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JurijFedorov
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My favorite short films
I will explain why these movies got their rank. I explain it from a short film writer perspective as I know a bad plot when I see it.
I tried to find the best possible high quality link to all these movies. All links are official uploads except for the Pixar and Marvel movie links.
Informative, accurate, and entertaining history movies
I'm trying to sort the list based on quality of movie, historical accuracy, and historical significance. A small biography is not crucial to watch no matter how accurate. A grand historical tale is worth little if the story is largely fictional. No movie tries to be historically exact, but the best ones typically are. I added a few movies at the bottom that mess with history to such a degree that it's practically fiction, but are still worth a watch to learn about propaganda and bad history in a cool way.
My favorite movie from each of the last 100 years (1918-2018)
My top 12 favorite mountaineering documentaries and movies
My favorite time travel movies
I added in a few stand-alone TV show episodes at the end of the list because otherwise the list will be missing several unique time travel concepts not yet seen in any movie. But largely I avoid TV show episodes/short films.
Real life bad people made out to look like heroes
The best documentaries ever made
My favorite detective movies
I added TV episodes at the bottom because there are just not enough really great detective movies out there just yet and some episodes are great.
I tried to put movies with more interesting detective work higher on the list.
105 super entertaining science fiction movies
Reviews
Glorious 39 (2009)
I'm not sure what the story is or why the acting is this horrible
Historical accuracy: 2
Acting: 3
Dialogue: 4
Camera work: 5
Editing: 3
Budget: 6
Story: 3
Theme: 2
Pure entertainment factor: 4
Video quality: 6
Special effects: NA
Pacing: 3
Suspension of disbelief: 2
Non-cringe factor: 3
Lack of flashbacks: 2
The movie feels theatrical. Like a group of amateur theater actors getting together and lazily acting out scenes without wanting to make it feel real and without a clear script. Everything is big arm movements and over exaggerated speaking that feels fake and cringe. The main issue is that the movie is so cheap that no visual element can be used. Hence most scenes are ruled by dialogue not action or movement. Which is a shame when the director doesn't understand dialogue. In such a scenario you do what many other mediocre directors did and plan out a movie where the dialogue is not essential for any one scene.
Secondly the storytelling is not focused. We move from place to place and time to time without a clear direct plot. With various characters and no clear motivation. Events just happen out of nowhere and they are always new events not following the prior story. Someone decided to film a bunch of scenes in random order and put them together randomly. Never having a clear script so there is no point to any one scene. They also feel like they are directed by different people as nothing is coherent from scene to scene. The sound is all over the place and never natural. Even the historical dialogue and setting feels fake and modern. Like a cheap theater play made by someone who didn't care to study up on the language or culture of 1939 as the audience is just 100 people anyhow.
Most drama is caused by random people saying overly emotional stuff out of nowhere. With the prior scene absolutely not setting it up as of course this is randomly put together so clearly the emotional valence is created in a single scene only not via the storytelling. There are some mystery parties out of nowhere we don't understand. Cats that appear out of nowhere and are suddenly important. Suddenly it's important the lead gets to London. Then next scene she's talking to her brother about her real parents. Next scene she's dealing with the cats. Next scene she sees the dead body of her boyfriend in a place she was sent to. Why does one scene appear after another scene? Who knows? There is also a mystery element like magical unreal events happening and time jumps. Yet this magic is not set up. Is this caused by terrible writing and acting or is this really magic the director intended? Like a person jumping from one place to another place or a random event happening in such a way it seems totally baffling. A mystery kid that sorta helps her yet no one else can see him I think. How can't the director not string together a story?
There is a mystery group here that wants Britain to avoid the war. Are they magicians? I think maybe it's all a dream? I can't be sure as nothing is explained. It could also be she is going insane? I think the director maybe planned out one story and then edited together a more mystical story just because the main story didn't work. But this one doesn't work either. And now it's all a rambling mess.
The Thing About Pam (2022)
The quality is all over the place, but it remains very fun start to finish
Historical accuracy: 9
Acting: 7
Dialogue: 8
Camera work: 7
Editing: 5
Budget: 6
Story: 7
Theme: 7
Pure entertainment factor: 8
Video quality: 8
Special effects: 6
Pacing: 7
Suspension of disbelief: 8
Non-cringe factor: 4
Lack of flashbacks: 2
The first 2 episodes are a tad cheaply made. They feel like something one would make as scenes for a documentary about the case. Just background scenes. With cops that are terrible actors, incredibly bad editing, and just lazy camera work and directing. It's never bad, it just feels overly lazy. That's to say the TV show overall is so good that one needs to just accept this is not some top tier production. The quality of the storytelling is there; you just need to look past low production value and mediocre directing. And then we have 4 lead actors pull up the quality to such a degree that it nearly becomes a triple A quality product. With acting so good it nearly shocks you. The storytelling is also fast and we get presented the full story of this incredibly fascinating case. The first episode has bad pacing. But after that it actually goes way too fast. With characters we don't even see again as there is no time. Like the DnD friend group that feels incredibly interesting yet is ignored for being nerds.
Overall highly recommended. This was a blast to watch and I watched it in a day as it just kept getting more exciting each episode. Despite it being rushed and many details skipped. Maybe there is a book I can read on this case as this in no way can be presented clearly in under 10 hours. Maybe not even 20 hours. Especially the court scenes felt extremely rushed with a whole trial presented in 5 minutes. That would have been 3 episodes by itself with all evidence clearly presented. It could even start with the trial and then use flashbacks to present evidence. That's how strong the focus should have been as this trial seems like one of the most interesting trials in US history with how much evidence was hidden away from the defense lawyers. Something that is extremely illegal.
The excitement factor is often forced by cutting various scenes together and by adding a ton of flashbacks. Once the actors take over this editing is not as irritating as the fun is found in the scenes themselves. Yet the 2 daughters remain bad and are made extremely irritating here via the editing. Especially the younger daughter, who's quite a looker, has the camera zoom into her face in nearly all her scenes. In real life the daughters were nothing like this. They don't have a natural charm and don't look like rich spoiled college girls. They are also desperate to get in contact with Russ again as he's a millionaire after settling a trial against the police. The young daughter here is seen as someone who supports him outright from the start. This would have worked with a better actress and editing so that it was not in your face. Obviously most of these people lied and cheated to get Russ imprisoned for life.
The Contestant (2023)
A decent overview
It feels a tad pointless in some places. Overall it's a great lesson about the case with English translation for everything. But I have seen this case presented in a way more engaging way on Youtube. With more passion and mystery to it. Here it's all just presented directly. Lazily edited where nothing feels exciting or shocking. We just see stuff happen scene by scene with no great tension or goals. Terrible editing, good material.
It's a good intro, but way below the best intros to the case. And with a TV show also coming out the documentary may lack even more behind soon enough. The main event is actually quite shocking. I would also have loved to know more about the best seller books. As he was imprisoned they printed out several of his writings. But who got the money? They never mention much about this smaller stuff. Did he get married? Did he have kids? Does he hang out with friends? Who knows? It's all a tad obscured by lazy editing and lack of narrator telling us everything.
Longlegs (2024)
One of the slowest and most illogical movies out there and nothing makes up for it
Acting: 5
Dialogue: 5
Camera work: 6
Editing: 3
Budget: 5
Story: 3
Theme: 2
Pure entertainment factor: 6
Video quality: 4
Special effects: NA
Pacing: 3
Suspension of disbelief: 3
Non-cringe factor: 5
Lack of flashbacks: 1
This misses the mark for many reasons. Unfortunately nothing quite works as well as it should which is a shame as it's one of the most hyped up modern horror movies. But at times hype is unwarranted.
The very first thing I notice is the painfully slow pace. Unless you love ultra slow movies this won't interest you. The information flow is so slow that it just doesn't work as a detective story. We get little to no info about anyone and the lead investigator is just being handed clues by the serial killer. We never get to guess or explore and we get so few details that we are just waiting for the story to unfold. They never really find clues themselves or stop murders. Or even show up just a bit late. All clues are delivered to her by the killer himself. And the stuff she does find out happens because of her magical powers where she can see things.
Secondly I have to say that the FBI work here is utter nonsense. Basically 95% of this is totally unrealistic. It starts out with the lead detective feeling a killer is inside a house yet doesn't stop her partner from going to the door. He gets shot and instead of calling it in she decides to walk inside alone. If she had been killed the killer could easily escape. She later gets visited by the serial killer who gives her a letter. He tricks her to walk outside and she runs after him then sees him inside her house and finds the letter there. She never moves away from the house after this. Instead of calling it in she decides to open it in her home while looking over her shoulder as he may still be there. The letter tells her not to mention it so of course she doesn't. Because we all know a single clue given to you by the serial killer himself can just be hidden away even though you are the lead detective on the case. She constantly gets handed evidence by the killer and then explores it by herself at home. Keep in mind this is a serial killer doing this for decades and any shred of evidence is crucial. He writes in code and reveals the code to her. So she interprets all letters and shows this to her boss who doesn't even praise her. The letters tell them to go to a farm. And again one would think they would have 100 agents going there to carefully protect the crime scene. Nope, she goes there alone with her boss at night. To a place the serial killer himself made them go! Insane.
