carry-on-man Reviews

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Alloyed (2022) Season 1, Episode 8

Was this really the season finale?

[4/10 · 14 October 2022]

In the final episode of the season we find out just who is who whilst the harfoots take forever to say goodbye to the stranger and that girl that found him. Some rings finally appear too...

On the whole I've enjoyed the season, but will admit that some episodes were a chore to get through, there's no way I could've binge watched it.

As a final episode it was very uneventful and quite dull, hopefully the second season will pick up we're the penultimate episode left off as this episode doesn't.

With a bit of luck the second season will relegate the Harfoots to a mere footnote as every scene with them drags the show down.

Fantastic Four (2015)

Why all the negativity?

[8/10 · 9 January 2022]

I'll just start off by saying I don't really like superhero films. I find them largely boring, childish, nonsense that rely heavily on FX, loud music and some sort of idea that the audience is already invested in the characters thanks to their comic book origins. I'm not really the target audience for these films, but for some reason I liked this one. I suppose all the hate is directed at whatever element it is that this film lacks that gets superhero fans so worked up that totally went over my head because I thought it was a good film in its own right with some decent actors, an interesting plot and some well executed scenes.

Horrible Bosses (2011)

Crude and noisy

[3/10 · 4 June 2021]

I only gave it three stars because its not as bad as the sequel, which is a two star movie. It's basically the Hangover template of three guys, one sort of sensible, one more cavalier and one an annoying moron with less than half the laughs. I just don't get that little man with the annoying voice, he's not remotely funny. At least the plot has a chance to breath in this one unlike the sequel where it's just the three protagonists shouting over each other for the entire length of the film with the annoying guys voice being even more unbearable. I suppose if you really want to see Jennifer Aniston with dark hair in her underwear you might find this noisy rubbish interesting.

Hostel (2005)

Solid horror

[9/10 · 4 June 2021]

Along with Wolf Creek, The Human Centipede and the first Saw this is one of the best horror movies of the noughties. It's well cast, quite gripping and uses some excellent locations. It isn't quite the "torture porn" detractors make it out to be, its a well executed excursion into the seedy underbelly of humanity.

The sexual parts are decidedly un erotic and the final act is pretty exciting to watch. If you're a real horror fan you should love this movie.

Tenet (2020)

Dedication's what you need

[10/10 · 17 May 2021]

Let's make no bones about it, this film is hard work and loads of people will simply give up. On first viewing I thought it was boring except for a few scenes and, had it not been a Nolan film, that would've been the end of it, BUT because it is a Nolan film I took the time and watched it twice because I knew it would be worth it as that's what I did with Memento, The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar etc (not the Batman films though, Superhero films are just garbage in my eyes, regardless of who's directing).

It's a brave director that makes a film that requires multiple viewings as he knows that will alienate over half of his audience and risk many negative reviews, especially online reviews like the ones on IMBD, but he's confident enough that the viewers that understand it are worth the effort and will give good reviews to balance out all the negative ones from people that watched it once and gave up.

Just watch it, be confused, give it a couple of days then watch it again. It all makes sense, especially if you turn the subtitles on for the second viewing like I did.

Dedication is all you need.

Coming 2 America (2021)

The title is misleading.

[1/10 · 25 March 2021]

Should have been called "Go to America for five minutes and get somebody to take back to Africa". Horrible film, zero humour, terrible CGI, bad cameos, horrible music. Looked more like Black Panther than Coming To America. Avoid and hit Murphy in his pocket so he doesn't succumb to temptation and do a Trading Places sequel.

Sid and Nancy (1986)

Garbage

[1/10 · 17 February 2021]

This film gets everything about the Sex Pistols wrong, it's utter nonsense. The cast is terrible, the real Sex Pistols were much better looking than the ugly actors they picked to play them, I guess it was an attempt to show punk as an ugly movement when it really wasn't. As for Oldman, he's just too old too short and too ugly to play Sid. Sid was well over six foot and his only plus point was that he was the poster boy, male model, of the punk scene and Oldman just doesn't cut it. I'm so used to films that pick better looking actors to play real people that this being the reverse of that is jarring. No wonder Lydon took them to court over it.

The Hateful Eight (2015)

I'll keep this brief.

