Tag: Thomas Ian Nicholas

Bilal: A New Breed of Hero

Bilal: A New Breed of Hero gets to be the first animated film released in America in 2018! Yay Bilal!

It gets to go up there with the likes of great films like…Norm of the North. Oh goodness, that is not a good list at all.

From the occasional trailer, Bilal looks like the sort of animated film that might actually have a unique and interesting plot. But because it looks so terrible, it also will have no one wanting to go out and see it.

Kid
Still good to have non white people in animated films.

Our story is of course about a kid/grown up dude, named Bilal (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). He wants to be a great and wonderful warrior when he grows up. But for now, he is just a kid, with his sister (Cynthia Kaye McWilliams) and mother. And then their little home gets attacked. His mother is killed, and the kids are sold into slavery.

He has to become a hard working slave, getting whipped, growing up with nothing. All of that jazz. Eventually he is sold to the richer trader around, Umayya (Ian McShane), who is of course ruthless and dickish. He has a son that is a similar age who decides that he does not like Bilal having opinions or morals. Every time he stands up for another, Bilal gets knocked down again.

This is based on a real story, meaning it is at least a famous story in some parts of the world. Whether the events are real or not, who knows.

But I think you know that Bilal is going to Gandhi this shit up until everything works out nicely, right?? Right.

Also featuring the voices of Thomas Ian Nicholas and Mick Wingert.

Evil
¨Damn slaves, not just being emotionless obeying robots!”- Him, probably.

I have written a lot about good and bad animated films over the last year, unfortunately more of them have been bad. This is my first look at animated films of 2018 and frankly, it definitely disappointed me on many levels.

Again, this could be an amazing story by giving us different cultures, strong willed characters and not falling into silly tropes. It it is trying to appeal to the family, not just the kid. But it just seemed to drag on and on.

And honestly, the animation style did not help. The film constantly looked like a cut scene of a PS2 game, and it made watching it feel already dated.

This is not the best start animated films in 2018 could have wanted. Not by a long shot.

1 out of 4.

Fading Of The Cries

Fading of the Cries? Interesting title. I know nothing about it.

Cover Fading of the cRies

Alright, interesting cover. I guess. Maybe some action movie involving like, vampires or stuff. probably CGI dependent, and dumb plot, but hopefully it is interesting too?

Nope. Not at all.

This movie is a super low budget cheesy “scary movie” reminiscent of those SyFy original movies. Except even those have better acting than this one.

Here is a rough plot outline. Hallee Hirsh puts on a necklace. Town goes to shit. Gets saved by super emo dude with sword Jordan Matthews. The drones might be zombies? They want to kill humans at least, and have no eyes, but also run fast and look super blurry. Her mom (Elaine Hendrix from Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion) and sister have to just hide in the house confused.

There is also some flashbacks of some Michael dude (Thomas Ian Nicholas) finding a spell book and releasing evil power. He is the uncle of said main chick. And yeah, that is about it. Don’t want to spoil the lore…that I don’t necessarily understand well.

So, as expected, the acting is horrible. No one is believable. The whole movie has horrible special effects. Some of the “Creatures” just look disturbing. Which I guess is a plus for this type of movie. The ending may have had some twists in it, but they didn’t even have reactions to the twists. No one gave a damn about this movie, everything may have been done in one take.


Is she coming on to me?

They did show a transformation from human to weird zombie eye thing. Was pretty cheesy. This is one of those movies where I am mad that everyone didn’t die at the end. Also, in the parts where homeboy had to kill lots of zombies (as they ran into his twirling death sword, more or less) and in other zombie scenes, it seems as if they just loved making that “Gut Wrenching Scream and Fall Into Distance” noise. Just, pushing that button over and over again. It’s a noise also made famous for being in Aaahh!!! Real Monsters!

I am glad they are trying some new things. All good and fine. But coherentness would be a plus. On the plus side? This would be a perfect movie to get drunk to and make fun of with friends.

0 out of 4