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The Midnight Gospel (2020)
Babel with basic animation
Animation in the style of the Beetles with a script of pseudo philosophy that never really goes anywhere. It comes off as the conversation between some stoners interspersed given an animated video to make it more interesting. Neither the animated antics nor the subject matters ever really get going enough to entertain me.
BlacKkKlansman (2018)
A great cast & a powerful message
A provocative true story highlighting the problems inherent with philosophies that advocate prejudice & division. It's an engaging script with strong performances across the board. Great direction & a wonderful soundtrack. Full of hilarious moments whilst staying true to the drama, excitement & tragedy of the human enigma. Brilliantly put together & wonderfully executed. I'd happily give this 11/10 if IMBD would let me. One of the best movies of 2018 & a well deserved award winner.
War of the Worlds (2005)
Tom Cruise running away from CGI
This movie sucks. The plot is non-existent. The acting is terrible because there isn't any script to do any acting with. It's just CGI monsters with Tom Cruise looking scared & running whilst holding his kid. For me it just serves to highlight that both the star & the director are out of ideas. People in the cinema were laughing at it, then they got grumpy, then they walked out before the movie finished. Another money spinner with no soul. Another boring CGI fest with absolutely no respect for the audience.
Ready Player One (2018)
Hollywood just does not get movies anymore.
If you've read the book, you will hate this movie. If you have not read this book but have seen any other movie ever, you'll probably still think this movie is pretty poor.
It's a great story (in the book) but they mangled it so much only the general synopsis & character names are the same. It's soulless pop-culture references are thrown together with no logic or charm, clearly the screenplay had no geeks to give helpful advice like "Halo is poop for jocks so don't reference it, unless you are going to have the lead geek disparage it." I'm not hating on Halo but I'm questioning why they didn't reference Skyrim, Doom or something more geeky & less obvious.
The casting was quite bad, a typically Hollywood cast of good looking wood & painted plastic. Given this is a story about geeks it was very strange to see how pretty they all are. Obviously future geeks will spend more time in the gym than at their computer. Not a single memorable performance given in the entire thing, the Simon Pegg narration was about the best performance of the lot & I'd say that was one of Pegg's most forgettable moments.
Most of the added plot points don't make sense which combines with illogical story telling to render the ending haphazard & unsatisfactory, It felt rather bolted on in the typical Spielberg way. He's a good director but a terrible story teller & he really needs someone to explain that having money + directing talent does not make one a good creative writer.
I give this a 4 because the CGI was very good, the set scenes were well placed & they did get the world (real & virtual) very accurate to the descriptions in the book. That being said this shouldn't have been called Ready Player One & the character names should have been changed.
Star Trek: Voyager: Sacred Ground (1996)
Religion is bad, science is bad, thought is bad, just obey the magic spirits.
Just no. It's a terrible story, no place in any universe fiction or real. The underlying moral seems to be "Thinking is bad." - not sure what the writers were trying to really get at but it's quite badly explained. I don't think the writers spent much time on this one, as with the rest of the end of season 3 it was a little awkward & felt thrown together at the last minute. Given a lot of the interviews post Trek days it does seem that the writers were forced to fudge the scripts a lot at the last moment. I always skip this episode now.
Bird Box (2018)
Questions but no answers.
Lot's of questions raised that never get answered, characters act without motivation or cause. Random nutters making the situation worse just because they can. I sat through it just because the performances are really good & I hoped that there would eventually be some kind of explanation. There are no answers, only more questions & plot holes. Really this is just a very lazy horror story that borrows heavily from horror tropes, cliches & it's current peers. The lack of proper explanation really detracts from the performances of such a great cast.
He Never Died (2015)
Darkly humorous, worth the watch!
I wasn't sure what to expect from this one but it grabbed my attention right from the start. Great acting & a strong script, nicely shot to. Sometimes it was a little cliche, otherwise I would have given it 10/10.
