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Reviews
Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023)
Disappointing as all the ingredients should be there...
The cast, design, CGI & budget are all good. But the plot is so derivative the best thing is to play a group game where you point at the screen & shout 'Star Wars' 'Avatar', 'Matrix' 'Gladiator' 'Solo' etc. As you spot the undisguised theft of scenes and ideas. In case you are dumb or drunk one of the underextended cast talks it through every 5 minutes. Sadly it isn't even smart enough to acknowledge the spoof, like Guardians of the Galaxy does so well. The opening set was too close to Norsemen (a comedy) to get away with playing it straight. The character added to please the China market is so painful I had to pop the kettle on. If you liked Serenity, and you've got a bottle of tequila close to hand then have fun. I shall NOT be watching Part2.
The Creator (2023)
It looks amazing, great performance, but some plot bloopers did spoil it
I enjoyed the spectacle, excitement, performances, design and cgi of The Creator. But there were plot points that bother me too much to give it over 7*.
Loads of plot-spoilers here and I'm probably overthinking it but here are some of my problems with the plot;
Joshua and Maya lived together for years and were deeply in love. But she never knew that he was on a mission from US military to destroy her father and all the robots, their entire community. His job was to find The Creator. He never noticed that somehow on the beach she was developing the most advanced technology the world has ever seen. She was The Creator. The say love is blind but that's ridiculous.
How come no-one can make small kid-size robots? So everyone can be flabbergasted when they see Alphie I guess but that's senseless.
Why do some of the replicant faces looks 100% human but others look like postboxes or saucepans? Why do they need to copy a real human to make something lifelike? And why do robots wear clothes? Do they unbutton their shirts to take them off at night? Do they need washing?
The robots communicate with walkie talkies. Don't they have wifi? Bluetooth? Wouldn't they just have mobile phones built in?
New Asia has AI with self conscious replicants, but all the cars still have steering wheels and manual controls!?
It always seem ridiculous that in an age of advanced weaponry that there is hand to hand fighting, but that's a problem with most sci-fi films.
The massive supertanks that appeared in the big battle for the city. No one saw them coming before they appeared through the trees? How did they get there unnoticed? They had time to erect sandbag defences, but looking the wrong way, and evidently of little use against massive supertanks!
The trillion $ Nomad had all those nukes ready to launch on all the cities in New Asia. Why hadn't they launched them before? Why wait until the child was on the ship?
How come no one had shot down Nomad before, its been there for 10 years. Joshua only let off one limpit mine and it was toast. It was clearly rather fragile.
The child managed to run through Nomad when they were on high alert and get to the central control globe without anyone stopping her? On a high security supership wouldn't they have installed doors, with locks? Perhaps guards?
The US Military were trying to destroy all robots but seemed happy to have running dustbin bombs that could talk. Why not just missiles? They were't even very good bombs. When one went off on the 'somehow really important wooden footbridge' (they have robots, flying boats and 500 story megacities but hadn't upgraded the bamboo bridge?!) Joshua and the child were uninjured 20 yards from it.
With all the high tech and flying things and robots why was the significant battle over a footbridge anyway?
And the replicants defending the pathetic bamboo bridge are shooting and shooting at the running dustbins but nothing can stop them. Did no one think of just blowing up the bridge? Cutting a few ropes would probably have done it. Artificial unintelligence.
Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)
I would rather knock myself unconscious with a cricket bat than have to watch this again.
Superhero movies are always a bit dumb but sometimes a couple of beers before will help the suspension of disbelief and let your handbrake off enough to enjoy the good ones. Seriously only a general anaesthetic would suffice in this case. WW84 is long, boring, really really dumb, overacted in a bad way, pathetically soppy and entirely senseless. It is not a good use of 180 minutes of your life, even if you are in prison or the $200 million it cost. The opening sequence with WW as a little girl competing in a Hunger Games type event is impressive. When Chris Pine returns from the dead was about the moment that Fonzy jumped the shark. If you haven't seen the first movie it would be even more incomprehensible and this sequel does nothing to explain who Wonder Woman is, who Steve is, why she hasn't aged, why she's superhuman. Steve who apparently died during WW1 seems to be able to fly a modern jet fighter no problem & Wonder Woman seems to be able to make the plane invisible. This is not explained, & really just an excuse for a "flying through fireworks sequence." The trailer that tricked me into seeing the movie featured the track Blue Monday by New Order and I was hoping and expecting good 80's music in the movie. The is almost none, its all Hans Zimmer, which I might normally like but I was promised New Order in the trailer and I was waiting for the 80's music to kick in. That is an absolute missed opportunity. The whole film is a giant missed opportunity.
Five Summer Stories (1972)
The ultimate original surf movie
This is the full-on original surf movie. It is everything you would hope for, bearing in mind it was made in 1972. But don't be put off by the age, the waves are just as big, the surfers just as amazing and the colours just as rich as any surf film. The soundtrack is magnificent, a guided tour of the sounds of the 60s & 70s. It is sometimes hard to tell if it is supposed to be taken entirely seriously as some parts feel so 'californian' and so over the top and wacky that you suspect it was made somewhat tongue-in-cheek. It doesn't matter. There are hours of footage of beautiful surfing. Modern extreme sports movies cut from shot to shot every couple of seconds and tend to focus on the big tricks and extreme moments but Five Summer Stories is mostly long shots showing the start, the ride and the fall of each surf. It is long but breaks away from surfing to feature skateboarding 'The Magic Rolling Board' is part of the film, chat with some of the exponents and show clips of dancing, flowers, people in the bath and any number of somewhat mental moments. I think you could describe the movie as psychedelic. But it is not all nice and lovely. The director/commentator take plenty of snipes at commercialism and competitions in general - it has a definite political angle, which only enriched the film for me. High points for me were long shots of Gerry Lopez pushing the limits in the pipe to fantastic music, and the over enthusiastic of the titling machine - there are big yellow titles for all sections of the film, adding another level of commentary. enjoy