MauritiusVonMailand Reviews

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

Honestly? I wouldn't have paid a dime for this sequel

[6/10 · 1 April 2024]

In truth, the result is more than honorable when compared to other similar products (sequels, reboots, remakes, ... of cult movies) where the viewer keep asking "why?" during and after watching it.

The plot is sufficiently solid, the final presence of the old ghostbusters is wonderful (and necessary), the tribute to the late Harold Ramis with the ghostly reconstruction using CGI is touching, and there are good laugh in some scenes.

However, I found myself yawning way too often than acceptable; not that there were useless pieces in the editing (each scene serves to create the plot) but the "magic touch" that the mere presence of the trio Dan, Bill and Harold was able to give in the previous films was here totally missing. The sore point is in the current cast which is... wrong not because of their acting skills (they are good) but because they don't convey anything.

I love Mckenna Grace as an actress (from Gifted to Young Sheldon's Paige) but she seems to have been cast only because a super-intelligent character was needed and she now has this on her acting CV. The other three (Trevor, Celeste and Podcast) are also not "magnetic" characters. Paul Rudd a little in the shade compared to usual and they seem to retrace the same scenes done in the past by Moranis and Weaver.

The fun starts with the Walmart scene,. A little perplexed by the initial scene when Egon died. Because it would imply that the "bad ghost" had already escaped while we then realized that the security systems created by Egon inside the mountain were still fully working.

In summary, the grade is fully acceptable with good points but the two originals are (still today) superlatives.

The Nun II (2023)

Poor script. Better the first movie

[5/10 · 31 March 2024]

The Nun is definitely the weakest piece of The Conjuring universe.

Already in the first episode there were serious problems in the script such as the decision to set everything in a Catholic monastery in 1950s Romania. Which denotes a profound historical ignorance given that in those years the Stalinist era was in full swing (from which the Ceacescu would later emerge) with profound religious persecutions, especially against the Greek-Catholic church, such as to make the idea of a cloistered female monastery totally senseless (given the absence of any "political supervisor/controller"). Equally senseless is the character Maurice, a globetrotting Frenchman (not just because he was in that area but even free to enter, and then, exit the Soviet bloc?). But that film was overall pleasant due to the gothic settings, and the idea of the nuns guarding the passage opened by an unwary sorcerer was interesting.

The Nun 2, however, is significantly worse despite the always excellent scenography, costume reconstruction and acting. It starts very badly with the idea of black nun who seems to have been placed there on purpose for reasons of political correctness; her figure is a living oxymoron both because she is American (one from Mississippi, totally devoid of faith and even basic knowledge of Catholicism, who is transferred for unknown reasons to a small French monastery?!?!) and because of the out-of-context explanation of her to be a nun; It is true that in the Middle Ages monastic life was often linked to daughters/cadets by family decision but everyone was certainly pervaded by a profound faith. Afroamerican-smoking-with a non Nun attitude-non believer (agains she was not a novice but a full nun and as that there because of her own choice) is a nonsense profile.

To this we add too many chases (it reminds me of Aliens movie sometimes), the appearance and disappearance of a goat devil who has nothing to do with the "nun" demon (he appeared while the demon was busy chasing the "eyes of Saint Lucia"), the inability to kill his adversaries the priest and the girl were killed just in a "eye-blink), the crucifix inability to stop anything, and finally the very idea of "eyes" (made of "jelly"!!) preserved buried for centuries that the demon wanted to gain power (!?).

Even more ... Maurice possessed and then saved, how come he ends up under "care" by the Warrens (shown in one of the Conjuring films) if he was cured?

Sister Irene who burns but doesn't get burned?

The girl pierced by the horn of the devil goat who runs as if nothing had happened?

Why does The Nun continue to appear in Warren's visions in subsequent films if he has been defeated and he no longer has a conduit?

Little Bitches (2018)

not totally wrong but ...

[5/10 · 29 August 2023]

Not totally wrong but we a major flaw: MISCASTING. All three girls pretending to be (in the very first scene) in the freshman year and then in their sr. Year while they were all 23-26 yo and JMcC sometimes looks even older than that.

