kevinoneil-99062 Reviews

The Expanse (2015–2022)

Space done right.

[10/10 · 25 March 2018]

How to do book to film the right way and keep it all relevant.

These days we don't get the luxury from Hollywood of keeping things mostly realistic because come on... that requires thought and knowledge. Also takes time and research and just time we don't have time to do things right these days, or do we the Expanse says. The Expanse promptly punches J.J. Abrams in his stupid lens flare loving face and does things they way they should be done.

There is a lot to appreciate in the Expanse, anyone interested in outer space and the exploration of our universe will love this show. The show packs in enough action to keep watchers engaged and gives us the realism of what fighting in such an environment would be like. Not to mention the politics of the show manage to feel spot on.

With great characters, great story, fascinating realism, amazing cinematography, great set work and special effects. What doesn't this show not have?

Although I would like some more character development on Alex Kamal.. and lens flare.

Altered Carbon (2018–2020)

A great show. That had a common problem.

[7/10 · 25 March 2018]

Altered Carbon opens up rapidly, doesn't care what you know or don't know about it's universe and will leave you in the dust with it's concepts of a future. Sleeves, meths, stacks, dippers. All a cool concept but if you don't know what they are. Too bad. Altered Carbon has barely any time to explain any of this to you. Still a series with great new ideas, refreshing takes on a Sci-Fi genre that has felt far too overplayed. Plus more nudity than GoT could ever offer us.

The episodes were great and gripping, until the end.

I've never seen a villain more confusing or annoying.

The ending feels so rushed the fight scenes become so boring and typical of what any bad fight scene is made of. The show had such strong episodes, great fight scenes and just falls off and never relives any of it's previous greatness in it's final episodes. There is a lot of missed opportunity to spend time explaining more of the world to us and time that could have been spent explaining the main villain to us.

Instead... drawn out action situations.. jason bourne comes in(In a stupid looking sleeve).. and the fighting gets horribly sloppy.

I'm not sure what happens towards the end of Altered Carbon or what they were thinking. But that was awful, straight up, awful, horrible and drawn out. There was no reason to draw everything out as much as they did, or get as cheesy as they did or make the audience cringe as hard as they did.

Still the show manages to get a 7/10 from me because of at least 8 great episodes. There is no reason to turn away from this awesome series, the characters, the story, the setting the world it creates is all amazing and beautiful to watch.

But seriously what the hell with that ending..

Pacific Rim (2013)

Everything done right.

[10/10 · 25 March 2018]

This film does everything completely right. Everything that the other monster vs robot movies get wrong. The robots aren't hiding in dark lighting there isn't massive amounts of lens flare there isn't cut after cut to hide crappy fight scenes. The fight scenes are actually amazing and have great attention to detail with what is happening punch after punch. You wonder why the EMP Kaiju doesn't EMP again? Because Gyspy clearly rips the EMP generating part of the Kaiju off in a fight scene. Being able to actually give us substance and detail in a fight scene is what all these other movies constantly lack. The details put into this film make it amazing, Guillermo Del Toro did wonders with this, he put passion into this.

Which is why it's so sad to see the sequel be given over to the kind of people that would say "I wish the robots would hurry up, just hurry up." said by Boyega the lead actor. Why not just star in a transformers film?

"The actor admits that he found the movements of the original Jaegers a little too cumbersome, and has brought fight co-ordinator Liang Yang over from Star Wars: Rogue One and The Force Awakens to bring the aforementioned "martial arts feel" to Uprising."

Way to ruin parts of what made the original film so great. Why take your time with anything? This is what Hollywood does over and over. Rush projects, no passion. From the characters, the feel of the movie the music this movie just tells you that time was spent on it, that love went into it.

Guillermo Del Toro made these mechs lumbering towering giants and perfectly sold us the illusion of how big they actually are. They aren't going to do spin flips unless someone makes a sequel and thinks it's transformers.. Which unfortunatly happened.

Being a movie that gives attention to detail to the world it is set in is wonderful, we don't get that in a lot of movies. From Kaiju harvesting to black market Kaiju scamming powders to boost your sex life and the opening credits talking about how the world reacted to Kaiju's appearing. Everything is spot on in this film and shows how a film should be done.

I saw the trailers before it came out and said "Oh no not another Transformers." But I could not have been more wrong. You really should watch this.

This is not just a great movie. This is what film making should be.

