I just finished “The Tomorrow War” with the fried rodent, aka Chris Pratt (crisp rat.) I saw that somewhere and now can’t un-see it. He was his usual amenable, likable self. Enjoyable, but the last act was completely unnecessary.
Bruce Willis must be broke as shit, cause I’ve seen him in two ‘recent’ movies where his name is prominent, but has little screen time and gets killed off early. He’s got to be doing this shit for a big paycheck, because the movies suck some major bung-pipe.
And he used to be so cool. What happened to him? Must be lawyers.
I thought it was a solid B. I agree with all your criticisms but they didn’t really bother me while watching it. It was a fine way to spend a Friday night, and the White Spikes were pretty cool - looking.
Monsters (2010): Was atmospheric nonsense.
Yeah, it just seemed like they couldn’t land on which plot they wanted to use. Change the future? Change the past? Muddled plotting, IMO.
Okay. So, I finished watching Gaia (single sitting), and although I won’t say it’s terrible, I simply cannot recommend it to anyone. It’s as if they wanted to do something like mother! (in the sense of a metaphor for a religious story or series of stories, which could have explained the idiot plot too) but then caved to pressure (whether internal to the writer or external from some studio) and threw in some monsters for good measure.
There is half a film that could have been made great (but no doubt a terrible bore to most) in the hands of someone like Terrence Malick. And then there are bits of what could have been a passable zombie genre-esque slasher/survivalist film. Heck, they could have even gone with (though I’m really glad they didn’t) some kind of found footage film. But instead they went with… honestly I’m still not even sure, because the film fails whether you look at it as a straight telling (too much of an idiot plot), an extended metaphor (too much seems to just pad runtime and make the film more “exciting” for a general audience), or even just a fever dream (too many shared experiences and shifting POVs make it clear that some of the most fantastical elements are not simply in one character’s mind, but actually happening in the world of the film).
ETA: Actually, this really makes me think of It Comes at Night, which I enjoyed in part because they didn’t deviate from the real-world horror interspersed by fever dreams narrative. Gaia would have been so much better if they had just picked a lane.
To me, The Tomorrow War was a uninspired mishmash of Edge of Tomorrow, Alien and The Thing.
Recipe:
Take the swarming near-unkillable aliens and their uber-mother alien from Edge of Tomorrow.
Substitute Chris Pratt and Yvonne Strahovski for Tom Cruise and for Emily Blunt.
Stir in J .K. Simmons for father/son conflict.
Add the crashed spaceship buried in the snow from The Thing, and from Alien use the interior of the ship, dead pilots and eggs.
Toss in a cute daughter, comedic sidekick, and the typical assorted cliched soldier types, and there you have it!
The Tomorrow War: I watched it last night. It was paced well, a little silly but overall enjoyable movie. The last act was to needed to make use of one of the actors in my opinion. Otherwise the character would have been a waste.
Just finished The Tomorrow War
First the good, the monster design and their introduction were both very well done. From the moment future lady goes “if we showed people this none of you would be here” to their eventual reveal on the stairs, great scene. Sadly that’s about it for the good. I guess Chris Pratt, JK Simmons and Yvonne Strahovski did the best they could with the turd they were given.
The bad is well… everything else. The plot is utterly ridiculous, the resolution even more so, the action was straight out of most standard modern videogame shooters. The monsters were scary when pitted against untrained civilians using small arms weapons that they were specifically immune against, but melted like butter against the kind of opposition they actually would have been fighting (the freaking air force). Those two little machine gun dronies at the end did more good than the uncounted thousands of people they sent in as monster snacks, send more of those fucking things through the stupid time portal.
Yesterday. I admit that I had avoided even considering watching this as it appeared to be nothing more than a cheesy, lightweight and stupid cashgrab for Richard Curtis, Danny Boyle and Paul McCartney, but as it popped up on TV I decided to give it a go, and have now revised my opinion of it: it’s nothing more than a cheesy, lightweight and stupid cashgrab for Richard Curtis, Danny Boyle, Paul McCartney and Ed Sheeran.
Don’t bother unless you’re drunk and bored and want a film that requires no thought or attention at all to be the distracting flashing lights in your living room.
I didn’t anticipate much from this, but I was more entertained than I expected to be. (I put it on to drown out the sound of the M-80s being set off by the morons in the next neighborhood over, and it delivered on that score.) I’d give it a “C.” Good monsters. The acting is earnest. It clicks off all the clichés you would expect from a movie like this. If you accept it for what it is, mindless popcorn entertainment, and just go along for the ride, it’s worth a watch. I enjoyed it much more than any of these Marvel superhero movies, which I find incredibly boring.
I’m in the last bits of the 2009 Star Trek movie with Chris Pine and Karl Urban and am enjoying it very much, despite the silly science. I don’t know how I missed this movie the first time around, although that was the year I retired and moved, so it would have been a low priority.
Your post sums up my opinion of this movie pretty well. Too much redonkulousness.
I couldn’t sleep last night, so I ended up watching Super 8 from 2011. Basically what you would expect of a Abrams & Spielberg team-up. Part Goonies, part ET, part Stand By Me and a creator avatar in the kid film maker. Some of it was a little silly or a little much, but it was good enough to watch at 3am when I couldn’t sleep.
Last night, I couldn’t find anything interesting and new to watch on any of the dozens of broadcast or pay cable channels or on any of the several streaming services I already subscribe to, so I ended up watching Galaxy Quest on Hulu. Not for the first time, of course. But wow, that’s a great film. Laugh out loud funny at moments, and still genuinely exciting. (There are rumors of a TV show adaptation but really I won’t mind if that never happens. Some things are better left alone.)
Just watched Life (2017). Ryan Reynolds should consider himself lucky to have died first and being spared the rest of the movie.
Now, Coherence (2013), was a much better movie than I expected. Really good story that leaves you thinking about it as you fall asleep.
Yeah, agreed on Galaxy Quest, I recently saw the Honest Trailer for it, which then made me want to re-watch again, and I still found it funny. Also, there is a documentary about the film called Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary which is worth a watch if you liked the movie.
//i\\
Just rewatched Return of the Living Dead. Besides being one of my favorite movies ever, it takes place around July 4, 1984. So the holiday weekend is perfect for viewing.
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I just wanna party!
Dune (1984)
I know everyone on this site has already seen it, but I hadn’t. Haven’t read a word of the novels, either, so I can only assess it on its own terms as a movie.
It’s terrible in so many ways - including storytelling, acting, dialogue, the attempt to express character thoughts in voiceover, the most awful fake eyebrows I’ve ever seen – and it has more cringe-worthy moments than any movie should. At the same time, the production design is all-time awesome, the sets magnificent and the vfx shots well-composed to convey scale. Some of the story concepts are very interesting (if not always well-executed) and it has giant sandworms (lots of ‘em).
What struck me most was that in the absence of CG, the film relied on paintings, miniatures and models, rotoscoping and hand-drawn animation. While these varied in quality, I appreciated their look (in contrast to CG) and the craftsmanship that went into making them in a way I can’t do knowing that some dudes sat in front of computer screens to create CG.
While the flick left me with no desire to read the book or check out other filmed versions, I found it overall a worthy failure, ”worthy” being defined in terms of worth watching or not.