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Reviews
Doctor Who: The Forgotten Doctor (2013)
Fan Fiction
Maybe it gets better. But initially it lacks acting finesse in key acting roles. A bit too much like watching preteens at play.
Definitely not much like current official series standards for script, acting and special effects.
The series does sort of imitate pre-1987 special effects and video standards in a very limited way. Excepting that full model aliens are even more rare and shadowy stills of classic WHO prop monsters favored instead. Thus more scenes are effectively monologues or off camera conversations.
Basically what you would expect from a series with next to zero prop budget and no professional creature makeup artists. What quality matching the series does have compared to the earlier official Doctor Who is strictly a product of the cheapness and prevalence of home computer video special effects.
The Parent Trap (1998)
Really cute
Even more family friendly than the original. Very watchable for all ages. But it will fulfill your sugar requirements for the day. And similar to sugar you might not want your kids (especially girls) to watch this before bed. Some of them go quite hyper at the thought of having a natural co-conspirator living with them 24x7.
Looking forward to the rumored #2 modern remake where things take a modern twist after the camper conclude that they are twins. The parental confrontation reveals that their mothers were the actual twins and with twin fathers accounting for their similar looks. So the kids are not actually twins. The happy moment is resolving difficulties between the parental twins who have not spoken since the long ago girlfriend/boyfriend theft incident. I think M. Night Shyamalan is directing.
Jericho (2006)
Great character drama unfortunately the writers are idiots about...
The writers are idiots about practical matters of life. Season 1 episode #6 was a classic. The great fire crisis.
Fire crews did not just physically cut power lines to the building with axes or cutters but instead trusted someone across town to flip the right switch. Oops! pardon my mistake. Wrong switch. All done as if the writers believe power gets flipped right back on when the fire is out without need to repair lots of wiring. Incidentally the show already had the live power feed to the building completely fall off and shock someone in the parking lot -- which would be highly visible. Also I doubt the town government would have access to power grid controls unless the town owned its own power plant - possible in western Kansas. But even then controls would be in the power plant, not town hall -- unless someone rich funded recent solid state remote controls. In which case controls would likely be run from an executive office computer. The basement location is an obvious confusion with a residential fuse box. Hilarious! Town water is NOT gravity fed to the pipes by a tall tower. It is electrically pumped block by block. Yeah right. Sure this common power/fire safety problem hasn't ever been seen before in the last 200 years of the US. And there are no national guidelines or state regulations to prevent idiot systems. Oh and the fire truck has NO internal capacity to buffer water shortages momentarily. In reality such electric pump stations are never used for anything but sewage!!! Not even western Kansas is so water short as to use that in fire hydrants. Somebody needs to smack the writers every episode.
Hee! Hee! Looks like smarter people on the secondary video crew did!!! In the opening of the second half of the episode, the first image is the camera zooming in and panning past the local water tower which provides gravity feed pressurized water for quite some time after the power goes out. Unfortunately the point is probably lost on the dimwit writers.
The major puzzle of the first 4 episodes to figure out how to get gas out of a storage tank without electricity is also a classic writer screw up. This is western Kansas. Almost every farmer has manual pumps on his farm tanks. Most western Kansas towns lose power to storms for several days at least every couple years. They thus have had recent practice and they talk about it too. Its like a saying a New Yorker or Los Angelos person would be stumped for days by candy vending machines if the power went out - rather than just finding a brick. If you haven't done it, you have seen it or at least heard about it.
But then what do you expect from writers who can't read a map and never visited the general locale? Yeah episode #1 -- in reality the Rockie Mountains are something like 180 miles away straight line from the closest point to the Kansas border. Everything in sight in Western Kansas is very flat and usually treeless -- except a few isolated geographic features rare enough to be tourist traps. To see mountains and Denver just over the horizon as in the TV show, you have to be at least 120 miles west of the Kansas border inside Colorado - within about 60 miles of Denver...which fits with the arrival time of the storms in episode #2 (otherwise you need massively destructive superstorms to cover 180 miles in less than 2 hours). In reality I doubt you could see a mushroom cloud over Denver from Western Kansas - a long way over the horizon.