[9/10 · 14 January 2021]

I'm a big fan of QT's movies yet this evaded me for over five years, I was aware it got quite a lot of hate from certain quarters. Finally watched it and enjoyed it. The basic plot and setting suits the movie and makes its lengthy runtime seem short, which is a miracle. Ignore the stupid low score reviews and watch it if you like QT films, you won't be disappointed.

Black Mirror: Metalhead (2017) Season 4, Episode 5

Much better than the reviews suggest.

[9/10 · 6 January 2021]

This is one of the best Black Mirror episodes, along with Shut Up And Dance and The Entire History Of You. It's a tense 45 minutes with a bleak, nihilistic, ending. People complaining about it being about nothing going nowhere are missing the point, if humans put too much into making robots that can fight a war then they're asking for trouble and if a war is fought using them then this could be the sort of scenario the human race faces after such a war. The "dog" robot is eerily close to the systems being developed by the likes of Boston Dynamics and the Chinese Military, only just today the Chinese unveiled a dog robot that can defend itself and I only just watched this episode last night! Just view it as a straightforward sci-fi horror similar to The Terminator.

Breaking Bad: Felina (2013) Season 5, Episode 16

Great ending

[10/10 · 9 November 2020]

I just finished binge watching the entire show, seven years after the hype has faded. I hate over hyped TV and movies and I hate watching TV shows on a weekly basis. Three episodes in I was thinking "well, this is way overrated" but now I've reached the end I think it kind of deserved the hype, but only just. It didn't really alter it's basic tight plot for the entire series, which is admirable, and some episodes were generally intense, especially the finale. Shame it had to end, but I'm glad it did on such a high note.

Villain (I) (2020)

Not bad, but it's very predictable.

[6/10 · 20 September 2020]

I like gangster films. I thought this was an ok gangster film. If you have seen Carlitos Way then you have pretty much seen this film, albeit in a more glossy American setting.

Blue Story (2019)

A wasted opportunity

[3/10 · 20 September 2020]

Three stars for trying to do a real look at Londons, well any big city's, postcode gang culture. The problem is that it's just a garbled mess to anybody outside of that culture. I am in no way racist, believe me, so I'm not making this next comment for any malicious reason, but ten minutes in I did not know what was going on because I could barely understand what anybody was saying, I almost put the subtitles on but resisted, on top of that everybody looked and talked the same and zero character development outside of the two characters meant I was confused by all the other minor characters and how they fitted into the story. Now I know the dress code of gang culture and the vernacular that comes with the territory means this was probably all accurate, but to an outsider it was just confusing. Even worse though was the fact that it turned into a sub par Romeo and Juliet rather than a deeper film exploring how and why these gangs operate, to me it was a wasted opportunity to look at wasteman culture.

Dead Silence (2007)

What happened to horror films?

[2/10 · 26 July 2020]

Dull by the numbers horror movie. Suffers from what loads on horror films post 2000 suffer from, overly glossy, colourful and dripping of Hollywood. It's about as scary as kids tv show with puppets in it, like the muppets. If you want a scary film featuring a ventriloquists dummy watch Magic from the 1970's, an era when they knew how to do generally scary horror.

Ad Astra (2019)

The hitchhikers guide to mundanity...

[2/10 · 18 July 2020]

I really like Sci-Fi, especially space travel movies like 2001, Silent Running, Dark Star, Interstellar etc, but man was this hard work. Took two attempts to watch it as I fell asleep during my first viewing and had to watch it in two halves to make it to the end. I like slow burn films and I like thought provoking and dialogue driven movies, but this is so boring it feels like a very dull job to just watch it. What is it's big problem? Where to begin? Here goes...

1) 90% of the time not much happens.

2) When things do happen to add drama it's just stupid stuff that makes no sense. I mean Moon Pirates? How did they get there? What are they pirating on an empty rock in space? Why are they trying to kill people when their only possible motive could be to kidnap them for ransoms? Now on to the killer baboons on a space ship sending out a distress signal, just ridiculous given that there is absolutely no follow up or explanation of the scene after it happens. Don't even start on how he hitchhiked on to the Neptune bound space ship, Douglas Adams did it more believably.

3) Space travel never looked so slow yet fast, either that or the solar system never looked so small.

4) Why do gigantic planets like Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune look so small?

