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Mandeth
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Fear the Walking Dead: So Close, Yet So Far (2015)
Fail The Walking Dead
Two episodes old and already this show is the most witless show on TV. Stupid characters portrayed by very weak acting, combined with amateur writing make for one on the worst TV series I've seen in quite some time.
Last week we saw the central characters react to seeing a zombie with less emotion than a person who finds someone ate their bag of Doritos.
This week we see Madison Clark, played by Kim Dickens, forced to make her 1st zombie kill by smashing the head of Artie, her longtime friend and co worker, and then react as if she just sprayed a few bugs with a can of Raid.
Madison shows no emotion whatsoever as she smashes Artie's head with a fire extinguisher. Hours later Madison sobs at her house, though we aren't sure exactly what finally got to her. But we do know she's not mourning poor Artie. And that bashing a human skull in didn't bother Madison in the least.
The rest of the episode was excruciating to watch as the impossibly stupid characters made impossibly stupid decisions.
The writing is a mess. We have riots taking place, bits of lawlessness here and there, while a couple miles away people act like it isn't even happening. They don't even watch it on TV. Word of the dead rising hasn't spread over the net, TV or through the many other means of communication that exists.
Fear The Walking Dead writer's really couldn't think of a believable way to transition the world we know into a zombie apocalypse. The show is so void of redeeming quality that there is not any potential in any part of the writing or character creation.
I have no doubt the ratings will slide. But considering how bad this show is, I think it is possible it will devalue the original series for some.
Fear the Walking Dead: Pilot (2015)
No Fear Of The Walking Dead
Fear The Walking Dead was a huge letdown and my expectations were actually set pretty low to begin with. The show kept building to the climax moment when the central characters finally realize the dead are rising. And when it got to that point it was a weak finish. The characters actually reacted like it was no big deal. Like they had run over a dog or something. The rest of the show was forgettable and uneventful. 15 - 25 minutes of show stretched out over 90 minutes.
Walking Dead and now FTWD like to move along at a snail's pace. That means the viewer gets less bang for their time spent watching it and the creators get to do less and maintain a lower budget.
I'm not going to bother pointing at flaws, as if the pilot could've been better if this or that were different. Instead I'll write it off as a total waste of space. And the most lackluster intro to a zombie apocalypse I've seen in the zombie genre.
I give it 1 star because it failed to achieve any of it's goals.
The Interview (2014)
It's Love Guru bad!
Remember Stroker Ace, Cannonball Run II, Police Academy, Zapped, Cable Guy, Ernest Goes To Camp, Crocodile Dundee In LA? All of those movies are better than The Interview. It's Love Guru bad.
There's not one single entertaining moment found in the entire movie. North Korea did Seth Rogen a huge favor by creating the stir around the film. This movie was doomed to fail in the box office and Rogen was going to look very bad. Now Rogen has quite the excuse to save face.
Nevertheless, this thing does prove once and for all that Rogen has no business headlining films. He needs to do TV or stick to supporting roles as the fat sidekick to better and funnier actors.
Franco doesn't have a comedic bone in his body. His premature aging got my attention more than his boring attempts at comedy.
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Force of Nature (1993)
A terrible attempt at an anti-pollution episode
This was a terrible episode. And it would foreshadow the mediocre direction of Brannon Braga produced Star Trek. This episode was meant to make people think about pollution. But it used the fictitious warp drive as the method and created a story line that says warp speed was damaging space. All that was achieved was the very clear idea that Braga looked at his viewers as if they were children. This episode felt very much like some light made for kids show with superheroes giving us sermons of how we should live our lives.
This show may have been a swing for the fences by Braga in terms of landing some sort of award like the Peabody. Whatever his goal, it failed miserably.
Near the end the cast all take turns delivering political points on protecting the environment of space from further damage and the scene plays like a cheesy public service message.
It is incredible that they did not have the actors go ahead and officially break the 4th wall and deliver a message to the viewers from Braga. And they may as well have done that since the scene was so obviously written to make Trek and the actors look politically correct and the lines seemed to come from the actors not the characters.
This was very close to being The Next Generation's worst episode and unfortunately all of Braga's Enterprise and 75% of Voyager was far worse.
