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trevor-mcinsley
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Godzilla (2014)
Painfully Dark
I don't mean dark as in figuratively but physically. I watched it on the Sky Movies website which compresses the hell out of films normally (and is generally awful) but since so much of the screen is black or near to black for most of the film the pixelation was terrible. Even without Sky's ridiculous compression the film is just so dark that I could barely make out half of what was going on without maxing out my screen's brightness, contrast and gamma settings to the point where explosions were blinding. It seems like the majority of the film is set at night which kind of makes the huge FX budget redundant. Black monsters fighting against a black sky backdrop in a black city with black planes firing black missiles at them. Then again half way into the film when I gave up Godzilla hadn't had more than about a minute of screen time anyway.
Then there was the audio. I had to have a finger hovering over the volume control for most of the film. Several times it goes from someone whispering to something exploding in a heartbeat which means you're either left straining to hear or blowing up your speakers. I'd have been better off watching it with subtitles (if Sky Movies wasn't such a dreadful website and actually had that option).
Eventually I had to give up watching it because it was like a simulation of being both blind and deaf. The plot didn't seem exactly engaging anyway but perhaps I'll give it another try when it comes to Netflix (a website that doesn't use stone age compression and streaming technology). Without having a nuclear powered monitor though I doubt I'll be able to make out much more. I'm not saying it's a bad film. I'm saying that it's more of a shouty black rectangle than it is a film.
In conclusion: Sky is a joke of a company.
Saints and Soldiers: Airborne Creed (2012)
PG-13 War Films Should be Banned
The level to which this films dumbs down the horrors of war in order to make the film fit within the PG-13 rating bracket is genuinely offensive. Right from the off when it shows two French men being executed with the bullets hitting the walls behind them without leaving a scratch on either their clothes or bodies it is clear the film takes this ridiculous stance of censorship.
War films should show war for how genuinely horrific it actually is. You can't have people just falling over without a drop of blood when they get shot or the crew of a tank crawling out with just superficial blackening after a frag grenade goes off inside the vehicle. It is just pathetic and in really bad taste.
It becomes even weirder when the film will happily show someone brutally beating a man to death with his bare fists and has the main characters bleeding out and dying long and drawn out deaths. It kind of made it feel like the German soldiers were just expendable robots and aren't even human in the eyes of the PG-13 censorship guide.
This would be excusable if the film actually had some kind of plot or direction but it really doesn't. Halfway through it goes wildly off the rails with a pointless shooting contest and lengthy scene of characters talking about home and blah blah cliché cliché. It was clear very quickly that the two soldiers in the jeep were Germans in disguise yet no one picked up on this until way into their boring conversation. I gave up when they decided to pointlessly attack a vastly superior German force with a tank and half track. The scene seemed to exist solely to facilitate the deaths of all but the two main characters and everyone just kind of went along with the ridiculous plan. The French Resistance were guerrilla fighters known for sabotage - not for standing on a hill out in the open firing at a tank and twenty odd Germans. It's like they all have a death wish or something.
I skipped through the rest of the film after that and saw that it just looked very boring and contrived anyway. Oh and even with my basic French I could tell that the English subtitles were very flimsy and gist like translations which often missed out a lot of detail. I guess that matched the dull script though.
An entirely pointless film.
Knights of Badassdom (2013)
This film was made for me (perhaps JUST me)
From the title and the cover art thumbnail on Netflix I dismissed this immediately as one of these low-budget, low-talent parodies of whatever the most recent popular film is. The kind spawned by the Scary Movie franchise.
However when I actually looked at the cover properly and picked out faces I realised it was far from that. With actors from Game of Thrones, Community, Firefly and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia combined with heavy geek humour, metal and a medieval theme it seemed like it was actually made specifically for me.
Unfortunately half of this big cast play little more than cameo roles with (spoilers...) Danny Pudi getting killed off without ever having his character properly established or speaking more than about three lines. Peter Dinklage plays a small role (no pun intended) at best and meets a similar fate without really doing much. Slightly disappointing to be honest as they are both great actors who could have done with a little more screen time before their grisly demise. In fact none of the characters are especially well established in either their real world or fantasy personas.
Still the storyline was good and since I have always found the subject of LARP rather amusing it was entertaining. However having seen other reviews I think I largely found it funny because I actually know about LARP (without ever having done it) and have messed about in roleplaying servers of online games (which are frankly hilarious). Hence it was the subtleties of the LARP combined with the out of character stuff that made it funny without there needing to be big in your face jokes.
For instance giving the car park some crazy fantasy name and pretending it is anything other than a car park when you... do in fact know it is a car park and literally just parked your car there. Just like in RP MMOs when players will pretend that moderators are some kind of god or demon... rather than just being a minimum wage employee sat behind a computer in a massive office. Everyone knows these things but they pretend anyway. It is that level of commitment and surrealness which makes it funny.
I appreciate that those who know nothing about RP will probably not find any of that amusing though. It probably could have done with a lot more live action roleplay so people understand what it actually involves... prior to everyone dying. Those who do play LARP are probably going to find a lot of the content kind of offensive because it is just totally at their expense and they are ultimately the butt of every single joke.
So given that this film seems to fit a niche specifically for those who understand what RP is but don't actually do it I can understand the bad reviews. I'd probably give it 8/10 in fairness but I feel inclined to be generous as I sincerely believe this film was made for me and me alone.
My only complaint really was that the succubus didn't make sense. In pretty much all established lore a succubus is meant to be a demon that takes the form of a woman to seduce men and then ultimately kills or otherwise degrades them. The origins of this are fairly obviously a repressive Christian thing to scare men away from sexual temptation with a horror story. Yet in this film the succubus kills readily and without actually needing the seduction element. The gay guy she tried to kill should have been immune to her, as should Hung as he was seeing her for what she truly was due to the shrooms.
As it stands her transforming into some giant demon thing served only to be aesthetic as she was already invulnerable to attack and a savage, superhuman killer. She should have only been able to kill those she seduced prior to the transformation otherwise she could have been a werewolf for all the difference it made.
Broadchurch (2013)
Mostly good up until the last episode
The first seven episodes were very good as they kept you guessing and threw up constant twists and misleads. A lot of these covered some real world issues in quite a sensible and clever way. For instance (spoilers...) the newsagent's story gave a very mature look at just how readily communities will condemn people with a history of sex offences and brand them as a paedophile when the reality might be far from that. It also portrays how the media can make things worse and how one person being murdered can have far reaching consequences on everyone around and dig up all these secrets.
Those bits were clever.
