attempting suicide! (I'm not joking. This whole subplot probably added 20 minutes for absolutely no reason.)

But back in the story, the LAPD is afraid to shoot a multiple-cop-killer (earlier today) in the immediate aftermath of yet another murder, because REASONS! So instead the cop gets beaten unconscious by the ever-heroic DeNiro. And DeNiro's soul-mate realizes that even though she's accepted being an accessory to multiple murders for him, he's still willing to walk away from her at the drop of a hat. Which he does! It's true romance!

Did you know you can just run onto the tarmac at a commercial airport? There aren't even fences or anything. And none of the employees will bat an eye when you run past them in a suit carrying a gun. And so we're all set for the final showdown. THANK GOD. This film should have ended over 2 hours ago. If only Pacino the police officer had a police radio so he wouldn't have to do this all by himself! Anyway, Pacino comforts the multiple-cop-killer as he dies, because DeNiro was such a good guy!

Thank god it's over. Okay, so I keep taking jabs at the morality of this film. The filmmakers were definitely trying to show both sides of the story, but I won't put it on them that some terrible people couldn't figure out who to root for. That's on the viewers', or rather, the REviewers. The first review on IMDB (10 stars!) is titled "You find yourself rooting for both sides the entire film." 101/105 people agreed. I don't know who you are, kevin_robbins, but if that's how you feel, you are a TERRIBLE HUMAN BEING. And so are all 101 people who agreed with you.

DeNiro and his team are all terrible people, and the only thing you should be rooting for is that they all die horribly, preferably before they can hurt any more innocent people. We don't even get a resolution on whether Kilmer escapes.

Anyway, I've laid out in painful detail what a crap film this is. If you read this far, cheers!

Snowpiercer (2013)

Possibly the Dumbest Film Ever Made

[1/10 · 4 October 2023]

Others have pointed it out in their reviews, but this film is pretty. That's literally all it has going for it. To call its metaphors and messaging "heavy-handed" is to call a black hole "heavy," or to call absolute zero "a touch chilly." This is politics for idiots, delivered at a level that a ten year old could think beyond. But those face-palming failures are not why this might be the dumbest film ever made. No, that all comes down to the "worldbuilding" (though I'm disgusted to even use that word for the pathetic slop provided in this film) and "plot" (and again, to call this nonsensical mess a plot is an insult to writing).

The level of stupidity throughout this film will either be self-evident to the viewer (with a working brain), or will completely elude them (if they're dumber than your average rock). I'll go through some notes scene-by-scene.

The riches come to the rear of the train for a violinist. Apparently they have a violin, but in eighteen years no one has thought to ask if anyone knew how to play it. (If the film weren't so stupid maybe I'd give the benefit of the doubt that the person who could play it died, but this film doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt.)

Remember that this sort of thing has been going on for EIGHTEEN YEARS: the riches want something, they come demand someone who can do it. But for some reason the poors still haven't figured out how this works. Not only does the idiot who volunteers think he'll get to take his wife with him, but he thinks he can say no if he can't. As if this has never happened before in eighteen years.

Any time the poors revolt or try to stand up for themselves, why do the riches even bother arguing or fighting. Why not just back up, close the doors, and not feed them until they submit. They have TOTAL CONTROL. None of this is necessary. It's all just stupidity.

How did anyone get FAT like this black lady living on 18 years of starvation rations? She's not the only one, just the most obvious. It's just another example of the lazy stupidity of the people who made this film.

The poors see a cigarette and someone blurts out "Cigarettes have been extinct for over ten years now!" I wish they would have also blurted out "This is my first time writing dialogue, and I don't know how to convey things without just having people blurt them out, even though everyone there obviously already knows the information!"

In the big fight scene, the riches have a 100% advantage of night vision and complete darkness (which is temporary), but instead of pressing their advantage to kill all the poors while they have the chance, they just kill a few and then hang back for no reason... for SEVERAL MINUTES while the poors light a bunch of torches they just happened to have laying around for no conceivable reason because there are lights throughout the back of the train, and run them all the way up to where the fight is. This part actually gets worse later in the film, when Wilfred tells the chief doofus that getting a light source when you're being attacked in darkness was "pure genius" and completely unexpected. I guess the poors really are so astoundingly stupid that no one expects them to think to do what any child would come up with instantly.