Brannon Braga is to Star Trek as Joel Schumacher to Batman. Braga killed Trek just as Schumacher killed the 90's Bat-films. Both are two men with no talent or instinct for entertainment and should be kept away from it FOREVER!!
Son of God (2014)
'Son Of God' : A Good Film In A Bad Time!
I've seen this film and I've seen the critics unfairly bashing it. It is sad that critics would give great reviews to films like Iron Man 3, 21 Jump Street, Magic Mike but hate on and target 'Son Of God'. This film will not be judged as a film but instead it will be condemned by Liberals in the media because it represents Christian beliefs and The Bible.
But if you judge this film as a film and without bias you will enjoy it. The casting is the first thing I noticed and it was great with the exception of Roma Downey as Mary. It is quite absurd to have a Mary with an obviously artificial face. Downey's face lift and lip injections make her look unnatural and unappealing. And when she is on screen it is a distraction. I note Roma Downey has been targeted in some spite filled critic reviews and I am not trying to bash her. But it is bad enough to see celebrities before and after plastic surgery disasters and it is really a tone killer to see obvious bad plastic surgery displayed in a film about the life of Christ set over two thousand years ago.
But the rest of the cast are excellent. Diogo Morgado's Jesus is the best portrayal yet. Many films about Christ seem unsure of how to present him. Or in some cases such as the 1979 'Jesus' starring Brian Deacon, Christ never seems quite real and is often detached from humanity. Diogo Morgado's portrayal will not get the praise it deserves in the Anti-Christ environment that we live in but in this film's Jesus is finally a man whom we can relate to.
Some critics have also attacked the production values and even the music of Hanz Zimmer and Lorne Balfe. That is also an unfair attack against the film. The music is very nice and the production values are excellent.
This film may not follow The Bible 100% of the time it does a remarkable job of depicting a Jesus that finally seems like a real multi-dimensional person while beautifully conveying the spirit of his story.
Justice League: War (2014)
Back to cartoons for the Justice League but with a slight edge.
'Justice League: War' really got nothing right. I'll start with the heroes. The heroes were like a mix of the Super Friends and the 1980's GI Joe animated series. And the end result was 2 dimensional and hollow heroes similar to the Power Rangers. There was really nothing to them but powers or technology. The people they are were rendered meaningless and their powers and abilities were vastly over used. I could tell within 5 minutes that this was not going to be one of those great WB Animated films like Mask Of The Phantasm. The tone, bad sound effects, the cheesy dialog and the quality of the voices really felt like an old cartoon rather than the grown up word we use these days: animation. Endless scenes of the seven superheroes bashing Para-demons which felt like a rehash of the cheesy live action Avengers film. And then we get a version of Darkseid that is by far the worst I've seen. He seemed and looked oddly more like the mindless Doomsday than the menacing Darkseid. This takes animation a huge step back to the days of GI Joe, Real Ghostbusters and Transformers. It is obvious that this...cartoon is supposed to help build interest for a live action Justice League film. Instead it makes the Justice League look even more juvenile and simplistic than Marvel's Avengers.
This cartoon's makers tried to give this an edge with some blood, profanity and Superman taking another life but this was nothing but a simplistic cartoon disguised as what we call 'animation' just so it's OK for big boys to watch.
Out of the Furnace (2013)
Out Of The Furnace is a very rare non-commercial masterpiece!
Do we have "film critics" giving great reviews to Iron Man 3, Into Darkness but actually not liking this film?!? Amazingly, we do. Which makes me wonder if Critics still rate films based upon artistic merit or commercial value. Out Of The Furnace has a remarkable cast with Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson, Casey Affleck, Willem Dafoe, Zoe Saldana and Forest Whitaker who are brilliant in this wonderfully written and directed masterpiece. Other not so well known cast, who were equally remarkable includes veteran actors Tom Bower, Bobby Wolfe, Sam Shepard, Nancy Mosser, and Charles David Richards to list a few. Combined the cast deliver pure acting. Unpolluted by the commercialized process of typical Hollywood films. This film is to me simply art on display. It does not conform to any pre-established Hollywood styles or typicality. Instead it cuts it's own path. No Hollywood beginning, middle or nice and tidy Hollywood ending to appease members of some early screening. I'm sure a film like this will be hard to digest for those who get a steady diet of pap films like; Transformers, Marvel Films, Jack Sparrow, Potter and Twilight. Unfortunately, looking at the sum of critics reviews regarding this film at Rotten Tomatoes, many critics prefer the corporate friendly, CGI heavy, stylized and formulaic typical offering from Hollywood.