She goes home to her mom and finds a photo of the killer. So the case is solved quite randomly. Of course instead of calling it in or carefully transporting it to the office she hands it to her sweaty boss who is out on a run. Genius! ... So the killer is arrested. That's it. She is told to search her home by her boss. She finds this photo and the case is solved. The killer is also extremely dull. We see him right away. And he never does a single scary or interesting thing. This doesn't feel like a horror movie. We just see gore and disgusting stuff, but that's not really horror in itself.
She then uncovers what we the viewers already knew from the start as it was painfully obvious. That her mom was working with the killer. And she finds her mom at her boss' house telling her what will happen. The boss will kill his wife because of hypnosis, then his daughter, then himself. So she'll just shoot the doll creating the hypnosis or shoot the boss to save his wife and daughter? Nope, she just stands around crying as he slowly walks into the kitchen with his wife and kills her. Only when he starts walking towards her does she shoot him. Then shoots her mom too as she should have done a long time ago when it was clear she would keep killing. And then you figure we would get some explanation. Who is the doll maker and why does he do this? Where does his magical power come from? Why does the agent have magical intuition? Why does the agent do more in a single day than most serial killer investigations do in 10 years yet no one congratulates her or calls her a genius? They also all know she can read minds or clues intuitively by magic yet no one ever wonders about this. Her boss just mentions it one single time. The agency knows this too yet keep her on this small insignificant case instead of letting her work for the military. Just nonsense.
The more I think about it the more nonsense it is. It's not awful. But there is nothing here. No story, no good acting, no charisma anywhere, no clever concepts or scenes. All scenes are so slow they feel fake. It's a waste and not worth your time. This has been my letdown of the year unfortunately.
Perfect Murder, Perfect Town: JonBenét and the City of Boulder (2000)
This is historically accurate with good writing
Historical accuracy: 8
Acting: 6
Dialogue: 7
Camera work: 5
Editing: 8
Budget: 7
Story: 8
Theme: 8
Pure entertainment factor: 8
Video quality: 4
Special effects: NA
Pacing: 9
Suspension of disbelief: 7
Non-cringe factor: 6
Lack of flashbacks: 6
The longest ransom note in US history is found in a rich household. The 6 year old daughter is missing. She is found dead in the basement. No one knows who did it.
The TV show starts out by showing the family visiting their friends house and then JonBenet taking a ride on the bicycle during the day. Then they find the ransom note when they wake up. This seems wrong. They came come from the Christmas party late at night and claim that they carried JonBenet inside as she was asleep in the car. Of course their version of the story is wrong too as she had ananas in her stomach. Ananas found in their house so she must have been awake at some point to eat it. The intruder kidnapper may have fed it to her for some weird reason. But they never found any DNA evidence or any things left behind linking anyone to the murder. A flashlight was left behind, but a cop may have left it by mistake too. The TV show itself shows the real story later on in interviews. So this is a slight error.
It's a curious case as there is so much misinformation about it online. Whole forums where not a single user knows much about the case and they just debate single details like they are proving something by themselves. Overall the case is a grand mystery as the crime scene had so many people walking all over the place and messing with the body that any potential evidence was gone before the investigation even started. But if a family member committed the murder there would be no foreign items or DNA anyhow. So you either conclude the intruder evidence was not protected or that there was no evidence to protect in the first place.
The camera angles are off and the quality is a tad jarring as it's before digital cameras. The acting is also often worse in movies like this where reshots are not as simple as with digital cameras. The script is quite on point though as the evidence we know about is presented via social scenes. We know the neighbor said she heard a child scream at night and later retracted this claim. We follow the 2 main detectives as they complain about the lack of evidence gathering in the house and as they walk past the neighbor we hear her make this claim in the background. This is exactly how you need to write a murder mystery. Not via slow interviews one by one but real life evidence presented naturally. Quite likely they never walked by the neighbor right as she told the story to cops. They were likely making the complaint in a more private place at another time. But this is not bad history. This is good history and great writing.
They do skirt over the whole pollution of the crime scene thing. That is the MAIN thing in this story. They couldn't find anything in the house as the body was moved around and touched constantly and all rooms were walked into by all the visitors who were there to keep them company after the kidnapping. This is made more clear in the newer movie. Here it's overlooked for some weird reason. We see all of this happen but not a single cop comments on it at any point. We just have them talk about journalists complaining about it as if the journalists are clueless. This is weird as they even mention small stuff like the tape roll not being found. For the tape used to cover her mouth. I think this is mainly explained by the fact that the female detective on scene let all the pollution take place. Allowed them to move the body and conduct a seance too. If she was part of the team advising the TV show then obviously they would ignore this part of the story. You will see it in other depictions of the story as it's the very main element here. Honestly I'm quite shocked they overlooked this part.
Their friends also started to wonder why the Ramseys refused to cooperate with the police to catch the killer. The police had not much to go on and therefore didn't really have any leads besides the Ramseys. A friend is seen shouting at them at a gathering. The Ramseys refuse to talk to the police as they don't want to give the police anything they may use against them. But of course it looks absolutely awful to any outsider. As they value their own criminal record higher than finding the killer who may have abused and killed their daughter. I can't explain it. But maybe rich people just know not to talk to the police no matter what. They flew away from the town so I guess they wouldn't care too much about a potential killer in Boulder. Or they did it themselves ... that would be a more simple explanation. At any rate it looks weird. If your child is dead it's the one instance where you at least should give the police all the main info about things. Just don't talk about what you felt or did maybe? They would have figured the perp would be found at some point as such a crime scene usually has a ton of DNA evidence everywhere. Yet this had little to none. And for some reason they predicted this.
The TV show does not show any interviews with the son. Which is very weird. They even show JonBenet's body close up which is controversial enough so they could have included a few psychologist interviews to show us they did try to gather more evidence, but just didn't find any. They also didn't show any investigation into the tape roll. They actually visited stores and found out where the tape could have been bought and found out the Ramseys did spend that amount of money in that store.
The show grows better over time. The first hour is just the well-known stuff. The parents are terrible actors. But once we follow the cops and the journalist with spotless acting it becomes better. Especially when the conflicts are subdued at times. The whole fight between who to prosecute and fights about the lack of evidence are real things. The stress did get to them. The Boulder police commanders worked closely with the ultra rich Ramseys. While most officers were frustrated about the lack of prosecution and interviews. But it's not quite clear if the Boulder police was extremely corrupt or just extremely conservative to a degree where it ruined the investigation. Not all police forces like to put the screw to the accused. In LA for example this is historically common. You shout at people and pressure them until they confess. And that's how you solve big cases. Did Boulder police solve nothing? Or was the case too public and therefore forced them to do no pressure? Either way once they lawyer up there is nothing you can do. With poor criminals you can always trick them into interviews.
It does look a bit cheap at times with green screen and barebones sets. The acting is below par. It just feels cheap with horrid analog film. And the scenes are often rushed with no acting shining. I did greatly enjoy it though. I have to admit it was fascinating and better than the movie as it goes deeper into the drama surrounding the case. I highly recommend it. But don't expect any quality product visually.
Oddity (2024)
Needed a bit more to happen, but it was fun
Acting: 7
Dialogue: 5
Camera work: 8
Editing: 4
Budget: 3
Story: 6
Theme: 5
Pure entertainment factor: 8
Video quality: 7
Special effects: 7
Pacing: 4
Suspension of disbelief: 4
Non-cringe factor: 6
Lack of flashbacks: 2
Quite good really. One of the many, many new horror movies that are getting hugely popular and making the horror genre the main genre even surpassing superhero movies for a moment in how much quality is found here today. The last few years have been absolutely spectacular for the genre and this is yet another quality horror movie despite not really doing much or saying much.
It's very slow-burn. In a way where this is basically a 1 hour movie stretched out into a movie runtime. We have a girlfriend who gets killed at the start. We are not sure what happened. We get told some of the story via flashbacks. Her blind twin sister who is a mystic meets the boyfriend of her dead sister. She visits his house and meets his new girlfriend. The house seems to be haunted after the murder. The blind sister brings a wooden doll with her. The new girlfriend is soon scared away. We find out that the killer is actually someone the boyfriend works with at the mental asylum. That guy goes to the house to kill the twin sister as she reveals she knows about the real killer. She supposedly kills him with the wooden doll and makes sure she dies too as she feels guilt for initially having killed a man wrongly accused of her sister's murder. We see the actual killer now as a patient and the boyfriend kills him. The boyfriend remains alive.
