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Reviews
General Magic (2018)
A very interesting story, once you hear the correct sound mix.
Showtime screwed up the audio when they first broadcast this, which led to dozens of permanent bad reviews here, because the music was louder than the dialog. The problem has been fixed, I have watched the stream in the Showtime app and it now sounds fine.
It's a fascinating tale for people interested in technology and even though I was working in the business at the time and know some of the people in the movie, I had never heard the whole story before.
Hulk (2003)
Slow and boring with terrible direction, writing and acting.
One point (pointless is closer to the truth). The simple origin story in the comic book is replaced by a long and very dull family psycho-drama dating back 30 years. It's a good 40 minutes (actually it is a very bad 40 minutes) before we get to see The Hulk, and even then the action scenes are no fun at all. The standard of the dialog in this movie is very low. It plays like Ang Lee wrote the script in Chinese and then got Google to translate it into English. The direction is appalling. Ang makes heavy handed use of split screen in an overly literal attempt to
evoke the feeling of comic book panels. What Ang should instead have
preserved was the fast pace and simplistic story lines of the original. This film desperately needs comic relief - lots of it. It takes itself so seriously you'd think this was Schindler's List, not an attempt at a Summer action movie.
The Mummy Returns (2001)
100% action-adventure fun
I found this sequel an improvement on the original. A total fun explosion with the pace and humor of an Indiana Jones movie. Rachel Weisz is sexy and magnificent, Brendan Fraser the perfect likeable action hero. The special effects are superb, but the film really makes its mark with the highly original scenes set in London which show an impressive inventiveness on the part of of the writing team. Shaun Parkes is hilarious as the sarcastic pilot Izzy.
Totally recommended.
The Lord of the Rings (1978)
Movie takes an axe to Tolkien's classic book
This cheapo animated version of the Lord of the Rings gallops through the story, cutting whole key sections of the plot to save time, and then peters out halfway through the story anyway. Maybe the big budget three movie version now in development will do a better job of putting the classic trilogy on the big screen.
Pay It Forward (2000)
Good film, bad ending (no spoilers in my comments)
Thought the ending (which I will not describe here, as I don't want to spoil the movie) was a bad idea. I can think of various alternate ways the story could have ended which would have worked better. Apart from that it was an interesting well-acted film, exploring the idea that positive deeds can cause a chain reaction, just as negative ones can.