Reviews

I have no idea how this is rated so low on here, nor can I rationally explain the poor reviews. Did we even watch the same film? For my money this is better than even the first film in the series. The acting, direction, fight choreography are all so much better than anything else in the franchise so far.

The only way I can think to explain why people hate this so much is that Van Damme doesn't really play a major role in the film until the final act. I personally like this decision. His character is set up to be struggling with who he is, what he was made to be, and then eventually he's unleashed. The heightened anticipation this creates is really well done, and even with somewhat limited screen time Van Damme proves that he's capable of being a good dramatic actor in addition to a great action star.

I really appreciate the direction that John Hyams has taken the series, with it's darker tone and more brutal combat. The stories and darker themes are a breath of fresh air. I wish more people seemed to "get it", but I guess this and the sequel, Day of Reckoning, will remain under-appreciated gems of the action genre.

It's hard to believe this is now 13 years old. I would have thought that it would enjoy a stronger cult status at this point, but its current 6.1 rating here is such a sorry underappraisal of this film.

The common criticism I see is that it's too excessive, too much like a Troma film. It's hard to argue the first point, at least it's full of over-the-top violence. Whether it's excessive or not is subjective, and of course I disagree. The world portrayed here is an ugly one, but it's also obvious that they were trying to walk that line of violence that's so over-the-top it becomes simultaneously horrific and funny, and in that I think they succeeded.

I definitely disagree that this is in the same league as most Troma films though. That is to say, it's not a fair comparison because this is far better. Despite the fact that superficially it resembles the kind of schlock that Troma has become famous for, this is actually a very really well-crafted film. If you actually pay attention, the calibre of filmmaking here is on another level. It's honestly a little disappointing to me that more people seem to have missed that, and can seriously lump this in with your average exploitation film in terms of quality.

Not only are the direction and writing really great here, but Hauer gives what I'll unironically call one of the best of his career. In fact, credit should go to all of the cast for doing an outstanding job. Gregory Smith and Nick Bateman deserve props for their memorable portrayal of the sadistic duo Slick and Ivan. The music is fantastic, at times reminiscent of Ennio Morricone and at times evoking more of a John Carpenter vibe. There is never a dull moment here - the film comes out of the gate strong and doesn't let up until the end.

If you are into wild rides, this movie will have you doing a "chef's kiss." It's funny, hilariously violent, and even at times poignant. I can honestly say I haven't seen anything quite like it before or since.

I'd like to rate this higher. I am old enough that I can say that I used to watch it on television, and it definitely left an impression. I've re-watched it several times since then, and always come to essentially the same conclusion: it has a lot of elements that make it memorable but some big weaknesses that keep me from really calling it any kind of masterpiece.

The visual flair is the most obvious thing to praise about the series. The fusion of Japanese anime filtered through the aesthetic of Egon Schiele is inspired, even if it's hampered by some occasional sloppiness. You get the sense a lot of this was a rush job. But the composition and design of the action sequences and the more fantastical dream-like sequences are really interesting, and a lot of that imagery will probably stick with you long afterward.

Unfortunately, on subsequent viewings I've found the writing to be rather obnoxious. A lot of the episodes have multiple writing credits, and this isn't surprising: there is this overwhelming impression that there was no unified idea of what any of this was supposed to be about. The dialog is usually really cringe-inducing. Imagine the worst parts of the Matrix sequels turned into an awkward soap opera and you'll have some idea of what the dramatic parts of the series sound like. The first and second seasons, which consists of disconnected shorts, have no dialog, and might be better for it. The third season actually has a discernible narrative but most of the dialog is fairly terrible. It's a regrettable trade-off.

Despite its shortcomings, the series really does feel like an important piece of history. The dystopian vision and inventive science fiction concepts that it plays with are compelling. When it's at its best, we are given little information and left to try to piece together what's happening and why. It's a shame that the dialog feels so annoyingly expository and at the same time unintentionally nonsensical, ultimately undermining that. I would still recommend it, but I think most people giving this anything higher than 8/10 must be too strongly influenced by their nostalgia.

