SeanMSU

Pros
+Bringing the story back to Tattooine makes sense it should've been by the other inquisitors though, like specifically under Vader's nose to distract Obi Wan or something.
+The Obi Wan/Leia relationship is one of the few times where the newer Star Wars products strengthen the films. We never get why Leia thinks he's the only hope in the originals but now we get that piece and it's done quite tastefully.
+++++++ Vader wanting his rematch and getting it, choreography, music, art design. They knew this was the one crucial moment that needed to be perfect and they got it right! Felt like two of the strongest Jedi/Sith of all time facing off just like Mustafar. Obi Wan softening when he saw Vader's deformed face has some of the best acting in a show this year.
+++++Lars and Beru just gunning on the Third sister was funny as hell although it obviously made sense and was their only option. Just two hillbillies against a near invincible sorcerer, the plot armor is strong with them. The only thing that would've made it better is if 10 year old Luke choked her ass out too.

Cons
- The Third Sister should just be dead, I'm sick of motherfuckers being stabbed through the gut and cut in half and thrown into an spaceship's reactor and all sorts of stupidly, overtly fatal injuries and have no capacity to get help and yet somehow come out of it. It's by far the dumbest part of Star Wars. Anakin should have been a one time thing due to him being just stupidly force sensitive and getting immediate help along with his injuries being solely on his limbs. Now every death is just subject to opinion because hack writers like the shock value. At this point it's only rolling eyes they should be getting. Like her "redemption" by not killing him and ending the cycle of trauma is meaningful at least but it's not really creative or unique for the series.

Pros
+Anakin training scenes are fitting and fantastic
+Obi Wan urging the betrayal of the Inquisitor fit well with what she's already done and how the Jedi are actually supposed to fight and act. Vader being blinded by his rage/need to win was also a really nice touch, we are reminded why he lost to the master of the high ground. However it made no sense why she would let Obi Wan just walk back into the base.
+I liked Leia's role in this episode, it fit what they are building her into very well.
+Vader showing how strong he is against the Third sister and clowning on her just like Obi Wan clowned on him in the training and awakening her trauma was great. (Although tbh he should've choked her ass out like 3 episodes ago)

Cons
-Tala's confession about killing children that were force sensitive came at a really awkward moment with no lead up or reasoning. This should have been something saved for later, it ended up having a very dull impact. Then they threw her character away in a clumsy way too. I thought her character was one of the few interesting ones, huge waste to throw her away this early
- the thought of Anakin not knowing that the Third sister was faking death while he is literally the one cutting through the children in the Jedi temple is insane and that this leads up to her joining him without any mention of brainwashing or being forced to be a child/slave soldier. Like it would've been so easy to give her a realistic story but they just chose not to. IDK I guess it fits with how big of a fucking idiot she is but come on.
-Tone was inappropriate at times. Star Wars always mixes in the levity with the struggle but they are always during periods of relief, not in the middle of the fight. This one doesn't follow that during many serious sections.
-What is it with the new ones and their dumb ass "sad" droid deaths lmao? it wasn't sad in Solo and it's not sad now. They can literally be rebuilt whenever and even if it was fucking R2-D2 or C3P0 who the audience actually knows well it still wouldn't be sad.

I know this comes off as kind of negative but the negatives were more mid-level bad things and the positive bits were very positive. Definitely had the best moments in the series so far.

Decent all around
Pros
+The infiltration was believable enough
+I liked that they seemed to actually have a plan that was carried out for once
+The action was above average
+The Third sister isn't a total moron in this one although she still acts like one most of the time and her tracker is not the most reliable contingency considering that droid gets broken like every other episode

Cons
-Felt drawn out t the start when they could have been doing more
-Third sister still acting like a completely incompetent leader and somehow they try to justify how like 2 ships blew up half their impregnable base smh Like does Vader not care that she literally could've just monitored the cameras better and surrounded him with one or two of the other inquisitors and they'd already have Obi Wan lmao
-The spy girl getting found out and still just like getting away with it was comically stupid. All they needed to do was handcuff her until they got back

At this point I feel like I've gotten a decent grip on the show to say that the acting is always going to be pretty good and the plot is just going to be written as if the bad guys are all complete morons. Star Wars usually has great villains so maybe it just stands out more when the Third sister is like a minor comic book villain meant to get outmaneuvered by the good guys every single episode lol. I'm really hoping this doesn't end up retroactively making Vader into this as well.

