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Reviews
Ex Machina (2014)
Succeeds in spite of poor writing, pacing and acting
Despite its many problems, this movie packs a hellacious punch.
YOU CANNOT, ANY LONGER, THINK OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AS SOMETHING THAT WILL COME ALONG LONG AFTER YOU'RE DEAD. IT'S HERE NOW. TO IGNORE IT COULD MEAN BIG TROUBLE FOR HUMANS.
Were it not for the importance of building the A.I. discussion in the public's consciousness, I"d rate this movie a 2, because it's poorly written and paced, with 66% bad acting by the 2 male characters.
Eva, played by Alicia Vikander, was near perfect.
Cinematography is, at times, stunning, but it has NOTHING to do with the story. If anything, it makes me jealous that I don't have an estate so large that it takes 2 hours to fly to the center of it.
Interstellar (2014)
Great Sci-Fi for REALLY STUPID PEOPLE
The movie is visually stunning, at times making me feel like I was really traveling with them, millions of miles from Earth.
But folks, there are so many problems with this poorly-told story I could write 5000 words explaining.
There are 20+ scenes that do not not drive the story forward, and worse, totally contradict the notion that "Earth is dying."
After traveling through a worm hole to another galaxy, McConaughey flies into a black hole, ejects from his craft and comes to a halt inside a giant square mirrored thing, but still has radio communication with his fellow astronaut outside it. From within this thing, he finds himself magically years in the past, behind his daughter's book case, looking at her as though through a one-way mirror. And he somehow has the power to bang on the back side of the book shelf, but not actually talk to her. STUPID! but he communicates to his daughter via morse code the secret to saving the planet and human kind, which apparently she does.
He somehow is rescued floating in space, and is brought to a massive artificial planet/space station where he wakes up in a hospital bed. Thought still physically young, he is 120 Earth years old.
He is told that the space station is Called "Cooper" which makes him think it's named after him, but he's told it's name after his daughter, who is still alive but very old. He is told that he can see her.
Now. . .This means that Cooper is the the father of the savior of mankind. There is no fanfare for him at all. ZERO. He is lead to a hospital room room where his daughter is on her deathbed, surrounded by her kids and grand kids. WHICH MEANS THEY ARE HIS GRAND KIDS AND GREAT-GREAND KIDS, BUT THEY TOTALLY IGNORE HIM AND WALK OUT OF THE ROOM! HE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR SENDING THE MESSAGE THAT SAVED HUMAN KIND BUT HIS OWN GRAND CHILDREN AND GREAT-GRAND CHILDREN WALK OUT WITHOUT SAYING A WORD!!
Really bad writing and directing.
Gone Girl (2014)
An enormous junk heap of illogic and nonsense
One of the most ridiculous spectacles of bad storytelling I have ever seen in my entire life. "Gone Girl" gets its title I think, from the fact that she was supposed to be done away with (murdered and disposed of) but is really "gone" psychologicallyshe is a pure psychopath. The movie tries to tell you that she is highly intelligent, and meticulously plans to fake her own murder and frame her husband for it. Here's the pathetic execution of her plan: 1. he leaves the house one morning, and she springs into action. 2. she breaks the glass coffee table, pours about a half quart of her own blood in one puddle, in front of the kitchen sink. That much blood from a violent attack would be all over the room. 3. she flees, leaving the front door open. 4. A nosy neighbor notices the door ajar and calls the husband (somehow the neighbor knows exactly where he is.) But no one saw the wife leave. 5. The husband comes home. He has not a scratch on him. 6. he is totally co-operative with the police. 7. They eventually find her diary In a wood stove at the husbands father's house. The wood stove door is ajar and the diary is only partially burned; it really makes you wonder how that played outthat the husband put the diary in there to burn but just left it singed, all that work, cleaning up the blood at home, but not to burn the book, as if he needed to make a special trip to his dad's house to dispose of a stupid book. and the only thing incriminating that she wrote was on one page which he could've simply torn out. 8. When the wife runs away, she only changes her appearance slightly and then, instead of secluding herself, she makes friends with some low-lifes, with whom she sits and watches her story unfold on TV. 9. she murders the Neil Harris character in an attempt to switch the blame to him. That would then imply he was the one that drained so much blood from her back at her home, he cleaned it up and he put her diary in the wood stove (?!) His car wasn't seen at her house. He then kept her a prisoner, starved and raped her.Yet she found the opportunity and strength to kill him, but didn't call the police from his house to come rescue her. rather she jumps in his car and drives all the way home. 10. upon returning home she has no wounds consistent with the bloodletting at her original house or at the hands of her alleged kidnapper. 11. There is no visit to or investigation of the alleged kidnapping crime scenehouse on the lake. 12. The hospital sends her home in a nurses uniform, underneath which she is still caked in blood. This movie is just about the lamest piece of S**** I have ever seen.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)
Amazing CGI, but one of the worst, nonsensical stories I have ever endured
How about this: EVERYTHING is wrong with this film. Literally EVERY SINGLE PART of the story is nonsense.
