Doctor Who Christmas Special: Dr Babe’s Trip Through The Looking Glass

Dr Babes is back and crying once again.

There was so little merry about this that I consider how they can even call it a Christmas special, surely that is some form of false advertising.

If you didn’t like the new Doctor’s first series you won’t like this it is much more of the same, him dancing, him saying babes, him being sassy and then being strong by crying. Who needs brains and a sonic screwdriver when you have interpretive dance and crying.

Him being joined by one of the stars of Bridgerton just feels like the BBC once again desperately trying to get in a youth audience that has never even heard of Doctor Who, she was entirely forgettable. Turning her into the Star Of Bethlehem from the Bible was an unexpected twist that manages to spoil a centuries old story, all to prop up the BBC’s failing IP.

Having a future version of the Doctor show up just feels like more messing with the cannon for the sake of trying to get a cheap thrill, it shows a lack of respect towards the series and towards those that enjoy it. However, I would expect nothing more from the current day BBC.

Overall, more garbage paid for by an archaic and unjust tax.

0.5/5

Pros.

It makes for a good thing to laugh at

Cons.

The guest star can’t act

The star twist is stupid and doesn’t fit

The future Doctor idea is lazy and disrespectful

It is cringe

It is too long

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Sonic Three: The Quest For Meaningful Stakes

Summary

Sonic, voiced by Ben Schwartz, is back.

Going into the latter half of the year and looking at a pretty dire slate this was one of the few films that kept that small ember of optimism alive in me. However, after seeing it I have to say I was disappointed. I really don’t want to be writing that but it is the truth.

My issue with the film is pretty clear cut, whilst I liked Knuckles it did feel very much like a small story idea wrapped in goofiness and filler that was acceptable as it was a streaming show and not a mainline film. This film was far more Knuckles than the previous two films, rather than having some earnest heart, and having some epic moments or deeper worldbuilding, this film instead decided to have lots of goofy nonsense, such as a musical dance number, Eggman, Jim Carrey’s, obsession with telenovelas and a long drawn out race sequence in the films first act.

They have Krysten Ritter as the new director of GUN yet they give her one line and that is it, it is such a waste. I would have rather had more scenes that debated the ethical nature of GUN and made Sonic and co question whether they could trust them. As far as Shadow, voiced by Keanu Reeves, goes I was again disappointed. Shadow is my favourite character in Sonic lore yet they just give him a pretty bog standard revenge arc here before making him team up with Sonic at the end. I would have liked to see more of Shadow being an anti-hero, rather than him just getting the Knuckles in Sonic Two treatment where he is a villains henchman turned hero. It would have been better to have him and Sonic both trying to fix a problem say GUN did something bad in the past, but Shadow’s ways are too extreme and that puts him at odds with Sonic, rather than Sonic and Shadow both realise GUN did something bad so Shadow is going to destroy them for revenge, this seem over the top for Shadow who is an antihero, to kill lots of innocent people, and yes he isn’t fully aware of the weapons potential but still.

Overall, I would hope for the next film they could have less goofy silly stuff and a little more stakes and tension. It is never going to be super serious but some worldbuilding and some deeper character work would be nice. What I would like out of the next film is a for Amy-Rose to take team Sonic, including Shadow off world and for it to be a galaxy hopping adventure to stop a mass wave of Metal Sonics from destroying Earth to get to Sonic, this journey would explore Sonic’s origins and be large scale and epic. We wouldn’t have any goofy sing alongs dancing or anything else like that, we would have character growth and stakes.

Overall, good but a bit too silly and without the heart of the previous films.

3/5

Pros.

The end credits

It is cool to see Shadow even if they don’t do much with him

Jim Carrey is entertaining

Cons.

It is too goofy

It wastes new actors like Ritter

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The Advent Calendar: Belgium Really Seems To Have A Thing Against Disabled People In This One

Summary

An evil advent calendar leads to the deaths of a bunch of people.

