asby1156

A handsome, well-directed, high-gloss movie, with adequate soap-opera-like acting, but the script, unfortunately, is poor. There are simply too many improbable things that happen to make the plot work out; and, the same glaring mistake is made here that is made in too many thrillers.

The glaring mistake is having the heroine eventually recognize something is very wrong in her ideal world, and that the perpetrators could be of great danger to her if she confronted them about it. But rather than playing dumb until she can devise an escape plan, she openly confronts the dangerous perpetrators, who then should have quickly finished her off to protect their amazing (although diabolical) project, but for some mystifying reason, didn't.

Also, some improbable things happen, such as incredibly brilliant bad guys doing incredibly stupid things so our heroine can survive (if she in fact did in the end). This is what is called a "contrivance" to make the plot work out. For example, how can the bad guys not employ constant surveillance of their subjects, tracking them wherever they go once they leave their houses so they can be stopped before stumbling onto something that could greatly undermine the project (as the heroine in fact did)? It can be argued that the bad guys had to make a deal with the husbands not to surveille them or their family members inside their houses. But with such a risky endeavor involving complex technology that could go south very easily, and with several duped subjects, you would think such brilliant people would install as many fail-safes as possible.

Time-travel technology developed in 30 years, but no highly-advanced killer drones? Thirty-years of almost certain advancements in aerial drone and ground robot technology by the militaries around the world, and none of this appears in 2051? Simply herd the alien monsters by using animals as bait, then the drones slaughter them from the air? Or feed all info about one of the dead or captured alien monsters into the highly-advanced drones' computerized brains, then they would perhaps know how to track and terminate them? But I guess the writers thought they wouldn't have a movie if they included these sorts of highly-probable things, so rather than step back and try harder to make the monsters more intelligent and complex, and thus more difficult to kill, they just plowed ahead with total nonsense. But, of course, they knew they had Chris Pratt, and his huge, loyal fan base, so why transcend lazy writing?

I read a couple dozen volumes of the comic book as a favor to my nephew, who is a big fan. So Seasons 2 & 3 should be more appealing to Amazon's large audience if Amazon writers avoid wokeness, too much time travel, too many alternate versions of characters/universes, and especially too many side conflicts involving way too many superheroes and villains/monsters. I think a wider audience would be more entertained--and much less confused--if the Amazon writers concentrate on a few major items, especially the conflict between Mark Grayson and the Viltrumites, which involved battles, alliances, double-crosses, compromises, twists, etc.--with family and romantic matters regularly worked in. And Amazon should get rid of all the profanity they've added in Season 1. The comic book had lots of violence, but no profanity until sprinkled into the final five or so volumes I read. In fact, I thought the comic book's characters' non-profane dialogue was quite coherent and intelligent.

In the comic book volumes, provocative items like abortion and rape occur, which I think should be removed because they could alienate a wider audience. So have the superhero heroine avoid abortion and have two children rather than one, and then remove the female alien raping scene.

The comic book's romantic twist seemed so sudden, so clunky, not gradual. So have Mark and the superhero heroine finally get together romantically after Mark is badly injured during their defeat of the Viltrumite's principal enforcer (Conquest) in what I thought was the most exciting battle of the comic book volumes I read ("Still Standing"). Draw out the romance so viewers don't see the twist coming a mile away. Comic book readers, who I assume are mostly teenage and young-adult males like my nephew, probably care far more about action than romance, so why worry if the romance is clunky? But a much larger audience (Amazon viewers) could.

The repetitiveness of superheroes fighting various creatures obviously wows comic book fans. But I think this repetitiveness will bore and thus turn off a much larger audience of Amazon viewers, most who haven't read comics since they were kids, and are seeing this story for free. Mark and his allies' conflict with the Viltrumites was extremely well done. So I think Amazon could produce at least four entertaining seasons by solely concentrating on this conflict.

Excellent cinematography; and, good direction from actor John Krasinski, especially in building tension and producing several neat jump scares. But there was little background information about the alien monsters. And there were just too many ridiculous contrivances used to move the story along--a classic example: the parents allow a young child to lag far behind them rather than keeping all their children closely in front of them, especially when traversing an area they knew had monsters roaming around in it.

You would think Apache helicopter gunships could have herded the monsters from the air via various sounds, then easily finished them off. I can only think the military had not yet gotten out to certain rural areas to deal with the monsters at the time this story took place, and thus had sealed off these areas so humans and monsters could neither enter nor leave.

Hopefully, the sequel (I would prefer a prequel) will provide more--convincing--information about many things, especially pertaining to the alien monsters.

I write this review as an American after seeing El Dragon's series 1 & 2 on Netflix. This telenovela is a very handsomely-produced and directed romantic thriller similar to the excellent 2016 British romantic thriller "The Night Manager."

The main strength is the actors playing the hero and heroine: Sebastian Rulli (as Miguel Garza) and especially Renata Notni (as Adela Cruz). To say these two actors have chemistry is an understatement. And Ms. Notni is one of the most charismatic actors I have ever seen; and, Mr. Rulli is not far behind. This is what is so great about streaming services: Americans like me can watch excellent tv/theatrical movies and actors from other countries. I think with this production, Mexico has joined South Korea and Spain on that level. And I hope Mr. Rulli and Ms. Notni will get a chance to star or co-star in major Hollywood movies. (I recommend watching their performance with subtitles; not with dubbing.)

Other strengths are the elegant and clever dialogue written for Mr. Rulli and Ms. Notni when they speak to each other, as well as the bad guys' non-politically-correct dialogue. Add to this the excellent cinematography; and, most of the twists are well-thought-out; they do not occur because of contrivances.

