chaiadammason Reviews

Reminiscence (2021)

Unbelievably boring

[4/10 · 6 November 2023]

What a waste With a premise this there are so many options to explore a world, particularly the submerged one with snorkeling to find what mysteries lay beneath the old cities and buildings etc - the only scene of this is a random fight between two of the characters as they try to drown each other

The only redeeming features are the cast and obviously the production value which was sadly a waste.

Instead of any of the fresh sci fi stories that could be told we get a half-baked facsimile of a mid 20th century noire romance/revenge tale with a bittersweet ending that leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

I'm not going to make any gags about women directors and it's clear that it would have been just as bad if not worse with a male one - however the over emphasis on romance kind of became the focal point of the story and it wasn't enough to hold it together.

As for the old 'memory videos' gag that's been done to death, all it does is remind the audience about the brave new transhumanist world that we are entering into that most humans simply do not want or need.

The Highwaymen (2019)

Not bad

[7/10 · 5 November 2023]

I suppose everyone in the Anglosphere (I'm English) and probably everyone else as well has heard of Bonnie & Clyde and even seen a movie of it as I assume there were numerous other films made.

So why make/watch another B&C movie? This one is told from the perspective of those who hunted for the couple giving it a more fascinating and sombre twist. For myself I don't think I could sit through another manic Bonnie Clyde movie so I decided to give it a go. It has a soft meditative tone punctuated by an observation of the obvious fatigue and desperation of the authorities especially amongst the growing popularity of the outlaws.

Another reason to watch of course is the stellar cast, Harrelson and Kostner now grandads, something that is riffed on in the movie and presumably matching the ages of the actual persons the characters are based on.

But the real delight for me and the main reason I'd give to watch it is the soundtrack which is bordering on the sublime. In fact I watched much of it with my eyes close (as I was trying to sleep for insomnia)

The most fascinating and in fact one of the more rewarding aspects of this study is the fact that the outlaws themselves are not given one scene and are not featured except in wide shots and don't even have any close ups until the final showdown. This allows the audience to avoid empathising with them and instead follow the perspective of law enforcement.

As an aside regarding Woody Harrelson I also remember in the 90s seeing Natural Born Killers, a kind of modern horror version of Bonnie & Clyde which left a distinctly nasty taste in my mouth with the sensationalist ultra violence popular in the late 80s and 90s and thankfully seems to have been toned down nowadays.

Bonnie and Clyde is obviously an important story in American History. What I didn't realise was the resounding popularity for these two murderers amongst the masses. I suppose it says a lot about the complex paradoxes of American culture and human societies in general. Maybe it says something about the American romanticism of the lawless 'old west' and freedom from (imagined) "oppressors" (these Americans worshipping these murderers want to try living in Russia or nearly anywhere else at this time) and how removed Americans had become from their folkloric origins to compare these two vagrants with the story of Robin Hood. There are more prescient reasons for their popularity as reading any online synopsis will tell, mainly the recession and the fact they were robbing banks of course.

The whole thing leaves a kind of bad taste in the mouth to be honest but is another interesting chapter in the history of famous criminals and their pursuers.

A decent film, as others have mentioned probably and instant classic.

One Piece (2023– )

Almost better than the original and that's saying something.

[9/10 · 7 September 2023]

I'm one of the few I suppose non-Japanese who have followed this show from the beginning, or at least from when the first English fansubs hit the net in the early 21st century. (I think the manga started in 1998 and the animation a couple years later? Damn that's nearly 25 years ago.) At first I didn't think much of the style of animation, I was a grown up by then and had left college - but returned to it and quickly got hooked following the animation well into my late 20s. I stopped watching it years ago shortly after the time skip (following the Whitebeard War) but have since read the Manga and though I got rid of most of my merchandise I still remember the show fondly despite being middle aged now, it remains one of the most exciting adventures and character building modern science fiction fantasy mythologies.

Oda did something special with this story with his unique assimilation of a bewildering number of historical and pop culture references, not least his now hundreds of characters being largely caricatures of famous Japanese, Hollywood or pop culture celebrities and musicians. As an Englishman I am particularly drawn to the representation of maritime history which as a maritime nation the British have played a large part in for good and/or ill. Funnily enough there is very little actual sailing or maritime lore in the story - it's clear that Oda has little sailing experience and chooses to focus on the characters and ludicrous scenarios - this doesn't make it any less interesting, just confuses me slightly that there is no real even reference to navigation or ship mechanics when most of it takes place on the water. This is transferred to the live action show though this at least has a few moments of navigation and references to port and starboard at least.

