The Cellar (Directed by Jeremy Bates, author of notorious "NoEndHouse")

"Chief, our movie isn't very scary..." "No prob, noob. Just jam in some black goats, sit back and watch 'em numbers grow!"

The movie starts with a not-very-original proposal of a haunted house with a creepy basement, then it presents us the typical American dream family with a "rebel" teenage daughter, Billy Ellish style, that disappears in that basement.

 The movie then switches perspective to the mother who will try to unveil this great mystery that turns out to be an esoteric mish-mash, handling suspense very poorly and delivering a very dissatisfying ending in a very unimaginative supermarket queue hell. 1/10

Kickboxing 1989 (Maybe things weren't that much better in the past?)

 An objectively bad movie, with shallow characters and stiff actors, with special effects so cheap that make one wonder if it was meant to be a joke, kickboxing gathers all cliches of an action movie, from the pensive scenes of the main character walking around to the training sequence, the raped maiden and the final fight against a seemingly undefeatable bad guy. Barely salvaged by Van Damme's fight scenes, based on his real-life skill. 

Predator: The Prey (If indians were so tough, howcome they got trashed by europeans?)

The movie is quite predictable. The minute I read the synopsis which could be summarized as "High-tech alien that looks primitive for some reason versus Comanches" and I saw the Comanche female empowerment lead, it became crystal clear that there wasn't any danger for the protagonist.

 It was as if the predator suddenly forgot everything about his tools and training, allegedly because he underestimated the danger posed by a human whose gender he probably can't discern any more than we can tell the gender of an octopus.

 The whole thing was preposterous, with plot holes big enough to sink the Titanic, patched up with some wise-sounding Indian phrases, barely salvaged by the action scenes that make the movie more or less watchable. 

Akimbo guns (Remember Harry Potter? This is him now. Feel old yet?)

 Crazy from the start to the end, unexpected, and very funny.

 With the premise of a regular nerd getting mixed up in a live-streaming arena fighting characterized combatants because of some troll commentaries and having guns bolted to his hands, the movie will surprise us all the time. There's high-quality action and comedy all the time and let's be honest here, who doesn't want to see Harry Potter go Akimbo guns?

 

Violent Nights (Super viking santa vs common thieves)

 Exactly what the trailer promised: a movie about a Nordic, battle-hardened Santa fighting to save a family from the hands of anti-Christmas criminals. The tools and action scenes are very original until half of the movie, presenting a difficult mixture of an almost human magical being, with high intensity and a lot of improvisation.

 Later, this decays into super-hammer unbeatable Santa and becomes more ordinary, but fun nonetheless.

 Good movie to spend Christmas night.

Warrior Nun (Ma'am, I feel like I have to tell you... A suit of medieval armor will not deflect bullets)

What on earth are you wearing? Is winter coming or something?

 Well, the genre pretty much says it all. As a superhero series, the plot isn't the strong part and the character development feels quite lacking: many of the character's actions feel unprovoked and random, there's a serious plot hole in the second season as to what is the real relationship between human religion, especially the Christian one, and this "other realm" from which supervillains come from.

Yes, it's based on a comic book, are you surprised? Though, no revealing outfits, I'm afraid.

 The main character, in particular, Ava, is definitively the worst one: utterly whimsical and personality-lacking. Sometimes she has a problem with authority, some times she doesn't. Sometimes the church is her family, sometimes she dumps them for some random dude. Sometimes being the "warrior nun" (still getting over that) is the calling of her life, sometimes she just wants to "live her life", whatever that means. Sometimes she's selfish, sometimes she wants to play martyr to save humankind.

 The action scenes, the "forte" of the series, is weird since the scenes had been modified by computer and the tactical nun's moves are sped up, and the enemy faction lacks a technique altogether. Not to mention that the nuns are occasionally immune to bullets and the main characters are immune to damage altogether.

The fifteen year old soldier employed by the church when she has to save the protagonist from a hundred mobs, alone and armed with a stick. 

 This heavily lowers the quality of action scenes that barely compensate for their spendthrift budget.

 Despite all this, the series are more or less watchable, with a lot of Marvel-ish action to keep the viewer from examing the, let's be honest, overexploited demons vs nuns plot too close. Personal bias: I hate Spain, I hated that the series was set in Spain and I hate every Spanish line and there's a whole bunch of them. Overall score 4/10

Barry ((3 seasons)) (Action, comedy-crime TV series)

mfw half the series premise turns out to be trash (actors)

 Barry has a good grip on the vertiginous mixture between comedy and tragedy, and unlike other hitman series, the main character is not invincible. He's quite human and has demons to deal with, he hates being cold-blooded and joins an acting class that he happens to cross by in one of his hits and prepares to fight the long battle against his violent nature, compelling the viewer's empathy. He has, let's say, moderate success.

