Ragnar Danneskjöld

After reading all the hate reviews surrounding this movie, I've really come to pity the Millennials and their successors, These generations have become so jaded to life, while never having any actual exposure to an environmental revolution other than what they've been indoctrinated to believe, are now so tainted that they can't simply enjoy a new experience like Avatar. Every character is shallow unless they constantly preach an agenda-driven mantra of extreme global cooling/warming man-made destruction, trans-bisexual anti-homogeneous gender nullification or some other left-wing dribble involving renewable energy, a meat-free diet or that somehow one race's life matters more than another because of the indignities they suffered centuries ago. Now, you have to deny that 4k eyecandy graphics are BORING to fit in with the new generation of beatniks and that CGI is killing the movie industry, even though all those that insist on it would never sit down and watch a standard definition B&W film from the 1950s, even if their life depended on it.

Creating a self-sustaining universe is something ever so difficult. Only a few (Tolkien, Lucas, Roddenberry & Stan Lee come immediately to mind) have been able to pull it off with success. The DETAIL that you need to weave is so intense that only a few Masters have been able to pull it off and have their legacy extend beyond a single work. The world of Avatar could easily be included into that mix. Just watching how the unique creatures breathed, their interactions with the surrounding environment and how life on that planet communed with itself was enough to make me want for more. Yes, the graphics today in 2021 might not be that impressive, but for something a decade old, they truly were breathtaking. Of course, this is coming from a person who grew up during the Beta-Max - VHS war, in an era when your home phone broke, you had to get to the Ma Bell Telephone Store to get a replacement (because you only rented your home phone from the utility) and where 4-bit video game graphics were groundbreaking.

There are 2 aspects of graphics that are the most difficult to program: running water and the human hand. These are the two things that the industry grades the most difficult and expects to expose the weakness of substandard work. Both of these are flawlessly done in the film and come off as exceptionally lifelike. After that, everything else is gravy and is believable to the standard eye. The amount of background activity is breathtaking and if you happen to look beyond the main protagonists on the screen, you can get lost with the environmental interaction. Unfortunately, most people won't be able to see the forest from the trees and never enjoy the graphical ballet going on in the background.

While those less-versed might not see it, Avatar is a modern version of the American Western; where the white-male protagonist is adopted by the native tribe and instructed in their ways of life and existence. It has been done time and time again (Bianco Apache, The Savage, Little Big Man, The Light in the Forest), and this film follows the doctrine to the letter. Avatar is nothing more than a new-age telling of the same old story of Empire vs. Indigenous people on a planetary scale, albeit with better graphics and new age technology. Yes, it's not a new tale. But honestly, after millennia after millennia of humans telling stories, how many original tales are still untold? Besides that, everything else about the film is almost perfect. The cinematography, the editing, the graphics and even the dialog fits the movie like a glove. If you weren't impressed, then go take a peek at Cool World or Who Framed Roger Rabbit and see how far we've come in just a few short decades. While not the perfect film, it definitely entertains and leaves the viewer wanting for more. Highly recommended.

Ted is THE poster child for the fact that every great concept doesn't automatically become a guaranteed winning project once it leaves the drawing board. This movie SCREAMS "Here's a great idea, but we just didn't know what to do with it." Whether it was because of lack of imagination or too many tokes on the community bong, nobody will ever know.

Having a movie about a real-live Teddy Bear existing in the every day life of a 30-something underachiever sounds like a winning formula. However after the first few moments, the movie stalls, the dialog gets stale quickly and the majority of the story revolves around Ted getting high and/or trying to bang shallow, attractive women (even though Hasbro didn't include on him full, working equipment) while the main character tries to balance his 4-year ongoing relationship with a woman completely out of his league and his life-long Thunder Buddy (Ted).

Lewd, crude and rude, Ted does little to entertain beyond the limited soph-moronic humor. Unless you are a rabid fan of Family Guy or the 80s Flash Gordon, live in or around the Boston area or think it's funny to hear the F-word every other second, this one won't be for you.

Go Flash Go!!!

