The real question is why the hell did the guy charge money for snacks at the white house?
Barbenheimer: Part 1 of 2
This is the kind of film I really don’t want to criticize, because we don’t get nearly enough other stuff like it. However, mr. Nolan has been in need of an intervention for a while now, and unfortunately all of the issues that have been plaguing his films since The Dark Knight Rises show up to some degree here. Visually it might just be his best film, and there’s some tremendous acting in here, particularly by Murphy and RDJ. However, it makes the common biopic mistake of treating its subject matter like a Wikipedia entry, thereby not focussing enough on character and perspective. As a whole, the film feels more like a long extended montage, I don’t think there are many scenes that go on for longer than 60 seconds. There’s a strong ‘and then this happened, and then this happened’ feel to it, which definitely keeps up the pace, but it refuses to stop and let an emotion or idea simmer for a while. There are moments where you get a look into Oppenheimer’s mind, but because the film wants to cover too much ground, it’s (like everything else) reduced to quick snippets. It’s the kind of approach that’d work for a 6 hour long miniseries where you can spend more time with the characters, not for a 3 hour film. I can already tell that I won’t retain much from this, in fact a lot of it is starting to blur together in my mind. There are also issues with some of the dialogue and exposition, such as moments where characters who are experts in their field talk in a way that feels dumbed down for the audience, or just straight up inauthentic. Einstein is given a couple of cheesy lines, college professors and students interact in a way that would never happen, Oppenheimer gives a lecture in what’s (according to the movie) supposed to be Dutch when it’s really German; you have to be way more careful with that when you’re making a serious drama. Finally, there are once again major issues with the sound mixing. I actually really loved the score, but occasionally it’s blaring at such a volume where it drowns out important dialogue in the mix. I’m lucky enough to have subtitles, but Nolan desperately needs to get his ears checked, or maybe he should’ve asked some advice from Benny Safdie since he’s pretty great with experimental sound mixing. My overall feelings are almost identical to the ones I had regarding Tenet; Nolan needs to rethink his approach to writing, editing and mixing. This film as a whole doesn’t work, but there are still more than a few admirable qualities to it.
Edit: I rewatched this at home to see whether my feeling would change. I still stand by what I wrote in July, though the sound mix seems to have been improved for the home media release. It sounds more balanced and I didn’t miss one line of dialogue this time around. I’m slightly raising my score because of that, but besides that I still think it’s unfocused, overedited, awkwardly staged and scripted etc.
5.5/10
Legend has it, that the script took forever to finish. Every time they finished a line, it disappeared
Pattinson is the best Batman ever.
he is so tortured, his emotions are sincere. He's the darkest and most precise batman out there.
the visuals and the soundtrack are incredible and take you into the thoughts of the character.
For me it’s a masterpiece.
Nothing comforts anxiety like a little nostalgia.
If anything, Hollywood has boiled that concept down to a science over the past few years, as this film is basically a summary of everything that’s wrong with the industry in a neat, 148 minute package.
It thinks it’s meta and self-aware by pointing out how cynical and cheap franchise filmmaking is.
That might sound similar set-up as 22 Jump Street, but this film proceeds to be cheap and cynical itself without saying anything substantial beyond its own set up, so it embraces what it’s trying to criticize.
Everything in this movie is structured as an excuse to show stuff you’ve seen before, there are little to no original concepts or ideas that push the franchise in an interesting direction.
It’s mostly a rehash of the first film (mixed with some stuff from Reloaded and Revolutions in the second half), except the action isn’t nearly as good, it’s more predictable and convenient, the performances are nowhere near as memorable (that’s what you get from replacing your 2 best actors), it looks uglier and more synthetic, the pacing isn’t as tight, and it’s a lot more dull because of how much it overexplains itself.
It also ditches the cyberpunk aesthetic, and replaces it with something a lot more bland and boring, stripping the franchise from a lot of its personality.
It’s honestly quite an accomplishment when you think about it: the original is one of the best, most successful, big budget films ever made that still maintained a strong artistic and alternative impulse.
This, on the other hand, couldn’t be any more lowest common denominator if it tried to.
It’s a parody of itself and modern blockbuster filmmaking.
I suppose that was Lana Wachowski’s goal to some extent, but it isn’t very compelling to watch.
3/10
The cynical side of me wants to call this Everything, everywhere all at once for consoomers.
The optimistic side of me sees Kevin Feige finally pushing the boundaries of his own franchise.
I guess it’s a little bit of both in the end.
