Reviews

You can tell this was written and directed by a woman. Self righteous condescending hypocritical female characters portrayed as wonderful human beings. We have a guy that leaves his wife as he isn't happy. He is portrayed as sad, lonely and an a-hole for leaving and the neighbours all pile into him for it. You just know that if it was the wife who did the leaving she would be portrayed as finding herself amid some sort of midlife relevations that she deserves to be happy. The irony is the wife was cheating on the husband for 2 years prior to him leaving. No apology , no remorse nothing. So she turns out to be a scumbag but she is still portrayed as the victim. No plot, just a slice of life movie which seem to be growing in popularity. Slow with some unrealistic character motivations.

I enjoyed this movie even if it made me feel somewhat uneasy. Any film,doc or book that explains how the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) occurred I tend to be interested in.

My main issue with the movie is that it portrays that main protagonists as heroes but the reality is they profited from the collapse of the financial system and all the pain it subsequently caused. The irony is that the credit default swaps (CDS) that they purchased (essentially going short on the collateralised debt obligations (CDOs)) were a main cause of the collapse of some of the big financial institutions. By purchasing CDS s they were essentially betting that the mortgage instruments (CDOs) would fail . Of course once the big banks got wind of what was going on and began to realise how bad these sub prime mortgage instruments were they started furiously buying the very same credit default swaps.Subsequently once the CFC occurred large institutions such as Lehman Brothers failed as they couldn't make good on all the credit default swaps they had sold.

I feel the movie glossed over this aspect so its main characters came out looking like they took on the big banks for the little man. This was never the case. They did it for their own benefit pure and simple and this money stayed in their own pockets along with their investors.

Apart from this it was well acted, good story line if somewhat slow in parts. A solid 7 out of 10

First off I really wanted to like this movie. After the prequel disasters I thought finally we are in line for some redemption.Unfortunately this wasn't the case.

The negatives. I get the feeling the casting director was instructed to get a younger Keira Knightley but with less chin. That is exactly what we got with Daisy Ridley who plays Rey. A carbon copy right down to the smile, accent, laugh and look. Her acting was marginal. Everything was condensed down into one look i.e.a permanent scowl. Also the last 20 years has seen the annoying trend where we have this never ending quest for equality and in the process we are turning our men into women and our women into men. I am never going to believe a 55 kg woman can kick the ass of a 100 kg man or even a 70 kg man. Why can't we embrace our differences. Women are not as strong, fast or co ordinated as men but they have their own strengths. In Star Wars episode IV Carrie Fisher played a strong woman without requiring the audience to suspend belief.I guess we have to cater to the various womens groups and feminists. Yawn.

Speaking of episode IV (the original Star Wars in 1977) did we just enter a time warp? We had the exact same story line in TFA as we did back in 1977. Talk about lazy writing. Surely JJ Abrams could have come up with something original? Disappointed.

Kylo Ren played by Adam Driver. Started off promising but then developed into this uncertain, unsure insecure weeble beaten by a woman who had never picked up a light saber in her life. He should have kept the mask on. It went downhill from there. The prequels were crap but the one redeeming feature was that bad ass Darth Maul. Now that is a kick ass dude I could relate to not. Even Darth Vader was a mean as bast..d! Speaking of never picking up a light saber. How can an ex Storm Trooper and a never used the force before woman with no sword fighting experience suddenly hold their own in a light saber duel against a Sith like Kylo Ren? As we know from Episode 1 future Jedis can only be trained from birth. In this movie we have a 23 year old woman who suddenly starts using the force and a light saber like she has been doing it all her life. In reality someone who has never used a sword before up against a master would be slaughtered within two moves. Not in this movie.

I feel like JJ Abrams is turning into the next Michael Mann . All style and no substance. Good effects but everything else is forgotten.

No real character development. No real chemistry between Rey and Finn. If you want to see chemistry between the two leads. Watch Episode IV with Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher

Now for the good points

Han Solo..great as usual. Always held his own apart from when some little girl told him how to fly his ship. Something he has been doing all his life. Hollywood stop catering to feminists and all their bullshit!

C3PO had the best line of the film.

Great special effects but this is to be expected.

I read another reviewer who said Kylo Ren's light saber sucked. I couldn't disagree more. I loved it! It was great symbolism in action. Rough, unwavering, edgy, unforgiving. Everything I would have loved to have seen from Kylo himself instead of the limp wristed character we got.Bring back Darth Maul! Overall I came away unsatisfied and empty. I hope the next episode will put things right. Come on JJ get a decent script going and make Kylo Ren the bad ass mother that he should be.

Lets hope Luke Skywalker brings something decent to the table in the next film.

The theme in this movie has been done before in The Island with Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson albeit The Island was more realistic, as strange as that may seem and of course in The Island the clones didn't know that they were intended to be harvested for their organs unlike the characters in this film.

