Reviews

This is basically the "Predator" version of "Home Alone".

Who do you think could take on a 7' tall extraterrestrial with extreme combat skills? A group of adult men with lethal weapons? A 1,000 lb grizzly bear? WRONG! A 5-foot, 70lb teen girl, of course!

The film is full of "men are clumsy, stupid and cruel" contrasted against "Girl is tough, smart and humble" scenes. It's basically the whole movie in a nutshell. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with female leads (Alien is in my top 10 of all time), but this is just... stupid.

She's so tough, in fact, that the final scene sees Mr. Predator standing there motionless while he lets her kill him. She must be so scary that he couldn't even move while she called her dog, ran at Predator, slid through his legs while grabbing a hatchet out of the dogs mouth (this is not a joke, this is actually in the movie), chop his leg, then climb up his back and wrap a rope around his neck. Ugh, what?

I give it 3 extra stars for great cinematics, though.

In the scene where the girl is dancing with her period, you can see the blood on the floor disappear then re-appear in different shots. They likely filmed this scene in an empty room then cut it in to make it look like it was in front of an audience.

This is the kind of misleading garbage that SBC has devolved to.

The Giuliani scene had similar tricks and ended up being a huge letdown. He WAS clearly tucking his shirt back in, after the girl tugged it out when removing his mic.

I also find it annoying that all the media outlets were reporting she was referred to being 15 years old through out the interview. Not once is "15" mentioned in the scene until after the bed shot when SBC bursts in and says she's 15.

Not a fan of the guy and it's obvious what he's thinking but it's hardly some massive "caught red handed" moment they hyped it up to be.

All in all SBC just looks like he's doing a bad impersonation of Borat, and the whole joke of the film is supposed to be pointing out how crazy conservatives are. Which, by itself, is not funny.

If you gave some Australian college students a camera, a budget of $50, told them to watch "Timecrimes" and "Primer", this is what you would get.

The acting is god awful. So bad, that you have to question if this is a movie about time travel, or a movie about a mental asylum patient who thinks he's time traveling. The non-stop overly exaggerated facial expressions, bug eyes and squinting make it hard to know for sure.

The decision making capabilities of the main character are highly in question. For example, he wants to get into "Room 41" of a local motel. Instead of asking for this specific room (which we know is vacant and was rented out to someone as early as the day before), he takes room 11, then breaks into this room. Why?Suspense > logic.

Then, he wants to save his ex-girlfriend (who is way out of his league) by preventing the car accident he causes. Slash his own tires? Warn himself? No! Run as fast as you can to the street where the accident was, then jump in front of the car flailing your arms. Oh no, that's what (you guessed it) caused the accident in the first place! Who could have seen that coming?

If you want to waste your time, this is a wonderful movie.

Stuck in a traffic jam, the mother hears her daughter's frantic screams. Instead of hanging up the phone and calling the police herself, she screams into the phone "I'll get help!" repeatedly, and starts banging on car windows asking "DO YOU HAVE A PHONE!?". She finally finds someone who does, and after telling her to call the police, she simply says "229 Eden Street" and then runs away. Then, she trips, drops her phone, gets back up and calls for a taxi. She has a vehicle, one that she left in the middle of freakin' traffic. And why not call the police yourself?

Either the writers are missing brain cells, or this is a bizarre plot for AT&T to subliminally convince people in 1996 they need a cell phone, on the off chance a woman will bang on your window asking you to call the police.

I can't stand how everything the characters do is the complete opposite of what literally anyone would do, in real life. If you find two dead people, you don't immediately split up, let alone split up into mother/daughter, father/son. "You found two people murdered? Ok, let's send the two females back, alone, while we go investigate". Now, imagine you're about to be stabbed to death. Do you fight for your life? Try to get a hold of the knife? Try to make a run for it? Of course not! You look your daughter in the eye and calmly say "Just go :(" and then let the person hug you from behind, caress your face, then stab you in the back, as you continue to look at your daughter like the mentally handicapped person you are. Or how about when you have a gun to someone that just killed both your parents. Do you shoot them? No! You just point it and repeatedly tell your sister to run! If there's anything scary about this movie, it's how unbelievably stupid the characters are. They go beyond your typical horror movie cliches, into the realm of completely unreasonable garbage. Whoever wrote the script should be barred from ever working on another horror movie again. Watch the original, it's 10x better and far, far more realistic.