Undoubtedly, the best thing the movie has going for it is the Sam Raiminess of it all. His fingerprints are all over it; you’re getting the weird camera angles, camp, his sense of horror, etc. It definitely has more style than some other Marvel movies, though there's also still some of the usual blandness. I'll give it to Marvel for putting in a scene where a talking corpse gives a heartfelt, sentimental speech. There's more of a psychedelic feel to it than the first film, but every time it tends to get really interesting it feels like Raimi's being reigned it to adhere to Marvel's demands. Elizabeth Olsen and Benedict Cumberbatch are giving some of their best performances as these characters to date, and the music’s really well done. But ultimately the film’s Achilles heel is its own script, which is complete junk. The story is thin, messy, nonsensical, and at times flat out embarrassing. The set-up in the first act is very rushed, while the second and third act feel like they’re written by a Reddit fanpage (you just know for a fact that Marvel only went in this direction because of the 2 Batmen that have been announced for The Flash). It’s Marvel at its most ‘producty’, and it’s going to trick a lot of people into thinking the film is better than it is. Regardless, I hope Patrick Stewart got a big paycheck for ruining his own perfect send-off in Logan at the very least. A lot of the story beats don’t make sense either, with most of the characters arcs feeling rushed and nonsensical, even despite the copious amounts of exposition that are desperately trying to tie everything together. The choices made with Wanda in the third act are baffling, and I still don’t know what the takeaway is supposed to be by the end of the film. Her motivation is problematic in general, and I don’t like the use of the [insert plot device] corrupts the mind of the villain trope, which is becoming very overused in the MCU (Ant-Man, Winter Soldier) and just a lazy way of forcing a conflict where the villain stays redeemable. The new character (America Chavez) is a boring, underdeveloped plot device, while Strange himself doesn't even have a real arc. It's the kind of film where a lot happens, but very little leaves an actual impression. I’m not sure what happened, but I get the impression that a significant portion of this film was reworked and rewritten during post production. The action didn’t impress me whatsoever, but that’s been a case with these films for a while now (some of the stuff in Shang-Chi excluded). Some of the visuals look tacky and unfinished, the action’s a bunch of people shooting flashing lights at each other, shots don’t linger enough, people move like animated characters, it’s all the usual bs (and this is coming from someone who thinks the action and effects in the first one are still underappreciated to this day). Inbetween the first film and the sequel, Marvel has become a machine that’s now collapsing under its own pressure. If Disney would allow it, they really should go back to making 2-3 properties a year. The consistent mediocrity of their current output is killing their own longevity.
4/10
Oh, and your kids will be fine watching this. I’ve seen some uproar about the ‘horror’ and violence of the film, and it’s honestly not that shocking. There’s way more creepy stuff in some of the Harry Potter and Indiana Jones films (or just your average 80’s kids film in general).
This is an honest, spoiler-free review coming from your average fan (not a critic):
I just saw this new marvel film, and I have to say... it's no where near as bad as the critics make it out to be.
Yes there is a lot of dialogue. But it gives the characters a chance to shine and for scenes to breathe.
People call this film dense. I would disagree. Yes there is a fair bit of plot and history told, however I would say that other mcu films have simply much simpler plotlines most of the time.
There are moments when things are just about to become exciting, and then it is interrupted with more dialogue which instantly kills the suspension.
There are a number of plot twists in this film, and some unexpected things happen that I wouldn't have seen coming.
This film has a slow burn, but sometimes that's a good thing. Would I have liked more action? Yes. Was I unhappy with the action we do get? No.
I will admit, going into this film I was expecting a masterpiece, and while I wouldn't quite call it that, its definitely a well-made film, marvel or not.
Oh. And expect to have to do some reading at the very beginning. Kinda reminds me of a classic Star Wars opening crawl.
For someone who was born in 2001 and not being able to watch Matrix in theaters this movie has a special meaning to me.
Edit: Never mind this was film was a piece of crap
Denis Villenueve. A solid lineup. A different take on first contact. I loved Sicario but went in expecting a cerebral epic sci-fi.
That was a mistake.
Good things:
- Some really nice visual scenes
- Interesting aliens Calligraphy aliens!
- Clear theme of communication is omnipresent
- A neat score that might be awesome in a different movie
Bad things:
- The acting
- The lack of emotional reaction to ALIENS! The students asking to turn on the TV, all of the main characters
- Lack of useful characters Only the aliens and Louise actually did anything the entire movie.
- Supporting characters are very stupid in an attempt to foil the main character slightly
- Very clumsy exposition. Genre-typical news reports, voice-overs, dumb characters asking stupid questions.
- Very slow pacing. This worked in parts of Sicario, but didn't work in this movie because there was no tension. The main characters never seemed remotely threatened.
- Lousie showing up at school thinking everyone will be there after aliens arrive and there's a state of emergency
- Why can't you translate alien language like you can translate Farsi. This is a paraphrase but in the spirit of what Colonel Weber was saying.
- Useless love interest when the costars have no chemistry.
- Ultrasecure military base lets someone steal a ton of explosives and put it in an ALIEN SPACECRAFT without anyone noticing.
