MeritCoba

There is a market for low-budget movies like this thriller, but you need to add something crunchy to the mix to make it stand out, such as a well-written script, an original take, tense dialogue, interesting characters, and good pacing. I pick these examples on purpose because the movie is devoid of them. The basic story is so mundane that it baffles the mind. This script must have landed on someone's desk, and that someone must have given it the green light. I can only assume that there was some mistake with the original good script, and the wrong one was given the go-ahead. Or is Netflix's plight so dire that they can only get the mediocre ones? In my mind, I see Netflix canvassing the universities for graduates hoping they get lucky. Perhaps they were inspired by Stalin's remark that quantity has a quality of its own. And to drive the point home: there is nothing remarkable here, even though there could have been if the makers had just changed some parameters. One thing to take at heart is to invest in the protagonist and not swap him out halfway into the movie with another one. Or perhaps you could have considered making someone else the protagonist, like the mother. This would have created an interesting angle: the mother must learn from her son. Another piece of advice is that less is more. If you don't have the budget, why establish multiple protagonists? I go as far as that there are three. The worse aspect is that the movie feels overlong because it spends so much time on their backgrounds. And this would be fine if this was a social drama, but it isn't: it's a thriller. A thriller has the protagonist, the underdog, pitted against the superior antagonist, and the movie ends with their roles being reversed in a clever or unusual way. The film goes through the ropes but is never clever or unusual. Now to give you an example of what could have been done. The antagonist could be exposed by streaming the whole on the internet. This could have been foreshadowed by the son filming his break-ins and publishing them on the internet. Instead of the son, the mum will be the story's primary focus. Her son breaks into the antagonist's house and disappears. She has to find out what happens and then is up against the seemingly unassailable antagonist. And with the help of her son's friend, she chips away at the antagonist until he crumbles and falls. A few points. 1 There is one protagonist and it will be the mother. 2 What happens inside the mansion will be unclear until the end. There is footage, but it is distorted or unusable. This adds to the mystery. This is the old wisdom of not exposing the monster until the end. I would have omitted every scene inside the house. Instead, what happens in that house is something the mum observes from the outside. She calls the cops. They go in and come out. What has happened? She asks the cops; they tell her they didn't find anything. She learns that the antagonist is best buddies with the police chief. The low point for the mum would be that the antagonist uses his influence and connections to set the whole apparatus of law enforcement on her(including perhaps making her out to be a nutcase), which makes the antagonist untouchable and powerful. 3 The parent-child relation gets swapped. The son becomes his mother's teacher. 4 I would make the son become the father instead of the other guy(actually, I think he should be given a small role or be left out entirely). This creates conflict with the mother(you, dad? You can't even hold a job down for more than a week?) and perhaps with his pregnant girlfriend. (You have to stop these break-ins, you get to be a father now). 5 The mum is not tech savvy, but she learns from her son about making movies by watching and learning from his films. This can then be used to make her understand her son more. (For instance, he makes money and has a large following, so while he doesn't hold on to a regular job, he has one: being a streamer). 6 The antagonist gets exposed through his security system. These are just some ideas I came up with in an hour, and in my opinion, it would have led to a better script.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I find it easier to pan a movie that I find terrible, then to praise one I find good. I got a tip for this one, after watching the slow boring Tales from Earthsea. Goro Miyazaki, the son, made that one; Hayao Miyazaki, the father, made this one. Spirited Away is an outstanding movie that takes a simple story and makes so much more of it. I probably missed lots of the Japanese references, but this movie works also for me as Westerner. It is the story of a young girl who gets lost in a magic world where she has to save her parents before she can escape it. Chihiro, the principal character is the key to this movie. She is vulnerable, brave, resourceful and likable. Most anime relegate girls to the side; there to be saved by the male hero and applaud him. They can be all Chihiro is, but never center stage; always in the shadow of a male figure. This movie could have fallen for this cliché too. Chihiro meets Haku, a young boy that helps her at the start. But he never takes the lead and doesn’t dominate the movie. In fact, he isn’t in most of the movie. And in the end it is Chihiro who saves Haku. The movie is closely knit. On the surface, it feels like a Japanese version of Alice in Wonderland. It has that same mood, that same strangeness. Some characters, like Yubaba seems like the Queen of Hearts. There is that similar feel, but it never feels like a rip-off. There are many layers to this movie. It isn’t just that Chihiro herself undergoes a story arc, but where she goes she touches everyone: her optimistic nature and kindness affect others. And where the world of spirits is initially hostile to humans, she earns their respect and eventually changes their nature, as they change her. Yubaba, for instance, changes from a hateful person towards a kinder one. Her baby, a selfish individual who never goes out, changes too, when he travels with Chihiro. There is also a twist near the end of the movie that is foreshadowed throughout the movie. You might find some things strange(I won’t say what because I don’t want to spoil it), but you discover everything is there for a reason. I would sincerely recommend if you like a layered story with a likable character. I give it a nine not because it isn’t worth a ten, but I always keep that last number in reserve, just in case there is a movie more perfect than this one in its category.

There is Paul William Scott Anderson and there is that other Anderson: Paul Thomas Anderson. While the former consistently makes movies that are fluff, to his defense: they do make a profit. The latter does make acclaimed movies, but they are far less profitable. Paul was once asked a nicer version of: why do you make rubbish(while you can do better( see Mortal Kombat or Event Horizon))? He defended himself with a nicer packaged answer than this: rubbish is my trademark. And he does make a profit. I would wager that Monster Hunter will do too. Not in the democratic world where it gets panned for what it is: rubbish. But more in that countries were fluff is pushed as the daily drug: it is a movie that will slide through the censorships with such ease that you might think it was a lubricated and then slide down an ice sheet set at a right angle. Unless the bureaucrats perceive something as a jab. Maybe the monsters are the government? No, No, that will not do! The follow up for Paul's answer could have been: it might be less rubbish if you let someone competent do the writing(see Mortal Kombat or Even Horizon.) Seems that after having mauled the Resident Evil franchise with your lackluster attempts at writing you might have either learned to be better or to give up and let someone with writing skills in on the movie. But Paul just learned something else. What if there is no story at all? Paul has actually outdone himself with this one. If his previous movies were badly written, this movie is not written at all. Maybe even unwritten? The writing is not merely bad... it is not there. This is not even like the way Abrams handled the Rise of Skywalker: no story: just plot. This is like a twisted version of a Bay movie: no story, no plot: just explosions. The incompetence of the writing is so avoidable that it baffles. One example suffices. The movie starts out with a bunch of generic American soldiers. They get introduced to us in a lackluster manner showing that they are in every way a cliché. Next they get killed of so quickly that you have to slow down the movie to see what happens to them. It is like snap: they are gone. Near the end of the movie we get introduced to another group of warriors. Perhaps it is better to say: made aware of. They look all diverse and interesting, but they are not introduced to us: they are just there. No names, nothing. Now compare this to the colonial marines in Aliens. We get introduced to a group of overconfident gung ho warriors that are all bluster, but as they go up against the aliens, they get more personality as the story unfold and they realize that they are in deep trouble. This makes the audience feel it when they get killed. They are not stereotypes, but people. And even if you kill them off early in the movie, at least introduce the new group or just leave them out. The writing is so not there. Milla's character is a blank sheet. The Asian warrior she meets is a blank sheet. Nobody has any kind of personality or any kind of character arc. They are not there. And if you think: hey it is a monster movie.. that is what this is about. Well, there are two monsters in this movie. And a bunch of creepy large spiders. And they are just that. Monsters that are there and indestructible. They basically take up most of the screen time to get killed. Not in a fascinating way. All the fancy weapons do nothing to them. Only a well aimed arrow can kill them. Yep. My take on this: this movie is aimed for China, where the money is to be made. The cliche American military gets wiped out at the start and end(when even tanks and helicopters get destroyed by da dragon) because hey: it is aimed for China, where this probably invokes giggles. Otherwise Paul avoided writing so it can get past the censors. If there is nothing there, it can't be banned. Now Paul hopes it probably gets to be a franchise, just like transformers. And one wonders if **** up to China so you can get your movie past the censors becomes some kind of morally abject action? Ah well. To quote Scriptwriter guy from Pitch Meetings whenever Producer Guy starts to have moral qualms: money.. just think money. Oh.. Ron Perlman is also in it. Don't expect anything from it. He is just there for the trailer. He cashed in and checked out.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Surely, a crazed monkey savaged the footage because what is with the cinematography in this movie? It has this unpleasant nervousness about it as it goes from wide shots to extreme close ups and changed angles in matter of seconds. Who films this way? That is something you do to spice up your action scenes or to create tension, not as your modus operandi. This reminds me of that shaky-cam rage that became the fashion some time back so everything was shot that way, even if it was just some guy taking a leak. It gets even worse when boring parts are spiced up with music that is totally inappropriate. Instead of ditching superfluous scenes they just add hyped music to it. Why? Because you ran out of footage? Oh and you know this is going to be bad when, after the opening scene that has Oldman mumble some lines in a church, the movie needs to tell you that the next scene is set in London, the United Kingdom. It was the first and the last laugh. What is next? Berlin, the capital of Germany in Europe? Tokyo, capital of Japan in Asia on planet Earth in the Milky Way? Is the audience supposed to be that stupid? Oh and it has this super frail actress who goes mano a mano with men twice her bulk and a head taller. Can't she not just be smart? Or nimble? Or skilled? And Gary Oldman is in this too. He looks like Jeff 'the Dude' from the Big Lebowski, but mumbles his lines as if he is checked out or wasted. He is doing a Freeman here. I gave this a few points because the cast(except Oldman) does their best, especially the lead. It is not their fault that the rest **** you too, Oldman).

