iwatkin

I'm going to start this review by pre-empting all of the obvious criticisms. It's difficult to make an engaging sci-fi story without resorting to existing tropes. This series manages to mine quite a few franchises along the way. We get a little piece of Red Planet with the inability to leave Mars. We end the first season with a dash of Mission to Mars. The dying billionaire looking for immortality sprinkles on a little Prometheus for good measure. We also get a little of the rest of the Alien franchise by the second season, with an android out of control and endangering the whole shebang. We delve into The Matrix when we learn that Jeanne is they "key." There's even a nod to The Planet of the Apes (which is of French origin) before heading into a little of Interstellar with a dose of Stargate/Stargate SG-1. The third season literally has the same basic plot of Dark and manages to finish in exactly the same way. This is a plot device used multiple times in Star Trek: The Next Generation. I was reminded a few times of The Martian Chronicles.

Now, after saying all of that you would believe this to be criticism. It is not as I see these devices as necessary homages. Sci-fi has been thoroughly mined and originality is almost impossible at this stage. No, I would have to point out how this show is expertly crafted and well produced. The acting is well done and the characters are fully formed and make for a cohesive, logical plot. The show has some excellent foreshadowing that is used to make for some excellent surprises.

Each season is completely different and goes off in a new direction while being faithful to the whole story. This feels like the result of great planning; something that is lacking from a lot of story arc television.

Lastly, the production and effects are very well done. Only one shot took me out of the story. The music is perfectly aligned with the story and doesn't overwhelm. At times, the score was reminiscent of The Martian Chronicles, which I liked very much because it lent an air of spooky mystery to all the right moments.

I would recommend this to anyone with a love of real science fiction.

This might possibly be the most discombobulating movie I've ever seen. It's 50% decent (average acting, filming, editing, production) and 50% claptrap (story all over the map). It features a 5,000 mile flight in a Cessna, phone and camera technology from the 90s (people share phone numbers by writing them down, and a man with a blog hands out a business card with no URL or email address), alongside androids and a room straight out of THX-1138. The androids are part of a super secret UN unit, but it's fine for them to ride motorcycles and question random people out in the open.

Then the androids and the intrepid team of three (protagonist abductee, female abductee, some hacker they bumped into) engage in something of a train chase. (No. Seriously.)

Of course, I haven't mentioned that the central plot is about an alien abduction related to an event that is exactly the same as the Walton Experience (Travis Walton, "Fire in the Sky"), but with totally different names. Most bizarrely, about 15 minutes from the end, we learn that the aliens are looking for the origin of the universe and want to know about some guy called Jesus. At that point it smelled like a cornball religious movie, but it's never brought up again. Our protagonist settles down in Costa Rica, falls in love with fellow abductee. The end.

It has pretty decent BGI (not a typo), sometimes thinks it's an 80s movie, and goes from professional production to college film project and back again several times. The soundtrack goes back and forth between pretty impressive and super cheese, with a couple of songs probably by the writer/director's girlfriend/wife/daughter/mistress.

I'm just utterly confused. I have so many questions...

I'm sitting with someone right now. They've been glued to this for a good portion of the day and evening. Personally, I'm 100% skeptical about the subject matter, but this show is borderline comedy. It's hilarious at times. Laughable at others. When they revealed the "God Helmet" I had to leave the room so I could laugh in private. I don't honestly believe that anyone on this show really believes this stuff. They're jumping at shadows and random noises. Each episode is all setup and no serious payoff. When these shows are done well they can be mildly entertaining. This almost feels like a parody of a bad A&E show. There have been moments when I've felt sure the actors (because that's what they're trying to be) were about to break character and start giggling. If anything, I admire their fortitude to keep up the silliness without cracking a smile.

