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Reviews
Braveheart (1995)
Quickly destroys suspension of disbelief.
The movie is SO close to being good. Most of the story is great as a faux-historical drama, and I can get past all those inaccuracies in dates and people... but, as an adult, it strains believability nearly immediately. The lighter aspect of why is the King and his Son. This just reeks of bad propaganda and poorly written villains.
But the absolute killer that rips away suspension of disbelief is Prima Nocta. Such a law could not be enforced by a governing body without an overwhelming power disparity, and it would not be established as a law for the reason of common sense. If you establish this law, your rule will be met by constant uprisings. It's not even a worry that it might happen, it WILL happen. To think that your authority can allow you to do this to the wives and daughters of a culture without constant challenge is a folly relegated to soon extinct dynasties, whose rulers ends will be lucky to be swift.
The goals of the law may be realistic as a decision a villainous ruler would make, but the execution can be done in a thousand other ways that are more safe for the lawmakers, and my suspension of disbelief is destroyed almost immediately in this movie because of this mythical (fictional) law.
Prey (2022)
I want to like it
I really do want to like it since it's considered one of the best Predator movies.
But all I see in my screen are reflections and what in the movie I can make out lacks color saturation. I cannot for the life of me figure out why anyone doing video editing work would pull the color and light out, it doean't give it a different feel, it just makes it look bad. The beads and paint they wear doesn't pop the way it should, it isn't visually contrasting. The daylight scenes look like it's all dusk then it moves over to night scenes which fail to being in the visibility you'd want as a bare minimum.
The acting could be amazing, the costumes and location look like they could be amazing, but everything is muted, sickly, and suffering from the same poor visual editing most movies now-a-days are.
Marry F*** Kill (2023)
It like they pulled tropes out of a hat
The lighting isn't bad, which is normally why I give such low ratings. In this case it's more like they had a bucket filled with penny actors that they grabbed a few out of, a hat full of tropes that they grabbed out a handfull from, a direct out of college director, and a dash of taking themselves too seriously. It's quality is on par with the fifth 'direct to VHS' in a franchise.
But, at the end of the day I wanted to watch a horror movie named * Marry Kill, and this was pretty close. Plus it got my wife to keep saying a name from Supernatural in a southern accent, so that was entertaining.
Eight for Silver (2021)
Fairly interesting, a couple off bits
Hulu's descroption was initially refreshing, as I DGAF who the actors and actresses are when selecting what to watch. Hulu actually gave me an idea of what the movie might be about.
Tight lacing a corset? Seriously thought we were past this, what with every historian and youtube corset person pointing out that it isn't accurate.
The movie is not too dark to see what's going on, which is a huge plus for this era of horror movie. General use of foreground lit shots, a lot better than senseless poor backlit headache inducing "natural" scenes. Oof, a couple poorly backlit shots, got to deduct a star for that. Real looking fires, definitely a plus.
Ooo a fancier breed of chicken, always enjoy seeing that instead of purpose bred factory farm chickens.
Oof, people waking up with full makeup. For some reason people are wearing extremely loud shoes, kinda want to smack them with the newspaper for being so obnoxious.
Yeah so the lighting just gets worse and worse until you're realling wishing they'd invest in a reflector. That's a solid middle rating from my eyestrain.
Nope (2022)
Nope is an absolutely solid movie
First of all, the movie actually has reasonable lighting for a recent movie, and I cannot express how satisfying that is. Recently there has been a push toward poor lighting, back lit characters, and generally any skill in cinematography has been thrown out for a "natural" appearance that is atrocious to view, especially if you aren't shelling out thousands of dollars for a home cinema setup. Forget that, Nope is well lit, looks natural and isn't a strain or a pain to watch.
The characters are well developed and fleshed out and feel like they're real, regardless of if they are or not. Everything's motivations are well established, develop, follow a narrative arch, and are CONSISTENT. You don't need to sit there and scream at the screen that someone is acting foolish, if they're foolish you know they are, and most of the characters aren't.
