statistician_t's reviews

The story is not about any civil war. It's just an mostly incredible background for some journalists who are hell-bent on interviewing/photographing the president before he's captured by the "Western Forces" - that is, California, and, huh, Texas.

California and Texas having the same goals is giving me nightmares tbh.

Well, getting to the president before the troops get to him is already a pretty far-stretched scenario: They do not know what will happen on their long journey to Washington D. C. - and no war is going according to a schedule. Reporters are either there when something happens. Or they are not.

Throughout the film, the photographers endanger themselves - and others - trying to get some good pictures. It's through simple carelessness that at least four of the characters die.

Though the film has some stunning scenes, the film will be forgotten in a few months. In the best case, it will serve as a warning - on how not to title a film. And how not to behave as a wartime journalist.

Wait, you have this crazy idea for a film:

For one day in a year, there are no crimes because everything is legal.

On "Purge day", you could beat up your neighbor's kids and steal his car, but because you cannot be punished for it, he has to accept your acts with a tremendous grudge.

How will this change neighborhoods?

How does the "Purge" affect everything that requires interpersonal trust?

It's so curious that in this film, people mistake "You can do everything" for "You'll go on a murder spree", because fights for survival make for better cinema fodder.

But what about robbery? Proclaiming your own sovereign state? And people who break laws to do some good?

So many ideas to explore right here. But this film...

Basically "Home Alone", but it actually insults your intelligence.

This installment of the kangaroo stories has blown me away. It's a spot-on, satirical comment on the past years in which covid-19 conspiracy nuts ruled many discussions and sowed so much confusion.

In short, Marc-Uwe and his kangaroo seek out to free Maria's mother from the clutches of her conspiracy theories. On their odyssey, the duo enjoy quite a lot of comical situations - which I will not summarize here.

But let me say that the film contains insider jokes that one can only understand as a German. Though, some refer to the capitol attack on January 6th, 2021. Others relate to covid-19. At one time, they cite a famous phrase from "Life of Brian" (1979). The very beginning bears resemblance to ALF, the 1980 sitcom.

Frankly, I wonder how they will translate this masterpiece for English-speaking audiences.

I am not going to review the bad script. Groan.

I am a keen observer of animals, since childhood. And so it's the CGI dinosaurs that struck me as very odd. When you see a crocodile lurching over land, when you see a monkey climbing - you always notice that the vertebral column is not a rigid thing. The animal's back can bend, the *entire* animal is rather elastic.

In this film, it was most pronounced when the animals were moving slowly, especially the large four-legged ones. The computer models assumed the vertebrae to be completely rigid.

It's puzzling how the 1993 film, with its very limited computing power behind the CGI, did a better job.

But: Bonus points for using so many special aircraft. They even borrowed the weird Boeing 747 from "Casino Royale".

It's easy to misunderstand this film, and to watch it with high expectations.

"Contagion" isn't a thriller. This film lacks a climax. This film doesn't have any leading actor.

It still is a haunting, highly watchable and realistic story about a deadly virus epidemic that grips the world and causes panic, public unrest and millions of deaths.

Epidemiologists are the experts that trace the origin of an epidemic. They try to find out how a disease is spread. How long patients remain infectious. Which persons are most at risk.

It's a film about the silent heroes behind epidemics, the laboratory technicians, the CDC field agents, the statisticians, the decision-makers.

If you'd ask me about similar films, then I'd answer with "Zero Dark Thirty."

...but yet the camera work as well as the acting makes this "film" barely watchable. It looks even worse than a typical high school movie production.

It's so bad that you barely notice the weak story and the weak character development.

No, I really do not mind the hardcore stuff.

Yes, I really hate bad films.

First, some technical things.

Having just returned from the cinema, watching a 3D movie for the first time, I still have to digest the unbelievably rich visual impressions. I long pondered whether to see it in German or in English – with German subtitles. As a fan of the English-language originals, "The Two Towers" is the last film I've seen in German synchronization before "Avatar". Nothing beats the real voices of the actors.

And there lies a dilemma: Subtitles just don't work in 3D movies. Subtitles in 3D films happen to float in space, in front of the actors, of the scenery. It looks kind of strange. How will my taste of movies develop if more and more films are to be released in 3D? Now about my opinion: The story was quite thin. Just too much remembers me of other films – the reconciliation of men with nature can be found in "Princess Mononoke", for example. The renegade Marine helping the aboriginals remembered of "The Last Samurai". And the "Avatar" topic itself is borrowed from "Total Recall" – a bit far-fetched, I admit.

