shoobe01-1 Reviews

Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver (2024)

I do not get the hate for these films

[7/10 · 3 May 2024]

(This is more or less the same review as for part 1, as these are really just one big story, so some of this references the other "film" technically).

For starters, there is one thing that really didn't work, and that is Fra Fee's makeup. Ho boy does his aging-up makeup

Otherwise, it really does. Not 8 or 9 but 7 just because a bit action-heavy for me. For example the fight in the bar once they start going to recruit is superfluous; we already saw Sofia Boutella fight, we don't need another slow motion example. It might have been cool to have it play at full speed in fact, but I digress.

Anyway, for what it is, it is lovely for the reasons I guess most people hate it. It is slow. Seven Samurai is 3-1/3 hours, so the two together are not hideously longer. It's fine, and we can have people talk and travel.

It looks fake: Um, no. It looks stylized. The opening plowing scene with the ringed planet makes clear we're on a moon and that we're in a different universe. Not just different from here on earth, I mean not MCU, Star Wars, etc but a tone of its very own and it worked for me. I mean it, entirely worked, never once was I annoyed by a digital background or strange spaceship as they all worked together and as odd as things were they were believable, In That Universe. Shoveling stuff into the boilers? Sure, made me almost giggle at the old Flash Gordon comics, once when captured shoveling uranium into the reactors. This is the weird parallel universe we're in and I love it.

There's criticism of not enough background in part 1 and too much in part 2: frankly, shaddap already. That's going out of your way to find fault and it worked for pacing. In part 1 they /totally/ tell who these people basically are, and they act a specific way, that carries through to the rest of the film. In part 2 there is a quiet period all gathered around and they can talk to each other. Moreover, Djimon Hounsou /explicitly says/ here's my tale, now everyone else share. Not forced, worked for me.

Oh what else do people hate? Oh, the weapons. I personally was again giddy we have something different for a change. Call it a plasma gun, but I loved that there is a splash at impact, that things are clearly defeated at least partly from heat, so stuff catches on fire and people are burned. There's also some weird power swords, colors seem to mean things, they have names for types: fine. It's clearly a thing, there's background that if it matters they will tell me but it's not random.

Okay, it is... stilted. Not bad dialog, it's clearly to me purposefully a specific style. I tend to think this is a much stricter homage to Kurosawa than everyone thinks, so the villager and "samurai" dialog (at least) is feudal Japan or 14th century europe, and it is nice to not have a modern sensibility tossed in randomly.

Acting: Mostly very good and I had sorta avoided it just for putting Sofia Boutella in the lead. As good as she's been and anything not good is not her fault (slightly too many long gazes into the distance, too much time in the tank top when being a farmer, etc) but line delivery I almost entirely embraced; she did better in vo than most do; I still love Blade Runner and cannot stand the vo cut as Harrison Ford is so annoyed sounding over it all.

I could go on, but entirely liked it, hope it continues and do not at all mind we got Andor to show us the roots of Star Wars rebellion and /also/ get this different rebellion show. Oh, and also: I've been pining for a remake of Battle Beyond the Stars for decades, this satisfies that itch very well.

Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023)

I don't get the hate

[7/10 · 3 May 2024]

For starters, there is one thing that really didn't work, and that is Fra Fee's makeup. Ho boy does his aging-up makeup

Otherwise, it really does. Not 8 or 9 but 7 just because a bit action-heavy for me. For example the fight in the bar once they start going to recruit is superfluous; we already saw Sofia Boutella fight, we don't need another slow motion example. It might have been cool to have it play at full speed in fact, but I digress.

Anyway, for what it is, it is lovely for the reasons I guess most people hate it. It is slow. Seven Samurai is 3-1/3 hours, so the two together are not hideously longer. It's fine, and we can have people talk and travel.

It looks fake: Um, no. It looks stylized. The opening plowing scene with the ringed planet makes clear we're on a moon and that we're in a different universe. Not just different from here on earth, I mean not MCU, Star Wars, etc but a tone of its very own and it worked for me. I mean it, entirely worked, never once was I annoyed by a digital background or strange spaceship as they all worked together and as odd as things were they were believable, In That Universe. Shoveling stuff into the boilers? Sure, made me almost giggle at the old Flash Gordon comics, once when captured shoveling uranium into the reactors. This is the weird parallel universe we're in and I love it.

There's criticism of not enough background in part 1 and too much in part 2: frankly, shaddap already. That's going out of your way to find fault and it worked for pacing. In part 1 they /totally/ tell who these people basically are, and they act a specific way, that carries through to the rest of the film. In part 2 there is a quiet period all gathered around and they can talk to each other. Moreover, Djimon Hounsou /explicitly says/ here's my tale, now everyone else share. Not forced, worked for me.

