EM-69079's Reviews

3 Body Problem (2024)

5/10

31 March 2024

Easy reviews first, the visuals are mostly bad, special mention to the chimp. The sound design is mostly good. Lighting is pretty standard and Netflixy but works.

Not for more in-depth commentary. Actors are alright but mashing all characters into 6 or 7 main ones is pretty weird, when you think about it and the coincidences that occur. The characters they introduced like Tatiana are not well written. Jack Rooney is alright I guess.

I liked Will and Jyn, but them being Yun Tianming and Cheng Xin feels rushed. Same with Saul being Luo Ji or Wade being born in the 20th century. I understand the need for introducing us to important characters early, but I dislike how they did this. Things happen so quickly that it becomes boring. Not once are the protagonist struggling with coming up with a solution. For example, Staircase? Dealt with in 5 minutes of screen time.

Also, Augustina is one of the worst characters ever created. They tried making her this cold and cool clever girl while still having her being unstable and honestly pretty stupid in her relationships. Makes no sense.

So yeah honestly I'm glad that's not my first introduction to this universe.

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Mars Express (2023)

9/10

Well that was awesome.

25 November 2023

The movie made me feel the full spectrum of emotions. I laughed, cried a bit, was moved by the deep repercussions of the story. Could've run for 30 minutes more and I wouldn't have been mad

It's definitely a beautiful movie too. Animation is good, despite a few low-fps sequences, it still works because of the hand drawn art style and crazy backgrounds. Knowing what the crew went through, I understand the need for some simpler parts. Designs are inspired, threading perfectly between the obvious references and something really personal. Music's very good and the overall sound mixing was perfect.

For a first movie, Périn and Sarfati really put the bar extremely high, I'm really wondering what their next move/movie will be. But first, time to rewatch this one.

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Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

4/10

I don't understand why they made this movie

28 December 2022

Warning: Spoilers

Pros:

Better CGI I think? Looks good
Kids are fun and cute
Creatures designs

Cons:

Same movie but in the water
Long scenes of contemplating things you already saw
A slog overall
Same dumb villain because let's just forget the giant cities on Pandora right?

Plot elements are just dropped because F consistency
Justifications for anything are dumb as possible (why does leaving the Tribe protect the people? Did Jake think humans would leave the planet or what?)
Cameron never heard of Chekhov's gun apparently, he will give you 10 rather cool ideas to pick from and do nothing with them
Anything that would make the movie good is unused. Payakan? Will never convince his tribe to help. Kiri being a freak? Used ONCE. The biologist who should help? Jokes once and disappears
Kiri, one of the few interesting characters, is just ignored because "epilepsy", when everyone actually knows what she does with the plants and animals. Makes no sense
You're supposed to care about characters you see twice, shout out to the older son
Spider, why?

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The Sandman (2022– )

7/10

Solid adaptation, cast is a meh and some changes just don't work.

11 August 2022

Warning: Spoilers

The show's pretty good. It does a pretty good job adapting what can be adapted but obviously misses a LOT of what makes the books good and deep. That was to be expected but it hurts. For example Rachel's dream was nonthreatening to say the least.

Some changes (Lucienne and her central role, Matthew's importance, Choronzon being replaced by Lucifer, Johanna replacing John, for example) are pretty bad. Special mention to The Corinthian actively trying to escape Dream instead of just doing what his nature dictates, completely misses the point. Second, if you're gonna remove things in the adaptation, why not remove the two minutes wasted on Mazikeen who's useless so you can use some actual material? Finally, Dream is often relegated to an observer, they made him almost powerless and relying on others (Matthew for example) and being weak shouldn't mean being dumb.

The cast is alright (Death, Desire, Hob, Cain and Abel, for example, are great) but I don't get some picks. Patton Oswald as Matthew is annoying, Despair is absolutely unimpressive.

Final thoughts. Special effects are alright, for a Netflix show. Soundtrack's good. People who complain about race or gender swapping are idiots, most instances are fine (Lucien should never have been Lucienne thought, she traded his wits and banter for a boring motherly attitude).

Tl;dr: Enjoyable and worth watching, don't expect the book's worth of content thought. Very exposition-heavy. The Sound of her Wings was almost as good as the comics, as was Dream of a Thousand Cats. Well done.

7/10, possible upgrade to 8 if they get Season of Mists right.

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La Flamme (2020– )

6/10

A handful of good moments/characters but the show takes you for an idiot

5 June 2022

Some good jokes, some fun character moments. But the good parts don't hide the overall lack of substance, and worse, the fact that most jokes are ruined by superfluous explanations.