I found Wind River well done thriller with some nice acting, visuals and emotional moments. It has a slow start followed by an engaging middle part but it definitely drops the ball at the end. I liked Elizabeth Olsen as the out of her depth FBI officer who does her best. Jeremy Renner is also good but seems to lack screen presence. The rest of the cast give a good performance. Overall a decent movie with a good cast but marred by a poor ending and script that doesn't always work well. I will only make a few observations about the weak parts of the movie. Jeremy Renner? Given that the movie is set in an Indian Reservation I found it curious that this role was not given to a native or that there is hardly anything done with the fact that Renner is a white man living among Indians. Specifically because an important theme throughout the movie is that life in an Indian reservation is hard and the natives are treated as second rank citizens. It is one time alluded to that Renner isn't one of them, but most of the movie sees him treated as one of them. In addition Renner is actually a hunter of dangerous wildlife. It almost feels like this should have been played by native but that the studio probably didn't have the balls to cast one as the lead. Renner's additional problem is that he seems to have a weak screen presence in this movie and he is at his best alone. Perhaps this is actually well played. The problems it that the moment someone else steps into the frame the camera seems to turn away from him, like happens with Graham Greene(the chief of police), Olsen and even his ex wife played by Julia Jones. I am still not certain if that is well done or just his issue. Those infernal pumas. An important part in the movies is played by the elusive pumas. It is searching for them that makes Renner find the first body and lateron he finds via them an important clue about the murder. The confrontation between Renner and the pumas seems inevitable, and I was expecting that this would lead to some kind of payoff near the end. However, nothing is done. In fact it isn't even shown that he kills these predators in the end after he has found them, which feels like someone didn't had the nerve to have them killed and not even have it suggested by having some shots fired? Dropping the ball... This movie is a thriller set in a cold landscape giving you this eerie forlorn feel sometimes changed into beautiful visuals. This contradiction of the deadly blizzards and stunning beautiful landscapes is an important aspect of the movie. It is mirrored in the movie for the people: Renner's happy family before his daughter was killed and his breakup with his wife after. Much of this is alluded to(and might have been even more profound with a better director and script). ..then the end happens. The end is a sudden change of pace. Perhaps because this contrasts with the first three quarters of the movie just like a blizzard follows a beautiful wintry landscape. However it feels like they suddenly decided to take a sharp turn and step into another genre. I leave it at this, as to not spoil your fun, but I felt that the ending was not well executed, especially because they just show you what happened scene by scene during the murder. It spoils the thriller/mystery aspect. Like really, was that needed? Like really, can't you solve a case without knowing that you got it right?

Sleepy Hollow is often praised for its great visuals. It invokes a dark mood and gives a nod towards the way lighting was used in movies as the Third Man. Alas, the visuals take a backseat on the small screen of my laptop and brings in focus the story and characters. And the contrast is striking. The movie is filled with strong actors like John Gambon, Martin Landau and Jeffrey Jones. But there is hardly any acting by them as they are figures in landscapes, witnesses to Depp's antics and victims for the headless horseman. Depp plays a young constable of a New York police force that did not exist for another fifty years and denounces police torture methods that were never tolerated(at least not until recently). He gets send to investigate strange beheadings in a remote village populated by yokels. He is the agent of modernity who is going to bring the light of reason to the outback. Or so you think. But actually; no. Sleepy Hollow is like a slideshow: we move from one set to the other. Each scene is like a painting: well crafted with powerful lighting. Deliberate marvelous pieces. A girl dressed in all white on a white horse in a landscape of black leafless trees. A massive tree dominating the travellers, its branches clawing the dreary sky. A small town smothered by fog. An Inn full with bright colors, people, laughter and music. But how do we get from one scene to the next? We use Depp. He meanders through the story: stumbles into caves, plunges into forests and trips over bodies. There is no investigation as such. He is just led on. When he gets stuck a witch tells him where to go next or a sidekick finds something and says: you have to see this, sir. And then he leads him to the scary tree and the girl in white tells you its name. It isn't a bad movie because even on my laptop it looks interesting, but it is evident that the story and characters are just there for the visuals. Pity, considering all the acting talent available.

Nick Nolte plays a grumpy old guy who blows up a score of bad dudes in a confrontation on a mountaintop that is a somewhat reminiscent of the first Rambo movie. That is the only fun part of the movie and, alas, very short. It is why I gave it a three, instead of a two. There is also another guy in this movie, played by Butler. He is an ailing secret service guy past his prime. Despite that he kicks the butts of men half his age, and outwits everyone. Not because he is smart, but because he has plot armor and plot brains and everyone else is shockingly dumb or incompetent. This is how you write a story when you are unable to make a smart guy do smart things. He basically just runs to some place and survives everything with nary a scratch. At one moment he actually runs into a room where a bad guy has the drop on him. But the bad guy waits for Butler to shoot him. There are so few surprises that it actually surprised me. It takes half a braincell to figure out who the evil guy is behind it all, how the story would develop and how it would end. It was so unsurprising that I actually braced for a twist of some kind, but once the bad guy's voice was being warped when talking to the second main bad guy, I knew it was as bad as I thought it would be. This was just done for the audience. The biggest surprise for me is that three people wrote the script. It is amazing that you need three writers to write a by the numbers story with characters that have no depth or arch and a story that is as shallow as politician's promise. A terrible movie.

Perhaps this is the moment to blame Monty Python for emphasizing all that is wrong with medieval movies. Then again it was all meant to be silly and so The King could have been if it hadn't been so depressing. Gloomy isn't funny. The King depicts the life of one of the more remarkable kings of England: Henry the Fifth, a man immortalized in a play by Shakespeare. He wasn't king for long, but almost succeeded in joining France and England into one union after remarkable successes on the field of battle, of which the battle of Agincourt in 1415 is the most notable. History would certainly have been different had that lasted. Given all that, it should be easy to make a movie of this grander than life figure. No need to embellish or twist things to make an otherwise boring historical figure into something watchable. Alas, the movie makers beg to differ. Let's toss all that boring historical stuff aside and just make up new things as we go along. And throw in some Holy Grail things, like dirty peasants, down trodden poor clothing and anything else that have been cliched to death by now. It is fascinating to see them turn Henry into an erratic angsty teen that would fit right in with the Twilight saga cast. Henry, leader of men, the warrior king, mumbles his lines and sits in depressed silence throughout the film. Into the breach once more, he mumbles and listlessly waves his sword. His men stare at him. Sorry, did you say something? The movie is almost drained of any color, like it is shot on an overcast or rainy day. The characters are drained of any liveliness as well. Like half dead men they stumble about. They look sick, or undead, or drunk. Oh... look.... the enemy.... Let's gape at them for a while. That movies aren't well versed in depicting war will not surprise you, but that they even get the most basic things wrong is amazing. Like having your fully equipped knights march on foot overland without any cavalry screen to find out where your enemy is. At one moment the column of men, and it is actually a long column without any flanking forces, comes up on a hill and then somehow Henry senses the French army is behind the hill. And by Jove, they are! And neither army has any scouts out, or screening forces or camp guards. I swear that the French army didn't even notice that one figure in plain sight on the top of the hill. Why make a movie about a king who spends most of his live on the battlefield while you have totally no understanding of how war is waged? Or, apparently, no interest whatsoever to ask people who do know? I bet there are enough people in England who can tell you how to avoid the most basic of errors? But all of this isn't the worst about this movie. The worst is how amazingly uninspiring it is and weird. For some reason the French king is disdainful of Henry. Apparently it is, so we are told, because of Henry's rowdy live before he became king. Let's just rewind this a little. Henry is a lazy layabout who spends his live whoring, drinking and doing nothing much until he becomes king. And then he changes from that into an experienced warrior who bests experienced knights in duels and defeats one of the most powerful armies in medieval Europe. Picture that. SO the French king thinks Henry to be a weak king and thus mocks him, sends assassins and plots against him. And eventually, Henry has enough and thus invades France to teach their kind a lesson. So far the totally made up history of the movie. In reality the story was different. The rumor that Henry was a whoring drunk was just that: a rumor. In fact he was well experienced in war. And the reason he invades France is not because he was insulted, but because he claimed the throne of France. It baffles why you need to twist history if history is good enough to tell an engaging story? Anyway.. this uninspired movie exasperates. Maybe they should call it: the mumbler saga: breaking history.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I seem to be driven to write mostly negative reviews, so now I wanted to write a review of a movie I really liked. I watched this movie a year ago and then re-watched after seeing Joker. Phoenix gives a stellar performance in a tale that is dark, possibly too dark for many. The movie works with a positive vibe to working towards and ending that is touching. It made me cry. The acting this in this movie is supported by a story that is well written and centers itself on where it should: the characters. This allows the actors to invest and show us people who feel alive and whom you can connect with and maybe even care for. Phoenix has this remarkable skill to do this, which he also shows with Joker. These aren't easy characters to play. If you can stand unusual characters that might be hard to like or understand, then this is a movie you could try. Personally I would just do because if watching a movie with a story that makes good acting possible. Which in itself is a good reason to watch movies like these.

I gave this movie a try, but I couldn't get past the murders of innocent bystanders. There is this scene I can't forget where a blue collar worker is pushed of a building under construction to fall to his death. His gas welder plummets to the ground and explodes to kill of another group of workers. Add this to two scene were Bond escapes with his life because a windscreen of a bulldozer stops bullets and his opponent ran out of bullets when he has Bond cornered and he comes over as a murderous skill-less thug who got lucky. I prefer another kind of bond.

I stopped watching this after ten minutes. The big problem with the movie is that they didn't even attempt to make it look right. One of the earlier chase sequences has Wick run down a street. He then gets hit by one car and immediate by a second. Without anything to show for. The people in the cars then let him get up and run into a nearby stable before giving chase. How nice of them. The people inside the stable then react like gun wielding goons are a daily occurrence you do not need to worry about. Probably they have seem too much Wick already. Next Wick takes a horse and gallops down a street while being hunted down by two motorcycles. Where do these guy comes from? Well, they were visible watching Wick going in and then exciting that stable. How did they know he would be there? How did they know he would come out? Who cares. Next we see clearly that the cars to either side to the chase scene are all parked and have their headlights on. Every scene feels fake. Like when someone is surrounded by five thugs who all wait in turn to get a whipping. It has been done to death. Try something else. The first movie felt like a graceful dance, this feels like a drunken swagger.

