fagurado Reviews

Arrested Development: The Ocean Walker (2005) Season 3, Episode 6

Charlize Theron is simply incredible

[9/10 · 14 September 2023]

I have to say, this would have been just another Arrested Development 6 or 7 star episode, but the dynamic that Charlize Theron as Rita brings to the episode...it's just tops! Not only we get the usual humor from AD, but the her delivery of the jokes that they wrote for her is just so incredible, unexpected and just made me burst with laughter. The way she speaks "night, night" and jumps in bed, her laugh when she paddles Michael...she's just the cherry on the top.

Now as for the story about her being mentally retarded...well, let's just say it's good that they kept it to one episode. I feel like this wasn't something they could really get anything out of.

One Piece (2023– )

Don't even like One Piece but this was pretty fine

[7/10 · 3 September 2023]

You know, I never got into the One Piece anime because it just felt like a waste of time. I tried the manga, liked a couple hundred chapters, and then just felt like I was losing interest in the characters and their adventures because it was just the usual"boy gets strong and fights the power" type of show. I never read the whole thing (is it still ongoing? Who knows) and I thought I was going to find the One Piece live action boring and stupid, but I didn't!

The characters are pretty solid, there are some differences with the manga (duh, of course there would be!) but I'm not a crybaby who needs everything to remain the same, so if a character's skin color changes, and that's not ruining the story, then I'm capable of just ignoring that and focusing on the positive. The CGI is pretty good, if you are not familiar with the original work you might think "how is a clown floating in the air?" but hey, that's the way the character is introduced in the manga, and I think they did a great job with the adaptation. It's not goofy CGI, it's pretty good.

Honestly, I would watch a 2nd season of this. My only complain would have to be...I wish they had remained loyal to the physique of the ladies in the show. They are a bit...smaller...

Oh, also: The voice actor that dubs Sanji into Spanish...god, his accent is awful. Whenever he's speaking it just breaks the atmosphere of the show, it just sounds like I'm on the phone with my Cuban friend, it's not just the accent but rather how amateurish it sounds.

I Feel Pretty (2018)

Just a mediocre film

[3/10 · 22 August 2023]

I don't understand how people can give this film a 10-star review. Like, honestly, people don't understand what the star rating system means. They think "I laughed" means "this is a 10-star film" and that's why they rate these crappy flicks so high, putting it next to classics like Titanic, 12 Angry Men or Pulp Fiction. Films which are brilliant, next to this absolute garbage. This is why democracy doesn't work.

The plot of the film...Amy Schumer is an average looking girl that hits her head during a Spinning class and she starts to believe she's hotter than she really is. And we have to believe that too, because there is no CGI, no special effects or even a green screen with another girl in it. Do you remember that movie with Jack Black where he fell in love with a fat girl, and when they showed what she looked like through his eyes, it was a different girl? Well not in this film. The regular Amy Schumer stares at her image on the mirror and goes "omg! I I look absolutely different!" and the director expects everyone to go along with this absurd idea.

Amy Schumer spends half of the movie acting like a prick towards people because she thinks she's hot, and the big redemption arc is that she realizes she was never pretty and tells women "it's okay if you're ugly. Also, buy this lipstick"

Lazy, lazy film making.

Superstore: Cereal Bar (2020) Season 5, Episode 15

Amy and Jonah becoming insufferable

[5/10 · 15 August 2022]

The more the series progresses, the less I care about Jonah and Amy. I know this is a comedy show, but it was so frustrating on this episode when she interrupted her employees and didn't allow them to express their complaints to the CEO. Honestly, this episode and the episode where she lets teenagers basically take over the store because her teenage daughter is hanging out with her friends...she's just become a piece of s. She will not hesitate to throw her employees under the bus if that makes her look good. It seems like all she cares about is her salary and nothing else.

And Jonah...god, can you please write any more stupid situations for him to show how useless he is? Amy and Jonah going to the meeting of another branch, and Jonah awkwardly trying to get Sandra to leave...it was just goofy, goofy and stupid.

Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

Loved it and hated it. Those damn eyes...

[8/10 · 3 July 2022]

I grew up reading Gunnm and Gunnm Last Order, and it was a series that was very dear to me, so I was both afraid and excited when I heard they were making an Alita movie.

