Reviews

I can easily say this is one of those films that make you feel lucky you were born in that correct timeline to experience them firsthand on the big screen. I am afraid many audience reviews will trash it because it is certainly not going to appeal to everyone and thus the box office collection might not break even with its rather expensive budget of 35 million dollars (for an A24 movie).

However, I think like Blade Runner, which was also a flop upon its release back in 1982, the movie will slowly gain traction with cult followings in the next few years and will probably play to more packed crowd in future midnight screenings.

In terms of plot, I would use the same term which IMDB used ti describe it, " Kafkaesque" . You will find yourself asking if this film is based in fantasy or reality or if it is meant to take place in that fine line between the two extremes where dreams and real life merge and commingle. Similar movies which came to mind upon reflection were Brazil(1985), Paprika(2009) and The Truman Show(1997) . Personally, I think it is Ari Aster's best; definitely a huge improvement over the rather tepid and predictable Midsummer (2019) and just surpassing the excellent Hereditary(2018).

Joaquin Phoenix deserves a special round of applause for his performance and lends verisimilitude to an otherwise very heightened sense of reality in the events depicted.

Buba is a refreshing change from the usual barrage of foreign films that Netflix adds to its catalogue every year, with the scripts and performances of the latter being very one note.

Buba however immediately holds your attention from the very first scene, huge thanks in part to the lead actor who gives off a very likeable and charming persona and also has great comic timing. He reminds me a lot of French actor Gerard Derpedaeu from the 80s-90s You instantly start rooting for his down on his luck character to succeed.

Another thing I liked about the film is that it smartly avoided any gratuitous sex scene or even implied ones. There is a love interest for our main character but verges more on a Platonic affair that is more appealing emotionally to the audience.

However, the film really starts losing momentum by the time it reaches the 3rd act and seems to be in a rush to somehow patch up all the plot points they had introduced earlier without properly concluding them.

But despite its flaws, Buba provided amicable entertainment for a 1 time watch.

4 episodes in and this is turning out to be pretty good. My only previous acquaintance with this scandal had been the book Bad Blood from the Wall Street author John Carreyrou which paints the founder of the scam biomedical company Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes, as a cardboard cutout psychopath.

This web series, on the other hand, tries to humanize her and at least makes the audience understand her world from her point of view. It reaffirms my suspicion that Elizabeth definitely had it in her to be a pioneer and iconoclast, just that she was just too impatient and wanted to accomplish everything in life before turning 30.

It's sad that this show isn't catching on as it should have. Also, Amanda Seyfried is pulling off a pretty convincing Elizabeth Holmes.

This had so much potential that got sadly wasted.

The few fight scenes in the first half were better in quality compared to the usual Marvel quick cut edited ones. They were mildly reminiscent of the Matrix fights( The intro to the Shangchi theme music even sounded suspiciously similar to Furious Angels from Matrix Reloaded and made me miss the Matrix films more)

However, anything positive about the film ends in the first half only with the second half culminating in a bloated CGI mess that is the hallmark of almost all Marvel movies. In fact, between Shangchi and Black Widow, I'd say the latter featured much better visual effects which would have looked better on the big screen than this. Shangchi would have been a more apt as a direct to video release.)

It didn't also help that the lead actor was a complete void of charisma.

Honestly, I am just going to watch some Jackie Chan movies now to now to help deal with the kung fu cravings this movie initiated in me but failed to deliver.

Yes the plot is kind of trite if you were to deeply analyse it but if you just wat a solid flick holding your attention for 2 hours, then this is right up your alley. There are indeed plot holes galore(the time travel trope has a nefarious reputation for that) but overall its a nice visual spectacle with acceptable acting.

My only amusement came from the suspicion that this might have initially been conceived as a Tom Cruise vehicle. Everything about Chris Pratt, from his dialogues, to the specific tropes his character embodies, even down to this haircut, reminded me a lot of Tom Cruise. There is also no denying how much the movie poster, and even the title, echo the 2014 Tom Cruise starrer The Edge of Tomorrow(which also involved a time travel plot as well as fighting invading aliens) . Chris Pratt seemed like a last minute replacement.

An amazing piece of animation that highlights the philosophical absurdities of life in the style of the great French philosopher Albert Camus.

