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Reviews
Vivarium (2019)
Fabulous film
This is a very thoughtful film. The cuckoo chick pushing the rival chicks out of the nest is an analogy for the overt plot of the film. At another level it's a film about connection and sense of purpose; how empty our lives are without meaningful connections and relationships, about how parenting is not just an act of care, rather an act of connection. Each of the protagonists react differently to the alien in the nest: a violent visceral rejection and a search for escape, or an attempt at connection and meaning. Both, in the end, are futile, and leave us with a sense of emptiness. It's nature, sometimes it is mean.
This is well cast, well acted, and has a great set. The minimalism only intensifies the anomie.
Silo (2023)
Ascension, but underground
This is "Ascension", taken off the generation starship, and buried in a silo, and not as well done. It's not an original plot idea, merely the latest in 'the world is a simulation designed to control you' movie plots, so, in a way, we all know what is coming, so the tension has to be created in the execution, rather than the unexpected plot twist. It's not badly done, not enough world building given the number of episodes, and some of the antagonists are rather lazy stereotypes, but there's more to come in season two. I just hope that it can break out of the predictable direction of season one.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: The Elysian Kingdom (2022)
Star Trek writers on acid
Someone put some funny mushrooms in the writer's tea pot. This was the result. Best enjoyed, only enjoyed, on the same mushroom tea from the magic tea pot.
Official Secrets (2019)
Well worth a look
Its rare to see a film with a strong moral core that doesn't moralise. Excellent nuanced performances, a well paced story that examines the complexity of information gathering, intelligence, and how Governments subvert the apparatus of the State to work for their own political interets.
The Princess Bride (1987)
A perfect Movie
The perfect movie: perfect script adaption, perfect casting, perfectly filmed and edited. Suitable for every age... over and over.
The Dead Don't Die (2019)
I don't understand all the bad reviews
This is one of the great zombie comedy genre films, wry humour, good performances from an all-star cast and just enough splatter. It doesn't end well, another pleasant change for zombie movies that are usually redemption stories of some kind.
The Tomorrow War (2021)
Almost indescribably bad
No, I've sat here for 5 minutes trying to think about where to start, but it is indescribably bad.
Concept was intruiging but just very very poor at every level from script writing, casting, directing, science. Just. Bad.
Midway (2019)
Meh
Battlestar Galactica, but set in the Pacific, and being a movie, rather than a multi-season television series, without the character development
The Twilight Zone: You Might Also Like (2020)
I don't understand the bad reviews
By far the most enigmatic, surreal and interesting episode of the series, the only one like the original Twilight Zone of my childhood
The Aeronauts (2019)
It's not meant to be an action film
It's not a Hollywood adventure blockbuster action film, it's unfair to criticize it for that. It's really a film about relationships, trauma and social expectations, and it does that quite well
U.F.O. (2012)
Unengaging
A multi-million dollar budget and they can't afford a steady-cam?
...or a scriptwriter?
Rim of the World (2019)
oh dear
Lazy character development with race and gender stereotypes, lazy plot development, poor CGI, there's little to recommend this movie.
The Handmaid's Tale (2017)
Emotionally disturbing television
This is not a series for the action movie generation. There are no superheroes, no fast paced action scenes. Most disturbingly it s not an empowering series, it's a series about disempowerment, about complicity, about silence. This makes for disturbing viewing as the viewer is also passive, disempowered, and left to process disturbed affects. It evolves slowly, far too slowly from some, who prefer easy rapid solutions and happy resolutions, but that sense of slow unremitting oppression and suffocation is exactly what the show is written and filmed to convey. The show is paced so you feel trapped, feel like it's just taking too long, perhaps that's why there are comments here about how the pace could be 'improved' with a 3 episode series?
This won't make the show popular with everyone as the polarizing reviews here reflect, but it's such a pleasing change from the usual vapid shallow television that is the staple milk from the cathode ray nipple. I accept that the message here isn't subtle, but really, how do you write a subtle show about disempoerment and abuse?