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Alienated (2021)
A pleasant surprise
If, like me, you grow weary of big budget SF movies chock full with CGI, but empty on ideas, and worse, empty of heart, then you may find Alienated a very pleasant surprise. David Bennett (Michael Aaron Carico) is a struggling astrophysicist on the cusp of an incredible leap forward in science, but can't quite join all the dots. A young artist, Jordan (Gracie Lacey), comes into his life, and although she's ditzy, she immediately makes an impact with a sculpture that is identical to a UFO he saw just before they met. Naturally, there's more to her than meets the eye, and before long, David finds that she has surprising insights into his work.... Many decent low budget SF movies start off with a bang, and run out of steam, but Alienated gets more engaging as the story progresses, without ever going overboard. Add to that both main actors are likeable and play their parts with understated charm that is often missing from big budget blockbusters, and a supporting cast who more than just make up the numbers, and you have a charming little movie that's well worth watching.
Burning Questions: Star Trek: Picard (2022)
To Boldly Go? Please Boldly Stop.
This show basically trashes the optimistic, high values of the Federation of TNG and TOS. It is not Star Trek. The characters are ill-formed, kill with impunity, are out of control, directionless egocentrics. Picard is a hapless shadow of his past self and the hopeless writing and story arc of Season 1 has not been aided by poorly patched in cameos by past characters. Seven of Nine is particularly poorly judged; she's devolved from her role in Voyager -- a highly advanced, resourceful and rational superwoman into an angry drunk. The other characters are barely worth mentioning, Irish Romulan and all. I gave the first two episodes of Season 2 a chance to redeem the series after Kurtzman's disastrous stab at killing off all that was good, decent, positive, and visionary about TNG's Federation, but even with Q roped into the proceedings, it continues to be highly unpleasant, and as unrepresentative of the original vision of Star Trek as to be disappointing at best, and joins other modern reboots that revel in the undoing of past characters in the never-ending mission to ridicule that which went before while supplanting it with something inferior, and in this case, infinitely worse. To Boldly Go? Please Boldly Stop.
Infinite (2021)
A disappointing waste of a half-decent idea
The real problem with Infinite is that it reduces the intriguing premise: 'What if there are people who can remember every detail of their past lives?' to a depressing answer: 'They will remember only fighting, killing, and (latterly) how to drive in gratuitous car chases.' 'He has no pulse,' says a character of our hero, Evan McCauley (Marky Mark Wahlberg), as another character obviously meant to be something akin to Q from Bond, or Tank from The Matrix attempts to restore his memories. It's a good phrase. The movie has no pulse either. It's poorly paced, and narratively little more than a melange of SF and fantasy tropes that become progressively more confused as the story develops.
Both groups of Infinites - the 'believers', those who want to better mankind and use their powers for good, and the 'nihilists', those who see reincarnation as a curse and want to destroy all life to rid themselves thereof, are jerks in this movie. After watching it I also wanted to forget, and felt like I'd lived through several lifetimes.
A waste of a half-decent idea, and two hours.
The Huntsman: Winter's War (2016)
Terrible
This movie sucks rocks. Starring a Hemsworth (again), narrated by Liam Neeson (who only needed to start going on about 'I will find you' etc.) Emily Blunt, and Charlize Thereon, all phoning in their performances, I braved it anyway, but should have trusted my instincts. In fairness, it's not the actors' fault their characters are so unlikeable, the dialogue is awful, and the plot lumbers along like a fatally wounded beast for what feels like fourteen hours. The 'story' is a hideously mangled melange of Game of Thrones, Frozen, and every other fourth rate fantasy trope made in the last ten years. Plenty of grim, but no Grimm. The visuals are good though. 2/10.
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011)
Terrible, not good enough to be bad
Nicholas Cage: is he mad, or does he act mad? Who cares, he's terrible, and gets worse with each film. This movie is no exception. It's idiotic even for a superhero film. Terrible, clunky CGI, terrible performances throughout the cast, a script presumably scraped together from The Big Book of Marvel Cliches, and very poor action sequences. Humourless, weird, and charmless, with zero sympathetic characters. Truly one of the worst films I have ever seen.
Does this review contain spoilers? How could it? It would be impossible to do anything to this movie to spoil it. The film makers already did that.