One of the least appreciated movies made in my lifetime. Done right after the glory that was The Empire Strikes Back and released to a public that had forgotten who Flash Gordon was or what the 1930's serials with Larry "Buster" Crabbe represented. Although the public was drooling desire for more high tech special effects and serious Space Opera, Flash went in the opposite direction and brought Campy back with a style all his own. This movie PERFECTLY recreated everything that those early B&W serials threw at those screaming kids sitting up in the movie theater balcony. Not to mention that the actor recreations were done as if the drawn characters came to life and leapt out of the funny papers to star on the silver screen. Max von Sydow IS Emperor Ming. Brian Blessed IS Prince Vultan. Sam Jones and Melody Anderson came in as the unknowns they needed to be and stole the show. Topol, as Hans Zarkov, and a young Timothy Dalton (Prince Barin) were at the opposite ends of their careers. Dalton was just starting out and Topol had reached his zenith a decade earlier in Fiddler on the Roof. Both wore the campiness extremely well and embraced their characters with a robust fervor. The soundtrack by Queen is one of the best in movie history. That pounding baseline with Freddie Mercury's unbelievable vocals should have won an academy award. The ONLY downfall to this movie was the fact that it did so poorly at the box office and never received the sequel it hinted at in its ending.

We all remember the final message sent by HAL at the end of 2010: ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE. Of course if you read the next book in the series (sorry, there was no movie made), you'd know that we humans just couldn't stay away and had to get hip deep in the soup. Although Europa Report is not part of Arthur C. Clarke's literary universe, it does partially channel his essence.

Since Europa has a liquid ocean similar to that of Earth, it is the most likely place in the solar system where multicellular life probably exists. With that fact in mind, this moon of Jupiter should be high on the bucket list for any explorer of the final frontier. This movie explores that possibility in the form of a pseudo-documentary where most of the footage is provided by the multitude of interior cameras located within the ship, along with some one-on-one interviews or private communications sent back by the crew. This presentation style works for the film, even though the blackouts and/or flickering of the shot when trouble arises can get to be a bit tedious once you are 1/2 way through the movie. If you have seen Cloverfield (2008) or Monster (2008), you'll have an idea of what to expect once things start going south for our adventurers.

And go south it does; fast, hard and unbelievably bad. This has to be the most cursed ship since the Titanic, because everything that can go wrong does and unlike the NASA of Armageddon (1998), these people do not double up on anything and are constantly playing life fast, loose and have no respect for even the simplest of safety protocols: EVA suits with no option of thrusters in case one might get separated from the ship while doing a space walk, never having a person in Ready-Go mode in case one of the astronauts gets into trouble, maintaining a tether to a secure point on the ship because you don't have thruster packs, sending out solo expeditions without a buddy back-up. Seriously, some of these protocols are so basic that people on Earth follow them religiously when SCUBA diving, rock climbing or just going out for a hike in the woods and it is unbelievable that they would not be followed constantly while navigating strange, new worlds or traveling through the depths of space. One might think that this would be because of a lack of space knowledge on the part of the writers, but there is screen after screen of acknowledgements and thanks for assistance from NASA advisors in the ending credits, so I'm not really sure why these issues exist, other than they were necessary to drive the plot and make you feel sympathetic to the cast. Personally, I just spent half my time shouting WTF's at the screen during the climax of every catastrophe.

That being said, I liked the rest of what I saw. The cast was pretty mediocre and all of the characters could have easily been interchanged with other actors without detracting from the film. However, the performances were solid even though the personalities were forgettable. The Science was valid and believable without the writers needing to stretch the laws of physics or relativity to make things work and the premise was outstanding.

All in all, Europa Report does everything well enough to not be bad, but not well enough to be good, especially when matching up against similar movies like Gravity (2013), Interstellar (2014), The Martian (2015) or Prometheus (2012). As long as you go in not expecting this to be a version of 2061: Odyssey Three, you should be fine.

A few years ago, I happened upon the audiobook of an unknown author named Ernest Cline. He had this dystopian novel about how an internet game had become a way of life and the contest that became a quest for all of mankind. The kicker was that because of an obsession of the "Creator," society had re-embraced everything of the 1980s from its tv shows, video games, music and even their wacky fashions. Personally, being a child of the 80s, this was just as much a welcome walk down memory lane that playing GTA: Vice City had been the first time I powered up my PS2 with the game DVD inside. I screamed thru the book and finished it one single driving period across 3 states and then started over to listen to it again the next day. This book quickly became one of my newest favorites and jumped up to become one of my top 5 books of all time.

