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lowellmontgomery
Reviews
The Grand Tour (2016)
One big ugly car commercial!
I hate "motor sports" with a passion. If it were up to me, I'd ban them all, except for "Sustainability Races" that push the envelope for fuel efficiency and/or alternatives to the fossil fuels we've been using. This show just promotes the racing and auto industry. It's product placement, pure and simple. I have only watched about a half of an episode, but that was enough to almost make me want to hurl. This show is for self-indulgent jerks who want to see the planet screwed up faster than we already are. I'd give this show a '1', but I've heard they aren't considered in the score calculations. I'd give it a score of negative 1000 if I could. Yeah, it's "big budget" and could be a boring "car show". They make it exciting, though... and for this stuff, that's actually worse. F*#^ cars!
Man of Steel (2013)
Wow! A 225 million dollar pile of crap!
When film producers decide to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a film and pour all of that money into just the special effects, this is the kind of nonsensical, annoying, plot-hole- filled product that results. It doesn't matter how good (or overpaid) the cast is, if the script and editing is this poor, all they've done is wasted the whole budget. I like to watch films that leave me with something to ponder, films which inspire, films which are clever, with plots that hold together under reasonable scrutiny. They really should have just taken some of the better elements from the comics rather than writing the most improbable, ridiculous, storyline they could come up with. This was just a waste of time (for me to watch) and seems to illustrate something I've noticed is becoming true: the bigger the budget, the bigger the (likelihood of) failure. Some might say this was an "epic" film; I'd say it was an epic failure.
Touch (2012)
Nothing worse than Kiefer and Fox...
Kiefer Sutherland and Fox combine again to create another propaganda-ridden TV series that has absolutely no merit whatsoever! I hated 24, so I'm not sure why I even bothered to watch an episode of this, but I can say, I won't make the same mistake twice. I'd say this should be canceled, but I don't expect much good to fill the void. If people want to watch this kind of empty drivel and propaganda, let them. They are lost already and probably are too brain-dead to realize how empty the show is.
Anybody who is even partially awake won't bother wasting more than the time lost on viewing one episode of this meaningless, insipid, totally-devoid-of-any-redeeming-qualities nonsense. Hell, if they are smart, they'll see "Fox + Kiefer + (history: 24)"... and think, "no, thanks". Avoid this.
Team Picture (2007)
A pointless film starring pointless losers?
When I first looked at the ratings for this, they must have been skewed by all the friends and family of these very novice filmmakers. I really can't imagine a film any more boring and pointless than this one. If you don't fall asleep during it, your life must be very dull, indeed (I actually didn't fall asleep, but started doing other things, watching to see if the plot would ever develop and if anything would ever happen. I was surprised by the credits at the end, because really... NOTHING ever came to be. You couldn't make a more boring film if you took any two college drop-outs living together and a cheap video camera and filmed them sporadically for a few days when they were doing nothing much. I really can't imagine a film being done any worse than this one... I think I could describe every scene in this and still not "spoil" it.
I think the ratings are telling: there are 9 people (as of now) who gave this loser a '10'. And now 11 who have given it a '1'. I'd say the filmmakers have 9 friends (probably all in this!) Don't bother watching this folks; there's really nothing happening here.
The Dark Knight (2008)
Why so much hype?
Okay, so they built a good villain in the Joker, but the plot was just a bit too unbelievable to hold together. I'm not going to add any spoilers here, but if you want a big-budget, action- adventure escape that totally relies on the rendering farms that had to handle all the special effects... and don't mind plot-holes the Hindenburg could fly through, this film is for you.
IMHO, this film doesn't deserve all the hype. Look at reviews from people who "hated it" and see why. Once the hype has died down and people get over their brainwash to overrate this over-produced Hollywood crap, we should see ratings more in line with the film's true value. I didn't walk out, but that was because I had such high expectations. I'd hope to see this rated a '4', maybe even as high as a '6' by the average public. I'm rating this a '1' to try to offset the obvious shills and excessive hype. This is, by no means, "the best film of the summer"... but in its favor, it does give better balance to the darkness of Batman. If it weren't for the growing trend in bucking the old "feel-good Hollywood ending" routine... if it weren't becoming cliché to kill off "good guys" and create characters with seeming hearts of gold, who turn half-evil, I'd say this film had something unique; but that whole scenario is now a formula for making a film armchair critics will say has "depth"... pffff...
Save your time and money and rent an old classic favorite that you somehow never managed to see. Or go have a picnic with your loved ones. The alternative is two-and-a-half hours you won't get back; don't waste it to further enrich Warner Bros.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005)
Truly a beautiful film...
I loved this film. The performances were wonderfully done, the scenery and settings were splendid, the script was great (I know it's based on a book and I know it may differ in some ways, but... ). Truly a well-told coming-of-age story without too much of anything that would be disturbing for parents with kids, yet with enough poignancy, romance, and believability to be a hit with the whole family. I'm sure the target audience is teenage girls, but it manages to be much more than that.
One of the best I've seen in a while... too bad I missed it when it was in the cinema, but I'm glad it found its way home on DVD.
Dogville (2003)
Just plain Dullsville
I'm baffled as to how this director has managed to trick people into thinking that he's produced a great film.
Okay, it's dark.
Okay, it's stark (as in practically no set).
Okay, they hired one of Hollywood's top actresses to break into the American/English- speaking market... (If they hadn't it'd be the lowest budget film ever shot).
But that didn't change the fact that it was just plain painful to watch this film: way too long, way to little going on... you could say just as much about the sorry state of the human race in a 10-minute You-Tube film and save us the hours of torture and the let-down.
I'm well aware, as are most of us, of how messed up America (and the rest of the world) is; I actually like to watch films that "make me think" once in a while... about something OTHER THAN this mono-dimensional bleak outlook on things that Von Trier has. The director is clearly a misanthrope who also hates the U.S. and while there may be plenty in the world to make us feel both those sentiments, this film wasn't any more enjoyable or worth watching for subjecting us to his Weltanschauung.
If people dazzled by the names of famous stars and distracted by the high ratings of others hadn't already lifted this well above it's deserved low rating, I might actually rate it higher than one. I truly am baffled by why enough people LOVED this film to give this a better rating than some films that actually ARE good -- Is it just because of the...? (Okay, I won't spoil the ending -- someone might actually still see this old piece of Von Trier garbage, but don't say I didn't warn you). I don't need a "Hollywood ending" to like a film. But this film was just plain boring till it got tedious, painful, trite ... so I'm giving it the lowest rating I can; someone has to.