Yes everyone posting positive reviews waxes lyrical about the sublime acting and imagery which you cannot deny however with a plot so full of holes it is hard to not just start screaming at the screen.

Are we really to believe that with no obvious guards, access to motor vehicles and the ability to come and go as they please the clones don't just up and leave their cottages thus avoiding their horrible fate? Give me strength. I am all for suspending belief in certain genres of movies but only where it merits this such as silly action or over the top sci-fi movies.

But no our actors believe that the only way out is to defer the inevitable by proving their love for each other and thus delaying their fate by three to four years. So no one fights, no one escapes and and everyone behaves like sheep.

I would have marked this movie about a five but marked lower to counter the crazy seven rating this film received in IMDb obviously predominantly by females who no doubt fall for the soppy story line in droves because lets face it females are suckers for this kind of dribble especially when actors can cry on cue.

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie apart from a couple of key points that really detracted from the overall quality.

The story picks up mid way through a chase in the snowy Nevada mountains. We do not know who is being chased nor who is doing the chasing nor do we know why. Motives are slowly revealed throughout the nearly two hour running time. Until then it is up to the viewer to decide who to root for (typically human nature will mean we always go for the underdog which is inevitably the person being hunted).

The cinematography is excellent and the landscapes outstanding. The plot is deliberately simple as this is not a movie with endless twists and turns although the chase leads us from mountains to lowlands through railway camps, pilgrims to desert.

One of the messages here is an age on old one namely the futility of revenge with the two protagonists eventually forming a bond without necessarily becoming friends.

Where I feel the movie falls down is a couple of key areas such as Gideon leaving his only means of transport namely his horse at a campsite in the mountains with a fire going for his chasers to find. Sure leave the campsite and watch your pursuers from afar but you would never leave your horse..that just does not make sense.

Also at the end when Carver is shot but then miraculously gets up and walks away....what the f..k??? Maybe bullets back in the 1860's only tickled. What was the director thinking?

Lastly throwing in a random Indian philosopher at the waterhole, well just didn't quite fit in and seemed a bit contrived or maybe a space filler.

Apart from that Brosnan and Neeson did a bang up job.

Enough people have waxed lyrical about this film so I will lay of the heavy dissection. As young surfer growing up in on the North Shore of Auckland New Zealand I can fully appreciate the sentiments around "the locals only" culture but never to the extent as portrayed here.

A good movie for the footage of some heavy duty surfing on some out of control breaks. The Abberton brothers and crew have large kahunas I will give them that.

You can almost taste the biased portrayal of the murder of the Hinds character. You would think that he deserved his fate and Jai & Koby were angels from heaven come to deliver the world from this evil menace. Unfortunately most kids in the Maroubra community will now come to think of these brothers as heroes for killing another human being be it an act of self defence or intentional. It is never okay to take a another persons life even if you came from the worst possible family environment possible.

One last point...where are all the females?? Apart from the grandmother their seems to be a heavy underlying gay tone. Even in the group scenes their is a total distinct lack of female presence. I would have got out of there for that reason alone ha ha

What initially started out as a visual effects and directorial master piece turned into a semi B grade ending leaving you with the big question mark hanging as to why a perfectly good movie was ruined.

I am a fan of Cliff Curtis from his humble beginnings and he has never let me down in any movie including this one. Biased because I am a kiwi too :) All the actors gave good performances. It was the screen play and directing at the end of the movie that let the movie down.

I was a little like "you are kidding right" when we are lead to believe that a scientist/crew member forgot to allow for the SUN when changing the course of the ship and hence the heat shield was not also adjusted resulting in some damage to the shield itself which led to a whole series of problems.

However this was minor compared to what happened later in the movie.

Little things like why would Cappa, upon finding out their was a fifth unknown person on board, go running to the observation deck to confront this person and yet not bother tell any of his other crew mates to get some "backup". That would be the first thing anyone with any intelligence would do. HELLO this is what happens in lame B Grade horror flicks when upon entering the haunted house everyone immediately splits up to be predictably picked off one by one...yawn.

Oh and what possible explanation was their for Pinbacker only being displayed in a wavy,hazy double image type way apart from covering up hopeless special effects on his burned beyond recognition body??? Also towards the end the storyline was disjointed and you didn't know how characters got from one scenario to the next.

Overall I still enjoyed it and would recommend this movie as long as you make some allowances.

After reading great reviews on this movie I was disappointed in the end result. Probably due to this genre of comedy having been done so many times before in the last 3 - 4 years. Kinnear and Carell were good to watch as per usual.

Dwaynes scene where he discovers he is color blind and the ensuing reaction is predictable.

The most disturbing part of this movie is watching 5 - 8 year old girls with full makeup, sprayed on hair and revealing dresses parading around pretending to be adults.

"Freaky" but a sad indictment of some parents that actually do this to their children