Tactrix Reviews

Monkey Man (2024)

Please Just Stop

[3/10 · 24 April 2024]

This movie could have been great, the story was good, the action was good, the acting was good. So why 3? Because it's unwatchable. The shaky cams just make it a bunch of stuff you can't see, it looks great from the in frame things, but there's so much jarring camera throwing that it might as well not even be a movie, just a ping pong game with my eyeballs.

Whoever keeps making movies like this, please know that I will never give your movies a good review, EVER. And the reason is because you don't have the foresight to understand that your movie has turned into a pile of garbage by the simple action of horrible camerawork.

3/10 yet another movie ruined by horrid camerawork.

A Nice Girl Like You (2020)

A nice prude like you

[2/10 · 21 April 2024]

So let's start this off on the positives. I'm a big fan of Lucy Hale, and she and actually a good deal of the cast did some pretty good acting in this movie, so kudos to them for that.

And that's about it. Everything else was bad. Let's start with why this movie would never work. It's not relatable, how many people know a 34 year old prude that's deathly against porn past the year 2010? But let's even go one step further and how many people think that someone in this day and age has never seen porn, doesn't know anything about it, and thinks that people who look at it are perverts? The answer, No one.

There isn't a person alive that can relate to how out of touch this plot is. Maybe if this movie took place before the internet and before everyone and their mother knew everything about porn. But now? Nope, sorry. The premise is a complete failure, because it's non-believable. And if the premise fails, the entire movie turns into a really bad circus act where people have to pretend that they live in the 1800's where everyone is judged by their favorite book, and women speak as if it was some how perverted that a woman should have sex and know things about sex.

2/10, good acting but everything else is completely out of touch with reality and would never happen.

Secrets of the Hells Angels (2024– )

Woefully Incorrect

[3/10 · 16 April 2024]

Now I love seeing a good biker series as much as the next guy. However the issue with this series is that it's just wrong. Right from the start they tagline it as "Hells Angels are the biggest and baddest biker gang too ever live." 100% wrong. To date the Hells Angels have around 2,300 patched members. The Vagos have over 4,000. Not only are they just as violent and dangerous as the Hells Angels, but by all accounts far more so. So as where the stories in this series are relatively true, their depiction of the standing of this gang is not. And that's a huge distinction because the Vagos was also main chaptered in California. Which means when they keep talking about, "The Hells Angels had a blood fued with the Mongrels because they owned California." That's a complete lie, they didn't own anything except in their hopes and dreams.

3/10 don't let the hype become your reality when making a real series.

Fallout (2024– )

Apocalyptically Sound

[10/10 · 14 April 2024]

I've never been a particular fan of the Fallout games. However this series is fire. The acting, the story, the aesthetic, everything about it is just spot on. And they took no liberties with making it some political statement. They made it for the purity of the series. And it really shows.

So this is a story about a post nuclear world, there are a few factions worth mentioning, the vaulters would be the people who were in the vault during the blast. The ghouls are the people who were not in the vault but through chemical intervention basically survived the blast and live on turning into a form of zombie without the chemicals they need to keep them alive. And everyone else is some kind of faction of human trying to perfect their version of what the new world should be. I'm not going to get into more details than that because of spoilers, but this is a MUST watch.

10/10 everything was perfect for what this show is. We need more like this.

Tracker (2024– )

Bland

[5/10 · 1 April 2024]

I don't know, maybe my bar's set too high. But this show seems super bland to me. Like it has characters that are kind of meh. The acting isn't bad or anything, but like as soon as an episode starts I can't wait for it to end. It's just not engaging at all. I wish there was something interesting about this show but I just don't see it.

There's a guy who had family drama, he has some lesbian couple that makes up half of his info team, some hacker guy who helps him with his info and some lawyer that helps him with his cases. If you've ever wondered what the plot is? I honestly can't tell you, because as far as I can see there isn't one. He just chases bounties around and calls himself a "rewardist", which is just an unoriginal weird way of saying "bounty tracker".

