eli_down Reviews

The Broken (2008)

God knows I tried

[2/10 · 24 March 2009]

What an incredible fall for Sean Ellis.

You gather a bunch of your friends at home, all hyped about the follow up work of Sean Ellis. You have an vague idea of the plot, no spoilers that could kill the fun, very high expectations.

It is late at night, perfect atmosphere for a movie of this type.

15minutes passes and you start telling yourself it is bound to pick up, at 25mins you start wondering if you should just go to sleep and save this for another time when you can fully appreciate the expected not existent subtle touches. Over the half hour mark you realize half of your your hyped up audience is already asleep and call it a day.

A few days later when you exhaust all other material to watch you go back to this, in the middle of the day this time, hoping your mood will keep you awake this time. 10 minutes later you find yourself fastforwarding the unbelievably and needlessly long intermediate transitions and images. Any other stuff I would have given up already but there is cashback and its legacy. But that legacy can only carry you so long, this is a new level of boring movie-making, imagine a short story extended to a novel with just descriptions, this is what it is.

Decent cast is wasted, there is no cinematography that leaves you in awe like cashback either. There are films that annoy you, there are films that lack certain aspects, or just cheesy, unfortunately this is just a waste of time.

Final words, stay away.

What Just Happened (2008)

Unexpected gem

[9/10 · 18 February 2009]

When I read some of the other users' comments I could hardly believe we watched the same movie. Wasted 2 hrs of my life!? This is, simply put, ridiculous, this movie does not require moral or surprise, it is quite enjoyable and powerful as it is.

Superb acting, intelligent writing, characters you can sympathize with as well as good steady rhythm.

It is a beautiful movie centered around a producer and how his life evolves around a series of regular down to earth events. It is a little like entourage minus the girls and absurdity as it is centered around Hollywood but you do sympathize with the lead character a lot on his reactions to events.

I had no expectations from this movie and it turned out to be quite a gem, I believe this is one of those movies that will be rated more highly in the future. If there was any hype around this, if people expected a blockbuster, well it is their fault. It is more like an independent movie and a very good one at that I must add.

It certainly feels like De Niro very much enjoyed acting in this one, this is by far the best I have seen him in years. Turturro, Wincott, Penn Willis all saw something in this script and they were right. ( To be honest with you Turturro did overdo his part a little)

I have been to much more boring movies than this and they were rated much higher by IMDb crowd, no it does not move at a snail's pace, no there are no big psychological dramas or a big story, and yet all those are OK and their absence is what makes this movie perfect.

The List (I) (2007)

Pass

[2/10 · 3 June 2008]

One of the weakest resolutions ever seen to a voodoo vs prayers plot with a pinch of south carolina's version of skulls.

I hate judging movies by their IMDb rating and select my movies depending on the variety of user comments. This unfortunately does not work for any movie with religious or ethnical content as people seem to praise to concepts rather than the movie.

There are so many holes in the plot I would not know where to begin. Evil spirits hauting houses, good spirits lurking in churches, money tucked away in swiss banks, irrelevant gold coins, family ties that lead nowhere, some sort of family descend vodoo power, some sort of cursed money influence that puts people that benefit from it and their loved ones under voodoo influence. (In addition, the moment they return the money thay are freed from it) If you are looking for any original thoughts, any shred of brilliance look elsewhere. If you want to show your 4 year old kid a elemantary school play level movie, coomunicating "pray and everything will be all right" message, with quotes from bible distributed meaninglessly and out of place than you have hit jackpot.

I have been following IMDb for nearly a decade and this I think is the first time I am posting a review, actually I could have gone without posting but I did not want anyone to be influenced by these heavily biased comments, this movie is truly a colossal waste of time. I still am trying to understand how mcdowell signed on this movie, what a fall from clockwork orange to this, I am pretty sure he would have quit acting right after Clockwork Orange if he had any chance of looking into the future and seeing himself in this.

Now I have looked at the other comments and I see other users ranting at the enormously biased users reviews, unfortunately these were not available at the day I got the movie. I have spent another 10 mins plus the running time of this movie to convey the message "stay away".