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westal_sage
Reviews
Mauchly: The Computer and the Skateboard (2001)
Excellent footage and a great story
I found this as a streaming video rental, and thought it looked interesting. It was.
I'm a software engineer and I've always been interested and intrigued by the history of computing machines. This documentary did a great job of combining actual footage and anecdotes to tell the story of the development of the first electronic computers.
If the content is to be believed (which I did), then many of the things I understood about the computer's history were false - mainly about who should've been credited with certain ideas and inventions. It would appear that Mauchly and Eckert were outright robbed of their creative innovations.
All in all, if you're interested in this sort of stuff, I think you'll really like this film. It's production values are on the low side, but for me the content more than made up for this.
The Goonies (1985)
Wow - pretty darn awful!
So I was about 15 when this thing came out. I never saw it, but over the years have heard good things and fond memories related to it. I decided to give it a shot - I tend to like these kid-venture movies from the 80s.
Right away the red flags started popping up. Music by Danny Elfman. Oh no. That annoying staccato-strings and the cello trills splashed all over the place when something's supposed to be cutesy-funny. Oh the cringing right from the get go.
That unbelievably annoying Asian kid from Indiana Jones (Mr Jones! Mr. Jones!). Oh no. Oh no.
Back to the cutesy-funny. That's all this movie is - attempts at this type of entertainment that just fall flat.
I could go on, but man I just hated this film. It was the Spielberg cutesy era that started with E.T., although E.T. was WAY better than this Goonies garbage. And why are they called The Goonies, anyway??
The Hunger Games (2012)
Is this for real? I mean....really??
I mean, how on Earth can this stand at a 7.4 rating as I'm typing this?
Man, this thing is AWFUL. I was actually kinda hanging in there with it (albeit...barely) until the thing with the forest fire and the fireball things happened. I would just stop here but I think I need more lines. Here are just some more awful things until I've reached the minimum.
Rue has ridiculously long and "meaningful" death scene. Katniss finds out she's been asleep for *TWO DAYS*. K takes forever to saw limb and gets stung by killer wasps. There's somebody named Peeta (so, not pita or PETA??) P gets badly wounded but has time and/or presence of mind to decorate himself as a tree.
Heroes (1977)
Not much more than a M*A*S*H episode
Overall I'd say it's an hour and a half of not much, then a pretty great ending (albeit predictable) ending. It reminds of something that would've made a decent Mash episode. The acting is decent, although I kinda wonder why either Winkler or Field would be in it, except that at the time I think it was kinda drawing on the popularity of Mash. I liked the film mainly for its 70s feel. It seems like to most people, the most important part of the film was the Kansas song at the end (or its apparent omission in some versions). That seems pretty strange to me. Overall a watchable film, although a bit hard in parts, and kinda hard to swallow in some parts.