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
Recently Neill Blomkamp gave this interview where he said he missed out on a lot of career opportunities because he wasn’t ‘Hollywood enough’. With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that Gran Turismo feels like a total paycheck gig, it’s some of the most phoned in directing I’ve seen this year (especially because we all know he can come up with a creative vision if he tried). This looks like a Russo brothers movie (zero effort when it comes to lighting and blocking, every conversation is shot like basic coverage, its few attempts at flashy stylistic touches are stupid) and the score is aggressively bland. For a movie primarily aimed at teenagers it’s also surprisingly lacking in any edge, instead what you get is a very sanitized, plain version of the typical underdog sports movie with a lot of dumb, melodramatic moments. The racing sequences are fine (if a little brief), with the overediting making it feel more like watching Tiktok than an actual race. Again, say what you will about early Fast and Furious (I’m not a fan myself), but those movies did have personality. This is very corporate by comparison, it’s content waiting to be forgotten about.
3/10
I'll second @Bernard, in that this is pretty much what has become the bog standard R/E script of aggrieved baddie whining about why he is so aggrieved, in this case cuz' his bestie got infected, and then he had to make the horrifying choice of making said bestie assume room temperature (via gratuitous heavy object head smooshing trope) as rapidly as possible, lest he assume room temperature himself. Said traumatic experience "turns him to the dark side", thus, he now schemes to make the world pay by infecting it, and of course, fusing himself with whatever rando super zombie the writers could conjure, to become a killer MEGA zombie, which no matter the ensuing theatrics, eventually ALSO assumes MEGA room temperature via previously stated gratuitous trope heavier object head smooshing, head severing, blowed-uppaning' virus trans-mutating, or some combination of the aforementioned.
Curiously, the quality of the animation in this series has IMO deteriorated ever so slightly with each iteration, and they can't seem to keep Jill Valentine's "assets" a consistent size, unless, the SF Bay water was shrinking her top and push up. (standard fem gear for zombie fighting ) But, I digress...., Not horrible, but, nothing you haven't seen before if you've kept up with the series.
Maybe it's time for another live action one....
While looking for the dragonballs Kylo Vegeta Ren finds the emperor and he reveals a clown car with 10 trillion death stars in it. Instead of conquering the galaxy the emperor chooses to just give it to Kylo as long as he kills Rey, because she is a sayan prince or something.
Meanwhile Rey is also looking for the dragonballs and to find a dragonball she needs a wooden stick that some guy made 10 days ago.
Luke and Lanpedo have been looking for this stick for 10 years, but Rey finds it after falling in a hole and helping a snake. She blows up 10.000 people with a kamehameha, but is sad because she lost her dog. Their robot needs to talk with an alien monkey on another planet because it can give him red eyes. Rey goes on Kylos ship to find her stick, kills a few hundred more people with a gun and finds her dog. Rey notices the stick looks like a death star so they go to the death star and find the dragonball. Vegeta comes and is killed by Rey because his mom calls his name. Rey brings him back to life because she wants to smooch and kills his mother. Kylo finds his sayan spirit and becomes a good guy (he only killed a few million people no big deal). Rey rams her ship into another planet for fun and finds another stick that points to the emperors clown car. The emporer wants to get whipped, by his granddaugther, because he is into that. Rey charges a spirit bomb with the power of her 10 trillion fans, but the emporer snaps his fingers and kills all her fans in 1 hit. Kylo comes to help Rey whip her granddad, but he slips and falls down a staircase. Rey grants her grandad's his dying wish, but because the she used the wrong whip they are both dead now. Kylo revives Rey, they smooch and he turns into a ghost. Also his mom now is a ghost. Rey uses the dragonballs to destroy 10 trillion death stars and become a dirt farmer with a different last name, because some ghosts nod their head. Somehow her 10 trillion fans are back alive, her dog gets a medal and Lanpedo starts an inappropriate relationship.
