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Fallout (2024)
Possibly the best videogame to TV/film adaptation ever
I've played all the Fallout videogames from start to finish since Fallout 1 was released in the 1990s and I can honestly say this faithfully captures the essence of the franchise. This series is not just entertaining, it's thought provoking. To be honest I was shocked at how good it was, I was half expecting a 'Rings of Power' or 'Wheel of Time type debacle' but instead we may have the best videogame to TV / Film adaptation ever.
The writing is excellent and the way the main three protagonists evolve given the revelations regarding their backstory is great.
I think the complainers will say things like 'diversity' this and 'inclusion that' in the casting but forget that; focus on the story for once and you will thoroughly enjoy it.
Alex/October (2022)
Optimism in the face of oblivion
Most peoples' lives are fairly humdrum and full of bad and the two main characters Alex (a 40 something alcoholic, divorced with a dull job) and a October (20 something, reckless, unambitious floater in Chicago) meet up when she answers an ad he places online. But wait, it's not a dating app. Far from it.
It's well acted, the character's home lives are explored, their demons are on display, they are both troubled people but they do have some common ground.
This is a movie about despair and finding love in a time when many people feel worthless and see no hope and future in their lives from different generations. What is interesting is that I believe that Josh Hope did a movie short back in 2010 with different actors also named 'Alex/Hope' it would be interesting to view that sometime to see what he had sketched out back then. But anyways this movie comes recommended, I miss the days of the late 1990s and early 2000s with even the big studios such as 'Fox Searchlight' doing 'Indie' type 'human interest' movies like this. Mainstream big Hollywood productions are just unwatchable as far as I'm concerned these days, this is where it's really at.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: A Shadow of the Past (2022)
Tolkein-ish and somehow reminded me of a big budget version of movie Willow
So, this is a TV series commissioned by Amazon with the bulk of the story lifted from the vague appendices from the Lord of The Rings books. So lets just say that there quite a lot of room for 'interpretation' and that's not a bad thing because most people haven't read or know of the content in those appendices which is a great basis for a spoiler free experience. The acting is adequate, the costumes and visuals are stunning/beautiful, getting the pre-LOTR / The Hobbit era just right where everything seems just a tad more primitive than the settings for the books we all know and love. The first episode covers the usual drama tropes i.e. Defiance of authority and tradition, forbidden love, an unseen enemy / ominous threat, revenge and to be honest it's handled quite well.
Now for the loaded question and that is that some more cynical out there have complained that there are breaches in the canon and lore of Tolkein when it comes to the 'appearance' and 'uniformity' of groups of characters in this production; I for one don't mind this as that to me is almost incidental (hey they did it partly in The Witcher and we all loved that); for me what is important is the story, character (as in motivation and persona) and the dramatization.
This production is not a 'Wheel of Time' (awful as that was I gave up on it and could not continue) and watching the 1st episode has compelled me to watch more.
Don't listen to the naysayers who wrote off this production before they saw it months ago, open your mind, sit back, relax and enjoy a wonderful fantasy adventure.
Prey (2022)
2nd best movie in the franchise and a female protagonist done 'right'
This has superceeded Predators as my second favorite Predator movie, the female lead is no Mary Sue, she makes blunders and learns when to run and when to fight and some of the ways in which she fights the Predator at the end is a homage to the original movie but not a direct copy, rather different and cunning the traps she sets.
The native American Indian setting was a joy, there was something great about a basic weapons hunter gather tribe taking on a Predator and Disney didnt hold back on the gore and the action compared to previous entries.
I hope to see more of the leads in different movies, a marvelous job.
Miracle Mile (1988)
Solid 80s 'Apocalypse Soon' movie
I'm going to talk about the 'feel of this movie'. I heard about this movie 20 years ago when a guy knew the premise and had watched it in the 80s but didn't know the movie title and was asking around for it but I only watched it tonight for the first time; it has that 80s 'feel' which I've never seen repeated since 1989 and by that I mean it's like After Hours crossed with Risky Business with a sprinkle of Night of The Comet.
Until recent times the threat of nuclear armageddon has mostly been forgotten about and dismissed from people's weekly thoughts, this movie brings to life a madcap scenario told from the perspective of one guy that gets a head start knowing about the imminent strike on U. S. soil.
Tangerine Dream gives us the excellent music in this movie which is very similar to the music in Risky Business.
