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larrysez
Reviews
Aquaman (2018)
Hollywood Tripe at Its Worst
I watched this movie on a flight from Oakland to Kauai, after I'd already watched a really good film (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood). I was looking for something light and easy, that I wouldn't mind missing the end of if it lasted longer than the rest of the flight did. I can assure you that I did not mind missing the end of it.
The two stars, Jason Momoa and Amber Heard, are pretty good eye candy, as were a couple of the second-stringers, gorgeous Patrick Wilson and still-stunning Nicole Kidman. Some, but definitely not all of the special effects are well done. Otherwise, what a waste of celluloid, or electrons, or whatever movies are made out of these days.
Both Momoa and Heard are atrociously one-dimensional actors who can't even pull off the clichéd, tough-guy lines they've been given in any kind of believable cowboys-and-Indians way. They'd be the runts of the litter in any 6th-grade drama class, except for their good looks.
The script is so bad that its predictability and the simple-mindedness of the dialogue are actually one of the most fun parts of watching the movie. The plot is full of lazy, dumb shortcuts that break the movie's few asinine rules about Atlantis and sea-people vs. land-people as soon as they've been laid out. E.g., our hero and heroine, ferocious Atlantan royalty who can swim better than anything in the ocean, have to steal a boat to get from the coast of Italy? Greece? (someplace on the Mediterranean) to get to an off-shore island so close that it can easily be seen with the naked eye.
If you shaved down all the overly long, gratuitous fight scenes, you could probably cut the running time of this potboiler by about 50%. Which would be a blessing. Thank heavens for the fast forward button.
I'd been willing to suspend disbelief, as one always must with sci-fi/fantasy films, but this thing is dumber than the crappiest 1950s horror film you could ever imagine. So, of course, it made over $160 million, and a sequel is planned. Yay, Tinseltown. It's hard to tell how much to blame the director and producers for (justifiably) holding their audience in contempt, as opposed to not being able to produce a decent product even in a lowbrow genre like comic book movies.
The Sound Barrier (1952)
Chuck Yeager Is Replaced by Anonymous Brit
Totally made up fantasy about how the sound barrier was initially broken by some English guy. It mashes up the true death of test pilot Geoffrey de Havilland in 1946 with a made-up subsequent crash and a made-up subsequent pioneering blast through the sound barrier, and it was written and filmed more than enough years after Chuck Yeager had really broken the sound barrier (after de Havilland's crash) to be a pretty outrageously and fictitiously an expression of British nationalism.
All of the characters are very posh and very English (and of course lily white), with the exception of an irascible Scottish technical genius who may well have been the prototype for "Scotty" in the Star Trek franchise. Just the sort of movie you'd expect from postwar Britain when they thought they'd still be ruling the world for ever and ever, even as the empire was already disintegrating. Pretty good acting, but the characters are all a little too refined, too restrained, and too polite, even as the rather unscrupulous head of the aircraft company in the movie gets a pass on getting test pilots killed in the interest of being the first guy to build a supersonic plane.
Pride & Prejudice (2005)
WORST Adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice" in Decades
Between Deborah Moggach's god-awful screenplay and director Joe Wright's dismal vision of a filthy, graceless English upper class, this is the most dismal of the many film versions of Jane Austen's classic since the laughably bad 1940 movie.
The Elizabeth Bennett of this movie is a slovenly, thick-headed country bumpkin who eats like a slob, plays the pianoforte like a ham-fisted 5-year-old and has the conversational skills of an autistic teenage boy. She lives in a grubby, falling down hovel surrounded by untended fields, dusty drives and muddy yards filled with free-roaming livestock. Compared to this version of poor Elizabeth, Tess of the Durbervilles was like Marie Antoinette. Elizabeth is not alone in this coarseness, however; director Wright gives us an entire class of people who look more like ragtag medieval peasants than 19th century aristocrats.
Do yourself a favor and ignore this travesty. The marvelous 1995 mini-series starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle is vastly better in every way, especially its choice of sticking faithfully to Jane Austen's dialogue and plot line, instead of debasing them with a cheesy Hollywood attempt at embellishment.
Angora Ranch (2006)
God Awful Movie
The simple-minded script for this abysmal film might have been partially rescued by a competent cast, but the acting is absolutely excruciating to watch. I've seen better in beginning acting classes -- no, wait, make that "I've never seen worse, even in beginning acting classes."
After an opening scene where our lovely young hero Justin drops trow, steps into the shower, and sings "A Hard Man Is Good to Find" (yeah, that's original), the action begins with a completely contrived confrontation between Justin and his overbearing father over what Justin will wear to The Big Meeting where he will make a pitch to a new client of Dad's ag agency. OK, both Dad and Justin look like people you'd be more likely to find behind the counter at Dairy Queen than in an ad agency, and Dad comes across gayer than Justin, but let's see how this plays out . . .
Justin drives off to the meeting, dressed as Daddy insisted, and comes to a dead end and roadblock sign that is straight out of a Roadrunner & Coyote cartoon. On second thought, make that a Bugs Bunny cartoon, since there are cutesie-poo rabbit references throughout the film. In fact, Justin goes off the road to avoid a bunny in front of the home of a crankily kindly stranger, thereby setting up the rest of the action with all the subtlety, but none of the wit, of the car breakdown at the start of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." He goes to the nearby house to ask for help, and meets Jack, the owner of the place, and his father Peter.
Love is sure to bloom thanks to this chance encounter, because circumstance and a little interference from kindly bumpkins in the Texas village he has stumbled upon conspire to pair him up with the rather neurotic, unattractive older man whose bunny he swerved to avoid. Played atrociously by the screenwriter and director of this disaster, incidentally.
By the way, how is it that Peter, this straight father, also seems gayer than his tres gay son? Could it be that Tim Jones, the "actor" playing him, is the producer of this vanity production?
Gag! It just keeps going downhill from there. It could have been a creation of some retarded younger brother of John Waters. Absolutely dreadful.
Do yourself a favor -- watch something else. ANYTHING else.