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Reviews
X-Men (2000)
This movie was like a glass half full.
This movie was like a glass half full.
As much as I do not enjoy debating whether a glass of milk is half full or half empty, in this case, I have no choice but to join in and declare that this movie is like a glass half full as we were only able to catch glimpses of what this movie is fully capable of showing us.
Personally, I believe the decision to move the story along at a brisk pace with hardly any pause has cost us in that we are unable to get to know any of the mutant heroes in depth and there were lots of them. They were therefore reduced to cardboard mock ups providing thrills and spills at the whim of puppet handlers and the movie suffered as a result since the story was now completely plot driven and relying on set pieces none of which were ingenuous or original.
There was great potential for characterisation in this movie as well as great potential for a much stronger theme.
Instead the theme appears to have been buried and forgotten much in favour of putting bums on seats and I mean twelve-year-old ones.
Take the case of Wolverine for example, a character begging to be explored in full. Instead we were teased a lot about his past but learnt nothing. . . .Or Professor Xavier, or Rogue. I am not impressed with the reason Magneto turned bad either. I understand his paranoia, but it is no justification for his subsequent actions. I expect the real reason is probably on the cutting room floor.
I have not read the comics and I hate it when comics are adapted for the movies as virtually no one would be fully happy with the final outcome. But even though I never heard of X-Men before the movie, what I saw here was great potential but suffering as a result of the commercialisation of Hollywood. I long for the old days of Hollywood when movies were work of Art that could entertain for generations. X-Men isn't one of these movies. I suspect a reworking of the movie and its underlying theme could benefit us but not the moneymen.
Star Trek: Voyager (1995)
This show hides behind Momma's Aprons
Personally, I do not think a show like 'Voyager' would succeed if not for the 'brand name' it clings to.
This show has no new ideas, no new concepts or new stories.
For a show supposedly in the scifi genre, it offers nothing new but treads old and well-worn ground often tread by TOS and TNG to better effect.
Star Trek is a show that 'explores strange new worlds, seeks out new life and new civilizations and boldly goes where no one has gone before'
Voyager fails on all accounts.
True, we are thrust into a 'new' quadrant (full of infinite possibilities, concepts, ideas/stories). True, we get new foreheads or new homeworlds (for all of 42 minutes), What we are actually getting is a TOS/TNG story updated for the nineties. It appears alien cultures are the same whether in the alpha quadrant or the delta one. Character dynamics hasn't changed much in the 200 years since Kirk and co first landed in an alien world! If anything, character dynamics is almost none existent in the world frequented by the Voyager Crew nor does it exists on their own ship either.
In a world full of many scifi shows most of which are way better than Voyager, isn't it a travesty of justice that they never survive while 'Voyager' hides behind the Star Trek name?
Six Years is long enough for this show to establish its own identity and we are nowhere there at all. I for one will be glad when the curtain falls on the very last episode of this laughable series.
The Seven Years of Star Trek Voyager is one long embarrassing episode I would never want to relive ever again.
How to Make an American Quilt (1995)
...or how to make an American wince!
Nice individual stories but we can't see the thread that's supposed to weave these stories together into a quilt - or a movie in this case. If Finn's head was a mess in the beginning, its more of a mess now after listening to the individual stories and definitely after her mother's revelation. Great performances all around. It just doesn't weave together into a whole. We were supposed to 'see beauty in a multiplicity of patches', we were also told the theme is 'where love resides' and this was supposed to be the thread binding all the stories together. All I saw was a progressively moral decay of a once great nation. - from the post-slavery era to present day America.