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Finch (2021)
Someone wrote this script while sitting in Starbucks
Based on watching the trailer, I expected this movie to be a lackluster version of Cast Away, with the robot filling in for Wilson.
It is almost that.
Despite having more plot holes than a great big piece of Swiss cheese, being a predictable road movie with forced tension and drama, and leaving the viewer puzzled as to why anyone would spend two hours watching this movie, it is sweetly told, and therefore fairly enjoyable.
We are stuck trying to figure out what happened and what's going on, given bits of clues and information. Solar flares have poked holes in the Earth's ozone so that ultraviolet radiation instantly burns any living thing exposed to direct sunlight. That's a neat premise. Despite the super damaging ultraviolet rays, car windows and windshields apparently provide adequate protection. That seems suspicious. Finch and a few other lucky/unlucky people continue to survive, foraging for scraps of food and staying out of the sunlight.
They missed a humor opportunity. They could have named Fred, Wilson. That would have at least gotten a chuckle.
We are to suppose, I suppose, that Finch's RV runs on solar energy, and it gets enough to not only run during the day, it also operates fine at night, and it continues to operate even after driving he RV under a low overpass and severely damaging the solar panels. His naked body double is thin, and the clothed Finch is clearly well fed. There is no shortage of water or electricity. Wind and solar are all that's needed. Maintenance is not an issue.
Miraculously, and not explained, as the guys get close to San Francisco, the killer ultraviolet rays no longer exit. We are to suppose, I suppose that the sky over California is not affected by sky over the Midwest. The huge dust storms that plagued them at the beginning of the movie no longer exist. The sky is blue, and all seems suddenly magically well. Someone wrote this script while sitting in Starbucks.
So, the story is forced, predictable, drawn out, and not particularly satisfying, and yet, if you turn off your adult brain, and switch over to child brain, it's a sweetly told story. We love Tom Hanks, even when he does preposterous movies, so that's worth an extra review point.
The Watcher (2022)
THE ENDING IS LIKE BROCCOLI IN YOUR TRICK-OR-TREAT BAG
We enjoyed the first six episodes. The writing and acting were rather good, and the suspense of finding out "who done it" was nicely spun and redirected throughout the first six episodes.
The ending was unsurprisingly disappointing. Like many streaming movies in this genre, the writers drag out the suspense, only to disappoint the viewers with an unfulfilling ending. It felt like the writers had a half a dozen possible endings, and they decided to use all of them, like a Fourth of July fireworks finale.
We watch these kinds of shows because we want a wow surprise ending where we say, "Who'd a thought it would be that?" Instead, we get, "Ugh, we knew that in the first episode." In the end we know no more than we knew at the start. That felt like a waste of time.
A better ending, in my opinion, would have been to end it with us finding out that the dad was really "John", and the story he was relating to the therapist, was all in his head, and he was in a mental institution. Or just leave it at the storyline where the private investigator was the instigator. Some real finality was expected and desperately needed as a payoff for watching all the episodes.
These/this writers/writer need to binge watch "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," so they can learn how to write a good mystery. Their blah ending was yucky, to put it nicely. It was like getting broccoli in your trick-or-treat bag.
Don't Look Up (2021)
This is a good movie on many levels.
This movie is like two movies in one. It is a metaphorical satire on how our government is run by rich people that run our incompetent, self-centered politicians, and it's a disaster movie about the end of human on Earth.
I am a bit bothered that it is a rip-off of the Armageddon/Deep Impact story about an astronomer that discovers that the Earth is about to be destroyed by a large incoming object. That's forgivable, given the way the story is told.
As a satire this movie is disturbing because it is only a few inches over the reality line that divides satire and truth. Many of our politicians really are inept, self-serving and corrupt, and much of what our government does in the name of patriotism is really driven by the decisions of the rich and their big business interests.
Meryl Streep is excellent as a Trump-like ego-centric unqualified president and Jonah Hill is great as her Trump Jr-like son. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence are great as the only two sane main characters in an Alice in Wonderland crazy, insane world.
The mix of serious characters trying to make sense of the satirical characters all around them is not unlike what it feels like for most of us that are trying to make sense of the world.
The big production political patriotic entertainment events, the TV drama over celebrities' lives, and the entertainment/no journalism journalists portrayed in this story are not too far off from the real thing.
Great actors, good writing, creative storytelling, and a satisfying ending, despite all Earthling humanity and life having been destroyed, make for an unusually good movie.
