mikelpcl Reviews

Seize Them! (2024)

Silly entertainment

[8/10 · 25 May 2024]

Take it for what it is.

It's silly, it has some funny jokes, it evolves at good pace, the story-line is only slightly bonkers, ...

You can see the budget was not big. But it doesn't need it.

It's well crafted and it keeps you entertained the whole time.

It doesn't drag, and you get a funny joke now and then. Only one or two laugh out loud ones, but plenty chuckles.

That's the kind of movie it is.

No idea why some people seem focused on trying to compare every movie to Citizen Kane.

They don't seem to understand that different movies have different purposes, and they all can be good as long as they fulfil their purpose.

You don't know what to watch, you want something light and entertaining. You are quite happy to watch three adorable actors for a while.

This is it.

This one will work for you.

The Fall Guy (2024)

Didn't finish watching it

[2/10 · 21 May 2024]

I watched the first 10 minutes... and started to wonder why it was takign so incredibly long to introduce this protagonist.

I watched the next 10 minutes... and I was still wondering when the fun was gonna start.

I watched a few minutes more and I gave up on it. I stopped watching.

I'm fine with a movie not having a plot. I very happily watched many Jackie Chan and other similar Hong Kong movies. It's totally fine as long as you give me action, comedy, ... something.

The first 25 minutes fo the movie just gave me nothing.

25 minutes spent telling me stuff that can be told in 4 minutes, no comedy at all, and very little action.

The Witcher (2019– )

It's time is over

[7/10 · 22 March 2024]

I don't quite know how to rate this one.

First season feels like a book. Takes a bit to get used to, but it's real good.

Second season feels more like a TV show. A bit of a mix between the first season and a usual TV show. Still very good.

Third season... it's just a very very long Marvel movie. Not one of the good Marvel movies. There's a couple good fights, and everything else is just like that last Dr Strange movie... aggressively bad. Like they didn't bother watching the two previous seasons and are just trying to bore you off, so they can go do something else.

Problem is, the first season hooks you in. It holds you enough that you wanna watch season 2.

Then season 2 still keeps you quite interested/hooked up.

But season 3... I don't care what happens anymore. I might give season 3 a chance if I hear a lot of noise about things being better, but it will have to be A LOT of positive noise.

Ricky Stanicky (2024)

Cena shining here

[8/10 · 13 March 2024]

Proper silly fun movie.

For the first time in such a long a time, an original premise.

All actors are on point, delivering so many smiles and quite a few out loud laughs.

Funniest jokes are mostly delivered by Cena, who to be honest nails it.

He was ok in previous movies, but he went up a whole level on this one. I'm just a dude in the Internet, but it seems like he has found his expertise and knows how to exploit it when the script is up to the task.

This is good stuff.

More premises, script, directing and acting like this please.

It all clicked together perfectly fine.

Now on to see the viral clips, which there will be quite a few of.

Damsel (2024)

Way too long

[4/10 · 10 March 2024]

It's 110 minutes long.

You can just watch the first 5 minutes and skip the next first 30 minutes. They are pure filler; they add nothing.

Then, it's a mix of unncessary grunting and pain-shouting shots with normally-paced action-ish shots.

It's not that it's actively bad. It's just not good.

They wanted to feature Milly Bobby Brown in a film and make her the hero.

They thought having a dragon would make it cool.

They created a 30-minute script.

They added a whole lot of filler footage and thought that Milly Bobby's grunting abilities would do the rest.

If you paid full price to watch this in a cinema... I'm sorry you wasted your money.

Ok to watch for free in a secondary TV while you do something else.

Honestly, it would have been so easy to look for a decent script with an actual storyline... such a waste.

The Beekeeper (2024)

Good action, incredibly silly

[6/10 · 3 March 2024]

Statham knows how to fight. The action is great.

The dialogs and the plot... oh my God. This was all written by a 15 year old as a weekend project.

It's all beyond ridiculous.

Even Statham's usual delivery can't salvage the "zinger" phrases in this movie. Not even that.

