jakob356 Reviews

The Peripheral (2022)

Great pilot, but stady down hill from there

[4/10 · 20 November 2022]

I was totally sold on the first episode. Everything perfect and I was ready to give it a 9.

Then I saw the following four episodes, and the show just keeps on stacking up unlikeable characters, without finishing any stories on the ones they already had.

The russian guy, the local mob boss, the shoulder pad woman, and latest Mr Bob and the english police chief wishing to turn everything in to an Agatha Christie mystery.

And you kind of get that tourist feeling, like if Woody Allen shot a movie in Paris (he did..), where the american creators are just a little bit TOO fascinated by old english culture, so the fill in fancy London neighborhoods, black taxis, double decker busses and tweed clothing, until you are just about ready to vomit.

Still, nothing is really bad about it. It hasn't gone all wrong yet, like Prison Break season 4 and 5, so it is still above average, so I'll give it a 6.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022– )

Just give me some characters to relate to

[8/10 · 5 September 2022]

I really don't care if it's set in space, Westeroos, Middle Earth or somebody's dull office in Swindon, I just want some real people with real feelings and real problems, that I can somehow relate to. And this don't really seem to give me that, after having watched an hour of it.

That other show with swords and dragons, now into it's first spin off, has just that. Hell, the story doesn't even have to be there: I've watched Lost three times, just because it has people!

The LOTR movies had silly hobbits with broken carrots, elves and dwarfs teasing each other, and even orcs with meat back on the menu, boys. Could we please have just a little bit of that, then I'll rate it higher, and you might just have a succes on your hand.

Seaspiracy (2021)

Entitled douchebag gets to make an environmental movie

[1/10 · 10 March 2022]

• And even gets it shown on Netflix. Good for him.

There is so many things wrong with the logic, data, research and tone of this film. I agree with the overall theme, that it is of course really bad that the industry is ruining the environment. But could you please try and communicate that in a proper way?

First of all: You didn't grow up watching Jacques Cousteau. That is something 55 year olds did. You have just been watching too many Wes Anderson movies.

The charts showing something moving from much in one side to less in the other side: There is nothing on the Y axis, so nobody can tell if something is going from 80 to 70 or 100 to 0. And all the curves for diffrent species are the same colour! Blood red of course for dramatic effect. That is appaling data management and manipulation, only seen in bad media like Fox News or Daliy Mail.

And targetting some organisations for doing too little is very easy. Their overall outcome is positive, so would it be better if they were not there? No. It's just you who is interpreting the symbols on the packages in a wrong way.

The same with going after rather low links in the fishing industy food chain. They just work there and aren't educated enough to know that the industy is wrong. We need governments to step in and make bad things illegal.

And that sad voiceover, and you not being able to wear a cap the right way around most of the time. And the document forgery like you are some kind of Günter Walraff. Just makes me sick.

The Protégé (2021)

Alright, so Michael Keaton can be in a bad movie too

[1/10 · 30 August 2021]

Which was this one...

We're getting used to Samuel Jackson being in very many bad movies, like middle aged Michael Caine or Nicholas Cage. He obviously has many grand kids, that he is setting up college funds for?

I'm not really familiar with the Maggie woman. And I'm not going to, because she just didn't have any acting skills and looked the same way during the entire movie. Did she take acting classes from John David Washington?

The movie itself is just yor typical hitman with a twist movie. With all the clichés you could possibly think of. Yes, it was cool when Bruce Willis dangled from a fire hose in Dia Hard in 1988, and feeding someone to the pigs was new in Snatch in 1995. But we're in a whole other centuty now, please update your movie maing skills and try to serve us something new!

The casting was strange. Why would you hire an english actor to play a frenchman? And the dialogue was just appalingly bad.

Dear russians or chinese or whoever made this: It is not enough to buy a couple of famous actors, the rest has to be good too. Please try again in a more convincing way!

Infinite (2021)

A wild ride!

