Shay

VIP

3

The first time I watched The Martian was in theaters and I remember absolutely loving it. Coming at it for a rewatch was a little bit depressing, particularly after reading the book. I should have known better.

The movie itself is not bad, not at all. Ridley Scott did a great job with this movie and adapting it to the screen. There were a lot of great elements to the original story that got cut, but it was for a reason. Sometimes it's not easy to adapt the little details to the big screen. It's just not possible without making a 12 hour film.

The movie captured the most hilarious of the funny moments and the worst punchlines of the dad jokes, all while doing justice to the story itself. Matt Damon really brought Mark Watney alive. He did such a great job in this role. Some of the Earth supporting cast were great as well, like Chiwetel Ejiofor as Venkat (Vincent) Kapoor and Donald Glover as Rich Purnell.

I'm keeping my rating of this show from when I first watched it, because my impression of the film has been muddied since reading the original story. All in all this is a pretty good show with some great music, a great cast, and a lot of impressionable moments. It's cheeky and action-packed, while still retaining the gravity of the situation for the serious, emotional moments.

Loved it.

oppenheimer's life and involvement with the manhattan project are too interesting for this movie to be so boring.

cillian murphy and robert downey jr. have both shown amazing performances in this movie, no surprise there. the videography is great and edited to mute any bright colors. it helps carry the undercurrent of despondency through the film in a visual way and that added a lot of impact to the dialogue and acting in general.

i admire nolan's attempts to tackle a movie written in first person. his choice to show the subjective in color and objective in greyscale was genius and i think this is probably one of his better movies.

however, the complete lack of continuity is very frustrating. i like how one of the reviewers put it: "it makes the common biopic mistake of treating its subject matter like a Wikipedia entry." i couldn't have said it better. this movie feels messy and all over the place. it's incredibly slow-paced while also being choppy and inconsistent. it's hard to pin down oppenheimer's emotions and convictions when the film feels like a mashed up series of webisodes.

my largest complaint about this movie, though, is that it's boring as heck. there's no action, there's no drama, and there's very little emotion. cillian murphy did a standup job of trying to inject as much emotion as he could, but this is really christopher nolan's failure as a screenwriter. if he wanted to write a documentary, he should have just written a documentary.

a large part of this movie deals with oppenheimer's conflicting feelings around the project and use of the bomb, but it's shown in a very subtle way. there are so many moments where he's questioned about his opinions and concerns on the bomb. he's displayed as weak, a traitor, and someone attempting to prevent the progression of building a hydrogen bomb for selfish reasons. through all of this, not once did slotin come up. he's not even in the movie and i can't figure out why.

slotin was a physicist who worked with oppenheimer on the manhattan project. he was the person who built the trinity device for the test explosion (the big tower with the bomb on top of it.) his contributions to the project were crucial to its success, so he was by no means a minor or unimportant person. he died just months before the testing of the bomb from radiation sickness after an experiment went wrong and he was exposed to lethal doses of radiation. it took nearly a month for him to die in a hospital at los alamos.

maybe this is a bit ranty of me, but i don't understand why nolan would choose not to include the gruesome death of a colleague in this movie. i'm sure this strongly influenced oppenheimer's opinions on the project, and it certainly impacted the entire town. seeing the effects of radiation poisoning and how awful of a death it can be is an important factor when deciding if you wanna inflict that suffering on hundreds of thousands of people.

the film is from oppenheimer's pov, and he wasn't present at the accident, but a funeral was held in los alamos and oppenheimer gave speeches about slotin after the fact. there were many times oppenheimer's hesitation about the bomb was interpreted as disloyalty. he was accused of being a soviet spy and of being sympathetic to the japanese during the war. slotin's death was a pivotal moment in the quest to build the bomb and it's dumbfounding to me that this was excluded from the movie despite the emphasis on how oppenheimer's opinions evolved while working on the project.

there were so many other ways to display how and why his opinions changed, but all that's shown is 2-3 seconds of cillian's face while viewing photos from the aftermath. nolan was attempting to be subjective with this film but instead he made oppenheimer seem stale and emotionless.

all that being said, i did still enjoy the film. it was worth going to see, it was worth buying, and i'll probably watch it again. it was good, but it wasn't as great as i had hoped it would be.

i just had high expectations and nolan let me down.

Blade and Blade II are some of the best vampire movies ever made. Blade: Trinity isn't quite as good, and I think that can be chocked up to pulling Blade to the background of his own movie, but I don't think it's as awful as some make it out to be.

Wesley Snipes, of course, makes this movie what it is. IMO, it's worth watching for that alone. The loss of Whistler is perhaps the first mistake this movie makes. They try to make up for it by bringing in Whistler's surprise daughter, but it just doesn't work.

Abby (Jessica Biel) tries too hard to fill the role. She's basically a watered down Blade. There are many scenes throughout this movie where she's mirroring Blade, almost like they're setting it up for her to take over the franchise, but her character just doesn't have the same presence Wesley Snipes brings to Blade. Purposeful or not, that makes the movie feel disappointing. I don't think that would've been the case if she'd been brought in as her own character.

Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds) kicks ass. I've always loved his particular brand of deadpan humor. At this point he's been typecast to hell, but he brings something different to the movie and that at least makes it entertaining.

And I loved seeing all the flared jeans and old apple tech. It's hard to believe this movie is almost 20 years old.

At first I wasn't sure how I felt about this documentary. It was informative and intriguing, and it had me asking questions I'd never thought about before. And I love that.

At the same time, it was very limited in scope and had a general negativity toward stimulants as a treatment for ADHD, which I think can contribute to adding to the stigma that's already there. It's important to remember that there is a lot more to this issue and discussion than what can be fit into a 1.5 hr film and that stimulant medication helps a lot of people with ADHD.

