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Mortal Engines (2018)
Utter garbage
Were it not for the beautiful Robert Sheehan, I would have given it less. Terrible crap. A ridiculous story line, more crap loosely sponging off Game of Thrones, various superhero flicks and absolutely awful and embarrassing lones for nearly every character. I watched it to the bitter end to see if it might somehow redeem itself and make the colossal easte of a fraction of my life worthwhile, but alas, despite being a pre-Covid release, it did not. The writers of this bomb should be on a breadline somewhere and never work again. Just pathetic I'm assuming that Hollywood is intent on continuing its policy as of the last decade of trying to dumb down future (and present) generations by continuing to spoonfeed the world such pablum. Sadly, judging by the other reviews here, I fear they are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams. We are so doomed.
The Empress (2022)
Devoid of any historical accuracy
History cannot and should not be changed, even if Netflix thinks it's a good idea to completely warp it for ratings. The Austro Hungarian empire is so grossly misrepresented in this lavish but completely fictionalized account of the love between Franz-Josef and Elisabeth that it drfies any semblance of credibility whatsoever.
Maximilian, the younger brother of Franz-Josef was indeed popular, and there was a rift between the two, but the fictional romance between him and Elisabeth is absurd, as is his olotting to overthrow Franz-Josef who ruled from 1848 until 1916 and was a very strong monatch.
In reality, Maximilian was happily married to Charlotte of Belgium. He served as commander-in-chief of the Imperial Austrian Navy (1854-1861), thereafter as viceroy of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia until 1859, when Franz-Josef, angered by his brother's liberal policies, dismissed him. After a few years of comfortable early retirement in Trieste (now Italy), he accepted the crown of Mecico and ruled there as Emperor Maximilian I. Until his overthrow by Republican forces and subsequent court martial in 1867, after which he was summarily executed by firing squad
Elisabeth, who was indeed a love match with Franz-Josef, did indeed suffer under the oppressive rules at the Hapsburg court and was very much at loggerheads with her mother-in-law, Archduchess Sophie, but did produce several offspring, most notably Crown Prince Rudolf (who died at his own hand with his mistress Mary Vetsera in a murder-suicide at his hunting lodge at Mayerling in 1889).
Elisabeth was not the utter failure depicted in this production, but rather was instrumental in bringing about the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary in 1867.
Elisabeth was was mortally wounded by an Italian anarchist named Luigi Lucheni while travelling in Geneva in 1898.
With a storyline as provided by history, why was it necessary for the writers and producers of The Empress to come up with this absolute codswallop?
I've given the rating of 3 stars mainly because of the superb acting and lavish production, but don't think rewriting history for whatever reason Netflix did is acceptable or necessary.
Air Collision (2012)
Admittedly, so bad it's comical
From the wonderfully amateurish painted backdrop of the control tower through the "satellite part" made out of an old recessed lighting pot with a random piece of circuit board glued to it, this one is so bad, it's funny. The prehistoric monitors in the air traffic control center (the one with the painted tower) look like they were borrowed from the set of "1984". The poor put-upon stewardess on a low-fare airliner (the bringer of doom) handing out blankets, pillows, magazines and cocktails (!) all make it even more fun. Enjoy this made for TV festival of bad screenwriting, terrible continuity and mediocre acting.
Mulligans (2008)
Trite in the extreme, absolute shlock
College cuties come home for summer, dad falls in love with his son's bestie who happens to be gay. Uptight Mom tries to fit into hubby's life by taking up golf (golf ad nauseam in this snooze fest), during which see catches a glance of hubby and son's bestie having a fumble in the nearby woods, leading to - oh, my goodness, clutch my pearls - marital crisis, then taken to even higher peaks of bad acting when son discovers dad and bestie having yet another careless grope. Amazingly badly written and acted, accompanied by one of the sappiest soundtracks of all times. Best character is the alcoholic grandma who is a shining beacon of reason in this cliché-bonanza extraordinaire. I nearly lost in when uptight Mom is explaining to precocious daughter why she and hubby spend lots of time apart: "Well, I have my scrap(book)ing ... and daddy has golf." Just the most vomitous claptrap in decades, probably based on some poor shmo's "true story" given the ultimate in bad-taste Hallmark channel melodrama. The three stars? Because this turd should inspire a renaissance of non-trite gay cinema and because grandma had the only decent, non-melodramatic lines.
A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017)
Dreadful and unnecessary remake
Why take a perfectly delightful film and water it down and make it into a poor television series. Ah, yes, to make it more relative to uncultured Americans who don't like or can't comprehend anything that doesn't play in their soon to be "great again" little part if the world.