I am all for horror being depressing but come on. I mean everyone in this film seems to hate the main woman, played by Eugenie Derouand simply for existing. Even her supposed friend steals the guy she is into and lets her go home with a horrible man who attacks her. It is pretty bleak.

This is done to make it better when the calendar kills a lot of these folks but still, it doesn’t make for nice viewing. Even I who have been round the way with horror many times, find seeing a disabled woman being sexually assaulted and then violently thrown out of a car and having to crawl back into her wheelchair, which takes quite a long time making it even more uncomfortable, to be needlessly over the top. It is not so much that this film is scary but it is incredibly depressing.

Overall, if you’re looking for a horror film to depress you more than it scares you look no further than this.

1/5

Pros.

It tries something new

Cons.

It is depressing

It is badly paced

A majority of the cast do very little

It is boring at times

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Baby Girl: Those Nichole Kidman AMC Adverts Have Changed Quite A Bit.

Summary

Hold onto your casserole dishes we get yet another erotic thriller for mothers.

Very much like the Grey films this film seeks to fetishize s and m and puts forward the idea of how hot it is for the boss women to be made to bark like a dog for a younger man. Is this actually titillating for anyone, remember folks when erotic thrillers would just be normal fairly vanilla sex but the passion of it is what gave it the heat, now you have stuff like this done for shock value. I am no prude but I do consider what sort of things are being shown as healthy here, and don’t think they are in fact that.

I find the graphic scenes of Nicole Kidman masturbating to not be shocking, to not be boundary pushing as oh we have never had a scene of a woman masturbating before, glass sealing shattered as we have, but instead rather to be desperate. These sort of scenes are not put in to make some bold comment on female sexuality, this comment has already been more articulately made, they are done for shock value and to be like ‘oh look at how graphic we made it that’s sexy right?’ It isn’t it is just desperate.

If Miss Kidman thinks this will make her anymore relevant or hey even get her some awards love it won’t. It will be forgotten about in about 5 minutes and will only live on in the mind of some old neglected housewife who wants it to happen to her.

Overall, a desperate sad attempt at eroticism.

1/5

Pros.

Old unsatisfied housewives might like it

Cons

It is cringe

It is desperate

It legitimising some morally bad things

Kidman is miscast

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What If Season Three Overview: Shut Down Marvel Animation

Summary

Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

So before this series aired it was well known that What If was not coming back, yet did they think to have it go out on top? Oh no. What Marvel animation produced is one of worst things that Marvel Studios has ever dumped onto Disney Plus in disgrace.

Where to start, maybe with the fact that none of the characters you know and want to see are shown here, no Iron Man, no Scarlett Witch, no Cap, but hey you do get popular Phase 4/5 characters like Agatha, Shang Chi and Kate Bishop, remember them? Worse yet rather than show us what if scenarios based on characters we like they decide to give us all new characters that mean nothing to us, Howard the Duck and Darcy have a kid, yes casual bestiality in an MCU show, and she is an important character later in the season. I bet you can hardly contain your excitement.

To break it down episode by episode so you can get a flavour of what is just so bad about the season, the first episode reads as a kid copying off their more successful friend in this case Marvel Animation stealing ideas wholesale from Pacific Rim and Godzilla. The second is an old Hollywood pat on the back with Agatha, one of the least popular characters in the MCU. The third tries to be a spy thriller sort of affair with Winter Soldier and Red Guardian yet reads more as how much can David Harbour embarrass himself in twenty minutes. The fourth is the infamous duck sex. The fifth features a Riri Williams the bargain basement Iron Man clone with multiple failed comics runs to her name. The sixth is an old west adventure with Shang Chi and Kate Bishop, who have about as much chemistry as two neighbours who have had a bitter blood feud for twenty years. The seventh is a Captain Carter and her new characters adventure across the multiverse, this is probably the best episode though that doesn’t mean its good, it sets up an interesting finale and has Storm so those memberberies are present.