Oh what else do people hate? Oh, the weapons. I personally was again giddy we have something different for a change. Call it a plasma gun, but I loved that there is a splash at impact, that things are clearly defeated at least partly from heat, so stuff catches on fire and people are burned. There's also some weird power swords, colors seem to mean things, they have names for types: fine. It's clearly a thing, there's background that if it matters they will tell me but it's not random.

Okay, it is... stilted. Not bad dialog, it's clearly to me purposefully a specific style. I tend to think this is a much stricter homage to Kurosawa than everyone thinks, so the villager and "samurai" dialog (at least) is feudal Japan or 14th century europe, and it is nice to not have a modern sensibility tossed in randomly.

Acting: Mostly very good and I had sorta avoided it just for putting Sofia Boutella in the lead. As good as she's been and anything not good is not her fault (slightly too many long gazes into the distance, too much time in the tank top when being a farmer, etc) but line delivery I almost entirely embraced; she did better in vo than most do; I still love Blade Runner and cannot stand the vo cut as Harrison Ford is so annoyed sounding over it all.

I could go on, but entirely liked it, hope it continues and do not at all mind we got Andor to show us the roots of Star Wars rebellion and /also/ get this different rebellion show. Oh, and also: I've been pining for a remake of Battle Beyond the Stars for decades, this satisfies that itch very well.

Monsieur Spade (2024)

Oh, you people

[8/10 · 30 April 2024]

All the low ratings are simply ridiculous. This is more authentically Dashiell Hammett than the Bogart era movies. A common complaint is that the plot is convoluted.

Yes. It's in the style of noir (1940s or so) detective novels and they aren't like modern ones. You don't get hand-held through the whole thing, and they are problems for which you hire a detective - or which they find themselves wrapped up in that doesn't take an afternoon to wrap up. Why are we watching if it's not convoluted.

The other complaint I cannot stand is that people had to read. The subtitles they mean. I just can't even in this day and age. Then: don't watch it. Just give up and relegate it to Not American Enough and ignore it. But others are able to even understand languages other than US English, or can read - or even keep captions on all the time to make sure we can get every nuance of dialogue in every show and are used to it. "It has subtitles" is not a valid criticism of the show, but of yourself.

This. Is. Great. I mean, I am conservative in my ratings and might up it to a 9 in future. Moody as all get out, and some of the use of light and shadow is textbook noir film style; they could have filed this in B&W.

Near perfect to my eye period correct. Great cars, great village scenes, etc. Firearms even! French produced WW2 movies have less accurate use of firearms than this. I mean crazy attention to detail.

Really cares about the period in the plot. "The War" is (mostly, sometimes it is ancient history, WW2 Resistance stuff) Algeria, which if you aren't steeped enough in history means you don't know what is going on and: good! I am delighted they didn't hand-hold us through this all.

Dialog is outstanding. I have been posting it to good-quotes forums. And while as I said it's more authentic than e.g. The Maltese Falcon, Clive Owen delivers several lines I could hear in Bogart's best worn out and tired of everyone's lies tone. Great stuff.

The Beekeeper (2024)

Weirdly classic approach to film-making

[8/10 · 30 April 2024]

Yeah yeah, like everything this is overly compared to and called a rip-off of whatever is popular, but it's not truly a Wick-esque revenge movie, but much more so a 60s western revenge movie.

And best of all: nothing is explained. A lot of this works because they barely discuss what the background is and I love that.

This extends to finally a true surprise. Movies and TV don't have surprises anymore, and I mean even the staple of the mystery or police procedural which always hand holds us so much that maybe it opens with the crime and we see all the details, know for the whole time who the bad guy is.

Not here. Here we get a series of reveals right up to The Top.

Further, there's no double crossing! The Deputy Director of the FBI who is acting all cryptic here and there... is just doing it above board. Not in on the plot. In fact, and in the best of the western mode, the topmost big bad isn't in on what evil was done in their name and thinks it is a step too far!

Last: it's surprisingly un-violent. Look close and notice how little blood there is. A nice touch not discussed is that he beats up or wounds people when he doesn't need (for tactics or revenge) to kill them. The FBI and USSS guys are beat up or hurt, the mercenaries are (mostly) killed. Nice.

The Consultant (2023)

I just can't

[6/10 · 2 April 2024]

I mean, it's really well done. Visually believable office (for a change! Esp for tech offices!), really good acting, almost uniformly. But... the plot...

Now the story is fine. No problem. But where it falls apart is a field of stupid and improbable around everything. See, a big problem I have with baddies of all stripes, monsters to supervillains, is infinite power. No matter what you do, they can stop it. The baddies need to be able to be defeated or what is the point really? Right after that is the typical problem of characters who would be fine except they make bad choices.

