Barbenheimer: Part 1 of 2
This is the kind of film I really don’t want to criticize, because we don’t get nearly enough other stuff like it. However, mr. Nolan has been in need of an intervention for a while now, and unfortunately all of the issues that have been plaguing his films since The Dark Knight Rises show up to some degree here. Visually it might just be his best film, and there’s some tremendous acting in here, particularly by Murphy and RDJ. However, it makes the common biopic mistake of treating its subject matter like a Wikipedia entry, thereby not focussing enough on character and perspective. As a whole, the film feels more like a long extended montage, I don’t think there are many scenes that go on for longer than 60 seconds. There’s a strong ‘and then this happened, and then this happened’ feel to it, which definitely keeps up the pace, but it refuses to stop and let an emotion or idea simmer for a while. There are moments where you get a look into Oppenheimer’s mind, but because the film wants to cover too much ground, it’s (like everything else) reduced to quick snippets. It’s the kind of approach that’d work for a 6 hour long miniseries where you can spend more time with the characters, not for a 3 hour film. I can already tell that I won’t retain much from this, in fact a lot of it is starting to blur together in my mind. There are also issues with some of the dialogue and exposition, such as moments where characters who are experts in their field talk in a way that feels dumbed down for the audience, or just straight up inauthentic. Einstein is given a couple of cheesy lines, college professors and students interact in a way that would never happen, Oppenheimer gives a lecture in what’s (according to the movie) supposed to be Dutch when it’s really German; you have to be way more careful with that when you’re making a serious drama. Finally, there are once again major issues with the sound mixing. I actually really loved the score, but occasionally it’s blaring at such a volume where it drowns out important dialogue in the mix. I’m lucky enough to have subtitles, but Nolan desperately needs to get his ears checked, or maybe he should’ve asked some advice from Benny Safdie since he’s pretty great with experimental sound mixing. My overall feelings are almost identical to the ones I had regarding Tenet; Nolan needs to rethink his approach to writing, editing and mixing. This film as a whole doesn’t work, but there are still more than a few admirable qualities to it.
Edit: I rewatched this at home to see whether my feeling would change. I still stand by what I wrote in July, though the sound mix seems to have been improved for the home media release. It sounds more balanced and I didn’t miss one line of dialogue this time around. I’m slightly raising my score because of that, but besides that I still think it’s unfocused, overedited, awkwardly staged and scripted etc.
5.5/10
Mockingjay Part 2's biggest mistake is being completely faithful to the book, considering that it is the worst one of the trilogy. They had the chance to make the story better but chose to stick to what they had. Being the final chapter of the story, it has emotional bits, but miserably (and unfortunately) fails to sell them, rushing the scenes which we were supposed to remember the most. However, its political and action turmoils are its best parts and were beautifully developed. After all, piecing the four movies together, it remains a good story.
Why are you rating movies that haven't even been made yet?
The problem with coming to a popular film like this later on is that hype gets in the way. With no awareness of the brand or comic, yet having been told numerous times how great this is, it is difficult to approach this in the right manner to review. There is no doubt that it is a lot of fun and a large part of this is down to Pratt who nails the lead, Quinn. Its bright and colourful (a welcome change to the lived in feel of many other sci-fantasy films) and confident in it's execution. Yet equally it is part of a Marvel formula that started to wear thin after the first Avengers movie - for all the talk of how different this film was to the usual Marvel film, it's only real surprise is just how tied to the Marvel template the film is - everyone trying to get hold of a MacGuffin of unspeakable power, culminating in a large scale battle and fight scenes that unfortunately lead to very little of consequence, with all our heroes surviving to fight another day and a tease as to where this is all leading to. Admittedly, the fun here is in the different characters they have created. But If Marvel are serious about creating a cinematic universe where all these stories are interconnected then at some point they are going to have to take a risk in the storytelling - this isn't it!
This movie was terrible, I enjoyed the game but in the game she survives alone and has to adapt. In the movie tho she's surrounded by a group most of the time, she never grows and learns on her own but when the time comes for her to do anything, she naturally can with no trying. I hated the addition of being a bike courier and that she trained mma but only used chokes. Felt like an addition suggested from data pulled from social media or focus group.
[Edit] THIS MOVIE IS 3 HOURS LONG???? THREE HOURS???? Dear god one hour felt like an ETERNITY in the theater.
Unfortunately walked out because I got overstimulated cause it was a lot louder than expected, and also really fucking boring.
