pacocharte
Joined Mar 2008
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Reviews50
pacocharte's rating
No joking, Sean Patrick Flannery does an absolutely amazing job in this role and the setup is pretty darn believable! The director and producers really did pull off a professional, low budget think-piece that required very little suspension of disbelief for about 45 minutes of screen time.
And then it got preachy. Like literal religionist preachy. And worse than that, anti-abortion right-wing preachy. At this point I found myself regretting watching the thing. As in they literally put forth the religionist notions that assisted suicide and abortion are ALWAYS evil at ANY stage of the game. How pathetic, but also how clever.
90% of the ultra-positive reviews are clearly from religionists. Probably ultra-right Catholics and Protestants who think that even the "morning after" pill is murder and that allowing and helping your 90 year old terminal cancer patient relative to end their own life is "morally" wrong according to some sky god and fake religious text. Allow me to interject a bit of historical fact: There is no proof that Jesus Christ ever existed in the manner depicted in the New Testament. Even worse, the Old Testament is full of straight up evil - and most of it was ordered and ordained by God, not Satan.
But then the film starts getting historical facts wrong or quite intentionally misrepresenting them to drive home it's religionist points. Moloch for example. As if child sacrifice was verboten in the (pre) Christian Abrahamic religions! It wasn't. And it goes on from there.
Look, from the perspective of a VERY well executed independent, low budget movie that's also VERY well acted (Flannery again, but also the shrink), this is a damned entertaining ride.
But after watching the whole thing and thinking it through, it's nothing more than a preachy holier-than-thou bunch of faith-based nonsense that expects the viewer to accept demons (and thus SkyGod and the Old Testament) as something other than the fairy tales that they are.
This is not a good lesson in logic, morals or life unless you are already prone to believe (or preach) ridiculous Christianist rightwing theology and politics.
A+ to the director and producers as well as to Flannery and the Psychiatrist actor.
F- for the not-so-cleverly-disguised Kool Aid forcing religio-political messaging pretending to be entertainment.
Weighted average: D.
And then it got preachy. Like literal religionist preachy. And worse than that, anti-abortion right-wing preachy. At this point I found myself regretting watching the thing. As in they literally put forth the religionist notions that assisted suicide and abortion are ALWAYS evil at ANY stage of the game. How pathetic, but also how clever.
90% of the ultra-positive reviews are clearly from religionists. Probably ultra-right Catholics and Protestants who think that even the "morning after" pill is murder and that allowing and helping your 90 year old terminal cancer patient relative to end their own life is "morally" wrong according to some sky god and fake religious text. Allow me to interject a bit of historical fact: There is no proof that Jesus Christ ever existed in the manner depicted in the New Testament. Even worse, the Old Testament is full of straight up evil - and most of it was ordered and ordained by God, not Satan.
But then the film starts getting historical facts wrong or quite intentionally misrepresenting them to drive home it's religionist points. Moloch for example. As if child sacrifice was verboten in the (pre) Christian Abrahamic religions! It wasn't. And it goes on from there.
Look, from the perspective of a VERY well executed independent, low budget movie that's also VERY well acted (Flannery again, but also the shrink), this is a damned entertaining ride.
But after watching the whole thing and thinking it through, it's nothing more than a preachy holier-than-thou bunch of faith-based nonsense that expects the viewer to accept demons (and thus SkyGod and the Old Testament) as something other than the fairy tales that they are.
This is not a good lesson in logic, morals or life unless you are already prone to believe (or preach) ridiculous Christianist rightwing theology and politics.
A+ to the director and producers as well as to Flannery and the Psychiatrist actor.
F- for the not-so-cleverly-disguised Kool Aid forcing religio-political messaging pretending to be entertainment.
Weighted average: D.
As other reviewers have pointed out, the science and physics just don't add up or make sense in this series.
I was an extra during filming in the Austin/San Marcos area of Texas and even as we were being herded around from scene to scene I found myself questioning WTF this show was even really trying to be about.
Since I was actually in it and appeared in two episodes of Season 02 (would have been four if the local "talent" management was competent), I decided to watch it from the beginning before getting to 'my' episodes. Big mistake. In typical JJ Abrams fashion, the audience is just required to suspend too much disbelief. The acting is also wooden, which I'll blame on the assistant directors being pretty darn bad at their jobs. Don't even get me started on the assistant-to-the-assistant directors who handled recurring 'extras' (like me). Even worse for the non-recurring ones. No direction or guidance whatsoever and when I watched it on TV I couldn't help but focus on just how fake all of the non-named cast members seem to be. It wasn't their fault; this series was filmed on a seemingly tight budget and the producers insisted on a very tight (and long, 17-hour days in some cases) schedule. It was almost like the feeling was already in the air halfway through Season 02 filming that it was going to be canceled.
Sorry about the tangent. This is not worth paying money to watch. 5/10 because it's literally just average television dreck.
