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The Witcher (2019)
It's suitable, if you're a fan of the universe.
If you're already a fan of The Witcher universe, then yeah, totally watch this. It's a cool way of experiencing thr world anew and as much as it could be better, it could've been much worse.
Firstly, the acting is hit or miss. Most characters are serviceable, some are terrible, and a few are great. Henry Cavill, who's usually terrible, does an amazing job as the emotionally contemplative block of wood that is Geralt. Anya Chalotra is great as Yennefer as well, only being brought down by confusing character motives and bad writing.
The writing itself isnt great for the most part. In general, character motivations are usually pretty interesting but how the plot gets from A-B is sometimes convoluted and bad. And most of the time the B-C is usually complete gibberish. There were many times I thought "Why is this character doing this?"
The show also suffers from many TV-show-isms in that the music is often overused, characters are inappropriately witty, and moments are intensely melodramatic. In short, the show lacks subtedly in its story. Although as a fan of the universe, you will probably notice many cool details that let you in that the creators are definitely actual fans of The Witcher in general.
The most interesting part of the series is definitely it's overall structure. There are usually 3 plots going on at a time and learning how they all piece together was very satisfying and honestly impressive.
If the show was more subtle, coherent, and more visually stylized this could've been a great show. But to be honest, in this day and age I'm just grateful to have something that is faithful and seems to have been made some love.
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
Shindler's List is more colorful than this grey movie
The story, while not anything special, is servicable and is a good vehicle for some good, surprisingly well written characters. Alden Ehrenreich did a great job embodying a Han Solo who hadn't learnt to be a badass yet. It's a better movie than might say, but is it a good Star Wars film? Ehh, that's debatable.
Unfortunately there are two things that hinder this movie most of all.
1: The world-building is just about non-existent to the point that half the time I dont even know what planet the damn scene is taking place on and some conflicts happen without their being any context that places it within a history that is tangible.
On one hand, it lets this movie stand alone very well. On the other hand, it feels about half as much like Star Wars as The Phantom Menace did because it's almost only implied that these two movies take place in the same universe.
2: This movie is the greyest, most bland, dreary looking movie I've seen since Birth of a Nation. Visually, everything blends in with each other like they turned the saturation levels down to zero. Which might work better for a contempory Noir film taking place in a sewer in Chicago, but for a fun, mystical fantasy sci-fi movie it just takes all the life out of the screen. Like, what the hell, this isn't The Dark Knight or Ivan's Childhood! The Star Wars universe was made to be colorful and exuberant, not a grey Rorschach drawing.
Deathstalker (1983)
A movie for people who scratch their balls in public
It's a very garbage movie. Maybe even self aware about it too. But still garbage.
Not to say it's not entertaining as hell to watch as it very much is. It has that charm of "so bad it's good" with the absolute incompetence in the film making. It's like being next to a dead body and hearing farts releases from the corpse. It's awful, morbid, and you really shouldn't even be there, but you can't help but laugh anyway.
The story is mostly nonsense too. I can't even remember it to be honest. I think it might've been about Stalker trying to find tits or something. It's the type of conflicted testosterone experience where it undulates between a male power fantasy tit show and an insecure homoerotic closetfest.
It's a movie made because Conan was made and that was about it. Nothing special. Just the garden variety type of bad that is geared towards dudes who say "no homo".
Children of Men (2006)
Cinematography. And not much else.
This movie, really was a blast to watch. Visually, this is everything you want out of a quick paced movie. A lot is made of the many extended single take scenes, for good reason, but they don't ever get too distracting and just serves to make the world so much more dynamic. Even the color grading of this movie is absolutely perfect. This movie just looks so damn good.
Everything else though, is very debatable. The world building, is very haphazardly done. Which is a shame because this could be a very interesting world to explore. But exposition pours out of everyone's face like water.
The dialogue is surprisingly corny and shmaltzy. Like I felt like I was watching a Spielberg movie at times with how forceful this movie was with these melodramatic sentiments. Which, juxtaposed, with this dark and gritty world makes it all feel so awkward.
Finally, the acting was honestly atrocious. Partially because of the sub par script, but also because of straight up bad casting. Clive Owens and Julianne Moore were decent, with Clive Owen showing glimpses of brilliance. Michael Caine was good beside having some of the worst dialogue. Everyone else though was just so stiff and boring in their performance.
It is a real shame. Because the visuals are amazing, and is really the only reason to watch this movie. The story itself could've been interesting, but the script and the actors just ruined it.
Please watch it though. It's worth it.