I had to hop on IMDb to validate my hunch this was written/directed by a woman. Lo and behold, it was. This isn't a surprise, as the vibe the movie gave off was very "feministic". Filled with disappointing male characters and plenty of completely unrealistic scenarios.

For example, you're in survival mode. You're rationing what little food you have. What's the last thing you would do? Contemporary ballet. The same girl that's spending her time dancing decides to argue with her sister about the smallest piece of chocolate she ate without sharing. That sums up the logic of this movie. I'd like to think women aren't really that stupid in real life.

Right after this scene, she's saying "How long is he going to stay? We don't have much food left". Somehow they manage to have food throughout the entire movie with little to no explanation. Sorry, but you won't be picking blueberries for a year, yet they seem to have an abundance of them like they live next to a blueberry farm.

Then, after ~10 months, their roof caves in. On a seemingly recent, well built home, their roof caves in. You can drive out in the country and find dilapidated homes from the 60's with their roof still in tact, and I'm to believe that this upper class home is just going to randomly fall apart? Give me a break.

The dancing girl decides to keep her rape baby (what could possibly go wrong?). What's the first thing she does after giving birth? "I want to burn our house down". "How long have humans been around, 200 thousand years? We don't need this place!" and thus "Into the Forest" they go. As if. Btw, despite having a ton of gasoline, let's use ALL of it to burn the house down. That's logical in a survival situation.

I'm torn between thinking only a dumb woman could come up with such stupid ideas, or if the movie exemplifies women who come up with such stupid ideas. It's a conundrum, really.

P.S. Ellen Page is an annoying, horrible actress.

If your idea of a good time in the past is going to a summer music concert, fixing your science grade and getting back at the mean girl from school, this movie is for you!

In other words, this movie would appeal to a 7 - 14 year old (or adult with below average IQ). There are so many little holes it's hard to keep watching.

If you can get past them, you're left with cheesy actors regurgitating their poorly written lines and an abysmally cliché plot.

For example, they decide they need hydrogen. "You need a permit for that!" one says. Apparently science kids with MIT scholarships don't know about electrolysis of water. This is one of those movies where they do and say really dumb things that would never work in real life, with the intention of looking smart and creative. Let's hook up a Prius battery to our time machine! Yeah! We don't have a freaking clue what volts this thing puts out or if it could damage our only control board on the machine but dang diddly we need more power! Grab the extension cord! That Prius has to have an 3 pronged outlet right on the battery!

When discussing what they should do with their newfound ability, one suggests they should work the stock market. Ah, the only sensible thing uttered in the entire movie. "It's not about money!" the main character replies. Fast forward 15 minutes and the same guy is peeling out of a parking lot after one of them buys a lottery ticket. Presumably purchased illegally as they're underage. I guess Mega Millions doesn't ID their winners anymore.

They're all upset they messed up a number and didn't win the jackpot. Ah, that stock market idea would sure come in handy. Especially since they have capital to invest with. Nope! Let's go do some completely useless stuff with our time. Let's not save anyone's life, make a billion dollars, etc. Let's go back to school and memorize stuff to get a good grade!

If you want to watch a "fun" time travel movie, watch Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel, Safety Not Guaranteed, Back to the Future, etc. This one is just dumb, dumb, dumb.

They're walking in a park and the guy says "stop". Then, ~100 people just stop like it's the manikin challenge. Apparently, everyone in this movie is an assassin. No one is walking in a park in the middle of a day except assassins. They make it seem like the ratio of assassins to non-assassins is 100/1. The homeless guy begging for change: assassin. The woman playing a violin in the subway station: assassin. All backed by some ancient assassins network that uses blood markers to guarantee assassinations. Kept in a binder with some rich guy in New York. If you stop for just a moment and think of how implausibly dumb this plot is, you begin to understand this is more of a comedy than an action flick. Let's kill people, then leave our DNA on a marker associated with the person who wanted them killed (which also happened to be our fingerprint), then let's hire women to run an operator exchange to send out text messages to thousands of stranger's phones with information on the inevitable murder of someone. Sounds legit! Even past the terribly implausible plot, the acting is just horrible. Reeves barely speaks 2 words when he talks. They come off sounding exactly the same. Quiet and awkward. Like, is he on Xanax the entire film cause he sounds like he's stoned. Then, occasionally, he'll speak a foreign language. Does it sound like he's fluent? No. It sounds like he's regurgitating his rehearsed lines. Just a weird way for the director to try and make it seem like John Wick is this insanely talented, worldly hit man. Wick thrusts a knife into a guy's heart and tells him it's stuck in his aorta. If he removes it, he'll bleed to death. To think anyone aside from, say, Terminator, would know exactly where you stabbed someone or where inside of their body the knife ended up down to the centimeter -- is pathetically stupid. It's implausible, as is the rest of the movie. Lastly, the fight scenes (although also implausible) are halfway decent. The only problem I have with them is Reeves is not cut out for being a talented mixed martial artist. He doesn't have the build. His hips are too wide and his shoulders not enough. He honestly looks a little clumsy.

