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Hypnotic (2021)
Just horrible.
Watched Hypnotic (2021) last night and Oh dear. Kate Siegel was Kate Siegel (pretty and making a good, but not great, effort at acting), but oh boy, the concept was just horrible. From the amount of research the writers obviously did, I'm surprised they managed to spell the title correctly (I'll just put that down to auto-correct doing what it should for a change). So much horrendously wrong information about hypnosis and how it works, which I could actually tolerate if the film was even half good (I'm totally fine with it in Oldboy, a film I _**LOVE**_). Hypnotic is just so by the numbers and predictable. At least with some bad movies you get the "so bad it's good" entertainment value, but this movie was just bad, really bad.
Dune (2021)
Not as bad as I feared it would be.
I'll open by saying I am not a fan of Villeneuve. In fact, I think he's a hack whose only genuine talent is making stupid people falsely think they are actually quite smart. I am also a HUGE Dune fan. They have been my favourite series of books since I first discovered them as a teenager. So although I hoped for the best with this, I was expecting the worst. What I got was somewhere in the middle. It's an OK movie, not great, thankfully not terrible, but OK
It got some things right the 1984 Lynch version got wrong, but still somehow managed to get other stuff wrong (including stuff Lynch got right). It was also a surprise how much Villeneuve just lifted directly from the Lynch film, both visually and auditorily.
The wardrobe choices were a huge disappointment. If you didn't know the time setting, going just on the clothes in the new Dune you'd be forgiven for thinking it was set a mere forty or fifty years (if that) in the future rather than the twenty thousand years in the future when it's really set. The Lynch stillsuits look futuristic, unworldly, and something that really would keep you alive in the deep desert. The new desert wear looks like they are just going to go dirt biking for an hour or two in our present-day world.
The casting (completely ignoring the pointless gender swap) was good, However, with the exception of Paul, Chani, and Rabban the original casting was all better. But the original (apart from the odd decision to use the totally unsuited Kyle MacLachlan) was a masterclass in how to cast the perfect people for the role.
Anyway, enough of the comparisons, This film is about the first two-thirds of the first novel. I always thought the story would be better told via a big-budget TV series (or even mini-series) rather than a standalone movie. I still think what they tried to cover here was too much for a single movie, but it was a step in the right direction.
The film mainly sticks to the book story but does make some needless changes, the most obvious of which being the changes made to both the gender and story of Liet Kynes, which in turn impacts the story of Chani. Most other changes are small and mainly insignificant though.
The film being filmed in Norway, Jordan, and Abu Dhabi looks fantastic and very well suited to the large screen. And it's clear a great deal of time, effort, and money was put into the sets that looked equally good as the places they were meant to be.
The acting was of a suitably high standard, but unfortunately, many of the Dune names and terms were horribly mispronounced. That and the Hans Zimmer fart that is played constantly throughout the soundtrack is likely to pull people out of their emersion in the movie.
I was also somewhat surprised by what was left out, OK the source material is VERY dense and obviously some needed to be cut, but I don't really think it's made clear just how crucial melange is to the functioning of the empire and society as a whole. Also what (and why) mentats are is largely ignored, you may think that isn't overly important, but it is at the core of how many things are done in the Dune universe.
Over all, it's not a bad movie. Despite its flaws, I still think the 1984 Lynch version is better though.
Playing God (2021)
Don't bother.
Watched Playing God last night, for a con trick comedy, there was surprisingly little of either comedy or con tricks. Both Michael McKean and Alan Tudyk did their best, but the material just wasn't there. Things didn't happen in a natural logical way, they only happened because they needed to happen for the next bit to start. The writer clearly started at where he wanted the movie to end and worked backward so he could set the next part up. Shame, with two better leads and a writer/director who knew what he was doing, this could have worked really well.
Persona: The Dark Truth Behind Personality Tests (2021)
It seems I was wrong about these tests.
I had never thought these types of of tests were good for use in the way they are used when reducing applications for job positions. However, if the people who are complaining about how bad these tests are in this documentary are good examples of the type of people being rejected, my mind is changed. If I was hiring somebody, I'd hate to have any of them waste my time interviewing them. They are the type of people who will never rest until they have found something 'problematic' about everything, and they will always interpret it as an institutionalised bias against them personally.
