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Post Mortem: No One Dies in Skarnes (2021)
If they had written this story better it could have been engaging
It has been a while since I have written a review because I don't see the point. However, I like to muse about storytelling and examine a story to learn from it.
With Post Mortem, I wanted to look at one of the biggest sins in storytelling: padding the runtime. Post Mortem is an excellent example of too much padding: it takes six episodes to tell a story that can be told in two.
But how do I know this?
By imagining if the story would make sense without a scene.
With Post Mortem, you find that many of the scenes are irrelevant. It is more than just that entire scenes can be left out; many go on for far too long.
The biggest culprit is the side story of Live's brother, who struggles to get his funeral services going. I think it is supposed to be funny, but it is pointless and eats up a sizeable part of the runtime.
The scenes with the police are also time eaters. They do a lot of talking but little else. It is as if the storytellers realized they needed to be in the story but did not know what to do with them.
I mention these two specifically because they could have become relevant to the main story with some changes.
It would have been easy to have Live and her brother run the Funeral Service together, with Live promoting the funeral services and her brother handling the burials and cremations. While Live causes people to die, her brother faces a dilemma as he finds out that something is wrong with his sister, but profits from her action.
The police could then get involved as they investigate the sudden rise of deaths in the city.
It took me a ten minutes to come up with an idea; a better writer will invent a better story in even less time.
I think that most people would skip scenes to get to the better parts like I did. But your mileage may vary. And if that happens to be the case; all the best to you.
Shadow and Bone (2021)
How writing for cool moments ruins a story
Initially, I was hooked. Shadow and bone has a promising setting: late 19th century technology with magic on top. You get a lot of lore thrown at you and hardly any explanation, but, hey; I am okay with that. They explain things later, right? Well, perhaps or.. perhaps not.
Unfortunately, they slit their wrists by using happenstance, contradictions and cliches to tell the story. And they add insult to injury by introducing new characters, while they haven't established old ones. Less is more? Just throw that under the bus.
The writers are the culprits. They organized the story around cool moments. And then they had to connect them. And there is where it goes wrong.
A key moment is when Alina's powers are revealed. She is on a ship that is trying to cross this mysterious fold, a rift filled with monsters. The ship is open, and the crew exposed. Then flying monster's attack and this crisis invokes her powers.
The problem here is that the people know obviously that this attack can happen, but did not take any precaution against it, like roofing over the ship or putting most of the crew under decks. Or use a better transport. And a few episodes later a better transport exists: the conductor uses a metal train as transport the Crows across the fold. A train he apparently has built by himself, including laying tracks through that dangerous fold.
And here we see the writers at work. They first needed a cool moment to reveal Alina's powers, then another to carry the Crows across. And thus they create an inconsistent world: open, vulnerable transport versus protected one. If the latter is possible, it makes no sense to use the first. Unless you need it for the story.
The story is rife with these inconsistencies. Is the fold impassible? Well, no, because apparently entire armies cross it to fight each other. And people seem to go back and forth all the time. Or do they? Too dangerous, just perilous, or merely a challenge? Decide, please?
Enemies teleport in whenever and wherever. Alina's party gets ambushed soon after her powers are revealed. They give a flimsy excuse: someone must have noticed her powers. Really? Because they saw her powers from afar? But even that is inconsistent. The people at the edge of the fold didn't see her powers, but the enemy did? And then quickly concluded what she is, who she is, where she is and where she is going? I mean, even the General was skeptical, but they knew for sure? It makes no sense.
Alina's persona is also inconsistent. We get introduced to her as a bright, determined and inventive person. Then a few episodes later her character flips. She becomes a whiny, annoying and docile person. And not to mention she killed her fellow cartographers, but this hardly seems to bother her. Instead, she wines on and on about how hard her life is and about Mal, her friend from the orphanage.
And Mal, the male protagonist, suffers too. He somehow became an expert tracker and an expert boxer between the orphanage and the army? How? When? Please explain? But no.
This sort of writing is insufferable. You just make it up as you go along. They brush aside rules that are established at one moment, the next moment. The conductor tells the Crows not to move because it will throw the train from its course. One does and nothing happens. Baghra, her trainer, throws Alina out and tells her to come back when she believes in herself. Do we see that happen? No. Does she train Alina anyway? Yes!
Is this worth your time? Well, perhaps. If you don't care about consistency and relatable characters? I guess you give it a ten. Hilarious.
Disobedience (2017)
Infuriating movie
I have given this movie a three out of ten not because it is a bad movie, in fact it isn't. The acting is great. The story, although sad, is decent enough and the setting, although dominated by drab grey is okay, if not a little dull. You can say that while it isn't a master piece, it is an okay movie.
So why the low score?
This is because the movie infuriated me.
Let me explain(spoilers ahead).
Contrary to what you might think the central character in this story is not Rachel Weisz although the story is told from her perspective. In fact it is Rachel McAdams. She is married to Alessandro Nivola and they are part of a orthodox Jewish community. In fact he is a Rabbi. The three of them used to be friends until Weisz left one day for New York. The movie kicks off when Weisz decides to return after hearing that her father has died.
The center theme in this movie is duty versus freedom and this is expressed quite bluntly at some point when McAdams asks her husband to set her free and tells him that she is pregnant and does not want her child to grow up in a world that left her no choice. Another blunt moment is when Nivola makes a speech about duty near the end of the movie.
The movie is quite blunt in other things too. For instance, Weisz finds out that almost nobody wanted her to come back and this is pointed out by a newspaper article that says that her father died childless and when she hears her father left her nothing in his will. Her existence is not merely denied: she doesn't exist.
There is more. When she enters her father's house together with McAdams the song Lovesong by The Cure is played and specifically these lines: Whenever I'm alone with you make me feel like I am home again.
But even more! Prior to Weisz leaving New York we get an unloving short sex scene between her and a man that is contrasted against the drawn out sex scene between Weisz and McAdams later in the movie. In fact any sex that is mentioned with a man is made out to be obligatory and loveless.
During the movie we get a few things revealed.
The two women had a love relation, something that is and was unacceptable in the community.
Nivola and McAdams married because he wanted to help her get over 'it' and she was told that she was not right in her head(this is literal from the movie).
We also get told that McAdams was the one who informed Weisz about the death of her father and that she did it deliberately to get Weisz to come back.
