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JKDahl
Reviews
Masters of the Air (2024)
Looks good but...
...is poorly written. It's cliché ridden with one dimensional characters and scenes you've seen many times before. The acting is alright but you still don't care about the characters.
It looks great so if that's all you care about you'll probably enjoy it, but if you want something that feels real, with people you care about and root for then I'll suggest watching Memphis Belle instead.
To be fair I'm only two episodes in so the show might take off, but so far it feels like an AI wrote a script after being instructed to make it as generic as possible. I had expected much more being a huge fan of Band of Brothers.
Reacher (2022)
Insultingly dumb at times, wasted potential
This could have been so much better. The stories are there ( the first ten or so books are very entertaining, then they fall of a cliff) but the dialogue and some of the action is just so stupid and plain bad. The characters are mostly just explaining what's happening to us, even the most obvious things. Extremely lazy writing. If a character shoots someone several times and he doesn't die nor bleed I don't need the character, after her friend has killed the guy with a headshot, to explain that he was wearing a bullet proof vest. Another example is a card counting scene at a casino. It's so ridiculous and dumb it's obvious that the writer has no clue how such a thing works and didn't bother to spend a few minutes doing research. The whole script feels like a fifteen-year-old's first draft.
The guy playing Reacher is too big, a drifter cannot have the physique of a roided up bodybuilder, but I can live with that. It's ridiculous, but fine. The production value solid and the acting decent, so why they couldn't get someone competent to write the scripts I don't know. It makes me sad, becaue this show could have been special because the books are a lot of fun.
Hijack (2023)
Started out pretty good...
The first few episodes were tense and good and you looked forward to watching another one. Since then it's become dumber and dumber each episode. Logic is no longer at play and the characters behave very unreasonably. It's gone from relatively grounded to utterly ridiculous. I thought I had found something special but it turned out to be just another run of the mill lazy writing stupid show.
The frustrating thing is it could have been good. The acting is good and so is the production value. It's just the script and the direction that doesn't hold up, and those are the most important things. The hijackers can't think of anything by themselves but need constant help from the hero. The super criminals are releast from prison because of demands from the hijackers, and then half an hour later, with the plane still hijacked, the special forces are sent catch them again. Why?! There is an abundance of dumb stuff in this. Wasted potential and a waste of time.
Fall (2022)
Great idea ruined by stupidity
I love the idea of people being stranded and forced to use their wits to survive, but for such a story to be good the characters and screenwriters need to have brains. This movie is just dumb and it angers me. I watch a lot of climbing videos on YouTube and have seen people scaling masts like this and done right this movie could have been great. One of the protagonists is supposed to be a climbing YouTuber yet she films exactly no part of the climb nor does she bring a camera other than her phone. That's not how they do it, film! Also, pretty much every thing they try to get out of their predicament is phone related.
Far too many times you're ripped out of the story by feats of superhuman strength. Too many times you're frustrated by the protagonists' stupidity. How about putting your phone in that damn giant bird you just killed? I bet it has a better chance surviving the fall in that than pretty much anything else.
The foreshadowings are very obvious and make the movie predictable. I had high hopes for this one but it failed.
Cube (1997)
Cool idea spoiled by bad dialogue and acting
This could and should have been so much better had they fleshed out the characters a little. The acting is pretty bad, but the dialogue isn't helping the actors. Everything put together makes it difficult to care about these people and you start to instead reflect on the ridculousness of it all.
Ojing-eo geim (2021)
Overacting and plot holes, but entertaining
I don't really get all the hype. This is far from a masterpiece in any way, but it's entertaining. It's a little bit like Prison Break, lots of flaws but entertaining. The concept is really nothing new, just a rehash of the Hunger Games (which was pretty much a blatans rip-off of Battle Royale) and the acting sometimes reminds you of silent movies from a hundred years ago. Maybe that's a cultural thing though, I don't know, but Parasite didn't suffer from this. Never the less it brings you out of the story.
I really wish it was as good as it's hyped up to be because I really like the concept. I feel the same way about this as I felt about Hard Target when that came out: "Why film did you have to let me down?!"
Funny Games (2007)
Pretty good, but could have been great
This movie was scary, tense and unpredictable, but undermined all those qualities by breaking the fourth wall in attempts of being artsy. As a straight, really tense thriller it would have been a much better film. A really good one, even.
Fleabag (2016)
Disappointment
I'm basing this on the first episode, since that is all I bothered to watch. It was a little bit different, I'll give it that, but it was boring and I didn't care about anyone or anything that happened. No one felt like a real person and no one acted like a logical human being.
Oxygène (2021)
Okay, I guess
The entire movie can be summarized like this:
Woman: Computer, do this so I don't die.
