Reviews

Nothing funny. Not one funny thing at all in the entire waste of time. There is a lot of cursing, a lot of pathetic childish body humor. Every male is weak, cowardly, inept, effeminate, or stupid. The script is awful, the story is idiotic. The acting is worse than my local volunteer playgroup. The only redeeming things about this movie are that it ended and I know I never have to see it again. I can only imagine that the other reviewers are somehow related to people involved in the movie. The four lead actors in this are also the writer, director, and producers ~ that really should have been a huge redflag.

Very few, except for older diehard Super Hero comics fans actually know who Blue Beetle is. He is not "the melding of Ironman and Ant Man" nor is he a smart mouth Gen Z. Blue Bettle is Ted Cord, an industrialist along the lines of Bruce Wayne, more than Tony Stark. He predates DC and was bought by DC from. Charlton Comics. Anyone who goes back to read the originals or his 1980s participation in Justice League will recognize the Watchmen character Owl who was based on Blue Beetle.

Sadly, the trend in comics today is to present flawed people with powers rather than Heroes a reader can aspire to. This trend is given a nitro-burst in Hollywood where many supers are actually criminals such as Deadpool, Venom, Black Adam, Joker, Ant Man. It is part of the culture that wants to redefine (read obliterate) the notion of Hero under the guise of "humanizing" the character. To paraphrase The Incredibles (a truly underrated story), if no one is special, then everyone is.

So it comes as no surprise that this version of Blue Beetle fails, because it offers nothing to lift the spirit of the viewer, nothing they can take with them as they leave the theater. Bruce Wayne comes out of the theater with his parents, having just seen Zorro, only to have them murdered. He idolizes the HERO he saw in Zorro and dedicates his life to fighting crime so no other child has to lose his parents. He is the Dark Knight who does not kill...until the 1980s when. Tim Burton gets his hands on him and devolves the character.

You will probably enjoy Blue Beetle as the empty shell, devoid of any human value other than mindless entertainment. Sadly, we could do so much more.

Sold as a Shark Movie, but NO! It's Environmentalist Claptrap.

The evil oil company, named for the usual Liberal bad guy, Richard Nixon, is allowing gallons of money to drain away instead of fixing a minor problem because they want to make gallons of money. That's right, it doesn't track, because environmentalists don't understand having a job or owning a business.

The actors did a reasonable job given the lousy script they had to work with. The camera work is amateurish and indicative of a low budget. The screenplay is amateurish, clearly written by an activist rather than a storyteller. The special effects are not special at all.

Do yourself a favor, watch Jaws for the umpteenth time again and do not rot your brain with this drivel.

As films go, this is a typical offering. Bond shoots a lot of people, drinks a lot of martinis, escapes from death-traps, and beats the bad guy. There is nothing surprising or even quote-worthy. Daniel Craig plays Daniel Craig quite well. Most movie-goers by this time have never read and will never read one of Ian Fleming's novels and I expect most of them have no clue there even ever were books. This means their only exposure to Bond is from the film. Not a very important observation, but it does explain why most are satisfied or even excited about the slop that Hollywood serves them.

The biggest surprise of this entry in the franchise is at the very end of the film, after the credits roll, a message pops up, "James Bond will return." A hopeful romantic, such as myself, can hope that the next producer/director demands a decent writer who is not full of their own sense of self. The writers of the Daniel Craig arc have taken liberties with the characters that were unnecessary and do not really add any depth to them.

No Time To Die in unmemorable but watchable. It attempts a sentimental link with On Her Majesty's Secret Service as foreshadowing, but the characters lack any qualities that make us care for them. Not much can be said for George Lazenby's performance but Diana Rigg made us care for Tracy Bond and the writers gave her something to act with and for the audience to resonate with, so her death in that story meant something.

Mr Fukunaga, you are a director, not a writer. Do what you do, leave the writing to writers, and do not use the pair of writers that have written the Daniel Craig screenplays again. They know how to write pointless and overlong car chases and fights, but are not decent storytellers. Maybe use a writer who's actually written something that has sold widely instead of the Hollywood hacks.

Here is a story with character. The characters are well developed rather than cardboard cutouts. Braveheart is a great film, no question, but much of it is simply flash. This film is low budget, but the makers found the silver lining in low budget ~ good story and characters.

The lack of spectacle is exactly what makes this film shine. With spectacle, the audience watches the flash, with no substance. Battle scenes do not explain, they do not build character, they do not develop story. It is in the quiet, the talking, where the actors become people and the characters come to life.