I am good with absurd, with SF and superheroes, etc as long as there's an internal logic to it. But this is adding the creepy goings on to a normal world but the normal world doesn't work. The characters mostly make fine choices but within a framework of wrongness. Fundamentally, this is not from about minute 10 how companies work. There are many levels of management, there are lawyers and HR people, and not even having them fall under the thrall or visibly get fired or something is dumb. Irredemably dumb and to me distractingly so that there are vague thoughts that they will be saved or make their own salvation with legal or contract activities but none of them happen.

I mean, Dracula (the book!) is largely concerned with real estate, contract law, etc. Harker has a boss who is named and has lines, and last I checked it worked. Dumbing it down that far really broke this for me.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

A rare miss purely in the directing

[6/10 · 21 March 2024]

Harrison Ford does a stellar job being as old as he is and should be. Even in much of the action, I believe him. In general, written pretty well. Not Raiders good, ut as good as any of the sequels where they mostly make things worse by inadvertently helping the villains, but that is Indy's way so it works.

A little convoluted in too much hidden agenda, but that is the modern world. I hate it but what can you do. But overall, written well and mostly believably both an Indy movie and updated to the 60s. Mostly no dumb 2020's sensibility language either.

But the MOVIE is not that great. There's just an overall failure of the pacing, the art direction (it is all too dark and small for an old school action movie), and the editing. It's needlessly confusing and that's before you get to the bad CGI. I mean even stuff that is simple like static backgrounds of Tangiers or a parade look so, so fake. And stuff that should have been left simple like the map travel scene is overdone with a photorealistic airplane banking all the time. Why?!

Okay, I also think too much action. Very simply, too much. Think of the terrific x-marks-the-spot library scene in Last Crusade. The writers could have admitted more that he's old and smart. Hell, even let the youngsters do the action but comically have it in the background and much like the whole theme of action on multiple layers.

Speaking of other old people, the nostalgia casting like Rhys-Davies also totally worked. He's a cabbie but pleased as he can be to be doing that. But other nostalgia doesn't work. The theme pops up like it's an amusement park ride, not like a legit score. I think this points to that basic bad direction/editing thing, where there's no clear reason they couldn't score it properly and just didn't understand what they were doing, so failed at it.

Other casting of new people is surprisingly nice. Not everyone new is young, and a new old-friend (we haven't seen every one of Indy's adventures, and it's been over a decade since we saw him in action, a decade before that with no idea what he did, etc) being a fairly worn Antonio Bandaras really works, and is believable in story, believably acted by them both,

Indochine (1992)

Beautiful but deeply weirdly structured

[7/10 · 10 March 2024]

I kinda want to give this a lower rating yet, but each scene is so well done. I can't go higher, because the film as a whole is so strange.

Camille turns... into a communist? And then a communist leader? How? Why? Why would you make one of the core characters of the film undergo several changes and grow into adulthood, have a child then make a further massive change off screen? Weird.

The film also takes place in a clearly historical setting, around actual historical events, and is deeply intersecting with the bureaucracy of both the French colonial government and the Vietnamese, but then just sort of skips over the Japanese occupation, the change to the Vichy government, and so on. Why? When communists shoot up and set fire to part of the plantation, and there is otherwise so much political interest - a rich and apparently powerful family unaffected by these changes? The shift to communism has no impact on their personal fortunes so the plantation can be sold for lots of money?

If you want to make a movie that is politically agnostic (and history is in the background) then okay, and if you want to make a movie about the history happening then okay but it feels deeply weird and leaves me with confusion and questions that distract from me watching the movie.

Moonfall (2022)

They did it, those mad bastards...

[3/10 · 8 February 2024]

... made a movie less believable than Armageddon. I am not sure there's a point to finding all the technical / physics flaws alone because there's hardly anything believable. I am surprised all the characters have two legs and two arms.

Let's finish by paraphrasing the late great Opus: Roland Emmerich's new movie Moonfall has brought the word "bad" to new levels of badness.

Bad acting, bad effects, bad directing, bad editing, oh lordy bad writing, just bad everything. This film just oozed rotten-ness from every bad scene. Simply bad beyond all infinite dimensions of possible badness.

Well maybe not that bad, but lord, it wasn't good.

Mitchell (1975)

An entirely reasonable movie for 1974

[7/10 · 18 January 2024]

I don't get the hate. I think mostly it is that everyone who knows this now knows it via MST3K, which is both mocked and is (like Marooned) a cut down, hacked up version. The full one makes much more sense.

My biggest problem is that it's reviled and long lost so the only way to watch it is pretty bad quality, and... cropped? I feel that in this era it shouldn't be academy ratio.

