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steven-brown487
Reviews
Shark Side of the Moon (2022)
WTAF did I just watch! Lol
Look, it's an Asylum movie. Terrible plot, passable acting and 20yr old FX. Just what you want from a movie so bad but you have to see through to the end! Best watched with a drink or a smoke. You know what I mean.
This one has no recognisable name which was a worry but everyone that is in it, does their best. How these guys keep a straight face is a marvel.
So many ridiculous scenes but the basking shark attack is a stand out, or the prison break, or maybe even the interrogation scene!
It's been a while since I watched any Asylum movies (did a Sharknado marathon which took it out of me), but I'm gonna have a catch up coz they're hilarious.
Prey (2022)
It's a pretty decent film and a good Predator movie
I'll keep it short. Very well shot, well acted, well scripted and for a movie about Comanche v Predator, believable. Yes. Believable. Very little "oh please" moments.
This is a bloody good film and definitely deserved a theatrical release.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022)
The Star Trek we've been waiting for.
I'll keep it short. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. This is pure Trek. Well written, serious when it needs to be, humorous when not. The acting is stellar, it's well casted with a diverse Bridge crew who's names you remember.
There are funny episodes, some that break the heart and enough callbacks to TOS to keep diehard Trekkers happy.
It's great. Anson Mount as Pike, what a job he's doing. Chapel, Spock, Uhura, Kirk all given reverence by their respective actors who honour the original cast but make the roles their own.
Lots of little Easter eggs and subtleties that, if you know your Trek, you'll love.
Can't wait for season 2.
The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
Please, please stop.
I'm sorry but Hollywood, can you just stop with these garbage reboots, sequels etc?
I watched this as a four movie session with the first three. Why? Why did I do this? The first is classic, the next two are solid sequels and then I watched this...
While not technically spoilers, I will say this, if you know anything about how modern movies are being written, you'll know everything about this film going in. Add a touch of Disney Star Wars, a smidgeon of Terminator Dark Fate, a drop of Bill & Ted Face the Music and a big chunk of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and there you are.
After I saw a human, high five a robot, I gave up and pretty much scrolled through my phone till the "inevitable" ending.
Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)
This, is the movie you were waiting for...
"Josstice" League was poor. We know it. A movie butchered, rewritten, reshot, slashed and edited into an almost incoherent mess. We won't go into why, it's been said a thousand times. It's out there, it's done.
Very rarely do we get a second chance with movies. Happened with the Exorcist prequel. In that instance, both movies turned out to be bland.
Not this. No, this is a great movie. Plotholes erased, a true sequel to BvS (ultimate edition), a proper plot. Its not a different movie, the good bits from Josstice are still here. Even Whedon knew to keep them in. It's 80% identical plot, just done differently.
The main two heroes, Batman and Superman are really on the back burner with much more plot given to Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Flash but especially Cyborg. The beating heart and pathos of the film. Ray Fisher gives soul to his role without descending into self pity. Ezra Miller too is far more rounded and a lot less cowardly than the other variation.
Are there flaws? A few, some CG is a bit substandard but Snyder was working with a far reduced budget so no blame there. I didn't like the aspect ratio of 4.3. Its a pure IMAX ratio but does not suit a home TV. Luckily I could zoom the picture in to the edge of my TV screen and thankfully Snyder has framed all credits and action to allow that.
It ties in beautifully with BvS and the epilogue? Holy moley. We need a sequel and it needs to be to this movie. This movie needs to be made canon and all that follow need to follow this movies threads. I've seen all the DCU movies (except Birds of Prey, I had to turn that off) and none of them make this movie apocryphal. More please!
Psycho Goreman (2020)
Throwback to the 80s...
I liked this. Has more than a hint of "The Monster Squad" about it, throw in "The Gate", "Power Rangers", and the like and you've got a movie for a Saturday afternoon.
A real 80s vibe with the practical effects, stop motion, rubber costumes and lask of CGI.
And the chemistry/hate between Goreman and the kids is great. The young girl is fantastic and chews through more scenery than Al Pacino!
Spoorloos (1988)
Really?
I'm getting a bit tired of reading reviews for these supposed "art" movies, that are all 10/10. It's not good. Pompous, drawn out, incredibly implausible, very, very dated, I could go on.
It's not frightening, not at all. It starts very well but my goodness, it drags on. And the shock ending? Really? Give over. If that gives people nightmares, see a shrink.
I've given it 4, for the acting. I'm gonna watch the remake. Maybe I'll be the only person that prefers that one...
