Change Your Image
Doke
Reviews
The Last Airbender (2010)
Should have been a photo book
I saw this in 2D. I'm not familiar with the anime series.
This film is visually beautiful. The cinematography was amazing. The scenery, sets, and costumes are intricate and gorgeous. Most of the dynamic special effects are well done and convincing. The soundtrack is beautiful.
Unfortunately, all the other elements that make up a movie are very weak. The script was terrible, with inane dialog, no sense of elapsed time, no character growth, too predictable action, and disjointed flow of events. There was almost no character development, making their motivations incomprehensible, and preventing us from caring about them. There are no surprises, the plot proceeds along the most predictable course. There's little emotion in the story; no laughter, no joy, no tragedy, no sorrow. Events occur that might have promoted those emotions, but they're presented so badly that they have no impact.
Most of the acting was stiff at best. The single exception was the actor playing the uncle, who was the only one able to portray emotion with tone of voice, facial expressions, or body language. He wasn't given enough chances to do so.
The plot has huge holes. Many things are not explained. The characters ignore obvious opportunities.
I won't say how it ends, just that the ending feels both deus ex machina and silly, and contains some of the least believable CGI in the movie.
I could almost recommend seeing this at a discount theater, or matinée. Ignore the stupid characters and action, and think of it as an artistic photo exhibit. The beautiful visuals will not survive transition the small screen. Don't bother seeing it on TV.
Sunshine (2007)
weak plot depends on pathetic science to create drama
I worked on suspending my disbelief as hard as I could, and still couldn't handle the huge plot holes, unbelievable personalities and dreadful science. With a little more thought they could have made a good movie based on sound science. Instead, they insult the intelligence of anyone who's had fifth grade science.
The premise for the movie is the sun is dying. A small crew is piloting a huge ship carrying a "stellar bomb" to restart the sun. As the movie starts, they enter a communications blackout zone, too close to the sun to communicate with earth.
The crew shows no signs of military discipline, and it's impossible to believe they would have been entrusted with a bomb the size of Manhattan, and earth's last hope. I wouldn't trust them to cooperate enough to run a car wash.
The crew doesn't seem to have a believable level of skill redundancy. Each member has a single focus, with no other member backing them up, or checking their work.
The mission was apparently not equipped with a policy manual, or any contingency plans.
The ship shows no design redundancy. Our space shuttles have more backup systems. I can't believe a ship carrying the last hope of mankind would be so poorly engineered.
There's no discussion of safer techniques to compensate for a cold sun, ie orbital mirrors or fusion satellites.
The communications blackout is absurd. It happens far to early, outside the orbit of mercury. We had a probe communicating back from mercury in 1975. With current laser technology, we could easily punch messages well into the sun's corona, and back out.
The sun is dying at least a billion years ahead of schedule, and at a ridiculously fast rate.
Fission reactions are the normal way of creating fusion chain reactions, in hydrogen bombs. However, trying to augment an existing fusion reaction with a fission explosion at least one trillion times smaller is absurd. The most probably outcome would be a small solar flare at the explosion site.
The movie does contain some nice dramatic moments, but they're spoiled by being so artificially contrived.
Hysterical Blindness (2002)
superb performances of dreadfully boring people doing nothing
Uma Thurman, Juliette Lewis, Gena Rowlands and Ben Gazzara all give wonderful performances. Unfortunately, a great performance of a boring character is still uninteresting. When the movie is a largely plot-less character study, dull characters are fatal.
Uma Thurman is particularly good as Debbie, a painfully neurotic, almost psychotic twenty-something girl. She's desperate for love, and stalks it in all the stupidest ways possible. She repeatedly throws herself at men, only to be disappointed. She's exactly the sort of barfly that you can find in every local bar.
Gena Rowlands and Ben Gazzara give amazing performances as an older waitress and a retiree in a budding romance. Unfortunately, they're secondary characters, and don't get enough screen time to properly develop.
