Reviews

The theatrical cut was pretty great in the theater. Never heard so many gasps before in a film, or seen so many people in a state of euphoria & talking about a movie on the way out of it. Seriously underrated, even though the kiddie stuff in the second half holds it back some. Doesn't hold up as well in later views, either, but first viewing was great considering how little leaked about the film ahead of time in the teasers. We really had no idea what to expect. It has a momentum that is very hard to top. Extended cut sucks, and of course the TV shows just further ruin it for new viewers if they're exposed to those before seeing the film. For that matter, I'm not sure in this day and age with other TV shows, History Channel, and internet you could pull this movie off like that now. The telecine & colorist work on the later editions are also HORRIBLE and look nothing like the prints compared to an original DVD (might be foreign) that I have.

A Parisian DJ spends all his money on drugs, records, & designer cloths, has guest lists that are so large they're like half the attendees, gives much of his guest list drink comps, starts a record label putting out very generic dance music in a single genre, and then wonders why he's broke. Short of the government of France giving him an artist stipend, which I suppose isn't entirely irrational considering what he brings to the city of Paris, I'm not sure how you could expect this to turn out any other way.

Other than the seemingly-obligatory (for this kind of movie) death of a friend that predictably occurs (though oddly off-screen), not much really happens. At the very least, we could have gotten to know the characters in a more empathetic and interesting way, rather than sort of cookie cutter, 2D representations.

I did like how some DJ gear showed up in this movie that I recognized. Actually, I'm a gear head, so I recognized all of it ;-) But the CD players appeared way too early according to the dates shown. People were also using Denon DJ and Numark players before Pioneer CDJs ever showed up in the booth.

The best thing about this movie was the music and the girls, but even that can be boring considering it was mostly the same girls and only one genre of music. I don't get how anyone can only play one genre.

Oh, and the DJ this is based on apparently knew Daft Punk before they were famous. If you can't get Daft Punk to actually do a cameo in your movie, though, best to leave that part out.

I didn't understand this guy sitting in a little chair for long periods without binoculars. That's just going to screw up your neck and back. If you're not actually watching anyone, lay down and get some rest.

I concur with the use of 308 subsonic for the first shot when the rifle doesn't need to be short. The time to use it was when the lady gets on her knees, not when she's standing or dancing around. This was not an accident by the film makers, obviously.

A pistol compensator is not the same thing as a suppressor, though the latter sometimes has the former inside that can be used on its own. Fassbender's little vented 'potato' he doesn't dispose of is clearly just a side-vented compensator.

Probably the physical intrusion, evasion, and disposal elements were the most adept. Not incredible combat technique. Actually, this guy had no advantages there... not on strength, not on skills. Him not buying the farm soon in the movie wasn't believable. Too much extension on how he holds out a sidearm, especially walking through a threshold. Doesn't seem to know where to place himself after entering a room and especially after triggering an alarm. And he goes up against people with more physical fitness and obviously more experience hand-to-hand fighting. Just one or two of those hits to the face would have put him out. Other than some yoga, what did he do to stay in shape during the film? The character does specify that he's not exceptional, but his luck seemed to be, even though he doesn't believe in that, either.

Most of the philosophizing was not as insightful as it could have been. "Anticipate, don't improvise" has also been a well-known recipe for disaster (along with overly-complicated and/or rigid plans) ever since Operation Eagle Claw.

I didn't feel anything in particular for the characters, let alone connect or empathize with them. I don't think this was at all accidental. It felt a bit like a so-so attempt at Brian De Palma or maybe Kubrick.

So, The Killer turns out to be mostly a kind of hit man procedural, and just an o.k one at that. Tonally, it's probably closest to The Conversation or some notable, detached, French new wave, but neither as enjoyable or moving as the former, nor as smartly done as the latter.

I did watch it until the end, though, and didn't feel like I wanted the time back.

Didn't need two leads.

Technical action is too small-scale, compressed in distances, and Hollywood.