[7/10 · 30 August 2021]

Take some The Matrix, Total Recall and Highlander and mix it up. Forget all logic or science, add some hot babes and good looking special effects, and you get this very entertaining, but somewhat forgettable movie.

You don't get the usual eastern european bad guys and henchmen, and it is mostly free of other dull clichés.

The main villain even has some charm. Which is nice because Mark Whalberg hasn't got a lot of that.

There is also a bit of humour and irony here and there. So it shines through that even the makers of this movie are not takaing it very seriously.

There is even some new innovative action seqences, you haven't seen before, like an indoor car chase and dragging an escape vehiche in a forrest from an Apache hilicopter.

Yes, ts sounds incredibly unrealistic all of it, and that is the good thing about it. I enjoyed it a lot.

The Sparks Brothers (2021)

So good you think it's a mockumentary

[9/10 · 11 August 2021]

Sometimes fiction can be so good, that you wonder if it really happened, and you get the same strange feeling here.

So it is just as good as "Exit Through the Gift Shop", "I'm Still Here" or "This is Spinal Tap".

But as it rolls on, things just get more and more real, with SO much old footage, that you think that it would be a really hard job to fake all this. And it IS real, all of it.

Mr Wright obviously loves Sparks, and the Mael brothers obviously just loves to write and perform songs. So there is much love in this movie. And it just makes you happy.

I only have one Sparks LP in my collection. Which I before watching this had forgotten all abou. Have to do something about that.

Jungle Cruise (2021)

Just som good clean fun

[6/10 · 9 August 2021]

Emily Blunt only has one face for use in movies, but in a movie like this, it doesn't really matter. Didn't Kirk Douglas also look the same way always in 1954?

And maybe there was a bit much "smouldering intensity" (Jumanji) in Dwayne Johnson? But never mind. It's a wild and fun ride, and totally ridiculous in a lovely mid twentieth century way, that we don't see to much nowadays.

Jesse Plemons gets a legendary bad guy role, and he complete fills it, in a lovely over the top way. So you soon forget thinking about how there is room for his giant submarine in a shallow south american river.

So if you are just after some classic family friendly fun, like in Around the World in 80 Days og Journey to the Centre of the Earth, this is perfect.

The Suicide Squad (2021)

This is pure trash

[1/10 · 9 August 2021]

I should have known better and avoided something, Zack Snyder was involved in.

Excessive bad language and violence: Is that cool? I don't think so. I think a clever script which combines humour and action is cool. Look at any Marvel movie from the last 15 years - even Deadpool - and learn from that, please.

You can animate a raccoon and give him a bad attitude, and you can paint Michael Rooker blue, and it can still be a good movie, like in Guardians of the Galaxy.

But this movie was just another one of those movies trying to be cool, by borrowing stuff that worked in other movies.

I pulled the plug on it after 45 minutes of suffering, where it just got worse and worse. Can't DC or whoever is behind this just trow in the towell and admit that Marvel has won that race, and stop trying to make the same thing?

I have nothing against dark movies with an angry Batman or a dead Superman, but these trying-to-be-cool-movies are just annoying and does not work.

Watch Black Widow instead. It's got violence and people with super powers and a witty dialogue. Or the TV series The Boys. There are so many better things out there!

Army of the Dead (2021)

Dear Zack

[1/10 · 23 May 2021]

Please stop making movies. You suck at it.

There was just nothing innovative or fun or cool or anything about this stupid hunk of junk. It was just cliche upon cliche upon cliche the whole god damn time:

The Japanese boss was cool in Inception, so let's copy that.

Linda Hamilton was cool in T2, so let's copy her for the helicopter woman.

Cool bearded black guy worked OK in Tenet, so let's go with that.

And a manical mexican of course. Always works!

And some girl who looks and sounds like a younger Salma Hayek will sure sell some tickets.

Mackenzie Davis obviously didn't want anything to do with this, so let's just clone her with a look alike as well.

