unbeltedsundew Reviews

Upgrade (2018)

I can't believe how good this movie was

[9/10 · 21 July 2020]

In the same genre as Ex Machina, but actually better in respect to the story and ending. Engaging characters and great acting from the lead, and the detective character. It even includes some really incredible fight scenes which I would have expected to simply be passable in a movie like this. Many interesting cinematography choices that serve the scenes and story.

I was expecting typical sci-fi schlock that would get me through the time and got sci-fi gold.

Rick and Morty (2013– )

Nihilistic trash

[3/10 · 9 June 2020]

It went from nihilistic trash that was at least funny for the first three seasons, but now in the fourth season it seems to have lost all humour.

Dracula (2020)

Um, it's strange

[3/10 · 30 January 2020]

First two episodes are alright. I suggest that if you enjoy them that you stop at the end of the second episode right after the scene with the two crewmen in the lifeboat where Piotr reveals his real name. After that be prepared for extremely stupid TV.

6 Underground (2019)

Just awful

[2/10 · 17 December 2019]

Somewhere in this mess there is a fun movie waiting to be made. It's still waiting.

In the first minutes you might think that the editing is going to be the worst thing about this film, you'd be wrong even though the editing is truly horrendous. The director did a far more horrible job. The movie feels like it was made by a first year film student only with less heart and less taste. The dialogue is uninspired and terrible, they must've used exposition to tell us the premise of the movie at least five or six times. "We had to die to become ghosts and fix the world." Ok thanks for telling me over and over again, I'm not sure I got that. Although to be fair the script is so awful there's no guarantee that would be understood if it was left up to the story. The whole movie is chock full of fadish techniques, extreme camera angles, moving cameras pointlessly in still scenes, egregious shakey cam, super close ups, irritating and fake lense flares, and perhaps worst of all not giving the audience enough time or screen space to enjoy some of the fabulous locations the had available.

I don't know what the people making this were thinking but it just not worth it. Even the cast, which is amazing, couldn't raise the movie to anything worthwhile despite their obvious efforts to so. Not worth the time and indeed actively frustrating to watch because you can see what the movie should have been.

Venom (2018)

A marvel movie that's actually worth watching

[8/10 · 29 November 2019]

I was very surprised by the fact that the movie was actually enjoyable. It's actually a fun Marvel movie, who'd have thought? Venom was a great character and Tom Hardy, as always, did a fantastic job. The plot was straight forward, but it worked. I'm not sure about the writing. In any case everything else just came together well, and, thankfully, there was a bit of humour in the movie that wasn't hamfisted and lame, which helped take the movie from a ridiculous place into somewhere enjoyable.

Its good enough that I still can't believe this was a Marvel film.

In the Tall Grass (2019)

Exponentially lame

[2/10 · 19 October 2019]

It starts of kind of boring, with promises of being better, then it gets stupid, and then it doubles down on boring, and then it gets really stupid. These are the basic questions you might be asking within the first ten minutes: Why would they not honk the horn and let the lost kid come to them? Why would they both run into the field that they know people are lost in? Why wouldn't they park the car off the shoulder if the expected to only be 5 minutes finding the kid? Why would they not carry any equipment into the field? Why would they not tie a string or rope to said car before going into the field (that they know people are lost in)? What kind of person who needs glasses would take them off to run into a field? Why, when the grass was becoming such an issue, would you not cut, crush, or otherwise destroy the grass?

These questions are only what would be obvious to anyone in the first 10 minutes and don't deal with the other underling questions, which, foolishly, you might be expecting to be answered later on. It only gets worse.

Nightflyers (2018)

A show unsure of its own purpose

[5/10 · 3 March 2019]

The story and characters have a veneer of being interesting but never really turn out to be anything. Much like the show itself. It's one of those things that always appears right on the edge of dropping some great beat and somehow maintains that feeling throughout without delivering.

I can't pretend to understand what even the skills of the various characters are, it's one of those things where the story keeps saying they have skills but they never really use them or alternatively they do things completely unrelated to the things the story claims they are actually good at. And as for the background crew they seem to have no actual jobs whatsoever, they're not even used as fodder for the most part. The background crew could've been left out entirely and it would have had no effect on the story. For instance the ships doctor, besides being the most incompetent useless person in history, she just sits on the sidelines during a medical crisis whilst the core characters attempt to do the job she should be doing.

As for the conclusion of season one be prepared to be underwhelmed with a bunch of gobbledygook and pap.

The Disaster Artist (2017)

A mediocre film, that just doesn't generate the laughs.