My friend is transfixed. Maybe it's the loud, ominous music that is ever present. I imagine the music is intended to ramp up the suspense. It's a shame that there really is no suspense. I could gather five people in a house and have them randomly yell out, "Who made that noise?" And, "Did you see that? What was it?" I reckon I could replicate this show for a few thousand dollars. I just need some fishing line and bad lighting and a handful f unbelievable "scared" people. Come to think of it, why are these "professional investigators" even scared? Isn't this what they do for a living? Oh, right. Of course they don't.

The Paedophile Hunter is a little weird as documentaries go. Coming in at just over an hour. It cuts straight to the chase and explains who the hunters are and how they go about their work. Interspersed between footage of "nonces" being apprehended and questioned, are segments of Jim Gamble and DC Jonathan Taylor explaining that no laws are being broken but that this kind of approach is dangerous to the perpetrators and their families. One particular case that ended in suicide is then raised, and then it's all over.

This is one documentary that doesn't attempt to sway the argument in any particular direction, which is how all documentaries should be. It just presents the facts through snippets of interviews and actual footage, provides some opposing opinions, and then leaves the viewer to decide.

Short and sweet.

You may have noticed a lot of turds flying about the user reviews for Picard, here and elsewhere. They're all 100% correct and honest assessments. Anyone that enjoyed this steaming pile quite honestly doesn't understand plot, pacing, and good old-fashioned storytelling. The writers (and I use that term in the loosest of fashions) have no idea about the rich lore of Star Trek. They may have read the Cliff's Notes, watched an episode or two, or got some clues from elsewhere, but merely making mention of something from TOS or TNG or even Voyager, doesn't do them any justice when they completely muck it up.

Plot holes and a complete disregard/misunderstanding of canon make this mess even worse. The general idea seems to have been to throw as many plot devices at a wall and see which stick. They all stuck and now they're all jammed into a 10 episode soup of jacked up lore. Guinan apparently pukes when meeting Picard for "the first time". Only, this isn't the first time they met, and when they producers quickly argued that it was "in this timeline", I pointed out that the universe-altering event that would have meant they didn't meet in 1893 San Francisco hadn't happened yet... so a huge WTF? On my part for that. You want more? How about the fact that Picard's mother lived long enough to show up in a photograph as a grey-haired old woman, or that she showed up at the same age in a hallucination? If she hanged herself (Picard incorrectly used the word "hung" on the show... tsk, tsk) at such a young age, then who is the old woman in Picard's photo album? And these are just a few of the many holes in the plot.

Red Letter Media's Mike Stoklasa said it best when he stated that the writers of this show just don't know Star Trek. Period. They don't understand Roddenberry's vision, what allegory actually looks like in science fiction, or even the very basics of the characters involved. Picard takes a back seat while Seven of Nine becomes an angry ninja and brutally murders people. These are not the characters that we grew to love. They're not even one-dimensional versions of them. They're angry, bitter and twisted versions of them. There is no hope in Picard; it's all just dark dystopian mulch. The cerebral stories we remember have been replaced with a brainless action adventure, featuring the very first car chase in Star Trek (and I'm not counting the Bad Robot Star Trek movie... cuz not a car chase at all). It's really gotten that bad. Where once were noble people reaching for the stars with honor and brains, we now have zombie Borg and any brainless attempt at action we can muster. And yes, it's apparently obligatory for every Picard episode to have a lil bit of Borg sprinkled on.

And they thought they were fooling us about the true identity of the New Borg Queen. Sorry, writers of NuTrek, you're just not that clever.

And that's the thrust of my review. It was overly long and paced very unevenly. They seemed to put an emphasis on his charitable work, which may make some judge him less harshly, and that's unfair. His charitable efforts probably worked as some sort of self-justification, but they also allowed him to operate unabated for decades.

But the real story here, and the one that needed to be addressed, is how he managed to get away with it for so long, and the many failures of people in the media and the police. Ultimately, the sad part is that he was never really given the opportunity to witness the backlash that came because he was already in the grave. As far as he knew, he'd pretty much gotten away with it. Watching his sly comments years later, it's all right there for anyone to see. He was basically baiting his audience at every step with his, "...next Thursday," comments.