The Eye (2008)
Silly Film
Never good when the bulk of a movie's core story is 10 seconds of narration rather filming the drama.
Maybe a little subtler but commercially this is another sexploitation film. Weak sexploitation at that. Still it obvious the film wouldn't make it to DVD with an ugly or completely uninteresting looking woman as star. The subconscious savagery appeal to men is that, through most the movie Alba appears as a beautiful woman so crazy and helpless that she would be unable to defend her virtue or effectively report when you take advantage of her. For women the appeal is identification with a woman having justification for masturbatory self-absorption, a fantasy return to youthful attention seeking. Alba's character gets "daddy"-like attention from her supporting doctor without the film ever providing any good reason.
Sure the film has other messages but unfortunately these are too weakly presented to be the basis for commercial appeal. The supernatural element of the source story is basically all but lost. See the TV show "Ghost Whisper" if you want to add a supernatural story to the sexploitation (and better sexploitation for men too).
How does the film fail so badly? Well the real story is in the last 19 minutes. First the movie spends 25 minutes of "action" in an extremely slow setup before the first hint of entering the main idea. So you know more than you need to about life before the eye surgery. Lots of stalker appeal I guess.
The slow setup might be because the rest of the movie has so little to say. The movie spends way too much time in blurry vision mode. It takes 20 minutes for normal stuff to come into focus. She doesn't see everything clear until around 55 minutes into the film. I guess this is to encourage you to believe the main character is nuts because she jumping around way before you can see a reason for it. In fact this film ought to be called "The Ear" because for 2/3 the time she is hearing stuff far more than seeing it.
The writing and directing is so bad that I think most people would have problems figuring out what the big deal was from the first 60 minutes, if they hadn't heard the movie synopsis before seeing the film. At least not until the character tells you something with only 30 minutes to go. Oh there are a couple fuzzy hints earlier but nothing definite. Then a support character reveals the bulk of the story in 2-3 sentences with only 20 minutes left in the movie. Then you get the first validation of the main character's reality a minute later...not good timing, especially as it has never really been questioned until this point. There is only 10-15 minutes left in the film before there is a hint that the main character has a goal or something to resolve -- and it still isn't clear.
The Eye (2008)
Silly Film
Never good when the bulk of a movie's core story is 10 seconds of narration rather filming the drama.
Maybe a little subtler but commercially this is another sexploitation film. Weak sexploitation at that. Still it obvious the film wouldn't make it to DVD with an ugly or completely uninteresting looking woman as star. The subconscious savagery appeal to men is that, through most the movie Alba appears as a beautiful woman so crazy and helpless that she would be unable to defend her virtue or effectively report when you take advantage of her. For women the appeal is identification with a woman having justification for masturbatory self-absorption, a fantasy return to youthful attention seeking. Alba's character gets "daddy"-like attention from her supporting doctor without the film ever providing any good reason.
Sure the film has other messages but unfortunately these are too weakly presented to be the basis for commercial appeal. The supernatural element of the source story is basically all but lost. See the TV show "Ghost Whisper" if you want to add a supernatural story to the sexploitation (and better sexploitation for men too).
How does the film fail so badly? Well the real story is in the last 19 minutes. First the movie spends 25 minutes of "action" in an extremely slow setup before the first hint of entering the main idea. So you know more than you need to about life before the eye surgery. Lots of stalker appeal I guess.
The slow setup might be because the rest of the movie has so little to say. The movie spends way too much time in blurry vision mode. It takes 20 minutes for normal stuff to come into focus. She doesn't see everything clear until around 55 minutes into the film. I guess this is to encourage you to believe the main character is nuts because she jumping around way before you can see a reason for it. In fact this film ought to be called "The Ear" because for 2/3 the time she is hearing stuff far more than seeing it.
