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3

I wasn't expecting to love it this much when I first started watching. But it was just so clever, and every aspect of it, from the acting, and the direction styles, to the cinematography, and the amazing soundtrack (Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross are hard to beat), was just so beautifully and precisely crafted to serve the story. The writing in this show genuinely excellent, and often multilayered in its delivery - in particular "She Was Killed By Space Junk", and "A God Walks Into Abar" are especially magnificent.

If you aren't familiar with the Watchmen universe on some level, then it's true, you'll miss some of the references and double meanings that really elevate the show. However I do also think that it's possible to watch it without any prior knowledge, as the show throws everyone into the deep end - fans and newcomers alike, and reveals the state of the world and the characters that occupy it in small increments. If there's something that the audience needs to know, you just have to have a little patience, and a healthy dose of curiosity, and trust that the writers will reveal the necessary information at the right moment. But it's worth sticking around for.

That said, it probably won't be for everyone, and there will undoubtedly be people who find some aspects of it offensive. And that's fair enough. But I will say that while the show is often unflinching in its delivery, it rarely feels gratuitous.

It's true, I'm firmly in the contingent of those who enjoy this type of story, and I'd been looking forward to watching this for a while, but the quality of Watchmen took me by surprise (and I can be quite critical of these things). The story is peculiar (sometimes downright bizarre), and delightful, and fast paced (but then also occasionally meandering), and often unsettling. But providing you like your stories a little weird, there's plenty to stick around for, and Watchmen has some of the best writing I've ever seen in television. I can't recommend it enough.

Ms. Marvel episode 1 impressions: First of all, why is Disney shooting these Marvel shows with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio? Shows meant to be shown exclusively on 16:9 displays. It's rather annoying. Especially after they made their huge marketing push of having 16:9 open matted versions of the Marvel movies on Disney+ with the "IMAX Enhanced" label. Seems really backwards to have the Marvel movies in 16:9 and the shows at a wider aspect ratio.

Second biggest problem: WTF did they do to her powers? This isn't faithful to the comics at all. Why is her ability this weird energy crystal power instead of polymorphing? And instead of getting her powers from having Inhuman genes, they made her get her powers from magic bracelets? It's like if they made Spider-Man shoot lasers instead of webs. She might as well be a totally different character.

In fact, making the source of her powers come from magic instead of from a genetic modification is a hilarious blunder as magic is considered haram in Islam. They might as well have made her a super fundamentalist Christian superhero who gets her powers from witchcraft.

I could excuse the strange casting choices that made Kamala and Bruno look too young compared to their comic counterparts if it weren't for the fact they ruined her powers. The constant shapeshifting body horror of the comics was central to Kamala's character.

For me this is another hatewatch just like the Halo series. Like Halo, while it has some things that appeal to fans of the original lore, it has many other aspects that drag it down and make it difficult to fully enjoy the show.

MODERATOR EDIT: Be more respectful.

A potentially great film being held hostage by its PG-13 rating and its messy, all over the places screenwriting.

By PG-13 I don't simply mean its visuals/goriness, but most importantly its dialogues, themes, and storytelling it tries to raise. Let me explain.

First, the dialogues.

The film opens with murder and Batman narrating the city's anxious mood. We get a glimpse of noir in this scene, but it soon falls flat due to a very uninteresting, plain, forgettable choice of words Batman used in his narration. Mind you, this is not a jab at Pattinson - Pattinson delivered it nicely. But there is no emotion in his line of words - there is no adjectives, there is no strong feelings about how he regards the city full of its criminals.

Here's a line from the opening scene. "Two years of night has turned me to a nocturnal animal. I must choose my targets carefully. It's a big city. I can't be everywhere. But they don't know where I am. When that light hits the sky, it's not just a call. It's a warning to them. Fear... is a tool. They think I am hiding in the shadows. Watching. Waiting to strike. I am the shadows." Okay? Cool. But sounds like something from a cartoon. What does that tell us about you, Batman?