Curiously I enjoyed this movie even though it could have been improved with some better writing. It would have been much better to focus on the conflict between the new submarine commander and his XO which would then reach boiling point as the tension rises. This would have required to flesh both men out more and this time could have been found by removing much of the scenes in the US. There is also too much time given to the special ops team. It would have been much better if the team actually was a navy seal team that operated from the submarine. In that way the focus would have been on the sub all the time and there would have been less time needed to introduce people and the leader of the seals could be another guy with a stake in the conflict between the captain and his xo. I find the movie also weak because it paints the Russians in a negative light. For while the US commander never fires first, never on his own men and never on the Russians even when he would need to save his own ship, the Russians have no issue to shoot, execute and blow up their own men. It turns them in cardboard bad guys. I also think that it would also have been better if they had focused the conflict between the Russian destroyer and the US submarine. I recall the haunting scene in Das Boot. It could have been introduced as the latest in anti-submarine warfare at the start of the movie and be the reason why the Russian president was there. In that way you have a build up and a pay off. Now it just appears suddenly. The most problematic story element is however the motivation of the Russian bad-guy. There is no effort to give him a good reason, give him a good background and make him so we can understand him as a person. It would have been easy to do, by having the Russian president be responsible for cut it the defense budget for instance. Stating that the Russian destroyer would be the last of its kind and all the other builds cancelled. The bad-guy then could have been given a personal stake in this. Maybe he fears that his country would become weak. Or maybe he has issue with the US submarine commander, or maybe he is an old buddy. Just something that makes him into a person instead of a puppet. The biggest issues in this movie is that it doesn't concentrate on the central story and it fails to give us characters we can connect with. All in all what you get is a mediocre thriller. If you are really into submarines then I am sure you are better off watching Das Boot or The Hunt for Red October.

A group of generic bad guys terrorize a young Chinese couple in a cabin in the woods. The man is left for dead after being stabbed with a knife in the heart. This turns out to be merely a flesh wound. Let's call it a draw, King Arthur would have said. .. The dead man aims to liberate his wife with about three inch of steel sticking in him and although he is somewhat worse for wear this doesn't dampen his heroics. Just pop in some painkillers and you're good to go. These pills also fixed the concussion he must have gotten when his body was dragged up some steps and over a very high doorstep.. Karma is a thing in this movie so we are told by one of the bad guys, so the first two adversaries kill themselves. One guy gets his throat sliced by the antlers of dead deer and the bad girl slams her head on something after getting kicked by the Asian guy in the shin. .. At this point the remaining bad guys figure out that the first guy is missing, but they fail to catch on to the dead Asian or to check the body of the supposed dead man. Why should they? The movie continues on with nonsense. Here are some highlights for you. Dead Asian man somehow manages to lock a bathroom door from the outside. Dead Asian guy somehow gets his hands on some poison that he spikes whiskey with. It is stuff that comes with cabins. Dead Asian guy uses a tractor to overtake a van and then drives the van off the road. .. Is there something good about this movie? Well, the acting isn't too bad. And there are a few interesting conversations. There are so many better movies. It is best to watch or re-watch those.

Michael Fassbender steals the show in this awful movie as an evil henchman while Josh Brolin struggles to be the reluctant antihero. Brolin plays a former Confederate officer who rises from the dead and gets all kinds of powers in the bargain. He seeks to exact revenge on the bad guy, Turnbull, played by John Malkovich. To up the stakes Turnbull, also a former Confederate Generall, intends to destroy the Union. I wonder where we have seen that before... This movie reminds me of Wild Wild West. It has the same kind of story, it has also good actors - not counting Will Smith - and is equally disastrous. The main difference is that Wild Wild West became what it wants to be, even if it was bad at it, but Jonah Hex became nothing, and was equally bad at that as well. On the one hand, this movie seems to go for a grim mood like Sin City. Sin City uses contrasts to underscore the personalities and the action. The comic itself is even done in black and white to highlight the contrasts. It is powerful, it is grim and it works. On the other hand, Jonah Hex goes for nonsense. The villain plots to destroy the United States with a super cannon that fires nukes as shells and the president needs the help of Hex to stop the evil guy. And how about the two Gatling guns strapped to a horse? These are the trappings of a comedy. And there you have a major problem. These two opposites tend to cancel each other out. It is just hard to be grim and funny at the same time. Hell, some movies have just issues with being one or the other. Like Wild Wild West; it wants to be funny but it isn't. The greatest sin, however, is that there is no attempt to make us care. It is telling that the person I liked most was Fassbender's evil henchman and he was just in the movie for a few minutes. The ultimate challenge for any story is that it should make you care. And this movie fails to do so.

It is a pity that this movie turned out the way it did for the premise was interesting, but the execution left much to be desired. .. So this movie is about a man who, as a young beat cop, gets confronted by a series of unusual grisly **** subsequent investigation and pursuit seems to end the case eventually. Yet nine years later there is the same series of unusual murders. A copycat at work? And so the movie jumps with nine years intervals from 1988 to 2015, while the protagonist tries to make heads and tails of the strange murders and stop the killer.. .. At first you think this is a movie like Zodiac, but this movie isn't anyway close. It has elements of a thriller, a film noir, an action movie and, eventually, a sci-fi movie but it isn't any one of them. It is a mish mash. However,at the core this is the tale of one man's obsession about a repetitive serial killer and what havoc this obsession wreaks for himself and those around him as he slowly loses everything, including his wife, daughter, friends and his sanity.. .. Now this might sound like a good story if it wasn't for some bad execution. The biggest issue is that most of the cast is truly unlikable. People are just downright nasty to each other for no apparent reason. Even the closest relationship, the camaraderie between the two cops, comes over as forced: as if they have to pretend to be nice to each other. The whole movie has people being unlikable in general and to those closest to them in particular. And thus there is nobody to care about. ... In addition, most of the roles are unconvincing. Various important relationships are never brought to life. The hero probably loves his wife, but we never get to see that played out, even though this is important to the story. He probably loves his daughter,but she is just enough in the movie as to let us know that he is a bad father. Unfortunately, his relation to this daughter is also of the utmost importance to the movie and again it is not brought to live. .. What is also unconvincing is the gradual falling apart of the lead. Such a role requires powerful acting like Jack Nicholson did in the shining. The lead actor of this movie just seems unable to express the kind of madness and obsession that should convince you that this man is losing his marbles. This is mostly because this is never really shown. With each nine year leap we start of with the character already being in a certain way and during the brief period before the next leap we do see his decline progress. Instead we get mostly a visual clue: he gets a craggy beard glued on, or remark from a bystander. ... Now the above issues are the big ones, but there are many weird moments that contribute to weakness of the movie. There are the Bay style action scenes that do not seem to belong in a movie like this. There is the nonsensical science behind it all which probably should not have been explained at it just turns it into magical nonsense. There is the murder weapon, that apparently doesn't get investigated even though the police are at a loss where it is from and how it is made. Even more, it never gets explained why that peculiar weapon with its shocking method of killing(it causes brains melting out of your ears) is used. Perhaps the last thing to mention is that the movie blatantly reveals the plot. So you do not need to piece things together.. it will be explained to you.. .. Another problem is that the movie never gets to grips with the problem of time travel. If you think that the murderer is using time travel, will this knowledge not inevitably start to gnaw on you. Would your actions make any difference or will your actions be the cause of what happens? What if we killed ****? Maybe a new one would stand up that wins World War 2 by turning the US and Russia into nuclear wastelands. Or maybe nothing happens at all, other than that your attempt itself causes the man to become the mass murdering freak that he was. Does it matter what you do?.. .. All of this points to a movie that is unbalanced. There is not enough time to spend on what matters and there is time wasted on things that do not matter. It is getting complicated and the movie doesn't handled that well. However, most of it could have been forgiven if it makes you care about the people. But as said, they are an unlikable bunch. And there, my friend, is the root of all evil.

I like Radio Head and Thom Yorke but this short movie irked me to no end. In this fifteen minute short we get a to see a kind of arty love affair between Yorke, fifty years old, and the actrice Dajana Roncione, thirty-five. Not only is this movie something that might be just enough to get your bachelors at the art academy(not in the least helped by the professionals employed) but trust them to pick a woman who is fifteen years younger then he is. I bet if she was five years older she would have not made it into that movie. Sorry Charlize, forty-three is just too old. .. .. But I guess it was the **** dream of a man past his prime caught in a dull life dreaming to get away from it all. And what man of fifty would dream of woman of his own age?!. .. .. Now it would have been really pushing things if Yorke had been substituted for unknown actrice of fifty dreaming **** of thirty five(or a man). I guess the ratings would have been halved. .. .. Then again, it still would be barely enough to get you a bachelor's as an art movie, because this is Art according to Netflix. Damien Jalet is the choreographer and he just stuck to the middle of the road. I mean, did he phone this in? If you want to see how dull this movie is, look up A Delicate Battle by Matjash Mrozewski(A clip with the music of Rainbow Arabia is still on u tube). Or go and visit your local ballet, no doubt about anyone does better than this. I no doubt trust that Jalet can do much better, but come on. .. .. Art is specifically that area where you avoid the beaten path. And the beaten path is what we get. It is like eating flour, if you use it to make a good meal, even a dull tasting product can be made into something tasteful, but in this case, the cook served it as it is. (my excuses for the .., but these seem to be the only way that I found to make sure the breaks are where I want them to be.)

