duncan_buchanan

Content is really great, well filmed, although with the abundant uses of cgi it does make your wonder if some of the shots that were too perfect were doctered to make them so. That said, cgi on the whole is excellent as you would expect from a company that has been generating some of the best looking cgi dinosaurs since the early 90's. Narration was excellent and dramatic enough but without it becoming a pastiche. It's going to be very difficult to fill Attenborough's boots though, even with a man like Freeman who has arguably one of the most relaxing and unique voices of our age.

The biggest issue I had with the whole series, as others have mentioned its the amount of jumping around it does. End of episode 4, 'welcome to the time of the dinosaurs'... Dinosaurs which have featured in virtually every episode before this one.

It's enjoyable though, and very well crafted.

This is a pale comparison to the British version. Characters essentially replacing the British versions do not match the quality of the original. And characters that are technically new are also very stereotypical. I get that the setting and characters along with a lot of the humour from the British version may not work for an American audience, sounds like the cast from the original understood this as well, but this doesn't bode well for the rest of the series. Hopefully it beds in quickly, stops spoon feeding the audience, reduces the over acting and makes different choices in plot so it's harder to compare against a far superior product.

The pros - Main actors were great and brilliantly cast, locations beautiful, cinematography glorious, music spot on, while it would be great in the cinema I'm glad it was out on demand straight away, very little filler, tight run time.

The mediocres - Script - why do so many films feel the need to repeat dialogue from previous entries? Half expected 'you're one ugly mother******' to appear. Would love to see it in comanche language in full, or maybe even with even less talking / zero speaking. Original predator still the best actual creature in design. Story wasn't exactly unique.

The bad - by the numbers jump scares, convenient and very fast to react way of being able to hide in plain sight. Wish pain killers kicked in that quickly.

Easily could have taken an hour or of this episodes run time and still kept the storyline intact. Really can't get my head around the timings for this season and why it was split into two parts. Watchable still, but not the best episodes of the series.

While it's a decent enough watch, there really isn't much in any of the episodes you would consider to be new information. If you've seen the special features on any of these films dvds etc, chances are, you've pretty much seen this shows contents.

This is just pure joy to watch. After a number of very lacklustre episodes in the last couple of series I really felt like this sort of episode was done and dusted. But it possibly my favourite 45 minutes of television, let alone x files.

If you like your films dark - And by dark, I mean, unable to figure out what on earth is going as the visuals are virtually impossible to see clearly - then you'll still probably think this turd of a film is pretty crap.

Genuinely looks like it was lit by a 9v battery in a torch. Apparently the director thought the previous film was too bright which took away from some of the suspense etc... Well this film had no suspense because you can't see it!

Throw in the usual clichés, obligatory scantily clad women shots for no reason other than tickling the film makers obvious need to just have them in there for the sake of it (there may as well have been a strip joint cliche too) and you're on to a real doozy of a film.

It's a miracle any further Alien or Predator movies have been made since.

No, this review doesn't include spoilers. As I couldn't see the film myself to spoil it.

Wasn't expecting such fun bundled along with package, I laughed along with this more times than I remember than any other movie I've seen on the last 12 months. Maybe it's the British sense of humour in Bale's portrayal of Miles.. I don't know, I just really enjoyed it. Not knowing the history of the story kept me engrossed throughout. And for those picking fault at the accents Christian Bale and Caitriona Balfe used. Try growing up in the West Midlands. I did and still live here and I got the accents right away. Pretty damn close to how they sound around here if you ask me.

Can't believe the words yampy is now in at least 2 movies 😂

A great way to spend an evening.

And that's a big statement, but for a while the episodes have been good, this one really stepped up the laughs!! I love this show!!!

I'm not exaggeration when I say this this full stop right here >.< is more interesting to look at for 2 hours than this utter pile of horse dung. I've seen some bad films in my life but this takes the biscuit. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY ON IT.

Just finished reading the book which I thoroughly enjoyed, it was gripping, thrilling and really made you constantly wonder about who dunnit. The format in which it was written from several character perspectives over a short period of time also lended itself very well to the way it read. A very easy read.

