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paulquilichini
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Mickey and the Roadster Racers (2017)
About as bad as streaming can get
I've seen a lots of kids YouTube and other stuff through the years. This ranks right at the bottom right with Barbie. Except with Barbie at least you know beforehand how terrible it will be.
Why is it terrible? It teaches nothing except the opposite of what children should be learning. The stories are pointless. The characters are unintelligent and thoughtless. Mickey must be some sort of megalomaniac, living in a town with his image absolutely every.
I could go on and on, but I'm really just here to bump the overall down a bit because I know it doesn't deserve 6/10.
Iron Fist (2017)
Idiot Plot Alert!
After reading a brief description I thought,"Yes! This is right up my alley! I have to watch this." Two episodes in and I think I'm done. A story that could have unfolded within 30 minutes was strung out through two episodes through the clumsy use of character brain clouds. I'm not trying to insult the writers here, as this is fantastic first attempt at writing. Don't give up guys!
The acting isn't horrible. On par with many of the more solid series. Obviously cast for beauty slightly above talent. It matches well with the style over substance, and I'm sure digests easily for most people.
My specific niggles? Did Danny not think ANYTHING through before he showed up in the city? Did he not have to travel halfway around the world? Did he not pick up on anything along the way? He just walks into the building with absolutely zero plan? And the way he goes about trying to convince people he is actually Danny... frustrating beyond belief. I've met toddlers with better skills than him. So why does he fail so miserably? Because the story needs him to be a clumsy fool initially, no matter how unrealistic it is.
I really shouldn't be surprised, since it is actually geared toward young teens, no matter how adult the violence makes it seem. Except I wouldn't recommend it to my own kids because they're smarter than that.
Arrival (2016)
My problem was expecting too much.
Good: The controlled use of music. I loved this. I want to see more (hear less) like this. The atmosphere was great. Beautiful photography. No bombardment of FX. Yay.
It had perhaps three "aha" moments which I thought were pretty clever, but for a movie which seemed to be about twists and revelations, they gave away too much in hints and foreshadowing. In fact, they gave it all away. Perhaps it was just too predictable. The final 15 minutes could have been omitted completely. Sure, not every movie is made for geniuses, but don't try to make smart movies for the dumbest of people, please.
And China as the main protagonist until the American woman somehow changes his heart? Please. This would have been so much better if the clichés had been... well... not such clichés... Hollywood needs to get past America somehow, and until they do their movies will always leave a sour taste in the most discerning mouths. Perhaps Trump will cure them of their pride.
Star Trek Beyond (2016)
Hollywood ate Star Trek and pooped out this movie.
Be forewarned that I grew up with Star Trek and so my opinion is a little biased.
The Star Trek world used to differ from the Star Wars world significantly, but they're slowly merging under the mismanagement of Hollywood's big earners. It's a sorry situation which leaves very few (any?) sci-fi franchises worth following these days. The Star Trek movie before this one rated a 7, for me, and left me with hope that perhaps the team would pull up their socks and do better, but instead they did the opposite.
With such a large budget they could easily hire a few physicist consultants to at least get some of the science into the realm of the believable. Are they going to introduce a version of "The Force" in the next movie? Is that where we're going?
The sound effects were overdone. Way, way overdone. I know, the sound effects guy has to play his part, but I think it's time we admit that not everything makes a sound when the camera passes by it.
The music could have been brought down a few notches. Not in volume but in frequency. It takes away from the movie when there is continuous music.
The costumes were... wow. Did anyone even try to use their imagination with these? Really? Hundreds of years from now and everyone dresses like the early 21st century when they're not in uniform? Do we still dress like people from medieval England today? Just make up something!
The antagonist? How cliché. How very cliché. How disgustingly, insultingly cliché. Have we run out of ideas already? No. The people who wrote this movie had no ideas, so they remembered ideas other people had.
The special effects were good. Really quite good. But they can't replace a story. They can't make up for an overzealous sound team.
Thanks, Hollywood, you just convinced me that I'm going to watch more foreign films from now on. And when I want some English sci-fi, I'm just going to have to read a book.