Personnel action has terminators doing a lot of useless throwing instead of hitting or strangling.

Soldiers are too often not wearing any head protection.

Dubbed-in comms and dialogue added obviously later in post that was unnecessary.

Bryce Dallas Howard and Christian Bale are both good actors, but they lack chemistry in this, and that should have been easy to figure out before shooting the film.

Tries to rewrite the franchise history by saying there was a military hierarchy, facilities, and massive amount of technical assets still intact for the human side immediately after judgement day.

Another retcon claims Skynet would know who Kyle Reese is. Nope.

John Connor is supposed to have started a work camp & prison revolt, not broke into such a facility.

Generally, this is a stupid plot that's stupidly executed.

Too bad this joke of a director McG got a terminator project, and the one with Bale, at that.

Bale was nice enough to apologize for blowing up on set, but if your DP is screwing around, it's the director's job to deal with it, not have the talent do it. Literally no one else above-the-line backed Bale up. I'm surprised Bale didn't just walk off the set and be done with this lousy project.

I'm giving it a couple stars for having a few interesting, watchable moments.

This was one of the most montage-like movies I've ever seen. It felt like it could have been another half hour longer, with looser editing, and especially less music. I suspect they were struggling to bring the cut length down to some arbitrary dictate from the distributor while still preserving the story threads.

The result is a film that ends up missing many of its emotional beats and reveals due to this need to keep things as efficient as possible but with a ton of story to tell. The most important, emotional moments and reveals are basically blown by it, wasted, having few real impacts on the emotional state of the viewer.

Is the first half interesting? Yes. Did it remain engaging? Only enough to keep watching, but it felt like I was increasingly sitting through a badly-organized and rushed adaptation of a mess of story-boards. Visually impressive, and I don't have a huge problem with the Blade Runner inspiring Anime inspired by Southeast-Asia atrocities vibe, but, for heaven's sake, let the moments of drama breath.

I can maybe forgive the at-times idiotic military tactics, equally idiotic futuristic military technologies, or the bizarre, Hollywoodized compressed scale of some of the orbital tech because, at times, it worked in its stylized framework. And, again, think of and just appreciate the influences it's based on. You shouldn't be too judgmental of samurai movies from a certain era that are showing a certain Japanese movie sword fighting style, either.

If you can get past the anti-American, anti-military, rose-colored AI rendition presented here, Creator is potentially a worthwhile film, but it's currently painfully begging for a longer, more relaxed, less forced cut with the music also silenced from some of the moments of reveals and most dramatic interchanges. It could be much better than what's been released.

For most part, the rendition of dialogue is finally improved in this film compared to the last few Nolan outings. We're not yet back at Memento or Prestige fidelity, though, in dialog or the rest of the film generally. Those were his seminal greats, in my opinion. Sorry, but even The Dark Knight was not a truly great film overall if you deleted Heath Ledger from it.

Back to the rendition of voices, though, while most of Oppenheimer is fine, there are still a few too many scenes that are ludicrously mixed with the droning swath of the music obscuring them. There are some basic concepts in sound mixing, of keeping frequencies separated, volumes conservative for certain elements, or even panning the music to the back channels while the front is left for the voices that Nolan still refuses to adhere to enough.

Combining the persistent occasional sound issues with the misuse of ADHD-style editing that Nolan first started abusing in the third act of Batman Begins, this montage-like, cutty speed where now even dramatic scenes of intimate dialogue and developing relationships are subject to this. Too much of the acting is drowned not only in the music & sound design but in this frenetic, impatient, abbreviated quality... for what, to shave 10 minutes off the total run time? Absurd. To improve the pacing and rhythm? It doesn't; exactly the opposite. It didn't work for the third act of Batman Begins' action & climax or his other films since, and certainly doesn't work for scenes of barely comprehensible dialogue in a romantic relationship. Let the performances breath, for crying out loud!

