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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: The Elysian Kingdom (2022)
This was a fun episode, what's with the 1/10 and 2/10 reviews?
This episode SCREAMED classic Star Trek. TOS and TNG did stuff like this all the time, and it was always fun and silly. What's with the bad reception solely on IMDb? I think it's showing the age of a lot of viewers, because this show is TRYING to emulate old Trek, and this episode actually pulls that off pretty well. I think I'll stick to Reddit for Star Trek opinions, as even this episode was pretty well received on the Star Trek subreddit. IMDb though, hoooooly... what's going on over here?
I was originally going to give the episode a 7/10 when I was still watching, but Hemmer's comical moments and the story about M'Benga's daughter (which was never big enough of a plot thread to deserve more than this) receiving a decent resolution drove the rating up.
It was a lot of fun seeing characters acting the opposite of how they normally are. Pike being a sleazy coward, La'an being extremely bubbly and happy, and Uhura being evil. Absolutely loved how the characters acted in this one.
The Enterprise set was given a pretty cool makeover in this episode. I loved the idea of transplanting bits of a fantasy setting inside of a spaceship, with the affected characters seeing all the fantasy and none of the sci-fi. Characters looking at each other awkwardly whenever M'Benga tried talking to the computer was a nice touch.
As for the resolution with M'Benga's daughter, I was happy to see it end because I felt like this plot thread was basically baggage for the series that would ultimately hold M'Benga back and limit the abilities of sick bay. Allowing her to leave the ship to live with a hyper powerful incorporeal lifeform that allowed her to experience many different realities and such was a better fate for her than to be stowed away in the transporter buffer. This resolution frees M'Benga up to be his own character, and I appreciate the move.
I thought it was a fun episode, and I'll probably really enjoy it on future rewatches. Also, Hemmer is amazing. We need much more Hemmer!
Cowboy Bebop (2021)
Lower your expectations, don't expect a shot-for-shot remake, and have an open mind.
As long as you're a fan of the original and you go in with tempered expectations and know that they ARE going to change/condense stuff because it's 10 episodes rather than 26, it's really not that bad. People are also upset that they changed the plot a bit. What, were you hoping for a shot for shot remake of the original? What would even be the point in doing that? If people cherish the original so much that they just want to see the same scenes all over again, they're certainly free to go back and watch it again.
I appreciate that they changed the story up a bit, though I'm a bit lukewarm on the final 10-15 minutes of the finale. Still, it's obvious that they wanted to set this up to continue as a new series that tells new stories for those who are interested. If that's not you, then, I don't know what to tell you. Go back and watch the anime?
As far as the production goes, it was decent for a Netflix show. Some stuff was hokey and I probably would have gone with a younger actor than John Cho for Spike, but he does a good job in the role despite his age. The rest of the cast are more or less average/good (but not great), and the CGI and set pieces are pretty good. The space scenes in particular are pretty nice to look at.
So, yeah, go in with an open mind and lower your expectations. Don't go in thinking, OR wanting, a shot for shot remake and you'll probably at least be moderately entertained. The live action Cowboy Bebop is by no means exceptional, but it's still a fun watch overall.
Mortal Kombat (2021)
It's decent, but can't match the entertainment value of the 1995 movie.
I have a hard time writing any kind of review on this movie. It bounces around a lot and a lot of things happen for the sake of convenience, but the overall structure of the movie is okay.
The acting is shockingly good for a video game movie, with the weakest links being Cole (bleh) and Sonya. Jax is also a little hammy at times, but that is all the script's doing. Kano is by faaaaaar the best part of this movie and he pretty much steals the show. The actor who played him felt like he was a level above everyone else as far as acting chops go, and his character's lines felt like there was more care and thought put into them than those of any other character in the movie.
The worst part of the movie, aside from there being no actual "tournament" in the movie, is Cole. Before seeing the movie, I had wrongfully assumed that he was intended to be an audience surrogate. Instead, he is so much more. Not only is he a blood relative of a major character, he also gets his own powers about three quarters through the movie that are hilariously awful. All in all, I just didn't feel like Cole belonged with the likes of Liu Kang, Jax, Sonya, etc. The fact that he was able to take out one of Mortal Kombat's BIGGEST heavy hitting characters on his own was kind of lame, but it was what it was.
