xenolupa Reviews

Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

Beautiful film but incoherent story

[6/10 · 22 December 2022]

The movie is beautiful. The filming resulted in a lot of eye-candy, one more beuatiful gem after another. The underwater scenes are magnificent. I will see this movie at least twice more. Just because of the visual mastery.

I would declare myself a fool during my third viewing, because the story is barren, simple, it will not win any literary prizes. The story leads me to a lot of "Why?" questions. Why would anybody takes this decision, say such things, act such a way?

Why would humans go back to this planet? They first came for the element Unobtainium, and that stuff is not mentioned once in this movie.

Why did humanity come back in full force? To portray humanity as evil aliens, as so many aliens brutally attacked Earth in other SF movies? Like there is there no ethical oversight on Earth, to control evil schemes like this. Like there are no other planets in the Galaxy that would be a good host for humanity, so now they are going to eradicate the Na'vi.

Quaritch is like evil Putin and out on a murder spree invading other people's territory, and Jake Sully is like Ukraine's Zelensky defending his country, except that Jake Sully does leave the forest, even though it is not clear why. He leaves because Quaritch is only after him. That is weird, because elsewhere, humans are destroying the planet, the habitat of the Na'vi.

Why would Sully flee to another Na'vi tribe, and endanger them? Why are these Sea Na'vi so inhospitable? Why is there such adversity between different tribes of the same species, on a planet that breathes love and cooperation between species.

I guess evolution would have changed the shape of the bodies of the Na'vi, so that forest Na'vi have different tails and arms from the sea Na'vi, but I am pondering how long evolution would have taken to make changes as extensive as these.

Why would Sully call for medical support when his daughter is unconscious, and why would that medical support come in human airflight? Anybody with half a brain would know that the flight path would be tracked by satellites, and lead to the Sea Na'vi.

Why is the treatment of Sully's daughter by the witch doctor of the Sea Na'vi so akin to human pseudo-science (mock-acupuncture and laying on hands)? I would have expected some potions, maybe a mind-meld, or some other supernatural stuff, but not this.

Why has the sea creature, the tulkun Payakan, a neural connector in his mouth? What would the evolutionary benefit be? It's the first species we meet on Pandora we see that has the neural connector on such an inconvenient spot.

How did the humans find out about the Amrita of the tulkun? With dozens of new species introduced in this movie, how did they find out that such a giant being has a small amount of liquid that makes humans immortal? Planet Earth still has millions of undiscovered species, and every year we find a being that has some protein or other molecule that can be used as medicine. Such molecules are being synthesised when they are useful, so that Amrita does not need to be harvested from superintelligent beings like the tulkun. I guess humanity in the future is even more unethical as current humanity, even though we nowadays frown on whaling. This whole thing has ruined the movie's story for me, because a large part of the whole movie depended on humanity setting up a large-scale tulkun-hunting infrastructure, within a year of arrival on the planet.

Another holy tree. How many of such trees are there on Pandora? Will we encounter mountain Na'vi, river Na'vi, underground Na'vi and other tribes who each have a holy tree? Each just one of them, because who cares about backup systems. Why didn't the humans go around searching for such mighty trees and destroy them all to easier subjugate all the Na'vi.

Colonel Quaritch returning as an evil Na'vi avatar is just as unbelievable as him having a son, and as Grace Augustine still being alive but unconscious AND her having a daughter.

Why are the human vehicles so sloppy that a Na'vi arrow can penetrate a wind shield and kill the pilot.

Why didn't the Na'vi prepare for a return of evil humans? As if the humans would be ever defeated, or taking a loss.

Captain Marvel (2019)

Good, story, good acting, butch hero Captain Marvel

[9/10 · 14 March 2019]

My partner and I enjoyed ourselves with this movie. Long ago, I've read the origin stories of the "original" Captain Marvel and his successor Ms. Marvel, and this movie has little to do with either of them (maybe with some later reboot of her origin story, but I haven't read those stories yet). The story in the movie is a very nice self-contained original reboot, set up with nice internal logic, and as many of the movie industry's superheroes undergo a reboot semi-regularly, this one is especially beautifully crafted.

Of course Stan Lee is in there. Nicely done. The movie even starts with him: the "Marvel" comic book sequence at the start contains a lot of different Stan Lee's and a lot of his quotes over the years.

This movie also stars younger versions of Agent Coulson and director Fury and they look stunning.

Brie Larson plays a butch woman, beautiful, self-assured, well-trained, with lots of character development, and different roles portraying different parts of her life: Carol Denvers, Vers, Captain Marvel. I also liked that she did not want to depend on other people. That she did not fall in love with some awesome man. That she took care of herself and others. A real hero.

