Change Your Image
JurijFedorov
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Lists
An error has ocurred. Please try againI added TV episodes at the bottom because there are just not enough really great detective movies out there just yet and some episodes are great.
I tried to put movies with more interesting detective work higher on the list.
I will explain why these movies got their rank. I explain it from a short film writer perspective as I know a bad plot when I see it.
I tried to find the best possible high quality link to all these movies. All links are official uploads except for the Pixar and Marvel movie links.
I'm trying to sort the list based on quality of movie, historical accuracy, and historical significance. A small biography is not crucial to watch no matter how accurate. A grand historical tale is worth little if the story is largely fictional. No movie tries to be historically exact, but the best ones typically are. I added a few movies at the bottom that mess with history to such a degree that it's practically fiction, but are still worth a watch to learn about propaganda and bad history in a cool way.
I added in a few stand-alone TV show episodes at the end of the list because otherwise the list will be missing several unique time travel concepts not yet seen in any movie. But largely I avoid TV show episodes/short films.
Reviews
Girl in the Picture (2022)
Very dark, prepare your soul as this starts and ends in sadness
The documentary is telling the story very slowly by only revealing a tiny bit at a time. So it can be hard to know if the story is even important even half an hour into the documentary. One of the prettiest girls around plans to get an engineering degree and move away. She lives with her father and he seems off and controlling. She is about to make it big yet gets pregnant and the father demands they move to another city together and she has to drop her dreams. No one knows what she is thinking or why she is moving. Or even who knocked her up? She ends up dead on the side of the road. Her husband, who is much older, visits her at the hospital before she dies and initially her son is living with foster parents yet visits this man who he hates. But it is found out he is not the father and they get to keep him. Yet this man drives past their house at times after that. They contact the authorities who tell them not to worry about this. But the guy goes into the school then kidnaps the child and the principal. Tying the principal to a tree and running away with the child. We find out the old husband and father is the same man. Both the daughter and dad changed names to marry.
We get some info about her workplace in a stripclub and her coworkers tell us a bit about her. She earned $500 to $1000 a day in the late 1980's early 1990's just for dancing, not even naked. Yet her dad demanded she ask the men in the club for $50 to have sex with them. We also find out her dad has sex with her quite openly. One of the workers saw he get r#aped right in front of her at gunpoint yet never said anything to anyone for some reason. And seemingly many of her friends and coworkers noticed such stuff like him being her dad and husband at the same time yet never told the police or FBI about it. I assume you don't snitch in this environment? We also learn that the dad at one point kidnapped a 4 year old and raped her in his youth. And beat up a random woman.
We find out his daughter was born when he was in prison meaning she can't be his actual daughter. She must have been kidnapped too. They find the guy when he tries to renew his driver's license. Yet they actually don't know what he did with the kid or what happened to his daughter/wife. In some states it's not possible to get a murder verdict without a body. This is why there are often no murder convictions in some cases where all clearly know and can prove who the killer was, when he committed the murder, why, and how it happened. But he is guilty of kidnapping and gets 52 years in prison for that.
Right after the cops find photos of abused women under a truck he owned. A body is found at some point and the clothes match the ones in the photo. This is a stripper too he was obsessed with. A mystery man blows up the house to hide evidence and the killer leaves town.
An author interviews him in prison, but he refuses to admit guilt. He loves talking about himself and how great, good looking, and innocent he is. Later FBI interviews him. They just keep at it and at some points he starts to admit stuff they can use to identify the daughter. Her parents are still alive. The mother left the dad for another guy when he got sent to Vietnam. Then she became single again and met the perp. The dad was asked to take the kids but refused. She went to prison and the perp kidnapped the 3 children. He left 2 behind and fled. The mother was off, maybe some mental illness, and didn't have the tools to chase this guy.
I will likely never recommend this documentary to anyone as it's extremely macabre and dark. We are talking r#ape against small children, the step-daughter, and others. 3 proven murders. Beatings, abuse, extreme pressure, and a perp who could kidnap and r#ape a 4 year old yet not spend his days behind bars and just continue doing this again and again? And why did the mom not try to get her back? Why did the friend who saw the mystery woman get r#aped at gunpoint by her supposed dad not go to the police? All these people who didn't say anything got 3 people murdered. It's hard to put into words just how disgusted and mad I am after watching this. But if you think this is bad, watch Abducted in Plain Sight where the parents actually admit to everything on camera related to the pedo they kept working with instead of lying about every little thing and claim they were innocent. This documentary on the other hand barely has any photos. Most scenes are reenacted. We have basically nothing of note.
I guess evil happens when people rather look away. As there is plenty of evidence all around us.
The Case Against Adnan Syed (2019)
Badly edited, but does present the main info over time
The mystery remains obscure even after this documentary. We still don't have concrete answers, but we are getting closer to the truth. If you need to know for sure who committed the crime, this case and documentary is not for you.
I see a lot of critics panning the documentary for not being harsh enough on Adnan like their favorite podcast about the case, Serial. I have not listened to it yet. Different media will have different ways to present the case and this documentary released after Serial too so they have way more and more concrete evidence this time around. Some podcasts are critical and rational while others pick a side. This one does not pick a side, but one can have an issue with what evidence is presented and how. Yet the prosecutors are interviewed for this so it's not one-sided.
Is it too kind to the main suspect? Making a Murderer popularized the biased documentary style where you bring in a huge bias. But we have the West Memphis Three documentary too. That one was extremely biased and made them look innocent by ignoring 99% of the evidence. But this one is not even in the same category whatsoever. It doesn't present a fake story or even tries to defend Adnan like the other documentaries did with people that did actually murder and rape. Adnan is merely a background figure here. He was a non-violent A student Muslim, that's it. We don't get much deeper info about him here. And Adnan has since been freed from prison as the prosecutors admitted they messed up the case which makes me doubt the first verdict. I always tend to trust the prosecution more than the accused as them lying or making up claims would entail a huge conspiracy with maybe 5 cops and 5 prosecutors getting together all agreeing to tell a lie to put a person in prison. Knowing they would be fired if anyone found out. Why risk a career to put some random person in prison, who may be innocent. Furthermore any one person telling about it to a friend or family member could make the whole story fall apart. Meaning the case will be thrown out and the prosecutors all get fired. Conspiracies do happen daily, but arrested people lie more often than conspiracies happen. 100 times more often. And anytime the prosecutor office is big with a bunch of new employees coming and going any conspiracy is that much harder to pull off. Which is the case here.
I think half think Adnan did it. The other half thinks someone else did it or that they really can't say for sure. Which shows that the documentaries about the case are not really trying to make Adnan look innocent. As after Making a Murderer pretty much 95% of the watchers thought the perp was innocent even though we actually know for sure he did kill her as we have very clear evidence showing this. We also know Making a Murderer excludes all conclusive proof of him being a psychopath in his day to day life too like burning a cat or offending women. So that's bias and them trying to make him look good. But this documentary says Adnan was non-violent and leaves it at that. And all agree this is valid. Hence he doesn't have a criminal past and hence the documentary is fair enough on the most significant points. Making a Murderer has a 8,5 rating on IMDB. So how do we judge bias as viewers?
After watching this documentary I am fully convinced Jay was involved in the murder or coverup as he himself admits to it even today. Then if you believe his story Adnan was involved too. But obviously it's hard to believe a big drug dealer who constantly lies and changes his story and was easy to convince to take part in, at minimum, the murder coverup. Hence while most people blindly believe Jay and conclude Adnan is guilty I don't put as much faith in this evidence as lying got him to walk away nearly scott-free. So he had a reason to railroad another person. If any DNA or clues were found on the body or in the car Jay could just stick to his story about taking part in the coverup. And Adnan seemed like a perfect fallguy as he had just broken up with the victim. Creating a potential motive. Jay meanwhile could have heard about the breakup and then wanted to hook up with her. Getting a no from a newly single girl as the drug dealer hotshot of the town and high school may have enraged him. He himself admits that the police told him what to say and how to change the story. He was even told to change the location of where he saw the body. If the police forced him to change a crucial part of his story we can't believe anything else he claims. Similarly the guy who found the body lived very close by and his story about how he found the body is also a tad peculiar. He also was not fully investigated. Then we have the new boyfriend with a very crude past and only a family member as his alibi. That doesn't count for much as Adnan has this too. So we have Adnan, Jay, the guy who found the body, and the new boyfriend she just started dating. We know the police investigated Adnan to a large degree. The other men hid in the shadows until any potential evidence related to them faded away. And now that the Adnan evidence is questioned too we are left wondering what actually happened.
Evil Genius: The True Story of America's Most Diabolical Bank Heist (2018)
About a crazy older woman not about the bank heist
About the bank heist where the robber wore a bomb around his neck he couldn't take off. It exploded when he was arrested. FBI and the police didn't have any clues or evidence to find out who forced him to rob the bank. Before he died he told them some Black people had put it on him, but it sounded false.
The documentary is about a woman the documentary maker befriends. She is a mentally ill older woman who has a habit of killing her boyfriends. She planned to murder her dad. He is a millionaire who stopped giving her money as she kept using it to commit crime. She is somewhat related to the robbery. Yet no one knows how. She claims she's innocent. A man who is obsessed with her helped her hide the body of her boyfriend in a freezer. He is in love with her so after the boyfriend is shot and killed he plans out a way to cut him up and get rid of the body for her. But for some reason calls 911 at some later date, maybe when she refused his advances? She goes to prison and this simp dies of cancer. The murder happened very close to the robbery scene in those same weeks. So it seems like it could be related. But why admit to the death crime yet not admit to the robbery bomb plan? This simp is supposedly the mastermind behind it all.
