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The Outsider (2020)
Hokey drivel, poor writing
This dull series drags on and on and finally finishes with the explosiveness of a homeopathic remedy for hayfever. It starts well but quickly degrades into a facile monster-hunt, with laughable characterisation, jump-scares that don't scare, and the pacing of a sloth. The dialogue is atrocious. Avoid.
Three stars because it starts well, but once Jason Bateman is out of it, it's awful
Destroyer (2018)
Noir without style or substance
In this painfully-shallow script, Kidman plays an emaciated Mars Attacks alien traumatized by loss and her role in it, and spends two hours shuffling around LA among a tiny cast of textbook heist characters. The dialogue is poor, the plot is weak, and Kidman is difficult to watch, as she barely looks human in her terrible make-up and grey-Christmas-tree-wig.
Had potential, but the writers forgot to add anything original, and to try to inject gravitas the director simply hits the slow-mo button, so much so that a 45-minute TV episode wastes 2 hours of your life.
No idea who would enjoy this. Not awful, but few redeeming features.
Prevenge (2016)
Not funny, poorly-written, pointless
This isn't much of anything. Any jokes are unsophisticated and fall flat. The comedy horror-gore is pointless, and the plot has no twists, no turns, no reason to follow it.
I read that this was written in 3 days, and it shows. Edit, polish, rewrite, wait, reread, edit, polish, rewrite. That's how it's meant to be, to ensure that you're putting out something good.
The acting was pretty good.
Could have been a lot more, but ultimately, devoid of art, devoid of humour.
Snowpiercer (2013)
Absurdist, needlessly-violent and contrived nonsense
I'm sure a lot of fans will immediately find this review "unhelpful", but in my opinion this film is a total waste of two hours.
It tries I think to be both Mad Max and some sort of unnecessary and outdated commentary on social class, and it fails miserably on both counts. This movie is like a very pointless linear video game - it basically has levels that the main (unlikable) characters have to progress through to reach the end. Each level has some novel and random twist, but the twists are just unpleasant and stupid.
I had a bad feeling about this movie from the start, beginning as it does with one of those news-radio sound-bite montages about how we ruined the planet attempting to fix it. This is hackneyed and clunky exposition to say the least.
I give this two stars because the visuals are decent. The plot is absent, the violence is over-the-top and absurd without offering anything really new (think Old Boy but ramped-up), the main protagonists are near-invincible, and the whole thing is distasteful and meaningless.
The featured review on this film has a guy comparing this to Robocop. I voted that his review was helpful - he genuinely really enjoyed this. I genuinely did not, and Robocop is one of my top films ever. Perhaps this is one of those films that polarises opinion, in which case, some people might love it. I did not.
Daredevil (2015)
Fantastic, character-driven drama
Daredevil is a fresh and surprising drama that centers around a handful of excellent main characters. In particular, Daredevil himself and his nemesis Wilson Fisk are fantastic, troubled and complex characters, far more than you would expect from a Marvel show. Wilson's assistant Wesley is also striking, basically Pat Bateman from American Psycho in the form of a lawyer and p.a. to Fisk.
There are a couple of hammy moments between Daredevil's friends Foggy and Karen, and an (IMO) unnecessary Ross and Rachel from Friends romantic dynamic, but this aside, this is a very well-written first series that made me want to binge-watch. There is some decent martial arts action too, but by far the star of the show is the moral ambiguity and the play between Daredevil and Fisk.
Excellent stuff.
Blade: Trinity (2004)
Worst film made by humans
This film is enormously freaking sheet. It's honestly the worst film I can think of. The dialogue made me want to turn inside out. I wanted all the humans to die so they wouldn't say any more dumb lines. I think I'm having a panic attack, that film was so bad. I'm getting palpitations. I will never enjoy any Ipod products ever again. There were frequent references to cereal products for some reason. The white man's beard made me feel dirty. The woman was truly obnoxious and actually used a bow and arrow. Please don't watch this film because it will make you very unhappy. Um, vampires and stuff. I need to make this review longer somehow, but thinking about this bad bad film is very tough. The extra people that ran around with Blade were very terribly awful. I did like Triple H's pony tail, however.