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Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Stupid sci-fi
When I heard the title I thought it was a daytime soap opera, but that's hardly the point.
The first problem is that they treat the "time reset" as an advantage when it is not. Imagine D-Day. Years of planning, hundreds of soldiers killed but the objective is achieved and an Allied foothold is taken. Then, just as the day ends, a single soldier is killed. He steps on a mine or is shot by a sniper and suddenly it's yesterday and they have to do it all over again. Maybe it will go better or maybe it will be a disaster. The point is they do not control it, not with Alphas roaming loose. They also have to know that the power can be transferred to a human, giving them the advantage.
The real stupidity is in the writing. For example, despite being the only one with the power, Cruise manages to convince a platoon to follow him. So, the night before the battle (a battle that Cruise knows is a trap) they sit around talking about how they are going to get off that beach alive. But if Cruise knows it is a trap why are they going there at all? Why walk into a trap? In fact, why are they waiting at all? They've got a 12 hour head start. Why wait to step into a trap to desert? Why not start now and be halfway to the Omega before the battle starts?
Another example is the helicopter. He knows they fail every time so why keep trying? Isn't the textbook definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result? I he knows it's a trap, why not swing a few miles north or a few miles east and try that? Why do the same thing over and over? It's just stupid.
Of course, the whole ending is absurd. They kill the Omega and it's the day before, when the Omega is still alive. Everyone who died is alive and the aliens are defeated and no one knows why or how.
Better Call Saul: Coushatta (2018)
Very bad episode. Disappointing
I was a big fan of Breaking Bad and I have enjoyed Better Call Saul from the beginning. Sometimes the tension has been almost unbearable.
However, this may be the episode that shakes my loyalty to the show. It should be called "Why Kim Wexler was disbarred and Jimmy sent to jail".
To start with, I have to say I have never been a big fan of "The Big Con" or
"The Caper". There is always too much work for so little gain. Someone do
a financial analysis of The Sting. Take what they got, subtract all the rent
and equipment and clothing and then divide by the incredible number of people involved and you could make more with a job.
But back to Coushatta. First of all, Kim made a fatal mistake at step one. When the judge complained about all the mail, Kim immediately said it was from Coushatta. How does she know? Shouldn't it all be a huge surprise to her?
Second, her opponent is the District Attorney's office. If they send ONE investigator to that town, it is OVER. It will not even take one day to see that none of the people there even heard of the guy. Does that church even exist? If so not one parishioner sent a letter or took a phone call.
Worse yet are all those people they used. The first time one of them is arrested for shoplifting or is late with child support they will turn in everybody.
What I really don't understand is why bother? Let the guy go to jail for a year. He wanted to run? Let him run, get caught and go to jail for three years. He's got nothing he can use on Jimmy. Even the cop he assaulted could not arrest Jimmy. I understand loyalty, but look at the list of Federal and State crimes Jimmy admitted they committed. They
can put money in his canteen account and give him a job when he got out. No one did this much to avoid prison in Goodfellas.
One final note. Fring is going to kill all those workers before they can return to Germany. It's like the original Mummy movie. They killed the slaves who dug the grave and then killed the soldiers who killed the slaves. The secret must be kept.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Wow, what an awful film
First, I could not understand a single word anyone said and had to use CC the whole time. The final credits were dim grey on black, so I could not read one word. Between those problems the film made no sense at all.
So Rachel had a baby and the rebellion leader said if the can have children they're in charge of their own destiny? Tell that to HUMAN slaves. So that was stupid.
Who was Jared Leto? Why did he want the baby? In fact who was anyone? No one made any sense as to who they were, what they wanted or what their goals were. Why did the assassin kills the blond lady? It's just too much to go into. It was slow, dull, incomprehensible and was of time. Mine and who ever made this movie.
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Loud and stupid
Yes, I saw the previous movies, so I know who the Avengers are but I frankly didn't understand a moment of this movie from beginning to end. Good guys are bad guys, bad guys become good guys. They kept introducing new characters and magical technologies straight through the movie. Also, I don't think you are a hero when you solve a problem you created through your own stupidity. Fortunately, despite all the shooting, explosions, fire, radiation and killer robots not one innocent person so much as got a nosebleed. I mean they evacuated an entire flying city? Good work, writers, not a single drop of blood on the Avengers' hands.
