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The Mountain Between Us (2017)
Heartwarming Adventure
It is a standard formula: Two people get into a sticky situation and have to push through
This movie does not try to show the "epic adventurer" (Tomb Raider 2018) or "too angry to die" (The Revenant, 2015), but instead attributes survival to the sheer will of not letting go of hope.
Makes it less hard of a watch without giving away the ending. An ending that should have either been more or less specific.
Hidden Figures (2016)
Song of Unknown Heroes
This film shines a spotlight on those who got the US into space without forgetting to point out the hurdles put in the way of those who did their part in the colossal effort.
A must watch for Space Enthusiasts!
Tomb Raider (2018)
Just like the 2013 Video Game
For the better of the movie, it does not have pointless survival elements or "I am such a poor girl"-moments.
Instead, after a short introduction, the viewer is sent along the trip of Lara Croft in search of her father.
One of the annoying things all the games since 2013 have is "excessive breathing". Lara is not 80, but chuffs like a steam engine...
+ Action is spot on
+ Story works
+ No boring burdon from the game
- character interaction feels a bit shallow at times
- Lara remains an unknown (just like in the games...)
TL;DR This is more or less a perfect movie adaptation of the 2013 Tomb Raider game. If you disliked the game for beeing drawn out, you will like this.
Ad Astra (2019)
Started in automatic, insisted on manual but could not find the gears
After a more or less standard opening establishing the typical problem caused by the typical military people needs to be solved by our hero, while remaining undercover, because how else?
This hero is the first thing that is not standard, not completly at least.
Some more imersive SciFi world gets built.
The next what felt like 20 minutes was good. Humanity has the foot in the door to a inter planetary species, atmosphere is dark and the "bad guys" feel shady.
Action kicks off with a chase, the real bad guys show up.
Then the story, that opted to drive automatic with all-typical until now, decides it wants to drive in manual, then proceeds to not getting into 3rd gear.
At this point the VFX guys called it a week, so dirty default concrete military base set gets taken from storage. No Sci-Fi for you!
Our new found crew follows a call for help and finds an empty ship. Tension rises as none is there to explain anything. What I suspect is an experiment gone wrong, that info is given, then leads to a minor inconvenience for Mr No-Feelings hero.
This empty ship that is there because... who knows why it is there, for action reasons.
Instead of the crew bonding over this event, they get put on a shelf, because we may need them later.
Military shady happens. Nothing is explained, more loose strings get tossed out.
And the shade is taken away with a typical Sci-Fi glas tablet. Because driving automatic is easier. We would be picking up speed, but the tension curve is a straight line going nowhere. No depth to the main character except for "maybe my dad is the bad guy?"-feels.
The movie takes the 5 minute break to confirm, shady military guys are shady confirmed.
Crew from earlier who we did not know gets killed for good in a horror movie style bad decisions gone wrong event. And this would be very tragic, if we would have been introduced to them. Mr. No-Feelings has brief seld doubt. The film is desperatly trying to get 3rd gear in and climb the tension hill!
Turns out, we had enough speed to slide over the crest. Time for 30 minutes of absolutely nothing! Camera crew and VFX guys did an amazing job though.
Rolling on a straight in 2nd gear, the expected ending gets dragged out a bit.
Someone then decided to suddenly cut to a foreshadowing, and then back to this little tension we had going to kill it off for good.
And then the thing... ends.
All the loose ends are hanging like the electrician quit his job after taking the ceiling tiles out.
Its own logic was thrown overboard at some point. Ships suddenly do the Starwars thruster break (without front facing thrusters), to be honest, I did not care anymore.
Music and Sound were good, images were well crafted. Now if someone please can write a good story line for it, and only make it 90 minutes. You don't need 120 minutes for a "my father is the bad guy"-story.
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)
Needed some polish on the story
Not quite sure where to put this film.
While the action, camera and sound design were definetly on the good side, the plot tries to get some depth going, but it just does not get it right enough to convince and to be remembered.
