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IF (2024)
the story, plot holes, and opinion:
Main girl's mom dies to cancer.
Time passes.
Girl's dad is sick in the hospital and needs to do a surgery.
Girl starts seeing imaginary friends (IFs).
They say that they were created when a child is in emotional need.
Once the child grows up and doesn't need them anymore, the child stops being able to see them. Now they are depressed and looking to be able to connect to new children.
Girl tries to help IFs to connect to new children.
Eventually she's able to connect IFs to their old children, who are now adults.
His father is worse in the hospital, and she rushes to see him.
He's actually not that bad.
She realizes that one of the IFs was her IF when she needed emotional support when her mother had cancer. She reconnects with him.
She goes back to living her normal life, but her IF keeps the process of reconnecting IFs to their old children.
End.
Plot holes:
If kids generate IFs when they have great needs, doesn't make much sense that the asian kid would generate an IF at the end of the movie.
If kids could generate an IF when they have great needs, there would be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more IFs in the world. Also, many of them would take the shame of some known cartoon, and not some original character.
Why would IFs be depressed that their kid doesn't remember about them anymore? A) Seems like a plot stolen from toy story. B) if you are imaginary, don't have physical pains, don't need to eat, sleep, worry about cold, or rain, or have to work to pay bills and taxes, and usually have some superpower, go have fun in the world. Or did every kid create an IF with attachment issues?
The girl gets to walk around the city without adult supervision.
The girl is the only one who can see IFs after forgetting about them, in more than 200.000 years of human existence.
The IFs said they had been trying forever to reconnect with their former creators, and the kid does it after a half a dozen tries. And after she does it one time, she and her IF become an expert at doing it.
Opinion:
As you've read, the plot is dumb. So you could maybe say that it's meant for kids, so people shouldn't think too much about it. But even though the plot is dumb, and it has colorful IFs in it, the delivery of the movie is sooooo slow, the tone is somber and quiet, and wihout much action, like drama meant for adults. Feels like the krasinsky got praised for the tone he put into "a quiet place", so he decided to bring it to this project. So it doesn't connect.
Also, the main girl isn't a very good actress. Amazing things are supposedly happening in front of her eyes, and she's somewhat blaze about it.
Also, why only one human IF? And why would he be so jacked up?
Also, what's the point of the "girl writing a story" subplot, if it goes nowhere?
Also, if the movie is meant for kids, what's the lesson to be taken from it? Don't create imaginary friends, to soothe your emotions, or you'll eventually forget them, and they'll live depressed for the rest of their lives? Or is it: since you got special powers to create real creatures that can affect the world, and you didn't use that power responsibly by creating IFs that can ressurect the dead, or to cure cancer, you're responsible for the state of the world that you're in. Or: Don't stop feeling bad, or you won't have the need to soothe yourself, and you'll forget your IF.
Werckmeister harmóniák (2000)
Smart people love puzzles.
When something isn't obvious, people have to put their intelligence to work.
Smart people like that.
The story:
circus comes to town. Circus leader incites people of town to violence. People attack their most fragile own people, until they see the naked truth of what they have been doing. People attack circus. Everything goes back to normal, except that the innocent get traumatized.
Interpretation:
whatever you want it to be.
IMHO, most likely what the intended message was:
watch out to not be led astray by shadowy pupeteers that might not have your best interests at heart.
Also, being fanatical about purity might lead to disaster, and reaching practical compromise might be more beneficial.
There. I saved you 3h of boredom. Go watch something else.
X-Men '97: Tolerance Is Extinction - Part 1 (2024)
the dumbest episode
Cable says that in his timeline bastion used the fallout from genosha to get backing for his prime sentinel program.
1) his timeline is the same as this one with the slight change that cable has gotten inside it a day ago. A) So it doesn't make sense that bastion will get backing, as the episode shows he already has a lot of money. B) why would mutants being attacked make people give more money to attack mutants? Doesn't make sense, since people would feel more compassion towards them.
2) it says bastion was a human altered by technorganic virus (different from the comics but ok). And he's using the virus to make changes to humans so they become superior to mutants. But humans are against mutants because they represent change. So it doesn't make sense that they would want change to robots.
3) cable says mutants were used as slaves for mankind. If in the future eveyone is superpowered robots, why would they need mutants? Also, if they can change humans, why wouldn't they be able to change mutants into robots as well?
4) cable says bastion is probably a backup that mastermold uploaded to after hewas taken down. That doesn't make sense. If he was taken down, he wouldn't be able to upload. Also, if he coud upload, he could've easily done that before, and to many different bodies. Also, an upload is a copy, if he could've upgraded himself, he wouldn't have attacked as a lesser version, he would've upgraded himself to be like bastian and attack like bastian.
