It's not enough to just say that one 'likes' Star Trek. This is because of Star Trek's long (40+ year) history and especially the more recent series and movies, which introduce story reboots, altering of the entire time line and a move away from science fiction. This practically necessitates that one places oneself as a fan of a specific incarnation of 'Trek'. As a case in point, I'm not remotely old enough to be familiar with the original Star Trek series (just 'Star Trek') which is now referred to as 'The Original Series' (TOS). Its successor (The Next Generation) was also before my time, but it's one of the ST series which I fully watched. I never really got around to watching more than a few episodes of TOS for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is of how different it feels.
The first Star Trek series which I watched as it aired was Star Trek Voyager (VOY). I thought it was okay back then, me as a child back then figured it did have too much chatter in it, though. Only later as I rewatched it a few years back did I realise the sheer emotional depth and the bleakness of the situation that the Voyager crew went through. Here I could definitely say that rewatching it made me appreciate the series infinitely more.
Deep Space Nine (DS9) is a bit of an odd series in the Star Trek universe. It doesn't take place on a starship, for one. Instead it puts the show on this clunky old Cardassian space station that's orbiting a planet (Bajor). This against the backdrop of the former occupation of Bajor by the Cardassians for the past decades (as covered in TNG as well), with the United Federation of Planets ('Federation') being asked to have a presence in that area as a neutral party to ensure that everyone lives up to their end of the peace agreement.
I do not remember exactly when I first watched this series. It must have been somewhere around the time that I also caught up with TNG. My memories of DS9 from back then are rather vague and incomplete. More of a set of impressions rather than a solid sense of what the story was about. This made rewatching it recently quite an interesting experience, to see how much of it I could recall.
The first two seasons of DS9 were okay, I thought. I remembered some episodes from the first time I saw them, such as 'Move Along Home' (S1, E10) and 'Battle Lines' (S1, E13). Episode 15 ('Progress') was also quite memorable, and served to weave a bit more story around Bajor, though I always felt that too much of the larger context here was lacking. In later seasons the rebuilding of Bajor is mentioned too (e.g. S3, E24), but it is always in passing and there never forms a sense of what the status of Bajor is, or how well the rebuilding is progressing. This even against the plentiful reminiscing by the Bajoran people on the show, including Kira, about the horrors inflicted on Bajor by the Cardassians in the past.
Starting with the fourth season, things got a bit more rough for me, as the ramping up of the Dominion plot line get interrupted by random time travel episodes ('Little Green Men') and a lot of relationship and pregnancy-related drama. This against brilliant episodes like 'Hard Time' (S4, E19) and 'The Quickening' (E24), which sadly are not (significantly) referenced later on, as it is the kind of episode that should have left a serious impact on both Julian and O'Brien. At this point the series really feels like it's ripping itself apart as it tries to both maintain a coherent serial story arc and have independent episodic content at the same time.
The rest of the seasons continue pretty much the same way, with Ferengi homeworld issues, Trill and Klingon mating rituals, Odo's quest to figure out humanity and the occasional bizarre episode like 'The Ascent' (S5, E9) with totally out of character performances by Odo and Quark. There is also the awkward personality shift in Dr. Bashir into a kind of Data replica, with cold, inhuman behaviour and a display of super-human traits, which was never a part of the character until then.
There are the occasional bursts of action, like with the retaking of DS9, but that is followed by more episodes that feel like they can be skipped or at least glanced through briefly, as they serve no real purpose to building up the characters, or to add to the Dominion War story arc. There is also the introduction of a new character (Ezri) at the beginning of season 7, who adds some fresh blood after Jadzia's character began to feel rather stale throughout season 6.
As for season 7 as a whole, though supposedly intended to build up towards the show's climax in the Dominion War, feels more like a half-hearted attempt to try and wrap up the countless loose threads that have been left carelessly lying around from the preceding seasons. Although some episodes are exceedingly good (Nog's battle experiences and struggles with war trauma, for example), as a whole it feels like a show that is running out of time and plans.