So basically, I hated and loved it this movie, but most love than hate. Let's get the obvious thing out first: the eyes. Such a dumb decision, imo. It's way more distracting than anything else, it forces you to have CGI all over the place, and it doesn't add absolutely anything to the film. If they had made Alita just have a human face, it would have been a 9/10 damn great film. Instead, they looked at the source material, and thought we wanted to see this monstruosity of a CGI face, and went and did it. Awful, awful stuff.

Now, the the great: Christoph Waltz, and Rosa Salazar. At some points the Salazar character does some dumb posing and expressions, but you can't tell what part of that is just that the CGI still looks out of place. Waltz...is a master actor. Most of the best film moments come from his delivery of powerful lines. Sometimes, the character is just too cartoonish for the screen. For example, the weapon that doctor Dyson carries...in a manga, it looks cool. In real life, it is too big, cumbersome and slow for him to actually prefer it over say a gun or a machete. I understand they tried to adapt the original material, and kudos for that. Jennifer Conelly, Mahershala Ali? They were okay, not having been given big roles. I was disappointed that I didn't get to see more of Desty Nova, and I'm afraid the sequel will never see the day of light and we will lose possibly one of the most charismatic villains of all time.

Battle scenes could have been shorter. Part of the script could have been written better. Love story between Alita and Hugo was done perfectly imo, I just wish they had gone for a less buffed actor for the role of Hugo. I always thought he was a sort of a small, imaginative kid rather than a cool skater weightlifter bro.

Overall though, I loved this film. For a movie adaptation, it didn't absolutely butcher the original manga. They dared to experiment with a CGI face and hopefully they learned their lesson. It was really ugly. Please don't do it again.

Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)

The horror that wasn't horror

[4/10 · 9 June 2022]

This isn't a horror film. This is a bad action film with characters from a horror film. I did not feel anything during this movie, none of the disgust or shock I felt during Hellraiser 1 or 2, or the admiration I felt for Pinhead and the cenobites in Hellraiser 3. This was easy to watch, easy to forget. I will probably never watch this again.

Acting was good, production was good, everything was okay. It's just not a very good story.

The Ritual (I) (2017)

Trite and unoriginal

[5/10 · 19 May 2022]

It's just your old monster story. Friends go to the forest, find monster, die. Really, there's nothing interesting about this.

So the story is about some friends who decide to go hiking to the mountains, seemingly not very well-prepared, then they get murdered by this weird monster who is being worshipped by some odd forest people. That's about as deep as this will go. Where the monster comes from, how the people came to meet it, that's never explained.

The monster itself is quite lame. At first I was hoping that it never appeared on camera, but when it did, I was extremely disappointed. Basically it's like a huge horse. A huge horse with hands. That's all it is. It really loses all its mystery when you have a male character fending it away with an axe. I would have rather not seen it and just imagined what kind of creature it was.

It's also not explained what's the deal with all the visual hallucinations. Is it the monster's doing? Is it the feeling of isolation?

Anyway. I like forests, so I didn't completely hate it.

The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986)

Entertaining, simple but complex

[8/10 · 19 May 2022]

I really enjoyed this film. It's a simple story, there are no plot twists or sudden revelations, everyone just pretty much is who they are, but the film is so enjoyable that I enjoyed every minute of it.

I like movies about adventures, and you don't get more adventure than being a neanderthal living in a cave and fighting wolves and bears. The actors really brought the sign language to life, and some scenes are directed so well that only with three or four grunts you can understand what is going on. No long speeches, no stupid holier-than-thou arguments like in those superhero movies that are so popular these days. No, just grunts, the expression in your face, and the movement of your hands.

It reminded me a little bit about Apocalypto, because of its rawness. It's just people, in the wild, doing things. If that's not enough for you, then download doctor Strange or something with complex timelines and flashbacks.

The Northman (2022)

Kinda boring, violence doesn't redeem it

[5/10 · 6 May 2022]

You should watch this movie if you care more about swords and fighting men than you care about a good story.

Characters are extremely one-dimensional, you have your strong hero dude as a lead, whose motivation is just to kill his uncle, to the point where he throws away his entire future just for a chance to enact revenge. But even he forgot about revenge, so why couldn't he just have a normal life? You know, find a wife, make some little people, and live in the mountains eating mushrooms.

