Tag Archives: Thriller

Mad Max: Fury Road Review

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This review is of the TV-14 edited version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

“All right so here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna make a film about Mad Max where he’s kidnapped for a good chunk of it. He’s still stuck in the same old desert that he’s been for every film in the series and there has been absolutely no progression in this dystopia over all these years. Sounds good?” “Yeaaaaa” This one of those films where you feel bad while you’re watching it because you know that it’s not going to end anytime soon.

So the film starts off with Max being kidnapped by a bunch of ruffians. He manages to come close to escaping but then they capture him again. In the present, he is tied to the front of the car while having his blood continually drained. It’s a really rough spot for him. Meanwhile, a bunch of women decide to break away from this gang and finally claim their freedom. They’re heavily outnumbered though and will eventually be caught. Their only chance might be to team up with Mad Max.

I’ve got a lot of problems with this film as you can probably guess. The real question here is just…where to start. As always the world is super bleak and annoying. The hooligans run the world as always and civilization hasn’t even started. I still question what the point of this whole series is but I suppose that’s neither here nor there for now. There’s nothing interesting to look at and all of the backgrounds are the same. None of the villains are even remotely interesting as they are just edgy randos.

The film also goes more all out on the violence and being generally disturbing this time. This does not do the film any favors in the last. At one point a villain’s spinning around an umbilical cord and you’re just thinking….why? What point does this serve the film? This is one of those cases where the film is so edgy that it just loses the plot all the way through. Then of course you have one of the main women being pregnant while belonging to the villain and this guy basically does whatever he wants whenever he wants.

It’s definitely a tough life when your kingdom is ruled by a madman. At least by the end of the film things will be better but how long will they stay that way? Without a form of government of some kind, the strong will always rise to the top and the power will corrupt them very quickly. There’s just no way around that. So the film doesn’t even leave you with a ton of hope there.

Max is an okay main character at best but I’ve never been much of a fan. It’s not like there’s much to dislike or anything like that, but there’s not much interesting about him either. He’s just a guy who rides on his motorcycle and fights the villains but in this film he got captured so quickly. It’s only thanks to plot armor that they didn’t finish him off to be honest. Furiosa is the main fighter from the women group who tries to lead them off into freedom. She has the most amount of drive and spirit, without her the others definitely wouldn’t have made it.

As it was, one or two of them were ready to call it quits and turn back. Not very smart considering who we’re dealing with here. I suppose there was a bit of Stockholm syndrome going on there. Furiosa is strong and capable so she makes for a good heroine. She practically has to blackmail Max into helping her and then from there she does well with the gun. Hopefully she can use her power to start taking down a bunch of villains and maybe create a society again. That’s all I want at this point, just create something so the world starts to feel more developed and we can get past the endless desert. It’s the only way these films can ever really change.

Otherwise you can hold the last 3 films side by side and play random scenes. It would be hard to know which scene was from which film because they’re all so similar. That’s a really bad sign for any series. At this point even just have Max go into space or something. Get out of the planet and instead of jumping the shark I’ll say that you made the right move. The planet as it is, just stands out for being so grotesque right now.

Maybe if this was a 50s film it could have been a little different. Part of the problem is that every part of this film is like you’re living in the slums. The writing isn’t particularly engaging, all of the villains talk and act like thugs. sure they’re villains but can’t we have at least one sophisticated one? It’s like this brings all of the worst parts of the wild west without any interesting shootouts or anything. I suppose I can at least say that this one had some decent special effects with the sand tornado. It’s not really my thing but it does at least beat being an even more bland film.

There is a lot of action as the characters drive around. I would say that this is a positive except the fight scenes don’t tend to be all that interesting. Even the driving would be a lot better if they weren’t just stuck in the desert the whole time. You can barely see what’s happening at some points. At one point the heroes literally backtrack most of the distance that they had just gone. There’s a story reason for this but you couldn’t help but feel that it was all a waste then.

Even the initial oasis place they were heading for ended up being a waste for the most part. Every time there is some hope, the film is quick to take it away. It’s why I don’t hold out much hope from the ending either. There will always be another gang and more villains without any heroes along the horizon. The series is like an anthology but one where it’s the same story over and over and over again.

Overall, Mad Max takes another absolutely massive loss with this film. The movie is just way too dreary and devoid of any fun. I want to be having a good time here. I want to be grinning ear to ear and laughing at every scene but there’s just no chance to do that. It’s not right and so I don’t have much hope for the future of the series. Maybe it’ll rebound but I wouldn’t count on it. I was pretty close to giving this one a 0 but I suppose there’s just enough going on where it still differentiates itself from the absolute bottom tiers. Definitely stay far away from this title!

Overall 1/10

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome Review

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Strap in folks because it’s time for another Mad Max film. These never fail to disappoint me because the series is so big and yet the films always end up being super underwhelming. This one may beat the original but it’s still not a film that is going to stack up all that high. The film is very dreary the whole time without any big fight scenes to really take it to the next level.