Possibly the most unsettling part of this movie about exorcisms is at the end. We are told that the structural abuse of hapless victims, condoned by the Catholic Church, is not only a continued practice today, but is seen as something warranting praise. At least enough to make a movie about it that proclaims such abuse as a good thing. So we are told that one victim was starved of water and food for eight weeks before the devil was driven out. This might be a case of: operation successful; patient died. We aren't offered details. But it is even worse. It isn't just condoned: the Church has actually a list of official exorcists and a training program that teaches this stuff to promising priests. One of those promising priest is our main lead, who is actually a doubting Thomas. Only in this case he is called Michael. Doubting Michael turns priest because, according to him, it is the only other alternative to becoming a mortician. And as Doubting Michael wanted to be away from his parental home, seminary school was the way to go. Believing in the almighty daddy isn't sufficient reason in fact. God doesn't hold any sway in this movie about driving out the devil through abuse. In all irony, the portraying of the opportunistic Michael as agnostic, if not downright as an atheist, who wings it through seminary school backfires as it shows that the Catholic Church is bereft of a functional selection mechanism when picking priests and just about anyone can get A grades and get handpicked for the elite exorcists training course irrespective of the strength of their convictions. But to top it all: the years of seminary school does nothing to sway Doubting Michael one way or the other. He is as unconvinced about the Catholic truth at the end as he is at the start. Seminary school fails to turn doubters into believers. It attest to its utter failure as an institution. The proof is in the pudding. I see something special in you, says some teacher of his, just when the main lead is about to hand in his collar as it was never about becoming a priest. And in the next scene he finds himself signed up to a satan kicker course over in Rome. What that special is(it isn't the fervor of his belief) goes undemonstrated. You might even say that there is more evidence for the contrary as the whole time our hero demonstrates his disbelief. It is like saying that a guy wearing coke-bottle glasses must make an excellent sniper, without showing his accuracy in previous scenes and him refusing to even touch a weapon out of principle. I guess we just believe it without evidence.. shall we? It is what religion is about. Now I can't fault you for thinking that from reading the above that it must be a comedy, but it really isn't. It is nothing more that a straight telling without any mirth. The whole thing is about the exorcisms and the script rushes towards that part and just gives us a cursory nod towards establishing a background and personality for the lead. Since Hopkins has enough personality upon entry without any need of establishment, the difference between him and the lead is so great that you can drive a truck through it, sideways. Was there anyone else in the room? Or even the picture? Even the extras and the support cast have more personality than Doubting Michael. Of course, we all known that this lack isn't surprising as Michael isn't a real person. He is the stand in for all the doubters and atheists who will become believers overnight when confronted by an 88 mm gun.. eh the evils of Satan, just like Michael is. There are no atheists in foxholes! Funny enough, at best the movie demonstrates that a being named Ba'al exists. If you take that to be proof that god exists, this is because you have been doggy-trained to make that connection. Turning a believer because of an illogical conclusion or because you are afraid doesn't say anything about existence of the almighty. In rational reality it is more likely that any sane person, whether atheist or not, will prefer to have the victims transported to the nearest decent hospital, Hopkins incarcerated for his own good and that of societies, and the Catholic Church outlawed until they stop actively supporting this kind of abuse. Like that will be the day! A remarkably disturbing movie that confronts you with the fact that while witch hunts and burning heretics has seen better days, institutional craziness and abuse is still rife in the Catholic Church. It once more shows how well-meaning people can do evil things if they just believe hard enough that their delusion is factual and they have movies telling them so.

It is hilarious to compare the pretentious prattle of Clayton Dillard(Slantmagazine) dishing this one a 38 out of 100 to Helen O'Hara(Empire) who lauds it with an astonishing 100 out of 100. Dillard spots a lack of precision in the geometrically conceived stylization and feels it is a let down compared to Resident Evil: Retribution and Children of Men. I kid you not. If you happen to feel that this movie doesn't stand up to Alien(s), Blade Runner and Jurassic Park due to the egregious lack of a captivating comparative social narrative you are totally valid in that assessment. Just remember that pretentiousness demands the combination of at least three important sounding words, bonus points for adding more(I got four). O'Hara in turn praises not only the acting skills of the kid wonder but predicts that it’s the dense social commentary(note: three words) and moral dilemmas that will haunt you. A denseness that will haunt you? I know it will... I wonder who is on a trip further away from reality? And did they snort the same pods? In any event.. for those who live closer to the real world: it is an zombie flick in which the zombies are called hungries as to deceive you into thinking that these flesh eating dead aren't zombies. This time it isn't a virus, but a fungus. Not that it matters: it works the same way: get bitten and you become one. Further stuff we might have seen before. Mad Scientist(capitals as it is a trope), played by Glenn Close, who thinks she can save the world by using infected kids as ingredients for her cure. An infected kid who is jolly polite and eats cats(the latter amounts to the greatest sin of all according to my daughters). An accidental hero(ine) who thwarts the Mad Scientist. Doomed soldiers who are there to die(obviously). A military base that gets overrun(cause zombies win from machineguns, flamethrowers, rockets and nukes hands down every time). And Important Words. As extra you will see the kids from Beyond the Thunderdome as smart zombies hunt down one of hapless soldiers. Then they get put in their place when the jolly kid defeats their leader in a truly atrocious kids fight. Do they ever learn? In between stuff happening the band of hapless survivors talk about stuff. Feelings, their spouses and siblings and the end of the world. It must be that dense social commentary I missed. Well, I didn't actually, but I did. It's a decent flick.. but it cannot be held against you when you think it a dime in a dozen. Cause frankly.. it is all it is. The acting is at least okay even though nothing remarkable comes from it. Let me favor it with a six cause it is Tuesday.

This movie propagates a cynical view of humanity that many moviemakers cater to and by doing so feed it. It is what sells to a crowd that has lost their faith in the authorities and whose faith gets further eroded away by movies like these. The police is incompetent, politicians are self-serving, reporters fabricate lies, the judicial system is failing. It is all in there. Man is wolf to man. The only thing they didn't lose faith in is the hero,as they think themselves to be that hero, but it would be the ultimate unraveling of society if even the hero can no longer be trusted(this movie gets close I find it annoying that moviemakers like Tony Scott feel that they have to make the bad guy pure evil. He has to make Washington's boss into a bastard. He has to make the police incompetent. He has to make the mayor into a self-serving git. He has to tick all those cliches just to crank out a story. It just shows poor storytelling if you think that you can't achieve a (good) movie without making a lot of honest well-meaning and hardworking people into buffoons, crooks and morons. Is it so impossible to just show normal people dealing with a bad situation instead of stacking up a huge pile of cliches?

I liked this movie. I know there are some issues with the way the killing is portrayed. I think the general opinion is that Bonnie did not do what the movie claims she did. But this movie isn't about Bonnie and Clyde and that is why they remain figures in the distance. I sort of can live with the deviation from history. The movie is about the two guys arranged the end of Bonnie and Clyde's crimespree. They are played by Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson. To be honest, I liked their acting and the character they played. The movie also avoids some of obvious pitfalls. Harrelson usually plays the buffoon part, but here he doesn't have to be.. even though his character remains a bit awkward. There is even a bit of a tongue-in-cheek moment when Costner and Harrelson have to ask a group of people about the whereabouts of Bonnie and Clyde and Costner says that he isn't good with people.. and thus Harrelson has to ask. Harrelson grunts somewhat, and then talks to a kid in a rather unusual way for him. It is nice to see him getting the chance to play such a character. I like the movie a lot and the way the two acted. I personally think that Coster wasn't the best choice for the role, but he was good enough. It is a pity that the movie felt as something with a small budget. And perhaps it was. This could perhaps have been a much bigger movie with the right money. The supporting cast could then have had some bigger names. But things are as they are.. and I like the movie.

I find myself smiling as I seem to end up at the other end of general opinion.. maybe it is me. Perhaps I like a movie where two girls exact out a weird from of revenge that is as unsettling as it is gruesome. A gruesome beauty in which an abusive man gets punished. I honestly liked the movie. I can see that it wouldn't be very popular as it is just too offbeat and gruesome in parts. But not the kind of gruesome that would amuse people who are attracted to that sort of thing. It is part of the story rather than the thing in itself as in a horror movie. The movie toys with the storyline and it has some twists that are a bit far reaching. Some of the story gets explained. Perhaps the movie can do better without the explaining. I liked the acting and the way the movie starts so innocently and then slowly turns into something darker as the layers of the story are peeled away to show another story underneath.

Stranger things set in motion the production of a whole category of movies and Rim of the World is one of them.. Kids, sci-fi and the scent of the eighties. And while I am no fan of stranger things I admit that it tries to avoid some of the terrible clichés. Not so Rim of the World. Rim of the world celebrates them. Unabashed. It pulls no punches. It feasts on them. This movie truly does not show any shame in being a totally unoriginal. Just a small list.. Fat kid that is the comic relief. Main lead is a shy kid, afraid of everything, including heights and girls. The third guy is the brave upright boy with a dark and sad past. The last is the girl who puts all the boys to shame time and again.This leads to the absurd moment in which the little sprout drives a muscle car around for which she simply lacks the length. The blond biatch is missing.. There is just one girl. The all have their predictable story arcs. The story? When the evil aliens strike earth.. the kids get hold of the key that will save all by destroying da mother-ship. It is a forgone conclusion that they will do so, but we have to watch 90 minutes of regurgitated material before the aliens snuff it. Bleh.. I try to hold out, thinking that at some point they just must run out of clichés and be forced to do something original. But there is no end to it... If it was just funny and didn't take itself so seriously? But no..this is as deadly serious as they come.. The only redemption is in the music. I pity the kids doing their best. But the best is not enough. Avoid at all cost.

