jah9000

I gave the shoot-em-up / fight choreography those three stars. Otherwise, a whole lot of impossible nonsense for generally no functional reason. Cliches within cliches, as if their main point was to show two prettyboys wasting ammo.

Three stars for production value.

Premise is good. Story is bad. Chopped salad of backstory that doesn't matter, terrorist plot that has no function unless we're supposed to believe it was the one stolen from Casino Royale, total chaos of a final act that comes across like they just went with every idea mentioned at a three hour "how do we end this thing?" brainstorming meeting, with a heaping side of hammy acting cliche roles.

I don't think reading the novel would improve the story, anyway. Beginning with why Core was "hired" in the first place and ending with the senseless murder of a dozen or so people in a so-called vengeful rampage.

This story isn't movie worthy.

Presents powers without context, a menace without real motive, within a premise that barely rises above basic formula sci-fi.

Decent effects. But that doesn't make it watchable. Avoid.

The best thing to see here is the progress made in animating dinosaurs with believable screen impact. Observe the fine details, the lighting, and the compositing - all top notch, and an advancement from even the previous Pratt/Howard feature.

The main storyline was formulaic. The three "bosses" were fairly drab.

Ted Levine's talent was largely wasted by the screenplay. His character, Wheatley, was a greedy idiot. He went around dumbly threatening people and griping about his pay. He must have said something about his bonus at least three separate times. He's the lead henchman, and his demise is easymode, even corny, given the franchise's history of stunning bad guy deaths.

The tier two boss, Eli Mills, is a cookie cutter corrupt and greedy money manager who has set about scheming to create an illicit dinosaur black market in the very residence of his employer and benefactor. It's a stupid plan, especially considering the fact that the foundation spent who knows how many millions on a private island upon which to house dinosaurs. Either that was a big lie, or the scheme is ridiculous, in terms of a cash motive.

(Another goofy thing: This weird auctioneer, Eversol, played by Toby Jones, scoffs at the idea of a dinosaur auction because of s few hours delay in shipment of the animals... and acts as if his buyers will take their business elsewhere... as if there's some competition in the dinosaur breeding market. But then all of a sudden he's super on board and slinging prose about the animals as if he'd spent two years writing the catalogue.)

Anyway... Mills... straight out of the limp villain handbook. Greedy, treacherous, no regard for human life, justifies his own evil by accusing everyone else of equal evil, and dies more or less insignificantly, but at least with decent screen impact. (Ripped apart by competing carnivores.)

Final Boss, the Indo Raptor. Yawn. Not really menacing. Characters never really seemed to be in any danger, and they even had Claire Dearing climb with a claw-inflicted leg wound up onto a roof while wielding a rifle just to demonstrate how generally harmless the monster was. You just know it's going to die because the entire film has telegraphed the formula from the first few minutes onward. So, you're never worried about the characters, and the action loses impact.

Aside from the main story, there's a pointless side story. Dr. Lockwood cloned his daughter. ZOMG! No one actually cares, because this has nothing to do with anything at all. Maisie is a completely unnecessary character, as is her subplot unnecessary. It only serves to motivate the girl, at the end of the flick, to release a bunch of dinosaurs into the continental United States because they deserve to live, they were "created, just like me..." Sure, little girl. Untold numbers of human beings should die in grisly ways because you were made in a lab.

Jeff Goldblum is in the movie, doing nothing and serving no purpose. His tedious character testifies before Congress. And that's it.

It was entertaining enough, though. Cool action, especially the volcanic island sequences. See it if only for the effects/spectacle.

Three societal parasites, a skank, a dudebro loser and a useful idiot have been perpetrating burglaries in the dumbest of ways.

Somehow, a list of Useful Idiot's father's home security clients are being burglarized. As if by magic, these homes are thoroughly ransacked, vandalized, looted, before the alarm goes off. Fortunately, these morons live in the Detroit area, where crimes are apparently never investigated. If anyone did investigate, such as a cop in a coma, or Mr. Magoo, they'd immediately suspect a connection between Useful Idiot's dad and the crimes.

Also as if by magic, these losers have gotten word that an old guy in a generally abandoned neighborhood has a lot of cash in his house. As luck would have it, he's also one of Useful Idiot's dad's customers. So, they go over to rob the guy.

