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2010 (1984)
More than a worthy sequel
I'm a long-time fan of hard science fiction, not space-opera (Alien, not Star Wars). They're different genres so no disrespect meant to those who enjoy the latter.
As a teenager in the 1960s I was totally enthralled by the science-fiction to science-fact crossover of NASA actually going to the moon. Naturally, I loved 2001 when it came out, and spent far too much on cinema tickets to see it again, and again, and have my mind expanded into the cosmos by Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke and Timothy Leary (uncredited).
I loved 2010 too. Director Peter Hyams did what James Cameron later did in "Aliens", his sequel to RIdley Scott's "Alien", which is this:
He followed an original masterpiece with a completely different movie that continues the story without in any way competing with or disrespecting the original.
Like "Aliens", I think 2010 can stand alone for a wider audience, those for whom the original masterpiece is too slow, or too obscure. The only backstory needed is the question "what happened to the previous mission", which is a pretty common trope nowadays.
2001 is not required viewing to enjoy 2010.
Grabbers (2012)
Instant classic. With Irish people. And alcohol.
In the genre of sci-fi monster movie, like those 50's B-flicks where an isolated group encounter a deadly alien, this movie is a masterclass in movie making.
It plays by the rules, at least to start with, setting the scene by Introducing a few interesting characters and giving them a bit of time to establish themselves, alongside bringing the scary stuff slowly to the boil.
Humor is there from the start ("Marine Psychologist"?) but never forced and never allowed to undermine the scary premise. The plot is straightforward and carefully fills any holes as it goes. Nothing is unjustified or contrived, and unlike certain other alien monster movies I could mention, Ridley, it doesn't undermine itself by making characters behave stupidly out of character just so they can be killed off.
Neither does it degenerate into last-man-standing, where only the lone protagonist and maybe his love interest are the only survivors. ( That may have been a bit of a spoiler. )
Instead we're treated to a carefully constructed set-piece that becomes a tour-de-force of drunken mayhem, as drunkenness becomes a survival skill, and we care about all of them because the peril feels real and we can't predict the outcome.
Wonderful Irish acting skills (perhaps like Ringo, they just had to Act Naturally), and a lot of booze must have gone into the brainstorming and character development.
And did I mention, it's funny. Spoilers? Playing safe by clicking "Yes", but I've tried not to give much away. It's still enjoyable to re-watch, but first time through it's best to know as little as possible.
Utopia (2020)
Character Assassination
Yes, I know, if you saw the original you despise this remake.
If you didn't, you can judge it on its own merits.
Others have lamented various aspects, and I agree, but the original was very much a UK work, and as foreign to US audiences as if it had been voiced in Korean.
So I'm ok with some leeway in the storytelling, locations and acting.
But.
Only 2 episodes in, and I've already seen 2 characters completely redefined, in a way that bodes ill for them having any kind of satisfactory character arc as the episodes unfold.
Spoiler 1 -- having Wilson rescued, instead of rescuing himself, diminishes his character arc at the instant of its first challenge.
Spoiler 2 -- Jessica's character was assassinated the moment she turned the gun on whats-her-name , making her just another psycho killer, so why should we care about her?
Neither of these distortions make the new plot better, or more suitable for US audiences, they just detract. Why, I must wonder. Maybe if I watch the rest of it I'll find out. Or not.
-------
Update, after watching the rest of the season. I still hold with my original comments above, but it turns out not to be all that bad after all, if you stick with it,
despite getting a bit silly in places (the forklifts).
But It does manage to challenge the viewer with the Boss Bad Guy's motives, and the primary character arc is that of his primary hitman, not Jessica or Wilson. You go from
repulsion and dread of him to rooting for him before the end.
For all that, I revised my rating from 2 stars to 4. The UK series is a 9 on the same scale, just sayin.
Spectre (2015)
My wish came true
When I reviewed Quantum of Solace, I wished that the next movie would have the budget for a steadicam and a director who knew how to use it, instead of the Bourne-age shaky-cam blender-edited rubbish of QoS.
Spectre delivers, in spades, on that front - the opening sequence, one very very long single take (so it appeared) from street to rooftop, looked to me to be Sam Mendez showing Marc Foster how it's done.
Satisfied by the intro, I sat back and enjoyed the rest of the movie, flaws and all, which I won't mention, as other reviewers have covered them already.
Verdict: Excellent opening, followed by a fairly good 007 outing, enjoyable, warts and all, if you've ever liked a Bond movie.
Bonus moment (the spoiler): Bond vs mouse: "who are you working for?"
Survivor (2015)
Lazy. And not in a good way.
