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D-Defoe
Reviews
War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
Apes are the better humans now?
What I do not like about this movie is the basic message: Humans in comparison to animals cannot be trusted, they show no mercy, the animals reach the higher ethical ground and should survive and reign the world.
How is the goal of this message achieved? First, the whole movie plot is filmed from the perspective of the ape- society, their families, their friends, their love and their sorrows. Unlike the perfectly arranged classical Charleton Heston movies in the 60s which bore a shock element in a dark post-nuclear, post-apocalyptic world, where mankind destroyed itself, this movie aims at showing the worthlessness of human beings. The little blonde girl whose father got shot dead by Cesar, didn't loose a single teardrop for her father, but after a short while befriends herself with the apes, starts crying for a dead gorilla, who gave her a flower, gives water and food to the imprisoned killer of her father, Cesar, and feels herself quite comfortable now growing up as a monkey daughter in the sense of a Tarzan, yet in a considerable lower social position.
Second, other humans, except maybe for Woody Harrelson as a pittiful leader of a small company, do not have character depth in this movie, and are basically the enemies, and except for the little blonde girl, they all die, either killed by monkeys, by themselves, or by a snow avalanche.
What a stupid movie! What a stupid message! Worthliness of human beings is being shown here. Of course the human is bad from nature (described as sinner), as the Bible tells us, but he is not worthless, and as Gods creation is above the animals. Here you see the perversion of this idea to the extent.
Now to the ambiance: Cold, snowy, Alaska-like landscape, no cities, no larger Human or animal dwelling places. Most of the time 5 apes and the little blonde girl take the central part in the non-inhabited boreal wilderness on seek of revenge.
The fights: starting with a tactical nonsense Human uphill assault with well equipped tactical weapons against spears and still being lost. Only 3 humans and a silver-backed Gorilla get captivated, and after a short interrogation get released by Cesar, but later become his fiercest enemies again. Major explosions quite in the end of this almost two hours movie. I spare to pinpoint the many flaws of the fights there, just dumb.
Better title in this case would be: "War for the little ape reserve in the Northern Alaska (or whatever landscape it represented)"
Cesar's portrayal - in the beginning: the good leader - in the middle: the bad revenge seeker - at last: and the ugly Spartacus in the workingcamp Conclusion of the movie: all humans dead (except girlie who feels herself as a monkey) and the long exodus to sunny monkey land next to a big evening-sun-bathed lake, where they all lived happily there after,...oh no, not all, Cesar finally died from his arrow wound, which he survived for the 1000 km trek through the deserts of death Valley (or whatever location it represented), with a last glimpse of his little monkey-boy playing with the little blonde human girl, he died right in the arms of his Orang-Utan friend Murksy, Mopsy...forgot the name. Bad.
1/10
Arrival (2016)
Subzero entertainment, meaning the suspense got lost in the vacuum of space
First, I left the movie after 57 min as it was unsupportable. My lesson: never go to a movie at a last moment decision, especially if you read "SciFi" and a well known ACTION movie actor, as Jeremy Renner is, on the movie poster, as this could be a fake.
Why did I leave so early ? Because I have seen so many movies in my life that I did not expect it to become better and reading the negative comments on IMDb afterwards I got assured doing the right thing.
The movie started already with a dull,foreboding background music reminding me of the gray, clouded days in wintertime on a Monday morning where you have to wake up at 05.00am and prepare to go to work. Always a bad sign for a non-interesting movie for me. Amy Adams plays a supposedly talented linguist, who 2 years ago did work on a top secret mission for the US government to translate Farsi (the language spoken in Iran). And she lost her only child, which we see in many flashbacks. Then the aliens land, on 12 worldwide spots. She learns about this while teaching a bunch of students. The emotional levels of the students and hers about this incident were like mine about this movie: nonexistent. The worst acting I have seen for a while, beginners level of acting. Now to the dumbness of the seen first 57min before I left the cinema:
-after the announcement of alien encounter, almost no one seems to be really frightened, worried, running around, astonished or whatever, it seems like life goes on as it always did. Is this logical ?
