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alan_bloom
Reviews
Red Notice (2021)
Relies on the charisma of the actors, not the god awful script
Good cast with good chemistry. However, the script comes across as if it's written by someone who hasn't matured since being a teenager in an American high school fantasising about how cool kids will talk and act once they've grown up and got cool jobs. The rock is a American cool guy that dresses how he wants, drives crazy fast through Rome right up to the Castel Sant'Angelo, hops out and talks down to Italian officials and counterparts, waltzes up to a priceless piece in a museum and calmly lifts the lid off it while no one reacts and then pours coke over it and proves how incompetent everyone else is, then shows up the local police with his prowess and jumps out of a priceless stained glass window and steals a car without the keys. That's how real life goes, yeah? Repercussions? Nooope.
It's a fun-ish ride where you can watch charismatic actors working but don't worry to much about the story.
24: Live Another Day (2014)
More of the same but let down by writing issues
A continuation of Jack Bauer's escapades but with an interesting change of scene. Decent premise and addressing modern debates. However, instead of gaining momentum and interest during the season like the ones that came before it, this one seems to lose it along the way because of bad writing.
The season is full of clumsy exposition scenes, sometimes repetitively so. The characters lack depth, especially the protagonist. Michelle Fairly is an excellent actress but has a poor script to work from here, which is a real shame. Not just lacking interest, it harms the overall story because the protagonist becomes predictable. I. E. You know she'll order the most illogical, contradictory actions which means you know what will happen next and it comes as no surprise when it does come to pass. It's very unimaginative writing, offering no insights into the character.
Mary Lynn (Chloe) isn't given much to work with, either. As a star character in previous seasons, that's a real shame.
Stephen Fry is by far the best part in the story and by actually emoting, it reinforces the stark contrast of lack of depth to the characters.
Furthermore, it REALLY feels like an American's opinion of how things might happen in the U. K. But American agents running around London, shooting people all over the place... yeah... No.
Overall, 24 Live another day offers some value but the poor writing prevents full enjoyment. It doesn't take anything away from past seasons, so it's just an "OK".
Enterprise: Dear Doctor (2002)
Definitely my favourite episode of Enterprise so far
The good thing about Star Trek is its willingness to tackle philosophical concepts and that is what makes this a good episode. Also by combining it with development of the doctor - my favourite character, nonetheless - I think it's the best episode of Enterprise I've seen so far.
I've seen negative reviews on IMDb, perhaps because the reviewers believe the "correct" answer is blatant. However, I would argue that the point is that these concepts should be explored. That the answers are not clear cut and that challenging one's established ideas is good. Each side has merit and the way this is explored is well written and presented convincingly.
This brings this series back to what makes Star Trek great.
Star Trek Beyond (2016)
95% Special Effects, 5% rubbish script
I've actually hurt my eyes from colossal eye-rolls endured by watching this movie. That's not a joke. This movie is awful start to finish.
However, it's worth pointing out that if you liked the previous film, Into Darkness, then you'll like this film because it's more of the same: style without substance.
My complaints can be summarised as points: The vast majority of the film is special effects, albeit high quality effects. But a film can't be made just by special effects - watching endless sequences of destruction porn is hardly entertaining.
The plot is shallow, contrived, intangible and absurd. Avoiding spoilers, none of it really makes sense - it's just a small amount of plot which pads out the excessive special effects sequences. There are lots of corny moments too, which made my stomach churn and previously mentioned eye-ache.
The self-fulfilling action sequences are just so confusing. A large portion of the scenes are in dim light, so it's actually not possible to see what's going on... just lots of mess everywhere and, apparently, people are running around doing something - but I can't tell what.
Character development is almost non existent. Just skims over them and presents corny, cliché revelations of the main characters without enough exploration of the protagonist.
The directing is bloody awful - the camera is constantly moving all over the place and the action sequences flit between scenes with just a matter of seconds on each shot - no anticipation, no tension, too much confusion and disorientation. The 'comedy' is not funny. There was one joke which was amusing... the rest was very stale. I noticed the cinema was not laughing at the scenes which were presented as comedy.
For fellow star trek fans:
There are inconsistencies with some characters' established personas, especially Spock's. Kirk is not presented as having captain-like qualities, just an action-hero. It's like you could put any plonker in charge of a space ship as long as they can win a fight.
It's very hard to find redeeming qualities - Jaylah was good but there wasn't enough of her and, again, not much in the way of development. Karl Uban gets the tone right for McCoy but the jokes are stale and the relationship with Spock is spoiled by the terrible script writing.
I liked the first Star Trek, although I felt it suffered from flaws. I didn't like Into Darkness at all and went into this film expecting mediocrity, as to not be disappointed. It was much, much poorer than I expected and will definitely say it's the worst film I've seen this year and possibly the worst film I've seen in a cinema.