- Many unbelievable plot points
- Poor dialogue Let's make a baby - real quote
- Poor handling of the major plot points Looking through time seems to undermine the fact that the aliens need help. Why did one have to die if they could see the future? Why did only one die when they were right next to each other?
- Very heavy handed moral messaging that didn't align with the rest of the movie.
- Why couldn't Ian also see into the future as he studied the language, or any of the others?
Overall extremely disappointing. I'm honestly surprised critics or general moviegoers like this. The premise was very good. It's a real shame the execution failed so miserably.
If this film is a cake, then it’s got the best possible frosting you could wish for. The cake itself, however, isn’t great.
I’ve always had a strange relationship with these films. I don’t really care for the Raimi films (I think they’re overly cheesy, poorly acted and dated, though don’t expect anyone from around my age to admit that), the Webb films are fine (really like the first one, second one’s a mess) and I’ve really liked the 2 recent ones (not as much as Into the Spiderverse, but still good in their own right).
Compared to the previous 2, this one pretty much ditches the John Hughes aesthetic as it goes along, and it goes into full on, operatic superhero mode.
Unfortunately, it is another one of those project that puts nostalgia and fan pandering over story and character, the kind of blockbuster we’re seeing over and over again in a post Force Awakens world.
This story is completely hacked together, consisting of so many contrivances, conveniences and established characters acting out of character that it becomes a bit of a shitshow ( Doctor Strange, a genius, is being tricked by teenagers; Peter not knowing about the consequences of the spell is a very forced way to set the plot in motion; Ned being able to open portals is quite ridiculous when the Doctor Strange movie made a point about how hard that is to learn; why is Venom in the universe given how they set up the rules of the multiverse, and the list goes on ). The problem is that they needed to take that bullet in order to make the film they wanted to make here (or rather, the film fans wanted to see), but that doesn’t make it the right choice by any means, because it leads to a nonsensical film with a rushed pace.
Look, you can nitpick this film to death ( why would a university publicly admit that MJ and Ned are rejected because of their connection to Peter? ), but that’s not even my point. It’s heightened and not meant to be taken that seriously, I get that, but you at least need some form of internal logic, you cannot just do these unearned things because the plot demands it.
It’s not all bad though, Holland’s Spider-man still has a very good arc with some great emotional beats in it, and they make some very bold choices towards the end that I hope they stick with. It’s very similar to the first Fantastic Beasts, so I hope they don’t pull a Crimes of Grindelwald by retconning everything .
The acting is great, Holland and Zendaya give their best and most mature performances yet, and the villains are all good. I really like that they toned Dafoe down a little bit.
It looks fine. It has some of the best cinematography out of the trilogy, but some of the action looks very animated (again, stop touching up the suit, just let it wrinkle ffs) and unfinished, which is probably because this thing was rushed out, as we know.
For instance, there are some really wonky shots in the scene where Spider-Man fights Doctor Strange, the close-ups with Benedict Cumberbatch look like a weather forecast on television.
The references to the previous incarnations are a bit of a mixed bag. I like that they progressed some stuff and did interesting things with the things they referenced ( for example, you really feel like time has passed with Tobey and Andrew, they’re not giving a copy of their original performances, which is also a great excuse to tone down the awkwardness and lack of personality in Tobey’s version. Also, the banter between them is very nice, of course ), but most of it plays like a pandering greatest hits compilation. I don't need Dafoe to say you know, I'm something of a scientist myself again, it is nothing but a cheap attempt to trigger my nostalgia button.
Finally, it also has some of the worst tonal balance and comedy out of the trilogy, especially with some of the lines that are given to Benedict Cumberbatch.
5/10
In summary/TLDR: great idea for Sony’s bank account, but the seeds for this needed to be planted much earlier in order to make it a good film.
Did you all give high ratings to make a point? Half way through the movie I could not keep my eyes open. Seriously... 8.7 / 10 in IMDB. Crazy!
I gave this an extra star based on the fact that everyone in the movie is so dumb just like the people I see outside everyday.
Before explaining why I liked this movie, I'd like to point out that the main idea of the movie is NOT that you need find your purpose to have a happy life. It's the exact opposite! I'm not saying this just to be a professor, but because it's really important and that's why I loved the film so much. You don't need to be fixated about something to find a meaning in your life. You need to savour it and learn to enjoy the little moments instead of waiting for something big to happen to reach happiness. It's so profound and refreshing. A movie just about a guy waiting for his big moment and feeling fulfilled after having reached it would have been dull, boring, trite and most of all wrong, like pretty much all "self-help" advices.
Instead the opposite idea is presented and if you just pay attention to the dialogues -and the story, really- you'll understand what I mean and most importantly what you might apply to make your everyday life better.
