₦airaland Forum

Extreme "wokeism" is ruining the fun out of everything these days and i think movies suffer the most from it. You basically can't enjoy any movie without one airhead conjuring up a ridiculous and down right silly think piece....like just enjoy a movie and move along. I wouldn't even know the difference if black or colored actors played the role of "fictional blue aliens" living on a "fictional planet" ffs

Kaycee7:
Glass Onion - A Knives Out Mystery (2022) 7/10

Rian Johnson did quite the amazing job with the first Knives Out movie and I feel he'd probably have done better with this one if he'd been less concerned about giving Elon Musk the finger. Yes, Rian, your less than subtle placeholder Musk character didn't go unnoticed.

Props to Johnson, he does deliver an interesting and entertaining mystery story, through the first and second acts. The third act ends up feeling rather a bit underwhelming. It felt as though the mystery got resolved right as it started picking up steam and the whole burn-it-down sequence felt a bit anticlimactic.

i]Glass Onion,[/i] all in all, is still a pretty enjoyable mystery movie. Just fell a bit of the mark of matching its predecessor.

P.S: Haven't really noticed anyone talking about the jab to the conservative red pill alpha male side of the internet taken with Bautista's character. Another evidence that most people won't recognize the "forced wokeism and agenda" they claim to hate until some YouTuber points it out, usually when the movie or series has poor ratings as well.

IMO because the mystery was a dead giveaway like 15 minutes into the flick and so there was no big reveal or mystery at the end to embody the title...but a very decent watch none the less.

Kaycee7:
That's what I'm trying to understand. What exactly did you find confusing?

It's still a head-scratcher why folks keep saying they don't understand "Tenet". giving, one might simply not get it on first watch but there are tons of trusted articles and sub reds explaining the entirety of the it in such delicate details that seeing it again armed with these explained details, might be a breeze.

Kaycee7:
Still going to watch it. Can't really trust reviews on this considering the switch after Cavill's departure.

Same chief. it's not like i am particularly spoiled for choice on good contents lately and it's an easy binge at 4 episodes.

pu7pl3:
Please recommend one recent one for me make I sample am.

"A Hero" (2021)

abduleez1:
Boss, where you dey see these films download? I've always wanted to see more international movies but the means to no dey forthcoming. Na only Korea and India we dey see promotion for.

Man... Herculean task o because of Iran's strained relationship with the west, thier movies are hardly distributed outside.

But Pahe has a good number of them if you search carefully.

abduleez1:
Yeah, I saw the Asghar Farhadi on the article. I wanted to post the screenshot but I forgot.
Yeah, I've been hearing Iranian cinema being top tier lately but I didn't anticipate them amongst top 5 or 10.


Na the article be this. ↓
They tried sha but them spoil am when they mentioned Bollywood as the best industry.
Yeah, Bollywood was gold but they have been mimicking Hollywood and it's getting stale.

Yeah, I no dey take that Oscar Best Foreign Film play again. I saw this year list and I was wow. I got a few on my watchlist. Downloaded decision to leave since but evil spirits no lemme gree watch movies asides from TV shows.

I am actually tired of Bollywood at this point, too focused on making "award magnet" movies and they have lost thay sway they once held.

A link to this article will be much appreciated chief.

pu7pl3:
Wow are you serious?
Tbh this is the first time I'm seeing Iran in a movie conversation.

Serious as a heart attack chief... I am always feasting good each time i dabble into Iranian movies. Dem sabi die!.

abduleez1:
I saw an article about best movie industries with top quality movies and saw a Iran listed amongst the top 5 and I first shock.

I wanted to post how much weed the writer don smoke but I forgot cos the weyrey go spoil an intriguing list with the nonsense of putting Bollywood as the best movie industry above Hollywood.
Which kind weed be that.. Weyrey no even call South Korea sef.

But one thing you'd notice, almost all the top 10 can't match the US or Japan in terms of budget but they turn up with some of the most interesting plotlines. Budget isn't everything.
Especially when you hear of the exploits of Turkey. You begin to wonder wetin European powerhouses like Germany, Spain, etc dey use their money do.

My guy...Iran as a country might have the dodgiest human rights records on earth but thier Cinema is A1. Google "Asghar Farhadi" for context. They hardly disappoint. "A Separation" (2011) was basically a 5 cast Iranian movie and it was having an "Oscar Best Picture" shout at that time!. It eventually won Oscar Best foreign language film that year.

