I can't be the only one who sees the irony in a company like Amazon being the producer of this show.
When you’re rooting for the dinosaurs to eat most of the characters (especially Franklin) during the movie, something’s not quite right.
I got massive GTA 5 vibes from this. Just look at it: heists, hijacking cars, more heists, criminals being portrayed as eccentric & nuts, planning heists in an abandoned urban building; hard to miss the influence.
It still feels like an Edgar Wright film though. In fact, it very much starts like one of his comedies, but then it takes a complete tonal shift around the halfway mark. It becomes much darker, and it’s suddenly driven by tension instead of jokes.
A lot of movies can’t pull that off, but this one does simply because you can look at this premise as lighthearted, but there’s nothing too ridiculous or stupid for it not to work as a serious thriller either.
The directing and editing are really stylish and inventive, the performances are good, plenty of character development (a lot of which is done visually), excellent music selection, and there are a few twists in the second half I didn’t see coming.
My only complaint is that the romance subplot starts a bit clunky, but it evens out as the film goes along.
8.5/10
Are you feeling nostalgic for movies like Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Elektra, Ghost Rider and The Punisher?
Well, you’re in luck.
Easily the worst comicbook film since Hellboy (2019), but I doubt that’s to many people’s surprise.
It’s produced by Avi Arad and written by the guys who did Power Rangers, Gods of Egypt and The Last Witch Hunter.
Its director has never made anything noteworthy, and the lead is an overrated, pretentious hack whose performances have derailed many films over the past ten years.
It’s exactly what you think it’s going to be: dated, nonsensical, overblown and completely soulless.
It’s got crappy acting, predictable story devices, weak dialogue, weird editing choices, everything looks cheap and blue; you probably get the gist of it by now, especially if you’ve seen those movies I mentioned earlier.
This is nothing more than a quick cash in by a studio who thinks they can sell anything for as long as you slap Marvel’s name in front of it.
And they’re probably right, so who can blame them for making it?
2/10
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
Ouch.
The visuals are breathtaking, as already shown by the trailers.
ScarJo is trying, you can tell that she wants this to be her new franchise.
It's edited quite nicely, it's got a (simple) story, and it's coherent.
So where did it go wrong?
One of the problems is that it takes away all of the philosophical depth from the original.
Well, that means you can still enjoy it from a simple action flick perspective, right?
Good luck with that.
This film has such a ridiculous amount of exposition, that it badly hurts the enjoyment of the film.
Many sequences consist of characters just talking to each other, and explaining the plot.
Things are definitely shown, but then the filmmakers don't think we're able to put two and two together, and hence add another explanatory scene.
As a result of that, the film doesn't take its time to develop the characters, meaning you won't care about them.
Top it off with an awful performance from Juliette Binoche, and you have your modern style over substance film.
3.5/10
A really cool idea for an allegory, but it could’ve, and should’ve, gone a lot deeper with its social commentary.
A lot of it feels half baked and not all that sharp.
Also, the characters are flat, and it leaves you with a lot of questions that needed to be cleared up (Why do people go to this place? Who’s behind it? Etc.)
Kind of a mess, but also some great action and cinematography
Good world building, I would've preferred it the Pokemons looked more like animals and less like cartoons, but this Roger Rabit approach will do. Also, decent cinematography and score. But, the script’s complete ass (conveniences, unnecessary exposition, uninteresting characters without development, extremely predictable storyline etc.) aside from some of Pikachu’s snarky lines, so you’ll probably get bored at some part.
4.5/10
Great storytelling and concepts, it may be weird and even inaccesible for some folks, but it’s also very creative, original and bold. The characters are fantastic and well rounded, and they all inhabit a NY that’s captured it in a very unique way. That’s mostly a result of the animation, which grasps the attention immediately because it’s so boundary pushing and atmospheric. It’s just hard to find any weaknesses in it. The comedy is strong and tasteful, it doesn’t drag, the voice acting is excellent and all of the different Spiderman add to the story in their own way. I’m not as much of a fan of some of the bland autocrooning in the soundtrack (that’s probably the biggest thing that might make this seem dated in the future), though I generally still like most of the musical choices made here.
8.5/10
It's mediocre, yet also really entertaining sometimes. In that regard, the closest comparison to this is Jurassic World.
Pros:
- Visuals and cinematography.
- Conflict within the group of characters.
- The characters of John C. Reily and Toby Kebbell (although underused)
- Action, particularly the climax.
- The editing stands out a few times.
- Nicely paced.
Cons:
- Too many characters, meaning you won't care about pretty much all of them. They also don't take their time to develop them, meaning that most of them come across as Fast and Furious cartoons.
- Some iffy CGI (not with Kong, but with the other creatures).
- Some minor moments that felt out of place or coincidental.
- Besides a few gags, all the humour falls flat.
- The second act drags a bit.
- Sometimes, the colour grading is overdone.