I don't know how even mediocre writers could fail so badly at creating characters we care about at all, create any sense of proper world-building, or even create individual scenes that have any kind of meaningful development.

No, this series is at this point quite obviously going to just be a collection of scenes where things sort of happen and even within that scene there's no rhyme or reason to it. Forget about a larger sense of consistency across the film. I wish I could say that Snyder at least seems to understand how to create cool action. I think at one point in time he probably did - earlier films of his like Dawn of the Dead and 300 seem to suggest he had some clue about this. I don't know what happened, because even the main battle here was frightfully dull and full of nonsense like people rushing at each other with guns so that they could... hit each other with the guns. People look on as their friends get killed about 20 feet away, at which point they rush over to help them after it's too late. Protagonists have clear opportunities to kill their enemies but simply decide not to for no reason. We discover that the ships are powered by... coal. Yes, there are rooms on the ship where people are shoveling coal into the engines. But they also have scanning technology that rivals Star Trek.

These movies should have written themselves. It's a shame, because I really like Sofia Boutella but she deserves a much better franchise than this.

Discovery seems to be really polarizing, and apparently gets a lot of hate for either not being "real" Trek or being too "woke." I don't really care about any of that. I'm OK with a show going where Trek hasn't gone before. But it's a shame that the writing couldn't be more consistent. I also see that most people seem to prefer the first two seasons and then think the show dropped a lot in quality after that. I must really disagree.

In fact I can't really single out any season for being markedly better or worse than the others because there's so much inconsistency within each season. Each one has some really stand-out episodes with good ideas and some good characters. And then everything gets derailed by idiotic decisions, ham-fisted and overly dramatic dialog, actors that seem to have exactly one emotion that they're capable of expressing. The show makes a play for being darker and more serious than other Treks with really mixed results. Often the violence feels excessive and out of place. The drama and personal problems range from well done to feeling really forced. While there are some excellent characters, there are also a lot of people who you see repeatedly but it's difficult to even remember their names because the show doesn't care about them at all.

Which brings me to Sonequa Martin-Green. I think she's capable of being a really good actress. I liked her in The Walking Dead. But her acting in this show is legitimately difficult to watch at times, and that's a problem because the show inevitably ends up being mostly about her. Especially in the first three seasons, you will probably see her unfurrow her brow a total of three times. It's not an exaggeration to say that almost every speaking line she has is read as though she's desperately pleading with whoever she's speaking to. When she's not doing that, she's either crying or whispering. There's even a scene where she's giving a eulogy with an entire crew in attendance and she's whispering half of it so softly that there's no way anyone there would have been able to hear what she's saying. The whole thing seems so ridiculous, and it's not an anomalous scene. The writers also have this annoying penchant for reminding us how flawed she is yet simultaneously acting like these flaws are actually strengths. I wish I couldn't say this, but she's the focal point of the show and also maybe its worst character. In fairness, these things do improve in season 4, but at that point it's difficult to begin liking her.

In spite of all this, the show is watchable. I didn't hate it as much as I kind of felt like I wanted to at times. The production values are really good. There are some excellent episodes and cool characters with interesting arcs. It's almost worth watching for Michelle Yeoh alone. I would say it's an improvement over the rebooted film franchise but not as good as most of the other shows in the Trek canon - definitely not as good as TNG, the original series, DS9, or Enterprise... maybe about even with Voyager, but even that I would probably put ahead of it.

I say 'inexplicably' because at first this seems like it should be a difficult thing to screw up. The trailer hints at an expansive world and high stakes. But maybe it's easy to explain why this is so forgettable: it's mostly an unsatisfying pastiche of clichés that don't really ever cohere into something interesting.