Second, it's dated! It is the most 1974 movie ever. The fashion, the terrible land yachts everywhere, oh! The dramatic cuts to shifting the Mustang's /automatic/ transmission! Oh 70s, never change.

But things that are simply matter of fact from reviews like Mitchell is a mess, a slob, etc: not true. He's got a pretty nice place, keeps it entirely clean, appears to be able to feed and bathe himself, goes to work on time, stands when the boss enters the room, dresses for the occasion, etc. He is Joe Don Baker in 1974, so there were very different beauty standards then, and it shows. His haircut is terrible, but that's bit a character flaw, but a period flaw.

In fact for flaws, the marketing is weird. He's not unduly violent, he mostly does police work. He stakes out, he files reports, reviews photos and get yelled at by the boss... in the records room working amiably with another cop. The other cops agree that the duty is stupid, and he's being punished. He gets in people's faces, and is in trouble with his bosses for doing his job too well and not bowing to political pressure.

The action is... well, it's 1974 again, and toned down from many. Go watch a "classic" of the era like the Pink Panther and compare. The dune buggy chase is well done for example because Mitchell is terrible at driving it, is slow and nearly looses control a few times, compared to John Saxon's character who does this as a hobby.

The plot is reasonably straightforward, and when there are confusing double crosses he explains it to us (there's another character to talk to) or shows us, like the height of the first burglar/victim. It's easy to track if you just watch.

Justified: City Primeval (2023)

If you hate this, you hate the original also

[9/10 · 5 January 2024]

Interesting how "this is terrible" and all the bad reviews but still 7.4 here, and 91 on RT. Hmmm...

If you think it's suddenly all PC (or "woke" as is now the trend to call everything you hate) then you didn't see the same Justified. The one where Raylan is pro-worker, anti-fatcat, explicitly anti-racist, gets in tons of trouble for being too violent and more over time, where the women are the competent ones, and so on.

City Primeval is as good nearly as any police procedural that has ever existed, as well written as anything Elmore Leonard derived and if you don't think so, I am not sure what you were watching. Numerous laugh out loud or "oh he did not!" we had to pause and rewind again.

Great story, great multi-layered villany. And mostly one of the better fish out of water stories I have seen. Often that's too forced, but here it really works. Raylan isn't so improbably country that he doesn't know how to move and investigate in a city, to deal with mob bosses in a big city, etc but he is so country he doesn't have a clue who Parliament is. Perfect.

Willa is the same way. She's a stressor to pull him out of the purity and focus of the investigation. She's not badly written, she's well written; teen girls are annoying, and his visitation schedule plus being ordered to do stuff by his bosses and the judge means this is a big stress that like fish-out-of-water is also a lens to look more objectively at what his straight job is.

My Policeman (2022)

Lifeless and pedestrian

[5/10 · 20 December 2023]

I liked this even less than many other critical reviewers. Let's start with the nice things many say, that it has beautiful locations. Does it? I found it filmed in quite an uninspiring way, and generally that while Brighton could be a character, and at the least relative locations matter, it is all just window dressing, an arbitrary background.

Otherwise oddly shot a lot. For an intimate and tension filled romance, lots of relatively wide lenses and the camera positioned above the character's head, lots of panning to show us the important bits (because we're dumb, can't figure it out or wait 2 seconds to see what happens etc). It all feels remotely observational, narrative instead of involved.

I think the adaptation is horrid. It's the Reader's Digest summary of the novel, not a film adaptation, committing the sin of telling instead of showing far too much. Lots of talking, to tell us what the bad photography, indifferent geography, and jumpy editing doesn't let us see.

Which is all not helped by mostly horrid acting. No, not just Styles, but everyone acts like they just got the pages this morning, and we're in too much of a rush to bother getting to the emotional meat of the lines. Linus Roache, just for one example, is a completely good actor - I can't think of a time I didn't totally buy him, even just in some throwaway TV role - and somehow here he's the second best actor in the junior high school play.

I don't know what went wrong but for me, for the type of film it wanted to be, just about everything. Deeply disappointed, from what could have been and the glowing reviews from many others.

Warhorse One (2023)

Unwatchably bad

[3/10 · 18 December 2023]

I didn't know they made movies this bad anymore. Amateur doesn't cover it. Your typical YouTube video of kids playing with toys has better production quality and a more coherent storyline.

But at least the acting is a joke that makes one pine for the professionalism of local theater, photography gives me a headache (literally constantly moving for some reason), and Lens Flare should get top billing.

It is so boring! Walk, shoot, walk, walk, walk, shoot. Everything takes forever. Normal action movie conversations that in the 80s would take 20 seconds take FIVE MINUTES here, so the end result is this debacle is over 2 hours long.

