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Unsane (2018)
Really bad, the script is the worst part
What sounded like a great promise, falls apart very quickly due to an extremely poor script. First of all, the movie looks awful, because it was filmed with an iPhone so it looks artsy fartsy I guess. The angles are terrible, the quality is grainy and crappy, and everyone looks like they're covered in dark makeup. Simply dreadful. The music is also unbereable, it's completely detached from the supposedly serious experience the main character is having.
Now, the story is about this chick who gets stalked and then moves out of town to avoid this creepy dude. She develops super fears and then she goes into a consultant to "get cured". While she's there, she signs some papers which they tell her they're rutine, but turns out she voluntarily put herself in a mental institution.
At first, like the synopsis says, we're led to believe that she actually does have psychological issues, but in a matter of minutes she casually finds her stalker working in the facility. There's no doubt about it, you never believe that she imagined him or that he never stalked her in the first place, it's spelled out right in your face - he is, in fact, her stalker, and he's there specifically for her. Of course no one believes her and then it's all this ridiculous story of her trying to get out of the place because it's "an insurance scam", as one guy inside explains.
The rest of the movie is her doing the most idiotic things ever in the most unbelievable hospital in existence. The worst part is when she gets a picture of her friend tortured by her stalker. It's basically the perfect proof of everything she was saying, but instead of going calmly to report it, she goes in crazy mode, starts screaming and attacking everyone, and then gets sedated. This stalker guy has more resources than McGuiver also, he can kill people all he wants and nobody ever finds out, not to mention he has almost godhood level of medicine skills.
Terrible movie all around, the acting is ok but honestly the main lead is annoying as hell. Skip it unless you want to get really angry at yourself for wasting precious time and money.
11:14 (2003)
Same Night, Different Angles
A rather short and quick movie, although the synopsis, and especially the tags, are a little misleading. There isn't much of a story to tell or a mystery to solve, but more like a gimmick to show you how much related a bunch of random events can be, and how much a simple action can change the course of other people's events.
It is well told and the ending makes you go "oooh, so that's what happened", basically connecting every dot with no room for loose ends. Revealing parts of the plot would give too much away, and I think it's best enjoyed with the constant discovery of each point of view.
Low budget, but well filmed, you never miss anything and the sound is great too, which is something I usually see it failing in movies like this. The actors are all pretty good, I especially loved Cheri as the manipulative chick who starts to see her sweet plan fall apart and has to think fast to put it back together.
Definitely a fun ride, check it out.
Dimensions (2011)
Barely scifi, barely about time travel
Don't be fooled by the tags: it's barely scifi, and it barely deals with time travel. I'm going to say the only good thing right off the bat: the movie looks great, in picture quality, scenery, wardrobe, and chicks. Sadly, the music is nothing but a single tune of a piano constantly, and it's depressing. Other stuff are simply hilarious: a girl goes alone to a bar and asks for a gin tonic, while the bartender, also a woman, says "it's one of those days, uh?". In Cambridge. In 1930. Seriously?
All right, the bad: everything else. The movie starts with two boys and a girl who are very best friends, the girl dies in an accident and the boys blame themselves. Before this, they're visited by a mysterious old man who gives them a lecture about time travel and the fourth dimension. All this takes 40 minutes of the movie, and I'm no joking. I was so incredibly bored that I honestly wanted to shut it off, but I endured, because in enduring, grow strong. I inmediatly knew who the old man was, as anyone with the smalles experience in time travel movies would, but I decided not to dwell too much on it...
