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Waco: American Apocalypse (2023)
Amazing footage; lackluster information. A good supplement to existing documentaries.
As you can see from some of the reviews here, misinformation about Waco still abounds.
The warrant WAS to search for automatic weapons. Specifically semi-automatic weapons converted into machine guns. Such conversions are 100% illegal. Not only did the agents on the ground testify to hearing automatic weapons fire, so did the journalists present. This is also all in addition to them recovering automatic weapons after the fire.
Meanwhile another reviewer insists that if the Davidians had grenades that they would have exploded in the fire. I can only imagine this reviewer was simply not paying attention because 1) Footage of the initial shootout captured the sound of very loud explosions which were implied to be the grenades and 2) There WAS a very large explosion at some point during the fire. Even if those explosions and the large one during the fire could not be attributed to grenades, that doesn't mean the Davidians weren't attempting to construct them, which is all that the delivery driver's finding of an empty grenade hull actually ever implied.
The documentary also did very little to explore the issue of who fired first, despite there being an enormous amount of theories and speculation about this--both theories that the ATF did and to the contrary. It instead simply gives the benefit of the doubt to the ATF agents, which is pretty far from unbiased or definitive. Not even to suggest they're lying, they just could have been mistaken.
The one piece of information this documentary DID provide that's usually absent in many Waco documentaries is the audio recording of Davidian members discussing pouring fuel and distributing hay, which implies they were setting the fires. It also includes FLIR footage from helicopters which shows the flames beginning simultaneously at three different locations, which does not support theories suggesting the FBI HRT set the fires either intentionally or unintentionally.
Despite what you believe about what happened that day on Waco, this documentary takes the side of the government's explanation of the event, and I think it's unfortunate that it doesn't provide more substance to support that. It's not that I disagree with it, it's just that it spends much more time interviewing people who clearly have a stake in the matter and whose views can't be seen as impartial by any means, rather than reviewing cold hard facts, which are readily available.
Beyond that, it doesn't really give equal time to all those involved, and it seems to be unfairly weighted to make the HRT operation seem to be at fault for things going so badly. The Davidians were presented as religious fanatics who didn't know any better, the FBI negotiation team was presented as the only voice of reason involved, and the HRT was painted as simply a gungho force of overly aggressive soldiers who unnecessarily escalated things. Given what the documentary did show, it's hard not to agree with it, but considering that only ONE member of the HRT was interviewed, it feels pretty slanted and like there's much more to the story left out--and having watched many other Waco documentaries, I know there is.
Overall, I was pretty disappointed, especially given that this is a Netflix docuseries. With their propensity for turning small subjects into 8 episode installments of mind numbing minutia, it's really surprising that they dropped the ball so hard making only 3 episodes for this when SO many more facets of the event could have been explored. It just feels extremely incomplete and shallow, examining only the very surface of the event.
On the other hand, there is an abundance of never before seen footage, and what's more some footage that's been seen before with this level of video quality. They really knocked it out if the park as far as collecting and presenting stock footage, creating visual representations of what happened, etc. But unfortunately the actual informative quality seemed to suffer because of that.
The best I can say for it is that it's phenomenal supplemental footage to other information that's already available. The worst I can say is that it's very shallow and biased in its dissemination of information about the event. Overall, worth a watch, but by no means comprehensive.
The Anthrax Attacks (2022)
Can't decide if it wants to be an investigative doc or a dramatized re-enactment
I really don't like documentaries that are actually just dramatized reenactments of the events, and prefer investigative documentaries that rely solely on actual footage, audio and other media involving the event. This documentary tries to straddle both, but unfortunately tries to derive way too much substance from the re-enactment portion. Most of this has to do with one of the FBI's suspects, and at that point in the film the production really goes off the rails into being primarily an over-acted, dramatized re-enactment. I think they felt this was really necessary to better highlight the reasons why the FBI suspected this person, maybe feeling that simple narration of transcripts might have been too boring. However, as with all re-enactments, you then run into scenes like a deposition hearing between the FBI and the suspect that are so dramatized you don't know what was actually said and what was part of the script the production company provided.