Lost in Space (2018)
Shiny but lacking
I've only watched the first 2 episodes. Bad pacing, poor scripting & a prosaic story. Yet another "sci-fantasy drama. I may stick it out for another episode to see if it gets any better but I think I'd rather watch the original series than people standing around chatting all the time.
The VVitch: A New-England Folktale (2015)
Bad lighting & a loud soundtrack
I'm pretty sure half the visuals in the film were hidden by bad lighting. The same goes for the dialog, either the backing music (cliche horror scream-chorus) was to loud or the actors were mumbling. From what I gleaned of the rest of it, a slow burner to nowhere. I gave up about half way through because the score had a constant whine to it that felt like simulated tinnitus, & the scenes had apparently devolved into children shouting each others names in scared voices whilst carrying candles (there may have been other things in the scenes but it's hard to tell as they appeared to be lit by candle light then darkened with a filter post production).
It felt like someone was trying very hard to make a cult classic horror but I think if you take off the soundtrack it would be obvious the movie is more a period drama with paranoid people. I can't say I noticed much of a plot... at one point there was a rabbit that was clearly scary because of the ominous music, perhaps some sort of Monty Python homage that was so deadpan I missed it.
TL,DR: Turn up the brightness on your screen if you want to see what's happening.
Class (2016)
Cardboard American stereotypes in a UK school
After hearing Doctor Who had been shelved for 2016 I was looking forward to something to sate my appetite. Unfortunately what we got instead was a high school prom, dating troubles & teenage angst like something out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, all set in the extremely unlikely revamp of the inner city school we first met Susan in.
To make matters worse the scenario develops into a terrible parody of Captain Planet with the far too short cameo from the Doctor that came off rather like "Go team! Go! Go team! Go" before being shovelled with no care or attention into an obvious formulaic script for each episode after the pilot.
The graphics & production are about the only thing this show has going for it, the rest of it is a terrible attempt to milk the Doctor Who cash cow whilst once again not bothering to make any actual Doctor Who. The BBC should give up on these spin offs & spend the money on the show instead. The least they could have done was review the script & point out to the writer that UK schools are just not like this.
Aftermath (2014)
Unremarkable, unexplained & pointless.
There are many unanswered questions in this movie or as I like to think of them "plot holes". After a semi-promising couple of minutes at the start the movie quickly becomes a small scale lock in hide from the zombie things outside suspense drama with no suspense that leaves the audience wondering not "What's outside!?" but instead "Why is any of this happening?".
If you like shiny movies where the characters lack motivation & do many stupid things to move the plot forward, this is the movie for you. You will have the unarmed lead character getting shot with no warning for apparently walking up to a strangers porch in search of shelter. You get the joys of never quite working out what any of the characters were actually doing in the middle of nowhere to get into this position in the first place. You get to wonder why any of the nukes were fired to start the whole film off. These questions and many more will fail to be answered in any meaningful way.
This is a movie based on bad plot lines & has a wholly unremarkable script. The only reason this gets 3 stars is because the production was good & most of the actors were able to transcend the shoddy regurgitated script to show some of their talents, even though it would appear the plot was worked out by Spongbob Squarepants best friend.
Sucker Punch (2011)
In short: I feel gypped
I watched this movie because I thought it would be action packed sci-fi. I was a little worried by first few minutes as it seemed to be starting off a long way from anything in the trailer. It then began to jump around a hell of a lot, first the lead goes to the mental home, then it's an orphanage, then it's a bordello. Oh well, I can cope with that. Then she starts dancing... but wait! What's this? When she dances she closes her eyes and ends up in a fantasy world.... cue action sequences that have no bearing on the plot. This goes on for a long time. Then we find out she's been lobotomised and the entire film is all in her head. The end.
"Well" I thought to myself "That was a big kick in the teeth" The sad thing is it really could have worked but in order to give us the kick in the teeth ending of "it was all a dream" much of the direction, script and plot is misleading, contradictory and completely pointless. I don't see why this movie is being raved about by some. It's got nothing going for it but a great trailer made from all the action sequences that have no bearing on the plot at all.
