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Reviews for Life (2017) starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds

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Did not enjoy this movie at all. Was really waiting for it to end in the last 30 mins.

It's disappointing because it started off strong. Good atmosphere, good tension and great cinematography with some interesting questions being developed.
Then it became a derivative monster movie and not a particular good one.

The characters were completely devoid of any interest. Jake's whole personality was based around liking space and it was predictable how they were going to reincorporate that. Jake's personality was a plot device and nothing else. All the characters made incredibly dumb decisions throughout and I just didn't care about anyone involved. Ryan Reynolds was the only character that had any likeability and that was only as the result of his natural charisma. His death was great and tense because I actually had some semblance of care for his character but once he was out I stopped caring.

Also, some of the editing towards the end of the movie became really choppy and confusing. There were moments where I was genuinely confused as to what the hell was happening.

Overall, if I had seen this on Netflix randomly I probably would have been satisfied but considering it had such a good cast behind it, i'm sorely disappointed. It wasn't awful but it wasn't good.

2/5
 

Aurongel

Member
Just got out of seeing this. It was slickly made but so, so, soooooo derivative of every major film like it in the past half decade. It takes the worst lessons from Gravity (long takes and disorientation) and does fuck all with them or uses them in ways that doesn't really add anything of value to the drive of the film.
The characters are way too dumb for you to even care about their fates. I will say that killing Ryan Reynolds first initially made me REALLY interested in where they'd go next because it felt subversive but everything after that is incredibly straight forward. The soundtrack riffs on Sicario and parts of Gravity at least in how it's used. Sunshine was slick and polished for 2/3 and dumb for a third but this was just dumb for 4/5 of the runtime. I would have liked to see the characters act more intelligently but still ultimately falter due to some unforeseen consequence. That would have made things more tense and hopeless but instead we just got dumb people doing dumb things and being punished for it in very predictable ways.

Zero gravity gore is a cool and novel concept and the idea of having a straight up B movie with a budget like this is actually kinda neat and rare these days.
But man this script was a massive stinker. The direction however was on point and bodes well for his career.
 

Fliesen

Member
Oh, also i felt like they constantly set up things with no pay-off...

Like that
polaroid camera that the black scientist kept using. I was certain him using flash photography on the organism would trigger some kind of growth spurt. Or North's finger wound. Hell, at least the space toilet could've been used as an re-entry point for Calvin into the ship.

Also, i didn't appreciate them having those weird
trackers
and that holographic display.
Like, why add this kind of 'outlandish' sci-fi technology in an otherwise rather (technologically) 'grounded' film.
The
trackers
were only really (predictably, gotta have that
'Aliens' scene...
) used in a 1 minute scene after
Calvin swallowed one when eating scientist dude's leg.


you might wanna spoiler tag some of your post.
 

pringles

Member
Just came back from seeing the movie.

It was a decently made space horror thriller.

A few minor - nay, i'd say major(!) nitpicks:

1. Their 'containment' / 'quarantine' system is utter shit. They open doors when quarantine was broken. (Ryan Reynolds) ... Their lab has AIR VENTS connected to the rest of the ship with no filters or anything covering them ...

2. "Calvin needs oxygen to live. If we cut off life support it will go into hibernation" - uhm, did we watch 2 different movies for the last 15 minutes? Where Calvin survived easily in OUTER SPACE?

3. Calvin is super smart (almost sadistically so) when the film requires him to be, yet animalistic and instinct driven at times. Like, why doesn't he just snap Jordan's neck first and hug that oxygen torch later? Why is he so easily baited?

4. Why can an airlock from the outside in not be opened without both people turning some weird dial at the same time? Meanwhile, why can the soyus capsule - that is being sent there to PUSH the space station out of orbit - be opened by Sho, even if it's with a manual crank.

5. When did they decide to use the black scientist as some kind of "bait"? Why did they think this would work?

... overall ... Firewalls, my ass.

Sure, some of these are nitpicks, but these inconsistencies within the film's logic just hurt my enjoyment of the film quite a bit.

Also,
I saw that ending twist coming from a mile away
:/
I'm no ISS expert but couldn't 1 and 4 be explained by the design of the ISS itself? They discuss 1, which is that the ISS is not designed for quarantine procedures of that magnitude. I would be highly surprised if the real ISS has a
fire sprinkler system able to stop foreign lifeforms from getting around the ship
. Ryan Reynolds character
did break quarantine, but then again he seemed to be least "scientific" person on the crew so it made sense to me
.
2 they also explain in the movie;
Calvin can survive without oxygen for a period before going into hibernation
.
 