The tension is great and mystery proper. Everything is slow but the magical items are slowly revealed. Too slowly frankly. The twin tells the boyfriend she knows it's him and he just runs away. There is nothing else happening directly to him. One would think she would kill him too yet that doesn't happen. He is the only one alive and on screen at the end. Overall the monster just had to appear sooner. It's a horror movie and we are only scared at the start. Once the twin arrives we are just waiting for the mystery doll that unfortunately is only used that one time and nothing much happens with it. I think the ideas are great. But it should have come together in a more coherent and realistic way instead of being forced into the story. Let them fight it out. She just tells the killers she knows what they did and it ends there. Why not take revenge first and foremost? Why are the killers not more careful? They are all stupid and no character is trying to stay alive as such. Once you see a ghost or know who the actual killer is you react. The movie is also so slow it feels unrealistic. Much is told via flashbacks and the dialogue is all fakish. No one is smiling or having fun. We don't see people eat or just talk with strangers. Could be in a store or on the street. They really don't feel like real people in a real setting as the movie starts out being creepy and never lets up. So when they are in a dangerous situation we don't feel much for them. Similarly no one is in danger. We know the twin sister is magical so she can survive anything. We know the brother and his friend are killers. And the last character is the new girlfriend. That's it really besides minor characters. We pretty much right away know there can only be 2 people who are the real killer. And only the boyfriend is logical as a choice. So that's it, solved. We fear a bit for his new girlfriend, but the very next day after seeing the ghost she wants to leave and never get back and so the scare factor stops. Plus the twin is from that day always there with her so we know nothing can happen.
Overall a positive for sure. I did enjoy my time and really liked the tension. The twin is both attractive and cute as a character. It's a shame they killed her off and didn't let her have more fun here. She feels like a proper horror character that didn't have enough to do. She could easily have gotten a sequel as a grand witch now not hiding her powers. I would watch that! The budget obviously needs to be 10 times as high for it to make sense. The movie has a ton of great concepts like this that unfortunately are not fully shown as the movie is dragging out the tension and not letting us see much of the actual conflict. But for what it is, it's fun. A dirt cheap movie you can make for a few hundred thousands at most. And film in 2 weeks. I would say it's 6,5 stars.
The Truth vs. Alex Jones (2024)
Very little actual information
The title reveals the bias of the documentary in that they have picked sides. Since Alex Jones himself later said he was wrong we can conclude there is only 1 side to this issue. Despite the documentary finding a few people who still believe those old claims.
This whole case also made most social media ban Alex Jones and many giant podcast episodes on other channels were also removed. Joe Rogan had many episodes removed that contained now forbidden words and then Alex Jones. Joe Rogan lied about this saying it was just a technical error. It wasn't. Despite all the lies related to this case Alex Jones has never fully regained his footing as this civil trial loss is greater than his combined wealth. Only right-wing platforms like Twitter host him today. And Infowars is also being sold to pay the trial costs.
Overall it's a fine enough documentary. But I don't quite understand what is happening. The trials sorta start and end without any talking head explaining anything. This is extremely lazy movie making. Just reusing trial shots and interviews with parents. But no one is here to explain how the trials are going or why he lost them. Did he say something at some point? Did he mess up in a big way so that the first trial didn't even go to a jury verdict. The judge just said he was guilty without waiting for all evidence to come in. But why? Why did he lose the trial this way? The interviews with the parents being overly sad feel hollow in the context of us lacking any meaningful details.
This is basically a collection of scenes and interviews. Which is still something curious, but it's not on par with the true crime genre where we get the whole mystery presented step by step. This documentary doesn't really present either of the 2 trials clearly. We just know he lost them. Which I knew already. I also knew the event did happen and that Alex Jones lied about this stuff. So I learned nothing new. There is actually way more to the cases like his team releasing his phone messages by mistake and then the economic scale of his channel that is enormous and could have turned into a billion dollar business over time. We just get hints of this stuff as without a talking head or expert we can't get the facts. Which is a great shame for the parents too. I'm sure they wanted to present their facts clearly.
The Apprentice (2024)
Positive surprise but should have been a TV show
Historical accuracy: 8
Acting: 10
Dialogue: 9
Camera work: 9
Editing: 7
Budget: 8
Story: 8
Theme: 7
Pure entertainment factor: 8
Video quality: 8
Special effects: NA
Pacing: 8
Suspension of disbelief: 6
Non-cringe factor: 7
Lack of flashbacks: 5
Actually quite good overall. I would say it peters out at the end. The whole concept has strong sides to it that makes it hard to tie it all together. We follow the gay lawyer Roy Cohn who practiced McCarthyism on good and bad. Prosecuting real spies delivering atomic secrets to Stalin and at times being overly eager and attacking socialists in USA who didn't have a direct connection to Stalin. We see Trump as the good son helping his dad run his landlord business. Donald asks him for help and Cohn has so much dirt on everyone that he makes the state drop a lawsuit against the Trumps for discriminating against Black people. He has more dirt and makes Donald skip on a $160m tax demand for a new building in NY. And hence Donald kickstarts a greater business empire while his brother drinks himself to death. Donald doesn't drink or smoke.
In this movie-version Cohn creates Donald. He creates a monster as cold and mean as himself. A go-getter seeing the world as a battle ground. With winners and losers. Donald declares himself a winner. Soon Donald grows too powerful and Cohn can't control him. When he gets AIDS, and as we know Donald is a germaphobe, they can't remain as close friends. At a dinner celebrating Cohn's birthday he starts crying and leaves the dinner. Did he think Donald grew too evil? Too cold? It's not quite clear. The movie doesn't answer a lot of questions. But since Cohn kept lying until he died I don't think he would actually feel sadness in this aspect as he didn't have the capacity.
Donald meanwhile has a scene where he sexually attacks Ivana Trump. Scenes where he cheats on her even though they are preparing for a divorce, and a scene where he gets a liposuction and hair job. The movie is not positive or negative. It rather just presents. But one has to wonder how much extra scummy stuff they didn't film as it could cause a lawsuit. Like his connections to the Russian mafia that runs Russia. Or his scam university. Or even the casino going out of business and Donald going bankrupt. All that of course came later. But even in the 80's he had that Central Park Five newspaper page where he demanded the death penalty. They were found to be not guilty many years later and NY paid them $50m. These small errors Trump made shows how he is harsh yet adaptable. He did later backtrack this page just like he backtracked on the Iraq war once it was clear it was a giant dud and Bush had lied about the weapons of mass destruction and the Taliban connection. A lot of what happened in the 80's can be used to show us who Donald is. And while the sets look great and the acting is amazing I feel like we are not really learning enough about Donald. The movie is missing some deeper introspection like the stuff I pointed out. He becomes cold and inhumane at the end refusing to even hold eye contact or listen to people. But there must be more to this man and the movie doesn't quite touch upon it. Maybe we will only find out the full story when he is dead and can't sue movie makers.
The acting and sets are making this all work. All 3 leads are amazing. Donald, Ivana, Cohn. Ivana is a rare real woman in a movie. Not some super soldier or offensive jerk. Just a woman with her own dreams about creating a jewelry business as she likes all things pretty. Going from model to a Hillary Clinton type figure that Donald falls out of love with as she thinks too much. Yet again we don't even see the divorce itself. Too many storylines are unfinished here. Ivana is smart and noticed false jewelry when she sees it showing great writing. She is strong in her own areas. By the way she remained friends with Trump till she died, praising him. They did like each other till the end. So I think the movie maybe skips this a bit and just shows one side of the picture. Ivana was actually extremely shallow. A typical blonde model mostly focusing on diamonds and riches hating work. Marrying a much younger guy as she liked to live large. She is made out to be a great businesswoman in this film. Trump meanwhile is made to look more stupid. It's too narrow in scope as a movie. Trump didn't just randomly decide to marry some superwoman while himself being a tad clueless. They fit perfectly together for a very good reason and his next 2 wives were exactly the same. Shallow very attractive models. Imagine a new movie about Trump where he is an evil ignorant president and Melania Trump is an honorable business savvy mom helping him make everything work in his presidency. Would seem a tad ... off.
Again, maybe a TV show would have been smarter as in real life he is not this cold and has more character traits. The acting is just spot on and maybe there are some deleted scenes that could expand and complete the movie. I would say it's very much a needed watch for everyone and very enjoyable. But I can see this being done even better in the future. There is also an older film about Trump that was so afraid of getting sued it didn't show anything interesting. So this is a step up. But there are still more to tell for sure. I would gladly watch a sequel.
Alien: Romulus (2024)
Better than the original one by far
Acting: 9
Dialogue: 9
Camera work: 8
Editing: 8
Budget: 9
Story: 7
Theme: 7
Pure entertainment factor: 8
Video quality: 7
Special effects: 9
Pacing: 8
Suspension of disbelief: 6
Non-cringe factor: 8
Lack of flashbacks: 9
I'm blown away. This is so clean and to the point that it makes the original Alien feel fully superfluous. Honestly it does not hold up whatsoever compared to this remake of sorts. Everything is better. Camera work, acting, story, editing, pacing. The original Alien movie now feels ancient and outdated with pacing that just is off. It was iconic when it was made but this CGI shows us how much more can be done with the concept. Even Life showed us more with a similar concept.