The 'physic' however just felt absolutely stupid. It is never readily explained if the loss of the pendant from the other murders was made public and if that was how he knew. However given how DI Hardy reacts to this and then actually goes and asks him for help the implication is that he couldn't have known that way. Making wide statements that 'it's something about water' or that a boat was involved can be written off as coincidences in a seaside town. However he is correct about the pendant and ultimately that the killer is someone close to them and the series basically just seems to end with the assumption that he is a wizard. Or physic, or whatever ridiculous nonsense he claims. That was weak.
Ultimately though what put a real negative turn on the whole series for me was the last episode. The 'revelation' of who killed Danny comes out of nowhere. It also comes right at the start of the episode making the rest of it a little dull to watch. For the killer to give himself up like that is a pretty disappointing end and then it just goes and shows how the whole murder happened. The fun in crime dramas is usually in seeing the truth come out piece by piece but with this series the entire first seven episodes are almost completely unrelated to the last one. Since the killer himself was given so little screen time throughout the rest of the series there wasn't even suspicion or the opportunity to wildly speculate as to who did it whilst watching it (also one of the perks of crime dramas).
As a result when it was revealed he was the killer I didn't really care. It might as well have just said Captain Hook did it and then showed a pirate ship sailing off into the distance for how unrelated it was to everything before it. His reason behind the murder being so bizarre just made it all feel kind of disappointing. Would have made a lot more sense if he had killed himself out of shame. The whole last episode just felt sort of dodgy to me and almost a little rushed like having him confess was a cop out because they didn't have enough episodes left to let it unfold naturally. The ending of it is sort of surreal and then sets up a weak excuse for cashing in on a second season.
Fury (2014)
Cliché, Contrived and Various Other C Words...
I'm struggling to see why this film is so highly rated on here. The final battle scene is so ludicrous that it ruined the movie completely. It actually felt like the director simply abandoned the project and handed it over to someone else such was the paradigm shift in style.
Prior to this the film was alright but didn't really offer anything new to the genre besides the setting of the tank. Whilst it was good to see a story about a tank crew rather than yet another film focused on infantry it was ultimately let down by the contrived action scenes.
The first battle with the German tank demonstrated how out matched allied tanks were and seemed to show vaguely realistic tank warfare tactics however the outcome of it was fairly predictable. You knew that all the other tanks were going to get taken out and leave them to go it alone.
Ultimately the final battle just made me give up on the film entirely and more or less tune out until the end. There was no logic in a three hundred strong SS battalion throwing themselves headlong at a stranded tank. Their initial tactic of ambushing them by lighting some fires and pretending to be blown was clever but after that it just turned into a bewildering suicidal turkey shoot which apparently went on for so long that it turned to night halfway through.
The story feels like it was vaguely inspired by that of the Fray Bentos tank from WWI. However in that (true) story the Germans didn't have much choice but to engage the tank as it was stranded so close to their lines. Hand-held antitank weaponry didn't really exist what with tanks being so new and hence they did clamber on the machine and try and chuck grenades inside.
In Fury it is never clear why the SS don't just fall back and hit the thing with the vast supply of antitank weaponry they are seen to be carrying instead of just running headlong at it with rifles and grenades. Even just cutting their losses and bypassing the crossroads through the dark fields would have made more sense than wasting half your number to kill one wounded tank.
I gave up entirely when it showed one of their commanders ordering them to attack it by just running at it. Or when they had to go outside to get ammo (for some reason). Then predictably the crew all get killed one by one in an array of horrific situations and upon each death the action seemingly stops and leaves everyone a minute of silence to grieve. Oh except for Brad Pitt who was granted a high resistance to bullets by the gods of dramatic effect who were determined to give him an over the top ending and facilitate the escape of the token new recruit.
Utterly cliché ridden tripe. By all means watch it as an action film and enjoy it but anyone saying this is emotional or that it demonstrates the true horror of war is just plain wrong.
'Fury' is Rambo set in World War Two where Brad Pitt is filling in for Stallone.
Rick and Morty (2013)
Just Excellent
When I saw the 14 age rating come up on the screen I nearly switched off thinking it was a show for kids. It is not. Besides from the content being inappropriate for them it is also far too good to waste on children. The writing is excellent and Dan Harmon's creativity shines through just as it did in Community. Not one episode yet has been remotely clichéd or uninspired. Even with the frequent parodies and obvious references to classic sci fi plots and other films/shows it still manages to present them in a new (and usually pretty damn disturbed) way. Frankly the 14 age rating feels a little low given the casual planetary genocide which seems to occur in every other episode.
On that note I feel inclined to directly address the writer of the only 1 star review currently left on this title. The one wildly criticising the show for saying that god doesn't exist...
As you yourself say, it is fine to have your own opinion but in the universe in which Rick and Morty takes place it is fairly clear that there is indeed no god. The show features aliens, alien planets, alternate dimensions, wormholes, time travel, space travel, rapid cellular evolution and mutation. Deep breath. Disintegration, talking dogs, sentient robots, shrink rays, growth rays, a giant naked Santa Claus in low orbit around the Earth...
I could go on. Believing in a god in our world is weird enough. Insisting that a cartoon which features all that very non-biblical stuff still maintains that illusion is insane.
Time Lapse (2014)
A little clichéd and mostly predictable but ultimately watchable
The concept of a camera which takes photos of the future and has a dark or evil outcome isn't a new idea by any means but this film is entertaining nonetheless. It does however feel rushed in places and the characters are quite vapid and unbelievable. Upon discovering this magical camera they realise what it is ridiculously quickly and don't seem to show much disbelief or really any realistic emotions. It seemed very rushed and could have done with at least a couple minutes added to that scene. More time was given over to the party which contributed little.
Deciding to exploit the machine to win bets is an obvious enough conclusion given how many time travel films have used this premise before but even that seemed to come to them a bit too quick. In almost no time at all these characters, who previously seemed pretty average, are coming up with complex theories about relativity and temporal cause and effect. They conclude that if they deviate from the future shown in the photo they will suffer the same fate as the scientist and even put plans in place to make people think he is still alive. It felt like they were rushing the story along by making the characters intelligent beyond their established pill-popping/slacker/obsessive gambling back stories...
Yet despite this sudden burst of intelligence none of them think twice about taking huge amounts of money from a shady bookkeeper? Is this film set in some kind of hypothetical world where there isn't a legitimate betting shop on every high street and literally hundreds of websites dedicated to nothing else? Given that this becomes a major driving factor in the story they probably should have established some kind of reason why they couldn't simply divide the bets up indiscriminately amongst many bookkeepers. Without an explanation for that it simply came off as a plot hole to me.
The obsessive gambler who was stupid enough to get them into this mess then gets them out of it through a genuinely clever ruse before rapidly going insane. Greed turning him into a killer is one thing but the other two don't seem all that concerned by the prospect of being implicated in murder.