Star Trek: Picard (2020)
A betrayal of the original characters and spirit of TNG
I wanted to like this series, I really did. I kept watching in the hope it would improve. But it didn't. Picard himself is reduced to a shadow of his former self -- he has no spirit, no determination, no values. Seven of Nine is conveniently written in as an embittered bounty hunter. The other characters are unpleasant, forgettable, and very poorly played. Alex Kurtzman is a specialist in digging up classics and destroying them, along with JJ Abrams. He did a great job in destroying the original spirit, values, and characters of The Next Generation, and perverting them into something unrecognisably amoral, nasty, venal, and shallow, and putting yet another nail into the Star Trek franchise. As for Patrick Stewart, an actor I have always admired, well, he pretty much helped, reducing Picard to a weak, directionless shadow of his former self. Disappointing beyond description, really.
Continuum (2012)
Absolute crap - but strangely enjoyable
As others have observed, this is a "series" of tacked together 10 minute "made for the web" stories which seem to have been written by a dyslexic orang-utan, acted by people who are unlikely to trouble Judi Dench and Ian McKellen, with effects that would make the average movie on MST 3K glow with pride.
The resident ship seems to be a gym shower room, the spaceships themselves are straight off the shelf of a dollar toy store, and the CGI is most kindly described as "basic."
However, there is something strangely endearing about the way the soundtrack builds to dramatic climaxes when the leads are doing something totally unexciting, like studying the endless plastic tiles on the walls and ceiling of the spaceship. or struggling to regain their memories.
Naturally, both main characters are suffering from amnesia, which is something I think most people who have seen the 'series' wish they could contract, in order to forget it. "I'm looking for something that will help," says Raegan. What? Like a script, motivation, or evan a working premise.
Avoid, avoid avoid, unless of course you're like me and you like watching compellingly awful cheap sci-fi, in which case, grab a beer, whack your brain into neutral and laugh like a drain as intrepid hero and heroine Raegan and Tipton sneak through the totally unscary good ship Gymshower in search of their marbles.
Does my review contain spoilers? How the **** could it?
Stasis (2017)
The real Apocalypse is preferable to watching this movie
Where to begin? If Netflix keep filling out their schedule with this low quality dross, they will soon find themselves losing subscribers, and moving into a new category: "Didn't do well at the box office", "Straight to video / stream", "Student movie", and "Netflix". As with Paradox, my short review contains no spoilers; principally because there's nothing to spoil. Weak plot, even weaker dialogue, feeble effects (try not to include working street lights, traffic and standing buildings if you're doing a dystopic, noirish intro) and acting which looks like an "fail" audition tape made by acting school principals as a laugh at Christmas. Really, don't bother. No, really. And will the people who keep scoring the soundtracks please do something other than channeling Vangelis' soundtrack to Bladerunner: one, it's getting old, and two, Vangelis did it infinitely better.
Paradox (2016)
Here's a neat time-travel trick - save yourself an hour and a half, and don't watch this crap.
This review doesn't have any spoilers because there's nothing to spoil. The worst part of this film is the sudden inconsistencies and almost randomly atrocious continuity, not just in the plot, but in the characters' behaviour. Terrible dialogue, terrible, terrible, storyline; totally, 100% unsympathetic characters, and truly, monumentally awful acting. Too bad for MST3K to parody. Here's a neat time-travel trick - save yourself an hour and a half, and don't watch this crap.
One of the worst films I've ever seen.
Hard Sun (2018)
Mindless drivel
This should be the kind of series I like. I'm into thriller SF and crime series. But Hard Sun is preposterous - and I don't mean watchably preposterous, just plain preposterous. The main characters are poorly created, highly implausible, completely unsympathetic, the story is unnecessarily nasty, stupid and poorly thought through and the series weakens as you get through the episodes. To be honest, I started thinking, if people really are this bad then the human face deserves to perish anyway. I had similar misgivings about Luther, but Neil Cross and his ilk seem to be the kind of programme creators the BBC and lefty press love - seemingly moral, but just weak, depraved, nasty, and inconsistent in both storytelling and character creation. If there is a second series, I'll watch the one where we all burn up, compensated by the fact that the characters go "Phoom" with us.