The documentary maker is obsessed with this older woman too. Yet what is her role here? She didn't build the bomb, likely didn't plan anything as she can't even handle her day to day life. She was some minor figure in this case and was just around the evil planners. A rapist accused of crimes against children who lives in freedom now. A lot of disgusting low-life men. 3 were murdered or died because of the robbery. She doesn't reveal anything about the bomb heist and proclaims her innocence so following her feels pointless.
I think the documentary is a tad besides the point. First of the 4 episodes is about the bank robbery. Yet it's badly edited and confusing. The next episode is about the murder of her boyfriend. And from then on we just keep following this insane woman and some potential connection she may have to the main crime here. The documentary maker is absolutely obsessed with her and calls her his best friend I think. Lots of men were obsessed with her. I'm note sure why as she killed most of them. I think I would rather watch a documentary about the robbery.
American Nightmare (2024)
There are way better documentaries on this case, but this is not bad
A couple is tied up in their own house during the night. The woman is seemingly kidnapped and sexually abused in another place while wearing a blindfold. The man meanwhile is told to sit and wait the whole night and not call the cops.
This documentary is fine, but there are way better documentaries on this case that reveal twice as much info in half the time. Obviously it's still a fun watch as the case itself is extremely interesting with no one getting killed either. So I will watch anything I can on it. But one of the main things was that the couple claimed they were kidnapped by a group of special forces experts with laser pointer guns, speakers, and a huge organization behind them. Obviously the FBI and police never found a single thread of proof of this happening. To this day they claim they heard several footsteps when being tied up. Plus a human-like doll was found in the perp's car later on showing how he staged this whole story of a group kidnapping them making them give misleading info to the cops. They still fully believe this story and no one else does and no one ever has been accused of being part of this group even though the perp himself claims it was the case. This whole story is fully omitted from the documentary which makes half of it make no sense. Why didn't the FBI and cops never trust them? This version of the story doesn't explain this. When she was released by the perp she claimed she was not sexually abused. And the couple claims his very attractive ex, who had cheated on him and moved out, was the intended target. So this supergroup kidnapped a middle class woman by mistake and didn't abuse her? Obviously no cop anywhere would ever believe this story. Which explains why they were outraged and why the couple won $2,5m in their case against the investigators because they were publicly accused by these outraged cops. And quite likely they still claim they believe the group kidnapping story as it makes their case against the police stronger. If they truly were this gullible then they cannot be blamed for misleading the police. And hence the police and FBI just didn't figure out the couple itself was mislead. Hence the $2,5m in settlement is warranted.
The perp molested her twice and practically got away with it. So he kept doing it as he may have felt invincible and this time tried to kidnap a 22 year old woman. Again info largely omitted from the doc. In reality he lost his phone in a fight there. So another police department arrested the guy and found all these weird tools in his house like a blindfold and closed up windows. Clearly the other tools were used for some other criminal act in the house itself and the cops called other departments to see if there were other crimes to uncover and were told there was this hoax that sounded similar. They uncover the hoax is actually a real crime. The Harvard lawyer goes to prison for 4 decades after partly representing himself and still being semi-insane. He has since married while in prison and changes his story regularly. Is he falsely accused? Was he in a powerful criminal gang of special soldiers? Was he just trying to take money and give it to the poor? You can believe any story and I get why the documentary, and frankly most interviews with the couple, fully omits the criminal gang element as it makes them look like foolish liars to most viewers. The Vox podcast does the same. They clearly mention a group and talk about men and use "they" to describe the kidnapping. Yet it's ignored and edited out from their very own story because no one would believe it.
I can't recommend the documentary despite it being great. As there are way better ones out there on this very same case. But you won't regret watching it as this is still engaging and well-made.
Abducted in Plain Sight (2017)
These are the most gullible people you will ever see
A p#do neighbor talks a family into handing him their little daughter. He claims he wants to take her out horse riding. Why did the family hand over their daughter to this weird creep? His brother is interviewed and says that everyone knew about his sexual proclivities and crimes involving underage girls. Yet for some reason he was not in prison and could befriend small girls openly?
The perp at some point started to have a sexual relationship with the mom in secret. And then the dad in secret too so I assume the dad is a closed homosexual? They were seemingly Mormons so questioning someone from their ingroup, being gay, or having an affair was not really something one talked about. And any sexual abuse would first and foremost be discussed and handled by the church that would rather retrain sexual deviants than throw them in prison. The perp manipulated them as he wanted to get access to Jan. He builds Jan her own room in their house and also tells the mom he wants to kidnap Jan. He convinced the parents that he had suffered sexual abuse and needed to hang out with their daughter alone in bed as part of his supposed therapy. He even told them they could call his therapist and ask about this, but the parents just blindly believed him. Both their church and FBI knew all about him. He still got to sleep in the room with the underage Jan and could then commit his crimes. Until the day he wanted even more and kidnapped her.
When he kidnapped her he took her to Mexico as it was legal to marry a 12 year old there. They got married and he called his brother to make her family agree to this marriage so that he could legally return to USA. Otherwise he would never come back. The brother made FBI track the call and Mexican police arrested him with the girl in his motorhome. Yet the cops allowed him to visit her afterwards and he then told her to lie to everyone about what had happened and not happened. He made up a story about aliens forcing them together to impregnate her as she was part alien. This way she could save her alien planet. This mission was a secret she couldn't tell anyone.
When he was brought back to USA he and his wife threatened the family. We find out this guy has a bunch of kids himself and is married even though we never see these people. If they didn't sign an affidavit admitting he didn't kidnap the daughter they would reveal the affair between him and the mom to the world. The mom didn't want this to happen hence signed the papers with the dad ruining the case for FBI. The parents also remained friends with him. The mom started to have a full blown affair with him in his motorhome as he asked her to leave her husband so she stayed with him. The church then pressured the dad into divorcing her as this was a point of shame for the church. While divorce was unheard of affairs seemed even worse. They get back together as she misses the kids and quite likely maybe a house too. The perp asks for Jan again and the parents put her on a plane to fly out to live with him. At this point it seems like both parents and the daughter are in love with the perp and will do everything to live with him, but he's interested into small girls only. The perp only gets 10 days in prison for the kidnapping as the parents worked to protect him so FBI didn't have enough on him. It's the same as the R. Kelly case where he made a video tape committing a sexual crime and all could see who the girl was yet the parents of the girl claimed it was not her as he had paid them off. The girl and parents have never admitted to this.
Jan comes home after some weeks then stays at home for some weeks and decides to leave herself this time because the parents now refuse her request to stay with the perp. The perp takes her away and hides her with nuns while claiming he is a secret agent so that the nuns don't reveal any of this to any outsider and it would also explain why he can't keep living with the girl who he claims is his daughter. The parents wait 2 weeks before calling FBI. After this the FBI finds the girl and is again after him even though he didn't technically live with her. At this period in time he goes to prison for only 6 months as yet again FBI is seemingly left in the dark and don't have enough evidence from the parents to do much about this. The perp pays other prisoners to burn down the family's store. The perp also sues the parents in a civil trial for telling his story to the world as he claims it was love not a kidnapping. This is where it all ends as once Jan becomes an older teen he doesn't want to hang out with her anymore and he later removes himself from the world as he doesn't want to spend his life in prison and finally the family gets rich from selling this story. Supposedly he had a ton of victims, not just the 2 we see in the documentary. How much of this did really happen? Both the dad and mom admit to an affair with the guy and Jan admits to believing that aliens forced her to have a child with the perp so she couldn't talk about it to anyone and she fully believed she was part alien herself. She also talks about planning a random murder as she was that convinced she needed to be with him and not her family.
I think the whole family is insane and the story is extremely hard to believe. But I have to assume this is mostly true as the family makes themselves look like psychopaths selling out their small girl to a perp. Not sure why they are not spending the rest of their lives in prison, but I guess telling FBI the girl was abducted and not sold gives them this leeway. Maybe they will admit more later on in life. The only reason for the dad to admit to a gay extramarital affair that no one knows about is to claim he was seduced and tricked into all of this. If he is just a fool then he clearly didn't sell or randomly give away his daughter to a known p#do. He is trying to make himself look better and more honorable, by admitting to disgusting stuff that is not criminal so this way he looks honest and transparent about all his faults. Who knows what the truth is. But the cultish church they belonged to definitely could make them do this. So this way one could explain away some of the actions. But we see so many red flags every minute that one cannot really accept that the parents didn't know what they were doing. Yet all their children remained with them. They were not taken away by services and also remained dutiful children. That's another thing that makes no legal or personal sense. If this all happened how come the children didn't leave the parents and how come no one else went to prison?
We also know from the Podcast about the show that the perp actually adopted a little girl in Mexico and she was taken from him when he traveled back to USA. There are also another gay affair event uncovered. So the dad lied and likely was fully dating him. Belonging to the Mormon church and being gay was not a good mix in the 1970's. Even today it's not morally allowed by the church.