Visually stunning movie. Absolutely gorgeous. The effects done in camera, the cinematography, the acting, everything is just so much fun to look at. Christopher Nolan knows how to make a damn good looking movie. Hats off to the team that made this thing.
But writing wise... damn, it underperformed.
Other commenters mentioned that this feels like a Wikipedia entry or a montage of 60 second clips, and damn they are right. The writing just did. not. hit. It was hard to follow any of Oppenheimer's personal life and to actually feel anything for him or any of the people in his life. I don't expect a movie to hold my hand. But I do expect pace to be managed well and to have a bit of breathing room to be able to process stuff. This did not give you the time to do it lmao.
Also the characters just... didn't interact in an engaging way. Less than 20 minutes into the movie I was already checking my watch to see how much more of this I had to sit through! I didn't know half of the characters' names, or half of their relationships to each other, or why they were even relevant. Like the best example of this is Oppy and Einstein's interactions. They have beef, but it's hard to understand why? There's like... two interactions before the one hour mark that total less than a minute of on-screen time together. Einstein gets a few words in there and it's just very very unclear why they hate each other, or how they met, or what any of their background is. It's confusing!
Also let's talk about Oppenheimer's motivations. As a literal communist, I should empathize with Oppy and understand where he's coming from. But I don't! Because he's a fucking idiot! When he's talking with other leftists, he mentions "Isn't ownership theft?" and the person in the communist party is like "It's property, actually" and he's like "Well sorry I read all three volumes of Capital in original German" and he's like... just a dick??? But also no fucking leftist who is going around having read all three volumes of Capital talks about that shit! That's just dumb! And the entirety of his leftist politics are portrayed in a way that make him look like an egotistical maniac with dumb politics! One minute he's starting a union and pro-labor, another minute he's dropping all of that in order to be a dog of the US government! There's obviously an enormous jump happening there. Like something very, very clearly and very, very majorly changed for Oppenheimer there, and the film spends a grand total of 30 seconds in a single scene having him transition from brilliant labor activist to US government dog.
Also there are time jumps! Lots of them! The choice to jump back and forth between the McCarthyist interrogations of Oppenheimer and the past do. not. make. sense. They are hard to follow, extraordinarily boring, and absolutely ruin any sort of pacing the movie might have! There are several points in this movie where Oppenheimer starts to be fleshed out a bit more as a character or starts to be given more space for us to see what he's really like. And then it's randomly cut off and flashed forward to these utterly irrelevant black-and-white interviews. Oppenheimer has a leftist past! Of course he does! The movie literally shows us that! And instead of just telling things in a regular narrative way, the movie splits things up confusingly for absolutely no good fucking reason, and ends up showing us and telling us the same information twice! That is shit writing! If you cut all of these scenes you would be missing nothing from the movie, and you'd have more time to actually tell us about the characters, instead of them feeling like one-dimensional caricatures.
I don't know any of Oppenheimer's history, and I left this not understanding any more of it! I left after an hour because it felt like two and a half because it was just this firehose of information. And Nolan didn't present it in a way that actually made a story! He just shat this all out on the screen (and it's a beautiful shit, don't get me wrong!!), and expected the audience to love it! His characters are one-dimensional, they aren't given the space, the motivations, or the background really for us to understand where they're coming from or why they do what they do. And that ends up with this being a visually stunning but really fucking boring movie that I just walked out of because I couldn't take it anymore lol.
I cannot stand seeing visually gorgeous movies produced by people who clearly have god-level talent that seem to have a complete and utter inability to get the basics of movie-making, story, correct! I have ADHD. For a lot of people, sitting through a boring movie is just boring. For me, it is exhausting. It is excruciating. I can't fidget in a movie theater, I can't move, I can't pause the movie and come back later when I'm feeling more focused. And so if a movie is boring, I just leave! And it is so fucking annoying to miss out on a chance to see a movie that is, outside of its story, fucking beautiful because its director and writer couldn't do the extremely basic job of making a movie that holds people's interest and communicates things in even a slightly clear way. God what a waste.
...and who knew that every fear in this movie would become a reality after a tragic terrorist attack in 2001.
[7.3/10] One of the things I like about kids movies these days is that they tend to be pretty clear about what the characters want and how that drives the story. I’m sure there’s some selection bias there, with plenty of kid-focused dreck that doesn't make it onto my radar. But one of the benefits of aiming at the kid audience is that films almost have to be clearer about motivation and its connection to story or you risk losing attention and understanding. Sometimes, that leads to overly telegraphed plot points or predictable story arcs, but in others, it adds a sense of clarity and character to children’s entertainment that wide swaths of adult-focused films lack.
