Rusticcrayon Reviews

Bird Box (2018)

Another Netflix Dudd.

[3/10 · 2 January 2019]

I watched this movie, having been intrigued by the trailer, but to be honest I didn't have very high expectations as I can't remember what the last good Netflix produced movie was that I watched, and sadly this movie adds to Netflix's ever increasing in-house catalog of mediocre movies.

The film runs at over 2hrs, and it has to said it makes you feel every minute ebb away, as another minute you won't get back.

This is a shame as Sandra Bullock while not my favorite actress, does carry the movie and puts in a good effort, but unfortunately she on her own can't breathe enough life into this slow cumbersome movie.

My biggest issue in these types of movies, is they expect you to suspend belief, but this is only possible if people act in a reasonably logical manner, which unfortunately they do not, which makes watching this movie even more frustrating, as I can't suspend belief if the script/direction has people act in such illogical ways.

There is so much that is not explained, and we are supposed to just fill in the blanks for ourselves, but maybe it's just me, but when I try to do this, I cannot come to the same conclusion and direction that the director did.

I am aware that this film is an adaptation of a book, and it could be possible that the director, couldn't provide the story justice, Either way the film was just not that enjoyable, its not that it was a terrible film, but if it was a colour it would be grey, as it was just plain dull.

I am aware that everyone sees things through their own optics, but I could not see this movie in any otherway.

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

Solo: A Mess of a Movie that did one thing right.

[4/10 · 30 December 2018]

Arghh!!!! What the he'll did I just watch, This film is a full mess from start to finish, this film brings no life to the characters we knew and loved from the original trilogy, in fact it craps all over these characters without a thought as to what made us love them in the first place. It even goes as far as to have us believe that Lando Carlission is some sort of relation ship with his robot side kick. It plays no homage to the characters that Harrison Ford and Billy Dee Williams gave us, and made us believe in. Instead it would have us believe that Chewy was some fierce eat anything monster, that Lando likes to get it on with a toaster and Han had been heart broken all these years, on top of this we get the worst character since Rose Tico and Jar Jar binks in L3-37, which for some reason managed to grate so badly with me i wanted to stick a forks in my eyes and ears it was that bad.

All the Star Wars films have had droids as a central character, but unlike L3-37 all the droids before have been funny and had character, but here we have a toaster that you wish some one would scrap immediately as it just spouts crap.

Sadly this film adds nothing to the SW universe other than the one thing that needed to happen, and did what the Last Jedi should have done, in that it made the Disney machine stop rolling out more trash into the SW universe, unfortunately not before they had unleashed the last jedi which literally choose to burn the SW universe to the ground in one massive FU to all its fans.

That said, at least Disney realised it's errors and will make sure the next film is true to the heart of the original trilogy...... Ha, who am I kiddin they haven't got a clue.

Annihilation (I) (2018)

Dont believe the hype look at the facts in front of you

[1/10 · 27 February 2018]

It is a sad state of affairs that movies like this are gaming the review system. I watched the film at the weekend, and checked the popularity rating on IMDB ;ast night and it was tanking (it had a 46% drop in popularity) and negative reviews were coming in. This echo's the half empty cinema I sat in on its opening weekend and the fact people were leaving and grumbling before the movie was even over.

Progress to Monday, and the corporate machine has turned its wheels and started to spout out rave reviews of 8's to 10's, and its rating is going up again. (Clearly the paid for reviewers returning to work).All saying how wonderful this film is, how great the acting was and what a thrilling ride, or mind bending move it was - all complete tosh.

Having read the book and watched the movie, I can say that the film is a complete flop. Now I was not a fan of the book, as its was slow, plodding and full of underdeveloped characters (one thing the film did copy) and pointless flashbacks, and one of the most cringe worthy nicknames I think anyone could have created (Ghostbird).