So, the movie goes on 15 years later, the main guy is obsessed with time travel and giving lectures about it and saying with 99% certainty that the future can't be changed, no matter how far you travel to the past (mind you, he uses the same techniques the old man gave him). He meets a nice girl who becomes his helper, he manages to build the machine but gets stolen by his jealous childhood friend / cousin, an evil mal with money (he has money, therefore he's evil and do evil stuff) uses it and becomes trapped in it in which is probably the only good scene in the entire movie. More drama, more boring stuff about love, at the very end of the movie he finally uses the machine with his cousing and travel back in time, revealing that the old man... OMG IT WAS HIM ALL ALONG!!11 I NEVER EXPECTED THAT!!11111
Besides the preditable ending, I was laughing at the huge plot hole they left there. While the paradox of him travelling in time, using the same teachings he gave himself as a child by travelling in time, is nice (handled a million times better in PREDESTINATION though), he spends the whole movie trying to convice everyone that changing the future is impossible. Yet, in the final scene, he "saves" his childhood friend from dying by changing the events - apparently, it was a different timeline or something, but it's not the same visit from the beginning of the movie.
So, to sum it up: he visits and teachs himself in one timeline, but the he does it again in another one but here he saves his friend. Why not doing it from the go and saves us from this film? The movie contradicts itself in a silly way, and I was pissed off about waiting all this time for such a terribad ending.
Whatever, skip this one unless you like big dramas about love.
Hobgoblins (1988)
It stinks, no matter how you look at it
Wow, what can you say about this? It was clearly made completely aware of its own crappyness, which kinda takes away the fun for me. I mean, they deliberately made this film to be as ridiculous and cheesy as possible, so of course the result will be this incoherent mess.
The puppets are most of the times just static, and when they jump on people the actors (and I use that term very loosely) grab them and shake them as if they were attacked, it's just dreadful. The plot is beyond stupid, the whole bar scene last forever, and all the characters are a disgrace. You really can't put this movie in any genre also, because it fails in every level imaginable. I don't think a single person dies in the whole movie, not even the guy who gets completely engulfed in flames, so even the synopsis is a lie.
This movie is terrible, and honestly, I don't mean it in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way, because for me, in order for that to happen, the director has to be honest in the first place. BIRDEMIC and JACK-O are good examples of this, they really tried, but luckily for us, failed miserably. HOBGOBLINS is just a bad rip off of GREMLINS meant as a cash grab, taking advantage of the bad movies cult. The trivia even confirms that the director personally contacted the MST3K crew so they showed one of his films, but eventually sent them this one.
Avoid this crap unless it's in the MST3K format, because to be fair the episode was truly hilarious.
The Martian (2015)
What lacks in character development, compensates in visuals
An interesting movie, but not very original to be honest. While I cannot discuss the science behind it, although I assume it must be somewhat correct since NASA helped, they failed miserably in the psychological side of the story.
At no point our hero shows us the despair of being stranded alone in a planet deadly for any form of life. In fact, it seems like he's having some kind of vacation in there. Only at the end it kinda shows some emotion, the rest of the time it's like "lol disco music". MOON captured this a million times better.
While I do appreciate the fact that everything seems to go wrong, most of the problems are solved inmediately by some conveniently placed object: duct tape, a piece of plastic, whatever. Mark is not just a botanist, but also an engineer, electrician, chemist, surgeon, and anything else the plot requires. The guy has more knowledge than Wikipedia, it's amazing.
Still, an entertaining movie, although it's longer than necessary. The Mars landscape is gorgeus!
Blue Velvet (1986)
Is this supposed to be serious?
Why do I this to myself? The premise sounded really good, since I love murder mysteries, but too late I realized it was a David Lynch movie. This was my first experience with that director, and the only good thing I got from it was to dismiss my curiosity about TWIN PEAKS, because it says it was inspired by this movie.
Let's see... first, and most importantly, it fails as a mystery. The plot is constantly padded by the whole sexual thing between Jeffrey and Dorothy, which makes no sense at all. By the end I couldn't care less about her husband, since she clearly never gave a damn about him either (your partner is missing and you go and get laid with some random guy in your home? Sure...). And the kid, well, if it wasn't because they showed him at the end, I would've believed he never existed in the first place.
I waited for a cool twist at the end to salvage the whole thing but it never came, instead the corrupt cop stood there somehow dead but moving, I don't know. We never get straight answers about the main premise of the movie, instead the focus is on the "romantic" part, and I use the term very loosely because it's more twisted than anything.
