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OvidiuStoin
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That '70s Show: Rip This Joint (2004)
WHAT IS GOING ON???
To be honest the characters of Eric and Donna have started to make 0 sense to me. I do not understand what triggered these changes in them, I barely recognize them, Donna loved Eric for being smart and responsible, now he is a lazy rebel, wasting his life (much like Hyde was in the previous seasons and she never had a thing for him)... So why is she even with him at this point? Then again, Donna was a responsible character herself, she had a dream she was willing to fight for, she wanted to support the feminists, now she's ok with being Hot Donna, an objectified hot blonde radio bimbo, she wanted to move into a tiny trailer, live a poor pathetic life with a loser Eric...
What the heck happened to these 2? And maybe this was a '70s thing, but why are they so obsessed with getting married at such a young age, even though they're both terrified of it and have 0 money?
At this point I continue watching it for Kelso, Hyde, Red and Bob, even Kitty has become obnoxious. I hated Donna and Jackie from the very begining and Fes was kinda cute in the first seasons, now he is nothing but a lazy stupid creep.
Too bad, I know this is a sitcom, but when the writers are making stupid illogical decisions like this, can't end well.
Vikings: The Last Act (2020)
More of a review for the entire season 6
This final episode was not bad itself, but it is pretty bad as the ending of a once great show, as they really messed up some narrative threads.
The best thing about the past 2 episodes was the return of Floki, he did not say much, but his mere presence said it all, the actor is brilliant and his ending was satisfactory in my opinion. He seems to have finally found his piece of Heaven (or Hell - that is up to Ubbe), Ragnar is still haunting him, which makes perfect sense since his life was greatly impacted by him. Floki gave the impression of the man that has seen it all, he truely went through a lot, lost his wife and child, his best friend, the hope of a new start. His ending was a nice one.
Ubbe would be the second best ending of the show. Yes he made some stupid decisions and got all of Bjorn and Torvi's children killed (still think Torvi was the worst mother ever), but other than that it was ok, he wanted to explore just like his father and did just that. My only issue was with the eternal cliche, like the one from 'Lord of the flies' (which I hated), that in every group of people there are some that are pure evil and will never change. I understood Kjetill's ambition to become king and why he was an a**, but even in the significantly smaller group that has reached the Golden Land, there had to be a greedy one that wanted gold instead of peace. Olso I disliked the mystery around Othere.
Harald's ending was kind of cool, except the way he died. Ok, he was killed by the new bishop, that must have been a skilled fighter, like Heahmund, but him being taken by surprise...was lame. He deserved to die in the middle of the battle, surrounded by 10 English soldiers. He was a badass fighter and a sly ruler. But loved his last moments, seeing Halfdan again was a big plus, as I liked his character a lot.
Bjorn's ending also made sense, I was the point of killing him, but I did not see the point of also erasing his lineage, why killed all of his children? Gunnhild's death was also stupid, she was a respected shield maiden, deserved to be queen of Kattegat, rather than Ingrid. I kind of hated the whole Ingrid and Erik story arc, was stupid.
Ivar was a complicated and troubled character. His ending was lame, yes he deserved to die in battle, but not like that. He should have died fighting, not sitting there and waiting to be stabbed. Also I did not like the fact that he was eventually scared to die.
Hvitserk I never quite liked. He was so bland and uninteresting, boring character. Him becoming a Christian was stupid, there was nothing pointing in this direction, it was just... Would have made sense for him to return to Kattegat and rule there, since no one would have expected him to become king there.
Lagertha - her whole story this season was useless. She did enough in the previous seasons. Could have peacefully retired, without all that fuss. She died only because the writers have decided to kill everyone that mattered. Maybe she even deserved to reclaim her throne as queen of Kattegat. Old and wise, would have made a great ruler.