The film starts out with Max getting punked as his vehicle is stolen and so he makes his way to a town that is ruled by violence! They have the famous Thunderdome where you have to fight someone to the death. Max is tough but these guys have a lot of strength too. There are two factions trying for control here. The first group is the one who actually runs the place, Master who is protected by his bodyguard Blaster. Then you have Aunty who has dreams of ruling the place but no way to usurp the throne yet. So she asks Max for help and he agrees so he can get his car and get out of there. Was that a wise move?

The film’s title of being beyond the Thunderdome is pretty accurate since we don’t spend much time in the ring at all. Max is out of there fairly quick as he becomes a runaway and then bumps into a tribe of lost kids. These kids have been waiting for the prophecy of someone like Max to come and save them. They have images of the old world and what the Earth used to be like and that has basically turned into legendary stories over the years. Max breaks it to them gently and works with them to stop the other villains.

Here’s one of the big problems with the Mad Max films in general, you have no real reason to care about the plot. Most of these characters are as generic as they come and there is no real escape. The whole world has already been completely obliterated and even if you escape one group, another one will find you before long. Nobody is trying to rebuild society or anything. There is no progress of that from the first film to the last. If anything I’d say it’s gotten worse. At least in the first film you would still see some semblances of humanity. Now it’s all empty desert which I’m guessing is due to climate change or something.

It’s a world that has given up on being saved and so you just don’t really care at this point. There are no particularly likable characters here and just about everyone is corrupt. The kids aren’t evil yet of course but you doubt that they will be able to become upstanding citizens when they do grow up. Assuming they even live that long with how rough things are. The Mad Max universe is like if everyone was forced to permanently be barbarians until the end of time. As if time never actually moved forward because well it can’t. Without someone trying to change things then we will forever be stuck in the era.

It’s a setting that didn’t work the first time and it doesn’t work now. The film is super grim and while this one is less explicit than some of the other titles, it’s still rather painful. Nobody has a good quality of life here and I can’t think of any real happy scenes here. It goes without saying that Max very rarely smiles but unless you count evil smiles, nobody else is really smiling either. So as the viewer…what is left for me? Not much……not much at all.

The special effects aren’t anything to write home about and I can’t think of any good themes either. The big fight between Blaster and Max isn’t even good because it’s really just a lot of jumping. The way it works in the ring, you use any weapon that you get and you are on a harness so you can jump around a lot. It means there isn’t a ton of actual fighting going on. This is good for Max because it’s made very clear that he wasn’t going to last long in a straight fight against such a built guy. On the other hand, you still could have had some good choreography and martial arts if you really wanted to. Unfortunately the film did not want to do that and so that means there weren’t even a bunch of great fights here.

Then I’m not typically a big fan of kids in these things either and this didn’t exactly change that. The kid mean well but they can’t really fight or anything so they’re not all that helpful for the most part. They help with sheer numbers and back up Max by the end but I definitely could have done without that whole plot. Look, in a film like this I can usually at least jump on the movie having a bunch of animal violence, fanservice, or other issues but at least there’s something to really dive into.

Part of the problem with this film is there aren’t even a bunch of topics to tackle like that. There’s nothing you’re super invested in getting into because the film is just boring. The next Mad Max has more to jump into because it’s a much worse film but the Thunderdome? There’s just not much point to it at all. The whole film should have been about the Thunderdome, at least then we would have a tournament even if my hopes would be extremely low. I have serious doubts that the film would really be able to deliver with the big fights here.

Overall, Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome is definitely not very good. It’s not as crazy as some other titles in the series to be sure but it’s just so boring. You just really don’t care about anything and this has to be one of the blandest dystopia worlds that I’ve ever seen. Give me some high tech devices or something at the very least. I want a cool character or something. Maybe throw in some witty banter? We get absolutely nothing like that. There’s seriously not a single interesting thing about the movie so skip this at all costs.

Overall 2/10

The Three Faces of Eve

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It’s time for a film about someone who had to deal with multiple personalities. It’s definitely a tough condition to deal with in part because a lot of people will always think that you are lying. It’s very difficult for someone to really wrap their head around the personalities all being different and for the changes to happen so suddenly. Some will just think it’s a convenient excuse and even in real life I’m not sure if I would believe it. I’m not sure specifically what it would take to convince me. So yeah it’s pretty tragic all around.

The film starts with Eve leading a normal life until one day she nearly murders her baby. Her husband takes her to a psychiatrist and at the time this was not a medical condition that people knew about. So even the doctor doesn’t buy into it at first but gradually he does start to accept this and so he keeps her for observation. Eve’s marriage is all but tanked at this point and the switches are getting worse. Instead of just 2 personalities, there are now 3. Is there any way for her to remove these extra personalities or is it too late?

Part of the issue is that the main Eve is the weakest willed of the 3 so it’s not easy for her to keep the others in check. They tend to be rather overwhelming with just how powerful they are. They’re more outgoing, one of them doesn’t really have much in the way of morals, while the third one seems reasonable. So the main Eve in a way doesn’t mind getting removed, she just doesn’t want the mean one to win. In the meantime her husband is not particularly helpful to be honest. He never quite ends up believing in the personalities business and threatens to murder her several times. I didn’t think he was particularly tolerant at all.