From the cliché ridden 1-dimensional plot to the 2-dimensional cardboard cutout non-characters, this movie amazingly lacks even a single redeeming feature. Should come with a disclaimer - "the presence of well known actors in no way implies that any skill or talent was involved in the making of this movie." There are many ways to approach this kind of story - lone protagonist wrongly accused and hunted by the authorities, and by the bad guys, who is the only one who can prevent Something Bad Happening. This movie approaches it by lazy scripting, indifference to any kind of realism, not bothering with dialog or scenes that might have added a touch of individuality to any of the characters. Each character is a cliché to him/herself, and does/says nothing to personalise the role. Each scene either directly furthers the single-track plot, or fills time until the next plot point is reached. Without these empty scenes, the whole movie would be over in about 15 minutes.
Now, if it had a seriously agile kick-ass protagonist and an endless supply of kung-fu baddie henchmen instead of one tired looking former 007, then it could have been a wonderful Jacky Chan movie, despite the lack of plot and characters, just get the director to plant cameras on tripods and let the fight scenes unfold before our astonished eyes, and make sure the editor goes easy on the cuts. That way you could have 75 minutes of action and 15 minutes of obligatory (but don't take it seriously) plot to frame it, and everyone would have been happy.
Ah, maybe that's what it was. They found a script for a martial arts vehicle and thought they could skip the martial arts, too hard, too expensive, can't be bothered. In a word, lazy.
As a film-school assignment, it would earn an F.
Some nice shots of London, I suppose.
Prometheus (2012)
Astonished at the Good Reviews
Even the venerable Roger Ebert (RIP) said nice things about this movie. RottenTomatoes scores it 73% and on IMDb it's a 7. All of which shakes my trust in Reviews to the core. Suckered, I paid good money for a ticket, and the 3d glasses, and I got the best seat in the house (easy, as the cinema was totally empty apart from me - word had gotten round, it seems), so I enjoyed perfect 3d vision of the lovely CGI, and the utterly dreadful movie that contained it.
All the other low-star reviews have detailed what's wrong with this movie (basically, everything but the CGI), so I needn't repeat. What they haven't addressed is why. And the overall high ratings maybe offer a reason: Ed Wood was right, after all, the audience doesn't care, won't notice, you can't insult their intelligence because they haven't got one.
I see they're making a sequel. What a waste. The title should have been Alienate, as that's what it did for me. Goodbye Ridley, you did some good stuff back in the day, shouldn't you be retired by now?
Seven Psychopaths (2012)
Disappointing in a Cat Stevens "Foreigner" kind of way
So disappointing.
As another reviewer put it: "a half-assed Guy Ritchie version of Adaptation." Novels about writers, movies about movie people, must seem Terribly Interesting to those creating them, or perhaps to those bankrolling them. Otherwise, why do they do them? Once upon a time it happened to novelists. The first novel, a gritty and realistic drama set in the poverty of the working class environment of the writer's background, is a great success, and propels the author to fame and a little fortune. He moves to a comfortable estate in the Home Counties (if England - not sure what's the US equivalent) and his second novel is a boring diatribe about being a moderately successful writer living in comfortable circumstances and suffering from Writer's Block while trying to start/complete his second novel. And of course, it flops.
Now we have a film maker who creates a highly original and entertaining indie movie, and gets the backing to move to Hollywood and do one for the big studios. And he lounges in the way too bright California sunshine and drinks way too much and struggles to complete the screenplay by the studio's deadline.
Seemingly the same thing can befall successful recording artists: I'm reminded of Cat Steven's album "Foreigner", recorded in Jamaica, following several very successful studio albums recorded in England.
At the time, I concluded that he must have had a lovely time in Jamaica spending the studio's advance, then woke up one day realizing that he'd run out of time and money and still hadn't recorded anything, so rushed into the studio and dashed off whatever he could.
Seven Psychopaths is a Cat Stevens "Foreigner" kind of movie.
The Guard (2011)
Pure genius
Genuine Irish comedy, full of laugh-out-loud moments. Not for the easily offended, though, so don't show it to your grandmother if you don't think she'll like hearing the F-word applied to exhaustion, by all the cast and especially the star, the wonderful Brendan Gleeson.
Best odd-couple buddy cop comedy since Hot Fuzz.
Best Irish comedy since Divorcing Jack, or The Commitments.
Turn on the subtitles if the accents are too thick for you. Or, should I say, if you're too thick for the accents. (Yes, that was deliberately offensive. Just trying to give a hint of the flavor of the movie's attitude.) I found some of the reviews here hilarious. Especially the one that thought it was about tracking down a serial killer, complained about the lack of suspense and car chases, and thought the various sub-plots slowed the story.
