Reviews

Thanks to David Lynch and movies like Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway, Houses in Hollywood and Beverly Hills are somehow magical for the audience who never lived in LA, I lived there and there is no magic in reality, at least for 99% of the residents but still I like to see movies made in those houses on top of the hill, forcing myself to imagine always something sinister and odd going on inside. Like Time Travel, Black Holes and Unfaithfulness, it's one of those ever popular subjects that you rewrite the same story with slight variations over and over again and people still love to watch them. I call this movie an unsuccessful tap into an ever popular concept. Odd people living in a mansion in magical Hollywood are up to something sinister. Movie opens good with the Coyote accident (which has nothing to do with the main story) and then falls flat, I mean completely flat. The couple go to a reunion and for almost an hour, nothing happens! Technically, their greetings last for an hour! After an hour, suspicion begins. The main character can be suspicious because he is invited to his ex home where his ex is living with her new husband. I wouldn't accept such invitation specially with my girlfriend but if I agree, I would be suspicious of their true intentions but even with 100 clues, I would never dream of my ex and her husband, planned to kill all guests so the movie has logic problem. It's boring, it doesn't make sense and even when the plan is revealed and some action and killings happen, it doesn't move the audience.I had no sympathy with the agonist and any of the antagonists. They were strangers with no clear background and they remained strangers. I didn't care if any of them lived or died, so character development was another big blow. Provided with all that mentioned, the magic of the mansion on hill was also ruined! Movie was low budget with no notable cast so getting it into production does not surprise me. I could probably made it myself with my existing equipment and good but no name actors and actresses I know from Midwest. As a low budget student project for Sundance of Youtube, it was a decent movie but as a Hollywood production, it was a total disaster!

Could be a reasonably good movie but suffered from hasty character development, incoherent story, nonsense incidents and very poor production. Let's see how

1. We have an adventurous girl, Doesn't want to get married and is sent to British embassy in Tehran, Iran. Here comes the big initial blow. Tehran is not a tropical or even subtropical city, there are no palm trees in Tehran. Very few scenes are depicting the actual city and in those rare scenes, people wearing Keffiyeh (Arabic hat) which is not worn in Iran. Also the architecture was Arabic/north African. Before delivering such an incorrect historical image to audience, The producer could go on Youtube and watch some period Iranian movies and Mini-series such as Hezardastan to get the feel of Iran and Tehran in that period. They could also negotiate to use the existing Old- Tehran prop in Iran for accurate production and I saw no reason for Iranian officials to deny such request as the movie had no anti-Iranian content.

2. So she began to learn Farsi, good for her but Farsi is known to be a hard language for foreigners, takes years to be learnt as second language. It belongs to Indo-European language branch and is fundamentally different than Arabic. So she wishes to learn Farsi, then he jumps into Arabic countries venturing into deserts? If you are in love with Farsi and Persian Poems and you wish to learn Farsi in that purpose, you normally wonder in Iran which is mountains and woods with some areas of Desert not as vast as deserts in Arabic countries. So either the real historical figure had mental instability or the director assumed one can jump from Farsi to Arabic!

3. She literally is jumping from Iran to the Arabian desert. We see no transformation.

4. Bedouin tribes have no respect for women, they rape before they say hi! Yet she wonders among them without any support from British military gaining their respect... really???

5. We see that the squeezed T.E.Lawrence into the movie. We have no reference of this lady in Lawrence Of Arabia movie yet in this movie Lawrence plays a reasonably major role. If Gertrude Bell was an important historical figure, there would have been a reference of her in Lawrence movie, so I assume she was not!

6. British Arab whatever headquarter in Cairo looks like a modern oriental themed hotel and I guess it really is! The producer did not even think for a moment that how a British establishment would have looked in those days!

Shortcomings of the movie are huge and movie has no message, no goal, just a plain narrative of an obscure supposed to be real figure. NOT RECOMMENDED!

Double SPOILER ALERT

First of all for those who wish to see a season 2, The story resolved at the end of season 1 (or mini series) so nothing left to pass on into season 2 and that's great, don't want the memory of this awesome show get ruined by prolonged multi season nonsense. But as good as it was, there was also problems:

1. show never delivered the feel of 1983. Something was missing, I think it was mostly the flashy color and digital HD quality. Past decades are remembered by color and quality of media so If you want the feel of 1983, the show should be recorded by the devices of that era, Digital HD quality with flashy colors as good as it looks, never gives that nostalgic feel to the audience... Some 2 stars smoked out over this issue.

