I don't know ifs it's a bad movie with a bunch of good scenes or a good movie with a bunch of bad scenes.
Do you know why the first issue is called "Sleep of the Just"? You do, if you've read it. Do you know why the first episode of the series is called that? There's no reason, really, since an important side character named Wesley Dodds, a.k.a. Sandman, is not introduced in the episode. Abel and Caine aren't in "Imperfect Hosts". I wonder what else is gone.
Overall, two episodes in, this is a flavorless series only remotely associated with the original graphic novel.
It was quite pretentious and with a lot of excessive drama, to the point of feeling fake. Essentially, even reading the Wikipedia page on the subject was more interesting than this docudrama.
While my opinion of the first season was mostly positive, the second season took a marked turn to the worse.
Yeah yea, Iroh and Top had their moments and are pretty good characters. But the overarching plot is about infuriatingly incompetent adults in power, very convenient events that contribute nothing to the final outcome, setups with disappointing payoffs, and a penultimate episode that made me quit the show for good.
Maybe I would have liked it if I were a kid.
If only it were not about a real accident, real radiation, I would have rated it much higher.
Here's the problem: Chernobyl is visually as close to a perfect representation of late 1980s USSR and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident as anything.
Except it blows the scale of the accident itself out of proportion, presents urban legends and the unfounded fear of irradiated people being radioactive as fact and even outright lies about the number of victims in the epilogue. And the vodka? In the middle of "sukhoy zakon", the Soviet version of prohibition?
It feels like it tries to respect the victims and heroes of the tragedy, but then, it sacrifices a lot of its credibility.
Don't get me wrong, if we take out its claim to be a docudrama, Chernobyl is a good, even if scientifically inaccurate, work of fiction.
But as docudramas go, it's 5 out of 10.
Might be the worst horror movie I've ever watched.
Let me get it straight: the movie does have some semblance of style. It uses camerawork from Hitchcock's "Vertigo". In one scene in the beginning. And it's not a part of the movie's visual language. It's just there.
There's a certain style to the monster and set design too.
But there's absolutely no substance to it.
It's not like "The Orphanage", it's not a horror film gradually creeping under your skin: it's actually a very family friendly thing, back in the 90s some might argue it's not even PG. Well, the most PG thing about this film is schoolkids smoking.
There's a bunch of jumpscares throughout the movie, but well, the worst the monster does for most of the film is moving some furniture. You read it right. About 75 percents of the film in, and this horror movie has no threat to the protagonists. It's just "weird stuff happening". Well, one of the protagonists is having visions of a threat in the future, but it's for a character so sugary you wouldn't miss him if he died.
Cracked me up right in the movie theater a couple of times - and I wasn't alone. Thing is, if this film had a laughing track, I'd mistake it for a comedy, and not even a black comedy at that. Sadly, the film is very self-serious and the comedy was unintentional.
Funniest of all, the film claims to be based on real events. Not only it isn't even marginally based on real events or even allegations of real events - it actively falsifies facts to fit its narrative.You might want to do some research on the story behind this, you'll get it.Laughably bad usage of horror movie cliches, and as I already said - virtually no threat to the characters for 75% of the movie, just "spooooooky stuff happening".No character study or development.Lots of quasi-religious propaganda.No story.
It deserves 1/10.
Now Marvel has officially made a blaxploitation film.
And before some liberal goes on about me being an entitled heterosexual white male and thus racist, let's set it straight.
I love black characters done right. Spawn is one instance. Static is another. Static Shock the Animated Series is an amazing instance showing black communities, their problems, gang violence - and the good people trying to help.
Black Panther is another thing entirely.
It's self-serious and unfunny.
It's ham-fisted in its message - using a stereotypical "African" accent just to nail in how "black" the characters are, and even the (quite terrible) song in the end sings "I hate people who feel entitled". The only white protagonist is referred to as "colonizer".
There's no character buildup for the villains - so much that they might as well be cardboard cutouts.
The mandatory strong independent female characters - remember, if you can only define a character as a "strong independent female", before defining who they are as a person, that is a comically bad character. As bad as the "testosterone-fueled bad-ass dude" and the rest of them.
The CGI is cheap, the soundtrack is bland and not memorable.
