nmlal68 Reviews

Unhinged (I) (2020)

VENI, VIDI, VOMITi

[1/10 · 31 March 2024]

What an unimaginable piece of garbage and how painful it was to go through this joke of a movie. Nothing here feels right. Everything feels rushed, predictable, unbalanced, senseless, fake, and, worse of all, boring.

And the acting! Man! Plainer than this is difficult. There are B movies out there acted with much more enthusiasm. Everyone here just seemed to be dragging themselves painfully around with utter boredom probably just waiting to get their paychecks and go home. Worse than the acting only the dialogues.

And then there is the explicit brutal nonsense violence which could be rated as disturbing. But what really is disturbing is not the physical violence, but rather the violence of time, money, and energy wasting in this nothingness, in this thing some people call a movie.

No, it was not entertaining, I was not entertained, and I'm sure the whole crew wasn't entertained either. How could Russel Crow fall so low?

Ad Astra (2019)

A great scenery...

[2/10 · 29 June 2022]

This movie is a big beautiful scenery. Yes, a wonderfully ride into space and spacecraft atmosphere. But that's all it is. Everything else is either pointless, a clichê, or simply stupid.

Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas (2013)

It's a mess...

[2/10 · 4 February 2022]

Mads Mikkelsen is great as ever but that's it. Films don't get saved by good acting and a nice scenery. For me the major fault among others, is the erratic way time is used to tell the story, where scenes are stretched that should be shorter and longtime events stepped over that should be dealt with care and patience. For instance, you have the impression the rebellion got finished before it really started, which is not only confusing but also annoying. You wonder 'what the hell did I just miss?'. In fact, not much.

The Many Saints of Newark (2021)

Definitely a big disappointment!

[3/10 · 24 October 2021]

This movie felt very disconnected right from the beginning , jumping from one scene to another without the needed coherence to glue every piece together. Everything felt thin, the characters, the plot, the general acting. Everything felt like a bored fake copy of a good mobster movie like Goodfellas, Casino, or The Sopranos. You give it a try because you heard Ray Liotta delivers a excellent performance - and he does - but after half an hour you wonder if the movie will ever takeoff. Sadly it never does. It just gets worse dragging on and on, scene after scene, up to the point there's no point at all in all that mess. And if one of the intentions of this production was to shed a light on the young Tony Soprano, then they couldn't have made a better job in picking probably the two most boring unconvincing actors to play the part. A big no go.

The Emperor of Paris (2018)

Boring and very poor character developement...

[3/10 · 14 February 2021]

The expectation was high but you can feel the boredom and emptiness creeping up just after the first couple of scenes. Characters are poorly introduced, the plot rushed and caricatural, the acting average at most, and Cassel not at all convincing. A major waste of time.

Siberia (2018)

As bad as a movie can get...

[1/10 · 6 February 2021]

To put it plain and simple, this movie stinks, an awful joke played on the viewer. There's no other way to describe it since nothing really makes sense in this mess. The plot is catastrophic, the acting miserable, and the ending, oh man, just beyond belief, probably designed to leave you at the verge of nausea.

Joker (I) (2019)

What a joke!

[3/10 · 31 October 2019]

A total blunder. Joker is the worst kind of movie, pretending it´s deep, philosophical, structured and with a thorough plot. Well, it's nothing of that and it's as hollow as hollow can be. You take an exceptional actor, make him mimic de Niro in Taxi Driver, give him some eccentric dance steps on a staircase, produce a nice trailer, and.... voilá, you fool half of the world with pure nothingness. Joker. What a joke!

Cold Pursuit (2019)

A Coen movie without the Coen's...

[4/10 · 18 May 2019]

Usually, if you try to imitate a genre, it doesn't work very well. And this was exactly what happened to this movie. They tried to do it like the Coen's but without the Coen's. The result is a pastiche without colour or wit, with bored actors just moving around. Don't bother!