Scotch

Member
Overall, if I had seen this on Netflix randomly I probably would have been satisfied but considering it had such a good cast behind it, i'm sorely disappointed. It wasn't awful but it wasn't good.
You worded my thoughts exactly.

If this had been a low-budget movie with unknown actors I stumbled upon one day, I may have been pleasantly surprised. But the cast and the pretty scenery set different expectations, and the schlocky script just sticks out like a sore thumb.
 

Mr Swine

Banned
You worded my thoughts exactly.

If this had been a low-budget movie with unknown actors I stumbled upon one day, I may have been pleasantly surprised. But the cast and the pretty scenery set different expectations, and the schlocky script just sticks out like a sore thumb.

It's probably hard to write a script where everything is on a small space station. But I liked the movie, I knew that the alien would
survive
some way
 

Wollan

Member
This was really intense and blood curdling. I loved it.
Been a longer while since the last proper sci-fi horror.

I didn't see any trailers before hand so I had no idea what this was besides a creature horror.
Reason I went: A couple of movie outlets mentioned on Twitter that one shouldn't let it pass you by, someone else said it had a special ending. Spoiler:
I speculated in the last moments that Gyllenhaal would go rogue and send the thing to earth due to his outlook on humanity but I enjoyed the switcheroo as well. Bleak outcome.

edit: Trailer is plenty spoilery.
 

Monocle

Member
I caught this the other night and though it was pretty decent.

It's better than Arrival.
What the hell?

If you really think this, then you lack the critical equipment to distinguish a quality movie with real depth from a shallow popcorn flick one half-step above schlock.
 
What the hell?

It had no laser pew pew battles and it was hard to understand and made no sense. Also it wasn't an alien action movie pew pew. It's just a romantic movie. That alien language was laughable. Also too long and dull.

These are the things I've read about why people didn't like Arrival.

My MOTY.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
Quite the schism between how the film tried to present itself, which was as an intelligent sci-fi movie, and what lay just under that veneer, which was a box of unusually dumb bricks. It had these weird half-hearted feints toward a greater philosophical aspirations, but that's all they were, right down to the title. And for a film that spent a lot of time setting up the physicality of the space station, its layout and logistics, I spent a lot of the film deeply confused about what the fuck was happening.

Here there be spoilers.

The movie started to lose me when Ryan Reynolds opened the quarantine door to the lab, which everyone should have been 100% on board with NOT DOING. But it really lost me when for some reason they can't just turn off the vents, like they did earlier, but have to turn them off one at a time so we can get a sequence where they turn off too slowly. Come the fuck on. I disliked this movie from that moment onward.

They're constantly dropping the oxygen to all or parts of the ship, but it's not clear why since the creature survived in freaking outer space for extended periods of time. When the Asian guy was in his sleeping chamber with Calvin, and they drop the oxygen to that wing, and then he opens up his chamber....why didn't have have problems breathing?

When they bait Calvin into returning to the body of the biologist, the two survivors appear behind Calvin and close the door. Where did they come from? The ship is a series of tubes. Calvin had to go past them to get to the body.

I have no idea what happened once the ship came to ram the ISS out of orbit. That whole sequence degenerated into a clusterfuck - why was the ship suddenly venting? Why did the ship that was ramming it spin out of control and crash? How did they go from being pushed out of orbit to falling to earth? What. The Hell.

The one and only person who made a smart decision in the film was the captain, to keep it in space. I'm still not sure how Calvin got back in. Through the thrusters? So the thusters lead straight to the interior of the ship, with an opening large enough for the newly en-biggened Calvin to come in? What?

The first person shots from the alien were so out of place and pointless. Okay, it sees as if the camera is smeared with snot. Good to know. Why did they set up the creature with the idea that every cell served every function, then give it a face? Why does a being that sees with every cell need a face?

The moment Jake G.'s character proposes to use the two different escape pods to split up, it was clear a twist was being set up. My thoughts at that time were,

-Are they going to let her get to Earth, only to be killed/quarantined?
-Calvin goes to her pod instead, she pilots it away since the whole quarantine thing was her gig. Jake goes back to Earth where he didn't want to go.
-Calvin gets down there somehow.

They went with the last of those, and it was clear they were going to to that the moment the quarantine lady's ship was smacked by debris. But the movie couldn't play it straight - we see a clear shot of the two pods, both in control, and they slowly separate, one drifting toward space smoothly. The twist happens and we see the ship flying out of control in space, directly contradicting the earlier shots. How did Jake's ship go down when he was clearly shown taking it out of orbit? It's one thing to do a "twist" ending, but this movie shit all over itself going about it.

