marbl-1 Reviews

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

An example of excellent craftsmanship, but no art.

[7/10 · 17 September 2023]

Pros:

• Huge scale - it was meant to be.

• Attention to visual detail of environment, characters.

• The mood of solemnity.

Against:

• Ill-conceived attention to detail: someone came up with the idea that it would be fitting if the hobbits had bitten and dirty fingernails, so the camera shows those fingernails for ten minutes to let everyone see exactly how much attention to detail they were paying (this is one example among many).

• Boring and pretentious. This is supposed to be a monumental and serious story, the shots carried out with flair, but the director went "a little" overboard. Scenes that are completely irrelevant are forcefully shown as monumental and take up a boring 10 minutes (something like "They go, they go, they go, the next one goes, the next one goes, with this one looking around, they keep going, going, going...").

• Related to the above is the lack of balance of the plot: very important things from the book are omitted, unimportant things take up 3/4 of the film.

• Selection of some of the actors. Here one can write at length, I will limit myself to the least polite aspect of this problem: Several female characters in the novel are described as absolutely, wonderfully beautiful. Some of the actresses playing these roles.... Well, maybe it's a matter of taste. But it is possible to find women that EVERYONE in the world would find beautiful, there was no need to choose ones whose beauty would be appreciated by connoisseurs with a particular taste.

• The characters of some of the characters have been changed, what hurts the most is making fools of several of them.

All in all - the film will probably appeal to people who haven't read the novel and who appreciate the wonderful visual effects. For me, it is wasted money for which a masterpiece could have been created.

Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (2019)

A script for the next SW episodes

[1/10 · 2 July 2022]

I have for sale the script for the following episodes of this B-grade series. A new evil guy builds a new evil empire. He builds a new, bigger Death Star and/or a new, bigger spaceship, and/or a new bigger fleet. The hopelessly inept rebels lose their entire military and support once again. Their last hope is some single orphan - the unsuspecting son/daughter of the evil master. The only chance to defeat the giant evil army is to destroy an undefended small element (a hut in the jungle/small antenna/locator, etc.). The main orphan ends up in front of the evil guy, where together they watch as the remnants of the rebel fleet are destroyed. Then the orphan kills the evil guy, usually with the help of a miraculously converted other, slightly less evil guy. Everyone is happy, until another evil guy shows up, with another, larger army.

It's good to add something particularly moronic. For example, the lady in the penultimate rebel spaceship has a dazzling experience - going into hyperspace towards the enemy fleet destroys it all. You could have thought of this before losing the entire fleet - by sacrificing one unmanned fighter you could win the war. But no. Only the heroic lady at the end heroically sacrifices herself. Or how about adding a charge of animals on the surface of a spaceship, apparently several kilometers above the surface of the planet - practically no atmosphere (why did the good rebels decide to murder them in such a way? Because they all had to die). Or how about a brave stormtrooper-deserter, zealously murdering his fellow soldiers? He escaped because he had the chance. Maybe 90% of his colleagues were also good, but they didn't get the chance? Or let's carelessly, humorously sacrifice own people: cut off our spy's head? So what... Let's make pets always the same on every planet (4 paws, pointed ears, tail). Let the evil hero murder a billion people, but then let him wheeze and whine a little, so that we love him for some reason - he's cute, he's converted, those billion people don't count after all. Or let's add dropping bombs (falling in space on the spacecraft despite the planet with a billion times stronger gravitational field behind). Or let's have a TIE fighter fly - in space - into the open hangar of a larger ship, with people apparently walking around, apparently breathing vacuum at the time.

Or... There have been so many idiocies in the last few episodes of this nightmare that it's hard to list them all.

I terribly regret my habit of buying BR or DVD. You should have watched for free, because the next episodes are piracy on the part of Disney - brazenly robbing money for nothing.

Anyway, how much $ million do you think I will get for that script for the next 15 episodes?

M*A*S*H (1970)

Disgusting, shallow, not funny.