Shang Tsung's enforcers were some awful picks. Outside of Kano, who wasn't even originally on Shang Tsung's side, we've got Goro, Kabal, Mileena, Nitara, Reiko, and Sub-Zero. Kabal's only purpose is to swear a lot and sway Kano to their side, and Mileena, Nitara, and Reiko are so horribly bland and uninteresting that you can honestly forget that they're in the movie. I actually forgot that Mileena was in the movie and had to go back and add her to the characters I named off. Sub-Zero more or less steals the show and about 75% of the "villain screen time" is devoted to him. That's an awful imbalance. This movie also did Goro dirty. Shame on you, writers.
Oh yeah, Reptile was in there too. See? Forgettable.
This all sounds pretty negative for a 6/10, but it IS a decent movie to put on if you don't have high expectations. It's just silly action, a little bit of hilariously over the top gore care of Kung Lao, and a few endearing characters (Kano, Kano, Kano, and Kano) who are fun to watch. The story is okay, nothing great and a few plot points from the games are totally glossed over here. The 1995 movie does just about everything better (except Kano), but you'll still have some fun watching this one if you're a Mortal Kombat fan. If you're not, then it's probably best to skip this one.
Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi (2020)
Interesting show that doesn't just teach you about food, but cultures and history as well.
I don't think that I've ever seen Padma Lakshmi before this show, but I had a general idea of who she was. Gotta say, this show has made me love her! She's super down to earth and very charming, and she has a good voice for narration. Also, gotta say, she's looking freaking awesome for a fifty year old. This is a woman who knows how to take very good care of herself and it shows.
I really appreciate that this isn't JUST a food show, but it also delves into the cultures and history of the people behind the food Padma gets to eat and learn about.
My only complaint is that I wish the show was an hour long instead of just half an hour so that Padma could spend more time with the people she talks to, and so that some of them don't take up a third or more of the running time of an episode.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Mac Finds His Pride (2018)
I've had three years to reflect on this. One of the weakest episodes of the entire series.
A lot of people praise this episode, and it's for the last five minutes. While the dance at the end is beautifully choreographed and shot, it's not the entire episode.
Prior to Mac coming out to his father, the entire episode was... just terrible! Frank's antics, while often outlandish, were ramped up to 1000% as he did things in the episode that he never did before or after. The absolutely stupid nonsense that they made Frank get up to throughout the episode was way out of character even with his tumor in his head. Not even Charlie would have done anything as remotely stupid.
Not having Glenn around as Dennis was felt throughout the season, but this episode was the worst offender. Frank constantly made mention to Dennis as if he was standing just off-screen and was hanging around with the gang for the entire episode when he's simply not in it. Constantly acting like Dennis was there when he wasn't made the flow of the episode feel incredibly awkward and stilted.
A vast majority of the jokes in the episode fell pretty flat. Charlie and Dee were barely used and received, what, about a minute of screen time in the entire episode? Instead we were treated to Frank acting out of character for twenty straight minutes as he tried to help Mac. Nothing really worked in the episode, it just all felt so bad. The writing for the first twenty minutes (or thereabout) was a dreadful conclusion to what was already the show's worst season by a significant margin (fortunately the next season was a huge improvement).
Yes, the dance scene was beautifully done. However, it did nothing for me at all and it did, as others have said over time, feel really out of place in a show that was all about crossing a fine line by regularly being dark, offensive, and vulgar. Given the show's history, I expected Mac's performance to end with someone yelling something homophobic at him, or for his plans to blow up in hilarious fashion. Instead we had everyone in the prison cheer, Frank (who was insanely out of character all episode long) having a profound moment to himself, and Mac's father just getting up and walking away in what I assume was supposed to be a powerful message about the character and his feelings towards himself and his son. By the time I had to sit through the entire dance scene, I had already mentally checked out from what was an otherwise terrible episode of Always Sunny.
Guys, don't give episode 10/10. I'd understand if it we had The Nightman Cometh or Charlie Work level comedy and writing before the dance scene, but we didn't. We had some of the worst writing that this show has ever seen. Grade this episode accordingly and as a whole, please!
Shazam! (2019)
Why isn't DC pumping out more movies like this!?
Easily the best DC movie since the Tim Burton Batman movies. This movie distanced itself from the dark, edgy, grim tone of every other DC film franchise of the last 10-15 years, and it worked tremendously well for it. Shazam could easily be a Marvel movie with the tone it has. Action and humour were perfectly balanced. I could easily watch this movie again.