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
This is a movie about being a bored God who is done.
Imagine if you were a God that could make anything happen (more or less), you could travel to any instance in time at will to any part of the multiverse do anything you wanted. Yet you felt unfulfilled by these powers and you became destructive, not having anyone around to share in your powers.
It would become terribly frustrating, this movie is about a version of a person who becomes a God and has decided that enough is enough, she is checking out into the void but wants someone to share this experience with her. But in embarking on this journey to find 'another Godlike being' to share this new desire for oblivion she finds that the other Godlike being doesn't believe in destruction and the futility of it all, quite the opposite.
This is an incredible movie and for me at the end was quite moving. I've not seen anything so good and inspiring in quite a few decades to be honest.
Whiplash (2014)
The perfect movie for me
Drumming is a key component in this movie yet it's not the real underlying message i.e. Whether having talent or not, rather it's about obsession, sacrifice, hope, dismay, dreams, betrayal, passion, creating enemies and then reconciling their differences all because of the love for some common pursuit.
Incredible movie, they caught lighting in a bottle with this one, as uplifting and moving as it gets.
Go watch it and you may well get that same feeling when you saw Star Wars Episode IV : A New Hope for the first time.
The Wheel of Time (2021)
Half way through episode 3 I have had enough...
There is quite simply a lack of chemistry between the main actors, I wonder how many rehearsals they did. The casting directors did a bad job here.
The acting seems wooden and forced and stumbles for many of the different characters. The so-called humour lands flat on it's face and is ill timed and the FX for spell and creature desgisn look a bit bad 1980s / 1990s in places.
Also, how can I put this delicately ? The 'big message' that appears daily in many productions is just overly used here in the casting and it just takes me out of it as a fantasy piece.
Netflix's The Witcher just struck the right balance between humor and drama and action but The Wheel of Time is boring with many sub-par performances.
It's like they took the cast of BBC soap opera East Enders for a weekend out to do a fantasy drama with little to no preperation.
Rubbish !
Ojing-eo geim (2021)
An absolute masterpiece
Squid Game is essentially a terrible indictment of society whereby contestants are so downtrodden and made desperate by life in the real world that they're willing to enter a fabricated, deadly gameshow world to solve their real world problems with money. Although this show demonstrates that money certainly doesn't solve everything like you think it will. The show also highlights that as with real current events in the early 2020s, some elites are bored and perverted and take pleasure in having people abused and exploited for their entertainment. This series has got it all, great action, betrayal, loyalty, friendship, co-operation, revenge, family, greed, horror, plot twists, suspense and some very touching moments.
Everyone involved with this production should be proud of themselves, the set designers and builders, the lighting technicians, the actors, the director, the writers, the people that chose the music and costume design.
The Tomorrow War (2021)
A ludicrous but excellent fight the aliens movie
A ludicrous but excellent fight the aliens movie
In the first 20 minutes of this movie I thought it was just a goofy version of Battlefield Los Angeles with time travelling
elements stolen from Terminator and on ..then later Starship Troopers but as the movie progressed it gave me that fun 'big' movie
vibe that I've not experienced in 7 years or so.
There are themes here about family and saving the world to save your families future, there is some light humour and
drama and plenty of action, the SFX are top notch. Interestingly there was the slight hint of PTSD being explored but
it never went into much depth.
These are how Hollywood blockbusters should be made. I just with there were more of them.
Army of the Dead (2021)
If a businessman offers you to do a heist in a city that is imminently going to be eliminated which is invested by hordes of zombies - don't do it.
The characters are ludicrous, cartoon cut outs with no depth; the plot is incredulous and the acting and dialogue are all over the place with questionable quality. Yet this movie is absolutely perfect for what it is, which is a heist movie in a zombie infested danger zone. I like the idea of Las Vegas being converted into a Zombie kingdom with the king zombie and his queen and their henchmen and serfs. The infighting in the heist team is done well with redemption arcs and honorable self-sacrifice to save others and backstabbers getting their just desserts. The zombie killing effects and FX were some of the best I've seen.
With the death of the great late John Romero, who is left to take up the mantle of the great contemporary zombie movie director ? Well my guess is that it's Zack Snyder now.
Love and Monsters (2020)
Like an old school 1980s "light" action adventure movie DONE RIGHT !
I was a bit cynical before I started watching Love and Monsters but it was at No.1 in my country so I gave it a shot and I'm really glad I did.
