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Reviews
Star Trek: Discovery (2017)
WooHoo! Wow! Yowza! and EeeeHa!
This low rating is intended about one particular complaint - not the whole of the series. The occasional yell and shout of exuberation and thrill from someone usually moving quickly through space is extremely out of place. It is reminiscent of a high school joy ride by adolescents and not at all characteristic of serious and dedicated professionals in a difficult or challenging situation. Very silly, juvenile and out of place. In fact, a lot of the dialogue seems silly and simplistic while scattered with attempts at sophisticated intrigue and scientific innovation. The contrast does NOT work at all. Captain Kirk was challenged, tested, and even sad and melancholy at times - and you couldn't help but empathize with his mood and strife. It's impossible to care about these characters one way or another. That's too bad.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022)
Comment on the Trailer
First, I'm a fan (there is a "but" coming). And, I'm sure I'll watch when the new season returns as the concept is a good one. But, I am VERY disappointed: Note in the trailer how, as the Enterprise rises from the trees into the sky, somebody let's out a "WooHoo!!" as if they are kids on a roller coaster ride.
Nobody in the original or TNG series would have done such a thing as they were serious adults. And, the writers would never have even thought to do so. This is just embarrassing. What silliness! And, we're supposed to buy into the serious drama of the series. - give me a break !! It just shows the immaturity and superficial mindset of the writers. It is insulting.
Another Life (2019)
Immature adolescent's view of space travel and space drama.
This is a weak and ridiculous approach to a space story. The basic premise is fine - going into space to confront the aliens who sent a probe to Earth. But the mission, the crew and even the ship are all silly and impractical. For example, during some turbulence - which is never sufficiently explained - the crew tries to hold on and they are bounced around the cabin. There is apparently nowhere for anybody to sit down and buckle up.
Characters are maladjusted children with person conflicts between them. There is even a conflict about who should be in charge which they resolve with fist fights (so you can see how the realism is heading here). They don't know the technical capabilities or tech. specs of their own ship. A shield around their ship which not everyone even knew about, they just nick-name it the "bubble." The priorities are not even understood by the upper management and appear to be a subject of considerable, heated debate. All of this plus the cursing and anger just show this to be the most unlikely, unprofessional, inept crew that could possibly be assigned to such a mission.
Even the computer, manifested as an emotionally distraught holographic preppy, is an indecisive and confused wimp. I thought he was going to cry because of the stress.
Every single oddity or anomaly in dialogue that doesn't look professional or proper for a crew on such a mission just screams out as a feeble and adolescent attempt in poor writing and poor direction. It seems like a story written by and for junior high schoolers.
I will never understand why this sort of thing sells. Either they hire kids to write this crap thinking it will be hip and relatable by the young... or somebody writes it with that purpose in mind. The result is crap that nobody can even tolerate. Take any sentence uttered by a character and just ask whether a professional in space with a serious job to do would ever say such a thing. I suggest this because obviously the writer(s) never considered such a thing.
Manifest: Off Radar (2018)
Rediculous sophomoric writing and directing.
I'm keeping 4 stars just because of the potential the show has. The acting is reasonable too. BUT ... the writing and directing is the worst. It's just plain dumb and stupid.
For example, the boy is in the hospital, intensive care with two doctors in attendance. So, the wife has a scientific interrogation of the doctor about treatment, effectiveness, etc. Then when the husband does the same, she tells him the boy needs a "father," not a scientist. This contradiction goes unexplained.
Then, later in the boy's room as he suffering further attacks which one of the doctors attributes to undetected fever the treatment conflicting with the cancer treatment program. Naturally, the father asks if they have to choose between treating the cancer versus the fever. Oddly, the doctor then dismisses that notion as unfounded and inaccurate but goes on to explain exactly what the father suggested, having to choose between the two. So, to resolve this conflict of treatments, while in the hospital intensive care, with two doctors standing by, the primary doctor makes a seriously profound declaration: "We need to approach this from a medical perspective." Wow... really?
Separately, unknown to the boy, the doc and the family, the boy's manifestation is linked to another patient in a government facility elsewhere. So, with no clues or basis whatsoever, the father "guesses" that the boy must be channeling the conditions and treatment of another patient somewhere else. So then the father must be clairvoyant.
This writing is apparently from a junior high school student. --- Too bad. Could have been a good series.
211 (2018)
Not worth it even if they pay you.
All SPOILERS (Alert!)... First, the title is just stupid. Nobody knows that's the California police code for robbery and nobody cares. The premise of the military contractors' money transferred to various banks in varied amounts prompting the mercenaries to rob one of the banks is just ridiculous. The original contractors made an automated electronic transfer; it was not a deposit of a pallet of cash (which would have been relocated anyway). The amount of cash on-hand at the bank has no relationship to that electronic deposit. The premise of selecting that bank, independent of its design, security, cash-on-hand at that time, or anything else is completely absurd. Of course, if the contractor's original electronic deposits have nothing to do with it, then the whole basis of the beginning of the movie is lost entirely. Either way, it's all pretty stupid.