The poors are trying to get to the head of the train; they all agree that they've accomplished nothing if they don't take the engine. And yet they stop to take a nap instead of pressing on, giving the riches all the time they could want to prepare defenses and isolate the back of the train. Want to make it stupider? The riches don't take advantage of this and make any preparations whatsoever.

Tilda Swinton apparently forgets between scenes that she was so wounded she couldn't walk the day before, and now moves like she was never hurt at all. Because that's the level of attention to detail the filmmakers put into this.

Why proceed to the front of the train with an improbably overweight black woman and a recently one-armed man instead of literally anyone more capable?

Back to the riches making zero preparations: how do the riches literally two cars up from where 50 armed thugs with body armor, axes, masks, and night vision just went to fight a horde of poors, not know what's going on and are just sitting around like nothing is up? An army literally walked by YESTERDAY and never came back. None of this makes any sense. These people are just going about their business as if this were all totally normal, completely unalarmed when a bunch of armed and bloodied poors show up, even though we're told everyone on the train is well aware of the previous revolts. A guy was randomly making sushi for no one, and calmly serves it to them without asking any questions. Just like the audience shouldn't ask any questions, because thinking during the movie is punishable by being forced to watch more of this movie.

The scene with the school children is a real low-point in a film that's already scraping along the bottom. Why are the children so far back on the train, away from any living quarters or parents? Why weren't they removed after a horde of poors slaughtered all the riches' soldiers? It's like the writers wanted to show what all these places would look like on a normal day, and so just decided to depict them that way even though it makes no sense in the story they're telling. What did the children make of 50 armed, armored, and masked men marching through their classroom the day before? Why don't they have any reaction to a bunch of poors showing up, armed and bloody, with Tilda Swinton bloodied and obviously restrained? Do I even need to mention the ridiculous exposition provided here? How the children are JUST NOW, right at this very minute, being taught about the route of the train, something they should have all known basically from birth, because it is literally a fundamental of their existence?

And then the filmmakers actually take advantage of their own bad writing, because everyone acting like nothing is wrong is used as a cover for the egg man to act like nothing is wrong, calmly distributing eggs while taking guns to free the prisoners and kill everyone. Because the writing is that bad.

On that subject, why bother with the egg man and the pregnant schoolteacher shooting the place up? Why bother sending 50 guys with axes to get slaughtered? You had the bullets. If you needed population control (we'll get to that, seriously), you could have just shot everyone from the start and not done any of this. It's all just so incredibly dumb.

Also, what was the point of bringing Tilda Swinton along, only to just execute her later? She obviously wasn't good for anything to begin with. And hey, the violin guy showed up for a minute... and then just disappeared. Where'd he go? Don't ask, because the filmmakers didn't think about it or care.

Finally people start to notice the poors don't belong here. Why now? No particular reason. Just because it's started to become convenient to the filmmakers. The stupidity rolls on.

Why is one of the riches an unkillable Terminator? Don't worry, it'll never be addressed or explained.

And then we get to Wilfred and the front of the train, and all the answers you've been waiting the whole film for are actually stupider and make even less sense than everything that's come before. Wilfred talks about how the train is a self-contained ecosystem requiring perfect balance, just like Tilda Swinton described the aquarium earlier. Except if that were true, then you should have only brought people who had useful skills and can perform a particular task. Everyone with a role, plus redundances, all of them here to keep the train going and humanity alive. You definitely wouldn't bring a bunch of random, skill-less poors who contribute literally nothing to the train, and are just a bunch of excess mouths to feed who need to be regularly killed off to maintain the balance. You know, unless you're the dumbest human being ever to have lived. But the children! Except that wasn't planned (only happened because a part wore out), and you could just as easily use the riches children. The children don't even die, they just grow up to be Tilda Swinton (a fate worse than death).

Do I even mention that Wilfred tells dumbass to take his time with the engine, then comes back and disturbs him again ten seconds later? Yeah, that's the level of writing we're talking about.

So Gilliam was in on the whole thing for 18 years. He had to be, because there's a hidden phone in his room at the back of the train that couldn't possibly have been installed without anyone noticing. So he was in on it when everyone was staring to death, and he cut off his own arm and leg to feed people, knowing full-well that there was plenty of food at the front of the train. Do we even need to talk about how stupid that story was to begin with?

