Moonies Married To The Cult: A Documentary That Teaches You Nothing

A documentary about the secretive Moonies organization.

This felt like a very surface level documentary, in terms of the fact it covered a lot of things in not much depth. Not only did it assume at the start of the documentary that you already had a working knowledge of who the Moonies are, but it then presented a scatter shot approach to its topic, jumping back and forth between a lot of different points not spending much time with any of them.

It also doesn’t spend much time with more high profile things related to the Moonies such as the death of the former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and brushes over a number of these sort of things. It makes one question whether they may have had more material they were forced to drop, or maybe they originally planned it to be a series but then it got turned into a film. It is hard to say but one thing is for sure, it does not give you much of an in-depth look or understanding into the group.

It also has what I like to call Netflix witness/expert syndrome, wherein a documentary has a lot of talking heads who are just regular people, who had experiences with the Moonies, but doesn’t balance that out by including experts to contextualise things. When a documentary leans more heavily on ‘I was there’ testimony rather than having expert opinions it immediately loses credibility and is also far less engaging.

This feels like it was made for the short attention span having youths who want a mass market somewhat true crime documentary.

Overall, weak and fairly boring.

2/5

Pros.

I’ve seen worse, at least it had decent production values

It has some really interesting threads that it just doesn’t explore.

Cons.

It wastes one or two great witnesses

It is far too surface level

It jumps between too many things

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Wake Up Dead Man Knives Out Three: The End Of A Deal

Summary

Rian Johnson gives up.

The first Knives Out film was good, the second was bad, but the third is meh. Whilst it is better than the second film which was out and out trash, it is an effort in passive watching and little more. By that I mean the film feels very low energy and as though it was done just to make another one rather than out of a genuinely good idea, or need.

Josh Brolin commands the film admirably, but everyone else is just turning out for the pay check, even Craig’s fateful inspector feels like a flanderised version of himself from the previous films. Craig’s Blanc feels at times almost cartoonishly impotent or incompetent, and behaves at times in a way that is entirely alien to how we have seen him up until that point. Bad character writing.

The commentary of the film is on religion and how it divides us, but I suppose if done in a more effeminate way, is still good I guess, would arguably be the message of the film. Personally, I am not very religious, but I can imagine how if you were you might find elements of this film highly objectionable.

Overall, this feels like it was done to satisfy the Netflix demand for new content and not out of need, or due to some great new idea.

2.5/5

Pros.

It is watchable

Brolin

It has a few laughs

Cons.

There are too many underdeveloped characters

The preaching

It feels purposeless

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Love Meghan At Christmas: A Fake Christmas At A Fake House

Summary

Meghan Markle is back to save Christmas.

Much like the Grinch here Meghan tries her best to seem affable to get guests to come around to her house and desperately appease her, but if they say something she doesn’t like she will steal their presents. You get this vibe when Prince Harry who you imagine has been kept forcibly locked under the stairs for the past season arrives in the final few minutes and thanks his wife ‘for having him’. I imagine his SS costume that he was going to get for Christmas will have gone missing now as Megrinch teaches him a lesson.

Jokes aside this is more of what Meghan does best hosting various Z list celebrities and having them speak wellness speak, as Meghan pretends that she is listening. All the while she is thinking about her campaign for President on the democratic nomination. The guests she has for the special are a mixture of cringe, quiet and pandering, they all make the same awkward small talk, some with more of a feeling of duress.

Meghan tries to pull out all the stops including wearing Christmas pyjamas and does manage to make it feel Christmassy, despite her being fake, not in her own house and with her kids off and out of sight.

The cringe never ends.

Overall, a funny experience if you watch it ironically and see how weird and out of touch Meghan is.

3/5

Pros.

It is funny not intentionally

It is short

The discomfort is real

Cons.

It is very fake feeling

It is more of the same

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Home Alone Three: Fighting Terrorists With Toys

Summary

We remove, Macaulay Culkin, we replace burglars with terrorists, and we have it so the child is only home alone whilst there mother nips to the office. Is it even still Home Alone?

For me personally I prefer the traps section in this film to either of the earlier efforts as it truly feels like this one went all out and gave us this idea taken to its fullest. Perhaps this is gimmicky but to me it worked.

The child is not as affable as Kevin and the family feel like an imitation but at least the traps are good. It was odd that the mother seemed almost modelled after Catherine O’Hara, but I suppose John Hughes did have a type.