He's a blind guy, as it happens. A blind veteran. But they go ahead with the plan anyway. Keep in mind, the piece of crap who wrote this piece of crap expects the audience to regard these robbers of the elderly and infirm as the heroes of the story. But it's at this point that you should be eagerly anticipating whatever horrible thing is about to happen to these creeps.

The scumbags arrive at the house, and drug his dog. More winning. The house is locked up like a vault. They break in with some effort.

At this point, any action by the occupant of the house to deter or defend against this home invasion is justified. But this is augmented by the additional threat of the dudebro packing heat. After dudebro fails to force the blind veteran to ingest harmful chemicals (sleeping gas cooked up in a soda bottle), he menaces THE VICTIM with his firearm. Because he's a stupid dudebro thug with bad hair and neck tattoos and zero firearms training, the veteran easily disarms him and kills him with his own weapon.

The rest of the movie is a panicked attempt by the vermin to escape the house with the veteran's money before he gets his hands on them.

There's a subplot, sure. A wealthy woman has caused the death of the veteran's daughter. She isn't held legally responsible. Somehow, this blind guy has managed to abduct the woman, hold her captive in his basement, and has inseminated her, artificially. His deal is that she owes him a daughter. No, I'm not kidding. Somebody actually wrote that.

As the human garbage attempts to flee through the cellar, they stumble upon this woman, free her, attempt to escape with her, and she ends up being shot and killed by the veteran. Outraged, he then intends to capture the skank and inseminate her instead. The movie shows a lovely closeup of a public hair in a container of old man sperm as it's being drawn into a turkey baster type syringe. Thanks, movie. This syringe is later shoved into the old man's mouth and deployed with much sputtering. Thanks again, movie.

Which of course suggests that the skank is rescued by the Useful Idiot. Too bad. But at least the idiot doesn't make it out of the house. He finally dies trying to unlock the front door.

But the skank is sadly lucky. She escapes after she ostensibly kills the old guy.

As she's about to depart for her glorious future as a dead former meth-addicted porn star in California, she sees a news story about the burglary of the old guy, which says that he survived. She looks alarmed.

Which brings me to the plug line for the proposed sequel to this flick: "The blind old man returns to terrorize more unsuspecting people."

I do beg your pardon, movie, but the guy terrorized no one. The movie was about sociopaths who attempted to prey upon the man.

The main characters were criminals, and no one should be glad this woman got away with her numerous crimes.

Gave it a 4 rating for production value.

I wouldn't say that it was entirely necessary to BE an artist or a writer to fully appreciate this film, but I can say it doesn't hurt. That's especially true when it comes to smaller details, such as the significance of art works shown on screen and how they tie in to the overall story. I'm both a visual artist and a writer, so my review could fairly be considered biased to a certain degree.

On the less ethereal side of things, all one fundamentally needs is one good and nasty romantic heartbreak to "get it" at least the meat of it.

This is a provocative piece that tweaks and twists emotions as severely as it does visual sensibilities, but not gratuitously. It begins working you over immediately, in the opening sequence depicting an art exhibition and doesn't let go, even after its quite illustrative ending.

The production is visually stunning, with strikingly opposed moods, tones and textures. A wide range of sensory manipulation is performed through these changes, in addition to their being used as cues to shifts in the screenplay.

Some might say this is a story within a story, but it's actually more complicated AND more simple. I mention this mainly to correct the faulty description in the blurb on IMDB, and I don't believe this is a spoiler. The blurb suggests the main character reads a novel and believes it to be a veiled threat. But that is not at all what happens.

The story follows a woman who has received a copy of a manuscript written by her ex-husband. The audience then "reads" the novel along with her. As she reads the novel, she begins to understand a number of truths about her life. There are three "main veins" through which the story is told (four, if you count the artwork), but it's all one story. Again - I don't think that spoils anything. I mention this as an aid to appreciating the film.

It's one of the most impressive films I've seen in quite a while. Highly recommended.

Mean Girl trapped in loop until she figures out a crapton of teen movie tropes,

Set in the Pacific Northwest for extra moodiness,

Writer can't think of any solution to the time loop dilemma other than main character must die in place of person she's tormented into suicide. Not exactly a veiled statement - "bullies should die." How about just alerting relevant authorities that a fellow student plans to commit suicide? Then follow up, treat her like a friend, help her heal, all while making sure the Uber brat Lindsay gets straightened out.

