Reviews

So, I just watched Knights of the Zodiac, aka Saint Seiya for the people, like me, who watched the anime and read the manga. So, if you know the characters and the general gist of the story, basically Boromir and Jane Grey adopt Athena, who happens to be the blonde from Jumanji, and she exploded Jane's arms as a kid, so Jane decided that Athena had to be killed lest she kills everyone else first and started kidnapping people to develop a machine that sucks out cosmos and apparently she also developed the dark knights, which here are cyborgs. There's Cassius here too (John Connor from T3) and he is just a loser who makes money with underground fights and wants to beat Seiya for no reason. No, Seiya is looking for his sister, then Boromir asks the Chinese guy from the Marvel EU to take Seiya to Marin to be trained, in what looks like a single week or so. So he trains and eventually has to rescue the blonde girl from Jumanji because Jane Grey kidnapped her to kill her. But he shouldn't bother because she managed to get out all by herself. In the end we find out that her main minion is Phoenix Ikki, but he has another name (and it wasn't really a twist of any sort because he used an illusion on another dude earlier), but he is just a moron. The cloths are clumsy and big like medieval armours. They have these bulky gauntlets used in jousting, and the helmets have a bevor, even though they are not really mounted knights. Very weird. I liked Marin best, as she is similar to anime and manga Marin. But I didn't like the story. Too messed up.

I value the effort for the film. I mean, the cast is unexpectedly good, but there's only so much good actors can do with a lousy script. I know adaptations from different media tend to be difficult endeavours. Take Mortal Kombat for example, the 1995 film was a good effort, but most of the later works are a complete mess of things. Most anime and manga adaptations are awfully done, because I think western studios want to "translate" the, frankly, Japanese insanity of the stories into a western dialect, so to say. But the Japanese weirdness is what makes these stories fun in the first place. That's why, for example, One Piece works well. The One Piece creator maintained creative rights to the story and had the last word on film decisions, so it maintained the original stuff and its first season was a success.

Saint Seiya, aka Knights of the Zodiac, suffers from that adaptation obsession with translating into western sensibilities. And it falls flat on its face doing so. They try to make sense of the mad story behind it and it doesn't need to make sense. They avoid talking about "holy war", for example. It's an important concept in Saint Seiya, and it doesn't mean the same as our historic holy wars at all. I think they also wanted to take it easy on the violence. That doesn't work, Saint Seiya is a violent story. Even the toned down anime is extremely violent. If you remove the violence from it, the whole sense of danger and horror gets lost in translation.

So, I rate this 1 star for the cast, 1 star for the effort to bring Saint Seiya to the screen, and 1 star for Marin, who is the only faithful bit of the story, albeit half-arsed and done in haste. The effects are just okay. The plot is ridiculous. Pacing is boringly slow, and well.. no respect for the source material, so no more stars and 3 is plenty.

It's a story within a story. One story is about a writer who doesn't know what to do with his story. He promptly dies and nothing happens. The other is the story he wrote, which is a mess about some random people who end up in a random town in the middle of nowhere. The protagonist seems to be this widower, and nothing happens to him. He learns nothing and nothing changes, the death of his wife has no effect on him. His actor learns that there was a deleted scene in the script in which his character suffers with his wife death, but that has zero relevance. And there is an extra-terrestrial that comes to the town twice in order to track a rock and his presence has almost no effect in the story.

It all goes to prove that it doesn't matter how nice the film looks and how good is your cast, if the story is rubbish, the film is rubbish.

The story goes like this:

One day, a very talented, genius young woman, with great social skills, great knowledge and wisdom and without any flaws, comes up with a brilliant business idea, which she puts down on a napkin from her preferred bar. She proceeds to build in record time such a successful business venture that makes her and her associate billionaires and their friends very successful and famous people. Let's call her associate the evil dude.

