Reviews

The story in this is quite different from the 1980s Dune movie. On the plus side, it's much less cheesy. Gone are the "Chaaaka" toy guns. Also gone is the child actor playing the sister. However, the presented story is a reasonably coherent story, so it works.

There are two bad things about the film. First, the audio.

Much of the dialogue is spoken by actors wearing masks and scarves and is unintelligible. They had this problem with Bane in The Dark Knight and just redubbed all his lines. I don't know why they didn't do that for this film. Second, Zendaya's acting, or rather her lack of acting ruins quite a few scenes she's in.

As far as scifi blockbusters go, it's pretty good, but I don't think it's nearly as memorable or solid as the 2021 movie.

It's interesting how in the summer of 2023, people ironically watched "Barbieheimer". The pairing that actually makes the most sense for 2023 is a double feature of Oppenheimer followed by Godzilla Minus One. Both are epic stories about man versus nature, set on opposite sides of the atomic age, the second world war, and the line between history and historical fiction.

This Godzilla has a unique style and tone. The movie's theme is about the horror and aftermath of war, comparing the conflict between US-Japan against the conflict between Japan-Godzilla.

Most striking is the movie's understated style. As a Japanese film, the CGI is naturally more muted than what they produce in Hollywood. The movie is set in the late 1940s and they made the movie look like it was filmed in the 1950s. The score is riveting, combining the classic Godzilla themes with modern epic themes. The characters act like real people, not like caricatures typical of most superhero films.

I'm very pleased to have watched the movie at a theater. I only wish I had seen it earlier when it was shown in the larger auditoriums.

This documentary basically presents four sources:

1) Michael Johnson, hired by BSA around 2010 to head up Youth Protection. The documentary presents him as the hero of the story. He talks like he knows all the answers, reminds you several times how he is an expert on the topic, and you can imagine how just his personality would have made his job that much harder.

2) BSA's former general counsel, who seems to have a realistic grasp on the issues but comes across as smug.

3) Several adults who were abused as scouts.

4) Investigators and attorneys for those abuse victims.

Overall the film does dramatically present horrible stories of abuse which scouts suffered in the past, but the filmmakers imply that those same conditions still exist at BSA, implying that abuse is still prevalent. More frustrating is that they don't present any evidence at all that this is the case, and worse, they don't even offer any recommendations for what still needs to happen to prevent abuse.

The original was good. This sequel politicizes it to the point of ruining the original. This film is deeply pro-Democrat and anti-Republican, made in 2017 at the height of partisan hysteria. Gore also focuses on "weather" to prove his points, which is also what distracts from the message because climate is not weather.

Hopefully Gore makes an effort to redeem himself with a third film that focuses on data, instead of him going on a rant trying to relate climate action to civil rights, gay rights, abolition, and suffrage. If he's not running for office, there's no point in wading into partisanship on the issue.

The creators of this series deliberately made it painful to watch. In Every. Single. Scene. One or more characters is acting in an unreasonable, annoying, frustrating manner. There is literally no scene where two people are talking or interacting with other and both make sense.

This is manipulative and a cheap way to make the story move. Characters alternate between acting like jerks and acting like victims. It's a cheap trick storytellers use to wear the audience down.

The only non-annoying character in the series is the 5-year old daughter, who seems to be a remarkably good actress.

Unfortunately my better half likes the series, so I'm forced to keep watching it and all of its manufactured tension building. I don't think the two main actors are suited to writing screenplays.

Shaky camera, people talking over each other, and loud background noises make this episode the worst.

The story is bad (like a flashpoint paradox ripoff), the writing is bad, the animation is bad, the casting is bad. There is nothing redeeming about this movie.

The movie a social commentary more than entertainment. It offers a good glimpse of the veneer of in the Silicon Valley dotcom workplace. And it portrays some points about privacy and technology in the role of companies and government.

On the other hand, the movie is a series of scenes, and they those scenes develop is awkward and will make you cringe.

All the Rambo movies were war movies. This is not a war movie. It's like a late-career Bruce Willis movie.

The only reason for attaching the name "John Rambo" to this movie is marketing.

The monsters are okay, but what ruins the movie is the human characters. They're all annoying and unrelatable (except maybe Tywin), and like any typical disaster-genre film, they're all too lucky, not getting smashed by buildings falling right on top of them.

Why is it so hard for Americans to produce a decent Godzilla movie?

This felt like GoT's bottle episode. Very little happened in terms of plot. Just a lot of characters reminiscing and patting each other on the back.

1. Wahlberg is stupidly at the center of everything.

2. They turned the last five minutes into a victory lap, with interviews of officials and victims talking about how empowered they feel. It's telling that the Richards family stayed away from the film.

3. Everyone speaks in an over-exaggerated accent.

On the plus side, the film does a decent job of reenacting the events in an gripping and entertaining way. If you ignore Wahlberg, it's not half bad.

This movie feels like a "draft version" compared to the other Lego Batman / Justice League movies made since 2013. Everything about it - the characters, the editing, the pacing, the story - make it look like it was made 30 years ago, even though the animation is modern. It doesn't grab your attention like Gotham Breakout, Bizarro, Brainiac, or Batman 2017.