Truth is..some countries outside of US, make excellent movies but the focus is on Hollywood because of budget and VFX. Scandinavian countries, Iran and recently South Korea, these countries i mentioned don't have the time and the resources for shalaye budget or serenren VFX, it's straight to banger movies full stop. Even the British too have been churning out some solid flicks in recent times. . Peep Oscar Best foreign language norms each year, na bangers dey always full inside. Bollywood used to be in this cool class too but in recent years are desperately trying to be a Hollywood wannabe with so many stunts and little time for story telling.

abduleez1:
Na wa o.
When I think say we get something for the holidays.

I enter IMDB see reviews and ratings, i just weak .... Na Henry Cavill carry this show for back before. Make Netflix stay far from this lore abeg.

itspreshh:
I've said it before that I am more lenient towards Nollywood.
One of the reasons is to push Nollywood forward first and promote it on global platforms

Another reason is budget. You can't compare the level of budget Nollywood has to foreign movies, not only Hollywood.

Technology is another reason


However, there are some bad troupes are writers are doing in our higher budget Nollywood movies/series that they should stop.

One of these is mixing too many genres in one movie/show. Every casual movie seems to have unnecessary and forced action scenes that kill immersion. You're making a post-high school drama and suddenly in last episode students are beating professional thugs like Jackie chan.

Or casually introducing Jazz and black magic into the last episode of a show or final act of a movie that had no such thing throughout the movie/ show

These scenes feel forced as if the writers just wanted to add this in the show by all means.


Another stale troupe is extravagant weddings. It's honestly getting boring with so many Nollywood movies featuring weddings that take half the runtime and all sorts of drama and even action scenes into the wedding



I honestly don't mind them adding things that aren't common in Nigeria. Hollywood does it too. They go overboard with how open and free sex is in their high schools. They go overboard with a lot of things too that aren't like that in real life.

I won't even mind a movie set in a dystopian Lagos or something if it's properly built

With the advent of Netflix and Amazon into the Nollywood lore, Budget hasn't really been an issue as i have seen enough expensive props and sets to make a good movie.

But contrary to popular believe, expensive budget doesn't really translate to good movies. Infact most critically acclaimed movies in modern history aren't high budget movies.

Delve into Iranian or Danish cinema, these people neither have the high budget or technology but most of thier movies are always top tier.

The major problem that still plague Nollywood is bad writing and bad screenplay and this is the core basis on which any successful movies is formed. Take for e.g the recently released "Far from Home", it neither suffered from low budget or lack of of "tech" cuz this were present to some certain degree but the writing and screenplay was so so bad. Even the title is misleading and the plot haphazard with no clear plot plan and so many unnecessary sub plot that ultimately lead no where.

Mind you Nollywood does not suffer from bad writers...far from it, the producers with the money bag aren't willing to pay for a good story. I follow a clique of writers and film makers that do extremely good short films with very mergre resources, one of them pitched an excellent script to Mo Abudu for "Cheif Daddy" 2, she read it, liked it and offered peanuts for it, Baba couldn't accept it, so my guy left with his script. Mo Abudu did the script herself and came out with the blandest plot ever on an expensive budget safe to say the movie was a terrible mess.

I saw like 10 Nollywood flicks this year, and i only liked 2 so till the producers that spreading the Netflix or Amazon money around to get good writers, they will keep churning out hot mess like "Far from Home".

The reviews for "The Witcher: Blood origin" are so so gutter. Netflix has terribly handled this adaptation.

Anime features have the most random and yet so simple plot ....love it

Meksbig:
As the year draws to a close, lemme just list out some of the series I absolutely enjoyed watching this year (in no particular order):
The bear
The white lotus S2
The sandman
Reservation dogs 1 and 2 (S2E4 and S2E5 were standouts)
Primal 1 and 2
Pantheon
Severance (season finale was so good)
Black bird
Andor
Wednesday
The serpent queen (this surprised me)
The minx
Abbott elementary
The sex lives of college girls 1 and 2
The boys 3
Cyberpunk edgerunners

You have quite an exquisite taste i must admit. Banger list.

IbrahimMav:
True Detective (2014)
S1....10/10
S2.....7/10
S3.....8.5/10

Currently watching.....
Slow Horses (2022)
The Game (2021)
Jack Ryan (2018)

Mann...How were you able to get into "True Detective S1"?

I haven't been able to get past Episode 1 for a while. I know is going to/is be/a masterpiece, but for the first 30 minutes it seemed like nothing was going on...Same vibe i had with the first season of "Better Call Saul".

abduleez1:
You just hit the nail on the head. I still can't bring myself to delete the last 3 episodes of the show since 2021.

