albertomtz Reviews

Andhaghaaram (2020)

Don't watch this

[1/10 · 23 January 2022]

I fell for the impressive IMDB rating. I've come to the conclusion that there was some "web guerrilla ratings" in here because they don't even kept it low key with 7 and 8's. Reviewers straight up give this a 10 and call it a masterpiece, which objectively simply cannot be.

It is extremely long, confusing and convoluted. They try to throw you a "Usual Suspects" tie-up at the end... not as a twist, but because the writers or directors KNEW it was an undeciphrable mess and they had way too many threads hanging. So in the last 5 minutes we get the doctor trying to tie eveything up in an obnoxiously fast paced explanation. I couldn't even keep up with the subtitles. And while trying to look artistic, it is a visual mess when they go from blurry fast to slowmotion to ultra slow motion black and white to normal color. What was that all about?!?

I would rate this a 5 if they cut it up to 2 hours tops, and if it wasn't obvious that tons of bots rated this with a 10.

The Matrix Resurrections (I) (2021)

Lazy, slow, painful

[4/10 · 28 December 2021]

It starts slow, repeats everything the first one had already explained. Then it gets slower. They reuse so much material from the first one, including lines and actual video.

The dialogue is stale, boring, they talk for 5 minutes then theres a change of scene, with another character yapping nonsense for other 5 minutes. Change of scene, looks like the action is coming, nope, another character talking for 5 minutes. RINSE REPEAT FOR 2 hours.

Then it LITERALLY gets slowest. It's amazing how they abused innecessary slo-mo (think Snyder cut).

Faking A Murderer (2020)

Misleading genre

[1/10 · 7 August 2021]

This is not a crime genre movie.

If you're looking to have light fun watching a comedy mockumentary go ahead.

Pretty much a "The Office"/"Parks and Rec" styled fake documentary where the leads are constantly making fools of themselves. They're not bad as "awkward/uncomfortable" mockumentary actors, but thats their only trick. It gets old and stale by the 10 minute mark. I mean, the world's seen enough of Dwight Schrute and Michael Scott.

I'm currently on minute 40 and the investigation hasn't started. They're still being naive, unprepared, clueless, boring. I'll stop it now.

Fear Street: Part One - 1994 (2021)

No feelings

[4/10 · 3 July 2021]

The main character doesn't care AT ALL that her -only- 2 friends are dead. And that is a major problem because if she didn't, why should the audience feel or connect to anything?

Same with her girlfriend: She sees first hand how her boyfriend gets killed and we see her making out with her on-off gf hours later.

The list goes on, patients on the hospital literally see kids being chased by a killer and no one turns around. The kids steal an ambulance and no one gives a damn. For god sakes, the car that crashed in the woods was still there a day later, the police or the insurance, or the owners, no one gave a damn about the car being left there.

I would say the movie begins quite nice, if it wasn't a Scream ripoff, -sorry, "homage" or whatever- for 20 minutes (mall intro + school scenes), it doesn't help that the music sounds like possible scraps Marco Beltrami did for Scream.

The movie is quite a mess, a well disguised mess, thanks to a Netflix budget.

Black Box (II) (2020)

Enough with crackly sounds & characters!

[6/10 · 12 October 2020]

I was about to give up on the movie because of the overly clicheed crackly sounds and creepy cracky character. Yes, it is justified, but they use it as a scary factor and it is not effective, it is only annoying.

Also, this is not a horror, but an effective sci-fi suspense story.

I wish they had solved "crackly man" with a dark shadow, would've been subtle and creepier.

Supernova (II) (2019)

Zombieland

[4/10 · 15 August 2020]

To enjoy this film you'll have to ignore the insulting quantity of errors done by the authorities. There's 3 policemen and 1 policewoman, their chief, a firetruck with at least 3 firemen, 2 ambulances with at least 3 paramedics, but no one is doing ANYTHING.

A rookie policeman just barfs and is being bro-ish, a serious policeman practically hands his gun to a civilian, policewoman is disrespected everywhere. Paramedics never even started the ambulances to go to the hospital, they're basically parked waiting for God knows what. The chief is walking around here and there without giving instructions, just talks on the phone. Civilians cross lines (policemen/firemen/paramedics do nothing), to attack perpetrators escape car (police soooort of try to stop them), once civilians got the perpetrator out of the escape car they decide to just stand like zombies once they violently tak. A ghost helicopter appears out of thin air, literally, but it does nothing.

There's a camera that recorded the incident, but nevermind about that; the chief found way more critic a clip of the perpetrator having sex.

If this film is a critique to polish police, firemen and paramedics, then I'd rate it a 7.

Malasaña 32 (2020)

Scare jumps have a bad reputation because of this.