I watched a documentary about him back in the 90s. It focused a lot on his relationship with his mother, and I knew at the time that something was off. This man, who nobody ever recalls having been with anyone ever, played it down as though he was "too busy" or "not in a single place for more than 48 hours". It was weird. And this is someone that I looked up to as a child, as many of us did. And that business with Gary Glitter on camera. How did nobody not catch the signs? I guess it was a different time when we were all too innocent and didn't conceive that such monster existed. I hope we know better now.

So my rating is for the documentary overall. My rating for Savile will always be negative, no matter how much money he raised.

The movie was fine. No problems there. The paranoia surrounding IoT devices has kinda calmed down in 2022, but the threat of hacking and other nonsense is still as real as ever. No matter...

What bothered me is the fact that she has a random set of equalizers stashed in her closet. You know, for that fateful day that she'll suddenly need to isolate a vocal against loud music. I'm not being funny, but there are literally websites where you can do that in a couple of minutes (for free). She already had an EQ plugin on her computer. And using those EQs like that isn't the best way to get the job done, and the results where a bit too clean for my liking. It kind of took me out of the story... because who has that just sitting in a closet anyway?

Well, that's all. It's a fine movie for a one-time viewing. I could nitpick the other technology aspects, but they could easily be explained away with simple ineptitude.

It's normal to see a trailer and be intrigued. On the other hand, it's a different thing entirely when the same scene in the movie doesn't provide any answers. I mean, the "trailer" was just part of a scene, but the scene itself serves no purpose, and may as well have been from a different movie entirely.

Sam Neill reprises his role from Event Horizon. Even the supercomputer resembles the ship's drive from that movie. He's basically the same character, perhaps a forebear since the latter takes place in the future. They throw in a lot of science-y words and misappropriate popular science quotes from around the place. It's obvious that none of this was understood by the writer since it's all put in a pot and stirred up to the point of being silly. There's some nonsense about multiverses ("if she doesn't fall, then somewhere she's fallen and somewhere she hasn't"). And then they add visuals that are just there for the fun of it. Clones, possibly? Lots of particulate CGI, because nothing says "future" like pixels dancing like the murmuration of birds (which they also show at least twice). I quickly realized that this movie was 100% style and no substance. Less than halfway through and I knew it was going nowhere and had nothing to say. It's all so easy to add some God references to give it that appeal of heightened awareness. But at the end of the day, it has no substance and is all gobbledegook from a writer that understands nothing beyond the capability to fashion an assemblage of loosely connected parts.

The characters are cardboard caricatures. All nerdy, all weird. Scientists tend to be (for the most part) quite humble ordinary human beings. Movies have to stop making them all whiz kids with odd clothing, mannerisms, and no actual depth. These characters were taken (quite literally) from the movie Hackers, and they didn't even bother to include a pool on the roof.

Ultimately, this poor creature of a movie had some serious effort put into it. It's not overtly cheap, but it turned out like a soufflé that someone dropped on the floor. Instead of throwing it away, they served it anyway. And it was quite the flop.

This is one of those movies where they secured the budget for the effects but forgot to leave anything over to finish the script. It feels like they went with the spec script. The dialog cannot even be ranked as atrocious. It's far worse. Bruce Willis didn't so much as phone this in; it's more like he emailed it a week before. He's doing that thing he often does these days where he looks like he knows he won't have fun and just commits to dead face and saying the lines at the appropriate time.

As for the story. It's not told well at all. It feels like there are scenes missing, or someone forgot a voiceover. It just goes from random happening to all-out war with some unknown something. I'm used to movies where we know as much as the actors. In this movie, I get the horrible feeling that we know less than they do. We're left in the dark most of the time. Again, the feeling that scenes were left unfilmed, or edited out completely.

The effects are passable. The scenery, what there is, is just a warehouse in Georgia and a bar set (probably at the same location). The rest of the time we're somewhere in the woods (probably in Georgia again).