Virginia G was somehow the most believable character. KC was a good surprise but her acting was quite too loud. Kate Berlant (the counselor) was far too borderline. JMcC has some good scenes but she is still in the nowhere zone between tv series style acting and TV movie acting (real movies are something differente) Ok, this is and SHOULD be watched as an not too much pretentious movie about friendship in high school. Still there are lot of popcorn teen movies much better out there.

Meh.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999– )

It WAS good. Now just ideology

[4/10 · 3 January 2023]

It used to be a damned good TV product. Not just because of the original cast but because the plots were well written. Starting from season XIX, it got worse and not (season XXII) I stopped watched.

This is not because of the cast change (natural outcome) but because of the characters and the plot that seems written JUST to be compliant with the Agenda.

Cast. In these last seasons the VU is composed of one black (attorn, two gays, one Ice-T and a desperate blonde. I am not aware of it to be the standard in any NYPD precinct. Jamie Gray Hyder is worth a mention as one of the worst actress (not just the character) of the show.

Plot. In the last 2 season the focus is #metoo, #BLM and "the guilty is always and only the white male"

This is not anymore a tv show. This is brainwashing.

Leap! (2016)

For very young audience only

[6/10 · 15 January 2022]

Good enough for a very basic American audience that knows nothing about what ballet is and (more important) what ballet WAS at that time.

This is not a minor issue both as for what ballerinas of that age (11yo) can/could technically handle and the real dynamics inside a ballet school as Opera or ROH.

The director went even further choosing a totally inappropriate soundtrack and something equivalent to the "challenges" in TV shows or movies as Step-up (see Félicie vs Camille challenge).

Last but not least, historical nonsense as the motorbike in a epoch that is supposedly anterior to 1875 (see Statue of Liberty construction). I hate historical nonsense because facts cannot (should not) be reinvented especially when the audience lack the knowledge to understand what's wrong.

The animation is good (not Pixar but good enough) and the "acting" (as facial expression, jokes, etc) ok for young audience.

Sufficient but I definitely prefer movies as Bolshoi (2017)

21 Bridges (2019)

Movie or just another manifest?

[7/10 · 23 December 2021]

It seems that this movie sum it up all mantras from today political Agenda.

Main characters: black and a woman Bad guys: black and white but the one really bad and committed to murder is (of course) the white man.

Stereotypes. The die hard cop (whose only goal is finding and killing cop-killers) is moved in the Internal Affairs division. He is called back to find (in just few hrs) the bad guys that just killed many cops in a single robbery. That's to say history of redention. The woman works for the narcotics and the chief force them to collaborate (seen so many times).

Boooooring and irritating.

Countdown (III) (2019)

Countdown to boredom

[5/10 · 22 November 2021]

Something already done many many times before in every single scenario. So why they did it again obtaining such a mediocre (TV movie like) result?

It is like they changed n times the screenwriter or the director. The only possible reason to explain the amount of dead end sub-plots (the "bad" doctor; a family that has never recovered from mourning) and banality as the very unlikely priest expert of demons, the part-time nerd who hacks a remote database in less than 10 seconds etc etc.

Last but not least the totally gratuitous love story whose only possible explanation is that being interracial it earns some points by media.

Fargo (2014–2024)

Season 4 a complete disaster

[7/10 · 2 October 2021]

The vote was supposed to be much higher but the last season made me so mad and disappointed that it spoiled the series.

Just to make it clear Season 1 deserved 9, while Season 2 and 3 were not that good but were worth the time and I enjoyed watching them (7 star).

Season 4? Nomen omen, It deserves the same number: 4.

Plot inconsistency with flaws that drives you mad. Actors much less talented. Dialogues less than acceptable. Someone wrote that they tried to do a "pathetic version of Twin Peaks". Well, not that far from the truth.

Last but not least I strongly suspect that casting was driven by black washing purposes more than by script driven casting (aka first casting then invent a script fit for the purpose). This happens when ideology and conformism rule the industry (instead of the quality).

Look what happened with True Detective season 2 and 3

R. I. P. Fargo.

Wind River (2017)

totally wasted in the last 20'

[5/10 · 2 October 2021]

The 1st half was quite good. Good location, casting and acting. Intriguing plot. But then the director opted out to push on the accelerator revealing abruptly what has happened and therefore making even more predictable what was going to happen in the very last part.

Once you have watched it, no way you are going to watch it again.

Such a waste of potential.

