roedyg

What I liked: Tom Holland is a charmer, much better looking than in still pictures. He alternates between timid everyman and smartass hero. He reminds me a bit of Marty McFly in Back to the Future. Michael Keaton was one of the best villains I have ever seen in movies. It was so fun to see Robert Downey Jr, but not nearly enough screen time. Liz is an easily believable heartthrob. She has athletic beauty and substance. What I did not like: two of the sidekicks were grossly obese. The actors talk so fast in teen slang I could only understand a small fraction of the dialogue. Most of the movie consists of unidentified out-of-focus objects being thrown at the 3D audience. That gets annoying very quickly. I kept checking my watch to see how much longer it would go on. Special effects are non-stop. It really does seem as though Spiderman has superhuman strength and agility. The effects are quite natural.

The movie is underexposed. The sound is muddy. I think they did this deliberately to enhance the mysteriousness of the squid creatures from outer space. But the net result is you can't tell what is going on.

The movie is very confusing, jumping about chaotically in space and time with very few clues where you are. It is downright irritating.

The heroine is quite insipid.

The plot makes no sense. Our heroine is yanked out of bed in the middle of the night by military types to try to decrypt an alien language. Why her? She speaks Pakistani. Huh?? She is put in charge, then no one listens to what she says. They don't just disagree, they refuse to let her say anything.

They crack the code in two breakthroughs without explanation. The heroine discovers she can see the future with absolute clarity. Oddly, she had never noticed any such ability before. Seriously?? Everyone but her wants to go to war with the squid people. She prevails, but what she did to change all those minds is a mystery.

For the last bit of the dialogue, they pasted together Hallmark card verses. It is nauseatingly saccharine.

Nothing in the movie makes sense. It is maddening as a mosquito bite.

The movie is very long and very boring. Just when you think it is over, it tacks on the longest denouement in movie history.

The plot of this movie is a group of soldiers have to get from A to B. Their way is blocked by various traps: explosions, automatic guns, and I kid you not, mummies they call "mutts".

The characters are mostly one-dimensional soldiers. They justify killing civilians and children. They believe their opponents are so wicked, any atrocity is justified. These are the supposed heroes, but they are disgusting.

I had trouble telling the characters apart. Characters die, but I could not figure out who died. This was further confused by the heroine coming back to life at least three times.

Our soldier heroine has some qualms about killing but does it anyway dispatching her victims with arrows. She has some "mockingjay" superpower, but it was never adequately explained. Perhaps that is clarified in part 1.

The most interesting part of the movie is the sets. The characters traverse the length of a huge futuristic city, blasted by war. I don't know how they created the illusion. It was completely believable and intricate.

Donald Sutherland as the arch-villain President Snow has some incisive fascinating dialogue, delivered perfectly, but he is on screen for only a short time.

Philip Seymour Hoffman as Plutarch Heavensbee is also on screen only a short time. His part is quite bland. Using him was a bit of a waste.

There is a lot about how deception, lying and propaganda are integral to war. I took these as allusions to American politics.

Jena Malone as the bald, drug addicted, jittery Johanna Mason deserves special mention. She was so creepy, again only on screen for a short time.