Raphael Suter’s Blog

As I predicted in my review of “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” I was ready for this latest Terminator flick to follow the same rise and fall pattern of the X-Men franchise. I liked T1. I loved T2. I was disappointed by T3, and so was fully prepared to be appalled by T4. Turns out I was almost right, on my pre-determination. I’ll explain.

I remember way back when the director of this movie was announced, and as soon as I found out that it was McG I felt a sinking feeling in my heart. A franchise that had been perfected by James Cameron was now going to be helmed by the writer of Scooby Doo, and the director of Charlie’s Angels 1 and 2? Mother Fu@ker. In fact, at the time, the only saving grace was that Christian Bale was in it, and while you can love him or hate him, he typically choses fairly good movies to be in.

So lets cut to the chase. The acting in Terminator Salvation is terrible almost completely around the board. Even Bale, comes off very one-note and showed very little range. He also chose to go with his extra raspy, (somebody punched my in the throat while I was swallowing glass) tough guy voice he so lovingly created for Batman. The exception, though not without his own acting problems, was the performance given by Sam Worthington who plays Marcus Wright. he as his share of bad dialogue but he comes off the most genuine.

While the acting is bad I can’t help but think that a majority of it is that way because the writing is is off the wall horrific. Some of the lines they have the characters deliver are incredibly cheese and reminiscent of the dialogue found in Charlie’s Angels. The other heavy contributer is that McG simply cannot direct actors. I also felt the that casting of Helena Bonham Carter – whom I normally like – was an extremely bad choice. I thought her presence was distracting, I didn’t believe her in here role, and thought here sub-plot was completely unnecessary. In fact I think you could remove the beginning from this movie and make it instantly 5 percent better. Also people need to stop giving acting jobs rappers and they can start with Common.

The one saving grace are the action scenes and there are a lot of them. McG can’t handle people but he seems to know his way around and explosion. Unlike Terminator 3, the menace and deadliness of the the terminators is brought back. They feel dangerous instead of like CG looney toons. There is also extensive use of live action puppets as opposed to CG ones and they work really well. I loved all the shots of the T-500’s shooting chain guns and watching the reverberation that you could see shaking through the whole metal frame. I would have to say that I enjoyed the action in this movie way more then then in T3 and thought that it was a more entertaining movie overall. This is why – at the start of this review – I said almost.

Terminator Salvation ended up being a huge disappointment for me. It has atrocious acting, terrible writing, crater sized plot holes, and some bad casting. It does have some pretty cool action going for it. It also has some tie-in’s to the the first two films, and a few fun surprises, but these end up feeling like a sweet eye candy shell around a poop nugget. With this being the first part in a three part trilogy I can only hope they can fix these very obvious faults and deliver something that deserves to be called a Terminator film, and placed next to the original two part canon.

I enjoyed X-Men, I loved X2, and I was crushed buy its complete disaster that was X-men 3. One of the many problems I had with 3 was the over abundance of under developed characters so when the Wolverine movie was announced I had a glimmer of hope. There was only one real main character and one of the more fun ones at that. I had no illusions that it was going to be as good as X-men 2 but I had my fingers crossed for it to be entertaining. Alas… No such luck.

Wolverine was a shockingly shallow effects driven feature whose effects themselves felt somewhat cheap. Wolverines origin story is rushed and when things take there inevitable course you don’t care because the whole situation was underdeveloped.

The band of included mutants was small enough but they are were also so completely un-actualized mid way into the film that any events that took place with them lost most of their potential tension because no one cares.

The acting was passable on all fronts but none of it was stellar by any measurement. Danny Huston did a fairly good job with his portrayal of Stryker, but he was no Brain Cox. While the acting was ok, there was no real perceived motivation. In Brian Cox’s performance we got to see why he hated mutants and why he wanted them all dead. In Wolverine, we see a glimpse of his son, and a quick mention of what had happened but thats it. I think that there was an opportunity here to show what his son did to him an his wife and by so doing, make the audience see where he was coming from, from a more visceral standpoint.

The music was another feature that did not stand out.  It wasn’t bad, but was very mediocre. It served it’s purpose but there weren’t any strong themes, that stood out.

Gambit is horrible.

As stated above I’m a fan of the first two. The third movie – while I hated it – at least had a few scenes in it that were fun to watch. Now with this mess making 79 million on it’s opening weekend, the studio’s got a sequel for it in the works. They also have both Magneto and Deadpool spinoffs in the in the pipeline, and as much as I want to see more great X-men movies, I don’t think it’s going to happen. They need to stop but this is a series that the studio is going to run into the ground, and with Wolverine now leading the charge, it’s already buried up to its neck.