[1/10 · 22 August 2020]

I watched the movie "MASH" knowing and liking the series "MASH" with A. Alda (1972) beforehand. I wanted to see where it started. It turns out that I've never been so disappointed with a movie. Altman's film is about a gang of degenerate alcoholics working as military doctors. They are only interested in drinking, smoking and cheating on their wives. The only two people in the unit trying to do their job right are ruthlessly harassed and humiliated. This situation can of course be found in movies. Surprisingly, however, the director believes that the viewer's sympathy should be on the side of the vile bullies. Level of sense of humor is more or less of elementary school for bandit kids. The most disgusting is the scene in which a woman (who has done no harm to anyone - she only wants to act like a human) is humiliated, exposed naked, in front of a cheering mob. Apparently this scene is "funny" to the director. What kind of person do you have to be to find such a thing funny? Think for a moment. Imagine that this woman is your sister or daughter. Funny? I really have a sense of humor. I can appreciate subtle, gentle jokes, irony, simple slap-stick comedies, and a rough sense of humor. But what Mr. Altman showed is embarrassing, hideous. What happens next? The repeatedly humiliated woman is finally broken, meekly sits next to her masters playing cards, cheerleading for them, having sex with them. A really strange sense of humor, a really strange message. Really weird and scary is that so many people like it. I understand that you can laugh at various things. Of women, blondes, men, teachers, policemen, lawyers, homosexuals, heterosexuals, white people, black people, yellow people, mothers, fathers, grandparents. You can even laugh at the wounded, disabled, sick, dead - there is a black sense of humor. BUT you have to remain human. You can make fun of a woman as a sexual object, but it has to be a good, subtle joke. Not arrogant humiliation, not torture. Not making fun of the suicide. What else? A hopeless scenario - many threads started and broken, no specific story told, random dialogues. A vary few really funny moments (included in the film probably accidentally). Hope I can forget this disgusting movie and still enjoy the show with A. Alda.

Northern Exposure (1990–1995)

The best show in the history of TV

[10/10 · 10 November 2017]

I was 20 when I watched it for the first time. It struck me with it's depth, sense of humor, mysticism. After 20 years I got DVD edition, and could not stop watching. After 110 episodes I put the first DVD to the player again. After the second turn I did it again. And again. It is unbelievable how Cicely became my hometown, how it's inhabitants became my friends. Never before and never later have I felt such a bond with fictional characters.

Of course, I can see very poorly built Maggie/Joel interactions, I can see occasional pretension, some clichés (or rather some things which NOW seem to be cliché, but were original back in 1990), I can see sometimes desperate attempts to tie some loose ends of the screenplay.

But all that doesn't matter because of overwhelming climate of peace, friendship, love, pensiveness, with ingenious, extremely surprising ideas from the edge of poetry, humanity, philosophy and simple life. It is the ONLY show ever that really makes you THINK and feel. The only which gives you as deep experiences. The only which makes me laugh and cry (almost).

The bad thing is, however, that present viewers can not appreciate it. Why? No firearms. No lasers. No rapes. No murderers. No fights. No blood on the walls. No naked chicks. No intestinal gases. No swearing. No sport cars. Ergo, it is boring.

By the way (spoilers): The series were aired 1990-95. In 1994 the "Friends" show launched. If you know both of them well enough you will see that "Friends" are almost "Northern Exposure" remake, but as just simple comedy (with intestinal gases included), of much lower intellectual level. There are hundreds of similarities, not obvious but visible (e.g. one of the friends is ordained and performs marriages (Chris/Joey), Rick/Phoebe's mom after death comes back as a dog/cat, Ruth-Anne cannot learn Italian - Joey cannot learn French, Rick/Ross die by a blimp/satellite, and so on - almost every little detail in Friends is copied from the Northern Exposure if you pay attention).

Anyway, if you are able to think and to feel, if you want to experience something really peaceful and deep - it is a "must see".

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Unbelievable. Twice.

[1/10 · 4 October 2017]

First "unbelievable" - it is that Mad Max franchise could be SO wasted. I am slowly (or even quickly) getting used to the lowering of quality in almost all sequels: they get worse and worse, year after year. But nothing prepared me for the Fury Road. It was almost uni-vocally acclaimed by the critics - it is the second "unbelievable". HOW could anyone like it? What can be possibly liked in that disastrous, pathetic movie?