10/10
A skiffy story with great visuals, some moral and philosophical questions, and some romance for good measure. And a few nits that stood out -- nits of the sort that always bother me. First, there would have been no call for the automated announcement about the slingshot maneuver around that sun since there would have been no reason for the original programmers to think that anyone would be awake to see it. If the writers and director were committed to showing those visuals to the audience, then they should have just let Aurora and Jim discover the event for themselves as it occurred. Second, pretty much everything about that tree was wrong, from the water questions to the potential issues if and when its roots broke through the deck and all kinds of things in-between. Third, probably not a good idea to put your reactor plant at the front end of your ship, where it will take the brunt of any ramming damage. Fourth, a complete lack of logic behind the turning-around question. All things being equal, if it takes X amount of time to get from A to B, then it should only take X amount of time to return from B to A. Even a slow turn that takes a week to execute is nothing in relative terms in a scenario like this one. And lastly, given how much must have been spent on building the ship as a whole, would it have killed the money people to splurge and include more than one autodoc for a crew of 258, as we're told at the outset? While I'm willing to accept the fact that there was no reason to expect problems with the 5,000 hibernation pods, any engineer worth his or her degree would insist on better redundancies and a backup plan or two in case something did go wrong as it did here. In any case, nits aside, the primary four actors here and the visuals and the underlying story itself were all strong enough to survive those nits, with plenty of room to spare.
I'm listening to the soundtrack right now to put me in the mood, which the OST is actually pretty darn good.
I think this movie frustrated me more than anything. There was so much fucking potential with the concept, and some of this movie does work, but most of the time, it comes off as generic Hollywood bullshit. When this movie does work, it works really well.
There's this one scene early on where, let me explain:
Chris Pratt's character has been awake by himself for almost a year now, and he's had enough of living alone, knowing he's just going to wait around to die. There's actually a very effective emotional scene where he gets into the airlock without a spacesuit on, and is about to open the airlock to kill himself. The music and the emotion on Pratt's face actually got to me, I don't know why.
The whole idea of being alone on a ship, doomed to live the rest of your life on it alone, is a fantastic idea. It's a great concept that could have so much to explore, the meaning of life, the importance of a partner, the possibilities of heartbreaking stories and lessons that could tapped into with this movie... and it doesn't amount to much. They take this great concept that could really talk about the meaning of life and could've been one of the best movies of 2016, ends up being butchered by studio executives, given a 150 million dollar budget to add action scenes, and a standard Hollywood romance story that's dumbed down for American audiences.
It really makes me sad, because there very brilliant glimpses of intrigue and worth-while storytelling, but that's all they were, glimpses. I wish this was more of an independent production, so a small group could actually flesh out some meaningful ideas with this idea.
They even have an 88 years later recap and a pop song for the end credits... fucking fantastic. When it does work, it works. The music is great and there are some well-done scenes, but it makes me more unhappy than happy. I want to love this movie, but I can't.
Well...
Instead of reading reviews, the best thing to do is just go and watch it
I didn't find it REALLY good, but I enjoyed it nonetheless !
the main problem (sorry) are the actors... especially Jennifer Lawrence ! Don't go watch it if you want a serious SF movie !
I didn't count the number of times there were "sexy" shots on her body, but at the end I was like "come on ! Not again !"
Also for physics friends, the director made quite a good job ! Of course, there are some flaws but there is a lot of actual physical content, so the ship, the technology and everything is not pure imagination (or wandering).
also I'm still wondering some things, like why is there only a single medical pod or bartender for 5200+ people ? Why there is still a need for propulsion when you keep at 50% of light speed ? What a glass preventing humans from being roasted by a fusion reactor is made of ? How strong Chris Pratt really is to make an amount of force equivalent to the force with which he got ejected by the energy of that reactor, simply by throwing a door ?
Finally, the music is fair and the design is good, the only big problem here is too much romance but hey, that's what people want now ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Warfare and gender politics (plus musical numbers and pet dragons) around imperial China in this Disney-fied adaptation of an old eastern fable. It's flashy and well-produced, with a strong female lead and up-front morals, but the plot seems too convenient and there's very little life outside the spotlight's bright glare. Funny, that last point, as Disney's always been so thorough about granting attention to the little details in their better preceding efforts.