The two girls always were attracted to women, but they never did anything with it, not even Weisz who had broken with the shackles of her past. In fact we are told that she never met anyone and apparently engaged in quickies with men.
Essentially the movie is because McAdams informed Weisz about her fathers death. This made the latter come over from the US and this is what McAdams wanted. You would then expect that this would result in something but this is not what happens. In fact McAdams is almost unseen in the first part of the movie and the two girls hardly respond to each other. And then suddenly about a third in they hit it off which cumulates into a long sex scene about halfway in. Then the movie see-saws as McAdams cannot make up her mind and Weisz not doing much more than trying to flee. Eventually this leads to the moment where McAdams asks her freedom from Nivola. Which then is totally undone when Nivola makes a speech in the Synagogue that comes down to: duty is important.
Weisz doesn't have any kind of character arc. She is the same as when the movie started and her trick is to flee. But fleeing has gained her nothing. She is a lonely figure who has quick sex with men whom she doesn't love and she has no family and probably dies a lonely death. She has become nothing.
McAdams has a character arc of sorts but it is only to make her end up where she started. McAdams might not have found love but she had found her role in life: that of being the mother of her child and the wife of her husband. She has become something.
What infuriates me is that the whole movie is aimed at rubbing this is by leaving no alternatives. The whole 'lesbian' affaire is there to contrast the two women and the whole story railroads them to an outcome.
But what takes the cake is near the end. Weisz drives of in a taxi, but McAdams runs after her. They kiss passionately and then nothing happens. Yeah, they wanted to make sure you go the message.
The Mandalorian: Chapter 9: The Marshal (2020)
Nice episode with good visuals but weak story and lacks characters.
I like the Mandalorian as concept and as a character, but this episode feels weak. Overall, the camera work is amazing and they went all out on the visuals. I really enjoyed that.
But the writing leaves me baffled.
So the Mandalorian wants to bring little Yoda back to his own people.
This seems like an okay drive to get the story going.
Next he wants to find another of his kind 'for guidance'. I don't quite understand why another Mandalorian might help, but fair enough, let's go with it.
Then he hears from an informant there is a Mandalorian on Tatooine.
Okay.. so he goes there.
Turns out it isn't one, but some dude who used the armor to make himself marshal of the town.
Okay, valid enough.
Then the Mandalorian orders him to hand over the armor.
At that precise moment a huge sandworm comes into town(for some reason it also bring with it a powerful wind) and gobbles up a bantha.
What a coincidence...
Next something happens that leaves me baffled.
The marshal offers the Mandalorian a 'deal'. Help kill the sandworm in exchange for the armor.
Wait, what?
Why?
Why would the Mandalorian make a deal? He can just gun the marshal down, take his armor and leave?
At this point the writers should have add another reason for the Mandalorian to agree to this deal. Perhaps the whole town is up in arms against him. So he has to kill a lot of innocent people. Or they have the whole place rigged with explosives to make a point(the explosives come back later in play when facing the sandworm). The marshal needs the armor for x, but once x is gone he wouldn't need it.
It feels like in the first writings of the script, the armor the marshal was wearing would fend of the sand people. It feels like that wasn't going anywhere so they introduced a sandworm. So now the sand people wouldn't be the enemy but savage natives that have a common cause with the inhabitants of the town. But that doesn't make sense either as the sand people are nomadic raiders. So why would they care about a sandworm that lives in a cave at a particular place?
It would make sense if the monster had some religious significance. And it actually seems they were going for that in the images. But somehow this got lost during the telling.
It would have made more sense is there was a kind of character that spoke for the sand people. Someone that would be able to link the fate of the sand people to the fate of the sand worm. It misses that kind of character.
Still I liked the episode, but as some other people say. It lacks good characters next to the mandalorian. The only other 'person' is the marshal and he just doesn't feel like a genuine character. It seems like most of the budget went to other things then good characters.
Turbulent Skies (2020)
Poor camera work and cliche characters
Whatever story this show wants to convey is harmed by its camera work, editing and under par characters. Especially its jittery camera handling and fast edits make this one an unpleasant sit.
Years ago, this sort of movie-making became a hype and while the rest of the world has moved on, some Dutch filmmakers seem stuck in it.
Good movie making is like any profession the skill of selecting the right tools for the right job: one picks the right shots and uses the right editing for the scene. It is bad when you toss the camera all over the place and cut scenes down to one second shots as if you are showing a roller-coaster from a first person view while all you are showing is two characters casually talking. Stop trying to be cool. Stop trying to be the next Michael Bay.
What is also most in evidence is that the two main characters are caricatures. Fokker is the Gung-ho guy who likes to live the life: fast cars and women. Plesman is his opposite: the conscientious serious guy who tries to make his dream come through. With Plesman not only having to deal with all the challenges involved in starting up a new business but also reigning in Fokker.
The last straw that made me decide to stop watching was the obligatory sex scene. I got the feeling that about every sex scene in Dutch movies and series are more akin to rape than anything else. As if they are incapable to make such a scene anything else but unfeeling sex. And bang there it was, right in the middle of the first episode.
This series is tripe and it probably does no justice to the real people. The makers would have been better if they didn't use historical persons, but just based their stories on them. In this way they could make up the story as they see fit instead of distorting the historical ones.
Maybe a tell-tale sign for the quality of the series is that they went out of their way to advertise the CGI airplanes, buildings, cars and streets. Granted, it looks impressive, but probably hides the shortcomings in other areas.
#Saraitda (2020)
well okay: gamer boy meets cute girl during.
Perhaps this movie should get more than its due? It is a nice story about a guy who finds himself isolated in his apartment during a zombie epidemic. Of course he will connect with a girl his age. She is, after all, the only other living being in the high rise. So he has to go and safe her. You know how those movies go.
So why is this movie?
This question ought to haunt you when you write this script. What makes your movie stand out? How about contrasting the real world with its real zombies with the fake game world with its fake zombies? Easy to kill something in a game but how about a real person? So how about having him save that cute girl, but the they have to divide those meager resources over two persons? How about making her pregnant, deaf, a lesbian, give her aids, make her a sociopath, make her or him fear heights or open spaces. And why zombies? What happens if you swap them out with something else? Would the story fall apart or does it not matter at all? Then why zombies?
Herein lies the issue with this competently made movie. It is totally forgettable. Feel like throwing your stone in the endless sea of zombie flics? Well, this one doesn't even leave a ripple. Ramp up the stakes, throw in something unusual. Anything!