First - Mad Max himself. Where is Mad Max in this movie? There is just some pathetic loser who has no... Well, he has nothing. No charisma, no strength, no brain, no ideas, no mission - nothing. The rest of the characters - not better than Mad Max. The worst part is a bunch of the supermodels who apparently have just had their hair done, nails polished, facial and full makeup applied, in a world of dirty, ragged, ape-like cavemen. Where did they come from? They just doesn't fit. It hurts eyes and brain. The "special care" for them is not plausible (they would have to produce lipsticks, creams, powders, eyeliners and so on).

The story - plain stupid. A "Mad Max" movie doesn't need to be very deep, it is action-oriented. But here nobody knows what and why she/he does, the decisions are random. We can not feel the story, it simply doesn't look real. We are not in this world, we don't experience it. We just sit in the cinema, watching something boring. By the way: it is Mad Max. But the lead character is some chick. I know nowadays girls MUST be the main characters in the movies (or a girl and a man). But if it is really necessary, why just not do a "Mad Princess Maximme"? Why to do a laughable Mad Max?

In all of the Mad Max "old" parts there was action, blood, violence, AND something deeper. Here is only action (violence is on a naive, kindergarten level). And it may sound paradoxically, but action is boring.

Interstellar (2014)

Overrated. Total waste of idea.

[4/10 · 26 September 2017]

Although the idea is simple and written 100 times in SF novels and short stories, it could make a quite good space opera. It could be deep and wise. It could make people think. But no. It had to be wasted. The weakest point is not poor acting (by the way: McConaughey really can't speak? I am not the best in the world in English, but I know many native speakers who couldn't understand him talking), awful music. Even the dumbest possible design of a robot is not the worst part of the movie. It is a forced, painful solemness and pretended adherence to science and logic combined with funny, childish errors and a mile wide gaps in logic.

It would take to much time and space to write down all stupid ideas, so just a few of them. Some of them are partially explained in the movie or e.g. in IMDb FAQ, but the explanations are even more naive than the goofs themselves. I start with a biggest problem: - In R. E. Raspe's "Baron Munchausen", the baron drowns in the mud and saves his life by pulling himself out, on his own hair. The Earthmen in the movie do the same: the humans from the future save their ancestors. But if the present people perish, there are no future people to save them... The most simple paradox, and yet they included it in the "serious" movie. And no naive explanations (branches, interpretations, non-linear timelines etc) can make it wiser, no matter how many times they use the word "fractal". And if the future people exist, they don't need to do anything, do they? - The best plan from the future humans is to put (in a past) a wormhole, 2 years flight from Earth, making it almost impossible to find and reach. Then the Earthmen would have to build spaceships for billions of people to travel to a new world. I would simply help the Earthmen get a decent crops...

• A catastrophic climate change destroys all the crops. How? During just several years? And all plants are dead? All animals? But humans survived? How? Isn't it possible e.g. to grow some algae in oceans? Why nobody even tries to do anything? - Why an anti-science education? A science never does any harm. Only the politics and businessmen do, using science. So it is not the science to be ostracized.

• A farmer drives his children to anti-science school fully equipped to bring a military drone down (has a specially programmed computer, antennas, means to establish a connection, etc.) - A "ghost" communication is very implausible. Does it really depend on gravity? Even some waves, oscillations would create observed effects on books/dust, the gravity hardly could.

• Barely legal NASA base, hidden in a barn, building a spaceship... Funny. Unsuccessfully looking for it's best pilot in the world, year after year... Funny. The pilot accidentally finds them, and is captured and interrogated like a war prisoner by scientists - funny. The scientists are pilot's old friends. And they just finished building a rocket. He has never seen this ship, he is a farmer for 20 years now, so will he fly it, the only hope for humanity, please? FUNNY! - Plan A and B. Science and technology so advanced that can keep human embryos alive during a space journey, and rise them to get humans, can not rise a radish on Earth (nor perform a MRI scan).

• Please, stop the stupid "expert's presentation how it works" (the imbecile with a pencil demonstrating wormholes, just like the similar imbecile in "The Martian" explaining the trivial maneuver around Earth). What makes it even more pathetic, the "expert" addresses his childish show to a engineer and best NASA pilot.