Mulan is just fine. The animation is fluid and smooth, a crisp blend of classic western style and traditional Chinese décor that brims with character while paying service to a stiffer, more respect-driven society. The plot, up-tempo but shallow, hits its important points and changes the scenery before younger minds have a chance to wander. Singing and dancing cartoons aren't really my thing, but the tunes in Mulan are aurally inoffensive, at least, and kept rather short and utilitarian. I didn't hate anything, but I also didn't love anything... it was all just there. Yep, that looks like a Disney movie. Yep, that's the bad guy. Yep, there's the cursory romance. I appreciate the envelope-pushing hinted by the premise, encouragement to challenge the status quo if you find it unjust, but the film's conviction to see that message through adversity seems shaky at best. Even Eddie Murphy's comic relief side character, the aforementioned cat-sized dragon, doesn't get much to do.
The ideas are good, the animation is top-notch, the music is tolerable, but the big picture stuff is half-baked and the window-dressings are shockingly bland.
Right intentions, but rather awful execution.
I'll start off by saying I do believe the intentions of the filmmakers were positive. There are undoubtedly minors being exposed to similar themes to that of the film, so it's imperative that people - particularly parents - are made aware of this.
With that said, 'Cuties' goes about it in entirely the wrong way. The message, which does become clear at the end, is to stop the exploitation of children - yet here they are doing just that. There are scenes and/or camera angles that simply should not have been filmed and shown. There is no need for certain shots.
More should've been left for the viewer to work out, as opposed to shoving it into our faces and therefore practically doing what they are criticising. For example, they could've zoomed away at particular points or got an extreme close up of the characters' eyes when they were doing sexualised things.
For what it's worth, I will say I respect the performance of lead Fathia Youssouf (Amy) - I felt a fair amount of emotion from her at certain points. None of the other cast members stick out in my memory, though none produce anything negative.
I've spent a long time thinking about how I was going to word my review, much longer than I usually would at least. It's slightly tricky as, as mentioned, I do believe it intended to do the right thing. Unfortunately though, it ends up - in my eyes - doing what it's trying to say is bad.
There are some extreme thoughts on this film, not all of which are right in my opinion. However, as said, it isn't a good watch - even if only judging on film merits.
An immigrant child in a new school battling hormones and her mother's Senegalese traditions tries so hard to fit in she breaks.
Cuties / Mignonnes is everything but cute. It's rough, hard, brutal, tragic and very real. Director Maïmouna Doucouré paints the gut wrenching portrait of the young lady and the clique she's dying to enter with sensitivity, soul and a touch of magical realism that mark the reader like a dark tattoo.
Amy is a complex character (terrifically written by Doucouré and played to a T by Fathia Youssouf) because in the same instant she elicits our sympathy, our anger and our disgust. She makes all the wrong decisions for all the right reasons and because for an 11-year-old on the threshold of puberty, there is only right now and desires that blind them from seeing any consequences of their actions.
As for the ridiculous controversy launched by those who haven't seen the film and fueled by blind ignorance: I find it interesting that people will criticize a female woman of color for directing a film based on her personal experiences, whereas when Woody Allen makes a film about young women throwing themselves at older men, he's hailed as a genius.
Shame on those who shame someone for trying to tell their story. Cinema is meant to be a stage for sharing, not an arena for executing artists we judge despite knowing nothing about them or their art.
Finally, I saw it in full length - before I saw just parts of it. And that's the biggest problem with this movie, the length.
It starts with the script, which tells everything and everything three times - e.g. we see who is the true murder, but there is a conversation which tells us this again. And it goes to the pace of the acting, everything is told slowly. The actors speaking like bubble gum. I like to have an editors cut, thightened it up. This story is just not a 3 hour story, it is not the godfather! I assume that Stephen King had a big involvement in it, which doesn't help a movie in my experience. (One of the best "Stephen King movies" - The Shining - had no involvement whatsoever and when he did his version it was a big failure.)
The acting was good. Especially, Rockwell and Hutchinson were great. Unfortunately, Duncan's role as Coffey consisted of 90% crying. Which is a failure by the director and screenwriter using the most boring and easiest way to tell.