Nobody acts like normal human beings. The ones who aren't completely bonkers are more robotic than the bird at the end. Who the hell talks like that? "I can't figure out if you're a detective or a pervert", "that's a human ear all right", "why are there people like Frank?", and other stupid lines that seems to come from someone who never talked to another person or had any kind of experiences in life. The decisions the characters make are completely crazy: why would you agree to sneak into someone else's apartment just like that? Why Dorothy never called the police when her family was missing? Why nobody ever tried to stop Frank and his gang going 100mph all night?
Speaking of the characters, it's like a parade of weirdos. I've read that Frank is supposed to be scary and disturbing, but I find Dennis Hopper over-the-top acting actually hilarious. Buffalo Bill would look at this guy with a confused expression. What's up with the air thingy? What the hell I'm watching right now? It's this a spoof and somehow I didn't get it?
I could keep on and on ranting but it's pointless, it's David Lynch. Everyone is going to praise it as a masterpiece just for the name. To me, it's artsy garbage that failed to entertain and thrill me, and its unnecesary long running time made it worse. Extra points because at least it has some cool music.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
A total letdown
Not long ago I watched the original BLADE RUNNER for the first time and I liked it a lot. I mean, it was nothing original, but the scenery and effects were marvelous, as well the protagonist by Harrison Ford. The sequel is simply garbage in my opinion.
What was the point of the virtual chick? What about that ridiculous threesome, and why they give it so much screen time? What? Why? What?
The main point of the plot makes no sense: why would you go through the effort of letting replicants reproduce, when it's much more time consuming and expensive? Just by answering that question you'll realize the whole "searching for the secret" it's ridiculous. The ending doesn't solve anything, like, at all. Any question you had will remain unanswered. How do they reproduce? Did they got away? Did the rebellion worked? Good luck figuring that out.
The worst thing about this movie is the pacing. Literally, every scene seems to go in slow motion. Now, the first one had this slow pacing, but it worked because it actually served a purpose - here, it's just to pad the whole movie. I was bored out of my skull with this, and couldn't care less about anyone except Lieutenant Joshi, who sadly was nothing but a secondary character. Harrison Ford was just there for the paycheck, he looked even more bored than me. Jared Leto was the most cheesy and ridiculous villain I've seen in a while; his monologues were terrible and made no sense.
Awful movie and an insult to the original. It's embarrassing to think that the first one looked way better and had only a fraction of its budget.
Logan (2017)
A somber yet action packed movie
Apart from the original trilogies of SPIDER-MAN and X-MEN, I'm not much into super heroes movies. I watched X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE and I tought it was really good, not sure why everybody trashed it. In contrast, I consider THE WOLVERINE and DAYS OF FUTURE PAST complete garbage, and made me move away from the franchise altogether. I had the disgrace of watching stuff like BATMAN V SUPERMAN and one of the AVENGERS (don't ask me which), and I regret it to this day. I decided to give this one a shot because I heard good things about it, and they weren't wrong.
The movie does have some problems tho: it's extremely bleak and depressing, it has some plot holes, some things came out of nowhere, like the Logan clone, and it doesn't follow any of the other movies, since it's a stand alone film; this may be considered a good thing because someone who is not familiar with Wolverine or the X-Men franchise can follow the plot without any issues.
But these things are minor when you face amazing roles from the main leads, especially the young Dafne Keen as Laura. Unlike the previous films the gore is ranked up high, which I think it's fitting for the role of Wolvie, although it's weird seeing the Professor saying those nasty words. I did loved the scene in which he uses what's left of his powers on the horses, it was strangely moving.
Speaking of him, they gave a great ending to the main character but not to one of the most important ones in the whole franchise, they could've put more effort on his death I think.
Still, Logan did had a good treatment, and his farewell from the screen was a satisfying one, ending with a note of hope. A well done and powerful movie.
