don't worry, almost all the movies i've seen lately have slapped. but some of them? well.
The Batman (2022) was baffling. way longer than it even remotely needed to be. my wife said it was like half of the production crew knew how to make movies and the other half had never touched a camera before and every day they got together and did this to determine who got to film the movie that day
the moral of the movie (and you know it's the moral of the movie because they put it in twice, at the beginning and the end) is that it's okay to eat fish, because they don't have any feelings.
Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) had the bones of a good terminator film in there but the meat was wrong and cloying. by the bones i mean: in much the same way that the t-1000 in terminator 2 is so effective because it's able to seamlessly blend itself with the organs of state control (the cops), T:DF correctly identifies things like the US border patrol, ICE detainment centers, and smartphone location tracking as currently-relevant organs in the same system, especially when the New John Connor is a mexican lady poised to become a labor activist. old sarah connor poorly dealing with her shit was cool but they put way too much focus and reverence and deference on her to the point that dani ramos, who is supposed to be the future leader of the new human resistance, barely got a chance to do anything or express anything about herself. most importantly, they sent a cyborg butch back to protect her. you NEED to do this. movie would have been so much worse without this. it was bold of them to open with footage from terminator 2, the best one, to remind the audience that they could just watch terminator 2 again instead.
arnold's character sucked ass, they were way too winking with his writing. like, okay, you took the concept of a t-800 gaining some degree of personal autonomy after his future and the directives it came from got unmade, and you decided that he would just become a fucking republican dad in texas?? a family man?? fuck off. but my biggest critique of the movie as a piece of craft is NO ONE FUCKING LIT THAT FILM. EVEN THE CGI SCENES. if you have a character say "i can't see what's happening!" in a sequence you built then it's good writing actually because the audience also can't see what's happening and it will build our bond to the character.
it's called Terminator: Dark Fate because every day on set they forgot to give their gaffers things to do