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robhdean
Reviews
Love, Death & Robots: Beyond the Aquila Rift (2019)
Premise & Reveal fine, but crassly executed
If you have no problems with utterly gratuitous female nudity, you'll enjoy this a lot more than I did. It put me in mind of the SNL skit of a Game of Thrones script team on which there was a teenage boy who simply suggested more naked women every time he was asked his opinion.
The script & voice acting were perhaps intended to seem mannered & stilted, given the plot, but just came across to me as jarringly awkward. I particularly noticed the constant use of Christian names in dialogue when in natural conversation they are not used to nearly that extent: it became odd & irritating.
Slow Horses: Failure's Contagious (2022)
Implausible plot flaw killed it for me
This opens with a dramatic airport action scene which is later purported to have been a 'training event'. This was so implausible as a training event, and so fundamental to the setup, that I don't trust this series with any more of my time. The characters tended towards one-dimensional caricatures, the boss of the dingy office absurdly and overstatedly so to the point of parody.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
A dismal sequel to an enjoyable movie.
I first had this feeling while watching 'Back to the Future 2' - of having paid to watch a sequel that is little more than a cynical set-up for the third movie to come.
Plotwise, there is no overall 'good idea' behind this movie, just a lot of unspectacular CGI 'spectacle'. Ironically, it was Depp's very amusing & engaging character, not CGI, which made the first movie the likable pantomime it was. In this second film his character is buried under the untidy plot & expensive but unexciting FX - Jack is a less vivid and engaging character here. It's a bit like meeting someone for the second time & realising they are not as charming, funny or quirky as first impressions had made them. Not Depp's fault: his character is servant to set-piece scenes at the cost of any coherence.
After all the untidy set-up, even this half-aside plot is left unresolved: you have to pay again for '3' to have any hope of that. The final nail in the coffin is the appearance, right at the end, of a character who was so conclusively disposed of in the first film that it's an affront even to pantomime-level plotting for him to re-appear.
It's really not too strong to say I was disgusted by this movie - it felt so thin & so cynical, so determined to show as little of it's hand as possible so as to protect the franchise.