The woman on the street in front of the bank, upon spotting the masked, robbing mercenaries, actually runs toward the bank and gets closer to the robbers rather than stopping and backing away or running n the opposite direction.
One robber entering the vault area is told he has one minute. Why would he have only one minute? Apparently, because they aren't going to stay around there very long. So, then they collect everyone's cell phones which makes no sense given a quick exit. Then, of course, the robbers do not take only one minute spending as much as 10 minutes bagging the money. There are no logistics indicating the need to collect cell phones especially considering that a silent alarm would have been assumed at their initial entrance.
Having already bagged money, the robbers could have easily made their escape quickly while the police resistance was minimal and instead chose to delay while the police force builds their siege of the bank. It was interesting too that the bank robbers chose to rob the bank while carrying along a giant sniper rifle with a tripod.... standard issue for a lean and mean, in and out operation I guess. Still it accounts for the lack of a quick exit, because otherwise, they would not have a chance to use all of the equipment and explosives they brought with them into the bank.
The bleeding partner cop could clearly have been removed from harm's way before becoming critical by retreating directly in the path of the vehicle's protection to a distance he could be extracted. But, then, of course, we wouldn't have had that heart wrenching musical drama of his last words. It seemed that Nick Cage missed the whole thing while standing inches away aiming his pistol at the bank and doing nothing to remove the injured officer. Even the tourniquet was applied incorrectly. Unfortunately, the police officer was stuck behind the car and at risk just because the novice writers wrote it that way. You have to have at least one presumed death that later survives just for the drama regardless of whether that actually makes any sense.
It's a little weird that we have an Interpol agent investigating in America without any presence of the FBI at all where she single handedly shakes down a gun store owner with vague and meaningless threats. But, lucky we had the Interpol agent on hand at the robbery to say poignant things like "How American of you" and to officially inform the police that "These men don't play by the book." And, to that, the officer in charge exclaims, "I don't know what we're going to do if these guys start shooting hostages" (like they had never considered that before). Naturally, the robbers then execute the bank manager for absolutely no reason at all. Still, in spite of doing nothing, the Interpol agent was posthumously congratulated for a job well done. I was about to ask for extra butter 'cause this thing couldn't get more corny!
The melodrama with the daughter and her issues with her father's handling of her mother's death is one of the worst written, worst acted and directed and completely unnecessary scenes in movie history. It was very heard to watch and only the promise of Nicholas Cage kept me watching.
The movie was terrible and stupid at every turn. It made no sense at all. They might have gotten away with this crap back in 1961 but today I think we expect a little more. This is not worth your time let alone the whole dollar we paid to watch it. It's not even worth it if they pay you.
The Philadelphia Experiment (2012)
Missed Opportunity - Too Bad
This movie has the elements of time-travel and other sci-fi cool stuff. Viewers who cannot resist time-travel stories will need to watch this and may remain immune (in denial) to the obvious limitations. SPOILER: The whole subplot of there being a clandestine governmental agency out to first, kill Bill Gardner (the time traveler lieutenant), and second, to blow up the ship and control center(s) hardly makes any sense at all. It makes even less sense that they have no problem running around killing peripheral characters willy-nilly. It seems to turn the whole sequence into just another cops & robbers thing as bad and dated as a lost episode of Starsky & Hutch or Hart-to-Hart
But, the most implausible and improbable elements include: (a) They completely ignore the cautions, warnings and expertise of the lead scientist (or even keeping him alive and in-service for their cause) while knowing they have no idea what will happen or how to achieve it; (b) They have Ms. Brunette Bimbo, who looks like a NY model or maybe a cosmetics representative for a department store, as head of the evil government agency - completely unbelievable, and (c) she has her own team of assassins killing anyone she chooses even with the approval of the U.S. President!! I mean, give me a break already!
Oh, not to mention of course another spoiler where she gets to call in a nuclear strike. Perhaps that authority is standard issue for all super models working for secret agencies and wearing Prada.
Of course, nobody who ever takes out a bad guy ever thinks to pick up his weapon for their own use. And the neophyte writer even has the escaping lieutenant, running from the government assassins, pause to flip the bird at the automatic weapon shooting bad guys bearing down on them at high speed from 50 yards away.
Another goof in ending sequences: the technician removing hard drives and securing them into the silver briefcase on the table clearly shows 4 drives in the case prior to our lead scientist being shot by the high heel vixen... (killed for reaching for a walkie-talkie). But, after the scientist is shot, and the blond granddaughter joins the technician to assist, he again removes the 4th drive and goes to place it into the briefcase now only holding 3 drives in a different configuration than before. The contents and count of the brief case change between the two scenes.