Boy meets girl during the zombie outbreak?
That is about it.
Is that really worth your time?
Ghost Wars (2017)
Episode one: tension. Episode two: drama.
While the first episode captured my attention, building up the tension, the second episode undid it all..
In the first one we see a lot of people die, a bus full of people, a repair crew for the bridge and at least two policemen. So it slowly it dawns on the remaining policemen that something unexplained but evil is afoot, especially when it is clear that a section of the bridge is destroyed, but the ghosts create an illusion that it is not.
The thing that struck me the most was that people seem to shrug away that other people just died horribly. A cop drives into a gap when he tries to cross the bridge and his colleagues go like: oh look, that is fake! So how about checking on your colleague? But nobody cares to.. Apparently just taking it for a fact that he is dead.
So by the end of episode one it is very obvious something bad is going on and they determine that they have to figure out how to deal with it and clearly need the help of the lead. And in episode 2 everything is forgotten.
Everybody goes his own way as if nothing has happened. And when a boat arrives nobody but the lead sees it as a way out. And just to get out, not to get help. And what about fighting back, as you were talking about in the first episode?
The police only come visit the boat to bring in the skipper for questioning and when that same skipper asks someone to help repair the engine, that guy refuses because the skipper can't pay him. Like he doesn't even propose to help repair the boat so he can escape the town or to get outside help.
What is even more surprising is that there is no outside communication apparently, but you can clearly hear the radio in the bar. It apparently still receives outside signals. What is more, there is no doubt in my mind that at least one inhabitant will have a radio set that allows them to talk to the outside world. Just because your phone doesn't work, doesn't mean you can't communicate in other ways.
Like in so many other series it is clear that the focus in episode one was on the strange happenings, but in episode two it shifted to the main stay of about every series: drama, usually of the sibling or spouses kind. We need to invent contrived conflicts so as to make things happen.
I didn't think the series was going to get better.
October Faction (2020)
It was all too much for me..
I am watching the first episode as I write this. I am halfway in. It started a bit goofy, but on a high note in a hotel room filled with maimed bodies and a monster. The whole scene took less than a minute and half the time was taking up with the father looking grumpy. The mother then shoots the monster in a goof way: she walks away and shoots it without looking at it. And that was all the action in the first part..
I am still waiting for the quirky parts, but I might have missed those as the episode is buried under so many tropes and cliches that it must be about to collapse into a black hole of boredom. Everything is run-of-the-mill. What is even worse, we are thirty minutes in and nothing has happened yet: it is all exposition and setting up for later: the death of a brother, the death of the grandfather and the arrival of the grandmother who will bring her own troubles with them(she is that snarky,self-assured type; like another clone from Miranda Priestly from the Devil wears Prada.
There was a moment in the episode that caught my attention: the owner of a gas station refuses to help them because of the mother. At that moment I thought it might be because he knew something about her, but apparently it is because she is black. At least I guess it was because that is how the family takes it and the gas guy doesn't explain. God, he doesn't even curse or anything. And he doesn't say anything about the kids, who are also black. So hence my confusion.
The opener is usually 'better' as to draw you in and then it goes downhill. And by Jove I already stopped after fifteen minutes to read what other people though. I then had to force myself to watch another fifteen minutes. But I calling it quits. I hope you get more entertainment out of it.
.
Star Trek: Voyager: Favorite Son (1997)
And there be spiders...
And Voyager takes a nose dive again as the series fails to maintain its otherwise relentless mediocre course and plunges towards the atrocious in an episode that should have been named: and there be spiders..
Harry Kim gets to be made the main star which is almost worst then making Neelix the main star. Boring vs Annoying. Oh, the choice.
Kim gets into danger as spiders in the shape of women lure him down to get eaten for his genes.
Do I care?
No.
Remind me what makes Kim stand out again?
He likes to play music?
And?
Well, he likes to play music.
Anything else?
No.. not really.
Anyway.. some kind of race greets Voyager with powered down weapons and lowered shields, but they are arming their weapons in secret without Voyager knowing, except for Kim. Fire away he shouts. Nice that Voyager can or cannot detect this depending on what is needed for the moment. This level of bad writing, being super inconsistent, now even occurs in one episode. The bla bla buffers can detect a virus and cannot detect it. The computer cannot detect alien DNA and can detect it five minutes later. Oh, who cares.
That alien DNA turns Kim into spider fodder in a desperate attempt to make him interesting. It fails. He is left behind on a planet on which 90 percent of the populace is women. Nubile women, so those women tell Kim. This means then that ten percent men, I assume, hasn't been devoured yet? Anyway these spi.. women tell him he is actually an alien of their kind who returns home. Except he is male.. And they will eat him. Well, they didn't tell him that. They told him: You're home Kim.. and strangely enough turning into an alien does give you spots, but does not make you interesting.
From that moment on every time someone talked about these women I mentally substituted women with spiders. And i didn't even knew they were going to eat him.. It was just obvious they would.
In the mean time that species that got shot at by Voyager - thanks to Kim - is contacted by Voyager to ask them: why did intend to fire on us while pretending not to so we had to fire on you, so you could totally wreck Voyager when you finally did fire at us?
Cause we hate that other species!
Why?
Cause we do. And anyone having one of their species on board will be shot at. For no reason at all. Even if you would have superior firepower! Which Voyager never has, because the weapon systems are always the first to go offline in a battle.
For no reason you attack us but because you do not like those women. Because.. well why? Maybe to leave the viewer guessing?
So Voyager returns to the spider planet after having squandered the time on nothing. But this was just so they could find out that those spi.. women erected an impenetrable force-field around the whole planet to keep Kim in and Voyager out. Except that it is penetrable if you just plunge Voyager through some holes you made by modulating the shield or bi-polarize the emitters. Or inject a plasma stream into the warpcore. Oh man.. so many words that you can combine.
In the meantime a spi.. women ship is then on an intercept course so Janeway can shout: Battle Stations.
What does that mean anyway? Everyone is already behind the consoles they sit behind during the explosion scenes. Why shout this pointless line? Cause it sounds cool. Like shield down to whatever percent. Or establishing the cause of things after it has been revealed. We are being fired upon. Oh is that what cause the shaking of the ship and the lowering of the shield.