As it stands, there is no actual resolution. This idiot girl has perpetrated a heap of additional misery upon:

Her loving family, parents will never get over it Her friends - who are stupid and shallow enough to blame the death on the girl they had been victimizing - no lesson learned. The boy who has spent his entire life loving her, who she has callously given a green light mere moments before she allows him to witness her grisly death. What the hell, writer?

Production quality high. Soundtrack excellent. Acting solid. Screenplay, stolen from a better movie and stored in a compost heap in some depressive west-coaster's organic garden. C.

Why was this set in the future? Why was the main character Amish?

I gathered that Cactus Bill was AWOL from the US military. Naad had ratted him out in an attempt to get away from him. That plus the threat of losing the kid was the motive for the murder.

But what was the need for that cloak and dagger nonsense? What an over-the-top scheme for someone driven to violence by rage. Seems a mite calculating and prolonged for a man of action known to carry a foot-long blade. The method of murder was also out of character. He's a violently angry guy and a torturer to boot. He's not going to go for a passive method and a death he doesn't even get to witness.

The Amish thing... I just don't get it. It's the furthest I've ever seen anyone go to explain a character's circumstances. Why can't this guy talk? Oh, because when he was a boy, he was swimming, and a boat came through and ran him over, and his neck was severely damaged by the propeller....

And since his family was Amish, they refused surgery, so his vocal chords were permanently ruined.

WHAT?

Leo's Amishness serves as a contrast to the high-tech reality he lives in... but it's a purposeless contrast, which ultimately doesn't matter at all to the narrative or the character. Likewise purposeless is the futuristic setting. It was like watching Bladerunner, only from the point of view of above-average extras.

Also strange was the inclusion of a pedophile in the cast... That was disturbingly out of place - up to and including attempts to actually SHOW children in states of undress in a sexual context, which suggests there's more wrong behind the camera than there is in the fictional character's screwed up (if imaginary) mind.

It's weird that this pervert survived beyond Cactus Bill. It seemed more likely that Bill would have killed his friend in a rage when he learned that he'd been tweaking Leo, putting his schemes at risk, or when he found confirmation that his friend probably had degenerate plans for his daughter.

Not only does he survive, and get access to the little girl... but he then KIDNAPS Leo... why? Oh, so that he can perform an intricate surgery upon him to restore his ability to speak... Why? Oh... so he can force him to say "I'm sorry I killed your friend."

WHAT?

He did that... kidnapped the guy, installed an artificial voicebox in his neck, all as a prelude to taking him to a bridge to throw him over...

WHAAAAAAT?

It made no sense. In the sequence, it just served to give the viewer a few more minutes of angst over the fact that a pedo had possession of the child. Otherwise, what meaningless detail! "This is the place that photo you have was taken... look, see the evidence of their relationship..."

We take it as given, man. We don't need to be convinced that the woman was Cactus's wife at this point. "I took that photo!" Oooh, what a stunning development. (So to speak.) Who cares, man? You should have been dead long before this.

Leo should have discovered the torture chamber... First, the pimp guy, still alive, who he sets free. That guy should just escape the house. Next, the pervert, dead in the freezer. As he recoils from the discovery, he spots the plastic sheeting... He finds the body of Naad, and breaks down. He takes the body out, and as he attempts to leave the basement, is confronted by Cactus on the steps.

Cactus loses, Leo rescues daughter, the end.

But nah - it's the future and all, so first Amish guy needs to become a cyborg. Perhaps someone will consider this ironic, perhaps a critique of religion, instead of just finding it to be a ridiculous waste of production budget.

Even though I say all of that - I kind of liked the way the story was woven. It was somewhat back to front, not a traditional whodunit. The work on future tech was generally pretty solid, and the performances were generally good. I give it a 6/10.

There are a few things to like about this presentation. The fight choreography wasn't bad. There was an appropriate amount of humor, which is more or less inevitable in a Drunken Style story.

There are quite a few more negatives:

1. The score was kind of one-dimensional and overly moody. It seemed more like the soundtrack of a video game than a deliberate attempt to augment a story with music.