Ralph Breaks the Internet is the (nigh-literal) poster child for that idea. In a series of enjoyable opening clips, the film establishes that candy-coated racer Vanellope is tired of the predictability of life in the arcade, and is thirsting for the new, different, and unknown. Ralph, on the other hand, things the steady life of work, root beer, and especially hanging out with his best friend is paradise, is everything he could ever want. So when Vanellope yearns for something more, he’s helpful and supportive, but doesn't really get it and wonders why his friendship isn’t enough to sate her.
Naturally, things go haywire from there. Some track-based improvisation leads to a broken gaming wheel in the real world, sending Ralph and Vanellope into the internet in an effort to find a replacement. They meet new characters and face new challenges and explore the ever-expanding, bustling realm of the world wide web. But every choice the movie, and more importantly the characters, make is driven by their friendship, and those two conflicting impulses and concerns that Ralph Breaks the Internet sets up in its first ten minutes.
What’s interesting is that despite being set there, and theoretically expanding the reach of this franchise, the film isn’t really about the internet. Sure, there’s plenty of glancing observations about silly things going viral or the toxicity of comment sections. But for the most part, the web is just an energetic backdrop for a story about two friends who care deeply about one another but need different things in order to feel fulfilled. The tale Ralph Breaks the Internet tells fits that within its cyberspace setting, but the Internet is merely the object of Vanellope’s impulse to experience a wider, woolier world, and Ralph’s reluctance in the shadow of its dizzying diversity, rather than the true subject of the film.
That’s not to say that Ralph Breaks the Internet fails to make the most of that setting. While fans of Tron or even the inevitably revived ReBoot are familiar with the inner workings of cyberspace being depicted as some sort of bustling city, this movie kicks that idea up a notch. The web as a sprawling metropolis, with website skyscrapers and user milling around as little avatars, is a fun, high energy backdrop for all the misadventures of our heroes. Spammers and pop-ups are treated like carnival barkers, sites themselves are fun houses or factories, and viruses and the “dark web” are the seedy underbelly of the bustling burg. The tropes are familiar, but the execution is a visual feast, creatively done.
Thankfully, the gratuitous corporate synergy comes in small, concentrated doses rather than overwhelming the story and setup this film is trying to impart. There’s cameos from Marvel and Star Wars characters and conspicuous House of Mouse-style mash-ups of different worlds and properties. And yes, as the trailer promised, there is an all-star team-up of Disney princesses, who chat with Vanellope and lend a bit of aid when the moment calls for it, with a new ode from Alan Menken to boot. There’s meta gags galore and a few winks at the standard princess tropes, but it’s all punchy and funny enough that it’s always pleasing and rarely veers to the level of indulgence.
The problems with the movie instead lie in how it rushes and sitcom-ifies the conflict between Vanellope and Ralph. There’s legitimate tension to be had in how Vanellope is drawn to Shank, the leader of a hardscrabble racing squad in a Grand Theft Auto-meets-Twisted Metal game called “Slaughter Race” that’s captured Vanellope’s imagination, and how insecure Ralph feels over that. But Ralph Breaks the Internet dramatizes that with a cliché “one character speaks frankly without knowing that another character is listening in” setup, and underlines in with a device that literally reproduces Ralph’s “insecurity” in destructive fashion.
At the same time, the movie bends over backwards to prevent either party from seeing the bad guy. That’s not a bad tack in principle. Both Ralph and Vanellope are genuinely well-meaning but are capable of hurting each other due to their divergent wants from life. But the movie needs conflict and action, and so retreats from having Ralph doing anything genuinely bad or ill-intentioned, instead incessantly underscoring the fact that he doesn't mean any harm when his actions come close to doing real harm to his best friend. That takes the juice out of the confrontation between confidantes the film wants to draw out, and weakens the overall conflict.
The inevitable third act action sequence exists in an odd space between inventive and rote. The final challenge involves an Oogie-Boogie esque threat who’s creatively animated in every frame, but who’s too blunt as a personification of Ralph’s worries and whose defeat drifts into hand-holding as to the message of the film and a solid snootful of fan service to boot. The film thrives and delights when it features Ralph and Vanellope capering through cyberspace, but falter when it has to bring the burgeoning friction between them to a head.
Still, the film’s message is a laudable one, which settles on accepting that the people you care about can want other things in life to make them feel fulfilled, without diminishing the closeness of your friendship. At times, its efforts to convey that message verge on the contrived or the overblown. But at its core, Ralph Breaks the Internet commits to the idea of what its two main characters want, and amid the wonder and pitfalls of the world wide web, plays that idea out in a way that vindicates who they are and what drives them. The film boasts fun online observations and vaguely self-satisfied but self-effacing Disney jibes, while ultimately coming down on the side of a character-focused story.