The role of Col. Quaritch was the most believable, I think. Strange? No, because Jake and Neytiri look so outlandish. They really don't play in the same category. Because I knew beforehand that Jake will fall in love with Neytiri and that they will fight together for all the living creatures of Pandora, they did not have to be such "remarkable" characters compared to Col. Quaritch. Yes, despite their blue color.

As a biologist by training, I was flabbergasted by the portrayal of the flowers, trees, insects and larger animals... you see an insect. Yes, it looks like an insect – because I've seen such one in a book on phasmids. No! Then you see that the creature has feet like a gecko. And when it flies away like a helicopter, you think... "Wow!". The creators painstakingly crafted the creatures of Pandora. As a biologist, I could often tell which body or plant parts were taken from which real plants or animals.

For the visual effects, 9 stars. For the story, 5.

Yesterday evening there was the premiere of this made-for-TV motion picture. I watched it with great zeal because this air disaster happened at the Swiss border, and a Swiss air traffic controller was in charge of the two aircrafts' fate.

The first thing I have to mention is the acting talent. Several roles are staffed by people who simply cannot act in a genuine and convincing way. The head of the ATC company tries to be convincing defender of his firm, but he can't convince us of his plan to hide the firm's mismanagement from the accident investigation board. His legal aide is much more effective in selling her point – and whom would the public believe?

The German fireman was also not really able to portray his state of being shocked when he hears that the father lost his whole family in the accident. The same happens when Balbayev, the husband and father of some killed in the disaster, discovers the corpse of a child. The sequence just does not feel sad or shocked enough.

On the other hand, the movie makers had access to a real air traffic control center and cockpits - kudos for this. The TCAS display looks like a real one, and it's at least no cheap computer simulation of it. There have been many more lavishly financed films that have done more "goofs" in aviation terms. But then, the pilots don't act like real pilots. They seem too calm. The air traffic controller too. If he had been that calm, he would have ignored the third aircraft that needed a landing assistance, knowing it would have enough fuel to circle Friedrichshafen for half an hour. Pilots are trained to take matters in their own hands if justified. If he would have been that calm, he would have set his priorities right and saved the 71 people.

Even it is a motion picture, it tries to dissociate itself from the reality. Everybody with some curiosity will google this aircraft disaster. Everybody can find out it was the collision of the Bashkirian Airlines 2937 and DHL 611 flights that happened near Überlingen on the 1st of July, 2002.

And everybody can read on Wikipedia that it was Skyguide that administered the airspace, and it was Vitaly Kaloyev who killed the air traffic controller, who in reality was Peter Nielsen. Why does this film try to shake off the connection to the real world and change all the characters' names? A fear from lawsuits? Everything can be read in the official accident report. Seemingly, the movie makers where a tad too shy in their attempt to paint the picture in its true colors.

In sum, this film could have been improved a lot by choosing better actors, and perhaps also a better director. The actors look and feel like the top actors Switzerland has - even Hollywood comedians give you a better "feel" for the atmosphere.

One of the few films I admire. I really admire. And that take you away already in the first few minutes, when the highly cartoonish and stylized front credits pass. Wow, what sort of film is following that crazy introduction? Are they going to keep that promise? The film never let me down, not during one single minute. The scenes featuring Philip Glass' "Prophecy" and "Pruit Igoe" were eerie, Dr. Manhattan was a believable character, the romance between Silk Spectre II and Nite Owl something I really liked because they were so true characters.

I loved the stylized violence in the fight scenes because they showed what imaginative movie makers are capable of, similar to "A Clockwork Orange" which would not be discussed and praised that much without its foundation – the depicted violence.

It's difficult finding anything negative about "Watchmen". I do not know the underlying graphic novel, and so I found Veidt's/Ozymandias' lair in the Antarctica something weird. Why something so far away? Why something so elaborate when he could have built his dungeon somewhere in a rain forest which would have been much nearer to his New York? But I agree Veidt is very egoistic and lone figure, and that he wants to be as far away from populated areas as possible.

Something else I have to attest is the high self-confidence and maturity with which "Watchmen" referenced the 9/11 attacks, without having been intended so by the novelist (the comics came out in 1986 and 1987). But because I felt that the film weaves in the course of history so well – especially when the plot touched the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the ongoing tenure of Richard M. Nixon – I was very, very willing to forgive the "pun" made on the 9/11 attacks. The same city devastated, and the same city having a gaping hole which is being filled again by erecting a new structure. These images were a little scary, yes.

