atsmiller Reviews

The Wheel of Time (2021– )

Crime against fantasy

[1/10 · 26 November 2021]

OMG! I tried to watch the first part and scrolled through the second and third. Just like a book, a huge pile of bloated text and silly sorcery.

C'mon, I already know that pseudo-middle-age world like trash cans in my back yard! Someone stuffs flowers into vases, someone feeds chickens, someone throws something with hay... And in the evening, everyone in the tavern drinks and eats meat and laughs and is dirty and then comes a stranger.

And then they keep fluttering and freezing and swimming and something evil keeps coming and is still one step behind and nothing changes, the heroes go from one impossible situation to another, they are all the time dirty and on the verge of death, but the 'narrative shield' lets them go at the last minute and they are still making a foolish blabbing, and you will want to be for the evil's side and pray that someone have mercy and struck down those pathetic dorks... You know, every minute of this series is a crime against proper fantasy literature. It's the school composition of an infantile struggling with lack of inspiration and not lost innocence, and apparently this whole series is a kind of Gaia defense mechanism - a lot of useless people don't do anything really bad while making this series. Just undersized...

Foundation (2021– )

Stupid space opera

[2/10 · 28 October 2021]

After watching parts 1-to-6, I am extremely disappointed. I will of course continue to watch, firstly, at the morbid interest in how much it is possible to rape Asimov's text, and secondly, a lot of effort has been put into the series, the visuals are pretty good, and from time to time something interesting comes in (both in terms of ideas and visuals).

First of all, this whole story is being streeeee-eetched. After watching the hour-long episode I would to check that, wait, it was really an hour and not a 10-minute... Second, such an empire could not exist. Or I don't know - the part that is shown (dull conversations between the clones of the emperor) is at the level of a fairy tale; all that would be really like ruling the empire is missing.

Third, there was logic in the crises in Foundation's books. What happens on the screen is the opposite. Yes, this is in the insulting the intellect level opposite of the psycho-history - a messy action where everything depends on ONE person and where the whole "Plan" could be turned upside down by a random bullet...

Agency of Vengeance: Dark Rising (2011 Video)

Trash

[2/10 · 11 November 2020]

Yes, it's a comedy. Yes, it does not strive for credibility. But it's not funny, it's rather annoying. Plus, it's an impossibly insincere film - the heroine's almost only value is visual and you won't be shown more than some bare cleavage and thighs ... What is it then - an erotic heroic comedy for under-10s? Bad acting, bad special effects, non-existent script - and so probably under-10s have done it. And probably everyone who has given it a score higher than 3 is also (at least in terms of spiritual development) under 10s.

Time Apart (I) (2020)

Drama, not SF

[3/10 · 18 April 2020]

Well, yes, read the introduction. This is not an SF movie. No, not at all. It is a drama that explores the so-would-say long-distance relationship. So if you're looking for drama, go ahead. if you are looking for SF, beware.

Starfish (2018)

Nonsence

[3/10 · 31 January 2020]

Virginia Gardner is very beautiful and a good actress. She undresses several times during the movie (unfortunately not completely). Everything else is a painful rubbish.

Lucy in the Sky (2019)

Drama, no Space

[3/10 · 25 December 2019]

I couldn't have imagined earlier that a movie about an astronaut could be so boring. In fact, it is not. So if you are looking for something that is usually associated with space exploration - greatness, excitement, breaking boundaries - you will be disappointed. Its not a bad movie in its genre, but it has nothing to do with space - its an ordinary nonsense drama.

The Wandering Earth (2019)

Well, better than Marvel, but still way to go...

[5/10 · 28 April 2019]

This movie has a fantastic CGI. Almost everything else sucks. Royally. I'm seriously amazed at the people who consider it the best science fiction movie - guys, how have you managed to ignore the whole human culture?

Characters - unbelievable. They don't engage. They will die and I don't care. Ah, and before they die, they say something important.

Scientific background - embarrassingly nonexistent. If one day "Everything wrong with Moving Earth" will be done, it will probably be longer than the movie itself. Absolutely everything is wrong. And I'm not talking about little things, like the speed of light is infinite (how do they otherwise get an instant radio answer between distant objects?) And whether the length of the journey or the gravity field of Jupiter are a couple of orders of magnitude different from reality, so that it is worth using gravitational slingshot. I mean, the whole idea of bringing the planet to another star system is, of course, Marvel-worthy moronic - yes, why not, we all know the stories of baron Münchausen - but no one takes them seriously! If it is possible to move the whole Earth, wouldn't it make more sense to move mankind and half of the biosphere with billion times lighter ships and not spend 2500 years in caves, but to get there a thousand times faster? And of course, Earth would not have survived more than a thousandth of what our beloved planet must live through during the movie.

CGI - really fantastic. Only that in the second half of the movie, the finger was searching for a fast-forward button. The characters are struggling on the screen, all things fall down... and you know that everyone but important characters will die. You know the Earth will be saved. There is only matter of formalization.

Positive things - It was like a breath of fresh air after Hollywood movies, where there is the US and the rest of the world seems to be uninhabited. How humanity together solved the problem - plus 2 points at least!

In general, I would like to encourage the Chinese - you are on the right track. However, despite all the negative, it was a serious attempt to make a good sci-fi and as such deserves recognition. Yes, of course - this movie is better than 9/10 of those trying to be sci-fi.

Prospect (2018)

Basically watchable

[6/10 · 15 February 2019]

In this film, there are three plans which can be assessed separately that in many ways work against each other. First, the acting and the actors. Although Sophie Thatcher wears a space-suit most of the time, she's quite easy on the eyes. Honesty this forces me to note that, as a middle-aged man, I would have probably stopped watching this movie if Sophie Thatchers character Cee wasn't there. In all actuality I'm being a bit dishonest - the acting in the film is generally great; I don't mean only miss Thatcher, the other characters are also very believable and amazingly well played. Yes, at times the dialogue sucks, especially for people outside the Anglo-American cultural space. Some moments of alienation emerged as a result - even in a vastly distant future the characters are still able to emit some third-rate US commercial TV debris out of their mouths... But these are little things. Anyway a great job! Content - Western. Although most people grow out of stories about how different companies of people climb around lawless outskirts and embezzle loot from each other, there is nothing wrong with such stories in itself. Certainly, I do not want to undermine the genre. But if I do want to watch a western I choose the most atypical one I can find, much like this movie. Third plan - Sci-Fi. It sucks royally. Or lets say otherwise - it's always possible to make a comedy or a parody. But let's decide! Yes, there are some pretty fun movies-series where a stupid story is put in the middle of the 60's sci-fi mumbo-jumbo; where characters in colorful jumpsuits jump on cliffs made of cardboard in a studio, and everything from the huge moons to purple flowers are so genuinely fake that it can't be taken in any other way than a joke. Rocket-powered Caterpillar might have been a tough word in the 70s, but nowadays, there are more electronics and better controls on an excavator than the world's first joystick stolen from a museum or a Pre-World War II microscope. It's just unbearably silly. The planet itself... well, you're still in Kansas. The yellow-orange filter and the giant planets projected into the sky get the job done briefly, but in a matter of minutes the same thing will become disturbing - how cheap and lacking in fantasy! Yes, if the story is good you can forgive the makers - you can't demand that the filmmakers have any clue about science, technology, and even science-fiction, and maybe there was no money for CGI or for hiring someone who knows at least something... In conclusion - a relatively good story and performance with a likeable protagonist in the strikingly stupid background.