Who Killed JonBenét? (2016)
Dirt cheap and badly acted movie that actually does tell most of the main story
Historical accuracy: 9
Acting: 4
Dialogue: 7
Camera work: 4
Editing: 5
Budget: 3
Story: 5
Theme: 5
Pure entertainment factor: 6
Video quality: 5
Special effects: NA
Pacing: 7
Suspension of disbelief: 5
Non-cringe factor: 3
Lack of flashbacks: 2
I know quite a lot about this case by now. I have listened and read theories basically blaming everyone many times over. That's also why I decided to watch the movie as I just want to see more details about the case. I know this is a dirt cheap TV movie made in what seems like a week.
A 6 year girl from a very rich household is missing during the night. The dad is a CEO in a huge company and mother is a former pageant queen making her tiny daughter attend child beauty pageant competitions. The mom calls the cops and shows them a ransom letter left behind. The longest ransom letter in US history and likely took over an hour to write. The anti-US kidnapping group knows the rich father very well and the letter demands they not contact the cops yet they do it right away.
The case by itself is already extremely weird yet it gets way more weird. There are 4 theories of who killed the girl and the main ones all have the parents involved in the murder somehow. Firstly some assume it was an intruder. That's the theory the parents supported and they had a lot of very powerful friends in politics and the police department so this theory was forced onto everyone. Yet it lead to absolutely nothing. No DNA proof, no clear break-in, nothing from outside the house. So an intruder, who had a professor level intelligence, decided to spend an hour in the house writing this note. Without ever fearing getting discovered. And the dad found the dead daughter in the basement while the police was there. So the kidnapper wrote the note when exactly? Before she died somehow?
Then there is the extremely weird parent behavior. As they were powerful they could boss the cops around willy-nilly. They touched everything in the house many times over. The ransom note, the dead daughter, everything else. They were allowed to stay in the house with the cops. Then when the cops tried to interview the parents days later they fled the state. When the cops flew out to interview them they yet again escaped the cops and flew away again. Easy when you are rich and can afford to just keep traveling. Now we have a contaminated crime scene and parents who refuse to help the cops in any way. There is no one else to interview. No other person is accused. No evidence leads to anyone else. Only the parents have fishy stories. The few short interviews they gave when the police was there were often contradicting. Even small details had several alternative storylines. Did she fall asleep in the car or eat before going to sleep? The parents can't agree on this and constantly changed the story. Food from the house was found in her stomach. Digested for some hours. So clearly she ate when she got home yet without a clear timeline we can't know what happened. We just know the parents didn't tell the truth.
No piece of evidence ever pointed to anyone else besides the parents. It does not prove there wasn't an intruder. It's just that this theory has absolutely zero supporting evidence. Not a single clue or piece of information supports this theory or even explains why some outsider would do this. We don't know if he was rich or poor or why he would demand such a low amount of money yet write such a long detailed letter. Then we have the mom, dad, and son. With the son it could only have been an accident. He did a single interview to proclaim his innocence 20 years later and acted in an extremely weird way. But we can't know if he has autism or how he acts day to day. This theory also involves at least 1 parent who wrote the letter and later also strangled the daughter with a garrote and tied her up. And while experts claim the letter didn't have dad's handwriting the mom's handwriting did seem very similar to the letter. Some letters are exactly the same which is quite a coincidence. The dad may have dictated it as the letter is constantly talking about how amazing and powerful he is. Which is very peculiar. The letter quotes a lot of kidnapping movie lines. Meaning the writer must have had a great memory and likely quite a bit of free time, like a housewife. It also basically excludes 99% of potential lowlife criminals as they would not be able to write this letter. The ransom value was also basically exactly the bonus the dad would get from his company. The person who wrote it could have known very personal details about the dad. Yet a friend of the family or coworker would not have asked for this little money as it wouldn't be worth this level of possible negative consequences.
For whatever reason the parents wanted to ruin the investigation. They started doing this before being accused by anyone and the police leaders all supporting them and stopped any decent investigation into them. If this was a random child dying in their house then refusing to help out would make some logical sense as it keeps the cops away from you. But doing so while ruining the investigation into your daughter's murder seems extremely ill-advised. If they knew for sure they were innocent and that likely DNA would be found and someone else accused they would have no reason to fear much. Yet exactly what they supposedly feared happened. No other clues were found despite the intruder ONLY using things found in the house to write the note and kill the daughter. A fully unprepared kidnapping yet leaving not a single piece of fingerprint or DNA?
Mostly the movie tries to tell the true story, but does overuse flashbacks and jumps from place to place. It also includes a few pieces of evidence that are pure guesswork. Like claiming there were certain sentences said by certain people on the 911 call tape. A whole book was written on this. A whole popular documentary made on this piece of "evidence". Yet no one else can hear these statements being said. They also accuse the son of taking part in this. And without more evidence we should blame the people we have more evidence on first and foremost yet this popular theory is for some reason blaming a small kid who for sure had nothing to do with the garotte or the letter and is not essential to explain the murder. The more you learn about the case the less the intruder theory makes any logical sense. Maybe the mom did it alone and wrote the letter to force the husband not to call the cops. Then planned to bury the daughter while the husband would drive to the bank to get the money. Yet he then forced her to call the cops and she didn't explain she had killed her prior to him cooperating with the cops and hanging them writing samples that showed that the mom had an extremely similar writing style. Then once she told him they lawyered up and refused to speak to any cop anywhere. Maybe, but even this theory involves the husband at some stage. In the very best scenario for them they just ruined the investigation for the cops and let a child killer go free. In the worst case scenario it may not have been an initial head trauma accident but a rage induced attack caused by the daughter's bed wetting. We will likely never find out. But some theories have too many points of evidence to ignore.
Who Killed Garrett Phillips? (2019)
I strongly recommend it even though it may not be unbiased
The fact that the police and the prosecutors were interviewed for this documentary and didn't even know how to create a consistent story is insane. It's mindblowing that like 6 people get a 3 hour documentary to make a case and just ... can't. Not only didn't they have any evidence they basically had negative evidence.
A neighbor couple hears someone call for help inside the apartment next to them. They call the cops when they knock on the door yet only hear a lock being activated and nothing else. A cop arrives and hears someone walking inside the apartment. They assume someone then jumped out the window and ran away when they finally get into the apartment. A 10 year old boy is close to dead inside the apartment. No one knows how he died or if he was murdered. But based on heard footsteps the cops assume a murder took place and someone strangled him just a minute after he got home.
The mom is an attractive and popular woman with a White cop ex and then a Black ex who is coach of a school soccer team. The cop is seemingly eager to hang out with her again as he's not quite a looker. At one time he bothered the Black ex, Nick, and even split up his marriage to another woman "by mistake" by revealing he was seeing the mom on the side. The mom calls the cop ex to support her when interrogated by the cops and then they all agree Nick must have done it as clearly the other ex, who is in the room with them, is innocent. Nick doesn't seem to have a criminal past, he's quite popular and charming, and the mom hung out with him even post their split. Yet they split up because her kids didn't like him so that's motive enough for the cops. Even though we have no clear proof he wanted to get back together and never said he wanted to harm anyone at any time. Meanwhile the cop ex actually gains something from the possible murder right away as he gets to hang out with the mom and be her partner in crime. He was also the one who found the apartment so that she could move away from Nick. Even in the new interviews he seems head over heels in love with her. Meanwhile Nick doesn't really seem to care either way and just seems like he was dating some woman that once was in his life and now is not. We never get any clear evidence on what Nick felt post the break-up. But there are rumors, outside the documentary, that he was desperate to get back together and blamed the kids, those rumors are from her family though so not worth much as they were manipulated by the cops to accuse him.
The cops forced Nick to strip and hand over all his belongings. They don't really look into anyone else and are sure it's him yet there are several giant issues with this theory. Firstly their theory is that Nick jumped out the window and hurt his foot as it's a long way down. They get the search warrant because they claim he was limping that day and the judge believes them. The video they recorded from the day shows that he is in fact walking very fast and not limping so clearly the cop was lying to himself or the judge to get this warrant. At least that's what we see, maybe the documentary cut out any limping. His feet are also fine, he just has a minor older scrape on a foot. Yet their theory is that the killer must have a hurt foot. They also have a giant issue with their own claims as the cop heard footsteps inside the apartment at a time where Nick was with a friend. So now the 2 main claims that prove Nick did it are both false. He didn't limp, as we see it, and the main proof that someone killed the kid and that it wasn't an accident is now seen as false by the police themselves. Was there someone else in the apartment? A bra was found near the body and some assume it could have been auto-erotic asphyxiation. The same way a Kill Bill actor died. We don't really know what state the body was found in. No one ever saw anyone in the apartment or flee the apartment even though it was just past school hours and daylight and there were people around. Even a couple fixing a car right outside the window most of the time. Just meters away. If the police are correct then Nick got into the apartment mere minutes after the kid, only made minimal sounds, and then escaped without being seen or getting injured and then just minutes later met with his friend looking completely unfazed. The timeline is extreme and very hard to believe as it even requires the police itself to have made mistaken observations. But if they admit to making such a huge mistake we have to assume they are prone to making such errors and then we have to question even more claims.
This documentary is not really biased towards Nick as I see it. I have seen other videos on this case and all present the case the same way so they would all need to be biased the same way. There is not really any conclusive evidence disproving anything in this documentary or showing greater evidence, but some do assume Nick is guilty and have firsthand experience that questions the documentary. But still, no evidence, just anecdotes and then accusations based on how he acted during interrogations.