I haven't even gotten to the idiocy of the train itself. Who is maintaining the tracks? The wheels? Everything else on the exterior? I'm about to run out of room in the review, but this has got to be the dumbest film ever made.

Final note: 438,000km, 8,760 hours in a year, that's 50kmph or 30mph. Yet the train appears to be going more like 100mph. They didn't even bother to do the math.

Batman Forever (1995)

Batman Quits?

[3/10 · 7 September 2023]

This film really should have been called "Batman Quits," or possibly "Batman Quits: and also adopts a 25 year old 'child' for some never-explained and utterly inexplicable reason." Or maybe "Batman needs to hide the entrance to the Batcave better"? Or perhaps "Batman gets exposed for all time and this film ruins all Batman continuity"? I don't know what the hell they were thinking with this one.

Yes, giving Tim Burton too much control in Batman Returns went well off the rails, but handing the reins over to Joel Schumacher was a disaster. Well, they wanted a silly, kid-friendly Batman, and I guess they sort of got it, except for Nicole Kidman absolutely sexing-up the screen throughout the film (easily the best thing about the movie).

We need to talk about Robin. Whoever was ultimately responsible for casting a 25 year old Chris O'Donnell (who looks 25-30 here) as a minor who needs to be in the care of an adult should be shot, dragged out into the street, shot again, and trampled by a horde of ravenous gorillas. That person is too stupid to be allowed to live in the same world as the rest of us, infecting it with his/her stupidity. This goes WAY beyond the typical high school full of 20-somethings playing teenagers.

So what else? The plot is dumb, the action is weak, the good guys' and bad guys' acting is like they're in completely different films: Kilmer, Kidman, and O'Donnell trying to be serious like they're in 1989 Batman, and Carey and Jones and most of the supporting cast going full 1960's Adam West camp-Batman. I don't blame the actors for this, it's clearly on the half-assed director, but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that Chris O'Donnell can't act to save his life. He was clearly shoehorned into a role he was way too old for simply to try to appeal to teenage girls.

Oh, and writing a plot where 100% of the bad guys and all their henchmen HAVE TO DIE (or lose their minds) or Batman's secret is exposed forever? And then the henchmen DON'T all die? So basically, Batman is hosed? Yeah, welcome to Terrible Writing 101.

So yeah, it's bad, despite the fact that I love Val Kilmer and Nicole Kidman. I understand this was a dream-role turned-nightmare for Kilmer, but I wonder if he realizes it was a nightmare for the audience as well?

Chuck (2007–2012)

But it's just so DUMB...

[3/10 · 22 August 2023]

I wanted to like this SO BAD. I am a huge fan of both Adam Baldwin and Yvonne Strahovski from other things. I think I'd put both of them in my top 20 favorite actors. I tried, I really, really tried. The show is just so... dumb. The spy stuff is just moronic, and having it all constantly tie back to the Buy More got painfully old after the first season. It was probably a funny concept: the normal guy working in the electronics store who becomes a secret super-spy, but has to keep his pathetic day job. But it needed to end, and somehow instead dragged on for all 5 seasons.

I know it's supposed to be a quirky comedy, but the plots are absurdly stupid, everything about the show is utterly contrived (including everyone Chuck has ever met being a spy in one form or another), and almost all of the characters are absurdly obnoxious.

The main character, Chuck (played by Zachary Levi), is far from the most obnoxious character, but being that he's the protagonist, he becomes the worst offender. It takes over two full seasons before he even becomes tolerable. Until that point he's a whiny, pathetic loser, and I was constantly struggling to understand why any of the other characters could even tolerate him, let alone like him. None of this is Zachary Levi's fault. He's obviously playing the character exactly as intended.

Chuck's best friend, Morgan (played by Joshua Gomez), is still a pathetic loser pretty much all the way to the end, and apart from being faultlessly loyal, had essentially no redeeming qualities. The supporting cast working at the Buy More were considerably worse, and the less said about them the better. Once again, I'm not blaming the actors. I'm sure they were doing exactly what they were supposed to. The characters were just awful, unbelievable, and utterly unlikeable.

I already said I love Adam Baldwin, but his character in this is terrible. He's a tough, no-nonsense killing machine when the script calls for it, but other times he's just an incompetent doofus and the butt of jokes. Most of the time the character is so uninteresting I was just bored when he was on screen, and that is a crime against humanity because Adam Baldwin is an awesome actor.