2. The whole idea of replacing people in high office belongs to pre photography age. It's insanely ridiculous that they did not have the photo of the real person at base specially when that person was going to serve as Germany's top general. If the security of NATO was that cheezy, I wonder how we are still alive today!

3. The hostage situation, there was no way someone can cover it up with all those witnesses and a dead prostitute on the ground... And the whole scene was unnecessary, so the squeezed an unnecessary insanely ridiculous section in the show which had nothing to to with the resolve of the show. 1 star smoked out!

4. Martin gave coffee cans which were suppose to be bombs to Jakal, Jakal blew a building. But later on it was said that Jakal blew the building with 25 kg of explosive so whatever was in coffee can, had nothing to do with explosion. I still wonder why they squeezed that scene into the show. 1 star smoked.

5. American general while hugging a whore, tries to calm Alex saying that he has German wife!!! Ho ridiculous is that?

6. General killed himself at the end but why? The wife he never loved just left him, so why? he was enjoying prostitutes, in reality he had to celebrate for that wife to move out. There was problem with daughter, he had no idea that alex had aids and there was no defeat or work problem, all the sudden we hear that he killed himself. but why?????

7. AAAH, Good to mention that a university professor lives in a mansion and he is all over the newspapers... I wonder how no one in German secret service asked how he got money to live in a mansion because with university salary, no one can live in a mansion!

Overall very entertaining show but could be much better.

6/10

First let me say that this review has no spoiler, I just check the box to be on the safe side.

Lets get to the point: 1. Endoskeleton if to receive human tissue shell only otherwise it doesn't make sense for machines to produce endoskeletons with TEETH! In the movie we see that machines in the future are primarily endoskeletons without human shell and all of them have teeth. So why do they need teeth? what do they want to eat? human flesh??? Pretty childish flop.

2. Apparently machines are so advanced, so why on assault on Colorado base, a puppet endoskeleton (again with TEETH) is riding a truck? Why the truck is not equipped with auto driver and drive itself? That would be acceptable for a 1950s sci-fi and not acceptable even by 80s standards. Yet another awful flop.

3. So they found a way to explain why Arnold looks old, cyborg tissue ages like human tissue. Pretty goo explanation except that Cyborg human shell is genetically modified to grow rapidly which means it grows rapidly and it should degrade rapidly on the other side so NO! CYBORG DOES NOT GET OLD NORMALLY, if that's the explanation, Arnold is too young you that reason. Not really as bad as endoskeletons with teeth but Im pretty sure that James Cameron would come with better reasoning.

4. 1984 feels like 2099 !!! Also the plot is pretty boring, It's like that you work on your LAPTOP writing paychecks and also listen to movie and do not loose the storyline and special effects look good but nothing really extraordinary, just a better looking CG.

Overall boring and full of childish flops and tasteless humor. I rather remember Terminator 1 and 2 and just ignore the hurting knowledge that they ruined the awesome duology with 3 other awful installments, pretty much like what ford did to Jaguar and then ditched it off to an Indian car maker!

I watched this movie because of Martin Scorsese's promotion of Polish Cinema and I really didn't understand the hype around it and specially why it was nominated for Oscars. Actually the screenplay is pretty silly. A couple heading for a boating vacation ran into a stranger. For the silliest reason (which was no reason), the husband lets the stranger in the car to ride with them, then again for the silliest reason (which was no reason), he asks the stranger to go on the boat trip with them. In reality a couple go on such trip to have so privacy and intimacy and no one wants a third wheel around. The stranger acts pretty silly and they just tolerate him and the NO STORY goes on. The movie has no direction at all, it has no message. It is nothing. It has no value for a western filmmaker as it bears no inspiration. At best, it's worthy of a film student who takes a camera and makes a film with his friends with virtually no budget to prove that he/she can hold a camera and shoot. 1/10!

The battle sequence which comprises almost half of the movie is breathtaking, it can't be better than that, no one in Hollywood can claim that he or she can create something better however the movie suffered from some facts.

1. A battle group travels in time for unknown reason. I can buy that. You can give the audience every possible "Make sense" fact for the time travel but at the end, time travel is still considered a myth and no one knows if it's even possible, some argue it's not as we had no visitors from the future in the known well documented history so not giving the audience any fact for time travel is not really a problem. It just happened. It's OK.

2.Iba suppressed the mutiny and regained control of the patrol boat. Then he made the most ridiculous and insane move. He blew the boat. Even if he had no use for the boat, he had to keep so he can use the diesel in the tank and tucks, yet he blew the boat with all the fuel and I assume with everything inside it including the ammo.

