Rachel Wingard

It's not a terrible movie by itself, I guess I can give it that. If you just watch the movie without having read the books, then it's not that bad. HOWEVER, if you have read the books, then be prepared for a terrible adaptation. I listened to the audiobook right before watching the movie, and having the events of the book fresh on my mind while watching this meant I was especially aware of every change they made and hated it all the more. I honestly don't know how you can make an adaptation of source material that manages to ruin almost every single character, but somehow this movie did just that. They also shortened the plot in just about the worst way possible. (Spoilers after this point...) First of all, the character of Henri was straight-up assassinated. They decided to Americanize him for some reason, which makes no sense given that he is literally from an entirely different planet, and according to the books has a French-sounding accent, so his name is pronounced "On-ree". Not in the stupid movie, though. They also completely screwed up his relationship with John. It's supposed to be like father and son, but instead it's like two guys who barely know and kind of hate each other. Makes Henri's death feel incredibly hallow. The movie also turned Sarah into the 'I'm not like other girls' stereotype, they made Sam an emo kid who's barely even friends with John, and they reduced Mark's bully-to-bro arc to nothing. It was actually painful. However, I could not convince myself that the characters I was watching were actually the same people in the book, because they weren't. They just weren't. I understand it's going to be difficult to squeeze an eleven-hour book's worth of plot into less than two hours. The movie was already struggling to do that, so I really don't get why they decided to try to cover Sam's dad being involved with the Loriens, because in the books that doesn't get revealed until midway through the second book. That being said though, if the budget is such that you can't even pay the actor for number three to have a speaking role so he can actually say something when he's hunted down and killed, that should be when you know you gotta step back and try again.

I don't understand why people have a problem with it. If it's not your thing, ok cool then don't watch it...but you shouldn't give it a negative rating just cause you don't like parkour. Also if you don't like watching Taylor Lautner do parkour then like...why. It's cool. No the movie's not amazing or anything, but it's still pretty good. A little cliche maybe but still fun. Also at one point in the film, someone tells Taylor Lautner that there can only be one Alpha in the pack. He's obviously an idiot. Don't you know that Taylor Lautner is the grandson of Ephraim Black. He is the grandson of a chief! He was not born to follow you, or anyone else!

Ok I ain't even finished watching it yet but Imma already improve its ratings because this is pretty much the best Star Wars content there's been since...dare I say Return of the Jedi? No I don't, cause to be fair I haven't watched all Star Wars content since then, I'm not a nerd. HOWEVER. This show is pretty dang good. It's much better than Boba Fett, Obi-Wan, even Mandalorian, and definitely better than the entire sequel trilogy. But to be fair, those are low bars to clear. (Mostly anyway--Mandalorian had some banger episodes here and there. Just overall if it weren't for Baby Yoda no one would really watch that show let's just be honest). Much praise to the writers of Andor for taking a character that the entire audience knew was ALREADY DEAD and making a good and interesting show. Now a lot of people might get bored by it because to be fair there is a lot of dialogue and the pacing of the show overall is kinda slow. But it's worth the wait. I love how they've developed Cassian (again--a guy who WE ALL KNOW IS GOING TO DIE), showing him to be definitely just as badass as Han Solo. (Honestly he's even more badass than the Han in Solo: a Star Wars story imo). (Minor Spoilers) the whole prison break sequence is worth watching all the rest of the episodes for alone, it had me and my bros at more hype than any of the sequel movies could even dream of. (DA BOIS, DA BOIIS! ONE WAY OUT, ONE WAY OUT, ONE WAY OUT!!!) Anyway....long story short, this is a great show that you should watch! (Also ngl this got me shipping Cassian and Jyn so hard I'm reading fanfic AUUGGHH WHY IS THE BEST ROMANCE IN ALL OF (main cannon) STAR WARS THESE TWO CHARACTERS THAT FREAKING DIE AGSDKNFDIJF) ok I'm done. This has been the Gen Z review. 🫡