It can’t top Ralph and Vanellope’s first outing, and stumbles a bit as those character clashes are forced to turn into the mandatory uptempo thrillride all tentpole movies have to have these days, but Ralph Breaks the Internet whose who they are and what they want, comedicaly and dramatically, which keeps the movie enjoyable and on track, even amid the online flurry the film steeps itself in.
[9.3/10] At first blush, Baby Driver writer-director Edgar Wright and fellow director Wes Anderson don’t seem like a natural pairing. Wright’s films, like Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead tend to be overtly comedic, include a good quotient of action, and bring an adventure-focused quality to the proceedings. Anderson’s, by contrast, tend to be quieter, more droll pictures, that are certainly funny and have their share of exciting moments, but which find their form in the more reserved, music box sensibilities of Anderson’s oeuvre.
And yet, Wright and Anderson’s films have something very much in common. They both create films where it seems like the world was built to fit their characters, rather than more typical films where the main personalities find themselves struggling in a world that’s indifferent to them or even more commonly, which doesn’t fit them at all. Whether it’s Anderson’s elegant dioramas or Wright’s “everything’s foreshadowing” rube goldberg machines, the environments of these films bend to our heroes, not the other way around, resulting in some wonderfully well-choreographed cinema.
Baby Driver is the apotheosis of this tack, brought to bear in the form of car chases, gunfights, and the best jukebox soundtrack this side of the galaxy (and any attendant guardians). Indeed, Marvel Studios’ Guardians is a nice reference point, as both films not only feature countless rockin’ tunes, but also center on roguish but decent young men, holding onto to the last holy artifacts of their mother, finding solace in music and falling in with a rough crowd before deciding to stand for something more. It’s kismet that star Ansel Elgort, who plays the lead (appropriately named “Baby’), is signed on to be the past and future Han Solo in the latest standalone Star Wars flick, a character who’s very much in the DNA of Guardians’ Peter “Star-Lord” Quill.
Independent of any comic book counterparts, however, Baby Driver doesn’t offer much in terms of an original premise. Baby is a badass driver and a decent kid, mixed up with some bad folks, tentative about the prospect of blood and his hands, wanting to start a new life with his lady love. There are a lot of tropes in the film: the quiet but effective young naif, the loose cannon gangster, the slimy mastermind, the ingenue who represents a beacon of hope, the inevitable moral dilemma.
But what the film lacks in originality in its setup, it more than makes up for in performance, texture, and execution. Baby Driver has a murderer’s row of performers who chew up and spit out Wright’s script and make what could otherwise be stock character come alive and compensate for any dearth of depth with the sheer vividness of their presence.
Kevin Spacey looks alive for the first time in ages, bringing a blasé menace as the organizer of each heist. Jamie Foxx is at his extroverted best, rolling through pointed monologues and bringing a lived-in flavor of crazy. Lily James has enough homespun, wanderlust charm to balance out her underwritten part. Elgort is necessarily more reserved, but equally endearing and a fine fulcrum for the movie. And Jon Hamm brings his Mad Men practiced-gentility in a fashion that makes him seem like that much monstrous when the scales fall.
But while the performances carry the film in its quieter moments, what sets Baby Driver apart is sequence after superlative sequence of breathtaking kinetic cinema. Not content to simply toss in explosive but empty action to keep the heart-pumping, Wright, cinematographer Bill Pope, and editor Paul Machliss create these elegantly constructed set pieces of gorgeous synchronous stunts, twists, and turns, the hum right along with the music, just like the protagonist.
That works whether Baby is blowing the doors off the film’s opening with a series of death-defying terms perfectly sequenced to his backing track. It works when the young man finds himself embroiled in a firefight where surprise shots and returned fire blast back and forth in time with the beat. It works in chases on foot as the rhythmic thump of the tune of the moment matches the energy of pursuers and pursued alike. Even when Baby goes to get coffee, the world moves with him; from the graffiti on the walls to the buskers on the street everything goes where he goes.
In the same way, the film doesn’t so much present action scenes as it does ballets of chrome and octane. Baby Driver oozes with style and tempo, knowing how to hold the audience’s attention through great escapes that and close scrapes that keep topping one another, and quieter scenes where the tension comes from sweet interactions juxtaposed with combustive elements, leading the viewer to wonder which will win the day.