In sum, let me thank the movie makers for delivering the first *good* film of the year 2009!

As a young investment greenhorn, still in High School, I invested some money in the company this film is about. I really thought that nobody could let this national symbol fail. It could never happen.

And then I lost US$ 550. In order to end my experiment at the stock exchange I even had to donate the shares to the broker firm because Swissair was in bankruptcy and I could not sell them for US$ 30.

Well, this summarizes how I approached this film. The powerpoint slides shown by the consultant were tell-tale and neatly summarized how Swissair got into that mess. The negotiations with the banks were also a (perverse) fun to watch – big banks wanting to crash Swissair in order to cheaply buy the still-profitable remnants of the wreck.

As somebody grown up and living in Switzerland I did not like that the film was made in the Swiss-German dialect. You know all the regional dialects that good that you wonder if the Swissair CEO really spoke like *that* – may you even know him? The new chief financial officer Mario Corti hires from the U.S., Jacqualayn Fouse, speaks such a horrible "English". It sounded more like a German imitating American English than an American imitating German. They could have used a perfect, accent-free German playing her part, especially when all the other roles speak Swiss-German dialect – this would have kept the distance between the Swiss managers and her as the hired expert from the U.S.

Another big trouble was the trashy, kitschy story about the little boy. About her mother. About her husband. It just did not look genuine. And the Italian worker in the GateGourmet kitchen – the police storming the cold room. Really.

The movie was certainly a well-made one. If one forgets everything beside the main plot, which was saving the airline and the negotiations with the government and the banks. A well-made corporate thriller is feasible and will attract many moviegoers. But don't waste the good premise with cheesy subplots, please. And I really mean PLEASE.

Another positive point worth mentioning is that the chief personnel officer of Swissair, Matthias Mölleney, actually played himself in this movie.

And I want my US$ 550 back, by the way.

Why do I give this 1974 porn movie 7 points? Because I watched it. And I found it hilarious! Aliens, their weird spaceship, their weird helmets... my God, was that a sight. And all what these desperate alien women need is semen from the earth.

And where do they look for it? In upper Bavaria, Germany. And that is where the main fun comes from: In Europe (and more so in German-speaking countries), Bavaria is seen as a traditional and backward region. And then the actors are so helpless with the alien women. Well, there have been films about people being unable to deal with women like the "American Pie" series.

But what this film achieved is a true, funny weirdness. You constantly wonder how they came up with these crackpot ideas. But it was 1974, and looking back 35 years fills one with a kind of nostalgia. You've never seen a film like that.

And if you don't mind seeing the casual pubic hairs and breasts, watch it once. It is a comedy essentially, not a porn flick.

Well, like many people I also grew up with Indiana Jones. In our family, we really liked to watch the Indiana Jones adventures when they were shown on TV. They were great pieces of entertainment.

With these high expectations I went to see The Crystal Skull. And disappointed I was. It began with the CGI hamster/marmot/prairie dog - you know something is fishy when you encounter fake animals in a 185 million dollar real-life movie. In the previous three films, Lucas and Spielberg were perfectly able to do without digital trickery.

Then, what is this old guy... whatshisname... well, what was this demented professor doing? He didn't really contribute to the story, except for the fact that didn't go entirely insane before helping Indiana Jones.

But really the biggest flaw in this movie was that Indy is a silly adventurer here, not a real hero. At every point in this movie he could have backed off from that adventure. He should have known from his previous adventures that his enemies invariably kill themselves in the end. In "Crystal Skull", Indy never was in a position where his or the life of anybody else was in immediate danger. It was only a race to get to the crystal skull ahead of the Soviets.

Well, there were scary scenes like the hungry ants. But this was an accident, not a trap wantonly set up by the Soviet agents. The screen writing department could have saved this movie's grace.

Conclusion: Indiana Jones in name only.

This was a flick I liked, it did not make justice to the much greater film it could have been. Well, the film was beautifully photographed with the column of soldiers marching in the snow. The "American" control post in the forest and the ditch full of dead GIs was a haunting idea, but surely they also appear in the John Katzenbach novel the film is based upon.

Carrying out a court-martial to hide something from the Germans was an ingenious idea, but this was diminished by giving the Colonels McNamara and Visser only limited screen time. They do little to maintain Lt. Hart's illusion of a fair and well-meant court-martial, and if he wasn't such a half-baked and sissy-like soldier he would have found out much sooner how fishy the whole thing is. But he prefers to play along the game.

