Reviews

Huge Holes Everywhere

Looks good in the trailers doesn't it, I mean who wouldn't want to watch a time travel version of Lost with Walking dead character types... everyone, because that's all it is a remake of Lost with scenarios stolen from the formulaic guff that's being pumped out of the streaming channels nowadays.

And guess what...its season finale simply sets up season 2...dint see that coming from a mile away...I did, I did we see all the plot twists and reveals.

And as for spoilers...who in this day and age writes a time travel paradox show, without understanding high school causality? I mean has none of teh writers seen back to the future? Or at least Rick & Morty?

So its seems they're quite happy to use paradox consequences that suit the plot, but ignore the same paradoxes that would also be affected by those very same actions>

Here's the spoilers as an example

if mom, has to take her young version of her husband to a portal which puts him back in 1984 from 10,000bc so he can grow up and become her husband otherwise her son who is with her in 10,000BC will cease to exists....then the fact that she only fell into the portal in the sinkhole was because she ran back to save that very same son in present day, would also fail to be a part of that causality, ergo she wouldn't be in 10,000bc to put the son in the portal..one could argue that its cyclic, but then if its cyclic as one of the cast tries poorly to explain then linearity overlaps the cyclic states...meaning she could not fail to put him into the portal...even if she didn't try...because she's there in 10,000BC

also some guff about what starts off as her husband having these psychic visions, which turn out to be memories from his youth in 10,000BC cannot include the plot reveal that he knew were her ring was buried when she lost it...because he wasn't there as a child when she lost it to remember that. Not to mention that ring surviving 10,000 years in the found and coming out as shiny as the day it was made..seems the writers at this stage hadn't decided this particular reasoning, so again fail!

The plot is riddled with this nonsense contrived plot holes, which suit a very basic narrative...to the point you spend most of it screwing your face up saying,,,how can that happen?...if?...that doesn't make sense?

If you don't understand basic causality...don't write a time travel film.

'Lost' in the plot holes is the tagline to this howler.

Don't get invested,, they were running out of ideas by episode 5 and budget it seemed as despite the fx budget being spent in the opening scene and from that point on its one poorly animated bear and one woolly mammoth...other than a couple of birds its mainly just some people stood in a field hapless at basic survival skills who keep getting themselves injured, shot or dying only to be perfectly well an episode later. Oh, not to mention they are in the ice age, but its beautiful sunny weather apart from 1 episode where the snow doesn't even last that episode out...

also ask yourself since at least 1 mile of buildings fell into this hole, skyscrapers the works...why is there only like 30 people down there in episode one, filtering out to about 12 by episode 5...did they just wander off...no buildings fell through, despite seeing at least 40 fall in, and a few cars and a bus....honestly lame!

...there's not two seasons in this formulaic guff.

On the plus side, compared to the David Lynch version, I could actually follow the plot...on the down side, now I understand the plot, I realise why David Lynch avoided following it.

The suspension of disbelief in the logic and scale of this drawn out tooth extraction, is your old trope about a prophesied special Harry Potter/jesus/avatar/king Arthur/endless other "you're a wizard harry" coming of age and finally their powers and destiny are revealed story.

Combine this with the darkest dismal grey but over scaled cinematography supposedly set on a desert planet which has a super hot sun...you'd expect to actually feel the major issues that are supposedly the adversaries of life and development of this planet done so well many times in any desert based film, sadly not really explored other than telling you its dry. So how about letting us feel like its a dried out hot planet, not just an inconvenient plot hanger when it suits.

I'll give it scale...for some reason everything is built huge, from walls to doors which are neither aesthetically pleasing or serve functional design purpose. So why did anyone bother building halls and rooms with 200 foot tall doors that they can walk down in ceremony like kings in GOT??? 10 people who walk through them a day? Why on a resource tight planet, are you building pointless empty grand gery and drab palaces???...because its the future...Erm ok!

Theres these sandworms, what 300m long did they say? The size of tall buildings anyway, who survive on this planet and manage to grow to that size by eating what???? The occasional desert lost soul, and huge building size mining tanks...tasty! These creatures hear sound vibrations of your footprints on the desert as long as you walk with a stable beat...in which case they ignore you and carry on swimming through the sand crapping out spice. Which is easily avoided by maybe not walking, and using some of the endless hovering anti-grav tech, but for some reason people tend to prefer to walk across this desert. Because...well plot requires it.