Braveheart is a fun film. Rob Roy is a better film. Robert the Bruce is the best of the three.

This movie is well worth the watch and the time.

This is what you get when the writer of the story is the editor of the story and the director and the producer. There's no one to tell him, "hey, this is not good. You need to fix that."

All around the movie is surprisingly good. The acting was believable, the characters and characterizations are good, the sets are good, the continuity was accurate, the music was extremely good, and the special effects were adequate to the job. Many bits and pieces are lifted from movies like Close Encounters and Signs, but that's ok too.

The first 3/4s of the movie are edge of the seat chills and thrills, but then the story shifts in a totally unexpected direction. This is considered "the unique twist." The 'twist' is something that modern scriptwriters seem desperate to pull off and almost none of them actually do it. The Sixth Sense may be the last movie where it really worked. In this particular movie, the writer/editor/director/producer throws in the monkey wrench without the slightest attempt to justify it except to offer a lame, "I don't know. We don't understand it. We may never understand it." It's Aliens, so sure, how could we understand it? But that's just not good enough. The motivation fails. Why the Aliens do what they do makes no sense unless you just accept "well, they are aliens, so their motivation is alien." That may be fine for people who shut off their brain to "enjoy the movie," but for people who enjoy the movie by thinking about it, it doesn't work.

The plot twist does not ruin the movie but it leaves an unsatisfied feeling that a good storyteller would not leave. If you don't mind being let down by the ending and being left scratching your head trying to make the nonsensical reasoning, it's worth a watch. There are a lot worse movies out there.

I read the Star Wars comics version of the movie when it first hit the stands for 30 cents and stood in line to see the movie opening day. Every Star Wars movie after RotJ has been awful, except the Solo movie, which was actually a Star Wars movie. I saw the first Star Trek movie when it was released. I saw Jaws in the theater, what a summer that was. My Doctor is Tom Baker, the new stuff is tripe. I offer these as bona fides to give you a sense of my age which may give you an idea of my values. I am a fan, not a fanatic or fanboy, a Trekker, not a Trekkie.

I saw Stargate in the theaters. I watched all the series, some more than once. They were good shows, some were great. Atlantis and Universe were weak but entertaining. Stargate Origins is a good show. Yes, the acting is oddly amateurish and there were goofs with 1920s-30s costuming and gear, but the story and characterizations and lore were spot on. If you enjoy sci fi and/or Stargate, this series (really just a short movie in installments) should please you.

After reading a review for this movie that panned it, I decided to give it a go anyway because my son would probably enjoy it. I sat down with low expectations. The review I had read was just 100% wrong on every point.

The no-name actors added to the movie rather than being a handicap. The directing and acting was decent. The dialogue was standard but did not make me roll my eyes or want to puke. The story, which is where most movies lose me, was solid. Not only did the storyline answer every question it resolved so many inadequacies that bigger budget movies never even bother addressing.

Not only does Beyond Skyline not "screw up" it shines as what a good alien invasion movie can be.

I have long complained of the lack of truly great films in the last several years. There have been countless popular films that are entirely devoid of creativity that play to the audience's ignorance and basest nature. Films rife with titillation for the sake of selling tickets, a level of gore well beyond what is necessary to tell the story, stories that are weaker than wet paper, beautiful actors who can memorize lines but are unable to actually act.

Albion is not one of those. I got the film for my children expecting to be bored, sickened by the heavy-handed message, or irritated by an insipid production. I was so completely glad to be wrong. The film is visually stunning in many parts. The story is simple, relying on fantasy, fable, and myth for character archetypes as well as storyline. Refreshingly, the villain is not misunderstood or a shade of grey, he's just plain bad and the heroes are good.

It is a movie about hope, redemption, and love conquering all. Albion will be part of our family video library.

If you are one of those people who think obvious plot twists are clever, think that concepts of Good and Bad are trite, or believe that the world should be seen in shades of grey, this movie is not for you.

It's summer so there's a shark movie. This is at best an average movie. The acting is at best average. The script is at best poor. There are graphic "jump" scares that you expect with any shark movie.

The only really remarkable thing about this movie is that it was already released, we've already seen it, and now we can pay twice as much to see it on the big screen.

For those reviewers who compare this to Jaws, I can only say, I hope you are being paid well for promoting the film. There is a reason Jaws still sells, a reason people still read the book and watch the movie forty-three years later. It's less than 12 months since I saw the first release of this movie and I'd nearly forgotten it.

Matthew Modine's gotta eat.