Grade: 5/10
Is it just me or is there some circlejerk going on at Disney where they keep using the same group of actors over and over again for their different brands? Just stop using Taika Waititi already.
The movie itself is pretty whatever.
It reminded me a lot of Onward; you could do a lot worse, but it probably won’t be remembered within the broader Pixar catalogue.
Not a lot of depth or subtext with this one, it’s a pretty straight forward adventure (which is also fine of course).
Some good animation (lots of visual ideas are being pulled from Star Wars), decent voice acting, fine characters, story’s alright.
It’s kinda inoffensive and doesn’t really warrant some of the extreme reactions it’s gotten.
The whole ‘woke’ label is baffling to me, it just seems like a smokescreen certain people use to cover up for their own homophobia, which only emphasizes how the word ‘woke’ carries little to no meaning nowadays.
Any regular person will be fine watching this, regardless of their political leaning.
Ffs, it’s mass entertainment after all.
5/10
I feel like I’ve just been yelled at for 2 hours by Adam McKay. Yeah, it's on the nose and way too obvious, but still decently funny.
5.5/10
It’s honestly starting to feel like the seventh season of GoT.
Yes, the action is bigger and better than the previous season, but any of the fantastic writing with a mystical/mysterious/philosophical edge, that was present in the first season, has vanished.
It’s still good, of course, but this straight forward human vs robot continuation isn’t I was hoping for.
It’s not a movie.
It’s just another bland, soulless mass product that’s primarily aimed at the Chinese market.
Now that WB is the only real studio releasing big movies, it really shows what a joke of a studio they’ve become during the last 5 years.
Not that they didn’t release crap before that, but at least there was something like a good Mad Max, Harry Potter, Matrix or Lord of the Rings film somewhere to be found in their slate.
It would seem Villeneuve and Nolan are the only real talents that are left at the studio.
For nearly every other film they make, they seem to think that appealing to the lowest common denominator will give them the biggest return on their investment.
I.e. the action scenes are more important than the story or the characters, and the scale needs to be huge, even if it looks tacky and fake.
3/10
The most corporate movie I’ve seen in a while.
2 hours of pure unadulterated cringe.
The funniest thing about it is the performance by Chris Diamantopoulous (the “this guy fucks” dude from Silicon Valley), whose acting kept reminding me of Eddie Redmayne in Jupiter Ascending.
3/10
Jonathan Majors , love the dude, but that performance was godawful. He kinda reminded me of Jesse Eisenberg in Batman V Superman
The Meg.
Alternative title: Everything wrong with contemporary Hollywood in 2 hours.
Alternative title II: This one’s for you, China.
Just shut up, Meg.
2/10
Despite not wanting to pull the trigger for a genuine emotional pay-off, this does have the most heart and emotion out of any Marvel movie throughout. I think people will be surprised by how dark and emo this gets, which is established straight from the opening credits. Unfortunately the rest of the movie is a bit of a mess. Adam Warlock and the villain are bland, the plot has a strong ‘we’re making it up as we go along’ feel to it, the tonal shifts and needle drops feel more jarring than cohesive and the action (despite a cool hallway fight) isn’t handled with the same care as the previous 2 (or The Suicide Squad). It’s probably the worst looking Guardians movie, however that incidentally still makes it the third best looking MCU movie. The characters and acting are the two main things that keep it watchable (especially Mantis, Drax and Nebula get a lot of time to shine here), but the entire picture feels unbalanced.
5/10
Wow, how the mighty have fallen. Was this season produced by the Hallmark channel? The schmaltzy music that plays in the background every other scene, the forced feel-good vibe, the corny jokes, the cringy musical interlude during this episode, that fucking Ed Sheeran montage…. it’s all so incredibly lame and cheap. Any of the sharp wit and quirk from the first two seasons has completely disappeared from the show. Instead this entire season felt like a bunch predictable, bland, sentimental nonsense made for the broadest of audiences.
Tom Hardy, all by himself, almost makes this a good movie.
And, it's hilarious at times (which I believe was intentional, I think this movie is self-aware), way funnier than say Ant-Man and the Wasp.
There was just something about the banter between Eddie and Venom that worked extremely well.
But: the script is awful, the dialogue sucks, the production values are terrible, and anyone that isn't Tom Hardy comes from a much blander film.
So I cannot really recommend it, even though I kinda want to.
This is one of those films that is just impossible to hate.
It’s such a well made crowdpleaser; from the acting, to the score, to the camerawork.
From the very first scene, you know you’re in the hands of a filmmaker who knows what he’s doing.
It’s long, but you don’t feel its length at all.
The predictability of the story is the only real issue.
7.5/10
Normally, I like Charlie Kaufman, but this is him at his most pretentious.
Not that it’s all bad, I actually liked most of the first long scene in the car.
