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mrwolfie
Reviews
From (2022)
Populated by annoying dumb characters.
Ep1 Season 2. Two survivors are creeping thru a cave system.
Man: be quiet. They'll wake if they hear us.
Woman: who will?
Oh, I don't know - perhaps the monsters that you've been hiding FROM for the entire first season!
There is no hope for this show, everyone is either a complete shouty, screamy imbecile- or behaves like a psychopath having a manic episode. It would be impossible to have a smart, capable, logical person arrive in town and take control, reasonably and rationally, because it would make every other character look like an idiot. Which they are.
In any given situation, every single character in this show will: (if possible) run, shout, shout some more, demand that someone "do something" while flailing around like a muppet.
This show desperately wants to be LOST, and it is - without the charismatic characters - and we all know how THAT ended. I wonder if Harold Perrineau sometimes forgets where he is and shouts "Micheal" instead of any number of cliched, dumb lines he's been given here.
Beforeigners (2019)
SciFi Time Travel Mystery
Set in modern Norway, in a world where people from past times are turning up in the present, a Viking shield maiden is a police officer and investigates murders with her drug-addicted, hallucinating modern-day partner.
These migrants from the past, or timigrants, cause a lot of problems for the current day, bringing their old religions and beliefs - from the violent vikings to the prudish, repressive Victorian-era and the technology-eschewing luddites. The show is absolutely the opposite of preachy in this area, not shying away from showing the problems that occur and the crimes some of these people are willing to commit to try and change modern society more to their liking. While a handful of timigrants can and do integrate, many do not and add the the slow erosion of the modern city.
Anyway, behind all this there is the further mystery of how & why people are turning up from the past, who is behind this and is the traffic only one-way?
The story is a little confused at times, but the main characters are engaging enough and the actors all play their parts well.
An entertaining 7.5 out of ten.
The Walking Dead: World Beyond (2020)
If you were worried...
...about the welfare of the writers of Z Nation after their show ended, fear not! They are alive and well in the Walking Dead Universe. They're really revealing themselves in Episode 2: Zom-Bees... Blaze of GORY... I can't wait for a ball of entangled "empties" to roll down the road, or for someone to get "mercied".
Finally, I'm rooting for the zombies. Every time one of these kids comes within range of the undead, I'm, "bite her, bite her!" and "eat his face off!"
This show sure is interactive.
The most sympathetic character in E2 was a zombie who got puked on, and no-one - not even one of the adults - put that zombie out of its misery. Poor zombie :(
Monsterland: Eugene, Oregon (2020)
A swing and a miss.
The shadow was real. It existed before he went online to see what it was. So whatever the moral of this story is, it is not about bad influences online. No matter what he does about it, the problem DID exist.
The chat room manifesting in his room was cool. Until: they passed a bottle of alcohol around and all comment on how bad it is. And then, the ringleader gave him some pills for his sick mom (I know right, such a bad person!!)
And the end. no-one knows what happened. Some people think he shot his mom, he could have shot himself, he could actually have made a light gun and been shot by cops...
100 Million BC (2008)
Is one out of ten really the lowest score I can give?
Quite possibly the worst movie I've seen in 45 years of watching movies. It's not even so bad that it crosses the line into humour.
Just plain pathetic. On every level. The only redeeming factor is that the worst actor in it gets eaten early on (by something masquerading as a dinosaur that is a disturbing cross between CGI written in DOS and a sock puppet). However, exactly who the worst actor is might have you guessing for a goodly portion of the "movie". Trust me, you do not want to waste 90 minutes of your life trying to figure out which one of the cast is stinking up the screen more.
The FX are not so much "special" as "papier-mâché". The camera work is distinctly amateurish and the plot, such as it is, has at least one WWII personnel carrier driven right through it. Really, yes it does!
Avoid at all costs.
Batman Begins (2005)
Not as good as 33,000+ say...
Stop. Remove the memories of all previous Batman movies from your mind. Movies should not be judged on their predecessors. For me, each of the following points knock one point off from the top score:
All the fight scenes. Bad. Just terrible choreography and camera set-up. I cannot believe, in this post-Matrix world, we are still seeing fight scenes done as clumsily and confusing as this. Even Spielberg falls into this hole though, with his fight scenes in MINORITY REPORT. Personally, I expect better from my directors; at the very least, I expect them to have seen THE MATRIX, KILL BILL, YING XIONG and SHI MIAN MAI FU. Duh!
Michael Caine as Alfred. Bad. I mean, come on! His accent changes halfway through the movie!! This one was done purely for the money, wasn't it?
Katie Holmes. Bad. She's about as believable as pigs flying and, personally, I'd rather wrestle flying pigs to the ground than have to watch her "act" again.
R'as Al Ghul. Bad. He's supposed to be an extreme eco-terrorist. He's supposed to have discovered the Lazarus Pit, which keeps him alive for centuries. He's supposed to be EVIL!
Talia. Hot. Yeah, she would have been, but R'as Al Ghul's daughter who loves Batman (not to mention that love being reciprocated) is absent. Instead we're treated to some half-assed plot that no-one understands and we're all left unsatisfied with the conclusion.
The final climax. Bad. There are so many plot holes and scientific implausibilities with the final threat-that-must-be-averted it's almost laughable.
Altogether, that's minus six! But since it is Batman, I'll be generous and give this film a five/ten. Definitely not the best super-hero movie ever.
Mysterious Island (2005)
Oh...the acting!
This film ranks amongst those that are so bad, they're almost amusing. Almost.
Vinnie Jones turns in the worst performance as pirate, Bob Harvey. He was so amazingly bad (eclipsed only by the obviously artificial wig, that looks like it was last worn by a member of Motley Crue) that we couldn't contain our laughter while he was on screen.
My favourite scene was where Patrick Stewart (Nemo) confronts the castaways just as there is an earthquake. I'm guessing that this whole scene was shot in a studio somewhere (on completely solid ground) and stock footage of an island with a big rumbling mountain was stuck on later. Anyway, as Stewart delivers his lines, the pro that he is, he stumbles and shakes as the eruptions and tremors go on all around. Then we cut back to the rest of the cast all standing still with cow-like expressions. Either they were wondering whether Stewart had lost his marbles or they were filmed in a completely different studio way before Nemo's lines went into the can. It's hilarious though...
...doesn't save the film in the slightest, mind.
Freebird: The Movie (1996)
Fine performances, what there are of them...
I remember the days of 1976 (although I was only 13 at the time) and the BBC used to have a people's choice on New Year's Eve, the footage of Lynyrd Skynyrd performing "Freebird" at Knebworth won every year it was one of the choices. Unfortunately, this movie does not include this triumphant, jubilant performance and it is instead replaced by, in comparison, a pedestrian version from an altogether different source. Colour me disappointed.
While the music of Skynyrd is well represented, and for this alone I rate this at 7, the failure to include one of their greatest moments on stage ~ especially when the footage was available (clips of it are shown during the end credits while another song entirely provides the backing) ~ is an atrocious error in judgement.
Enjoy what is there, but remember it could have been so much better.