It’s the original trailer for Alien (1979), and it is up there with the best of them:
Sometimes trailers are art. If you watch the Star Trek (2009) one, for example, with its Two Steps From Hell accompaniment, it’s more accomplished than the actual movie.
There should be awards for trailers.
I spent most of this intriguing movie wondering at what point the twist was going to occur or when the deus ex machina would reveal it all to be the figment of the protagonist’s imagination. It put me off fully enjoying the thrills as I was permanently searching for the clues. Maybe it would have worked better as just sheer hokum but there’s plenty of that around.
The bickering between the leads is tedious but the script needs to reach its finale, so you have to endure these non-characters argue away. But this aside, you’re not quite sure what’s going on and the momentum helps you stay involved.
Decent action with some thought-provoking ideas.
Some movies you just ‘don’t get’. I don’t get Arrival (2016).
It’s boring. It’s derivative. It’s inordinately and agonisingly slow for no reason. It’s not even pretentious but wants to be; if you fail at that then you’re rubbish. I didn’t hate it … which just made the experience even worse. If I despised it then at least I would enjoy ranting about it. It’s merely pointless.
And so is this review.
Bye for now.
Another first viewing – I’m on a quest to get my money’s worth from Netflix.
I wasn’t expecting anything from this but I was quite disturbingly surprised by how much I liked it. I’ve never had much time for Vin Diesel, his silly fast car flicks and muscle flaunting, the daft yarns with their terrible scripts. But here I found an interesting, thoroughly likeable and complex character I wished to share the journey with. It’s a glimpse at a career that never was, and I won’t watch another film he’s in because the lad can’t possibly top Riddick.
The movie was as generic as it comes and I won’t revisit it, but the 90 mins were killed and I chuckled a wee bit.
It’s an intriguing accidental portrait of an actor at a crossroads.
I’ll keep this short.
I lasted 54 minutes but couldn’t take any more pain.
It’s nothing but a desperate parody of the original.
I wondered why or how Keanu Reeves was in it. It’s either blackmail material or the makers of this sorry sack of shit were in possession of another sad-with-a-sandwich meme.
It’s visually so anonymous and could be any derivative movie among a thousand.
It has nothing to say.
And every character in it I wished to flush down a toilet.
It’s pointless.
Bye for now.
But I found it slightly disappointing and for a good 30 minutes in the middle I was bored beyond belief; I won’t spoil why.
I regret not seeing it in the cinema, though, as it’s better than most films of this … variety. To a large extent reliant on spectacle (for that’s what it is), I suppose these aesthetic qualities demand a big-screen experience rather than a god-knows-what-inch £55 second-hand Chromebook.
It gets a lot right – the stunning visuals, the world-building, the casting, sandworms that aren’t ‘Pure LOL’, and the spirit of the book. And most importantly, it isn’t the David Lynch version.
Thank fuck for that.
When this came out nine years ago I must confess I was blown away and wouldn’t accept any criticism of it. The arty-farty Ridley visuals and production design did it for me as well as the religious and philosophical themes at work. I figured it a sci-fi horror that actually asked probing questions, though offered no answers.
Another viewing and I think I was a bit (very) wrong about this movie. It still holds up remarkably well on a technical level and does indeed comprise a few of the mankiest scenes you can imagine, especially a rather gruesome moment featuring an incubator, Noomi Rapace, and a squid … thing (you know what I mean). But it’s just so utterly stupid. Not just the premise but the incomprehensible characters and the daft things they do. I’ve frequented many a supermarket so know there are legit dumbbells out there, but the folk in this are dumber than a box of rocks. Everything they do is nonsensical. And they’re meant to be scientists and geologists and engineers and pilots!
I was so frustrated with the mass idiocy on display that I put a dent in the laptop. I could go on for a million words but it’s all best summarised by this classic Honest Trailer:
That’s brutal. But correct.
Saw this for the first time in decades and bloody hell is it dull. It’s just so boring, which I find rather mental because it’s about UFOs and all that, and Spielberg is a master craftsman. It’s shot here like a TV movie, its depiction of suburbia painfully tedious. Even when the weird-looking critters arrive at the end it’s underwhelming. The only curiosity to be found is the casual appearance of François Truffaut, who is eminently more interesting than those around him.
Something else bothered me about it. It’s so naive, with government agencies portrayed as even being benevolent. What a weird decision, this just after the twin calamities of Watergate and the American involvement in the Vietnam War.
Never watching it again and I do not understand why it’s lauded.
The first trailer was released the other day for the latest adaptation of the Frank Herbert classic (1965). As promising as it looks, one is wary. Has there ever been ripe source material so consistently ruined by the moving image? Aside from a few pedestrian made-for-TV films, we have the rotten behemoth, the stupor-inspiring megaflop that is Dune (1984).
Even as a child I hated it and could articulate why it was so terrible. It was like a lesson in how to make a movie boring. The screenplay is all over the place, extended scenes existing for no apparent reason, characters possessing zero capacity for thought, all washed down with ropey special effects, hammy acting, and just a general … stylistic weirdness completely out of sync with the bare bones of the story.
David Lynch, with all his auteur talents, is not a director one associates with epic spectacle and character development mirroring the vistas. He cannot help himself here, insisting on going full-Lynch. God knows why he was handpicked for this, or why he accepted the mission. And what was Sting doing there?
I convinced myself that I could not wait to watch it again for fear is the mind-killer ….
It was pathetic. I fucking hated this stinker, then and now. Everything about it is vile. It’s like Nick Cotton every time he returned to Albert Square.
This crime against humanity needs tortured.
Further reading/viewing:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/03/dune-50-years-on-science-fiction-novel-world
https://screenrant.com/dune-2020-trailer-movie-1984-differences-explained/
Another memorable number from the 1993 movie vault, which I often posit the ‘best year ever for movies’: Mrs. Doubtfire, Schindler’s List, The Fugitive, Jurassic Park, Tombstone, Falling Down. Am I wrong? Have I missed anything?
It’s in all honesty not much of an action movie, the scenes terribly staged and edited, another case of the viewer not having a clue what is going on. It’s as unimaginative as it gets, ADHD Eisenstein. However, as satire and social commentary it is terrifyingly on the ball about today’s nightmarish cultural landscape. It actually predicted 2020.
It nails the all-out assault on language, the SJW proscription against alternate viewpoints, the restriction of real individualism in the quest for Utopia. Who knew that offending someone could be a crime? Well, it sadly is these days. Because they (the crusading creatures) have been allowed to get away with this.
The only thing this movie gets wrong is the method of wiping one’s arse. Britons will be doing it ‘Old Skool’ until the next extinction-level event.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 