Alone (V) (2020)

Good effort for such a low budget movie

[7/10 · 25 April 2021]

Why wasting money to make reboots, remakes, re-washing up of cult movie (most of the time just to change skin/gender of the main characters) while you can make a plain simple but entertaining movie like this?

This does not mean this an hidden gem directed by a novel Kubrick. The point here is how to make an honest movie with low budget and a 3 person cast in such a classic topic as serial killer-victim chase-escape. A movie not interested in gory stuff (such an easy way to go ...) to enforce an otherwise predictable plot. The camera work was plain but efficient; the photography more than acceptable; the acting professional; the plot somehow surprising in the final scene (don't remember something similar).

I am sure I'll forget about the movie in a week, but I don't regret watching it and this is something sooo difficult these days.

Yellowstone (2018– )

Loved it at first and then abandoned

[6/10 · 19 April 2021]

I was really in love with the series or at least I was in the very beginning. Then something happened and became more and more disaffected till, at the end of episode 8 I decided it was not worth it.

Settings, cast and direction are quite good and the plot, although a little bit stretched to the extreme of "wealthy family drama" (modern day "Dallas"?) intriguingly enough to stay tuned.

Unfortunately as the episodes progressed, more and more borderline situations accumulated. If on one side the characters became defined so that we could understand why they were like that, on the other side there was a crescendo of situations enforced by the introduction of characters that seemed more the needed fee for the actual Agenda. An example? The lesbian journalist and partner that pop-up from the East just to remark the difference btwn "educated East coast and the barbarian cowboy- and republican - land.

I loved Beth Dutton / Kelly Reilly's acting and charisma but it's too far-fetched. So is the attitude of the patriarch that reach the extreme when (SPOILER) punched and expelled the only "stable" and definitely family-oriented son ... . This was (at least for me) the last the straw that breaks the camel's back. So I quit.

Dreambuilders (2020)

7 star the movie with a bonus

[8/10 · 31 December 2020]

The animation is good. Not as good as a todays Pixar or Dreamworks movie but pretty damn good for a Danish production whose budget is definitely much lower. Major flaws are in facial expressions and in body movements. Ok, they are portraying Danish folks and as that you cannot expect Mediterranean expressions so this is not much of a problem (ok, I am joking but I am allowed to say that 'cause I lived 3 yy in Copenhagen and I love Danskerne).

As for the story it is a revisitation of something already seen but in a very different flavor. The idea could be something a Monster & Co but the development is totally new, to my knowledge.

1 star more than actually deserved because of the effort and the result totally lacking the unbearable attitude of todays American Studios, full of politically correct garbage and hidden (actually not so hidden) ideological inputs (see the fact that it is NOW impossible to have white characters even if the animation movie is set in France during Middle Age, see the very last Live Action Beauty and the beast).

Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)

mediocrity and nonsense at its best

[5/10 · 29 July 2020]

I am totally aware that this is the kind of movie where the plot is not important. You should watch it after turning off your brain. Just enjoy it visually. But, hey. This is too much. While the first two episodes were absolutely entertaining and with a "logic" flow of events, from the 3rd episode things are worse and worse; do you remember the container in Las Vegas, apparently empty from which dozens of zombies soldiers emerged, as if it were a magic box?

In the 4th episode things are even funnier. One of the "best" is at the beginning with Milla clones ravaging the Umbrella base in Tokyo (all destroyed by a nuclear explosion) and our "original" Milla that survived a frontal crash of the airplane she was in with a mountain.

Her attitude is quite peculiar, indeed. She want to save the mankind from extinction and she keep killing far more soldiers than zombies did.

Please, write it again

Lady Macbeth (2016)

Boring and misleading

[4/10 · 4 May 2020]

Boring, Wrong adaptation. Mildly voyeuristic. Good acting (average, not all the cast). Nice photography Watchable. However there is one major flaw that I cannot forgive and this is the casting. Whenever I see hidden ideology in a movie willing to rewrite an historical period, this make me nuts. How can you explain that in rural England, year 1865, you see a coloured maid and a field laborer that is obviously not caucasian? The most exotic human being available at the time (except for the Victorian court or similar) would have been Irish. If you lie about the Society you want to describe, than you lie about everything.