Ultimately the paradox this film presents is very good and there are some clever twists and turns along the way. The main let down is just with the characters. They show little emotion, feel intensely flimsy and just sort of dart around between being geniuses and morons at the whims of the story. As a result of this it is difficult to invest in them without simply assuming they were all sociopaths from the start.
Lone Survivor (2013)
Disbelief suspended... right off a cliff
I pretty much tuned out at that moment and gave up on the film altogether a short while later. I looked up the actual events on Wikipedia because I genuinely could not believe that anything I was seeing could have happened. The fact that most of the story is the sole recollection of a critically injured individual then fed through a Hollywood filter shines an unlikely light on most of it.
The four men take rifle rounds like they are BBs and receive only superficial facial wounds after jumping off cliffs and crashing into rocks and trees. Therefore the events in the film are either grossly exaggerated or the laws of physics had been suspended that day. Either way I just lost interest. Mixing 'based on a true story' with 'Rambo 6: Revenge of Rambo' doesn't work.
Besides that though the film just generally angered me as I couldn't understand the motivations behind what the characters were doing. The beginning of the film which showed a montage of the incredibly harsh training they go through painted a really amazing picture of the physical prowess required to become a Navy SEAL. It didn't show any kind of tactical training or any tests involving logic, reasoning or just plain common sense though and that is probably for the best.
The team faced a tough choice when confronted with the goat herders and no option was palatable. However why they chose the one which was guaranteed to give their position away and see them hunted to extinction was just baffling. They knew they would go back to the village and alert the large ruthless militia yet still the option of simply taking them with them as they bugged out didn't even merit consideration apparently. They could have remained unnoticed and released them when they were out of the woods (literally). But no...
So then, with the knowledge that an army was likely coming for them they decided not to put some extreme distance between them and the village but instead to hide in a forest and get discovered in short order. Then they choose the brilliant tactical option of jumping off a cliff thus leaving themselves injured, unarmed and with the high ground in the hands of the enemy.
Nothing in this film made sense.
Our World War (2014)
Excellent but a shame about the music
The stories they chose to portray in this series were well chosen and incredibly well done. Made a real change from the generic trench horror stories and showed other aspects of the war. The action scenes were pretty brutal and intense and really made the viewer connect to what was happening and what the soldiers went through.
My only criticism is that the programme was clearly trying to target a young audience by throwing whatever awful style of music happens to be in the charts this week into the mix. It often jumped around quite randomly and spoiled the ambiance of the performance. I guess that this was out of some kind of desire to make the war seem more modern and relatable. Certainly the overhead thermal drone style shots and news style infographics of unit movements worked well. They made it feel a lot more relatable when we are all used to such things from Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of the music though just seemed like a bad attempt at doing likewise which just came off as being really out of place and bizarre.
Anyway, I apparently missed this when it first broadcast in the summer and only caught it when it was shown again on iPlayer later in the year. Watching this after 'The Passing Bells' really made this show stand out as being especially well directed and filmed. I would say it is definitely up there with the likes of Band of Brothers and The Pacific and considering that it is about World War One that is impressive.
The Passing Bells (2014)
So Far So-So
It is nice to see a series about World War One for a change as it is a subject that isn't covered all that often, at least compared to other conflicts.
Unfortunately however my main gripe with this series is that it's clearly intended for a pre-watershed audience. People die from nonspecific wounds, no one has any blood on them, no one swears and curses at their impending deaths...
It's not that I want to see limbs flying off after shell impacts and people dripping with blood to slake some sick desire for gore but this was the reality of the conflict. It was horrific. Dumbing it down for the sake of censorship strikes me as being kind of offensive. It fails to get across just how awful the situation was for those involved in it and ultimately makes the viewer feel disconnected from the events on screen. Why show it at all if you are not going to show it right? For example seeing people getting cut down by a machine gun would be horrific. Seeing people falling over without scratch on them after some vague bang bang noises off camera just doesn't quite have the same impact. They might as well just be firing paintballs at the rows of approaching enemies.
I've been watching it on iPlayer and it was only because the next episode just showed up online that I realised it was in a 7pm broadcast slot. It seems pretty obtuse to me that you can happily show hundreds of people dying in this time slot but not show a single person physically getting shot. It paints a completely false picture of events and almost seems to glorify the conflict as one big game rather than a serious event.
If we want people to look back and remember the lessons of the past then they shouldn't be half-lessons which haze over anything deemed unsavoury.
Earlier in the year The Crimson Field was shown on the BBC. It wasn't focused on the battlefield but did not shy away from the true terror of warfare. After the battles had ended and the gunfire had died down it showed the aftermath of events. The Passing Bells does this too at the Somme but despite trying to be all sombre and dramatic it simply fails because not a single soldier has so much as a drop of blood on them or even a bullet hole in their clothing. It seems that there is something seriously wrong when The Crimson Field only showed people being brought in on stretchers after the battle and yet managed to paint a more terrifying picture of what had happened than when this series actually tried to show it happening.
This unrealistic disconnection from events as they happened makes me question why they even bothered to film a series so heavily focused on battle action. The series has more than enough human drama that it could have just filled it with this instead. Showing battle scenes in anything other than full realism just isn't really going to work these days when multimillion blockbuster films are out there, so why bother? Also each episode seems to cover one year of the conflict and frankly half an hour just isn't enough to get through all the stuff it is trying to cover. There is little character development as a result and soldiers go from being green recruits to battle hardened veterans in the blink of an eye.
The first episode made me think that it might touch on some of the lesser known stories from the war. For instance I didn't know about the British making homemade bombs due to a supply shortage. Unfortunately it just sort of jumps from place to place after that in a really disconnected fashion.
In short the series would have benefited from a later time slot and one hour episodes.
Doctor Who: Dark Water (2014)
A good episode ruined by previews
After some of the disappointing episodes of late this one would have been very good. Unfortunately on the BBC iPlayer website they chose to show a thumbnail from the very end of the episode of Cybermen marching through London. The fact that the whole Nethersphere thing is a Cyberman plot isn't revealed until 38 minutes into the episode when the water starts draining to reveal their exoskeleton. At around 30 minutes it is revealed that the water hides non organic structures which might have tipped this sooner. That moment of revelation when they are revealed in their true form would have been good I'm sure.
However as a result of choosing to use that thumbnail image anyone who watched it on iPlayer knows from the first second that the plot is going that way and so the entire thing was just ruined. Worse than ruined in fact, it was made genuinely boring. At one point the Doctor asks 'Who would harvest dead bodies?' and says he is missing 'something obvious'. Generally with Doctor Who plots (or good ones anyway) the moment at which he realises something is also the moment the viewer does. At least, when they haven't been spoiled by previews it is.
I always skip them at the end of the episode (not that it gives you much chances to with how quick they cut in) but if I had watched the preview on the last episode I would have seen Cybermen emerging from the tanks. I just went back and watched it and it even starts giving away aspects of the episode after this one too.
