Geoffrey Eble – Google

2 stars is pushing it for me. I don't generally like Rotten Tomatoes' rating system, preferring audience scores, but I can see how it only got 16% on RT, haha 😆. Even the IMDB score is less than 50%, which is being generous. I mean the movie is kind of a joke, really. Its main premise is obviously that being pretty is shallow, but the movie itself is so shallow, poorly written and developed that you can't take it remotely seriously. And reading the book wouldn't help, because the basic themes are stupid. I mean, #1) a utopian flower is this society's power source? That's silly, being polite, idiotic if you're not. #2) how can you consider there to be two different societies when the only difference is the age of the people? #3) how, exactly, does 'being pretty' solve all the world's geopolitical problems? How does that obtain and fairly allocate natural resources. Do you think the Russians care about that? No, only teen girls who feel it might be so stigmatizing that they can't function would have such a ludicrous idea. #4) where are the parents? Where do the 'uglies' come from. I know there are some ugly babies, 😆 but are they all really that ugly from birth? Do they reproduce asexually somehow after being prettified, or do it the old fashioned way, then abdicate any parental responsibilities for their >ugly babies< for life. Maybe that's the joke of the book and this movie, who knows! 😄 I knew there'd be a point where the tired YA genre fad in fiction and movies would reach a place of ridiculousness that would mark its end. This movie and unfortunate book series (yuck, there's more than one? Uuggley!) may signal the beginning of that end.

I'd have rated this series 3 1/2 stars, but they don't have that option, so 4 it is. I understand many fans found this 'woke,' because it has mainly female characters, like the 2nd Captain Marvel movie, but I kinda liked it! Reading some of the obsessive/compulsive, minutia detailing negative reviews was kinda funny in itself. Many of the 'true fanboys' want to be seen as Star Wars afficionados, but then reading through their numbered points, many were either false, didn't actually understand the significance or meaning of certain scenes and events and misrepresented the original films!? That was weird, reading reviews by 'experts' and finding they were actually clueless about much of what they claimed. There are some parts that are far fetched and some things I don't like about it, too, the humorless, green skinned, baldo Jedi leader, for one. However, I think it evokes the overall feel and style of some of the best original films and sequels. The cinematography and some of the imagined environments are good. The story's a little on the dark side, but the main characters convey some genuine, heartfelt emotion and what Star Wars movie doesn't have a bit of dark side to it? So, overall I thought it was a better than average effort. Not great, but good/okay.

I was gonna rate this movie at 3 stars until I just saw it had a running time of 2 hours and 20 minutes. So its confused mediocrity was prolonged for more than two hours! Usually, a movie has said what it has to say in 2 hours or less. Only 'serious' art movies or some blockbuster franchises deserve more time. This one doesn't. The actors are likeable enough, but the only quantum of solace for viewers is that there probably won't be a sequel.

Kind of a frustrating film. It has some great elements to it, it's realistic, the sparse acting is good, the mostly desolate scenery is where the actual Meek's Cutoff traveled and it has several points of historical accuracy. Unlike another reviewer stated, the route was actually used somewhat extensively for at least a dozen years after this initial attempt. It was the most direct route to the southern Willamette Valley saving 130 miles and the tolls required to travel down the Columbia River route on the main Oregon Trail. Contrary to her uninformed opinion, it would have been easy to become temporarily lost in this area, as it was little traveled prior to this first crossing. For western history buffs, it's a good watch. The ending was abrupt, but I actually like it upon reflection because it definitely conveys the wildness, potential danger, uncertainty and the sometimes life or death stakes of early westward migration into unknown territory.

I'm only rating this a one because there's no way to rate it a zero! The movie proceeds at the most plodding, pedantic pace in the history of cinema! It's like the viewer experiences some kind of extreme, relativistic time distortion where what normally might take place in 2 or 3 minutes takes ten. The editing is horrible, the movie dwells on scenes excessively and draws them out to a degree of absurdity that's laughable. The script is 4th rate, with some seriously awful writing. It takes what could have been an interesting premise for a sci-fi movie and completely ruins it. So skip this one. Don't watch it. You'll be glad you didn't. Note: There are better actors to play the President of the U.S. than Steve Tyler!

The reason why most critics didn't particularly like this movie is it isn't the typical flashy, mindless, 'superheroes save the world from aliens with their superpowers' fare. But audiences rated it much higher on IMDB. (6.6 out of ten or something). It's almost its own sub-genre in film (aliens control the world still populated by humans) although there are a few TV series that explore the subject. In tone and setting, it's more like Attack the Block, but more complex and not goofy at all. The movie is a little too somber, perhaps and somewhat oblique, as it doesn't delve into the alien's technology, their attack on our planet or how they came to be in control, but it's worth watching.

It's a lot better than that racist pos Peter Travers from Rolling Stone would have you believe with his 1 of 4 stars rating, that's for sure. It was interesting and different. McConaughey was actually pretty good in it, albeit a different, more thoughtful kind of role. Yes, it could have been better, but part of the problem is that there was so much injustice in the Deep South at the time of the Civil War and afterwards that each type of inhumanity that Confederate garbage perpetrated on the populace could have had its own story. The movie touched on many such issues more as a chronicle of the times, so couldn't avoid being seen as possibly a shallower treatment of those injustices than would normally be warranted. Still, definitely worth watching. Now, if it had rampaging dinosaurs or white guys, superheroes and comic book characters with nifty, weird superpowers battling space aliens for the umpteenth time, little Peter would have loved it! Until his mommy called him upstairs for dinner.