Ocean's Eleven (2001)
Get ready for an unpopular opinion
I enjoy scam movies a lot. I decided to give this one a chance, even when it's filled with actors hated by me, since it's quite famous and generally regarded as a great movie, and by many as the ultimate con movie. Boy I was disappointed.
First of all, my biggest gripe with this film: I don't care about any of the characters. I don't even know the names of most of them, the only one who has a little bit of development is Ocean himself but since he's played by George Clooney it doesn't matter because that man can't act - he's literally smiling in every single scene. The only character for whom I cared a little was Saul, but after thinking about it I realized that his job is completely unnecesary: why go through all the effort of bringing the explosives into the vault when they had a man inside? Why not just give them to the chinese fella and avoid the whole suitcase drama?
The whole movie is filled with plot holes like this one that only serve to pad the film, like the romantic interest that it's 100% useless, and full of "what if" situations. What if the EMP didn't worked? What if the tech guy got caught while lost? What if the entered the room where Ocean was getting beaten? The amount of chance this plan was based on is so ridiculous that borders in the realm of magic. I like my scam movies to be rooted in reality, that's why they're fun, because they can easily happen around us.
And what's up with the uplifting music after they commited a robbery like this? Am I supposed to feel good about these criminals? They're thiefs! I actually cheered the whole movie for Benedict. I waited for a nice twist at the end that salvaged this whole mess but it never came. Instead, it was filled with cliches: girlfriend goes with the bad guy but at the end she stays with the "good" guy, bad guy is bad because he has money and therefore he must be evil and do evil stuff, no one ever caughts them even when the government itself may be after them, they're all so incredibly good at what they do that not even the entire staff at the casino can even stop them, etc.
I felt like this movie was the GOODFELLAS of scam films: flashy and cocky, but with crappy plot and even crappier characters. And like GOODFELLAS, it's held like some sort of sacred piece of art. Sorry, but to me, it's more like a piece of crap.
Being John Malkovich (1999)
Falls apart rather quickly
Well, well... this was some hell of a ride. I wasn't sure what to expect with this movie, but certainly not this drug fueled trip. I really wanted to like this film, but sadly it has so many flaws that, at least for me, ended with a sour taste in my mouth.
First of all, the good things: I liked the concept, the acting (I recognized Cameron Diaz but I had to check it out to make sure), John Cusack is great as the loser hopelessly in love, and the puppet work is amazing - probably the best part of the movie. I loved all the comedy that had nothing to do with the main plot: the silly office, the deaf secretary, the crazy boss, Charlie Sheen cameo... basically, during the first half of the movie, it had its moments of laughs. Sadly, it went downhill from there.
Now, the bad: the plot went nowhere. I was hoping for some kind of conclusion or idea behind the ego or something like that, but it never came. It basically dwelled 100% in the sexual side of the characters, and never moved away from there.
For example, when Craig takes full control of John and he performs in front of Maxine, I was really hoping for him to discover that his skills with the puppets were gone, since he was using another body and his fingers weren't the same, but sadly that didn't happened. That would've been amazing to show us that, regardless of how bad our lives are, everything that makes us "us" is unique and personal. Yet, here it seems that if you're very strong and transport to a skinny guy, your strength goes with you... in your mind, I guess?
The whole old-people-trying-to-live-forever thing made no sense. Who took control of John's body after all? Just the main guy? The rest of the people were just prisoners in his mind? What kind of eternal life is that?
While I think the actors were good, the characters sucked. Maxine is really cruel and mean, then suddenly she's nice, she hates Craig's puppets, then she asks him to perform for no reason, she doesn't like Lotte physically, then she spends her life with her. Craig only wants to perform with puppets, then he completely forgets about them because he "fell in love". Lotte is simply bizarre. At the end, I didn't cared about any of them, because they didn't cared about themselves.
The ending is just bitter, at least for me. Basically, nobody learned anything, except that the chicks liked each other. No one seemed to care about John like, at all. Why not a single one of the hundreds of people going into his mind managed to take hold over it, by the way?