Still, the action is good.

Watch it for the action. With beer. With friends around, making fun of all the silly and teenage-amateurish dialogs.

You'll walk out thinking that you should not have enjoyed this horrible movie, and that you can also be a Hollywood screenwriter. Easily.

By the way, they spent 40 million to do this... I can only imagine Statham walked out of the movie loaded.

Role Play (2024)

TV action

[7/10 · 15 January 2024]

I feel like this was meant to be a TV show, but they then made it into a movie.

The first half of the movie is a great first episode for a TV show.

Good set up, clear definition of the character archetypes, actors with charisma, some TV-style light intrigue, ... All very well done.

The second half is like a rushed-out mix between a TV show episode and a movie.

Silly dialogs, silly resolution, ...

All in all, it's an entertaining hybrid.

Well done and engaging.

No idea why people complain about it not being funny. Because it's not meant to be funny.

It's a light action movie.

Gotta say as well, Cuoco does a good action star. There's nothing fancy going on, neither does it need it. She does well on the choreography (feels like she might have done some karate when she was a child?), has the charisma required, turns out believable enough for TV/movie.

I dont' know where I know the black dude from, but he is good as well.

And the Brit older dude is fantastic. A real highlight.

Judge it for what it is, a good light action movie.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021)

Full of heart. Americans making a ghibli movie, and succeeding

[9/10 · 3 January 2024]

Marcel catches you from the very first second and doesn't let you go.

It's a heartfelt movie, with characters you will immediately come to care about. It's a shell, and you still care about it.

It's constantly creative, sweet and fun. But still gives you that little bit of satire. But more than anything else, it's sincere and made with so much love.

Technically, you won't find any fault. The animation is exquite, the whole movie has such great sense of rhythm, ...

I'm trying to think about how to describe it, and I think I must say it's just as if a bunch of Americans made a good Ghibli movie.

It's THAT good.

The Mayor's Race (2018)

Plagued with lies

[1/10 · 2 January 2024]

Ghettos in Bristol (Easton is not a ghetto), being the first European African mayor when Peter Bossman did it 6 full years earlier, ... Even the summary is plagued with lies or inaccuracies.

Just have a look at the poster, trying to emulate Rocky.

The misrepresentation of 1960s Bristol (UK) is so blatant to anybody who ever set foot on it.

They fail to mention that this is a career politician, educated in political science.

This is not a documental, but a political tool for the subject.

Then again, as a political promotion tool as well, it comes out as boring. Complete lack of rhythm and content.

Zombie Town (2023)

Bad good bad movie

[2/10 · 22 November 2023]

The photography is very pretty and the pacing is nice.

Some actors are decent. Most are honestly not.

I don't know... the producers owed some favors and that's why they cast all those bad actors?

So many of them really act like amateurs. Feels like they were taken straight from a highschool production.

The script is careless (in the good sense). It doesn't take itself seriously.

Sadly, it also seems like the script was put together by some decently talented... in a single weekend.

It's all silly, incoherent and lazy.

I can't imagine this paying much money or making any money.

It doesn't feel like a work of love either.

Unless Aykroyd and Chase owed a favor to these actors' parents (except the black one), it makes no sense.

Maybe they tried to make a series B movie, a good bad movie?

But it turned out bad good bad.

Your Lucky Day (2023)

Engaging from start to finish

[8/10 · 19 November 2023]

For some reason I had little hope for this one, but once I started I just had to watch the whole thing.

There no need for a big budget when you know when you are doing and you write up a good script.

No fillers, no fluff, no vacuous metaphors, ... Enought for you to understand the characters and to make you care about them.

Yeah, it leans on some stereotypes. And that's ok. That's what stereotypes exist for.

The action is also well done as well, by the way. Nothing flashy, just effective stuff that they let you clearly see.

Perfectly well done and perfectly enjoyable.

They could have used more money to get more famous actors and more flashy unrealistic action... but to be honest it doesn't it it; I'd say that it'd even make it more showbusiness-y and less storytelling-y.

