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Soul (2020)
Thoughtful in parts, but bland for the rest.
The moral of the story was quite thoughtful, but the largest chunk of the movie is just fairly average to me. The destination was alright, but the journey felt a bit bland, as the scenery and characters are so mediocre. He likes jazz and the secondary character likes nothing, but learns to enjoy more things as the story progresses. But that's it. These two have nothing going on for them apart from that. They are flat characters. Acting supernice and overexcited most of the time, which gets annoying quickly. This reminds me more of something like dispicable me than a good disney or pixar movie. In for instance the movie Up we got two characters Carl and Russell contrasting each other well whilst going on a journey. Carl is old and grumpy, living in isolation whilst missing the love of his life. Russell is young and tries to please everybody, perhaps because his parents are divorced. He's annoying to Carl, but their journey is endeering, funny and organic. In Soul they just don't make an interesting duo at all and aren't even interesting individually. It was an average kids movie and I wouldn't recommend it or watch it again.
American Moon (2017)
Most thorough documentary about the moonlanding hoax
The documentary lays out every aspect about what is wrong with the official story about the moonlanding. There is no dramatic music or strange mysteries, so you don't feel manipulated as a viewer. You feel the documentary approaches the subject objectively. It is firstly about how the apollo project didn't go as well as expected, then how it was very hard to get humans to the moon and lastly how the footage on the moon is extremely problematic. Throughout this documentary there are several debunkings of the moon conspiracy theory that the documentary explains are actually false or unlikely.
If the moonlanding was faked, then there are dozens of questions that pop up into your head. This documentary goes into all of them and that's why it's 3,5 hours.
Tenet (2020)
Interesting, but unclear and has little soul.
I have watched Tenet twice now where the audio has problems in my first watching only. Now I have seen it the second time I can grasp the film far better, but did not enjoy the movie more per se.
What made it hard to understand the first time was the protagonist jumping from location quite often with minimal explanation. The time manipulating element in the film (which I won't spoil, but only criticize) is quite clever in the second act, but extremely hard to grasp in the third. The second watching made it clearer but there is a large action scene there in the 3rd act that is just really hard to follow. My gf and I were sometimes wondering if they were fighting themselves as the baddies look almost identical.
Also some parts of the time manipulation thing seem to be break logic a bit, but because of spoilers that's all I have to say about that.
In terms of character's the protagonist doesn't really have an ark and I didn't really feel the emotional connection he had to other characters. I also found his acting notably bad in some dialogue scenes. Pattinson is pretty good but he doesn't have much to work with.
It is actually very comparable to inception although it does not have as much exposition, and doesn't have leonardo dicaprio we can really connect with. Leonardo longed for his wife and kids. The protagonist in Tenet does not have this connection or acting talent.
For the rest there were some decisions characters made that put the mission at risk which I found weird. The action scenes were sometimes pretty good but nowhere near the heights of Nolan's other films.
The music was although unique very jarring sometimes as it could be so loud that nothing else could be heard. It can take you a bit out of an action scene where the dark knight had a better balance of the music being loud and softer in bits. They've gone a bit too far with it here.
All in all I found movie clever in parts, bit illogical in others. Character development was almost non existent and plot hard to grasp. It is imo the worst of Nolan's films.
The Lion King (2019)
No soul.
The original Lion King is one of my favorite movies of all time and if you feel the same I'd recommend you to never watch this remake. Now let me explain how this movie is completely ruined.
1. Characters have no facial expressions - So in the original if you just turned off the sound you'd still be able to understand what's going on as the body language and facial expressions were a big part of what brought these characters to life. In the new film simba looks like a real lion and similar to a real lion he has zero facial emotion. This is true for all the characters.
2. The voice acting is horrible - everyone talks incredibly unemotional and SLOW. These actors have likely been told in production to do so as otherwise it would have looked weird for these animals to move their mouths so fast. Even Mufasa's voice is far slower and less emotional while it's still the same voice actor. They really talk half the speed and have odd pauses in their dialogue. Emotion is gone entirely.
3. Clever jokes and small exchanges are not in this movie - Because characters talk so slowly they can't say as much. Therefore all small jokes and clever exchanges are left out. A few are kept in, but fall flat as the timing is off now. For instance when in the original Simba and Nala go to the elephant graveyard the hyena have all these fun exchanges and they are left out in this movie, Instead we get 2 hyenas that are particularly unfunny...
4. The songs are ruined - In the original movie, songs bend real physics and reality to give an expressive montage that was visually stunning. Here they just walk or jog a bit.Then a few other animals might appear, but that's about it. Songs are also played at a slower tempo which in itself ruined all the momentum out of the song.
5. Simba is unlikable - Before simba flees away from pride rock you feel his character is a bit reckless and a bit cocky, but he is also brave and has the characteristics of a leader as he protects others. In the elephant graveyard he stands up for Zazu (while he does not even like zazu) saying the hyena's should pick on somebody their own size. When he and nala then have to run for their lives nala is falling behind. Simba then runs back and saves her by scratching Shenzi. These 2 things do not happen in the remake, which make simba a cocky guy only caring about the power he will get as a king. In the second half you'll start to wonder if he really should be king.
6. Filler scenes - There are a few additonal scenes or things that are dragged out that give zero character development and do not bring new information at all. You'll notice these scenes in the film, but to give 1 example I'll tell the one that's the least spoilery. Remember that mouse that scar grabs under his hand in the beginning? You see him run up to the camera, wash his nose and BAMN. Scar has him under his paws. In the remake we see this mouse crawl for a whole minute. Why?!? Later in this movie there is something that took the original 5 seconds too, but here takes 2 minutes! They're are really struggling to make the movie 1 hour and 50 minutes, whereas I do not think it's necessary at all and they could have just made a movie of 1 hour and 25 minutes as the original was.
This movie has no soul and leaves a bad taste towards the original.Disney has lost all it's credibility and respect it still had left by making this atrocious movie.
Annabelle Comes Home (2019)
Watchable, but passable
Annabelle: Comes Home feels weaker to me then Annabelle: Creation, and I would rate it about as high as The Nun. The jumpscares ranged from ok to meh and there were a lot of suspense-building scenes. However, there is no sense of mystery in the movie, so getting scared by demons/ghosts or waiting for that to happen is pretty much the only thing you're seeing. There's no interesting backstory, no interesting though a lot new monsters and no real character development. No downtime where the characters can catch a breath and discuss about what's really going on. Just tensefull scene after tensefull scene and this became a bit of a drag for me.
The scenery is also pretty boring compared to that castle in the Nun or the houses of the Conjuring and Annabelle: Creation that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. Looked as if they wanted to keep the budget as low as possible here.
It's a simple horror flick, that you have already scene in the conjuring films over and over.