Enjoyable enough to watch despite the failed parody thought.

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The Father (I) (2020)

9/10

Didn't think it would hit me like that, but it did

22 November 2021

Really powerful, it really hit me hard, seeing this family struggling with memory loss, confusion and some backstory. The acting is amazing, emotions feel real and it's even stronger when you personally know someone with Alzheimer's.

Kinda disappointed with the soundtrack, which is good but was sold like a masterpiece. But like I said, it's good.

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Kaamelott: First Installment (2021)

6/10

Solid but weirdly cut and missed the transition to cinema

22 August 2021

The movie's good but feels like a succession of sometimes oddly cut episodes of the TV show.

Astier slightly missed the transition to cinema by getting trapped by the profusion of characters and the need to have them all -or almost all of them- appear (to appeal to the fanbase?).

Good experience thought, with some really fun moments and some storylines getting picked back up.

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Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle (2021)

8/10

Some long moments, but I hope you're strapped in

26 July 2021

The movie's really good. The beginning kinda drags on, despite you perfectly understanding the stakes, but it pays out in the end.

The characters are lovable, the story's not far from what really happened. The picture's great, although slightly blurry sometimes.

Really worth it.

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The Queen's Gambit (2020)

7/10

Solid but all over the place

25 October 2020

Too many montages, too many threads the show has trouble following. I get the angle of the young girl learning to become an adult despite all the odds, but you end up with issues forgotten between episodes, etc. But it's quite good for a Netflix show, some strong moments and tension that you can enjoy.

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Emily in Paris (2020– )

4/10

I had a few laughs but it's awful

10 October 2020

Binged it with my roomates to hate on it, and I wasn't let down. There's no plot and the only thing that resembles a plot is everyone being mean, in order to shake up a status quo. Every guy wants to do Emily/every girl either hates or loves her, and all justify their behaviour using fake "French arguments". Bonus point for the Vincent Desagnat lookalike thought.

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Snowpiercer (2020–2025)

3/10

Holy heck it's bad

11 June 2020

Acting is miserable. Honourable mention to LJ, wooo I'm mean I show my teeth and predate on adult men wooo be afraid of me wooo. Awful. They keep on pushing subplots that are so badly done that they have to either end them instantly or drown them under tons of exposition. The concept would be good but then you realize the writers didn't realize 1000 cars would mean instantaneous travel doesn't work (and cows wouldn't be a dead species because of one (1) broken window Last but I'd say it's the main issue I have with these bad cheap productions: they don't understand why the use some techniques. Using blur to slowly reveal a character? But we already know who he is, we've been hearing him talk for minutes and it's no surprise. Cuts for suspense? Why not but why do them randomly when there's nothing to cut to?

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Dracula (2020)

3/10

I can see where they were going, but that doesn't mean much

25 January 2020

The show's ridiculous, better say it quickly and be done with it. It's really bad. There are some moments, despite their cheapness, that kind of work. For example the second episode's Agatha Christie-inspired setting is interesting. But the punchline-driven dialogues, the bad plot, the storylines that make no sense... I hope they produced the show with the intent of it being bad. If they expected this to be good... Yuck

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Love, Death & Robots (2019– )

6/10

Déjà vu, but it's well produced

23 March 2019

Let's be honest, anyone who has read a bit of science fiction could guess the plot of most of the episodes less than 2 minutes in.

You can also see it's been produced for Netflix, as the show really pushes the independent quirky dystopian character trope and the idea that everything men do is ruin (women's) lives and the environment (Sonnie's Edge, 3 Robots, Good Hunting, The Dump). That and some unnecessary sex/nudity that sometimes fell flat.

On the subject of animation, there's good and there's bad. The art directions are nice, sometimes reminding me of Lastman, sometimes it's more like a computing power demo with huge spacial settings in an over-realistic modelling. But there's good diversity even if you sometimes see there's tracing in there (The Witness). Wandering features (wtf happened with Good Hunting?), big drops in framerate ... It can feel rushed.

That being said, the show manages to take us for a tour of varied small universes that work fine for what they're trying to tell. The way it's been produced also helps, as we're given many different creative choices.

Special mention to Zima Blue, my favourite episode as it's not trying hard for some impressive bs, it's perfect as a 5 minutes story. If the whole season had been just this episode I'd given the show a 9.

Tldr : baby's first sci-fi, but short enough to be dynamic and not feel pointless.

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Titans (I) (2018–2023)

7/10

I'm positively surprised

11 March 2019

Let's be honest, I was one of the -not so thrilled- persons before watching the show. The trailers had this stupid feeling, Raven looked bad, Dick was edgy for the sake of edginess and don't even mention Starfire.