-the colonel plays a 1 min audio recording with alien language out of the blue sky and expects the linguist Amy to decipher it in less than two minutes otherwise he goes for another linguist. Is this logical ?
-the big upright floating pebble stones (alien ships) come from whatever planet to earth, have sophisticated anti gravity, but are unable to build up communication in a sensible way ? Why do the have a 90 degree inverted gravity in the entrance tunnel 10 m straight above the ground. They could have landed on the flat pebble side, save combustible and make the entrance for the humans easier as gravity would be then parallel to the earth's gravity.
-While I would have been staring in awe at the spaceship, emotionless linguist Amy passes by on arrival uninterested as if she was used to these sightings. Maybe she plays an autistic ?
- Amy and Jeremy Renner (the physicist) are being let to enter the spaceship without any introduction and preparation,on what they might expect (differing gravity, alien appearance...) ?
-What the heck was the chirping bird's role in the cage in the situation of encounter ? Why did Amy not introduce the bird first instead of herself ? "B-i-r-d, bird"
- Wow! The floating "octopussies" were in fact "HEPTAPODS" ! (7 legs) This revelation in suspense was almost unbearable ! (How many legs did the Independence day "calamares" have ? Were they somehow relatives, as they also had some 12 flying saucers landing around the world)
-"Contact" Jodie Foster,...uh, "Arrival" shaky-hands-constantly-panting-Amy Adams removes her exposure suit just to show her face to the eyeless "heptapod" ? Why did she not take a big pin-up poster and stick it to the glass panel with her signature under it? Maybe also an alphabet and numbers poster with a Rosetta stone "Easy learning-English" audio-recording. Would have saved them a few trips inside the ship. Do names really enhance the understanding of foreign languages ? "Me Tarzan, this Jane" Response: "OO"
-The "O" Rohrschach-Circles must have been developed by a famous "heptapod" psychologist. Have I mentioned earlier why the further developed foreign race who visits earth does not make first language attempts and waits instead for the inferior race to struggle for it ? But on the other hand first-world tourists to the third-world-countries also expect the host country to speak in the visitors language.
-How much I longed for a human nuclear-rocket-attack or something exploding, but this wish was not fulfilled in the 57 min.
-The production expenses for this movie must have been below 1 million, as it played in a cemented tunnel, in a military barrack, in a university, in someone's garden and somewhere on a green field. The cgi for a floating pebble stone a two "heptapods" was below nowadays computer games.
-imdb ratings are flooded by false high ranking comments and votes since the last decade, with assumed, paid 10.000 to 20.000 "false" voters. IMDb ratings have lost their ground for me. This movie is definitely not a place 98 of top 250 movie, as it is junk. Even "Contact" was more exciting. -People, be warned, this was the first movie EVER, where I left the cinema before the end, because it was endlessly boring. <0/10
Star Trek (2009)
Good main actors - Bad story- No science
Being a large consumer of any seriously mentionable Sci-Fi-movie here my opinion: The choice of Kirk, Bones (in German: "Pille" for "pill") and Spock was very good,similarities in behavior and faces were existent.Medium choice:Uhura and Sulu Worst choice:Chekov (although I had fun with his Russian dialect),and Scotty (too pale. The real Scotty was my favourite) The real Spock was unfortunately too senile in this movie(78),but in former times unquestionable great.The overall story dumb in many aspects,especially the revenge background, especially because Nero could had used the 25 y of being thrown back to warn his planet and his wife (she was maybe young but still living). A flat villain a one dimensional story with one sense: force melding all the old crew members of Star Trek together within hours.
Scientifically many,maany,maaaaaany strange inventions and assumptions:
Topic Singularities: -Singularities in their destructive behavior swallow the whole Vulcan planet from within in a matter of just a few minutes.Why was the suction effect like that of a funnel in a sandbox? The singularity in the core of the planet would attract the matter around it just equally and form maybe a crushing and shrinking sphere-not a funnel.
