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Reviews
Falling Skies (2011)
Entertaining, but not enough
I will start off by saying that this show is decently acted (with Noah Wyles being the front-runner). As a Sci-Fi series, it comes off as entertaining but very poorly written.
First of all, I found it refreshing that aliens aren't humanoid. It is incredibly boring to see all the Sci-Fi series pumping out bipedal humanoid alien designs, that in the end prove to be more human than the human characters. In "Falling Skies" they are interestingly arachnoidal.
Second good point: the show skips the actual invasion, which is then referred to in discussions or short flashbacks. This helps keep the focus on the actual survival issues.
The potential of the series is wrecked, however, by the incredibly poor side-stories and general character management. In fact, the whole behavior of the group of survivors is erratic and borderline insane, lacking any shred of common sense.
1. The timeline is shady. There's no real information on how long it's been since the invasion, or how long the resistance was setup. We know this: it's been short enough that existing food is still good in storage , it's been short enough that nobody's thought before of studying the enemy but long enough that most characters have suffered an incredible transformation: a businessman becomes captain, a history teacher becomes a brilliant tactician and self-righteous prick.
2. Characters seem to just vanish: Mason's son has as girlfriend a blonde girl who is taken by the aliens in the third episode, but nobody gives her a second thought: her boyfriend never thinks of going to rescue her despite the fact that he knows she's alive (and must be with the other kids they later save, since the aliens didn't transport anything and anyone away), he has no issue flirting immediately with other girls and generally nobody mentions her in any context until she reappears as an alien agent a few episodes later.
3. The commanding officer seems schizophrenic: one moment he doesn't trust the people he knows but has no issue trusting the outlaw Pope and sending him on a mission with others, he is ready to kill the only information source they have on the aliens (their alien prisoner) just to appease the civilians he despises (and whom he has no second thoughts to sacrifice), he completely trusts Mason to be his second in command only to instantly put him under arrest hours before the critical mission that Mason designed is to be launched. He seems to have no military thinking whatsoever, he changes plans on the fly depending on what side of the bed he gets up on. One moment he's ready to leave everyone behind and forsake the leadership responsibility, the next he seems everywhere plots to remove him from command.
4. Mason is a self-righteous prick who seems in charge, despite the fact he's just a history teacher with no better experience than anyone else. Just because he seems to spit out history facts, a general puts him in charge of civilians. He is just as schizophrenic: he preaches focus on the mission at hand but has no problem taking a break in the middle of a scavenger mission to muse about family issues (can't he wait for the fight to be over?), he puts his 13-year old kid as a scientist's assistant (in the 200-people group wasn't there anyone more qualified?), etc
5. The 200 survivors that the 100 fighters must protect are just a statistic. Apparently they don't contain anything but lawyers as they don't appear to do anything than sew clothes and move containers. The only doctor is a pediatrician, the best scientists the group has are an old teacher and a 13-year old, the best nurse is a 16-year old girl and the only explosive expert (despite the 100 fighters with military experience) is an outlaw the randomly pick from the street and suddenly gets their trust.
6. The doctor is also schizophrenic: one moment she forbids the only real scientist to dissect an alien because it's inhumane and anyway it needs to be interrogated somehow, but just 5 minutes later she drives a knife through its brain for no real reason (just to prove that their brains could be hurt through their mouths - even though that theory was already proved before and anyway she had a dead body to dissect).
7. an entire episode is spent preaching about the importance of doing a silent kill against a single alien to free some children. What happens in the end is surreal: they dismiss crossbows because one of the group of 4 can't aim, so they send him in alone to stab the alien. But he fails so he ends up stabbed by a screeching alien while the others rush in and turn the alien into a pin cushion with their crossbows. So, the silent kill posed no issue when in turned noisy, no other aliens were alerted, etc - then, the crossbow was actually more useful and since the others had no issue going in and shooting, that should've been the first choice.
Overall, the logic is severely lacking and in the end it's hard not to end up rooting for the aliens, just so that the absolutely idiotic humans would be put to rest and stop hearing their ridiculous scuffles.