Her friends and the evil dude are all greedy and one day the evil dude decides to invest the company's money in a dubious McGuffin which is basically a super concentrated hydrogen thing that can generate a lot of electricity, but it apparently has serious flaws because it's very combustible. So instead of a realistic approach, the story takes us to an obtuse turn of events, as the bright woman decides to kick the evil dude out of business because using the McGuffin is evil, but the deal turns sour after he gets all their circle of friends to lie in court and somehow claim the whole business solely to himself based on the pretence that he wrote the basic business concept in the infamous napkin instead of her. Somehow that works and she is left disgraced and alone. At that point she finds the napkin and to prove it she sends a photograph via email to her identical twin sister. Now, of course, the email somehow is common knowledge, so the evil dude tracks her down and kills her, poor thing.

That's all explained in the second half of the film in flashbacks, now we get to the story as presented from the beginning:

This evil dude invites his friends to an isolated island for the weekend, and he is surprised to see that his old associate, that brilliant young woman, attends the event, along with 007. Of course, this is not the brilliant woman from the start of the story, she is her equally virtuous and noble identical twin, who happens to be a teacher and perfect person that lives elsewhere and is there to avenge her sister. Sorry, did I say avenge her sister? I meant bring justice to her sister. Anyway, the guy is obsessed with the Mona Lisa, which he borrows from France, and puts behind a very unsafe glass cage that can easily be opened. You can see where this is going.

OK, turns out that all the friends in the island owe their success to this evil dude, and they are all very toxic people. After a while it surfaces that the original perfect girl died, and one of the friends knows the evil dude killed her, so the evil dude kills him. Then he tries to kill the twin, just to make sure. But he fails, because she is perfect. Then she finds the napkin but he burns it. But it doesn't matter, because she breaks everything and sets fire to his palace, which is powered by the hydrogen McGuffin thing, which is everywhere, because that's how electricity works. That burns the Mona Lisa down, ending the nefarious plans of the evil dude.

007 meanwhile is basically tagging along, telling the brilliant virtuous twin his educated opinion on how things are and distracting the nasty people so they don't realise she is on a quest for justice.

In the end, the evil dude is apparently exposed, 007 and her sister's friends are at the same place they were at the start of the film, and she burned evidence of a homicide and a unique work of art. But hey, that is totally justified, because the evil dude was exposed!

When I walked into the cinema I was expecting some Poirot-inspired 'whodunnit' story, but instead I got this moronic tale, with shallow and boring characters, trying to pitch an unlikely reality where becoming a millionaire is something trivial and where normal rules don't apply and attempts the now-cliched Hollywood trend to spread the pernicious and false social identity ideology, which I strongly oppose. For these reasons I rate this piece of junk a 1 out of 10 stars, since IMDB won't let me go any lower.

Minor spoilers ahead.

This film is very random. The core idea is that every tiny decision in our lifes changes the course of everything. In this film, every decision was taken, and as soon as that happens, multiple timelines are created. Some people in one of these timelines found a way of moving between timelines, which makes a person remember everything that happened on that other timeline as well. To travel between timelines, they need to do something extremely random and unexpected, which is the best mechanism to kind of... bring proximity between those timelines to make the jump easier.

Behind all this madness is the delightful Michelle Yeoh, who plays Evelyn Wang, a Chinese expat trying to make ends meet in the USA. It turns out one of her counterparts is the one who have found out about the dimension jumping and because of that, things went pear-shaped really quickly after a traveler started becoming too powerful. Evelyn is suddenly approached by a husband from another dimension and give the unlikely task of fixing everything. Why? Because since she is the most hopeless version of Evelyn ever, she is the best candidate to be successful.

Brilliantly fresh and weird. I highly recommend.

I can't believe Disney managed to botch Obi-Wan. It simply doesn't compute. They have the characters, they have the lore, they have the money. How is it possible they can mess this up? And mess up they did. Obi-Wan is completely out of character. A whiny man, running from everything, being sad and weak. Sure, perhaps they wanted to portrait Obi-Wan as a character who lost all hope. But make some justice to the character, shall we? He is a jedi master, an ex-general and a warrior. He defeated Darth Maul, stood hand to hand with Dooku and defeated Gen. Grievious. He trained the most powerful jedi in the galaxy. Of course that after years in solitude, sad and tired, he would no longer have the same power he once had. But what Disney did here is too much. Obi-Wan barely incapable of fighting a bunch of stormtroopers and runs away from every inquisitor he meets.