-Lovely senile Mr.Spock(maybe because of the German translator he sounded senile) managed to shrink a supernova with a mere drop of liquid red matter contained in who knows what kind of containment field(left for the scientific public to discover afterwards), within a small spaceship.But
has anyone thought of the energies produced by a supernova?He would have been burned to ashes, even the Romulan planet exploded within seconds. In what containment device he put that little red drop (looked like in "Blade")? Why not beam it ?
-The supernova being so gratefully sucked into that black-worm-hole-thingy and nero and poor "too-old-for-that-sh. (cross-reference: Lethal weapon)" Spocky afterwards...where was the amount of that supernova-energy in the other galaxy ? And why Spocky and the others didn't get crushed ?.
-Megalol on the final encounter with the red matter...all was spilled within the Nero-ship...one should expect the the whole universe including the cinema theater and its audience should be sucked into Nihilation...but as always the omnipotent remedy to all scientific and household problems is: throw in as much as you can, best if you do it with your warp cores (especially because warp cores have more energy than supernovas)!!A lot helps a lot (this is also my credo when washing my clothes with detergents...)!
Topic Beaming: -Sometimes beaming is just a matter of how dear the actors are to your heart sometimes necessary for bending things into the correct order. Beaming moving objects is maybe difficult but omnipotent Russian 17-year-old-nintendo-playing chekov is well trained in doing that with the joysticks just in time in case of beaming Sulu and Kirk up. Strange enough, that he doesn't manage to beam Spocks mother up, since she just started to fall.I think Chekov didn't like Spocks mother.That must be the reason.He never mentioned it.
-Beaming towards far away, moving objects is accomplished in just a few minutes? But how long was Kirk unconscious in that rescue pod?A few hours?During that time how far did Enterprise travel?Assuming traveling only with light speed (in fact it is more than that I know)where just 18.000.000-km are gained each minute,Scotty is able to locate the ships interior to beam Kirk and himself inside. Interesting enough, that he was not beamed into the warp core or ships hull but inside a big watertank. Spocky was maybe wiser than that and beamed himself directly onto earth since distance does not to seem to be a matter here.
Topic coincidence -what lucky coincidences sometimes exist I experience in my own life, and so it must be like meeting an old school chap somewhere in the Antarctic, when Jim meets Spock on the otherwise (except for an outpost and monsters from StarWars)uninhabited planet "Hoth" (cross ref. "Star wars Ep. V"). -Since sometimes there happen clusters of coincidences, why not add one more: Scotty is also there with a wimp who reminded me of Oompa Loompa (cross-ref. Charlie and the chocolate factory) and indeed it is ooompa loompa !!! What a coincidence !
Topic clichés: -Alien ships must always been constructed and designed dangerously outside, but even more inside. Even if it was a mining ship something like a railing on the walkways never evolved. Poor future workers will slip on banana skins and free fall to death.
-Sympathetic Eric-Nero-(burning must Rome)-Bana must die a dreadful sucking death within a singularity (although he survived it the first time unharmed). Depends maybe of the size of the red blobs
-Superhero kids are omnipresent nowadays,and so 10 year old Kirk jumps out of a car falling down a cliff. Young Anakin Sykwalker was as tough as that too in the pod race. This is omnipresent glorification of "cult" heroes. Maybe Anakin Skywalker build his first organic nanobot within the womb of his mother...oh sorry I drifted off to another strangely similar movie in many facets.
-This "funny" swelling of the hands and lips and clumsy acting due to allergic reactions is well known in "Hitch-the date doctor", "Star Wars -episode I" with Jar-Jar (but in different context) and many other movies. Creating jokes is just taking them from a list of everfunny gags and converting them to the different settings
-Always, ALWAYS, Aliens who attack earth start in the United States, mostly in California, because of the beaches, the sunshine and the nice dolphins. Strange I missed the American flag...but it must have been somewhere hidden to my filtering senses.
So my global impression: 3/10 for the many colors I have seen.