gonzoville
Joined Jul 2011
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Ratings175
gonzoville's rating
Reviews9
gonzoville's rating
This movie showed up on Amazon Prime this morning. As soon as I saw "Directed by Luc Besson" I was in. Remember how the original Star Wars starred a bunch of actors you never really heard of? Remember the original Star Wars was fun? Well Valerian recaptures that. Yeah, it's a bit bubble-gummy in places - at times it feels more like a kid's movie. But it is derived from a comic, so I guess that comes with the territory.
The two main characters are a male-female special ops team. And they're in love but don't really know it yet. But they're fun to watch. This isn't the usual heavy Hollywood style crap. Their relationship is more witnessed than spoken about. They don't spend half the movie drenched in self-analysis. She kicks as much butt as he does, so forget the whole "there are no strong female characters" whining. They're a couple - they compliment each other - it works. It's not Nick and Nora Charles, but it has the same kind of spark.
Very little SJW sub-text. Rihanna's character has a few lines about being an "illegal alien", but that was about the only really noticeable inflection of Soy-Think.
As usual, Besson's visuals are top notch. There's something about his direction that has a more "organic" feel than a lot of Hollywood directors. Scenes and sets seem more "alive" - less perfectly chiseled. His attention to detail is amazing. Everyone stays in character, there aren't any serious flat spots - maybe a little in the beginning before things get rolling. Lots of pew-pew and things getting blowed up, but no foul language.
If you can get past the few goofy comic-book-ish scenes, the rest of the movie is pretty damn awesome. Visually, it really is stunning. Just kind of ride out the first fifteen minutes. It apparently tanked at the box office, but I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.
The two main characters are a male-female special ops team. And they're in love but don't really know it yet. But they're fun to watch. This isn't the usual heavy Hollywood style crap. Their relationship is more witnessed than spoken about. They don't spend half the movie drenched in self-analysis. She kicks as much butt as he does, so forget the whole "there are no strong female characters" whining. They're a couple - they compliment each other - it works. It's not Nick and Nora Charles, but it has the same kind of spark.
Very little SJW sub-text. Rihanna's character has a few lines about being an "illegal alien", but that was about the only really noticeable inflection of Soy-Think.
As usual, Besson's visuals are top notch. There's something about his direction that has a more "organic" feel than a lot of Hollywood directors. Scenes and sets seem more "alive" - less perfectly chiseled. His attention to detail is amazing. Everyone stays in character, there aren't any serious flat spots - maybe a little in the beginning before things get rolling. Lots of pew-pew and things getting blowed up, but no foul language.
If you can get past the few goofy comic-book-ish scenes, the rest of the movie is pretty damn awesome. Visually, it really is stunning. Just kind of ride out the first fifteen minutes. It apparently tanked at the box office, but I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.
Wow. After all the great ratings for this movie I actually expected this to be, you know, a good movie. How anyone who's seen "2001: A Space Odyssey" can give this four stars or more is absolutely beyond me. But the critics for some reason raved about this thing.
The plot is that the Earth is running out of food and crops keep failing due to some kind of Nitrogen-loving blight. There are dust storms and things are looking bad. And then somehow a worm-hole in space opens up near Saturn by "them." Who ever "them" are. And, golly gee, there's habitable worlds on the other side of the wormhole. How convenient. So Michael Caine (who plays the chief NASA scientist) sends some spaceships through to check it out and the next step is to try to set up base to get the rest of the people through.
Enter our hero, Matthew McConaughey. A former NASA pilot who now works on a farm. The first sign of trouble with this movie is the amount of attention spent on The Children. Children and Sci-Fi or action movies equals death. Sure enough, McConaughey spends what feels like a quarter of the movie whining about missing his kids and so on and so forth. It's Acting!
And so they go through the wormhole and a bunch of stuff happens. I don't want to give the plot away, but see if some of this sounds familiar. The robots who help man the ship have warm, mellifluous voices. An astronaut travels through a tunnel of flashing lights. Said astronaut arrives in a strange room where he can see past and future. Oh and the robots who help run the ship they look like monoliths articulated, walking monoliths.
Then some of the technical stuff that goes on is just impossible to believe. The most bizarre is the thrilling docking scene when the mother ship is in an uncontrolled spin, and so the shuttle not only matches the spin, but then manages to dock with the hatch which runs down the central axis of the mother ship. But that's not the stupid part. The shuttle then uses it's engines to stop the spin of the much, much bigger mother ship to which it is connected by a long, slim docking boom. And none of the metal buckles or shears away.
Some of the physics about how gravity can pass through worm holes and the time relativity shifts that occur simply by landing on a planet are a bit tough to swallow. The crap the film goes into about time travel is even harder to swallow. Note that "2001" also had similar elements, but Kubrick's genius was that he didn't try to explain what was going on. He let the viewer interpret it in whatever way it struck them. This movie insists on explaining everything – and it does so quite stupidly.
