Reviews

And it honestly should have been. With this nice ensemble and decent budget, great production design, and a director who in theory definitely should have the chops, THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE had everything it needed and more.

And yet, it misses the mark. Much of it has to do with the direction, I'm afraid. A lack of spirit and inspiration can be felt throughout the film, sometimes worse than other times, but neither the shots he called nor his direction of the actors are worthy of Ritchie's potential. The script could have used a bit more polishing, especially concerning the dialogue, but it's really mostly the practical aspects where this falls flat.

If you're a native German speaker, you will also notice how bad the fake Germans actually are. They should have been dubbed, but nobody seemed to care. Even Til Schweiger messed up some lines in German (probably drunk on set, as usual) - nobody cared.

What also made the film worse than it could have been is the score. Someone told the composer to go for "Schifrin meets Morricone", I guess, and what he delivered was a weak attempt at copying both. No swing, no drama, no feeling whatsoever. Just flat and boring, matching the direction perfectly.

That being said, you can still kill a bit of time watching this, since Cavill, Ritchson, et al are very likeable and have a lot of charming presence. Locations are nice, the DoP did a great job with the lighting, and Eiza González has a great singing performance (refreshingly with no audible pitch correction, but as a professional singer with an amazing voice she really doesn't need any), even though the arrangement and interpretation of the famous "Mack The Knife" is quite horrible.

But if anything, this has made me wish for a more silly WW2 comedy with Cary Elwes in the lead. I'd buy that for a dollar.

From the spectacular nothingness of the characters to the simplistic plot that still manages to produce holes bigger than any bullet in the movie itself, from tired movie tropes like generic flashbacks and toy box sadness to a gimmick that does more damage than good - SILENT NIGHT is truly something to behold.

The writing is as naive and incompetent as the direction, and unbelievably, I also have to include the action, especially because it's a John Woo film which has to be held to his own, once fantastic standards. CGI cars, bad CGI blood, a lot of "invisible" cuts. From people not being able to hit anything with automatic weapons just metres away from each other to people not being able to see a huge forklift standing in their way - it's all hilarious if you can see this as a comedy. But the sheer pretentiousness of the no dialogue gimmick and the overall overly heavy tonality sadly spoil the fun, leaving you clueless whatever happened to one of action cinema's greatest directors.

No character has any backstory, personality, meaning. It's all nothing. As a consequence, you will probably fail to have any empathy and enthusiasm for the protagonist's progress. The only thing that made me feel anything was seeing Kid Cudi's incredibly gross fingernails.

Man, I'm afraid John Woo lost it for good. Where there was once delightfully absurd, visionary, fast-paced, over-the-top action and mastery of bending time and space, now only absurdity remains.

I'm gonna address the elephant in the room right away. Why is "Awkwafina" in any movie? She must be one of the worst actresses out there. Terrible delivery, poor screen presence, bad timing... what is going on with that?

And what a shame, since Nicholas Hoult and Nic Cage are actually very decent here, especially Nic Cage with a mesmerizing performance as Dracula. Unfortunately, the film itself, while having an interesting enough premise, fails to deliver on a writing and directing level, and with an ever-shifting tonality, it doesn't seem to know what it wants to be.

Add in some not-so-good action with terrible CGI blood, and you get a strange mixture indeed. And if it wasn't for Nicholas and Nicolas, this would have been a chore to watch.

MIRA is somewhat of an unexpected thing to behold. While the story is a bit of a knockoff of the Emmerich formula (family, drama, calamity, spectacle, and family), the attention to detail and overall execution is something else, indeed.

There are sequences in this film that are truly remarkable in every aspect, rivalling some of the best Hollywood has ever brought forth. The camera work, the production design, the acting (including the extras) and the VFX in the impact sequence are quite extraordinary, and the more realistic approach results in a fresh new way of witnessing a terrifying disaster.

I really have to stress again how amazing many of the visual effects really are: not flashy and rubbery like so many things we get to see from much bigger films, but seamless and believable. I really wonder how they pulled of a lot of shots that seem like practical effects, which of course they can't be.

Don't expect a perfect film, though. Especially in the third act, the film loses much of its realism and also goes into full cheese mode, but the good aspects easily prevail, at least for me. And so the verdict comes easy: if you're a sci-fi buff like me, you need to watch this.

Where the first season of THE MANDALORIAN managed to capture me with its Spaghetti Western flair and its obvious inspiration by LONE WOLF AND CUB and really managed to outshine all the other bland or ridiculous Disney Star Wars product, and the second season at least had some interesting and engaging story lines and episodes, this third season took a bit of a nosedive.

Specifically this episode made me realise that Star Wars is irredeemably dead now. The whole season so far has done little but make the other two seasons redundant and pointless, and the result is that now, nothing really happens. Add in really stupid things like this bird-dragon taking some Mandalorian kid during what I can only describe as amazingly awkward "training" with a Grogu doll commercial being shown, make other characters change their views without any apparent reason, and you can picture me sitting here, wondering where things started to go wrong with this show.

