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Das letzte Land (2019)
Best no-budget film ever.
I had never heard of this, I just stumbled across it by accident at 3am and fully expected total trash. But sometimes in life you are very happy to be wrong, and this totally blew me away. I can't recommend it enough if you like cheap sci-fi done well, or any films where just one or two people are stuck in one room the whole time. To make a film so minimal, and still have me captivated from start to finish when I was just wanting to sleep, speaks volumes about the quality of film making here. But if you are someone that only likes big budget action films, car chases, explosions, or superhero extravaganzas, then this will be 2 hours of absolute torture for you.
Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway (2019)
Bonkers.
The world needs more films like this. Its like The Mighty Boosh wanted to produce a sci-fi as a side project, but for some reason they wanted to keep their names out of it. Every criticism that you may have about this being ridiculously cheap and making no sense is everything that makes this film wonderful. I can't be the only person thats sick of knowing everything about a film the second i see the poster or hear the byline. The bigger budget a film has then the more cliches they usually cram in. But this film looks like was made for the price of a lunchtime snack for the main cast. And a small snack at that.
The Batman (2022)
The best thing DC have ever done.
I'm not massively into DC, I'm much more of a Marvel fan-boy. Though I love each version of "Watchmen", and I also think that DC have way better animations than Marvel do. But for the most part, I could have happily lived in a world without any Batman, Superman, or Wonder Woman in it at all.
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So I'm as shocked as anyone to see me write the following....
This is possibly the greatest superhero film ever made.
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I know! Right? But hear me out. Because this is NOT all lasers, robots, aliens, giants, and action galore. This is an amazing film that's as different to something like "Justice League", or Marvels "Endgame", as it is possible to be.
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But here's the thing.... It's awesome, BECAUSE it's so different to those spectacular events. This is basically a noir detective film. And while it might be about a billionaire caped crime fighter, everything else here is as down to earth, gritty, realistic, and even as believable as possible.
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The Batmans costume here looks like he has cobbled bits together from various military and hardware shops. Colin Farrell is unrecognisable as The Penguin, who here is just a fat guy with a bit of a pointed nose, rather than someone with actual flippers like in some versions! The Batmobile here is just an extra souped-up muscle car, rather than the one off armoured car of the Nolan trilogy. Everything here works BECAUSE it goes against the grain of all other superhero films.
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And for lovers of Nirvana, the soundtrack being one long reworking of "Something In The Way" just never gets old. If anything, it helps this film seem both classic and timeless, while somehow still being more modern than anything, all at the same time.
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And what we have here might be slow, dark, atmospheric, and just shy of three hours long. But at no point in my first viewing did it feel slow or did my attention wander even slightly. Even in my second viewing I was into the last twenty minutes before I so much as glanced away from the screen.
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This is the best Batman film, with easily the best Batman ever, the best Gotham ever, the best Alfred, best Penguin, Riddler, and CatWoman. And all by light-years, rather than miles. This wipes the floor with almost anything and everything that DC have ever done, and gives the very best of Marvel some stiff competition. Though as I say, this wins by being at completely the other end of the film spectrum. Well, as opposite as can possibly be while still being a superhero film I should say.
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If you ever saw a film called "Franklyn" and loved the mood, style, and atmosphere, but just wished it had been a better actual film, well this, is that, times a thousand.
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Star Trek: Picard (2020)
W.T.F. Happened?!
I loved the first season of ''Star Trek: Picard''. And that's no small thing considering that, at around the same time, i was also watching great shows like ''The Expanse'', and ''The Boys''. So it makes it all the sadder that season two of ''Picard'' is some of the worst, by the numbers, cliche ridden, barrel-scraping, cookie-cutter garbage that i have seen in decades. And i don't mean that it's just dissapointing compared to season one. That would be understandable. But season two is bad compared to the worst of anything that TV has ever had to offer. And i don't just mean within the Star Trek franchise either, or even within science fiction in general. I honestly and seriously mean that season two of ''Picard'' is one of the very worst things on screen, ever.