The Crew (2021)
It's just "okay".
Feels like Netflix's intended successor to The Ranch in terms of character relationships, general theme, and writing.
I watched all of the first season of The Crew and found it to be watchable. I hate NASCAR and am an F1 fan, and found a little bit of enjoyment in this show. You don't have to be a fan of NASCAR or racing in general to like The Crew.
The humour isn't that bad in the show and some of the jokes are actually pretty good, but the laugh track is loud and obnoxious to the point where it ruins some jokes. If there was no laugh track, I'd probably chuckle/grin more than I do with the laugh track. It's 2021, we DON'T need to be told when to laugh anymore.
Overall episode plots are extremely predictable. You'll know what's going to happen in the episode as soon as they introduce the main plot of each.
The Crew isn't great, but it's not bad either. It's just sort of okay. The writing is extremely predictable to the point that you'll see the two season finale twists coming a mile away, but the characters are at least somewhat endearing and Kevin James is more likeable here than he is in a lot of his other roles.
The show is just a bit above being forgettable. I'll probably watch season 2 on Netflix when it comes out, but only if they properly advertise it otherwise I may forget it exists.
The Great Escapists (2021)
Do NOT go in expecting some sort of Grand Tour/Mythbusters fusion.
I hadn't heard of this show at all prior to it showing up in my suggestions on Prime Video. Being a massive fan of all things Top Gear/Grand Tour, and enjoying James Mays' recent solo projects, I figured that I would give this a shot and that it would be an interesting show to watch since I find Richard to be the most charismatic and energetic member of the Grand Tour trio. I saw that the premise involved Richard and Tory being stuck on a deserted island and having to find a way off. I expected something scripted on the same level of The Grand Tour with some fun building challenges and experiments along the way, combining The Grand Tour and Mythbusters to make something new and interesting.
Boy, was I wrong. I tried to like this show, I just wasn't able to see it through to the end and it had completely lost my interest and I'll say why.
The major turn-off for me is the overly scripted nature of the show. It's not what I expected going in given the history of both Richard and Tory in that they are, for the most part, reality TV personalities rather than performers with notable acting chops. I expected some scripted gags perhaps, but for the rest of the show to probably be relatively unscripted as the guys fought with trying to construct things to help them get off the island. It ended up being the complete opposite of that. Everything is scripted, and do I mean EVERYTHING.
Richard's acting isn't the best, but he's had plenty of experience in making scripted gags look improvised thanks to the sillier scripted moments from Top Gear and The Grand Tour, but even he has trouble working with the material he's given here. He comes across as lovable ol' Richard Hammond about 50% of the time and as some ridiculous and weird caricature of himself for the other 50%. That said, Richard's acting is the best thing about the show. Tory, who isn't an actor AT ALL, struggles to give a convincing performance here. You can 100% tell that he's just reciting what a script told him to say, and his inability to deliver an authentic performance really ruined any sense of immersion that the show could occasionally build up.
The cutaway scenes where Richard and Tory are being interrogated by two people (who even are they and why are they being interrogated?) are the worst part of the show. Tory's inability to act (not a dig against him, he's just NOT an actor) is on full display here, and the the interrogators add literally nothing to the show. They're just... there. These scenes come up so often that, again, they'll take you out of the show and negatively affect your immersion if/when you're actually becoming even slightly invested in the events unfolding on the island.
The biggest sin this show has is that Richard and Tory just have no on-screen chemistry, authentic or scripted, and the humour feels overwhelmingly forced which caused the jokes to just never land for me. In an overly scripted affair with writing that appears to be written for a younger audience, these two guys just don't belong together and don't feel right sharing the screen with one another. In an actual science and tech show where the two guys would carry out REAL challenges and experiments, I think they would probably be able to gel really well... but they can't ACT with one another and make it seem convincing at all.
Without going into specifics about the "story" in the show, I will just say that it would have been oh so much better without it. If Richard and Tory had just been plopped on an island and told to get off of it ala Top Gear/Grand Tour special, I would have been totally onboard. Instead, we're treated to a completely scripted and fictional affair where these two men basically play fictional versions of themselves cranked up to 11. It just feels so... awkward. To top it off, they don't even really do anything themselves. They say that they are going to build/make {insert thing here}, and then suddenly they just have it. Uh, okay?
