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Edohiguma
Reviews
Walker: Independence (2022)
Classic CW rubbish
If this is the "future of westerns", we need to stop making westerns.
This suffers from the classic CW syndrome and Whedon style writing. Not only are the characters uninteresting card board cutouts, no, they also talk and behave as if they're in 21st century LA or NYC while dropping those unfunny quips where you need an insert that says "please laugh".
The pilot begins with terrible music, and the main character and her husband have left the wagon train they were on, just camping alongside the trail, which nobody would ever do because it's stupid. Cue interaction of a 21st century couple with writing so bland that it makes me wish for a nuclear winter.
It goes on like this. It's apparently all these "writers" can put on paper. They understand nothing about the Old West or even just basic human interactions.
I watched the pilot and the second episode and I want the time I wasted back.
Then again, it is a CW show, so what was I expecting? Quality writing, quality stories, quality acting? Too funny.
Death on the Nile (2022)
No. Just no.
Hercule Poirot is now a farmer and WW1 veteran, carries a pistol and does action scenes.
This is not Agatha Christie's Poirot. This is Harkle Porridge, a sad parody of Christie's work. Branagh should be ashamed of himself for making such garbage.
The "real" Poirot was already a policeman when WW1 broke out and he went to England as a civilian refugee. Branagh also looks nothing like him, his Belgian accent is an abomination and rather sounds like a stereotypical French guy trying to sell baguettes.
David Suchet remains the ultimate Poirot, followed by Sir Peter Ustinov.
As for the story itself? It doesn't follow Agatha Christie's novels. It's a mishmash of nonsense with some characters completely changed, some added, for no reason other than incompetence.
Dear Hollywood. Stop rewriting things made by people a million times smarter, more creative and more talented than any of you.
Im Westen nichts Neues (2022)
This is not what Remarque wrote.
This is pure and simply trash.
It's just a generic WW1 movie.
They dropped major characters and plots from the novel and replaced them with meaningless garbage.
Yes, it's very realistic looking. And it proves, once again, that hyper-realism is no substitute for story.
Yes, they have all the head shots and torn off arms and legs, etc, all the blood and cracked open skulls and random corpses blown into trees. But not once does the movie achieve the feeling of hopelessness and horror that the B&W movie or even the TV movie do.
It's just so generic and doesn't follow the novel.
To give you a list of what was dropped:
Kemmerich and his boots. Important side story, all the men who wear his boots die or are wounded.
No Westhus. The character doesn't exist.
No Detering. He also doesn't exist.
The scene where the squad sits together after stuffing themselves with double rations and talks why there even is a war? Removed.
The three French girls appear in a distant shot only. There's no interaction with the soldiers, no little side adventure.
Basic training, a very important part of the story where the boys are turned into soldiers. Completely removed.
Himmelstoß, the mailman who becomes the boys' drill instructor and abuses them. He's not in the movie.
Paul Bäumer dies in October 1918 in the novel and in both the B&W movie and the 1970s TV movie. Not here. He's alive and well in October. So is Kat.
At one point in the novel Paul is wounded and sent home. When he returns more of his friends are dead, either by war or desertion, and that's also when Kat dies. None of this is in the movie.
What did they replace all this with?
A side story of the truce negotiations, which is not in the book.
A side story about some war mongering general who ends up holding a dumb speech on November 11 1918 where he states the war must go on. Which is not in the book.
Same general then has Paul and other German soldiers attack the French 15 minutes before the truce begins. That's where Paul dies, after going full Rambo on the French. Of course not in the book.
They added also a tank attack by... Saint-Chamond tanks, which were garbage. Big, bulky, cumbersome, hard to maneuver, and that massive 75mm gun they put right at the front didn't make things better either. It made the whole thing front heavy to levels where it had issues climbing and crossing trenches. The French began replacing them with English heavy tanks in 1918 for a reason. And that attack with those tanks is supposed to be scary. It's not. It's garbage and not in the book.
Let me add one of the worst things at the end.
Who is Paul Bäumer? I don't know, the movie doesn't tell me. It doesn't explore Paul or his friends. The only details you get are that Kat is married and had a kid, and Tjaden was a peat digger. That's it. Nothing else.
You learn nothing about the main character, the narrator, Paul Bäumer. The movie just throws you into the war and you get to see Paul being scared and breathing heavily a lot.