The movie was not able to get me emotionally involved - only Hutchinson's role got me - everything and everyone else I didn't care. After 3 hours I was exhausted and happy the movie was over. (And again, the movie ended but it was not over, it goes back to the current time and tells another story and someone else has to die, and the mouse has to reappear - what a boring mess.)
Lacks story and consistency. Sure you can say you don't watch this movie because of the story but only because of the action. But in my eyes the first two parts are clearly superior to the third one. John Wick was "a man of focus", all of is actions had a certain goal and were inherently consistent. Not so in this part, John is left as a confused old man without any clear path to follow, he's straying around, grasping each straw, using up all favors that several people in the world owe him, one after the other, leaving only scorched earth and loads of dead corpses (as of course expected).
Although, John is not always aware of the consequences of his actions (e.g. when refusing the marker in part 2) and in his fighting behaves like an instinctively controlled predator, he has is moments of great foresight and strategy (planting weapons used during the escape after killing Gianna, or consider the many stashs filled with weapons, coins and personal belongings). I really hope John will find his focus again in part 4 otherwise it will space out into the dull shoot-out which the movie, when viewed objectively, actually is.
Not sure why this franchise gets so much hype.
This particular installment has nothing that makes me go: wow, great action movie.
That's not because there's no action in it. Quite the opposite, yet the action is just dumb.
The dialogues are stupid. There's basically no story whatsoever, no plot other than "John Wick survives the most absurd stuff".
It's very often quite absurd without being selfaware - with a few exceptions, like the opening knife fight. That was entertaining in its hilarious absurdity. That was the only thing entertaining, though.
Fight choreographies are ridicolous overall. You can see the "enemy" actors holding their position, arms, legs, ect. for Keanu to do his part instead of reacting to the actual fight. Most of the time they are simply way too passive.
Maybe that's more of an issue with the cut, though.
Weapons are conveniently unlimited ammo when (film)shots need it, while in other situations Wick loads for example a shotgun with two round but can fire like 5-7 times. Overly brutal killings of enemies with headshots when they are already down. Usually with surprisingly atrocius CGI gunfire. The opening knife fight? CGI and gummy knives everywhere.
This movie is just more of the same without any merits. It goes the same direction as the Underworld franchise.
Just that this movie is quite nonsenical all around in addition. And for what? A fourth installment, of course!
The only good thing for the 4th movie is Wick working with King to bring down this assassin's guild as it seems. That seems to be at least some plot to be had in the future.
I've just stepped out of the cinema having watched the worst movie of the year. I feel like the director has played me for a fool. I feel like the joke here.
Joaquin Phoenix must want to shake Todd Phillips till his eyes pop out his head for he went 100% down the rabbit hole to create this performance - only for a horrendously bad director, languid editing, and a screenplay-by-numbers to fail this picture into the miserable, sodden, car-crash of a film it is.
The last time I felt so vitriolic after a 'much-hyped' film was Guy Ritchie's Revolver. Another stinker for the ages.
I particularly feel like a joke has been had at my expense by the presence of Robert De Niro, who must have had deja vu cashing his paycheck reminiscing back to his (actually a good film) The King of Comedy.
This film tries to marry that Rupert character to Taxi Driver and comes up with garbage. Much like the garbage epidemic denoted in the plot itself.
I paid 8 pounds to see this. You'd have to pay me 800 to watch it again.
It almost worked for a few minutes during the scenes with Bobby D's Johnny Carson bit. Almost. The rest was as predictable yet immensely tedious as it could be without me being handed a copy of the script on the way in.
Do yourself a favour... Don't ruin your opinion of Joaquin Phoenix by seeing this. It doesn't feel like he is to blame here. But it's best to just steer clear of the movie altogether. It offers nothing to the DC universe. It offers nothing to the Batman legacy. It actively dishounours the greatness of Heath Ledger, Jack Nicholson, Cesar Romero and all future Jokers.
This film itself IS the joker.
Utter crap.
3/10 - for the attempts made by Joaquin Phoenix saving it from 1/10.
Initial Reaction
The Good
• It is fun for the most part, giving you that rebellious feeling for the anti-hero.
• The design of Venom was pretty appealing to watch in action.
