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Reviews
Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)
Ankle deep
I've made three attempts to watch this movie, nut never made it to the midpoint. I enjoyed Ragnarok, It was different and funny and I can see why the filmmakers tried to emulate it. But they failed. The jokes were weak and Thor's character like the emulation in the parody plays with Matt Damon: close but no cigar. Fine for 5 minutes but no meaty enough to make an entire movie. I did not care if Thor succeeded in (a) defeating the bad guy or (b) reconnecting with his romantic interest. It was like stepping to the ocean only to discover the water was just ankle deep. Next out out, dump the parody and give Thor something real to do stop abusing my trust.
Extraterrestrial (2014)
Falls apart at the end
I admit that I only watched this movie because it featured Gil Bellows who did such a great job in Ally McBeal. He plays a local sheriff in this movie investigating farm animal mutilations and other weird happenings, typical for an ET movie. It had the ET movie five teens combination of two couples and an odd (in this case) woman out. One couple are in love (important plot point) but when the guy proposes to the gal, she turns him down (big plot point, set up and foreshadowing).
This is a prime time for the alien to enter the movie and it does. It looks like a thin version of the popular alien from Close Encounters (all aliens look like this now) and Signs with Mel Gibson (yuck). This alien is a badass mother and kills everyone it sees or beams them up into its gigantic flying saucer. So far so average and predictable.
Finally the jilted suitor is beamed aboard, the heroine realizes she goofed and demands to be beamed up too so they can be together at the end of the movie.
That's where it should have ended. Mysterious murderous aliens, lovers separated by the Fickle Finger of Fate (FFOF). I was going to give it 8 just fr this alone. But it went on for another 15 minutes of the heroine seeking out and locating the jilted lover in the saucer where he is encased in goo (just like Aliens) and the aliens spew the couple out to land entwined in a green field where beams of sunlight play on their goo-covered bodies. This is pure nonsense and unnecessary saccharine to appease the romantics (and probably the studio suits). Then, the couple are shot to death by soldiers a la Night of the Living Dead.
I threw up in my mouth and dropped the rating from its original 8 to 3.
Radius (2017)
Radius loses arc
Interesting premise that is not not fulfilled. We never discover why and how these characters need to be together because the movie spends all its time repeating the same cycle of they meet people who then die. The serial killer subplot was a shocker but does not excuse the omission. I wanted to know how the electrical storm affected them in this particular way, and where it came from. It left a huge black hole in the plot, which then left me feeling dissatisfied and disappointed. There were also too many contrivances to keep them together. Frankly, after the twentieth person dropped dead, I fast-forwarded to the end.
The Green Knight (2021)
Pretentious claptrap
When I read the plot summary of this movie, on the back of the DVD, in the library, I thought it was a comedy al a "Fisher King," but it was serious, overblown, badly sequenced and totally without merit. Yes, it had the indie thumbprint: obscure plot, over acting, glorious color palette with the obligatory dark scenes et al.. But funny, it was not. And I was halfway through the movie before I realized my error. So, I tried to watch it as a serious film, but it was so silly, I could not take it seriously. Alas and alack! I fast-forwarded to the end, but ran out of patience doing that. I'd never seen Dev Patel before and, although his acting was find, I don't believe I'll see him again. In fact, instead of laughing at this movie, I had the strange feeling it was laughing at me/
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
From boring to snoring
I really enjoyed the first Iron Man and Captain America. Unique. Good plotting. Good script. Then the sequels began and CGI a flash-bang took over. This one bored me from the start. The troops storm the castle. Been there, seen that. Tony Stark's ego expands until it bursts on the screen like an over-expanded bowel, and he creates Ultron without doing his homework. The rest was so snoring that I quit when Ultron joins the bad guys. I could care less about any of the characters by then. They opened Pandora's Box and now everyone has to live with it. Well, thank you Avengers and good-bye. That's another promising franchise flushed down the toilet.
The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
I'm an atheist. I don't believe in The Resurrections.
I was bored, I could not wait for this movie to be over and fast-forwarded through most of Act 3. Contrived plot. Even the shoot-em-up action was ho-hum. What a terrible way to end a franchise. At the end, I thought: What was he point of this garbage? None.
Jungle Cruise (2021)
Sank into Stupidity
I watched this movie because I like Emily Blunt and Jack Whitehall and can tolerate Dwayne Johnson. It started out as a classic Disney adventure; a quest for a McGuffin, in this case, some rare flower with the magical power to cure all ills. Then, just after the midpoint, it sank into stupidity when the C story kicked in: some nonsense about the reanimation of ancient conquistadors, one of whom was a 400-year-old Dwayne Johnson inhabiting a modern body. That's when I ducked out. What a croc! A nonsensical attempt to combine Pirates of the Caribbean with Jumanji and falling flat on its face. Too ridiculous for anyone over 12.
No Time to Die (2021)
I fast-forwarded to the end
Great opening sequence that reminded me of "Hannah" (badass kid blows away villain). The rest of the movie went downhill slowly from there. The story is an attempt to complicate a traditional the plot--nerd steals world decimating device and the good guys have to save that world--the writers just drew it out like taffy. Lots of violence and hot women. But I lost faith in the movie at the end of the opening sequence when the badass kid puts at least six bullets into the villain from close range, yet he still has the strength to chase her down over a cracking ice lake and pull her out of the ice. The movie lost all credibility right there and never won it back. Nice swan song for Daniel Craig but too been-there-bought-the-tee-shirt-for me. Shame.
Bill Tilghman and the Outlaws (2019)
The film makers should be arrested
This movie made me understand what a director does, because this director sucks. Lots of downtime. Bad positioning. Lack of pace. Incredibly bad acting. The only thing that had any value was the log line and premise. I schlepped through 15 minutes of this garbage, then I had to abort or throw up. As for any rating over 1, it must have come from the actors or their friends because no one not associated with the movie could possibly give it a positive review. If this were my movie, I would pull it from production and burn every piece of film.