In the 1970s TV movie Paul's teacher catches him drawing a bird in class instead of paying attention to the lesson. Short character introduction and development. None of this is found in Netflix's "adaptation". You are now in the war, this is Paul. He's just Paul and nothing else, he has no individual traits.
Oh by the way, they also botched the Duval scene, where Paul hides in a crater, a French soldier falls in and Paul kills him. They rushed it. Hours should pass during which the French soldier slowly dies, then Paul picks up his papers, reads them, realizes he killed a normal family man. In this movie, Paul stabs him like a lunatic, starts crying, tries to help him for a few seconds before looking through the man's papers and that's it. No mention of anything.
Netflix, or better said Netflux, once again messed it all up.
This movie isn't "based on" Remarque's novel. It vandalizes the book.
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
Rubbish
They took the epic origin story of Han Solo and Chewbacca from the Old Canon, aka the Expanded Universe (EU), where Han frees Chewie from imperial slavery, and turned it into a 100% foreseeable, less than mediocre heist movie where Solo is mostly a dunce and not actually Han Solo. Must be a relative of Han, one of the Solos who never achieved anything.
This is modern Star Wars. Remakes, reboots, rehashes, sad appeals to nostalgia and no skills or originality to back up anything.
Utter rubbish.
Into the Dark (2018)
Mediocre
The setup of the stories ranges from decent to good, but the problem is, they never manage to make you go "oh!" and "ah!" as it all progresses.
As the stories progress, the general trend is towards plots being mediocre, jump scares and blatantly simplistic conclusions.
There's not a single moment where you go "WOW!" The opposite is true, some episodes are flat out comedic (I found The Body hilarious), which is probably not what was intended.
The quality of performances varies massively. Some are really good (like in Pooka!), others are just flat out atrocious (Treehouse, School Spirit.)
This is not horror. This is Discount Horror by tumblr writers. If you're looking for diet coke level of "entertainment" and are really bored out of your skull, watch this.
If you want quality with great writing and great performances? This isn't it.
Captain Marvel (2019)
The trailers were 100% accurate.
This is the first movie I've ever seen where the trailers are 100% accurate. It really is as boring, flat and dry as the trailer suggests.
Larson has no presence, no charisma. She's absolutely flat, no passion anywhere.
The amount of retcons is absolutely ludicrous.
The constant appeals to nostalgia are just irritating.
The attempts at jokes are pitiful.
Certain parts of the plot are completely nonsensical (just look at Nick Fury.)
The whole thing is mediocre at best, and just a complete waste of time and money at worst. The only time this movie really picked up was in a mid-credit scene. The after credit scene got nobody in the theater excited. It was a "Seriously?" moment. Congratulations Marvel, you Johnson'd it.
All my points are for Goose the cat, because cats rule.
Winchester (2018)
I almost fell asleep.
It's dull, boring, full of sad jump scares and not a single twist that comes as a surprise, because everything in it has been done before and is now just a sad trope full of kitsch.
Just take the start of it. How many higher ups in a big corporation go to a psychiatrist, in the middle of the night, to offer him employment?
None, of course, because that would be silly. The whole movie follows this pattern. Trope after trope. It makes your average cliche-laden trope-fests look good.
Of course Mister Mind Doctor has his own personal baggage of irrelevance and also, big surprise (yawn), a drug problem. Straight Into Cliche-Ville.
It gets somewhat funny when he, in 1906, calls the Winchester rifle as the best in range, accuracy and stopping power, when, in real 1906, the Winchester was not a service rifle anywhere in military use. It was simple outdated by several decades.
An utterly boring back and forth follows, until we finally learn that, SPOILER, the bad ghost is a former Confederate (which is about as surprising as Santa wearing a red suit.) His brothers died in the Civil War to a Winchester rifle. That is curious, because the Civil War ended in early 1865, but Winchester didn't produce any rifles until 1866. The Winchester model 1866 was the very first rifle they ever made.
Major fail right there. The entire setup for the bad guy makes absolutely no sense thanks to simple historic fact.
As for the whole premise? Well, why didn't the women in the Mauser family lose their mind in similar way? Lebel? Mosin? Nagant? The families behind Martini, Henry, Lee, Enfield, Snyder, Metford? Or shall we say, Krupp? That list is literally endless.
You're looking for something good? This is not the movie you're looking for.