I thought the parrot had a number of good moments and brought some levity to the film, though I must say that even it got to a point wherein I felt was becoming a bit of a crutch for the film ultimately.

Overall, there is still some charm to be had here particularly if you like the traps however, I would say that it is not as good as the other two films as films and feels like a made for streaming movie, though in its time it would more likely be a straight to video film.

2.5/5

Pros.

The traps

The parrot

A few funny moments

Cons.

The plot is worse

The terrorists stuff is ridiculous

It lacks the charm

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Five Nights At Freddy’s Two: Blumhouse Actually Managed To Make A Horror Film

Summary

Blumhouse actually managed to make a horror film.

I thought the first Five Nights At Freddy’s was bad, this one I find almost good, they really managed to turn it around.

They managed to fix the tone issues of the first film and have it be actually scary throughout no building forts to happy music. The horror is very by the numbers, there are one or two effective jump scares, but it is more of what you would expect. The marionette was a cool addition and had the right aesthetic.

The story itself I found interesting, I am glad we weren’t returning too much to the first location, however, there is a number of contrivances throughout the film which set up the ending. So at the end of the first film Mike and Vanessa were basically a couple, yet here they walk that back and have this whole weird arc of Mike being angry at her and saying he can’t trust her, now this happens so she can get possessed at the end of the film and become the baddie for the next one, but makes no sense. The fact the writers need to break the logical throughline of their relationship just so they could set up a cliff hanger ending speaks to how bad the writing team is here.

Overall, the film is a step up from the first film, but the writing is still a fundamental issue.

3/5

Pros

It is more horror focused

It is engaging

It has one good jump scare

Cons.

The ending

The writing

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Diary Of A Wimpy Kid The Last Straw: Forced Conflict From A Writer Out Of Ideas

Summary

Greg and his family are back and this time he has daddy issues for no particular reason.

So I thought I was done with the horrible animated Disney + Diary of a Wimpy Kid films and yet here I am.

This time after embarrassing his dad at church, Greg is going to get sent to a military school unless he gets his act together. Cue a series of schemes to try and appear like he’s doing good at school which all go wrong, who could have seen that coming. This whole conflict is weird for three key reasons, one this conflict between Greg and his dad hasn’t been there before, the fact they have the author of the books writing these films and he just forgot that little detail is shocking, secondly is the fact that it is pretty clear to see Greg is accident prone not bad which makes the dad look unfair, thirdly Rodrick is actually bad and he just lets him get away with it. As such you end the film thinking that the dad is an insecure man child, who wants to punish his son for his own failings, which probably isn’t how the film wanted him to come across.

In the images on Disney+ for the film you see them wearing Christmas hats and it is presented as a Christmas film however, there really isn’t a mention of the season anywhere so it doesn’t really come across as a Christmas film. So if that’s what you are looking for then stay away.

All of my points about Greg being a goody goody from my last review also still stand here, it is quite sickening.

Overall, less cringe than the last one but the story and the conflict feels forced.

2/5

Pros.

It is short

There is one or two good laughs here

Cons.

It is boring

Greg is devoid of personality

The conflict feels forced

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Bride Hard: Stop Trying To Make Rebel Wilson A Thing

Summary

Amy Schumer better watch out Rebel Wilson is trying to steal her spot as the number one for slop on Netflix aimed at women.

This time Ozempic Wilson, as we will call her for the rest of the review, is a secret agent who has brought a group of civilians with her unknowingly in order to steal a bio weapon, whilst also being the maid of honour at a bachelorette party. Cut to painful cringe comedy.

The idea that Ozempic can take down a group of guys is just laughable, and not in a good way, the fact she does it all with a face straight out of the Alaqua Cox school of acting makes it funnier. Perhaps this is the death throws of the girlboss genre, they say as a genre dies it begins to parody itself and this certainly feels like that.

The thing is this sort of film was once funny, but that isn’t the case now, now you get a few unbelievable action scenes, a few sassy yaaaaaaaaaas queens from the friends, then cut to credits.

Overall, this is low rent female slop from Netflix, as it thinks this is what women want. However, much like Mel Gibson in a much better film from decades prior they don’t really know what women want.

0.5/5

Pros.

It is short

Cons.

It isn’t funny

Rebel Wilson should go away

It is slop

It is repetitive

The action is awful

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Stranger Things Season 5 The First Batch: Without Stakes

Summary

Stranger Things begins its final season.