He was a bit traumatized when the baby nearly got murdered which is reasonable but all of his scenes after that are just rough. You’d expect at least a little understanding. Also later on he is mad because the people around town are making fun of him but he just shouldn’t care what they say. At least Eve meets a new guy later on and quickly rebounds. It’s all based off of a true story so I won’t say much about that because people should be free to rebound if they want to. In a film’s context I would typically take more of a shot at it.

As for the personalities, I would assume the subconscious reason for them is these are all parts of herself that she was really repressing over the years. They eventually just broke their way forward as most hidden feelings do and the best way to get rid of them would likely be to be honest with yourself. Not everything can be solved purely through willpower of course but it’s always a great first step to get you there.

It’s a very dramatic story in the movie but I wouldn’t say all that eventful. It makes sense since it’s not like this would have suddenly gotten very explosive or anything like that in a small town. Some of the more enjoyable scenes are with the doctors talking to each other but it’s just too bad that they couldn’t do more. They were mostly at a loss the whole time and just tried to keep Eve comfortable without really making much progress on removing the other personalities. In the end it’s mostly Eve who does all of the work. I guess at most they helped her tap into the past trauma.

The writing is solid though and the pacing’s not bad. At most it might get a little slow here and there but I expect you’ll have a good time throughout the adventure. You’ll probably get a little frustrated at the husband but all of the other characters tend to be helpful. The ending is also nice and happy. You know how much I like a wholesome ending so that works out. It may be a bit rushed to be honest but I’m not sure what more they would have really done with more time so you might as well just let the film be on the shorter side.

Overall, The Three Faces of Eve is a reasonable title showing just how tricky it would be to have multiple personalities. It has to feel strange not having full control over your body like that. Hopefully it is the kind of thing that treatment can help with since I imagine we’ve come very far from what this would have been like back in the old days. I feel like you don’t really hear about multiple personalities syndrome much nowadays but I suppose it probably just wouldn’t be in the news.

Sound of Freedom

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This film certainly made a lot of waves when it was coming out. It deals with the rather heavy themes of human trafficking and goes very in depth with the subject. So this isn’t meant to be a fun watch by any means but more of an instructional one. Always keep your guard up and be careful out there. You need to be careful not to let your kids out of your sight with any strangers and even with people you know unless you are 100% confident that everything will be okay. Villains lie around every corner.

The film follows a guy named Tim who works for Homeland Security and his main job is really about finding podophiles across the country. Sometimes he is able to save some of the victims as well but typically they are taken across the border so there isn’t much more that the country can officially do about it. One day he plays the long game with one of the villains to get his trust and manages to actually save some of the victims. One of these victims explains that his sister is still being held captive and so Tim decides that this time he is going to see the mission all the way through. He will have to go to Columbia and so he loses the support of the homeland since this is out of his jurisdiction. Tim’s officially gone rogue and will have to use all of his skills to take these guys down.

There isn’t a lot of action for most of the film as it’s really about Tim having to set up a trap for these guys. He plays nice with the locals and has to act the part for a while. The idea is to build a giant building filled with kids to get all of the villains around and of course one of those kids might be the girl that he’s looking for. Of course it’s a very risky endeavor as well because if he gets taken out of the picture, now there is a new base for the villains. Also he has to wait until all of the kids land and so the first ones who get into the island are in the most amount of danger.

I’d say the main weakness that the film runs into is that since Chris has to pretend to be evil for most of the film, it feels like the majority of the film is just villains chatting with each other and talking about evil subjects. The dialogue is just hard to listen to even when nothing is happening. Then the film is fairly graphic in detail about what’s going on here and the main character barely manages to get there in time. One character’s origin is another tragic one about being with a minor when he didn’t even realize it.

Basically, this film is unrelentingly dark at all times. There’s never really any time for happy scenes here. Sure there may be a smile once in a while but only the very ending is actually happy. That’s a long time that you have to sit through to get to that point. For any film the objective for me as a viewer is to have fun. If you’re not having fun then the entertainment part of the genre is being lost and that’s always a problem. I would have preferred if the film has just dramatized things a bit and been more of an action thriller where he went around shooting everyone and saving the day. Of course you can only take so many liberties when being based off of a real event.

The takeaway here is to do your part in trying to make the world a better place. Be careful which organizations you donate to since tons of them are scams and just redirecting the money but find one that is actually helping and contribute. It can feel a bit futile at times with how much corruption there is in the world but we’ll be stuck here a while longer and every single person you can help is one less person being hurt or becoming a victim. Even if the film itself may be a little too daunting to check out, you can always do research online on ways to help.

Overall, Sound of Freedom is definitely an intense film. I do think that it goes too far to illustrate the points of the dark fates that go to anyone who has been trafficked. We understand implicitly what happens at that point without needing to see the whole leadup to it and aftermath. In a standard film that I’d review, going this far in depth would net you the immediate 0. This film is based on a true story so there’s no score and these kinds of films tend to have much more content since you can get away with more in that context. It’s why you can have documentaries and such with enough content to be an easy R just get a standard PG since it’s in a scientific context. As long as this film can inspire more people to support the cause of keeping everyone safe then that’s a good thing.