Compare this to a similar scene uttered by Rorschach in Watchmen. "The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood. And when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. All those liberals and intellectuals, smooth talkers... Beneath me, this awful city, it screams like an abattoir full of retarded children, and the night reeks of fornication and bad consciences." You can say that Rorschach is extremely edgy (he is), but from that line alone we can tell his hatred towards the city, and even more so: his perspective, his philosophy that guides him to conduct his life and do what he does.

Rorschach's choice of words is sometimes verbose, but he is always expletive and at times graphic, making it clear to the audience what kind of person he is. Batman in this film does not. His words are always very safe, very carefully chosen, which strikes as an odd contrast to Pattinson's tortured portrayal of Batman as someone with a seemingly pent up anger. His choice of words is very PG-13 so that the kids can understand what Batman is trying to convey.

And this is not only in the opening scene. Throughout the film, the dialogues are written very plainly forgettable. It almost feels like the characters are having those conversations just to move the plot forward. Like that one encounter between Batman and Catwoman/Selina when she broke into the house to steal the passport or when Selina asked to finish off the "rat". They flow very oddly unnatural, as if those conversations are written to make them "trailer-able" (and the scenes indeed do appear on the trailer).

Almost in all crucial plot points the writers feel the need to have the characters to describe what has happened, or to explictly say what they are feeling - like almost every Gordon's scene in crime scene, or Selina's scene when she's speaking to Batman. It feels like the writers feel that the actors' expression just can't cut it and the audience has to be spoonfed with dialogues; almost like they're writing for kids.

Second, the storytelling.

Despite being a film about vengeance-fueled Batman (I actually like that cool "I'm vengeance" line) we don't get to see him actually being in full "vengeance" mode. Still in the opening we see Batman punching some thugs around. That looks a little bit painful but then the thugs seem to be fit enough to run away and Batman let them be. Then in the middle of the film we see Batman does something similar to mafias. Same, he just knocked them down but there's nothing really overboard with that. Then eventually in the car chase scene with the Penguin, Batman seem to be on "full rage mode", but over... what? He was just talking to Penguin a moment ago. The car chase scene itself is a bit pointless if not only to show off the Batmobile. And Batman did nothing to the Penguin after, just a normal questioning, not even harsher than Bale's Batman did to Heath's Joker in The Dark Knight - not in "'batshit insane' cop" mode as Penguin put it.

Batman's actions look very much apprehensive and controlled. Nothing too outrageous. Again, at odds with Pattinson's portrayal that seem to be full of anger; he's supposed to be really angry but somehow he still does not let his anger take the best of him. The only one time he went a bit overboard that shocked other characters is when he kept punching a villain near the end of the film. But even then it's not because his anger; it's because he injected some kind of drug (I guess some adrenaline shot). A very safe way to drop a parent-friendly message that "drug is bad, it can change you" in a PG-13 film.

And all that supposed anger... we don't get to see why he is angry and where his anger is directed at. Compare this to Arthur Fleck in Joker where it is clear as sky why Arthur would behave the way the does in the film. I mean we know his parents' death troubled him, but it's barely even discussed, not even in brief moments with Alfred (except in one that supposedly "shocking" moment). So... where's your vengeance, Mr. Vengeance? And what the hell are you vengeancing on?

Speaking of "shocking" moment... this is about the supposed Wayne family's involvement in the city's criminal affairs that has been teased early in the film. Its revelation was very anticlimactic: the supposed motive and the way it ended up the way it is, all very childish. If the film wanted the Wayne to be a "bad person", there's a lot of bads that a billionaire can do: tax evasion, blood diamond, funding illegal arms trade, fending off unions, hell, they can even do it the way the Waynes in Joker did it: hints of sexual abuses. But no, it has to be some bloody murder again, and all for a very trivial reason of "publicity". As if the film has to make it clear to the kids: "hey this guy's bad because he killed someone!" Which COULD work if the film puts makes taking someone's life has a very serious consequence. But it just pales to the serial killing The Riddler has done.

