brian_liska Reviews

Saints Row (2022 Video Game)

About 6h into the game and booooooored

[3/10 · 27 August 2022]

It's an origin story, that's great.

It's an open world, that's great.

It's repetitive, bland, humorless, quirk-less, powerless and a chore to work through the same tired side missions which end up being stripped down versions of previous versions of the same style activities.

I was so excited for a new Saints Row, by looking at the box art and watching the trailers it's a fast paced quirky game with the charm and humor of Saints Row 2, 3 and GooH, it's not that.

Combat is slow but twitchy getting stun locked or completely overrunning enemies after upgrading any weapons, the activities are just scavenger hunts with look through the area and click on the buttons or try to figure out what's a target and what's scenery.

Bad, in all things gameplay, story and character development.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

Marvel's bait and switch in full swing

[5/10 · 24 June 2022]

In a new era of Marvel, the standard seems to be name a movie, pick a hero and then ignore them for the entire story while forcing replacements and ticking off tired nostalgia cameos or 'gender before story' decisions.

Very disappointed with the studio's decisions with the entire Marvel universe, this film just summed up everything wrong within the company. Director choice, CGI quality, side character actor selections, even as far as the "villain" motivation is just disconnected from anything interesting or clearly, based on the other reviews, what fans actually want.

That's before you even stop and question the plot holes and shamefully forced main fight scenes (which from ANY other studio would have been B-Movie gold)

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)

Not bad but we've seen it all before

[7/10 · 4 June 2022]

From the opening scene this movie felt like it was written by committee rather than anyone interested in telling a story.

We actually started playing a 'tick in the box' game during our first viewing because it's impossible to miss.

Fated deal which could kill a hero if they break it - tick awkwardly trying to be funny with animals - tick big scary creature locked in a hole - tick 'heist' movie setup and obvious 'twist' resolution - tick show some fly overs of Hogwarts & train - tick nazi-style enemy in the German capitol - tick introduce some new magic which upends the entire harry potter universe's power balance - tick duplicating trick - tick niffler slow motion scene - tick mirror dimension fight - tick family always wins over unbreakable magic - tick literally Bambi with a mustache - tick

it goes on and on with tired, overly marketable 'moments' and call backs loosely lined up in a story.

The good?

It's still the HP universe so locations are gorgeous and the actors are all champions at making characters feel alive.

The truly bad?

You've seen all the things they do before in other movies with better storytelling.

The Batman (2022)

Don't compare it to the other Batmans and it's good

[6/10 · 1 May 2022]

In an isolated world, with no other Batman movies, this could stand on it's own as a decent beginning to a trilogy with some major flaws and clearly a lot left on the cutting room floor (which is hard to think of when it's 3h long already) We had to watch it in 3 parts since it couldn't hold our attention or became so outlandishly forced we had to pause and reset. The movie is presented as a detective noir style film, but that requires it to stand on par with Touch of Evil, Laura, Maltese Falcon or even Sherlock (tv series) for modern detective work. This falls short at every step.

**spoilers (kinda) Flying rat = penguin? Obviously they needed a Batman and Penguin conversation so that's the hoop they jumped through to get it.

Christopher Nolan's Batman did everything this movie provides: Batman is brooding and emotional - check Dark and gritty city with billions of dollars injected by his family - check Awkward criminal connection to his father: check Motorcycle connection with Catwoman for no reason - check Magic bulletproof armor - check Kills many thugs (but not really) - check (using a thug's gun fired at another thug and kicking people off 3+ story high places is going to kill people)

Overall, The Batman's Batman came across as dim witted and just watched along as the other characters in the movie solved it for him, with the occasional "I know what this means!" moment thrown in to justify his showing up at all.

The Rookie: Simone (2022) Season 4, Episode 19

Lies from Writers, Painful Characters

[1/10 · 28 April 2022]

I was curious when the main character of this episode was talking about females in the FBI, these are publicly available stats. After stating "there's 1%" that number also sounded completely outside reality for a federal sized organization so I looked it up.

In 2019 - special agents.10900 male/2726 female 20% police officers.210 male/46 female 18% professional staff 10105 male/13998 female 58% Where are the writers getting their information from for these kinds of simple mistakes.

I honestly hope they are mistakes because the alternative is intentional misdirection of the audience directly causing misinformation to be spread.

The Matrix Resurrections (I) (2021)

They pulled a Space Jam 2

[2/10 · 24 December 2021]

It has been a looong time since a movie dropped the ball this hard. Seemingly easy things like not having shakey camera fights or a basic narrative storyline with some identified antagonist before the second half of the movie.

This failed in every category of film making and should be further used as an example of what zero motivated production results in.

