Reviews

My original impression of The Orville after a few episodes was not very good (I gave it a 5 out of 10). I stopped watching it after a few episodes because they had too many silly immature characters - not what I expected from a Sci-Fi series. The sets and special effects were well done, but the plots, dialog, and acting seemed to be sub-par. I was a little upset because they had obviously spent a lot of money on the production. After a year, I went back to the series and found that it had gotten better and better with each episode. I finished the second season and now give it a 7 out of 10 rating. Not great, but not bad either.

Nomadland had some interesting moments, but I found it, in general, to be boring. I know that others really like it, but it just wasn't what I like.

I have just finished the 4th episode and it will be my last. I find that I'm now fast forwarding through all the scenes that show the home lives of the astronauts. They are just plain too boring to watch. I've even started fast forwarding through some of the space scenes. I really hate seeing sci-fi produced by people that don't understand the genre. What a waste of talent and money! Too many cliches and too much PC, too much unneeded melodrama, and too much earth-bound family life. Hopefully the spaceship crashes on Mars and ends the series.

I rated this movie 8 out of 10. It was very good and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I chose Mustang for our monthly movie group and we have some lengthy questions about the character Yasin and the movie in general. Since we saw the movie with English subtitles, we are suspicious that some of the details and messages of the movie were either lost on us or misinterpreted.

Can you answer any or all of these questions? If you are from Turkey, please state so, as you may have better informed answers.

Question #1: What is the literal translation of the Turkish title of this film? The English word Mustang usually is a noun referring to a small wild horse. A lesser known definition of mustang is as a verb that refers to corralling wild horses. Both definitions could apply here. Which definition was used for this film?

Question #2: What job is Yasin doing with the truck? My guess is that he delivers cylinders of propane for use in home cooking. Is this correct?

Question #3: Why would Lale look for Yasin's phone number on a shopping bag? Might a local gas delivery company advertise on a grocery store bag?

Question #4: In the English sub-titles, Lale calls a company whose phone number is printed on a the shopping bag. She says (according to the English subtitles) that she is looking for a long haired driver named Yasin. The person who answers the phone says that they don't have any queer drivers. Why would he say that? Are we to believe that in conservative areas of Turkey, a male with long hair might be presupposed to be gay?

Question #5: When watching this movie, I was initially worried that Yasin might assault Lale (he didn't and was, in fact, a sympathetic friend)). Was there anything about Yasin's speech, hair, clothes, or mannerisms that would have led a Turkish viewer to think that Yasin was gay?

Question #6: Is this movie a social commentary to show hypocrisy and the abuse of women's rights in the conservative areas of Turkey?

Question #7: I generally feel that youthful actors seldom give entirely believable performances. I thought all of the girls in Mustang gave perfect performances, but I can't evaluate their spoken lines (I used the English subtitles). If you speak Turkish, were their spoken lines as good as their acting?

I haven't seen this movie for 40 years. I had always remembered it as a great movie. I had been waiting for a Blu-ray version, but I finally gave up and decided to see the DVD version.

The movie was a mixed bag for me. I still love the sets and most of the acting. The audio, however, was so bad that it seriously distracted from the movie. If the audio was equal to the sets and acting, I would raise my rating to a 9. As it is, I can only give it a 6.

There were three things that were particularly bad. First the speaking parts seemed to have all the bad quality of a dubbed movie. It appears that the actors were all speaking in English, but the soundtrack sounded as if it was all dubbed. All of the speaking parts reminded me of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". The second problem (for me) was the overly emotive sobbing of Juliet throughout many of her scenes. Again, it was if the scenes were filmed and then the parts were spoken later in a recording studio. Maybe this is the way all movies are made, but it was bad enough to make me cringe each time Juliet started the sobbing. The third problem was the use of orchestra music in the background of many scenes. This may just be the norm for 1968-era movies, but it now sounds wrong.

I'm really perplexed by this film. I generally find that my impressions of a movie correlate very strongly with the IMDb rating. I generally find that any movie with a rating over 7.0 will be an absolute delight and anything over 8.0 will be an incredible movie. It was with great anticipation, therefore, that I rented this 8.1 movie. After 30 minutes, my wife and I agreed to start fast forwarding to see if anything was actually going to happen - it never did. This movie had the feeling of the thousands of forgettable French movies that center entirely on people having discussions in cafés. We generally love any movie with a rating above 7.0, but this movie was a complete disappointment for us.