Even more anticlimactic considering how Bruce Wayne attempted to find a resolve in this matter only takes less than a 5 minute scene! It all involves only a bit of dialogues which boils down to how Thomas Wayne has a good reason to do so. Bruce somehow is convinced with that and has a change of heart instantly, making him looks very gullible.

And of course the ending is very weak and disappointing. First, Riddler's final show directly contradicts his initial goal to expose and destroy the corrupt elites. What he did instead is making the lives of the poor more difficult, very oxymoron for someone supposed to be as smart as him.

Second, the way Batman just ended up being "vengeance brings nothing and I should save people more than hurting people" does not get enough development to have him to say that in the end. Again - where's your vengeance? And how did you come to such character development if nothing is being developed on? And let's not get to how it's a very safe take against crime and corruption that closely resembles Disney's moralistic pandering in Marvel Cinematic Universe film.

Last, the visuals.

I'm not strictly speaking about gore, though that also factors in the discussion. The film sets this up as a film about hunting down a serial killer. But the film barely shows how cruel The Riddler can be to his victims. Again, back to the opening scene: we get it, Riddler killed the guy, but it does not look painful at all as it looks Riddler just knocked him twice. The sound design is very lacking that it does not seem what The Riddler done was conducted very painfully. Riddler then threw away his murder weapon, but we barely see blood. Yet when Gordon arrived to the crime scene, he described the victim as being struck multiple times with blood all over. What?

Similarly, when Riddler forced another victim to wear a bomb in his neck. The situation got pretty tense, but when the bomb eventually blow off, we just got some very small explosion like a small barrel just exploded, not a human being! I mean I'm not saying we need a gory explosion with head chopped off like in The Boys, but it does not look like what would happen if someone's head got blown off. Similarly when another character got almost blown off by a bomb - there's no burnt scar at all.

Why the hell are they setting up those possibly gory deaths and scars if they're not going to show how severe and painful these are? At least not the result - we don't need to see blood splattered everywhere - just how painful the process is. Sound design and acting of the actors (incl. twitching, for example) would've helped a lot even we don't see the gore, like what James Franco did in The 127 Hours or Hugh Jackman in Logan. In this film there's almost no tense at all resulting from those.

I'm not saying this film is terrible.

The acting, given the limited script they had, is excellent. Pattinson did his best, so did Paul Dano (always likes him as a villain), Zoe Kravitz, and the rest. Cinematography is fantastic; the lighting, angle, everything here is very great that makes a couple of very good trailers - perhaps one could even say that the whole film trades off coherency for making the scenes "trailer-able". The music is iconic, although with an almost decent music directing. And I guess this detective Batman is a fresh breath of air.

But all that does not make the movie good as in the end it's still all over the places and very PG-13.

Especially not with the 3 hours runtime where many scenes feel like a The Walking Dead filler episode.

If you're expecting a Batman film with similar gritty, tone to The Dark Knight trilogy or Joker, this film is not for you. But if you only want a live-action cartoon like pre-Nolan Batmans or The Long Halloween detective-style film, well, I guess you can be satisfied with this one.

Vastly overrated.

This is basically just a Nancy Drew, Veronica Mars style murder mystery, but placed in a supernatural school.

If you're a 30-40-something year old looking to revisit the Addams Family for some creepy capers and what-not. This isn't for you. This is written for alt-teens who grew up on Disney Channel movies and are now at the point in life where they are trying to rebel. The only thing here for the older crowd is Christina Ricci popping up in a new role.

The show is entirely predictable from the moment the "Hyde" (monster) is introduced. Ask yourself, why are certain character 1 and 2 so prominent in the story? What are they seriously offering?... Oh, it's because they're the bad guy and whoever are the bad guys at the start obviously won't end up being so. There are zero surprises here.

