Reviews

Drinking vodka for 90 minutes straight would have caused me less brain rot than watching this fine film here.

This contrived and pretty dumb story unfolds over what feels like an eternity, even though the runtime is less than 90 minutes - always a good sign for a quality film. Also, for some reason, someone decided to shoot this in one take, and although I give my compliments to the crew that probably had to work a lot for this to get it done, in terms of serving the story this deciscion makes no sense whatsoever. With conventional editing, this would have been a short film. Still a bad one, but at least it would have been over sooner.

Oh, this plot. Too many times it's painfully obvious that some stupid things are only happening so the rest of the awful plot can happen. The dialogue is low-tier, the acting at times alright-ish, at times atrocious. The writing and directing are almost as bad as this director's other masterpiece PREY (Netflix), and yet he can continue to make his bad films. Why? How?

The score is mostly a continuous drone that drowns every trivial thing in pseudo-ominous synth soup and oftentimes fails to serve any of the weak beats and cues, thus making everything even duller than it had to be - which is quite the achievement.

The camera work is mostly appalling, both in operating and lighting. In important scenes, half the frame is basically unexposed. The shaky cam is strong here, and even worse than the BOURNE kind. It's just a camera stumbling around.

Except for the protagonist who is a true nothing character (we just know that she's pregnant and her name, no joke), none of the other characters' (all of who are even emptier than the protagonist) motivations make any sense.

If anything, this film once again proves that German filmmaking is as bad as their cars are good.

Skip this or watch it as a comedy, but get some booze first - you'll need it.

While Homelander continues to be one of the most interesting and intriguing characters in the last decade or so, played by the absolute god that is Antony Starr, and the story continues with mostly very interesting turns, supported by a tremendously charismatic ensemble, this episode holds one very unexpected suprise for its audiences: the offputtingly bad dialogue editing.

While visually, everything falls into place and is great to look at, the sound in several scenes seems to be straight from the editing software itself. You can hear cuts in the dialogue, sudden changes in levels, noise or complete silence at inappropriate times - in short: a work-in-progress sound mix. This makes me wonder if there's some sort of quality check going on before the episode goes online. Apparrently not, or at least not this time.

Which is too bad, especially with high-profile and high-quality shows like these.

But even if it takes you out of immersion every time it happens, the episode is good enough to draw you right back. So - ignore the technical failure, even if it's pretty ridiculous, and enjoy another fine episode of THE BOYS!

A lot of influences had to come from far away and finally fuse in a brilliant mind capable of expressing itself in such a stunning and mesmerizing way for a film like BRAZIL to come into existence.

Terry Gilliam has created a true masterpiece of cinema with what many consider to be his best film, if not one of the best films of all time. It's astonishing how BRAZIL seems to have it all - absurdity, satire, tragedy, love, suspense, fantasy, science-fiction, beauty, ugliness, heart, pain, and so much more - and yet manages to have such a clear vision behind it.

The direction is impeccable and full of spirit and character. Nobody else could have put this kind of blend to film quite like Terry Gilliam, whose visual genius presents its audience with absolutely unique vistas and beautifully realised ideas. Add in fantastic characters, played to perfection by the amazing cast, captured perfectly on beautiful film stock, and gorgeous film music that is based on one melody only: "Brazil", and you have but a faint idea of this work of art.

BRAZIL is a timeless classic that can be watched over and over again, never failing to teach you something new with every viewing. This film manages to take two hours of your life and, in exchange, fill the rest with several lives' worth of ideas and inspiration; a spark that ignites imagination and will make you laugh and cry at the same time.

BOY KILLS WORLD builds quite the interesting and colourful world, showing some competent work and true dedication. It features good actors, some great camera work and some great over-the-top gore.

And yet, it doesn't really work. Why?

In my view, it all starts with the writing, yet again. The kind of alright story is ruined by the protagonist's atrocious and mostly completely pointless monologue. Compared to the technical execution of BOY KILLS WORLD, this is truly astonishing. Add in some naive dialogue, on-the-nose "controlling ideas"/"themes" and a pretty dumb "emotional" twist, and you've got BOY KILLS WORLD. Amateur screenwriting at its most obvious.

