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Dune (2021)
Didn't care for the visuals
Competent but quite ordinary entertainment. I seem to be among the few who liked the Lynch version - at least back in the day, it's been a long time since I watched it. I also seem to be in a minority in finding the visuals pretty meh. Shots are all yellow or all red or all dark. Okay, I know it's a sun seared desert planet, but where is the subtle muted palette? Nor the art direction. Villeneuve seems to have a thing for spherical spaceships. Everything is blocky and geometric. Just not interesting. The other flaws have been well covered. Slow, yet no drama, no tension, little emotion, but lots of buzzy shield fighting. - Would anyone who has not read the book understand by watching the film that shields stop anything moving fast, hence the blade work??
Blow the Man Down (2019)
The sinful and the damned.
This is a story about two sisters, their deceased mother, and her female compadres. It is about how the older generation has, and continues to, nurture and protect them, and when they do and do not judge. That does not make it a woman's picture or an investigation of a matriarchy. The men in this hard scrabble fishing village don't have it better. Listen to those "annoying" chanteys. Some of you missed the tale of cannibalism avoided by Providence. It's just a movie about a pair of sisters and the women of the village who raised them.
The younger, wilder sister, having buried her mother and discovering that her deferred dream of attending UMaine is in as much jeopardy as the mortgage on their house, decides to do bad things with the baddest boy in the bar. But when she opens the wrong door and uncovers something she should not, she must flee for her safety. And to escape his clutches, she overdoes it with a brick. Not recognizing the evil she's seen, she mistakenly enlists her older, steadier sister into covering up the sin.
It doesn't take long for this to unwind. But when it does, it reveals a deeper tangle involving the police, a local madam, a drug smuggler, and some working girls. And most of all the village women whose disapproval is only prudish on the surface. The dominoes start to fall in unexpected directions, lines are crossed, and prices are paid. But because this is not a dumb men's thriller, there are no mortal enemies, just folks struggling to survive while walking the line. As the song goes, if you aren't sinning you better find a landsman job.
LOOK FOLKS! I've spent this week watching The Vast of Night, You Were Never Here, and Midsommar. Each one more seriously pretentious, more highly rated, and more abysmally awful than the next. Blow the Man Down may be billed as a comedy and often quirky fun, but it's far more insightful and moving than the aforementioned twaddle. It's a genuine pearl.
Midsommar (2019)
Hi. This is Simon and Connie. Bye.
Gorgeous shots and tells a coherent but dull story. So really a 5, but I can hardly enable the 7.1 and trick others into watching.
Most everything has been said, but what struck me is the way the 10 little indians go down. We meet Simon and Connie from London. They are engaged. They are said to have left. Mark is a jerk and, well, he disappears. And Josh is serious and, well, he disappears. And that leaves Dani and Christian who don't seem the least concerned. Uh, okay.
And just because the audiences laughed does not mean the movie is full of black humor.
Paradox (2009)
DO NOT WATCH!
Seriously. The show has an interesting premise - essentially a time travel drama, but with sufficient constraints than perhaps it will make sense. BUT THE SHOW WAS CANCELED AFTER FIVE EPISODES, RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PLOT. So if you do sit down and watch, you will be left completely high and dry, like I am.
The Undoing (2020)
One blinks too much, the other can't.
Well that was a real let-down. My money was on Franklin. That would have made things interesting. But no-oo. Just another take on Oedipus Rex, which is my least favorite plot.
Why did the detective lie about other persons on the CCTV? Why keep the hammer? Why explain points of law as if you are doing a TV show?
Ugh. Lots of padding. Lots of perm.
And "none" is either singular or plural. I thought that was a clue, but no-oo.
The Half of It (2020)
Best movie on Netflix for ages
A three dimensional teen love triangle. Fresh, sweet, sad, hopeful. Watch it.
Yeom-lyeok (2018)
Like a bite of spicy fried chicken...
Okay, it's not really a ten. But it sure ain't (at the moment) a 5.9 either. After sitting through any number of well crafted neo-noire Netflix Euros which crash into utter absurdity in the final reel, this is a breath of fresh air. It's a simple superhero fable, with well worn tropes, but imaginatively presented. The bad guys are horrible, more in their corruption and cynicism than their misdeeds. The good guys are, well actually, they are outlaws as well as victims. The action is vivid and grand yet unique and intimate.It's goofy, it's emotive, i's melodrama done right. And it's obviously got a lot of Korea's concerns on it's sleeves, from the clash of glass towers and ramshackle al fresco dining, corporations building a new Korea or going bankrupt, corruption, justice, resistance, and the seduction of success. A fun, entertaining, and illuminating ride.