3. It is a known fact that tanks are short range vehicles. You can't just marsh half of the country with a tank in single tank of fuel. It is just impossible. In the beginning we see that they just march with the tank back and forth (wasting the fuel) and then marching with the tank to the battle. Even by 1940s standard, that was just ridiculous.

4. Same thing goes with the helicopter. Helicopters do not fly on nuclear fuel, they run on gas and they are not a regional passenger jet. Again we see that he flies the copter just to show off like there is no future.

5. They waste ammo just to show off!

6. Iba marches with the entire battle group without protecting his rear. Japan is not a big country. He had to save the patrol boat for escape and if he wanted march, he had to do it along the coast line so at least he had protected back. Coming from the future, he had the precise map of Japan's coast line so he could find a strategic peninsula, secured from 3 sides with water and gun boat and entrench on the land connection, try to lure the enemy to his position. Of course if they wanted to play it right, they had to re wright the whole screenplay but considering the insane effort they put into creating such awesome battle sequence, it was worth it. This movie had the potential of being a cinematic epic/classic.

7. So he marches inland with his battle group which in reality suffered from shortage of ammo an fuel with absolutely no supply line. They got encircled and... It was very well made. They lost everything. Historically such thing happened in WWII when Germans sneaked into soviet line to Stalingrad and everyone knows the outcome. No army commander sneaks into enemy line without having a solid and well protected supply line unless he is on suicide mission!

So, aside from some entertainment factor, the movie was a total disaster.

Soundtrack was good except for the fact that the Japanese singer was singing the mix of English and Japanese... Whenever I heard a song, I wanted to hit my head to the wall.

Overall the concept was good, we saw the concept in several western movies like the "Timeline" and I bet we will continue to see more movies based on similar concept in the future. I would say 6/10. The production was so good that I can not downgrade the movie as much as I like.

Harrison Ford was 20 years older than the third installment, he could not be made young so the whole timeline had to move to mid 50s and mid 50s was the age of UFO craze and Mccarthyism so it was no surprise that the enemies were Soviets and the object would be of extraterrestrial origin. Some say it began very cheazy, I say Indiana Jones series were cheazy from the very beginning, in 1981, special effects of Raiders of the Lost Ark was so big deal that people forgot about the cheaziness but in 2008, special effects were not as important, people were looking for more solid story and better mystery and what they found was the good old cheaziness, of course they got disappointed. I don't want to discuss how ridiculous the refrigerator scene was. What I like to mention is some serious holes in the plot that can not be filled by any logic. Story circles around a stolen Crystal Skull. Apparently the console of crystal skeleton aliens we saw at the end of movie possessed some great power. So I wonder, how the Spanish explorer managed to steal the skull in first place? That was absolutely impossible. Why Ox decided to return the Skull the the Spanish Explorer's grave? No clear answer but not a deal breaker. According to Indy, those aliens were archaeologists. What we saw was the destruction of virtually what they collected since the beginning of time. If they really wanted to collect something, they had to secure it in proper boxes, still a negative blow but no deal breaker... But the biggest hole is the impossibility of stealing a crystal skull by Spanish Explorer, even Indy couldn't do that so they based the whole thing on nothing. aged Indy, flawed plot, marriage at the end... but it was highly watchable and I reasonably enjoyed it with some reserve.

The movie is perfect in every sense. Plays are awesome, production is perfect with attention to smallest details, cast selection is flawless, everyone is in his or her place... but at the end it is just the direct remake of David Lean's 1948 version which was perfect by itself. The movie had no added excitement, like in one of the mini-series based on the novel, Oliver managed o solve his birth mystery and eventually found his true relatives. I don't know if that was the case for the original work but there is no sign of it in this movie, basically it focused on the more dramatic parts of the story rather than more exiting sections. Highly watchable movie but don't expect anything new, can be considered a waste of time somehow but I enjoyed it anyways as I like the original story. Everything is perfect but I can not give more than 5 out of 10 to a direct and unnecessary remake.

