rpcarnell Reviews

Madame Web (2024)

Amazingly incoherent

[3/10 · 16 February 2024]

Wanna watch a movie full of coincidences, plot holes, cheesy dialogue, and an incoherent plot? This is your film then.

Cassandra Webb is an awkward paramedic who develops the ability to see the future after a near-death accident. Keep in mind her mom was bitten by a spider before giving birth, so it is safe to assume her power to see the future is spider-related, no matter how ridiculous this is.

The three girls Cassie saves from evil Spiderman are supposed to become superheroes in the future, but it is never explained how. The bad guy, well, he is the bad guy, and he has a sidekick, some woman helping him find the girls. At least we know her gender. And we know the bad guy is wealthy. We don't know how he makes his money though.

Spoilers ahead.

The movie is saturated with plot holes and incoherencies. Girls go to a diner, and a guy sees their picture in a newspaper and recognizes them as the three missing girls. They have been missing for only a few hours. How fast were newspapers published in 2003? And the biggest stupidity of them all: Cassie leaves the girls at her friend's house and goes to Peru to learn more about her powers. She was gone for a week. A lot could've happened in a week.

If you like bad movies, this is the movie for you. There are no redeeming qualities here.

The Pope Must Diet (1991)

Years ahead of its time

[7/10 · 26 February 2021]

This comedy quickly evolved into a drama and then goes back to being a comedy again. Even then, it is not to be taken seriously. It is light-hearted, sometimes a little offensive, but it is fun overall.

It was quite controversial back in the early nineties, and I fail to see why. It is not more or less offensive than the mini-series "The New Pope". I guess times have changed.

I remember seeing it a few times back in the nineties, and I always found it funny at times. Sometimes, it could also be sad. For example (spoilers), the new Pope finds himself living in the streets and stumbles into a child he knew from the orphanage he worked at, who is now also homeless because the orphanage closed. It shows you people's hypocrisy, how they leave the poor guy out in the cold as soon as he stops being Pope.

Watch it if you can find it. And remember, at the end of the day, it is a comedy. Not real life.

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

It Terminated the franchise

[4/10 · 27 October 2019]

Hello,

First of all, be aware of the spoilers. That being said, here we go:

The new Terminator is great. It can turn into two Terminators, which is a good thing, and also a very bad thing, since any of the two Terminators could've terminated Dani, but chose not to because just like the Terminator in Salvation facing John Connor, his job was not to terminate, but to push and throw the opponent around just for kicks. Two Terminator, one Terminator, but he was not doing his job properly.

The action is great at times, specially the sequence where the Terminator crashes a plane against another plane in mid-air, and also the numerous fight sequences between Grace and the Terminator. But sometimes they moved way too fast. It kind of makes sense because Grace was a cyborg, enhanced to defend Dani.

Everything else in this movie stinks. Dark Fate makes you think that no matter what happens, AIs which turn against humanity. It is no longer Skynet. Now it is Legion. And just like Skynet, it has killer robots, killer androids, time-machines, and the desire to wipe out humanity. Grace knows nothing about Skynet or Sarah Connor, but Legion seems to behave exactly like its predecessor, Skynet. The movie sends a simple message: artificial intelligence is doomed to turn against humanity.

Spoilers! John Connor dies in the beginning. He gets killed by a Terminator that popped out of nowhere. How stupid is this? Remember how the little girl from Aliens died in Aliens 3? It is that bad. That alone marks the end of the franchise. That alone makes it obvious that the other Terminator movies never happened. In Genisys, John Connors turned into Genisys/Skynet ally. Obviously they were trying to reboot the franchise with an alternate timeline. Obviously they failed Now, by killing John Connor in a very stupid, cynical way, they simply got rid of all the other Terminator movies, after T2, and they are, once again, attempting another reboot. This time, the reboot is horrible because it makes Sarah Connor's struggles to save her son meaningless.

At this point, the people behind this franchise are insulting the intelligence of people who pay to see Terminator movies. For example, why is Legion interested in killing Dani? They got rid of John Connor, and Dani became the new savior of mankind. If the Terminator succeeds, another savior will show up. John Connor was American. Dani is Mexican. Perhaps they should reboot the franchise again by killing Dani while she is honeymooning with her husband or something, and the next savior of mankind will be from Haiti.

It is supposedly a reboot, just like Genisys. But we get a lot of the same. Spoilers! The Terminator is killed by an exploding battery taken from Grace's enhanced human body? Sounds familiar? They took the idea from Terminator 3. After killing John Connor, the Terminator wonders around and settles down, enjoys a quiet life in Texas, with a woman and her child. Rings a bell? The Terminator in Genisys raised Sarah Connor and even loved her. It seems to me that these machines so determined to destroy mankind should stop making T-800 models, since they are destined to become tender human fathers.