It’s also a near perfectly-paced movie. Like a perfect mixtape, Wright knows when to kick things into gear and when to slow things down to let the audience catch its breath before putting his foot on the gas once more. While the film starts to feel a bit overextended at the very end, with the villain creeping into unkillable slasher territory, for the vast majority of its runtime it holds your attention from moment to moment and scene to scene expertly. In that, Wright matches the talents of his protagonist, directing and maneuvering this complex machine like it were a rough-and-tumble ballerina, full of slick thrills and inimitable grace.
He achieves this with a movie, a setting, and a lead character, that each move like clockwork in sync with one another. While Baby Driver is neither as quiet or twee as Wes Anderson’s work, it brings with it the film’s own sense of longing and melancholy beneath an intricately constructed world. Every scene is a dance, every moment a confluence of sound and imagery and movement, whether in the pulse-pounding races against cops or robbers, or gauzy imaginings of another life that might be. In Baby Driver, Wright has built his most elegant, intricate toy, and it’s a treat and a pleasure to see him play on the screen once again.
What happens when you give the keys to the Star Trek kingdom to the director of the Fast and the Furious movies? You get a franchise known for its thematic depth and attention to character reduced to a series of whiz-bang action sequences and only the shallow veneer of theme or character development on top of it. Make no mistake, Star Trek Beyond is a film that can barely get the surface-level details right, and stumbles in its abbreviated attempts to go beyond them. And the result is a generally dull action film that could have its serial numbers shaved off and thus be wholly unrecognizable as anything related to Star Trek.
The film is most striking in how it fails where its predecessors succeeded. It's true that there was little of the heady optimism at play in the 2009 Star Trek reboot, but what the movie lacked in thematic heft, it made up for in terms of giving the audience a journey focused on character. The greatest conflicts in the film are not between the Enterprise and the Romulans, but within and between the film's two biggest characters. Kirk starts out as a good-for-little scoundrel and through his experiences in the film, evolves into an officer, albeit one who is still charmingly rough around the edges. Spock starts out as a man unable to reconcile his human side and his Vulcan side, and through his experiences in the film's adventure, he find balance and peace. Most importantly, those two character arcs intersect in meaningful ways and make us invested in those in charge of the enterprise.
By contrast, Beyond suggests a similarly intriguing start for both Kirk and Spock, but peters out between the beginning of their journey and the intended destination. The idea of a somewhat jaded James T. Kirk, having lost some of his passion, wondering if his mission even matters given the enormity of space, and contemplating whether to hang up his spurs, is a superb one that made me think director Justin Lin and writer Simon Pegg (who also plays Scotty) and Doug Jung (who plays Sulu's husband) were following the 2009 film's lead in this regard. Similarly, the notion that Spock, rattled by his alternative timeline counterpart's death, also feels inclined to give up Starfleet to focus on carrying on the elder Spock's goal to rehabilitate the Vulcan people, creates numerous storytelling possibilities and a parallel sense of restlessness to the character that mirrors Kirk's. The state of play as Beyond begins seems poised to tell another compelling, character-focused story of growth and change.
Instead, by the end of the film, Kirk has decided to stay in active duty; Spock stays a part of his crew, and the reasons for their change of heart are fuzzy at best. Whereas the 2009 film spent ample time showing events that marked the changes in Kirk and Spock's mentalities and perspective, Beyond amounts to something along the lines of, "They wanted to leave. They went on an adventure. Now they don't" without nearly enough connective tissue to get at the why of the shift in their plans. It's an Underpants Gnomes approach to character development that falls flat. There are vague concepts of "unity" as an important principle floating the film, but Beyond does little to tie it into concrete incidents that motivate Kirk and Spock to be in a different place at the end of the film than they were at the beginning. Instead, they just go on an adventure and come back different, which makes their supposed evolution narrative unsatisfying and ultimately unearned.
It doesn't help that the whole "unity is good" concept underlying the film is dramatized in about as shallow and trite a manner as one could imagine. It's a fluffy theme to begin with, and Star Trek Beyond doesn't do much to make it any more weighty or meaningful in how its realized in the conflict of the film or the characters' actions, especially in the context of on-the-nose dialogue to that effect. Say what you will about Star Trek Into Darkness, and there's plenty to say, but at least the film had the moxie to explore, as its hallowed predecessors did, some of the major social and political issues of the day. There's room to criticize Into Darkness's approach, and other flaws derivative elements that hobbled the film out of the gate, but tackling concepts of militarization and the security state feels of a piece with the politically-charged spirit of The Original Series and its successors. Its reach exceeded its grasp, but there was a nobility in the attempt.