It's got this 1980s feel good 'vibe' about it, like those 1980s kids movies and TV shows that Spielberg did back then. The CGI is great and the 'dad joke' humor is all there but some moments were quite moving.
The Witcher (2019)
A Swords and Sorcery tale done right.
I've binge watched all the 8 first season episodes and I can honestly say this is a fantasy world which works well. Right from the get go the use of magic and monsters is revealed so there is no slow, drawn out reveal as there was say with Game of Thrones. Geralt is an excellent anti-hero as is Yennefer. I would say the mood and style of this series is somewhere in between the Shannara Chronicles and Game of Thrones but do not mistake this to mean that it is of the same quality as the Shannara Chronicles; the Shannara Chronicles was a pretty rubbish series and got a well deserved cancelled season 3 (the young actors were just not up to it). The Witcher has great acting right across the board and special FX are up there. Highly recommended to fans of the fantasy genre; do not believe the mainstream media reviews which are giving it 3/5 stars, this is a sold 4/5 stars to 9/10 stars tv series.
The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (2019)
Only the Skeksis are sceptical of this ! an enchanting and wonderful series.
As a kid of the 80s the old movie strangely passed me by but I caught it in the early 2000s I caught the movie, it was good, a little strange. But this new Netflix
series has got it all, amazing puppetry, better than the movie, amazing sets, incredible lighting, and that a charming world full of light and dark, with drama which reminds me of the good old days of 'dark Disney' and this is not really made by Disney - maybe they could take a leaf out of The Dark Crystal's book and start again to create something as incredible as this. I'm a Star Wars New Hope and Empire Strikes Back fan, the Dark Crystal is better than the Disney Star Wars movies , much better !
Sex Education (2019)
An incredible series, a masterclass in writing, casting and directing
Set in a mostly middle class college in home counties England in a slightly surreal school which is half way between "American Highs school" and countryside Brit school, kids are learning to deal with the realities of their sexual lives with a little help from Otis, the series focal character. who is finding his feet as a sex therapist.
This isn't 'reality' acting for the most part. The characters are extreme and the relationships are incredulous but somehow it works so well. Otis's gay fried is hilarious but don't think that this is a campy comedy, there are serious parts to this series such as teenage abortions and anti-gay violent attacks. And yes, the story has characters which may seem very 'progressive' but I think that it makes the series more 'upbeat' because of this and many of the non-mainstream characters are very likeable.
I absolutely loved this series, I hope that if there is a season 2 that the quality does't go down.
This series has a similar style to "The End of The F**cking World" if you like that netflix show also.
Portlandia (2011)
If Portlandia was Game of Thrones the city would be High Garden
If Portlandia was Game of Thrones the city would be High Garden.
A wonderful comedy sketch show with a running theme, the theme being the irony of real world city Portland.
I asked some American guy if Portlandia was anything like the real Portland. And the told me that he actually lives in it and he didn't want to talk about it.
Black Mirror: USS Callister (2017)
I'll never look at a games programmer in the same way again
It was like The Matrix, meets Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak crossed with Star Trek all gone wrong !
Mild mannered Matt Damon's twin brother is the CTO of successful company company Callister named after the Star Trek like ship from a bygone sci-fi TV series.
But it's always the quiet ones that harbor grudges of their work colleagues and vent their daily frustrations on computer game characters after going back home at night after work. But how close are those computer game characters to the resented co-workers ??!??!
The Mist (2017)
A mist opportunity
Due to apparent budget constraints this is a very 'talky' horror movie with few special effects which tries to make up for it with tension and suspense but it feels to do that even. So what you end up with is a total bore-fest that goes from scene to scene with conflict, conflict resolution, a bit of a fog to try and create mood.
I can see what they were trying to achieve, they were trying hard to create an interesting character driven horror series with something supernatural in the background but when that element is pushed back so far that the creature / horror theme is almost incidental you end up with something quite bland.
Let those all involved with this production, learn from it and grow. The Frank Darabont movie is far superior in almost every way, save yourself some time and watch that instead.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Blade what a bummer
Not too pleased about this movie, the main bad guy of the Wallace Corporation doesn't really have his story completed. The virtual hologram girlfriend was like something out of Red Dwarf the TV series. Having a 1950s styled personal assistant doing the killing of the bad guy as a henchman looked out of place. The low point was when Elvis came on singing as a hologram.