The cop ex did it claim makes some logical sense. It could explain why at the end of the day the prosecutors couldn't make a good case against anyone. A cop invited to take part of the investigation from minute one would have the knowledge to railroad the case from the inside out and lead the police department so astray. Even the DNA testing was done badly. The prosecutors claim the DNA proved it was Nick yet the testing is done so badly the judge throws out this "evidence". Yet some cameras do prove the cop ex was walking his dog basically next to the apartment at the same time the crime was committed so if he did it then it must have been extremely fast and with his dog with him which makes it quite complex. He too would only have minutes to commit the crime and this too seems unlikely. I think it's likely that a robber may have been in the apartment when the son got home. This would explain why the murder happened just as he got home. Of course the cop ex did get the mom the apartment and so had access to it too. Then there is the other kids theory that would explain why no apartment fingerprint was found in the criminal database. Fingerprints that belonged to seemingly no one were found on the window. Maybe a game gone wrong inside the apartment? They would then escape out the window and any DNA or fingerprints would never appear in any prisoner or crime database unless maybe retested 10-15 years later. Of course we never really got clear evidence anyone else was in the apartment at all.
Nearly all the evidence is just claims like "I think he did it", "I'm convinced he did it", "other people think he did it", "we have evidence showing he did it, but cannot show it to you". They never actually present any clear evidence that can be used in the court itself. They show that Nick was in the area. Guess who else was in that area? The whole town! Every single person shown here was in that area as it's a small town where everyone knows about everyone. They show Nick was at the school the same time the son was there and went home at the same time. Yet he literally works at the school. Even if you truly feel Nick did it you have to admit the evidence is not there to convict. Even the cop ex arrived home at the very same time the son rolled past his house just meters away from him. Minutes before he was murdered. Again showing just how small this area is. No matter who you accuse that person would have been right there at that time and then you could use that as "proof".
They only prosecute Nick when they watch his civil trial interview when he was suing the police department etc. They then used it for the grand jury to make them agree to a court case. Yet if he did it why would he create hours long evidence for the cops to potentially prosecute him? If Nick's lawyer felt Nick's story was not clear he would never allow this. The prosecutors now also had an extra conflict with Nick giving them more motivation to derail his life. At least the claims about the police force being racist and narrow-minded makes logical sense as it all connects the dots here. We ourselves see them shouting at him and mocking him when he volunteers to help them out. There is ZERO need for this. The claim that they were biased is very much warranted. While a claim about a random coach freaking out and committing child murder out of nowhere as his first criminal act seems harder to make sense off, taking all evidence into account. He was with the mom for months on end and was never violent while hanging out with her and her sons. He was calm and kind all the way to a degree that even post the break up she wanted to hang out with him as a good friend. Yet at some point he snapped and decided to spend a few minutes killing the son and no one saw a buff Black guy in a White town run away from the murder scene? At one point we even see that a witness is willing to claim he saw a Black man in the window of the apartment. That's many years after he told the cops he never saw anything. Clearly many were nudged to lie about what they saw and heard. And hence all the rumors about Nick hating the sons are also questionable as they come from similar people. But then we can't prove the cop ex did it either. We just can't prove anything here. Because we can't prove anything I just wish everyone the best. They are not guilty in the eyes of the law hence they get to live freely. But obviously I would support them reopening the investigation and this time maybe looking into the other potential suspects. The cop ex is still a question mark for us all as he was left alone and not clearly looked into.
Pushing Daisies (2007)
The dialogue makes it work
Acting: 6
Dialogue: 9
Camera work: 8
Editing: 8
Budget: 8
Story: 8
Theme: 8
Pure entertainment factor: 8
Video quality: 6
Special effects: 4
Pacing: 7
Suspension of disbelief: 4
Non-cringe factor: 7
Lack of flashbacks: 5
Quite a positive surprise. It seemed like a TV show for women so I avoided it for years, but the quality in the dialogue and great focus on murder mysteries makes it more than just a cheap chick-flick style show. Though the basic premise is that the couple cannot touch each other as otherwise she dies. So it's "love overcomes all barriers" and the physical part the leading man craves is overlooked as it's seen as non-essential. Of course the hot blonde working for him is head over heels in love with him yet he refuses to leave the woman who will die if he ever touches her. It's definitely romance many men will feel seems a tad off.
The episodes are unfortunately very episodic. We always have deeper family mysteries being uncovered like who is the mother of the female lead or who loves who. But the murder case itself is always the same. Each episode has one. They set out to investigate a murder. There are about 3 people involved. 1 is a lead suspect. They chase the clues. At some point they just randomly run into the murderer and the perp is promptly arrested no matter if they have any evidence or not. The case may be solved logically too, but in the very same scene the murderer just also appears ready to kill again and is captured in the act. It's pretty much Scooby Doo level of mystery where all cases are solved with a simple unmasking. It's somewhat a mystery, but not really a full detective story and since episodes are short we can't really get much more here. This is the main fault in the TV show and likely why it was canceled. Instead of making the first 5 episodes episodic and then jumping into a season show they refuse to improve the planning. The writing is great. Even very high tier at times. But if you don't plan out a season you can't really go deep into any story and expand on the characters. The last episode also just shows us the conclusions. Stuff that should have happened in season 1 or at least mid season 2. But they are so busy with the episode storylines that the main stories all remain unsolved and then a few a solved in a single minute. This reveals how badly this was planned. Maybe if the episodes were a tad longer we could have had the full story being shown over 2 seasons instead of nearly everything being a cliffhanger.
The acting is quite bad from the 2 leads. But really top tier from the Black PI and the blonde and then the episode characters. They are all quite charismatic and likable. The Black PI is pretty much 70% of the show. He carries nearly every episode on his shoulders making all stories grounded and cool. I would say it's very much worth a watch as it always is fast paced and the sets are quite cool. It's like City of Ember (2008) where the story feels a tad incomplete and weird yet the sets are so unique that it's very much worth a watch. Unfortunately they do use CGI for quite a few scenes and it's quite awful. The setting itself is like Coraline (2009) with crazy backstories and sets. Making it all look a tad childish and magical. Which is required as the premise is pure nonsense that makes no logical sense even in this universe. You are just not supposed to question anything. If you want something better and deeper in the detective genre I recommend Terriers (2010). But for us who adore anything in this genre, Pushing Daisies is enjoyable despite the main stories being overlooked, the creepy romance subplots, the creepy premise, and the rushed murder mystery stories. I enjoyed it and the cliffhangers worked well. They just worked too well as they were never solved.
Down Periscope (1996)
Where are the funny jokes?
Acting: 5
Dialogue: 6
Camera work: 7
Editing: 6
Budget: 7
Story: 6
Theme: 6
Pure entertainment factor: 6
Video quality: 5
Special effects: 5
Pacing: 6
Suspension of disbelief: 3
Non-cringe factor: 2
Lack of flashbacks: 10
The humor is too outdated for this to be fully relevant today. Like an overweight cook farting made into this giant gag. There is also a single woman in the submarine. Of course she is a blonde bombshell all the guys like to push a bit. But even this is over the top. Instead of small funny jabs they are just drooling over her and make huge direct statements towards her without even seeing how sad it makes her. Every little event is overblown. And the humor is forced and fake.
What I like is the story. We have an outdated sub that needs to "win". So we are following the raggedy crew of misfits and then one bombshell. The story also moves forward at a frisk pace with clear bad guys and clear wins for the good guys along the way. But overall it feels like it's just a tad outdated. It's like a 1970's slapstick college comedy. It has a lot of great ideas, a good budget as the sub looks nice, and a story that ties it all together. But frankly I didn't laugh once. So did it fail as a comedy? I think it's not even a comedy. Just some slapstick distracting you from the story.
The Liberator (2020)
The too over the top modern progressive theme and weird animation makes it feel ahistorical
Historical accuracy: 5
Acting: 6
Dialogue: 5
Camera work: 6
Editing: 5
Budget: 4
Story: 4
Theme: 2
Pure entertainment factor: 5
Video quality: 2
Special effects: 1
Pacing: 6
Suspension of disbelief: 4
Non-cringe factor: 4
Lack of flashbacks: 4
A modern progressive theme put heavily on top of a simple Band of Brothers like story and it doesn't quite mash as the original historical setting mixed in with far-left values from 2024 always feels forced. This is often the case in historical movies where the time and place they are made in decides the events and personalities instead of the history being the main focus. We start with Nazis mocking any race mixing and then the Americans constantly bragging about the immigrants in USA and how they are brave immigrant soldiers. We follow an extremely mixed group of people with American Indians, African Americans, Mexican Americans and so forth in the same battle group lead by a progressive White leader.
The cartoony style is definitely there to make it cheap and a team of just a few post-production people could pull this off with some automated software. The actors wear real uniforms and some things we see are real. But they can edit in and out anything. Unfortunately it's still small stuff like a few tanks or some road barrier. This style could be used to create whole cities for basically no budget. Buildings exploding everywhere. Using it to create a single building in the background feels pointless. This style would be a positive if it for example was set in a city with street fighting or maybe even a ship battle sequence.
They also want to be so much like Band of Brothers that they of course want the initial training sequence. But how do you create it in a show that has worse writers who need lazy Hollywood tropes to get by? You need to entice the viewers by showing a battle sequence in Germany and then half into the first episode we switch over to the training that they felt they couldn't write well enough to make for an interesting story by itself. It's a story about criminal rebels trained into a proper WW2 unit. Something we have seen in way better movies already. A story that we see too often.
