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lamieur
Reviews
No Hard Feelings (2023)
The antagonist... wins? I'm not sure.
First of all, took me half an hour to actually notice who the lead actress was. Wow, for someone this accomplished (and rich), I thought she'd be able to afford cosmetic surgery not done by a veterinarian in an abandoned barn somewhere. Ouch!
But the movie itself! We're watching through the eyes of the antagonist. I loved this idea! This is why I decided to watch it. Unfortunately, we get the villain's origin story before any action, which is a definition of bad writing. But it still had potential! (And even tried to deepen the meaning of the origin story later on, but that already felt forced; again: bad writing...)
The story had tens of characters, each making a single joke and if they ever appeared again, they had no more lines. Yes, it was important to make us understand how many people's hearts she's broken in the past. But in this movie, there were no characters, just roles. Even her presumably best friends appearing in like 3 scenes were cut out of cardboard, no to mention all the important exposés with every person just appearing for 15 seconds. Hell, even the actual protagonist's actual love interest appeared in 2 scenes and spoke for like 15 seconds total.
Yes, playing "Maneater" in the background when one of her former ummm... adventures? Shows up to complain, was awesome, I was instantly hooked back up! But then characters notice as well, and they proceed to explain what the song is about. And then they make a whole another scene with it!
It's a GREAT song, I love it. But I hated it being used so ostensibly. I got it the first time. Absolute moron would get it the second time. A minute later even an amoeba would already be saying "ok, I'm not THAT stupid, this is forcing stuff, bad writing".
In the end, there was no resolution of any plot thread, except the one that was introduced in the last 5 minutes. Not exactly spoilers, but nods to people who have watched it already: she actually wins everything, then forfeits the already won battle and proceeds to just make life worse for everyone else (this I expected, she's the villain after all). But then she killed a pregnant couple's life plans by manipulating the guy to sell his boat, of course... and that was the happy ending for them?! Then she gets something she was absolutely banned from getting, just out of spite, I guess? Please, writers. Let your next movie end by finishing a story. Here, nothing changed from the first to the last scene. I was expecting a resolution. Then I was expecting some artsy open ending. But no, it's just "a day from the life of" where absolutely nothing changes, no one learns nothing, everything is still miserable.
I liked the multitude of innuendos in the first act. Very basic humor, but filmed/edited in such a way, we know it's intentionally doing an adult sitcom/parody movie. Completely not what I was expecting, absolutely different from the following acts, but this was the one part which felt consistent. 3/10 for that part. Then the silly comedy stopped and I was left with an incoherent drama without a writer on staff.
The Tomorrow War (2021)
Will test your suspense of disbelief
The movie starts with someone dropping from the sky into a pool. Then we learn this is the main protagonist and how he got there. And it isn't what you'd think.
I won't go into spoilers, but even this first scene tells what will come. The hero survives countless situations which no one else would, even in the movie's "universe".
The movie tells us 20% (one time it's said to be 30%) of the people survive a single encounter. The movie tells us a couple of aliens can wipe out entire human race, including combined military forces of all the nations. But you will see random people killing the monsters with their bare hands. 2048-2051 combined world science can't figure out where the aliens came from, but a housewife in 2022 figures it out in 10 seconds. Somehow there's a time machine in the future, but they can't send plans to the past to build more. They can send people with clothes and guns into the future, but can't send tanks or bombers. One guy collects a clip from a dead soldier to say a dramatic line, but all guns (taken from 2022) have infinite ammo anyways. There's an example of this stupidity every minute of the movie, but I won't go into details to avoid actual plot spoilers.
And then there's the melodrama. Between the CGI action scenes, there will be scenes with violin music engineered to boil emotions in your heart. Because an action movie needs cheap tear jerks. You just know it's an American block-buster designed by a committee.
And then there's the filler. The movie is over two hours long and there are long moments where you just fast forward because nothing happens. People stare at mountains for a minute, stuff like that. I guess in 2021 we're supposed to marvel at CGI? No idea, FF button it is.
Of course the melodrama and boring filler could be fixed in a different cut, but that wouldn't save the movie. The depth of stupidity in the plot makes this impossible to save. Whether you want a silly action movie for an evening with popcorn, a sci-fi movie, a flashy CGI showcase movie, a whatever-else movie, there's always plenty of better options you still haven't seen. Avoid this one.
Tom and Jerry (2021)
Really bad, nothing like T&J
You can tell the animators know the source material. For the 5 minutes (of a 1:40 movie) when Tom and Jerry are actually doing Tom and Jerry stuff, it's exactly what you wanted. I kid you not, it's 5 minutes tops _total_ of T&J silliness. BUT even then, it's over music so bad it will give you lasting shivers well after the movie is over.
