Reviews

The dialogue, the characters, the direction and special effects gave homage to the original cast and series. There was not one single moment that was dull. The film affected an alternate timeline when Nero destroyed the USS Kelvin, commanded by Captain George Kirk, the father of James T. Kirk.Nero is a Romulan, who for some odd reason, sent Spock to save his planet. Spock failed, but his attempt sent both Spock and the Nero's giant ship back close to 200 years in time. But rather than using the "gift" of time he has received to be able to save his planet and eventually rescue his wife and family, Nero spends his time idly plotting revenge against Spock.So, either Nero is a totally idiot, or the writers were. At least this could have been explained by having Nero's ship losing warp capability and throw to, say, near earth, so that he couldn't go back to save his planet. But that wasn't the case.It was also a bit of a stretch without explanation that when young Spock maroons Kirk on an arbitrary planet, it turns out to be the same planet that old Spock just happened to crash land on, and that same planet where Scotty has been stationed. That just reminds me of Bogart's line in Casablanca, "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine."

I purchased my ticket with great hopes that the movie would be almost as good as the ones with Sigourney Weaver. Boy was I let down. From the opening scene with Guy Pearce and Michael Fassbender, when I thought to myself, "Oh, no!" my worst nightmare came true. Money flushed down. While Prometheus was just plain bad, Covenant had moments of more mature dialogue, but even that was overrun by more moments of sheer stupidity. David, of course, was the android determined to play god and destroy two races in the process in separate acts of genocide (One could not explain why the David/Walter android had aged or why David's hair could grow). Anyway, it seems that androids mostly go bad, mostly. There is David here and in Prometheus, Data was constantly nearly destroying the Enterprise in Star Trek the Next Generation and there was Ash in the original Alien. Someone needs to get a clue. The writers apparently were trying to turn Prometheus and Covenant into origin stories for Alien, set prior to the first film. David, it seems, is the one who has created the alien race, along with the face-huggers, but there are gaping plot holes. In Alien, the crew lands on a planet where they find the remnants of one of the giants' space ships, where the giant astronaut had apparently been killed by the creatures. Yet in Covenant, David has already destroyed them. In Prometheus, the black stuff merely kills, but in Covenant, an alien pops out from the infected person. Neither is there an explanation as to how an alien got on board the Covenant, when we clearly see the doors close after the three have entered. Meanwhile, Daniels, one of two survivors, now captain, is totally clueless that Walter is not really Walter but David (Were they intent upon creating a whole colony of stupid people?) And if there were 1000 colonists on board, why would they need human fetuses or don't colonists breed and have children like normal people? And what were they going to do with the fetuses anyway, just shove them in? These weren't fertilized eggs. They were each 3" long. I'm sure one can even implant fetuses without a placenta in place. Unlike the first four Alien movies, Covenant ended on a note of doom and gloom. Everyone but David is going to die as either a host or fodder for some yet unborn alien. Deaths came quick. All for the best, I suppose, because we really didn't care about any of the crew. Poorly written, sadly directed. I would have walked out at the start if I thought I could have gotten my money back.The only thing that might have made it worse would have been another clone of Ripley, saying, "Who do I have to f--k to get off this planet?"

While the special effects were excellent, the writing was so sub par it was subterranean.

No 1. In the beginning, Kyle Reese, the apparent narrator, says that he was born after Judgment Day. Yet it was clearly established in the Sarah Connor Chronicles that Kyle Reese was about nine or ten when Judgment Day occurred. Now there are those who will contend that by sending Reese back in time, it postponed Judgment Day, but if that were the case and John Connor is the son of Kyle Reese...oh, this is giving me a headache.

No. 2. If everything went the same as in the original Terminator movie, who sent back a reprogrammed Terminator to rescue Sarah Connor and where did Skynet get another time machine and why wouldn't it have followed the original protocol in Terminator 2?

No. 3 The creation of a human being is based upon one egg united with one sperm. Every time a man ejaculates, there are billions of sperm. The odds of the same egg and sperm uniting with all the changes in time are uncounted trillions to one. John Connor would have been erased from the moment Sarah's life was interfered with as a child.

No. 4. It was established that John Connor was compromised the moment Kyle Reese was sent back. So, who sent "Pops" back in time to save Sarah? And how did Skynet, on the brink of destruction have time to create a liquid metal T-1000, and why the hell would Skynet even bother to give its cyborgs human designations? Wouldn't it just be assigned some binary code?

No. 5. But now that John Connor has become the worst person in human existence, why did anyone bother to try and save him in the first place? The resistance would have been better off had he never existed.

