Reviews

Zahler keeps doing a fine job. This is a rather watchable little film. The plot has holes for sure. It is also unnecessarily oversimplified at times. Still, it flows and it works. It should have no more than 6 stars but, what the heck, here is a 7th.

Know what you are in for, though. This is a violent movie. It is, in fact, a movie about violence. And Vaughn takes on the role well.

I'm looking forward Zahler's next project. There is a certain originality to his movies that is refreshing. Check out "Bone Tomahawk" if you haven't. Again, it has holes but it works.

On the one hand, we are constantly being told that "corporations" need to be regulated because they are inherently evil. We don't have regulations, it is claimed, because there is a conspiracy. Yet when regulations are in place, folk complain just the same. Regulations are not for me! They are for them! So it must be a conspiracy too, apparently. And, of course, it is also masterminded by evil corporations. So, what's the common thread. It is all part of a conspiracy, no matter what. Indeed. So is this very website, the internet itself, and, of course, the planet we inhabit. All of it can be easily explained as a conspiracy. There. I "conspired" to saved you the time to watch this documentary.

The show deserves no more than a 7 but I cannot help but gift an extra point on account of its uniqueness.

The food is so well presented, contextualized, and explained. It takes us on a beautiful voyage. These dishes are pinnacles of gastronomic expression, nothing less than a consummate sensory blend of artistry. If you have been at such a table, you know what I mean. It is a painting and a sculpture and a literary journey and... a merging and submerging of taste, smell, texture, temperature, bliss.

And there is no small amount of genius than to showcase these culinary gems but on the gritty hands of the workers that mine them. Because, you see, almost without exception (although, there are exceptions), these chefs are conceited and self-important to the point of utter ridiculousness. The contrast is magnificent.

One could hope for a better lot of human beings, at least less vain, but the sprinkle of imperfection on perfection, the intimation that while we are so, so flawed, we are nonetheless capable of so much... it is inspiring.

There is a real need for more shows like this one.

Without failure, every single male shown in the first 10 minutes of the show is violent. Unsurprisingly, every single female shown is a victim and, if belligerent, fully justified.

There is nothing unusual about this depiction. It is, in fact, the norm in today's society. It has been so for as long as I can remember. It is on every TV station, every hour of the day, seven days a week, every week of the year, year after year.

So, is there a reason to watch this show when it is possible to see this kind of sexist nonsense everywhere else?

It really isn't.

It's repetitive. It's boring.

Finally a proper survival show. Mind you, it has many flaws. But it is a monumental step forward for this type of shows.

There is no need for you to know this but I consistently write negative reviews about survival shows. There are a handful of reasons for this but, essentially, they let me down.

Not this time. From producers and crew to the "contestants", everyone has tried to do the show the way it should be done.

The heart of 'Alone' are the folk competing. As time goes on and their situation evolves, viewers are presented with a soulful, tearful at times, rendering of woes and struggles.

Some people get "in their own heads", eventually freaking themselves out into an exit. Their rationalizations are poignant, and cruel, and humbling,... and only become more so as the days pass.

Some people endure and the ones that do, do it on a shoestring. Literally. They gradually devolve into physical and psychological miserable existences, bringing to the fore the inherent, real difficulties involved in true survival situations.

This is not Bear Grylls on a weekend adventure... although, I will say, that's a guy that I would like to see competing on this show.

Anyway.

Some of these guys put their very heart (and then some) on the line. Here is a shout-out to their courage and my appreciation for taking us there, to the edge, with them.

Respect.

As you can see from the other reviews, it's very political. My advice is to stay away.

Generalizations are not funny. People are not funny. Men are not funny. Women are not funny. Left handed people are not funny. Individuals are. Or can be. These individuals are not. Rather, these are a handful of specific people finding their way through their professional lives rather poorly for, it seems, they need to trash entire groups of human beings to make it. Not cool. Not OK. Not funny.

Well, IMDb demands more lines. Here they are.

