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Awix (3310 KP) rated Geostorm (2017) in Movies
Feb 7, 2018 (Updated Feb 7, 2018)
Gerard Butles With The Elements
It's a movie directed by the producer of The Day After Tomorrow and 2012, in which Gerard Butler is shot into space to have a fight with bad weather. If the description alone does not make you engage in fairly serious expectation-management, you must be new to this whole going-to-the-movies business.
Um, yeah: Gerard Butler plays a brilliant but maverick meteorologist (stay with me) who invents a global weather control system codenamed 'Dutch Boy' (possibly because the satellites are really high all the time), then gets sacked for being a pain in the neck. Years later, the system starts to go wrong (unimportant people like Afghans and Chinese meet spectacular weather-related deaths) and Butler is recruited by his brother (don't ask) to figure out the problem.
There is a lot of chasing about and a conspiracy and the world's most oddly designed self-destruct system, and the villain turns out to be the person you thought it was all the time. Butler spends most of the movie in space, which at least means Abbie Cornish can do more as a member of the Secret Service who ends up kidnapping the President (it's that kind of movie). Geostorm hasn't quite figured out how to handle having the President as a character in a movie in the current situation: Andy Garcia plays him in a very sensible, nondescript manner, quite divorced from reality.
I have to say a friend of mine said Geostorm was so bad it made London Has Fallen look like a Christopher Nolan movie, but it's not so much flat-out awful as simply very silly, obvious, and predictable, not to mention very much like all the other movies Dean Devlin produced for Roland Emmerich. I suppose the moral should be 'stick to what you're (reasonably) good at'.
Um, yeah: Gerard Butler plays a brilliant but maverick meteorologist (stay with me) who invents a global weather control system codenamed 'Dutch Boy' (possibly because the satellites are really high all the time), then gets sacked for being a pain in the neck. Years later, the system starts to go wrong (unimportant people like Afghans and Chinese meet spectacular weather-related deaths) and Butler is recruited by his brother (don't ask) to figure out the problem.
There is a lot of chasing about and a conspiracy and the world's most oddly designed self-destruct system, and the villain turns out to be the person you thought it was all the time. Butler spends most of the movie in space, which at least means Abbie Cornish can do more as a member of the Secret Service who ends up kidnapping the President (it's that kind of movie). Geostorm hasn't quite figured out how to handle having the President as a character in a movie in the current situation: Andy Garcia plays him in a very sensible, nondescript manner, quite divorced from reality.
I have to say a friend of mine said Geostorm was so bad it made London Has Fallen look like a Christopher Nolan movie, but it's not so much flat-out awful as simply very silly, obvious, and predictable, not to mention very much like all the other movies Dean Devlin produced for Roland Emmerich. I suppose the moral should be 'stick to what you're (reasonably) good at'.
Movie Metropolis (309 KP) rated Geostorm (2017) in Movies
Jun 10, 2019
The 90's are back
I’ve got to start by telling you I wasn’t holding out much hope for Geostorm and that’s for quite a few reasons. Firstly, Gerard Butler’s career has been on a bit of a slide recently.
Last year was particularly rough for the Scotsman, with London Has Fallen and Gods of Egypt receiving less than 2 stars here at Movie Metropolis. Secondly, Geostorm has had one of the most turbulent productions of any blockbuster in recent memory.
It actually completed main shooting in 2014 but after a negative audience reaction, it’s release date was pushed back numerous times and costly reshoots were drafted in to sort out the presumed mess. Now, in Autumn 2017 it’s arrived. But what’s it like?
After an unprecedented series of natural disasters, the world’s leaders banded together to create an intricate net of satellites to control the global climate and keep people safe. But now, something is wrong: the system built to protect the planet is attacking it, and it becomes a race against the clock to uncover the real threat before a worldwide geostorm wipes out everything and everyone along with it.
Sounding like something straight from the SyFy channel, Geostorm’s premise is utterly ridiculous but disaster movies have never been particularly well-known for their deep, meaningful and accurate storylines. In fact, some of the very best films in the genre, Deep Impact, Armageddon, Volcano wrestled with significant plot holes – audiences don’t care about that when they can watch the planet getting destroyed.
Morbid, right? Most definitely, but the same applies here. The special effects are so darn good, as a tidal wave obliterates Dubai, and the action interspersed at the right intervals, that the lack of cohesive plot and at times hideous and expositional dialogue really doesn’t matter.
The cinematography by director Dean Devlin (in his first feature film) is really rather good. It’s not ground-breaking but considering 95% of the movie is CGI, he works with green screen well and the script’s twists and turns make it a damn sight more interesting than the majority of 2017’s blockbusters.
“Geostorm channels those brilliantly camp disaster movies from the 80s and 90s beautifully.”
Gerard Butler is actually very decent, but there is a lot more talent on offer here than you would first expect. Ed Harris is always dependable and Andy Garcia plays a President similar to Morgan Freeman’s turn in 1998s Deep Impact. It’s cheesier than a Dairylea triangle, but that’s exactly how disaster films are meant to be.