The result is sadly a finale that feels flat and forced, with a last-minute plot twist for captain Sisko thrown in that completely wastes the potential. Especially after previous uses of his character in 'Far Beyond The Stars' (S6, E13) and 'Shadows and Symbols' (S7, E2), the ending that DS9 ends up with uses none of that, doesn't tie things together and somewhat fizzles out without leaving behind anything meaningful.
When I look back on how the final episodes of TNG and Voyager affected me emotionally, with a sense of warmth and belonging for TNG, and the bitter-sweet return for Voyager, then DS9 didn't leave me with much more than a handful of memorable episodes. While not the worst Star Trek series by far, it also does not feel inviting to watch it again some day.
Next on my 'to rewatch' list is Star Trek Enterprise, which I thought was the worst Star Trek series ever when it first aired. Maybe it now actually feels decent after suffering through the 'Star Trek' reboot movie by JJ Abrams and enduring the onslaught of Star Trek Discovery and Picard. Also one day I should rewatch all of Babylon 5, as one of the few proper story arc-based series to ever have been released.
Maya
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Friday, 15 May 2020
Saturday, 7 July 2018
Watching movies on transatlantic flights, or: don't cry in public
As I'm typing this, I am sitting in my Cupertino hotel room, in the very heart of Silicon Valley. On Monday this week I travelled to Canada, for an on-site job interview there. After the Tuesday interview, I travelled to San Jose on Wednesday, where for the past two days I had additional job interviews. In a short while I'll be taking a taxi to SFO to travel back to Europe.
On the flight back I expect to be watching in-flight movies again, just like I did on Monday. During that flight I immediately dove into the Chinese and Japanese movies sections. Though fairly limited in the offerings, I ended up watching one Chinese movie (of which I do not remember the title any more), and two Japanese movies.
Of the latter two movies, 'The last shot in the bar' (Tantai ha bar ni naru 3) [1][2] was a really fun yet still serious Japanese detective movie combining both slapstick elements and intense emotional scenes. By the end of the movie I found myself definitely engaged and interested in how things would work out. The twists the movie threw at me were not obvious and improved the story immensely. I have to watch the first two parts now, for sure.
The second Japanese movie was ゆらり ('yurari', English title: Last Night Rewind) [3][4]. This is a movie that was adapted from a theater play, and one can definitely notice this in how the scenes are put together. This is absolutely not a negative, however, as it allows one to focus on the characters. The movie description made me expect a different kind of movie than what I ended up watching.
Basically, this movie is far better than what I had expected, with the struggles of a number of characters from a couple of families followed as they try to work things out. The first resolutions are emotionally intense, but they are just the beginning. This was the movie were during the final scenes and afterwards I had to fight to not burst out in tears.
Watching an emotional drama in public is slightly awkward at the best of times. In a cinema everyone is at least watching the same movie, so everybody is likely to respond the same way. In a public space where it's just you watching the movie, awkwardness increases exponentially.
Not having to hold back may make a movie even better. Just letting those tears flow freely while experiencing the crushing emotional depths of the story, instead of having to keep them in check. I think this is a good reason to rewatch those movies at some point in a more private setting.
I'm curious to see whether there's a new selection available on the in-flight entertainment system as I fly back in a few hours. And then of course to see how my own story will continue, as I receive the feedback of this week's job interviews.
Maya
[1] http://asianwiki.com/The_Last_Shot_in_the_Bar
[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7058618/
[3] http://asianwiki.com/Last_Night_Rewind
[4] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7246944/
On the flight back I expect to be watching in-flight movies again, just like I did on Monday. During that flight I immediately dove into the Chinese and Japanese movies sections. Though fairly limited in the offerings, I ended up watching one Chinese movie (of which I do not remember the title any more), and two Japanese movies.
Of the latter two movies, 'The last shot in the bar' (Tantai ha bar ni naru 3) [1][2] was a really fun yet still serious Japanese detective movie combining both slapstick elements and intense emotional scenes. By the end of the movie I found myself definitely engaged and interested in how things would work out. The twists the movie threw at me were not obvious and improved the story immensely. I have to watch the first two parts now, for sure.
The second Japanese movie was ゆらり ('yurari', English title: Last Night Rewind) [3][4]. This is a movie that was adapted from a theater play, and one can definitely notice this in how the scenes are put together. This is absolutely not a negative, however, as it allows one to focus on the characters. The movie description made me expect a different kind of movie than what I ended up watching.