The Secret of Convict Lake Review

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This film was okay but I feel like nobody looked all that great here. It could have gone badly for the heroes in a bunch of different ways and by the time they got ready for action it was too late. It’s an interesting scenario to an extent but for the most part I don’t think it makes for a good film. As I’ve said in the past, it can be annoying to have a bunch of villains be the leads or even around the leads so you’re just ready for them to go away.

The film starts off with a bunch of convicts escaping from jail and running across the snowy path. They come to a small village where there are only some women who run it. The men are gone prospecting and won’t be back for some time. The prisoners aren’t in great condition since they are hungry and thirsty plus they are unarmed. The women have all the guns but the convicts make the case for why they should stay…and even have a few threats to go along with it. So they are granted the right to spend the night….is this a wise move?

The obvious answer is No! Lets be real here for a minute, there’s a difference between being nice to your fellow man and putting yourself in an incredibly risky position. There are a million ways that this can go really wrong after all. If you ask me….the only thing to do here is to tell them to keep moving. If they hurl any threats then unfortunately you do have to fire. You don’t have to murder them, just shoot out the legs so they can’t try anything and you can keep them alive until all of the men are back in town.

The fact that the convicts were making threats from the start definitely rubs me the wrong way there. Yeah if it’s too risky don’t finish them off right then but instead wait until they go into the house and then take them out. You have to realize that threats like that have to be taken super seriously because they will likely make good on it. On the women’s side, one of them is elderly and can barely walk and the rest don’t have any experience with a gun. The longer this situation goes, the more in danger they will be.

Particularly since most of them do not really have any survival instincts. At least two women quickly get interested in these guys romantically which is crazy since they have only known them for a few minutes or so. Not very smart. One of them is instantly convinced to keep the affair a secret and to even tell him where all of the guns are. What a traitor. The instant you start telling these guys where the guns are, you have sold out your family to a stranger. There’s no two ways about it, it’s the only real answer there and it’s disappointing.

The main convict is named Jim and he’s the only reasonable one here. Of course that does put him in a tricky spot since that means he’s surrounded by the enemy and is forced to be in close quarters the whole time. He has his own plot going on involving the crime he was accused of. If everyone was evil the main characters would really be in trouble so at least this way there was someone to look out for them. I’d still argue the women needs to know how to protect themselves since you still can’t trust anyone no matter how kind they appear to be. Like I wouldn’t trust Jim no matter what he says because you just can’t afford to. In every circumstance you always have to imagine the worst case scenario and plan accordingly.

The romance here is very weak as well. Jim falls for a lady named Marcia who is engaged but wouldn’t you know it, the guy she is engaged to is rather nefarious. So Jim reminds her that she doesn’t actually love the guy and Marcia agrees….that’s great. It feels like a super weak mindgame that got real lucky somehow. At no point should that trick actually have worked. How are you engaged when you’re not actually in love with the guy? A lot of things just aren’t adding up there. Call me super skeptical over here. Of course it all works out but that was sloppy.

Then of course between the traitor running around and the women constantly forgetting to guard the men, it all gets a bit annoying. The tension is that the men could how up and overpower/murder the women at any point and that’s not the kind of tension that makes you eager to see what’s going to happen. The movie just isn’t very fun and really needed better characters. You need to construct a scenario where the men are around and the women are protecting their house without it only being a tough situation because they are making a lot of mistakes. Like have them sneak into town under the cover of night and they could be anywhere. So the heroines have to protect their stables and different houses while making sure not to be separated for too long. That’s the real trick and I felt like the movie just didn’t go that route.

At least the climax is pretty solid though. We have a good chase scene and an actual fight scene at the end. It makes for a satisfying climax with all of the players involved and some good closure all the way through. It still means you have to get through a rather long first 70% of the film but at least ending on a high note is the best way to make sure you’re not going into the realm of being a bad movie. A bad ending would have absolutely tipped it that way.

Overall, The Secret of Convict Lake is an okay film but one where the characters are really annoying. The convicts shouldn’t have been able to deal nearly as much damage as they did. It revolves around one of the women being a traitor and the grandmother getting sloppy near the end. When one side has the numbers and health advantage as well as all of the guns, they should not leave. They lacked the survivor’s instinct here and so the film is more frustrating than entertaining. It’s not a bad film but I wouldn’t be going out of my way to recommend it or anything like that.

Overall 5/10

65 Review

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It’s time for a film involving space and dinosaurs. An intriguing mix to be sure but ultimately it just didn’t work out. With dinosaurs it can already be hit or miss depending on how that plays out and then this film made the mistake of having a very small cast. The problem with this? There just isn’t a lot of dialogue or character dynamics to go through. It means that we are absolutely sunk because the film goes by very slowly.

The movie starts off with Mill getting ready to go on a 2 year journey. This one’s so long that he will really get to miss his daughter growing up and it’s rough because she’s already quite sick. Unfortunately the family does need the money so he goes aboard the spaceship. Everyone dies after an asteroid strikes the craft and Mills lands on a planet infested with dinosaurs. He has his energy gun which can take them all out but he also has to look out for a girl named Koa. Turns out that someone did survive after all. Unfortunately she doesn’t speak the same language that he does so communicating is difficult. Can they survive long enough to get off of this planet?

