the_woodwose Reviews

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Say what you will, Tarantino knows his craft.

[8/10 · 27 May 2012]

This movie is an historically inaccurate, piece of overly violent crap, with the same level of comedy that made Hogan's Heroes a hit. There's no god-damned way in the world that this should work.

But it does.

Inglourious Basterds one of the most compelling movies I've ever watched, but at the end of the day, it's like a bucket of fried chicken from KFC, pretty goddamn tasty, but you just know it's not good for you.

There are seminal films that change everything, and in the history of film, there are only really two, Birth of a Nation, and Citizen Kane that profoundly changed the medium.

Taratino has it in him to do the same, if he could only find a worthy subject and story. Inglorious Basterds isn't it.

But it's still a compelling film

Steve Jobs: One Last Thing (2011 TV Movie)

A Pathetic Documentary

[2/10 · 3 December 2011]

This documentary really doesn't give much insight to Steve Jobs. Oh wait, he liked to take walks. Wow! What a revelation. This whole thing was a badly put together mish-mash of people talking about Steve Jobs, with a couple of snippets of Jobs talking about various things. It was more or less in chronological order, but was rarely given much of a context. Hmmm, one guy remembers a raging argument with Jobs but can't remember what it was about. Probably the most interesting thing in the whole long slog of the documentary was the guy talking about trying to build a prototype of a mouse.

This documentary should have either focused on the technologies that Jobs pushed into being or more about the person that Jobs was, what he believed in, what the corporate culture at Apple was like, and what affect he had on the people around him.

Unfortunately, it really did neither, and basically left me with more questions and fewer answers about Jobs than I had before. A really dissatisfying documentary, poorly made and rushed.

Give it a pass.

Hot Coffee (2011)

Biased Propaganda

[5 September 2011]

Let's get a couple of facts out of the way that this "documentary" never bothered with. From a taste standpoint, coffee has to be brewed just off the boil, which means at 195 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, and you can not find anyone serious about good coffee who will disagree with that. Secondly, when someone hands you a cup of hot coffee, it's your responsibility to deal with it, to avoid injuring yourself with it. If someone hands you a loaded gun, and you shot yourself in the face, who's fault is that?

Yes, this woman screwed up, she dumped a cup of very hot coffee in her lap. How the hell is that McDonald's fault? Because they sold coffee that is hot? Hells, bells, their customers EXPECT hot coffee.

My brother when he was two years old, pulled a freshly brewed cup of hot coffee my dad had just set down for a second onto to himself and was hospitalized with burns all over his body. Gosh I wish we could have thought of someone to sue, because we'd be rich forever.

This stupid woman poured hot coffee all over herself and sued the pants off McDonalds. And won.

And this STUPID PIECE OF PROPAGANDA tries to make us believe that's justice. It's not justice. It's a set of tragedies. This woman was burned beyond belief and spent months in pain for a mistake SHE made. That's the first tragedy, but there's only one person who could have prevented it. The second tragedy is that a court of law inexplicably gave this woman millions of dollars of OTHER people's money for making a mistake that none of those other people could have prevented.

And yet this film tries to convince us that's justice.

It's not justice. It's extortion.

The Weight of Chains (2010)

Deeply flawed...

[5 September 2011]

This documentary purports to describe why Yugoslavia broke apart in the 1990's. Surprise, surprise, it was all a US Imperialist plot! Who knew?!

Actually, this documentary is not quite as simplistic as that. It turns out that the EU is also evil, as is the IMF, NATO, and anyone who can't see that a country dominated by a communist elite is so much better than a country dominated by a capitalist elite.

This documentary does provide a different point of view though and is a thought-provoking if you can stomach the absolute banality of it's completely biased pro-Serb viewpoint and the sing-song style of it's insufferably-I'm-smarter-than-you narrator