I'll open by saying I am not a fan of Villeneuve. In fact, I think he's a hack whose only genuine talent is making stupid people falsely think they are actually quite smart. I am also a HUGE Dune fan. They have been my favourite series of books since I first discovered them as a teenager. So although I hoped for the best with this, I was expecting the worst. What I got was somewhere in the middle. It's an OK movie, not great, thankfully not terrible, but OK
It got some things right the 1984 Lynch version got wrong, but still somehow managed to get other stuff wrong (including stuff Lynch got right). It was also a surprise how much Villeneuve just lifted directly from the Lynch film, both visually and auditorily.
The wardrobe choices were a huge disappointment. If you didn't know the time setting, going just on the clothes in the new Dune you'd be forgiven for thinking it was set a mere forty or fifty years (if that) in the future rather than the twenty thousand years in the future when it's really set. The Lynch stillsuits look futuristic, unworldly, and something that really would keep you alive in the deep desert. The new desert wear looks like they are just going to go dirt biking for an hour or two in our present-day world.
The casting (completely ignoring the pointless gender swap) was good, However, with the exception of Paul, Chani, and Rabban the original casting was all better. But the original (apart from the odd decision to use the totally unsuited Kyle MacLachlan) was a masterclass in how to cast the perfect people for the role.
Anyway, enough of the comparisons, This film is about the first two-thirds of the first novel. I always thought the story would be better told via a big-budget TV series (or even mini-series) rather than a standalone movie. I still think what they tried to cover here was too much for a single movie, but it was a step in the right direction.
The film mainly sticks to the book story but does make some needless changes, the most obvious of which being the changes made to both the gender and story of Liet Kynes, which in turn impacts the story of Chani. Most other changes are small and mainly insignificant though.
The film being filmed in Norway, Jordan, and Abu Dhabi it looks fantastic and very well suited to the large screen. And it's clear a great deal of time, effort, and money was put into the sets that looked equally good as the places they were meant to be.
The acting was of a suitably high standard, but unfortunately, many of the Dune names and terms were horribly mispronounced. That and the Hans Zimmer fart that is played constantly throughout the soundtrack is likely to pull people out of their immersion in the movie.
I was also somewhat surprised by what was left out, OK the source material is VERY dense and obviously some needed to be cut, but I don't really think it's made clear just how crucial melange is to the functioning of the empire and society as a whole. Also what (and why) mentats are is largely ignored, you may think that isn't overly important, but it is at the core of how many things are done in the Dune universe.
Over all, it's not a bad movie. Despite its flaws, I still think the 1984 Lynch version is better though.
I have no idea why people are raving about this film, it's a bit crap, it's probably Oldman weakest performance to date, and the cinematography is terrible. Churchill with Brian Cox in the lead role is a FAR superior film on the subject.
I thought Ex Machina was (although flawed) an excellent movie, Annihilation was just crap though. Apart from the outfits, there was nothing even remotely military about any of them, the whole thing just didn't know where it was going or why, it was a huge confused mess. It probably would have made a good TV episode in an anthology show, but just not enough there to make a decent film. It put me in mind of Arrival (easily the worst sci-fi movie of recent times), low-brow junk masquerading as high-brow gold. Both were designed from the ground up to make stupid people think they are really smart. If a film is advertised as 'highly intelligent' they should at least be moderately intelligent, but this doesn't even come close. The fact the ending is somewhat ambiguous and there are several different theories about it doesn't mean the film is cleaver, it just means the ending has more than one interpretation. I'm not saying films should spoon feed you all the answers, in fact, I hate when that happens, It's great being able to contemplate a movie and it's meanings after the fact, the problem here is it gives you so little of worth to actually think about.
Really interesting topic, but sadly the documentary maker doesn't have the first idea on how to make a good documentary, he seems more interested in appearing on screen himself, than asking relevant questions, following interesting avenues, or even just letting the story tell itself. There is almost nothing here that people who know the Bob Lazar story won't already be familiar with, but for anybody new to the subject, it is an OK (if rather one-sided) introduction.
Sadly nowhere nearly as good as it should have been. The film had a fantastic cast (and Johnny Depp too), a great director at the helm, and wonderful source material, but somehow it managed to almost completely fall flat. Odd things from the original story were changed apparently just for the sake of it, I could see no other reason for the changes. Although there were some good performances, there was nothing that stood out, which, as I said, with a cast like that, seems rather odd. Somewhat of a wasted opportunity really.
Finally got around to watching In & Of Itself, wow, what a huge disappointment. From all the rave reviews I've been hearing I was expecting something quite fantastic rather than the dragged out self-indulgence I got. Fortunately there was some good magic and a couple of entertaining bits squeezed in, I still wouldn't recommend it to anybody.