Now to go into the positives! There are only two:
1. Richard is occasionally his charming self that we've grown to love.
2. The cinematography is really good.
I tried to like this show, but it's just not what I expected it to be and I couldn't appreciate it for what it really is, and I suspect what it actually is intended to be is a sort of Grand Tour-esque special that is watered down for a younger audience and given an extremely goofy script to make it more digestable for said younger audience. I've seen so many people online saying that they couldn't get into this show while their kids really enjoyed it, which I think only reinforces my belief that children/teenagers are the intended audience rather than us crusty old adults who have been following Richard since the early Top Gear days or enjoyed Mythbusters back during its hay day.
It's great that there are people who do genuinely enjoy this show, but it just feels way too cheesy and forced for me given that the two lead "actors" are not actors at all and are way out of their comfort zone with this project. Ah well, back to watching (and enjoying) James May fail at cooking.
Game of Thrones: The Iron Throne (2019)
Good ending in theory, but the execution was terrible.
I avoided writing anything about this series finale for months. I felt like I needed a lot of time to sit on it and reflect on it, as I wasn't sure how to feel about it when it aired. I originally defended the finale and told people that it was decent, albeit a little rushed. Several months later, and I'm finally sure of my thoughts enough to say that the ending is awful and very rushed.
The writing was on the wall for this show when David & Dan arrived at the confusing conclusion that the last two seasons needed to be seven and six episodes long. By depriving viewers of seven additional hours of Game of Thrones, D&D pretty much guaranteed that the story that they needed to tell wouldn't have the time it needed to be fleshed out, fully make sense, or feel believable and true to the characters.
Bronn essentially turning on the Lannister boys, both of whom he legitimately BEFRIENDED over the course of seven seasons, all for the sake of having Highgarden? It made no sense at all. Bronn was always shown to be the closest thing to a best friend that both Jaime and Tyrion could have had throughout the series, and while he is of course known to be greedy, the level of greed demonstrated in the final season was hopelessly out of character for him.
Jaime running back to Cersei with his tail between his legs? I get what they were going for, and with more episodes to flesh out his decision to go back to her, it could have made sense. However we have Jaime pledge to fight for the North, and have several legitimately great scenes with Brienne, only for him to go back on all of it at the end of the very next episode, which is the episode prior to the one I am reviewing. I know that I elected to review the finale, but you just cannot touch upon these weird twists because they ALL hang over the final season like a weird cloud of muddled confusion.
The biggest crime against this season is the turn of Daenerys. I was all for her going mad since it's in her blood, and I expected this show to ultimately end with Daenerys versus Jon for years, but the way in which the writers chose to handle Daenerys' fall from grace was extremely out of character, very rushed, and disrespectful towards all longtime fans of the show. She literally went from smiling, loving Daenerys to psychopathic "BURN THEM ALL!" madwoman in the span of sixty minutes. She bounced back fine from losing Viserion, so why did losing Rhaegal contribute to pushing her over the edge? Or was it just losing Missandei? Honestly, Daenerys still seemed pretty coherent up until she was beheaded. I don't think either of those two things happening was enough to justify her literally roasting an entire city of people and then going full on Emperor Palpatine on everyone after she was finished by establishing some sort of creepy "you're with us or you're against us" Targaryen empire. I'm glad that it was short-lived, much like her turn to madness. In theory, her fall from grace could have been extremely believable, but having her brain just go all screwy from the sound of the bells in King's Landing? That was half-assed and sloppy writing at best, and I can't believe that the script for this episode managed to get out of the writer's room.
A lot of people I know were upset by Jon being sent back to The Wall. I was actually kind of okay with this, since I read between the lines and understood that this was Tyrion telling Jon that he was a free man now. What did Tormund always tell Jon? That he belonged beyond the wall with the wildlings, or free people. The last scene we saw in the series was Jon going to join them, reunited with both Ghost and Tormund. Jon never wanted to lead, or be a king of anything, so going to live with his loyal pup and best friend was a fitting conclusion to his story. Though it's sort of a poetic ending for Jon, I still would have preferred it if they had just given Grey Worm the middle finger, kicked him out of King's Landing, and told Jon to just do as he pleases (which would still ultimately be the same thing, going to live with the people he best relates to).