Princess Leia shows up, and she is, initially, delightful. But it gets tiresome as she steals the show and her relationship to Obi-Wan edges the retcon realm. There is a chase scene in episode 2 that makes for the most goofy Star Wars thing since the childish plot of Last Jedi. Or perhaps Jar Jar Binks. It's bad, lads. What the hell?

Then comes Third Sister. I'm sorry, but I don't buy it. It's a shallow character, with no serious motivation, and badly acted. She is not convincing, she is not menacing, she is not driven. The Third Sister has to be head to head with Snoke as one of the most boring villains ever.

What about Darth Vader? Oh, it was cool to see Anakin/Vader being played by Hayden Christensen, make no mistake, but he is also out of character. After years without seeing Obi-Wan, the only thing they have to tell each other is... "what have you become?" - "what you've made me"? Then after bashing Obi-Wan like a ragdoll and making all kinds of threats, a bit of fire puts Vader off his quest for vengeance, probably because it reminded him he forgot the fire on at home. I mean, what the hell was that? He just gives up like that?

So no, I'm sorry, this is no good. Disney screwed up. Again! And they won't stop doing it! The IQ level at Disney must be dropping exponentially, perhaps they are too deep into woke nonsense to figure out their bad decisions.

1 star for the visuals, 1 for the original actors. The rest is garbage.

Okay, so I'm all in for female heroes. I love Sarah Connor from Terminator, I'm a huge fan of Ellen Ripley from Aliens, I'm a fan of Nikita, the Black Mamba (Kill BIll), of Wonder Woman (first film), I love the many female leads on Star Trek such as Captain Janeway, Doctor Crusher and many others. I really enjoy a good female lead. And Captain Marvel is not one of them. Captain Marvel is a badly scripted, toxic female lead that has no depth and no charisma, so boring, shallow and obnoxious that it rendered the film pointless and bland.

Mild spoilers ahead. If this film can be spoiled, being the junk it is.

Brie Larson (who is, by the way, one of these politically outspoken actresses who think they know best than the "mob" and pictures herself as a PHD in sociology and psychology although she is just a mediocre actress), portraits (badly) the character Carol Danvers, aka Captain Marvel. Carol is a girl who grew up on Earth, joined the military and became a fighter pilot. Unknowingly to her, she ends up engaged in some alien technology under an alien commander, and an accident gives her magical powers. She eventually is captured by an alien group who erase her memory and enlists her as a soldier in this special forces group. She has a device to keep her power under control, and one fateful day she ends up on Earth and starts recalling her past life.

Yeah, the main story can be improved, but it's not all that bad. What makes it bad is that the character is not relatable. At all. Captain Marvel's powers make her perfect. She is like Superman without cryptonite. No one can beat her, no one can challenge her. The bad guy is defeated without her even touching him, it's ridiculous. This film is littered with sad notions that every man is toxic and wants Captain Marvel to fail only because she is a woman. So apparently she is always sad and vindictive. (I am extrapolating, because we can't figure out through Larson's acting, but through dialogue and stuff.) Captain Marvel has no challenges. Her character doesn't have any space for development, she doesn't struggle with anything, she doesn't learn anything, she is not afraid of anything, she doesn't seem to love or want anything. She is as deep as a tea spoon. And Larson shows no emotion at all; she is always with the same expression, looking like she is so bored she might actually take up accountancy as a hobby.

Captain Marvel is a character that they try to portrait here as strong. But they confuse being strong with someone who has zero vulnerabilities, makes no mistakes, is never challenged and is always right. Well, the thing is... a hero with no challenges cannot grow. A hero that takes no risks is not a hero. The very definition of a hero is someone who is admired for their courage and nobility. If you can do anything, why is courage even needed?

So if you definitely want to watch all the MCU films so to follow a storyline, go ahead and watch it. Otherwise, don't waste your time.

