deltagilbert's Reviews

The Acolyte (2024– )

3/10

6 June 2024

Two episodes in and all I can think about is how much this series seems to have ripped off scenes from The Matrix. Having Carrie-Anne Moss effectively play Trinity again but dressed in a Jedi robe was bizarre and ridiculous.

The martial arts direction they appear to be trying to take for this series' action scenes makes for a strange and jarring choice. Even the non-Jedi characters seem to be experts in kung fu. It doesn't feel like Star Wars at all.

Much of the dialogue sounds flat, as if it were straight from a high school drama production.

I laughed hard at the scenes with Torbin, a levitating Jedi master, in the second episode. The makeup department takes a very young actor and gives him a terrible fake beard and receding hairline to make him look like an old man. It looks like something from an SNL sketch.

Overall, the show is generally uninteresting and at times laughable. This is the reason I will probably watch to the end, just to see how bad it gets.

So, it falls into the 'so bad it's good' category but I'm not sure that what the creators were going for.

3 out of 5 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Old Dads (2023)

7/10

Great fun ruined by the last half hour.

23 October 2023

Warning: Spoilers

A very funny movie about a guy who just can't stop getting mad at the ridiculous world we find ourselves living in.

I laughed a fair bit throughout this movie, but those laughs lessened toward the end. The problem is that the three main characters are in the right throughout the movie, but the writers just didn't have the spines to see it through to the end.

Burr's character almost loses his home and family for refusing to fall for what turns out to be an embezzling fraudster. But when his wife loses her cool and it costs Burr a close friendship, he just has to accept it. The man is held accountable, the woman is not.

Woodbine's character knows what he wants. He wants a life free of marriage and kids. He even puts his money where his mouth is and gets a vasectomy. His younger girlfriend says she doesn't want kids or marriage, but somehow gets pregnant anyway. In the end, Woodbine just accepts the situation he wanted no part in and rolls over. The girl gets what she wants at the expense of him losing everything he wanted.

Cannavale is trapped in a horrible marriage. He reaches a point where he can see the exit. His awful wife gives him a choice to leave, but he just basically asks her to be nicer to him. Pathetic.

The last 30 minutes of this movie cancel out the genuinely smart and funny first hour.

Worth a watch but could have been so much better if the writers had stuck to their guns.

16 out of 27 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

From (2022– )

5/10

Frustrating - Characters keeping everything to themselves so they never learn anything new.

30 May 2023

This show started off well. It has an interesting premise, creepy and genuinely threatening monsters and initially a few gory scenes. The problem is it drags on episode by episode and goes absolutely nowhere.

The most frustrating part is when a character finds some information or has a weird experience, rather than share with the group to help the other characters learn something about their situation, they just hide it and the story doesn't progress. Why do they need to keep everything secret? By season 2 episode 6 they, and the viewer, have learned nothing and the story has gone nowhere.

I really want to see where the story goes but its such slog I might eventually give up.

14 out of 20 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Make My Day (2023– )

3/10

Starts of well but the awful script ruins it.

4 February 2023

The basic premise of the show is 'big bugs discovered on an icy mining colony start eating everyone'.

The first two episodes were interesting. I thought it was some kind of animated spin off from the Lost Planet series of videogames and I was waiting to see bigger and more crazy looking bugs show up (which they never did). By episode 3 the plot had descended into badly written, non-stop, cringe inducing dialogue about emotions and how people should help each other with very little action to keep me entertained.

The bugs quickly became boring and each new character that the story introduces is more irritating than the last.

The animation is pretty good. Similar to Arcane but not as colorful and smooth.

After episodes one and two the series isn't worth watching. I watched the dubbed version because I was tired and too lazy to reach for my glasses. This was a mistake as the dubbing is possibly the worst I've ever heard. It might be slightly better with subtitles but not by much.

In summary, avoid.

25 out of 30 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Snow Falls (2023)

1/10

Shot in 6 days. Same amount of time the writer must have attended school.

20 January 2023

Warning: Spoilers

The film is about a group of friends trapped in a cabin during a blizzard and they start to freeze to death. I think the writer's brains froze when they wrote this script.

