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danjocross
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The Martian (2015)
This movie is really NOT good! Here's why.
It's so frustrating when so many people like and praise a movie that really doesn't deserve it. The Martian is such a movie. I had such high hopes for it after all the hype, and after reading reviews by smart critics I usually agree with, but it was such a disappointment. Here's why:
Plausibility. Just like Gravity, there are so many non-sensical depictions of the physics of space travel, it makes my head hurt, and I'm not even a physicist. The characters and their actions are pretty implausible too, starting with Damon's chipper attitude about being left alone on a planet 100 million miles from Earth, but certainly not ending there. After realizing he is alone and will be for so long that he will run out of food, he gets the brilliant idea to try to grow his own, which we are supposed to take as a mark of his plucky brilliance. But he's a botanist! What would a botanist be doing on a space mission *except* studying how things grow? And then when an accident causes all his potato plants to die, the brains at NASA (who can't believe he figured a way to grow potatoes in the first place) instantly conclude (and tell us) that since the accident froze all the bacteria in the soil, he won't be able to grow any more. Why not? He still has potatoes to eat, and he still, presumably, shits occasionally, so he has all the ingredients he used the first time. Ugh! My brain hurts!
Writing. The script seems written more by market researchers than a screenwriter. Corny little one-liners ("My balls are frozen!") appeal to the lowest common denominator in the audience, and the relentlessly happy tone makes being stranded on Mars seem like a big party, complete with disco music (literally). And the dialog!! There's a moment when Jeff Daniels, the head of NASA (whom it is hard to imagine has ever ever taken a science class or piloted anything) talks to the heads of the Chinese Space agency who offer (presumedly--we only hear his end of the conversation) to lend one of their ships to the rescue effort. He says, "Mmm Hmm. Okay. I see. Thank you." (That's what a discussion about loaning spacecraft between two space agencies sounds like.) Then he hangs up the phone, clenches his fists, and says, "Yes!" It's like Homer Simpson finding out there is still one donut left. That someone wrote that line is astounding. That the director and actor saw fit to actually shoot it is bewildering. That it survived the editing process and made it into the final cut--well, there should be an investigation.
Pacing. It's a movie about being stranded on Mars for months and months. Why does it feel like a comedy by Woody Allen or Edgar Wright? There is never a pause, never a prolonged quiet moment that might begin to capture something of the unbelievable space and loneliness this movie is supposed to be about. Instead, it is a constant rapid fire of dialog and action. Even the scenes where he is communicating with Earth via text happens faster than I usually get with my iPhone and 4G. (NASA technicians mention, at one point, that there is a 25 minute delay between all communications, but the filmmakers hope we forget this two minutes later when all the subsequent conversations happen instantly). Then there is the rest of the crew and their additional unplanned two years of extra time stuck in the spaceship, going all the way BACK to Mars to pick up what they left there. If I have to run back home to get something I forgot, the trip always seems infuriatingly long. But not these cheery space travelers! Another two years in space! No problem! And it takes only two minutes of screen time. Piece of cake!
AGH! What a frustrating experience. If you want a sugar-coated popcorn movie that will make you think that if being on stranded on Mars isn't really so bad, why complain about our petty little problems here on Earth? then this movie might be for you. It does for being stranded in space what The Shawshank Redemption does for being in prison. It tries to tell us that it's really not THAT bad after all. It's such a lie, and such a disappointment, all the more so because there are so many serious issues and exciting psychological and scientific aspects about space that could have been explored here.
The Space Children (1958)
Mysteriously Underrated Mysterious Film
I can't understand the low rating this interesting film has on IMDb either! I just watched it for the first time, and I found it very entertaining, compelling, atmospheric, and ahead of its time.
The most interesting aspect of the film is not the cold war intrigue but the war between the old and new generations. The children (with the guidance/power/control of a growing, glowing alien brain) rebel against their military-industrial complex parents. The parents attempt to fight back, resorting to physical violence against their own kids twice in the movie. In the end (mild spoiler alert here) the kids get the upper hand. One of the most interesting lines for me comes at the admittedly heavy-handed preachy ending (what 50's sci-fi film would be complete without a pedantic lecture about the dangers of man and science going too far?). But here, the leader of the rebellious alien-allied children says something about how ALL the children of the world joined together to oppose the military buildup. "You mean all the children in Russia and Prague too?" says one of the military leaders. And this, a full 10 years before Prague spring and the Democratic Convention Riots. Someone saw the youth revolt coming!