Very fun episode
Pros
+Action scenes weren't all great but a majority were and fit the whole escape scenario, I do feel like the tone didn't match as well but I'll get to that
+Acting was fantastic particularly with MacGregor, Nanjiani, and Blair
+I enjoyed this as the start of Obi Wan getting back into form, where he makes some missteps and has to be more unorthodox than usual to end up on top
+I liked the scene with clone trooper begging for money, I think it reminds us of how Obi Wan fought alongside these grizzled vets on the frontline and went through a lot with them but also him having the paint of Coruscant is another reminder of how they turned and butchered thousands of Jedi. It's an emotionally unsure moment that fits perfectly in this moment where Obi Wan is debating whether or not he will involve himself in the struggle against the Dark side.

Cons
-I get why people are disliking this villain, she's an absolute moron traitor who completely fucked up her own plan for no reason other than personal pride. Yes, I get that betrayal is a big part of the sith identity but doing it at such an inopportune moment allowing Obi Wan to escape with the "more powerful" inquisitor just like getting fucking merk'd immediately was dumb. and she just like gets away with it lol
-The tone for some reason didn't feel as tense as a chase mission should have. I don't know if it was the music, or the weird out of place help that came, or the little stops where they tried to build the relationship between Leia and Obi Wan but it just didn't feel tense. Like when the Mandalorian took back the child in the first season of that show, they had almost the same scenario as this except that one felt so much more intense. It wasn't like terrible or anything but I still felt like it was a small drag on the episode.
-Obi Wan not knowing that Vader is alive isn't awful but it's a little dumb, like in Ep3 he calls himself Vader right in front of him iirc (at the very least Sidious says it to Yoda's face). plus Obi Wan could feel he was alive when he left him and knew the Emperor was right there possibly with the ability to stop people from dying using the force. He definitely should've suspected Anakin was alive.

This movie is Super wild, both in good and bad ways.
Pros
+Characters were all really great and enjoyable
+A lot of the humor was very funny
+Action sequences were fun and intriguing
+Major emotional impact on the important scenes
+I love the idea of raising the stakes of small, personal issues by showing other possibilities and life paths. The whole general idea of the story is really cool
+the lighting and cinematography was top notch
+Music was pretty good

Cons
-MANY of the scenes felt like a waste of time, a good example is how they kept going back to that fucking hot dog finger world. There just is so many moments where it felt like they could have sped it up
-A lot of the bigger gags were just fucking dumb. I know you aren't going to hit on every joke but sticking by the hot dog finger thing and raccoon thing and many of the other more prominent gags was something that should've been ironed out before the script reached approval
-the villain's motivation and origin made zero sense and the alpha versions of people also somewhat had this problem what she wanted to show her mom that everything sucked and was pointless? because she saw every one of her own possibilities and got overwhelmed? That's so inconsistent with how her character acts throughout the movie To me it felt like this part was determined by some cheugy millennial who posts memes about life sucking
-Along with spending too much time on these weird gag universes there wasn't nearly enough time spent on the two most important other universes the one where Evelyn stays behind and becomes a kung fu movie star while Waymond becomes a successful business man and the one where Evelyn becomes a singer to please her father both of these possibilities have such great implications in respect to the main universe's drama. They tapped into them a little but more could have been done.

Altogether I think it is a decent movie but it has the potential to be so much better.

Lots of potential washed down the drain with shitty writing.

Pros
+Great visuals
+Above average Dialogue
+Great acting
+Lots of imagination in the execution of everything makes it really feel like a cool fairy tale
+the first hour and a half of the movie is fairly solid, not perfect but it is entertaining and undeniably cool
+the cumshot scene is fucking hilarious and even though it shouldn't be in the story, it will be the one thing people remember about this movie and it will be the entire focus of every conversation about it.