Honestly what is the point in watching something which is written with some excellent mystery and suspense if the BBC just go and ruin it like that? The plot itself seemed very good but I just could not enjoy it as I wasn't able to experience it as intended. Why are the BBC giving out spoilers on their own programmes? At the beginning of Saving Private Ryan does the old man in the war cemetery turn to the camera and say 'oh by the way I was Ryan and they did save me but the main character dies in the process now here is the rest of the film'? No. At the start of Titanic does the old woman on the surveying ship just blurt out 'the male lead you are about to see dies saving me at the end of the film'? Not as far as I can recall, no.
If this is the BBC's idea of good story telling then they might as well just stop broadcasting the episodes altogether and just publish 200 word synopsises on what they would have been about instead.
Doctor Who: In the Forest of the Night (2014)
Good idea, shame about the children... and the plot
The forest growing overnight all over the world was an interesting idea and something quite new. Unfortunately the plot was dreadful after that and the episode was made rather painful to watch by the amount of screen time given over to the kids. Perhaps its just me but the over the top acting, high pitched voices, screaming, laughing and so on was very annoying.
The girl running about and flapping her hands actually made me have to avert my gaze from the screen and when the glowing things started talking through her I had to mute the programme and stick on subtitles. I could neither understand what was being said not tolerate the two voices at once. I'm sure most people probably wouldn't care all that much but I am also sure I am not totally alone in this.
Really though that was the least of the problems. The main problem can be summed up in two words: the plot. Just to pick a random starting place for my list of criticisms... trying to clear a path through the forest using fire... in the middle of a city. Even the screechy little children in the episode would know that London doesn't exactly have a great historical record when it comes to fire...
How the trees extinguished themselves wasn't made especially clear with just some lazy statement about them controlling oxygen. Yes, trees do output oxygen but they can't very well suck it all back in and create some kind of localised vacuum. Might as well just have said it was magic rather than come up with a clumsy idea like that. Would have made sense to say they were exhaling CO2 to put out the flames though of course that wouldn't stop a chainsaw... which was the logical way to remove them in the first place. Especially given how easily one of the children snapped off a thick branch.
Oddly not a single character bothers even touching on the idea of simply cutting the things down and instead they jump right to dropping poison on the entire planet. Did one of the Bond villains get voted into number 10 earlier in the series or something? Yes going at them with axes and saws would take a hell of an effort but given the constant talk these days about the enormous rate of logging operations in the rainforest it is hardly infeasible. Then again there are only about ten characters in the episode anyway. Somehow it seems that not a single one of the millions of other people living in London decided to go look at the incredible forest that appeared overnight. I guess all the night workers, clinical insomniacs and roving street gangs must have all fallen asleep that night too.
Seeing Trafalgar Square and familiar landmarks overgrown with trees was the best part of this episode and quite well executed. It is a shame then that they didn't bother actually setting the scenes in the Natural History Museum inside the Natural History Museum. For anyone who knows London that just completely destroys the illusion. The scene was actually shot in a museum in Cardiff apparently though I cannot fathom why.
Finally the conclusion of this whole episode... the trees are producing more oxygen to shield the planet from a solar flare. So... more oxygen and yet they are somehow less flammable. Right. The explanation with the Tunguska impact is incredibly flimsy and seems to be predicated solely on the fact that it happened to flatten a forest as a result of the airburst. It doesn't matter though... the Earth's magnetic field is what provides the best defence against solar flares, not the atmosphere. An increase in oxygen in the atmosphere would just make everyone high shortly before the entire planet caught fire. Which frankly sounds like a better ending.
In the end the forest magically goes away leaving everyone oblivious to it ever being there. Even more miraculously the trees all vanish without leaving massive potholes and extensive property damage all over London. These magic glowing things say something about grass growing through cracks in the pavement at one point. They didn't bother mentioning that after growing it they go and fill the crack with cement. I always suspected that road maintenance people don't actually do anything...
Ultimately just another Kill the Moon episode. A good idea, executed dreadfully and which didn't actually require the Doctor to be in it.
The Walking Dead: Webisodes (2011)
Borderline Unwatchable due to Intrusive Adverts
I watched these on the AMC website and honestly do not understand how Americans put up with this kind of behaviour. These episodes are meant to be quite dark and tense but then every three minutes they break into incredibly loud and flashy 30 second adverts. I mean they're not even between the episodes, they just cut in right in the middle of conversations or suspense situations. The last batch of adverts then went and froze the playback for some reason. Every time you try and skip ahead it then plays yet more adverts and the tracker is so screwed up and inaccurate it took several attempts to actually find my place. I kept clicking on the 17 minute mark but it wouldn't jump past 4:58 for whatever reason. The closest I managed to get was 15 minutes and before it actually started playback from here I had to watch two whole minutes of adverts...
It is a complete joke and makes it very hard to actually leave a review based on the quality of the episodes themselves. Given that it took me thirty minutes to watch a nineteen minute story the ambiance and continuity of it was very broken. Most of the adverts were for AMC themselves which is particularly bewildering since all it actually did was discourage me from watching other AMC programmes.
The stories themselves are nothing overly amazing or new as zombie survival goes but the way they tie in with the main Walking Dead story is very good and they are worth watching as a result. Unfortunately however I wasn't left fearing some mutilated zombie freak would jump out at me so much as I was on the edge of my seat because I knew that some incredibly loud advert was about to start shouting at me at any moment...
Goodbye World (2013)
Excellent Premise, Dreadful Execution
The idea of a simple text messaging going around the world and overloading the network is great. It looked like it had real promise and would give the film makers a chance to explore a very different apocalypse setting.
Unfortunately that is not the case and 90% of this film is just people smoking weed in the woods whilst babbling about entirely unrelated issues and drinking a seemingly inexhaustible supply of beer. The entire technological apocalypse idea takes a back seat so incredibly quickly that it might as well have not even been in the film.
Yes suddenly losing communications, power and so on overnight probably would lead to people fighting in the streets. It likely would cause a rather dramatic collapse of society which the world may or may not recover from. None of these ideas are adequately looked at in any detail however and it really is just dull characters getting wasted in the woods. Ultimately it leaves you wondering what the hell the point in even making this film was.
Waste of an hour and a half.
Doctor Who: Kill the Moon (2014)
Absurd from start to finish
Whilst this episode has some interesting ideas like giant bacteria and the moon being an egg they simply have no place in Doctor Who and would be better suited to a sci-fi B movie. For this story to make any sense at all you basically have to ignore every single episode that has come before and likely every one that will follow. As well as basic science of course.