So you already see the dilemma here with there only being two characters and they can’t even communicate with each other. It means there are a ton of silent scenes as the characters walk around and their conversations can’t go beyond anything too basic or they can’t understand each other. It’s an original dynamic but not one that is going to be super interesting which is the main problem here.

At least Koa is a lot more likable than the average kid in these films. She is fairly resourceful and doesn’t panic all the time. Yeah Koa does have a few times where she breaks down and slows everyone up but it doesn’t happen too often. I can allow for it to happen a little bit. She’s still not a great character or anything but she’s not too bad. Meanwhile Mills is a decent lead but he gives up awful quick. He was about to end it all early on and I felt like that moment was a bit rushed. There were still more options and exploring to do surely. You only throw in the towel like that when you’re really on your last legs and don’t want to die a slow death of starvation or being eaten by dinosaurs. Yeah the last one isn’t super slow but it would definitely be painful.

One of the mistakes the film makes early on is that it just isn’t very fun. This is a very dreary film of the heroes wandering through the jungle and shooting up a bunch of dinosaurs. Occasionally there is a joke thrown in and the characters get to have some fun but this doesn’t happen often and it fades quickly. The backgrounds and areas don’t have much variety and so that doesn’t really help matters. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the soundtrack either.

Of course the big thing here is all of the violence against the dinosaurs. Whether this is the same as animal violence or not tends to depend on how realistic the effects are and how much the creatures look like animals. In this case they definitely look like animals all the way so seeing them get shot or pounded with blunt objects is never any fun. I would also argue that the gun is way too overpowered in this film. One shot can murder almost any of the dinosaurs in this film so there’s not even a lot of danger. The whole time you know that he can definitely secure the win if he just takes out the gun. That’s all he needs to do and it takes away from the survivor angle.

So now that’s weakened and without the gun there would be less dead dinosaurs as well so that would be a plus as well. Look, the dinosaurs have been on this planet for a long time and are just defending their turf so it’s rough to see them all getting mowed down the whole time. This is not how it was supposed to go. So there aren’t many positive aspects of the movie to think about once we’re done with all of this. I will also say that the film gets a bit needlessly grim in what happened back on the home planet while Mills was gone. Is there really any point to the final twist there? It feels like the film just wanted to make sure that there wasn’t almost anything to be happy about by the end.

There was only one avenue to success for this film and the downside is that it could possibly get a bit boring. Redo the film except there are no dinosaurs. So it’s just about the two characters bonding and learning how to communicate without talking. Then you have the humans show up as part of the rescue mission, except they want to murder the kid so our hero has to protect her. It would be a much more engaging film once the opponents show up and the first half can maybe get by on being wholesome. That’s how I would pitch it at least.

Overall, I suppose the film isn’t too long so that’s a good thing. In the end I would say that it just doesn’t deliver on being a really fun summer blockbuster kind of film. There’s no real reason to rewatch it and other dinosaur films like Jurassic World are better. Unless they make a sequel about aliens and cool battles or something then I think this franchise is basically doomed. There are many better sci-fi films for you to check out so I recommend going ahead and doing that instead. This one can definitely wait.

Overall 3/10

Finger of Guilt Review

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All right it’s time for a Noir title with pretty good atmosphere and an engaging plot. There is something that holds it back though and that’s the main character. He really didn’t handle things all that well here and really dug his own grave at times. That makes it so that the villain’s plan feels rather convenient as it just should not have worked at any point.

Reggie is a guy who wants to have a good Hollywood career but he has no self control. The guy got into a big fight and ended up losing his job the first time around because he was messing around and had an affair with his boss’s wife. Not a very smart move right? Then after that he finally got married to the daughter of another person he’s working for but at least this time that doesn’t mean he was cheating. The problem? Letters have started coming in from a lady who claims to have been going out with Reggie. He denies it but his wife is taking this very seriously and is worried at this point. Reggie has to set this straight but part of him wonders if maybe this is real and he just forgot.

So this is where the story loses me a little bit. Every time this kind of mystery happens, the main character starts to wonder if maybe he’s crazy. Maybe somehow he did have a secret relationship with someone and forgot about it. You can see how crazy that is right? These characters get gaslit so easily and it doesn’t make any sense. You know if you did or didn’t do something and there’s no way someone should ever be able to convince you otherwise. It’s just really convenient for the villains.

Meanwhile, Reggie looks awful once he goes to confront her. For starters he is immediately flustered and even goes as far as to try and hide the picture of him that was on her desk. This just made it very easy for her to walk in and point out to the wife that he hid it for some reason. Odd behavior if they’ve never met before right? Reggie walked into her traps constantly. Then the worst part was when he decided to make the rumors true by actually cheating on the wife with this lady.