Cons
-The writing went off the rails after the first night he stayed in the castle the whole "fuck my wife and then fuck me" thing was an idiotic perversion of the actual tale. In the myth the whole awkward situation of the kisses and the garter is punished and justified in the final act. In this we get some bizarro shame based ending that made no sense in relation to the rest of the story. Instead of "Make sure to stay true to noble values and strive for perfection regardless of temptation/faults" it became "If you do some weird shit then you will feel bad about it for eternity and ruin your life so just die instead" absolutely baffling how they threw away the framework for a good story to make this trash ending
-They pronounced Gawain like Gawen for some dumb fucking reason. Super annoying

I understand that people are very excited about Boba Fett and Ahsoka Tano showing up in the Mandalorian but honestly this is somewhat of a bad sign. If you think about the legitimate criticism of all of the Star Wars materials throughout the past decade, the source of all of it is the over reliance on what was already covered (and concluded) in the previous movies. Think of Solo ending with Darth Maul showing up or Palpatine returning for Rise Of Skywalker, it not only cheapens and stifles the creativity of the newer materials but the retconning objectively makes the previous material worse. It's not as big of a deal that Vader threw Palpatine into the core of the Death Star if he just magically survives it.

This is the problem, I don't want Mandalorian to become some drawn out explanation for admiral Thrawn recreating the Imperial army, or Palpatine returning, or even some connection to Revan's crusade. It needs to hold it's own identity. Mandalorian's greatest strength is that it uses the amazing Star Wars universe but it is NOT connected to what we already know. It is distinct and unique this way. It's mysterious and unpredictable. It gives a loosely blank slate to appreciate something different rather than rehashing something into the grave.

It hasn't gone too far yet but the shitty Star Wars fanbase is both going to call for more and more inclusion of the characters they are obsessed with while at the same time getting angry and nitpicking anything that those characters do that they think goes against a previous iteration of that character. Anything Star Wars always has to ride this line, but the most successful and the most well respected choose to separate themselves from as much of the known as they can and create something new and worth it's own value.

This movie is so good it's unbelievable.I am not a child watching this. I saw this as a 28 year old man for the first time. It's incredible. The characters are all weirdly vibrant and their "other" selves in the opposite world are equally so. This is a movie made of moments and there are so many just great moments. Coraline dealing with her parent's BS, dealing with being bored,the first time we see her smile in the other world listening to her song being sung by her "other" father, the real neighbors and their completely bullshit skills while the parallel neighbors have the real skills whilst being inhuman and unneighborly, her relationship with Whiby and how the other Whiby is such a perversion of what she wishes, the idea of the button eyes, the cat leading her past the end of the world, so fucking many moments that are stunning. Then to climax the film you have this Gaunter O'Dimm esque face off and it's just what fairy tales are made of.

This is not a normal movie visually either, I'm not a huge fan of stop motion but they adapt the cartoony qualities in just the right amount to make the impossible feel real and intimidating while also feeling whimsical. It really is hard to explain this movie's tone and that's because it's very complex and multifaceted. The art style for every character is supreme, especially the doll world and Spidermom being as intimidating as she is. The music was ok, I'm not complaining about it but the subtle chanting was fine and I love the "They Might Be Giants" guy singing Coraline's song but a lot of the rest is unfortunately generic.
This movie is actually amazing though, surprisingly so!

Oh and to top it all off... Coraline herself is an absolutely amazing character with incredible voice acting

Hamilton is absolute dog shit. I'm not a musical fanatic but I can get into musicals most of the time. But this is just a bad story. It's stretched an hour longer than it needed and got extremely repetitive halfway through. I'm a huge fan of history but this is not the story to make into a 3 hour play. Hamilton is not Alcibiades or Hong Xiuquan or Napoleon or Sulla. Historically Hamilton is interesting for what he was NOT able to accomplish but the play just gives him God mode and everyone loves him to the point that they're also all jealous of him. He's a glorified accountant/banker with sexual controversy that only makes you dislike him. Weirdly the play implies that it shouldn't make you dislike him and that it isn't a big deal while simultaneously showing that it was extremely important in his downfall. There's just way too many songs that are purely about gossip in this play and honestly (and yes I know this is one of the central concepts for the whole thing... but) the rapping was just cheesy as fuck and a continued reminder that you are watching a melodramatic play rather than engrossing you in a compelling story.