Anyway Kim.. finds out the spi.. are women.. or was it the other way around? He flees..Comes in one of the most silly pole fights ever and show he has nothing to his credit but playing music.
The spi.. women start to prepare him but he gets saved.
Oh my, wow that was exciting. They saved him..
Who?
Kim?
The music player?
Yes, him.
Say,... whenever did we see him play music?
Anyway Voyager flies off with the spidership hot on their tail when that other species makes in an appearance.. cause you know.. Script.
And while earlier into the episode that spider ship knocked out those other ships with one shot, now they can't. Cause script.
At the end Kim tells about the Sirens... if you missed the reference.. we just grab your head and smash you in a full bowl of the painful obvious.
Oh and he says: there was something exciting about having a new identity.
Yeah,, maybe you make for a more interesting character being a meal for spiders.
Star Trek: Voyager: Innocence (1996)
Despite the acting and the premise it is an abysmal episode
The most curious thing about this episode is that if Belenna had been in it she would have reversed the plasma stream through the gravitational nodes and then enriched it with antimatter and injected into the teleporter stream to create a window through the electrostatic storm surrounding the moon. Then they would have teleported Tuvok and the kids out of their without issues. Pity Janeway and Kim didn't think of that one.
So now we have to deal with the story.
When rewatching old Star Trek series on Netflix you get to meet the good, the bad, the truly remarkable and the astonishing atrocious. That one episiode can have it all is possibly shown by Innocence.
First the good: Tuvok played by Tim Russ. I find him a believable Vulcan. Tuvok has crashed on some kind of moon where a group of children have been stranded too. We see him interact with these children, thus confronting him with the unruly and emotional. We learn a bit about the Vulcans and how they learn to control their emotions and become logical.
Now to continue I would have to reveal the clue of the episode, there is no other way. The clue is that the species the Voyager meets this time has a reversed aging process. Now this isn't revealed until the very end. In fact this is truly bad because the whole confrontation and what happens in the episode would not have occured if the leader of the species had told Janeway the moment tensions arose.
Now one can argue that they only became aware that the Voyager crew has a reversed aging process as compared to themselves near the end but we never see them go though these motions. In fact: it is just mentioned before at the final confrontation. Oh, they don't know we have a reversed aging process; the kid is 96 years old. Note the sentense? We have a reversed one. This assumes they accept that the norm is different from theirs. But how would a species that deliberately isolates itselfs, so we are informed, assume or know that they are abnormal?
But then we run into various problems. Does this reverse process also entail that they forget everything they learned? The kids act as kids do and show the usual neglect of experience and understanding. In fact they don't even know they come to die because they tell Tuvok that it is a monster who takes them away and the others of their kind are out to kill them. And when Tuvok goes to investigate he finds only the clothes of the kids in the cave they are too afraid to go into. Why did they go into a cave with a monster they feared? So where did the bodies go? I cannot but feel that there is none as to prevent Tuvok from discovering the bodies so he can determine they died of a natural process and not by the hand of a monster. But given the way the clothes are arranged this must have given him that clue anyway. They did not die a violent death.
What is truly bad about this series is that you see them try to make this tale work by bending everything out of shape. How truly convenient to the story that nobody was there to explain things to Tuvok. How interesting that there is apparently no guidance or buildings or anything to make the dying more convenient for the kids and tip Tuvok off? Why is it called dying anyway? How convenient that there is a storm around the moon that prevents everything from communications, teleporting to shuttle craft landing. And no Belanna tweaking the teleporter to teleport them out or in.
The whole episode can only work if the story if things conveniently happen. Too much things. And this is why the episode truly is atrocious, despite an interesting premise and the acting.
Luchshe, chem lyudi (2018)
Neighbors with robots
After having dragged myself through the first two episodes of season one I concluded that that if you replaced the robot with an illegal immigrant then you probably would get the same story. Perhaps this was intentional, but if it was then why not tell that story? Maybe because people wouldn't have watched it? Even so, the moment you add robots to your tale then you need to do something with them like in blade-runner, or ghost in the shell, or mother. And this is telling. The robot and other technological gadgets are just tacked onto an ordinary story about a family with issues and to add some flavor to that drama they now also have to deal with a rogue robot and the guys who are after her. Most of the time the movie has people chatting, babbling and arguing. Or shouting orders. Or sling verbal abuse. Sometimes there is a moment of excitement but these are far and in between. In between more babbling and chatting and so on. In this the show is probably like Neighbors with robots.
Those who avoid Neighbors are well advised to not be lured in by the veneer of technology.
Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (2012)
Ich wollte keine flapper sein
Ah the roaring twenties.. what a time it was.. Girls got liberated and intensely boring. Flapper.. yes.. they were called flappers. Like upper class chick Miss Fisher. She plays at being liberated, which means being promiscuous and solving crimes. And she has gun too! Wow. Like she is almost a man and allowed to wear a skirt at the same time without being ostracized or getting mistaken for a Scotsman. That's a kilt laddie, not a skirt. Oh well.. I am getting ahead of myself.. this is the 20's right.. no skirts allowed.. dresses... I mean dresses.
Anyways. I was trying to recall what makes miss Fisher stand out from all the other sassy, intelligent, irreverent know-it-all-girls who celebrate their liberation of the corset by having it on with any guy with foreign accent - fake or not - every episode?
Absolutely nothing..
It is as forgettable as it it can get.
Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers (2018)
I am a scientist!
Regardless whether you believe Bob Lazar or not, this movie will not in any way sway you one way or another. This movie, and note I call it a movie and not a documentary, is a vehicle to promote the vision of George Knapp(who also produced it) and uses Corbell(the director) as his spokesperson. It is in no way meant as a thorough investigation of the claims of Lazar. And to be fair to Knapp.. he sorts of states it at the beginning of the movie.
For those who are unfamiliar with the Bob Lazar story(and Knapp's role) I would advise to look it up on the internet: it isn't hard to find. The short of it: Knapp is a journalist who spends a lot of time pandering woo(see his Coast to Coast Am show), who way back discovered Lazar. Lazar claims to be a scientist with a degree at both MIT and Caltech and having worked in 1988-1989 at a super secret lab at Area 51 where he reversed engineer flying saucers . In 1989 he became a whistle blower on Knapp's KLAS-TV show. First anonymously and seven months later publicly. After that he became a doomed man.
