Nick C

Perhaps the most lowbrow historical drama I've seen in recent years, this occasionally amusing historical fiction is marred by all characters essentially involving themselves in deadly court intrigue while having the intelligence and substance of the contestants on Temptation Island. It finds itself a showcase of Elle Fanning in her finest role you date as the lead role, which unfortunately mostly displays her own limitations and that of the writers. Instead the spotlight is routinely stolen by the nominal antagonist, her husband the emperor, gleefully played as a complete buffoon by Nicholas Hoult. The show is at his best when he is portraying a portrait of a spoiled, childish emperor - despite being the largely idiotic villain whose only that lies in his casual cruelty, the actor manages to portrays a deep emotional role of a cruel man whose unrivaled power from a young age has rendered him impotent in intellect and leadership. But it is often said that a great hero requires a great villain - The Great has neither. It is tragic that schoolyard intrigue outshines the machinations by writers who can only write supposedly intelligent characters by making the rest of the world moronic. They clearly decided to discard any element of historicity early on, no doubt fearing it would bore the audience. This isn't a wrong choice by itself, as being unshackled by history allows the writers to spread their wings. And yet. What is instead managed is losing the fascination and grounding of actual history and replacing it with by vapid melodrama that lacks both depth and nuance. Best watched as a drinking game where you joyously shout huzzah! Along with characters, where company copiously imbibing will allow you to forget that you're watching reality television turned into costume drama. There is enjoyment to be had here, but of the sort that you might imagine if Game of Thrones had only had the last season and you approach it as completely free from history, intelligence, or even the lowest sort of cunning.

Even more shallow and pretentious than the archetypes it tries to mock, this movie has nothing to say that hasn't been said thousands of times very recently. A waste of time for anybody with even minimal taste, it's exactly the kind of thing critics will like because they suspect they should.

I'll admit it, I watched less than 5 minutes of this because that's all you need to realize this will be stupid the entire way through.

A time dilation movie that reminds me of the butterfly effect in that one of the best movies dealing with the logical effects of a single sci-fi concept gets panned by people who didn't understand what was going on and believe it to be a flaw of the movie. In any case a very competent execution of what is essentially an old-school sci -fi short story, that would essentially be a better than average Outer Limits or Twilight Zone episode. Ultimately it's a very simple premise, but it has one major twist which let's the movie setup the entire last act. It was a little disappointing they never showed whatever artifact is powering the whole contrivance at the "center" of the cave, but it is a B-movie with limited budget so perhaps it is better left in the imagination.

A disaster film that somehow manages to be overly melodramatic despite it being about the end of the world. The movie loses any badge of realism by engaging in ridiculous pyrotechnics with the typical "gasoline is an incredibly powerful and unstable exclusive" Criminal acts are rampant out of proportion with human nature with people frequently having not only no sense of decency but engaging in poorly thought out plans that would never have worked but serve to make every other person attack the main characters. The main characters aren't any better, making them deeply unsympathetic because of their unearned victories. The plotting ends up being so structurally by the numbers you can turn off your brain or walk off for any 15 minutes of the movie and miss nothing important. Also, it's one of those disaster movies that is barely about the disaster. You could replace the disaster with aliens or zombies and it wouldn't matter. Watchable but lacking in spectacle, passion, or cultural value.

A likeable movie that gets at the heart of coming of age movies: insecurity Hailee Steinfeld manages to infuse a difficult role with life, and the myopic direction is perfect showing the viewpoint of a self centered teenage girl. The only real problem is just how terrible the almost everyone actually is. Virtually everyone in this film displays astonishing selfishness, most of all the main character. They only keep from being the bad guy by all of them getting kind of mutually terrible to each other. True, this element makes it avoid many cliches, but at the same time, if every character died in a fire the world would be a better place. Still, worth the watch.

The pacing is terrible skipping between past and present, we are given incredibly long and drawn out sequences of absolutely everything, not least the drugged out daughter with no personality besides being a twenty something with daddy issues who is strung out in the kind of way that only really exists on TV. The world logic of the heroic code that Not Superman teaches everyone makes absolutely no sense that they've been holding onto it without any of their friends dying for decades - nobody is particularly invulnerable in this world. The show also breaks a rule by essentially lying to the audience to attempt to make it more difficult to identify the big bad. In an absolutely terrible writing decision they show with Not Superman himself talking about social issues like he's a millennial when he's well over 100 years old. We have a man who was in his 40s during WW2 talking about Nazis in the streets of America and how much worse America is getting and how terrible political corruption is. There is absolutely no way anybody who lived through 1920s America or for that matter 1980s America would believe that political corruption and crime are especially bad today. That could have been left to any number of their children who are all under 30 (even though the old guard is all 120 or so). The show wants to be deconstructionist of comic book tropes from 50 years ago but not only has that been done to death and better, but it makes no sense with the world building because it's written like a bunch of superheros popped into our world and have to deal with realistic consequences except they've actually had superpowers for decades in the world without facing consequences. Also, the fight scenes are hokey trash taking itself seriously without the budget or choreography or the plain effort for the audience to take it seriously. It's a mess, just go watch Invincible or The Boys for way better takes in very much the same vein. Or for that matter umbrella academy, my hero academia, or winter soldier and captain falcon if you're not especially wanting the niche of Not Superman and Friends except realer.

Remarkably devoid of value, this movie feels like it's missing entire arcs to give motivation for the characters as well as substituting gauche design for substance. Of particular note is one of the most ham-handed morality plays of class themes in recent memory. It's no mystery that this movie was quietly buried.

Stopped watching after episode 4 even though I wanted to watch mindless vaguely sexy dreck it was just too meandering, ill-conceived, and bereft of narrative or emotional payoff. Don't do it, you can watch Netflix for 6 hours every day and still find better stuff to than this.