Some day we'll get a movie like this where smart people do smart things but are outmatched, and we can root for them. But holy hell this movie was not one of them. It's really, really dumb.
 

gfxtwin

Member
Based on everything I've seen and heard it seems to be a movie that doesn't need to exist when you could watch Alien instead. Might check it out when it's on cable and/or netflix.
 

Brakke

Banned
I have no idea what happened once the ship came to ram the ISS out of orbit. That whole sequence degenerated into a clusterfuck - why was the ship suddenly venting? Why did the ship that was ramming it spin out of control and crash? How did they go from being pushed out of orbit to falling to earth? What. The Hell.

Yeah that was a total mess. My understanding was that
the capsule was unmanned and therefore not pressurized, so when dude opened the hatch, the station was undergoing explosive decompression, the force of which messed up the seal between the two vessels? So the station was venting into space and buffeting the capsule?

But yeah. For the first half of that scene I thought I saw figures (the capsule crew) in the capsule getting ravaged by Calvin. I think that was just Calvin writhing around under gale force winds actually, but it was a mess.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
We already have that kind of movies: Alien and Aliens.
I mean, since then. :lol
Yeah that was a total mess. My understanding was that
the capsule was unmanned and therefore not pressurized, so when dude opened the hatch, the station was undergoing explosive decompression, the force of which messed up the seal between the two vessels? So the station was venting into space and buffeting the capsule?

But yeah. For the first half of that scene I thought I saw figures (the capsule crew) in the capsule getting ravaged by Calvin. I think that was just Calvin writhing around under gale force winds actually, but it was a mess.

I
thought I saw the same thing, with Calvin tangled in with others who I thought were from the other ship. What a badly edited sequence.
 

Brakke

Banned
"I know, let's do 1) flashing emergency lights, 2) a flailing many-tentacled monster, and 3) hurricane winds all at once -- and let's do them 4) centered on a new and unexpected physics interaction that we won't anticipate for the audience!"
 

Fliesen

Member
after 4 days of "processing" the movie my single biggest gripe is the decision to:

Instead of
leaving the creature aboard the ISS, which would burn upon entry and crash into earth, which the creature might or might not survive.
, they chose to
bait the creature into a pod that has an autopilot set to safely land on earth, and a heat shield to boot.
because
Jake G. just needs to 'keep pulling on the flight stick to alter the course' ... yeah, like that'll work out.

That is the single dumbest decision in this movie. And they went out of their way to make it. Many other things were just bad luck or the fact that "the ISS isn't designed to be a proper biotech lab". But that one's entirely on them.

I mean, since then. :lol


I
thought I saw the same thing, with Calvin tangled in with others who I thought were from the other ship. What a badly edited sequence.

i'm quite sure
the Soyus capsule was manned. We see Calvin munching on the poor Cosmonauts.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
after 4 days of "processing" the movie my single biggest gripe is the decision to:

Instead of
leaving the creature aboard the ISS, which would burn upon entry and crash into earth, which the creature might or might not survive.
, they chose to
bait the creature into a pod that has an autopilot set to safely land on earth, and a heat shield to boot.
because
Jake G. just needs to 'keep pulling on the flight stick to alter the course'

That is the single dumbest decision in this movie. And they went out of their way to make it. Many other things were just bad luck or the fact that "the ISS isn't designed to be a proper biotech lab"

Yup!

The quarantine lady deciding to go along with Jake G's plan was so out of character. Her entire mantra all along was minimize risk. That bit about how she thinks about what could go wrong, and the next, and the next, and the next, and builds solutions for them.

And she agrees to a plan to A) put the alien in a ship that by default auto-pilots to Earth, and B) lets her go back to Earth, thus voiding the entire point of the quarantine. I was practically screaming when Jake laid out his plan. What could possibly go wrong?
i'm quite sure
the Soyus capsule was manned. We see Calvin munching on the poor Cosmonauts.

I really couldn't follow how that sequence played out.
The last thing I saw that made sense was, Calvin was lurking right behind the Asian guy who was opening the door between him and the other two. Then the film cuts to the point of view of Jake and the quarantine lady, and there's atmosphere venting, Calvin is tangled with...someone(s)? and the guy that opened the door is yelling about something while everything is getting hoovered out into space. There was no establishing shot of the others in the capsule, or any shots of Calvin attacking them. I have no idea what took place between him opening the door with Calvin behind him and all hell breaking lose.
 