tldr: It's boring and over half of the dialogue is cheesy gossip rap, it stretched the history way too thin and has terrible pacing, Hamilton is turned into a man where his only flaw is that he fucked bitches all day every day and even his enemies love him, and the story is never sucking you in because it's all so melodramatic. I have no idea what people see in this other than minority representation, which is fine but it doesn't make the story bearable.

This show needs to get itself back on track. The first two episodes were great but it's starting to just get less interesting and they seem to be doing this on purpose in some cases. Why would they not show Alvin in combat? Why would they not show Sandy in Kentucky? All they need is one small flashback from those experiences and this episode would probably be significantly more powerful. Evelyn is also just a complete moron who does ridiculous shit that doesn't even make any sense why would she be bringing Sandy to the state dinner? what a moronic plot point that was clearly lazily set up to cause a yelling match between Herman and Bengelsdorf It doesn't help that Herman is the main character and all he ever does in this show is bitch to everyone about shit the audience agrees with. Yeah, being a Nazi sympathizer is bad. Yes, Jews are American too. How about you do SOMETHING in this story! lol I like you but you have done NOTHING interesting this whole time and it's 4 hours into the story.

That said, I do love the set design, general cinematography, music, and acting in this show. I also liked the FBI stuff here.

Pros
+Looks Beautiful and Ugly at the same time (Ugly as in portraying the ugly circumstances of the war)
+The way it is shot is incredibly fluid, it's very much a long shot movie but there are maybe 5 actual like hard cuts in this and the hidden transitions are seamless. It really feels like you're walking alongside these messengers while still also giving the viewer an impression for how much time is passing in the story.
+Characters were all believable and likeable. There's some funny banter, there's some emotional release, a bit of fear, some kindness, and it's well acted so it gives the viewer a good impression of who these men are and it makes you want to care.
+Music and general sound design was nearly perfect
+ The story in general is solid. There are some things that I feel won't please everyone (which I'll mention) but I think overall it's a good story. The beauty is kind of in the simplicity. It's all about getting from point A to point B, but having it be that simple it makes room for the viewer to appreciate everything that happens in the journey.
+ You've probably guessed it from the things I've already said but the overall atmosphere is great without feeling like it's up it's own ass
+Very purposeful film. Lots of efficient scenes which seem disconnected at first but end up communicating an aspect of why the messengers are doing what they are and reflect the importance of this mission and/or increase the urgency of what is happening.

Neutral
*The movie is partially about will power and the main character's name is Will lmao

Cons
-I think Tommy's death happened too soon I understand not wanting to waste too much time but I feel like just a few more scenes would have done a lot for that part of the movie. (FYI this is not a big criticism I kinda knew it was going to happen since the trailer had so many scenes where Will was alone but it didn't quite mean as much as I would have liked)
-Predictable. This isn't honestly a criticism for people like me who don't really need any twists but I feel like some people would be bored with how straight forward and unapologetically predictable it is.
- in the German trench it says on one of the rafters "I <3 Elsa" a clear anachronism since Disney's Frozen (tm) had not come out in time for WWI soldiers to be fanboying Elsa smh btw I'm joking lol but I did see that in the trench

Definitely worth a watch

This movie is outstanding. Keep in mind when you go to see this that this is not a typical comic book movie that is just a ton of pow pow action, haha chaeesy joke, pow pow. It's basically a movie about a man going crazy but set in Gotham and that man ends up becoming the Joker. It is far more similar to Taxi Driver than it is to even the grittier Marvel movies. The only comic book movie I have seen which has even a remotely similar tone is Watchmen and even that is not as similar to it is to Taxi Driver or Apocalypse Now.