(There are not enough pixels in the world to define the physical impossibilities and technical inaccuracies, as well).

And just for the fun of it, there's politics for no reason (blaming Biden for the Trump withdrawl in sentence 3), lots of pro-Christian messaging that also makes a point of being explicitly anti-Muslim instead of anti-terrorist, etc.

The Last Shift (2020)

Great, worth seeing, but know that it's not fun

[8/10 · 16 December 2023]

As far as I can tell, most of the low reviews are from the now-current expectation that all movies be (to borrow from the one parole officer scene) comfortable. We aren't always meant to be comfortable when we learn, observe. Film doesn't have to be entertaining.

Now, it's so realistically unpleasant sometimes I am likely to never watch it again. But that's a good thing re: the script, and the craft of the film making. Everything rang true, even when if I was there I'd, I must admit, mostly leave to not get involved. Uncomfortable.

Richard Jenkins is as brilliant an actor as ever, but also is a different character, so is lovely to see doing the work of low class, not that intelligent, not well educated, and passively racist.

The rest of the cast is equally great, to the point I never want to see Da'Vine Joy Randolph as she's such a perfect bad manager it will be hard to not see that in other roles! Ed O'Neill is, like Jenkins, such a different character I barely recognized him, entirely from tone and posture; who can change how they sit and stand so much you don't recognize them?! Great work.

I've never seen Shane Paul McGhie in anything else, so no idea if that's him or what, but he was also annoyingly believable, to the point I was uncomfortable with him in many of the interactions with superiors (PO, Shazz) so I'll assume again great work.

The Shepherd (I) (2023)

Worked for me, not sure why the hate

[7/10 · 11 December 2023]

My best guess: anti-Disney people coming to gripe because they are told it is their identity. Interesting how essentially every 4 and below review has several egregious spelling mistakes, isn't it?

Travolta is indeed meh, weird they couldn't get him to shave, but most of his acting is far away, in a cockpit, geared up, so no big deal.

Everyone else is fine. Some of the talking to yourself is because it's a movie, hard to have internal monologues that don't seem sillier.

Cockpit lighting is wrong, but it's a movie, I guess they couldn't persuade the producers people can get by with a dark film.

I really really hate bad CGI, find the last 2 years of Marvel nearly unwatchable from that, but... no problems here. Not sure what anyone finds unbelievable, looked good to me and a delight to a Vampire on film!

Vampires were prone to electrical failures even of instruments (and the author of the original tale flew them before his writing career) but he seems to have forgotten there's a plain old magnetic compass that should have worked. About the old real flaw here, and I suspect someone could have come up with a reason it fails also, but we can just handwave that for the story as the rest tracks nicely.

While not authentic, the ghost story inside a ghost story worked well also. If you like the concept of a guardian spirit, easy to imagine that each individual ghost is in their own world and so former batsman ghost is doomed to his own life, not working in cahoots with his former master. Nice surprise.

Machine Gun Preacher (2011)

Full of meh

[5/10 · 8 December 2023]

Trying hard to set aside the reality (at least half the claims are patently untrue) and how much it's basically propaganda, it's just not a very good movie.

Butler is inconsistent as all get out. In tone and word. Even the script has him become much more of a barely literate redneck here and there, but he's explicitly persuasive somehow, and never at a loss for very specific. And correct wording for tons of conversations where he is persuading everyone to go his way.

Similar for other characters; the daughter is apparently intelligent, educated, but they throw in the occasional "aint" just to make sure we believe these are good old Real American people, I guess. It's weird.

It's weirdly put together, head to toe. Very typical biopic, covers too much timeframe, but also doesn't explain the time jumps so we're deeply unclear how much time has passed.

There's not a whiff of motivation. I didn't just not believe in his conversion, then visions, but I didn't see one at all. Just all of a sudden he is doing things like drawing the church and orphanage (etc) but... out of the blue. It's like they edited out scenes where he had reasons and decided this but... they didn't and instead it's just terrible film-making where you know e.g. He had a vision because has a deeply unemotional speech about having had a vision.

And his wife is All In. His whole family is. His friends are, and people he could be cometitive with in business are not. There is not a bit of palpable tension in the movie. If you say "but the LRA!" meh. Seen a good war movie? They are not all perfect friends led by perfect leaders against the enemy, but have their own tensions and worried internally or within the group.

Not here, as all too typically for this genre. Everyone is a good guy, but the Very Bad Guys, so it's boooooring. Seriously, for a movie full of ethnic-cleansing levels of atrocity, with gunfights, hard to bother paying attention to the whole thing.

Red River (1948)

I don't know what people see in this...