Alphas (2011)
Completely awful
Rarely have I seen a series that completely insults the viewer's relative intelligence as this one. Alphas has as a premise a team of people with special abilities led by a neurologist who are investigating strange cases for the US DoD. The premise itself (as well as the characters) are bleeding with logical holes that are simply too painful to bear through the first 6 episodes (I stuck through this ordeal trying to see some potential in the subject). - why is an investigative team led by a neurologist? What exactly qualifies a doctor to be an investigator of any sorts? (this is the same hole that plagues CSI series) Moreover the team also acts as a tactical team led by nothing else except "Common sense" as none of them are trained to be tactical leaders - the only thing they have going is their abilities. - the autistic kid (Bell) can intercept any sorts of wireless signal and process the information within "as fast as any computer" (to quote the doctor). Is he? No. Within the pilot he is shown tracking a direct line of communication between two mobile phones. Dude! That's not how mobiles work! The signal from one goes to a tower then to the second phone. At best he would've been able to track the signal to the mobile tower and then get the general location of the second phone (in that case a mere triangulation would've given a much more accurate location). But wait, there's more! The kid can practically decrypt any and all protocols carried over a wireless signal. That includes any kind of video stream, TCP packets, communication over SSL, GSM signals and the list goes on. Any and all encryption algorithms are useless. This kid would be better put to work cracking terrorist communications. Hell, he's the universal decoding machine, in real time! TSL, RSA, AES are useless regardless of cypher strength, which goes way beyond the combined power of all normal human brains added to the total power of all the CPUs in the world. - the "marine" (Hicks) could very well be the equivalent of Bell in abilities. He can't tap communications but he can process just as fast. - the linguist (Pirzad) - initially her ability was described as heightening one sense and lowering the others, but it was changed to "disabling all the others". The problem here is that it's not just the senses that get boosted. Her ability is again the equivalent of Bell, because a sense simply feeds information to the brain. You need absolute knowledge in order to interpret that volume of information. One time she uses a heightened scent to detect complex chemical compounds. But first of all she needs the ability to process that much detail and then to have a comparison term - this kind of knowledge is available only to aging doctors in chemistry with so much experience. Unless her brain has the infinite processing power of Bell, there's no way she could know what she's smelling. And how could she describe the smell to another? It smells like .. aaaa ... potassium permanganate? For that she should know from experience what potassium permanganate is ... and she's a LINGUIST!!
The list goes on, in an annoying and unbearable fashion. I really can't believe that this level of stupidity gets to be compared to Heroes where (granted, 1 great season followed by soapy ones) at least the powers were well defined, strict and well explained.
The acting (on the other hand) is decent and on the par with other series (Warehouse 13), but the terrible and poor universe given to us by the inept writing and senseless characters turns this show into a terrorizing experience for the average intellect.
Blood Diamond (2006)
Great movie
A fictional story set against a mostly accurate rendering of a civil war in Sierra Leone. All historical ingredients are there: the poorly trained government troops, greedy rebels that don't actually want to take over, mercenary troops ready to kill for the highest bidder, cynical characters but also a handful of those who actually believe in change and truly managed to do something about it. The weak link is, unfortunately, di Caprio. Surely, he is fairly believable as a cynical mercenary who finds redemption in a single act that could be seen as heroic. But at the same time he sinks into a recipe for this kind of character that we can also see in "Body of Lies" (tough, cynical but warmhearted guy who keeps adding 'huh?' at the end of every line). Arnold Vosloo, Djimon Hounsou and Michael Sheen steal the show while Jennifer Connely is adequate for her part. There is enough sexual tension between her and Leonardo to underline both their characters' determination to pursue their goals (her story and his escape from Africa's wars). In the end, they all sacrifice something to get what they really wanted.
Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
Silly and marginally entertaining
This movie is just as preposterous as you would expect from the title. Then again, pinning completely parallel iconic groups (or characters) one against the other in absurd environments has plagued the collective imagination for some time. Alien vs Predator, Ninjas vs Pirates, DC Comics Heroes vs the Marvel Universe, Jackie Chan vs Bruce Lee, Sailor Moon vs DBZ. Anything goes.
There are a few secrets to make an outrageously silly production like this work: 1. don't take yourself seriously. The idea is silly, adding drama to it makes it even sillier. Use the silliness to your advantage, perhaps some self-irony. 2. stray from the "source" material. Whatever you claim as source, it is as "original" as pizza in an American restaurant. However good and changed, pizza is still an Italian dish. Therefore you don't need to feel bad for modifying it and giving it some touches that the author never thought of. Who knows, you could make it better.
Favreau and his writers fail across the board. They hesitate to make the source material their own. I already know that Favreau can do pretty good things (see Iron Man). Here he doesn't and the result is stiffness all around. Stiff acting, stiff writing.
The movie takes itself too seriously. As far as Craig's character is concerned, that would work if they would've stuck to a silent dark mysterious hero. He has the make of it: shoot them to death, don't talk them to death. That part has its charm with a bad-ass like Craig.
Downside? He has no background. If Favreau would've left him with no background, that would've worked. What doesn't work is an attempt at giving him a back story that has absolutely no effect on the plot. Wife dead, memory lost (sure, an old fart like the sheriff gets his memories back 2 minutes after getting out, the Craig bad-ass needed Indian intervention two days later), a pathetic attempt at a romantic subplot.
The girl (oh, alien girl). Why is she even there? A lot of jibber-jabber about her lost world then she commits suicide. I was happy when she got killed first time and so annoyed that she came back to life (also, the fact that nobody seemed very disturbed that a dead woman walks out of some random flames managed to disturb me - yeah, that happens everyday in Texas). Oh, and she's nowhere near as hot as the movie poster makes her to be.
The clichés run high. In fact, there's no western movie cliché that doesn't fall in, with one exception: Indians doing the war (or even ghost or rain) dance. Nope. They smoke the hell out of Craig, visions and so on, sure. They talk funny and pretend not to know English.
Oh, and Harrison Ford is there too, but I barely even noticed. Also, a bunch of useless character that die along the way. Obviously, of the two likable characters, one dies first (the wise preacher). Thankfully, the other (the dog) survives.
The end.