Reviews

I was thrilled when I saw the trailer for "The Killing of a Sacred Dear." I'd thought that it would follow in the foot steps of child-gone psycho films such as "Orphan", "The Bad Seed" or "The Good Son."These kind of films have always intrigued me! It had an extremely high rating here on IMDB (Last time I trust it), so I'd figured it'd have been worth a watch. I can safely say that I will be sure to read the reviews prior to viewing next time. Where does one even begin? "The Killing of a Sacred Dear" managed to underwhelm on almost every front. I've never seen acting this wooden or line delivery this stilted in any professionally made film before. The cast attempts to portray a group of unrealistic, inhuman, underdeveloped and ultimately unlikable cast of characters that go through no significant changes, revelations or development over the course of the 2 hours I spent (wasted) watching this. There were oddities in the music choice and even issues in the sound mixing. There were scenes where "ominous" music was played over two characters having a casual conversation and scenes were the music was so loud it was drowning out the dialogue. The film is riddled with pointless and needlessly sexual deleted-scene esque material that could have been removed and would have improved the films pacing. Then there comes the leading issue. The story, or rather lack thereof. It's apparently based off of some archaic greek story without being changed or contextualized to make sense in a modern setting. We all know how it went. The father (just watched the movie and already forgot his name) killed Martin's father in surgery and now his son Martin wants to avenge the innocent...by targeting the innocent. (Again, not properly contextualized.) He makes the children of this family deathly ill. How he managed to do this is not even remotely hinted at or explained. Is he god? Is he psychic? Is he a WIZARD!? As far as the character of Martin goes, he's kind of just a creep. His history and character have no exploration other than his "You took one of mine, now I take one of yours" mentality. Anyway, I guess I can talk about the conclusion now. Or rather how much of a waste of a conclusion it is. It isn't deserved. It isn't satisfying. It isn't worthy of the 2 hour build up it receives. It doesn't even appear to have any impact or consequence as the film abruptly ends before the weight of the situation can be felt, that's assuming the events of the conclusion carried any weight at all. Overall, this is probably the worst movie I'll see in 2018.

"Los Heroes Del Mal" or "The Heroes of Evil" is a Spanish drama that centers around 3 "misfit" teenagers who slowly descend down a dark path of sex, drugs and violence.

Our three main characters are Aritz, Sarita and Esteban. Esteban, is sort of "the nice guy" archetype. He stands up for Aritz the new kid, when he gets picked on and tries to talk the trio out of doing anything particularly dangerous. Sarita, is your run of the mill tomboy who's character makes a noticeable 180 about 30 minutes into the movie. She goes from being the logical- thinking anti-bullying heroine of the film, to being a hot-headed, ill- tempered, irrational prick.As the film went on, I began to dislike her more and more. Now, the most convoluted character of the movie, Aritz. I can't tell you much about this character as a person,because there is so little to him. As the movie progresses, he shows more and more of his true colors. He is revealed to be a rather problematic card, mentally, emotionally and sexually. In short, he's coco for coco puffs.

Now, the bulk of this movie stems from the interactions between our main three characters, which slowly falls apart. They go from being the best of friends to a polygamous relationship to mortal enemies out for each others blood...literally.

The three-way relationship soon becomes a relationship between Esteban and Sarita that hurtfully excludes Aritz. Later on the two have a falling out and Sarita detaches herself from Aritz and Esteban entirely. However, what I found most interesting about this movie was the dynamic between its two main male characters, Aritz and Esteban. There are "subtle" hints throughout the movie that Aritz is actually homosexual and in love with Esteban,despite chasing women around for most of the movie.This is made more apparent by the fact that he failed to erect at the sight of naked female in the flesh, when he goes as far as to hold Esteban in his sleep,put his finger in his mouth and even kiss him. When he is rejected he storms off claiming that it was a "Friendly kiss,a kiss among friends."As an American even i know that that isn't a thing, even in Spain...Is it?

Now earlier I described Aritz as being "problematic" that is because when you boil it down, we know nothing about him. It's revealed at the end of the movie that he was lying about his backstory, buying most of what he "stole" and even lying about the prostitute that he supposedly murdered and about leaving behind a key chain of Esteban that linked him to the crime. It turned out Aritz had the key chain the whole time. While all of this exposition is being dumped, Esteban and Aritz are chugging down a bag of sleeping pills attempting to commit suicide, at least, that's what Aritz is doing while Esteban is spitting the pills back into a bottle of beer...that they're sharing. This leads to Aritz confessing to his lies,calling out Esteban for "cheating"to no surprise and confessing his love for him and dropping dead as Sarita walks into the room, who I assume heard everything.

That was "Los Heroes Del Mal", it has it's issues. Blood Special Effects look terrible, focus is all over the place, characters are inconsistent, plot holes like swish cheese and Jorge Clemente's hilarious over acting.Still, not too bad for something I found for free on Netflix. If you come across it bored out of your mind and either know Spanish and or don't mind subtitles, check it out.