[4/10 · 6 July 2020]

Every horror movie needs a scare jump, or many for sure. But to abuse the scare jump and use it every single minute of the movie is overkill, and it's what gives scare jumps such a bad reputation.

In this movie they use the most monotone situations to use scare jumps along with an extremely annoying volume boost. So yes, at the 5 minute mark I started rolling my eyes, but the atmosphere sort of gave me something to keep watching.

Then again, lighting is all over the place, they open the door and its a pitch black apartment, next scene theres a lot of light coming in from the windows, it uses light to their convenience and not in a realistic way.

It is never clear why the characters are acting the way they are (brother, grandfather, girl in wheelchair (and her mother)), and even worse, the movie concludes with a "resolution" that doesn't really explains those situations.

I'm sad I wasted my "free On Demand movie" code for this. It is a waste of time, scare jumps and money.

Hunters (2020–2023)

Editing mess

[5/10 · 15 March 2020]

As stated in many other reviews, this had great potential: budget, cast, production, premise. But it felt rushed, but not only felt, it was rushed: the day/night change in the Schneider factory was the last straw. Just as that, there are many situations that make no sense, they travel from city to city, from neighborhood to neighborhood in seconds, people appearing conveniently under bridges "just in time" to save others. It gets annoying, because at the end of the day, everything seems extremely convenient for the sake of developing the story.

I started writing this with a 6, but I'll post this with a 5 just for remembering other unforgivable flaws.

I See You (II) (2019)

Misleading genre

[7/10 · 7 December 2019]

Don't believe the genre tag. This is straight up a thriller/mistery, there is absolutely no horror at all and you will be totally and completely dissapointed if you're in for the horror.

Said that, if you enjoy thrillers "I See You" completely delivers. There are a handful of surprises and will make you want to see it at least twice (I didn't really saw it twice but I definitely rewinded to some parts).

It has a smart script that keeps you guessing, and while the behaviors of the characters sometimes made my eyes roll, most are explained later. There are only two or three things that they had to force and you have to turn a blind eye to in order to fully enjoy it.

I See You will stay with you for a little while and won't give you all the answers. I'm still wondering why he chose -that- song, and what happened in -the trailer-. Leaves it to the imagination and mine went to really dark places. Making the movie EXTREMELY dark.

You (2018–2024)

Show for tweens

[3/10 · 2 October 2018]

I had no idea of this show until I accidentally bumped into it right here on IMDB while reading about Showtime's wonderful "Kidding". IMDB decided that I'd "probably be into 'You'" since I was checking "Kidding"'s page. A solid 8.2 score and some good reviews on the top made me instantly curious and man do I regret it.

"You" might be good if you are 16-27ish and/or if you enjoyed the "Twilight" saga and its lookalikes.

The characters are a cliché, they try so hard to seem deep and they even mock Dan Brown enthusiasts, while they sound like Twilight characters from the Twilight book.

We have this pretty woman who is intelligent, bright, deep, almost an intellectual who writes poetry when she's not around her superficial friends getting wasted, or getting used by his model and empty headed naive rich boyfriend, or passively seducing her boss-teacher?

On the other hand we have this super bright intellectual, good-looking, suavé-talking sociopath who is "OMG super cute" and always has the perfect lines to get the beautiful girl, but instead of being forward he stalks her, follows her around, listens to her conversations with her friends from 20 feet away, and keeeeeeps narrating everything with a hint of 90's ironic token guy from any 90's teen movie.

You've been warned. This show is hollow, dumb and predictable.

Barbarous Mexico (2014)

Terrible collection of shorts.

[1/10 · 7 November 2015]

Here are seven horror shorts that lack horror, premise, dialogue, even sound at times. The whole collection is completely uninspired, the stories are poorly developed and executed.

While photography may rescue part of some of these shorts, some just come short of everything, just like high school projects. Harsh? Maybe. True? Completely. Take for instance "La Cosa Más Preciada (The Most Precious Thing), the acting is bad, the dialogues are hands down some of the worst I've ever heard in cinema history, the whole thing was given an instagram-like "vintage" filter. This one in particular is preposterous.

The rest of the shorts, whilst more professional, are still pretty bad and absurd, there is no heart to be found. If the project was done by amateur kids, then fine, I'd give it 4 stars, but these are - self?- deemed- directors.

Also, the only Mexican thing on this are the assets (directors, actors, writers, producers, settings), there are no real legends or myths in here, just perhaps loosely 'inspired from'.

My conclusion is that a couple of Mexican rejects from 'ABC's of Death' decided to take matters in their own hands... disaster ensued of course.

I must say I was very excited to watch this since I first heard of the project back in early 2014. I was looking forward to what 'indie' Mexican directors had up their sleeve since we practically have no recognized mainstream horror directors, but no, I cannot vouch for any of them.