Despite the world it's set in, werewolves, sirens etc., it's entirely unimaginative and lacking in any real depth. Wednesday is just a 15/16 year old kid trying to be a detective and sticking her nose in where she has no business. Everyone keeps telling her to go away and stop and she is just annoying as anything. She also just isn't creepy and at all threatening like Christina Ricci was in the 90s. Jenna Ortega seems to act like she's watched one too many movies of Hollywood depicting an autistic kid and rolled it all into one reclusive bundle. It doesn't help that the script is bad and cheesey to be fair to her but again, she's just a kid devoid of giving a crap... with some one liners thrown in to make her sound like she's threatening or creepy here and there just to remind you she's Wednesday Addams and not Veronica Mars.

I fell asleep three times trying to watch through some of the middle episodes.

Oh... and the CGI on the Hyde monster. HORRIBLE. So cartoon. If you want to be reminded "this is definitely not realistic", that CGI covers it off nicely for you.

Michael Moore: "If you were to talk directly to the kids at Columbine or the people in that community, what would you say to them if they were here right now?"

Marilyn Manson: "I wouldn't say a single word to them I would listen to what they have to say, and that's what no one did".

Bowling for Columbine is a documentary about the gun Violence in America is shown as Michael Moore looks for causes and answers from some of America's top opponents of gun control.

Bowling For Columbine is one of best documentary's I've seen in a while. It's both unique and interesting with it's powerful look on gun violence in america and the Columbine shooting back in 1999. All this is shown in different type of tones, you got a brilliant sense of humor, a strong statement and the truth.

Michael Moore to me is 50/50, I know a lot of people don't like him and not a lot of people do like him. Yeah sometimes he can come off as jerk when it comes to interviews and some of the topics that he focus on, but I got to admit he sometimes comes up with some clever ideas to support he's statement and proving he's point to everyone, even when some may not agree. I don't hate the guy as these much more people out there that are even worse (like Katie Hopkins. If you don't know who she is look her up, she's a horrible human being). Moore is trying to get he's worries out about the fact that you can walk up to a counter of a gun shop and say "Can I have a gun please", and they give it to you and that person may shoot others if it falls into the wrong hands, and I can understand him right there even when Moore can take it to another level of forcing it in people faces which makes him look like a jerk to some.

The documentary jumps around to different places and people by hearing their thoughts on the gun problem and the Columbine Massacre. All opinions are mixed and this documentary is like a time capsule of what the people and the whole controversy bullsh*t that was happening back then was like. I always love those kind of documentary's that show you a bit of the past and everybody's thoughts back then, it's just so interesting.

The ending scene with Michael Moore interviewing Charlton Heston was both brilliant and it was hard to look away it was that strong. People may not like that scene has Moore is forcing the message down his throat, but I sawed something else then that, I sawed Moore trying to something right even when it might not be the thing but at least he's trying to prove he's own point.

Now for the problems: My only little problem with the documentary and it's only a ant size problem and that's when they talk about the Columbine High School Massacre and they talk about what may cause Eric and Dylan (The shooters of the massacre) to start shooting by on that day. They brought up that it might be violence on TV, violence in movies and games and they even brought up bowling as one, but they didn't bring up bullying and to those who didn't know, Eric and Dylan was bullied really bad and they were out cast of the school as nobody really cared for them, maybe that's why they did it, for revenge. The documentary didn't bring that up and I was wondering why they didn't put that in.

Overall Bowling for Columbine is a Documentary that's worth recommending and worth seeing.

What is this show supposed to be? Are you supposed to be knowledgeable when to comes to military terminology to know what's meant to be funny, and then go from there? Comedy is one of its main genres if not the main genre, but it didn't feel like it until the end. My rating was going to be a six because almost the entire episode felt random with hardly anything happening until it neared the end, starting with Cooper and Mekhi's business venture while Anthony gets lost with a goat. That made me change it to a seven. From what I've seen, a lot of people, mostly people who are in or have been in the military, are pissed at it. The show's nowhere near accurate, I'm guessing. I can understand their frustration. All I say is that this show just isn't for them. I imagine a lot of people who aren't in the military will hate it as well, perhaps for different reasons. All of that aside, I think this show has the potential to be very entertaining, and if a foothold is established quickly enough, and stays there, I think I'll find it very entertaining, too.