You can't help how you are born. To be ridiculed for it is immoral. To be harassed for it is immoral. You are not on this earth for others to mock you for your gender. Free yourself. Be you.

I want to like the show so I give it a 3 star that it does not deserve.

Wilderness survival is a very interesting topic for me. The set of skills involved is so remote from the lives of most normal people, it might as well be science fiction. TV shows like this one have the potential to bring us closer to otherwise lost or unreachable information and experiences.

Yet, time and again, we get to see overweight folk mill around. It is not a fault of this one show, it is the same elsewhere. Dramas are manufactured. Say, a broken engine leaves a boat at the mercy of a forever incoming thunderstorm... yet the camera crew must be on another boat right there filming (unless they can walk on water or the boat itself is by the shore).

But it gets far worse, really. These shows are about first worlders playing at being pioneers (at best). They have all kinds of gear, from weapons to weatherproof clothing to machinery (chainsaws and what not) to, come on!, plenty of food to grow near obese on (even the dogs are fat). And, let's be honest, they never are far away from support in case of a real emergency.

The fact is that it would be better if these folks were shown for what they really are instead of for what they are not.

Another wasted opportunity... too bad!

Just watching the first few minutes of this show, I learned so much. So much.

For instance, quads and the gas to run them with spurt out of the forest floor all by themselves. However, things like yeast cannot be gotten unless you do a "run" to civilization.

That's a shocking surprise. I reckon even arm-chair survivalist could make their own yeast while even an engineer would fail to build a simple vehicle with nothing but mud and sticks.

There is more. The "reading of books" is apparently a mysterious skill.

I almost forgot. The boogie men of BigCoal are the evil counterpart to these carefree, innocent creatures of the bush.

In sum. This series is a complete train-wreck.

The show works best as a satire of today's society. A kind of Modern Family for adults. Give it a try. Let your mind untwist. You will enjoy the show. A smile is worth far more than a cringe.

Besides, the context itself is interesting. Using sexual orientation and gender identity as the background constantly offers fresh material for character development. This is rare nowadays.

We need more TV like this. It caters to the audience left out by the onslaught of shows about werewolves, zombies, mutants, or vampires. Amazon must be thanked for the effort.

I am giving a 6 which, for me, makes it better than most.

After watching this documentary, the children were impressed so I asked them to reach for their mobile phones and google "how many phones are in the world". They know no other phones than mobile phones and no better source than Wikipedia. Probably, neither do you.

Wikipedia told them that there are approximately over 6,800,000,000 mobile phones in use for a global population of 7,012,000,000. They also delighted themselves by looking up the breakdown by country etc. Please also do so yourself.

Thirty, forty years ago no one could have thought that by today each person would have their own private phone line, much less in their pocket, and to boot, not just a phone but a computer.

Yet the poor are getting poorer, we are told.

I wonder what this documentary would have been like if instead of wealth, Russell Brand had had knowledge or commonsense. We will never find out.

Has many holes, its silly at times, but... it is well put together.

Rami Malek is very good in the main role. He carries the show, really.

The writing is acceptable on the computing technical side, something very unusual.

On the subject of "world financial evil corporations" and other clumsy generalizations passing as social commentary, it is just dribble, a random collection of inane, vacuous, and puerile rants. It bores.

The pilot promises a great deal and I will watch a second episode. The hope is that the series does not degenerate into another soap opera as most TV shows do (who sleeps with who, who "disappoints" who, etc).

This show presents a rare opportunity for those of us that have given up on television. I'm going to rate it provisionally with 6 stars.

It's fine. Watch it, particularly if you feel like being told a complex story in childish terms. It will tell you how awesome some people are and how evil others are. But it's nonsense, of course. It's just entertainment.

The movie itself is not at fault in any unique way. It's always been fashionable to produce scripts that use history in order to create a fantasy world. Marketing strategies determine the perspective to adopt and if historical fact gets in the way few will notice.

Still, it provides a point of view, a simplistic one but a contribution nonetheless. If you use it to motive you to dig deeper, power to you. If you don't, well, you will at least be moderately entertained.