2. There was a disappointing amount of martial arts, and when it occurred, it was generally underwhelming. Drunken fighting was even less present - which is a significant problem, for obvious reasons. There was also no real narrative relationship between the hero and the form.

He trains a bit, but he sucks at it. And then his master disappears, never to return. He "learns the secret" of Drunken Fist after being weirdly electrocuted by chi lightning while in jail, and proceeds to more impressively beat up a water barrel than any enemy he later defeats.

It's nonsensical and disjointed, and doesn't take Drunken Fist seriously (within the idiom, at least).

3. The villain is a super cheesy stereotype, complete with absurdly fake white hair and giant crazy man eyebrows.

4. There are a slew of important characters who appear out of nowhere, or vanish into nowhere, or have secret motives revealed out of the blue.

5. There is an overabundance of moody interludes, in which the hero is staring into the middle ground, breathing heavily.

6. There are numerous pointless relationships, such as the annoying woman in the brothel who supposedly harshly abandoned Beggar So when his fortunes turned, AND stole a pile of his money. Yet, there's no lead-in to this betrayal, so nobody gives a flip. It's just an absurdity, and the audience dislikes the character because she's acted badly, not because anything she did in the narrative. The "master" - I just can't get over the fact he just wanders on. He writes some letter and bails. He never faces his old foe. He's never killed so as to motivate Beggar So. He just leaves mid-story and that's that. Prior to that, he doesn't make much of an impact. He doesn't train So in any meaningful fashion - even though the realization of Drunken Fist is supposed to be his life's great dream. And then... in spite of that same fact... he just shoves off before seeing whether or not So pulls it off... WHAT? Then, his daughter... There's no chemistry, and no attempt to simulate it. She's just kind of there, and she has female body parts, and so we're expected to agree that there's a deep and great love affair going on. That's helped along (not at all) by a weird, sudden, random sex fantasy in the mind of So. Otherwise, she's furniture, existing mainly to end up a distressed damsel at the climax, when Captain Eyebrows threatens her life in a bid to escape.

7. The movie is in Chinese, with subtitles. That's cool. But it also seems to be overdubbed in Chinese. I'm sure there's some reason for this - but it's annoying. Extremely annoying.

I gave it a 2. I say it's a good effort, with a good bit of attention to detail in certain important areas. That rating is largely based upon the first segment of the flick, which is watchable and even capable of instilling false hope - but after Su Can gets arrested, the fail parade begins.

Be advised: You can't UNwatch it.

True, this review may contain spoilers. But they should be considered a merciful reprieve. Please, please, take my advice: read the "spoilers" and consider yourself punished enough.

The premise of the movie is fairly simple. A writer needed to prove he had no solid concept of time travel, paradoxes, physics, or the way highly educated people talk.

Here's my favorite quote: "The only way a time machine can be built is if someone from the future, in which one had BEEN built, used it to come back and build one."

That could serve as a summary of the general intelligence of the screenplay, and if you say it kind of clumsily while staring into the middle distance instead of at the person to whom you're talking, you can get a gist of the quality of the acting as well.

Who built future guy's time machine? I assume some guy from that guy's future, and so on and so on. At what future point and by what means is the time machine actually built? Who can say? Maybe it was spontaneously built at random like a monkey-typed Shakespearean masterpiece. Maybe it was aliens.

It's one dumb idea after another, duct-taped together with f-bombs and unmotivated aggression, pock-marked with pointless side action and completely out-of-left-field "reveals" that make no sense.

I gave this thing two stars only because it was so bad it became fun to ridicule. Somebody needs to recommend this to MST3K.

I don't believe many of the reviewers of Hanna know what the word "pretentious" means. If they do, they must enjoy mis-applying it to undeserving movies.

What's the pretense? The story is simple. It's not a bad story, it's a basic story. It's neither deliberately convoluted, nor goading in its symbolism. If you can't follow the narrative, maybe Steven Seagal movies are more your speed.

