Change Your Image
davphv
Reviews
The Hateful Eight (2015)
Hogwash
The only thing this movie has going for it is that it feels like it could be the Old West.
There are so many things wrong about this movie.
The dialogue is overly wordy and inane. Real westerners would not talk like that.
They didn't have PEN PALS in the 1870s. They didn't make SNOW ANGELS either.
They didn't have a poison back then that worked that fast, and from a couple of sips of coffee.
No one would build the out buildings so far away from the house. It's like they didn't know about winter. I guess they didn't want the stench to invade the atmosphere of the big impressive ranch house built in the middle of nowhere are run by a woman.
How could the gang have cleaned up the mess they made in less than four hours? There was blood and brains everywhere.
Jackson would have died within minutes from blood loss with an injury like that, but he hangs on for at least a half hour.
I guess people just like Tarentino's movies so much they overlook obvious flaws.
Enterprise (2001)
Timeline out of place
Star Trek Enterprise is a somewhat believable space opera with each episode in chronological order.
I've only seen the first two seasons, so this narrative is based on those episodes.
There are aspects about this series that just do not seem possible.
Klingons appear occasionally even though Original Star Trek (OST) would seem to have had first contact with them.
Same with Romulans and Borg. What the hell are doing in this series?
The Temporal Cold War is another out of character plot device. Time travel is best left to far later Star Trek timelines.
On the good side, the Vulcan are portrayed as you would expect as a veteran species helping the fledgling Earth along. The Enterprise crew are shown to have fears and doubts along with courage.
Seems like every ST series has to have a prolonged war somewhere along the way. The third season (not seen by me yet) promises a war with the. Xindi.
My order of favorites of ST series: 1) Next Generation 2) Discovery 3) Original 4) Enterprise 5) Deep Spavce Nine. There are newer series, like Discovery and Picard, but those also have scripts that are just not timeline believable.
The Homesman (2014)
Pleasant surprise
The real worth of a movie is to make you see the actors not as themselves, but as the characters they portray.
The movie is about three farmer women in western Nebraska who succumb to madness due to the bleak circumstances in which they find themselves. This is an aspect of the West that rarely gets any play.
A Methodist church across the Missouri River agrees to take in these three women, but somehow they have to get across semi-wild Nebraska, with having to deal with the weather and the occasional Indians and bad men.
Escorting these three wild women are a plain spinster with man-like grit, and a derelict ex-soldier that is just drifting through life. The spinster (Swank) saves the derelict (Jones) from sure death in exchange for his help getting the three crazy women to safety and comfort back East.
All that happens in the movie could have happened in real life. Crossing the open Plains is shown to be like crossing a lonely desert.
An unexpected gem of a movie.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022)
Ridiculous
I love the characters and their interactions in this Star Trek, however I think the episodes are ridiculous and far-fetched with miracle endings..
Without giving away too much, and comparing against the Original Star Trek, there are a ton of ambiguities.
1) Why are the rooms in SLW so much bigger than OST? For that matter, their even bigger then SNG.
2) The technology is on par with SNG timeline, which is over 100 years later. For example, OST had to contend with physical switches for in-ship communications panels, but everything in SNW is smooth panels.
3) Episodes shamelessly borrow from sci-fi, like the movie Alien.
4) Crew are mostly able to move around planets and spaceships without helmets, even though the atmosphere appears to be lethal.
In Bruges (2008)
Plot holes galore
I loved the interplay between Farrell and Gleeson in this movie. I could not give it a higher rating due to the huge plot holes.
How can there be so many gunshots and no one calls the police? Are the Bruges police so timid that they hide from gunfire?
How can Harry (M / Voldemort / The English Patient) shoot Ray on a boat that's over 50 yards away yet miss his vital organs when he's only 5 yards away? Why did Ray stand up in the boat and present himself as a target?
Ken is shot in the neck and bleeding from an artery. How can he, already with a leg wound, and losing blood by the pint, climb back up the tower stairs faster than Harry can run down the stairs? How does Ken have enough strength left to pull himself up onto the tower ledge? How does a man in his blood-loss condition survive a fall from the tower? How is his face not smashed in since he landed that face-down?
Ray shoots a child in his gunplay sequence. Why doesn't the kid run away when he hears the first two shots taken in the confessional booth?
See? Too many unfathomable scenes that make no sense.
That said, this movie is far superior to the Farrell/Gleeson pairing in The Banshees of Inisherin. That was a truly awful movie.
Synecdoche, New York (2008)
An Overdone Art Film
I give the movie 2 stars for the nice assembled cast. I give it zilch for story.