Basically, this movie is far better than what I had expected, with the struggles of a number of characters from a couple of families followed as they try to work things out. The first resolutions are emotionally intense, but they are just the beginning. This was the movie were during the final scenes and afterwards I had to fight to not burst out in tears.
Watching an emotional drama in public is slightly awkward at the best of times. In a cinema everyone is at least watching the same movie, so everybody is likely to respond the same way. In a public space where it's just you watching the movie, awkwardness increases exponentially.
Not having to hold back may make a movie even better. Just letting those tears flow freely while experiencing the crushing emotional depths of the story, instead of having to keep them in check. I think this is a good reason to rewatch those movies at some point in a more private setting.
I'm curious to see whether there's a new selection available on the in-flight entertainment system as I fly back in a few hours. And then of course to see how my own story will continue, as I receive the feedback of this week's job interviews.
Maya
[1] http://asianwiki.com/The_Last_Shot_in_the_Bar
[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7058618/
[3] http://asianwiki.com/Last_Night_Rewind
[4] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7246944/
Saturday, 12 November 2016
Why 3D films aren't true 3D
The big advantage of stereo vision is that it allows an individual to perceive far more about their environment than without it. One physically sees more, and one is able to judge distances and shapes far better. It is for these reasons that real 3D films have been a tantalising prospect for many decades, long after stereo photography became popular.
Over the past years I have had the chance to watch a number of 3D films, both truly filmed in 3D (Avatar) and later added with post-processing (2010's Alice in Wonderland). Even for films which were shot in 3D a number of large obstacles remain before they'll come close to a true 3D experience, such as that for example offered by Virtual Reality (VR) technology.
One of the main sticking points with 3D films has for a long time been the framerate, or lack thereof. Comparing the usual 24 frames-per-second (FPS) 3D films with the (much rarer) 48 FPS films, one can see that the latter is much smoother and more pleasant to look at, especially with panning or fast action scenes.
A few days ago I went to see my most recent 3D film, Doctor Strange, together with a bunch of friends. At this cinema they used a non-IMAX screen with active glasses, meaning not using polarised frames. Theoretically this makes for the best possible experience, as there will not be any overlap of frames per eye and not having the darkening effect of the polarisation.
The main issue with films trying to be 3D is that since they are filmed using lenses, they always have a focal point, effectively meaning a point that's in-focus in the scene while the rest is blurred. This is very disconcerting while looking around the scene as it feels as if one's vision isn't working normally. It also makes that every object that's not in focus (especially nearby objects) turns into a shapeless blob which one's mind cannot make heads or tails of.
Basically this means that you're not free to just look anywhere in the frame, but are forced to follow the focus of the camera. This is different from VR, where every part of the visible scene is in focus when you look at it. The resulting effect is of a scene which looks partially 3D and partially just like (blurry) 2D cut-outs.
One could say that this is no different from a 2D film, but the difference there is that the brain interprets a 2D image very differently from a stereoscopic one. With the former there's no expectation of it being a scene one can look around in, as it's just a flat image in which we can recognise shapes. With the latter the expectation is that it's just like our normal stereoscopic vision, but the limitations make that this is left unmet.
My personal experience is that of an experience markedly worse than the 3D effect experienced with VR and Nintendo's 3DS console. Some parts of scenes are cool due to the added 3D effect, but this is mostly when the camera has finally stopped moving and we get to focus on a close-up scene. Sadly such scenes are rare and in general I don't really feel that one misses a lot by watching it in 2D format.
Now if the FPS got upped to something reasonable (60+ FPS per eye?), and everything in the scene was in focus, then it would work. What we end up with today is kind of somewhat okay-ish at best, but nothing mind-blowing.
Especially after exposure to VR my feelings about current 3D films is that they're essentially a gimmick without a lot of added value.
Now VR... there's a topic which is truly mind-blowing. Part of me thinks that eventually VR will replace films as we know them today. I really hope it will and take films properly into the next dimension.
