Chris-742's Reviews

Wonka (2023)

4/10

18 April 2024

I expected to see an origins story, some story about how Wonka learned to make chocolate and how he recruited the Ompa-Lumpas. Instead we get a standard hero story, evil villians try to stop hero until he exposes them. In a zany tone.

I am not a fan of Chalamet, but when he looks into the camera with a twinkle in his eye, he works. But some of the zanier scenes do not work.

As a kid I used to hate musicals. The action ground to a halt for a bit of annoying music. As I grew older I began to appreciate the musical numbers, but I did feed myself the best ones like Mary Poppins. In Wonka I find myself a kid again and I tense up in strong dislike everytime a musical number starts up. In short the musical numbers are meh, at best.

Some things grate on logic. Like when Wonka stops Nudles from taking a bottle of milk, yet himself takes a huge bunch of balloons in a later scene.

Chocolate never(?) looks like chocolate, but more like bonbons/caramels.

A destitute Wonka invents a machine that helps in his work, but where did he get money for parts and time to build it?

Acting is overall ok, Hugh Grant is the best one. But overall, with average script and grating musical numbers this movie is below average.

4 out of 8 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Ahsoka: Part Five: Shadow Warrior (2023)

Season 1, Episode 5

2/10

Nothing burger with some fan service.

19 September 2023

So what is there in this episode? I admit that I had my hopes up after previous episode which was the best of the show so far, but boy was that hope smashed. A big nothing burger with some fan service. The whole episode is centered around a kind of beyond death scene, and adds a famous character for fan service. Problem is that this adds nothing to the plot or the story. There is no within this series buildup for this, nor does it add anything to the series. This long scene explains nothing, adds very little character build for Ahsoka, and gives her no answers for the future. There could have been a buildup if she had been questioning her own motives or the results of her own actions in previous episodes, but there is nothing. My only conclusion is that this episode just waves some shiny fan service while adding runtime to a series already moving way to slow and having way to little plot.

11 out of 24 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Wheel of Time (2021– )

4/10

Confusing

2 September 2023

Watched season 1 and it was ok. Started watching season 2 and it confused me to no end. The synopsis was no help at all, it was more a dramatic trailer for the second season. But the episodes were also confusing. The female heroes look too similar and to add insult also have similar names. One of the male heroes shaved his hair, which was his big identifying factor. But either I blinked or it was not shown, and it was not until a flashback in episode 3 that I understood who he was from season 1.

And since no catchup of names is done, whenever someone is referenced in third person, you (or at least I) have no idea who they are talking about.

How could prime not have a synopsis retelling the major events in season 1, and also the names of major characters?

10 out of 21 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

3/10

Four letter word

14 February 2023

The concept is great. The real estate agents of a firm are about to get fired by their new boss. Only the one selling the most will get to stay on.

You think you are in for a treat. Some of the actors are good, some should be really good. There are reviews praising this.

What you do get is actors you thought were good screaming a four letter word starting with F at each other for the length of the film, incompetently huding that there is only plot for a few minutes.

It's like an inside joke on the viewer. Do you join the jokers and praise the movie or do you admit the truth, that this is a truly awful movie?

My recommendation: Avoid this movie!

0 out of 7 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Battlestar Galactica (2004–2009)

6/10

Almost the best sci-fi ever...

2 October 2022

Ran for 4,5 season. And for season 0, anf the first two full seasons it was pure awesomeness. Tense, good characters, mostly good plots, incredible buildups to a conclusion.

And then came the last two seasons, and it was awful. Where there had been intelligence, there was now only stupidity. The final conclusion could have been better written by an eight-yesr old. It is really hard to understand unless you have seen it, but this franchise crashed and burned worse than Game of thrones. I really should rewatch it, but it still pains me even to think about it. I dont know what happened, maybe the lead writer quit and was replaced by someone who hated the series.

Or as a friend said, "this series is dead to me".

5 out of 7 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Dune (2021)

6/10

The middle Dune

27 October 2021

Better than the miniseries, but lesser than Lynch's Dune. Lynch's Dune is a guilty pleasure for me so it was impossible for me, watching this, to not compare it to LD (Lynch's Dune). And it underperforms in almost every important aspect. Lynch did go overboard with some things, but his film tells the story in one movie. The actors are clearly lesser in this Dune, delivering their lines less well, even if I thought the actor's playing Thufir Hawat and Beast Rabban was better in this movie (due to not overacting). LD was also slimmer, this Dune adds several scenes that were in the book (I think) that only adds time but no world- or characterbuilding. Music was much worse in this Dune compared to LD, at best the music is as good as the "Children of Dune" miniseries, at worst the music is just annoying noise.

