Reviews

The plot of Dolores ending up at the beginning of Westworld how it all started might have been a bit too easy, but it perfectly narates what Westworld is about. This should have been the grand finale, because this actually brings some good closure to the show, so I wonder why they would make another season.

After an abysmal third seasons, the first episode of season 4 got me curious, the following couple of episodes got me excited very much. I read that a lot of people were writing that Westworld had it's mojo back, the plot twists were simply amazing.

I took several nonsensical things for granted hoping for a good plot/finale, but sadly it is not satisfying at all and full of random variables that make absolutely no sense and the way so many key characters were killed was way too random.

Let's make a small list of odd ducks.

Bernard can calculate every butterfly effect to perfection, but is unable to somehow prevent an easily preventable death by William. Yes maybe this was the best option for him in his calculations, but it's just lazy writing if you ask me. Somehow Bernard can calculate future events up to 20+ years after date, while not a single computer in this world at the moment of writing can calculate all possible outcomes of a 52 card deck and even if it could, it would have to do this times quintillions of multitudes of this. Just ridiculous and it makes the story boring.

What is the whole point of Aurora's mission, risking a lot of lives to save her father, then end up losing people, getting her robo-dad only to leave him behind?

Clementine was fairly absent in this season and has 5 minutes of fame in the finale, with a random storyline. Also, if she could track Stubbs so easily, why the hell didn't they do that before?

Hale gets an upgrade and seems unkillable, but need to run away and is still easily damaged, why didn't she upgrade before? Why did Hale go from egomaniac to save the planet in 15 minutes?

Why was man-/robotkind doomed to go extinct? The outliers have extremely advanced technology, no longer are threatened by AI and they're likely too small to actually pose some sort of apocalyptic threat to each other.

The flies controlling humans.. it just doesn't belong in Westworld, it may be Sci/fi but I saw Westworld as a show that revolves around ethics, morals and how we should deal with artificial intelligence, even season 3 perfectly played into this narative and up until the whole Skynet/Rohoboam stuff it was actually going somewhere other than 'must destroy Skynet'. This season however lost that narative, mankind lost already and it was made clear (by Bernard) that they were not going to get a chance of winning anymore so Westworld lost it's most important narative; a show where you used to question the future has turned into a show where you question well.. nothing, because it makes no sense.

The only good thing was Christina/Dolores' storyline, which they could have shown in an hour long episode and be done with it all.

I enjoyed Maeve, she was awesome and she should have been the one to dealt the final blow, reactivate the dam, release Dolores back into the Sublime, which would add an extra layer, due to the struggles she had with Dolores. After that they could chose for Maeve to enter the Sublime to see her daughter again or for whatever dramatic reason make her unable to and let her me the one to commit robocide. Even the upgraded battle suit seems to be more bad ass for Maeve than for Hale. I actually wonder if they mixed the two up or Thandiwe Newton got COVID or something, I don't know but it's weird.

After last year's Atomic Blonde, I was thrilled for Red Sparrow. For me Atomic Blonde was one of the best Spy-Thrillers of the past years. It had a great ambience, good plotline, great actors and acting, but just a little bit too much action and it somewhat seemed like a smoking commercial.

• Cinematography

I was hoping Red Sparrow would be able to catch the same cinematographic and ambient feeling as Atomic Blonde, but sadly it did not deliver on that part. For a movie set mostly in Eastern Europe the colors were too vivid. It did not give me the spy-thriller movie experience I was expecting. They should have gone with another director.

• Cast

Jennifer Lawrence had a rough start in Red Sparrow, her acting in the first half of the movie reminded me of the Hunger Games, where the character had very little depth. I know she was supposed to play the emotionally stumped balerina girl, but it wasn't convinving enough. luckily she bounced back in the second half of the movie, where her performance was much better and where you really didn't know whether or not she was good, bad and on Russian or American side.

Joel Edgerton's performance didn't stand out enough in this movie, he was just a character filled in by 'some' actor. That's how it felt. There was very little dynamic with Jennifer Lawrence and their chemistry seemed boring at least.

Matthias Schoenaerts as Jennifer Lawrence's Uncle did a pretty good job, he was genuine and convincing. Nothing to add there.

• The movie

The movie started out feeling like an edgy teen flick, like the Hunger Games or worse. Especially when the protagonist was taken to the training facility seemingly full of teens where they had to undergo some sort of too typical training jampacked with clichés and onliners that were repeated during the movie for no apparent reason. These onliners actually made the movie more predictable, which of course is terrible for a spy movie.

Gladly after her training the movie lost it's edgy teen feel and started to feel like a spy movie. At the point she met with Nate Nash the movie started to get interesting and this is where everything got a hell of a lot better. From this point on, you basicly didn't know what Dominika was up to and on which side she actually was. She played her role to perfection, but there were some issues I had with the story. For instance, why doesn't an elite spy girl have a weapon? She let's Nate get tortured for no good reason and eventually picks a terrible moment to attack her torturer. How is it possible for a Russian spy to enter a CIA safehouse without much trouble, while everyone seems to know everything about each other in this movie. And when in the end Vanya is betrayed, I would presume real intelligence agencies would instantly see that it was staged. But what bothers me most is the English with a (bad) Russian accent. I mean come on, if you want to make a movie convincing, make it genuine! This had me feeling like War Horse again, which was an epic movie, but when you make a movie where the French, Germans and everyone else in the world speaks English with an accent, it just loses every bit of genuinity.