• ...and so on... I don't understand the physics that stands beside the unusual phenomena in the alien solar system, on its planets (the hundred miles high waves on an ocean two feet deep, the frozen, solid clouds in the air, the anti-logic movements of the ships, the anti-logic decisions of the crew... and so on...

• and at the end I (and all the nearby watchers) couldn't believe the stupidity of the falling to the black hole behind the main character daughter's bookshelves. It was... it was... unspoken. And the Future Men felt that the best way of communication with Present People is to shake the books in some girls' bedroom. If you can move the book, or a hand of the watch - that means, you can move objects - you can take a pen and write as well. It is the same action, using the same forces. Yes, I fully understand the meanings, metaphors, 11 dimensions of continuum, and so on. Doesn't help.

To sum up: Interstellar is just another pseudoscience-fiction movie. It is intended to be deep and serious, but is just funny (including it's makers argumentation why it is not). It is not easy to think out a GOOD SF story. You can easily make a non-science fiction story which is very good and nice to read or watch (like Star Wars), but it cannot pretend it is serious and science-based. The most depressing thing about that movie is, however, it's huge overrating on IMDb. Are the young people so easy to control? If they see something that makes the first impression of having some value (slow, grave, pseudo-intellectual) they give 9 and 10 points just to show they are serious and deep-thinking? Is that why poor SF movies get such a high notes? Passengers, the last few Aliens and so on?

My "4" rating is a real one, not lowered to balance the general overrating.

Passengers (I) (2016)

In space, your rope is never long enough.

[3/10 · 26 September 2017]

*A one big spoiler, although it is not easy to spoil something like this film. The work is already done. If you are older than 7 and/or your IQ>70, do not watch or you'll suffer greatly. There is no S in that movie, just F. Unless S stands for "stupid", not "science" anymore, which is quite possible, seeing the last 10 years in SF genre. I rated it "3", it is a real rating, not a lowered one to bring a balance.

A spaceship is sent for a 120-years long journey, with no human supervision. There are backup systems for everything, but cannot be used: no awake humans on board to make repairs. There is a 300-persons crew, but hibernated, doing nothing during all the flight (what are they for?). The empty ship is well lit, all the monitors are on, the temperature and atmosphere are controlled. Just in case, somebody can always drop in. A meteor hit causes a very strange malfunction which makes a man wake up (we can compare it to the Titanic hitting an iceberg which causes turning on one of passengers' radio. Possible, but surprising).

It turns out a "Help" function in a spaceship's OS is designed by a MicroSoft employee, so the passenger learns nothing useful. He tries to contact the tech support, but that, in turn, is as easy as contact with Adobe's tech support. He travels in economy class, so he gets only a junk food (millions watts of energy can be thrown into the mud every second - heating, light, computers etc., the space journey itself must cost millions for one person, but a decent coffee (worth a quarter) can not be spent). When you travel one way 100 years to build a colony, the money from the home land has absolutely no sense, only a real value counts (imagine Robinson Crusoe on his island with a box of dollars). But Jim is charged for a call to Earth (with payment in several centuries).

When our anti-hero starts to be bored, he decides to take somebody down with him. Because why not? Does he wake up somebody who can help him? No. He chooses carefully somebody he can... well, you know what. A blonde chick. She must be stupid enough to believe him, so he goes for a journalist. Bingo. The girl wants to go and see the first year of colonization and than go back to Earth. How? She forgot it was not possible to get hibernated again, so her return was not possible. Nobody told her? Moreover, how did she intend to go back? On foot? I don't think they were going to let her take the gigantic colonization spaceship back to Earth, they probably were going to use it to build a colony. So, our cruel, selfish hero sees he has chosen right. They plant a tree in hall. Why? How? The seed? The dirt? Watering? Fertilization?

Then, the malfunction grows. Some pots fall down from the ceiling. Another man awakes, pure coincidence that he is a member of ship's crew. So he tells how to repair the ship and dies. He knows he cannot live, nor wake up another crewman who can repair the ship, because it would break a harmony of our love-birds (or rather a horny deviant and his brainless victim). A gravity fails. Newton's laws fail (e.g. Swimming in a water bubble, a sudden stop of spaceship's spinning after power failure). Everything fails. But they survive passing very close to the star (the ship at 1/2 c would crash, hitting the particles emitted from the star, and/or the star's gravity would tear it to pieces), survive staring into opened reactor, etc.

