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Reviews
Outside the Wire (2021)
Despite all it's flaws still an enjoyable watch
Unexpectedly better than what I expected. I think due to the lack of good movies in the action/sci-fi genre lately, this suddenly feels surprisingly decent. Cinematography is great, CGI is good. Acting good. Script so-so. Still, above the average that came out in 2020 and 2021, so I'll take it!
Kill Plan (2021)
I've seen first graders make better movies
Terrible acting, cringeworthy in general. Has been upvoted initially people somehow related to or benefiting from the movie, this is pure garbage.
Behind the Line: Escape to Dunkirk (2020)
Average at best, poor at worst - not worth the time to watch.
I watched this movie open-minded (It supposedly had an 8 on IMDB, before the negative reviews came in). I was fairly disappointed straight from the beginning, mostly due to VERY illogical behavior from the main characters, rather average acting, terrible foreign languages (I speak German and I can't understand half the German lines lol), weird plot turns.
Right in the beginning the characters are faced with a situation where they can a) do nothing b) attack or c) find a creative solution. They script, almost like always, chooses the most boring option A rather than either the logical or the creative options. That makes the movie very boring to watch, without any surprises.
I was constantly hoping for some kind of interesting turn of events, but even when the options were presented the makers decided to take the greyest possible choice and return back to flatline. The movie essentiall is trying to portray ww2 by showing a horse and wagon, people in uniforms and 'old barns' - otherwise it's decidedly absent and the story is really just about a few guys who make dumb choices all the time.
Barely worth the watch despite that I'm heavily into ww2. Sorry, I'd have liked to like this!
My Octopus Teacher (2020)
Compelling, pure and identifiable
As a freediver myself, often playing with octopuses, I really enjoyed this movie. Also, as a freediver, I must add that swimming with your snorkel in your mouth and taking very few safety measures (buddy system, breathe up between dives etc) are not good ways to introduce the masses to safe ways of diving under water on one breath. If I forego that mayor flaw, remains a beautiful and touching movie that highlights the unique nature of octopuses. Truly the dogs or social cats/parrots of the sea. Hopefully people will refrain from killing or eating them (as did I!) from now on. And hopefully people will also research further into Freediving basics than he did.. !
Star Trek: Picard (2020)
This isn't startrek, and it isn't Picard
I barely made it through the first episode. It has the wrong setting, wrong feeling (more a budget blade runner meets rip off x-man meets anonymous drama movie that nobody remembered the name of). Acting is a bit unconvincing, you can see Picard tries but he doesn't fit his role. He comes across as Harison Ford in real life..an old man that can't keep up. I tried watching the second episode but fell asleep. I have never fallen asleep with any sci-fi movie or series in my life. Ever. Won't continue watching.
3022 (2019)
Interesting, but not entertaining
The movie has potential. But was handicapped by under-acting from the antagonist and the occasional 'snap you out of immersion' inexplicable occurrences, behavior and coincidences. The movie never quite reaches the atmosphere of the likes of Moon, the martian and others because of creative and financial limitations. Just a bit 'off'. But not enough to turn off the movie. Fun if you want some 90s sci-fi and don't expect a deep plot.
The Mandalorian (2019)
Can't rate this highly enough!
Like seeing some of my favourite youth sci fi books brought to life.. (Jack Vance's Tschai comes to mind, or some of the more humerous Eric Frank Russel titles). The mandalorian feels like a more real, less child-oriented less commercial Star Wars. I especially liked the way many scenes seem visually and sequentially inspired by 90's sci fi comic books ( Storm by Don Lawrence comes to mind ). This further adds layers of immersion to the series. The plot is not (yet) particularly complicated but I think that is the virtue of the first episode : Just a crazy, normal week in the life of a future bounty hunter. Can't wait to see the rest of this, it has absolutely made my year after all the recent 'PG rated', millenial-oriented or marvel-scifi movies and series.
Lost in Space (2018)
Didn't manage past the first episode.
