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Star Wars: The Bad Batch: Aftermath (2021)
Surpassed all of my expectations!
This was a fantastic first episode! I had low expectations, all of which this episode surpassed! It made the returning characters more interesting, introduced a great new one, and introduced a very intriguing conflict. And I love hearing Kevin Kiner's amazing Bad Batch Theme again! Can't wait for episode 2 on Friday!
Black Beauty (2020)
Horses understand English now
This was clearly supposed to be a serious movie, but it turned out to be a mix of boring and unintentionally hilarious.
It was already an extremely lazy writing choice to use narration to convey the horse's inner thoughts to the audience. Visual storytelling is a much more powerful tool, and in movies like The Call of the Wild (2020), it works perfectly. But what's so bizarre about the narration is that the horse refers to specific details of things the human characters are saying, single sentences even. So the horse understands English?! I'm sorry?!
The acting was also a huge let-down, probably because the script gave the actors nothing to work with. I did not feel anything when we learned that Jo's parents died. No one acts natural in this movie. Even Mackenzie Foy was pretty bad, and she was in Interstellar, one of the best movies of all time, and she gave one of the best performances of her age group ever in it. Even in The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, she was so much better than the film.
This is the type of movie that you instantly forget. Except that the horse understands English, I will never forget that.
The Mandalorian: Chapter 13: The Jedi (2020)
I should be euphoric, but...
Ahsoka Tano is my favorite Star Wars character of all time. Ever since I first saw her in The Clone Wars, I absolutely fell in love with her. And even though I wasn't a fan of Rebels overall as a show, every episode she was in was a blast for me.
When I first heard rumors that she was going to be in The Mandalorian, I wished so badly for them to nail her looks in her first live-action appearance, and they did, but not casting Ashley Eckstein to voice her was a very disappointing choice. I wanted to love this episode so bad, but Rosario Dawson sounded very off... Her voice was way too low, and I never got the impression of her inflections and tone being like Ahsoka's...
I am really torn about this episode. The writing is, for the most part, amazing. When Din said the child's name for the first time, the way he looked at him was so well-done. But Ahsoka's live-action execution just did not work, and I'm almost tearing up writing this, because I know everyone tried their best, and I should be so happy now, but it just didn't work... I really hope you do enjoy this episode more than I did.
Also, why did Ahsoma say that she only knew one of the child's species? What about Yaddle? Ahsoka was around 4 years old during The Phantom Menace, so she should have some memory of Yaddle.
The Big Bang Theory (2007)
This is what's wrong with America
This show is, unintentionally, a perfect representation of what's wrong with the USA. Let's set up a great asexual character who was great representation, and then let's make him ""realize"" how that's just weird and wrong over nine more seasons. Let's explore a romance that gives us the right to portray blondes as stupid for twelve seasons. Let's add a character who steers remote-controlled cars with cameras between women's legs and does other stuff that would get him jailed in the real world, and portray it as funny. Let's add an Indian character, so we can pull off one stereotype about South Asians after the other. In twelve years of their lives, one character meets one non-cishet character one single time, and that's it. In twelve years. And they're in California. Let's hardly have any black characters ever. Let's shame male characters hardcore whenever they show the slightest feminine trait. This show is sexist, aphobic, racist, transphobic, and a lot more.
And, oh boy, that's far from the only problem. After about six seasons, the show has absolutely no steam left. After all the characters became average society-conforming boredom pills, the show, for some reason, carried on for six more years! Six more years, after all the conflicts were resolved! They didn't just milk that cow until it gave no more milk, they milked it until it had no more blood, fell over, and died.
At least in the first three seasons, there were a few jokes that landed well. Season 3 was actually fine. But then, the show had to introduce horrendous characters like Amy, who, at first, is just an overclocked version of Sheldon, who is more obnoxious than really any character ever. Then, for some reason, she suddenly loves sex, and wants Sheldon to love and screw her so bad. What in the world has made her take that 180 degree turn? And also Bernadette... Not only yet another instance of the "blondes are stupid" stereotype, but it is baffling to me that she and Howard get married in the end. They have absolutely nothing in common, except that they're annoyed by their mothers. And I just laughed at the incompetence of the show when their baby was born, which sounds nothing like a baby, and is always off-screen, because the crew can't even get a baby on set. It's pathetic.
At least two good things came out of this show for me. It made me curious to see Star Wars, which made me discover my passion for film. And it also improved my English skills a lot, especially daily conversational English. To save you the time, watch Star Wars. Don't waste your time watching this, like I did.