Theres the opportunity to terraform the planet we're told, but they decided not to and to live in a wasteland while they mined the spice, because "Spice". Yes, they couldn't terraform tthe whole thing because they found spice and that was a better commodity, however nobody thought to terraform a small part of an entire planet they live on for some reason, so they live in hell.

There's some spice hooked natives whoiare in the millions, but need rescuing by the boy, even though they are better fighters than any man has ever seen, and outnumber the bad guys like a million to one...but they take the inhumanity and suffering while awaiting our Harry potter to finaly arrive and rescue them from the tirrany....because...well prophecy, they need him to lead them, without him they're busy recycling spit, because water is so scarce.

This is set around an emperor "of theknown universe" with millions of planets under his command, double crossing the growing power of "house atraidees" (sp) which he fears (about 100 people I reckon, lead by our Harry Potter, his mum and dad. So being so powerful Emperor ruling over planets and solar systems he sets them up to fail, loyal subjects that they always were and seemingly not plotting against him, they need to die anyway (but not mum and boy thats part of the agreement). The army of miners who had been plundering the planet and being bad guys in general to the locals are in on the plot, they hand over the keys to the fiefdom of the spice planet to house atraidees. With crap mining materials so that the good guys will fail, and tehy swoop in and kill off whos left, which have not been killed by the harsh nature of the planet. After like 5 die by a worm eating one spice harvester, house artraidees are sufficiently weak enough for Hakkans to return and launch an attack of their 1,000 vs Atraidees what 50? (remember this is the emperor of the universe and an interstellar battle were meant to believe), with ships the size of moons, and millions of crew. (off camera for convenience).

The tech, wow I love the dragon fly ships, awesome, nice original concept...despite being 10,000 ADish, people fight hand to hand with knives and tiny assasin drone needles that look like beetles, because guns are not suited to the plot.

Oh, the agreement not to kill atraidees mum and son because theyre part of some matriarchal dynasty, but just because the Hakaans agreed not to kill them, there's no reason they shouldn't just keep letting them go assuming their dead in a Austin Powers Dr Evil assumption, where they use their super powers of "telling people what to do" Jedi mind trick is developing. And used to convince baddies to let them go. Yawn!

But yes, its huge budget and huge scale spent badly so you know your seeing a lot of money and therefore something so expensive should be great...but its really not, when you look through the cracks, its superficially awesome in scale.. but cannot live up to the grandeur it pretends to be.

Good visual effects does not make a great film, this is not great film and this idea that throwing money at effects means something is good is becoming all to common, its disappointing that people nowadays are so easily tricked into believing they're seeing something significant. Please look through that veil of effects and scale, and look at the drivel you are actually watching.

What is going on here? The characters are all borderline bipolar, one minute there's dislike and distrust, next undying commitment.

There's no fluidity or relationship building. Everything is ham fisted and forced into the next dynamic, with little consideration of making your hook onto any particular thread.

If you've never seen this film before...don't worry you've seen it all before.

Even the whole bakery arch goes on the predictable odds against, to all that is needed is someone to believe, to no customers, all looks dire, followed by a review in a magazine....then happy ending with little development.

The whole film is just a series of barely connected scenes and even barely-er connected characters. The only one with a decent character is killed off in the opening sequence. Throw in some filler scenes like the grandmothers circus act??? What? Why? What did this lead to...oh nothing, much like every other scene.

Then don't mention it again...throw in a love scene that comes out of nowhere, then drop that...tick checkbox romance, was there anything funny? Nope, not that I remember, rule out comedy, oh and drama....nothing dramatic because there was zero investment in any development of anything.

oh, then there was the paternity test scene, like they decided a subplot of could she be the male leads daughter...but that's mentioned twice before, then they're at the most ridiculous paternity test clinic you've ever seen, but you don't really care one way or the other if these two are related, because it's not been a feature of the film.

In short, too much money spent by the investors on a film without any originality or substance. Three stars is being kind, because I have to credit the performances would be fine, given a half decent script... this is a long way from half decent.

"If you've seen one, you've seen them all", mother used to say as we sat at the breakfast table.she always sat there for serious discussion. "It's all sex and that, unrequilted love" she said, of course she meant unrequited, but I knew what she meant. "Have you been to the allotments?", she was right of course, about seeing one, seeing all. "aye, I went yesterday" I said, I hadn't, but she wouldn't know.

