Reviews
Beyond the Rising Moon (1987)
This could have been a good movie
There are the bones of a decent movie here.
If there were a couple decades later a student filmmaker could really make an awesome movie out of this.
The Wonderful World of Disney: Magical Holiday Celebration (2020)
Absolutely brutal
I enjoy a good musical variety show but this is just so BASIC on every level thought it is like watching a commercial.
Amazing how something so superficially joyous can be so absolutely vacant and devoid of any real feeling.
Holmes & Watson (2018)
Unwatchable.
This movie only makes sense if you assume the people who made it hated Sherlock Holmes their entire lives and we're looking for some revenge against this character.
It isn't remotely a loving satire or send-up of Sherlock Holmes, it is pure spite.
It was a competently filmed and created movie. The crew is not at fault.
Maze Runner: The Death Cure (2018)
This movie was so terrible I couldn't finish it on a 10 hour flight
This pointless, stupid, illogical movie as so bad that I just turned it off. I didn't care about the characters and their incomprehensible motivations and actions.
Nothing seemed to make any sense; the plot, the action.... Nothing made sense.
Annihilation (2018)
This B movie is profoundly terrible and should have go straight to video
This movie is profoundly terrible. You have been warned.
Annihilation is at best a straight to video B movie.
People will tell you that the visuals a great. No it is standard CGI fare
People will tell you that the score is great. No it is completely forgetable
The plot and characters are so stupid that you have to wonder how the screen play was approved. There were no deep scientific questions, there was no profound meaning.
Basically the movie throws a bunch of incoherent nonsense at you and hopes you will be fooled into thinking it is profound.
Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood (2008)
A case study in selection bias
I understand that the film makers motives are good but the manipulative messaging and one sided view coming from the film hurts its credibility. Distorting the truth for a good cause is still a lie.
What you will see is the worse of the worse in exploitative marketing to children, much of which the viewer has never seen. This selection of content is meant to illicit an emotional response of parents so they go out and demand the censorship we see every generation from people reaching middle age. It is the same old cliché of "this generation is going to hell in a hand-basket," which every generation has bemoaned since time immemorial, only this time it ironically the boomers doing the moaning.
What you will not see is the people who grew up with this level of intense marketing or what effect, if any, the marketing had on these people? I have an idea: why not let parents turn off the TV if they are so worried. How about taking some responsibility if you think this is a problem.
That last thing we need are moralists making decisions for everybody.
A Halloween Puppy (2012)
The acting is Truly terrible
I thought this would be a good, funny kids movie for the family but it turned out to be the biggest bunch of crap I have ever seen.
Seriously, the writing, story, the acting, the filming and even the music are worse than porn levels of terrible.
It isn't even good-bad like Tremors 3, it is just poorly put together and executed. It is a case study in failed film making.
The only thing even remotely interesting is the weird sexual tension between the teens... and the dog and the mother. The long scene of the mother scratching her boyfriend that turned into a dog with the Sesame Street-like music in the background is just fetish material.
If you doubt this, go check it out on net-flix.
Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century (1999)
Scooby Doo upgrade
My wife and I are very big Sherlock Holmes fans so we had to see this cartoon version.
Our impression is that it is a very suitable introduction to Sherlock Holmes for children who can handle minor cartoon violence. In this series, like Scooby Doo, the protagonists use reason and deduction to solve problems that are always human in origin.
Sherlock Holmes' catch phrase (repeated often enough to be annoying) is "eye and brains," which is a positive message to teach any kid. I hope my kids take this message to heart.
One person noted the great computer graphics. Given that the comment was in Jan 2000 (10+ years previous) they can be forgiven.
From a Sherlock Holmes perspective; the episodes bear little resemblance to the originals.
Sherlock Holmes (2010)
Not even bad in a good way, just tedious and dumb
This is an astounding terrible movie which obviously had a pretty significant budget
To be fair here are some good points, effects, filming and sets.
Everything else was painful to watch without fast forwarding Pointless dialog Completely wrong casting for Sherlock Holmes Plot with so many holes discontinuities and absurdities Editing. If this film was edited at all it would be about 30 min long. It has many pointless scenes which add nothing to the story Bizarre non-Sherlock Holmes characters... like a brother named Thorpe who worked with Lestrade???
Definitely one of the worse movies I have ever seen and it isn't even bad in a good way, just tedious and dumb.
The Fountain (2006)
Boring, pointless and lacking in any story
If you rent this movie, it says that it is a time travel movie over a space of 1000 years; well it isn't, that is a lie.
What this movie as to offer: no story, no plot, no character development, no continuity, complete boredom, an example of painfully pretentious film making A lesson in how not to make a movie
The funny thing is that I would normally like movies like this but it even fails to be a sound art film because the message in convoluted by the absence of ANY story.
The movie is not even good enough to be parodied on MST3K (if it still existed).
I have seen better movies with a ~3.0 rating on IMDb, there MUST be some vote rigging which IMDb should look into.
Stargate: Continuum (2008)
Painful number of plot holes
While I really enjoyed the intensity of the action scenes the plot holes around the time travel where just too painful to tolerate.
Example: Ben Browder goes back in time to fix up the time line, doesn't have away back to the future. Does he just stick around in 1939? How about this one: Baal's plan fails in 1939 but he doesn't know it 70 years later at his execution? Another one: Even though Baal's plan is defeated in 1939, with tonnes of evidence laying around and the current stargate group don't know anything about it.
A close one: if they didn't explicitly say that Baal was a clone, then you would have the painful paradox of him being killed before he was born and invented the time machine and implementing the plan while in custody awaiting his execution.
Lightspeed (2006)
A potential teaching aid in film school
I stumbled on to this movie in the video store and after reading all the outrageously negative comments decided to watch it anyway.
While I agree with nearly every poster that this movie was flawed beyond hope I think it might have a second life as a teaching aid in film schools.
Some examples:
1. The acting in the opening scene is flat-out painful, much the same way you see in student films.
2. Lack of a coherent plot. Great movie houses like Pixar, preach that plot is everything. Every student needs to know this.
3. Overly ambitious special effects. If you don't have the budget to blow something up or the skills to make convincing special effects. Then don't do it, use a plot device to get around it.
4. Proper casting. If you are going to do a super-hero movie, then cast somebody that at least looks athletic.
5. Character development. This movie should have been called Cobra since he was the only compelling character in the whole movie. The main character, presumably, Lightspeed needs to have some development too, after all he does get super-human power, this might change him a little bit.
6. Super giant plot holes. You ever wonder why superman doesn't just fly around the world and reverse time when every something bad happens, like he did in that one movie? Well you will be asking your self this over and over in this movie. Lesson, make your super hero's skills consistent!
7. Weird, unnecessary editing in action scenes.
8. Lousy gore. If someone is going to be hurt and you don't have a budget to make it look convincing, then don't do the closeup.
9. I could go on and on.
At least the sound was decent and the camera was in focus