But the show surprised me. Despite moments of boredom, clichés or bad CGI, it managed to keep me interested. Some episodes are quite good, with a good pace and solid directing. Shoutout to the very self-contained Doom Patrol episode that felt really heartwarming.

I now realize Starfire still has to shed her dumb appearance in S2 (hopefuly), Nightwing has yet to rise, etc etc... ; but i have the feeling Titans S1 is, despite being far from perfect, a good start and an engaging story about this family of outcasts (please don't steal Doom Patrol's spot!).

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Christiane Amanpour Sex & Love Around the World (2018)

5/10

The intent would be good, if it wasn't butchered by the constant judging

7 January 2019

Yes we know you find it weird that people do this and this, it's the nth time you repeat it. For a show that aims to understand objectively how societies deal with those subjects it ended up insisting a lot on the weirdness of non-US-centric lifestyles. Also, I get the idea of mainly interviewing women, especially in societies were men have more power in women's love life, it lets them talk more freely. But then the show takes its sweet time showing only queer men are good people and it feels like a Twitter feed. I can remember in the episode about Japan when a girl keeps saying she's fine with her couple not really having sex but they insist for several minutes on "that's not normal!!". Weird. As expected, it's a Netflix show with all the Netflix (anti-)values it carries and the main ideas that stick are that all around the world men are responsible for bad sex and that you have to behave like in New York if you're a civilized human being.

For short, expect a cliché romcom about women talking about their last orgasms more that a documentary.

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Lastman (2016– )

9/10

A violent but touching gem

20 November 2018

Let's get rid of the "negative" first. Lastman suffers a bit from the budget and production issues, and some parts are not as well animated as the rest. There you go, that's it.

You don't need to be a fan of the books to get the series, erveything's pretty clear. While straightforward, the story's strong and you'll be caught in the character's lives quite easily.

The humor is quite dirty but strikes really hard especially the whole 2015 french attacks reference episode. Wuat a scud. The random sex and fights serves the show's universe, whether some people like it or not. One could also argue female characters suffer a lot. While that's true, they also have a central role and i challenge you to call Tomie weak.

In the end, more than "a boxer vs demons", it's really the story of normal people versus the horros of the world, either human or supernatural. The animation is overall really solid too. This kind of shows need more support.

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Her (2013)

8/10

Very intense empathic reaction

13 August 2018

The strenght of this premice is that we've all experienced this kind of falling in love with someone/thing unreachable and in makes the struggles in Her very real. I felt a strong empathic reaction, one that i've felt rarely in movies, made possible by Poenix's very poignant acting.

One of 2013's must see-s.

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Deadpool 2 (2018)

5/10

Meh. Forced and stale

4 June 2018

Had an ok time at the theater but nothing great actually stays in my mind the next day.

DP2 is kind of everything you'd expect, the "4th wall breaking wow effect" gets old because it's not renewed in any shape of form : same joke about RR in GL, other actors in other movies, etc. Also, jokes about the first one and obscure references to make it sound like an intelligent satire.

So yeah, I was kind of entertained but there's nothing more to the movie than some "don't think too hard about it" action and puns.

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Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

6/10

Entertaining for a while, annoying overall

7 May 2018

Warning: Spoilers

It's a mediocre superhero movie, and definitely not a good movie.

The action scenes are so busy and cut you're sick after 5 minutes. The images are fine but FX are too much. Sounds and effects are very loud and all over the place. This is for the technical stuff.

Thanos actually makes for a good villain, character-wise. I'd say it's the only character in this franchise with a bit of weight at this point, and that's nice. But his plan is dumb and even his Death-boner makes weirdly more sense, but oh well.

Then, you realize Black Widow and other regular humans are as strong as Cap, Vision gets nerfed to hell, etc. At least they have the decency to leave Hawkeye retired. Might change thought, sadly.

And man oh man the jokes. More jokes than in freaking Deadpool. It's supposed to be the end of the universe for Christ's sake. The additional "meta-jokes" with Dinklage dealing with cringy GoT references are the worst. They're trying to add gravitas and sadness in the movie but you end up rooting for Thanos to end it once and for all.

TL;DR : i was invited to watch the movie but if i could go back in time i'd have invested the money in a few beers. If you really have to watch it, watch it for Thanos' storyline.