The crude amateur animation is actually a veiled commentary on society's crude obsession with transient pleasures which we oftentimes define to be the goals of our life and not simply a passing fad.

Finally, the voice performance of legendary actor Mike Stoklasa blew me over. He has channeled the persona of his iconic creation, the fictional film critic Mr. Plinkett, into the character of Desmond and the result just screams perfection. That deep sagacious voice truly resonates with the absurdist notions of life as projected by this cartoon.

I am interested in more future episodes and I really hope they bring Mr. Stoklasa back for more side cameos.

I chose to rent this movie for $6 on YT based solely on the lead actors being Jesse and Imogen . I followed their on screen chemistry in two previous films (The Double and Art of Self Defense) and found them likable as a couple in both of them.

This led me to see their performance here as well.

Before I go over my criticisms, I will say that this film really tries to be different from the norm. More than sci fi, I would say this film borrows more heavily from the philosophical ideas of Spanish writer Jorge Luis Borges. Borges would often allude the idiosyncrasies of daily life to fantastical and impossible scenarios. He was also quite fascinated with the theme of infinity or redundancy in his short stories. Without going into spoilers, I can say this film follows a similar theme of infinite repetition of life, equating the daily problems in rearing a family to the myth of Sisyphus. There is no respite from it. Also, I liked the look of the film. The colors they used sort of helped accentuate the sensation of vapidity in the lives of the protagonist. In fact, besides the two human characters played by Imogen and Jesse, the vapidity of living in a society as a family is personified as a third character.

However, I fell that given such an interesting premise, the writers could have worked a bit more on the material. Both Jesse and Imogen felt like blank slates. We knew nothing about their characters before or even after the end of the movie. It would have helped to get some context on their relationship and their own personal motivations . I was seven more confused with Jesse's role. I think he wanted to shake off his "nerd" image and be more of a butch in this role; however it comes off as being very confusing. Is he supposed to be assertive or mild mannered, smart or dull. I really couldn't get a grip on his character.

Also, at the end of the film, even though I got the film's central message, I still didn't feel I got a well earned satisfying conclusion. And I think this ties directly to the notion that the two characters were underwritten. If they had personal good arcs, maybe I could have appreciated the film more.

No...just no. This film has to be one of the most pathetic ripoffs of 3 Idiots that nevertheless fails to inherit any of the charm or grandeur of the original.

The first sore thumb, among many, was the casting choice for the lead roles. I found the supporting cast adequate, but both Sushant Singh and Shraddha Kapoor were TERRIBLE picks for the lead.

Sushant gave a somewhat tolerable performance as a college student but the moment he put on the terrible aged makeup to play his older self, I would brace myself for a lot of lifeless bland acting. I think this man was way out of his league for such a role. He is more fit as a teenage heartthrob with the dance moves and pecks rather than playing any character/role that requires some dramatic depth. But a more terrible offender of bad and even cringe-worthy acting was Shradhha Kapoor. Whenever she attempted to shed tears on screen, I would have to painfully restrain myself from bursting out into laughter. She was just so bad.

And now, let's move onto the plot. Ideally, a good plot would have compensated for any of the bad acting to some degree. But sadly, the plot here felt an ever bigger joke than the dubious casting choices. The writer thought it was probably an excellent idea to mash 3 Idiots with Student Of The Year. And this does not pay off at all.

Here's the main problem: The film tries to correlate a young boy's frustrations of not getting a good college admission rank with the frustrations of his father and friends when they tried to win a college sports competition to reclaim their hostel's glory on campus. There is an immediate disconnect between these two types of frustrations. The boy is genuinely worried about his future career and education, things we can all agree are paramount to establishing security in life. But his parents in their youth are worrying over a mere sports competition??? How can they be both the same. If I lost the latter, maybe I would be severely heartbroken but I know that would not leave an impact on my life's security. I find it even more ironic that the director of the film is an IIT alumnus and yet he stupendously fails in portraying this frustration today's youth face in trying to establish themselves in an over competitive third world nation.

So , starting from the second act, the film completely devolves into Student of The Year territory without any tether to the actual struggles of college and academic life in India.