I've just seen this movie on DVD two days ago. I can't say it is a bad film. I suffered through Stone's "Alexander" and I knew what to expect in the worst case. But it wasn't a brilliant film either.

Because the film was made long before George W. Bush's end of tenure, Stone gave away many opportunities like the upcoming financial crisis, the historical election of Barack Obama and the very symbolic shoe-ing of Bush in Baghdad. All this could have been cornerstones of an epic movie. In all fairness, Oliver Stone did not have the benefit of hindsight.

But what Stone produced was a fair and balanced, but also a white-washed portrait. I did not learn many new things about the President in movie because of my keen interest into U.S. politics; but it was almost comical to watch the actors being convinced in WMDs which actually did not exist. Stone's "W." shows Bush and his entourage as the actors on their own stage, acting in a play they, so they hope, was determined by themselves until the end.

And then, metaphorically spoken the "play" breaks down: The bringing of democracy to Middle East that was begun with the innocent hope of playful children failed. Citizens protest their once well-liked President. Stone could have polished that notion of grown adults "playing" around and failing ultimately. Bush was a child that wanted to play big...

Although I have rarely flown myself, I am keenly interested in aviation... and this film has added to the precious laughing stock in aviation cinema.

1. Why is the captain doing the ground checks? Why does he even measure the oil levels in the engines? With turnaround times as low as 15 minutes in commercial aviation this is not a typical pre-flight check.

2. WHY does the captain KICK against the aircraft tire? Strange kind of pressure check. Or anger management :-)

3. The cockpit has a crew of 3. All large, western, two-engined jets built since the 1980ies have a crew of 2 people. Now try a guess at how old the movie script is.

4. A helicopter manages to fly alongside the crippled airliner. Must be a fast one... and the captain's words to explain the "maneuver" to the passengers are indeed hilarious ones!

5. With arrested elevator rudders it is always possible to lower the nose of the aircraft. It happens, for example, when any aircraft moves slower than the stall speed.

6. The elevator rudders have hydraulic actuators. After the collision with the business plane it would, most probably, have severed the hydraulic lines and thus make them useless for steering, but it would NOT fix them in certain position.

7. The fire in the aft galley was a stupid idea. It was designed to show that only gentlemen ask for the extinguisher and fight the fire, regardless of who was actually trained to do that – the flight attendant.

8. At the time of collision, the aircraft's elevators would have been in a neutral position. The film could have ended here...

9. The flight engineer (the third person in the cockpit) has three bars on his uniform. In reality, flight engineers have two.

10. Why does the captain slash the cabin casing with an axe to examine the damage behind? I thought it would have been the flight engineer's duty, as he is already supposed to perform technical checks before and after flight.

11. In any aircraft, there is no unused space. At least commercial airplanes cannot afford the luxury of a compartment that can be filled with tons of water.

I could go on and on... but at last I laughed hysterically about how the screenwriters imagine aircraft disasters! Woooohooo! Most aircraft disasters happen in such a short time span that you simply cannot make 90-minute flicks out of them. But you can always fill 90 minutes with mind-boggling and insane crap, irrespective of the genre.

I long forgot to write my Dark Knight comment, so here it is!

That was one awesome film. The scenes showing the bank robbery alone is worth the entry fee, it does not make any compromise in showing how mean Joker is – I really cringed and I was frightened with how much nastier Joker would get!

There is one little, minute flaw in the movie: The scene where the police chief (?) is killed, and his son screams "Daddy!". This broke the otherwise flawless stream of Joker's nastiness and the desperation that rules Gotham City. It would have been more convincing if the boy did not scream, but would have been forced to be silent. After all, not being able to cry or speak out is more appalling to a child.

I dutifully expect the next film. I hope Heath Ledger's "Joker" will be honored and the overall quality of "The Dark Knight" too. Don't let me down, please! Don't do what Marc Forster has done to "Quantum of Solace" after the masterly "Casino Royale"!

I have read the book this film is based on back in 2004 and one more time in 2006, and I still cherish it as one of the best books I have ever read. Therefore, watching this film was a sort of duty.

What I disliked was that in the first half, Professor Kepesh gets to know Consuela way too fast. He invites all his students to his home, and soon he is in the cahoots with Consuela. Of course I am aware that I'm comparing the novel to the film – but still I can't avoid that. In the novel, David Kepesh explains much about his sexual philosophy, something that could have been the basis for a much longer, more elaborated film. In the novel, there are philosophical excursions into American culture, puritanism and sexual freedom, things that in the film are rarely touched.