For some reason I ended up on IMDB today and One Piece was there - I headed to Netflix which I don't really use anymore and watched it all. The first few episodes were a bit low key, and seemed rushed - it was clear that there wasn't a huge budget with this one, but by the time Sanji turned up I was fully on board. It's clear that though there aren't as many special effects as the animation (that would have been prohibitively expensive and probably overwhelming) it's also clear that a lot of love has gone into this production - the casting was spot on. I remember reading a few years ago the nationalities of the Straw hat crew as defined by Oda for the beginning as it's hard to tell in the original as they all look Japanese and/or European (as realistically only Europeans generally have variation in hair and eye colour) and I was glad to see that they'd of course stuck with Oda's specifications of nationality - it was great in fact to see these represented for the FIRST TIME! As of course in the original they all speak Japanese and though they were speaking English and most of the actors are English or American, Luffy is clearly Brazilian (though it's unclear but of course not impossible that his gramps would be Scottish but with Scots roots myself this was a welcome addition and maybe Oda intended this as well)

It was clear that this show deviated from the manga storyline considerably for brevity's sake and for story progression - which actually was an improvement in some ways in terms of Nani's story particularly - though I must admit I would have liked more of Don Krieg but at least he was there for a moment - most of all I missed Jango he was hilarious. Kuro was very formidable and was seen making an escape so maybe he'll return I can't remember but I thought he was defeated completely in the original. The only thing that really hit me was Merry getting killed, he of course survived in the original story. And where was Richie? And the whole story with the mayor's dog? That was a real tear jerker - but would have been too time consuming.

Buggy the clown who is formidable in the original but of course a ridiculous character with even more ridiculous henchmen - is actually pretty unnerving and mildly terrifying in this adaptation and I suppose unsurprisingly somehow closer to the DC villain Joker at times in his intensity at least at the beginning - later on when he's a disembodied head and then runs off he becomes closer to his original. Of course fans of the manga will know that he appears multiple times especially during the Impel Down story ark, always offering comic relief, sometimes being almost an ally but usually reverting back to his devious, two faced or cowardly/self serving ways. It's a great character and I look forward to them further fleshing it out.

My only real criticism is that Zoro is meant to be Japanese and they didn't get a Japanese kid but an American actor who I understand from this page has been in several other anime adaptations. Also for his flashback which didn't look like Japan or Japanese actors but Americans and American 'karate kid' style approximation of what is supposed to be a Japanese dojo - I would have expected this for the 80s but not for a modern day production. Shame they couldn't insert this as it is based on a Japanese story so it would have been a nice kind of nod to the flavour of the original to have a Japanese character and an authentic jJapanese back story which feels much stronger and more fleshed out in the original. If they had delivered this it would have been 10 stars all the way but never mind - the actor who played Zoro did a great job. And I understand it might have been jarring to have the Japanese Zoro character and background contrast with the other parts of the story. I guess we'll never know.

Incidentally there is an Indonesian action film YouTube channel who made an amazing live action version of the Zoro episode of the animation which is closer to the original than the netllfix one - well worth tracking that down.

Despite everything the most important thing is: All the emotional beats hit home just like the original and I found that despite myself and knowing the story I teared up when Nami said 'help me'.

In all it felt slightly rushed but the casting was so perfect and the story was actually improved in so many places that I can't help but love it and hope that it goes all the way to the Whitebeard war and beyond - maybe even some live action movies. It's certainly probably the best anime adaptation ever made and stand-alone better than most of the mediocre stuff that jams up these bloated streaming services these days. I mean I know the human population has grown exponentially and along with it the volume of everything we create but it's just ridiculous nowadays he amount of mediocre junk being created. This is a long needed breath of sea air which hopefully represents a sea change and long may it continue and get the funding it needs - I know sadly (or maybe not!) it's not going to be 25 years long like the original (even though as Oda has stated in those 25 years only two or three years have passed in the story) because the actors will want to do other things and also would be middle aged by then, and generally if they don't get axed Netflix series rarely last longer than 5 seasons and this is particularly niche with it's weird fantasy elements and cartoon characters but we'll see. In fact it would make more sense if the show runs for something more like the actual time of the original.

Who knows, it might not make it as far as Franky and Water 7 which was an intense story arc (with a lot of filler!) but I can imagine it following at least the remake movies, we've already had the introduction of Baroqueworks so Smoker, Crocodile and Princess Vivi in season 2 then maybe Alabaster and then Drum Island with the introduction of Choppa in season 3... then maybe Fast forward to Franky and Robin in season 4 (though it would be very interesting to see how they do sky island, that was very weird!) And I certainly hope they get to probably my favourite section, 'Thriller Bark', which had some hilarious comedy horror but probably is funnier and more suited to cartoon as it's pretty freaky and probably not for children in live action!

Damn that show was fun back then.

9 out of 10 for me at least and it looks like it will get even better into season 2.

