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My Son (2021)
Beautiful Scotland, muddled story
I checked the times at about 40 minutes in, wondering how the hell they were going to wrap this up in the time left, wondering if I'd been mistaken and this was actually a series. It just unfolded so many plot points that went nowhere and so were completely unrealistic.
Why would Edmond's work be related to the disappearance of his son? Why would 'London' take over the investigation, and why would that mean that Edmond and Joan were suddenly 'on their own' with looking for their child? Wouldn't the first thing they'd do be to call London to ask what's going on and what their investigation is about, what they've discovered?
Why would Edmond's 5 year long partner Leah just tell him never to call her again because their offices had been raided? Why were their offices raided? Why did Leah seem so worried they had all their information on 'Iraq'? What happened with his company in Iraq? This all seemed like a potentially important plot point that went nowhere.
So eventually they find their son, he's been captured by a small group of people who are going to 'deliver' him and other children presumably to some paedophile ring. Joan finds a little girl in the back of their car - no other mention of her ever throughout the rest of the film. Wouldn't her parents also be looking for her, wouldn't she also be on the news and being investigated? Did her parents work for an oil company? The way it was written, they implied this group did this sort of thing all the time, but that's ridiculous. If little kids were always going missing like this, it would be all over the news. Yes kids go missing a lot, but they're normally found quickly. That's why stories like these where a kid has obviously been snatched from somewhere and neither parent is involved make the news.
It started off really intriguing and the scenery was stunning. But it ended up feeling like some QAnon type person's 'everyone in power is secretly a paedo' revenge fantasy and made about as much logical sense. Let's throw in 'the oil industry' and 'higher ups in London' and make that sound sinister but never offer an explanation.
And also, WHY did Joan's partner not include a room for Ethan in the house he was building?!
Thought it could've maybe been better if it had been made into like a 'Tartan noir' mystery thriller series where they could have explored all these plot points more and made it make sense. The acting was obviously extremely good from McAvoy and Foy, it's a shame the story was such a mess.
A Discovery of Witches (2018)
Way too cheesy/cringeworthy
It's a sort of tacky, cheesy soap opera but with witches and vampires. It takes itself far far too seriously, which makes the whole thing feel embarrassing. If it injected some humour and was more tongue in cheek, acknowledging that it's just a pretty ridiculous supernatural/teen romance/twilight style romp, then that would've made it more bearable I think. I just keep feeling bad for the actors while I'm watching it.
Invasion (2021)
So terrible it's kind of fascinating
I find myself kind of engrossed when watching this show, but only in the sense that I'm constantly thinking about how much better every scene could've been. It's supposed to be a story about an alien invasion told through the eyes of ordinary people, rather than from the often-used perspective of the world's governments/military/people who would be directly involved in dealing with the threat on behalf of humanity.
I like that concept - what would it feel like for us to go through a world-and-humanity-shattering crisis like hostile aliens arriving on Earth? But the characters in this show aren't 'like us', they're not like anyone. They act in ways that are completely at odds with how real people would react to an invasion. They care more about their personal petty relationship issues than they do about trying to figure out what's going on.
No one looks anything up online, no one even shares crucial information about the aliens or where they've been/what's happened with other survivors they meet along the way. Have you ever ever seen humans behave that way during a crisis? Because I haven't. If aliens invaded, it'd be pretty much all anyone was talking about, at least for the first week! Even the military characters don't share information with other military members they meet, about their previous encounters with the enemy, no one asks what the government's plan is, what they should do to keep safe. It's just abominable and so boring.
It's more like how orangutans would react to an alien invasion - yeah they're scared when something makes a big bang and they go hide, but other than that they carry on with their normal orangutan activities because they have no way of conceptualizing or communicating about what's happened. I think I'd still find that show more interesting though, because at least I wouldn't be expecting a somewhat realistic and intriguing depiction of how human beings might react to the biggest thing that's ever happened in human history.
It's basically at least 7 episodes of people acting completely unnaturally but in the most boring way, while some sort of 'event' happens in the background. The dialogue is cringeworthy, the aliens are your typical CGI monster-blobs with extendable gnashy hell-mouths, the cinematography is often so dark you can't even see what's going on, the plot is achingly slow and shallow, it's full of cliches and what's worst about it is that it could have been really good, with all the money behind it and the concept - it could have been great, but it's just awful.
Infinite (2021)
Acting is just too terrible
I couldn't get past the atrocious acting to enjoy this for the silly fun action movie it could possibly have been. The acting is just SO dire, you can't suspend disbelief for a second, they all seem like they're kids playing dress up, reading directly from a script.