I get that this is a budget movie, but better movies have been made, and probably for less. This is quite simply a tragic mess. The script, the direction, the editing. It's all subpar. I do hope Netflix didn't pay too much for it.

What had all the makings for a pretty decent action flick, just left me with so many questions. The acting is fine, the scripted dialog is fine, but the plot, whilst being a little wobbly, is just... left unfinished!

Angelina's character is developed during a couple of flashbacks from the previous year. We don't get anything nearly as exotic for any other character. They're all pretty much one-dimensional people that we've met in other movies.

The basis for the plot and every other piece of narrative is divulged during weird, broken dialog that hints at something without ever telling us what. It's really odd. I even checked for an end title scene because the movie literally feels like it's missing a couple of important scenes.

The action is fine and good. It's the one saving grace. That and the unresolved promise of some kind of explanation for everything is what got me to the end. Ultimately, this almost feels like a Choose Your Own Adventure with an entire chapter of blank pages. Fill in your own backstory. Use your imagination to fill out the motivation of the antagonists. You really have to, because nobody else bothered to.

It's refreshing to find an artist that is truly authentic, has genuine talent, and despite reluctance, fatigue, and the pressure of having to go on in spite of how she may feel, goes on and on. I always been impressed by how much of herself is on display. She has near total control of her image. She isn't being pushed into a corner by style gurus and managers, and when she does get pushed she pushes back and they listen.

What we have here is an unapologetic eye on her world, the creative process, the ups, the downs, and all the bits in the middle. She's unapologetic about her openness, and that she doesn't have a team of songwriters makes her music all the more special. And it is special, Finneas and Billie O'Connell represent a serious threat to homogeny that is modern pop music, and I'm not sure this is all pop music anyway. Baring one's soul is not in keeping with today's twee world of obvious party lyrics. There's a depth to the lyrics that makes them accessible in a number of ways.

The documentary was well done, and every bit as informative as any we've seen without the need for a narrator or a narrative. It's just Billie and Finneas, raw and mostly unedited. The support they both receive from their parents is lovely to see. I only recently learned that Billie is two weeks older than my daughter, and it was then that I could see some of the parallels of what she is going through. Her mother said it best. It's easy to ignore or write off what our kids are saying, but we can never know their difficulties or their pain points. They're growing up in a totally different world to the one I experienced at that age. It's always going to be difficult, but there's a lot more exposure to everything now. Maybe it's a part of evolution, too. I don't know. I just saw some spooky parallels and heard Billie saying some stuff that I recognize from being around my own kid.

Nevertheless, while I'm not what you would call a fan, as someone who dabbles with music, music production, and understands a fair bit about the process of songwriting and production, I take my hat off to these two. They make it seem effortless.

Once again, I'm saddened to have to resort to commenting on the so-called reviews. I'm sorry if you don't understand that the title is meant to be ironic and that the two characters do indeed need some serious psychiatric treatment. The relationship as depicted is broken from the outset by their unnecessary need for secrecy, which becomes only too apparent later on.

As for the story, it's the tale of two misunderstood individuals trying to deal with their attraction to each other in spite of external issues, either real or imagined. Sure, it's not a description of any "normal" relationship, but sadly there are so few of those in the real world. My only gripe is that the story ends at a juncture where it could easily go on. This wasn't going to be the first time they were separated by geography. But I think the point was that there was never going to be a happy ending. An honest reviewer would see this as a reflection of reality. There are no happy endings, because all ending result in death. If fantasy is what you're after, this is not the show for you, and there are plenty of vacuous tales of miracle relationships that "just work". This is not that, and anyone who has suffered or experienced any of the issues on display here will at least recognize and have an appropriate emotional response. That a story dares to deal with actual realities faced by many is actually quite brave. So no, these are not "normal" people, and in any case, such a thing does not exist. They are not average in any way, and are actually exceptional in all the areas but the ones where it counts. The focus is on the way that they inevitably end up together again, only to be torn apart by their own failures or circumstance.

