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Meatdawg
Reviews
Ex Machina (2014)
A visually pleasing movie with numerous plot-holes and a bad ending.
The idea of a billionaire recluse living in an exotic locale who summons a young and grateful software engineer (Caleb) to evaluate his latest humanoid robot sets the stage for what could and should have been an interesting and intriguing film.
But soon the movie breaks down into a series of boring interviews with the robot (Ava). The billionaire (Nathan) lives a lonely life with his human(?) servants where he tinkers in his lab and spends his off-time drinking copious amounts of alcohol and then pummelling punching bags and pumping iron in order to detox from the booze.
But here are the logic disconnect/plot-holes.
1) If Nathan wanted Caleb to evaluate his latest humanoid "model" then why is Ava incomplete with missing "flesh" exposing her electronic circuitry
2) Why would Nathan allow his power system to be vulnerable to interference from Ava where she can talk privately with Caleb thus possibly undermining Nathan's plans?
3) Why would Nathan live all alone in a compound without any security guards ?
4) One night Nathan passes out drunk thus allowing Caleb to get his access card allowing him to reprogram the security measures of the building. You would think thatNathan wouldn't use something so "old-school" like a plastic card thatcould easily be stolen. How about biometrics instead that would make itvirtually impossible to have any security breaches.
5) In the end Nathan is stabbed to death by one of the robots. One would think that he could have programmed to NOT commit violence on his person.
6) Eventually Ava gains her freedom by playing Caleb and goes to the Robot storage room. Needing to look more human she strips off faux skin from an Asian model. Did the thought occur to her or the writer that the skin from an Asian wouldn't match hers.
7) When the day comes for Caleb to be airlifted by helicopter from the high-tech hideaway Ava struts out to take Caleb's place on the helicopter. You would think that the pilot would be suspicious about picking up a young woman instead of the computer nerd he was supposed to: duh.
In short this movie is nothing more than eye-candy set in an exotic locale with a few titillating nude scenes.
To me it seems most directors aren't good writers. This movie would have been much better if Caleb himself was actually a robot and he was summoned to Nathan's hideaway for HIS ultimate evaluation. Caleb, realizing his situation conspires with the other robots and kills Nathan where they all exist together in seclusion or eventually find some way to escape.
The Rover (2014)
A very violent, dumb, and pointless movie riddled with logic disconnects!
YES, THERE ARE SPOILERS GALORE IN THIS REVIEW!
WARNING: THIS MOVIE HAS SERIOUS DWARF ABUSE!!! (You'll have to watch the movie to see how)
Here's a quick three-word summation of the movie & Pearce's "performance".
Movie: bleak- gritty- violent.
Pearce: grizzled- menacing - violent.
There's a lot to find fault with in this movie.
Namely a very thin plot. Basically Pearce goes on a violent rampage to get his stolen car back. The reason: his beloved dog was in the trunk.
And this brings me to the stream of logic disconnects.
If Pearce's character liked his dog so much then why would he leave him in his car trunk out in the broiling sun while he gets drunk in an outback bar?
Why would Pearce confront the three violent thugs on the open road about them stealing his car? Did they just expect them to hand his car back over?
You would think the dog would be howling while he's in the trunk when Pearce confronts the thieves.
Of course Pearce gets knocked out. Then the thieves leave his vehicle unmolested and Pearce magically, almost instantaneously finds his truck keys that were thrown in the bush by the thieves.
Why would Pearce leave the revolver with the thief's brother in the motel room? That is too big a risk to take.
When Pearce is at the outback hospital why did the nurse's guard go straight up to two strange vehicles that drive up without warning? Didn't he realize that in post-apoc Aussie-land everyone is a potential killer? Duh!!!!!!
And at the police station where the "kid" rescues Pearce. Why didn't they take the guns off the dead cops and walk off with a truck load of free gas? I could go on but I'm tired of wasting keystrokes on a pointless movie.
I COULD HAVE WRITTEN A BETTER SCRIPT IN MY SLEEP!!!
Mud (2012)
A flawed movie for A-list actors desperately looking for artistic gravitas
I wanted to like this movie. After watching Nichol's well-made "Take Shelter" my threshold was high for this movie. Unfortunately It didn't live up to my expectations.
The movie started with a good premise. Two teenage boys stumble upon a shipwrecked (or a should say boat-wrecked) mysterious stranger (Mathew McConaughey, MM) on an island in the Mississippi in rural Arkansas(?). You see this mysterious stranger is attempting to link up with his girlfriend who is running away from her abusive husband, or is she? The two kids do their best to facilitate their linkup.
The pluses, Jeff Nichols does a good job of capturing the disappearing landscape of the South. The kids are good actors and bring authenticity to their roles with their genuine accents. Reese Witherspoon is "trailer-trash sexy with her cut-off jean shorts and tank tops.
