WhiteWolf_1984

While having the look, sound, feel and the obvious production values of previous Star Wars movies, TRoS fails badly in terms of plot, imagination, pacing, characterisation and satisfaction. It's a hollow and uninspired Star Wars movie. I'd love to start with the positives but unfortunately the bad stuff tanks this movie so badly it's where you must start because it's so shocking where Star Wars has ended up. TRoS feels in different ways worse than Solo. I have to start with the plot, it's unimaginative and empty. You get thrust into the middle of things already happening and only have the opening crawl to know slightly what's going on. Then everything in from there happens at hyperdrive speeds. You just get exposition thrown at you and vague reasons for why our heroes have to go somewhere. Questions about the mission and how did stuff happen are just bluntly explained away with a sentence from someone. There is no mystery or clever thinking it's just go there and stumble across the answer. The film allows you no time to get to know a place or a character. The pacing is rushed and if you don't listen to every quick conversation you will miss something. Fortunately the plot is so basic like a World of Warcraft fetch quest that if you do miss a line it doesn't matter. It's a McGuffin hunt directing Rey to we all know what because the trailers have already spoiled it and the opening crawl spells it out. The camaraderie between our heroes is lousy, they just bicker and the tiny bit of wit they do show is eye rolling bad. The dialogue is basic and does the job but no effective wit and humour. I only chuckled at one line C3PO said and somethings Babu Frik said and did. Nothing else amused me even Chewy or D-O didn't add any humour. Rey is who you spend easily 95% of the movie with either on her own or with someone and unfortunately Daisy Ridley just doesn't act the part very well. She isn't very expressive and is one dimensional. Her performance isn't truely believable, her anger doesn't come over and her happy side is just a grin. Many scenes shes in shock or bewilderment and in them she just looks like a rabbit in the headlights. Oscar Isaacs is good if predictable and John Boyega's performance is the best out of the main stars but nothing special. The new characters are awfully implemented they just appear and you just have to go along with it and not expect a proper introduction to them. I truthfully can't remember their names. They come into the story so abruptly and then they go away and show up barely at the end. Don't know why they bothered putting them in, they're just in there as a means to an end I guess and just products of bad writing. The film squeezes in so much exposition and McGuffin hunts into the 2 hrs 20, the movie doesn't have space for character development. The Knights of Ren have about 2 minutes of screen time, no joke ! Some characters also make illogical decisions throughout and their motivation for why they suddenly decide to do something isn't well conveyed over to the audience, you just have to go along with it and not question why. I guess it keeps the pace up not deeply getting into the why, they just do. I prefer being involved in characters thought processes. The First Order scenes are just cheesy and bad, I just didn't feel any threat from them and they felt like pantomine villains. Hux and Pryde are crinchy and lame. The lightsaber battles were fun if a little short and predictable. The fighting scenes became ridiculous though with the use of 3 different never before seen force powers which made the final battle and aftermath laughable. Now for the good... The visual presentation on show is impressive. The locations and sets look great with amazing vibrancy and detail, everything is spot on, it looks Star Wars. The CGI is solid as all the ships, speeders and structures are well rendered although some of the graphics in outside scenes like on the desert planet look fake. The special visual effects are top notch every blaster flash and explosion. They thankfully haven't tinkered with the library of Skywalker Sound assets so every lightsaber zoom and TIE fighter screech are exact. The music is the best part of the film, it's the original trilogy John Williams themes which have been lifted and polished to perfection. The nostalgia is what Abrams nails and he knows how to milk it through sound and visuals. There are lots of new aliens which look great and are all done using animatronics. The space battles are good and decent but you don't get much more than 10 second flashes of dogfighting before it cuts to something else. The ship battles and saber battles are exciting but before you can really get into them they're over. There were some good performances from Ian McDiarmid, Adam Driver, Billy Dee Williams and Mark Hamill. The Leia scenes are cleverly implemented with old Carrie Fisher footage. A disappointing end to the saga.

