hpz-462-658736 Reviews

Sully (2016)

NTSB bashing not useful

[5/10 · 7 January 2017]

The 5 is for Tom Hanks' acting. He plays the cool airline captain very well, as we all expected.

But the NTSB would never hire such an asshole as the guy who plays the chief investigator, and they would never get the report on the left engine while sitting in a final public meeting. Also, never would the NTSB accept simulator tests where the operators were allowed several attempts. They are well aware of the stress factor and don't have to be lectured by some film producer. The film makes them look like they had done their first accident investigation.

Once again, Hollywood has created prejudice among lay people for the sake of "good entertainment". Shame on you, screenwriters and studio!

Gravity (2013)

Terrible Lack of Gravity

[1/10 · 20 November 2013]

WARNING: This review may contain spoilers! (Although there is nothing to spoil...)

Have you ever sat through a movie just to find out how ridiculous it gets? My wife and I did that with Gravity.

Believe me, I would love to love this film, but in all honesty, I can't. After five minutes, you've seen all there is to see. Yes, the animation department has done its job, but that's about it. The script is terrible, the director has done a poor job, even the actors, once known as A-list folks, are the worst I have ever seen.

Obviously, we are expected to believe a bunch of baloney:

• Dr. Stone is a medical doctor, but gets an engineering job in space.

• Dr. Stone and her colleague Matt Kowalski still address each other by their formal titles, and Kowalski doesn't know if she has kids until in the middle of their space mission. I guess, they just met an hour before the mission, and that's probably when NASA decided to send Dr. Stone (who has always crashed the shuttle in the simulator) up there to do what she does best: Repairing stuff she doesn't understand.

• Kowalski does everything to save the mission. He hovers around in space with ease, and, where necessary, with the aid of a fire extinguisher. But when his secret love interest (yeah, isn't she adorable in her cute little space suit?) is connected to the space station with a rope, and he holds on to her, he decides out of nowhere that "the rope is not strong enough to carry us both", and he lets go, not even trying to get back with the tools he used to exploit before, but happily vanishing in space.

I could go on and on. Not one moment did I care for those ridiculous characters. And as to the dialog, I always thought multiple writers would improve at least that part of the script. To wrap this up, I have two questions:

1. Should NASA sue the production company?

2. Has Hollywood become a bunch of babies fooling around with huge budgets? Or are they grown-ups who have discovered that feeding babies is a lucrative business?