Agreeing with another reviewer here, yes, the MI5 joke alone makes it worth the price of admission.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
The Tattoo says it all
I haven't read the books, I have watched the original Swedish trilogy, and I've read with interest many of the reviews here.
It comes down to this: the Tattoo. It doesn't appear for long in either version, so pay attention, but it says everything about the movie: The Swedish version was a huge dark scary beast with its claws ripping out of Lisbeth's flesh. Pain and anger and danger and defiance, all there.
The US remake was more like: She's down at the Tattoo Parlour - I want a tattoo, what's in the catalog? Maybe a butterfly. Oh, that dragon looks alright, let's have it.
Or more to the point, the people with the job of supplying the tattoo for this movie pulled out Dragon#3 from the nearest catalog of temporary tattoo decals.
While at the same time everyone else on the movie did a good, solid, workmanlike and uninspired job of the whole thing. They did to the character of Lisbeth what the artists did to the tattoo - watered it down, weakened it, trivialized it.
So, despite the content - replayed quite closely - the result hasn't got the punch.
Two examples (here's the Spoilers, spoilers for both versions so stop now if you haven't seen both):
************ SPOILERS ******************** The final chase, and the killer's demise. Lisbeth asks "Can I kill him?" No way, that's way out of character. And when he crashes, there's the Hollywood Car Crash Instant Explosion instead of the major plot point where she has the opportunity to rescue him, but instead chooses to stand and watch him burn. Which of course ties into her backstory (which is much understated in the US version).
And lastly - she buys the guy an expensive gift, then chucks it in a dumpster when she sees him with The Other Woman. Please..... That's so out of character. Much better the original, where her parting shot is the Gift of all the information he needs to nail his nemesis, and a rapid, shy, don't-look-back departure.
Perhaps Hollywood will remake Butch & Sundance with the final scene changed so they crawl out thru the drains or something, cut to kangaroos in the sunset...
Or Patrick Swayze washes ashore in New Zealand....
Straw Dogs (2011)
What was shocking in 1971 becomes dull in 2011
The reviews here fall into 2 groups: those who've seen the original 1971 version, and those who haven't. The first group review by comparison with what was a shockingly controversial and influential film in its day.
But the second group saw the movie without preconceptions, and I'm interested to see they mostly found it dull, boring, slow, pointless and generally unsatisfactory, despite a decent cast and smooth production.
So, what was shocking in 1971 is boring to today's audiences? That may be the most shocking thing about this remake. I watched both versions back-to-back to find out for myself, and yes, the original is a good deal more daring (for its time), the retread pulls its punches while otherwise doing a decent job of relocating and updating without changing the story.
One other point I notice: the reviewers who know about the location - the US Southern Heartland - are the ones most critical of the way the locals are portrayed.
In this I must say the remake more than mirrors the original: Knowing rural England of the 1970s, I found all the local characters very unrealistic and badly acted. I know the original movie is highly acclaimed, but really, the local English actors all came across as bit-players from the old Ealing comedies, middle class city dwelling amateur dramatics types playing at being working class country folk, with dialog and mannerisms that only a foreign director could fail to detect as phony.
So, a polished but flawed remake of an unpolished, also flawed, but controversial original. 7/10 for effort.
Macbeth (2006)
Watchable if you don't understand any English
Having just seen a condensed version of Shakespeare's Scottish Play performed very convincingly in Scotland by a 6-member Scottish cast, I found this in my local video store.
The players in Scotland, with minimal sets but with talent and the right accents, brought all the richness of the dialog to life. It was understandable, it made sense, the characters became real, the drama came to life.
The contrast with this movie couldn't be greater. Shakespeare's words spoken by Australian gangsters? A daring concept.
But did it work? Hell, no. Not for a second. Silly to expect that it could, really. I don't know any Australian (or any other) gangsters, but it's not hard - especially since Tarantino - to imagine that they really really don't naturally speak in Shakespeare's words. The actors seemed uncomfortable trying to. They said all the words, but without conviction. It felt like they'd gone thru endless retakes to get the wording right, and called it a wrap when they had a take without any actual mistakes.
Contrast Richard III, updated to 20th century and filmed in part in Battersea Power Station: when the king's jeep gets stuck, and he yells "A Horse! A Horse! My Kingom for a Horse!!!" it was actually convincing.
Still, all's not lost. Look out for a version dubbed into Cantonese, and subtitled back into English in Hong Kong, then it might come across as an edgy piece of action cinema.
