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rysmith25
Reviews
The Creator (2023)
Easily one of the worst movies in recent memory
Most important element of a great or even good movie is flow. Does what just happened make sense? Does that action, decision, or dialogue make sense? Would that ever happen? This is beyond suspending to believe that a technology or idea or reality could exist, it's would that happen given these extraordinary conditions? Flow is also a timeline of scenes occurring in a fluent way. That doesn't mean a story needs to be strictly linear, but it should reflect a coherent narrative.
This movie is a blueprint for the opposite of that. This movie was about as coherent as a drunk Brad Pitt in Snatch.
In addition to terrible directing, writing, and editing, the acting was pretty forgettable as well (except for the kid, who was one of the sole bright spots). The characters had no backstory, no motivation, no personality. The conflict between the AI and the humans had zero build up. No reason to care for anyone in the story.
What happened to movies? Are we so dumbed down as a society that we accept trash movies like these to be made. Worse yet, the average review is over 7? Really?
The worst part is this movie had such great potential, but the makers of this were solely focused on graphics and technology that they forgot they were making a movie and not a tech demo. I feel bad for the artists on this movie. The architecture, environment design, and overall atmosphere was really awesome. It's too bad everything else sucked!
Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
Best Star Wars film since Return of the Jedi!
Forget all the negative reviews. It has a story. It has a great story with a huge reveals. It has great characters that I do care about. They have some nice development in this film. Love the ending. I'm a long time Star Wars fan. I watched the original trilogy multiple times as a young child. This movie brought a lot of those feelings back.
The Expanse (2015)
Season 4 review
One word...disappointing.
First, the positives:
Acting, production values, and character development are solid. There are some heart warming moments early between Holden and Naomi which are very believable. Bobby's development and story is definitely the high point of the season. Frankie Adams takes her game to a new level.
The problems:
Season 4 doesn't hold up to the other seasons. The main problem is the main storyline. I started to question the season's direction by episode 4. Unlike previous seasons where the environments and action was constantly shifting for the main group, this season was the opposite. The main story drags on and on. It felt like that part of the story should have ended by episode 3 or 4. I don't know if it was lack of budget or lack of creative writing, but the static main storyline was a huge disappointment. And where are the epic action sequences that were trademarks of the first 3 seasons?
Overall, after all the excitement of the show being cancelled and then coming back, season 4 was a bummer. There were some good moments, good developments, but compared to the other seasons, it was a major letdown.
Pet Sematary (2019)
Suspenseful Masterpiece
Loved it.
I watch a lot of movies and a lot of horror (mostly crap). This movie was a classic, on par with the original.
What really stood out to me was the amount of suspense in this movie. After the first ten or so minutes of the movie, I was on the edge of seat the rest of the way.
Each scene felt carefully crafted from the dialogue, to the cinematography, creepy music, and lighting.
Acting was great all the way around.
If there was one negative I noticed, it was the cat looked a bit too animatronic at times.
Great ending. Just a really good f'n movie.
Alien: Covenant (2017)
Best Alien movie since Aliens
I am a huge Alien fanboy. I've seen Aliens at least 50 times. I was hugely disappointed by Prometheus and not because they didn't show the actual alien until the last two seconds. Prometheus wasn't good because there was a disjointed flow to the plot, which was basically a series of disconnected scenes. The zombie guy and the middle third of Prometheus was terrible.
Alien Covenant on the other hand had a completely coherent plot. Every scene flowed smoothly into the subsequent scene. The plot was awesome, tying multiple alien movies together. The acting was excellent. The amount of Gore, scary moments, anticipation, and action balanced perfectly with the dialogue scenes. Wow, just wow. Best movie I've seen in years, 9.5/10.
I just wanted to add that I went and watched this movie a second time, and feel exactly the same way. I honestly don't understand all the negative backlash. The main gripes with the negative reviewers (1 star, really?) are with stupid characters and a bad plot. I disagree on both accounts. The characters react realistically in an emotional unprecedented situation. Their captain is burned alive, the 2nd in command is an inexperienced leader with confidence issues (played brilliantly by Billy Crudup). Waterson and Fassenberger are amazingly believable as well. Waterson brings back some of that old Ripley leadership badass in a female lead. The complimentary characters are solid as well in their smaller roles. The one thing that seemed a bit unrealistic during the film that I mentioned to my friend was why they didn't wear any type of breathing apparatus on an undiscovered alien world. That seemed like an obvious oversight in the script, but other than that, everything else made logical sense to me. I loved the plot twists and how there was a smooth flow to the movie. Each scene felt completely appropriate for that point in time of the film when it was shown. This was a big flaw with Prometheus, but a big strength for this film. Again, I do no understand the criticism. I'm not some teenager that have only seen a few dozen science fiction films. I've seen every Sci-fi movie and TV series made since 1977, and this is one of the best ones I've seen. As far as a cross breed of sci-fi and horror, it doesn't get much better than this movie. Go see it, ignore the haters!
