Way too many different tones/genres squeezed into the same movie. Was almost like half a dozen people each wrote part of a screenplay and pasted them together, with the caveat that none of them ever took creative writing. Character motivations and thought processes were…for lack of a better word, absent.
Beautifully shot, though.
I said in my review of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) that I'd have to watch and compare this with that and Spectre… Well, here we are.
The 2015 Mission: Impossible installment roundly beats out The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in writing, production, and on-screen chemistry. Rebecca Ferguson is no Alicia Vikander (LOVED her in Ex Machina), but the interactions between both leading men worked much, MUCH better in this film. It helps that Christopher McQuarrie let this film have a much calmer editing style—it's a hell of a lot easier to follow than Guy Ritchie's chaotic simul-action sequences with 2-5 camera views on screen at once.
I'm still undecided whether I like Spectre or M:I better for my top 2015 spy film, but I'm officially knocking U.N.C.L.E. out of the running. MI-6 and the IMF can duke it out.
(It's entirely possible that I'm being easier on this film because I lack a solid background with the franchise; I've seen very little M:I compared to U.N.C.L.E. But I don't think that's why I like this one so MUCH more.)
As others (notably Simon Massey [1]) pointed out, the chemistry wasn't there. The two lead actors didn't click.
I'd go as far as to say that I didn't like Guy Ritchie's style. The chaotic sequences where 3, 4, or more camera views went sliding and gyrating all over the place to show simultaneous action were really hard to follow. Some of the edits were questionable, and a couple shots held for FAR too long (did we really need 20 seconds of slow zoom-out on Gaby sitting on her hotel bed?) dragged down the pace.
Yeah, something seemed off. I love watching the original TV series, and still want to finish it—but as for 2015 spy movies, between this and Spectre: I'll take Spectre, hands down. (Now I have to watch Mission Impossible and compare…)
Lost me as soon as it turned into a don't-call-it-a-zombie movie.
Touches all the important Peanuts mythology. Mildly amusing. Needed a few more frames of animation in parts, especially when characters handle props (apparently this was a creative choice—ill advised, IMO). Soundtrack is jarringly un-Peanuts in multiple scenes, and at the end.
Last week, Ferris Bueller. This week, Babymetal's ギミチョコ！！ as an insert song.
What's next?
Supergirl watches Homeland? The cross promotion is real.
Should have stopped at the nicknames. The whole homage was really overdone.
"An officer will escort you both to CIC," he said. And then Quincy turns up wandering around belowdecks about to pull a halon control lever? Come on, Cpt. Chandler. True to your word or the whole crew gets screwed.
Oh, yes, and then Quincy just pops up in CIC a couple scenes later like nothing happened. Wow.
Lots of good action here, much more interesting fights than a lot of the qualifiers. Docked my episode rating by 2 because there was NO post-fight interview of the loser in Plan X vs Bronco when there were very obvious questions that IMO needed to be asked.
Bit of a let-down that we saw four battles in the first episode, and four battles in this one, but only short snippets of the remaining four (which still knocked out four bots that we never even really got to see in action). Why couldn't they just take three weeks for the qualifiers? For that matter, why did we only get to meet a fraction of the builders this time? Second episode is much weaker than the first, and hopefully the trend will reverse…
Was getting more and more into it, until the helicopter pilot simply accepted Ava as his passenger instead of Caleb and flew her off into the wild blue yonder, no questions asked. The ending was thus highly unrealistic; Ava was much more likely to have had to walk Nathan's entire estate. Given that the helicopter pilot wasn't even allowed to fly within of the building, it's unbelievable that any pilot contracted or employed by Nathan would simply pick up a passenger other than the one he was ordered to. Overall it's a stunning film, but the plot has a hole or two.
Note that this "special" is also listed as a movie, separately, with all the metadata you could want.
M*A*S*H has been in and out of my world since I was a kid and my parents watched reruns when they came on the local TV networks. I'm starting on a real watch-through (only a few episodes in yet) and it's really exciting to think about going from start to finish with this, especially now that I've seen the original film.
(Updated Jan 15, 2017, to fix trakt picking up the *s in the title as italics.)
Crap writing, crap editing. Nearly every line of dialogue is repeated 2, 3, 4+ times. Several places feature reused footage. The same reused footage. 3+ times. This story could have been told in well under an hour. Hearing Ellie Goulding's "Lights" play over the end credits was the absolute last straw—good song, tacked onto a terrible film. That licensing deal should be retroactively canceled.