Much was said about these series and there is a firm fan base who swallow whatever they feed them under the name of "Game of Thrones" so I bet this review would get some stiff resistance and dislike but the truth should be told. They call it a success! I don't know how to assess success for a TV show at the time of illegal torrent downloads. Yes, it was very successful in luring more illegal downloads than any other show in history and I assume it happened because of the high price of HBO as premium cable channels and its exclusive and somehow restricted broadcast through very limited channels. Forbidden fruit is always exiting even if its apple, a fruit which is anything but exiting in reality! Game of thrones is a nice show, it sure has very good production, character development is brilliant as there are no heroes and there are almost no pure villains. that's what I like about it. It's not black and white, its grey! but the screenplay lack the thrust. Episodes come and go and nothing really happens. It was like it from the very beginning, it never improved, just continued like a flat line. After watching couple of episodes, it downgraded to the level of well polished soap opera. I was on my laptop doing my work and it was on on TV. Each 2-3 hours i had to raise my head t see whats going on, I liked to know what happens at the end but the way to the end was so boring that I decided to make it tolerable with multi tasking. Show is well produced with the worst screenply, 5/10 for nice set up only!

Michael Biehn is an awful actor who got some big screen roles first because he had the favorable 80s facial features and of course his chance that landed him on a role in Terminator (1984). While his lack of talent could not be easily detected in fast pace action movies like Terminator, it was dead obvious on a thriller like Rampage. He could not even communicate with his supposed to be wife in natural way, talking like a preacher on Sunday church. I expected that a veteran director like William Friedkin to pay more attention in selection cast, some missing parts or minor holes in plot are forgivable sometimes but acts this awful could never be forgotten! 5/10 Highly watchable but nothing special

I just read a review titled "Whoever doesn't like this movie, doesn't like art"... Buy a good video camera, head to Shenandoah or Blue Ridge mountain and I guaranty that you'll make some artistic videos of nature so is taking some good videos of national parks considered art? probably! But that's not enough to make a movie neither artistic nor entertaining. This film has severe production problems which gave audience feel of a TV movie rather than a cinematic work. Everything looked polished, both Indians and colonials were shaved, clean and dressed up. Indians were the worse speaking plain English with just some misplaced words! But that's not all. There was something seriously wrong with the screenplay. It was slow, boring and lacked almost any conflict. The Mohican was flirting with the British lady in broad daylight while the presumed suitor/fiancé was acting like a carrot. No emotion, no conflict and I doubt if it was even historically accurate. Acts were not notable also. Daniel Day Lewis delivered a flat performance, probably not his fault, there was nothing special about his character. I barely finished the movie and I didn't like it so if you wish to call me an imbecile who doesn't like art, suit yourself!

I'm speechless for the amount of bullshit they tried to feed the audience with this movie and I am eager to know what order was behind the production of such a sham! I do apologize to the family of Chris Kyle (the real sniper) for writing this review in this tone, I know he was murdered recently and the pain is still fresh but I guess they made themselves ready when they sold the right of making a movie based on the deceased's book. Chris Kyle's book title is "American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History" Autobiography of the most lethal... means the guy was so proud of being the most lethal and in my opinion, whoever is proud of being "The Most Lethal", has serious mental problem, period! So we are not dealing with a hero, we are dealing with a 2 bit bully redneck who was brought up with guns shooting animals he was not going to eat... (I'm not against hunting but I believe if you kill an animal, you have to eat it! If you kill an animal for pure pleasure, you are mentally unstable). The cheesiness of the movie begins with Kyle being touched with seeing the news of bombing US embassy. Its' not pleasant for anyone to hear that a place got bombed and people got killed but his reaction looked like a senator from Senate's foreign affairs committee not a redneck somewhere in Texas. So he decides to sign up. Now what's the real version? He was probably a redneck out of job and options, signed up for military to get the sign up bonus and get his life on track, not heroic but respectable decision. He is being trained as seal. Good for him but even a kid knows that the identity of seals is almost kept secret if not top secret so a seal goes to the bar, drinking and probably speaking about the secrets of the U.S. Navy, that may happen but that is deemed as irresponsible act punishable under martial and even civilian law and I highly suspect that was not how he met his wife. People like to lie about these things and they have years to come up with a glorified version! I wouldn't be surprised if they originally met in a Yahoo! chat room! Now 9/11 happens. Again that senatorish look while seeing the news but I know what is behind that look "Fuck! Now I have to go to war!!!" They go to Iraq. It's war, it's fair game. Americans kill Iraqis. Iraqi's kill American. On the battle field, none are evil, they just follow the orders and its fair game, its just business. No need to mention that USA was on the evil side, invading a country on totally unacceptable pretext! Like those of Hitler's on invading Poland. In Iraq Kyle meets his arch enemy. An Arab sniper who we never know who he was and for the rest of the movie he wants to hunt him down. He will eventually but I suspect that the whole story is fictitious. Kyle was not a hero. He enjoyed killing people as he enjoyed killing bucks, he was probably highly delusional who wrote an autobiography based on his delusions.