This show spoke to me on many levels. I would imagine that it will generate many different responses in many people. It really depends on where you find yourself in life. If your only response is "these people are messed up in the head", then I should congratulate you on your powers of observation. You have uncovered one of the main plot points, and you didn't require the assistance of an adult.

Now that I have a literal allergic reaction to the J.J. Abrams school of "mystery box" stories, I'm really not fond of open-ended questions without enough supporting material to draw one's own conclusions.

Overall, a fine and logical story with the inevitable hopelessness explored in many ways. The effects were just good enough not to be a distraction. Actually, I really liked the look of the exteriors and outer space imagery. It was pretty neat.

The interiors were as one would expect of a cruise (space)ship. Basically, having the general appearance of a modern hotel and/or airport lounge. This all made great sense, and the near-distant future angle probably won't change these things significantly.

Areas where I had a little trouble were as follows:

1. The conceit of having no reasonable backup in the event that the core needed to be ejected. That's unthinkable. And, to make matters worse, no obvious means of communication with Earth who surely must have been aware of the situation. I understand the conceit needs to exist in some form. There'd be no movie otherwise. I just think it was a sign of poor writing that it wasn't handled more logically.

2. The probe. The drilled and bashed away at that thing... until they just stopped. Hopelessness is the explanation. I just wished the thing hadn't existed at all, rather than no reasonable conclusion. I realize, again, that it was included to provide for a source of hope that would eventually be dashed, making matters much worse.

3. I don't know, but if the ship provided sufficient ecosystem to last for 10 years, then it seems reasonable to assume that, even with inevitable entropy, the diminishing roster of crew and passengers would have meant it could be sustained indefinitely. For evidence, I point to none other than Mothership Earth. Now, I don't know if we can make this ball of rock work for 5 million years, but we're doing pretty well so far, and it's not like we haven't tried being wasteful and illogical.

4. I hope that mental health is dealt with much better in the future than it is portrayed here. Isagel's state of mind seemed to be clinical in nature. The facts of her situation only made it worse. I fully expected the outcome. I was waiting for it throughout the movie.

So, overall I found it very watchable. I don't have any issues with the acting. It's a little difficult to judge in a foreign language. The movie was well made and kept my interest. I kind of like that they wound up at Kepler-62e in the Lyra system. I'm not sure what the point was, given that they were all dead, but I think it was to give an ironic flourish to the whole piece.

First of all, Mr Writer Man, the expression is "desert island" and not "deserted island" as one character feels compelled to explain.

This show wants to feel smug about its relationship with the sometimes excellent "Lost", but someone needs to explain that it was adopted. The pathetic reference ("Maybe we're in Heaven..?") just adds insult to injury. The characters, not knowing who they are or why they're there, immediately begin battling one another, or at least they do when they're not swimming, sunbathing, or proposing some sort of sad party. Later on, we learn that they are part of an experiment designed to solve the age-old nature versus nurture question. This riddle is answered before the end of the first episode, so why are there more episodes, hmmm?

Not being happy at the lame attempt to make something as interesting as "Lost", they then throw in a line from The Matrix: "If you die in there, you die out here." Ugh! Seriously?

The characters are 1-dimensional cookie cutter stereotypes that revolves almost solely on their particular crime.They don't even do anything logical, such as work as a team, or come up with any viable plan. They just bicker their way through each scene, while vaguely threatening murder. For example, without knowing what time of day it is, they decide to go for an unplanned hike through a jungle. As self-serving as these people are, you would imagine they have enough of a survival instinct to not do something as foolish as not to wait until morning.

The plot, which couldn't get more thinner, resorts to totally unoriginal soap-opera-esque antics to maintain some semblance of interest in 5 - 10 minute bursts. At the end of each episode I was reminded that nothing had progressed at all.

Lastly, the idea that a virtual world would contain objects that have been designated "Property of..." is just mindlessly silly. After all, who is going to steal them, and where would they take them?