The movie doesn't do much to further knowledge beyond that which we already know and, what is worse, it doesn't even bother to let any criticism being voiced by Lazar's critics . In fact for some odd reason we get to see Corbell a lot while he talks to Knapp over a mobile phone. More time is taken up by Knapp either talking to Corbell over the phone or talking in the movie. Lazar gets to be interviewed in between which results in reproducing that which he already told us. And then we have Mickey Rourke babbling pretentious lines. There is more.. but it is more of the same stuff.
Corbell doesn't bother proving anything. He claims to have talked to a Mike Thigpen, but alas that guy didn't want to talk on camera. He claims to have consulted nine scientists and three in depth about Lazar's claims, but he doesn't name any of them and none of them appear in the movie. He claims to have found the illustrious Cloud Chamber tape, but alas it was overwritten. When he asks Knapp about Lazar's degrees, he gets a reply from Lazar: would you think they hire someone out of high school?
Corbell parrots what Knapps wants to be known. Research is just messing with unnecessary details. The big picture is what he is interested in. And with that any searching for the truth had succumbed to Knapp's rendering of reality. Even if you totally belief Lazar.. you must agree that this makes for a very poor case. This isn't a documentary, it is a manifesto.
A close friend and ardent supporter of Lazar was one Gene Huff. Huff once wrote that was amazed that Lazar got underpaid for a senior staff member(yes: it reads senior staff, Lazar like to think big). Huff asked him about it. Lazar's reply was that scientists were underpaid.
That is one answer.
The other could be that Lazar wasn't one and that when Huff remarked that Lazar(whom he later made a movie with, called the Lazar Tape)sounded like a scientist, Lazar should have answered.. I wish I was one.. but I ain't.
211 (2018)
Nothing to call home about: another Netflix dud.
It is one of those Netflix flicks I saw because I wanted to see Nicholas Cage act. Weird, I admit, as Cage isn't known for sublime performances. But that is precisely why! Someone pointed out that Cage's acting could be seen as deliberately anti-acting. Like, let's say, the Joker as played by Heath Ledger in the Dark Knight Cage is over the top, but while Ledger pulls it off marvelously, Cages over-acting is often a dud. Perhaps often is an understatement. But with 211 Cage surprises again by putting in a such a run-of-the-mill performance that one can only giggle.. and giggle and giggle some more.
Cage is in good company(or is that bad?) as the rest of the cast is as bland as used teabags. There is kind of attempt to make us care for them as the various non-entities get introduced during the long winded first part of the movie, but it doesn't pay off when it should. It is a half-assed attempt anyway, which is why some of the people have no names at all. Oh yes, the fat bloke is shot in the head. Ah yes, the son-in-law is on the verge of dying after being shot(and boo-hoo he has just heard that he has become a father). It makes me pause to consider what makes us connect to people.To feel the hurt they feel. Or at least sympathize. Using tropes like: man-hears-he-becomes-a-father-just-before-facing-mortal-peril puts me off. Come on! And of course he doesn't die. It isn't even a spoiler to say so.. it is that kind of movie.(It would at least have been inspired if she wasn't pregnant as he turns out to be infertile. Or she ups and leaves. You know, like real life people sometimes do).
The movie tries to take the serious angle by declaring to be inspired by real life events, but it is just that: inspired, not based on. If they would have based it on the North Hollywood Shootout(which is the one they mean), they would have altered the movie significantly. For one, there was never a pause. The two dudes(not four) came out and the fight was on: what you would call a running battle. There were also no hostages. But the movie has the robbers sit inside the bank for some time with hostages, so where the heck is the negotiator? And why show the police as having AR-15 as the lack of them was the whole point in the real shootout: that the police did not have the necessary firepower to stop the heavily armed and armored robbers?(It is just infuriating when you watch an interview with a former LAPD Swat team member who explains just that and why it can not happen now and this movie gets exactly this point wrong).
Then the Swat team does arrive - which takes ages unlike with the real shootout -, they get time to set up the assault and do so is a very clumsy way. As said: there is no negotiator but there are also no snipers and the teams only use what must be a smoke grenade. And why they heck do they press the assault when the hostages are send out?
But possibly the worst part of the movie is the utter unrealistic carelessness for human suffering with the cops. When the backup arrives with their AR-15's, they waist no time to shower the bank with a hail of bullets while it is obvious that they have hostages in there and it is very likely they hit them first. In addition they leave one of the survivors of the coffee cup bombing unattended while it is clear she is in a terrible state. And finally they don't give a rats ass that Cage has an obvious nervous breakdown after being on the receiving end of a barrage of bullets and thinking his son-in-law has died. But the only thing the officer in charge does is telling him to calm down. It is almost like the slap-in-the-face trope, without the slap in the face. But anyway, in this movie it works as Cage then takes charge and goes Rambo.
There is an utter lack of seriousness in the whole movie that tries to pawn itself off as being serious. And there lies the issue. There is so much unrealism in this movie(a band of experienced mercenaries robbing a bank for a trifle?) that the whole inspiration becomes silly. If this is inspired by real life events, then Lord of the Rings is inspired by the First World War, Star wars by the American revolution, and Pearl Harbor by Pearl Harbor(and one of these might actually be true). It would have been better if they had not taken this all too serious, but just made a stupid action flick with an over the top bad/good guy. Cage can do that. That is his thing.
This is another Netflix dud. Netflix Orginal is becoming a byword for underperforming. Netflix: get a hold of yourself.
Perdida (2018)
Another miss for Netflix
Netflix movies do not have a great track record with me. Perdida does in no way make me think differently. The subject would lend itself for a thriller or a film Noir. My bet would have been with the latter. The music, perhaps the one outstanding aspect of the movie, seems to chosen for a kind of setup.
But the movie is too unfocused to be anything at all.
This then is its greatest weakness: it spends too much time on side stories and back stories that break up the pacing, take away the mystery and often seem irrelevant.
One example is the time given to the criminals. They get extensive screentime. A better director would have chosen to have their activities discovered by the lead, like for instance in Sicario, where Emma Blunt stays the focus of the movie and we discover through her what happens. Another example would be the Third Man or the Maltese Falcon, where again the focus stays on the lead. If a back story is required, it is told in dialogue or given a very short screentime.
