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The Expanse (2015)
Starts off strong tanks in the third.
I really enjoyed the first season, but toward the end of the first and the beginning of second the wheels started to come off. By the end of the second and start of the third some really lame stuff happens, and scenes stretch and get filled with tripe dialogue. Some really hair-pulling scenes in third season. People keep raving about it, but it was a significant downhill trend from the middle of the first season. Not a scifi buff/nerd/geek myself, enjoyed a lot, but crappy writing and awful acting hinders ANY genre.
Death Race 2050 (2017)
It's no Death Race 2000, but it tries
It's a sequel/remake of Death Race 2000... and while it's not as good as the original it has a lot of fun, and there are some great moments.
I'm guessing most of the really negative reviews are from people that actually sat through the newer sequels to Statham's Death Race, and would never have enjoyed DR 2000.
The cars look naff, the acting and script is appalling, and the CGI and explosions are terrible. This is Cormanesque cinema at it's best, un-apologetically entertaining trash and unafraid of our seeing the 'wires' where the obvious budget limitations gave way.
Some films you have to have low expectations going in to them to enjoy. Given this is being true to Death Race 2000 and not the modern remakes this film nails the schtick very well.
I gave it a 6 because I love Death Race 2000, but it would be blasphemy to give such a shiny turd anything more than that. But it is fun, and stupid, and entertaining - you just have to get over 'America' being entirely populated with Hispanics, and looking like Mexico... All part of the charm of this dodgy little film.
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016)
Just not that funny
Comedy is very personal. That said I didn't find this laugh out loud funny at any point.
I've enjoyed Brooklyn 9 9, the spoof videos of Andy Samberg, and Spinal Tap (which this is oft likened to). I saw a lot of similarities to All gone Pete Tong, but that was a much funnier film.
This felt like it ticked all the boxes, but will probably be found funnier by a younger audience as condescending as that sounds. There just wasn't a great deal there, and what there was felt pretty forced/lame/cliche.
Hell, give it a whirl. It wasn't terrible, but it could have been a lot lot better.
Alien: Covenant (2017)
I gave up at about half an hour.
Very little had happened. I was just generally offended by a similarly stupid series of events that enabled a total disaster similar to the mess that was Prometheus. You know, land on an unknown planet, send EVERYONE in without environmental protection of a single solitary concern for their welfare, get exposed, and then have no means to effectively quarantine said infected and blow up own ship. It's clearly a fairly stupid film from that much that I did sit through, and the first 30 minutes was spent watching familiar and boring space visuals and being introduced to familiar and boring characters, before they all grabbed their various assault rifles, put on their kit and all rolled off to have a romp in an alien planet they knew nothing about without doing any tests for infection, perhaps sending a canary down first, or having one brave person spend a week down there alone...? No, send two space ships full of dozens of idiots wearing Kathmandu military attire to run about having a look at stuff... Before being infected as you would expect were you to do everything you would expect not to do, and avoid all the safeguards and precautions you would expect to have, if you weren't a zombie.
Baby Driver (2017)
The Showgirls of action films.
I had expectations of this film given the cast, hype and ratings on this and other sites, that it fell woefully short of, despite my misgivings having watched the trailer and the terrible baby driver gimmick.
Unlike the largely 17-year-old-and-under crowd that was in the cinema, I did not enjoy this film a great deal. It was a hodge-podge of style over substance. The dialogue was embarrassing, the characters generic and un-engaging, and the plot strictly by the numbers.
This film was trying to be brave putting music to action, and this was hyped up in some interviews, but this 'innervation' was done in black and white films 80+ years ago and seemed just as clunky and forced back then. In this film it ruined another meh action set piece.
This was ultimately a very average film with numerous failings that borrowed from earlier and better films such as Heat, La La Land, the films of John Waters/Tarantino, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Wild At Heart. This film borrowed from all these films to produce a mess that left me in bewilderment at numerous times, making it (for me at least) the Showgirls of action films. Just WTF was the director thinking? Why does everything have to be set in the 50's/80's/whenever - some mythical past where beatnicks listen to ipods, sing in the streets, and get out of prison in 1955 when they went in in 2017...
The Baby Driver gimmick was ultimately the least of the film's problems which I think 90% of the audience weren't even aware of.
Sully (2016)
A better recent Eastwood, but still (typically) flawed.
Eastwood's more recent films have often left me wondering if he has been approaching, or even reached, the logical end of what has been a lengthy career. I have often considered him one of my favorite directors. While his films are sometimes and somewhat imperfect, perhaps self-indulgent, they are usually interesting, and possess a particularly unique quality.