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

I'm starting to think Ragnorok might have been a fluke success because this one sucked

[3/10 · 9 September 2022]

I'm tempted to choose one star but it really wasn't that bad. It was bad though, that NZ guy did a good job on Ragnorok though the pro-immigration / people of Israel propaganda still annoys me every time (just to be clear I'm not anti-immigration and I have very little opinion about Israel either now or thousands of years ago I just prefer my fantasy films to be free of political propaganda though I understand it's somehow impossible for the corporations to do now for some reason)

All the best points about the failures of this film, mostly the annoying gags, short Guardians cameo, flippant use of Thor's powers, not enough antagonist screen time and maybe that the antagonist was right all along when it turned out that Zeus et al were a bunch of tw*ts, and that the power of the wishgiver at the end negated a bunch of other previous MCU plots... but consistency (for example the multiverse having completely different rules in each multiverse movie) isn't surprising with such a bewildering number of projects - and after all, this is just entertainment and to make money, as if anyone producing the largest grossing and most viewed material of all time really cares about art or storytelling. So there is that.

However this was far better than the third act of Shang Chi or the whole of Eternals which is one of the worst things I've ever seen, along with Venom 2 and the travesty that is ... that vampire one? Morbius?

But the bottom line is, as other reviewers have noted, this entire project seems to be a couple of the filmmakers, notably the director, get paid to flaunt their egos and the result is a flat, vacuous misfire which tries to be funny but fails in almost EVERY one of its jokes, and tries to insert some drama but the charicters themselves have had all their character stripped from them to such a degree that I, as the audience, don't care about any of them even when Natalie Portman's character (who gives the second best performancer after Bale) dies. Both the drama and the comedy are missing to the degree even in other ridiculous Marvel movies.

Ragnorok was pretty great, made a good setting for the end of the 'season' of the MCU (phases 1-3, which I now realise was probably the end of the whole phenomenon realistically) and the humour was a success partly because it was not expected but even at that time I could see the slightly manoic and egoic drive behind the director (casting himself as comic relief, using the same song multiple times) and had a suspicion that this was a one-hit wonder for Waikiki and it seems that has turned out correct.

In the end it falls flat. I'm just pleased I didn't pay for this one and bittorrented it instead.

Stranger Things (2016–2025)

TO THE HATERS; there's a REASON this title has a high rating

[6/10 · 3 January 2017]

And the reason for a higher rating is people actually like it. It's OK for people to like something you don't even if you don't understand why. That's actually OK. The rating apparently used to be higher and would be higher than it is if it weren't for all those killjoys whingeing and whining. If it doesn't meet your high expectations don't watch it.

I'm rating this 10 to bring the score back up as it rightfully deserves the high rating as one of the most unique celebrations of 80s nostalgia. So what if some people don't care for it, this isn't made for you. Sorry about that. I also enjoyed it as much, as I did Boardwalk Empire and Daredevil. Why do we watch TV shows? Because we enjoy the story. If you don't enjoy it where half to most other people do is that your fault or the creators? I'll leave readers to answer that themselves.

I've been revisiting a lot of 80s movies in 2016 and someone told me about Stranger Things - I held off watching it until December and held back from binging the short series to prolong the suspense, even watching a couple of the episodes twice in a row. Far from perfect but I'm very impressed with the ambiance and vibe and pacing. What an accomplishment. So what if it has mundane parts. So what if it has filler, it's stylish. Whatever flaws are present, and I'm sure there are tons (many of which have been articulated comprehensively by indignant IMDb haters), are more or less invisible to this viewer perhaps due to an 80s bias (I grew up in the 80s being born in 1979 - etch-a-sketch, chopper bikes, Garbage Pail kids etc despite being British of course I embraced the indulgent romanticism of 80s American coming-of-age movies) HOWEVER - I'm not a great fan of 80s horror and sci fi (with a few exceptions) and I can't really stand SPIELburg's overly-sentimental and crass contributions to cinema especially ET and Close Encounters. I do respect the work of Stephen King though prefer his dramas to the horror. Despite or maybe because of all this I instantly recognised and enjoyed the parallels between this TV show and 80s titles which the creators were very deliberately and conspicuously paying homage - Stand By Me, The Goonies, Alien, Scanners, the list goes on and on (there are several blogs and entertainment sites listing the titles as well as recommendations for other post-80s films and other more recent releases). Thus the intention of this series is not to be original, as expressed in the polemic of some of the haters, but the intention is specifically NOT TO BE original. In this way the Duffer brothers have tapped into a whole generation with fond memories of retro technology and a time when such technology was in its infancy and entertainment was less cynical and the world in general seemed simpler as we were less connected and consequently more ignorant than we are post-millennium. After all ignorance is bliss.

