Wait... is that...?

Are we getting a new album????

...or is it just an ad for a magazine? (it could be both!)

Hang on... is that Teardrop I hear?

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Presents

This movie tipped a potential warning for me as it was under 90 minutes. But...

We are in a house, going around, looking at the rooms. A family moves in, and we follow them around, caring a lot about what happens with the sister Chloe. The brother brings in a douche-bag friend, and he is a real scumbag. We don't like him.

And that's what I'm going to say about the plot. Is this a second-person film? It definitely can be read that way. There's a mixture of oners, but then this is underdone with short cuts that don't quite work in that framework. The set up was enough to keep me watching, and we get definite hints about what is going on...

Lucy Lui is in this, but despite that name, she isn't the lead. Instead it is Callina Liang and Eddy Maday who lead the movie, and they are quite believable. There are very few effects (and the few are well done) but the key trick is how well the camera moves, barely getting past some of the actors, and you don't hear any footsteps. Good production there.

Frankly, this was a far better movie that I was expecting.

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Campagnion

I keep thinking that is Anna Taylor-Joy in the poster.

Josh is a shitty person, and this movie is entirely dedicated to showing that in every frame of this. Terrible person, terrible friend, terrible morals, just all out and out terrible.

Oh, and this is about companions and such.

I knew the trick of this movie from early trailers, but then it seemed to be a twist to not reveal? And yet, the "twist" is revealed in the first half of the movie, so it's not the big reveal? Indeed, there isn't much of a big reveal, it's just Josh being a shit, and we find out the degrees to which that is true.

The performances are fine. Sophie Thatcher is indeed the lead role in this movie, and Jack Quaid is the piece of shit. Others are also in this movie, including it's Harvey Guillén!

This movie doesn't have that much to say, so on one hand keeps it clean, on the other... it just doesn't have much to say.

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The Georg

He's just an assassin boy, she's just an assassin girl, can I be any more obvious?

There's a Gorge in the middle of nowhere, and it might contain some epic nastiness. Anyway, aside from that, we have an American man on one side, and a Russian woman on the other... can these two would be enemies find common ground, and come together in love? (Like, they aren't really enemies, just not supposed to contact each other.) And then a monster movie happens.

Half this movie is build up, then the bulk of the next part is them dealing with what is in the Gorge... and then like the last five minutes is wrap up? Seriously, they go from "we barely made it out of Act Two" before they are suddenly able to set off the last act and then the credits roll. How will they deal with it? Super easy, barely an inconvenience!

Miles Teller is our lead, and he's fine. Anna Taylor-Joy is the female lead, but she is definitely treated as the supporting artist here. Sigourney Weaver gets to cameo, so that's something. The monsters are... fine. Nothing particular spectacular about them, and the colour pallete is "mono", so they don't really have anything out standing about them.

If you want to see this, I'm not going to say "no", but there are better things to put on.

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Maona 2

I can see how this was abbreviated...

Moana is out looking for other islands/people, and after being struck by lightning, she gets the idea for the plot of the movie of going looking for a particular island. After grabbing a handful of other people who will not matter in this movie version, she heads out, bumps into someone who shortcircuits a lot of the adventure, finds Maui, and then goes to the island. There are many, many songs to fill in the space to make this over ninety minutes.

This definitely has the feel of "we could make this a television series" feeling, with lots of potential plot points expanding over an episode, with the focus on different characters. See, for example, how Prodigy did this. But here we just get maybe a song covering a lot of it, then on to the next one. Speedrunning as a movie!

Auli'i Cravalho and Dwayne Jackson are back, and perfectly fine. There are a scattering of other actors, and now I can easily recognise Rose Matafeo's voice, so huzzah for her!

This is fine, although would have been better as the full series. But at least there's the teaser for more movies... yay?

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Capitan Ameraci

aka The Falcon And The Angry Soldier.

There's a Celestial out in the ocean. Remember that? 'cos the movies haven't for a while, but now it's all anyone is talking about. It's vitally important for... reasons, and it forms the main backbone against which the events of this movie play out. Captain America is uncovering things while President Ross is involved, and then...

Actually, if you've seen the trailers or heard lots of old commentary, you know a lot about the 'who's that are involved, but they aren't nearly as prevalent as you might think. Anthony Mackie is great as Sam Wilson, and Harrison Ford is... often on screen. There are numerous other characters, and various cameos, and Giancarlo Esposito is wasted as Sidewinder.

All because the plot just isn't that exciting. The common thing people are saying about this movie is "it's fine" and...

It's fine.

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Trans1former1s Un

Before they met the eye, they were not more.

Orion Pax and D-16 are just dudes who want to help out and be more than they are. They do this by doing extremely stupid things that turn out to be helpful for them, until they find out the obvious secret of betrayal and their whole lives are built on lies. And then they are on track to becoming the battling bots we know and play with.

This is a lot better than I was expecting. It's not exactly deep, but it's a story well told, and even the obvious moments are still executed well. It's a decent origin story, and although the twist from D-16 is a little forced, you can see how it plays out. Although the actual eventual name of Autobot and Deception is a lot of a stretch.

Good vocal performances too. Chris Hemsworth is doing his "big speech" voice, and Scarlett Johansson is also in this. Brian Tyree Henry is a great D-16, and Keegan-Michael Key is suitably annoyingly as B-127. (If there is more to their names than just random numbers, I have no idea.)

I don't know Transformers deep lore, but this works fine for me.

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