The absolutely mind blowing lengthy airplane stunt scene toward the end of the movie, which makes Tom’s airplane stunt in Rogue Nation look lame, earns this movie a full point and a half. It is the most amazing stunt scene in motion picture history. The film begins slowly, improving as it goes, but overall it is a too grim in tone and needed more of Benji’s humor. I’ll bet they filmed such scenes but cut them. A recut of this movie shortening it by 20 minutes and sprinkling more humorous moments could raise this to a 9.5. Maybe when released digitally, such a cut will be an option.
I think the first Wonder Woman movie was one of the best super hero movies of all time. Sadly, Wonder Woman 1984 is its polar opposite. Terrible. The first hour and 20 minutes are excruciatingly slow. Then in the final hour it really picks up ... and becomes such a confused, inconsistent mess it'll make your head spin. Things just make no sense. Then there is the unfortunate fact that all men (except Steve Trevor) in this movie are groping sexual assaulters. One positive aspect of the first Wonder Woman movie was that it did not come off as a man-hating flick at all, in the way, say, Captain Marvel did. Wonder Woman was for everyone. Disappointingly, "Wonder Woman 1984" makes Captain Marvel seem as if it was produced by a men's rights club. It's hard to understand why Gal Gadot or someone else on set didn't say at some point, "This is just ridiculous." In any event, a real disappointment after the last Wonder Woman movie. Shockingly so. It gets 2 points. One for Gal Gadot and one for Chris Pine. They were great, but they had to act out an excretious tale.
I never played Sonic the Hedgehog. I have no nostalgia or affection for this character. Only saw the movie in order to take my child to something on a weekend that was too cold for the playground. It was great! And Jim Carrey was hilarious! A very funny and endearing movie, better than most Pixar or Disney offerings of late. The audience applauded at the end. FYI stay for the post-credits scene.
A herculean achievement. JJ Abrams brings the true Star Wars spirit back to the franchise with a story that builds on the entire history of Star Wars, course corrects the missteps of TLJ, and gives Adam Driver his best turn as Kylo Ren, all of it sprinkled with surprises and delivered with unrelenting action. The perfect conclusion to the Skywalker saga. So why the haters? Maybe the pacing was a bit unrelenting. OK sure, but so what. A lot better than it being dull and slow. People don't like Palpitane's return. But we all knew that going in. True, there is not a detailed explanation as to how he survived, but he's hooked up to a million machines so it's pretty clear he was salvaged by someone in a way similar to the way Vader was salvaged in Episode III. There is only so much time in the film. We can see more about that in a DVD special features or in the novelization. Finally, people complain about Palpitane's power at the finale. There is a very specific reason he was able to do that at that moment, but apparently the haters were not paying attention.
The two stars are for Olaf. Otherwise this would be a zero. Disney has lost its way during the interval of time between Frozen and Frozen 2. Its ultimate goal used to be telling a compelling story. Now its goal seems to be mostly about transmitting political messages, while the other elements of the production are given to an intern to take care of. The original Frozen had a tightly constructed plot, nice pacing, solid character development, and several memorable songs. Frozen 2's plot is a vague bunch of junk that makes little to no sense on any level, though it does manage to convey a politically correct message dumping on western civilization. Its pacing is so sluggish in the first half that I saw two families leave at the halfway point. After the movie ended, as I left the cinema I could not remember a single melody from the movie (other than ones that were recycled from the first movie), and no new characters were introduced that were remotely interesting. The movie was a mess that appears to have been written by committee. It was sometimes boring and sometimes painful. The worst part, though, was seeing the disappointment in my daughter's eyes as she watched. When after the movie she asked me why this or that happened in the story, I tried to invent answers but ultimately just told her, "because the movie was not very well written." I just didn't know what else to say but the truth.
It's one thing to slip in jokes only adults will get, as in Jim Carrey's Grinch movie. It's another thing to slip in cynicism and events that will create awkward moments between parent and child at the movies. The woman cast as Dora is as perfect as a real person can be in the role. However, the story at times edges from sincerity into mocking the character, as when she comes across a plant with a long scientific name and says to the camera, "Can you say [insert long unintelligible scientific word with about 20 syllables here]," clearly intending to mock the cartoon Dora who teaches kids new words. My almost-5-year-old daughter loves the cartoon, and the movie was heavily promoted during the cartoon show on TV, so of course I assumed the movie would be for the same age bracket. It is not. It is full of poop and fart jokes. It also left me having to explain to my daughter what hallucinogenic drugs are and "why that man took his clothes off." Not to mention the concept of 'mating' which I had planned to introduce my daughter to at a later age. The story itself, once you remove these unfortunate bits, is just OK. In short, not appropriate for the littlest kids, i.e. those who likely most enjoy the TV show. A bit snarky and cynical with a Dora who seems perfect except that they made her such an intense pollyanna the mocking is unmistakable. Also could have done without the woke interpretation of Moby **** as "appropriating indigenous blah blah blah." I had thought it was about a man obsessed with a whale.
It's difficult to rate this movie because, while it is as funny for its full running time as any of the 'Between Two Ferns' internet skits are for their few minutes, it's still essentially more like one long skit than it is like a movie. They do go on the road to interview celebrities and run into various snags, but it only feigns the depth of a full blown movie, with certain key turning points, while its heart is really in its gags. If you go in knowing what to expect you will be entertained. Think, The Office, where Galfinakis is the Michael Scott character.
The trailers for this movie suggest a balance between humor and action that is not present in the movie. I expected this film to be along the lines of the movie, "Knight and Day" with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz with respect to the mix of action and humor, but this movie is actually lots and lots of action just as in any straight forward action flick, with tiny bits of humor here and there. You could literally remove all humor and still have a full length movie. It is that incidental. The result is that much of the humor seems out of place because between humorous moments you forget it's not just a straight forward action flick. Also, the movie opens with a pretty extensive and brutal scene introducing the bad guy, which also seems out of place in a movie that attempts to ride this particular line between action and humor. I know the bad guy isn't supposed to be part of the humor, but there is still a limit to how brutal a movie like this should get in any scene or else it feels schizophrenic. Unless it's shooting for black humor like the Coen Brothers, which it most certainly isn't. In fact, it has a very strong, unmistakably Disney-esque message at the end, about the power of love etc. So bottom line, it was OK but I think they need some serious reshoots to rebalance. Also, one more point from a strictly action perspective. I saw the opening to one of the Fast & Furious movies. It's the only other Fast & Furious bit I've ever watched. I don't remember which one it was but the scene was with the good guys racing down a road in the Dominican Republic and some kind of truck threatening them. It was a brilliant action bit. Nothing in Hobbs & Shaw comes close to that Fast & Furious scene, despite all the over-the-top stuff with a helicopter linked to trucks and so on.