Snowden (2016)
Snowden was a Patriot
I don't understand people that complain about this movie.
There is zero to complain about in this movie. You got to wonder if the low reviews are government paid employees or just Oliver Stone haters.
I couldn't keep my eyes off the screen. I was mesmerized from the beginning of the film until the end. I honestly had no idea it ran two hours and 20 minutes. A movie is never too long if you don't look at your phone and check the time. Myself, nor did anyone in the theater once look down at their phone. The movie had great cinematography, excellent pacing, strong emotional dialogue, and solid character/relationship arcs. You can't ask for much more of a drama based on a true story. Excellent job Oliver. Welcome back!
The truth is people don't want to hear it. If it doesn't directly affect their cozy iPhone streaming lives, than they don't want to hear about it. They don't want to hear that they are wage slaves. They don't want to hear that there is no such thing as privacy in this country. They don't want to hear that the government isn't a democracy. People don't want to hear that the American government isn't a government at all, and that it's been replaced by a multi-national fortunate 100 corporate conglomeration funded by the international banking cartel. People don't want to know the truth.
I'd venture a guess that most of the people that rated this movie poorly didn't even see the movie. These are the same people that can't handle the truth. Open your eyes people. Don't be another corporate wage slave.
Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)
The biggest problem with this movie is that it had Star Wars in the title
The expectations for this movie, fair or not, were going to be impossible to meet.
The GOOD:
* The lead character Rey played by Daisy Ridley could be the saving grace for this trilogy. She was fantastic all the way around. I almost immediately started to relate to her. The scene where she finds Luke's light saber and has a flashback was most definitely the best scene in the movie.
* Han Solo wasn't as good as the original Han, but Harrison was still able to reach deep down to pull up as much of the original Han as he could. Ford's effort in this movie did not go unnoticed by me. In particular, I've never seen a 73-year-old move so fast in the chase scene on his freighter. His scenes with Princess Leia weren't very good, but that wasn't his fault. On a quick side note, I hated the last Indiana Jones but felt Harrison did an excellent job in that as well.
* The humor and emotion Chewy brought to the table was priceless. Chewy's role felt slightly extended from the original trilogy, but just enough to positively influence the overall movie.
* Maz Kanata was a very interesting and mysterious character who I thought was cast and acted perfectly by Lupita Nyong'o. At a time when the movie was starting to fall apart, she did a nice job of adding some originality and mystery to the Star Wars universe. She had an oracle like feel to her. Also, the CGI on this character was very well done.
* The aerial battles between the X-wing and Tie Fighters were excellent. Considering JJ Abrams experience with space combat, this shouldn't have come as a big surprise, but the air to air combat was better than any previous Star Wars film.
The BAD:
Adam Driver as Kylo Ren. This was a major F up by JJ and the crew. Anytime you have a movie as iconic as Star Wars with a theme so in your face as good vs evil, you need to nail the bad guy. All the villains in this movie felt terrible. Part of me feels like the current generation of kiddies (ages 14-21) messed this up. Another part of me felt like Disney messed this up. Ultimately I blame JJ Abrams for this colossal mistake. Can anyone say Christian Haydensen? The big problem with Driver outside of being an average actor, is when they decided to take off his mask. Part of me felt like that had to happen during the trilogy, but it happened way too early in this movie, and series. If you were going to take it off in this movie, the only right time to do it was in the final scene with Han, and not before that. Every scene when his mask was off revealing a clean Adam Driver was terrible.
Carrie Fisher what happened? I didn't expect miracles from you, but I have a hard time believing you are only 59 years of age. You look and act 99 years old. I don't think I could see her mouth move when she spoke. She showed absolutely no emotion in this movie. Her scenes with Han were uncomfortable to watch. I understand wanting to bridge the gap between generations and story lines, but she felt forced and insignificant.
The supreme leader deserves its own bullet point. Piggybacking off the previous point of Kylo Ren, the bad guys in this movie didn't feel bad at all. Who is the supreme leader? Where did he come from? Why is he so big? How did the empire reform into the first order? What happened to the Sith? How is the supreme leader connected to the dark side and the Sith? Some of these questions didn't need immediate or obvious answers but why even show him at all if you aren't going to reveal any of this information. JJ would have been better off going the George Lucas route, and wait until the second movie to talk about the Supreme Leader. Why was the CGI so bad on this guy?