If you really want to watch a film to stoke your nostalgia of college life, either go rewatch 3 idiots or simply go to Youtube and watch the excellent satire TVF Honest Campus Placements.

This turned out to be surprisingly quite fun to watch. There were no big names attached to the project, or even recognisable ones save for Andie McDowell so I was initially not quite sure how the movie would turn out. But they all gave good performances. I really liked the lead actress Samara Weaving; she had very expressive eyes that were always beaming with energy.

What stands out is the pseudo commentary on the effect of excesses on man's nature and class distinctions. However, the movie's strength primarily was the excellent pacing. Even though I could get a hunch for some of the plot twists based on the way they were set up prior, the swift pacing still kept me anticipating those turn of events.

I hope more people see this hidden gem and spread the movie's fame through word of mouth since there wasn't that much effort put by the studio for promotion (the trailer lacked none of the energy the film actually had)

I don't know the fuss over this movie being so divisive among reviewers. Of course this movie is more of a fictionalized account of the days leading up to ISRO's MOM launch than a semi autobiographical narrative. So what? So many movies around the world come and go with the "based on/inspired by the events" tag that stray far from reality yet no one bats an eye then.

This movie is just OK, you can bring your parents or colleagues or spouse and you are guaranteed to have a pleasant time with any of them as company. Akshay does a fine job in the lead role with Vidya giving a commendable supporting act. The rest of the cast are passable.

The movie thankfully has not many cringe-worthy moments. The few that were put in more as a quota fulfillment for a standard masala Bollywood film do not stick out like a sore thumb. A lot of people seemed to complain that there was not much emphasis given on the exact science of the Mars mission . Clearly, this movie aims more for that vicarious experience of joy and happiness at having achieved the mission rather than the exact train of intellectual thought that went into solving the obstacles faced.

Finally, there was a commentary by an official reviewer as to how this movie was pandering to nationalism and religious appeasement at the same time.I got neither of those vibes from the movie. Regarding nationalism, I felt the referenced attribute was more about cherishing the underdog tale ( a financially stunted ISRO against space giants like the US and Russia) rather than any political right wing remark. And the religious appeasement angle was anything but left wing. If anything, that subplot was meant to reconcile the different faiths in a diverse nation and pray mutually for the success of the Mars mission.

So,overall I am impressed and will recommend this movie

Spider-man definitely feels more fleshed out both as a concept and as a character compared to Homecoming within the confines of the MCU. Homecoming had felt more like a testing ground to launch the character of Spider-man into the MCU. Kevin Feige was probably unsure as to how much the late entry would affect audience expectations so he made Spider-man play second fiddle to Iron Man till the third act. Far from Home by contrast feels more like a conventional Spider-man film.

Character interactions were enjoyable as well. I didn't like Zendaya as MJ in Homecoming because she had looked too much like a professional model to be starring as a character who is personally very close to Peter Parker in Spider-Man lore. However, she definitely seems more like a real teenager here. Jake Gyllenhall did alright. This was probably the first time I saw him in a mainstream popcorn movie and his character really did not have much dramatic depth where he could have given his personal touch. So I have no complaints about him.

There is a plot twist which I easily saw coming even before the first act had ended. It's a very overused trope to create plot twists in general. Also, I wish the other school students were more fleshed out as were the main characters.

However, the CGI in the third act really heightens the sensation of being in a Spider-man movie. It's drastically improved upon Homecoming where the CGI suit had looked so fake. Here when there is an action sequence involving Spider-Man , you can actually insert yourself into the character as he web swings to heighten the immersion. In terms of great CGI, this is easily very close to the entry scene of Spider-Man in TASM2 which still remains my personal favorite Spider-Man sequence ( too bad the rest of that film was so bland).

There is a mid credits scene that is sure to bring back good memories to some audiences. Overall, I would recommend the film as light fun.

There is no dearth of critical reviews online hailing this movie as a masterpiece . The verdict seems to be this has surpassed even Aster's previous venture , Hereditary, in terms of sheer brilliance. Well, personally speaking, the film no doubt is something to be not just seen but rather experienced as a trip. 10 minutes of watching Midsommar offers more on the visual psychedelic palette than all the recent jump scare based run of the mill horror movies combined. But I would still rank Hereditary a notch higher than this.

