I guess I cam with pretty high expectations for this film, the trailer did look intriguing, you kind of expected more lore explaining how the war happened , and despite some pretty decent action scenes, all you get story wise is that there are a bunch of photographers going into the heart of warzone to interview the president... All we know from the beginning of the film that the president was kind of evil since he authorised bombings of his own country states and that is all you'll get on explanation of the conflict, which is kind of damn shame... The last scene will probably leave you furious, I mean I see what Garland did there, from Ben Laden example, but this was just too weak of an ending...
Reviews
179 Reviews
Mr Bates vs. The Post Office
(2024)
Post Office first, Tories next
28 March 2024
Let's start with the fact that it's a brilliantly filmed, acted and scripted drama that truly does belong to be somewhere at the top... This film is like a representation of all that is wrong with Tory government... Abuse of power, secrecy, blatant lies and all part of a plan to keep the regime going... It's pretty strange that an organization so insignificant as a Post office, can act as MI6, just because it's a government organization ... It took Alan Bates 20 years to achieve some justice, but he is like a symbol to show that these monsters can be pushed into corner even if it takes decades .
Dune: Part Two
(2024)
Let's control the Universe
2 March 2024
Dune Part 2 takes off pretty much where Part1 ended.
It is hard to be unbiased with Dune with all the positive reviews everywhere so I will try to be as open minded as possible...The story focuses on Paul's Guerilla war against house Harkonen as well as explores his role in the Fremen prophecy. The VFX is brilliant, the art style seems to be leaning in between Geiger style for all Harkonen Architecture and Doug Chiang for all the vehicles ... Costumes, VFX, environments there is nothing to complain about there... The script for Paul and Chani is written well, you can feel the chemistry between characters as well, Rebecca Ferguson does well playing lady Jessica, her storyline was intresting to follow... There is one point however where Villeneuve Dune could do better than it did and it's lord Vladimir Harkonen, now don't get me wrong, the acting of Stellan is brilliant, but his script lacks clever plotting and scheming, his script is very straight pure evil, I don't doubt he should be evil, but instead of melancholic evil they could do a sociopathic evil which plots and schemes and comes up with clever ideas to do evil, instead it felt like lord Harkonen is so done with everyone... So apart from that details the film is hell enjoyable and really manages to transfer you into a world of Arrakis for couple of hours...
It is hard to be unbiased with Dune with all the positive reviews everywhere so I will try to be as open minded as possible...The story focuses on Paul's Guerilla war against house Harkonen as well as explores his role in the Fremen prophecy. The VFX is brilliant, the art style seems to be leaning in between Geiger style for all Harkonen Architecture and Doug Chiang for all the vehicles ... Costumes, VFX, environments there is nothing to complain about there... The script for Paul and Chani is written well, you can feel the chemistry between characters as well, Rebecca Ferguson does well playing lady Jessica, her storyline was intresting to follow... There is one point however where Villeneuve Dune could do better than it did and it's lord Vladimir Harkonen, now don't get me wrong, the acting of Stellan is brilliant, but his script lacks clever plotting and scheming, his script is very straight pure evil, I don't doubt he should be evil, but instead of melancholic evil they could do a sociopathic evil which plots and schemes and comes up with clever ideas to do evil, instead it felt like lord Harkonen is so done with everyone... So apart from that details the film is hell enjoyable and really manages to transfer you into a world of Arrakis for couple of hours...
500 Days of Summer
(2009)
It was an Inception of Dating films
29 February 2024
There is a reason why I gave this film a 7/10 which is pretty high rating and the reason is, because it reflects the reality of dating world way too well, but problem is, the film is kind of a self fulfilling prophecy, as it is likely that films like this one have crafted the psyche of modern women... There could be a million reasons why Summer decided the relationship wasn't working, but the reality was she was toying with the guy all the way through... She initiated the kiss. Summer insisted that they are just friends and that she does not want to have a girlfriend title... There were moments when Tom thought he was going crazy because he thought it was wrong she is not officially his girlfriend, but she said generic stuff like "this is life" let it be as is, aren't you happy? Essentially she manipulated him and he followed along... The most important moment might be when they were sitting at the bar and there was a dude trying to pick her up, every normal guy would say Tom did the right thing hitting him in the face, while Summer acted as if she wanted to have that option of giving her contact to another random dude right in front of him ... I mean come on guys, for men it's a film that shows the kind of woman you should avoid at all costs, for women it shows how to manipulate men possibly dating other men at the same time...