I just arrived home from the theatre and I'm still fuming, so maybe I'll feel differently tomorrow and change my review... probably not.
The Martian (2015)
Turn off your brain, and The Martian will entertain.
I'm not going to write much about all the the technical, story, and plot shortfalls.
Matt Damon gave an admirable performance, considering what he was given. Cheers to him. I'm also a fan of Donald Glover. Maybe he wasn't the best choice for this role, but he gave what he had and I enjoyed his part, as long as I didn't think deeply about it.
The director should really get his head out of America's a** and learn a few things from foreign cinema/television.
One of the things that bothered me is the lack of average-looking people. Have you seen pictures of scientists? They do not look like that. To be certain, the director wasn't going for realism. Hollywood really needs to cast some unbeautiful people, because it detracts from the rest of the movie. Just like there is no sound transmitted through a vacuum, there should not be 99% beautiful people cast for movies... not in 2016.
Another thing that bothered me is the fact that the US spent billions retrieving this guy and it never even came up that maybe one life isn't worth billions to the government. In fact, I'm pretty sure one life is only worth $10,000 in proactive payments. Maybe a few million in reactive payments. Billions? Hardly. Not to this government.
I wish this movie had been directed by Hong-jin Na, TBH.
Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)
It's the iPhone 6 of sequels
Since the critic reviews had left me hopeful that something new and exciting was brewing with the Star Wars series, I felt disappointment as the final credits rolled in the theater. I'll drop it in easy point form.
The Bad: -The soundtrack. Please just calm down with the music. Are the scenes really that weak that they need constant orchestral support? -The entire story was taken from the recycling bin. All of it. Nothing was fresh. If you fed all of the Hollywood films, from 1970 to 2010, into a computer and told it to recombine them into a random 2 hour film, it would eventually come up with this exact story.
-I felt nothing. My heart rate stayed a steady 60 BPM for the entire film, I am certain.
-Sound in space? This is 2016! In the '70's people perhaps didn't know any better, but in 2016 even children know that sound isn't transmitted in a vacuum. Please just give it up already.
-Robots that speak in bleeps. Come on! It would be a trivial matter for a robot maker to install speech capability, even if that robot had been made in 2010, let alone in... 2300 or whenever this movie supposedly takes place. We had R2D2 and that was enough. He was cute, we get it, but you've already used it up and now it's time to move on.
-An ex good guy now a bad guy controlled by an evil overlord. Perhaps the writers aren't fans of books, because if they were they would realize that they can do something more imaginative.
-The list is ending here, but know that I was SMH throughout the entire movie.
The good (there was some!): +Han Solo died (at least he was still dead at the end). Yes, this is good. It means that the writers have decided to move on with something. Even if he was pretty much the only saving grace of the series. Really, Star Wars needs to kill of main characters more often. It has become like a Marvel series where we don't even worry if the main character is in a bind because we know with 100% certainty that we will survive.
+CG and special effects. These have come a long way. Some people involved in this film know their jobs well. They weren't over done and they didn't take away from the story (ha). Kudos to the special effects people.
+The converted Storm Trooper. Hey, that was different. Something was different! I started by rating this 5/10 but after writing this review I've realized it should only be a 4/10.
Engrenages (2005)
Forced me to binge-watch
I've finished season one and was immersed for every moment (save a few). American TV writers could take a few (many!) pointers from the people who created Engrenages since it could survive solely on its story and character development.
The suspense doesn't seem contrived and it really doesn't let up. I found my palms sweaty and heart rate elevated while sitting in the hotel chair glued to the laptop screen.
The characters are mature (mostly), well developed, and believable. There hasn't been any argument about who is sleeping with whom. They don't bicker about petty events since they have bigger problems to deal with. Even the drug problem of one of the characters is limited to only a few minutes per show. In America they would have an entire show dedicated to some petty **** such as that. (I'm not knocking all American shows since there are some brilliant ones, but they are as plentiful as vitamins in a candy bar.) Two of the main characters sleep with each other and virtually no petty drama follows! I love it! I'm not usually a fan of police dramas, but if you are then you could fall in love with this one. You just have to be able to read subtitles and follow along at the same time. Unless you want to watch a dubbed version. *shudder* There really are no current American police dramas that can touch this one.