When the first half hour are just a sequential series of unlikely events happening at record pace, against all odds and against all logic then I don't really wish to continue watching (especially not after reading confirmations of my impressions for later episodes). The spaceship getting hit was a minor event despite that the huge burning debris smashed into it. The spaceship 'crashes' uncontrollably but the impact only dislocated a few boxes. The hatch is stuck for no other reason except that it means they have to get out elsewhere. They leave a perfectly fine spaceship when seconds after they leave it, and only meters away, it sinks almost instantaneously into a 30 meter deep lake. No floating, no slow filling with water. No automatically closing doors on an advanced spaceship exploring an other world. No compartmentalisation. Conveniently the lake was entirely liquid, but after a steaming hot metal spaceship that just entered the atmosphere minutes ago sinks into the water it freezes at record pace. There is no Sci in all of this, just Fi. Fun for families and kids who know nothing about basic science and how things work, otherwise a waste of time.
The Refuge (2019)
Painfully boring, soulless and visually unappealing
Prepare for endlessly stretched driving scenes, one sided dialogues, secondary characters acting way better than the protagonist, a cheap look to most shots involving people (colour, lighting, composition). The majority of spoken words are irrelevant and it's hard to keep your focus. Probably one of the worst movies I've seen in the past decade, and sadly not bad enough to be funny or interesting.
Alexander (2004)
Better than I expected, doing some justice to his feats
Having seen countless documentary movies and animated battle stories on his feats and life I was eager to watch this film. Despite that it had a low rating and I expected nothing of it - I thought I'd have to use my imagination to make Alexander's life come to life.
Oddly enough, very little of that! If anything, this movie had me gripped and fascinated for the the entire length of it's play except the odd little too CGI'd up battle scene (elephants, I say no more).
Alexander does a good job in compressing and dramatising some of the more memorable events in the figure's life. The battle scenes are intense, chaotic and of sufficient scale. The backdrops varied and wonderful, although prime attention goes to the people who star in front of the landscapes, certainly.
When I reed negative feedback on this movie I cannot help but think that people misidentified the less sophisticated, more dramatic or unexpectedly dry acting as old fashioned or poor skill/choice/cast. What I saw was a direct throwback to how the Greeks and Macedonians themselves told these stories - who ever has been at a play of such events will recgonise the acting style. I think it helps put the viewer more in the spirit of the time.
All in all unexpectedly enjoyable, if you take the CGI for what it is : 2004, and not the best of it's time.
Dunkirk (2017)
As if watching a movie on a very tight budget - boring, incorrect, soulless
I don't remember watching a movie this bad in a long time. And that comes from a Nolan fan *and* a ww2 fanatic. I have no idea why this movie is hyped as it is, but there was very little that attracted me to the movie.
1) Throughout the movie a total absence of scale is prevalent. You never have the feeling that Dunkirk was about 400,000 men crammed in a relatively small section of coastline. Empty, if anything, is the only word that describes most of the movie.
2) An unhealthy amount of recycling of the same locations makes the movie feel cheap. Most shots are framed in such a way that you never really get to see much beyond the absolutely necessary. The inside of a boat, a little cross section of a cruiser, a very close-up zoomed image of a pilot in a cockpit that doesn't even shake or show any signs of noise or discomfort. The same little stretch of beach with the exact same docking cranes features in various scenes - always the same angle, the same distance.
3) The dialogue is weak. Unnatural, sometimes almost as if part of more takes of dialogue that were removed later on. Short, abrupt, without conviction. Never feeling the tension as a reason to not talk. Or excessive boredom. Or sleep. No, it just feels like the characters didn't really have a soul.
4) The actors were generic and poorly chosen. They didn't feel like they were really unified with their character. Many of them looked alike and that's about as deep as we go.
5) There is a lot of "time stretching" going on in this movie. Things that would last 30 seconds or a few minutes in real life last an hour and a half in the movie. There is so little information to tell, so few scenes, boats, airplanes and so little story telling going on that they made every tiny accomplishment or happening last almost throughout half the movie, bit by bit, "interwoven" (and that is a word that makes it sound better than it is) with each other. But boring in the end.