Shōgun
(2024)
Decent Remake
27 February 2024
I am a fan of the old Shogun from 1980 with
Richard Chamberlain , so I enjoy the retelling of the original story big time... So far the story follows quite precisely which is a good thing... The locations are great, the VFX is decent, there is a respect for source material which is good. It is nice that the Japanese actually speak Japanese ... Overall I would suggest watching "Age of Samurai" documentary before this as it perfectly sets the scene to understand which period this story covers. The only thing that this show is inferior to the original is the main actor can not replace Richard Chamberlain, nor anybody can replace John Rhys-Davies well enough , those actors were legendary, that is why 1980's version is totally worth a rewatch...
Ancient Apocalypse
(2022)
Fascinating
23 February 2024
You can remember people like Galileo, who would stand against established truths and the people of power would be against him... Honestly I do not have any problems with this theory as suddenly a whole lot of stuff starts to make sense... Why would ancients waste so much time and effort to build 36 underground cities in Turkey,
why would they build massive temples to observe the stars so precisely, why would the symbols of serpents would be so common in multiple cultures and finally all the prophets stories that are present in almost every ancient culture, when a man sent by the gods would come and teach a young civilization some knowledge that would either speed up the culture or improve their lives... What Graham Hancock did is analysed a lot of information and unified it into a single theory, well nobody says it was exactly like that, no one will tell, that is why it is called a theory and I have completely nothing about it's existence...
It's not an improvement, it's a regress
8 February 2024
So you get one pretty bland action sequence, with the fights we already saw multiple times on a planet that does not seem to be important as it's there only for 10min or so... After that you have 40 minutes of talking with various characters... Talking with ex admiral, talking with a new boss, talking with Cortana alike and there is a seemingly unimportant side story about ex Spartan developing... I don't know who are the people praising these first two episodes, but the show turned from a mediocre action show which I actually enjoyed into a mediocre soap which I can barely stand watching, what is worse in EP2 that Asian woman with her side story is back...
Queen of the South
(2016–2021)
As someone who enjoyed all Narcos
7 February 2024
I've watched all Narcos, Narcos New Mexico and then suddenly discovered this show. First of all, he vibes are really similar, drug kingpins all over the place fighting each other and there is no way to escape their power and influence anywhere, most of the time the show keeps a decent tension, not for a moment Teresa can feel safe... The show feels more like an action thriller and has a surprisingly mesmerising soundtrack in style of Enigma ... Overall as mentioned above if you enjoyed Narcos and all the other similar drug kingpin dramas, it is highly likely you will enjoy The Queen of the South.
I Am Mother
(2019)
Post Skynet Earth
7 January 2024
Warning: Spoilers
This is a very interesting concept that deals with what happens after human civilization loses a war to AI... Shall Ai want anything to do with humans? Shall it want to create a new race? Essentially what Mother does to her daughter is seduces her on premise of how much she can do living in that lab rather than on that beach with that stranger woman... The mother has grown her daughter exactly as she wanted, she was the result that she wanted, the ending showed that even a stranger woman was simply a part of the test... I even suspect that the stranger woman might have been raised by Mother too ... In the end Mother leaves the lab to daughter to grow a new human family, but does she really leave her alone, I doubt so... It is likely the AI has a long term plan for that new human colony , it would be intresting to see a sequel where descendants are on a quest to meet Mother again and find out what her further plans are... Yeah they could make a multi film franchise out of this... I loved the film, because it made you think and imagine, rather than just enjoy mindless action...
Underrated episode
10 December 2023
Warning: Spoilers
This episode is an experimental episode and that is exactly what makes it kind of fun... Red Squad is mentioned first time in Paradise Lost, but you never get to see them, that's the first What if... The secoond What if is that it's a crew of 18 year olds ... You can blame these teenagers for average acting, but the script isn't poor, nor is the action of that episode... There are no slow or boring moments in this episode, what is shown is how a group can be manipulated by ideology in a collective... The Crew is on a mission to find an Advanced Dominion Battleship, so you get to see the Dominion battleship at multiple angles which is one of the coolest ships that John Eaves has designed... Now people would say, yeah, but what's the point of this episode? If you are looking for moral of the story, the moral of the story is don't send teenagers to war and that is why I guess many parents might have hated the episode, because most of the crew gets killed, but hey, they made a point...