It's not every scene, though, and as I previously said, there's more of Nolan's older films in this than many of his other recent films. Some segments of Oppenheimer were wonderfully edited, great sound, and the problems didn't destroy the rest of the movie for me. It's still definitely worth seeing. Heck, finally, one of my biggest pet peeves addressed: we've got a depiction of the speed of sound in film or TV. That's practically an historic moment. The Star Trek & Star Wars franchises, war films, and terrorism/spy genres take note!

A few more caveats before I end this:

The scale of the Trinity Test itself is relatively underwhelming here in both physical scale and duration of its aftereffects. How it's carried out in terms of editing and tone is fine in emotional impact in the theater. I can't fault it in the moment, but rather upon refection significantly, though not severely, lacked the sheer magnitude of physical atmospheric outcome bordering on cosmic that even such a moderate atomic detonation has. This instead sort of looks like you zoomed-in on a smaller tactical atomic test. Perhaps the forces involved in such a large conventional explosion prevented forced-perspective tricks from being tolerated in-camera, and therefore they relied more on zoomed shots, the effects on the onlookers, and a shorter duration as a matter of necessity. Using the restored original test footage with a combination of corrections & artistic license or even stooping to using CGI might have been a better choice, but if you're trying to strike a print directly from negatives, you have to make concessions.

It's too hard on Truman, who was more polite and gentlemanly, and portrayed better by Gary Sinise previously, anyway. Truman was duped by people around him who did not accurately & fully relay to him the prior peace overtures and terms of surrender the Japanese had offered, which required such things as their emperor remaining, which eventually were essentially accepted anyway after the detonations on two targets chosen for 1) having real humans to check the effects of the weapons on, and 2) to test on two geographically-distinct cities for future planning purposes. Truman was also not told that the Russians were positioning to assault the islands and the Japanese were desperate to surrender to the USA and not Russia. Truman later in his life admitted he'd been deceived by those around him in order to cause POTUS to make a decision his underlings wanted.

The film is still too easy on Teller, who had much more to do with the attack on Oppenheimer's character than is even shown here. Teller continued to have a deep connection to extremely sensitive and compartmented programs that he wanted Oppenheimer to have no connection to, and was instrumental in the assistance to the nation of Israel in the development of their thermonuclear weapons.

Finally, and this is not a caveat but a defense of the film, the Hindu stuff needs to be put in proper context: life, death, pleasure, pain. The little death, as the French call it. Not to mention Hinduism did not notably become puritanical until it had to start competing with Islam in the region. In its early days, they had temples of prostitution, and the Kama Sutra is in fact a compilation of older Hindu 'holy' writings & instruction on sex.

Essentially, this is "Measure of a Genetically Engineered Woman", and done before the audience can actually give a damn.

It's too early in the series to be doing stuff like this when I really don't care about these characters enough yet. If the first officer was replaced, it wouldn't upset me. It's only been like a dozen episodes, which is less than half what TNG had in already by the time they did the episode with Data.

Shows need to put in more ground work of just entertaining, episodic stuff before delving into this sort of main characters in deep moral peril stories. To those claiming it's already episodic: The stuff with the Gorn, augments, and these genetically engineered people the 1st officer is a part of has all been serial in its story telling, not episodic. They literally are recapping in the beginning of the episodes what happened in prior relevant episodes. You don't do that with episodic TV.

They're taking the viewers for granted in how they're running this show in season 2, devolving into more of the Discovery mold compared to season 1 that was passable compared to the majority of Discovery. I hope they regain their footing.

P. S. Speaking of footing... the pants, particularly on the men, need to be at least the same width from the knees to the shoes, even if they're not belled at the bottom at all. They look extremely lame currently, figuratively and literally.