• When Venom and Eddie were fighting over the control and motives to their actions, it was very well done most of the time.
The Bad
• Starting off as a fun action flick, it quickly turned into the cash grab we all thought Sony was going to pull.
• Tom Hardy does do a good job at interacting with Venom, but everything else is a mess for him.
• The main villain in this movie is plain awful, so cliche and lacking proper motive. Not to mention the casting choice was so bad.
• I'm going to try not to say much, but the motive for Venom himself is the worst part of the movie. It suffers from the infamous show not tell rule, especially with this aspect.
• While the blacks, dark greys and blues are a nice colour pallet for the movie. Having Venom be primarily in the dark is not a good viewing experience or a good visual image.
• The lack of gore is extremely frustrating. The benefits of having this movie be R would have been great.
Conclusion
Venom could have been a good dark action anti-hero movie. But instead, it feels as if it is the typical Sony higher-ups demanding compromise over quality. No style to really think of, because you can't count night as one. But, I did have fun with it when the two partners were actually alone to argue and discuss. The action is okay and limits itself to not repeat or seem stale. Sadly though, it lacks in everything else. Leaving you with the feeling of a kids rollercoaster ride. A thrill to begin with, but leaves you wishing it climbed just a little higher.
Started off good enough enough. I thought this movie could pull off a decent sequel. After an hour the mystery of the child becaming painfully obvious. From then it became a typical hollywood drag of a dog (let's call him Pinocchio Runner) chasing his tail. As I'm waiting for the obvious to happen I remember that the bad guys did some cringey plot revealing monologues in the style of Sunset Beach, but looking like something from a superhero movie (adhere to the demographic?) It was looking bleak and felt dumbed down and boring.
It's fair to compare this to the look of the original as it's setting is simular and it really was a part of Blade Runner. This is less cyber punk and way brighter. It does still have its moments of beauty. Many. The pacing is simular, but the slow pacing of the original was held together with a plot that deveoped and a thick murky atmosphere, which are missing here.
The relationship between Joi and our main guy the serial number was too repetitive and obvious. I liked it at first glance. It looked great on screen. My issue was that the idea and thought provoking behind the relationship was done after a few scenes and the rest, of which there was a lot, felt like filler. The relationship was too linear and uninteresting to demand so much time and in the end it didnt make me feel much for the characters.
Before long there was no new ideas or interesting development in the story. When Gosling finally meets Ford it got worse - not better. The scene in which they meet was boring and silly. I start zoning out. Then... a rescue mission to conveniently take us to the end. Bye now I was completely bored and didn't care about the movie.
This movie didn't need to be made. It didnt feel like the writers wanted to write it. It felt like a cash in. Another cash in.
So it lacks all the main qualities of the original, doesnt stand alone as a good movie, and becomes increasingly boring as it progresses. Least we know Sylvia Hoeks can produce a single tear to roll down a cheek for the camera.
This movie is OK at best. It's one of Nolan's better ones at least. But, it has some serious issues. See Krauss talk about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pG89gREWyI&t=1m12s
It's too long - he's right. The oxygen blight is completely scientifically silly. The entire basis of the plot (that Earth will run out of oxygen in tens of years) is unbelievable. This put me off from the start. There's some "formula" that Michael Caine worked on and half-solved, but it took data from the event horizon of a black hole (which also makes no sense scientifically) to solve it. Sorry, if you approach a black hole, you don't end up behind a bookshelf in your old house in the past - I have no idea how they can claim this is a movie about science. It is FULL of religious symbolism, though, so if you're into that, you'll be right at home. Apparently humans evolve out of the 3rd dimension too ... sure. There's one thing that was definitely right - outer space is quiet - FINALLY.
The cinematography is pretty good, and I liked how the dude went crazy on the barren planet, but this film would have been a lot better without the sappy happy ending. I mean, really - transporting all the way back from inside a black hole? Armageddon had a much more realistic ending than that, and it was SO STUPID! It would be great if someone fan-edited this into something scientifically accurate (dub over the lines about what's wrong with Earth replacing it with a feasible problem, have him crushed to death in the black hole, show Brand on the planet at the end all alone, FIN). I don't know how people can give this a higher rating than a 7/10. I wouldn't consider it to be a classic at all. It's at best a see-once blockbuster, just like Armageddon was.