Not a reboot. Just recycled ideas.

At the end of the day, this is a waste of money. The nail in the franchise's coffin.

The Strangers: Prey at Night (2018)

Why the hatred?

[6/10 · 12 May 2018]

Some people seem to hate this film, and I wonder why. First of all, let's face it, there's nothing special about it. The parents might as well be cardboard cutouts, since they were shallow characters. They have two sons, one of which is a girl going to boarding school, and she is a puberty beast (no surprise there) who smokes, but at least she likes the Ramones, you can tell by looking at her shirt. And by the way, she and her brother don't get along, and we know next to nothing about him.

The four of them go to a trailer park, where (no spoilers here, since it is easy to guess) hell awaits.

The Strangers Prey at Night resembles Vacancy (2007) in the fact that you have a family terrified by masked killers. The latter takes place at an isolated motel, and this one takes place at an isolated trailer park. Both movies benefit from their isolated, and dark, surroundings. The Strangers: Prey at Night manages to creep audiences out with three masked killers that seem to have crawled out of your worst nightmares, and nothing is said about who they are, or where they come from, and that makes them even scarier.

Despite the low budget, Strangers delivers a few frights, and may even keep you on the edge of your seat despite the lack of character development, and the lack of originality, after all, (family trapped in the middle of nowhere, preyed upon by killers, with no police officers to help them at all) this is the kind of thing Texas Chain Saw Massacre did in 1974, and few movies, if any, have done it better. Even then, The Strangers: Prey at Night is not a bad entrance to this type of horror.

The Case for Christ (2017)

It is true because the Bible says so

[4/10 · 2 March 2018]

Steven Pinker once said that if you have an ideology you shouldn't read books that reinforce your ideology. Instead you should read books that contradict your ideology. Perhaps you will find out that you are wrong.

Well, I am not a religious person. But following Pinker's advice, I decided to give this movie a try. What can I lose besides my lack of faith, right?

The Case for Christ may be a little better than God is Not Dead when it comes to plot and characters. At least we don't have Kevin Sorbo as the staunch, always-moody atheist who hates God. Instead we have Lee Strobel as an skeptical reporter who (shocker!) will eventually become a Christian after learning about the existence of Christ and his resurrection.

If someone thinks that Strobel found evidence that Jesus was real, or that God is real, that person is wrong. Strobel himself, being a reporter and having been involved in court-cases, should know that any other case not involving religion would throw his evidence in a garbage can. It says so in a book, so it is true does not prove anything, and neither does what he feels about his faith or anyone else's. Feelings are not facts and neither are books. Otherwise, we'd find ourselves concluding that Islam, Christians, Hindus, Jews, and Mormons are all right, and all you need is a little logic to know that you can have multiple facts being true all at once.

In the end, The Case for Christ preaches to the converted. In the process, it adds sad music to the background to appeal to your emotions, and perhaps bring a few tears out of your eyes. As for me, I think it is a festival of flawed logic, and poor evidence concealed as undeniable facts.

The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)

Disappointing Film

[5/10 · 11 February 2018]

I am not a fan of 10 Cloverfield Lane because it is just a movie about two people held captive by a maniac. If you were expecting a monster, 10 Cloverfield Lane was one hell of a disappointment.

The Cloverfield Paradox makes its predecessor look great by comparison. As soon as you start watching this film, you get the feeling that you are watching a science fiction B-movie, with a few good actors thrown in (same feeling I got while watching The Vault, and noticing James Franco was in it). Except that this is a Big Budget release. Or is it? Because everything seems to have been made with a low budget, and, unfortunately, that includes the script.

Yes, the script is horrid. Most of it involves people inside a space station, where bad things happen after they activate a particle accelerator. Space and time are torn apart (and so is the plot), and they end up in another dimension, and monsters are transported to Earth. What kind of bad things happen? Well, someone loses an arm, and the arm can move around by itself and even write on its own. How? It is not explained. And, of course, some people start to die. Reality has been seriously altered. It seems the movie found a way to throw ideas randomly into the film without having to explain them any further, like one of the characters vomiting maggots he never swallowed.

Cloverfield Paradox successfully turned the script into a paradox. It answers nothing about the previous Cloverfield movies. In fact it does not even seem to belong to the same universe. If you liked Alien: Covenant, then perhaps you will like this mess. Otherwise, just go watch Pandorum, Europa Report, or Event Horizon. Once you finish watching Cloverfield Paradox, you may want to watch one of those three film anyway.