Sully (2016)
Excellent - but the documentary is better than the movie
Best film I've seen this year. More of a dramatised documentary than a movie, but more powerful because it represents a true story. Real-life heroes don't wear capes, they aren't out for revenge or tortured souls .... they're often just quiet, modest, professional people who do their jobs really well, and keep their calm when >95% of us would crap ourselves. In the words of his wife, Capt Chesley Sullenberger "hates surprises and always plans ahead". The documentary about Sully is arguably more interesting than the rather contrived court-room drama of the investigation which dominates the film. In the real world, calm heroics come at a price. Sullenberger suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, lost 13 pounds in two days after his miracle landing on water, and loathed the attention. If you get the DVD, watch the feature documentary - it's as good as the film (no disrespect to Clint Eastwood and Tom Hanks, their movie is excellent). The interesting thing is - there's a world full of Sullys, and 99.99% of them will never be recognised - but they just do their best anyway. In Sully's case, he gave New York good news, involving a plane - and that really was a miracle.
Star Trek Beyond (2016)
Racey, pacey and entertaining
Okay, I admit I wasn't keen on Into Darkness, in fact I hated it, but Star Trek Beyond is a much pacier, racier movie with great performances from all the principal actors, who have really matured into the classic Trek roles. Glad they saw fit to honour Leonard Nimoy with a respectful mention; the baton is passed.
Chris Pine is perfect as Kirk Alternate; Quinto has tapped the spirit of Spock Prime, but it's Karl Urban's laconic, witty delivery that somehow most channels Dr. McCoy that I'm increasingly impressed with.
30% great effects, 30% great action, 30% great acting and 10% plot that keeps the action going, it's hardly cerebral, but it doesn't need to be.
I'm sold. Keep boldly going guys, you won me over.
Lucy (2014)
Disappointing
I think this movie proves that two halves of a half-decent idea don't equal half a decent movie.
I don't really care about the current fashion for checking with Albert Einstein or Charles Darwin to ascertain if far-fetched SF stories are actually plausible (witness film critics currently checking their cosmological constants in order to test if Interstellar is actually scientifically feasible), but I do care that the stories themselves have something worth watching.
From the beginning I felt Lucy was a messy, poorly paced, and (sorry Scarlett) poorly acted melange of confusing visuals, half-baked plot lines and unnecessarily unpleasant characters, particularly, and especially, Lucy herself.
Whatever residual sympathy one might have for high-tec surgical drug mules (which is obviously considerable) is wiped away in a moment when Lucy shoots dead an unconscious patient during surgery, and a dozen other rather wanton, gratuitous, and not even particularly entertaining "action" scenes.
The one thing I would say in "Lucy"'s favour is that the action doesn't stop, it is visually imaginative, and it isn't overlong -- and I did watch to the end, which is more than I did with "Prometheus", "Noah", "Olympus Has Fallen" or "White House Down" and all the other recent idiotfests that have polluted the celluloid in the past couple of years.
4/10, no better.
Interstellar (2014)
Best film I've ever seen
I'm glad I lived long enough to see this film. To me, it's right up there with 2001 A Space Odyssey, It's a Wonderful Life, Schindler's List, The Shawshank Redemption and Citizen Kane.
In the near future, the Earth has fallen prey to a global blight that has killed nearly all crops except corn, which will soon begin to fail. The whole planet is covered in an increasingly large storm of dust and all human activity has reverted to farming in a vain attempt to grow enough food in the failing earth. Nolan doesn't make heavy weather of why it happened, but the blight is breeding in the Earth's nitrogen and is an irreversible extinction event. Coop and his daughter, Murph (the hero and heroine of the film, respectively), study strange poltergeist-like incidents in her room, which leads them to a base which is the remains of NASA, and ultimately leads Coop to his destiny to follow earlier explorers through a stable - and manufactured - wormhole to three possible Earth like planets, encouraged by physicist Professor Brand (Michael Caine). The wormhole's benevolent makers are simply referred to as "them", and we must initially assume that they are rather like the anonymous, God-like creatures who created the Monoliths seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I say initially, but won't spoil the denouement for you.