Maggie and Annie (2002)
touching and good despite technical problems
I had a mixed opinion of this film. Most of the technical aspects: lighting, camera work, sound, sound mixing, etc looked both amateurish and low budget. For example, I noticed several shots which started out misframed, and they moved the camera to recenter the action, instead of re-shooting the scene. On the other hand, most of the artistic elements: acting, dialog, and soundtrack music selection were excellent. The script is somewhere in the middle. It's riddled with clichés, predictable, and unsubtle, but it's believable and has a wonderful tenderness. The characters are reminiscent of several of my women friends. Overall, the movie moved me, and kept me thinking for hours after watching it.
The Contender (2000)
mostly dull
There are a few entertaining moments. Some of the dialog is brilliant. Some the acting is excellent, especially a couple of soliloquies. However, the plot is lifeless, and the ending is largely deus ex machina. The characters are difficult to care about or identify with, because they're all either flat, unbelievable, foolish, or unpleasant. In particular, the central character, Senator Laine Hanson, shows a level of determination, ethics, principles, and public dedication to unpopular causes that is completely unlike any real politician, because it would be political suicide. As a result she's unconvincing. Worse, her motivations are kept a mystery for most of the film, preventing us from fully sympathizing with her.
This movie is a sequence of well delivered political speeches, strung together by a negligible plot and shallow characters. Several segments totaling about 10 minutes are entertaining. The rest is boring.
Dogma (1999)
Witty, insightful, and hilarious. Highly recommended.
Kevin Smith has done it again. This movie is witty, insightful and hilarious. Highly recommended.
The central theme is an action-race-against-time plot. However, Kevin Smith has surrounded it with thought provoking dialog, sympathetic characters, and delightfully well-timed humor. In particular, he's managed to portray angles and demons, apostles and idiots, as understandable people.
The movie supports the central beliefs of christianity, while ridiculing the formalized Catholic church.
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)
One of the funniest films I've ever seen, with a good message.
This film is hilarious. It lampoons everything: society, government, religion, education, and even itself. It builds on the running jokes of the south park series, yet adds a vast array of new humor.
On a slightly deeper level it does a reasonable job of exploring the dangers of intolerance and censorship. It's a bit heavy handed in spots, but that's partially obscured by all the jokes.
The film does contain a great deal of language, violence, and adult humor. However, it's never gratuitous. It's used to support either the moral message about intolerance, or the comedy.
I recommend this movie for children. The slapstick parts of the comedy will entertain them long enough so they might pick up some of the message.
Highly recommended.
The High Crusade (1994)
A poor adaptation. Not recommended.
This film has almost everything it needs to be first class science fiction, except a decent screenwriter. The effects, makeup, photography, and direction are all perfectly acceptable for the story. However, the script is a disaster. This is a highly inept adaptation of Poul Anderson's classic sifi novel. Most of the basic premise, and introduction, are preserved. However, the rest is terrible. Anderson's competent crusader knights are replaced by idiots and buffoons. The subtle humor of the original is replaced by inane slapstick. The result is implausible, and embarrassing. If they had simply cut for time, without trying to replace or add, the film would have been vastly better.
Wing Commander (1999)
Tolerable low-end action flick.
Within the genera of movies made from video games, this is pretty good. Within the wider genera of action films, it's passable.
The acting is mediocre. The dialog is a bit corny. The plot is simplistic. Most of the characters are two dimensional. The enemy aliens' characters are never developed at all. Their makeup isn't very good either. However, nothing stands out as being either really bad, or really good.
If you're looking for something to fill time, catch a matinee of this, but don't pay full price. There are enough special effects so it may not transfer as well to video and the small screen.
Armageddon (1998)
An insult to viewer's intellegence.
There has been a recent deplorable trend towards movies which are little more than a collage of impressive visual images. These movies lack anything time based, particularly plot and continuity. The images may be rearranged arbitrarily without damaging the meaning of the movie, because there is no meaning. Armageddon is one of the worst examples of this style of filmmaking.
Armageddon contains many impressive images. However, everything else was sacrificed. It has a truly awful script. The plot is unbelievable. The dialog is pathetic. The continuity is poor. The passage of time in the story is highly variable and inconsistent. The science is particularly bad. The acting is weak. The direction is crude.
This isn't a movie, it's a screen saver.