5) cyclops doesn't want bastian to kill anyone else, and cable takes it as him being an overprotective dad?! BS conflict.
6) jubillee is racist. Gets confronted about it, so decides to tell roberto that they should go and spend his money, and he accepts. Since when was she so self entitled?
7) news reporter goes to the beast and asks how many altered humans like trask are there? Which prompts the beast to search for them. Yet later she is revealed to be one of them, and then fight beast to interrupt him from telling the other xmen. If she didn't want him to tell them, it doesn't make sense for her to ask him how many are there, because she would already know the numbers, and also because that would prompt the beast to search and tell the xmen. Also, why would the xmen that have more developed tech (including alien) not be able to check that she had been altered, or even beast's hypersenses like listening and smelling? Also, why would they let a journalist get inside their base and have access to their most secretive information, like keeping trask jailed there?
8) bastian says that in the future mutants will outnumber humans, so they had to act quick. A) where does he get those numbers? B) who is breeding to make mutants more common? Humans with humans, humans with mutants and mutants with mutants. So in 2/3 of the possibilities it's humans making more mutants, which is basically saying humans are naturally becoming mutants. So why would that scare anyone? C) bastion is a sort of mutant, he even brags about evolving, and yet he's against mutating and evolving? D) he says he's also afraid of the planet heating up, so why isn't he working on that instead of killing mutants? E) he says the problem is that mutants in the future will extinguish humans, so he creates a zero tolerance for mutants. But if his problem is just the humans stop existing, a some tolerance plan would work just as well. Doesn't make sense to create a zero tolerance. F) if he has no tolerance for mutants, how come he's working with sinistro who wants to keep mutants alive so he can do genetic experiments? G) he says that mutants can replace jobs of many normal humans, so they should be enslaved. But these slaves will still be used to do the same jobs, so the normal people will still be fired. H) people willingly go to a facility to get experimented on without knowing what will be done to them? And then they go back to their houses without knowing what has been done to them and are ok with that? BS. I) Also, doesn't explain how some more proeminent characters would have been altered that had no motivation to do that. J) bastian also says bully an underdog for too long and people start feeling sorry for them, but his plan is to enslave the mutants. Wouldn't that be bullying the underdog for long, and would make people feel sorry for them?
9) bastian's mom asks cyclops, jean grey and cable if they have children. Coincidence much?
10) when wolverine confronts one of bastian's altered humans it says "filthy neanderthal" to him. If bastian is against evolution/ mutants, shouldn''t he be in favor of less evolved mutants like neanderthals? So it wouldn't use is a curse word.
11) when a lot of bastian's altered humans find rogue sleeping, instead of simply attacking her, they stare at her sleeping, giving enough time to other x-men come save her. B) Also, they say why resist the inevitable. But if bastian knows mutants come from regular humans, and knows eventually humans would be extinct, wouldn't he also be resisting the inevitable? C) nightcrawler says we must get them away from rogue. Did he forget that he's a teleporter and could just get her out of there in the blink of an eye?
12) roberto is being followed by some altered humans, so he goes to his mom and say: mom they are trying to kill us, the altered humans say we don't kill them, we save them. And his mom tell roberto to go with them. A) she trusts strangers more than his son? B) did roberto expect her to fight them? Didn't he think they could kill everyone in the party? C) save them from what? Themselves?
13) sinistro complains to bastian tha she left magneto escape. Bastian says of course she did. A) didn't sinistro have any protections to keep magneto enprisoned? B) if bastian knew this could happen, why would he give her free acess to his base? C) And if he's a master robot maker, why wouldn't he add extra protections against that, or why wouldn't he transform her into one of altered slave humans? D) why wouldn't magneto destroy the base and sinistro with his magnetism powers as soon as he was released?
14) professor xavier shows up and says to me my xman, and shows the beast receiving the message, but moments ago he was unconscious.
The Fall Guy (2024)
the story and the opinion
A male stuntman and a female director assistant are really into each other, and doesn't make much sense that they haven't consumated yet.
The stuntman does a falling stunt, but some problem happens where he falls too much and gets heavily injured.
18 months pass, where he has cut ties with everyone, because of pride, and now he's completely healed.
The female producer of the last movie found a way to get in contact with him and says that the female director assistant is now a female director, and needs him for her first movie.
He goes, but finds out she didn't know about him.
She's pissed that he had cut off all communications 18 months prior.
She makes him redo a scene where he gets hurt a little bit, more times than they need, as a sort of revenge, but at the same time having a dialogue where she indirectly and comicaly tells him him how much she was mad that he cut ties, and that she has moved over, but wants to know why he has done that. (best comedic scene of this movie IMHO)
His dumb answer is something like: i waited too long.
