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Reviews
Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
Weaker than the original
Let me start by saying that this was an entertaining movie, which kept me engaged throughout the sitting. However, it lacks too much for me to give a high score.
The premise is that Maverick (Tom Cruise) after 30-something years since the first movie has not made much of a carreer. That in itself is an refreshing idea: it makes him more an anti-hero than the typical Hollywood hero.
He is given a last chance in the Navy to prepare a group of young pilots for a dangerous mission. The catch: one of those young pilots is "Rooster", the son of Goose - Mavericks's buddy from the first movie who died during a flight accident. Rooster holds a grudge against Maverick for multiple reasons and of course this gives some friction.
There is also some mild competition amongst the young pilots. They are just a standard mix of all kind of minorities so that every one can feel included, They are basically cardboard characters and it is hard as a viewer to relate to any of them.
There is also an unncessary romance between Maverick and the local bar owner (Jeniffer Conelly), which does not connect to the rest of the movie in any way. It is nice though
The final mission is an air strike against an unnamed other nation. Of the enemy we only see the exteriors of their jets and face shots of the sun-visors of their pilots. This does not help in giving a face to the enemy. I understand how it would have been politically sensitive to name a country as the enemy, but the least the director could have done was give some hints what part of the world this enemy is supposed to be in, so that we could all imagine our favourite enemy from those parts.
The finale is spectacular, but predictable. The flight scenes are very well done, but unlike the original where one could imagine how challenging.it could have been to shoot those scenes, here probably most of them were done digitally, which takes away much of the awe factor.
In summary, I feel that this movie does not improve on the original in any aspect. Given the choice, I would prefer watching the original for the 10th time over watching the sequal again.
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)
Warning: movie contains violence
And nothing else. The movie is just a long sequence of the main protagonist beating up guys and then killing them. There is no story whatsoever. So many guys get killed, that they had to have many killed in the same way, because they ran out of ideas on how to kill them.
If watching unfiltered violence for 2.5 hours on end is your thing, you will love this movie. Otherwise avoid it like the plague!
Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)
Not a good star wars movie, but there are worse movies
Yes, the movie is heavily flawed, which is almost entirely the fault of the storyline. I'll summarize what has been mentioned already many times:
- Luke Skywalker has somehow changed from the greatest optimist into a grumpy old man. He can in no respect be linked to his former character in the original trilogy. A one-minute flashback is not enough to explain that. Hell, they would need at least another trilogy to explain that change. It would be even more credible if he had turned over to the dark side!
- Lord Snoke is killed before we ever found out who he was.
- Kylo Ren is nothing more than a teenager with emotional issues, but at least he plays it well. The Hux character however is completely incredible as military hotshot. How did he ever make it to that position? He wouldn't have survived a single day in boot camp.
- We still don't know who Rey is. OK, the revelation is probably saved for the last part, but at least give us a hint or a cliffhanger.
- The main story about the low-speed chase in space is boring and the redundant side-story with the code breaker didn't conceal it.
Fans can only be disappointed by this movie. But on the other hand, the special effects are good, the battles (both the ones in space and the man-to-(wo)man kind) are fantastic, the music is as good as always and there is no problem with the acting. Is this had been one of those hundreds of superhero movies, people would have said it had been excellent fun and good entertainment.
Therefore I give it a 6. Very poor for a Star Wars movie, but a reasonable score for a random action movie.
Passengers (2016)
Not what I expected from the preview
The preview gave me the suggestion this movie would be a science fiction thriller. Instead I got a scientific romance. Bummer!
Nevertheless the main premise of the movie was promising, making you wonder "what would I do in the situation". But unfortunately the focus was on the romantic development instead of psychology.
Special effects were great. A bonus point for introducing the concept of space-vertigo! If you are pedantic you could argue about some plot holes/illogical events in the movie, but hey it's a movie. If everything made sense, it would have been even more boring. Overall the movie is a missed opportunity to be something better.
6/10 because you get to watch hot Jennifer Lawrence for 2 hours.
Captain America: Civil War (2016)
Boring!
I have to be honest: I am in general no big fan of superhero movies, but there are some exceptions. This movie, however, was not such an exception.
The movie seems to want to impress by pouring cans of superheroes at you and make them fight. Wow, I have never seen that before.
There was some sort of story line, but the basic premise is that you can't trust the UN, because superheroes themselves know better what's good for the world. Oh, the arrogance!
Because of the surplus of superheroes, I couldn't figure out which one(s) I was supposed to sympathize with. That they were all as thin as cardboard characters didn't help much either.
Perhaps if you're a comic book fan this movie contains some references to "canon" material (?), but for the otherwise uninformed viewer, there is not much entertainment value in it.
The Martian (2015)
Expected more
I am a bit of nerd of this kind of realistic science fiction movies and therefore I had high expectations of this movie. I regret to say I was disappointed.
The movie tells the story of how the main character struggles to survive on Mars and how the space agencies work to get them back. But I was missing the emotions, the human touch. The main character never displays any signs of loneliness, despair or fear. He is more like "oh, looks like I'm stuck on Mars, let's grow potatoes". He makes a one- off reference to his parents in an electronic communication, but nowhere in the movie is it made clear what his main drive is to want to return to Earth. It appears as nothing ties him there. Maybe the directors wanted to avoid the cliché of the eight months pregnant and terminally ill wife eagerly awaiting her husband's return from a dangerous mission, but even a cliché had been better than nothing. His character is also too flat. The only character trait that is highlighted slightly in the movie is that he may be a bit too smug about himself. Nothing else to make me identify or sympathize with him. To be honest, I couldn't have cared less if he had not survived.
The Mars landscape is beautifully rendered en very credible with dust clouds and all. This is the main attraction of the movie.
The main problem that there is nothing novel about this movie. There have been better movies for every aspect of the film:
Human aspect/psychology of being marooned in a strange place: Cast Away did it so much better; set in space: Matt Damon's role in Interstellar was more credible than his performance here. Space action scenes: Gravity had me on the edge of my seat Ground control scenes: Apollo 13 already set the standard
In summary, the movie is a beautiful, but hollow shell.