Hereditary still remains the best horror movie I have seen in the last 10 years. In terms of motifs, Midsommar definitely inherits from Hereditary such that fans of the older movie can spot them in the new one again and get the same level of satisfaction. However, Hereditary also had a more structured plot that sets up a lot of subtle things in the beginning and have them pay off very effectively as the film progresses. The conflict established between the central characters of the mother and son, brought on by a family tragedy, serves to properly guide the decisions of the characters . In fact, the film's ending even justifies the namesake Hereditary, without going into spoilers.

In Midsommar, a lot of these tropes seep in as well: the family tragedy, the conflict and misunderstanding between the two lead characters who are supposed to love each other. However, they don't pay off with the same efficiency. While I was being smothered with the crazy beautiful visuals ( and really they are very good ) , I couldn't help but notice that the plot could could have had a better resolution. The characters did not seem guided by motivations that made much sense, save for the black guy and the Swedish friend. The side characters here had very specific traits: the curious academic who is only driven by research ( William Jackson Harper) and the comedian ( Will Poulter). Also, as a graduate student myself, it takes some suspension of disbelief to accept that the lead characters are doctoral researchers. Except for William Jackson Harper, everyone else looked quite young for the character age and acted more like freshmen rather than grad students. But again, this in particular is a minor nitpick.

In terms of praise, I guess the visuals are the top draw. The enchanting camerawork, that seems to fluidly distort space and time, helps sell the idea that the film is meant to be a simulated acid trip centered around a cult in Sweden. There are zero jump scares. The horror element comes from the insinuation that this acid trip started on a high note but gradually descends into profound chaos and dread.

So, on the basis alone of getting to experience an acid trip , I would definitely recommend this movie.

The biggest disappointment straight off the bat is that despite being rated R, this film at best can be described as PG , not even PG 13. There were maybe perhaps two scenes with split second of onscreen blood. The rest of the film plays out like a generic Goosebumps episode from the 90s. Actually, some of those episodes I watched as a kid had a more structured narrative to them, along with effective scares.

This movie could have easily been so much more than the bland tepid two hour jump scare montage. You have just one big house as the setting with many props dangling around. A good script writer , whose only aim would have been to scare the audience, could have easily designed an elaborate system of conflicts for the main characters to resolve one after the other in order to get to a goal. He could have easily even sacrificed a character to make the final resolution seem more significant. Yes, these methods are cliched but they would have been more effective in making a barebones horror film plot than the mess I saw splattered all over the screen. The characters don't have any arc. Only one of them somewhat has it but it comes off as the laziest way to conclude that arc.

In the scares department, you had random ghouls providing the jump scares. No introduction or character development was made for them. Guess they are all just sequel/spinoff bait in this muddled horror cinematic universe.

The only time I sort of felt engaged with the story was whenever the Lorraine couple featured in their brief cameos. Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson have excellent chemistry as husband and wife and really makes you yearn to partake in that lovely experience. But basically everything else caused me disappointment. So don't but into these bafflingly high reviews made by the possessed and save yourself that ticket money. I hear Midsomner is coming out soon and that's apparently already a hit with the critics as a fine horror movie.

I really went in with meager expectations for this. But I was surprised at how entertaining this was. The Chucky lore is perfectly modernized by ditching the supernatural theme in the original movie and replacing it with a more befitting evil AI , something which syncs perfectly with the modern era of Internet of Things.

Mark Hamill delivers an enjoyable voice performance. It' doesn't sound as demonic as in the original but more like the Joker from the Batman animated series under the influence of weed. Which is perfect. The lighting and background score help lend a sort of nightmarish quality to the film's setting.I thought Aubrey Plaza wouldn't work as a believable mom but she was alright too.

In terms of complaints, I guess the main would be that Chucky really doesn't have a very strong motivation to turn evil and kill people. In the original, it sort of made sense because he inherited the soul of a dead serial killer. Here, I really expected a more concrete impetus to slaughter victims other than them simply being an a apparent impediment to a close bond between Chucky and Andy. Also, while the overused cliche of the "son up against the mom's boyfriend" is used to create a central conflict, I wish it were fleshed out more . We really needed to see Andy feel more frustrated and disturbed by the boyfriend to help evoke a more effective catharsis.