No. 6. This version of Sarah Connor is a whole lot weaker and stupider than any of the others. Why would either she have any feelings for John Connor? She never gave birth to him; never met him. It's like someone telling you that Adolf Hitler is going to be your son and you hesitate for a moment not killing him? She should have had no ties to him whatsoever. She's also younger than Linda Hamilton

As for the casting, John Clarke is awful. First off, he doesn't look like a john Connor, but rather like Conan O'Brien. He most certainly doesn't look anything like his supposed parents and he doesn't have the likability that Edward Furlong did or Thomas Dekker. Nor does he have the commanding presence of Christian Bale. Jai Courtney in about as lifeless as he was in A Good Day to Die Hard, which was a yawn and a half in and of itself.

That being said, I still liked Emilia Clarke and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who looks much better with silver gray hair than with the dyed reddish brown mop he normally sports. And J.K. Simmons was good as well. But I would have preferred them to have brought Robert Patrick back, at least through CGI than the T-1000 that replaced him.

In the end, both Sarah and Kyle give young Kyle things to remember, but since the time line has now been altered, none of that matters. And you would think that Kyle would have wanted to tell his parents who he really is. Martin Sloan tried in the Twilight Zone episode, "Walking Distance." In fact that was the first thing he did.

All in all, T-5 is a predictable, poorly written, poorly cast film that is entertaining, but hurts your head when you try to make sense of it all. They would have been better off if they had picked up where the Sarah Connor Chronicles left off. But then, where would Ahhhnold have been?

With bits of Caprica and AI, Extant is a muddled conspiracy sci-fi series that tries to give credibility to its storyline. Molly Woods (Halle Berry) is a astronaut just returned from a long solitary space mission, whom it turns out is inexplicably pregnant. Meanwhile, her husband, John, is a robotics designer, who apparently has designed the first AI in the form of their son, Ethan. Meanwhile again, it seems that the government or the company that sent her up in space are in on some conspiracy to maker her the brood mother for some extraterrestrial species. Meanwhile, once more, Ethan is about to go ballistic (Didn't we learn anything from the creation of Skynet, I Robot or even R.U.R. and when is THAT going to be a major motion picture coming to a theatre near you?) Obviously, the Woods are very wealthy in order for John to build robots from scratch, let alone ones that have self awareness and learn. I'm not sure how many happily married people would volunteer for a year-long space mission, or why John, having been left to his lonesome, wouldn't have built a hot 22 year old looking female robot instead. Maybe the guy's just a saint or a wannabe Catholic priest. Anyway, the coincidence of both of them being involved in conspiracies—her with the pregnancy and him with the robot kid that has been taken over—strains the plot beyond Andromeda. The aliens appear to Molly in the form of her ex-husband, whom only she and her ovaries can see, and wasn't this sort of kind of used in Contact? The kid premise started out really good, but then he turned into Damien. I'm sorry, but, with the exception of occasional comedies, American television has been formulaic and basically sucked for decades. The days of Rockford Files, The Fugitive, Route 66 and Ben Casey, when there were talented writers writing are long gone. Extant needed Halle Berry to survive, but as a space opera, I don't know that she, along with the special effects, is enough to launch it into renewal. because Battlestar Galactica it ain't. Oh, and one more thing. Why all the flashing lights on the space station computer? Does YOUR computer look like a Christmas tree?

This movie is about a really unlikable, shallow guy, who is obsessed with an emotionally dead rainbow-haired girl, for whom he breaks up with a totally awesome girl. He plays in a really crappy band that everyone loves, has superpowers and it able to kill Rainbow Girl's exes by turning them into coins, one of her exes being ex-Superman? Oh, the humanities! Despite the fact that those engaged in battle are hurled into walls and beaten again and again, no on is ever really injured; not even a scratch. It's like a cartoon where a character can get flattened by a steam roller, then pop right back up. The only good lines that came out of this were Rainbow Girl's ex gf saying that she was bi-furious and calling her a hasbian. The movie comes across like Sucker Punch on acid. I guess that there are some movies that are so incredibly bad that they appear to be good. This one is just plain bizarre, but can probably be wildly entertaining if you're watching it while zoned out on pot.

1. When Logan recovers from the atomic bomb blast, why does his hair grow back perfectly styled?

2. When he loses his healing ability and he extends his claws on the train, then retracts them, why do his knuckles instantly heal?

3. After Logan is shot several times in the chest, wouldn't the last thing he would want to do is go chop apart a huge fallen tree? Wouldn't his wounds open up and cause him to bleed to death?