Escape from New York (1981)
Painfully Bad
I am genuinely confused about the positive ratings for this film. It is SO bad. It is slow, it has a ridiculous plot, many plot holes, bad acting (even the extras who are just there to be part of a crowd scene are bad actors!), no character development, the thinnest of storylines, the action is clumsy and not believable, the characters act in exceedingly stupid ways that just completely ruin suspension of disbelief, the set looks so bad it totally breaks immersion. There is no point to it. The music is so atrocious that at one point I literally thought an alarm clock was going off somewhere in my living room. If your seven year old child made this movie, yeah you'd maybe suffer through it but say 'oh wow well done!' at the end. But that's not saying much
I'm guessing this must be a 'cult classic' or something that's gained some sort of weird popularity due to its silliness, and that's why people like it? If you come into this having never heard about it before, you will find yourself perplexed and bored.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
Kept me interested but seems it's better if you've read the book.
So I haven't read the book, which meant that I didn't really get what was going on. I got that the janitor was Jake, that this seemed to be about dementia and a fragmented mind - it did a good job of giving some idea of what it might be like for someone suffering from dementia, getting lost in time, feeling confused, getting events and places mixed up etc. It's just that the female character seemed to be the main protagonist, so if you haven't read the book, you can't help but think she is real while watching this. I thought it was about her suffering from dementia, thinking of herself as a young woman the whole time, struggling with her identity and attaching her identity to the man she was with. I really expected to see Jake the janitor at the end looking after an old her or something. It was all about her, Jake seemed to be a side character, and I guess, having read other reviews from people who did read the book, Jake is meant to be sort of a side character in his own life? But that doesn't come across at all well in the film, because it's her thoughts we hear, we see everything from her point of view. I think it's a huge ask for people who haven't read the book to get that this main protagonist through whose perspective we see the events of the movie is just a figment of another character's imagination.
So that makes the ending fall really flat for the non-book-reader. It comes across as nonsensical. Maybe at the end we are supposed to have the epiphany that it's all Jakes' imagination mixed with memories, but it doesn't come across like that at all, it comes across like wtf why is this guy naked and following a cartoon pig?
Anyway, I did enjoy it, it made me think about things. It was bleak, and I liked the way it explored how horrible and dreary and painful life can be, and how things don't always work out - we can just waste our lives, living in fantasies, never appreciating the present moments, getting bogged down by hangups and the burdens our parents put on us. Also how media and films and stories can distort our understanding of what life's about and give us false hope and expectations for what gives us value as human beings or what relationships should be like.
It sounds like I would've enjoyed it much more if I'd read the book, and I don't think that makes for a good adaptation. In my mind, if you're adapting a book, you should remember that much of the audience won't know what you know about the story, even if it seems completely obvious to you as a central point of the narrative, and should craft it with that in mind. Otherwise it can come across a bit messy and confusing.
A Cure for Wellness (2016)
Pretty entertaining but weird
I did enjoy this film, especially in the first half. It has the feel of a ghost story, mystery, or creepy institutional psychological thriller. It keeps you intrigued, creeped out and entertained up to the end, but the answers never quite arrive, which is frustrating, and the ending is pretty cliche, which is a bit disappointing.
Reading some of these other reviews, they mention Trump, which is odd to me. There is no reference to Trump at all throughout the movie and I never even thought of Trump while watching it. The main bad guy character doesn't look like Trump or talk/act like Trump, so don't worry about watching it if you think it's going to have some irritating Trump character in it or that it's political. Not every bad guy in a movie is supposed to be Trump??
The Death & Life of John F. Donovan (2018)
Something missing
The acting was good and the music was good, but there was something missing for me. I kept getting the impression that I was supposed to be feeling something, but it just never managed to touch my emotions. There were a few too many cliches perhaps. I also never really felt the connection between the two main characters, we never got to see who Rupert was to Donovan, all the scenes with Donovan pretty much ignored Rupert. Even showing him writing those letters, or what had happened just before he wrote them to prompt the decision to write, or showing him receiving letters from Rupert, would've given me something more to feel about who Donovan was and what this relationship meant to him, but it was completely absent, whereas we got to see and understand Rupert a bit more through the frame of this strange friendship. For a movie centred around this relationship, it felt very lacking that we never see John's investment in it or even a hint of his reasons for engaging in it. Maybe that was a choice and there was a reason for it, but for me personally it was really a hole in the movie that made it difficult for me to be moved, despite seeing that I was supposed to be moved.
