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Reviews
Rogue One (2016)
Sophisticated adult story - well done !
I loved this movie because the story is political and sophisticated, at least compared to other sci-fi these days like Star Trek or Doctor Strange, or Marvel like stories which really seem to be for children, there is absolutely no comparison, this one rises high above those. This story has more complexity, at least we see that rebels have different opinions. We should fight, we should not, should we care about rebellion at all? The narrative is realistic, still with some Hollywood twists like "oh my god, in fact he is not dead!", but the general rendering is realistic and not naive. Great design on the robots. Also I love that every character has an important role to play, it's not just a hero that saves everybody because everybody is so weak. It was a big joy to see the old rebels costumes again with the orange glasses and all, it's a really good feeling. But there was no big innovations unfortunately. Then, the story really integrates well with the rest of the Star Wars stories, any Star Wars fan should not be disappointed, it is a real Star Wars story! Really well done! It explains what will happens next and makes so much sense, it makes me want to watch the next episode, now. I know, there are no Jedi, or force but honestly it is a big deal that they explain this side of the story on how they got the map, such an ingenious story. But I wish they explained more their motivation and why they want so badly to defeat the Empire.
The only thing that could be improved, is that despite the great design of the robots, the vessels and everything, we still see that the military director is a 3D character, we just see that he is not real, Leia was better because we just guess she is not real. Finally my only regret is that the heroine was not bold enough, she seemed to be carried from one point to the other and didn't show big initiatives, she didn't make any memorable actions of her own, she is kind of presented only as the daughter of.. yet she played her part very well, I wish she was developed more, it's sad we might not see her again, she's an interesting character.
Doctor Strange (2016)
Not enough Mastery
Where is the mastery?
The story is simple to understand, a good start for great intrigue and action. However, after you understand the story, I was really disappointed that there was not enough mastery, and smart strategy, it's too simplistic (I know underneath it's still Disney!..). They would ALWAYS fight but "traditionally", there were effects, but I didn't see their real mastery. It was like they would win only by luck with a few tricks sometimes. Do you really need to fight body to body - even when you are out of your body (lol!) -, when you control energy and matter? Bizarre, right ! Especially, I think Tilda Swinton died way too easily. I mean, she is very "ancient" with great longevity, so she must have won a lot of big fights to have survived during all those years or centuries, and yet she just dies from a frontal stab after a 5sec fight?! Come on ! The doctor fights during 20mn we never see the end of it and bonus: he doesn't die ! She is supposed to be the "Sorcerer Supreme"... she should have saved the situation more times and fought more. She should have pulled off a magic trick that only her owns for example, like a true big master. I think it's definitely a scripting mistake. Anyway, she delivered a great performance, even if I don't understand what really motivated her to help the doctor. He never proved himself or argued his case. He just showed arrogance, and yet she taught him and told him all those big secrets, WHY? The guy is not even remotely interesting or likable. And he just drops in and takes over? Hmmm, that is just weird. I don't understand his real motivation.
Another hero based story (of course, I know, I know)
I know it's Marvel. But I'm still going to say it :) What does everybody else is doing while he is saving everybody on his own?! Why does he have to do it on his own, all the time? I wish I saw the other characters developed more. I think hero based stories where a sole person saves it all just really don't make any sense anymore in today's world. Not only does it means that everybody is weak and actually needs a hero, but also that power is concentrated in a few privileged "gifted" ones, not very positive and motivating in my sense. But that's Marvel's viewpoint. OK.
Excellent visual effects
The movie is beautiful though for the cracking power imagery. I don't get over such beautiful effects, with the city turned upside down and everything. Bravo !!!
Welcome to Me (2014)
One day nudity will no longer be necessary
This is a good movie, the acting is good even if I had the impression sometimes that the actress looked too normal for the role which gave the sense that she was acting this role and was not enough real. That said, I love this actress, she's excellent.