But the special effects are better, the ships, shield and weapons feels more real in this Dune. So an ok movie, but not as good as LD.

3 out of 8 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Adventures of Aladdin (2019)

3/10

Not terrible not good.

22 August 2021

Noway near as bad as some would have it. But not good either. Feels like a college play recorded on camera, and the acting is overacting, just as a stageplay. Everything is obviously low budget, and the special effects range from ok to cringe. The palace fight scene with the giant lizard was especially bad.

But the guy playing the genie was pretty good.

So watchable, but i am glad I did not pay for it.

0 out of 0 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Knives Out (2019)

5/10

No Agatha Christie

24 September 2020

Knives out is to Agatha Christie what the Last Jedi is to Star Wars. A totally unrelated story, some inspiration, some good parts, some bad parts, some good humor, some bad humor, som awful humor (the p***ing when lying) some generally bad twists. All in all an average movie in a great setting with good acting and some awkwardness that draws it down. Rian thinks he is clever, but he is not. Wish I had not paid to see it.

1 out of 3 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020)

8/10

The best Eurovision event this year.

5 July 2020

..and probably would have been even if they had had a real show this year. For me that has watched the eurovision since I was small this was an emotional roller coaster ride. The movie is not a comedy as such, even if there are more than a handful of laughs and giggles. It is more of a feelgood drama with comedic and goofy undertones. In fact I think a lot of the movie manages to hit the goofy tone of much of the Eurovision. It parodies a lot pf Eurovision song contest, which is probably lost on a casual or someone who never watched the ESC show. Payback to the americans when we had to watch otherwise good movies against backdrops of hard to enjoy or understand stuff like american football, basketball or (snore) baseball. But as well as goofiness, there are also deeply romantic and sad parts. The music, for the most part, is excellent, better than the average ESC fare. Good efforts from Will, Rachel and Pierce Brosnan who is great as the stern and sane father. Bad is a stretch in the middle of the movie and any mention of p----. Why is that even there? Ohh, and this movie makes me want to go to Iceland right now. Was there for 4 days last year and it was great, beautiful country despite having few trees and friendly people. Ps2. There was a phone voting in my country for the ESC contestants despite there not being a big contest, and Iceland won. Iceland for the win!

60 out of 71 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

6/10

Meh.

29 December 2018

Just back from watching this in the theater, writing this as I am watching the Julie Andrews original.

First, this movie tries hard to copy the original, but fails. For instance in the original they jump into a painting, here they jump into a painted bowl. But the original really had no plot, here they pressed in a contrived plot, I say contrived because the plot and it's resolution is signaled far ahead and it is not very original. Secondly, the tone is way of. It mixes long stretches of melancholy with crazy happy escapism. The crazy happy escapism is where this movies shines, a bit like the original. But the melancholy parts take over. Thirdly, while Emily Blunt is a good Poppins, it's a long boring stretch before she enters the mivue. Fourthly, none of the music numbers are rememberable. Forgetable scenes include Meryl Streep as a crazy russian or something. Her scenes should gave been cut altogether IMO. Rememberable scenes include Angela Lansbury as a balloon seller. Lastly Jack (Miranda) leaves me completely cold. He might be an accomplished singer (I have no idea), but in this movie he comes out as neither good nor bad, just meh. And that is also my verdict on this movie.

4 out of 12 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Alien: Covenant (2017)

3/10

Agonizing like a boring meeting.

22 May 2017

I actually though Promotheus was fairly good, in that there was a lot of mystery. However the bad part of Promotheus was how stupid the characters were. Well this movie has the bad parts of Promotheus and enlarges them. There are a lot of "Ex Machina" or stupid moments. The characters have no logical reason to act the way they do and the movie does not bother to explain it, a simple sentence can make the characters change their mind on something. They mention security protocols, only to break them for no good reason a few seconds later. Cinema-sins is going to have a field day with this. As a watcher you see every event coming from a mile away, every plot twist is signaled far in advance. I was not surprised at anything happening on-camera, I was not even jump-scared. I was sitting on the edge of my seat, but this was due to the movie being scary, but rather a feeling like when you are on a boring meeting and cannot wait to leave and do something else. Can't I say anything good? Well, the scenery and photography was great. And what I heard of the music was really good. The acting is not bad, but that does save the movie.

12 out of 24 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

7/10

OK, I guess.