I like the story development. The Kree are good, the Skrull evil, and and before that and later it seems vice-versa. Carol was human, than Kree, than human again, and now I think she might be a hybrid. There's a lot of shooting and of course the heroes aim better than the bad people. The cat, Goose, is one to pay attention to. Also, don't leave the cinema until the scene after all the credits ended, because, again, cat.

Some days ago I read that this movie amassed 455 million dollars during its opening weekend in the USA (plus what the movie made worldwide). Cool. I guess that means there will be at least one sequel. I look forward to see this integrated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, like in the movie Avengers: Endgame which will be released next month.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Inane destruction

[3/10 · 28 March 2016]

I've seen this movie with increasing disgust. It has so many sets of stupidity, I facepalmed myself every couple of minutes (now my nose hurts).

The most stupid thing was Lex Luthor. No real explanation on why he did the things he did, what his company was doing, and his ramblings took too long and were filled with nonsense.

I grew up with comics of Superman and Batman. Both cared for other people and always tried to cause as little damage as possible, and if they did, tried to rescue as many people as they could. Often they took the fight to an unpopulated (or less densely populated) area. In this movie, just as in Man of Steel, Superman kept the fight in the city and caused ridiculous amounts of destruction, death, and suffering. He is just evil.

The movie stumbles from stupid plot to stupid plot, not explaining things (or giving explanations that were as valid as "roses are red so all red things are roses").

Batman has a wonderful plane that is so advanced I think all military in the world would want to have it. Same for his car. Jimmy Olsen is CIA, and executed at the beginning. Batman is Superman's enemy because of all the destruction in the previous movie, and slowly becomes his friend, and really, that happens in a dim way, how the hell can these two people be depicted as smart. Superman teaches the Kryptonians how to become superpeople like him. The Kryptonians know so many uninhabited habitable planets but chose Earth to terraform. It just drives me mad writing this. This movie is bad. Well, the stories are bad. The visual effects, special effects and stunts are awesome.

Dragon Wars: D-War (2007)

Illogical even in its own logic

[3/10 · 23 February 2011]

The Korean myth has its own logic. That does not explain why the hero and the lady-with-the-spirit are born in the USA. It does not explain how all the different monsters show op in the USA.

The logic in this movie is absent most of the time. Jumping from scene to scene is often erratic. Why are we here, now, and how did we arrive here.

Example... Why would a team of heavily armed and geared-up policemen run on a beach towards a cave, stop at the edge of a ravine, wait for a monster, be scared of the monster, run away without shooting, run out of the cave, and then start shooting.

Or... Why would our hero at one point need a car and go to max speed to escape from an attack by the main monster, while a couple of minutes later he can do it by simply running.

The dialogue is minimal and mostly simple. Things are explained in a silly mythical way that makes no sense at all, like something else is explained. Things happen without explanation beforehand nor afterwards.

The monsters in D-War can be compared with the monsters in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. The special effects are quite nice, but are of TV quality, not big screen quality (like LotR, Godzilla or King Kong).

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan (2009 Video)

Cylons are humanoids and among humans become more and more human

[8/10 · 28 March 2010]

Why the cylons tried to kill all humans is gradually made clear in this movie. Why it failed as well. The original plan was replaced by a new plan and at the end by another one.

Why kill them all? Because the humans made the first (metal) cylons and they made them wrong and therefore the new (flesh) cylons are bad as well.

Why did it fail? Because the cylons were to cocky and thought they could kill them all easily. But some humans are smarter that he cylons expected them to be. And a lot other humans were just plain lucky.

The original plan: kill all humans. The new plan: kill all that are left over. The last one: try to occupy our own bits of the universe.

I like this movie because it connects with several strange bits in the series. The cylons are machines, but they are advanced machines, with advanced and complex brains, they have emotions, longings, moods. And as with any advanced brain, it thinks for itself, it learns, it views opposing sides of any issue. Many of the cylons that live along humans see that the differences are very small. That the way the cylons love and hate and think and plan are not very different from the human way.

I think this movie shows the importance of the matter of perspective. When you're a machine that is designed to live among humans, and actually live for quite a while among humans, you will become more and more human and less and less machine.

The promise that many answers would be answered in this movie is not proved, many are not answered at all. I wanted to see discussions in the cylon worlds about why and how to kill all humans. I wanted to see the cylon worlds, period. I wanted to see meetings of all cylon types. I wanted to see how the flesh cylons were made. I hope that is done in a future movie.

This movie is a nice story. Don't watch it with too high expectations. Don't believe the promises, watch and think for your own. Enjoy the stock footage, enjoy the acting, the special & visual effects, the fights, and enjoy Dean Stockwell. And hope for another movie.

Surrogates (2009)

These robots do not operate on their own, people!