So, whatever. I'm pretty sure this movie doesn't get bad reviews because it's "psychological, original, and deep", therefore if you say anything bad about it it's because "you didn't get it". I'm sorry, I think it's just a mess. Great idea, but poorly executed and went nowhere. It does have its moments though, but they're short and crammed in the beginning.
Bone Tomahawk (2015)
Western Horror With Kurt Russell? Yes Please!
While not a fan of westerns, I watched this movie specifically for Kurt Russell, and I was pleasanty surprised. The whole setting is very well done, although many times the movie is way too dark, and everything seems so "clean" for a western. The suspense is amazing and the troglodytes are a scary bunch. There's some gore which is really nasty and does serves a purpose, it's not there just to freak you out.
If you like a different take on the western genre, I thoroughly recommend this. Character development is done really well, you end up knowing the group of cowboys and rooting for them, even for John Brooder, who's kinda messed up. And if you like good ol' Kurt, get ready for some kick ass scenes from the most underrated badass guy from the 80s and 90s. I loved some lines of dialog, too.
Overall, another proof that low budget films (only 1.8m!) can be really good, and even better than high budget crap. 8/10
Repo Men (2010)
Don't Miss the Ending!
While the concept sounds rather generic, the setting and overall mood of the movie is very well done. At certain points, the city has this BLADE RUNNER kinda vibe, which is great. The parallels between the plot and pharmaceutics and banks aren't very sutil, but still allows for much analysis. Perhaps if they toned down the violence and gore it could've been a more cerebral movie, but the fun factor is certainly off the roof the way it is.
Jude Law is awesome as always, and you totally believe his change of mind. I don't particularly like Forest Withaker but he does a great job portraying this unstable and mindless drone of The Union. Alice Braga sucks, she's like the token latina chick that is just there so the main character can fall in love. In fact, this whole sudden relationship thing was a complete failure, not to mention the "sexual surgery" scene, which almost killed the movie for me of how ridiculous and bad it was. Luckily, the excellent ending salvaged the whole thing, otherwise I would've ended up really p**sed.
Tons of action and cool fighting scenes, a nice plot, great lead character, and a sweet ending made this a very fine watch! 8/10
Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Artsy-fartsy Garbage
Perhaps I just enjoy going against the current, perhaps I just suck as a movie watcher... or perhaps, maybe perhaps, this movie is a little bit overrated? I've watched it for the first time last weekend and I hated it. It's basically TRAINSPOTTING but without the memorable scenes, the black humor, the interesting characters, and the uplifting ending.
Not only the four main cast is ridiculously boring and cliched, but I also couldn't give a damn about any of them, therefore making the whole emotion exploitation of the movie meaningless. There wasn't a single point in the whole plot in which they tried to be better by pure sacrifice and effort, all of them took the easy way out and basically blamed it all in the rest.
The portrayal of both medical and security staff is laughable, those hospitals looked like they came from a horror movie (electroshocks without anesthetics? Sending away a patient with gangrene, and then arresting him without treatment first? Giving amphetamines to a person who wants to lose weight, just like that?).
Plenty of scenes were totally useless, just there for the shock factor, like frontal nudity, the guy inyecting himself in the wound for no reason, the whole orgy at the ending, and many more.
The editing made me dizzy, it felt like a neverending music video. The dialog is simply awful: a lot of phrases are not only bad, but also used more than once, and in some cases, by more than one character, as if we needed to hear it over and over because they were oh-so-deep.
Honestly, I believe that the only reason this movie got popular was because the music, which is really good and appropiate for each scene. The rest is total artsy-fartsy garbage, sorry.
The Man from Earth (2007)
Like a Longer Twilight Zone Episode
This movie felt like a longer TWILIGHT ZONE episode, but unlike this amazing show, it lacked a proper and surprising finale. Instead, it abruptely ended and left me empty, instead of wanting to know more about the protagonist, or think about the ramifications of his condition.
