Film Reviews by Other Worlds

OK , lets be honest . Even before you put this on you can pretty much guess the plot. Yes there are monsters , yes they fight , humans look on in awe and wonder and fear.

Nobody comes to a godzilla movie without a very clear idea of what to expect and what they want. If it is a godzilla movie you came for you've arrived at your destination. If you took a wrong turn somewhere and came here expecting some other movie with an insightful and subtle human interest story told in artfully constructed , grammatical sentences you are going to be dissapointed.

Don't get me wrong it does makes an attempt at a plot , but it doesn't really bear much scrutiny so forget it and just look forward to the next collapsing building , demolished city or exploding volcano !

As someone with an interest in space and spaceflight in general I thought that over the years I'd seen pretty much all the footage publicly available as far as the Apollo 11 mission was concerned so while I was looking forward to watching this documentary, I wasn’t particularly expecting to see anything new. How wrong I was, I would guess, that at least 70% or more of the footage used was new to me so I suspect it may be new to you as well. So, thumbs up for that.

It also benefits significantly from , firstly, not having a contemporary voice over telling you what you are looking at , instead there are just the recordings made at the time so the story is allowed to unfold in its own way and secondly by the clever use of very simple on-screen graphics to reveal telemetry changes. I thought that worked really well.

All in all, a great watch, I'd recommend it to anyone.

I have to admit , looking at the acting talent on display at this stage of the franchise things do seem to have thinned out more than a bit since the start of the series. The cast tries hard , but they aren't particularly helped by the script and the direction makes the whole movie feel like we've been here and done that.

Its not quite as bad as some say , not a ringing endorsement admittedly, and if you are a Marvel die-hard you should certainly be able to power through to the end.

It all feels very, very tired however and if this is not the end of the X-Men story arc I truly fear what might happen next.

Deadwood was a great TV series and since HBO fumbled its closure fans have been promised and waited for a film that would allow the various hanging threads of the story to be brought together to a satisfactory conclusion. In the first years after the ending of s3 hopes were high but gradually faded as the sets were struck and the actors dispersed to greater or lesser successes. Its a measure of how fondly remembered the show is that 13 years after the shows demise we finally get the film we were promised and not only that but so many of the shows original caste reunited for it.

However Deadwood the TV series was an intricate, oiled and supremely well balanced engine of dialogue, set, acting and direction and it has, so to speak been out in the rain unused for a very long time. On reflection, it was unrealistic of me to expect it to spark back to life exactly as I remember it. The dialogue which once sounded so natural, now sounds a little forced and some of the characters are reprised more successfully than others. The plot is in truth light, and is told over the space of nearly two hours. In the original series the same ground might have been covered in about 25 mins and yet even with all that time on its hands many of the most colourful characters only get a few minutes of screentime.

For fans of the show I find myself conflicted between advising you to watch the movie or to remember the show at its height instead. Perhaps the best I can suggest is that you watch the movie but come to it with a less expectations of it than I did.

For those who don't know the TV series and are wondering if the movie can be watched on its own merits I would say yes but I would advise against it, the show had a lot of characters and in allowing all of them to have a bit of screentime makes the move 'flit' around a lot in a way I'm not sure I'd be able to make sense of if I hadn't seen the show. Instead I'd advise you to watch the original series, then at least, you'll understand what all the fuss was about.

I really enjoyed the first two of the franchise , yes they were over-the-top in terms of violence but I always felt there was an undercurrent of humour too ; not in this case though ,sadly ,no humour at all just the violence in all its repetitive , tedious forms.

I can say with some certainty that the people making the movie had an awful lot more fun than I had watching it , I kept waiting for the humour to kick in and then found my attention drifting and then the credits started. If that sounds like a fun way to spend the evening I can thoroughly recommend the movie if not then 'move-on' nothing to see here.

The format of this probably works if you are viewing it as it was originally broadcast , i.e. with a week between each broadcast.Maybe then the repetition would not be quite so tiresome ; however as currently packaged with the opportunity to binge watch it -as I did-then it becomes really hard going .

Maybe watch every alternate episode perhaps or the first and the last , you'll save hours of your life and not really miss much.

If you want to win an argument over how they really don't make movies like they used to then you can always offer up 'Klute' as an example.

Don't get me wrong I enjoy movies as they are made today but ... I can't help but feel they aren't really made for me. That is to say pretty much anyone over the age of 35; modern movies are fine but I'm always aware that my eye is being distracted by a fancy piece of graphics, or my emotions are being manipulated by piece of 'feature' soundtrack or a sense of excitement generated by some rapid editing. It was ever thus, but somehow there was a time when it was generally more subtle and lot less bombastic.

Klute is a movie where people talk to each other , where the camera is allowed time to linger on its subject , where not every thought is expressed and the actors are expected to be able to imply things by actually acting and the director assumes that you the audience are able to infer what is intended by watching that acting. The 70's , it seems to me was the last decade when 'adults' as a demographic was one that Hollywood consciously made movies for - I can't imagine Hollywood green lighting movies like 'The Deer Hunter' ,'Taxi Driver', 'Chinatown', 'The Godfather' or 'The Conversation' - which Klute has a similar feel too. So, I would certainly encourage you to watch this movie and enjoy it, not as curiosity of another time, but as great piece of storytelling.