TL:DR Pro's

• Good acting after the first half hour
• Plottwists
• Just enough unpredictability

Con's

• Starts out feeling like a teen flick
• Terrible Russian accents which sometimes seem more like heavy Enligsh than Russian
• Patriotic Russians speaking English to eachother
• Intimate scenes are terrible (sex lasts 10 seconds)
• Nate Nash is a boring character with very little depth

Even though this movie had just 3000 ratings a couple of days ago, at 9.3 I wanted to see this movie. I work at a cinema so I see almost every movie, but when they're rated high on IMDb i'm prone to watch it on the premiere night. I was so bummed out by this movie. I kept watching and waiting for it to get excited, but that never happened.

The movie starts out slowly with a dramatic first ten minutes where Joe Brody, portrayed by Bryan Cranston loses his wife in a tragic monster attack in a nuclear facility. This did set a good tone for the movie even though it was a little cliché. I was really waiting for what was going to happen next. Then the movie unexpectedly fast forwarded 15 years, leaving us wondering what had happened.

It turned out Joe's son Ford Brody, became an army man, which seems only to be because they had to give him a roll where he would be in the midst of all the monster madness. When he visits his obsessed dad in Japan it turns out his dad was right all along and the monsters are conspiracies are real. Conveniently right when father and son visit the site where the MUTO is hatching it does actually hatch. Okay so that can be a coincidence, but that was the first annoyance of the movie.

The most terrible death scene When the monster escapes the island Joe is injured badly and we see him going into cardiac arrest on the chopper. This is where you would normally expect a scene of him dying right then and there, but the scene is cut, as if it's just not important. Then on the aircraft carrier we get to the scene where Ford sees his dad in a body bag... Just like that Joe is dead. Almost as if Bryan Cranston was used for this role, just because of his fame in Breaking Bad, to lure audience to this movie.

So now we are left with Ford, a character that hardly has any lines, and survives several dangerous encounters by insane luck. Also it seems that whenever the MUTO's encounter him they take their time to move slow and observe the situation, while at other times they just devour groups of people in a blink of an eye.

Goodguy Godzilla I am not that familiar with the Godzilla stories, but I expected Godzilla to be the dangerous monster he is perceived as, it didn't bother me he was there to protect us, but I lost the feeling that this movie was about Godzilla at all.

General flaws and absurdities. This movie goes in to my top 10 most absurd situations of all time. To start with the mechanical nuclear bomb. This bomb has been made so that no EMP would render it useless, however the shear force of the MUTO on the device should destroy its clockwork mechanism or at least make it unusable for detonation. It's fairly easy to disarm a nuclear bomb by just taking it apart, but it kept intact. Lucky coincidence? Maybe.

Then there was the moment Ford broke a piece of glass which alerted one of the MUTO's which became very angry at him, because it somehow knew he set its children ablaze. Now how the hell could it hear that in a city that's in flames? There would be noise everywhere, but it can here a broken piece of whatever? Again the monster took its time before wanting to attack which again led to Ford's survival.

Trivial human life With hundreds to thousands of people dying all around in this movie, why is one kids life so important. You see people flying around dying all over the place, but that little child has to survive, because he is in the male protagonist's proximity. That's just too trivial and in this movie all the sentiment seemed like it had to be in there, but it was for no good reason. It's a Godzilla movie, not a romantic comedy.

Too much coincidence - Joe and Ford to be witness for MUTO's escape - Ford to be on the train that is attacked by a MUTO - Ford's son to be on the bridge that is attacked - Ford's son and wife to be in the city the fight takes place - Ford to be the only one who survives the attack on the bridge

I think I might be able to go on with this movie for a while, but it just disappointed me so much, while I was looking out for this so much.

A lot of criticism and bad reviews going around about this movie, but it's not that bad at all and if you ask me it has a lot more punch to it than Olympus has fallen.

This movie touches some moral values and deals with some prejudice as well. The story isn't that great and you can see most of the things coming, but some things are still very compelling. Hey, what do you expect from this Genre? It's supposed to be an action movie.

It showed that not all terrorism comes from the middle east, but there are also extremists amongst the American people, although this is also a form of prejudice taking on right wing extremists, it's a complete breath of fresh air, and who doesn't like so see racist rednecks get some ass kicking.

The most important part about this movie were the characters, let me go into them a little bit more.

The president/Jamie Fox I went into this movie expecting very little, because I don't picture Jamie Fox as the presidential type actor. It's more of a role for Dennis Haysbert who played a brilliant president in the 24 series. However, I think it was intended to give this president a little bit of an Obama flamboyance, being more of an average guy swearing a little and wearing sneakers and such. They wanted the president to be a normal guy and for that Jamie Fox is great, however I still think his roll in this movie was a little bit too much, he just doesn't fit the presidents roll.