Coop is the only pilot left in an age when the Moon landings are denied, and farming the only career. He is soon convinced by Brand to lead a final mission to explore the three planets marked as possible new worlds suitable for human habitation. Coop is joined on the "Endurance" by Brand's daughter biologist Amelia (Anne Hathaway), physicist Romilly (David Gyasi); geographer Doyle (Wes Bentley); and two AI robots, TARS (Bill Irwin) and CASE (Josh Stewart). There's a nice humanity about these droids which contrasts with Hal 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey - indeed they provide the very few laughs this movie contains.
The three worlds identified are in the vicinity of a Black Home, Gargantua - which plays a similar role in Interstellar to the Monoliths of 2001: A Space Odyssey. After the approach to Saturn, Coop pilots the Endurance through the wormhole, and they decide to explore the world identified by the (now silent) explorer, Miller. In a terrifying episode, Coop and his companions are stranded for mere three hours on the stupendous oceanic tides of Miller's world, which is so close to the Black Hole that one hour on the planet's surface is dilated to seven years of Earth time.
When Coop returns he finds over 20 years worth of messages waiting for him, and his son and daughter grown up. This scene is perhaps the pivotal moment of the film, for Coop's promise to his daughter that he will return recedes as the movie progresses. McConaughey and Jessica Chastain play these scenes with such searing intensity that it becomes the emotional anchor around which the rest of the story revolves.
None of the above minor spoilers have given away the essentials - or the extraordinary, mind-bending twists that Jonathan Nolan's screenplay provide, by the way. The film grows to a remarkable, moving and mind-bending conclusion that Hans Zimmer's cathedral-like soundtrack resonates to perfectly.
I read somewhere that Interstellar is like a three hour crescendo. That's beautifully put. The three hours fly by, rather like the horrific relativistic episodes that strand our hero Coop further and further from his daughter.
I felt from the first couple of minutes into the film that I was watching one of those films that stay with you forever. On leaving a movie theatre I normally snap out of movie mode and back into the real world. When leaving Interstellar, I found myself almost too choked to speak. I'm still processing this movie days later.
Finally, a hat-tip to young Mackenzie Foy who plays young Murph with such warmth, and believable conviction that she successfully establishes the emotional core of the movie together with McConaughey. It is the bond of these two characters that will ultimately provide an anchor point not just for the story - but the very future of mankind.
Don't worry if you've heard a lot of talk about the heavy reliance on quantum physics and so on. Interstellar is about the nature of love, loss, trust, loneliness and the passage of time, across any and all boundaries. These universals transcend any of Kip Thorne's theoretical physics you may have read about....
Mind-bending yes, but also heartwarming.
Pompeii (2014)
Awful
Well, I thought Noah was the worst film I'd seen this year, but Pompeii beats it by some distance. Well a few cubits, perhaps. Poorly scripted, poorly acted, nice visuals, gratuitous violence, a rather loose grasp of classical history.
Kiefer Sutherland proving what I'd always thought, that he's a really lousy actor ..... I was glad to see the place devoured by pyroclastic flows.
That's not a spoiler, by the way, not unless you're unfamiliar with the actual place rather than the CGI splendours depicted in the movie.
Garbage.
Noah (2014)
I wanted to drown myself by the end
I watched "Noah" on DVD last night. Thankfully, I didn't go to see it at the cinema as I'd originally planned. Four hours into the movie, the timer on my DVD player said: "47 minutes". Crowe seems to be turning into a caricature of himself. I don't know about the great Flood, but by the end of the film I was ready to drown myself. Oh, and Ray Winstone is a really, really lousy actor. Whoever cast him as Cain deserves to burn, that's for sure. It sounded more like Michael Caine. As for Emma Watson, she will forever play herself, I fear. "Wingardium Disappearo", is my prediction. Only Jennifer Connelly emerges with any credit for giving the movie a little depth and soul.
Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful.
Right down there with "Olympus Has Fallen" and "White House Down."