We enjoyed this movie on Christmas Eve, with eggnog milkshakes with rum, so that added to the fun and movie enjoyment.
The Starling (2021)
Ewww Peww, Such a waste for such great actors
How could a movie with so many good actors be such hard to stomach yawner?
Melissa McCarthy, Chris O'Dowd, Kevin Kline, and Timothy Olyphant are great in almost everything they are in. This story, not so much.
For people that like a reason to be sad, this is a good choice.
These actors are best at comedy/drama and good writing. This story is about the opposite of those things.
The movie begins on a light, humorous, and happy note, then quickly nose dives into never ending sadness.
The supporting characters are painful stereotypes of therapists, grocery store workers, neighbors, receptionists, etc. Nothing imaginative in any of them. The writers pulled them out of the stereotype character box.
And like so many movie formulas, this one spends 95% of its time being hopelessly sad and lost, only to magically find the happy ending in the last few minutes. Puuuuleeeeese!!
A high school student could have written this movie.
The talents of the these fine actors is wasted here.
Not a move for their fans to enjoy. At all.
I Care a Lot (2020)
This Movie Will Leave You With a Yucky Aftertaste
This movie will leave you with a yucky aftertaste.
This movie has no heroes. Everyone is a villain. There is no one to root for.
The Russian Mafia guys are inept and evil. The two women scammers are mean, heartless, detestable and evil. Even the old women, who we initially sympathize with, turns out to be part of the Russian Mafia.
This was potentially a really good story had it gone in the right direction. The two villainesses could have been rewarded with some deserved consequences, and their victims could have been released and revenged.
It was not to be. The Russian Mafia guys have unlimited cash and power, yet they are unable to convince a family court judge to reconsider his ruling. They cannot influence the nursing home director to see things their way. They take an all-thumbs approach to dealing with their adversary. Their Better Call Saul type attorney turns out to be a helpless bungler.
The writers want us to like these two criminal women, and they give us nothing to like about them. They apparently could not decide if they wanted to write a comedy or a drama, so they created a jumbled mess.
The story is stupid and painful to watch. It goes from promising to extremely disappointing.
The Undoing (2020)
This Series Should Have Ended with Episode Five. The Ending is a Disappointment Grande
SPOILER ALERT. MUCH OF THIS REVIEW IS ABOUT HOW THE STORY ENDS.
SPOILER ALERT
The first 5 episodes were pretty good. This show works hard not to feel like a one-hour story crammed into 6 hours.
The actors are good, and the acting is good. The writing isn't bad. The two actors that play the two sons do a good job of acting pretty much like real kids.
Objections
1. Movie makers use "rain" to set the tone and mood of a scene. I get that. This movie way, way over does the use of rain, to the point of, "oh no, not again".
2. Clearly the onsite scenes, shot in the prison and at the courthouse, were all shot at the same time, even though they are supposed to take place on various days. That's forgivable, and it doesn't detract too much from the story, though it's hard not to think about it when watching the same scenes repeating in different episodes.
3. The police detectives are too much like TV police. They interrogate the mom, without an attorney present, although they think she may be a suspect or an accomplice.
4. The mom has a high priced, supposedly very competent attorney, yet she doesn't request to have her present when the police are questioning her.
5. Some of the emotional scenes are just too much of too much.
6. Still, overall, I rate the first five episodes pretty good. The final episode is a real disappointment, especially with all the build up to some startling, unforeseen conclusion.
7. Who was the murderer? Was it the mistress's husband? He had the motive and the opportunity. Was it the grandpa? He was mean enough, and he hated his son in law. Was it the trusted girl friend? It was suggested that she may have had a relationship with the murdered mistress. These people were all prime suspects.
8. If the story had ended at the end of episode five, that would have made an excellent ending. The scene is the 12-year-old son, peacefully sleeping and the mom coming into his dark bedroom to check on him.
The mom walks over to the son's closest, kneels and opens her son's case, and in his case is the hammer, the murder weapon. Flash to the son, lying in bed, with his eyes now wide open, and unblinking.
My wife and I both exclaimed in unison, "Whoa, it was the son???. Wow!!!" That would have been a great Hitchcockian ending. Leave the audience hanging on that possibility, and the murderer being someone no one suspected.
But no, it was not to be.
SPOILER ALERT...SPOILER ALERT
The murderer turns out to be the dad, the prime suspect. Boo. I wasted 6 hours waiting to find out what they could have told us in the first episode. It felt like one those long Internet videos that promises a great surprise that goes on and on and never delivers. Boo and Blah.