30 April 2017

Entertaining, but not as good as #1. This feels like a middle movie, which it obviously will be. Some characters get some fleshing out, Gomora's and Peter's relationship takes a tiny step forward. Some bad jokes, some good ones, lots of action. An overblown epic quest. It felt like Star Trek V, if Star Trek V had been more entertaining.

1 out of 4 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Last Contract (1998)

3/10

Wet dream of the left...

29 December 2015

Warning: Spoilers

Major Spoilers. Let me start out by saying that the convoluted plot of this film plays out like the wet dream of the Swedish left. They cannot buy the boring history that the prime minister was killed by a drunkard by mistake. Instead we have this. The Swedish prime minister is killed by a an assassin. The assassin has previously killed anti-apartheid activists. Behind the killing lies Swedish nazi and an unknown people high in the government hierarchy, wanting him killed because he works against nuclear weapons. In the end the assassin gets his just desserts.

The movie is full of left-wing tropes. A bartender expresses his dislike for the prime minister...so he must be a right wing extremist. Who else could possibly dislike prime minister Palme? (FYI: Palme was a very confrontative and acidic person and roughly half the people in the country disliked him). The right wing are skinhead Nazis led by mysterious men in suits.

What did I miss? Probably a lot, there are huge plot holes. The protagonist, the young police, always seems to magically find himself near the assassin when something happens and can photo meetings and payoffs. The police magically get tips and have recordings. All this is hidden in a massive cover-up even before the murder. In a similar manner, the assassins hired help repeatedly finds himself in a sauna with the prime minister. In short the makers of this film put together a movie from their wet dream plot, made up with what they thought to be interesting scenes, without properly connecting the dots. Add the tropes of Swedish filmmaking with emotion being showed by swearing like a madman and what you have is simply not a very good film, but not bad enough to be a turkey.

PS. I hope I used "trope" in the correct manner.

4 out of 7 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Once Upon a Time (2011–2018)

4/10

Going nowhere...

28 June 2014

After seeing the first season I was intrigued. This looked interesting, weaving the characters from old tales together to form a modern tale. Seemed to have a good range of characters and let them build slowly. It seemed to lay the foundation for a great continuation.

But the series lost the storytelling, yet continued with episodes. Nothing happened in season 2, except the introduction of yet more characters. Now mid 3rd season, this series is truly going nowhere, I missed an episode and did not even notice it until much later. Nothing happens, except that new characters are introduced and old ones simply disappear. Nothing is concluded. All in all, this way more like a snail-pace soap than a fantasy series. Please put it out of it's misery and terminate it already!

6 out of 11 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Inception (2010)

2/10

Boring action movie with dazzling special effects.

31 December 2010

This movie has several dazzling special effects. But other than that, what is there to say. Well, mainly....YAWN. Many comedy movies are just sketches strung together with the barest of threads to hold the plot together. Inception does the same thing for action movies, the action sequences are held together with a plot that pretends to be complicated, but in reality is wafer thin and yet full of holes that you could put Incepton's entire budget for special effects into each one of them. Inceptions virtual world does not impress because it is a work of beauty without any connection with dreams at all. Take away the special effects and you are left with substandard, uninspired acting and a boring movie.

22 out of 44 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Bluebeard (2009)

2/10

A beautiful picture ruined by wooden acting.

5 June 2010

The tale of blue beard told with beautiful visuals. But sadly the story and the film is marred by two unforgivable things. Mainly, the acting is so wooden you think the actors might catch fire from the open fires. It is impossible to discern any emotion at all from the actors. And secondly, the story is drawn out by being read by two young girls in a more contemporary setting, it does not add much but extra time to an already too long film. I watched the film anyway, hoping for a new twist, for some emotion from the actors, for some clue as to the relationship between Bluebeard and his new wife, but ultimately I was only disappointed. This is not a film for watching, this is a film for lying down and avoiding.

I also noted a jarring anachronism, everything in the story has the look of a medieval setting, but in this setting there are 17th century musketeers. Guess the filmmakers took any prop they could get their hands on.

14 out of 30 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Real Da Vinci Code (2005 TV Movie)

9/10

The hunt for the grail.