I would have preferred if it had been a purely factual documentary, or at least if Netflix had made it more clear that it was so largely re-enacted so I could avoid it all together.
An Unexpected Killer (2019)
Should be called "Dumb Luck Disqualifies the Usual Suspects"
Here's how every episode goes in a nutshell:
Someone is killed
Detectives immediately begin interviewing the usual suspects (boyfriend, ex-husband, ex-employee, etc.)
The detectives go down the list until alibis, DNA evidence, surveillance footage, etc. Eventually rule out each "usual suspect"
After they've wasted all that time and ruled out everyone on their suspect list they do a modicum of actual investigative work and end up finding the "unexpected killer", which actually translates to a completely unrelated and impossible-to-expect person
It really highlights the way investigators like to say everything is suspicious. Your timeline doesn't match what your friend says about the timeline? Suspicious. Your timeline DOES match what your friend says about the timeline? Suspicious. Eventually when everyone has a solid alibi--or my personal favorite, knows their rights and/or has an attorney--they move on, all the while wasting time trying to throw darts and make something stick. It's only until after all that is exhausted they do something simple like find a DNA sample, run it through a database, and find a suspect that wasn't on their radar at all. In the meantime, you get to watch investigators try to coerce false confessions out of innocent people.
Basically an unintentional expose into the stupidity and laziness of modern police investigations.
Ascension (2021)
I've never checked if a film as almost over this much
The film maker was able to gain access to many areas in China because they did not seem to have an overtly political point. We get to see lots of glimpses of Chinese life that would otherwise be heavily curated, either by pro-Chinese or anti-Chinese peopganda. Instead the film maker was able to seem completely neutral in only offering what basically amounts to stock footage of various jobs in China. It almost feels like an episode of "How It's Made".
However, as intriguing as it is from the start, it gets boring extremely quickly. The film maker decided not to add any sort of narration, and that was a huge mistake. What you end up with is a disjointed collage of scenes with a, "Interpret your own meaning," conclusion. While I'm sure many people see tons of implied points and messages conveyed with this imagery, I don't find the uncertainty of it compelling at all and I found myself literally struggling to complete the film.
I gave it a three because I enjoy stock footage, and I appreciate a new approach. However, after a while I wad very unmoved by what is essentially just watching people at work. There are the obvious implicit commentaries on social inequalities, but they're not any different than the same inequalities we could observe in any other capitalist society. Meanwhile, without narration, so much of the unique aspects of their culture is left vague an undefined. For example, they will use the term 'boss' over and over again in the film, without the viewer able to differentiate between the term being used to describe the amount of social influence a particular person may have--akin to the West's "influencers"--or if they are talking about a literal boss, i.e. Someone's employer. Without a narrator there to give the viewer this sort of context, most scenes more incoherent than simply abstract.
It's an interesting concept but it really falls short in delivery. Perhaps if it had been 60 minutes instead of 90, but after a while the film maker's desire to leave the point unstated simply makes the film feel pointless.
Strange Evidence (2017)
Mind-numbingly sensationalist, racist and ridiculous
This show use to be interesting. They'd feature some clip of something, and then offer up a bunch of possible explanations. Usually they'd go down the line from utterly infeasible, to somewhat probable, and then eventually they'd reveal the actual explanation.
Over time, it has developed into offering not only completely infeasible explanations, but always ones that are sinister and foreboding. A power transformer blows up and makes a smoke ring, and the narrator asks, "Is this a portal to hell?" Or perhaps a natural gas line blows up somewhere in China, and the narrator asks, "Is this a Triad gang attack?" Every explanation they offer is accompanied by spooky sounding background score just to try to play it up as ominous.
Then on top of that, it is frequently racist. Every time there's a video out of China, Russia, or any other nation really, they don't miss an opportunity to talk about the country's poor infrastructure, lack of medical knowledge, etc. And so forth. The last episode I watched even went so far as to suggest the Chinese were developing some kind of parasite to infect humans a la "Manchurian Candidate".