If you are one who loves real films like the rich dramas of the 70's, then you may very well love this film. To me, this is the best film I've seen in 2013! Thank you to all involved for this great film!
Parkland (2013)
Parkland: The 1st film to explore the human tragedy of the JFK assassination.
I started watching this film expecting to be mildly entertained and to be caught up in an interesting conspiracy watch.
But somehow all involved made a film about a subject that is all too familiar, very intense, very deep and above all fresh. Each actor was superb. Their performances combined with excellent writing and directing creates great drama that really pulled me into the film. The film is very poignant and does a magnificent job of reminding us of the gravity of the Assassination of JFK and what it did to this country. The film also has a very wonderful and heart-rending score.
This is not a film about the assassination conspiracies. It is a film about how the JFK assassination impacted the people close to him and the people of this country that day and in the immediate days that followed.
I was just telling someone I had not seen a great film from 2013. Now I have.
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
Star Trek II The Not So Wrath Of CumberKhan
The 2009 Star Trek film by J.J. Abrams was a mix of 80's films like Police Academy and Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek. Gone was the intellect. Replaced by a Kirk played by Chris Pine who was ripped from Steve Guttenberg's Officer Mahoney of the Police Academy movies. A Zach Quinto Spock that seemed like a comical parody of the original one of the most miscast casts ever in film. Abrams' Trek crew wasn't smart enough to pilot a canoe but they were all thrown into his version of the Enterprise, so we could have some fun teen hi-jinks in Star Trek meets American Pie. Unfortunately the dumbed down Porky's Trek made some money. So we get a sequel; 'Star Trek Into Darkness'. This film's buildup has been totally centered around the I.D. of the villain. Of course that secret may or may not be a secret but finding that out adds no enjoyment here. And the big reveal is that Abrams did indeed attempt to recreate Khan. This Khan is not the handsome, deadly, strategist played so well by Ricardo Montalban. Instead he is a whimsical, crying, effeminate, boring Khan played oh not so well by Benedict Cumberbatch. So I'll call him...CumberKhan. And he's not a strategist of any kind. In fact he wouldn't even make a good terrorist in the real world but in Abrams dumb world of Mahoney- Kirk, he is quite deadly. CumberKhan wants to attack Starfleet command. His genius and diabolical plan: Mass shooting! Yeah. That's right. A big Sci Fi, big movie villain is reduced to being a mass-shooter. And so he goes all mass shooter and shoots up a command meeting. His mass shooting is cut short by Mahoney-Kirk and CumberKhan escapes. But not before CumberKhan's mass shooting fatally wounds Mahoney-Kirk's mentor Admiral Pike, thus creating some vague implication of a rivalry between them. So Mahoney-Kirk and the rest of the miscast Trek parody crew take off looking for CumberKhan. Once they find and capture him, they find a gentle, crying and motherly CumberKhan. CumberKhan is only doing bad things because Starfleet's Admiral Marcus, played by Peter Weller, has his crew from 300 years ago captive in their cryogenic pods. And CumberKhan wants them back. So CumberKhan isn't a villain really. He's more like the poor misunderstood Abominable Snowman in the old classic Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer. He's just a misfit. Admiral Marcus is the real villain who had CumberKhan's crew loaded into torpedoes onto the Enterprise with a 'do not open' order with instructions to use them to kill CumberKhan.
Once that's settled, Marcus shows up in the USS Vengeance. He wants CumberKhan, Mahoney-Kirk wants to keep Cumber-Khan and go to Earth to rat out Marcus so we get a big battle. Both ships are damaged. Mahoney- Kirk and CumberKhan literally jump from the Enterprise to the USS Vengeance, Marcus gets killed and CumberKhan decides to betray Mahoney- Kirk and turns the USS Vengeance on the Enterprise and demands his crew be returned. We get another brief battle that leaves the Enterprise damaged. USS Vengeance crashes to the Earth and San Francisco, CumberKhan of course survives and runs off into the city.
