Downsizing (2017)

I was reminded of - of all things -Coneheads while watching this 2017 scifi comedy that, like Coneheads, is pretty much over as soon as you first glimpse the sight-gag, in this case not pointy crowns but something just as interesting: a miniature world of environmentalists who have chosen to literally shrink their environmental footprints - but both the big, ordinary world and this downsized world look exactly alike once you are in amongst them, so with nothing more to do with its skit, the movie shifts after its elaborate, drily funny first third of world-building into a meandering Joe Versus The Volcano adventure, interesting but all of it far from earth-shattering. 

★★☆☆☆

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The Martian (2015)

"MacGyver In Space" is about a lone astronaut stranded on Mars but Ridley Scott puts an orchestra up there to accompany Matt Damon's two-and-a-bit hours of natty problem solving so that there is never a quiet, contemplative moment and the solutions to the astronaut's fictional troubles (burning this, exploding that, rerouting something else) are merely shrug-inducing, making this scifi about as fun as watching someone do a maths test.

★★☆☆☆

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Hereafter (2010)

The afterlife is an idea that might well sustain a movie-length feature but here it serves as a mere contrivance to bring three sombre characters and their separate sombre stories slowly, slowly together with the movie growing more tiresome the more this inevitable intersection of stories is delayed; when at last the moment arrives, the afterlife has proved a very underwhelming thing. 

★★☆☆☆

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