5) Why is the ending so dull, I mean they could've had an interesting, existential twist at the end whereby Tommy Lee Jones HAD discovered intelligent life on the outskirts of the solar system that was using him as a vessel to threaten mankind, but no, instead we get Brad saying a belated hello and goodbye to his dad then, after the most absurd scene of him flying through the (very small) ring around Neptune back to his space ship using a shield of some kind, he just rides a nuclear explosion or something back home ha ha.

5) Finally I noticed we saw Earth, the Moon, Mars , Jupiter and Saturn on the short trip to Neptune but they totally avoided Uranus...surprising as they made a total arse of a film.

Vivarium (2019)

Twilight Limits

[6/10 · 4 April 2020]

The whole film plays out like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits. Don't expect it to make much sense, it's not supposed to, in fact if you looked for reality in film then about 90% of movies make no sense. The whole thing is an allegory for the banality of suburbia and the quite frightening nature of becoming a parent for the first time.

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

Again and again and again...

[6/10 · 30 March 2020]

The problem with time travel movies is that by their very nature you can constantly rewrite history within their own universe to come up with a new movie and the Terminator franchise rules supreme in this department. The original Terminator is a great movie, no doubt. It still stands up as the best of its genre, like the first Alien. The second was, like the second Alien film, an exercise in taking it from sci-fi horror to sci-fi action to gain a much wider audience, even though it's not as good a movie it was incredibly successful. Since then it's been a bumpy road of rewriting the history within the movies to keep things moving, Dark Fate isn't the worst, it's actually pretty good as an action movie, Genisys is the worst, followed by Salvation, Dark Fate then Rise of the Machines. If you want these movies to stop then stop watching them, if audiences gave up on them the studios would stop throwing millions at them, either that or wait for Arnie to retire, that said they still made Salvation.

Sword of Trust (2019)

Low key conspiracy debunking

[7/10 · 30 March 2020]

I don't get the reviews giving this 1-3 out of ten, it's actually quite funny if you're the sort of person that can appreciate subtle humour as opposed the the endless steam of crappy American comedies starring the same handful of actors, I'm looking at you Seth Rogan, Paul Rudd, Katherine Heigl etc. I can only imagine those low scores are from low brow people that believe the conspiracy nonsense this movie pokes fun at.

Countdown (III) (2019)

Incredibly predictable

[3/10 · 30 March 2020]

Yet another "by the numbers" horror movie made for the sort of people that find those stupid Conjuring and Final Destination films to be the pinnacle of horror. Barely a scene goes by where you can't predict what is coming next, I literately said "circle of salt" out loud two seconds before the movie character did. Just for once I'd like one of these crappy films to just end with good having triumphed over evil, this movie, like virtually every horror film made in the last twenty years, predictably ends with evil winning the day to set up a sequel I don't want to see.

Judge Dredd (1995)

Why waste such potential?

[2/10 · 3 October 2019]

I saw this when it came out and hated it, I was a big 2000AD and Judge Dredd fan as a kid and this film broke so many of the rules around the Dredd established in the comic strip it rendered it a "non" Judge Dredd movie. I saw the later "Dredd" movie and though I felt it was closer to the comic strip it still lacked too much of the spirit of the strip, probably due to a limited budget affecting what they could actually do with a futuristic city, ironically the Stallone version gets that aspect correct as it had a much bigger budget. I feel that if 2000AD had been a big deal in the USA we would have got some good movies out of the characters within the comic, but unfortunately they've had two cracks at the main character and failed both times, which is a shame. If they'd used the huge budget in the 90s to make a movie more closely linked to the comic we might have been on to a winner, but the potential was wasted.

Glass (2019)

Glass half empty...

[5/10 · 27 May 2019]

I liked Unbreakable, I quite liked Split. On paper I should've liked Glass, but I didn't. It was about twenty minutes longer than it needed to be in order to play out the unnecessary "twist". I hate superhero films and I'm not a big action movie fan, I like dialogue heavy films with thought provoking concepts, which this tried to be. Unfortunately I found the final result quite boring, superhero's with mild superpowers, rooted in the real world, just aren't interesting. Having them finally face off in a "fight" that shows how little "superpower" they have is just dull. Having a final twist involving a secret service that tracks these lacklustre superhero's down to try and either convince them that they aren't super or liquidate them if their boring psychology talks fail is just a rubbish idea. Expected something far more interesting given the set up of Unbreakable and Split. Watch it, but prepare to be let down.

Game of Thrones: The Bells (2019) Season 8, Episode 5

The best of season eight series far...