Run All Night (2015)

Neeson plays Superman again. What a drag!

[1/10 · 11 May 2015]

It is always very sad to see such a great actor like Liam Neeson plunging into brain-dead scripts and playing stupid action roles in pointless movies. Because this is a stupid pointless movie. Have no doubt about it! And worse. It is the kind of movie that surrounds itself with a colorful package, but inside is completely hollow.

Let's see. This movie looks like a bad collage, with glue dripping all around, where pieces are thrown into the central plot not to tell a good story, but to fill and hide the shallowness of the whole project. "Father kills the son of his best friend and best friend swears vengeance", and against this 'idea' they painfully construct the rest.

The father-son approach was pathetic, everything but natural, and so was the all around character development, like the restaurant scene between Neeson and Ed Harris, by the way stolen from Michael Mann's 'Heat'. Michael Mann must have been one of the director's heroes, because again, the confrontation scene between Neeson and Harris also resembled pretty much the one between de Niro and Pacino.

The 'Terminator' movies must also have made an impression on Mr. Collet-Serra. I'm recalling the big menacing hit-man with the green eye pursuing Neeson and his son in a dark building while shooting cops, and reappearing again (obviously!) at the end of the movie to threaten Neeson's family, like de Niro in 'Cape Fear'. Curiously there is a fighting scene with burning sticks between the hit-man and Neeson, where the former turns into Darth Vader and the latter into Obi-Wan Kenobi, which didn't seem strange since Neeson played a jedi master in Star Wars.

I don't know how long Neeson will play Superman, but I hope not too long. After three 'Taken', 'A Walk Among the Tombstones" and this bulls**t, I hope it will be enough. Let's give this kind of roles to average actors, not to geniuses.

One of the worst movies ever made! And dead boring...

The Drop (2014)

Good movies are becoming rare in Hollywood...

[9/10 · 14 April 2015]

In this desert called Hollywood, where blockbusters roam the badlands tearing apart all memories of good cinema, a lone ranger fights back: The Drop!

I have always believed that beautiful simple things are the most difficult to create, and this movie is simple and beautiful. It was a joy to watch it. No neurotic camera, no Barbies nor Kens, no telling after one minute how all is going to end. Strong story line always charged with a hidden tension, fantastic pace, great editing and superb acting.

Bravo!

Stand Up Guys (2012)

A movie that made me feel good!

[8/10 · 30 March 2015]

I had no expectations whatsoever when I put the player on and had this movie rolling. And what a great surprise it was when I saw myself tremendously enjoying a great movie with two of my beloved actors, Pacino and Walken, who superbly underacted their roles to produce a magnificent climax from beginning to end.

Oh man, it was such a delight to watch these two veteran actors, acting side by side as smoothly as breathing, giving the impression of having a great time all along. Everything so simple, so cool!

The movie was just fun, sentimental, even dark, supported by an amazing blues-rock soundtrack and a fantastic all around acting.

One might argue it's not really a great movie. I don't care. For me it was! It made me feel real good!

Spartacus (2010–2013)

Sh*t sells!

[1/10 · 17 March 2015]

What you have here is not a series, but the excuse to show unseen violence, nudity and sex on screen. Don't get me wrong. I'm not a moralist or a puritan. I like violence and nudity in movies, but I like it to go along with a plot, to serve a dignifying purpose, and not the other way around. Here, the very very slim plot is the slave of an overwhelming cheap violence and empty sexual content, and its purpose focus only on the exploitation of the idiocy and shallowness of the blockbuster fan.

We could go on about the disturbing misrepresentation of the gladiator fighting and the values of roman society. Or about the dreadful special effects and the ridiculous overuse of slow motion. And let's not forget the basic dialogs and unconvincing acting delivered by Barbies and Kens. There is nothing good in the entire series to be pointed out. Nothing is real. No appeal whatsoever. Everything has the feeling of a cold computer game.

The sad fact that it has so good reviews should be a concern to every movie lover and normal human being.