Aliens meanwhile is one of the best action movies ever made so it's better. But this is clearly the second best one in the franscise. The remaining ones are either bad or just fun enough, but still worth a watch if you don't mind silly action. Alien Resurrection is bad. Alien and Prometheus are equally fine. Nothing I can recommend, but fun enough movies for the runtime and not much else.
Especially the writing and acting is such a huge step up from any other movie besides Aliens that it's worth a watch for this alone. The android is spectacular. The female lead SPOTLESS. They both are acting so good that it pretty much could carry any story. Yet the tension is high and goals clear unlike in some of the other ones like Alien and Prometheus that are going absolutely nowhere. There are some issues still. The dark palette is dull by now. It never really worked out even in the first one. This movie tries to create a full mining town, but the darkness makes it feel unrealistic. Humans wouldn't live like this anywhere. The spaceships are also cold and dark. Where are the paintings and colorful robots? Where is the fun music and movies? Where do they buy food and where do they have fun and relax? We don't even see a single bar or swimming pool. Or bowling alley. Just something.
We also only have part of a story. The ending leaves us hanging and it's one of those movies that could be ruined by Joker 2 or improved with an Aliens. We can't know. The characters that potentially survived clearly have more to tell, but it could turn out to be the same story yet again. As all these stories are the same. Just more horror and monsters. I want a bit new stuff same as Predator did with American Indians. Something that feels fully fresh like Aliens. But again, not Alien and not Aliens. They have been remade 100 times over by now. We now have this one that is superior to the original, but need a new direction. Action seems proper enough, maybe a bit more upbeat with a bigger town defending itself? Maybe even romance or thriller? I'm not sure there is anything new to tell here. I'm just tired of the same story on repeat with even more characters dying or us just following a new crew with the old characters not being shown. Alien 3 did it wrong too by killing off beloved characters as they had aged out of their roles. This pleases no one. We don't want horror for the sake of horror.
I did love how it was basically PG-13 and not R as the director is prone to some truly nasty gore that even I can't tolerate despite loving the horror genre. Alien on Antarctica did the same PG-13 thing. But there it was clearly recut to fit this category so most scenes felt incomplete. Here everything is clearly made to fit PG-13 so when we don't see an injury it feels real anyhow. It makes it way easier to recommend even to very young viewers. In my country all movies that are R are rated 15+. So no matter the level of violence or sex it's 15+. But this is misleading as there are films like this one and then for example his Evil Dead remake that is 18+ in every single way and in no way should be watched by anyone younger than that.
A final note is the stupid characters. Yeah, any even slightly smart person would have survived easily. They make so many mistakes that the whole danger is created by them being stupid. All at the same time and not one character is rational. There are scenes where they could just walk to safety with no issues whatsoever but for some reason choose to get angry and fight each other to create all this danger. But they are supposedly teens so I think this is all fitting enough.
The Outer Limits: Déjà Vu (1999)
Amazing
This is very similar to one of my favorite movies,12:01 (TV Movie 1993). The story is pretty much the same with similar characters and ending. The movie also initially started as a short film project that was just a concept with no plot or ending. The movie fixed it all and this episode fixes most of it too in 45 minutes. Of course the movie is better, but this is very fun and well-written with a ton of turns at every corner. Also reminds me of the Star Trek deja vu episode that is a work of art.
Overall it's fun and fast paced with quite a few engaging characters and plenty of fun interactions all with great passion. One thing to note is the zoomed in camera work and absolutely dull camera movement as this is analog film where creativity is harder. Often we just see a face. We rarely see the setting or anyone exploring things. Just faces. The plot is so tight that it still works though, but there are very simple improvements to be made here.
The Outer Limits: Gettysburg (2000)
Clever time travel
This is one of my favorite episodes. Frankly I have watched all time travel episodes now and most are really fun and great. The episodes about other ideas are mainly quite dull. But this is one of the best. Even the twist is really clever here and actually did surprise me. It just needed a tad more time to feel big. And a bigger budget and digital camera.
We travel back to the American civil war. The time traveler tells the 2 guys he brought there that they are supposed to prove that time travel can change things for better. One guy is a huge supporter of the South. He hates his minimal wage job and terrible prospects. He loves how he may be fighting for a cause. He tries to convince the commanders to not go into the battles where they will be wiped out - as he knows from history. But no one listens to him. Soon we find out that the moral lesson is not for the Southern army. As why would it be in a liberal TV show? The lesson is for him as he ends up shooting the Black president in 2013. Instead in this timeline he ends up dead trying to convince the commanders so much that they shoot him. Nothing he can do. But in a prior fight with another commander they use the time machine on him to avoid getting shot. And we see that commander show up in 2013 and shoot the Black president as he is next to a Lincoln actor he thinks is the real deal. Proving history cannot in fact be changed. Neither the army was convinced nor the president left alive. This is all extremely clever with twists at every corner. But it really needed more time to cook. The gut punch is weak when we barely have time to really enjoy much of the atmosphere. Even when they meet a pregnant woman they are only there for a few scenes and move on. There is no time for romance anywhere. No time for new friendships or lessons. Everything happens too fast. This does deserve a full movie.
It's curious how the TV show predicted a Black president in 2013. Even for that alone it's worth a watch.
The Outer Limits: Time to Time (2001)
Feel good time travel
Most episodes and time travel stories are quite macabre. This is a breath of fresh air. A woman is about to crash into the ocean and die and is taken into the future to help a time travel crew. They go back in time to prove to her time travel is possible. But she wants to save her dad and nearly ruins everything. Her dad is part of a radical left-wing terrorist group killing civilians in USA because of the Vietnam war.
The budget is a tad low and story extremely forced. But it just feels fun to watch and everything happens fast. We also have a bunch of charming characters like the lead actress and her mom. Both are so charismatic you kinda want to see more of them. Similarly the young time travel crew is great. So much fun and energy. Most of these episodes are stuck up and dry. You kinda feel like everyone is natural here. The lead actor is really top notch and delivers a spotless performance. Everything feels clever and part of a greater world. Honestly only the budget is the issue here and maybe the runtime. It could have used 20 more minutes to show the full story.
The Outer Limits: Breaking Point (2000)
One of the stronger time travel stories out there
I watch as much time travel as I can. I seek out episodes too. There are different types of time travel and moral concepts in these stories. Most are quite good as they require good writing so everything else seems easy in comparison. This one is actually quite decent and mainly focuses on the time traveler creating the problem himself when trying to fix the problem he already saw in the future. Most The Outer Limits episodes are frankly too barebones for the length. Most have 25 min of plot for 45 min runtime. This is closer to feeling like a proper episode instead of an expanded horror concept with only 2 acts. It does lack more personal storylines. We follow the husband with the time machine and his wife. He's going insane from the time travel. He travels to the future then to prove it can be done and sees his wife get killed by himself and travels back in time to stop it. We don't really meet their friends, they don't have kids, and most scenes are just the husband doing his own thing and mainly shouting at his wife when she's around. It makes it feel like we are not in a real setting as we start out with him already being crazy and violent. And he knows he's going to kill his wife at a very specific time and place. All he has to do is tell her to NOT be at home at that exact moment. Yet she is at exactly that moment as she's moving out so she is actually not at home at any other point except this one. And he gets to the house at exactly the same moment too. He would at least know not to do that. He would at least just tell her not to be at home that day. Anything else doesn't matter yet he is just shouting out vague warnings.
He finally decides to kill his past self to save his wife. Yet this makes no sense as he could just stop him from ever meeting her, that's all. He actually already did just that and didn't need to kill himself. They solve all plot holes by her just not believing him and him never fully explaining everything or trying to prove the time travel to anyone. And no one really mentions it besides him. Not even the company with the time machine. The episode just lacks logic. We have time travel but no logic to go along with it. It's one of the stronger episodes, yet has the lazy The Outer Limits writing where the story doesn't quite come together in a realistic setting and as always 95% of problems are created by people just not speaking their mind. This type of lazy writing wouldn't really cut it in better shows. Or even just decent modern shows. But The Outer Limits focuses on concepts not story, plot, or theme.
The Outer Limits (1963)
Does not hold up
Absolutely not. This is not enjoyable and is way too lazy filmmaking to stand the test of time. Compare it to the original Star Trek from the same time where you have colors and funny jabs and gags. They also explore the universe visiting various aliens and we follow a crew we learn to understand, all interacting. What does this deliver? Aliens too in a cheap way. An episode will last 50 min and consist of 4 actors. In one episode an astronaut jumps into the future and experiences the glory of our future world. Which consists of a single person, some rocks, and then some plane walls. That's it. No future tech, no future stores, no future dinners. Just this one guy all alone and then everything is done via exposition. And this is the case for ALL episodes. They feel like something you'd film to show as an example to a producer. Something you film for $50K to then show your movie concept. Even Twilight Zone looks expensive in comparison while Star Trek looks like an expensive blockbuster compared to this. It's not acceptable.