I also found Kandahar to be more in-depth and realistic in its technical depictions. Finally, a movie about this sort of stuff shows night in a believable way. One of my pet peeves is over-lighting night activities, and they strike a suitable balance here, particularly when white phosphorous NODs were used. You also got to see the use of thermal imaging chips on that unit here, and the advantage afforded by it versus the adversaries' old green phosphorous with no TI. I was disappointed, though, that the CIA handler friend didn't later show up with a mk1 IVAS goggle for daytime ops to conceal and see through smoke during the compound assault. The gun fire was also appropriately dynamic, being probably closest to the film Heat, but in contrast correctly lacking urban reverberation. There was also a wonderful balance and humanity on display how they dealt with all the various operatives acting on behalf of their own nations' self-interests, making this film one of the more mature depictions that has been done.

The first act of the film teetered between boring and painful. The second act was tolerable but not great, but it does pick up and became enjoyable for me by the third act. I'm not sure there was much laughing in the theater during the first act at all. I certainly didn't laugh during the first act. I even contemplated walking out and changing my movie ticket, since I'd just seen one flick and thought maybe I was in the wrong mood to see this one.

It wasn't a complete waste of time, but there was a lot of potential for actual character development and compassion for these characters that was not exploited. It just didn't have much heart and I didn't care what happened to them, but it eventually became amusing, at least. The dialogue was surprisingly good at times, but the editing, especially during the first act, maybe the first half, was amateurish.

The focus on Russia was much like the recent John Wick movie, which I'm not sure is a coincidence or instead means this production or that production borrowed from the other during pre-production somehow.

While I'm giving this a 7 in the context of the entire series, it'd be at least an 8 if S02 had not wasted our time and overused this subject matter in such an inferior way. While the finale was somewhat predictable, it was also superior to the prior episode, which was for me the biggest disappointment of this season with what seemed to be a tired repetition of villain. It was worn out by then. However, I think if season 2 had never happened, you've not watched it, you can simply forget it, or at least treat it not as canon, then season 3's big reveal doesn't seem so bad, and subsequently this episode also improves.

The resolution scenes for the remaining TNG crew after the climax and then the final scenes with the possibility of a new spin off are an easy rating of 9 for me, even if the rest of these last two episodes weren't quite as thrilling and surprising for me as the earlier episodes of season 3.

My final criticism would be that some of the explanation for where this villain came from and how they were reanimated was not as well explained as it could have been.

And again, if you haven't seen season 2, I think you should probably skip that one, or at least leave it as a bonus season after you've watched S01, then S03.

A fictionalized film about Marilyn Monroe that's loosely based on a fictionalized novel about her. How do you judge something like this when it never purports to be true but it's kind of about real people? It obviously touches on her talent and intelligence, but I didn't think it quite went far enough. She was more grounded than this. Sharper. Wiser. She frequently warned other women about the perils of the industry, who to look out for, etc. Where's any of that if you're trying for some feminist interpretation with massive creative liberties? Most of this movie's controversial stuff, and there's a lot of it here, is made up -- the orgies, the abortions, the crazy outbursts.

What's most odd about this endeavor, though, was even given how extreme and fictionized it was, it ends with a completely mainstream version of her death. No neighbors hearing Bobby Kennedy at her place arguing with her about some little red diary. Nothing about the surveillance of her and her friends. Just a quaint little accidental suicide. If filmmakers who are so outrageous about everything else in this film can't bring themselves to deviate from the official narrative of her death, then that must be the truth, right? Right? Perhaps that was the whole point of the film in the first place, to prep the audience for that reinforcement through a sleight of hand, and certainly propaganda can be artful, too.

Neato. They used neural networks with glossy production CGI computer screens to find information that's been known for a long time in documents that have previously been used by many other researchers to come to much more rational conclusions.

This is an unwatchable, sad excuse for an investigation.

There wasn't just information withheld from the Warren Commission, but the commission was misrepresenting witness statements. Evidence didn't just get suppressed, it was destroyed or changed around by multiple elements of the USG. Here is just a taste:

The cop who originally was part of collecting the gun in the depository later said the rifle in the archives was not the same make or model.

The CIA photo dev guys who did the briefing boards later said the boards in the archives are not their briefing boards but have rather been altered and redone by someone else.