Most of the user reviews on IMDb are trashing the film for stealing the plot of the first. It's hard to argue that's not the case when the story line is practically identical. For that reason, the film has no originality. Unless of course, you consider inserting awkwardly unrealistic social advocacy elements into the film as being "original".

Let's go through them:

1) John Boyega as storm trooper with a conscious. Because if they don't put a black guy in the film, they're racist. And if the black guy isn't the one who did something heroically rebellious, they're racist. Because black people never get major roles (according to everyone at the Oscars). The problem: You're making one of the highest grossing films of all time for the most successful film franchise ever and you decide to cast a guy who's had a part in one movie while at the same time managing to destroy the whole concept of what a storm trooper is supposed to be. Nice job, Disney.

2) Daisy Ridley as Luke Spywalker; girl version. Because it's 2015 and I'll be damned if girls aren't as strong as boys are. Right, Furiosa!? Girls can do it, too! Because if we don't make a girl the hero of the film, it will alienate our female audience. The problem: You're a 3 year old girl dropped on Jakku and grow up without family/friends in complete isolation yet you still manage to end up with a British accent. I can only imagine this "I've been in like 3 episodes of a TV show" actress didn't have half the skills necessary to learn how to speak without one.

3) Domhnall Gleeson as General Hux Apparently, "a long time ago" in a galaxy "far, far away", the Irish people managed to get there because for whatever reason a top ranking General has an Irish accent. What's more, how do you explain such a young looking guy getting to that high of a position? I mean, there's storm troopers older than him. Does his Dad know Kylo Ren and was like "dude, my 25 year old looking son needs a job!"

4) Adam Driver as Kylo Ren I think this casting decision was an accident. I feel like Day 1 on set, Driver showed up and the director was like "Wait, where's Elijah Wood? Ah, screw it. Driver looks like a baby faced 20 year old. He'll do!" His character comes off as "I saw an ad on TV for the Dark Side and I had just gotten in an argument with my mom about how much XBOX I'm playing so I ran away and now I get to be the First Order guy with a mask and I can play as much XBOX Live as I want because Supreme Leader Snoke doesn't care!"

5) CGI Giant as Supreme Leader Snoke I definitely couldn't tell it was CGI, could you? When Adam Driver took off his mask and held his hand up to use the power of the dark side, I was really, really scared (almost as scary as Toby McGuire doing the same thing), but when this CGI giant gets mad and makes a >:( face, man, is it scary!

6) Black Storm trooper in a relationship with white girl Because we need to show the world that interracial relationships are okay. Otherwise, you're a racist! Even though it came off completely unnatural and awkwardly fast, it's beautiful and you agree with it.

What they should have done was switch Oscar Issac with John Boyega. But of course, that would make them racist because then the black guy gets the side-role and the Italian looking guy gets the girl. Issac also doesn't look as young as Boyega, so I assume they thought it wouldn't look as natural. (Ha... haha..... hahahhahaa)

This film was made purely for mass market appeal. Rey attracts females/young girls to the film. The black guy scores brownie points with the racists/black people, Mark Hammil, Harrison Ford and Leia bring back the baby boomers, all the 20-ish looking actors make sure the millennials connect with the film, the CGI giant brings over the Harry Potter/LOTR fans and finally copying the first film's story ensures people will like it.

Rear Window is certainly well shot and the suspense is there. However, the mystery isn't. It's very predictable. That's fine, but unfortunately Stewart isn't a very convincing actor. Coming off of "Vertigo", I was thankful he was portraying a photographer (Jeff). Well, this is supposed to be a "tough" photographer who wears boots, treks through jungles and eats grizzly tribal foods in foreign lands. He doesn't look or act "tough" in any way.