The very moment i heard that the plot was the team travelling back in time to (more of less) present day L. A. then i instantly cringed. After all, it's not like it's been done before is it? Oh, except by Kirk, and Janeway, and probably others slipping my mind for now. And it's also not like there are any other citys in the world either. We all know that everything happens exlusivly in LA, New York, or at The Whitehouse. There are simply no other locations on Earth (are there Hollywood?)
But if that wasn't basic, template writing enough, the second that the team arrive in Earths past one of them gets hurt and rushed to a clinic. From there, i knew for certain that i could tell you almost all of the plot for the next couple of episodes, and half the plot for the rest of the season. He meets a hot nurse, he then seperatly meets her precocious and annoying child, who explains (without much reason) that his mum is currently single, various members of the team get arrested, etc, etc, It's like i'm watching almost any old Trek from the last half a century, and all that's changed is the names and faces. And there is only one small jokey reference to kind of say ''Yes, THIS again''. To be honest, they could have littered season two with those self-deprciating-humour scenes, and turned it into one long bad self-parody. Yes, it would have been like a second rate version of ''The Orville'', but that would still have been a massive improvment on what this is.
Because next we get a baddie inside someones head that nobody else can see or hear (done endlessly in ''Farscape'', and WAY better in ''Altered Carbon'' and ''The Expanse''), a whole episode inside Picards mind (not far off the ''it was all a dream'' cliche), and even a damn song! And that's me out. When i somehow get so far into a book, film, or TV series, and still don't have to see the end, that's when i know it sucks. Because IF i've made it past the halfway point, and i can still bail out without even wondering how things go, then it must truly be garbage. And i have only done that about four times in roughly forty-five years. But yes, this gets THAT bad. And from having been so good (I. M. O.) to start with, that must make it one of the biggest, or at least one of the fastest drops in quality in TV history.
Tenet (2020)
One of the very WORST films that i have seen in over 40 years.
Bloated. Pretentious. Cliched as hell. Just plain dull throughout. And with easy to spot continuity mistakes early on that are nothing at all to do with time travel.
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Much of the hype around this film have made us think that the flipping backwards and forwards in time will be hard to follow. Well it isn't. What is harder to take though is the fast paced conversations, and the choppy editing of a small car advert. By two hours into Tenet i am just to tired to give a damn anymore. And more than once i found myself thinking of the "Fast talking, high trousers" bit in Family Guy. But no amount of fast talking can distract from the total B. S. of this film.
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Talking of Family Guy, remember one scene where they were criticizing a Hollywood writer for calling his main protagonist "John Everyman" ? Well the protagonist in this film is called "The Protagonist." Seriously!!
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And this film is also full of shock-revelations that are nothing of the sort. I'm no genius, but i saw every single one coming hours ahead. If i was watching this in a cinema, then by the time this film goes "Surprise! It was him all along" i can easily picture 200 people all yawning at once. By the time of the reveals, it would have been more of a surprise if it had been anyone else at all.
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But as a fan of some films that are "so bad they are good" i could maybe overlook all of this, is it wasn't for Kenneth Branagh. If this man has previously won any awards for acting then he should give them all back right now. Imagine all the worst Bond villains added together, but worse than that, and whispering at a totally inaudible level throughout. I connected a large pair of external speakers to my TV, turned them up to full, and still could not make out a word he said in the entire film. Re-watching Tenet with subtitles enabled a couple of times (just to make sure that i haven't simply imagined how bad it is) has only emphasized how bad his performance and character are. I can imagine between takes Christopher Nolan saying "Yes, just like that love, but only much much worse this time". This is simply the worst acting that i have seen since "Plan 9 From Outer Space". But at least that film was meant to be bad. This is just terrible. Which makes little sense, because just before watching this i watched "Mindhorn", where Kenneth Branagh plays a kind of spoof version of himself. And he is absolute gold in that!!
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And if anyone tries to say that i just didn't get it, or that it was to clever for me, well they are wrong. This film is nowhere near as clever as it likes to think it is, or wants to be. Apart from the lack of sex, and the time travel aspect, this film is basically the worst Jame Bond rip-off ever. More repeat viewings, just to help cure my insomnia, have only confirmed for me that this is easily in the top five worst films that i have ever seen in my life (and i recently binge-watched all five "Sharknado" films!)
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