What a pile of crap! It was completely meandering and meaningless. I fell asleep twice while watching on DVD. I couldn't wait for it to end.
This must be what insanity is like to the insane person. Caden is not likeable, he makes the wrong choices all the time. At least his wife/girlfriends are cute.
This reminded me of Brazil, without Brazil's zanyness. You at least expected randomness with the Monty Python crew. This movie is a plodding, sodden mess.
I have nothing else to say about this movie, but I needed this paragraph to meet the 600 character requirement.
All Roads Lead to Rome (2015)
Wooden performances
This movie suffers from a lack of believable acting and a sorry script.
Sarah Jessica Parker is just awful. A lot of her dialogue is repeating what someone just said, as if she's more stupid than she normally is.
I didn't recognize Claudia Cardinale. She and Bridgette Bardot have not aged well. I guess it's better to die young so you're always remembered that way (Marilyn Monroe, Natale Wood).
There should be much more problem communicating since neither the mother or daughter understand much Italian. Out of the blue, when they can't get what the Italian is saying, the Italian switches to fairly perfect English. Have an issue with this, particularly when they're out in the countryside.
The Man from Earth: Holocene (2017)
Quite a comedoen from the original
Instead of experienced professors in the room we are left with college kids with miraculous internet skills.
Less talk in this movie about the phenomenon of the 14K old man. The kids take one discredited book and a series of coincidences, and jump to the conclusion that the 14K man is who the book author says he is.
The ending is complete crap. After they knock out John, three of them leave to pick up the author. Why all three? Because the screenplay didn't have a clue how else to close out the movie. The religious nut drags the unconscious man 100 feet all by himself, and manages to bind him with duct tape upright in a chair without the man falling over. Then we have 15-20 minutes of crappy dialouge about the born again and the Jesus man.
There is no good explaination what happened to Phillip. Did he run away, never to be heard of? Was he killed by a suddenly freed John?
The tacked-on ending with the police and the author also seems unlikely, making it appear that John is the suspenct for every cold case murder on the books.
I'm sorry I watched the movie.
Leaving Las Vegas (1995)
No one drinks that much
Ben (Cage) drinks one bottle after another of liquor without immediate effect. He can drive and not get caught while swilling a bottle of vodka/gin. He's able to walk in roughly a straight line in half the movie.
It's just not possible. He would be passed out during most of the movie if this were real life.
Shue does look good in this movie, but the hooker's tale also has some whoppers in it. Her pimp conveniently gets wiped out by Russian hoods. She only gets assaulted twice in the movie - once by her pimp and once by a bunch of college-age kids. She heals from the second beating (black eye, cut on face) fairly quickly considering this movie time-frame is four weeks.
I don't know why the police are conspicuously absent. I received two propositions by hookers when walking around at night but even then they were very careful to make sure there were no cops around. No problem in this movie - the cops must all be eating donuts.
Another Earth (2011)
Physics goes to sleep
Very few positive things to say about this movie.
For one thing, the duplicate earth starts out as a blue dot in the sky. Four years later, it's ten time bigger than the moon. That doesn't affect the tides or the seasons? It doesn't bother anyone in the movie that the dupe earth is on a collision course?
The romance story appears to work up to a point. It was nice to see the composer drawn out of his shell. The end of the relationship happens, then she turns over her ticket to him, and he goes to space camp in her place. Is this like the Wonka ticket that whoever holds the ticket gets the prize/ You would think the company running the earth-shot would pick the next person in line instead of a compete stranger.
There was a black-and-white movie a ways back about a duplicate earth exactly on the other side of the sun. I don't remember much about it but I feel that one was better than this one..
Wyatt Earp (1994)
Costner in his element
Costner does two things well: sports person and American West personna. Both can have understated dialogue which suits Costner to a T. I don't see him as a big action figure; I see him as a slightly smarter than average every man who means well (sports) or who can hurt/kill someone (Western).
I just got done reading a book about Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. The movie was essentially true to that book except for the Arkansas part.
Ed Masterson plays a bigger role than Bat Masterson in the movie, probably due to the stars portraying them. In reality, Bat was the leader and Ed the follower.
Doc Holliday has probably the next most viable role, except the Earp brothers would have been next in Wyatt's sphere, not Doc.
The scenes show a dirty, rowdy, sometimes violent cow town. There would probably have been more mud in the streets.
Fury (2014)
unrealistic ending
You have an elite 300 man unit marching down the road. You see a disabled tank in a crossroads. Do you rush it intelligently? No - you send one and two persons at a time while the rest hang around within weapons range.