I caught a trailer for this show and thought it looked like an interesting take on the usual superhero story. It definitely takes some of its DNA from Watchmen, and maybe a tiny bit from DC and Marvel. But, as the first episode rolled into the second, I had the not tiniest feeling that there was a subtext that had nothing to do with superpowers and saving people from criminals. In fact, while the "Supes" may not exactly be criminals, they're also not exactly good people.

Reading between the lines, the show is really a statement about the state of the world, the Trump administration, the Me Too movement, and likely some other things that have happened in recent years. Put simply, this show explains what happens when the balance of power is tipped too far in one direction. While this isn't a novel concept at all, the events in the show are too similar to news events to be coincidental or taken too generally. They're spot on, to the point, and brutally honest.

Yes, the show is well-written, though Urban's Cockney accent was a tad weird from someone who managed to pull off Bones (Star Trek) so well. Overall, I enjoyed the not-always obvious direction it took.

This movie could have been so much better. They had half-decent acting, a VFX budget to die for, and ultimately (I think) they ran out of time and money.

The story/script just didn't come together too well, and there are moments when things move very slowly and others were it's jarring and seems to jump from scene to scene.

The thing that really got me was the complete lack of logic at the close. Think of it; they want to put the memories of a dead woman in an android, and this kicks of a theistic and political debate about ethics and what is right. Fine. I get that people have a hard time dealing with that. But then, when the android is destroyed and the husband kills himself, the project suddenly becomes about copying Amelias's personality into dozens of sex androids... and nobody bats an eyelid. What?!!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's another one of those "what if" experiments to see what would happen in a desert island situation. Loosely based on the LOTF concept, it could have been called The 200, or maybe Inside The Big Forest, or something. My pet theory is that we're witnessing a Pied Piper story unfold. Pfeiffer didn't get paid, so he made the kids disappear...

But is it good? It can be at times. It's engaging enough, though the first episode slowed down and just chased its own tail for about 30 minutes. Is it a mystery? Kind of. Well, they do wonder what's going on for a bit, but then real life and the prospect of running out of literally everything coupled with personalities all serves to get in the way.

High school kids who are part kid/part almost adult. They have one foot in either camp, and soon learn to ditch their cliques (mostly). All the usual suspects are here: the born leader that some people don't like, the rich brat who is all about himself, the psychopath... wait... what? Well, you get the general idea.

I'll plod on with it in hopes it doesn't start to run out of ideas...

As someone who has followed the story of Andrew Wakefield for almost all of the 20 years since his famous paid-to-lie "research", I honestly don't know why he doesn't just quit already. The man has no ethics whatsoever, and with this movie he is attempting to imply a cover up by the CDC. Even I am willing to believe that the CDC is by no means a perfect entity, but it wasn't the CDC that pulled Wakefield's research from the British Medical Journal. Nor did the CDC revoke Wakefield's medical license. These acts were done by the BMJ and the General Medical Council in the UK. Since then, Wakefield has purportedly been practicing some kind of quackery in the US without a license. The BMJ went on record as saying, ""It's one thing to have a bad study, a study full of error, and for the authors then to admit that they made errors. But in this case, we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data." For the reader who doesn't know the facts, it was alleged that Wakefield's data was edited extensively in order to secure funding from a law firm that wished to create a class-action suite against vaccine makers.

This movie claims that the 2004 CDC study group was reduced intentionally to guarantee that the MMR vaccine was proven safe. This allegation is laughable considering that it was Wakefield whose study comprise of an extremely small number of individuals. Meanwhile, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2015, found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. The study involved 96,000 children.

Early on the movie, an assertion is made over the "steep rise" in autism cases since the 1990s. The cause of autism is still considered to be a combination of genetic and environmental factors. The apparent rise has been found to be from several factors, including improved diagnosis and something as mundane as a change in the questionnaire used by the CDC to diagnose autism.

If anything, Wakefield should be thankful that the medical profession closed ranks to protect him as they did. They should have publicly burned his reputation back in 2001. Instead, he is free to make horror movies and continue in a vain attempt to clear his name. Andrew, dear, just give it up. The jig is up.