I can recall this film being criticised for it's re-showing the last few minutes of the flight. In another film this might provide greater insight, or reveal a new dimension to the event, perhaps a twist of some sort. In Sully this appears to both serve as a departure from the rather pedestrian events before and after the landing, keeping the viewer interested, and also to reinforce that this was an event that was experienced by many New Yorkers. Perhaps reinforcing to Americans that this was a significant national event. Eastwood is certainly no stranger to infecting his films with his personal ideologies, and I suspect this film yet another example of the director's politics at work. This was most apparent in the decision to depart in corny and dramatic fashion from the truth of events following the event.
Such significant distortions in a film pretending to be factual and biographic should come as no surprise to viewers familiar with the liberties taken in Eastwood's other biopics, particularly American Sniper. I can only attribute these unnecessary deviations from an honest portrayal of events and characters to the favorite tricks of a beguiling, but sometimes clumsy storyteller/myth-maker, if not the direct effect of a director whose political axe requires grinding with each and every film. Be that grievance one with big government, or the crippled that can't access his restaurant, or his love affair with war heroes that are confirmed notorious bullshitters with the moral fiber a gnat.
Like most of Eastwood's films this is a quality product, it is dry, but well filmed, and remains engaging. It is unfortunate that while his films appear so convincingly authoritative, and grounded within the real, they are persistently undermined by their creator's decision to be creative or dishonest regarding the characters and narrative.
7/10
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2016)
Curious, but deeply flawed
I did not watch this film with preconceptions, and I watched it on a perfectly normal television. So any particular technological advances meant very little me.
It's story was so-so. I never got bored, but then I wasn't expecting an action film. The acting fine. I don't really see how someone can give this a 1/10 or call it the worst this year, or even this month. There could have been more to it, but it almost felt like a biopic to me, and erring on the side of conservatism. The events were not huge, escalated, Brian Lynn did not kill Osama Bin Laden, there was no sex scene with a cheerleader...
The film appeared very 'dry' visually, the clarity I understand now in some part due to Lee's filming at a high frame rate, and resolution. Throughout I drew comparison's to the works of Brian De Palma. Characters would often stand front on to the camera, talking to the camera as if it were the subject in their conversation, and I wonder if this was chosen to foreground the detail, or the 3D in which it was presented in many cinemas, or make the whole thing more 'real' for us the viewers. It felt unreal to me, like those films where they film in a first person. 3D is still very much a gimmick, one that distracts from all but the spectacle in films, weakening dramas when shown in 3D, and everything when presented in 2D. If it's to really go beyond that it needs to be something you either show in 3D, or not at all.
The Barefoot Bandits (2016)
Outstanding New Zealand series
Barefoot Bandits hits a lot of the right notes for me. It's a little talky at times admittedly and very very colloquial, but the humour, quality of the characters, stories, and animation might prove palatable to an audience outside New Zealand. I hope so.
It's brave and surprising to see a series that irreverently showcases New Zealand provinciality, it's very Scooby Doo, but undeniably Kiwi.
What other series has the young upstart investigator say to the menacing robot:
"What are you looking at? you got an eye problem?"
I've only seen the first season and about 6 or 8 episodes, but thus far it's a very good effort.
Reading the credits it doesn't appear to have offshored it's animation work, which is encouraging. I enjoyed the first series of bro'Town, but lost interest by the second series, and they opted to employ foreign animation farms for a lot of the work. The animation is clunky in a South Park/Samurai Jack way, but facial and other character animation is still strong.
You might enjoy.
'71 (2014)
A very tense film that unravels a bit in the final quarter.
Many other reviewers have commented the apparent authenticity of the production, it certainly feels like the time it was set in both in terms of costumes but also the camera-work - the "mise en scene" if you wish to call it that...
The narrative is very efficient. We are briefly told the story of a recruit in the British army as he receives training and then is promptly sent to Ireland. There are a few clichés that raise their ugly heads, for example the well meaning but inexperienced Lieutenant who ignores his sergeant and exposes his men to unnecessary danger - a trope of so many Vietnam films.
His mistake leads to one soldier being cut off from his platoon and having to try to navigate out of enemy territory. The complexity of the 'troubles' leads to confusion over who he can trust as IRA gunmen, protestant paramilitaries, and his own side, hunt him for very different reasons.
Unfortunately the film cannot carry the terrific pace and tension of the first 30-45 minutes and after a dramatic scene mid film the story unravels somewhat as it searches for an ending. Some rather clunky twists in the final half hour cheapened what was otherwise a very good film and reduced it, in my opinion, from a great effort to just above average.