The special FX. If nothing else, Star Wars has always set the bar for special FX. While this movie was on par with the latest CGI technology available, it didn't do anything new. Some of the action scenes with explosions felt too much like movie sets. The CGI on the Supreme Leader was abysmal.
The Plot. Too many holes, too many coincidences. Either too much was explained to cater to the child audience, or not enough was explained. The scenes didn't flow into each other. Too many transitions felt forced. Lack of originality killed this movie.
Conclusion: The biggest problem with this movie was the title. You take Star Wars out of the title, and movie is actually pretty damn good. The problem is the expectations are so high when comparing to the original trilogy that it is nearly impossible to meet those expectations. While I didn't expect the movie to be as good as the original, it ended up being a bigger disappointment to me than the Phantom Menace. Someone else mentioned that at least Lucas followed his heart with the prequels and tried to make something original. This movie felt more like a remake of the original trilogy than a movie that stood on its own merits. There were a lot of great things about this movie but without a coherent plot and smooth movie flow, the good gets overshadowed by the bad. The most anticipated released movie of all time was a disappointment to me, but I'm still excited to see what they do with episodes 8 and 9.
The Grey (2011)
Worst movie I've seen in a long time
Holy Jesus, where do I begin? I'm not even going to bother with the whole spoiler alert, because if you pass on this movie, your life will be better for it.
I have to start at the most ridiculous moment I've seen in movies in recent memory, the cliff jump. Really? Really? I'm almost positive that Carl Lewis would have only made it about 2/3's across that ravine before falling to his death. In this movie, you've got some random white guy whose already a few inches away from death after evading a pack of predatory wolves for over 24 hours jumping across a 30 foot plus wide cliff with a few hundred foot drop. I almost turned it off at that point, but the movie was 2/3s over at that point. Of course he made it, and made some ridiculous Macguyver rope of clothing tied together for the others to get across. But hey, at least they were rid themselves permanently of the pack of wolves chasing them. Nope, apparently these wolves are capable of 35 feet leaps as well. You never get to see these incredibly obvious cgi wolves make the leap, but they do catch up to the remaining crew a day or so later.
The rest of the movie is almost as bad, from unrealistic plot lines, to poorly written characters, to spotty acting, this movie fails in every aspect. I have really enjoyed Liam Neeson's work lately, and I'm surprised he would sign on, and do such a poor job on this film.
There was one redeeming quality of this movie which was the exciting plane crash scene, but other than that this movie was a total waste of 2 hours, avoid it like the plague.
Tron: Legacy (2010)
Outstanding, but does it live up to the hype??
Not quite.
The good about this movie certainly outweighs the bad. First and foremost, this movie has set the new standard for most visually stunning movie ever created. The sound is also on that same par with the visuals of the movie. This movie created a symphony of audio fidelity. The use of daftpunk for the audio tracks that actually sync up the action moments in the movie, to the sound effects of the grid, you are listening to as close to perfect as it gets. The Grid world is a character and a story by itself, that totally sucks you in. The acting of Sam Flynn played by Garret Hedlund was solid, but not Oscar worthy. His character wasn't very deep, and you can tell the script writing in regards to his character was too safe, not taking any risks. Like everyone has already mentioned, his chemistry with Bridges in the father/son bonding scenes were believable. The acting of Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, the return protagonist from the first Tron was a mixed bag. I personally think Bridges the actor did excellent considering he had to play three characters in the same movie(old Flynn, young Flynn, Clu 2.0). Bridges was able to differentiate his characters quite convincingly, with each having their own distinct personalities.
In the same breath, the writers/director must have influenced Jeff Bridges' spiritual 'dudeness' because he reminded me too much of the dude from the Big Lebowski as the older Kevin Flynn. Old Kevin seemed to like to say the words 'man, radical, dude, and chi' a lot in the dialogue. Whether that was Bridges just kind of freelancing his character or the writer/director telling Bridges that he needed to be the dude, I don't know. In any case, the big Lebowski was taking me away from the world of the grid. The plot lines in the movie were generic and felt borrowed from other movies. Tron Legacy left out too many questions and plot lines in relation to the original Tron. For one, where was Tron?