Perdida also suffers from a direction that tries too hard to be nifty with the camera and misses movie gems at the same time. Nice scenes are not exploited by good framing, but often marred by 'bobbing' camera work: in one scene the camera moves from a heavy grey and snowy sky downward to a street view. This maneuver is clearly too much for the cameraman to handle and results in him(or her) losing grip.
All in all a movie feels like it is overreaching itself. Perhaps try and make a small movie instead of attempting to make an epic one?
Australien skies (2015)
And are you convinced?
Convinced there is something out there?
Don Meers, the director of this documentary, is at the end.
But will you be?
And has he reason to?
Australian Skies sees Don Meers, an Australian director, make a trip with one Damien John Nott to Glass Mountains, a hilly location about 30 kilometer above Brisbane. Make a note of that. Nott claims that he sees unexplained phenomena on a daily basis. And he is not alone, others see them as well for Nott is an UFO magnet.
Meers states that it his aim to understand what people like Nott are witnessing, to explain these objects and to see an object himself. Meers method seems to be to fill the bulk of the movie with interviews, of which the one with Nott takes the biggest slice of the cake. We hear Nott making claims in the order of seeing hundreds of unknown objects, having hundreds of witnesses, photos and movies to boot.
This claim must of necessity lead to a selection of movies in which these strange phenomena are shown. And given the claim, one would expect the best of the crop. The ultimate irrefutable footage. And what do we get? We get a small sampling of crappy pixelated clips made with cameras flipping all over the place. Here is a man with hundreds of photos(he actually claims thousands) and lots of footage, but the documentary cannot give anything that is crystal clear. Nor is all of this evidence show examined in anyway. It is just shown. An ironical smile came to me when Nott at some point told how youtube was swarming with fake movies. You mean those movies that are purposely badly made as to hide that they are fake? If your movies are not like that, why do they appear to look exactly like them?
To add some more weight to the documentary Meers goes with Nott on a field trip in the hopes to get confronted by one of those many objects that seem to dodge the heels of Nott. It results in a wake at night for reasons unexplained. Strange objects only come out at night? Are they more visible at night? The crew and certain others stand around pointing at the black sky stating how they see this or that and instead of pointing the professional camera at the indicated objects(one claim: this cannot be seen by the naked eye!) Meers does nothing but instead uses the crappy footage that the others make with their swaying handhelds. Hello?
The remaining part of the movie splits in two parts. One in which the documentary tries to examine(or rather disprove) that the strange objects are drones, the other can best be collected with one term: conspiracy theories.
As to the drones, the crew come to the conclusion that it cannot possibly be drones and, in a beautiful dichotomy, concludes that if it cannot be drones then it must be UFOs. Oh by the way, it cannot be planes either, because there are hardly any planes there. Oh aren't there?
So let's see what are the busiest airports in Australia? Hmmm... Brisbane is number three of all Australian airports. Would that not amount to a lot of planes?
And then it inevitably comes down to conspiracy theories. If there is something of a litmus test for claims that can be dismissed to the dustbin then it must be the claim that there is some kind of conspiracy behind it all. With great irony Nott makes the claim that it would be odd for the government to send out a soundless drone over populated areas(why not?) and then later into the documentary he has no problem claiming that the government has a helicopter hovering over his house for 45 minutes. And more of this, strange men or the government is on to us. Now any documentary maker worth his metal would at this point have asked the question. Why would they?
And there lies the central weakness of the documentary. Remember that Meers wanted to understand what happened to Nott(and others), what these objects are and be confronted with one himself. Next to the question, are there even objects(this goes without saying apparently) Meers doesn't even try to be critical. He lets Nott talk on end in the documentary, but Meers never poses one critical question. Nor does he consult others outside the circle of ufo adaptees. Meers hands the UFO people a platform and uncritically allows them free reign to spout their claims without any critical opposition. I think that this is called: playing tennis without the net.
My take is that Meers wasn't convinced by what occurred during the making of the movie, he was already convinced when he started to make it. And this makes him biased and the documentary useless. This is documentary is preaching to the choir, it is utter pointless to convince anyone with a critical mind.
Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars (2017)
Anime meets Metal Gear in this misguided movie.
Whatever meaning the novel and original movie Starship Troopers had is lost in this anime sequel that borrows its main character from Metal Gear Solid. This is not Rico, it is Big Boss. I wonder when the legal battle will ensue.
The whole political, moral and philosophical implications of an society dominated by the military and drenched in warfare is pushed to the background and so much so that merely making a reference to it seems to score favorable with the anime crowd. Oh blimey, they just quoted a line from the original movie! Awesome! As long as it is anime, which means over-muscled though guys, dramatic looking characters, supposedly funny nerds and long slender blacked hair girls with big breasts wearing suggestive outfits and anime haircuts. I swear that the air marshal is Lightning from Final Fantasy.
What we get served is a trashy story of a bunch of stereotypical newbies that get dropped in the midst of a surprise attack on Mars by aliens nobody except the audience saw coming. There are issues over Mars trying to gain independence for the federation, but this is never addressed properly because it is just required as a plot device to get the newbies fighting giant bugs over a planet and for a population we never see or hear from. It is just shallow window dressing.
What is even worse is that almost all the characters are boring run- of-the-mill anime tropes which is exacerbated by a shallow story-line that is goes something like: bunch of newbies wise up under stress to the surprise of their though as nails commander Rico.
This movie is best avoided for anyone but die hard anime fans.
Actually I do not dislike anime, but it ill fits with Starship Troopers. By all means, make a movie in which a bunch of staple characters fighting insectoid invaders. Just call it something else but Starship Troopers if that is all you want to do.
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)
A shallow tale exposed.
Intense torment is part of the makeup of the denizens of Sin City, where people do bad things even if it was their intent to do good. And regardless of their intentions, torment is their due. The city corrupts and twists morals yet despite this corruption sometimes good comes from bad.
This formula made the first movie work but the magic falters in this one because at heart the characters and story are incredible shallow. But this was all hidden from sight by the sheer intensity of its telling. As a concept, supported by some enigmatic filming, fitting dialogue and characters whose plight you care about(mostly John Hartigan and Nancy Callahan) the first movie was great. It was intense.
But in this movie, despite everything, it is the characters that are lacking. The only really interesting person is Ava Lord played by Eva Green and,to a lesser degree, Senator Roark, played by Powers Boothe. The others, even Dwight McCarthy, Nancy Callahan and Gail, seem bland and the latter turned in an extra.