Anyway - like I said - if you're into time-travel and enjoyed the 1984 version, you'll have to watch this just because of what it is. But, you'll also have to dismiss a lot of these distractions for serious-minded viewers to get through it. It really did not have to be like this... an opportunity for a great remake, missed so badly.
It's all just so much silliness.
Emerald City (2016)
Not for me ... w/ spoilers
I don't usually write reviews 'cause I usually think I'm not a good judge for everyone and you may agree in this case too. I don't know Game of Thrones and I don't know earlier adaptations of the Wizard of Oz story so I'm not relating this show to those. I really didn't know what to expect but my hopes were high.
I couldn't make it through episode one. The scenes (sets) are beautiful and captivating but I don't watch the show for that and don't care. The Dorothy character is interesting but I'm interested in the story telling... what are the writers presenting to me? Early in the show we find an elderly woman having risen from her bed being confronted by her caretaker and she is now struggling with the caretaker who has taken hold of her by the wrists. It is a physical confrontation as the woman pleads to use red fingernail polish. Why there is a physical confrontation over red fingernail polish - they never address (mystery). Why it escalated into a physical struggle or why the caretaker would not have already permitted the color red and instead allowed the situation to escalate to this unrealistic level is not explained at all and all seems seriously unrealistic and pointless. It looks like a child-writer's view of controlling the elderly in a slight state of dementia.
Dorothy comforts the woman but takes a bottle of prescription medication from her and hides it in her pocket. What the medication is and why Dorothy took it is never addressed (mystery). Why Dorothy needed to protect the old woman from the medication - or instead to deprive the woman of her needed prescription is never addressed (mystery). The whole scene seems pointless and unrealistic. It of course begs many other questions. Does Dorothy make a habit of stealing drugs from patients? Does Dorothy have a special need of some sort we don't know about? Was someone trying to harm the woman and Dorothy has foiled that plot? All curious and unexplained.
This trend continues as instance after instance with a lot of details all go unexplained. Later, the police have arrived at a crime scene. The many issues of the crime scene, how the police knew to come, what happened to the police officer, how or why things were what they were at the scene... and most importantly, why I should care about any of it - are all ignored.
Special effects are impressive, I guess, except I don't care about any of that when the visuals are merely some sort of technological presentation. Why are these various elements of the story being presented if they are irrelevant? Soon Dorothy is in a new land. There too, the effects and sets are impressive but the story itself makes little sense in terms of why people do what they do. Their goals, their intent, their mindset all seem to be unrelated to what they say, how they act, what they want, etc.
The story-telling is weak and uninteresting. The reason seems to be because there are too many convoluted details that do little to contribute to or support the foundation of the story. Dorothy is tortured over a simple misunderstanding while falling into that trap seems more a matter of bad writing than Dorothy being in any realistic danger inherent in the situation. That is, some common-sense things that she might have said to escape or extricate herself from the situation she simply doesn't say. Why? Because the writer had already planned for her capture. She was captured by the writer - not the bad guys. It's all just unrealistic.
There is little time spent developing the characterization. So, as Dorothy is tortured (for example), there's no reason to care. I mean, one can care in the abstract about the evil of young women being tortured, but there's no reason to care about this particular case or this particular person. We don't know her. We don't really know who she is or what she's about. Her angst or fear in the previously mentioned crime scene is another example. We don't know her or anything about it so my reaction is so what. Was I supposed to care about the police officer that disappears? Perhaps not but how is Dorothy any different?
Nothing seems relevant or worthy of our attention. Nothing seems important - unless everything is important and then of course we're back to the mystery of the red fingernail polish.
The unfolding avalanche of details without any means to distinguish relevance from pointless combined with the complete lack of character development and foundation combine to make the story much more trouble than it is worth. - I say skip it unless you're ready to focus just on scenery.
I gave it 3 stars due to the scenery, costumes and effects. Such things cannot combine to warrant anything more when the story-telling is so convoluted. /// Of course, all such questions may have been eventually answered with great clarity and import if I could have been more patient and lasted longer. Perhaps the fault is mine.
The Flash: Who Is Harrison Wells? (2015)
Jr. High school kids must be writing this junk.
Listen to the dialogue. One person says something and then the other person just talks. It is mostly non-responsive to the first person's comment. Then the first person answers back and it too is mostly non-responsive. It is an endless series of micro-speeches made by characters in a completely unrealistic fashion in an attempt to add drama and move the weak plot along.
The guy pulls out a high-tech device that looks like a metal detector, but it is not one. Instead, he declares that it detects "abnormal" waves. This is the sort of plot tool used by Jr. High School writers.
