TheEvilTwin

Wow. At first Where the Crawdads Sing appears to be a courtroom whodunit, but it very quickly switches to pure story-drama, which at first I didn't find very fortunate, but I soon found that the story is so strong and so clearly drawn that after watching it I feel like I've known the main character for years. And that's an emotion I don't get during the vast majority of movies. Here we have the basic premise of a "guess what happened" trial backed by a chillingly told story set in a visual feast in the swamps, with an excellent lead actress and a roller coaster of emotions. In the finale we also get a dense trial and an atmospherically powerful verdict, and as much as I didn't like the final five-minute epilogue with the aging characters, or rather it was redundant and unnecessary, the final twist in the last few seconds brought me to my needs. Solid filmmaking and exactly the kind of film for all types of viewers.

Arcadian is certainly better than I would have expected from the ratings, but it still sticks to the average, falls well short of its potential and takes everything from the genre in a superficial way. There's not point in rating Nicolas Cage, as he only acted for about half an hour, and the rest relied on two child characters, who did a pretty decent job. Visually, it's plain average. That said, the film has a lot of fun and original looking monsters (a hodgepodge of about five animals that I don't even know what to compare them to) and there are a few interesting elements too (they way they roll around and eat their prey, for example), but on the other hand, there's just no bigger moment for the viewer to drool in bliss over, a stronger ending or a more memorable carnage. Story-wise, it's also classic, so in the end it's probably purely a director's cry in the dark and an attempt to contribute to the monster genre, but nothing downright groundbreaking or really interesting. Conflicting feelings.

I really don't give a shit about this anymore, these random episodes that suck the life out of you, where nothing actually happens. There's nothing interesting to wait these ten years for, and Rick's whole story is so terribly uninteresting and ordinary that I had to skip to the end to even give it a chance. The whole thing is too rushed, dull, the zombies are still lame figures that pose no danger whatsoever, and to throw an hour long love-story episode in there is a decent execution of the viewer too. Negan failed, Daryl failed as well and unfortunately so did Rick, so I'm sure I'll skip the next season with no regrets. Trash.

I love this whole monkey franchise, I love Wes Ball and I love his Labyrinth films, so this was a clear guarantee of quality, which was confirmed from the first minutes. If something is flawless, it's the visuals of the whole film, because we get absolutely realistic monkeys, whose quality increases with every episode and this is probably the imaginary peak, it can’t get better than this. Then there is the excellent depiction of the colorful world around, the forests, nature, the eagles!! I have no words for this aspect of the film. Equally, I have to commend the story, which explains in the introduction where we've come since Caesar's time, and which solidly portrays the various current "factions" on the ground and who's really against who. So as a visual treat, along with the globe-trotting and unraveling of the story, the film is great. My only problem, though, which also puts me off the full score, is the lack of any major action, a grand finale or mass battle (which in previous films was almost always a big finale...), as well as the story being perhaps a little too forcefully directed towards that fateful rocket landing (which we all kind of saw coming), so the viewer actually probably knows roughly who's going to win, what's going to happen and how it's all going to end, which kind of spoils the surprise moment. Although the impression is overwhelmingly positive, the film is still lacking some more closure, a better villain or more fatality, so I guess we can only hope that Wes will take it properly and bring more carnage in the coming episodes. Oh, and I commend the eagles and the originality of that element, as they were really good.

So I don't know if we've watched the same movie, but I feel everything is wrong. Mathieu Turi didn't win me over with Meander, a much-anticipated film that turned out to be bollocks in the end, and it's the same with The Deep Dark. After all, if you go for a claustrophobic creature feature in the mines, you expect the "monster" to appear before the (literally) first hour is up and that the visuals will at least be passable. But here, the entire first half is reprehensibly slow and drawn out, and the look of the monster is so terribly cheap – I certainly wouldn't have expected a cheap monster slowly swinging on strings in such a fairly decent looking film. The kills are also rather second-rate, the French language didn't allow me to honestly empathise with the characters and although some of the mythology around it wasn't entirely pointless, the film as a whole, including the slow build-up, the generic finale and the uninteresting progression or unused atmosphere, was very lifeless and a big misstep. It's amazing how the reviews here can diverge...

This is definitely not a comedy, and in the first half hour without a single joke came, I wanted to turn the film off, but when I accepted the fact that this is a pure drama, it was watchable. In the end, Snack Shack is a summer story about two teenagers and the new girl in town, and it all kind of revolves around relationships, romance, and a non-violent form of storytelling that doesn't lean on comedy at all, but which ultimately kept my attention until the end. Probably nothing groundbreaking, and in many ways a completely "ordinary" story, but on the other hand the film did manage to hold me at times. It’s a bland and (below)average film with a genre label that completely misses the mark.

I wonder what drove the creators to fuck up our favourite childhood fairy tale that everyone loved so much. Remake it into a TV show, stick to the same story verbatim, make the entire main family black (??????), slap bland visuals on the whole thing, and hope we'll be fine with that? The only forward movement is in the "horror" aspect of the look of the monster, but otherwise it's an incredible step backwards that doesn't deserve even the slightest attention. When I compare it to the similar teen series Locke & Key, I see a diametric difference and would rather watch that one again than the Spiderwicks.

A grim and depressing look at a normal day in a New York ambulance service, in which, in addition to the oppressive atmosphere of the ubiquitous junkies and other creatures, we also get solid chemistry between the lead duo of Sean Penn and Tye Sheridan. I wouldn't look for more than that, the film doesn't have a major climax, but I was decently entertained as a viewer who enjoys the occasional stifling piece. The acting is top notch, the filmmaking is as well, and the soundtrack gives it points up too. But I don't think it's anything of substance, and "non-fans" can easily skip it.

In the end, quite disappointing. The opening episodes were great, they had atmosphere, horror, an interestingly played out plot and drew me in solidly, but as the episodes went on, the horror elements slowly faded until they died out and at the very end we don't even get an explanation of "HOW" it all happened and what was behind it. The big upsides for me are the relatively short episodes, so it's easier to stick with them, but in this series, I find Jordan Peele and his signature drastically lacking to the atmosphere, and the whole plot ends up being rather odd, without a sophisticated idea or anything that's downright enticing. Then at the end we get at least some connection to the characters from season 1, but it doesn't really tell us anything, and it's hard to tell if the creators threw this at us because they want to build the franchise further or just to "somehow" connect the dots. From my perspective, and judging by the sheer "mediocrity" of this series, it's more likely the latter...

Here we go. Perfect atmosphere and there are some scary and tense moments. I'm starting to like this.