This ain't half bad and shows some premise but it ultimately feels like just the opening half to a full series which we'll probably never get (so be prepared for it to be inconclusive or picking up the manga (which has also been on hiatus since 2023 :/)).
Just how often are they gonna roll with the magic realism... it's hilarious.
If you take this for what it is - a Squid Game Reality TV / game show, it has some decent entertainment value in regards to how people behave with this amount of money involved but I also did go very heavy on the skip +10s button (especially in the first half).
There also have been a lot of first person accounts of the show popping up, including rigging accusations, which I sort off get but the behind the scenes bonus actually highlights that they've put in a lot of effort to accommodate for the insane amount of people on camera. Editing obviously can do a lot too (like the first game in reality supposedly taking more than 7 hours to complete).
Take it or leave it imho.
Watchable on https://how-to-give-your-best-self-some.rest/ - quite fun!
Bro doesn't even hug her :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:
This seems to be a remake of Joachim Hedén's previous film https://trakt.tv/movies/breaking-surface-2020 fwiw...
A simple but effective short film.
While initially very off putting in it's targeting of foreigners/white people it's easy to look past that once it gets going and the additional context in the outro is certainly eye opening.
Fun movie that doesn't dig very deep and needs you to suspend disbelief. The hook for Sigrid to engage with this was perfectly fine but it doesn't explain Frank's passiveness at all. Also takes the convenience of turning the back to the baddie... Soured it for me.
While I didn't hate this, and the central conflict of the movie is well explored it didn't really land for me. The sci-fi element takes a backseat which is fine but it's implication makes you anticipate something coming throughout the movie. It also lost some of it's believability towards the end unfortunately (the way he was sagging at school they would have dropped him in an instant and not invest so much in keeping him, I also didn't quite get why the other top cadet went batshit when he still had a seat?). Also those numbered chapters... not helping!
Except for the initial setup this one is quite transparent to the viewers but it's still competent and has a fun final act to conclude on.
Enjoyed the first "Becky" but expected more from the sequel. Imho the middle part would have benefited from some additional kills as it runs already short and that is with some fakeouts and an epilogue attached. Elena also had very little impact on this - would have been a good excuse to have her be more manic instead of just making it about "getting the dog" later on.
Maybe I've seen too many of these docs but I found this one to be quite tedious. Doing a wrap around is certainly a unique choice but even in short segments it got quite taxing and added very little.
While they managed to include plenty of big names it didn't help to structure this thing as they've included parts not really having to do with the segments they were on nor were they that insightful. Also could have added some extreme metal bands to the mix and not just the popular ones.
I guess watch this if you want to know some artists horror influences but not for "historical" context.
Can't say I enjoyed this season very much and sadly this couldn't have ended much goofier.
I don't think they did a good job of hiding who the widow was... funnily enough she can't fight for shit in the finale and moans like a madman...The detective throwing away all his morals in an instant (going as far as participating in the killing) didn't fit at all and why tf would the only guy left on the kill list be walking around alone...).
Looks like this is postponed until further notice ☹ https://myanimelist.net/news/68442225
You're not stupid Ilonka? Mhhhh. Honestly, this ending was utter shite. The Shasta storyline just gets conveniently amped up only to get abruptly stalled again and ofc. no one in the house heard or saw all the ambulance or police cars right at the porch... and Ilonka tells them about it only later and then even off screen?? Couldn't take up any episode time silly because we want to instead conclude some character arcs and two lame Midnight Club stories and throw in two more mysteries because this is a faux finale after all~.
In hindsight this show masks the Netflix formula quite well and made me feel quite duped for watching all of it with it's non-conclusion... As indicated by the main cast this is more of a young adult type of show but it's OK for what is is in earlier episodes. As the show progresses it starts to loose the balance between the "mysteries" they've setup and the drama and sometimes quite pointless and lame stories the club tells themselves (which brings pretty much all progression to halt).
I don't get it at all... Why are they pushing to sign the contract??
The mystery... 8ft(!!) below the surface...
Terrible acting, unnatural dialogue and a stupid story to boot. "100s" died in the lake and somehow it takes the ghost of their dead teenage son to get the father back to the lake when they had a vacation home there all along?:rolling_eyes:
Quite a strange script for this one but it was passable until it came to the reveal after which it was just embarrassing to watch.
This showed some promise but is unevenly paced and has lore that doesn't make sense unfortunately.
I didn't realize this was a Predator movie the first time I saw the poster and thought this was some random horror movie but the positive buzz certainly didn't pass me by so here we are again. After watching it I'm certainly... shocked?
From the get go this did very little to pull me in, be it the CG animals, one-dimensional plot or the the selfish attitude of our heroine. Now obviously one can argue how much that all matters when the action is good but it didn't really scratch that itch for me either... the Predator fighting with the animals was certainly entertaining but random guys biting the bullet with mostly offcam/unclear CG gore not so much. Would have been nice if they showed some wits when they fought him at the camp but somehow him going invisible is enough reason to lower their weapons and start talking to each other. She saw how the camouflage works multiple times in action already..?!!