In fact I can't even be bothered to leave a proper review. Instead, like most everyone else on here, I will just list some of the things that were wrong with it in the hope that the writers read it and learn from their terrible mistakes. Given that the core concept of the episode was the public sending messages to a small group of people that seems rather apt.
First of all the giant bacteria. I'm sure science puts a limit on how large a single celled organism can actually be but I'll let that one slide. However them behaving exactly like spiders to the point where they even create webs? Why would they possibly evolve this behaviour if they live off larger species like a parasite? Since the episode didn't show any possible prey for them besides humans they wouldn't be catching anything anyway. Then comes the question of why the kid would possibly spend ten minutes kitting up in a spacesuit and then decide to grab the bottle of disinfectant to take with her onto the surface of the moon. If that scene had taken place on the Tardis it would have at least made sense. Hell if they had just established her to be an obsessive compulsive germaphobe it could have been lazily written off. Then they find the body of their crewmate in direct sunlight despite establishing that the creatures avoid it which did make sense at the time given that UV light kills bacteria. Later they are also crawling all over the surface in the light, so much for that idea then.
Then the creature itself. The premise of it having been inside the moon the entire time is completely ludicrous as such a thing would have been noticed. If the story had taken place around an alien planet yet to discover spaceflight then the idea would have been acceptable. When it hatches the surface of the moon just turns to harmless rubble instantly for whatever contrived reason the writers failed to think up. Anyone who has seen any kind of fish/insect/lizard/bird hatch knows full well that most of the shell remains intact. Trying to apply logic to the situation is fairly pointless though as it is also never made remotely clear where the extra mass the moon creature is acquiring is coming from. Had they said the creature was born with a wormhole in its stomach that was sucking in matter from elsewhere they at least could have tried to justify the idea. I sort of got bored of watching but it seemed to suggest it was the bacteria multiplying that caused the mass gain which still solves nothing as they could only have fed on the creature itself. At the end it simply flies off with what appear to be dragon wings. At least the star whale seemed to move via some as yet unknown propulsion method and not by simply flapping its wings in a vacuum...
The most ludicrous part of all however is naturally the end where the beast lays a 'new moon' egg which looks completely different to the moon and so screws with all past episodes that show it in the future. The earlier 'hologram' line was clearly devised to cover this but simply fails frankly. Worse of all though is the ridiculous idea of a newly hatched creature laying an egg larger than itself. The episode simply cuts to the new moon being in the sky and no one seems to question the sheer impossibility of this scenario.
The Waters of Mars storyline is also rendered seriously tenable after this one. As someone else pointed out this would mean that the human race put together a viable Mars colonisation programme in just a decade. It also means that after enduring major catastrophe on Earth they decided to spend fortunes flying to Mars instead of, you know, fixing stuff at home. The crew on the Mars mission are also dumbfounded as to how the Doctor arrived on the planet, which was a logical reaction at the time. Now though we have to assume that the astronaut who survived the mission and returned to Earth didn't bother telling anyone what had happened or how she got home. The only way anything that happened in this episode can possibly make sense is if the end of this series has some kind of major time reset event like that which occurred with the Master, or if it is revealed to all be a simulation or something.
All in all an episode which simply has to be completely ignored in order to continue enjoying the programme. What alarms me however is why this episode was ever put into production in the first place. They must have known at the time that it made absolutely no sense and didn't remotely fit in with other Doctor Who episodes. It concerns me now whether future episodes will ignore this one totally or try to justify the things that happened in it (like showing the new moon around Earth in future stories). Either way they must be really scraping the bottom of the barrel if this is the best writing they could find.
Elysium (2013)
An alright film based around a totally illogical plot line
The central theme around this film seems to be that the illegal immigrants from Earth are trying to get to Elysium not to live there but simply to get cured in one of their magical medical pods. Naturally the notion of them trying to live there would be absurd because they are all dressed in rags, covered in filth, have no home or money and wouldn't be recognised by any of the locals. The equivalent would be someone crossing the Mexican-American border and then heading straight to a gated community in Beverly Hills without so much as dusting down their jeans... they are going to stand out.
The people on Elysium would have to know this. Therefore it seems that they could cut down on the illegal influx and the crime that it creates 100% by simply not hogging all the magical medical machines. I mean if they said they were alien technology or required a one million dollar fission coil per use then it would make sense.
Instead they seem to be so commonplace and cheap to run that every single household has one. Just how many life threatening illnesses and injuries do the people of Elysium pick up every single day? Given that it cures you in less than a minute you think each town would just need one of the things. Maybe two in cold season. It vaguely mentions that people on Elysium do not age and so the assumption is that the pod keeps you young through daily use. Why then the entire business and political elite of Elysium are played by actors and actresses in their fifties is a mystery.
Ultimately it seems that if they just stuck a couple of these magical machines on Earth people would stop trying to get to Elysium in the first place and they would just keep to themselves. It would be in the best interests of the citizens to pay for them to be built on Earth. Instead everyone on Elysium seem to be the direct descendants of Nazis. I mean if the CEO of the robot building company just had one of the damn things in the factory to treat work related injuries (like lethal radiation exposure) it would increase productivity dramatically and there would be no more sick leave. Whatshisface wouldn't have needed to even go to the hospital for his broken arm then and would have been at work sooner. Yes the assumption is that labour is very cheap and inexhaustible but they must have skilled labourers which it would be easier to heal than replace and retrain. Then again why the workforce is even human to begin with when they have so many robots to hand is also a mystery.
There is no logical reason to withhold the technology other than for the purposes of evil. Wanting to live a luxury life with a clean atmosphere is fine but are they only happy so long as Earth is filled with untold suffering and misery? The really baffling bit occurs towards the end when they deploy three enormous medical ships with dozens of these magical medical machines down to Earth at the drop of a hat. Why would a space station in which the nearest medical pod is never going to be more than twenty foot away need a fleet of ships capable of treating a hundred people at a time? The only logical assumption is in case of emergency but just how many hundred car pile ups is this gated community expecting on a daily basis to justify that? A ship with one or two pods on like a rapid response paramedic sure but not something capable of responding to a daily Titanic disaster...
When they reprogram the space station at the end it isn't so that everyone from Earth can come live there but so they can all get access to this rapid cure. Of course if it did prolong your life and reverse aging then this would only be adding to the overpopulation issue but so be it. Oh and whilst we are on the subject of dying...
The medical pod can cure someone with half their head blown off ten minutes after they are dead but if someone gets their throat slit or gets shot in the chest then its game over? What is the point in having enormous medical aid ships and satellites monitoring your heart rate when you don't have a single poxy robot to come pick you up when you bleed out? Also I don't fully comprehend the point of a neurological encryption system that lets you copy the data completely but then kills you afterwards. Or indeed one that paralyses you. Surely it should do this before you attempt to access the data? You can buy a USB stick today which burns the memory chip with explosives if you type in the wrong password three times. It doesn't let you copy all the data and then explode...