An American Werewolf in London (1981)
The greatest werewolf movie ever made...
Scared me witless as a kid. Now, what a movie. What a transformation! Nearly 40yrs later, it still hasn't been bettered.
Perfect jump scares, fan(g)tastic FX, a love story, the blackest comedy streak and a top notch cast who give it 100%
The ideal movie for turning out the lights and if you get the chance to watch it with someone who's not seen it or even better, YOU haven't seen it, someone's in for a treat.
Impractical Jokers: The Movie (2020)
Not a patch on the show
I've now seen three different formats of Impractical Jokers. TV show, movie and I actually went to see them live on stage. Let me tell you, the only way to enjoy them is the TV show. It's so odd. The TV show is hilarious. The live show was terrible. And this? Is very, very boring. Their format only works as a series. This movie is disjointed, badly acted, clichéd and boring.
Richard Jewell (2019)
Another Eastwood tour de force...
Eastwood simply doesn't make bad movies.
Tackling the true story of the Atlanta bombing, he handles it without sensationalism, without grandstanding. Every actor is outstanding. He teases these performances out of an excellent cast. Hamm, Wilde, Bates and Rockwell are all fantastic but the film belongs to Paul Walter Hauser as the eponymous Jewell. Never seen him before but he owns every scene he's in, acting this mini ensemble off of the screen in the process. Utterly captivating performance.
Those performances along with Eastwood's trademark languishing direction make this a must watch.
Friends (1994)
For me the best American sitcom ever made.
I've seen every episode at least three times. Once when it aired, then when we borrowed the dvds, and now streaming. I think it's fantastic. It simply doesn't have a bad episode, sure there are stand outs but quality from first to last.
Great characters, great casting, brilliant writing, stand out supporting cast (keep your eye on Gunther, in the background in the episode where Joey keeps hitting Ross in Central Perk). Yeah, sometimes you can see the twist, or the plot ending a mile away but it's the journey to those punchlines.
Has it dated? A bit (certainly the fashions!) but for a show that had one of the first same sex weddings on tv, dealt with surrogacy, fidelity, sexual expression, female empowerment (the women frequently got the upper hand on the guys) and in which the male stars fought for their female colleagues to get equal pay you can't deny it was ahead of its time.
Star Trek: Picard (2020)
And it started so good...
What on earth happened? I left a review for the first episode which I found fantastic. Great TV, it felt like ST, it was a new adventure, it was going to new places....and then it stopped.
Nothing of note has happened since Ep 2. Utter tripe. Honestly, watch the first two then, I'm guessing you can watch the last episode or two. No series arc, nothing. Clichéd characters, rehashed stories, Seven brought in for no reason whatsoever and don't get me started on the Irish Romulans (cheeky Really?).
Just like The Mandalorian, (another series where we didn't really progress from Ep 1 to the finale) it's style over substance. There are some redeeming factors, Alison Pill is revealing some interesting characteristics and you can't deny Stewart's charisma but if I hear Michelle Hurd's character refer to Picard as "JL" once more...
I'm losing faith with TV shows (and movies to be fair) at the moment. Remember groundbreaking stuff such as Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones (without the last season), Westworld season 1, The Sopranos, the first two Doctors in Doctor Who, even going back to Friends, Seinfeld and Frasier.
Nothing "grips" you anymore.
QI: Quads and Quins (2020)
Dear BBC...
Dear BBC
After watching another thrillingly entertaining and educational episode of Q.I., I noticed that your guest, Nish Kumar, didn't mention Donald Trump, Brexit or the colour of his skin.
Could you tell me, was he ill?
Regards
A TV Licence fee payer.
Gisaengchung (2019)
I think a bit of virtue signalling has surfaced here...
Please stop with all this "best film ever made" rubbish. No one can see your profile, you're anonymous, it's pointless.
It's not bad. I have no idea how well its acted as I can't speak Korean. And I'm guessing, neither can most here. They could be hammy as heck for all I know.
It's quite original, and certainly well scripted. It's also a little far fetched. Well, a lot actually.
Listen, it is good. Is it gonna make you rethink "world cinema" (ridiculous term)? Not if it was never on your radar.
Dracula (2020)
Don't watch episode 3...
Amazing first episode. Gothic, scary, brilliant casting, and decent plot twists.
Second episode had a lot to live up to and does, just. Great characters kept this one interesting.
And then episode 3? WTF? Actually had to turn it off, it's that bad. Utter tripe.