You'll notice I've not really mentioned anything about the content of the show. I'm assuming you've seen it already but if not - check it out and make your own decision. I noticed that the majority of 1 and 2 star reviews (some of them admitting that they would review it 6/10 but they deliberately rated it down to lower the mean rating - which is a cretinous thing to do) the majority of those reviewers it appears had seen the rating, or heard people saying how great it was and so then had the highest expectations - but for some reason these expectations weren't met. Personally I didn't know anything about it at all before I watched it except that it had something to do with the 80s, didn't read any reviews and wasn't aware of IMDb or any other ratings - and I enjoyed it. As a fan of comedy and fantasy but not so much of scifi horror, this show perfectly filtered and watered down vintage horror and added a watertight cast, 80s kids movies nostalgia and topped it off with a lovely ambient synth soundtrack.

So this review is for the haters. This show is not perfect but it is entirely comprised of elements that some audiences, myself included, have wanted to see for a very long time. Keep on hating, I'm waiting keenly for season 2 and if it disappoints, so what? It's not even that important! The important thing is that for whatever reasons for the Duffer Brothers, whether they wrote it or not (whereby as they didn't write it according to IMDb reviewer bradcheng; "their auteur status goes down the drain"), this is a labour of love - demonstrated by it being rejected fifteen times before Netflix - and their love for the material shows in the work, whether it makes sense to some viewers or not, if viewers have the imagination to enact, in the words of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, willing suspension of disbelief (a term which was coined in the discussion of texts like this, involving the supernatural). Like Peter Jackson the Duffers are unabashedly invested in their subject matter and though might not be pioneers of horror/fantasy/scifi they worked hard to realise their vision regardless of whether audiences think they were successful or not. Some audiences like these works - some don't. If you don't, I'm sorry for you, that you don't get it, that you didn't enjoy it. At he end of the day this TV show will quickly and quite rightfully become an instant cult classic, in the words of another historical Englishman "warts and all".

EDIT It got worse as it went along so I changed my rating from 10 to 6 but the characters are still interesting, some of the acting became a bit hammy but kinds works of course.

I won't get into the esoteric or occult aspects of the show for there are many.

Super 8 (2011)

Pretty great but both made and mired by Spielburg influence

[7/10 · 1 January 2017]

The current index review by Nooch007 ends: "All in all, Super 8 was a terrific film experience, that will leave you with a smile on your face". Which I would amend to "...a terrific film that will leave a smile on your face but a sour taste in the mouth"

I watched this as a remedy for watching and finishing Stranger Things S01 and while I wait for S02 - great, I thought, an American teen adventure movie, set when I was born ('79) so will fulfil most of the requirements of a void left by Stranger Things with its wondrous and spot-on nostalgia. Plus directed by Abrams, who impressed us all with Star Trek.

The film is really great and ticks most of the boxes. That is until

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S P O I L E R S

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the protagonist talks the monster into not killing anyone else and just to go home. Of course it could have just continued to kill everyone and go home anyway. Which is kind of what I could believe. I understand about having to build tension to thrill the audience etc blah but also to have a happy ending etc blah - and I'm not proposing an alternative to the plot but with the drawn out soundtrack and the sudden magical negotiation ability of the kid to talk his way out of being killed. I was about to write about the blatant implausibility but the plot had already delineated with the doctor who communicated with the alien in the lab by being touched (picked up) by the alien and the same thing happened (presumably) when the protagonist kid was picked up in the underground tunnels. Presumably because both their intention was to communicate they didn't get destroyed, whereby the air force guys got mashed because their intentions were hostile - but there's no explanation about why expendable characters who perhaps just scared and didn't have time to be either hostile or want to communicate still just got wrecked. This is typical of mainstream storytelling and is lazy and always pisses me off about ALL of Spielburg's work. Takes a good idea and just saturates it with crowd-pleasing sentimentality. he ruined most of his films this way, except maybe a couple Indy ones and probably Jaws. It's just spiel. Pun intended. And poor old Abrams seems to be musing for Spielburg by exhibiting exactly the same kind of sickening saccharine sentimentality. Of course that doesn't make it bad, just lazy. The whole film was pretty great, until the ending. A monster is a monster, it doesn't get to terrorise and then at the very end be exonerated. I understand why it might in Wollstonecraft/Shelly's Frankenstein or other texts where character and plot is developed throughout the story but here none of that happened. Just annoys me. That's why Stranger Things was so great, no sentimentality, just story and character. I understand that this is ostensibly a kids film and Stranger Things isn't.

Still, worth a watch. Will be liked by fans of SPIELburg and ET which I'm not (though I've always been staggered by how he could make a whole generation love what is basically a talking poo so props to him there) Also it's good that you don't see much of the monster as it builds suspense as should be (but also because it wasn't a very interesting design - looks like a dog's skeleton which has gone soft mixed with an octopus). I was going to rate 6/10 but 7 as it's fairly unique and will have a nostalgic feeling for viewers who grew up in the late 20th century. Probably would have been 9/10 without the crappy touchy-feely ending.