What caught my attention is that even if the story doesn't need any sexual/romance plot, and could be really more interesting without, the writer injected that in the story, and managed to encrust a scene where we see the actress full body naked. I don't mind naked bodies when it's necessary for the story, in the shower, in a love scene, in the bath... It was not really necessary here, and I don't understand why good actresses accept it. It sounds just like a pretext for the creators, because the character is a woman, therefore she has to have a sexual activity and we have to see her naked. I don't see Dustin Hoffman having to do this as rain-man, or Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump either, does that remove anything from their story? I believe it is just an artifact of our time. Adult woman stories don't need sex or nudity to be viewed as adult. Story of a plain woman without the necessary nudity and sex belongs to the future. Sticking to these ingredients is not modern, because it's like we're stuck with them, it prevents the story from developing beyond and cuts down the character's charisma and dimension.
For example, I wish we had seen the world more through her eyes in addition to the talk show, it would have been interesting to show how she interprets what people tell her, with cinematic effects or day dreaming scenes, or inner voice. The weakness of the movie is that it shows her from our point of view, not hers (despite her talk show), so all the drama in her life seems very trivial, it's almost like we mock her, but we don't understand her. We don't know how she really thinks. She just seems super crazy and it stops there. It made me think also of the movie "Requiem for a dream", what's with the craze for TV? Go to YouTube instead! There you can exist as you are ;)
Violet & Daisy (2011)
Poetic massacre drama
What a poetic massacre drama! I love the absurd pitch - it is crazy. Love the girls motivated by getting a dress and the assassin crying behind the trash after an intimidating encounter. It's like a Japanese manga. This is so much fresher than a Tarantino, I like better this genre ! Tarantino takes himself way too seriously ! I regret though that the girls seem to not be enough professional, and that there was not more action. I really missed the action ! But the poetic sweet mood is very innovating, I'd like more of this please. Loved this line "What's with the cookies?! Wait, what if it's only the tip of the iceberg? What if he also makes brownies ???" Excellent !
The Red Tent (2014)
Epic tragedy
In general I don't like historical stories because it often tells the story of warriors with no spirit, only narrating the quest of victory. But this story shows a great sense of tragedy. I really loved how it was telling the story of real people, the tragic events in a family that explain certain human behaviors, the sense of honor or respect. I found the movie conveyed a great sense of human spirit. Everything is really human, anyone would understand each character I think. The main character seemed also very real, the actress did an excellent job. I had the impression of seeing the story of a real woman, one that gets hurt, and overcomes the difficulties on her own. I didn't mind God was not mentioned, I found the focus on the people to be more relevant because it depicts how humans are. I really felt torn about the story of each character. It was so epic! Great tragedy.
It also got me more interested in biblical stories, I might read more of it because of this movie. For example, I would like to read more about the story of Joseph. This movie and the original author have the merit to draw the attention on biblical stories and characters. I didn't even know Jacob had a daughter, choosing Dinah as the narrator gives power to the story and offers us an original and great angle to view the story.
Thanks for bringing her to my attention.
The Hateful Eight (2015)
Misoginy? Racism? Of course! It is a hateful movie! What else.
Unable to change the world, I think Tarantino just likes to maintain it. This movie feeds all the existing hatred including of this movie itself.
In this movie you will find reversed racism against white people, it's like some kind of shallow and equally hateful revenge. There are also characters that just can't stop talking about their stupid plans to total strangers, and then hope that they won't reveal anything. The men hate the woman as she is the devil, this is what feeds the minds of men and I think really the mirror of how men see the woman in general. Women just can't win, or save themselves ever. From the several punches in the face she gets (I didn't see any of the male characters get those punches with the same sadistic laughter that follows), to the feeding her, and telling her to shut the f* up (if only all of them had shut up, especially Samuel L. Jackson and his monologues), and making her say "I got it" in this submissive non combative way, and the pathetic end. I don't understand why this role even deserved a nomination at the Oscars, it's just a way to promote weak women. I'm glad no high profile actresses agreed to play that. I really prefer when the woman is simply not present, it's way better than seeing her portrayed weak and evil as hell through the masculine lens.
Well, Tarantino you should be glad, the world has not changed ! Terrorists must get great inspiration from this.