If this were an American group coming across a Nazi Panzer tank the commander would make sure they have anti-tank weapons trained on the tank before sending men to investigate
The Germans used the same tactic that is always used when the director wants to spread the action out. Attack one person at time. Hey, it works in martial arts movies.
Other than the last 20 minutes, the film WAS a lot like Saving Private Ryan for action, so it gets some points for that. Otherwise the ending kills the movie.
Judy (2019)
Not a fan
This is quite a downer movie. I never once felt that the lead actress was anybody other than Rene Zellwenger or maybe a raven-haired Bridget Jones.
I obtained the DVD from the library. It may have helped some if the DVD contained something of the older Judy Garland - a picture, a clip, something. Unless I look up Judy Garland online I won't have any idea how the older Garland looked or performed.
This movie had but one redeeming act - the last one. Up till then it was a depressing movie about a has-been. I had to force myself to watch it. I almost gave up one or twice.
There are far, far better movies that show the life of someone famous, like Ray, Bohemian Rhapsody, or even .Julie and Julia.
The Social Network (2010)
Technical to the extreme
There was a lot a technical jargon during the movie. Kind of reminded my of TV Star Trek Next Gen where the actors are required to spout technical jibberish. Except what the actors in TSN were saying kind of made sense to me as an IT guy and it was a little disturbing that they were able to do it so easily. Seemed like dark web stuff except that it was rather early internet and security holes were gaping at the time.
I gave the movie a 6 because I just didn't like the lead character - too glib. Maybe that's what. Zucker.berg it like in real like. If so, that's too bad. Didn't care for the Sean Parker character one bit. Sleazy know it all. Not too many likable characters in this movie.
Licorice Pizza (2021)
Series of vignettes
A few good scenes but not many believable scenes. Why would a 25 year old even hang out with a 15 year old, even though he is charismatic and unpredictable? She really has low self esteem. There's no way the teenager would be able to get one, much less two business licenses in the early 70s. Watch for an older Sean Penn - it takes a while to see it is really him. This movie had the feel and ambiance of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, with the older cars and the screwed up script.
The Wiz (1978)
Visual effects trump music
I had heard a few of the songs in The Wiz and was anticipating an enjoyable viewing experience. Unfortunately, the only music that was not dull were the few songs I already knew. The first part of the movie was a setup on how mundane Dorothy's life was, just like in the original movie, but, boy, that part of the movie is really boring. Nothing of consequence happens until Dorothy makes it to OZ. At that point, the visual effects take over. The crows, the subway, the evil queen's lair, the flying monkeys are all supurbly done.
Mrs. Pollifax-Spy (1971)
McGavin makes the movie
The film somewhat follows the book. It could have used more Polifax background, it being so humdrum, yet it starts with her interview at the CIA. How did she obtain that interview? Read the book.
The movie essentially goes nowhere until Darren McGavin appears. He's worth the movie all by himself. Also Harold Gould (Kid Twist in The Sting) fills in admirably as a reluctant Albanian colonel.
Rosalind Russell did an OK Polifax. I don't know any other aged female star of her generation that could do the action parts.
This movie is like most movies based off of books - the book is far superior to what ends up on screen..
Arrival (2016)
Convoluted film
I love science fiction, but I found this movie hard to follow and overly long. How can one two-person team figure out the alien language in that short of time? Granted, in the beginning they were part of 12 different teams working and sharing, but all of their team's ideas came to fruition when no other team's did?
The time-travel thing was put there only to expedite the ending of the movie. It made for an interesting ending, but come on now - only Louis is able to do it, plus she's able to be in the present and the future at the same time? That's a stretch I don't believe in.
Louis disobeys orders over and over again. yet this military-run project lets her continue to do so. In the middle there was a scene where the "shift" was over, yet she went into the staging area without permission and made the movie's major breakthrough while our own troops were firing on each other. Another unbelievable premise.
The aliens were interesting. It was like that Star Trek episode where Picard and an alien culture almost come to war until he figures out that they speak in metaphors.
Robot & Frank (2012)
Semi-good
The Robot is interesting. It looks, acts, and sounds benign, just like a companion should. It's the human I have trouble with. Frank can't remember family things (including one big one) yet he remembers how to case a joint. I can't believe the Robot wasn't programmed to send reports to the human son. As they're stealing from the neighbor, it looks like the neighbors come home with them still in the house, and yet they're able to scurry out when the neighbors argue. Do robots scurry? It's implied Frank and Robot left no tracks in their heist. You see a futuristic car pass Frank on the road early in the movie, but all cars from that point are cars from today, including a junker truck. In the last part of the movie, how does the Robot get upstairs so quickly with Frank. Why doesn't the law just break down the door? Parts of this movie are insightful, many parts are stupid.