It starts off promising enough. The initial scenes set the stage for a peaceful, almost idyllic setting which is interrupted by the arrival of a malevolent force. The introduction of the adversaries is at first portrayed with tension, but this quickly dissolves into just a bunch of cartoonish bad guys. What follows is an awkward hour and a half long team-building exercise followed by what feels like a climax that would feel rushed if we didn't just kind of want it to be over anyway. None of the characters we recruit along the way are given any dimension, we don't really care about any of them, and they don't spend enough time together to form any chemistry with one another.

The writing here is just not very good. It's often hard to tell if the actors are really just not into it or if their lines and parts are just so bizarrely uninspired that they have nothing to work with. This is set up like Magnificent Seven in space, but statistically at least one of these characters should *accidentally* be compelling, but they're all really dull. So many things are hinted at and then never qualified or brought up again. In a film like this, at the very least the villain is usually memorable, and Ed Skrein is usually pretty good in those roles, but here even that is paper thin. This is one of those films where things just sort of happen and there doesn't seem to be a lot that connects one scene to another.

Of course this is a part one, and maybe part two will somehow develop the innumerable loose threads here. Maybe we'll actually see some chemistry build between the characters and begin to care about this struggle. But I kind of doubt it. There were just too many consistently missed opportunities here and indications that the writers have no understanding of how to build a story of this magnitude.

The trailer for this makes it look like a hyper-violent romp with a lot of irreverent humor throughout. David Harbour in the role looked to be some of the most perfect casting you could imagine.

Well, the film does deliver on the last part. Harbour is excellent, as you'd expect. Unfortunately the rest of the film is really not as exciting as you'd probably have hoped. Most of the film's runtime is bogged down with scenes of either vapid rich people acting stupidly, cartoonish bad guys acting ridiculously, or with Santa talking with a young girl via hand-held radio. Some of the latter actually salvages the film in lieu of the entertaining over-the-top violence you'd be expecting if you had trusted the trailer.

Unfortunately, up until the film's final act there really isn't very much of that. And disappointingly, most of it is shot in near dark, making it really difficult to make out what is even happening. It's actually kind of surprising that this aspect of the film was so poorly conceived given that it was obviously the big selling point.

Overall, this is watchable, again mostly because Harbour really gives 100%. But the writing and direction leave a lot to be desired.

I see a lot of people complaining about this film for what I feel are the wrong reasons. The common criticism you can pretty much figure out by scrolling through half a dozen reviews is that the ending is bad. I definitely disagree - if anything I thought it was one of the best parts of the film, and I feel that if you're thinking critically about what the film is really saying then it's hard to imagine not understanding why it ends that way.

If anything, the weak parts of the film are:

1. While a lot of scenes are very effective at creating a sense of suspense and anxiety, there are a number of scenes that don't really advance either the plot or our understanding of the characters at all. This could have been cut down by at least 20 minutes and been probably a better movie.

2. Stylistically the film goes off the rails sometimes. Early on in the film especially, the soundtrack is all over the map. There is also a lot of weird camera work that doesn't really contribute to the visual story that's being told and just generally feels overboard. To be fair, there are other times when the cinematography and direction are quite good, so it's a mixed bag.

The people praising the film seem to be generally saying that this is a really relevant film for the times we're living in, and I think that's true. Despite the fact that it could be overall much tighter and more effective if certain creative decisions had been made, I still think it's worth watching.

This is kind of an odd film. It does a reasonably good job of being engaging, with a slick directorial style and nice tension in a lot of scenes. There aren't nearly as many action scenes as the trailer would have you believe, but those scenes are satisfying. Fassbender plays his part well, although his character doesn't require much dynamic.

But I doubt I'll be thinking about this much a week from now. The story itself seems simple enough that you would think it would be hard to screw it up and yet how we get from one scene to another is rarely explained. The entire film essentially consists of him tracking various people down but how he even knows where or who they are is almost never shown. The conclusion is also a bit nonsensical given what we are taught about his character. Furthermore, the entire affair seems like a missed opportunity: the fact that our protagonist doesn't change at all ends up feeling like the film really wasn't "about" anything. Of course not every film has to be about something, but they are usually more memorable when they are.

