An American Disney sword and planet science fiction directed by Andrew Stanton, starring Samantha Morton, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds and Willem Dafoe.
A man in the old west stumbles upon a secret cave in which he meets an Alien, shoots it and uses it's medallion to travel to Mars. There he is adopted by a civilization of aliens and meets a humanoid princess whom he must save.
Not too shabby, but I got the feeling that it was trying to be a Star Wars spinoff. This was based on A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, a sword and planet "science fantasy" book published in 1912. I had stumbled upon a web page mourning the loss of good science fiction and fantasy pulp paperback novels which accompanied the end of the 1980s and this was one of the series listed there. Being a Disney production, the cinematography and special effects were amazing. With a 306.6 million dollar budget, I would expect no less. Just for perspective, the entire school district that I work at has less than an 81 million dollar annual budget and that runs 6 schools fully staffed with teachers, administration and cleaners, an administration building and a bus garage with a full fleet of buses. There was some extremely low volume dialogue in the beginning which is unacceptable considering the money involved. The rest of the audio was fine. The aliens speaking an unknown language without subtitles in the beginning was intentional, as the main character learns to understand them and they speak in English after that. I don't know how much of the sets and costumes were CG (lots), but I saw CG eyes on the female lead. In the arena scene (which took forever to get to) monsters called "wild Bants" are mentioned, but all we get are "white apes" that looked like Yetis from Drakan: The Ancients' Gates for PS2, but with 4 arms. The whole consensus anatomy of Mars except humanoids was to add arms or legs. Their riding beasts had the most, rivaling Odin's Slepnir with 8 legs. Overall, an entertaining science fiction/fantasy adventure with good special effects. I'm keeping it, but discerning movie buffs may be disappointed by the lack of tact and finesse. I would put this in the same category as Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018): cheap thrills that were expensive to make. I rate this good because that's what I've been liking watching these days.
An Irish crime comedy directed by John Michael McDonagh, starring Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle, Mark Strong, Liam Cunningham and Fionnula Flanagan.
An Irish cop gets a black, American partner and they try to catch a gang of drug dealers.
Amazing! I don't have anything bad to say about this. The plot was written very well and held my attention through two consecutive viewings before writing this. The characters were written and cast well. They were unique and colorful and made me feel like I had known them my whole life. Even the secondary characters were written and acted perfectly. The dialogue was on par with Quentin Tarantino material. Video looked more like Wes Anderson style. Everything was contrasty, over-saturated and extremely planned out. The audio was great. Everything was mixed right and I could hear the music and dialogue all very clearly. Overall, a fucking masterpiece. There is no other way to rate this than best. You must watch it!
A British American action film directed by Guy Ritchie, starring Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Mark Strong and Eddie Marsan.
Holmes and Watson are against Lord Henry Blackwood, who is trying to make a grab for political power by devious means.
This was terrible. The plot got lost in special effects and "faster than the speed of light" editing cuts. The characters were played alright, but this didn't amount to much with all of the obvious flaws present. Again, we see Holmes portrayed as a warrior/fighter instead of a detective. I think most of the video was done in Adobe After Effects and with other CG editing software. Most of the time, I could tell the characters had been recorded in a green room and placed upon digital environments. The sets were just too big to be real and items of immense size flew through the air in choreographed motions. The audio was also horrid. It featured terrible music (not quite as bad as the chap hop in Game of Shadows though) and whispered dialogue that was inaudible. Overall, I wish I had turned it off and want those two hours of my life back. Please refer to my post about Game of Shadows (2011) for more trash talk. I rate this shit. DO NOT WATCH!!!