Watchmen (2009)
Really bad, confusing and empty
I find the credit sequence is the only good part of the movie, and even that is awful. Who are these people dressed as superheroes found dead in doorways or hauled off to asylums? They appear able to leap out of planes and land unharmed, pick up other people to toss them around and punch through brick walls, but have no origin stories, except for Doctor Manhattan. His origin story apparently takes place in an alternate-alternate-timeline where humanity never invented the circuit breaker. He's trapped in an atomic machine with no off switch? Nothing about this movie makes any sense and the characters are not interesting at all.
X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
Really Terrible Movie
The really stupid part of the movie was that killing Trask makes things worse, but terrorizing the president and the military in full view of the world doesn't. So one mutant saved the president and Trask is defeated and is arrested for selling military secrets? What secrets do they have that he doesn't? His technology is 100 years ahead of the rest of the world (giant autonomous flying robots in 1973?). After what Magneto did they would kill every mutant and abort every fetus that could possibly be one.
If Mystique has her powers then and can even mimic Trask and break into his office why fly to Paris for a public assassination? Drown him in his bathtub - no guards, no air travel.
Better plan - if Magneto can command the 1973 Sentinels (never explained) have them suddenly go berserk at the demonstration like ED in Robocop and start killing everybody without an obvious mutant in charge. THEN Trask goes to prison and no one ever builds a Sentinel again.
Looper (2012)
Terrible from the get go
I'll confess to being very judgmental about films and TV shows. If, in the first minutes, you see that the entire premise is absurd, I'm against the whole thing. From the minute you are told that people in the future send their contracts back 40 years to be killed by over-paid people who themselves are later killed, by themselves - the entire movie goes off the rails. Once you ask yourself why they don't send them back 10,000 years, or to the middle of the ocean - you're done.
All the rest, the TK, the Terminator rip-off, the "One" rip-off of The Matrix and others - well, it's just crap piled on crap. The time travel concepts are ridiculous. Okay, so a guy is sent back and then his current self is mutilated, which appear instantly on the older guy. So how did he spend all those years without his limbs to be sent back intact? No, I call no way. Same with the ending. So young Joe kills himself, which erases old Joe from the time line. So all the criminals he killed and the loopers are okay now? How is the kid still wounded?
Just really lousy.
Identity Thief (2013)
Was this supposed to be a comedy? (Spoilers)
There are pictures that are bad and some that are painfully bad. I have never seen anything worse that this. I bailed about a half hour in when a bounty hunter threatens to incinerate a woman to get useless information and then threatens her with (apparently) rape and murder if she remembers him. Jason Bateman's character is so unbelievably stupid that he really deserves all he gets and more. But since everyone around him, including his boss and the police are just as stupid - how are we go judge him? Didn't anyone read the script before it was filmed? Didn't anyone watch it before it was released? To put this in perspective, I once got a call from my credit card company when I spent like $10 in a place I had never been before. No one calls the guy when she spends THOUSANDS in a different city? I take back what I said about the characters being stupid - the writers and producers of this film think we are stupid.
The Ghost Writer (2010)
Truly Awful
The amount of stupidity in this film ruins it completely. It can't even be bothered to maintain its own internal logic.
1. The first ghost disappears off a ferry then washes up on a beach. But the second ghost is told that the body couldn't have wound up there and that there were flashlights on the beach that night. So, did they toss him off a ferry to drown, or drown him and then put him on the beach? Why do the killers care where it washes up?
2. The second ghost may have been naive and stupid to go to the CIA handler, but the first one already knew (it was in the manuscript) so why go there? It was more like suicide than murder.
3. So the wife was a CIA agent. Unless the former PM was brainwashed like in the Manchurian Candidate, what did that do for anyone?
4. The sheer stupidity of the second ghost to let them know he knows, before telling the guy who could do something about it. Also, when you are running from the bad guys, walk on the sidewalk.
5. And the secret message? Reminded me of an episode of the Simpsons where they go to a thriller and Homer yells out "Now I remember. The code is the nursery rhyme he sang to his daughter!"
6. It's not proof. The photos aren't proof. Nothing is proof.
7. In all the time since the first ghost's murder, killed because he "knew too much", no one searched the room for evidence? And what did all the evidence prove? Nothing.
Stupid, stupid movie.
Låt den rätte komma in (2008)
A twisted message
Vampires are so big right now that there's something for everyone. Who this is for I'm not sure. Innocent people are killed for their blood and small bullies (who certainly deserve a good whupping) are murdered as a gift. Then a small boy is recruited to be her personal butcher.