I feel like the film really skims past this when it’s an extremely big moment. Literally he just gets drunk and decides to get together with her. Later on he said it’s because he wanted to test how far she would go if it was an act but that’s just an excuse. Of course she would go far because it just makes her story better and better. This guy really did not think things through and so later on when he’s upset and complaining about how he did nothing wrong….it’s not true because he did. This guy has no self respect or decency about him. It just ends up all being a big mess.

This is a Noir mystery and part of the fun is in seeing how things will play out so I won’t go too far into the twists but what I can say is that the villains are super lucky here. Their plan just shouldn’t work in any sane universe. Usually in a film like this you would have the mysterious lady blackmailing Reggie which is what gets him to respond but that doesn’t happen here. She never asks for money or anything and just sends him letters so that he can’t report this to the police. So all he had to do was tell the wife that the person sending letters is lying and that’s it. It only became suspicious initially because he decided to try and hide the letters instead of immediately telling his wife about them.

Then later on, all he had to do was say that the lady was crazy and move on. Instead he takes her out to a bar without telling the wife and she catches him. It’s crazy misunderstandings like this that happen time and time again in the movie. There’s always someone walking in at the perfect moment to hear something and then the situation gets worse. Once the mystery is unraveled and we get to the actual villain, Reggie has just been compromised too much by that point.

The actual main villain is also super petty and whiny. There’s nothing much to like about that character at all. This may be starting to sound rather negative but basically it’s just that the character cast is really weak. Fortunately a Noir mystery is about much more than the characters. The writing and tension means that this is still a good title, just be prepared to be rolling your eyes a whole lot throughout the movie. You just can’t feel bad for the main character at all.

Overall, Finger of Guilt is a good movie but Reggie really makes things too easy. I would argue that the villains’ plan was about as flimsy as it gets. It revolves around a ton of very convenient things happening and Reggie handling them all in the worst way possible. The writing is still good otherwise but the whole thing doesn’t feel very plausible. At least we do get a little action in the end as they manage to squeeze in a fight. I wasn’t really expecting that at such a late point in the game so it was a pretty interesting way to go. I feel like I spent most of the review talking about Reggie because he’s so awful but it’s also because the plot of the movie is very straight forward particularly when I’m not really talking about the twists. It’s him trying to figure out what’s going on while also going insane the whole time. I would have given him a sadder ending to wrap things up to be honest. Even though she was one of the villains, the mysterious lady was a lot more likable than the protagonist.

Overall 6/10

Suddenly Review

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All right it’s time for an old school thriller. It’s a pretty fun film that goes by quickly and has interesting characters. I would say the weakest link is really the romance but that’s probably not super surprising right? I don’t think the film has the right approach on that part but the rest is good so overall I’d say we’re in the green here. It succeeds in the important ways.

The film starts by introducing us to the town of “Suddenly” where nothing really happens so the name is more on the ironic side. Everyone has a bit of fun with that part but what they don’t realize is that the town is about to live up to that name. See, the President of the United States of America will be passing by and so all of the different police groups are here to make sure nothing happens. After all they have gotten wind of an assassination attempt. The one problem? The assassins have already infiltrated the town and are keeping one family hostage. This house has the perfect angle to murder the President. Can the villains really get away with this?

This is a film where I felt like the villains would have been taken down before having a chance to fire either way but based on the ending maybe I overestimated the cops. The villains end up taking the sheriff and the head police officer so you figure that people will be searching everywhere for them right? Well, they do search a little bit but all it takes is for Ellen (One of the hostages) to assure them that the cops already left for these guys to walk away. Why not realize immediately that this wouldn’t be possible? They wouldn’t have deviated from the plan at the drop of a hat like that. It was a bit rough to see them outmaneuvered so easily.

Now as for the romance, yeah this is definitely the weakest part so lets really dive into this. The main heroine Ellen lost her husband 3 years ago and so now she raises her son Pidge by herself and lives with her father Pop. The Sheriff in town, Tod, is in love with her but she doesn’t want to move on from her husband. That’s admirable but he doesn’t see it that way. He tries to guilt trip her by saying that Pidge needs a son. Tod basically makes the case that she needs to get over it already and marry him. He has the gall to say that his offer won’t be there forever either and that she needs to stop letting everyone down. It’s crazy talk.

Tod seems to think that she owes him love because he’s been such a nice guy the whole time in helping her out and everything. That’s definitely not cool, I would expect a lot better from him. At the end of the day you can be the nicest person everywhere but that doesn’t mean you deserve a girlfriend. It’s just not the way that the ballgame works. So he was real annoying there and from that point on I was really not rooting for them to be together. Additionally you have to consider that he was openly defying/undermining her at every turn.

He knew that she didn’t want Pidge to be playing with guns and yet he buys the kid one anyway. Ellen doesn’t watch him to watch war films but Tod says that it’s okay. The worst part is that it’s portrayed like Ellen is making the mistake here as she has gotten a little too paranoid after her husband was gone but these are very reasonable requests. Also she is Pidge’s mother so she should be able to make the call on what’s objective.