[6/10 · 25 March 2010]

I did like this movie. Not spectacularly good, several of the points the critics make are very valid, but I did like it. I did like the acting, Bruce Willis, the chases, the fights. They're not the best I ever saw, far from it, but they're decent.

Several of the critics make the same fault over and over again. They compare these robots to robots in AI (which do operate on their own, without somebody directly controlling them), or to the entities in The Matrix (where they are not consciously controlled by their human counterparts, but forced into a certain behavior by circumstances and the AI's).

The robots in Surrogates are 100% controlled by their human counterparts. They cannot operate on their own. The movie does contain some mistakes on this aspect, and maybe they are put in there on purpose.

I think these robots can best be compared with the avatars in Avatar. I'm sorry there's nothing about training to get accustomed with the robots, as is in Avatar. As with the chimp in the beginning of the movie, a lot of training is necessary to get the robot to do what you want.

The critics that I wholeheartedly agree with: - The robot-hating areas don't seem to be filled with the elite. It seems it is an uneasy collection of hippies, rednecks and losers, the same type of people who would refuse to use a computer or internet. It would be very easy for any police- or army-force to take such an area in control. - In our world the majority of the people have a cell phone. I'm not very sure whether the majority of people have a car. Or a computer. Or internet access. Certainly a radio, and a television. Robots like depicted in Surrogates are likely to cost more than an average car, probably a lot more. It would take quite a lot more years than the 15 years to have more than 90% of the world's population to use robots this way. - It would take many many more years for the world's population to use robots this way this extensively than depicted in the movie. To get to a situation where the streets, shops and offices would be solely populated by robots, a situation where the greater majority of people would not ever leave their home, not even for a minute, would take decades of gradual changes. But of course, a movie that tells such a story would be utterly boring. - Even the best massage chairs would not help to stop the deterioration of the human bodies who never get out anymore, who let their robots do all the work. - Humans not interested in real physical sex anymore? Come on, you're kidding. With skull kits as shown in this movie, there is no feedback to the real human body when the robot is touched by another robot. You would need a full body suit for that. So, venereal diseases going down with 90+ %, I doubt it. - If I would have a robot that would be able to jump to or from a rooftop, that would be able to lift a car, or to act tremendously fast, I'm afraid I would turn into a criminal very fast. No jewelry nor bank would be safe for me. I fully understand that there will be robots in those jewelry and banks as well, but still, it is not my body that is getting hurt in the fight, so I might as well go for it. Crime going down... nah, I don't believe it.

But still, the idea is nice, many aspects of robotic / human life are shown, so I give it a 6.

Avatar (2009)

Beautiful but stupid

[3/10 · 27 December 2009]

I did read up about comments here and external reviews, before I went to see the movie. I expected a bad story and stunning visual effects. I got to see a very bad and very predictable story and I thought the visual effects were not that good.

The panoramas were nice, certainly. The graphic world was nice, with the forests, the alien creatures, the huge machines and planes of the humans. But I thought it was very well visible that it all is CGI. It's animations. Why would people say that you can hardly see it's CGI... do they think we're stupid? I've seen computer games lately that look just as stunning. And in 5 years, we'll just remember this movie as "nice graphics for its time, but the story sucks".

I agree with the reviews of Avatar being a mixture / ripoff / remake of Dances with Wolves, Pocahontas, FernGully, Last Samurai, Enemy Mine, Lawrence of Arabia. Cameron did a much better job on Alien and Terminator. Did people finally convince him that his audience is stupid? I did quite a few face-palms while sitting in my chair. I started drinking a lot (thanks to our service cinema for providing this lovely feature), because I was bored. Predictable. As soon as I saw the main character sit in his wheelchair I knew: he is going to one of those Na'vi. Predictable. As soon as I saw the huge tree, I knew they were going to blow it up. Really. Barf.

I still don't understand why humanity of 2154 needs a whole fleet of airplanes to cut a high tree, since we already have neutron bombs now. You want to eradicate the aliens, get the tree out of the way, and not let the public at home know you did something terrible? Throw the neutron bomb and nobody will know. The area will be easily accessible with big digging machines, because there will hardly be any radioactive fallout. I know, it's evil, but that's the way these evil humans are in this movie. But that would be a short story, wouldn't it.

Go see Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Aliens, Terminator, Silence of the Lambs... or so many other films. Nice stories, some unpredictable plot changes and ditto character developments, grey (vs black&white) characters.