The Good Lie (2014)
Human movie with a great soundtrack
They should do more movies like this to let us see there is a planet with different kind of people around us. I think this movie succeeds in that it is not too much in the Hollywood story patterns. There were times though when I wondered if the western view as not projected on the way the refugees related to each other. But all in all it is a very good movie that informs us on what happened in Sudan and makes us understand how the context is complicated. The focus is not political though which they could have elaborated a bit more than "they fought over religious and resources matters". The movie is enough anyway to get you interested in this problem and maybe it is a good thing they didn't make it too political to not introduce any bias and agenda. The movie is a good advertisement as well for America, it is true America have such programs and I think it is really great to show it. I also liked that they arrive in America and discover the other set of problems that western countries have. Africa might have wars, but western countries have loneliness and social despair. About the acting, Reese Witherspoon plays well, I think she upgraded her kind of films, she should do more like these, I liked her active "make it happen" character and the rest of the cast is really good as well. Finally the soundtrack is really elegant and beautiful, I love it.
Silicon Valley (2014)
A bunch of cyber brats, not technology lovers
To quote the far better show "Veep", those guys are just a bunch of "cyber brats". The show actually really looks like the hilarious parody that "Veep" made of Silicon Valley, they really pinned the correct term.
This show is a little bit better than "The betas" in that the sexism and misogyny is not so blatant but still there. There was some improvement with some innovations where one of the developer regrets he was sexist toward a stripper (lol) and they actually flee the stripper, very funny. However you see the stripper and hear the word "cum" in the first episode. I always wonder how many strippers the writers see everyday so that they are so overly represented on screen but let's move on.
I actually kept watching because the content itself was not so bad, you see a little bit how the business works and how developers are. You also see the problems a start-up can encounter, it can be interesting. However I regret it had not enough geek content or references in terms of software development for example. They don't talk much about their actual work. It's much more about how to deal with the investors and other things. The only moment I found really funny was the guy whose start-up idea was to make a soup made of 1 and 0 -- very cool. But other than that, it's not that funny. That said, the founder's start-up idea to compress data is good and not so cliché, so this is a good point.
I really stopped watching at Episode 3 because there is one character that is just painfully annoying and who makes the show very difficult to watch. It's the accelerator and flat owner. What a massive douche. I don't know why they felt obligated to represent that guy. His big advice is "be an asshole" and throughout the show this kind of advice is celebrated. The message is clearly, the more you are an asshole the more you will succeed. I think it's a really bad message. They should use the correct term instead, it is really "be decisive" as in "don't be afraid of taking the right decision" but it is not "be an asshole". This is such a terrible advice because it keeps encouraging people to be actual assholes without them even taking the right decision. I know, the plot is probably about the founder eventually not following this advice, but still, really the whole show advertises it as a good thing. So anyway, I wanted to watch the 8 episodes but I stopped at Episode 3 when the douche guy criticized the company's name and advised "the name of your company should be the kind of name you could say during intercourse" like "google, hulu, uber", and you see them all dumbly approving. Well, if you find that funny it's really because you are mocking the characters so much they are zero-ambition losers.
Yes, once again, forget about "change the world" and all that jazz. The show is not at all for technology lovers, it's not even remotely motivating. At no point you feel they love technology or love what they do, sadly. The show just circles around those bad polluting jokes. I thought the level was too low and toxic for my mind so I stopped watching. If the whole plot is about a success story start-up, any start-up that starts in this context doesn't really interest me. The founder doesn't really want to solve a particular problem that's personal, he just wrote an algorithm that works. The thing is, success stories often start with a deeply personal problem the creator is trying to solve. The show makers really don't get that the crisp lies between the creator's deepest motivations and his or her abilities to make it in reality, that's what's interesting, that's where the adventure is, but it's not in low life jokes.
Veep (2012)
Verbal acid in your face
I wonder: how can they all work together given that they all receive 3 insults per second? Wait, it's a TV show about politics, right ! I should have known.
This show is really hilarious but you'd better not be sensitive to swearing, insults and the such because this is how they all communicate with each other. But in the end it's funny because it's well written. It's the kind of show that makes you want to take notes because the lines are really ridiculously funny. Like this one:
"Glasses make me look weak. It's like wheelchair for the eye."
I like the characters, I like the relationship between Selina (Julia, the veep) and Amy (chief of staff), and of course Selina drives the entire show very well, she's very comic. The political plots are not very elaborate but the show makes politics very funny and ridiculous. Each season gets better, and also the swearing seems to reduce as the seasons advance, but the 3 seasons are all good, with a lot of cool turns of events.