Congrats to the team. Well done you.

The Green Knight (2021)

Unbeareably slow

[2/10 · 19 November 2023]

In a normal room that's not noisy at all, I just could make out what people was saying. I had to put headphones on.

I watched over 1 hour of the movie.

After the first 20 minutes, I set it to play at 1.5x.

Still unbeareably slow.

I keep seing 12 second-long scenes that could have communicated the same in 3 seconds.

I feels like the director actively wanted to discourage people from watching the movie.

Nothing happens.

You don't care about any of the characters, at all.

They even leave out parts of the legend that could have made the movie so much better.

I can only guess that they had no money, they had some stubborn idea about not having dialogs, they didn't want to resort to storytelling / animation / puppets or any of the million ways they could have told the missing part, and they for some really thought it had to last over 2 hours.

I'm sorry I watched over 1 hour of it, even at 1.5x for part of it.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

Aggressively bad

[1/10 · 13 November 2023]

Does somebody in Marvel hates viewers?

Why subject viewers to over 2 hours of this?

We get it, "multiverse" is the buzzword ever and you love it. It also gives you the opportunity to create nonsense plots, with no stakes, or with all stakes in but with lazy magical solutions.

Honestly, I didn't finish watching this. I felt like Marvel had simply lost any respect for the viewer.

It's just nonsense. Magic. A lot of VFX guys doing random stuff, just for the sake of it; and to fill up a minimal plot up to the mandatory 90 minutes, but to roast viewer for over 2 hours.

No. Just no. Better watch the tumble-drier run.

The Marvels (2023)

The movie has no soul

[6/10 · 13 November 2023]

This one sits around the middle in the Marvel movie ranking.

Don't get me wrong. It's not good. But it's not aggressively bad like the last Dr Strange, for example. Maybe because they had the consideration to leave this one at just 90 minutes.

Imagine Black Widow, but without the funny bits.

It's deeply uninspired. No idea how they arrived to this plot, but they should re-evaluate their process. I didn't care about any of the characters, none of the plot points clicked, all the plot points were just not bad enough to be annoyed by them, dialog where just meh, ...

Surprisingly, the choreography was slightly bad. Just a mess in which no stakes were at play.

The usual post-credits scene promises a Disney-style future movie which I'm already not interested at all about. And that's quite something, because I really like the previous iteration of the character introduced in the post-credits scene.

You can give this a skip, and you won't be missing anything. You can watch it, and you won't hate it.

Brie and Samuel, I hope you made lots of money with this (it's a job and we all gotta eat). I also hope you go back to working on real projects like I've seen you do in the past, though. To be honest, I myself will just skip the next few Marvel movies and wait for your other stuff.

In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50 (2022)

Not for fan. For people who care about a craft

[10/10 · 5 August 2023]

I knew nothing about Crimson King.

I had listened to a little bit of their music and it told me nothing, so I never paid any more attention.

After watching this film, I can proudly say I know very little about the facts, names, impact, etc of the band.

I feel I know what drives the band, what they are trying to do, what cost it comes at, and even maybe what they get out of it.

And I quite like that was the take of the film. I can learn all the data in Wikipedia if I'm so inclined; I can listen to their recordings any time I want; this film fills a different gap.

I'm still not keen on what they create and how they dress it up. But it doesn't matter. This is not a film for fans, it's a film for people who care about a craft whichever that craft might be.

Skinford: Death Sentence (2017)

Ran out of ideas

[2/10 · 14 July 2023]

The first half is good.

The girl is pretty, the dude is funny, the other girl acts well, ... Once you accept the premise of the movie, that the girl can't die and neither can you while you are in contact with her, it makes sense.

The second half is where it loses it all.

Seems like they had no ideas as to where they wanted to go or how to arrive there, and just threw in whatever the first proposal for it anybody made was.

It stops being funny, it's not torture porn at all as another review said, the caricature characters serve no purpose, ... even the time jump in the storytelling are pointless (and not very well paced).