Flanagan and Jordan Peele are two horror geniuses of our time, especially Mike.

I casually started the show, and i was hooked after Ep1 so i just rushed through it, Good stuff .


Mike Flanagan had another horror show out recently i think.

IbrahimMav:
The horror element is more understated when compared to his previous projects, but Midnight Mass is just as scary.
It's character driven, so there is more focus on the human elements, plus a mystical take on the supernatural, but it culminated in a horror fest.

Great show tho.
Enjoyed it more than Bly Manor but Hill House still ranks as my favorite.

I was more vested on the human element so the horror elements were lost on me. I found myself more caring so much about the characters especially Riley's redemption arc. The ending was as profound as it could be.

Like you said Great show.

He has a short filmography television wise but Hill house stands out for me too.

"Midnight Mass" 2021

Unlike other Mike Flanagan's work that is billed as "Horror", I don't think this was it, it was rather a deeply religious drama with some horror element and it was quite good.

The monologues were stellar, fantastic performance from the cast and a great cinematography. It had it's misses with the pacing but redeemed itself with a satisfying end after a chaotic build up.

In the end it was great show brewed onto 7 episodes with equal doses. Can't be shortened and can't be lengthened. Just the perfect dose.

sammyys:
Begin Again 8/10
Brilliant! Great performance all round. Highly recommended.

one of my all time fav...10/10 soundtrack too.

IbrahimMav:
Fixing a WC in december vastly affects the football Calender negatively in the sense that schedules are adjusted to accommodate the mundial.
We have a situation where breaks between seasons are shorter, pre seasons are shorter, more matches played per week.
All these will invariably give rise to player fatique.
Player fatique will usher in injuries and mental exhaustion.
Players will start dropping off like flies, like many did pre Qatar 2022.
It doesn't end there.
More injuries will follow post WC.

It just isn't optimal to host a WC in December.
Top leagues use the December period to take a break and recharge for the second half of the season.
A winter Mundial completely makes a hash of this and put players physical and mental health in jeopardy.

FIFA will not be repeating a December WC in a long time.

Mate all these you mentioned have been going on and it came to a boiling point post covid lockdown period. The competitions are a tad to much and most top teams shouldn't even bother with them because it means more fixtures with little or no room for breaks. Take England for example They have PL, FA Cup and the Carabao cup to play weekly, and for the top teams, UCL and EL, and the recently added conference leagues. Giving the chance, some top teams will opt out of the FA cup and Carabao cup. Only Germany has had a proper "Winter Break" in retrospect, without the WC, The EPL would have still had insane number of games this December, with games on boxing day and New year day even!.

One of the main reasons Floretino Perez was pushing for a "Super league" where the top teams played against themselves in a single tourney once a week, and you see how quickly these top teams agreed to it, before the outrage by fans, and the plans were put on hold.

At bolded, FIFA lead by the last 3 president namely Blatter, Platini and Infatino has shown that they will twerk for anything as long as they will have a massive payday. I have never seen a more controversial pre world cup build, with human rights abuse, LGBT and Alcohol banning, there's was even an actual FBI investigation into how Qatar won the Bid and FIFA was unfazed, so should a rich arab nation wins a WC bid and it requires a Winter WC, Best believe FIFA will allow it without thinking twice, infact the FIFA president was the one personally defending this WC in Qatar, and in the words of Mr Gianni Infatino, i quote " This has been the greatest world cup ever", so yeah, the system is that rotten.

toluxe0075:
Story for the gods. You cheapened your congratulations to Argentina and Messi by also trying to assume things could have been different if certain French players were at the final.

France is without their main players yet they destroyed every team that came their way to get to the final. They also nearly crashed the party for Argentina.

You guys were not talking of these missing French players until Argentina won the tournament. How are you sure those French players won’t flop if they came to play in the tournament. How are you sure France would have gotten out of the group stage with them.

So what World Cup is best World Cup in your book if the 2022 World Cup with a lot of drama and upsets is not close to being the best for you.

Mannn...I haven't seen this much intrigue, drama, upsets and sheer football quality in one WC. The 3 WC prior doesn't even come close.

Bar the dodgy Human rights records, i think Qatar hosted a fantastic tourney.

IbrahimMav:
Hope you're not serious.
This WC was a logistic nightmare that no one will be willing to repeat.

Thank the stars it was at least a successful one, but long term, players fitness will take a beating.