Fast forward to 2018 and I read on the Interweb that someone had decided to translate my newest favorite book to the silver screen. I honestly felt the same way I had back in my childhood happily unwrapping the best Christmas gift I ever received; My Atari 2600 on December 25th, 1977. Then to put a cherry on the top, I find out that Steven fricking Spielberg will be behind the project. Only George Lucas or John Hughes could even come close to matching Spielberg for his overall influence for the era and for having their finger on the pulse of a generation. No doubt about it, this movie was going to be EPIC! I couldn't wait. This might be the movie to finally get me back into a theater in almost 2 decades.

My attitude started to waver when I saw the first trailer for the film. While everyone was going ga-ga over seeing the Batmobile (even though it was the Batmobile from the 60s) and the A-Team van, along with many other well-known 80s vehicles prepping for the all-out race, I started scratching my head and questioning what I was seeing. Yes, this looked like it would be awesome with so many icons immediately seen, but what was I seeing? This wasn't in the book anywhere, so how were they going to tie this in? Well, that was the point where I decided I'd better wait for the DVD to come out and boy was I glad I did.

Almost NOTHING from this movie matched the novel. Take out the character's names and any reference to the Oasis and I doubt 99 out of 100 viewers would have associated this with RPO. The story starts out in the wrong city, has the characters meet up IRL way before they do in the book, NONE of the challenges are the same and even the fact that the keys allowed you access to a second level of challenges, instead of being a means to the end, were removed from the story completely. How Wade wins the quarter, how and where the main characters fight the final battle and even the fact that not all the main characters live up to the battle, or through it, are misconstrued or completely rewritten. Moreover, most of the epic vehicles that we saw in the preview trailer never made an appearance in the race. Obviously the movie ran into licensing issues and most of the non-Spielberg properties were cut from the film completely.

However, the biggest sin is the complete loss of the vibe of the era that the book radiated. The biggest point for the book was a walk down memory lane while you read it. Every game, song, movie and tv show that were mentioned brought back individual memories of actually sitting down with a bowl of popcorn and watching them for the first time yourself, the emotions the music gave when you danced to songs at the school dance or the victory you felt bringing the Holy Grail back to the Golden Castle with Rhindle hot on your tail. If you take out a couple of songs from RPO's soundtrack, and the Delorean from "Back to the Future," it's just another generic SF adventure, and not a very good one at that.

Honestly, Spielberg has sucked every last drop of life from this property and left its dried husk to blow away in the desert wind. I can't think of any way that he could have made this movie worse, in any possible aspect. Even the special effects are more or less blah and do nothing to get the juices flowing. None of the actors seem really invested in their parts, the dialog is weak and has nothing really to do with the "real"story, the "expert" Gunters know almost nothing about Halliday or the media of the era and even the wrong character ends up indentured by IOI for the wrong reason. Personally I think the 1.5 stars is too generous of a rating, but I can't go any lower with a clear conscious.

If you never read the book, obviously like most of the people who gave this movie gracious scores, I'm sure you'll find it at least a mind diversion from everyday life. All others need to stay away and rewatch a copy of Monty Python and the Holy Grail or War Games instead.

It's always nice to get a history lesson. Unfortunately, having it filtered to meet an agenda turns into nothing more than an attempt to rewrite history to tell a preferred story, which some people might call propaganda, rather than what really happened. I actually read the book, along with living through the actual events, and it differs GREATLY from the film. There was a lot more debauchery and criminal activity involved with Representative Wilson than what was portrayed in the film. He admitted to consistent drug use, illicit affairs with multiple women along with being drunk most of the time that he was awake; all of which were lessened to seem to be nothing more than harmless vices and close personal relationships. Even his fleeing the scene of a very serious traffic accident the night before he flew over to Pakistan, because he was driving drunk, was filtered from the movie. I'm sure the #metoo brigade might also have something to say about his staffing choices and how they all got their roles in his administration...just saying.