Even the guy who headed the House Select Committee on Assassinations' investigations, who gave the government every benefit of the doubt back then, now says that one of the persons babysitting his team of investigators when they were at the CIA was the CIA's former contact person for Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil when Oswald was dealing with them.

Both LBJ and Hoover were dirty to an unusually high order. That doesn't necessarily mean they were directly involved with the assassination, but it certainly means at the very least that every phone call they knew was recorded and every memo they signed was part of their attempt to not only cover their butts but create a second layer of narrative in case the first layer failed. LBJ and Hoover doing conference calls with Dallas PD and a meeting with Earl Warren urging them to pin this on Oswald for the good of the country to prevent WWIII had a deeper motive than preventing WWIII.

There were people at the agency, like William Harvey, who had already explicitly violated orders from the president, thought the Kennedys were scum, and wanted them gone. The weirdos Harvey and his friends were connected to were stranger and more disturbed than Oliver Stone or Jim Garrison wanted to get into. Think to yourself for a moment: What other subject did the USG suddenly want to start doing a limited hangout on in 2017 besides the JFK thing? Use your head, while you've still got it.

Margot Robbie did exceptionally in this, I thought.

John Washington was as wooden as the log in Twin Peaks... and even less interesting.

Tonally and from a sense of narrative flow, I found this to be sort of odd and not entirely successful. How much of these problems, though, are really a result of the other issues is hard for me to say. Can you ever be certain if tone or flow not quite working is just because some acting isn't convincing or because a humorous moment is falling flat?

The subject matter they've, let's be generous, 'ostensibly' drawn from is interesting, but they've done some weird stuff in this most-obviously changing the names around, I guess because they've certainly confabulated so much of the details about what exactly happened with the conspiracy of a couple people in the American Legion at the time who tried to cook up a bizarre plot.

The most egregious fabrications, though, were not the events, personal details, or the names that have indeed been substantially changed from reality to the point this either must be considered mostly fantasy or two completely separate scripts slapped together into a single project, but rather the claim of Nazi-Germany-sponsored eugenics clinics. These were, in fact, usually state-run clinics in the USA, and usually with the backing of various Ivy League institutions and institutes on 'human hygiene', particularly popular in places like California.

Just as the China 'one-child' population control policy was formulated and exported from the west to that country, Nazi eugenics was exported from the west to there, not the other way around. US and British banks had funded not only the ousting of the Czar and the rise of the Bolsheviks, but the rise of Hitler, too. Later on there were certainly groups here who were followers of Hitler, and a back and forth occurred, but to treat the early-30s eugenics movement as being some hidden, underground German export to the USA was a distortion of history in order to deflect culpability of our own country and especially west coast academia in the events of that era.

While the theatrical cut still resulted in a meaningful film, it irked me originally in the theater and then again recently upon seeing it again that very significant moments from the original Philadelphia Inquirer articles were left out. It was as if someone hadn't just forced Ridley Scott to cut the film down for time, but to de-emphasize the disparity in training and personalities between the Tier One units and everyone else. Was it because they wanted the Rangers to do interviews and go on the talk circuit to help publicize the film? Regardless, the Extended Edition adds back footage I had no idea they bothered to even shoot. The only big thing missing is that Delta medic Earl Fillmore isn't a character, but I assume his family wasn't interested in him being portrayed at all, which is unfortunate. In the Extended Edition, Wolcott instead serves the Fillmore role of reassuring someone and then himself becoming an early KIA. In fact, Fillmore was killed while moving to Wolcott's crash site. So, this was a very smart and fitting proxy. The theatrical cut is, frankly, an inexcusable version that no one should be watching when the extended exists.

It had the huevos to show how fascism is evil but undeniably useful... and you can explore that in a historically astute, ironic, entertaining, and oddly nostalgic way that can still be relevant, lest people with poor memories later find themselves shocked by fascism being justified in a half-way convincing manner. In other words, its utility of mobilizing a people against a threat was never in question, nor was the capacity for young people to get carried away by some cause. The film was unvarnished and unabashed in its approach, not to mention the second film in a lineage of ultra-realistic war violence right after Braveheart, with Saving Private Ryan following right on its tail.