"Bran the Broken" becoming the new king was pretty stupid. Pretty sure Bran said not too long before the finale that he didn't want to rule, that he wasn't a Stark heir any longer, etc. Why the hell would they give the Seven Kingdoms to a teenaged boogeyman who spits out random bits of cryptic information in a monotone and robotic voice? Literally anyone would've been better. Tyrion. Davos. Sansa. Brienne. Anyone would've been better. You know who would have been the best choice though, and would have served as a nice little reset button on the story? Gendry Baratheon. Instead of putting some creepy crippled kid on the Iron Throne, why not put a Baratheon on it? You know, since they were sitting on it before the Lannisters usurped it from them? What right does a Stark have to the Iron Throne? It's all a load of nonsense, and it was really jarring how the decision to plant Bran on the Iron Throne was presented as pleasing fanservice during the episode, but I don't think anyone I know thought it was a good idea.
Positive takeaways from the finale?
1. Arya the explorer. What IS west of Westeros? I'm glad that they had her follow this path, as Arya has always been an adventurous free spirit. She stated way back in season one that she didn't want to be a lady, and she was true to her words in the end.
2. Grey Worm leaves Westeros. THANK. GOD. Grey Worm was cool a few seasons ago, but he became really lame in the last season when he was Daenerys' blind follower. I swear Daenerys could murder Missandei with her bare hands and Grey Worm would still follow her. I get that he was all big on honour and loyalty and everything, but you have to draw the line somewhere. By following Daenerys down her path of madness, Grey Worm demonstrated that he was no better than her in the end. Good riddance Grey Worm, enjoy your vacation on the island of killer butterflies.
3. Davos and Sam survived. Good. The story of Game of Thrones has always been brutally unforgiving to characters who possess good hearts and have only noble intentions, so it's nice that these two characters made it to the end despite the world being against them at times.
4. At least Drogon survived? I think we all expected the series to end with the other two dragons being dead so this wasn't really a surprise, but the way in which Drogon departed was one of the few legitimately good scenes in the finale. Drogon roasting the Iron Throne, rather than Jon, after nudging Daenerys' corpse and realizing that his beloved "mother" was dead was actually pretty heartbreaking. I've personally always viewed the dragons as Daenerys' pets, and it really resonated with me as an animal lover and pet owner. I hate seeing animals outlive their owners, it makes them appear so alone and vulnerable. Poor Drogon. At least you made it to the end, buddy.
This could have been a good ending had the writers taken their time, but D&D forcing them to try and cram as much material as they'd usually write for ten episodes into six hurt the show far more than it helped it. Truthfully, I don't think it helped it in any way at all. The last few episodes were just so rushed with rapid fire plot twists being thrown around at that there was just no way it could have felt like a proper send-off to the show. Honestly, the entire series finale, and half of the final season, were so out of touch with the show's overarching story that it was a massive slap in the face to fans everywhere. The ideas behind this final season were sound and could have been great with the proper pacing and writing, but the actual execution? Terrible.
Just terrible. Because of my feelings for the final season, I'm removing my rating for Game of Thrones as a whole on IMDb. I had it rated as a 10 for so many years, but now I don't know how to feel, so I'm just removing the rating entirely and leaving the series as a whole unrated because it's just too polarizing now when you looking at the first few seasons and then at the final season (and parts of the second to last season). How disappointing that it had to end this way.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)
A step in the right direction after the last film
After On Stranger Tides, I didn't expect too much from Dead Men Tell No Tales. The return of some past characters, and a romance between the side characters that wasn't forced for once, made for a nice romp. Barbossa being back was as great as ever since he's one of the highlights of this series. However, I felt that Gibbs was a bit underused even more than in On Stranger Tides this time around.
The action scenes are a bit of an improvement over the last movie, but still nowhere near the first two movies in the series. The whole first chapter that took place before the characters took to the sea was insanely enjoyable, and I wish we had more of that. The story once they got onto the sea was a bit less interesting, and I felt like the villain in this movie, Salazar, kind of sucked and is probably the worst villain out of all the movies so far. I had so much trouble understanding what he was saying most of the time, but thankfully Netflix subtitles saved the day for me.