Other parts that were left out were why the Democratic Congress were so willing to fund "this" war against the Communists while they fought tooth and nail to defund and expose the Nicaragua Central American situation that was the Republican-supported leg of the Cold War. It was also very nice to try to give Charlie Wilson the sole credit for the collapse of the Soviet Union, but failed to give him the same credit when he dropped the ball and couldn't get the Democratic Congress to continue to support the people of Afghanistan that they became Al-Qaeda and were responsible for the attacks on 9-11.

Having said that, Hanks and Hoffman do a righteous job of portraying their characters, especially Hoffman who does Avrakotos probably better than Avrakotos did Avrakotos. Do yourself a favor and read the book and you too will come to appreciate his excellent exhibition even more. Even being filtered with Blue-tinted lenses, the story is a good one and worthy of your time. Just remember, it's based on a true story, just not the whole true story.

Like most movies, if you've never read the book, You'll Love It. If you have read the book, you'll be like WTF??? Changing the locale of the story from Pittsburgh to California sucks a lot of the life out of it. The deaths of Buddy and Darnell are extremely cheapened without the snowstorm. Combining the LeBay brothers into one character cuts out half of the intrigue and discovery. The confrontation of Buddy and Arnie before he buys the car also loses revelation as the ghost of LeBay infiltrated Arnie and changed him. The resurrection of Christine also loses meaning, along with the reversing odometer, when she just sits there and heals. Even the hamburger scene is lessened without the hitchhiker. Don't even start with the New Year's Eve drive through hell that never happened, the Thanksgiving meal that lasted 5 seconds, discovering Christine AFTER school started and not having Petunia and Sir O-Cedar in the final scene. Even Arnie's death is a cheat, as he was miles away from the final confrontation and Junkins' non-death in the ending scene ruined a plot point.

If you want the real experience, read the book. It's a shame Hollywood only remakes good movies looking to capitalize on previous success. This movie, with the available CGI technology available today, screams out for course correction and a version that is true to the original work. It would only work as a TV mini-series, like the remake of The Shining accomplished in the late 90s. Trying to translate a 500+ page book into a 90 minute movie just doesn't work. The only shame is that Keith Gordon isn't of the proper age to play Arnie anymore. He pulled the character off perfectly. Carpenter worked well with what he had, it just wasn't true to the original source material.

While it's a nice Hard Science Fiction film for the masses, many of the foundational premises made absolutely no sense. Why would the human elite go all the way out to the Kepler system, almost 2000 light years away (a system that also doesn't have any habitable planets in the Goldilocks' Zone), when Mars is right next door and could just as easily maintain a closed-system colonization? That's like driving from New York to California because there was a chemical spill in your hometown and you needed to evacuate. Furthermore, if they have the technology to travel 2000 light years in 10 real-years, why are they still using Apollo-styled reentry capsules instead of something with a controllable reentry ability like a shuttlecraft? Then after only 40 short years (2 generations according to the opening scenes), you decide to try to return to Earth instead of finding a better environment closer to where you are now? I know, most people don't know the location of the Kepler system and its planetary make-up but still, with Google, all things can be learned within mere seconds. Once upon a time, serious Science Fiction authors wrote smart because they knew their audience was also smart. Today, not so much.

After all that, then you start running into the standard fare of post-apocalyptic issues. It's been at least 60 years since the fall of man. The planet is given the appearance of constant marshland that floods every 12 hours with the tides. Where are they getting the diesel to run their boats? Where are they getting the replacement machined parts for the engines? When nobody has seen a tree in years, where are they getting the wood for their arrows, the cloth for their clothes and food for their tables when no coordinated farming can be done and only the seas provide nourishment. You see why Hollywood prefers to stick with Space Opera instead of actual Science Fiction?

Anyway, if you can stop yourself from asking questions and just watch the movie, it's pretty much a mediocre tale. Most of the film is purposely hard to see, to probably save on the budget, often shrouded in fog, mist or darkness. The only actor in the cast that I recognized was Sebastian Roché. Finally the dialog and character interaction was minimal at best. While this may seem so negative, trust me, I've seen worse. It gets a "Meh" rating. Watch it if you have no better options.

At the height of the #Metoo movement, Hollywood came riding in on its white stallion to save the Damsels in Distress (Liberal Actresses who sell themselves like whores for movie parts) from the evil Meanie, who also just happened to be Hollywood (funny how that worked out) and decided to gut every franchise that they could and retool it for female leads in a hope to quell the decades-old status quo and somehow wipe the slate clean before everyone put the mental pieces together of what was really going on. Ghostbusters was one of those movies.