Source Code (2011)
I tried to like this movie... and failed.
I watched this movie hoping for a nice thriller with a few sci-fi elements.
I worked out who the bomber was (my girlfriends first guess!) in the first few minutes.
I worked out the lead role was already dead within the first 15 minutes.
It was obvious that the woman opposite him on the train was the love interest from the first scene she was in.
It was obvious the bomb was in the toilet air vent.
The explanation (when it finally arrived) was incoherent and made no sense, even if what they were saying was possible.
So I spent an enjoyable half hour doing the crossword and waited for this poorly crafted, badly executed boring movie to end.
It carried on.
It went on for a lot longer.
It got to the twist.... oh wait I already figured that out at the beginning.
It ended.
I was happy then.
Please Hollywood, if you can't be bothered with the science, just stick to the fiction.
Legend of the Seeker (2008)
Legend of the Seeker FTW!
This is a very entertaining show, it's such a shame they appear to be axing season 3. I love the books and came across the show around half way through season 1, so I went back to watch it from the start and thoroughly enjoyed it.
There are a couple of points I'd like to make about the critics of the shows main issues. Firstly it's no comparison to Xena and Hercules, it's WAY better. If you like Xena and Hercules (I personally couldn't face them, no matter how many clothes the characters take off!) then this may appeal to you but unlike those shows LOTS is a real fantasy story with a plot that is planned out from the start. It's not a hash of ancient Roman, Greek and misc' mythology loosely tied together in a not-very-well-thought out way. Richard and Kahlan were not cast using a ruler to measure breast implant and bicep size, yes indeed, they were actually chosen for there ability to act without the need for surgical enhancement.
Secondly the author of the books helped write the series. It's strange that some viewers seem to think the makers were idiots but the author was amazing... it's the same guy.
Anyway, it's a great fantasy adventure series, my favourite by far. The acting is much better than 90% of US TV shows. The locations are awesome. The CGI is good and does the job without being either laughable or budget killing. There are enough differences from the books to keep the reading audience guessing, yet enough similarities that you can still see the connection. I'd say that it's as good as can be hoped for and if it went on to do a couple more seasons I think it would be brilliant.
The only real criticism I have is of the reviewers who clearly either didn't pay attention to the show or just didn't watch at all. Maybe I was watching a different edition of the show or something but I'm pretty sure that the majority to the haters were too busy bashing to check some fairly obvious facts about this one.
Ah well, good luck to all those involved in the show. If you don't get a 3rd season, maybe they'll let you do a feature film like Firefly/Serenity... now that would be cool!
Pandorum (2009)
Intelligent and twisty.
I just finished watching this movie and I really enjoyed it. Good acting, lots of twists and a great atmosphere. An intelligent sci-fi in the vein of Event Horizon, Aliens and a bit of 28 Days Later and Fight Club.
***SPOILERS***
A guy wakes up on board a spaceship and tries to work out what's going on. He very quickly finds a friend but it's not quite what he thinks. Lot's of weird things running around that like to munch on pretty much whatever is going make for an intense thrill in the vein of 28 Days / Aliens etc. He meets some weird characters who have been trying to stay alive for various amounts of time and his commanding officer meets some even stranger types. It's a great twisty roller coaster all the way to the end with lots of red herrings to keep you interested.
***End of Spoilers***
There are a few people who seem to dislike this movie, seems a bit strange to me; either they don't like the similarities with Aliens / Event Horizon etc or they are moaning about the loud background noise of the ship. In my opinion this is a sci-fi movie that is really worth watching, the direction is excellent and very much in the style of the Alien movies with a little Fight Club. The noise of the ship really adds to the authenticity of the movie, which becomes a very well thought out story arch just in time for a great twist at the end.
Excellent watch 10/10.