Obviously the casting has suffered at some points. It demonstrates once more how the right actors can change a movie. Clive Owen has been replaced by Jos Brolin as Dwight McCharty, which made for a somewhat indifferent feel. Aiko is replaced by Chung as Miho which definitely changed her character dramatically. Aiko made Miho just look terrifying dangerous while Chung makes her look cute.
The final nail in the coffin is that the movie lacks intensity. What looked awesome in the first looks bland in the second and once you are no longer charmed away from the movie by its intense telling the shallow depth of its story and characters are exposed and thus turns it the lesser movie.
Still, this isn't a bad movie. It can be worse and it certainly is still entertaining even if it was only for watching Eva Green, Powers Boothe and Mickey Rourke.
Das Floß! (2015)
With a weak script and mediocre acting this movie loses its buoyancy.
When people marry they hatchet their freedom by throwing bachelor parties in a last act of ultimate debauchery and so do Katha and Jana in this mistitled movie. In German it says the raft, a neutral name. The English title Floating! suggests some light fun. However, this movie hovers in between the serious and funny and never seems to commit to one side or the other.
The movie screams debut. This doesn't imply bad. The Dutch movie Zusje(little sister) was a debut movie and was good movie. However, the inexperience tells. Both the script and the actors feel lightweight, with the exception of Julia Becker and, to a lesser degree, Anna Becker. A mediocre script can be saved by good acting, and mediocre acting can be saved by a good script(although less likely) but with both being under par there is little to salvage.
The acting not only suffers from the inexperience of the actors but from the miscasting. Katha gets to enjoy her bachelor's party with four guys on a raft: her younger brother, a school friend, a coworker and a sperm donor. The latter's presence is excused on the ground that it would be nice for Katha to get him to know a little better.
It probably looked hilarious on paper, in practice it is a string of embarrassments as we get to witness the disclosures and confrontations of private mishaps in the past and in the present. Jana in the meanwhile has her own bachelor party, which is mostly virtual as the only one we see is her old lover Susan. Otherwise she drunkenly rambles at Katha through her mobile.
This might all been meant to be funny or it might not, but with Katha being grumpy for most part of the movie and otherwise drunk, just like Jana, you'll never know. It seems to me that grumpy people and drunks cannot carry a movie. Well, unless their is a specific reason for it and done by good actors.
Still there is some redemption. The two main leads at least put in an effort and there are some nice moments between them. But the movie falters on its script and poor acting. A pity.
Exile (2008)
Refreshing movie, mostly rough around the edges, but fun for certain
Granted, this not a good movie in any way, but unlike bad movies, this one contains an interesting idea which, surprisingly, is worked out reasonably well.
The central theme is one that could be taken from Philip K. Dick, or for those more erudite in movies; Blade Runner(or Ex Machina). Dick has a fascination about what is real and what makes someone human or not. Therefore the most interesting character in this movie is Reyna. She is a non-linear android who is activated by Jason, the survivor of a crash who has been blinded. Non-linear means that she is able to think her own free thoughts, which she proceeds to do.
What next follows is hard to demonstrate without spoiling the fun. Reyna depends on Jason as much as Jason depends on her. And since he is blinded he can not see what she tells him she is seeing. While the story develops they seem to grow closer together, but we as the third party, get to see what Jason does not. The conflict starts to develop once it is clear that Reyna will cease to function when Jason dies or leaves, which makes efforts to defend him understandable, but at the same time makes you wonder how he will defend himself from her.
The movie makes a good attempt to develop this dual relationship and at first I was taken in by the apparent straightforwardness of Reyna. How the story finally pans out is for you to see, but I must say that up till the end it got me rooting for her.
The bad part of the movie is not so much that is clearly shows how low budget it is, but that given the choice the movie makers could not resist adding an alien monster for which they had no budget. The lesson to learn here is: if you lack the budget for a good monster, don't have one in your movie. Especially because it was totally superfluous to the movie and could have been easily substituted by something more mundane, as it actually was by having Jason chased by enemies from anther planet.
All in all a movie that is clearly low budget and rough around the edges, but has an interesting central story that certainly merits a remake with a better budget(and some better plot development). At time the movie has serious plot holes and at one time Jason runs out to wave at planes he can not see, but he can now. The script totally forgetting that he is blind. This movie is a bit like a cheap Ex Machinima version. One specific point to make here is that unlike Robots/Androids like say Data, Reyna never expresses the desire to become human. Which is refreshing.
El día de los muertos (2007)
When a social drama becomes horror
I must say that writing a review of a movie gets increasingly harder over time. Oh yes, it is easy to thumb down this movie for it is just a bad one. But where to begin? It is the underpar acting? Is it the bad dialog? Is it that the movie does not know what it wants to be?
The movie has an interesting setup. A group of better-off citizens picks up the strays of society to murder them as part of their perverted fantasies. However, they overplay their hand and kill an illegal Mexican. Enter an officer of the law and the father of the victim.
Why is this interesting? Because it offers many ways to explore humanity, which in the end is what makes movies great. And if you do not agree with this, then we have nothing to agree about. So at first, it seems that the movie goes down this path. The victim is followed for no less than thirty minutes and it is shown how she ekes out a precarious existence in the shadows of society. She is an illegal immigrant and speaks not a word of English. Her fate is sealed when someone, in an act of goodness, gives her a list of potential customers to work for, one of which is her nemesis.
After the killing, the focus of the movie is shifted to the agent and the investigation. Unfortunately, the actress is at best mediocre and it doesn't help much that there is no adequate supporting cast, setting, camera work, dialog or plot. The investigation has little option for surprises as we already know who did it, what they did and why they did it. So no surprises there.
What the movie is left with is how to agent solves the case or, like Columbo, how the murderers get caught. For a moment it looks like we will see a cat and mouse game, like in Hard Candy, but neither the actors, not the writing is anyway near the level required. What dialog there is, is so cringeworthy that it embarrasses more than anything else. Clearly, the writers can't write and the actors can't act. They pull the weirdest faces at the wrong time into the conversation. The camera work is equally weak. Sometimes it focuses on details that are totally irrelevant to the story. Panning is just bad and angles are weird, not to create a strange eerie feeling, for if that was meant, then it would be consistent, but instead, it is inconsistent and pointless.
