Reviews

I'm sure we all expected an Epic Biographical War Drama ... and I'm even more sure we didn't expect to get a a Period RomCom.

This felt like a mini-series was cut up and mashed into a very rushed film. Its not terrible, but sadly not this amazing epic we all hoped it would be.

The colour grading is atrocious, either everything is orange or everything has like -95% saturation.

The use of natural lighting is also TERRIBLE. We're looking at silhouettes talking for most of the film, the background is beautifully lit whilst you can't even see anyone's faces in the foreground.

There's 5 battle scenes, 2 of which are cut before any battle happens, 1 is in pitch black, and the other 2 are desaturated beyond imaginable.

Napoleon is portrayed as this goofy comedy character, I was surprised he didn't sing the Loony Tunes song.

Might be the most mid film to ever exist...

If you're expecting Rachel Zegler (Lucy Gray) or The Hunger Games themselves, then you're 100% going to be disappointed. Rachel has about 10 minutes screen time and the Hunger Games only last a few minutes and we don't see much at all.

This is a President Snow Prequel, and nothing else.

It felt way more like a mini-series which got slapped onto the big screen for the sake of it. Nothing about this felt like an actual film.

What a disappointment.

For the time Rachel does have on screen, she is great. Viola Davis is fantastic as well, and Jason Schwartzman is fantastically cast.

Did anybody proofread the script? There are way too many inconsistencies.

1 - It's stated at the start of the film that it's a musical... but only in the afterlife / wherever the ghosts live. So why did Clint (Ryan) start singing in the real world?

2 - Scrooge (Will) is English, with a terrible attempt at an accent, but then is American with no explanation?

3 - When Scrooge finally lives in the real world present day again, why is he surprised by how everyone is dressed and how the world works? He's been there as a spirit so many times already so why would he be surprised?

4 - Scrooge speaks and flirts with Kimberly several times in the flashbacks / visions... so why when Scrooge becomes real again does Kimberly even know him? How does she know any of those visions happened? Scrooge even acknowledges that she won't know anything literally seconds before she remembers with no explanation.

5 - The Yet-To-Come ghost was speaking several times throughout the film... so in the graveyard why on earth were the spirits shocked and surprised that he spoke when he had already shown he speaks several times before?

It has some good and interesting moments but the lack of care into the script let this down massively. Also, shouldn't have been a musical.

Liked it but don't love it.

Every time I ramble when writing a review about something I liked, I always mostly write the stuff I didn't like. This will be the same. Thank you to the 2 people who read these.

Didn't like the Family Guy style cutaways which happened a handful of times.

Didn't like the ending.

Didn't like the DUN DUN DUN DUNDUN DUN DUN DUN DUNDUN drone background music through 90% of the scenes.

Didn't like the inconsistent pacing. By this I'm mostly talking about all of Ernest and Mollie's relationship. They meet and fall in love in the first few minutes of the film. Then they've suddenly got two kids with no indication of much time passing at all.

Also... there's a few plot twists / plot reveals which happen at the end of the film which were so noticeable and obvious to figure out I was beyond surprised when they actually spelled it out.

Aside from all that, really enjoyed it. Was sat in that boiling hot Cineworld for four hours and only had a sip of my water so I'm proud I didn't die in there.

The final episode salvaged this from being a total disaster.

I was questioning on Twitter/X why on earth a John Wick Prequel show was hardly ever promoted and after watching the first episode, I found my answer.

Firstly, why is Winston Scott now American? Ian McShane plays Winston Scott in the four John Wick films, but why is the younger version of himself American? Was the actor really that terrible at putting on an English accent so much that they just gave up attempting? Seriously, it's never even brought up why he's American in this.

Secondly, IT'S TOO LONG. Shows like this are a prime reason why streaming is a bad idea, they don't know their own limits. Trim the episodes down and make more episodes in normal TV show length, not make three episodes all the length of a feature film with little substance in them.

Thirdly, the fight choreography is TERRIBLE. The majority of every fight sequence is so over-choreographed it sucks you right out of it. The acting in the fighting is GCSE level and looks like some WWE crap.

Fourthly, WHY ARE THERE SO MANY MEME SONGS? In fact, why are there so many songs at all? There's like 10 song montages each episode, all it missed out was characters singing and dancing.

Fifthly, is this meant to be a comedy? Mel Gibson puts in some overly campy comedy performance, meanwhile the majority of the supporting cast all have the comic relief spread across them with cheesy one liners and moves you'd see in an action comedy.