You see, in my view, the problem with "tongue-in-cheek" writing is that in order to be funny and meta, you need to master serious writing first, or else your irony becomes baseless, has no measure and no tact. We as an experienced audience can smell this kind of incompetence instinctively, and probably will harshly categorize this as "wanna-be".

Another inconsistent factor is the direction. While the action is mostly well-done with a few very spectacular shots, the rest is quite lackluster and of stunningly inferior quality. Questionable shots that jump axis at times, weird and staged blocking, perfermances that feel strange, especially knowing the usual acting abilities of the actors. It's pretty messy.

This whole film feels like a few movie fans had an idea and got some professionals to help them get it done. Like fan fiction with a Hollywood budget.

But you know what? I'm still glad it got made, because it shows that some people with wild ideas and drive can still make something more entertaining than most of the soulless corporate content. I'm just disappointed that it wasn't very good.

If it wasn't for J. K. Simmons, this film wouldn't have been made. But thanks to nepotism (the director is Simmons' real life wife), we can now enjoy this fine product and lament almost two hours of our lives we won't get back.

At times competently shot, YOU CAN'T RUN FOREVER is a nice borefest of a "thriller" that manages to let you down quite quickly. Starting off mildly intriguing, it loses its grip fast, never to pick it up again. The characters are stupid, infuriatingly so at times, the drama forced and the execution lackluster. In fact, writing and directing go pretty much hand in hand.

And the title seems quite fitting once you see (now elderly) J. K. Simmons running through the woods, as he certainly can't run forever. Oh my.

If you value your time, skip this one. It's nothing but a pretty incompetently told, uninteresting story made by a not-so-talented director who happens to be married to J. J. Jameson's only worthy incarnation.

It might feel unfair to bash this kind of fan-made production that came from a warm place of admiration for the original BLOODSPORT. But in the end, it must take a stand in the ring and face the one it chose to compare itself to.

THE LAST KUMITE is, to be very honest, an embarrassment for everyone involved. A mindnumbingly amateurish script meets a spectacular failure in directing, acting, filming, choreographing and almost everything else.

It's amazing that they have so many legends involved in this film, but I wonder if that's really a good thing. Personally, I didn't need to see Cynthia Rothrock embarrass herself in something that doesn't even exist in the same reality as her incredible performances of yore. If anything, it made me very sad to see what might be her last axe kick on film in this piece of absolute junk.

Everyone delivers a wooden performance at best, to put it extremely mildly, and that goes for the action as well. I'm not sure how they did this, but nothing is good about this film, absolutely nothing. Not even Paul Hertzog's throwback score.

The camera work is incredibly inconsistent- from half-decent shots to influencer-level iPhone fidgetting. Sound design is atrocious, the sound mix is terrible. It's all a mess.

THE LAST KUMITE might give you some sick form of enjoyment if you love to see the world burn. For everyone else, it's a tremendous waste of time and an insult to the spirit it tries to emulate so desperately.

And it honestly should have been. With this nice ensemble and decent budget, great production design, and a director who in theory definitely should have the chops, THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE had everything it needed and more.

And yet, it misses the mark. Much of it has to do with the direction, I'm afraid. A lack of spirit and inspiration can be felt throughout the film, sometimes worse than other times, but neither the shots he called nor his direction of the actors are worthy of Ritchie's potential. The script could have used a bit more polishing, especially concerning the dialogue, but it's really mostly the practical aspects where this falls flat.

If you're a native German speaker, you will also notice how bad the fake Germans actually are. They should have been dubbed, but nobody seemed to care. Even Til Schweiger messed up some lines in German (probably drunk on set, as usual) - nobody cared.

What also made the film worse than it could have been is the score. Someone told the composer to go for "Schifrin meets Morricone", I guess, and what he delivered was a weak attempt at copying both. No swing, no drama, no feeling whatsoever. Just flat and boring, matching the direction perfectly.