Some of the cinematics in this movie are striking, to a level of being as beautiful as any movie could hope to be, and I could easily see this as being a classic that people will be able to enjoy long into the future.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)
Come on, get your lockpicking accurate
This movie came out in 2019, Lockpicking Lawyer has been active since 2015. That means there were at least 4 years for the creators of this movie to find out how to properly pick locks or give depictions of lockpicking. Buuuuuut they failed.
Generally the movie is edging too dark to be watchable. It's been a trend in movies to do this and it's obnoxious. The movie is still watchable, but it's right on the line. Luckily there isn't much of the supremely aggrivating backlighting they've been doing.
Decreasing saturation and brightness in post doean't make your movie scary, it just makes it seem like you don't know how to light scenes.
Under the Skin (2013)
Slow from start to finish
When you watch old movies you notice they seem to drag, lingering shots, unnecessary pauses, slow dialogue... and ultimately the movie just drags and it feels like you spent 5 hours watching an hour long movie. We've generally moved past this as a society, and that movement has been good as its allowed us to find a greater level of enjoyment out of the films we watch.
Under The Skin successfully remains as a slow paced mindnumbing trudge for the whole movie, despite coming out in 2014. The movie is a battle with your buttocks to not get up and do anything else, a battle you'd be better off losing. Listen to your butt, find somthing else to do.
Hellraiser: Judgment (2018)
This is about as bad of lighting as I'm willing to accept from a movie.
You know, for one of the various dumb Hellraiser movies, it isn't bad. And for coming out in 2018 it's better lit than most modern movies like the trash Hellraiser 2022 movie (seriously, going to have to cancel all the streaming services if they keep refusing to put lighting in the scenea and constantly choosing to backlight characters).
Generally my focus is just 1 star rating movies that, for whatever godforsaken reason, have decided to just completely ruin the lighting in the movie. While straight daylight in this movie looks like a very very very dim overcast sky, it is realistic to real world lighting, while in the 2022 Hellraiser film they decided to take a clear blue sky that would make all the surfaces glow down to a super dark, post apocalyptic, dying sun appearance, at least this movie didn't do that.
I can see what I want to see on screen, despite watching in normal viewing conditions. I didn't need to wait until midnight, I didn't need to create unsafe conditions by turning off all of the lights, I didn't leave the movie with eyestrain or burnt retinas from random, poor backlighting.
So this movie earned a 7, a passable score because it was able to do the absolute baseline expectation of being watchable. It didn't dynamically sound me to ringing ears or a blown speaker or straining to hear dialogue, it wasn't so dark I want to flagellate the editor. This movie meets the depressing base expectations that have been established since the wanker brigade decided to ruin the lighting and audio of movies.
Sinister (2012)
Decent horror movie
Pretty terrible lighting which is extremely obnoxious, you'd think this movie were made in the later '10s or even in the '20s what with things being obnoxiously dark for no reason other than filmographers seem to get really into black screens. Middle of the day, uncoveres windows in a room that should be well lit, nah pitch black shadows, no reflected light, looks completely terrible.
That said, this true crime novelist deserved to be held accountable for withholding evidence of a crime from the police early on in the film, which establishes him as a PoS early on, even though shortly after they show him burning up the film luke an idiot and only after that does he start making a copy for his personal use as a novelist.
There is a bit of usage of unrealistic animals in PA, like a scorpion (aside from pets and escaped pets there aren't scorpions here) and what looked like a red/black/yellow banded milk snake, while there are tons of local PA snakes that could have been used and would have been a lot more realistic. While the use of a Sheriff in PA was a bit confusing, as I asked a few people locally and they didn't even know we had sheriffs, while even the imdb goofs section said thos was pretty unrealistic to their role in PA. Kind of kills a movie when the creators have a setting and just butcher it left right and center.
M3GAN (2022)
Actively preying on current fears of AI while missing the point
It's a fairly generic robot gone bad, created by people who likely have no idea what tools a roboticist would have on hand or what they would need to actually do to inspect and do repairs on the robot.