Geostorm channels those brilliantly camp disaster movies from the 80s and 90s beautifully. Dante’s Peak, Earthquake and Volcano can all be felt here. It takes itself a lot less seriously than 2015’s San Andreas, and has a decent sense of humour to boot.
The scenes on-board the International Space Station are a little dull and to be fair, for a film titled Geostorm, there could be a little more ‘storming’ going on, but it’s a fun, throwaway film that requires nothing but your mind to switch off.
Overall, despite a ridiculously turbulent birth, Geostorm is an honest film. Sure, it’s premise is plagued by plot inconsistencies and the characters aren’t fleshed out enough for us to care about their fates, but it’s a rollercoaster ride of special effects and disaster, which I’m not ashamed to say, I really enjoyed.
https://moviemetropolis.net/2017/10/21/geostorm-review/
Last year was particularly rough for the Scotsman, with London Has Fallen and Gods of Egypt receiving less than 2 stars here at Movie Metropolis. Secondly, Geostorm has had one of the most turbulent productions of any blockbuster in recent memory.
It actually completed main shooting in 2014 but after a negative audience reaction, it’s release date was pushed back numerous times and costly reshoots were drafted in to sort out the presumed mess. Now, in Autumn 2017 it’s arrived. But what’s it like?
After an unprecedented series of natural disasters, the world’s leaders banded together to create an intricate net of satellites to control the global climate and keep people safe. But now, something is wrong: the system built to protect the planet is attacking it, and it becomes a race against the clock to uncover the real threat before a worldwide geostorm wipes out everything and everyone along with it.
Sounding like something straight from the SyFy channel, Geostorm’s premise is utterly ridiculous but disaster movies have never been particularly well-known for their deep, meaningful and accurate storylines. In fact, some of the very best films in the genre, Deep Impact, Armageddon, Volcano wrestled with significant plot holes – audiences don’t care about that when they can watch the planet getting destroyed.
Morbid, right? Most definitely, but the same applies here. The special effects are so darn good, as a tidal wave obliterates Dubai, and the action interspersed at the right intervals, that the lack of cohesive plot and at times hideous and expositional dialogue really doesn’t matter.
The cinematography by director Dean Devlin (in his first feature film) is really rather good. It’s not ground-breaking but considering 95% of the movie is CGI, he works with green screen well and the script’s twists and turns make it a damn sight more interesting than the majority of 2017’s blockbusters.
“Geostorm channels those brilliantly camp disaster movies from the 80s and 90s beautifully.”
Gerard Butler is actually very decent, but there is a lot more talent on offer here than you would first expect. Ed Harris is always dependable and Andy Garcia plays a President similar to Morgan Freeman’s turn in 1998s Deep Impact. It’s cheesier than a Dairylea triangle, but that’s exactly how disaster films are meant to be.
Geostorm channels those brilliantly camp disaster movies from the 80s and 90s beautifully. Dante’s Peak, Earthquake and Volcano can all be felt here. It takes itself a lot less seriously than 2015’s San Andreas, and has a decent sense of humour to boot.
The scenes on-board the International Space Station are a little dull and to be fair, for a film titled Geostorm, there could be a little more ‘storming’ going on, but it’s a fun, throwaway film that requires nothing but your mind to switch off.
Overall, despite a ridiculously turbulent birth, Geostorm is an honest film. Sure, it’s premise is plagued by plot inconsistencies and the characters aren’t fleshed out enough for us to care about their fates, but it’s a rollercoaster ride of special effects and disaster, which I’m not ashamed to say, I really enjoyed.
https://moviemetropolis.net/2017/10/21/geostorm-review/
Daniel Boyd (1066 KP) rated Bad Samaritan (2018) in Movies
Oct 3, 2018 (Updated Oct 3, 2018)
Tacky jump-scares (1 more)
Constantly asks you to accept huge leaps of logic
What A Waste
Bad Samaritan is a movie that I really should have liked. I am a huge fan of David Tennant, I love a decent thriller movie and the trailer for the movie teased an intriguing plot as well. Unfortunately, I didn't like much of it, in fact it really annoyed me how little I liked when watching this thing.
Let's start off with the cast. David Tennant is, - as he always is, - absolutely fantastic in this role. In any other better movie, he would be in with a shout for an award for this role, unfortunately he is surrounded by absolutely overwhelming amount of trash. Robert Sheehan does a serviceable job with what he has given, but some of the lines he delivers are just too forced and cheesy to be taken seriously. The actor playing his best friend is just playing a stereotypical nonchalant small time criminal. Kerry Condon plays the hostage that David Tennant is keeping in his house and she also does a decent enough job with the shoddy material she has been given to work with.
