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Ghostbusters (1984)
awful
I remember not liking this movie as a kid (but all my friends liked it). I have several adult friends who can recite lines from this movie. So I watched it again recently. I can't believe how strongly I disliked it. I actually tuned it out halfway through, and read books/magazines while it played, then paid attention again during the final scene which I had specifically remembered from childhood.
There are no likable characters in this movie, with the possible exception of Louis (Rick Morannis) , who I found endearing. My biggest problem with the movie was Bill Murray's character. I think his character was trying to be funny. Maybe? My reaction to Murray's character was to intensely want to punch him in the face. Why didn't Sigourney Weaver punch him in the face? I don't know. Why didn't the overworked secretary (Janine) punch him in the face? I don't know. Why didn't his colleagues, the EPA guy, the list goes on and on, Bill Murray was a jack-a$$ who mocked everyone in the movie, yet inexplicably, everyone puts up with it.
A lot of people will dislike this review, because perhaps they really liked Murray's character. That's fine. But he wasn't funny, and he was a &^%#@ the whole movie. And the movie revolves around him.
There was one line, "When someone asks you if you're a god, you say YES!" That made my lip curl up, in the closest thing to a smile that the movie made me produce. This line was not delivered by Bill Murray.
Particle Fever (2013)
all hype, no science
Wow, this movie is a poster child for what's wrong with big budget science. At the beginning they show clips of conservative members of congress, who are arguing that the American version of CERN should be defunded. I'm sure this was intended to be a hit/slam, but I found myself agreeing with the politicians. For the record, I'm a science geek, with a degree in engineering, who reads books about quantum mechanics for fun (David Deutsch in particular is my favorite author).
The female lead, well, she was super-impressed by a 5 story structure. Kaplan, one of the male leads, comes off as very unlikable, although I warmed up to him by the end of the movie. Then there's the guy who won't collaborate with more than 2 colleagues, but Nobel prizes can only be given to a most 3 people. Great, this guy's ego is so big that he'll sacrifice science to protect his reputation.
There's very little science here beyond what's in the headlines. Basically, all this money was spent on CERN, they were expecting the Higgs to be in one of two places, but they found something (it must be the Higgs!) in a different place, therefore it's pretty much back to the drawing board. Perhaps science is at its limits - but you know what, Einstein didn't need an expensive CERN to know that general relativity was true. Yes, something is WAY off here, and this movie just solidifies that for me.
I'd give this movie more stars if it could actually tell me WHY a Higgs imparts mass to other particles (or anything interesting!) because the personalities of the people they interviewed were simply not interesting to me.
Guns, Germs, and Steel (2005)
missing the forest for the trees
I get that Prof. Diamond is trying to answer the big questions of "why?" some civilizations invented "cargo" (material goods) and others didn't. I have not read the book, and just watched the first episode of this miniseries.
A lot of the details of the argument ring true to me. The worldwide distribution of beasts of burden, types of farm crops and weather patterns all certainly have an effect of the rise of civilizations. But this can't be the whole story, or even the major part.
When showing Diamond interacting wit the New Guinea folks, the emphasis was on the New Guinea struggles to get food. Hunting is inefficient, and farming is difficult labor due to the crops and lack of domesticated animals. Okay - but what was really striking is what was the lack of a written language. At the end of the episode, Diamond says something to the effect that if only geography had been different, then the New Guineans would have invented the helicopter, and not Westerners.
The problem with this argument, is that in order to invent a helicopter, you must first understand fuel, energy, materials, densities, air molecules, physics, weather, and hydraulics, just to name a few things. I agree with Diamond that the New Guineans are plenty smart to understand all those things, but in order to generate knowledge, a society must have a physical way to disseminate knowledge (scrolls, printing presses, paper, etc) and culture of acceptance of new ideas (criticism of new ideas is fine, indeed necessary to refine knowledge). Diamond didn't discuss the role of culture at all, and this is a huge omission.
Ultimately any theory of the rise of civilizations can be supported by cherry-picking data. This is a historians job, not a scientific endeavor. Diamond has his theory, and any number of people have their own theories. I personally don't find Diamond's theory to be very compelling.
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014)
ehh
I had high hopes for this one. I loved Carl Sagan's version. I've watched that one half a dozen times and it is truly inspiring.
Now DeGrasse Tyson's version has some decent information in it, but I find the presentation painful to watch. There are too many special effects, and Tyson's voice is too low in the audio mix. But my biggest complaint is there is very little rhyme or reason in a lot of the episodes, i.e., he jumps around, and important information gets lost in the shuffle.
Most of all, this version lacks the sense of wonder that Sagan's version had. I wouldn't want Tyson to even try to do an imitation, but this version has the feeling that it was written by a committee. Tyson seems to be reading from a script, rather than articulating what *he* wants to say.
I stopped watching after 7 episodes. Perhaps I'll give it another shot in the years to come once this is available on DVD. But watching these episodes is a chore, not a delight.
The Dark Knight (2008)
2.5 hours I'll never get back
I'll keep this short.
I rarely go to the theater, but with the hype I had to go see this. Batman and the Joker are invincible characters. You know they won't die. Plot hole: the police have the Joker in an interrogation room, with 30 officers on the other side of a 1-way mirror, and the Joker just killed the Mayor the day before. What do the police do? Any logical person in that situation would kill the Joker. Period. Just shoot him. I nearly walked out of the theater when the Joker escaped (imagine that!) Here's the thing. The Joker isn't a serial villain here. He's a terrorist. He's Osama bin Laden. Normal rules of police interrogation shouldn't apply here. And where's the military? the FBI? This story made no sense to me. Well I tried to keep this short. I want my 2.5 hours of my life back.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Huh?
Okay, I've seen all 3... and read all 3 books a long time ago. After seeing the glowing reviews on this board, I weep for the future of movie-making. Does this really qualify as a movie? I didn't see a whole lot of acting, just wooden looking people in front of blue screens reciting lines. Question: why can't the camera stand still? In every sweeping CGI panorama, the director seems to have a hidden agenda of making the audience seasick. The plot of the movie is incomprehensible. (All of my comments on this movie apply equally to the first 2). I'm not sure why I went to see this movie. Mainly because everyone else kept saying it's the greatest movie ever made. Gollum: Okay, they have the voice down. But we're watching a cartoon character. Maybe one day they'll make CGI so we can't notice it's CGI. But why do I think that's a long way off? Just look at Gollum's unnatural blue eyes, the eyes that don't match the rest of his body. Or the way he moves, like Newton's second law doesn't quite apply. Of course that's true with all CGI. But how can... gaaa, I give up. I just hope I can erase the memories of these movies, and go back and enjoy the books. And I hope to god he doesn't make a Hobbit movie. That was such a good, lighthearted fantasy ditty... I can only imagine the travesty they'd make of that.