While this movie shares many strengths with its predecessor, like its amazing visuals and strong performances, it also shared (in my eyes) its biggest weakness: an unsatisfying ending.
The one complaint I had walking out of the first movie was the "This is only the beginning" ending, which undermined the arc up until that point, and left me on a sour note. So I was looking forward to this movie quite a lot to bring that to a satisfying conclusion.
Unfortunately we don't get that here. Regardless of if the original book ends here or not, I felt conned (again!) by the way the ending sets up the next part so hard.
That's all especially frustrating given how long the movie is, and yet it struggles in spots with both being too fast and too slow. At this point, I think I would rather just wait for all the "parts" to be released, and watch them all like a series/miniseries.
I really love this show. A modern classic comedy.
But the one thing that struck me rewatching it all back to back is if this show is an ad for anything, it's for the concept of having a family. Given the subject matter, and title, I guess that shouldn't be a surprise, but it becomes very apparent when viewed as a whole. So many of the biggest emotional beats of the series are framed around the classics of getting married and having children. So if that doesn't jive with you, then this series might not either.
Also, it's odd that Lily gets almost no screen-time and nothing to do until the last season, given that earlier seasons featured the other kids much more, even from a much younger age.
A pretty good movie, with a weirdly stacked cast. Although it is a bit long, it doesn't drag too much. It does end up a bit torn between being two fairly different types of movie: a sex comedy and a heartfelt rom-com. For me, the rom-com is the endearing part here, and the other part can tend towards being crass, predictable and dragging.
Yeah, it's a bit cringe and whatever, but not really out of step with the original series at all, so that's not really a fair criticism against it.
What is with this insistence that fires be put out with articles of clothing?!?
A cotton shirt is not going to put out an electrical fire, and will definitely catch flame itself.
And the second fire is clearly an oil fire, not electrical. Either way, throwing your (woolen?) jumper on it isn't going to put it out, especially when it has such a loose knit. That's not going to stop oxygen from getting through, and will probably catch flame as well.
Someone please buy these people a fire blanket, or an extinguisher!
Honestly all this bad fire safety is really killing my enjoyment of this show.
Despite finding Josie's character painfully relatable in some ways, I didn't really enjoy this much. I'm a sucker for the 90's fashion and music, but beyond that there wasn't much to like.
Realistically, the whole motivator for the plot doesn't make sense; the reason for her to be "undercover" is so harebrained. At no point does she have an interesting angle or meaningful lead on a story. This is mostly because the moment she walks in, she basically forgets why she's there and starts making googly eyes at the most popular boy in the school, seemingly just because he is the most popular boy in the school. She is consistently naive to the point of folly.
Josie is a great demonstration of the difference between being intellectual and smart.
The first 1.5hrs was pretty good, but the last hour felt like a drag.
Overall, very intense, but no one really came out of it as likeable or acting in a way that felt like it made sense to me.
The best mumblecore movie I've ever seen... and I'm only half joking.
Amazing performances, beautifully presented, and prompting some really interesting philosophical reflection.
If you go into this expecting this amazing love story, you might be disappointed, but at least you'll walk away questioning every aspect of your life.
Yeah, it's big, dumb, and corny, but it's got a little bit of heart so I didn't half mind it.
I like Sony probably more than the next person, but gosh the product placement was relentless! Even Celine Dion's prominent role in the plot could count, since she's signed to a Sony label.
Oddly enough, apart from two, most of the phones seem to be (old) Samsung models, not Sony.
Style over substance. Slackercore/mumblecore.
Visually, it's very impressive. Although it tends towards style over substance in some scenes, making the action hard to follow and lose its tension compared to if it had been shot more conventionally.
I don't know why, but I found the story extremely hard to follow until about the halfway mark when some of the characters just spell it all out for us, which is lazy, but was definitely helpful.
The biggest selling point of this movie is the vibe of the whole thing: it's very moody, it's very noir. It makes sense for Batman, even if it doesn't really feel like it fully pays off in this rendition. Maybe they'll be a next one...
Like a slower, more ponderous The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008), but in the MCU, and with more action-violence.
I appreciate the MCU trying to do new, different things, but at the very least this didn't need to be over 2hrs long.
Not as good as the original, but not terrible. A lot of the nuance of the original is lost or over-explained; it's been turned into an origin story, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but just such a Hollywood thing to do. It's much easier to follow than the original, but it's not without some odd scenes that don't seem to go anywhere.
I do like that a narrative reason for casting Scarlett Johansson is sort of given, although it's still fairly weak.
The irony of Motoko being anti-tech activist, who was forcibly turned into a being of technology is an interesting area of philosophical consideration that's barely acknowledged, let alone explored. And that's probably the overall weakness of this movie: it doesn't really want to take the time to explore the philosophical quandaries that it evokes.
Nary a likeable character amongst the bunch. Just a pack of awful, petty jerks constantly making destructive decisions.
The best part of the whole movie was the soundtrack.
Arguably no franchise/universe is more ripe for a 'Riverdale-ification' than Scooby Doo/Mystery Inc. So conceptually, this is really solid. Like with Nancy Drew, leaning into everything actually being supernatural kinda undermines the spirit of the series and the "mystery" though.
It's just a pilot, so all the actors looking like fully grown adults pretending they're teenagers is excusable I guess. That along with a lot of bad dialogue makes it pretty cringe to watch, but like I said, shows potential.
I really wanted to like this more, but I just didn't.
I'm a big fan of She-Hulk, especially the forth-wall-breaking era, so every time I sat down to watch another episode I was looking forward to it, but almost every time I walked away under-whelmed.