I rented this at Redbox after seeing the 7.2 IMDb rating. I forgot to check the number of IMDb votes. With only 300+ votes, it's obvious that many of the reviewers worked on the movie or were related to the cast and crew. Their praise was the praise of a parent for a dearly loved, but completely ungifted, child. This movie basically stank. It has some big name actors and it appears to have been made with a reasonable budget, but the general acting, directing, and storyline were BAD, BAD, BAD. Did you see Winter's Bone? If so, Winter's Bone probably inspired this movie, but the inspiration was drowned by a lack of writing, acting, and directing talent. My general rule of thumb is that you can ignore an IMDb rating until you have over 1,000 votes. The first few hundred votes are anything but unbiased. I forgot to check the number of votes and wasted $1 on another Redbox stinker.

Many of the reviews are apparently written by people who view the homosexual sex scenes and numerous references as being romantic. I felt that the movie would have been FAR better without those scenes and references. I think that the love between two men (or a man and a woman) can be portrayed without the sex scenes. The more graphic the scene, the more the director can titillate part of the audience, while grossing out others in the audience. If the audience for this movie is homosexual, then they will probably think the scenes and references to be positive. If the audience is straight, then they will probably find the scenes to be somewhat repulsive. I appreciate the frustration that homosexuals must feel in having to watch the heterosexual scenes that overpopulate many movies today (e.g. "Love and Other Drugs"). However, if a movie is viewed by a general audience, then 90% - 95% of that audience will be straight and may be grossed out by homosexual sex scenes. My rating of "5" reflects my own experience of this movie. If it had been more tasteful, I would have rated the movie as a "7". I think the director could have portrayed the message without grossing me out.

As it is, this movie is a so-so cross between the comedic energy of "Catch Me if You Can" and the romance of "Brokeback Mountain", but slanted towards a homosexual audience.

My wife and I saw this movie after seeing IMDb's high (7.3) user rating. We were extremely disappointed and would rate it a 5.5 at the most. What's most distressing to me is that I am GENERALLY in COMPLETE agreement with the overall user ratings that IMDb users give to movies. I rely on these ratings to choose movies to watch. If a movie has an 8 or higher it's almost guaranteed to be a great movie that I will enjoy and remember for a long time (with the possible exception of older movies that are rated highly for historical significance). If the movie is between 7 and 8, I anticipate an excellent movie. Ratings between 6 and 7 are a little more circumspect. If the movie is about a particular topic or genre with a big following (e.g. a western, or a NASCAR race film, or a children's cartoon, or a science fiction film) then I'll adjust the overall rating by perhaps a point, depending on how much I like/dislike that genre of movie. Movies below 6 are almost always boring or painful to watch and are generally just a waste of my time. I felt "Burn After Reading" was very disappointing as a comedy and dreadful as a drama. The only somewhat amusing part was the last scene. In looking through a few hundred of the latest reviews, it appeared to me that most people thought it was a bad movie, with just a few users rating this movie a 9 or 10. Those glowing reviews look like they were written by the cast or production crew of the movie (or perhaps their family) with a financial or emotional stake in its success. While I expect the first 100 reviews of a movie to be highly positively biased, I generally trust the ratings of films with over a thousand reviews. So ... what happened here? "Burn After Reading" has over 64,000 votes and a rating of 7.3, but a large percentage of the latest reviews were (like mine) fairly negative. Has someone figured out how to scam the voting process? ... or ... Is this a movie that people either love or hate? I'm very concerned that someone has figured out how to scam the system so that movie producers or interested parties can buy a high rating.

If the voting is being done fairly, I can fully accept that I rate a movie differently than others. What I can't accept is a system that allows for buying or manipulating ratings.

I would like to see IMDb provide a feature where a user can see a histogram of the user ratings. Perhaps then we would see a bi-modal distribution for this movie, revealing that people either loved this movie (9s and 10s) or didn't care for it (4s, 5, and 6,). That might then explain the puzzling votes I've observed.

A further refinement would be to have statistics that show if all the great ratings came from users who enrolled at the same time or some other characteristic that points to a manipulated voting process. It would also be very helpful to be able to look at a random sample of reviews. With 64,000+ reviews, I can't accurately assess the quality of the rating or reviews by looking at only the latest entries. A random sample would be a great way to look for irregularities in the voting process. Finally, there should be a way for users to flag suspicious votes to IMDb for someone to review for irregularities.

What do you think?