It's basically a dirt cheap Band of Brothers imitation with the clever historical writing replaced by a modern kumbaya "we are all one race" theme that would have been better depicted in a modern high school or prison setting. It's so extremely heavy handed and forced that it becomes cringe. And frankly the forced nature of the theme, the opposite of what Band of Brothers did, makes it extremely predictable. It's not bad, I just feel like it's trying to offend my intellect. I won't really finish it.
Unhinged (2020)
Nothing here makes sense logically
Acting: 3
Dialogue: 4
Camera work: 7
Editing: 7
Budget: 6
Story: 5
Theme: 3
Pure entertainment factor: 6
Video quality: 8
Special effects: NA
Pacing: 6
Suspension of disbelief: 2
Non-cringe factor: 3
Lack of flashbacks: 10
Not a good movie. We have a lot of these horror movies set during daytime in a big city. Often with a psychopath chasing some kid and a woman in traffic. Or trying to escape all cops in the city while having kidnapped a family member and driving all around town. Unfortunately it kinda needs to make some sense. We need to feel like it could happen in real life in some situations if the bad guy was extremely lucky or the good guys extremely unlucky. Of course this is not the case here. Nothing makes any sense whatsoever. There are maybe 2 scenes where you feel like it could happen in an extreme situation. Everything else is just pure fiction.
The mom trying to escape Russell Crowe can at any time just drive away and hide. She never does. At one point she takes her son out of school, that is protected by cops, and then puts them both in danger. Her son nearly dies. She could have dropped him off or let him run away. She drives to her mother's house and parks outside so that the psychopath can spot the car. Then drives into his car in another car while he is looking at her original car. Why? Why not just drive away or hide? Then she goes inside the house as the bad guy is there. Her son is hiding in a secret room impossible to find. Guess what, she crawls inside the room keeping the door open. The bad guy now finds them and nearly kills them. This is how the movie goes all the way. There is no logic here.
Her brother also sees the car the bad guy is driving outside his house. Instead of calling the cops he decides to pick up a knife and then search the house for this beast. A huge guy that he just saw kill a man with a butterknife. At least if he had a gun it would make some sense. Of course this search gets his girlfriend killed and he himself gets burned nearly to death. I cannot hope any of these people survive as they are so stupid I really don't care what happens to them. They can walk away at any point. Any point, they never do.
And keep in mind this is all caused by the extremely irritating woman who could have apologized for a traffic event and he would let her be. Nope, even though her son begs her to apologize she refuses which then gets all these people killed. I think he kills 4 people because of this stupid error by her. And she and her son only survive by sheer luck as they themselves want to take him on and finish it. Finish what? The cops are after him. A few minutes away. He would go to prison for life or be shot by them. What is her grand plan here? They also set up the ex-husband as a main character and then we never actually see him. Why not let him be a victim? We had a ton of scenes where they talked about him.
I think it's quite mediocre. I can't recommend it to anyone.
The Gold (2023)
Not sure it actually tells the story in a clear way
Historical accuracy: 6
Acting: 5
Dialogue: 5
Camera work: 7
Editing: 5
Budget: 6
Story: 6
Theme: 3
Pure entertainment factor: 6
Video quality: 6
Special effects: NA
Pacing: 6
Suspension of disbelief: 6
Non-cringe factor: 5
Lack of flashbacks: 10
It's fine, I guess. There is nothing great here and it for sure overstays its welcome. I would say the first few episodes kept my attention as it's an interesting criminal case I know quite a bit about. But the series soon devolves into a perplexing and unfocused storyline with dialogue you can barely hear. Initially we can at least follow the case and story. Later we just see a bunch of scenes from characters all over the world in their living rooms laughing or crying. And characters very often whine about stuff that seems quite insignificant. I would not call it good nor bad. It's sorta just mediocre in every sense as half the episodes are decent enough. The acting is really below par, even bad. The writing unfortunately is not good. There is a theme of the evil state or the old power that bullies these thieves and the honorable police officers and especially women. Yet we never see this power. There are maybe 2 small scenes with a rich arrogant guy, but he doesn't really seem evil. Instead these robbers seem evil. But the writing clearly tells us they are rebels and the powers at be are what is evil. But since we don't follow these powers it just presents as a great illusion. And it's boring to watch a TV show about just dialogue about some power we never experience.
The lead female is a feminist girlboss. She can run after suspects, do car chases, bully men around her, lie to achieve her goals, get promoted at will, is constantly outsmarting everyone and notices extremely obvious stuff no one else sees like discovering which cops are corrupt. We know this was a group project and everyone was working together on the clues. So of course when I see her flee in a car from a bunch of soldiers shooting at her and her partner I figure this didn't happen. It's added to make them look cool and add excitement. Yet in the real scene where a robber kills a cop we see nothing. We just see the cops then in the next scene he is dead and the robber is arrested. So we get a fake car chase and are not shown the biggest event of the real story? We also don't even see the gold when they rob it. We actually don't see a bunch of things as the camera is zoomed in in all scenes as this is set in the past and it's hard to find sets. Similarly we often have shots inside apartments or of just the road. It looks absolutely dull with shaky camera work, extremely dull colors, and overacting. There is nothing to look at. Even the attractive women are quite subdued and never charming. Especially, as I said, in the later episodes where everyone becomes a whiner whining about the greater evil powers that are supposedly making police leaders and millionaire robbers into sad, pathetic losers.
It's a shame that this very fascinating criminal case is not presented in a more exciting way. If only the acting had been good or budget decent then I would have something to latch onto. But once too many characters are presented it's hard to really follow any story. It's a miss for me. It devolves into overly long monologues about the evil old powers. And frankly that's a dull, dull thing.
Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (2020)
Mediocre
Acting: 4
Dialogue: 4
Camera work: 7
Editing: 3
Budget: 8
Story: 4
Theme: 2
Pure entertainment factor: 6
Video quality: 8
Special effects: 8
Pacing: 5
Suspension of disbelief: 3
Non-cringe factor: 4
Lack of flashbacks: 3
The main issue with the movie is the script. It's yet another girl boss movie that's so one the nose and lazily written that instead of using deep themes and plot to reveal a great thematic story about women in modern society the script relies on direct statements. An Asian girl steals from a Black woman. When caught she claims she was just trying to steal from rich White people. This would make thematic sense if the scene fit the statement. It's just a bunch of progressive value statements with no story to back them up.
Similarly they claim the main bad guy hates women and even wants to kill Harley for voting for Bernie. Yet this is not set up either. He seems to just hate everyone from what we see happening on screen. Hence the girl boss theme is quite illogical. The movie revolves around the main villain then 5 semi-criminal women who are supposed to look good in comparison to him. They are still thieves, murderers, a corrupt cop, a woman who does everything for money with no moral values. The bad guy is so comically bad anyone will agree on who is evil here. But this doesn't solve the issue of the lacking theme as the 5 girl boss chicks are not doing anything great here. They are not saving innocent bystanders, not saving the city, not doing good deeds for the sake of them. They just seem to like each other as they are all women. Besides this somewhat sexist drive they don't seem to have any overall drive.
The editing is all over the place with graphic overlays, fast flashbacks, and an extreme amount of voice over explaining everything to dump it down to a level so that even small kids won't overlook a single detail. Harvey just broke the legs of a bad guy and next up the guy attacks her in his new wheelchair. Clearly we can recall his face and also understand it must be the broken legs guy. Yet Harley has to narrate it and we even see a flashback showing the prior leg break scene again. A scene we saw 10 minutes ago. The movie refuses to let you think. The fact that it's a girl boss movie dumbed down 10 fold to make even a regular Batman movie seem intellectual is maybe illustrative of how Hollywood sees women.
I did enjoy the light atmosphere and fast pacing. But it's not enough to make it a good movie. Harley just seems like a silly female version of Joker like the female versions of Batman, Superman, Thor. The movie reminds me of the old cheap slap-stick superhero movies yet this one is gruesome enough to not be kid friendly. The modern female lead superhero and action movies are nearly all girl boss movies about how evil men are and about how great and strong women are. Most just overdo it with lazy writing. Captain Marvel is still the only such movie that's not directly bad. And even that seems like it's a lucky coincidence. It's a shame that they don't hire better writers.
Ill Met by Moonlight (1957)
Average movie
Historical accuracy: 7
Acting: 5
Dialogue: 5
Camera work: 6
Editing: 6
Budget: 7
Story: 5
Theme: 8
Pure entertainment factor: 6
Video quality: 5
Special effects: 6
Pacing: 6
Suspension of disbelief: 7
Non-cringe factor: 6
Lack of flashbacks: 10
Pretty good. It does all the basics without really doing anything extra or going deep into the story. It's a very shallow recreation of the real events with a few tension scenes put on top of it to make it feel more like a movie. Overall it's a letdown as a historical depiction, but works as it presents a lesser known story from WW2. They killed the driver in real life and the general became their friend on the trip. Also, the mission was a huge dud. The Germans lost a lower ranked commander they didn't care about after the actual target left the island. The British got a commander who couldn't tell them anything new. I guess we got a movie out of it.
The plot is: 2 British spies set out to kidnap a German commander on a Greek island. There are so many Nazi soldiers there that the general is driving alone with his chauffeur at night. We get a ton of nice shots of the hill and nature yet in black and white it's lacking something. Then we get a lot of shots of overly fake happiness and Greek soldiers smiling and partying. It's nice it's here, but it replaces the real life details. We could have learned more about weapons, the history of the island, the indepth plan, what the mission was for. It's nice that they show day to day life as that's not seen in modern movies where you pay a lot per speaking role. On the other hand it's too much. The movie gets a tad predictable and the plot points are given away by mediocre overdone acting and slow pace.