What all those scenes, and the movie poster for that matter, certainly established, is that our protagonist has little to worry and that a showdown was coming but I would never have predicted the amounts of bullshit that would contain:
- Somehow becomes a baller and expert in alien technology. Knows when the Predator is coming, takes her magic herbs to immediately lower her blood temperature (but is not shivering and still standing up) and is in the Predators path who obviously doesn't see a standing corpse right in front of it or notices her moving out of the way...
- Never used the gun but knows the right angle to shoot and remove his mask (betting on this being a weakness when this did little to stop it before).
- Gets to conveniently escape for the n-th time and has enough time to finish up some traps (which the Predator even hit on some random tree lol).
- Gets hit to the head twice from the shield that cut through the Predators limbs, spear and even stone but is unscathed.
- Can easily remove a fang attached to it's face to save herself just in time.
- GPS dog that always magically reappears is ready to bring her the tomahawk...
- Manages to sit on top of the Predator and even pull him into the bog with a tiny rope and a much much smaller statue.
- The Predator obviously submerges immediately, but little does it know of her the grand plan to have him placed at that exact LOS of the mask in anticipation that he is gonna fire from his gun (despite not having had his mask for the whole time) while he is already targeted by the laser the entire time... b r a v o. Obviously that one shot was also enough to kill it.
...
Honest to god - how does a movie with such a contrived finale get so much praise, or even leave the script writing phase??
Boring, lazy and non-sensical. This is intentionally misleading in a non-smart way. Neither the way it's acted out nor the dialogue (including exposition dump) hold up after the "twist". People around her, including the last victim know about a "nightclub serial killer" and we're even shown a pin wall full of news articles and missing persons stuff with headlines like "bodies found" (+on the computer) with lots of people, yet she is "only" at her 6th victim and hides all the bodies in her vince cellar... And the motive... jesus, what's your problem?.
Didn't necessarily hate this but the concept sure is undercooked and made very little sense. I anticipated that Jaslyn would become a medium but apparently a cliché revenge plot is more in line with the show...
I didn't really inform myself what I was gonna watch so my first thought was "oh. shit.. a Chinese kids movie... that's probably going to suck" but I don't think this has to hide to the big Western players in the field. Most noteable (to me) was certainly the 3d animation. Besides the odd face designs and some scenes involving water this not only looks really good but is damn near photo realistic in the lion dance scenes (I really would love to see a behind the scenes of that).
While the movie is certainly goofy at times it surprisingly doesn't shy away from pointing towards the poor working conditions in the country (in whatever form that is allowed anyways). The conclusion offered is certainly a spectacle with the visuals but also makes good use of music so yeah, my bias was very wrong.
It always bothered me a bit that the Chinese animation studios are eating away at the Japanese anime market already (which is relying on Korea, etc. too) but if this is the level of 3DCG they can offer then that bundled with good stories certainly makes them a force to be reckoned with even more.
This one has aaaa lot of jumpscares... guess one is bound to get you. Nothing really original to be honest but with the right expectations still watchable.
Ugh, if the battles are already this unanimated I don't even dare to phantom what's in store.
DDD turned out to be quite a compelling show to watch, too bad that it's focus on ballet greatly reduces it's potential audience.
While only being 11 episodes long and not entirely sticking the landing the Goudai family drama is a bit too psychotic/animeish (season 2 never) it still felt like there was quite some progress in our main character's journey and explores some interesting themes along the way and certainly tackles preconceptions people have about ballet dancers or how that relates to masculinity. In addition to that the show is also refreshingly realistic in it's portrayal of adolescence.
MAPPA did an amazing job at packaging this up in fantastic visuals, animation and score.
Certainly recommended!
I feel like Archive 81 is a show the Netflix content algorithm would spew out. It's seemingly a collage of various interests and styles without really having something holding it together (we got podcasts, a guy alone in the woods inside a modernist house, the mysterious groundkeeper, big corporation coverups, secret research labs, two churches on the same grounds, secret cults, ominous sounds and voices, demons, medieval witchcraft, possessions, religion, alternate dimensions, reality bending and betcha the true crime sells). As to be expected the pace is quite slow thanks to the very gimmicky "found footage" tie in and not made more interesting by dull performances - the show really becomes way too meta in the video watching segments. I'll probably just read the spoilers rather than finishing it...
I was behind on episodes but really I would have been better off dropping it at this point. This features very little of the sport outside of training and narration and can't balance that out with a good team dynamic either. While the initial memory loss of the main character was already a bit gimmicky, they pull it again later on and which brings to light just how psychotic some of the people in this show are.