I’d even say that Pidge isn’t ready for these things based on all of his outbursts. He makes so many mistakes and nearly gets everyone murdered in this film. The villains tell him not to yell? Pidge yells. Then at one point he runs to grab his fake gun which won’t work anyway and he talks really tough the whole time but can’t back any of it up. That’s a big issue as well. Yeah he’s a kid so he can’t fight but then you have to stay quiet and listen to orders. All he does is create trouble which gets old fast.

Pop is quick on the uptake at least but doesn’t do a ton here. He’s just a little too old to get in on the action but he does help come up with plans. Ellen is mainly a little too scared to do anything for a while so that leaves Tod. Tod would have been more helpful but he takes a bad injury when he is sneak attacked near the beginning which hampers him for the rest of the film. Yeah that was definitely real inconvenient which was a shame. While I didn’t care for him in the romance bits, he did a good job of talking tough in the movie while being able to back some of it up. He was actively thinking of plans and contributing so I give him the most credit here.

In general it’s the cops who don’t look great here. They just never take out their guns in time. at one point the villain is on the run and you figure they can take care of him since he’s injured and alone. Instead what happens is that he just shoots them. This guy takes out several opponents before they finally put him down. When you have a murderer on the loose and armed you really have to shoot first. Running out and yelling freeze or something like that is never a good idea.

Meanwhile the main villain John is definitely memorable. He’s a very intense villain all the way around and one that really does command respect. He is smart and tends to be 1-2 steps ahead of the other characters. He even gets a bit of a backstory which I was not really expecting the whole time. The other villains may have been more forgettable but this guy did good. That helped make all of the scenes at the house even more engaging.

Overall, A film like this always gets you thinking about how you would act in a situation like this. As Todd points out in one scene, they are effectively already dead. When you’re kidnapped in your own home like this, you have to try something because the alternative will be worse. Even if you die, you at least make sure that the villains would go next. Additionally you need to make sure that your attempt is bold enough so that you actually do die and don’t get left alive to be tortured or something like that. So there’s definitely a good amount of tension here and the script is solid all the way so you never get bored.

Overall 7/10

The Company of Wolves Review

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This review is of the TV-14 version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version of the film would be more negative

Oh noooo it’s time for a film about wolves. Let me tell you something, these films tend to be rather lackluster at best but this one really takes the cake. It was just so bad on every level. From the plot to the violence to the characters, it was all so bad that I had tears in my eyes. You will want to avoid the movie at all costs. Get out of there as soon as possible, it is definitely not the way to go.

So the movie starts with a girl getting ready to go to sleep. She goes to sleep and everything starts moving and getting all trippy but we go back in time for another girl’s sister gets eaten by wolves and then the grandmother of the first girl tells her a story about how men with unibrows are evil. From there we lose the plot further as we have tons of stories inside of other stories with wolves murdering everybody and it just goes to show that you are not safe anywhere. It butchers the little red riding hood story so hard on every level.

Lets start jumping into the negatives here. First we have the obligatory animal violence. The wolves like to eat just about anything of course and so that does include a poor cattle that was simply minding his own business. The scene is surprisingly graphic but it gets less surprising as the time goes by. Why? Because the whole film is thriving on shock value. The transformation scenes are easily some of the most graphic that I have seen. It’s pretty crazy seeing the guy just bleed himself into a wolf. That was super crazy but more grotesque than scary. Then in another one you have a wolf coming out of the guy as if the human skin was just a suit. This one was creative though so I will say that the special effects were really good this time.

Reminds me of when Reverse Flash jumped out of some guy’s body in the CW show. That was weird and spooky without being grotesque so props there. It’s just that the props I give the movie are always very far and few in between. For every decent moment like that there are a ton where you will be shaking your head. Lets go back to the romance angle for a minute. So we’ve got this villager kid who likes the main heroine and he’s always going after her but his persistence makes him feel more like an antagonist than a good character most of the time. He basically steals a kiss at one point and she has to shove him away and he doesn’t get the hint.

They play up the fact that he’s naive but as the saying goes, no means no. He needs to accept the rejection and keep it moving. It does lead to a quick fight between the fathers which was fun but yeah that character was awful. Then in the segment with the grandmother, you’d think the girl would have more of a reaction to her grandmother being eaten. She doesn’t react as you would expect her to which will make you grown as well. That’s not a small offense, that’s literally murdering a member of your family. Pretty crazy you know?

The grandmother is so mean to everyone that it can be a bit funny. She’s constantly intentionally scaring the kid with all of these violent stories and generally being a bit of a jerk about it. My only problem here was that when it came time to actually prove her abilities, she got folded immediately. Yeah she’s old but where’s her gun or at least some kind of a dagger? She was completely unprepared despite being the expert and that was disappointing. Felt like the whole plot was rather useless as a result. At least that’s the way I see it.

Now it is clear what message the film is going for. Don’t let anybody take you away from the straight and narrow path. Don’t trust anyone since all strangers can be evil. The grandmother throws this message in constantly and you can assume the wolves are basically a metaphor. The problem is that a big message can’t save a film and it’s really just an excuse to have all of these stories. At the end of the day it doesn’t help to make them be any more connected and the film is a real bore as a result. You know that the humans can’t do much here. Yeah they can shoot one but usually it will have bit someone else who can transform.l

The humans will always be on the backfoot here and due to the anthology format, it’s not like they can get a final win anyway. All in all, this film definitely did not do anything to make me all that impressed with it. Instead it just did the opposite. I don’t think that it would have been much higher if it was all one story but probably would have been better than a 0 at least. Maybe we could have stayed in the modern day which is an infinitely better backdrop than the olden days here. The olden days with werewolves is a super bad combo.