If you want strong female leads, and you like action, I'd recommend Atomic Blonde and Kill Bill. If you want a hero film, try the first Wonder Woman (the second is junk). You can also watch The Winter Soldier for some Black Widow action, although she is not the lead. Terminator/T2 and Alien/Aliens are good examples of leading females in sci-fi. Captain Marvel is a red herring on that front. Unfortunately. It had potential.

This film is so boring and pointless, that this review risks sounding boring and pointless as well. Here is the film, spoilers galore (if you think this junk can be spoiled, that is):

Neo and Trinity die. Then they are resurrected by some machines (hence the name of the film). One of the machines, called "The Analyst", proceeds to make a new Matrix and plugs them in. Somehow, in a way that was explained vaguely and badly, the new Matrix depends on Neo and Trinity to be near each other but apart for some stupid reason.

So the first half is kind of intriguing: Neo is led to believe his memories are a fantasy and he made a game called "the matrix" (leading to a lot of meta references, but it sounds stupid), so he takes prescription pills to keep his "hallucinations" under control. He sees Trinity at a coffee shop and kind of likes her. And that's it. That's the interesting bit.

On the outside we learn that 60 years have passed, and some people think Neo and Trinity are alive and are looking for them. Neo and Trinity can't be identified by those humans because the Matrix camouflages them. We also find out that Morpheus died, Zion fell and there was a machine civil war because some machines think matrix is necessary and some think they should let people go. The humans also made a new city called Io (it's a bad pun: 1 and 0, geddit?), that has both humans and machines living on it, and certain programmes can have physical bodies made by tiny balls of metal that can talk and feel and some other nonsense. The young Morpheus we see is such a programme.

Talking about Morpheus.. (ugh, this is tiresome) the start of the film is confusing, but it kind of explains Morpheus. So, it looks like Neo made a matrix inside the matrix. It's implied because the character Bugs says there's some old code running. From Ne's perspective, he coded the game, but for some weird, unexplained reason, Bugs can access that as a classic matrix code (made by Neo's subconscious mind, maybe?) and finds out a programme that is equivalent to an classic matrix's agent. That programme looks like a young Morpheus and it has gone self-aware. And that's Morpheus in a nutshell.

Oh, we also find out agent Smith is in the new matrix because "reasons" and he is a good guy now. And Trinity is "the one" in this new matrix.

So a rogue crew (why is there a rogue crew? I don't know, no one does) finds Neo and gets him out. Then Neo kind of sticks around and mumbles about getting Trinity out. He doesn't do anything, he is just there, other people kind of take action instead. They rescue Trinity on a long and boring action sequence with some super-duper creative ideas like disconnecting a person without the red pill. The machines don't use cameras in the real world and security is overrated, it seems, so it's kind of easy to get Trinity out and their plan works like Macaulay Culkin fending off Joe Pesci on Christmas.

Neo and Trinity have zero chemistry, and everything feels very fake, but Neo can stop bullets, making him more useful than a potato, and Trinity flies. Then Trinity gets all angry because of the whole business of being in the matrix again and kind of gets violent with the analyst, says some woke nonsense because the writer is a transgender (and they want us to remember that), Neo nodes in approval and then they both leave, nothing else happens and the viewer is left contemplating wtf was that.

And that's it. A bland, predictable, mediocre film with some fan service, some scenes from the original injected in, some special effects, horrible dialogue, that awful young-people-know-better-old-people-are-silly kind of vibe around the character of Niobe, forgettable characters and some political correctness. All wrapped up in a flashy matrix box with the pretence of being a clever movie, but it's just a bore.

I do not recommend. Just treasure the original, it's the best it gets.

Since B99 left Fox for NBC, it became a lousy excuse for a comedy. Series 8 is simply unfunny, PR garbage with recycled jokes and attempts at morality that makes this show umbearable to watch. It's sad, because B99 was a very good show.