Stan & Ollie (2018)

excellent but it could have been perfect

[8/10 · 28 April 2020]

Very well done and it was not an easy task. To my knowledge this is the very first biopic of S&O and the real risk was that young people would have label it as "uncool". The story covers the last part of their career, that of the European tour, immediately after the war. Tour forced by the absence of proposals in Hollywood. Perfect actors. Good settings Realistic "costumes" Touching story.

But ... yes there is something wrong and the problem is either on the director or in the production side. The problem is having tried in every way to insert politically correct issues dealing with "race". Two examples: 1) in a theatre clearly full of white people (as it was more than likely in the 30s), suddendly the director zooms on an afro-american couple, then zoom out and the audience is again apparently white (?!). 2) Final part of the tour in Ireland. Theaters full of cheering spectators. Suddenly, zoom in on an Asian couple. In Ireland? In 1947? Obviously it is not an accident but an "ideological" choice. It could even make sense if the message was that the couple was loved everywhere but if you do it in this way it mean lying about the historical context/demographics. This is not an accident but the rule in Hollywood in the last 6 years

Monolith (2016)

Bonelli is not Marvel

[5/10 · 10 October 2019]

That's the real issue. When a publishing house committed to comics since decades (Bonelli), believe it is experienced enough to produce movies derived from its comics .. The comics itself was just good (but not Good) for a short read ... not for a screenplay unless the person in charge for the script is a damn good one. This is not the case. What's good about the movie? Location. Everything else is so damn stupid: baby dressed like he was travelling through Saskatchewan winter time; the mother dressed with leather pants; the Car (not even the possessed black car from a great movie of 1977 by Elliot Silverstein was so resistant); the director is a good one for commercials not for movies . Don't waste your time

Teen Spirit (2018)

Good performance for Elle but is movie heading to nowhere

[6/10 · 14 September 2019]

God knows how much I appreciate actress Elle Fanning. I'm glad that in this film, she was allowed to prove herself as a singer. Mission accomplished. But here ends the positive part about the movie. Is it a bad movie? No, you can watch it. Is it a good movie? No, because when you leave the theatre you have a sense of dissatisfaction. There are many problems, among all a plot that opens many narrative cues, eventually left unexplored. The story is about a girl (Violet) who lives with her mother in a big house on the Isle of Wight, too big to be sustainable with their job as a waitress (part-time in the case of Violet, since she still goes to school) and a day-to-day caring of their greenhouse, fields and animals. Elle's dream is to sing but her mother (we discover she is Polish), a sort of "Born Again Christian" (but we are in the UK and not in the USA !!!), abandoned by her husband, does not want her daughter to waste time behind unrealizable dreams. The opportunity to fullfill her dreams came when the island host the selection camp to participate in programs such as The Voice (or X-Factor or ...). Violet secretly enlist herself to the trial using as a fake tutor Vlad, a former famous Yugoslavian opera singer now an alcoholist living in a van, who (we discover) would like to see his daughter, now living in Paris. For the rest, the plot follows the traditional canons. Beyond the plot with so many unaswerend questions, there is something strange about the casting. This is English movie, set on an English island with supposedly english people. Then why on Earth did they decide to cast Elle (an all-American girl from Georgia) to play the role of the English daughter of a Polish woman instead of (just as an example because she is not of the right age) Mia Wasikowska? Her accent sound too strange to be an Island resident. The movie is a sort of Cinderella story coming from the English working class (not so different from the story of Flashdance)? What is the added value of using a Polish mother, Vlad, and the support band, whose selection is clearly driven from their non-english ethnicity? Another problem in the representation of the inhabitants of the Isle of Wight. Violet's classmates (and young people in general) are 90% of non-British origin, while practically all adults are of English origin. Then we have a problem: either kids don't have parents or Wight residents don't have kids. It seemed to me the classic trick to insert the "gray factor" to reach the goal of politically correctness (all race even when this don't make sense), something not strange in British movies in the last 5 years. That's to bad because the movie had a lot of potential, but either film-script or the director (or both) failed in the task

The Circle (I) (2017)

It make you think about what you should already know

[5/10 · 13 September 2019]

First of all, watch this movie together with "Searching" (2018), whose plot is (wanted to be) the celebration of the immense potential of Google engine, good enough for doing everything you need w/o leaving a room, searches for your missing daughter included (the idea of "no need to leave your house anymore" scared me much more than The Circle, because to me this is not a potential but a nightmare, unless you are constrained in a bed).