I happily would give it a 1 / 10, but I did like the graphics. I did not like the plot, the story, the characters, the character developments.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

I really don't understand why people like this movie

[2/10 · 30 October 2009]

The acting is overacting. The plot does not exist. The story is completely unbelievable. This is fiction with over-fictional elements brought in a semi-serious setting. A farmer hiding Jews in the basement, being "interrogated" friendly by a Nazi, while the guards wait outside, they come in later and shoot them all and let one escape. That is a bad start. It is stupid. The stupidity does not end. This was not a funny movie, this was not satire, this was not entertainment, this was a long long list of stupid scenes, one unbelievable plot hole after another. An insult to history, an insult to every intelligent movie-lover. I was mad after seeing this. I really do not understand why people give compliments to this movie. Really.

Angels & Demons (2009)

The end of the movie spoils the whole (bad) movie

[3/10 · 22 May 2009]

The movie is bad: bad science, bad plot, bad timing, bad texts. Tom Hanks is one of the few reasonably good things (he looks good, his acting is not bad).

Scientifically, the movie is stupid. Antimatter for a bomb? Noooo...

The plot is stupid. Why would the bad guy think of such an elaborate scheme just to hit the Catholic Church? If this guy, who even became the "number two" of the Catholic Church, has access to everything in the Vatican, it would be so easy to bring the church to its knees. No, for a good movie it has to be done as difficult as possible.

Timing: cannot be. Racing around Rome like that is impossible. Taking action like that is impossible. Being right all the time about vague clues is almost impossible. Come on, preparing actions like this is also impossible.

But the end of the movie... when it is revealed that the camerlengo is the bad guy, this really is stupid. He has done everything to help the good guys. And now he is the bad guy? Ridiculous. His centerpiece of evilness was the antimatter bomb. But he brings it high into the sky himself. And goes down to the ground with a parachute and survives. Why would he himself stop the destruction of the Vatican, what was his prime goal. Unbelievable. Stupid.

I gave the movie a 3 instead of a 1 because of the wonderful views of Rome. The camera-work is excellent.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)

Shame on Disney

[2/10 · 18 July 2008]

The movie is not like the book. No way like it. The essence is out, the plot is different, the story lines are all changed, lots of things are taken out and lots of things are added, most horribly all that fighting and the wars.

This is an attempt by Disney to be better than the Lord of the Rings movies, well, they are not better, they make a completely incomprehensible story that disgusts any Narnia fans that read the books or that saw the BBC movies.

What disgusts me even more is the enormous amount of people that gave the movie a 10 and wrote a comment: these comments all read like Disney adverts. It's like people of various Disney PR agencies got the order to write a positive comment, without having seen the movie or having read the book. Just a lot of advertisement babble. Read those comments in the comment listing, sorting on "Loved it" order. It's amazing how much marketing blahblah can be spotted! I didn't expect Disney to do such things, and certainly not on IMDb.

Shame on Disney! Shame for butchering the book. Shame for making a violent movie where people and animals are killed and tortured, but without blood, so killing is OK. Shame for the PR babble in the reviews.

The Happening (2008)

The plants make wind

[2/10 · 12 June 2008]

Yes, the plants make wind. That wind spreads neurotoxins. These neurotoxins make people going to kill themselves. In the Northeastern part of the USA and nowhere else. This is being told to us, because, maybe, we would not understand if not being told... we see it happen and we might just not understand.

At the end, a professor is being asked by a journalist on prime time TV how this could happen. He explains that this is a warning by nature. The journalist is not convinced: if it is indeed a warning, it would not only have happened here, but also elsewhere, and since so, we can give in to complot theories. The government did it! Of course, at the very end, it is happening again, in France (Paris!). Wow, a second warning, or now really the end of humankind.

By the way, being in love with each other and telling other people you love them and appreciate them, might help. Save the environment, talk to plants.

This really was a stupid movie. Stupid like "Plan 9 From Outer Space", but this time with good sound and good image quality and costumes and scenery. But still, it feels like a whole reel of film was left out.

Ooooohhhh, beware, the plants and trees make wind, they make the wind blow, and with that wind, the neurotoxins come your way and make you crazyyyy...

M. Night Shyamalan breaks wind. I hope he never breaks anything else again.

10,000 BC (2008)

Very nice story, visual effects, emotions

[8/10 · 22 April 2008]

This movie is definitely not as bad as its rating. Sure, there are plot holes and anachronisms, but in essence this is a love story, a wonderful adventure and action movie, it's a movie about heroism and discovery, it's a movie against barbarism, religion (they kill a god) and tyranny.

There's humor in it, a lot of emotions, thrills, and a lot of great action. Nice digital and very nice visual effects. Mass movements of mammoths, enormous crowds of working slaves, a river full of ships. The panoramas of nature are wonderful: deserts, snow covered land, forests, grasslands, mountains, hills, it's like a nature documentary (just missing the voice-over of Sir Attenborough).

