#these are the most unserious serious reviews i ever seen

[starrvsn]

just some of my favorite 'the boys in the boat' letterboxd reviews

[alittlefrenchtree]

Come on now, what kind of critique is saying it was unrealistic? What were them supposed to do, a 20 minutes scene only about that or a *20 minutes later* spongebob style thing? Also they didn't sponsor it like that, it was just mention in an interview with so many other things and sometimes that's what made the title. This is a romcom and everyone is reviewing it like it's an oscar movie. It was never this serious. I guess at least you wrote your personal opinion and stopped there, hopefully you are not engaging with people making fun of nick like some other "fans" of his, the same that were not gonna watch this movie and end up following every step of the press tour and were first in line to watch it the day it came out.

You're right, nobody in the history of cinema has ever used elliptical narration. Never happened EXCEPT with spongebob who found the only way to show that time has passed on screen. My bad.

But that wasn't even my point. I don't care how long is the foreplay on screen. If they hadn't been loud about selling a movie the way they did, that would have been perfectly fine, a nice surprise even. I care about someone selling me a red dress and me buying it only to find out that it's a green dress. The green dress is totally fine but I bought the red one so it's a problem, right? And that isn't the only thing that what mis-soldi n the promo.

So I don't know which promo tour you saw but I think I saw like more or less 50% of it and I've already heard enough about female pleasure and women taking back their freedom and not being dead at 40 or whatever and I've seen very very little of that in the movie. I could argue that I've seen as much as the opposite as this, actually. So yeah, if there isn't going to be a red dress, don't tell me that you wanted to show a red dress. Talk to me about the green one, I'm sure there is nice things to say about it.

"Somehow that what's made the title", the somehow is most likely because that was in the talking points written by the pr team of the movie sooo my point still stands I guess. It's not that hard to pinpoint each one of them after a few typical interviews. Chemistry (leading to the casting story). Boysband boot camp. Feminism stuff. Not Harry Styles (Hayes is his own character). So in my book that wasn't really a unfortunate hasard. They lead themselves there and they didn't live up to it, so that's on them.

And oh darling, if I had reviewed this movie like an oscar movie, I would have burnt the thing to the ground and left no ashes with oh so many words. The only reason the first half made it in my eyes, is because I took it like a unserious romcom. The problem is that the second half didn't even meet this unserious expectations.

And I'm not going to even acknowledge the last part of your message since it does sound a lot like you're fandom police and since fandom police doesn't exist, I'm pretty sure I've hallucinated your words 😘

[soursfilms]

@ portwells, if you for a second even think that mack and gina could be serious you’re just plain dumb, i’m sorry. this is the only way i can articulate it at this point. this is the last season. i’m gonna need you to be so serious right now and use the brain that the lord gave you for once. both mack and dani are clear plot devices to add drama for rina, that’s it. they’re guest stars! and if you actually read interviews and articles, and reviews from screeners who watched the episodes early, you’d know that plot ends mid season. (woops spoiler but idgaf!) most of the stills of them are from the literal hsm4 movie they’re filming and he’s her childhood crush. i can promise you, gina, nor no one in real life is gonna end up with their childhood crush. (sorry to crush your dreams, but you will in fact not marry any one direction member that you had hanging up on a poster on your wall, and funny enough, gina has literal ¡placemats! with mack’s face on it if you look at the dinner table still because gina and her mom were fans of his show. a show in which ricky took the theme song of to write a song for gina and was released as a sneak peak already. extremely unserious all around)

portwells want to cling unto them because they’re bitter, as if we can’t see right through you. i wonder if y’all have ever watched an actual teen drama show in your life. clearly y’all haven’t and apparently haven’t seen interviews with the actual creator of the show speaking about the plot lines about HIS story, because if you did you would not be hitting post on your absurd takes. (not to mention, gina and ricky are clearly in love with each other. that’s something you all need to make peace with. especially if you claim to like gina, just accept it and be happy for her that she’s happy even if you don’t necessarily are a fan. he’s the guy she wants and you cannot change that.)

also, saw someone say ej and ricky being older means they’re both in different life stages than her so they wouldn’t work out?? (first, you don’t even know how old mack is. so i know you feel very stupid right now) and that’s not the same and you know it. gina still had TWO years to go in high school compared to ej, and she tried to make a future with him (those are her words) but it didn’t work out because it was not meant to be. mentally they were in different places. ricky and gina are only a year apart and closer in mindsets, and there’s actual love between them, that they will fight for (in the words of can i have this dance which they sang as a #real ship does “what we have is worth fighting for”) you cannot compare the writing of rina to portwell. one is clearly developed and well written and favored by the writer of the show, while the other was a plot device….let’s stop being bitter and just be at peace with the story the creator wanted to create. if you don’t like it just do not watch.