[5/10 · 3 December 2023]

...or movies like it. Others try, but Wayne is almost uniformly doing shockingly bad acting here, not believable for a moment.

Weirdly structured, a lot like it was cut down from an epic 9 hour multi-film series. Lots of just jumping around (she loves him SO much 10 seconds into the movie... 14 years later! Etc). They do not believe in the first truth of film, show don't tell. Even when they DO show (e.g. The can shooting competition) they then followup with saying what just happened ("sizin' each other up for later"). Its a waste of time and how stupid do they think we are.

Supposed to have great scenery but it's really indifferently filmed, and too many cutaways to very obvious sets. Ruins the feel of being on this wild frontier.

But most of all, Wayne is as much of a bad guy as I have ever seen in a western. Beyond gruff, he turns all confrontations into cattle theft, horse theft, claim jumping, real-estate fraud, and oh yeah: murder. He escalates things to shooting when they absolutely did not warrant it, murders those who he feels betray him personally (remember this is not military service but just an employment contract). He berates those who solve problems with less-than-murderous violence. He's a supervillain origin story level of bad guy, from day one.

Except, without the origin story. If he was originally neutral or actually good natured, then circumstances make him this villain sure, that's a movie. But no, right from the start, a hilarously self-centered bad guy and people stick with... him for what reason?

Montgomery Clift is fine. He's been better, i just blame poor direction. Walter Brennan does his typical cooke-type character, does as well as he can, but its a stupidly written part, with lots of inconsistency in the character's capabilities, motivations.

Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019)

The 80s nostalgia has gone too far

[5/10 · 30 November 2023]

You know, the nostalgia that leads to stuff like Stranger Things, but also stuff like Dallas Buyers Club, Straight Out of Compton etc. Lots of stuff set in the 80s but now... we're up to the level of ripping off the terrible style of too many of those.

This is a "teen" (the actors were never teenagers, as here) sex comedy but updated with the puritanical 21st century vibe to be vague teen romance instead.

Yeah, really. The overall thing is 100% teen comedy. The adults are buffoons, nothing goes your way, the hero is so bad at his romancing that you loose all sympathy by the end, etc.

Oh, you say there's a superhero movie in there? Sure, but there was also a raft race, ski race, fundraiser, court case, or whatever else was happening (Better Off Dead is a /good/ version of these that deliberately used the tropes of the time, but being a cult hit is still on TV now). This suffers that same fate of the core plot such as it is being secondary to being a silly movie of teenagers being on vacation.

Oh yeah, the action is a joke. I mean, for a contemporary superhero movie even. Absolutely suffering the Marvel syndrome of horrible CGI, but also bad directing, bad editing. Unexpected explosion in 3, 2, 1, now. Really. I am sitting here being bored by destruction of major cities because it is so predictable and so bloodless! There are no stakes, no one will die. And no one here cares about history and art so it's fine we knock over 1000 year old monuments, it's all for laughs.

The McConnell Story (1955)

Propoganda at its worst

[6/10 · 22 November 2023]

Billed as a "patriotic" movie, it's way past that. We start by interrupting a USAF GO from his smoking to all but give us the line from A Few Good Men ("...who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it!") and even is on the verge of that level of argumentativeness.

It ends, after his I /guess/ spoilery death, but it's historical and telegraphed at every turn. June Allyson's primary job is to emote "is Alan Ladd dead yet?" in about half her scenes. Anyway, it ends with more cringey "patriotic" scenes about how it is fully good he died, in a much more unpleasant way than any other fictional account I can recall much less actual people talking up heroes killed in the line of duty. Apparently, the President, the Air Force and his good friends wanted McConnell killed, even aside from the problems he uncovered with the a/c in test.

Oh, speaking of: Alan Ladd was given like 2 minutes to eject and just chose to go down in a 400 kt fireball?

Which also gets to one key complaint. I like Alan Ladd. Even when he's normally getting some guff for a role where he's stoic, they tend to work out. Here, he's supposed to be terribly excited about flying, it is his dream above all other dreams and... I mean, I guess? He doesn't seem excited by that at all. I buy his family stuff, but he was written bad or acted wrong for that key character attribute

Compare this to how a similar goal was shown by Michael Peña in A Million Miles Away. Come to think of it, good example of tragedy being shown as actually sad alongside mission-first and all without grabbing you by the collar and shaking you into believing the message.

Last, I was really lost for the first maybe 15 minutes because we got the cheap hollywood treatment, and I couldn't figure out that the very very very 1950s people were supposed to be in the 1940s and the first third of the movie is about WW2 starting, not Korea. Some other gaps in the clarity of the story for cuteness.

Decent flying scenes mostly, lots of access to the flight lines, but interiors are obviously sets. Would have done well to use more USAF installations for that part as well.