The only major character on the show who is really done any justice is Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski), except she's being constantly dragged down by the plot-central relationship with the protagonist, Chuck. The "will they/won't they" back and forth relationship is really the heart of the show, with she spy stuff bouncing wildly around it. They managed to give her character a lot of depth and make her genuinely appealing, which was surely a central draw of the show. Yvonne Strahovski is gorgeous and charismatic and does the vulnerability so well, she draws you in even when the rest of the show is awful. I'm sure it didn't hurt that she's constantly being showcased in skimpy, sexy outfits and costumes, gorgeous sexy dresses, and a vast array of sexy underwear. It seemed less strategically placed than in other shows I've seen where the female leads showed more skin the worse the ratings got, and more like it was just intentional eye-candy sprinkled throughout. Regardless, it's not enough to make up for the show's many failings.

I assume this show was targeted at young, single males working menial jobs, for whom the protagonist and his compatriots are stand-ins. I guess it's fantasy-fulfillment for that demographic, where suddenly they're secretly saving the world and having a relationship with the world's sexiest spy-with-a-heart-of-gold. So maybe I'm not the target demo, and that's why I didn't like it, but I'll say this one last time... I was just so DUMB.

The English (2022)

Should have been so much better...

[5/10 · 4 April 2023]

This really should have been so much better. It had all the elements. Fantastic overall story, great characters, amazing production values, wonderful actors giving outstanding performances...

What went wrong?

For starters, it was unfortunately far too pretentious. It took too many stabs at being deep and symbolic that didn't land, were completely unnecessary, often strayed into cringe-worthy or melodramatic, and distracted from the story.

It also jumped around too much. The story didn't have to be completely linear, but fewer jumps would have really helped keep things cohesive. Moreover, some scenes felt like they started out of the blue, as if there might have been connecting scenes that were cut out between episodes, or sometimes in the midst of episodes. Things would begin abruptly in media res, and sometimes end too abruptly as well, without carrying us out of the scene. Some of the subplots seemed to go nowhere as well, and the final confrontation was a serious letdown, as was the ridiculous excuse for how it all played out; completely forced and contrived.

Honestly, this probably earned a 6 out of 10 despite its flaws, but the fact that minor changes could have made this a 9 or 10 is just so disappointing that I'm giving it a 5 for wasting all that fantastic potential.

Should you watch it? Probably. But you'll likely be as frustrated as you are entertained.

The Dead Zone (1983)

Unbelievable

[4/10 · 20 March 2023]

The most unbelievable part of this film isn't the psychic powers; it's that Christopher Walken interacting with children would heal and improve them rather than traumatizing them for life.

Now that I've gotten my obvious joke out of the way, I just found this film utterly underwhelming. Maybe it was good in 1983, but 40 years later it felt slow, disjointed, over-acted, and kind of melodramatic.

The whole time watching it I kept thinking it felt like a Stephen King novel chopped down until there wasn't enough left to really present the story properly, and of course after finishing it I looked it up and, no surprise, that's exactly what it was. Maybe the book is better.

Without Remorse (II) (2021)

If Only They'd Had A Plot That Makes Sense

[4/10 · 12 December 2022]

It's generic, but the action scenes were very good, the special effects were quite good, and the acting was decent. And Michael B. Jordan really gets to show off just how crazy fit he is.

All they needed was a writer, which is a shame, since this was allegedly based on books that I'm 100% confident were narratively cohesive. This, sadly, was not. I'm not going to go point by point because I honestly just don't care that much, but the timeline absolutely does not work, several of the events are total nonsense and don't fit with their own internal story, and at the end of the day the whole plot falls completely flat on any degree of believability, even versus other slight-over-the-top Tom Clancy type stuff.

Everest (2015)

Eh...

[4/10 · 10 August 2022]

It wasn't a bad movie, it was just way too long and mostly kind of boring. The acting was great, they tried to get some characterization in for a large cast, but in the end this story is a tragedy, and for a tragedy you really need to summon up the audience's sympathy for the characters.

That's where the film lost me. I don't like to be unkind to the families of those that died, but these people were doing something incredibly foolish and absurdly dangerous, they failed to properly prepare, and then took some absolutely idiotic risks, and some of them died doing it.