Visually, this is a striking film. The scenes on the other planets are really well done. The dust- storm effects are also nicely done – it does really look like the documentary footage from The Dust Bowl. And the actual story is pretty decent if only they did a good job telling it.
And it's not like they didn't have time to tell the story. This film is almost three hours long. But they spend a lot of time on McConaughey emoting about not seeing his damn kids again – or giving soliloquies about the destiny of mankind (which sound an awful lot like those car commercials he just did). His accent and delivery work great when he's playing a lawyer but it doesn't work for a dashing, daring space pilot.
If your standards aren't too high, you don't want to actually think, and you want to see a good-looking sci-fi movie – and you have three stinking hours to kill – then you may as well see this movie. Otherwise don't waste your money. Wait for it to come to Netflix, and then wait for a night when you're having trouble getting to sleep to watch "Interstellar."
The plot is that the Earth is running out of food and crops keep failing due to some kind of Nitrogen-loving blight. There are dust storms and things are looking bad. And then somehow a worm-hole in space opens up near Saturn by "them." Who ever "them" are. And, golly gee, there's habitable worlds on the other side of the wormhole. How convenient. So Michael Caine (who plays the chief NASA scientist) sends some spaceships through to check it out and the next step is to try to set up base to get the rest of the people through.
Enter our hero, Matthew McConaughey. A former NASA pilot who now works on a farm. The first sign of trouble with this movie is the amount of attention spent on The Children. Children and Sci-Fi or action movies equals death. Sure enough, McConaughey spends what feels like a quarter of the movie whining about missing his kids and so on and so forth. It's Acting!
And so they go through the wormhole and a bunch of stuff happens. I don't want to give the plot away, but see if some of this sounds familiar. The robots who help man the ship have warm, mellifluous voices. An astronaut travels through a tunnel of flashing lights. Said astronaut arrives in a strange room where he can see past and future. Oh and the robots who help run the ship they look like monoliths articulated, walking monoliths.
Then some of the technical stuff that goes on is just impossible to believe. The most bizarre is the thrilling docking scene when the mother ship is in an uncontrolled spin, and so the shuttle not only matches the spin, but then manages to dock with the hatch which runs down the central axis of the mother ship. But that's not the stupid part. The shuttle then uses it's engines to stop the spin of the much, much bigger mother ship to which it is connected by a long, slim docking boom. And none of the metal buckles or shears away.
Some of the physics about how gravity can pass through worm holes and the time relativity shifts that occur simply by landing on a planet are a bit tough to swallow. The crap the film goes into about time travel is even harder to swallow. Note that "2001" also had similar elements, but Kubrick's genius was that he didn't try to explain what was going on. He let the viewer interpret it in whatever way it struck them. This movie insists on explaining everything – and it does so quite stupidly.
Visually, this is a striking film. The scenes on the other planets are really well done. The dust- storm effects are also nicely done – it does really look like the documentary footage from The Dust Bowl. And the actual story is pretty decent if only they did a good job telling it.
And it's not like they didn't have time to tell the story. This film is almost three hours long. But they spend a lot of time on McConaughey emoting about not seeing his damn kids again – or giving soliloquies about the destiny of mankind (which sound an awful lot like those car commercials he just did). His accent and delivery work great when he's playing a lawyer but it doesn't work for a dashing, daring space pilot.
If your standards aren't too high, you don't want to actually think, and you want to see a good-looking sci-fi movie – and you have three stinking hours to kill – then you may as well see this movie. Otherwise don't waste your money. Wait for it to come to Netflix, and then wait for a night when you're having trouble getting to sleep to watch "Interstellar."
According to Wikipedia, they spent $65 million making this atrocity. The end result is 112 minutes of mindless, puerile drivel which will leave any sentient being groggy from the barrage of idiocy. It's a parade of stereotypes, rehashed shtick, and poorly written and executed jokes. Except in this parade they put the horses up front and everyone has to tromp through manure the whole way.
Yes. It really is that bad. I like good slap-stick humor. And buddy comedies. And back-to-school comedies. And gross-out physical comedy. This movie tried to combine all of those elements, and managed to execute each one with equal levels of ineptitude. I guess in that respect this is an accomplishment.
The only positive I could find was that the production values were high. But after half an hour I needed to bail and do something more pleasing - like slam my head forcefully into a concrete highway barrier.
Yes. It really is that bad. I like good slap-stick humor. And buddy comedies. And back-to-school comedies. And gross-out physical comedy. This movie tried to combine all of those elements, and managed to execute each one with equal levels of ineptitude. I guess in that respect this is an accomplishment.
The only positive I could find was that the production values were high. But after half an hour I needed to bail and do something more pleasing - like slam my head forcefully into a concrete highway barrier.