Gotcha!
(1985)
2023 review this needs sequel
20 November 2023
I'll admit I started watching this because of Linda Fiorentino and did not know what to expect, this film is actually funny as hell, it has pretty realistic action and just that scene, where the blond at university tells him gtfo in the beginning and at the end is alone worth watching for... I must say the cast did really well, there is synergy between them... The scenes that are meant to be realistic are realistic enough and the scenes that are meant to be funny are intelligently funny... You get to see some Berlin, sadly not too much of Paris, but overall vibes of visiting a cold war country are shown well enough...
Superb
6 September 2023
Let's say I wasn't expecting lightsaber fights to be this good in Ahsoka, but they are... This was actually a very strong episode, it was pretty cool because there was a feeling like the good guys can actually get into a fight they can't handle ... The episode is full of decent non stop action... There are some pretty cool revelations and the material from both rebels and general canon is being used wisely, the sith are able to influence decisions and read thoughts ... Let's say if you are a somewhat fan of Clone Wars, I don't see the reasons not to enjoy it... As much as I hate sequel trilogy... And maybe Andor is the best thing that happened to Star Wars, Ahsoka is a guilty pleasure you should not miss...
It's still enjoyable
30 July 2023
I watched this film long ago and actually remembered most of it, surprisingly but in 2023 it's still enjoyable but I guess you need to be quite a lot into UFOs ...
The visual effects of saucer movements were actually created with consultation of J. Allen Hynek , there is the hand scanner unit Bob Lazar was talking about and the main scientists were prototypes of existing people of the time... The story is quite simple, but the whole mountain making scene is quite funny and quite intresting, I can't imagine how many hikers flocked to the area in 80's after the film was released... Anyway if you like the theme of UFO's give it a go...
Moonfall
(2022)
Hollow Moon theory is there for a reason
13 July 2023
Let's face it, it's a B movie with a lot of unnecessary subplots, car chases and characters, what it does right though is delivers the theory of a hollow moon which has a basis, because the moon did ring like a bell. You have typical Roland Emmerich: the military act like idiots, everything that is happening is a complete madness and everything is done last minute on a technology that should fall apart but doesn't, in a addition to that there is an almighty enemy...
The story doesn't take itself seriously, the main cast tries to do it's best, so it's watchable if you like Sci Fi, and if you don't, well don't bother ...
Good idea ruined by lazy writing
19 June 2023
I think out of all the episodes in Black Mirror this one has angered me most... So first of all it's an episode about Space, so you have high expectations, but the writer did not care about "Space" , instead he decided to write a cheap horror story... You will not find out what was their mission, they will not discover telepathic aliens, one of the astronauts will not have revenge on these hippies... There are many ways this story could have been better, but this was the laziest execution of the concept one could imagine... Instead of space, the setting could have been on an ocean liner, on a submarine, in prison and the story wouldn't change even a little bit, in fact the setting should have been in prison, at least the ending would make sense then...
Angel's Last Mission: Love
(2019)
A show that appeals to both genders
9 June 2023
The theme of angels walking among people is not new, but very few managed to explore it successfully...
The way the story unravels here is that no matter if you are male or female, you will root for both main characters...
What makes Lee Yeon Seo an intresting character?
The show starts with a girl that lost her parents, her sight and almost every person close to her, it's just difficult not to feel anything for that character, you just wonder how can she continue to live and how she copes with all of that...
Dan on the other hand is a funny guy - angel which actually kind of hates spending time with Lee at first, because she hates everyone and is generally hard to communicate with.
Little by little the main characters start getting close...
It's a simple , but very warm story which makes you feel good while watching this couple enjoy life together...
The way the story unravels here is that no matter if you are male or female, you will root for both main characters...
What makes Lee Yeon Seo an intresting character?
The show starts with a girl that lost her parents, her sight and almost every person close to her, it's just difficult not to feel anything for that character, you just wonder how can she continue to live and how she copes with all of that...
Dan on the other hand is a funny guy - angel which actually kind of hates spending time with Lee at first, because she hates everyone and is generally hard to communicate with.
Little by little the main characters start getting close...
It's a simple , but very warm story which makes you feel good while watching this couple enjoy life together...