Quite a shame. It could've been good.

Watch the first half. And as soon as you see it derail, don't expect it to pick up at all; just leave.

The Machine (I) (2023)

It's not serious good, it's silly good.

[8/10 · 13 July 2023]

Feels like the movie's message is all through the movie.

Christler knows what he knows how to do, what is expected, what he is selling.

The movie is not good in the way a "normal" comedy is. But it good as a silly method to put out outlandish jokes and make you laugh out loud quite a few times.

If you are in on the joke, you'll definitely enjoy the silliness.

Put aside the tons of amateur-ish phrases in the script and silly arc. Everything else is very well done, very well paced, very well acted (except one actor, which I dare not mention), and silly funny.

Kreisker is not a great actor, but he doesn't need to. Seems clear that he put a few scenes in just because he thought they'd be cool (even is nonsensical), and they were cool.

The blonde actress is quite awesome, and the rest of the casting is also proper good.

It's 2 hours long, but didn't feel long at all. Enjoy the silly.

Fool's Paradise (2023)

No Chico

[4/10 · 7 June 2023]

I was happy to see the multiple references to Chico.

I thought they were a bit on the nose but I imagined I missed the more subtle ones. Judging by the reviews here... maybe they needed to be even a bit more explicit, like literally putting a bit of a Marx Brothers' movie?

Anyway, lot's of stuff happens in this movie. There's something going on all the time.

Got that pacing right, again reminding Chico and Bros.

It all looks well done.

The only problem is that it's not funny, doesn't connect, doesn't really say anything.

Not agressively bad. Just meh.

Hope he gets another chance, but maybe run the script through some colleagues to check whether the audience will find it actually funny?

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)

Absolutely fantastic

[10/10 · 3 May 2023]

Previous D&D movies made me doubt about this one, but boy was I wrong.

It's a fantastic adventure movie. Go watch it.

Over 2 hours long, and not once you feel bored at all or feel any fillers were fed to you.

It's funny, well paced, CGI that does the job, well choreographed fighting scenes...

If you know D&D, there's a few references for you to enjoy.

If you don't know D&D, you don't need them; you'll still enojy this throroughly.

You even care about the characters, learn their ways, believe their motivation, believe their decisions.

Chris Pine usually annoys me a bit (I honestly don't know why), but I liked him a bit now. He made me proper laugh a few times.

Michele Rodriguez and Sophia Wills were proper great.

And I gotta admit that Hugh Grant has found his lane since Paddington. Doing great unlikeable likeable characters.

The Power (2023)

Unexpected, eyeopening

[9/10 · 17 April 2023]

We are 5 episodes in right now.

The trailers sold me this as a sci-fi about superpowers.

It is not.

The people making trailers are so talented... don't they even watch the material before creating the trailer? Are they asked to trick us about the product they are promoting?

Shame on you.

Still, good sci-fi drama.

There is one actress who takes me out of it (I'll let you guess who), but everything else is really well done.

Took a couple episodes to get over the fact that I was lied to in the trailer, and the long long set up. But I could see they were trying to do something, so I watched it while doing other stuff.

Episode 4 and 5 are yielding rewards to my effort, and it promises many more to come.

American "happy ending, don't upset anybody" aside, it is very efficient at showing how a new "power" given to the weaker people in society immediatelly changes their behaviour, the previously-powerful people's reaction (and fear), ... how the newly-powerful very quickly become bullies as well...

Episode 5 has a powerful arch that will reach many men (myself included), revealing the constant (normalised) fear women go through.

I don't know... much like whenever I have to go through the sketchiest part of the city, full of drug dealers and people who's very very out of their minds. Head down, eyes down, earbuds out, hands out of the pockets, never at night, take a diversion if possible, ... is that how it is for women, every day, every street?

The Big Door Prize (2023– )

Not a comedy at all, still good

[7/10 · 30 March 2023]

Not sure why they promoted/labeled this as a comedy.