Until then, sadly, it remains a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Thick as Thieves (2009)
How not to make a movie
This is only here to help push down the overall rating of this time waster. I don't think it made the cinemas, I'd have been very grumpy if I'd wasted an outing to a cinema to see it. Renting it on cheap-night was bad enough.
Made with 100% recycled material. No acting, writing, or directing talent was exercised in this production. The presence of well known actors is merely a marketing device, any resemblance to actual professional quality acting, writing, direction or editing is entirely coincidental, and completely undetectable.
It should have starred Steven Segal. Then I'd have known at once to avoid it.
Oh, and the spoiler?
What's with naming the lead character "Ripley"? A Very Untalented Mr Ripley this one was, so why the name? Trying to hitch a subliminal ride on good movies with the same character name? ("Oh, a new Ripley movie.. sounds good!")
Quantum of Solace (2008)
Shaky, not stirring
Like others who loved Casino Royale, I had high hopes for this one. The CR parkour sequence was stunning, the Origin story of Bond's first 00 mission fitted the genre wonderfully, the glib comment "Quite..." on his 2nd kill, and an explanation/origin for the gun-barrel sequence.
But this isn't a review of CR, sadly. I wanted to like QoS, but the shaky-cam stuff made me seasick. The point of shaky was, I thought, to fake a bunch of action because you haven't the budget for the stunt men to do it properly, like the swan dive off the dam at the start of Goldeneye.
I saw QoS from the back row of the cinema, and it wasn't far enough back. If ever a movie was made for watching on the back of an airplane seat, this is it.
Craig does a good 007, I think. Dench does a good M. Some of the plot was interesting, the idea that while the US could be fooled into running with the bad guys, the Brits (M in particular) wanted at least a second opinion, is a departure from the Bond franchise in which the CIA is always there with the cavalry when it's needed.
I really did want to like this movie, and I hope Craig returns as 007 with a different director and editor. And a budget big enough to include a steadicam and someone who knows how to use it.
Flyboys (2006)
Cheap video game animation. Dismal.
Tempted to rent the DVD by the good reviews here, I was hoping that modern CGI could actually make possible a realistic rendering of WW1 aviation.
No such luck. Dozens of Snoopy-Class red Fokker Triplanes, impossible aerobatics, glaring anachronisms, no sense of aerial tactics. One or two of the other one-star reviews (which I didn't notice until AFTER I'd watched the movie) go into more details, but overall it was cheap, dumb, slapdash, and evidently indifferent to the viewer's intelligence. Mind you, given the glowing reviews here of the 'realistic dogfights', maybe the producer's had their target market correctly assessed.
This would have been more realistic - and better - if it had been rendered in Roy Lichenstein comic-book style. And if Snoopy had been one of the pilots.
And I'm not even going to mention The Plot.
Divorcing Jack (1998)
Some love it, others miss the point entirely
A send-up in oh so many ways, this movie plays games with the viewer. Those who wrote negative reviews appear to have missed the point entirely. At one level it's by-the-book action/thriller, touching all the bases - deceitful politician, incompetent hoodlums (ok, terrorists), drunken reporter with wife/boss trouble. It even (spoiler!) kills off the black guy more-or-less on cue - you know, all those movies with (say) 3 goodies, and one of them is black and you just KNOW who's going to get wasted first.
But then there's the way it's told. The politician is a Tony Blair knock-off, taxi drivers and passersby all have something surprising to say (usually accompanied by plenty of swearing). The violence breaks all the rules in the Hollywood book. It Just Happens, neither evaded nor glorified - no John Woo slow-mo here - so it's much more surprising, and always final. None of the "he's dead - he's alive - oh, now he's really dead - oh, wait, no he's not" that infests so many movies. I'm also glad there was no attempt to show the (spoiler!) "Significant Flashback" - just a voice on a tape.
Jokes abound, threaded among the plot and delivered deadpan, so listen carefully. Watch out for the armoured mail-van (dismissed as "unrealistic" by one irony-impaired reviewer), and listen to the hoodlums happily reminiscing about a previous murder - far more funny, chilling, and convincing than any Tarantino patter about coffee or fast-food.
Easily the best example of REAL Irish humour since the Commitments.
Ticker (2001)
Worse than you can possibly imagine
Decent enough cast squandered by stupid plot, inept script, direction, editing.
Dont expect any martial arts action either, the only fights are so badly cut and lit that anyone could have done them.
Best moment: realising that Dennis Hopper's character is actually supposed to be Irish.
Worst moment: realising that it isn't going to get any better than the opening scene.