Reviews

This is a powerful and dramatic retelling of the classic monster film that created an entire genre'. I've heard some people calling it best film of the year. Well, I don't agree with that. But it is definitely a great film and the best Godzilla film since the original. It makes Godzilla a monster again; a majestically horrifying and unrelenting force hellbent on destroying humanity. Just like the original. Over the decades the iconic beast has become a sort of anti-hero; showing up to fight other monsters and perhaps take out a few cities in the process. Gone was the sheer terror of its arrival. But GMO fixed that. And this Godzilla has weight... I mean when it moves and smashes buildings, you feel the impact of those moments. But perhaps the greatest thing about this film is the humans. These are not vapid peripheral characters put there just to take up screen time until the monster arrives. These characters have weight too... emotional weight. And they have arcs. No point in me going on about it, it's already getting critical praise. But a last note; I had to sit through 25 minutes of trailers before the film began. And not a one of them generated any interest ot caused a reaction in the theater. I'm not a Hollywood brasher because I know how difficult it is to get a production off the ground... but they better start upping their game. Japan just whupped their collective butts on a fraction of the cost of a typical US blockbuster production.

I started to give this series a 7 but then realized I had just binge-watched the whole thing in one sitting. It's after 1 in the morning and I have to work tomorrow! It was so good I lost track of time. So I have to drop an 8. It's like I wasn't even aware of how captivated I had become. Amazing script and performances. I got so sucked in to the characters I forgot they were actors. There were a few dream-sequences and flashbacks that I thought were a bit too stylized, but that's minuscule stuff. I don't want to go into particulars because I don't want to do a spoiler review, but let's just say it keep you guessing on many fronts, and the reveal is not what I originally thought it would be. A captivating and complex drama and just beautiful film making overall. A truly human story.

How the hell is this riding at a 5/10? This film is an easy 8 but I'm giving it a 9 to buck the trend. It's not the standard fare murder mystery, but a dark examination of the myths, lies and tragic lives that lead to a brutal killing; a portrait of the people involved in the act and the social currents that provoked them. It's one of those little arthouse gems that tends to get bypassed for trending titles. The cinematography is beautifully simple but encompassing at the same time, and the performances are so subtle you might not notice there's some serious acting going on. I'm not in the Scorsese camp of pop-culture bashing, but the fact this film is only riding at a 5 rating suggests something rotten in our aesthetics.

I put this DVD in my cue maybe last year and just finally got around to it tonight. The trailer was intriguing and knowing it was from the director who brought us 'Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind' let me know I woiuld be in for a ride., But seriously, NOTHING could have prepared me for this dazzling surreal love story. I thought about the rating for a while. But I had to give it a 10. Because it's not just visually excellent but they somehow managed to make that bizarre realm beautiful and moving and captivating. No matter how much visual and sonic chaos comes from the screen you never lose sight of the story. There is an art to creating such a surreal world that has it's own consistent internal logic... and then to make it move me this way. I don't know what else to give it. 10/10. Bravo. A keeper.

The promotions for this film labeled it a thriller. But it's not. It's more than that. It's BETTER than that. When I think of a thriller I think of a film that is filled with climactic build ups and fast paced action. I love thrillers. But I also love films like The Village" which is kind of the opposite of a thriller... but in a GOOD way. It's really more a drama; a slow paced slow building film, that, even at it's crescendo, does not even attempt to deliver "thrills". Again I mean that in a GOOD way. Instead of thrills this delivers a thoughtful, metaphorical story about the rise and fall of an outsider with nuance and metaphor and underscored by tragedy. There is probably a lot of subtext I am missing due to cultural differences and my ignorance of Noh Theater. But overall I really like this film. Even though it is slow, there is something taut just beneath the surface. You can tell something is going to snap at any moment. And since it does not follow the standard American style of plot development, you have no idea when that snap is coming. It takes its time getting there but in the end delivers a satisfactory conclusion that doesn't forget any of the characters or their set-ups. And it is beautifully filmed. It's really more of a 7 but I gave it an 8 because it definitely doesn't deserve the 5 it is currently riding at.