Decried here by simpletons unable to understand the comic genius of the original film version, it stands to reason that those here lauding the new version would feel mire comfortable with removing the story to America and eliminating almost all the wonderful comic touches of the first production.
All due respect to Neil Patrick Harris, but he doesn't do justice to Jim Carrey's original performance. I find the new production sad and pale in every way when viewed side by side with the brilliant original. And the idea of attempting to make it into a musical (with dreadful numbers) is also disappointing and ludicrous.
Very, very sad, indeed.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (2016)
Cloying glurge at its worst
What did you like about the first My Big Fat Greek Wedding? The off beat characters? The wonderful sense of humor underlying it all? The story line - WASP boy meets Greek girl, love ensues? The funny supporting characters, like Windex-touting grandpa, headstrong Mom, wacky aunt? The family interaction that was quirky, at times dysfunctional, yet ever so believable and lovable?
Forget all of that. Imagine Home Alone 2, or any other really bad sequel you have ever seen - the kind where we have to go over the top to try and make everything bigger, better, cuter and (gag) Greeker than the last time. Now you have this travesty - all 94 painful minutes of it.
Everything is "bigger, better, newer, improved-er and funnier" than last time, you are supposed to believe. What really has happened here is a train-wreck of stilted acting, forced laughs, bearable tiny bits, a predictable and oh-so-awful plot designed to allow each of the original characters plenty of screen time to come back and prove they are still just as "ha ha" funny as last time - except, they're not.
Grandpa still has the restaurant and his bottle of Windex. Rebellious WASP son in law (John Corbett) is now the principal at the high school he used to teach at. Nina Vardalos (who wrote this heaping helping of utter glurge) is still Toula, now as the overachieving, overcompensating "soccer mom" to the beautiful Elena Kampouris (daughter Paris - why so named - possibly because she was conceived there? Never explained...) who is a senior in high school.
Take the old plot, add years to it and more obnoxious cutesy-wutesy Greekness along with several ridiculous subplots and there you have it - a giant opportunity to reprise roles that we wonderful but would have benefited more from being laid to rest permanently than from this schlocky piece of clap-trap.
The personal highlight of the movie for me? When Ya-ya gets to speak - one whole line. The rest would have been better off going straight to DVD or cable.
10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
Thrilling, unsettling, exciting - with a twist at the end!
Seeing really good movies is rare these days. Lots of remakes, some of them wholly unjustified, and lots of really bad movies, too. So when something that exceeds the original comes along as a sort-of sequel, it's a pleasure.
10 Cloverfield Lane was a total surprise. I liked the original Cloverfield a lot, even if the actual pictures of aliens attacking were very distant and disappointing, yet the action was great and so was the edginess, the hand-held camera, the priceless shot of Lady Liberty's head rolling down the avenue in New York.
How to follow that and make it even better? 10 Cloverfield Lane. The basic premise is simple - a woman is run off the road by a large pick up after a scary encounter at an eerily dark gas station in the middle of nowhere. We don't know much about her except that she has just run away from her husband/boyfriend/partner and is just driving to escape. And yet, she picks up the mobile when he calls, which is ultimately her undoing.
Sideswiped into a deep ravine. Next, she awakens chained to a wall, attached to a medical drip, in a bleak cellar, not understanding where she is, blood-matted hair and on a mattress on the ground.
Enter John Goodman in one of his best roles ever - he's the scary "dungeon master," who insists he rescued her after the car wreck and brought her to his lair to nurse her back to health... although he doesn't tell her of his ulterior and ultimate motives, which are not hard to guess...
But the pot thickens with the introduction of another inhabitant of Goodman's lair... one who tells our main protagonist that the world outside is contaminated, possibly destroyed. Goodman compounds the tale, and when a CB radio is seen in what turns out to be an incredibly well-stocked underground nuclear fallout shelter they are all sharing, she never tries to contact the outside world on it after being told by Goodman that he's tried and it is all to no avail.
The plot develops with some immensely interesting personality traits that are just plain weird and eerie. As soon as you settle into believing that Goodman's character is a complete pervert, a murderer and more, along comes her escape and the connection to the original Cloverfield, but this time we get to see the aliens up close. And ugly they are, too.
Enough said, go see it. You won't be sorry. And the door's been left open for a sequel, which I do hope gets made and I look forward to.
Solace (2015)
Amazing, much more than expected
Here's a suspense-action thriller that pushes all the right buttons: Cast, plot and suspense, coupled with surprises and some pretty good chase scenes as well.
