All User Reviews

Not everything is better reheated

The Hobbit is a children's book, short and self-contained (originally).
It does not contain enough material for a 9-hours trilogy.

This movie massively reuses assets from the LotR movies, not only to reduce costs, but also to score sympathy by association.

By necessity, it adds huge amounts of original material. Original, but lackluster.

What it fails to capture is the epic dimension of the previous movie. One of my gripes at the time was treating the dwarf as a comedic sidekick (because, dwarf tossing).
13 times the dwarves (eat your heart out, Snow White), 13 times the tonal dissonance. It's jarring.

As many movies in the decade since, this one oscillates between heroism and deconstructive, meta-"humour".
The joks are predictable and fall flat, taking with them any aspiration to grandeur.
Because heroism is masculine, and we don't like masculinity, do we.

1 point for wokeness, mostly because irresistible urge to introduce 'original' one-dimensional girl-boss characters, and inexplicable ethnic diversity.

Worse shite has been written around Tolkien (Rings of Power, anyone?), but this is tedious, and made somewhat palatable only because of its forebears.

Troon alert

A black male cast in a female role
Also its obvious they are going to shift it from anti communist to anti white nationalist
Well at least they got a accurate voice actor for the main communist pig

Tired, try-hard and boring

With the French bloke out, it's all females and their gay best friends.

The Noriko - sorry, Quynh - subplot fares barely better. Leaves some room for secondary character to breathe, which they don't really do. Except Booker. Schoenaerts is clutch.

Lots of sudden cuts in the first part, lots of exotic locales.
This movie felt to me as though it was trying real hard to whip itself into a good mood.
Trying - and failing - to establish a lore. The result is muddled, conflicts with the previous movie, and builds nothing.
In that way, it really does emulate the Highlander movies (although there can be only one).
I suspect Rucka's also trying to draw from Vampire the Masquerade lore, in an attempt to bolster his flagging creativity. Metuselah and stuff.


Thurman has grown old. Unkindly so. Especially compared to Theron, who's only 5 years her junior. And she's less than a decade older than Ngo. She still has that effortless elegance, and that genial charm, but not that unexpected beauty. Still a top notch actress, though.

Theron works hard to carry the movie. She's an excellent actress, but still sluggish in fight scenes. Atomic Blonde worked because the choreography was tactical, not physical. And she was younger.
Layne is still young. Meaning she's either badly coordinated, or just lazy with her training.


As a note, the "walking through the ghosts of the past" scene is just brilliant. A minute of grace in an unispired movie.
The rest is trudging through the motion. Anybody with two brain cells knows what is going to happen. But it comes slowly.


Also, this opus is less aggressively anti-male and anti-white than the previous. Studios must be starting to realize which side of the toast is buttered. Maybe they shouldn't grow too lucid, lest they realize most of them are the walking dead.

All-in-all, not bad, just tepid and directionless. Oh wait, this means bad.
Not sure the third movie this is desperately trying to build up to will be made.

The usual DEI overrepresentation we expect from marvel. Kate is a Mary Sue. She is as good as Hawkeye at everything. I don't care if you are
a trained competition blackbelt or a top competition archer. She is making ridiculous combat high stress shots right at the start and taking on multiple large male assailants by herself and manhandling them. She never has to train she's just amazing. She takes on Kingpin, by herself, in close quarters hand to hand, and WINS!!?? Sure why not. All the men other than Hawkeye are bumbling fools or villains. All the females are good, even the so called 'villains' turn out to be misunderstood or forced into it and had no choice. There is a completely pointless forced random scene arguing about a tote bag just so a female character can say 'my wife gave it to me.' It's not really preachy about any of it but it is present. Besides all the woke I did find it entertaining. The writing is for the most part good, the acting it good, the story is pretty well thought out, the FX are generally well done. Except for the eye rolling stupid pointless larpers. Why would you put that stupid silly nonsense in there? They are terrible!

Just ok

Reminds me a lot of Ron’s Gone Wrong, which is the better movie. The main character wears a rainbow flag pin the entire movie. And she’s not so subtly hinted at being a lesbian. Overall just a dull movie with a few funny elements.

Here we are, born to be yaaasss queens of the universe

The Old Guard is, in its own way, an attempt to spin off the Highlander mythos. It does add some interesting character building to the immortal theme. Although one should probably go to the comic for that. Most were 'simplified' (dropped) for the movie. Like most of the old guard being technologically retarded.

Rucka, the original comic book's writer, is a proud Portlander. Guy has always been something of a lefty, but I still liked some of his stuff. Mostly Queen & Country, not into super-heroes.

He did seem to come down with full-blown TDS in the last decade, and turn complete male feminist to boot. Lovable chap.

So yeah, somewhat woke, although it used to be he wasn't too overt in his writing.

The cast is ethnically diverse, as per the comic, although the opposite would be weird in context. Some race-swapping, though: incidental good guys are suddenly non-white. Dr. Menguele is suddenly female, though, go figure.
Still, what are the odds of an openly gay couple among 4 characters? Also, Rucka's not big on details: homosexuality did exist, but definitely not in its modern form, especially around the Caroline Renaissance.

The Scythians had (probably) female soldiers, but mostly in the form of mounted short bows (possible origin for the Amazons legend), not axe-wielding maniacs. Plus the axe is some sort of weird ass labrys, and not a sagaris. Why a woman of the steppes would carry a Minoan symbol of divinity is beyond me. On par with a Scottish goat-herder swinging a katana. Well, she does have a Greek name and a Norman face, so there.