Unlike many others, I did not like the original Lion King movie. I thought the drawings and animation were some of Disney's weakest. This new Lion King movie, however, kept me engaged throughout. It was visually breathtaking and well acted. The story was the same, but that's why it has the same name. If you don't want to see The Lion King again, then don't go, because that's what this movie is. Just look at the title.
I find it hard to believe anyone thought Homecoming was better. This is by far the best MCU movie. It's brilliant on every level. I will be going to see it again. I cannot recommend it more highly. STAY for the after credits scenes! Both of them.
NOT FOR SMALL CHILDREN The main problem with Toy Story 4 is that it is definitely NOT for small children. My 4 1/2 yo daughter enjoyed Toy Story 1, 2 and 3. Toy Story 4 terrified her. She kept saying she was scared and wanted to go home. We considered it, but then my wife picked her up and held her on her shoulder and she fell asleep for the rest of the movie. Toy Story 4 has a dark and creepy tone and several scary ventriloquist dummies that hold other toys captive. For an adult the movie is OK, maybe a 7. The plot just isn't quite as complex or interesting as previous entries as I remember them, but it's entertaining. For a small child it's a 0, so giving this a 5 overall is actually generous.
I thought to myself, "Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, together! What could go wrong?" A bad script, that's what. Why these two, not to mention Diane Lane - 3 of my favorites! - agreed to act in this ridiculous nonsense is anyone's guess. Do not waste your time on this movie. And to the actors I say - Next time, think before you sign. The one star I give is for the quality of the acting, which is as good as in any movie that has one of these actors or actresses in it. There is no fault on their part except for their bad judgment in accepting this project. The movie starts with Matthew living on a Martha's Vineyard style island, obsessed with catching a certain fish. It's like Moby **** but there is no reason given for his obsession. At first I thought the fish killed his son, but that turned out not to be the case. He simply had no motivation to be so possessed by this single-minded goal. It was literally the only thing that mattered to him in life, in addition to a little casual sex. SPOILER BELOW - It's the only way to explain why the movie is so bad. HERE COMES THE SPOILER Don't read any further if you don't want the SPOILER. IMMEDIATELY BELOW IS THE SPOILER It turns out, he's obsessed with catching this fish because he is a character in a computer game about catching fish. A little boy is controlling him on his laptop. THIS IS NOT A PRANK. It's TRUE!!! Stay away, far far away, from this joke of a movie!!!
The biggest problem with Endgame is that it is far too long. Right from the start it has ponderously long scenes. The same story could have been presented in 2 hours without losing a word. Other problems include never learning why Dr. Strange did what he did at the end of Infinity War, a funny but unexplained change to the Hulk, and a major plot device we have already seen in an X-Men movie, a plot device that renders all drama going forward meaningless. Nothing that happens in the next Spider-Man movie, nothing that happens in the upcoming Black Widow movie, matters ... at all. All problems are now, according to what Endgame established, completely fixable after the fact. Finally, Captain Marvel is MUCH too powerful. In one scene (I'll be vague to avoid spoilers) she destroys something very very very large simply by flying through it. If she can do that, none of the other Avengers are really even relevant. Also, I recall that no one but Thor could lift Thor's hammer, so why is Captain America running around with it like it weighs 10 pounds? The good stuff: great scenes with Tony Stark; great scenes with Steve Rogers. In fact, without the personal touches regarding Tony and Steve I would have given this movie a 5. There were a handful of jokes that made the audience roar with laughter but I was in the last row and the jokes were spoken so softly by the characters I couldn't hear what was being said. But I will assume they were great and so list them under the positives. And that's about it. Not spectacular. Though I do give the writers credit for weaving so many characters into the mix (though not enough Black Widow fight scenes for my taste).
This movie is below average, but its thinly veiled political message ruins what enjoyment was to be had. The story reverses 50 years of one of the most basic elements Marvel canon that cuts across the whole Marvel universe, in order to identify one race as symbolic of the downtrodden and another as a symbol of the evil white Western Patriarchy. It is painfully transparent and dumb. Even worse, this movie completely destroys the character of Monica Rambeau, turning her into a cliched black child of a single mom. Even though in the comics Monica has a good father and becomes Captain Marvel, and the leader of the Avengers, years before Carol Danvers does. Marvel has gone and joined Star Wars in the insufferable department. We still have D.C.
A visually beautiful, superbly crafted, well acted, Spider-Man movie that encapsulates all the crazy multi-universe stuff that's been going on in Peter Parker's world (or I should say, worlds) in the Marvel comic books for the past couple of decades. I would give it a 10 for its heart, it's capturing of the various character personalities, and the skill with which it introduces us to the complex tapestry of multiple universe stuff while still finding plenty of time to tell a good story. However, I take off two points (I was tempted to take off 5) for one gigantic, and I mean gigantic, gaffe. If you've kept up with the Spider-Man comics, you know there are multiple parallel universes within the Marvel scheme of things, each one with tweaks and modifications: in one, Peter Parker died and Miles Morales was then bitten by a super duper spider and became Spider-Man; in another, Gwen Stacy was bitten by the spider and became the super hero; her Peter Parker died, too. In our universe, of course, the biggest event in comic book history took place some years back. Gwen Stacy, to whom Peter Parker was engaged, was murdered before his very eyes by the Green Goblin. Spider-Man comics have reiterated and revisited and reminded us of this tragedy consistently ever since. Everyone knows about it. In fact, part of the reason the comic book telling the adventures of parallel universe Gwen has been so successful, is because it is so wonderful to see a version of Gwen who is still alive and, who to boot, is a super hero in her own right. So it is nothing short of bizarre when in the movie, Peter Parker, our universe Peter Parker, doesn't even recognize his fiancee's twin from another dimension. She recognizes him, but he's oblivious. This just doesn't make sense. It's like a parallel universe version of Lois Lane showing up and Superman not recognizing her. It's a gaffe the size of the Grand Canyon. And a huge disappoint in what was otherwise an nearly perfect comic book movie.