American Sniper (2014)

When do they shoot a movie about the thousands of murdered Iraqi civilians?

[1/10 · 24 January 2015]

Very good acting, competent technical direction and boring unimpressive story about an ignorant cowboy, who thought he was fighting evil, when in fact he was fighting for oil and territorial dominance while evil was comfortably sitting home and had three names: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld.

This is another republican propaganda flick, not about an hero, but about a tragic figure among so many, who was brainwashed with the most vicious and obscene propaganda into believing that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were involved in 9/11 and had weapons of mass destruction.

This movie is a moral inversion of a greedy and stupid war, which caused the chaos in the region and still kills innocent people every single day. One should be ashamed of portraying the main character as a hero over the corpses of hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, who are the true and only heroes in this disgusting bloodshed.

The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (2014)

Why does this documentary fail?

[3/10 · 11 August 2014]

The story is interesting enough for a documentary, well filmed, made a little bit boring at times though. But it is wounded from the beginning by an inescapable contradiction.

Aaron Swartz was a brilliant engaged young man who wanted to make this world a better place. He had a relentless energy and this rare capacity of combining deep technical knowledge with charisma, rhetorical power and strategical planning. He wanted to make a difference and wanted you to be part of making that difference. He seemed to be marked for greatness.

And then he is indicted by the government, implicated in a promiscuous process absolutely out of proportion, which thought to make an example out of him. And he gets depressed. And who wouldn't if you were facing the spectrum of 35 years in prison? The next thing you know he commits suicide.

Well, I will never judge someone who takes his own life. I'm not a moralist. What I judge is this. Here is a guy, an activist, no doubt a fantastic human being, whose apparent message was let's fight, fight, fight. We can beat and change the system, do good things. Let's not give up. And then he commits suicide? He does in fact give up? Are you kidding me? What about the glowing ideas? What about the inspiring speeches? What about the final message? When the chips are down, blow your brains out?

For me he is not a martyr. Nor a victim. Not even a dreamer. For me he is someone who betrayed everything he stood for.

True heroes that really make a difference are Assanges and Snowdens, not Swartzes.

Red Obsession (2013)

A monumental cliché without substance

[2/10 · 3 June 2014]

I like to enjoy a decent wine. I don't drink a Château Latour or a Château Lafite Rothschield simply because I can't afford them, but If I could, I believe I would once in a while delight myself with such an exquisite occupation. It is strange however, after watching this movie, that my sympathy and respect for red wine didn't increase. In fact, it decreased for a moment.

This documentary is totally hollow. You squeeze it and nothing comes out. You learn virtually nothing about nothing and you are fed with the usual clichés and prejudices about the new economic giant known as China, its people and the globalized world.

The cinematography is also one of the most boring I remember to have witnessed in years. This incipient self-centered director, insists in punching you over and over, again and again, with bird views of French chateaus and never ending vineyards, intercalated with interviews so empty, so senseless, so snobbish, that you start to feel a certain discomfort, even disgust.

Everything tastes very thin, very superficial, very made out of plastic, unlike the Bordeaux wines that deserved a much serious and better documented approach.

The only positive note about this waste of time was the narrator's voice, lent by Russel Crowe.

Searching for Sugar Man (2012)

Sweet indeed

[8/10 · 31 May 2014]

This is a fine documentary, very well filmed and edited. A touching story about Sixto Rodriguez, a fabulous guy and a very talented musician, singer and song writer, who was denied stardom in America of the early 70's probably because of his Mexican origins. Nevertheless, stardom caught up with him 30 years later when he went to South Africa to play for thousands of fans he never knew existed in that distant part of the world and who thought he had died a long time ago.

What surprised me the most, along with the quality of his music, lyrics and singing, was this amazing personality, coolness, humility and sense of complete satisfaction. What an incredible energy came from that man. It was beautiful to watch. No bitterness, no regrets, always a smile.