The premise is simple. A young professor is retiring and his partners throw him a goodbye party, in which he decides, for no real reason, to reveal them a huge secret: he's 14.000 years old. At first it's really engaging, and like the characters, you want to keep up with John. But as soon I realized that this guy seems to be always in the exact moment of history, managing not only to meet famous figures but also becoming one himself, I stopped believing the whole ordeal, and therefore, giving a damn about it.
I mean, not only he had the most incredibly luck ever, surviving thousands of years without getting into a fatal accident, disaster, or war, but he also stood right alongside unique people from history, just because of it - and don't even make me go to the "twist". Suspension of disbelief can only be strechted so far.
The story reminded me a lot to K-PAX (a good one, but sadly a ripoff of an argentinian movie called HOMBRE MIRANDO AL SUDESTE), but unlike that one, you don't end wondering if the story is true or not. Here, you're 100% sure: the guy is, in fact, 14.000 years old, which personally I felt it was a dumb move. I think it would've been much better if we didn't knew for sure if he was telling the truth.
Still, it's a good movie. I liked the low budget feel, the grainy look, and the acting is pretty good, even when the characters are so cliched and ridiculous (what's up with the middle aged guy carrying a student in his motorcycle btw?). Check it out!
The Abyss (1989)
Overrated Hollywood Garbage
My God, what a huge letdown this movie was. It starts off pretty good, with a submarine that crashes after a strange encounter with an unidentified underwater vessel. Then, a group of ridiculous cliched divers are recruited to find it and check for survivors, with the help of cardboard cutout navy seals.
Is this movie an adventure? A romance? A mystery? A sci-fi? Well, it's none of these. It mixes every single plot you can imagine, and the result is an incoherent mess that doesn't really know what it's trying to be. I was surprised at how predictable this movie is: pretty much every single plot point is called in advance. The married couple who "hated" each other, the fat guy saying he can hit hard, the breathing underwater, the ridiculous plan of drowning but reviving because the blood is cold, etc. I could almost hear Crow's voice yelling "plot point! plot point!" every time a character made an obvious comment about something that would happen later.
So anyways, after the initial 15 minutes the movie forgets the whole "finding for survivors" thing and becomes a disaster movie, in which this gang, which is composed by people who doesn't behave like normal human beings like, at all, tries to mantain their sub working. Then, aliens show up, but they may as well never been there because they have no relevance to the plot. Seriously, take them away or replace them with whales or something and nothing changes. Meanwhile, the movie goes on an on, it's so long it feels like an eternity, I haven't been so incredibly bored in a while.
The part which disappointed me the most was the fact that the abyss is barely shown. I was always fascinated by the untold mysteries of the darkness below the depths, and I tought this movie would try and tell me more about them. Sadly, most of the action happens inside submarines, with people running in them and shouting random phrases related to, well, submarines. I guess it could be exciting if you like submarines.
At no point I felt they were below hundreds of meters of water. When they do show the outside you can barely see a couple of rocks and machines moving slowly, they may as well be in a small river. You don't see any fish, plants, anything, just a blue background and some rocks. So impressive.
The ending is more Hollywood garbage, I stopped caring like an hour and a half. The characters are all so bad I couldn't force myself to give a damn about them. As a positive point, I do have to say that the special effects are quite good for 1989, but sadly good movies are more than just special effects.
Just avoid this thing, it's overrated trash. Even the generic score sucks.
Unforgiven (1992)
I wanted to love it
Man, this movie was a disappointment. I'm not much into westerns, but nevertheless I recently decided to watch the "dollars trilogy", and boy did I loved it. So coming into this modern take on the genre, and with a cast like that, I was expecting a great movie, but sadly it was quite the boring drama which did nothing for me.
First, the direction. I usually love Clint Eastwood's movies, but this one was rather bland. Everything was too clean and polished for such a harsh time, if you watch the Sergio Leone movies, everyone was dirty, sweaty, and had bad teeth. The shooting scenes are few, short, and nonsensical, extremely far away from the awesomeness of the movies of old - how the hell did Little Bill didn't shoot Munny after he took down the bartender, I will never know.