But still, in the end, I wasn't bored by any minute of this movie. Scenes which I thought could potentially drag on were thankfully shortened, almost as if the filmmaker was aware of this.

So go ahead, enjoy the movie. It does bring something new to the table

The only two Jarmusch films I have previously watched and which will form the basis of my reference for this movie are: Dead Man and Only Lovers Left Alive. Now both these aforementioned films are not the typical popcorn movie. They are somewhere between being general entertainers and art films, leaning slightly to the latter. However, they both felt like SOLID movies, with the audience feeling a sense of conclusion to the narrative being told in them.

However, The Dead Don't Die really doesn't compare much to either of these previous Jarmusch ventures. Which is so sad, because it has the trappings of achieving cult status: great actors, a quirky if not so original premise and a great rural setting ripe for a 50s B horror movie pastiche . I did like the exchanges between the lead actors , Bill Murray and Adam Driver. Their onscreen relationship was probably the centerpiece of the movie.

The side characters sadly didn't have much dimension or rather much to do really, but the actors portraying them were professionals and tried to inject as much quirkiness to them as possible to make them somewhat memorable. You are led to believe that one side character might be the key to resolving the narrative conflict presented but, as acclaimed film critic Jay Bauman likes to mention often, the film "subverts your expectations" in a bad way.

There are some genuine laughs here and there. There is quite a lot of meta humor as well; some land well , others quite don't.

Overall, I really wouldn't go so far as to NOT recommend this movie. If you just want to chill, seat back and just enjoy a somewhat offbeat comedy without investing too much in the narrative flow, you might find the movie OK and amusing. Else, hoping for a zombie comedy along the lines of Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland might get you frustrated at having watched this.

I don't know if this is a phenomenon that has been widely observed or not but nowadays, Hollywood barely makes what we can traditionally call a " Robot" movie, that is a movie that has an actual robot as a central character . Most SF films that involve robots these days mainly have them as motion capture based CGI extras or grunts. When it comes to representing artificial intelligence, these movies instead tend to focus on a central computer or a hive mind as the complimenting character. Even the later Terminator movies tended to flesh out the evil Skynet software as a tangible antagonist more than any individual T800 robot unit. Possibly the last major Hollywood movie to mainly revolve around a robot character and devote actual animatronics and suit design to it was Bicentennial Man, and that was way back in 1999.

So the very first thing that delighted me in I Am Mother was to see the revival of the classic actor in a robot suit formula . Mother 's suit is very convincing and clearly has been inspired by the numerous popular real life humanoid robots in existence today. She seemed very reminiscent of the humanoids from Boston Dynamics. Because there was an actual robot performer on set with suit on, I could tell how convenient it was for the other actors to interact with it and give more engaging performances. Contrast this to more recent robot films like Chappie where the mo cap based CGI is convincing enough but there is always that uncanny feeling somewhere in our minds that these robots are really not tangible.

So much about the robot suit. The plot accompanying it was pretty well done as well. Elaborating on it might devolve into spoiler territory so I won't go that route. Basically, in a supposedly post apocalyptic environment, one sole robot, Mother has set up a sealed sanitary lab to grow a human embryo and rear it up as a child. The actor in the Mother suit was great and really sold me his character of a robot tending to each and every need of the child from infancy to adolescence. The main premise of the movie, as Mother herself keeps reminding her "daughter", is to see whether she has been successful enough in making a fine exemplary human out of the girl so that she can restart human civilization. And this premise actually leads to its conclusion in the ending as well , leaving enough enough food for thought as to whether Mother was successful in her mission or not.

Hillary Swank is pretty good in her role as well. It really is a pity that Hollywood does not provide such a genuine actor with mainstream performances of late. She reminded me a lot of Linda Hamilton's performance as Sarah Connor in Terminator 2. Speaking of T2, this film has a very nice reference to it.

Overall, I am happy that I didn't pass up on this film on Netflix and I would recommend it .

The film takes place in an unnamed Capitalist country, a stand in mostly for the USA, where filthy rich capitalists try to squeeze as much profit from the worker and repress any revolt. An engineer , caught in this class maelstrom , invents a special Robot that hopefully will reduce workload for workers and gradually eliminate a capitalist market with the resultant cheap labor. But alas, the evil Monopoly men have other plans for him and his invention.