The medical pods issue needed explaining better. If there was an expensive running cost after the initial purchase then you could understand them not sharing the tech however it seems to just use electricity. Hell an MRI is a pretty costly piece of machinery but every public hospital still has one. If there is an expensive running cost that uses a lot of power or resources of some kind then letting everyone in the world have a go in one just isn't going to be practical or possible.
Basically either everyone is a Nazi for electricity usage or there physically isn't enough power in the world to heal everyone. Either way it is weak and illogical.
Essentially in order to take this film seriously you basically have to completely ignore the main plot point... and a whole host of other things. That's never a good sign.
Mysteries at the Castle (2014)
Dubious at times, Interesting at others
Once you get over the ludicrously over the top narration which just plagues US documentaries and the fact that it keeps recapping the same information over and over... it was ultimately interesting.
I pretty much would have just left it that however I felt I had to leave this review just to vent my annoyance at an absolutely ridiculous statement that just came out of the blue at the end of the first episode. They basically just went out on a total limb and declared that ESP (Extra Sensory Perception AKA: I think I am a psychic because I have an overly inflamed ego and a low intellect) was a real thing. They claimed that the owner of one of the castles* had proved it was real without giving any evidence to support this outrageous claim. That annoyed me.
Oh and also the bit about George Herbert's dog dying at the exact same time as him. Obviously that is just complete nonsense which the media at the time likely just conjured to sell papers. The notion that they would have accurately noted down the time of death of George Herbert in Cairo and his dog in England and then accounted for the time difference is pretty ludicrous. Yet the programme didn't say 'legend' has it and just presented this spurious piece of information as a fact. Also seemed to end that piece with the idea that the curse was indeed real.
*The title is rather misleading. The majority of the buildings featured are stately homes or mansions. More akin to a palace than a castle, the definition for which would imply a defensive purpose. Whilst the programme was interesting it was quite distant to what I expected it to be about with most of the events taking place in modern times in what are essentially just very lavish homes for the super rich.
Bones: The Hero in the Hold (2009)
I hate it when shows do this...
This show has always had a grounding in logic and reality. I can deal with some of the futuristic technology and the odd bit of dodgy science as that exists to speed the plot along. However ghosts? Just why? It started on the notion that it could have been a hallucination caused by Booth's injury and drugging but soon gave up on that ambiguity entirely and just basically said 'yeah this guy is definitely a ghost'. Having the ghost help him escape could have been explained as a combination of hallucinations and head injury and would have made for a good story element. However when Brennan talks to him at the end it just ruins it completely.
Once you cross that line in what was previously a scientifically grounded programme I can no longer invest in it at all. Essentially any character could now be a ghost so when it is unclear who the murderer is... it could be a ghost too.
Moreover for Booth, who is insanely Catholic, to so willingly accept the supernatural just seems totally out of character. This is a man who genuinely believes in heaven and hell... you would think that finding out his friend was wandering around the Earth as a disembodied spirit might throw his deeply held beliefs into a state of dismay. Instead he just blindly accepts it.
I'm still working my way through season four but now that the show has suddenly taken the radical stance that ghosts are real there doesn't seem to be much point watching it anymore.
Archer (2009)
Four Seasons of Excellence
When I discovered this on Netflix I went into it wary that it would be one of those stupid animated shows for adults you find on late at night which are usually just immensely dull, stupid and generally seem to be tailored for people who are either A. Insomniacs hallucinating from lack of sleep who just need a distraction from the giant squirrel in the corner of the room or B. Stoned.
Whilst I often do fall into category A this show is far more than just a distraction from somnolent visages. I was immediately surprised to find that it was actually superb in every regard. Archer is one of the best characters from any comedy, animated or otherwise. His incessantly talking to everything, be it alligators, babies, the people shooting at him or just... Russia, is hilarious. His constant drinking and 'high functioning alcoholism' only makes him more endearing as does his total lack of regard for danger and inability to take anything seriously. Truly an excellent and hilarious character.
Also: to those who have rated the show low because it is just 'adolescent humour' with 'sex obsessed' characters you are rather missing the point. This is very much a parody of the James Bond films where all the agents are just forever having sex, drinking scotch and blind firing guns from behind cover. It is playing on the fact that just about every female spy Bond encounters is promiscuous as hell and doesn't bat an eyelid at immediately sleeping with him. I shouldn't need to point that out frankly...
It is rare that I find anything truly hilarious to the point where it raises more than a minor chuckle but every episode of Archer is excellent from start to finish. That is... until season 5.
I'll gladly add another two stars to the review if season 6 gets good again but it just seems to have gone downhill massively, as much as it pains me to say. The constant story arc rather than individual stories might have something to do with it or it might be that cocaine smuggling is just not as interesting as spying. The episodes where Archer turned pirate were brilliant but if they had gone on for more than three episodes they too would likely have become a little trite.
Episode one of season five had a lengthy flash forward sequence about what would happen if they tried to sell cocaine which at the time was funny but having already watched this you know hefty chunks of each episode as a result and a lot is ruined. I never watch trailers for this reason but this one kind of got forced on us by actually being part of the show. The Archer Vice idea would have worked better as a half season thing because honestly so many of the episodes so far have just gone nowhere and contributed little. Ultimately though it seems like the writing has just suffered for some reason. I genuinely checked to see if someone else had taken over. I've laughed maybe twice since the start of season 5 and the last few episodes have actually been tiresome to watch. This is a dramatic shift from the last four seasons.
The point is: it now has become the kind of show I wrongly feared that it would turn out to be when I first went into it. A boring adult cartoon which just isn't funny. I am very glad that I stumbled upon it from season one on Netflix because if I had of caught any of season 5 on TV I would have switched off and never bothered looking for the rest of them. I'd have missed out on four excellent seasons as a result.
Bones (2005)
Entertaining but Predictable
Once you get past some of the over the top, made up technology like the holographic display and the computer simulations which seem to predict inexplicably complex scenarios with total accuracy and without any effort at all... this is a good show. Those technological inconsistencies put me off at first but I can understand that they exist simply to speed up the plot and facilitate shortcuts around some of the boring stuff.
That's fine but what I have noticed is that just like the computer capable of calculating the unpredictable... I am capable of figuring out most plots long in advance. In other words: this show is often incredibly predictable. It is still good and everything it's just in virtually every episode you can usually tell who the killer is going to turn out to be pretty quickly. Likewise when there is some mysterious circumstance about the body it too is often predictable long before any forensic investigation technique has provided an answer.
I would consider Castle to be a similar style of show (albeit slightly more over the top in the scale of the plots) but it is generally not as predictable as this show is. I'm only halfway through season 2 but in more or less every episode it isn't hard to make a leap based on logic, cliché or simply common story telling practices which later proves to be true. It rarely seems to throw a curveball by making you think one thing and then going in the other direction completely.