As a lover of bad disaster movies and probably one of the few people in the world who can unironically say they love The Core, the biggest problem with this movie is that it's actually not dumb enough. The best bad disaster movies always have a degree of self-awareness about them, performing a balancing act between grave and silly. 2012 is another good example of a film that manages to pull this off.

Moonfall is just kind of cringeworthy throughout. The fact that there are three different lines in the movie referencing how awesome Elon Musk is kind of tells you everything you need to know about it. It's hard to even tell if the conspiracy-theory pseudoscience is actually being played seriously here. The whole film is almost like a joke that you can't tell if someone botched on purpose in order to be funny or if they're really just that inept at telling jokes.

Just about everything that usually makes a disaster movie either exciting or funny falls flat here. Apart from a few scenes of the Moon skidding past Earth in orbit, there's not even a lot of visual flair, and most of the action feels pretty tame. The melodramatic moments of the script are likewise just too flat to be even unintentionally funny. I can promise that you won't care about any of these characters in the slightest... well, maybe Fuzz Aldrin.

At this point I can't tell if I'm just tired of these films and their formula or if they're just in a quality slump. I think it's a combination of the two. I thought the first Guardians film was pretty good but did not like the second one that much. Too much heavy-handedness in the themes, too much humor that didn't really land, too many attempts at emotional resonance that fell flat. This is closer to the second than the first in pretty much all of those categories.

The best part of the film is probably Iwuji who plays a good villain. Some of the Rocket backstory is good too, if kind of heart-breaking. But most of the film suffers from having such a large number of characters that we're supposed to care about, all breaking off into small groups, spawning subplots that feel too formulaic in their own way. It all builds really obviously into a "send-off" that to me felt kind of forced.

There were some entertaining scenes and, again, the parts involving Rocket's backstory were good, albeit a little hard to watch. But I don't really know why everyone seems to be raving about this one so much. To me it was barely better than the second film and definitely not in the upper tier of Marvel films overall.

I've found it increasingly difficult to care at all about any of the Marvel or DC stuff that's come out since End Game. The formula has gotten very stale and even films about characters that I like have become so lackluster and uninteresting that I've started to think that the days may be numbered for "cape sh**."

In walks Peacemaker and says "hold my beer." This is really James Gunn at this best. While I don't often appreciate the fact that he has to make daddy issues a central theme in the things he does, here it actually works and feels pretty genuine. The humor, although somewhat relentless and juvenile, surprisingly works 99% of the time. If you liked his Suicide Squad, you should really like this (it's overall better, I would say). The chemistry between the different characters is mostly really good (especially between Peacemaker and Vigilante, which almost needs its own spin-off-of-a-spin-off, and I hate spin-offs).

The best part about the series, though, is the emotional core that holds it together, embodied in the meaningful arcs that are given to many of the characters, often in subtle ways. Cena really surprises with a great acting range, proving he can do action, comedy, and drama. I like that they took a character from Suicide Squad that seemed like a shallow-minded d-bag and turned him into a real person with a lot of pain and trauma that he has had to overcome. The way they treat the process of his growth is what makes this series stand out.

And of course, the real star, Eagley.

Despite his personal failings in real life, I actually like Miller as an actor and think he did a good job here. Unfortunately, apart from him and Keaton, much of the rest of the film felt phoned in. Even the production values were surprisingly poor. A lot of people are complaining about the CGI and justifiably so - this would have looked bad 20 years ago so it's pretty inexcusable in 2023 from a studio with this kind of resources at its disposal.

Casting felt really off even in some of the smaller parts, with many of the actors (looking at you Ron Livingston and Sascha Calle, among others) feeling like they weren't even up to the task of delivering in their limited screen time. Some of them (Shannon is an example) were so flat that you had to wonder whether they were even in the film at all and you weren't just seeing some AI rendition of their likenesses ripped from previous films.