4. It is very convenient that is Prometheus there was an alien removal machine and in Wolverine there was a color x-ray machine, but how could Logan operate on himself and reach to his heart to get the parasite? Beyond the fact that it would be awkward, beyond the fact that heart surgeons have to crack apart the ribs and then use a rib spreader, beyond the fact that his ribcage is saturated with adamantine, wouldn't the pain have caused him to black out?

5. If all Shingen had to do to get Logan's healing ability, wouldn't it have been easier for him to have drilled into his claws when he had him trapped in the chair, rather than building an adamantine transformer?

6. If Professor X found the ability to reintegrate his molecules like Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen, why didn't he fix his spine so that he didn't have to use the wheelchair anymore? And grow some hair on his head? (eh, you even gotta wonder why in the 24th Century, Jon Luc Picard never heard about Rogaine)

7. If only part of Logan's adamantine claws were chopped off, why do complete bone ones grow back? What happened to the partial metal ones?

The movie was far too long on ninja fight scenes. I was beginning to fall asleep. Sad that the bad guy turned out to be someone whose life he saved. The Viper character was just creepy without any definable reason for why he was even there.

All in all, it was a waste of bad popcorn.

Most people remember Richard Dawson as the host of Family Feud. But Dawson was a character actor, whose first real claim to fame was on Hogan's Heroes. But there were other roles dating back to the early Sixties, including one on the Dick Van Dyke Show in Racy Tracy Rattigan, where he played a lothario with his eye on Laura Petrie. Dawson's role as Killian gave self homage to his role on Family Feud.

The rest of the acting was stilted and wooden. Years later would fine Arnold running for governor of California with more disastrous results. The direction by Paul Michael Glazer only proved that most actors should stick to acting. Production values were even less than television quality. What in 1987 was released as a sci-fi action thriller, today reflects more as a low budget comedy. I find it incredible that the same man, who wrote both Die Hard and Die Hard 2, wrote this. Guaranteed that if this had come out after DH, Arnold would have spouted yippee-ki-yay, mother f**ker as Dawson sped towards his doom.

No wonder they gave away free tickets to see this one. Don't get me wrong. I like the other Die Hards, but this one was nothing but special effects. Not one character to give a damn about. Wooden performances. Bad script. Poor direction. And John McClane seemed like a gun happy idiot.

1. John McClane goes to Moscow to search for his son, and finds him in two minutes.

2. Apparently there are no cops in Moscow while guns are blazing and a kajillion cars are being destroyed by John McClane.

3. The bad guys get their hands on an advanced military helicopter exactly how?

4. The CIA plans a three-year mission based on bad information.

5. The Soviet and Russian governments conveniently abandon for decades tons of refined bomb- grade Uranium 235 for anyone to walk away with.

6. McClane, Jr. gets run through by bar steel, but when it's pulled out from his gut, he doesn't even need a bandage.

7. In real life, actor Kevin Smith (Aries in Xena/Hercules) fell off a stage and died from the fall. Here, MeClane and son both jump from a tall building twice with barely a scratch.

8 The bad buy dies the same way Hans Gruber died in Die Hard 1 with the exact same falling shot.

9. And what was up with the back side of the guy to the left of the screen in the opening shot. Bad direction.

10. When it finally ended, my thoughts were, "That's it?" Yep. Two hours of my life gone forever.

Yippee ki yay my a**!

I dunno. Maybe Thomas Jane did it, but in my mind it was a lousy ending killing off Joe. 41 years of children not having a father; of a woman not having a husband, all summed up in a Ghost and Mrs. Muir ending with, "You waited for me," from the now 83-year-old but somewhat rejuvenated Alison, who kicks the bucket without any of her family anywhere in sight. We, of course, assume that in all this time she never dated, never remarried, and, God forbid, never had sex, because we know that ghosts, like Santa Claus, are watching all the time. Waited for her, huh? What was spirit Joe supposed to do as a ghost—play golf for 41 years on Cloud 9? And when Alison turns into a vapid spirit herself, why does she manifest as a 42-year-old woman? Why not the 25-year-old hottie she was in True Romance as Alabama Worley? If it was within CGI capability to fabricate a young Arnold out of smoke and mirrors in Terminator Salvation, the producers most certainly could have turned back the clock a decade and a half or so. Does the Big Guy up in Heaven only reanimate dead souls as middle-aged?

I don't know why there are so many tears of joy in the board threads about the killing of JD. Wasn't it bad enough he got eaten by zombies in Dawn of the Dead? Give the poor guy a break!