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Aldaron-2
Reviews
Deep Impact (1998)
Thought-provoking & intelligent
It is impossible to review "Deep Impact" without reference to "Armageddon", however I will keep the comparisons to a minimum and get them out of the way earlier.
"Deep Impact" is the intelligent geek to "Armageddon's" moronic jock. It is not laden with CGI effects -- these are saved pretty much until the end of the movie. This is very appropriate, since they aren't needed earlier. It really grates on me when I constantly hear people say: "Oh, but Armageddon had better special effects". So what?
Special effects/visual effects are adjuncts to a story. A movie is supposed to tell a story, not be a fireworks display, and "Deep Impact" does this very well. It tells a series of stories about people living with the knowledge that the destruction of most of the life on the planet is nearing, and the various ways they cope (or don't). The special effects exist only to drive the story, not vice versa, and as such fulfil their role nicely.
Scientifically, whilst "Deep Impact" has some inconsistencies, they are relatively minor and I had no problem suspending my disbelief. An obvious effort was made to be reasonably accurate (with the low escape velocity of the comet providing an additional danger and the "day" side of the comet erupting with geysers of gases), and I appreciated this. Too many "sci-fi" movies today plunge headlong into stories that could be made MUCH more plausible if someone would just pick up a high-school physics text ("Armageddon" and "Chain Reaction" spring to mind).
On the whole, "Deep Impact" was, like "Contact", a quality science-fiction story: it is about people, and their reactions to various situations and conflicts in an unusual setting, but above all, the CHARACTERS are the centres of the story.
I give it *** out of *****. (For the record, I gave "Armageddon" a *, "Chain Reaction" a *1/2 and "Contact" a ****1/2)
Phil
Armageddon (1998)
This was a box-office smash? Frightening...
WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS
You know, if someone had asked me a week ago what the worst movie I'd seen was, I would have been hard-presed to pick it.
Not now, however.
Basic premise: asteroid heading for Earth. Planet-killer "the size of Texas". Must land on it, drill 800' down and plant a nuke to split it in two to miss the Earth.
Let's first look at the movie as a whole. It is trite. It is rife with cheap cliches. It is rife with stereotypes. It overflows with moronic, annoying characters written and acted by people who seem to think that screaming idiocies at the top of your lungs is funny/entertaining. It is cheap, intelligence-insulting, flag-waving, mindless writing. It is appalling directing, cutting from one scene to another faster than the eye can follow. It is one or two nicely done CGI effects mixed with truckloads of fireballs, smoke and sparks (and a bizarre, strobe-like flashing that seems to be constantly coming thru the cockpit windows in the shuttle -- don't those aliens dip their broad-beams?) In short, it is something like a cross between "Die Hard" and a slew of terrible B-grade 50s sci-fi movies.
Probably the worst thing I found about "Armageddon", however, was the constant, CONSTANT implausibilities throughout the movie. Here is a few...
1) It is considered easier to train 9 oil-rig workers to be astronauts rather than train 9 astronauts to dig a hole.
2) The "Russian Space Station" (as it was only ever called in the movie) carried a heap of liquid oxygen to refuel the shuttle. Lovely. Pity the shuttle also needs a heap of liquid hydrogen as well.
3) With 2 space-shuttles coming in, the "Russian Space Station" starts to ROTATE to "provide gravity to make it easier to refuel" -- not to mention making it an extremely dangerous and almost impossible task to dock two space-shuttles on it! (One wonders if it was to make it easier -- and cheaper -- to film these scenes rather than have the astronauts in zero-G)
4) Whilst sling-shotting around the moon, the astronauts experience 11G of acceleration. Humans black out at around 9-10Gs. But here, of course, Bruce Willis' friends were busy screaming "yeeehaaa!" at the time.
5) When setting down on an object in space, one doesn't send one's shuttle screaming in for a crash landing. One slows down, matches velocity and gently sets down on the surface. Since all the asteroid fragments are moving at more-or-less the same velocity as the asteroid, you don't have the added hazard of screaming thru clouds of fast-moving rocks; you just gently puff your RCS thrusters and drift past. Wouldn't look as spectacular, I guess...
6) When you crash your shuttle onto an airless asteroid, bits of it don't sit on the surface and burn with nice cheerful fires, putting out smoke that gets whipped around by the wind...
7) When you're equipping your space-shuttles, you don't put 9mm handguns in special lockers as standard equipment, and finally...
8) When you design your "asteroid rover" vehicles, why in God's name do you mount whopping great remote-controlled chain-gun turrets on them?????!!!!!
Do yourself a favour. Don't, under any circumstances, waste your time with this movie.
I give it * out of *****, and that's only because of the great CGI shot of Paris getting nuked by a meteorite.
Phil
Ngo si seoi (1998)
JC should avoid writing/directing and stay in front of the camera...
I wonder whether I'm actually reviewing the same movie everyone else is. I thought it was one of most dreadfully B-grade movies I've seen.
Let me set one thing straight -- I'm not a rabid Jackie Chan fan. I like his stuff, I've always enjoyed and gotten a laugh out of his movies, and I don't expect the most brilliant piece of cinemagraphic legerdemain, just a slick movie, great fight scenes and an all round good time.
"Who Am I?" had the fight scenes...yes. It had little else, unfortunately. Appalling acting, ridiculous props (like bombs that suddenly grow red tentacles...????), terrible visual effects (including CGI that looked as if it were done on a home PC), cheesy sets and, worst of all, the most squirm-in-your-seat-inducing dialogue I've heard in a movie in a long, long time.
Not to mention that the dialogue was about a third of a second out of sync with the actors -- something that irritates me no end...
I think Jackie needs to stick to stunts and fights, and stay well away from both the back-end of the camera and the script-writer's desk...