The plot, at its core, would have been alright if this wasn't several films back in the line of superhero movies that tried to play with time travel and alternate realities. I can't speak for everyone else, but I've definitely found it increasingly difficult to care about these free-for-all cinematic universes. The saving grace of this film is that there's at least some emotional resonance driving Barry's decision to go back. It still pales in comparison to the gravitas driving End Game, for example, but it was something. Unfortunately here the reality jumps just become tiresome by the end of the film and the relentless fan service isn't enough to hold it together.

All in all I was a little disappointed in this. The DCU doesn't have a great track record at this point but I was kind of hoping based on the trailers that this might be one of their better entries. Unfortunately it ended up being just another poorly executed mess. It wasn't Black Adam bad, but it wasn't that good either.

Don't get me wrong: Dark Fate is far from perfect. In many ways it epitomizes the way franchises try to invoke past successes in the hopes of getting enough fan service points to get a passing grade. But at least it was watchable, had some great action scenes, interesting character moments, and actually made some sort of sense.

This movie is just bad. The performances are of a really poor caliber and the writing is such an abysmal mess. Even in the tradition of abandoning conventional logic for movie logic this is off-the-charts nonsense. People remember things that haven't happened yet, people are born who shouldn't have been born yet, the script basically just sends whoever wherever whenever they are needed for things to happen and just tells you to go with it. It's probably the most ridiculously arbitrary screenplay I've ever seen. There are dumb films and then there are films where it actually feels like the people who wrote it are insulting your intelligence. This is one of those.

But the biggest problem is that as a Terminator film it's actually just really boring. I mean, there is action. But none of it is interesting or compelling. Even at their worst the rest of the series has some awesome scenes (well... Salvation is debatable). I can't really think of a single scene from this that was memorable or had even a fraction of the intensity of the first couple Terminator films. T3 looks like an utter thrillride by comparison.

I've even re-watched this just to make sure I wasn't missing something and it was honestly difficult to even sit through. My advice is to not even see it once.

This is an odd viewing experience, but one that is worth the investment. The first 15-20 minutes are strange. You will probably wonder what kind of movie you're watching, and you may even be asking yourself why things feel "off," or maybe even thinking that it's just not very good.

Without spoiling anything, there comes a point where everything changes and everything we've seen up to this point becomes re-contextualized. As the next act of the film unfolds, things we didn't understand suddenly start making sense, and a lot that we thought we knew gets completely up-ended.

What starts out as a somewhat bizarrely awkward film turns out to be rather clever and even moving, and rather satisfying in the way that it subverts out expectations.

The series has followed two different trajectories: the quality and creativity of the action choreography, and the quality of the storytelling. In this third entry, I think we can generally say that the first trajectory has been upwards. While all of the films suffer a bit from monotony that comes from watching at least a hundred people get shot in the head in one way or another, this one at least mixes things up quite a bit with more hand-to-hand combat, knife throwing, attack dogs, horse riding, motorcycle combat, etc. It felt overall more refreshing than what we came to expect from the first two films.

Unfortunately the second trajectory has been steadily downwards. The first film rightfully hinted at a larger mythology about a global network of assassins. I think history has generally taught us that mythologies like this are better hinted at than expounded upon, and the John Wick series commits the mistake of ignoring that historical lesson. By the second film we already had scenes like where an entire public park is revealed to be populated by people who are part of this network, and everyone from street buskers and cab drivers are likewise assassins in waiting. In the third film this just gets turned up to 11. The extent of this network along with the convoluted and ridiculous rules that govern what is and is not acceptable in this world they've created actually reach cringe-worthy proportions.

The dialog is mostly terrible. Having silly dialog is a well-established feature of a lot of action films, but it works best when the overall tone of the film backs that up. Here it feels like it's at odds with the attempts at gravitas. The supposedly most dramatic moments are mostly rather difficult to take seriously.

