Terminator: Genisys (2015)

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I had to postpone Terminator: Genisys review by one day. Normally I do videos over several days. This was done over one day from watching the movie to uploading it to YouTube. Normally I sleep over night before writing videos. It results more analytical videos and I might change my opinion about the movie. I wrote review with more spoilers on Thursday. You can find it here.

I didn't mention in video that Terminator: Genisys had some ideas. Ideas didn't work as intended. Story was too inconsistent. Too many questions were left open for sequels. Movie has two sequels scheduled already. Without sequels this is inconsistent mess. I doubt sequels will make this more consistent.

If you want quick opinion without watching the video, I recommend not to see Terminator: Genisys in theater. It copies too much from other movies. Mainly from first two Terminators but also from Dark Knight Rises and Fast & Furious sequels and probably form somewhere I have not seen. Few hours after watching it I have really hard time remembering what movie was about.

Try to wait for rental or NetFlix if you really need to see Terminator: Genisys. It is not worth of movie ticket or the time. We don't need any more of these poorly written sequels to popular movies.

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Terminator: Salvation (2009)

Terminator: Salvation is considered by many as worst Terminator movie. At least until Terminator: Genisys hits the theaters. Terminator: Salvation is only Terminator movie without Arnold Schwarzenegger and only one set on war between humans and machines. There was computer generated Arnold but we don't see real Arnold in movie. It was meant to launch new Terminator trilogy which was forgotten quite soon after the release of the movie.

Terminator 3 and Terminator: Salvation are disliked by general audience since they closer to original film than Terminator 2. Terminator 2 was feel good kid friendly action movie as much as movie about war between humans and robots can be. It was also only movie ending with possibility of war between humans and robots may not come.

Terminator: Salvation forgets Terminator 2 completely and takes very little from Terminator 3. It takes almost too much from first Terminator movie. John Connor is messiah of human resistance. Based on wikipedia his role was expanded because Christian Bale wanted to play him instead of Marcus which he was planned to play.

Marcus is main character. I guess his role was reduced a bit to give more room for John Connor. Marcus is executed criminal who wakes up in middle of war between humans and robots. Movie tells story of how he finds out what he really is and how he decides what he wants to be. Marcus meets Kyle Reese. Machines are after Kyle Reese like they know he is the father of John Connor. When they caught him they forget they want to kill him.

Terminator: Salvation has many plot holes and inconsistencies like that. I feel making John Conner's role bigger caused many of these inconsistencies. Keeping this as story of Marcus and Kyle Reese would have made more sense. Now John Connor is lone action hero going against enemy base. Also making every movie story of different characters with connection being small role of John Connor would have been interesting idea.

Mad Max: Fury Road was like that. Judge Dredd comics are like that. Original idea would probably had worked better. Most problems were caused by giving John Connor bigger role.

Terminator: Salvation is not as bad as its reputation. It has plot holes and inconsistencies. Marcus is interesting character and his story is best part of the movie. Making John Connor and Kyle Reese too important was bad choice.

The Terminator (1984)

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Terminator: Genisys comes to theaters near me next Friday. This is good time to review the movie which started it all. It is good time because it came available in NetFlix. To my local NetFlix. I can't promise what is case elsewhere. Before anyone asks, next week's video will be Terminator: Genisys review.

The video will not be published on Monday. I have to delay it until Tuesday. I have such a tight schedule next weekend I can't make video for next Monday and I can't do it during the week because movie comes to theaters on Friday. Trailers have told everything about the movie so it could be possible to do video before seeing the movie and then fixing what I got wrong. But I won't do that.

The Terminator was the movie starting it all. It is my favorite movie in franchise. I found few interesting facts when I wrote the script and checked the facts. I always thought it was Arnold Schwarzenegger's idea he should play Terminator. But turns out it was James Cameron's idea and Arnold didn't expect much from the movie before shooting started.

I tried to get Terminator feeling to this video. There are couple things I would have changed if I planned this look from the start but those are not too confusing and changing them afterwards would have required much more work.

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Battle of the Damned (2013)

Another one and half hour scifi movie. It can be called scifi because zombies has scientific explanation and there are robots. That kind of sums the movie. But I think I should write longer review.

Dolph Lundgren is sent to zombie infested city to rescue daughter of rich industrialist. First ten minutes are pretty much Dolph and his group killing endless hordes of running zombies. Even actors seemed to think it was stupid. They didn't put much effort into fighting scenes. There are few mandatory deaths and lot of killing of zombies. If zombies were counted as people and rest of the movie was similar to beginning Dolph would have broken record of most kills in one movie with big margin.

After ten minutes Dolph let other survivors of his group to leave. All one. Then we cut to daughter who is one of few survivors and quite zombie killing machine herself too. Dolph finds daughter who takes him to other survivors. Movie moves from zombie killing to small group surviving zombie infection.

