Reviews

The film has a very slow start but it is worth it in the end. There is an element of "Falling Down". However, unlike that movie, Surge really doesn't have any back story, and therein lies its weakness. It is also somewhat contrived at times, in particular the sequence of events that pushed the main character over the edge.

There is one small mystery that is not explained, to which the viewer is not privileged to hear, occurring at a wedding reception - although I guess it is just a verbal repetition of what is written on the notes the main character passes to bank tellers.

Ben Wishaw's performance is extremely good, but, set against a script with the weakness mentioned above, it doesn't rate more than a 6 from me.

This is a film which has several interesting concepts, but it is just a confused mess when they're all strung together. Much of what is in the film is not explained. Who are the shrouded figures? Why did the first nurse become "infected" (if that's the right word), why would a morgue be at the bottom of a staircase - are the dead expected to walk down? All of it drenched in gore so deep you'll never find a meaning swilling around in it. So many unanswered questions and certainly no pay-off. Five stars for the interesting concepts amongst the disappointment. A-Void.

It's low budget but does rather well with what it has. I've seen Hollywood blockbusters costing 100 times this movie that were 100 times worse.

There are plot holes and the characters are somewhat stereotypical, but on the whole I found it gripping enough to keep watching.

Worth a watch and gets a solid six.

In line with the premise of the film - that humans are born with not enough alcohol in their bloodstream - I am actually writing this review while under the influence of alcohol. Lucky me :-)

Mads Mikkelsen and his co-stars give a realistic and heartfelt performance as friends who decide to experiment with alcohol as a way of enhancing their teaching methods at the school they all work at.

The pacing is good and the acting top notch. If anything, I felt the film ran a little long. There is no obvious redemption at the end; it is left ambiguous. Is this good or bad? Each person needs to view the film for themselves and decide.

The character idiocy in this film just beggars belief. Nobody would ever use a mobile phone until they were in a safe location. Nobody would ever go for a boat with reptiles everywhere in the water when they had a perfectly good roof to climb up on to. Nobody would be stupid enough to signal and call to other people, endangering their lives (and thus causing the deaths of four people).

I could go on.

Three stars: two for the good effects and one for the dog (the only sensible being in the movie).

Above average monster film. The lead actress and the madman are excellent, the child actor less so.

All up it provides more than one would expect.

A solid 7 stars.

A man finds a boat adrift in fog with no-one on board.

Suspenseful throughout, yet nothing much happens.

Nothing is explained.

But therein lies its charm.

A solid 8 stars.

The original movie tried to stay with Paul Gallico's novel, but made some awful changes. This version takes the basic premise and makes its own story, which results in a far better movie.

Lots of suspense, even if there are one or two moments that require suspending disbelief - in particular, the people hugging and spending time talking when they would in real life get on with escaping.

I was expecting a bad movie, but this was a pleasant surprise. Eight stars for not slavishly trying to be the 1972 movie and for the fine special effects.

If you want nice CGI then look here.

If you want a meaningful plot, don't bother.

The movie is about monsters attacking the world in the future and time travellers from the future come back to recruit people from the present to fight in this war.

Unfortunately, there is little sense in it. The screenwriter's concept of "time travel" changes every time there is a need to plug a big hole in the script. What is this? Many Worlds? Deterministic? Random? Certainly the writers don't have any concept that they can consistently hold on to.

So many of the scenes have no logical sense. People act in ways that defy all reason. The monsters too seem to change in their abilities depending on who they are attacking (Grunts - lethal aliens. Chris Pratt - aliens that are easily killed). On top of that, Chris Pratt can't act.

Overall a complete waste of time. So much could have been done with the concept but the opportunity was squandered. I don't ask a lot from action movies, but this is all round a very poor movie.

Three stars for the CGI.

A great film right up to the last few minutes when it is finally revealed what a waste of time it's all been.

There was plenty of potential here and it was squandered in pointlessness.

Watch if you must. The first 3/4 of the film deserves the 8.3 star rating, but the rest of it drops it to a 5.

Someone on here recently wrote:

"The opening lines reference the film having a theme tune. From this line alone it's easy to work out that it should be approached as a tongue in cheek exploration of the zombie theme."

You can approach this however you like, but it is damn awful. The "jokes" (if you can call them that) are complete misses. In fact, I don't think there is a funny line in the film. Even if you take it as a comment on cliched zombie films, it's still damn awful.

It drags about as slowly as the zombies. There are numerous pointless side plots (c.f.: the kids from out of town) that go nowhere. It has nothing to say and is just a long winded vanity project that, for some reason, managed to get funding and, surprisingly, rope in a bunch of big name people.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space is great because it is awful. This film is just awful.

Don't waste you time with this garbage.

But, it is well made. The story won't stand up to scrutiny and there are plot holes you could drive a lorry-load of Nazis through, but it is low budget and has a lot of bang-for-buck. The payoff is far batter than some of the Hollywood dross with mega budgets.