Two-thirds in the movie it gives up on the murder case and decides to turn into a horror movie. Yes, the killers now get themselves killed, by scream like types. It isn't hard to guess who the killers are, but harder is to figure out how they know whom to kill, and how and when. But hey, this is a horror movie. Why have a reasonable logic plot in a horror movie, right? Maybe because two-thirds of the movie was not a horror movie?
So now the script is falling apart and like many bad scripts, it has to fill the plot holes with deus ex machinas. At some point the officer gets cuffed and she liberates herself by rubbing the chain against stone for a few minutes because the script needs her to. Her intelligence level, which wasn't impressive to start out with, is dropping just so she does the stupid action that allows her to run into danger. For one, she has no partner nor a backup.
Her stupidity is glaringly demonstrated by the fact that in the first part of the movie she helps women train against assaults, and when she herself is assaulted later in the same way, she doesn't apply the same tricks.
The movie finally ends with a full horror theme and thus demonstrates it's abysmal failure. If the movie was meant to be a horror movie, then it fails to set up properly for it. In fact, this end feels just like it tacked on so the movie could be wrapped up.
All in all a bad move that is not worth your time.
IMDb allows me not to give ratings, so I don't. Just make up your own mind reading the above.
Doctor Who: Amy's Choice (2010)
Where Plato fail.
What is real has always been a kind of challenging idea for people who mix their drinks with navel staring so why not make an episode out of it? So the good doctor and hangers-on get their shot and half-baked philosophy. Let's follow in the footsteps of Plato and swallow the blue or the red pill, shall we?
The story is about figuring out what is the real world and what is not. For you have to kill yourself in the fake world to keep existing in the real world. Oh and if you don't, something else or someone else will.
The initial victory goes to Amy, who makes the first right choice. But the doctor would not be the doctor if he hasn't got the final say. And so his choice is the final right one. Or is it. Writing is easy if you are not bound by anything. You can just make stuff up as you go and teleport people, creatures, and things around so they can appear when and where you need them. Again this results in utter nonsense, which is good for a laugh. Or more a tired smile.
Amy(and her hubby) gets into danger, of course, but she gets saved. Oh wait, is that a spoiler? Come off it. I don't really care what happens to her. Lucky her hubby is there. I care even less for him.
Fifteen stars go to Toby Jones as Dream Lord. Fifteen duds go to older people being evil creatures. Okay. Ten. It has some initial funniness.
Another lukewarm episode.
By the way, driving with a Volkswagen Minivan into a house is possibly the worst form of suicide. If you want to die, why not let the evil creatures you just tried to escape from do their thing? Just saying.
Doctor Who: The Vampires of Venice (2010)
Sinking your teeth in.
The nonsense continues as the group ends up in Venice where everybody speaks the king's tongue. Nevermind about that, it is just a funny line. It is 1580.
Let's copy and paste the script. Vampires equal women in danger, which equals Amy in distress. There are them vampires hiding in a building recruiting women, therefore Amy goes in and attempts to open the backdoor for the others, the one the good Doctor will later open with his magic stick when they are on the run. The plan goes wrong, of course. We cannot have Amy escape danger that easily.
Vampires get killed by daylight, but this happens on and off, depending on when it is needed for the story. At some point it becomes clear that letting go of any consistency and realism makes comedy fail somehow. I know that in the next episode I will no Ionger care that Amy gets into danger. She gets saved anyway, the monsters get defeated and nothing bad comes from it.
What is the reason to watch this? It is predictable, the quirky attitude of the doctor gets tedious, there is nobody to relate to and nor is the situation.
There is one redeeming aspect in this episode. How do you feel about exterminating an entire species, doctor?
Now, that is something to sink your teeth in.
Doctor Who: The Time of Angels (2010)
Gravity fails
The staple and stock fare of this series are that the Doctor and/or his companions get into a sticky situation and then doctor shakes a stick and the issue is solved. It is magic. It is Deus ex Machina. Dr. Who is god(or Merlin or Gandalf). All is fine though for this is not to be taken seriously.
Creepy angel statues come to live when you are not watching and then they eat you or something.It really doesn't matter what their motives are. Between unseen killing and standing still they use the voices of the recently killed to give Dr. Who hints. The ultimate evil creatures are yet another threat to the universe. Can there be an even bigger hyperbole?
A group of soldiers and a mysterious lady are added to the group, so there is a body count and some snappy dialogue. You can't have the doctor help Amy escape death in the nick of time all the time! So there has to be blood.
The episode is all over the place, from soldiers shooting at statues, running from statues or getting slaughtered by them to Amy walking with her eyes closed between those statues, who think she is watching them because.. because she has a beeping thing in her hand. Which might have come in handy at the start of the episode. Dr. Who is not only omnipresent but omniscient, for he knows exactly what the statues are planning. In the end, the doctor waves his wand and wins, no surprises there.
As said, it is not to be taken seriously. I wonder why I keep watching this. There is nobody to relate to and it is utter nonsense. Gravity falls here. Oh sorry. I meant fails. Did I spoil anything?
My Honor Was Loyalty (2016)
Poorly executed movie that fails to make use of the material
While making a movie on a shoestring is a challenge, bad decisions have been made to make this movie bad. For instance, we are served poorly executed battles that are obviously located in the same area that has to represent Russia in 1943 and Normandy in 1944. These battles just look downright fake. Coupled with this is the poor acting, marred by dubbing, the poorly cinematography(shaky handy cams!) the endless boring battles scenes and finally the borrowing from the thin red line.(long intro, voice overs, chaotic battle scenes, a lot of pondering and thinking).
The movie is presented as the story of a regular guy serving in the SS. It is literally announced at the start of the movie. However, the movie plays this fiddle a bit too much. For example: at one moment the subject is raised why the men joined the SS and it is presented as if they just wanted to do their duty. But the SS was not just some regular army unit. The SS were selected men, all volunteers, who adhered to a certain ideology and are noted for a long list of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Notably, the unit in this movie, the 1st SS, was notorious for this.
While the subject could have been interesting, the movie does not make much use of it. Where moral ambiguity would have been interesting, this is downplayed and only brought up at the end of the movie and the cloaked in a kind of apologetic by showing that the allies were bad as well. It would have been a much better movie if it had shown the SS as they were, brave perhaps, but brutish as well, and so perhaps explain how they could do the things they did. Now we just get to see what we have already seen before. A soldier getting tired of war and disillusioned. That we have seen before and seen done a lot better.