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valargitis
Reviews
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
Wasted Opportunity
It was and is my favorite book. Everything was so well written and arranged.
They took that book, some amazing actors, huge production and money to invest and they created this school love thing.
I rewatched it tonight after many years and still cannot believe it. The script is so badly written that they couldn't even bring Tonks in the train to find Harry. I m not even starting with the memories, the horcruxes, the Hogwarts battle. People who didn't read the books do not deserve to find out about Voldemort's family and youth so let's not show them, well done.
And Draco apparently is a Death Eater. Yes, he is not in the books.
I was wondering all those people who have not read the books and say the movies are brilliant, do they understand the story at all? I wouldn't... how on earth is Harry going to find the Horcruxes? What could they be? Where would they be? Dumbledore says in the movie "they can be anything" when in the book is carefully explained that "Voldemort wouldn't turn anything into a Horcrux".
Oh I have an idea, lets make Harry's scar hurt and give him a vision to see Ravenclaw's flag. And where is the diadem? Has he seen it before? No, it's fine, someone will tell him where it is.
Let's spend half of the movie to watch Lavender and Cormac and we ll sort the unimportant Horcruxes later. And since the fifth film got so many bad comments about not showing most of the Department of Mystery amazing battle, lets skip now the Hogwarts battle, not important.
And funerals are sad, so Dumbledore can just go to the tomb by himself, no time for that, better show Harry and Ron talking about Hermione's skin.
I can go on for ages, how Harry gave Felix Felisis to protect them, he didn't drink all of it by himself, how the Barrow never got burned, how was the story of the Half-Blood prince revealed and why was Snape called the Half-Blood Prince. No time even to explain the title of the movie, at least the other titles made some sense.
And last but not least at all, Dumbledore picks up Harry from the train station? Seriously? No Dursleys in this film? Not this amazing talk by Dumbledore? No it's ok, we will just show Harry asking a girl out while reading his magic newspaper somewhere in London, where he would be safe from Death Eaters.
Huge opportunity wasted, really surprised I see people having read the books and put 7 and 8 stars for this outcome. I did not expect the movie to copy the book, I expected the movie to respect it, and it did not.
Alexander: The Making of a God (2024)
Very sloppy
This was a great opportunity. If by using the phrase Agapi mu they thought they would show the Greek language and origin, we had a huge fail.
The name is Alexandros, not Alexander. A good start would be to use the correct name and not changing everything for the convenience of the english speaking audience. The fact that they even call him Alex is beyond me, what would be next? Sending selfies to each other and make social media posts: Alex feels great in location: Egypt?
Why is he called "The Great" or the correct term "Megas"? No time to explain it I guess.
What was Aristoteles contribution? Not important.
Why on earth the historians who appear in the "documentary" do not know about his actual battle strategy and the phalanx? Or they do know but its better to spend so much time in small dialogues between the actors (who did very well, not their fault that the script was so weak) rather than focus on the things that actually matter to someone who is watching a documentary and not some soap opera drama.
Alexander's horse (Vukefalas) is probably the most famous horse in history. We never found why, how Alexander managed to tame it and what was special about this horse.
The amazing strategy in battle in the series is shown as "you go left, I go in the middle" like a proper football manager of a third division team. So he started from Greece and he reached India (no time to show the whole story so we stopped somewhere in the middle) with this strategy.
We see the city Alexandria and this is the only exciting thing and the only one that shows something worth watching, the findings after so many years, with the Greek colour, the statue of Alexandros and how the city was shaped back then. It would be nice to show how Alexandros managed to take and maintain the cities, how he persuaded people to be loyal to him and how he could march forward without fear of losing the cities he conquered and left behind.
Finally, 3 figures shown in this "documentary" are totally undermined. First, Alexandros himself. Yes he was young, but he was not a silly boy who just marched forward without any logic and got lucky. Second, Darios was an amazing leader, a proper king with amazing battle skills as well, definitely not this scared, unskilled king that nobody respects and is shown in the series. Third, Filippos. He wasn't just a drunk lustful king who wanted to kill Alexandros. He was a great king and he fought and won battles with his son, he inspired Alexandros and helped him rule when his time came. Oh, and he lost an eye in battle, but I guess that was not important since we would see him only for 20 seconds and find out he liked young girls, hated his son and got assassinated. And I loved the historians explanation: there is a huge Sherlock Holmes mystery about his assassination, but Olympiada did it.
I honestly do not know why they hate this historic figure so much and every effort to portray him is so weak and inaccurate. Hope next time I watch something with his name it will be a better work.
The Traitors Australia: Grand Finale (2023)
Many unique points and the best finale
Having watched UK, US, Aus all available seasons, after Australia Season 1 that was the worst I have seen I did not have high hopes. However I found many unique points in this one.
First of all the best faithful ever is Annabelle. She obviously did her homework but first time I saw a faithful asking the obvious question: How would I play if I were a traitor? And then acting accordingly.
