Reviews

Really cringy dialogue and bad acting. I'm not expecting The Wire here but come on. I'm baffled by the high score. There's no chemistry between the two leads and I don't care at all about their relationship. The only person I'm rooting for is the ex Vanessa.

It was enjoyable as light entertainment but pretty predictable and full of outdated cliches and stereotypes about Paris and French people. Not once did I finish an episode wondering about what was going to happen next. As far as romantic comedies set in Paris go, there are way better shows than this, on Netflix too.

This is a somewhat engaging depiction of a stubborn yet meek Czar and his equally stubborn, arrogant wife, whose disastrous reign eventually led to their deaths, and opened the door to one of the worst regimes in history.

It's informative and entertaining, but the commentary cut-ins interrupted the flow of the show. The narrative would have been better without them, as a full dramatization instead of a docu-drama. This would have required a better script instead of relying on commentators for exposition.

The actors would also have more to do. This was a capable cast but they just don't do much other than reenact the pivotal moments. It's like a watching a Wikipedia entry on the Romanovs.

What we actually get here is a documentary with reenactments, mixed in weirdly with (I'm assuming) fictionalized drama.

This show elevates a simple premise with strong writing and acting. The characters are relatable and three-dimensional, and it's genuinely funny. The Paris setting also adds to the charm. Looking forward to season 2.

Overall another great episode with uniformly terrific acting, compelling writing, and immaculate production quality.

We got some much-needed levity in the form of coal miners who were bused in to help with ongoing cleanup efforts.

While previous episodes depicted the USSR as a bumbling bureaucracy, in this episode we got a real sense of the menace of living in an authoritarian state and the ever-present danger if you ask too many questions.

The depictions of the poor souls whose bodies were destroyed by radiation were heartbreaking and staggering.

They really hit this one out of the park. I had some concerns, the trailers made it look like a typical save-the-world storyline, and Avengers 2 was terrible. But man I was completely wrong, this was great and mostly thanks to the villain Thanos, who is one of the better movie antagonists in recent memory and probably the best MCU villain (except perhaps Killmonger). He is cunning, ruthless, and physically very powerful.

Marvel villains are usually foils to the heroes, and only exist for the hero to defeat them and learn more about himself in the process. Here, Thanos is a fully fleshed out character who experiences a range of emotions and spends a large part of the movie on his own personal odyssey. He shares surprisingly little screentime with the Avengers (he sends his minions instead) and there is little gloating, cackling or lame quips. When they do clash, they are mere obstacles to be swatted away rather than his genuine rivals.

Taking the action away from Earth and into the cosmos allowed for very imaginative and psychedelic battles. There is a battle on an alien planet that could be ripped straight from the comic books.

I had some problems with the ending and the usual Marvel humour got a little tiresome at times, but other than that this was as close to a perfect comic book movie as you will likely get.

The good:

-The action. It's what we all came for. Some sequences are spectacular.

-New characters. I liked the "twins" and even though they barely scratched the surface with their story, it was more compelling than those of any of the Avengers. The Vision was also pretty cool, but alas they did nothing with him

The bad:

-Unfortunately there were quite a few battles that were very meh. The final battle was chaotic and not that exciting.

-Ultron sucked. He starts as a "Frankenstein's monster" type of villain seeking to punish his creator. This would be really cool. But as the movie goes on he becomes a cookie cutter cackling bad guy. Tony and Ultron never really talk. The implications of his horrible creation are never explored. He just doesn't care and an enriching storyline is completely ignored.

-Spends too much time on uninteresting story lines, and neglects the interesting ones. The superpower twins' background with Tony Stark was fresh, but it never went anywhere. And the Vision could have been a real standout in the movie. An android with heightened awarenes. His few scenes where he gets to talk are interesting. He reminded me of Doctor Manhattan in Watchmen. But he just shows up to kick some ass and nothing else. Why have all these new characters if they serve no purpose?

While the above characters are swept aside, the movie somehow sees fit to waste plenty of time at a farm and on pointless side-errands for the main characters. It's really baffling.

-Too much humour. There are a LOT of one-liners and jokes. Most fall flat and most are inappropriately placed in that they kill any tension or thrills. I get it's a lighthearted movie, but the constant wisecracking got a bit much.

Overall, I enjoyed this movie, the action was pretty good but couldn't help feeling as I left the theatre that it could have been a lot more.

I was expecting another "dark and gritty" origin story, that was what they advertised and what is the big trend in Hollywood these days. But within minutes this premise is flipped on its head and the movie suddenly takes a much different, lighter tone.

There's just enough twists to be interesting and the acting is good. There are no CGI monster fights, but a few good sword-and-sandles epic battles.

Most importantly this movie knows what it is and know how tired the usual origin story tropes are. It just pokes fun at itself, and ends up being funny and entertaining.

This movie was good, not great. The battle scenes were superbly done. And I thought the movie succeeded in portraying the horror and sheer brutality of WW2, yet still allowing decency to poke through here and there.