At a certain point of the documentary his song writing skills are even put above those of Bob Dylan. I personally think that Dylan is a notch higher and that the comparison was out of place, simply because Rodriguez himself would probably never think of comparing himself with Dylan or somebody else for that matter. He is unique, and that's enough.

All Is Lost (2013)

Charlie Brown Goes Down...

[1/10 · 20 February 2014]

Painful acting. Painful script. Painful movie. Unless, of course, they were into comedy which I believe they were not. But when a dude's sailboat is rammed by a huge container on high sea and he manages to go on sleeping you should be prepared for the worst.

If you know a few things about sailing you will be asking yourself how did this guy manage to sail so far? How did he even get to leave the harbor? Even if you never set foot on a sailboat in your life you will be struck by the dumbness of his seamanship. For example, when your ship is flooding you don't look around and take your time until the water reaches your waist. You immediately turn the bilge pump on for obvious reasons. Or when a storm is coming, you make the necessary sail changes before the storm, not during it. And you use a storm jib. And please, put a life vest on and never tie yourself to the rail. Or when deciding to leave a sinking ship (because you had no idea how to behave in a storm) you should have an emergency bag at hand with all the necessary items for a prolonged stay on the ocean to take with you inside the life raft. You NEVER tie the raft to the boat, throw yourself in and take a nap while waiting for the storm to end so you can get inside the boat again and calmly pick up the things you need to survive. You are leaving the ship because IT'S F****** SINKING, you moron, remember??? The last thing you do is TIE YOURSELF TO IT!!! But the last scene sums it all up. NEVER, but really NEVER, start a fire inside a life raft. Why? Could it be because life rafts are made out of highly inflammable materials like rubber and polyester?

And believe me, the list could go on and on and on, from the pathetic scenes overboard to the way he handles the sextant or the flares. What I find hard to understand is why choose an idiot when even an exceptional sailor would have been challenged to the extreme by the very same events, with the difference that plausible action and good seamanship might have turned this tragedy of a movie into a good one.

And finally to the acting, please meet Mr. Stoneface, inexpressive and boring. More words what for?

If there has ever been someone who deserved to drown, this is our guy.

The Counselor (2013)

Repulsive

[1/10 · 18 February 2014]

Yes, repulsive! Why is it repulsive? No, not because of the violence. This violence here is just plain, depicted over and over again in many other movies. Nothing new or repulsive about it. The Ferrari f****** scene? C'mon! That was only bad taste. What is repulsive in this particular movie is that they never intended to tell a story. And how do I know this? Well, because there is no story. Simple! You have a very good camera, a very capable director and a bunch of superb actors like Brad Pitt, who in my opinion steals the show. By the way, I thought Cameron Diaz did her part very well in spite of some negative criticism shown here on IMDb. But that's it people. That is all you gonna get, glued by the most crappy-pseudo-intellectual dialogs you can imagine. A plot? Really, was there a plot? Sorry, if there was one it just passed unnoticed. You never understand what's going on, what and why things go wrong, who the people involved come from, what they do, whom they work for. Actors just slide in and out of scene after firing their mystic s*** while you keep on watching in disbelief. Oh, and there are the cats, those stupid cheetahs, making constantly misplaced appearances on the screen. The only good thing about them was they could not talk. At the end you know as much as you did at the beginning which is to say you know nothing. But this is not entirely true. You know you should never have wasted two hours of your life watching this piece of garbage.

Ridley, next time you want to present your surreal nirvana bull**** announce it first as such. Or go direct some theater in Indonesia.

Elysium (I) (2013)

Bad is not the right word...

[1/10 · 22 January 2014]

There are a few things that make this movie a bad movie. Very unconvincing acting by very talented (Damon, Foster) and untalented (Braga) actors for instance. Or a very thin, rushed and boring plot sold to you as 'THE' science fiction movie. Or perhaps the fighting scenes for the lovers of action. Not even those are made interesting. And what about the plainness and shallowness of the story? One could guess every step of this mess until it was at last finished.

