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Reviews
Wicked Little Letters (2023)
Misleading trailers
Trailer was well cut and looked like this was gonna be a decent comedy for once. Sadly not. It had a couple of moments that were smirk-worthy, but no laughs.
For the most part, the acting was good, can't fault that, but the film seems to suffer from being selective with prejudices. Because this is yet another 'women are just as good as men, look what they can do' movie. Yeah, everyone knows that women are capable of achieving great things and so on, we don't need to be informed so by the media all the time. To show that women are capable, the movie plays up all the male characters except Bill as incredibly patronising and sexist in a way that is not at all natural, and just seems like someone is trying to air their grievances. Playing it up to this level, in my opinion, cancels out the struggles of POC, as there are several in the movie and they are all treated with respect in regard to their race as if it were the 21st century. Why, if you're going for a social commentary film, would you ignore this just to focus on women? There was very little plot and the twist is extremely predictable. It quickly started to become a list of actions rather than a cohesive story, particularly while the whist ladies were trying to catch Edith in action.
It's not an awful film, but it's not for me.
Truelove (2024)
Boring
Watched it because the promo on channel 4 looked promising and there's been no decent original TV series on regular telly in ages. Turns out there still hasn't.
None of the old people are very good actors, with the main lady saying everything as monotone as possible. They constantly show her smoking cigarettes as what I'm assuming is a really really subtle hint that she's going to get lung cancer.
And of course they have to have not only a cringeworthy old people love plot, but one which is also adulterous. Nice.
Won't bother watching the rest of it, but if you like painfully slow stories with very little plot, it might be for you.
The Boogeyman (2023)
You've probably seen it before
You know the drill, modern horror film:
-Characters have recently suffered a bereavement, giving them an excuse to be withdrawn/bitchy all movie
-'Crazy' person arrives and complains about monsters, either is committed to an asylum or killed.
-Monster passes on to the main characters
-One character can see the thing but nobody believes them
-Another character gets in on the action and also sees the creature, much to the annoyance of any remaining unconvinced characters
-1 or more characters go to see the family of the original crazy person to get background, they are initially reluctant, but end up in some way helpful.
- Now equipped with how to fight the monster, the characters give it a shot and fail
-monster ups its game
-characters try to fight it again and this time succeed, while also proving to any remaining sceptics that it is in fact real.
-everything is all happy and the characters have never been closer
-Uh oh, monster is still alive - sequel activated
Rinse and repeat.
Infinity Pool (2023)
Pretentious
Honestly can't say a right lot about it, because I walked out about an hour or so in, after the dude got gunged and killed by some kid. Couldn't find a single thing to enjoy, and was totally bored out of my mind. Plus the blonde lady's voice is so incredibly grating that her scenes were tough to watch. I'm not sure who she is, so whether that's her actual accent or not, I dunno, but the over-enunciated R. P. accent always winds me up. None of the characters seemed to have any particular personality, and the pretentious camera shots, like zoomed in on lips and whatever, or spinning around like an alchy cameraman were just overbearing and irritating. And which perv asked for a close up wanking shot, that's just weird.
So far as I'm concerned it's a film that has nothing to say, and just wants to fill someone's evening with dreck, but then maybe it was addressing a more artsy sort of audience member, what do I know, I'm just waiting for guardians of the galaxy.
Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities: The Viewing (2022)
Seems pretentious
Firstly, I dunno why pretty much every episode of Cabinet of Curiosities needs to have at least one person with an awful accent. This time around it's Turg, or whatever his name was, who has a godawful English accent, I think.
I'm currently 33 minutes in, and nothing has happened so far except a bunch of faux intellectuals sitting around in a circle talking rubbish and doing drugs.
It reminds me of one of my favourite episodes of anthology series 'Inside No.9', called Private View, except with the twist that it's, at least so far, intensely boring. The crux has been this old guy hoovering up a pile of coke. Not being a drugs person, maybe I don't understand it. They've shown a gun on the wall, so I assume somebody will be shot at some point, possibly either the old fella, or the hippie.
