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galiberal
Reviews
Counterpart (2017)
Really smart sci-fi series
I didn't know about this show until it hit Amazon Prime, but it was a real treat to watch. Yea, you have to pay attention (so I rewound a lot) and it takes some effort to wrap you head around the premise, but it was well worth it. I read that Starz cancelled it because it was "too male" for their vision. Oh well. Just another reason for me NOT to subscribe to Starz. It's too bad some other network didn't pick it up because there was so much more story left to tell. And J. K. Simmons was great. I mean really, really great.
Boys State (2020)
What's to love?
As a documentary it's plain and boring. As a window into 17 yo boys testosterone-fueled political views it's terrifying. If any of these kids actually get elected to office this country is in serious trouble. Very serious trouble.
The Martian (2015)
Implausible and scientifically inept
Where to start. Mars has almost no atmosphere so there could NOT be a violent windstorm that would carry someone several meters. This is one of the most glaring errors in the movie yet it is the basis for the entire move.
If something punctures an environment suit the inside pressure is so much greater blood would not seal the breach before all the air escaped. Even if for some reason the person survives and makes it back to the hab module they would either bleed out or get some infection that kill them.
Pulling 12Gs during the launch would be Martian Gs not earth Gs. Given Mars relatively weak gravity, it would be less than Earth 5Gs which a trained astronaut can handle without passing out.
Growing any plant in alien soil no matter how much human waste you use would not yield the same effects as on Earth. The fruit at best would not support human life or even poisonous. Further, generating hydrogen and then burning it using hab oxygen would be counterproductive. It would take twice as much oxygen as hydrogen to make water which would reduce the amount of oxygen available to support human life.
Poking a hole in the glove of an environment suit in space would depressurize the suit in milliseconds due to the high pressure difference. Think popping a balloon. There would be no "thrust" so the person could "fly like Ironman."
The return spaceship's wheel does not rotate fast enough to generate even a weak gravitational field. The wheel would have a radius of 226k meters and rotate at 12 rpm to generate 1 Earth G. If the wheel is smaller the speed has to be faster which could cause motion sickness in the crew.
There are many more glaring problems, but these are the most obvious. Next time someone wants to make a movie about being on Marts, GO TO MARS.
Radioactive (2019)
A mess that short changes her contributions.
There are two fatal flaws with this movie. First it's made to appear that she discovered these new elements very quickly when it took her years and under very difficult conditions. It also gloss over the difficulty she had getting any recognition for her work and makes her appear hysterical and demanding. The second flaw is the flash forwards (which are odd) implies that her work led to the atom bomb and Chernobyl which is mindboggling as she had nothing to do with either. As a side note the clearly British accents are annoying considering she was Polish and she's living in France.
Red Dawn (1984)
Guns, Guns, and more Guns
This movie is nothing short of an hour+ long commercial for the NRA and every paranoid fantasy of the far right. The story is simplistic, the dialogue juvenile, and the acting isn't. There is no way that a bunch of untrained kids could ever hold off an organized, trained military force. In the end, they didn't. It is just a phony patriotic stick-it-to-the-Commies tripe you'd see in the 40s and 50s. Yet this is the springboard for several actors that went on to great success.
Rocketman (2019)
Such a disappointment
This was advertised as a biopic in the same vein as Queen, but it's not. It's a musical using his music as the score. Right out of the box there is an overblown musical number even before we get to know the principle players. From there it doesn't get any better. It's disjointed making it hard to follow how the various events affected his life and his music. And Egerton's acting doesn't make it easy to watch either. It changes from flat and uninspired to frantic and over-the-top. And I question if some of the events actually happened. Did Elton John actually walk out on a diving board, announce he was going to kill himself, and then try to drown himself in front of a bunch of guests? And were his parents really that bad; his father cruel and his mother opportunistic? Or are these events just so much Hollywood ballyhoo? So much promise yet so little delivered. Like a candle in the wind (which was completely MIA).
Mom and Dad (2017)
Another Cage bomb
What a complete mess of a movie. Uninteresting, shallow characters, typical gore fest, and really bad dialogue. Not even good for DVD.
The Circle (2017)
God awful
I thought this would be a decent movie given the high dollar acting talent of Hanks and Watson. I was sorely let down. Cliché, horrid, unbearable dreck. That's the best I can do. Hanks basically phoned in his role; no depth or real effort. Watson was inept. The rest of actors did their best with a bad script and an even worse direction. Maybe this little slice of heaven would have been much better if it landed on the cutting room floor. So bad I wanted to give it a big old goose egg.
The Snowman (2017)
What the ****?
I was expecting something like Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. What I got was an incomprehensible mess. It just jumped around with no logic. And the subplots were simply diversions to make the movie longer. Take out all the nonsense and its only a short. Other reviews are more detailed but simply put this movie s u c k s. And its not hate as one reviewer claims its simple truth.
Failure to Launch (2006)
What a waste
This is a true chick flick and a waste of a chick flick at that. Shallow characters, hamish acting, predictable dialogue, and Hollywood formulaic scripting. Certainly didn't improve the movie career of Parker. It's just typical Hollywood dreck they crank out to suck people into paying $8.00 for a movie. Avoid this movie unless you want to be put in a coma. You can probably stream this over Netflix or Hulu which is good because you can fast forward really fast. I've tried to find some small redeeming quality in this movie, but nothing comes to mind. I guess it could be used for torturing terrorist suspects by forcing them to watch this movie over and over and making them choke on their own vomit. It's that bad.
Mission to Mars (2000)
Worthless eye candy
This movie makes the sci-fi movies of the 50's look like scientific marvels. There is soooo much wrong with this movie from the scientific perspective it's laughable. Like when the space craft engines explode there would be so rapid a change in velocity it would likely rip the rest of the spacecraft apart. Or when they freefloat to the remote resupply ship, they would have their arms ripped off when they grasped the handholds. The suit jets would not be able to slow them sufficiently. There are many other examples, but why bother. Absolute junk science, very poor acting, and an incoherent story all combine to make this a waste of time.
Jesus Camp (2006)
Unbelievable
It was great that the film maker was given such access to these people. In fact, so much access that I would be willing to bet someone will claim it was staged. That aside, it was very scary to see how they were effectively being brainwashed. Of course it's fun to go to camp with kids your own age. So disguising this as a "camp" makes it easy to sucker parents and kids into believing this is harmless. It isn't. It will lead to these kids being very screwed up as adults. They will soon find out that this was always a secular society and they will have a hard time being accepted. It wouldn't surprise me at all if some of them didn't become a serial killer or bomb abortion clinics or hospitals. The kid with the wicked mullet has my vote. The adults get kids to break symbolic objects with a hammer because they represent the government. Talk about training an army to stage an overthrow. Telling kids to make war against anyone or anything that isn't Christian. Telling kids that America is a Christian nation and Christian Americans are the only ones worthy to live here. So much for the Jews and the Muslims. They worship George Bush like the Hitler Youth worshiped Adolph Hitler. They decry science as fake and that only God has all the answers. They use kids a political cannon fodder over abortion and telling them that Satan is behind abortion. At least the radio announcer added some sanity to this movie.
It would be very instructive if this movie was intercut with scenes from film about the Hitler Youth to show the similarities. It would be very instructive.