The budget for this movie was immense and it really shows. For the people that are irritated by the anachronisms: put this movie in the same box as Lord of the Rings, Narnia and Harry Potter: it's fantasy, a fairy tale, a story. Enjoy the acting, the effects, the landscapes, the animals, the hair (wow, a lot of hair!), the wardrobes, the weapons, the huts, the jewelry. Feel like being in 5,000 BC (which would have been a better title), or like being in "Walking with Mammoths".

I Am Legend (2007)

Awful ending of a mediocre movie

[6/10 · 17 January 2008]

I'm a big fan of Will Smith. In this movie, he's a mixture of a good guy and a nervous basket case who's cracking down more and more. Will Smith in a zombie movie. Outsmarted by zombies. We have seen much better zombie movies, where the zombies really look convincing, but that's not the case here.

The end is really crazy. He does not want to survive with the two last survivors, but he sends them away to a surprising way out (hey, where did that come from), that would stop the zombies from following them. Will Smith could have gotten away, while still letting the hand grenade explode and let it kill the zombies.

At the end, the two survivors arrive at a huge wall. Other survivors with big military power. But earlier in the movie, we saw the zombies having superhuman strength and speed. They could easily climb that wall! Ridiculous that here's a human stronghold that isn't run over by the zombies. It should be on some island, not here.

We zijn weer thuis (1989–1993)

Dramedy in all respects, with strong influence on language

[9/10 · 28 December 2007]

Series of 5 seasons (1989-1994) with 47 episodes (season 1: 6 episodes, 2: 6 episodes; 3: 12 episodes; 4: 11 episodes; 5: 12 episodes) about a widow (Nel van der Hoed-Smulders, wonderfully played by Truus Dekker) and her three sons. Each son is conceived by a different father.

The father of the oldest son (Simon Raaspit, played by Wim T. Schippers, who also wrote the whole series) disappeared shortly after Simon's birth. Mother and father were married and since he is still alive, they still are. Simon is an intellectual, albeit a lazy one, who loves writing. Though he's not very attractive, he has a lot of sex with beautiful women.

The father of the second son (Govert Swanenpark, played by the very handsome Kenneth Herdigein) was told to be drowned, but he appeared to be just a one-night stand and still very alive (and rich, owner of a chain of hotels on Aruba). Govert is a smart programmer, who invents a lot of good software. He's a beautiful man, who has at least as much sex as Simon. But he's too trustworthy, he's (often) easily fooled by business associates and by the ladies. He starts companies, which go bankrupt. He goes to bed with a lady, who than turns out to be somebody's else friend or wife.

The father of the youngest (Thijs van der Hoed, played by Dick van der Toorn) died while trying to blow out candles of the birthday cake of Thijs. Mother and father were married. Thijs often behaves like a clown, a fool, with some gay tendencies, but has a lot of sex too.

The three young teenage sons still lived with their mother at the time of death of the father of Thijs. In his will, the father of Thijs demanded the two older (steph-) sons to stay live at their mother's home until she approved moving out, marrying a good women. In case Simon or Govert would not comply, they would not get their inheritance, one-quarter of the total of four million Dutch guilders (the current euro was worth 2,20 guilders).

The series is a real soap, but a very humorous one, henceforth "dramedy". The plot twists are sometimes very silly, sometimes ingenious, sometimes hilarious, but almost always surprising.

Surprising is the use of language. Unlike most soaps, there are hardly any "meaningful looks and silences". One moment of inattention and the remainder of the series can become very confusing.

The sex is never explicit (it's not porn, but sometimes it almost is), but the genitalia of the three sons can be seen regularly.

The texts are unlike any other soap. In total, unchanged, it could make into good books. Several words made it to the Dutch language.

There's quite of bit of violence in the series. People hit each other regularly, china is thrown around in almost every episode, doors and furniture are crashed, windows smashed. This violence is never disturbing, or as Schippers would probably say, "in good taste".

The love and loyalty between mother and sons is very strong, and is a good example for everybody.

Among the noteworthy characters is the family's notary, Born, who helps the family several times, but who also uses the family's money for his own purposes. The mother's brother, Gerard van der Hoed, is a nutty inventor who gets himself into trouble all the time (like destroying his own house, not with an invention, but because Thijs finds a World War II bomb in the garden, which rolls off the table), but later finally invents something which makes him rich.

Several actors (some starting in this series) became famous, winning awards, like an Emmy for Pierre Bokma in "De Uitverkorene".

Not for the faint of heart.

Ocean's Thirteen (2007)

How often can you fix a big problem in 2 minutes?

[4/10 · 1 July 2007]

Problems? Fix them in 2 minutes screen time. Winners and losers switching places every couple of minutes. Keep characters as shallow as possible, please keep them stereotypical, with a broody look on their face to try to let them look more intelligent.