22 February 2006

Tony Robinson is mostly known for his comedy work in stuff like "Black Adder". This work was the first time I ever saw him in a serious piece, and a documentary at that. It was a very positive surprise. Tony (and his invisible researches) takes a look at the roots behind the myths in the bestseller book "Da vinci code". He hunts for the holy grail and examines some of the places in the book and also looks for the basis of some holy grail myth. Robinson manages to cover a lot of ground. This is a high class documentary, boring historians are given space, but it never gets boring because somehow the boring parts are edited out. This documentary is almost as fast-paced as the book. Well worth watching, I have seen it three times, twice before and once after reading the book. My only complaint is that they did not dig deep enough in some places.

18 out of 18 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

National Geographic: Beyond the Movie - The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003 TV Movie)

3/10

Lightweight like a high school paper.

30 October 2005

Warning: Spoilers

This documentary is like a high school paper, written without preparation. "What are some of the archetypal character or events of Lord of the rings and give some simple examples of similar characters or events in history?" 4 hours, at least 5 pages, no aids. I think my problem with this film boils down to that the creators have taken the path of least resistance and no examples are given taking Tolkiens background into consideration. Examples of people given are Benjamin Franklin (not a bad choice, but a very American choice), Lewis and Clark (also a very American choice), Edmund Hillary and sherpa Tarkey (which happened after Tolkien wrote the books. Faramir's charge is compared to Picket's charge. But the charge only takes place in the movie and does not appear in the books. In short, whoever made this documentary seems not only not to have read the books, but seems to lack basic knowledge about Tolkien. The execution of the documentary is well done, but it's basis lacks thought. There are no insights into the mind nor world of Tolkien. So the grade for this documentary can only be an F with the added comment "Did you even read the books, it seems you only watched the movie." The other documentary (Fellowship of the ring) is much better. This one is for "lying down and avoiding" (A monthy python quote).

1 out of 4 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The New Adventures of Robin Hood (1997–1999)

So bad it is almost good.

22 January 2005

"The new adventures of Robin Hood" can be described as a light-hearted, silly piece of recorded live role-playing. The actors(?) probably had a lot of fun playing out their own fantasies, but the result is lacking. The plots consists mainly of Robin Hood and his merry men (Marion, Tuck, Little John) helping people in need, resulting in fights against the antagonists of the relevant episode. As in similar series (Sinbad, Hercules etc), there is no blood. In fact the whole series is completely bloodless and soulless. Instead silliness rules. Robin Hood is flippant (for comic relief), Marion is haughty (for comic relief), Little John is stupid (for comic relief) and Friar Tuck is a fat fart (for comic relief). Topping off this silliness is a lack of credible plots and a long line of historical inaccuracies. For instance Vikings (ca 800-1000) and Mongols (Asia and Eastern Europe ca 1200-1400) appear in what should be an late 12th century England setting. A series like this should make you very, very upset that someone wasted even low-budget money. But you can also revel in all the silliness and play "Silly Bingo" and try to finds as many historical inaccuracies or ridiculous fight scene events as possible, say: Two Mongols (beep, inaccurate), slash at Robin Hood with their swords. Robin Hood blocks both swords with his bow (beep, ridiculous), which is made out of glass-fiber (beep, inaccurate). He then hits both Mongols over their metal helmets with his bow, and they go down (beep, impossible). And so on...

10 out of 14 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Troll 2 (1990)

2/10

Feels like a college project.

10 October 2004

The whole feel of this is that of a college project. Some youths going together to do a scary movie for fun. Almost a parody on scary movies. And had it stayed in that college to be viewed at frat parties, it would have been a great movie, and the creators could have been proud. But this should not have been released to the general public. The script is non-descript, but the acting is completely without feeling. It is like the actors are reading their lines from the script, without taking into consideration what is happening around them. The only exception is Deborah Reed, whose acting is borderline comical and I think the borderline comical part of this film is the only entertaining part of it. Any good parts? Well the photography. So do not waster your time on this. Or watch it for the turkey value.

0 out of 2 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Gettysburg (1993)

7/10

Marred by melodrama.

11 August 2004

A very good film, good acting, very well executed. If you should make a war movie today, this is the way to go with character building and fighting scenes, not computer effects. My compliments to just about everyone involved.

Just one thing, it's this melodrama that present throughout the movie. It's general Hood losing his leg, it's Chamberlain losing his aide, it's Armistead whining about his union friends, it's the overacting when pointing out that the Maine regiment is the end of the line (I lost count at them saying they were the end of the line after 10 times), etc etc. Now many filmmakers seem to think that melodrama makes the viewers symphatize with the characters. But too much melodrama just makes me mad and hate the characters and wish they would pass on peacefully and most importantly quietly. And this film has enough melodrama for quite a few movies.