Sixthly, WHY was Yen even in the show? We're introduced to Yen who is Winston's Brothers (Frankie) wife/girlfriend, and she is pregnant. We know this from the first episode. It's then forgotten about entirely since then. However, in the final episode, there's a song playing which has a lyric along the lines of "inside the candle there's a wick", and as that lyric is played, the camera pans over to Yen. Now... IS YEN JOHN WICKS MOTHER? This would make Winston John Wicks uncle. Do we find out? NO! Do the writers even acknowledge this? NO! She's so terribly written it's a joke.

Finally, as I said at the start, the final episode carries this show but is still let down by the odd humour. The only characters that are enjoyable in the entire show are:

Charon played by Ayomide Adegun: He plays a younger Charon identical to how Lance Reddick portrayed Charon. Giving far more respect to both the character and actor than Colin Woodell's effortless attempt at being Winston Scott.

KD played by Mishel Prada: Never heard of Misha before but she puts in a great performance and I was really invested in her story.

Hansel & Gretel "The Twins" played by Mark Musashi & Marina Mazepa: An interesting duo. Neither speak a word throughout but I enjoyed seeing them whenever we had the chance. The only downside is that they're meant to be twins but very clearly have a 20 year age gap.

Overall, I'd suggest giving this show a miss. It puts a bad stain in the John Wick franchise with a mostly pointless trilogy of films.

The biggest disappointment in film this year.

Madeline Voyles (Alphie / "The Child" / "The Weapon") puts in an incredibly fantastic emotional performance despite currently being 9 years old, and 7 years old when filming.

Visually, this film looks very pretty BUT is dragged down by being, literally, SO DARK. Even in the daytime scenes it is still so dark.

The script itself lacked anything interesting.

The story, was far too repetitive. They go somewhere, the big ship with the blue scanner arrives, it blows stuff up. This is repeated at least four times throughout the film and is pretty much the only thing that happens.

There's no proper attempt to establish any time passing either. We jump from scene to scene and I cannot for the life of me figure out if 10 minutes, a week, or months have passed between scenes.

It also feels as if so much was edited and cut out of this. We skip by at rapid pace eventhough the actual pacing is slow.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's a director's cut with at least 40+ minutes of additional scenes. Just seemed that too much was cut away. Such a shame.

Honestly... this was not terrible like I thought It would be.

Firstly this didn't seem like a reboot. The characters are NOT Juni and Carmen but are new characters completely.

Take the first three spy kid films plots and put them all into chatGPT with the prompt "Combine all the elements of these films into one film".

This film, although not as good as the original 3 (never saw the 4th), still feels like a proper Spy Kids film, even keeping the Spy Kids Leitmotif from the originals.

It's fun and very cheesy. Kids will probably love this, adults will probably review bomb it.

Still wish we got another outing of Carmen and Juni with the original cast.

Season 1 : 5/10

I found this so tough to watch but I'm glad I stuck with it. For the first 8ish episodes, we're flooded with completing boring and insulting narration, flashbacks, and exposition dumps.

There's a few storylines all happening at different times:

The Hari Seldon & Gaal story is simple and easy to follow but there's hardly any of it. I thought this would be the main story but sadly not.

Then we have the Cleon / Empire story which, again, there's not as much of but oh my the quality and acting and directing and story for this storyline is absolutely fantastic. Seems the majority of the budget went into this story as its clear by the sets, costumes, VFX, and the quality of the actors. MASSIVE commendations to Lee Pace (Middle age Cleon) and the Teenage/20s Cleon. Fantastic.

Now the worst and most boring part which takes up the majority of the story...The Terminus story. Its set in such a bland boring area and it very clearly has a fraction of the budget of this show. Every single time we're watching this story it's like putting vinegar in your eyes, TORTURE. It's bland, boring, terribly acted, and visually painful. BUT, I'm so glad that this is seemingly over.

Looking forward to Season 2 after it ended on a high.

Um...who's idea was it to show the exposed chest of a 12 year old girl at the start of the film!? Very VERY weird decision.

Practical effects on the alien were just as good as the first two films, but the CGI alien was atrocious, looked like someone cut out a sticker and just moved it across frames. Also, the alien just changes sizes from about 10 foot tall to 4 feet within seconds, terrible CGI.

Ripley just stands around the entire film with her gormless mouth wide open.

The horror and gore in this film is much better as well.

Theres only so many times you can remake the first film but still, somehow better than the first two. Even if all three are pretty much identical.

Best guy in the film was Dillon.

Likes :

• The opening 15ish minutes were so much better than the predecessor. Establishing that Ripley has been sleeping for over half a decade, and that people accept the Androids more and they have been updating. Additionally, addressing the evil android from the first film and building on that saying that old version malfunctioned a lot.

