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Reviews
The Capture (2017)
What's missing.
The cinematography was good. Does good cinematography make a good movie? No. The lighting was good. Does good lightning make a good movie? No. The acting was pretty decent. Does decent acting make for a good movie? No. What was missing? There were even some good ideas to base a story on. Do a few good ideas make a good story? No. What was missing was a story. You can have all kinds of "film school" techniques that are done fairly well but this by itself a good movie does not make. Cinematography that gives you moments of suspense, but without a decent story, does not make a good movie. A couple of 1960s era oscilloscopes and some cat 5 wire do not science fiction make. At least it was good enough that I watched it all the way through.
Nice try, but no. Plus the ending is lame.
Asteroid City (2023)
I liked it, but I don't know why...
I Guess I'm a Wes Anderson newby so there's that. I really enjoyed this movie and I really can't tell you why. Yes, the plot is a bit thin. The characters are pretty quirky and the cast is amazing. The movie is about the production of a play interspersed with the writing of the play. Black & white is used for the sections on writing and the production of the play is in oversaturated color on a "theater play" feeling set which looks like it uses painted backdrops. All I know is I had fun watching it and I will probably watch it again. I think the point of the movie is when Augie breaks character, finds the director, asks for direction and says "but I don't understand the play yet." Maybe you won't like it, many didn't, bit I did.
Native (2016)
Beethoven saves the world slowly, boringly, cryptically, with a nice score.
Here is what is good. Rupert and Ellie did a nice job of acting. The set was clean, albeit a little bit boring, the lighting was nice The score was good. The computer graphics were cryptic and sparse but good. Here is the hard news for all you film critics and would be film critics. When there is no story that means there is no story, it does not mean the film is cerebral. The concepts in this script would fit in an 8 and a 1/2 minute short. The writers and directors stretched it into an 85 minute supposedly feature film. Lack of plot does not make you think, it simply makes you bored. The actor and actress did their best to make it interesting. But there's only so much you can do with a one dimensional cryptic script. The conflict is that the aliens want to wipe out all the life on Earth. The hive mind aliens have to realize that the orders they are being given are wrong. They do this by listening to Beethoven's 5th Symphony. If you like long films that have very few concepts and one overarching conflict this movie is for you if not, maybe you can skip it.
Solar Strike (2006)
Pretty good for a (bad? no...-cheap? wait, not quite...Canadian...sorry low blow...) OK, Pretty good compared to all the 4 star movies we've been watching on free streaming.
I like Joanne Kelly, and when I saw this also had Louis Gossett Jr. I figured it was worth a shot, considering it's on a free streaming service. The rest of the acting staff are not A list material, some of the lines can be a bit wooden, in some cases as bad as singsong. Yes, the writing is not the best, and the science has, dare I say, flaws. Well, show me a disaster movie with perfect science, I dare you.
In spite of all that both my wife and I enjoyed it. It's just good enough so I could suspend my disbelief and have a good time. The movie has an environmental theme that is Foo Foo science of course, but the disaster is averted by blowing 5 thermonuclear devices, by the post Soviet Russians no less. By itself that was good enough for me to be happy with it. But wait, there is a subplot with some additional suspense. We cared if the protagonist would survive the little misunderstanding between superpower submarines. Twice the suspense all for the unbelievably low price of free ninety nine. Yup, the movie is good, enough...
Atomic: History of the A-Bomb (2019)
Cheap, uninteresting, and poorly done
I could only watch 5 minutes Before I couldn't take it anymore. The video uses stupid generic graphics to make points. When it talks about the bomb it uses little cheesy little generic graphics. When the documentary quotes Oppenheimer there is no picture of him, just a cheesey video of random people in lab coats. When the program discusses dropping the first bomb There is only a graphic of an airplane, no historical footage and they Use a graphic depicting the wrong type of airplane. Everyone knows a b twenty nine dropped the first bomb. What's with the picture of the ford tri motor looking airplane that is terribly incorrect. Did they use clipart.from PowerPoint? Then there is the narrator's voice it is so gravely and annoying. I had to turn it off I couldn't stand to watch any more. Did someone get paid for this?
Magellan (2017)
After 90 min you get 90 seconds of decent dial... I mean monolog.
The sets are low budget but that is OK. The movie is extremely slowly paced but I can live with that. I can even live with the marginal acting quality. What I'm having a problem with is the dismal plot, the lack of scientificic accuracy, and the silliness of many of the scenes on planet and in the ship. This is much too long of a movie for the amount of plot and story plus most of the plot lines do not get resolved by the end of the movie. I know that this movie probably had a really dismally small budget but give me a break. The main contact with the commander of the spaceship is the director of NASA who can only giggle.
The poor commander did not even have a belt clip to hook his ammo box in which he was carrying the communication sphere McGuffin while he was trying to climb a cliff. The big tension of that scene is that he dropped the McGuffin, had to return down the cliff to retrieve it in time to make his unrealistic launch schedule only minutesaway. Oh, the gravity on this moon or whatever was purported to be extremely low.
Hmmmmm.
This sub-mediocre Science Fiction writing at best. Oh, and the ending is pretty stupid too.