Worst yet, the show has completely given up on actually finding the explanation for many of the videos shown. In the beginning, it would at least eventually reveal the true explanation, but now more often than not it just throws its hands up and goes, "Is this evidence of an alien invasion? Unfortunately we can't say," and moves on to the next nonsense.
Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
Two men try to write a female-empowerment popcorn flick
I really don't have a problem with the all-female cast, but how do women not find this patronizing? About thirty minutes in I said to myself, "This feels like it was written by men." Then I looked up the writer and director, and sure enough, two dudes. The dialog and little female-literary-giant name-drops gave it away. It was the dialog that really ruined it for me, though. There's a point in the film where all the badass female assassins begin censoring themselves by saying things like, "Fudge that!" I don't know if the film was trying to be funny by pointing out the absurdity of them trying to shield a little girl from vulgar language while they're killing people in front of her, or if it was truly operating on a stereotype that all women are inherent nurturers and protectors that would naturally try to shield an impressionable child from naughty language. Then there's a terribly expositional moment where they're name-dropping all these female authors where a character actually blurts out, "Very progressive, a feminist." I guess they couldn't risk the audience not being familiar with the referenced author's works, but it was so clunky and unnatural that it made the actress saying it seem like this was her first role. The final coup de grace was the subtle-as-a-foghorn metaphor of the film's antagonists representing the patriarchy and its protagonists' triumph being some symbolic victory for all women. For people saying this was just supposed to be a popcorn flick, that was a really hamfisted attempt at social commentary.
But it doesn't even have much going for it as a popcorn flick either. First of all, the noir genre is liked by many, but it was hard not to laugh when they made Gillan's character look like a liveaction Carmen Sandiego, and I'm still not sure if it was supposed to be funny or not. Then there was the nebulous assassin's-society world-building a la John Wick. Which is one thing to do if you're going to do it well, but the whole thing felt like a vague afterthought in this movie. I'm still uncertain if they were trying to make a satirical parody of that type of idea or if it was just poorly executed, but I didn't like that aspect in John Wick either. Where John Wick made up for it was in superb choreography and fight scenes, that while not exactly realistic, were good enough to make you suspend disbelief and made you feel like there was some seriousness to it. Gunpowder Milkshake's fight scenes, while not lacking in creativity for sure, had all the believeablity and seriousness of a Tom and Jerry cartoon. The one character with unquestionably badass fight scenes was Michelle Yeoh's, but unfortunately you only get to see her fight two different times.
If the action had been better, I think it might have distracted me from the clunky, expositional feminist-pandering by the two male writers. As it is, I had to force myself to finish the film, and did not feel rewarded for staying it through. Do yourself a favor and watch The Old Guard or Kill Bill if you want to watch decent action scripts with female leads. If you just want to watch a Wickian popcorn flick, go checkout Nobody, or maybe just watch John Wick again. As a fan of all those movies mentioned, this movie left a lot to be desired.
White Tide: The Legend of Culebra (2018)
Infuriating
I have to give this 6 stars just because it managed to elicit so much emotion from me...
I sure hope Rodney is still building homes for Habitat for Humanity, because otherwise he's just a giant piece of filth that should be locked away in prison. His wife is an unrepentant, unsympathetic, spoiled brat. "Oh woe is me, I have to live in a double-wide trailer." Sad fact is I'm sure that Rodney is back to doing construction just simply to support his spoiled brat of a wife.
Here's the nutshell... A hippie named Julian, who doesn't care about materialistic goods and lives a subsistence-living type of life, finds a duffel bag of coke on a beach in Puerto Rico, and buries it because he wants nothing to do with it. He then goes on to tell a bunch of people about the story, and one of them is a greedy, naive idiot named Rodney who decides he's going to go down there with his drug-addict friend--who he most likely buys pot from--to dig it up. Along the way, they meet a low-level dealer named Dee who agrees to sell it on the street level for them. Well, Dee gets pulled over by the cops, and wisely decides to snitch on Rodney. The local sheriff's department, along with homeland security, get Rodney hooked up with an undercover agent he believes is named Carlos. Rodney is the most gullible, greedy, idiotic criminal in history, and so after he's clearly setup to be busted the first time around, but like an absolute idiot didn't have the wherewithal to bring a shovel with him to dig the rugs up, still goes along with this plan, and eventually gets arrested after willfully importing several dozen kilograms of cocaine into the country under the hopes of using Dee to sell it. The sappy judge decides since Rodey (a fat, middle-aged white guy) has no prior convictions, no criminal history, decides to waive the minimum mandatory sentence and gives Rodney 60 days in jail with 5 years probation and community service--after he's just imported enough coke to burden and create dozens upon a dozens of addicts as part of his "American Dream". Rodney then goes on to claim that he was entrapped and that the department of homeland security probably never actually dug up the drugs, because he obviously has no remorse and is just sour that he got caught.