Yep. That's what you'll be if you fall for this garbage. The material in this (originally an NBC special) TV show includes interviews with Creationists, evolution deniers, and other pseudo-scientists. Nothing that is presented is ever critically challenged, and Heston just keeps asking the question, "Where there humans alive millions of years ago." A cursory attempt at any research upends everything presented here. Even Ken Ham was critical of this biased presentation, and that's really saying something. Carl Baugh is one of only a handful (about three) scientists that still have faith that the Paluxy River dinosaur/"man tracks" are a sign that prehistoric creatures walked alongside human beings. The rest of the world has chosen to agree that the "human footprints" are variously metatarsal dinosaur tracks or highly selective natural impressions. Just by the number of "eye-popping facts" that I already knew to be true, I knew the rest of this show was largely fantasy.

Packing for Mars trots out the usual suspect memes in no particular order, and doesn't even make a decent attempt to sew them into a cogent mass. No actual evidence is presented, save for the husk of a gymnasium that was supposedly a destination of teleporting teenagers (try not to laugh). In the stead of evidence, we are treat to a steady stream of random talking heads. I should have prepared a Buzzword Bingo card beforehand. It would have gone something like this...

• Nibiru/Planet X
• Aurora
• Remote Viewing
• Secret Base
• The Face on Mars
• MK Ultra
• Area 51
• Roswell

It's impossible to take a "documentary" serious when various people describe, not one, but three mutually exclusive methods to reach Mars. Why would one person be on a supply mission when others are describing instant teleportation?

The only positive I can think to say about this riotous comedy, is that the final message is that people are generally asleep. This is actually true. I see it when I walk down the street and interact with random people. People are asleep, but I'm pretty sure our governments aren't smart enough to keep a secret for this long.

As often happens, I feel at pains to respond to all the negative reviews I'm reading here...

I should first point out that I read the Ted Chiang book that contains the source short story this movie was based upon. The book comes highly recommended, and Chiang doesn't consider himself a science fiction writer.

All the elements in the movie are almost exactly the same as in the book. I say this, so as to highlight what some deem as poor alien design. It's always a tricky thing to pull off, especially since there are no confirmed sightings of actual aliens. In my mind, anything goes, but in this case the Heptapods were on the page before the screenplay was written.

Again, the dialog, "Do you want to make a baby?" is straight from the book. It's explained that this comes after two years of marriage, so it's not intended as a lame pickup line.

Someone even had issue with a lack of apparent government involvement. Seriously, do we need another movie with the president making all the actual decisions on screen. Government interaction is implied by means of common sense. We really don't need to see what 11 governments are up to directly. That would be boring.

I guess these things were lost in the movie. I tend to enjoy movies that leave some of the story unexplained in detail. Books get away with this with prose and narration, and movies often don't have enough screen time to go into the same level of detail. I tend to turn off my common sense radar for movies like this. First and foremost, it's intended to be entertainment. And, if you're busy sighing and complaining about these elements, you're missing the point of the story.

Wow! Only three reviews for such a terrific movie. I'm shocked an dismayed that subtitles are such a turn-off.

LFO (an abbreviation for Low Frequency Oscillation) is wonderful, claustrophobic tale of a man who discovers the exact frequencies needed to hypnotize and ultimately control people (including himself). It was reminiscent of Sound of Noise (2010) in its oddness and its relationship with music (of a sort) as a means to telling a story.

(Almost) the entire movie takes place in Robert's house, and it's wonderful to see how such scenery can be used to great effect and actually add to the cold, emotionless claustrophobic feeling this movie exudes.

The things that Robert does are truly awful, but it's hard not to feel a certain glee as he never gets caught and his newfound superpowers make him omnipotent in a world where he was previously impotent.