It has too many rainy scenes, which are dark and murky. It's cool to have action scenes in the rain (as unoriginal they are), but this one goes too far. It takes two hours to get to the last and pretty much only fight, but by that time I was almost snoring. I know there's at least two more shootouts, but they're not between two sides, more from one to another and then running away. I was expecting a cool duel like the times of old, but the movie was trying to steer away from the epicness of those scenes, because killing is bad or something about that.
Now, the script. I understand that they were trying to take on the cowboys as more real human beings, with their own problems and weights in their souls, but this one is simply lame. It's like everyone's Mother Teresa or something. Most of the characters are huge cliches: prostitutes with hearths of gold, a hot-shot kid who lie about how many men he killed to impress others, a ruthless sheriff, and so on. The town was hilarious because not only was compossed by a couple of houses, but it seemed to have more security than actual people living in it. At the end I couldn't care much about anyone, not even Munny, because his dialog was always the same: "oh woe is me, I did bad things in the past", "my wife straigthened me up", "ain't gonna drink or kill anyone else", then proceeds to get drunk and kill everyone because his friend died.
Overall, it's not a bad movie. I understand what they were trying to do, but sadly I felt bored and couldn't care about anyone. Perhaps I needed to be in a different state of mind, right now I want closeups of squinting eyes and hands reaching for guns.
Joker (2019)
A list of reasons of why I hated this awful movie
I finally made some time to watch this incredibly overhyped film, and boy was it painful. Here's some observations I'd like to make about it:
1) First, I'm going to address the title character: it has nothing to do with the infamous villain. The movie can be called anything you like, just remove the three names from the comic, which are Joker, Gotham, and Wayne, and it has nothing, and I mean nothing to do with it. I'm convinced that this was a movie about some crazy guy and they just slapped the title at the last minute as a marketing ploy, since it was the whole craze at the time. It clearly worked like a charm.
But it goes even further than that: by using the name Wayne to portrait a selfish rich guy, you undermine the whole story of the comic that has been built for generations, in which Thomas Wayne was always a wise and generous man, and Bruce tried to keep that legacy going in the form of Batman. So basically they not only made the movie nothing like the comic, they also took a huge dump on it. And that's coming from someone who doesn't even read comic books.
2) Now, the other constantly mentioned thing, the "cinematography". The movie is composed mostly by grey buildings, dull faces, and boring insides; you will only see some color when the main character paints himself. It's so grim to look at, and I understand that that was maybe the whole point, but it's just dreadful. I was sick of watching those mind-numbing streets filled with random people while hearing a constant and depressing chelo as a soundtrack - and by constant I mean 80% of the film. Yes, when it's not that chelo, it's some kind of inappropriate song in the background, and that's it. My ears hated me for two hours.
Other stuff placed by the director are simply hilarious, and I felt like an idiot just for watching this movie. For example, when the lead character discovers that his whole relationship was an illusion created by his mind, the simple use of the dialog already told me that. Yet for some reason the director felt the need to show me each indivual scene of him with the girl and without her, just to remind me that OMG she wasn't there!!1. Like, could he spoonfed me more this stupid and extremely overused twist?
3) The other thing that everyone raved about: Phoenix's acting. That forced laugh he uses the entire movie is terrible, terrible bad. I actually cringed every time he did it - just try right now to laugh out loud and record yourself. Now hear it... do you feel how stupid you sound? Now make that half of the dialog in this movie. A lot of scenes are taken straight from other movies, like when he talks by himself with the gun like TAXI DRIVER, or the relationship with the girl, very similar to THE KING OF COMEDY. Hell, even the whole visit to the show reminded me of that movie. At no point I felt sad for the character, or any character at all for that matter, it was impossible for me to connect with anyone.