Not only that, but the final episode also includes a double-cross by the wife who volunteers to testify for her husband's innocence. We find out that the wife has told her friend the truth about her husband's emotional and mental incapacity, and her friend has shared that information with the prosecuting attorney. The prosecuting attorney uses the information to discredit the wife's testimony. Why the heck didn't the high priced, professional defense attorney question the defense attorney on where she got her information? The wife should have been charged with perjury. She, a professional psychologist, testified that her husband was incapable of violence, and then the prosecuting attorney discredits her testimony with the wife's own set up /true testimony. The case should have been ruled a mistrial right then and there. That's bad writing, and it's bad story telling. It stinks up the whole story. Pew.
The upside for the final episode, is the closing chase scene. That's pretty good, and we see very good acting from the dad and son.
Other than that, by this point I was sighing, "I wasted six hours on this?"
Capone (2020)
Incredibly Lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnng and Sloooooooooooooooooooow and Painful to watch
Occasionally I watch a movie and wonder, "How in the heck did this movie get made?"
This is one such movie. I can't imagine a director, producer, and production staff screening the production version of this movie and thinking it as anything close to good.
A movie about Al Capone, at any stage of his life, would potentially be interesting if it told us something about Capone as a person, gave us insight into his character, and told us some interesting history. This movie does none of that.
This is a movie of lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng silences. The phone calls that some one answers and no one on the other end of the line speaks until there has been a lonnnnnnnnnnng pause. The scenes where nobody speaks for a lonnnnnnnng time. The long periods of nothingness simply add more nothingness to an empty story. Were the creators of this film paid by the minutes of film?
This movie uses all the movie devices, rain and then more rain, cute innocent kids, stereotypical mob guys, stereotypical feds, stereotypical house help, the big dream sequence (the only real action in the entire movie), etc. And horrible make up.
Any of these overused devices can be overlooked in a well-acted, well directed, well told movie. This movie has none of these qualities.
Al Capone, I am sure in his heyday, was an interesting and violent character that would have (and has quite often) made a great movie personality.
Here we see only a demented and empty old man (who is only 47). Maybe Big Al was like this in his final days. If he was, he wasn't much to see.
Why did people invest money in making this movie, and who did they think would enjoy seeing it?
So, I am back to the original question, "How in the heck did this movie get made?"
I'm giving this movie 2 stars because the scenes and scenery are well shot.
Away (2020)
To heck with scientific accuracy. Scientific accuracy be darned.
At 186,000 miles a second, it takes light and radio signals about 5.4 minutes to travel one million miles. So, a roundtrip message to someone and their response would take about 11 minutes.
Every million miles our travelers travel should add 11 minutes to their transmissions. Mars is 33 million to 140 million miles away from the earth, depending on where the two planets are in their orbits. That means that even at their closest, it would take six minutes for a roundtrip message, and it would take 26 minutes when the two planets are at their furthest.
I get it, that including transmission time in the story would make it vastly more boring. Still, it sticks in my craw that they don't come up with explanation for this, at least poetic license.
Beyond that annoyance, the Away stories are overdramatic, histrionic, artificially intense, and overacted. I like that.
This is one of those "something for everyone" series. It has the emotional poppycock for people that like that stuff, the verbal interplay and science fiction for those of us who like that stuff. That makes it a series my wife and I can watch together, and both find something to like.
The space effects are good. I especially like the moon panorama. The lack of simple space physics takes closing one-eye and tongue biting.
Overall, after five episodes, we're enjoying Away enough to watch it again tonight.
Away (2020)
To heck with scientific accuracy. Scientific accuracy be darned.
At 186,000 miles a second, it takes light and radio signals about 5.4 minutes to travel one million miles. So, a roundtrip message to someone and their response would take about 11 minutes.
Every million miles our travelers travel should add 11 minutes to their transmissions. Mars is 33 million to 140 million miles away from the earth, depending on where the two planets are in their orbits. That means that even at their closest, it would take six minutes for a roundtrip message, and it would take 26 minutes when the two planets are at their furthest.
I get it, that including transmission time in the story would make it vastly more boring. Still, it sticks in my craw that they don't come up with explanation for this, at least poetic license.
Beyond that annoyance, the Away stories are overdramatic, histrionic, artificially intense, and overacted. I like that.
This is one of those "something for everyone" series. It has the emotional poppycock for people that like that stuff, the verbal interplay and science fiction for those of us who like that stuff. That makes it a series my wife and I can watch together, and both find something to like.
