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Mistrz (2020)
Kind of meh
It's "ok" for a concentration camp movie.
Although one thing that really bothered me from the very beginning of the movie is the Nazi guy telling the prisoners that they only way they are leaving is through the chimneys of the crematorium. It really doesn't sound like any historical accounts and documentaries that I had seen, including the actual Dachau concentration camp. The prisoners (mostly Jews but also gays, Romanies, etc) didn't know they were being killed when they were led into the gas chambers disguised as shower rooms. If the Nazis went to such length to not letting the prisoners know they were getting killed, why would they threaten them like that? If the prisoners had no hope of surviving, they wouldn't be as cooperative.
Kateo (2022)
A vomit inducing movie
The movie is shot in a way to pretend that it's a one-shot film. For an action movie, it means that the camera is constantly flying around like on a drone from scene to scene. But that also means it doesn't give your brain any chance to pause and readjust to the new location.
I play a lot of first person shooter video games and this movie STILL gave me motion sickness from all the random camera movements. .If you are prone to get car sick or motion sickness, do NOT watch this movie. It would be torture for you.
As for the convoluted plot and the purposely ambiguous ending, seriously meh. You are left to question which side the main character was really on, kind of a "Total Recall" scenario. But it was really too forced.
Moon Crash (2022)
Don't waste your time watching this movie
Just from the title of the movie you can tell it's trying to ride on name recognition of another movie coming out this year, Moonfall. That should tell you what this movie is.....cheap knock off. The disappointing part is just how cheap this knock off turned out to be.
As a sci-fi movie, the special effects scenes in it was so pathetically little that it makes Roger Corman films look like Star Wars. The acting was pretty bad but mostly on par with many low grade TV movie productions, filled with over acting and exaggerated lines of recent film school graduates. Even the extras were terrible. In a scene of a Pentagon meeting, none of the people seated at the meeting looked like they belong in a Pentagon meeting, especially the general. Camera angles were also bad. Very boring close-ups to hide the cheap staging of the scene everywhere.
There is just zero redeeming factor of this film. Don't even watch it to fall asleep.
Xing lin yi yuan (2020)
Amateur level acting, especially the female lead
Besides the actors for the two priests, all of the remaining cast members have next to zero acting credits prior to this movie and it really shows. Rumor had it that the female lead was only casted because the director was her boyfriend at the time. She had ONE credit before this movie, a role in a TV movie. And her lack of experience totally shows in her performance. Every line she delivered sounded like a low budget TV show. Knowing that her only previous work was a TV movie, that kind of made sense. But it also means she sounded totally out of place with the rest of the cast. They should have dubbed over her natural voice acting so that the audience didn't have to hear her speak.
Besides the acting problem, the story line was too forced as well. The main female character repeatedly insisted to talk to the spirit of her deceased husband without any explanation for most of the movie, despite of several near death encounters with hostile ghosts in the haunted hospital. But what does she do? Continue to risk EVERYONE'S lives just to talk to her husband. She would even risk her own life just to talk to him. And we finally find out why near the end of the movie what was so important, she wanted to tell her deceased husband that she is pregnant with their child! WTF!!!??? She doesn't even bat an eye at the thought that if she dies, their child, the ONLY thing her husband would have left for them, will also die. Nope. Not a single mention. No worry about the life of their unborn baby. Then the timing is all wrong too. The hospital looked like it had been shut down for months, if not years. But she doesn't look pregnant AT ALL! She should be nearly done with her pregnancy if not already given birth by the look of decay of the hospital. But nope. Her stomach is as flat as a normal person so she can't be more than 3 months pregnant. There is just no way the closed down hospital could look that terrible in those short months.
The reason they wanted to make the hospital look like it had been closed down for years because at the movie is a frame story. At beginning and ending of the movie, we are actually at "present" time. A Vlogger is introducing this haunted hospital, and we find out at the very end that her cameraman was scared away by the ghosts of the Tao priests and their two patrons, meaning that the whole story we had been watching happened a while ago and, BIG TWIST, they had all died. But this created a discontinuity in how the hospital looks and the pregnancy status of the main female character.
Besides a few jump scares, this movie wasn't all that scary. Half the time it's too dark to see anything anyway. Much of the $1 million budget is on special effects. They really should have spent more on improving the script and hiring a real actress instead of the girlfriend of the director.
Midway (2019)
An return to a more classic way of war movies
Is this movie completely historically accurate? Definitely not. Dive bombers dog fighting with Zeros was just too much of a stretch to watch at times. Don't know why they didn't include the actual US fighter escorts for the dive bombers and torpedo bombers doing the real dog fights against Zeros.
