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chriswjoiner
Reviews
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023)
Painfully cringe
I have seen a lot of Godzilla movies in my time, but this has to be the most embarrassingly amateurish one of all. The characters are like cardboard cutouts, and utterly unsympathetic, Kurt Russell is Kurt Russell, granted. But the two Japanese kids both seem like they just need a good spanking, as if they have been spoiled rotten all their lives. Gojira itself (what is the correct pronoun for a monster?) is well done, at least on a superficial special effects, but utterly lacks all pathos. May/Corah is just another spoiled, self-centered, egotistical brat. I'm trying hard to find something nice to say about this movie, but I got nothing. Don't waste your time. Go watch Pacific Rim again instead.
Oats Studios (2017)
Cheap & cheesy
Low budget, poor writing, no continuity at all. Each episode is just 20 minutes or so and has zero connection to any of the others. If you have a short attention span this might be your thing, but it doesn't work for me.
Away (2020)
Soap Opera in Space
I really wanted to like this, and I tried hard to like it. I am a big fan of Hilary Swank, and she does play her role very well, as do all the actors.
But the problem is a painfully bad screenplay. This is a not a SF program. It is a soap opera set in space. 75-80% of every episode is maudlin, cliche emotion drawn out far too long. If they could just show us how the characters feel and then move on with the story, it could be OK. But they have to drag it out beyond the point where I start rolling my eyes and grimacing in disgust.
The directing is solidly competent, the cinematography is workmanlike, and the actors all play their roles well, but the screenwriting is just abysmally bad. They even have to go all political with it, descending to the cliche, "Russians bad, Chinese bad, Americans good" level of storytelling. The black man from Ghana who is somehow also Jewish actually turns out to be the most engaging and likeable character.
The thing that finally killed it for me was that when they finally got to a potentially interesting section sequence, they manipulated it in a manner I found completely unbelievable, for the sake of their trite, cliche plot twists.
Waiting for the Barbarians (2019)
meandering, meaningless waste of time
A monster and a weak, foolish old man with a foot fetish, these are the two central characters of this pointless waste of time. It has no plot, it has no action, it makes no sense. There is some absolutely beautiful scenery, and the cinematography is competently executed, but these are the only redeeming features of this film.