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Fallout (2024)
Starts slow, but is genuine
I was bored for the first three episodes. Kind of like the game, the lameness of vault life and the initial leaving of the vault is slow. The story did a good job of building up the mystery of the vault experiments. I loved the ghoul character (props to Walton Gibbens). They did a really good job of sticking to the source materials (the games). I almost felt like I was playing the next fallout game while watching. The lead did an amazing job of being both the naive vault dweller and a capable survivor. My only advice to the team is to speed up things a bit. I am looking forward to the next season!
The Tomorrow War (2021)
Good enough for a popcorn flick, but they needed to fill a few plot holes
From a pure action movie perspective the movies checks all the boxes. It is fun enough to watch, especially if you have had a few cocktails. However, the big reveal at the end should have actually be the very start of the movie.
Warning: Spoilers
The people in the future figure out a way to stop the war from ever happening, but they need enough time to complete the work so they can send the solution back in time. This is why they need all the soldiers from the past, to hold off the enemy long enough for the solution to be finished.
However, in the closing act, most of the aliens are killed off fairly easily with some military grade explosives (and a glorified knife fight).
The entire premise of the movie is ruined in the final act. First, in about 2 minutes 2 scientist and a high-school student figure out what the entire world has not yet figured out (where the bad guys came from). You have to believe that aside from sending all of our soldiers to the future that we would have had every scientist on the planet trying to figure out where the aliens came from, but no, it takes a high school kid to figure it out.
Second, it shows that a coordinated pre-emptive military strike could have easily stopped the war from starting. Therefore, the solution from the future was not needed, just the information about where the war started and a few samples from some of the dead aliens would have been enough to end the problem before it started.
This could have been saved with some ground hog day, edge of tomorrow (lie, die, repeat), style time-looping, where they keep trying different things, failing, and having to try something else. They could even have alluded to it similar to the Avengers Infinity War scene where Dr. Strange mentions that he looked at 14 Million, 605 possibilities and only one worked. They could have even done that as part of the news briefing in the first act, or as the pre-combat briefing all the new soldiers get in the second act.
Instead we are left with a head scratcher of a plot hole that kind of ruins the movie.
Palmer (2021)
Predictable and not entertaining
Follows the formula that most white people are variations of bad, with the cops being the worst. The only good people are the excon (Timberlake), the LGBTQ young boy, and the teacher and janitor that happen to be black. The acting is decent throughout but the actors are held back by the terrible script and all of the contrived situations. The plots seems like it was following a lifetime channel checklist for a sappy story. A southern setting? Check. Excon who has a big heart and just made a mistake when he was young? Check. A trailer trash meth addict mom? Check. Intolerant cops, church goers, and employers? Check. Incompetent social workers? Check.
This movie fails to impress. The viewer keeps expecting something interesting to happen, but it just drones on.
Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)
jumbled mess and waste of actors
It wasn't fun, it wasn't engaging. Other than wonder woman and Steve, none of the characters have any depth. Pascal did what he could, but with such bad writing he did not have much to work with. This script would have been given an F- in a creative writing class for all the plot holes, the lack of character development, the cringe worthy motivations of the villains, the random creation of WW's new super powers, and the dues ex machina at the end where everyone gives up their wishes to help ww save the world... yeah, I call BS on the whole thing.
The Wolf Hour (2019)
Watts' performance cannot save a bad plot
June (Watts) was a celebrated counter culture author (apparently from a well-to-do family) that wrote a well received novel that was more or less a biography of her father. That biography exposed illicit activities of her fathers company which resulted in legal issues and significant strife within her family. The movie opens with June in self-enforced isolation in a Bronx apartment circa 1977 during a summer heat wave, and if you know your history when there was a large power blackout and subsequent fires and looting.
Watts gives and outstanding performance, but there is little she can do to resolve terrible story writing from writer/director Alistair Banks Griffin.
The first full hour of the movie portrays June as paranoid, depressed, and in obvious self imposed isolation. Suspense build as the viewer assumes that the backstory for June must include some terrible event that shaped her life and made her so fearful. The setting of a bad part of the Bronx during a summer heat wave where she can see crime outside her apartment window reinforced the suspense. There are even radio news snippets that the audience overhears of a serial murderer that is targeting long haired brunettes (you guessed it, Watts' character matches that description). There is also the recurring ringing (and annoying) of her intercom at random hours of the night to make you think somebody is stalking her.