Ok, so I started watching this show over late summer of 2022 bc it was free on Amazon and I was trapped inside with Covid and didn't have anything else to do. (Seriously I managed to avoid the rona for two years; summer camp was what finally got me--go figure). Usually if something's free that's a good indication of poor quality, but for a free show this is actually pretty good and worth watching. HOWEVER. This show could've been a lot better. I'm not saying it's terrible, because it's not. Now, the first episode kinda misleads you in several ways. First of all, Mac's narration is very over-the-top and a lot cheesier than it is in the rest of the episodes. Second of all, they very quickly set up his relationship with Nikki, showing quick scenes of them making out, which leads you to think that's gonna be a regular thing on the show, but no she's dead but wait she's not dead turns out she's betrayed them but then no she's actually good but it doesn't matter cause she's just gonna leave and you'll never see her again anyway after the first season. Like....ok? What was the point? Like I get that with making a show like Macgyver that's gonna go on for a long time, it might be hard to get actors to stay on for the whole time, and it's hard to keep up perfect continuity when it's an ongoing story and things are gonna change. But this show had a lot of issues with that. Another point of the first season is that his boss was actually evil the entire time, and she has this code name that I don't remember and she was behind some bad stuff, and so she gets arrested and then just...never becomes a problem ever again? Again, what was the point of setting that up to just never bring up that character again? I tried to make this review a lot longer but Google wouldn't let me so just a few points: 1. He spends at least a whole season trying to find his dad but then turns out his dad was his boss the whole time and never told him and so he kinda just is mad at his dad for most of the time that we know him and his dad never does much of anything so like. It's just kinda disappointing. 2. At one point he moves to Africa and grows the worst beard in history and dates this random chick that just disappears after a while. 3. If you're going to write off a character permanently please just kill them. It should've been Jack who died in the elevator, not the random bomb expert guy that we barely knew. Now like I said, if you're looking for a free show to watch this one's still a good option, at least for like the first two or three seasons. (And if you wanna watch the guy who played Jesus in the Gospel of John play a rich a-hole who threatens to kill people you can watch the beginning of season 4. Seriously talk about ruining someone's childhood geez). Overall to sum up this show I would say it was a very character-driven show that just didn't know what to do with its characters. And that's kind of a problem.

Ad Astra is a great example of what happens when you try to make a movie with exactly one actual character. I honestly don't remember thinking anything else about this movie after watching it other than that. Brad Pitt...whatever the character's name is...is the only character in the entire film that stays constant throughout. Yeah others pop in...and then usually just die/ we never see them again. And yes, it is about him finding his father; however when he does his father just straight up kills himself anyway, so what was the point?? I know he gives a lot of exposition and random delirious flashbacks trying to explain this point, but we're never shown what the actual point is. Yes obviously he was trying to see his dad again and just save this human life since there was reason to believe his father was still somehow alive. But in terms of the actual storyline, what is the point of the character going to extreme lengths to do something only to have exactly zero payoff? Return to earth to your girlfriend who's a cardboard cutout with a pretty face who's actually in the movie in person for like one or two scenes. The movie did have an interesting idea behind it--if humans were actually able to travel beyond the planet to as far as Neptune, what would the mental and emotional toll on the astronauts be like? It would've made for a much better movie if rather than playing the old hot-main-character-has-daddy-issues trope, we'd explored a sort of mental-health what-if scenario that also reflects regular PTSD type-stuff. Like if Brad Pitt were the one that had been stuck out near Neptune for years and years all alone because his entire crew had died, and then he got rescued and struggles with his trauma on earth for a while with his girlfriend/wife who is an actual character, and maybe even throw in some kids, then some situation comes up where an entire crew has been stranded again out near Neptune, and Brad Pitt is needed for the rescue mission because of his extreme familiarity with the type of ship (duh he spent years trapped on it alone, right?) and so he has to face his trauma and fear and go back out there again in order to rescue this other crew. Man now I want to watch that nonexistent movie. But anyway...yeah, if you want a space movie that's actually good, I'd suggest Martian. A story written by a guy who had absolutely no intentions to make any money at all, which meant he was entirely motivated by creating a good story and that was it.