I have absolutely no sympathy for Rodney or his wife. They kept talking about this being "The American dream" throughout the documentary. I'm an American, and I never dreamed about addicting dozens if not hundreds of people to narcotics in an effort to support my spoiled brat of a wife who thought it was just atrocious to live in a double-wide trailer--a living situation that many Americans would give anything for. He had no thought of the damage that he was going to do to other people, and his stupid spoiled brat of a wife has the nerve to say, "It's all bullshit, they should have put the real drug addicts in jail." She literally had the nerve to sit there and bawl because they went from a big fancy house to a double-wide trailer that, was in her own words, "As big as our three-car garage." Literally the worst type of person.
I have to admit, that it raised a lot of emotion in me, which is the only reason I'm giving it a relatively high rating. None of it was sympathy for any of the protagonists. The only person that had any sense about him was Dee, the low-level street dealer that snitched on Rodney. That doesn't exactly make him a good person, but the idea that it tries to cast him as the villain and Rodney as just some naive good-hearted guy really pisses me off. He was willing to get countless people addicted to drugs. He's not a good guy, and he was damned lucky that the judge gave him such a light sentence.
So long story short, this documentary is good in the sense that it's a good enough story to have made me so mad. I'm sure other people's views on it will differ, but that's what makes it a good story. I would have liked to have heard that Rodney continued working for Habitat for Humanity, but given his greediness I'm sure that's no the case, and he's probably back to working to support his spoiled brat--and by that I mean his wife; his daughter seemed all right, if not clueless. Dee is the most likeable character (other than Andy for shear idiocy), and that's saying a lot considering he's a run-of-the-mill-drug-dealing thug. He's the quintessential "little fish", but Rodney was the big fish that the justice system decided to catch and release.
Long story short... This is one of the few documentaries that's ever made me feel more sympathetic to law enforcement than the perpetrator they arrested. This guy should have done hard time, but instead got off with a couple of months and probation. There are people in penitentiaries doing 10, 15, 20-some-odd years for dealing less drugs than this guy was involved with in dealing, and he's just very lucky he got some kind of sweet-heart deal from the judge. In my opinion, it was a total miscarriage of justice, and the fact that he has the nerve to go on about 'entrapment' and claim that homeland security staged the discovery of the rugs just shows me he's not remorseful, and that he would have gladly exploited countless drug addicts in an effort to fulfill his own greed.
Long story short... I wish that Julian would have never told anyone about the drugs, but he did, and this is what happened. Like it or hate it, it's a good story.
Kings of Pain (2019)
Let's be idiots... For science!
Okay so first an foremost, let's talk about the premise: Enduring lots of insect stings and animal bites in order to rate them on an index of which hurts the worst. They reference Justin Schmidt a lot, who apparently wrote a book that does the same, but he only rated the intensity of the pain. They decided to try to expand on this, by rating not only the pain intensity, but the duration and damage.
Here's the big issue... Intensity and damage are both very subjective, and only four episodes in, I've seen them give questionable ratings in both categories. They rated bark scorpions a two on damage because it merely caused swelling, but then in another episode, they rated another insect ( I honestly forget which ) much higher even though it caused basically the same simple swelling reaction. Beyond that, the intensity rating seems very unbelievable too, since their visible reaction for some stings seems much greater, wherein they rate it very low in intensity, and then very high for other stings where in they rate it very high. Finally, the only objective rating, "duration", they seem to mix in other categories... They rate some insects as higher duration because the swelling is still present the next day, when that seems a bit more like conflating duration and damage. Really there's no controlled way that they measure the duration... You'd think to be truly scientific, one would have to graph the intensity of the pain over time, but they are just winging it.