Failures of everything from fight choreography to basic vfx mistakes, the writing is just a bizarre combination of forced winks to the previous movies and jabs at the studio forcing them to make the film.

No Time to Die (2021)

complete waste of time

[2/10 · 13 November 2021]

This is hands down the worst, least Bond movie ever made.

Do you like Bond's gadgets? There's 3 total in the whole film 2 of which are in the first 15min Do you like action sequences? Car chases? Barely any and the few that were in it are lacking any direction or motivation.

Do you want to see Bond romance his way to information? You know, being a spy? Nope, look elsewhere

if I wanted to watch The Notebook rewritten with James Bond in it, I would have liked this film. I wanted a Bond film and this just isn't it.

The Suicide Squad (2021)

Generic action movie unbelievably overshadowed by the first one

[4/10 · 7 August 2021]

I never would have expected to go from the opinion of "the first suicide squad was pretty awful" to "can we have the first suicide squad again?" overall thoughts, big potential let down by weak writing, over sharing trailers, and a "committee made" feel which lost the plot so many times it wasn't worth watching.

Harley Quin was just not up to par with her first or second appearances while clearly trying to hold up a sinking franchise. Jared Leto needs to be brought back, a proper DC movie is obviously coming but it just isn't this.

Superman & Lois (2021–2024)

Desperately beating a dead horse

[5/10 · 24 February 2021]

It's not bad, just Smallville with new people so far. Push down your expectations to it's good enough to waste your time on and not good enough for me to intend to skip weeks of this and catch up if/when I remember this exists.

Monster Hunter (2020)

Rough edits and lacking the writing it deserved

[4/10 · 17 February 2021]

Someone rewrite and edit this movie so it has a plot and likable characters. As a long time fan of the games seeing some of the monsters in their oversized glorious debut is fantastic! This is the only reason this 1 star movie got a 4/10. That's the good, awesome monster battles with unique creatures and fantastic combat scenes. The bad.... pretty much every other aspect. Zero character arcs, zero secondary character development, the first 58min of the movie was uneventful and can be completely skipped. It should not be a solid hour into the movie before introducing all but one of the secondary characters, and after introducing them give zero information or show any aspect other than a head nod to the games with their costumes. That was a big oof. Second half (should be called true start) of the movie is quite good, beautiful locations, interesting monsters show up to give some lived in feeling to the scenery, still lacks dialog, lacks any idea of character arcs, and then abruptly jumps straight to the final showdown.

This game was best suited to be a TV series like The Witcher or Sherlock, couple episodes per year and give the world time to develop instead of snap cuts through time rushing to show the few monsters and location the writing team saw in the game trailer.

WandaVision (2021)

Nostalgia vs Cringe

[6/10 · 17 January 2021]

If you Love Lucy, and understand that statement you'll probably like this show. If you don't understand it or were expecting Marvel's superheroes doing anything but wink at the fourth wall the whole time with "old timey" jokes, just re-watch ANYTHING else Marvel. First few minutes were good for a cute peek into the 1950's sitcoms, after 2 episodes it's lost it's charm and needs more Marvel and less Beaver.

The Rookie: In Justice (2021) Season 3, Episode 2

just fire the pathetic writer of this episode

[2/10 · 17 January 2021]

LOVE this show, but this episode was a lesson in who you shouldn't have on your staff. Between the disrespect to police officers, the pop-culture race baiting, the jaded writing masked as progressive and supportive, and the racial stereotyping on all sides of the story presented, this episode was a mess. Hopefully the studio uses this as a lesson of what not to do and focusses on their characters instead of their misguided political statement. Seriously, fire the writer, blacklist them from the industry to prevent further embarrassment and go back to developing characters instead of platforms.

Departure (2019–2022)

interesting concept let down by bad writing

[2/10 · 3 November 2020]

Cinematography was decent, pretty much the standard for a modern show. It's no game of thrones but overall enjoyably shot. the storyline has great potential, then the writers threw it off a cliff. Badly written or non-existent character arcs, transitions with no context, continuity errors everywhere and a severe lack of direction for how an investigation is conducted. If you enjoy mystery and thrillers look elsewhere, if a soap opera is more your speed you'll be prefaced for this travesty of writing.

Lucifer (2016–2021)

Season 1-4 are amazing, skip season 5

[9/10 · 22 August 2020]

Season 1-4 are wonderful, character arcs are fantastic every role has motivators and tight story lines. It breaks the crime drama formula for some of the episodes which is very welcome in a rinse and repeat with new characters industry. Then we hit season 5... utter garbage. Unexplained major changes in characters, thin story lines and just bad writing. Honestly can't understand what happened, a truly Indiana Jones level screw up.