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thomasshahbaz
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Good Girls (2018)
Tame
Remember how Breaking Bad was a way better version of Weeds? Well this is a slightly more lame version of either of them.
It's so tame as to lack any semblance of credibility.
Three seasons of the same thing over and over again, although in the third they've really ramped down the drama and tension by removing the sensual frisson, leaving only bad choices and more bad choices.
Apparently the sweet girl whose foresight in locking her phone meant a grisly exhumation had more savvy than one of our girls whose phone is stolen by an fbi agent and seemingly has no security measures. I mean, come on, this is unnaceptahle.
Must try harder! Or don't bother maybe.
The Midnight Gospel (2020)
High-concept in every sense
Genius.
Some will hate it, saying it doesn't make sense, but it makes enough sense to be beautiful, crazy fun.
And bravo for not being pretentious too.
Lords of Chaos (2018)
Not scary, not shocking, not tense.
Fantastic acting by Culkin, very poor casting of Christian, everyone else mediocre.
Pretty baffling mixture of accents. The band are American, the journalists are Scandinavian, the townsfolk are Norwegian, the news readers are English, all of which serves to take you that one step further out-of the film.
Could have been half an hour long.
Little Fires Everywhere (2020)
Just about watchable despite the array of unlikeables
There's a fine line between flawed humanity and deplorable antagonism on the big and small screen.
Here we have the latter. There's so little to like about any of the main characters that I began not to care. With the exception of Pearl and Izzy (and I'd say Bebe if she weren't so one-dimensional) I'm not rooting for anyone.
It's difficult to know without reading the book whether Mia is meant to be so unpalatable, but I can't help but agree with other reviews that her resting acrid-sanctimony face is too much, as it's omnipresent.
Can't help but feel te they've made a mess of worthy literature but those who've read it will know for sure.
I've updated my rating since seeing the finale, which is prime, eye-rolling, ridiculous melodrama. The line "was I the bird, or was I the cage?" alone makes the whole thing merit one star.
Such a let down.
Paddington (2014)
Fantastic entertainment
Strikes the right balance of humour, wit, heart and peril for everyone of all ages to enjoy.
Not only does every joke land, there are many side-splitting moments that will have you hooting and slapping your thigh.
The cgi is unparalleled, i.e. you don't even think about the fact it's cgi.
The one weak link is Nicole Kidman, but it doesn't matter. She's pretty lacklustre, never really seeming menacing, more vacuous and pretty, exactly as she was in the antagonist role in The Golden Compass, and her poor performance really does stand out as bad among the fabulous work of everyone else.
If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)
Saccharin sentimentality in a world unlike our own
As others have said, I wanted to like this. I had very high expectations after the amazing Moonlight, and was sorely shocked and disappointed. The crass sentimentality reminded me of such schmaltz as Hotel Rwanda (particularly Wyclef crowing "if there's a United States of America why can't there be a United States of Africa" VOM!).
The heavy, repetitive string score also surprised me, as I loved the score for Moonlight.
All in all, they've taken worthy subject matter and made it difficult to watch, and immediately forgettable.
Marriage Story (2019)
Meh
Basically a very good quality TV movie.
It didn't move me to tears, nor was my heart wrenched because I loved the main characters so.
I enjoyed the excruciating black humour of the scene with the observer at the dad's apartment, but had to wait a long time for that gem of a moment, then sadly this was undone by the dreadful musical ending.
I'm sure this all rings true to rich Americans who once got divorced, but to the rest of us I don't think there's much to hook us in.
The Irishman (2019)
Painfully boring and pointless
Over and over again the same thoughts kept running through my head.
Why do we need another saga about terrible people doing awful things?
Who the hell are these people? There are so many to keep track of, none of whom are particularly well fleshed out.
Oh my god, there's still hours left.
Please make it stop.
Suspiria (2018)
Such a shame
Three stars for the first hour. After building some promise, it becomes ridiculous, pretentious garbage. You feel like it's difficult to follow, then realise there's nothng to follow. No tension, no meaning, no frar, no story, nothing. All at a punishing runtime.
Dracula (2020)
Where to begin
Embarrassing accents, terrible jokes, not at all scary, ridiculous modernisation despite classic setting.
A special nod goes to Joanna Scanlan whose accent and acting are so dire, so cringe worthy that I struggled not to turn it off every time she spoke. Like others involved, she's come a long way down from the heady days of success (in her case in The Thick of It and Getting On).
Warning bells as to how bad this would be can be seen in the last few Sherlock episodes, especially the one with the sister.
I'm all for reinventing something which has been hackneyed to death already, but this is truly risible.
The Conjuring (2013)
Zzzzzzzzz
I lost count of how many doors slam, rattle, close, open, move, slam, creak, slam, open slowly, open fast, eurgh just kill me.
