Reviews

I almost feel bad about writing this, since there is enough negativity being spewed out all over the internet already. But I have to say that this series is, so far, the worst sci-fi I've ever seen. Why even make this? Its like the producers of this show lack respect for their audience. I can almost hear them telling themselves "Wow, this really sucks! But those nerds will just gobble up anything we serve them anyway, so screw it". Everything about this show is mediocre at best. The makeup is ludicrous. The script seems to be written by a second rate sci-fi hack. The concepts introduced in the pilot are confusing and shallow. Most of the alien races act mostly like humans, except for the fact that they are quite obviously wearing make up and prosthetics, and speak cringe worthy made up languages. Its not that the make up is bad, really. Its just so obvious. Some of the actors are clearly having trouble acting through it - looks like their faces are being constricted. Editing and continuity suffers throughout the show. The CGI parts don't mesh well at all with the purely live action scenes, and everything feels rushed. Yet it manages to become very boring. Some things are just silly oversights, like in one clip we see snow on the ground, then in the next there is no snow on the ground. In the CGI clips we see lush alien vegetation, yet in the live action parts there is only barren "earth" vegetation. Two things deserve special mention: the CGI and the music. The CGI is lackluster at best, and just terrible in some places. Some console games I've seen look as good as this. It completely ruins the suspension of disbelief. The music is totally embarrassing. In some places they insist on singing in the stupid made up language of the alien race(s). I was forced to mute the sound every time there was singing in order to be able to endure the show. What saddens me is that there were probably some talented and ambitious people involved in the making of this show. There always is - even in bad projects. I hope the mention of this show won't screw up their CVs when it inevitably gets canceled.

While watching this, for some reason I began thinking about the time I watched the film "Dune" together with my father. For some reason, this movie has a "cult following". In the scene when Paul Atriedes rides on a sand worm, we almost fell out of our seats laughing, because it just looked so silly and stupid. But I should have cried. Dune is one of the best sci-fi novels I've ever read, but the movie is very poor. I imagine it was very expensive to make - just like Cloud Atlas.

"$100 000 000 (estimated)" Yes - one hundred million dollars. Money that could have been used for cancer research, or something similar. Instead, they elected to invest this mind boggling sum in a horrible film.

Natalie Portman gave the book to someone. She should have kept it for herself. In the opening scene we see Tom Hanks in old makeup. One of the cardinal sins of movie making - OLD MAKEUP. After sitting through this garbage, I got to see "old" Halle Berry saying something like "warm them old bones" in a faux old woman voice. Wow... Just - wow.

First of all, let me give you a short anecdote of what happened to me while I was watching this movie in the theater.

At first, after putting on my 3D glasses, the opening credits looked as though I was staring cross-eyed at some sickening troll picture on the internet. I really started feeling a little bit uneasy, and frankly -- sick to the stomach. Next, I started to adjust a tiny bit to the 3D. The audio was just on the verge of being ear-splitting at times, adding to my discomfort. Then, the frame rate hit in. A few parts of the scenes in the first 45 or so minutes looked like a ridiculous silent movie from the 1920's. To me, the action scenes consisted of up to 80% of inexplicable confused ghost closeups of something that I suppose was dwarfs being double projected onto my retinas. This also filled my body up with an emotion that can only be described as mild to moderate angst.

In one scene a loud snoring sound appeared, panned far to the right. This was when I was just aching for the movie to end. My hind quarters were hurting pretty bad. I thought that a member of the audience had actually fallen asleep, which wouldn't have surprised me in the least by that point. But it turned out to be just one of the goblins snoring! Great unintentional humor there! I would like to address Mr. Jackson directly now. I want to tell you that watching this movie was a rather excruciating experience. I got quite physically nauseated by the horridness of the 3D effects that I experienced, and the sometimes inexplicable effects of the high frame rate. I don't go to the movies to feel physically and mentally anguished. I would very much like it if you payed me an amount of money that represents what it cost my mother to actually take me to your movie just to cement our family relations during the important "mellandagarna" Holiday in Sweden, plus a sum that represents a decent wage for three hours of work in your country. The money for the ticket will be used to reimburse my mother for her expense. The rest of the money will go to me personally to compensate for my loss of time while watching your film. Bear in mind Mr. Jackson -- the above is not (except for a couple of somewhat bitter comments) my opinion of your film, or a review of it. Its what actually happened to me while the film was being shown in the theater. If you would like to the decent and humane thing, please PM me on IMDb!