I can't help but think that this film would have been much better if Emma Watson and Karen Gillan had swapped roles, and if Tom Hanks had swapped roles with Bill Paxton, Oh and the obvious one, the whole thing was rewritten, and refilmed by somebody who knew what the hell they were doing LOL
The film was actually really disappointing. As a film it was /OK/, but as a sequel to Blade Runner, it was terrible. There were some nice in-jokes and references, but overall low-brow junk masquerading as high-brow gold (it was directed by Villeneuve, so I really shouldn't have expected better, the only thing he's good at is making stupid people think they are clever). Everything seemed forced and unnatural. The plot was trite and cliched, and everything was very predictable. Totally a wasted opportunity ;^<
What a fantastic blast from the past, if only they could still write Star Trek as good as DS9 was.
Very average sci-fi short, but it has nothing to do with Star Trek (just like the show it's a spun from). Somewhat surprising that they can fit so many plot holes and clichés into the eighteen minutes this episode takes. No wonder NetFlix refused to pay for this nonsense.
OK, but easily the weakest of the three shorts created to advertise Blade Runner 2049
Really surprised, and somewhat confused, by the positive reviews of this episode. It was actually pretty bad. Predictable plot line, poor dialogue, and far too many endings. The show used to be great, but each season was a drop in quality from what went before, and this episode was the worst episode of the worst season. Such a shame they couldn't come up with something more creative to end the show.
Terrible, STD is trying so hard to be the Orville, but just as the hack writers don't understand Trek, it seems they also don't understand humour.
Went to see Bohemian Rhapsody yesterday. I was quite surprised that Malek's weird eyes didn't bother me nearly as much as I had expected, but his acting was really off mark for the first half of the film. Thankfully he found his feet when we got to the 80's and from then on it was great, even if he never did quite get his intonation right. The thing I found really weird about the movie was all the odd changes and omissions (made even more odd considering how closely the remaining band members were involved with the films production). Amongst other things, how the band got together was wrong, how Freddie met Jim was wrong, hell, even the band splitting up was wrong. The casting was spectacular though, practically everybody looked, sounded, and acted just like the people they were portraying. So much so that I actually thought Dermot Murphy who plays Bob Geldof was actually archive footage of Geldof cut into the movie when he first appeared. If you are a die-hard Queen fan (like I am) you will be a bit annoyed at the discrepancies, but regardless it's still well worth checking out.
Really nice character piece, only five minutes long, but it gives you a great introduction to 'Sapper' played by Dave Bautista. Probably my favourite of the three shorts made to advertise Blade Runner 2049.
Wow, I had forgotten just how much I loved Babylon 5! It was great to have the team back together. After seeing what had been done to Star Wars, Star Trek, and many others I was VERY worried this was going to be woke garbage, fortunately that was a dodged bullet. The only real negative was the drawing style for the animation, it's next to impossible to to tell who is who (with a couple of obvious exceptions like Londo and G'Kar) until their names are mentioned. I hear this is the first step to a new B5 series, as long as they keep to this standard, I'm all for it!
Not as good as some people are claiming, but also nowhere near as bad as others say. The issue is most people aren't evaluating a movie, they are ignoring it entirely and voting purely on partisan political grounds. I normally dislike Laurence Fox, but was very impressed with his work here. I don't think John James was a good casting choice though. I'm not even going to mention where I stand politically, but judging this movie as a movie and nothing more, I think it's a fair seven out of ten.
Bloody fantastic film. I thought it was just going to be yet another low-brow SFX laden action thing with loads of fight scenes, not really my thing, but Karen Gillan was in it, so I thought I'd give it a go before crashing out. Not at all what I expected. It's actually a really clever dystopian black comedy with fantastic performances from everybody involved. It's getting a lot of hate, seemingly because many others thought it was going to be the same film I thought it was, but unlike me, they were disappointed it wasn't actually that. The interesting thing about it is, it seems designed to have two seemingly open possibilities of how it ended, but in reality depending on which people choose to accept, you can see how closely they paid attention and thought deeply (or not) about the film. If you want an action movie, give it a miss, but if you like cerebral black comedies, watch it ASAP!
Just watched Old, and Wow! What a terrible movie. Like so many of Shyamalan's movies, the core premise is quite interesting, but the execution is just horrendous. The rules of the world-building are applied or not applied randomly, depending totally on what the story needs at the time. The dialogue is embarrassingly bad; unrealistic, clunky, and more often than not being nothing more than clumsy attempts at foreshadowing. And there are potholes so wide you could drive a bus (sideways) through them. Don’t bother with this one.