OK, Minimum character limit met.
Impact (2009)
No science, only fiction
The misrepresentation of how the physical world and the physical sciences took me out of this movie from the very start. I might have happily bought into the rest of the cliché ridden sappy story line, until some outrageous misrepresentation of gravity, inertia, propulsion, magnetism or some other junior high science concept popped me right out of caring about the story. If you can suspend caring about reality and take this movie as pure fantasy, maybe you could not hate that you wasted time on it. Even the visual effects were garbage. Even the piece of rock that supposedly got knocked out of the moon looked like a wedge of cheese with craters in the rind. Give me a break.
Sum1 (2017)
Slow paced submarine warfare or, is ET mean?
Slow paced, especially during the first 90% lwan Rheon is good enough. He sells us the loneliness and the crazy. Cinematography, music, etc was good, better than the story. I don't like slow pacing, so I was bored nearly to quitting. I stuck it out. So, what is left is the story. It keeps you guessing for a bit, is he nuts? Is the "man" pulling one over on us, that type of thing. All is mostly answered in the last 5 minutes or so, but it takes so very painfully long to get there. OK, the spoiler bit. Where did such monsters come from. Not being very organized are they simply an infestation of monsters? Why can't we/the military kill them. Maybe the "man" created them and turned them loose on us. Questions like this are NOT answered. But those are not very important questions. Scifi movie themes and scifi story conversations generally have deeper issues to think about. Yeah, not that kind of movie bro.... Just slow paced submarine warfare with monsters thrown in...
Deus (2022)
Mostly Completely Terrible
Another megalomanic villian is going to thin out the eart's population becausethe earth cannot sustain its current population. The characters are mostly all morons. They are mostly all as emotionally complex as a a group of 2 year olds. You don't really miss them as they die and get killed off. The first half of the film felt like was 90%, it dragged on forever. The black sphere MacGuffin was lame. The central computer's voice and messages were pretty lame. Unless it was meant to be an allegory for the pandemic, even the environmentalist theme was pretty lame and dare I say simplistic.
What was good?, I hear you ask. Well, let me think. OK, the design of the ship was pretty good, the patina of the walls, floor, doors worked for me. It did seem kind of big to be run by such a small crew though. Plus the earth maritime shipping containers in the cargo bay kind of put me off, but whatever.
The music chosen for the soundtrack was effective and I would say quite good overall. Especially during the last 20% Claudia Black did pretty well with her character. Having her cast in the film set certain quality expectations, but alas, the film fell short. Mostly the cast was excellent at playing emotionally stunted morons, that is a positive, right? I lasted through the whole film, but maybe you mostly won't have to.
While the Rest of Us Die: Secrets of America's Shadow Government (2020)
Hoping for the best, got the worst
Watched one episode. Leftist propaganda mixed in with lots of close ups of the nuclear football. Anti Trump to the point of slander. I don't like the guy's personality but this is ridiculous. Enough with the allegations of an unhinged man and what could he do... Then again, once in a while it's anti Nixon just for contrast. Writing this is in 2022 I say this hasn't aged well. I'm sure a third season won't dwell on a demented confused old man in charge of the football. I'm pretty sure that I won't be able to sit through even one more episode. Production is good enough technically, but the extreme bias kills any value this might have had. Too bad... don't bother.
Starforce (2000)
OK Then...
Cheesy script, adequate acting, a couple of cute actors, low budget visual effects, soldiers wearing paintball gear, all terrain cycles and a dune buggy, what's not to love?
Camera work is pretty good though. Foley and music score are actually fairly good. We made it through without quitting from boredom, so there is that. Oh, and cute little horror bugs too.
The Grand Tour: The Grand Tour Presents: Carnage A Trois (2021)
Best GT special so far.
Having driven in France only one time for a few days during the 2018 Yellow Vest protests (riots?) I was interested in what the boys' opinions on French autos and motoring.
Of all the Grand Tour specials, I enjoyed this one the most. Here's why.
1The really stupid humor was toned down a bit. Sometimes their gags are nearly unwatchable by this commentator because of the extreme degree of stupidity written into them.
2 The wanton destruction of innocent automobiles was limited to 4. I was only emotionally invested in the poor 2CV, the other 3? Well, C'est la vie. They gave their lives to demonstrate a point.
3 Yes, the commentary on French strikes hit very close to our experience with the Yellow Vests in 2018.
Bravo
It was funny, a mix of insightfully funny, why, and just plain silly. Yes I laughed out loud a few times.
Bravo!
Monsters (2010)
Monsterless Monsters
Characters are boring.
Monsters are adequate but sparse.
Story is boring.
Theme is nonexistent.
We are supposed to learn a bigger life lesson, oh please give me a break.
I was able to watch it until the end without turning it off, just barely, so there is that.
Flying the B-17 (Then and Now) (2009)
You're better off watching the Army Air Corps video on YouTube
I have seen the entire Army video somewhere else, it is pretty decent. The long non-narrated additions of a current b-17 make the video nearly too boring to watch while adding nothing that is not already in the original WWII training video. Do yourself a favor and watch the original somewhere else and skip this one. I love B-17s and do volunteer maintenance any time I can.