Twilight Zone is endlessly more fun, but it too suffers from exactly the same issues despite having way better actors and dialogue. The short Twilight Zone episodes often work. The long ones nearly never do exactly as in this show. The ideas are just the concept with nothing else. In Twilight Zone the concept leads to a horror. Here it's just straight up illustrated via a tiny story. There is no ending and no lesson. No one gets anywhere. The episodes should have been 15 minutes long.
Unfortunately for this show while the modern Twilight Zone remake is supposedly terrible and thematically lazy and forced the modern The Outer Limits continuation is just better in every conceivable way. There is absolutely no reason to watch the old episodes. The 90's episodes have color, bigger budgets, way better acting, and always a 3 act story structure instead of just a single concept. They are deep, dark, and historically relevant unlike these old episodes that are too afraid to touch real history or real cultures. The remake/continuation did everything right compared to this. It too suffers from a low budget, but at least there they had some budget. These episodes I could legit make for free with a group of friends. That's all it takes.
The Twilight Zone: A Kind of a Stopwatch (1963)
Too predictable
The idea is genius of course and has been done way better in modern movies. As always Twilight Zone was the show that made the concept popular yet lacked things to do with the concept. A man gets gifted a stopwatch that stops time. And then ... well, not much. He tries to sell his boss on the idea yet the boss refuses to listen and instead of using the stopwatch to somehow convince him he just leaves. It would be incredibly easy to convince anyone. He tries to date the secretary yet here again he doesn't use the stopwatch. Really? At least make him try something and then fail. Why is this flirting in the episode if he doesn't even try anything after getting a magical item? He tries to convince the bar and yet again does something very small so no one even notices it. And the ending is extremely predictable. I already knew how it would end right away. And lo and behold it did. Anyone can guess it. There are just way better ways to use this concept like in the X-Men movies or even Click. Even in the 50's and 60's they should have been able to write something a tad more creative.
It's one of the better episodes for sure as some are just pointless and dull. But it's not quite great.
Barbarian (2022)
The most illogical movie I have ever seen - the horror works though
Acting: 8
Dialogue: 6
Camera work: 7
Editing: 7
Budget: 7
Story: 4
Theme: 3
Pure entertainment factor: 7
Video quality: 8
Special effects: 8
Pacing: 7
Suspension of disbelief: 1
Non-cringe factor: 6
Lack of flashbacks: 6
It's pretty incredible how many nonsensical things are in this movie. Every single character acts fully illogical. I'm not sure if this is meant to be a comedy or parody of sorts? Why not have real people here?
We start out with a Black woman and White guy who end up in the same rental house. Even though they both have money and should not have been in such a horrid location. The woman arrives later and still stays for some reason instead of driving her car to a better place and sleeping in the backseat. Absolute insanity. They then small talk for a very long time. At night she notices someone opened her door and it's not him. In the morning she gets warned about the neighborhood in a job interview yet refuses to leave. She gets back and a vagabond chases her down and shouts at her calling her a little girl. She calls it in and the cops do nothing. She does NOT leave the damn house. Instead she goes to the basement and finds a creepy room with an old camera behind a secret door. Again, she does not leave the house after this. The guy gets back and instead of leaving together he wants to see the room. Why not just call the cops and let them search it? Insanity. She waits for him in the damn house instead of waiting in her car ready to drive off. She then goes down in the basement to search for him as he doesn't come up. Clearly he has been taken or he is the bad guy. Either way there is evil down there. She finds an extra door and goes further down and then keeps searching in the caves too. Keep in mind neither have called this in so if they get injured a door gets locked behind them they are just stuck forever. The guy gets killed and she gets taken by the witch.
We then follow an actor who sexually attacked an actress. He needs money so he gets down to Detroit to sell this house. The cleaning crew never came by as they only clean BEFORE new visitors hence they never saw that the last visitors never left and NO ONE calls this in. No family member ever started searching for the 2 missing people? No family member checked out the last house they stayed in. Keep in mind 2 different friend groups would be searching for 2 different people. Both people last seen in the same house. Yet not a single person called this in and even after he finds all their belongings he does not try to ask exactly who rented the house or where they may be now. Or who may be searching for them. Neither he nor the rental company working for him tries to investigate this matter. And neither one has ever received a single call asking for either person. Both these are young handsome people with tons of charisma and success in their work life yet no one is calling for them?
He finds the basement and cave system too and he too does not call it in or informs anyone about the extremely creepy rooms. He just goes down there alone AFTER having heard some creepy noise from the caves. He spots a TV in a creepy room and of course decides to check it out instead of calling the cops. He gets imprisoned in a hole with the woman.
At some point he ends up in a new room with a guy. And the woman escapes the house. The vagabond is outside telling her there are multiple evil things in that house and that the woman can leave it at night so DON'T be here at night. So you figure she would go to a hospital to get checked out after 2 weeks in capture. Or report her crime at a police station. Of course not. She calls the cops. They come around. She tells them she witnessed a murder and then the 2 kidnappings. They drive off. Keep in mind she knows the name of the guy who got killed 2 weeks ago. And surely half of Detroit is searching for him as he's some semi-known musician. Yet she does not mention his name. And doesn't even tell them her own name. She has been gone for 2 weeks too! Her whole family must have called the cops 40 times over by now. They would have her name and photo in the system. Or she could do a simple search online to prove she was not a random homeless woman.
Of course she decides to wait for nightfall and go into the house again and then decides to go down into the caves. What else is there to do? The actor shoots her by mistake. They don't try to escape all the way, just down the street. The vagabond from before tells her the full story about the evil man who still lives in the house who kidnapped various women and impregnated them and then their daughters. Of course this vagabond never told the cops about this even though the perp is still living there. Again they get caught ... go figure. They get on top of a water tower. The witch chases them. The woman tells the actor about his gun. He grabs it and right away drops it. He throws her down and the witch jumps after her. The woman lands on the witch. Neither seems injured from the great fall. The witch of course is extremely strong. The actor knows this as he was dragged by her. He knows she could likely lift 1 ton and should have survived the fall as she is superhuman. He goes up to them both with his gun. You figure he would shoot the witch yet he does not. He does not even look at her; he starts talking to the woman instead. And lo and behold the witch can easily get up without being seen or heard even though she is right under the woman and kill him. He never shoots her at any point.
What is this even? What is the logic? Why are people not thinking? It's 4 people who ALL didn't clearly report the crimes with names. The vagabond knew about the whole story of the house and the woman yet never called the cops. At least make it sorta realistic. I don't know how to review it. It's one of the stupidest movies I have ever seen. Yet it's not dull. It's just fully pointless. Yeah, it's scary and the acting is decent. The horror element works too. But man horror movies sure get more and more stupid each year. This is not good enough.
Until They Sail (1957)
Quite decent
Historical accuracy: 7
Acting: 6
Dialogue: 8
Camera work: 6
Editing: 5
Budget: 6
Story: 7
Theme: 8
Pure entertainment factor: 7
Video quality: 6
Special effects: NA
Pacing: 6
Suspension of disbelief: 7
Non-cringe factor: 6
Lack of flashbacks: 10
Pretty good watch actually. Surprisingly so. Many of these movies tend to be a tad too simple, but what saved it is the late year of filming it. The acting is better, the budget a tad higher, the theme more clear. It's just a bit better than WW2 era movies with the same ideas. The theme is the strongest point as we are dealing with extramarital affairs and American soldiers sleeping around with New Zealand women. This is stuff impossible to depict during the propaganda era during WW2. And you also didn't really have American actors randomly mixing in with British actors. Of the correct age even instead of older men.
The pacing is off for sure and camera work and editing dull. Actually quite shocking how dated these 2 aspects are. They are pretty much 1930's quality. Camera doesn't move much and we just cut from actress to actress instead of doing anything creative. With the lead actress also being below par it's not really that appealing to watch for the sake of it. The lack of colors makes it dull, the lack of varied settings is lazy. We are only in the city or the house. Not a single battle, ship scene, any walking about in the outskirts, any cool rooms. Everything is so dull setting wise. Frankly, besides the very attractive women there is only a few older things. They should have done way more and used color.
It's quite fine. You get to explore the affair side of things which, as I said, feels quite clever and new. But besides the deep topic and some very interesting historically correct scenes the movie doesn't really go anywhere. It's decent but nothing more. With some scenes even being fully dull. I think a remake as a TV series would be in order. Something with a big budget. The writing in the movie is what holds it up. But it's not an audio drama.