The finale takes anything good about episode seven and defecates all over it and serves it up to you on a bed of middle fingers, it is about twenty minutes of Captain Carter and co punching the watchers until she finally kills herself at the end. The death of Captain Carter should have felt like something she was the show’s most important creation and yet it just felt like you had twenty minutes of your time wasted, they could have done so much with this and taken the finale in a number of ways and yet they just didn’t.

Overall, this leaves a bad taste in my mouth after a year of questionable Marvel offerings with worse yet to come. Personally I believe the age of Marvel Studios is well and truly over and I don’t think they can come back, I think it is over.

0/5

Pros.

There is nothing redeemable about it

Cons.

They seem allergic to using popular characters

The finale is terrible

The casual bestiality

It isn’t entertaining

You feel nothing

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Better Man: A Death Rattle Out Of A Rotting Sub-Genre

Summary

A man is made into a monkey.

So as I have been saying for a while musical biopics as a sub-genre are running out of steam at the box office, there are a few here or there that are making money but by and large the amount being made is less and less. In steps the bright corporate idea of making these biopics more silly and unique by doing things like shooting with Lego or as is the case here having a musical biopic where the singer is being played by a CGI monkey. I hope you can smell the desperation as I can dear discerning reader.

Honestly, there isn’t much to say about the film itself beyond its central conceit which I have already mentioned above, it is the same old same old. If you have ever seen a musical biopic before then you know the story, it is one of two. It is either rise then fall or rise, hardship, continued success, this would fall into the latter category. The two story structures are never deviated from across the entire sub-genre and really can’t be, if you are trying to tell a somewhat accurate biopic, sans the monkey, then you have to stick to reality and reality is either one or two.

If you are a Robbie Williams fan then that will help the experience as you can at least enjoy the music.

Overall, it is watchable if entirely uninspired. The monkey gimmick feels as desperate as it sounds.

2/5

Pros.

It has good songs, I am a fan of Williams music.

It has a good mostly British cast, though they are underused

Cons.

The monkey thing feels desperate

It is been there and done that

It is poorly paced

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Demon Slayer Hashira Training Arc Series Overview: A Waste Of Time

Summary

The new season of Demon Slayer has one goal, to waste your time.

So if you have read my other season reviews for Demon Slayer then you know I often have the same complaint, the pacing and the filler, more often than not each season will have a few good episodes and then lots and lots of filler around it, this is where that shifted.

I wish I could tell you that the change is a good thing but it isn’t, this season was almost entirely filler far more than the other seasons. Basically the whole of the season was just the character’s training, which I know is what the season is called, but there is no build up to a grand show down as there was with the other seasons, no here it basically just builds up to a pretty disappointing death and then the cast are thrown into the pocket dimension with a big to be continued vibe to it.

I like the characters and I like seeing them interact but this was long drawn out nothingness, and the fact that there wasn’t even a satisfying pay off at the end of the all the filler makes it doubly annoying.

Overall, this is just killing time until the films and everyone knows it.

1/5

Pros.

It has a cool ending

Cons.

It is all set up and no pay off

It is all filler

It is boring and badly paced

It hits the same beats over and over again

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Nosferatu: Lily-Rose Depp Is Even Worse Here Than In The Idol

Summary

Robert Eggers is back with his most vapid film yet.

So I am a huge fan of Robert Eggers in my mind he’s 2 for 3, The Lighthouse being the odd one out for me. However, in his forth entry we see him move away from his art house roots and move closer to the mainstream than he ever has before, much to his and the film’s detriment. This film could have felt deeper and as though it had more to say if it had used more of Egger’s art house flourishes, what this film reeks of to me is of a man wanting to make a commercially, as in main stream approved film, as such his usual motifs and themes have to be dumbed down. I wouldn’t be surprised if after The Northman flopped Eggers felt he needed to make a commercially successful film in order to prove he was more than just an art house director.

The film itself is a pretty close version of the Dracula story/ or here Nosferatu, there are some changes to the original German silent film, quite noticeably in the villains appearance. If you have seen either the original German film or other versions of Dracula you know where this is heading. I found the fact that they stuck with the original film’s ending but changed it to rather than just drain her of blood here he did that whilst also having sex with her to be an odd choice, but hey they did it to get the punters in as they felt the need to try and sell this as some sort of erotic horror film. Alas anything to sell tickets.

