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donovan2419
Reviews
Phantom 2040 (1994)
Great show, but terrible low resolution prints make it unwatchable
The Amazon prime cut is unwatchable. It's a tragedy, because it's a really intelligent show. You can't even see the faces in most of the scenes. I would estimate about 100 resolution. My system handles HD and 4K, it's the copy not my system.
I watched it decades ago when it first came out.
Is there any place to watch it in high res? IMDB doesn't note that it's a bad copy when they list who is offering it. I wish they would.
Who loses when such a bad copy is distributed? The people who made the show and the viewers. Even the distributer loses, so why do they do it? I contacted Amazon and complained. We all need to do that.
Safe House (2012)
Skip this piece of garbage!
Dark, drab color pallet, wall to wall meaningless violence and evil, barely audible dialog, I tried running it faster, I tried adjusting the audio, an skipped the torture part, and it still was a total waste of time I will never get back. Maybe I wasn't drunk enough for this kind of wallowing in the the darkness.
There are no good guys, there is no happy ending, it's a paranoid world.
No wonder there is so much violence in the USA. So many horrible, stupid movies and shows on all the time. This movie will rot your soul. Find something else to watch. It's absolutely tragic that so many people upvoted this horror show.
Joker (2019)
What a waste of time. Horrible.
Garbage, utter, ugly garbage. Depressing, ugly, boring, pointless, sick. There's something wrong with the world, when people think this is a good movie. NO redeeming value. I feel sorry for for anybody who thought this was a good movie. Normally I let people love whatever they love, but this is just sick.
Star Trek: Discovery (2017)
Fantastic. Better than most of the franchise movies and TV.
Burnham is a fantastic character. The rest of the cast are all unique and great. The acting is perfect. The stories are great and imaginative. The CGI is fantastic and beautiful. The whole series is fresh and beautiful and full of love.
Not every episode is a hit, and not every scene is perfect, but at least as good a hit rate as any of the rest of the franchise except maybe the Voyage Home. If you don't like an episode skip it. I don't care for the first 2 but you probably should suffer through them to get the setup. Maybe that's why so many people hated the series.
Let's rank All the Start Trek franchise:
The original Star Trek
The Voyage Home
Voyager
Next Generation
Discovery
Wrath of Khan
First Contact
Lower Decks
Lesser:
Star trek Reboot
Into darkness
Generations
worst:
Nemesis,
Insurrection
Beyond
The Motion Picture
The Search for Spock
The Undiscovered Country
The Final Frontier
Enterprise
Deep space 9
Picard
The animated Series
If you agree roughly with my ranking, you will probably like Discovery.
The Meg (2018)
I was expecting Sharknado, but it's a beautiful science fiction movie.
The images were beautiful, the station, the ships, the people. The science was plausible unlike so many other shark movies. They didn't make the shark unrealistically large, that was the size of Megalodon. They even backup the claim of the strongest jaws with the photos of the an actual megalodon jaw bone where you can see the massive thickness of it. Give it the benefit of the doubt, or "suspension of disbelief" as it's called. There was a lot of good science shown without narrative, like the use of whale sounds to attract the shark.
I liked the Morris character but he was not the typical villain. Jonas was the stereotypical hero wrongfully disgraced, but it works. Suyin is beautiful and I enjoyed the chinese aspects of it very much.
I sense a lot of anti China xenophobia in the negative reviews. I love science fiction because it's about the unusual, and other cultures are a big part of that. I don't care that is partially driven by marketing to a huge chinese audience. Movies are big business, pretty much all the great movies are crass money grabs that happened to create good movies. If seeing the Chinese influence in the modern world upsets you, don't watch the movie and prepare to not watch a lot of movies.
Bingbing li as Suylin is excellent and what do you know, she has a Chinese accent when speaking English and it's wonderful. The interaction with Jonas is fun. My least favorite characters were DJ and The Wall and I blame the writers. They don't ruin it and there are such folks in nearly every movie. Meiying was well done but approaching too cute.
Black Panther (2018)
We all love this movie, what's with the neg?
The ratings prove "we" love this movie. The critics agree. It's a tense, intense action thriller epic story. It was really cool, to have just two "token" white guys, a bad one, and a good one. I guess most of you have not noticed that it's normally swapped color schemes. I grew up with Marvel comics, they taught me to read. I had dyslexia, and the graphic novel was by far the best teaching for me... DC was boring. Maybe norms don't notice the color pallet in most movies either. I'm an old white guy. I noticed. I hate oppression, so it's a joy to see a movie whites don't dominate, whites don't replace other nationalities for our "comfort". I read the original black panther comic books. and they were a big deal at the time. All the good people in this movies defend human life without regard to race... not so the bad folks. Many of you roman empire folks want to see a roman win. I see a lot of folks who did not enjoy the comic books as kids, don't understand the ethic of superhero movies. Darker movies seem more popular with the mainstream. You missed out. Superheroes do the right thing no matter the legacy hatreds, no matter the personal pain. They do it wearing tights too. They fear nothing.