That this movie, at the time of writing this, holds an 8.8 rating at IMDb is simply beyond my understanding. Needless to say I did not really like this movie. The story is not very good, the science is ludicrous and the visuals not all that impressive. Maybe the latter would be better in a big theater (I watched this on my home cinema system which has a relatively large screen by European standards) but I am not really sure about that either.
Be warned that the rest of this review might contain a spoiler or two.
The movie starts of with the usual “I told you so” wet dream of the green fanatics on a dying Earth so it is off to a depressing start right away. That is an overused concept today as far as I am concerned. Then they pour it on with a school official claiming that he Apollo missions and moon landings never happened. What the f…? If they wanted to depress the audience right from the start they succeeded, at least with this audience.
The story proceeds with our heroes finding these gravity waves in the sand and by a huge stretch of imagination decrypts them to mean coordinates which leads them to the secret NASA base. Once there Cooper is told that he is their best choice of pilot for a “save the human race” mission through a wormhole. Yeah, right! This guy was former NASA. His whereabouts could hardly been unknown to them. If he was their best choice why would they entrust a mission to save the human race to someone else until he stumbled onto their door? Typical Hollywood nonsense!
The movie is full of this kind of rubbish. Romilly wastes 23 years of his life doing pretty much nothing except deciding not to go into the sleep capsule. The supposedly highly trained and vetted professor that they do find turns out to be a psychopath as well as and idiot almost blowing up the ship when trying to proceed with a docking that all the systems tells him have not succeeded. Then they proceed to dock with the main ship and stop its spin as well as bring it out of orbit around a planet with the shuttles engines. That is one hell of a powerful shuttle not to mention the strength of the docking mechanism! This just goes on. When someone is not doing something illogical or stupid (or both) they sit around talking, philosophizing and dragging the movie forward at snails pace. 169 minutes is way too much for this movie.
The movie ends up in one big time travel mess (okay they do not travel in time, just sends messages through time but still…) during a bunch of psychedelic scenes while traveling through the back hole. Science? Not so much. And what about this totally ludicrous massively illogical and inefficient robot design?
The one good thing I can say about this movie is that the performance of most of the actors, especially Matthew McConaughey, are quite good. For the rest, not my cup of tea.
Contains major spoilers !!!!!
Huge and utterly dissapointing. After TFA I said this movie would make or break the story. For me it broke.
Where to begin? Let´s start with my biggest problem.
After that rebel cruisers bridge was hit and Leia was thrown into space we saw her drifting in the cold empty vacuum of space. This was a powerful scene and I had tears welling up in my eyes thinking that would be a great ending for the character dying how she always lived. Fighting. I did not realise, or care, that it would have been a huge coincidence had they written this scene at that point not knowing Carrie would pass away. But as I said powerful scene. And then she opens her eyes and floated back into the ship still beeing alive. At that point I was seriously considering leaving the cinema. It´s scifi but, please, without as much as a hint of an explanation that is just awful writing. It is Disney all over it. Anyway I stayed and watched the rest but in general I was done with the movie.
There are tons of other things I didn´t like.
way to much unnessesary and stupid humor. Most of the time it does not fit and just destroys scenes. Holding for General Hux - that might have been OK once but two or three times it just becomes goofy. And there is more of this througout the movie.
the writing was all over the place. So much things going on that do little to nothing for the general plot and just add playtime. Like that whole thing with the codebreaker, going to the casino. Just sugarcoating CGI.
and speaking of playtime - way too long. About five times towards the end I thought it was over. It could have ended when the reached the rebel base- no let´s add another battle. When they realised they where trapped. With Luke going out to face Kylo. At some point I would have been OK with the movie ending with the First Order defeating the rebels, everyone dying, and the franchise done with. But of course that is not happening and the movie ends.....no, just show us a kid with a broom looking at the stars and indicate he could be the hero of a future movie.
