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Knives Out (2019)
A murder mystery with a political twist.
What an odd film. It's like they were going out of their way to write a decent murder mystery... and then sabotaged it.
I marked this review as containing spoilers because it's key to talk about the ending. The ending is, surprisingly, a communist wealth redistribution plotline.
That's it. That's all the film is. It's "illegal immigrants should get money given to them which was taken from the people they work for". It's mind boggling why they didn't just have her get her just desserts similarly to how the other characters was; she was arguably one of the most vile characters in the show, and yet... they insist she had a "good heart" - despite attempting to steal an entire family's inheritance.
On a technical level, even before the ending, the film is aggravating due to the very poor research done into the subject matter; if you cut any of your children out of the will, they can contest it and will have a 100% win rate. They also don't inherit anything until the will has settled; i.e. All contests have been solved.
To quote a lawyer I knew; wills, like prenups, aren't worth the paper they're written on.
Bad Words (2013)
Pipe-dream film for people with personality disorders.
At first, the film comes off as a story about an overly rude and petulant man determined to cause a little bit of trouble; it's funny, and a fairly solid premise.
However, this tone does not hold out throughout the entire film. Instead of it following the more predictable and heart-warming plot of the spelling bee causing him to soften up, and perhaps develop his character in some positive way, he gets worse.
Unfortunately, the way he gets worse isn't narratively justified; it's absolutely nuts, and more a portrayal of the mindset of the people who made the film. The protagonist moves from hijacking a spelling bee to sexually preying on children (including sections where he tells a 10 year old girl that he can "see her womanhood", gives another child a shot of whiskey before taking him to a prostitute , etc.).
Even after the section dedicated to normalizing predators ends, the film never really regains its footing. People who should be holding severe grudges against the main character suddenly don't, and other characters have 180 personality flips mid-conversation.
This would have been a good film had they maintained the tone from the beginning of the film, but as it stands, it's a film for people who seek to be accepted despite behaving poorly, and predators.
Helix (2014)
Good sets and costuming, but soap opera writing
The premise is solid, the CGI looks goof and is used appropriately, and the sets look well done and believable.
Unfortunately, the issue is the script. To put it simply, it's bad. Stock phrases and buzzwords are a dime-a-dozen, characterization is non-existence, and the script relies heavily on exposition.
Raised by Wolves (2020)
An excellent Sci-Fi series with a dense collection of themes
The standard elements of a TV series are all adequate or excellent in Raised by Wolves; you shouldn't expect to have any problems with the acting, camerawork, or screenplay. However, they're not what make Raised by Wolves worth watching.
What does make it unique are two elements; the first is the aesthetic, which is a level above essentially every other sci-fi film or tv series made yet, with an extremely high level of attention to detail that really boosts immersion. You aren't left to guess or fill in the blanks of what's happening; there's no character vocally describing what happened, because you can always see it for yourself. This means that the characters can stick to performing their roles, and not being voices for the writers.
The second element is the story itself. This is what I was referring to when I described the show as having a "dense collection of themes" - the writing of this series covers an extremely large amount of topics, and derivatives of those topics as well. Most notably are the social effects of a child's upbringing depending on its environment; how will a child raised in a religious but highly moral environment act compared to a home-schooled only child that was only surrounded by synthetic androids?
Theology and technology could be considered the base of all the other themes, but their derivatives are really what make this show worth watching. To what degree does an AI's strictness regarding its rules affect its behaviour? Should it be able to adapt? When dealing with a deity, does the nature of the deity or whether or not it assists you affect whether or not you should consider it a deity?
My favourite usage of the themes in this show concerns the purpose and the usage of advanced technology. Many viewers have expressed confusion about how or why certain things work in the way they do; but I like to think this show takes into consideration not only what technology we could possibly have access to, but what kind of people would abuse that technology. For example: a fast growing plant that consumes its nutrient solution rapidly in order to reach full growth within a matter of minutes could easily be turned into a weapon against animals in the wrong hands.
Fair warning, however: towards the end of the first season, the show does start to go downhill rapidly. The previous set rules of the show start to break down in favour of being more dramatic, and far too much screen time is dedicated to romance. Thankfully, the show picks back up in season 2.
Tenet (2020)
A hollywood checklist of criteria combined with Nolan focusing only on the parts of film he cares about.
This is a film that aims to tick every box in the hollywood propaganda criteria list, along with a few more recent ones; an adulterer (or someone who decided they were in an "open relationship") is shown in an excessively positive light, a mentally ill woman is shown as a victim despite being entirely responsible for her own situation. It's so egregious that when this character commits a horrifying act of betrayal against the protagonists of the film, they essentially verbally high five her and cheer her on in a "you go girl!" moment.