So let's talk about the music. Tom doesn't speak but he... sings... in English... with autotune. What the...?! And the music is just... well, there is no music, it's mostly gangsta rap with PG-rated lyrics performed by who knows who? Even tracks I recognize aren't performed by the same people - they've licensed the same loops and made new tracks with unknown "artists", guess that's cheaper than what they wanted, but is it cheaper than a small groovy orchestra? I don't believe so... Closest you get to an orchestra is like a fourth track of the credits, where a millionth rap track of the movie loops an orchestra sound for a few seconds before introducing a synthetic beat. Rubbing the salt in my wounds.
But I hear you say - who cares what the music is if the movie is good, right? The story, the acting, that's what counts! Let me tell you - the whole movie is a romantic comedy with a plot so idiotic and acting so bad it will make your four year old facepalm. But it wouldn't matter if there was any Tom and Jerry in between, right?
Right, agreed, I wouldn't mind! Except Tom and Jerry are third class characters, after the leads and a plethora of supporting actors (to me most memorable was Joy who had like 15 seconds of screen time, and I can remember more of her than T&J, the ones this movie was titled after - what does that tell you about the writing?)
I would give it 1/10, but it gets a +2 for a Droopy cameo. It was so on point on so many levels I still have his image in my head. Don't watch this movie, but if you're masochistic and still do, and you know Droopy, you will understand.
Max Cloud (2020)
It's idiotic and it's fun
I have no idea who Scott Adkins is, but all the other reviewers seem to have a negative opinion of his interpretation of his role... I don't understand this, not only did he have fun playing a silly video game character, mid-movie we learn that his character has a super cute back-story (stupid, sure, but that's the point! I was completely captured!)
So about the movie, it was a pastiche of the 80s/90s movies. The story is between Jumanji and that movie where two kids bring a hot chick alive through a TV, I just can't remember the title. Which is fine, those movies were forgettable, but still fun!
The pastiche works, the game character's presence and jokes are... wooden, and that's by design. The game, when shown as an SNES game, is awesome. Meanwhile, inside the game, the characters do and say stuff that's deeper than the arcade game they're in. That's absolutely awesome. There's a nod to printed game guides, character back stories, and all of that eventually completes the immersion. I've developed a game in my time and to me it was absolutely awesome seeing the discrepancy between what the sprite-based characters did in an arcade-style game, compared to a 80s/90s developer's idea of what the character actually was about. I won't mark this as spoiler, but you'll see what I mean when the time comes. And believe me, it's awesome through that lens.
I't's a B movie and it's aware of it, making the best of it. It's a pastiche of a tiny sub-genre of 80s/90s movies, so maybe not for everyone. But if you're in the right mindset, you will enjoy it. And hats off the the people who created the pixel art for the game, that was actually amazing and completely transparent, as opposed to the spaceship CGI which was obviously (but very consciously) crap ;)
ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band from Texas (2019)
Story ends 40 years ago
As much as I hate single paragraph "reviews", I'm just writing this to tell you this doesn't even mention "Rough Boy" (one of the greatest songs of all time, and the music video is still impressive in 2020), not to mention "Sharped dressed man", "Viva Las Vegas", "Sleeping Bag", not to mention "Pincushion" which was recorded like 10 years after all of those, not to mention... you get the point, nothing was mentioned.
The story literally ends around 1980 and there's no Afterburner (whiskey foxtrot tango!) or anything that followed. You get involved in the story, they mention early MTV and the "Gimme All Your Lovin" video and the car (which of course starred in "Rough Boy"), and the next they say is basically "and so we play together to this day, wow!", like nothing else ever happened. I don't understand. If a sequel is coming in another 40 years, not only will it be hard to conduct interviews with the band, I won't be alive to watch it, so for now, please accept this score of thumbs down.
Eleven Eleven (2018)
It's fine and fun
I don't get why all the reviews are either 10/10 or 1/10.
It's a fun movie that starts with a fun concept, ends with a fun post-credits rolls, and in between, everything is just mindless fun. Silly, for sure, but still fun!
I'm normally a hard-SF fan but this movie actually addresses that ("i use words that earthlings can relate to, you know?") and keeps being silly after absolutely disarming my SF nit-picking inside critic. It was a super nice touch and it should work on anyone who likes silly comedy, even if he's into astronomy and astrophysics, like myself. It just disarms your ego and lets you have fun all the way, I really appreciate that!
Oh, and the actors' chemistry was absolutely on point. It's a stupid comedy, remember, but everything made sense, everyone acts cold when they're supposed to be cold, and ummm... hot when they're hot? The point is: they do act perfectly to the movie's tone (which is SILLY!) How can anyone say the acting is terrible is a mystery to me.
Oh yeah, the CGI is objectively crap, but it works fine in the canvas of a silly movie, "3rd rock from the Sun" style. If you liked that show, this movie won't have trouble providing you wit joy. You won't laugh out loud, but you will be entertained, that's the whole point, "gosh-darnit"!
Invasion Planet Earth (2019)
Spend some of your budget on a microphone next time, please
What to say about this movie... The script is absolutely horrible, full of cliches, sure, but worse - nothing really makes sense. Let me makes some points (spoilers!)
