Don't you hate it when you accidentally press the wrong button and end up posting a blank page? Sigh.
So, three reviews. I would have spaced them out a bit more, as I seem to be ending up posting about once or twice a month at best lately, but I just saw Battleship and Chronicle this weekend, and caught the last of House of Cards (a Netflix miniseries). So, you guys are stuck with one big tripartite review.
Let's take House of Cards first, since it's fresh in my mind. It's all about politics, basically. And not even accurate politics, as far as I know. First, let me say this, I am neither an expert in, nor do I ever really think about, politics. Other than to say, I don't care. I don't vote, because it doesn't seem to matter who gets elected, they all seem to either be corrupt or ineffective. Perhaps you see this as a nihilistic attitude, but I am simply pragmatic about it... my vote does not matter, so what's the point of wasting my time? Now let's move on.
House of Cards is a look at the inner world of one Congressman Frank Underwood, a man who supported the incumbent (fictional) president, but got screwed over when it came time to hand out the rewards for his support. Over the course of the 13-part series on Netflix, Frank tries to not only take his vengeance out on the man who wronged him, but gain more power for himself as a result. Sounds like a good revenge story, eh? We all like a good revenge story! Doesn't quite work out that way, however.
So here's what I think about it. It might seem pretty realistic except for the fact that Congressman don't write their own legislation, a process routinely shown over the course of the series. As I understand it (and admittedly, my source is the internet since, as I said, I know nothing about politics), lobbyists actually write the bills that are turned into law, and congressmen just get re-elected so they can keep taking money not only from the people but from the corporations as well. Hey, don't look at me, as far as I can tell, that's the internet's take on how congress works, and we all know they can't put stuff on the internet that isn't true, right? lol It does go into great detail about how the oil corporation keeps a lobbyist practically on Frank's front doorstep just in case they want him to do something, and shows a lot of underhanded dealings as far as that goes. In the world of House of Cards, corporations certainly are the bad guy. They apparently operate with no rules and can pretty much do whatever they want, while adhering to the ridiculously negligent laws about them dealing directly with congressmen. So by comparison, I suppose a man like Frank Underwood is a holy knight in shining white armor.
The series isn't really consistent, though. At one turn Frank is coordinating a series of back-door dealings to assure his influence, and the next moment he's rambling incoherently on live TV. They never fully explained why he can seem so brilliant one moment and so idiotic the next. I will say Frank seems like a typical congressman... more interested in advancing his own power and wealth than producing anything good out of life, and he doesn't care who he has to hurt to do it. There's one scene at the very beginning where Frank ends the life of a dog who gets hit by a car, something I took to be a merciful act, but seems more to foreshadow his absolutely cold-hearted behavior through the rest of the series. I found it hard to root for Frank, or to identify with anyone at all in the series, quite honestly. They all seem to be lying, backstabbing people, only concerned with advancing their own agendas despite whatever interpersonal bridges they have to burn. Alliances seem to form among enemies between one episode and the next, and powerful people seem to break otherwise beneficial bonds that have been working. Maybe that's politics, but it seems a god-awfully inefficient way to do things. Also, the series ends rather ineffectively, not that we can't see where things are going, but I suppose, it sets things up for next season. Given that it's been some time and I have yet to see another season of Lilyhammer (netflix's first series seems to be hanging in limbo), I don't hold out hope I'll see the end of this 13-part setup.
Overall, I would say, only watch the series if you like politics, enjoy excellent acting (excellent acting abounds here, spotlighting kevin spacey), or have a thing for Kate Mara (arguably the leader of the supporting cast on the opposition side), which, I do. She has a fine rear end unless they used a stand in, which is entirely possible, and the rest of her is not unattractive either, I must say. lol No monsters, very few boobs, lots of betrayals, backstabbing and such. Politics as usual. Moving on.
Battleship did not seem like that decent of a movie, quite honestly. When I saw the trailers for the giant robots in the water, I immediately thought "transformers clone" and nearly disregarded it completely. However, HBO advertised it heavily this week and I was bored so I took a gander at it.
Basically, we find an earth-like planet, and decide to beam a signal directly at it in hopes of contacting alien life. Much like one of the scientists involved in this endeavor, I already thought that this was a bad idea. Oh not for the obvious reasons, but two things stood out. One, if we are beaming a signal directly at an alien planet, what are we hitting when it gets there? The signal would have to be pretty powerful to go that far, so, are we talking, some poor alien shleb on Earth "2" is sitting there reading his morning paper when an alien laser beam fries him and all that's left is his slippers? I would take that as an attack, quite frankly, not an attempt to communicate. Also, we are never told what actually is the content of the message or signal we are sending. Could be reruns of reality TV, in which case, I'm not surprised they sent military warships in response. Which, is what happens, while a bunch of navy vessels are undergoing battle-exercises in the ocean around Hawaii, alien ships drop into the ocean there, erect a forcefield, and try to re-establish contact with their homeworld. They don't seem to attack civilians, as far as I can tell, which would seem to be a direct invitation to begin some sort of dialog to me, but what sort of movie would that be? Uninteresting! Blast the shit out of the friendly buggers. Much more fun that way.