Shining Vale (horror-comedy TV series)

 

 Shining Vale doesn't offer anything new to the genre, contrary to the belief of other reviewers who forgot about the "It's not madness, it's demonic possession!" fever, and has quite an amount of coarse references to Shining on top of several awkward sex jokes.

 Still, given that there were interesting moments and the total duration of the series amounts to four hours (little in comparison with other series I've been watching), I consider it a fun trip, although I don't recommend it and I don't think I'll ever remember it.

(2025: I don't remember it TnT) 

Wednesday (Fail as a remake. Good as standalone?)

 Back in the '70s comedy series were strange, and to be honest, most of them were crap. But among all that crap there were some jewels, like agent smart, or like one of my favorites, the Addams family.

 I thought that the series was dead so when I heard that there was a comeback I was exhilarated. At the hands of Tim Burton, a director of great renown, the series is really well done and nicely filmed: the plot is well-handled and moves swiftly, and the actress that plays Wednesday is really good. Therefore, nothing can be said except ¡Well done!

 Now, as a comeback of the Addams family, I just can't accept this "monster high school" aberration. The "Nevermore" Academy is practically a parody of the original series, where Gomez was explicitly against sending the kids to school, and now they made some kind of Marvel superhero out of Wednesday, and is strange to see her having the BOSS fight against some kind of wizard with a cheat-stick while having the image of the little girl telling Lurch to "find a nice girl to be miserable with".

 Not to mention that the whole point was to show the Addams and their queerness in comparison with us normal folk whereas in the Wednesday series there's a whole school of "weird" people, that by the way, as a weird person, I find somewhat insulting to be compared to THAT, meaning that this completely unmissable point is missed.

Yes, the fake nails are supposed to be warewolf claws. That's how claws look like.

 In summary, as a comeback from the Addams series sucks, the parody of a parody is a tragedy. As a new series, completely unrelated to the Addams family, the show is great. Because it wasn't what I was expecting, but I was still got surprised I score it an 6.5

On Heroes and Tombs (Drama/Mystery novel with philosophical tints)

I think the highlights of the book are Quique's mordant critique, Lavalle's story (the poor man got a short, narrow street near the obelisk and General Paz has a huge avenue that encompasses the whole city), and pretty much the whole of chapter three, Informe Sobre Ciegos, except the very final part where it gets uncannily sexual.

The boring parts were most of Martin's thoughts, D'arcangelo's dialogs (Ugh, more stuff about some soccer team I don't care about), and almost the whole chapter four (Dios Desconocido) except for the Lavalle fragments

Also that Alejandra turned out to be a prostitute made me queasy. The book never tells you why Alejandra killed Fernando and suicide immediately after. My dad has quite the theory. He says that Fernando, amidst his delusion, never left the mirador and that the shadowy figure whom he has forceful sex with is not 'the blind lady' or anything of the kind. Is actually Alejandra. So after being raped by her dad Alejandra decides to kill him and burn the whole house, ending the family line once and for all, which of course kills her too. The book left me with a dark, sad feeling. Not quite like a drama, and more like an explicit depiction of child abuse. It pretends at times to be poetic but what it shows is cynicism, crime, misery, and a lot of Argentinean politics and history. Some said that the book changed their lives, but for me, it was a half-boring half-distressing experience that I'm not eager to revive.  

Void scrappers/Vampire survivors (Survivors: the original sin)

 With 48 weapons, 41 characters, 198 enemies, and over ten maps, vampire survivors appear like a void scrapper's big brother, which only counts with less than ten of the former and only one map. 

Like how it looks? There are 700 games just like it

The mechanics are so similar that one feels like yelling "Plagiarism!". Yet, somehow, void scrappers manage to be a better game than vampire survivors because, first because Void Scrappers embrace its simplicity, and understand that there's no point in having two hundred "unique" monsters if the only thing they'll do is swarm the player indistinctively, a bit faster, a bit slower, throwing bullets or not.

 There are four weapons but unlike Vampire Survivors they're distinguishable from each other and different characters do change the gameplay, that in vampire survivors feels like it's always the same. 

In that respect, Void Scrappers feels more honest. 

Secondly, Void scrappers is far more fast-paced, and (thirdly) more interactive. 

In vampire survivors, whether the character moves or doesn't move is the same and there's no active skill, leading the player to remain still for half an hour the wave last until "the reaper" shows up.

 In void scrappers the minute you don't move is the minute you die, making it more interesting. Still, Void Scrappers' theme is far, far more boring than vampire survivors and feels utterly plotless, making it a very exhaustible game with mere hours of entertainment to provide, similar to its cousin that happen to choose a slightly better theme but didn't know how to exploit it and end up with Mario Bros references, Vampire survivors.

I give Scrappers and Vampire and 4/10 and a 2/10 respectively