However, the film suffers from poor editing. It really switches and changes far too quickly from different times, characters randomly appear with little explanation (ie Abdic) that I think if I hadn't read the book I'd have struggled to keep up with it coherently.

Nearly all the characters are short changed, especially Luke Evans as Scott. virtually everyone to a degree seem to get large chunks of their character development expunged, to the detriment of the overall film.

Emily Blunt plays the part pitch perfect although I struggle to accept her as how the character in the book is described. Also, the location moving to the states doesn't add anything to the film other than maybe getting more interest from the US audience. Do we really need another film set in or near New York?

So in summary, if it had remained in London, been edited much tighter but given more scenes from the book to allow for character development and the actors were given more time to shine I think it would have been much more faithful and enjoyable, if thats the right word to describe the subject matter.

It's not a - buy to keep and rewatch kinda film... Watch it on Netflix or Rent it and watch it one, but I recommend the book first. Either way the other you with or read first will ruin the experience of the other but I think reading it will just make you wan to watch it, whereas watching it won't really make you want to read it afterwards, which would be a terrible shame.

Goodness me....

Ok, so this wasn't as bad as I was expecting. That ain't a good thing though. I was expecting the epitome of a hot mess if I'm brutally honest.

Full disclosure, I didn't think Man Of Steel was bad. Especially not with that the score... Yeah ok the whole killing people thing I get... Same as the Batman issues in BvsS. I had the fortune of not seeing it in the cinema and so I got to watch the extended edition first which again, I didn't think was that bad... Can you see a pattern...

Wonder Woman was a class act, however, totally different Director which I think played a very big part in that. I'm not even going near Suicide Squad as I've managed to expunge it from my memory, good score again though..

Anyway, expectations were very low, I'd seen the fan boy reviews before watching it, didn't bother seeing it in the cinema, basically, I could have managed to get by without watching it, but meh, I did. Oh my god how bad are the effects!?! In a bloated big budget movie like this, how does it justify it's budget when you get moustache removal that deforms a face so obviously... How do you generate a bad guy that looks like it would have been dated if it had been made 10 years ago... Lord Of The Rings FOTR is 18 years old.... No, 19..... Tell me why it looks better than this. No really, tell me....!

It has positives, Ezra Miller is great in the role, but so far he's been great in every film I've seen him in.... hmmm I did pluralise positive.... erm.... Danny Elfman... on no wait, he just plagiarised himself from 20 years ago... WHY! WHY WHY WHY!?!

I quite like Ben Affleck as Batman, and although I'm not a fan of Jeremy Irons his Alfred ain't too bad either... Ray Fisher is a calculated a understated performance too... Yeah. I think that may be it... damn, so why did I like this more than I thought I would... *Shrugs*

In summary, Dear Warner Brothers... Stop trying so hard to be Marvel. The audience would really appreciate it. Your box office takings would go up, you might actually cast people who are more than willing to stay on for more than two films before they want to leave. The list of benefits is long...

For the love of all that is pure please please please start employing some different directors and LET THEM FINISH THE MOVIES YOU ARE EMPLOYING THEM TO MAKE without buggering them up. It worked for Wonder Woman, and there's a reason for that.

Oh and next time Cavill has to have a moustache contractually that messes with your timeframes, let him finish that film before you just smear vaseline onto your visual effect companies computer screens, because lets face it... thats what you did for those special effect scenes wasn't it...

This is how you make a crime drama / biopic / thriller / police procedural / whodunnit / 60's-70's throwback.

For every person who moans about not getting closure, please..... There's this thing called historical accuracy... It's like people moaning about having the plot in 'The Crown' ruined for them, yes, I know people who have done this..... erm, it ain't fiction! It happened, it's hardly a spoiler or a well kept secret!

Fincher is a visual genius. He knows his subject VERY well whenever he makes a film. It's beautifully written, shot, edited and the cast are sublime.

If you like historically accurate movies, watch it if you haven't... It'a a class act.