Aliens can understand English of course, but they can only communicate by... transmitting apocalyptic images into people's heads... which is supposed to let them understand that they're being saved? Surprise - everyone is terrified and it only worsens the situation down on the ground.
Then the aliens turn out to have millions of ships, they can teleport people and make them breathe in open space, they can also disarm whole armies by (again) transmitting a sound into their heads... but they can't stop a few bombs from being blown. And of course a few bombs can trigger a chain reaction of some sorts and literally fry the whole Earth.
And they can make an infantile schizophrenic turn into a grown man in exactly 20 minutes, but again - can't fix hateful terrorists, world leaders and whomever from doing bad things.
And they provide cell phone service on the spaceship (understand protocols, encryption, radio bands necessary, probably needed to hack into some satellites to connect to the Earth's networks), can intercept communication both in space (the ISS, which has a side window) and on the ground... but again, they can't prevent a few bombs from being detonated remotely.
This is kind of explained as the aliens intentionally showing whomever was cherry-picked to be "saved" how bad the world was that killed their leftover friends and families down below... so they rebuild a better world somewhere else? Because history teaches us that after a war, there was never another? Oops.
And the people down on the ground know there's a huge spaceship in orbit (don't get me started on orbital mechanics, it's all fantasy with a ship can levitate in orbit over a single spot), they think it's an invasion, but still decide to instead... shoot each other during said invasion.
First part of the movie, when everyone is still on Earth, has such bad sound that it made watching this impossible. I've seen children make "movies" with better sound, and same quality of acting. Really horrible, in a single conversation in the same room you get one person speaking with big reverb, and another muffled like speaking through a phone. And they left in long pauses between actors' lines, just in case we thought real live people were having a conversation.
I don't mind low budget CGI if there's a story being told. Here the story is so silly, acting so wooden, and sound quality so bad, I recommend everyone to skip this title. And this didn't have such a low budget, the CGI is bad but there's really a lot of it, then they had actual tanks on the streets (completely unnecessary to the story), but couldn't get a couple of microphones and a sound engineer? Please, set up your priorities better next time...
Aniara (2018)
Super unscientific? Sure, but that's not what broke it
I don't consider this a spoiler - especially if you're in the reviews section, you already know this is very very loose sci-fi. You have 3 weeks Earth to Mars journey, you have artificial gravity at all times... except the exact moment when there's actual gravity and the film shows zero gravity instead. But if you're like me, you know not all sci-fi is hard, sometimes you can have a movie with engine sound in space (this one has that, even though the whole premise is that the ship has no engines running, take that, Star Wars!).
So that's all acceptable. Sci-fi doesn't need to be about physics. I did ask myself how come a ship with full power, working telescopes and radiotelescopes (we even see antennas turning to point at objects, everything works) couldn't establish communication with Earth or Mars bases. BUT! The only reason why I was even allowed time to ask myself this was because there was nothing else to take my mind off it.
You see, the movie is about being stranded in space. I'm a sci-fi fan, I enjoy books and movies that include stuff that's completely anti-science, but is used as background to a good story.
Problem is, this has no good story. Premise is good, many things are omitted that should happen, but again - should be no problem, as long as the omissions lead to showing something else.
Except nothing leads to anything. Whole movie is built around stuff that can't happen even in the movie's fictional universe (explained above), but even there, people do stuff they wouldn't actually do. There's some promise in second act, I was really enjoying those things (again - no spoilers), but nothing leads to anything.
And the ending, oh, the ending! Not only it makes no sense in a physical universe, but it simply scratches everything that happened in the 100 minutes up to that point, on every level!
This is still not a spoiler, but the ending is a sequence that is all done in post. My hypothesis: a test group gave an earlier cut of the movie bad notes because it wasn't what they hoped it would be / they didn't like the ending. So someone decided they will add an ending that should satisfy... I don't even know who. No one who is ever going to see a film like this will be happy with this ending. It's beyond ridiculous, scientifically bankrupt (think: actual magic) and it was made in CGI after the movie was filmed.
Absurd.
TL;DR: see it on your own responsibility. It's not hard SF, it's not psychology, it's not character development, it's nothing that you thought it would be. And it has so little nudity or sex that I think people who talk about it in reviews are actually trying to sell it to others (disclaimer: I'm European, I don't need to pretend I haven't seen a girl's breast before)
Sandy Wexler (2017)
awesome for 35+ year olds who used to watch MTV in 1990
First things first - I really hated the fake speech impediment of Sandler. This was not necessary and annoyed me for the first few minutes. Then you get used to it, but still, why?! But then it was just pure viewer satisfaction. 2 hours of "I know her/him!" interlaced with lots of happy jokes.
I would give this 4/10 for Sandler's speaking, 8/10 for all the other guys making all the actual jokes + all the 90s guys playing themselves.
So why I gave this a 10/10? Just last scene, Stanley Spadowski appeared and I almost stood up. And then for the closing credits... I won't spoil it, but if you watched MTV as a teen before it got encoded (on satellite TV in Europe, YMMV), you will absolutely lose your...