It's a great looking film too. The landscapes are so bleak and eerie, and the children's faces are so interesting and ambiguous. So much is done with silent looks in this movie! And forget about whatever silly TV shows you might have seen the actors in, the performances are good. Russell Johnson (aka, The Professor) is a great physical actor here, and Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester) is good too. The best performance though is the leader of the children, Michel Ray, who is impressively understated and subtle for such a young actor.
This is a smart, well made movie, much better than Invaders from Mars (which has a rating on IMDb exactly twice as high as The Space Children). I say you should definitely give it a chance.
30 Days of Night (2007)
Such a promising premise, such a stupid movie
I have been wanting to see this movie for a long time because the premise was so interesting. I was hoping for something like the terrifying claustrophobia and geographic trap that made John Carpenter's The Thing so scary. But, uh, no. Not at all!
I started to realize that this was going to be a bad film after about 60 seconds, when the two cops trudge across a vast wasteland of snow to examine . . . a little black spot in the snow--a pile of burnt cell phones. How did they know this little pile of burnt phones was out there in the vastness? Oh don't even ask, because it is only the first of dozens of just irritatingly stupid logical flaws that plague this movie!
The brain-numbing logical flaws just never end! Where did these "vampires" come from before the sun went down for a month? Where do they go the other 11 months of the year? (some snow cave, perhaps? an igloo?) And then to learn that they have been around for centuries makes it even more baffling. Who in the hell have they been eating all that time? Inuit people? Where did the head vampire get that nice modern suit he's wearing? Perhaps he stole it from someone on the Shackleford expedition? And why is the suit and his white collared shirt so spotless at the start of the film, especially since these "vampires" have such horrid hygiene--none of them ever seem to wipe their mouths, so that each of them walks around for the whole movie with what looks like beard of red blood all over the lower half of their face. Which is funny because none of the "vampires" are ever shown actually EATING the people they kill. They may growl and rip open someone's neck, but they never seem particularly interested in, you know, actually drinking blood. You'd think they'd have more of an appetite after hibernating (or whatever they do) for the last 11 months. In fact, I watched the whole movie without ever understanding what the "vampires" actually WANTED. If it was actually just food, that would have been so much better; if they crept in like predators and dragged humans off into the darkness to devour them, that would have been scary. But they don't. They just seem to stumble around and hiss without even really eating anybody.
Even the setting is a disappointment, because you never get any sense of emptiness or isolation; the set looks more like a small town in an old western movie (shot on a studio back lot). And speaking of darkness . . . well it isn't. There is always so much light on everyone at every moment in the movie it makes you wonder who strung up all the Klieg lights all over town and what keeps them running even after the "vampires" disable the power plant.
The editing is also a disaster. Every "scary" moment is cut to pieces to attempt to make it look exciting or shocking, but it does not help. It just makes you think constantly about the editing, and the fact that you are watching a movie, and a bad one at that. Even the sound design is hilariously bad; there are sounds of a screaming, whistling wind over shots where there are just a few lazy snowflakes slowly falling.
Perhaps most maddening is the syrupy and heavy handed love story with the two impossibly- pretty-for-Alaska lead characters, Eben and Stella (neither of whom you can ever imagine living in such a place as Barrow). You know this story is going to be nauseating and overly obvious when one of the minor characters says to the pretty blond Stella, "Me and Jennie were hoping you and Eben would rethink this whole separation thing." And this (SPOILER ALERT!) is actually the only bit of suspense in this silly movie: are Stella and Eben going to reconcile??? Yep, every sappy emotion is spelled out for the slow people (and teenagers, the obvious target audience for this film) in the theater--except for any hint about the reason they separated. They are both so perfectly pretty and virtuous with no character flaws or skin blemishes, you can't imagine why they weren't happy together.
Finally, the climax of the movie is so disastrously illogical on top of all the other nonsensical things that come before it (SPOILER ALERT! Even though the main characters repeatedly run out into the street to save each other and never get caught by the superhumanly fast vampires, at the end, the only way Eben can save Stella is to BECOME one of the vampires so he can have a man-to- man fistfight with the lead vampire while all the others form a circle and watch from a respectful distance like some bad John Wayne movie. Oh god. It's all so senseless.
I joined IMDb so I could write this review and others like it because I want to try to steer people away from movies like this. Don't encourage them with your money, people!!! There are so many better more worthy movies you could be spending your money on! If you want to be scared, check out The Thing, or REC, two of the scariest, most claustrophobic movies I've ever seen.
Thanks for reading!