Really wanted this one to be a hit but I was sourly disappointed.

The supporting characters had no "character" at all. The show didn't give time for us to form any kind of connection between the hired mercenaries either. Made no sense when the robot and Makita all of a sudden had hearts. Robot kamazazing for no reasons after his "friend" was killed. The bear sacrificing herself to hold back the invading force? Why? There was no point in this show that these characters ever seemed to care about anyone but themselves. Which is fine really, that can be a character point in itself.

Yasuaki is bland and has no development at all. He is the same through out the show. As a black man I had little to connect with him. Really wish they gave him more character. Instead we got a basic protagonist that happened to be black.

The animation is poor. Watching the characters mouths move made my head spin. Looked more like an English dub when that is the original language. It's clear Netflix didn't give them much of a budget (Ala Castilvania, Son of Zeus) and it shows.

Those are just a few examples but there are more that made this show more of a failed experiment Netflix threw out there.

I have so much to say about this show and how bad it is. If you want a excellent supernatural drama, then watch this BUT only from season 1 to 5. The fifth season's finale offers a great ending to the show and after that, everything is just plain bad. The plots stop making sense, they bring back characters just to kill them off and introduce new ones nobody gives a shit about. Think about everything that makes the show amazing, all those characters you love. Well, you'll be lucky if they decide to kill them off, because they managed to ruin Castiel and Crowley's characters to a point where I can't even stand them. Season 10's Crowley is just terrible, all he does is sit on his chair in his castle or whatever the hell that is (look i made a pun) and kill random demons. Regarding Castiel, a lot happens to him after the fifth season, sure, but his character just doesn't evolve. This is so irritating because i was such a huge fan of this show but now i feel like i'm gonna have to drop it.
I can only recommend the 5 first seasons, after that everything is just bad.
Just look at the gap between season 1-5 ratings and season 6-10 (or 11 now, since it has been renewed), and really the only people still defending this show are tumblr hardcore fans and shippers.

5 September 2019 - I really try to give a series a chance to prove itself, but I'm abandoning 13 REASONS WHY after S3 E4. It is scrapping the barrel of all things potentially hurtful, damaging and downright dangerous in teen living. The prescriptive warnings by the cast to seek help if you are in the situations depicted in their drama do not excuse the series reinjuring those in peril for the sake of further episodes/seasons. This series no longer has a cathartic benefit. I will no longer be watching it (despite a new bright light in the cast). As I prophetically wrote in 2017 - This series has sucked the life out of its premise. I leave the series with a rating of 5 (meh) out of 10. [Teenage Drama].

I've left the previous reviews here so you can see how it fell out of my favour.

3 April 2017 - I'm just three episodes deep into this Netfilx series and I'm enjoying the characters and the suspense. This is a good premise, the acting is strong, and I can't wait to find out what happened, as we see the story from the varying points of view. Looking good - so I'm giving it a preliminary 8 (great) out of 10.

8 April 2017 - I'm sorry to say that the series didn't live up to the premise. I think it was meant to be a cautionary tale, but the writing was uneven, the characters' emotional arches poorly drawn, and some episodes were just a downright mess. The acting was good because the casting was strong. Even though the scripts were disappointing the series will resonate with those who have been shamed, bullied, emotionally or physically abused. Unfortunately, these are now adolescent realities, so people will see their experiences reflected here. But the writers sewed these components together poorly, interrupting the build of suspense, artificially inflating the emotional environment which in turn compromised the trueness of the characters and leaving the audience disappointed, or in some cases, lost (I almost quit after the very poor episode - S1 E7) and a general degradation of the quality of the series). Although there were some 7 (good) episodes, there were also 6s (fair) and even 4 (poor), so I'm giving the whole series a 5.5 (failed potential) out of 10. I'd love to see these performers again, but the series has sucked the life out of it's premise.