Beacon 23 (2023– )

Once again, every bad SF trope, just with a budget

[4/10 · 14 November 2023]

Good production design, everything intentional is in focus, some good actors. And that's it. What have we done to anger the gods of good SF to get so many shows like this:

• A new element
• Gears control electricity
• Future power sources explode catastrophically
• Mercenary team
• Everyone on the mercenary team has a distinctive hair style
• Everyone on the mercenary team hates each other
• Transparent displays
• Gravity... but sometimes not
• Hacking!

• Give away the action in the cold open
• Everyone is a jerkass
• Space is small

I mean, lighthouse and victorian mansion in a storm (maybe bonus: the bridge is washed out) are the classic isolation for drama or monsters, so spaceship in space (or mining colony etc) is the modern version. Lighthouse in space needs to go above and beyond not to be just tropes upon tropes.

What really annoys me about this and much other bad SF is the lack of world building. We didn't get 2 minutes of just how the place works, even if not explicitly explained, before it goes straight to acton and conflict so we're not oriented to these truths, and instead everything that happens with future stuff seems like it's a macguffin.

Things to Come (1936)

Awkward pace and uninvolving characters indeed

[6/10 · 10 November 2023]

Gary Westfahl says "Things to Come qualifies as the first true masterpiece of science fiction cinema, and those who complain about its awkward pace and uninvolving characters are not understanding Wells's message, which is that the lives and actions of individuals are unimportant when compared to the progress and destiny of the entire human race"

No. I am one who gets the message, and doesn't even really disagree, it's just still an odd movie. A lot of monologuing, strangely stilted characters, pacing is all over the place; it cannot decide what sort of movie it is. Sometimes it's an FX driven montage, showing the passage of time, sometimes it's these little character driven stories. Sometimes it gives very memorable intertitles, sometimes it gets rather long voiceovers.

And so much clunky wording. This from Wells? He must have used up all the good ones. Plenty of strange phrasing but just the proper nouns "Everytown" and "Wings Over the World" are horrible, make sure any investment in the truth of the story are back to distant observer.

Sadly, hardly anyone works with the material, but instead has these affected mannerisms and speech, that even for the 30s was odd. I watch plenty of films from this era, and Things to Come is still a very strange and hard to watch movie.

I might lament that it's been butchered with repeated edits but it's not gaps in the story that is the problem. It's just weird within individual scenes.

The Fountainhead (1949)

I mean, it's all in focus, and you can hear what they say

[4/10 · 9 November 2023]

Technically it sure is a film. Past that, hardly any redeeming factors. The dialogue is just nonsense. As other reviews have said, no one talks like this. No one emotes this little when defending their close held beliefs or romancing the love of their life.

Handily Gary Cooper's worst movie. He's far too old, but mostly is just doing an absolutely horrible job. At least you sorta believe the crazy stuff Raymond Massey says; he understood his role, and ate up the crazy but essentially the whole movie relies on Cooper and he is simply not up to this task.

Oh, the romance. If he's hard to believe as a creative professional in a fundamentally collaborative industry, he's impossible to believe as a romantic lead in... what is this? A love triangle, I guess? It's often hard to tell what is even happening. Per the descriptions some stuff happens because years pass but that's not obvious, and apparently Patricia Neal leaves Cooper then goes across the street and gets married.

The actual work is nonsense. Oh, also super obviously fake, really shocking FX work when they could have just gone to real locations with snazzy post-modernist buildings; many in communist countries, by the way!) But anyway, there's no engineers, no mechanicals, no general contractors, just superstar architects. There are newspapers with architecture beats? Come on.

Where is his staff? When Wright was early in his career, he employed around 10 staff, and that was designing mostly houses. Huge office towers and complexes of buildings by... himself? I mean, since he's such a radical defender of his vision, I guess he does all the thousands of drawings, the math for structures, is an expert in every field and very fast. Not clearly so as he just scribbles a bit and gazes out of windows a lot. Not a drafting table in sight much less a blueprint machine (or... maybe he should have switched to diazo if he's such a radical?)

The culminating events, the trial, is just shocking nonsense. He's on trial for being anti-collectivist, not for explosives violations, (as far as they know) attempted murder, destruction of property and so on, but just being a selfish jerk.

He puts up no defense except that individualism is all that matters, and anything but strident individualism is communism (that's what they mean), so you don't have to play nicely with others even when you work for them, have contracts to do things, etc.

In any court in any time, the judge would have had the jury explain themselves and set aside the not guilty verdict. It's nonsense.

The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)

Another voice for: third part is a letdown

[8/10 · 30 October 2023]

First two parts are both great, and really really interestingly tied together. Third much less so with the time jump, with coincidences and contrivances, etc.