[zeroandfour]

ONEWE as Youtubers !

Admin: Kenny 👻 (first post woohoo!!!)

________________________ ♡

DONGMYEONG:

Does a little bit of everything actually

Mostly make up tutorials, talking about his day or reviewing shows/movies

Hauls and product comparisons

Often invites friends or does collabs

Vloggs when he takes a trip and shows off his cooking skills

Abuses the voting feature in the community section

A gay girlies fav youtuber 

Has a cute animated intro and a fandom name

GIUK:

High effort covers with actual MVs

Shows how he works in the studio

Drops Music every once in a while

Does MV reactions but every time he doesn’t like a part he’s not gonna be mean, he just looks at the camera like 🫣 and goes „that’s…interesting..haha“

Collabs with Kanghyun once in a while

Makes tier lists of albums and songs

Video descriptions are stacked with links to buy his equipment

KANGHYUN:

Guitar covers once in a while

Rant videos where he goes off about his loud ass neighbours but then cuts himself off with „Anyways that Kentucky chicken lowkey bussin“ as if he didn’t just go into explicit detail about his neighbours divorce for 30 minutes straight

„The worst TikToks I have ever seen“ and it’s just him pausing the video every 3 seconds to go „What the fck 😶“ with the most ear assaulting distortion edit

Always breaks something in his video or spills a drink

Invites Giuk to watch TikToks with him

Lowkey a boomer but he tries to go with the flow (uses words in the wrong context or mispronounces them)

HARIN:

Review channel- may it be a new Lego set or his grandmas kitchen. also takes it too serious- so serious that he comes off as unserious

posts every 5 months

Apology videos with titles like „I am sorry.“ „I know what I did and I apologize.“ and it’s just him apologising for not posting only to vanish for another 4 weeks

Posts random questions like „How do I get dog food out of my headphones“ in the community section

No one knows where this man lives and what he does in his spare time 

Will make the most mentally unstable comments but just moves on as if nothing happened

YONGHOON:

The most annoying MF on this app

Has too many friends to collab with and they’re all LOUD

Does Pranks and Challenges - especially 3 A.M challenges

Clickbaits and scams children

„TRYING THE NEW SPONGEBOB HAPPY MEAL - REAL CRAB MEAT ?!? | NO CLICKBAIT !!!“

Always has to be in frame

got a restraining order from at least 4 restaurants 

calls his fans Hustlers

lowkey acts fruity with his friends but shouts „no homo ho homo“ afterwards

[aromantic-misguide-to-romance]

My Spy Romance Review

(Betareading: @reneotomegirl​ - thank you!)

After playing some really silly games from Genius, I didn’t expect anything else from My Spy Romance. Genius isn’t a widely known developer, the games are not meant to have a long life and rely on fandom’s attention for long. Many of these games disappear from the app store quite soon too, though some might be found on ApkPure. My Spy Romance isn’t an exception. I cannot find it in the Play Store developer’s list or through searching – but can be accessed if you go through your browser and Google search. This way the link will open in Play Store and you’ll be able to download it.

Maybe that’s why there isn’t much out there about these games, but it’s hardly a bad choice of doing business when the fandom doesn’t have infinite capacity of long-term engagement. These games rarely have many routes and aren’t rather made for that – and have many downloads, so I guess it’s working for the company.

At the beginning of the game we meet the MC – quite an ordinary girl, who tries to play her cards right in a terrible situation (even if she isn’t exactly the brightest bulb) but not that ordinary for an otome heroine. Namely, she’s bitter and generally would hate the world if her best friend Lenna didn’t want her to give it a chance. This friendship is one of the most important things to the MC – she’d agree to everything to keep Lenna safe and no boyfriend can ever get even close to the level of bond they have.