Fliesen

Member
I really couldn't follow how that sequence played out.
The last thing I saw that made sense was, Calvin was lurking right behind the Asian guy who was opening the door between him and the other two. Then the film cuts to the point of view of Jake and the quarantine lady, and there's atmosphere venting, Calvin is tangled with...someone(s)? and the guy that opened the door is yelling about something while everything is getting hoovered out into space. There was no establishing shot of the others in the capsule, or any shots of Calvin attacking them. I have no idea what took place between him opening the door with Calvin behind him and all hell breaking lose.

i'm very sure we
saw (from the PoV of Gyllenhall / North) how Calvin was ravaging the Soyus crew. The panic / chaos this caused might have resulted in them somehow triggering certain other thrusters that led to the capsule disconnecting from the secure docking position, and also drifting off to the side.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
i'm very sure we
saw (from the PoV of Gyllenhall / North) how Calvin was ravaging the Soyus crew. The panic / chaos this caused might have resulted in them somehow triggering certain other thrusters that led to the capsule disconnecting from the secure docking position, and also drifting off to the side.

Where did they come from? The setup was:
Jake and North on one side of the door. The other guy on the other side of the door. Calvin right behind him. The door opens and suddenly Calvin is writhing with the other guys from the Soyus, and atmosphere is venting. I don't know where they came from or how they got there given the setup to that scene. I tried to make sense of it, but it felt like there was a lot of setup and developing action cut.
 

kurahador

Member
I really couldn't follow how that sequence played out.
The last thing I saw that made sense was, Calvin was lurking right behind the Asian guy who was opening the door between him and the other two. Then the film cuts to the point of view of Jake and the quarantine lady, and there's atmosphere venting, Calvin is tangled with...someone(s)? and the guy that opened the door is yelling about something while everything is getting hoovered out into space. There was no establishing shot of the others in the capsule, or any shots of Calvin attacking them. I have no idea what took place between him opening the door with Calvin behind him and all hell breaking lose.

Urghhh...that scene was so out of place.
The scene where Miranda advising Sho to not let go also doesn't make any sense. I mean previously it was established that she prioritized safety over all else, while Sho was willing to endanger himself trying to get home to his daughter.
Like wut???
 

HotHamBoy

Member
tumblr_n67kofm7o91skt03xo2_r1_500.gif


Should be in the OP
 

Mr Swine

Banned
One thing I don't get is when
escape pod crashes down to earth in the ocean, the Asian fishermen go and inspect it. They see Gyllenhall alive tangled in something that looks alien and he is shaking his head at them to not open the hatch. They proceed and let the alien out
. I would never do that if something like that happened
 

Scarecrow

Member
In the trailer when they joked about a "custody battle" over the creature, I thought they were going to have a good think piece on getting along with other countries with the backdrop of finding alien life. Maybe one of the crew members secretly gets orders from home about how to leverage the findings, causing the eventual break down of trust among the crew. Then let the alien start making trouble.

At least it looked nice.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
One thing I don't get is when
escape pod crashes down to earth in the ocean, the Asian fishermen go and inspect it. They see Gyllenhall alive tangled in something that looks alien and he is shaking his head at them to not open the hatch. They proceed and let the alien out
. I would never do that if something like that happened

Language barrier ..
those fishermen probably weren't able to understand what JG was saying and from the window they just saw a tangled up dude who they thought they should let out. They wouldn't know there's a hyper smart Martian lifeform in there.
 

MC Safety

Member
Can someone explain the ending to me? I'm talking specifically about the twist, but maybe you can just clarify the last confusing muddle that is the last 10-15 minutes.

I understand the intent to highlight the chaos and emphasize the uncertainty of the situation, but I thought the parts from the station being rammed onward were poorly shot or edited or whatever.
 

Fliesen

Member
Can someone explain the ending to me? I'm talking specifically about the twist, but maybe you can just clarify the last confusing muddle that is the last 10-15 minutes.

I understand the intent to highlight the chaos and emphasize the uncertainty of the situation, but I thought the parts from the station being rammed onward were poorly shot or edited or whatever.

Plan was for Gyllenhall to lure the creature into his escape pod (by means of oxygen torches) while North makes it into hers. The pods are programmed to automatically safely land on earth. North is meant to make it back to earth alive (why?!) while Gyllenhall would sacrifice his life by steering the pod (that has an autopilot towards earth) manually towards outer space. Turns out the creature is really good at grabbing people and preventing them from pushing a flight stick - who would've known!
Not only that, but one of the capsules is hit by space debris during descent. We're led to believe it's probably Gyllenhalls, while North's makes its entry into the Earth's atmosphere, but - shocker! - it was north who was drifting into Space all along, while it was Gyllenhall'S pod that landed on earth. -DOOMING US ALL!
 