Snow is coming down the entire film and the group gets snowed in, yet we see multiple shots throughout showing the cabin with the same dumb snowman outside surrounded by the exact same light level of snowfall.

They can't drive to safety because the road is blocked by snow. The same level of snow that continually surrounds the snowman. They might have well stuck a big ruler in the ground next to it for a laugh.

When the fire begins to go out the friends find they're quickly running out of firewood to burn. No one seems to notice they're surrounded by multiple sources of wood. They even have a big shiny axe to cut it with. The entire cabin is made of wood. The walls, doors, tables, chairs, trees outside, even the acting is wood. Everything!

Remember that road they couldn't drive to safety on? The police car at the end of the film doesn't seem to have any trouble driving along it. Maybe only one lane was clear and the gang didn't want to drive on the wrong side of the road or something. Definitely better freezing the death than getting pulled over.

This whole film is dumb, boring and I'd rather freeze to death than watch it again.

48 out of 49 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)

7/10

A midly entertaining effort but a masterpiece when compared to the W.S. Anderson garbage.

21 December 2021

This movie is far from great but it is entertaining and the closest we've come to seeing a true live action version of Resident Evil. The movie gets a lot of things wrong but gets a lot of other things right. There are lots of bits lifted straight out of the games, some recognizable locations and some good action and effects. There was also a few odd casting choices that were quite jarring.

Compared to the awful W. S. Anderson movies, this is a masterpiece. But that's not saying much. Overall I enjoyed this movie for what it was. If you played the original game on the PS1 like I did you will probably enjoy it too.

4 out of 9 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Malignant (I) (2021)

7/10

James Wan's best movie.

12 September 2021

I usually find Wan's film pretty disappointing. The trailers promise much and the actual films deliver little but I had a lot of fun watching this.

Malignant is an old school B-grade monster movie. It gave me the feeling of watching old 80's horrors like Child's Play and Psycho Cop. I highly recommend it.

0 out of 2 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Masters of the Universe: Revelation (2021)

5/10

Fun but a missed opportunity.

27 July 2021

It's a fun, short and easily watchable 5 episode series. It was great to see old characters back on screen again after all these years and focuses on the supporting cast rather than He-Man.

Was it Teela heavy like the leaks claimed ? Yes. Evil Lynn was a way more interesting character in this series though.

Story wise, there's a few dumb character choices at times and it was probably a massive mistake sidelining He-Man and Skeletor. It will need a second season to actually become a He-Man show but based on the reactions of most people right now, I doubt we'll ever see it.

1 out of 12 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Werewolves Within (2021)

3/10

Only two reasons to watch this garbage.

3 July 2021

Nothing to see here except the lovely Milana Vayntrub. There's a single scene in the movie where she dances to 'I Saw the Sign' by Ace of Base (which I personally really enjoyed). After that, I could have just turned the movie off because it was terrible. It wasn't funny, scary or entertaining. It was just a load of poorly written characters running around doing dumb stuff for no reason until the credits roll. And there's very little werewolf in the whole movie.

25 out of 55 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Till Death (I) (2021)

8/10

Surprisingly fun and suspenseful

3 July 2021

I went in with very low expectations and came away really enjoying having watched this movie. It was a fun game of cat and mouse. The plot moves along at a steady pace and the writers managed to successfully keep a sense of suspense going throughout. Acting was pretty decent. Callan Mulvey always plays an excellent villain and needs more roles where he can do his thing. Megan Fox was fine too. Well worth your time.

45 out of 83 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Tomorrow War (2021)

7/10

Better than most 'blockbusters'.

2 July 2021

The movie started off slow. The first 20-30 minutes of set up could be condensed into 10 to make room for far more interesting scenes. But once the main story and action got started I was very impressed. The parts set in the future were excellent and the last act was a pleasant surprise from where I thought the story would go.

This is also Chris Pratts best movie after Guardians ( I actually prefer this but I think I'll be in the minority).

The cgi effects were excellent and I could rarely tell the creatures were computer generated which kept me in the movie.

