The Mugwumpery

These are cut-and-pasted from Netflix. With very rare exceptions, I only write reviews for movies I disliked – it’s my way of getting revenge.

There are no spoilers here. All ratings are in the range 1 to 5 stars.

[Edit: I see that 12/14 of the reviews below use the word “stupid”. I suppose that says something not terribly flattering about myself. So be it. It’s still how I feel about these films.]

Things to Come

The Gestapo will save us from war, hatred, and irrationality and create a paradise of identically black-suited heroes who rule and identically white-gowned citizens who obey, all living in a futuristic world with lots of pneumatic tubes. Underground. And they will have television. But, of course the Gestapo (or is it Stasi? Or Checka? hard to tell) rule in the name of Humanity, so it’s all good. But they don’t approve of private airplanes. H.G. Wells personally oversaw every detail of this film. It supposedly represents his vision of an ideal (!) future world. (He supported something he called “liberal fascism”, and it shows.) Acting is high school play quality. (On the low end of that.) Special effects were good for 1938. I give it 2 stars, both for historical interest. The film isn’t worth watching aside from that.

Sunshine

I used to think Gravity was the worst recent science-fiction film. No longer. Gravity was stupid, terrible, and stupid (with great special effects and pretty good acting). But Sunshine is bad on a whole different level. It has *layers* of stupid, each dumber than the next. Layers upon layers of stupid. It’s really an amazing achivement. But not amazing enough to make it worth watching. It’s not “fun stupid” like Plan 9 From Outer Space. It’s just…. well, don’t watch it.

Interstellar

The stupid – it hurts. Physicist Kip Thorne was involved with the scriptwriting. Thanks to him the part about wormholes isn’t stupid. Just the other 99% of the movie is stupid. If you know anything at all about engineering or physics, that is. I won’t give spoilers, but please note it’s difficult to hide the launch of a Saturn V-sized rocket. And the vicinity of black holes tend to have LOTS of x-rays. Not a place you’d want to (or be able to) live. Plus, a little 1930s-style dust bowl is no reason to abandon an entire populated planet. See astronomer Phil Plait’s comments at Slate.

The Man from Earth

Some interest. Others have done it better in written science-fiction. The Mel Brooks/Carl Reiner version (2000 Year Old Man) is much funnier. This movie is all talking-heads (it cost $200,000 to make). And the characters are cardboard cut-outs, very poorly written. But some interesting ideas.

Mr. Nobody

There’s a solid 25 or 30 minutes of entertainment lurking in this 2 1/2 hour movie. It’s slow. Really slow. The filmmakers even showed they know it – there’s a line in the film “it’s like a French movie – nothing happens”. Synopsis (no spoilers): Choices have consequences. I think most people already knew that, but the film assumes that it’s a mind-blowing concept.

Argo

Intrinsically an interesting true story, but way too Hollywood for my taste. As others have mentioned, the film inaccurately minimized the Canadian role, and positively insults the heroism of the British and New Zealand embassy staff (for no conceivable reason). Worse for my enjoyment of the film was the obviously made up last-second hitches inserted by the filmmakers. Without spoiling, there are two huge omg-we’re-almost-there-BUT moments, inserted by the filmmakers for suspense. Plus a lot of smaller ones. But this is a true story. These have no basis in history, and are such obvious Hollywood tropes as to break my belief that I was watching something real. It’s like when James Bond defuses the bomb with 1 second left on the clock. You know you’re watching a scriptwriter’s cheap trick, not something that happens in real life.

Gravity

I just watched it. I’m still stunned. Stunned by the utter stupidity of this movie. From the very first minute this movie is idiocy after idiocy. Read the other reviews for some of them, but I could write a book about everything wrong – with physics, with technology, with psychology, with common sense – in this movie. Just in the first 5 minutes (no spoilers): 1) She’s a MEDICAL doctor, yet she’s there to work on an upgrade of the Hubble telescope. Huh? 2) She says she’s nauseous – while in a spacesuit. Does she immediately go inside and take off the suit? Does she have ANY IDEA what will happen if her stomach goes while wearing a space helmet? (Answer: She will choke to death on her own upchuck, while totally blinded as it coats the inside of her helmet.) 3) The stars are visible IN THE DAYTIME. Clooney is DOING CIRCLES (==burning fuel like crazy – he should be out in 90 seconds at that rate) around the shuttle in a jetpack at a speed that would kill him instantly if he hit anything. 4) People describe things being at “7 o’clock” while floating IN OUTER SPACE (so the clock doesn’t even have an up and down, let alone facing in any particular direction) 5) People are asked to “describe their position” while floating in F***ING ORBIT! (What the heck are they supposed to say… “I’m 100 feet south of the tree?!?!?”) 6) She’s a NASA astronaut, but she “crashed” Soyuz in the simulator EVERY TIME. But they still let her fly. And that’s just in the first 5 minutes. It goes on just like that for an hour and a half. My head is still spinning. WHY does Hollywood do this? This movie had a huge budget and A-list stars. How much extra could it POSSIBLY cost to hire a scriptwriter smarter than Bozo the Clown?

The Hunger Games

Too much killing of innocents. Not enough revolution. “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” Thomas Jefferson