TLDR ? This movie is Disingenuous. At best, it's a Ghoulish dark satire of the republican party during the Bush/Cheney era. Except, they forgot to insert comedy or satire. As a result, it's grim and insulting, the parody is often at the expense of the audience being too stupid or uncaring, or religious. Large chunks of american history are deleted, omitted or filtered so that the movie can focus on the death toll of the war, or the "Wazzup" meme, etc.

large chunks of Dick Cheney's history don't make it into the movie, or are stylised / exagerrated / spoofed.

It is a well made disaster of a movie. Care went into making this.

But, it's as bad as Holmes & Watson, Star Trek Discovery, The Last Jedi or Ghostbusters 2016. It's deeply unlikeable at times, and it is actively trying to rewrite history as it goes. I'm not a republican or a conservative, i don't follow politics, this is a highly deranged film that is deceptive at times, and I doubt that any of the events took place, as a result of the ham-fisted effort at painting Cheney as some mastermind villain, working in the shadows. It's only missing that villain laugh track during the more hammy moments.

The most sanguine part of the movie is that they treat the WTC bombing and 9/11 properly, but they draw an enormous bow throughout.

part of the movie hinges on the use of executive power being wielded by Dick Cheney through the Bush Presidency, to the degree that they'll infer it becoming part of the reasons why Cheney brought the war from Afghanistan to Iraq, and that he also used the position to secure oil reserves in Iraq before the war started, as well as ignore questions / receive kickbacks from Haliburton contracts, and infer that he brought a lawyer into the emergency/control room during the "crash" period of 9/11 post-pentagon collision, as airline flights and air corridors were shut down, airports were being closed, and private/civilian aircraft were being tracked and landed in airports, etc. So that he could wield this Executive Power without asking the senate or the Congress or the President for approval.

It walks the line of defamation, and yet, apparently it's from the guy who made Anchorman 2 and Step Brothers, Talladega Nights, The Other Guys. Brad Pitt and Will Ferrel financed this movie, i think. Their companies are in the titles.

All of the Actors do a great job. I even like Annapurna for their video game productions (Donut County, Gorogoa, Edith Finch, Florence), and i've seen a handful of Annapurna movies, like Phantom Thread, Her, American Hustle, and Sausage Party...

I went in with no preparation, and assumed it would be a dark comedy with political overtones, because, politics and Steve Carell, and I can see Aquaman later on. It can't be that bad, it's Christmas week.

This movie has the unfortunate effect of making you hate theatrical movie releases and critics, and perhaps all movies.

Yet, it's so well made, it has style, artistic credibility, and it's directed, shot and lit perfectly, the sound is on point, the acting is sometimes forgettable, But it's similar in style to other "moral" drama films, like "The Big Short", leading into the Global Financial Crisis where they pander heavily on people's motives and actions of "we're getting away with it", sic. The pandering is incredible.

It is a better political movie than most, but it's utterly manipulative and disingenuous at it's heart, and nothing can make that funny or amusing.

Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 11/9 is unhinged and deranged, while Vice, is just powdercoated hatred and bile, trying to hide under progressive and democratic ideals. it's more like an upmarket youtube political conspiracy movie talking about Hilary Clinton's "SECRET Brain surgery", George Soros, the Koch brothers or the Jewish conspiracy movies you get recommended after watching "The Young Turks" or "David Pakman".

They even sink low enough to include a "Ghostbusters 2016" poke at the audience in the end credits by lampooning the partisan nature of the film, in an attempt to skirt criticism and outrage

A sideplot about an hour in, has a series of scenes in a focus group with the same strangers. The marketer/political consultant asks the group to raise their hands to choose between climate change or global warming. Another time, it's a choice between Estate Tax or Death Tax, inferring that marketing & political think-tanks, along with Fox News, used politically correct language in the 90's and 2000's to make conservative ideas palatable.