I was an extra during filming in the Austin/San Marcos area of Texas and even as we were being herded around from scene to scene I found myself questioning WTF this show was even really trying to be about.
Since I was actually in it and appeared in two episodes of Season 02 (would have been four if the local "talent" management was competent), I decided to watch it from the beginning before getting to 'my' episodes. Big mistake. In typical JJ Abrams fashion, the audience is just required to suspend too much disbelief. The acting is also wooden, which I'll blame on the assistant directors being pretty darn bad at their jobs. Don't even get me started on the assistant-to-the-assistant directors who handled recurring 'extras' (like me). Even worse for the non-recurring ones. No direction or guidance whatsoever and when I watched it on TV I couldn't help but focus on just how fake all of the non-named cast members seem to be. It wasn't their fault; this series was filmed on a seemingly tight budget and the producers insisted on a very tight (and long, 17-hour days in some cases) schedule. It was almost like the feeling was already in the air halfway through Season 02 filming that it was going to be canceled.
Sorry about the tangent. This is not worth paying money to watch. 5/10 because it's literally just average television dreck.
First off, in the grand scheme of IMDB ratings, this is *not* an 8.4 by any stretch of the imagination. The paid ratings/reviews and recency bias among real users has reached a tipping point at this site and it is no longer a reliable source for objective movie reviews spanning the history of cinema.
Ahem...with that out of the way, "Spider-Man No Way Home" can be seen from a few different vantage points.
In one, and the major, sense it's a pretty entertaining big budget superhero flick that's mostly well written, acted and directed. There are some funny one-liners and situations and, of course, excellent special effects. However, the run time is too long and the writers tried to tie way too many MCU storylines into it. I mean like *way* too many.
In another sense - perhaps related to the last point in the preceding paragraph - it's a "Why did they really need to make this?" type of film. There are a couple of obvious answers and they are, in order, 1) $$ - HUGE box office $$ and 2) A genuine love of the MCU by the writers, which they took too far w/ all the storylines they tried to cram in. Another aspect of this movie - and the continuing MCU saga movies - is the same actors and actresses are in all of them now. Not only that, but they use actors that are also appearing in seemingly every other big budget or Oscar bait movie made. Do I *really need* to see frickin' Benedict Cumberbatch or Zendaya in ANOTHER movie at this point? Couldn't some other actors use the work? Yes, I understand that there is a continuity issue with switching actors while trying to extend the franchise(s) along the same story arcs, but since we all know they're never going to stop re-adapting Marvel characters/comics, isn't it time for a reset/refresh? Get some fresh faces in there and start over already. Kind of like what they've done with the switch from Toby McGuire (who probably is too old to play a young Peter Parker, admittedly) to Tom Holland. Either that or just take a break!
By now you can probably see that I'm fatigued of these MCU creations in just about every way and that "Spider-Man No Way Home" only added to that. Still, if you've read this far and are looking for a fun, shallow superhero film, and you haven't already seen them all, you could do a lot worse than this.
My rating: 5.4/10 rounded down to 5. This does not deserve an 8.4 rating along or above the pantheon of legendary movies that currently have equal or lower scores.
Ahem...with that out of the way, "Spider-Man No Way Home" can be seen from a few different vantage points.
In one, and the major, sense it's a pretty entertaining big budget superhero flick that's mostly well written, acted and directed. There are some funny one-liners and situations and, of course, excellent special effects. However, the run time is too long and the writers tried to tie way too many MCU storylines into it. I mean like *way* too many.
In another sense - perhaps related to the last point in the preceding paragraph - it's a "Why did they really need to make this?" type of film. There are a couple of obvious answers and they are, in order, 1) $$ - HUGE box office $$ and 2) A genuine love of the MCU by the writers, which they took too far w/ all the storylines they tried to cram in. Another aspect of this movie - and the continuing MCU saga movies - is the same actors and actresses are in all of them now. Not only that, but they use actors that are also appearing in seemingly every other big budget or Oscar bait movie made. Do I *really need* to see frickin' Benedict Cumberbatch or Zendaya in ANOTHER movie at this point? Couldn't some other actors use the work? Yes, I understand that there is a continuity issue with switching actors while trying to extend the franchise(s) along the same story arcs, but since we all know they're never going to stop re-adapting Marvel characters/comics, isn't it time for a reset/refresh? Get some fresh faces in there and start over already. Kind of like what they've done with the switch from Toby McGuire (who probably is too old to play a young Peter Parker, admittedly) to Tom Holland. Either that or just take a break!
By now you can probably see that I'm fatigued of these MCU creations in just about every way and that "Spider-Man No Way Home" only added to that. Still, if you've read this far and are looking for a fun, shallow superhero film, and you haven't already seen them all, you could do a lot worse than this.
My rating: 5.4/10 rounded down to 5. This does not deserve an 8.4 rating along or above the pantheon of legendary movies that currently have equal or lower scores.