There was a scene near the beginning of the film where Jeff was supposed to doze off, not being able to stay awake and watch out his window any longer. It looked more like he was having a stroke than falling asleep. If a Hollywood actor can't convincingly fall asleep, that's a problem.

The film is filled with just downright unrealistic events.

To go through some of the more extreme examples: At the end of the film after Jeff falls from the window, the policeman pokes his head out to report a full confession with multiple details. This was 10 seconds after they pulled the killer off of Jeff. All that in 10 seconds? I don't think so.

Prior to that, Jeff was hanging only by his fingers/hands on the ledge. He has a big, strong looking man pushing on him but somehow his fingers have superman strength (yes, that is a 1998 Rear Window remake jab at Christopher Reeve). Of course, it's only when the police stop the killer that he falls.

The scene prior to this with his camera flashes was the dumbest killer/victim scene I've ever seen. Basically, the killer is standing at one end of the room and Jeff in his wheelchair at the other. He puts a bulb in his flash and sets it off, temporarily blinding the killer. The camera focuses close in on him rubbing his eyes, stopping him in his tracks then recovering. He takes one more step, and this whole process repeats about 4 or 5 times until he finally reaches him. Of course, it's at this point that the police coincidentally show up and he's able to scream for help. It's comical.

Earlier in the film, Jeff's girlfriend is being strangled/attacked. He and his nurse just watch. He squirms like a pansy and says "Oh gee, what do we do?" Oh gee, golly whiz, what do you do? Well for one, if someone's life is in serious danger, you don't do nothing. You could scream. Yes, screaming out and saying "HEY A**HOLE, I CALLED THE POLICE! WE SEE YOU ATTACKING HER!" would actually be a rational thing to do. But, the police magically show up literally 15 seconds after he calls them and save the day.

The problem is all of these unrealistic scenes were unnecessary. They could have easily been replaced with realistic alternatives. Great movies don't require the viewer to throw rationality out the window (no pun intended). For that reason, I feel the film is quite overrated. I also think the Freud analysis of the movie some people have like "it's a take on society's obsession with voyeurism" is complete nonsense. No, it's actually not. It's actually a crime-suspense film about a nosy, bored neighbor stumbling upon a murder - not a message to viewers about society's inner perversions.

"Terrible" is the word that comes to mind to describe this movie.

The overall plot and interaction between characters is so implausible that at one point I began laughing at how bizarre it became.

The main character (Scottie) is a retired police detective/former lawyer. He comes off as a gigantic dimwit. Clueless throughout the entire film, clumsy, unsure of himself and completely gullible. He doesn't act, talk or carry himself like you would expect someone playing the role of "clever detective" to. It would have made much more sense to cast him as something more mundane like a professor or accountant. At least then it would give credence to the irrational decisions you wouldn't expect a detective/lawyer to be making. Of course, the reason for this character's profession was to give reason for his friend's request he act as a private investigator (which could have been just as plausible with any profession, in my opinion).

For example, if you're going to covertly tail someone you probably shouldn't stand 3 feet behind them staring at their hair.

The script was rushed and I agree with criticisms that Hitchcock did so to fit it within 2 hours. For example, Scottie falls in love with Madeleine even though he's met her only several times. We're supposed to believe he's truly in love with her but from my perspective he comes off as a guy with a hard-on for a hot blond. Even the most desperate romantics would be wary of a woman exhibiting psychotic behavior that you don't even know that well, right? I also think if the viewer is expected to care about Scottie's despair/struggles, they probably shouldn't have made him what most today would be considered a home wrecker. There wasn't even an "oh gee, I feel kind of bad for starting an affair with a married woman, let alone married to one of my friends".

The acting is over the top. I thought "Midge" delivered the best performance but unfortunately her role served almost no purpose to the overall plot.

The facial expressions became an annoyance. It was almost insulting that the viewer can't be expected to notice something without doing close up shots followed by Scottie's overly exaggerated eye-squinting and head cocking.

This was all set to the most annoying part of the film: suspenseful violin music. It was like a 5 minute track set on loop for the whole film.

Overall, I was just purely disappointed. The plot didn't make sense. The script was over the top. The acting was terrible. I couldn't find much about this film I found entertaining.