In my prior review, I complained about them not dealing with D'Souza's past, the Errol Morris-like repeated use of a well filmed (and obviously not meant to be interpreted as real surveillance footage) dramatization of the guy in the hoodie without labeling it a "reenactment", the lack of an in-depth proving that their methods were valid using red hat attempts to debunk these methods, and the trope of a few reality TV-like moments that were annoyingly scripted. These were relatively minor complaints, though. The film was still quite compelling, and the interviews, in particular, led me to want to learn more.

It turns outs that law enforcement has come out and said this group did not assist solving a homicide using the tracking data. They have not demonstrated that any of their "mules" took part in the riots or were in Antifa. Most of their raw data has not been made public to be evaluated by others. The little information you can pull from the documentary itself, like something as simple as drop box location plots, isn't even fully accurate. Their supposed use of the compiled smart phone geospatial data also only required the "mules" to be within 100ft of a drop box. That is a bizarre level of imprecision given the resolution this type of data nowadays can actually afford. What's being sold by brokers is not that crude. They can absolutely do better than that. So why aren't they?

For that matter, I've gone over the documentary's sections with the surveillance footage again, and while they say there's footage of the same people going to multiple drop boxes, they don't actually show an example of that. Each instance of a person cramming in multiple ballots and weirdly taking a photo is only a one-off within the film, with no additional footage of that person shown again... unless, of course, it's just to show that same clip to another person to get their opinion of it, too. I'm not saying that's not potentially a crime if that is actually what the person in the surveillance footage was doing one time, but the claim was that these persons went to multiple drop boxes as "mules" for some organized effort of voter fraud, not single instances of illegal handling of ballots. Again, why not show the footage if you have it? Don't they have the location data for each of them and video footage to match at least some of it?

If you watch this documentary a second or third time, you pick up what almost looks like confirmation bias and early presumptions they refuse to modify. You can fool yourself very easy, which is why you need to check your assumptions and attempt to refute the evidence you've developed. From True the Vote's perspective, if it indeed was a whistleblower's tip that was the impetus for the creation of a hypothesis and possible test, and they were subsequently able to confirm their theory with rigor, then I suppose they would certainly feel confident to pursue further investigation. However, they do not strongly demonstrate this to the viewer. No shadowed, distorted-voice whistleblower. A person they do interview under shadow is completely unconnected to their original timeline of work. And again, no red hat team and no alternatives explored. They only begin constraining one of their variables, for instance, when they have expanded & relaxed one of the others, unsurprisingly still coming out with satisfying their presumption. Again, if they're telling the truth, that's fine for them and their own investigative motivations, but not enough for convincing an audience or an election official to carry on the investigation, as you must prove to the rest of us you're telling the truth.

Amusingly, whoever was doing the graphics in this 24-style (read that: Kiefer Sutherland series style) glossy production also curiously used a widely available clip art map of Moscow for some of it... as if to tip people off that these worker bees weren't allowed to use the real analysts' graphics, were too lazy to find a way to utilize the real graphics being used, or perhaps real graphics plots didn't actually exist and all the rest are just clip art or whole cloth fabrications? Maybe it was just some prank or sort of secret protest by them against their employers? I have no idea, but if the film can't get the drop box plots correct on some of their primary graphics, they failed to demonstrate their supposed repeat offenders in the actual footage, and their ancillary graphics are (let's momentarily give them the benefit of the doubt) pranks by poorly paid post-production workers, it's hard to take this documentary as seriously. At the very least, they have a few uncommitted workers compounded by the rest of the team being sloppy with not only the rigor of the analysis, but with the accuracy of their various on-camera statements.