I notice that most of the nay-sayers here are from the U.K., yet these very same people will wax poetic about the latest crap that is Transformers, Superman, etc.
If you are looking for what a film is supposed to be - decent entertainment - then you have found it. Go see it before the nay-sayers manage to get it sent to DVD, even though it deserves a good long run much more than half of the pedestrian so many young people seem to think is Oscar-worthy.
Jurassic World (2015)
More ham than a Christmas dinner
Keeping in mind the first the Jurassic series entries, I read the reviews on IMDb before going to see this turkey and was amazed that so many people thought it was so brilliant.
Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard and Vincent D'Onofrio called in their performances, resulting in some of the most shallow, I- couldn't-give-a-damn characters on screen. Whether that's what Colin Trevorrow was aiming for I don't know, but considering the hokey performances from Ty Simpkins, Nick Robinson, Judy Greer and BD Wong, one has to assume he was aiming for the lowest common denominator and the shallow end of the pool.
A wholly uninspired cast sleepwalks its way through a monotonous, boring plot underscored by bombastic music more worthy of a made- for-cable production than a supposed blockbuster.
The only bright note throughout the entire ordeal is a praiseworthy performance delivered by Irrfan Khan as the big boss of Jurassic World, the be all, end all of unrealistic theme parks - think Disney World on steroids with live dinosaurs instead of animatronic ones.
The opening is a family scene with a desperately clutchy mother, Judy Greer, saying goodbye to her little darlings going on an unaccompanied trip to La Isla I Don't Care to go see the dinosaurs, where the big bad theme park is conveniently run by her flibbertigibbet sister, played by Bryce Dallas Howard. All the emotions throughout the film seem hackneyed and either totally over the top or so shallow that your feet wouldn't even get properly wet.
Once we see Jurassic World, we are introduced in quick succession to Chris Pratt playing a character he apparently based on a combination of Crocodile Dundee, Indiana Jones and any number of other hokey jungle-style macho misogynists.
The naughty brothers played by Simpkins and Robinson ditch their (naturally) British nanny, and thanks to aunty's VIP passes for them are the last on a ridiculous theme park ride just as the big bad lab-concocted supersaurus escapes and begins to eat and terrorize everyone in sight.
The resulting hunt and chase scenes, complete with cheesy oeuvres by D'Onofrio playing an InGen madman wanting to use the dinosaurs as soldiers of the future for the U.S. army, are at times hilarious enough to wonder if the entire cast had a parody in mind, and at other times so stunningly poorly acted that I assume multiple retakes were necessary and everyone's collective spirit flagged to the point of "let's just get it over with."
Another point leading to the conclusion that this was intended as parody is the fact that the theme park - oh so closely based on Disney World and targeting the same lolling tourist audiences - was completely devoid of the average profile theme park visitor - the overweight American. All the visitors to Jurassic World are beautiful people who do not at all look like the regular theme park crowd and make it more like a EuroDisney with giant lizards.
The dinosaurs themselves, the CG and blue screen techniques used are noteworthy and fun at times, sometimes predictably boring and inane.
There were a number of (most likely unintentional) belly laughs throughout, just as the plot was so utterly predictable as to be totally uninspiring; the phrase "mind-numbingly mundane" springs to mind...
If you are looking for anything like Oscar-worthy performances or an unforgettable story-line, skip this film. If technology and blue screen stunts are your bag, then you'll like this film. Don't expect anything more than pretty low- grade B-Film acting, writing, direction and execution here.
Woman in Gold (2015)
Oscar-worthy Mirren steals the show
Woman in Gold, beautifully written and acted with gripping performances from Ryan Reynolds and Daniel Brühl alongside memorable cameos from Elizabeth McGovern and Moritz Bleibtreu, deserves several Oscar- nominations. Helen Mirren delivers a tour-de-force performance and the entire film mirrors high production standards, excellent continuity and obviously skillful direction from Simon Curtis along with a wonderful musical score.
Those pundits here and on other sites panning this little gem because they are either anti-Semitic or think that money and lawyers getting rich was the only motive for this real-life story have missed the point entirely and should probably stick to watching mindless shlock like Jurassic World instead of something tender and lovingly crafted dealing with a difficult but nevertheless touching story told with a warmth, obvious love and pride of craftsmanship that is not often found in many films these days.
