marrich2009 Reviews

Terminator Genisys (2015)

Hollywood soup for the catatonic

[1/10 · 11 July 2015]

Against all odds I was amazed I made it to the end of this movie. I only wish I could go back in time and tell my wife to talk me out of the suggestion I made to see Terminator Genisys. The original Terminator movie is a cult classic and yes, the remade scenes entertained me on a nostalgia level but as for the rest of the script, it played out like an episode of neighbours. The acting was terrible, the casting was terrible, the action sequences...If I said, give me $170 million dollars for me to take a dump and then I'll feed it to the masses and make a profit, you'd think I was insane - yet Hollywood does it again. Another 3 dimensional turd (yes I sadly paid the extra for the 3D which only really amounted to feeling like someone was actually shi**ing in my face) served up for the intellectually bereft to eat popcorn too. I don't know where these great reviews are coming from, but they're certainly not from Ireland, because in my cinema there was a general feeling of agitation and boredom about an hour into the movie.

It felt like Arnie was trying to save the movie by explaining the plot to us, which simply didn't come together, as well as trying to plead with us that his acting days weren't over, even if they were limited to playing an emotionless robot - i.e. the role he has played in all his movies since the 80s.

So here's the spoilers, if you can call them that:

If I knew that a computer programme was being developed that was going to cause the end of humanity, or at least try to and I had a time machine that would enable me to "destroy skynet before it's born" would I really jump to just 24 hours before Judgement Day? I think I may have had the foresight to nip it in the bud a bit earlier.

If I was in a bus that flipped and was completely mangled, hanging off a bridge, and I was initially sitting in a passenger seat without a seat belt, I would expect...well..I wouldn't expect anything, I'd be dead. Hardened soldier as he is though, Kyle Reece steps out with the obligatory scratch on his forehead. At one point I thought they were going to reveal that they were all T1000's, the amount of physical abuse they could take.

If I could essentially break myself into a floating atomic state, I wouldn't then spend my time struggling to pull myself off a lamp-post through my guts - I would simply float round it, or at least open up the hole so I could walk away without a struggle.

If I was a hardened female self made soldier, I would expect that I would show some signs of physical fitness and muscular definition - sorry Emilia, but if the fate of humanity rested on you even being able to act like a militaryesque hero, I'd be guessing it was game over. She looked like she was struggling to run with the props. And yes I know "militrayesque" is not a word, so give it 3 minutes after reading this and it will probably appear in a US dictionary.

If I had created an explosion that was enough to liquidate an entire compound around me, I doubt I would put my faith in a steel door to save me from the blast. Especially one that a sword handed T1000 has no problem puncturing with with his sword hands.

I could go on...and on.

As for the chemistry between the two leads, if there was a formula for this and we could create a bomb with it to be used on "Judgement Day", the fallout would turn everyone into Keanu Reeves, or Pinocchio.

Just awful.

All I can say is that all of you so called fans of the original that loved this movie, must have been the result of a 70's fertility drug gone wrong. Seriously, watch it again with your brain stem attached and tell me this even comes close to quality cinema.

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Unfairly criticised is an understatement

[9/10 · 12 February 2015]

OK, the main thread is simple blockbuster fare, but this has so much allusion thrown in it to make this a sci-fi classic and it is in exactly the vein of the previous Wachowski movies. It has obvious elements of the Matrix, Cloud Atlas, and V for Vendetta thrown in, yet so many have said otherwise. Did they really digest this movie? On top of that, you can throw in a pinch of Dune, Battlefield Earth, The Last Starfighter, anything by Terry Gilliam (as well as Terry Gilliam himself!) and yes, Flash Gordon, amongst probably a dozen or so other sci-fi movies.

Like its predecessors, you have the usual commentary of social pyramids, corporate agendas, inhumane consumerism and the trance of ignorance to it all that we like to walk around in. There's the hint (and not subtle either) that gods and angels are simply advanced extra-terrestrials that have been spanning the universe for millennia, a touch of Robin Collyn's "Prehistoric Germ Warfare", explanations for our continually alleged sightings of "Greys", the post-modern mish-mash of Egyptian, Roman and Greek civilisations being elevated universal slave drivers, the future of gene mapping, the idea that by probability the thousands of genes in our genome may be perfectly replicated over time to effectively reincarnate a person, the future of stem cell research combined with isolating the genes for cell reproduction, and perhaps a whole lot more that could be picked out from a second viewing.