Green Room (2015)
Entertaining enough, often original, but also fundamental flaws.
The film opens cleverly both visually and narratively and we are quickly drawn into the current lives of Pat, Reese, Sam, Tiger, and Tad a band of earnest, starving punk performers. Through a series of mishaps they soon find themselves deep in the Northwest woods at a neo-Nazi rock club. And just before they can slip away, they witness a murder and are detained by management awaiting the boss Darcy. That's Patrick Stewart, who I thought did a pretty good Nazi. i'm horrible with faces while my son is quite aware, yet both of us kept thinking Walter White rather than Captain Picard. Which brings me to a point that I think a lot of viewers completely missed. Not surprising since it's mentioned off hand once or twice and never figures in the action for some reason. But it does go a LONG way to explain why Darcy is so intent on constructing a death scene somewhere else. And that is the flaw of the movie. It is so concerned with immersion in the moment - which it does very well - it ignores the basic rules of exposition. I have no idea which one is Pat, Reese, Sam, Tiger, or Tad and I couldn't even tell you which ones lived or died except that I looked it up. And while the 3-4 forays from the green room generally resulting in a furious retreat might be an ironic twist on the conventions, the geography of the place is equally hazy. There is a secret level, which holds and keeps Darcy's secret, and well maybe it's just another ironic dead end. But when the band finds the usual unexpected allie who knows the exits, they still wind up behind the bar for some reason. There is, of course, a cathartic conclusion, but even that leaves the worm unturned. For me, the main measure of a movie is whether it draws me in by avoiding obvious manipulations, clunkly tone, or pacing. And this did and was often clever and original. But it could have been a whole lot better if used some more of the old tricks to make us care about what was happening rather than just watching it unfold. So a six.
Radius (2017)
don't bother
Maybe it's just an impression. Maybe IMDB reviews have always been stuffed, but it seems like ever since the forums were eliminated it's been overrun with shill reviews. Take this movie. How does it rate a 6+?? And who in their right mind would claim it's a great story really well told?? I can't help but feel a lively forum would call out some of the ludicrous stuff that festers every time a new video shows up on Netflix.
The movie starts out well, with nice visuals and quickly presents the dilemma, a man gifted/cursed by the gods during an accident. He can't remember what happened but soon discovers he kills every living non-plant within 10 meters, until he meets a similarly gifted/cursed woman who survived that same accident. So they struggle to understand the situation. So far so good.
But then the movie suddenly changes. Instead of watching the human spirit rise above, we are plunged into a voyage of discovery as the principals begin to remember. I've always hated the Oedipus Rex narrative. It's so passive and uninteresting. Anyway whatever heavy moral questions the writer might have hoped to raise are pretty much dashed by the fact that in the movie, why yes, they can make monkeys fly out of their ass if they so choose to. The narrative loses all connection to anything previous. In particular the 10 meter radius is meaningless. Only the amnesia counts but just to obscure the sordid history intended to shock us. Then the movie thankfully ends.
Closed Circuit (2013)
Ludicrous
When I waste time like this, I always rush to the "Hated it" reviews to bathe it the warmth of shared derision. But this time MY GOD PEOPLE! no wonder you believe Hillary kills people!? The problem with this movie is not the acting or pacing or cinematography or romance based on home-wrecking. It's the utterly silly setup. For reasons that are unclear the establishment is bent on conducting a show trial, with a culprit/victim who for reasons that are unclear is willing to go along with it, perhaps because his family for reasons that are unclear wants him to. So they manipulate things to assign a couple of compromised defense lawyers to handle the public and in camera portions of the trial. But the lawyers press on so the secret service starts murdering people to avoid some horrifically inept bungling coming to light... Um okay. Turns out 1 in 10 Brits is a member of MI5, so there is no need for CCTV, which doesn't play any part despite the would be eponymous title. This reaches a climax when our heroes must escort a teenage witness to the court. For no reason they seem to think the court is some kind of magic sanctuary... Anyway, this gut wrenching sequence plays out by the protagonists shouting "Hey look over there!" then walking to the courthouse. Where upon MI5 figures out the obvious solution and the movie thankfully ends. Er except for a coda with the lawyers acting like the sluts they are...