Beyond, on the other hand, is content to coast on a vague Barney-esque notion of teamwork as a guiding principle and theme that barely feels worthy of a generic space adventure, let alone a franchise like Star Trek. The new ally introduced in the film is a lone wolf, wayward traveler brought into the Starfleet fold, whereas it's villain is motivated by a rejection of unity and the benefits of collective action, in a skin-deep realization of that contrast meant to be the film's focal point. Idris Elba is completely wasted in the latter role, an outstanding actor reduced to snarls and platitudes that do not do him justice. In fact, few cast members are given material worthy of their talents. What little they're given to work with in terms of expressing this theme, undercooked though it may be, is lost in a sea of stock beats and action set pieces that feel almost wholly disconnected and inadequate to convey what the film is shooting for.
Those set pieces, which ought to be the saving grace of bringing in a director like Justin Lin, are also a surprising weakness for the film. While there's no shortage of action, almost all of it is shot and directed in a nigh-incoherent fashion that makes it difficult to follow what's happening from scene to muddled scene. Lin and cinematographer Stephen F. Windon pay little mind to ideas of geography or scope, rendering what ought to be a strength of Beyond, instead a collection of occasionally-cool moments with little to put them in context with one another. The film can boast an enjoyable anti-gravity sequence, and its Beastie Boys-fueled excitement is enjoyable if silly, but for the most part, the visual fireworks of Beyond fizzle out into a hodgepodge of undifferentiated combat and explosions.
The film does have its merits. The dynamic between Spock and Bones is the best realized element of the film and lives up to the humor and endearing qualities that Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley imbued into that relationship. And for however much the film's action falters, its design work is impeccable, from the unique look of newcomer Jaylah to the geometric wizardry of the Yorktown Space Station. But they pale in comparison to the fundamental elements of Star Trek, whether they be from the pre-2009 shows and movies or the Abrams films, where Beyond totally misfires.
At its best, Star Trek features the focus on character that drove the original series, bolstered the 2009 reboot, and is realized in only a meager, perfunctory fashion in Beyond. The franchise can soar in its examination of meaningful social and political issues in a fantastical setting, in keeping with its science fiction roots, a virtue Beyond sacrifices in favor of a generic message about working together. This film skips the heavy lifting of showing us how the characters at the core of the franchise develop and grow, and the burden of telling a story that can be both heady and thrilling, in favor of an easy, unambitious action film that has a handful of good moments, but only the patina of what made Star Trek special. Star Trek Beyond is like any other middling cinematic sci-fi adventure of the past decade, with only a Trek-inspired coat of paint to distinguish it, and that's the film's greatest sin.
Edit: On rewatch nearly five years later I...still agree almost completely with my previous review. I probably wouldn't rate it as poorly, but even knowing where everything is heading, this film is a narrative mess that substitutes bland platitudes and indiscriminate action for having an actual story or character or point with any genuine depth. With Simon Pegg as a credited screenwriter, there's more charming references to The Original Series (e.g. Kirk ripping his shirt, Chekov claiming that scotch is Russian) and even some homages to Star Trek: Enterprise (a mention of the Xindi!). But those cute callbacks don't make up for this flashy, indiscriminate clump of a movie.
The one thing I would revise is that there's at least a decent arc for Spock here. he thinks that living up to Spock Prime's legacy means leaving Starfleet to help Vulcans, only to see how much his friends and colleagues need him and realize that Spock Prime's legacy was helping and standing by his friends. It's bare bones, but it's there, and the movie deserves credit for it.
Still, a rewatch does this no favors. If anything, it just confirms the film's Underpants Gnomes approach to storytelling, the jumbled pacing and lumpy structure, and the unavailing action sequences that make it something less than the fun success of ST'09 and less even than the noble failure of Into Darkness. I'd probably upgrade it to a [5.5/10], but it's still a real low-light among the reboot films.
How is it that a small base in the middle of the forest has methods to check if they are letting a human or an android into their base? Yet the big base in Boston that even has an EMP available just brings anyone in?
This lapse in thinking through their story points basically makes the climax of the movie, and everything thereafter, null and void.