Overall an 8. I didn't feel I wasted my time watching it - in fact it was rather gripping.

This has shades of the BBC's "Horizon" programs - science, but hidden behind stupid graphics and dumbed down visuals that have almost nothing to do with the topic. At least this program didn't do the Horizon trick of using stupid camera angles and getting the interviewees to look through objects, mirrors or lenses or do stupid things.

Look, science is not boring and the audience is not dumb.

I'll give one example of the Horizon mentality that infected this program. When showing Sagittarius A* and the stars orbiting it, rather than showing a nice, accurate diagram like you can find on Wikipedia, we instead get some artist's crazy rendition that bares little resemblance to the real situation. Please! No more of this kind of garbage.

I also found there were long periods of padding that were totally unnecessary. Do we need to see artist's drawings of stick figures marching along the screen? Do we need lengthy sections of dialogue between scientists that is taken totally out of context and is pretty meaningless to any non-scientist?

Then there is the lack of a narrator. If you are going to dispense with one then at least get your interviewees to explain. On the one hand the producers wanted to dumb down things with stupid graphics and yet, on the other, they leave it to the audience to work things out for themselves. For example, the teams of people producing independent results from the same data. It almost presents the story as if the scientists are just making up stuff and the resulting image of the black hole was their collective fantasy effort.

Overall it was interesting, but the story could have been told in half the time and made much more interesting.

Six stars for the science content - you'd have got more if you'd corrected the above problems I've pointed out.

If a little predictable. It's still well worth a watch.

A typical Hollywood action movie. Nothing to do with the original Italian Job apart from minis and a heist. It's not even set in Italy.

5 stars for its entertainment value. I'd have rated it higher if it hadn't tried to pass itself off as the 1969 original.

If the movie had been half as long it would have been worth switching your brain off for. But at the extended run-time it is a criminal waste of any sane person's time.

Others have already pointed out how cliched and plot-hole-ridden it is, with characters you don't care about and a mission that in the end is pointless.

2 stars for the visuals, but really, don't waste your time.

I'm sorry, but this film is a strong 8 stars. People on IMDb seem to want to quibble over technical shortcomings, but really, given the dross that comes out of Hollywood and the blatant disregard for science, this was a technically perfect film in comparison.

It builds up slowly and doesn't have the ending you'd expect.

My only technical quibble is that the Earth would not rotate out of view given the direction of force in the spacecraft. But hey, it's done for effect.

As I said, 8 stars, and IMDb users have made a bad call on the ratings of this gem.

A reasonable storyline, good acting and good visual effects. All and all worth a watch. It's not particularly scary and some of it is predictable, but certainly better than a lot of recent attempts.

A strong 8.

Honestly, there's not much to say about this movie. Some strange things happen - mostly on a boat. There's a sound (hence the title). And really, that's about it. Don't expect any real explanation - I guess it's up to each individual to determine what happened in the end.

On the whole it's not bad. The acting is ok, the dialogue sound, and the characters don't do anything horrendously stupid. However, the script is minimal and the movie is mostly driven by its special effects, which are for the most part top-notch. I guess that is why it is a rather marmite movie - some will love it, and others hate it.

The concept was great from the start right up until the truck scene. Then the scriptwriters realised the corner they'd painted themselves into and took the easy route out. As such, it made the entire concept ludicrous.

There was no point to any of it - especially the numbers. A "warning"? For whom exactly? Seeing as nobody could change anything then it was pointless. Who drove the children to the location? It wasn't the parents - so effectively they had zero part to play in the events.

For once Nick Cage isn't just trying to pay off his debts. The movie is quite good, although there are many plot holes - the worst being that they shut down the mobile phone network, and even have a terrorist unable to use his phone, but explosives can be detonated by using a phone!

Ignoring those gaps, the big problem is the last 2% of the film. It's just an unsatisfying and disappointing ending and effectively deletes a lot of the rest of the plot.

Seven out of ten for being a reasonable film, but let down by the ending.

Unfortunately, this movie just doesn't seem to know what it is. A dark comedy? A drama? Some of it is very forced and stilted. A very underwhelming film that really goes nowhere. It could have been a good story if the writers had decided on the genre and tightened it up.

It's a 4 from me. Not bad enough to turn off, but something I really could have given a miss.

Snakes on a Plane was hyped many years ago. I didn't see it then and only watched it now because it was on Netflix. It's ok, but can't seem to decide if it is a horror or comedy film. It filled in some time and there were occasions where it was suspenseful, but I wouldn't watch it again. But then, I don't like SLJ very much, so that's an added disincentive to watch it a second time.

The problem with this film - a take on social media and likes - is that it tries to pack too many issues into its screen time. Its other problem is is plit-screen or multi-screens many times and, on top of this, provides running social media commentary as well. It's just all too much to take in.

What this film sets out to try and do has been done a lot better; for example the Black Mirror episode "Nodedive".

Five stars for trying and for having one or two laughs.