Change Your Image
antharper
Lists
An error has ocurred. Please try againReviews
Damsel (2024)
Interesting plot idea, but a let down on many fronts.
The movie had an interesting plot going for it; girl gets wed into royalty then sacrificed to a dragon; ok I'll give it a go.
But the movie spends no less than 40 minutes wandering its way there. From the synopsis, you're already primed for who the good guys and bad guys are, so it seems like a chore to get through to the movie you came to watch.
After that, the movie kind of picks up and gains some intrigue, with a fairytale princess meets The Descent vibe, which was working for me for a while.
However upon exiting the cave, the plot goes into an overdrive of convenience, fast travel, lost logic, and cringe. And despite that, it was still utterly predictable to the point my mind was always 2 minutes ahead of what I was watching.
I'm also not usually one to dump on some cast diversity, but here it runs directly in conflict with the plot. The royal family are supposed to be sacrificing 3 daughters every generation, yet somehow the dragon didn't spot that these girls were from every corner of the globe...?
And it's clear that the writers were big Game of Thrones fans, because the ending was riding that vibe so hard, it felt like someone at Netflix had to step in and cut the dragon riding scene. But instead replaced it with a slo-mo, hip-swagger, girl boss walk away from the burning castle. The cringe definitely took a few days off my life.
That said, the dragon CGI was great, and the voice acting was brilliant too.
The Book of Boba Fett: Chapter 5: Return of the Mandalorian (2022)
Absolutely Brilliant
The only thing stopping me from giving it a 10 is that fact that it feels like it should have been Ep.1 of the Mandalorian Season 3.
All the callbacks and references to the rest of Star Wars, even the games, are a real treat in this one.
Seungriho (2021)
Some great ideas and CGI, but let down by the characters and plot.
I went into this film wanting to like it. The Netflix preview looked good; decent special effects, interesting setting, etc.
The plot boils down to essentially the Guardians of the Galaxy following an Ice Age 'lost child' plot, which culminates in a 'save the earth' battle against Mr Evil corporation.
Not bad on paper, but the film suffers from a lack clear tone, blending serious and goofy in a way that doesn't pace well. It doesn't help that the characters often act in ways that don't make sense given the information 'we' and they are aware of, like giving up hope in an impossible situation due to X when we just found out that one of them can control X.
The film also introduces a lot of plot elements that seem like they will be integral to the story, but end up going nowhere. Not to mention the needless amount of fluff that comes with inserting a child into a bunch of anti-hero's.
Ultimately, there was a lot of potential here. The idea of space-junkers cleaning up space debris was new and interesting, but it was all quickly forgotten about in favour of attempting family friendly adventure, that looses track of what it wants to be.
The Hateful Eight (2015)
Everything is great, just the story is slow and lacking.
Very early on in the film there is this beautiful close up shot of the horses pulling the waggon through the snow, and I thought to myself 'this is going to be great'.
And it was. The cinematography, the score, the characters, the acting (Tim Roth especially), all of it was top notch. But the story and the length of the movie let it down. The movie spent an hour introducing the first four characters, which could arguably have been shortened to fifteen or twenty minutes at most. Things only get interesting at about the one and three quarter hours mark when the tension starts to rise between the characters and all hell breaks loose, becoming more distinctly Tarantino like (you'll know what I mean), rather than a low budget western made in the fifties.
All in all, it's worth a watch if you're into 'who done it?' types of movies, but don't go into it thinking you're going to get Kill Bill meets the American West, like my friends did.