This documentary tries very hard not to mention benefits and dismisses any benefit using information from a single study that found students had no measurable improvement in academic performance while using stimulants, despite many other studies showing data that proves the opposite. This documentary is biased, which is very obvious from the beginning, but I don't think that means it doesn't have value.

I had a sour taste in my mouth right after watching it and I'm glad I waited to write this comment because my own bias was impacting how willing I was to accept new and conflicting information. It's been a week since I've seen this film and I keep thinking about it.

When I was first diagnosed with ADHD I didn't want stimulant medication. I struggled on Concerta and Ritalin and Adderall. They all made me feel awful and the negative side effects were too much for the benefits to be worth it. But I was finally put on a low dose of Vyvanse and it's made a big difference in my ability to function within my family, be responsible for and complete my work on time, and finish tasks that are crucial for me to be more independent.

And as much as this medication has helped me, I also wholeheartedly agree that it has created a lot of problems for a lot of people. Between addiction, dealing drugs, side effects, social pressure, and irresponsible prescribing, stimulants have potential to cause a lot of harm. I can't ignore that.

Learning more about the history of stimulant use in the United States (and elsewhere) was eye-opening. Positive and negative experiences can exist at the same time. This can be a life-changing class of medication in the best and worst ways at the same time.

As regulation gets more strict I do worry about losing access to a medication that has made such a big impact in my life. Despite being disabled, stimulants have helped me get by and contribute in a society that I might not have without it.

But the one thing that keeps haunting my thoughts is the question of why it's necessary in the first place. Why we push our workforce so hard they feel there is no option but to take stimulants. Why we demand that people with ADHD perform the same way as those without ADHD. Why it's impossible to truly compete without being on a drug. Why universities are so difficult and tough on students that stimulants are the only way for some people to make it.

Beyond application for ADHD, this medication is being abused as an escape and a performance enhancer to help people meet unrealistic expectations. This documentary asks the question "why do we need these unrealistic expectations to begin with?" and for that reason I highly value the time I spent watching and learning from this film.

This was okay - a typical action flick, but there were some poor choices made by everyone involved with this movie.

Namely, the ending. Now wtf was that?

Anyone interested in watching a movie about finding treasure wants them to find treasure and make it big time at the end - whoever decided it was a good idea to go with this nonsensical ending should be fired.

If they just waited until Jo left the island before going to the actual hiding place she never would have seen them and they never would have given the actual location away. They could have gotten away with all of their treasure instead of CRASHING THE BOATS AND SINKING IT INTO THE OCEAN. It made no sense at all - especially since both characters wanted to find the treasure and Sully had been looking for it for a long time.

I just can't wrap my head around the decision to take that route. This could have been a great show.

This was the first film I saw in theaters since like.. 2019 so the excitement of the big screen still made the movie enjoyable, but if I watched this at home I probably would have turned it off.

Informative in some ways, but pure propaganda in others. With the rise of boutique pet food brands and the raw feeding craze a lot of pet owners have been fooled into believing that kibble cannot be the best option for their pets. I've seen people full on harass pet owners who dare to feed Pro Plan, both online and in person at stores. Some of these untested pet food brands push themselves as a superior option because 'you can understand the label' but conflate nutritional literacy with the idea that it's healthier and better. Not understanding the nutritional name for something on a label or why it's called that doesn't make it a bad ingredient. Whole ingredients do not equate to higher quality or better nutritional value if it isn't a nutritionally complete diet.

In the same way food companies will sneakily use certain terms to manipulate people into believing an item is good (such as legal requirements for using 'natural' or 'organic,') companies can do the exact same thing to pet foods. Before judging a food as 'good' or 'bad,' make sure you understand the label and what tricks a company may be pulling to skew your opinion.

The informative part of this documentary comes in some of the information about the history of kibble and the pet food industry. But a lot of this information is skewed toward the negative - it's biased. Which I expected. They're making an argument for raw feeding and boutique (often grain-free) kibble so I expected them to pick information that would support their argument. I just didn't think it would be so obvious.

The WAVSA Global Nutrition Committee created guidelines for nutritionally complete foods and has strict requirements for a food to meet those guidelines. WAVSA foods are good foods. And that doesn't mean foods that don't meet WAVSA guidelines are bad, but it does mean you're taking a risk in not feeding your dog a nutritionally complete diet and you need to put in some extra work to make sure you're doing what is best for your pet.

I'm not anti-raw or anti-boutique food brands and I do think it's possible to feed those foods safely and in a way that is beneficial to the pet. Full disclosure, I feed one of these 'boutique' brands to my own dogs. But I don't agree with skewing facts or cherry-picking information to support a point of view without also discussing the negatives of that point of view.

Feeding raw or boutique foods can be dangerous. You risk malnutrition, higher chances of bacterial infections, and a host of other conditions (including a potential increased risk of DCM*) by feeding untested brands of pet food. If you are unsure, consult a veterinary nutritionist. They will help you make sure that what you're feeding is nutritionally complete, whether you decide to feed grain containing kibble, grain free, or raw.

And lastly, to the people this applies to, feed the dog in front of you. Piling on people or shaming them for not adhering to your way of doing things is despicable. You are not a better pet owner just because you have a superiority complex.

*To further elaborate, many pet foods have been associated with a higher risk of DCM (enlarged heart and disease of heart muscle, which can cause death) and that is for both grain-free and grain containing pet foods. The FDA published a FAQ in 2021 stating that this risk is associated with foods that have pulses (peas, lentils, etc.) higher on the ingredient list. Although many foods have reformulated since then, it was previously more common to see pulses high on ingredient lists for grain-free foods because they used it as a filler instead of using grain. This came to the attention of the FDA because of an increased number of reports, likely due to the increased popularity of boutique pet foods.