The film has puzzled me because while I do understand its goal, it failed in making the problem look real, at least to the vast majority of compulsive social users. He wanted to be a kind of "j'accuse" against facebook (no hypocrisy please, the movie is about Facebook and Zuckerberg and, as someone said, Steve Jobs, whose focus was tech and money and not data collection) and its desire to plunder data from users too happy to share everything. My fear is that the average "social media -addicted user" would think "cool, I'd love to be online h24 and participate in a man-hunt". Mae's character does not arouse empathy and Emma Watson's pose (it made me think of Hugh Grant) was somehow dull. Tom Hanks is a perfect synopsis of Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg. Maybe too much. I believe that the vast majority of the young people who saw the film did not perceive the message, just "the usual exaggeration of people resilient to internet". Pushing too much on drama, made the message weaker because most people would think "ok, it is a movie. BTW, take a pict of the funny fat guy seated in front of us eating meat". Last but not least if you want to deliver a "message" you must be sure of being credible and not just another case of brain washing. Let's talk about Ty Lafitte. The only positive character ... is "coloured". Quite strange that while I cannot remember in the movie Indians or Pakistans, Chinese or Russian (people usually associated, because it is real, with Geek roles) the producers decided that the Geek (and somehow a hero) was supposed to be afro-american. When a movie whose goal is to denounce the intrusiveness of internet and social media, the hypocrisy of the single thought, and the "social driven democracy", ... appears to be totally flat with the recent Hollywood agenda whose claim is "no Afro-American has to be cast as a bad guy, it should always appear as a positive character, better if it is the only one ", then credibility goes to hell.

Bird Box (2018)

Plot holes, wrong casting, poor direction

[5/10 · 14 August 2019]

I am perfectly aware that you cannot (and you shouldn't) compare a movie with the book behind the story. This is a fact. However, this rule works if 1) the script make sense, 2) the casting is correct and 3) the director knows what he is doing. This movie failed in all of them. Let's me going a little deeper in each point. (1) Script. This was a tough job because the book was already borderline. The original plot is about the appearance of mysterious events involving people going nuts (homicide and then suicide) for no apparent reason. The "epidemic" started in rural Russia and in few weeks it hit Alaska and then all the country (and countries worldwide). It took weeks if not months and was not a sudden event. This is important because in the meanwhile news reported that just before people goin' nuts, they claim to have seen something "incredibly beautiful", something that apparently you cannot withstand with your "logic" and that it "cooks" your brain cortex. The "short-circuit" effect seems delayed and/or negligible (at least in the short term) in people that are already "crazy" and in animals. This is not a minor thing because it explains why all the bad guys in the movie seems to behave normally while planning the worst. At a certain point you understand than the reason of this epidemic are "creatures" that are somehow not compatible with us; the book never explains who they are, why they here or even what they look like. The only thing we get is that they would never harm you directly and, apparently, they don't even want to. Whatever their intentions are, if you (or an animal) watch them too closely, you get nuts. Any SF/Fantasy book need a suspension of disbelief from the reader and that's part of the deal. However the book is so stretched in the realm of disbelief that you keeping reading just because it is well written and the characters well analyzed. The movie fails along all the line in some minor aspect (windows are not totally obscured, the "voices" of the creature, a love story that wasn't in the book, the raiders in the two black cars, no guns, ... ) and some major stuff. Which? Malorie raised the two kids all by herself (everyone else died in the very same day she gave birth to them) for 6 years. This is very important because most of the story is about her instructing the children since they were infants to use their ears and not the eyes to explore the environment. When she eventually decided to leave the house, the kids were perfectly at ease as "radar" once blindfolded. Not frightened and defenseless kids. No rescue mission from her when the girl adventured out of the boat. BTW, the river had no rapids and this make sense; can you really believe that a blindfolded person would survive that without even falling into the river? So many plot holes that even the NYT made an article on the issue. (2) Sandra Bullock. Are you kidding me? Malorie is supposed to be a young woman (25-30) and not a 55 yo woman pretending to be a young mother. Tom,DIED with all the others and there was no romance btwn them. BTW, he was not black. This per se would be a minor point, but if you take into consideration that in the movie they decide to transform George (Greg in the movie) from the fully organized owner of the house (the one that posted messages in local newspapers at the very beginning of the epidemic to inform everyone interested that he had a safe place to share) to a dull gay character then you wonder why they did it. Should we think than every movie done in the US now MUST comply with an unwritten code for political correctness, even if they need to rewrite a character so that to transform a "neutral" one into something that fits with the agenda? This is more than a suspect if you see it happening in EVERY single mainstream movie. 3) the direction is confused, with few ideas and with poor logic. Again, how it comes that you see the the daylight everywhere in the house?