As for the entire season 6, it was much better than season 5 that had bored me to death. The Rus arc reminded me of the old Vikings, it was interesting (except for Katia's story arc, saw no point there, at least why did she have to resemble Freydis). The whole Iceland/Greenland/Golden Land arc was kind of stale, as it was in season 5, could have been much shorter. So, it's not the GoT kind of bad ending of a once great TV series, but could have been much better still.
The Boys: Nothing Like It in the World (2020)
Don't understand what people were expecting from The Boys
I am watching and enjoying the heck out of this show because it is so much different than your typical superhero show. People complaining that this episode is slow and boring...then don't watch this, go back to all other superhero flicks, with mindless non-stop action and cardboard villains...
I just loved this episode, so much more than the previous one that got such a high ranking (tbh I didn't understand why). To people who found this a filler or a slow burner, this is called build-up and good writing, something you probably never heard about.
Homelander does not cease to surprise me, damn he must be one the most fascinating characters I have ever seen in a movie or tv series. This is what I call a true antagonist, I am uncomfortable and on edge every time he is on screen, he's creepy and scary, like a time bomb, you never know when he might snap. And the actor is pure gold. And Stormfront herself gets more and more interesting. Keep up the good work, writers and producers!
The Flash: A Girl Named Sue (2020)
Please producers/writers read
Someone said in a review of the previous episode that we should stop bashing on Iris, that the writers are to blame for what The Flash has become, that they are lacking new ideas of bringing Barry again to his former glory... This is partially correct, the writers are definitely going through their own Crisis, but Iris is still a deus ex machina omnipotent character...This is just absurd, a brilliant scientist trapped in a parallel dimension for 1322 days needed Iris to come illuminate her within minutes...Iris, who is impersonating the cheerleader archetype, who probably hooked-up with the entire football team, not giving a damn about her grades and education, can go now at the same pace as genius scientists...The perfect human being, never making mistakes, never apologizing, never taking responsibility for her stupid plans, always judging others...WOW!!!
So yes, The Iris is still a big darn issue of this show. And I can understand that The Crisis arc was expensive, but if they ran out of money, why bother making so many episodes? The 10 episodes format is very popular nowadays and pays off, much better quality over quantity (one example that comes to mind is Lucifer). The Flash is missing from his own show (probably because the streak effects are expensive), the shot of Central City and STAR labs looked like it was from a '90s B grade TV show...Come on... This is still no excuse for what you are delivering, Nash for instance is such an interesting, underdeveloped character, AND WE ALL LOVE TOM CAVANAGH, the guy can act, use him if you ran out of ideas and budget to develop Barry further...
Ah and the feminist agenda...My beloved writers, might I ask why is it that you are striving for female dominance rather than male-female equality? We get it, nobody wants any more annoying female characters like Willie from Temple of Doom, who did nothing but screamed and needed to be rescued the entire movie, we get it, most women are not like that, we live among them and we can see that they are not brain-dead...but nobody likes Mary Sues either, cocky, arrogant, know-it-all, omnipotent goddesses...
Also I have learned in 4th grade that what matters is what we do, not what we say...All your female characters are claiming to be smart, strong and independent, then making the stupidest decisions ever...All these you prove, not say...Empty words...Pathetic, your female characters are mere jokes, you are not empowering women, you are shaming them even more...
Let's take Cecile as an example, I can remember her second appearance in the show, I guess, she was this badass DA, washing the floor with Joe for asking her to do something irrational...Yes, that's it, she was the freaking DA, she did her job, that is powerful, independent woman, thinking for herself, making her own decisions, not the parody that you have made her character now...All she's doing now is being loud, annoying, pushy, talking waay too much, she's a mere caricature of the woman she was...
Another thing: tell your actresses that over-acting does not make them cooler, it's needy and lame (I am looking at Amunet and now Sue)...Also stop trying to make Ralph look like a smart, genius detective...He's not, he's a nice guy, he's funny and goofy, but dumb as a brick (made me laugh when he went toe-to-toe with Sherloque...), he can be a great superhero, but not a detective, let's face it already...