I must be coming from a odd angle when I say that the movie was a job well done and it can be expected to be historical inaccurate. Distorting the truth is the bread and butter in Hollywood, especially when it is Hollywood that gets the limelight. I know.. it gets me at times too, especially when the subject is close to heart. The Canadian Caper isn't so I didn't care much one way or another, other then that, when reading about it, I thought that the filmmakers could have been more respectful towards other people, be it the Canadians or Iranians. So we can put Argo safely amongst Braveheart, The Patriot, Pearl Harbor, The Untouchables, The Highway Men, Inglorious Basterds, Saving Private Ryan and The Bridge of the River Kwai and a slew of other movies that base themselves on some kind of real occurrence. But hold on. Some of these movies are actually quite entertaining(and well acted). And there you go: Argo isn't entertaining. If Argo twisted the truth to make it more engaging then it failed to achieve that goal. Compare Alan Arkin, who is praised for his cliché performance in Argo, with, say, a stellar performance by Alec Guinness. Or compare the bland cast of Argo to say, the cast from Saving Private Ryan? Or for that matter, to All the president's men or The Untouchables? Care to remember who they were? You forgot them right. Why would you care for people you forgot about the moment they leave the screen. And this is possibly the ironical failure of movies like Argo. They take some kind of real event, twist the events, and utterly fail to either be true to the truth or leave a lasting impression. Why not just make the whole thing up but at make a good movie? You know... like Citizen Kane.

I can't help it, but I didn't like any of the characters. It starts with the unlikable Josh Brolin who is supposed to be the good guy, but he is just a thug with a badge. Then again, the last time I saw him was in Sicario playing another unlikable person. There is Ryan Goslin, playing another unlikable guy. Sean Penn is unlikable too, but then he plays a gangster boss, so it is understandable that you don't like him. Emma Stone is also in the movie, a great actress whose acting is totally wasted. She could have been replaced by any pretty girl and you wouldn't have noticed the difference. The supporting cast resembles the supporting cast from the untouchables, with the exception that each member of the latter, such as Andy Garcia or Sean Connery, had something distinct. Not so for this movie: they are mostly unlikable. With a unlikable cast I stopped caring what happened and gave up two-thirds in. It seems to be a film noir too, but we are far far away from movies like The Maltese Falcon or The Third Man. Taken from this I assume that the Untouchables is also a film noir.

Say, doesn't this movie make Morgan Freeman... eh god.. out to be a ****? I mean, his lordliness removes people leaving the rest stuck in dangerous situations. I imagine an open heart surgeon suddenly whisked away while operating. Yeah, unlikely as he or she is probably an atheist or Korean: both not eligible. But you know..that kind of situation. In the movie a driverless car smashes into a shop and a small plane crashes into a mall. To hell with those left behind! Well, not hell.. unless they were actually all moved downstairs while the rest went to the attic. I tried to look it up, but the bible is a boring mess. A bit like this movie. I wonder what happens if you happen to be operated on and you are abducted. You'll arrive with your internals hanging out? Taken from the movie you'll probably arrive naked in heaven surrounded by mostly kids as kids get in for free. All these little naked kids. Most without parents: Where... where are mam and dad? They... are not here, Sweety... you see... They were not good Christians. Not like us! But... but I am not either... I am not a Christian either! Or I wasn't.. Yeah, we know.. but you are a kid. Now, be a good boy... I don't want to be a boy.. I want to be a girl! Shut up, or we send you back when you turn nine! I mean, doesn't that sound weird? Like icky weird? And if you missed out because you had your birthday today you'll curse the supreme one for the rest of your life.. or eternity.. whatever takes longer. Why today? Why not yesterday? Only a **** would do that! And have you even heard god say sorry? Of course not. Which also makes him a ****. But how do we know it is even god? Why not aliens? Or the devil. Or the Vogons? No, it must be god, so we are told.. Because of reasons. It is like they the probably conducts trials. Who did it? The black guy in the trench coat! What is your evidence? Well, it is what we believe. But the logical reason why it must be god is clear: only a **** can make a **** move like that. And god is a ****. So who else could it have been? And a worldwide panic sets in. It says a lot a how myopic the makers of this movie must be. Considering the percentage of the world populace that is eligible to go up it should be nothing much at all, unless god also feels obliged to take all the kids away from the entire world.. including babies. Filling the heavens with toddlers of all religions and convictions.. and none. And being a toddler for all eternity.. that must be fun! Are you sure this is heaven? The conclusion is inevitable: god must be a ****. I am surely overthinking this all, but I like to as it is so funny to imagine how this nonsense must work. Little thought has gone into this movie. Suspend you reason, because that is the way to watch movies. And how can you believe this nonsense anyway? The moment you start to ponder things it starts to unravel in a funny way and you can go either of two ways. Saying that this is so bizarre it must be nonsense or saying that this is so bizarre.. and then make a full stop right there. Let's face it. Down to earth this movie is mostly harmless. Mostly, for you run the danger of being bored to dumbness. It is fascinating really, how boring you can make a movie. It has a really cute female lead, but she is really boring. And Cage is in it. And even he is boring. Nothing really happens. But... but.. how about the plane: it is about to crash! Yes... and what is so exciting about that? Of all the plane crash movies it is by far the most boring. Most of the time this movie is people talking and pretending that they are undergoing emotions of some kind. Oh and people stating that it must be the rapture, with a grave mood. Desperate the female lead contemplates even suicide. God is a big **** but he likes kids. That is what the movie tells us. Well done there. You know what is funny? The people who made this movie and a sample of viewers probably think they will be raptured themselves. They can be sure that they won't. Would god reward people who take pleasure from the suffering of others? From those who are left behind? It is very likely he wouldn't. But then he might cause he is a **** after all as the movies tells us. You know what is double funny? God wouldn't be raptured either. Or do mass-murdering sadists get to heaven? (Despite my strenous effort to keep the formatting right Metacritic makes a jumble of the text by gluing paragraphs together. I have given up on getting it right. My apologies.)

"What the fxxx is happening!" "We gotta get him out of there!" "Fxxx quarantine I am going in there!" "Who put you in charge!" "Permission to kill this xxx!" "Guys, it is trying to get out!" Real astronauts are unlikely to shout this kind of tripe, cause these guys and girls are highly qualified to keep their cool even under intense pressure. And them's smart people too. A lot smarter than me and you. Combined. It is why they had to add some extra drama into the Apollo 18 movie: just to shake things up. And it is why we don't put actors up there. Actors do stupid things because the script tells them to, and they unlock doors so the alien life-form can escape and eat everyone. And land on earth for all I know. But I don't know as I stopped watching after a tidal wave of dumb actions and lines. Another movie that needs to have smart people do and say dumb things to move the plot forward. It made a profit, so we probably can look forward to life 2. I hope you will like it...

It is one of those Netflix flicks I saw because I wanted to see Nicholas Cage act. Weird, I admit, as Cage isn't known for sublime performances. But that is precisely why! Someone pointed out that Cage's acting could be seen as deliberately anti-acting. Like, let's say, the Joker as played by Heath Ledger in the Dark Knight Cage is over the top, but while Ledger pulls it off marvelously, Cages over-acting is often a dud. Perhaps often is an understatement. But with 211 Cage surprises again by putting in a such a run-of-the-mill performance that one can only giggle.. and giggle and giggle some more. Cage is in good company(or is that bad?) as the rest of the cast is as bland as used teabags. There is kind of attempt to make us care for them as the various non-entities get introduced during the long winded first part of the movie, but it doesn't pay off when it should. It is a half-assed attempt anyway, which is why some of the people have no names at all. Oh yes, the fat bloke is shot in the head. Ah yes, the son-in-law is on the verge of dying after being shot(and boo-hoo he has just heard that he has become a father). It makes me pause to consider what makes us connect to **** feel the hurt they feel. Or at least sympathize. Using tropes like: man-hears-he-becomes-a-father-just-before-facing-mortal-peril puts me off. Come on! And of course he doesn't die. It isn't even a spoiler to say so.. it is that kind of movie.(It would at least have been inspired if she wasn't pregnant as he turns out to be infertile. Or she ups and leaves. You know, like real life people sometimes do). The movie tries to take the serious angle by declaring to be inspired by real life events, but it is just that: inspired, not based on. If they would have based it on the North Hollywood Shootout(which is the one they mean), they would have altered the movie significantly. For one, there was never a pause. The two dudes(not four) came out and the fight was on: what you would call a running battle. There were also no hostages. But the movie has the robbers sit inside the bank for some time with hostages, so where the heck is the negotiator? And why show the police as having AR-15 as the lack of them was the whole point in the real shootout: that the police did not have the necessary firepower to stop the heavily armed and armored robbers?(It is just infuriating when you watch an interview with a former LAPD Swat team member who explains just that and why it can not happen now and this movie gets exactly this point wrong). Then the Swat team does arrive - which takes ages unlike with the real shootout -, they get time to set up the assault and do so is a very clumsy way. As said: there is no negotiator but there are also no snipers and the teams only use what must be a smoke grenade. And why they heck do they press the assault when the hostages are send out? But possibly the worst part of the movie is the utter unrealistic carelessness for human suffering with the cops. When the backup arrives with their AR-15's, they waist no time to shower the bank with a hail of bullets while it is obvious that they have hostages in there and it is very likely they hit them first. In addition they leave one of the survivors of the coffee cup bombing unattended while it is clear she is in a terrible state. And finally they don't give a rats ass that Cage has an obvious nervous breakdown after being on the receiving end of a barrage of bullets and thinking his son-in-law has died. But the only thing the officer in charge does is telling him to calm down. It is almost like the slap-in-the-face trope, without the slap in the face. But anyway, in this movie it works as Cage then takes charge and goes Rambo. There is an utter lack of seriousness in the whole movie that tries to pawn itself off as being serious. And there lies the issue. There is so much unrealism in this movie(a band of experienced mercenaries robbing a bank for a trifle?) that the whole inspiration becomes silly. If this is inspired by real life events, then Lord of the Rings is inspired by the First World War, Star wars by the American revolution, and Pearl Harbor by Pearl Harbor(and one of these might actually be true). It would have been better if they had not taken this all too serious, but just made a stupid action flick with an over the top bad/good guy. Cage can do that. That is his thing. This is another Netflix dud. Netflix Orginal is becoming a byword for underperforming. Netflix: get a hold of yourself. Merit