Cale Some dude with aggression issues and proper military training, that's about it.

Emily For me, this was the star of the movie, she put down an amazing performance. Her acting was really good and believable, she was courageous, intelligent and adorable. Everything she did in this movie is an illustration of how anyone would want to be, but most of us are simply not able to be such an altruistic person.

Some of the bad things. The bad guys one shot every security guard when entering the white house, but they can't manage to get a single bullet into the main character's big enough torso. Also, why didn't they demand Cale to come out of hiding as well when they demanded the president to surrender when they were threatening to shoot Emily. It doesn't make sense.

All in all I liked this movie, Emily really gave me the feeling I could be a better person, but that just might be me. It's definitely better than Olympus has fallen, which has mainly action and nothing else.

Does anyone agree that the puke and poop stick weapon was the worst humor ever and totally discredits the believability of the whole movie?

It made the movie seem really cheap.

Also I believed that Jim Carrey would be kind of taking over the roll of big daddy, being the adult male protagonist taking on evil in a funnier and just as hardcore way as big daddy did, instead he was kind of pathetic with his 'no kill' policy and cheap death. How did they even find the goddamn hideout? This movie disappointed me so much.

The chick flick part was also just horrible, especially the poop stick being the solution to it....

I've been a fan of the spider man series since I was a kid, and I know most of what happens, though some things are different in the movies than they are in the movies.

/** Things I think are different First of I believe in the television series spidey goes into a free fighting competition and there he encounters his uncles killer, correct me if I'm wrong. Also his uncle doesn't get killed right away after Peter doesn't do the right thing; putting him away for his crimes. Nevertheless the out coming is the same, his uncle dies because he didn't do the right thing as the words are said in several episodes in the comic series.

What I also missed big time in the movie is the one and utmost important quote from uncle Ben. This is the one thing every spider man fan will have imprinted into his mind and it's "With great power, comes great responsibility" either I missed this or it wasn't in the movie, which should have been, because thought it was obvious this was meant by the words spoken, it wasn't literally there as I can recall? There were the quotes from his uncle which did inspire him, but not that one.

Also his aunt seemed pretty young, but this could be due to the fact that this movie was also based on the beginning of the time line, however in the television series Peter's aunt already seemed quite old from the beginning.

One other thing is Peter revealing his identity, I know in the series he reveals his identity to Gwen, that's known, but I don't know about her dad, and even if he did, it's pretty darn fast in just a couple of weeks. I believe in the series the only one knowing is Gwen, and his aunt not knowing for a fact but being pretty sure, whereas Mary Jane struggles between her relationship between spider man and Peter, because she doesn't know they are the same, but she loves both I think. Maybe a villain or two also know his identity but not sure there.

Also the lizard has a pretty common human looking face in the movies whereas in the series he has pretty much a lizard face and I don't know about his morphing abilities from human to lizard.

Another thing I couldn't place was the time setting. At first I thought it was based around the 90's because of Parkers camera, which seemed a little old school however in the rest of the movie new age science played a pretty big role, so I am still wonder what the intended time space in the movie was.

One more thing. In the movie at about the end of it we see flash wearing a spider man t-shirt, which I think wouldn't have happened in the series. I thought of flash as an anti spider man person, never to wear a pro spidey t-shirt.

*//

//* Review All in all I have to say I really enjoyed this spider man movie. I always thought the previous spider man movies to be a little weak and lack some sort of emotion. With this movie I really felt every single emotion there was. I really felt it when Ben died. It hit me, and the relationship between spidey and Gwen was so emotional, though I always felt more for Gwen than for Mary even in the series. His relation with Gwen is much more passionate. Mary Jane seems more like a subject to spidey whereas Gwen seems like a fiery lover with her own capabilities, and this was reflected very well in the movie.

Also the part where the crane operators moves their cranes to support spidey was really cool. We did miss out on the great spidey hating Jameson, but I guess that is something for the sequels.

Nevertheless I thought it was a great movie and surpassed the earlier spider man movies by miles. I liked Tobey, but this guy just did a better job even though the skateboarding part brought Peter totally out of character comparing to the series.

*//

Point of the post.

Eventually Gwen creates the antidote/serum to get the lizard man back to his original form, but what confuses me is the fact that I think this serum should have also canceled out sideman's powers, seeing that it turns a person back to his or her original form. So shouldn't spider man have lost his powers there aswel?

After the antiserum explosion spider man and lizard fall down to the side of the building and lizard helps spider man get back up to the building, this is where I thought that spidey indeed lost his powers, because he seemed to need lizards hands to climb back onto the building, because if he did have powers he would have just climbed back up himself right? But then at the end of the movie we still see he has his powers, so what's going on there? Did he re infuse his powers somehow, or didn't he lose his powers and was the antidote/serum just fixed on the lizard serum, but then again why couldn't he climb the building by himself? This is the most confusing part for me.

I work as a cinema operator and I see lots and lots of movies coming by every year, but just a few really grasp my attention and this was one of them. Kudos for this spider man movie. It was really great!