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The Imitation Game (2014)
Computer science got the backseat
As a software developer, I was interested in this film because of the computer science aspect, particularly during a time when computing was essentially non-existent. Alas the story was overwhelmingly about his personal struggles with repeated flashbacks to his school days and random shots of Benedict Cumberbatch running really fast.
The actual computer science side was incorrect because Alan Turing did not invent and build the Bombe (the machine with all the rotating things) from scratch by himself as portrayed in the movie. The British bombe was a development from a device that had been designed in Poland, the initial design being from Alan Turing but the engineering design and construction was undertaken by an entirely different company. It was an official project so the scene when the machine had been running for a day and he fights to keep it running is almost certainly fabrication.
While speaking of fabrication, when the machine finally does work in the movie, they happen to decode a really significant message but Alan Turing supposedly decides that they have to keep the news to themselves in order to hide their new capabilities. Not taking action based on every intercept did indeed occur but in real life if he had done that he probably would have been executed for treason! A decision like that resulting in massive loss of life would have been up to the admiralty or the Prime Minister. It simply was not his decision to make.
The Sum of All Fears (2002)
Bears no resemblance to the original story
Really only about three things happen in the movie that are from the original story on which this movie is supposedly based. The first, the loss of a nuclear weapon during the Yom Kippur War, happens right away. The second, the nuclear explosion at the Super Bowl in the book takes about 800 pages to get to and the third, the rapidly worsening situation between the US and the Soviet Union that Ryan manages to defuse, happens in the following 200 or so pages. Nothing of the 800 pages up to the explosion makes it into the movie which has been entirely reinvented with only the names of characters from the original story remaining (although some, such as the Russian president, inexplicably have different names). What remains is so unlikely and entirely dumbed down that it is hard not to laugh at this movie. I mean, if you ever see a red and black pair of wires twisted together at the bottom of something like a cigarette dispenser then don't bother with saying OMG, just RUN! Just run for your life and get as far away from that thing as you can!!! Instead of the considerable effort and precision work that went into building the nuclear bomb in the original story, we just see three Russian scientists goofing around and cutting the same frightening twisted red and black wires. This dumbing down of the story continues on right to the final painful moment and tragically leaves out the brilliant stuff. There was even a chapter dedicated to describing the first 30 nanoseconds after the bomb's trigger goes off. It is perhaps one of the most brilliant things I have read and would have made an incredible but also utterly frightening montage on screen.
There is no mention of the so-called "Vatican treaty" which is the background of the events that unfold, there is no mention of a situation involving a Russian attack submarine and a disabled American missile submarine, no mention of the TV satellites that purely by accident become disabled by the nuclear blast and led authorities to falsely believe it was no terrorist attack, no mention of the bomb's yield being overestimated which also falsely ruled out the terrorist attack.
At the time of the movie's release it was said in the media that they changed the terrorists from Arabs to Nazis because it was too close to being something that could actually happen in real life. I never understood this explanation because wasn't that the whole point? Changing the story to something implausible is ridiculous. This sort of story only works if it seems like something that could really happen otherwise the bad guys may as well be fairies.
For anyone who has seen the movie and has not read the book, I recommend at least reading the Wikipedia article on the book and compare the plot summary with the movie. I really think this story deserves a do-over perhaps in the form of a miniseries to allow more of the original story to be included. Maybe a studio like Netflix or HBO might like to have a go at it.
Invictus (2009)
Stirring and inspiring stuff
Clearly the world needs more people like Nelson Mandela leading their countries. It takes a special kind of human to forgive and to respect others like he did. Some other people who are now in positions of leadership are considerably more childish.
It's a pity that the Springbok victory at the World Cup is marred by the fact that nearly all of the All Blacks had food poisoning and were severely ill. A former chief bodyguard to Nelson Mandela believes betting syndicates were behind the deliberate poisoning.
Vikings (2013)
Hard to like anyone really
I made it up to halfway through season 4 but then lost interest. In most things the characters are developed in such a way that the viewer understands their motivation and generally wind up rooting for them. This was certainly the case in a certain other show that was based in a fictional medieval world. However in Vikings I found that pretty much everyone was unlikable and so I didn't really care less what was happening and to whom. Furthermore the stories became full of weird and totally pointless events that seemed to only exist to fill in the time. An example of this is what was going on in Kattegat while the Vikings were being defeated in Paris or the point of that character King Harald Finehair who goes along for the ride. None of this is relevant because nothing comes of any of this and straight after the defeat in Paris we jump forward several years when we see Lagertha practising some sort of martial art fighting with her new girlfriend. Sorry, all too random...
First Man (2018)
Could have been great
Much has been said about how visually stunning this movie is so we chose the biggest screen in the country to view it on. It did not take long before we had regretted this choice. All but the sequence on the moon was unworthy of an IMAX screen while the entire rest of the movie was jittery, shaky, extreme and out of focus close ups, crazy pans and tilts, zooming in and out, etc all made doubly irritating because of the size of the screen. Totally ruined the movie for us with many non-action scenes totally unwatchable. It could have even been a 9 out of 10 but for us was barely watchable. One of us was even sick and I only didn't walk out because of the subject material and the hope that it would improve, which thankfully it did for the short moon sequence.