Secondly, the rest of the faithful were in the wrong game. They should be in big brother or something similar, they just did the same thing every night, "lets get rid of Sam" then the first person accusing Sam on the table would be eliminated since Sam replied simply every time "I think you are a traitor" and they followed.
It was amazing that Annabelle got banished, claiming she is faithful and giving two names, which she got both right that was incredible, then they did not even think to try one of them until the end.
Sam was not a good traitor. He was practically screaming that he was a traitor but with this audience there was no hope. Btw when I hear someone saying "I swear to God I am not a traitor" and he is a traitor, there are no words, people really have no morals when it comes to money.
Sarah deserves a trophy, she made the final simply because if Sam told her to vote for herself she would.
The finale, if true is the best I could imagine. Watching the show I did not want the faithful to win since they were really bad, last year we had one person manipulated all the way and giving the win to the traitor, this year faithful were so bad that they did not vote a single traitor out, Ash was banished only because Sam wanted to banish her. At the same time I did not want the traitors to win since they did not really show skills, they were just lucky.
Watching this finale and the way the Steal or Share was played was an exciting moment I did not expect to see, well done to the greedy traitors who did not want to take 80k each home.
The Devil's Plan (2023)
Imagine if everyone played for themselves
The idea is fantastic, something unique.
Most of the games were very well thought and despite the complicated rules, they would test the players brains and decision making. The hidden secret also very fascinating.
Best quote "I see the collapse of socialism", I think every viewer supported the winner from early on.
I can not put 10 though for 2 reasons. First reason is that the hidden game, fascinating as it may be, would give someone a small advantage in the final, if he/she avoided elimination. I consider the risk too big just to just get a small advantage in the final, to risk elimination.
Secondly and more important, the choice of players was really bad. They supposedly chose a cast to play in a game of wits, they chose people who can not do simple math.
Plus, most players had no dignity. They went in every game to ask someone who called himself Orbit, full of pretentious "I want to help the weak ones progress" and fake tears when one of his opponents got eliminated, to help them survive over smarter and better players. Btw it was so obvious that he lost on purpose in the game before the final, he could not even fake it.
I would be happy to watch a game like that with smart people who play for themselves and there are no under the table arrangements. Games like the one with the animals or the one with the numbers would be amazing if there were no teams formed. I would also enjoy a lot a poker table including the first two guys who got eliminated, rather than that lady who couldn't divide single digit numbers, the pop star who took 5 minutes to sum single digits numbers and he still got it wrong, and the youtuber who, as he said, was too confused when it comes to numbers.
The Traitors Australia (2022)
Not a fair game - mistakes
I love the concept of those games. Watched the UK and US version and recently finished the Australia version.
The game was staged at first perfectly, and the choice of the original traitors we pretty good, although Claire seemed to not be comfortable with this role. Maybe her choice wasn't the wisest one but they got 3/4 right.
There were some serious flaws though, which makes the show much less exciting (and suspicious).
First of all, the concept is supposed to be for the faithful to try and find the traitors and banish them. As for the traitors, they must remain hidden and last until the end. So, a fair result should be if the faithful find the traitors, then they are the only ones left and they should split the money. But in this game, someone wanted to give all the money to one person (since apparently its more exciting to say someone won 1/4 million rather than 4 people won 62.5k each) so they kept recruiting traitors even though the faithful took out all 4 original traitors.
One more thing, the faithful in the final table are not supposed to know how many traitors are left. And in the other versions when there is a recruitment, it is not announced, so nobody will know how many traitors are left. Here they did something to ensure the faithful have zero chance of winning. After 4 traitors are gone (and already announced there is one recruitment) with only 5 people left, they decide to recruit another one, but not tell the players. So within the 5 people 2 traitors (one of them hidden) all they had to do is work together, since they only needed one vote to banish someone and then 4 players with 2 traitors included, its a definite win.
Another one, the amount of the prize money (being exactly 250,000 dollars) shows that they had already in mind how much they would give. Even if a mission failed, they would make an extra mission to give the rest of the money (since the last one was simple and was worth 40,000 dollars, if they needed more could be 60 or 70). Which makes all the missions unimportant, so why do we need to watch them?
I understand there were a lot of players, so no time to show everything, but I literally reached episode 6-7 and I saw Paul and Craig, and I honestly couldn't remember having seen them before. Paul stayed until late stages, I must have heard him speaking 3 times total and that's it. Imagine Paul's family, who will sit down to watch the episodes and they will see him for like 1-2 mins total, when he stayed until the last 6. Again, very bad execution.
Finally, the worst thing about these games is when the game master has not thought through the game and just decides randomly whats next. In the last banishment there were 4 people to vote. Even number. Not 3 not 5. So, what if they voted 2 people with 2 votes each? The concept of the traitors is that first night someone gets murdered so that we always have an odd number of votes for every banishment. That way, if the votes are split between 2 people, they need to revote and someone will have more votes in the end. But if here we had 2 votes for Alex and 2 for Craig for example what would they do? Toss a coin? Amateur planning.