That said the book had a very interesting idea, and after seeing Ex Machina and the trailers of Annihilation, I was keen to see how the story was moved to the big screen under Alex Garlands direction. Alas, the film is a mess and no matter how pretty some scenes were, they just couldn't make up for everything that was wrong with the film, which range from flat acting to the complete removal of key pieces of the book that were core to the story (No tower, no creature in the tower scribing on the walls, the hand like organisms). Instead we have some additional characters who add nothing to the film and acting in ways that are so illogical their actions are more perplexing than what they are sent to investigate, Worst of all, the film leaves little to the imagination unlike the book, which left you pondering on what was actually happening and why. But not here, We have the physicist on hand to tell us what's happening, with no scientific equipment and works it all out within a day or two (I know they were their longer, but they had no memory of the first 3 to 4 days). Which just goes to show, woman really do know it all.

This film unfortunately is not clever or intelligent, if it were it wouldn't have had to spoon feed the viewer in such an obvious way. I have read some outlandish reviews on here that make some reference to this being like 2001, Arrival and Stalker. Clearly these people were not watching the same film, or had climbed so far up themselves that the themselves had found shimmer.

There is a phrase my father used to say to me which is "No matter how much you polish a turd, it will still be a turd". and this phase was never more true than describing this film, and sadly this this movie has to rank as one of the worst movies I have seen in the last 12 months.

If you haven't seen it, then don't believe the hype, there's a reason there are a lot of negative reviews!!! If you feel you must watch this wait for it to hit Netflix at least you wont feel robbed of $10 - $15.

The Crazy Ones (2013–2014)

Dull boring dross

[4/10 · 17 April 2014]

My wife and I were invited to watch a secret screening of a show while we were staying in Las Vegas, which turned out to be an episode of "The Crazy Ones".

I will say straight of the bat that my wife and I are British so this does mean we may not necessarily agree with how Americans may see this show.

Anyway we both watched the episode where the office gets a cold and they have to launch a doll. We had to track how much we laughed or found the script entertaining from 0 - 10, with 0 being get me out of here this is the worst, through to 10 were everyone should be laughing out loud. Anyway after watching the show for what seemed like an age it ended and I realised I hadn't even moved the dial to more that a 4 which was when the credits came up as I felt relief that this show was over. I asked my wife whether I had missed something as I didn't find the show funny in the slightest and the humour was extremely basic, almost virgin on what I might expect my children to watch on a Disney channel show. She also agreed that this was very basic and unoriginal and didn't laugh at all through the show.

This was a real shame as Both my wife and I like Robin Williams, but the script in the show was just so weak not even he could lift it to any level. As for the rest of the characters neither my wife or I can remember any of them as they didn't engage us at all and we really didn't care what happened to them.

The show tries to be clever but approaches things in such a childish manner it fails badly. Unfortunately this show sums up the stereo type view of humour the British have of American sitcoms - childish, basic and predictable As it happens this show hasn't made it to British shores which I guess means at least someone filtered this dross from spreading any further. But maybe this show reflects American culture and we Brits wont get it, after all the our shows, such as the Office, Inbetweeners, Queer as folk etc..... didn't translate well into US series.

World War Z (2013)

Quiet possibly the worst film I have seen this year!!

[1/10 · 25 June 2013]

So I think everyone is aware this film has had a lot of troubles, and for those of you that weren't, you will soon see why if you waste you money, let alone your time on this excuse of a film.

Like a number of people that have posted I also wanted to believe this film would offer something, but it doesn't. It is not original, the SFX are average, the acting is poor.

I like Pitt in most his films, but in this one, I honestly think this is some of the worst acting of his career - look out for the scene where Pitt is in the WHO building in the last act when he finds out that all the dangerous viruses are in the B wing where.... you guessed it all the zombies are, I actually laughed out loud at his acting it was that bad.

The films jumps about and you develop no emotion for any of the characters, even from the opening scenes I just didn't buy into the loving family that Pitt was supposed to be a part of.

The end of the film is also one of the worst closures to a film i have seen. It was if, they hadn't filmed an ending so thought how the hell do we bring this to a close, and a bright spark said I know we'll get Pitt to explain it all via narration that will keep the fools that have sat through it to the end happy.

In short zombies do exist - this film is proof of that, it should have died before it got to release but somehow it made it back from the dead. Now all I need to do is vaccinate myself against this monstrosity by watching an equally bad film.