So as a short recap it starts with Arthur, an insane and severely depressed man. He has a condition that causes him to laugh uncontrollably when he is uncomfortable. Literally everything in his life is shit, he gets his ass kicked at work by punk kids, he gets shaken down by his employer, his mom is completely reliant on his help and they live together in a cramped and squalid apartment and his therapy is barely keeping him hinged. In the background Gotham is experiencing lots of political turmoil around the government and wealthy residents showing a complete disregard for the well-being of the needy and Arthur is hit hardest by this. His psychiatric services are cut, he loses his job, his mom is expecting a wealthy benefactor to save them which Arthur knows is not coming, the TV show that Arthur loves and the host of it who he admires coldly shames him for something he was proud of. The shit continues to pile on him as he becomes more deranged and eventually he starts to crack and becomes more and more violent along with much of the rest of Gotham who identify with his same experiences.

The themes of this movie are easy to understand but they run extremely deep as well working on many levels. The top crust of society looking down on others, passing judgement, acting without any repercussions or any true understanding for the devastation they are causing for others. The prime symbol of this is Murray Franklin, this rich talk show host who Arthur initially admires and fantasizes about interacting with in the future but when it comes down to the reality he just stomps over his dreams and aspiration and treats him as a prop to use for his own joke. It's funny to the people looking down with Murray but it's devastating to Arthur. Joker coming onto the show at the end and turning the tables with his "Joke" is also symbolic of the other side of the message. Joker and the clown protests are not good guys, they are not right, they are not helping, they are rabid and reactionary and fueled simply by fury without logic. They have solid reasons for why they are mad but when it gets to the point where you are that beaten down it is hard to see if there is any way to improve it and so reckless fury is all they can muster.

The detailed execution in this film is OUTSTANDING and is really what takes this film to the next level. The acting of Joaquin Phoenix in obviously one of the greatest performances in recent memory. The way he talks, the innocence of his dreams juxtaposed with his tainted reality, the brutality, the way he contorts his body to make the viewer cringe and painfully stare without being able to blink or look away, the facial expressions, the crazy way he runs, the dancing, all of it. It's something you have to experience and feel as you watch it. The script itself is impeccable, the faux twists, the delusional fantasy that is impossible to pick apart from the reality, the dialogue (my god the dialogue during the Murray Franklin show bit was beyond perfect), the art style that puts you in the gutter with Arthur, the careful pacing to make sure that you saw and understood every bit of why Joker comes into being, the music and general sound editing, etc. etc. etc. it's nearly flawless.

Another part that needs further appreciation is the use of ultra-dark humor and the affect it has on being in the audience. This movie
is one of the more brutal movies I have seen in recent times and as it goes on there are these subtle jokes woven into these shocking and disturbing scenes. They are jokes that most people won't laugh at (like locking the door so a dwarf trapped in the apartment with Joker has to ask to get out after seeing a friend's head bashed against the wall, or this situational humor on the talk show with the inappropriateness of the drunk driving joke in the middle of Joker's final rant) but they are really funny if you have a certain sense of humor. The amazing thing this does is that it gets the sick bastards like me who find it funny to laugh uncontrollably in the audience. This has two opposite purposes; the people who laugh are now experiencing the uncontrollable laughter and cold stares that Arthur experiences every day. On the other hand the people who don't laugh get these creepy out of place laughs coming from the people around them in the theater and they know that they're surrounded by sick bastards. It is THE most creative use of humor I have ever seen in a movie.

If we are talking about down sides I can't really speak to that much. The only things that I think might give it a lesser score are the fact that it is not a movie for everyone. It isn't a comic book movie at heart so if you're wanting a Avengers-esque experience then you're SOL. It's extremely brutal and will make you uncomfortable multiple times throughout and it isn't fun action brutality where there is a good fight and one guy wins, it's blowing people's brains out in a subway with a revolver and then chasing down wounded victim #3 type action. I can see how people might not like the lack of justification with the Clown rallies but that is also part of their purpose as I said earlier so I can't knock that. Overall it is a super complex movie that is also easy to understand at a basic level which is an awesome thing because it's hard to do both and I feel like it allows anyone to talk about it and learn the depth.