It's rather boring though. And that's probably the worst sin a movie featuring Adam Driver fighting dinosaurs could be. Because, how?! It feels a lot longer than its run time.

There's no sense of space in the world, the characters cycle through different backdrops without a lot of thought to them. So it never felt like we could connect to the prehistoric planet as a physical location.

Strangely it opts to put a language barrier between the leads which serves no purpose other than to prevent a deeper relationship between the two. It just makes the film's job harder than necessary. Whatever characters we get are bare bones and one dimensional.

The choice to mostly avoid realistic, scientifically accurate dinosaurs could have been used for interesting creature design, but it isn't. They're just a bit bland and I doubt they'll stand out to people. So really it ends up disappointing dino nerds, without exciting monster fans.

It's the shallowest of the Sad Dad's Bad Day cinematic universe.

Specifically compared to the book? The movie fails in every capacity as an adaptation. The book is a lot clearer that a god that would require brutal human sacrifice to avert an apocalypse is an evil god. One that shouldn't be obeyed. The entity that is glimpsed in the light has a malevolent aura. And in the end it's about two people choosing to live on after their world has ended, suffering unfathomable loss. To go on regardless of what happens because all you can do, is go on.

The movie is 'Yay, human sacrifice! 😁'. Okay, well maybe not quite, but it never deals with the moral complications the plot raises.

I think the film is well acted, it's shot beautifully. Shyamalan directs the hell out of it, but it's lack of thematic coherence in the writing is a fatal flaw.

I yes such a broad question but I would say that generally the answer is 'no'.

Personally I think a good majority of 'stupid' things aren't really stupid at all. They're a result of someone trying to be 'smarter than the film' and wilfully ignoring alternative reasons for a characters actions.

But if there's a truly egregiously stupid decision it's often very simply 'because the plot needs this to happen'

Interesting. The first one was mostly known for a surprisingly strong performance by Kevin James. In all honesty, I felt like Becky was the weakest part of Becky and without a compelling villain to hang the film around, a sequel will struggle.

>These are all things that Slowik plays into. He lives apart from the other workers, and is treated differently. He builds a reputation and mystique around himself, and his workers are treated in a dehumanized fashion.

And arguably, Slowik punishes himself for exactly this. Or rather the sous chef is the one that came up with the idea for them to all die in the end. Slowik is not innocent, he knows this and accepts his own death as part of the piece.

I do wonder if that happens though. Like there could be a director out there who really wants to make a Dwayne Johnson shooty bang film but their entire reputation is now staked to producing three-hour black and white misery-fests about poverty stricken Polish farmers.

So now they're really phoning it in. 'Oh yeah... The empty well is totally supposed to symbolise the hopes and dreams of the village, for sure. Whatever.' whilst quietly grumbling to themselves that they could be in Dubai blowing shit up and having fun.

But the critics keep praising them no matter what because they're convinced its still some auteur visionary stuff so the director is never getting free.

>But, the guy who goes there and is trying to understand what's going on?

Tyler doesn't go there 'trying to understand'. He goes there thinking he already knows everything. Tyler thinks he's a special little boy that the chef is going to love because he's going to show off how knowledgeable he is. He thinks he's above the rules laid out every time (taking photos, not running during the hunt, and honestly I think he expected to be spared). He expresses elitism over those who don't know as much as him, even though his own ability and knowledge is demonstrated to be lacklustre. He idolises the head chef whilst minimising the contributions of the other chefs (not asking the other chefs name early on, not recognising the whole menu is a collaborative process with others having input beyond Slowik) Oh yeah, and the whole thing about dragging another person to certain death.

Key to his character is 'I'm special and I can do what I want because of it.'

Personally, I would define a cult film as one that was either a critical or commercial flop on release but which developed dedicated fans over time.

A poorly reviewed film that ends up beloved, is a cult film to me.

Personally, I think the larger threat to the idea of cult films, is that in the age of streaming there's not as much permanence to media. Cult films of the past grew their fanbase slowly, overcoming critical or commercial failure over time.

This was often aided by a constant presence on video-store shelves, repeated TV airings and so on. But now there's a never-ending firehose of new content. Content content content! It feels like there's less room to rediscover 'old' films because 5 new ones are being released tomorrow. Many of the current generations aren't watching live TV. You're never in a position where you have to watch a 2* film from 2008 because there's nothing better on TV. The idea of not being able to watch exactly the thing you want with instant access is alien. But how else are you going to find the pleasant surprises?

And maybe that's just me being out of touch. Maybe there are new, different routes to cult classic status. I don't know.

I can spoil it for you if you want. Its relentless shit and misery here on out.

In the UK there's less of a distinction between stage acting and screen acting. Which means you'll find a lot of popular British actors you see in TV started out being classically trained in theatre. That amounts to another skillset that increases the actors range. Big name British actors will go and do a run in West End show and my impression is that doesn't usually happen as much in the US.

In addition, yes, I would say that overall, British TV is less focused on finding perfectly attractive models. There's still an attractiveness bias but, even hot British actors are still a person you could believably see walking down the street. As opposed to like CW shows who I assume are grown from a vat somewhere in a lab.

Because most hero stories are 'man vs self'. There's an internal conflict the hero is struggling with which is represented in the story as an external conflict between him and a mirror (or a direct opposite) for the villain.

Thus by telling the story, you can highlight the conflicting emotions and arguments the protagonist is having in their head. And by defeating the enemy, the protagonist comes to realise the solution to their personal problems.

I'm trying to imagine what that would be like.

If there were a drama film about someone navigating a normal life,balancing their career and family responsibilities and then out of nowhere a serial killer murders them and the film ends.

Not going to lie, it would be fucking bold. I'm not sure if it works though...

I think the only real point of genuinely stupid decision-making is that the protagonist chooses to stay in the house in the first place.

Ask any woman if they'd stay in a house with a strange man after a 'Mix-up' when they had a working car with gas. Not one of them would.

But that's sort of the inciting incident of the film, its the thing that has to happen for the plot to exist. And thematically the film takes quite deliberate joy in playing the game of 'how many red flags can we put up for the character to ignore' because they obviously end up subverting it.

I think it's interesting that your first two points are 'Wait for the police' and the third is 'the police are useless'. Like... Yeah. Yeah that's the point. The police really cannot be fucked. It's pretty much a dead neighbourhood and the cops called are never going to take a complaint from there seriously because its either the homeless or the crazies.

I 100% believe that.