I would recommend it as a watch if you want to experience a bit of history. But it's a movie that's a bit too easy to forget as the plot is extremely basic and stretched thin. It's barebones.
A Haunted House (2013)
Cheap and lazy
Acting: 4
Dialogue: 4
Camera work: 4
Editing: 4
Budget: 3
Story: 4
Theme: 2
Pure entertainment factor: 5
Video quality: 5
Special effects: 3
Pacing: 5
Suspension of disbelief: 2
Non-cringe factor: 3
Lack of flashbacks: 10
Largely just a collection of cheap scenes just like many of these parody movies that are written and made in just a few months. It's a cheap way to make some fast cash without putting any work into it. They don't really feel like full movies and are not even coherent with a proper plot. Largely it's just a bunch of gag scenes. Some are funny, most are just silly and unfunny. The humor ranges from decent to overly silly and disgusting toilet humor.
The movie never gets totally terrible as there are some funny scenes here even though they are rare. When the comedy falls flat it's truly bad. And that happens regularly.
The plot is unfortunately quite a mess. The scary ghost and the whole investigation could have been made stronger. They for example stay in the house with the ghost and TURN off the lights at night. All you have to do is keep the lights on in all other rooms and the ghost will lose its power as it doesn't scare them during the day. They also never call the cops. These factors make it seem like an unrealistic mess with people who don't even try to think or act rationally. Even though there are just about enough plot scenes to keep it going.
Since it's silly anyhow they could have hired a model to play the wife instead of a regular actress. At least then the movie could have another interesting thing. The overacting and silly nasty gags are just not funny.
Skip this. But I think people who adore nasty sex and toilet jokes will enjoy parts of it. I just don't imagine anyone having this type of humor. I don't hate it, but I do think it's a waste of time.
Masters of the Air (2024)
Historically iffy, but better than The Pacific
Historical accuracy: 6
Acting: 7
Dialogue: 5
Camera work: 7
Editing: 6
Budget: 8
Story: 6
Theme: 5
Pure entertainment factor: 7
Video quality: 8
Special effects: 7
Pacing: 6
Suspension of disbelief: 4
Non-cringe factor: 4
Lack of flashbacks: 10
All reviewers keep saying this is not on par with Band of Brothers. Indeed it's a very weak follow-up and not even in the same universe quality wise. But keep in mind it's a trilogy of TV shows. Band of Brothers, the follow-up The Pacific, and now this plane focused third part. First 2 are based on specific books so they follow real life stories and are realistic in that the voices of real people are heard. And soldiers were interviewed for Band of Brothers to get all the details just right. Unfortunately The Pacific is based on a dull book about soldiers who hated the military service. And the author mainly writes about all the stuff they stole, how boring and dull it was, and how much they drank and all the women they got together with. It's quite anti-army to a degree where it becomes self-destructive. While Band of Brothers was about an army group and their real life missions actually getting the job done and defeating Nazis when needed as someone had to get the job done and defeat evil in the world. I get why some soldiers refuse to do anything unless forced, but when the characters are fighting evil forces you kinda want something useful to happen on screen and want to follow true leaders.
This third part is a step up from The Pacific entertaining wise. They knew they couldn't repeat the dull realistic setting with no plans or goals and maybe didn't find a proper book to film so they overdid it in the creative department. Everything feels like a parody of WW2 with Hollywood tricks at every corner. The lead female is of course whining about her rights and British men while she herself is a girlboss superspy. The most stereotypical modern role and extremely forced. And of course just an invented role even though there were active spies in real life too. More actual women had nursing, cooking, and factory work yet none of this is shown for some reason. The American lead pilot is basically an action hero. When anyone complains or tries to stay safe he forces his crew to fly on and of course he doesn't even get injured. Instead of showing us one pilot doing this and dying and another doing it and surviving they just follow this American superhero who is the smartest one on the plane and knows what to do in every scenario while the remaining crew is just following orders or freaking out. He never makes a mistake in anything. Then they show the Black pilots and we know what will happen as the prior episodes illustrated how basic it all is. In Band of Brothers it would have been a cool realistic short scene with no heroes or victims. Just real life. Here the first thing they do is complain about racial discrimination, then show forced ultra intelligence skills, then do heroic deeds, then are discriminated against openly, and then debate with their captures about how they will fix America when they return home. It's clearly just 2024 progressive Black values shown during WW2. The interrogation scene is so preachy one has to wonder if it's a joke. Which is a shame as I feel like the idea behind it could work if they gave the scene more time to develop step by step. But scenes are fast and cheap here with everything feeling like fake and forced 2024 storylines.
The British pilots are all snobbish violent jerks who mock or fight the American pilots. First thing they say is that Americans flying during daytime is foolish. This statement is factually correct. The British pilots flew at night as they had years of experience and already knew that bombing raids during daylight would get half the planes shot down. American newcomers were still arrogant and felt they could do things better than the British. And furthermore the American plans here are shown as being crucial for the war effort. Keep in mind other countries were fighting Germans too and did daring missions too. And these American missions during daylight were more aimed at propaganda victories than anything that would turn the tide of war. Instead of just showing heroic deeds by mainly one single superhero they could have explored all these topics. Instead of showing all British men as snobbish cowards they could have at least told their story fairly. I agree with the British on this. But as soon as the war was over Hollywood did make the American pilots into the main heroes of the war and seemingly even today with more critical thinking than ever we can't get away from these cheap story tricks.
The Germans here are always shown as brutal murderous monsters. This is like Indiana Jones. But there it feels right as you'd want them to be caricatures. Here it's just like the British pilots. So one-sided that it feels fake in every scene. There are a million ways to show the Nazis as pure evil without just showing all soldiers constantly beat, shoot, or mock POWs. You could just show a concentration camp like in Band of Brothers did. In that episode they showed how uncaring the civilian Germans were. They lived right next to the camp yet felt it was not their fault and now felt it was unfair that they were forced to clean up the camp. All part of the reeducation effort by the Allies. Extremely powerful, and makes them out to be clueless monsters by showing what actually happened in real life. They are not cartoonishly evil, they are actually cruel and uncaring and therefore evil. The last episode here showing a KZ camp and then food airdrop to Holland was great and emotional. But such emotional scenes are few and far between. It's mostly all forced.
The CGI is at times funky as others have pointed out. Not ideal, but frankly to me it's a tiny matter. We need cheap TV shows too and they cannot make a Band of Brothers today unless they get extra funding from somewhere. The real airplanes were cool. The acting being weird with overblown superheroes is not on the actors. They are reading lines written in a script. Clearly the producers did not want another Band of Brothers here. They wanted a more childish and direct version of WW2 inspired by real events instead of basically trying to replicate them completely like in Band of Brothers and The Pacific. I somewhat like the show overall for what it is. A fast-food version of Band of Brothers with none of the depth, acting, or plot. But just enough WW2 events and tech to be engaging all the way. Even though one is let down at every minute watching this as it could easily have been Band of Brothers 2. But they never tried to make a sequel. They tried to make something that's easier to understand for even small kids.
Quel maledetto treno blindato (1978)
Not worth a watch
Historical accuracy: 3
Acting: 2
Dialogue: 3
Camera work: 5
Editing: 5
Budget: 5
Story: 4
Theme: 3
Pure entertainment factor: 5
Video quality: 4
Special effects: 4
Pacing: 7
Suspension of disbelief: 2
Non-cringe factor: 2
Lack of flashbacks: 10
Silly low-budget WW2 slapstick. It's not like the Tarantino version focused on intrigue, tension, and an alternative storyline. This is a dirt cheap movie where everything is silly because the quality behind everything is low. I watched a dubbed version with terrible dubbing. But then the Italian version would have American soldiers speaking Italian or what? No matter what this just doesn't work. It's not really a comedy as it's not funny. It's just slapstick. German soldiers getting shot fly away. The special effects are cheap, sets are small and largely just set outdoor. No one is serious and many scenes are just there for the gag alone. Battles often happen out in the open without soldiers ducking for cover. It would have been fine if the movie was about 45 min long as the lack of plot and constant random scenes would not be too irritating. The whole Suicide Squad thing also doesn't work. The unit of Allied prisoners trying to escape from the American army to Switzerland are trying to avoid combat along the way, but are forced to kill Germans to get by. Yet there are no clear moral values or themes that are create after they are forced into battle. The group is just randomly getting into battles and often makes things worse. Maybe if the budget was greater or acting decent this could have worked better.
Where Eagles Dare (1968) is the best video game movie ever made even though it's of course not based on a video game. It's exactly like one and has the silly action and weird single focused mission where the good guys can shoot 100 Germans without being hit. It does what this movie does yet to a grand degree. It's the silliness and action you'd want.
The Dirty Dozen (1967) is a similar premise in that it's also about a group of criminals on a secret mission. And since this stuff was done better way before the movie came out there is not much reason to watch it. Which is a shame as it could have done a bit more with what it had. The naked German women could have been a great part of the plot and created some romance subplots. Or maybe the Black man could have had a bigger plot development. They could have tried a few new things here that were not done in other better and higher budget movies. Maybe it would have been interesting to see a group of criminals capture a group of German women and then travel to Switzerland with them?