But back to the movie I've got to say I almost cried as the end was approaching as much as I was going to turn off the tv when the movie started. The whole initial setting reminded me too much of Inside Out, a film I quite disliked, so I was worried it was a copy of it (it kind of is in the beginning). But luckily the second half steered away from it and developed in one of the most moving film I've seen in a long time. Undoubtedly one of Pixar's best.
Started off as a half decent action movie till the truly horrible third act.
Why would the government not help kill them under the ice, they were quick enough to believe 'the future people'? Just so you can have your small group of outcasts save the world? Why go through more than half of the movie to help 'the future people' and then barely use what you fought for, the toxin? Terrible writing.
Am I the only one that thinks this movie f'ing sucks balls. Didn't like this at all
A two and a half hours boring, depressing mess. In short, Zack Snyder.
And the dream sequences take more screen time then the actual BvS fight. Who thought this was a good idea?
One of the best anti-war movies of all time. I was shaking and had heart racing the whole run-time.
One of the most memorable cinema-experiences I ever had. After the credits rolled, no one made a move for two minutes. Everyone sat quietly and thought about what they had seen. At one point early in the movie almost everyone had also stopped eating their popcorn.
Watch it in Cinema if you can. Watch it in german if you can. Watch it in german with subtitles if you must. Or wait for it's Netflix-Release. But watch "All Quiet on the Western Front" no matter what. And learn from it.
One of the most intense movies you'll ever see.
This is definitely not as bad as people make it out to be. Yes, it's not Interstellar. Yes, it's ridiculous. But it's also a lot of fun, and John Bradley delivers the laughs as expected.
I'm just here, still wondering why the chandelier...
If I ever traveled to Avatar world, I would invent arrow proof cockpit glass for the helicopters and become rich.
I think I would have been perfectly satisfied with a Henry Cavill Sherlock Holmes film
Dune Part 2 is visually spectacular. The picture is stunning. Ignoring the worn-out tropes, the problem with the film is the lack of emotional attachment to characters. The scope is too big for its runtime which leads to underdeveloped players. The movie is so impressive, yet hollow.
Too silly for my enjoyment. Tried to send a message, but apparently pressed the wrong button.
Probably the most overrated movie of 2022.
In my opinion, this is definitely in the top 10 best Fast movies.
Seems like Michael Bay got some drones for a Christmas !
Look, I'm very much in favor of giving directors the creative freedom to put their own spin on whatever they're adapting.
In fact, I think it's quite shallow and close-minded to judge an adaptation against its source material, pretending as if that's meant to be some holy grail of perfection.
That being said: the whole appeal of the Uncharted games in the first place is that they feel like a mix of Indiana Jones and Mission Impossible, with this sassy, horny, shit-talking protagonist at the center of it.
This movie captures neither of those aspects, and replaces them with basic movie tropes.
It doesn't feel like the aforementioned franchises. Instead, it looks and feels like your generic, throwaway action movie that usually stars The Rock (e.g.Rampage, Red Notice, Skyscraper).
Tom Holland plays Spider-man with attitude. He's not playing (a younger version of) Nathan Drake.
Mark Wahlberg plays Mark Wahlberg.
Like, why was this project treated like a tax write-off?
It has everything a Hollywood executive could want: the source material is cinematic, action packed, fun, and best of all: it has a built in audience.
This could've easily been the next big summer franchise if this was given a proper treatment. It should be much easier to get this right than other videogame based adaptations.
So why is Avi Arad producing this? Why is Ruben Fleischer directing this? Why is this script burning through four games of material? Why is the dialogue so clunky and unfunny? Why is the casting so lame? Why does it look like plastic, when the cinematographer of this thing shot Last Night in Soho and Oldboy?
Fuck.
3.5/10
Incredibly uninspired.
I haven’t seen one of these in a while, but even I noticed that a lot of its visuals and ideas are directly lifted from better comic book movies.
And it’s ugly, really ugly. Way too heavy on the generic orange/teal color palette, way too much slomo, not a single ounce of tangibility.
They should've just gone all in with making the artifice a stylistic choice, make it look like 300 or something. The hybrid of stylized CGI noise with a world that’s supposed to look at least somewhat real doesn’t work.
The movie itself will have lost any sense of relevancy within a couple of weeks. Yes, despite ‘changing the hierarcy of power in the DC Universe’, there’s not much of interest going on here.
I just feel bad for Dwayne Johnson, the man clearly has a talent that suits this type of film, but he’s stuck in a time where adrenaline driven action filmmaking is at its absolute blandest. This needed way more bite and edge in order to cover up for the basic premise. It’s such a shrug of a movie as is.
3.5/10
I know it's a bullshit movie okay, everyone who watched it knows that! But it's some great bullshit and I'm glad i watched it. Trailer was right, it is the Michael Bayest movie of all Michael Bay movies.
Really great performances, but the movie is pretty messy. It genuinely felt like I was watching a movie trailer that was almost 3 hours long.