The space effects are good. I especially like the moon panorama. The lack of simple space physics takes closing one-eye and tongue biting.
Overall, after five episodes, we're enjoying Away enough to watch it again tonight.
The Goldfinch (2019)
Not a bad way to spend a couple of hours of entertainment time
This is not a movie I would have watched from beginning to end, on my own. For my taste, it's too emotional and slow.
My wife and I watched it together. We are always trying to find a movie or series we can both get into.
Once I got caught up in this story, I liked it. Luke Wilson seems to be finding divorced father roles lately. He does a good job with this one.
The kid versions of the characters are quite likeable, though they don't act like real world kids, but hey, it's a movie.
The adult versions of the characters are less likeable, and the end of the movie follows what seems like a typical movie ho-hum, predictable path.
It's an okay story, and not a bad way to spend a couple of hours of entertainment time.
The camera work, acting, and scenery are all very good.
Arizona (2018)
YUCK, ABSOLUTELY SICK, DEMENTED YUCK
What sick, demented mind came up with this movie, and who, in their right mind, would consider it any kind of a comedy?
There's nothing humorous or even entertaining in this story. It's a sick, sad story about a sick demented man and his victims.
The movie starts off flat, and it looks to have some potential then it dives into ghoulish darkness and never recovers. It had the potential to be a dark comedy with dark humor. Instead it very quickly becomes a terrible story about a terrible person and his victims. This movie is Inexcusably appalling, and it is undeniably no comedy.
I mean this as no joke, the fact that the people who wrote, produced and directed this movie walk among us, is a scary thought.
Jojo Rabbit (2019)
Whoa, what a mix of perspectives and emotions
This is a horrible movie and a terrifically fantastic movie all rolled into one.
We were not sure what to expect. It seemed to be pure satire and comedy at the start then switched into a much more serious and violent story as it moved along.
I decided, about halfway into the movie, that what we were seeing was WWII Germany through the eyes of a ten-year old boy, including his imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler.
Once I accepted that perspective, the movie made sense, and its sad reality became more apparent and heartrending.
It is an extremely audacious statement of the NAZI and the war's horror, when shown through its filter of the eyes of a ten-year old boy. It is exceptionally creative.
Great acting. The crazy mix of nuttiness in the midst of brutality is a mix of sugar and vinegar in the story telling.
The actor playing Hitler deserves high marks for his zeal, and the mix of real Hitler speech and intensity merged with a little boy's personality.
Deadwood (2019)
It's a Good Movie
We're big Deadwood fans, and we were looking forward to this story.
Making a sequel that captures the spirit of the original is always a tough target to hit. This one does it pretty well.
It's sad seeing the aging of the characters and the actors. That's life.
As always, the Deadwood story has great villains, heros, good guys and bad guys, writing, action, editing, direction, timing, and story telling.
Bullock has absorbed some of Raylan Givens' cool and tough personality qualities, and I suspect may have been one of Raylan's ancestors.
If you love Deadwood the series you'll enjoy Deadwood the movie.
First Man (2018)
Almost Half Good. It's No Apollo 13
It's a Hollywood formula movie.
The sad scenes are punctuated with obligatory Hollywood rain (while the sun is shining).
Armstrong's wife is shown as emotionally burdened and burdensome. Her husband is an astronaut, and she's upset he may not come back from the moon. Didn't she know he was in a dangerous job?
The Earth scenes were drawn out, slow, and emotionally heavy.
The space scenes are pretty well done.
The humanity of the characters is lost in the overly dramatic story telling. The movie lacks reality and believability.
It's too heavy and slow. It could have been so much better.
I know there was comraderie among the astronauts. That's barely suggested in this movie.
It's no Apollo 13.
Aquaman (2018)
This is an excellent escape from reality movie
We saw an advance preview, and I thought this movie was great. It's the same lame every action movie story stuck inside some great special effects, GGI, clever wrting and terrific movie sets.
It's fun to watch. If you're going to see this movie, leave your critical thinking at the door. Grab a big bucket of pop corn and a large drink, turn off your thoughts, and enjoy the action, story, cool action, and great writing.
Dog Years (2017)
This is a very good movie, once you get past the start
Until the "Smokey and the Bandit" scene, I was about to turn this movie off. It started as a sad and slow story about an old lonely has-been actor who travels to Nashville for what he thinks is a big deal award ceremony that turns out to be and extremely low budget nerdy fan festival. Vic/Burt gets drunk and angry. We see that he is a sad, faded shadow of his former self. Ick.