This movie needed more sets. It felt like 3/4 of the movie took place in Ant Man's home or the Wasp and her father's laboratory. There was also a 'quantum realm' but it was shown for only a few minutes. I like intimate personal stories, especially when super heroes are involved, because too much super hero-ing without knowing the characters gets very dull very fast. However, was there a reason the movie could not have included a broader range of environments? And the two main actors all need a little more spark, an espresso at least, before filming. The movie was strangely low energy, despite all the shrinking and growing and fighting. I can't imagine such a problem if the movie starred, say, Robert Downy Junior and Margot Robbie. Those two have so much personality. But here something - something besides the relatively few sets - was missing. It wasn't the plot, the plot with a full range of sets of bad guys of varying degrees, was well done. But some element of personality and/or energy was lacking. All that said, Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer did their jobs well. Both leads, though, were missing something I can't define. Maybe chemistry between them was lacking. That could be it. They're supposed to be in love but, I didn't feel it.
A really good movie, 8.5 actually, one of the best I've seen this year, with an actual plot that requires more than one brain cell to follow. Refreshing. And Jon Hamm does a great job. This is a grossly underrated thriller.
I was looking forward to this movie, but I could not watch it for more than about 15 minutes. The setup was extremely basic. Find 3 keys, pass 3 trials. I expect movies to be more sophisticated than a game of Doom. The mindless overdone CGI in the "virtual" world was just overdone for the sake of overdoing it. King Kong roams about, but who cares? None of it meant a thing. It was all gratuitous nonsense. And this whole idea that VR enables some kind of a magical transportation to another world falls flat. I actually had VR in the mid 1990s (it was called VFX1 and VFX3D), and now I have PS4 VR. It's not magical transportation to anywhere. You have to make sure you don't step on the cord, that you don't step on your cat, that you don't trip over the sofa. And the "world" is just basically a TV screen pushed up against your face. It's fun but it's not exactly transporting. This kind of sci-fi fantasy would have been more interesting and convincing years ago before so many became familiar with VR; the simplistic setup to this story was not interesting and the reality of VR makes the story hard to accept.
Mind blown. Absolutely the best action movie I have ever seen. Saw it for the second time today. Great plot. Great pacing. Insane action. Cruise does his own stunts right down to climbing up a rope into a helicopter and then piloting it, and a bit of rock climbing, motorcycle and auto stunts, and that really helps with believability. This is the best Mission Impossible film so far, partly because it relies on events from the immediately previous film, in a big picture kind of way, which frees it of some of its 'set up' responsibilities and allows it to get moving more quickly. I honestly have zero idea what the medium and negative reviews here are talking about. If you don't like this movie, then I don't see how you could like action movies generally, because this is the best the genre has to offer. For the record, having seen all the MI movies the week leading up to this one's release, here's how I rank them.
Mission Impossible Fallout i.e number 6 (the one now in theaters) - First Place
Mission Impossible 4 (Ghost Protocol) and 5 (Rogue Nation) - Tied for Second Place.
Mission Impossible 3 - Third Place
Mission Impossible 1 - Fourth Place
Mission Impossible 2 - Fifth Place (and the only one that is a stinker, except the last act is good. A ruthless edit of this movie could improve it a lot as the first 45 minutes are insufferably bad and could be cut down to 15 minutes).
Far and away the WORST of all the Mission Impossible movies. The jokey opening scenes which go on for a good half hour fall flat. The whole opening act is just off and utterly lacks suspense because they try to turn the movie into a comedy romance which is NOT why I watch Mission Impossible movies. The action especially in the first portion is overdone and tedious. Fans of John Woo (the director of this one) are rabid cult members who will call anything he makes the "best" so disregard those reviews. The movie does pick up in the latter half and isn't bad, not great but not bad, and Thandie Newton is a very sexy co-star at her most beautiful in this movie. But overall this movie is too long and the opening half hour is bad. Mission Impossible III, IV, and V are all great. V is a little old-school, feels a bit like an old movie, which I loved but some may not. Mission Impossible I is good but not great. And the word is that Mission Impossible VI is the best of all. But Mission Impossible II is at the bottom of the list. Skip it and come back to it after you see them all, if you're still dying for more.
Two brothers go to visit the cult (or commune) they left 10 years earlier. Then weird stuff starts happening, but it's never really explained in any way. That's fine if there's a strong metaphorical element, but there was not. The writer may have had something deeply metaphorical in mind - I suspect that's why Polaroid photos and old Super 8 videos were found all over the place - but the writer never adequately conveys what the metaphor is. The best I could get out of it was something one of the brothers said as his reason for why he is considering staying, considering rejoining the commune/cult. But that wasn't really enough and it didn't explain most of the weird happenings, such as the Polaroids all over the place. That said, the performances were earnest and persuasive and the suspense was well handled. There is a lot of skill in the filmmaking but the screenplay was underdeveloped.
The reason you don't see any spoiler reviews here is because the story's not worth talking about. The 3 main characters did a bad acting job. At times it felt like a fan film with a really big budget. The actor playing Lando did not have the charisma or way of carrying himself to pull off the character. The sexual implications about Lando and his robot were creepy. The other two actors didn't pull off their characters very well, either. But at least they had each other and weren't getting it on with robots. The secondary characters, including Thandie Newton and Woody Harrelson, were good, but it was critical for the primary characters do a good job too and they just didn't. The story idea was generic and the pacing was off, and the action was overdone. It got to the point where it just seemed messy. There should be a beginning, middle, and end to each scene. An action sequence should have structure. Some of the action scenes felt like the editor had no awareness of that, like fireworks that go on for days. Enough already. And the music was too loud, as if they thought that would convince us this was really Star Wars. It did not. Just as showing us the Falcon dice over and over and over again does not convince us this is really SW. A movie does not magically become a real SW movie because of the props or because you turned the music up. The whole 'Kessel Run' thing wasn't explained well. They applied a similar explanation as used in the SW expanded universe (that Disney removed from canon), but they gave the explanation so little screen time in Solo they basically squandered it. There was one scene on the Falcon that should have been suspenseful but it was full of so many dumb jokes the mood was spoiled. I suspect this was a scene left over from the original directors. If so, that demonstrates how much worse this movie would have been if Ron Howard had not stepped in to improve it. But there was only so much he could do. He could not recast. All in all a disappointment. They really should have gone with Anthony Ingruber.