That being said, you can still kill a bit of time watching this, since Cavill, Ritchson, et al are very likeable and have a lot of charming presence. Locations are nice, the DoP did a great job with the lighting, and Eiza González has a great singing performance (refreshingly with no audible pitch correction, but as a professional singer with an amazing voice she really doesn't need any), even though the arrangement and interpretation of the famous "Mack The Knife" is quite horrible.

But if anything, this has made me wish for a more silly WW2 comedy with Cary Elwes in the lead. I'd buy that for a dollar.

From the spectacular nothingness of the characters to the simplistic plot that still manages to produce holes bigger than any bullet in the movie itself, from tired movie tropes like generic flashbacks and toy box sadness to a gimmick that does more damage than good - SILENT NIGHT is truly something to behold.

The writing is as naive and incompetent as the direction, and unbelievably, I also have to include the action, especially because it's a John Woo film which has to be held to his own, once fantastic standards. CGI cars, bad CGI blood, a lot of "invisible" cuts. From people not being able to hit anything with automatic weapons just metres away from each other to people not being able to see a huge forklift standing in their way - it's all hilarious if you can see this as a comedy. But the sheer pretentiousness of the no dialogue gimmick and the overall overly heavy tonality sadly spoil the fun, leaving you clueless whatever happened to one of action cinema's greatest directors.

No character has any backstory, personality, meaning. It's all nothing. As a consequence, you will probably fail to have any empathy and enthusiasm for the protagonist's progress. The only thing that made me feel anything was seeing Kid Cudi's incredibly gross fingernails.

Man, I'm afraid John Woo lost it for good. Where there was once delightfully absurd, visionary, fast-paced, over-the-top action and mastery of bending time and space, now only absurdity remains.

I'm gonna address the elephant in the room right away. Why is "Awkwafina" in any movie? She must be one of the worst actresses out there. Terrible delivery, poor screen presence, bad timing... what is going on with that?

And what a shame, since Nicholas Hoult and Nic Cage are actually very decent here, especially Nic Cage with a mesmerizing performance as Dracula. Unfortunately, the film itself, while having an interesting enough premise, fails to deliver on a writing and directing level, and with an ever-shifting tonality, it doesn't seem to know what it wants to be.

Add in some not-so-good action with terrible CGI blood, and you get a strange mixture indeed. And if it wasn't for Nicholas and Nicolas, this would have been a chore to watch.

MIRA is somewhat of an unexpected thing to behold. While the story is a bit of a knockoff of the Emmerich formula (family, drama, calamity, spectacle, and family), the attention to detail and overall execution is something else, indeed.

There are sequences in this film that are truly remarkable in every aspect, rivalling some of the best Hollywood has ever brought forth. The camera work, the production design, the acting (including the extras) and the VFX in the impact sequence are quite extraordinary, and the more realistic approach results in a fresh new way of witnessing a terrifying disaster.

I really have to stress again how amazing many of the visual effects really are: not flashy and rubbery like so many things we get to see from much bigger films, but seamless and believable. I really wonder how they pulled of a lot of shots that seem like practical effects, which of course they can't be.

Don't expect a perfect film, though. Especially in the third act, the film loses much of its realism and also goes into full cheese mode, but the good aspects easily prevail, at least for me. And so the verdict comes easy: if you're a sci-fi buff like me, you need to watch this.

Where the first season of THE MANDALORIAN managed to capture me with its Spaghetti Western flair and its obvious inspiration by LONE WOLF AND CUB and really managed to outshine all the other bland or ridiculous Disney Star Wars product, and the second season at least had some interesting and engaging story lines and episodes, this third season took a bit of a nosedive.

Specifically this episode made me realise that Star Wars is irredeemably dead now. The whole season so far has done little but make the other two seasons redundant and pointless, and the result is that now, nothing really happens. Add in really stupid things like this bird-dragon taking some Mandalorian kid during what I can only describe as amazingly awkward "training" with a Grogu doll commercial being shown, make other characters change their views without any apparent reason, and you can picture me sitting here, wondering where things started to go wrong with this show.

This is becoming tiresome, and I have to say that this might be the episode that made me stop watching THE MANDALORIAN or anything Star Wars, really.