In the positive side you have good acting and none of the usual eye-rolling stupidity seen in horror films, but this is not scary and it is boring. So boring.
There's not a single original element.
While most of the characters are fairly credible, the teenagers are super brattish, especially at the beginning, which personally made me not care a jot what they went through, which was mostly the aforementioned door kinetics.
Oh also you've got your creepy music box, demonic doll, etc etc.
If you want to watch a good supernatural horror, watch The Witch.
Crawl (2019)
Terrible
Given the length and successes of Aja's career you'd think he'd avoid churning out by-the-numbers crap like this.
Everything lacks thought. Characters are one-dimensional and seem more like parodies of Americans from films through the ages. The script is ridiculous and made me want everyone to die from the outset.
Various clanging expositiony lines jar throughout, but the worst thing is that they all provide insight whcih is pointless and only serves to make the characters seem more vacuous and stereotyped.
The score is so bland and generic it could have been taken from countless other films.
Just awful. Why bother?
A Quiet Place (2018)
So many gaping, yawning holes.
With a film such as this, based on a premise which practically ejaculates forth with plot holes, it needs to be really damn good so you don't think about the holes.
This is not the case with A Quiet Place. I found myself getting more and more angry that the film got the go-ahead. I won't repeat the many, many flaws mentioned by other reviewers, but thank god there are some genuine new horror classics being made by the likes of Mike Flanagan, Ari Aster and Robert Eggers. This, Bird-Box and any other such mindless dross can be consigned to the dustbin of mediocrity disguised as good film-making.
Midsommar (2019)
Review of director's cut
I don't get all the one star reviews. This film isn't terrible. In fact there's a vast amount of merit here, albeit alongside heapings of tripe.
Positives:
- beautiful, masterful cinematography.
- fantastic score.
- top-notch acting.
- claustrophobic levels of dread akin to Hereditary.
- believable dialogue.
- intricate and interesting plot / themes. Having read many other reviews berating the film for the lack of proper themes or story, I couldn't disagree more.
Negatives:
- as the boyfriend guy is such a huge at every stage of the way, I absolutely don't buy that the other characters would give him the time of day. Why aren't his pals calling him out on the despicable way he treats his girlfriend?
- sadly, for a film so lovingly crafted, there are so many baffling acts (or a lack of logical ones). Are we really meant to swallow that three of the group witness horrifying suicides then say nothing to the fourth guy, and that immediately afterwards two of them argue over their PhDs? Ridiculous.
- the recurring head-gore trick as seen in Hereditary. I mean, yeah, OK once is effective, but it's exactly the same trick used again here, taking me out of the film to be offended by the gratuitous nature of its repetition.
- I can take one scene of OTT sobbing, but several? No. Not everyone cries like that, and even if they do, surely not every single time they cry. Very jarring.
- an incredibly secretive cult sends EVERY one of its members to live elsewhere in the world as a rite of passage? Nope.
- continuing the tradition black guy being the first of our "heroes" to die. Zzzzzzzz. Also, the only other two minotry characters are "disappeared" before anyone else.
The Morning Show (2019)
Gripping
Aniston has to be one of the most sorely underrated actors of her generation. She devestates in every single scene of this. Everyone is seamless, in fact. This is a welcome breath of fresh, realistic air in a TV world filled with supernatural claptrap and superhero dross. OK so I've only seen episode one but I have nothing negative to say about it. Bingeworthy indeed.
Now on episode three, this is really becoming something special. Using drama to debate the sides of me-too really exposed the naivety and entitlement of the toxic male, but it's never preachy and never expositional. The writing is supremely intelligent and witty, the casting perfect and the acting gobsmacking. This is a real TV gem which could stand out as my favourite show of the decade.
His Dark Materials (2019)
Looks great, but....
The highest of production values and a true feel of the books, which is an achievement not to be sniffed at.
Sadly, there are many plummy, Rada types here. Every character that should sound working class instead sounds like mummy and daddy have sent them to the best academies before boosting them up through the echelons of cronyism. Even Dafne Keen, brilliant in Logan, is reduced to forcing out an "ain't" which sounds so misplaced, so wrong, against her well-spoken acting voice.
Clarke Peters is straining so hard to do an English accent that he sounds like his jaw has been wired shut. Why bother? I'm not sure it would have mattered that much if he'd just been American.
There really is some dreadful acting, but from actors who are capable of so much more. I can only put this down to the quite jarring, expositional dialogue (really, really eye-roll inducing and terribly difficult to listen to.... "is this airship like the one my parents died in?" etc etc), but James McAvoy in particular is abysmal and seems capable of one tone, one facial expression.
Living with Yourself (2019)
Generic, vacuous Netflix dross
It's got the standard white main characters and array of ethnic sub-characters.
