I will admit this right off the bat: I am not a big fan of Natalie Portman. As Dorothy Parker wrote about Katharine Hepburn, "She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B." If I apply that to Portman, then it puts us both in good company. Because of that, the movie didn't grab me from the beginning, despite the Crosby, Stills, and Nash background music as she thought about her husband who supposedly died in service to our country. Honestly, as she is pulled back and forth around his disappearance, I feel nothing coming from her. She's just as blank as Queen Amidala. Even when things should have been really terrifying, her face looked like she'd just had botox. Good thing I rented this on Netflix DVD (http://www.dvd.com) so I can return it easily!
Anyway, about the movie. The premise is interesting - a no-woman's-land where things aren't at all what they seem. A group of women are sent in to figure it out. They aren't trained much, so they take a lot of needless risks. A whole lot. Despite seeing all kinds of mutations and other oddities, they still don't believe other strange things when they see them. It's like a bad 80s horror film where the guy who says, "I'll be right back," never comes back.
If I sound cynical, it's because I am - "Annihilation" tries way too hard to bring odd things into the picture, then dispense with them right away. "I don't want to stay here tonight." "We have to. It's too late to move on." That dialogue could have (and probably is) in almost every movie ever made. The Shimmer itself was no more interesting than anything we've seen in the new "Lost in Space," or the Australian Outback. Everything they find, they immediately go up close to it without protection or go off alone. Even Navy Seals don't do that.
I won't spoil the end, but it is way too easy to figure things out when the explanation is just waiting for you at the end. There's no real use of anyone's intellect to figure out what's happening. Portman plays a biologist, whose big revaluation is that different flowers shouldn't grow from the same stem. I wonder if they just took LSD if they'd have a better adventure. Honestly, the bending and loss of time was the most unsettling thing - if the writers had done something with that - well, that would have been a bit better.
If it sounds like "Annihilation" was a waste of my time - it was. The good thing is that because I wasted my time, you don't have to waste yours. Skip it.
#dvd20 #dvdnation #ad
Anyway, about the movie. The premise is interesting - a no-woman's-land where things aren't at all what they seem. A group of women are sent in to figure it out. They aren't trained much, so they take a lot of needless risks. A whole lot. Despite seeing all kinds of mutations and other oddities, they still don't believe other strange things when they see them. It's like a bad 80s horror film where the guy who says, "I'll be right back," never comes back.
If I sound cynical, it's because I am - "Annihilation" tries way too hard to bring odd things into the picture, then dispense with them right away. "I don't want to stay here tonight." "We have to. It's too late to move on." That dialogue could have (and probably is) in almost every movie ever made. The Shimmer itself was no more interesting than anything we've seen in the new "Lost in Space," or the Australian Outback. Everything they find, they immediately go up close to it without protection or go off alone. Even Navy Seals don't do that.
I won't spoil the end, but it is way too easy to figure things out when the explanation is just waiting for you at the end. There's no real use of anyone's intellect to figure out what's happening. Portman plays a biologist, whose big revaluation is that different flowers shouldn't grow from the same stem. I wonder if they just took LSD if they'd have a better adventure. Honestly, the bending and loss of time was the most unsettling thing - if the writers had done something with that - well, that would have been a bit better.
If it sounds like "Annihilation" was a waste of my time - it was. The good thing is that because I wasted my time, you don't have to waste yours. Skip it.
#dvd20 #dvdnation #ad
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