Another oddly excessive inclusion to the checklist is deliberate misrepresentation of violence; chokeholds, chloroforming, and combat in general are shown in a ridiculously deceitful manner - to the point that it just looks goofy (e.g. Someone holds their forearm-only against the wrong side of the neck in a faux 'choke hold').
As far as everything else goes: If you've seen any of Nolan's films, then you've seen this one. Music that goes BUHHHH every so often, an obsession with inertia in action scenes, goofily climbing up skyscrapers, etc. He appears to have almost completely given up on plot, story, and characterization. The pseudo-science in this film also doesn't follow its own rules, with "how it works" being shown to operate differently multiple times.
I'd only recommend viewing this if you want to look at the pretty pictures and expensive stunts; I do not recommend it for the action, however.
The Book of Boba Fett (2021)
Low quality on all fronts; and a nonsensical emancipation arc for the raiders.
Whether its the sets, the acting, the casting, the script, or the audio mixing, it's all off and strangely low quality.
Boba Fett is an old fat man with dentures who struggles to make even basic movements. The enemies are instantly subdued by weapons that do nothing to the named characters. The music is at least three times the volume of the spoken words; be prepared for several extremely loud 'thump' sound effects after each character whispers their lines. The story, however, is the worst offender, and the primary reason I'm bothering to leave a review.
The script is extremely basic; it relies on the vocabulary of your average seven year old, and the sentences match that level. As a result, you might not be expecting much from the plot - however, the plot is thus: Emancipating the 'victimized' Tuskan Raiders. It's just a case of real world political nonsense being shoe-horned into a plainly antagonistic faction.
I wouldn't even recommend giving this show a chance to see if you like it; there aren't any redeemable aspects.
Game of Thrones: The Iron Throne (2019)
Several arcs reach their logical conclusion, and the story is complete.
Daenerys character arc is what I refer to most of all as "reaching its logical conclusion". Having been worshipped by superstitious tribals and desperate slaves, she experienced a great degree of culture shock in the more civilized lands of westeros - where people understood what the dragons were, and how to combat them. She'd been murderhappy up until this point, killing people for so much as hurting her feelings - so naturally, when the people of westeros didn't drop at her feet worshipping her, she murdered them for it.
With the characters realising that her murderous rampages weren't such a good thing when they were aimed at them, she was dealt with as you'd expect. This show was an excellent case of how a character would be seen as a hero in one culture, and nothing but evil in another - a showcase of chemistry between a character and their setting.
As far as show endings go, this ending tied up all of the most important plot lines, and left the kingdom at peace, with its most pressing issues solved - for a time, at least.
Joker (2019)
High quality production standards only brought down by a mundane plot
Every technical aspect of this film is seriously impressive, top notch. The screenplay is fantastic, and the acting is flawless, as far as I could notice. That's what makes this film worth experiencing - however, it's let down by an unsatisfying plot which could be summed up as an escapist film like Office Space, but for serial killers.
It's essentially the pipe dream of a murderer - nearly ever murder he achieves causes colossal waves across the society of gotham city - people stand up in his defence, and are inspired by him. The first set of murders started a city-wide protest against the group which he had shot - the second public murder turned that protest into a massive riot.
But why? If the city is such a bad state, and so full of crime and misconduct that it's at boiling point, surely random murders are commonplace. His actions just don't fit the requisites for being the catalyst as they're shown in the plot. If the civil unrest started only after his murder of the talk show host, the plot would make far more sense.
The Mandalorian: Chapter 6: The Prisoner (2019)
A shadowrun-esque heist gone wrong
The mandalorian is a victim of his own circumstances, and that theme has been kept going in this episode. He's forced to seek work out with a colleague/employer from his early days, who is one of the only people disruptable enough to deal with him despite the bounty on the Mandalorian's head.
The characters fit the plot perfectly - the heist only screws up because they're terrible people. Had they remained professional, the heist would have gone off without a hitch and been smooth sailing, and as a result, I have nothing but praise for how the characters actually create the flow of the plot - rather than them being characters who happen to be present while the plot unfolds.
The Expanse: Saeculum (2019)
Plot armour ruins all suspense
Every antagonist refuses to shoot, and the main antagonist who declared his intent to murder Holden didn't even ready his gun, resulting in the supposedly highly competent Murtry being defeated easily.
Every other character dies nearly instantly when shot, but the terrorist-sympathising Amos is seemingly invincible - as a result, it's impossible to remain invested in the conflict or to take it seriously.