Somewhow, on episode 1, NBC thought it would be a good idea to dive, head-first, into politics. So they start by acknowledging the COVID-19 pandemic, thus putting the show into the real world instead of the fiction that makes it appealing, and then framing all the police as guilty for police brutality after the death of George Floyd. Of course, important details such as that being a localised incident in a particularly problematic corner of a particular country, or the fact that Floyd had a violent criminal history, including pointing a gun at a pregnant woman, didn't make any difference in the real world, and would never be mentioned on the perfectly woke-compliant new version of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. So they just white-washed that incident as the woke left demands of everyone and duly suggested all cops in the USA - nay - the WORLD - are brutal racist bigots. Soon, Rosa Diaz leaves the force because cops are racist, Raymond Holt has problems with his husband Kevin because he is a black gay captain (I'm still trying to figure that one out), Jake Peralta becomes a reckless, stupid cop who bullies an innocent man only to show how cops are dirty, and so on.

Every character is hitherto destroyed by the woke nonsense that has been injected into B99. The final two episodes kind of leave the wokeness on the side in favour of making cheesy references to old jokes from the time Fox was making the show, and making ridiculous, meta references to the show itself. They even make a reference to the opening credits at some point. It's that bad.

It's funny how NBC made such an effort to "end the show as it deserves" and proceeded to destroy it because they are afraid of retaliation. It would be better if they had plainly cancelled the show or even better: if they made a whole 8th series that ignored the real world problems and be funny for a few more episodes, ending as usual, without any unnecessary "closure".

B99 is not a beloved show because it is politically correct, but because it is funny and would seamlessly deal with political correctness without rubbing people's faces on it. NBC has now changed that and this trainwreck is the result.

A sad end to a great show.

This is one of the episodes that make Star Trek such an interesting piece of fiction. Forget the wars, forget Starfleet, forget the borg, forget space exploration. This episode is about the Doctor and how he deals with a traumatising event.

The interesting bit is... the Doctor is a hologram, so the crew can "fix" him whenever things go south. But the point of the episode is really this: even if you could fix a bad experience: should you? And this is the conundrum Janeway is faced with. The Doctor doesn't know what is going on, and he wishes to know it. If Janeway allows him to remember, he will most probably "glitch." But if she prevents him from remembering, will she be preventing him to grow as an individual as well?

This episode deals with change and trauma, but also with the idea of artificial intelligence. The Doctor is not human, but is he conscious? Is the Doctor a living thing? Does the Doctor have rights? We have established on The Next Generation that Commander Data was considered a living being and should therefore have rights. But the Doctor is far from home, where his rights are only relevant to Voyager. Not interfering with his programming means respecting him as an individual, a living being. But if the Doctor cannot deal with his memories, is he up to the standards of a living being?

Food for thought.

The whole movie goes round a very stupid premise and then it obviously fails to deliver. The whole plot makes no sense. So there is this stone, right, and it was made by a mayan god, and it grants a wish to whoever holds it while it takes something important from this person. The whole story goes around this dude who gets the stone and wishes to.. ugh.. to be the stone. Thus he can grant wishes and take stuff from others. Apparently. The rules are fuzzy. So he goes on a rampant of wish-giving while trying to... do something I couldn't quite figure out. And here, I think, is the crux of this mess: what does the bad guy want? We don't know. And the logistics of how the undoing of wishes work is not clear either. And I suspect the writer and director didn't know what to do at this point. At one point WW talks to the entire planet (yeah.. anyway) to give up on their wishes and everybody does that. Talk about naïvité. Anyway, besides the plot the film delivers such cheesy moments that 2 minutes into it you wonder whether you are watching the right thing or not. It's like a spoof of 80s movies. But very badly done. Oh.. did I mention WW flies? And apparently she lassoes the clouds. Oh, and they did the invisible plane thing. No kidding! Yeah.. it's bad. Sorry. I expected something better. But hey.. it's DC. They need a bad film before making a good one, so fingers crossed!

The MK creators keep making the same mistake, it's just tiresome. Kevin Tancharoen had the right idea to make a good MK film, but they insist in making it weird. This time, the plot is really weak and many of the actors don't live up to their characters. Their motivation is questionable most of the time, it doesn't make much sense.