The moment we find old Bert seated in the passenger seat next to young Bert driving the black "Smokey and the Bandit" Firebird, the movie comes to life.
The relationship between old Burt (Vic) and Lil adds a real charm to both characters. It becomes more than a buddy road movie. They both come away with a new view of life.
Burt reliving his life's great memories both as Vic and as Burt touches all his fans. Of course, the movie is about aging for all of us, and it delivers that message in a sweet and powerful way.
It's worth seeing
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
It takes you somewhere other than where you expected it to go
I watched this movie on the airplane flight home last night. Early into the movie I was ready to switch to something else. I decided to stick with it for a bit longer, and it turned out to be a worthwhile decision.
This movie takes you on a trip. The story is not about the three billboards or the death of Mildred's daughter. It's a story that's a mini life story about each of its key characters, Willoughby, Dixon, James the dwarf, and even the supporting characters. The tone makes me think of Breaking Bad or Boardwalk Empire. The big story is just a frame to insert the personal stories into. It's like binge watching a Netflix series all in one movie. By the end, you feel like you've come to know and understand the people, who in the beginning of the movie seemed like strange, mean, hateful people.
It's a great movie because, like most great movies, it breaks with expectations and takes you somewhere other than where you thought it would go.
Bridge of Spies (2015)
Good Entertainment if You Don't Need Historical Accuracy or Reality
We enjoyed this movie on a purely entertainment level. If you don't have to have historical accuracy and logic, this will do for that.
The movie is filled with mucho movie clichés, for example, a dark stormy, rainy night to set the anxious scene for the shady CIA agent following Tom Hanks, cold blizzardy snow to set the East Germany post war gloom and danger, mean/cold/evil CIA agents, a judge that doesn't care about following proper legal proceedings, WW II era German soldiers, cold and calculating Soviets, 1950's innocence in America, Commie hating Americans, unquestioning allegiance to the Military, and of course everything has to be based on a time deadline and come down to a happy ending at the last moment.
The first part of the movie made me uncomfortable because of its historical inaccuracy and exaggerations. Once I stopped looking for accuracy and reality as necessities, I settled down to just being entertained.
Gary Powers clinging to his spinning out of control U-2 was both exciting and silly. A person attached to an out of control airplane that was falling at +400 mph would be torn apart. I believe the historically accurate story was less exciting. Gary Powers ejected after his plane was hit, failed to destroy the aircraft and take his suicide pill, and was captured, to the embarrassment of the U.S.
The movie takes a long time to move through the story that we know has to have a happy ending. It's filled with almost there, then failure, then almost there again. That's the main pattern of the telling.
Tom Hanks is always Tom Hanks, no matter who he plays these days. He's no longer the intense actor we saw in "Big", "Forrest Gump", "Cast Away", or his other blockbuster masterpieces.
The overall theme of the story was a good one. Spying was considered a necessary part of the Cold War, and both sides denying that they were spying was part of the game.
History loses something in the telling.
Interstellar (2014)
This Movie Steals from Everywhere
So many movies are just a rehash of other movies. The many plots are dropped into a Hollywood blender and the writers make a movie of out whatever comes out.
That said, for this movie, the writers did a great job. Sure Albert Einstein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C.Clark and other great scientists and science fiction writers are rolling their eyes in disgust and amazement at a movie that plays fast and loose with science and physics.
Still, if you're willing to put all expectations of believability aside, this is really good entertainment.
The movie has some of the best actors, good acting, good writing and really nice special effects. If your goal is to be entertained with a good story, music and special effects, this is movie worth seeing.
Noah (2014)
It's not a bad movie, and it's not a great movie.
This story re-writes the Bible and typifies today's movies. The characters and script are formula driven. It has Transformers in it. It has Darth Vader (in the role of (Tubal-cain). It has Obie Won Kenobi (in the role of Methuselah). Noah is sort of a confused Luke. We know what's going to happen before it happens, because we've seen it over and over and over again in movie after movie.
It's always amazing how the characters, living on bare subsistence in the wilderness, manage to wear make-up, have nice haircuts, and stay healthy and beautiful.
I know it's a movie, but a touch of realism would be good.
All that said, if you don't mind the same grind over again, this movie on Blu-Ray on a Saturday night with some good snacks and drink can be okeydokey entertainment. Just turn off your brain, open a bag of chips, and absorb the action and emotion, and fantasy.