The introduction works, despite beeing a bit cliché. Soldier gets injured, meets his great love and gets recruited by the CIA by a guy who has the "seen it all"-look on his face.
Then the money and time saving "x years later" headline happens and semi-broken man is now an agent doing business men things. Had this part gone for 5 minutes more, I would have quit watching. Was too much info nobody asked for, a repeating problem.
As a business man he meats the villain. A plan is made to do agent things wich then gets a twist that works okay, hadnt it been teased so hard before, it would have worked better. There is a 6/10 tension at this point. The main problem beeing that every hurdle is jumped via "CIA has an insider". While copying data to a flash drive, there are things are explained wich nobody asked for.
The best persuit scene in the film follows, action is good, tension is not quite as high as I would have liked. Camera work is excellent here, not too much not to little movement.
A typical main character scene follows. He is an analyst, sure, but how do pieces of information click for him put not for a team of CIA agents?
For some reason, the film then closes with a "double ending".
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
An odd one
I went into this knowing barely anything.
First impression were "Lot of grey" and "There is rain in the future".
Without many words a story gets shown, not told, shown. Some movies get this wrong and try to be an audiobook with visuals, not this one. You could probably watch without sound and still understand everything.
Visually stunning, not much more to say.
The audio is a different story. No idea if this has to do with the bluray, but the levels varied from "cant hear a thing" to "that is loud". When you dont know what an audio compressor is, you are not alone, neither did the sound designer! I found myself reaching for the remote more often than I should to adjust volume up or down.
Apart from volume levels varying too much, very nice experience.
The Huntsman: Winter's War (2016)
Has its moments
- Story is okay
- dialogue is cringy at times
- CGI is 6/10
The movie starts out rather serious, then decides it does not want to be so serious. Then is serious again, then not so serious. This alternation between beeing serious and slacking off makes this hard to watch.
The jokes and relieves (relieves to wich tension exactly?) are well delivered. Towards the middle, the movie reaches peak mediocre. Stuff gets done for no reason, there is a fight with trolls/cobolts/whatever for, suddenly Eric crossed the bridge he just destroyed? The final "fight" is completly boring, the final heroic action of the "not-so-evil"-ice queen is expected at that point. Main characters, Eric and Sara both shrug off their near demise and walk off. Personally, the two dwarfs, Nion and Doreena were less cold hearted than Eric and Sara. Mrs Blunt played the dying queen rather well though.
Interstellar (2014)
A Sci-Fi movie that makes sense
- Soundtrack is amazing
- Realistic, 2001-ish space happenings
- Story without potholes
It is a fantastic movie! No other way to say it. The soundtrack fits the scenes, scenes that are well writen, acted in a natural manner filling a story that just makes sense.
Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
Enjoyable experience
- Story made sense to me (in some movies, I get lost thinking about the how and why because of a plot hole in minute 4, did not happen with this one).
- Action scenes were solid.
- Acting (especially voice) was like I would expect the characters to behave.
- Visuals are 10/10.
- When I payed attention, Soundtrack was good.
Should probably mention that I did not know the story before. I just went to the theater and watched the thing.
Spoilers ahead:
Overall, the movie gave a warm welcome, a reason why this is happening and then put you on the back seat for a ride. Nice mix of darkness and light, of action and calm. The buildup was a bit odd. Sometimes there was some tension, then it got lost to be picked up again. Tension build, story gave some depth without throwing questions it was not answering. Good times. Then the beginning came into context, it would later be the final and ending (I like that. Story elements that get picked up again. Gives it a nice round feel). Epic fight scenes, not sure if the soundtrack was any good here, had to watch an epic-scale bar-brawl. And then it came to an end, a conclusion (with a murder or two wich I don´t get why they are important). The movie did not drag out, did not overstay its welcome, did not loosen the tension completly, did not put obvious&obnoxious "more in the next one" questions.
I like it. Will buy the BluRay when it comes out.
The only thing that was wierd was that I saw the beginning twice (yes, in the movie theater, twice. Projector was set to 2D making the image flicker. Got fixed in 10 minutes and after a reboot).