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Reviews
Perry Mason (2020)
Modern film-making bastardizes another classic character
Not at all reminiscent of the books by E. S. Gardner or the 1950's-60's TV show. (I have read the books as well as being a fan of the original TV series.) Same character names, completely different story with absolutely no relation to the original. Why didn't they just create an all new story?
He isn't even a lawyer, let alone a great one with class. The character in the books is a bachelor lawyer-adventurer who enjoys excitement and who is willing to risk his reputation for the welfare of clients he believes in. Unwilling to just sit in an office he is as much a detective as Paul Drake. This Perry Mason is a morally bankrupt, dishonorably discharged, divorced, cussing, classless, down-and-out PI - a classic film noir character who has been dirtied even further to appeal to low-brow tastes. Della Street has all the class this Perry lacks but is definitely NOT the starry-eyed late-20-something as she is when the books start and she is a long way from being Perry's fan.. The lawyer in this story is a second-rate attorney played (well) by John Lithgow.
Paul Drake shows up in episode 2 and rather than a suave, unassuming bachelor, capable head of a detective agency, he is a married black LA beat cop.
In and of itself, it is an okay production, good film-noir, but Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason, it is not.
The Tomorrow War (2021)
Check your brain at the door ...
There is no place for logic here, it is just one long adrenaline rush.
At the end of the movie there is a explanation as to how a bestial, non-intelligent species would travel the stars (unlike with Alien) but like most "deadly alien species" stories, not a very good one. Why would an advanced race use such a dangerously voracious predator to do their planet clearing when science would do a much cleaner job of it without leaving a dangerous mess to clean up.
Equally improbable is the team that goes to end the story. First, they didn't carry enough explosives and second, a nuke would have been much more probable: Identify the target and call in a strike. After global draft and mobilization, there would have been no questions raised by any government and there would have been no resistance. The scene with the officious bureaucrat was as laughable as unlikely. Perhaps it was a (weak) stab at levity?
L.A.'s Finest (2019)
REFLECTS POORLY ON POLICE OFFICERS EVERYWHERE
*Note: I am not and never have been a police officer.
While the storyline is somewhat enjoyable, entertaining, and bingable given that I am having a hard time finding things to see on Netflix anymore, it is a show containing a string of police officers committing one criminal act after another in order to serve "the greater good." For example - police do not (generally) use weapons on full automatic. (S02 E11 and others). I do not think that they use the cyclic (3 round) mode. They have to use a mode that allows them to know where every round is going and they have to account for every round fired.
The vast majority of police officers simply don't act like this even though some like to believe that they do.
Acting badly in the name of serving "the greater good" is one of the greatest examples of social engineering of this time and one of the greatest wrongs. Committing arson, stealing drugs, murder - they are all wrong, even if done for "the greater good." Shows like this say that they are "right" and glorify "the greater good."
Seal Team Eight: Behind Enemy Lines (2014)
I found nothing good to say ...
Directing ... bad * Acting ... bad * Writing ... Bad * Plot ... very little * Dialogue ... unrealistic and unprofessional
They should be ashamed of wasting the money of the investors.
Seals fight smart utilizing every bit of cover and concealment. They are the ninjas of today. You know they are there when you are dead. They certainly don't walk down the middle of the street, being fired on by 100+ bad guys, dodging RPG's, on some solo revenge gig, disregarding an order to wait for reinforcements who are less than 20 minutes away (unless you are wanting to be KIA to avoid the court-martial for getting your squad needlessly and carelessly wiped out). And they don't leave people behind, particularly when they don't know whether or not they are even dead, half-buried in a mine shaft.
The writer(s) didn't even bother to look up on Wikipedia to get even the most basic understanding of the yellow cake mining process. (Hint: it doesn't come out of the ground as a nice yellow powder.) And unlike the cover art, Sizemore never even holds a weapon. Not worth the price of a bag of microwave popcorn, let alone the price of a ticket.