The Walking Dead (2010)
Smallville with Zombies...
Season one wasn't bad, if I ignored how ineptly the writers describe how humans actually behave when their lives are in constant danger.
Season two was the death knell for TWD in my watch list.
Why is GOT so much better than TWD? Because the characters of TWD are suburban adult children, clumsily written by a YA genre group of drama writers. GOT, on the other hand, is full of adults of every type, doing every kind of good and bad thing to each other. Even the children in GOT are more mature than the oldest characters in TWD.
Back to the childishness of TWD. The characters are behaving like survival isn't their top priority. If humans depended upon this useless group 70,000 years ago I would not be writing this review today. We would have gone extinct 69,998 years ago.
The makeup and CG aren't bad. I can't fault that. The people not involved in writing are doing a bang up job. Even the acting is decent.
This is a case of failed writing. Sorry to everyone else involved in the project.
The Flash (2014)
So far so-so
This series is puzzling to me. It seems to have been written for young teens yet the nature of the content disagrees.
The main character is a difficult, self-absorbed, emotionally infantile, incompetent, meat-head who seems to get by on luck alone. It's almost as if he is the antagonist because he inspires absolutely no empathy. He can't be, however, since the antagonists are portrayed in such a blatantly obvious manner that any doubt vanishes when they are on screen.
The drama that commands large portions of time seems very trivial, especially considering the gravity of the situations the characters face.
The cinematography is not bad.
The specials effects are not bad for a modern mid-budget TV show.
One season and two episodes in and I'm done.
Highly recommended for other people's teenagers, as long as their intelligence is below average, or they're only half-watching while they play with their tablet.
San Andreas (2015)
It falls on its own.
I can't fault the acting, since the rest of the movie was bad enough for me to not even notice.
**SPOILER** The main group of characters should have died many times over- and I would have been kind of glad- because they made terrible survival choices throughout. I know, dramatic effect has to be achieved, but in this movie it was achieved at the expense of my empathy.
I'll skip over how many laws of physics and math were broken, since that's a decomposing horse in Hollywood these days.
The worst part? At the end, Dwayne's character stands across the bay surveying the destruction, while an American flag unfurls from the remains of the bridge. "Now we rebuild", he says, with his family in his arms. Yeah... he's SEARCH AND RESCUE! Why is he not thinking about now rescuing any of the thousands of trapped and injured people before more die, and especially before thinking about rebuilding?! What?! Now we rebuild? Aren't you skipping a step?
One thing they left out: he didn't travel by train. We had plane, helicopter, boat, parachute, and truck. They missed train. Maybe that will be in the director's cut.
Shingeki no kyojin (2015)
Script and Execution Failure
I watched the series, but even if I hadn't I still wouldn't have enjoyed the movie. The pacing was terrible and moments of salvageable scenes were hung up on painfully slow moments of unimportance. The main character is frustratingly useless until the very end, which he is not in the series.
The acting was weak at best. I don't speak Japanese so it doesn't matter as much, but it still took away from the experience. My Japanese girlfriend found it horrible as well.
*SPOILER* Mikasa is extremely useless as the beginning and just sits on the ground without even trying to run from the approaching Titan. She somehow doesn't pay the price for this and is magically transformed into an amazing killer a short while later.
Unimpressed... though I did watch until the end.
Upstream Color (2013)
This movie is for those who can pay attention
Confusing, this movie is not, if you pay attention. The director wastes hardly a moment and does not suppose his audience to be missing a thing.
I read a few reviews and took a chance anyway. I was expecting to fall asleep partway through a slow movie; instead I was riveted from beginning to end.
The cinematography was superb, as was the fit of the music. The story is very interesting, though nothing terribly profound. If you did the same story in a typical Hollywood fashion it would have lost half of its stars.
For those who love big Hollywood movies, there is something there for you too... though you will probably stop watching long before you see it.
What I loved most about this movie is that it didn't beat me over the head with obvious BS. It didn't drop a hint three times just in case I was too busy staring at cleavage the first two times. It assumed, instead, that I was capable of understanding and following visual poetry.