Oh and a sweet german guy, like in X-Men 2? One of those as well, please!

Why does the zombies seem like an evil native american tribe with white war paint (yes you saw that idea in Westworld the series, and in Bone Tomahawk...), who hesitates and contemplates before eating the mustache guard guy, when we've just learned in the beginning and credits that they replicate and attack everything very fast? Have they somehow evolved? And then why not tell us something interesting about that? How can the zombie leader guy have feelings? That could have been a great story.

And why the hell are the zobies so easy to shoot or decapitate, when patient zero in the box in the beginning could not be killed? No explanation at all!

And those musical montages? Man! I hate this movie so much!

Dave Bautista was in this movie. That was about the only good thing about it. Not that he did much, but at least he has a hard time really sucking in movies.

I wish I could have walked demonstratively out of the cinema, but I watched it at home on Netflix..

Total Recall 2070 (1999)

Welcome home, fellow Philip K Dick and 20th century pop culture fans!

[7/10 · 11 January 2021]

If you like The man in the High Castle, Black Rain, Blade Runner, Alien, Prometheus, WestWorld and Total Recall, this show is for you.

You don't mind a little stiff acting, as long as there is a great sci-fi story and cool special effects.

You can accept some clumsy blocky stating the obvious and spilling the beans storytelling, to get you where you want to go.

You almost like, that the main character looks like Christian Bale and sounds like young Keanu Reeves, while he delivers his stiff Raymond Chandler sounding lines.

Clichés like "that is out of your jurisdiction" and "let's go downtown fo a little chat" makes you smile.

If someone tries to put a little Hannibal Lecter or Roy Batty into their character, that just makes things better, according to you.

You have missed that glossy nineties ad agency way of shooting things, with hard light directly from the side.

And if you can get all of the above, and even some R rated skin exposure too, wrapped in classic cop buddy series form, you don't want to leave until you have consumed the whole thing!

Tenet (2020)

Too few real people

[4/10 · 10 January 2021]

My main problem with this movie is the dead look on Washington's face throuhout the whole movie. He just isn't acting in any convincing way at all. Can he do that at all? Fortunately Robert Pattinson is there some of the time, to loosen things up a bit. Not much life in Debicki as well, though a little better than Washington. Put a beard on her and she might be just as bad. Branagh as your typical eastern european bad guy is just lughable. I actually laughed myself and thought "oh no, not again" when I heard the word oligark mentioned in the movie. Story and special effects are pretty much what you would expect from someone just trying to make an Inception 2. Actually it mostly feels like a cheap chinese knock off of Inception.

The Exigency (2019)

Looks and sounds awful, but has a fine story

[5/10 · 12 August 2020]

It is like watching a cut scene in a 15 year old video game, and while waiting for your turn to play, you get to like the engaging story.

The voice actors are not really acting together, just delivering their lines, somewhat dry. Fortunately there is some humour and fun here and there to lighten things up. The animation and looks of everything is just dated and ugly. Especially the characthers' shiny white strange teeths as they speak are annoying. External scenery, without any living things in it, are quite good.

The story is simple and full of clichés, and remind you of some action flick from the VHS era around 1987, but it suits the corny animation and acting just fine.

It would be great to see it as a real feature film at some time. Dwayne Johnson could be Kyle, Timothy Oliphant could play Diedrick, and John C Rielly could play King Sargon. If you can sit through dated badly animated movies like Havoc in Heaven or Akira, you will have a good time with this too.

Starcrash (1978)

I love this movie!

[8/10 · 8 February 2019]

This is one of the best "bad" movies ever, where everything is just laughable and a lot of fun, making you uncertain if anybody ever meant seriously that it would make a good movie. It is definately up there with "Death Race 2000" and "Troll 2"!

The cast is just wonderful, the special effect and costumes colourful, and the whole story just does not make sense. I especially like the hilbilly robot and Joe Spinell as the bad guy.

Watch it! You will not be disapointed.