The Devil Judge
(2021)
Death Note vibes
16 May 2023
Many wonder on why the ratings are so high for this show... I guess what differentiates this show from other dramas is that it has a unique idea to show how a global voting system in courts would work. As far as I remember there was an episode of "Orville" exploring this idea, Devil Judge portrays such voting mechanism in full detail... I don't know if it's Eastern storytelling, but the plot have almost all typical strong anime twists, some of which are : "revenge", " mysterious figures", "all main heroes and villains knew each other since childhood", "something bad happened in the past what made everyone hate each other " ... Anyway the story is very exciting to follow and all the action scenes are superb in addition to everything...
It took them 38 years to produce a good DnD movie :D!
10 May 2023
Most of the people will come to this film having not much idea what is Dungeons and Dragons all about.
Firstly it's a tabletop game, an animated TV show from 80's and, a few unsuccessful films and more than a few successful games.
There will be few references to animated TV show and computer games but apart from that it's a standalone film with brand new characters...
The acting and casting is surprisingly good, no one is out of place, great main cast, good villain , everything is in it's place...
The story is simple but makes sense, the humour is decent and the action is entertaining...
All in all that is the case when this felt more like a an extended episode of a large universe waiting for stories to be told... It would be great if there was one more film about the cameo kids from the 80's animation ...
Firstly it's a tabletop game, an animated TV show from 80's and, a few unsuccessful films and more than a few successful games.
There will be few references to animated TV show and computer games but apart from that it's a standalone film with brand new characters...
The acting and casting is surprisingly good, no one is out of place, great main cast, good villain , everything is in it's place...
The story is simple but makes sense, the humour is decent and the action is entertaining...
All in all that is the case when this felt more like a an extended episode of a large universe waiting for stories to be told... It would be great if there was one more film about the cameo kids from the 80's animation ...
The Planet of Dr Moreau
6 May 2023
I was going with pretty low expectations for this third instalment after a very flawed Black Widow and other recent Marvel failures... Guardians 3 turned out not only quite decent but very well on par with previous instalments...
The Good.
Guardians 3 have an interesting back story of Rocket, although there is nothing surprising there, but at least that story was decently written and the main villain turned out to be definitely more interesting than at least in a first movie where the main bad guy was very generic... The story of Rocket along with Evolutionary is very well intersected, you see some sort of Mozart/ Salieri relationship where Rocket turns out to be Mozart... The whole sped up evolution concept reminds of Island of Dr Moreau and it's not a bad thing after all... The film have a few interesting locations, particularly corporate Moon along with pretty cool guest star Nathan...
The Bad.
That moment at the 3rd part of the film when the main villain releases a superweapon and that superweapon is a bunch of minions, this is the most boring idea ever, considering at least for half an hour we just watch the main team killing those minions Matrix Revolutions style ...
The fight with the main villain is pretty damn short, this guy was supposed to be almost as strong as Thanos, but is crippled in like one shot and dealt with within a pair of minutes or so, sad the build up of the villain was pretty good...
Overall the 3rd film is a satisfying conclusion of the trilogy despite a messed up/ rushed ending..
The Good.
Guardians 3 have an interesting back story of Rocket, although there is nothing surprising there, but at least that story was decently written and the main villain turned out to be definitely more interesting than at least in a first movie where the main bad guy was very generic... The story of Rocket along with Evolutionary is very well intersected, you see some sort of Mozart/ Salieri relationship where Rocket turns out to be Mozart... The whole sped up evolution concept reminds of Island of Dr Moreau and it's not a bad thing after all... The film have a few interesting locations, particularly corporate Moon along with pretty cool guest star Nathan...
The Bad.
That moment at the 3rd part of the film when the main villain releases a superweapon and that superweapon is a bunch of minions, this is the most boring idea ever, considering at least for half an hour we just watch the main team killing those minions Matrix Revolutions style ...
The fight with the main villain is pretty damn short, this guy was supposed to be almost as strong as Thanos, but is crippled in like one shot and dealt with within a pair of minutes or so, sad the build up of the villain was pretty good...
Overall the 3rd film is a satisfying conclusion of the trilogy despite a messed up/ rushed ending..
Avatar: The Way of Water
(2022)
It's enjoyable but like Popcorn
20 April 2023
I am not one of the people who waited for Avatar 2 nor I had great expectations for it, but the experience overall was enjoyable... It feels like this movie could have been shorter as watching this simple family drama story for 3 hours is a bit overwhelming... It's not even that CGI is extremely good, but overall water creature design and performance was probably the most enjoyable part of this movie... Yup if you don't like nature documentaries this might be a wrong movie for you overall... What James Cameron managed to do as always to build a pretty believable ocean world with amazing water creatures and very predictable story... Overall the film is one of these which is totally watchable, has it's flaws and has it's moments, however story wise is as forgettable as an episode of Disney Star Wars TV show...
