Reviews

Just watched this for the first time and was disappointed. This one didn't age well if it even was better in 2004.

Except for the title song none of the other songs are really memorable. At least not like other Webber musicals. The whole movie looks like they just filmed the theatre performance. Sure the story takes place in a theatre but all the 'non stage' sets look so artificial.

And why cast Butler as the phantom? Not for his singing apparently.

Barely made it to the end.

Haven't seen the showtime version yet, so can't compare that part. The series is okay, not very good, not very bad. While not historically accurate, it does set the culture and society for the period correctly. Actual events may have occurred differently, but you can imagine the intrigue, arranged marriages and overall power struggle could have been real. Cinematics in general were good. Direction not so good, see below.

What ruins the series for me is the absolute bad acting overall. Seems like casting was mostly done for the looks of the actors and not their acting abilities. Some cringe-worthy performances. Like they are reading from the script in hand with no expression or feeling. The opening scene almost made me turn off the episode and skip the rest of the series. Girl wakes up in a pool of (her own) blood. Then to run around the house with a clean white nightgown. This kind of continuity error doesn't make for a good first impression.

Initially I rated this series a 6 but after thinking about it more changed it to a 4 and write a review. It's OK, not great. Read on why.

The show and the host The show is rated as reality-TV and is kind of an 'action' documentary. The host, Josh Gates, talks a lot and does stuff. He tries to be humble in some situations but fails. The viewer sees him drive a prototype mars rover, climb down a cave, drive a 4x4 for hours, letting go of a weather balloon, operating a metal-detector and coming to obvious conclusions. Stuff. He does participate in everything which is good.

Cinematography and the aliens Another positive thing about the show is that it is well filmed. High quality picture, well captures scenes and reasonable directing. Even the night shots are decent. Also the experts on the show are equipped with night cameras, but mostly the only thing we see is Josh. Also close-ups of Josh listening to other people don't really add much to the show.

Every episode Josh travels to unrelated locations around the globe where mysterious UFO things happened or science happens. Most topics are already covered in-depth in many other shows and documentaries. Not much new information was presented (see conclusion). We've all seen the NASA rovers, telescopes, ISS astronauts, jittery UFO footage, Easter Island, Roswell and Nick Pope. The only topics that were kind of interesting for me personally were the incident at the school in Zimbabwe and the English team of researchers capturing space-dust.

Coming back to film quality. When they tried to film strange lights in the sky all quality was lost. When filming UFO's you need an in-focus picture and a point-of-reference to determine size and location of the object (see conclusion).

The conclusion and my conclusion New information could have been presented maybe but they missed the ball on just around everything. During the episodes they had some research results outstanding. In the last episode all results were discussed. Turns out bones in a cave are just bones in a cave, an iron meteorite fragment is just an iron meteorite fragment, a captured dust-particle is a dust-particle. (Side note: Walking with a sample through a clean-room can still contaminate the sample. Clean-rooms are never 100% dust-free, especially if someone like Josh isn't wearing a beard-cover. I work in clean-rooms so I know something about them.) An old picture negative doesn't get better over time. The 'expert' on UFO footage was just ridiculous. Cellphone footage must be fake and a light in shaky out-of-focus footage that Josh's team filmed must be an UFO? Especially the 'strange' footage in the last scene of the show was an obvious fake but the 'expert' called it a UFO anyway. What a joke. Poor ending of the season.

It's reality-TV, so a lot things are staged and also look clearly staged. Finding the meteorite fragment for instance. And the last scene in the cutting room. So don't expect too much from this series. If you're interested in the UFO subject, check out the show 'Alien Highway' instead. They do more serious research and it's not so much about the hosts of the show.

Stunning visuals but unoriginal story. It's like watching star wars ANH and ROTJ combined, minus Solo and the droids.

In the last couple of years, action (and/or fantasy) movies have become longer and longer. Don't understand why, probably to display the great special effect studios can produce these days. However, this generally doesn't help the story. And this movie is a high action, low story one. All cliché characters are there, explorers/scientists blind to all danger, the war-veteran waiting to get his revenge at all costs and mostly red- shirt cannon-fodder. The effects are great for sure, but hide the thin story-line. It's classic King Kong with a twist. People find monkey. Monkey kills people but likes tiny girl. (Why?) People try to kill monkey. Monkey tries to kill lizards. Lizards try to kill everyone. Monkey turns out to be the good guy. (Monkey should be ape technically.) Few survive. In end credits it is revealed there will be more p.o.s. movies coming in the next years. Can't wait ~cough~.

At some point halfway through the movie I just wished everybody would die so it would be over. It didn't bother me anymore if the "bad lizards" won or the "good guys" + monkey. It kept dragging along without end. Not recommended.

This is a movie-festival film I would say. "Movie buffs" will woo Hopkins for his great artistry, while regular people will hate it, or at least won't "get it". In general, I like movies of any kind. I've seen very good and very bad ones. If Hopkins isn't insane then this film is just too artsy for me. Didn't like it at all; the first 20 minutes were chaotic. In the end the story gets some closure, but it's too random or unstructured as a whole in my opinion. On IMDb the genres are comedy, drama, fantasy. Drama and fantasy okay but I didn't even chuckle once. While watching (at increased speed) I found myself doing other things, which implicates the story wasn't very catchy. Would not recommend.