A 7 is generous. It deserves a 6.5. A thinner more trifling superficial movie would be hard to find. It is entertaining but here's basically nothing to this movie. It's like the popcorn at the theater. This movie is a series of suspense scenes with no real development. As the trailers show, aliens have invaded Earth and they are drawn to sound. So long as you're quiet you're safe. So this movie is about a family's efforts to remain quiet, and when you have kids that's not easy. That's it. The suspense scenes are entertaining, but they are all you get. You never find out a single thing about the aliens. You never find out a single thing about anything. The way the movie ends is cute but it's not the result of development. It's a shortcut ending that the story has not naturally built to at all. Bottom line. Fun but light and ultimately empty.
Obvious. Not surprising. Consequences clearly are not permanent. Only Spidey, Strange, and Iron Man (who worked together apart from the other heroes for most of the movie) were interesting. The rest of the film was ponderous, depressing, obvious and slow. I really wish I had saved my time and money.
It's impressive how well the original Tomb Raider movies, and this reboot, were cast. Angelina Jolie was spot on as the original Lara Croft with her swagger and larger than life charisma. Alicia Vikander is just as perfect a fit for the new 2013 rebooted Lara Croft. As in the rebooted game series, she's younger, less self assured, more human in scale, and ripped like no woman I've ever seen outside of a professional MMA fighting arena. Smartly the game reproduces some of the 2013 game set pieces. I've always thought it strange how movies based on games will just ignore many things that made the games popular. Tomb Raider doesn't make this mistake ... well ... it could have used more characters on Lara's side. In the game the boat was full of people who later ended up on the island with Lara. In the movie, the boat only has one other person, the captain. So we get great visuals, good pacing, and a star who is as intense as Daniel Craig in Casino Royale and whose skin is always glinting with sweat and rippling with muscles like an atlas of human anatomy. The downside to the movie is that the story is fairly standard and Lara doesn't have many friends to interact with. She basically has one sailor and later another character, and that's it. I said above it was smart for the movie to reproduce some of the games best set pieces. Well, the game put more people on Lara's side in the movie, and I wish the movie had followed suit. Also, if we are going to have a more realistic human scale Lara, we need a more realistic nuanced story.
A mediocre B horror flick with a dumb ending. Mediocre because lots of stuff thrown into the movie is just a diversion and has nothing whatsoever to do with the plot. It's there only to trick you and is left as a hanging thread never explained. And in the end the answer to what's really going on is just ridiculous and kind of cliche. I thought the director was M. Night Shyamalan, that's how bad it is. But it turns out the director is black, and that I suspect explains the positive reviews. It's celebration is about political correctness. And so people conjure grand statements about how the movie is a commentary on racism, when it's nothing more than a mildly entertaining, unoriginal, long drawn out substandard Twilight Zone episode. It makes no sophisticated point about anything, and it doesn't work well as a drama or story. But it will keep you occupied as you empty your bag of popcorn.
I'm conflicted about this movie. First - On the one hand, it is beautiful to look at, on the other hand, most of the external shots (though each one is brief) look pretty but also fake, like they are mostly or entirely computer generated or painted or something, but certainly not 100% actual shots of trains passing through scenery. There's a Harry Potter-esque look to it all. Second - Poirot does not look like Poirot as described in the books. But whatever. I can get over that. If it was Sherlock Holmes I'd have a harder time accepting such a different appearance, but I'm not nearly as accustomed to seeing Poirot portrayed on screen so it didn't bother me much. Third - There MANY CHANGES to the story in the book. Most of these changes are for the purpose of adding short moments of mindless action to the movie. I did not appreciate them. However, one large change at the end really did add more drama in a good way, though the change strained credibility. Fourth, I always found the book a little confusing regarding who was whom. It didn't do the best job of keeping everything straight. You needed a pad of paper and pen to make a list or chart as you read, at least I did. The movie is far better at being clear in this way; maybe that's just the natural result of seeing actual faces put to each character. The movie also revealed the solution to the mystery in a way that was more appropriate. The book felt rushed at the end. The movie, by devoting a greater proportion of its overall time to setting out the solution, and by dramatizing the crime being committed on screen as Poirot explained it, did a better job with this final part of the story. On the whole, I suspect the older movie version (which I saw ages ago) is more true to the Agatha Christie's novel, but this version does have its improvements, sprinkled among its misguided action bits.