Action scene by action scene (fights, explosions, dangerous looking stuff) they start reconnecting.
Enters plot 2 (very dumb by the way):
The female producer says she actually brought the stuntman, because the main actor has disappeared and needs his help to find out where he is. And if the studio finds out about his disappearance they might stop the movie production.
So the stuntman goes, which leads him to a lot of action scenes.
Well let's skip some of this movie:
Spoiler alert: the main actor and the producer are evil. Why? Reasons.
So the stuntman runs away fom baddies while declaring his love on the phone to director.
He sneaks into a scene with the main actor, and turns a safe car shoot into a dangerous car shoot.
Stuntman shows the world the actor is bad, director shows the world the producer is bad, other good movie workers fight bad actor's evil goons. Helicopter jumping scene. Helicopter falling scene. Good prevails.
Opinion: 1) subplot is too dumb, even for a comedy movie. 2) There are too many action scenes. We have already seen these same formulaic action scenes hundreds of times before in other movies, I'm not 15 years old anymore, I'm bored. Also, they're badly used, because they're supposed to be dangerous, but if the main guy is so bad ass that there's no chance of him failing, then where's the danger? I think in the whole movie, he only gets slithly bruised in a cheek. The reason people like game of thrones is because people really don't know who's going to live or die. That's real danger. 3) Why didn't they call the cops when they already knew the baddies were baddies? Dumb.
Sometimes I Think About Dying (2023)
being shy is hard
Shy girl works at an office.
She seldom shows her emotions.
She likes pleasant, quiet, slow things.
A new worker starts working in her office.
He seems to be open, and has ability to connect to other people effortlessly.
She starts to like him.
But he wants to know her, in order to let himself fall in love with her.
She hurts him emotionally in order to push him away, so he doesn't get to know her feelings.
She feels pain, loniless, and regret.
She apologizes to him.
She shows she wants to be emotionally closer to him, but doesn't know how.
He tells her: let me know stuff about you.
She tells him that she thinks about dying, and cries.
He hugs her. The end.
Opinion: Even though it's a movie which is based on subtext, which I often like, because it's sort of a puzzle to exercise your mind, there's very little nut (content) to get after you crack it.
"As good as it gets" does the same thing, but way better.
American Dreamer (2022)
Cliché writing, blind people, a lesson is learned.
A writer writes about a writer who thinks his writing will make him rich, even though he's a teacher of economics.
A person that is small and feels small, needs something big to make up for it, so he decides to buy a mansion, even though he's a teacher of economics.
Tries to grift someone for it, but learns through the grifted, that he didn't need the big thing to be happy, and that happiness was not outside, but within him all the time.
If you're not puking inside your brains, then you haven't seen a lot of movies, and don't know what cliché is. I envy you.
Also, my review is still too short, but not anymore.
Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000)
why it's so bad:
1) Bad acting (it's as if Larry knew he was a bad actor, but instead of making an effort to become a good actor, he either casted a lot of other bad actors, or got good actors and told them to be bad, and said it was a choice, either to make him look better in comparison, or so that the redoing of scenes take too long a time out of his life)
2) Bad directing (if one actor is badly acting, you blame the actors. If everyone is doing a bad acting job, you blame the director).
3) Uncharismatic characters (every character is either dumb, or ignorant, or annoying, or agressive, or have little emotional control, or close minded, or lazy, or a combination of those)
4) Bad writing: most of the stories happen like this: Larry reacts to something, because he can't help it, people misinterpret it. That misinterpretation only happened because we want X to happen later on, and that misinterpretation could've easily been explained, but it won't be, because we want X to happen later on. So it's basically forced writing where things only happen because the writers want something specific to happen later on, no matter how unrealistic the sequence of events are.
Spaceman (2024)
Better title: idiot men realizes he likes his wife
Story: guy generated a bad relationship with his wife for no good reason. She's sick of his promises and wants to leave him. After some time alone, he confronts his scary feelings, and realises what's most important for him is his wife and soon to be born baby. He promises he'll be better, and she believes it. Roll credits.
PS: there's a side story with him being a spacemen for the czech republic, going to see a space anomaly that has primordial particles, and talking to a hallucination. But all of this is completely unscientific, badly explored, and unnecessary for the plot. It truly seems like it was stitched onto the rest of the story.
PPS: Thanks to CGI, hollywood has evolved from using the magical black man trope to the magical black spider trope.
PPPS: Does not pass the bechdel test.
First Time Female Director (2023)
Very chelsea peretti
I went in not knowing who the writer was. But in the middle of it, I was sure it was Chelsea Peretti, because her style of humor is very well displayed in the movie. She likes weird character quirks, more than jokes.