It's weird. Shang Tsung is hanging out in a mountain with nothing on it besides some chairs and a wall with the bad guys in Outworld, and he is freaking out about losing the tournment. Shang Tsung is so concerned that Outworld will lose he decides to kill all champions before the tournment. And that's the plot, basically. So the film is Shang Tsung crew randomly attacking Raiden's fighters. They are all a series of characters with varying levels of faithfulness to the games.

The protagonist is someone no one knows and never appeared in any game. His power is to conjure an acquaman suit. Liu Kang is a tiny little fellow with squeaky voice, quite different from 1995's Robin Shou, and a most boring character. Raiden is... dull. Tancharoen's Raiden was much more interesting. This is just a round-faced guy talking with an accent, I don't quite buy it. Sub-Zero is basically the boss level character. He is unbeatable. Sonya, Jax and Kung Lao are very much what one would expect, very similar to the game, and the actors were good. Kano is only so-so, Shang Tsung is.. meh.. Ermac a weak dude, Milena is.. boring, Reptile is badly done, Goro shows up, and he is just okay.

Kabal shows up (boring) and Scorpion as well. Scorpion's story was heavily inspired by MK Legacy and the connection is evident. The actor is okay. A bit old, I thought. I liked the previous one better, but very convincing.

The fights are the highlight of the film, with faithful fatalities and it's fun to watch. I dislike all the armour and weapons worn by the characters. Otherwise, 1995 film is less clumsy. Tancharoen would certainly do a much better job. It was a huge mistake not giving him the opportunity. Huge mistake.

There's a hook for a next episode. Let's hope they can salvage this mess.

Well, let's get this over with. Here's the plot:

The whole film is about the rebellion fleeing the empire or whatever they call those space nazis. That's it. That's the core. Then we got a bunch of random characters doing random stuff. Just like that, each go about their own business, like different stories loosely connected. I even thought the Force Awakens wasn't THAT bad, but this film sets the bar lower than ever. Remember Snoke? Who is he? Nobody knows. Why are there Rebels during the Republic? What are they rebelling against? Nobody knows. If there is a Galactic Republic, where's the army? Nobody knows. No questions were answered in this film. Instead we got what seems to be a bunch of sequences some random dude thought was cool, some unfunny jokes and mashed all together in this thing they can Episode VIII.

Where was I? Alright, they are escaping. Leia almost dies, the space nazis can track the rebellion ships through hyper-space, nobody knows how, nobody ever finds out. But Finn is on it, and after a lot of pain, he's got nothing. But he kills Phasma after miraculously surviving a cliché attempt of failed execution and an explosion that kills everyone around him. Then Rey and Chewbacca meet Luke. Luke wants to die and take the jedi teachings with him. Rey has a connection with Ben Solo, she decides to save him. They kill Snoke. But Ben is bad for no reason and he decides to stay that way. Yoda makes a cameo. Luke feels guilty and dies. The rebellion is saved. The end. Ridiculous.

Mark Hamill is the only thing holding this nonsense together. Can't complain about him, he did his lines and did well. But the fact that no one questioned this script is not excusable. How many people working on this? Nobody questioned how stupid everything was? This film is pestered with children nonsense like furry animals and kids doing stupid stuff. When people are not wasting time on pointless dialogues and killing themselves off-screen for the greater good (yes, there are like... 3 characters sacrificing themselves? wtf!), they are making jokes in very inappropriate moments and vomiting clichés all over the place. Snoke dying was surprising. But I don't know enough about the character to give a flying toss. We have a couple of new characters nobody cares about, and by the end of the film almost nothing happens.

This film is boring. Even the endless nonsensical Trade Federation stupidity from the prequels was more interesting than this. George Lucas probably wasn't the most talented writer, but at least the dude tried to tell a story. He failed almost comically with the prequels, but hey, at least after Jar-Jar Binks we didn't have any furry Puss-in-Boots types of characters to entertain children.

Disney really messed up here. I give one star for Mark Hamill and I think the fact that his character and Ford's character died is foretelling of how the franchise died. Forget Star Wars. It crap is a children's show now.