in many ways the continuation of storylines is not satisfiying. They introduce Snoke in the first movie without an explanation who he is, where he comes from and how he got there. Would have been OK, could have done later. So now he´s dead without so much as a fight and there are questions left to be answered.
what about Rey ? Are we really to believe her parents were some drunk and drifting scavengers that sold her for money like Ren said ? That would be very stupid because how in the universe could she master the Force in ways even the best Jedis or Sith couldn´t without as much as years of training. Another void in the storytelling.
too many, shall I call them, homage scenes ? A lot of times I felt I had already seen this movie. The scene in the throne room f.e. Snoke = Emperor, Rey = Luke, Ben = Vader, the destruction of the rebel fleet playing in the background and the Ben killing Snoke is like Vader killing the Emperor. I know that was said about TFA as well but I feel it´s much worse here. The Battle of Hoth reviseted would be another thing where they re-did some scenes to a T. All that was left was tow cables.
Those are just some examples of the things I disliked and maybe there could be satisfactory explanation later. There is a lot more but it would take too much time to write it down. But I doubt I will go to the cinema for the next one.
To be fair there where some positives in this movie.
I liked the scenes with Rey and Luke althought they did not really lead anywhere. But some nice insights into Lukes story after ROTJ.
The conversations between Kylo and Rey where very interesting and I thought there was really potential to steer the story to something new and exciting. Not happening.
So overall I was not satisfied. I really like TFA, it built some expectations that where all crushed with this. As far as I am concerned I am done with this new story. I am not not very eager to find out what else the canibalise and how they try to write themselves out of this. There is nothing left.
This is my view of the movie. If you liked it I´m happy for you.
May the Force be with us. Always.
I think my old review said it all...so here it is.
How many times can you shoot the same movie without things getting stale?!?
Well...usually...not many...especially when you have done it so many times as they have done it with the Underworld franchise...AND...with a smaller and smaller budget to boot.
Even Kate Beckinsale in her incredibly tight spandex can't save this one. Don't get me wrong...she's as hot as ever, but seem dreadfully bored about the whole thing. Though...she's actually one of the few redeeming factors. One of the other is that the effects are quite good in places...except for the usual bad CGI of course.
Anyway...I'm not going to list everything that is wrong with this one because that would take a very long time, BUT...especially ONE thing bothered me throughout the entire movie. The lighting sucked all the way through. Most of the time you couldn't even see what was going on let alone any details. I know the movie is supposed to have a gothic feel...but talk about taking it too far.
Watch Underworld: Blood Wars only if you are a fan of the franchise, or have a masochistic streak.
I'm pretty sure this will be the last time I'll ever see this movie. There are too many GOOD movies out there I haven't seen yet to bother with this one again.
Entertaining, though lacklustre in telling an original story.
The highlight for me personally was definitely when the main characters enter The Shining. The way this is created looks to true to the source material and is full of recognisable moments from Kubrick's movie. Also, the way the added scenes tie into the original is really well done and the way the characters interact with the scenes we all know is good for a chuckle or two (like the scene with Aech and the twins).
The story itself is nothing special; poor guy gets a chance to make the world a better place for himself and everybody else by stopping an evil corporation from getting absolute power and in the end succeeds in doing so against all odds.
But that is not why you watch this movie. You watch it to be entertained and on that front it delivers. There is no point in the movie where you are bored as there is so much visual spectacle to behold throughout the entire movie. The effects are always great and the most fun thing in this movie is spotting the references to pop-culture both past and present. And trust me, there are a lot.
So even though the plot is nothing special, if you're looking for a movie to just have a good time with this one won't disappoint.
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.
— @aag's review (https://trakt.tv/comments/62697, and we need proper internal link markup on Trakt!)
Seriously. The big dramatic moments are unbelievably rushed—there's no time to dig into them. There's too much focus on bad CGI and not enough on characters. Basically every character is 2D at best, except maybe Katniss and Peeta. But that's also due to sticking true to the book. None of the characters in the books were particularly well fleshed out, either, as I recall (from reading them 3 ½ years ago).
