vandylan92 Reviews

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Tedious attempt at character assassination

[1/10 · 10 August 2023]

For this Disney movie, Kathleen Kennedy teams up with James Mangold with the objective to destroy the Indiana Jones legacy through brutal character assassination of Indiana Jones himself. The atempt fails, partially because so few bothered to even see this trainwreck of a movie, but mostly because the previous movies will remain forever as the beautiful and legendary masterpieces of cinema that they are. No matter how much they want to, Disney and Kathleen Kennedy can't erase them.

In this movie, Indiana Jones is portraied as a weak, poor, alcoholic, that nobody likes. He is cynical, pessimistic and tired of life. In other words, a personality diametrically oposite to the personality that has been established for this character in the original movies.

Neither is Indiana Jones the maincharacter in this movie. Instead, he is portrayed as a sidekick to Phoebe (Fleabag) Waller-Bridge, the "hero" of the movie. Disney's (very heavy handed) objective is to replace Indiana Jones (Harrisonn Ford) with Phoebe Waller-Bridge, whose character in the film is incredibly smug, annoying, uncharning, unattractive and unfunny. Nevertheless it's the completely insufferable Phoebe Waller-Bridge character that the out of touch Disney executives expects the viewers to sympathize with, even as she repeatedly tries to murder Indiana Jones. Like other female characters in recent Disney movies, PWB is also very much a Mary Sue here.

To sum this horrid production up, it consists of 2,5 hours of PWB being smug and telling everyone how attractive (!) and amazing she is, Harrison Ford telling everyone he is tired of life and want to die, stale CGI action and extremely lazy storywriting with plotholes the size of Jupiter.

Compared to this, even The Chrystal Skull comes across as a masterpiece. If you love Indiana Jones, don't waste your time with this tortured piece of junk.

Black Spot (2017–2019)

Tedious, pretentious, pointless

[1/10 · 9 December 2022]

This is yet another botring Netflix series where the creators focus interely on style and completely ignore substance. All characters in the series are one dimentional, cartoonishly presented and simply annoying. You don't care the slightest if they live or die. There is no story, point or plot, just a long string of boring scenes recorded in a pale gray light in order to seem "cool", "mysterious" and "edgy". It's all tedious, pointless and prententious. A big yawn and a complete waste of time. If you suffer from insomnia, this might help you get some well needed sleep. Otherwise, stay away frim this train wreck. Entertainment value = 0. Originality = 0. Creativity = 0.

1899 (2022)

Pretentious and boring

[2/10 · 3 December 2022]

Given that it has received lots of good reviews here and an interesting trailer, I had high hopes for this one. It turns out that it is just yet another bad Netflix series which tries to be dark and "edgy", but has no relatable or believable characters, no story and ultametely no point. It tries way too hard to be "cool", "mysterious", "dark" and "deep". It mostly fails at everything and instead comes across as boring and pretentious. I watched the first couple of episodes, but then I gave up as it was obvious it was nothing but a waste of time. On the positive side it is slow paced and focuses on building an atmosphere, which is a very bice from all the explosion and action packed productions that are constantly shoved down our throats these days.

The Gray Man (2022)

Brainless, boring and ugly

[1/10 · 21 July 2022]

This is supposed to be a symbol of the new Netflix, with fewer but more expensive films. It's hard to see where all the money went though, as this film looks both cheaper and uglier than most low budget movies. It is also compeletey brainless and charmless and lacks any real story. Boring, ugly and meaningless - perhaps the beginning if the end for Netflix.

Yakamoz S-245 (2022)

Vastly inferior and nonsensical spin-off to Into the Night.

[2/10 · 8 June 2022]

Since it's a spin-off of the well written, creative and exciting Netflix series Into the Night, I had rather high expectations on Yakamoz S-245. Sadly it doesn't deliver at all. It's nothing but a very badly written copy of Into the Night, with a completely nonsensical plot and characters that are so badly written that it borders on parody. The characters in Into the Night are written to be, interesting, complicated, flawed (like real humans are) and have several dimensions. Within the obviously not realistic setting of the story, the characters in Into the Night are fairly credible and realistic. In Yakamoz, the characters are instead shallow, one dimensional, stereotypical and neither relatable, realistic or credible at all. Throughout the episodes, neither their personalities, interactions or actions make any sense at all, which in turn create enormous and annoying plot holes. The writers, presumably in a forced effort to create something different and unexpected compared to Into the Night, have even included a female ninja, who seems copy-pasted from a random B-movie from the 1980's! She has several sneaky ninja super powers, like effortlessly jumping down from windows five floors up straight onto the pavement, getting in and out of a military submarine full of soldiers completely unnoticed, living in that same submarine for days (again, unnoticed), and hacking into to any civilian or military computer system in seconds. Any one of these extraordinary, basically supernatural skills would be astonishing for any individual to have. Yet all other characters in the series react as if it was just normal stuff that you see every day. I guess the Turkish actors do a decent job with the appalling material they were dealt by the writers. No actor, no matter how talented, would be able to save this train wreck from disaster though. Don't waste your time on this.