Eastwood instead of trying to decipher a sniper's real personality and mix it with some events from the book so he can tell that the movie is based on actual events, decided to make a movies 100% based on Kyle's delusional book and capitalize on it in which he succeeded greatly. He did a great job of depicting the obsolete concept of "Americans are always right and everyone else is evil and stupid" once more! By making this movie he put everyone in difficult situation. Kyle's family now have to hear these harsh word on their beloved decease, a murder suspect may not get impartial trial because of this movie. Who knows? maybe Kyle had some problems, maybe he was murdered while trying to bully a trouble veteran while given his record, no one would have questioned him. He was murdered in 2013 and a movie was made in 2014. Maybe Eastwood taught he was too old and for him its now or never.

Overall an awful one dimensional movie, do not waste you money as I did! I wish there was a refund policy so I could get my money back!

Screenplay was perfect, acts were perfect, flight sequence was nothing short of masterpiece. I totally loved this movie, started to watch it 30 minutes past 12 in the midnight, I never hoped to watch all of it in one piece but I did, it really hooked me. But speaking from a pilot's point of view (Of course I do not fly commercial jets but the concept is the same), It was obvious that he drove the plane over it's mechanical limits on the pretext of getting it out of the storm faster but I strongly suspect that it was an over excitement caused by high dosage of Cocaine he sniffed to converse the alcohol effect, to be realistic, he put everyone's life in great danger by unnecessarily overriding the auto pilot and manually drive that show in first place. Now at the end of the movie we find out that a part in the tail section was worn off and was never changed, ran on that condition for almost 2 years, obviously a negligence from the airline but It is very likely that the speeding on ascent and put unnecessary pressure on the aircraft caused the already defected part to suddenly cease to work at that very same flight some 20 minutes later. Yes, he was skilled pilot, he managed to avoid an all out crash but also it was his fault in first place that the part ceased to function. His Alcohol and drug abuse led to his speeding on ascent, that put unnecessary pressure on the aircraft, as a result, already defected part ceased to function and catastrophe followed. So button line, he was not a hero, he just cleaned his own mess. He belonged to jail. The crash HAD EVERYTHING TO DO WITH HIS DRUG AND ALCOHOL ABUSE. This is the thing that was never mentioned in the movie. Everyone accepted that the crash was act of God and some bad law driven feds were trying to convict a hero who saved 96 lives on pretext of him being intoxicated while piloting the plane. In that regard, movie was sending a wrong message so everything was awesome but the message was questionable.

The original story was a masterpiece yet dated and dull at some aspects. When a story is around for 2 centuries and numerous movies and TV series and cartoons are made based on that, it becomes familiar and somehow boring. What happened here was that they used the old characters but took the classic story to entirely different level so the combination of familiarity with characters and the story shell but alternate time, events and ending, made this show so exciting that I literally watched it in 2 days... a rare thing with an anime! Nevertheless, it could be better. The opening and end credits and music was insanely lame. I didn't like the faith of Danglar and Mondego, I wanted them to have worse and also I think they had to end it at episode 23. The whole episode 24 was 24 minutes of pure waste of time. Another problem was the Japanese feel of the characters. I know it's Japanese made and its anime cliché but somehow they felt so Japanese while they were supposed to be french. Overall it was a brilliant anime, my second favorite after Robotech. 7/10 and highly recommended.

Before I move forward, I have to mention that this story was not a genuine Arthur Canon Doyle story but rather based on Sherlock Holmes, a character created by him so the major gaps and flaws in the story are not to be subtracted from his credit. Story was grossly incoherent, illogical and hastily sewn together emphasizing on minor events rather than the grand theft itself. Lets see how and I warn you, this is going to be real spoiler if you haven't seen the movie. Story is simple. Moriarty wants engage Sherlock Holmes in a false murder threat to divert his attention from his plan to steal crown jewels. Problem starts right away. Sherlock Holmes is a private detective not the secret service or something and apparently there was no threat so why the crown treasurer wishes Holmes to be present in the delivery of an emerald? It doesn't make sense at all so even Moriarty's assumption that Holmes would be there is illogical... Of course Holmes would be there for story's sake otherwise there would be no story but the whole thing was built up on mud! Homes got involved with the murder threat of the lady and murder of his brother. There is minimal problem with that. Moriarty manages to keep Holmes away from the Tower. In the tower, a fake theft attempt was done so Moriarty can stay inside the tower. Watson goes back to Holmes. that takes at least 30 minutes. There they find out that Moriarty was up to something. It takes lets say 15 minutes. They go to Moriarty's house. It takes 30 minutes. They go inside and find out about his plans (15 minutes). They rush to the tower (another 30 minutes). That's roughly 2 hours and yet we see Moriarty was in the tower holding the same crown he had in his hands 2 hours ago!!! Seriously??? If it was for real, Moriarty would have won, gone with the jewels long before Holmes even finds out about his plan for the crown jewels. Not only the whole story was based on arrogant and stupid idea of Holmes being essential for the security of the crown on top of all British security agencies of the period, Holmes in no way could stop Moriarty if it was for real. Holmes was pictured as plain stupid, something like Inspector Gadget who managed to stop Moriarty by the wish of the writer rather than his intelligence. Some may say it is an old movie and stories were simple and somehow stupid in those early years of sound movies. I would say bullshit! We had masterpieces like Dr Mabuse years before these series. That was not what I expected from a highly acclaimed detective series.