To the film's credit, aside from the greater variety of action staging, there are some good character moments here. Fishburn is a welcome carry-over from the previous film, and it was nice to see Lance Reddick actually join in the action rather than merely playing concierge/dog babysitter. It was also a pleasure to see the very underrated Mark Dacascos in a big movie again.

For some mindless action, there are far worse ways you could spend 2 hours. I would like to see much less focus on all the High Table nonsense in the next film, but I won't get my hopes up.

The film starts out predictably enough - you can probably imagine what the first scene will look like knowing almost nothing about the film. The protagonist is sympathetic, but even so, it's difficult to fathom some of the poor decisions early on in this film. But let's suspend some of our disbelief so that the movie can happen.

The action, especially in the first half is pretty riveting. I found at one point my palms were legitimately sweating, and I'm not even overly afraid of heights. If you are, this will probably be either a really exciting or somewhat difficult film to watch. My girlfriend is rather afraid of heights and she kept saying how uncomfortable each scene made her (although I think she did enjoy it for that).

When the film settles down into more psychological territory it starts to lag a bit. Overall the pacing is still not bad, but the slower parts didn't add enough thematic interest to really make up for the shift of gears away from the more riveting action. There's also definitely some heavy suspension of disbelief required later in the film.

Overall I think this is worth watching. The acting and direction were all quite well done. The writing was nothing special and was sort of the weak part of the film. I do tend to find single-setting films like this to be an interesting cinematic challenge. Not only do the film makers have to visually represent their primary location convincingly, but they have to maintain our interest enough without relying on change of scenery. In that regard I do commend the director here for succeeding in that regard.

I can even understand the desire to try to update the source material for a more contemporary target audience, but hardly a second goes by in this series without eliciting bafflement over how bad the writing is here.

This is such a gigantic step down from the original film, which had cool world-building, great characters, striking visual effects, an amazing score, and some comic relief that actually felt like it wasn't constantly at odds with the tone of the other elements. Everything in this series is painfully anachronistic, especially the dialog, which is some of the worst I've heard in a long time. The characters are really uninteresting and have identities that are basically only distinguishable from one another by their particular brand of snark. Even Willow himself is often reduced to a wise-cracking old grouch. The music must be an actual joke: every episode has at least one modern popular song injected into the soundtrack, often being a cover version of a slightly older track (we're talking Metallica's 'Enter Sandman', Springsteen's 'I'm on Fire', Dire Straits 'Money For Nothing', etc. - in other words, *not* the kind of thing that feels at home in a fantasy series).

To be fair, the direction does overall improve as the series goes along. It starts off in genuinely amateurish territory and ends up in the realm of upper mediocrity. The writing, however, gets worse and worse as the series progresses. There's literally an episode where a troll (yes, the feral shrieking creatures from the film) uses the words "anywho" and "schmalzy" (incorrectly, I might add) in the same line of dialog. In one episode a character calls another one "bro." It's difficult for me to fathom who thought this kind of thing was a good idea. The overall story is so meandering and ill-considered. Things just sort of "happen" and then they're on to the next thing. Continuity is so bad that characters sometimes disappear from the room entirely during a scene.

I could probably go on for quite a while about everything wrong with this series, but I'm going to cut myself off there because I think you probably get the picture. This plays out like someone who had never made film or television had put in charge. This is just another sorry and tragic example of how little Disney cares about making quality content for existing franchises.

I see people saying this was "artsy" for the sake of it and didn't have a plot or meaning. LOL, wut? Seriously, I don't even know how someone would find their way into a film like this and have no experience watching films that aren't spelled out for them. But OK, maybe this is your first "difficult" film.

Anyway, Alex Garland is on a roll at this point, and if you haven't seen either Ex Machina or Annihilation as a point of reference, they are definitely worth checking out, and serve as a better entry point and are much easier to understand. But they also hint at his sensibilities, which culminate in this film which takes them to the next level.