Really, I think this should have been released all at once rather than in parts, the issue with this approach is I can’t really feel favourably to the first batch of episodes, as it feels like they are building to something that never comes. The Vecna fight is cool I guess when he destroys the military, but it also makes how easily the gang beat him in season four seem incredibly poorly conceived.

The big ‘epic’ reveals of this batch are mostly either pretty meh, one of the bad kids Eleven hung out with in season two is back, or cringe such as Will feeling okay in himself means he gets psychic powers. Neither of these things land.

Then you have the fact that like most seasons the series would rather focus on other people rather than developing out the cast we already have, herein represented by the focus on Holly Wheeler, you need to have a child character so the kids can still watch it even though they don’t. As well as Linda Hamilton who seems to be playing Sarah Conner from Terminator Dark Fate. You could have given those roles in the story to Erica and possibly a somehow alive Brenner and it would have made much more sense.

The hellfire stuff was dumb and boring last season and should have been scrapped the fact it is still being rehashed here, as they can’t think of anything else for Dustin to do is a further show of bad writing.

Overall, it moves the pieces around the board and has some good moments, but it can’t give us surprises we care about and feels the need to force in yet more boring needless characters.

2.5/5

Pros.

Finally giving the Wheelers something to do

Having all the characters in one place

A darker feel

Cons.

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Strangers Things Retrospective: Slop Hidden In Plain Sight

Summary

Stranger Things is often held up as one of the great modern series, but upon watching it back a second time you see the power of Netflix and the hype people, to really overblow something to the nth degree.

The conspiracy ideas of the show are interesting, however, it is far too derivative, concepts like how Vecna kills people in season four, or the entire mystery of the first season feel like carbon copies of other things from the period such as the works of Stephen King and The Nightmare on Elm Street films.

The series as a whole doesn’t seem to want to know who it is for either, it has mature elements for adults, yet packs the story so full of melodrama that it could be called a YA show just as easy. The issue with the series as it aged is the fact that it really started to drink its own cool aid, and started to have these big pompous episodes on for far longer than a lot of prestige tv shows, and the reason they were so long, not because they were trying to unpack weighty issues and themes but because of all the filler.

The characterisation and the character writing in terms of motivation feel so inconsistent, characters change massively over the course of the show and not in consistent ways that makes sense for them, almost as though the writers forgot who they were between seasons and just decided to start over. They also flanderise characters, look at Will, people said from the very first episode he was gay, yet as the series progressed that is all he became. The whole of the fourth season was him whining as his straight friend wasn’t into him, it gets to a point where the characters becomes a cliché.

I think with Stranger Things to which I watched all four seasons in the lead up to this final season over the last month, it becomes very clear that if you stripped out the nostalgia, the premise and the soundtrack and just viewed it as a show based on its characters, writing, and themes that it was always slop. The nostalgia and the premise made you think it wasn’t so bad, but it was always slop we just didn’t see it.

Overall, the show is pretty mediocre.

2/5

Pros.

The soundtrack

The mystery as a concept, the more and more they explain of it the worse it gets.

Cons.

The character writing

The pace

The shallowness of it

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Back To The Future: Marty’s Mother Is Sexually Abusive

Summary

A classic doesn’t hold up.

I recently watched this film after not having watched it in years, it was not a great experience.

Some films from the Eighties hold up and pass the test of time and some don’t I would argue this is the latter. Firstly, the stuff with Marty and his mother which is played for laughs is really quite an odd choice and is creepy. Marty is being constantly sexually harassed and at times quasi assaulted and yet this is not a big deal and if anything is just a humorous misunderstanding, lets flip the genders and see if it is still a comfortable viewing experience.

Following on from that is the aggressive amount of product placement that is everywhere. Whilst this could be viewed as gimmicky or a funny thing to laugh at it actually is quite distracting and the more and more it goes on and the more you see the worse it gets. It feels less like you’re watching a film and more like an advert.

The smoking gun for this revisionism is that Marty himself is insufferable, not only is he overly cocky and smug a lot of the time, he doesn’t treat those around him well he treats his dad, back in the past, with contempt for being nerdy, and he takes his girlfriend, in the future, for granted, worse yet he never really gets called out for being the way he is. However, when you watch it back you think if Marty was erased from existence the world wouldn’t be so bad.

Overall, a movie that does not hold up.

2/5

Pros.

It is watchable

It has a good soundtrack

Cons.

The stuff with his mother

The product placement

Marty is not a nice person

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