So the whole premise of doing it for "science" is troubled by the fact that their rating method is totally unscientific, but that's okay... Is it at least good television? No, and I'll tell you why.
They begin each "sting" by going out on an obviously faked expedition to find the insect or animal in question. It's so obvious that the two hosts do not actually do any of the tracking or finding of these animals, and sometimes they will film them "collecting" the animals, but in other instances it's obvious that someone else ( probably some unpaid intern ) got to go out and get them. The episode with the harvester ants shows the hosts stumble upon ( literally ) a nest of harvester ants, and then they throw one or two of them into a case before deciding to bug out (pun intended). Yet, when it comes time to test the sting, there are hundreds of the ants in the case that they'd only tossed a couple into.
Meanwhile... It's pretty hard to believe their reactions to some of the stings and there's a whole lot of over-acting. They jump up and down, grunt, moan, yell "Oooof", and act like it's some horrendous pain... Then they sit down and rate it a 3 or a 4 or something. Meanwhile, there's clips in the introduction of one of the hosts being bitten by a Python, receiving major lacerations, and he's literally tapping out and has an expression on his face completely unlike others I've seen. I've not made it to that part of the series yet, but undoubtedly he'll rate the damage of the lacerations as only a 5 wherein the swelling from previous insects' bites they've rated 8.
The whole thing is just fundamentally flawed and poorly executed, and worst yet... It's just a ripoff of Coyote Peterson. Obviously they saw how popular his YouTube videos were, and decided, "This would make a great show, let's put it behind the facade of being scientific testing!"
One thing that also concerns me is what happens to the animals and insects they're testing. The show does not tell us whether these animals are returned to the habitat they're removed from, and from a conservationist and ethical standpoint, it seems very likely that these animals are harmed in one way or another.
The only positive I can give this show is that you will learn about a myriad of different insects and animals, but they only comment very mildly about those animal's behavior and missed the boat by a mile when it comes to the potential for this being an informative production.
tl;dr : You'll like it if you just want to see two grown men act like idiots and intentionally hurt themselves. If you were hoping for any type of scientific or informative merit, you'll be disappointed.
Joker (2019)
Did you like Taxi Driver? You'll like this. Did you think Dark Night was the best films ever? Stay away.
All the people giving this low reviews probably weren't expecting an actual art piece. Granted, given that it's supposed to be about the DC comic universe, I could see how they would have went into it expecting that, and can understand the disappointment.
Have you ever seen Taxi Driver? No? Go watch it. Did you like it? Watch this.
Only reason I didn't give it a ten is because of some plot holes and some predictable "twists", and because it could have been about virtually any other character besides the Joker and have been the same film. I'm not really a big fan or detractor of comic-book based movies, so I'd imagine I'd have stronger feelings about it one way or the other if I were. I pretty much forgot that it had anything to do with Batman for most of the movie.
Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
2 parts political commentary, 1 part parody
I don't mind a movie trying to make political points if there is some level of nuance to it, but this movie seems to have forgotten it's supposed to be a part of the terminator franchise. I'm pretty sure that they allowed the protagonists (one of which being an insanely powerful human/terminator hybrid, and the other a gritty and experienced resistance fighter) to be captured by border patrol just so they could make a statement about the way immigrants are being jailed. They even go so far as to remind us, "We call them detainees," just to make the political commentary unmistakable. I feel like the treatment of immigrants is abhorrent and we need immigration reform, but I wanted to watch a science fiction about machines destroying humanity, not be reminded about the actual machines doing it in real-life. There, I just made a more scathing and political remark than this movie attempts to in 90 mins.
