Change Your Image
baronvonyiffington
Reviews
Gotta Catch Santa Claus (2008)
Very, very thinly veiled anti-science, pro-religion theme and moral
The movie is very clearly a vehicle to drive home the idea that belief in something is more powerful than facts, reason and scientific evidence. They attempt to hide this reasoning behind "Santa Claus," but every single mention of Santa can be replaced with "god" and the movie is the same.
The movie begins with four characters, and each one exhibiting a different one of the typical religious stances. One is a hardcore believer (believes Santa exists, despite all the evidence), one is a staunch atheist (proves using math that Santa is impossible) and the two younger brothers are agnostic (even going as far as actually saying "We don't have a stance on this, but we'll help").
The movie doesn't get any better as it goes on. The character with scientific beliefs constantly has crap shoveled on her as increasingly impossible things happen, all of them in favor of the believing character - even right down to the scientific focused character being able to harness magical powers as soon as she disregards science and begins to believe in magic.
Later in the movie, one character even goes as far as to say "what science you believe in might not work for me." The finale has a character outright say "What else can you say to a skeptic but Merry Christmas?"
The movie's moral is disregard science, logic and reason and simply believe in things despite evidence to the contrary (several times it is outright stated in the movie that belief is more powerful and science doesn't belong), which is the basis of modern religion.
Avoid at all costs.
Super 8 (2011)
Disappointing, plain, predictable story
I expected a lot more from an Abrams film. Maybe that was my problem.
Anyone who has seen Abrams' other movies or TV shows knows what to expect. Twist endings every episode, surprise character revelations and cliff hangers. Super 8 delivered absolutely none of that, instead replacing it with a very normal, predictable ending that most people will figure out after a short time into the film.
The movie tries to pull off what Cloverfield did: an obscured, unidentified alien that nobody sees and lives to tell about. However, it falls flat on it's face for two reasons; this time, the alien has an agenda instead of just being on a rampage, and the military proves to be a much bigger threat than the monster does.
Another gripe is that - and this surprised me, because, again, an Abrams movie - were plot holes you could drive trucks through (or, in this case, trains). For the sake of not having this tagged as containing spoilers, I won't go into detail, but I'll just say they are obvious if you think about it after the movie.
However, the children were (mostly) interesting characters that I liked. Other than the "lead" character, all of them had quirky little problems that made them fun to listen to and watch. In addition, all the children are amazing actors and I look forward to seeing them in better movies sometime down the line.
I understand that this movie is less about the monster, more about the characters but that doesn't save it because the actual development behind the characters is boring and as predictable as the monster plot.
Overall, I was disappointed. The plot lacked any real substance that mattered and beneath all the hype and speculation was a plain alien movie that everyone has seen before. Definitely not Abram's proudest moment, and anyone expecting to enter Super 8 and find the usual things that Abrams brings to a movie will be extremely unsatisfied.
Google Me (2007)
Not terrible, but I wish it focused more on the Jims instead of their locations
I was very impressed with this movie, but I've got a couple of gripes.
I really, really wish that the movie focused more on the Jims themselves instead of where they live. Most of the scenes where he traveled TO the different people named Jim were far, far too short and didn't tell us anything about them as a person other than "original Jim gets along really well with everyone".
For example, the meeting with Scottish Jim. They meet, speak for about two minutes, then it's off to sight see. For the rest of the Scotland scene, they are simply making fun of driving on the opposite side of the road, roundabouts, haggis, kilts and bagpipes, and how Jim from L.A. is bad at all of them. I learned nothing about Jim from Scotland except that he had the same name as Jim from L.A. - which would be fine, but the entire point of the movie is to learn about the people named Jim Killeen, and that was lacking.
The same thing happened with most of the other Jims as well. Jim from Denver was simply a short scene with a bit of gambling and a couple shots from the Swinger's party. Jim from Australia was penis and kangaroo jokes, then a football game.
Overall, the movie was decent. It wasn't the best, but it wasn't awful. It's definitely worth a watch, but don't expect this to be about the Jims as people like it tries to present itself.