There are some flaws. Two irritating ones are the many storylines crisscrossing one another; and, the makeup. The investigative journalism portion is not even needed, distracting from the main story. And making up Mexican actors to look Japanese seemed very amateurish. No money for Japanese actors?

But the major flaw by far in my opinion--and why I selected a spoiler alert with this review--is the fate of one of the principal characters at the end of Series 2. If there is a Series 3, I cannot see how it could remotely be as popular without this character/actor. Possibly a dream sequence added to the beginning of a Series 3, like the famous Bobby-Ewing-return in the popular tv soap opera "Dallas"?

James Cameron's revival of the terminator franchise was a middling effort at best. The action scenes were very entertaining, but Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger's lack of enthusiasm was painfully obvious to this reviewer. Also, the chemistry between Ms. Hamilton and Michael Biehn; and between Mr. Schwarzenegger and Edward Furlong; that was so effective in helping make Terminator 1 & 2 into sci-fi classics, was definitely missing between Mackenzie Davis and Natalia Reyes. Both actresses had to try much too hard to try to make it work, and that could be blamed on the script's wokeness. I think this story would have been far more appealing if Mr. Cameron had cast Ms. Davis and Gabriel Luna (this movie's terminator) in each other's roles. And the witty, clever dialogue that Mr. Cameron is known for was definitely missing.

Technically, the script seemed to suffer on several occasions: For example, why did Sarah Connor have to kill terminators before terminator Gabriel if Dani Ramos is the principal human threat to Legion? Were there multiple human threats to Legion, and Dani was just one of them? If Sarah has all this experience wasting terminators, why didn't she use the significant firepower she previously possessed to immediately terminate this terminator? Why did she need Grace and Carl to help her so significantly this time? Why did this terminator seemingly have to get up close to spear Dani to eliminate her? Could he not have clandestinely taken her out from afar with a high-powered rifle, rocket launcher, armed drone, etc.? Why did this terminator move lightning fast sometimes and not during close-in confrontations with Dani and her protectors? And the amazing coincidences pertaining to the cargo plane and the dam? And Carl becoming more human without being reprogrammed? (Carl's nature miraculously changing is the most ridiculous nonsense I have ever seen in a sci-fi movie.) And so on and so forth.

I don't know why the political stuff pertaining to the U.S. southern border was included in a terminator movie. But at least white males were not made to look like incompetent fools. I liked seeing Latino characters as co-leads in a big budget movie. Whites are not the only folks who can entertain people from across the planet.

As a big sci-fi fan, I will give just about any new sci-fi movie, tentpole to tiny, a go, hoping it will entertain me. This movie only did in spots. So I hope James Cameron pays attention to the critics and the lack of box-office success of this movie so he doesn't make the same mistakes with his next Avatar effort.

A fast-action thriller set in the near future. Excellent performances by the principal actors helped by an excellent script and cinematography. In real life, the lead actor is a former South Korean Army soldier, and the lead actress is the daughter of a senior South Korean military officer. This possibly helped them give strong performances in a military-esque type of drama. And they are both tall; quite tall for Asian actors. I'm not sure if tall Asian actors are now being pushed in thrillers because they will come across better to international audiences or not. But these two certainly have potential for international success.

The only reason I gave this movie a 9 rather than a 10 is because there is a contrivance at the end. Spoiler Alert!!! The noble leader of the renegade group of law enforcement reformers is obviously quite insightful and intelligent. So why would he want to kill off the heroine at the end, knowing she had to do what she did to save her very physically-ill younger brother? This was obviously done to set up a big, impressively-choreographed fight between the group leader and the hero over the heroine's fate. Everything worked out in the end, but I thought the writer could have done a better job of finishing the story without making the group leader have a temporary mental lapse near the end.

This movie, like the outstanding "Train To Busan," shows that Hollywood better pay close attention to South Korean film makers, especially pertaining to thrillers.

I agree with so many of the reviewers who have written that "Alien: Covenant" is a big, sloppy mess. And it has neither suspense nor spookiness.

But I think the problem starts with its predecessor, "Prometheus." Ridley Scott is one of the greatest directors of all time, but he started this series of prequels with the wrong premise; i.e., tying the Engineers and androids so closely to the aliens rather than keeping the conflict between humans and aliens. The entire series of movies has "aliens" or "alien" in each title, not "Engineers" or "androids." So the series should principally be about the aliens and humans. I think had Prometheus been strictly about the alien origin, then tying in the Engineers in a much later prequel, while downplaying the androids, then Alien Covenant could have been done much better.

I believe letting Elizabeth Shaw survive at the end of Prometheus on the alien planet by her wits in the space lab, then sending out stress calls, would have been a better setup, rather than flying away with android Michael. The stress calls could then be eventually received by a Weyland vessel, and a team of marines or Weyland-paid mercenaries could be sent to the alien planet to find out what has happened. The first two alien movies, which are sci-fi classics, did not stress the Engineers. The androids did play a major role in both movies, but they did not remotely overshadow Ripley or other principal humans.

Instead, Weyland executives appear to simply blow off the loss of their company's owner and female heir, as well as their very expensive vessel and lab. Then some entity sends out a group of colonists to explore a new world. Can you imagine if a Fortune 10 company in this day and time lost a major vessel and the company's owners? You can bet that company would do everything it could to find out what happened.

I think Ridley Scott needs to start over with the prequels; or, somehow push the androids and Engineers down to supporting roles, and bring back the humans vs. the aliens.