It took me two watches, some 12 months apart from one another, for me to be able to say emphatically that Alex Garland’s (Ex Machina) Annihilation isn’t a great movie. While I appreciate its ingenuity and ambition, the overall execution, delivery, and continuity could not be overlooked. For as much as I was in awe of Garland’s 2015 directorial debut, Ex Machina, I was even more disappointed with Annihilation, a movie for me that came and went as it felt, broke its own rules, left me bored at times, and hoping for more, while knowing it was never going quite to deliver. With a critics’ score of 88% but an audience score of just 66%, I am comfortable saying that, after watching it twice, some artistry I was missing made this movie so likable by those who review movies for a living. I couldn’t help but remove myself from critic mode and, even after taking off that hat, couldn’t get behind Annihilation to come close to recommending it.
Category Archives: Gina Rodriguez
Deepwater Horizon (2016)
If you’re going to make a big-budget disaster movie, it might as well be based on a true story. Personally, I’m so over the huge blockbuster disaster movies like The Day After Tomorrow, Poseidon, Independence Day, The Core, Volcano, Into the Storm, Armageddon (which I actually really like), San Andreas (which I also kind of liked), Dante’s Peak…the list goes on and on. The point of these movies, and so many others, is to make a big buck. Forget about the plausibility; most of these movies are utterly ridiculous. The hero(es) always overcome the most extreme circumstances and, often, end up saving the world in the end. Now while the 2010 disaster caused the worst offshore oil spill in United States history and made British Petroleum (BP) the most villainous company on the face of the planet at the time, the story of Deepwater Horizon does take some liberties along the way. While the unfortunate events on that night of April 10th certainly did happen, the events on that rig felt very much like James Cameron’s Titanic after the ship hits the iceberg.
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