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There’s actually a lot there, much of it hidden in plain sight, but most people don’t see it because we’re used to watching movies passively. Eyes wide shut, so to speak.
YouTube has some good analysis of the movie if you’re interested.
Solomon’s behaviour was ambiguous and occasionally self-serving, but for the most part he was telling her what she needed to hear to get her to the mental state where she needed to be. The visions of the demons and the angel were the product of that mental state and part of her healing process.
If the flux capacitor only responds to movement in the direction that it’s facing, then for north to south travel, you would have to accelerate it by some other means to get to the required velocity of 67,088 mph.
The earth orbits the sun at a speed of 67,000 miles per hour, so the actual speed needed to achieve time travel in the movie is 67,088 mph. That’s assuming the car is travelling in the direction of earth’s orbit, and not taking account of earth’s rotational velocity, which is approximately 1,000 mph, depending on your distance from the equator.
So you’re right. “What did I tell you? Eighty eight miles per hour!” makes no sense.
In the Blu-ray edition you can see a thin black wire heading off from the back of the arrow to the top right of the frame.
As the commenter above suggests, It's probably a studio shot with the campfire scene projected behind her in reverse, then the whole shot is reversed. The effect is very well done. The tip of the arrow goes into a fold of her dress so you can't see the hole before the arrow "hits", and the actress's performance really sells it.
The train station scene is De Palma homaging Hitchcock (as usual). It's his version of the scene in "Rear Window" where James Stewart sends his girlfriend to find evidence of a murder in a neighbour's apartment while he watches through binoculars. Then he sees the murderer enter the apartment and catch her...
In the Hitchcock movie the hero is immobilised by a broken leg. In this movie there's no explanation of why Jack stays behind in the car, but De Palma does a good job of distracting you from thinking about it too much. The final act of the movie, from the murder of the prostitute to the fireworks display, is De Palma at his virtuosic best.
There isn’t a single likeable male character in the film. They’re all creeps, weirdos, cowards, serial killers, perverts, or the henchmen of perverts.
<blockquote>They ALL knew that death was not always imminent with these things, and their fate could even be worse than death, trapped as a shell or living husk for these things to mutate and grow...</blockquote>
That is an exact description of the “fate worse than death” facing the desperate characters in Aliens. Are you suggesting that movie would have worked better if somewhere in the third act Ripley had said, “Screw it, we can’t beat this alien queen” and shot Newt in the head with her pulse rifle?
Even if the ending of The Mist is how real people would behave in real life, it’s poor storytelling. It subverts our expectations of a movie hero by having him give up and choose death (including the death of his son) rather than fight to the bitter end. I admire Darabont for trying something different, but I don’t think it works from a story point of view. The way the cavalry turns up seconds later just seems perversely cruel, like a sick joke.
Blanchett was doing a Mika Brzezinski spoof.
His speech to Bond gives some clues about his masterplan:
"We both eradicate people to make the world a better place. I just want to be a little... tidier. Without collateral. I want the world to evolve, yet you want it to stay the same. Let's face it... I've made you redundant."
He seems to be saying that while Bond is content to repeatedly foil the plots of organisations like Spectre, his own goal is to eliminate them entirely, "to make the world a better place." The "without collateral" part is incorrect, of course, and Safin's views about which people need eradicating are unclear (MI6, perhaps, if they get in his way?). Which is why Bond has to stop him.
It wouldn’t have been hard to give him a plausible motive for the targeted assassination of millions of people. E.g. overthrowing governments for political goals, crashing the stock market for financial gain, eliminating specific ethnic groups for racist reasons, or even saving the world from climate change.
Goldfinger had a great supervillain plan (irradiate the gold in Fort Knox to increase the value of his own hoard). This guy, not so much.
They could have aged the doctor by simply replacing Rufus Sewell with Ian McShane somewhere near the end. The two actors look remarkably similar, but 25 years apart.
I think she blacked out, like others who tried to leave the beach had done. She died from the fall.
There's an early scene where Abbey Lee's selfie girl character is ordering a calcium rich drink and explains to the waiter she has a calcium deficiency. During her accelerated ageing her bones become brittle and deformed due to lack of calcium. Her arm breaks when she lifts a heavy rock in the cave, and it immediately heals in the broken position. Then as she's flailing around in pain the same thing happens to her other bones. She probably dies from a broken neck.
Of course all the other characters, particularly the children, should be suffering from calcium deficiency, too, since they're not eating anywhere near enough to support the growth that they're experiencing.
I enjoyed the movie, though the logic of it doesn't bear close examination.
Some of the characters, especially the middle-aged white guys, were sketchily drawn and unmemorable. I think it was partly to keep us guessing about them, but also a lack of skill on the writer's part.
I loved the big smile on Miss Fax's face as she parachuted down. She looked like she was on a ride at Disneyland.
You sound like someone who's never encountered death or suffering except in computer games, and never known someone that you would risk your own life to save.
<blockquote>14.) Why didn't the Martians sample the atmosphere to test for fatal bacteria/ viruses before attacking?</blockquote>
That's really the only one of these "plotholes" that's also in the original story. But then again, I suppose it's possible for even a highly intelligent species to be taken unawares by a virus ;-)
<blockquote>5.) Why did the Martians even bother to bury the now-technologically-obsolete Tri-pods 1000's of years ago since they had to fly them anyway from Mars to Earth?</blockquote>
That one bothered me a lot. It made no sense to add that detail. In the book, the martians bring their tripods with them - flat-packed, apparently, since they assemble them over several days after landing. I can only assume that Spielberg wanted the story to unfold faster and liked the visual effect of the machine bursting out of the ground.
I don't believe for a moment that Mars was working for a rival mob. But the mob who wanted the disc may have thought so, which is why they wanted to recover it before it got into the hands of their enemies, or of cops investigating the crime scene.
The mob's plan to coerce Talley into talking his way inside and getting the disc doesn't seem all that absurd. Where the movie went off the rails for me was with the fake FBI guys. I mean, you can't just turn up in a black van with FBI on the side and take over a hostage situation.
Well, obviously torture doesn’t work on innocent people. Either they maintain their innocence or they offer up a false confession to stop the pain.
It does not follow, though, that torture is ineffective on the guilty. In the movie, the CIA had what they believed was evidence of guilt, so the purpose was to break the suspect and get him to provide intel that might stop further terrorist attacks. Had he been guilty, the torture might well have worked, and lives may have been saved. The question is whether a moral society should ever use such methods.