It is a sad time when movies think of not offending the overly sensitive audience, instead of telling a good story.
A simple, yet well-crafted story, a feast for the eyes and a pure spectacle. + some ugly CGI and an ending that fails to sell the story. Overall, 8/10.
Special praise for Cara Delevingne for giving an amazing performance.
In the comic book series, the characters and their backstories made sense. Here, they make none. Basically, it's another dumbed-down badly written TV social commentary-stuffed series based on a comic (hello, Lucifer, Gotham, Flash, Constantine). They even threw in an actually likeable character (Cassidy) based on the experience of the Game of Thrones, so that you'd keep watching at least for his sake.
Fourth episode in, nothing to get me going. Bad writing (especially the dialogue), absolutely nothing interesting happening, deliberately not showing stuff and ending on cliffhangers as if it's going to interest me more - guess what, it isn't.
There was a lot of hype going around Preacher, I don't see why. Mediocre.
Learning that Azarello had done the writing (I have a lot of confidence in him after his run on Hellblazer - not exactly my favorite run, but still pretty solid), and that Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill were reprising their roles as Batman and the Joker, I already knew I would likely be a good one. Still, I was afraid that they would fuck up the ending, which might be interpreted as being ambiguous in the comic by some. But the story in the beginning made it so it would work both ways, and still they left the ending the way it was in the comic.
I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I hadn't read the comic - this is the problem with the adaptation being faithful to the original material, but, overall, a decent effort.
Hence the rating - 8/10 "Great"
Now this is a pretty good Green Lantern animated feature film. Not an origin story, varied plot, focuses on characters. Also has the Alan Moore "Mogo doesn't socialize" story. The ending is kind of anti-climactic, of course. But, overall, a worthy attempt.
Origin story, overly evil Sinestro, no character development, plain and primitive. Has it's redeeming points, but compared to "Emerald Knights" and "Green Lantern: The Animated Series", wish I had skipped that one.
Good as the first season was, the second is way better. And the ending... didn't expect it to go all feels over me. Just watch it, not gonna spoil it for you.
I finally had enough of it.
1:35 of the episode, it's only missing "and that, kids, is the story of how I met your mother".
"Geeky girls are sluts with eyeglasses" stereotype - check. The quest for cultural relevance continues.
Ok, it gets worse. Now I know exactly what it looks like - silver-age obsession with science by people who don't understand it (let's throw in some badly understood terminology and they'll thing this is complex scientific stuff). Let's give attempted scientific explanations to the villain's powers, even though the result will defy the law of conservation of mass. Add bronze-age pursuit of cultural relevance - particle accelerators, internet, cellphones and twerking. And let's make Iris "Miss Unnecessary Backstory in Dialogue".
Worst of all, the character has absolutely no backbone, no integrity. Then we have all this American cliched pep-talk by authority figures.
And why do they make his hood drop as soon as he runs fast? Why the hell does he need a mask that opens his face every now and then? Imagine Batman's mask falling off every time he jumps off a roof.
The series is decidedly weak.
Thankfully, there was less "Twilight" in this one, than in "The Amazing Spiderman", but still, it's way too fake. The problem is, like the beginning of the Bronze Age of comic books, the series is looking for cultural relevance. I understand they have a budget and need ratings and $$, but when the overall quality of the series suffers, it's not an excuse.
"The Flash" lacks personality. Before starting the first episode, I watched the direct-to-video "Justice League: Flashpoint Paradox". "Flashpoint Paradox" wasn't amazing; it was cliched and predictable. But it was fun to watch, and it had a story to tell. And it moved me. "The Flash" failed. Actually, it failed the very moment twerking was mentioned. There's enough twerking in the world without it entering superhero comic book adaptations, goddammit. This is escapist stuff, it should have that feeling, atmosphere. The stuff those dumb "Kick-Ass" comics and movies lack. A soul. Class. Imagine Batman in JLU singing "Wrecking Ball" instead of "Am I Blue?".
Instead I get an origin story mostly copied from Sam Raimi's 2002 "Spiderman".
I'm still going to give this show a chance, they say it gets better later on. But seeing how Green Arrow was portrayed - pretty sure I'm not wasting my time on Arrow.
It was... a sad experience. I had high expectations.