This might sound like good zombie movie. It is not. It looks like it but forgets what makes good zombie movies good. First of all zombies don't feel dangerous. Usually people die when they make mistakes. Dolph and his group makes all the mistakes in first ten minutes. Group members die but it feels more like script said they die than they did something wrong which killed them. After almost losing all of his group Dolph stays behind alone. Because it was on script. There was no sensible reason to stay as far as they knew whole city was turned into zombies.

Good zombie films study group dynamics in stressful situation. Battle of the Damned has group without any dynamics. Characters don't have any personality. Dolph is like robot who is programmed to save the daughter. Daughter doesn't like her father. Leader of survivors is leader. Two Asians had relationship. I almost forgot lovers of the daughter and the leader. They had even less personality than others Robots appeared at one point. Someone send robots to kill zombies in a city which was scheduled for firebombing. Don't ask my why,

Battle of the Damned looks good and has few nice visual tricks. It works better as action movie than zombie movie. Characters and story make it forgettable.

Jurassic World (2015)

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Jurassic World is second of those "What year is this" movies. Mad Max Fury Road got good reviews. So far I have not seen good reviews of Jurassic World. To be honest I have not seen or read too many reviews. I will see third of those movies in two weeks. I don't have high hopes for Terminator Genisys. Trailers have spoiled it and what I know doesn't sound good.

I try to take these videos to new direction. I didn't go all the way in this video but there is something I am trying to add more. I constantly try new things and now it was time to change presentation.

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First thoughts of Jurassic World (2015)

I saw Jurassic World last night. Video review is coming on Monday. It might have more spoilers than my normal videos and I might try couple new things in it. I had rough day at work and used all my aggression in gym. I was bit tired at cinema and had my guard down. I feel my opinion changes more I think about the movie. Monday's video might have totally different opinion than I have now. Because of all that I wanted to write short serious spoiler free review.

Jurassic World is lot like slasher movies. If you go there expecting to see dinosaurs killing people and expect nothing else you probably enjoy the movie. You just have to endure about 20 minutes before two best characters appear and some time more before real action starts.

Jurassic World tries to give everyone something. It knows what we have learned about dinosaurs since Jurassic Park. Dinosaurs didn't look like they look in Jurassic movies or any other dinosaur movies. This movie plainly says it. There is intelligent subplot with scientists and evil corporation which I wanted to see more of.

But Jurassic World is adventure movie with dinosaurs for kids. It is full of cliches and as predictable as slashers. Dinosaur effects are good. The Dinosaur is scary. When it is on screen you feel characters are in real danger. You need to see Jurassic World in theater. Dinosaur effects don't work as well in small screen and movie loses it main selling point.

Because I was tired and I let my guard down I enjoyed when action really started. But to be honest this is full of cliches and things stolen from other movies. It is full of plot holes and so on. If you want action, dinosaurs killing people and expect nothing else you can enjoy Jurassic World.

Retrograde (2004)

Another one and half hour movie. Sometimes these low budget scifi movies work and sometimes they don't. When they work it is usually because they try something different which is not possible in big budget movies. When they don't work movie usually don't have any own ideas. It is just low budget version of what we have seen in bigger budget movies.

Retrograde has interesting premise but it turns boring quite soon. Plague is killing human race in two hundred years in future. Plague was first discovered by one expedition ship in Antarctic in our time. Future humans send their spaceship to our time to stop the expedition ship. Part of the crew decided it is better to take plague rather that destroy it. I don't know what was their plan to use it. Once released it will eventually kill human race and they know it because they come from future where this has happened.

Dolph Lundgren manages to escape bad guys. He is saved by expedition who also finds meteorites with plague. Dolph tries to destroy the plague which is infecting the expedition.

Premise in interesting. I assume idea was taken from someone else and then made into this mess. Writing is the biggest problem. There are no interesting characters. If characters have any character traits they are unrealistic stereotypes doing stereotypical things which doesn't make any sense. I lost interest after first ten minutes because of couple characters.

Movie has couple interesting twists. Twists are interesting when they come but later make no sense. When you see the ending the whole premise and the big twist at middle doesn't make any sense. This makes me think someone messed with original story and changed it for worse.

Whole action angle with spaceship's crew turning evil was unnecessary for the story. It was there to make this action movie. Movie would have worked better without it. Horror movie with plague and Dolph from the future would have been more interesting. With better writing it could have been a good movie.

Citizen Kane (1941)

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Citizen Kane is not kind of movie I usually review. I just heard one too many references to it and it was available at the time. So I reviewed it. I don't think Citizen Kane is greatest movie ever made. Reasons are in video. I decided to review this before I realized Sense 8 was released last Friday. I wrote my initial thoughts of series last Saturday. Proper review will come in future. I just don't know when.

