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danielhkraft
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The Beautiful Game (2024)
Beautifully Mid
The beautiful game is a feel good story that features a former soccer phenomenon who was never able to truly make it as a young teenager. Vinny finds himself "homeless" and in a real rut in life.
The problem with this movie is it doesn't really develop the arch of Vinny and we never really see his light side re-appear. Yes he eventually plays with, and wins, with South Africa at the homeless World Cup, but we never see him open up and address him teammates and scout in a genuine way.
He betrays his friends, time and time again. He even neglects his drug recovering roommate and never gets a real chance to make up for that. They make this a feel good story about a man who keeps making mistakes with reactions on FaceTime to his daughter at home, to his teammates, and ultimately to himself.
In the end it's nice to see him have a little bit of a revival and I do like Michael Ward as an actor. The movie script is based on real live events and is not horrible but not good either.
Civil War (2024)
Unique and Realistic Feeling Story
Civil War is a really great film. Its ability to draw the audience into such a believable yet dystopian masterpiece is admirable. Its characters are believable insane, but feel real and raw.
But it falls short of being higher than this rating due to the following. Where is the context? It's clear that Civil War is trying to "escape" some sort of debate. By partnering up "California" and "Texas" in their own alliance, as well as other states in various coalitions, the viewer is told to understand, "this is how things are".
A divided country a "Civil War" but this isn't a civil war. This is "Government Rebellion" or "Presidential Overthrow". As viewers it's frustrating now knowing which side we're on from the journalists perspective. As in who are we currently following and recording. In one scene the journalists are alongside with rebel looking soldiers (Hawaiian shirts underneath gear) at a college campus, who appear to be fighting more "professional looking" military soldiers, fine! Then suddenly, we are introduced to the base of the "Western Front" who seem more "professional style" US military than all of them.
We see derogatory slurs towards the WF on the top of a building as they pan away from New York in the opening montage. It mixes up groups with no context, but maybe that's how it's supposed to be?
I don't think so, a little context of who is in this war would have gone a long way. Are the various military alliances also fighting each other? Are the alliances, like the journalists, racing to get to the president to see which group can kill him first? Obviously in reality these issues would be wildly complex. While the characters seemed realistic and raw, the context of the whole situation seemed all juggled and confused. When small details are thrown around about talking about their opinions/narratives it's frustrating to the viewer not to have any context.
Road House (2024)
Meaningless Fun Movie
Road House is a fun and entertaining movie but lacks any contextual storytelling significance. The main character goes through the motions recovering from the downs of an MMA career. (which we don't see anything of) He decides to take a leap of faith to protect some random bar in the middle of nowhere which for some reason he falls in love with. (Maybe because of the child he feels bad for working at the bookstore?)
The story has no meaning, a bad guy, a mafia boss trying to buy/bully out the owners of Road House and an enforcer (Conor Mcgregor - actually thought he played the part well) just go back and forth until they get into it ugly with each other all in a fight to protect/destroy this roadhouse. Entertaining move, not a memorable one.
Fallout (2024)
Fun, creative, and full of potential
The first 8 episode season of Fallout is great in so many ways. The series is super fun! It's sci-fi, fantasy style is perfect for this un-realistic, retro-futuristic nuclear fallout setting. The story and character building is done quick, but still feels deep and attaches meaning to the characters backstories before we meet them. The series quickly develops character that we are attached to without even knowing why.
The bounty hunter, Cooper Howard, is introduced early in the first episode and ends up as these nuclear-radiated, immortal bounty hunter. While we don't quite know his motives, we are attracted to his unwinding storyline of hurting whoever gets in his way until we learn of his true motives.
This series is unique and well done. It's a fun watch but also with meaning and potential behinds it characters Lucy, Maximus, and even Norm. Excited to see the direction of the future seasons and would love to see what other "experiments" have been taking place in fallout shelters!
Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver (2024)
Outdoes it's predecessor!
This film well out does its predecessor. While the story in the first seem bland and lacking life, it did build for a more engaging moment during the second film.
This film still lacks true creative depth and seems to pass on using the character supposed "deep and meaningful" backstories. The story building from part 1 does lead to some connection with the characters as they prepare to fight what seems to be the largest battle any of our characters have ever faced.
What's missing is the continuity between dropping all of these plot facts vs actually having them make sense. Yes the movie achieves being an intergalactic space war extravaganza, but it doesn't build any meaning between the characters or with the viewer.