If that wasn't bad enough, it very sheepishly tries to force a female-empowerment angle, but fails itself by reinforcing the usual tropes but simply with reversed genders. It's not that the 3 main protagonists are female that forces this empowerment narrative, it's that one of the females is basically the savior of humanity, and the cheesy dialog they choose to make sure the audience "gets it". She plays this savior all while failing to make any impression at all, while the other two are needlessly aggressive and cantankerous, respectively. Seriously, the unnecessary rivalry between Grace and Sarah Connor seemed more reminiscent of two macho-male roles trying to assert their dominance as the alpha in a struggle of young vs old, yet it was so unbelievable because neither could play the part worth a damn. It's like Hollywood thought, "How can we write empowered female leads? Oh, let's just make them needlessly competitive and overtly confrontational." If you had replaced Grace and Sarah with any two run-of-the-mill meathead male action heroes ( personally I'm imagining Sylvester Stalone and John Cena), they would have been the exact same characters. Meanwhile, Dani seemed to just be caught up in the middle of this, and in the end with all this pomp and posturing trying to make it seem like these women are so badass and empowered, none of them actually get to be the hero in the end. So what was the point of all that insufferable pandering to begin with?
Oh, and did I mention that T-101s know how to change diapers? Yeah, I'm sure you'll love that little tidbit. Though I did get a little chuckle out of hearing Arnie's character very seriously warning about the catastrophic color choices you could make with room decor. No, I'm not joking, it happens. Apparently the only way they could think to really make the female characters seem empowered was to completely emasculate the only male role.
But, if you can get past all that, and focus on the plot... You still get a kick in the teeth. Remember Skynet? Yeah well that never happened. Mission accomplished, humanity is saved, right? No, because now there's "Legion"... With no real explanation of how that happened, except some very thin, misanthropic suggestion that it was all because of man making weapons... again. Granted after the last three sequels, there wasn't really any continuity to speak of, but fans hoping for a cogent and meaningful follow-up to events after T2 will basically see through this "new" story as a parody of the same story, except NOW, Skynet is Legion
So yeah I give it a 3/10 just because it's got some cool action scenes, but as a fan of the franchise, and a movie-goer trying to action a science-fiction/action film and escape the constant barrage of political commentary in every other part of media these days, I'm pretty sorely disappointed.
The Dead Don't Die (2019)
If you didn't like it, you probably fell asleep
Yeah I get that this is a big satirical commentary on zombie movie tropes, blended in with a big metaphorical commentary on society, and capped with a little diatribe from Tom Waits as the "outward observer", but the entire thing is just SO slow that it's utterly boring. I literally fell asleep in the middle of it and had to start it over again. The jokes aren't funny and the story elements go nowhere.
Maybe if they hadn't spent so much money on the rock-star cast of A-list celebrities they would have had more left over in the budget for a story with jokes. Honestly I think the reason the whole thing moved so dreadfully slow is because they had to find a way to fill 90 minutes. Watch the thing at 1.5x normal playback speed, and maybe the high-pitched voices and better pacing will make it salvageable.
Tone-Deaf (2019)
You might laugh a few times
With how hard this movie strives to make all its main characters as unlikeable as possible, it's interesting that they only chose to make one of them actually die. It's weird because they seemed to try to stay impartial in their critiques of each generation the two main characters represent, but all things were not equal. For one thing, the Baby Boomer has a weird habit of delivering fourth-wall breaking diatribes, and in the end the Millennial is the one who ends up triumphant despite the film going out of their way in the beginning to make you hope she gets snuffed out in the end. If only her vapid friends had gone with her to get taken out too, it might have been offset, but in the end the movie kind of betrays the early notion it set that it was going to try to be impartial and that neither generation would come out of it the victor.
It did have a lot of funny moments in it however so I wouldn't say it was completely without value, but it would have been a lot better if both main characters had ended up dying. In a way I think this betrays the dark comedy genre, because having a "happy ending" is really unnecessary and only leaves the feeling that the writers were really on the side of the Millennial all a long.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
The worst movie I've seen all week
I have been on a binge of sci-fi movies this week, and kept seeing people mention this in their reviews of others as some type of benchmark. Among that it was also mentioned in a documentary I was watching concerning Devil's Tower. Given that it is a classic, and I've never seen it and only ever saw it parodied, I thought it would be worth a watch. I was wrong.