I will again point out that people with a sole complaint about the use of the reenactment footage are still coming off as ridiculous. Yes, it could have been labeled, but most of us get that's a dramatization. Not labeling those scenes as such, however, appears to be the least of this film's issues. It's not just too short and shallow, it's embarrassing. Heck, I'm embarrassed to even still find a modicum of its claims slightly compelling still, because the film makers seem to have done very little to assuage doubts, either in their released film or later in the last few months in response to critics. I spent the last few months avoiding watching it or learning anything about it, I finally force myself to watch it, and now I feel sort of duped on the same day. They've had plenty of time to bolster it. If they have some hard evidence, they better start just releasing it entirely onto the internet for others to evaluate. That is how you get to the truth, through transparency, scrutinizing, and welcoming doubt, not weaving elaborate narratives and asking for reactions from interviewees.

Oh my god. What did I just see?

They had a bunch of scholars working on this thing. Legit. I am in a bit of shock. I'll keep from rating this a 10 just out of not wanting to seem hyperbolic.

So, I had no idea about this going in. I'd actually avoided seeing it because lately I haven't felt like watching anything particularly violent. I also had no interest watching that Viking series, and figured this thing was just piggy backing on that trend. Nope. They had a completely different motivation for this film, and I'm not talking about trying to one-up that series on realism, or something like that. You're going to be so surprised the later stories that sprung from this original one they've thoroughly tried to recreate.

Let me give people who haven't seen it some word of advice: Go see it. Don't read or watch anything about it. Just don't miss it.

Honestly, my head is spinning, and now I've been looking up info about the film, and the spinning is intensifying. Wow.

In fact, the whole assimilation of people shtick was nearly as bad as the queen. The Q Who version was always the scariest.

I'm just not feeling Picard anymore. I'm bored, no matter how much action. It is curious that the Borg are too stupid to turn those lasers off that give away their angle.

Here's the most unsettling part, though: where the hell is Picard's older brother Robert in these flash backs? Between the writers having no idea about Time's Arrow 1 & 2 or his brother, I'm starting to think they aren't very familiar with TNG.

I found this film obviously contrived and painful to watch. By the last act, I had to remove myself when I realized I hoped all the characters would expire. I've never had that happen before. In the years since, I've had zero interest in seeing it again.

Their claims are lies. They made this stuff up. The gas coming out of the guy's faucet had nothing to do with fracking. The oil companies love this movie, by the way, because it demonizes the natural gas industry, and your car can probably already burn methanol that can be easily made out of natural gas (or anything else organic). Why might the oil companies and Gulf States let and even encourage CNN and MSNBC to blabber on about this stuff? Why is the EPA saying you're breaking the law and "tampering with an emissions control system" by turning on your car's ability to adapt to any fuel at-will? Conspiracies do happen, folks.

Cue in Picard once again saying, "You know..."

climate change hysteria, pro illegal immigration, anti police sentiment, changing actors for characters with little good reason like it's Matrix Resurrections

BTW, Picard already met her in the past, and the multiple futures usually do not cease to exist in the divergent timelines according to any prior Star Trek or even the Terminator stories, for that matter. Few are going to watch that and think it makes any sense. They don't even bring it up here. Besides, the actress they got looks like a professional body builder. There are literally impersonators they could have hired, though I just would have gone with the original and come up with an in-story explanation.

Also, how did the writers miss the opportunity to have Agnes threaten to use a zippered mouth cover or ball gag on the S&M-looking queen if she didn't shut up?

There were two good scenes in this episode, the initially-cringe-worthy bus scene that turns out nice when you realize it's the same guy with a very different reaction this time, and the transporter scene, though the actresses should have materialized crouched in seated positions and then fallen on their booties softly in the dirt.

"You know, back when I was in the academy, we would follow every toast with a song!"

Go watch the Pogo - Data & Picard on YouTube. That will brighten up your day after watching this.

