Reviews

The Dark Night went beyond the franchise and set the standard so high any attempt to follow is most surely a sacrilege. This film seems to know that and takes three hours trying to distance itself from that shadow of a reputation. But just like its protagonist fails to break his unhealthy attachments, set to a disturbingly dull soundtrack, the film fails to fight its own mediocracy, while accompanied by the sound of heath ledger rotaing in his grave.

I mean.. it's not very intricate in acting, or cinematography, or sound, or character development, or story telling, or the plot. It is rather compromising, very.. compromising. Everything is conceived and done in a miniature scale: times are shortened, characters are superficial and coincidence and causality is taken for granted caricaturally. All in all, the world of this film is small, mostly because the story tellers are taking a very relaxed approach to their work. It's a snow globe where your imagination must compensate, not in a good way.

This might have had been an incremental breakthrough or otherwise novelty in storytelling IFF it didn't have sci-fi elements. It is a sequence of loosely related scenes of building tension, mystery and action in picturesque landscapes and between characters that we get to see just enough. There is no story to connect them. One could have filled the gaps by their imagination of how man's world works using the bare insinuations. But it is impossible with the introduction to other worldly nature of things. We could have imagined all the why's and what's to our best if it was confined to what we think we know. But the film is undone by its own fear of the wild --or the confusion of a whole pack of directors and producers who fail to understand a film cannot just provide visual effects to a book it adopts to only become comprehensible to people who have read the book already.

This isn't either a Homeland knock-off, or a Bourne knock-off. But it obviously tries to be both, and it barely makes it halfway.

10 stars feels absurdly low for this episode. There should be another scale, another system. This climax and chaos of stories intertwined, and a totally genius of story telling, horror-some, and heart-breaking. And, I have never seen some of the elemental topics in this episodes ever tackled before on screen, let alone with such prowess.

This is ravaging through the orient to repackage the loot and sell what hardly qualifies as a mid-day children's cartoon to us about the glib we want to believe is exotic AND meaningful, thrown out of proportion by an utterly unnecessary high-profile cast.

This gives a surprisingly complex portrait of tension through stories of family, war and class. In its dramatic prowess, although very succinct, this looks like a period piece. And in its reenactment of professional politics, it's prudent and amazingly attentive.

Season 1 There hasn't been anything good in this niche, maybe-sub-genre for a long time; classic, grown-up, suspenseful, children-cast sci-fi the likes of which are only to be found in the golden age of children literature in Europe. And this is just so good. The innocent, yet hard-reality, dark fringe of a story with beautifully done dichotomy of a warm familiar setting segueing into bizarre no-man's-land.

Season 2 Is like Matrix 4, if the now-sisters continued that downward slope into cashing out on their franchise. The whole season 2 could have been done in the first 15 minutes of one episode of a spin-off. And even that shouldn't have been. If you are a tasteful fan of classic sci-fi's, and haven't seen the second season, you may want to skip this season all together. I cannot not see this failure now.

All the bad reviews were creepy, so I checked a bunch and to my disbelief so many came from users registered only recently and only reviewing this one film. That made me believe it's a smear campaign. But smear was it not!

The film is good enough to enj.. to enterta.. Look, we all should stop expecting what was an exciting, whole-new-other-world-imagined in our childhood to be recreated or renewed in any sequel to suit us as adults. Maybe this is exciting for teens, as we were then. Although it now lacks all the world and character developments we had in the original installments and is left with meaningless action, underdeveloped figures and, honestly, a crappy story -even this description and that production still worked in the 80s and 90s. What we enjoyed as teens, this generation won't get from this. The J.J. Abrams' was the only version made for adults with genuine attempt at growth in complexity.

The multitude and sheer passion in high ratings here may well reveal that apes actually but secretly are raging a war. Let me explain.

First of all the film sucks. A brilliant Serkis performance is ruined by.. i wanted to say a lifeless Harrelson counterpoint, but in all frankness almost everything else. Secondly, some of the overly saturated cries of praise look honest and innocent, which proves only the steep drop in intelligence, pointing to clearly somewhat sub-human intelligence. I mean people differ in taste or expertise, but c'mon! By the time we are 18 we've seen enough films to be able to at least vaguely tell a good one from a bad one.

When you can see "every" twist of the plot, in the horizon clearly, from the very moment of its inception, it means the film is pandering to the lowest common denominator. The consistency of unimaginativeness of that "every" means this is actually well-executed within defined parameters.

Here we have on our hand a public message in the form of a film. It is painfully obvious no personal, artistic or otherwise authentic inspiration has ever been involved throughout its making. And the result is a flyer to raise public knowledge.