We get a bizarre Abrams Police Academy style version of Trek II's classic death of Spock scene, Only this time it's Mahoney-Kirk who dies while Parody-Spock watches. And this time none of it matters as it did in Trek II since these characters do not matter. Mahoney-Kirk's death is shortlived,(LOL!)when he's resurrected after Dr. Parody-McCoy takes some of CumberKhan's blood and injects it into a dead tribble. I guess injecting dead tribbles with liquids is fun in the 23rd century. Then when Parody-McCoy sees CumberKhan's blood can revive the dead, he has Parody-Spock chase down CumberKhan, get some more blood and voila; Mahoney-Kirk is back. By the way this is the same he's dead now he's alive Hollywood stunt usually reserved for the end of bad movies or TV shows to inject some form of impact and meaning when the actual ending has none. It's an old Hollywood trick developed and used in TV and films like Gilligan's Island and Short Circuit. And the trick is once again deployed here by the overrated Abrams to make people think they saw something relevant. Actually it was done better on Gilligan's Island. The Skipper, Professor, the Howell's, Ginger and Mary Ann standing and mourning the Skipper's apparently dead 'Little Buddy' when he falls out of a tree and lands on the Skipper's head. Hmm. Maybe if Kirk had fallen out of a tree on...nah. Wouldn't work because who cares about Abrams and Chris Pine's Mahoney-Kirk.
I suppose this film was called 'Into Darkness' because of Mahoney-Kirk's brief death. Whatever the reason, this film further signifies the end of the true thought invoking and socially relevant Star Trek.
Iron Man Three (2013)
Iron Man 3: Shane Black's tribute to Lethal Weapon
Just saw Iron Man 3 and the problem with the film isn't The Mandarin, which Stark himself calls "Embarrassing."
The movie actually lacks continuity with the previous Marvel films featuring Robert Downey JR. as Tony Stark/Iron Man in some very big ways. Up until this film Tony has been brilliant and resourceful. And the Iron Man armor has been a powerful weapon. But in this film Tony is a guy with a big mouth who isn't all that great with the suit and his suits seem like they're made of aluminum scrap. And there are various times in the film where Tony's once amazing tech is reduced to malfunctioning junk just for cheap laughs.
It also seems like the creators of Iron Man 3 forgot that Tony Stark's mini Arc Reactor powers his various Iron Man suits. The mini Arc Reactor was the driving plot point of Iron Man. It's what everyone was fighting about and it was ripped from Tony Stark's chest by Obadiah Stane and used to power Stane's Iron Monger weaponry. Later Stark recovers the mini Arc and places it back inside his chest. It's still there in Iron Man 3, yet Stark runs around looking for ways to jump start his Iron Man armor after it's damaged.
There's also no explanation as to why Tony stays in Tennessee as if hes stranded and why Tony labors on repairs for his damaged armor when later we find Tony has had dozens of fully operational Iron Man suits hidden in California, that he could summon at any time. And why did Tony don his only non operational suit after daring terrorists to attack him at home in California, when he had many ready to go suits in his basement and bunker?
We learned in Avengers that Tony's artificial intelligence design; 'Jarvis', also exists in the NYC Stark Tower and can manufacture suits without assistance. Yet in Iron Man 3 he only exists in the Iron Man armor after the Malibu home is destroyed. Another bit of Iron Man canon that is ignored to keep Tony stranded in Tennessee and stuck with a damaged Iron Man suit.
Tony's Iron Man armor has survived direct hits from missiles, being run over by a car, SHIELD Heli-Carrier propellers, Thor's hammer and many violent crashes in previous films but in Iron Man 3 it is shattered by a collision with a semi truck and later in the climatic battle, multiple suits are ripped apart like wet tissue.
Iron Man 3 was directed and co-written by Shane Black, the creator and writer of the Lethal Weapon series. And much of this movie breaks the cannon of 2 Iron Man films and Avengers, just to morph Iron Man into a retread of Shane Black's glory days writing scenes for Rigg's and Murtagh.
Shane Black became friends with Downey JR. while they worked on Black's 'Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang'. It was Downey JR. who pulled some strings within Marvel Films to get Black his Iron Man 3 gig. Marvel did itself and it's fans a great disservice handing such control of it's Iron Man franchise over to Black who in turn used it to pay homage to himself and to his Lethal Weapon series.