[10/10 · 18 May 2019]

I notice the two episodes in this season that featured zero action score much higher on here than this one, why? This is a great episode, but because it doesn't live up to what all the geeky nerds that take this sort of thing far too seriously wanted it to be they come out in droves to give it a bad score. It's a good episode, fitting that by this point the mad queen finally emerges with the power of a nuclear bomb. What were people expecting? This was seen coming a mile off, just like we all knew Arya would kill the Night King, but they complained about that too. Why don't you nerds take a break, it's almost over and they have to do drastic things to end such an epic story.

The 15:17 to Paris (2018)

Don't be fooled...

[10/10 · 20 October 2018]

Ok, so this isn't a 10, it's more a 7, but I wanted to balance out some of the idiotic reviews on here. I didn't read anything about this film before watching it, so I was not aware that the three leads were the real guys and not actors. Not knowing this I didn't once question their acting ability as I watched it, I actually thought the main guy was a pretty convincing actor in his role, and why wouldn't he be? He lived it more than any method actor could even dream of. It's plotted well in its build up to the final confrontation on the train and even the rather corny scenes of the three bonding as pre teen trouble makers is quite engaging. I enjoyed it, and believe me I'm a film snob. I hate superhero movies, most action films and nine out of ten comedies are crap to me. I like dialogue, good acting, a paced plot and a satisfying pay off at the end. This film delivered on those fronts.

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

The best Zombie movie hands down

[10/10 · 8 April 2018]

Having been impressed with this movie since first seeing it in the early eighties on video I feel compelled to write a review of the reviews on IMDB, it deservedly gets a high score, with 10 out of 10 user reviews one after the other, until you hit the spate of 1 out of 10 reviews. Who are these people? Surely they're not movie fans, the big problem with the internet is that you see everybody's opinion, including those of blithering idiots. Some people are even complaining about the zombies not running about after people! I blame this modern idea of zombies on the DOTD remake and 28 Days Later etc. They aren't zombie films, dead people running about whilst they slowly decompose is just stupid. The fear is in that even though they only shuffle about they are so vast in number that there is no escape no matter where you run, they only have that burst of speed when they're close to the victim in true zombie films. The idea is that you can escape for a while and try to avoid them, but eventually they close in and get you. The exciting parts of this movie work because they don't move fast, allowing the protagonists to do things that fill the film with interesting possibilities, like what would it be like to live in a shopping mall with no customers and nobody charging you for anything? It's a black comedy about consumerism and it wouldn't work if all those zombies ran around like Olympic athletes, making for quick deaths and desperate hiding as seen in the remake, it took the fun out of it.

Life (I) (2017)

You've seen it all before, but...

[7/10 · 3 March 2018]

If you've seen Alien, the Thing, the Quatermas Experiment, most other sci-fi films about malevolent aliens you've pretty much seen this film already, but that's not the point. It's well executed, the acting is decent, the effects are pretty good and it builds to its final, predictable, scene really well. The chorus of supposed "movie fans" on here bemoaning it's plot for being predictable and scoring it 1 out of 10 bemuse me. It's a good film, not brilliant, not rubbish, just a good film. It's not pretentious and it's not dumb, just enjoy it for what it is, a decent sci-fi horror romp.

Kong: Skull Island (2017)

What did people expect?

[10/10 · 8 April 2017]

Just got back from seeing this at the cinema, to be fair its only a 6 or 7 out of 10 movie, I only gave it 10 to balance out some of the idiotic reviews on here, 1 out of 10? No way, somebody said they even walked out after an hour, why? It was a King Kong monster movie, made specifically to tie him in to the Godzilla franchise, I don't know what some people were expecting to see. I wasn't expecting a script on a par with The Godfather or acting that wouldn't be out of place in a serious Oscar contender, I was expecting Kong and some other big monsters to fight it out in a totally unrealistic way while an annoying human subplot got in the way for the best part of 2 hours, as is standard practice in good old monsters movies going back to the original Kong via many a Godzilla flick and all the many rip offs in between.

Bottom line is is it as good as the original 1933 film? No, it isn't. Is it as good as the 1970s remake? Yes, it's probably a bit better. Is it as good as Peter Jacksons version? Seeing as how it isn't 3 hours long and as boring as watching paint dry I'd say its a good deal better. Bring on the next Godzilla film so we can get more of the original Toho monsters in on the action before the big two square off!