That's Alan Bennett. Rinse and repeat, throw in some thing out the ordinary usually some narrative of a forbidden sexual encounter that he's trying to mitigate, and a passive aggressive dig at some racial grouping, just once mind, as not to make it the feature of the ramble, usually Indian, harping back to the 60s mindset he never really left behind, casual racism that were meant to think comes from the mind of some suburban housewife, so he can maintain cognitive dissonance from his own narrative, There must be one in every episode, then he will make some statement as thought the character is accepting of that culture....at a distance, as though he has the right to be a judge and then benevolent with his acceptance, "applaud me, I'm live and let live". while he projects this abstract acceptability of mitigation for perceived societal sexual deviations for his own middle class mind.

Meanwhile you've set up a minor twist, that comes as no shock to anyone, as you reveal it in quarterly sections, little hint a quarter of the way in, a little reinforcement of if halfway, big confirmation 3/4 of the way through, followed by quiet reflection of the shock, opinion, and acceptance of the last act. Which probably mentions the original opening clue as a closing statement, to show you that the clues were there all along.

As for the wooden, predictable staring out of the windows of the actors. Clearly none of them got to see any of the others works, and all opted to go for the same basic drama 101. Deep in thought, pause, look off from the camera, wait, 3,2,1, next line. Or juicy gossip you have to say with immediacy. Look into the camera, say the line, pull face afterwards to reflect smaller or "what do you think of that?" expression.

It is great to return drama to the tv, play for today is long missed. But it's about time the world woke up to the fact that Alan Bennett has one story, that he's been piping out for his, and our lifetimes. The tragedy is, most people can't see it.

I clicked contains spoilers, but that's an understatement, I've just about spoiled everything Bennett has ever written.because it's all the same, made more evident by watching this series in quick succession.

Independently, if no other er Bennett work was around, then for sure, excellent, imaginative. Cutting and thought provoking. It's when you see all these works together, and reflect on them and his others, you suddenly realise...they're all the same.

"Aye, you've seen one, you've seen them all".

I gave up on Star Trek after being a huge fan in the 90s with the next gen, Ds9, Voyager because it really went nowhere. Then this came along in series one, and I was amazed, finally a StarTrek which engaged adults and had a sense of characters who weren't pretent , holier than though, diplomats, but swearing, killing, procreating people I could sense a state of familiarity with.

StarTrek grew up.

Season two...return to the drivel, pumped out episode after episode, emotional, predictable, happy endings. I just watched my last episode, serum gets a cold, then miraculously gets better, "seeing th light" after an inevitable death build up.

Yawn...

They ruined it AGAIN....the evolution of StarTrek into the 21st century, now sadly returns to where every episode has unboldly been before, over and over again.

I don't know who was behind this change of direction, form a long awaited originality back into mediocrity, but whoever it is...we'll done you're dullness is exemplary. Sadly the great score this series has, probably came from series one, and the reviewers have not yet come back to correct their score. Why? It makes no sense.

While watching this film my sone and I devised the Aquaman game. The premise is simple. You watch this film with a timer running and a pen and notepad. Every time you see a line, concept, scene or cliche which is undeniably stolen from another film you write the time and the reference down. The person with the most wins.

The whole film is just scenes from some of the most successful films of all time, strung together in some sort of "guaranteed formula" concept of ensuring success, that patently has failed to work. IIt'snot a bad film, it's not as terrible as people make out, but it has too many plot holes and failures to allow yourself to escape into the universe and put the faults behind you to make any real constructed frame which makes the film whole. But, no joke its like watching every film you have ever seen before strung into one, with scenes from star wars, Warcraft, harry potter, game of thrones, how to train your dragon,"King Arthur", Avatar, Finding Nemo, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribean, Hercules....and I don't mean these are similar themes, they are full identifiable scenes!

Throughout the film you question choices of rational, like why did the mother stay away so long? it tries to explain, but the answer doesnt make sense? Overall switch your brain off and enjoy the ride, if you bother to think in the film you will quickly turn into dispising it,

I couldn't suspend my disbelief at any point in this movie. It makes no sense. It's basically the "taking lives" premise where a soul passes from one person to the next adopting their lives. But due to terminal decay the person, who is at heart some sort of vampiric good guy has to jump from one person to the next killing each host as he goes, but only manages it seems to cups the host body for a day or two.