Godspeed.

One of the reviewers claims to have worked in medical "settings" in one form or another for many years. She(?) is also in awe of this movie and it is not difficult to understand why. She tells us. She has endured and still is enduring the traumatizing personal drama that is to face death. Her words also tell us what is cruelly wrong about this documentary.

First of all, modern science is fundamentally different from "traditional" healing in that it removes randomness by means of the scientific process. If acupuncture (or whatever other "traditional" practice) is ever considered to have merit in modern medicine, it is because it will have been tested formally, with rigor, and found to deliver specific outcomes. Furthermore, were acupuncture ever to be found able for (again) specific purposes, it would not show that "traditional" medicine was right all along. It would simply show that modern medicine is able to separate fact from fiction... to everyone's benefit.

Second, there are many afflictions (e.g. appendicitis) that modern medicine cures routinely even though they were deadly until only a few decades ago. Our grandparents saw their peer die for comparatively very little. The forest was always there, the wizards and incantations were always there, acupuncture was always there, and so were the corpses.

Are there limits to science? Evidently.

Are there faults on how those of us in modern societies participate in the medical establishment, whether as practitioners or patients? Absolutely.

Is it consequently the case that we should turn to voodoo when we are faced with a disease that forces us to prepare for the most frightening journey? Clearly not. It is repugnant to even suggest it because it reveals a desire to profit from despair.

And this is what this documentary shows. Desperate people being taken advantage of when they are most vulnerable.

Yes, it's sufficiently well-made to be watchable. Even if the subject is not particularly of your interest (it isn't mine) and you cannot relate (I cannot), it is still a good thing that such documentaries are being made and it is a good thing to be able to experience them at one's leisure.

It's not a great documentary, of course. After all, it simply records a collection of individuals doing their work and, at times, saying their piece. They don't have any "answers" and, frankly, don't need them either. But it is interesting to hear them struggle to explain themselves.

It is also good to see these young people engage as they are on an activity that not long back would have been dangerous, not pretend/consensual dangerous, but really dangerous, as in their lives could have been destroyed on a whim by the narrow-minded. Nowadays, especially the women involved, are no more than simply reluctant and this only due to the caricature that political correctness has made out of feminism. They are on their back foot, yes, but not running away.

Which reminds me, I particularly appreciated the absolute lack of politics. No lobbying, no proselytism, so suasion. This is rare.

Last, Franco has planted a flag with this work. One of a few, by now. Good for him.

I'm giving this documentary a 6. Hope it pleases a little and hurts a little.

It tires. It kind of does.

You see, Big Bird is conspiring against us. I mean, Big Oil. I mean, Big Pharma. I mean, Big Agro. No, no. It really is Bid Bird. It's out to get you.

The propaganda piece that is this "documentary" documents nothing but the collective hallucinations of a sector of the first-world population.

They have never been hungry. They don't have any comprehension of what it means to be hungry, really hungry, the kind of hunger that bends you over. The kind of hunger that starts when you have eaten absolutely nothing for three or four days.

They have only seen hungry children on TV, "brown" children, always safely far, far away from them. They have never seen their own children be hungry, much less, die of hunger.

But they feel entitled to play with their food and yours. And to make ugly faces and reject this and that from their diet because of their political beliefs. They are picky. They are also entitled to criminalize other people's diets and to fabricate stories about food they don't approve of. They are also entitled to forbid you from eating it.

There is no information in this documentary. You will only learn about a delusion. A delusion, by the way, that is killing millions of people every year. Look up vitamin A deficiencies, for example. It's perverse. You and I can protect ourselves from these people. The poor of the world can't.

I have recently watched two political documentaries. First, The Unknown Known. Second, Watermark.

The first one is about glorifying a psychopath. It tells of his exploits as he uses humanity as subjects of his experiments. Its only saving grace is its honesty as it is unquestionably political.

The second one is this one, Watermark, and it has absolutely none of this honesty. It is a documentary that uses the awesomeness of nature to disguise political propaganda. It is essentially babies and puppies. Cheap manipulation to sneak in an ideology.