• The scene near the end with no dialogue, where Ripley and Newt were in nest surrounded by eggs and face to face with the Queen. Liked this because you could tell that Ripley and the Queen were communicating in some way with actions, no words, essentially telling the Queen that if you attack Ripley or Newt then she (Ripley) will burn all your eggs. Thought that was done very well, and that's how I've interpret that scene anyway.

Dislikes :

• IT'S SO DULL AND BORING 💤. Almost nothing of interest happens. It's like a burger. The bun is fresh on both sides, but the meat is rotten.

• The girl, Newt. Where tf is she supposed to be from? Is she American or British? It sounds like shes an American kid putting on an 1800s London Chimney Sweep child voice.

Had a great start, great ending, tedius middle.

I am confused by this because.... it wasn't a confusing film that I've been lead to believe by so many people.

Absolutely none of Tenet is backwards. It's a very linear film. So... why have I seen so many people claim half the film is backwards? And on top of that, why have I seen clips of this film a while back of the opening scene in at the Opera, in reverse??? Have I hallucinated this or something????

Aside from the second time were at the airport and you blatently can tell Washington and Pattinson are jogging backwards and its played in reverse so theh look like they're jogging forwards whilst everyone else is going backwards... Pretty good film imo. 👍 8/10.

Another Nolan film which never reaches its full potential.

The first two hours, I seriously considered a 9/10, but that final hour completely DRAGGED.

The sound design was terrible, unless it was just the Cineworld showing I was in, the music drowned out almost all dialogue for the majority of this film.

I'm not sure who is responsible for cutting each shot within a scene; the director? Cinematographer? Editor? No idea... but cutting back and forth 9 times in under 4 seconds (in one scene) is an absolute eyesore.

The bomb itself has to be the single most overhyped practical effect I've ever been blue balled over.

Nolan really prefers this "Tell, don't show" style to his work.

Oh...and Cillian Murphy's accent slipped a couple times, and ended up Cameo-ing as Thomas Shelby for a few sentences.

Additionally, correct me if I'm incorrect but, Nolan seemingly constructed this true story film and made it feel more like a mystery within the final hour. Just tell a true story without trying to elastico the ball into the net in the 90th minute.

Aside from all that, enjoyed the most of it. The first two hours really built and built tension with a great score to compliment it.

7/10.

I managed to solve the "mystery" of this film was fairly quickly... not quite first scene "Shutter Island" quickly, but within the first half of the film i managed to figure it out. There's then black and white scenes which play in order in a different timeline. ~~~

I get WHY it was pieced together like this, but oh my it made for an excruciatingly boring viewing. Having to watch the same scenes multiple times when we've just seen it, stretches this 40 minute film into almost two hours.

We have one timeline where it's in colour, and playing backwards. So each scene (in colour) is before the previous coloured scene. However, at the end of most coloured scenes, it plays part of the previous coloured scene. I managed to solve the "mystery" of this film was fairly quickly... not quite first scene "Shutter Island" quickly, ~~~~~

Overall, 5/10.

An okay film which I'd probably enjoy on second viewing; something I very rarely do. But didn't really enjoy it much at all. We have one timeline where it's in colour, and playing backwards. So each scene (in colour) is before the previous coloured scene~~~

There's then black and white scenes which play in order in a different timeline. Both of these timelines eventually meet and the film finishes roughly in the middle of the film.

This is one of those films which would've been so much better as a Limited TV series rather than a film. Far too much to condense and it was made so boring.

Saoirse Ronan - Accent kept slipping from Scottish to Irish to American throughout.

Margot Robbie - Accent slipped and she started sounding South African at times.

Things I learned and will probably remember:

David Rizzio was murdered in front of Queen Mary whilst she was pregnant.

Queen Mary was sentenced to death by beheading.

There was a Scottish dude called John Knox who was a preacher.

I have no idea how historically accurate the rest of the film was, but i have a feeling it wasnt very accurate at all; it seemed that there was so so so much modern day political messaging and agenda pushed into this film. Historical Films should be Historically ACCURATE.

Needed way more David Tennant, don't care if he played Queen Mary, we all love Tennant.

I expected so much more.

Really liked the filthy gritty vibe of Gotham.

Didn't like: How outside Wayne Manor looks like an England countryside, taking you right out of the films immersion. Also didn't like how the Batmobile (or whatever it's called in this film) looks like a small toy remote control car.

Cillian Murphy and Liam Neeson had barely anything to do.

The characters and film could've worked much better if... the first hour of the film was much faster than what it was; it took over an hour to actually get to "BATMAN". OR, have the film run longer, kissing three hours, allowing more time to establish characters and the story itself.