I usually never say a movie is a waste of time, but this is one that deserves that statement entirely. It starts off intriguing with the mysterious appearance of some lost aircraft from WWII, and I thought, "Oh boy is this going to touch on some Bermuda Triangle mystery?" and was really excited for them to wrap it up and explain what was going on with all the mysterious appearances.
Soon though, I was being assaulted by completely cryptic scenes of people running around India recording some kind of chant, , and having a little bit of knowledge about the plot of the movie I had a suspicion this had something to do with the idea of the aliens communicating with us. I thought, "Okay well, great, we're going to see some real interesting theoretical talk about language and communication," but I was pretty disappointed. Though I did get kind of a kick out of differences in technological sophistication when they realized a signal they were receiving was a set of coordinates, and they hastily hi-jacked some county official's globe in an effort to locate where it was coming from. Though I couldn't really understand why they had to roll it down the hall-way rather than just mapping the coordinates on its pedestal. I guess seeing a bunch of guys rolling a big globe down a hall way is what excited audiences in the 70s. Instead of giving a little bit of scientific substance, we're then treated to a conspiratorial mystique of some army official basically asking, "What can we fake to make people so afraid no one will go near Devil's Tower?"
Right when I thought the story was picking up, we're introduced to Roy and his insufferable family. The pacing at this point begins hurdling forwards in great leaps as in one scene Roy witnesses a U.F.O, and in pretty much three scenes later he's a raving lunatic and his wife is packing up the kids and leaving him to construct a giant replica of Devil's Tower in his living room. Honestly the only sense of enjoyment I got out of this part was realizing that the movie Canadian Bacon was parodying this when Rhea Pearlman made her mashed-potatoe CN tower. "This means something." Soon Roy is in Wyoming (wow he got there fast) trying to mill through crowds which are probably larger than Wyoming's actual population.
Anyway, long story short, the whole thing wraps up in the most disappointing climax I've ever witnessed as a cavalcade of scientist basically play a giant game of Simon Says (the electronic version) with an alien ship, it lands, missing airmen get off and the movie sheepishly wraps up the original plot of "What's up with these missing planes reappearing?" and then Roy decides that he wants to go board the ship with the aliens. A lot of other reviewers seem to think this is very unrealistic that he'd just leave his family behind, but on the other hand I couldn't completely understand his decision to get as far away from them as possible.
I really don't know how anyone ever found this movie charming or entertaining at all. It was a 2 hour slog of trying to tolerate lousy pacing and even lousier story-telling. I suppose in 1977 the visuals were probably a lot more spectacular and that this movie was basically just an eye-candy affair, but in 2019 the production values were pretty far from satisfying. The aliens had to be the goofiest looking contraptions I've seen in a long time. I could see nostalgia influencing a lot of the positive reviews, but otherwise I don't understand how anyone could enjoy this film in 2019, and certainly not how it could be used as a benchmark to compare more recent sci-fi movies.
Alien Code (2018)
Came for the code, stayed for the heady plot
Okay I have to admit I'm a cryptography nerd, and I was looking for sci-fi films and couldn't help but want to give this a try when I read the plot summary. My immediate reaction was, "Oh boy I can't wait to see what kind of BS movie-software and psuedo-technical drivel this will have," but I was really surprised. This movie actually uses real-world software and cryptography primitives, even showcasing some seemingly functional Java code. Though, I will say that I doubt the world's best cryptographer is going to be using the primitives he chose.
Anyway, the technical aspects of it are not a really substantial feature of the film, but I found the plot itself pretty interesting. It's not the most original idea, and the story-telling kind of leaves some loose ends, but I suppose whether you feel if they're resolved or not depends on your interpretation of the final scene, which has some rather heady postulating--think 'The Matrix Reloaded' scene with Colonel Sanders' look alike, but less pedantic.
I thought the acting could have been better, and I couldn't stand the main protagonist's appearance. His affinity for scotch and beer was touching though. Overall I found it an entertaining story, and a refreshing change in the aspect of its technical details. If you were like me and were hoping to have a laugh at ridiculously fake tech you'll be disappointed in that, but the actual story itself you might find worth a watch.