Maya
Over the past years I have had the chance to watch a number of 3D films, both truly filmed in 3D (Avatar) and later added with post-processing (2010's Alice in Wonderland). Even for films which were shot in 3D a number of large obstacles remain before they'll come close to a true 3D experience, such as that for example offered by Virtual Reality (VR) technology.
One of the main sticking points with 3D films has for a long time been the framerate, or lack thereof. Comparing the usual 24 frames-per-second (FPS) 3D films with the (much rarer) 48 FPS films, one can see that the latter is much smoother and more pleasant to look at, especially with panning or fast action scenes.
A few days ago I went to see my most recent 3D film, Doctor Strange, together with a bunch of friends. At this cinema they used a non-IMAX screen with active glasses, meaning not using polarised frames. Theoretically this makes for the best possible experience, as there will not be any overlap of frames per eye and not having the darkening effect of the polarisation.
The main issue with films trying to be 3D is that since they are filmed using lenses, they always have a focal point, effectively meaning a point that's in-focus in the scene while the rest is blurred. This is very disconcerting while looking around the scene as it feels as if one's vision isn't working normally. It also makes that every object that's not in focus (especially nearby objects) turns into a shapeless blob which one's mind cannot make heads or tails of.
Basically this means that you're not free to just look anywhere in the frame, but are forced to follow the focus of the camera. This is different from VR, where every part of the visible scene is in focus when you look at it. The resulting effect is of a scene which looks partially 3D and partially just like (blurry) 2D cut-outs.
One could say that this is no different from a 2D film, but the difference there is that the brain interprets a 2D image very differently from a stereoscopic one. With the former there's no expectation of it being a scene one can look around in, as it's just a flat image in which we can recognise shapes. With the latter the expectation is that it's just like our normal stereoscopic vision, but the limitations make that this is left unmet.
My personal experience is that of an experience markedly worse than the 3D effect experienced with VR and Nintendo's 3DS console. Some parts of scenes are cool due to the added 3D effect, but this is mostly when the camera has finally stopped moving and we get to focus on a close-up scene. Sadly such scenes are rare and in general I don't really feel that one misses a lot by watching it in 2D format.
Now if the FPS got upped to something reasonable (60+ FPS per eye?), and everything in the scene was in focus, then it would work. What we end up with today is kind of somewhat okay-ish at best, but nothing mind-blowing.
Especially after exposure to VR my feelings about current 3D films is that they're essentially a gimmick without a lot of added value.
Now VR... there's a topic which is truly mind-blowing. Part of me thinks that eventually VR will replace films as we know them today. I really hope it will and take films properly into the next dimension.
Maya
Monday, 22 November 2010
Party Time
Saturday I went to the graduation party of a friend. This was also basically the very first party I have been to, making it in many ways a difficult first step. In the end, though, it really wasn't that bad. In fact it was actually pretty fun.
All the people at the party (except me) were musicians, and aside from me there was just one person who spoke Dutch so English was the primary language used. There were people from Israel, US, UK, Japan, Germany, Spain and other countries. The first thirty minutes or so after I arrived (around 8 PM) I made for a pretty wall flower, chatting a bit with this one German girl but otherwise feeling a bit lost.
This changed somewhat when I started talking with this American girl I had met before on Facebook. Familiar faces are reassuring at a party. I also had the first guy ever compliment me on having such pretty nails. I must say that male musicians in general tend to be slightly more... feminine in their behaviour than the average guy :) In general my impression was that everyone at the party was nice albeit mostly somewhat closed. As a stranger to most of them I think I talked with about 5 people total out of the about 30-40 present.
The most fun part was with the Japanese people; the girl in their group at one point sat down next to me and we just started chatting. Note that this was the first time I had ever talked to a Japanese person in real life. We ended up talking for at least two hours total, and it was awesome to discover that my Japanese wasn't that horrible at all - I actually got complimented on my pronunciation - and that I generally felt completely comfortable and at home discussing things related to Japanese culture in general.
I hope that I'll be able to meet up with this Japanese girl more often, and have fun swimming and helping each other with languages. I did think it was curious that yet again I end up talking the most with Asian people while finding little in common with Western people and those close to them.
