Change Your Image
amateur_wizard
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
The Flash (2023)
People are Calling this a Good Film with Bad CGI
This isn't a good film, it's a bad movie. It has none of the character, depth or character needed for this to be a film. No one will be speaking of this movie in the next decade let alone when the unforgivable sequel comes out.
How most cinema goers perceive a movie is based on the quality of CGI. That's to say if you take the same film with varying CGI quality, people value the quality of CGI more than the content. However this changes when the quality of the content is decent/good (i.e. The Thing & The Matrix: Reloaded). The fact that the line is the sand for whether a blockbuster is good or not is the CGI underscores what has gone wrong with modern film in general. At least when my parents brought me to watch Monsters Inc. I could take away something valuable from what was unsaid, and so could they.
Honestly after this monstrosity of a film I cannot for a minute believe that Warner Bros or any other company in this space is going to pull out of this nosedive. Modern film is all pop-culture references with no substance. Please, I urge to go back and take a look at the first Iron Man for just a few minutes, then come look at any of the sequels. Infinity War was the only one that came close, then it's legacy was ruined by Endgame. Lord forgive these writers, producers & directors. The flash was a mess, ingratiating itself at the feet of the common viewer like a pug but when it comes down to it, it shouldn't have ever existed in the first place. Us as the people who pay for the tickets, recommend movies to others, and bring our children to the Box Office have forgotten that we're in charge of the $h!t show. We bred the pug and The Flash into existence, and it's deformed shape is no longer morally justifiable, it's time to undo this mess.
This is while trying to ignore the controversy involving some of the cast. I genuinely gave it a fair shake and I want a refund.
To quote a true graphic novel adaptation. "Blake understood. Treated it like a joke, but he understood. He saw the cracks in society, saw the little men in masks trying to hold it together...he saw the true face of the twentieth century and chose to become a reflection of it, a parody of it. No one else saw the joke. That's why he was lonely."
Pantheon (2022)
Sets the Bar High
I saw no promotional material for this show, none of any kind. This came straight out of left field and happened to one of if not the best show I've seen in 2022.
The creators of the show clearly know exactly what they are talking about. No pseudo-intellectual nonsense-names for future technology. The technology (bar the McGuffin) is very much grounded in our current reality.
The cast are excellent voice actors, that and the lip-syncing never left me wanting. The characters are well rounded & well written. Often they caught me off-guard with their decision making which in hindsight was well thought out. Pacing of the story was good too, on par with a metronome.
Overall people who aren't 'tech-literate' are going to enjoy it too. However if you happen to be a programmer, or in any other sphere of IT then it's a treat.
Pantheon - Season 01 Episode 01 [31:55-34:17] 🙂 Now that is dialogue, not just what they say but the way they say it & the tension at the table.
Bonding (2018)
2 Dimensional TV Show
Take a boring show and add something salacious to it. This is the main reason most people disliked season 2, the novelty wore off.
This is also a distorted representation of just about everything involved. Very surface level. Most of the humour is based on cringe rather than anything actually interesting. It could have been great, I just watched Ms. Fletcher and this was a far cry from that. There are some lines in this that are just shoe-horned in.
"It's a costume, all clothes are costumes." The parts where we're supposed to develop emotional connections with characters fall flat. In part the delivery of the dialog was mediocre.
There were good parts to this show too. The use of lighting was great for the night shots. I'm not a fan of the post production however. I think the thing this show is lacking in a word is 'substance'.
The Lazarus Project (2022)
Tolerable
I find it tolerable all around though. It's decent but has problems. The pilot honestly set my expectations high.
Imagine a show with the same feeling as Counterpart (2017), but instead you have a pretty mid story atop an interesting premise. There's lots of comedy though, so it's got that going for it.
Excellent, now for the next ingredient. They're fresh out of Secondary School and have trouble with self control. The result of this is "government agents" that make the mess. Feels more like watching Johnny English than James Bond.