I could go on, but...what's the point...
The Flash: Love Is a Battlefield (2020)
We get it, THE IRIS is cool
Now, dear producers, if you like her so much, why not giving her her own show? Really now, then maybe you can focus on THE FLASH!!! (last time I checked this was the title of this show), because WE ARE SICK OF THE IRIS AND HER PLOT ARMOR...
The Mist (2007)
Just don't...
...watch this... After watching The Green Mile, a movie that is close to perfection in every imaginable way, being a horror buff, I have decided to watch The Mist...well, it didn't go well as I only managed to bare with it for ~40 minutes...never ever have I seen such hollow characters, such random and boring dialogue...also all the actors seem to have accept their part solely for the cash...all the horror movie cliches were hit in the first half an hour...damn, those 40 minutes were probably the most painful of my life, I had no investment in either of the characters and hope they all died by the end of the movie (except maybe the young kid)...
Contracted (2013)
The potential it had...
This movie was very promising, I do not personally like the zombie concept, I find them slow, dull, boring... But this film could have finally come up with a theory regarding the cause/source of the zombie disease (all other movies more or less mention the cause of the outbreak, usually it just happens for zombies to start roaming the streets, the cause - some unknown virus). It started out quite nice, the dude carrying the disease was indeed creepy, especially the fact that they didn't show his face.
But then the movie started and all went downhill. The dialogue must have been written by a brick, all the actors except the lead actress (she was quite decent, had a few awkward scenes, but I blame the garbage dialogue for that) seemed to be C grade professionals.
Obviously my biggest issue is with the reaction people had regarding the appearance of the lead actress, who basically turns into a walking corpse - she's got maggots down there, so I can only imagine the rotten flesh smell around her, but nope, nobody seemed to have been bothered by that. On the contrary, in the end I came to the conclusion that all of the side characters were actually necrophiles, not only the guy that spread the disease.
So people around this poor girl claimed that she looked like s**t in the very beginning (always hated this in movies, felt like the make-up artists never even try to make the actors look even remotely bad when other characters claim that someone is looking like c**p), when she looked like maybe she didn't sleep all too well, but later in the movie, when she was bleeding through her eyes, her finger nails were falling, had blue veins all over her body and a big wound on her lip, nope, all good, she was good to work. AMAZING!!!
So no, this movie didn't work at all, bad script, overall bad acting, cringe moments, a clueless mother who didn't use the bathroom for hours so she could see the shape her daughter was in, a woman who starts decomposing but goes to work and to a flower competition (although let's give her a break and assume her brain was rotting), a horny sexually harassing 'friend' who could not get 'no' for an answer (and later comes to bang a corpse, yuck), a stereotypical lesbian gf that treats the zombie girl like c**p but zombie girl also can't deal with rejection, the most moronic doctor in the history of cinema (this girl is having heavy hemorrhage and you're giving her a cream and sending her home...), etc.
I could go on, but there is no point in it. Avoid at all cost!
The Descent (2005)
Another case of the emperor's new clothes
Some people will tell you that this entire movie is nothing but a big allegory or metaphor, outlining one's descent into madness. What can I say, there will always be people seeing things that do not actually exist, but unfortunately it is not the case within this movie. Nope, the creatures are real, as it would be confirmed by the sequel (don't even get me started abut that one, this movie is 100 times better than its sequel).
So yeah, do not listen to the snobs, there are very good movies that are actually allegories, but this is not one of them. The characters are all horrible people, I wished all of them dead within the first 10 mins and the lead actress is the worst, in the end letting her bff die because she fornicated with her ex... Pathetic!
Overall not entirely bad, but nothing we haven't already seen before.