Sisu (2022)
Decent revenge flick
Historical accuracy: 2
Acting: 6
Dialogue: 6
Camera work: 6
Editing: 6
Budget: 6
Story: 6
Theme: 5
Pure entertainment factor: 7
Video quality: 7
Special effects: 8
Pacing: 6
Suspension of disbelief: 2
Non-cringe factor: 6
Lack of flashbacks: 10
The movie is a revenge fantasy. We follow the nearly immortal soldier as the German Nazis hunt him for his gold. At the end he wants the gold back and hunts them. It's that basic. He may have 5 lines of dialogue in this movie. Everything is slow motion basically. Some scenes are slow motion but everyone is doing things slowly too. Hence this is how he survives. Time and time again he survives impossible battles as the Nazi leader is constantly trying to slow fight him instead of letting anyone shoot him. He lets him run away or hide before attacking. We don't get why, but this is just how the movie works in all scenes. No one wants to kill him. And they all move slowly and even talk slowly. Even when he's on a field without weapons running away they can't hit him for some reason despite the sniper being able to hit any other man 50 meters away with a single shot.
This is not historical. This is pure revenge battles with Nazis being incompetent. Curiously the Nazis act exactly as Soviets acted. Abducting women to abuse them, killing civilians for fun, pillaging. This unit is insane and unlike most Nazis units. They constantly kill their own men too. And curiously the most evil Nazi actually survives it all. If the evil guys were Soviets it would be way easier to understand their reasoning. But there are plenty of stories about SS units doing sorta this stuff in the rest of Europe. Mainly if they are in the country where the population is not Aryan and where they hire in semi-local crew not Germans. Germans themselves would typically have way more rules and regulations and fight for the nation. Most Germans came from civilized towns and became brutal while Soviets were naturally brutal and needed to be held back. In this movie they talk about the war being nearly over. That would make them extra focused on trying to plan ahead as leaders. Their action reveals a crew that is doing war crimes left and right while laughing about it. Fully psychopathic and this is exactly what Soviets did when they moved into Europe where they would take control and not be prosecuted. While Germans mainly did war crimes when following the leadership as they were running away. Hence war crimes increased when the leadership got desperate while the Soviets were psychopathic as the leadership just let them be their natural selves.
His way to survive is also impossible 90% of the time. And his injuries would all kill him yet he seems fully healthy just minutes later after each battle. There are also camera tricks everywhere. Like him rolling out from underneath a truck surrounded by Nazis or climbing onto a truck with Nazis right behind them. Time and time again he is doing this in clear view of Nazis yet the camera zooms in so we can't prove he was seen. We just know he clearly was as we just saw the Germans just meters nearby.
Overall it's fun for the runtime despite needing a cut to make it 15-20 min shorter as many scenes are just people staring at things. There are also a ton of these type of revenge movies out there many easier to get into. I would recommend 30 revenge movies over this one despite this not being bad. This is interesting as it's Finnish. It's a curious watch as such a small country used special effects this well for such a dirt cheap movie. But I would not watch a sequel and rather focus on city revenge movies with more characters and dialogue. Here there is basically no dialogue and no revenge is personal as such. Even the women he saves are just there in his way. He doesn't try to save them, he tries to get his gold. Which makes it feel a tad pointless as he's not even planning much with his life so why is the gold important?
There are also survival scenes that make no sense as him just letting the plane dive and crash instead of trying to land it. He just ties himself to the wall and lets it crash. Why?
Dumb Money (2023)
The plot is going nowhere but the acting is top notch
Historical accuracy: 10
Acting: 10
Dialogue: 8
Camera work: 8
Editing: 8
Budget: 6
Story: 7
Theme: 6
Pure entertainment factor: 7
Video quality: 8
Special effects: NA
Pacing: 7
Suspension of disbelief: 9
Non-cringe factor: 7
Lack of flashbacks: 10
The movie starts so fast there is little to no exposition which is usually unheard of. They didn't initially explain the pandemic, didn't explain the main fight between big companies putting money on the stock dropping and then all these menial people keep buying stock to make the companies lose billions to stick it to the man. We kinda get small hints about everything here yet there is no clear A to B plot which is why I think many feel the movie is a tad lacking as you have to do all this work yourself or keep watching and it will reveal itself over time. But this also means that the heavy exposition is a tad lacking which is the stuff I personally love. I watch a ton of documentaries and read a bunch of technical books and the parts where they explain everything in detail is always enticing. Maybe the average viewer doesn't quite get this stuff and hence the movie focuses on the small man and how people invest in stock to feel important. Which to be fair is the main part of this story.
Meanwhile we also follow rich guys who invest too. The poor people are supposed to be people fighting back. Sticking it to the man. Yet the main investor in GameStop made millions pretty early into the movie. The other investors made thousands. Are they really small insignificant people? They have modern smartphones, fulltime jobs, internet followings, rich social lives, they are young and healthy with partners who love them, they have plenty of money leftover to gamble on a meme stock. There is one person who delivers food for money and he's indeed really poor and single. Yet his brother just became a millionaire and the movie ends with him getting an extremely expensive car for free. He's a drug addict who takes his brother's car without asking when delivering food. And he had a fulltime job before being fired because of the pandemic. So yeah, he's poor, but not quite the underdog I'd say. More like a guy who made it rich without working for it.
Overall the young people here have BETTER lives than the billionaires. They are young and healthy and seem to have fun at all times without focusing on jobs. We meet the lesbian couple as they get drunk and touch up each other at a party without a care in the world. Are they really the little guy trying to get by? The nurse having a fulltime job at a fulltime hospital or nurse home is not suffering either. She too is young, attractive, and ridiculously charming. She could find a millionaire husband if she really wanted to get rich. Now, a 55 year old overweight nurse with bad knees? Now we are talking yet that's not what we are seeing here as the main investors in this stock were young people with a surplus of money. The whole fight is therefore quite perplexing. RobinHood is the company they use to buy stock on and it too is ran by billionaires.
How do we rate this movie? Paul Dano is spectacular here. Best performance of the year by far. So you rate it high. Acting so good it makes me want to lick the screen clean. This movie focuses on characters so the actors doing a good job IS the point. It's like The Social Network. Same level of acting and detailed technical storytelling where you can't really follow A to B plot lines as this is real life. So you can just make it as realistic as possible. I also noticed that 4 of the best actors alive are here and all 4 are known for their superhero villain roles. Spiderman, Batman, Captain America, and Daredevil. An antihero from The Suicide Squad. A lead from a superhero movie. It's a collection of great actors who can pick any role they want and picked this movie. But the overall plot is on the dull side as there is not much getting resolved. The theme is extremely weak. I still strongly recommend watching it as the acting is that good.
Fly Me to the Moon (2024)
By the numbers and predictable, but the budget for sure saves this
Historical accuracy: 3
Acting: 8
Dialogue: 8
Camera work: 7
Editing: 6
Budget: 9
Story: 7
Theme: 7
Pure entertainment factor: 8
Video quality: 9
Special effects: 9
Pacing: 7
Suspension of disbelief: 6
Non-cringe factor: 6
Lack of flashbacks: 10
Following the moon landing from a new perspective. We follow a man and woman in this romantic comedic movie. The woman is responsible for all the marketing in the moon program supposedly finding funding for it and making it all work even though she joined when it was already a giant successful company.
The man is the engineer running the program. The romance could be stronger. We see them meet up at the start and flirt in the very first scene so the whole story kinda doesn't develop in this aspect. They should have started with them not liking each other and then slowly learning to respect the work they each do. Instead exactly this happens yet it's just confusing as we don't get why they are not just getting together right away when they liked each other a scene prior. They are both single and don't have time outside work so what's happening? I do respect their work here even though it's fiction and not what really happened. We see them solve engineering and marketing problems in quite creative ways. The comedy on the other hand is quite bad. There are a few funny scenes with the director and head of engineering, but everyone else is not really trying to be funny. The feminist who hates Nixon is not funny. The female lead, Scarlett Johansson, is unfunny and actually quite mediocre here. I don't recall her being this plain before. But I guess I have not really seen her tested in any movie so it makes sense.
They also focus on largely fake stories like a fake moon landing being filmed to be used instead of the real cam footage. A race to steal a color TV and then change electronics on the rocket 10 min before launch. That's not how NASA works. The fake speeches to politicians saving the program is also a tad much. But I have seen From the Earth to the Moon (1998) so I know what actually went on so this fiction doesn't bother me too much as if you want the real story it's just a click away so we are not missing out on the true story here. If this was a true story then people would just dislike it for not being the better TV show.
It doesn't work as a comedy at all. Maybe 3/10. As romance it feels way too predictable and without any will they or won't they. So 4/10. As a true story it's maybe 3/10 too as the moon landing program at least did happen. All this is a shame as such movies are extremely hard to market so they tend to lose money. And Hollywood knows this already yet this may have been made as a movie about nothing with nothing on the line - as a TV movie. Meaning anyone can watch it and forget it a week later. I think this sort of ultra fake movie is just supporting the Apollo media. Even though it was a box office bomb for a good reason. I don't mind the fake history as we have the real history already. I do mind the mediocre romance ... in a romance movie.