Despite this, he seems to attempt to continue the hosts lifes normal daily routines..why? He also wastes time disposing of the life drained corpses...which would appear to be in a state of severe decay...and by doing so. Makes their deaths looks more suspicious...why? This of course wastes most of the day he has in each host. He also seems concerned that the cops are catching him up...yet he would never have the same body, so could easily provide allibys for all the previous deaths...why?

It reminded me of a low budget student getting his first big budget script. Dialogue was poor.

It wasn't a terrible film, it was quite well made...but the conceptual plot, story and the dialogue really let it down.

There is not one aspect or moment of this film that in not cliche. Every character, every moment, every concept, every scene has been done almost every film ever made. Somehow this film has managed to bring to screen the epitome of action film, cliche. This is not a film for a movie enthusiast. If in the unlikely event, you have never ever seen any film before, you'll love it.

It would be impossible to really give spoilers in this film by revelation definition, yet I am loathed to tick the box, because I have to point out my major issue with it, which is its whole seen before theme, nothing happens that you wouldn't expect. If it was some 14yo boys home made script that he put on at a film festival, I would give him a very patronising "well done". The fact that Hollywood have now reached the stage where they are financing this drivel regularly makes me fear for the whole industry and the "dumbing down" of humanity.

Even the soundtrack, as good as it was, classic black-woman soul which was totally what you expect to give the character (Jodi's nurse) some sort of melancholy, which was the only layer of a very thin onion of her one dimensional character. Other than that every other character was absolutely one dimensional and seen in a thousand films before; you have the good guy at heart bank robber, his not so smart brother that ropes him "back in", the old woman that is long in the tooth seen it all before, the giant muscle guy that is loyal but not smart, the whiny rich guy who always gets his own way (obviously deserves to die just for being mouthy), the dumb Oedipus son trying to please his dad who knows hes dumb, the rich (father) megalomaniac who rules the city...OMG the list goes on but ultimately concludes with the Russian femme Nikita assassin...typing this list of characters is giving me nausea! and an endless supply of dumb henchmen who seem to get killed for merely being henchmen, even though the people killing them are meant to be the people you ingratiate with. And, of course their interactions with each other are playing into that personality in every sense of the word. You neither like nor hate any of the characters, they all coma and go at a whim, oh, speaking of which there was wedged in some "cop" that carried the story nowhere, had no purpose, revealed no bigger story that for some reason despite being a 20+ storey hotel, had to be hidden from the guests (all three of them) by wheeling her between rooms before she wanders off...was she the girlfriend of the writer or something and promised a part? did she will it in a Facebook competition? what, why? never mind, I've wasted too much thought on this film already.

This film could not get more predictable, cliche and opiatic for the mindless zombies who will give this anything more. don't waste your time...you will, because, the trailer makes it look great, I couldn't wait... take my work...nothing to see here!

Where to even begin, respectable cast, good basic premise...so poorly executed and poorly written that no amount of quality casting can save it. I am so surprised that actors like Grant Masters took this role. His role is particularly bad. Usually films like this put together a set of random individuals which don't know or trust each other, and that just about works. But to say that this is a family behaving like irrational, paranoid freaks, uncaring when any of them die, often being the cause of each others suffering. Its not in any way credible. Not a single character was relatable. they all behaved ridiculously and unsuitably to the situation. Which begs the question why did they accept the roles of the most one dimensional, stereotypes of amateur film making, its clear from the outset its a ridiculous film with dialogue and development. And then, just towards the end, it turns from a suspense thriller into some sort of alien, satanic horror film. If this had been some amateur filmmakers attempted entry into a film festival, you could accept it as a good foot in the door to progress into real film making. But since this clearly has budget, well known actors and expensive filmography...what the hell? there's good scripts out there that will never get made while some idiot is throwing financing at this tosh! Well I'm sure they will have learned their lesson, this film is a bust! It will be a financial flop, and every actor has took a step back in their career.