After so many streaming failures I'm happy one of these attempts turned out to be enjoyable.

4 out of 8 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

What Lies Below (2020)

1/10

Stop making movies with no real ending!

8 June 2021

I knew after an hour the writers were boxing themselves in and struggling for a way to properly conclude the movie. At the end you're 'left to wonder'. Massive cop-out. It's just lazy, inept writing. I despise movies like this but there seems to be a growing number of them these days. Don't waste you time with this trash.

2 out of 3 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Coming 2 America (2021)

2/10

Breaking news! Racism is bad, women are good!

16 March 2021

There is a very thin plot here about Eddie Murphy's son following in his father's romantic footsteps. It's largely forgettable. I chuckled once or twice during the movie. I cringed at the heavy handed, sledgehammer to the face way I'm told yet again, racism is bad and women are equal to men. I agree with those messages but do they really have to be to overtly hammered home?

We have Eddie's son facing a young white racist during an job interview. We have Eddies daughter being passed over for ruler of Zimunda in favor of the son based purely on gender. Zero subtlety, zero intelligence and zero laughs. Surely there is a writer out there with a way of adding these messages to a movie without using the storytelling equivalent of slipping on a banana skin.

There were a few 'look here, and old famous person' cameos and some poorly utilized classic Eddie characters from the original (Sexual Chocolate guy was the worst).

No one will be watching this movie a second time, let alone in 30 years.

3 out of 4 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Wrong Turn (2021)

8/10

Better than the originals

12 February 2021

I was expecting this to be terrible but it turned out to be a solid film. Starts off like the originals but goes in a very different direction than the cannibal hillbilly route. It was an interesting take without a cheesy 'evil for no reason' villain. I enjoyed it from start to finish. Well worth your time.

2 out of 12 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Empty Man (2020)

1/10

Nonsense.

8 February 2021

Starts out interesting but the story falls apart minute by minute. It's a long film too at over 2 hours. The ending is total nonsense. Don't waste your time.

5 out of 16 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Monsters of Man (2020)

7/10

Surprisingly good.

8 December 2020

I was shocked by how good this movie turned out and how much I enjoyed it. I gave it a go after being impressed by the trailer. I was expecting trash but for a low budget indie movie I thought it was surprisingly good and looked really professional. And I'm a sucker for cool looking robots.

The movie was really well filmed. I'm not sure what it was filmed on but it didn't have that cheap 'filmed on a phone' look, which I appreciated.

The robot designs were great. They had a very realistic Boston Dynamics look to them and the CGI was for the most part excellent.

The cast and the characters they played were decent too. The acting was solid over all and the one really annoying character (the blonde bearded dude) actually grew some balls, started making smart choices and had me routing for him by the end of the movie.

My only complaint was the running time was a little too long. It got a little repetitive towards the end. At 131 minutes I was waiting for it to wrap up with around 15 minutes or so left to go.

I recommend giving this a watch. It's well worth your time. Well done Mr Toia. I'll be keeping an eye out for your next project.

8 out of 12 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Star Trek: Discovery (2017–2024)

1/10

Bland crew. Annoying main character.

26 November 2020

I've given this show a good go. I've tried like it but I just can't. It's simply not very good. It started off poorly and to its credit, did get a little better by the third season. You can see the writers had to cut their losses and move the story to a new period in time because of the massive mess that they made during the first 2 seasons.

The third season has potential with the fresh slate it's been given but the cast are just so bland and annoying. They're all so cheesy in their support of the dumb choices of Michael Burnham makes (urgh, that name). All Michael does is cry, ignore orders (yet still save the day) and cry some more. It's embarrassing to watch.

The show runners have indeed gone out of their way to incorporate diversity into the show but have hired some of the most irritatingly smug actors (perhaps that's just the way they're written). It doesn't help that the show focuses almost exclusively on Michael. Remember when you might get an episode following Data and Geordie in Engineering? Or Worf chilling with the Klingons on Q'onoS? There's none of that. So you just don't know about or care for the supporting members of the crew.