By the time I left the party, together with the Japanese people, it was close to midnight and I still had over an hour to travel back to home. After a long, long journey through the Amsterdam subway, which does have very interesting types traveling in it at that time, and nearly falling asleep in an almost empty train I arrived home at about 1.30 AM. It was about 2 AM before I finally fell asleep.
Waking up at around 5.30 AM, I was definitely not that pleased, especially when I discovered that I couldn't go back to sleep. I felt too restless for that. After tossing and turning for a while I got up. At around 9.30 AM I was at the swimming pool, feeling kind of out of things with just 3.5 hours of sleep, but managing. It didn't seem to impact my physical capabilities too much.
At 3.15 PM Pieter, I and the girl I met before at the pool were at the cinema, to watch the new Harry Potter movie: Deathly Hallows, part 1. I had managed to cram in a few more hours of sleep before this.
For reference, it's not a particularly good or bad movie. It's just so-so. Even after 6 previous movies, the characters still have the depth of a sheet of paper, the story in this movie is vague and illusive, as the director has opted for an abstract way of shooting, with plenty of close-ups and scenics which just add to the distancing of what one sees with the story one knows is supposed to be occurring. It's very different from the previous movies and to be quite honest I'm not sure whether to like or dislike it. A bit of both and neither, I guess. It's cliche and two-dimensional, but it has its funny and interesting moments. It just seems to keep detaching itself from the story all the time, instead opting for this very airy, abstract atmosphere it maintains throughout the movie. If you've seen the previous movies, you can safely watch this one, although I do wonder how they're going to wrap things up in the next and final movie, Deathly Hallows, part 2. We'll see next year.
After the movie the three of us went back to Pieter's place, where my friend cooked us dinner. It was tasty. The ice cream dessert afterwards was nice too :) We watched The Princess Bride during dinner, which still has to be one of the most awesome movies ever, right up there with Space Balls.
With dinner and movie finished, Pieter went upstairs, while my friend and I kept talking for a bit until she went home. I went to bed after that and slept until 6.30 AM. Not bad.
Summing up my thoughts on this for me very unusual weekend isn't easy. On one hand I feel it was a very positive experience, meeting so many new, nice people and challenging my continuous feeling of loneliness. On the other hand familiar voices keep insisting that I'm still just deluding myself, that to a something like me friendship and anything more is just not possible. Part of it comes from fear, I guess. Fear of the unknown, fear of getting hurt again, fear of losing myself to this sometimes desperate feeling to be accepted and loved I feel inside. And of course this intensely bitter realization that I'm 'just a freak' who doesn't belong.
Emotional stuff isn't nice or pleasant most of the time, and whenever it is pleasant, it's a fading thing. Emotional attachment can only come to grief, as people's paths never cross for very long. Aside from the very rare cases in which two or more people seem so perfectly alike that they're called soul-mates, as though they're fragments of the same soul re-united. I like to believe that I have found one such person already in my best friend Trevor, and pray that I may encounter more of such wonderful people. Maybe then it will feel as though my own soul is finally complete.
Maya
All the people at the party (except me) were musicians, and aside from me there was just one person who spoke Dutch so English was the primary language used. There were people from Israel, US, UK, Japan, Germany, Spain and other countries. The first thirty minutes or so after I arrived (around 8 PM) I made for a pretty wall flower, chatting a bit with this one German girl but otherwise feeling a bit lost.
This changed somewhat when I started talking with this American girl I had met before on Facebook. Familiar faces are reassuring at a party. I also had the first guy ever compliment me on having such pretty nails. I must say that male musicians in general tend to be slightly more... feminine in their behaviour than the average guy :) In general my impression was that everyone at the party was nice albeit mostly somewhat closed. As a stranger to most of them I think I talked with about 5 people total out of the about 30-40 present.
The most fun part was with the Japanese people; the girl in their group at one point sat down next to me and we just started chatting. Note that this was the first time I had ever talked to a Japanese person in real life. We ended up talking for at least two hours total, and it was awesome to discover that my Japanese wasn't that horrible at all - I actually got complimented on my pronunciation - and that I generally felt completely comfortable and at home discussing things related to Japanese culture in general.
I hope that I'll be able to meet up with this Japanese girl more often, and have fun swimming and helping each other with languages. I did think it was curious that yet again I end up talking the most with Asian people while finding little in common with Western people and those close to them.