Two other funny things are the bands that seem to be playing everywhere, and that people seem to stand around in photogenic poses.

0 out of 2 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Van Helsing (2004)

2/10

Overdoing it.

25 June 2004

This film is some mad cross between james bond, dracula, frankenstein, alien, tarzan and whatever. It's like the worst of Hollywood tackiness. Steal yourself blind taking plot elements from other films, but use them in the worst possible way. And then I have not mentioned the worst. There is simple too much special effects and action in this film, it never ever slows down. You need acting and character in a film. But special effects and action is no substitute for good acting, which we sadly see nothing off in this film. Mostly because the film doesn't pause enough to let there be acting. But also because every time someone says something, not only does that person have the most outrageous accent, but their speaking is so constructed that you wonder what kid wrote the script.

Sometimes the film slows down, and you think, maybe there will be some good acting, maybe some plot, maybe this isn't a completely bad film. But no, the film soon races off, leaving unfinished plot elements and the audience behind. I wasn't the only one sighing in the theater. And there were instances of people giggling at the film, as opposed to giggling with the film.

Now with a lot of work, this film could have been an amusing homage to horror films....or it could have been an amusing turkey. I wish they had cut, say 20 minutes of wire-swinging to do just that and changed the overall tone from...from..ludicrous to comedy. It wouldn't have made the film good, but it would have made it average, and possibly entertaining.

There can only be one grade for this boring mess: a 1 (out of 5 or 10 either one).

3 out of 6 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Dune (1984)

8/10

A very good effort.

12 April 2004

Every time I see this film I like it more, yet can see why people would dislike this movie, and I can sum up it's shortcoming this way:

Not close enough to the book to humour the people who have read the book, to confusing for people who have not. Thus Lynch managed to get a lot of bad press about this near masterpiece.

It is very difficult to fit the plot of Herbert's masterpiece into 130 minutes, but I think Lynch did a good job, sadly he added som stuff that was not in the book. Where Lynch does excel is in setting the mood. To help him he had probably the best possible cast for such a movie and the best musical score ever. The acting overall is excellent (except possibly Maclachlan and Jones) and for me who read the book before seeing the film, it is hard not to see Stewart as Halleck. The timing of the acting and events is almost perfect. If Lynch had had help by a better scriptwriter to curb some of his wilder additions and flesh out the plot a bit and this could have been one of the best sci-fi movies ever. As is, it is very good, but somewhat flawed.

201 out of 277 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Alfred the Great (I) (1969)

4/10

Fails both as lesson and entertainment.

2 March 2004

A disappointment. This film is filled with so many factual and historical errors it's not even funny. So it fails as a history lesson. But it also fails as entertainment, because the film is too slow-paced and the dialogue boring and the acting generally uninspired. A common film plot is to make the protagonist all good and the antagonist all bad. Black and white. But one of the big weaknesses of the film is the demonizing of the danes. At the time of the danish invasions, the danish society was in many ways more advanced than the saxon. They had a large set laws, and thus what happened to the woman at the feast would not have happened. The "spartan phalanx" as presented in the movie was a common norse formation "svinfylkingen", the spartans fought more like the danes fight in the movies. The greatness of Alfred was that he learned from his enemies and from his own mistakes. He emulated what was good in the danish society and built a society to resist the danes, both in civil life and military. But by demonizing the danes, the film also reduces the accomplishments of Alfred. Historically a great man, made small by a film like this.

The only ones getting away with their honor intact from this film is the set and costume makers. Least favorite moment in movie: A woman armed with a stick kills 5 or so heavily armored danes. Sigh.

15 out of 19 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)

3/10

Been there, done that. Brooks running empty.

11 January 2004

Good acting, a parody on previous Robin Hood films and previous Mel Brooks films. So this should be a good film. Nope. It falls flat. Why? Quite simply, it's not funny enough. The jokes are too few and too far between, and we have seen just about all of them in previous Mel Brooks films. Brooks reuses jokes that were not funny the first time around and spends a lot of time presenting them. Several minutes are simply wasted with jokes "the hero has a large sword, not" and "jewish circumcision", which were slightly amusing the first time they appeared in a Brooks movie. Add a whole bunch of old and tired puns and predictable jokes and sorry, the Brooks funny film factory is running on empty. Hiring some new people (comedians or whatever) to add a lot of fresh jokes and gags might very well have saved this movie. If you want too see a funnier Brooks film, see Spaceballs instead.

9 out of 19 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Chris-742

Reviews

Tell Your Friends

Recently Viewed