This movie is one of the many that prove ROTTEN TOMATOES IS NOT THE ULTIMATE DEFINITION FOR WHETHER A MOVIE IS GOOD OR NOT AND SOMETIMES YOU MUST READ REVIEWS FROM ACTUAL PEOPLE NOT PEOPLE PAID TO BE CRITICAL TO ACTUALLY GET AN IDEA OF WHETHER THE MOVIE IS GOOD OR NOT. There. I said it. Now it is true that on the actual rotten tomatoes website you can see critic review score versus audience review score, but whenever you look up the movie by itself it always shows you only the critics review score and can give you the wrong idea. Anyway, this movie is amazing. I saw one other review where someone said the acting was lacking, and admittedly it's been a while since I actually watched this movie, but I think if it was that bad it would've stuck out in my mind. I personally think this is a great movie even if there was bad acting. the only problem someone could have with this movie is if they're not religious, and so the parts where it brings up faith and God may be a little annoying if you don't believe in any of that, but still it's not like it's obnoxious. There's still a good story that happens around the parts where religion and faith is mentioned, so you can watch it for that. Also, this movie has a main storyline that we need to see more of today. We usually see stories about characters overcoming bad things that have happened to them, or getting out of a bad situation they have been placed in, or doing that while simultaneously saving the planet. We don't see much of characters becoming better people from the inside--overcoming things that they have done, rather than things that have been done to them. Yes we need both, but we need a balance. It's encouraging to see movies like this that show people are capable of changing. Another thing that I wanted to mention was that this movie was actually based off a book. When I watched this movie and heard that, I immediately wanted to check out the book to see if it could be even better than the movie, which is usually the case. however, this is the one case I have ever seen of the movie being better than the book. In fact, the movie is about a billion times better than the book. The book was just so badly written I could not even read all of it. Drowning in exposition and bad dialogue. So if you're like me and think about reading the book DON'T. But yeah. This is a really good movie and you're wanting to watch something that might make you cry but actually has good meaning in it, this is a good option for you.

Hear me out. The things my generation will feel nostalgic about are often not the best, most creative, wholesome things out there. Like most mainstream pop music in the last twenty-ish years. However, I'm glad to have grown up raised on the best from Pixar and other great movies like the Lego Movie. Angry Birds is a movie that me and my siblings have watched probably around thirty times, and therefore I know that in twenty-ish years I'll look back on it with a lot of nostalgia. Does it deserve this? Perhaps not entirely. Nonetheless this is not a bad movie overall and does not deserve 40-ish percent on Rotten Tomatoes. The problem with a lot of reviews on sites that like is that they are all written by adults, who of course viewed the movie with an adult perspective, when the target audience for this movie obviously was not adults. Not saying that an adult can't enjoy this movie, because they certainly could. I do, and I am very nearly adult (three weeks away--augh help). The storyline of the movie is a good one. There are a lot of good jokes, and only a few potty humor ones. Also for a kid's movie a lot of the jokes, especially the ones told by Red, have a really sarcastic tang to them, so much so that you'd have to be a certain age to really get a lot of them. But this movie, like a lot of kid's movies, does a good job of having jokes for young kids, older kids, and even for adults. Also it can even be a learning experience! In the scene when a mom bird vomits into her kids' lunch bags, you can explain to your perhaps a little confused younger children how mother birds do actually vomit up their food for their young chicks. And if you want to put your own even funnier spin on a certain part of the movie (the montage of Red, Bomb and Chuck trying to get up the mountain to see Might Eagle), you can imagine Red is an older sibling and Chuck and Bomb are the younger siblings. You'll find it's a very accurate representation of any time older and younger siblings do anything together and it will make you literally die laughing. (that is if you have siblings...sorry only children. This can be educational for you! Or maybe you have cousins that you can picture this happening with). Anyway, the movie also does a good job of developing an actual story--and a good one at that--from an iPhone game, which is an impressive feat. Turns out there's more to it than random pigs stole random eggs from random birds and now the birds are trying to get their eggs back by destroying the pigs very rickety and not at all well designed structures. So yeah! Definitely recommend, especially if you have younger kids and are looking for a good family movie that you also can enjoy.