Overall, This film was pretty bad. At no point in the film was it cooking up a good story or developing any good characters. Everyone here is on the annoying side, the romance is dreadful, and the violence is definitely over the top. I didn’t really get what the point of the whole thing was. Surely they could have thought up a better script than this right? I think the movie got a little too ambitious with all of the stories inside of a story. Having it all be chronological would have helped but even then, anthologies are always the worst kind of format. You should really have more confidence in telling a complete story.

Overall 0/10

Nosferatu the Vampyre Review

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Oh no, we’re back to vampire world. As you can probably expect this film is pretty bad all around. The characters are sloppy and the main villain is anything but intimidating. The whole time he’s on screen you’ll be shaking your head because he’s just not really a threat. If the characters could learn how to throw a decent punch it would all be over for him but unfortunately they don’t have the speed feats needed to take the edge here. It’s a real shame when you think about it.

The movie starts off with Jonathan being given a big job from his employer Renfield. He has to go over to Dracula’s lair and sell him some real estate. The place is rather far but it’ll pay well so Jonathan goes even though Lucy begs him not too. She has seen visions of his this will go badly but he doesn’t care. He wants the money asap! Everybody is scared or Dracula though so he can’t use a horse and as a result the trip takes months. Not a great amount of luck there but at last he has made it. Dracula seems rather spooky the whole time though as he keeps on staring at Jonathan. Jonathan is sloppy and cuts himself which causes Dracula to go crazy and eventually Dracula decides to go take down his wife Lucy. Jonathan has to try and make it back home before Dracula but it won’t be easy now that he is super ill. Additionally a plague is going to be wiping out the place in short order.

Where to start with this one right? The bloodsucking is pretty awful as always. The heroes never put up a fight and just take it. Jonathan for example just stays in his bed as Dracula gets closer and closer. The guy barely even reacts as he is knocked out. Then the same goes for Lucy who is unable to do anything. Those scenes are super annoying the whole time and you’re always waiting for someone to break the cycle. In the end I would argue the heroes didn’t do much of anything and Dracula just got sloppy. I can’t even give Lucy much credit there because you’d think Dracula would be hyper aware of what time it was.

He’s just sloppy in general. Jonathan even had a good time to finish him off earlier but got spooked. This is one of the slowest incarnations of Dracula and he isn’t particularly impressive physically. There’s no way anyone should be afraid of him. His design is certainly very sinister but more in a completely insane, psychotic way as opposed to being threatening. Jonathan should have just knocked the life out of this guy. The fight should not play out any other way.

Also this is where the slow burn approach fails because all the scenes of Dracula staring at everyone is more annoying than it is scary. It will bore you to tears the whole time because it all feels so unrealistic. I don’t care if he’s using some kind of hypnotism, just break out and take him down. Every time they just stand/lie there you know how the scene will play out and it still takes forever.

Then the whole town plot with the plague is pretty boring as well. Basically a bunch of mice start coming around and the villagers know they are doomed so they all start to eat and just give up on everything. Surely they could have tried something before throwing in the towel right? Instead they did absolutely nothing and that was a shame. The ending is surprisingly grim for the heroes. It looks like evil has won out this time and if the cycle continues then it’s just going to keep on happening over and over again. Even Van Hellsing didn’t look particularly great here to be honest. His role is rather small and he just didn’t have a whole lot of confidence. He’s a far cry from the more action centered version that I am used to.

As the main heroine Lucy nis okay and she definitely has some guts but I was still expecting a little more out of her. I’ve already talked about Jonathan enough but the guy is super annoying and should have heeded Lucy’s warning. If not, at least get out of the house right away after getting the papers and don’t just let Dracula stare at you the whole time. Renfield is definitely at his most insane in this version and he was an interesting character. I can’t say that I was able to take him very seriously though. It’s not like he has a lot of raw power or anything and he’s no genius. He just gets lucky that the cops are not particularly careful so it’s easy for him to break away. That was extremely embarrassing.

Then Dracula is rather dull and boring. So yeah there’s not much here to make this film all that good. It’s one of the most boring Dracula movies that I’ve seen and that’s even considering that it still hits all of the usual negatives like excessive violence and a lot of blood sucking. It’s very rare that there is ever a good vampire film and this will certainly not end up being one of the exceptions.

Overall, I highly recommend skipping this film. It’s way too slow paced and unrealistic the whole time. If Dracula himself looked more powerful then at least that part could be believable but instead he looks flimsy enough to just toss away and that would be it for him. The guy is super slow as well. So if you’re in the mood for a thriller film, definitely skip this one as soon as possible. You absolutely do not want to be anywhere near this film unless you’re ready for a good nap. In that case then we have an exception on your hands.

Overall 1/10