Legacies: There's a Place Where the Lost Things Go (2020)
We desire change, yet when we get it, we complain about it
I see this episode was not very popular among the fans, however it gets a kudos from me for the effort. Of course it was not perfect, mostly story wise, yet the cinematography was beautiful, I really did appreciate some of the shots. The 'Casablanca' vibe was obviously there. I see no issue from time to time to let myself enjoy something different, especially something that brings some nostalgia with it, so, crew members, good job for being bold, don't get discouraged and dare to play/experiment once in a while, I for one am looking forward to it.
The Curse of La Llorona (2019)
I officially declare the horror genre dead...
This movie was frustratingly stupid, my brain hurt while watching it - felt like the crew gathered and said: " 'Ight, we gonna do this horror movie really quick, filled with all the cliches in the horror universe"...A quick gash grab and they succeeded, this movie made more than 10 times more than it costed, so they are going to do even more of these...
Here are some of the things that have bothered me, in random order:
- There are 2 kinds of horror movies involving kids: one where the kids tell the parents about monsters/ghosts and the parents do not believe them in the beginning; and the other where the kids for some reason do not tell the parents about a ghost that they not only see, but physically ABUSES them - this movie is the latter.
- The mother sees her daughter having a big wound on her hand and goes with the "I fell" excuse or whatever lie she said, without asking more details - mother of the year award goes to...
- The father was mentioned, yet he contributed with nothing to the story, only perhaps to explain why the mother was on edge and neglected her children...
- The priest said that in the past he did not believe in myths and lore - IRONIC
- So the church acknowledges there are evil spirits out in the world, that could kill their victims in a few days or hours (it's not like you can reason with them), yet the investigation for getting involved in such a case takes a few weeks, cuz they are so busy doing... WHAT???
- In most horror movies you kind of feel for the evil entity, it has an interesting back story, what it does is wrong, but it had been wronged itself in the past, while still being human, but no, this broad finds out her hubby is cheating on her, so she decides to murder her children as punishment...MOTHER OF THE MILLENNIUM...then someone (WHO??? GOD??? THE DEVIL???) curses her to roam the earth killing other innocent children (yup, that certain someone who 'punished' her like this is the movie's true ANTAGONIST)
- Patricia, another mother of the year, thinks she'd find peace after her 2 innocent children are being murdered by the weeping broad, by getting other 2 innocent children murdered...yup...
- The shaman dude first decides not to help the desperate mother with 2 children that are being haunted by an evil spirit, even tho that is basically what he does for a living...
- It felt like the shaman dude was 'chilling' near the Hollywood studio where this was being produced and the crew invited him on set, 0 fu**s given by the actor, he had no idea why was he even there and his attempts at humor were cringy...
- I am sick of idiot kids risking their lives for a toy, yes I have been a child and I haven't been that stupid at that age...
- Americans some times forget their houses are so big that they have a back entrance...
- The mother jumped in the pool to randomly search for her daughter in the water, instead of first pinpointing her exact location from the outside and only then jumping to get her out...
- The shaman dude hopped in a taxi the next morning, right after the crazy mom Patricia had shot him in the chest or shoulder during the night...hmm, ok...
- The acting was laughable...
Should I go on? I think not... This one has pulled the plug for me on the horror genre, no originality left, everything has been said and done, R.I.P.
Supernatural: The Scar (2018)
Maybe there's still some hope
I must say that after the disastrous start of the season that was episode 1, I had almost lost my last hope. Episode 2 was a bit better, but still far from OK (though I liked a lot the cinematography in the final scene when Dean appears, those red light eerie shots were awesome). But I personally liked this episode, it gave me hope that maybe Supernatural is not yet entirely lost.
I appreciated the fact that Michael was only mentioned and not actually present as it reminded me of the good ol' days, when Supernatural episodes were much simpler, with Sam and Dean fighting a regular monster, without having an overpowered super villain lurking in the shadows. I liked the Jack/Castiel arc, they were dealing with a girl that was enchanted by a witch (just like Sam and Dean would in the glorious past) and Jack finally learned that he can be helpful and save lives even without having his powers, he realized how important brains are (in opposition to what Dean had told him, that he weighs 100 pounds soaking wet and all) and that he must not entirely rely on muscles. Maybe now we're not gonna see him whining about not being a Nephilim anymore.