Rucka's an avid practitioner of historical revisionism anyway.

Unburdened by what has been, indeed.


The movie adaptation does add wokeness. Andromache, very much hetero in the comic - basically a sex fiend - now sports a butch cut and a sapphic sub-plot. Complete with that old feminist dog whistle (bitch whistle?), of witch trials. Which killed many more men than women, but hey, victims, amirite? Also, the women in STEM one.

Theron is, by what few accounts I've seen, a revolting human being, but she does put in the work.
The rest of the cast is on par with her: no glaring shortcomings. Ejiofor is the stand-out, expectedly.

Quite a few good, albeit semi-original ideas, competently set to film, but strong female possibly homosexual boss babes, black female saviour, weak, homosexual and corrupt males, usual anti-historical talking points. It's Hollywood, baby.

F1 is to Formula One racing as Rocky is to Boxing

The Karate kid (the original one) had teenage combatants in "legitimate" competition winning with kicks to the face. F1 is kind of like that. You need to leave the "realism" behind and just enjoy the ride. If things like this happened on a real track, the driver would lose his super license, the team would be fined severely, and the penalty would be DQ. that said, they did a great job with the story. The action was very real. They merged real racing into the movie somehow. I'm still wondering how much was staged, CGI or cleverly edited mix with real race footage. They did get a lot right, such as the implications of cold tires, virtual safety cars, pitting strategy, etc. That's not surprising since this was produced by Lewis Hamilton, the second-oldest driver active. A lot of real drivers, team principals, team owners, etc. were featured. Some had speaking roles. The only thing that may be considered woke is a petite, female, pit crew member on the tire gun. I don't consider that woke for one main reason: she flubbed it and punctured a tire. A woke movie would've had her be the hero somehow. The acting? top notch. From Brad, to the supporting cast, and even to the cameos by F1 people, it was award-worthy.

Hard to rate this

I gotta give it credit for having a accurate all White demographic which is the main reason I wanted to watch it, the body horror isn't as bad as i expected but the sexual scenes are unnecessary and disturbing.
The movie is said to be a feminist movie which if you aren't being told you have to perceive it that way you kinda miss it. Its basically a movie where desperate money hungry women do anything for money and men attention while having zero morals but its the man fault because misogyny or something. So yeah if you go by the message that they marketed but didn't successfully address in the movie its pretty woke but its easy to ignore it completely and do your own interpretation. Now a woke thing that made me regret watching it was a scene where a woman calls another woman "my love", but it was too late to stop so i went with it and pretended it didn't happen plus they are vile so even if not intended its a pretty accurate representation. So yeah the lesbians and degenerate nudity and sexual acts are my main issue. The failed attempt at a feminist stance didn't matter to me.

One of THE MOST OVERLOOKED classics

The amount of mindfuckery that unfolds in this movie is enough to put your favorite Nolan movies to shame.

Listen, I'm probably one of the most anti-woke mfs on this planet. I can't stand the sight of even the slightest hint of wokeness these days in movies.

So believe me when I say I don't see anything woke here. I see a love for art and storytelling. And some phenomenal acting.

Also, this movie came out during a time where dogshit ideologies weren't shoved down our throats at every turn of phrase. Storytelling was tasteful. The art of cinema was respected.

So, yes. Anyone who does rate this as woke is either a certified moron or a sarcastic attention-seeking troll.

Predestination

Predestination, not woke come-on people. First you see a baby left at a orphanage then grows into a little girl misfit beating up the boys at school next the bar seen, a Woman comes into a bar dressed as a man, they tells a dragged out story of her two sex organs and the ensuing sex change, then goes into the bathroom staring at the closed toilet seat not knowing what to do. Posted review; no mention of how woke, review states “ interesting and captivating with a new twist to a classic formula” greatest sci-fi film, etc,etc. Man if this movie ain’t woke what is, I can’t believe more people haven’t complained. I only made it to the toilet seat seen, that was enough. Not only woke but super duper woke, you get the hole sex change story and more. Ethan Hawke, shame on you for putting up with this script

Could have been excellent

Hoult and Cage are brilliant - for once, Cage is not the only main character. Hoult is shaping up to be consistently good.

The movie itself is tongue-in-cheek, colourful and irreverencious.

Sadly, it's marred by girlboss syndrome - which could make sense in context - but males are uniformly bubbling incompetents. It's played for comedy, but, white blokes exclusively.

Awkeye final - Aqua fina - the female lead - seems close to developing an acting ability. Also, comedic timing. Same character, same act as in Shang-Chi.
It's wonderful that her career began before she was ready. I mean, for her, not for us. Must be her physique. Or not. I hear she's a rapper too. Hopefully, it's all I hear.

I really liked the photography. It is, as previously stated, colourful. And expressive. Far from the usual Hollywood orange and teal.

Good movie, sadly trying to trend toward the 'modern audience', which I am not part of.
Could have been excellent with a less sexist/racist script, and a better actress.

The only real woke is some DEI token and overrepresentation in background characters, at least in the first 30 minutes I managed to watch. There are some great actors here yet somehow the acting is all barely passible. I put the blame squarely on the director. The story is completely implausible stupidity. Now that would be fine if the comedy was a bit on the over the top side. But it's not, the entire thing is played straight and serious and there is nothing funny anywhere. It's just boring bland slow moving stupidity.