I think this more light WW2 focus is essential as war movies today tend to be overly fake by being macabre and dark to an unrealistic degree. Where all the men are gloomy at all times which is just pure fiction. But you need to have both sides to make it work. And this movie is just not realistic at any point.
Gladiator (1992)
Silly yet fun
Acting: 7
Dialogue: 7
Camera work: 8
Editing: 8
Budget: 7
Story: 7
Theme: 6
Pure entertainment factor: 7
Video quality: 7
Special effects: NA
Pacing: 8
Suspension of disbelief: 6
Non-cringe factor: 7
Lack of flashbacks: 10
Pure silliness. Rocky in highschool. A White teen-ish guy starts in a new high school in a dirt poor city. Mainly ruled by young Black gangs with one gang beating up everyone who does not oblige. The White lead, a Cuban immigrant, and a Black boxer are all in trouble. Meanwhile a former light heavyweight boxer is running an underground fight ring. Willing to pay a random kid from the street $1250 for one single fight. Really? That much for a single bout with zero preparation and zero info about who is fighting or what the rules are? At any rate the lead's dad has some gambling debt that needs to be repaid. And now the great White hope is stuck. His teacher keeps telling him he has a huge talent in communication and English. Yet he seldom says anything.
The Cuban is brain dead after a fight as everything is allowed. Kicking, showing, elbow blows. Everything. Everyone else is cheating and the gang banger kid puts chemicals in his eyes then basically kills him as no one throws in the towel. Quite silly. Why would no one protect him? No parents, siblings, girlfriend, friends? No towel anywhere? And how come kicks to the head are allowed? In real boxing everyone in the hall would storm the ring and beat up any boxer who did this. Yet here it's accepted.
At the end the other Black boxer has a brain injury yet is told to fight the lead. They finally refuse to fight and the lead instead fights the guy running it all and beats him. But why not agree to only do body punches and have a real fight with the Black boxer? They make it into a huge deal. Yet a single such agreement would solve all their issues and get them $20K and a pro deal for the winner. Isn't he some super talent in English? Now he can't think while they are alone preparing for the fight? Also, he keeps saying the bad boss may kill him, his father, his girlfriend. Yet he never kills anyone or even really harms anyone personally. So it becomes silly exposition where we clearly see no one is in any danger yet the plot demands they are in danger so they just have a guy say it is so without any info at all to support this claim. Overall I like the realism, but it really devolves in a caricature of boxing and the gang world. Still fun though. And the boxing is great. Hard Times (1975) is similar yet amazing as it stays real. This one is a bit all over the place, but a great watch for boxing fans ready to be perplexed by these boxing rules.
The Way Ahead (1944)
Great acting but lacks plot
Historical accuracy: 7
Acting: 8
Dialogue: 8
Camera work: 8
Editing: 7
Budget: 8
Story: 6
Theme: 6
Pure entertainment factor: 7
Video quality: 6
Special effects: 9
Pacing: 7
Suspension of disbelief: 7
Non-cringe factor: 8
Lack of flashbacks: 10
Quite a positive surprise. Very impressed by the quality and intellect behind the movie even though it does feel a tad hollow or incomplete overall. I think mainly because it lacks color and a clear structure. During WW2 Britain didn't use too many young male actors so these people are not between 18 and 41. Some look 50-55 even though they are drafted here. But with not many young men left behind this is what they had to do with. Shame as it could have been a movie about the leadership instead and looked more realistic. The acting is top notch though and that's what you get in return. We largely focus on their training and negative experience with their leadership and how hard they feel the training is. At the end they become a proper military unit. There are only 2 war events. One on the ship and one in the field. The ship one is amazing. Must have cost an extreme amount of money. I have not seen such budget in that many WW2 movies. Second one felt a tad forced with Germans just walking openly in a field. But overall they follow regular WW2 events with even 2 old men acting like talking heads and commentating on how spoiled the modern generation is.
I do feel it could have been more. We follow the wives a bit, but we mainly just see them talk a bit with their husbands. There are no conclusions. We don't see the soldiers return. And don't see the wives react to the final battle. We follow the training, but they never practice any healthcare, swimming, and are never told details about how to use the military equipment besides a few scenes outside of training. The training is mainly just running and crawling which is a shame as that's the main part of the movie. So it should have been deeper and better to make up for the overall lack of direction and plot. But as war movies go this is very realistic. It's similar to Fury (2014) and All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). Where realism and day to day life of a soldier is on the forefront. But mostly it's like Jarhead (2005) where we mainly are focused on the experiences of the soldiers and how they are actually not fighting too much, but rather constantly preparing. Band of Brothers (TV Mini Series 2001) is similar, but it focuses on real life battles and a unit that actually did do a lot of heroic stuff. So other films about single battles are not as deep or engaging. This one also tries to stay realistic. Sergeant York, Sahara (1943), and Gallipoli are in this category too, but I have watched a lot of these kind of movies from WW2 too and many are better than this one. This one is on the better side, but as a pure story it lacks a bit. It is mainly pro military propaganda. So a lot of the negative events are made into humorous and light scenes with soldiers just whining. Which to many soldiers watching this will feel like rose-colored glasses and that's a great shame. It never really feels real as you can see this layer of fakeness propaganda. They knew this was fake, but also knew they didn't have other scene options during WW2.
The Gallant Hours (1960)
Dull and cheap
Acting: 7
Dialogue: 6
Camera work: 8
Editing: 7
Budget: 7
Story: 7
Theme: 6
Pure entertainment factor: 6
Video quality: 6
Special effects: NA
Pacing: 6
Suspension of disbelief: 7
Non-cringe factor: 6
Lack of flashbacks: 3
I love WW2 movies, but this one feels a tad cheap on every front. Dialogue is used to tell us about sea battles without showing us maps, top views, or even miniature battles. That takes a lot of the energy and plot out of the movie as the victories and defeats on sea are just told about so I can't even be sure what information is valid or not. This is war so a lot of initial info would have been extremely misleading and as we are getting such battle info we are not fully sure we can trust it. I guess movie magic makes it all true right away? But that takes away from the realism of the movie.
The dialogue is forced and we have a ton of monologing by the lead as what else can be shown here? We have cabins and then a few outdoor scenes and all involve battle debates. So there are like 7 scenes where the lead just preaches on about how he hates slavery or loves freedom. Or explains that leaders don't change their mind, but change their goals. All this would be very clever if the plot showed us these moral points and lessons via conflict and battle outcomes. A guy talking about it to another guy in his office is dull and doesn't convey any moral point. We just know he believes it. He believes a battle was a disaster or a success. We don't see any of it and can't know what actually happened and who won. Of course a commander will claim a victory where there is none.
The production value here is just way too low to make a proper sea battle movie. And for the dialogue to make up for it it would have needed to be really sharp with a lot of personal stories taking over like a love affair, some family events, ship jobs, some PTSD. Yet none of this is featured here. We are inside a ship yet there are no personal relationships on the ship as they just talk about battles and the captain is so stoic that there is no conflict either. This is a huge missed opportunity. We could have seen ship life. Or with a bigger budget had seen a sea battle movie. Instead we get his philosophical movie that wants to be something it's not. And even the music and editing feels cheap and rushed. I can't recommend this. Read a good WW2 book instead or watch a documentary.
Totally Killer (2023)
The progressive on the nose propapange is cringe, but the movie is funny
Acting: 8
Dialogue: 7
Camera work: 8
Editing: 9
Budget: 8
Story: 8
Theme: 5
Pure entertainment factor: 8
Video quality: 8
Special effects: 7
Pacing: 8
Suspension of disbelief: 4
Non-cringe factor: 7
Lack of flashbacks: 6
A super left-leaning progressive 2023 teen girl travels back to 1987 to solve a murder. The time travel tries to make it a culture battle with a lot of statements like "I should have expected this time to be overly racist" and "that's offensive to gay people" etc. Everything is offensive to her as she leaves her small super progressive bubble and goes back to a time where people were more direct with each other. No one is really racist or discriminatory as such, but their humor and lack of attention to social issues rubs her the wrong way. And she for some reason never changes or develops at all. She's just this cult figure in her one-girl cult spreading messages about how crappy the 1980's were in her own small town. She's basically a radical missionary. But besides her cringe statements the humor here does work, her weird statements and then reaction cuts are magnificent making even cringe statements funny. I was laughing so hard at times.
The time travel and murder mystery is nice, but not really fully explained. They show a modern murder podcast, but the film is so fast that it never becomes a parody. It's just a murder podcast with a few gags. Unfortunately they don't really set up any mystery. The motive behind the killing is revealed as the killer is revealed and we didn't really see anything about this leading up to it. Which is a shame as I love trying to figure out who the killer is, but for that we need to see all scenes that could lead to killings.
Overall it's super progressive with even a gay flag and gay couple and constant bombardment of progressive propaganda about how everything is offensive. But somehow it works as the humor takes it far. It never takes itself seriously either. I adore time travel, I adore murder mysteries, I adore well-made teen chaos. Of course it doesn't really hit all notes and some biases may be too much for half the viewers. But for me it worked overall. Olivia Holt was amazing in this and clearly is heading for a huge career. I would not be surprised if she becomes the most famous actress alive. Kiernan Shipka was very funny. I'm not sure why the parts around her mouth were shining at all times. A bit weird from the makeup department as they never explain it in the movie. The Final Girls is pretty much the same concept with time travel murder mystery and teen girls. Happy Death Day too. These movies are great and super fun. Bottoms does everything a bit better high school wise and is a better movie overall. But it's not time travel.