Overall, despite the villain being a little underwhelming, I feel like this is a much better installment to the Pirates franchise than On Stranger Tides was. If you're not expecting a totally memorable movie and just want to kill a weekend adternoon watching a decent movie, I feel that this is a good contender.
Star Trek Beyond (2016)
Pretty enjoyable, but probably the weakest of the modern Star Trek films.
I wasn't really sure how to feel about this movie. I was decently entertained throughout, but the story left a huge sour taste in my mouth.
The villain of the movie and how his forces were defeated made almost no sense at all and, overall, felt like they were written by a team of amateur writers. The twist towards the end was also a little weird. I personally didn't see it coming, but it still fell a little flat with me because it just didn't carry much weight since the twist revolved around characters we just didn't get to know very well. I also felt like there was never any sense of dread or urgency in the film, despite what major events transpire during it. Overall, the storytelling felt a little lacklustre this time around.
In terms of characterization, a few of the Enterprise crew members get some great moments to shine. McCoy and Scotty probably felt more significant in this movie than they did in the other two. Spock was surprisingly under-utilized, and some characters like Sulu and Uhura only had a few dialogue intensive scenes and were, other than that, practically invisible throughout the film. Kirk, of course, was the central character from start to finish.
In terms of the evil aliens in the movie, they pretty much received zero actual development before the big twist late in the movie and weren't memorable at all. I feel like Idris Elba's talents were criminally wasted in the role of Krall. He's such an awesome actor, but as Krall? Well, he just didn't really get to do much other than run around looking intimidating for most of the movie. On the other end of the spectrum, the "good" alien of the movie was Jaylah, played by Sofia Boutella. Unlike Idris Elba, Sofia got lots of screen time and her Jaylah character got quite a bit of character development. While Krall fell kind of flat, Jaylah was probably the biggest highlight of the movie. She kicked ass, had a spunky tomboy attitude, and was exceptionally pretty looking to boot (her makeup job was very well done). I really enjoyed her interactions with Scotty and other members of the Enterprise crew, and I'd love to see her return in the next movie. Without revealing anything in the movie, suffice to say they do leave the door open for her return.
Star Trek Beyond was a decently enjoyable movie and it did have several highlights, it's just that the villains were a little bland and the resolution employed to defeat the enemy forces felt a little hokey. Despite those shortcomings, it was a good movie. The main cast did great, Jaylah was a lot of fun, and the CGI was pretty good. If you enjoyed either of the first two movies, you should get some enjoyment out of the third instalment.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)
An overall average TMNT film that is, at least, pretty watchable.
I'm a 31 year old guy who grew up on the old TMNT cartoons, games and toys of the 1980s and 1990s. I'm heavily nostalgic for the old TMNT series, and I wrote this movie off the very second I found out about it after its announcement.
Fast forward two years, I still hadn't seen it. I heard online that it was garbage (but, of course, the internet has a habit of saying that about everything) and people I know in real life either said it was a little disappointing or just average.
After deciding to give the movie a go when I was looking for something to watch on Netflix, I was actually pretty surprised by the movie. Granted I went in with absolutely zero expectations, but still! I didn't feel that, in any real way, that this movie was awful. It's not great and it has a lot of big flaws, but it's not terrible.
As a longtime TMNT fan, I didn't quite like how the turtles in this movie are so intertwined with April's past. I also felt that Leonardo and Donatello were criminally underused in this movie. Both had as much personality as the cardboard boxes their pizza comes in. Michaelangelo didn't get to do much, but his goofy and fun-loving personality was definitely evident. Raphael ended up being way more hot-headed than he should be, and I feel like the writers put way too much attention on him. Raphael had the most screen time (and lines) of any of the turtles by a significant margin, and for no really valid reason. Late in the movie when the four turtles believe they're about to die, everyone but Raphael throws out a quick one- liner. What does Raphael? He spews out a long monologue about how he loves his brothers and his own deep insecurities. I didn't really like this aspect of the movie. Way too much attention on Raphael.
Shredder in the movie looked goofy. Much like in Bay's Transformers movies, Shredder here suffers from a case of his design being overthought. As a result, his "costume" just looks very cluttered and messy due to them trying to cram way too much detail into it. They should've gone simple, like in the old cartoon or even like in the movies from the 1990s.
