etsenberg Reviews

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

Lots of action, no logic

[5/10 · 2 July 2024]

Well, if you are not tired of repetitive scenes "a gang on bikes and buggies attack a huge fuel truck at high speed" from previous Mad Max movies, you will get your favorite dish, Again and again. But virtually all characters in this film act extremely stupid. The oasis dwellers did not care to guard and protect the entrance into their paradise. Furiosa swears to her mother to escape and return home even if her mom fails to do it, but instead she goes back into the hands of the bad guys w/o a slightest hope to save her mother (and indeed, she just sees the latter being tortured and killed and becomes a caged captive herself). And Dementos (sorry if misspelled), the gang leader? He is definitely not a good guy (actually, almost nobody in this movie is), but after torturing to death the mother he does not torture the daughter (while keeping her in chains) in order to get the same secret of the greatest importance - the road to the oasis! (BTW, why nobody found it again as the first group of bikers did? It was not too far, just several hours of riding!) Dementos in general is a worse poseur than even Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean. He talks too much for a gang leader, and at the end he even tells Furiosa, who captured him and is going to shoot him. That it will not satisfy her urge for vengeance! The result? She agrees, and instead of a merciful bullet he receives a fate worse than death (sorry guys, no spoiler here - that was really nice!) Between these two scenes - Dementos capturing Furiosa and Furiosa capturing Dementos - there are 2 hours of action where I completely lost the thread - who attacks who, who betrays who, who ambushes who. Anyway, they are all bad guys, so there is no team to root for. But the scenes of convoy attacks are very stupid again - as if it were a comedy and not a "serious" and even tragic film. Can you imagine, for example, a western where a gang attacks a train using balloons and hang gliders? It was technically possible in the end of the 19th century, but totally impractical!

Closer to the end (but before the final scenes), Furiosa is captured by Dementos AGAIN, and chained by her hand AGAIN, but that time she escaped by cutting her hand off. How did she manage? Were Dementos and his guys stupid enough to leave her a knife? Or did she use her teeth? (Possible for a fox but improbable for a human.) Yes, her hand has been damaged before that, but not to the extent when it could be easily torn off! (Otherwise those who chained her would have noticed). Later, she gets a huge bionic hand instead. OK. Cyborgs are great, but if this level of technology is available, why don't they use drones and other hi-tech weapons? And why we don't see other cyborgs?

Still, the film is watchable if you can turn your critical thinking off. And my special thanks and praise to the authors (without irony) for no sex scenes in the whole movie.

Spaceman (I) (2024)

Anru-science fiction. Even more stupid than Interstellar

[2/10 · 4 March 2024]

I totally absolutely hate every movie or book (or author) which propagates the ideas "human emotions are better than intellect, love is more important than science, "heart" is wiser than mind" and all that crap. I disgust this even in fantasy, and when something with such ideas even approaches the SF genre, it should be considered a felony! I hate Interstellar for that, but Interstellar still had some good visual effects and. Being mostly anti-scientific and illogical, had at least SOME (not many) scientifically-ground points. This film has none. It is totally stupid, based on the most primitive clichés, lacking both knowledge and imagination and just boring.

The Vanished (2020)

Interesting, but totally unrealistic

[5/10 · 4 February 2024]

Date of birth is probably the most often thing each American tells next only to his/her name. I have to tell my DOB every time I call a technical support, let alone at any contact with any government agencies. And here the parents tells the police that their daughter vanished, and they are not asked her DOB?! That's absurd! What country is the scriptwriter from? I guess he never lived in the USA ;) And of course the first thing the police would do is checking all the information about the missing child. Her contacts in school and internet, her medical conditions, any samples of her fingerprints or DNA etc. Nobody will search for a child which does not exist, basing solely on her parents' words. BTW, the parents also will be suspects in any such case, so all their words must be verified.

That's the most, while not the only, stupid and unrealistic thing in the movie.

Stowaway (I) (2021)

The film I deleted on the 9th minute

[1/10 · 5 July 2022]

The first (or one of the first) American(!) mission to Mars.

Not a single white male onboard (including the "stowaway").

By watching (let alone making) such films you support anti-white racism and.misandry!