This was like watching grown men who know everything there is to know about explosives standing in the middle of an enclosed ammo dump, pulling the pins on hand grenades, and chucking them out through a tiny hole in the roof. They know it's insane, and that unless everything goes perfect on every throw they'll probably die, but they get off on the danger so the just keep playing.

It's just hard to feel sympathy for people who intentionally and recklessly put themselves in danger and then suffer the utterly predictable consequences of doing so.

Moreover, the lack of preparation seems astounding. Obviously I've never done this, but how do you not have someone going ahead of your tourist groups to make sure all the necessary ropes and such are in place? How do you not have WAY more than enough oxygen stashed somewhere that you've absolutely ensured every climber is aware of and can't miss in an emergency? How have you not triple-checked that all the oxygen tanks you hauled all the way up the mountain are full before you stage them. How do you not have oxygen tanks designed for the super-cold temperatures you're absolutely guaranteed to encounter up there? It just seems completely irresponsible.

At the end of the day, I just couldn't feel for the fools who did this to themselves, and with such a slow movie, you absolutely have to have that sympathy to make it worth the watch.

RoboCop (2014)

As Lifeless as a Machine

[2/10 · 20 July 2022]

Wow. They managed to remake Robocop, but this time took out all the drama, tension, emotion, and even the satire and comedy. It's amazing they managed to produce two hours worth of film without ever even approaching anything compelling or worthwhile. They did show off some special effects though, so I guess that's... I don't know, a thing they did? Seriously, this film is bad. It makes the low-quality Robocop sequels from the late 80's/early 90's look good by comparison. It's just completely bland and lifeless.

For starters, gone is any sense that crime is out of control. Everything in the city is clean, quiet and peaceful everywhere anyone goes. The only cops we meet are detectives, not street cops, who go about their jobs casually, with none of the sense of fear and tension and the pain of constantly losing friends and comrades on the streets. Their police station is clean and modern and calm and professional. They all live in quiet, peaceful suburban neighborhoods with manicured lawns. Instead of crime, what we have is a political fight about whether robots can be used inside the US, as they are overseas. And the argument is on philosophical grounds. That's it.

Murphy's death is likewise robbed of all its horror and emotion. He walks out to the car and it explodes. End of scene. Flat, dull, lifeless. None of the tension and fear of being captured by truly evil, heartless men with a history of killing cops. None of the threats and banter. And of course none of the slow, brutal execution. It's like they just sucked all the life out of everything in the film.

Then they rip out the trauma of Murphy realizing he's a man trapped in a machine. Instead of being declared dead and spending years under "construction" while the world moves on, he actually survives the explosion and his wife is told he'll be crippled but live. It's actually her decision to have him transformed, so all of this could have simply been avoided. And as soon as he's brought back to consciousness the whole thing is just explained to him, and after one scene of freaking out, he simply accepts everything. They even let him go see his family before he goes on the job. It's like every time they saw a point in the plot where they might be some tension and emotion they stepped in to make sure it was smoothed over.

I could go on, but why bother? The film is bad, plain and simple. They took out everything good and replaced it with a bloated runtime and precious little else.

War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

Wow, this one really went off the cliff.

[1/10 · 16 July 2022]

The first two films in this series had their own serious problems, but this one really just does everything wrong possible. There's just so much that makes no sense.

In the last film the apes captured the entire human settlement in San Francisco with its huge armory of guns. There were 10x more guns than apes. So where did all the guns go? Why doesn't every ape have 2 guns?

And where did they get hundreds of horses in San Francisco? It's not exactly big horse country. And seriously, gorillas on horses? Adult gorillas weigh 300-450 lbs. Horses can break their backs carrying overweight humans, and are usually limited to 250 lbs. Or less.

The evil humans capture all the apes, but then the leave only one guard on duty overnight? Just one? What prison, or even a firewatch, has just one person at a time? Oh, but it gets worse. That one human is so childish, emotional, and stupid, that he abandons his watchtower (built specifically to watch all the apes from a position of safety and maximum visibility), and enters the pen with hundreds of apes, carrying the keys to let them all out, where he could easily be rushed and killed and all the apes escape since he's the only guard. You'd have to be a compete idiot to allow any of this to happen, and you'd have to be twice as stupid to write it in a script and think that's okay.

