offmylawn-57047 Reviews

Don't Look Up (2021)

Satire based on inability to handle the truth

[9/10 · 1 January 2022]

So many reviewers here are upset at the "politics" of this movie. Since when did telling the provable truth become political? Oh yeah, since the Birther and Qanon Talibans have taken over the Right in America.

If you enjoyed it when Neil Armstrong smacked that rude lunar-conspiracy fanatic who got in Neil Armstrong's face to insult and threaten Neil, accusing Neil of being a liar, then this movie is for you. The Neil/Lunar Conspiracy Looney conflict wasn't political, it wasn't left vs right, it was stupidity vs patriotic heroism. If you are a lemming who parrots the most ridiculous lies to prove your lemming-like loyalty no matter how evil or damaging to humankind it is, this movie isn't for you, and I would suggest Turner Diaries or Daily Sturmer or Tuck "medicated pad" Carlson for your agitation propaganda needs. We all get it. Admitting truth doesn't prove loyalty because the truth is true. But pretending a Birther or Qanon style lie is true requires sacrificing one's own self respect, intelligence and dignity to become part of a Goebbellesque bandwagon of the feckless.

Don't Look Up skewered the idiocy of society at large, left or right. The second satirical point of the movie which applies to the Left is how the Left ignore the obvious threats by worshiping their celebrities. It skewered corporate America as being part of the delusion factory that feeds delusions, petty issues and virtue signaling as worthless and meaningless as the Right's "thoughts and prayers".

The proof that this movie is so on-the-nose are all the complainers who saying it's left wing propaganda. Telling the truth isn't propaganda. It's simply telling the truth. If telling provable truth equates to "liberalism", then you can see why right wingers despise this movie. The point of America's political Right, aka, the Qanon Taliban, is to spread lies to incite mass terrorism and enflame genocidal hatred. This is just the fact of America circa 2020. Some day the Left will do what the Right is doing now and will become the gravest threat to mankind and life on Earth, but clearly these days it's the Qanon Taliban who are threatening extinction on humanity. This fact isn't the fault of the movie.

Notice the movie didn't talk about tax rates, abortion, banking policy, US Military policy, the environment, gerrymandering, judicial nominees, the debt ceiling, healthcare, but it did talk about how genuine threats facing humanity are disregarded due to stupidity, greed, sadism of people as a whole. The same idiots who complain about the "politics" of Do t Look Up tend to be Holocaust deniers and the like, dregs of humanity.

Tenet (2020)

Not that confusing

[4 January 2021]

Apparently lots of people think this movie is confusing. It is densely packed with information, but it all made sense the first time I saw it. Since I was never confused I was able to relate to the characters just fine and found the story rich and complex. My only problem with this movie is what I perceived as bad sound quality. Dialogue volume changes plague this movie and if you can't understand the characters, this movie is harder to follow. At times the music drowned out characters dialogue. I suppose the movie is meant to be watched at ear bleeding volumes so every bit of dialogue can be heard. I think if they had managed sound better, people would have understood better and that's a shame because this movie is a unique gem, however, with some inclusions. I watched the movie twice with only a four hour break in between to see if I was actually confused but didn't know it until a second viewing because of all the apparent confusion everyone complains about. It turns out I missed only very slight bits as a matter of bad recall, but not a lack of understanding.

In my opinion this movie is among the top two best time travel movies ever made, the other being Edge of Tomorrow. If you have an understanding of physics, time and entropy, it's not that difficult to understand this movie ...unless you can't hear the dialogue. I think buying the movie for home consumption will give the viewer better control over volume and make for a better experience.

Westworld (2016–2022)

Season 3 the logical extension of the story.

[8/10 · 3 January 2021]

Season 3 has earned some unhappy faces among the public. I wasn't impressed with season 3 at first but after a second watch everything fit together. My complaints on season three the first time around revolved around my perception that the writers got lazy, as it appeared like deliberate obfuscation to make it seem more intelligent than it was. But after the second watching I scolded myself for having such a negative opinion.

I liked the first season but liked the second one a little better. I hope they make a season 4 but from the complaining and river of tears on this review board, my guess is they are done. Compared to most of HBO's TV series, even with the much complained about season 3, Westworld is still the best TV on HBO. That said there was some clunkiness in season 3, and the characters changed their personas a bit too much for my liking.

And for those who complain that the show left the theme park, I think that was apparent from the first season that leaving the park and taking over the planet was the point.

The Midnight Sky (2020)

Too many ridiculous and unbelievable things.

[3/10 · 25 December 2020]

There are a number of things so simple to address that it almost seems like an insult on our intelligence. Mankind is exploring or in some way colonizing a completely undetected Jovian moon with breathable atmosphere? The moon has wheat growing when there isn't enough sunlight at Jupiter to grow plants. Energy necessary for life in the Jovian system would have to be tidal or chemical, definitely not solar. They didn't explain well enough early on where the moon was so I assumed it was in a different star system because that's the only thing that would make sense. Mankind is able to see comets and asteroids near Jupiter. It can't find an entire moon with all of our telescopes and space probes? For the last almost hundred years scientists could tell by the movement of the Jovian moons if there was a Secret Moon hidden by a large stealth blanket. The moon would have been discoverable before space probes or before Hubble.

I feel like it was lazy writing combined with an almost criminal ignorance. I could see that this movie could have been written by a flat/young Earther, man-never-landed-on-the moon type. Are there actually people who are as rich and famous as Clooney who are as ignorant of basic science as this movie is?

Beyond the lack of believability, there were numerous plot holes. I guess it's possible that this story was a very old story from before man knew about galaxies or even other star systems, and Clooney found it in a time capsule from the 1800s. I was surprised that the spaceship in this story didn't stop by the moon to acquire cheese from the lunar cheese mines, because we all know the moon is made of cheese.

I can appreciate slow stories, but ridiculousness ruins the seriousness of this particular drama. For those who think science and truth are satanic plots, you might not be distracted by the ridiculousness of this movie, but you still might find it's a bit slow and plagued with inadequate character development in spite of the time spent by Clooney looking sad. Even if the physics problems were fixed, the movie could have been told in a 10 minute short and still have the same or more emotional impact.

If you are 20 minutes into the movie and you are wondering if you should give it a chance to get some kind of payoff for your saint-like patience, just hit pause and find something else. It's not going to get better. If you are swooning over the first twenty minutes then the next seemingly hundred years of the movie should thrill you as well.