When I say "nonsense," I mean that when a movie creates a world, it must stay true to that world. This movie is a massive wreck. I could write for 2 hours about everything wrong with it, but I don't want to. I will mention a few crushing details.
The premise: over 90% of human life has been killed off.
(just about the greatest thing I could imagine would be to reduce the human population of earth by 90%. It would not be a tragedy. It would be a blessing.)
This would mean that the surviving human population would have approximately 1 entire square mile PER PERSON to live in in the contiguous 48 U.S. states. That's over 600 acres per person. That's utopia.
They'd have enough fuel (diesel and gasoline) just sitting in all the reserves of the nation (and the various fuel stations) to run generator and vehicles for 100 years. Anyone with half a brain would move to the south eastern U.S. states with the temps are mild, growing seasons long and water plentiful.
They would have NOTHING to fight over. I honestly can't think of anything sweeter that having the world's population reduced by 90%.
The Apes could NOT have had the distribution of intelligence they exhibited within just 10 years of Ceasar and a few zoo apes getting their "brain boost' back in the first film.
Ceasar, the Ape leader, says at one point that they haven't seen a human in 10 years, and he wonders if their are even any left. That's ridiculous. There is not way that it would have taken 10 years for either Ape or Human to cross the bridge out of curiosity.
There is certainly no way the Apes lived in perfect peace for 10 years. That's just a bull crap notion embraced by people who just don't like themselves. Mammal fight easily and often. No way around it.
Hannibal (2013)
Some of the WORST writing and acting in the history of television
This show seems to be written by a half-witted, no-talent writer who thinks that because they saw all the Hannibal movies 20 times each, they can regurgitate their memories, rearrange things a little, and POW! we have a show. Wrong. Frighteningly bad writing here, folks!!
The backdrop of this show is the long series of wildly elaborate murders by the as yet uncaught "Chesapeake Ripper."
There is no indication that anyone within 500 miles of Washington, D.C. is aware of the crimes, which, if they were happening in real life, would have the entire region in a grip of terror.
But it's as if every single murder is staged purely for about 12 persons at the F.B.I.
There is NO WAY anyone could get away with the murders that remain unsolved.
Hannibal was a suspect but they never searched his house.
Will Graham is arrested as the ripper, then later released, but again, it's like no one in the entire western hemisphere notices.
There is no way that 3 of Hannibal's victims: Miriam, Abigail and Beverly, would ever have investigated Hannibal without leaving ANY information about what they were doing. Especially Beverly, who basically broke into Hannibal's home, which would have rendered anything she found there inadmissible as evidence.
Can anyone tell me how it works out that this certain small group of F.B.I. agents are invited regularly to eat at Hannibal's home?
Mads Mikkelson's acting is one-dimensional, so boring it's almost lethal.
The Heat (2013)
A Dangerous Celebration of Power Abuse
The acting is not bad;
Melissa MacCarthy is her very funny, rough, smart mouthed self; but nothing can atone for this film's flagrant celebration of power abuse.
The cops pretty much act like they own the public instead of working for them.
I am 51 years old, and my respect for law enforcement is at its all-time low; and movies like this don't help, which is why I walked out of this one and got a refund.
And within the 1st 20 minutes, MacCathy is replaced by an odd-looking double. It is very obvious that it is not her driving the car inti the police dept parking lot.
World War Z (2013)
Great CGI, crap story, crap acting
When the totality of life on earth as we know it is threatened by a horrible contagion that turns people into crazed, rabid killers in under 30 seconds, Brad Pitt's character gets no more freaked out than if he were dealing with a paper jam in a photo copier.
The writing, pacing and acting in this film are on the level of an 8th grade kids spinning wild fantasy. This happens! then this happens! then this! then the zombies come! then the helicopter saves them at the last second!
Zombies on the planes! blow a hole in it so they all get sucked out but Brad and his girlfriend.
Plane crash! everyone dies but brad and his Israeli girlfriend, who's up walking around without a scratch.
