The Signal

tags: drama, German, Netflix, pseudo sci-fi 

Goose egg🥚

The Signal: Woke In Space 

I just wasted more than 4 hours on this nonsense. It was made to spew wokeness. It has no entertainment value. The writer made up a ridiculous nonstory mainly to promote kumbaya We Are The World stupid idiotic nonsense with some "they are so greedy" and "we should stop war" without any context or back story. 

The female lead character said such dialogue but they were never discussed before or after EVER. What? Did I miss something? It was frustrating. 

The script is utterly bad and so is the acting. The woman chosen to be on board the ISS looked like she was really high on something. The program funded by an evil billionaire to let 2 civilians to board the ISS for some experiment chose a woman who is a smoker, takes drugs, has psychological problems, and hallucinates. Great! Sheesh. What could go wrong?

She is so stupid for not recognizing the voice she picked up from space which is the voice of Carl Sagan's son in Voyager 1 saying "Hello". She thought it was communication from aliens. What a moron! Her equally ignorant or maybe evil partner prevented her from telling the real astronauts who would have told them it is from Voyager. They could have prevented their murder by the evil benefactor. But they are stupid so they deserve what they got. 

Avoid it. I watched so you don't have to.

The Dark Valley (Das Finstere Tal)

tags: drama, German language (Tyrolean), late 19th century, mystery, revenge, Western

Description fron Amazon

A lone rider arrives in a small high mountain village; nobody knows where he is from and nobody wants him there. Greider introduces himself as a photographer from America, and the town patriarch, Old Brenner, provides him with shelter for the harsh winter ahead. The village cut off by snowfall and barely a ray of sunlight reaching the valley, a tragic accident leads to the death of one of Brenners beloved sons. When another son is mysteriously killed, it is clear this is not a coincidence, and this visitor carries a secret with him.

I was wowed by this dark Austrian/Dutch/Italian produced vendetta film from the first frame to the end credits. I watched it not having seen any American westerns, although I've seen several times the spaghetti western Django with Franco Nero, one of my favorite shoot-em-up movies. 

The movie is deliberately slow to build with concise dialog but everything is done on purpose for the atmospheric feel and story. The cinematography is simply breathtaking. The alps is beautiful as the backdrop to the rustic village setting and the dark clothing of the inhabitants. Acting is top-notch too, specially the lead, English actor Sam Riley as Greider. Although it's easy to guess who Greider is and his motive, I was surprised as to the evil person's reason for his crime against his victims. I enjoyed this movie very much and will watch it again. 

Currently streaming on Netflix and Amazon

Highly recommended in German with English subtitles. English dubbed is also available but the voice actors sound cartoonish and unnatural.