Add some incredible thingies, oh wait, add a lot of those. The drill that drilled the Channel Tunnel from the French side... funny, but not really, and very incredible. Put on a fake nose and you won't be recognized. Raise a guy from the dead with lame poetry. Security? What security? Half a billion worth of diamonds that cannot be stolen, and after-wards the theft turned out way too easy.

I gave it a four for the couple of funny moments and another couple of good actions. Overall, this was a very disappointing film. The outcome was certain, it was told at the start.

Submission: Part I (2004 TV Short)

The murdering of Van Gogh proves the value of the movie

[10/10 · 26 October 2006]

The murdering of Van Gogh proves the value of the movie. It proves that there are Muslims out there that behave just like the movie tells us. The reactions of several Muslims in other comments here at IMDb also prove the value of he movie. They show that no comments are allowed to be made about Islam, any comment, any critique, is bad and evil and is considered (by Muslims) to be offensive to Muslims.

Islam is a totalitarian religion, Muslims are totalitarians. They accept no comments on their ways, on their religion. They respond with violence, with death threats, with loud protests. They do that over and over again, like they did against Ayaan Hirsi Ali, like they did at the time of the Danish cartoons. They can't control themselves, it seems.

They use the Qurân to show they are right for using violence. Suicide bombings bring Muslims to heaven. Killing Theo van Hogh brings the Muslim who killed him to heaven. A Muslim who would kill Ayaan Hirsi Ali (or Salman Rushdie) would go to heaven. Hitting disobedient wives is allowed by the Qurân. Killing non-believers (heretics) is allowed by the Qurân.

They? Not all of them. Indeed. But too many do.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh are heroes for making this movie.

10.5 (2004)

Stupid, bad characters, dinky-toy-like special effects

[3/10 · 7 May 2006]

Every time something big and bad happens to a road, bridge, landscape, it is clearly visible that the cars are toys, the bridge is plywood and the landscape is a small patch of dirty ground behind the parking lot of the studio. A roaring see looks like a shaking bathtub. A part of California becomes an island at he end and the rift that tears the ground open looks like the graphics by a secondary school nerd.

Several reviews talk about a tsunami and the disappearance of California. I've seen no tsunami. And by the way, just a small part disappears, most of California remains, as a big island.

The characters are weird. The president is a good and smart guy who really knows what he has to do and immediately does the right thing. Male political / scientific macho's start listening to a Jody Foster-in-Contact-like woman who has weird theories, that wonderfully turn out to be true. Where the viewer would expect panic, everybody is rather calm. Where panic is completely useless, people panic in a stupid way (you really see them thinking "did I have to run this way or that way, and hey, the camera, oh my, don't look into the camera"). People are dying and are able to say the necessary last words to console relatives, and of course die instantly, right after the last word. Advisors to the president contradict themselves every other 10 minutes, and at the end it is just "yes mister president". Stereotypes everywhere. Disney-happy families. Even the girl in full puberty who does hardly anything more than screaming, moping and being negative is happy with her daddy in the end.

The wonderful female researcher has to go to the place where the next earthquake should be, or to a place where underground faults might prove her theories. She's going on survey missions that normally take weeks, but here just take a couple of hours, and she always finds what she needs to prove her theories, even though she has to run for poisonous fumes coming up from deep underground and of course she survives.

People find their lost ones, who could be in any refugee camp, but of course the lost ones are in the same camp, or in the first camp that is being searched.

FEMA is a well-oiled, effective, efficient, quick-acting and compassionate organisation, that has trained all possible scenarios. It's a bit hectic, but they really have learned their lesson after New Orleans! Wow.

At the end of the film, a solution is found. Let's use nuclear bombs to fuse the underground fault. No way it will do any damage. Nukes will fix the problem. We are wrong when we think that it will rip California from the mainland... nooooo..... 5 nukes will do the trick. But the fifth one doesn't work OK. Still, maybe it's enough. But it isn't. It really should have been 5. California drifts off and becomes an island. And people survive!

Other reviews mention the real-time display of the Richter scale earthquake force. It's going from 4,6 to 4,7, the display says so, while the earth still shakes... so it must be true. And at one point, an earthquake is even "stabilizing", yeah really, I guess at that point they had their script writer replaced by Calvin (maybe even Hobbes was writing too).

I had a few good laughs. Not at the moments that the producers expected me to, though...

Bad movie. Bad, bad movie. Stupid movie. Barf!

Ice Planet (2001)

Combine Star Trek and Galaxy Quest and Battlestar Galactica and ...