The writing and directing is so bad that I think most people would have problems figuring out what the big deal was from the first 60 minutes, if they hadn't heard the movie synopsis before seeing the film. At least not until the character tells you something with only 30 minutes to go. Oh there are a couple fuzzy hints earlier but nothing definite. Then a support character reveals the bulk of the story in 2-3 sentences with only 20 minutes left in the movie. Then you get the first validation of the main character's reality a minute later...not good timing, especially as it has never really been questioned until this point. There is only 10-15 minutes left in the film before there is a hint that the main character has a goal or something to resolve -- and it still isn't clear.
Rambo (2008)
Last 15 minutes has Gore Merit -- otherwise....
At 80 minutes until end credits, this movie is still a bit too long. Truthfully action-wise all the two-sided violence is packed at the very end. Nothing socially redeeming and barely hits mediocre acting. Not much dialog in English and except for a hand full lines all pretty banal.
Really pretty boring during first half except for some short "bad army kills villagers clips". And those no more exciting than to say the enemy is ruthless which saying "the enemy is ruthless" does almost as well. If this movie gives you a thrill before the last 20 minutes, you take too much pleasure in passively watching people gunned down without a chance -- that or watching rain forest river scenery.
John Rambo, himself, lurks stone faced and non-committal until 2/3 the way through. Other than a brief use of revolver, arrows and a jog through the woods, Rambo doesn't exhibit the old super soldier skills. He sets a claymore and lurks behind a truck mounted gun for the majority of actual action. I would guess arthritis has caught up with Stallone.
The last 15 minutes is a chase to the climatic all out bombs and guns "glory". Mostly fairly realistic human destruction by high caliber weapons. Far more than most movies are willing to show. But the same old exaggerations on how easily it is to cleanly decapitate with single blow.
The sniper guy is the best job of acting but he only has like 8 lines.
And you know this isn't a "real" action movie because they got Julie Benz and they don't flash her tits, not even a wet shirt. And while she stays in character as a extremely naive and none too smart Christian missionary -- the chances of her keeping her shirt in real life while native people are are raped and killed continuously is about nil. Only if she had been kept for ransom by rebels (not official government forces) would she have had a chance of good treatment and keeping her shirt.
One really odd moment is when the chief bad guy grabs a young boy from the prisoners and takes him to bed. But after that everything proceeds like the kid volunteered for the role and is even released in the morning to trot happily away by himself. One of the mercenaries will later refer to this homosexual act after being captured by calling the evil commander "ladyboy" despite lacking a view into this incident. I guess somethings were cut out that would have explained all this and we end up with only random "gay foreigners are evil foreigners". Very biblical but unnecessary.
She-Wolf of London (1990)
Real value?
Well some episodes showed promise. Better than the Hulk for actual drama. Buffy class drama but more moralizing.
But really the main reason to watch as the British editing where VHS slow-motion had some extremely "revealing" shots of a young Kate Hodge waking after transformation nights.
Which was why the very Christian Kate was really angry about the show in later interviews. She wasn't angry about being potentially being stereotyped as a good monster flick actress as she said but as the specific overexposed eye candy to shore up weak shows. Also probably why she made efforts to reduce her quite buxom figure with dieting. Might have been some surgery too.
Sunshine (2007)
Mixed bag of Science and pure Existential "Art"
This film has very nice trappings of Science and SciFi. Very business like procedures and analysis of issues (mostly). The set and effects are superb. Rated 7 but it could have been so much more with some improvement in writing.