Of course there are embellishments, as some reviewers complained, for any movie, otherwise just go watch a documentary, plenty out there about Midway. However, overall the movie told the story of an important historical battle from multiple angles, including that of our adversary. Most importantly it told the story about the war, not some random love story or "character growth" story. This movie was about the war and the war remained its focus. This is also why Tora, Tora, Tora was a far better movie than Peal Harbor. Not every war movie needs to be like Full Metal Jacket or Saving Private Ryan, focusing on the individual soldiers. Those were great for their own right. But sometimes we need other kinds of war movie that talk about the war itself more. And not just the soldiers at the front line, but the intelligence and support aspect that allowed Midway to become the turning point of WWII in the Pacific Theater. Spending time recognizing the contribution of the code breakers, and the actual trick used to figure out Japanese navy's target was very gratifying to see. They helped us won the war as much, if not more so, than the actual soldiers in the field. Without finding out ahead of time Japan's attack plan, we would have just sent our sailors to their deaths for nothing.
Rotten Tomato critics have completely failed us again on their ratings in my opinion.
Kol (2020)
Deduct 1 star for too similar in concept to Frequency (2000).
Decent plot line. however the overall concept is too similar to Frequency in 2000.
Antebellum (2020)
I actually liked the ending
I don't know what all those super negative reviews are talking about. I thought the movie was quite well done. Docked point for misleading genre classification. It's definitely not a horror movie but mostly a mystery thriller.
For those who can't relate to the main characters, maybe they are still in denial about the systemic racism still existing in the US today and don't want to admit to it or face it's ugly face. Few countries are as obsessed with re-enacting past wars, especially civil wars as the US and it seems very odd the side that lost still tries to frequently glorify its past. I thought the movie did a decent job poking at the white-washing of a shameful part of US history.
So aside from those still in denial of real US history, I do think the film made some connections to the audience. I was cheering for the main character at the end as she, shall we just say, achieved closures.
Zhu xian I (2019)
Terrible start to hope for more sequels
This is a film adaptation of a novel of the same title. I believe a TV series is also made based on the novel. I understand how novel to film adaptations often have to leave a lot out because a movie just don't have enough time to cover an entire book and the makers of this film accounted for it to break the book up in part and this is supposed to be part 1 to set everything up. But it just totally bombed at its job. I have no desire at all to watch this movie's sequels if they ever get made.
There could be a lot of potential with the cast. Several up coming new stars and some old stars as well. But the film spent way too much time showing off CGI special effects that are mediocre and run of the mill at best and contributed very little to the overall story telling. It seems to be a trend with new Chinese movies these days to over-use CGI special effects to out-Hollywood Hollywood. But it just feel like it's too much.
Frankly the film feels like "just another fantasy action film" from China with lots of fluff and little real substance. Lack originality. Needlessly flashy CGI effects. Can't understand why anyone would actually like it.
The Rain (2018)
Promising premise...annoying characters that don't deserve to live.
I have patiently watched seasons 1 & 2 of the show before making my judgment. Frankly, none of the characters deserve to survive.
*Spoiler alert*
Simone & Rasmus: In the very first episode, the two defied their mother and opened the bunker door insisting the possibility that the pounding on the door was made by their father, who just few minutes ago saved their lives by opening the bunker door and let them in before the deadly rain started. These two little brats led to the death of their mother from their stupidity. Both of them constantly risk the safety of the group for very selfish reasons. Rasmus, being trapped for 6 years in a bunker with his sister, falls in love with just about every girl he meets. And when they die or get hurt, he looses all reason to live. WTF!?
Martin: He had one job and one job only, shoot anyone attempting to enter the restricted area. Not only did he allow an infected woman and her infant through. He didn't even bother to radio his colleagues to give them a heads up that someone is coming their way. He is the sentry, that's the job. His whole platoon died and their death is on him.
Patrick: Actually, this formerly useless looser who couldn't hold a job is the most deserving to survive. But his group constantly disagrees with his very logical choices of actions in a post-apocalyptic world. He actually deserve to live. I am rooting for him.
Lea: Took her just a few hours to fully drank the Coolaid of a cannibal cult.
Jean: Betrays his whole group because his girl died.
Put this group of people in any other post-apocalyptic world they would have become instant zombie food. How they had survived 2 seasons is beyond belief.
The Commuter (2018)
All too predictable mysteries
The movie is decent and the acting was fine. But the story line is just too predictable if you have watched enough of the genre. It was obvious from the start that the friend was involved in something fishy when he reminded the main character that he has a train to catch. It was obvious who the witness on the train. By not showing her much during the search phase of the movie confirmed my initial guess that she's the one. It was too obvious that she was treated differently with regard to screen time in a clumsy attempt to throw off the audience. The ending was no surprise either.
All in all it was entertaining to watch. But not very suspenseful for very long.
Ni shi ying jiu (2017)
Bad acting, ridiculous plot deveopment
Ok, this is not the WORST time travel movie ever made. Time Cop is the gold standard of crappy time travel story. But the set up is just nuts and unnecessarily complex, to the point that it makes no sense why the characters in the movie chose to do things the way they did it. The dialogue is ineptly written and the supporting actors sounded like this was their first time acting outside of their school drama club. The laboratory setup is insanely anti-ergonomic and the security measures for such a major research facility is laughable at best. The main female lead actress Yang Mi also isn't skilled enough to carry the movie. There is little saving grace to it. 2 out of 10 is me being generous because China film industry is still relatively inexperienced. SyFy network can make better TV movie than this.