Now we come to that difficult and sad part when I have to review this movie. It is tempting to make this the "best of" compilation of the already excellent dumps several people have taken on this film, at this site. But I must rake my brain and make a (somewhat) original submit. (After all we all had to sit through the same film). Regrettably, it has to begin with the characters. Radagast: An embarrassing role that has bird manure caked in his beard. I cringed inside every time I was exposed to this poor representation of the brown wizard, which was actually a welcome relief from the nausea from the 3D. Galadriel: What can I say. Cate Blanchett is a good actress, but in this rendition of her previous part she provokes in me a slight feeling of wanting to get up from your movie seat and leave. Maybe its the way she turns so dreamily... Gandalf: Just bland. The Dwarfs: oh my Goodness... That (those) was (were)(some)(an) embarrassing performance(s)! Someone wrote that they reminded them of Jar-Jar Binks from the first Star Wars prequel. That is so spot on! Elrond: One of the few redeeming interpretations, but the part when they circle around the dwarfs with the horses sent messages to my legs to just get up and walk out of the theater. Bilbo: yeah... Real interesting. The rest of the characters: I hardly remember them because of the lingering nausea. (On a side-note: the reason this film gets a 3 from me and not a 1 is the fact that the beginning description of the Lonely Mountain and Thorin's acceptance of Bilbo actually provoked something slightly resembling true pangs of emotion in me). The Script: Obviously created by the same Peter Jackson Splinter Mind that wrote the "Deadmen Nuke" part of "Return of the King". Really liked the snot humor, and so on! Nearly wet my pants spilling my drink on my pants to get out of the theater there, with a valid excuse for leaving (I wet my pants). I'm not even going to describe the rest of my feelings for this film. All I'm going to say is this: In 2014 get ready for "Attack of the Clone Wars: The Quickening, part 2: Bilbo goes through a forest to a mountain, and that will take 6 hours!!!!"

Let me be honest about my feelings regarding this show. It is garbage. I am not talking about the footage; it is excellent, and even breath taking in some of its views of Manhattan!

I am not talking about the costumes, or any such detail. Everything about that looks great. I am talking about the scripts, and the acting. Or the direction of it.

The banter around the Irish-American Sunday dinner table becomes a parody of itself. We all know that its not like that, and it never will be. So the never-neverland of the Sunday dinner table becomes like a strange vortex of wishful thinking that I find myself getting strangely sucked into. It is oddly addictive.

Looking at starkly "realistic" shows like The Wire etc. I sometimes wonder how realistic they are. They are probably just some vision of reality -- just like Blue Bloods is a vision of an un-reality. Which one is better?

My left eye almost popped out of its socket when I saw this film got seven stars out of ten on IMDb. Then my right eye almost popped out when I read how much money they spent on making this movie. You can certainly tell they spent a lot of money... But you can't polish a turd with dollar bills. The main problems are the poor script and the lame, tired visual ideas. It makes you wonder if the good actors in this film actually read the script before accepting the part. Either the didn't, which is a bit strange... Or they did - and that is mind boggling. Why agree to star in a film with such an obviously inept script? Oh and some of the ideas/visuals... "We have a lethal vampire loose in our secret lab! At once turn on the confusing, strobing lights that trigger epilepsy! What? Why we should do this!? I don't know - I've seen in movies they have those in their secret superlabs so I thought we should install our own... Kinda cool, huh?" Amazingly, the film-makers seem unable to shake their obsession with strobing, flickering lights - they appear for no apparent reason in several scenes. The werewolves look stupid a cliché - like a really poor horror slasher film. Which this is, sort of. The facepalm moments... Like when vampire girl wakes up in secret lab (the one with the STROBING LIGHTS remember) and finds her latex suit and all her gear in a nice cupboard with a glass door right next to the bed... Wait... Its almost like the writer couldn't come up with something better... Or the script is written by a nine year old... One would have though it safer to keep the evil super vampire's belongings locked up in a safe place far away from where she might wake up any moment... A true facepalm moment. Of which there are many in this snore-fest of a film. I struggle to actually remember the story. Several times I felt a horrible urge to fast forward or walk out. The only things I clearly remember about this film are the cringeworthy story solutions and how forgettable it is. For the latter I should perhaps grateful.