Thought what she did in the beginning with the form was interesting.
I didn't like that all the acting was very uncommited to the characters, like they weren't taking it seriously. And that's not a fault of the actors, that's part of Peretti's comedic style. That aloofness where they think that trying hard, and taking things seriously is cringe. But it just breaks too much of the suspension of disbelief.
Ricky Stanicky (2024)
Story and opinion:
Story:
3 kid are friends and make up a fake name to get out of a problem they had.
When they grow up they are still using it. They get out of a baby shower by pretending this fake person has testicular cancer, and that they need to go see him in the hospital. But they actualy go to party in Atlantic City.
They meet an actor that does raunchy shows.
They find out that the wife that was pregnant got into labor, so they rush back.
She already delivered, and the mother in law thinks the fake person is fake, so the friends hire the actor to pretend to be the fake person at the bris of the baby.
He's kind of a loose cannon, but does a great job. The friends are impressed, but happy he's leaving.
Except the boss of two of the friends hires him because he was so impressed with his personality.
Also, the wife of one of the friends wants to do a big news segment on him.
The friends try to get him fired, so he'll leave, but he does a great job.
In a heated argument, one of the friends tells the actor that he is unwanted, and that he is going to tell the truth.
It seems like everything is going to go bad for the friends, but the actor's life and his relationship with the friends is revealed in such a positive spin that everything turns out great for everyone.
Opinion: there's good and bad in the movie.
The good: jeff ross, the premise, the good hearted actor character.
The bad: most of the humor was targeted for complete morons, the lazy writing, the misuse of andrew santino's comedic talents, the choice of protagonist, the lack of personal accountability for the main characters.
Orion and the Dark (2024)
all sizzle no stakes
The story: boy named Orion is afraid of a lot of things. His school class is going on a school trip, and even a girl that he secretly likes invites him to sit next to her on the bus to the school trip (because Deus ex machina).
Boy is so afraid of things he doesn't want to go to the school trip tomorrow.
Also, he's afraid of the dark. And that night, when he's screaming at the dark, suddenly the Dark, an entity that represents all of darkness in the planet shows up and tells him that he's annoyed with the boy always treating him like he's bad. So he decides to show the boy how he's actually good.
BTW, the dark appearing exactly the night beofre the school trip, and exactly for that one boy are 2 more deus ex machina.
So he tries to show how he's good, and even has other entities that hang around him, like Sleep (that puts people to sleep), Dream (that make people dream things), Insomnia (that make people awake and worry), Strange-noises (that makes weird noises you hear at night), and Quiet (that sucks up noises).
The boy is so afraid of everything he messes up everyone's 'jobs'.
(not explained why the entities treat those things as jobs, and why they keep doing those things if they don't get paid)
(also not explained why entities that do exact opposite tasks like each other. E.g. Putting people to sleep, and waking them up, or making noises and quieting things down)
(also not explained why dream would make nightmares, or why nightmares exist) (also no reason not have a nightmare entity)
During this process, Dark explains that he's getting a bit depressed from having children not like him. And since your self esteem is partially based on what others think about you he decides to change the perception of one kid to make him have a better self esteem. (which is kind of a bad lesson to kids) Also he tells the kid that by teaching the boy to not be afraid of the dark, the kid will learn to not be afraid of all other things that he's afraid (which doesn't make sense).
The kid starts liking the Dark, but then another entity, the Light, almost catches up to them, and the kid likes him much more, and convinves the other entities of how much better the Light is.
So the Dark decides to kill himself by letting the dark reach him. (kind of a weird lesson for kids).
The Light has no problem doing that (kind of weird).
And when the Light passes over the Dark is destroyed (instead of them mixing and everything becoming grey).
Also, around this part or before we learn that this story isn't real in an alternate universe, but just a story told from a father Orion to his daughter so she won't be afraid of the dark. (therefore the story of the boy has no real stakes, because it doesn't matter how it ends, it's just a story)
The world becomes so light, that becomes unbearably hot, and things die or suffer.
The Father Orion doesn't know to go on with the story, so the daughter goes into the story and tells the kid a poem that inspires them to bring the Dark back by going into the Dream of the boy and finding him there. (except that the movie ignores that that's not the real Dark, but just the concept of Dark that the boy had in his mind, which means the original Dark would still be dead) (also that means Dream has the ability to make anyone sort of come back to life, she just chooses not to do so, which is kind of weird).
So the boy goes to sleep and the girl and dream go to rescue Dark "from the deepest recesses of the boy's mind" (why does Dark need to be in the deepest recesses full of fears is also not explained) (also it hasn't even been 24 hrs that the boy met Dark, so how the Dark be in the deepest recesses of his mind? Wouldn't he be in some of the freshest parts of his mind?)