I want to forget this movie someone please erase my memory.
Entre dos amores (1972)
A style of Spanish film making that we should never return to !
The acting is hammy and unrealistic, I cannot get in invested into the characters who just seem to be 'walking their lines'. As a light, romantic comedy with musical elements (yes the actors often break into singing and mild dancing) it doesn't work for me because the plot is so awful you just don't want to hear it ! Everything about it looks cheap also with rear projected backdrops etc and poor editing. Actress Irán Eory who plays Patricia (a rather unconvincing English woman) is knockout beautiful but the use of inappropriate zoom ins and musical elements in the movie ruin any potential, it's almost like a bad Bollywood movie. Sadly the main adult actors in this movie are all dead now which reminded me of how precious time is and left me wondered why I even watched this dreadful movie ! To be used as a bad example of bad movie making of a bygone age.
Dunkirk (2017)
A very special war movie indeed
Beautifully shot and crafted the desperation of being on the losing end of a full military retreat. Out of hopelessness comes salvation. The multiple different story threads intertwine and are often partially repeated from different perspectives, the big acts of heroism from individuals and the little people combined is quite uplifting and moving to watch. The movie almost reminds me (in mood and design) of those 1960s, 1970s and 1980s movies .. Waterloo, Battle of Britain, Barry Lyndon .. sort of slightly detached. A must see for war history lovers and investigators of the human condition when under bleak, mortal threat.
The Siege of Jadotville (2016)
A (more) modern day Zulu - battle at Rorke's Drift
Set in the 1960s a 150 strong and very green U.N. Irish regiment holds off a Congo / French mercenary military force which is 20 times their number defending a remote radio station camp.
This actually did happen and there was U.N. political incompetence and U.N. political tragedy after the president of the Congo was assassinated for nationalising the mineral rich Cobalt and Uranium mines in the area which paid mercenaries and the new corrupt president and his army vowed to defend for the companies and keep them as private entities.
These Irish soldiers were seriously left to die almost by the U.N. in a political game which saw them face impossible odds and in the face of adversity they showed immense bravery. The movie ends in a rather sombre mood which makes us realise that there is often more honour amongst soldiers than there is with politicians.
Bullying (2009)
the horror of insane people taking out their frustrations on a victim
This is a surprisingly well directed movie about a teenager who is the new kid in a new school in a new city in a brand new hell. The physical bullying is very graphic and the psychological bullying is downright nasty. Like in many situations like these the parents and teachers are clueless about the violence and torture perpetrated against him. There is hope in the form of a neighbor who lives in the apartment above who initially seems to be an uncouth man but turns out to be a kind of savior of sorts.
The movie was shot in 2009 when cyber-bullying was not quite as prolific as it is nowadays but the threat of cyber-bullying is certainly featured in this movie.
The moral of this movie is perhaps that if you are getting bullied, flag it up early, make all those involved and in authority and the parents aware of it to fix it and if it doesn't get resolved move to a different school or ensure the ones doing the bullying are expelled. There were some disturbing statistics quoted at the end of the movie regarding numbers bullied in Spanish and UK schools. Food for thought.
Cube (1997)
A Sci Fi classic not just a sci fi indie classic
When I watched this in the cinema as a younger man I could appreciate it back then, I've watched it on and off over the years often catching it half way through on TV. Tonight at the end of Summer 2016 I'm watching this and it's on par with the best sci fi I've watched in the last 17 years.
There is a hidden message behind this movie with conspiracy theories, the failure of mankind and how it will inevitably destroy itself. What was surprising is that many of the actors starring in this movie were from England (or at least were born there). It's no surprise that the director of this movie directed the excellent Cypher and Splice two excellent sci fi movies. Pity none of the actors in this movie went on to have stellar careers, there's not much justice in the world.
Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015)
Porky's Meets Zombieland
A small scout party, a cocktail waitress in a stripper bar, hot young girls hanging out with jocks from school. The nerds are in Scout group they desire the hotties, they must prove themselves to be real men through a rite of passage fighting the undead. This has some real laugh out moments which are usually very short and punchy right at the end of scenes which then quickly cut out to the next scene for next punchline. The humour is quite adult so this is not for kids. This movie is essentially a good effort almost as good as ZombieLand but not quite. I know it had a limited release in theatres and has had to make it's money back via TV etc and I hope it does reasonably well and the actors etc go on to do other things.