Finally we move to the biggest issue with the film Lily-Rose Depp. So I have seen her in quite a number of films now Yoga Hosers, Wolf, a forgotten science fiction film, and now this and honestly she gave her best performance in Yoga Hosers. At least there she shows a variety of emotions here she has one face for the entire film, distant and robotic. Her husband who she thought dead isn’t, distant and robotic, she is having relations with a vampire, distant and robotic, she is trying to convey the threat posed, can you guess what I am going to say. Honestly, there are scenes in this film where she is rolling around and having fits, but also maybe possibly orgasming at the same time, its an odd film, and it shouldn’t be but is massively comical. Mainly this is due to Depp’s poor acting, increasingly it seems that she is becoming the actress that will take her kit off and that has a lot of sex on screen but that won’t make up for a lack of talent. Anya Taylor-Joy in this would have done a much better job.

Overall, a massive misstep.

2.5/5

Pros.

Some good cinematography

I liked the old timey dialogue

The rats were a nice touch

Cons.

Depp

It is a familiar story

It wastes time

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Dune Prophecy Season One Overview: Adapting The Wrong Book

Summary

Hollywood really can’t have any franchises without feeling the need to run them into the ground.

So the two recent Dune films were met with both praise and love from audiences, so what did they feel the need to do that’s right give the show a spin-off tv series. Now this could have worked with the right talent, but sadly it adapted one of Brian Herbert’s newest books, and focused on a group in the universe who are only interesting due to the fact that you don’t know much about them, it also lacked any talented creative to shepherd the series.

This feels very much as if the CW was given the Dune license, it doesn’t have the production values of the films by any metrics, and it focuses more on petty soap opera like drama rather than universe wide intrigue and drama. The opening 5 minutes of the first episode are the most entertaining thing about the whole first season, it would have been far more interesting to focus on a different Brian Herbert book and looked at the Butlerian Jihad and humanities war against thinking machines, but they clearly wanted to go with another angle.

The fact that this is a girl boss Dune series is not only why it was made but also why it was made so fast, the wise and perfect and not at all morally corrupt Sister needs to lead the Imperium from the shadows because silly men would lead it to ruin. There is as you can imagine a number of girl boss themes and men taking their tops off so the women can objectify them, remember folks it is okay when one gender does it but not the other that’s the world we live in now.

Overall, it is a girl boss show about a group that is interesting when mysterious, this series removes that mystery and with it any interest in the show.

1/5

Pros.

The opening of the first episode

Cons.

It demystifies the Sisterhood

It is too drama focused and has little action

It feels like a science fiction soap

It is badly paced

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Squid Games Season Two Overview: The Filler Strikes Back

Summary

The games are back.

I really don’t know what to say, this was a massive let down. It reminded me of when you watched an Unexpected Journey for the first time and right when Bilbo and co are getting into the heat of it it’s the end credits. Please wait for the sequel. The reason why the Hobbit films are viewed with much more animus than the original trilogy of films is because they felt like one story divided into three for the sake of greed. This is much the same, rather than give us say a 15 episode second season that provides a satisfying follow up that ends out the series this instead decides to cut out right as the action is getting started. It is infuriating.

What makes this worse is the fact that there is so much filler here, the first two episodes are literally all filler and exposition. By the time the games actually do start up again you are almost midway through this ‘second’ season.

They also shoe horn in a trans storyline that feels very modern day and makes you ask the question why, the answer to that is likely Netflix said we have a diversity quota that needs filling and you don’t have any non-Asians in this so you have to make it up another way.

Overall, I would say don’t bother watching this until it is all out, it is not complete in anyway as is and comes off as massively unsatisfying.

2.5/5

Pros.

The games are interesting

It ends on a high

It has some good moments

Cons.

The filler

The forced in trans storyline

It shouldn’t have been split

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