kermodefan94-blog

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Six:The Musical Live! Pro Shot Review/ Impressions. 

  Here’s a bizarre case from this author’s perspective. He wants to make abundantly clear, before giving his thoughts on the professionally recorded release of the hugely successful millennial feminist power fantasy musical, that preservation and greater access to these shows is only a good thing. That’s sad in the pantheon of all the live theatre this viewer has seen (having seen the show…

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Paradise. Season 1. Review. + A Tangent on This Is Us. (Mild Spoilers)

Whatever can be said about Dan Fogelman and what this author is sure will be his magnum opus in  NBC’s This Is Us, he can certainly deliver on our ambition, having seen all six seasons and 106 episodes of that show. His multi-generation absurdly sweeping, undeniably manipulative but effective and transcendent at its best family melodrama epic crosses paths with five generations and 70-80  years…

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The Squid Game Sequal (Part 1) Impressions/Review.  

This viewer’s hottest media take of the past several years might be that outside what might be one of the best single episodes of TV in the last 10 years (the marbles game) Squid Game Season 1 is distinctly below average. Coasting by on a lot of established iconography and striking set designs for the games themselves (somewhat expected when your premise is deadly playground games) and paper-thin…

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Black Doves. Season 1. Review.  

We are well past the point in Netflix’s existence as a platform where it was releasing quality high-budget originals with huge marketing campaigns every week beyond its pre-established hits and franchises. It’s now distinctly noticeable when the studio puts a sizeable amount of marketing and PR muscle behind a new property that wants to turn into a potential next big thing. The latest of these…

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Paddington in Peru.  Movie Review. 

The buzz from the third entry in the modern take on the Paddington franchise, once original director Paul King departed to make Wonka, would always be that it was a step down from the first two regardless of quality. To an extent this is understandable. Both movies but especially Part 2 are already instant family movie classics in certain circles especially Part 2 transcending beyond the film…

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Babygirl.  Movie Review. 

As an actress, creative figure and producer Nicole Kidman doesn’t need to prove anything. She will always have a future as one of the most recognizable figures in modern Hollywood for the last 30 years. That said from a casual viewer’s perspective this watcher has found it quite alarming that her creative instincts for the previous 10 years or so seem to mostly reside in making high-brow in…

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We Live in Time Movie Review.  

The conventional wisdom from many audience members in 2024 is to mourn the loss of the conventional movie star outside of maybe Tom Cruise and a few others who got their start 30-plus years ago. While this is certainly true to an extent there are still newer names that can sell a movie on the strength of their names and performances alone. Case in point! Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield combined…

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Kraven: The Hunter. Movie Review.

This will be written a fair bit after giving the theatrical release was two months later but will be going up in fairly quick  Succession following the review of Venom: The Last Dance. The last three entries in the misbegotten SSMU released in 2024 2/3 of which have been horrendous flops. This R-rated effort with Aaron Taylor Johnson playing the titular Spiderman villain appears to be Sony…

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Better Man. Movie Review.  

  It’s virtually impossible to be from the UK and not be at least partially aware of Robbie Williams The man has been an unavoidable cultural juggernaut for the last 35 years.  For as long as he’s still around his antics can be comfortably relied on to fill tabloid column inches in the UK and across stretches of mainland Europe where he remains massive for a legacy act. From a UK perspective,…

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Lee. Movie Review

Kate Winslet is gunning (pun not intended) for more  Awards recognition in this serviceably solid but unspectacular biopic of American fine art photographer and Vogue war correspondent Lee Miller.  Winslet is unsurprisingly excellent bringing heart and humanity to the central role even when the narrative across the second and third acts involves exploring the aftermath of The Holocaust.  One…

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Citadel: Diana.  Season 1. Review. 

The insane sense of sunk cost fallacy in the rollout of Amazon’s insanely generic yet weirdly ambitious Citadel spy universe is the sort of thing that not only represents the insanely big-headed yet supremely creatively bankrupt studio executives but also perversely fascinating project that will more than likely be a cautionary tale for marketing executives of the future once all the shows have…

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Moana 2. Movie Review.  

It’s no secret that both of the previous Walt Disney Animation Studios’ efforts in Wish and Strange World deserve their critical and commercial failures (especially Wish being the most cynical excuse for a supposed 100th-anniversary celebration this viewer could think of.) So in a way, the least surprising they could have done was push a literal “emergency Moana sequel” button and aim to get it…

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The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. Movie Review (Very Mild Spoilers.)

Here’s a classic case of a project that sounds more interesting in concept than execution. A Lord of the Rings anime Helms Deep origin prequel that is produced in continuity with the Warner Bros/New Line/Peter Jackson’s take on Middle Earth with vocal appearances from Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd, narrated by a returning Miranda Otto as Éowyn. When the trailers started rolling out this viewer…

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Arcane: League of Legends.  Season 2.   Review. 

 It would always be difficult if not borderline impossible for Riot Games and French animation studio Fortiche to follow up the absolute majesty of that genre-defining work with the first season of Arcane.  By the time this viewer got to the end of the stunning crescendo of that third episode that rounds out those that dropped in its first week the genuine sense of rock your socks off completely…

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Red One.  Movie Review.  (Mild Spoilers)

It’s hard to judge exactly how much the tide of public opinion has or has not turned against Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. On paper, he is still one of the most recognizable public-facing multi-hyphenates around whose creative reach extends far beyond his wrestling origins. That said 20 years into his Hollywood career it’s hard to ignore that Johnson effectively plays a version of himself in a…

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Venom: The Last Dance (IMAX)  Movie Review.  

For this viewer, the first Tom Hardy solo Venom film in the misbegotten Sony “Spider-Man without Spider-Man” cinematic universe is the only thing that’s ironically defensible in its entirety. An insanely high-camp disasterpiece that was already a meme before releasing thanks to the immortal “  like a turd in the wind“  line that actually takes place within the film’s final moment. There’s other…

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Smile 2. Movie Review. 

  Director Parker Finn’s breakout success with 2022 Smile filled this viewer with apprehension and dread.  This is not to say that the first entry in this new franchise is anything overtly terrible. In fact,  on a certain level, it was a perfectly functional visit to Jumpscare City that certainly had the ingredients to become the success it did.  The inherent tonal juxtaposition within the first…