Jody still kicks ass and I liked a lot that I haven't seen any SJW cr*p in this episode as she got punched like a man and also her arm got broken, despite being a woman. Equality is the answer, kudos to that!
The Kaya character is pretty awesome, love her cool movements with her spear, some of them seem ripped out of a computer game. And it's nice to see that she's not evil, or not as evil as I thought. Another thing that worked for me was the absence of Bobby (who should have stayed dead) and Mary (who never should have been brought back) in this episode. Looking forward to what twists we might get, even though perhaps they should wrap it up this season.
Supernatural: Stranger in a Strange Land (2018)
Perhaps it is time to let Supernatural go...
I will give the creators of this TV show 2 more episodes to change my mind, otherwise with great pain I will have to let it go. This might be the worst Supernatural episode that I have seen, for the love of Lucifer, I could have shot more realistic action sequences with my phone.
God how I miss the old times, when therewas only Sam and Dean fighting a cunning normal monster. I've had it with all these ridiculous boring story arcs involving super-powerful beings. And what, now there is an entire army of hunters at Sam's disposal???
They should ged rid of all these extra characters, make the army spread through the country and fight monsters; the new Bobby I don't like and they should stop tainting the memory of the real Bobby; mother Mary I only liked in the younger version, this one did not convince me at all, there is no real chemestry between her and Sam and Dean, I feel like she doesn't actually care about them; and Jack, well they should send him to school now that he's a normal dude, I feel like he played his part...
This episode felt amateurish as heck, especially because after it I have watched some episodes of Daredevil...and damn the quality of those fights was many leagues ahead of what I've seen here, this time.
Supernatural, get better, or else it's gonna be the end of the road for me and you!
The Nun (2018)
A great disappointment
I am Romanian and the entire audience in the theater was mostly laughing through the most part of this movie. At times I thought I was in the wrong hall, watching a comedy or even worse, a parody. Of course there was a remark sounding something like: "Here in Romania we live in the Dark Ages"...Well sc**w you Hollywood for distorting reality and misinform people, thank you for the nice advertising of my country...So just to sum it up, in 1952 most likely in France people from mountain villages also used carriages to travel to the woods, ah and we do not spit on the ground every time someone mentions an 'evil' place or whatever...
But leaving all these things aside, the movie was plain horrible. I had so high expectations for The Nun as Valak was beautifully portrayed in the previous installments, it was one of those non CGI entities that gave me the chills (and I must mention that this does not happen too often) - pretty much like the bride in black from Insidious chapter 2. What I like about these kind of 'monsters' is that they are insanely creepy without doing much, but merely being there and staring into the camera, without having to show teeth or a gross tongue,
just displaying the evil and pure cruelty in their eyes being enough. And all this by only using real people and make-up, to me all the CGI monsters are cheap and laughable. And what did I get in this movie? Most of the times a badly rendered CGI Valak... What a big pile of c**p...
Oh and wait, there's more, I was actually expecting Valak to be the focus of The Nun, but no, I mostly got some lame zombies delivering cliche, childish jump scares... I thought it would be an origin story, but they didn't bother for more than 2 minutes to explain how and mostly WHY did Valak came into our world. So I was watching another movie with a villain whose motives are shady - doing evil just for the sake of evil...
The characters/cast? I felt that Taissa Farmiga had no idea what was her purpose most part of the movie, like she was there only because her big sister is beautifully playing Lorraine Warren in the Conjuring movies. Of course we have the usual comic relief which was in far too many scenes, having cheesy cliche lines. Ah and of course, the big expert, the veteran with plenty of experience, one of a kind in the world who got played by the demon on every freaking occasion. I was under the impression the he had no idea what he was dealing with and how to defeat it (come one, he found out the name of the demon very early in the movie and that's the hardest part of an exorcism).