I didn't like this film at all. It has a mediocre script, strange casting (what on earth is Tom Sizemore doing in this movie?) bad acting by most of the people involved, an annoying soundtrack... The cutting is bad in several places. But by far the worst is the sound design, with audible clicks, distortion and a host of other issues. I had to lower the volume almost down to zero several times just to be able to stand watching it. I feel a little betrayed by my Christian friends who hyped this film and said it was good. It simply is a badly made film. I don't really understand how they can say its enjoyable on any level. One thing that really got to me was the sometimes disastrous over acting and general level of overstating the points that the film is trying to make. There are so many examples of this that its hard to pick an example. But when Satan is making his closing argument, one of the cast is making a "ooh that Satan is really, really bad" that is just silly. I hardly feel its required to underscore that a fallen angel that hates humanity and wants to drag us all into hell is bad. Especially not with some of the worst acting I've seen.... The film seems to be preaching to the choir - repeating stuff that Christian believers already know, and have heard over and over again. In that way it is disgustingly self indulgent. It would perhaps surprise the makers of this film to know that most educated people know the stories in the bible and the canon that this film is based on. They also understand the spiritual message they are trying to convey. Its really not that hard to understand - be you a Christian believer or not. Why people elect not to believe with their hearts (in the Christian message, that is) is another matter entirely. I also believe that opinions differ in that matter. I just have to repeat that I feel a little mad at my Christian friends for trying to sell me this film in the way that they did. It felt dishonest and manipulative. My opinion of them is a bit lessened because of this.

My main problem with this film is that it attempts to be "hard" science fiction, but it gets all the facts wrong. It also borrows a lot from older films of the genre and has inconsistencies and gaping plot holes. In fact this disturbed me so much that my enjoyment of "Sunshine" (a visually pleasing film) was affected in a negative way.

• Help! The sun's light is fading! Hm - strange, since it's a scientific fact that the intensity of the light from the sun is increasing by 10% every one million years.

-"We've mined all the earth's fissile materials" oh really!? A lot. I mean... A lot!!! Considering the fact that there is more fissile material than tin (a fairly common metal) in the earth's crust. At least ten to the power of seventeen kilos. I also wonder how they calculated the mass of Manhattan. Is there some kind of consensus on that... Makes you wonder how they got it all up there in the first place. And why would you want fissile material anyway? The sun works by FUSION.

-Apparently, the sun makes a loud sort of rumbling, swooshing sound when it burns. How strange. There is no air in space to conduct the sound waves. This sound can also be heard very clearly inside the space ship for some reason... But only in the room where you can watch the sun.

-The sun destroys one of the antennae of the ship in the blink of an eye, but mercury just sits there without being affected at all.

-The solar wind prevents the crew from sending messages. But the distress signal from the other ship can be heard very clearly (for some reason it is a silly, meaningless synthesizer sound) -The name of the ship is Icarus II. You know - the guy who flew too close to the sun so his wings melted, and he crashed to his doom. Perhaps they should have called it "Titanic II" instead to bring less ill omens to the crew.

-It is comforting to know that psychology has been exposed as the pseudo-science that it is, 50 years into the future. But perhaps the captain of Icarus I (?) should have stayed on his schizo meds for the ENTIRE trip so he could suppress his urge to be "alone with God" Behold now the thievery (only partially exposed) -Crew boards spooky ghost vessel causing pinhead type villain: EVENT HORIZON (pinhead villain already stolen from horror classic in the first place) -Space walk without space-suits while shot out of airlock: 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY This could go on and on. But I think this IMDb rating is much too high. It is sad that the script is so bad, considering how ambitiously it has been executed.