They really aren't making them like this anymore.

If a movie is going to ask me to hand over 2hrs and 40 minutes of my life to it then it had better be good. Dragged Across Concrete is nowhere near good enough for that scale of transaction. There is a scene in the movie where Vince Vaughn is eating some crunchie thing ( for some inexplicable reason the film company is so proud of it it appears in the trailer - but in much shortened form ) that just goes on and on and then in what is presumably a knowing wink to the audience concludes with Mel Gibson saying 'he has been waiting hours for that to finish' - not only did I feel the same about the scene I felt it all the more about the entire movie. Give it a miss.

It can't be easy making a documentary about a man as emotionally controlled and as taciturn as Neil Armstrong but David Fairhead makes a creditable attempt.

A notable absence from the movie is Buzz Aldrin , the only actual witness to the Armstrongs most famous moment and either he was not asked or chose not to involve himself ? Very odd and a real weakness in the documentary.

The film is mostly made up of interviews with people who knew him personally and professionaly; what film there is of Armstrong talking is composed entirely of non-candid moments speaking to the press etc.

The family movies are mildly intersting , not informative particularly ( they are silent ) and Harrison Ford reads from some of Armstrongs private writings , presumably made available by the family, and they helpful in providing some insight into the man. Insights that he never voiced to camera himself. I did wonder how open the family were at providing access to all his writings however. There is,if not a suggestion of hagiography , then definately a very selective history on display.

No reference at all , for example, is made of the allegation of medical malpractice made by the family against the hospital where Armstrong died .

In the end if you are interested in the man , then you would be better off i.m.o watching Damien Chazelle's movie 'First Man' a completely different genre , drama vs documentary ,but really I think you need the drama to give the guy a, fully deserved, 3rd dimension.

I don't know how you can employ this much talent on a movie and spend this much money on it to end up with something so boring and flat - even as metaphor , and as metaphor it is hardly subtle , it is just awful.

If I were to sum it up in a word it would be tedious , after 15 minutes I was looking at my watch - which for a movie that is over 2 hours long is a bad sign. Give it a miss you won't be sorry.

I tried reading the book but gave up on it. Despite that the premise was sufficiently intriguing I thought I should give it a chance as a film.

I at least managed to make it to the end this time, but take it from me it's not really worth the slog. The film looks great but that is about it , having to come up with a plot yourself because the filmmakers didn't doesn't make a movie profound it just makes it pointless.

It's all long moments of people who don't know anything interspersed with science-babble that makes the nonsense that accompanies cosmetic adverts sound like it deserves a Nobel.

The adaptation of DC comics to the screen has not been anywhere near as successful as that of Marvel , but I have to say I thought this movie is probably the best yet from the DC catalogue.

The film looks great for the most part , some of the CGI looks a little over-processed but human faces are hard to get right , so I can live with it.

It's not the deepest ( forgive the pun ) movie you will ever see ; at no point are you going to find yourself saying "I didn't see that plot twist coming" but it has a lot of story to tell and despite its length the action keeps coming.

Give it a chance you might enjoy , I know I did.

First of all the good; the show , imo, looks great - the sets and special effects are top notch. Umm , I cant think of anything else ...

The weaknesses all stem from the writing. Historically, as best as I can recall , you would get a Star Trek series that, if it had 20 episodes , would offer up 21-22 stories ; one or two stories that lasted a season but otherwise one story per episode . Not so in this case, essentially you have one story told over 15 episodes, if I was quicker on the uptake I would have taken that as my first indication that the writing was going to be weak - that was only confirmed by the sudden switch over into the 'alternate universe' trope a desperate writing move that most programs don't reach until they are midway through season 4 or something not halfway through season 1. None of the main characters are particularly engaging , not as appallingly misjudged as some of the characters in Star Wars (Ep 1,2,3) that come to mind but that is hardly a complement. If you are a fan of the genre and a bit of a completest then watch the series and come to your own conclusion but unless they put some serious effort into improving the writing I won't be coming back for seconds.

I usually enjoy Japanese movies but I confess I was releaved when this movie finally finished , it was really hard work. The real problem with it I found was that it was very hard to understand what was going on , I don't usually mind that a filmmaker assumes that his audience is capable of following along but in order for that to happen you do need to have some clues to help in that process I get the feeling that the subtitles were only capturing about 5% of the plot and none of its subtlety . Some of the conversations between lawyer and client ( particularly towards the end were completely mystifying and appeared to be assembled at random ). Did he do it , or didn't he , if he did do it do we know why , was he a good man doing bad things - absolutely no clue. Everyone in this movie - lawyers, defendants and witnesses are lying or concealing their motives

It could be that this movie is a thickly veiled critique of the Japanese judicial system , or maybe just its defence lawyers. Certainly a Japanese courtroom does not come across as a forum for enquiring minds - most of the decisions seem to be agreed in advance in back room deals and defence lawyers seem to get the rough end of it. At the start of the movie the camera is positioned so it is on the same side of the partition as the defence lawyer making the prisoner appear to the one who is incarcerated , mid way through the movie and the camera has switched positions so it appears as if it is the lawyers who are boxed in and by the end the director uses reflections to overlap their faces to suggest that the two are indistinguishable - maybe that is the point ? Who knows ? If you are a native Japanese speaker perhaps you can let the rest of us know.