I gave it a 3 star rating only for the beautiful shots, ominous soundtrack and creepy atmosphere. Besides that, the acting was terrible, the script must have been written by a 6 grader ("Holy s**t", "The holiest..." was the character's reaction upon seeing the blood of Christ - I must mention that I am not religious, but come on...), there were plenty of inaccuracies (Romanians are Orthodox, yet the abbey was Catholic - otherwise the Vatican's implication makes no sense; none of the nuns were praying in Romanian, but in Latin - ok maybe since they seem to have been an illusion created by Valak, maybe Latin makes sense, the demon does not speak Romanian I guess).
In conclusion, should you watch this one? Well that's none of my business, but beware as it is a very bad movie (I found Slender Man to be better than this one), the weakest in this franchise. I really hope they will make it up to Valak in the next installments and make proper use of his huge creepy potential.
Knock Knock (2015)
Pay attention to subtleties
Reading other reviews for this title only saddens me as people prove to me once more how shallow they are and how easily they are missing the subtleties of things. Of course I am not implying that this movie is Oscar worthy, no, not even close, but it got me thinking and that was enough for me not to consider it a waste of my 'precious' time (I hate those people who always whine that they have wasted time and money for a movie bla, bla - every movie is a risk, it might be bad, it might be good, but obviously you didn't have anything better to do since you chose to watch it).
"Knock Knock" had kind of a "deja vu" effect on me, as I once met two beautiful girls (yes, one blonde and one brunette) that were shallow, immature and a bit crazy, just like the two female characters from this movie. Of course they didn't tie me up to a bed and rape me, but they were disturbing enough, so that made the psycho girls from "Knock Knock" seem realistic to me.
Keanu's performance was laughable, yes, the man just can't act, but the reason for his character's fall into temptation made sense to me (his wife is very busy so their sex life was put on hold and the scar on his shoulder was a hint that he might have been into young girls). So there you have it, two hot girls are showing at his door, continuously hit on him, he tries to resist as much as possible, but he eventually gives in as the girls literally get physical and rape him (might be hard for women to understand, but having two naked girls grabbing your junk is hard to resist).
Another problem raised by this movie is the power that women have in a court of law. A couple getting divorced, the mother will almost always get the children. Rape allegations, the woman will always be seen as the victim and win the trial. It's an actual problem and it proves that double standards still exist when it comes to man-woman equality.
As for the motives of the girls, they weren't explicitly specified, but seemed to me that Bell was abused by her father (maybe step father) when she was still a child. As for Genesis, perhaps her family was ruined by a cheating father and that had a strong psychological impact on her. I really liked their performances, their craziness was believable to me.
Yes maybe the ending was kind of stupid, but the fact that the girls got away unpunished is not what has bothered me. In real life most situations don't have a happy ending and bad people get away with their dirty deeds, so that added extra realism to the story.
In order to enjoy it, just take it for what it is: a story about a horny "nice guy" father who stumbles upon the opportunity to have "free pizza", tries to decline it, the pizza flies in his mouth so he takes a bite and then tries to deal with the consequences (also shows how a prefect life can be ruined within minutes after making a bad decision). I know there a re plenty of plot holes and moronic situations, but if it were to make 100% sense, this movie (and so many others) wouldn't exist. People complain that Evan was overpowered by two girls, but if you think about it, as a man, there is a certain hesitation when it comes to hitting a woman, so it kind of made sense to me.
Is it a movie that I shall recommend to someone else or that I shall re-watch? Certainly not, but it's also not as bad as people here are trying to make it look (people who enjoy the trend of hating on movies of certain directors - Eli Roth, M. Night Shyamalan or actors - Adam Sandler, Nic Cage). Don't be biased.