I honestly don't understand the attraction to this type of cinematography. We humans simply do not see the world in this way and so this only reminds us that we are watching a movie, thus taking us out of the moment and putting us back in the seat in the cinema, especially so as we often preferred to look at objects in the cinema than at the screen much of the time! However what do I know, it would not surprise me if it gets an Academy Award for cinematography.
Bones: The Doctor in the Photo (2010)
Constructed and out of character
This episode presents us an entirely new side to Bones, a side that is irrational and incompatible with the character that we have come to know. Simply put, her behaviour is out of character. It is well established that she is highly rational and does not believe in sentience after death. More than once we have seen her standing in front of her mother's grave and wondering why she should say anything to it. And yet here we see her having conversations with a dead woman via a tape recorder! At a stretch I could have accepted this as being a means for Bones to figure out what may have happened and indeed this was perhaps Bones's initial motivation for doing this. However when she plainly admits to Micha, the night watchman, that she is talking with the deceased woman, one can only assume that she has gone insane because there is no way that her character would ever find such embarrassing behaviour acceptable.
This was not acting out of character in the sense that she was not her usual self. This was acting out of character in the sense that she had developed a split personality.
Perhaps the writers wanted to show us that she was on a slippery slope towards insanity because she had always bottled up her emotions. Perhaps her objectivity and ability to be dispassionate was indeed part of this, however if this were the case, then her recovery back to her normal rational self was just too rapid. Something like this would have to be fleshed out over multiple episodes, perhaps even over much of the season.
Then we are expected to really believe that Booth follows Bones out in the middle of the night, when he has better things to do with his own girlfriend. Up to this point Booth wasn't showing a lot of interest in what Bones was feeling about this case. Despite his lack of interest and the fact that he has a personal life of his own, he still follows Bones around in order to save her from herself. This all seems contrived and constructed. In the scene where Booth saves Bones we have a Deus Ex Machina which is the car that comes out of nowhere at a ridiculous speed and yet for the rest of the scene not another car is seen.
Finally Bones spills the beans and admits what so many viewers have been waiting to hear for the last five or six years. However because I had basically switched off at this point (or I was too busy discussing with my wife about what was wrong with the previous scene), I don't remember what happened and what was said. I'm sure that other viewers would agree that this scene was over far too quickly. Possibly scenes in following episodes with her grappling with the realisation that she loves Booth before she finally manages to admit it?
Battlestar Galactica: Unfinished Business (2006)
Days of our Lives revisited
The show Battlestar Galactica is like a roller coaster ride and I don't mean that in a positive sense. There are some brilliant episodes such as episode 4 of this series (Exodus: Part 2) and there are ones like this one with all the pointless and constructed drama of a soap opera.
There were more of those long slow scenes with Admiral Adama and President Roslin staring at each other. Unfortunately some might call this great acting but to me it seems like they're just filling in time.
I cannot surely be the only person dreading having to watch through more of the tedious Apollo vs. Starbuck melodrama. Starbuck is a train wreck and seems to be eternally heading for her comeuppance but never seems to get it. She is just a poor replacement for the beautiful and pleasant Anastasia Dualla and Apollo is obviously an idiot, but then a lot of the characters on this show are idiots.
The episode was also inconsistent. At the end of the second series just before the arrival of the Cylons on New Caprica there was a feeling as if everyone more or less hated living there. It was cold, there were strikes and it seemed that people were dissatisfied. In this episode one got the feeling that life on New Caprica was good and they were all loving it. Oh, and one other thing, Chief Tyrol's baby was not born on the Galactica, as indicated in this episode. Since his wife was pregnant at that union meeting just before the Cylons arrived (which was led by the then-civilian Tyrol), his baby was obviously born during the Cylon occupation.
Perhaps the idea with the boxing match was original and a change but all in all, a poor episode.
Verliebt in Berlin (2005)
Let down
Like most people, I'm referring to the original Verliebt in Berlin with Lisa and not the extension. I only watched the show because of Lisa so I don't care about the extension.
The final episode, which concluded the main story thread, was a huge disappointment for me. The whole thing with Rokko vs. David seemed to be an incredible farce invented just to keep everyone watching until the last moment. Obviously it was exactly that, but it was unnecessary. The writers should have trusted more in what they had created and in what the show had going for it (e.g. Alexandra's performance), rather than inventing this silly twist that would sort itself out in the very last moment.
Lisa's behaviour at her train wreck of a wedding was simply inconsistent with her character. The best way to describe Lisa was to say she was "nice", which is why I liked her and cared about what happened to her. However on her wedding day she was everything but nice. It is one thing to leave someone standing at the altar but it is another thing entirely to marry someone else on the same day! Imagine being in Rokko's shoes on that day! He even said "I do" and then gets brusquely replaced by the competition.
Obviously the target audience was rooting for David and I was probably too old to be watching this but there are many reasons why she would have been better off with Rokko. The series was about her development from a silly ugly girl into a beautiful self assured responsible young woman but in the end she was still the same silly starry eyed girl as in the beginning. She only liked David because he was some sort of prince that young girls like to dream of but she never honestly loved him because of his personality. I mean, he treated her badly, was fickle, moody and was constantly egoistic. They never even had a date together and yet she married him! Rokko on the other hand cared for Lisa, they had the most fun together, he was patient with her and always supported her even when she was obsessed with David. These are the important things one needs in a partner for life.
I hope all the best for Alexandra. It was the best thing for her to do to leave the series.