A bevy of uninteresting characters, and it's hard to know why they even hang out. But they keep hanging out, having flashbacks or flash forward or flash to never-never land... and I just could not wait for some sort of alien invasion to start! Random plot for the first 1/3 of the movie finally leads to a space ship appearing. Thank you! But long sequences of looking at people's faces looking at something is not suspenseful... it's just filler to stretch out this disaster of a sci- fi film. Asylum "mockbusters" are so bad they're kitch and funny. This is not interesting, funny, scary or entertaining. It's annoying and filled with unlikable characters that had me cheering for the aliens!
Reviews
3 Reviews
The Take
(2004)
Eye-opening and Hopeful
14 November 2004
This movie helps progressive people address one of the main criticisms of the right and capitalists: what would you do differently if capitalism and globalization is so bad?
Argentina was a country where public utilities had been sold off and money fled the country. Factories were left empty, owing millions of dollars in taxes to various levels of government. The workers thought: we don't have jobs, so we can't buy things for our families. There are no jobs, because people aren't buying things for their families. So they broke the cycle, and with government approval (eventually) occupied the factories and just started producing items for themselves and their neighbors. The co-operative/collectivist movement in Argentina flourished.
The movie shows it was far from easy, and there are many hurdles left to overcome for this country and its people. But it's a hopeful message that if you buy locally, use locally produced services and products produced "locally", you create a viable economic cycle that enriches everybody. You may not have $40 microwaves produced someplace else on the other side of the world, but instead you get a quality product produced by your neighbour, that doesn't require the expense and waste of trans-global shipment. Then, the makers of cheap microwaves will be forced to pay their workers more in order to create a local/national market for their products, rather than using slave labour and shipping the products overseas to the "first world".
Okay, I'm off my soap box. Well done movie with real emotion and appeal.
Argentina was a country where public utilities had been sold off and money fled the country. Factories were left empty, owing millions of dollars in taxes to various levels of government. The workers thought: we don't have jobs, so we can't buy things for our families. There are no jobs, because people aren't buying things for their families. So they broke the cycle, and with government approval (eventually) occupied the factories and just started producing items for themselves and their neighbors. The co-operative/collectivist movement in Argentina flourished.
The movie shows it was far from easy, and there are many hurdles left to overcome for this country and its people. But it's a hopeful message that if you buy locally, use locally produced services and products produced "locally", you create a viable economic cycle that enriches everybody. You may not have $40 microwaves produced someplace else on the other side of the world, but instead you get a quality product produced by your neighbour, that doesn't require the expense and waste of trans-global shipment. Then, the makers of cheap microwaves will be forced to pay their workers more in order to create a local/national market for their products, rather than using slave labour and shipping the products overseas to the "first world".
Okay, I'm off my soap box. Well done movie with real emotion and appeal.
A Passage to Ottawa
(2001)
Charming, but not exceptional
6 January 2003
As you may notice, I'm writing this short review from Ottawa, Canada's Capital. Unlike New York, London or Toronto, it's not often that my home town has a starring role in a movie, so that was perhaps my main attraction to this film.
The story and quality of acting is at "The Game Has Been Rained Out, So Here's a Movie" level. Everything is competent, but not exceptional. The story-line moves along well enough, until near the end where I found it began to take some leaps in logic.
The story deals with a young boy trying to understand his mother's illness, and look for ways to save her, by finding a superhero to bring home to make her well again. The unlikely superhero is the unlikely captain of a tourist cruise boat, who falls in love with the young boys cousin. It deals with issues of race and culture and family.
Without my bias in favour of Ottawa, I'd give this movie a 5.5 out of 10 stars, but if you want to see some awesome scenery, Ottawa can't be beat.
The story and quality of acting is at "The Game Has Been Rained Out, So Here's a Movie" level. Everything is competent, but not exceptional. The story-line moves along well enough, until near the end where I found it began to take some leaps in logic.
The story deals with a young boy trying to understand his mother's illness, and look for ways to save her, by finding a superhero to bring home to make her well again. The unlikely superhero is the unlikely captain of a tourist cruise boat, who falls in love with the young boys cousin. It deals with issues of race and culture and family.
Without my bias in favour of Ottawa, I'd give this movie a 5.5 out of 10 stars, but if you want to see some awesome scenery, Ottawa can't be beat.
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