As I watched Neil Marshall's first films, it seemed to me that they were remarkably different from his last two, and to me, his downfall seems to be correlated to the appearance of his co-writer Charlotte Kirk, also starring in both THE RECKONING and THE LAIR.

Kirk is not the worst actress, but I can imagine that Neil Marshall has succumbed to her considerable charms and looks, leading to compromise and a noticeable drop in quality.

The premise is solid, the overall plot alright, but the writing, acting and direction are all over the place. With some rare exceptions, the script is a cheesefest that should have been revised a few times, especially concerning the dialogue. The acting ranges from decent to hilariously bad. Holy hell, those fake American accents were just incredible. How any director with some skill to him (and I know Neil Marshall does have that) can accept that kind of acting is beyond me. No budget restraints can explain that. Compared to the worst offenders, Charlotte Kirk is fine indeed, but still isn't close to believable in her role as tough pilot girl. Walking and holding a weapon already seem to be too tough of a challenge, which isn't very good in this kind of film.

There is also some incredibly uninspired and downright bad directing going on, many times so unbelievably bad that I wonder if someone else was sitting on the director's chair at times. Was it you, Charlotte?

Add in some amateur sound mixing mistakes (How do the Afghans have no reverb on their obviously ADR'd voices down in that lair? Why is some of the dialogue so low in volume?), some pretty bad THE THING rip-offs, quite a bad John Carpenter rip-off score and awful humour, and voilà - another step down for a talented director.

On the good side, there are, at times, some very decent camera work and some great scenery to behold, but those do not outweigh the bad aspects. Quite the contrary, because you get a glimpse of what could have been, which is a bit frustrating.

And so, I can only hope that Neil Marshall finds out of this lair of desperate and hopeless desire and finds back to the roots of his inspired filmmaking - next time without any co-writer who also has to play the protagonist. You can do better, Neil.

VIOLENT NIGHT could have been a really entertaining film indeed. The premise and the casting of David Harbour (which absolutely carries the film, if we're being honest) are actually pretty great.

Unfortunately, the film is being held back by both an inconsistent script and uninspired direction. The first drags the film down by an ever-shifting tonality which makes me wonder if there were too many cooks resulting in this spoiled broth. The insecure direction also smells like too much of an outside influence by some naive and simplistic producer, pretty similar in style to many other 87eleven North productions.

All of this isn't helped by the obvious and overdone DIE HARD references that pretty much reach the point of plagiarism in some cases. Add in some stunt performers that have been promoted to actors (which they kinda aren't), and you have a christmas dinner that doesn't smell very good, but still manages to satisfy a few cravings.

Some performances and ideas make the film bearable indeed, but still, VIOLENT NIGHT ends up being a bit of a frustrating experience when you start realising that this could have been so much better with a better script and a more competent director.

Make no mistake - this is a visually stunning animation accomplishment with stellar moments and interesting new ideas and themes that seem to haunt del Toro quite a lot.

The biggest difference is probably the change of the original story's setting from the late 19th century to World War II era Italy. Yes, even Mussolini plays a minor role, and his design is glorious.

But even if you're willing to go with the flow and accept all the changes, some things still are a bit confusing. This is a much more mature version of Pinocchio, so why put in so many musical numbers?

Speaking of which - the music was great for the most part, except for the singing. I have no idea why so many modern movies have to resort to such horribly executed pitch correction, but boy, was it horrible here. I'm guessing that mixing engineers with no music mixing experience had to do it, because it's so obvious and bad that I refuse to believe that it was actually done by someone with musical ears. It kinda takes you out of the story if it's a warm-hearted story about being human, but the singing sounds like it was generated by some first generation A. I.

But in the end there are way more positive aspects to this film than negative ones, so don't listen to all those geniuses who take their kids to a Guillermo del Toro film and then complain that it wasn't for kids at all and enjoy an emotional ride with a lot of sad and dark elements, realized with a beautifully designed approach in its design and execution.

Let me state the obvious first: norse mythology is awesome, and I love films and stories about it.

