Category: review

Gravity 8/10

James Cameron called this the ‘greatest space movie ever’ or something like that. I am differing not because it isn’t great but I don’t think it’s a space movie. It’s a survival movie, and so therefore when that became evident I started comparing it to other survival movies, particularly one of the best of them all in my opinion, Castaway.

And what makes me use Castaway is because it had all the elements of a great survival movie. Tom Hank’s character is in a fantastically desperate situation that would make most of us want to give up. Not only are the challenges tremendous, he needs to take them on alone. So alone is he it is almost like he is in a vacuum for most of the movie.

Bullock’s character Ryan is clearly in such a bind. With emotional baggage from an earlier incident to boot, she has to fight a frightening array of random disasters until it came to a point where she had to make a choice – find it in her to bring on the super human effort needed to fight harder and harder odds, or just give up.

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World War Z Movie Review

7/10.

Reason being is special in the sense that it is due to my distinct experiences enjoying the zombie genre. Writing this also happens to be apt considering it involves I Am Legend by Richard Matheson who happens to have passed recently. So here’s my review:

I am a great fan of I Am Legend. It is an amazing book and the first I read that tells the story of a man being chased by transformed human beings, in this case ‘vampire – like’ creatures. I obviously wasn’t the only fan because the book also inspired George A. Romero who would then go and make ‘Night Of The Living Dead’, featuring ‘true’ zombies albeit the slow and plodding but nonetheless out – to – get – your – brains and will – only – stop – when – shot – in – the – head. Much later we will be introduced to the sprinting zombies of 28 Days Later which imo is the best in class of the fast running zombie genre, and then now we get World War Z.

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Movie Review: It Takes A Man And A Woman

The movie is about a couple on a long distance relationship that breaks up when Laida (Sarah) comes home to find Miggy (John Lloyd) kissing someone else. Flashbacks were used to show he did so only because he was vulnerable at the time due to his dad having just died. Laida goes back to the US and never forgives him despite his many attempts at reconciliation. It should be noted Laida is also sore at her father who cheated on her mother. This is important to understand what Laida’s issue is: a supposed inability to forgive, which I did not really get out of her. More on that later.

Miggy is the black sheep of a wealthy family whose publishing company is counting on finalizing a republishing agreement with a big brand in the US (or some franchising scheme I imagine), and wouldn’t you know, the only person who can help them is Laida. Much of the scenes have to do with the two dealing with each other along with Isabelle Daza, his current girlfriend who also happens to work with them.

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Iron Man 3 Review

I just stepped out the theater and here’s what I’m thinking:

Tony Stark was supposed to have been undergoing some kind of issue that may or may not have been discussed in the past and it has to do with how he cannot sleep. I think there may have been a story somewhere there and they should have pursued that, a kind of ‘he is not as infallible as you think’, always compelling with superhero stories imo, but for some reason they didn’t.

Or maybe they did, but at some point during the movie a villain appeared, (the guy who played the king’s brother in ‘The King’s Speech’), and there started a story around him as well as a girl (she played Ben Affleck’s girlfriend in the excellent ‘The Town’), but it wasn’t really interesting, didn’t make sense, or both. At any rate I felt I was being distracted from what I really wanted to know – what was wrong with Tony Stark and how was he going to deal with it.

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Les Miserables Movie Review

In a word, I found it tedious.

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I didn’t much care for the idea of singing out every line. I am only lightly knowledgeable about Les Miserable songs, and I didn’t like having to figure out when they are singing or starting to sing one of them or are just declaring something. I don’t know what that adds to the experience.

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Skyfall – 8 out of 10

This is Javier Bardem’s movie – He was chillingly effective in No Country For Old Men, and is just crazy effective again here. He’s mastered the art of trying to stifle the maniacal laugh, the single most oft messed up villain trait. He is by far the gold standard of movie bad asses and yes that includes Darth Vader, the Predator, Dr. Lechter et al.

This in spite of the fact that a singular flaw in trying to make Bond movies more believable is that the concept of the ‘super villain’ of old, ie. Blofeld, Dr. No, etc., works against him or any future Bond villain from coming up with a respectable performance. These older, spectacular villains parodied wonderfully by Mike Myers as Dr. Evil, work because they’re so out of this world, amazingly, ridiculously powerful.

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Thoughts On Steve Jobs A Quarter Through

I’ve been reading Steve Jobs the past week, and am somewhere in the part where he had just closed down the parts of Apple that was working on the Apple II and Lisa in favor of the Macintosh department which he was heading. While he was co-founder of Apple he was not its President, but he was able to do so because of the great success he had with the Mac and the ensuing privileges it allowed. Anyway, he either fired off or retained staff from the other groups unceremoniously, branding them as losers to his Mac team’s winners in a very public way. When asked why he would do such a thing especially since they were all still Apple employees and some certainly didn’t deserve it, he explained that Type A people (his Macintosh team) liked being with other Type A people, and he had to get rid of the Type Bs and Cs ie., everyone else he felt not worthy of working with him.

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