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Reviews
Northern Exposure: The Quest (1995)
People I thought I knew acting stupid
Chris would never have committed fraud for any reason, and certainly not for the ridiculous excuse made in this plot. Holling and Shelly would not be jerks just for a good review. If there were buckshot or hair in the food The Brick would have gone under decades ago and been reopened under better management. And you can't walk to Manhattan through a fog in the Aleutians.
The parting of Maggie and Joel left me teary, but that was not enough to make up for the disturbing lack of believability of this script. It is an insult to the outstanding writing that carried the first five seasons and parts of the sixth.
I thought I had watched all of them when they and I were younger, but I didn't remember any of the details. Some of them are not worth remembering.
Yesterday (2019)
Wonderful music, not much plot
Lots of talent and a nice tribute to the Beatles, but nothing really new about the love story. And the guy playing John is too short and the voice and accent are wrong.
Wish that lunatic hadn't shot John, and really wish George were still with us.
I'm an original Beatlemaniac; still have all my LPs and 45s. The "British Invasion" had actually begun before 1963, but the Beatles changed everything, in my opinion for the better. I grew up with them, got confused with them, worried about them, memorized every song, played those LPs until the grooves wore down. My first guitar was called George (Harrison). My current guitar is a Martin, so of course also George.
I really expected Jack to wake up in the hospital after the accident to find it was all a dream. Actually I hoped it was, because a world without Coke and cigarettes is not a good trade for a world without the Beatles.
House M.D.: Simple Explanation (2009)
Meat Loaf as Eddie hahaha
Am I the only one who noticed that the character of the dying man is named Eddie? I recognized Meat Loaf in the introduction scene so I looked it up to confirm and saw the character name and laughed my ass off.
Now I will finish the episode and resume the review.
This is my second time watching this series. The first time I was all choked up over Kutner. Now that I know Kal Penn left to join Obama's staff I just kept smiling through it.
The sick couple's story kinda bored me, it was so predictable. Girl marries boy, boy ignores girl, girl goes to Rio, boy is dying, girl feels guilty, boy gets better, girl dies.
WTF.
Star Trek: Lower Decks (2020)
Very Enjoyable
Update
I absolutely LOVE the baby space bug suckling on the nacelle in the intro.
Nearly done binging season two. I'm loving the graphics. Watching on the iPad the details are very sharp. The exterior views of the Cerritos with the tiny lights are awesome. So far the plots have been inventive. The characters have grown on me. Animation can offer experiences impossible for live action to depict. S2 ep 10 removing the outer hull panel by panel while in flight? I never could have anticipated that. Brilliant. I have not been a huge fan of animation, but the creativity here is exciting and inspiring.
Dolphins in uniform! Ahhahaha! Surprises every few seconds. Hope the next seasons are just as good. Fun stuff.
Jurassic World Dominion (2022)
Loved Beta. Hated the writing.
This was truly awful, but we had to watch it to complete the set. Many innocent animals were killed in horrific ways. I was very fond of Blue, so seeing her daughter was nice.
But the writing! OMG how low can you go? Predictable, repetitive, scientifically implausible, it's like the car chase version of dinos and vehicles.
After the ice, no one is even shivering. Kayla's hair is dry.
Laura Dern (love her) uses "light years" as time instead of distance as "light years ahead of anyone else" regarding scientific progress. This is a really old error, and anyone who has ever read SF would have avoided it.
How many times do we need to see a large dino crunching a piece of a cage or staircase to get the point? They are big. They are strong. They are fearless. We are no match for them. OK already.
Four stars for Jeff Goldblum being Jeff Goldblum, for Ellie and Alan getting together, for the cute cloned child, and for the very real love for the animals that comes through despite the death toll.
Star Trek: Voyager: Waking Moments (1998)
A slap in the face to science
Tell me how a species evolved with no waking interaction in which to eat, eliminate waste, or reproduce. IMO the worst abuse of biological fact in all of Trek. Pure garbage.
So many of you loved it, as did the professional critics. All I can say is, you are not biologists. I found the whole presumption of the sleeping species painful.