At the end of the movie, Cheney is in a cross-chair interview, after just having had a heart replacement. As the interview starts, the scene pauses, and Cheney/Bale instead, turns away and lectures the audience directly (invoking Frank Underwood's, stylised yet sociopathic 'lectures' in House of Cards) , saying he did what was best for America, despite the cost and the lives lost in the war(s) sic. It's just on the borderline of "helping make america great again" and a typical Frank Underwood self-justification, we fade to black, get a terrible americana/Fly Fishing title credits to the music of West Side Story's Puerto Rican version of "Coming to America" and we return to the Focus Group, mid-credits. The final scene has the consultant ask what people thought about the movie. A member of the group, complains that the movie insults conservatives, while the neighboring person insists it's factual, with the first man then calling it liberal propaganda, and then calling the other a libtard, sic. and hits him, both getting into a fist fight, while the camera turns away, to another woman, who turns to her neighbour in the room, and says she's going to enjoy the next Fast and the Furious movie (sic).

The implied comment is that they did the research, and had to improvise the story in-between, because nobody would speak about Dick Cheney's history or family to set the record straight. When/If you see a biography of Barack Obama in a few years, attending child brothels with kevin spacey in indonesia, receiving oral sex from a pansexual transvestite, while he's snorting a line of cocaine off a preteen boy , while another person is handing Barack a membership form for the Democratic Party ... Vice, is going to be the movie that they quote and use dialogue from.

This is the kind of movie that Alex Jones and infowars would make of Hilary Clinton & Barack Obama, by selectively omitting pages from a biography, and denigrating the characters and roles they undertook. The excuse would be, they couldn't confirm the story, so they took liberties and stuck with the facts, being transcripts, police records, licenses, marriage dates, etc.

I'm Australian, I genuinely don't care about the politics, but the smearing of the republican party is like a sledgehammer at times.

There are several Saturday Night Live level 'jokes' or skits/scenes that don't even make you cringe, they're just deeply unsettling attempts at humor or levity. Care went into the timing to paint several scenes as 'dark', or darkly funny at the expense of others. I expect people would laugh at them, it didn't connect with me, or the other 5 people in the theater.

It's not quite Fahrenheit 11/9 levels of insanity, on the contrary. It walks the line of parody, conspiracy and defamation neatly in a lighthearted attempt to skip 20 years of context, in a 2 minute conversation.

There's an early moment, perhaps 40 minutes in, where Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld is ruminating to a younger Dick Cheney in a random hallway of the oval office, about the imminent bombing of cambodia while Nixon is talking with Kissinger in a spare room of the Oval Office to avoid recordings. Mid-lecture, you hear Carell while we see a village about to be bombed mid-lecture, a typical cambodian/indonesian forest village, women and children sitting around, before explosions occur, and the scene changes back to Carell & Bale, unphased.

This kind of manipulative sledgehammer is used, repeatedly to invoke... satire? outrage ? compassion ?

This occurs about 5 or 6 more times, with even less subtlety.

Alfred Molina's "restaurant" scene, Molina's character offers Cheney and 3 seated guests at a restaurant table, Extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo Bay as menu options , is ham-fisted, but it's executed darkly and humorously, similar to say, Aaron Echkhart's Thank You For Smoking scenes, lampooning Tobacco, Firearms and Alcohol lobbyists.

It's the kind of movie where you could let things slide if you were a lifelong US democrat, because it tries to tell harsher truths of the political and military consequences, overtly, by flashing to bombings, drone strikes, torture, rendition, deception and greed, during the more infamous moments of nixon's career and Bush's presidency.

And it profoundly relies on Fly fishing to represent Dick Cheney, as other movies do (2007's Shooter) to the point where they use gaudy Americana as Fly Fishing decorations (rockets, drones, Oil Rigs, missiles, the white house, Surveillance cameras) in the end-credits.