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)
Excellent
These days I shy away from any kind of violence in movies .... I hate violence in films. There's quite enough in the real world. So, I subsist on a light diet of children's films, costume dramas, rom-coms, historical adaptations of the classics, and SF. But the violence in the Hunger Games: Catching Fire is one of the few films where the distressing violence, cruelty and torture really is justified. It is a brilliant allegory of a modern, technocratic, dystopian society where those in control of all the resources keep ordinary people starving, living in fear, at each other's throats, and diverted by a powerful propaganda machine which contains a modern-day parallel of the Roman Gladiators: The Hunger Games. It is also a story of how even the most powerful regimes, based on inequality and a reign of terror will eventually drive even the weakest, disenfranchised citizenry to revolution. I enjoyed the first movie, but Catching Fire is .... stupendous.
Oblivion (2013)
Alternative Plot; Tom Cruise friendly
60 years ago, the Earth was attacked. We won the war but reduced the planet to Birmingham, or Wansworth, or Stoke on Trent, maybe. We're the mop up crew. It's hard work mopping an entire planet. Everyone else is on Titan. I believe that. Just as I believe L. Ron Hubbard was an alien overlord and you can't tell the difference between Stork and butter. I believe that.
Is it possible to miss a place you've never filmed in, a role you were different in, a time you've never lived without the aid of greenscreen? We won the war, but now we have to help giant Remington shavers suck up sea water: are the drugs they give us legal, or what? Our commander is Sally, who bears a striking vocal resemblance to Hal 9000, and who we have never seen, but still believe her home spun southern drawl. Victoria and I are obviously morons. Or clones. Or both.
Yesterday, a man who looks like an older version of Morpheus from the Matrix, but sounds suspiciously like the wise old bird from the Shawshank Redemption told me everything I knew was nonsense. I told him not to be so rude about scientology. Then I went to service a droid at a calcified football stadium. Victoria tells me that's what twentieth century Leeds looked like. On a good day.
When I met the women that I later learned was my original clone's wife, sixty years ago, before the world fell to the Tet, or the Scavs, or the mongs, I said: Julia, I'm with you, and I don't know your name; I'm dreaming but it feels real. Like a memory of a dream of a fantasy of a Philip K. Dick short story. What the hell's that about? I took Vika flowers. She hated them. I cultivated the last flowers on Earth for all she knew, and she preferred vacuum packed rations. You can't please some people.
But after all I have learned, I realised that everything I knew wasn't real. I wasn't real. Victoria wasn't real. Sally's accent wasn't real. And despite being beaten up by myself to save money on stuntmen, I went in search of the house he built. He's a lousy builder. Did he use a spirit level? I think not. I know that, because I know him. Because I am him. I am Tom Cruise, and I am home. Playing the same part I play in every single movie I've ever been in. Clipped, nondescript, slightly odd, beating up full sized men and standing in the shadow of my leading ladies. Standing in the shadow of Legoland cars. We are an effective team.
Horatius said: "How can a man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his Gods?" I said: "In a rocking chair, aged ninety, drinking beer."
This Means War (2012)
Thank God I didn't pay at the cinema to see this movie!
This film had all the ingredients of being entertaining, fun and engaging. But it misses the mark somehow. It should have been my kind of movie, but it wound up annoying me.
Three great young leads (to someone of my advancing years Reese Witherspoon is still young, though I do think she should be looking towards heavier roles now, as she can actually act), a reasonably amusing premise and the opportunity for a few decent comedy action scenes.
Having rented the DVD I didn't see the three letters that would have saved me the outlay of both time and money: McG, ruiner of the Terminator franchise, amongst other sins. His direction is about as subtle as a brick through a window and has all the lightness of touch of a gorilla in a glass factory.
That said, Hardy and Pine make a decent buddy partnership and Witherspoon is enticing enough to believe that two best mates could actually go to war over her affections. However, we never even get past two dimensions with the clunky dialogue and clichéd photofit characters, including a baddie actually called Heinrich, and an annoying slutty best friend (Chelsea Handler). Worse still, the gorgeous Angela Bassett is sinfully underused.
I don't mind any of the above at all. After all I enjoyed True Lies, in which I believed yet again, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was a regular American guy and not an Austrian body builder in any way. But This Means War is a wasted opportunity, and at the end of the movie, I would have been quite happy for the three of them to plunge over the edge of the precipice with the stereotyped baddie.
Near miss, rather than Epic Fail, but the latter can often be amusing in a way This Means War just was not. I hope the next movie I see Hardy, Pine or Witherspoon in is more worthy of their abilities.