Computer: I cannot do that, because.
Woman: Because what?
Computer: Because we need movie to happen.
Lot's of logical holes and you don't really care about the main character, but at least it's not another Marvel movie so that's something.
Samurai Cop (1991)
You won't be bored
Watch this movie with a few friends and you will have a great time. It's far from Oscar material but it's lots of fun. People say The Room is hilarious, and sure, it has it's moments, but such moments are much more common in Samurai Cop. Also there is action, nudity and a fake lions head. What more can you want from a movie?
High Fidelity (2020)
Why?
These constant remakes have to stop. How about being courageous enough to produce something new? It's not enough just taking every moderatly successful movie from the past and making it again and just changing the gender or the colour of the protagonist. It's uncreative and it needs to stop.
Tenet (2020)
Pretentious to a ridiculous degree
There are no characters to care about in this movie. They are all flat and boring. The plot is ridiculously stupid but tries extremely hard to be smart. The dialogue is mostly just two people explaining things to the audience, things both of them already know. The formula is as follows:
Person A: Do you know what X is?
Person B (instead of just replying "yes" like a human): It's the hyperalgorithm needed to reverse the inverse proton destabilizer.
And then person A, who by know ought to know that person B knows what X is, goes on to explain it a little more, and then they take turns explaining it to us in the audience. That is bad dialogue and that's a bad script.
Sound is off too.
The visuals are very well done, except the fight scenes, that follow the too edited, multi-angled, disorienting school of action that plagues so many action movies today.
If you want you hipster friends to think you're smart then sure, pretend you like this movie, but as long as you keep that charade going Nolan is going to make more movies like this, and you're going to have to watch them and pretend you like them too, so why not take up chess instead, or learn how to solve the Rubik's cube?
Onward (2020)
One of Pixar's finest
This is Pixar when they do everything right down to the smallest details. The script is tight and the jokes are clever, the characters have depth and the story is engaging. It showed that the creative team behind this carefully thought every scene through and made the most of it, so there are no jokes that fall flat, no sped up tempo to hide lack of substance, no needless chase scenes to keep the ADHD crowd from getting bored. It's just a good movie that made this middle aged man laugh out loud several times, which doesn't happen that often, and cry like a baby at the end.
When it comes to animated movies this is top 3 for me along with How to Train Your Dragon and Wall-E and I highly recommend it to anyone, especially if you're a fantasy nerd or a metal head.
It Chapter Two (2019)
At least the Jabba impression was funny
This movie is boring. It's full of predictable jump scares and bad CGI. You don't care about the characters, you're not scared by the monsters and you rarely laugh at the jokes. It's just a bad movie with a big budget, which is a shame because done right, the book It could have been a great movie (or two). They should have focused on the coming of age, the friendship, what it's like to live in a small town with dark secrets, but instead they focused on trying to scare you with cheap effects. The book would have been great even without the monster, but the movies...? There would be nothing left.
Ghostbusters (2016)
Even Adam Sandler would be ashamed of this movie.
How do you go from being involved in Freaks and Geeks, The Office, Weeds and Arrested Development to this?! Paul Feig has just lost every ounce of talent he once had. It's really sad because I love all those shows.
He has a talented cast to work with. I like both Wiig and McCarthy and MacKinnon has made me laugh several times on SNL. Hemsworth is also a good actor, as are several of the the supporting cast. The script however is just mind-bogglingly bad. It would have been rejected in a grade school drama class. If you add the fact that Feig's direction seems to consist of telling his cast to improvise, and whether the improvs are funny or not (mostly not) keeping them in the movie you have the recipe for a really bad film.
There's really no story, no characters to care about and the parts that are supposed to be funny fall flat. It's a waste of money, talent and a franchise that could have been resurrected and profitable, had it been done right.
Booksmart (2019)
This movie could have been so much better...
...had it only decided on an identity. Sometimes it wants to be a somewhat serious drama/comedy about coming of age and sometimes it's just one of the direct to DVD American Pie sequels. There are almost no straight guys, and by that I don't mean heterosexual men, instead everyone is weird and quirky which makes the characters and the story unbelievable. This is sad, because the cast is good and some of the jokes are funny and had it just taken a more serious route it would have been a much better film.
It's an okay movie, but it could have been really good.
The Secret Life of Pets (2016)
A great premise but...
...instead of making the most of that with original and clever ideas the movie falls into the old and tired trap with constant violent chase scenes. The beginning was lovely, but after that it's pretty much just a loud plot less mess. I really wish they would have had a strong script with good dialogue and interesting characters instead of just a jumbled lot of chasing and screaming.