There's element's of Zero Dark Thirty in the invocation/flashes of torture, waterboarding, confinement, exposure, even the Abu Ghraib incident/leak with a prisoner being dragged by a Dog Collar by Lynndie England (the "work safe" versions) appears here. and rendition scenes along with the "Shadow government" themes of Dick Cheney's role as Vice President during George W Bush's tenure. It is highly implied several times that Cheney set himself up as the Executive, the CEO in charge of the war by undermining George Bush and, being responsible for the birth of ISIS, hiding reports from the president, etc.

They walk the line when it comes to defaming the Cheney family, there's also an implication of Lynne Cheney's father, Wayne Vincent murdering his wife in an argument by drowning, and of Lynne Vincent, being raped by her father Wayne in an over-edited and dubbed scene that was heavily muffled to avoid the censor noticing. Wayne, is seen pointing to his daughter during a muted, abbreviate shouting scene implying alcoholism and frequent domestic violence.

It extrapolates the most defamatory versions of people, and highlights that absurdity.

It takes what should be parody or simulacra, a 'bad saturday night live' sketch comic scene, and extrapolates moments as their cheapest moments. It's also high budget, they take Sam Rockwell's version of President Bush, Governor Bush, and rotoscope him into the more infamous moments of Bush's Presidency, i.e. the mid-war "Mission Accomplished" presentation on the Carrier Deck.

The German nihilists, the feminist artist, the porn manager, the crazy phedophile, the crippled fake business tycoon, the Vietnam-war obsessed psycho and off course the Dude: a lazy deadbeat lowlife. The Big Lebowski sure has a lot of colourful personages which in my opinion is one of the reasons this movie is one of the best i have ever seen.

This is one of the many masterpieces from the Coen brothers, i wish i could congratulate them myself because they are geniuses. The music, the script and the cast are beyond fantastic. This is a masterpiece that only comes along in movies a few times in a decade. This is one of those movies that is and always will be a cult classic. I cannot say that this is the best movie that the Coen brothers ever made, but only because they made so many exceptional movies. But its definitely high up the list.

My favorite part is Gutterballs, when the Dude has some kind of hallucination. The music was just perfect together with the show Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore put on. I can't tell you how often i saw that part, that was just awesome.

Anyone should see this movie at least once in his lifetime. But once you've seen it i can guarantee you that you want to see it again.

World Premiere Review:

If I can sum up it up in one word, it's a giant "meh." I liked all of the new Star Wars up until this point, but this one was so forced. It didn't help that they had to reshoot more than half the movie with a different director, albeit with the great Ron Howard.

First problem, no one can fill Harrison Ford's shoes, it's impossible. The new characters are boring and forgettable. Still, Donald Glover just nails Lando...they should just do a Lando stand alone movie next time. Chewie is also awesome and funny as usual. I should also mention Malla is cannon now from the Christmas Special? Just speculating that's who he kisses with when he frees his people. Lumpy will probably show up in Solo 2. I saw George Lucas shift uncomfortably in the theater a couple seats over during that scene which was amusing. The story is just ok, it's a little slow and boring. At least the action sequences are fun.

Here's my biggest peeve: L3-37 is the most forced, obnoxious Star Wars character since Jar-Jar. I was so happy when this Social Justice Robot, who is supposed to be Lando's co-pilot, gets destroyed close to the end. This attempt to be "relevant to the times" sticks out like a sore thumb and the actress voicing it made me wince every time she spoke. Hopefully that's the last we hear or see of it.

Finally, Emilia Clarke's character has the depth of a sheet of cardboard. Worst of all though was the twist at the end where fucking Darth Maul shows up now post Episode 3. She is working with him and it was so cringey and shoe-horned in, I'm so tired of him not being dead. I tolerated it in the Clone Wars with spider-maul, but he just needs to go away.