The War of the Worlds (2019)

Very good, unless you crave constant explosions and mindless action

[9/10 · 11 December 2021]

It's rather sad that so many people today apparently can't accept anything else than Jar Jar Abrams style "sci fi" which consist of nothing but explosions every 90 seconds, lens flairs, multi million CGI effects and people running around screaming with no dialogue or plot at all. The creators of this BBC series actually bothered to put in place a plot, write dialogue, engage good actors and build up atmosphere and tension. Which makes this far superior to most contemporary big budget sci fi efforts. But if it is 3 hours of constant and mindless explosions, running around, screams and lens flairs you want, then this is not for you.

Eight Days That Made Rome (2017)

Shallow and patronizing denigration of ancient Rome

[1/10 · 27 August 2021]

If you want to learn about life in ancient Rome, then I recommend Mary Beard's two brilliant series, which are very exciting, interesting and inspiring. Mary Beard's passion and deep knowledge of the subject is truly contageous.

Here, instead, we get Bettany Hughes who spends eight episodes constantly expressing her personal feminist persuasions and attacking and denigrating the Roman civilization for not having suffiently lived up to those persuasions 2000 years ago. The fact that most viewers may not be at all interested in her political viewpoints and shallow rants is apparently not a thought that has struck her. Neither, apparently, has the futility in applying the morals and customs of England in 2017 on people who lived in an ancient society in a completely different time and world. As a sidepoint, I also don't understand why Hughes and her production team thought it was a good idea for her to show her cleavage in almost every single scene. Though I suppose that too could be yet another feminist statement of some sort.

So, if you want to watch a shallow and patronizing feminist rant, whine and moralize about the lack of modern day feminist values in ancient Rome, then this is the series for you. By contrast, if you want to learn things about ancient Rome and the Romans, then skip this and watch something else. For example by Mary Beard.

Hudson & Rex (2019– )

Lassie solves crimes

[2/10 · 4 January 2021]

A quite ridiculous show about a guy and his dog solving crimes. And that's basically all there is to it. The guy and his dog solve a crime each episode and everyone goes "ooooh what a clever dog". Very predictable and cliched. I guess dog fanatics might find that exciting though. To me, it's just boring, banal and... well, stupid.

Unstoppable (2010)

Exciting action, classic storytelling but stupid story

[4/10 · 28 November 2020]

Right from the start, there is tension and exciting action. The setup is classic and simple, well told and well paced. Denzel Washington does an very good job as one of the main protagonists. It could easily have been an excellent movie in this genre, if the people who made had just put in a little more effort to avoid some over the top stupid and unrealatic scenes (and scenarios) that really drag the movie down.

Elysium (I) (2013)

Plot holes the size of Jupiter

[2/10 · 28 November 2020]

The visuals and CGI is great and very impressive, but can't save this trainwreck of a movie. The story is just way too stupid and nonsensical, with plot hole after plot hole the size of Jupiter.

The Queen's Gambit (2020)

Extremely cliched, predictable, shallow and boring

[1/10 · 26 November 2020]

Wow. This might actually be the most overrated/film of all time. It's nothing but shallow cliches. And it's so predictable. Nothing even remotely surprising happens at any point. The characters are all stereotypes and the plot/story writing is singularly lazy.

The entire story of the whole series is as follows: 1) a 10 year old girl (played by an annoying 25 year old actress), who we might call Mar Sue, reads a book about chess and immediately becomes the greatest chess player the world has ever seen (because girl power, yay). 2) Mary Sue grows up to become a teenager/young woman, plays a lot of chess and easily beats all other chess players in the world, putting all the sexist men in their place (because girl power, yay). 3) Mary Sue has lots of sex, uses lots of drugs and talks about periods (because women don't have to be "perfect", take that patriarchy!) 4) Mary Sue faces the evil Russian chess master - the only person who might possibly pose a mild challenge for her superhuman chess skills. Mary Sue beats the evil Russian chess master (because yay, or whatever). 5) The end.

This story could easily have been told in a five minute clip, without skipping or losing any important details, nuances or message. Instead it drags on for hour after hour and episode after episode in the most tedious of snoozefests.

On the plus side, the series is very nicely filmed and produced: people with perfect hair and perfect makeup, in a very stylized and idealized 1960s setting - kind of like in a Wes Anderson movie. But that is nowhere near enough to make up for the seemingly never ending cavalcade of tired, old and predictable cliches.

