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rjbentley
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R.O.T.O.R. (1987)
Bad Except for the Ending
This movie is garbage, so bad that I wouldn't even give it a B-grade rating if it weren't for the very end. We're talking clumsy acting, incredibly lazy writing and direction that often felt like different people struggling to put their stamp on the end product.
Let's start with the basic thesis of the movie, that an impossibly advanced and complex robotic policeman (NOT a Robocop although the echoes are there) would inevitably suffer from so basic an error as to categorize all criminal suspects as deserving of capital punishment! The writers appear to have excessively relied on the natural fear of technology to be found among the elderly and stupid.
Anyway, MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD. At the very end, after an experience I'd had difficulty staying awake for and which generated plans for revenge against the person who had insisted I watch it, came the brief, transforming scene that turned the entire movie around. The HERO - complete with chin prosthetics, unnecessary muscles and an out of context-handsomeness, is blown away by the Police Commissioner using a shotgun. I remember actually leaping to my feet and cheering once I'd realised what had happened.
Dear John (2010)
Super Creepy
Ignore the blurb for this movie, what we actually have here is a supposed hero special forces operator who creeps on teenage girls. Their 'meet-cute' was especially so, as he'd clearly been stalking their small party for some time. Too bad that Hallstrom went out of his way to make the existing 'boyfriend' as lame as possible in order to justify his immediately being dumped and replaced.
Channing Tatum, a famously wooden actor, does a wonderful job of portraying a predatory psychopath in this movie. The writers were given a real workout in writing lines for the other men in the movie, stating how cool the 'Hero' is. Is there a male version of the Bechdel Test?
Pacific Rim Uprising (2018)
Great Effects, Terrible Writing
Okay, I don't think Del Toro stepped down from directing this mess solely because a better movie came along but rather because he didn't want to be associated with it.
In a battle for the very existence of nations and in which millions have already died, the writers thought it smart for Jaeger crews to have 'Rivals'! IRL any middle-manager or PR flack suggesting this should be immediately lynched by the closest survivors.
I won't bother discussing the issues such PTS, cultural dislocation, refugees and infrastructure destruction that this movie SHOULD have raised, as apparently these are too complex for whatever audience the movie was aimed at. Another '75' production, maybe? Although that does seem a little high for this dross.
Almost a movie better watched with the sound turned off until the action starts.
A Summer to Remember (2018)
Did we watch the same movie?
Catherine Bell plays an EMERGENCY ROOM doctor - badly, but that isn't the point. Someone who went through roughly a decade of higher education to get where she is, and then sufficient OJT experience to earn her a shot at a far better position. Can I just say Emergency Room again? A job where you see people in the midst of the worst days of their lives, and it is your responsibility to not only keep them alive but sufficiently intact to enjoy it.
So... This computer-generated pap from Hallmark, however, is trying to convince us that she must throw that all away in order to link up the with deputy regional manager of a plastic-delights resort in Fiji.
I quit watching before the end credits, just in case we get a future shot of Bell barefoot and pregnant; just like JEEBUS demands! I hate this movie, and the people who forced me to watch most of it.
Come What May (2009)
A Celebration of Ignorance
Did we watch the same movie? Looking at the other reviews of a movie clearly written in crayon by a committee of 10 year old home-schoolers, I can't match what others have written with what I watched. Do they really think that this is how college works? How a lawyer would prepare for a case before any court, let alone the highest in the country?
That Patrick Henry is an actual accredited college in the first place? It was particularly depressing, given the current issues with swollen student loans, to learn that someone could walk out of Patrick Henry after 3 years with a $60,000 debt and a piece of paper that literally no one will accept as an academic record.
So, let us also lightly brush over the property transfer between fathers that was the 'protagonists' marriage proposal. That the Mother - presumably at the top of her game if she's arguing before the Supreme Court - quits her profession to cook for a wastrel. That the Father was booted from a real college for pious lying, and is still unemployed. Oh, and moot court 'normally' has people arguing for both sides of an issue - but having seen the verbal contortions needed for Patrick Henry to literally create their own competition ladder, for them to then do it wrong should come as no surprise.
Prospective authors are often advised to 'write what you know'. To write about subjects and events they have personal experience with. This movie, however, was apparently written by a bunch of people, some of whom may once have heard some legal-sounding words or phrases but clearly had no idea what they meant or how they worked in reality. Nor, apparently, did they have access to Google in order to check things such as basic definitions.