Legion (2010)
I really hated it
It's rare that I stop watching a film in the middle because I'm so bored, but that's what happened with this one. I just didn't care about anything that was happening, the characters weren't engaging and were one dimensional, the plot was boring, the build up felt like it was paced all wrong, with little time spent developing tension or characters, instead switching between different characters to give a tiny glimpse of each without building a story or people I could care about. The acting was bad - I felt a bit of second hand cringe for the actors while watching it. I didn't watch the whole thing so maybe it gets better, but I'm giving it 2 because if I have to stop watching because it feels like I'm wasting my life, how good could the ending possibly be?
The Hunt (2020)
Hilarious indictment of social media
This movie is basically what the world would look like if the conspiracy theories your Uncle posts on Facebook were actually true. And it's ridiculous and hilarious. To me, the 'liberal elites' and the 'conservative deplorables' in this movie basically represent the stupidity and illusory nature of social media and the heroine represents real life. She focuses on whatever's in front of her, while all the other characters have allowed themselves to be whipped up, by glimpses of other people through the lens of social media, into a fantasy land of outrage that has no basis in reality or recognition of the complexity of life or human beings. In turn, this mistake leads them all to create the brutal, unforgiving reality for themselves that they were ostensibly so keen on preventing through their righteous anger. It really is funny, and it's clever. If you're offended by it, then its definitely a movie for you :-)
Ratched (2020)
Pretty perfect TV
This is a really interesting and quirky show - I hadn't heard anything about it, simply put it on because it came up on Netflix and I was bored, and was very pleasantly surprised. It has a great, intriguing story, complex engaging characters, great actors, the costumes and sets are wonderful, it's well shot, it's darkly very humorous at times, at times quite poignant and moving, other times exciting and dramatic. There is excellent attention to detail. I love the explorations of psychology and the effects of trauma, and the portrayal of the difficult attempts to categorise and treat mental illness and the barbarity of the practice in that time period. It keeps your attention, draws you in, isn't predictable or cheesy - it feels very substantial, creative and original. I recommend it.
Away (2020)
Just no
Okay, so maybe this series is not really supposed to be about the sci-fi stuff, maybe it's supposed to be about relationships but with a sci-fi background, but you just can't get into it or feel for these characters or relationships because the whole backdrop is totally unbelievable, making it too difficult to care or become immersed. All you can keep thinking is 'this is ridiculous. As if they would do that.' This crew has been training together for years, and yet they act like they hate each other and mistrust each other. Right away crew members are wanting to stage a coup before they've even launched. It's so stupid. This would never happen. Maybe if this was a comedy instead like 'Space Force' where they're a bunch of incompetents messing everything up it could work to have characters acting this way, but it's supposed to be a 'realistic' drama. And if you can't make the science stuff realistic then the drama doesn't come off a s realistic either.
Dream House (2011)
Shutter Island meets Home Alone meets Poltergeist
It just didn't work. The beginning was interesting, and seemed like it could go somewhere, but it went off the rails and became almost slapstick and cartoonish towards the end. It wasn't very original, seeming to stitch together a bunch of cliches from various genres, and it wasn't clever either - it was pretty predictable, from realising it was the neighbour husband who did it (which was clear as soon as he was introduced as this mean guy living across the street from the murder house) to the 'Will is living in a delusion' thing, which was obvious very quickly. The reason for the murders was laughably ridiculous, with the murderer helpfully shouting at his wife exactly why he wanted to kill her - "it was meant to be you! You took my house, my kid, my life!' *shakes fist*. And the ending was just totally schmaltzy and has been done a million times before - "you have to let us go, Will' as he hugs his ghost family while the house explodes around hi,. Then to close out we get one of those standard movie endings of the main character several months later seeing their bestselling novel in a window display as they walk down the street, leaving us safe in the knowledge that he has 'moved on' and 'done something special'...roll credits.
I don't really get the good reviews for this - I think maybe if you're someone who hasn't seen that many films it might come across as good, but if you watch a lot of movies then you can probably miss this one as you'll have seen it before.
Catch and Release (2006)
Completely shallow movie
This movie felt completely nonsensical. None of the characters seemed real at all, none of the relationships had any depth. There were opportunities to explore emotions and how relationships and people cope in the aftermath of a sudden death, but it just completely failed to do that, and treated the death around which the story revolved as a simple plot device and no more.