Black and Blue (2019)
One more rewrite could've fixed it
I saw this movie last night at a preview screening, where you would buy a ticket for a really low price, and you don't know what movie you're going to see. When I go to these showings, the film I get usually turns out to be mediocre or complete crap. I was pleasantly surprised with this one.
This is a movie about a black cop in New Orleans, played by Naomie Harris, who witnesses her colleagues committing murder against unarmed black kids. The murderers and their associates in the local police force then try to frame her for it, and chase her down before she can upload the body cam footage and expose them. This is a very relevant story that pulls off its themes of corruption and racism in the police very well, and Naomie Harris and Frank Grillo give amazing performances. It's extremely suspenseful, and I was engaged most of the time.
Unfortunately there are so many moments in this movie that are only there to move the plot forward, that don't really make any sense, the biggest one being that after Naomie Harris's character gets shot, the first person she tries to get help from is a former friend who owns a gas station, but he doesn't have any bandage, so she fixes the wound with GLUE?? And it works?? This was ridiculous as hell, one person in the theater actually laughed. Couldn't you just let him have some bandage? But no, they got to have the line "Do you have a better idea?" in there, so they can say it in reverse later... Other questions are left unanswered, too. Who sent that WhatsApp message to the kid related to the one murdered kid? The full number was at the top of the chat, which means the sender was not in the kid's contacts, so I don't buy that it was someone he knew, like the movie wants us to believe. When the cops committed the murder, how did they know exactly where they were? The reason for the murder is rushed over so quickly. Obviously racism played a big role, but I would've really liked them to give a longer explanation. At the end, is she still in the police force? Also, this movie tried to tell a subplot with a woman in the victim's family, who Naomie Harris's character apparently knew long ago, and at the end they hugged really lovingly, but I didn't really care because she had hardly been given any characterization.
There is a lot of hip-hop music by who I assume are black artists in the movie. They would often play at the beginning of scenes. Sometimes I didn't mind their use, but two times I think they really disrupted the tone of the film.
There's a great story here, but at times this movie unfortunately suffers from bad writing. One more rewrite could've fixed it.
Cool Cat's Crazy Dream (2019)
Complete rat-shit
This is complete crp. The acting, direction, editing, and camerawork are all wrong. The story is barely there, and the dialog sucks. Daddy Derek, please stop making this awful stuff! If you want to watch a good movie, watch 0000: A Shark Odyssey, it's even available for free on the director's YouTube channel.
Voicemails from Strangers (2019)
Underwhelming
I am a huge fan of Austin. I first saw one of his videos in late 2017, and since spring of 2018 I've been watching his videos regularly. I love them, especially those about filmmaking and his own experiences making films, so I was pretty excited when I saw his tweet saying something along the lines of "Maybe I'll drop a feature film on my channel later this month.".
"Voicemails from Strangers" is a documentary, Austin's first one. In early July I believe he made a creator post on YouTube throwing out his phone number. I find it hilarious that so many commenters believed it was the phone number he uses in daily life. Some people got through to him, but he received over 6000 voicemails, including one voicemail from me, and he compiled them into this documentary.
I enjoyed watching the documentary mainly because of Austin, and because of the experiences shared by the callers, but I was honestly underwhelmed. I wish there was at least some narration throughout the film. Austin has an amazing speaking voice. But my big issue has to do with the opening. I, as a long-term subscriber of his, understood what's going on because I saw all these posts and videos that started this project. But I think that someone who never saw Austin's channel before would be slightly confused. No information was given about who Austin is, or why so many people called him.
Lion (2016)
My favorite movie of all time
Lion is my favorite movie of all time. No movie ever impacted me so much emotionally. No movie comes even close.
I saw Lion in theaters in March of 2017. I never heard of it before that day. I only read about it in the program sheet of the theater, which described it as something along the lines of "A boy from India is trying to find his family", a description that doesn't come anywhere close to doing this masterpiece justice.
Lion is based on the book "A Long Way Home", the true autobiography of Saroo Brierley. As a five-year-old Saroo lived in a poor village with his mother, his older brother, and his baby sister. One day his brother is going away to do work at night for a short time, and despite his initial refusal, Saroo convinces him to let him come along and help him. At the train station of destination young Saroo is way too tired to work, so his brother tells him to stay at the station until he comes back. In the middle of the night Saroo wakes up, he's all alone, he desperately looks for his brother in a train at the platform, and falls asleep again, taking him further and further away from home. One day he's adopted to Australia, and as an adult he's looking for his biological family.