Vampires are monsters and were usually portrayed as such and were vanquished in the end by ... us, real people. I know there are anti-heroes but they just don't go around killing innocent people. Dirty Harry didn't walk into a coffee shop, order a decaf and gun down the barista! When did we start backing them? It's like the Japanese monster movies where suddenly Godzilla was the good guy.
Who are we supposed to be rooting for in this film? Aren't we supposed to remember that it could be US hanging upside down to be bled dry?
Too slow, not scary, twisted message. Didn't care for it and don't see what the excitement is all about.
Eden Log (2007)
Worst thing I've ever seen
I checked the spoiler warning but there's no need. I defy anyone to make a coherent statement about anything in this film that would give anything away. There's no beginning, no middle and no end. Nothing is explained or makes sense on its own. I watched the French version with English subtitles, but I might as well have watched the Swahili version with subtitles in Esperanto. Worse yet, it's filmed in "seizure vision".
The only good news is I have a new addition to my list of "Why the French should not be allowed to make science fiction movies" which include - Fantastic Planet, Le Jete, The Fifth Element, Immortal and Alphaville.
Immortel (ad vitam) (2004)
Very bad
I've said it before and I'm going to say it again - the French should not make Science Fiction. The credits say this movie is "loosely based" on the graphic novel, but it's also loosely based on every other movie.
It takes place in a futuristic New York City that is, at the same time, high tech and dilapidated (Blade Runner). Hovering above the city is a pyramid containing aliens who are the actual Egyptian gods (Stargate). One of the aliens, Horus, is condemned to death for rebellion but is given seven days to go down to Earth so he can rape and murder as he sees fit. I guess we should be thankful that Ted Bundy didn't have this guy's lawyer ("Hey Ted - you're gonna die in a week but hey, go out and kill a few coeds, on us!"). Anyway, Horus is seeking a special woman, Jill, both naive and incredibly dangerous (Fifth Element) who he can rape and impregnate (Rosemary's Baby and Demon Seed). While he is on this quest the other aliens waste their time aboard the ship (and I'm NOT making this up) playing Monopoly! Horus needs to occupy a human for his task (why they don't explain since they claim to have created the Earth and Jill is some kind of special alien who can breed with gods). The first seven people he possesses explode with him inside bringing in a detective who was mauled by a supposedly extinct creature. There is also a corrupt senator and his hot Asian assistant (or puppet master) and a company called Eugenics that fits in we don't know where but can apparently murder policeman with impunity and wants the frozen bodies of criminals who are kept in cryogenic stasis for the duration of their sentences (Demolition Man). By some kind of dumb luck Horus finds his match in a political rabble rouser who was the one person who wasn't found when part of the prison broke apart.
Jill, it turns out, is the special protégé or pet or something of "John", an alien who has created a special zone out of Central Park where there are people or aliens who seem to die trying to get in and/or out or something. This does not affect Jill or John for some reason. John is feeding Jill special blue pills, saving the red pill (The Matrix) to complete her transformation to human. Why he or she wants that we aren't told.
It then turns out that the corrupt senator has the last remaining creature that mauled the detective, why we don't know. This creature can swim through tiny sewer pipes, but also on the outside of buildings (land shark). There's also a pseudo creature that is set loose by the Eugenics company for some reason.
Eventually Jill is impregnated, Horus is retaken by his people (and although he was condemned to death is still alive at the end), the senator is killed for no reason, John vanishes. At the end Jill, who has no memory since the red pill is living in Paris and has a tiny shape-shifting baby that turns into an eagle and kills a pigeon. We can assume that by the time the baby is a teenager he'll be feeding on his fellow students.
Just awful.
Sunshine (2007)
Excellent SciFi
When I started to watch this film I realized its similarities to 2001, 2010 and Event Horizon but I wound up enjoying it tremendously. I think the writer must have seen the previously mentioned films, realized their shortcomings and decided to redo the same ideas but right this time. This film is true "hard" science fiction - no supernatural elements, not even aliens, just all too frail human beings versus the laws of physics. Even their talking computer was not that intelligent and did not seem to be sentient, like HAL.
Unlike the other films I've mentioned this one had a real purpose to it. 2001, 2010 and Event Horizon had "missions" that could have been dispensed with and no one would ever have noticed. This one is life and death for all humanity and the people on board the Icarus II know this. Their decision to intercept the previous, failed, mission was presented as a coin toss. As it turned out it was a huge mistake, but at least several people said so going in. My choice, by the way, would have been to drop their bomb and, if it didn't work, then go for the first ship. However, the decision was made and then, when everything goes wrong, there was guilt, horror and blame - very real.
