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The Expanse: New Terra (2019)
Avaserala's language.
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Nice way to start out the new season.
Vdoman-2232117 December 2019
Avaserala swears constantly in the books, right from the beginning: if anything, her character in the series is rather restrained in her language!
I'm currently just starting Book 5, and loving it. The books go into a lot of background detail (as expected) but the series is a very good and pretty close retelling. Not perfect of course, it would have cost an absolute fortune to reproduce it identically, not to mention being about four times as long, but still an addictive and compelling version of the story. We all love it.
Aniara (2018)
... wow...
OK, there was (perhaps) a little more sex in this than was strictly necessary, but given that it was dealing with how humans react given the apparently hopeless situation they find themselves in that can be forgiven. The sfx were superb, the music gorgeous, and the people... very human. The story is fascinating - I've never seen a film quite like it, and given our dvd library (heading for 2,000 titles and still growing) I've seen an AWFUL lot of movies, from the obscure (Black Moon, and the less said of that the better) to the insanely popular (Star Wars et al) that's actually saying quite a lot.
Aniara... well, it's quite extraordinary. Definitely not for everyone, but it's gone on our 'best of the best' shelf. Son and I found the ending weirdly hopeful, and simply loved the film.
Nightflyers (2018)
Disappointing
I bought the 1987 Nightflyers film on VHS waaaaay back soon after its release, because I like Michael Praed, love sci-fi, thought the rest of the cast looked intriguing, and decided to give it a go. It's not at all a good film, but... it's memorable. Quite daft, but with oddly serious, introspective moments.
This, though... we watched the first two eps, and found it good enough to continue (quite a lot of what was interesting in the 1987 film reappears here). Then it went rapidly downhill. So much unnecessarily filler, so horribly illogical, and sooo slooow. So frustrating. Such a waste of a great idea.
We feel cheated. The original film is much more fun to watch.
Under the Skin (2013)
Oh dear.
Watched the film, curious to see it after reading all the intriguing reviews. Found it irritating, a little too much 'aaarty faaarty' for my liking and basically incomprehensible. So I bought and read the book...
Gordon Bennett. The only thing the book and the film have in common is the name and the basic premise of a female picking up men for a specific reason. The book is FAR better. Not great, but a good and interesting read. I'd recommend the book over watching the film any time.
6 Underground (2019)
Oh dear...
Continuity? What's that? If you ever watch it, note the wingmirrors on that hideous green car in the first 10 mins of the film. They're there, then they're not. Then they're there again. Then gone again. There, gone. There, gone. And the film just goes downhill from there. A real pity, as the idea and plot were actually quite interesting, and in the hands of a competent director it could have been a good film.
Free Guy (2021)
Fabulous.
OK, I freely admit I'm a Ryan Reynolds fan. I have not yet seen anything he's been in that I don't like, and generally his acting leaves me spellbound. But this... this is just astounding.
Bought it as soon as it was available (at Tesco!) and we all watched it the same evening. Very, very funny, touching (even - discreetly - tear-inducing in a couple of places), exciting, unpredictable, and very very clever. Absolutely fantastic. Loved the characters, loved the homages, adored the character development... what's not to love?
Of course, we do now have to watch it at least a couple more times to pick up on all the things happening in the background. Oh woe! What a terrible fate! >8-D.
Scream and Scream Again (1970)
Oh dear...
"Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing - AND Michael Gothard? What's not to like?" I innocently asked my husband.
Absolutely everything, unfortunately, is the answer. One of the worst (most incomprehensible and boring) films I've ever seen, and I've made a point of watching 'worst films ever made' over the years. Plan 9 from Outer Space? Yup. Starcrash? Oh ye gods. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians? The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies? Howard the Duck? Battlefield Earth? Galaxina? Meet the Spartans? Seen them all. This isn't even as interestingly awful as most of those (well, except maybe Meet the Spartans, which is Just. So. Bad...)
Don't bother. It's a waste of time.
Good Omens (2019)
Wow. Just... wow...
Bought my first copy of the book in 1991/92. Read it, adored it, re-read it until it started to fall apart. Gave it to my son to read and bought a new copy. Read it and re-read it. Heard the series was being made a year or more ago. Heard Martin Sheen and David Tennant - two of my favourite actors - were starring. Waited impatiently for a year. Read it was being released on DVD Monday 28th Oct. Rang Tesco that day to find out if they had it. Walked to the nearest Tesco and bought it - and watched the first three episodes that night... (Only stopped because husband had to get up early for work the next morning.)
If it's blasphemy to say the series is better than the book - I'm sure neither Aziraphael nor Crowley will mind! Visual media, if done well, can be more expressive and deeper than the written word. And ye gods was this done well! (I nearly cried at the delivery man's message to his wife scene.) The small changes - to bring the background a little more up to date - were damn near perfect, and I will be eternally grateful it was produced as a well paced series not a hurried film.
And the MUSIC! I'm not a true Queen fan - loved their first five albums then felt they'd become a bit too... smug? self-satisfied? with their subsequent offerings. But here - from 'I'm in Love with my Car' while Crowley is driving to the airfield to 'Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon' in the park, every track was perfectly placed. (Check out the lyrics if you don't know them!)
Well, what more can I say? I've never grown tired of the book, I'd say there's a more than even chance I'll never grow tired of the series. I plan to watch it again next week, and pay more attention to the soundtrack so I can properly place each Queen song (I missed a lot of them the first time around).
A masterpiece. I love it.
Years and Years (2019)
Staggeringly good
It's been a while since I've watched anything this powerful. We were hooked in the first five minutes and can't wait for the next episode.
10,000 BC (2008)
Correct location
To correct the wildly inaccurate guesses of previous commenters: the story is set in prehistoric South America, not Europe or the Himalayas. The giant birds are phorusrhacidae (look them up on google: the Wikipedia article is quite good...) or some similar species, and the seeds the tribe took home with them at the end are clearly maize. I'm also fairly sure 'the almighty' was supposed to be Atlantean rather than an alien (although no doubt it could be argued that the mythical Atlantis may have been built by mythical aliens...)
Other than that, I'm pretty much in agreement with the bulk of the comments. It's an oddly dull film, the acting barely adequate (not that the actors had an awful lot to work with), and while I accept that a fantasy can be as historically inaccurate as the writer/producer/director cares to make it, the mix of accuracy (the aforementioned phorusrhacidae and the multi-coloured corn kernels) and errors (mammoths hauling stone slabs under a subtropical sun?) was irritating. It's not a film we'd care to watch again.