I could not wait for the film to be over. This movie talks itself to death - it probably has more dialog than two real Star Wars films put together. The characters were forgettable. In particular, Forest Whitaker reprising his role from Battlefield Earth. But the biggest disappointment is the film does not have the striking visuals or sounds that George Lucas would have demanded be made for a Star Wars film. It's those scenes and sounds that made the first six Star Wars so marvelous to watch.

On the plus side, the last 30 minutes is very watchable and has less talking.

Every fantasy and sci-fi show does an alternate/parallel world episode. "Let's make the good guys act like bad guys, and the bad guys act like good guys. The normal good guys cross over into the alternate- reality and defeat the new bad guys. While we're at it, let's put two of the good guys (who are now bad guys) into a romantic relationship." It's the sci- fi version of the sitcom "bottle episode" and is rarely well done.

This variation of the theme is worse than most, and for Justice League fans, the randomly chosen set of celebrity voice actors makes the whole production just seem fake - i.e. good superman and bad superman both sound wrong. Alternate-world episodes usually seem to be driven by actors who want to dress up and "act" differently. But in this case the unfamiliar voices of the characters only works if the script is exceptional (like in Flashpoint Paradox), but in this case the story and script and very bland.

The entire movie just falls flat.

The movie starts out well, and the first eviction scene will leave you shaking in your boots imagining your family and belongings getting foreclosed and tossed into the street. I can't think of another film that focuses on the eviction process so intensely.

You're better skipping the end of the movie (after the scene with the old man). The last forty minutes of the film are not satisfying at all, and just gets dumb with characters acting more and more ridiculously. In the beginning of the movie, many of the characters act over the top for the sake of dramatic tension, but it it gets to be too much towards the end.

I was excited about the movie after watching the teaser and trailer, but then realized that watching the rest of the movie just ruins the trailer.

I think the biggest fail of this Godzilla movie is that they over-Americanized it with a prominent human lead. The main character, Ford, zigzags from the center of the action in once scene to the center of the action the next scene. He manages to meet all the monsters eye-to-eye a half dozen times, and lives!! The movie is mostly about him, with Godzilla there just as a backdrop.

It's better than that Matt Broderick movie they made in 1998, but not by a lot.

This 2nd Hobbit movie shows the weakness of turning a 300-page children's book into a full blown 8-hour movie trilogy, an expansion which was unarguably done for commercial and not artistic reasons. There's not enough material in the book for a trilogy, so everyone at New Line had to make stuff up to get three movies out of it.

My suggestion is to read the book before (or after) you watch the movie. Consider how extra content added to the film changes the story. In addition to creating mindless action scenes for the sake of entertainment, they reshaped existing characters into heroes and insert new heroes into the story, which was not written to be so grand or epic.

It would be okay if they called this "a film inspired by The Hobbit", but calling this film "The Hobbit" is just wrong.

The film offers an insightful message beyond the obvious ones that after you die, you really have no control over the stuff you leave behind, and the message that the greatest art heist of all time is the one you've never heard of.

The message is about how power is wielded and leveraged at the highest levels. Organizations are power, and whether they are non-profits or governments they are always run by men, and men who crave power will eventually find a way to control those organizations. If you set Game of Thrones in a modern setting, it would look a lot like this film.

This quote from the film sums it up:

"We're used to hearing about corporate takeovers with for-profit corporations. But this was a non-profit corporate takeover. And the first thing you have to do is remake the board of trustees... (This) is what takes place all the time in the corporate world, which is to take over the board by adding new positions on the board. You don't go in and kill all the board members that are there. You just put ten more on."

The film helps you appreciate how the world works, especially in our incorporated and securitized business climate.

The Silver Linings Playbook movie follows a formula, with each character following the same basic development.

Step 1: Characters are neurotic and annoying, creating tension and wearing out the viewer. Step 2: Characters experience an empowering and revealing moment of vulnerability, bringing sympathy to the viewer. Step 3: Characters are supportive and no longer annoying, bringing relief to the viewer.

Every character follows the same routine. It's way too formulaic and gimmicky. The topic of mental illness and the dancing motif also smell like Oscar bait.

The film 12 Angry Men might have been very good cinema for 1957, but in the 21st century it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

The movie wears you down while characters spend more time bickering about bickering than actually going over testimony and evidence. It's like the Blair Witch Project, where the characters act loud and annoying, beating the audience into exhaustion. The characters in 12 Angry Men mostly argue with each other, often screaming, making the resolution more gratifying to the audience. It's a common trick.

*begin spoiler alert* Maybe we've gotten spoiled watching too much Monk and CSI and Law & Order, but as a legal drama the movie is confusing anyway. There's no discussion of blood trails or spatters. The defendant claimed there was a hole in his pants, but no pants were reviewed as evidence. Davis introduced a knife he bought as evidence in the jury room, which you can't do. The jury determined that the witness was nearsighted based on her nose. The jury decided a witness was incapable of running based on how he walked. The jury never discussed who else might have committed the murder. The thought-process behind the plot is so convoluted, it makes the whole movie frustrating to watch. *end spoiler alert*

The movie is OK for 11 year olds so certainly carries a lot of nostalgic value 60 year olds, but it's flawed and doesn't hold up as a timeless film.