Bringing in Bloom, Douglas and Malkovich seems calculated to attract exact numbers of target audience --their skill does not seem to be a factor. The problem for the film-goer is every hope of surprise is slapped in their face. The problem for the intended effect is people remember, discuss and absorb better when inspired.

You could still find this more compelling than some blockbusters though, enough to concern yourself it is lame. That's much more than I could say, for example, for the horridness that Mummy was.

Not every 2.5-hour film is an artistic one. That is what they were going for here clearly, because it looked deliberately different from mainstream. At least they tried to make it look like one. So what you get is fine production of a story that isn't there. O.K. photography of scenes that might as well belong to a hunting magazine. And eventually adding up to a ruthlessly, arrogantly empty film that seems to pride on not even trying to give any hope of drama. Any attempt at defending this as art, mass art, folklore, or even a tale that might have moral against the religious zealous is doomed to be ridiculous.

This is not embarrassing but not entertaining either. It's not something you would want to keep your eyes on throughout.

This is a failed experiment of "Tom Cruise Productions." Isn't that a clue? It feels like Tom Cruise, a moderately decent actor, decides that he can try and recreate the success of "A Few Good Men," apparently all by himself; acting couldn't help but lag behind everything else because of a bad story and a worse script. This could not even repeat the, again, moderate entertainment of the first instalment.

This is a very expensive failure of, hopefully, over-reaching and not vanity.

Oh, boy I've been there: nudist group showers and caresses. Going wild and having sex in the forest. And the rest, quite action-film staff with corporate and political players. A new kind of hippie.

If you've had the privilege to see each side of the story first-hand, from corporate and government side or activist side, perhaps you know how pain-in-the-neck the other is. Or perhaps you're open to new hactivist, CSR, or investment activist approaches. You may be undecided as well. This film gives you time to mull over all that. And it is entertaining.

It's a smart flick. While Spy Game was smart in its efficient narration and wit, this one is focused on the larger picture and an intended effect; a message of responsibility that goes both ways, towards environment and government. Here's the catch: the film comes out and says its what its intended effect is, at the end. Which is quite a sabotage. When you think of it, the film has been so smart up until that point that while you may feel disappointed as "ar.. propaganda" you soon realise it may well be that the filmmaker outsmarts the propaganda advocate here by saying outright "ok, you saw that? now we are expected to tell you this message: blah blah blah." It has Ridley Scott written all over it: it engages its audience, and assumes them smart enough to see the best-of-class intricacies.

Penny dreadful is always "entertaining." The end of 2nd season was a bit indulgent and finished off the story where you could just leave it there. But Kudos to the writers, the 3rd season suddenly throws you into many story lines each so rich and exciting, and then lets them collide beautifully. Each sub-story is innovative and the elaborations on characters' paths only add up to the grand plot at work.

This very episode is especially captivating. It starts slowly and builds up to perplexing developments; The mental representations, well versed with psychology, segue into believable supernatural situations without a blink. By every standard, it is quite a course in production and acting. And sure as heck fun to watch. Just bring your wits.

It's part of the franchise so you gotta see this. I mean, if the previous installments was fun for you. But let's be honest, as we got further away from the first X-men, which was a fantastic, full-fledged coming-to-life of the comics, it's got boring and boring. This one was just CGI.

You couldn't much improve on anything. Acting was very good and so were the visual effects, but pretty much everything else was nothing cohesive.

The point is, lower your expectations than you would, keep the TV on and have some popcorn, maybe do the dishes if you're at home. It's nothing serious in the story department.

Oh, my, god. I grew up reading John Christopher's trilogies, staying awake all night to finish them. I never thought the mystery, sci-fi and bizarre, so gratifying to me as a teenager, would repeat now as an adult. I'm so glad I was proven wrong.

I'm just gonna praise the film some more, so not to ruin anything for you. Oh, did they pull this off. This is a story very, very well-told.

This is the kind of mastery in sci-fi story-telling I thought was lost forever. And this isn't a remake or just a good mishmash of previous short stories or films, but is totally original. Despite its mastery, I wouldn't have been surprised if it became a cult classic. But it seems it's having more audience than a niche group of nerds with good taste!

Since a good horror film like "the others" or "shining" apparently comes every decade or two, I've stopped having high expectations. I'm not sure what, but may be horror films can either be masterpieces or a failure. Or it's just that not much budget is put into them. Acting, premise and plot was decent. So I feel a little unfair when I'm gonna bring down so much good work just because of poor writing.

The beginning was appropriately paced fast enough, but it is then that you also realise the narration fails to develop the characters.

Passed mid time, story begs for the resident of the house to question the sudden change in his house, and he doesn't. At that point I start skipping before I get bored.

I watched this because another comment said it was worth a watch. Well, I'm recommending it is if you have some side activity, or if you easily get excited .