I recommend it, it's very funny!
"I lied and everything, but it sounded true at least !" "Political pricktise" "What? I can't cancel my destiny!" "You're kind of obsolete. You're like a viking stuck in time." "You're the world's biggest single cell organism." "He's like a belly dancer with a hammer!" "This programme revolutionizes the way we think about the way we think." "This fish is delicious. What is it? -> It's chicken." ... and tons more.
Äkta människor (2012)
Very smart robots story told from a social point of view
Social story
I found this show very original for the narrative angle it adopted. The show focuses on a Swedish family and starts by showing how the "hubots" (humanoid robots) are pervasive and accepted in society. The depicted future is a future where machines have become humanoid but they are not yet intelligent like human beings, they are just functional and social robots. From that setting the leading story takes place in the background showing a group of free hubots who have become intelligent and who want to integrate human societies as "real citizens".
The show is extremely intelligent in that it shows with a lot of consistency what the presence of hubots would imply in society. Groups with different points of view would form, the "real humans" group against hubots and the pro hubot group. It would also provoke some behaviors in human beings themselves, such as sexual attraction towards robots or the willingness to become a robot. People who love robots are called T-H-S (transhuman sexual) and the phenomenon looks very plausible and understandable from the way it is realistically shown. Those are innovative concepts that are realistic considering the nature of humans. The show also brilliantly includes justice in the frame, and asks the question "should hubots have human rights?"
It challenges our thoughts about what allows human beings to be "special" and brings good arguments on the table. For example, if the hubots can't be as special as humans just because they're not made of flesh and blood, then why animals are not as special as humans either? If intelligence is the criterion to be considered as a real life form, then hubots are already intelligent, why can't they have rights? It will really help you make yourself an opinion about how you would react if hubots really existed. The narrative is not opinionated so you are really only confronted to the facts and you can forge your own point of view without being too influenced.
Quite funny
SF fans will love this show because the writers thought of everything. Some situations are really hilarious, like the hubot saying "I need to defragment", or sighing of pleasure while she is recharging. Also, as the family hubot starts working, her boss wants her to have holidays. You also see a religious robot, which is hilarious but sadly really possible, or the robot who wants to "get married and live a happy life". To some extent, it is clear that the writers projected all the human ideals in the robots minds, so you can't help yourself but think, "gee, she's a robot and yet she is so incredibly stupid, why?!".
This is maybe why I didn't rate the show 10, because it still idealizes human beings as if being human was an ideal for the machines. The show clearly states though that for machines humans are idiots, but I found regressive that the machines would really like to become human. I don't get why a machine would want to be like a human. Also the show focuses on social robots, when real intelligent machines will probably not be social at all, but I guess this would happen in a later future.
Fantastic acting and great characters
All the characters are great. A big cudos for the actors and actresses who played the hubots because it is really really well played. Also, none of the characters are clichés. This show is very refreshing for that reason. For example, you don't find the "programmer genius" who is usually an ingredient for this kind of story, and you don't find the evil mysterious puppet master either, two clichés that are becoming very annoying in SF stories. Instead, I honestly loved the story from the point of view of the family, I liked seeing the dad caring for his girl, the mom caring for her hubot, the teenager coping with his T-H-S condition, his sister caring for him.
Advanced social norms
Because it is Swedish you also see the advanced definition of gender roles where each gender is active. The women are confronted to violence but they fight back, not like in the usual western productions where they are just victims. You also see advanced social norms where the father role is very positively depicted, and the man is something else than the "warrior" figure. You also see different layers of society, the young, the elderly and the middle-aged persons, it is not just about the young people. I particularly loved the mother character that I found very "real" because she brought something really human to the show.
Very advanced compared to American shows
For all the reasons cited above, I think this show is really advanced compared to American shows. It is very innovative. If this was an American show, the story would probably be told from a policeman's point of view. And the whole story line would be about fighting the hubots and showing the fighting scenes to add action. It is the case for example of the "Almost human" show that I stopped watching exactly because of that, boring fighting scenes succeeding each other that don't make you think at all.