Using Stoker's source material for the first two episodes, albeit loosely, is a good idea. Then doing a "Game of Thrones" and trying to outwrite him for the third was ridiculous.
Please don't make a season 2.
The Mandalorian (2019)
The Meh' Dalorian
Am I missing something or has expectation for something decent from Disney SW hit such lows that we'll praise anything that's not the recent movies?
This is boring. It looks fantastic, but the plots are risible. We've ended the season without progressing from episode 1. Plot arcs unanswered, he's the worst bounty hunter in the Galaxy I mean, he gets double crossed and beaten up every episode, the scripting is poor too.
Bill Burr was brilliant but he always is, as was Gina Carano and Carl Weathers, Mando himself is one note.
Star Wars is moribund, Rebels was good but that got up its own towards the end, the last two movies can crawl in a Sarlaac pit and die. I had high hopes for this but it never got me going. Not terrible just very, very boring.
Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
Well, it's an ending at least...
As I've said before about these divisive movies, any 1s or 2s and 9s or 10s are nonsense. It's not that bad or that good.
I'm a lifelong SW nut, TFA was decent enough, the prequels were good, the originals awesome, The Mandalorian is a bit boring, Rogue One was great, Solo not bad and TLJ was garbage. There, that's my opinion. This is somewhere in between.
As a SW movie it's not the worst, by a long shot. It looks and sounds great, has some great action sequences but suffers from too much macguffin plotting and clichéd dialogue. Everyone in it gives their all, fair enough. This, without the ending would've been a decent sequel to TLJ, a nice filler movie I suppose but as a curtain closer for an entire 42yr, 12 movie (including Clone Wars) arc, it's disappointing. Does it have a lot of fan service? Yes, yes it does but know this, without franchise fans, the studios wouldn't get funding for more movies so looking after the fans has to be high on your priority list.
Will I watch this again? Yes, definitely. It certainly isn't boring and more importantly, unlike TLJ, it feels like SW.
That said, please no more. The same goes for Terminator, Bond, etc. Please Hollywood, more original stuff.
Joker (2019)
Really? This is what all the fuss is about....
Sorry but it's not that great a movie. There, I said it. I was so looking forward to this.
"It angers, it may incite incels, white man bad, Joaquin Phoenix deserves an oscar, it's Taxi Driver for our generation..." lots of left/right politic baiting which is right up my street...yet....
Sorry but no. It's not a bad movie by any measure and Phoenix is good but it's not groundbreaking and certainly doesn't deserve an Oscar. I believed the hype about how good this was and it didn't live up to my expectation. Pretty much zero plot, too long and with a boring mid section. Like I said, Phoenix is a great actor and this is a one man show throughout and he is good but it's just aimless. It won't be getting a rewatch from me.
Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
Not the sequel you're hoping for but not a mess either.
OK, straight out off the bat. It's OK. That's it. Any 1,2,3 out of 10 or 8,9,10 out of 10 reviews, in my opinion are biased. It's simply not that good or bad.
Arnie and Hamilton are the worst things in it by far. Luna is perfectly acceptable as the Rev-9 but Reyes and Davis are very good, especially Davis. She's a flawed character and completely believable. Arnie is unnecessary comedy value and Hamilton is a nasty piece of work. Completely unlikeable. I wasn't rooting for Sarah Connor anymore. She maybe has reason, which brings me to the spoilers...
The treatment of John Connor is appalling. We invested in his mythos in all the movies and to dispense of him like this movie does, is a travesty.
I'm not a fan of mid movie reboots, (Halloween, Superman Returns etc). It's sci-fi, you can create any reason for the changed timelines. Say Connor somehow created alternate timelines and this is just another. Avengers Endgame used this method to get around it's own time line mess and it works.
Would I watch this or T3? T3, by a country mile. Salvation had some good additions to the Connor saga and Genysis was just terrible. This is on a par with Salvation.
That said, please make no more.
Game of Thrones: The Iron Throne (2019)
Eh?
Poor, poor ending to TV's best show. I know you have to wrap stuff up from the previous 7 seasons but how can you not tie up lose threads from the last episode?
Arya rode off on Shadowfax (borrowed from LOTR) last week. Where was he? And what happened to her broken nose? Fixed, then broke again, then fixed again.
I hope Sophie Turner wasn't paid by the word this season.
How has Bronn ever shown himself to be good enough with money to be put in charge of the finances of the realm?
Nice to see six tonnes of fallen masonry didn't smash Jamie and Cercei's faces in.
To be honest, there is so much more more wrong with this season but I can't be bothered anymore. These are just niggles from last night.