This film starts promising, has a charming tone going on, but loses its appeal about at the midpoint. You can basically use a timer to predict the mandatory story beats from there, including a very constructed "bad guys are closing in" beat. From there on, it's basically a slightly better Roland Emmerich film that really needs you to shut your brain off.

The VFX are pretty decent to glorious, the acting mostly absolutely fine, the score a bit wanna-be but acceptable, but the script just tries to stick to hollywood procedure, which ultimately is its downfall.

If you're into norse mythology as well and don't mind a cheesy, off-the-shelf script, this is your jam. If you expect a bit more, you won't find it here.

Honestly, large parts of BLACK ADAM seem like they are cinematics from a hypothetical INJUSTICE game. Rubbery, bad CGI in fights with some cool moments. And it's all fine - until you realize that you don't have a controller in your hands.

BLACK ADAM tries to be a darker anti-hero story, but it only succeeds in displaying lots of money being burnt on screen. A cheesy script with cheesy direction and cheesy acting and a very bad score - desperately trying to get your attention with cheesy CGI.

Now, there's some nice and cool moments in this, but unfortunately, they don't make up for the horribly bad moments. Just think about an ancient culture, maybe even the oldest one on this planet - and they had some guy with a goofy lightning logo on his chest as their "champion". Right.

Add a very generic score with insufferable "beats", and you get a cheese show deluxe.

If anything, the fight between this strangely generic "Hawkman" and Black Adam in the kid's room was pretty fun, plus some shots and maybe even some lines in between, but as a whole, this is pretty much a mess from beginning to end - a convoluted two hours that won't really satisfy you. Too many bad lines, bad moments, bad plot points, bad characters and bad visuals that will spoil the fun. The concept is intriguing, though, and I would have loved to see a better script turned into reality by a way better director. Oh well.

...and I continue to feel like Pearl herself: am I missing something everybody else has got?

Who really wanted a prequel to a film that was a gimmick in the first place? X looked fantastic, but that's about it. Now, PEARL also looks really good, but what am I missing that I find all of Ti West's films boring and empty shells?

And so I find myself in the same situation again. I admire the technical aspects and how much work went into making this, but couldn't you have written an interesting story in the first place? Yes, Mia Goth is great, we get it. Wowsies, the monologue. Gasp, the smile in the end credits. Suspense? Nope.

With all that, I do think that West has made progress. PEARL is probably his most coherent work to date, but the self-indulging, wanna-be aspect remains. And he's making it a trilogy, or so I've read. Which really makes me wonder again: who wants this? Who funds these films? What is going on?

If you have ever seen any horror film before, this will seem like it really is - a naive, generic and badly written cash grab.

Almost every aspect of this film has been ripped of from another, better film.

The music is wanna-be scary and has nothing to do with what the film shows, the sound design is stupidly dishonest to squeeze a bit more reaction out of the audience, and the writing is... lackluster, to say the least. And the runtime is as exaggerated as some of the film's dialogue is terrible. Pretty much, that is.

The smiling is so unscary and inconsistent throughout the film that it's actually hilarious. I would have loved to see Sam Raimi's version of SMILE, and it would have been a much better film.

So if you're some horror newbie who finds smiling scary, have fun. If you have seen and enjoyed actually good horror films, you should probably skip this one or see it as a comedy.

After quite a solid start with two charismatic characters in an awkward situation, the film takes a strange nosedive and completely loses its focus, its direction, and with those, all suspense and immersion are gone.

It doesn't really matter that the performances are pretty good - it's a bit of a chore to get to the end of this mess of a film.

And curiously, when I read that Jordan Peele was involved, it all made sense to me. This film had less budget than Peele's stinkers, and it has even less coherence, but it shows the same unfocussed naiveté. You can even tell which one of those brillant ideas are Peele's.

Either way - there are some half-intense scenes and a bit of gore, but ultimately, you'll find no thrill in this one. And when you think of the director's statement that up in the house it's a Fincher movie while in the cellar it's a Raimi movie, you can only shake your head in disbelief, since the he doesn't seem to have seen any of those vastly superior directors' films.

I'm afraid not even a few beers will make this worth your time.