Then there's a black hole that starts sucking everything to it, and everything that falls in it gets destroyed permanently (why? Not explained) and the Dark is getting sucked into it. Also if you dry in the Dream, you die in real life (First: we know that's not true because a lot of people die in dreams, and they just wake up. Second, even if it was true, we know this whole thing is a atory, so there's no real stake).
Then the boy remembers what someone told him before: "sometimes you're afraid to do something, but you just do it". This is something that the boy had mocked before in the movie, because it doesn't work. But now he remembers it, and believes it (for no reason). So he goes toward the black hole to try to save the Dark. They are almost dying, so Sleep goes out of the kid's body to tell the other entities they must wake the boy. (wasn't sleep pretty much all powerful inside a dream? Why does she need help?)
Then insomnia tries to wake the boy, but can't do it because deus ex machina.
Then Quiet (who no one could hear before) goes to the boys ear and tells him that if he doesn't wake up he's going to miss out on the school trip and being close to the girl he likes. (why he can be heard now is not explained) (how he knew about the boy's trip and the girl he likes is unexplained)
Then suddenly the boy wakes up because of the "power of love" he feels for this girl that he knows nothing about.
(also, previously even though she asked to sit by him in the school trip, he didn't like her enough to surpass his fears, so he wasn't going to go, but now for no reason that love is much more powerful).
Now Dark 2 is alive, and the boy goes home, but the daughter is still in the story and has to go to the real world somehow.
Then comes a time traveller that says he's gone back to get her to her time, but they must go quick, because him going back has brought time monsters.
(1: she didn't time travel, she just inserted herself in the story. 2: the time monsters are human shaped bipedal for no reason. 3: why are there time monster? Not explained. 4: what do time monster do/ want? Not explained. 5: even though they were quick, the time monsters appeared and didn't grow in numbers, showing that they didn't have to be quick. 6: when a time monster almost completely dies, but an arm is left, it reconstitutes itself into a whole thing. For no reason.)
We learn that the story changed in this ridiculous way, because now Orion is a Grandfather, and his daughter is a mother, and this new insertions were added by the grandkid who is now listening to the same story Orion told his daughter many decades ago.
Old Orion loves this new additions (which makes no sense, since we could see before that he was inteligent, and their original story was poetic and had the purpose of making a child not afraid of the dark, and not to be an action sequence for a kid that want to insert himself in a story to be an action hero). (it also doesn't make sense that the daughter now mother would be telling this story to hher kid, since he's obviously not afraid of the dark).
So the moral of the whole movie is kind of 1) don't be afraid of the dark, because when you're afraid you just shouldn't be, and that will solve all your fears (lol), and 2) even if you die, your stories can keep existing. (which makes this even more terrible for the writer of this awful story, since even after his death, his progeny will be able to look at this and feel ashamed).
Sôsô no Furîren (2023)
Stockholm syndrome
Have you ever watched one of those very long, boring, and slow dramas in the movies, that always get Oscar nominations?
Those stories could've been told in much less time. A story being told in more time than is necessary is treating you like an idiot, and is wasting your precious limited time alive.
Also, have you ever hear of Stockholm syndrome? It's when you are stuck with something for so long, you end up liking it. Kinda the same reason why people love their families, their cities, their homes, their countries.
Well, the only way people can like this series is due to Stockholm syndrome. It's so boring that even the characters in it are bored or apathetic all the time. All the interesting things, like fighting a big demon has already happened. Also characters are boring, uncreatively written, and annoying.
American Fiction (2023)
story and opinion
Highly educated black writer needs to write a book to get money to pay for mother's medical care.
The market wants a "blacker" book, which means they want a book that tells the story of a suffering black man from the hood.
Teacher writes such a book more under a pseudonym, to show the editors how wrong that type of book is.
But he gets a great deal on it, so he decides to pretend to be from the hood, while also being conflicted about it.
He even becomes a writing judge that will judge which book will get an award, and even though he is against it, his book receives the award.
One of the other judges is a black woman who also writes books about suffering black people, and is also against giving that book the award.
The male black writer is surprised because he thought she wrote the same kind of thing (even though he never read any of her books, but had read exerpts).
Even though she hadn't suffered like those in her books, those were based on real experiences that she had researched, and her books had a soul, and felt that black people were great, whereas the male black writer didn't think they were, and had not realized it up until that point.
The award is going to be delivered and the male black writer goes up to the podium, and says he's got a confession to make.
The story cuts to the writer talking to a director, they discuss ways in which the movie based on the book should end, including his reveal of being the actual writer. The director decides that they should end it with a shootout, killing the writer.