This is becoming tiresome, and I have to say that this might be the episode that made me stop watching THE MANDALORIAN or anything Star Wars, really.

As I watched Neil Marshall's first films, it seemed to me that they were remarkably different from his last two, and to me, his downfall seems to be correlated to the appearance of his co-writer Charlotte Kirk, also starring in both THE RECKONING and THE LAIR.

Kirk is not the worst actress, but I can imagine that Neil Marshall has succumbed to her considerable charms and looks, leading to compromise and a noticeable drop in quality.

The premise is solid, the overall plot alright, but the writing, acting and direction are all over the place. With some rare exceptions, the script is a cheesefest that should have been revised a few times, especially concerning the dialogue. The acting ranges from decent to hilariously bad. Holy hell, those fake American accents were just incredible. How any director with some skill to him (and I know Neil Marshall does have that) can accept that kind of acting is beyond me. No budget restraints can explain that. Compared to the worst offenders, Charlotte Kirk is fine indeed, but still isn't close to believable in her role as tough pilot girl. Walking and holding a weapon already seem to be too tough of a challenge, which isn't very good in this kind of film.

There is also some incredibly uninspired and downright bad directing going on, many times so unbelievably bad that I wonder if someone else was sitting on the director's chair at times. Was it you, Charlotte?

Add in some amateur sound mixing mistakes (How do the Afghans have no reverb on their obviously ADR'd voices down in that lair? Why is some of the dialogue so low in volume?), some pretty bad THE THING rip-offs, quite a bad John Carpenter rip-off score and awful humour, and voilà - another step down for a talented director.

On the good side, there are, at times, some very decent camera work and some great scenery to behold, but those do not outweigh the bad aspects. Quite the contrary, because you get a glimpse of what could have been, which is a bit frustrating.

And so, I can only hope that Neil Marshall finds out of this lair of desperate and hopeless desire and finds back to the roots of his inspired filmmaking - next time without any co-writer who also has to play the protagonist. You can do better, Neil.

VIOLENT NIGHT could have been a really entertaining film indeed. The premise and the casting of David Harbour (which absolutely carries the film, if we're being honest) are actually pretty great.

Unfortunately, the film is being held back by both an inconsistent script and uninspired direction. The first drags the film down by an ever-shifting tonality which makes me wonder if there were too many cooks resulting in this spoiled broth. The insecure direction also smells like too much of an outside influence by some naive and simplistic producer, pretty similar in style to many other 87eleven North productions.

All of this isn't helped by the obvious and overdone DIE HARD references that pretty much reach the point of plagiarism in some cases. Add in some stunt performers that have been promoted to actors (which they kinda aren't), and you have a christmas dinner that doesn't smell very good, but still manages to satisfy a few cravings.

Some performances and ideas make the film bearable indeed, but still, VIOLENT NIGHT ends up being a bit of a frustrating experience when you start realising that this could have been so much better with a better script and a more competent director.

Make no mistake - this is a visually stunning animation accomplishment with stellar moments and interesting new ideas and themes that seem to haunt del Toro quite a lot.

The biggest difference is probably the change of the original story's setting from the late 19th century to World War II era Italy. Yes, even Mussolini plays a minor role, and his design is glorious.

But even if you're willing to go with the flow and accept all the changes, some things still are a bit confusing. This is a much more mature version of Pinocchio, so why put in so many musical numbers?

Speaking of which - the music was great for the most part, except for the singing. I have no idea why so many modern movies have to resort to such horribly executed pitch correction, but boy, was it horrible here. I'm guessing that mixing engineers with no music mixing experience had to do it, because it's so obvious and bad that I refuse to believe that it was actually done by someone with musical ears. It kinda takes you out of the story if it's a warm-hearted story about being human, but the singing sounds like it was generated by some first generation A. I.

But in the end there are way more positive aspects to this film than negative ones, so don't listen to all those geniuses who take their kids to a Guillermo del Toro film and then complain that it wasn't for kids at all and enjoy an emotional ride with a lot of sad and dark elements, realized with a beautifully designed approach in its design and execution.

Let me state the obvious first: norse mythology is awesome, and I love films and stories about it.

This film starts promising, has a charming tone going on, but loses its appeal about at the midpoint. You can basically use a timer to predict the mandatory story beats from there, including a very constructed "bad guys are closing in" beat. From there on, it's basically a slightly better Roland Emmerich film that really needs you to shut your brain off.

The VFX are pretty decent to glorious, the acting mostly absolutely fine, the score a bit wanna-be but acceptable, but the script just tries to stick to hollywood procedure, which ultimately is its downfall.