Doom: Annihilation (2019)
The very basis of the movie is ...
... Lame and untenable.
First, Phobos generates no measurable gravity. So much for walking not to mention that firing a weapon would send the shooter flying.
Second, how would such a rabidly vicious and beastly race develop space travel, let alone interstellar gates.
Brimstone (2016)
There aren't many movies I wish I could unsee ...
But this is as sick and twisted as it gets. I find nothing redeeming in this story whatsoever? It just ,made me ill. If that was the directors purpose, he succeeded.
The cinematography is decent. If I had seen this in a cinema with my wife? I would have left the theater well before it was over and asked for my money back. I cannot begin to fathom why someone would waste the time writing such a horrific and tragic movie.
Deadwood (2004)
Pretty good on the whole but a few things that hurt
For the last part I am enjoying the series (I am on the 7th episode) but ... I grew up around the military and worked for over a year in an EM/NCO club as both a bouncer and an evening manager. They weren't sailors but I probably heard less swearing in a month to there than I did in a single episode of Deadwood. It just wasnt needed. That much swearing actually make it less effective than would occasional swearing. Another problem was the sheer filthiness of the actors. I would expect that most people woukd wash their faces occasionally at the least even in a Gold Rush town.
Looper (2012)
Entertaining but very poor story line.
Plenty of reviews here go into detail on this movie but I thought I'd add my two cents.
Before seeing this movie, I saw the plot summary listed by the Media Center TV listings and thought it a pretty lame idea. Bored I turned it on anyway at one point. The acting, the direction, the entertainment factor are all good, but the base plot line stinks.
Why would you have an mob assassin kill his future self and why would you pay him so much better for that hit than others? He just shot his future self, him. He knows that he is going to be murdered by the people for whom he works. Why would he continue or want to work for them? The premise of murder in the future being too difficult to deal with bodies ... just because you can't hide the body doesn't mean people stop killing each other. Either they get caught more often or the number of disappearances reduces and more unsolved murders are on the books. The Mob could still kill people all sorts of ways.
And why send them back 40 years earlier to be killed? Why not send them to the middle of the Atlantic rather than some cornfield. You wouldn't even need the assassin in the early years. Just drop your victims in the middle of the Pacific. Much cheaper and cleaner.
The handling of future self verses younger self is very poorly handled. Everything that happens to the younger self would be in the memory of the older self such as the identity of the Rainmaker and he would never go after child 1 and 2. The rainmaker is supposed to have a plastic jaw from the gunshot at the closing scene. If is jaw had to be replaced, how is it he is still talking?! With young Joe falling for Sara and Cid, why would he ever continue his life to become old Joe in the first place? And how is it these GAT men of 2044 act as almost a police force and so brazenly? Jesse for example carrying a large caliber hand-gun at his waist in a front holster. And why would 2044 be so much easier a place to dispose of bodies than any other, like a war zone or the black plague? Why even transport the back alive? There are far too many problems with the plot of this movie to warrant any sort of rave praise or recognition, but it is somewhat entertaining.
Valhalla Rising (2009)
Strange ...
Even the movie's own website has wrong information about the film. "...They go to sea, determined to return to Scandinavia to fight the spread of Christianity, ..." They aren't trying to return to Scandinavia, they are trying to get to Jerusalem. They aren't trying to fight the spread of Christianity, they are Christians joining the Crusade for the Holy Land.