By the time I left the party, together with the Japanese people, it was close to midnight and I still had over an hour to travel back to home. After a long, long journey through the Amsterdam subway, which does have very interesting types traveling in it at that time, and nearly falling asleep in an almost empty train I arrived home at about 1.30 AM. It was about 2 AM before I finally fell asleep.
Waking up at around 5.30 AM, I was definitely not that pleased, especially when I discovered that I couldn't go back to sleep. I felt too restless for that. After tossing and turning for a while I got up. At around 9.30 AM I was at the swimming pool, feeling kind of out of things with just 3.5 hours of sleep, but managing. It didn't seem to impact my physical capabilities too much.
At 3.15 PM Pieter, I and the girl I met before at the pool were at the cinema, to watch the new Harry Potter movie: Deathly Hallows, part 1. I had managed to cram in a few more hours of sleep before this.
For reference, it's not a particularly good or bad movie. It's just so-so. Even after 6 previous movies, the characters still have the depth of a sheet of paper, the story in this movie is vague and illusive, as the director has opted for an abstract way of shooting, with plenty of close-ups and scenics which just add to the distancing of what one sees with the story one knows is supposed to be occurring. It's very different from the previous movies and to be quite honest I'm not sure whether to like or dislike it. A bit of both and neither, I guess. It's cliche and two-dimensional, but it has its funny and interesting moments. It just seems to keep detaching itself from the story all the time, instead opting for this very airy, abstract atmosphere it maintains throughout the movie. If you've seen the previous movies, you can safely watch this one, although I do wonder how they're going to wrap things up in the next and final movie, Deathly Hallows, part 2. We'll see next year.
After the movie the three of us went back to Pieter's place, where my friend cooked us dinner. It was tasty. The ice cream dessert afterwards was nice too :) We watched The Princess Bride during dinner, which still has to be one of the most awesome movies ever, right up there with Space Balls.
With dinner and movie finished, Pieter went upstairs, while my friend and I kept talking for a bit until she went home. I went to bed after that and slept until 6.30 AM. Not bad.
Summing up my thoughts on this for me very unusual weekend isn't easy. On one hand I feel it was a very positive experience, meeting so many new, nice people and challenging my continuous feeling of loneliness. On the other hand familiar voices keep insisting that I'm still just deluding myself, that to a something like me friendship and anything more is just not possible. Part of it comes from fear, I guess. Fear of the unknown, fear of getting hurt again, fear of losing myself to this sometimes desperate feeling to be accepted and loved I feel inside. And of course this intensely bitter realization that I'm 'just a freak' who doesn't belong.
Emotional stuff isn't nice or pleasant most of the time, and whenever it is pleasant, it's a fading thing. Emotional attachment can only come to grief, as people's paths never cross for very long. Aside from the very rare cases in which two or more people seem so perfectly alike that they're called soul-mates, as though they're fragments of the same soul re-united. I like to believe that I have found one such person already in my best friend Trevor, and pray that I may encounter more of such wonderful people. Maybe then it will feel as though my own soul is finally complete.
Maya
Tuesday, 12 October 2010
Resident Evil: Afterlife & Machete
Friday I saw Resident Evil: Afterlife in all its 3D glory in the local cinema. Saturday I saw Machete in its plain 2D-ness in the same cinema. Both movies I wouldn't want to see again. That's right, I just said I wouldn't want to see a Resident Evil movie again, this after rewatching the first three at least a few times.
What's wrong with Resident Evil: Afterlife (hereafter Afterlife) compared to its predecessors? For one thing the 3D thing. It was used well in a movie like Avatar where it truly added something. In that movie it brought new life to the atmosphere of the story and I do prefer the 3D version over the 2D one as it's just plain more impressive. Not so in Afterlife.
The director of Afterlife either only got a script of 10 pages which he had to turn into a movie of 90 minutes, or has been drooling over the Matrix for so long that he just couldn't resist. Either way, half the movie consists out of bullet-time, slow-motion or stand-still, moving-around-the-scene-while-it's-frozen-in-time kind of scenes. Every single fighting scene does it.