I've been a fan of the Warhammer 40 000 universe since I was a kid. The original grit and darkness have become a little diluted through the years, but on a whole GW have stayed true to the main themes.

Its been pointed out that this film is a "nice try" and I'd like to second that. There are however some major plot holes and artistic shortcomings that makes this feel like a school project rather than a "real" movie.

The first problem is the relatively low quality of the CGI. I am referring to the quality of the textures, models and animation of the characters, which feel unnatural at times. The quality is also uneven - sometimes it is acceptable; sometimes quite poor. This gives the whole thing an amateur feel.

The second problem is the script. There are portions of this relatively short film where it is quite obvious that they're just trying to fill in time, like the part when the squad is walking through the waste toward the shrine. The dialog is also quite poor. One thing that becomes irritating, for example, despite the shortness of the movie, is the officers constantly repeating the names of the lower rank characters. You get tired of hearing it over and over. There are also some things that don't fit right, like the final battle with the daemon-possessed captain. We hear a countdown toward an engine burn (probably supposed to create tension) and the marines fear that the warp-gate will destroy their home world, which is the destination. So why don't they just call the ship's crew and stop the countdown? This is a mistake that even a child would spot.

On the other hand there are a few moments that give you that nice "Warhammer 40 000" feeling and if the team had been given a better script and more money and time to finish the job this could perhaps have been a great CGI movie.

I think we'll have to invent a new word for this movie. Holocaustsploitation, perhaps. The problem with this film is that it takes one of the most awful sets of events in human history and turns them into some kind of daytime movie for children and stay at home moms who like a good cry now and then. There's nothing wrong with being a kid or a housewife. But the holocaust really happened, you see.

I can just imagine Ellen or Oprah promoting this film in their mildly sociopath style, becoming just perfectly tear-filled in a perfectly calculated way and then everyone in the audience gets a copy of this film on DVD.

This movie has a strangely inauthentic feel to it and according to all documentary sources I have witnessed, it also IS very inauthentic. I think you cross a line when you set a film in and near an "Auschwitz-y kind of concentration camp" and then decide to make some things really authentic (like Zyklon-B crystals being blue, for instance) and some things, like the camp perimeter, sort of what you need them to be to make a fictitious story work. In fact some revisionist would probably love this picture, because it turns concentration camps into a fairytale.

I also found this film strangely unmoving. I don't know if its the music, the acting or the camera work, but it didn't really touch me in the slightest way. I found it mildly pleasant and entertaining to watch, which is completely wrong, when you think about it.

If you want to see a truly great movie about the Holocaust, you should watch "The Grey Zone". This is a deeply disturbing and chilling piece that portrays the stark and utter horror of Auschwitz like it should be portrayed. Its not a good cry. It doesn't provide any answers. Instead it rips something out. It leaves you feeling cold, numb and terrified. Sure, The Grey Zone has its flaws, like some strange casting and inconsistent acting, but its not a borderline debacle like this one.

I recently had the grave misfortune of watching this "thing". A friend of mine acquired IT somehow and though IT was just another animated kids movie that his daughter could watch. But the day after, pale, drenched in sweat and with the eyes of a man who had just witnessed the death of morals, ethics and philosophy he with trembling hands forced the disc into his DVD and tricked me into watching it as if the contents were a sickness that he had to pass onto me in order to survive.

I wish someone had the energy to research this title. If it is a hoax we can all breathe a sigh of relief. There will be no "Tjernobyl: the legend continues" or animated Disney musical version of the 9/11 attacks... But I doubt it is a hoax. There will one day be films like that. Just you wait. I mean everyone has heard about 9/11-- who would like to pass up on a marketing opportunity like that!?

As for the quality of IT one can only say that if you were to call IT a picture, it would be below the worst film you have ever seen. By far the most horrible thing to be distributed. I mean seriously-- what could POSSIBLY be worse than this?