Don't worry this was created in 2022 so at least every other episode has a lecture on social politics.
The same undiscerning majority rates this like everything on IMDB a 10.
Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)
I'm Embarrassed for Anyone that Liked this
Horrible waste of time. This show is literally cultural vandalism. What the hell is Kathleen Kennedy's obsession with destroying male icons from the earlier movies. Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Admiral Ackbar. I've cancelled my Disney+ subscription, I'm done with this Obi Wan Cucnobi nonsense, I love Ewan McGregor, as a person as an actor, as a human being, I have nothing but hate for this and the creators of this. I can't count the plot holes but I am tempted to make a 1 hour video for each of these episodes.
Conversations with Friends (2022)
"IGN Gave it a 10"
(This was only supposed to be 2 sentences long but here we are.)
Conversations with Friends is so bad I'm going to give it a 10/10 on IMDB, others need to suffer through this. I like flawed characters but these people are a little too rough around the edges. I was expecting the final episode to be the 'and they all lived happily ever after', even though there was not character arc from any of them, that's what it was. Someone on set should have pulled up the definition of polyamory because that sex quadrangle wasn't it.
Irish people don't always do that thing where they add radio-static to the end of every sentence.
S01E12
Bobbi: "Stop objectifying me!"
Frances: Send Email of objectification.exe Embiggened edition, with added booth-call.vbs
Bobbi: "Are your parents home!"
There are good qualities to these characters too but...:
Frances doesn't have the emotional maturity for 'polyamory'.
Bobbi feels entitled to more than she should from Frances, like they're still in a relationship also takes out frustration on others.
Melissa should take her own advice from ep. 11.
Nick is a 2-dimensional lapdog
Pretty much a cancerous relationship where everyone knows each other.
Why add the last line, so they can repeat the last 5 episodes? They learned nothing.
Y: The Last Man: Victoria (2021)
I read the comics when they came out, but I am reviewing this show stand alone.
I believe in allowing artistic license when it comes to adaptations. What works in a book doesn't always in the medium of film or television.
That being said, I held my tongue for 10 episodes of the show to give it a fair chance at pulling up from a low-altitude flat spin. It didn't. It would have been fine if the show was just bad, and I know that doesn't make sense but hear me out. The fundamental recipe was right, good actors, the CGI for the monkey (Ampersand) wasn't 'distracting', the source material was great (I never read things twice unless it's educational content), I read it more than once. Yet somehow they managed to put all that greatness into one end of their machine and get such caustic waste out of the other end. I don't and didn't expect a copy of the graphic novel and am not comparing to it outside of the general theme, by virtue of it being the same intellectual property.
There are people that will say 'just turn your brain off' the show is fine. Those people should go watch Teletubbies, even The Simpsons, and Futurama require some level of cognitive ability. This is not an adequate excuse for what this is.
I'm disappointed that there wasn't a soul on set that said 'Hey this isn't right!' let alone 'What bigot wrote this 2-dimensional crap?'
I've invested more time into this show than it's worth, I hope this is the last episode of the season so I can forget about this show and watch a production with a spine.
A World of Calm (2020)
Does Exactly what it says on the tin
20 minutes of relaxation. Pretty amazing stuff. I would have thrown my server out of the first floor window if Keanu Reeves wasn't voicing episode 5. I wish I could say I was joking. Nothing went right that week, apart from this.
Tenet (2020)
readme
Film is art, this isn't a flick like transformers, you're going to have to pay attention. If that's too much leave. I wish someone would have told that to the Day 1 reviewers who used the words 'confusing'.