All the characters behaved bizarrely, but not in any way that was intended to explore the complex ways in which grief affects different people differently, just in a completely bland, unrealistic solely plot driven way. Garner's character loses her fiance, then finds out that his friend knew the whole time she was being cheated on and that her late fiance had a child with another woman - she doesn't even once challenge this friend about why he helped her fiance keep the secret, she doesn't get angry with him or anything, instead she sleeps with him and he ends up being the main romantic interest. And there's nothing about the love story that relates at all to the fiance's death, not really. The death is basically a plot device to explain how the two know each other. They don't even wrestle with feeling guilty, feeling that it might be wrong to get together, feeling it might be weird. The big 'will they won't they' moment where one of them runs off so the other can wise up and go find them for the 'happily ever after' bit, is simply her being overheard saying that sleeping with him meant 'less than nothing' to her. It wasn't even about the moral/emotional complexities of sleeping with your best friend's widow or your late partner's best friend! Even the other friends don't really have anything to say about these two shacking up even though their best buddy is still warm. In fact, one of the other best friends himself makes a move on her! And no one ever talks about how this is strange, or 'not the done thing' or disrespectful of the deceased's memory, given this all seems to take place within a few weeks of his funeral!
There's nothing in this that has any depth at all, the humour is lacking, the characters are bland, the story is implausible - all in all it's a completely stereotypical 'rom com' except the romance is extremely icky to the point you're rooting for them NOT to get together, and the comedy is almost non-existent. It felt like, with this subject matter, it could have been a great insightful character-driven dramedy exploring grief and how people react to and overcome it, but to do that it would've had to actually show grief instead of using death as a superficial backdrop for a stereotypical 'rugged bad boy cad with a secret heart of gold seduces cutesy girl-next-door' plot.
Messiah (2020)
'Homeland' meets 'The Leftovers'
This is really great TV, it's got intrigue, mystery, interesting characters and it's great at building tension and keeping you hooked.
It's very relevant to our world today and the anxieties of humanity about our planet and our place in it, and concerns about how the internet has allowed governments and others to distort truth and confuse the global population about how to even discern what is real in a globally connected world. Exploring these things through the arrival of an apparent messiah is a great and interesting concept.
Modern Love (2019)
Pretty good but the ending ruined it
Some of these episodes/stories were quite good and kept my interest, but the ending of the final episode was just so schmaltzy and cheesy and cliche it basically ruined my overall impression of the entire series. It would have been much better if they'd left that 'look at this rich tapestry of life across the city, all the interconnected human hearts living and loving and suffering and dying alongside each other and isn't it so magical' with cheesy ick swelling music, out of it. The last episode was really bad.
Against the Clock (2019)
Just awful
I tried sticking with this but it gave me a headache. It was completely nonsensical. It's fine to have a few of these disjointed weird scenes in a movie to portray some emotion or dream sequence, but the entire movie like that is just too much. You can't follow what's going on, it's just really an unpleasant experience to watch and you don't even manage to pick up any interesting plot from it, and what plot there is, just isn't worth the torment of sitting through weird flashes and CGI and random loud noises. It's the movie equivalent of going on an acid trip in an abattoir.
Last Flag Flying (2017)
Amazing film
Loved this movie, it makes you feel like you're one of the buddies going on this trip with them. It's hilarious and moving and the acting is phenomenal. I'm really surprised it doesn't have a higher rating, it feels like it's a wonderful classic. Definitely watch it!
Otherhood (2019)
Overbearing borderline emotionally abusive mothers
This film really annoyed me; these mothers felt entitled to their adult children's lives, they were smothering, had no boundaries, no respect for their children or their children's friends/partners/homes etc and it was all presented as though it was just normal and hilarious. It's not hilarious or normal, it's terrifying. Especially the bit when Huffman is chasing round the recipient of her son's sperm donation in order to get a glimpse of/dump presents on the baby. That is creepy, and just because you share a little bit of genetic material with someone's baby doesn't mean it's ok to stalk them and insert yourself. What's worse, the mother of the sperm donor baby came to the conclusion Huffman's behavior was ok because 'now that I'm a mother I realise if my baby had a baby through sperm donation I too would stalk them across the city.'
The whole film was embarrassing and cliche and made out like when women become mothers they lose all sense of self, all self respect, all boundaries and all decency, making the lives of others hell as a result. It wasn't funny, it wasn't entertaining, it was cringeworthy and had a truly terrible message.
The Drowning (2016)
Missing plot
This film was awful. It seemed as though someone had taken a cheesy Lifetime-type stalker thriller and had randomly cut half the scenes from a 3 hour movie and then stitched the remaining scenes together in a way that made little sense.
There was a scene with a chicken being taped to someone's hand and then having its throat cut, which was so unbelievably dumb - maybe it was supposed to be laden with meaning or something but deciphering what that might be was impossible.
The ending made no sense, I guess it was supposed to be a 'shock twist' type ending but because there was no narrative or character build up and because it made no sense it just came across as insane, but in a boring way. The worst of both worlds.
This movie was just awful in every way. It wasn't even hilariously bad so that you could get a few laughs from its awfulness, it was simply bad bad. Nothing redeeming whatsoever.