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Greatest movie ever!
This is one of the greatest movies ever made. It's Shakespearean in some of the scenes and dialog, it has unprecedented action scenes, it explores the great issues of our day. It's Frankenstein updated for AI. The acting is fantastic. The dialog is inspired. The hulk widow love story is very good. The battles are as much between friends and co heroes as it is with the enemy, a creation of Stark and Banner. It's the inner demons manifest in AI.
I loved it in the theater, I bought the blu ray, I have watched it many time in 3d and 2d and it's great either way. Every watching I see new details. I'm watching it now. every second it better than most movies entire run time. Pay attention, it's a smart movie and a great and fun movie at the same time.
MacGyver: Trumbo's World (1985)
fantastic episode all about the human interactions.
MacGyver innovates and perceives his way out of trouble. He wants to investigate rumors of something killing everything, birds and animals alike. He goes into the jungle and meets Trumbo, who hates all outsiders. He tries to bargain ad Trumbo says no. He hears a Generators/pump that's dying and offer to try and fix it if they can stay, still no. He offers to do it for free. That works. He does not hate this abrasive man, he tries to win him over and understand him. Trumbo has made a home in the most hostile jungle in the world. Lots of people like MacGyver when he battles his foes with invented gadgets, but THIS is his real talent. The best way to win a war, is never to start it in the first place. He wins this difficult but capable man over. Then he really wins him over. He stays when nearly everyone flees, to help him fight the threat. They win at great cost. The only downside is the death of the loyal employee, they should have done more to save him.
The emotional interaction, the acting between the two men was fantastic.
The story is how MacGyver wins over Trumbo. Not the action, nor the gadgets.
Doctor Strange (2016)
Fantastic, wonderful, stunning visuals.
People say it's formulaic. So is everything else and everything good. According to many scholars there are between 3 and no more than 100 different stories and everything is a variation on them. Look up the Seven Basic Plots. Arrogant successful man does foolish thing and destroys his health and career. All mainstream treatments fail. Logic, science fail. Man desperate, hears of mystical cure, and pursues it to to exotic foreign country where he meets spiritual gurus who takes him on a magical trip. Then he finds out it's part of an age old struggle of good an evil. Finally he struggles and fights till he finds a new home and a new life. Sounds familiar huh? So what?
It's well done, good acting, good writing, good story. Astounding visuals. See it in 3d for the full experience. The glorious visuals are not tacked on, they are there for a purpose, and serve the story. They trace right back to the comic book as well. They even copied the artistic style. Benedict Cumberbatch is perfect and it's different role for him. All the actors are good, and there are many characters you care about. Marvel continues to blend in humor as well, right in the midst of the action and what could be done dark and gritty. Thank god they don't go there. It's still a very serious and even tragic story, but it celebrates life as well. It's definitely a MCU film but even so has a very fresh feel to it.
Suicide Squad (2016)
Suicide Squad is evil terrible
Suicide Squad is evil terrible. It's a glorification of brutal loss of morals by all parties, done in depressing dark colors, dirty textures and non stop ugly brutality.
If folks are rating it 75, we are in serious trouble. I think the studios are stuffing the comment boxes big time.
This movie is not just terrible. It's evil, it's an evil vision, it's an evil experience, it's just plain evil.
I had to come home and watch Age of Ultron to clear my mind and soul. Wow, the contrast was universes apart. DC is promoting corruption, violence and evil, Marvel, even though it's an action movie with fights and deaths, is promoting love, caring and peace.
The DC universe is dark and evil, so we have to be evil too. Parts of the Marvel universe are dark and evil, but not the majority of it. The Marvel heroes strive to stay good even when facing evil.
The best DC universe version was the 2001-2006 Justice League and Justice League Unlimited cartoon series. Batman: the animated series 1992-1995 was pretty good too. This whole dirty gritty depressing version of the the DC universe has been tacked on by movie and TV directors, it has nothing to do with the comics, or the cartoons. It's contaminating some of the marvel TV shows too. I'm sick of it. It fetishizes evil.
Not to mention, lack of color, amorphous cabbage heads for the enchanted soldiers, infantile story and characters, ugly sets, ugly costumes. ugly, ugly ugly.