And of course, there has to be a most funny moment with a rope. In space, your rope is never long enough. If you don't know the distance, cut a piece of rope and measure it. If it is 321 yards long, the distance is about 323, for sure. In every SF film lately there is a scene with too short a rope (From "Gravity" (edit: I am sorry, I have misremembered this one; in Gravity there was a different funny goof) to "The Martian"). People! If you ever go to space, prepare a rope that is 3 yards longer than you think it will be needed!

Bad acting (J. Lawrence was especially wooden, but both lead characters lacked any depth). Stupid screenplay. No scientific consultation. The SF movies can totally omit science and logic if they don't pretend to be serious, e.g. Star Wars. But if the movie tries to be deep, serious, SCIENCE-fiction, the screenplay shouldn't contain gigantic errors and gaps, too big for a 10-years schoolboy. Now I am waiting for a sequel: a girl gets old, so Jim - our hero - throws her to the reactor and wakes up a second girl. Why not? Or five of them.

Trespasser (1998 Video Game)

A gem but not for everyone

[10/10 · 16 June 2017]

You can either love this game or hate it. If you are impatient, inaccurate, if you know only present computer graphic - don't even try. The game was (and still is) just revolutionary in some aspects. The realism level is wonderful. No controls, indicators, panels, journals, character development trees and so on. It is just YOU (I mean, Anna) and the world. You interact with surrounding world like... well, like in a world. You can see what you would really see. You can use your arm like in the real world. The problem is in controlling the arm: it is a bit difficult to learn. In most FPS games you just point, press the button and kill a 1000 of bad guys. But here you have to get a real skill before you win. That is why some people after 30 min of trying start to think it is a lousy game. Well, it is not the game which is lousy here. Once you learn how to move and interact, the game will become perfect (well, with some bugs). You sneak from tree to tree trying to survive, feeling raptor's eyes on your neck. Of course for some people it is "boring", because you don't get to shoot 100 opponents per minute. It was the first game featuring a real physical interactions between objects (from rag dolls to catching and throwing objects), the real-time-generated sound effects, the inverse kinematics, etc. Generally, it was the most ambitious video game in the history, but during developing it was too much pressed by time and funds. That is why you have to admire it's greatness through the clouds of removed and unfinished attractions. I would really like to see it in it's full glory, without bugs, with all the features which were planned, but could not be included.

The Mission (1986)

The audience sat in silence...

[10/10 · 27 August 2015]

I will not describe every aspect of this masterpiece - you should just see it. It can not be told. You can (and you should) read R. Bolt's book, but it is not enough: you would not see nor hear it. Everything in "The Mission" is just perfect, from the first to the last scene. Perfect script with very convincing history, with serious and deep topics involved. Perfect acting (of every single actor). Perfect scenery and shots. Perfect music (the soundtrack on CD is a no-brainer purchase). In my opinion this movie deserves every award possible. I will just say one thing, which I experienced only once in my life: when the movie was over, all the audience in the cinema sat in complete silence. Nobody moved for several minutes. That is how powerful "The Mission" is. The best film I've ever watched.

Friends: The One with All the Thanksgivings (1998) Season 5, Episode 8

The worst "Friends" episode.

[1/10 · 27 August 2015]

First of all: I love "Friends". For me, it is one of two best TV series ever. The level of it's jokes is much above the average. Only rarely happens something awkward, even disgusting. Maybe it is the difference between the cultures - European and American, but here, in the Europe, the fart/gas/barf jokes are not appreciated. All the "Friends" quality of jokes is much, much better, so it is very painful that the producers decided to go for inferior standards sometimes. Anyway, when it happens, usually it is just 10 seconds, it is bearable, and we can still enjoy the show. But THIS episode is... Well, the first 3/4 is OK. But the finale is just awful. Disgusting. I mean, specifically, Monica with a turkey on her head (1), wearing a fez (2). I do not know, how the Turks feel about it, but I would NEVER show, e.g. a pig in a cowboy hat, wittily implying a connection to the Americans. It is the same level of joke. Very, very low. And again: This is the only episode I hate. All the rest has 8-10.