High Road to China (1983)

Perfect for 1960's... still nice for now

[7/10 · 24 December 2018]

I was surprised that this was a 1983 movie because it looks 20 years older - the very classical 1960's style. The plot seemingly collected all cliches of the adventure genre, starting from the very beginning - a young daughter of a rich man hires a drinking war (WWI) hero to find her father in exotic lands, through all dangers they meet (from a cruel barbarian who wants to get the girl to evil German ace) and all the conflicts between themselves. to the final kiss right before the credits in the very end (thanks to the authors. nothing worse than that, no sex scenes which I totally absolutely hate). Still, the girl is not a typical rich spoiled doll, she is brave and she is a good pilot herself - this is probably the most original point in the film. But, while being very classical or trite, whatever term you prefer, the film is really nice, especially for antique aviation fans like me. It's not humorous enough to be a comedy, but not too serious, let alone tragic, as well.

Revenge (II) (2017)

The most unrealistic BS I've ever seen (or at least remember)

[1/10 · 9 September 2018]

Well, if it were a zombie/undead movie, or a SF movie about superhumans with superpowers, it could not be that bad. But it is not, The authors just want us to believe that a regular human being can fall from a 10-stores high rock onto a stake, be impaled through the belly and not only survive this, but run away and, with the only help of mescaline and heated tin from a beer can, heal this wound in several hours and run, shoot and fight as if nothing has happened! (Comparing to this, running barefoot all the time in hot desert full of sharp stones may be not worth mentioning.) I suggest the filmmakers to go on and to make a sequel where the girl revenges the rapists after being decapitated! Brains are not needed neither for making not for watching such movies after all.

Valley of Shadows (2017)

Don't waste your time!

[1/10 · 3 March 2018]

I am shocked with the high ratings of this movie. It's just boring nothing with no meaningful end. The whole plot can be told in a couple of lines. Something kills sheep. 2 boys think it's a werewolf. Then the younger boy loses his dog. Then half of the film he wanderers in the forest looking for his dog; nothing happens. Then he meets a man living in a house in the forest; nothing special in the man and the house. The man says he is the beast who kill sheep; we never know if he means it literally. Nothing else happens between the man and the boy. Then the man puts the sleeping boy in the boat. The boy is found by rescuers. The older boy founds his dog (alive). The boy breaks the fence which was built to protect sheep from the beast. Then we see the boy lying on his bed (alive), with a pool of something like blood under the bed. The end. Ah yes, the boy also had an elder brother which was a drug addict, was expelled from home and maybe died or maybe committed some crime. We never get any explanation of this line, too.

Fertile Ground (2011)

Nothing new, but really good!

[8/10 · 4 September 2016]

Don't trust those low ratings. The movie is really good. Yes, it doesn't contain anything we didn't see before in haunted house stories. But well, the same can be said about classical movies of any genre. If you like the genre as much as I do, you'll probably like this movie. If you are looking for something very original, check art house, not horror.There is still an unresolved question in the end, if there really was something supernatural in the house or the woman just gone mad because of her stresses, coincidences and imagination. And yes, we've seen such open endings before, too. But again, I see nothing wrong in it. Just yesterday I've watched another movie with a similar plot - "Deadline", but "Fertile Ground" is better, in my opinion.

Shelley (2016)

Don't lose your time. This crap doesn't even have a plot.

[1/10 · 13 August 2016]

I trusted to the good reviews above, and it was a big mistake. This movie is not just slow-paced and boring - it just ends with no explanation of what was happening. The only thing you can guess - "probably there is some evil in this baby", but you guessed it from the very beginning and didn't need 1.5 hour for that. What kind of evil? Why? What's going to happen next? Did the husband die and appear in the house as a ghost, or did he just return home? No answers. The whole "plot" can be told in several phrases. A rather old woman never could carry a baby, so she and her husband ask their Rumanian worker Elena to be a surrogate mother. Elena agrees, but as her pregnancy progresses, she gets health problems and feels disgust to the baby, eventually trying to kill the girl in her womb. The doctors save the baby; Elena disappears from the plot. Then the husband begins to feel the similar disgust (for no reason) and tries to move the baby away from the house, but his wife prevents it (maybe killing him or maybe not) and returns home with the baby. Her husband is shown behind her. The end. There is NOTHING else in the whole movie, literally NOTHING.