I have no doubt that this movie is made with good intentions, but I cannot but help to be irked by it. More of that later. Let's first go to the title. 'The most unknown' might make you think that this is about that what scientists do not know (yet), but it is also about the scientists themselves. That in the US science is under attack from religious groups is evident. There is a strong suspicion that the scientists all belong to a nefarious society whose purpose is to ridicule that what is ridiculous. If you believe that the planet is 6000 years old, flat and ruled over by an invisible all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good being that has a plan that is unalterable but you pray to it so it changes its plan for your personally and you get told that the nonsense you believe in doesn't sit well with any scientific research or logic, you can either adapt, ignore it or do away with it. Since the first is undesirable and the second doesn't work, the latter is what remains. Hence the extreme religious groups influence politics to have their view imposed or, lacking that, at least push back the influence of science that contradicts their religious views. Queue for this movie that introduces us to science as much as their scientists. And so we get to see is all the areas where the friction between religious convictions and science is the most obvious; the origin of life, the universe, the planet. And we get nothing on anything else. It also introduces us to nine scientists of which about six are native English speakers and five of them are Americans. The suggestion is clear. Look at all these nice American scientists, see they are not nasty evil people, but funny and cute and dedicated. And mostly American. What is irksome is that five out of nine scientists are portrayed as American scientists. And if you allow for those that are English native speakers or working in the US the number goes up to seven. Reality begs to differ. The US is a strong dominating force, but the reality is that 3 out of 9 are perhaps US born, whole 1 of 9 might be a non-Us born scientist working for an US university. Making 5 out of 9 for the rest of the world who work elsewhere and 6 out of 9 a Non-American. And this number is changing rapidly. This documentary is neither about science or the scientists. It is a piece of propaganda that is to tell the American audience that (American) scientists are mostly harmless. As if that is going to work.

Lesbians do not fare well in movies. In Blue is the warmest color the love affair ends because, you know, most lesbians truly desire a man and the lead did, which her butchy girlfriend did not like. She could have known. You see, in movies lesbians are divided into two groups: butches, the true lesbians who act like men(because they want to be men) and want to *** other girls(with strapons) and the deluded girls who think they are lesbians and have it on with the butches but realize their mistake when they meet a real man. If two deluded girls somehow happen to meet up it invariably ends in a tragedy. In a perfect ending, one of the two dies. Freeheld, same deal. A lesbian love affair is at the center of Mulholland drive, one leaves, the other kills herself. The only one I have seen that ends well, more or less, is Imagine you and me. Would Below her Mouth be any different? It might. Did I care? No. For a large part this movie consists of sex scenes, yep the leads are pretty, even the butchy one, and we get to see them get on throughout the movie. The movie wastes no time on it. The butch breaks up with a former partner, then meets the new lover in the local lesbian bar. For some odd reason the new lover, up till then a straight girl and engaged, wanders into the only lesbian bar in town to met the butch. It is what all women do, right? Anyway what follows is mostly a series of lesbian love scenes because women having it on is hot. Character development, drama there might be some, but I lost interest halfway through after yet another love scene. When do we get to see the persons as persons instead of bodies entangled? But what is more, most of the sex scenes have the butchy one act like a man, with a strap doing the other as if lesbians don't have fingers, mouths and tongues. The screenplay is written by a woman and she can't imagine lesbians having sex in any other way than doing it as if they were a man and woman. Of course there are some issues surrounding the engagement. And this is yet another feature of lesbians in movies. If they aren't breaking up because of a man, they are breaking off an engagement or wedding because of a woman. Lesbians cannot exist on their own in movies. That there are lesbians who are not involved romantically in any way with men and not butchy is sheer impossible to conceive. And that such women can be attracted to other lesbians who are not pretending to be men(read butchy) and also not involved with men, that is impossible. But even if the impossible happens, lesbians do not end up happy(Mulholland drive). Women cannot go without men, either true men or pretend men. Below her mouth is not different. Welcome to the movies, boys and girls. I upped it to five.. because of the ending.

Some people lack all sense of proportion by giving a movie like this a score that equals such movies as Alien(81 vs 83) or, more into the revenge scene, outscore Hard Candy(56???) or the Brave one. High scores suggest a good story, good acting, good cinematography and a good music score. Revenge does not deliver on any of these. Perhaps, the best is the cinematography. It is at times unusual and sometimes comes above the level of decent but it is seldom put to good use and often followed by such bad camera work that you got the feeling that two people were working on this at the same time. And maybe there were. The music is not bad and sometimes even the best part, but again it is lackluster most of the time and just used in a bad way. The acting is not atrocious, but clearly these are not good actors, they feel like those Italian support actors Spaghetti western were filled with, whose only role was to be gunned down by the main actors. What can be said is that the female lead takes the cake simply because after some initial dialogue has no lines anymore. Silence is golden. The worst part is the story and how it is told. This lack **** plot is drowned with ample buckets of blood which is so ridiculous that non of the tension from the combat convinces. Especially at the end the setup is so botched with too many blood that I just had to skip the scene to the end. It isn't gory, it is just plain silly. So the story: a girl is pushed from a cliff and gets speared on a branch in a dead tree after a drop of thirty feet. Had the movie started with this then it would have been engaging but alas we are about a third or so in. In fact, they could have started with her dragging her body through the desert, prompting us to ponder how she got there, and why. And had the pursuers just be silent men who hunted her instead of having us witness their atrocious dialogue. Again adding to the intrigue. This start would have gone nice with the interesting camera angles as she hangs in the tree and seems to die. Or while she scrambles through the desert and she slowly gets delirious. The problem is that we never get to understand how this girl, with a foot long piece of wood through her kidney area is able to go on. In fact she leaves a bloody trail behind her and kills a guy, before she finally drags herself to a cave to tend to that wound. Mind you, she only patches up the exit end, the other side, we see in some shots, is not getting treated, but has apparently healed by itself. If they had just made better used of the powerful drug she has with her, it would have been believable that it was that that made her go on, but no.. even that explanation is not used. The rest of the movie makes you not only wonder how this girl is able to go on, but makes you wonder why she doesn't run away. She is a sweet girl with, as far as we know, no combat experience or PTSD, heavily wounded, **** and smashed up. I would have ran the moment I had the chance. And she gets that chance even: she gets a car and she can now flee the scene, giving her the opportunity to exact revenge in another way(watch the movie to understand) but no this movie has to go pick the obvious but inexplainable route of having her confront the last guy. And here is possible the big failure of this story. There is no plausible explanation for why she does what she does, what makes her tick and go on instead of collapsing into a ball of pain or running away when she can. In all this doesn't make for a good movie, it doesn't show humans, it shows cliché characters that make the unblievable in an unbelievable story and giving this more than a five is being generous..

....but it sure is terrible, isn't it? There isn't much to say about this movie that is made by the same team that gave us Shaun of the Dead(short Shaun) and Hott Fuzz. While those two movies worked due to speed, and combination of fun and funny lines and scenes, this mix fails for the World's End. The fail is from the get go. Gary King, alcoholic and failed person in general, wants to redo a (failed) pub crawl that he and four former friends did twenty years ago. It feels as pathetic. Especially when it becomes clear that his former friends have moved on and are reluctant to join in. The main fail is that I simply couldn't really care much for King. He obvious is a bad friend and always has been. He lies and cheats his supposed friends during the movie, who somehow take all this without walking out on him. But according to this movie, this is funny. A tell-tale sign that this movies isn't working well is the exposition at the start of the movie. In my experience exposition, the movie explaining itself to the viewer, is a bad technique and usually marks the inability of story to weave the background into the movie itself. There are examples where it does work(The third man) or is kept to a minimum (Star Wars, A new hope)as to be unnoticeable, but here it distracts and slows the movie down. In Shaun the people were thrown into it, in the World's End King has to recruit his former friends. But there is obviously no reason for the others to join King in reliving his pubescent fantasy and much against it. And when Martin Freeman says something along the lines of: what am I doing here, this question almost breaks the fourth wall and at least feels like an ironic commentary on the movie. What indeed are you doing (here)? And it is never explained or made believable. If the movie had taken the angle of five friends having a reunion after twenty years that turns into a pub crawl, it could have worked, but redoing a pub crawl from the outset while it is obvious they are not interested and then have these reluctant friends down large pints of been is illogical. It is abusing your powers as a scriptwriter to have your characters do things they simply would not do and pass it of as being funny. Halfway through the movie is changed to a variant on Stepford Wives. It is understandable as the whole five-former-friends-redo-a-failed-pub crawl had run out of steam about a third into the movie. But the aliens-use-robots-to-replace-people thing doesn't work either. It is just an series of the group fighting robot people in various pubs while King thinks of a lame excuse to try and finish the pub crawl. There is no reason and it isn't funny. Perhaps the worst moment how unfunny this movie is, is when King and Sam, the sister of one of his former friends, try to flee by using Sam's car, and King deliberately wrecks it for no reason at all. Sam doesn't even bat an eye. All in all a failed attempt at trying to be funny. The formula that works for Shaun of the Dead and Hott Fuzz fails in this one.

