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Reviews
Prey (2022)
Oh dear! Not really much to see here!
Several of the latest flicks in this category has turned out to be utter disappointments. Monster Hunter - totally, like... duh! Jurassic World Dominion, like... duh! And now *this*... thing!
OK! I learned about Hollywood's idea of what Comanche was like, 300 years ago. Oh, and the pred had a much meaner look than ever before.
I wasted time watching this totally uninteresting waste of money. I really hope this isn't a theatrical release. It should go to DVD/BR directly.
Acting was OK. Still, when speaking English it was just perhaps a tad too much modern English.
Jurassic World Dominion (2022)
Oh, puhLEASE...
Let this one be the last flick in the Jurassic saga!
It was good to see Laura Dern, Sam Neil and Jeff Goldblum again since I love them all. But what happened to their characters? Loved the interplay between those three in the first film. But, heck, that was 30 years (almost) ago.
Jurassic World Dominion has turned into yet one more action reel with OK CGI but with a lousy story. I will have to revisit the one prior to JWD because I don't remember certain parts that seems integral to what is playing out in this one.
As an action flick... OK! It's average. As a worthy Jurassic follow-up it's not!
Please! End the franchise after this one!
Death on the Nile (2022)
Remakes rarely means improvements
OK, so... I'm "tainted" by the old version from 1978 with Peter Ustinov, Mia Farrow and David Niven.
First, wonderful photography! Cudos! You can also see that Ridley Scott was involved. Casting? Hmmm... OK, I guess. But then...
Kenneth Branagh doesn't let us get to know the characters enough. He doesn't let them get established properly and this is the huge minus for this film. Who are all the people introduced as we move along? And for those of you who are used to the 1978 version, forget those characters! This one is all different. But having seen it should help you navigate.
The plot is the same with some variations. It would be really captivating if you had the background that Branagh denies you. Now, there's just a mush of characters that, really, don't have much personality and the impression they make is small to negligible.
This one leaves me... Well, it just does!
Breach (2020)
Good Lord! Just how bad is this?
Sad to see Bruce Willis in this one. He's got to have problems earning enough to pay his rent but was this really necessary?
Story... Totally incomprehensible, Acting... Well. Set and CGI... Poor! Don't waste your time on this one.
Prityazhenie (2017)
I had so totally missed this one...
I caught this one via the Corridor Crew on YouTube reviewing good and bad VFX. They showed a few pieces of great CGI from a... Russian movie! Oh! How could I have missed it? I, who follow SciFi-movies dot com! And, yay, there was a track back to this movie from 2017. And I had missed it! Completely!
Now, I'm more of a hard core sci-fi buf. Love the space opera stuff. And the initial fantastic CGI made me get this one. But...
Lo and behold. This isn't really a sci-fi flick although that's the setting. It's a traditional boy-meet-girl drama set in a slightly alien context.
It is sort of low-key, and sweet. The alien (of course there is one) isn't explained but that is not what this movie is about. It's about love that develops between Julia and Hakon and hope amidst what looks like bad times. It is about the rapport across light years. And a bit of ET call home.
It is Russian and that surprised me! But why should it? Russians have made great movies before, they still do and they will continue to do so.
And the initial CGI is... Wow! Beats Hollywood! ;)
My heart went out to Julia and Hakon. For the time they got.
Hannah (2017)
When do you realise guilt?
Hannah is a woman well beyond her prime. She partakes in an avant garde drama class. She works as a house maid to a rich, probably, Parisian family's household. With a, maybe, stay-at-home wife and a blind young son.
Back in her apartment, Hannah cooks dinner for herself and her husband. Fish. She and her husband dines before the TV. A sordid little apartment suitable for two sordid little people. A scruffy dog. Last dinner, it turns out!
Next day, the couple drives to a prison and the husband is admitted. For what crime we're never told.
Hannah keeps working, keeps attending drama classes. She has no friends. She talks to no one. A woman bangs on her door one evening. She wants to talk, "mother to mother". Simon, the faceless woman's son, is wetting his bed now. Isn't Hannah responsible? For what?
After visiting a bath, Hannah is told that her membership has been revoked, not expired. It has been revoked! Why?
At young black woman really tells the entire story while riding the Metro, but not in the way she thinks. She tells her lover, also riding in the same Metro car: "Did you ever love me?" "You should have told me what you wanted from the start". Hannah is riding in the same Metro car and hears the young woman. And she is reminded. The words uttered by the young woman should really have been Hannah's.
Hannah rides the Metro to Michel, her estranged son whom she calls every week but never get any replies from.
Her grandson, George, Michel's won, is having a birthday and Hannah has baked Michel's favourite cake. But Hannah is not welcome at the house when she arrives. George runs out to meet his granny but is told to go back inside by Michel. The cake Hannah baked with such aching love isn't welcome and the present she bought is wasted. Michel tells his mother off. "You're not welcome here!"
Hannah's utter desolation in a women's restroom after the rejection is horrific.
A handy man comes to Hannah to take a look at a leak from the apartment above and needs to move a cabinet. An envelope is stuck to the back of the cabinet. Hannah picks it up when the handy man leaves. She looks at what's in the envelope and we see the contents in Hannah's face. And we know why Hannah's husband is in jail. We know why Michel hates his mother and won't let Hannah meet her grandson.
Hannah confronts her husband in jail and he turns and leaves. And the utter desolation of Hannah and her entire life is terrible.
Charlotte Rampling is perfect as Hannah. A woman who never really envisioned, when she was young, the life she would have in her old age. Like most of us have no idea.