Why does the traitor gorilla who decides to save Caesar just stand there and let the a weak little human execute him point blank? Why not fire the grenade launcher, then immediately turn and fire it all along the wall, and tear the nearby humans limb from limb before they realize what's happening. Especially if you're a gorilla who was so worried about your own survival that you turned against your own kind. Why suddenly give up on living, and not even bother to take your enemies down with you. Because bad writing, of course.

Why was the humans' super-important defensive wall built entirely on top of something massively explosive that could easily be detonated? Wasn't it just pure luck it hadn't detonated from all the missiles being fired at it? If anything it's a miracle the whole attack wasn't over when the first missile hit the base. And since they were expecting an attack, why did they have huge fuel tanks just sitting out in the open where anyone could blow them up and take the whole base out in one hit? And why didn't the helicopters aim at these obvious targets? I guess everyone in the film was equally stupid. More importantly, what kind of idiots wrote this drivel?

Then Caesar manages to outrun an avalanche, climb trees, and walk for days or weeks all the way across the desert, before suddenly remembering that he got shot way back when, and apparently it's time to die from that wound? The idiocy of this knows no bounds.

And finally, Koba wanting to kill all humans because some humans tortured him is not even remotely the same thing as Caesar wanting to kill the specific human who murdered his family. Those things are not even remotely the same, and there is no "moral equivalency" between them. Killing random innocent humans is bad. Killing a human who has tortured and killed countless apes and continues to do so is an unmitigated good. This is only a hard concept if you're a brainless, soulless, morally-bankrupt Hollywood type.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

A Perfect Sequel to the First One in All the Wrong Ways

[5/10 · 16 July 2022]

I'm not sure a film has ever followed its predecessor so perfectly as this one, and unfortunately that's not a compliment. Everything that destroyed the great potential of Rise of the Planet of the Apes and reduced it to barely watchable is back in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Once again it is the writers' total inability to write believable "bad guys." They're all absolutely idiotic, irrational, unbelievable caricatures, on the level (or even worse) than one-dimensional films like Avatar.

And that's a real shame, because this is not at all a one-dimensional film. The "good" characters are done so well, and the story itself is pretty good, but just like in the prior film, the writers prove they have no idea how to move a story along without having absurd, unbelievable antagonists doing stupid, unbelievable things, and then the good characters inexplicably not disavowing and turning against them.

One stupid character ruins the entire relationship between the species in the film, while simultaneously ruining the film. The idea that he could panic and shoot an ape in the first scene is absolutely believable, even if his reaction afterwards is over the top. But his behavior after the apes spare them is absolutely absurd, counter-intuitive, and unbelievable. And then, for contrived plot purposes which are later discarded without even being discussed, they have to bring him BACK to the apes, and his fellow humans don't even make him apologize. That should have literally been step 2 of any plan to go back. Step 1: make contact. Step 2: make him apologize. You'd have to be the dumbest, most clueless people on earth not to do that.

Then, because the moronic writers still can't think of anything intelligent, or even new, to move the plot along, they have the same guy completely illogically and unreasonably overreact a second time. And then we find out that he's not just terrible, he's the dumbest man who ever lived.

See, the apes tell them they can't bring guns. There are only like 6 of them, and hundreds of apes, so even if they all had automatic weapons they could never shoot their way out, so having guns would only mean they could take some apes with them before dying anyway. So even if they had ill intent leaving their guns behind is meaningless. But despite that, this complete idiot decides to smuggle a gun in. Because him having one gun was somehow going to make him safer? Getting caught with it is a potential death-sentence. Using it is a guaranteed death-sentence. There was absolutely no logic to it. But hey, the writers couldn't think of how to move the plot along, so there it is.

Then we get the leader of the human colony, who is also apparently a total nutter making decisions that make no sense at all. And they break open their giant armory (not unreasonable), but only have 2 guys there (apparently the 2 dumbest men in the entire colony), whose job it is to test all the guns. But instead of just test-firing the guns, these idiots blow through loads of precious ammo apparently just joy-shooting all the guns even after they've proved they work. And you don't need me to tell you about how utterly stupid their entire exchanges with Koba are.

This film had such potential, just like the first one, but terribly written "bad guys" ruined it, just like the first one, taking it from what should have been a very good film to something barely watchable.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

Potential Wasted with Sloppy Writing and Characters

[5/10 · 15 July 2022]

This film really had potential. The overall story is good, the acting is generally good, and "good" characters are all well-realized. Where this film really falls apart is the "bad" characters, and the writers' inability to move the plot along without using the most contrived and unrealistic "bad" characters imaginable.