[3/10 · 22 April 2005]

If not for the special effects and the sets, I would have given this movie not a 3 but a 1. There's hardly any explanation what the story or the plot are about. I have seen the whole movie and I really have no clue why this movie was made. Or what this movie was about.

Weird combination of plot less Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Star Wars, Galaxy Quest, Stargate, Starship Orion, Starship Troopers and a whole lot of other space opera with space fights, silly uniforms, actors who have no idea what role they are supposed to be playing or what the texts mean they are saying. Technobabble galore... (even the subsonic).

The end was weird, was it an end? What happened there? It was a clueless ending. One thing was clear though: it was supposed to be followed by a TV series. I'm glad it wasn't.

I lost 85 minutes of my life. No idea why I did that.

The Village (2004)

This could have been an episode of the Twilight Zone

[3/10 · 11 April 2005]

This movie is overrated and way too long. It should have been made in the style of the wonderful TV series Twlight Zone. I think the writers of that series would have made an episode of 30 minutes with this story.

I have seldom been so bored as with this movie. The clue was so clear, from very early in the movie, I really can't understand what all the hype was about. Series like Twilight Zone, Buffy and Angel have clues like this in almost every episode, and have better suspense.

I did laugh several times. But I'm quite sure the makers of this movie did not intend me to laugh at those times.

The acting was not too bad. But the actors had to work with a silly script. And they had to be slow, dull, a bit dim even.

Don't waste your time with this movie. It is slow. So very slow.

Van Helsing (2004)

Mix of the super movies. Bad mix. Bad, bad.

[3/10 · 21 January 2005]

let's start with a mix of the stories of Dracula and Frankenstein. Add some eggs of Alien(s), and later on have many more. Out the eggs come Gremlins. Funny creatures. They behave really like the pixies of the Harry Potter movies, and they behave badly. There seems to be need for quite a bit from Lord of the Rings, like the maps, the horses and the nice views of snowy mountaintops. Dracula wants his ring, but is not yet calling it his precious. Add some feel and wit of Buffy and Angel episodes. Sprinkle some silly special effects and anachronisms of Wild Wild West and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Frankenstein's brain was flown in from the set of the next sequel of Silence of the Lambs. A mirror acts like a Stargate, go through it and be somewhere completely different suddenly. Some castles are moved from New Zealand, and Saruman and Sauran sorely miss them. I've seen Jack Nicholson do a better werewolf. Van can surf like Legolas, but this looks even more unbelievable. Everybody is able to perform rope-slinging like Spidey, even the lady outdoes Indiana Jones.

All humans have super strength and survive blows that would kill a rhino, survive 50 yard drops that would smash the sturdiest marble.

Oooh, and of course we got Faramir from LOTR, behaving silly and cowardly. And Wolverine from X-Men, behaving heroic and gentlemen-like. Rubeus Hagrid from Harry Potter is killed way too soon. M of the League is way too human and friendly to convince as a vampire. Selene of Underworld though is a good and very strong vampire killer, and how tiny is her waist, it's stunning, but it being very unpractical does of course not stop her.

Ah, all ends well that ends like Ghost. No Swayze though... But the end is an invitation for a sequel. I hope it won't be made.

Of course it's dark, snowing and/or raining all the time. The acting is a bit thin, it's all a caricature. The plot, well, it makes hardly any sense. The story goes ways Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley have never thought of and would certainly not approve.

It's all way too silly. I give it a 3. Not a 1. But that's just because of the special effects, the costumes and the new ways of extreme violence.

The Grudge (2004)

Not so bad, rather good

[7/10 · 17 January 2005]

I wanted to see Sarah Buffy on the big screen, so I first bought tickets and then checked the reviews at IMDb. I worried about seeing a bad movie. Well, I had fun watching the movie. Some parts, which obviously were meant to be scary, were actually quite humoristic, almost as in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I don't consider this a bad movie. It's not a great movie either. Just a rather well made horror movie. It does not rely heavily on special effects, but on camera angles, acting, music. In my opinion, the acting was OK. Sarah did a very good job, quite convincing. The other actors were definitely not bad either, I liked Yoko.

The sets are nice (and I don't care that the sets are the exact same ones that were used in the Japanese original).

The scary moments were often predictable. But not always. I have seen quite some horror, and did not expect to be scared now, but it happened at least twice. Nice.

The movie had some nice scenes that were almost original, like the trails of rubbish, the simple special effects for he ghosts, the eyes of the boy, the cat that made eery noises, the gurgling of the dead boy and his mother.

Don't go if you want to see Sarah in another Buffy episode, because it is very different from her Buffy work, much more serious. Don't go if you only want to see movies that gather Oscar nominations. It's a good horror movie, enough suspense. I gave it a 7.