Summer '03 (2018)

Not bad, not good. Not regretting the time I spent

[6/10 · 6 August 2019]

Not a comedy, not a drama. That's fine because the movie, as the life, is more complex than placing into a single category would otherwise imply. Do not expect any laught (comedy) or tears/anger (drama). This is a mix btwn a coming-of-age story and living in a, somehow, dysfunctional family (dysfunctional because of grandma last words). The tone is that of a comedy, I would say a rated comedy, the content is (supposed to be) more serious. I loved the work done by Joey King (Jamie), not so much the character she played, a self-centered girl. However who would ever like the way a teen behaves or think when he/she is in the middle of the hormonal storm and in the phase of finding herself as an adult; indeed, most of the time, you cannot even stand your beloved kids when in that phase, so not loving Jamie is understandable. Nothing to say about the other characters/actors. They are either dull, not quite convincing or just poorly written. You can watch it and forget but not regret.

BTW. I read some comments claiming that the movie content is anti-semitic. No way it is (see the producers)!!! Quite the opposite indeed. Catholics (grandma & most characters) here are seen as hypocrite, dumb or just followers of an empty rite. The final scene (Jamie speech at the church) is one of the most offensive thing I could ever had imagined. Acceptable as viewer because movie need to be free but over the lines. The same the depiction of the young priest, depicted as someone searching a stable job occupation (really? In 2018, being a priest in a post-religious world is something not really "safe"). Last but not least the german character (the "real" grandpa of Jamie) is just a joke, not even a stereotype because to be a stereotype you need a truth behind

A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014)

Gross and I don't know why they wanted it to be.

[7/10 · 8 June 2019]

Not bad but it could have been much better. Perfect locations and costume, nice script and wit lines, fun characters, good acting (not the usual "just for the money" (except perhaps Amanda Seyfried, a little dull). Last but not least a funny dance scene (the "mustache" dance), well choreographed, that could have lasted longer. What's wrong? Gross humor better suited for movies as Dumb and Dumber. You don't need it when you cast Charlize Theron, Liam Neeson, Neil Patrick Harris (even if you cast the funny but mostly over-the-lines Sarah Silverman).

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

oops they did it again

[5/10 · 1 May 2019]

Marvel and Disney ambition is to become serial killers of successful "classics". Not because they are incapable of creating something awesome; they simply follow an agenda based on the politically correctness that requires the rewriting of every "classical" plot.

What's wrong with the movie? Duration. 3 hours is frankly too much. The plot. The "raison d'etre" of the movie is double: to cancel out what happened in the previous episode (dead end) and write off the leading characters. There are indeed some discrepancies between what is known (half of the world population disappeared) and what we see: halving the world (pardon, the universe population) would have had negligible effects even in small town. Instead what we see (abandoned houses, scarce population) would suggest something way more devasting. A problem in the plot is Nebula.There is no need to be a theoretical physicist to understand that "hey, we have a big problem". In the very same moment that the "Nebula of the future" (redeemed) kills the "Nebula of the past" (bad girl) we have a paradox and even contempling the multi-universe theory, the first Nebula should disappear.

Characters. It is quite irritating to see Thor as an obese alcoholic. Antman makes too many useless jokes. Captain Marvel powers are notoriously immense but here they are excessive even for a "thor" (synonym of God) not to raise the question of whether she was enough to do everything on her own. Hulk is actually very nice but a jujube is not really the characteristic of an Hulk. Thanos destroyed half of the life forms to give another possibility to the universe (it is not clear, however, why he should have destroyed even non-sentient beings, like birds, and even so, why he spared plants) ending up as a retired man dedicating his endless time to cultivate vegetables in a garden planet.