But mostly I think it's that Cianfrance relies on characterization and emotion to communicate the themes (sin, family, etc) and the last segment needed that to happen from the kids. I'm not 100% convinced that the issue is the acting from Emory Cohen and Dane DeHaan as that it can be hard to write convincingly for children and teens and much of this didn't read as plausible to me but the way adults think kids talk, along with other tropes like the school lunchroom conspiracy and the Big Teen Party.

Major Arcana (2018)

A tale of characters who do not grow... and that works

[10/10 · 25 October 2023]

Wondering why this got no play, hardly any visibility anywhere. Stumbled across on TV, and delighted.

Yes, an arthouse sensibility and lots will not like this, but every note, every frame rang true. I was annoyed when his mom came on screen as that was too close to old mom (or aunt, etc) griping about stuff. And overall, I have had enough time in small towns with friends and distant relatives that the whole tone of low expectations and knowing the same people for your whole life worked.

Also found his cabin building to be fascinating and rang entirely true to my experiences. Nice gear, used properly, and nice gaps to it also. Hand cutting, and using bolt cutters instead of pruners at the end was a lovely touch.

(If expanding didn't get it, AS SPOILERY AS SPOILERS GET)

But most of all the broadest scope of the movie left me almost stunned. Ujon Tokarski is making a big change, a weird one but one that seems plausible to work out for him and he's just gotten Tara Summers to change her life, at least has a fighting chance at normalcy, which with the nesting of making a cabin in the woods, seems to be what he wants.

And, he admits, he doesn't. He just flees again, and while film (well, narratives generally) want character development as part of the journey, in reality people don't change much and not in this timeframe. This rang very very true of real life.

Billy Madison (1995)

Nothing happens

[5/10 · 23 October 2023]

Norm MacDonald can't act, and has enough lines it shows. Bradley Whitford, and others, seem to have not bothered because why bother with a movie of this type. Even Chris Farley is somehow only bringing about 20% of Chris Farley to each of his scenes, and no one seemed to know how to film or edit for him, anyway.

Bridgette Wilson-Sampras is in a parallel universe where I guess she's got a motivation to find Sandler attractive? This, and other bits just made leaps of logic, and skipped around right before something might have been funny with the attention of a 2 year old.

James Downey is similarly perfect and his whole quiz show sequence could have been great but was played wrong, and is so very different from the rest of the film in many ways.

Steve Buscemi is awesome, and his scenes are even good but tonally wrong. Editing is different, etc. It's weird.

Why cut to the banana? Oh, that somehow killed a whole family and his life at High School got better? I... sure.

Adam Sandler is clearly acting the whole time, with this caricature of excessive entitlement, and never stops.

And that's a key problem above and beyond the rest of the many issues. See, this is a long-lost niche of a movie, the rich kid has to make good. It can be seen as far back at least as Captains Courageous but for today let's talk about Brewster's Millions (which remember is based on a 1902 novel and has been made as a least five films). The 1985 one, 10 years before this, has a properly conniving business baddie, people like and help the stupid lazy kid, but because... he grows up.

Richard Pryor offends people who later on see that he's deep down a good guy who can make relentlessly good choices. His dumb actions turn into good ones, etc. So, when the evil plot is discovered, they help him and he wins not just the money but friends and a life worth living.

Adam Sandler... did not change at all. He says he wants to learn, go to teaching school, somehow has a girlfriend, but he's the same buffoon and he performed so poorly that apparently he's not just lazy and buffoonish but actually stupid.

The lesson here is that no one changes, why bother to change, everyone is great the way they are, I guess?

Joker (I) (2019)

Too derivitive

[6/10 · 4 October 2023]

First off, Joaquin Phoenix is as good as he can be, top notch work. Zazie Beetz has too much of the girl role so not enough to work with, but is really good at it, much more so than others has a distinctly different sense between what's probably-real and what's certainly-not-real which really works. Frances Conroy is also a bit too background, but does as well as I can imagine with the role.

Robert De Niro was... fine. Too many others were simply fine.

Similar with other things. It's pretty well filmed, but poorly art directed. I mean to the degree that once or twice I lost track of where a character was, as their apartment didn't present the same from shot to shot, room to room. How they like the scripty face, and the old timey prod logo, but then do 2010s VERY BIG ALL CAPS once or twice.

But mostly the story. It is a bit slight, too obvious, and everything is telegraphed far far too much. And of course, it's some mashup of The King of Comedy, Deathwish, and people say Taxi Driver but I don't see that so much.

Why? How can this character with decades of history, in an era where we talk about mental health head on for a change, need a totally derivative and predictable story? I think I preferred the Jack Nicholson Joker origin story to this mess.