But, regardless, right now people are actively afraid of this sort of artificial intelligence, which is generally because they fear the unknown and just don't know how neural networks work. Like, a single child test for an AI system which would require hundreds of thousands of inputs to even approximate something that doesn't seem like a trash fire?
People are at risk of having AI systems being trained to replace their jobs, and the creators of this movie are like "ooo scary murder robot"
Pig (2021)
A phenominal story which is conveyed well and shows real acting
The first few minutes of this movie establish the story phenominally, you end up caring about this man amd his pig and their relationship. There is actual acting in this movie, not just a script, large amounts of the movie and its story is conveyed visually and tonally, less dialogue, a better more impactful story.
The lighting and audio were top notch, no random dynamic audio to blow out your speakers, and every scene could be seen, neither of these should be considered a godsend, but here we are in the 2020s and every movie is pitch black and most of us are pissed about the audio being a whisper in dialogue and explosive everywhere else.
All around I wish more movies were like this movie and I highly suggest people watch it.
The Hole in the Ground (2019)
While not the best horror has to offer
This movie actually has decent lighting to it, at least compared to other newer movies which have decided to gove us 2 hours of black screens (looking at you Evil Dead Rise).
I also appreciate the general lighting changes this has to establish different scenes. There is definitely a predilection toward desaturation, leading to a lack of pop in the scenes.
Again, all around this is much better than comparable movies being produced recently, it helps that they also seem to not be trying to blow my eardrums out, although that could just be the speaker settings.
If you're sick of the modern trash and all the egregious sins of modern films, this is actually quite good at not falling into those pitholes.
Evil Dead Rise (2023)
It would be nice to be able to see a modern movie
But for whatever reason this is the choice the industry has made, f everyone who doesn't have a home cinema, f everyone who troes to watch a movie during the day, just make everyone stare at their own reflection for 2 hours because god forbid the movie industry have the budget to actually put lights on a scene.
Just got done with ED, ED2, and AoD, no problems, turned on this PoS and suddenly everything is so dark we had to turn off every light and it still doesn't matter because it isn't 12am so there is still light somewhere and this PoS is as good as watching the TV turned off for hours.
Figure it out.
Planet Sex with Cara Delevingne (2022)
Mind destroying boredom that will devastate your enjoyment of the rest of your day
Hulu suggested that this was a show for me and while initially it sounded like it could be cool I almost immediately lost interest in Cara Delevingne's asinine attempt to figure out her sexuality when she pretty much had the right idea in the begining, no labels. Going right into the show it felt like she was in an interview she didnt want to be in, and then she had so many hangups about her prior relationships you could see the distain when she learned that her brain lit up for love when looking at a photo of her ex.
Walking into a show like Real Sex you want to be guided on the adventure by the person who can't wait to strip off their clothes and talk to the elderly polyamorous nudist colony, instead it feels like there's more hangups going into segments than a Health inspector bring introduced to buttered grubs.
You want someone who takes you on a journey of human sexuality to feel like they're actually a person and leave you feeling satisfied after this romp through human sexuality, not leave you feeling like they can be summed up by eyebrows and angrily defying expectations because they're so edgy, hating the actor more than you hated their character in Only Murderers in the Building.
I'd recommend this show to anyone who wants to experience violent boredom first hand, otherwise just go watch old episodes of Real Sex, it's a substantially more enjoyable show than this wayward successor.
Mortal Kombat (2021)
It looked good, many of the characters were cool
All around the movie was enjoyable to watch.
However the movie loses a single star to not being amazing, and four more stars for introducing Mary Sue as the main character. Besting Goro at the same point he gets his powers? Yeah, take your self insert garbage character and shove it to whomever's idea this was, he may as well be named Roboute Guilliman, prized champion of the authors.
Otherwise the movie is quite enjoyable, the fatalities are epic and believably gore-y without going over to a gorefest horror movie. Set design is pretty awesome, Scorpion's entrance is great although it's timing is just plot armor.
All around Cole just ruined the movie.