For this film you could even call "romantic movie" (I recommend it to lovers!), the portrayal of the unequal relationship between Kepesh and Consuela was too tame. In the novel you see and sense that Kepesh has no bounds. In sexuality and relationships, he is all but committed to somebody – he boasts his emancipation and freedom. The novel Kepesh even explores some rather unusual sexual practices with Consuela. As an avid reader of Roth's novels, I was really a bit disappointed.

Some commentators have stated that this film is misogynistic because Kepesh is shown using Consuela as his sexual tool. He isn't much interested in building trust. But in the end, the film shows Kepesh's destruction: We see him punished. We see his anguish. Philip Roth's novels argue against a hollow sexual morale which is evident in slogans like "True love waits". Sex is something good, something you are completely free to enjoy. But what Roth shows is the emotional loss that often follows when one does act selfishly and without integrity. Kepesh, a grown and experienced man who could have stood up to Consuela, tries out his sexual philosophy on the very person that is so dear to him. In German-language countries, the film is called "Elegy - the art of loving" – not without reason.

Go, watch it!

I've seen this film twice already and its spiders still shock me! The film is well-paced and always prepares the viewer for more and still more shocking pictures, thus it never disappointed me. As I am more able to write about bad pictures (which this one definitely is NOT) I want to write about... well, the portrayal of the spiders. I hope it catches the interest of a few people out there!

As a biologist by training, I did not like how the scientists were portrayed. First and foremost, unlike to the beginning of the movie you cannot say if a butterfly species is unknown or not – until you've sifted through dozens of books, hoping that it is still unknown to science. Personally, I know of a beetle biologist who uses Russian literature in order to get the full picture of the group he does research on, and identification and classification of any insect inevitably involves a lot of literature research.

Then, it is nearly impossible that two different species of spiders mate. First, many spiders have elaborate mating behaviors which are different across the species. If the other spider does not behave as it is expected by the first one, it will get killed (and eaten) pretty fast. Secondly, the sexual organs of the spiders are often not compatible across the species boundaries.

What also struck me is the caste system of the Brazilian movie spiders: If the little spiders cannot reproduce, they are doomed to deliver food to their "king" or at least they must defend him. Hmm, the latter one is not so improbable. But as they are on the "top of the food pyramid", as told by the biologist, are those small eight-footers able to carry their prey to the king? I suppose there still are bodybuilding spiders out there, if this theory is correct. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to catch human-sized prey.

Well, I am glad that this movie is much better than its title does suggest – "Arachnophobia" remembered me of certain B movies. And I am certain that Steven Spielberg gave the director one or two tips on how to make this film that good!

I've seen this movie some day's ago with my girlfriend. On walking out, I was fully ashamed that I recommended her this film; and I want rather commit suicide than watching this "epic" again.

The film clearly had too much talking, and when a battle ends, only the narrator explains what the results and the consequences of this battle were. Huh, and there are only *two* battles in a three-hour "epic" about Alexander the Great? I thought he was a conqueror, not a emotion-laden sissy. The real Alexander committed atrocities (by far bigger ones than silencing a mutiny), he burned down Persepolis, the capital of Persia - but where do we find these important events? A comparison with another "conqueror" epic, "Patton", shows what went wrong with "Alexander". I am not a great military buff, but I that's one of my favorite movies – that's why I mention it. In "Patton", it is really shown what the main character did and felt by his own actions, in Alexander, most emotional problems are *told* by a snake fanatic. Go and watch "Patton"! In "Patton", there was a logical sequence of events, but in "Alexander", it seemed to me that, from the countless battles Alexander the Great has lead, only two were selected randomly. One in the desert, the second one in the Indian forest. Huh, I wondered, why Alexander is suddenly transformed into a warlord? Suddenly there is a battle! Ho, mount the horses! I am a military leader! I thought people would grow into such a role...

Why was the Indian forest battle such a bloodfeast? I meant any experienced soldier would avoid fighting in a forest where the defender has an advantage.

One other point is that Alexander isn't shown as a real homosexual. I really *waited* for the first kiss between Alexander and Hephaistion because the newspapers rumored so much about that. How would an that (once) great Oliver Stone handle this topic, I wondered. But then, it ended in harmless hugging between Alexander and Hephaistion. What a rubbish! I hope Oliver Stone has to work off the $150'000'000 failure in a most cruel sort of slave labor...