This film sort of ruined my night. I was going to catch up on some series I had saved after watching this. But I couldn't watch anythng esle afterwards. I was comletely sated. And grateful. This is one of those films that makes me marvel at the power of cinema. And great acting. A perfect blend of humor, drama and tragedy. This would have been a 10 but for the very last segment which, while I get it and understand it was a necessary part of the story, sort of detracted from the dramatic impact of what I thought was the conclusion. No spoliers but those who aready saw it know what I mean. Gratitude to all who were involved in this amazing piece of work.

The original Swedish film is a horror classic and on my all time favorites list. The American knock off "Let Me In" is tepid entertainment with none of the creative boldness of its predesessor; worthy of one viewing but no conversation starter. This series is surprisingly ok, though I find myself wishing they had just created a new frnachise and left "Let The Right One In" out of it. The story is gradually becoming borderline sci-fi and cumbersome in its long list of characters and intrigues. However, while I am disappointed in the changes that were made to the characters and story, I am (almost reluctantly) enjoying this series. It's a good story, I admit. But when I saw the first billboards I was hoping to see a gritty, realistic continuation of Ellie and Oskar's adventures... or misadventures... that would carry the darkness and moral ambiguity of the original. The changes made to Ellie are my biggest problem since "her" character was so complex in the original. It easily deserves a 7 since I find myself anticipating the next episode, but I gave it a 6 as an admittedly meaningless protest. I am being petty perhaps, but while it's fun to watch, it just doesn't capture the horrific magic of the Swedish original.

UPDATE: When I wrote the above review I was at around ep 3 or 4. I am now at ep8 and the show has been slowly circling the drain for a while. The things I didn't like about it have just become worse and it's turning into a bit of a tepid romance that doesn't seem to know what to do with itself. The initial mistake of writing Ellie as an innocent is blunting the edge of what is already a blunted character. I've gone from anticipating the episodes to just getting around to it later. Downgrade to 5.

I waited for the second episode before writing this because I wanted to give the show another chance. I don't really want to dump on HBO. I know they are hoping to revive the magnificent spectacle that was Game Of Thrones; the international, multi-generational audience, the global watch parties etc.... I wish them the best and hope this show pays off. But I don't think I'll be carrying on. Not because it's bad. I don't really think it's "bad". It's just, as I had feared, a lackluster knock-off. It's what the Hobbit films were to the Lord Of The Rings; an obvious attempt to cash in on a better product by trying (and failing) to do more of the same. I find it a little ironic that people who trashed the last season of GoT could love HotD. I too was disappointed in the last season of GoT, but not for the reasons I heard from many other fans. And this series already has all the elements I disliked about the final season. The things that hooked me on GoT were the pacing of the scenes, the realism in location and nuance, the way they introduced and developed characters, the natural banter etc... all of those were abandoned in the final season of GoT, and none of these things are evident from the beginning in this show. The Double D's were offered plenty of money to deliver the full ten episodes for the final season. But for some reason they opted to give us a truncated season, abandoning their long established scene and character development, opting instead for quick expositional scenes and battles filled with hackneyed deus-ex-machina moments. But it took the Double D's years to take so many short cuts. From the start of HotD, the pacing is quick. Scenes are not given time to breath and therefor characters have no time to develop beyond their specific role in the story. Remember when we first met Ned Stark and his family... and Robert Barathoen? Remember when we were first introduced to Danyeras and Littlefinger, and Cercai and Jamie and TYRION! We met all those characters in the very first episode. And how quickly, for good and bad, they won us over. But I have not yet seen one character in HotD whose story I really care to follow. And the dialogue isn't much more than huge info-dumps delivered by GoT style caricatures. Everything has a glossy CG sheen, the modern equivalent of putting Vaseline on the lens. And nothing has any weight. The jousting scene tried to replicate the realism of The Mountain's battle with gore.... tried and failed, imo. GoT felt real. Authentic. This just felt gratuitous. But the real test for me is simple: do I want to watch more? And the sad answer is, not really. I'm not a hater. I don't think it's bad. It's just meh... and it's competing for my attention with a lot of other new shows... and sadly not cutting it. I really wanted to like it. I did.