Other than being visually very beautiful, there is very little substance to this very bloated, badly acted eyegasm.

It almost feels like two parts to a movie were used as the bread at either end of this and wrapped around another movie stuck in the middle.

Considering Luc Besson had wanted to make this for so long you'd really think there would have been more care taken with a lot of it. The main leads, whilst not being A listers isn't an issue for me, struggle with very bad dialogue and leave you not giving a crap about the forced relationship thrown on them. Whoever cast DeHaan in the role needs their head examined. I immediately disliked him, I have nothing again characters being roguish to give them a bit of grit, see Han Solo as a perfect example of this, but the Valerian he portrays is like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of this sort of character. If he was any more wooden his nose would be growing when he lies.

Plot holes, contradictions, pointless characters played by bigger names that don't even live up to the word cameo and a Huey, Dewey & Louie crossed with Jar Jar Bink triplet that offer nothing but annoying expositional flatulence.

I'd love to say it's enjoyable and I really wanted to like it, I'm just glad it showed up on Netflix so I didn't have to part with cash as I almost did a few times.

It would appear that Hollywood isn't the only area that is suffering from lack of substance over visual style at the moment.

I quite often flippantly rate films higher than they deserve immediately after I've watched them because of the initial excitement felt from the buzz coming out of the screening, I then re-look at my ratings days/weeks/months later and realise how wrong I was. That said, Dunkirk has been rated 10 and will firmly stay at 10 without question.

It's been a while since I've seen a film with such a small amount of talking, with such a minimal amount of character names that are explicitly given and that relies on such a relatively small plot in the grand scheme of film making. It's been even longer still that I have seen one that even though it lacks all of the above it still manages to make you care for every single soul on that beach.

That's not to diminish what happened there in anyway whatsoever, but looking at it from a film makers perspective, rescuing soldiers off a beach would usually be a 10 - 15 minute scene at most in any film. Nolan et al manage to ensure the 90 minutes pass with fairly minimal exposition, talking, minimalistic music design, lack of character 'development' so to speak, minimal location usage and above all else, crucially, minimal down time. Once you get through the first 2 to 3 minutes, it simply doesn't stop.

The score whilst sparse and difficult to listen to on it's own, feels very layered and textured, gripping and tension building - you'll catch yourself with clenched fists at least once purely because the music dictates a continual uneasiness, aided by the virtually constant threat of gun fire, bombing and torpedoes. It's an Audio / Visual masterclass that will no doubt be taught at colleges and universities in years to come.

Upon reflection, and this is what I love about Christopher Nolan as a director, none of the things I've mentioned above matter. The confidence this director has in the way in which he makes his films is right there in front of you. He throws out the rule book and creates his own set of rules. These usually would render films at the mercy of people like us who want to tear things to shreds purely because our opinion is the only opinion that matters and who cares what anyone else says.

But in reality, in the cold light of day, it's an utter stroke of genius. Anyone who is of a certain age in the UK will at the very least know the story of Dunkirk, will know the significance of what happened and what it was the pre cursor to. So for Nolan to effectively create a character out of the story rather than the characters within it is unfathomably brilliant.

I do not remember the last time I shed a tear at a film in the cinema. Or at least, if you'd asked me that yesterday I could have hand on heart say I couldn't remember. But I know darn well now that it happened today.

The cinematography is stunning, the music is excellent (alongside the film itself that is), the acting is perfectly balanced and nuanced, the direction is spotless it does and will always be at the top of the list for me with films to better. It's a war film but not as we know at and it benefits so much from that fact.

See it in the cinema if it's still available to see.

The premise of this was excellent, it could have been so good.

Nothing happens! Absolutely nothing. It's boring. Lacks direction. Does not flow well.

Only positives are the locations, Iceland is just gorgeous as always... and that the actual cinematography is pleasant.

I don't write reviews generally, but this just could not pass me by without me being vocal about how annoyed I am that I stuck with it thinking I'd give a rats ass by the end of it.... I really didn't.

Do not waste 90 minutes of your life watching this.