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Reviews
Chappie (2015)
Very Disappointing Film on Many Levels
I had high hopes for this film but it met very few of my expectations. The basic premise is hugely intriguing but the story they tell is very poorly executed. For some reason, they decide that it will all take place over just a few days, when it would have worked so much better if the time frame had been stretched to weeks or even months. There are just too many unexplained leaps, almost as if they had cut an hour out of it to make it fit into schedules or something. Too many things happen that don't follow what we've already seen and have no logical explanation.
Then there's is the script itself. It's terrible and makes some very fine actors look pretty bad. Hugh Jackman's character is simply absurd and we have little or not sympathy for anyone in the film, except Chappie itself. Maybe that's intentional but it could have been done in a less heavy-handed way, as could much of the emotional manipulation in the film.
Too much of the film feels "borrowed" from other films. The robot nemesis looks almost exactly like ED-209 from Robocop, the gangster hide-out is straight out of Robocop 2 and the big gangster looks and feels like he's straight out of Mad Max. Even Chappie feels too much like "No. 5" from Short Circuit, which is totally at odds with the extreme violence portrayed in certain parts of the movie.
The science is also very poor. There are several convoluted series of actions that are invented to drive the story that don't make sense. The most obvious (and the only one I can think of that won't involve a spoiler) is why Chappie would begin life like a scared animal if his programming was derived from the existing police robots. Surely he would "emerge" as another police robot and grow from there? It wouldn't have hurt the story but it would have made more sense.
The CGI is the standout feature of this film. It is brilliant and totally seamless. You instantly accept Chappie as another character without question.
So one point off for each of the following - poor story, bad script, bad acting, too derivative and poor science/logic. The bottom line is that if it comes onto TV, it's worth wasting a couple of hours on but I don't think it is worth paying money to see it.
Rizzoli & Isles (2010)
It Seems To Be Improving
I should state up front that I would happily watch Angie Harmon doing housework all day. That is probably the only reason I got to the end of the first episode and lined up for the second. I am glad I did as it is a much better effort. It is hard to find fault with any show with a cast as strong as this. With guest spots from Brian Dennehy, Chaz Palminteri and Donny Wahlberg, along with the strong regular cast that includes Lorraine Bracco, it is easy to overlook some of the show's shortcomings.
Angie Harmon's character is pretty much a straight re-run of her outing in Women's Murder Club, which I thought was a more interesting show than this. Sasha Alexander's Medical Examiner is very clichéd but Sasha herself is also very watchable, so she manages to pull it off reasonably well.
There are many better US drama shows than this - The Mentalist, Criminal Minds and Burn Notice come to mind - but it holds it's own against garbage like the CSIs and, even if the writing is no good, it is about the only show you can still enjoy with the sound muted. It is being shown in the non-ratings period here in Australia, which is probably where it belongs.
Shutter Island (2010)
Strange Film For Someone Like Scorcese
I'll start by saying that I did enjoy this film overall but there are a lot of really annoying aspects to it. First off is DiCaprio's stubble, which in 1954 would have made him a vagrant, not a US Marshall. Then there was the ridiculous music that accompanied an inconsequential scene of the marshals entering the asylum gates for the first time. It built up and built up, then nothing happened. That kind of thing is really annoying. The score overall veered from terrific to grating and inappropriate in places. I often found it quite distracting. There were many continuity problems throughout. If it was meant to add another dimension to the film, it failed. Instead it was distracting and gave the impression that they ran out of time/budget more than anything else. The plot is largely obvious from early on. If it takes you more than 15 minutes to work out what is going on, there is something wrong with you. OK, the full extent of the revelations at the end is harder to divine before it's revealed but the thrust of it is obvious. The film was, as you'd expect, beautifully shot and the cast was pretty good, although DiCaprio's Boston accent came and went at different times. The setting was also magnificent, which added to the overall effect. As a genre film, Shutter Island doesn't work nearly as well as others. Identity comes to mind as a far better attempt at the same kind of story. It's probable that it's strength is that it is not really a genre film and will, therefore, appeal to a broader audience. However, it is definitely not one of Scorcese's best. If I had to rank it, it would sit somewhere near Bringing Out the Dead.
Flashforward (2009)
Not As Good As It Could Be
Having read the novel about a year ago, I was quite excited by the prospect of it's transfer to the small screen. Sadly, it only took the opening 2 minutes for disappointment to set in. Where the novel is centred around the scientists whose experiment seems to be the cause of the flash-forward, the TV show makes no secret of the fact it is just going to be another cop show from the outset.
At least the TV writers pay some lip-service to the novel, running with one of the main themes, that of the protagonist's side-kick being dead in the future. Elsewhere though, it has little in common, with the focus being on characters who were never in the novel at all, and that is largely to it's detriment.
I would have thought shows like CSI would have paved the way for scientists solving mysteries on TV but it seems we are still stuck in the 70s, where only cops and shoot-outs make for decent ratings. They have also tampered with the time-line, bringing the flash-forward down from 2 years to 6 months, which makes it harder to believe that so many people's lives will be so fundamentally different. Of course, it fits in much better with the length of the TV season, so it's understandable, and I imagine there will be new flash-forwards to fuel subsequent seasons.
Where the show really falls down is in it's prime driving force - Agent Benford's (a nod to the scientist/novelist Gregory Benford, perhaps?) flash-forward of his investigation board. All the supporting characters question his single-minded pursuit of his memories of the board's contents, yet no-one comes up with the obvious possibility - maybe the board has those things on it purely because that's what he saw in his flash-forward, not because they have any relevance in the real world. i.e. It is an obvious self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course, the whole story would fall apart if that strong possibility emerged, but it is a fatal flaw for me and after 5 episodes my suspension of disbelief has evaporated because of it. I'm still enjoying Lost, at least it doesn't pretend to have any basis in reality, but I think I'm done with this show now.