Such an important friendship isn’t often seen in otome games – I recollect some supportive friends, but not that close and that important to be MCs sole reason to run the plot. If Lenna weren’t there for her in the darkest hours, the MC would give zero damns about these guys and whether or not they destroy the world. Or maybe she’d even join them to watch it burn.

That being said, after the beginning I expected the game to be a light, silly fantasy on a kidnapping scenario with gold-hearted kidnappers with tragic pasts and no one would die. And the game definitely goes this way... at first.

In the first half of the plot we meet the love interests and get to know them. There are two kidnappers and one FBI agent, so obviously there had to be two arcs so the player can choose their fave later. So no wonder the kidnappers are not really bad and have hearts of gold and don’t want to destroy the world. This way they can definitely be convinced by the MC to save the world instead, of course.

Around halfway through the plot when you’re expecting the game to slowly head to one of the endings, things start to escalate. And they do it quickly. The game stays consistent on how it handles the topic too – this isn’t a twist where you’re wondering if the previous writer got fired and the next one didn’t get a chance to read the plot. It deconstructs the sweet kidnapping fantasy but isn’t very serious about bringing realism into the story either. The mix goes surprisingly well, mashing it all up into one enjoyable mess.

And this is probably one of the best things in the game. Early plot isn’t particularly interesting or memorable, so the twist brings significant improvement, at the same time maintaining the general light mood of the early plot in sweet or silly scenes in-between the chaos unfolding, gunshots and deaths ex machina.

The effect is maybe not a masterpiece, but a fun read. Despite all the praise, the game isn’t an undiscovered gem that  humanity failed to appraise. It won’t give you catharsis, it won’t make you forget breathing, nothing of that for sure. But it’s dynamic enough to keep your attention, offer you some fun with all the winking at the reader, deconstructing and subverting motifs, and the unseriousness of the mess that breaks out in the second half of the game.

If you tend however to get emotionally invested, it might be a much more difficult experience. The game tries to keep the emotional engagement on the right level, but everyone has different sensitivity so feel warned as well. In this game anyone can die, whether they have a sprite or not.

Mind, however, that it is not one of the typical mobile otome games where you get separate routes and separate plots for each love interest. Here the plot branches late – and Genius generally does like to simply give you the chance to choose the guy you want to end up with and then gives you the respective ending. Here it happens a bit earlier – which unfortunately means you have to replay the whole game to get other guys. In many games the plot branches in the last chapter, and you just need to replay it a few times to get everyone – but here you have to go through the whole route again. It’s not that bad, but considering how Genius usually plans their games it might discourage the player from continuing to play.

Since it’s a freemium game, there are many paywalls in the story – including endings. So you generally have to pay to see sweeter versions of some scenes and to see CGs – so if you prefer to play for free and not spend your time on mining the premium currency, you will probably have to skip the premiums. But to be honest, Genius CGs are generally nothing special. I didn’t get them and don’t really regret not buying them. There is another thing about art in the game though that I would like to mention – while the art might not seem impressive, the sprites are animated. Not fully, of course, but it is not just simple blinking either. The characters not only blink, but breathe and make small gestures or - in case of Asher - even play with their hair. The body language in the game is quite impressive for an animated sprite in an otome game. Would this be enough to compensate for the CGs? It depends on each person’s preference.

However, I’d honestly recommend this game. It’s dramatic, engaging, but not that heavy as it never lets go of that playfulness it promised in the first half of the game and still is full of silly, hilarious scenes even if the world is at stake and blood is being shed left and right.

[marredbyoverlength]

Roundup - October and November 2017

Blade Runner 2049 (2017) Dir. Denis Villeneuve. Visually and aurally stunning, so much so that it would be a solid film no matter what. There’s a lot to love here: excellent performances from Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, and Ana de Armas, an excellent subplot about AI girlfriends, and even a surprisingly emotional ending. But the story is undercut by crowding, which becomes extra apparent in the third act when almost every major plot development happens within 5 minutes of each other. With more even pacing, this could be an all-time great. 8/10.

The Foreigner (2017) Dir. Martin Campbell. This movie was marketed as a Jackie Chan action flick, but really it’s a Pierce Brosnan political thriller about the remnants of the Irish separatist movement in which Jackie Chan sometimes beats the hell out of private security guards. It works pretty well, but I can’t help but wonder if this should have been two different movies. 7/10.