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Gore galore
I hadn't seen RD until I bought a used copy of it recently. I was very, very disappointed in the movie. A bunch of whiney hoods that cannot pull off a "perfect" jewelry heist. The plot (what plot) is just an excuse for Tarentino to stretch the limits of gore and sick violence. Again, we must suspend belief that all the shooting in the warehouse does not bring the cops. I realize this movie is set before cell phones, but someone must have heard the 4 or 5 shots Mr Orange gets off before the others arrive. Not to mention the head shots to the poor cop before others arrive. A really stupid Mexican standoff where the two worst guys are shot and Mr White is severely wounded? The timing is not realistic for the gunshots - White has to take out two guys that have their guns trained on him. The torture scenes are just sick. I'm surprised Tarentino didn't allow the lighter to drop on the gasoline trail just to add more torture for his drooling fans. Wouldn't we be better off without Tarentino's style (?) of movies? Even The Godfather had better violence - those thugs were killed off quickly. You wouldn't have one thug (Orange) hanging around bleeding internally and externally, and still able to have enough of his senses to kill Blonde? And why does someone place a gun next to Orange when they are waiting for a doctor? Just so Orange could shoot Blonde - the only reason. There are plot holes everywhere.
Yesterday (2019)
Loved the music but not the movie
Most fantasy movies that start with a life-jarring experience usually have another to set things back to the-way-we-were but with improvement of the lead actor's life. So many films were like that: 13 Going on 30, Big, It's a Wonderful Life.
But not this one. This one doesn't have a decent ending - screen writers must have run out of ideas..
This movie wants us to believe that a 12-second world-wide blackout affected all but a few people, and that some of our favorite things never happened. How can their be only one soft drink in the entire world - did capitalism get snuffed out in the blackout? Or was this just a huge product placement advertisement?
The songs are great - they're from the Beatles. But no one in this movie seriously challenges the fact that one man alone comes up with dozens of hit songs after 10 years of failure.
I'm getting a little tired of Hollywood forcing mixed-race relationships on us, too, just like they forced gun violence, gore, heavy swearing, hip hop culture,and unprotected sex on us.
Aladdin (2019)
Animated version much better
Will Smith just doesn't compare with Robin Williams. Williams was so manic and spontaneous - he could make up dialog as he went along. The Smith version of genie is OK. If this were the first of the two movies I would have rated it higher. The female lead is gorgeous. The male lead is a better Aladdin than the animated. The Sultan and Jafar are also better than the animated. But - too much music, and a copy of the 1993 version at that. The plot is a copy. The dancing was almost Bollywood. There were some excellent special effects. The one production number I liked was the prince's entrance. Generally, however, been there, done that.
Ready Player One (2018)
Special Effects overload
Definitely a movie for the MMP crowd. Very soft on plot but heavy on special effects. Not for anyone over age of 40 unless into MMP. It's like a spy movie, star wars, transformers, TRON all spliced togther. Many references to Apple Jobs/Wozniak and old video games, and you live almost the whole movie inside OASIS. It little more background in the real world would be appreciated. It looks like the world is overpopulated and poor. I'm sure the book did a better job on background, since the movie is 80% special effects, 10% plot, and 10% fantasy. The hero is a orphaned nerd. The heroine is pretty and inexplicably living on her own with no visible means of support. Don't the players have to pay for using OASIS? Nobody works, nobody eats, nobody sleeps. The only reason I went to this movie is because of Spielberg.
Lost in Translation (2003)
Snooze fest
I bought this movie from Goodwill and two bucks and that is all it is worth. The movie just drags on and on. There are some nice visuals of the Tokyo night life but I didn't feel any connection with Bill Murray or Scarlet Johannson or any of the Japanese characters. Just a boring movie about a bored movie star. I kept fast forwarding through the movie hoping it would have some redeeming qualities, but no.
Dunkirk (2017)
Great war movie
Saw it today. Good film - excellent acting from all involved. Realism on par with Saving Private Ryan. However, there are a lot of things that seem wrong with this movie, great as it is. I don't think ships sink that fast. The night scene maybe was a flashback. I don't think U-boats would have gotten that close to s launch torpedo in the channel. An airplane out of fuel probably can't shoot down a ME109 in full flight.