Cleanskin (2012)
utter, utter, utter dreck
Words will probably fail me - this film takes real life, horrific events and exploits them with a ludicrous conspiracy theory - look if powers are really that clever and evil we might as well give up now. Did anyone who enjoyed the film actually take the time to count up the bodies and consider the point of it all? Utterly repulsive conceit.
But what about the action? I realize it's a British thing to make their heroes tough by losing rather than ever victorious like (modern) Hollywood, but was there ever a more inept agent than Sean? Completely useless as a bodyguard, even when given a second chance, then gets beat about by a uni kid, and not stopping a moment to check in, or check out, when coats turn. Can't get to one bad guy in a month, but no problem getting to the other /eyeroll/
And what's the deal with Ash? Oh look at those movie star looks! Oh his hot girlfriend looks great without her top! Oh he's so distraught over Muslims being slaughter all over the globe, because, uh because, yeah, because he's like young, and yeah concerned and whatnot. And shamed by a lunatic Chechen baby-killer because he hasn't suffered enough.
Speaking of which, the movie totally cops out. Do we see the severed limbs and spilled guts from the bombings? no. The murder of the baby? no. The decapitation? no. What we do see is Ash limping across the ballroom floor in a waiter's uniform like Lurch from the Adam's Family. I started giggling, so I guess it wasn't a total loss. Despicable effort. Sean and Charlotte and Hadi should be ashamed.
River (2015)
I don't like most of the things I watch...
and the story line with the "manifests" had me avoiding the selection on Netflix for a while.
But the acting, directing, & writing pulled off an incredible, life affirming exploration of a deeply damaged, schizophrenic, but brilliant detective. Sure it had its implausibilities, magic Somalians, clichéd denouement, but it was so easy to immerse myself in the story because of the acting and composition and above all the invention. Who could believe Tina Charles disco hit could be so profound? So I gave it a ten - and see I'm not alone!-)
Netflix Originals (yes I realize this is a BBC production) have been top notch recently. Longmire and Red Road have been solid, and Jessica Jones was terrific and so is River.
Nightcrawler (2014)
Riveting for an hour and a half
Well paced, suspenseful, great feel for L.A. at night. Lewis is wonderfully creepy and the macabre send up of self-realization speak is funny, as he scrapes up a business complete with an equally desperate employee at something he is actually good at - ambulance chasing paparazzi. Unfortunately both the character and the job are quite unpleasant.
With half an hour left, I began to realize this was not going to be a redemption tale like Taxi Driver, or a more traditional comeuppance. I could see the "edgy" ending from a mile away. So what is left but to take it seriously as a parable of local news journalism. A grand guignol exploitation about how exploitative local news might be, is so, so, well 70's. Network was stupid then and this is stupid now.
A Most Wanted Man (2014)
a most wanting man
Hoffman? Le Carre? two hours of cerebral spy thriller? What's not to like?
The film runs 2 hours and 1 minute, and for 2 hours I held on to that hope. Unfortunately in that last minute the lights come on and, well, there's a lot not to like.
For starters, the "man" is an enigma throughout the four day narrative. We know he's been in Russian then Turkish prison and he's been tortured. And that's the whole back story, not in a nutshell but the whole seven course meal. And we learn nothing more about him whether he's guilty of anything or innocent of everything. Nonetheless, Bachmann (Hoffman), the German police, and American intelligence are all keenly interested in him and his purpose in Hamburg. A day or two later, Bachmann has discovered his very mundane purpose, which, naturally as there wouldn't be much story otherwise, fits in perfectly with his plans to turn a benevolent but dirty local Islamic philanthropist. The police and Americans have other ideas - and that is the entire plot - not convoluted, subtle, nuanced, layered, or complex. It's just a bureaucratic turf war that turns out badly (maybe) because apparently there is no higher authority in German intelligence to resolve things, other than this sloppy, chain smoking, drunk.
These narrative problems appear to originate in the book, if Amazon reviews are any guide, but are compounded by Corbijn's direction, which, just as in the tedious "The American", combines brilliant visual with lifeless, stereotyped characterization.
The acting is fine and while the camera frame is Hoffman's oyster, playing a sloppy, chain smoking, drunk is not exactly a challenge, nor, sadly, a stretch.