For over a decade there was talk about a third movie starring the original cast, even adapting the Video Game that was released in 2009 for the silver screen all to no avail. Mostly this was because Bill Murray refused to replay his part for whatever reasons, but then Harold Ramis died in 2014 and any further thought simply evaporated. This of course left the Ghostbusters Franchise ripe for the picking. However, this just couldn't be a standard reboot. Wrongs needed to be righted and messages needed to be sent to let the world know that GRRL-Power is superstrong. Therefore, Ghostbusters was turned into a 2-hour marathon of kicking the male gender in the neither-region while trying to convince the audience that anything men can do, women can do better.

Most of the male supporting cast are EXTREMELY feminine (of course never implying that they would be homosexuals because that would be insulting to the homosexuals) who scream, cry and/or are extraordinarily vapid without any possible intelligent thoughts. References to de-balling men are spread throughout the film - including the "Nutcracker" in the ending credits and shooting the big bad ghostie in the family jewels with the proton pack electron streams - and the only "Man" in the movie is the evil psychotic genius determined to end the world because he's been bullied (another recurrent theme message throughout the movie) his entire life.

Of course, since this movie carried the Ghostbusters title, there had to be some nods to the franchise. Curiously, the actor who created the largest roadblock to a sequel got the most screen time in this film (Murray). Every actor from the original, who was still alive, made at least a brief appearance, sans Rick Moranis (I guess nobody needed their taxes done in this film), however if you skipped the in-credits cameos you might have missed some of them. Even Slimer and Stay Puft get some screen time, however, even the Marshmallow Man gets it in the goodies in the end. Gotta keep up the motif, you know.

Besides all that, the plot is pretty predictable, the characters are pretty shallow and no real boundaries are broken. The female black character is the only non-scientist in the group, is the muscle when needed and keeps the white characters informed on the down-low of the "real" city life. For the rest of the crew, instead of three distinct personalities like we had in the first two films, we have a pair of Egons and a Ray/Egon-like character. The Annie Potts replacement (Chris Helmsworth) is her antithesis and is nothing more than beefcake eyecandy for the crew. The CGI effects, which were supposed to be the lifesaver of the film, are moving at such a high rate of speed that you only really see blue and green blurs; completely opposite of what we enjoyed in 1984. The nods to the franchise are nothing more than pandering and some of the cameos would be unrecognizable to those not familiar to how the actors have aged. The film did rate a #1 ranking for the week it was released, however that was because it was the only new film released that week and was achieved through some superior back-room maneuvering and compromise by Sony Pictures and the rest of the Hollywood Film Elite.

Needless to say, Ghostbusters for the new millennium was an extreme franchise disappointment, probably only equaled by the 1998 version of Godzilla (strangely enough, also released by Tri-Star/Sony Pictures). Like that version, if they had made the movie and had it stand on its own credentials, instead of looking to cash-in and ride the coattails of works previously released, it would have been an above average film. Nevertheless, since Hollywood opted for the "easy way," they lose points for the endeavor. Unless you are a female looking for some gender foundation-strengthening, stick with the original. Don't answer the call, let it go to voicemail.

To begin with, ignore the fact that this movie has been released under two different titles. Most cinephiles know that that point alone usually means the movie is scraping the bottom of the barrel. Whether if you know this film as Star Quest or Terminal Voyage means very little. Neither one really sums up the real feel of the movie.

While not a super low-cost release (it was nominated for a Saturn Award in 1994), you can tell that the budget was somewhat limited. The main ship, along with the two single-pilot fighters used during one of the VR sequences, were spacecraft from the 1980 cult-classic Battle Beyond the Stars (A space version of Akira Kurosawa's classic Seven Samurai (1954)).

After you get past that hurdle, the rest of the film holds up effect-wise until the ending scene, which was just graphically horrible. While trying to not give too much away, the simple way of looking at this movie is as it being a retelling of Alien (1979) without having a creature running amok throughout the ship. The cast is solid one, albeit they are only High-B grade quality, There are some unfortunate 90s stereotypes (the Asian Woman is a drug fiend, the Black Commander is mentally weak and unfit for command, the Frenchman is focused on food, the Russian is only thinks with a military mentality etc.) but the introduction of Virtual Reality as a form of entertainment is a bit forward-thinking for the time.