There are spoilers in this review. TLJ was the single biggest motion picture letdown of my life. Disney should have released this parody on April 1st. There are over 82,000 signatures on a **** petition to remove TLJ from Star Wars canon as of 1/6/18. Disney won't do that, but that there is a petition at all conveys that something is wrong here. And something is. Aside from being a bad movie, TLJ refutes the values of Star Wars. Disney pretends complaints show how sophisticated TLJ is. Those dumb fans, they don't 'get it'. But last I checked, thin characterization, using characters simply as vehicles for action, inconsistency within a trilogy, and thinking ships need fuel in space to keep moving, were not signs of sophistication. The discrepancy with pro reviews may be explained by the fact that pros' publications receive Disney advertising dollars. I give TLJ a 1 for the actors. They are not to blame. But the writing is ruinous to the entire franchise. First, too much CGI, visually messy scenes. The movie had no idea what to do with Finn. The casino planet scene was filler. And how is it possible, after destroying Starkiller Base, that massive weapon, that the First Order seconds later has all but vanquished the Resistance? There's no gap between VII and VIII. (There was a gap of 3 years between ANH and The Empire Strikes Back.) So why is the First Order in such top form after such a huge defeat at the hands of the Resistance (now inexplicably called the Rebellion). It's like the Resistance's accomplishments of the last movie accomplished nothing at all. By the way, I'm not a bot. And I'm also not alt right or a Trump supporter. I'm white, married to a brown woman of African descent (she was not born in the USA and her first language is not English). We have a young daughter who loves BB8, R2D2, Rey, and light sabers. But that's based on TFA. We wouldn't allow her to watch TLJ any more than we'd let her watch Sesame Street themed porn. The biggest problems with TLJ were Luke's characterization, the lack of characterization of Rey, and the anti-Star Wars theme which rendered this not Star Wars, but Mirror Universe Star Wars, or Bizarro Star Wars. Regarding Rey, if you think her TFA "vision" had meaning, or there was any rhyme or reason to Maz Kanata saying to Rey, "Now it calls out to you" (referring to Darth Vader's and Luke's light saber) you will be disappointed. IT IS ALL DROPPED. The identity of Rey's parents might have helped explain why she's so great at everything, but this was squandered. This is not a sequel, it is not act 2, it has almost nothing to do with TFA. Ep 2 continued Ep 1; 5 continued 4; but Ep 8 spits on Ep 7. The idea that Rey could beat Luke (trained by two Jedi masters) in a fight is ludicrous to the Nth degree, especially when you consider how much training Luke (not to mention Anakin) required. Luke lost his hand to Vader because, while he trained under Yoda, he left too early. He paid a price. Rey pays no price. She's perfect without education beyond a two minute meditation session. A protagonist so strong is not credible, and is boring because nothing can threaten her, thus no suspense. Johnson knows this; it's why the last act shifts and all but abandons Rey; there is no peril for Rey now that she's superwoman. He's left JJ with nothing for Ep. IX. As for Luke, this was anti-Luke. Luke was aware Vader had killed millions, yet in Return of the Jedi, refused to kill him. So Luke's instinct to kill Ben in TLJ wasn't in keeping with Luke's character. And would Luke abandon his cause, and his SISTER, for decades, to hide out? No. But if so, why did he leave a clue to his whereabouts for people to follow? He was searching for the first jedi temple why? No reason at all. Rian Johnson wasn't consistent with the original films or Force Awakens. TLJ is hermetically sealed off from and doesn't fit with the saga. It takes place in a separate universe. The statements throughout TLJ that heroism and sacrifice are not positive values, that there is no difference between good and bad, are anti-Star Wars. They also deny TFA, not to mention the intense sacrifices of Rogue One that made everyone's lives in TLJ possible. Bottom line. TLJ is creepy and nihilistic. Being pro-women is great. But Poe sexist, when Mon Mothma led the Rebels for 4 movies and then Leia led them, is absurd. Making every man bumbling, evil, or arrogant is hard to miss. You don't have to tear men down in order to build women up. That is just what feminists are always publicly claiming they are NOT about. Finally, the dialogue has no personality. In TFA when Finn helps Rey on the Falcon just before Han shows up - has more personality than in all of TLJ. I just bought Thrawn book 1 for an alternative post-Episode VI saga that makes sense. Disney has the legal right to make canon but that's an empty right when there is no spirit behind it. I'll decide what I consider canon.
Mother! is a terrible mush of symbolism so heavy handed it is embarrassing to watch. And it makes no effort to be a story. A woman moves into a house with her husband, a house soon invaded by strangers, bohemian partiers including a naked couple getting intimate, looters, a swat team, terrorists who start assassinating people, and soldiers (just before the house comes under mortar fire). The woman is not the protagonist because she's utterly passive, takes no action - or only makes the most timid efforts to take action to get the strangers out of her house. She acts like no real person ever would. The whole thing justifies itself as a metaphor or series of metaphors - mixed metaphors I'd say - and symbolism. But while a movie can have metaphors and symbolism, if it is to succeed it still fundamentally needs to be a story on a literal level. There is no story here. Just pretentious nonsense.
A great thriller that, unlike so many thrillers, actually makes logical sense from start to finish. Great plot and strong performances all around. Highly recommended.
If you are tempted to rent this movie because it stars the woman from the TV series, "The Killing" (the best murder mystery/suspense TV series I've ever seen), if you're tempted to rent this movie for any reason in fact, please do not. It is awful. At first I thought, This movie is starting off kind of slow, then an hour had gone by and still almost nothing had happened. Also, the sound is poorly done technically. The star has a voice that is kind of hard to hear sometimes; she mumbles a bit, which they handled well in The Killing. But in this movie when she talks, sometimes I could not tell what she was saying. Maybe if you have a good sound system hooked to your TV. But I just have the speakers that came with my TV. I turned the movie off after the first hour, though I skipped ahead to a few points first to see if eventually something would happen. I didn't pick up anything that seemed worthwhile, so I just quit. This appears to be an attempt to make an 'art' movie and to call it a thriller. There is nothing thrilling or remotely suspenseful about this movie. Nor is there anything interesting about it. It's not the fault of the actors. It's the story. The script just has no pacing; nothing ever really seems to develop.
This movie was a good comfort movie, like a cup of hot chocolate. I was considering a 6 but I give it a low 7, which may be a bit too generous. There was one song that stood out, the one Emma Stone sings at her audition, but the rest were just OK. The dancing was competent but very unexceptional. This is not Ginger Rodgers and Fred Astaire. The story is average, except that the latter portion skips over a number of years without explanation and tells us nothing of what happened in between. It was rather strange and seemed like a shortcut to end the movie in a way that appeared modern and cynical, as if the writers felt they had to do that since the rest of the movie was so old fashioned. I wish they written a better final act.