It’s the kind of scene that will make many casual viewers dismiss the film right away (due to its length), but I thought it set up both of our leads very well.
Then they arrive at the parents’ house, and my opinion on the film did a 180.
It does what every annoying art movie does (not saying all art movies are like that, I like a lot of them): everything starts to get weird for the sake of trying to be interesting, but without any artistic reasoning.
For example, the acting becomes a nonsensical mix of very grounded performances (our leads) on one side, and extremely heightened, cartoony perfomances on the other side (the parents).
Also, the cinematography is pedestrian at best, and I fail to see the reasoning behind the chosen aspect ratio (unlike films like The Lifghthouse or Mommy).
Just stick to writing, Charlie.
4/10
A bit of a nothing burger, it doesn’t really get interesting until the final 20-30 minutes.
There are a few entertaining bits inbetween (e.g. there’s a fun scene with Paul Rudd in a Wallmart), but there’s not nearly enough going on.
It’s just mostly bland: some decent acting and directing, but there’s not a lot of action, mystery, charm, clever comedy, drama or characters to get invested into (besides McKenna Grace).
For example, Finn Wolfhard gets as much development as the older brother from Jurassic World, he’s a teen and he wants to get laid. That’s all you get, and it’s not that interesting.
There are, of course, a lot of ‘member berries, which add nothing besides empty nostalgia.
The original Ghostbusters leave the biggest impression with just 5 minutes of screentime, and they clearly didn’t even give a shit about being there.
It’s not the worst thing ever, but this falls short of the benchmark for this kind of movie.
Just watch the original, or anything directed by Spielberg and Cameron in the 80s/90s.
5/10
This is mostly stuck in second gear for the entire runtime, it’s very bland and poorly directed. Interestingly, despite having a different director at the helm a lot of the problems from X-Men Apocalypse carry over. There’s once again visible cheapness in the costumes and make-up, Lawrence phones it in, Sophie Turner can’t pull off what she’s asked to do and the story feels muddled. The new elements it adds on top of that don’t really work either, for example Jessica Chastain gives the most lifeless performance of her career as the villain of this film. Generally, it just looks and feels like a cheap tv show, Kinberg clearly wasn’t ready for this. Due to it’s smaller scale it never becomes as schlocky as the worst moments in Apocalypse, X-Men Origins Wolverine or The Last Stand, but this movie feels unambitious next to all of those films. I’d be fine with the approach if it had genuine good writing and interesting direction, but what’s being served here is not cerebral, emotional or exciting.
3.5/10
Competently made, but it gives you nothing interesting to set your teeth in. The storyline has zero complexity, and all of the characters are highly uninteresting, because none of them are properly developed. Cutting to a cute muppet every now and then doesn’t really distract from that. Just do something interesting for the next season, because this isn’t the way.
It’s hard to rate, because there are a lot of entertaining scenes in it, but the movie at its core doesn’t really work.
I can’t shed this feeling that Edgar Wright had a visual cue in his head of a girl experiencing visions of the 1960’s first, and tried to build a movie around that second.
The characters, drama, camerawork, music selection and social commentary are all very good, but the whole set up is kinda nonsense once you know the answers to the mystery.
I kept waiting for the twist that’d explain why our protagonist has these accurate visions of things that happened 50 years earlier , but it’s never answered, despite it being the crux of the whole film.
Also, showing CGI ghosts in a horror movie using well lit close ups is never the best idea, it kinda killed a lot of the horror and suspense.
I kinda liked that I thought that I was ahead of the film at one point, only to find out that it was a big misdirect to make you think you were ahead.
5.5/10
It’s a lot like the first one.
It’s kinda trashy and childish, and it’ll probably make you cringe at least a few times, but it can’t help to be fun occasionally.
Tom Hardy clearly enjoyed himself making it, Woody Harrelson is fine.
The action is alright, but the production value is awful, the whole visual look is dated and cheap.
Like, this was shot by Quentin Tarantino’s DP, but you’ll never be able to tell that because of the production choices made by Sony.
The plot itself is very thin, uninspired and mostly forgettable.
Everything about it is extremely disposable, and the whole thing just screams ‘streaming movie’ to me.
You really don’t need to waste your money on this by watching it on a premium format.
4/10
I’ve seen two episodes now and I’ve got to ask: what’s the point of watching this?
There’s nothing inherently satisfying about the show itself.
Just putting a twist on existing lore and calling it a day isn’t enough to hold my attention for 30 mimutes, nor any sane person, I imagine.
Are people only watching this because it sets up future stuff?
Why would anyone watch something that’s just set-up?
Projects are always supposed to function as an isolated piece of art, and not just as a piece of a larger machine.
This show is so empty, it’s the kind of format that lends itself for short 4 minute videos on Youtube.
But a feature series? Come on.
Edit: alright so there is an attempt to tie the loose ends together in the final episode, but still, it kinda fails to justify its existence.