Yes, the CGI is bad, but you get used to it after a while, and I forgive it given the amount of pressure and crunch in that industry (principally because of Disney/Marvel). A lot of the forth-wall breaks are more cringe-y than they are funny, but I appreciate what they were trying to do. It's painfully ironic that the show is so hated for focussing on a storyline that prophesies its own backlash. And while I think it was a solid, relatable storyline,it was such a background thread until it was suddenly the main conflict that it didn't really feel like a proper payoff for the season.
Honestly, it felt more like the first half of a season than a complete season, and if it had gone for another 5-10 episodes I feel like it would have found a better footing and a more satisfying conclusion.
That said, all the cry-babies whining about this show are just that. Not every show is for everyone, even if they share a universe. I know that I can't (and probably won't try to) keep up with all the MCU content, so some non-essential viewing is A-OK, and if you really loved She-Hulk that's okay too.
I knew I wasn't going to like this show going in, but I saw some good reviews, so I thought I'd give it a chance.
Fundamentally, I disagree with this characterisation of the Addams family characters. This seems to derive from the '90s movie portrayals, which I also disagreed with, but here it skews even meaner and more literally monstrous. They seem to miss all the core elements of what made these characters likable to me from the '60s sitcom, in favour of violent, sadistic tendencies.
Wednesday also feels very much like a Riverdale-ification of this universe. While not at bad as some ('cause it's aimed at younger teens, I guess), it did start to feel like a gothic skin on an existing, generic mystery framework.
It was fine. Definitely some interesting concepts and potential, but it all falls by the wayside pretty fast.
The thing that bothered me the most though was all the unrealistic technical stuff. Yeah, I know, Hollywood gonna Hollywood, but when it forms the crux of the plot, it really ruins it for me. e.g.
- There's no reason for a dev/support to go in-game to kick a player from the server. They would have tools to kick people without going into the game.
- Rebooting the server wouldn't in itself reset everything, you would need to do some sort of rollback for that.
- Destroying a bunch of servers in Soonami HQ's basement wouldn't take the game offline; if the company and game are as big as the movie makes out, they would need to have servers in multiple regions.
- The fact that the evidence they need to take down Antwan is a clip recorded by some chronically-online Twitch streamer means that there's a 99.9% chance that there's another copy of it just sitting on the internet that Millie could have downloaded without any hassle.
Also, the cameos especially the gamers/streamers really made me cringe. I think I must be old now, and this movie's fan service is aimed at the generation after me.
Eh, mumblecore's gonna mumblecore.
That said, it's the best mumblecore movie I've seen by a pretty long shot. It didn't feel at pointless or boring as so many of those movies are.
LA Noir rips this movie off so hard. I'm not sure if that makes it good, or if it's just very cliché, but it's enjoyable.
This movie does such a good job of capturing a feeling, an emotion, a vibe. Maybe it doesn't resonate with everyone; It's not something that everyone can relate to. But if it works for you, it really works.
It's so stylistic, in an inventive and expressive way. At times it felt more like a series of tableaus, disconnected from each other, each a different terrible moment. But it all comes together in the end.
1984, as told by Douglas Adams.
This whole show just illustrates all the ways in which we're living in a surveillance state, and demonstratse all of the overreaching powers police have been granted over the years.
The "hunters" keep referring to themselves as 'the good guys', but the level of vindictiveness they show to a bunch of game show contestants really says otherwise.
If you're a sci-fi or Toy Story nerd, this movie will probably prompt more questions than it answers. The world-building is shallow, the sci-fi concepts are under-baked, and the way this movie fits into the Toy Story universe is vague at best.
If you're not worried about that kind of stuff and/or you are a child, then you'll probably enjoy this as a space-y action movie that expands on a character you know, and adds a new bunch that you don't.
Overall, Lightyear is a fine movie, but it definitely feels more like a (2010s) Disney movie, than a Pixar movie of any sort. It's missing a lot of that heart and charm Pixar is so well-known for, and that's probably the most disappointing part of all.
It's like a cross between Benjamin Button and Predestination, but actually good.
It's basically Play It Again, Dick without any of the Veronica Mars framing.
An okay murder mystery movie, with some weird choices, dragged down by a pretty vulgar sense of humour. It kinda reminded me of Angie Tribeca, but without the surreal elements, and running at about a quarter the speed.
Yes, it's very America-centric but so is almost every other disaster movie.
It's packed with solid analogies and references; the humour was more hit and miss. Either way, I walked away depressed, so good job I guess...
I enjoyed watching this movie. I went in with low expectations, and was pleasantly surprised.
Yes, the fight choreography & cinematography are bad compared to the originals. In fact, they're horrible.
But the movie really grabbed me with some promising aspects early on, like the very meta commentary on reboot culture and the way entertainment conglomerates are constantly seeking to squeeze dollars out of nostalgia. Also, they start exploring an interesting space around some of the original Matrix themes of "what is real?" etc. and how that could intersect with mental health, which could be fascinating. There's a lot of potential here that could be very interesting, but most of that falls by the wayside very quickly so that we can focus on a very "Matrix 4" plot. And while the adventure feels engaging and well-paced in the moment, it didn't seem so on reflection.
You could argue that the latter part of the movie, in a meta way, fulfils that blood-sucking need for nostalgia. But even if it's lesser quality was on purpose to serve this point, that doesn't mean it isn't kinda disappointing.
That said, as I mentioned, I enjoyed this movie. I don't think it's anywhere as bad as many people are rushing to say, but it's not as good as it could have been (even with this script).