I don't think I've been this pleased by an alien-invasion movie since Independence Day, and while it didn't have the star-power, acting talent or overall celebratory feel of that movie, it did remind me of it quite a bit. Liam Neeson was the only actor I can really think of offhand that was a big name in that movie, other than Rihanna (her first acting debut? maybe), but the otherwise unrecognizable cast did a fair enough job. The budget for special effects pretty much overshadowed everything else, I would think. The entire movie pretty much revolves around huge military warships duking it out with alien spacecraft (moving perhaps ungracefully through the ocean), with lots of explosions, artillery file, missile exchanges and special weapons being fired back and forth. Also, they did a rather excellent job on the aliens. They made a great deal out of painting the other planet as very earth-like, and in essence, the aliens were almost our twins, except for a slightly different origin and a slightly different environment, and slightly more advanced. Still, there's the requisite scene where an alien touches a human and there's mind-to-mind contact about the alien's homeworld. Why do we have this? Honestly, not all space-aliens are born knowing the vulcan mind-meld. Trust me, I know a few. Seems silly to toss it in here for absolutely no reason. it did nothing for the movie. Could have gone without it, quite frankly, and been better for it, but no. No.
In any case, lots of alien technology, alien-human fisticuffs, alien-human machine warfare, and no nudity, so if you're a typical fan of action movies and aliens, like me, then this is nice. But, what's up with Rihanna not doing a nude scene? I mean, she's practically naked all over the intertubes, am I right? Here she's covered up by flak vests and body armor constantly. Damn, girl! Show me some skin and let the aliens get a load of those boobies! Errr, anyway, I digress. On to Chronicle.
Chronicle has been out a while (much like Battleship, but being unemployed for so long, I don't see movies right away anymore), but I had seen the trailers for it when it first came out. It's, again, one of those blair-witch-camera type things. where the camera is almost a character in the story, and we see things through it's eye. I HATE these things. I don't care how well they are done, I don't care how much money they save, I don't care how they might up the suspense, i want to SEE what's going on. I don't want to see the view through a window being filmed by a neighbor with a telescopic lens, I want full frontal close-ups by a film crew who ripped out the wall of the room so they could put more cameras in to film EVERYTHING. People usually pay money to see a movie, so why deny them the right to actually SEE the movie? Why play camera tricks so that what they actually see is a movie of the movie, and a poor one at that, since the camera being a part of the action only ends up making us see very little of the actual action? It's like shooting a porn movie and showing snapshots of the lead actress going into a cheap motel to shoot the movie, watching the curtains blowing out the window of the cheap motel room while we hear sounds of sex but see nothing, and then showing the actress leaving the place with a frown of disappointment on her face. We feel your disappointment, ma'am. We do. Just show us what happens already.
Chronicle itself is about a few high school guys who follow a rabbit hole and end up communing with a glowy rock. I'm not sure if it's radioactive, alien in origin, or just some unexplained experiment in psychotropic crystals that got away, but it ends up awakening telekinesis in these three individuals. As you may have guessed, giving telekinesis to a bunch of high schoolers will not end well, and it doesn't. There's infighting, jealousy, rage, and general crankiness. Without even the standard boob fare, like Zapped! Such a disappointment.
So i'm not really sure why a bunch of drunken high schoolers would go spelunking down into a dark cave in the middle of the night, or how they actually managed to make it out alive without falling and killing themselves, or why only telekinesis was unleashed, but there you have it. Three entirely different teenage boys get super-powered telekinetic abilities, and there's no female nudity. I'm not really sure if they're gay, or I'm a pervert, but telekinesis could have SO many other uses than flying about in the sky playing football. Seriously? You can pull the legs off a spider but you STILL can't get into a woman's panties? Dude, seriously. Doing it wrong. Think "Modern Problems" with Chevy Chase.
I wasn't really fond of this movie. It starts out slow, and with the camera-being-a-character type of film process, it is immediately annoying. I had tried to watch it days before, but I had turned it off in annoyance. If you can get past that, past the slow build, past the fact that three supposedly straight high school boys never rip a woman's dress off with their powers, and past the typically emo personality the main character and his camera have going for them, well, the ending is okay. Rage-fueled telekinesis is, after all, what gave the movie Carrie it's lasting appeal, and this is basically what you might expect when an unstable individual's thoughts are given power.
To be honest, I'm not really sure who would enjoy this movie. There wasn't a lot of action, no nudity, no aliens, few explosions, very little fighting and no comedy, so.... yea. If you want to watch a movie where none of that happens, watch this one? lol
That's all I got for now. Nothing exciting on the horizon yet.
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