It's got the highly irritating, repetitive, bleepy soundtrack which accompanies all such crap (Maniac).
It's got the highly irritating, semi-retro, semi-neon aesthetic which accompanies all such crap (Maniac). In fact the synth soundtrack may be the most insufferable score ever created for a TV show. It sounds like someone sampled loops from 90s computer games then stitched them into a progrock, headache inducing nightmare. And I'm a fan of electronica and synths.
It's got the robotic, oriental, creepy scientists which are racistly present in all such crap (Maniac).
Shall i go on? I certainly could.
One positive thing is Aisling Bea. Her acting defacates all over the rest and she chews up the screen and spits it out. Can't wait to see her in something good.
Marianne (2019)
I don't get the rave reviews.
This slickly produced (maybe even over-produced) Netflix horror has every single cliché going.
Creepy kids singing to dissonant echoey music, check.
Gross old lady, check.
Creepy door-handle turning slowly in close-up, check.
Characters behaving in an utterly, bafflingly ridiculous manner, check.
Plinky plonky piano score churned out by a hack, check.
Blah blah blah
Why is it so hard to do anything original with horror? Or maybe the question should be why is this type of generic fare still being financed?
Barry (2018)
Mediocre
Starts of (series 1) as a sort of reverse Breaking Bad, and it has moments of brilliance. The characterisation is solid for the most part, and even irritating characters are rounded enough not to be too tiresome
However three main problems I have:
1) The best character by far (Janice) is killed off too soon.
2) It's yet another white-fest with minimal ethnic representation, no gays or any other LGBTQ representation.
3) As soon as the zombie/flying child thing gets going they completely lost me. This was a woefully missed opportunity to inject a blistering amount of humanity into a faltering plot, but instead it becomes comic-book farce. I can only think the writers ran out of steam and so decided to veer into a different genre. Unsuccessfully.
The Perfection (2018)
Utterly ridiculous
It's a shame, as the first third had me gripped. But the film suffers from terrible dialogue, terrible acting and wafer thin characters behaving ridiculously.
The script could have been written by some 15 year old stoner with a thirst for revenge porn, and the shocks are badly orchestrated, making some of them inappropriately funny.
Netflix seems intent on churning out endless crap with high production values, and why in god's name they have this film labelled LGBTQ is beyond anyone's guess
Awful.
Happy! (2017)
Full of promise, but ultimately running out of steam
What starts as an exciting, witty, dark, hugely original gore-fest sadly peters out by the last two episodes into a boring, vacuous hack-job. The story lasted well for six or so episodes, but all of the sparkle, wit and originality is gone by the last two episodes, and we're left with a drab, familiar few scenes of actors repeatedly saying/calling/shouting each others' names and running along Batman set pieces. This is a real shame. Gone is the blistering dialogue and laugh-out-loud humour.
The Predator (2018)
An utter waste of talent
A true dog's dinner. Almost nothing makes sense, and what does make sense is perforated by gaping holes and inconsistencies, stupidity and unbelievably ridiculous dialogue.
The House That Jack Built (2018)
The second worst film I've seen in full (after Mother!)
It's hard to know where to start.
I didn't find the violence particularly affecting, shocking or brutal. Everything about this film left me cold. The closest I got to feeling something was building irritation at the irritating nature of the dialogue, lack of characterisation, lack of plot, ridiculous fantasy ending and pseudo-intellectual mumbo-jumbo we're lectured with endlessly from start to end.
Actually I'm annoyed at myself for even writing this review.
Hereditary (2018)
I thought this was a masterpiece until.....
This film grabs you by the heart, then twists, squeezes and chokes you until you think you can't bear it any more. The visceral, cloying nature of the horror is masterfully executed, and the first shock, about 20 minutes in, might make you cry, be sick, or both. Toni Colette gives us her best performance, which is really the be all and end all of the film, as, whilst the other actors are good, she devours the screen and then spits it out in a nuanced, devastating explosion of emotions, both restrained and unfettered.
BUT... the last 20 mins or so should never have been made, as we reach levels of ridiculous (LaBute) Wicker Man hilarity which, for me, totally ruin the entire endeavor. Most of the audience were howling with laughter during the denouement, which at my most generous I could deem to be a deliberate release from the preceding, relentless suffocation, but I doubt this is really the case. I think they were trying to do a Rosemary's Baby, and it fails.
Happy! (2017)
Full of promise, but ultimately running out of steam
What starts as an exciting, witty, dark, hugely original gore-fest sadly peters out by the last two episodes into a boring, vacuous hack-job. The story lasted well for six or so episodes, but all of the sparkle, wit and originality is gone by the last two episodes, and we're left with a drab, familiar few scenes of actors repeatedly saying/calling/shouting each others' names and running along Batman set pieces. This is a real shame. Gone is the blistering dialogue and laugh-out-loud humour.