Alright film, but very overhyped.

7/10.

I slept on this and am writing the review the next day... but this was fantastic.

I'll get some negatives out the way first, it starts off REALLY slow, and I was worried as to where this was going. Also, wasn't a massive fan of some of the camera work, way too many extreme close ups in every talking scene.

Tom Cruise - Ethan Hunt is back again for another mission, and it seems as if age is finally catching up to Cruise. He still does his fair amount of action and stunts, but doesn't have anywhere near as much to do as previous installments.

Hayley Atwell - Grace is introduced in this film as a talented pick-pocket, and Atwells performance is fantastic. Beautiful woman with a great performance and has really good chemistry with Cruise.

Pom Klementieff - She plays Paris, a French assassin who works for villain, Gabriel. I LOVED her performance in this, but she hardly said a thing. She said maybe three sentences, and just grunted, barked, and groaned throughout her crazy performance. Now, Paris 100% feels like someone you would see in the John Wick films, she has a very unique style which I'd love to see more of, and I was so relieved when I heard the worst "there's a pulse". Really hoping she has much more to say and do in Dead Reckoning part 2.

Simon Pegg & Ving Rhames - They're not in the film much, the do have a few scenes but not massively involved.

After sleeping on this.... I loved the film, but... I do think on another day I might have been frustrated with it.

All that being said, this is by far the BEST Mission Impossible film to date. This franchise gets better and better.

9/10.

First things first...this is by far superior to Blade Runner (1982) in every single aspect. It's acted better, better dialogue, better visuals, better sound design, better plot, and slightly better pacing. But it's that SLIGHTLY better pacing which makes me rate this one higher.

The overall story and premise of the film is not that interesting at all, and has moments where scenes absolutely drag and drag for no reason whatsoever.

I really enjoyed the romantic story with "Joe" and Joi. Romance between the protagonist is done significantly superior in Blade Runner 2049 than Blade Runner (1982).

The stuff with Deckard was a mix, and his entrance was a bit cringe, as if he just stood there waiting for the American audience to stop cheering and clapping 😂

Better than the first, but not enough actually going on.

6/10.

What even happened to this show?

Season 1 was fantastic, full of this dark fantasy with great sets and acting and a great story.

Season 2 comes along and the first couple of episodes continue to be good, but rapidly declines in quality. The stuff with Alina Starkov is still interesting, but she is hardly in it. The majority of screen time is taken up by Kaz and his crew of diversity checkboxes. Kaz and his crew are all poor actors and drain the life out of me when they're all on screen, on top of that, the sets and VFX for his story are TERRIBLE. What happened to the budget? Did someone else take over?

Season 1 - 8/10 Season 2 - 5/10.

What a waste of time this film is.

• About 6 lines of dialogue in the whole film.

• The third act had almost NOTHING to do with the rest of the film.

• Did the budget run out to employ Josh Brolin (Llewelyn Moss) that he just didn't bother returning to film?

The entire film is this. Man follows other man from Motel to Motel and they ran out of budget to wrapped the film up completely randomly.

One of those pretentious films which win Oscars when not a single person can ever elaborate what makes this film incredible.

Somehow still giving this a 5/10 but mostly from Kelly MacDonald and Javier Bardem's performances.

A good film, but very overhyped.

A loud gasp of disappointment went across the entire 400+ seated cinema. Many people saying it was "sh!t" and "nothing happened" and "that was the deadest film"... and I partially agree.

While an overall enjoyable film from my perspective, giving it an 8/10, critics have misled audiences AGAIN and set us up for disappointment. Not much...actually happens.

We have a very VERY tedius 30ish minute intro and recap to all the characters we already know about, telling us everything we already know about Gwen and Miles, dragging out the runtime. There's no proper villain in the film either, we get a splatter of a few villains throughout, and one will obviously be a bigger villain in the third film, but... yeah...I sort of agree with the people complaining.

I did find this more enjoyable than Guardians of the galaxy Vol 3, but its not the masterpiece 10/10 the paid critics give it.

What a show. Taken some of the most popular and loved celebs over the past 20 years and put them all in a jungle in South Africa ... and they do the HARDEST trials in I'm a Celeb history. The trials are significantly more physically and mentally demanding, and the final eating trial... Myleene Klass you deserve to be the LEGEND you are. No public vote this time in contrast to the normal show, and the celebs can be kicked out at any time and are faced off in head to head survival trials which had all campmates competing against each other for survival.

This show had some of the hardest trials ever in I'm a celeb, hoping for a second season... only downside is that it wasn't live.