Even if you can accept the movie's ideology as a product of its time and place of origin, I hated the fact that there was absolutely no subtlety from an artistic point of view in spreading its message. Let's face it, this movie isn't giving Metropolis(1927) any competition. However, the movie makes up for it with genuinely good visual effects with the limited budget that they had. I liked the practical effects on the robots and the fact that they built so many units for use in the film. I think the effects overall have aged quite well.

I get that the main theme was exploring Existentialism from the point of view a woman who might as well be the only human alive on Earth. But surely, there must be something else , something more substantial to move the film along through its 2 hour duration.

But , I am sorry to say there is absolutely nothing else , no turn of events, no interesting character arc , just about nothing that can keep you engaged in the plot. Well, there is a particular event that sort of changes things for the woman and steers the movie into the final act but then again, it happened so abruptly in the midst of the boredom already perpetuated by the movie that it didn't elicit any emotional impact from me at all.

I guess the only two redeeming qualities of the film are the beautiful setting in the Austrian alps, and the performance of the lead actor Martina Gedeck. MArtina in particular proved herself to be such a great actor. There was a lot of subtle facial cues that helped bring life to her character that didn't have much dialogue save for an inner monologue. I have to admit I was completely in awe of her . She certainly deserves to be in more movies where she plays the lead instead of simply being the usual side character .

Overall, I really wouldn't recommend the film to any general audience. If you just have some free time in hand and would like to look at some beautiful scenery , coupled with the presence of a beautiful lady who really knows her art, then I guess you can check it out.

This film almost started somewhat promisingly enough, atleast to the depth you would expect a movie about giant monsters to attain. But then it gradually descends into absolute nonsense in terms of plot and vapid propaganda very subtly aimed at Chinese audiences to inflate their ego (because China is still a lucrative market for Hollywood).

Ok let me first go over my impressions on the movie as a whole before I delve deeper into this curious instance of Godzilla changing his identity from Japanese to Chinese. The basic premise involving the rift between the monsters themselves is decent. The subplot about the estranged lead husband and wife characters , who incidentally were the only somewhat interesting characters, could have easily been used to mirror the divide among the monsters, these Titans, in the human world. But this potential is hampered by stupid, inconsistent character decisions that really make you completely detached from every single character. There were also so many moments of unintentional hilarity that sometimes even challenge the more comedic light heartened older Godzilla films in terms of stupidity and goofiness. Another major flaw is that they give ZERO character development to any of the monsters. This is especially bothersome because in the third act, when these Titans have the major showdown, the film wants you to empathise with some of the monsters, particularly Mothra, but we literally don't have ANY scene of Mothra beforehand showing some evolution or character progression save for his genesis. Finally, that child actor really started giving a bad performance towards the third act, although by that time, the plot had immersed into maximum cringe. Overall, after coming out of the theater , I had to take two cups of tea to get rid of a storming headache attained from all the pointless absurdity that had transpired onscreen.

Now, let's talk about the China pandering, something way more interesting than the plot. As was the case with the King Kong reboot, one of the good scientists is a Chinese lady, Chen. However, unlike Kong:Skull Island, this movie gives the Chinese character a much broader role. In the first half of the movie, Chen is somewhat relegated to the background while the Japanese scientist, played by Ken Watanabe, serves more as the symbolic link to Godzilla's cultural ties to Japan . As in the 2014 film, he is the main human character conduit to convey Godzilla's personality to a Western audience in the first half. But then suddenly out of nowhere, Chen takes over and becomes the mouthpiece of Godzilla in the second half. She is the one who provides the exposition on Godzilla's current state of mind. She is the one who starts taking a big role in guiding the other characters as to how to deal with every situation. In a particularly interesting scene, she is whispering to the protagonist husband in front of an AMERCIAN army general while the latter is giving a briefing on the crisis. The general expresses his irritation at this upon which she stubbornly tells him how the AMERICAN army is doing it all wrong and how she is there to give them the right guidance . There are several other instances where the filmmakers try to desperately orient the Godzilla/Kaiju mythos to a more Chinese cultural foundation. Personally, I don't care much about this fad but somewhere deep in my conscience, it struck a bad chord with my inherent appreciation and fondness for Godzilla as a JAPANESE mascot. But sadly, that childhood construct seems to have been now obliterated by Hollywood.

