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miroslav-houdek
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Reviews
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Beatiful visually but otherwise nothing new
I like the movie, it's pretty much as good and as nice as the original/first Blade Runner.
Somewhat disappointing is that there are no new thought-provoking ideas. The original book by the brilliant Philippe K. Dick brought a new concept, a new look on our possible future. And the movie was thus not only nice but also interesting.
This new movie just doesn't have that kind of mind-blowingness into it. Where are some Philippe K. Dicks of today? Probably waiting tables in LA, after being refused by all risk averse Hollywood establishment. Artificial intelligence is booming - and likewise the AI safety research. Reading some of the approachable academic papers on AI, singularity, anthropocentric thinking and AI safety are way more exhilarating that these scripts.
Nevertheless, this movie has an interesting take on "chosen-ness" and continues to explore if we can trust our memories and who we are, whether we are real and whether we have some importance as individuals.
Clairevoyant (2021)
Amateur hour (and a half)
This movie is not funny and it's not a good 7+ movie. It's like someone took a camera and did one afternoon improv session, no retakes, no cutting, no script. Some of the situations are taking so much time to conclude, that you just don't believe how they are still beating the dead horse ten minutes later. If you have seen a mockumentary done right, this is just baffling. Actors are quite ok, I would say even excellent. It's just that it's incredibly funless and boring, just wow. Watch the first minute and then multiply by 84 and you have basically seen the movie, which are constant repetetitions of the same motive. I understood how bad the movie was when the joke was the "Indian from India versus Indian from First Nations" trope, which took 15 minutes to finally end and release me from the agony.
Stowaway (2021)
As an aerospace engineer ...
... I approve this movie. It's quite realistic, one of the more realistic movies definitely. It's not entirely clear how the stowaway gets there, but I assume that he must have annoyed someone at work, got smashed over the head with something and stowed behind the panel. That would make a very smart crime I suppose. There might be more explanations for sure. It is a bit disturbing that it's no explained in the movie, but that's how life often is.
Bacurau (2019)
Super average and highly overrated
It was good splatter but the beginning looked like something more than that. Way too long for what it turned out to be.
Ava (2020)
The movie is pretty average ...
... but I have to say, the acting of the actor named Common is so ridiculously bad that it works as little shocks throughout the movie. It's basically a 5/10 movie with one actor acting 1/10, really dragging the whole thing down.
Tales from the Loop (2020)
Visually beatiful but the rest is worthless
Someone was bound to "borrow" the visuals of Simon Stålenhag and make a TV series on top of it. But the the rest of it is just unbearable. No one ever acts like a real human being. If this show was written and directed by AI, then kudoz, I could almost believe it was maybe done by very clumsy humans. Every single scene, every human interaction in the show, is so weird, then basically nothing is weird anymore, just boring.
On the flip side though, if you have never ever seen sci-fi in you life, no Outer Limits, no nothing, and ages-old cliché tropes like time travel and body swaps are absolute news to you, then this might be the stuff for you!
Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)
This one's quite okay
The first Wonder Woman was just terrible and the boring CGI fight with the final boss was taking forever, I was bored out of my mind. But this movie was really decent. Relatable bad guys, the heroes are vulnerable to some extent. I was expecting a disaster but it was really good.
Breach (2020)
Reminded me of Red Dwarf ...
... so I'm giving it 2 instead of 1/10. Really hoped that they would realize that only lager will dissolve the vindaloo monster.
The Favourite (2018)
Fake history movie
This movie explores lesbian love triangle, which absolutely never happened. What is the point of watching a historical movie, when it's just pure fantasy and garbage, with no relationship to historical reality? If you like history movies, watch something else, if you like medieval sex, watch Game of Thrones instead.
Sparks (2013)
Oddly overrated movie
I would give the movie well deserved 3.5 for trying, but seeing as the movie is now rated at 7.2, I feel it is my duty to give it 1 star only, to lower the unjustified (and improbable score), to warn others - to save them the disappointment of thinking that this is above average or even average quality movie.
The acting is okay enough I guess, but no cigar. It was really painful to watch all actress/es try to pretend to have the physique of a superhero, while the cast was actually clearly physically challenged and couldn't kick someone with grace if their life depended on it. But the dialogs, effects, story, continuity ... the whole movie basically, was just terrible. It might be still worth watching, if you want to see indie superhero movie. The story is different enough to be worth it - but just bear in mind, that it's really 3 or 4 out of 10 - not 7 (or 6, or 5).
Europa Report (2013)
Not worth watching
The before landing part of the movie itself is so boring and uneventful that authors decided to cut it into pieces and shuffle them into hard-to-follow non-linear mess, which forces you to pay at least some attention to all those things not happening there. It is hard to imagine that flight to Jupiter will be that boring - there might be flybys, awesome views of Jupiter approaching, there might be interesting problems to be solved, there might be interesting scientific sub-missions to be worked on during flight and the crew should be a group of interesting people who discuss interesting things on the long journey. All that would have sparked interest in science in the viewer, as well as interest in the heroes and what happens to them. That does not happen at all, I did not learn anything and did not get interested in what happens with those 1-D cardboard characters aboard.
Movie itself is without expensive stunning special effects. Which I thought to be a good thing, as I expected this to be offset by incredible attention to detail and realism. Needless to say, this was also a disappointment and there are many disturbing details in the movie - a footage of departing command module was clearly a stock footage of a launcher with dual payload capsule. How would astronauts get in? How would they get out if the mission was postponed? In another shot, there is an entry-level consumer camera being unpacked by one astronaut, where in reality, nobody would pay the fuel cost to get a 500 USD digital camera with crappy set lens to orbit and then to a gazillion dollar space mission. They really could have looked at DSLRs used aboard ISS and borrowed some of that high-end stuff for that one scene. Then one astronauts talks to mission control, and they tell him: "Hey, we see here that valve X is damaged", and the astronauts goes: "Yeah, way ahead of you, Joe is already fixing it", at which point some female astronaut says: "Yeah, and don't forget to tell them that this panel is fried". That is not how this works at all, that is not how you fix or communicate problems in space.
The only interesting event during the flight did not really strike me as if that the best of the best are going out to repair something. More like slightly drunk overly confident guys wiggling stuff around, applying brute force immediately and recklessly. Which does blow back in a weird round-about way that does not make much sense ... but why wouldn't there be crucial communications RF boards outside of the ship and full of hydrazine as well, *sigh*. The ensuing problem solving is also not what I'd expect from best of astronauts, it's just a plot ploy with zero effort at realistic portrayal of characters or space flight.
The after-landing part is more of people continuing to behave unprofessionally and recklessly, combined with efforts to create suspense by cameras having bad reception and pointing everywhere else than where the action is. At that point I was not interested in what happens to characters and wished for this movie to end.
The movie is neither eye nor brain candy. I can see how the crew did not have money to make the movie visually stunning but I fail to understand how they did not have time to make it realistic and interesting, which both could have been done almost for free.