All in all, it isn't that Star Quest / Terminal Voyage does anything terrible wrong. Simply put, it just doesn't do anything novel or fresh. Even the plot twist at the end has been done many times before. It's a nice 80 minute distraction and nothing more.

Translated from Clive Cussler's book of the same name, this version loses everything that work put together. The good half of the book is left on the cutting room floor and the rest is nothing more than a overpriced mess of cinematic garbage. The drama and the thrill of the hurricane sequence, where the Russians commandeer the Titanic and Pitt, with the help of the Navy seals, retakes the ship is completely cut. All of the real drama of "Silver and Gold" never even enters the conversation, Dana and Seagram's relationship has been reduced from rocky marriage to boyfriend status, Gene's journey of madness down the rabbit hole as he mirror's Brewster's quest for the Byzanium and even the nationality of the assassins who chased the miners across the United Kingdom is wrong, mutated or just left out of the discussion completely. Pitt's long-time cohorts of Rudi Gunn and Al Giodino are nowhere to be found, their generic replacements offer nothing for the script and somehow the movie finds a way to not have Dana on the ship, in fact she hardly plays any role in the movie whatsoever, and so we never get to see her much lauded striptease in the grand ballroom of the Titanic. They even found a way to misconstrue known facts at that time by not including the breaking away of the ships boilers and had the wrong smokestack snapping off from the ship before she left the surface of the Atlantic. Nothing about this movie works, even the more-than-capable cast offers no salvation to keep it afloat. For a book-to-movie translation this film gets a 2 out of 10. For general purposes, I'll be generous and give it a 4.

Let me start out by saying that this looks like a medium to create sympathy for the three women still in jail as they are repeatedly refused parole for their life sentences. Manipulated or not, these "girls" brutally murdered innocents in multiple locations and did it willingly. Yes, they were weak, like most of the hippie/boomer generation, were spoiled and wanted all the privileges without any of the responsibilities required of them by society.

This film pushes the touchie-feelie Liberalism that got us into the problems we now have in society. Weak-willed or not, these "harmless girls" viciously slaughtered multiple people and then were portrayed as brainwashed innocents who sweet-talked their guards, played nice-nice with any "outsider" yet had complete control over their actions. We are meant to believe that they had no choice to do what they did and were completely innocent of their malicious crimes. They "turned on, tuned in, dropped out" then looked for sympathy for their actions. This attempt to cancel out actual history for an emotional version of it made my stomach churn. Yes, I realize this film was directed at those who weren't even alive when the Manson Family committed their bloody rampage and most have very little to no actual knowledge of the violence they created in 1969. Nevertheless, this just seems like a way to soften the hearts of the parole board by creating sympathy with the general populace who never saw the brutal crime scene photos.

To begin with, the person who wrote the completely weak synopsis for the movie didn't actually watch it. Cleopatra Jones is the female version of Shaft. Instead of being a Private Eye, she's a Federal Agent working to clean up the streets from the drugs and crime, working with the local cops, for the betterment of the community. She even protects the local "Clean-up Shelter" for those looking to kick the habit. She's fighting the drug war on a global scale, starting out the film in Turkey where the heroin is grown and processed.

Mommy is not a drag queen. Obviously she prefers the female gender for her enjoyments, but she also runs the underworld with an iron glove. Mommy is looking to get rid of anything that stands in her way, including the Drug Treatment Center and Cleo herself. When the Center is raided and threatened to be closed down because of a questionable drug stash found, Cleo is forced to return to the States to get to the bottom of the situation and clear the reputation of the Center.

This is one of those movies that screams for a big budget remake, yet will never happen. The original content is solid, the dialog was adequate and the plot flows well. The only downside was that the martial arts were stunted and stiff, but that is a generational thing most movies in the 70s suffered from compared to today's movies. While I'm not a fan of remakes, I only call for this movie being done because: 1) Nobody actually saw the original. 2) It's categorized as a Blaxploitation film which will make younger generations pass it on by. 3) Hollywood moans and cries about not offering strong leading roles for black or female actresses and this is the perfect medium to promote both.