6) The total lack of historical accuracy bothers me. It's not that Nolan has so much wrong in broad lines. No, it's quite accurate (also because he doesn't have much to tell, it seems). But the horrible depiction of for example the stranded fishing boat scene. After the first set of holes shoot up the hull, the soldiers are fighting among themselves "who needs to leave the boat to make it lighter". WHILE STANDING CHEST-DEEP IN WATER. Really, 70 kilos will make a difference when standing in 5-6 tons of floodwater?
Or the spitfire. Which flies at around 100 meters altitude, loses it's engine power but glides for seemingly forever.And forever. And forever. And then some. Just the actual seconds of flight time and the portrayed speed means it would have basically flown a dozen kilometers. But ...of course, it still ended up at the same tiny stretch of beach, same cranes in the background. Jesus.
7) CHEAP. I just can't put my finger on it, but the entire movie just feels "lower budget" than what I expected or would deem a minimum. The way the movie is edited doesn't help, a lot of the footage lacks cinematic grandeur, the music is predictable and somewhat repetitive. This movie can't even polish the shoes of intense, gripping productions like Band of Brothers. Literally the most boring scenes of that miniseries are still more interesting than the most interesting scenes of Dunkirk. And that's a sad conclusion to sum this all up with.
I feel like I'm wasting my time even writing this - the movie is just not worth really thinking about. I'm going to watch a few documentaries about Dunkirk to get the bad aftertaste of Nolan's failed recount out of my mouth.
Alamar (2009)
A delicate work of art for those who understand
This movie is one of these rare gems that you encounter, exactly when you're not looking for it.
Besides that Alamar reminds me warmly of my own quite similar youth (albeit in the Mediterranean) it also provided a lot of depth on other levels.
I'm surprised to see that other reviews are critical - sometimes say it has no plot, no development, nothing to keep the viewer occupied. This is far from the truth - even just for its wonderful aesthetics it should be worth watching. The unobtrusive editing further puts the attention of the viewer on the visual ; interesting & uniquely composed shots pass by regularly. As a documentary/art photographer I can only say it inspired me in countless events to rethink my own choices in composition, timing and storytelling.
The story is not so much a narrative in the traditional sense. It is an experience, more than a document. You feel like you are in someone's memory, or a dream..somewhere between observing and remembering. Fragments of daytime events pass by leaving you wonder about many things - and it is in the raising of these small questions about the mundane, the tickling of your curiosity and imagination that Alamar excels as well.
An other aspect that I greatly appreciated is the Utopian life portrayed. Not just the setting (gray mangrove forests aren't all that exciting really) but the delicate and heart-warming relationship between the father and his son. With a patience and kindness the boy is being guided into life, rather than forced. A simple life is something we should desire, rather than avoid seems to be the message.
The only aspect that leaves the movie somewhat to be desired is that the contrast with the city/Italian life could have been improved, perhaps. Then again, it's total absence in most of the movie acts like a catalyst in a way ; you cannot help but constantly see the boy struggle with life back in Italy, miss the things he experienced, be changed for ever. It is also in his absolute naivety (the crocodile/beach scene) that the urban life is never far away.
One of the more profound and metaphorical scenes is that of the glass bottle that is bound to be stranded in the mangrove trees not a few hundred yards away, yet quite ceremoniously dropped in the water by the boy. Or, the mini-story where the white pet-bird gets lost, almost to be found again responding to the boys call...but never quite encountered again. It is in these scenes that the director of Alamar shows his conceptual muscle. He manages to tell of the impeding change of the current boy's life, the inevitability of the world to seem to always separate you from what you desire.
Yes, this movie left me wanting, dreaming, appreciative of what I've experienced myself and unsatisfied of the life I'm forced to live right now. Not to mention inspired photographically.