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salamandermike
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The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021)
Poor Writing For MCU
Situations, dialogue, banter feels formulaic and uninspired, like they were writing to a template of plot points they had to hit. Falcon and Winter's relationship feels shallow and forced which leaves the impression that the characters are shallow. MCU has built complex characters with emotional intelligence throughout all their movies, and this feels like an outlier. Having little soul, the story is mostly boring. The only interesting parts are the non-superhero scenes that talk to racial tensions. Those scenes have depth and realistic context which, in other MCU movies exists throughout the entire story and action scenes. In this story, depth is slid in between plot points like an afterthought. I have loved every MCU movie and WandaVision, but this one doesn't carry the energy of the others. It's a caricature of the MCU.
Hellboy (2019)
Not Even Good Actors Could Rescue Bad Directing
I loved the 2004 version with Ron Perlman. That production team nailed it. I was expecting they would reboot the franchise because they had some new ideas. Doesn't seem like that was their motivation. The 2019 version is a mess. The source material is SO rich, but they only skimmed the surface of it, focusing on broad ideas so much that I couldn't really care about any of the characters or even the fate of humanity. The writing is bad and feels like a Jr. High boy's creative writing assignment, full of fantastic concepts that have all been done before. There's a lot of explaining about past events and scene setup that should come from situations and dialog, but instead is given to us in a "Oh yeah, forgot to tell you..." fashion. Then there was the editing... Scenes were mishmashed together to tell the story loosely. I'm not an editor, but I even noticed scenes that would have been better left out or rearranged in a different order. Halfway through the movie, I left.
Love, Simon (2018)
Disney-like Take On Being A Gay Teen
This is one of those fairy tales where you're gay and literally everyone around you is supportive except for two goofball bullies that are not really that threatening. My god, I wish I had come out in that setting. But, this movie isn't about the realities we face while coming out as a teenager; it's just about the inner struggle of coming to terms with not being hetero in a heteronormative world. It's extremely Disney in its portrayal. And I loved it! I was ready for a lighthearted take on this subject. I doubt I would have gone to see yet another gay tragedy in this world of gay tragedies.