The beauty of "Real humans" is that it focuses on the philosophical and social questions, it makes you think, and there is still room for suspense and action. The production of this show was really excellent and I admire the Swedish for once again innovating before everyone else.
Betas (2013)
No good for women in tech or any modern geek
Thankfully it's not Big Bang Theory
I couldn't rate it 0 so it gets a 1. I watched the first episode that's all it took me to see all the red smelling flags. I'm a geek and I like watching shows about geeks, it can always be inspiring and fun content. Last year I traveled to San Francisco and I saw the poster for this show everywhere, so I wanted to check it out. Also I noticed that it was made by Amazon, in other words, a geek show for geeks by geeks, so I had the hope of not stumbling upon the nonsensical stereotypes of geeks from the 80's who love Star Wars and RPG (like the dummy Big Bang Theory).
It is a hipster show
Well indeed, you don't find that in the show. Instead you find the young hipster almost like a teenager whose big revolutionary idea is to create a dating app, duh. If it was not the dating app, it would have been maybe a restaurant app, to be more original? For that matter maybe the show wanted to illustrate the shallowness of the tech culture in the Valley where they want to create popular but fundamentally useless apps. I mean forget all about the "change the world" motto, this show is absolutely not about that. If it was just that, and we actually learned a bit more about the ropes of the business culture it could have been OK.
Filled with misogyny
But unfortunately the show was just not funny and still stereotyping in a way. Basically, you had the tech guys, the networking founder and the marketing girl.
What I hated was the need to inject misogyny in the show like it is a requirement because it is the tech field. Best way to repulse women from the field really. The misogyny is so blatant! Within a few minutes of the show we see the 35 years old cave man developer skyping with a naked girl and drooling over the sight of her stripping for him. The image is very crude and disgusting. And this is how they depict the geek. I thought it was offensive for developers because I work with them, and it is not true that they are like that. The guys who are like that and openly misogynous in the workplace are actually the incompetent ones, those who desperately need approval from their peers to look cool by stating misogynous comments. But those who are competent and who are more likely to end up creating their own start-ups are actually really smart in that sense, they are not misogynous. 35 and misogynous like a pig is a really pathetic representation of how geeks really are.
But the misogyny doesn't stop there. The women are depicted as total angry bitches, you do not want to know them or be friends with them, because they are horrible human beings! The marketing girl is always shutting down men like she is so superior and wanted by everybody. The investor is an old sex hungry billionaire. Within a few minutes, I detected the "sex-hungry cave men chasing the female preys" pattern mixed with the lousy dating app plot. So I thought, OK I get it. It's another show for teenagers where all the guy wants is to get the girl, and the girl is just there to decorate or to act as the guy's carrot. No link whatsoever with technology. So lame.
So please, reboot and innovate
I am really concerned about how unconscious the producers are to perpetuate clichés about geeks and their unwillingness to innovate in storytelling when they're in the very business of innovation in the tech field. They don't make the tech field progress with this kind of show, they just make it regress. This type of show repulses the women in tech and developers, but it also doesn't motivate anyone to join the field. It celebrates the cave man sex-hungry style that should be so banned from tech culture like bad hygiene. The modern geeks are really not like that.
So to the producers: go get an update in reality and make another show. By doing so, you might also see that the women in that field 1. exist and 2. are very normal people, not horrible human beings like you think. I wrote this review also to notify that there IS a female geek audience to this type of show, and making good geek shows for all the audience can only be better for the tech field so that everyone gets inspiration, motivation and fun out of it, instead of stupid drooling for the cave men and disgust for the women.
Anyway, I'm glad that as I write this, the show has been canceled. I hope they come in here to check the logs and try to understand why it was such a massive failure and then reboot. I will give a shot to the Silicon Valley show, hopefully their big idea is not the dating app.
Now You See Me (2013)
Entertaining but doesn't make sense at all, pure fluffy fluff
I think the writers thought, hmmm let's list all the "must be in a movie" patterns and write words around them: car pursuit and crash, I give a watch to my little boy so he can tell the "watch story" next to the fireplace (what was that), two agents that don't like each other kissing in duty (what can she possibly see in that guy), authoritative idiots everywhere, supposedly powerful men who are rivals over who knows what.