The Grey (2011)
Overlong tripe
Far too long, comedy horror wolves, silly one-dimensional characters. Tremendously overrated.
Liam Neeson is a fine actor, but he can't carry an entire film. The problem The Grey is that while it starts well, it somewhat tails off in the middle of the film, and what is a weak narrative begins to drag.
The mens' desperation is well portrayed by a good cast, but the usual Jaws syndrome of making the animals almost superhumanly aware of their quarry becomes just a bit silly as the film draws to its conclusion.
I'm not a fan of animatronics, especially when a supposedly real situation is being portrayed, and I felt that this became a real impediment as the men pitted themselves against wolves that would have looked more at home in a Hammer Horror or Harry Potter and the Order of the Muggle Dogs, or whatever ....
The Grey might well have still worked if it had been edited somewhat, but it didn't, and it wasn't.
Enchanted (2007)
Charming, funny and accessible
I found Enchanted to be a pleasant surprise. It appears to be a standard Disney offering, but the excellent cast, and clever, witty script, elevates this to a classy film which pastiches earlier classic Disneys without parodying them.
The story opens nicely as a classic animated tale of our innocent, lovely heroine (Giselle, nicely portrayed by Amy Adams), is united with her Prince Charming (Edward, ably played and sung by James Marsden) and to me married on the next day. The formula is completed when Edward's step-mother (Queen Narissa) thwarts the union by disguising herself as an old crone who proceeds to push poor Giselle down a magical wishing well, to a place where there are 'no happy endings'.
The realisation of the animation and live characters is very nicely down and plays on the conventions classic animated films - the two- dimensional true love and tidy, idyllic world of Andalasia and its bland, ballad-singing Prince Edward, compared with the cynical lawyer who reluctantly rescues Giselle shortly after her emergence from in New York sewer.
There are some great cameos from Susan Sarandon and particularly Timothy Spall as the guilt-racked servant of the Prince secretly working for his beloved queen to feed Giselle a poisoned apple.
"Sire, do you like yourself?" asks Nathaniel, as the two of them discover the miracle of television.
"What's not to like?" smiles Edward charmingly.
It's the interplay between the real-world cynicism of divorce lawyer Robert (Patrick Dempsey) and Giselle that really carries the day; the story is adult enough to amuse grown-ups but has enough silliness and fun to entertain older children.
I found it great fun, and have watched it more than once!
Roll on Enchanted 2. Let's hope it's as great fun as the original.
Avatar (2009)
Over-hyped run-of-the-mill SF film, nothing more
I thought the first hour of Avatar was stunning for its sheer imagery and the realisation of Pandora, the Roger Deanesque world Cameron has realised as the backdrop for his "Jungle Adventure" in space.
Then the lack of a plot, a decent actor in the lead role, a stereotypical bad guy, reduced the film to one dimension, rather than rendered it in three dimensions, as promised on my theatre ticket.
It's not that Avatar is a bad Science Fiction film, it just isn't a great one. Cameron has long been a highly overrated film-maker, but he does get bums on seats, like the equally over-rated Roland Emmerich. Neither of them make bad films; they just make derivative blockbusters with the emphasis on technology and big-screen effects, rather than portraying any human (or alien) subtlety. This isn't helped by having only one decent actor in the film (Sigourney Weaver, woefully underused), playing opposite Sam Worthington, who frankly makes Keanu Reeves look like Olivier.
Avatar is not a bad film, and yes, the technology may well be a Star Wars moment, but it's not a great film either, and certainly not as thought provoking as, say, Moon, an Inde film made on a comparative shoestring with few special effects but infinitely superior writing and characterisation.
Cameron talked recently of 'leaving money on the table' with regard to the film's additional releases and DVD issues. It was a telling remark that reflects his true gift as a first-rate money maker, and a second rate film-maker.
Postscript, 20th July 2012: I haven't, in essence, changed my mind about Cameron as a film-maker, but I did see Avatar again on television recently, a very different experience from the original IMAX screening, and I must confess the bioluminescence scenes and overall setting of Pandora is stunning. I just wish next time he makes a film of this magnitude, he'll spare a few of the billion dollars he spends on a decent script. And for God's sake don't dig Quaritch up; one dimenstional characters don't translate over to 3-D very well!