Faithful deserved to win, but keeping a passive player like Craig (Who wouldn't be able to shoot an elephant in an elevator) all the way and the production trying badly to make sure one person gets all the money, they stood no chance.
Congrats to Alex, she did not deserve to win simply because she took out all the traitors very quickly, she should have left Nigel for the last 5. Without the second recruitment, she would not have won, since the other 4 people would know there is one traitor and she wouldn't have Kate's help to survive at that point.
The best players in the game were Nigel, Kate as faithful (she was bad as traitor), Mark and Midy. Too bad the first banishment was for a very promising player, I would like to see how a chess player would deal with the game.
The Mole (2022)
The smartest player in the game changes strategy for no reason
It is a very well thought show, fine for casual watching and guessing who is the mole and who is going to leave next.
After the first 3 episodes I would put a 10. However, watching the rest of the episodes I have to take 2 points out.
First point is because I knew 100% that Kesi was the mole from the bank, and just confirmed on the train and the climbing. They should have done a better job hiding it in the editing, kind of ruined the excitement.
Second and most important point is the - for no reason - change of heart of the smartest player, who of course is Greg. He keeps mentioning Kesi as the mole for 6 episodes and how she keeps confirming his suspicions.
Then suddenly, beginning of 7th episode and just after Kesi took the exemption, which should make everyone suspect her of being the mole, they travel to the museum and Greg mentions Jacob's name. Out of nowhere. And same day he loses the quiz and leaves, so obviously he chose Jacob in the quiz. This makes absolutely no sense, he is staying in the game for so long by choosing Kesi in the quiz and suddenly changes name for no reason and leaves.
If the show is staged, which is always likely with this kind of shows, then I would say next time try to keeps the characters consistent to a certain strategy and try to show more of the discussions between them since we need to like the people before we like the show. And they do not need to repeat the word mole every 20 seconds, we know what we are watching.
Headgame (2018)
Some of the many questions
Everything seems to be below expectations in this movie. No time to like or dislike any of the characters and they start dying.
Many holes in the script, but some questions I really cant answer after watching it.
A) What was this deal with the vape contest - one lives and one dies from smoking vape?
B) Each of the "gamblers" chose a player to put a chip at the beginning next to the player they thought will survive, nobody put a chip for the actual winner, how was only one loser in the end? I did not get the chip part at all. And how would someone chose to "not lose" instead of "win"?
C) What is the point of the riddles and "find the key", when all someone needed to do was kill everyone else, and the door opened automatically so no key required.
Btw it took 12 hours for 8 people to find one key, they could just give the players 2-3 hours total to make it more believable...
D) If someone sticks a lens through my head, I believe it would hurt, wouldn't it? I literally didn't see a single person showing a sign of pain.
Plus, why would they put the lenses and there is not a single first person view? Its like someone had this idea, they bought the lenses for the actors' foreheads, then this someone quit his job and went to work for another movie and they forgot why they bought the lenses but they used them anyway.
Pity when people start making a movie without having a complete idea, could be much better done.
Circle (2015)
Very good execution of a great idea
Watch this movie without checking reviews or trailer. I love smart movies and Circle is one of them. Low budget movie, relies purely on the acting and the script and they both are very good.
50 people, one winner. While watching the movie I kept asking myself the question how would I play the game to survive? Some very smart ideas and some very desperate efforts from the players, its great to see a game of survival using minds and not weapons.
Very smart idea of a guy to say "my wife is next to me" who would kill one of them. Smart as well from others to talk about their kids or families.
But the winner was brilliant. He chose very smarty when to speak and about what. First he pretended he knew something about the ones who abducted them. Then he disappeared until he spotted the opportunity of becoming the leader of one of the two groups. One group would protect the innocent and the other group would be the "bad" guys. In the end I was extremely sure how it would end, although i d prefer if i didnt see it coming. Again, the best one won. Game of survival at its finest.
For me the movie should have 8 stars but given the low budget I give extra 1 star because they did a great work with limited funds and used the talent of the writer and the actors.
Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021)
Live or Die, make your choice
I did not expect a sequel to be as good as the original movies but this was a lot worse than expected.
First of all the script was really amateur written. People who make a sequel have to watch the previous movies and take an example. There were some practically impossible games to win, no clock to show the time left, the guy on the tape says you have 3 mins left before the train comes but how could he know beforehand when the victim would wake up exactly? Also no logic at all how he could place all this mechanism when trains come all the time without being spotted from the cameras.
Dialogues were horribly written, some swearing words when there was nothing to say, too much drama without explanation most of the times why someone is shouting for no reason.
The twist wasnt even a twist, there was only one suspect left and they did not even make an effort to point someone else as a suspect.
I have more but I ll finish with this: How can you make a movie, put the word Saw in it, put some traps and tapes that remind of Saw, put the music of Saw in the end and there is nowhere mentioned why the killer set these traps the Saw way? Even in the finale he admits "killing" those people, Jigsaw never killed anyone and always gave a chance to live.
If people had watched the saw movies they d know the reason fans love those movies is the phrase: Live or Die, make your choice.