If you take out the original premise of it and the time it was released it's not a very good film or must see at all. Fair enough it was a nice idea to transform a complete dick of a character to a decent guy but he's just so stupidly insufferable for the 1st half of the film that it's hard to take him seriously. The way you're unaware of just how much time has passed is pretty brilliant but most jokes and humour didn't resonate with me. There was no reason for the ending whatsoever and it was just way way too convienent. A bland film that was the 1st to play out a very common fantasy/idea that does it decent enough, nothing special whatsoever
Good cast. Boring movie for me. I just didnt care about the sales people. Every time I watched Jack Lemmon's character I just thought of old Gill from The Simpsons. Pacino seemed cast for his voice and the monologues.
I didn't think the dialogue was all that great. All the character's dialogue was too simular, and as a result nobody had an individual voice. It was all a few steps away from being a gangster flick as they pushed for a tough world of sales.
this is one of the most overrated movies I have ever seen. It's boring as h*ll. Even the sex is boring... tedious, too much talking about nothing (and the dialogues aren't all that super either), predictable, drugs and sex to be an end isntead of a means for the story to be told (and as I said, even the sex is boring). Even DiCaprio could not save this incredibly crap movie.
Samara Weaving! Yes! Honestly didn't expect anything good from this but this was some funny stuff. Just, stop barrel rolling the camera.
The premises were good, and the idea is original. The film, however, is full of errors in the plot and random things.
Watching this today because it takes place on July 14th.
6.6/10. You’ve seen Hidden Figures before. Maybe you haven’t seen this exact movie -- about how three unduly unheralded African American women helped NASA in the early 1960s -- but if, like me, you dutifully watch many, if not most, of the Oscar-nominated films each year, then within ten minutes, you’ll already know this movie by heart.
It features a gutsy but unorthodox protagonist trying to make a dent in a system that marginalizes and ignores her. It’s a period piece, with enough obvious dialogue, signs, and cameos from well-known historical figures to let you know exactly when the story is taking place with plenty of opportunity for the viewer to say, “My, how far we’ve come.” It has supporting characters facing challenges that mirror the protagonist’s, shining more light on the ways in which the order of the day affected those who were quietly fighting to maintain their place in it, and maybe even change it. And it has the untold story/historical injustice angle that’s supposed to imbue it with an extra bit of triumph and tragedy, all unleashed with a heavy dose of Hollywood mythmaking.
The difference, and the thing that distinguishes Hidden Figures from the likes of The Imitation Game, Dallas Buyers Club, and other recent Oscar nominees that play in the same space is that it uses the power of that formula in support of a woman of color. At a time when the world of film is still lingering in the shadow of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, it’s encouraging that Taraji P. Henson can be cast as the star of a movie that follows the Academy Award film blueprint and succeed at the box office in the process. It’s just a shame that the film’s artistic merit doesn’t match its social merit.
Don’t get me wrong; Hidden Figures is a well-made film. It chugs along at a good clip -- telling the story of one brilliant mathematician’s contributions to NASA at a time when someone of her race and gender had to work twice as hard to make it half as far -- in a tight, if predictable manner. It sprinkles in the subplots about her compatriots nicely, allowing them to work well as breaks from the main narrative that still feed into it. The acting on display is solid-to-good all around. It’s impeccably shot, framed, and edited, with colors that leap off the screen and composition that emphasizes the loneliness, bustle, or intimacy of a given setting. And it can boast a jam-worthy soundtrack that fits the movie’s big moments, but which would be worth listening to apart even outside the theater.
But good lord is it full of every hoary trope from every awards season film you’ve ever seen. The film runs through a litany of standard, predictable beats, telegraphing each one along the way. The good guys overcome the heavily-underlined obstacles in their way. They stand up to thinly-drawn, ineffectual antagonists. They offering cutting, cheesy one-liners after finding their footing.
The film provides an opportunity for Henson to give a Big Damn Speech, and for Kevin Costner to give a Big Damn Speech, and for Janelle Monáe to give a Big Damn Speech (which is, surprisingly, the best written and performed of the three). There is a one-dimensional love interest (Mahershala Ali, whose talents are squandered here) whose only true defining characteristic is that he likes the protagonist. And in the end, there are the expected measured but clear victories, culminating in a big historical event and a “where are they now” text-on-screen closing.
Even the canny little moments of repetition and subversion -- the protagonist being handed a piece of chalk, symbolizing opportunity, by her supervisor the same way she as a child in the classroom; or one of her white colleagues having to hustle across the NASA campus to find her rather than the other way around -- feel like a page torn out of the usual awards-bait playbook. The only times when the film transcends this are when it puts its three leads -- Henson, Monáe, and Octavia Spencer (who manages to make a lot out of a little here) -- together. It’s in these moments that they seem like real human beings finding solace in one another and navigating an environment where the deck is stacked against them, rather than mascots for another rote bout of silver screen “triumph over adversity” heartstring-pulling.