It (2017) Dir. Andy Muschietti. Solid, straight-up horror movie, despite some tonal inconsistencies. But, as is so often the problem with Stephen King film adaptations, there’s just not that much substance here. 6/10.

The Snowman (2017) Dir. Thomas Alfredson. The Snowman is not a finished movie: by the director’s own admission, they didn’t have enough time to shoot almost 15% of the script. It shows. Simply put, the pieces don’t all fit together, and the Big Reveal at the end would have been weak even if the buildup were properly done. But it did at least keep my attention. 5/10.

Geostorm (2017) Dir. Dean Devlin. One of the dumbest movies I have ever seen. Geostorm features Gerard Butler doing an American accent (which he is always terrible at), a big clock that says “Countdown to Geostorm,” a ton of handguns on the International Space Station, the most predictable Ed Harris heel turn of all time, and countless other incredibly dumb things, including the most hilarious bad dialogue line since Winter’s Tale’s “miracles are down by 50%!” The best kind of awful dreck. 2/10, but you should watch it anyway.

Thor: Ragnarok (2017) Dir. Taika Waititi. Easily the best of the Marvel movies, and it’s no wonder why: the Marvel bosses pretty much kept clear of it, and Waititi had the wisdom to lean into the inherent silliness of Thor and the Asgard mythos. Tremendously funny throughout, and in a way that didn’t detract from Thor’s remarkably compelling character arc. Worth seeing just for Jeff Goldblum’s portrayal of a deranged bread-and-circuses space emperor. 8/10.

Murder on the Orient Express (2017) Dir. Kenneth Branagh. A friend of mine described this as a film about how we get justice when the justice system fails us. I think that’s giving the movie too much credit, but it is significantly smarter than the awful Imagine Dragons song in the trailer would lead you to believe. Overall, it’s a pretty good version of itself—but there’s not a high ceiling for that. 6/10.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos. When I left the theater, a staff member asked whether I like the movie. I told him I didn’t know. Then he asked what it was about. I told him I didn’t know. That is my review. 5/10.

Justice League (2017) Dir. Zack Snyder (and Joss Whedon, unbilled). Another movie where the production problems really show, especially with these two directors. Whedon and Snyder both have the same problem: they are incapable of writing distinct characters. Every Snyder character is a cynical, loathsome edgelord; every Whedon character is an unserious geek-chic quipster. The styles do not blend well. Still, this is one of the better DC movies, as it doesn’t openly express its contempt for its audience and for heroism in general. 4/10.

The Florida Project (2017) Dir. Sean Baker. I have a hard time reviewing this one. It’s well-made movie with a good heart, but it relies entirely on how much you like young children. I do not like them one bit (save for my nephew. Hi Brady!). The only character I wanted to see was a beaten-down property manager of a low-income extended-stay hotel (an excellent Willem Defoe), who did get a lot of screen time, but not quite enough that I wasn’t glad when the movie ended. 5/10, probably 7-8/10 if you like kiddos.

Coco (2017) Dir. Lee Unkrich, Co-dir. Adrian Molina. Fun, but terribly predictable, and like most of the recent Pixar flicks, it’s almost completely unchallenging. But it gets a long way on spectacular animation, great original music, and bittersweet themes of family, memory, and legacy. Good movie to bring your kids to. 7/10.

Lady Bird (2017) Dir. Greta Gerwig. Strong debut for Gerwig, with impressive performances from Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf as a daughter and mother with a strained but ultimately loving relationship. Tracy Letts is also great as the soft-spoken father of the family. The movie blends comedy and drama earnestly, and it’s clear that Gerwig has a good eye for filmmaking, especially with respect to editing. But the movie is held back by a busy script where lots of threads get dropped. 8/10.

Insomnia (1997) Dir. Erik Skjoldbjaerg. Good-looking and well-acted movie, but it’s impossible to root for any of the very awful main characters. Our Hero kills a dog and sexually assaults a receptionist. Without a strong story or character to latch onto, it’s hard to keep watching. 5/10.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut (1982/2007) Dir. Ridley Scott. An oppressive, moody atmosphere and soundtrack make this boring movie watchable. This version is often considered the definitive version by Blade Runner enthusiasts, but even it has serious problems in editing. It’s hard to piece a movie together 25 years later from an incomplete source. 5/10.