There was some beautiful imagery. The dragon wings behind Dany, a highlight. But some of the other VFX, were they standing in front of PS2 generated green screen in some scenes?
Terrible end to a great show. I'll read all the books once they're completed for proper closure.
Gotham: Legend of the Dark Knight: The Beginning... (2019)
Disappointing end to a great TV show.
Sorry but this was not a good finale. But the season as a whole was a bit of a mess. Trying to include their version of No Man's Land, introduce Bane, pass the torch to the true Joker, show us Nyssa (?, surely Talia!) Al Ghul and more into just 11 episodes was too much and the whole thing was too crammed and left too much for the end.
Then to this shambles. Would it have been too much to show the GCPD searchlight restored WITH the bat logo unknowingly affixed, showing us that iconic scene in Gotham's, smoggy sky? And how hard can it be to obtain permission to use the name Joker? Gordon should've kept the tache too. No one, save his kid has aged 10yrs. Selina doesn't count as she's played by a different actress. Camren Bicondova had piled so much weight on she couldn't possibly play a lithe cat burglar capable of moving between laser beams and infra red detectors but it could've been edited so it looked like she could. Was that a kick in the teeth or what? Doesn't send out a positive message to other actors. David Mazouz wasn't in the show, was that to balance it out? And the less said about that batsuit, the better.
Plus points? Kudos for fattening up The Penguin, giving Riddler a decent suit/costume. The new look "Joker" was great but what's with the psuedo British accent! And Batman's voice was exactly what it should be.
As for the actual plot? There's wasn't one. Clichéd and done a dozen times before. A crap end to what has been one of the best examples of televisions dominance in the last 10yrs.
Captain Marvel (2019)
Not as bad or good as you've heard.
First up, I'm gonna promise to keep the politics out of this review. Any 9s or 10s you read are false as are the 1s and 2s. Forget the identity politics that came along with this film.
As an "introduction movie" into the MCU it ticks all the usual boxes. The effects are what you'd expect, the storyline is exactly what you'd expect and you can second guess the dialogue a mile away. It takes no chances at all. It's light stuff, as Ragnarok was, but that's what is needed with the upcoming, emotion charged Avengers: Endgame just around the corner.
It serves its purpose of introducing Carol Danvers to the MCU, it tries to have some fun along the way. It does have an underlying agenda, but it's nowhere near as overt as you would be led to believe. Samuel L. Jackson is the absolute stand out, Clark Gregg has little to do and the less said about the cat the better. Larson herself? She's fine. Just fine. Her dialogue is mostly bad but that's no fault of hers. She does seem a bit miscast but with a better plot and writing probably could've made a better fist of it.
I'll be honest, it's better than I thought it would be. It's certainly better than Aquaman, which I thought was terrible (and I am a massive DC fan, yes, you can like both!). It's better than Thor: The Dark World. And way better than Gaurdians of the Galaxy 2.
It's not a 7/10 but better than the 6/10 I've given it. I wanted to give 6.5 but IMDB doesn't allow that.
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Quite possibly, the best movie ever made.
I cannot emphasise how good this movie is. It's ridiculously brilliant. The plotting, pace, script, acting, FX. The screen time given to each, of what must be the biggest ensemble of A List stars ever, is nothing short of miraculous.
The film is above and beyond the usual superhero fare, the villain, Thanos, is expertly envisioned, played and brought to life by Josh Brolin and is quite possibly the best movie villain ever.
As you can imagine, I am biased. I obviously love the genre but that's irrelevant. Before this movie came along, the 1933 version of King Kong was my favourite movie. It may still be when the Marvel Cinematic Universe runs its course but this movie, at the moment, is at No 1.
How on earth can Avengers: Endgame top it?
Bonehill Road (2017)
Does exactly what the cast & crew wanted to
Good werewolf films are like rocking horse dung. Honestly, you need to go back to the early 80s to see a decent one (three actually).
This is a very low budget flick that trounces most wolf flicks from the last 25yrs. It's in the same vein as Dog Soldiers and Ginger Snaps, which is praise indeed and has a far better wolf transformation than either of them.
The director is well steeped with modern horror classics and the influence from a variety of movies is there from the John Carpenter font, the "howl" from An American Werewolf in London", the song Blue Moon being played, and a great "Dawn of the Dead" reference, among others.
Kudos for giving each werewolf a slightly different look and as for that transformation? Well done for showing it to be as terrifying and as painful as it would be and not a pixel of CGI in there.
Stay tuned for the end of credits sting too.