Overall I'm both letdown and very impressed. It's just a very funny movie that's never dull. But man these people are stupid as heck. Her phone battery is running out and she is nervous about it, but never figures she can turn off her phone. The teens even in large groups attack the killer 1 on 1 or just run even though they have weapons and the killer only has a knife. They walk alone at night even while walking away from a murder scene! They are warned, but still do absolutely nothing to protect themselves and even go out of their way to get into dangerous situations. And they focus on hooking up and being offended way more than just trying to stay alive. Does it make any sense? Nope, but all this stuff never ruins the movie. If these Prime/Netflix movies start hiring proper writers then they will be amazing.
17 Again (2009)
Painfully cringe and a giant waste of your time
Acting: 3
Dialogue: 2
Camera work: 7
Editing: 7
Budget: 5
Story: 3
Theme: 3
Pure entertainment factor: 4
Video quality: 7
Special effects: NA
Pacing: 5
Suspension of disbelief: 1
Non-cringe factor: 1
Lack of flashbacks: 7
Everything is painfully terrible in this movie. The acting is horrid. The script is cringe, the plot is cringe, the dialogue is on the nose with the lead character introducing side characters by saying "you are my girlfriend" or "you are my best friend" or "you are my ex-wife". It's that low-brow. The jokes nearly never land. I was not even seeing it as a comedy until I saw 2 slapping scenes that made me laugh near the end. In the rest of the movie I didn't even smile. It was utter cringe and forced. A ton of nerd flirting with hot chick scenes and a few bully scenes where the lead again goes "you are the school bully and I don't like you". It's stuff even kids would get yet the script makes all characters spell this stuff out. So the dialogue becomes nothing and adds nothing.
Nearly nothing works here. I did like the idea about the ending. It's very clever ... as an idea. I like the actors in other projects. I overall like the simple plot idea as I adore this concept. But this does not work in any way whatsoever. I'm not sure why I even finished watching it as I had a bad time with it. The cringe is too much. I can't handle it.
American Experience: The Eugenics Crusade (2018)
Decent anti-eugenics documentary
This is only about USA and how they saw eugenics. They go over how eugenics was just a movement without a political leaning. Used to protect USA overall from ill immigrants, criminals, and people with mental disorders. And used to spread reproductive rights too as it was the moral foundation for it.
They do say quite a lot of nonsense here as they get too biased at times. Like one pundit claiming that an IQ test thousands of people took was pseudoscience as you can't even define or measure intelligence as such. This claim is of course pseudoscience. While you can criticize IQ tests just dismissing them is foolish. And the documentary never corrects it. I think there are actually a ton of valid criticisms towards the WW1 IQ test given to potential recruits. And some are close to what the documentary gets into. But overall the critique is terrible here. The same pundit pulls out a single IQ item as an example of how bad the test was. And documentary points out another item. But they fully overlook that a main part of the test did actually measure intelligence. Sure some items were terrible, but you can pull out any modern test and find a few terrible items in that too. That's just how ANY test works. They are clearly trying to mislead viewers by not explaining that a main part of the test was valid and quite useful to predict performance in the military.
Later they fully join the nurture camp. So that suddenly genes matter none, and that everything is just created by culture. Crime? Explained by culture. Children inheriting personality traits from parents? Culture. And so on. There is no middle ground as the documentary just attacks everything about eugenics without thinking about where it ends up. The documentary kinda just jumps head first into this "new" idea that culture explains all and hence old White men supporting eugenics are just unscientific and outdated. Again, this was close to a valid point to a small degree. Some pundits did touch on valid counter-claims like saying that the eugenics movement was not founded on scientific principles, but kinda just used them over time. And that National Socialists didn't create the movement, but did fully bury it after it was already basically out of style in 1920's USA.
This furthermore makes it weird. As of course the documentary starts and ends with explaining how bad and awful Nazis were. Then you suppose it would explain further socialist eugenics movements in other cultures and nations. But nope, this is only USA and Nazi Germany nothing else. Which is a shame as that's the 2 movements most already know quite a bit about. All other socialist regimes have practised genocide and mass selection too to some degree.
Overall it's a decent documentary for the anti-eugenics point of view. But it leans so heavily into this point that it misses a ton of valid points and becomes unscientific at times. And furthermore one feels it's incomplete without another point of view. Either a more scientific one or maybe even a short documentary pro eugenics. I don't think this can stand by itself as by itself it is propaganda that will mislead you. Of course they may feel like this moral standpoint is warranted and that misleading viewers is fine if it's for a good cause. But one has to note that they are doing this and be extra critical when watching it. I would not recommend it to people who know nothing about the topic. But if you can remain critical and understand that about 20% of the documentary is directly wrong I think you may enjoy it.
The Fall Guy (2024)
The acting is unbearably bad
Acting: 2
Dialogue: 1
Camera work: 5
Editing: 3
Budget: 8
Story: 3
Theme: 2
Pure entertainment factor: 4
Video quality: 8
Special effects: 7
Pacing: 4
Suspension of disbelief: 2
Non-cringe factor: 3
Lack of flashbacks: 5
This tries to be comedy. Tries. All the comedic scenes that are supposed to make you laugh are cringe inducing and the issue is that that's basically all dialogue scenes. They are overproduced, the dialogue is extremely stiff and fake, and often everyone is just chit-chatting about nothing or screaming their lines. This feels like a movie made with a script that's 50 pages long. The rest is adlib. There are constant scenes where 2 characters are supposed have an awkward personal debate. Yet the cuts are overly fast, the music too loud, and the dialogue is horrible. The whole script is awful mainly because of the dialogue that feels like it's written by someone who has never written a script before. Someone trying to write a comedy for the first time ever without really understanding what makes a scene funny. So it feels like a cheap imitation of a mediocre movie.
But then it's clear from the editing the producers didn't trust the story and acting to deliver so they overproduce each scene and cut it to bits. Everything feels extremely rushed yet the movie is overly long. Even the initial storyline kickstarting the plot is rushed via flashback and slow motion scenes. So many slow motion scenes everywhere! And then a 18 months jump in time where all this crucial plot development happened. They clearly had the runtime to tell a clear story yet just didn't. I can't even explain why. They had the actors, the budget, the runtime. They had everything to pull off a decent story. So the reason for the failure is just lazy people making the movie or no one actually making sure the quality is high. This is clearly produced, not directed.
Also, the story makes no sense. What are the plans? What role does the police play?
Gojira -1.0 (2023)
The scenes seldom connect to each other
Acting: 3
Dialogue: 4
Camera work: 8
Editing: 3
Budget: 8
Story: 5
Theme: 5
Pure entertainment factor: 5
Video quality: 8
Special effects: 9
Pacing: 4
Suspension of disbelief: 4
Non-cringe factor: 3
Lack of flashbacks: 7
Overrated. It's a Godzilla movie that's not overly cringe so it's maybe a tad better in some ways, but that's not a huge deal. This franscise has more bad movies than any other largely because the whole concept is quite poor and underdeveloped. The first Godzilla took place right after WW2 as it was made at that point. It's extremely cheap but most importantly the script is extremely underdeveloped and lazy. It's not even half as good as the average 1950's monster-flick from Hollywood with love stories, friendships, and big fights. Since then the franchise has expanded, but it frankly never really grew into a proper story and this tries to remake the original movie by adding in an actual plot and deeper character studies. Still, Godzilla is a dull monster so how much can you do here?
Unfortunately the acting is quite horrid and most plot lines don't really go anywhere. We have the failed kamikaze pilot post WW2 who never does anything. He's reactive and a coward who constantly screams at his suffering. So much screaming! So much terrible acting. We have a cool scene where Godzilla bites a train. Besides this there wasn't really anything here I'd call great or exciting. Mostly it's an extremely by the numbers movie where you can predict every event and plot point 10 minutes before it happens as they are that transparent about everything. So it feels like a movie made for kids. There are some on the nose analogies on the atomic bombs, the Japanese society, their army, and the WW2 loss. But it's so on the nose that nothing is done with it. You just see what Godzilla implies, but we never really understand why Godzilla is even needed when WW2 itself would have created the same theme. Basically, it's WW2 retold right after WW2. Why is this needed?
Overall I did like the CGI and the historical setting, but it's not quite a good movie. It's just like any other Godzilla movie. It lacks a point. Most scenes are just happening out of nowhere. The lead is at home, then on the boat, then at home. There are no scenes connecting all of this and when something happens we have a ton of exposition in the scene itself as they seldom set up any plot point. They also have lame excuses for why the Japanese army or USA can't attack the monster and why Tokyo is not warned. Apparently they want to appease USSR. Which makes zero sense. At least explain it away by saying that the American soldiers were pulled back to USA to protect the country from Godzilla. It makes no sense to not defend Japan because Stalin may grow a bit weary of the US war ships in the area. He would understand that a monster is causing this, not any escalation or bigger plan. Heck, the Korean war happened soon after with Japan also taking part by constructing war equipment. And that was against communist regimes. So why would they refuse to do anything just a decade prior?
I like the idea and I feel like Godzilla is moving in the right direction with a greater historical focus. But just like all other Godzilla movies there is not much here. Not even for monster movie lovers like myself. Mostly because of the rushed editing that doesn't tie scenes together and then the horrid scream acting. And then of course it lacks a point. This is yet again Godzilla for kids. And adults really don't have much to find in this franscise. Even adults who usually adore silly monster flicks.