Later it says " ...Meanwhile, HARALDS's search for identity is compromised when ARE is captured." But ARE isn't captured. He and Harald are at the shore when they are suddenly surprised. There is nothing about this film that tells me Harald is searching for his identity and nothing suggesting a conflict between saving his soul or saving the boy. If anything, it might be concluded that he saved his soul by dying to save the boy, but this is only implied, mostly by the Part 6 title, The Sacrifice. Harald is not asked if he is willing to die for the boy or anything at all. The natives (who appear to be native Americans) never attempt any form of communication. Harald sees some 20 - 30 natives in a semi-circle around he and the boy, and he simply walks towards the middle, dropping his weapons, then stands amidst some of the native warriors who summarily hit him in the head with a club and then proceed to beat him to death on the ground while the boy looks on. So we are left with this boy of 10 or so, with no provisions, no shelter, absolutely nothing but the ragged clothes on his body, sitting on the shore of a body of salt water looking at the natives who just beat his ... partner, to death. Gee, I wonder what happens to him?
The scenery was beautiful albeit almost constantly overclouded. The cinematography was very effective. The music was ... interesting. Think Jean Michel Jarre with heavy metal instrumentation.
The film was slow beyond just being tedious. I suggest that if you do watch this film, find a way to speed it up a bit. I saw it via Media Player so I hit the FF symbol which increases it about 25% and still gives you the sound. Even then, it felt slow.
Dark Relic (2010)
Somewhat enjoyable
Not a total waste of time as so many ScyFi channel films. The film's biggest downfalls are the poor CGI (something one might expect the ScyFi channel to be particularly good at given the genre, but actually are very bad at) and so-so directing and scripting.
It always amazes me that films which portray the demonic as such powerful and real forces give such short shrift to the powers of Good. It strikes me as rather lame that film makers have the demon win when confronted with a person of true faith standing on their faith against such. If the demon exists, so too must God and his angels. And yet, this film has devote monks becoming possessed flesh-eaters in the blink of an eye, a knight of the Crusade "poisoned" by a splinter from a piece of the "true cross" and converted into a demonic monster with flailing tentacles, cursed nails stronger than a holy relic (a piece of the cross) and the blood of Christ, and a demon immune to the Bible and a crucifix but at the same time subject to the power of an Islamic symbol. One of the characters is an indentured laborer who confesses to being a non-believer to a knight of the Crusade. Subsequently, she revises her position to one of belief. Other critics spurn her conversion, but I have to ask: given an out-right blatant proof of the existence of Evil in the form of a demon, I think that most atheists or agnostics would find faith in a deity of some form rather quickly. Kind of like the old adage: their are no atheists in foxholes ...
The acting is okay, and Fain plays the lead well. Alyy Khan does a pretty decent job in his role as supporting actor. I did find the reasoned approach to the coexistence of their different faiths to be a pleasant change. I am just not sure of how realistic it was for the time. It isn't unreasonable that a crusader returning to England after years of battle might be weary of the acrimony back and forth and to have a more wizened approach, but Khan's character has no basis for such given his position and background in such a strongly indoctrinated faith.
Given the portrayed invulnerability of the demon to normal weapons, it was a decent plot ploy that the blood of Christ would serve as a weapon enhancer to make normal weapons effective against the demon. However, the piece of the cross did not ooze such all the time so how did they gather enough to coat the weapons? Likewise, all this time the demon has been following the piece of the cross, even transporting it back to the good guys when they try to bury it and leave it behind, and yet when it is shoved in the face of the demon, the demon is blown to bits. And if the relic is so powerful against the demon, why is it that the knight can't remove the cursed nails from it? The nails are more powerful than the demon? Very weak.
Heatstroke (2008)
If you are bored and can find nothing better to do ...
This film has a host of technical flaws. For example, a Tomahawk cruise missile does not need site tagging for guidance. They are guided by rather precise mapping and/or satellite navigation. Saying that a targeting beacon needs to be within 100 yards? Gee, that would mean that the payload would have to be big enough to obliterate more than that, say 200 yard radius. So what would it take to obliterate an area with a diameter of 400 meters? More than a single cruise missile with a conventional payload which has a blast radius of about 30 ft. Those missiles which do use targeting beacons are generally targeted by painting them with an infrared light or laser (eg. laser guided missile) and not a rather inaccurate radio signal.