You know those uniforms & that society from Yesterday's Enterprise and those tendencies of Shinzon's that Picard had repressed? This mean's Quentin doesn't need to spend his tenth and final film on a Star Trek outing to see this idea come to fruition, which basically any fan of his who also likes Star Trek would have killed for, though it doesn't shut down the option for him doing a Star Trek project later if he comes up with another idea down the line. I doubt he's bitter or anything, because it's being, pardon the pun, very well executed, and as a director I'm certain he'd like nothing more than to watch someone else pull off these sorts of ideas without needing to have done it himself. If you're involved with the project, you can't enjoy the art as a viewer really after-the-fact in the same way. So, enjoy the ride.

It's for the best that didn't actually happen, because Robert Pattinson wasn't yet ready to play this part, and because people would be saying The Batman was the definitive version and we probably sadly wouldn't have ever gotten the Nolan interpretations.

The look and visual composition of this film is not like anything Matt Reeves has done before, and if you're going to be influenced by two directors for a movie like this, the Proyas and Fincher combo is a wise one to be inspired by. I'm sure Reeves has other influences showing up here, but those were the two that were obvious to me.

The editing was exceptionally lucid for most of the film, though I did find some of the climactic action at the end to be somewhat numbing and boring compared to sequences early in the film. I'm not sure if that was me or the film. I had the same reaction to some, but not all, of the action at the end of the Nolan films, final acts which I thought never quite lived up to their first two acts. The final act of The Batman was, on the whole, arguably better than any the Nolan films achieved, in my opinion, but not so much because of the action.

The editing is complimented by some wonderfully interesting shot choices, which are further complicated by the creative use of narrow focal planes, vignette blurring where only the center is clear, occasionally entirely soft-focus shots, and contrasted with very sharp wide-angle views of the entire city. Might these choices be somewhat calling attention to themselves and thus distracting us from being lost in the film? Perhaps. Some of the music has a similar effect, and I would personally not have used that one song in the trailers like they did, which resulted in it losing some of its novelty within the narrative, but it's all still very interesting and you can't stop paying attention to these shots or the music even if they stand out. So this is all a double-edged sword.

In 4k on a brighter screen that's not too outrageously huge, and with state-of-the-art sound, this was one of best-looking and sounding digital presentations I've seen. It can't have the clarity or vibrance of the best of real film (with the best accompanying projections and auditoriums) yet in some shots, but these filmmakers are embracing what digital can offer and exploiting digital's strengths well. While the action and gunfight scenes were extremely dynamic, the dialogue and ambience were not overly compressed for exaggerated loudness like Nolan's recent movies. The different frequency bands across the mix further had some room to breathe within the space. Speech was highly intelligible, and the overall sound retained its subtlety and delicacy, too. These folks did the sound right here.

The complexity of the frame and the choices in surround sound made this film spread out in a way I think people are going to find difficult replicating at home. If you have any interest in The Batman, then find a good theater and don't lose a chance to see it during its run.

If I had to give one complaint, though, it's that I didn't feel the relationship between Alfred and Bruce was developed enough. It seemed forced and like the audience buying into it was just taken for granted. They could have treated this as the only batman movie that had ever been made instead of assuming we've seen all the others and understand these two better than is presented here. I'll probably see it again and decide further if that's still my take.

If the first half of this doesn't grab you, I'm not sure if you have a pulse. It's magnetic, vibrant, and full of nuance. Unfortunately, much of the nuance is made up. The film is going for exaggerated caricatures. After the first half it also starts to come off its tracks tonally. It starts to feel kind of like an Italian tabloid, and it's not just the protagonist becoming unhinged that elicits this reaction. For instance, it portrays Paolo Gucci in a ridiculous light. Jared Leto depicts him as a fat clown. The Gucci brand, by the way, had previously frequently dabbled in combining pastels and browns. I'm not sure where Forden, Jonston, and Bentivegna are getting their bizarre information. I'm sure you will watch this at least once, so I'm not dissuading anyone from this. You will probably be captivated for much of it. Just don't expect either a history lesson or catharsis.