As said, there's about 10 pages worth of plot, which does add to the story we saw in the third movie (Extinction), but it's beyond wafer-thin, and the fluff added to fill up the remaining 70-odd minutes is painful, cliche and beyond ridiculous. It's not even scary, as it's obvious when the next tag-along character will be picked off by the new type of zombie. A type which doesn't get explained either, and doesn't really seem to fit in the RE universe.
Unless the next movie (yes, there'll be another one, probably in 2013 at the current rate of production) is a lot better, I'm not watching it and I'll be pretending that there are only three movies. In case you haven't heard yet, they even put in a very cheap cliff-hanger at the end of Afterlife which will have you groaning in disgust. Have fun waiting 3 years to find out what'll happen next. I'm out.
Moving on, if you thought that Afterlife was bad, wait until you get a load of Machete. It's like they took the concept of The Expendables and added a liberal amount of stupid to it. The story is bland, painful and uninspired. The amount of violence, gore and witty remarks would shame a B-movie and there's a lot of nudity for the sake of it. The movie keeps switching back and forth between a serious revenge story and a 'hey this is cool let's put it in as well' kind of attitude. It's like they let a couple of 10-year old boys go wild on the story and in the cutting room.
To be honest I couldn't keep watching Machete somewhere after the half-way point, as its amount of glee at suffering and gore just got too much and just closed my eyes and tried to ignore the rest. I could recommend this movie to people who enjoy pointless, hyper-violent movies such as Saw (part II and onwards) in which innocent people find a gruesome death. It's just beyond sickening that this is its only appeal.
In conclusion, the only positive thing about these two cinema experiences I can mention is that I got asked my age for the 16+ Afterlife movie at the ticket counter. For the rest I can just recommend skipping these movies, if that's what they can be called.
Maya
What's wrong with Resident Evil: Afterlife (hereafter Afterlife) compared to its predecessors? For one thing the 3D thing. It was used well in a movie like Avatar where it truly added something. In that movie it brought new life to the atmosphere of the story and I do prefer the 3D version over the 2D one as it's just plain more impressive. Not so in Afterlife.
The director of Afterlife either only got a script of 10 pages which he had to turn into a movie of 90 minutes, or has been drooling over the Matrix for so long that he just couldn't resist. Either way, half the movie consists out of bullet-time, slow-motion or stand-still, moving-around-the-scene-while-it's-frozen-in-time kind of scenes. Every single fighting scene does it.
As said, there's about 10 pages worth of plot, which does add to the story we saw in the third movie (Extinction), but it's beyond wafer-thin, and the fluff added to fill up the remaining 70-odd minutes is painful, cliche and beyond ridiculous. It's not even scary, as it's obvious when the next tag-along character will be picked off by the new type of zombie. A type which doesn't get explained either, and doesn't really seem to fit in the RE universe.
Unless the next movie (yes, there'll be another one, probably in 2013 at the current rate of production) is a lot better, I'm not watching it and I'll be pretending that there are only three movies. In case you haven't heard yet, they even put in a very cheap cliff-hanger at the end of Afterlife which will have you groaning in disgust. Have fun waiting 3 years to find out what'll happen next. I'm out.
Moving on, if you thought that Afterlife was bad, wait until you get a load of Machete. It's like they took the concept of The Expendables and added a liberal amount of stupid to it. The story is bland, painful and uninspired. The amount of violence, gore and witty remarks would shame a B-movie and there's a lot of nudity for the sake of it. The movie keeps switching back and forth between a serious revenge story and a 'hey this is cool let's put it in as well' kind of attitude. It's like they let a couple of 10-year old boys go wild on the story and in the cutting room.
To be honest I couldn't keep watching Machete somewhere after the half-way point, as its amount of glee at suffering and gore just got too much and just closed my eyes and tried to ignore the rest. I could recommend this movie to people who enjoy pointless, hyper-violent movies such as Saw (part II and onwards) in which innocent people find a gruesome death. It's just beyond sickening that this is its only appeal.
In conclusion, the only positive thing about these two cinema experiences I can mention is that I got asked my age for the 16+ Afterlife movie at the ticket counter. For the rest I can just recommend skipping these movies, if that's what they can be called.
Maya
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