The hippie, by the way has incredibly clunky dialogue, he's written terribly. Either because the writers don't know how English people talk, or because the guy's meant to be annoying, not sure.
They're now looking at some shiny stone, which they've blown smoke on for some unexplained reason. And because they're all high, they think it's special.
This episode is really very empty, we have just over 10 minutes left and nothing's happened, except the rock gave everyone a headache.
Okay, silly red goo alien thing has arrived, but can't say if it's only there because they've been doing drugs, or if it's actually a thing. Yes, probably intentional, but that doesn't mean it's not stupid.
They've started dying now due to the antics of the creature. Still unexplained why.
Creature's now turned into custard so it can eat the old man I think, while 2 of the group have escaped it.
Aaand the old man/alien got shot. Now he's in a tunnel.
What a lot of pointlessness.
One episode left, hopefully it's more like the first 3 than the more recent ones.
Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities: Dreams in the Witch House (2022)
Weird
There are a fair few issues with this episode, mainly, being it's quite dull. Again, set design is nice, the tree house thing is pretty cool, don't understand why a centuries old rotting corpse would have a wet blood stain coming through the ceiling, but whatever, I can deal with that. There's a pretty bad looking cgi wooden witch who comes along and starts necking with Rupert Grint for some reason, maybe it was explained while I wasn't paying attention, I dunno. Then there's her pet, or familiar I guess, this stupid fat rat with an old man face. Why? We don't get told why it has a human face or why it hangs round with the witch. It is my personal biggest problem with this episode though, not necessarily THE biggest problem, but it stood out to me the most. What the hell was its accent supposed to be? I dunno who plays it, given as it's never named in the show, but this thing has a range from Irish to Australian, to American, to Cockney. It travels more than a head of state. Then the thing eats out Grint like the thing from alien, unknown reasons, again, since the witch has been stabbed in the head and killed by this point, then Human Face Rat climbs back inside the hole it made in Rupert Grint and starts using him as some sort of puppet, because that makes so much sense. Not that it even uses him for anything other than kicking a pot and nicking an apple, which it probably could've done as a human faced rat, so I dunno why it bothered.
Back on accents again, so many of these episodes have people trying to do American (i think) accents and failing pretty miserably. If you want cast an English guy, and he can't do an American accent, just let him stay English. Why cast him otherwise? Plently of Americans kicking around.
Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities: Pickman's Model (2022)
Worst episode so far
First of all, I can't say I'm familiar with Lovecraft, so not judging this based on his work.
I've liked all the episodes of Cabinet of Curiosities so far, more or less, but this one is just so boring.
I will say the sets and art design are good, but if you're the sort of person who is scared by paintings, maybe you shouldn't be watching horror.
The two main characters are doing accents, and the accents are godawful. You got William, an Englishman playing an 'American', and Dickie, an American, playing I don't even know what, sounds like he was taught to speak by Bugs Bunny and Mary Poppins Dick Van Dyke.
The story focuses on William, who is incredibly emotionally weak and overdramatic, gets so upset by a painting that it haunts him for years. And he's meant to be the protagonist.
Then near the end, some ridiculous looking creature that seems to be related to the scrotum-necked goblin king thing from the hobbit pops up from a wishing well.
Overall it's a dull and predictable story and I'll be skipping it if I watch the series again.
Violent Night (2022)
Tonally very confused
Not really sure how to judge this film.
It's a 15, obviously due to the fight scenes between the Santa and all the various bad guys, who we never really get a backstory to, other than one who wants to kill the Santa because he got blamed for killing an old man once, so he hates Christmas now and thinks that killing Santa will mean that there will be no more Christmases. He's not written to be insane, but that seems to be his only real motivation, other than the fact that the rich old lady somehow stole 300 million dollars from somewhere somehow, and now he wants it.