I guess the marketing people saw Chris O'Dowd and they assumed it was a comedy (and not in the Greek sense)?

You will not laugh with this. You might smile a bit during some sweet and tender moments, but no funny moments.

Expect comedy-seekers to be very dissapointed and give real bad scores.

Sci-fi people will give a fair score (as mine).

A machine shows up in a town, which uncovers people's "potential".

You'll have many theories about how it determines the "potential", but it definitely shakes these people's small-town lifes.

It's well paced, keeps you watching without boring you, throwing a bone now and then, being smart (not "really smart", but smart enough), it doesn't feel gimmicky, all flows fine,...

It's not rivetting, and it's very definitely not a comedy.

It's not brilliant, but it does feel sincere and is well done.

Clearly better sci-fi than most of the stuff out there.

Will watch future episodes.

Thanks to the guys making it.

Poor Devil (2023– )

What a waste

[2/10 · 24 March 2023]

I watched the first 4 episodes in Spanish.

The first few minutes are quite bland, but I kept watching because I like other stuff these people have done in the past.

There's a bland joke here and there, the dialog is bad, it seems like this is the first time any of them has recorded animation dialog so everything is completelly disconnected, ...

I want to note that the Spanish version of the dialogs (for this Spanish series) sounds as if someone translated it from English. There's a handful quite poorly translated English expressions there... I can't begin to understand how that happens when all three creators and writers are native Spanish speakers.

One can only wonder how that happens. Those things don't make you feel like they put much effort into the project, though.

The drawing is good and all the technical aspects look good to me.

Nothing technical got in the way at any point.

You could tell me the technical staff are from very well stablished studios with decades of experience, and I'd believe you.

The premise could be fine, but there's no story, no real jokes, no nothing.

I hope this series at least helped the Spanish animation industry, where there's clearly a lot of talent.

Sadly, the important part is the entertainment value. As for this show... it's not offensivelly bad. Just completelly bland. Puff. Nothing.

Wednesday (2022– )

Even better than what the teasers promised

[9/10 · 25 November 2022]

This is good stuff.

The first few chapters are best, but the whole thing is real good.

They nailed the casting and respected the Addams legacy.

It's dark-ish, funny and entertaining all along.

If anything, feels a little bit short, one or two episodes short. That's how good it is; no fillers, and you are left wanting a little bit more.

There is just as much explanation as required, enough info to round up the characters and make you care about them,... I won't spoil it, but the ending leaves you with a small hint of sadness. And that's good, because it means it made you care about it.

The door for another season is left open.

The novelty will be gone by then, as well as all the introductory arc where we and the rest of characters get to know Wednesday.

They'll have a hard time topping this one. Here's for hoping they give it a go.

Well done you!

Warrior Nun (2020–2022)

Trying hard to make a pond look deep

[3/10 · 14 October 2022]

The first episode was 50 minute long (and I say loong).

4 minutes of intro, 2 minutes of tension, 2 minutes of action, 42 minutes trying to explore interpersonal relationships and trying to show how a person sees a whole new world for the first time (and I say try).

First problem: this is WARRIOR nun and comes preceeded by an action-focused trailer. You missed the point or you wilfully misled me.

Second problem: stereotypical and terribly shallow characters. There is nothing to explore.

I had a theory, but then I saw the director was called Jet... so my theory went down the drain. But then I saw the accompanying photo, and my theory was back on the table.

Possible (but justified) sexism warning: yet another female director trying to sell us something that she simply doesn't know how to do, surrounded by people trying to at least save the project by misleading us.

The Valet (2022)

A gentle feel-good movie

[7/10 · 21 May 2022]

You won't laugh out loud with this comedy, but it will keep a smile on your face all the way through.

The male lead doens't match much (he is good, but I just do see him fit in this role), but the rest of the cast is real good at it.

No stridencies, formulaic story, a very very little bit of social criticism and lots of smile-inducing tender comedy. It doesn't intend to be Schindler's List, nor does it need to be it; it does exactly what it was mean to do.

Thumbs up.