Hidden Figures does the good work of telling the world about the trailblazing achievements of Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, but it does a disservice to these women’s stories to reduce them to the usual prestige pablum, and it doesn’t have to be this way.
It’s laudable that Hollywood is using its hagiographic abilities on women of color who deserve to be widely known, but even the Awards season fare of the recent past shows that it can do better. The superlative Selma looked like a bog-standard Great Man biopic, and instead treated its historical giant of a central figure with a humanizing gaze that made Martin Luther King Jr., his movement, and his struggle feel more real than all the usual tinseltown gloss and lionizing tone could. The Best Picture-winning Twelve Years a Slave suffers from a small bit of the same white savior syndrome that afflicted the execrable The Help, but it was raw and uncompromising, putting the ugliness of the prejudices faced by its protagonist on display in a way that didn’t reduce them to petty hurdles our heroes would inevitably hop over. These vital stories can be told without sacrificing artistry or giving into the cliches of typical Oscar fare.
But maybe that’s the best thing to say about Hidden Figures. Every awards season is going to feature a certain quotient of this type of film. Every year sees a new crop of competently-made, not particularly inspired movies that deal with Important Things, typically from The Long Long Ago. If this is inevitable, if the awards circuit is continually going to honor films that hit these same notes over and over again, then the least we can do is use this generic form in service of people whose stories deserve to be told, and who are all too often, as the movie’s title portends, left on the cutting room floor.
First off, from a technical perspective, this is a masterpiece. Everything that is shot in a ship looks phenomenal. The moon landing itself is breathtaking. See this in IMAX if possible. That being said, everything outside a ship is just ok. The acting is good overall but I’m not sure if it Oscar worthy. Claire Foy really gives the best performance. It feels a little too long. They used shaky cam a little too much. It makes sense on the ship scenes but it felt overused on the ground drama. It might be my least favorite Chazelle movie but this is still a great movie.
As good as the first film? No, not really, but then sequels rarely are. It was big and bold, but the story was a little weak. However, the movie is still very entertaining in parts, and while I perhaps wanted a little more plausibility, it may be that I had unrealistic expectations for a film of this sort. Great action, a delicious turn from Julianne Moore, a rocking soundtrack, and a mincing turn from Keith Allen (what, you expected me to say Elton?), made this a film I will go back to. So not as fresh or as funny as the original, but it could have been a lot worse. And remember, before you have a go at me for giving it a lower rating than others, manners maketh the man!
Haha this movie is so unexpectedly bad, you think it's one kind of movie then it just does a hard 180 into insanity. I wish I didn't have the twist spoiled because I would of loved to have seen this unfold and had the big WTF moment.
All the moral complexity and historical sensitivity of a Disney sequel.
At least Judi Dench is brilliant. As usual.
World Premiere Review: 11/14/16
Frozen: Tropical Edition. But, that's not a bad thing. It's a really good movie with amazing animation, charming story and excellent songs (if you're into that). It's by no means flawless. Repetitiveness is the main issue, especially with certain physical humor which is done to death, particularly the wonky eyed chicken. I won't spoil what it does, but I found myself going "AGAIN?! COMON." Adults will find it charming and kids will think it's hilarious.
Child 44 is a mockery of true events drowned in a mediocre love story. If you want the true story about Andrei Chikatilo, you should leave this alone and try Citizen X instead, a 1995 movie with Stephen Rea and Donald Sutherland.
awful plot, wonderful job. congratulations to the people responsible on creating the animation, bad job to those who created the history
no b00bs ever are worth enough to watch this movie
Lame version of what you can experience in computer game.
Seriously though, it's too weak on heroes logic and motivation.
Mostly waste of time unfortunately.
Well, that was boring.
And disappointing. They completely rewrote the videogame's plot and got rid of all the supernatural stuff... which is ok. But at the same time, they failed to provide an alternate explanation for almost everything they still kept from the game. The island being inhabitable (why?), the WWII planes, Himiko, the shipwrecks... In the game, there is an explanation for all of that. In the movie, they just didn't bother. They could have kept the original story, or they could have ditched everything from the game and just make the story they wanted to. Instead, they chose their own story but keeping as many elements from the game as possible. The result is an abomination, it doesn't work.
I hope to see more of Alicia Vikander's Lara, but they reeeeally need to improve the storytelling.
I wish Alicia Vikander had gotten a better movie to be Lara Croft in. Tomb Raider (2018) is so boring.
