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onleybl
Reviews
Captain Marvel (2019)
Better than expected
I'd heard bad things along the lines of "30% good, the rest is meh/bad" or "feminist propaganda". In my opinion, neither of these are fair.
It's a great film! Entertaining, makes sense, good twists, will paced, good characters. I wouldn't say it was the best marvel film, I prefer Dead Pool 1 and Thor Ragnarok personally. Still a strong contender though.
Now to deal with the haters...
SPOILERS!!!
About half way through I was really enjoying it and thought "this is great! What were they taking about with the, what was it? 30% good and feminist propaganda?..." Then I thought about it and started looking through those glasses: Firstly, it's 100% good. Way off on that one.
Secondly, feminist propaganda wise: not unfounded but certainly unfair. Examples:
It's mentioned she didn't get on with her parents but only her dad is shown being mean to her, her best friend has a child but the father isn't mentioned (will dealt with, shouldn't be a big deal). A historically disproportionate amount of the non previously established lead characters were women (a good thing in my opinion, the historical statistics are poor). She and her "niece" dress up as Amelia Earhart in stories and photos. There's a montage of men telling her she should quit, she'll never make it, give up, and she always she gets back up (bad ass, loved it!). Lawson, the scientist is a woman (statistically unlikely, but totally plausible, I can see how stacked with the rest this might be perceived like feminist propaganda if you were looking for it) She also receives a few letcherous advances from some scummy men, which I've seen on TV but not in real life, probably because I'm a man and not an attractive woman. My girlfriend says it happens to her all the time. Probably a fair representation of real life (Stop it men, seriously. Not cool. You just come off as a letch. Why would you want that? It's also harassment. Sort your life out.)
Unrelated but worth a call out because it was great: when she photon blasted Jude Law. YES CAROL! The guy was a dick. That is you, it's not cheating. He's picking a fight he can't win then asking for you to give him a chance? Bugger that!
I think you might have to have issues with women or feminism to pick that out without priming. I don't think I would have noticed if I hadn't been primed and hadn't actively looked for it. I like that they tipped the balance towards women because of anything it only approaches a fair balance, and they're right: there aren't that many main stream examples of kick ass female leads. It's not fair. We don't notice a film without a woman in it because it's not weird, and that's weird. If this film was gender swapped they would have thought it was feminist propaganda that almost all the soldiers were women, you can't win! Having said all this, my mates I watched the film with, including two women, didn't notice anything. One of whom said she preferred wonder woman.
SUMMARY
It's a great film, haters gonna hate, leave them, they're the ones who are missing out. Might be my new favourite Marvel Hero.
Navy Seals vs. Zombies (2015)
Don't watch it. It's really bad. No redeeming features.
The premise has potential. A zombie film where the protagonists aren't preposterously incompetent. Unfortunately, it fails to deliver.
The "elite Navy seals" are out of shape. This is supposed to be the best of the navy seals, but they send in a team with a new member having some issues fitting in, to extract the Vice President. They are uncharacteristically reluctant to shoot rabid attacking zombies, even when ordered to. There are blatant continuity issues. The dialogue was atrocious at points: "There's a suspicious suspect"?! They still make some ridiculous decisions, for example there was the "let's split up and look for clues" style trope. The acting was awful for the most part. Not the worse I've seen though. Audio levels are poor too, at one point the music was louder than the dialogue, making it hard to understand the actors batman impression.
Having said this, it's not bad in terms of content for a "low budget film". There are shots of helicopters, jets, cars rolling, some relatively authentic looking sets and locations. I presume the majority of these are stock footage. Apparently one of the actors is someone I might of heard of too. The money would have been better spent on the script, editing, and direction though.
Not bed enough to be good. It isn't laughably bad... For the most part. Better content by amateurs on you tube.
Don't watch it. Really. Don't watch it.