Change Your Image
thebman-69628
Reviews
Sex Education (2019)
Not the Season 4 anyone was looking for ... 2/10
I fell in with this when the first season dropped and got everyone I knew to watch it. How refreshing to see so many taboo subjects opening explored but, and here's the key, in a serious BUT FUNNY way. It offered light and shade. There were moments of real levity.
I'm a staunch ally, as I guess the majority of fans are, but I found this final season a TOTAL DISASTER. I'm not sure if there were new writers, but it lacks heart, humour, I felt like I was being preached at. The acting is wooden and the writIng is lazy. Am a straight male in his 40's with 4 grown up children and I don't need to be spoon fed situations to bring my attention to the battles the LGBTQIA+ community faces on a daily basis. There were too many new characters introduced for what had already been announced was a final season, in what felt like an attempt to "tick as many boxes" as possible but the result is a jumbled mess that doesn't really give ANY of the issues the time/sympathetic writing they deserve. You lose sight of the core characters, and by the end, the pay-off (which disappoints) just left me thinking 'meh'.
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Beautiful Character Driven Piece
A film you 'appreciate' perhaps more than you 'enjoy'. This is a story of struggle against change. With one man wanting to break free of what he fears he's become whilst the other fights to keep things the way he feels most comfortable and you can't help but empathise with both, and the credit there lies in the performances of both Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson who reprise their "In Bruge" chemistry. Yes, the pacing is a little slow in places, but then I'm sure life was in Ireland in the 1920's but the journey is worth it. A stand-out performance by Barry Keoghan as the affable "slow coach" on the island deserves the credit it's receiving, likewise Kerry Condon as the put-upon sister so desperate to be seen.
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
Yawn, rinse, repeat
Too many reviews have covered the bases and probably more eloquently than I.
In short;
Does it look pretty? Yes, stunningly so.
Is that enough in itself? No
The story is bland and highly repetitive to the first film with more plot holes than a Swiss cheese (don't get me started on Colonel Miles Quaritch's return). There are large drops in frame rates when there's too much CGI.
Eight of us (all fans of the first film) went to see it and we spent longer than the film itself discussing all the "issues" we had with it afterwards.
Watch it? Sure, why not.
Revisit it? No
Eagerly await the next one? Not a chance.
Wayne (2019)
Romeo and Juliet - if Tarantino had written it
What a hidden gem. Funny, emotionally moving, violent (imagine The Boys), this series had everything. PLEASE bring it back for a 2nd season.
Loki (2021)
Disney at its cash-grabbing worst - Pointless Rubbish
Admittedly, I am not a fan-boy, Marvel-geek but I have watched all the films enough times and was genuinely excited when I heard the initial concept.
But how can anyone can rate this program highly is beyond me. Nothing happens! Six episodes of formulaic, boring, poor writing, lack of storyline.
It goes nowhere. I am not a fan of "time travel" or multiverses in general as I feel it's a bit like when you were a child at school, and realised you needed to end a story, but didn't know where it was going .. so you put "and then they all woke up and it was a dream!". Lazy, slapdash. The scriptwriters think they are being smart but they're not. If, as previously mentioned, this is to set the base, for future movies (as Wandavision and Falcon have before) this was a far inferior way of achieving it, and leaves me less likely to bother with what comes next. Wandavision had its critics but I found the story arc far superior; effectively a love story of a woman in mourning trying desperately to save the memory of the love of her life and utilising her powers to achieve it. Falcon focused too much on trying to legitimize itself by bringing in peripheral characters from the MCU, but we end up with the new Cap'. Here, we got no pay-off.
You actually feel for the actors who do nothing wrong but are given such a terrible product to work with. The CGI looks 10yrs old.