A number of these "nature" documentaries is being made nowadays. Big, big, big money is being given to "friendly" folks in the movie industry. Pockets full of cash, they are taking their skills around the world (literally) and making visually high-quality films. Unfortunately, the price of this funding is a script that makes adults cringe.

Consequently, this kind of "nature" documentaries is meant to be played in mute. Mozart, Armstrong, (or Pink Floyd if that's your preference) are far superior material to listen to while enjoying the unspeakable magnificence of our planet.

Watermark is also boring at times. The political obsession coupled with a jejune understanding of society and culture compromises the choice of visual subject. If they cannot use as a weapon to hurl at you, they won't show it.

We are often told that rich people are evil. This documentary proves otherwise. The rich people in the series have a heart of gold.

Indeed. These super-rich people briefly left their mansions and glorious life styles to tell us that we really, really don't want to have their mansions and glorious life styles. The fate of the world is at stake. They flew around the world in private jets (the film crews flew coach, we hope) telling us to "cool it".

You see, there are still parts on this blue planet where it is common for a 20-year-old mother to have seen two or three of her children die from diseases that are entirely preventable. Something as simple as access to electricity would do it (i.e. cheap energy with which to boil water). However, these super-rich people are telling her she cannot have an electric generator because, they say, 95% of scientists hypothesize it "could" harm the planet. And, shrug, the death of her children is the price to pay to save the planet from doom.

According to the World Health Organization, I quote, "more 6 million children under the age of five died in 2012. More than half of these early child deaths are due to conditions that could be prevented or treated with access to simple, affordable interventions".

The bottom line of the documentary? The children of the poor need to continue dying so that the children of the super-rich inherit a better world. And if it turns out that the fate of the world is not at stake, well, the children that have died are the children of the poor.

... why doesn't Robert Reich open a White Castle and pay his employees 95 dollars an hour? Or, just the same, why don't you? According to the documentary, the answer is because he is evil and so are you.

On the one hand, you are greedy. You need money on your money to enjoy your money as you butter money on your money. You cannot stand the thought of money having any other owner than you.

On the other hand, you hate other people. You could pay 95 dollars an hour to your (potential White Castle) employees if you wanted to but, if you did, they might be happy and you want to cause as much gratuitous pain as possible to humanity. It is your second most vital ambition (after money) according to the documentary.

Don't let other reviewers throw you off. It's not an economic issue. It's a moral issue. Rich people are evil.

Food for thought. If you have been born middle class in any first world country, you have been born rich compared to 90% of humanity. As the documentary explains, this makes you evil... for the wealth you have enjoyed your entire life has been obtained through greed and with the sole intent of flippantly hurting others. In sum, humanity would not know what suffering means if you were not evil.

Now you know.

The documentary is a complete mess in regards to facts. A few are there to be sure, but so scattered and disconnected that you will learn nothing about nuclear energy, good or bad. Indeed, if you have a real interest in the subject, it will take less effort to simply pick a physics book and start reading from chapter one.

What the documentary does (if it does anything at all) is to display a tiny portion of human stupidity. From activists to scientists, and various other creatures, we hear unsophisticated social/political theories that make absolutely no sense but that they are delighted to tell the world about nonetheless. And when the documentary does allow a professional politician to speak (e.g. Thatcher), it is to manipulate the audience by misconstruing the very manipulation of the politician herself. In other words, it is a mess.

In sum, it isn't worth watching on account of the presumed topic. Regarding the human folly, one can turn the TV on any channel for much of the same.

If you are into scifi, you should see the Riddick movies. The series is good in general and very good at times.

This latest installment, however, is very, very bad. I cannot emphasize it enough. Riddick (2013) is terrible.

An atrocious script is mostly to blame. There is no storyline to speak of. What little narrative there exist, it makes no sense. It leads nowhere and does so boring everyone to death. Including the actors. Vin Diesel himself has no choice but to pull "cool" at every turn in order to keep himself awake.