This is one of those shows you'll watch while doing something else and immediately forget once the episode ends. It is by far the weakest of all the Star Trek shows.

7 out of 14 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Come Play (2020)

8/10

An unexpected gem of a movie

22 November 2020

This was a really fun movie to watch. Had I watched this as a kid I would have been terrified. Took me back to when I saw Child's Play when I was 11. The plot is surprisingly suspenseful. the monster is well designed and was never overused to the point where it isn't scary anymore. I didn't find many clichés or characters making stupid choices, which was a pleasant change. This is simply a solid horror movie that is well worth your time.

Give this movie a go. You'll have fun watching it. So will your kids if they get their hands on it.

2 out of 5 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Tax Collector (2020)

1/10

The Cringe Collector

9 August 2020

I couldn't finish this movie. Everything about the movie was trying so hard to be cool and badass. The acting and dialogue from LaBeouf and Soto was embarrassing to watch. I finally turned it of at one point where a 'scary' boss asks to speak to his underling and proceeds to quietly laugh into the phone before hanging up. Very intimidating... and cringe worthy. You'll see what I mean if you make it that far into this garbage. I'll be very impressed if you make it to the end.

48 out of 88 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Old Guard (2020)

5/10

Interesting idea but would have been better in TV.

19 July 2020

The movie has an interesting premise about a band of immortal mercenaries taking on bad guys over the centuries and are now being hunted.

The characters are solid with potentially great backstories that I would have loved to see being explored in more depth but as a single movie everything is crammed in despite the 2 hour running time. It all felt way too shallow. It would have worked better as a TV show.

One thing I found really jarring was the contemporary soundtrack. Lots of UK R&B rather than a traditional orchestral soundtrack which would have added some feeling of emotion to what were seeing on screen. It didn't fit and really took me out of the movie at times. I know the idea was to sound modern and cool but it fell completely flat.

Overall, it's worth a watch but it won't blow you away.

1 out of 2 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Hunt (II) (2020)

3/10

Not as smart as it thinks it is.

17 June 2020

There was just no point to this movie. It was probably trying to say something about society and/or elitism. Trump being a bad guy was probably supposed to be in there somewhere too.

It was an aimless version of the Hunger Games. The acting is ok and the action parts are ok but its story goes absolutely nowhere. There is a twist at the end about the main character that answers nothing. It was all so pointless. It's watchable but you will forget out about it the moment you turn it off.

0 out of 9 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Turning (2020)

1/10

Awful. Nonsensical. No ending.

7 April 2020

Why do they bother making these films with half a story. What on Earth did I watch? Why did I bother?

This is your standard ghost story until the writers get bored and just stop. Please don't waste your time. If you do end up watching remember, I warned you.

0 out of 2 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Grudge (2019)

1/10

Terrible

12 March 2020

Worse than the last set of remakes, which were passible. This is just bad. It's boring, not scary or creepy in any way and the ghosts are generic 'dead body' looking borefests. I kept wondering why everything in the movie was so orange. Watch the original instead.

2 out of 3 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Daughter of the Wolf (2019)

2/10

Awful

17 June 2019

It should have been a straight forward 'mother hunts down kidnappers' story but it was so poorly written it became a total mess. The bad guys couldn't decide if they wanted to be bad guys. There was no real explanation of the main villains motivations. The action scenes were dull and amateurish. And what was the deal with the wolves? The acting wasn't bad but the plot was just awful. I like Gina Carano so I gave it a go but that 1 hour 28 minutes felt like an eternity. Give this one a miss.

8 out of 24 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

The Super (2017)

1/10

What a mess!

20 October 2018

Warning: Spoilers

What the hell did I just watch? The plot is nonsensical. I'm finding it difficult to describe just how poorly written this film is. Everything happens for no reason at all. The movie starts as a thriller then descends into an absurd ghost story with no explanation as to whats going on.

By the end I wondered if any of the actors had read the script before signing on. They must all have needed the pay day because this film is an embarrassment to everyone who took part in its production.

41 out of 66 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

deltagilbert

Reviews

Tell Your Friends

Recently Viewed