I'd say that the problem is that these things aren't spelled out, but I'd be lying. I hate to offend the critics but I have a feeling they lack the imagination to see beyond the blockbuster narrative.

Gone Girl (2014)

If Fincher was looking to UNDO himself...he has succeeded.

[1/10 · 14 December 2014]

I'm only writing this review because I noticed this appears in the top 3 of IMDb's "Top Movies of 2014" at the time of writing. This in itself was enough to make me p*ss my trousers, but I then went on to read some of the reviews, after which I completely soiled myself.

I'm all for suspension of disbelief, especially when watching Hollywood fare, but how is anyone buying this bullsh*t - and people are making comparisons with Alfred Hitchcock!?

It's as if the second half of the movie forgets the first half had happened. Let's look at what unfolds:

Psycho woman fakes own murder and plants enough clues around to implicate her husband. All the clues are so contrived that, for a short while, even the detective suspects all is not what it seems.

Meanwhile psycho wife has skipped out of town and disguised herself by dying her hair slightly less blonde and smacking herself in the cheek with a hammer, presumably to look like some trailer trash victim of domestic abuse and consequently giving her an excuse to wear Jackie Onasis sunglasses. All of this is keenly noted by the perceptive woman she moves next door to, yet despite watching her story on the news every day, her actual identity completely illudes the observant neighbour.

Despite psycho woman's meticulous planning and care, everything unravels when she accidentally drops a money belt (how does this happen?) with all of her cash in it, whilst, wait for it, playing crazy golf thus tempting said woman next door to rob her, which she does with the aid of her hick boyfriend. Calculating psycho woman sits by and does nothing at this stage. Instead choosing to call up an ex boyfriend and potentially throwing her entire plan to the wall. Luckily (phew!) her ex boyfriend is so obsessed with her (no-one knows why at this stage, or even cares) that he puts her up in his lake house with security cameras everywhere for her safety. He is quite happy for an innocent man to be sentenced to death it appears, despite having a visit from the guy in which he implies that there may be more to his wife than meets the eye. He does have very expensive sheets though.

Meanwhile, despite their best efforts, animators fail to make the Ben Affleck model appear in any way emotional or human. Not even CGI has any effect, so they just give up an go home. By now, no-one in the audience cares and Ben is replaced with a peace of plasticine that was left over when Tony Heart created Morph. Nobody, not even the supporting actors, notice.

Just when you think things couldn't become more contrived, psycho wife ties a ribbon round her ankle and throws some wine down her top to emulate the fact that she has been raped (?), or had a miscarriage, or just, I don't know, "Was that her favourite top she threw wine over, because she looks very upset in front of the porch camera."

She then has what clearly appears to be (for the sake of the cameras), consensual sex with her ex, before cutting his throat with a box cutter and making a dramatic return to her husband, without so much as a call to the police. Falling into her play-doh spouses arms, she is then rushed to hospital, where she convinces local detectives and the FBI that she was abducted and held as a prisoner, by her ex, this whole time. Detectives and FBI suddenly suffer from complete amnesia and forget entirely about the murder set up. If she was abducted by her ex storming into the house and whacking her with a club, why does she have no injuries, is she some kind of self healing salamander. She'd only been gone for just over a week. Why did no'one notice this altercation, or the ex-boyfriend appearing in the middle of the day - after all, the neighbour noticed the door was open? Where did the several pints of blood come from on the kitchen floor? Why was the lounge area staged? Did the ex-boyfriend leave a slightly charred copy of her diary in her husband's father's oven? Even window-putty Nick has the sense to ask "Erm, how did she cut his throat if she was tied up all the time as she claims?" "To which the uninquisitive police response is, wait for it, "Can't you just be happy your wife is home?"

"Yes, of course, we should invite Bundy, Manson and the Wests around and celebrate"

It's good to know that all you need to do, to hoodwink the FBI is act like a damsel in distress, wrap some rope around your wrists too tightly, and re-enact a scene from Big Brother using a champagne bottle for them to forget any evidence that may implicate you in murder or conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

I'm sorry but even as some sort of metaphor about domestic bliss or mass media, this film fails on so many levels.

Total sh*t.