Unfortunately the film is a wolf in sheep's clothing. As Science Fiction the film has several key underlying science fallacies and a psycho existential drama element that just doesn't fit the "Mission parameters". All introduced on purpose I bet. In this case "artistic license" is another way of saying "not a brilliant writer" when weaving the handful of good ideas and a good sense of mission related dialog into a whole tale. But I am betting the writer and director's main intent was a story of existential philosophy turned to horror (or maybe the horror of existence) which just happens to occur in a futuristic crisis scenario. As such Artsy people of the Green Peace "let all creatures and humans live or die together" turn of mind may find the film quite uplifting (no one left out like in elementary school games I guess).
You got to "love" (NOT) how the film starts by treating the sun as a gas heater with a pilot light that has gone out. Restarting a star? A silly proposition at best since stars die due to being low on ready fuel (usually when their gravity exceeds their rate of fusion). Maybe if the film had at least proposed a fusion bomb it might not be as revoltingly lame at its foundation. But fission did lend itself to the plot artifice of having only two chances & no more nuclear bomb threat on earth afterward if they work -- rainbows and ponies galore.
Why do the two huge awkward "one shot" ships have the ability to dock with each other when launched 7 years apart? A small shuttle would have made a lot more sense and made repairs easier and less hazardous. Oh that's why not -- more opportunity for dramatic problems.
Why don't the radio towers have retraction or ejection mechanisms? I gathered that it was reflections from their stubs that set the fire. I figure that the option to rotate would have been examined even if only 1% likely to occur. Plus retraction options make for easier repair and start resolving the question of "oh what happens when you drop the bomb attached heat shield to fly away?"
Oh a quick dip in liquid nitrogen? Hee Hee much stupider than the guys freezing in space. You really will freeze in seconds in supercomputer coolant -- even if it isn't liquid nitrogen (it frosted hand in 3 seconds earlier). Plus either the supercomputer sets its circuits to "safe mode" or it burns up in seconds. You don't have minutes to recognize the problem and fix it. If the writer wanted a crisis he should have had a time critical course correction or fuel being jettisoned or similar. Of course that didn't fit with concept of the Sun God High Priest putting the ships in permanent orbit as temples.
And the hydroponics garden is much too small for eight people. Plus you'd think there might be some concept of compartmentalization and separation for accidents. Its not like the US and Russia never cooked astronauts. You only have several miles of ship to spread living quarters, life support and other area across. And even brings the issue up of only having 8 crew when so much depends and apparently all competent workers are half-psycho. I figure there would be 5 psychologists and 20 men at arms just to find and eject the crazies as excess cargo, at least based on the film. But lets be real, in a crew of 8 just 1 clever crazy could have his way in a single move (eject or blow up bomb now). All this picking off crew and critical systems one at time is pure unnecessary Hollywood horror claptrap.
The underlying philosophical question of the movie sparks the final crisis. The question "shouldn't we just accept death and die together peacefully -- rather than engage in undignified resistance to the obvious will of God and have some live at the expense of the death of others?"
This idea is most personified by the Captain of Icarus #1, who sees himself as High Priest in charge of preserving the dignity of the dying Sun God and best able to commune the meaning of mankind by becoming its last representative. You'd think that weeding out people who might succumb to such megalomania under stress would be a #1 imperative for a mission to save mankind -- to the point of sending chimps if necessary.
The whole 16 months equals psychotic behavior is overworked Hollywood plot. These people are shown as having a lot more space than submariners.
Reference some other reviews: Actually gold "lame" is the preferred solar reflector due to reflectivity rivaling silver, flexibility plus its ability to be worked thin without tiny pinhole imperfections of other metals. Visit NASA pictorials of long life, high dollar satellites. Other materials are used where shorter mission lives make second best acceptable.
People in vacuum wouldn't explode into pieces, but they would quickly (<1 minute) spout boiling blood foam from nose, eyes, and ruptured lung sacs -- long before freezing stiff (hours if not in contact with a cold object). You might get a little surface frost depending on evaporation rate of liquids, again a matter of hours to freeze dry.
Lesser Evils: The payload is not spinning. So although crew modules are on rotating shaft, scenes near airlocks should be free fall and magnetic boots as should the payload area.