Troy (2004)

Let's rip apart the Iliad and try to imitate Lord of the Rings

[3/10 · 29 December 2004]

I have read the Iliad. Several times. I have been at two different plays where the Iliad was performed. It is a magnificent story. This story has inspired and awed millions of people in thousands of years.

The filmmakers of the film Troy decided that they didn't care about the respect Homer deserves with his magnificent story. The filmmakers didn't care at all.

They ripped apart the story. They made a pile of papers on each paper one of the many characters in the story. And a pile of papers with events. And a pile with dates on which those events took place. And of course a pile with places where the events took place. OK, shuffle each pile, independently. Now, take the top paper of each pile and combine those. At the end, some piles will still contain some papers (I guess a lot of characters will be left over), but of course those can be thrown away. Put these combinations in chronological order. Then, shuffle a bit to create the idea of flashbacks. Write a film script around this mess. Make sure it does not resemble the age-old story Iliad.

Now you have something that probably resembles the story in the film Troy.

Create stunning sets and perform even more stunning camera work, really spectacular stunts and special effects and sounds. Add a lot of handsome actors, whose characters really have to be different from how Homer described them. Of course, nobody speaks Greek.

If you don't know anything about Homer's texts, you have no idea that the story in this movie is something completely different than the real stuff. If you do know just a bit about the real story, watching this film is really embarrassing. You are thinking all the time... hey, this is from that chapter... no no, from that other one... oh no, that's not possible... eh eh eh... I'm not sure anymore.

Who do the film makers think they can fool? Me, I guess, because I paid money to see the film in cinema. Darn. I shouldn't have done that. These people don't reserver respect for their work. Raping the Iliad, it's a shame.

It's definitely not about the Iliad. It's eye candy. It's a bad movie.

Renegade (2004)

I love the comic books, don't like the movie

[4/10 · 8 October 2004]

Let's take the dozens of comic books that are made of Blueberry. Rip all the pages out, shuffle them and take the 20 pages that are on top. Rewrite the text so it does not resemble the original text. Create stunning sets and make even more stunning camera work, really weird special effects and even weirder sounds. And some bad singing, horribly bad.

Take some arty looking actors and let them speak French or some native American language. Dub the spoken text in such a way that the lip movements that you see on screen are completely out of sync with what you hear.

If you don't know anything about Blueberry, you have no idea what this movie is about. And if you do know a bit about the comic books, you are thinking all the time... hey, this is from that album... no no, from that other one... oh no, that's not possible... eh eh eh... I'm not sure anymore.

It's not like any other cowboy movie I ever saw. But it's definitely not the Blueberry I know from the comic books. It's eye candy. It's a bad movie.

4/10

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)

The mighiest country in the world... or not?

[9/10 · 27 August 2004]

Moore makes clear that power is relative. And that Bush and his buddies overestimate the power of the USA. Like Churchill said: "you can trust the Americans to do the right thing, after they have tried every other alternative". Bush seems to do everything wrong. I hope he does the right thing: loose the elections. And I'm no fan of Kerry... I'm just no fan of the American way.

Mind you, I am a big fan of democracy, freedom, capitalism. Moore is excellently expressing his freedom of speech and his freedom of opinion. This movie shows a lot of problems of the American society and of American politicians: poverty, lack of commitment, lack of understanding of the anti-American emotions in the rest of the world, and too much trust in the power of the military. I just read that 45 milion people in the USA are homeless. That's 1 out of every 6 people in the USA!

I, Robot (2004)

Lots of things from Asimov books

[9/10 · 9 August 2004]

As a child I devoured as many Asimov books as I could. I really love the technical SF books written with a vision that promises us a bright long happy future.

Bicentennial Man was not close to the story written by Asimov. I, Robot is on many points equally far away from the story. That's why the start of the movie deservedly says "Suggested by..." and not "Inspired by..." and certainly not "Based on...".

But I'm quite sure that Isaac Asimov would have liked this movie much better than Bicentennial Man. So many things from his other books are included in this movie, and so many important parts of the story "I, Robot" are included, that Asimov lovers really have to see this movie.

The end is a real cliffhanger. Signs of the zeroth law (law numero 0) of robotics are being shown at the end. In later stories, Asimov added that zeroeth law, making a total of 4 laws of robotics:

0) A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

1) A robot may not harm a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, except where that would conflict with the Zeroth Law.

2) A robot must obey orders given it by a human being, except where that would conflict with the Zeroth and First Laws.

3) A robot must protect its own existence except where that would conflict with the Zeroth, First or Second Laws.

I hope they make a sequel to this movie. Maybe "We, Robots"? With Daneel Olivaw as the main character, of course, the powerful robot from so many Asimov books, like The Foundation series. Because that's who Sonny is...