Just don't watch this film.

Yeah it's no secret that this film was intended to be a pastiche of Man of Steel to the point of copying the same font style for the trailer complete with the same shots of the young NOT Clark Kent exploring his Kansas home.

I had expected the movie to be more of a dark comedy because I think that would have worked better for the tone they were going for in trying to parody Zack Snyder's ridiculously serious take on Superman as if the superhero were a Christ substitute who has come to save Mankind and is burdened with a great mission.

But no, they instead make it a straight faced horror movie with the worn out cliche of characters dying one after another from the menace. What made the plot somewhat frustrating for me is that they really don't give NOT Clark Kent enough motivation to actually turn evil and wreak havoc on the townsfolk. They conveniently put in a plot device to account for his sudden character change , since the first 5-10 minutes of the film showed him to be a pretty ordinary twelve year old. They don't even introduce a cruel school bully or maybe an abusive uncle/aunt character to coerce him into turning to the dark side. Thus, none of the deaths in this movie really seem that much earned even from the killer's point of view.

Ultimately, with the premise they went for and the fact that this film is rated R , they could have accomplished so much more. Yes there were some interesting gory visuals but my appetite was really not satisfied with it. I guess I was suckered into seeing it on hearing that James Gunn was attached to the film. But turns out, he is just the producer. The writers also have the surname Gunn but they really don't inherit James Gunn's talent in writing a good screenplay, so bad for them.

The main hook for me in going to a select screening of High Life was a chance to see Robert Pattison in a Sci Fi movie about a space ship hurtling towards a black hole, possibly while still trying to make sense of the experience that was the Twilight franchise. The film is essentially a potpourri of ideas and visuals borrowed from a variety of different existing cult sci fi movies, but the ones which stood out were 2001, Solyaris , Silent Running and even Interstellar , because why not. Although it was pretty obvious there were huge budgetary constraints, the resultant special effects and set design were still sort of decent. At least they didn't completely break the suspension of disbelief.

The best scenes were definitely of Robert Pattison trying to take care of his infant daughter. The chemistry felt very natural. Usually in movies involving babies , they put in a fake baby for wider shots and the same sequence of baby sounds for the foley artists to use. Here, I really got the sense that there was a baby on board. Also , I liked how the film depicted the effect of entering a black hole being more realistic as compared to Interstellar.

But that's pretty much where the pros stop. The premise, which was nice, was not well fleshed out . There were too many characters and not enough time to give them a proper identity. Add to the fact that despite this, the film is still slow moving with a lot of unnecessary time taken to establish a scene. There also is a weird masturbation scene involving Juliette Binoche but instead of getting my blood boiled up, it made me extremely uncomfortable. But yes, I would still recommend it if you want something outside of popcorn movies at the theater.

This is probably the 2nd best DCEU movie we have right now , after Wonder Woman. The film certainly knew its limits and the premise it was given , and didn't unnecessarily up the stakes just for a super spectacular showdown. In fact, towards the 3rd act, it sort of lightly parodies the chaos and frenzy that was Man Of Steel.

Given that the protagonist starts out as a foster boy trying to search for his mother he got separated from, it was fitting that the core of the film was about finding family and bonding with your siblings. Their is good chemistry developed among the foster kids although some of the scenes still were corny. The child actors were refreshingly competent, in the sense that a lot of the new ones they bring in movies these days are just so bad at acting. The main kid was pretty alright himself and gave his character a lot of credibility.

The third act was very reminiscent of the 90s kids movies. I was getting a lot of Jumanji (the Robin Williams one) vibes for some reason.

My main complaint is that they went exposition heavy at some places , which took away the general flow. They could have easily supplanted that with scenes depicting the action and giving enough visual clues to the audience to indicate what is going on. Also the demons that Shazam fights vary in their effectiveness to entertain the audience. At times, they appear menacing and violent, ready to draw fear from us. But at other times they engage in cliched CGI slapstick as in Age OF Ultron or Justice League.