Twenty minutes in to an empty auditorium. I was ready to go. I have in my fifty years only ever walked out on one movie. This would've been the second, but my wife insisted we made the most of our evening out together and stuck with it. Forty minutes later she had fell asleep and I was stuck watching it. The self indulgence of the director was overwhelming, the script had no inspiration, you kind of literally expect "inpsiration" in a religious film. The scenery... was it filmed in Ireland or something, I can't remember a scene with sand or sun. Making it a miserable film even more miserable by its dull Northern European weather. So, how about the story of Mary Magdelane. Nothing...not a jot, no intrigue, no character development, just a stale one sided cardboard woman who decides to join a bunch of travelers passing through her town because they wanted to put some sort of woman's rights swing into the film to connect with modern movements that simply didn't fit in the movie. It picked out key points in the forty plus year old Jesus...didn't he die at 33? He,s looking rough for a 33 year old. Maybe they should have gone for the cultural appropriation angle instead of the women's movement one to apease it pc wallies, since not a single character had correct features for that part of the world.

Don't get me wrong, actors act and play people who are not them, so I don't cave to this nonsense. But it did stand out that all the characters wer western, even the extras virtually.

So yeas, basically about five seminal moments from the Jesus story, blind man made to see, Lazarus raised from the dead, last supper, betrayed with a kiss, crucified and saw in the garden at gethsemane....that's the Jesus story, we all know that... in between you would have thought they would've kind of created at least some interesting stuf about Mary Magdalene ? You'd have thought. No 5his one dimensional, "I will be faithfully by your side" character basically opposes any credit they had at women's individuality as she follows Jesus around like a sheep, listening to him whine about his lot in life...I wouldn't want hang around with him for ten minutes, let alone follow him and launch a new era of religious doctrine. The only really information that developed MM in any way was at the end, after the film, where it does the what happened next text on screen, where it tells us that MM was recognised by the Vatican as an apostle recently and not as the whore she is popularly credited as, as that now becomes documentary evidence that she or any of the others even existed.

There is so much interesting and great esoteric concepts in many books about MM that could've at least been posed...but they left this all out for a boring film discussing the most boring in between gaps of the key points of Jesus story mentioned above that without that context could've easily been about Brian, or any other prophet wandering around "Ireland" 2000 years ago...I can't be bothered looking where it was filmed, but Blackpool beach would've been more convincing.

Nothing, but nothing interesting or new, or dynamic about this film. It's quite possibly the dullest film ever made.

What was the point? This film is a section from a man's life, as most films are, but in the vast majority of cases the reason it forms entertainment is that the section of a man's life in films usually chronicles the unusual or extraordinary. Hologram for a king does not. It simply tells of a man who goes to do some work in Saudi and has a benign cyst on his back that he expresses a very slight concern for. He seemingly has a problem with rest and can't get up on time for three days, this may be anxiety and jetlag, meets a woman and decides to take a job there. That's it! There's your spoiler, not that there is anything to spoil. Usually that part is just the underlying premise upon which you build the extra-ordinary story, the writer in this case has chosen to omit that part. Of course the performances are solid, you can't go wrong with Hanks and the ensemble that accompanied him was equally good at delivering a convincing "I'm a normal person", but then how hard can that be, most of us practice this all our lives. Most frustratingly was the sub-plots that went nowhere, and believe me there was lots of them, loose ends that the viewer clings on to hoping that there is some significance to these characters, it is only as the film ends you realise there was not, they were pointless! These would be his estranged ex-wife who is trying to force him to sell some house to pay for his Daughters College, this subplot ends there with no resolution. There's his daughter who is dropping out, and is sympathetic to the dad (Hanks), he chats to her through skype, that's the full development of that plot. Most interestingly is the Saudi cab driver (Alexander Black) great character, you think…this is going somewhere…you think. No, his plot is being accused of an affair that he is not having. He initially instils intrigue, as though he knows something about the development that Hanks has been brought across to work on, intimating that it is some kind of false project or scam, turns out that plot doesn't get developed, and he doesn't have any more light to shed than that. Oh, then there's the love interest who throws herself at Hanks, but it turns out he's not that interested and there's another sub-plot dropped, instead he falls for his doctor, an in-divorce proceedings Muslim woman doctor (Sarita Choudhury), who despite the strict protocol of women's behaviour in Saudi and the fact she has shown him no interest what so ever, is very Americanised and simply begins an affair as the result of an e-mail he sends her…if only it was that easy! Ooh, in one particular gripping bit, he goes and gets his team some Wi-Fi…get your popcorn ready for that bit!

And there you have it, that's the film, sorry to spoil it but spoilers alerted, although I firmly believe there is nothing to spoil, there is no film here, it's just actors doing what they do.