Chappie (2015)
Blomkamp's Best By Far
What's not to like? Probably much of the unwarranted (mainly American) criticism of this film is because it is a) too intelligent for many people (mostly Americans), b) has an innate and sophisticated sense of humor that is way above the heads of many, and c) it is shot in South Africa (which most Americans cannot relate to).
Hugh Jackman as an evil villain is well-cast, as is Dev Patel as the successful inventor of a series of titanium-clad police robots designed to face South Africa's truly brutal crime scene. Sigourney Weaver is the "tough broad" CEO of the company producing the robots. All is right in the world, the robots are a success until Dev Patel develops software to make a sentient robot and Hugh Jackman, driven by jealousy because his gigantic annihilator prototype killing- machine (which looks very much like a tarted up copy of the giant killer droid in 1987's RoboCop) is not being pursued by the company. Jackman's character implants a virus into the working droids, they shut down, violence ensues.
Leading up to Jackman's truly villainous actions, desperate to try his software that makes robots sentient, Dev Patel steals a robot due for destruction to upload his program to as a test. Before he can get to it, both he and the test robot are kidnapped by some wonderfully comical gangsters looking for the "remote controls" to shut off all the police bots.
Patel is forced to upload his program to the test robot, No. 22 played wonderfully by Sharlto Copley; it works and the robot begins to "grow up" - first as a baby in some comical scenes, then to adulthood. Along the way, Patel gives him a sort of moral code. The criminals who have kidnapped the robot go to very comical measures to overcome these new morals with some wonderful trickery and some truly marvelous dialog and scenes.
Suffice it to say that in the end, the good guys win.
Plenty of shoot-em-up scenes, brutal blood and guts moments, violence, but not all of it is completely gratuitous, especially if you know South Africa or have lived there (as I have) and know how nasty and truly evil criminals there can be. (They can easily match the most brutal the USA has ever seen or has to offer).
Are there plot holes? A few minor inconsistencies, but no major ones. The graphics are excellent, the sense of humor is evident throughout, and some of the performances are truly memorable. Sigourney Weaver's hysterical head-over-heels exit from her robot manufacturing plant in the face of total catastrophe is comical in the extreme.
Even though there is a lot of violence which may be why some are panning this marvelous romp, it is a story with a wonderful moral ending (good triumphs over evil) and some really excellent entertainment along the way.
Go see it! Let yourself like it, enjoy the ride and if you have a working brain, you'll love this film!
Into the Woods (2014)
Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful
Having never heard of or seen the Broadway musical which apparently inspired this utter piece of claptrap, and been mislead by the trailers for this film, I went expecting indeed something along the lines of Maleficent. Imagine my surprise, then, when after a few minutes, the entire cast burst into some of the most uninspired, terrible lyrics I have ever heard, sung to some of the most melodically deficient and clashing tunes ever composed.
The most enjoyable aspect of the movie was seeing Meryl Streep, Tracey Ullman and Christine Baranski in their roles, even if they occasionally also were forced to launch into completely forgettable song.
Another writer has exuberantly praised the performance of Lilla Crawford; I must disagree, I think she has a very brassy, obnoxious voice which was more disconcerting than enjoyable.
I found the intermingling of accents also completely absurd; the plot of this amalgam of fairy tales we all know is chronologically set in the Middle Ages, mostly in Europe. A British accent seems appropriate, but many of the actors were unable to affect anything beyond North American nasal twang, with Lilla Crawford being one of the worst offenders.
Bottom line: If you are looking for a really awful musical based on throwing every fairy tale you can remember into the plot, then this is your movie. If you were expecting something more along the lines of Maleficent, stay away from this horrible offering.
Interstellar (2014)
Interesting but very long-winded...
INTERSTELLAR was an interesting film to watch. Excruciatingly long at nearly 3 hours, I felt it could have been cut in several places without harming the plot and making it eminently more watchable. I know some here will disagree with me, but that's how I felt after what seemed a very long time spent of sequences involving wormholes, black holes, etc. that could have been condensed.
Performances by everyone in the cast were extraordinary and in some cases Oscar-worthy.
The future of our planet, as painted hauntingly by the film, was fascinating to me and one of the better aspects. I also loved the scene in the school where the parents are told that the books they have raised their children with are "Federal" and therefore undesirable as they purport the moon landings in 1968 to be real instead of a huge, government-perpetrated fake, as the future apparently will reveal according to the beautifully satirical scenes in the film.
Some of the special effects were wonderful, and generally the film was enjoyable, but I overheard many leaving the theatre wondering aloud if they had actually enjoyed the film or not, and, due to the incredible and unnecessary length, I had to wonder the same thing myself.