Of course, if you are a fan of the series (as I am), you will watch it no matter what anyone says. This is fine. I would and in fact did. But go into it with your eyes open. The best thing that can be said about this movie is that it is an awful remake of "Into Pitch Black".

The standards are too low nowadays to properly rate a movie, any movie. I give it a 6 but its real rating should be a 4, at best.

It is watchable. The script takes off well. The acting has sufficient charisma. It is engaging enough overall.

But the story becomes deranged as the development of the main characters turns them into caricatures. It should be the other way around. Instead of depth, we get flatness. The secondary characters, however, are written rather well comparatively speaking.

The red flag is that the premise of the story is eventually shown to be irrelevant. The resolution takes the film on a tangent. This makes no sense. We are forced to believe that the concerns of the main character, the problems that drive him all along and entirely determine his life up to that point, disappear rather than are resolved. This is a cheat that torpedoes the true potential of the plot.

There was a time when this short of movie was meant for a particular kind of audience. Nowadays, it is supposed to be a blockbuster. It's appalling.

The gratuitous violence has been taken to a degree of outlandishness that does not fit in the word bizarre. I cannot but think that porn would be more suitably rated as PG-13.

The portrait of the White House and its government officials is delusional, even infantile. The music score on the opening scenes makes one's skin crawl.

I watched James Woods as I watched Melissa Leo in "Olympus Has Fallen", that is, in utter disbelief. If these two actors did not break into laughter between takes, it is because they were weeping.

I was looking forward to watching this. There is always the chance that a balanced view might be offered and discussed with maturity. No such luck.

All that is now left to do is to thank the rich people that made this religious drama. They are now back at their palaces, of course. Or flying around the world in their private jets.

Green acolytes will love this latest issue of their Watchtower. Just like the rest of us, the far larger majority, will not. It's a survival issue. For this "film" is an assault, camouflaged as an accusation, disguised as concern. And normal folk have been systematically brutalized before by the enlightened. We know in our bones that we are no more than prey to them.

In sum, it's just another propaganda piece. When it won't bore you, it will freak you out with its absurd extremes.

The movie is good enough in terms of the standards at play nowadays. The plot is formulaic. There are no surprises in direction or editing. The special effects are satisfactory.

The acting is not remarkable but not as nearly as bad as some people are saying. Sure, Will Smith shows none of the screen persona that makes him watchable. On acting skills alone, he struggles.But his son's acting work is as good as other kids these days. He does not have the charisma of the father, though, and unless he develops some as he grows up, his career will not go far. But it should be said that others have managed to do it (DiCaprio, Gordon-Levitt, etc).

I did not see any of the alleged Scientology dogma but I care nothing for Scientology so I wouldn't know. In any case, many movies are based, revolve, or otherwise, use religious material without a problem and I don't think this should be an issue here.

That's all. Average... which is bizarre, it must be said, considering that it cost more than 100 million dollars to make it.

Marling has explained at every opportunity that she writes because "there are not many stories of strong, powerful, sexy, entitled women" and has asked "Where's the film with the women who are complicated and strong and beautiful and sexy and interesting and of all body types?" Unsurprisingly, the answer to these questions is that these "women" will not be found in any of her movies.

Childish self-deception aside, is there any narrative merit to this script? Nope. Is there any merit to its mise en scène? Nope. Is there any merit to the actors work? Yep, some.

The entire movie is a mess based on a delusional view of the world, where fantastic two-dimensional characters find their daily activities narrowed to constant public pronouncements in either good or evil terms (according to the script's straight-jacket ethics). The dialog boils down to a vapid exchange of half-baked political ideas.

Why a five then? In a movie industry with any self-respect, the work of people such as Marling would be laughed at as vacuous, pretentious, adolescent. In the movie industry she (presumably) criticizes, the work of people such as her receives ample funding and support. This evident contradiction is completely missed by Marling. In the absence of much quality cinema, sure, this movie deserves a rating on par with Fast and Furious and the like.