Quality of film versus the costs? Well start by having no big name actors and reducing the overpriced Hollywood unions.
National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007)
Sequel fades
Not as good as the first movie though the end picks the pace for a while.
Unfortunately the only big reason to watch this specific movie is to support the possibility that another sequel will be written to the standards of the first movie.
A little too matter of fact at the clever points and break ins, etc. The main characters aren't nearly as interesting on average - though a spark hits here and there. The tech support guy is nearly cartoon as is the disappointing villain until some inconsistent changes at the end.
The other support cast is where the better writing and acting happens especially Mom and Dad -- sort of like how Sean Connery stole the last Indiana Jones.
Big plot holes: all the clues point to specific things that didn't exist and mostly weren't planned at the point the clue was created.
I Am Legend (2007)
Smith wimped out
Read the book. Despite its age it is much better. In the book Neville turns out to be the misguided villain in the end - man who didn't see how the world kept changing.
But Will Smith chickened out on playing the unwitting bad guy. Or maybe he didn't read the whole book (several hours) in favor of just watching the Heston movie with the director. The director was a terrible choice since by his own admission he loves classic (i.e. bad) zombie movies and the Heston "Omega Man" -- and wanted to make a zombie movie ("red flags" Will "red flags").
This film is instead a remake of the Charleton Heston movie which was really just zombie movie and wasn't not very good. This movie is much better but pretty much totally lacks originality. Since the book was written 40+ years ago the general viral Apocalypse theme has been ridden into the ground. Then add the restrictions of the standard Hollywood hero formula and you don't have anything that exciting.
You can actually see that they started to film this way for the movie in a couple scenes that they forgot to delete when they wimped out and made Neville a hero instead. Ask yourself who set the trap that caught Neville? Yes his mind is deteriorating some but not that much. Yup it is the infected people who are obviously not all mindless. (ooops! need clarify that Neville is really crazy or cut it for the ending of this movie) Why did the infected guy chase Neville into the daylight street? In the book this sort of stuff is the infected defending family and society from Neville though Neville doesn't figure that out. And I am pretty sure that was the original thinking for the scene when shot.
In the book Neville isn't a doctor able to search for a cure but a simple guy trying to find survivors with similar immunity or good luck. After society collapses he makes it his mission to kill off the infected during the day. But the infection mutates during the first year for the majority of infected to allow a night bound society to start to reform. They have just start to research ways medicines to shield themselves from the sun so that they can track down Neville who is sort of a daylight Dracula to them.
I Know Who Killed Me (2007)
Taboo plot points gain unmerited critics thumbs down
The movie is actually pretty good if you go for mysteries with a serving of horror and can tolerate a hackneyed paranormal explanation as a key point at the end. The clues are spooled very well. Very good as horror flick too - especially for women because Lohan won't be distracting your date.
There were some plot reasons for assigning the main character a job as stripper but I think with 3-5 minutes more they could have changed the profession and avoided a lot of critical defamation.
Overall it probably would have been a good idea to drop the stripper profession in favor of some other hard profession where weird, unlucky, hardcase personalities are accepted, targeted and not immediately believed by police -- maybe metermaid or cosmetic door-to-door sales.
Any big serious movie with main character strippers will always be panned. It automatically offends before viewing 80% of female critics, most anyone who specifically claims delicate refinement (most gay critics whose artistic cliché sets the stereotype for critics), and any religious/family values critics (who in the PC age make up most the other critics). Then add a very gory tale and you have a movie which rarely will see critical success.
From the audience side quite few males went primarily to see Lohan bare something and were quite disappointed when she didn't. To be honest I was sort of interested in what seeing what she looked like from all the Entertainment News raves. The girl looked distinctly unhealthy throughout probably not just from the gore nature of the movie but also I think her rumored alcoholism and too much sun and partying were evident.