5/10, boring.

In Treatment (2008–2021)

Profoundly Wrong

[3/10 · 29 March 2024]

As someone who has spent a good deal of time studying and practicing therapy it baffles me why that this show was done in such a completely incorrect and crude manner. The therapist here is not only practicing the worst type of therapy imaginable but it's almost like they just wanted to focus on the drama aspect of every session and never on the true therapy and the healing aspects of it.

You can tell from start to finish that he doesn't know what he's doing. In an episode someone described him as being "the best" which I found laughable. Because after watching this trainwreck the only thing I can conclude with absolute certainty he was the best at, is agitating the situations and maneuvering people who would be relatively easy to guide to a healthy solution into an awful situation where they don't end up getting treatment, instead he just lets them self-destruct with no regard for the outcome.

3/10 absolute rubbish, good acting, terrible directing and dialog, and whoever was there to guide the realism aspect needs to be fired.

Road House (2024)

Boat House

[6/10 · 22 March 2024]

Ok back me up here, if they had simply changed the name from Road House to Boat House.. this movie could have been perfectly fine. It's not great or anything, but it's ok, as long as you don't call it Road House. If on the other hand you make the lethal mistake of calling it Road House, you've ruined an ok movie by pitting it against an amazing movie. And now you've got problems.

This is a movie that has almost nothing in common with the original Road House, I mean the main thing that everyone should immediately pay attention to, is that the Road House in the movie isn't even a house, it's a big teepee. And that should be the first of many, MANY, hints that this movie has about as much to do with a Road House, as Nascar.

I would love to bore you with the plot, but it's so actually none sensical that it's laughable. So instead, for anyone who wants to watch this movie, and for anyone who keeps thinking remakes are a good idea. Just stop, they aren't. Leave the good movies alone, and give new ones a different title.

6/10 mediocre acting, decent fighting, god awful plot and laughable banter.

The Gentlemen (2024)

The Proper Criminal

[10/10 · 12 March 2024]

This was done in Guy Ritchie's favorite style and writing. Everything is crisp, clean and you don't see most of it coming. He's of course included his favorites, royals, gypsies, meth dealers, weed dealers, butchers, and assassins. And that's just the start, he can easily turn this into a giant series that spawns for decades if he wanted to. Whatever you do, don't let Guy Ritchie take a backseat on the writing. His influence can be felt in every single scene in the movie. Don't you dare change this formula, it's brilliant and it shows.

The cast is perfectly hand picked, I couldn't have picked them better myself. Everything just works, and when a good series comes together like this it's high art. You rarely see it, but when you do, you get another game of thrones on your hands.

10/10 spectacular, don't you dare cancel this series!

The Taste of Things (2023)

A Masterclass in Cooking

[10/10 · 11 March 2024]

This movie is what happens when you love something so dearly that words don't do it justice. If I had to guess I imagine this is a script written by a chef for chefs. It's so beautiful in both concept and execution it's truly a wonder. And having said that the only people that will truly appreciate this movie are chefs, I can't imagine anyone else having an appreciation for this sort of movie. However if you are a chef, or love cooking to this degree this movie is a MUST! I sat through this movie loving every second of it. I imagine when technology progresses far enough and we can actually smell and taste our movies this movie will be the best ever made.

10/10 this movie makes my heart and stomach happy.

Damsel (2024)

Damsel Washington becomes Elodinaris Targaryen

[8/10 · 9 March 2024]

So this is a cute little story of betrayal and survival. Starting our Damsel Elodie, who comes from a barren kingdom much in need of supplies or they might not survive the winter. Enter the evil kingdom, where everything seems sunshine and roses until it is all revealed to be born of a giant lie. I'll let you discover what happens from there, but the punchline is this is an entertaining survival tale. A lot of clever maneuvering and close calls. It's not very complicated in terms of plot, but it's decent delivery. And if you just turn your mind off and enjoy it, it's worth the watch.