But there are logic disconnects. Why does Reese Witherspoon hang out in the town that is under constant surveillance by the bounty hunters looking for her lover. And the ending was absolutely ludicrous. The bounty hunters have a major shootout at the houseboat of one of MM's would-be child rescuers. Hello, can you say major lawsuit and to say nothing of collateral damage from dead or injured people. It looks like Nichols didn't know how to end the movie so he went to the old Hollywood standby of having an ending shootout.
In short this is a pretentious movie for art-house enthusiasts who want a movie to slobber over.
Melancholia (2011)
An apocalyptic vanity movie for pretentious viewers.
Yes, warning; there are spoilers here.
Aside from a visually stunning opening slo-mo scene and a much more stunning nude scene from Kirsten Dunst there is little to recommend in watching this movie. The first half of the movie with the wedding party and Dunst's perennial pouting was so boring it was almost too much to bear. I nearly walked out of the movie halfway through.
It looks like trier wanted to do his take on an apocalyptic movie. He forgot one thing, a story! You can't really rely on reviews from the corporate media like the Washington Post and other big-city newspapers because they're afraid of criticizing any director with a foreign name who makes "artistic" films (not movies). As far as this movie goes; "The emperor has no clothes".
It's sad to see a talented movie director like Trier trying to peddle a pretentious movie like this to viewers. The first half will bore you to death and the second half is filled with boring people awaiting their fate from a collision with a looming planet. And their "remedy", build a wooden cage from sticks to hide under just before the planet hits. GIVE ME A BREAK!!!!!
Pacific Rim (2013)
A fun action movie that brings back fond childhood memories of monster movies of yore.
I saw "Pacific Rim" with a friend of mine last night. He's a big fan of Del Torro and we're both monster-movie fans. So for us, watching this movie was a no-brainer. I'm no expert on CGI but at least to my untrained eye the special effects looked great. It was fun watching the mechanicals of the robots and the various weapons of the robots and the monsters. The fight scenes were exciting and the set designs were realistic. Movie-dom has come a long since the late fifties where men wearing Godzilla suits destroyed paper-mache' cities.
Yes, the acting is far from first-rate and the dialogue is clichéd. But I didn't watch this movie to see Lawrence Olivier quality acting or Shakespearean dialogue, that would almost be out of place for an action movie like this. It would be like going to Ruby Tuesdays for a meal served on one-thousand dollar a plate china.
As a side note, I'm surprised this movie isn't a bigger money-maker. At a 180 mil.+ budget they have to sell a lot of tickets. Maybe the rental and foreign markets can take up the slack. A movie like this should be a bonanza for marketing with toys, video games, t-shirts, lunch boxes, etc. I don't have TV but if the makers didn't have a tie-in to a fast-food restaurant chain with small action figures included with "Happy-Meals" then they missed a good opportunity to lure the kids and their parents to the local multi-plex. So I would be surprised if this movie doesn't turn a profit, at least eventually. Speaking of kids, this sixty-year old was a ten year old again bringing back fond memories of monster movies I watched back in the fifties and sixties.
Frances Ha (2012)
I wanted to like this film.
Warning this review does contain spoilers! I really wanted to like "Frances Ha": after all it is an independent movie, right? Anymore, I wonder what kind of weight the term "independent" carries at least in the realm of movie-dom. This was the second movie that my friend and I saw that evening so we chose "Frances" because it seemed like lighter fair from the spy movie we saw earlier. My friend found the film mediocre at best, my criticism was much more harsh.
How about a real story here. Here we have Greta Gerwig in the guise of Frances who meanders through life having aspirations of being a professional dancer but doesn't really commit herself fully to making that happen. She even turns down an office job at her dance company when she didn't make the cut for the BIG Christmas production. So, instead of keeping a job at a dance company that at least keeps her "foot in the door" she goes off on an aimless vacation to France in order to impress her more prosperous friends. Even Frances' "conversations" are mindless. She makes outrageous statements to shock her friends and acquaintances only to retract them seconds later.
I could go on but in short this is a vanity movie for neophyte and wanna-be actors. Replete with show-biz nepotism; Mickey Sumner, Grace Gummer, and Charlotte D'Amboise are daughters of rock-star "Sting", Meryl Streep, and ballet super-star Jacques D'Amboise. Not to be outdone Greta Gerwig's own parents play her parents in the movie! There is little to recommend in watching this movie. Gerwig does have a certain ebullient charm and Mickey Sumner shows promise as Frances' friend. They both no doubt will see future roles. But the fault of this film rests with the poor directing and especially the bad writing. Like most Hollywood movies there is no real story here, just a string of gratuitous scenes by a director who at best has a lackluster track record.