This has the kind of full throttle action you expect from Michael Bay but apart from that the film is tacky, direct to video fare and a bad reflection on the once esteemed director. The action is solid with lots of real stunts and tangible explosions, CGI is thankfully at a minimum. I think the obvious budget restrictions have forced Bay away from CGI heavy action scenes which does help keep the action grounded and believable. The car chases are the best part of the movie because they're done with all real cars crashing and exploding. Secondly, the gun fights are well choreographed with loud shots and impact damage. Unfortunately, the overuse of dutch angles and "shaky" cam spoil the action, you get a nice few shots of some cool action sometimes in excellent slow mo and then you get distracted by the ridiculous camera work. It gets annoying by the end and the amount of lens flare and bloom usage is worse than in a JJ Abrams flick. The cinematography is amateur and dated. The editing and stupid amount of jump cuts is horrendous, every scene even the calmer scenes are visual jumbled messes. I think he wants the film to look flash and exciting but instead it's off putting and tacky looking. Bay needs to stop ruining the look of his films like this. The story is bad and dumb, it's a cheesy 80's cheap action movie storyline, a dictator mindlessly killing people, just embarrassing like a bad Rambo part 2 parody. The flow and pacing of the movie is all over the place, you have flashbacks to the characters pasts scattered everywhere and you flip flop from one location to the next way to much. The pace is slow fast slow fast........ it's dizzying! The movie shoe horns in a lazily done moral to the story which just falls flat and feels so out of place. Bay must think this film is higher thinking stuff when in fact it's just a below average action romp. The wit and humour of Ryan Reynolds slightly improve the watch but the rest of the cast are disposable with pathetic corny dialogue and eye rolling bad jokes. There are 3 big incredible set pieces during the just over 2 hour runtime which are really fun except for the irritating camera idiocy. The locales the film goes to are spectacular and the big explosions are well done, the pyrotechnics team did a great job. Without Ryan Reynolds or Netflix budgeting and streaming the film, it definitely would have gone straight past the cinema and onto dvd. If you didn't mind watching the last Transformers you might like this from Bay though it's a million miles away from his Armageddon or The Rock. Michael Bay has become a shadow of his former self and this film is evidence of the fact.

I think this is Tarantino's worst movie as director. It's an alright buddy comedy movie, an above average one but for Quentin, it's not very good. The movie focuses mainly on the friendship between Rick and Cliff (DiCaprio and Pitt). The friendship though felt awkward and kind of unnatural, Cliff was nothing more than Rick's unpaid chaperone while also being his personal stuntman. Their relationship seemed forced and just as a side effect of their jobs (and plot), not because they really liked each other. It spoilt my immersion into their scenes together and my interest in them as characters. When they aren't together but doing things alone the movie is better and the funny scenarios they get caught up in are amusing but not hilarious moments like in Inglorious and Pulp Fiction. I chuckled a lot but hardly laughed out loud. The big finale is more wtf and exciting than a belly laugh. The dialogue in sharp and gets your attention with wit but the story doesn't really go anywhere. I get Tarantino likes to break up his movies making them non-linear but ultimately every scene compliments the narrative and builds up to a logical conclusion. However, Once Upon... is just a collection of unique moments which our protagonists find themselves in, which although reasonably enjoyable, don't add barely anything to the narrative for much of the runtime. The last third of the movie is much better and meaningful which just is a bit frustrating because if the film was more cohesive like the final third, I personally would have liked it a lot more than i did. Ricks journey gets interesting 90 minutes in and Cliff gets a worthwhile plot. The finale is entertaining but the ending is a let down, it's like they go through a big event and just forget about it like nothing happened, The End. The movie wastes a lot of time on Sharon (Robbie) whose scenes are dull and just feel like filler. They don't go anywhere and eventually here character is just forgotten about. It felt like a tribute to the real Sharon Tate which is probably the case if you know what happened to her in 1969 but apart from being a tribute and a nod to the past, her scenes just feel unnecessary. This movie had real potential and just fell flat, all the cool 1960's Hollywood back drop and nostalgia wasted for a mediocre comedy. I think Tarantino films are more about imagery, quirky characters and honouring classic movies than about telling a gripping story and grabbing your attention these days.

The movie starts out ok, very similar to how The Day After Tomorrow started, quite sensible but soon falls apart and becomes ridiculous over the top cheese flick. Unlike a cheesy fun disaster movie like Armageddon or 2012, Geostorms serious tone doesn't suit the cheesy fun set pieces. Armageddon was fun with plenty of cheese but that felt right in that movie because it didn't take itself too seriously and had comedy elements. Geostorm is super serious in its delivery and would have been less rubbish if it had stayed grounded and intelligent like Deep Impact or Twister instead of going wild with the plot and over the top scenarios. The acting is alright just bland characters with dull dialogue. The parts that made me go from disliking this to hating it was the nonsense Science, the cringe action scenes and the stupid twist halfway through. The science in this movie doesn't make sense and logic is out the window. If you like science you will hate this film. The action is mindless and cringy. During the action you end up internally saying "Yeah right, like that would happen" because what you see is something ridiculous happening in a dead serious all be it bad movie. The twist of who done it and why that happens is so stupid and face palming bad, I laughed out loud. Worst big budget disaster movie to date, Sharknado of the big screen !