I hardly ever cry at movies, but when I said in this theater I was sobbing. Lion is an extremely impactful story that feels the most genuine I've ever seen in a based-on-a-true-story film. Whether as a five-year-old or an adult, you feel for Saroo at every turn. Especially the ending, which I'm not going to spoil, had me cry my eyeballs out. Saroo's search for his biological family and his secrecy about it made a huge impact on the people around him, which was extremely well-realized by the writers. The side characters are also amazing, especially Sue Brierley, Saroo's adoptive mother. There's an immensely powerful scene where she explains why she and her husband chose to adopt Saroo and his adoptive brother Mantosh. The acting is also amazing. Sunny Pawar as young Saroo had one of the best acting debuts I've ever seen. Dev Patel is amazing as adult Saroo, and Nicole Kidman as Sue Brierley is one of the stand-outs as well. The film is extremely well-shot and lit as well, which is only amplified by the lack of any effects. After a couple of minutes you'll forget that you're watching a movie. I also loved that half the movie is in Hindi and Bengali, which provides a whole lot of authenticity. Whenever the characters' real counterparts would've talked in English, Hindi or Bengali, they do so in the movie. Literally my only flaw with the movie was that the character of Mantosh was underdeveloped, I would've liked to get to know him a little more.
You won't find out why this movie is called Lion until the very end, but it's a perfect title. Also, if you're living in a country where movies are dubbed into your language, please do NOT watch the dubbed versions, especially not the fully-dubbed ones. The Hindi-Bengali language barrier is an important plotpoint, and it would probably be erased in a dubbed version.
I recommend Lion to you 100%. It's the #1 best movie I've seen in my entire life. It's near damn perfect, it's genuine, it shaped many of my views about adoption and parenting, and I hope it will have the same impact on you!
Captain Marvel (2019)
I really wish this had been better
I'm not a huge know-it-all when it comes to Marvel movies. The first Marvel movie I saw was Guardians 2 in 2017, and I've seen most of the new ones since. But I loved Endgame so much that I decided to watch the entire MCU in chronological order from the Beginning, so Captain Marvel was the second movie on the list.
I thought about the movie for a couple of weeks after seeing it. I really really wished I could say it was good, but it really wasn't. I remembered all of the hate that surrounded the movie's release, and because it was the first female-led Marvel film I wished it was better. I've only seen 10 of the 23 movies so far, so my knowledge about the MCU is fairly limited, but I don't understand why the first female-led film in the series had to be Captain Marvel. It should've been Black Widow, she's been in this universe for ages and never got her own movie, and having just seen her in Iron Man 2 I absolutely loved her.
By far the criticism I've heard the most is what people call its "feminist agenda". In my opinion, there were a lot of people on both sides who either wanted this movie to fail or succeed for various reasons. Being a screenwriter myself I can tell you that if you see a movie that focuses on non-female characters, like most MCU films before Captain Marvel, the female characters can still be strong. There are tons of examples of this. Writing a movie with male main characters does NOT mean the female characters are weak, and writing a movie with female main characters does NOT mean the male characters are weak. In this movie? Everyone's really weak, regardless of their gender. Carol Danvers is super boring and flat, and while I like some of the other characters, they don't really have much to do. There's a scene where Ben Mendelsohn's character (I loved that he kept his Aussie accent btw) calls a character "young lady" in a kind of derogatory way, and if that had been the only time the movie addressed that men sometimes talk down to women I would've been fine with it, but there's another scene that was just so on the nose. Carol Danvers wanted to buy something and a guy on a motorcycle harassed her. Yes, it is not too uncommon for women to be harassed, especially back in the 90s, but was this scene really necessary? Instead of making a movie where men are portrayed as harassers, make a movie where people are strong regardless of their gender and work together, this is a much better way to promote gender equality in a movie. Aliens, for example, did it perfectly, and men LOVE that movie because, among many other reasons, it's damn good and featured a well-written female character.
Captain Marvel is a kind of good-looking movie, but the characters are flat, the acting is meh, it's boring, it feels much longer than it actually is, I didn't care about what's going on, it tried to talk about a lot of feminine topics, which is fine, but they are only very loosely connected, so the plot feels like a collection of shorts sometimes. I liked the humor, especially when Carol Danvers first arrived on Earth. People had no idea that aliens exist, and Carol Danvers had no idea how Earth works, which made for some really funny scenes. Beyond that, the movie doesn't have much going for it, which is very unfortunate.
Today is Spaceship Day (2019)
One of the most heartwarming short films ever
This film truly touched my heart, it combines my favorite genre science fiction with comedy, and the characters were amazing. Austin is a fantastic writer and director, I like this even more than his previous film Sprouting Orchids (2014), which was a masterpiece as well. This is now the third animated sci-fi comedy I remember seeing, the other ones being 0000: A Shark Odyssey (2018) and 0009: The Sharks Make Contact (2019), which I highly recommend you also check out!! I love Austin's movies!