The Book of Eli (2010)

Mindless, unrealistic violence - no plot

[1/10 · 7 October 2020]

This movie is nothing but a cavalcade of mindless, completely unrealistic violence. The plot/story is nonexistant. Thus, unless you revel in watching lots of violence, it all becomes quite tedious very quickly. There is also a tiresome and not at all subtle message about religion here, which a lot of people (religious or not) will find downright stupid. I really like Denzel Washington as an actor but not even he can save this trainwreck.

Just Shoot Me! (1997–2003)

Generic

[3/10 · 30 January 2020]

Just shoot me! is very much a generic 1990's sitcom with generic jokes that could easily fit in any one of hundreds of other easily forgettable and interchangeable sitcoms. There are no memorable moments. There is nothing that stands out. It's not terrible (like the ridiculously overhyped "Friends") but it certainly isn't good either. In other words: odds are you won't be laughing, but you won't hate it either.

Friends (1994–2004)

A lame and totally unfunny Seinfeld rip-off

[1/10 · 12 October 2019]

Friends was always basically a very lame, very unfunny version of Seinfeld aimed at shallow teenagers, people who found Seinfeld to "edgy", "intellectual" or "cold" and people who need a giant sized billboard announcing every joke, in order to get it.

The whole setup of the show (starting with the stupid couch in planted in the middle of the café which is apparently owned by the main characters of this sitcom and where no other customers are allowed to sit) is unnatural and far fetched. Every line from every actor in every episode feels fake and is obviously just there to set up the next lame joke that you can see coming from miles away. This renders the series utterly predictable, annoying and boring.

Friends has no natural flow, no surprises and no funny jokes. It doesn't help that many scenes and ideas in Friends are copied straight from Seinfeld - though presented here in a lame, sugary and extremely heavy handed way. Basically the Friends writer are spoon feeding you old Seinfeld jokes with all the interesting ideas, nuances and flavors taken out and substituted with a thick layer of sugar to make everything sickeningly sweet.

Gods of Egypt (2016)

Awful, stupid and soulless

[1/10 · 23 June 2019]

First of all: why are all the actors white? It's like making a movie about the founding fathers of the USA and casting everyone with Chinese actors. Or doing a movie about the second world war and casting Winston Churchill and all other English with black actors. At best, it's just weird.

Rarely does one come across a movie that fails so miserably and completely as this one. Horrible in every respect: the acting, the story, the visuals. Most of all, it's a completely soulless and boring movie.

If you love ancient Egypt - you will hate this movie. Don't waste your time.

Blade Runner (1982)

Extremely overrated

[2/10 · 23 June 2019]

Visually, Blade Runner is a beautiful movie. And I'm a big fan of Harrison Ford. But that's about the only positive things I can say about this movie. The story is just awful and doesn't make any sense at all. The plot holes are way too big to ignore. It's such a mess it's even embarrassing.

Holmes & Watson (2018)

Why all the hate?

[7/10 · 23 June 2019]

Seriously, I don't understand why this movie is getting so much hate here. And what's with the people pointing out that it is a stupid movie and not historically accurate? It's a Will Ferell comedy and it's supposed to be stupid! Just watch the trailer! If you find that amusing, you'll like the movie. If you hated the trailer, then don't go watch the movie expecting it to be some serious drama!

Super 8 (2011)

It doesn't make any sense

[1/10 · 23 June 2019]

Others have already pointed out the many major flaws and plot holes of this movie, so I won't waste time on that here. I love sci fi adventures and the basic idea is pretty good. The special effects are nicely done too, but the story is just so amazingly bad and the plot holes so enormous that the film ultimately becomes unwatchable.

Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (2016)

Extremely unfunny and tired remake of classic comedy

[1/10 · 15 July 2016]

I'm puzzled by all the professional (payed) journalists that are virtually screaming at us that either you LOOOOOVE this movie or you are a woman hating troll. Just like the worst SJW activists. It's just absurd. And we've seen similar behavior with other big budget movies during the past 12 months or so... I'm really starting to wonder if these critics aren't payed by Sony, Disney etc to write favorable (not so say raving) reviews and cast all those who disagree as near nazi like "haters". It's just too much.

It seems pretty obvious that the vast majority of people just don't like this movie. These particular actresses just aren't funny. At least not in this movie, with its poorly written and tired lines and "jokes". That has nothing to do with hating women. Just as I can hate a movie with men in it, without hating men!

It has nothing to do at all with the original Ghostbusters movies (that I love). It's more like a SNL parody of the original Ghostbusters.

If you like fart jokes, vomit jokes and vagina jokes you will probably like this movie, because there are PLENTY of that here. If you liked the original Ghostbuster you will surely not like this movie at all.