(EDIT: I realized I was wrong about meeting all the afore mentioned GoT characters in the first epiosde. I think we don't meet Little Finger until episode 2... or 3 maybe? It's been a while. But the rest still stands.)

Saw this when it first came out and enjoyed it. I thought it was a bit odd but good. But after a few years, I just rewatched it and now I think it is a genuine piece of genius. The rapid-fire dialogue kept me a bit off kitler for the first viewing so I wasn't really paying attention to the amazing framing of the long single shots and the fact that most of the story is done in real time with very few cuts. And the score is perfect for the 50s era sci-fi sensibilites they are trying to convey. The sound design is eeriie and effective. The nod to the racial prejudice of the times is excellently conveyed. The sense of mystery and of something truley alien to this world is masterfully executed. The acting is true to form and the dialogue never seems forced or affected, although it is obviously playing to period. I think people who gave this a low rating need to watch it again. I love this film.

Season 1 made this one of the most intersting and unique series I've seen in a while. But season 2 is just all over the place. The story is muddled. Character motivations make no sense. Episodes are anti-climatic. Shots linger past their purpose. It's like they're making it up as they go. If I had rated season one it would have been a seven. But I'm giving it a five and that's only because I am curious about where it's headed.

Ok, I admit this fim is really a 7 stars, but gave it 8 because it deserves more than the 6 it has. I first saw it on a dvdrip mp4, but immediately bought the DVD. It's a shame it didn't do better at the box office but it was poorly promoted and the trailer did it no favors. But to be fair it's not an easy one to digest... or even to understand. It's much deeper than it appears. It's like a weird combination of The Lighthouse and Shape Of Water. People who were expecting to see Clash of the Mini-Titans would have been sorely disappointed. Sort of like "Night Eats The World", the surface story for "Cold Skin" also created inaccurate expectations. But the deeper story is tragic and beautiful.

When I queued this film on Nt**x's I saw their best guess for me was 3 out of 5 stars. Which just goes to show you what crap their algorithms really are. Granted I would have given this film 5 stars just for the subject, because so I admire her for what she's done; the movement she started.. But it was also a very well done film. A short look behind the curtain of public persona. No doubt the fright-wing trolls and MAGAtards will flood the IMDB with bad ratings while never even seeing the film, but it's a wonderful docu abut a wonderful child. And precocious as she can be, Greta is very much a child. She has a few short tantrum moments during the film that prove it But that is not a disparagement of her. It's an indictment to the rest of us; the 'supposed adults' who just want to carry on the compulsive shopping spree while the world burns and drowns, like anti-mask 'Karens' demanding their delusional constitutional rights to poison the rest of us with their disease and stupidity. Support this film. Support climate legislation and regulation of carbon gasses. And support Greta. Because she was right when she said she shouldn't have been the one confronting climate change at the U.N. It should have been one of the adults. But it seems she was the only grown-up in the room.

I mostly do streaming so I often forget what dvds are in my queue and usually don't remember what they're about when they arrive. So it was when this one arrived. Right off the bat I could tell it was a coming out film, and at first I almost popped it out of the tray. Not because of the subject but because It started with a sort of milquetoast quality, like one of those 'coming-out in suburbia' stories where the bullies finally get their comeuppance and everything works out in the end. But I continued watching and was pleased that it turned out to be a nuanced story with a satisfyingly suspended ending that didn't pander. I liked it. 7/10.

I did not expect a quality analysis of the human psyche from a series called "Monsterland, and I was pleasantly surprised. Sadly, the low rating don't surprise me. This is a thoughtful series of nuanced, open ended stories which are relevant to our times. The meaning lies between the lines. Nothing is spelled out. So, people tuning in for some hackneyed escapist fright-fest would naturally be disappointed, and unfortunately those people usually make up the bulk of viewers for something named Monsterland. But this is a peculiarly 'art house' series of stories and I hope the weak reception won't dissuade them from doing another season. There were a few weak points, but overall I greatly enjoyed it.