All User Reviews

No wokeness, but not exactly a thinking man’s film.

The plot of the film is riddled with absurdities, but it is fun if you can suspend your disbelief.

Woke Australian Modern 'Horror' Without Any Scares

Multiple DEI hires including the lead black female in Australia. A country with a 3 percent black population. Also a main character is trans played by a trans actor. Horrible horror movie without any scares whatsoever. A bunch of unlikable stupid gen z characters doing stupid things. Boring with pretty bad acting especially by the main black lead as usual for a DEI hire. Film makers are more worried about checking those woke boxes than making an actual well written entertaining movie.

The best Jason Statham movie ever

I don't get why everyone here says it's woke. Sure, there was a bunch of DEI bullshit casting, but I didn't mind it. The action was phenomenal, the story was surprisingly emotional, and David Ayer went crazy with this movie. When I watch a movie, I don't pay attention to the wokeness unless it's literally unwatchable. This movie is a must watch if you are a fan of Jason Statham.

Not too woke.

There's a gay or lesbian couple here or there, but nothing major. Very casual and doesn't make a big deal about it. The CORRECT woke.
Good show.

DEI still ruining movies

Love Jason Statham. Did great to make this woke movie watchable!
Try to fast forward the woke scenes of the DEI female black FBI agent with multiple lesbo ear piercings and her middle Eastern colleague. Boxes had to be ticked I guess
US President female basically summed it up

Usual PG-13 'Horror'

Woke is DEI hires and white daughter is immediately infatuated with the first black boy that talks to her in school. Good acting but no horror to be found. Loud noises going for jump scares in not horror. Flashing pool lights at night is not scary. How many times can someone lean out over the edge of the pool slowly reaching for something floating just out of reach. Also it's a minor thing but the father who retires from MLB due to illness seems to have been a very successful player for some time given comments and his age. The wife mentions early that they just managed to get insurance through her work? How the hell would he not have insurance? Bad, bad writing. Pass and go watch some real horror.

DEI wins again!

Y'all can relax. They got one each: a white one, a black one and a middle eastern one! They're checking DEI boxes left and right on this one. And get ready for a heaping dose of girl-bossin'.

Can you guess who the evil ones will be? If you guessed hetero, rich, white males straight out of the 1% patriarchy, you win!

Of course the black one is a thick, sassy, well-spoken, female FBI agent sporting a Harvard jersey in her free time. That'll track well with black audiences. She looks more like a woman who should be running her own Motown bakery. She's also sporting about 7 piercings in each ear, you know, just like how all hetero female FBI agents do. Enjoy her in the chunky-hipped, Afro-clad yet ineffectual tactical weapons scenes.

They went ahead and made the FBI deputy director black, too. They say FBI leadership lacks diversity in real life but it ain't happening. Until then we'll resort to race-swapping. While you're at it, why not sex-swap and make the President of the United States a woman who's spoiled rotten son is the Lex Luthor of phone scammers.

The beekeeper pro-assassin they send to dispatch The Beekeeper is a super-long pony-tailed caricature of a bad ass, martial arts chick right out of street fighter; She lasts about 3 punches which was the only realistic part of the film. Hilarious! To further suspend reality, the FBI special reaction team, led by an Asian beta-male, is worthless. The hardened SEAL team and Delta Force mercenaries who apparently would miss the sky if they fired upwards, bungle his capture. Towards the end, some wacky, cowboy Kiwi mercenaries enter the scene to hilarious effect.

In the end, evil whitey is punished and even though The Beekeeper drops about 30 bodies, this movie can't decide if it's a light romp or a serious action. And if it can't take itself seriously, neither can I.

Definitely Woke But Can Still Be Enjoyable.

Covers most of the woke talking points including feminism, anti-white racism, black victimhood, alphabet mafia. Some of it is done in a humorous make fun of it way but not all. The stories are mostly entertaining despite that with good voice acting and humor. Still worth a watch in my opinion.

A touching story dripping in woke

While wartime stories are usually heartwarming and inspiring in some way, the way the producers / directors took over this film ruined the message of hope and replaced it with the heavy salt of feminism. What could have been a charming young heroine is an in insufferable know-it-all akin to that awful Rey skank in what-shall-not-be-called-Star-Wars - meaning, she has no story arc, no discovery, no learning, and no flaws.
All other female characters are exactly the same - unsympathetic and unrealistic stoics, backhanding men with every quip of their devil tongues, blank and detestable.
I'm a chick, but feminist films like this irk me to no end.
Every time the brat comes on the screen I wish the worst for her, my sympathies lying instead with the bruised, battered, and broken Nazi boy who has far more complex and elegant an arc than the know-it-all Mary Sue.