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024)
Replace the actress and this would have been a giant hit
Historical accuracy: 4
Acting: 6
Dialogue: 7
Camera work: 6
Editing: 4
Budget: 9
Story: 7
Theme: 6
Pure entertainment factor: 8
Video quality: 8
Special effects: 8
Pacing: 7
Suspension of disbelief: 3
Non-cringe factor: 4
Lack of flashbacks: 3
Main issue here is not the historical inaccuracy and weird editing not following the plot, but the female lead who is god awful. How did she get this role? She's dating the director or something? Absolutely awful next to all these men who are actually trying and acting well despite the movie being overly flashy and comedic and never trying to be realistic. It's subdued and comedic where most lines are supposed to subdue expectations in those silly gags where something is happening then we zoom in on a character for 3 seconds and then the expected gag drops as the character does something crazy and cool. Repeat 200 times over! Extremely lazy editing.
The body types and races make no sense either. The female lead is Mexican. Half the British soldiers are not White. And 2 are modern steroid actors. If you look at photos of WW2 soldiers they were mostly between 18 and 40 and quite thin. Special unit soldiers would be under 30. Food was rationed in Britain and the rest of Europe and men had to work hard. Most of these men were overly thin. And these are supposed to be prisoners and sailors? Everything is of course overly clean and looks modern. This is not really a movie that tries to look or feel like WW2 yet for some reason quite a bit of it actually does. This mission was real, they did plan a fake party, and did steal the ships. But they didn't go Rambo on anything or replan anything as this was planned beforehand. They were actually told NOT to kill and not a single shot was fired and no one was killed. In this movie about 1000+ shots are fired from both sides and 30 men are killed here I feel. The Nazis also uncover the heist and shoot back. Didn't happen and the soldiers were Spanish at any rate.
But the overall silly and humorous feel to everything is actually true to real life and these groups. It may look fake compared to other modern gloomy WW2 movies. But those are actually often more fake as they don't depict real human beings and soldiers. The WW2 movies made during WW2 indeed show this type of fun atmosphere from real life. The WW2 movies made with real WW2 soldiers post WW2 also have this atmosphere. The books depicts it too and even the book about this film largely focuses on jokes and gags when we hear what the soldiers are thinking - as this is real life. Yet modern WW2 movies for some reason do not. Who knows why this fakish new style has taken hold? I wish someone somewhere would try something new like this, but just more realistic plot wise.
The Viking Lassen was a cold bloodthirsty Nazi killer after he was forced into killing as his country was annexed. But again, he wasn't Rambo and 99% of the time you try to stay hidden. So he largely snuck up on Nazis and got rid off them with his knife. He would also use bow and arrow as he was a hunter. At other times he would try to trick them into thinking he was a Greek farmer. Either way the goal is to stay hidden not to kill for the sake of it. They were told to avoid fighting and killing as the whole secrecy was essential as this was an illegal mission and the plan was to say that these were random pirates. Hitler said that if they were captured they were supposed to experience extreme torture. Any such soldier without uniform indeed expected a death sentence if captured by Germans during WW2 as what they did is a war crime hence no government could save them. They of course perished during WW2 as expected. One caught by the Spanish and hanged by Germany.
What is extremely fake is how many gunfights they win and how easily, with their modern weapons. At one point 5 men decimate a Nazi base with 60 armed soldiers during the day before the mission - even though this mission was the first hence that's impossible. All in overly clean settings and action packed scenes where our heroes don't even get injured. Injuries were actually extremely common, more so than deaths. And they mainly do this openly without ducking or fearing anything. It reminds me of the remake of the amazing Magnificent 7 where you also feel like half the stuff you see is fully ahistorical and too clean yet it all plays a role in the action sequences that feel flashy and modern. If you like flashy over the top action movies this is for you. I would compare it to the extremely fun Where Eagles Dare (1968). If it can do it well then why can't modern movies? Digital cameras make them look way better.
This movie is similar to another very fun true history movie that also was a gigantic box office bomb, The Great Raid (2005). That movie follows the book step by step except it adds in a fake nurse story to have a female character. I think that tanked the movie as adding this fake story made everything seem fake exactly like in this movie. Again a female character with an overblown role. She did marry one of the soldiers in this story so I guess that's her role in this mission, but why is she on the island planning the party? In the 2005 movie basically every single scene and event with the soldiers was actually true to real life. And it indeed was as action packed as this movie. And there too the local fighters did an amazing job. They did mow down hundreds of Japanese soldiers who just kept rushing at them as they saw it as bravery. So this mowing down of soldiers is true to real life in some settings during WW2. But there is a difference between the Japanese soldiers and the fictionalized Nazis in the 1968 movie and then this story set during a real event where no one got shot. This movie tries to mix fact and fiction and it doesn't quite end up working as the fact-wanting watchers will be let down by much of this. But I have to admit this was fun to watch.
Another thing is how they mix conflicts like Churchill having to debate appeasement fanatics who want him gone. The appeasement people were in charge BEFORE Churchill as Neville Chamberlain started giving Hitler free reign in Europe to annex areas. So this debate would have happened before WW2 and before Churchill gained power not after. Similarly while this plan was seen as illegal and extremely risky, which it was, there were no British leaders trying to stop it outright at sea or via sneaky deals. Some wrote letters saying the plan was a bad idea as it was a war crime. But the plan was to steal the ships and then the British fleet would mysteriously be in that area and find them. They claimed the Nazi paper story about the attack is what made the British ships go there and find the ships. All was planned out this way. If they were captured Spain could have joined the war which would have been a disaster so the critique was warranted.
I would love to see a more realistic version of this story with less James Bond and Rambo stuff. And then more planning from home and less action. Churchill was in charge as he himself had great army experience in such operations and lead plenty of operations from Britain and earlier as a soldier himself. He did create a secret task force of crazy soldiers with the help of the author of James Bond. And they did steal an Italian ship after another group planned a party to make all the Italian ship commanders drunk. The whole point was an economic heist like a bank robbery. It didn't really ruin the German submarine fleet enough though it surely planned some minor part as it took away some resources.
Twisters (2024)
Mediocre to bad in every aspect - just about watchable
Acting: 4
Dialogue: 4
Camera work: 3
Editing: 3
Budget: 8
Story: 5
Theme: 3
Pure entertainment factor: 6
Video quality: 8
Special effects: 7
Pacing: 5
Suspension of disbelief: 5
Non-cringe factor: 6
Lack of flashbacks: 5
A young chick joins a group of tornado chasers and saves the day in each single scene.
YAAAAAHOOO! A new tornado appears out of nowhere. YAAAHHHOOOO!!! Extremely loud and obnoxious country song. YAAAAHHHOO! Rinse and repeat. It's amazing how well they replicated the obnoxious social media influencer personality. Constant loud shouting, arrogance, and sheer ignorance. The 20 year old chick is constantly correct. And all these braggadocious super researchers and influencers can't make heads or tails of anything. Which is a shame as they could have cast a 50 year old actor to play this role. Making it clear why the lead was an expert. Then the newly graduated men would of course look clueless in comparison as all they have is the science. Yet for some reason she's this ubergenius even though she very much looks like a big city girl model who never studied a single day in her life.
I'm not sure if it's a remake or sequel as it's not really following any of the imagery or style set up by the classic. Instead it's a 2024 social media influencer take on the concept. With everything from music, shaky-cam, fast cuts, and over the top acting where nothing feels real as they are constantly trying to engage you moment to moment not caring about the plot. Every second scene is action created by the camera movement and fast cuts or over the top cuteness from the characters where the romance is extremely forced. No scene feels real. Which is the complete opposite of the original movie where you felt like the tornados were real.
They start out with the lead working for the rich team. Which is actually pretty great as it felt like they were trying something new instead of just lazily replicating the main story from the original one where the poor tornado chasing team were the good guys and the rich black cars team was for some reason evil. It was silly but worked somewhat as it was an original idea. A nonsense concept that at least was so over the top that it worked. This movie replicating it while trying to make the obnoxious social media influencers the good guys doesn't work. Social media influencers are liked because they are famous and rich, not because anyone thinks they are honorable and smart. Mixing these 2 things is nonsense. Make the evil team social media influencers instead.