Megan Fox was surprisingly okay in the movie. Of course there were MUCH better choices for April O'Neil, but I feel that they did a good job of downplaying Megan's sex appeal here and making her a pretty legitimate character with aspirations, goals, and an actual personality. She wasn't really here for the T&A for once, though there was that one scene where Will Arnett's character was checking out her butt when she was hanging out of a window. I've been critical of Megan Fox before and I've never liked her as an actress, but I felt like she was actually pretty likable in this movie (and you can't really blame her specifically for April being shoehorned in as the main character, which was a misstep).
William Fichtner, one of the most criminally underused actors in Hollywood today, did about as well as you could hope with the material he was given. His acting and delivery was 100% solid, but his character's ambitions seemed kind of murky and poorly thought out. His whole end game was just to make a lot of money and to get "stupid rich" even though he was clearly insanely wealthy to begin with.
There are a lot of negative points above, but I still thought that this movie was okay and was very watchable. I liked the personalities of Michaelangelo and Raphael, some of the action scenes were well done, and Splinter (despite looking a little weird) had some great moments. The final fight was a little anti-climactic, but I didn't mind that too terribly.
Overall, an average movie. If you go in with an open mind and zero expectations, you should be able to find this movie to be pretty watchable. It won't end up being very memorable, but it might entertain you for most of its running time.
The Room (2003)
A bad movie that is more memorable than Hollywood's best offerings.
It takes a special kind of terrible movie to be this magical. From the moment Tommy Wiseau's odd character walks onto the screen, you're hooked from start to finish.
Starring as Johnny, Tommy Wiseau's acting is majestic in its awfulness as he awkwardly recites his lines in a manner that is not dissimilar to a computerized voice rereading your typed words back to you in a profoundly hilarious and incomprehensible fashion. To describe Tommy as robotic or wooden would be an understatement, but the absolute lack of any acting ability is what makes his performance so engaging. I won't even go into his habit of letting out borderline creepy subtle laughs at the most inappropriate of times. That is something else entirely, and it is just another piece of the confusingly hilarious and mind-meltingly unsolvable puzzle that is Tommy Wiseau. To see Tommy attempting to act his way through this movie is like watching a baby take its first steps. It's an adorable disaster that you will never forget.
Tommy's co-stars aren't any better in their awfulness. Johnny's on-screen best friend is Mark, a Sears catalogue model who fumbles through his lines with a curious lack of commitment and has a propensity for violently slamming young men into stacks of garbage cans. Johnny's fiancée, Lisa, is a deeply disturbed woman with a habit of removing her clothes at random. Lisa may or may not be a sadistic sociopath due to her unreasonable and almost unpredictable behaviour in this jewel of a movie.
Last but not least of the main characters... is Denny. Denny is the teenage neighbour of Johnny and Lisa who has an almost creepy obsession with Lisa. Denny wants nothing more than to watch Johnny and Lisa have intercourse, or to kiss Lisa. These dark fantasies are shared with his friend Johnny, who seems oddly at ease with the boy's disturbingly abnormal tendencies. Even when Denny jumps and rolls around on the bed with Johnny and Lisa in their pre-intercourse shenanigans, playfully exclaiming that he 'wants to watch', everyone is frighteningly okay with the boy. Denny also has a drug addiction problem, which results in one of the movie's most delightful scenes involving a screaming drug dealer who just may be the best actor in the movie. Do note that I state this fact quite joyously, because the acting in this movie really is tremendously bad in the most beautiful way imaginable.
I don't dare spoil the movie's main plot between Johnny and Lisa, nor will I even dare mention the delightful performance given by the actress portraying Lisa's mother (it is just so beautiful in its awfulness). This movie is just such a glorious train wreck that defies logic and must not be spoiled!
The Room is, undoubtedly, the worst movie I have ever seen in my entire life. Despite this, it somehow manages to be unforgettable in its awfulness and remains more memorable in my mind than the greatest of Hollywood offerings. Imagine if the worst movies by Ed Wood and Uwe Boll had a baby together and starred an army of robots that had the acting parameters of Hayden Christensen installed into them. Even that description fails to capture the magical essence of The Room. This movie is terrible, make no mistake, but it is almost beautiful in its awfulness.
This movie needs to be watched by anyone and everyone, simply because this is a one of a kind movie that perfectly captures everything that can go wrong with the production of a movie. We will never see its kind again - (oh, hi) mark my words.