The acting/direction is mediocre at best. I doubt that the writers/director have any real knowledge of the military. They are obviously extremely poor at research. The soldiers are supposed to be special ops ... my guess is they were pulled from basic training after the first day and taken to a secret base where they were trained as private school crossing guards and issued airsoft weapons.
The graphics are lousy. Interactions with the aliens are clearly overlays and poor ones at that. The quality of the "special effects" in this regard would be right at home in a 'B' movie from the 1950's or 60's. The blood coming from the throat of Dr. Taggert when she joins the list of Darwin Award candidates near the end is a prime example.
The aliens also show absolutely no signs of higher intelligence in their actions/interactions. There is nothing which makes them appear as anything more than the raptors from that well known movie ... except that they are slower, less intelligent, and less deadly.
Storyline/plot elements were fairly hackneyed and poorly executed. Military/civilian initial accidental meeting/clash. Studly civilian types seek revenge in bar where they are resoundingly humiliated by the military types, then seek revenge again and end up ... as far as the rest of the story goes, vanished from the island in the middle of the night - one being a photographer who just leaves what would be thousands of dollars of his equipment behind. Nothing odd there, just forget him. (Viewers are gifted with an utterly lame death scene where the two are killed by an alien.) Then there is the model clawed and lying in the surf ... the military type just leaves her lying there rather than pulling her up on the shore and checking for vitals. Then the head model/photo shoot organizer is told that her whereabouts are unknown. Unknown? She's a hundred yards or so away lying in the surf, probably drowning as the two claw marks to her back weren't deep enough to be lethal. In the meantime, one of the "special ops" team sacrificed himself by holding a grenade until it went off in order take an alien with him in dying. Not only is his body missing from the scene, but that of the alien as well. Apparently, the grenade used utterly vaporizes flesh and bone while leaving things like jeeps intact.
Finally, lets not omit the glowing red eyes of the alien or the on/off glowing eyes of their one body snatch victim. Such tell-tale signs are a requirement of such a genre, right? We wont' discuss what makes them glow or switch from regular to red based upon the dominant intelligence of the victim ...
There are two reasons I gave this film a rating of two instead of one: D.B. Sweeney and Danica McKellar. First, D.B. Sweeney plays his part about as well as the script and directing allow. Then there is Danica McKellar. While her acting can't be rated highly in this, she radiates that wholesome beauty that just won't quit and is worth enjoying regardless of how bad everything else is.
Sadly, this film fails to be campy or a winner in any regard. It would be good for laughs if it attempted to be funny, but it was trying to be serious and failed horribly.
Hansel & Gretel: Warriors of Witchcraft (2013)
Great ... if you need a nap.
The good: Fivel Stewart really does know how to fight and the five seconds they show of her doing so are great.
The bad: the script, the directing, and utter lack of depth, suspense, climax, or action. I will forgo critiquing the acting as the direction and virtually every technical aspect of the film are just so bad that it is impossible to tell if the acting was any good, they were never given a chance to act. There are significant flaws in continuity within scenes dealing with lighting, costume, tears, etc. It feels like the entire film takes place over a 2-3 day period while the story line is likely intended to span a much greater period of time. As a teen movie, the eye candy was so poorly used that the movie is a total flop in that regard. The direction of Courtney Turk and Tyne Stecklein would have been great - if they were doing a fashion photo shoot, but otherwise completely unnatural. Our local high school does a better job with their annual play and musical productions. I would revise my critique if it turned out that this was written, directed, and produced by a ten year old with a movie program on his new computer after seeing Buffy the Vampire Slayer ... if it were, some amount of courtesy applause would be due, after your neighbor poked you with an elbow to wake you up.
Sadly, this production is just bad without any of the redeeming qualities of a laughably bad movie like "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" or "The Rocky Horror Picture Show". What I would like is the phone numbers of the people who paid a million dollars to make this as I am certain I could come up with something far more entertaining.