It could have been interesting to see a rich vs. Poor team again or old vs. Young. Yet here the supposed poor team is actually famous and sells a ton of merchandise. Another thing that could fix it is having the super expert lead not just solve every single problem by herself while being surrounded by experts. She is a science expert AND has extreme intuition that never fails. At least have a few more people solving things. A super driver who can do things in a car no one else can. Maybe the male lead who used to be a rodeo performer. Then have the female lead be the scientific expert. Have an older man be the one with extreme intuition. Now you have 3 characters all solving their own problems. Maybe the 2 teams get together after losing half the cars. Then they combine the science and intuition into one and finally defeat the tornado after failing time and time again as the teams separately lacked some specific talent. Modern movies seem to love the girlboss character. The smartest person in the room, an action hero, also very feminine when it matters, getting the men she wants, and is extremely brave and cool. But then have 3 women do one thing each at least. Don't do the girlboss stuff when remaking a movie that actually had a team solve things together. The teen-like love story doesn't help much either. Of course she gets the man and also saves the town at the end by expert driving and using her bravely and super science method to save the day.
There are also too many tornados. Every 10 min a new tornado appears right where both teams are at. At least remove 2-3 of them and make the ones you have more destructive maybe. Instead they have a bunch of tornados that each do 2 min of damage. They just do that one thing and then fade away. One tornado can kill a few people, demolish a car, destroy some buildings, and get data for the team. There is no need to have 1 tornado produce data then another tornado just be there to create a bit of danger for 1 minute. They move so they can move from the research area into a town. Also, why does a whole town in a tornado zone not have a single basement? It's here for the plot, but once again I'm sure one could have made something a bit smarter like having some common area basement be locked behind a car that flew up and landed right at the entrance.
Tornados are fun to watch and the destruction is cool. That's all the movie needed to be a fun enough watch. Unfortunately there is not much else here. It's just about fine enough. I think most will feel it's too silly. I rate it 5,5. Not bad, but a giant miss.
Trap (2024)
It's fun and frustrating to watch - both at the same time
Acting: 6
Dialogue: 5
Camera work: 7
Editing: 6
Budget: 8
Story: 7
Theme: 5
Pure entertainment factor: 7
Video quality: 8
Special effects: 5
Pacing: 7
Suspension of disbelief: 5
Non-cringe factor: 6
Lack of flashbacks: 10
The movie is quite a mess and all over the place. M. Night Shyamalan is a good director yet not a good writer. He seemingly sees everything as a surprise. I do enjoy half of his movies even though they are seldom great. Besides Unbreakable everything has been a tad silly and unfinished. He never really goes anywhere with the movies and they all only have 1 great idea to them. The Happening is one such movie that has a good idea and calm directing yet is so unfocused that it looks like a comedy of sorts. Trap has a similar feel to it where the topic is death yet the director knows so little about his own idea that he kinda messes it up. Again and again. Yet because he takes full control and creates unique stories they are often a curious watch. There are some movies no sane person will watch, but Trap is in that The Happening, Split, and Glass category. Where it feels like a beginning of something greater. With the other movies feeling like slow pilots to a great season. Similar to The Happening with Mark Walberg this has Josh Harnett. Yet again an actor hamming it up adding that comedy feel to it where you always know it's a movie and never take it seriously so you tend to overlook the mindblowing stupidity of it all. The Visit has exactly the same feel. The whole concept is utter impossible nonsense.
The movie has so many illogical plot points to it that one has to consider it either comedic or lazy. One could write a book about all the illogical plot points. Like the wife of the butcher setting him up to get captured. She leaves a ticket in a safehouse she found then calls it in. Not telling them her husband is the serial killer just giving them this tiny clue. And apparently he left no DNA in the house? Just a small fallacy to this idea. The ticket is for a concert his daughter will attend and he is just tagging along. So this genius set him up to get captured with his daughter by him? Hence if there is a shootout of any kind or he needs a hostage she set her daughter up to at least get lifelong trauma and at worst become another victim. This makes no sense. Not just logically, it just makes no sense emotionally unless she hates her daughter.
And then what does the FBI plan? They just plant a bunch of cops everywhere at the concert and then ... check the men there? Check how? We never find out, we just know that the killer cannot be checked otherwise he will found out. They are not even sure who they are searching for or how he will look like. They would not be allowed to mass check phones in such a case without the most extreme court order ever. And even then he could just throw it away. The cat and mouse game is engaging enough here though. The stadium looks full with plenty of people everywhere which makes the movie look great in every shot. The killer also has to take quite a few steps to avoid the cops and escape the stadium even though it's not quite clear why he wants to avoid the cops or why we should be rooting for him? He is a psychopath. So we want the cops to succeed yet never follow them. It becomes a weird mess with no direction. At one point a limo is surrounded by a SWAT team aiming their rifles at it. There are 30 people filming it with their phones. Yet the killer somehow creates a doll of himself in the car and escapes in just a minute. A limo where you can see through the windows! How does this happen exactly? Just utter nonsense. I bet you you could try this 1000 times and zero times will be a success.
It's a movie just to show off his daughter's songs. Which is fine enough. I just wish there was more to the ending maybe. Show us the FBI and their work. The reason we never see the cops do anything is because the movie can't make them be overly proactive as then they would catch him in a minute. So we have to see everything from his point of view. It's a fun watch. Kid Cudi is in this. What more do you need? Just don't expect anything made with a brain.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024)
The best trilogy of all time, this one is a fun step down
Acting: 5
Dialogue: 6
Camera work: 3
Editing: 3
Budget: 7
Story: 6
Theme: 4
Pure entertainment factor: 7
Video quality: 8
Special effects: 7
Pacing: 6
Suspension of disbelief: 3
Non-cringe factor: 4
Lack of flashbacks: 10
This was fun to watch despite being a huge drop in quality. The first 3 movies are so iconic they make up maybe the best trilogy ever? The third one being the masterpiece of the series but the 2 first ones are amazingly fun. This is not on that level. The side characters are so old all their action scenes make no sense and they largely whine about being old. The movie is also rushed. We meet a character and next scene he is kidnapped. Meet a new character and then never see him again. It's quite a mess. The camera work is terrible too and editing lazy. It just feels cheap and unfocused. With the daughter being a bad actress who can't sell her scenes and unfortunately they set her up to be the next lead - big mistake. Some of the car chase scenes are nice. The shootout scenes quite bad. But overall Eddie Murphy takes this B tier movie that should not work and makes it work. He is the powerhouse here. He's funny, engaging, and quite smart. The humor works because of him alone. The action works because of him alone. The movie doesn't really focus on detective work anymore though as most info comes from random characters they meet. It doesn't ruin the franchise but you can easily skip it. It's still fun though.
There are several issues with the plot. Like his daughter being the lawyer for a supposed cop killer. He has a family member who leads a gang. There is an over the top scene of them meeting with this boss. And then just nothing. We don't see either of them again. There is a dialogue line completing their stories. Yet we don't even get to see them smile or nod? Just nothing. Most storylines finished off screen with mainly the daughter getting to tell us what happened. This type of lazy storytelling shows us this movie is produced not directed and that it's just a cash grab. Luckily Eddie Murphy for some reason doesn't phone it in.
I recommend just rewatching the first 3 movies. But I don't regret watching this one as the jokes pertaining to the old movies nearly all land.
Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)
Quite fun
Acting: 5
Dialogue: 6
Camera work: 6
Editing: 4
Budget: 10
Story: 6
Theme: 4
Pure entertainment factor: 7
Video quality: 9
Special effects: 9
Pacing: 7
Suspension of disbelief: 3
Non-cringe factor: 4
Lack of flashbacks: 1
I did have fun with it, but it's not really a top movie. Mainly a few factors bring it down. It overuses slowmotion to a fault. Time and time again we see those huge entrances with the main characters do a slow walk. And we constantly see flashbacks in scenes that otherwise feel well-paced. Then of course there is the acting dud in the female Professor X. Weirdly her scenes have horrible editing and camera work. Did they plaster her into the movie in reshoots? Lucky most here is still fun despite the 4th wall break most often just feeling lame. The male bad guy for example is great. Just a whining genius. Wolverine is the best we have ever seen him with acting way above what this movie demands. Everyone else is phoning it in as they should as this is not really a quality product besides the budget. It was a huge letdown to see the girl Wolverine act this horribly here. Making sure she won't get her own movie as this is just not good enough. It's nice seeing Blade back as the first movie is awesome and kickstarted the modern superhero industry. Ryan Reynolds jokes about his role in Blade 3 and in other movies often referring to other characters by their name so Wolverine is both from Canada and Australia at the same time. He even refers to 2 real life divorces.
Overall it feels timely, but the humor will date horribly in just 5 years when people won't recall the first non-talking Deadpool or Blade 3. Many of the movies they refer to were big action movies that may just not be rewatched by a new generation with access to movies with $200m budgets that bombed. There is way too much to pick from now. And the older movies won't really stand the test of time. Neither will this Deadpool movie. But right now it's a fun watch. Some fight scenes are great, others not ideal. Some acting spectacular other is quite terrible. Overall there is enough good stuff here to be worth a watch. It feels like a lazily written story with terrible editing. But then it doesn't try to be a big superhero movie. It just tries to entertain and it does that.