Hurmm

The first two episodes were pleasant. The middle two were great - a right balance of the nastiness of GoT with the whimsy of the first couple episodes. The last two could have been taken from GoT, at least in tone and brutality, and a lot in terms of family dynamics and politics too. It's not bad, and always still interesting, but I wished that it stated truer to the spirit seen in the first two-thirds of the series. Not being familiar with the novella I also felt that the season was a little too short. Btw, Maekar is probably the most intriguing/complex character on the show. He appears outwardly evil at first, but everything he does is rational and understandable as a father to a petulant bunch of kids.

It's not better than Spirited Away, that's just daft. But Across the Spiderverse is incredible in its own right, as long as you're in-tune with its aesthetics and ferocious pacing and editing, and you're not epileptic. It builds to one of the best cliffhangers I've ever seen. Within the mayhem, it somehow makes you care about every one of its character.

Fair enough. They definitely showed more of the xenomorph here and I'm one of those who think it was ballsy. For the most part I thought it looked good, in a manner where I knew it was a guy in a suit but yet better than any CG creature could be. CG xeno always feels weightless in its movements.

The xeno in the 1979 masterpiece clearly looked like a guy in a jumpsuit. Multiple times.

I was considering if I should catch Avatar 3 on the big screen. So I tried watching Avatar 2 a couple days ago at home as a primer. It was unwatchable. What semblance of watchability from Avatar – Stephen Lang in real human form, military mech tech, biofluorescent shit – is all but gone in the second movie. If one needs any proof how the Na'vi have no presence need only to look at the downgrade in gravitas Quaritch goes through from 1 to 2. There is less military tech, always a strong suit of Cameron's. And the biolumence is replaced with underwater scenes that I could watch on the discovery channel. Not being facetious at all when I think Avatar 2 is a 1/5 movie. Even the special effects are evidently dodgy in more than a couple of scenes.

The Hateful Eight. Take a shot every time someone tosses their coffee onto the floor with reckless abandon. 5/5 and gets better each time I rewatch this, to the point I'm ready to declare this as my favourite QT film. Despite the frosty setting, the entire thing SIZZLES in every frame, bar perhaps the cameo from a certain famous actor pop who just doesn't carry the verbose panache and heft required in a Tarantino movie. But no matter, it's a slight light-roast coffee stain in an otherwise lightning-in-a-bottle movie. Just glorious. And yes, this is a Christmas movie.

They already shat the bed in ep 7. And instead of trying to clean it up they just mucked around the shit and spread it across the sheets and then collectively said WAIT FOR THE NEXT DAY to see what happens to the shit. There is no salvaging this crap. They have really denigrated the xenomorph here.

Ep 7 went full retard.

The stupidity of the crew in ep 5 is almost a throwback to Prometheus. The chibuzo lady was the most egregious of all. But I did feel the other crew members had sort of individual personalities which made them somewhat endearing (looking at the senior engineer and Rahim the medical doctor). I'm also one of the few who love Alien 3. Despite the bad vfx, it had a verve and style to it while maintaining some of the alien-ness of the 1979 xeno. In comparison Cameron's warrior xenos lacked any personality apart from being clearly intelligent, and the xenos and facehuggers moulds lacked the kind of physical intricate details that made the original so terrifying (just compare the level of detail in the 79 facehugger and the 86 ones). The queen is majestic though, and clearly Cameron spared no expense there.

I think the episode just about teetered over into showing too much, but just barely for me. I ultimately think it was a supremely brave decision and it looked no more like a "guy in a suit" than in 1979. I much prefer this over the typical CGI xeno action we got in the earlier episodes. In fact the only truly memorable scene with the xeno in the earlier episodes was the one in the Maginot – especially that shot of the xeno head uncannily moving backwards in front of the door to MOTHER. That's quintessentially Alien to me. But online discourse mostly sides with the "it looks like a rubber suit" camp.

Well are they (that) wrong? Ep 5 is the only Alien entry that managed get the mystical, almost ethereal feel of the creature from the 1979 movie. Sure, there are shots of it scuttling down hallways that's just like any other CGI creature. But there are also many scenes where the xeno just moves...weirdly. Hawley is the one got who understood that from the 1979 movie.

The xeno has never looked better on film than in this episode, save for a few choice shots in the original. I enjoyed the heck out of it.

Yes that's mostly what I felt too. The first episode was a masterclass in dread-building though. The last episode wraps things up very well, too, if only just for how the audience finally gets to understand the reasons behind the tragedy. The Last of Us season 1 wasn't particularly good either, but season 2 is mostly dreary. Only 2 decent episodes. I fear for the future of TV. 7-episode seasons and a 2-3 year wait between seasons. An absolute mood killer.

The ending narration is so cringey to the point it retrospectively ruins the character voicing it. I swear critics these days are a completely different breed from 20 years back. Imagine if MI3 is released today. Instead of the 70% RT score it got back then it would have easily gotten 95% now.

I don't think it's a bad performance, but neither do I think his performance nor how the android was written is one of the standouts of the movie. If anything, I was more impressed with Cailee Spaeny's outing here. Innocent yet steely. Actually you're right. The problem isn't the performance itself (I brought that up, albeit wrongly worded, as many reviews seemed to highlight his performance). You listed the precise reasons why Andy doesn't quite work. He is written as a rote robot that we have seen countless time in any sci-fi movie in the last 20 years.