8/10 some good ol' fashioned dragon fun.

Miller's Girl (2024)

The Struggle

[8/10 · 17 February 2024]

So this movie had all the features of a good movie, great actors, great story, fantastic writing. So why not a 10? Well, the issue is the end. See there's a buildup in this movie, it makes assumptions without confirming anything. And it does this quite a lot. However it feels wildly incomplete. Like they made a movie and then cut 20% of it out, and that 20% was the revelation of what was actually happening. And it would have been an amazing movie if they had left that 20% in, but they didn't.

Now the general feel of it is amazing, because it's atmospheric without meaning to be. I think it was written to convey each emotion with a specific place as a scene, and it really works.

8/10 great cast, plot and writing, it just comes up short with the ending.

Players (2024)

Formulaic

[6/10 · 15 February 2024]

Can we please stop with the same thing over and over again? I get it, you think it works. It doesn't. We've been over this formula of movies since the 90s, the fact that they're predictable makes them really bad. And here's the thing, this movie had all the potential of being good, except when you went into the formula part of it and started to make it the same stupid thing as the 9000 romcoms before it were.

Just stop making movies predictable, the first 30 minutes were great, it had originality and flair, and then you started with the whole "girl finally wants to get the guy" part and it sucked BADLY. Please any directors that see this review, take a note and stop making this garbage, no one wants to see it.

6/10 predictable formulaic same old story, no new spin.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2024– )

*Yawn*

[5/10 · 3 February 2024]

Supremely boring, so guy and girl meet for a job interview with a random computer screen. Guy and girl pass interview and are given missions. Guy and girl work on accomplishing missions. This gets a supreme negative rating for the plot, lack of realism, and generally nothing even remotely approaching tradecraft.

They do the thing that most regular people would do if they were put in this situation and kind of wing it every single time. And sometimes it works, and other time it doesn't. So the issue with that is that no one with any kind of training would ever approach these jobs that way. Even amateurs would have more of a plan. And even when they are working together it's so obvious they aren't on the same page it's just bad.

5/10 great acting, absolutely ridiculous script, lacks any sense of realism.

Wonka (2023)

Not bad, but not great

[6/10 · 21 January 2024]

So this movie did a lot of things right, they had the right general idea, they had a great cast, and they had amazing things in the way of wonders and compilations. And even though I hate musicals this one was one of the better ones for sure. So where did they miss? Ok first the story, it was about 90% dreary and 10% hope. That's not a ratio you ever want to see in a Wonka movie. Because it genuinely ruins the experience. You might think the first one had a similar ratio, but it didn't. The ratio in the first one was about 20% dreary to 80% hope. And that's one the main reasons it did so well.

It's really depressing to see such a great cast and movie be ruined by something as stupid as "let's fight greed as the plot." The people who wrote this, have lost the thread of just how valuable not just saying that imagination matters is, but actually watching it is. Watching this movie was just watching someone attempt to be great and be repeatedly shut down until they became corrupt enough to play dirty enough to win. Which is not hope, it's just lazy. We deserve better, Wonka deserves better.

6/10 bad plot and feel ruined what would have otherwise been a great movie.

Elysium (I) (2013)

The movie that COULD have been

[4/10 · 20 January 2024]

So I watched this movie a few times, and my opinion on this movie has never changed. This could have been a great movie, but they made a few fundamental errors in its creation.

First they made the movie not only bilingual but like 4 or 5 different languages, and I don't mean IN 5 languages, I mean throughout the movie you see english, and spanish, and french and 2 others. And Spanish seems to take up a good chunk of the movie. There was absolutely no reason to do that. It just made the movie horrible to try and watch unless there are subtitles.

Second, the general feeling in this movie is tragic, to bad, to worse. At no point are you rooting for someone because the state of affairs is so bad already that you just feel when the movie finishes it's a relief it's over. You don't feel better about anything, because the effect the director was looking for was you would sympathize with the plight of the poor people and feel better when they overthrow the rich. That's not how you feel at all. The end of this story feels like it's a beginning of another one but you're too exhausted from this one to ever want to see it.

