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Reviews
Underwater (2020)
A great movie that's unfairly treated.
The Lovecraftian horror genre might be too niche for people to understand on their first watch of Underwater. But, for the initiated, there's a great movie here.
With a few scattered Easter eggs, an uneasy sprinklinyg of insanity, a brilliant score to keep things uneasy, and unseen horrors looming. It all creates a pressure that's felt. You can sense the danger in the water, where our characters can't perceive. But the movie let's you wonder what possible indescribable horrors there are out there.
Our actors do a great job at making the horror and interactions real. 2 characters pulling another from the rubble have a discourse that doesn't feel obvious scripted.
Vincent Cassel is brilliant. Kristen Stewart redeems herself from the Twilight movies.
The movie gets unfairly treated. And it's not elitism or gatekeeping when I say "those people just don't get it." Much like critics who've never read a comic book critiquing a super hero movie. They're not going to understand the nuances that come with this flavor of horror.
The effects are great. The score is great. The set design is brilliant. Art direction. An original ending. No cliches. No characters being stupid.
A story that leaves a few lingering questions. An uneasy bit of potential answers. That's Lovecraft.
Chernobyl Diaries (2012)
Hides the ball too long. Doesn't show the horror.
The movie spends an absolutely obnoxious time building tension. But it never delivers on the horror it's building up to. We never see the results. All character deaths are left ambiguous.
It's no fault of the actors themselves. Simply the writing and direction is terrible.
These horror movies nowadays keep giving these fruitless ending. They aren't edgy, they aren't inventive. No matter how creative these directors think they are by giving these endings, They usually just prove their entire movie to be pointless. The ending is stupid.
Really this all just leads to a movie with no payoff from an entertainment point nor a story point. It's not scary, it's unoriginal and it fits in with another long line of horror movies that have terrible endings.
There's just no point to watch this movie.
The Northman (2022)
Really unpolished acting and action scenes in parts.
Not sure what critics saw here. There's nothing wrong with the story, the presentation, or even the slow-burn pace.
But some of the action scenes are downright atrocious. A lot of movements, you can tell, weren't rehearsed or practiced enough. Many actions stutter. It can be painful to watch. It doesn't come off as believable, because it breaks the immersion every time a contest of any kind happens.
Speaking of breaking immersion, a number of side characters can't act. The main few characters are okay. I think the movie could have been casted better. Anya is the only one that holds up 100% of the time.
But too many have really awkward, stiff deliveries in their lines. A few characters even look at the camera...
It, at times, feels like you're watching a high-school drama. Which is a shame, because set and costume design are on point. Some beautiful scenes are shown through character visions.
But it all falls apart when you're looking at actors who speak and fight like robots.
Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities: The Murmuring (2022)
Unoriginal, slow, lacking any horror.
Not sure how this got Guillermo's approval.
This is without a doubt the worst episode.
The story is a trope. "couple with grief problems stays at creepy ghost house. " We've seen this story ad nauseum.
It's horrendously slow. You can see Andrew Lincoln doing everything he can to reanimate this stone dead episode. But to no avail.
The other supporting actors are just .. flat out.... awful.
And it all leads up to this ghost encounter, that again, tropes its way through. And suddenly everything is A-OK at the end.
There's just no danger in this episode. There's no horror. There's nothing original here. It's like the writer and director collectively decided to sacrifice anything potentially interesting, just to make something entirely uninteresting and predictable.
I hope GDT does a better job of vetting episodes like this out if there's another season.
They should have had The Autopsy or one of the Lovecraft episodes be the finale episode.
This was like watching paint dry.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022)
Good show. Terrible abrupt ending.
For 10 episodes, we see a lot of character development for David and Lucy. The animation is fairly clean (though some action sequences do look terribly comical near the end).
Some story points seemingly become abandoned or changed part-ways through. Leading to a jarring pace.
But, it's overall a show that demands your attention, and keeps your eyes on the screen with much more ease than most shows on currently.
All characters feel unique. There's many callbacks to the Cyberpunk 2077 game, music is solid. Voice acting is solid.
Really, the only major problem I had with the show is how it ended. Characters are uselessly killed off. And the credits role just as one character gets about 10 milliseconds of closure. It feels rushed. And undermines all the development they worked so hard at through the previous episodes.
Still. Overall. A 7/10.
The Last Duel (2021)
A satisfying finale can't save this film from being a repetitive soap opera.
The pacing is AWFUL. And an interesting introduction devolves into a medieval soap opera where you view every main character repeatedly experiencing (or faking) orgasms until the main contention of the film is finally resolved.... A horrendously weak score accompanies the film, compared to Scott's other epics (Kingdom of Heaven, Robin Hood, Gladiator). The few brief fight scenes are the only good thing in the movie. It's entirely miserable and tedious to watch.
Jupiter's Legacy (2021)
Horrible pacing, costumes and effects.
You can tell there's a story here, but it's so frustrating to try and get to. The acting isn't awful. But the presentation is.
Finishing it. But, if they do another season, I hope they do a much better job with it. For Pete's sake, use some of that Netflix money to get some none 90's TV Era effects...
The Tax Collector (2020)
Movie never delivers after its setup.
The first act sets up a decent premise. But it's like they changed script part way through. Important characters are pointlessly killed off early. The bad guy is WAY over the top and cringey.
Action sequences are good but there's just so few of them. And they're also marred by some terrible effects. Shia is absolutely WASTED on the movie. He's hands down the best actor, and the story totally under uses him. And the script totally mistreats his presence.
All of this happens in a drawn out pace that leaves the climax to fall very flat. With an ending that id neither logical or satisfying.
Barbarians (2020)
Pretty boring...
While based in history, you can tell producers were hoping to recreate the success Vikings had.
Problem is the acting is lazy. the design is lazy. The story thinks it's exciting, but it's not. you can see where they are like "oh this will blow their minds!" but it all lands flat. its entirely predictable.
The music is also generic as possible.
It's just a low effort show.
House M.D.: One Day, One Room (2007)
Don't listen to the closed minded reviews.
This is really a rare and exceptional episode amongst a series of great episodes.
People are too busy generalizing the characters to notice that this episode really highlights more on philosophy and how it relates to human perspective. More-so than the usual House episodes focusing on atheism every now and then. There is a character with a counter- argument. Are there moments where the episode highlights the base characters of Chase, Cameron and Foreman? Sure. But it does that for a reason. There is a reason it's obvious like that. Ask why? What is the context this time? Why are they doing that?
What people seem to miss is the puzzle in this one. Of course there is no physical puzzle for House to solve. But there is a puzzle still there. So he has to learn how to do that.
There is also a great use of contrast in this episode, with humor, in difference to the obviously dark main topic.
There's tons of episodes of House curing someone's rare ambiguous affliction. But this episode is one of a kind.
Less is more, in this episode. But if you're actually paying attention, there is a ton of detail, depth, philosophy, and a great examination of the human condition.
It's a shame all these negative reviews put a damper on this episode. They really have no clue. They are entitled to their opinion, but it's obvious they missed the point of this episode, and it skewed their opinion. Sorry, but it's true...