Everything about this film is incredibly well done. Writing is creative and engrossing and the direction and acting really sell it. The soundtrack perfectly accentuates the mood throughout. I'd definitely recommend this if you want to watch a high level of film craft that might be a little difficult to watch but definitely has a "message" that you will be thinking about afterwards.

Tjahjanto's The Night Comes For Us is one of the best, most brutal action films I've seen in recent years, and Headshot was also a solid contribution to the genre, so I expected quite a lot more from this.

Sometimes comedy is very unique to certain cultures and doesn't really translate well. I don't know if that's the case here or if it was just not well-written, but most of the comedic parts (which make up the bulk of the film) are really cringe-inducing and not entertaining. The parts where the comedy mixed with the action were somewhat more successful. But overall there is just not enough action here.

At almost 2 and a half hours, the film is simply too long. They could have cut half an hour and it still would have been excessive. Tonally, the film is all over the place, and not in a way that was very satisfying. The best parts were those in which the violence was hilariously and intentionally over-the-top. But there were really only a couple of scenes like that in the entire film, and the "down time" between those moments was frankly difficult to sit through.

They clearly set this up for a sequel. I do think there's potential there, but only if it's a lot more focused than this first film and better prioritizes the action over the silly character moments that don't really work.

I used to watch this all the time as a kid, but I hadn't seen it in probably at least two or three decades. I was really curious to see how it held up. If anything, I think it has only gotten better.

The beginning of the film is kind of interesting - after a brief narrated bit about the protagonists life up until where we find him, we launch right into the premise of the film: a man starts hearing voices that tell him to build a baseball field. In a way, it feels a little abrupt, and I would say one of the film's only real weak points is that it's a little hard to imagine some of the people around him, especially his wife, going along with things as easily as they do. But it's a minor quibble.

The way the story unfolds is surprisingly engaging, with some interesting twists that keep us wondering what all of this means. The sense of purpose that the protagonist feels which is driving him transfers to the audience. To say the film is "magical" might sound trite, but it really does feel to me like there's a spell being cast on us. There are of course many ways we could rationally try to pick almost everything apart here, saying this or that doesn't make sense, but it's remarkable how successfully the film invites us to just go with the flow and get swept up in the sense of wonder that it creates. The score by Horner deserves a lot of praise for helping to really bring out the emotive power of every scene.

The cast is really great, and even some of the smaller parts like Ray Liotta as Shoeless Joe Jackson bring a lot to certain key scenes. I'm not always the biggest fan of Costner, who I often find to be just a rather flat or bland actor, but he does a wonderful job here as the normal guy who has never done anything spontaneous with his life and the regret he feels over his relationship with his father. As I said, I loved the film as a kid, which I attribute to the fun premise and the pervasive sense of wonder, but I think some of the other themes make it just as great if not an even better film to appreciate as an adult. Suffice it to say, this is a great film for all ages.

I would say the first two thirds of the film are quite good. Especially the early scenes of increasing tension are quite well done, and fans of Cuarón and his long takes will probably enjoy this. I've seen some people criticizing that there is not much substance in the film, and I pretty much disagree with that. There is definitely some thematic depth here. The acting is also mostly strong.

Unfortunately, the last act feels like it doesn't have much to say. Up to that point the cinematography was carrying the film and the actors were simply allowed to inhabit the scene as it unfolded. At a certain point that balance shifts almost completely in the opposite direction and centers almost entirely on one character. Now, as I said, the acting is pretty strong, but the problem is that the story itself doesn't seem to know where to go and the character motivations are unclear or downright baffling.

I would still say this is overall worth watching, but I really wish that it had finished as strongly as it started.

I am mostly a pretty big fan of Johnson, and I know this was a kind of passion project for him, so despite some superhero fatigue and generally feeling like the DCU films tend to be mediocre at best, I was sort of looking forward to this. What I got was more or less what I probably should have expected: another badly written and tonally uneven CGI extravaganza.

