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Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (2016)
Is it a masterpiece? Of course, you get to press X a lot after all.
All the hype worked. Picked it up as soon as possible for lots of cash. No one to blame except myself, but..
OK, this started promising. Nice storytelling with strong voice acting interwoven with interesting game-play. The graphics are good but that was never one of my main concerns since I'm more interested in immersive game-play. Now it's really hard to say when this whole thing went to hell. At some point the stealth/action segments became boring and repetitive especially since the enemy AI is unbelievably dumb. The whole jumping/grappling mechanic was pretty much useless from the start and becomes very stale soon and rather annoying towards the end. figuring out your way towards the next objective or the puzzles, which are easy for the most part are a total waste of time. why would companies fill their AAA games with stuff that's simply not fun to do? As the game progressed the story and dialogue deteriorated as well giving us the shallow, insipid equivalent of a run-of-the-mill action blockbuster. By chapter 17 (there's 22)I just wanted to finish this damn game and be done with it. There are some fun elements to this one, but they're few and far between. I could think of dozens of games that came out since 2011 that are far superior to this one so I'm baffled at the praise. One must have really low standards to love this.
The Man in the High Castle: The New World (2015)
Ersatz
I'm rather fond of Philip K. Dicks novel which, if maybe not creating a meticulously detailed alternative history, but creating a compelling framework for a rich story in which deep characters engage with each others and face their inner struggles.
This first part of this "adaption" is anything but. They mangled the story, only picking up bits and pieces that are disjointed, creating a half-assed attempt of a Dystopian society, that has hardly any resemblance to the book and that is ultimately hollow and totally useless. The characters and dialogs are shallow and insipid. The Backdrop of the Axis having won the war is barely touched upon, but of course Adolf is still in power instead of Martin Borman (probably because most Americans never heard of him.) Certain twists based on the novel are presented already in the pilot, but instead of creating suspense, the makers rob themselves of character development and creation of suspense for further episodes.
The novel deserves a faithful adaption and maybe an intelligent filmmaker will eventually tackle it. this is TV trash.
The Rum Diary (2011)
you blew it Mr. Robinson
I read the book more than ten years ago so I am hardly qualified to judge if this adaption is faithful to the original, but from what I remember and am told, it is not. I remember some flashes of brilliance in Thompsons early novel but of course they're not featured in this film.
Why? Because the director Bruce Robinson who apparently used up all his directorial firepower in "Withnail & I" chose to pursue a disjointed and haphazardly crammed vision of this book or even HST himself. I'm a huge fan of Thompson, so don't give me this "If you're a fan of HST you'll love this" crap, which is probably just marketing on IMDb.
The comedic elements don't work. Neither does the love story or the rest of it for that matter. Depp, who normally can add some depth to even the most mundane and disposable idea seems lost in this one, which he probably felt was an obligation to Hunter.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro goes the saying and this proponent of the weird sez: this movie sucks.