Opinion:
It's a movie that tells the fine line of a struggle between selling out your culture, and selling what shows your culture.
It also tries to walk the fine line between respecting the black people who suffer and showing their drama on one hand, but also using humor to make jokes of white people that don't realize they're being racist while thinking themselves to be antiracist.
It also walks the fine line between fiction and reality (or at least passable for real). It's metalanguage slightly reminds me of the movie "Adaptation".
All of this is very hard, and it's well done. So why not a 10?
1) Personally I dislike drama in general, and there is a lot of it in this movie.
2) It doesn't have a lot of interesting content. There are so many writer characters in the movie, and only one of them say something remotely interesting enough to be quoted. And the rest of the content could've been summarised in a page.
Dream Scenario (2023)
Good idea, that isn't well explored
The story:
University Teacher feels his life is passive.
Starts showing up on people's dreams.
People start giving him preferentiable treatment like he's a movie star.
His introverted wife just wants him to appear on her dream in a sexy way, and doesn't like the spotlight.
Ad agency wants to commercialize his image.
He shoots down their ideas, he justs wants to write a book about ants.
A girl from the ad agency tells him she has intense sexual dreams about him.
He tries to have a fling with her, but gets so nervous he farts, and embarassed he leaves.
He feels angry about a former colleague stealing his ideas.
Starts showing up on people's dreams killing them.
People start antagonizing him in the real world.
He doesn't know how to react to that, and becomes combative, which worsens the situation.
His wife distances from him due to shame.
Some time passes.
The teacher has stopped appearing in people's dream in America.
Humanity develops the technology to make people enter other people's dreams.
Vapid pretty teens are paid to make ads into people's dreams.
The teacher eventualy learns to use the new technology and enter his wife's dream to appear in a sexy way. Happy ending.
The analysys:
The story is an allegory for fame. People who don't particularly want it, become viral, get used, don't know how to deal with the media, become adored and/or vilified, pay so much attention to the shiny new things that come into their life, that they lose sight of what they wanted the most. While other explore the new way to become viral for commercial purposes.
The opinion: The movie has no opinion, doesn't try to teach you anything, doesn't take the concept into any interesting venue. And in the end, the moral is sort of "all you need is love", and "cancel culture is bad". Has anyone in the world not heard that boring idea a million times over at this point?
Here are some interesting concepts they could've taken it: What made his powers start? What made his powers stop? What would happen if he tryed to feel other emotions before sleeping? What if he tryed lucid dreaming? What if he tryed to stop dreaming? What if he was smart enough as a college professor and avoided conflict and called the cops and sued people, instead of getting physical with them? Why only one girl had sex dreams with him?
The Curse (2023)
Rating pending: Nathan Fielder is a genius, but...
Nathan Fielder is a genius.
He's great at combining oddness with awkwardness, with great stunts, with comedy.
This one isn't much of a comedy so far.
It's about a couple who are real estate developers, who seem interested in getting money, while also making other people's lives better, and participating in a reality tv show. They're far from perfect, and are constantly struggling with what is perceived by others, manipulating, as best as they can, other's visions of them and their real estate project.
This, by itself, is not genius, and also not completely uninteresting, but since Fielder is known for brilliace, and for making big stunts, this might just be a preamble to something greater, so I'll rate it later.
Krapopolis (2023)
The comedy is not where you expect
It's a comedy taken place in ancient Greece if greek mythology was kinda real.
The main characters are a family, where the mother is a narcissist goddess, the father is a sex hungry manticore, the main character is a loveable nerdy human who becomes king of a group of humans and is trying to create civilization, has a brother which invents things, and a sister that is a cyclops that likes to solve things by brute strength.
Most episodes show an objective conflict, some new part of human civilization being developed, and an emotional conflict between the relatives.
Opinion: To be honest, I came at this with extremely high hopes, as it was coming from Dan Harmon, but it was less than I expected. And yet I knew if I kept watching it, I'd be pleasantly surprised. And I was.
The strong comedy elements are usually founf in the takes on civilization developments and the myths.
The weak parts (and what most people seem to dislike) is on the characters.
Some of the funniest parts in Rick and morty come from their dysfunctionality: rick at the same time is megalomaniac, but says it isn't megalomania when he can actually achieve anything through his brilliance (and he can). Says nothing matters because there's an infinite amount of realities, but deeply cares about many things. Morty is at times extremely afraid of everything, but sometimes has mental break downs. Beth has abandoment issues with his father Rick. Jerry is considered so low value by Rick, that he uses it as a passive agressive tool against him. Beth and Jerry have a love-hate relationship. Etc.