I have only seen tidbits of the original Star Trek tv series, and have never seen an episode in its entirety. I watch Star Trek Generations, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, on and off, and watched none of Enterprise. I guess you could say I like the series, but am not a rabid fan. I cannot speak any of the made up languages, and don’t know one iota of trivia. So, when I saw the first trailer for it I was mildly amused but in no way excited. It was not until I viewed the 3rd and best trailer that I got exited.

Star Trek is solid summer fun film making at it’s best. After the lights dim, and the movies excellent prologue plays though you know you are in for a treat. The story is well constructed, and the acting is – in general – well done all around. Everyone playing younger counterparts of the original cast seemed convincing to me though as stated before, I really have not seem the original.

Star Trek has a ton of action in it. The space battles are engaging and immersive, and are not comprised of one or two photon torpedoes, but a whole f@ckTon of’em. There are lasers and debris everywhere. There are also some great fights and chases and effect driven eye candy. However, I do think that this frantic pace was a little to this film detriment. By the end of the movie I was a little battle worn and the final battle became slightly less effective. It’s like in the New Rambo move where once you’ve seen all the preceding over the top gore, the end gore – while cool – is really just more of the same. This constant pace artificially bloated the movies runtime and made it feel a little to long for me. However, I want to be clear that too much of a good thing is better then too much of a bad thing. Kudos to Abrams for delivering.

The soundtrack produced by Michael Giacchino is fantastic. The new theme is strong, and his scoring during action was fitting and help add grandeur and weight.

Seeing this as an excited but not hyperventilating, opinionated, fact filled geek, I thought it was well done, a lot of fun, and the right way to re-boot a franchise. It’s action is a great, though the movie felt a bit long towards the end. I also could have done without the young Kirk Beastie boys car chase which felt tacked on.  All in all though, it was a fine way to spend 10 bucks.

On a side note, i do tend to wonder if the movie would have been just effective if it have been original and not at all related to Star Trek. How much of this movie is good simply because it has your favorite characters in it. Just a thought.

It had taken me a while to muster up the gumption to see this movie, so when my parents came to visit me and my mother wanted to see it, it provided me the opportunity to check it out.  The reason I was on the fence about it is because I usually dislike Bollywood films.  I was afraid that this movie – despite being directed by Danny Boyle – would be filled with random dance numbers, and music that felt like there was a mosquito buzzing inside my eardrum.  (Nothing against the culture, but I am just not normally a fan of those two particular genre of entertainment, from that part of the world)

Turns out i really had nothing to worry about as the film was fantastic.  The cinematography was absolutely gorgeous with beautiful lighting and sweeping vistas of the county and communities within.

The acting from both the adults and children were top notch, which was important since so much of the film rests on the characters these child actors build and portray early on in the film.

The music was a fairly good mix and for the most part, did not put me off at anytime. I especially love the tracks with the tribal drumming during chase sequences, as well as the love theme which seemed happy, sad, and haunting all at once.

This is a wonderful movie, though I do feel as though it could shed a little weight from it’s 2 hour run time.  I would recommend this to anyone who has not seen it or who has been on the fence about it.  There is only once dance number and it it as the end of the film with the credits, so worry not.

I have never read the the graphic novel on which this film is based so this is purely my thoughts on the movie, and not of the original source material.

The Watchmen is like fat kid trying a pull up. You know there giving it there all but try as they might, it aint gonna happen. This films major problem is it’s pacing. It has no viable emotional or action oriented arch and build. It drones along at a continuous, monotone, art house pace for almost 3 hours. The feeling of length is exacerbated by the excessive use of slow motion, and slowly narrated exposition, buy multiple characters. Also, The film jumps back and forth though time and spends long sections giving us the back story of all the heroes throughout the entire movie. This makes it feel segmented and is part of the reason why the pacing is so bad. It really feels like this would have worked much better as a miniseries instead of the bloated snooze fest that it is. Another thing that bugged me – without giving anything away – was a character who flip flops ideals with seemingly no motivation of any kind.

Visually the movie looks great. The costumes and the city look fantastic and if it wasn’t for the overuse of the slow motion it would have been even better.

The acting is all over the place. Rorschach was the most appealing character to me. Ozymandias was my least favorite, and his motivations are a little puzzling especial because he is supposed to be the worlds smartest man. Silk Specter and her mom were pretty bad as well.

The soundtrack serves it’s purpose but is ultimately forgettable, with no strong theme standing out. Strangely enough, I have had this same problem with a majority of comic based films. Most of the soundtracks for these movies opt to use digitally enhanced background noise as opposed to character defining themes. I’m not sure what the deal is but it was a problem for me in The Watchmen once again.

Overall The Watchmen is a slow burn. Rather then being a stick of Dynamite with a fast fuse and an exciting conclusion, it’s a three hour candle, that barely provides enough like to keep you awake.