The only other positive that I can think of other than Tennant's performance, is the way that Tennant's character systematically ruins Sheehan's character's life. He makes him lose his job, he blackmails him via social media, he attacks his girlfriend and he wrecks his car. The way that this sequence played out reminded me of Frank Miller's Daredevil story Born Again, where Kingpin learns Daredevil's real identity and destroys his life piece by piece via the people he cares about. Don't get me wrong, it is done far better in Born Again and Born Again is a much better story overall than Bad Samaritan, but it was the only element of this movies plot that I liked other than what we already saw in the trailers.
Now that we have discussed the few positives that this movie has, let's go through everything else. First of all, I have never heard a more out-of-place, inappropriate score to go along with what is happening onscreen. It genuinely felt like a temp score that was put in preliminarily until the proper one was put in and then they just left it in and didn't bother going back to improve it.
Then there was the cheap jump-scares, Although they are mostly consigned to the first act in the movie, they are still far too frequent and totally unnecessary. The last one that I remember happening was so egregious, (when David Tennant was standing behind the detective outside the house,) it actually bordered on parody. There was no story justification for it whatsoever, why would this guy who is trying to appear normal and as if nothing is wrong, creep up behind a detective who is investigating him and just stand there like a creep to give him a fright? It makes absolutely no sense. To be honest, the movie is abundant with things that don't make any sense and you are almost constantly asked to make huge leaps of logic when watching it.
There's also the fact that this movie has no idea what it wants to be. Dean Devlin who directed this, also directed last year's Geostorm. Now Geostorm was a steaming pile of shit, but at least it knew what it wanted to be. The tone in Bad Samaritan is totally all over the place and doesn't work in any way or flow well at all. This movie also plays like a check-list of thriller movie clichés. Everything from cheesy flashbacks showing the villains messed up past to the detectives not believing the protagonist's claims even when he has photo evidence on his phone.
Overall, this film is a huge waste. David Tennant's fantastic performance that he puts in here as an unhinged, genuinely scary villain is wasted in this trash movie. The trailers showed us a potentially thrilling plot that could have really been exciting and engaging only to totally waste it on a flick full of mediocre production elements and a half baked storyline. The only reason that this scored 4 was because of Tennant's brilliant performance, if not for that, this movie would have scored a 2 at best.
Let's start off with the cast. David Tennant is, - as he always is, - absolutely fantastic in this role. In any other better movie, he would be in with a shout for an award for this role, unfortunately he is surrounded by absolutely overwhelming amount of trash. Robert Sheehan does a serviceable job with what he has given, but some of the lines he delivers are just too forced and cheesy to be taken seriously. The actor playing his best friend is just playing a stereotypical nonchalant small time criminal. Kerry Condon plays the hostage that David Tennant is keeping in his house and she also does a decent enough job with the shoddy material she has been given to work with.
The only other positive that I can think of other than Tennant's performance, is the way that Tennant's character systematically ruins Sheehan's character's life. He makes him lose his job, he blackmails him via social media, he attacks his girlfriend and he wrecks his car. The way that this sequence played out reminded me of Frank Miller's Daredevil story Born Again, where Kingpin learns Daredevil's real identity and destroys his life piece by piece via the people he cares about. Don't get me wrong, it is done far better in Born Again and Born Again is a much better story overall than Bad Samaritan, but it was the only element of this movies plot that I liked other than what we already saw in the trailers.
Now that we have discussed the few positives that this movie has, let's go through everything else. First of all, I have never heard a more out-of-place, inappropriate score to go along with what is happening onscreen. It genuinely felt like a temp score that was put in preliminarily until the proper one was put in and then they just left it in and didn't bother going back to improve it.
Then there was the cheap jump-scares, Although they are mostly consigned to the first act in the movie, they are still far too frequent and totally unnecessary. The last one that I remember happening was so egregious, (when David Tennant was standing behind the detective outside the house,) it actually bordered on parody. There was no story justification for it whatsoever, why would this guy who is trying to appear normal and as if nothing is wrong, creep up behind a detective who is investigating him and just stand there like a creep to give him a fright? It makes absolutely no sense. To be honest, the movie is abundant with things that don't make any sense and you are almost constantly asked to make huge leaps of logic when watching it.
There's also the fact that this movie has no idea what it wants to be. Dean Devlin who directed this, also directed last year's Geostorm. Now Geostorm was a steaming pile of shit, but at least it knew what it wanted to be. The tone in Bad Samaritan is totally all over the place and doesn't work in any way or flow well at all. This movie also plays like a check-list of thriller movie clichés. Everything from cheesy flashbacks showing the villains messed up past to the detectives not believing the protagonist's claims even when he has photo evidence on his phone.
Overall, this film is a huge waste. David Tennant's fantastic performance that he puts in here as an unhinged, genuinely scary villain is wasted in this trash movie. The trailers showed us a potentially thrilling plot that could have really been exciting and engaging only to totally waste it on a flick full of mediocre production elements and a half baked storyline. The only reason that this scored 4 was because of Tennant's brilliant performance, if not for that, this movie would have scored a 2 at best.