Nah, he has to find his uncle and kill him. An uncle who, by the way, is not a king or anything important anymore: after he killed Bjorn's father, he was ousted by another lord and now works taking care of sheep. I'm not kidding, that's your antagonist now: a very powerful shepherd. Seriously, that takes away so much from the interest I had on the story.

The girl, Olga? Well...she's pretty. That's all. She's a pretty girl that the lead character can have sex with. She has no purpose in the film, because even she can't convince him not to try to kill his uncle.

The queen mother is also a character to fill a requirement. The woman he's trying to save. But whereas other directors will make the character evolve, for instance having him reconsider his whole revenge plan once he learns of his mother's change of heart, Robert Eggers will force his character to fight to the death, no matter how useless that act of revenge becomes. He makes such a big deal of the words that Bjorn uttered a few times while he was sailing away: "I will avenge you father. I will save you mother. I will kill you Fjollnir". I get what you're trying to do, Eggers. Making this into an epic "slogan" for your story, so that we believe it's more grandiose than it really is. Problem is, nobody cares. I don't care about his mother, because I saw her for 60 seconds at the beginning of the film and all she did was yell at him to get out of her room because she was undressing. Most childhood scenes are about his father, so why the heck should I care about him rescuing this lady? I don't. I don't care, at all. Here's an idea: replace all scenes with his mother with flashbacks of his father, and you have a better emotional development.

Overall, this is a poorly written film, with a decent-enough director and a big budget. It could be better? Yes. It could also be worse. I was forced to watch it so I'm glad it wasn't worse. Bit on the long side though, last 30 minutes of the movie I just took out my earbuds and listened to music because I couldn't leave the theater.

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Is everyone in Gotham stupid?

[4/10 · 25 February 2022]

I somewhat enjoyed the first two movies. The stupid decisions some of the characters made, I overlooked, because at least I was being introduced to the Batman universe. But with Dark Knight Rises, it just reached critical mass. For all I care, the entire movie could just disappear from our collective consciousness and nothing of value would be lost.

First of all, let's talk about Bane. His voice is so silly, I couldn't take the character seriously. And every one of his speeches is so...preachy. So comic-book like. I dislike characters which are given authority and power simply because it's good for the plot. For example, Bruce Wayne has a huge mansion and builds incredible weapons, but we never see more than two people in the lab. Who the heck is building these weapons? Wayne, in his spare time? Alfred? Nah, Wayne is a billionaire, therefore, poof! Giant underground base with technology that rivals the military. No need to explain the process to me. What am I, someone who asks questions?

Then, Bane goes and decides that he's gonna blow up an entire city. Why doesn't anybody in the organization try to stop him? His plan makes no sense. It's childish violence without justification. It's like he has unlimited power over people. Whatever he wants, he gets, as long as it's part of the plot. Remember when the Joker just went ahead and killed his helpers one by one? And none of them did anything? Well, that's the kind of stupid stuff you'll find in the Dark Knight Rises.

During a chase sequence, they let Bane escape on a bike, because the entire patrol unit has to chase Batman. A man, alone, on a motorbike, and they let him go. A criminal, who just took the entire stock exchange building hostage, is let off the hook. Hundreds of police cars, and they don't send a single one after Bane. How stupid do you have to be?

Very, very stupid. As stupid as "let's send ALL THE COPS to the sewers". Yes, all the cops. All of them. Let's leave the entire city unprotected. How could anything go wrong?

I don't understand how can people rate this movie 8 or 9 stars. I'm assuming most people in real life are just as stupid as the people in Gotham city. I will never watch this movie again. I will never recommend this movie to anybody. And if I ever meet someone who rates this movie higher than a 5 or 6 stars, I will laugh on their face.

Batman Begins (2005)

A film for childrens based on children's books

[4/10 · 23 February 2022]

This movie is entertaining. As entertaining as reading comics. It's not a smart movie. The original material is goofy, because it's cartoons. Cartoons where people can fly and covering the top half of your face automatically makes you look like a different person. So much so that even the most famous city billionaire can walk around dressed as a bat and rest assured that nobody will recognize him. Just because they have technology that is good enough to build a microwave weapon that evaporates the water of the entire city, it doesn't mean they have any facial recognition software, or even a sensible person that goes "hey, that guy batman really looks a lot like that guy Bruce Wayne!". Nobody in this universe puts two and two together.