The bogeyman at the end, unlike the unexplained and incomprehensible presence in Event Horizon, or even HAL or the unknowable aliens in 2001 and 2010 was also very human. They set the stage well by showing the ship's doctor's obsession with sunlight. He risked his health and life by wanting more and more and even asked the dying captain what he was seeing as the other man was incinerated. He then chose to die looking full into the sun. The doctor might have wound up like the other captain if he had lived.
I felt the numerous jumpy and arty cuts were a distraction and could have done without them. Overall, however, I felt the movie was very powerful, had real characters and was very well done.
Renaissance (2006)
Disappointing
My problems with this film fall into several categories.
1. It's another reason why the French should not make Science Fiction - i.e."Fantastic Planet", "The Fifth Element", "Le Jetee" (interesting but like your uncle's slide shows if your uncle hallucinates)
2. Why is this movie animated - same question as "A Scanner Darkly" and "Sin City". There really wasn't anything in it that couldn't be done in a non-animated film.
3. Why wasn't it better animated - same question as "Sin City". If they were going to animate it - could we do it without eye strain?
4. Why bother with spoiler alerts since it was so incomprehensible as to make any spoilers more like explanations? People come and go, events happen, but it made no real sense. I clicked on spoiler alert so - why the big deal with the stolen car? Why the whole - "You're out of control so we'll help the bad guys and suspend you" - the film takes place in 2054 and the plot is out of a film from the 1940's.
Sorry just not a good film.
Children of Men (2006)
Very dumb movie
Okay - I know many people seem to love this film but I was dumbfounded from start to finish. Well before the start - the entire concept as reported in ads, reviews and discussions on TV confused me.
***************** SPOILERS *************************************
1) The premise that all women everywhere (but not animals apparently) can't have babies - fine - as David Letterman said "If you buy the premise you buy the bit".
2) That this leads to fascism and terrorism - sorry makes no sense. I would expect depression and malaise but not violence. For example, if you look at the real world you would see that it's having children that causes problems. When people have children and see that they will never get homes, jobs, education or health care, you get violence. In COM who is committing the violence, people who want to get pregnant but can't? There was a scene where Theo is on a bus and young men are throwing rocks. All I could think of was "Shouldn't they be out trying to get women pregnant?". Any government would pay a million dollars for a baby, any baby.
3) Okay, so a woman is pregnant (again with the Christian allegory) who is somehow the savior of humanity. Fine, but why this leads to a chase and killings makes no sense. Who are the "they" who the woman has to be protected from? Although it was nice for the bad guys to occasionally pause to provide exposition and back story where Theo can hear it. And why is taking her out in a rowboat to find people who might not exist the answer? You're telling me that every lab in the world isn't working on this problem? Any 1st world nation from nearby France and Germany to the distant US and Canada would be glad to send anything that was needed to get her and find out the answer.
4) I get the reference to today and Homeland Security, but this is the one situation where attacking refugees would not be the answer. With no one under 20 in your country you'd be importing them, as slaves if nothing else. It's not like today where the anti-immigration people are terrified of being over-birthed out of power. They're drones, just like you, so why bother
5) The one real situation was after the birth, where all the people in the internment camp are crying and reaching out to touch the baby. Then the soldiers. Do they shoot? No, they put down their guns, some kneel and cross themselves. WHO ARE THEY RUNNING FROM? The kid has it's own army! They'd desert and march the kid anywhere, to a lab.
6) The end credits has the sounds of laughing children suggesting the problem has been solved. I hope they are not suggesting that one woman and her daughter will repopulate the Earth - not much of a breeding population to work with. So some organization (with a boat named "Tomorrow" - jeez) will solve the problem because (unlike "The Human Project") everyone else wants the human race to go extinct.
Sorry, just an absurd and stupid movie.
Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (1933)
First time viewer
This was my first viewing of this film (thanks to TCM) and I did not see the first ("The Gambler"). It was a fantastic film, no doubt about it. Very clever with scenes like the assassination in the car, the couple trapped in a room with the bomb. Mabuse came across as the precursor of everyone from Lex Luthor to Kayser Soze (with a nod to Dr. Moriarity).
Still - as the film reached its climax I began to get that old feeling that I was going to be screwed at the end. So the main question is "Who was who"? Was it Mabuse or was it the Professor? Was the Professor really Mabuse, or the other way around? Was the Professor influenced by Mabuse, controlled by him, or possessed by him? And at the end - who was trapped and who was free?
I know many people like unexplained endings but to me that's like unrecognizable paintings titled "Untitled #3".