Change Your Image
DiscoStu482
Reviews
Finch (2021)
Terrible in every way
It's hard to believe a movie with Tom Hanks and high production value could be this bad. Finch is one of the few survivors of a solar flare that destroyed the ozone layer and heats Earth to 150 degrees per day. Because he is dying of cancer, he designs a robot to protect his dog as they flee a storm to go to San Francisco because...the story requires them to drive through locations.
Finch is incredibly derivative of every post-apocalytpic and "friendly" robot movie - I Am Legend, Short Circuit, Day After Tomorrow, Chappie, etc. Etc. It's devoid of action - danger is threatened, but doesn't materialize. There's no objective or goal. It's cloyingly melodramatic, but all of the emotion and drama are contrived, whether it's Finch's progressing illness or the weather event that occurs to suggest danger. When the movie needs the weather to improve, it does. The characters' survival depends on an RV, but after a scene in which the power source is destroyed and they appear stranded, it's fixed without explanation in the next scene. No actions have real consequences.
Most of all, it's a boring and annoying movie. Finch is a curmudgeon. The robot has an annoying accent and behaves like a child for some reason. The soundtrack is popular songs that never fit the scenes. It's also repetitive. Finch gets sick over and over. They drive through another deserted landscape. The robot learns, makes a mistake and then redeems itself. Finch gets mad at the robot and then is kind to the robot. This movie was less than 2 hours long, but seemed never-ending because nothing happened and every scene was repetitive and irritating. Avoid it.
The Tomorrow War (2021)
Mary Sue characters and non-sensical writing
This movie is the worst of modern Hollywood, ignoring all semblance of an interesting story and developed characters in the interest of checking off diversity boxes while hoping all the CGI will distract the audience from the stupidity of it all.
The premise isn't too bad: soldiers from 2051 time travel to 2022 to warn that Earth is losing a war against aliens and needs to draw on current population to fight in the future war.
But what follows makes no sense. Protagonist Dan Forester is drafted along with thousands of other middle-aged untrained civilians directly into future battles with aliens that have wiped out Earth's future armies. It's unclear how this cannon fodder approach is supposed to help turn the tide. Although 2051 Earth has invented time travel, it has apparently invented nothing else in 29 years, as the battles are fought with 2022 technology. Although Earth's cities are destroyed and 99% of the population is dead, there is still a fully-equipped military fighting the aliens. Where are they getting their fuel, ammo and supplies?
Numerous decisions are made purely as contrivances for the plot to happen. Why not use the 29 years of warning to prepare for and stop the attack when it occurs, using information from the future about the aliens? At one point, the heroes have to get vital research from a lab under urgent circumstances because the same humans have sent bombers to destroy the city - why not halt the bombing run? At another point, they kill aliens on a derelict spaceship one at a time instead of blowing up the ship with tons of explosives they brought, allowing some to escape and advance the plot. These are just examples.
The key future human is Forester's now-adult daughter. She is the smartest scientist. She is the best military leader. She is the best soldier, outdoing special operations soldiers in strength, agility and weapons skills. She is the hardest worker and never gets tired. She is also beautiful and never gets scratched or even dirty during her heroics, maintaining perfect hair and makeup even though humanity is nearly extinct and she's commanding an island fortress. The depiction of this woman as relentlessly perfect is even more unrealistic than the ridiculous plot. Even the alien female is meaner, stronger, smarter and more capable than all the male aliens. This is writing to meet an agenda rather than to tell a story that anyone will care about, and it shows.
La Fortuna (2021)
Warped morality Anti-American propaganda
La Fortuna is about the battle over a sunken treasure. The antagonist is an evil American businessman who builds a company that searches for underwater treasure on expeditions that he personally leads and, when he is successful, has the gall to try to keep what he risked everything and spent millions to find! The protagonists are Spanish bureaucrats who spend all day lecturing people about their ideals until they find out about the find and embark on a quest to use legal technicalities to appropriate the treasure they didn't find or even look for from the man who committed everything to finding it. It's a socialist morality play in which the State destroys the capitalist, so if that's your thing, you'll like La Fortuna.
Almost as warped as the morality is the romance between the bureaucrats. For some reason, the 25 year old clean-cut, handsome male lead is hopelessly infatuated with his 40-year old chain-smoking, uncouth colleague, who spends most of the series insulting him for being boring and insufficiently progressive and ranting about how much she hates America, unceremoniously dumps him and then has a change of heart and pursues him until he inexplicably welcomes this foul-mouthed, aging harpy back into his life.
The plot itself, which should be interesting since it involves a multi-national lost treasure, is mostly a boring procedural about (likely inaccurate) maritime law. Most of the movie takes place not on the ocean or underwater, but in airports, courtrooms and motels.
Free Guy (2021)
Hopelessly derivative
Another entry in the series of movies about the interaction of real worlds and simulated worlds colliding, and the characters who don't know about the other world. Free Guy is highly reminiscent of, among others, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Ready Player One, The Lego Movie, Wreck It Ralph and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle among many others. The only original aspect is that the main character is an NPC in a Grand Theft Auto-type game. There are some funny bits here, but the movie devolves into the usual fight against the sinister puppet master fueled by romance plot devices with a race against the clock to save the virtual world. By the end of this over-long movie, the special effects are everywhere, the characters are appropriately coupled and the treacly inspirational music commences.
El Cid (1961)
More spectacle than action
Although El Cid purports to be a historical epic, there is very little about it that is true to history beyond the names of the people involved.
Considering it does not attempt to be historically accurate, it should have been more exciting. But while there are some impressive scenes of castles and armies and landscapes, there's surprisingly little action. Rather, there are endless sequences of armies marching, parades, and lavish ceremonies that have no purpose in the plot, get boring quickly and needlessly add an hour to the film. Most of the sword fighting sequences are laughably staged, and there is no memorable set-piece battle or other scene, which is why the movie seems to have been forgotten compared to far-superior epics like Ben Hur.
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Inexplicably popular
This is supposed to be a black comedy, which requires characters who are essentially amoral. And while it has plenty of characters like that, Cary Grant's character is "straight," though, horrified to find out that his sweet old aunts have poisoned a dozen men. Rather than act like a normal person, he instead decides to become an accessory to the crimes by framing his crazy but harmless brother and getting him institutionalized and cruelly ignoring his sweet new wife. Why he is so willing to hurt himself and other innocents to protect his aunts, who are serial killers, is never explained. I do not understand why this is "comedy," whether black or otherwise.