If you're into norse mythology as well and don't mind a cheesy, off-the-shelf script, this is your jam. If you expect a bit more, you won't find it here.

Honestly, large parts of BLACK ADAM seem like they are cinematics from a hypothetical INJUSTICE game. Rubbery, bad CGI in fights with some cool moments. And it's all fine - until you realize that you don't have a controller in your hands.

BLACK ADAM tries to be a darker anti-hero story, but it only succeeds in displaying lots of money being burnt on screen. A cheesy script with cheesy direction and cheesy acting and a very bad score - desperately trying to get your attention with cheesy CGI.

Now, there's some nice and cool moments in this, but unfortunately, they don't make up for the horribly bad moments. Just think about an ancient culture, maybe even the oldest one on this planet - and they had some guy with a goofy lightning logo on his chest as their "champion". Right.

Add a very generic score with insufferable "beats", and you get a cheese show deluxe.

If anything, the fight between this strangely generic "Hawkman" and Black Adam in the kid's room was pretty fun, plus some shots and maybe even some lines in between, but as a whole, this is pretty much a mess from beginning to end - a convoluted two hours that won't really satisfy you. Too many bad lines, bad moments, bad plot points, bad characters and bad visuals that will spoil the fun. The concept is intriguing, though, and I would have loved to see a better script turned into reality by a way better director. Oh well.

...and I continue to feel like Pearl herself: am I missing something everybody else has got?

Who really wanted a prequel to a film that was a gimmick in the first place? X looked fantastic, but that's about it. Now, PEARL also looks really good, but what am I missing that I find all of Ti West's films boring and empty shells?

And so I find myself in the same situation again. I admire the technical aspects and how much work went into making this, but couldn't you have written an interesting story in the first place? Yes, Mia Goth is great, we get it. Wowsies, the monologue. Gasp, the smile in the end credits. Suspense? Nope.

With all that, I do think that West has made progress. PEARL is probably his most coherent work to date, but the self-indulging, wanna-be aspect remains. And he's making it a trilogy, or so I've read. Which really makes me wonder again: who wants this? Who funds these films? What is going on?

If you have ever seen any horror film before, this will seem like it really is - a naive, generic and badly written cash grab.

Almost every aspect of this film has been ripped of from another, better film.

The music is wanna-be scary and has nothing to do with what the film shows, the sound design is stupidly dishonest to squeeze a bit more reaction out of the audience, and the writing is... lackluster, to say the least. And the runtime is as exaggerated as some of the film's dialogue is terrible. Pretty much, that is.

The smiling is so unscary and inconsistent throughout the film that it's actually hilarious. I would have loved to see Sam Raimi's version of SMILE, and it would have been a much better film.

So if you're some horror newbie who finds smiling scary, have fun. If you have seen and enjoyed actually good horror films, you should probably skip this one or see it as a comedy.

After quite a solid start with two charismatic characters in an awkward situation, the film takes a strange nosedive and completely loses its focus, its direction, and with those, all suspense and immersion are gone.

It doesn't really matter that the performances are pretty good - it's a bit of a chore to get to the end of this mess of a film.

And curiously, when I read that Jordan Peele was involved, it all made sense to me. This film had less budget than Peele's stinkers, and it has even less coherence, but it shows the same unfocussed naiveté. You can even tell which one of those brillant ideas are Peele's.

Either way - there are some half-intense scenes and a bit of gore, but ultimately, you'll find no thrill in this one. And when you think of the director's statement that up in the house it's a Fincher movie while in the cellar it's a Raimi movie, you can only shake your head in disbelief, since the he doesn't seem to have seen any of those vastly superior directors' films.

I'm afraid not even a few beers will make this worth your time.

Let's approach this from its good side: the production design is stunning, the VFX work sometimes great and the score quite professional, if oftentimes overwhelming.

The world building is a bit clumsy, but it is absolutely saved by the rich and detailed production design. The show has very high production value at times. As could be expected, but still - hats off to those hard working people.

That being said, the rest unfortunately feels strangely out of place. I know my Tolkien well enough to have an idea why, and it starts with the protagonist, Galadriel. She seems like a naive fan fiction version of Tolkien's great Elven Queen, and Morfydd Clark stays pretty bland in her portrayal - which is mostly because of the writing and directing.

Blandness seems to be a big problem when it comes to the characters of THE RINGS OF POWER, as I found it difficult to identify with any of them or feel a lot of empathy towards them. This in turn gives me time to focus on the worse parts of the show, which is exactly when my immersion is ruined.

Be it the questionable hair dressing of many characters (including short haired Elves or teenagers with undercuts), the clumsy dialogue or the forced diversity - it's all distracting and easily breaks the immersion.

If anything, this show demonstrates how vastly superior Tolkien's writing was and still is. Compared to the source material, the show's altered characters and events seem fake and small, thrown into a world that still invokes feelings of splendour and magnificence from Peter Jackson's far better films.