But overall,a great movie to help keep off any worries and relax for two hours.

This Australian film had a lowkey release in the US this week. However, it really does do justice to the flow of events concerning the brutal sadistic siege of the Hotel Taaj in Mumbai, India back in 2008 by a terror outfit based in Pakistan. For me as an Indian, it brought back memories of being glued to the TV screen following news channel updates that detailed every plight by the police to contain the situation (which in retrospect actually was a deterrent since the terrorists also had access to the TV stations and got all the info they needed to plan their each and every move). The action and violence was REALLY intense and the movie's strongest point

My chief complaint is that Mumbai was depicted from the point of view of a Westerner who, despite making overall a great film, also thought to stir up the conventional views of the city by a Western audience which primarily involves visualizing the city as still clinging on to the colonial times with a stark contrast between poverty and the uber rich, with no middle class involved. But again, I would still highly recommend the movie if you are looking forward to enjoying an action thriller in a theater.

So I just watched Captain Marvel (I was the only person in the theater besides this creepy bearded guy with a ponytail slobbering away at popcorn) and wow.. was it an abysmally mediocre film. I wish it were leaning more on the so-bad-it's-good territory, if only to get more entertainment value . Hell, I would even rate Aquaman and Venom above this tepid mess in this regard.

They had two plot points where they definitely could have been more creative : the '90s nostalgia ( as was promised in the trailer) and the buddy cop relationship between Fury and Marvel. But they did an extremely mediocre job over both of these. The '90s showcase just lasted about 10-15 minutes max onscreen.

The plot itself felt something from a cheap '90s sci fi show, very lazily written. Also, the theme of women empowerment was so blatant and on your nose. I mean, you have Wonder Woman as a good successful reference and they could have easily taken pointers from there. But no, their vision of women empowerment is simply just one specific montage in the third act of Brie Larson courageously standing up from the ground at different instances of her life as "symbolism" for women rising up after being pushed to the ground by the establishment. I mean, that's literally it. Oh, and at one point, a lousy child actor tells her mom that she should do a courageous duty to set an example. It was just cringey.

Speaking of lousy acting and cringe-worthy moments, Brie Larson had a lot to showcase in this regard. She either couldn't act at all in certain scenes while in others, her efforts to emote either despair or satisfaction resulted in a mix of absolute cringe and lots of yawns from the audience.

The main issue that arises from the bad writing and the bad acting is that we as an audience simply don't get to care about Captain Marvel. I never got a sense of her character, her motivations and reasons enough to like her. She was just a blank slate.

The only reason I didn't rate this lower was because the CGI for some particular scenes was pretty well done. Also, Samuel L Jackson was pretty likable as a younger Nick Fury.

Just take my advice and leave this film alone. You won't be missing any plot points for the later MCU movies.

A Serbian Film (no not THAT one) about a man on an isolated spaceship, his only companion a female Android. Right off the bat, I have to admit there are specifically two points this SF feature got right: lighting and sound design. These two things genuinely enhanced the atmosphere of the movie and made you engaged in the universe it created. So many big budget SF movies Hollywood pukes out these days just fail to realize the importance of these two attributes in the genre. The premise, coming from a Socialist country, seems a bit .. of a stretch. Apparently , Capitalism is a plague in the future that has even infected whole galaxies and it is up to the ever righteous Ederlezi Corporation to send social engineers to these space colonies to restore normalcy the socialist way. That being said, I really wouldn't have had a problem of they actually fleshed out this premise even more. Instead, the film chooses to mainly concentrate on the chemistry between the cosmonaut and his robot sex partner. Which I guess wasn't bad on its own.

The robot is played by an actual pornographic actress, the beautiful and enchanting Stoya, so there is absolutely no body double or vfx used during the sex scenes. Also, she is naked most of the time even when the script didn't call for a sex scene. However, I admire that her particular athletic,not voluptuous, figure and the incredible lighting actually transcends any sleaziness and gives her a more sublime aura. It helps amplify the other worldliness instead of just being gratuitous nudity.

All in all, considering the low budget, I am very impressed. We genuinely need more atmospheric sci fi instead of another season of Star Trek Discovery.