Never mind the flight crew, Pitt walks a few miles though he's run through with a piece of metal.
Wakes up 3 days later in his street clothes, still pretty clean, all patched up & ready for more action.
And on it goes. This film is an insult to the viewer.
Adventureland (2009)
One of the most tedious pieces of crap I have ever seen
I usually don't think of sex in terms of basic bodily functions. . .there certainly is more to it that just tension and release, but seriously. . . Jesse Eisenberg's character really just needs to "get laid" and get it over with. He's just about the biggest neurotic fruit-boy I've seen in a movie since Laurence Monoson's "Gary" in 1982's "The Last American Virgin."
I resent movies that aren't nearly as clever as I can be just sitting and day dreaming to entertain myself.
This movie is a pointless, tedious P.O.S., a torture session of "you won't believe who did what and with whom, but don't tell anyone, okay?!"
We live in the age of porn now. The mystery of boy-girl love-sex is dead. I don't care if a couple is in love or is going to have sex. I can see more sex in 10 minutes (online for free) than my grandfather could have seen in a lifetime. That's life.
This movie is pointless crap. There is no payoff of any kind for the viewer.
Defiance (2008)
A "true" story worth telling, but not told well
This movie is actually a refreshing departure from most films in its genre, because it bravely shows jews the way so many of them are: extremely selfish, centric, argumentative, resistant to do physical labor and very quick to blame anything and everything for their troubles, most of which stem from their unwillingness to assimilate.
Of course, not all Jewish folks are that way, not by a long shot, but you never forget the ones that are.
This movie is about a group of jews who live in the woods to survive the genocide of WWII. Most of their difficulties arise from the fact that most of them (not all) are unwilling to do anything besides complain bewilderedly about their predicament and wonder who will take care of them.
James Bond is in this movie, playing a jew who's more than willing to work with his hands, fight and kill. I loved that!
Typical of a Hollywood movie, despite all their deprivations, surviving a Russian Winter with almost no food, filthy and sick, when Spring time comes, the lead characters don't look like they've missed a meal, haircut or Berverly Hills dentist appointment.
(If you want to see an method actor really suffering for his role, check out Christian Bale in The Mechanic.)
The film is missing Hollywood's seeming requisite homosexual content, you know, at least one same-sex relationship to remind us all that "there's nothing wrong with that."
Defiance has a few minutes of excitement, most mostly repeats scene after scene of arguments.
A skilled film maker would have taken this story and made a good, 1-hour docudrama out of it. Sadly, this film milks it a 2-hour "Schindler goes camping" rip off.
Defiance comes up short.
The Foot Fist Way (2006)
Danny McBride Has a Career, Therefore I DEMAND One!
a couple of camcorders and a lot of cussing. That's it. My god, this might have been a very funny YouTube short, if kept to the length of Will Ferrell's Land Lord sketch, but this thing was just a joke.
Guys, there's a bit more to making a decent film than getting drunk, thinking up silly stuff and acting it out.
This movie has no more finesse than low-budget porn, the kind where the camera guy won't shut up. . "you like that? You like that? yeah, I bet you like that. you like that?"
Where the hell did McBride come from, and would he please go back there?
Weak movie. Way too long. Bad.
Tropic Thunder (2008)
A Montage of false starts.
If you have any comedic sense, you'd be better off shutting your eyes and thinking up funny things that to waste you time and money on this.
So, it's a movie about a movie. All the characters are paper-thin and not to be taken seriously.
There is a rash of movies coming out lately that seem to be more of a free-wheeling improve party for the benefit of the actors than the audience. "Pineapple Express" is one. "Fist Foot Way" is another.
I think they blew most of they money on explosions and Tom Cruise's sickening character.
Another thing: If this "actor" Danny McBride has a career, I am entitled to one! He's no more talented than a wise-cracking gas station attendant. He's not even 1-dimensional. He's .5-dimensional.
Fracture (2007)
Five stars because this is like half an excellent movie (wait for in on DVD)
This one of those movies that succeeds in spite of itself. There is witty, charming dialog and enough mystery to keep your attention. When Hopkins bears down on you, your guts churn! But Fracture is like a ride in a small planeyou take off and arrive safely, but you don't fly very high or very far.
Hopkins plays an engineer with a trophy-wife. She's cheating on him with a cop. (they meet in hotels; he doesn't even know her last name or where she lives.) This movies is about Hopkins's half-baked plan to commit a perfect murder, beginning with sneaking into the hotel room while his wife is at the pool with her paramour and taking the cop's gun, leaving his own (same model) in it's place.