[5/10 · 17 February 2019]

There is one thing The Room got right, and that is that it is at least spectacular in one aspect, how terrible it is. The Disaster Artist is mediocre in every aspect, despite its subject matter it has very few real laughs along the way, instead it seems to be depending on the audience being in on their joke. The humour they seems to want to generate seems to be more along the lines of a group of people saying to the audience, "Hey this is pretty funny right? Hahahaha!" and expecting everyone to laugh along instead of actually generating some actual jokes or comedy.

The lack of laughs could be forgiven if this movie had even the slightest bit of heart, but instead it comes off as a smarmy attempt to ridicule those pathetic 'peasants' who attempt to scale the golden hills of Hollywood. The impression I got was that the entire film was based on the idea of the thought "unless you are gods like us, you don't belong here." Truly the funny thing is that The Room demonstrates the ridiculousness of that argument, and the irony is that The Room will be remembered far longer than will the Disaster Artist.

As an aside: I'm not sure why Dave Franco spends half the movie with what looked like a mat of pubes glued to his face rather than growing an actual beard. Is that what Hollywood thinks beards look like?

Life (I) (2017)

Atrocious

[2/10 · 12 August 2018]

There is one thing above all that ruined this movie, and that was the completely unbelievable super monster. It has no weakness and thusly no character and no suspense. It's super strong, it's super fast, it's super agile, it's super smart, it is invincible, it does all that from a single cell amoeba which then goes on to defy all logic in how it grows into a complex organism in which ever cell does everything. It's super boring.

The second issue is the script, in which a gang of super scientist and the most capable people in the entire world do everything wrong that they can, thus ensuring their defeat. I mean this is forgivable with a bunch or drugged out teens in a regular slasher flick, but not here.

Its a shame because it's beautifully shot and the actors really lift the script up from the dregs but they can only do so much.

Extinction (2018)

Boring and contrived

[3/10 · 28 July 2018]

The writing is terribly contrived, the plot was just terrible, and the premise boring. The characters constantly make stupid choices from beginning to end, it really breaks the ability to get into the movie. I feel like perhaps the premise could be something worth working with, but not in the way this movie handled it. I'd compare the entire movie to its bland art direction, largely pointless, and largely tasteless.

The casting was fine, but between the awful script and the terrible direction they might as well have used bad cgi robots.

Black Lightning (2018–2021)

It's OK, but it's not great.

[5/10 · 24 January 2018]

For Episode 1

The story sort of works and over all I think the acting is pretty good (except, ironically, the lead, but I think that is more to do with the material he is given to work with). The show can't seem to decide whether to go full camp or go full serious and so it's sort of stuck in a stylistic limbo. There is a serious amount of SJW posturing going on which is irritating, and definitely detracts from the show, and indeed is belied by everything in the story, so it's also kind of amusing in a sad way. Although what would one really expect from a character created for a different age, and specifically for pushing this sort of propaganda? While it's a misstep it isn't really a death knell for the show so it should be interesting to see where it goes, and to see if the characters develop past the one dimensional cutouts they are in the first show. I'd Rank it somewhere below The Arrow, certainly don't expect anything approaching the subtlety, nuance and craft of the Netflix marvel hero shows most notably its obvious comparison Luke Cage.

The Open House (2018)

A total failure

[3/10 · 21 January 2018]

This movie was awful, both the direction and the writing were complete flops. It felt a lot like they were trying to be clever or have a sense of fun and play with tropes, but they way they did it was not fun it was staid and boring and was most decidedly not clever since I think that is a large part of what led to the downfall of this movie. They entire opening of the movie which was pretty engaging was completely without purpose, and it contrived to lead to a setting that was also great, but in the end served no purpose either. Hinging the story on the idea that open houses are scary (they're not BTW) would have been better served if they had just stayed at their suburban home which they would have had to sell to cover the debts, instead of having to move out because of the rent into some holiday cabin of the super rich sister (who for some reason can't help her in any other way, and who we never see or hear from again) which is a super evocative location, but a set up for a completely different movie. This movie never decided what it wanted to be, and it was no closer to figuring it out by the end than it was in the beginning.

Sundown (II) (2016)

Totally miscast

[3/10 · 4 November 2017]

It's supposed to be a teen rebellion/comedy move and so they cast a bunch of people in their mid to late twenties. The main character is supposed to be 18, but he looks like he is 25. Why? Because the actor was 25 when they filmed it.

Perhaps the total miscasting would be less noticeable if the movie had more worth in other places. Unfortunately the only real fun came in the form of Chuy the cab driver. Overall a very bland and formulaic movie.