And the final nail in the coffin of this movie is deranged upgrades, it's one thing if you made them look sloppy but okish, but it just makes them look chop shop bad. The whole time the only thing I can think of is "when Matt Damon dies in this it will feel better for all of us than watching him walk around with metal sticking out of every bone."

4/10 there was a good idea somewhere in there, but it was completely overshadowed by unforgivable mistakes in the direction and execution of this movie.

Self Reliance (2023)

Just Boring

[3/10 · 12 January 2024]

The big twist in this movie is that there is no twist. And it's just bad because the entire movie you're waiting for a twist and then... there isn't one, so you're like "did you just purposely waste like 2 hours of my life for no reason?" And the answer is Yes. Yes they did. The comedy was nothing great it was the most mediocre conversations you would have as a real person at best. And for some reason they had a few celebrities throughout the movie but for no reason at all.

Like this movie encapsulates mediocrity. 3/10 and honestly it was just because they didn't make the movie corny, when in this particular genre there were so many movies that went that way.

A Vigilante (2018)

Supremely Disappointing

[4/10 · 22 December 2023]

I was really looking forward to this movie, because by the previews the material looked amazingly promising. And then I saw it, Olivia Wilde's acting was top notch. So what's the problem? The problem is there's no movie here. This is a woman going from one abuser to the next, there's no action sequences, it cuts them all out.

So what you have here is what I like to call "the question with no answer." They give you the problem and the movie would be her skills in both dealing with the abuse and learning the skills to get revenge. Except you don't see those skills for more than 2 minutes out of the entire movie. Which means what you have here is a bunch of bad situations with a resolution. But you don't see what she did to resolve it, all you see is the result.

4/10, the 4 was for Olivia, I can't believe someone made this and thought it was a good idea to cut out the whole movie.

A Murder at the End of the World (2023)

Heart of Cold

[9/10 · 20 December 2023]

I know there're a lot of people who're complaining about the climax of this series. I'm not one of them. I think it was done masterfully. There's a clear motive that becomes quite murky, and evolves into a whole new thing as the series goes on.

I think the characters played their respective roles beautifully. And thing I love most about this series is people establish themselves as what they are right in the beginning, so you know who you want to root for and who you hate.

It just creates a really tense but forward moving storyline, where you're going from one clue to the next but you can't really see around the turns. I think it's a masterclass in good mystery storytelling. And you genuinely won't know who did what and why until the end.

9/10 everything was amazing except for the repeating flashbacks, besides for that it was everything I like seeing in a mystery series.

Cat Person (I) (2023)

My soul fell asleep

[2/10 · 13 December 2023]

This movie was so boring that I literally had to stop to do other things just so TRY to endure how boring it actually was. The story is not only unoriginal but not interesting. The cast is mediocre although with this script it's hard to tell, maybe they're amazing and the script is so bad that it made them seem worse. And the chemistry just isn't there at all. It's just bland on every level that matters. Please don't waste your time with this god awful thing that tries to call itself a movie. This is like a bad tinder date, it just keeps going on and on and you wish it'd end but it just continues until it's unbearable.

2/10 the cast were alright. Everything else wasn't. A complete waste of time.

The Artful Dodger (2023– )

Pure Artistry

[10/10 · 2 December 2023]

This series was done in the time of Oliver Twist, and it revolves around a surgeon(once thief) who became much more after he was abandoned by his uncle. And in another town, with a hospital to do surgeries in, he and the lovely governors daughter push the bounds of the 1850s modern medicine.

I watch quite a few series, and as of late they have been pretty dull, but this one is fire. There's simply no other way to put it. It has everything you could possibly want in a series. Great actors, drama, love, medicine, crime, a villain, and twists and turns for everything.

10/10 well done. Seriously at a time when we couldn't get a great series this is a cut about the rest!