boring stupid illogical movie. 2/10

This is by far the best of any attempt to visualize the classic story and probably the most faithful one except for the ending which is a bit different but this doesn't mean that it was a perfect attempt! Screenplay adaptation was flawed from the beginning.

1. it began with Edmund Dantes as prisoner #37. It should have begun in the harbor, Dantes came back from a voyage, his fiancé is waiting for him, then some character development and create some sympathy for the hero and his love. It was very easy as the story was there yet they decided to bypass not only that but also the ordeal of Edmund Dantes in prison. We never saw his first contact with Faria, how he dug the tunnel, how they spent time in prison, nothing! When the money is tight and I can find no other explanation for this sham, you stick to the essentials. Instead of that corpse reviving hocus pocus they could do what i mentioned and I guarantee there would have been huge emotion and tears at the end.

2. The story continued very incoherent and ridiculous at some points. They literally jumped from one scene to another without succinctly developing any of them. Having read the original story, it was like a hasty review. I had superior position yet nothing could tough me. It was awful.

What made the first 4 movies great was not special effects but the great interconnected stories which gave them a miniseries feel. Of course they had some minor flaws here and there like the supposed to be formidable but ridiculous Klingons or the fact that Starship Enterprise was destroyed and it was supposed to be an obsolete vessel so the whole idea of recreating it at the end of forth movie was illogical. They should never have destroyed the ship but they had to leave it badly damaged somewhere in space for future recovery. 23rd century is not that far away and economic laws would not change a lot in 300 years meaning that it does not economically make sense to refurbish an obsolete damaged ship but to replace it with brand new one so assuming that the Enterprise was destroyed, it had to be replaced by an Excelsior class ship to make sense, of course they could have rename it as Enterprise. Then came this fifth installment. A brand new story. I would say the concept had some potential but the scenario was so bad that it killed everything this concept could be in first place. Lets start from the camping in Yosemite. Showing captain Kirk rock climbing was OK but the whole scene of sitting around the fire and toast marsh melon and sing was 100% irrelevant to the resolve of the movie and waste of time. All it achieved was to bore me in early stage of the movie so I had to pause and make a tea for myself, something I rarely do. Next we go the Enterprise. Everything is a mess, nothing works, even elevator doors do not open properly. Looks like the ship was the target of a computer virus. No sane person orders such ship to go into deep space no matter how grave the situation is as that could be suicidal mission. On Nimbus III which is supposed to be an important place but a vast body of dust with only one village, we read "PARADISE" in English on the sign. Like English is the universal language of the universe but it is not even universal language of the earth and certainly it is not the Klingon or Romulan inscription. Commando attack on Nimbus III. Since when captain Kirk became a Navy seal and when did he learn to ride horses? And since when, the first officer of the ship leads a field attack? Somehow for cheesiness sake, bandits take over Enterprise and they head to that barrier thing. How come no one ever tried to cross? It appears that it was very easy to reach the barrier and yet in 23rd century no one crossed it? why? OK, provided the barrier was something real. Enterprise just passed through like me passing through the door of my bedroom!!! as easy as that without the slightest challenge. Klingon ship also passed through. I guess there was no barrier in first place! On the other side there is a planet. Seriously? a planet out of nowhere? They land on the planet. Everyone looks at that piece of barren Arizona desert like they've seen something extraordinary. The logical response was to either laugh or at least disappointment. There was a genie or something on that planet who caused some scenes. They destroyed the genie with a torpedo. Kirk survived. A party and... I can't say how disappointing this movie was, actually it was disgusting! I would say if you are watching Star Trek series, just skip this one and jump to part 6. Assume this one never existed! 0/10! I assume this movie was never made!