The backstory that we're given here feels rushed and muddled, but I still felt some hope that when Black Adam was introduced that things would pick up. In his first real scene you can tell they tried very hard to emphasize the brutality of which he's capable, but they must have overexerted themselves, because the rest of the film feels pretty sanitized by comparison. The marketing and expository dialog all suggests that this is supposed to be darker and morally ambiguous, but it ended up feeling just like more of the same.

The actual plot is incredibly clumsy. The conflict that's set up between the Justice Society and Black Adam is forced and legitimately nonsensical. They basically just needed someone for him to fight before the real villain finally shows up, because the ordinary human baddies are obviously no real threat to him. I think the film suffers from having given us no real backstory for any of these characters, because they are uninteresting, hollow, and badly acted. Even Pierce Brosnan doesn't get much to work with here, and the lessons that should have been learned from Wonder Woman about putting an old dude inside a CGI costume went unheeded. Suffice it to say, the Justice Society just ends up being mostly an annoyance here.

And speaking of annoying, it's been a while since I've seen a film with more obnoxious expository dialog throughout the entire film that attempts to remind us what the themes are supposed to be. Count how many times they say the word "hero," how many times they mention that Adam "can't be a hero" or "isn't a hero" blah blah blah. There are so many moments where the film undermines itself by demonstrating that it can't even trust the audience to figure this stuff out for themselves.

I'm somewhat generously rating this a 5, and a bit surprised at how positively some people seem to have received this, because it's really very bland. If you've seen even a few of the superhero films in recent years leading up to this, I can't imagine not finding this really predictable and even boring. I hate to say it because Johnson's involvement in a project usually means that it will at least be fun and exciting to watch, but I didn't really feel much of anything watching this.

Hot take: the Del Toro films aren't really significantly better than this. In fact, the second one is distinctly worse than this. Del Toro is a talented visual artist, and his films certainly have more of a distinct aesthetic than this version, but he's not always the greatest writer. I can't say this film is exactly Shakespeare either, of course, but the script was adequate for the type of film it was.

My other controversial opinion is that David Harbour is probably a better Hellboy than Perlman. Don't get me wrong, I love Ron, and it's probably down to the script more than the acting, but Harbour was pretty good here and definitely elevated the film (as he usually does).

This is definitely a darker film than Del Toro's. His vision was more fantasy and wonder, as he usually does. This leans much more horror. There are a few scenes of legitimately disturbing violence, especially in the final act. Many people will probably miss the "charm" of the other films, but I'm not sure that Hellboy is supposed to be charming. I've never read any of the source material but I somehow gather that this is probably closer to it in tone.

Jovovich works reasonably well as the villain. It was nice to see her doing something a little different for a change. If anything I wish that she had had more screen time. McShane is also good, as usual, but again, underutilized. The rest of the supporting cast, however, leaves something to be desired. Abe Sapien's was a stand-out support from the Del Toro films, and this is definitely missing a role of that significance.

All in all, not a terrible way to spend a couple hours if you need to scratch that Hellboy itch.

Looking at the reviews here, I was expecting this to be a great deal worse than it was. While the first film was better overall, this one does have its merits. And yes, this is a sequel, not a reboot.

Some people seem to be really put off by the social commentary here. I will say that at times it was rather heavy-handed, but for me it did not spoil the film. I preferred the fact that in the first film it was more subtle.

I think fans of Jordan Peele will definitely like this. He only produced it but I think you can tell in certain scenes that his directorial influence was to be felt. The parts involving Candyman himself were often cleverly staged, being very careful about what to show and what not to show, which I think is essential to quality horror. The other aspects of the film including acting and music were also pretty well done.

Overall I would say some clumsy storytelling and a bit of bad dialog here and there held this back from being better than it was, but I would still say it's worth watching.