For a moment I felt myself dropped into the Mass Effect Andromeda game when confronted by what must be one of the most boring, generic adversary I have seen for a decade. Whereas in Andromeda they at least try to flesh out to enemy leader more, here we get you run-of-the mill generic reptilian looking baddy with a slavish following wanting to destroy the federation for reasons. He also seems to have the control a large fleet of ships and seems totally unaccountable to anyone. Excruciating boring are the few exchanges he has with Kirk and Uhura. Yes, yes, being the top dog is all that counts in our amoral universe. I dare say that star trek heads the opposite of star wars as it denudes itself from anything that makes sense or makes you feel connected to the people. There are some attempts at this, but as someone said elsewhere. They nod at it and then continues with the relentless frantic action scenes that seem to topple over each-other. No pause is given as the movie goes from chase scene, to fight scene, to blow up scene. It is written large: there will be no moment to ponder. Of course there are a few moments in which pondering happens, but they are at the beginning, just to get them over with. Star Trek beyond baffles mostly by the outrageous: the sheer outrageous stupidity of the cast making one idiotic decision after the other, the sheer outrageous luck that gets them out of their predicament that those idiotic decisions put them into, the sheer idiocy of the writing that offers the outrageous funniest and outrageous ridiculous moments, such as the one where they blow up the enemies swarms of ship with an old rock song. The biggest problem is that the cast of well established characters are in fact outrageous boring, with the exception of Uhura and some newcomers. It would be better if Star Trek rebooted again and then introduced us with some new characters so that they can be fleshed out and explored. Give the whole movie some more depth and people motivation that make sense. Just having a uninteresting star trek crew take on a generic baddy is.. (here it comes) beyond boring. That all been said, if you like a relentless series of action scenes that does not pause for anything substantial, you will probably find that here. But to be honest: you get the same with Guardians of the Galaxy, but that has better characters, slightly more depth and more humor definitely. So if you have to face that choice, you know what you are getting into.

I have not been much interested in Stalin, even though he is an pivotal figure in history, but for his death. The events surrounding his death (and the struggle for power that ensues) made me think of the death of Tiberius, the Roman emperor who succeeded Augustus and was succeeded in turn by Caligula. There are similarities there, even though Tiberius struck me as the more sympathetic ruler of the two. One moment especially made the connection, Tiberius lies on his deathbed, but he suddenly seems to come back to life. Caligula, who has taken the signet ring from the emperor's hand, cringes, pleads and begs his excuses. The emperor falls back on to the bed and is finally definitely dead. Another version has the head of the guard choke the emperor to death. Almost a similar moment can be found in this movie when Stalin seems momentarily to recover, making Beria, head of the security services, cringe and terrified as well. He was already setting in motion the takeover of power. Something the dictator might not see in a favorable light. The movie is a terrible movie, for it shows what shocking terror the people in the Soviet Union had to live with under this most abject of rulers. And even though it might look over the top, reading up on sources will show you that it was like that. There is a danger to compare him to ****, that other abject ruler but let's not go into that. The terror can be felt in every scene and one of the shocking moments sees the entire house of Stalin being emptied by security forces and most of the staff and guards get shot by other guards. Beria's orders do not even spare his own men. Nobody is safe. The scene ends with a truck driving off with the guard ordering it to drive away getting shot in the head by another guard. The movie is positioned as a comedy and a drama, and even though there is a certain comedy, mostly very dark, at no point is this cheap or over the top. Point in case is the opening scene. We witness the end of concert which is broadcast by a radio station. The phone rings: it is Stalin. He instructs the man to ring him back in 17 minutes. Terrified the man calls back and is then instructed to deliver a recording of the concert to dictator. But they did not record the event. And panic ensues as they redo the concert as to record it and, of course, everything goes wrong. It is funny in a way, but the underlying terror and dread is palpable. You might think this is all not real, but we know from history that Stalin actually did this. The acting is superb and I cannot actually say who takes the cake here, Buscemi is excellent as Khrushchev, Beale matches his with his portrayal of Beria. But also Tambor makes a marvelous role as weak Malenkov and Palin does a nice job as sycophant Molotov. My opinion is that one should invent an oscar for the best group of actors in a movie. My vote would be for this movie. If there is a crucial moment in the movie then it is the moment that Beria, losing grip on the situation, threatens the other members of the Central Committee. You could feel that it would backfire. And we see how Khrushchev makes use of the moment in a marvelous but, for him no doubt, nerve-wracking manner. The movie is an incredible well done teamwork and I love it is done by people like Buscemi, Tambor and Beale. Give actors a good script and they pull it off. This is how movies should be. It is why I often blame the badness of movies not on the actors, but on the director and the script. I would almost give this one a ten. The reason I don't give it a 10 is because the movie takes shortcuts with history. A cursory glance says that some of the events did not happen that way. Just read up on Beria's death.

Every once in a while someone tries to take a shot at the western genre, seemingly in an attempt to flog that long dead horse back to life again, but the result is at best iffy, in the case of the ballad of left brown we get a snore feast. My god what is this movie boring. This can be totally written down to the pace of the movie, the predictable plot, the run-of-the-mill characters, and the weak dialog. Bill Pullman, playing the title role, is not a bad actor, but without anything to make the the character remotely interesting any acting effort is wasted. The director is a master in making ill use of the conflict brewing between Lefty and the wife of his former friend, neglecting to use the landscapes and any the lack of having interesting cinema photography. It is a marvel to notice in the far distance the chance for a nice landscape shot that is totally lost on the director who prefers to have his sky lines blocked with shrubbery and brush. What is even worse, this movie, like many others, as has been pointed out by a critic, suffers of the one color scheme curse. Everything is dusty earth tones. It is the easy lazy digitalization method. The result is a plodding colorless movie. It is a pity, for the idea behind, a sidekick who gets forced into the limelight, who has a strenuous relation with his former friends wife and has nothing going for him that taking revenge could have been interesting.

I wrote a review about this turd of a movie a few days back and was more lenient than I should have been. Resident Evil: Vendetta is a disastrous bad movie which deserves a resounding zero if it wasn't for the animations that by current days standard are well done, but will no doubt be outdated in a few years time. Vendetta should not have been made. This movie lacks almost anything worthwhile and does not in any way push the bar. Why make an animation movie that is even worse than the normal ones made by Anderson? The story. A dude with a grudge against some government (the US one probably because the story unfolds in the US) plans to exact revenge by unleashing a virus on the populace because that government bombed his wedding for he was a nasty piece of work. He is that elegant refined evil dude that are the one out of two main bad guy-types that anime has managed to produce. He has the usual side kicks. The leather clad vixen and the brutish thug. He has the usual riches. He has the usual score of devoted followers. He has the usual knowledge of everything(except when the plot doesn't want him to.) He is the usual brooding type. As usual he is omnipotent and omnipresent, just like the bearded guy, but without the omni-benevolence.That is, until they plot requires him to be otherwise. Such characters are not persons, they are targets. And therefore, like targets, they are without personality. The heroes are nothing remarkable either. The rough and ready fighter and the reluctant brooding sarcastic warrior. They team up to rescue the world from the zombies and the girl from the evil bad dude. The girl is, as usual in stuff like this, there to be put in danger so as to be saved. Her function is to be pretty, to be put in danger and to claps her hands in joy and exclaim, "My heroes." The dialog is atrocious. You know what these guys will be saying and how they will say it. And the makers of this movie do not digress in any way of the well trodden route. Anyone could have written this, you just grab a few comics and copy and past the dialog right into this movie and you are done. Actually that must have what they did. The upshot is that there is nothing to connect to. Everything and everyone is cliché, but in a remarkably bad way. The way in that you simply do not connect and thus not care. This movie just utterly fails because you don't care about any of it. The style and graphics are equally soulless. If you take for instance Sin city of A scanner darkly, they try to use the possibilities that animations can bring to table. Different and unusual styles, colors and angles; powerful imagery. What does this movie do? It tries to mimic reality in every detail but makes a pastiche of everything. It says probably art direction in the credits. What art? What direction? This movie can best be seen as the back-story to a computer game. It would still be uninspired, style-less, soulless and lame, but then the player gets to play with guns and shoot monsters. Which is more than half the fun. But with this movie you have to passively watch this stream of uninspiration being pumped out. And there is nothing to take away the chilling realization that you just witnessed something astoundingly bad. If that is what you like then, by all means, go and watch it. If you want to have more fun; go watch paint dry.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Third attempt to write a review. With all the pop ups this is getting to be a chore. Did you read any reviews before watching this movie or rating or even reviewing this? I did. I think that my feelings are best captured by Hello Texas11 on IMDB, but I am somewhat more benign towards the movie. Basically this is a movie that goes by the numbers and serves the usual tropes. And it does so without twists. The good part of this movie is that it is well made and has a few good actors to carry it. Most of the credit goes to John Malkovich and somewhat less to Clint Eastwood. The latter mostly reprises his Dirty Harry role, but more of a burned out kind. Rene Russo and Dylan McDermott are doing their best in their supporting roles. Russo gets the lesser role as the prospective romantic interest for Eastwood. The main issue is that there is nothing remarkable about this movie. Hello Texas11 describes it as an attempt to be a mix of the Manchurian Candidate and Silence of the Lambs, but never getting to the depth of both movies. I would agree even though Silence of the Lambs seems somewhat unfitting. But the thing is: it tries to put Malkovich in the scary killer role and it fails in making him scary. What we get is a run of the mill thriller, well executed but mostly forgettable. There is no depth, nothing captivating and in the end nothing to take home with you. I can imagine more interesting movies: the Manchurian candidate being one of them. This is therefore a mundane thriller that doesn't tickle the fancy: a six at best.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Guess who? There is Robert Rodriguez and there is his pal Quentin Tarantino. One of the two excels in masterful dialogue, great scenes, powerful and well-cast movies, the other is a hack. Had Machete been done by Tarantino, would it have been any better? I wouldn't know for sure, but perhaps the dialogue would be better and the scenes and the music and the direction and the cinematography and the plot.. well okay it would have. The charm of this movie lies with Danny Trejo and his machete wielding is fun for about ten minutes, as long as the fake trailer that inspired this movie. For the remainder of this feature you have to like the b-movie style that Rodriguez masters in. It is pawned off as some form of art. I agree, when making movies in the style of second rate movies(or even third rate) has become art, it certainly is. And you don't have to agree that it is art if you don't like to. Art is toilet paper. Highlights in the movie are Steven Seagal as bad guy(which I personally think he is better suited for) and Lindsay Lohan as bimbo daughter who does anything to get attention. Yes, there is irony. I also like Michelle Rodriguez because I like her. Oh and Jessica Alba is also in it. There is little else to add. Well, Robert De Niro plays himself and a gray Don Johnson puts in an appearance(wow, where have you been dude?), both as bad guys. Like most of Rodriguez's movies, this one is a bit of a dud. Fire and forget. Watch if you do not have something better to do. If that is the case, you probably need to refocus on your life or get drunk(or tripping). In the latter case, you are in the right frame of mind to watch this movie. Just remember to throw up when the pregnant girl gets shot in the belly and again when a girl gets her eye shot out. Gosh, it might even become campy. Cheers, mate.