Watched Playing God last night, for a con trick comedy, there was surprisingly little of either comedy or con tricks. Both Michael McKean and Alan Tudyk did their best, but the material just wasn't there. Things didn't happen in a natural logical way, they only happened because they needed to happen for the next bit to start. The writer clearly started at where he wanted the movie to end and worked backward so he could set the next part up. Shame, with two better leads and a writer/director who knew what he was doing, this could have worked really well.
I had never thought these types of of tests were good for use in the way they are used when reducing applications for job positions. However, if the people who are complaining about how bad these tests are in this documentary are good examples of the type of people being rejected, my mind is changed. If I was hiring somebody, I'd hate to have any of them waste my time interviewing them. They are the type of people who will never rest until they have found something 'problematic' about everything, and they will always interpret it as an institutionalised bias against them personally.
Hilariously bad, I don't know exactly what it is about Christianity, but for some reason, it seems it's just impossible for them to make a good movie. The odd film (like this one) that does something well (comedy) it happens purely by accident and really isn't meant to be there, I mean if they actually wanted this to be funny, there wouldn't be any humour at all, but as they don't, it's a total laugh riot.
Wow! What a terrible episode, I was enjoying the series up to here, but this terrible episode very nearly made me give up. Not give up watching Altered Carbon, but totally give up watching ANY TV ever again.
There is NOTHING here that would cause people who understand science to even raise an eyebrow (well ignoring all the godidit claims obviously LOL), however, I would still recommend everybody (people who accept evolution, and science deniers alike) watch it, but ONLY with the freely downloadable subtitle track debunking all the lies, straw-men, and disinformation put forward in this joke of a documentary. It just shows how willing creationist are to lie to further their agenda.
What a terrible documentary! It doesn’t seem to know if it's about smart meters, cell phone towers, ac/dc converters, the government, big corporations, or any number of other things they don't understand and are therefore very scary, neither does it quite know if the problem is health issues, privacy issues, or again something else they don't understand and therefore find very scary. This joke of a documentary is wall to wall quote mines, straw man arguments, and bad science, it's so bad, the last time I watched anything on par with this it was a young Earth creationist promotional film. I have no doubt the tin-foil hat brigade will absolutely love this without spending a single second to bother actually researching the claims made here, or reading any of the studies that are quote mined (most of which aren't named, presumably for just that reason). I am sure there is corruption and greed at play here, but just making F.U.D. (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) nonsense up isn't going to fix anything, in fact if anything it will just muddy the waters further. Seriously if you have even a basic understanding of the technology featured in this 'documentary' you will physically be able to feel your IQ dropping as you watch this rubbish.
Very few of the cast and crew were stand out bad at their jobs, but they just couldn't hold it together and the whole thing came off as rather silly and amateurish. And nobody for a single second would actually believe that Sarah Gadon was a guy. With a better director at the helm and a bit of a rewrite, it could have been quite good, but sadly, that's not what we got.
I got very worried at the start when the filmmaker came on and said Rasputin was a great hypnotist, but fortunately that goof wasn't a sign of things to come. Most fans of Erickson will already know a lot of what is on offer here, but it's still great to revisit and there may be some stuff people aren't familiar with. There were some really famous names from the field here too. I highly recommend giving it a watch.
If this was done well, it could have been a really interesting series, sadly it wasn't. It was slapped together with either very poor research or things just left out as they didn't happen to fit the story the filmmaker decided he was going to tell. If you are already familiar with the many events and personalities involved, it's nice to get a closer look at some of the people, but please don't treat it as a history lesson and before you watch make sure you have plenty of Lott's wife on hand to take it all with.
I watched Hypnotic ( https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/536437-hypnotic ) last night, well technically this morning. I was expecting a mediocre movie filled with 'Hollywood hypnosis' but actually got a terrible movie with no hypnosis at all (real or Hollywood), It's actually a crappy B-move about psychics and a government funded organisation hunting for them. Ben Affleck has been in some good movies (he was the bomb in "Phantoms", yo) but most are pretty bad, this is without doubt the worst of them all though. Seemingly it was being developed for over 20 years, however if you told me it was in development for twenty minutes, I'd think you were exaggerating. If you are thinking of going to see it (or even downloading), don't bother.
Just watched this. I was expecting the miscasting of Harry Potter in the lead role to be too off putting, but it didn't annoy me nearly as much as I expected. My wife isn't as big a Weird Al fan as me, so it was fun watching her trying to work out what was real and what was parody. Although it lost its way a bit (mainly with the some of the Madonna stuff), if you are a fan or just want a bit of fun, it's well worth a look.