Anyway it is still entertaining and all of the characters are good even if it does have a tendency to talk down to the viewer via things being explained to agent whatshisface that most people should understand. His character is not that stupid and yet whenever there is a word or idea that the writer's are concerned the audience may not understand he is always the one who it is explained to. It's fine with some of the complex medical stuff but 'boolean'? Please tell me the majority of the audience don't need that to be explained...
Conversely though I like the fact that Dr womanface (I am really not good with names) is so socially inept and unfamiliar with everyday pop culture references as I generally don't get any of them either.
Despite the often predictable nature of the plots it doesn't actually get infuriating waiting for them to come to the same conclusion (as some shows do) as the journey getting there is still interesting.
After Earth (2013)
A Very Over-hyped Cardboard Box
After Earth is the story of Will Smith and whichever of his children he is trying to set up with a career this week conveniently being the sole survivors of a space craft crash. A space craft crash which conveniently cripples Smith Senior in order to thrust Junior into the limelight. In order to detract from the fact that Junior is new to this whole acting malarkey all the other characters have been zapped by a mystical space beam that removes all their emotion, dialogue and ability to portray drama.
At least... that's the plot as far as I could make out. As films go it is pretty boring and I gave up half way. I can't hold it against the Smith's for trying to set all their children up in lucrative careers using their vast underground caverns of money and dragon gold but just like that god awful hair whipping song this film doesn't exactly do a good job of it. Just because you have the money to set someone up in a singing/acting career does not mean they are a good singer/actor. I kind of feel sorry for their kids as it seems like they are being pressured into doing stuff they just aren't very good at.
The effects budget must have been pretty huge as literally every scene is filled with some over the top and unnecessary CGI. Granted some of it isn't very good and the main monster is just some kind of indistinct flesh blob but you can practically see the price tags on every scene. As is so often the case though (World War Z, 2012, Prometheus) it seems that they got so totally caught up in the CGI that they forgot to actually write a plot. The story is basically just head from A to B and try not to get killed by monsters.
Given that a large chunk of the film is occupied by the comms interactions between the Smiths and relies heavily on close up one shots you'd have thought they would have wanted to give the characters more emotion. As it stands it is a bit like watching a cardboard box for an hour. A very over-hyped cardboard box.
World War Z (2013)
Further Proof that Hollywood can Ruin Anything
As a generic zombie film this would be average at best however as a film which purports to be 'Based on the book by Max Brooks' it is nothing short of sacrilegious and appalling. It's a shame really because there is some solid writing and good performances on hand and it could have been a good film with just one minor change: the speed of the zombies.
In the book the zombies are slow moving and ungainly. Infection after a bite is a slow and harrowing process. Whilst the zombies are easily outwitted their power comes from overwhelming numbers, resilience and emotional reactions on behalf of the human race (not wanting to kill a loved one). The results are genuinely chilling and horrifying stories which tug at the heart strings and paint a vivid portrait of human survival.
This film throws all of those points out of the window and might as well just replace the zombies with a mile high tide of flesh called 'The Blob'. Zombies that run and jump miss the point so hard it is painful to watch. They might as well just be killer aliens or swarms of rabid dogs. The scene with them climbing over the wall is just outrageously stupid. The screen writers/director clearly liked the infantry square scene from the book but couldn't be bothered with the setup for it.
Worst of all however is the gaping plot hole that has come about as a result of messing with the time it takes for the infected to turn. Early on it states that air travel assisted in the spread of the infection yet it takes fully half the film for the main protagonist to conclude that in some people the infection can lay dormant for a time and isn't always instant. Logically therefore he had to assume up until that point that the cabin crew were serving tea and coffee to planes full of raging hell beasts? This story is a classic demonstration of everything that is wrong with modern films and major studios. They are so afraid of people switching off if the story moves too slow for even an instant and so they feel they have to fill every single scene with an explosion, a fight scene, a chase, a plane crash... all of which the hero inexplicably survives.
28 Days Later had the infected (not zombies) running and it worked well. It managed to create some really tense moments and some fast paced action whilst offsetting them with the desolation and destruction of daytime in an abandoned city. It did so with a significantly lower budget and yet was far better than this film. This is because whilst they were fast and agile they weren't in possession of superhuman strength. That and they were played by actual people and not just dodgy CG.
For the money they spent on this film they could have taken a handful of stories from the book and strung them together back to back or under a common narrative. When I heard they were making this film I imagined it would be like the book and work around the interview concept. The film would open on some scarred or tormented individual sitting in an interview room telling their story as the camera slowly focused in on them. It would then flashback to events happening in real time and the viewer would understand the physical scars and damaged psychology of the individual.
The result would have been fantastic. You still could have had all the action and gore that modern audiences lust after but with a genuinely chilling story behind it.
Instead they just made a generic over-the-top action film with some of the most preposterous zombies I have ever seen. Worse: by using the name World War Z they have all but assured that such a film can never see the light of day.
Equilibrium (2002)
Good Concept, Poor Execution
This film is written by someone with no concept of what emotion truly is. They seem to think it is simply a compulsive urge to collect knick-knacks. I get the impression that they might have collated their notes on the condition of the human psyche from wandering idly around car boot sales.
I'm not saying the script required the hands of a sociopath to be correctly portrayed but as it stands the film is riddled with unnecessary emotion which is contrary to the plot.
For instance when Neo Mark II begins feeling emotion he suddenly starts to enjoy the feel, sight and smell of things. Yet he thinks absolutely nothing to his daughter eating chocolate flavoured cereal? Not to sound overly petty but in a society which has dosed themselves senseless there would be no chocolate flavoured anything. What a fantastic sentence that was.
Likewise the dialogue throughout is indicative of a society which actually feels emotion. All the 'good night', 'good morning' and 'hello' nonsense. They are pointless social niceties which would only exist in an emotional society. Yes when people say them in the real world it is more out of compulsion or conformity and they don't necessarily genuinely care if you do have a 'good night' but saying it shows that they care enough to appear as if they do. Or in other (less convoluted) words: if you have no emotion you wouldn't bother saying it at all.
Couple this with the actions of the ones who refuse medication and the film comes off as overly ridiculous. It makes sense that when everyone is dosing themselves up with emotional inhibitors that they would see no reason for stopping that behaviour and feeling emotion. It also makes sense that they would outcast or kill anyone who did. You can draw parallels to narcotic addiction there if you like but even without that aspect it makes sense.
What doesn't make sense is the behaviour of the ones they are mercilessly wiping out. You see rather than wanting to free everyone and overthrow the drug pushing regime it seems that they simply have an overwhelming desire to collect desk toys and small statues of international landmarks.