Her (2013)
IF you like Romantic stories, THEN you will love this movie. IF not, THEN not
This is not my kind of movie, but I liked it anyway. The story has so many different messages intertwined in it; our relationships are all in our own minds, all relationships have a life cycle from beginning to end, technology is allowing us live in our own heads and personal world instead of reaching out to others, mostly, we can only control our own side of a relationship, and sometimes not even that, our relationships are defined largely as reflections of ourselves, and many other messages.
This story seemed to have a bit of a Woody Allen-bizarre flavor to it, without the comedy. If you're a romantic, or in a romantic soul searching mood, this movie can be pleasant and insightful.
I like that the characters are a lot like real people, which is not a quality found in many movies. Of course, there is a dramatic slant added to the personalities to make the story telling work, still it's content most people can identify with.
It's not a shoot'em up action movie, and it has no monsters or evil villains, so people who like those kinds of movies will not like this. Still it is a movie that many men and women can find themes to connect with.
3 Days to Kill (2014)
It's a "RED" or "Die Hard" wannabe. It's not that good, but not too bad
It's not a bad movie. Mostly, it seems like it doesn't know what kind of movie it wants to be.
I think it thinks it wants to be like RED, a movie with comedy and romance paired with PG rated killings and violence. It's not quite as good at that as RED, to put it lightly. The contrast between the two genres is too great. One moment Kevin is shooting and beating up bad guys and driving wildly through Parisian traffic over sidewalks, blowing up cars and knocking the bad guys off a bridge, and then he's a confused, loving, husband/father who can't figure out how to make his family life work.
Taken as a movie, it's not bad entertainment, and it does have some great action scenes. The family moments get a bit bogged down and long, but still make a nice story on their own. The scene where Kevin, superhero like, saves his daughter from what looks like an about to happen gang rape, is good action and has a nice emotional touch.
I watched this movie on Blu-Ray, on a big TV with a good sound system. That added nicely to the movie.
You'd probably enjoy watching this movie. As others have said, be prepared to suspend disbelief and accept that it IS a movie.
It's not, in my opinion, Kevin's best work. He, like a lot of aging actors, has gotten into an acting pattern, and doesn't seem to pour himself into a role the way the younger Kevin did. Another actor might have been a better fit.
This could have been a good "Die Hard" sequel with Bruce Willis. That would have been a much better vehicle than his last "Die Hard" attempt.
Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013)
It's a Great Movie IF you like stupid
For people who think that stupid is funny, this movie has more than enough of that. It has way, way too much stupid.
The movie has a few good moments. Using the pretty good storyline, it could have been a much more appealing movie. It has a great cast of actors as well as a nice group in cameos, but most all of it is wasted by being over stupefied. It's as if the writers challenged themselves to saturate the movie with sickingly stupid lines and scenes.
This movie was so bad that we almost ditched it early, but decided to stick with it through to the end. As it moved along it got a bit better and more entertaining, but never reached the point of good. The 70's music was the best part.
Mostly the whole movie is a very long Saturday Night Live sketch, one joke stretched out over an entire movie. This cast can be so much better than this movie lets them be.
Gravity (2013)
This IS a GOOD Movie
I watched this movie Saturday night while I was home alone. I watched it on my 70 inch HDTV with a Sony sound system and on Blu-ray. It was excellent. The CGI is wonderful, and the suspense and storytelling is very well done. I was willing to look past some of the unreal unscience for the sake of the story. I doubt that many astronauts wear only their sexy underwear inside their spacesuits. Why would Sandra take off her space suit inside the space station, not knowing the amount of damage she would encounter once inside? Could someone accidentally start a catastrophic fire in the ISS just by accidentally brushing by something? No matter, the story was all good. I saw a brief cut from Mission to Mars from 2000 and darn if there isn't the exact same scene of the man telling the woman to let him go to save herself. Still it's all good stuff. We can forgive some of the hokey stuff and unlikely or even unpossible stuff in exchange for good entertainment. It is a movie, after all. If you want reality, go outside.
After Earth (2013)
Um, Not So Good
The special effects and scenery are very nice. This story makes me think of an episode of The Rifleman with Lucas and Mark McCain. Mark and Lucas (Pa) are stuck in the desert, Luke has a broken leg and can't go on, so he sends Mark to get help. There are dangerous animals and natural threats to deal with.
This movie lacks originality and imagination. The part of the movie with the big bird flying off the cliff is a direct rip off from Avatar. Will Smith is capable of much better, and we expect much better from him. This is not a great movie, but we still we kind of enjoyed it with a bowl of popcorn and some good wine.
It is not unbearable, but it good have been much better.