The magic tricks were cool and Jesse Eisenberg and Isla Fisher were cool too, I watched the movie because Jesse was in it I admit. But Marc Ruffalo was such a pain, he plays really badly, he was a douche towards his female colleague, "i didn't ask you, I asked him", "stay in the car", "doing a little sight seeing?" -> massive douche!, yet she's kind of a possible romantic partner, we don't know. But he was just really bad in his role, I didn't believe any of it. Also you are left with many questions: why did he do all that? "welcome to the eye" -> what? What happened to the insurance guy? Why did Marc Ruffalo try to stop the Jake magician if his partner was already blocked? In the end, what was the purpose of it all ??? Also the end... did you get it? Nothing adds up really. All the magic books thing, and the eye stuff, and the Interpol woman saying "some things are better left unexplained" -> what ?! why are you even an Interpol agent ??? Pure fluff.
When I watched the trailer I thought the movie would be very sophisticated, kind of a mind game mixed with interesting strategies a bit like "21". But it wasn't, it was really just fluff with added "to do scenes" and sometimes funny lines:
"I'm touched. But I didn't tell you where I was touched".
Also I would have renamed "horsemen" into "horse-persons", there was a woman with them, good golly!
"The 4 horse-persons" so chic, isn't it?
Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)
Moses, the prophet warrior
Another warrior movie
Oh no. Just another warrior movie. I spotted it from miles away with the movie posters of course, but I went to see the movie anyway because it was made by Ridley Scott, the same who made the ingenious Prometheus (it was really the only reason to see it). I avoid warrior movies like the recent Noah where the Gladiator actor was starring, because it is just pathetic. It is a failing pathetic and reducing view of what manhood is and should be. Why do they always have to be brainless warriors??! Moses is supposed to be a prophet, a leader, a wise person, all the contrary of a warrior.
Unmotivated Moses
Moses doesn't seem to like his people, he's just guided by a creepy kid in his head, and even weirder he has sarcastic comments about religion itself like he doesn't believe in it at all. I mean it is the story of Moses, the Bible prophet you are making a movie about! You get the feeling that the modern philosophy was projected on the story, it produced a distorted and phony movie.
Weak story
I didn't dislike that every single "miracle" was rationalized and not made in a spectacular, fireworks and over the moon way, but I regret that all the plagues were just succeeding each other in sequence like programmed from God's supercomputer. Ramses was just a victim, the movie never showed how strongly he refused to free the slaves even when warned about the God's punishment. He seemed really powerless. Also, the burning bush was totally pointless. If you didn't know the original story, you would think what is that? Why is there a burning bush behind the creepy kid? It feels they just copy pasted it from our imagination to the screen, it served no purpose at all.
Typical Hollywood fairy tale
I also went for the visual effects. It was described by the marketing as spectacular, but I didn't see where the show was. It's no more than any other Hollywood blockbuster, it was OK. But you get all the Hollywood typical fairy tale narrative. For example, Moses gets back to his wife who has been nicely waiting for him all this years but hasn't gotten any older at all, of course.
What's with Sigourney Weaver?
So why didn't she get more than a 3 words line? It was really disappointing that Sigourney played such a small and invisible part in the movie, I mean why did she accept it? She's great she should be accepting greater roles.
How to improve
The movie could have been so much better if it insisted on relationships. They should have developed the relationships between Moses and Ramses, Moses and his people, Moses and God. Put more rivalry perhaps between the brothers, develop Ramses character, show how torn Moses was to chose his people and how his relationship to God was (beyond the creepy kid metaphor). Moses story is really incredible and beautiful, yet the story of him being left in the river was told to him just like that in the movie, no emotion, no flashbacks, like it's not exceptional.
Anyway it's too late now for feedback I think, it's not like they're gonna make "Moses II, he returns", please don't do that.
Ice Princess (2005)
What a disappointment that she didn't pursue her way in Physics !
Good points:
1. Hero is a scientist not an actress
I think this movie was very good at portraying a female character who is normal, and good at physics, I was nicely surprised by it. She was simple and not arrogant like the usual science geek cliché. This kind of character is really rare and the actress played her well without too many idiotic clichés about science geeks (except for the science blabbing which real science people don't talk in real life). It is refreshing that the girl does not dream of becoming an actress but her thing is physics.