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Isle of Dogs (2018)

8/10

Wholesome and touching, with humor and wit

16 April 2018

Appart from some messages that don't translate well, the movie is really nice. The story is simple but drives you from beginning to end with no weak part. A few characters (i mean Nutmeg) feel kind of pointless but in general they're all really interesting and you get to love them. There was no dumb Disney joke, they were all quite intelligent and you aren't explained everything like you're a toddler. Soundtrack is fantastic, backgrounds too. And finally, animation. I guess it's a hit-or-miss, since stop-motion is so peculiar, but they gave everything they could to make it great.

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Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)

5/10

Made me reevaluate my opinions about TFA

9 April 2018

Warning: Spoilers

Man oh man. I really really disliked this movie. I was so annoyed I reevaluated my feelings about TFA. What i thought was a "first clumsy step" was actually the building blocks for a wrecking.

The plot is stretched so hard you can see the holes. Wait who am i kidding, the holes are stretched so hard that they start creating their own plot.

This movie's mainly about fan-service, but the kind that leaves you a bad taste in your sad mouth. Don't even get me started on Yoda's appearance, effects are terrible and it adds nothing. Yeah, the infamous "homage".

The last Jedis' actions make no sense whatsoever, they end up butchering Luke's character that was built during the trilogy. Scrap the "mature" and "forgiving" Skywalker, you're now the dumb Anakin v2. Rey is kind of fine even if she has many useless scenes (ex the "dark side cavern"). Also, why did they kill off the main villain that's shown to have tremendous power (yeah no explanation of this either) so easily? Was it to prove that "arrogance makes you blind"? But he's clearly shown to win in a similar situation 2 minutes before...

Not that it would have mattered if balanced and done correctly but you're always reminded that the oppressed/minorities are the good guys. And the classic rich people are also those who beat children and animals. The only character that comes to challenged this manichean organisation turns out to be a douche/villain and his point is automatically invalidated. And it gets really annoying really fast because it's forced like hell. Way to go, movie, that's an easy 99% on RT.

Also it feels like there's absolutely no risk for the main characters. Only no-names die, or are harmed, the heroes don't bleed once. And then you have Leia who survives a huge blast (that killed everyone else in the room)+ 5 minutes floating in spaces but comes back a few hours later like nothing happened. Then you have the GoT-esque time paradoxes where nearly-destroyed spaceships that fly in circles manage to catch up with ok ships that fly in straight lines at full capacity.

The good parts ? The acting is good for the most part. The new Force power that lets you communicate and project your feeling on long distances. Maybe the anime shot of Hodo's sacrifice, that took me out of the movie but looked at least different.

TL;DR : 20% watchable, 10% enjoyable, 70% rehashed garbage that RT will praise

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Darkest Hour (2017)

8/10

Pure performance

20 January 2018

Nothing new here. Only history. Even dialogues are -as expected- heavily inspired or taken from what was actually said. But that's the point, and it's so well done. Oldman shows amazing acting (what a voice performance), the focus on the character (and the characters around him) is really well done, not too heavy handed but still poignant.

TLDR : A biopic, but a great biopic.

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Baby Driver (2017)

8/10

Quite "unoriginal" but well done

6 January 2018

Yeah of course the traditional "one last job gone wrong" story is kind of overused but Baby Driver makes you care and is well directed. Characters are interesting, for what tey are, music is well paced and chosen, even the simili-twist works.

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The Twelve Tasks of Asterix (1976)

8/10

Everything an Asterix animated movie needs to be

9 November 2017

It has the classic french dubs, the style and the humor. It's well paced, has the humor and balanced references you need (the goddamn washing powder). The characters are parodies, stereotypes, but gentle ones, keeping everything in the appropriate tone. Finally, it rounds up the value of friendship through A/O's relationship but also A&O/the village's. Even Caesar finds his own place in the world, in a perfect -before it was cool- epilogue. Yeah, that's pretty much one of the best animated Asterix classics.

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Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

5/10

How do you ruin dramatic tension?

26 October 2017

Yeah that's exactly how you do it. Man, what's happening? Where's the villain? We've been following Hulk and Thor for ages, why do we still need to hear the same lame puns, see the same overused visual "gags"? It's not even slapstick comedy, it's stupid.

The movie's not unwatchable, but why would you ruin everything you were trying to build with those -not so good- characters to begin with? Please leave this to Deadpool, even the stupid GoG2 proved you have to draw the line somewhere. Why is Loki such an inconsistent idiot? Why are we spoonfed everything? It even manages to assume the audience are a bunch of dumdums for example by using the same "i forgot what my powers are, oh a convenient vision" twice, ruining the twist (or whatever it was supposed to be).

Bonus points: if you've seen the trailers, don't bother watching the movie, you've already seen everything. For the post credit scene, it's on youtube.

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