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ander5151
Reviews
The Batman (2022)
Practically a movie and a half-but well paced
I didn't know about the nearly three-hour runtime going in, but it's surprisingly well paced, feeling more like an epic saga than the protracted dress-up stunt show it could've been. Colin Farrell is unrecognisable as an unstylized, very human-looking Penguin. Robert Pattinson would've been more convincingly tough-looking in his bat-suitless scenes if he'd bothered to put on some weight and work out a bit more. (Maybe he's a _vampire_ Batman who, being immortal, doesn't need to be as muscular to whack people around? LOL) The bit with the seawall seemed gratuitous, like they worried the film's scale wouldn't seem big enough (after all that romping around a huge city, though?). But hey, you're practically getting a movie and a half here, so it's hard to complain. IMHO, _The Batman_ is solid, darkly wacky entertainment with an excellent balance of angst, brooding, fighting, urban blight, car-chasing, and people flapping around in black garb with tiny hidden cameras... You know what a winning combination that always is. If you're like me, you'll also come out of it grateful to live in a place where it's not ALWAYS dark and rainy, day and night, and where there don't seem to be more criminals and wackos roaming the streets than normal people. Bonus!
Entanglement (2021)
A good effort with heart
There are some signs this film didn't have quite all the talent it needed to completely work. Some of the dialog and acting are a bit stiff, and the cinematography is amateurish in places. (You can tell that trickier shots, such as dialog in vehicles, posed some logistical challenges for them.) But it's a film with a lot of heart, with likable leads and some positive messages. And let's face it, making movies of any kind is a huge undertaking, where everyone does the best they can. So if you can cut this film a bit of slack and go with the story, I think you'll enjoy it.
Alien Contact: Outer Space (2017)
Unbelievably bad. Really.
I never thought I'd dislike something so much as to give it a one-star rating, but in this case I had no choice. This "documentary" is little more than a string of stock-footage and public-domain shots of rotating radio telescopes, NASA control rooms, TV-news animation backgrounds and home-brew CGI, with a droning voice-over that could've been---and probably was---compiled by lurking around a few of the cheesiest alien-conspiracy websites. The production values are so bad, and the lack of substantial content so profound, it baffles me how anyone was persuaded to have anything to do with it. But what's REALLY incredible is that I saw this on Netflix. Netflix! They were actually showing it! Why? Well, I suppose it couldn't have cost much to license. It's awful, though. Really.
Goodbye Solo (2008)
Talk about mixed feelings!
I thought this was a marvellously acted, understated, very touching movie—until it ended. Or, I should say, until it didn't end.
No, I'm not complaining about the lack of a Hollywood ending. I'm complaining that there was NO ending. Everything just stopped.
There was the long, final shot of the taxi driving back down the mountain road, and I sat there thinking, "Okay—why is this shot so long? Don't tell me the credits are going to roll next. No. I don't believe it. They wouldn't just throw this all away." Then the credits rolled.
What a complete bail-out. How could they put so much skill and care into creating a story like this, then leave it hanging in mid-air (so to speak)? Did they run out of production money, and decide to just release what they had?
I feel most cheated by the movie's ridiculous hype: "On the lonely roads of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, two men forge an improbable friendship that will change both of their lives forever... Despite their differences, both men soon realize they need each other more than either is willing to admit." Huh? Are we talking about the same movie here? What utterly exaggerated, manipulative nonsense.
I'd give the movie 10 stars, if that didn't include the writing. But unfortunately it does, so I must give it only 5—and I won't be recommending it to anyone. Why would a friend do something like that?
Soylent Green (1973)
Where's the remake?
It boggles my mind why we don't hear more about this movie these days, considering what a powerful statement it made when it was released---and, since then, how much closer we've come to the point where it will be too late to save our environment.
If we're going to wake people up, they need to actually see what future life will be like if we don't turn around some of our destructive, instant-gratification technology.
In other words, we need a good remake of this film. That is, if some corporation hasn't bought the rights to it and dropped them down a deep hole somewhere. (A tapped-out oil well, perhaps?)