2. Girls are supportive of each other
The fact that the girls support each other and are not mean for no reason is also very new and positive.
3. Science project is pretty cool
As a woman in technology myself, I found that the idea of applying her physics knowledge to her skating passion was awesome and cool. Actually this is what make scientists great, they apply science to whatever interests them and that's how they innovate and invent. During all the movie I liked the plot of her doing a science project on her passion and I thought this would be the message, she would get her scholarship because she made some findings (silly me!). I almost rated the movie 9 if it was not for the ending and the general cliché message.
Bad points:
1. Glamorous is better than science
I have nothing against ice skating, it is indeed beautiful and I understand that girls love it, I love it too. But the whole glamor vs brainy schema where the glamor wins just kills any feminine ambition there could be to become a scientist. It implies that science is no good and not something you chose and love, just something you do because you are forced to. This movie actually justifies why there are no women in STEM fields. Girls are encouraged to pursue the glamorous path even though they display talent in science which is actually a huge gift. Even though they rock at physics they become more motivated to become show girls, sad right ? Story tellers repeatedly fail at showing that you can love science and be pretty it is NOT a sin! Instead, the feminine ideal is set to be "beautiful and show girl", how do you expect girls to develop the confidence to become scientists? The movie sets an ideal that is really low. I think those story tellers don't think about that when they write their story. They just look for "what has been done until now, let's do the same because it works (well we hear nobody complaining)". They don't realize that girls who love science get no support at all from story tellers. This kind of story is very harmful for the minds of girls who could have greater ambitions. At the end of the movie I felt sorry for the hero because she had a brilliant path in front of her that she just gave away.
2. Science geeks can't have any passion
The movie opposes glamor and ice skating to doing science, like you can't have a passion when you are a scientist. This is just not true. The story tellers obviously don't know any scientists or haven't done any research prior to writing the story. They just worked from the old cliché "a scientist is an old and dull person who talks in formulas". Scientists have passions. Their lives are not all about science. The science is their technique but applied to what they love, they create wonders and inventions (see the inventions of photography, planes or computers !). This girl could have invented a new kind of ice skates, or she could have become an engineer in aerodynamics, textile engineer, software engineer, researcher, she would have been inspired by her ice skating to innovate in those fields. Instead, no, she just blew off Harvard to go ice skating. It is really not realistic because ice skaters train since they are 5, and honestly when you realize you are gifted in science, this is not something that you let go like that. The message of the movie is really bad for girls, yet it's those movies that inspire them the ideals to pursue. They could have just tweaked the story to show that she still loves physics or that Harvard actually cares about her ice skating.
3. Missed opportunity to inspire science girls
How many movies have there been about actresses or ice skaters? Plenty ! In fact, whenever there is a female hero with status, she is always an actress. Ughh. This type of movie is exactly the type of movies that girls watch. It was a wonderful opportunity to show them what cool stuff you can do with science! Instead of that, it seemed that the girl was not that passionate about physics, she was just excellent at it. Shame! Excellent at science? It is a super power! Yet, the movie showed that it had no value at all. I get it, the movie was about pursuing your passion instead of someone else's dream, if your passion is ice skating, go for it. But honestly, do girls who want to be ice skaters need this movie to encourage them? Everything encourages girls to be actresses or show girls, why do movies keep repeating themselves and fail to inspire girls to do greater things in science too?
Revolution (2012)
Nice SF plot/too much violence/great heroines
I very much liked this series for the plot about the nanotech behind each episode. I wish they developed more this aspect but instead they developed the classic war/apocalypse narrative. It resulted in a very violent series where key characters are killed just like that. Actors have 5mn roles because as soon as they appear on screen they're killed and in very repetitive and boring fighting scenes. All the violence was not necessary and reflected poorly on the series which had otherwise an intelligent plot. I also liked that the female characters are real heroines and strong women not weakened by unneeded sex scenes. The character of Erin (former geek) was pleasant to have in this kind of series, he brought something new. I wish they provided a more optimistic ending for the series. For SF fans, the fact that the nanotech plot was not enough developed is quite frustrating, I wish the series continued just for that.