It is abundantly obvious why this movie didn't do as well as expected. It's too slow. Every shot, every single shot, lingers lovingly over every setting, every landscape, every apartment interior, every closet, every object, every little thing for twice, three times, sometimes eight times as long as needed to 'get it' - it's like watching a long game of golf. And the dialog. Someone speaks. Then there is this huge long pause before the other person responds. It's like the director or editor takes too high a dose of anti-depressants and he's just moving in slow motion. This movie should literally be half as long as it is or shorter. When released on demand and DVD a shorter cut should be included. Someone who had the power to say yay or nay fell asleep at the wheel letting this movie go out to theaters in this condition. It could have made twice as much money if it had reasonable pacing. The second problem with this movie is that there's not enough Harrison Ford. I know he's old and a lot of people think he's a star of days gone by, but as soon as he enters this movie, as soon as you hear his voice, the movie gets real. It takes on more dimension, assumes real gravitas, and feels like a real movie. It's as if the other guy, Gosling (who never showed any emotion, which made him boring), was just there to hand the movie off to Ford and they took too long to do it. Also, they really should have made Gosling's holographic girlfriend do something critical to the plot. She acted well. The concept was cool. But ultimately, she supplied nothing critical to the story. That should have been fixed. A character who takes up so much on-screen time in a movie should not be expendable. The third problem with this movie, which I think is the least important but it still bugged me, is that it doesn't look like Blade Runner. One reviewer said it looks more like Blade Runner than Blade Runner. But that's just not true. It lacks the dense urban neon crazy visual chaos of Blade Runner. It trades that for vast rust colored expanses that are nice, but are just a different aesthetic, and gives an entirely different feel to the movie. Sure, you get obligatory passes in the floating cars over the city, but even that looks quite different. But even without reshooting anything, they could vastly increase the quality of this film just by cutting out all the dead space between dialog and cutting out all the gratuitous lingering pans. There is so much of that people in the theater were sighing and huffing with impatience. We wanted to see what came next, but it was like wading through molasses. And if there's any additional film of Harrison Ford on the cutting room floor, splice it into the movie. This movie needs more Ford!
The action scene that occurs inside a plummeting plane was among the best action scenes in the history of film. It is quite obvious they actually filmed it - many takes - in a plummeting aircraft produce the effects of zero gravity. It is insane to watch. Tom Cruise gives his all and then some as usual in his films and the ancient mummy woman does a fantastic job. The weakness of this film is that there are no real surprises or twists until the end, and that twist at the end is not something an audience wants to see. Our action heroes may be beaten, have their limbs broken, and can even be killed in movies, but audiences never want to see their heroes lose control of who they are. That was the huge error in the second Indiana Jones movie, and it was an error at the end of this movie even though Tom Cruise was able to be heroic when required. That said, this film is way way better than most reviews give it credit for. Since it is now rentable, rent it. It's a fun film with intense action sequences.
I would give this a 7.5, but rounded up because Metacritic makes you select a whole number. The acting is excellent, so as far as that goes it gets a 9. My criticism is about the script. This is a thriller about a man who goes to a dinner party hosted by his ex-wife. The best thing about this movie is the very last shot. The worst thing is that, instead of the plot unfolding at an incremental pace where the main character slowly puts together clues, building his understanding of what is really going on. the plot unfolds all at once in the last 20 minutes. Before that the main character has suspicions and things seem off and weird, but he's not really putting pieces together beyond knowing something's not right. There were a lot of opportunities, but the writers for whatever reason didn't go there. The consequence is that there is a period of about 15 or 20 minutes, no more than that, where you really start to think, "Is anything ever going to happen?" There's this little dead zone of time. Not because literally nothing has happened until that point, but because the level of suspicion and putting the pieces together has not kept moving forward. The protagonist gets to this point and then things just repeat, hover there for too long, with the protagonist not learning anything new but just reconfirming the weirdness of the situation without understanding or learning more detail about what's behind that weirdness. One big missed opportunity was to follow up on the woman who left the party early. Major miss there. However, all of this said, it was an entertaining thriller. It could have been a 9 if it had just been tweaked a little more. And as I said, the last shot is great, it actually for me is what lifts it from a 7 to a 7.5.
This guy doesn't behave like Spider-Man. No wisecracks. And he has no spider sense! The movie lacks nearly all of Spider-Man's supporting characters: no Gwen Stacy, no Harry Osborn, no J. Jonah Jameson, no Robbie Robertson, no Betty Brant, no Mary Jane Watson - though inexplicably there is a character named Michelle who goes by the nickname, MJ. And Aunt May is 30 years too young, not the feeble woman who fills Peter with such a sense of responsibility. Those supporting players created the dynamic that made Spider-Man interesting. Add to this all the hyperactive Tony Stark tech and this movie just isn't Spider-Man, not to this longtime reader of the comics. And the film is politically preachy. I gave it 3 stars rather than 0 for Michael Keaton's dialog with Peter Parker when Peter goes to pick up his date. That scene was the only worthwhile moment in the movie.
2:22. Where to begin? The acting is fine, the cinematography is fine. Everything is well done - except the screenplay, which makes no sense at any level, and this ruins the movie. I will assume that after the screenwriter finished the screenplay, people internally cut it up, changed it, and ultimately destroyed it. Listen, I love weird movies, especially weird thrillers. I loved Predestination. I loved Coherence. That episode of Black Mirror called White Christmas blew my mind as about the best single hour of TV I've ever seen. So I'm not complaining because the genre isn't my cup of tea. It is exactly my cup of tea. But even weird stories need to have their own internal logic. If they don't then the story falls apart. That's what this story does. It falls completely apart because it never ever ends up making a speck of sense at any level whatsoever. It is unsatisfying and not worth seeing.
A standard horror film (more horror than sci-fi) elevated by the acting, and some cool effects. As people have noted, it's not unlike Alien. It's not unlike Prometheus, but it's actually better handled than Prometheus. It's funny that there's so much more story in certain games, such as the new Mass Effect. Anyway, a handful of astronauts on the International Space Station (a real thing, so that aspect isn't science fiction) get a hold of a sample from Mars brought to them by some sort of unmanned capsule thingy we sent up. The cute minuscule life form they find in the sample proceeds to grow and begin killing the astronauts. I will say - while it was standard - it had a particularly good ending.
