Red Planet

                      

They did a great job here of somehow making a space movie set on and around Mars, featuring an evil robot, backstabbing team members, and flesh eating alien bugs, boring. We start with a long explanation of a pretty basic future scenario (Earth is overcrowded, so we're trying to terraform Mars, one stage of which is oxygen producing moss, which mysteriously disappears so we send a team up there to investigate) and the film isn't finished with us, and we're treated to bouts of terrible stilted explanatory dialogue delivered by the robotic actors throughout the rest of the movie.

All the exposition is really what first kills it for me. The actual characters completely lack character, and just spend their time talking in dated Internet verse at one another about awkward world building.

                         

                      

There were actually a few good cast members, but their performances were crippled by the terrible script. There were also several problem elements, where there only really needed to be one or two. These range from natural disasters to an evil robot to a very obviously evil teammate to evil alien bugs. They can't seem to stick to any one villain for longer than half an hour, and this along with the dated effects and dull action sequences creates a huge disconnect for me.

                

Red Planet: 20.0

Independence Day: Resurgence

                     

Looks like getting invaded by aliens was the best thing that ever happened to Humanity. After they get rid of the aliens in the first one world peace is achieved as everyone works together to cannibalise alien tech to defend their planet against future attacks. It's basically 'Star Trek' future, but then more aliens come to fuck it all up again. 

            

                   

I actually liked this one more than the original. It was more fun - but not intentionally so. While the original was bad, this one edged into being so bad it's good occasionally. The feeling wasn't consistent though, and about 80% of the movie was only so that that it was... bad. 

The characterisation was still extremely basic and bland, and just like in the original there was too much jumping around between disperse characters for my liking (I like this more in novels or TV shows that have more time to tell their story, but in a movie it really just results in under-developed characters that we don't care about). Most of the original cast stuck around for this one, but Will Smith , and I'm not complaining, but that and the focus instead on a group of young pilots meant that there was no real main character to focus on. 

I liked some of the funny moments though, and some of them were even intentional! The Whitehouse narrowly escaping destruction was cute, and the scene of Judd Hirsh driving his little boat along with massive tidal waves and explosions going on around him was hilariously bad. Another such moment was that 'Red Tails' level scene where the guy in the plane recognises his stripper-come-doctor mother on the top of a hospital building amid the total destruction of the whole city in time to see her fall to her death. 

Brent Spiner is back, and I really enjoyed him. “We're gonna get you to sick bay” was a highlight, and his character was fun throughout.

                   

                     

In the end though, there was too much happening in not enough time. I liked a lot of the elements, or I at least liked the idea of them, but everything was under-explored. This stretched out would have made a fun, silly, TV series.

                  

Independence Day: Resurgence: 36.4

The Martian

               
Not terrible, but I'd rather Matt Damon just read the book to me. And stroke my hair. 
The story was quite thin, it was basically made up of a series of events involving Matt Damon having to solve an imminent disaster. Once he solves one, he makes a few jokes, and then another problem pops up for him to solve. Also it ends on an almost cheesy upbeat tone, which tends to turn me off.

                 

                 
I liked the technical detail it went into (though the book does a far better job at this), and all the science seems legit. The visuals were alright. I really quite liked the Martian vistas, but these were as rare as they were pretty. There was a fair amount of suspense, and Damon was kinda funny. It was nice seeing him build up his little world up, it was like the 'Swiss Family Robinson' or something. His character doesn't develop though, unless you count getting skinnier as character development.
Not a particularly inspiring movie, but watchable.

              

The Martian: 37.2

The Towering Inferno

           

               

'The Towering Inferno' is one of those early disaster movies that helped stabilise the genre. Set in the fictional Glass Tower, which is the biggest building in the world (and made in 1974, back when the biggest tower in the world could believably have been built in America and be 550 metres tall) as it catches fire during an opening party on one of the top floors.
At over two and a half hours, it tends to drag a little, and I can't put all of that down to being an older film. It feels a little too puffed up for its own good. Kind of like Coco Austin or the 'Hobbit' series. It makes for good background viewing though, as you can zone out for a good five or ten minutes and then come back into it without really having missed anything of import. The acting was pretty hammy too, and the characters (though outlined beyond mere clichés, for the most part) were not fully explored. This loss in characterisation is to be expected in these flicks though, and the film did well to tell a handful of mostly unrelated stories (many of which ended badly, to my appreciation (am I a bad person?)) about a deaf lady, and old scammer, a cat, a guy sleeping with his secretary, and uh, yeah.
                   

                      
Some of the shots were a little cheesy, but the effects generally hold up very well (and the massive model they built for shooting was really impressive, check it out). I loved the occasional cuts to the building's exterior to give us an idea of the fire's general progression (General Progression) (as well as the earlier cuts to the fire starting and then growing in a storage area). The action was solid throughout, and I liked all the fiery deaths. The script was fine too, and most of the actors were clearly enjoying themselves - also, it was an all-star cast, and it was fun spotting so many famous faces in often quite minor roles.

The whole dedicated to the firemen of the world thing felt a bit sappy, but I get it. They should totally do a remake of this for 9/11 - I know they sort of have, but more overt, and throw in some comedy in there (has it been 22.3 years yet?)

                  

The Towering Inferno: 46.0

Independence Day

The archetypal "aliens are invading the USA - oh, and the rest of the planet too, but don't worry because we have some nukes and enough white Christians to fart them in their direction" type movie, 'Independence Day' was obviously going to be a hit. It had some nice visuals but was effectively shit, save several cast members who can bring life to a production without trying very hard - which they weren't. It lacked an ounce of subtly, and the plot was basic to a fault.
It reminds me of 'Team America', with every other country being ridiculously quaint. Somehow the RAF from the Second World War have survived until the mid 90s without aging or loosing their jobs, and a group of desert nomads are hanging around the Great Pyramids of Giza, with the rest of Cairo cut out of shot.
 

 
The first shots of the alien capital ships hovering over major capitals are nice, though I must repeatedly remind myself that at the time of filming this hadn't already been done a hundred times. The efforts to acquaint us with the various characters that precede this scene totally fail to grab my attention, however. All the characters are fairly basic, and while some of the dialogue is funny, it all feels very contrived.
The action sequences are fine, but there aren't any that don't take place in the cockpit, and anything technical about the aliens are either sipped over or really badly explained. I enjoyed seeing Brent Spiner as someone other than Data or the guy who built Data, and Jeff Goldblum does adequately, but I didn't like Will Smith at all (I rarely do) and the rest of them were forgettable (apart from Jeff's dad, who I liked).
That speech the American President gave, though. Terrible.

Independence Day: 33.7