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ben-j-ellis
Reviews
True Detective: Night Country: Part 6 (2024)
Horrible ending to a good first five episodes
I'm sorry but... WHAT? "We had to have the mine throw out extra pollution so that we could get better core samples from the permafrost?" What kind of unscientific nonsense is that?
This final episode was the laziest, crappiest piece of plot development I've seen since Bobby Ewing woke up in the shower and realized.season 9 of "Dallas" had all been a dream. It feels like someone backed themselves into a corner from a narrative point of view then just threw up their hands and said "ehhh, it's the pollution and stuff".
My wife and I loved the first 5 episodes but went into the 6th a bit trepidatious...
but hopeful, because we couldn't possible see a way to tie it all together.with any semblance of credibility. Turns out the story writers couldn't either!
Masters of the Air (2024)
Divisive, poorly characterized crap
I'm a huge fan of Band of Brothers and The Pacific, and a WW2 history fan in general. I don't read and watch as much as I do out of a sense of ghoulish obsession with death and destruction, I am instead fascinated by concepts of good and evil. How good men do evil things under an evil political regime, and how good men ever managed to cope with the pressures and hardships inherent in doing the right thing.
I'm offended by any media that attenots to rewrite what actually happened in the name of jingositic revisionism.
Two years, 8 months and 3 days passed before the isolationist USA joined its allies in the war against fascism. Even then, Hitler declared war on the USA. Lend lease represented a transfer of wealth from Europe to the USA and was the largest single transfer of wealth in human history. The US benefitted economically from the war, emerging from WW2 as the world's largest and most vibrant economy.
I'm OK with all that, history is history, but don't try to teach later generations how the ally counties were populated by arrogant cowardly toffs and disabled children, who had to be schooled in the ways of heroism by the Americans.
The true Masters of the Air were the heroes from Poland, Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and many other countries who fought and won the Battle of Britain, an air war on a vast scale that was fought and narrowly won BEFORE the US entered the war.
I'm all about individual countries representing their own history in a positive light, but don't do it by crapping on the legacy of your allies.
For an amazing WW2 movie about the contributions of the US that still acknowledges the heroism on all sides, watch "Greyhound" - also on Apple TV. Greyhound has a legitimate focus on the actions of one heroic US Destroyer, while acknowledging it was part of a wider Allied effort. Band of Brothers also manages to show British forces at least in a decently positive light, despite the laser focus on Easy Company.
Also, the only country in history to drop a nuclear weapon on civilians wants to school the other Allies on the evils of night bombing. Seriously?
All that notwithstanding, even if you are willing to overlook the chest thumping offensive jingoism of this series, it's crap even as a piece of theater. A better title for this would be "Elvis and pals go to war". Austin Butler is horribly miscast, delivering the same pouty lipped performance as he did in "Elvis". The whole sense of this harkens back to the days of the cheesy old John Wayne war movies.
I was really looking forward to this, and I HATED it.
The Creator (2023)
A vacant film with a terrible lead
Take 1/5th Blade Runner, 2/5ths Elysium, 1/5th Platoon, and 1/5th Avatar and mix them. Boil them for hours until all the emotional engagement and interest in the characters has been boiled off.
Add a terrible leading actor and serve on a bloated run time.
Who decided to cast John David Washington? He was emotionally lacking in "Tenet" and he brings EXACTLY the same "blah" performance to this film.
Who decided 2:13 was the right run time for this? It could have been a good punchy high concept action if it had been kept below 2 hours.
As others have said, this film felt emotionally void and I was completely disinterested by the end. Thank goodness we didn't watch it in the theater. A wasted opportunity.
The Rig (2023)
Ridiculous character spoils it all
I will concede that I do not, and have never worked on a rig. So if you have, and I'm wrong, feel free to correct me.
That said I cannot believe that a personality like that of the character "Hutton" would ever be allowed to work on a rig. Every unrealistic minute he's on screen irritated the heck out of us and ruined a promising show.
Smashing up the surgery during emergency treatment of a colleague, openly challenging the chain of command, shouting, physically threatening colleagues of both genders. That guy wouldn't be allowed to work anywhere, let alone a rig.
Just couldn't deal with that one character. Not the actor's fault he is obviously poorly written and poorly directed towards histrionics.
The Sound of Philadelphia (2020)
Better than the reviews
At the time of writing this has 4.9 stars and I think this film deserves more than that. About a 6.4 would be fair.
The main problem with this film for me is that the territory has been well explored before. 2014's "The Drop" being one example. Additionally, Matthias Schoenaerts is starting to get rather typecast, which is a shame because he's a fantastic actor with a lot of depth and talent.
That being said, if you enjoy dark, bleak, mob movies, or are a fan of "The Sopranos" then you'll get a solid hour and a half's entertainment out of this. Nothing new though but certainly better than a lot of the reviews here.
Morbius (2022)
Jared Leto does it again!
If you thought Jared Leto's performance as The Joker was the finest interpretation to date of that role then you will love "Morbius".
Yes... I'm being sarcastic. When are people going to stop casting this guy in anything? I won't watch any film that has him in it.
White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch (2022)
Sound design ruined this for me
Every 30 seconds the documentary blares out crappy frat boy rock, which makes this unwatchable. To actually hear the dialogue requires the awful music to be up to 11.
The Book of Boba Fett (2021)
So bad!
E3. Moody teens who look like they just stepped out of RADA, riding brightly coloured mopeds in the slowest, worst chase scene I've ever seen. Awful! Also, how can the CGI be so bad in 2022??
Nocturne (2020)
Way better than the reviews
We thought this film was deserving of way more than the 5-point-something it has right now. It's well scripted, and very well acted. My only niggle is the ambiguous ending. Personally if you're going to tell me a story I want the ending to be a payoff, not a "choose your own adventure" but a good watch that in my mind has been treated a bit unfairly.
Army of the Dead (2021)
Insultingly bad
Zach's DotD 2004 revision is one of my favourite films. So I was literally counting down the days until this movie came out, and planned a quiet night in to fully enjoy it. I turn it off after 30 minutes, why are Netflix seemingly unable to greenlight a good movie? Maybe they just have too much money.
Alien: Covenant (2017)
Insulting
Ridley Scott is an amazind Director and world builder. No issue there. But he needs a good script, and the script was BAD.
The Reckoning (2020)
One of our favorite Directors, so what happened?
Dog Soldiers and The Descent are two of our favorite movies and so we'll always watch a Neil Marshall movie, even though some of his recent movie work has been rather sketchy (e.g. Centurion).
However this latest offering is BAD BAD BAD. We paid $6 to rent it and turned it off after 40 mins. SO BAD! It's clumsy, poorly scripted and the costumes and make up are laughable. And don't get me started on the lead character's perfect hair, nails and modern makeup.
The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020)
Weirdly histrionic performance
Many aspects of this film were good, but the lead character felt out of place and the performance is weirdly histrionic. It probably didn't help that he was directing himself because any other director would have asked the actor to tone down the performance. Overall we did enjoy it but struggle to get over the constant over-emoting of the lead.
Happiest Season (2020)
One scene ruined the whole movie
There's a shoplifter scene set in a mall that is weak, cringey, ludicrous and unfunny. We were teetering on the edge with this film and that scene pushed us hard over the edge.