IT is more or less incomprehensible and abysmally poor but all the gruesome details cannot be described in an adequate fashion. It has to be seen to be understood. Rest assured that this is not one of those films that's so bad its funny. Its in a league (or perhaps rather hell) of its own. When you watch it you PAY with a piece of your SOUL.

The only thing I can compare the feeling to is watching "Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom" for the first time only this time, its all inadvertent. Like being forced to watch a snuff movie of a nine month old performing open brain surgery on a fully awake and aware patient.

Growing up in the eighties I had one fear that overshadowed everything from my parents dying to the worst of schoolyard bullies. It was the fear of nuclear war.

I wasn't old enough to be able to do anything about it, but I was intelligent enough to understand that if NATO and the Soviet Union launched their missiles, not only would countless millions die in minutes-- those who were unlucky enough to survive would face a grim, if not hopeless, future.

There was plenty of learning material, documentaries and excerpts from popular culture that detailed what a nuclear holocaust would look like. Being cursed with a very vivid imagination, I would lie sleepless at night, listening to passenger planes over Gothenburg, wondering if they were bombers or missiles passing above, and if this time it would be the end of humanity.

One of the worst things about this was that mom and dad couldn't say "it was just a horror movie" or "it was only your imagination" because it wasn't. The threat was very real and it could have happened.

The most startling revelation for me was the fact that this documentary revealed that the nuclear standoff between the USA and Russia still isn't over. This shocked me utterly, because I had believed that the nuclear disarmament after the fall of communism had been much more complete.

They still have hydrogen bombs ready to be launched at a moments notice, and once, because of a mistake, the Russians nearly did. After the cold war was over.

"The weapons of war must be abolished, before they abolish us."

Sixty million dollars. This is more money than 99.99% of the world's population will ever see in their lives, probably. And the producers don't even take the time to look at the episode in the "saga" that came before... Apparently this film is supposed to be a sequel to the last Resident Evil movie, and some things appear to build on that story... But if you look at "Resident Evil: Extinction" (much to the horror of the producers, some people may actually REMEMBER that one) especially the beginning of that movie, you will see that the people who made this boring and unoriginal sequel hold nothing but contempt for their audience.

I see it now... How this all came into being...

PRODUCER: We should open with... (takes drag from suspicious cigarette) a scene where Alice is flipping and flopping and taking out guards in swat gear. All in slow motion! And you should see pillars... Yeah; pillars at the end, all shot to pieces. Wow, I hope this place isn't bugged, because all this is so original someone might steal it.

DIRECTOR: I think that scene is from Matrix.

PRODUCER: And the bullets she shoots should make like, uhm... Cool traces in the air. In slow motion.

DIRECTOR: That may also be from Matrix. Look, why don't we take a couple of thousand and hire a script writer?

PRODUCER: What are you talking about? I'm having a stroke of genius right now! There should also be a mall, no a prison, or something, that is all surrounded by zombies... And the zombies are trying to get in.

DIRECTOR: That may be from Dawn of the Dead.

PRODUCER: What are you talking about you curmudgeon? This is all original thought right here! We don't need any script. Just take all this I'm saying and wing it... David Lynch never needs a script... Like, we should have this scene on a roof. And there are lots of zombies. And Milla, she catches a machine gun that is thrown to her. In slow motion.

DIRECTOR: Why!?

PRODUCER: Because can you think of anything cooler than Milla Jovovich catching a machine gun in slow motion?

DIRECTOR: (Sighs deeply) Maybe a huge zombie with a giant axe?

PRODUCER: You know I just thought of something.

DIRECTOR: What?

PRODUCER: You know I'm just free-wheeling right now. Shooting from the hip. Swimming with the flow. I'm just thinking, stop me if I'm out on a limb right now. I see a zombie. It MAY be really huge. Perhaps, just perhaps its within the realm of possibility... If it doesn't hurt the suspension of disbelief... that it has a giant axe. You have to put that in the film. That's it. A huge zombie with a giant axe. I think we've nailed it.

DIRECTOR: Also we could perhaps make it like a in-house joke that Milla has ammo clips that never run out?