Now that I have done Citizen Kane I might review other classic movies too. It is fun to review classics and say what I think. I don't have list of classic movies to review. I will review movies when they come available.

Fun fact about Mad Max: Fury Road. After seeing colorful images of Fury Road daily for weeks I started to edit my new photos more colorful. You can check my photos from my Flickr page.

About the room breaking scene. I guess it works better if you haven't seen The Room.

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Sense 8 after first episode

Sense 8 was released yesterday and it falls into genres I usually review. I had other thing planned for next Monday because I forgot all about Sense 8. I checked first episode yesterday to check if I should binge watch the season and make video of it for next Monday. I decided not to. Because of that I want to give my first thoughts here. I will review Sense 8 after I have watched it but I don't know will it be video or blog post and when it comes.

Sense 8 is written by dream team of The Wachowskis and J. Michael Straczynski. The Wachowskis are known for Matrix and JMS is the man behind Babylon 5. The Wachowskis have struggled to make good movie since first Matrix. JMS went to write comics. His run with Thor showed he can still write interesting stories. I have not read his other comics.

Sense 8 could have been comeback for The Wachowskis and JMS. It still can be but after first episode it doesn't feel like it. The Wachowskis are make same mistake as with Cloud Atlas. There are too many characters and we jump between characters too randomly. When character's story start to get interesting we jump to next character. Series has eleven more episodes. Story could start to make sense later but after first episode I don't have any idea what is going on. There are interesting characters but nothing gives me feeling I have to check what happens next.

This can be problem. I decided not to binge watch Sense 8 and review it during weekend. Some others may skip the series because first episode didn't draw them in. JMS usually starts slowly and it takes a little time before his stories starts to work. Slow start is required to build foundation for the story. This might be case with this too but was it necessary to introduce all eight main characters in first episode and not give any hints what is going on?

The Devil's Tomb (2009)

I like short movies when I don't feel like watching and reviewing a movie but I have to. I try to find short movies and pick one. This time my choice was The Devil's Tomb. I selected it because it had Henry Rollins and Ron Perlman.  Both had small parts. Others had much more screen time.

If movie is named The Devil's Tomb it likely has lot of pseudo-Christianity. Pseudo-Christianity usually leads to lazy writing. Writers expect audience to know the premise when you add angels and demons. Problem is there is so much of this kind of fiction with great variety. Different people know different versions of these stories. They probably don't know writers version of the premise.

Story is standard group going to base/spaceship/whatever where all contact has been lost. I could add long list of movies which The Devil's Tomb reminded me of. Those movies I remember. I will forget The Devil's Tomb almost as soon as I finish this post. Reason is movie doesn't have anything interesting. I didn't care about characters or the story. There was nothing to care about.

Characters didn't have any personality. When they have hallucinations telling their back story you don't have any idea what these hallucinations mean. You need to give some hints of characters backgrounds before you use background in hallucinations. That way audience may care what is happening.

Cuba Gooding jr's character has flashbacks through out the movie. Flashback just don't show what really happened until the end. Then it doesn't make much sense. We should care about the character but we can't because character didn't have any personality. Flashbacks could have given him personality but they just gave more questions.

Story is full of plot holes. It relies too heavily on effectiveness of pseudo-Christianity. It wasn't explained what caused people to become possessed. Henry Rollins' character looked like possessed but he wasn't. Others looking like that were. They got markings after they were "killed" and I am not sure if everyone possessed were "killed".

Possession wasn't only poorly explained thing in The Devil's Tomb. Almost everything is poorly explained. I have hard time figuring reasons to watch this movie. There really isn't anything interesting. It is not bad but there just isn't anything interesting.

Kung Fury (2015)

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Don't adjust your set. Video is meant to have that low quality letterboxed full frame look.

Kung Fury is one of the hottest videos on YouTube at the moment. It is Kickstarter funded 30 minute video of extreme 80's actiom movie goodness. It seem to get almost as much hype as Mad Max Fury Road. You can find it from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS5P_LAqiVg.

Because Kung Fury is available free and it is only half hour long I won't write more about it here. You can watch it and my review video.

I wanted to make new 80's like music for this video but couldn't come up with anything. There were too much other things this week. Because Kung Fury tries to look like worn out vhs tape I wanted to have decades old look too. I didn't go as far as 80's. I went to bad dvd quality. Dvd was introduced on 1995. That is good enough for me this time.

I hated this letterboxed full frame look with black bars on each sides on my dvds. There are dvds which look like this on widescreen television. I don't understand why they were made. As far as I know full frame televisions can show widescreen material and widescreen televisions can show full frame material. So why have dvds which have black bars on each side?

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