Final Girl (2015)

Good ideas - but sloppy execution

[4/10 · 8 May 2016]

Movies that are a filmed in a visually arty manner can often be really good. I mean just take Wes Anderson's movies as an example. They sure aren't made to look realistic, but they are still amazing movies. Obviously, Final Girls is not meant to feel realistic - cue the obviously artificial lights in the dark forest scenes, the formal 1950's style clothing of the protagonists and so on. It's all meant to create a mood rather than depict real life.

I also like the idea of a young woman, who looks all harmless, but who is actually a very skilled martial arts specialist and turns the tables on a group of young male "bad guys". When you think of it it's kind of surprising that there hasn't been (to my knowledge) a movie with that scenario.

Anyhow, I'm not sure that these two ideas (the arty mood and and the "girl next door" with advanced martial arts skills) go along too well in the same movie though. And that is what happens in Final Girl. But my biggest complaint about this movie is that so many basic premises are just inexplicably weird. For example: The young men in the movie are killing blonde women in a small town - yet the police does nothing. How come? And why do they murder people in the first place? The mystical man who trains Veronica (the main character) to become an expert martial artist and assassin could have interfered against the murderous teenagers himself. So why didn't he? I mean that would have been so much easier than to teach someone else to become an assassin. And what is Veronica's back story? We know basically nothing about her. All of these "black holes" in the story are quite annoying.

Contrary to some other people here I actually think Abigail Breslin is really good in the role as Veronica. You can see how the murderers would assume she's an easy victim and her fight scenes look realistic enough - especially the final one when Veronica takes care of the last murderer (and the only one she doesn't drug before she fights him).

Final Girl is a nice try for one (or actually two) original movies, but in the end the ideas come off as half baked and the movie just doesn't feel ready - but rather more like a work in progress.

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)

Jar Jar Abrams slaughters Star Wars

[1/10 · 8 May 2016]

Without exaggeration I can say that The Force Awakens is probably the worst movie I've ever watched. It completely befouls and murder the Star Wars legacy. I love the original trilogy and though the prequels were weak and disappointing, The Force Awakens make all the prequels look like masterpieces in comparison.

Virtually nothing in this movie makes any sense or is consistent with what we know about the Star Wars universe. Many reviewers have pointed out the many gaping plot holes and the stupidity of this movie, so I won't waist time repeating that and going into too many details here.

But the movie is basically a crappy ripoff of the first Star Wars movie. Even though episode 6 ends with the empire being defeated and everyone celebrating, The Force Awakens starts with everything being exactly the same as in Episode 4! The Empire is somehow stronger than ever and the republic is just a bunch of rag tag rebels. Ridiculous. And there is no explanation of how that is supposed to have happened. And even more ridiculous: Han Solo (a war victorious war hero and general at the end of the original trilogy) has now gone back to being a simple smuggler here... This makes no sense.

Luke Skywalker is not in this movie (contrary to what the advertisement did suggest) except for in a pointless awkward and weird staring contest the last 30 seconds of the movie. The role of Luke in this movie is instead played by a young woman called Rey. It's of course totally fine to have a woman in this role (though of course it would have been nice of Jar Jar Abrams to give her an original story and not just put her in the EXACT same situation as Luke Skywalker in episode 4). But apparently Jar Jar Abrams is a radical feminist, so he gives Rey superpowers. She is literally perfect in every single way. And I mean every way. She becomes the strongest master of every aspect of the force in a matter of minutes. She masters jedi mind control to perfection and she can beat a jedi master in a light sabre fight, even though she has no training whatsoever. So ridiculous. What's more - she is better than everyone else in the universe at fighting, she seems to know all kinds languages and although she has never flown a spaceship, she is also the best pilot in the universe. She even knows the Millennium Falcon better than Han Solo, just by sitting in it for a couple of minutes. All this after growing up alone, with no education and collecting trash for a living. It's totally ridiculous. How can anyone relate to a character like that?

And then there is the main bad guy: Kylo Ren who is just a winy emo teenager who throws temper tantrums all the time... So pathetic. Seriously, this movie is like something out of the Disney channels morning shows for kindergarten kids. Actually all male characters in this movie are basically pathetic, cowardly losers - while Rey is courageous and perfect in every single way. It's just stupid.

And what's up with all the lame jokes and like 10 000 explosions? Ugh. Horrible, horrible movie. In fact calling it a movie is being way to nice to this piece of junk.

The House of the Devil (2009)

An OK horror flick

[5/10 · 8 May 2016]

I thought this movie was OK. It's not original and the ending was quite disappointing, but I like how they build up a mood rather slowly as opposed to many other horror movies which just go into wacky overdrive after about 5 or 10 minutes. So that is a big plus in my book.

Don't expect any master piece in any sense, but it's an OK movie to be watching for some distraction. I didn't find it scary at any point, but if you find it scary or not I guess depends on your personality.

I also like the 1980s feel of the movie. Not just that it's set in 1983, but it feels like it could have been made during the 1980's and for me that is plus.