PRODUCER: Nah. I don't like cynical references like that. Maybe we can just assume that the bullets in the clips are really, really small so a lot of them fit in there. Only you don't see that. Because the clips themselves are sort of opaque, so you CAN'T see through the metal.

I'm not going to rant on too long about this one. This film is a decent way to spend an evening. It is well made and I felt myself getting drawn into it. But at the same time I felt there was something missing. The American actually feels a little too austere and barren; at the end of it, I was left craving something more. To be honest I wanted it to be a little less forgettable.

I felt Clooney was miscast as Jack the assassin. After all, Jack is a moral and ethical monster. Clooney looks and sometimes acts a little bit too sympathetic to fill the role. Its something about his vulnerable eyes and the subtle way in which he displays emotions. Clooney just seems too likable to kill someone almost as an afterthought, like he offs the Swedish woman Ingrid at the beginning of the film.

Speaking of that.. You did just not name a Swedish woman Ingrid, did you... Oh my, in that case Clooney should have looked and acted like McGyver plus he only eats apple pie and listens to country music. Because that's what "Americans" are like, right? But I must say it was fun to see Björn Granath just standing there for a few seconds and then getting shot by Clooney, who is probably a worse actor than him. Talk about the injustices of life!

I recently came across this film by accident. When I was a kid I was completely entranced by the graphic novels by Enki Bilal, so I was exited by the prospect of a movie based on the Nikopol Trilogy. I didn't get far into "Immortal" before I started to get really disappointed and disillusioned. The film tries to mix CGI that would be somewhat acceptable in a computer game with live acting-- its not the admittedly poor blend that is the main problem, but the artistic quality of most of the CGI and the often shoddy voice acting. It reminds me of the Star Wars prequels, which I didn't fancy at all... But "immortal" is far worse. You can't redeem this movie by saying that it is deep, not for children, and so on. In this film, you don't get the story because its poorly told. To be frank, the execution of the script, and perhaps the script itself are a disaster. There's a difference between a botch and something that is inexplicable in an artistic way like "Mulholland Drive" by David Lynch. As a film-maker, Enki Bilal just doesn't have his act together. Watching "Immortal" is a twofold torture, because Bilal is desecrating his own work while at the same time making an extremely poor movie that is mostly boring and sometimes even excruciating to watch. The scenes when the main character of the film is first possessed by Horus are very good, but this somehow makes "Immortal" even worse, because it reminds you of the fact that this film could have been something great. For me, this film was one of those rare ones that actually made me feel a tiny bit worse about life and art in general.

If you were a Native American, wouldn't you get annoyed by a movie, in which the supposed "Indians" looked like Maori and spoke with a German accent? The "vikings" in this film are a disaster. Vikings DID NOT have horned helmets. If they spoke with an accent, it was NOT Scottish. The vikings in the film wear clothes and armor that is completely unlike anything a real viking would wear. I know this is a child movie-- but why not put at least a fragment of effort into making the "vikings" appear at least a little viking-y? This all becomes extra irritating when the supposed vikings make references to actual Norse gods like Odin and use the ancient Norse alphabet. (Ancient rune-stones with such writing can be found not far from where I live.) As the "vikings" in the film look and act like... well, nothing at all (except they have Scot accents), to be frank, why put these references to actual Norse culture in at all? This just makes it even more irritating. The people who made this film could have checked out "Hrafninn flýgur" for instance to get a little bit into the viking feel... But apparently even checking vikings out on Wikipedia is too much of an effort... I wouldn't let my kids watch this movie, because I wouldn't want them to get the impression that our forebears looked and acted like dwarfs from World of Warcraft. Yeah, its a fantasy movie. But vikings actually existed... Another detail that annoyed me was the fact that the adults spoke with a Scot accent, and the kids spoke like Americans. The story is also stereotyped, a predictable "from zero to hero" story that even a young child could predict with unerring accuracy. The makers of this film have seriously underestimated children, I think. This movie is not a complete disaster-- it has its moments. But awesome animation and a charming character (yes, the black dragon) doesn't make for a movie anymore.