maf-30363 Reviews

Ben-Hur (1959)

Hampered in the Home Stretch

[7/10 · 8 June 2021]

First 2 hours - 8/10 Third hour - 9/10 Final hour - 3/10

The final hour (following the race) plodded along so painfully that a film on track for a 9/10 only an hour before was turning into a 6 or perhaps even a 5.

It settles around a 7 for its visual superlatives and mostly good direction, but is far from perfect and leaves a startingly negative taste with its final hour.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Rip the Cover Off, Judge It, and Throw It Away

[3/10 · 7 June 2021]

This gets credit for visuals far ahead of its time, which, though I'm not a fan of the genre, did inspire (much, much better) films that came afterward. Beyond that, it is a mess of a film, with an undeveloped storyline and two-dimensional (and that's generous) characters engaged in two hours of irrational action. Little is fleshed out, every scene somehow feels both rushed and plodding, the protagonist leaves his family on a whim, the secondary character constantly takes her eyes off of her child and kind of seems to forget about him until he walks off the ship at the end, the government officials' background and motives aren't really explained, the protagonists easily elude a massive military force, somehow summit an 800+ foot vertical butte on foot, and are ultimately welcomed in by the supposedly conniving government. All the suspension of disbelief of a blockbuster action film with none of the action and some of the worst writing ever put on screen. Hard not to give this a 1.