I understood hoarding the forbidden artwork, keeping books and music but is floral wallpaper really worth a death sentence? The rebels or whatever they call them therefore come off more like a combination between heavily armed art dealers and compulsive hoarders.
I guess though if they were actually trying to put up some kind of fight or attempting to fulfil a more pertinent plot point the film would just be too much like the Matrix. With the over the top kung-fu gun fighting and Goth/Nazi inspired outfits that is what it is obviously trying to emulate anyway so I suppose crossing the line into a solid plot would be too far. I'm already pretty sure you could selectively juxtapose the lead character's dialogue over Neo's scenes from the Matrix and no one would be any the wiser.
EDIT: I spoke too soon. White Morpheus has just shown up and crowbarred in a plot in the last half hour.
I'd have probably rated this film higher were it not for the completely contrived and ridiculous ending. The finale has just the most manufactured and pointless action sequences I have ever seen in any film. They basically come out of nowhere and serve little or no purpose. First he takes out two dozen guards whose > 600rpm rifles are completely unable to deal with a man just because he jumps about a bit. Then he takes out a bunch more people armed with swords who for some inexplicable reason decide to close in on him without so much as drawing their weapons. I mean there might as well have just been a rampant unicorn who rode into the office, snapped off his own horn and handed it to Neo Mk 2 to use as a weapon after saying "may all your wishes come true"... that would actually have made more sense.
Ultimately he defeats the sword wielding guys so quickly and with so little effort that the scene just feels pointless. Sword fighting is a little overdone in action films but Kill Bill and even the second Matrix film succeed in having well choreographed and dramatic battles. This one is just silly. Then he slices a man's face off and starts trying to punch a man in the head with a pistol.
A ridiculous ending for a ridiculous film.
Metallica Through the Never (2013)
Too Much Band, Too Little Plot
On paper the plot synopsis for this film sounded brilliant. At least the plot synopsis that I heard of it. A lone roadie facing some kind of over the top apocalypse with the soundtrack provided by Metallica. On a scale of 1 to awesome that is Godzilla fighting a flaming King Kong.
Unfortunately the direction just doesn't really take this to heart and the result is simply an hour and a half of Metallica performing with interspersed scenes of the actual plot. It's a shame really because where they overlay the music onto the roadie's story the result is absolutely brilliant. Cutting between the riots and the crowd with Cyanide playing is perhaps the best part of the whole film. The intro to And Justice For All whilst he walks beneath the hanging bodies is good as are the scenes cut into Master of Puppets.
The problem is that this underlying plot really should occupy more of the film. Most of it frankly. I mean it doesn't even really appear for the first forty minutes. The music should provide a backdrop for these apocalyptic scenes the whole way through. Instead the roadie's scenes mostly just appear between the songs or during intros and outros. The result is that I was continually left thinking 'when are we going to get back to the plot?' and wanting songs to end just so I could find out what was going on in the actual story.
This is completely the wrong attitude as the music itself is fantastic. I listen to Metallica all the time and I've seen them live a few times however I really never watch 'Live' DVDs as I generally find them boring. The stage show and the atmosphere of a live performance just cannot be captured on film.
The film only really comes into its own in the last half hour when the plot and the show come together properly. The problem is that when this happens it isn't especially clear what the plot is, what's going on or why. There are some pretty epic visuals running alongside the music but it just doesn't make much sense. Yes setting fire to yourself and running into a crowd with flailing fists looks awesome but logically chucking the burning petrol at them is probably more sensible.
Given that the main character is apparently named 'Trip' and he is seen taking a pill towards the start of the film the logical conclusion is that everything that happened, happened in his mind. The film doesn't elaborate on this at the end... in fact it just doesn't really have an ending. It just sort of stops. The problem with using a 'trip' as the basis for a plot is that the viewer cannot really invest in anything that is happening. In terms of narrative it is along the lines of ending a story with 'and then I woke up'; when the reader discovers that the last three hundred pages didn't actually happen they can feel cheated.
I had imagined that this was going to be something along the lines of 28 Days Later accompanied by an hour and a half of metal. In reality it's an hour and a half of metal accompanied by maybe ten minutes of weird cinematics devoid of plot, reason or explanation. The synopsis I heard from a friend evidently was wrong and I cannot blame the film for that. However the notion of an apocalypse taking place whilst the concert goers were completely unaware seemed truly fantastic. That's the film I'd like to see.
Instead of making a strong film which might appeal to a wide market and introduce Metallica's music to a new audience it is a film that only Metallica fans would sit through. When the credits rolled and the band members were listed as the writers, producers, directors and so on... Dethklok's 'Blood Ocean' came to mind...
Breaking Bad (2008)
Surprisingly Good. Incredibly Annoying.
I put off watching this for a long time as it sounded like it would be quite depressing. I am therefore surprised to find that it is actually quite good.
Only criticisms I would have is that it moves incredibly slowly at times and is frustrating as a result. Also the female characters in this show are unbelievably infuriating to watch. Like someone distilled the essence right out of a screeching cat, added in some dragon's blood and then mixed it all up into two loud, single-minded vaguely human shaped monsters with all the personality and charisma of shop mannequins.
I know that is sort of the point but I honestly cannot understand how any man in his right mind could be in a marriage with someone like either of them without going totally off the rails long before the cancer or drugs. If ever there was a programme to put someone off marriage this is it.
It is truly painful to watch them at times. I also get driven far beyond frustration at that whole 'get help' attitude. Said screeching-cat-dragon-blooded-mannequin-woman dives headfirst into everything without ever just using her own brain. The moment she finds out her husband has cancer she reads material on it obsessively whilst lying to herself. Then she goes all out convincing her husband to go through a painful treatment process which is unlikely to help and will only serve to make what life he has left horrific. Then she is moaning about him acting up in a group therapy session? She is one of the most annoying characters I have ever encountered on TV and I think the over the top nature of her is only partially intended as such. People being given 'interventions' rather than just being allowed to make their own damn mind up seems like an accepted part of American culture. It's just people who claim to have the best interests of their loved ones in mind whilst in fact all they are saying is 'fit in with our perfect utopian society which we are too blind to see any problems with'.
That kind of pseudo-psychiatric nonsense just seems to plague American culture though and I am unclear if it is simply a part of the story or if the writers were intentionally trying to poke fun at how stupid it all is like I am. Frankly I have similar issues with a lot of TV shows though and I can scarcely think of a family drama or sitcom where the wife isn't a total power hungry monster in a dress who wears her husband's testicles like a necklace.
Besides that however the programme has some good messages on serious social issues such as drugs, cancer and the horrifically unfair state of American healthcare. This is delivered through a pretty unyielding and hard-hitting plot. Just a shame about the dragons.