While in Krapopolis the characters and dysfunction are much less extreme. The main character is mild mannered, a little boring, a little low self esteem, but nothing major sticks out. The sister likes to solve things with violence, but mostly listens to the mild mannered brother, so doesn't becomes that destructive, the inventor brother seems to only invent things for his brother, and doesn't do anything very extreme. The self obssessed mother wants people to adore her, and doesn't go much out of her way to annoy anyone. The father pretty much just wants sex and doesn't annoy anyone. So instead of everyone being at each other's throats all the time, they are mostly chill with each other, os slightly annoy or inconvenience, which doesn't take the episodes into absurd hijinx and/or hilarities.
Edit: special props to episode 23 of season 1. Wish it was a recurring character.
Black Sheep Game (2022)
Good idea, bad execution
8 people participate in this reality social deduction competition. 2 are secretly black sheep. 6 are secretly white sheep.
The white sheep must eliminate the black sheep in order to get a chance of getting the money, and the black sheep must survive in order to get the money.
Through the season they participate in games wherein they can get clues about who the black sheep might be. The black sheep might purposely lose communal games so that the group doesn't get a hint, or win an individual game, so he can alter the content of a personal hint.
Opinion: I love mind games, so I could've given this a 10, so why do I think it was bad execution, and lowered it to an 8?
Bad casting: Most of the people chosen to participate in it are idiots, which barely gave any interesting contribution to the show. If you're rooting for the white sheeps, you'll hate what happens to the one white sheep that wasn't an idiot, and you'll hate the ending. Even the black sheep do idiotic things during and at the ending of the show.
Bad theme/ tag: I'm sure they wanted the drama/ raw emotions to rise from the chosen tag, but I believe it to be chosen in poor moral taste. Also, some of the hints seemed so spoon fed that required no social deduction, which takes away a lot of the enjoyment of a social deduction game.
The Time Hotel (2023)
competition of brains and social skills
It's a reality competition show where 10 korean celebrities compete in games that were modified from modern board games. Players are given an amount of hours to stay in the hotel. The time is their currency. They must use it to stay in the hotel, to pay for their food, and to buy special privileges during the games they play. Also, at end of the game their lasting hours get converted into money. If you win a game you win a lot of extra hours and is safe from elimination. If you lose a game you can choose another player that isn't safe to go to a death match. The loser from a death match gets eliminated. The winner get the loser time and stays in the house for another day.
My opinion: This a tv show that incentivises people to be smart, so I'm all for it. If you like this show, you'll probably also enjoy the show "The genius"
Happiness for Beginners (2023)
(un)likely romance
This movie tries to sel itself as another unlikely romance (two people who seemingly have nothing in common, but end up opening themselves up and realise they are just right for each other).
But it's not an unlikely romance when the 2 sanest and most attractive people get attracted to each other.
Besides that, journey trips are such lazy writing! Most people 1) never take trips with strangers, and when they do, 2) there's very little interaction between them, and when there is interaction, 3) they're not a bunch of weirdos with a heart of gold.
I know movies are supposed to be about things that we don't often find in the world, because the world is boring, but at this point, this scenarios is so unrealistic, that they could make someone in there win the lotto, or develop superpowers, because it would be just as unrealistic.
Foundation (2021)
Why am I still watching this?
I've read the original books, on which this series pretends to be based on a long time ago, and forgot most of the story, but this series is very different from them.
The basic premise of the books is that a super genius + his community of sociologist/ psychologist scinetists create an AI that knows all about how humans behave. Then he runs models of what will happen to humanity and the AI tells him that humanity is going to descend into a new dark age of knowledge that'll last something like 100.000 years. So he runs some models, and finds a way to decrease the time to only 1.000 years of darkness. In order to do that he created a colony on the far edge of the system to retain all their knowledge of psycho-social science. The story then changes protagonist from time to time, showing the passage of time, and important events that they had to deal with.
Also, something completely unexpected happens, which there was no way that the AI could have predicted, and people have to adapt to that, but I won't spoil the books.
What this series diverge: It focuses only in one specific time, and not the passage of time. It adds a lot of irrelevant characters and events. It takes out the defense of reason and logic, and makes it an emotional soap opera. It adds stupridtuality. It's boring. It makes tech look like magic. IT focuses on characters you find no reason to care about.
Secret Invasion (2023)
The writer must be *redacted*
There are too many logical flaws in the show:
Fury was a bad ass character, always in the know, always good with words, a lot of spy tricks.
Now he's a "redacted", 1) doesn't get the resources he needs to complete the missions with success; 2) doesn't spread the news about the threat to important people; 3) doesn't stimulate new tech to be developed to deal with the threat; 4) doesn't get the leader of the terrorists found and enprisoned; 5) doesn't convince anyone to do anything important; 6) hopes people just implicitly trust him, even though he could be a shapeshifting skrull; 7) Is the cause of some of the skrulls rebelling, because he didn't fulfill his promise to them; 8) If he can infiltrate anywhere and he wanted the president to shoot his advisor, why didn't he shoot the advisor?
