The Signal (2014)

The Signal had a whole bunch of sci-fi tropes that we've all seen before many times. It had potential. Good effects, acting and direction. But the story just wasn't there. It kept you interested via carrot on a stick mysteries, but ultimately it went nowhere. The ending was cheap and unfulfilling. Events that directed you one way only ended up being exposed as plot holes later on. Goes to show no matter how much gloss you put on a poor or even mediocre script, it still wont make a very good movie.

4/10.

Dredd (2012)

Dredd was awesome but I didn't like it. Let me elaborate.

Awesome: The most honest single comic book adaptation I've ever seen. This film was completely accurate to the source material. Unlike the 90's Stallone adaptation where Hollywoodization abounded, I couldn't pinpoint a single thing in this film that wouldn't have happened in the comics. It was dark, ultraviolent, and unapologetic. We never see Dredd's face. His dialogue is to-the-point, almost monosyllabic. The sets, the non-distracting camera work. I could go on.

I didn't like: The ultraviolence. A sure sign I'm getting old is I just can't stomach the unrelenting violence in action and emotion abounding in this film. This is a personal taste, a subjective one. The only thing is, that's the essence of the comics. The unapologetic, impersonal, unrelenting execution of the law of Mega-City One. So bravo for the filmmakers in their unflinching translation.

Now for the sake of disclosure, while I am logging this in my list as 4/10 for personal subjective reasons. In an objective light, such as when discussing the merits or demerits of a work of adaptation, I will give it a resounding 10/10. If you read the Judge Dredd comics and recall wondering what it would be like to actually see it? You're in luck.

The fact that someone finally made a movie based on a comic book and yet restrained themselves from changing whatever they damn well pleased... it pleases me.

River Of No Return (1954)

4/10. Run of the mill western that serves mostly as a vehicle for Marilyn Monroe.

Farmer Robert Mitchum and his son, Lassie's Tommy Rettig, rescue Marilyn Monroe and her husband Rory Calhoun from a river raft with dire consequences.

Not much here, though I was hoping for something with Otto Preminger attached as director. But this film was really just a draw for audiences to see Marilyn Monroe in a western. There's a few of scenes with Marilyn singing, a scene where she's clothed only in a blanket, she almost gets raped by Robert Mitchum, and she gets her overshirt torn off by an Indian. Plus there's a moral about when it's ok to shoot someone in the back. That's it. Other than some not so beautifully shot vistas in Cinemascope, this film has nothing really to offer.