This one could be perfect if the following problems would have been addressed:

1. Cinematography: This one was a major blow as the picture quality WAS too high def and polished made it look like a TV movie or a TV show. It gives the audience feel of a cheap B movie.

2. Beside Matthew McConaughey and Gina Gershon who did great job as always, other cast offered extremely cheesy plays again amplified the feel of cheap B TV movie. I think if they had not recruited Matthew McConaughey, the movie was doomed. Matthew McConaughey's play was good enough to fade other deficiencies but I regret to see how a near perfect script was made into a movie on the border of A and B instead of being great. This movie had lots of potential.

I would say despite the deficiencies, it's highly watchable and a bit controversial, not too long and fast pace which is good, a descent R rated entertainment but nothing special. 6/10

I noticed that most people watch this movie solely because of 2 names. Billy Wilder and Marilyn Monroe although the real credit goes to Jack Lemmon who became a woman and played as a woman so good which I almost forgot he was Jack Lemmon! Jack Lemmon's performance was nothing short of a masterpiece dwarfing any subsequent similar attempts like Dustin Hoffman's in Tootsie so there is something very original and unique about this movie however even Jack Lemmon's mind blowing performance was not enough to cover the shitty screenplay, insane cheesiness and obvious deficiencies in production. Let's start from Miami. I have no problem that Wilder decided to film Miami in San Diego California. Palm trees are palm trees and the thing about the difference in direction of afternoon shadow on east coast and west coast in not something an ordinary audience would pick up immediately however filming the the movie in a famous landmark like "Hotel Del Coronado" was an unforgivable insult to the audience's intelligence. That's something I never expected from Billy Wilder, a shameful disappointment. The second problem was character development or the character ark. Sugar Cane (Monroe) was a woman attracted to millionaires, yachts, private train cars and money of course. She was the best imitation of a shallow character. Now to make her fall in love with a 2 bit musician like Joe (Tony Curtis) was required a great character ark. Sugar Cane remained the shallow character till the very end. She fell in love with a fake millionaire or his fake money to be more precise as there was nothing lovely about the fake millionaire that Joe invented but his money. When Joe called her o say goodbye, she became upset and sad because she lost the millionaire. She never fell in love with the quality of kiss or sex, bottom line is that she never fell in love with Joe as a human being. What one could reasonably expect was shocking and emotional encounter between Sugar Cane but what really happened was a flat hasty encounter as Joe exposed himself in front of everyone and gave her the hasty and flat kiss. Based on what was developed (or not developed) in the movie, the logical response was anger and despise not that hasty baseless character ark in final minutes of the movie. It was so bad and cheesy that it could win an award of cheesiness and awfulness! Also nothing was cute about the humor, the flat humor was as childish as a Pink Panther cartoon which made the movie almost boring. 2 hours was a long time for such movie, a better editing and possibly trim it to 90 minutes could mask most of the problems so I would say the editing was a masterpiece of awfulness by itself. I don't know where the 8+ rating came, I can't find a reasonable answer why a serious film critic would give this movie anything more than 4. 3/10

Despite the common belief, this movie has no answer to unanswered questions of the 2001 nor it helps the audience to better understand the original movie. This a cheap flick, an attempt to make some money on the success of the 2001. I would say it is something like Terminator 3 or 4, cheap movies based on awesomeness of the originals however it was good entertainment on it's own. Plays were cheesy, Roy Scheider appears as "NAGGING MR ALWAYS RIGHT" which why I despise him because he had absolutely no talent, playing 100 movies and he has the same character in all of them! The opening scene is probably the most ridiculous when Dr Moisevitch approaches Floyd (Scheider) on the telescope. There is no way that someone could hear Moisevitch's voice while standing on top of the giant telescope! Seriously, how a director or screen writer can make such an obvious mistake? Movie is too noisy, inside spaceships are too dark as of most sci-fi of the period and instead of having an imitation of futuristic electronics, there are monitor screens straight from mid 80s but probably the ending was what made me go ballistic! A new sun was created in the solar system! Sounds cool except that in reality, such phenomena would cause the earth to be over heated and almost all life on planet earth would be destroyed! I'm a great fan of Sci-Fi and I hate open ended movies in which the ending would be left open to be guessed by the audience but what I hate more is cheesy and obviously unscientific answers. I believe an open ended is far better than a sham like this. If you watch this movie as a sequel to the 2001, you'll despise it immediately but if you try to forget about the 2001 and what it as a stand alone sci-fi, there is some entertainment value in it.