1.) The Actors/Characters

I'll start off by addressing the elephant in the room. The show is in live-action to the dismay of many of the viewers.While I don't find this to be a flaw in of itself, it is connected to many of the shows faults.

The Actors: Aelita(Léonie Berthonnaud) looks like an alternative punk rocker.Her pink hair looked fine in animation but in live action she just looks silly. She lacks the level headed, kind and intelligent demeanor she had in the original series. Odd(Played By Gulliver Bevernaege)while lacking a likeness to the original has actually improved from the original series. Other than that, Yumi(Melanie Tran),Ulrich(Quentin Merabet),Jeremy(Marin Lafitte) and William (Diego Mestanza) as well as Leonie and Gulliver play their roles adequately.

On a side note, I couldn't help but notice the whitewashing of a well known, or should I say the only black character in Code Lyoko, Sam.There were plenty of colored women on set so claiming that there were no auditions is not an excuse.

The Rule Changes: So, it seems now that everyone has the ability to deactivate towers, due to "codes" that X.A.N.A left within our heroes to insure it's survival. If the children lose these codes, they will lose their ability to deactivate towers, including Aelita. This is problematic in numerous ways. First of all, there is Zero explanation as to how X.A.N.A. did this or how exactly the heroes carry them around. Are the codes just floating around in their bloodstreams? Your guess is as good as mine. Does this now mean that X.A.N.A. can take away Aelita's ability to fight it? How does the transfer of these codes into the other kids give it the ability to take away Aelita's predestined abilities? Plot holes like these are rampant in this season. And to retrieve these "codes" from the warriors, X.A.N.A. sends specters to hug the children... Oh, how I wish I was making that up.In order to retrieve the codes from our heroes, X.A.N.A. sends indestructible, polymorphic, superhuman electro-kinetic specters to HUG the protagonists... It's not even a suffocating hug...

The Lack of Progression: What I mean by this is, for something with 26 episodes, there was a noticeable lack of any significant events in the season. There are no new sectors, in fact two of the sectors are missing entirely. There are no new characters... worth mentioning at least, as well as characters straight up missing from the original show. No new locations and very little done with the license.

The Enemies: We have the return of X.A.N.A., the rogue homicidal Artificial Intelligence that terrorized our heroes in the original series, which would have been fine if it wasn't a dry inferior copy-paste cut out of the original. Previously, X.A.N.A. was set on the destruction of humanity, here he just seems set on screwing with a group kids.We have Tyron, who's laughably absurd hair looks like something out of a Dr.Seuss book.I kid you not, Google image him now.The specters,practically the main threat of the original series have been reduced to slowly walking Hugga Bears who pose no threat whatsoever. In the original series, the specters/possessed were sinister villains with taunting dialogue,monstrous features and brutal superhuman abilities. Here, they're just blank silent zombies with nothing to offer but Jason Vorhees style chase scenes and maybe banging on a couple of doors.

5.) X.A.N.A. Itself:Possibly the greatest fault of all. Let's face it,the greatest part of Code Lyoko, was it's villain. It was a clever, decisive and versatile foe that would destroy everyone and anything in it's path. Let's look at the interesting ways X.A.N.A. has left us in awe.

It rampaged through the town as a giant teddy bear, turned flesh to stone, hijacked military assault aircraft and orbital lasers, raised armies of wasps, rats, robotic canines, plants and even zombies for crying out loud.X.A.N.A. was a brilliant super villain and it pains me to see it reduced to nothing, whilst this Tyrone persona replaces it as the main antagonist.

The Conclusion:What conclusion? Beyond my comprehension, the season had the audacity to end on a bloody cliffhanger.That's really funny considering that this was meant to be a series send-off and that years later, no news for a sixth season have been announced.

Update(6/13/17): It has recently come to my attention that the writer of the original series, Sophie Decroisette not only quit mid-production but also disowned this season. She claims that it's "Not Code Lyoko". Need I say more?

So I just watched the series finale. That's a lie, but there was no reason to seeing that the previews just told me how the series ended. Wanna know how? Austin and Ally confess their love for each other and kiss. Again, I didn't have to actually watch the series finale to know this since they showed to you in the teaser. They just spoiled a 1 hour event in about 5 seconds. Why? Why would you spoil your own episodes so blatantly. The purpose of a teaser is to show small snippets of the episode to engage the viewer, not give away the entire episode. With that aside, Austin and Ally was a mediocre and often hair pulling mess of a series. Following the formulaic "adventures" of the playboy of a singer Austin, a lazy, job hopping "Manager" Trish, the slightly bearable klutz Ally and the worst of the all, Dez. The fool that always comes along to ruin everything that just has to be in every Disney show.

There is a slew of problems with this show. But, the other reviews do a better job of explaining them than I care to. Over all, Disney channel will be better off without this travesty.