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bartmacmanus
Reviews
Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023)
It's a complete mess, some striking visuals, other amateur CGI.
I am writing this sans spoilers, but I will provide the overall plot. In essence, this reminds me very much of Star Wars: A New Hope. Bad guys come and a sassy lady farmer decides to take on the whole empire but needs the help of a handful of others. So part 1 is basically a movie of traveling to pick up all the characters needed for part 2. The problem is that there is no character development. There are only back-stories and "why this person is important". There are some cool action scenes but there are a lot of times where you have to suspend reality and just go with it.
The visuals are striking at times, other times they are dark and/or out of focus. Some of the CGI looks like it came from the SyFy channel.
Most of it is just meh.
As far as the actors, Sophia doesn't come across as believable in the lead role. I liked her in Kingsman but she didn't seem to have the range needed to be the main character. The other characters are a hodge podge that you'll know and 2 of them seen to be wasted in their roles. You'll see what I mean if you watch it.
Don't waste your time. This movie wasted a good premise and could have been so much more. Mediocre acting, canned plot line almost carbon copied from A New Hope, and so-so visuals make it barely a 4/10.
Enuattii (2017)
What a waste of a perfectly good idea
The acting was horrible, the costumes were horrible, it was clear they had no military advisor or decent armorer on set, the best part was the end credit animation. The acting was over the top, the dialogue was juvenile, the majority of the prop budget was probably spent on the large tent used for 20 minutes. Whoever directed this couldn't direct a high school musical. Don't waste your time.
Willy's Wonderland (2021)
Fun Cage
Over the top ridiculousness...production quality is pretty good and Cage is great as a quiet secretive loner. Watch the trailer so you know what you're getting into but worth the watch.
Monsters: Dark Continent (2014)
Monsters: * where are the monsters *
So let's get the obvious out of the way... the monsters are a very small piece of the film and basically a sideshow. The main part of the film is U.S. Soldiers vs Taliban(?), and emphasizes the emotional aspect war has on people. Acting is subpar, and I don't even think they had a decent military advisor to tell them how effed up their plot and dialogue was. I've heard better military scripts in video games. Surprisingly, the CGI for the monsters/aliens was really good. And there were a lot of ways to take this movie in a different direction. For example, even in the movie one of the lines is basically "we are going over there to fight the insurgents, and occasionally monsters if we need to". You would think that if aliens were really a menace destroying them would be priority one for all mankind, and fighting an insurgency far down on the list.
In a nutshell, it is marketed as a Monsters movie, but isn't. So keep that in mind.
Killing Gunther (2017)
Make sure to actually read the higher rated reviews
I've seen this now 3 times. Admittedly I was a little disappointed in it the first time but I went in with different expectations. It's actually pretty good and worth watching, mage sure you watch the credits.
Jungle (2017)
Not bad... But not a Horror film as it was listed.
I had to temper my expectations for writing this review after watching this movie. It was listed as a horror flick on Amazon Prime suggesting that a group of friends were trying to escape something, probably a predator or other person(s) hunting them. If that's what you're expecting then you will be disappointed, just as I was. But all in all it was a good movie and Daniel Radcliffe actually does a pretty good job. But where I instantly have problems is how they were ill-equipped for a trek through the jungle for 6 days or so. Improper clothing, no tools, no food... so it's a miracle any of them actually survived and mostly due to sheer luck and not any saying they actually did on their own. However the cinematography for it was over-the-top. As an example trying to depict the feet being torn up after walking in Boots for a week was extremely overbearing. anyone that had feet that look like that wouldn't be able to walk on them and gangrene would set in. seriously at the end of the story I'm wondering how anyone made it out alive considering the poor decisions they seem to make over and over again there survived in spite of their poor judgement and while I didn't read the book I'm hoping that it didn't come across like the movie and was more humble.