Jake Volkman

It's campy sometimes, but it's great fanservice to addicts of the Witcher series. I've only ever played the games. The world is unique and familiar at the same time, with new rules for the traditional medieval fantasy themes you find in Game of Thrones and the Lord of the Rings. I don't know if it's as good as those two titles, but given only 8 episodes so far, I think I'll give them a shot at it.

This is an example of a corporate algorithm writing a movie to make money without any loyalty to the source material. What a shame. -The plot doesn't make any sense. The first half of the film is a different film than the second half and could easily have been separated into two better films for a longer runtime with more exposition and character development. -All of the antagonists are new characters with no development. Including old characters that now have a different purpose than they did in the old movies. -The protagonist is introduced as having no skills despite defeating every opponent without consequence. -They introduce incredible new force powers that break the universe as we know it. This is the last movie; world building should be finished. -They introduce an incredible new technology that breaks the universe as we know it. This is the last movie; world building should be finished. -Special effects for the sake of special effects. Am I watching Star Wars or Transformers? -Fan service that doesn't fit the story. Maybe this is why the plot doesn't make sense. I am writing this movie out of the Star Wars universe. The parent company of these films has lost the fandom's license to consider these films canon. I will no longer be purchasing Star Wars merchandise.

I enjoyed pieces of this show and other pieces were cringey garbage. The teen drama in this show reads like a fanfiction, of which the source material would be Star Trek: Enterprise. Some of the sci-fi is pretty fun. I just feel like the target audience of this show is pre-teens sometimes, but the existential themes and some of the hard science fiction just don't work as a pre-teen show. If you can get through the first couple of episodes, you'll probably find the ending worth watching. Just don't expect the acting or the dialogue writing to be any better.

A real creepy horror film. It's subtle as you watch it, but as the film dances around love interests and teen drama, the characters are slowly being groomed by the monster like prey. It starts as simple tricks out of the corner of their eyes, and gradually increases the effect it has on the characters' observation of the real world. The monster plays with its prey by using teen angst to turn the group against one character at a time. Then, the monster strikes its prey, and the last 20 minutes of the film are a thrilling roller coaster.

The audience isn't sure who's the real bad guy, which is quite effective. Immediately we develop a rapport with the characters that are robbing a bank, with an Ocean's 11 level of organization that makes the robbers likable. The motivation for this robbery is never really made known the the viewers, other than the payout. It's hard to believe that a group of criminals with this amount of foresight would bother robbing a bank for so little and expect their shares to cover their escape costs. It's borderline absurd, but not important to the horror plot. There's an incredible twist at the end that makes the movie much greater than the B movie writing and acting the rest of it had. But a B+ still seems too much for this film.

It's pretty boring, and relies on jump scares for most of the film. It feels like a thriller that had the thrilling parts cut out until the last 10 or so minutes, where it is finally revealed that the film had potential but they squandered the plot for some uncreative explanation instead. A B- film that is hard to like but wasn't awful.

Boring. Not really scary, just creepy. The movie relies completely on the power dynamic between the adults and the children and the oldest kid overcoming that dynamic when an adult happens to be a bad person. It is the classic tween coming-of-age rebellion formula. Except with vulgar, adult themes that are supposed to disturb the viewer. Themes that would disturb children, but not really adults. A kids movie that kids shouldn't watch. Sorry, who is this movie for exactly? Adult babies? Parents that are scared of babysitters? The horror elements are cringeworthy. We never really learn the motivation behind the antagonist, other than something to do with her inability to have children... which she could just adopt? They try to patch that up too but I'm assuming a woman with the resources to look like a model would be qualified to adopt children. Maybe some costume design would have made the movie more believable. Easily the most interesting part of the movie is that the antagonist is working with a partner that is capable of kidnapping people, evading police, and hitting a car at speed, but still willing to sacrifice his own safety for this insane woman. I would be much more interested to know their relationship dynamic that led to him being in this situation and introducing his character. Instead we get more whining children and cuts to irrelevant scenes of the parents on their date. Skip it.

Joaquin Phoenix delivers an incredible performance in this terrifying movie about a sad man with nothing to lose but his mind in a culture that doesn't care about the lower class.

A culture war movie for the small, annoying faction of the culture war. The interesting parts of this movie were swept to the side to make room for social justice politics like toxic masculinity, inequity for "groups" (you know the ones), trying to prevent something that happens in the United States shortly after 2015 (wonder what that could be), and something that involves identity politics for a group that historically is very bad (hint: WWII). The fact that I have to be so censorious in this review is proof of how necessary it is to criticize this film. The time travel had the potential to be interesting, as did the obsession of the main character destroying his personal life. Of course, there wasn't time for those things. It was more convenient to delete characters than develop them. And then, because of the time travel, there were no stakes for anyone at all anyways. The main character could have done absolutely nothing and the outcome would have been the same. This is a problem with many time travel movies but often they also have humor, or character development, or maybe even a plot.

I've been a big Marvel fan since the 2008 Iron Man, but I think I'm getting superhero fatigue. Or maybe it's just the formulaic plot-points and overacted nostalgic dialogue that makes it feel like a shiny plastic toy I asked for Christmas when I was eight. Unfortunately for Captain Marvel, this movie is a middle of the road superhero movie. The big budget goes into polishing the CGI, which as always is impressive. But the rest of it is meh. Why did we need another one of these movies? Why did investors give this movie $152 million? Because of the Marvel brand. The difference between this average Marvel movie and other average ones is the political controversy surrounding the lead actor. Some political activists decided to hijack this movie and use the Marvel brand to push an agenda that many Marvel fans are critical of. And unfortunately for the consumers, the media has taken the controversy personally and started to censor bad reviews, turning this film into trojan horse of distrust. After seeing this movie and its reviews, I no longer trust the "trusted" review sites. I have no interest in using their services again.