Once again, I'm blown away by the comments and reviews, not to mention the criminally low rating of this movie. I appreciate that not everyone has the ability to understand the subtleties of a movie with minimal dialogue, little exposition, or anything where every detail isn't explained. I realize that this movie had way too little gun-play, no car chases, and even the nuclear event was way too artful and didn't rely on enough CGI for many movie-goer's tastes. But that's okay, because not every movie is intended to appeal to that 8-year old in some of us.

I'm also perturbed that anyone can take events in a movie in isolation, such as the way that the lead falls head-over-heels, apparently, after "one roll in the hay." Or maybe I'm mildly disturbed that the take-away from a movie about nuclear destruction and war and the aftermath of such is... "Ewww, she had sex with her cousin."

I watched the events of the Bosnian Conflict on television back in the early 90s. What struck me, and disturbed me greatly, were the images of refugees who had been displaced by the war. They looked to me just like any typical citizen of a western country. They looked just like people I know.

And that's what I took away from this movie. It was the story of how everything goes to sh*t when bad things happen. It's an exposition of how a teenager with certain issues in her life can be transformed very quickly, and cling to the people she barely knows, simply because they represent "normal" to her. That various reviewers don't get this completely baffles me.

But no, carry on debating the perceived plot holes, even if they do come about through your lack of knowledge or understanding. That's okay. I know that not everyone has that kind of mental capacity. I understand that some people would react similarly to Citizen Kane, or other classic movies, if only because they weren't filmed in color, or because "they look old and boring" or there isn't any CGI or "the effects are rubbish".

I'll take away a beautiful and disturbing tale of young people having their lives utterly torn apart by meaningless conflict. And that's what the point of this movie was to me.

SyFy, as another reviewer put it, "the network that hates science fiction so much, they don't know how to spell it". Yeah, those guys. After getting hooked on this show, I then find that SyFy killed it because of ratings. Ratings?!! Waddya talking 'bout? If you're not going to promote your wares properly, what do you expect to happen? What's that..? Oh, it's not "wrestling" is it?

Anyhow, this is a great show that is reminiscent of BSG for its mini-series start, and not just because of Tricia Helfer. The story is engaging because it's not your run of the mill 1- dimensional story arc, and it keeps switching people from good to not-so-good all the time. Y'know, how people are in real life. The writing is good and the story will keep any reasonably intelligent person coming back for more.

If only there was more...

"The Signal", for all purposes, looked like another cheesy attempt at sic-fi. My expectations were set way low as I recently watched (most of) "The Colony" which also features Larry Fishburn. That was a terrible movie, devoid of any believable plot, and I had to fast-forward to the obvious conclusion in that case. So here is another Larry Fishburn vehicle in the sci-fi genre... but this one doesn't suck. Having read many of the reviews here, I can see that it was grossly misunderstood by many. That's inevitable and brings back memories of the reviews of "A.I.", where people yawned at what they thought were more Steven Spielberg aliens. Tee hee. You're going to get that quite a bit when there isn't narration or some other means to spell every teensy little detail out in all its minutiae.

I actually knew from early on exactly where they were and in whose hands, but that's from a lifetime of reading and watching sci-fi I suppose. So, knowing the situation, I wanted to see how it would play out. Sure, the cow scene is a little out of place, and goes unanswered, which was probably a failing of the budget or the director changed his mind. Who knows?

But what I really liked about this movie was the ethereal quality and the flashbacks that said so much about the main character's mind-state. The visuals were stunning and the soundtrack is gorgeous. I actually bought it right after the movie finished and I'm listening to it as I write this.

So, great visuals, wonderful direction, brilliantly scored soundtrack. It can't all be great though, and the movie fails just a little in the acting department. Many have made note that Fishburn merely does a repeat performance of Morpheus, but that's a little unfair. Look at the character he's playing, and also... has anyone actually seen him in anything else? It's pretty much on par with other Fishburn performances (knowing looks and a slightly patronizing father-like tone).

Ultimately, I would recommend this to anyone who likes aliens and spaceships and technology- based sci-fi.