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Reviews
Runway 34 (2022)
The halfway point is when you realize you're supposed to think he's a good guy
I got to within about 10 minutes of the end and couldn't take it anymore. As far as I can tell, all the things he's on trial for are true: he partied with tons of alcohol till six in the morning the night before the flight, which he clearly knew was not a good idea because initially he told his friend he couldn't come because he had a flight the next day. He drove around at top speed in a sports car while drunk. Surprisingly, after this night of extreme partying and exhilarating drunk driving, he appeared to have trouble sleeping and so was massively sleep-deprived before the flight. On the plane, he was dismissive and condescending toward the copilot, boasting about the number of flight hours he'd completed. He went to sleep in the cockpit during the flight, then drank gin and took aspirin for what was evidently a hangover headache. Most aggregiously, he seemed to be making nonsensical decisions just for the sake of proving his power. He wasted fuel circling the airport despite timid advice from the copilot, ignored the rules about which airport they should divert to and chose the one farther away and more likely to have weather/visibility problems (again, despite logical protests by the copilot and air traffic control), and then chose a different runway than he was assigned - and in reality, there's no way he would have been able to land the plane in one piece in those conditions. The plane would probably have bounced because it was so low on fuel, and with the tailwind and the shorter runway and the lack of fuel, even if he somehow landed it in one piece, he wouldn't have been able to stop the jet before he ran out of runway. And for some reason, they built a runway that ends on a cliff edge? And why were the pilot and co-pilot not following any checklists throughout the flight??? They're supposed to follow them even if the plane's crashing.
So the pilot actually committed all those errors - it wasn't that they were misunderstandings - and yet his wife says he needs to start believing in himself? I don't think lack of confidence was ever an issue for him, and if the court case caused him to start doubting himself, that would actually be a good thing, because personality-wise he is repugnant and would probably meet criteria for narcissistic personality disorder. Getting indignant when authority figures tell him he can't smoke in certain public locations, and then smoking anyway. Repeatedly telling people the rules don't apply to him because he's too smart and has a "photographic memory" (which is highly unlikely anyway, and some scientists have suggested doesn't really exist). All in all, he's a disgusting person and I expected he'd get his comeuppance at the end, but instead it turned into yet more affirmation for him which would likely make him even more dangerously stupid in future.
Sidenote - why is the pilot so rich???? Either he married rich, or the writers think pilots make waaaay more than they actually do.
Poldark (2015)
Poldark is a podunk of a man
I was really liking it up until the part where Poldark does it with a prostitute - and of course it was done in anger. He's supposed to be a fairly noble person, and yet it's very possible in that time period the prostitute might have become pregnant with his kid. And then what would he have done? What most of the "nobility" did back then, I imagine. Not to mention the probable STDs that he would bring to his future relationships - and he's so concerned about cleanliness in general. But most of all, it shows his complete lack of concern for the short and brutal lives those women would have had. He lost all credibility with me at that point, and since I no longer cared what happened to this very unremarkable man I lost interest in the show. I still give it 7 stars though, because it's otherwise a fairly well done series.
12 Monkeys: Shonin (2015)
AAAAAAAA!!! That horrible woman!
This episode has way too much of that horrible pixie-haircut woman. Every time she opens her mouth I want to tear my own face off. The most obnoxious monotone purring voice I've ever heard, with the most hideous facial features and an infuriating smile permanently tattooed on her creepy face. I really, REALLY can't stand her. If they make her a fairly regular character I'm going to have to stop watching the show. As it is, every time she makes an appearance it's a mad scramble for the mute button.
The Last Ship (2014)
Not as good as the Aussie show 'Sea Patrol'
Everyone else has covered the good and bad points of the show, but I'm not sure if anyone else has pointed out that the President dude technically murdered his own daughters, admitted this to the Captain, and the Captain just got teary eyed and said he wouldn't tell anyone. Actually, there's no "technically" to it - he did murder them. It was his wife who asked him to put them out of their misery - the girls themselves didn't ask him. They had no say in whether they got smothered to death or not.