Skrulls: 1) There's a million skrulls on Earth, but they all live pretty much in the same place, except for spies, making them easy to be found and eliminated; 2) They can use machines to get superpowers of any DNA, but they want Fury to get them a vial with lots of DNA, instead of just getting a lot of DNA from many other places. There are tons of super heros and villains in the Marvel universe; 3) They're waiting for Fury to find them a place to live, but since they can shapeshift, why don't they just live anywhere they want? Or create a new city?; 4) Why capture and replace an advisor to the president and not the president? 5) Their plan is to create a nuclear war to make the planet radioactive, because they can survive radioactivity, but humans can't, but you can poison humans with radioactivity in easier ways: blowing up nuclear power plants, radioactivity in water supply, etc. But even that is dumb, because they could offer to clean places that have high radioactivity, which is impossible for humans and would make
humans grateful.
The skrull girl: 1) Why did she give powers to the skrull leader just to fight him 2 seconds later? 2) Why would she win in the fight if they have the same powers?
The president: 1) Why would he declare a public war against an enemy that can hide by shapeshifting? Have they learned nothing from Vietnam?
Biosphere (2022)
"Nature finds a way"
Story:
The sky has darkened, and probably most of the people have died.
Two male human friends are surviving in a very fragile biosphere.
They depend on fish surviving, so the biosphere is complete, and they can survive.
The last female fish dies and they're down to the last two male fish. This means soon the male fish will die, without proginy the ecossystem will die, and they will die.
But one of the male fish turns to a female, and so they have hope.
Then one of the male friends starts turning into a woman. After some mental adaptation to the bizzarre circumstance, they decide to have a child, and make love, and get pregnant, and have hope.
A tiny bit of light appears in the sky, and they have hope.
Their windows get broken by a storm, which means they are starting to get a normal atmosphere again, which gives them hope.
They think about how there may be humans in other biospheres, which gives them hope.
They talk about how there was a magician in the past that made real magic, and that gives them hope.
Opinion:
Yes, a lot of unlikely things can happen for the better, but promoting that kind of thought is bad for humanity, because it's so very unlikely, that usually magical thinking does more harm than good. When you're in a bad situation, it's not good to despair, but also not good to just hope things will get better, instead of looking to make things better.
Also, there are lot of other minor logical flaws to the movie, but I get that the movie is symbolic for having hope, so I won't go into them.
Forbidden Planet (1956)
Male meathead's dream
Space commander gets orders to go to a planet to check on people there.
There's only a scientist and his hot blond daughter there.
Everyone on the space troop takes a ride on the blond, by lying to her.
Space troop starts dying from a mysterious force.
Turns out an extremely advanced civilization had lived in the planet thousands of years ago, until they invented a technology that made them even smarter so that they could create things with their minds, without needing to use other tools.
The scientist had used that tech, and although he had become smarter with that machine, his unconscious had also become more powerful and was creating the mysterious force that was killing the troop.
When scientist finds that out, he decides to blow the whole planet, with all it's tech, and let his blond go with space troop.
So, to sum up: dumb people get dumb hot girl to have space orgy. Smart people and smart things get destroyed.
Suzume no Tojimari (2022)
Overdramatic anime female romance
Have you ever heard of a story about overdramatic romantic teens where they sacrifice each other for the other? (Romeo and Juliet)
Have you ever heard of a romance created to please girls? (boring looking girl, extremely good looking brooding guy, scenes with rain)
Have you ever heard of anime? (cute talking pet, parallel spiritual world, giant monster that is connected to a past disaster in japan, magical objects)
Okay, so you already know this story.
You want the details? Ok
girl meets boy. Boy closes doors so evil spirit doesn't cross to earth and destroy it.
Girl falls in love wiht boy.
Together they close some doors.
They find out boy needs to sacrifice himself to close final door.
He does so.
Girl is sad.
Girl saves boy and they live happily ever after.
Knights of the Zodiac (2023)
Boooo!
I'm not a fan of the original tv series or the manga, but I liked it.
This takes all that was good about the original and throws it in the garbage.
The original is a story about values: The smallest most boring guy in the original is the greatest hero because he refuses to stop fighting, even when there doesn't seem to be any hope for him left, and he would die if he keeps fighting.
In the movie, the main character is a male model that doesn't know how to act, and that risks nothing at any point.
In the original, the knights fight for a greater cause.
In the movie, the "good" knight wants to protect a grown woman, no matter how evil she decides to be. Possibly because he wants to have sex with her?