Tag: Science Fiction

Movie Review: STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS – JJ Abrams directs a Star Wars highlight reel, but the new characters are pretty great.

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TFA

Just back from the worldwide cultural phenomenon that is Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the true new Star Wars movie for anyone that – like me – loathed the inept prequels. I’ve mentioned numerous times over the last couple of weeks on FB and in the real world that I’m not a Star Wars fan, and I’m really, honestly not. The Empire Strikes Back was the last one I enjoyed. Return of the Jedi was very poor, and the prequels were truly bad movies. So I go in to this one first and foremost as a fan of J J Abrams, a director I admire greatly, even if he’s worked on mediocre to just plain bad movies in the past. To me, he’s Spielberg’s natural successor in the world of genre blockbusters, and he was the perfect choice for this new wave of Star Wars movies.

Continue reading “Movie Review: STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS – JJ Abrams directs a Star Wars highlight reel, but the new characters are pretty great.” →

Movie Review: TERMINATOR: GENISYS – mostly worthless, badly written installment with a Schwarzenegger that’s well past his prime.

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Terminator

I definitely went into Terminator: Genisys prejudiced by negative review headlines. Although I don’t read reviews until after I see a movie, these headlines, some word of mouth, and the low aggregate rating on Rottentomatoes made it pretty clear that this was garbage. Also, I had posted images from Entertainment Weekly’s misguided photo shoot about a year ago, and that was the source of my own negativity. Part of that is also my lack of love for the franchise itself. I greatly enjoyed the original Terminator back in 1984 – great movie, miles ahead of other entries in the sci-fi genre at the time, and it still holds up well. Terminator 2: Judgment Day, no, I can honestly say that as with most James Cameron movies, I’m not a fan. He’s a great technical visionary, but for me of all the big name directors, he’s the weakest. I wasn’t amazed by Terminator 2, Terminator 3 was tv-movie weak, and Terminator: Salvation was watchable, but that was about it. Continue reading “Movie Review: TERMINATOR: GENISYS – mostly worthless, badly written installment with a Schwarzenegger that’s well past his prime.” →

Movie Review: THE MARTIAN – pretty faithful adaptation of a good book, but the Earth scenes fall flat.

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The Martian

The Martian, Matt Damon’s latest “please come get me!” movie, is a good adaptation of a mostly poorly written novel. But, caveats!

I do consider Andy Weir’s novel to be poorly written, from a technical standpoint – though I personally found the book to be a terrific listen, especially because it isn’t JUST Robinson Crusoe-on-Mars-meets-Mission-to-Mars (Watney’s scenes are basically what Don Cheadle was doing offscreen in the latter) with Contact‘s big deus ex machina thrown in for good measure – it’s a book that’s bursting at the seams with conflict and science and logistics, and I recommend it to anyone. A good friend of mine was turned off by the book’s biggest flaws, and I completely understand his reasoning, but I would still recommend it, regardless. Continue reading “Movie Review: THE MARTIAN – pretty faithful adaptation of a good book, but the Earth scenes fall flat.” →

Movie Review: PROJECT ALMANAC – boneheaded, cautionary time travel movie annoys more than entertains.

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Project_Almanac_poster

A couple of days ago I watched an advance copy of Project Almanac, a movie I’d wanted to see for over a year, from a trailer I watched in early 2014, when the movie was originally titled “Welcome To Yesterday” -a far, far better title for this kind of movie, and as it turns out, a far, far better title than the movie deserves. Continue reading “Movie Review: PROJECT ALMANAC – boneheaded, cautionary time travel movie annoys more than entertains.” →

Movie Review: UNDER THE SKIN – arty, fascinating sci-fi that shows Scarlett Johansson can still bring her A game.

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Under the Skin

Watched Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin over a couple of days due to the odd times of the day I was viewing. There’s plenty of people who have written off Scarlett Johansson as an actor thanks to her big movies (Avengers: Age of Ultron) and celeb status, but she’s been great before (Ghost World, Lost In Translation) and she’s great here too. Continue reading “Movie Review: UNDER THE SKIN – arty, fascinating sci-fi that shows Scarlett Johansson can still bring her A game.” →