The police comment casually, "Sometimes we lie for love - especially when it comes to family." Geez! Yea, there's a lot of lying going on among families I guess. The notion is ridiculous, not to mention how this plays in the story.
The Shape-shifter meta-human, during a home visit had the investigators all fooled appearing as a benign grandma. Instead of continuing that hoax to complete the interview and exit leaving them no wiser, the shape-shifter runs out the back door and changes into a girl to escape. I.e., the whole super power and hoax was wasted only to gain a 20 foot head start running away. This of course makes no sense at all.
It is crap-TV at it's worst.
Transporter: The Series: Sixteen Hands (2014)
I'm a fan but please, please, please stop treating viewers like we're complete idiots.
SPOILER ALERT: Here's the first 5 minutes...
Opening scenes have a race horse running on a track in a relatively casual fashion while being timed with a stop watch. And, as other commentary on IMDb has noted, the girl testing the horse's speed is way to big to ever race a horse in such a race. And, why one would time a horse running at a relatively casual speed, I don't know. But, interestingly, the horse passes the timer position by some 15-30 yards, judging by its speed, at which point the timer is clicked. So, naturally, I'm wondering about what marker position on the track determined the point of timing. As the camera turned to immediately show us, the horse had managed to come to a screeching halt a mere 25 yards past the timer already turning on its way back. So, this whole scene seemed like a typically ridiculous movie moment, one of those things where no one is supposed to notice any details, and it was punctuated by the fact that no one was interested in the results on the stop watch. No one recorded the numbers or discussed the data.
It gets better: as the horse is being put away in the barn, the girl notices that all of the other stalls have been opened and the other horses are casually headed out of the barn. Instead of taking control of the horses and leading them back to their respective stalls - as an experienced rider would certainly do - she instead reaches over and hits the conveniently placed panic button to activate the barn siren. Apparently, horses escaping is such a frequent problem, they have a siren dedicated to the problem. Oddly, no one particularly comes running to help or even inquire about the siren.
It gets better: It turns out that the open stalls was an evil sabotage by the bad guy. What exactly that was to accomplish is not at all clear. But, this all comes to a head just as our hero, The Transporter, arrives at the barn. He is met by the bad guy, a barn ninja, armed with (I'm not making this up... the writers did) not the usual sword or throwing stars as one might expect. No, this ninja is armed with a nail gun, apparently with the standard safety attachment removed. I can't imagine how many construction implements he might have tried before settling on the electric nail gun. Perhaps the belt sander proved too abrasive or the floor sander was too cumbersome. It's hard to say what they suggest at ninja school, but this one had decided on the electric nail gun (no air power was attached).
It gets better: While the ninja is unable to actually hit anyone with the nails he's shooting all over the place, the fight gives our ninja a 12-15 foot advantage to escape out the door. With our hero close on his heels, The Transporter exits the door only to find that the ninja's lead has magically increased to 40 yards. In fact, the ninja has already started his large SUV parked conspicuously on the property and quickly drives away. I would have thought it odd to sneak stealthily onto the property, wear the traditional black hood, conceal secretly within the barn, but yet not mind that you've parked your big SUV right in the middle of the property for all to see. Silly me - clearly I just don't understand as it clearly worked just fine. Not one person on the property noticed anything odd about it at all.
More importantly, the writers or director apparently thought no one would notice anything odd about any of it. Either the viewing public is brain-dead (a distinct possibility), or the writers and directors are. Either way - very disappointing.
6 Guns (2010)
Bad Movie
There's enough bad commentary here already with which I fully agree so I'll not add more. The criticism is all valid and accurate. I'll just add the note that in the first 5 minutes the wife and husband are in bed for the night (nothing inappropriate... just casual)... but there is a small box like shape showing through the back of her night gown. The box is about 3-4 inches square and perhaps an inch or two thick and it's mounted on the back of her waist under her night gown. She then lays down to sleep for the night. This is obviously ridiculous and is probably a radio microphone transmitter. I mean, its not a fanny pack or a first aid kit. Mostly, ITS NOT INVISIBLE EITHER. Don't these things belong in a film school classroom where they learn not to do this kind of thing rather than available on the open market?
End Game (2009)
Unbelievably Bad - It's Cecil B. Demile of Bizarro World
Holy Cow ! It's late at night. There's nothing on TV. My wife made her last trip out for the night to Red Box and spent our last $1. We're desperate for TV entertainment. I've watched my last Star Trek VHS tape for the 1000th time so I can't do that again.
I am, instead, watching my blue screen in silence because that is 100 times better than this movie. I made it about 20 minutes and couldn't take it any longer. I'll listen to my Slim Whitman tapes and watch the blue screen before I push that DVD back into the player. I barely escaped with my life.
I'm telling you this thing is bad... I mean really bad.