However, when Dr. Scott did her gene-slicing thing on Nils (whose shoddy science had resulted in the deaths of billions, and who had purposely infected and killed any number of people) and kills him in the process, the Captain declares that she's now basically under house arrest and he'll turn her over to the authorities so she can pay for her crime. They get in an argument about not getting to pick the rules they have to follow. Is there a glaring double standard here or what? As far as I'm aware, suffocating your daughters is against the law even if you think you're doing it to ease their suffering.
And at another point, the President himself reminds some hoodlums about how Americans punish child-killers severely, and was apparently unaware of the irony.
Paradox (2016)
Not clever
Right from the start I knew this film wouldn't be great. Clues were the truckloads of unnecessary f-words, and the fact that the "scientists" were nothing of the sort. They were all supposed to be young and brilliant MIT students but they looked and behaved more like the thugs you'd expect to encounter in a back alley at 3 in the morning. Every one of them had a despicable personality, so I didn't particularly care what happened to them. I guessed who was behind the gas mask (why a gas mask? There was no gas) about five minutes in.
And the tropes would have been right at home in an I-Know-What-You- Did-Last-Summer-type movie. The killer looking as mechanical as possible, slashing away without mercy or logic. The girl character getting hot and lowering the top half of her coveralls so that we can all get a good look at her boobs in her white tank top, though the rest of the characters (all male), are perfectly comfortable keeping their tops on. The characters, despite their supposed brilliance, constantly splitting up and turning their backs to doorways, and never thinking, hey maybe the killer is a double of one of us from another time period, which was obvious to me from the get go.
And then, the female character confused me, because she looked over 40 years old, but I got the impression that the guy who was supposed to be her boyfriend was about 28. And her eyes had these giant bags underneath and she constantly looked like she was squinting, which I found irritating. That last bit is superficial, but it really annoyed me.
In short, the movie was more teenage-slasher than time-travel paradox.
Paper Towns (2015)
Margo apparently didn't have Huntington's
I didn't really want to write a review - I wanted to write a comment on the discussion boards, but they're gone, so here we are.
I watched this on Canadian Netflix because the availability of non-B movies on that site is not great. I hadn't read the book, because I know it's one of those coming-of-age stories I hate. When I saw the scene in which one of the guys looks up the bio of that folk singer on his phone, I was sure I knew where the movie was going - the article on the folk singer had said he'd died of Huntington's, which I knew was a genetic condition that often appears in the person's 30s and inevitably results in a slow and terrible death. So I thought, oh, that's why Margo is so reckless and apt to give advice about how other people should be living their lives, she knows she has this condition and is going to have a short time to live. So the whole time, I was expecting Q to search and search for her only to find that she'd lived it up madly and then killed herself to prevent slow deterioration, or that Q would never find her but would learn years later that at the onset of symptoms she'd jumped off a mountainside or something. She seemed like the type of person who would do that. And then Q, instead of becoming an oncologist, would become a researcher in neurological diseases and this would be the legacy she left him.
Instead, she turned out to be an ordinary brat who ran away in order to "find" herself, not having graduated high school. Boring. Which leads me to my second point of irritation with this movie, which is that, either the author has completely forgotten what it was like to be 17, or he was also a spoiled brat. These teens all have cars, no jobs, unlimited cash, and their parents are perfectly fine with them ditching school without notice and driving across the country. They all have way more independence and disposable income than seems likely. Margo is living by herself in some hick town. What happens after the money runs out and all her former friends have finished high school, and she doesn't have a degree and can't get a job? I hate the rosy picture of the three friends heading their separate ways to new adventures at the end of the movie. What would the average life course of real people be? Yes, some would become oncologists and spend 80 hours a week working and rarely get to see their fancy houses, some would become journalists for CNN and travel the world, but most will be ordinary and get married, get an uninteresting job to pay the bills, and spend their weekends trying to get their squealing infants to stop crying long enough to pick up diapers at Walmart. And then get divorced. I'm just being realistic here.
The movie has a typical upper-middle-class American "follow your muse, discover your true self" underlying message that is very unoriginal and very uninspiring.