The twists - if you can call them that - are naive and predictable, the conflict fails to invoke an emotional response, the characters fail to take you on any journey whatsoever. Add in some really thoughtless plot points and borderline idiotic decisions by the writers, and you get an idea of how big of a flop this show is. And indeed, its failure is the most epic aspect of LOTR:TROP. Was that to be expected with two inexperienced showrunners with close to no credits to them? Who knows?

And so we get something where I sincerely wonder who this is for. Hardcore Tolkien fans, as well as fans of Jackson's adaptations, will probably reject this show, casual viewers will probably find it difficult to get into the lore and will be bored by the dragging pacing. And the policy of holding back reviews or even deleting everything that is below 6/10 for a period of time only adds to the awkwardness of this undertaking. As it is, this is a tremendous waste of money, and I feel bad for all those who have delivered great work for this show. At least they got paid well, I hope.

Welcome to another great remake - or "reimagining" - of yet another franchise that should have been left alone. This HELLRAISER should have never raised from development hell, at least not like this. Ba-dum-tss!

And right away we have to deal with one of the film's biggest weaknesses: the protagonist. It seems to be quite fashionable to write poorly developed, annoying characters that we as an audience are then supposed to identify and sympathise with. But if the most prominent traits of your protagonist are an annoying, breaking voice and her clownish, overdrawn lips that seem such an odd choice, something is wrong from the very start.

Add in a loose edit with a runtime that feels thirty minutes too long, naive and quite predictable "twists", a poor sense of suspense, and you have your 2022 version of HELLRAISER. Oh, and of course the Cenobites have to be diverse as well now, which makes it feel like some Disney version of the material. It's actually Apple, so not very far off.

However, not all is bad - some decent gore effects try to make up for everthing else, and in some parts it's a commendable effort. Not nearly enough to make this worthwhile, but still.

The score is surprisingly decent at times, strangely awful at other times, which made me wonder if they pulled a GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE, and they kinda did. The decent cues came from the original first two HELLRAISER scores, the awful ones were new. Why are scores so unremarkable, boring, and bad nowadays?

All in all, I guess it is a true horror fan's duty to watch this HELLRAISER, but if you are and if you do, please don't expect this one to be anything great. It's an effort, misguided and naive at its worst, acceptable and nice to look at at its best. Have some beers handy, and you'll get through.

I sincerely don't know what has happened to good writing. The absolute childishness of the plot and its messages killed any interest I had built up since my last review, but in hindsight I can only categorize it as masochism. You can report and delete this review, but it doesn't change the fact that this is utter garbage in a nice package.

I already knew that it could get worse (having endured several seasons of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY and STAR TREK: PICARD), and it got worse.

This is WOKE TREK, written by simpletons for simpletons. I really wonder who is paying for this ghastly trash disguising as Star Trek. Who reads those scripts and goes "Yep, that's really good, let's spend millions making this."

First things first: the flying sequences are stunning indeed. Relying on mostly practical shots inside real jets, the movie immediately takes you into the Danger Zone, and the first five minutes with its opening montage and title reveal are basically perfect.

However, there are some things that dragged the film down:

• The writing:

Simplistic (which isn't necessarily bad) and very predictable (which is kinda bad) plot points drag this film down quite a bit. Some set-ups and pay-offs are downright cringeworthy. You could argue that this is an hommage to the 80s, but it just doesn't work that well anymore.

• The score

When original music is being heard, it feels great and appropriate. But when Hans Zimmer's music cues in, things go south, mainly because it feels like Hans just opened up some old INCEPTION Cubase projects and re-used them almost verbatim. Also, the VI-IV-I-V chord progression is so incredibly overused and cringe by now that using it in an unironical way should be considered a crime.

• The dialogue editing

In a blockbuster movie like this, I expect good, if not great sound quality. Some of the dialogue was severely over-denoised and trashy, which is unacceptable.

• The film editing

Not a big issue, but at times there were strangely unmotivated and jarring cuts in dialogue scenes which kinda took me out of the scene. I wonder if this was a little hommage to Tony Scott. Probably not.

However, these points shouldn't discourage you from getting a few cold ones and enjoy one of the best nostalgia baits ever created. If you can ignore some flaws, you'll have a good time. The bigger the screen, the better.

If you:

• like high-intensity plots that are incredibly well-researched
• have waited for ages to finally see a believable and well-written female action lead
• love great, witty dialogue and its flawless delivery
• are a fan of sublety and great taste in pacing
• have a faible for a sublime, but powerful score
• long for incredibly emotional and competent acting
• have an eye for masterful direction
• hope for Netflix to greenlight content based on quality for a change
• despise nepotism
• are hyped by gritty, well-choreographed and skillfully performed, captured and edited action

you should skip this and save yourself the embarrassment.