What ruins the series further is the constant predictive powers of the magical characters (talking plenty about things that haven't happened yet, like the Holocaust ovens being revealed, or the treatment of prostitutes after the war). The Nazis - save the lead boy, who was forced into the army against his will - all have the same exact boring character too, a cookie-cutter remake of Indiana Jones. They're all so similar I can't tell them apart, exacerbated by inescapable uniform. The inhuman monolith that is The Enemy.

It's funny how socialist directors try so hard to dehumanize a group of people, mostly in an attempt to other them and pretend they are not peddling the same darn thing.

At the moment (though not through the entire story and not sure I'll get there), besides the feminism there is a little forced diversity casting, with the incumbent head professor at a museum in Europe during the 40's being a black guy. Naturally, white people all are all evil, which is kind of realistic seeing as it's Europe, but the highest position in the room being black? Yeah, no. I'm black and I'm not stupid enough to believe that.

There are at the moment no LGBTPedophiles or trannies.
No politics, either, no modern lectures on TDS, racism or privilege.
But this is more than a chick flick - this is a sledgehammer designed to crush men's humanity right off and replace it with a world of Mary Sue -ism.

Excellent Biopic

Not woke. I like it a lot.

A rebuke of modernity masquerading as a smart feel-good movie

The Holdovers is a slow burning evolution of conflict in isolation, a feel-good movie that does not rely on musical theater crutches or fictitious airport hi-jinx to surface what glues important relationships together. The film is two weeks of three people struggling with loss of family and desertion. The school is an island slowly replacing the ocean with snow and walls shielding the outside world from view. Every shot is extremely myopic, we are very close the characters.

Mr. Hunham (Paul Giamatti) is a father without a son, and Mr. Tully (Dominic Sessa) is a son without a father. The entire film is a meditation upon the relationships between parents and children from the lost Curtis Lamb and his mother Mary (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) to the lost Quarterback Jason Smith (Michael Provost) being in a stubbornness contest with his literal helicopter flying dad who comes into pull the rest of the Holdovers to the ski slopes, abandoning our trio to solely exist with themselves for ten days.

There is not a lot wrong with the Holdovers, perhaps with the exception of the running time. I don't understand why it was nominated for Best Picture, but I do understand why Da'Vine Joy Randolph was nominated for best supporting actress. Randolph does a great turn as Mary, the grieving mother of Vietnam KIA Curtis Lamb, and is the character with the most depth, evolution, and clear motivation for her actions. Randolph manages to carry a world weary weight with her through every scene despite being the only truly happy person in the entire film.

There are many parallels between the world of 1970 and today, illustrated perfectly by Mr. Hunham's unprompted opinion of the state of the world during Christmas party small talk :

"the world doesn't make sense anymore. I mean, it's on fire. The rich don't give a shit. Poor kids are cannon fodder. Integrity is a punch line. Trust is just a name on a bank."

Hunham is a martyr awaiting a sword upon which to throw himself and Tully seems to be a walking weapons rack, they are a match made in heaven and a fitting denouement for the relative lack of action.

7.4 CGI'd eyeballs out of 10

Purposefully ambiguous, well acted and well written. Anatomy of a Fall evolves heavily over the course of the 150 minute runtime from a slice-of-life introduction to the household to inter-family drama to a murder mystery to a courtroom drama that freely switches between English, French, and German. The chemistry between Sandra and the interviewer contrasted with the overbearing presence of Samuel off screen through 50 Cent's PIMP playing at deafening levels manages to create both tension and duality, conflict lurks unseen in this house and just off-stage.

Samuel's shadow is necessarily over every frame of the film. The home is empty and quiet after his passing whereas every retelling of memory of Samuel is loud from the music to the shouting to the fighting with thrown glass and recriminations. Samuel is everywhere from the first frame until Sandra's fate is sealed, where his presence relents and she is alone. The purposefully long courtroom scenes that give the viewer a feeling of what it is like to just sit interminably while Sandra's life is decided, it fits with the evolution of the film. Both lawyers (prosecutor and defense) are very good actors who carry half the show, maybe more, with tightly written dialogue and logic.

Justine Triet has accomplished something fantastic by managing to keep viewers engaged through what is fundamentally an argument between two lawyers twisting facts to suit their own narrative in a way that invites the viewer to join the jury and think. What would you would decide, who would you believe, how would you interpret the facts.. or lack of facts? There is no conclusion, Sandra even states this at the end "it's just over". The viewer applies their own logic and reasons, but ultimately that does not matter.

We are left wondering about Sandra's feelings for Vincent (Swann Arlaud, her lawyer) to whom she put her life into his hands. The french legal system cannot be real, yet we are assured by others that it does work this way, truly eye opening with regards to liberté, égalité, fraternité. This is not the best picture of the year, but it was a good film. Sandra Huller as the protagonist is fantastic, as is most of the cast including Milo Machado Graner as Daniel.