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jonaswilmann
Reviews
Masters of the Universe: Revelation: Comes with Everything You See Here (2021)
What a blast!
Great conclusion to an absolutely stellar part 2. Can't believe some are still crying about 'too little He-man'. In part 2 we have not one but two epic battles between He-man and Skeletor, one where he-man is in some frenzied hulking version! And that last big battle is so perfect and epic. "There are no safe places" ... "oh, there's one ... Behind me" :-) I grew up with the toys and cartoons and I loved every second of this first season. Let's have more please.
The Suicide Squad (2021)
Gunn misses the mark
First 30 minutes were amazing, good bloody fun, then, sadly, it's further and further downhill. Weak, Clicheed plot (almost no plot, really), 'funny' dialogue derivative of Guardians of the Galaxy but is more miss than hit. Underdeveloped characters ... What exactly is a Rick Flag? What does it do? Maybe his personality was left in the first movie, I didnt catch that one. Fast forward to the 'starfishy' ending, it was very hard to stay awake. If the quality of James Gunn's film goes in this direction, I'm almost scared to watch Guardians 3 ...
Masters of the Universe: Revelation (2021)
Totally awesome!
Great animation, beautiful soundtrack, first class character development, voice acting absolutely superb (Standouts for me were Tony Todd as Scare Glow and Griffin Newman as Orko). Episode 4 gave us perhaps the most kick-ass showdown in a series or movie in years (I've rewatched this scene several times, gives me the goosebumps every time). Many shocking WTF-moments, but they only made the whole thing more exciting and made me hungrier for season 2!!
Gisaengchung (2019)
Nonsense
A veteran chauffeur, his wife and their kid wonders, one fluent in English, the other an art wiz with expert computer skills and mastermind deception skills, are all unemployed (!) and lives in a scummy basement, where they fold pizza boxes for peanuts. With wildly implausible easy they con a rich family (ridiculous caricatures of rich people who apparently got rich by being soooo stupid) into employing them. First the son, then the sister, then the father ... you get it ... sleep-inducing snail's pace to the predictable setup where the entire family has leeched their way into the rich people's home. Once inside the home, the rich family goes on a vacation, and the poor family literally start ripping the home apart in a stupid drunken frenzy?? The old housekeeper (which they got rid of in a horrible way, causing a dangerous allergic reaction) shows up, and for some reason they let her in?? Turns out the old housekeeper is keeping her husband in a hidden basement under the house, where he has been living for four years (best explanation to why is that he is hiding from loan sharks). He has been flickering the lights morse code-style which the small boy of the house has deciphered (but he never tells anyone and it is therefore utterly pointless). Each family now knows each other's secret, so they are in a stalemate. Right? Movie apparently forgets this, an instead we end up with a big fight. A lot of nonsense. A flood. Then a lot more violence. Poor father kills wealthy father (because of his arrogance towards the poor which have a certain odor), then leaves his own two wounded children to die, running to hide in the basement (he would actually have to step over his son, who lies half dead in an enormous puddle of blood in order to get to the basement, but I think the director forgot this - add it to the five million other plot holes!). At some point near the ending - where the movie takes another tonal shift towards the sentimental - I realized that we are actually supposed to sympathize with the poor family, despite how EVIl they have acted the entire movie ... This movie is wildly implausible, first half wildly predictable, full of weird tonal changes and plot holes. Everything is overly constructed to underline some muddled point about social inequality, but nothing really makes sense. I loved "Snowpiercer" but this is total crap.
Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)
By far the worst Star Wars episode yet
I was pretty disappointed with episode VII (too much fan service, rehash of episode IV and a universe that simply lacked depth and detail), but the latest installment is much, much worse. Not only are we given zero explanation to the tons of unanswered questions episode VII left us with (who is Snoke? Where did he come from and how did he affect Ben Solo? What is the Knights of Ren, WHERE are the friggin Knights of Ren??), but the movie is such a bore, filled with pointless new characters. Rose, DJ, Holdo (what's up with that purple hair?), ridicolous scenes with a casino, some giant space horses, repeated telepathic chats between Ren and Rey and a space chase that last the entirety of the movie. There is close to no plot, and the stuff about Luke - and what he has done - is highly unbelievable. The main characters Rey and especially Finn are such bores this time around, they have close to no personality. I really don't understand what Rian Johnson was trying to do - what an unbelievable mess!
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
High art? Hmm ...
"Blade Runner 2049" comes off incredibly long and boring. Not because of the slow pacing – "Blade Runner" had slow pacing too, but had the viewer hypnotized – but because there's no interesting thoughts present and nothing new really. Thematically the movie is exploring the same questions (about being human etc.) as the first movie did 35 years ago. And the few 'new' additions to the Blade Runner universe are totally devoid of originality. Take for instance K's hologram-wife. Not only are those scenes totally unnecessary (that three-way scene, jeez!), but we've seen the concept so many times before (for instance in Spike Jonze's "Her").
Apart from that, the movie is riddled with plot holes and stuff that just don't make very much sense. Tyrell get's killed off by a replicant and his Nexus-7 prototype runs off, shortly after Tyrell Corp rushes a line of replicants with OPEN ENDED lifespans and no other safety device than implanted memories (that didn't work with Rachael). No. Just no.
Furthermore we are told the nexus 9 are programmed to obey. However K lies to his superiors, constantly acts on his own, acts emotionally from early on in the movie. He does not obey at all.
And the revelation of a replicant child being born has people talking about revolution. Robin Wrights Joshi says it will 'break the world'. But how? Rachael was the only replicant able to give birth and Tyrell took that secret with him. Neither the few remaining Nexus 8's or the 9's can give birth – so no, it doesn't break the world. It doesn't break anything. But the movie really wants us to take this very seriously (Hans Zimmer is doing his loudest to make us sit in awe).
And it gets even worse. Later we learn that Jared Leto's ridiculous bad guy Wallace (those monologues!) strives to learn the secret of making replicant babies. But why? That undermines the entire idea of replicants. Tailormade slaves with superhuman ability; strength, intelligence etc. that are controlled by implanted memories. Having replicants make babies the old way would offer zero control of the outcome and the child replicants would have to grow up, go to school, make their own memories. What's the point then? And what's the difference, from just having some people make babies?
A lot of people has called "Blade Runner 2049" 'intellectual sci-fi' and so forth, but I found it to be quite the contrary. The movie forcefully demands you to accept it as highly intelligent art, but if you scratch the surface, you'll find something very different.