4) The character is completely unbelievable. Are you telling me that he suddenly took the courage to go and kiss the girl just because he killed some guys? Like, he could barely speak normally before that, but then he became a total stud; I understand that it only happened in his mind, but he clearly didn't knew that, since his surprise later in the movie is genuine, so in his mind, he did went and kissed her.
Not to mention... he was on seven medications, stopped taking them, and no side effects, like, at all? Hell, with seven medications you wouldn't even be able to remember where you live, imagine stopped taking them just like that. And this guy, who's clearly rather dumb because he can't do anything properly, somehow became the mastermind that is the Joker? The villain who could manage to confuse the best detective in the world? Yeah right. Not to mention, he would be pretty much an old guy by then. No wonder he dyes his hair.
5) And last, yet the most important issue to me: I felt that the whole point of the movie was not to entertain or move me, but instead just to make politics. It's a huge vehicle for socialist propaganda, which sadly I can see every day of my life, destroying my country (Argentina) from the core for generations to come. From the very start you'll see how the garbage pickup service is suspended because union protests, turning the city into a huge dump (you never know why they're doing that, only that it's the rich's fault somehow); you'll see constant approval of rioting, destroying of property, violence (especially against the authority), a complete disregard for human life, and a total hate for everyone who has money, who apparently are responsible for every problem anyone could have in this city. Funny how this hate machine for capitalism is brought to us thanks to capitalism, isn't it? I truly wonder if the $1,074,251,311 that this movie made worldwide was donated to some charity or country with problems much more serious than "people are mean to me!".
So, is there anything good about this? Well, there's no shaky camera, except for one scene, because it's oh so deep I guess and totally needs to shake. Other than that, it's one of the worst movies I've seen in a while. I ended up feeling bored and depressed, and not a good depression like the one you feel when a hero dies after an epic battle in which he manages to save his friends, but more the depression you get after watching a ten hours golf match. A soul crushing need to go and do anything else to forget this mess.
Now You See Me (2013)
Painfully Bad
Whoa, this was painful. With a cast like that (Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine) and a promise of magic, mystery and a heist, you'll expect a great, cerebral plot, and a nice surprise at the end. Sadly, the plot is equivalent of getting spinned in a swivel chair while getting hit in the face with a sack of bricks.
The amount of holes this script has is insane. Most of the situations are completely unbelievable, considering it's supposed to be "real" illusionism - here, a guy can hypnotize people at will in a matter of seconds, and force them do pretty much anything, and that's just one example of how ridiculous this movie is. The whole death fake scene is another major offender, totally bonkers.
Every single character is awfully annoying and has close to zero development. When the two previously mentioned actors show up, it's nothing but a cameo. Characters like the Interpol agent are there just to pad the film, because they bring nothing to the table except a forced romance that's tellegraphed from the beginning.
The ending is simply stupid. I actually thought of it halfway through the movie, but discarded it because it made no sense at all. I was surprised at the revelation but for all the wrong reasons.
Movies like THE PRESTIGE, which I thought it was ruined with the sci-fi concept, and THE ILLUSIONIST, which I hated because of a justified murder, at least had the decency of showing actual real tricks, in front of the camera. NOW YOU SEE ME uses CGI almost in every trick, making them impossible to perform in real life, and therefore, ruining the whole concept of magic. It's nothing but a flashy show of cocky people and a story in which rich people are bad because they have money.
Avoid at all costs unless you want the lose two hours of your life, and end up really angry at yourself. At least both Caine and Freeman make the best of their scripts...
The Big Lebowski (1998)
Like Watching Paint Dry
Probably the most boring "comedy" I've ever seen. No, random stuff patched together doesn't make for funny gags, sorry.
It's probably hilarious and "quotable" to those who live their lives smoking pot and being useless all the time. But, for the rest, it's just a crappy story about a parasite of society for whom you'll feel no simpathy. The plot is meaningless, the jokes are just random talking that makes no sense, most of the scenes are extremely predictable, and the characters are all disgraceful.
You could probably have more fun watching Shitizen Kane. Avoid it like the plague!