WW is a great super hero movie. I understand if someone doesn't like this movie because they want a more campy version like Linda Carter's, so they give it a 7 or even a 6, though I stridently disagree, I understand not everyone wants the same thing from this movie. But the negative 0 and 1 reviews make no sense. I would suggest you take them with a grain of salt. They are suspicious. This movie cannot be argued by any means to have 'flat' acting etc. If I had to bet on it, I'd say those reviews are fakes inserted by someone with an ulterior motive. Wonder Woman succeeds largely because of Gal Gadot and Chris Pine. Gal Gadot is a rare actress in appearance and bearing. I can't think of anyone today who could pull off Wonder Woman, especially with such heart while always maintaining a regal quality. Toning down the color of the costume was a good idea. One problem contemporary super hero movies face is, how to make the film without it seeming silly by definition. The way Wonder Woman handles this is by darkening the red and blue of the costume, setting the tale in the grim environment of WW I, and having her co-star as skeptical of her Greek gods-based theory of the world as the audience. The setup, as you likely already know, is that an island of women (Amazons) whose purpose is to protect men from the god of war (something like that anyway) encounters Germans during WWI when an Allied spy (Chris Pine) crashes his plane just off their island and the Germans come looking for him in boats. The Amazons fight them off and Chris Pine tells the women that - outside of their island paradise - the entire world is at war. So Diana, Wonder Woman, goes off with him to London to help end the war. She thinks she can end it by killing the god of war, a single being. Chris Pine has a more modern idea, delivering the intelligence he stole from the Germans to HQ. The rest of the story is Diana's discovery of the world at large, the dirtiness and lack of honor of modern warfare, and the discovery of her own powers, as she and Chris Pine each seek slightly different things together, he to destroy a factory developing a newer deadlier type of **** gas, and she to locate and kill the god of war. For a super hero movie Wonder Woman has a surprising number of tear-jerker moments, largely due to the fact that the WWI horrors depicted have a basis in historical fact; it has touches of humor, too, but it could use a little more of that. If the movie has one more significant flaw it is that - at no point do we know the limits of Wonder Woman's powers. So we never know how much danger she is in. I know from the comics that she cannot fly. In fact, as a kid one reason I didn't read Wonder Woman much was because she had an invisible airplane, but while the airplane was invisible, she was not. So the comic was drawn to show her in a sitting position whizzing through the sky, which just looked stupid. There is no invisible airplane in this movie, for that I'm grateful. But my point is - she can't fly, at least not in the comics to my knowledge. And yet in this movie she gets blown up into the sky more than once and descends lightly and slowly, in control, almost as if she can fly. And she leaps so high and far, it's almost as if she can fly. So the question arises, how powerful is she? Can she fly in this movie version? Is she invulnerable? She certainly takes a lot of abuse, explosions and so on, and comes out without a scratch. This is important because a key plot element turns on a decision one character makes to save her life. But at that moment I was not certain at all that her life was in danger, that her life COULD be in danger ever. And so I didn't understand why this decision was made. It was actually about 10 minutes after I left the theater, pondering what I thought was a plot error, that I realized that the decision that was made was necessary in order to save her life but the filmmakers just did a bad job of letting us know what could kill her and what could not. Wonder Woman is about compassion at least as much as she is about power. That's one reason it has so many sad moments as Diana takes in just what this war is doing to people. In fact the ending, in a key way, is a lot like the end of Return of the Jedi (without Ewoks). Because Wonder Woman 2 will take place in modern times, not WWI (Wonder Woman doesn't age or she ages slowly), Chris Pine won't be in it. If Gal Godot isn't given someone good to act opposite, that sequel could be in trouble. Wonder Woman is so much in earnest all the time, she really needs a co-star to lighten the mood. Ben Afleck's grim bad acting did her no favors in Batman v. Superman. So for the next WW film that's going to be an issue. If the movie rights licensees of DC comics have any sense, they will get Ben Affleck out of the Batman suit and replace him.
You may be wondering, Is this a good thriller using contemporary themes, or is this just a kind of public service announcement ('Killing civilians when going after terrorists [especially when you know that is inevitable] is bad; and it's also bad to kill people remotely thus distancing yourself from the reality of what you're doing.') in the wrapping of a thriller? Unfortunately, it is the latter. That means the plot is extremely simple with just about no surprises at all. It's like soup broth with nothing in it. There's this guy living in Afghanistan; his wife and daughter are killed by a drone. The 'pilot' actually flies the drone remotely from a cozy US suburb. For him the experience is a lot like playing a computer game flight simulator. But people really die. Then there's a leak of the identities of drone pilots. The guy whose wife and daughter were killed, goes to America, armed with the knowledge of who the pilot was, and confronts the pilot. What happens next? Nothing too surprising or interesting. It would have made a good half-hour Twilight Zone episode. But it's not worth a full movie, not without more complexity, both in terms of plot and character development. Though the acting is good. Luckily. Without that it would have been a 3.
This movie makes no sense whatsoever. But if you're drinking beer with a bunch of guys and want a B movie on in the background, I guess it's OK. The acting is good. The effects are good. The writing -- senseless.
This first half of this movie is mostly a father and son talking as they go about conducting an autopsy on a 20-something young woman. So what you get are two actors and an attractive woman lying naked on a table - with no attempts made at all to hide it; so the movie is full of the most unusual nudity you can think of- in the most unsexy circumstances possible. In most stories the characters engage in a lot of physical activity and move from one setting to another. It's a risk for a movie to limit itself to one setting and use only a couple of characters as this one does. There are more actors but their time in the movie is very limited. It's almost exclusively these two guys. If you think you can't deal with such a movie, don't watch this. But when I saw the trailer I was hooked. The young woman was found in a home where all the residents had been murdered. But she wasn't a resident. And she was found naked half buried in dirt in the basement; she was not killed while going about her business doing something normal in the house like the residents of the house were. As they do the autopsy they start to find weird stuff in her body, and the situation gets weirder from there. I would have given it more stars if not for a few big errors. Something very terrible happens, after which the father starts talking about the mistakes he made regarding his wife and how the son suffered due to that. This is fine to give the story some emotional depth, but it's the wrong moment. It doesn't work. What has just happened was too terrible. The father wouldn't have chosen that moment to say these things. They should have found a way to work it in before the terrible event. In fact, the way the two characters carry on after this event - within 10 minutes they're having conversation as if this event didn't happen - is totally unrealistic. Of course, the events of the movie are crazy due to the genre - but the way people react should be realistic. The ending is kind of cool but there's no reason it couldn't have happened earlier, much earlier, right at the start, in fact. And what the son does near the end - is also unbelievable. Also, one more problem, is that something that seemed to be happening, which seemed to be the ultimate point, did not happen; the ending would have been much better if it had. So I give the movie points for originality, but a couple of major missteps that could have been avoided if they'd just worked on the script some more, take it down to a 6. But be warned, really scary.