Freelance (2023)

Stop Acting!

[4/10 · 30 November 2023]

The more I see John Cena, the less I want to see of him in anything. This guy is really smart in his career, but a horrible actor. Because he learned to act in wrestling where everything's purposely looking fake. And it translates onto the screen, and I feel genuinely bad for the rest of the cast in any movie he's in. Because in a good deal of them, they're actually really good actors, and he's just dragging them down.

Like take this movie for example, it was funny, it had a good plot. I think all the actors besides him did a fantastic job. And yet, because it was centered around him, it was just bad. They have this exact same issue with a lot of transitioning wrestlers into movie stars. They don't know how to act on screen, and it ruins the whole movie.

4/10, 4 for everyone else and the script. -6 for John Cena... again.

Five Nights at Freddy's (2023)

Ways to ruin a Horror movie

[3/10 · 30 October 2023]

I was looking forward to this movie, because I was hoping they would have the good sense to make it a proper horror movie. Instead what we have is anything but. Let me explain, this movie was NOT a horror movie. This was a "who done it?" with a horror theme. Now, why does this matter? Because now you're piecing together what happened, while being in a movie that largely tries(and fails) to establish itself as a horror. The twists and turns are more like tiny corners that anyone can see around, and were largely predictable. But the worst thing BY FAR was the fact that someone at the studio actually had the gall to make this movie rated PG-13 instead of R thereby having to cut out ALL the gore. So what you get is a movie that has no horror scenes in it. And it would've been a great movie had they left the gore in and really leaned into it, but instead it's bad, really really bad.

3/10 I give actors credit for being the only good part of this movie. The studio is responsible for this catastrophe, not the writers, not the actors, just the studio execs.

Expend4bles (2023)

The Unwatchables

[1/10 · 15 October 2023]

I have never seen so many fans of this franchise united in their opinion that this pile of garbage shoulda never made it past the cutting room floor. Who thought this movie would be a good idea? I'm asking genuinely, because I can't figure out if they just decided that they wanted to burn the entire franchise down or, if they felt the way to go out is to make a movie so bad that everyone who would have even thought about a sequel would be disillusioned.

Needless to say this is just bad, I wish I could give you details on the specifics of how bad, but the truth is it's so bad that there's not 1 singular thing that we can compare it against in the movie. Nothing about this movie is good.

1/10, save yourself some time and watch anything else.

The Three Musketeers - Part I: D'Artagnan (2023)

Unwatchable

[2/10 · 2 October 2023]

When I saw the trailer for this movie, it looked like something I'd have a good time watching. I mean sure it's a book that's been turned into so many movies that it might as well have gotten it's own plaque in the hall of fame. But I actually like watching the different versions of The Three Musketeers so why not right? Well here's the problem, I couldn't get into the movie, because before the movie even really starts there're a couple of fights, and the camera work is so bad that I can only describe it as migraine inducing. I'd like to thank the cameramen because they have single-handedly ruined this movie.

2/10 unwatchable because of horrible camera work.

Virgin River (2019– )

Virgin Writers

[6/10 · 12 September 2023]

This show is a prime example of how talent can carry a show, however in that spirit, it's also a testament at how bad writers can get away with writing absolute garbage. Mel and Jack carry the show. The rest of the cast isn't bad, some more annoying than others but the thing that makes this show insufferable is the way they do time skipping in plot points.

See they way most shows do it is, you have a pivotal moment, and then you see what happens. Somehow the writers in this show were so obscenely bad that the only way they could qualify them still having jobs is if instead of showing the viewers what happened they would instead just show the result the next episode and slowly reveal in tiny pieces what happened. It's the worst decision of any producer that I've ever seen.

6/10, 3 stars for Mel and Jack, 3 stars for some of the supporting cast. 0 for the writers, and they're lucky I don't start deducting points for the garbage they wrote on this show. Seriously could they be less original. You could fall asleep and still know what this show was about.