Bishop89

Member
So why did Calvin stop going after the Japanese guy when he was in his pod?
I took it that Calvin had a moment where he felt for him coz he was looking at his picture of his wife
 

CSJ

Member
So why did Calvin stop going after the Japanese guy when he was in his pod?
I took it that Calvin had a moment where he felt for him coz he was looking at his picture of his wife

At first I honestly thought he crushed the pod closed so he couldn't escape.
But also, seemed like Calvin couldn't break it, so went off to do something else.
 

Jackpot

Banned
I have no idea what happened once
the ship came to ram the ISS out of orbit. That whole sequence degenerated into a clusterfuck - why was the ship suddenly venting? Why did the ship that was ramming it spin out of control and crash? How did they go from being pushed out of orbit to falling to earth? What. The Hell.

Totally agree.
I thought I heard more than one voice shouting and saw multiple limbs thrashing but the first clear shot is just Sho wrestling Calvin.

Urghhh...that scene was so out of place.
The scene where Miranda advising Sho to not let go also doesn't make any sense. I mean previously it was established that she prioritized safety over all else, while Sho was willing to endanger himself trying to get home to his daughter.
Like wut???

Also agree.
It's established that ONE SINGLE CELL is all that's needed to make a Calvin. One cell clinging to their clothes, like say when she tried to rescue Sho from being sucked into space and Calvin was wrapped round their arms.

But overall I did enjoy it and loved the ending. Hope they do a sequel.
 

Grizzlyjin

Supersonic, idiotic, disconnecting, not respecting, who would really ever wanna go and top that
In the trailer when they joked about a "custody battle" over the creature, I thought they were going to have a good think piece on getting along with other countries with the backdrop of finding alien life. Maybe one of the crew members secretly gets orders from home about how to leverage the findings, causing the eventual break down of trust among the crew. Then let the alien start making trouble.

At least it looked nice.

Same here. I know it isn't a good idea to go into a movie thinking about the film that you want this to be. But the trailer sold this as a smarter film than it actually was. At least that's how I felt. This is actually one of the few times I came out wishing the movie was longer cause the characters felt a bit cold, and it didn't really touch on any interesting questions. Shit just happens. It lacks a brain and heart. The premise is just squandered in every way possible. I have nothing to take away from seeing this. I didn't find it fun, or thrilling, or thought provoking, or funny, or heartfelt. They don't even get batshit crazy with the creature designs because the movie is trying so hard to be grounded..sorta. It's a bizarre film in that respect, cause it doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. If you're gonna be a creature feature, you gotta do some off the wall shit. Unique set pieces, crazy deaths, etc. Something people haven't seen before. If you're grounded, be smart about it. Give us some characters we can care about. Give me something to work with lol
 
Where did they come from? The setup was:
Jake and North on one side of the door. The other guy on the other side of the door. Calvin right behind him. The door opens and suddenly Calvin is writhing with the other guys from the Soyus, and atmosphere is venting. I don't know where they came from or how they got there given the setup to that scene. I tried to make sense of it, but it felt like there was a lot of setup and developing action cut.

just saw this.

so
the other ship came to push the space station out to space - it connects, the japanese guy thinks its there for rescue so he goes to it and opens the door to rescue ship and calvin goes after the pilots killing the other pilots

I didnt mind it but it was a decent enough movie - 6/10ish. I liked its
nihilistic
ending
 

haveheart

Banned
just saw this.

so
the other ship came to push the space station out to space - it connects, the japanese guy thinks its there for rescue so he goes to it and opens the door to rescue ship and calvin goes after the pilots killing the other pilots

I didnt mind it but it was a decent enough movie - 6/10ish. I liked its
nihilistic
ending

Also just saw it. I pretty much feel the same way.
I'd like a monster movie sequel. Like some Cloverfield stuff. But I don't think that's where they wanna go.

The monster's design was pretty cool imo.
 

Stasis

Member
I was entertained but this wasn't nearly as good as I wanted or hoped it would be.

Somewhere like a 6.5/10 for me I guess. Wouldn't watch it again, anyway.
 
Wouldn't you just shoot at it. Or ram it, why would you connect to it.


Just finished it, was ok. Felt a bit hurried, didn't really have a message or strong art style.

The breakdown and all that quarantine stuff at the start. There's gottah be a way to write the stupid out of it and still create a plausible outbreak.


Like, once they realised it's an organic responsive creature I'd be fucking freezing it immediately for storage.

Setup for a sequel I don't think will get green lit.
 
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