Logistics nightmare? In what context? Because i think playing competitive football so close to the World Cup improved the quality of the tourney.
I think the reason players'fitness might be tanking isn't necessarily due to a "winter wc". It stems from a number of factors that allude to a rotten "cash grab" system that football is been run.

Avatar: The Way of Water : 2022

Beautiful nonsense.

James Cameron spent the entire budget of this on VFX because that's the only good thing about it. I always doubted if actually this sequel was needed, and my doubts were quickly confirmed within an 1 hour of this.The visual effects were great on the actual Navi people and the underwater scenes were very very good, everything else VFX wise was so cringe with zero coherent story pushed. The plot just moved haphazardly leaving the audience in limbo why things were happening. The 3hrs runtime made it more laborious to watch, i actually blanked out at one point and i didn't miss anything.

There are more to movies than great VFX on the evidence of what i just saw. See it for the stunning visuals if you must, but i can confidently tell you that you can skip it, save your money for detty December and see Nat Geo wild for visuals for the time being while you wait for this to be available on VOD.

abduleez1:
Here's the full gist....

Smh So Henry Cavill was basically a pawn...How i wished he knew his potential and the fact that his skill set is one of the very best in the business. I need him doing big things cinematically in no distant time.

Dwayne Johnson has seen that his star power might be tad overated with BA bombing. This mans was even personally posting BO stats for BA on Twitter talmbout "BA made profit" when in reality it bombed harder than "Little Boy" on 6th of August 1945. I believe he will still get roles but steamrolling those roles to big bucks might be herculean.

As for James Gunn. Like we concluded last week, it's best to let him cook. Him and his team better know what they are doing with this new direction because the fall will be harder if they fail.

Thinking about Henry Cavill appearing in the "Black Adam" post credit as "Superman" and I am vexed about today's announcement all over again because what was even the point?... it's truly the hope that kills

abduleez1:
We need this King were he's especially needed.
Cavill for Aegon I. Shït would smack hard!! Cavill needs a big win right now and pitching tent with the biggest franchise on TV can't do no wrong.

This man is so well built for so many roles across multiple genres. I hate the dilly dally trajectory his career has been in, in the last couple of years, largely due to no fault of his tbh.

I hope him and his team carefully think thier next moves clearly and pick better roles cuz honestly he should be on top of the food chain and eating good.

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
This is such an Irish movie.

Darkly funny. Melancholic and depressing, yet simultaneously almost sweet and hopeful. Colm (Brendan Gleeson) one day seemingly just decides he no longer likes his best friend Pádraic (Colin Farrell). Pádraic's existence is essentially turned upside down. The fictional island of Inisherin is depicted as just off the coast of Ireland's mainland. Close enough to see and hear bombardments of the Irish Civil War, but disconnected enough to not have a dog in the fight. As Pádraic desperately seeks out answers for as to why Colm could literally cut himself off of his friendship, it invites questions about the nature of friendship, our basic need for connection, and the destructive power of despair and loneliness. A really beautiful film from Martin McDonagh. And though it's Farrell and Gleeson's film through and through, Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan were excellent in support. Condon in particular was incredibly charming.

This is instantly one of my personal favourite from this year.

PS: Once again See or listen to anything Irish...movie, series or music...they know how to make good stuff

IngeniousLeez:
Wtf do I keep getting banned.
I replied purple the other day on this same topic and I collect ban.


Ouch, e be like na the adult the weyrey bot dey censor.

The Covid lockdown really messed up people's movie psyche. Cinema now looks like a chore, people will rather wait to consume on VOD and the wait for VOD is quite shorter now.

Well 2023, is the litmus test, many popcorn flick that will normally get proper cinema traction will be out, if these movies fails to pull crowds, cinema will truly be a dying breed.

3 potential bangers and quite frankly some of the most anticipated movies this year available on VOD less than a month after a theatrical release and on the same day!.

Cinema ain't making it out of the hood any time soon ....eating good this week either way tho

Aflix:
Please, what language is spoken in the movie?

Predominantly English, but very little French, Greek, Swedish and Tagalog was spoken, but it was so minute that an official subtitle wasn't provided for them and it didn't affect the plot as far as i could tell.

"Triangle Of Sadness" (2022)

Parasite (2019) on a Yacht!

Could have been weirder and could have been way shorter , but definitely funny in parts.
Presented in 3 chapters with a brilliant first two and a rather dull third arc leading to an ambiguous ending.

Overall, it is a decent satirical critique of the wealthy and class hierarchy, with a drunken Woody Harrelson cameo as a side bonus makes it a decent watch.