Contact with alien life form is an ever green story concept for movies. There are 2 very distinct categories.

The first type is actually showing the aliens. Among them the most recent was Ridley Scott's "Prometheus" which I have mixed feelings about or more traditionally the Star Wars or Star Trek series.

The second type is not showing the aliens at all and often has some sort of open ending, probably the most famous is Kubrick's "2001".

Both types are considered a double sided blade. If the shown alien is not appealing enough or is not wrapped in properly sequenced mystery, it will be categorized as 2 bit science fiction and in case of unseen alien, the end of the movie may not be appealing to the target audience, the younger people.

I recall the first time I got my hand on this movie, then on a VHS tape and I simply bypassed it because it looked too slow and talky for my age, I was 17 or 18. Now at age 34 I watched it and I really enjoyed it specially after seeing shams like Interstellar!

The screenplay is solid with minimal holes. Everything has an explanation which passes to the audience mostly by vision not just words. Probably the most interesting part is the opening, the further we move from earth, the further we move back in time. I consider it a masterpiece, there is no narrative but just video, motion and it passes what it intends. I have to admit that I loved it and I got hooked immediately. The underlaying love story is touching and full of chemistry although it was never a main part of movie and virtually had nothing to do with the resolve. I'm not a scientist but as an space enthusiast I know some stuff about physics. Of course most of the scientific part was fiction but not in a bad way. One who is familiar with these things would only say "Its possible". Movie is rather long and with minimal action but never bores.

Of course there is some issues. From the discovery of the alien machine plans to actually building it moved very fast which never happens in reality as just decoding the plans and manufacturing the parts takes years to achieve, no need to mention that some technologies need to be developed just to make parts even if the blue print is available otherwise every single industrial nation on earth would replicate the B2 bomber in 6 months. Making something out of a blue print is way different than the reverse engineering. That's forgivable as this is a movie and no one wants to see the beautiful Ellie to go to space in her 70s!

Probably the biggest question mark is that why the tribunal in congress. The machine and the pod looked like intact after the experience so send another one to confirm. That was a real hole in the screenplay which could have been easily fixed by somehow destroying the machine after experience. a 500 billion dollar machine got destroyed and of course no one has the money to rebuild it but if the machine is intact which it was, all those things after the launch was nonsense. This is something that I can not bypass, there should be no holes in screenplay, if there is hole, movie loses stars and this one lost one star for that.

The second star was lost because of failure to come with a logical explanation why the aliens sent the blueprint. She traveled through multiple wormholes to another universe to see an alien disguised himself as her dad in Pensacola. And that illusion actually said nothing to her nor showed anything and sent her back. That small steps he mentioned actually was not a step at all however I can not blame Carl Sagan (Author of the novel) and other people who were involved with the story as it is extremely complicated. Even Kubrick couldn't close his infamous 2001 properly.

Highly watchable movie but I would like to see more refined ending and reasoning if not perfect. 7/10

The movie begins simple. If there is no Criterion mark on DVD, one may think that its a horror flick and it is actually a horror flick got prestigious somehow except for the fact that the plays are surprisingly good. Specially Margot Kidder delivers an outstanding performance as a French Disturbed woman. The African American guy looks like a potato but that's how most guys act when a stranger woman surprisingly asks them out. I would say it was an awesome performance in potatoness! The plot is simple and easy to follow. ***Now I warn you, this is going to be a real spoiler***. The woman who murdered the black guy was in the bed while it is clearly shown that Danielle was unconscious in bathroom although we never discover the nature of those very important pills nor we never find out why she needed more when she just took 2 pills 5 minutes before. Anyways, what I'm saying is, despite the outcome of the movie that Danielle and her sister are essentially the same person, Danielle can not be the woman in bed murdering the guy. I don't want to say the plot had problem but it was rather a defect in one scene. I think based on the outcome of the movie, Plama should have re written the scene. Another problem was the faith of the couch. It ended up next to a railroad in Canada while the private detective was watching it from the top of a telephone or power pole. There is a corpse in that couch for God's sake, it should grossly stink. Not only there is no foul smell (I say it based on the arrangement of the scene) but we do not know what took the private detective to get close and inspect/report the couch. The ending was unclear in murky way otherwise it was a descent entertaining movie, not something extraordinary and certainly does not belong to the Criterion line of movies. 5/10