It has some cool ideas, the effects are remarkable, especially for the time, and the actors are all good. The within-world plausibility is not horrible – they have little touches like one of the “expert” characters saying, “we ought to be dead” when the aliens do some extraordinary defiance of physics.
What’s weird is the pacing. Some scenes, especially the more emotional ones, just go on and on. It would have made far more sense to me to cut those down a bit and then show the actors trying to go on with their tasks and being a bit shaky still. And then other bits seem to blink by.
I can’t recommend Watchmen tv series enough. I’ve read the book several times and saw the movie. I was very disappointed with the movie because the book has layers and layers of backstory and mysteries to uncover. The series starts off like Lost with a number of puzzles but unlike it answers them quickly in later episodes. The world building is complex. The exposition is expressed naturally by the charcters so even if you haven’t read the source material you can keep up.
Other than the Abyss, I’ve seen every one of these. I would recommend watching other movies also by these directors
David Cronenberg: Dead Ringers, The Fly, Naked Lunch
David Lynch: Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway
John Carpenter: Halloween (of course), The Thing, Dark Star
The Abyss is like if Close Encounters was at the bottom of the ocean and directed by James Cameron
Having somebody say “this is implausible” while looking at the camera doesn’t make it more plausible. They could have ended the film when the hero finally went in the alien craft, and left the mystery of what happened to him for a sequel, instead of trying to resolve everything in the following three minutes.
Altered States - Meh
9: Scanners - Loved it
8: The Dead Zone - Meh
7: Escape From New York - Still Love it
6: Videodrome - Love it. (+ Debby Harry!!!)
5: Twilight Zone : The Movie - Meh.
4: Dune - meh. (Sorry)
3: 1984 - haven’t seen it
2: The Abyss - Liked it then, but it had issues I agree 1: They Live - still love it and would watch it right now.
I’m finally getting to see Atomic Blonde (on Netflix), and all I keep thinking is to get that Stasi agent or if East Berlin, all they had to do was wait a few HOURS and they could have walked across with far less resistance.
I’m having a hard time getting through The Irishman. I swing back and forth between being horrified by the way the Dinero and Pesce look when they’ve been made to look young, and being horrified by how old they actually are. Joe Pesce especially. He ends up occasionally looking like an animated cadaver.
i haven’t paid a whole lot of attention, honestly, but i do know Idris Elba was bandied about awhile ago. that would be awesome, and he would be great. I can’t remember which actresses had been also rumored, but any of them would be great by me, too. people would go ballistic, as they do, but it would be cool to change it up.
Gillian Anderson got nominated to be Jane Bond. I do think she’d be a good successor to Craig – they do icy similarly – and she certainly knew how to act while holding a gun in X Files.