Unicorn Store (2017)
Just another really shallow movie trying to be deep (sadly).
With Brie Larson being so prominent in movie news recently, and as I'm not a big superhero movie fan, I thought this would be a great choice to check out what she can do, sadly I was very wrong. It's an incredibly shallow movie that wants really badly to be deep and meaningful.
Apart from its obvious goal to be deep and meaningful though it has no idea what else it wants to be. It's rather schizophrenic in that a lot of the movie appears to have been written by a bored nine-year-old girl who isn't allowed outside to play because it's raining, but other parts feel like they were written by a jaded hack writer who's been forced to take a nine-to-five job in an office and wants to get their own back.
The part where Kit's (Larson's character) new boss complains about there being such a lack of imagination around here was speaking more about the film itself than anything else. I know it was Larson's first try at directing, but she did a very poor job, it was terribly uneaven, unimaginative, and batters you over the head with what she probably thought were subtitles. The acting (if I even dare call it that) was terrible from everybody, including a few of the cast who normally can turn in a good to great performance. And the dialogue was terrible, possibly the worst part of the movie. It was back to the nine-year-old girl writing what she thinks is the way witty and clever grown-ups talk and missing the mark dramatically.
This is all somewhat of a shame because with a good rewrite and somebody with more experience and vision at the helm, this could have been a really good little movie.
Legends of Tomorrow: Crisis on Earth-X, Part 4 (2017)
I wish they'd stop doing these bloody crossovers!
Another episode that makes zero sense if you don't have the time or inclination to watch half a dozen or so other shows as well as Legends. I'm done with the series now.
Legends of Tomorrow: Invasion! (2016)
Total mess if you don't also watch a load of other shows
It seems from reading other reviews here that this episode is fantastic if you also watch every single other show set in the same universe, but if you only watch Legends (and/or one or two of the others) it's practically unwatchable. I have no idea what the hell was going on for 90% of this. I'm actually 50/50 on giving up up on the entire DC universe because of this confused mess.
Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers (2018)
Really needed a better documentary maker.
Really interesting topic, but sadly the documentary maker doesn't have the first idea on how to make a good documentary, he seems more interested in appearing on screen himself, than asking relevant questions, following interesting avenues, or even just letting the story tell itself. There is almost nothing here that people who know the Bob Lazar story won't already be familiar with, but for anybody new to the subject, it is an OK (if rather one-sided) introduction.
Take Back Your Power (2013)
Just research it yourself and don't bother with this rubbish.
What a terrible documentary! It doesn't seem to know if it's about smart meters, cell phone towers, AC/DC converters, the government, big corporations, or any number of other things they don't understand and are therefore very scary, neither does it quite know if the problem is health issues, privacy issues, or again something else they don't understand and therefore find very scary. This joke of a documentary is wall to wall quote mines, straw man arguments, and bad science, it's so bad, the last time I watched anything on par with this it was a young Earth creationist promotional film. I have no doubt the tin-foil hat brigade will absolutely love this without spending a single second to bother actually researching the claims made here, or reading any of the studies that are quote mined (most of which aren't named, presumably for just that reason). I am sure there is corruption and greed at play here, but just making F.U.D. (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) nonsense up isn't going to fix anything, in fact if anything it will just muddy the waters further. Seriously if you have even a basic understanding of the technology featured in this 'documentary' you will physically be able to feel your IQ dropping as you watch this rubbish.
Legend of the Seeker: Creator (2010)
Just another clip show.
There are lots of things wrong with this series, but it's good enough to keep watching most of the time, the times when it isn't is episodes like this, clip-shows.
I really don't understand why US shows do this, surely it would be better to just have one episode less than put out rubbish like this.
OK, there are some nice set-pieces, fight scenes, and CGI special effects, but if you have watched the rest of the season up to this point you will have already seen 90% of the material here, the rest is just filler to allow the feeble excuse to reuse previous material.
Just skip this episode and move on to the next one.