Easy-peasy summary (spoiler alert): A government agent involved in a classified and illegal embryonic DNA-manipulation experiment goes rogue when he's given the order to terminate a woman he'd recruited, for whom he'd developed a particular fondness. Rather than follow orders, he gathers the woman and her young daughter (one of the test subjects), Hanna, and attempts to go on the lam. But, his 'handler' intercepts him and attempts to gun them down along an empty stretch of highway. Her shots cause a car crash, but the three escape and run. The mother is finally shot, and the agent and Hanna succeed in disappearing.

The agent spends the next 13 or so years raising, educating, and training Hanna. He does this with a mission in mind - a revenge scheme to be carried out when the agent is satisfied that Hanna is prepared and mature enough to decide.

The rest of the movie is Hanna's tribulation after setting the revenge scheme in motion. It's sprinkled with moments of self- and world-discovery and some realizations about her father-figure, but it's still just a standard adventure with a heroine facing obstacles and adversaries on her way to achieving a goal.

I really don't see what there is to complain about, overall. There are technical faults, and a few moments that were less than believable, such as her grappling the underside of a Humvee coming out of a manhole in a split second. Hello, massive spinal injury. But, it's an action flick about a genetically-programmed perfect soldier. It's supposed to contain absurd near-super- human feats.

Is it "derivative?" No. Unless every romantic comedy is derivative. Unless every war movie is derivative. It's a formulaic piece, sure, but it doesn't rob another work. It's a spin on an idea. There are all sorts of ways to spin the "let's cook up a perfect soldier/human being" idea. From that, we get Universal Soldier, Resident Evil, Captain America, Twins. Four significantly different movies. In Hanna, we get a fifth: "What happens if the experiment is performed on embryos?" with the follow-up question, "What if one of the children is raised outside the control of the scientists/spooks?" with the bonus question "Yet, what if the kid is still trained to be lethal in combat?" and for extra fun, "What if the kid is a girl?"

All of that makes Hanna quite unique in its flavor. Add in the visual aspects and the Chemical Brothers score - It's just irrational, to me, to hate on this movie.

It's certainly not the best I've ever seen, but it's one of my favorites.

I will issue a spoiler warning - but truly, nothing can spoil this movie. It comes pre-ruined.

A "time machine" is able to identify people and pin-point locations and dates via vague references - all via voice command, and all while being a cheap recliner wrapped in Christmas lights.

That would place this object in the category of "magical" time travel mechanics, which in and of itself is not out of bounds. The absurdity of it all is simply "Take me to before Cody dropped out of school." How would the object know who Cody was, or when she dropped out of school? And that's just ONE of the many faulty time travel concepts present in the story.

There is so much absurdity in this movie, there's no way to fit a review into 1000 words. The basic fact is, these writers are terrible and the actors did them no favors. It's wall-to-wall paradoxes wrapped in a bunch of cheesy love story clichés, ending with the "Oh it was meant to be" serendipity of the two destined lovers randomly ending up on the same bus together, leaving town.

I'm so offended by the awfulness of this movie that I don't even want to expend the energy necessary to tell you in detail how bad it was, such is my absolute hatred for this movie - BUT, it is my duty as a movie lover and as a human being to do my best to prevent you from having to watch this complete dog turd. You will thank me and be pleased that you are not now doing what I am doing: trying to think of a way to strike myself across the head in such a way that I will forget I ever saw this thing. Though, I may not really wish to do that on the off chance I succeed, happen upon the title once again and decide it might be interesting.

It was not interesting. It was terrible. I feel like weeping. Better still, I feel like kicking David Ayer in the groin.

In short, the flick is about some losers being losers in the most non-interesting and non-compelling way possible, and in the end you wish more people had died, especially Ayer. Suckfest 2006. Worst movie I've seen in years, and I've seen a LOT of movies.

Christian Bale plays the part of a white guy who wishes he was a street-savvy Mexican gangsta. Apparently, he's ex military, and apparently, this is supposed to have had some impact on his present personality.

He is as convincing in this role (both as an ex-mil and as a Mexican) as Vanilla Ice is convincing as a hardcore rapper. Random extras acted better in this movie. I believe there was a Coke machine in the distance that seemed more Mexican/street than Christian Bale. I have begun to wonder if Bale can act without Christopher Nolan, or if it was simply the fault of Ayer, who in all honesty really should be arrested for terroristic activities. I can't think of another description for this flick than 'nuclear bomb'.

Don't see it, or if you do, don't say I didn't warn you.