We find out that the horrifying event that has so traumatized June was the impact her book had on her family, and her fear of leaving her apartment has nothing to do with her personal safety, but her fear that she will do more damage to the world at large. We also discover that her ordeal and self imposed isolation has lasted 4 years.
The writer takes 2 full acts of suspense, scene setting, and character building relying on the incredible talents of Watt to keep the viewer engaged to spectacularly let them down with a petty problem that has only a paper thin relationship to the established paranoia.
The third act continues the disappointment as miraculously, a few minor interactions with people (a grocery store delivery guy, her sister, a male prostitute, and a phone call to her publisher) beings a rapid transformation in the character the defies belief. There isn't a clear "thing" that triggers June's transformation. There is an odd conversation with the male prostitute that could have been intended by the writer as the turning point, but it comes off as a non-important moment.
Regardless, the character resolves her writers block and suspends a great deal of her paranoia to allow her to dust of her typewriter and finish her book that was 4 years in the making - all in 1 month.
The final scenes have June leaving her apartment and watching the sunrise while surrounded by the destruction of the nights riots.
This is a really basic story that follows a common hero quest motif (aka The Hero Journey) that most of us learn in grade school English. The only thing that holds the first 2 acts together is Watts' performance and the contrived suspense. The plot device around her paranoia falls flat, and the 3rd act wraps up so rapidly that the lead character just comes off as petty.
The Wolf Hour (2019)
Watts' performance cannot save a bad plot
June (Watts) was a celebrated counter culture author (apparently from a well-to-do family) that wrote a well received novel that was more or less a biography of her father. That biography exposed illicit activities of her fathers company which resulted in legal issues and significant strife within her family. The movie opens with June in self-enforced isolation in a Bronx apartment circa 1977 during a summer heat wave, and if you know your history when there was a large power blackout and subsequent fires and looting.
Watts gives and outstanding performance, but there is little she can do to resolve terrible story writing from writer/director Alistair Banks Griffin.
The first full hour of the movie portrays June as paranoid, depressed, and in obvious self imposed isolation. Suspense build as the viewer assumes that the backstory for June must include some terrible event that shaped her life and made her so fearful. The setting of a bad part of the Bronx during a summer heat wave where she can see crime outside her apartment window reinforced the suspense. There are even radio news snippets that the audience overhears of a serial murderer that is targeting long haired brunettes (you guessed it, Watts' character matches that description). There is also the recurring ringing (and annoying) of her intercom at random hours of the night to make you think somebody is stalking her.
We find out that the horrifying event that has so traumatized June was the impact her book had on her family, and her fear of leaving her apartment has nothing to do with her personal safety, but her fear that she will do more damage to the world at large. We also discover that her ordeal and self imposed isolation has lasted 4 years.
The writer takes 2 full acts of suspense, scene setting, and character building relying on the incredible talents of Watt to keep the viewer engaged to spectacularly let them down with a petty problem that has only a paper thin relationship to the established paranoia.
The third act continues the disappointment as miraculously, a few minor interactions with people (a grocery store delivery guy, her sister, a male prostitute, and a phone call to her publisher) beings a rapid transformation in the character the defies belief. There isn't a clear "thing" that triggers June's transformation. There is an odd conversation with the male prostitute that could have been intended by the writer as the turning point, but it comes off as a non-important moment.
Regardless, the character resolves her writers block and suspends a great deal of her paranoia to allow her to dust of her typewriter and finish her book that was 4 years in the making - all in 1 month.
The final scenes have June leaving her apartment and watching the sunrise while surrounded by the destruction of the nights riots.
This is a really basic story that follows a common hero quest motif (aka The Hero Journey) that most of us learn in grade school English. The only thing that holds the first 2 acts together is Watts' performance and the contrived suspense. The plot device around her paranoia falls flat, and the 3rd act wraps up so rapidly that the lead character just comes off as petty.