What was their motivation to try to take over Voyager? Of what use was it to them? If they had not initiated contact they would have had nothing to fear. The entire episode made absolutely no sense.
OK, I admit the humor in each person's initial dream was fun.
Event Horizon (1997)
Cheap horror masquerading as SF
Truly awful. Life is the pinnacle of organization, the opposite of chaos. A dimension of chaos could not create life. The whole premise is absurd. The only reason I kept watching is because the reveal of said premise came so late in the film I wanted to see how much worse it could get. So much non-science, so much blood and gore it was actually funny.
I gave one star to try to bring the average down so fewer people get fooled by the 6 plus rating. My real feeling is that this deserves a three for a good cast and some pretty cool effects. Parts of the ship design were very appealing, nice to look at.
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
I Wanted To Hate It, BUT
It grabbed me from the get-go. I am ordinarily an Original Series purist, but this was wonderful. The cast played these classic roles superbly.
It captured the spirit of the original without being tied to the low budget or the early '60's standard of what you could do on screen.
As a drama, it stood on its own, but because of all the fond callbacks, it was also the funniest Trek since Galaxy Quest. Very enjoyable. "Take off the red shirts." Aha! They're going to live! And the required, "I'm a doctor, not a ....."
Prometheus (2012)
Fools in Space
Could not finish it. Supposedly centuries in our future, the team sent out to find our remote ancestors is comprised of hotheads and morons. The opening graphics show very inaccurate biological images, and there is lots of gratuitous gore.
Three stars for appealing spaceship and deep space images.
Purple Rain (1984)
Great performances, terrible movie.
No one denies Prince was extraordinarily talented and a riveting entertainer. I enjoyed the stage shows enormously. But the "plot" was irritating. If someone had treated me the way Prince treated Apollonia on their first "date" there would never have been a reconciliation.
Outlander (2008)
I could only stand fifteen minutes
He is in 8th C Norway. Why does the machine teach him English?
Emergency supplies include a weapon and that computer, but no food or water?
I had to turn on subtitles because Jack Huston mumbled his lines so badly they were unintelligible.
At which point I stopped to read these reviews and decided to watch something else.
Radium Girls (2018)
Why this ending?
The story needed to be told and I was engrossed throughout. But the ending was so wishy-washy, as if the hard decision to settle out of court was somehow a huge success. Those little happy family scenes, the repurchase of the radio, as sappy as It's Wonderful Life.
It took decades to stop the use of radium in consumer products.
We are STILL fighting for safe and healthy working conditions in many industries.
Ending the film at this moment was a betrayal of working people everywhere.
Night Court: Married Alive (1985)
Plagerized
As the previous review alludes, this whole episode is a direct steal from Elaine May's 1971 "A New Leaf." Always steal from the best. If you enjoyed this and have not seen the film, you MUST make the effort. I promise you won't be sorry.
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Brilliant
Ever have one of those days?
It must have been a lot bloodier than most heist films in 1992. And therefore more horrifying. But I see foreshadowing of Pulp Fiction, and found this nearly as funny.
Absolutely brilliant. Tarantino is a genius.
Cosmos (2019)
Edge of my seat excitement
Excellent. Lost one star for the "common origin" mythology. Would have liked a token female scientist buddy.
Nevertheless, I am very glad this film was made, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
ER: Just as I Am (2005)
Just one irritation
How does an auto parts retailer from a small town in NW Indiana stay in the Palmer House for several weekdays?
Other than that, I enjoyed the episode.
America 3000 (1986)
Bad enough that I watched the whole thing
Awful - but fun. I am still chuckling. The boom box that (a) still had working batteries, and (b) had a radio signal to receive after 900 years, was priceless. I remind you all that makeup, shampoo, and high heels seem to have survived almost every Sci-Fi disaster ever filmed. This phenomenon is not unique to the worst of the worst.
In fact, it seems to me that the creators intentionally harvested the most obvious dystopian film clichés, and then pushed each of them to their most absurd extreme. It's the future. Our leaders were short-sighted and disaster ensued. Mankind manages to survive and restart its social evolution, but blunders. A hero emerges with vision and corrects the blunder. I could probably use this film as an outline for my first SF novel if I wanted to.