So what to think of this movie that is created in the shadow of a popular predecessor(currently 8.0 on imdb)? I would almost say: don't do it. It is what I would say when planning a remake of Old Boy or a squel to Trainspotting, Blade Runner or any iconic movie. Don't do it. But I have to admit that I am curious about the sequel to Blade Runner nevertheless. Maybe it isn't going to be as bad as I fear? So what about a remake of Ghost in the Shell? Well, I have yet to see the original, so I can not compare it to that one, and that is fine. This movie, with Scarlet Johannson in the role of Major Mika Killian, a cybernetic lifeform with only her brain being human, is on the face of it an action movie with some depth. Personally I think the the second half of the movie shows some more depth, with the Major being more on the path of self discovery, than the first half. Some scenes I did find touching. Personally I liked Pilou Asbaek as Bayou. There is certainly some room for criticism, specifically in the way that they hammer in what they mean with the word ghost. Yes.. yes.. we know, you don't have to repeat it over and over throughout the film. Also, while I don't think that Johannson is miscast, I do think that she is also not well cast either. She gives a good performance, as might be expected, but every time she walks out into the rain I expected the black from her hair to wash out to show she is really a blond. No, it isn't that what bothers me specifically, just that she felt out of place at times. It would have been better if they had chosen someone like Maggie Q or Kim So-yeon. Not because she has to be an asian, but because if a big part of your movie is asian and plays in a seemingly asian town, then why make the lead not asian. Seems to make more sense? Also the first half of the story the good guys are pitted against an adversaries who is one step ahead of them, but in the second half this suddenly changes. Maybe the most criticism can be levelled at the pace of the movie. It takes little time to reflect on things and have some silent moments(there is however a great one)something that the anime Ghost in the Shell 2 has(it is the one that I did see). Conclusion A fair action movie with nice visuals and superficial depth, but a bit hampered by not daring to delve more deeper and not attempting to stand out. As such it is more a mainstream action movie than anything else and thus eventually it will probably be remembered as that other Ghost in the Shell movie.

Another failed attempt to make a successor to Mad Max? Perhaps so, read on and make up your own mind. Doomsday is clearly an attempt to be another Mad Max movie, with its apocalyptic feel expressed by the fall of civilization highlighted notably by the band of feral human flesh eating crazies headed by Sol(Craig Conway). They could have walked out from Road Warrior and walk right the into Fury Road. There is nothing wrong with this and there are even great moments, where the chase from Road Warrior is recreated with the usual fun mayhem. Conway does well as the lunatic Sol and when he is in the camera the movie is at its most interesting. Unfortunately this cannot be said about the lead, Rhona Mitra's character Eden. She is cast like a mix of Snake Plisken and Mad Max, but she has nothing of the anti-hero stance and cynical wit of the first, or the taciturn reluctant lonely person that Mad Max is. These two are heroes despite their own desires. Eden acts like it, but there is nothing to underpin it. Her character is even given an interesting angle, for she lost her mother, but besides that nothing is done with this, while this could have been MacGuffin that makes Eden go out there: to find her mother. Eden is an uninteresting fighting machine I did not care for much. And unfortunately, no other character fills in the void. The group with soldiers that tags along with Eden get no chance to show personality. There are many other flaws in the movie, but they can be accepted, but the lack of interesting personalities makes me not care for them and coupled with a weak script this makes it a meh movie at best.

This movie has no redeeming qualities except for that Pete Postlewait and Max von Sydow put in an appearance. It lacks interesting characters, captivating music, an engaging storyline and much more. You will be better of rewatching House of the flying daggers or Pirates of the Caribbean. Heck, watch them a third time if you have to. To say it in haiku: meandering path grim and dreary woods, uphill no better visions

Can you suffer cliches? If you can, then read on. The movie has two worlds that interconnect. First is reality. Connor O'Maley is a pale pipsqueak single son of twelve. He has a sickly single-parent mother. Did you count the stereotypes? There are some more. He has a dad, living in America who is, of course, mostly unreliable. He has also a nasty grandmom, who seems more concerned with keeping her house in order than supporting her only grandson(as far as we can tell.) And Connor has no friends. And Connor is also the target of a bully. What is the cliché count by now? Second is fantasy. Connor has strange dreams. He calls forth a monster(so it **** comes to tell him three stories during three nights and then Connor must tell him the fourth. Of course there are connections between the first and the second world, but unlike the cliché infested real world, the fantasy is far from straight forward and trite. In fact the stories follow unpredictable patterns and the lines are not that easy to follow. The three stories are told through animations and those work well. Eventually it gets all wrapped up at the end which isn't cliché but more realistic than you might expect. All-in-all a movie with a nice well told story supported by good acting but hamstrung by clichés, overdone dramatic music, boring cinematography(overuse of slow cam shots and close-ups) and obvious tweaked scenes(watch the weather turn sour all of a sudden near the end so the impact of the drama is exacerbated by the rain). Some will see past it, others will flee the theater. A mixed bag therefore.

Rogue One is a movie that sets the focus low. The heroes are not Jedi or members of some ruling elite. Rogue one's cast has more in common with Han Solo than with a Luke Skywalker or Princess Leia. The message of the movie: little acts of bravery can have important consequences. The MacGuffin that makes the movie go is to find the weakness of that big death star moon build by the father of Jen. Find the father, find the weakness. A message from dad reaches the rebels in the form of a pilot and so Jen has to be found as to gain access to dad by way of Saw Gerrera, a rebel so extreme that even the Rebel Alliance frowns on him. Since he happens to be Jen's surrogate father it might be that he listens to her instead of pulling the trigger. Does that sound overtly complex? Well, it does, but if you just tag along with the movie it is just one of points in the tale that you get dragged along. And tag along is the only thing that you can do as the movie does not let go. I would say, it keeps almost the same frantic pace as that crazy movie Fury Road. And that is the main weakness of this movie. Despite interesting characters there are too many of them and not enough time for any of them. The upshot is that you don't care if someone sacrifices his life, which happens a lot in this movie. They join up and they get killed. Next! Even when there is an important emotional moment in the movie it quickly gets trampled over in a desire to keep the pace. Without some dwelling on emotions heroes become two dimensional figures and their sacrifices have no emotional impact. Still, Rogue One one is one of the better Star Wars movies in my opinion. It would have been better if there had been some more time spend on character development and less on jumping from one place to the next out of fear that some moments of reflection will scare the audience out of the theater. A pity because the essence of this movie: little people can bring hope loses a lot of its emotional currency.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

The cast deserves a thumbs up for having the thankless job of saving a weak script with a great twist but bad ending. The story: a couple retreats to a remote island to work out their problems. but these take a backseat when a stranger washes up on the island and tells them that a deadly infection is killing everyone. The couple, overawed by the stranger, initially goes along with him but then doubt sets in. Is he telling the truth? The gaping plothole is that the transmitter turns up static just when the stranger arrives so his story can not be checked and thus it seems to support his assertion that everyone is dead. It isn't made believable why there is static and the couple does not even check any of the other band waves. More plotholes follow throughout the movie. The twist makes a lot up for the weakness of the script and the ending is sad. But the final end should be cut from the movie. Now we know and we shouldn't. This movie is about doubt, deception, and uncertainty. The end should have reflected that. Pity that once again a director thinks he is up to the task of writing a script, an art that is vastly undervalued. Few directors make good writers as few writers make good directors. Especially when the script is depended mostly on dialogue to propel the story forward. Why not take a story written by a good writer and adapt that? There are more than enough to choose from.

This movie has more stars than you can shake a stick at, with Pacino and de Niro taking most of the screen cake. Michael Mann brings with him his own visual style: extended long shots, mostly at night often at desolate places that isolate the characters. The movie starts with such a shot: the camera is set in between the elevated tracks of a metro railway and centered on a station silhouetted against the early dawn sky. The lights in the shot define what we see. A metro moves into view from the right and stops at the station. The next shot shows de Niro stepping out. We hear nothing but the music playing and the sounds of the metro and the city. An awesome shot. The movie is carried by the acting and the visual style, but hampered by the weak and overburdened plot. No less than three relations are followed as side stories, which allows some roles for women, albeit in the overcrowded niche of troubled partnerships. Mann is not one for strong independent women or ones that stand by their men.. Despite all the women(or maybe because of this), this is a man's movie foremost. No pun intended. The weakness of Heat is that Mann cannot quite make the plot stick. At the beginning, we start out with de Niro and his men robbing an armored money car with such gratuitous violence that it must have attracted crowds of onlookers as they are in the middle of LA, yet only one hobo was a witness to the events. This then is the reason that further on into the movie Pacino forestalls an arrest : they got nothing on them. Another event that is badly handled is when the gang is caught robbing a bank. Again overdone violence results(another Mann trademark) whereby the three crooks fight off a police force that out guns and out man's them. They not only manage to take out seven policemen but get away with the loss of one of them and one wounded. All thanks to their never ending supply of bullets. Mann can not turn violence into something that does not hamper the plot. Shoot up half the town and nobody can point a finger. So, in the end, some ratting needs to be done, by a woman of course. But again: what evidence do they have that they did not have before? Nothing actually. So we just kill them all. With that the movie is actually about the morally bankrupt, perhaps another Mann trademark. Women do get the short end of the stick. They are a source of trouble: if they aren't **** they are cheating and if they aren't cheating they are selling out their partners. And if they do neither of those they are best at whoring, lying or cowering in fear. The message: women, you can't do without them, just don't expect much too of them. And maybe that is another trademark of Mann. Short: it just takes too long and overreaches itself. Collateral is a lot better.