Aside from the action, this is a children's film that children aren't allowed to watch, and it makes no sense. We have this typical kids film protagonist child who doesn't stray from that box at all and is totally bland. Then there's all these horrible rich people, without any reason given as to why they're rich, and we're meant to be rooting for them.
For one, even if they weren't established as disgusting people I would be backing the villains to kill the rich people, but no. They don't even get any comeuppance for stealing the 300 million. Aside from I guess the fact that they burned half a million at one point to try to keep the Santa warm when he 'dies'. Then they have this saccharin 'I do believe in fairies' moment which unkills the Santa.
Oh yeah, and apparently he's a viking, cool I guess.
Should just have made it a babies film and toned down the gore, cos that's all it's good for.
Matilda: The Musical (2022)
Cringe
Most of the songs are good. Matilda's parents are entertaining enough, but none of the kids can act. All of them are stage kids, not suited to film. The main kid is incredibly shrill and hard to listen to, especially given the amount of time she spends talking/singing. The cgi is overused and the attempts at comedy are incredibly cringe, kids film or otherwise.
It has absolutely nothing on the Danny DiVito film, which is a crying shame, given that this one is British, like the original book.
Emma Thompson is passable, but having to be surrounded by so many annoying child actors has to be taxing.
Save your cash, read the book, or watch the original film.
The Witches (2020)
A film for American viewers only
Anyone else (in th least who's familiar with the original film, and the book) is bound to be completely alienated by it.
For one, the accent. Like everyone else says, it's terrible and all over the place, I don't suppose an American viewer would be too bothered by it, since it's not American, therefore it sounds the same to them and is the perfect villain voice.
I'm sorry to be taking this out on the yanks a bit, but I do really hate it when they take something made in the UK, or elsewhere and saturate it with Americanisms and flashy cgi, whatever. It's annoying. Would you be up for it if we took one of your classic books, took out everything that made it American and inserted a whole load of British history that nobody asked about? Was bad enough they made the boy in the original American.
Plus, the English kid was demoted from idiot to just being there, since they had to shoehorn in some girl mouse for a cliche love story kind of thing between underage mice.
The one positive I will give it, is Bruno doesn't say 'margarin' like he does in the original. Was a weird pronunciation.
Smile (2022)
Seriously annoying movie
Everything about this film is terrible, from the acting to the dialogue, to the camera work, to the music. It is one of the worst horror films I have ever seen.
This film is essentially a rip-off if It Follows, except instead of the 'curse' being passed on by sex, it's by someone dying with a witness. Because that's so much more entertaining.
The main actress is the pinnacle of what makes this movie so irritating. She herself is so completely annoying in every factor. She is unlikable, entitled, screechy and melodramatic.
There are many parts of the film which are clearly supposed to be scary or unnerving, which just come across as hilarious, like when she tried to kill the crazy guy, which is the only reason I didn't walk out of the cinema.
The music is incredibly irritating, particularly the random moments of pizzicato, and other assorted random noises, which just seem pointless.
There are also a great deal of just gratuitous swear words, and yeah, I get it's an 18, and I have no problem hearing these words or anything, but it just takes the edge of it and makes it irritating to listen to, especially when they're delivered the same exact way every single time.
There are also several annoying and unnecessary camera angles/shots. Such as the one where the camera spins upside down, which true, the first time looked quite good, but then it did it again. And again. And now I've got vertigo. There are also a couple of shots of things which are just gross, like a close up shot of the girl's face, or some pet food, or her eating disgustingly. I don't wanna see that. It's minging.
The jumpscares, of which there are an unnecessary amount, are generic, fairly badly done and didn't make me jump once, despite the sound mixing being ungodly loud for them.
In conclusion, this is absolutely nothing new and yet another 'whiny woman with past trauma thinks everyone needs to listen to her or they're in the wrong' movie.