But if there was something that really did bother me was the arrogance and hypocrisy of the film makers to present this piece of trash as a social allegory, a moral message, something very wise and profound that could help us all became better human beings and turn this horrid world into a better place. Let us open the frontiers, let us all share our wealth and smile kindly at our brothers they say. But as always, the final message of this stupid blockbuster was to make wealthier those who are already wealthy. Pathetic!

The White Diamond (2004)

Herzog gets lost in the jungle...

[5/10 · 9 January 2013]

First of all I have to say that I love Werner Herzog's work. He has directed in my opinion some of the best movies and documentary films in old and recent times.

There is no doubt that his beautiful camera pace and skills are not missing in "The White Diamond". You see it's a Werner Herzog's film, his passion for wild life in particular and Nature in general is always present, his interest for human drama and condition not being forgotten.

The problem is the dispersion from the main theme, which seems to be often neglected and in some cases even sliding into second plan. In other words, while Herzog promises to tell you the story of "The White Diamond", you have the impression that this is not the story he really wants to tell you anymore as if he sudden got bored or disappointed, taking refuge in some other jungle stories. One could speculate about the reasons for this behavior, one being the relationship with the White Diamond's pilot, which seems to be somehow stressed. Another reason could perhaps be that it was not in its due time acknowledged, the central plot not being dense or exciting enough to fill the whole documentary. In fact, when the film supposedly reaches its climax, you have more the sensation of a 'downer', like if everybody is just more than happy that the whole experiment is over so they can pack and go home. There is not a smooth flow of events. The plot seems to get stuck at every corner a little bit like a puzzle, with the pieces not really fitting.

Nevertheless, Herzog is Herzog. If you are a fan, you will surely find some strong reasons to see this film.

The Limey (1999)

Watching this movie makes waterboarding a child's play

[1/10 · 14 February 2012]

I really don't get the IMDb rating on this piece of trash... because that's what it is, a piece of trash with capital T!

Pseudo avant-garde bullshit camera moves that were everything but natural or fitting.

Dialogs that seemed made out of brick, so forced, so pretentious, so misplaced, so disconnected, so incredible bad.

General acting below B-movie level, with the zero talented Peter Fonda leading the circus.

Editing taken care of by amateurs, character development a sad joke and the plot... What plot?

This movie is a big nothing. It's an insult which doesn't deserve the classification of movie and should be wiped out from the cinema records.

Deception (2008)

This is what I can truly call a MAJOR DECEPTION!

[1/10 · 31 July 2011]

I don't recall in recent times having seen a movie that got me as mad as this one. Yes, it's a TERRIBLE movie, but with the particularity of being so dumb, that you could not escape feeling furious. If it were only bad, that would have been bad enough but acceptable, in some cases even respectable. But this one was a nasty joke thrown at your face, a charade, an ugly farce.

The beginning is very promising, even spectacular. You sit down, relaxed, with a drink in your hand, and start being pulled into a world of mystery and strange sexual schemes, and you think WOW!... finally something out of the ordinary, something that feels going deep into the dark side. And with excellent actors too. And you keep watching, fully enthusiastic, until you slowly realize that the plot you found so astonishing is after all just some minor side story, not even very important to the REAL plot, and that the REAL plot, a game of stupid uninteresting blackmail and computer burglary, is actually the main dish and you can't believe it. What about the OTHER plot, the good one, the one I was digging? HELP! I WANT IT BACK!

What's going on? How can they do something like that? You are shown a deer but are fed the horns? And then it drags on and on into no man's land, everything so boring, so "for the McDonald's family", so full of the typical Hollywood crap, bla, bla, bla...

And finally the ending, truly the worst I ever saw. They were even given the rare privilege of minimizing the damage with some twisted final, but no sir, it had to be one of those "mass audience bullshit" endings with a gun (two actually) and the bad guy dying and the good guy living and getting the ravishing girl that was bad but not that bad that turned out good after all.