But hey, it's a comic book movie. It's okay. If you know nothing about the Batman story, it will at least give you some basic vocabulary. The goo goo ga ga of Bruce Wayne, you could call it.

This goo goo gaga deserves 4 out of 10 stars.

El palomo cojo (1995)

Good acting, lacking in depth

[6/10 · 6 January 2022]

This is one of those Spanish films where the plot is just "things that happen in life", and it's hard to put your finger on one specific plot line. Is it about love? Is it about family? Is it about being a child? All of them at once. Which means, at least in my opinion, that there is no strength. It's a good enough comedy, family, romance, Spanish film. It's not outstanding in any of these categories.

Interpretations are good, all the actors fit their roles with like a glove. The only thing is, this being 2022, some viewers might faint when they see an old woman kissing a young boy in the lips, or showing him her breasts. But that's one of the allures of Spanish and French films. If you want skin, you'll see plenty of it.

This is a film that contains a collection of stories about Spanish people. It's not a big epic. It's a small, down to earth sort of coming-of-age film. Enjoyable, but probably forgettable.

Funeral Parade of Roses (1969)

Put on your rose-tinted glasses for this one

[6/10 · 25 July 2021]

This movie works under a certain context, and that is the context of Japanese gay cinema from the 60s. I seriously don't understand how people can give this film a 10/10 rating, putting it next to other films that are objectively better, and that work well across different audience groups. This film is a niche product. It's like watching a shoe-making youtube video and giving it a 10/10 rating because you are a shoe-maker.

This film is a beautiful film, it has funny moments and interesting parts, but overall I think it deserves 6 or 7 stars. I am curious, did many people just watched it because "it was one of Kubrick's favorite films" or something like that?

Well, I liked it, but I didn't LOVE it. Here's my list of good and bad things:

• Good: It's humorous, yet dramatic, and I like movies that have both. Characters are likable. It gets a bit weird sometimes, with the director deciding for example to break the fourth wall here and there, sitting the actors in front of the camera and asking them questions about their roles.

• Bad: It gets too self-referential at some points, and too experimental. I wish they had spent more time talking about the gay scene in Japan, and possibly their conflict with society. How about those riots? That could have been a good metaphor for the gay community, rioting against the society that they deem unjust or intolerant.

Overall, I liked it because it put me in a different social and historical context, that of Japan during the 60s. But I don't see myself rewatching it any time soon.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)

A dumb movie for audiences with no attention span

[5/10 · 4 June 2019]

The movie starts with loud explosions and lots of shiny fx. There is no time for introductions, the very first minute we are already given a sample of what to expect for the rest of the film.

Remember when you had to wait one hour to see godzilla on screen? When they took some time to develop the story, introduce the characters and give you time to immerse yourself into the monster universe? Well, not anymore. I must have blinked during the first 30 seconds and missed the part where they explained who was "Andrew" and why was so important, but basically the rest of the film I just couldn't understand why some already lame characters were mentioning this person as the reason why they did everything. We divorced because of Andrew, I push the button because of Andrew, let's save the world because of Andrew.

You would think they would go back to Andrew but they never do. Instead, the characters just keep making one dumb decision after another. Sacrifices are made that just are completely innecesary. Doctor chinaman decides to stay behind and trigger the bomb, but didn't they show remote controlled vehicles that could just as well deliver the payload without throwing away any lives? Why not send a soldier without training, or again, JUST USE THE REMOTE CONTROL VEHICLES

Plotwise this film fails on so many aspects. There is at least three characters that are pure comic relief, and the jokes are so cheesy that they would embarrass even Big Bang Theory writers.

I could keep going on about what I disliked, and why this movie is not worth watching, but I will cut myself short. Summarizing:

Cons: loud, dumb, stupid. Pros: buy popcorn

Banana in a Nutshell (2005)

It's okay but it feels very amateurish

[4/10 · 24 December 2018]

I can see why her family wouldn't want to be in the film, as it seems that she didn't even let them know that she was talking about them in public. Considering the Chinese are already very touchy when it comes to their personal life, I feel she could have been a little more sensitive. The guy just feels like a zero to the left, his role in the film is quite irrelevant. An okay documentary, definitely I learned a few things about China, still not a documentary I would put on my top 10.