I watched it more than 2 times to be sure of what I was seeing. Maybe at some point we'll get a commentary track for it. I needed to there are just so many great details to be realized. The track with the railways was on the nose in order to let you know to watch out for such things. You see trains going in both directions simultaneously, you don't know which is coming and which is going. It's a metaphor for time. This is highlighted when the clock is turned back. Then there is the wind turbine, you could see that a chrysalis of sorts. He has blossomed from a normal person to a trusted agent and in doing so has started masterminded the game that he is playing. On the second watch through his ruse of preferring 'soda water' (in order to throw off what looks to him like a would be enemy someday) falls flat on it's face.
You'll notice the protagonist is careful with words, the same way the antagonist is mindful of his heart rate. I'm not sure how those two theme intertwine but I think they might. Key words being bungie-jumpable and assumption/deduction, Sir Michael.
And that's just the first 30 minutes. I must get going.
Star Trek: Discovery (2017)
I wouldn't have a problem with this show if it didn't have the words Star Trek in the Name.
Preface: I came into discovery on its pilot date with moderate hopes. I was finally getting to see the Star Trek of my generation. You can imagine I was a little taken aback when I was met with this. I tried so, so, so hard to like it. I really tried and I eventually settled on my current stance. This is not Star Trek. This stance is the only way I can somewhat justify and comprehend what I saw.
There are plenty of YouTube videos pointing out the wrongs of Discovery. It looks like counter culture gone rogue. Everything is designed from the top down to be the opposite of what came before. The solution to every encounter is shoot-y shoot-y boom-boom. It's frankly embarrassing. Maybe this is an attempt at reeling in new blood! The focus is on expensive CGI and lens flare. When they do try to focus on greater moral dilemmas they trip over their shoelaces, this can be through glaring plot-holes or by just ridiculous stories and additions. I'll give an example of this. Spock an icon in the Star Trek lore. Now he's a space ninja apparently... in a show that is supposed to transcend our fallibility to find the best in humanity.
The only thing Star Trek in Discovery is the first two words. The rest is a parasite inhabiting the corpse of a once beloved host. Puppet-ing its limbs around in ways that make us think it has some sort of sentience some sort of motive. No, it's just fulfilling it's simplistic routine (live, die, repeat) franchise, merchandise, repeat.
If you want to know what Star Trek is... Star Trek is what's left when you subtract the money from a Hollywood production, the money lending benefactors and all therein. What's left? A cast that brings hope to millions, voices that have meaning, words that need to be spoken so the next generation don't repeat the sins of their fathers and mothers. That is Star Trek.
Once again. 'I would not have a problem with this show' if it didn't call itself 'Star Trek'.
Max Winslow and the House of Secrets (2019)
Cringe-tastic
Before we begin, this is just my take on the movie. You should watch it for yourself to form your opinion.
So at some point in the movie someone says 'The mansion has 64 yobibytes of memory'. That sounds smart...but there's a problem if you can count!. The entire internet today is 'only' 2.8 exabytes including the phone in your pocket. A whopping 32,000,000 times smaller than said mansion. This techno-babble sets the tone for the next hour and 21 minutes. (Which they pronounce 'yo-ti-bi-tes', but that's besides the point.)
Let's gloss over the 'hack the credit card company easily' opening.
First off the name Atticus Virtue is far too on the nose. There's no surprise that the 5 people that get screen-time in the beginning coincidentally get nominated, completely dissipating any potential tension.
The name of the butler is 'Sir Mordred', I'm gonna guess he'll betray someone later in the movie. (I guess I was right)
The first puzzle was odd that they happened to know what order the numbers went in. No one calls them 'computer codes'. Then around the 50 minute mark there's more techno-babble about private servers that make literally no sense in the current context. So apparently they never got the memo of an electrical charge residing on the outside of the conductor, a chainmail suit would be more than enough protection from a 110v outlet.
The characters are one sided with no arc. The score was straight out of a teenage girls party playlist. The acting isn't great. The greater message overall is okay but bounces between blaming your parents for your problem and doing too much of either social media or gaming.
1 star being the minimum, 1 more for the good voice acting and acting of Marina Sirtis and Chad Murray.