Daredevil (2015–2018)

Once is enough

[8/10 · 25 March 2018]

Daredevil was an amazing series. Mostly the way this was filmed was fantastic, not taking lots of cuts in fight scenes, actually giving us the depth of a fight. They did, great and amazing things with Daredevil. But once is enough. Netflix started coming out with series after series that takes the same formula, making them feel like the same story. The Punisher, Luke Cage, Iron Fister man. The Punisher was better in the Daredevil series than his own series partly because they spend loads of time on side stories and characters that we do not care about. Netflix needs to step away from pushing out superhero after superhero series. We're all going to get burnout with all the Avenging Avenger men and the Super X people. Stand back, step back and take a look from the outside again and give us something amazing like Daredevil again.

The Outsider (I) (2018)

Konnichiwhat?

[4/10 · 25 March 2018]

I can't say that this movie was fun to watch or made me feel enlightened in any way. It was bland. The movie doesn't even spend much time to tell the story of the culture of the Yakuza. It really just feels like things were thrown in. The Outsider doesn't focus on fancy fight scenes, but it doesn't focus on it's characters much either. Being a movie that spends time developing a story, I never felt much development. The main character suddenly gets higher respects than other Yazuka members for barely any reasons besides helping out a cellmate in prison. Everything just kind of happens. Things just happen, for reasons unexplained. I'm not sure what message this movie was trying to portray. Jared Leto an actor capable of many expressions and feelings and emotion just plays Ryan Gosling from Drive instead. I'm not saying you can't have a cold and calculating character but he seems to possess no traits besides a strange loyalty to the Yazuka, he offers to skip town on his pregnant girlfriend saying he doesn't know what kind of man he is. So what kind of man is this character? What are his loyalties?

The movie misses a lot of chances especially with dialogue on why certain things happened the way they did.

I found more questions than answers throughout the movie and only met more confusion.

Bright (I) (2017)

Hollywood hates Netflix

[10/10 · 25 March 2018]

This is a horribly interesting thing. I found Bright to be pretty damn enjoyable. It's a kind of run all night movie where the characters go against everyone and rightfully so with how the movie sets up the stage and the world it is set in. I find this movie deserves a 8/10 but will give a 10/10 because of the weird hate revolving around it. What was bad? The acting was great. The story was great. The characters great. Also being able to make a world with different rules and make the characters so relateable was amazing. The stage the music the mostly everything was great about this film. So how was it so bad? There is a very strange hate for this film and we should all take notice that Netflix is doing something to piss Hollywood off. Maybe making original stories and not another Jason Bourne/Transformers/Pos movie is what makes critics angry these days. 29 from Metacritic? There is more to the story here.

Bottom line if you want a fun action filled movie with great setting, atmosphere and characters then give this a watch.

Mute (II) (2018)

Enjoyable, strangely enjoyable.

[7/10 · 25 March 2018]

I found Mute to be a fine movie. Good story, great music, and spends time to actually develop it's characters. Though slow at times you aren't going to see a film with fight scenes and cinematography that jumps or bounces all around. But rather a film that takes it's time to build and develop characters and their traits. Mute proves itself to be a noir film that does not mind getting into the nitty gritty of it's characters. Great visuals that don't make it feel like a Blade Runner rip off. A movie able to set up it's own environment and keep the future and reality relevant. Alexander Skarsgard's acting alone is reason to watch this film. Paul Rudd does a great job as Cactus Bill a character whom you never know what he might do. I'm not sure why Metacritic warrants this movie a 35. It seems like there is a great hate in Hollywood for Netflix especially with Spielberg coming out and saying these films don't even deserve to quality for awards. Netflix is obviously making Hollywood mad. Mute is not a bad movie, does not deserve the fire it's getting and is worth watching for it's noir vibe and willing to get into the darker parts of people and characters.

Odd Thomas (2013)

Oddly great

[10/10 · 25 March 2018]

Blown away by any expectation I could have for this film. It really delivered a lot of different emotions in it's story. Great to see a film where the book and movie go so well together. With fantastic characters and story Odd Thomas easily fits it's way into my list of favorite movies.

Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)

Why even?

[1/10 · 25 March 2018]

It's always heart breaking to see another director ruin everything in a sequel that made the original great. You could have just made a Transformers sequel or called the movie something else. Why ruin a good name?

With directors and writers like these we won't get great movies like the original Pacific Rim. Just hollywood looking to grab some cash.