He shoots his wife once in the head at a time when he knows the cop (a local) is on duty. He's the first one on the scene. He enters into dialog with Hopkins. They both agree to put their guns down. When the cop sees who the wife his, he goes hysterical. At that moment, Hopkins switches back his gun for the cop's.
In retrospect, that's where the whole thing falls apart. 1. The odds of one man being able to orchestrate something like that perfectly are about ten billion to one. He had no way of knowing whether the cops would swarm his house, break in or demand that he come out. 2. He certainly should have made sure his wife was dead, but she wasn't. She lives, so the charge is "Attempted Murder." He beats that wrap but winds up going down for Murder when she dies later and his plan unravels.
Disturbia (2007)
Recycled story, but what about the techno-bloopers?
I don't mind that this takes heavy inspiration from Hitchcock's "Rear Window." I mind that it's nowhere near as good. This movie has severe story problems and a big tech problem, too, at least in the theater where I saw it.
First, as the trailer clearly shows, the lead is a teenager on house arrest. What it doesn't tell you is that he's being punished for his reaction to being sadistically ostracized by a teach in a foreign language class. He punches the teacher once in the face. I personally would have killed the teacher for what he said.
But I walked out because a boom microphone drops down into view about 20 times in the first 35-40 minutes of this film.
In Flagstaff, AZ, we have only one theater, but that doesn't mean we're stupid. Maybe this copy of the film was sent to us by accident. What a disappointment.
Lone Star (1996)
You sure don't need $50,000,000.00 to make a GREAT movie!
Superlative telling of a great story. Chris Kristofferson's performance as the wicked sheriff was Oscar worthy, and the different personalities were well crafted.
A lot of movies, even good ones, are still "actors acting." This is one of those rare movies that really pulls you in. I really felt like I was transported to that little town in Texas, and during the flashbacks, I was convinced I was really taken back to the time when most folks didn't have a television, many didn't have indoor plumbing, and no cell phones.
Most of the actors in this film are not Hollywood gorgeous scientologists types. They really come off real. The dialog is great, the twists in the story are great.
Fight Club (1999)
Find me a better film in it's genre. . .you can't!
"Azygophrenia" is a mental condition stemming from living a lonely, single life. It may manifest in different ways.
The Fight Club grows from the twisted loneliness of Ed Norton's character. it grows huge, then starts to get out of control. It's a complex, awesome movie showing the explosion than can happen when conformity leads to extreme internalized anger. Hint: Humans are not meant to live in tiny boxes. They do not find fulfillment in furnishing their entire lives with other peoples stuff or living according to a pre-written script.
This is a male movie, as far from a chick flick as you can get. Women could benefit from it if they want to understand the kind of frustrations guys feel regarding their egos and finding meaning and excitement in life.
Hannibal Rising (2007)
Another betrayal of Hannibal, and a weak movie on its own
Imagine yourself trying for the first time to paint someone else's portrait with the brush in your teeth. The result would surely be a messy abstraction of your subject. So it is with what Harris and De Laurentis have done to Dr. Lecter. By itself, this movie might have been okay as an HBO movie, but you must evaluate this movie as it relates to the other Lecter movies.
This is a lame slasher film, but worse yet is how often the movie betrays Harris's back story about Lecter in his other books. Honestly, the first Friday the 13th was better that this movie, by far.
Thomas Harris was commissioned to write the book this movie is based on. It read like he threw it together in a 1-week cram session. If it had been his first writing effort, I can't imagine it getting published, it was such plodding crap. The movie just plods further.
Silence of the Lambs was so powerful because of the way it taunted your mind with right and wrong. Though "evil," Dr. Lecter was absolutely fascinating. Though he killed those guards savagely, the exciting part was seeing how he'd plotted his escape with perfect patience. The violence was quick and ruthless, not gratuitous.
It's stunning how any competent filmmaker could see "Silence" and miss what was so powerful about it—minimalism. Hopkins was on screen for only 27 minutes of that film, mostly just talking.
In "Hannibal Rising" (A stupid title) Hannibal is not mysterious, nor does he engage in any fascinating dialog, nor does he come off as especially monstrous, except when he's really mad.
Gong Li's acting is perfectly horrible. She's good looking, but her acting was stiff.
And for some added silliness—Rhys Ifans is in this movie. In case you didn't catch the movie "Once Upon A Time In The Midlands," Ifans was in it, and exclaimed to a women regarding her brother, "He's your FOSTER brother; he could have DNA strands from Hannibal Lecter for all you know!"