It's not "Hollywood", the Americans are liberating Europe but that point is lost in all the gore and violence. It's just keep killing or end up dead yourself. There isn't much story or character development either. Fury just rumbles on, from one battle to the next. As a result, despite being over 2 hours long, the movie still feels cut short.

My only real gripe is the ending. After being gritty and "anti- Hollywood" for most of the movie, there is the most clichéd and unrealistic finale ever. Other than that, the movie was hugely entertaining.

7/10.

This time around the main character is agent Aaron Cross (Renner), part of a separate Treadstone program. The story involves drug-enhanced secret agents and Cross trying to get more of them, as he and Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz) outrun the CIA.

The story starts out interesting enough but quickly loses focus to the point of being meaningless, as the two leads run from place to place. There are some thrilling action sequences though and the Renner and Weisz deserve praise for their solid performances despite an almost non- existent story and script. Edward Norton's part was a disappointment because he didn't really nothing other than bark orders and spout patriotic clichés.

The movie is never really quite sure where it's going. A bunch of chases and then suddenly it's over, very abruptly and with no closure at all.

Norton, Weisz, and Renner are all great actors and this could have been a great movie had it had a more purposeful storyline and fleshed-out characters. As it stands it's a decent movie but nothing memorable and certainly won't stand the test of like the original trilogy.

First of all I liked this movie a lot. The set piece battles were thrilling, Aaron Eckhart was good, and the setting looked spectacular. We really were watching Los Angeles getting razed to the ground.

But there were some problems.

1.) Dialogue was hilariously bad. It really was. Aaron says at one point to a terrified kid, "I need you to be my little Marine"...who says this stuff?

2.) Every single military stereotype was present here. The guy with a pregnant wife, guy about to get married, the hotshot rookie, the sassy female, the tired old veteran (Eckhart), PTSD guy, the joker, token black character.

3.) This has been compared to Black Hawk Down. Both movies are about small squads of Marines facing off against huge numbers of enemies in an urban setting. But I really don't think this movie should be seriously compared to Black Hawk Down. Although that movie had many of the same stereotypes they masked it with better writing, story, and better action overall.

I liked this movie a lot. Very entertaining even if it was shallow.

This is a completely different movie from Tropa de Elite 1. That movie was about a few guys and their personal stories as they deal with crooked cops. They were a hindrance to good police work but not really a menace, more an annoyance. This movie is all about real deep- seated corruption in Brazil. The bad guys here are actually evil and ruthless, and as a result the stakes are higher for the protagonists.

The good: just as memorable action scenes, although there were less of them. The story had several twists and turns and it was fascinating overall

The bad: Character development seemed to have taken a back seat here to the grand narrative. The distinct personalities of the first movie are kind of reduced. Andre Matias is the biggest example of this, and I was disappointed with what they did with him. Cpt. Nascimento's wasn't nearly as bad-ass or imposing as in TdE1.

I recommend this to anyone who likes a good crime movie with a message. I'm not Brazilian but this movie still made me think.

9/10

First of all this is a great show for children. The visuals, sets animations, and cinematography overall are just stunning. The idea is a good one: the Earth has shattered and the remnants of civilization fight it out for resources amongst huge floating chunks of Earth. A young girl, Mila, possesses magical powers, and armed with this ability she and her brother fight with the resistance against the Empire.

Unfortunately the writing is pretty bad. Not much else to say. The dialogue is cheesy, cliché, and the plots aren't that great although there are some great action sequences.

This is disappointing because the production values are so good. I wonder if they spent so much producing the show, that they had to skimp on decent writers and voice actors.

This won't really put off any young audiences, for whom this show was intended, but it's still a bit of a shame.

7.5/10

Like many others, I wasn't expecting much from this movie. And good thing too. It uses every futuristic action movie cliché in the book, the dialogue is so bad it becomes quite pathetic, the characters are very thinly written and poorly acted, the special effects are nothing to write home about, and you can guess most of the plot from a mile away.

Yet this movie wasn't truly terrible. It had a good attempt at emotional involvement with the main protagonist/antagonist, considering how flat the other characters were, and the flashbacks were somewhat interesting.

The biggest problem the movie suffers from is utter lack of inspiration. I realize G.I. Joe isn't the greatest source material but the entire movie is so corny, predictable, and unoriginal that it becomes impossible to take even slightly seriously. There are plenty of plot holes and character decisions that don't make any sense at all. The plot is built around the action scenes and convenience, and so it doesn't make sense on its own. It is also painfully obvious how hard they tried to keep the action PG-13.

Channing Tatum was a robot, Sienna Miller was okay I suppose but her character just smirked all the time, and Marlon Mayans was lame. I didn't believe for a second that he was an actual soldier in an elite training program because he plain sucked as the bumbling sidekick. Dennis Quaid was wasted.

I give this 4/10. Not particularly good or even passable, but not quite terrible.