I also found the story very predictable. Obviously there's some amount of subconscious influence from having read the books, but it's also just absolutely clear when the big surprises/twists are going to happen, and what they'll be. They end up not being surprising at all. (Not to belabor the point, but the book had this problem too.)
My other big issue—which applies to the whole series—is that we barely see anything that happens away from Katniss. I know it's quite common in YA novels to present a limited first-person perspective from the protagonist's point of view, but in a big political saga like this I feel like that severely limits the storytelling.
I thought this was a bit of a letdown. It's retreading the plot and structure of the first one with some minor twists added and a different ending, so its not seen as the blatant copy it actually is. By having the same structure as the first movie did, most scenes before the 1 hour mark feel like filler and most after feels like a copy of the first movie, slightly amped up. To me it felt too much like the first one, a feeling I last had watching Transformers 2 - and that is not a good thing, as I avoided the sequels. Though, to be fair, it was mostly because Transformers 2 was very annoying.
The movie felt long. Really long. I think it could have been 40 minutes shorter and it wouldn't lose any important things while actually giving it a better pacing, as the movie feels just stretched out just so it runs over two and a half hours. And because of that stretching, the ending feels like it came really quick and was over before I realized it. The ending also leaves you hanging, desperately wanting you to want to see both parts of the final movie, both being released in a November (2014 and 2015), taking the route of unnecessarily stretching out the lifespan of the movies like it's usual now.
I don't understand why they think they need to do this. The Harry Potter movies, a franchise with a similar target audience, had the two parter finale released in a span of 6 months. Even the Matrix sequels came out in the span of 6 months. Both were very successful and at least the former was beloved by most who saw them. Maybe it's because of Twilight, as its two part finale was also released in a November (2011 and 2012).
But for now, until both sequels come out on DVD/BR, I don't have any interest in seeing (or even reading) The Hunger Games in the foreseeable future.
This is an ok distraction, what you would expect from the usual Z monster movies, but with the budget to make it look (very) good. Maybe even too much budget, that allowed them to include many over the top cliche action scenes instead of focusing on the monster action.
I mean did it really need a 0G space scene ? Parachuting from a crashing plane ? And a B2 bomber ? I was a little disappointed in what was supposed to be the climax, city battle and monsters battle, so a little more attention to that instead would have been better. More military action in the city battle for instance, lots of tanks, some fighter jets, etc. (though jets are maybe not great for city fights ?)
And what's with the B2 ? What's the point of using the most expensive ever furtive plane during the day to send a missile on animals from several kilometers away ? Did they fear they had radars ?
The first wolf battle is nice though, and the crocodile looks AMAZING. The SURPRISE: the wolf can fly was a nice touch too.
The interaction between The Rock and the gorilla is nice. Can't say the acting is that great, so it feels a little weird, nut it makes for some funny jokes.
Morgan's character is really cool, though he's just that. He's clearly been written with a description: "cool cowboy, rough guy but nice, smart enough to be on the right side". That's it, nothing more. His background, job, role and interactions with the rest of the characters are inexistant or makes no sense with no questions asked.
The really bad part is the antagonists. There we go way beyond cliche. Typical rich guys, ready to go beyond what is legal or moral to make money. They apparenlty lead a billion dollars corporation, able to have its own space laboratory, though we barely see any employee, They seem to be the only ones in control and who knows all the nad stuff. But at the same time they're the stupid duo you would expect in a Home Alone level comedy. And the result is weird. The sister is definitely shown to be tougher, but she just looks that way compared to her brother. She might have been an ok character if by herself. But he's so stupid and useless and played so badly that it's painful to watch each scene he is in. It's bleeding bad (non) writing through the screen. And none of what they do makes any sense. Hey, let's make all the monsters come right tot the top of our building. What could go wrong ?
Naomie Harris' character is nonexistent. You could litterally remove her and not a thing would change in the movie. Her only useful action is to put the antidote on Claire before she's eaten which is a great wtf because we've never seen George have any interest in eating people so how could it have been a viable strategy ? It would have been much more likely that he'd just punch her out of the building and out goes the antidote.
I was also surprised by the intro declaring CRISPR a WMD but I checked and some US officials actually referred to it as one. Don't think it's been officially categorized this way though.