The UTTER DECEPTION! Good to feed the dogs with!

The Expendables (2010)

Why 3 stars instead of 1?

[3/10 · 26 September 2010]

I hated this movie. I really did. Then, why give it 3 stars? Well, the answer is very simple. First of all because I like Stallone. He is the Keith Richards of the cinema, faithful to his stile and his clichés, doing his stuff as it pleases him. Only for that he deserves more than one star. If you like only action and explosions you won't be disappointed.

The other reason is because I had a rotten cinematographic month, where the movies I watched got worse and worse and worse to the point of desperation. Let's see. There was Salt, Iron Man 2, The Karate Kid (remake), Predators and Machete. They were all worse than a frozen Cheeseburger on a rainy day. IMDb had to start supplying minus stars so it would be possible classifying that vomiting nullity. So, compared to that, "The Expendables", a brain-dead imbecility of a movie, seemed to be OK.

To tell you the truth, I was scratching my head, wondering why they do it? Why are movies becoming what they are becoming, absolutely dumb, shallow, empty, superficial, wit free? I guess I know why. The problem is not the movies. The problem is the average movie fans, who are becoming everything I just mentioned above. So, Hollywood is just adapting. Clever!

Kick-Ass (2010)

Suddenly, everybody think they can be a Tarantino...

[3/10 · 13 July 2010]

The idea of this movie is not bad. Unfortunately, on the big screen, it fails totally due to the dispersal of the plot. This movie wants to be everything. Unfortunately, at the end, it's nothing but a "pastiche" of other movies like Batman, Léon, Matrix, Kill Bill or Sin City without their strength and personality. And because it is a copy or if you like, a kind of collage of other movies, the brutality and violence just seem to be misplaced, serving no purpose at all but the glorifying of violence itself.

A thing that bothered me was the (lack of) intention of the director, who seemed to need some direction himself. What was this all about actually? When the movie tried to be comical it was not funny. When it tried to be serious it was kind of comical-stupid. Violence a "déjà vu". Kick-Ass, the main character, seemed more like he was playing a secondary role???

But there is another thing that is bothering me even more. Why is everybody praising this absolute average uninteresting movie, as if it was the new Pulp Fiction?

Get me out of here

Public Enemies (2009)

Very poor character by Johnny Depp and weak storytelling

[3/10 · 15 April 2010]

Did you see "Dillinger", the movie from 1973? No? Well, that's the one you ought to see, not this fancy fabricated Hollywood soap opera.

Johnny Depp fails completely in giving a strong and convincing portrait of the arrogant, extroverted, hot shot gangster named Dillinger. He is simply not the guy for such a role. To tell you the truth, I had the impression he didn't even try very hard and was permanently making an effort not to do one of those grimaces à la Jack Sparrow. Compared to Warren Oates, who masterly played Dillinger on "Dillinger", Depp seems to be a frightened schoolboy with a dirty nose. On the other hand, I believe that Christian Bale made a much better job in grasping the essence of the not less extravagant FBI agent Melvin Purvis.

I do like Michael Mann, his slow pace and his organic camera work. Nevertheless, he was never capable of portraying a strong Dillinger, who seemed more like a second rate bank robber instead of the public enemy Nr.1 that he really was. Of course, Depp's acting only strengthened this lack of strength. Mann was also incapable of providing a solid overview of the strained sometimes charismatic relation Dillinger developed towards society and police. Every attempt to do so fell too thin. As a viewer, I could not help asking myself "oh, so this is the famous Dillinger… mmmm…"

At the last big shooting scene, which takes place at night, Mann decides to introduce the B movie effect, as to try to place the viewer inside the war arena. Well, in my opinion, it not only felt very forced and unnatural, but it totally collided with the way he had been filming. Personally, I did not enjoy this sudden touch.

Not a good movie unfortunately.