McAvoy deserves credit. This is a great video resume for his acting abilities. However, despite this, Split is The single worst movie I have seen in my entire life. Incredibly unbelievably bad, all on account of the story, if you can call it a story. There is almost nothing to give away in this unoriginal cliche-ridden piece of garbage because little happens that you don't see in trailers. But I'll say "Spoiler Alert" anyway. Here's the plot. By the way this director has no "twist" this time, though people call the ending a twist. It's an easter egg not a twist. It's a silly little tacked on bit of nonsense to top it all off, just in case it wasn't bad enough already - which I assure you, it was! Three girls are kidnapped by a man with 23 personalities. The two bad personalities did it, and they plan to release a 24th personality known as 'the beast' - a kind of Hulk or werewolf or Mr. Hyde if you will, to eat the girls. They succeed and the man gobbles up some of the first two girls, but when he encounters the third, he sees that she cuts herself, and understands from this that she (like he) has been abused (he developed these personalities in response to abuse) and so he lets her live. That's it, my friends. A long dull waste of your time and money. This guy has been making bad movies for decades. The Sixth Sense was his single good film and it's been manure ever since, but this is the absolute worst of them all.
Trust me, this movie is just not very good. It's not really sci-fi, not underneath all the superficial effects and the setting. In essence, it is the story of a woman who falls in love, falls out of love because she realizes she has been betrayed, and then forgives and falls back into love again. Ta da. That's it. I enjoyed the opening shots before any characters were introduced. And it was interesting after the introduction of Chris Pratt for maybe 20 minutes, but definitely by the half hour point the story begins to drag and it keeps dragging until the very unrealistic ending. It's hard to explain why this movie is so dull without giving away spoilers, so let me do that. SPOILERS FOLLOW RIGHT NOW BELOW -- SPOILERS BIG TIME SPOILERS IMMEDIATELY FOLLOW Chris Pratt is in hibernation along with a bunch of other people, on a 120-year journey to a new planet that's been colonized. But a gigantic meteor hits the ship busting through its shields and damages the ship, causing his hibernation pod to malfuction. He wakes up 90 years too soon. He can't get the pod or any unoccupied pod to work to put himself back in suspended animation. He wanders around the gigantic ship entertaining himself with all of its fancy restaurants and amusement arcades, alone, and in the meanwhile falls in love with Jennifer Lawrence. You see all the pods have clear fronts, so you can see the person in them. He spots her in a pod. He reads up on her in the ship database. Falls more in love. And then, after a year of loneliness, he reads a manual about the pods and triggers hers so that she wakes up. Then he runs away quickly so she will think that her pod malfunctioned too. She wakes up and wanders around until she finds Chris Pratt. They fall in love. But then she finds out that he woke her on purpose. She had thought her pod malfunctioned, too, like his. She screams at him. Hates him. Refuses ever to be in the same room with him. Prefers to be alone. The rest of the movie is dedicated to her hating the only person she knows, then to him nearly dying trying to repair the ship (They find out what happened and that the ship is slowly falling apart) and as he drifts out into space having been working on fixing the ship from the outside, she suits up, flies out into space and by the skin of her teeth manages to rescue him. But when she gets him back inside, of course like Snow White, he appears to be dead. She grieves, realizing she will be alone the rest of her life. Then he opens his eyes. And now, of course, she loves him again more than ever. So it's a story of someone falling in love, then being betrayed, then forgiving. Simple as that really underneath all the sci-fi fluff. The last act is dumb, and completely unrealistic, but I won't give it away. But man, I want to, because it is so ridiculous. But with only two people and a robot bartender, and a brief appearance by a crew member who toward the end also wakes up, there is just not nearly enough material to fill 2 hours, not even close. This would have been a great half hour Twilight Zone episode. But a two-hour movie, no. If they were determined against good judgment to make a movie out of this slight story, they should have at least kept it to an hour and a half.
I'm partial to thrillers that focus on couples, and enjoyed this a great deal. The acting is perfect. The story didn't know if it wanted to be straight drama, or a thriller. It's about a woman who has an affair and the growing suspicion of her husband. I wish the traditional thriller qualities had entered the story a lot sooner, so much more could have been done with that. But just the same, I was totally involved from the start all the way through to the end. Though I would have handled the ending differently. This is not a spoiler because this does not happen in the movie. But at the end the main characters - the married couple - is in a car at night. They are having a very significant moment. There is a train crossing just ahead. That much IS in the movie. For my money - given the shady activities they have both been engaged in - I would have had them drive across the tracks only to get whacked and obliterated by a high speed train. Then black screen and credits while the train whistle blows. But that didn't happen. The actual ending is good, though. Just not as good as that. While it's true that the movie has intense sex scenes, in the end you realize - other than toplessness - they really don't show anything you wouldn't see on the average beach, and all those scenes combined occupy maybe 4 minutes of screen time out of two hours. So reviewers who are calling this porn are just factually incorrect.
One of the best movies I have seen in a long time. I don't get the people who say it's pretentious. I guess they just don't like art dealers. I also don't get the people who say it takes swipes at conservatives. That is hilarious considering the entire point of the movie, which was apparently completely lost on that reviewer, reflects a quite conservative point of view. One reviewer in a positive way compares this movie to Gone Girl. If you hated Gone Girl and thought it was garbage as I did, have no fear. The story of this movie is nothing at all like the ridiculous plot of Gone Girl. A woman is married to a handsome guy who cheats on her like there's no tomorrow, and she knows it. She receives a novel manuscript that has been accepted for publication from her ex-husband, whom she did not believe in as a writer at all and whom she left for the handsome guy she is now married to. As she reads his manuscript it is acted out on screen - and it's great - and by the very end when she goes to a restaurant to meet her ex, the whole thing comes together. If you like disturbing well-acted thrillers, if you liked Deliverance for example, you will like Nocturnal Animals. I don't want to say more and give it away except that the novel that's acted out involves violent crime in the southwest, creepy criminals right out of Truman Capote's, In Cold Blood, a desperate husband and a very crusty old detective -- and acting of the highest quality. Of the movies I have digitally rented over the years, I have actually then gone on to purchase maybe half a dozen total, of which this is one.