First there's the neighbor, who is completely out of control in every scene he appears in, reacting like an absolute lunatic every single time he's on screen.

It yanked me out of the film every time the writers had him do something absolutely ridiculous to push the plot along.

Then there are the guys working at the ape shelter. If you've ever had any interaction with people who work at any sort of animal shelters, especially for exotic animals, you'd know that they're the most dedicated animal lovers on the planet (often to the point of being absolutely kooky). People who hate animals don't get jobs like that, because they're dirty, low-paying jobs whose only real up-side is getting to interact with and protect animals. The fact that that site was run by nothing but psychopaths was completely beyond belief, and once again yanked me out of the film every time it came up.

The main antagonist at the shelter was the worst. There are certainly psychopathic sadists in the world who get off on hurting animals, but they're not usually stupid about it. No one who knew anything about chimps from working with them day in and day out would try to confront one with a stun stick. It would be suicide, as is demonstrated in the film. But it's needed to move the plot along, so the half-brained writers make him do it anyway.

And then there's the money-grubbing executive. I won't delve into the absolute idiocy of the infected chimp rampaging through the entire corporate office and then just happening to crash right into the presentation they're giving where he's supposed to be the main exhibit. That was just terrible writing. But after that incident they decide the research is untouchable, completely unbelievably, only to turn on a dime and reauthorize the same research, under the same name and code numbers, once they think the drug can do something else unpredicted. It's absolutely absurd. And it only gets worse when this random technology executive decides to jump in a helicopter to try to help out with the rampaging apes. Why? Why, besides bad writing?

It's a shame what was otherwise shaping up to be a good project was ruined by such terrible writing failures. It's not a BAD movie as a result, but it went from potentially being quite good to, in my estimation, barely passable.

Dead Man Walking (1995)

Sympathy for the Devil (Don't)

[3/10 · 29 June 2022]

"Giving aid and comfort to the enemy." That's what this film is about. The victims suffered. The perpetrator is given sympathy and comfort. Just another realistic but utterly disgusting depiction of the vile people who care more about coddling evil than the victims. Another symptom of an absolutely perverse society that refuses to acknowledge right and wrong and personal responsibility.

Enough Said (2013)

Really?

[3/10 · 12 June 2022]

I cannot for the life of me comprehend what people liked about this, other than the acting, which was thoroughly believable.

This is a film about a sociopath who isn't smart enough to get away with being a sociopath, and it follows a 100% predictable path exactly as you knew it would from the very beginning, without a single twist or surprise.

Virtually all of the characters are miserable, detestable people, but none more so than its sociopath protagonist, for whom none of the other characters seem to be "people," but things for her to interact with and use to fill out various facets of her life. Oh yeah, she's also a pretty terrible parent and definitely a terrible "adult" in the lives of the children she interacts with, but that's just one of the stupid side-plots.

Gandolfini's character is the only one you're likely to not hate or despise, except for one of the young girls. All the other adults are just awful in so many ways.

Ford v Ferrari (2019)

An Okay Film, But...

[5/10 · 14 April 2022]

Since when do we get all fired up rooting for the Corporate Juggernaut with unlimited money crushing all the little guys, and CHEATING to do so? They tried to sell this like an underdog story, but it kind of falls flat.

Seriously, I felt like an Imperial Citizen cheering on the Stormtroopers as they perfected the Death Star to destroy the Rebel Alliance. They even showed us that the Imperial Officers running things were the bad guys, but somehow we're still supposed to cheer for the Stormtroopers carrying out their indomitable will.

And why would anyone writing a script have their "heroes" CHEAT? That thing with the lug nut was what BAD GUYS do. It's actually a cliché bad guy move. You can't beat them fairly so you trick them into thinking something is broken and their driver's life is at risk so you can take advantage of their concern for their driver. Whose idea was it to have the supposed "heroes" do that? And then they're stealing Ferrari stopwatches just out of spite? What kind of "heroes" are these?

The acting was good, some of the scenes were good, (others were preposterous), but overall I just can't see what so many people liked about this. Ultimately it failed to convince me to root for the bad guys, and it went on about an hour too long.