Star Trek: Picard
(2020–2023)
Season 3 is what you are looking for
18 April 2023
I hated first season and I could not bother watching second one, then I gave it a try on a 3rd season...
I don't know what happened, but the writers suddnely started writing a decent Star Trek at least on TNG Films level...
It feels like there was main writer's assistant which knew Star Trek lore inside out there in a crew somewhere which was only allowed to assist during first two seasons of this show and when the director realized show is getting cancelled, they allowed the assistant to write it full time because who cares anyway...
So suddenly a fan of Star Trek started writing a show based on his knowledge of Star Ttek Lore and it all started to make sense, at least that's what it feels like...
About the actual Season 3...
You get a whole bunch of TNG guest appearances, damn even Ro Laren is here and they all do something intresting, they all are nicely integrated into story...
I am not gonna spoil anything but the best scenes and story are very well crafted with a decent inspiration from Wrath of Khan and DS9... As a Star Trek Fan which seen whole TNG DS9 Voyager I can say confirm this is a very decent story full with TNG characters, yup, one could even say it's an 8th season of TNG you been waiting for...
I don't know what happened, but the writers suddnely started writing a decent Star Trek at least on TNG Films level...
It feels like there was main writer's assistant which knew Star Trek lore inside out there in a crew somewhere which was only allowed to assist during first two seasons of this show and when the director realized show is getting cancelled, they allowed the assistant to write it full time because who cares anyway...
So suddenly a fan of Star Trek started writing a show based on his knowledge of Star Ttek Lore and it all started to make sense, at least that's what it feels like...
About the actual Season 3...
You get a whole bunch of TNG guest appearances, damn even Ro Laren is here and they all do something intresting, they all are nicely integrated into story...
I am not gonna spoil anything but the best scenes and story are very well crafted with a decent inspiration from Wrath of Khan and DS9... As a Star Trek Fan which seen whole TNG DS9 Voyager I can say confirm this is a very decent story full with TNG characters, yup, one could even say it's an 8th season of TNG you been waiting for...
Nice plot twist at the end
14 April 2023
The episode starts as a very generic episode ... There is a lot of time dedicated to Mandalorian tribes but not to the main characters of the show itself... There is a lot of somewhat mindless action happening in favour of a good story, I mean the actual reunification of Mandalore story could have been done in a much more grand manner spanning more episodes across different planets, instead it all happens in like 3 locations which are all forgettable. Now as mentioned before a lot of mindless action happens at the episode until the ending plot twist and final scenes, at that point it sort of became interesting and you would feel some danger for main characters...
A monster episode done right
16 March 2023
Under normal circumstances I would hate monster of the week episode... First of all his episode has a what if moment with an R2 mech droid... I mean I bet many wondered what would happen if Luke's red Droid worked and Luke picked it instead of R2 from Javas...
This episode is very well made,
you get to see Mandalore after it's destruction, Bo Katan gets into action and there is an impressive mysterious monster, which really makes you feel the danger in the moment... Overall very good work from concept artists and animators which managed to bring this all into life... Do not miss that one under any circumstances...
Andor
(2022– )
Slow start, great buildup
25 September 2022
Andor unlike Rogue one, starts pretty slowly, you get flashbacks of the origin story of Andor in between the main scenes, not much seems to be happening at first, but the story is developing somewhere eventually reaching a very decent climax in episode 3... One could say this is too much drama for Star Wars in first two episodes but overall the result is very satisfying, it feels like an intelligent Star Wars, which really tries to build a realistic universe portrayal, anyway can't wait to see the rest... What my criticism would be, I am a die hard fan of Star Wars starting with an impressive space scene, in Andor there is just a corporate city, which in the begining feels more like Blade runner than Star Wars...
Let's hope nobody notices
12 August 2022
I mean, about every Sci Fi watcher seen James Cameron's films, you know, these expensive, over budget hyper realistic decent script movies :D ... It ain't bad episode, but it ain't offering anything new except a ripped off story of Aliens , it's an ok episode but in many cases I would call it plagiarism...
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