But the difference between a cartoon plot, which reinvent many classical characters, and an ideological film is at the end: Thor abdicates from leader of "new Asgard" in favor of someone that has nothing to do with the Norse mythology; Captain America appoints his successor by giving him his "symbol", the Shield. Of course it isn't a mere coincidence that both successors are black. As Black Panther showed everybody, you can create ex-novo a great and successful character and every fan would be happy. On the contrary if your goal is rewrite the old character because you want to erase classics, then we are in a very different realm: ideology and brainwashing.

The title is indeed correct: ENDGAME but in the sense that the classic heroes are buried because the actors are either too old or too white

P.S. The initial reference to Disney was not accidental. They did exactly the same thing with Star Wars.

Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders (2016–2017)

Beyond borders? Not really

[2/10 · 25 September 2017]

The correct title for this TV series? Beyond American stupidity. I cannot believe that a country enslaved by the morbidity of political correctness attitude could produce such a nonsense. The nonsense is already in the initial quote: "Over 68 million Americans leave the safety of our borders every year. If danger strikes, the FBI's International Response Team is called into action". Beside the fact that is more dangerous to travel in most urban areas of the US, the simple idea that if anything happen abroad (i.e. Europe or even Botswana) the local police will leave "carte blanch" to FBI to make it own investigations, fully armed, that's totally nonsense. The whole idea of the TV series is more than offensive. It is ridiculous

The Dark Tower (2017)

Not awful. Not good

[5/10 · 30 August 2017]

Let's go to the point. Beware of enthusiastic reviews (10 stars?). They are either from people who want to overturn the general bad reviews or from teen dudes whose flagship for excellence would always be the dumb I Am Legend and not the original The Last Man on Earth or the following Omega Man (do not believe me, just watch them all and then make an educated comparison). On the other hand it is not correct to rate this movie with one star. It's just a mediocre product. When judging The Dark Tower, there are only two possibilities. If you have read the books, then the best choice is to stay far away from the Theatre; unlike the massive Peter Jacksons work on Tolkien world, this movie is totally missing the epic spread all over the 8 Kings books. If you are totally naive of the story, then it will looks like a flat and self conclusive, something between a teen vampire book and a TV movie. Idris Elba and Matthew Mc Conaughey: good actors but the latter wins the game by providing a portrait of pure evilness. Elba is flat all over the movie. Guess, that we would have had a much different product if Abrams' proposal of a trilogy intermixed with a TV series to fill in all the holes between one film and the other. By the way, I am tired of Hollywood ambition to brainwash the audience by inventing good colored character where there is none

Life (I) (2017)

Another Covenant - like movie

[4/10 · 20 July 2017]

Another movie with a bad script. Another movie with good actors and an average director wasted by a bad script. Another movie where astronauts are dumb. Guess in the next future scientist and astronauts will be recruited outside a pub or directly from an asylum.

1) The biologist is a black Briton (we need a black in each movie and the US crew was already cast); wheel-chaired (yes, you sent out in space a person with disabilities); stupid (as a biologist myself involved with bad "bugs", I got mad when he started touching and playing with the "thing", calling it "Calvin). 2) The "cowboy" (Ryan Reynolds). He is so brave that he succeeded in capturing a full speed probe from Mars, just standing outside the ISS and using a robotic "hand". Of course he will die soon doing the dumbest (and forbidden by all safety protocols) thing: trying to rescue the other dumb (the biologist) when "the thing" was still alive. 3) The veteran MD (Jake Gyllenhaal). Guess what? He is also disturbed. Not by his +400 dd permanence in the space; he suffers of a sort of PTSD dating back to his days as army MD in Syria (after the PTSD from Vietnam, Desert Storm, Afghanistan and Iraq, Syria is the must in contemporary scripts). I am still waiting for someone to explain me how he ended up on ISS after serving in Syria "building hospitals". He despises mankind … and in fact he will be the cause, although unwillingly, of the "invasion"

4) CDC quarantine expert. What? You don't send someone out in space just because she prepared something so basic as a quarantine protocol … that will eventually fail.

5) etc etc

We have here the very same problems of all Covenant-like movies. Characters are stupid and their action is the easiest way to make things happen. We are light years from the perfect plot of Alien or The Thing, where characters did everything they could to deal with the unknown and the unpredictable.