Spoiler alert: The movie is called Tron, where the heck was he? It would have been better to leave Tron out of the movie entirely then throw him in half heartedly at the end. Its a cool little surprise, but the movie was already over at that point, and the Tron action sequence that followed that was anti-climatic compared to the other action sequences. What little screen time Tron gets (when you finally realize who he is) he doesn't show any personality or physical traits (his face is covered by a shielded helmet)that the audience can relate to. When Tron actually does anything that differentiates himself, Tron speaks, and says, "I fight for the users." If I didn't already know he says that in the first Tron, I wouldn't have heard what he said. The writers / directors did a poor job of using the Tron character. Obviously, the movie wasn't about Tron, but about the relationship between Sam Flynn and Kevin Flynn, but if they were going to introduce the character Tron, they should have done it right. The last disappointment is only slightly disappointing, and it was the CGI Clu 2.0 young Jeff Bridges. The CGI work itself is breathtaking, leading to the perfect visual score rating, but the awkward jaw and lip motions (facial animations) don't line up with that of an actual persons expressions. In a still image, you can't tell the difference between an actual picture of Jeff Bridges in 1982 and the CGI model of Clu 2.0.
I know there was a lot of nitpicking in this review, but the preview of this movie, and the pedigree behind it, made this the most anticipated movie release ever for me. The trailers have been everywhere for over a year, and the visual flare always ups the hype factor. The other problem this movie runs into is that it is released a week after the best movie of the year, Inception, was released on Blu Ray. With all those obstacles going against Tron, the movie almost lived up to the hype anyways.
Visual Presentation - 10/10 CGI - 9.5/10 Action Sequences - 10/10
Screenplay - 6/10 Acting - 7/10 Sound - 10/10 Direction 7/10
Cinematography - 9/10 Replayability - 9/10 Overall - 9.3/10
The Dark Knight (2008)
Single Best Acting performance I've ever seen...
....and could be the best movie ever made. Granted, I've only viewed this epic masterpiece 3 times thus far, I came away feeling ecstatic that such moments of beauty still exist in this world. Last night(Sunday, 8/10), I viewed the movie in IMAX for the 2nd time at a 6:30 showing. The place was sold out. I couldn't believe people sitting in the aisles after the movie had already been released for 3 weeks. We got there 30 minutes before the movie started and 160 out of the 360 tickets were already sold.
Let's start with the Joker. Heath Ledger is a god. I've never really loved any of his previous work, but I viewed him as a descent enough actor. Heath Ledger's acting in Dark Knight set a new standard for acting. I can't even put a finger on why he was so good, but he scared me. When they rolled the credits, I had a smile bigger than the Jokers, but at the same time, I was left wondering what if. What if Heath Ledger was still alive, what other great things could have he done? Did Heath become so obsessed with his work, and playing the Joker that it made him insane? Or, was Heath already so mentally unstable that it allowed him to play the Joker with such perfection? I think Heath was starting to come into his own, and realize his potential and everything came together for this movie. We all know the rest of the story. R.I.P. Heath, you made this sad person a happy one for a day.
I don't even like Comic Book Movies. With a CBM, you already know none of this could ever happen, so its hard to even have a connection with any movie of this ilk. Unlike other CBM's, the Dark Knight had a very real, almost eerie feel to it. No superpowers, no radiation mutations, no aliens from other planets, just plain people in extraordinary situations. This movie is a classic story of good vs. evil, and why people decide to choose the sides they choose.
What makes this movie a 10? Well, besides the fact that it includes the best single acting performance of all time, I couldn't get enough. The plot was rock solid, with many interesting plot twists that kept you guessing. I don't care how much of a veteran you are of movies or comic books, it was impossible to predict what was going to happen next. I love when movies have a perfect balances between plot, character development, and action sequences, and I can't remember a movie that has ever had a better 'flow'. The other thing that I absolutely love in movies is just when you think the movie is over it keeps going and getting better. The acting was top notch. Christian Bale is better than Michael Keaton, he just is. Old people, accept it, and move on. Bale is cooler, more determined, and has a deeper soul than Keaton ever did. Aaron Eckheart was outstanding as Harvey Dent, worthy of a best supporting actor nominee in my opinion. As good as Bale has been as Batman in both movies Eckheart was his equal in this movie as the White Knight. Heck, even Eric Roberts as the mob boss was a convincing character.
The symbolism and cinematography was also top notch. The whole idea of people destined to destroy themselves, and how chaos ultimately reigns is fascinating to me. The Joker was the symbol in this movie. The Joker symbolized anarchy and Christopher Nolan's pessimistic nature let his character come alive. It's sad that there are such corrupt people in high levels of power, and while it's just a movie, it begs the question....what if?