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Hunger (2023)
Unsatisfying resolve
Since it's the first Thai movie I have seen it may be that what I experienced as slightly akward acting is normal for this genre... With that said I found the lead protagonists' acting, both the chef and the female lead, very poor. The chef is stonefaced or angry the whole movie and the female lead go-to response is an expressionless stare.
The first half of the movie I enjoyed (7/10 ) and there was good momentum in the buildup of the tension between the two, reminiscient of the movie Whiplash. Hower the second half (2/10) has a very unsatisfying resolve in combination with a rediculously scriptet chefs battle scene and the movie just fizzles out in the end.
The movie has an undertone of criticism of the Thai elite which also misses it's mark. At least to me with little knowledge of Thailand and its society it was difficult to grasp the message here.
Emancipation (2022)
Colorless
Exaggerated brutality on a thin plot which basically is a 2hr long chase through swamps followed by a battle and a family reunion.
A big fan of movies based on historical events - such as e.g. 12 years a slave - Emancipation misses the mark for me on a couple of key points:
1. My biggest gripe with the movie would be the portrayal of the slavers - i.e the "baddies". They are so overly and unrealistically portrayed as sadistic brutes that credibility of this being a historic movie on slavery quickly evaporated. In the same way that most people don't sadistically torture their pets in today's society just for fun I don't believe that most slavers sadistically tortured their slaves for fun in the mid 1800's. Don't get me wrong here as brutality and breach of human rights was on a massive scale, but to portray southern white men as unanimously sadistic terrorists is simply unnecessary rewriting of history. They were probably pretty normal people with their key objective being of getting stuff done, and with that probably worked on 'motivating' their slaves and workers to do it for them, which doesn't really include beating or killing them just for the sadistic pleasure of it.
2. Secondly, I found the running and action scenes to be far too lengthy. On such a thin story, which could be summarized in a few sentences, there really isn't enough meat here to make a 2hr+ movie. Some of the running-through-woods and swamp scenes seemed never to end... and the action scenes were not particularly captivating either. It would have been a far more interesting movie with some more parallel story lines (such as the civil guard guys or the photographers) rather than bad action scenes. Again, it just misses the mark for me as this could have been a good historical movie.
Other than that I didn't really appreciate Will Smiths acting which I also found quite exaggerated, and I personally don't have much positive to say about the grey/white light filter on the film which gives a really colorless hue to the movie. So a bit surprised to see others reviewing Smith's great acting and the great cinematography! Clearly subjective to say the least!
But in summary, Colorless is perhaps a good summary for my view here. It could have shed some historically accurate color on the year 1863 when the Emancipation proclamation was adopted, but unfortunately I found the movie to be pretty bland and colorless.
Ron's Gone Wrong (2021)
My 8 year old rated this
Took my 8 year old son and he gives it a 6.
Basically he thought Ron was mostly annoying (so did I) and not particularly funny. He definitely did not have any desire to have a Ron (a broken b bot) but was more interested in one of the functioning ones. So the totally unoriginal message here definitely did not make any impact on him. He mostly enoyed it though.. hence the 6.
I personally thinks he's spot on in his judgement of Ron. Why Barney laughs at or enjoys any of the extremely annoying stuff Ron does in the movie beats me. I would also prefer one of the functioning ones.
I'll chip on also to add that the story is 80% unoriginal and 100% predictable. This could only be made in the US. I would give a 4 - but since this is primarily a kids movie I'll let my son Oscar provide his score!
Game of Thrones: The Iron Throne (2019)
Rushed endind
A surprisingly predictable ending to an unpredictable series... Rushed conclusions that should have lasted several more episodes to conclude satisfactory.
The Hateful Eight (2015)
Not the same caliber as Django
Tarantino renewed himself with Django Unchained, which all-in-all was an amazing movie, and all the main protagonists were highly interesting and amusing characters. With The Hateful Eight, Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Roth, and Michael Madsen are basically remakes of characters from old Tarantino movies - now with cowboy outfits. If you close your eyes and listen to Jackson you would be inclined to think you were listening to Jules from Pulp Fiction... and Michael Madsen's cowboy is right outta Reservoir Dogs (his raised eyebrows, cool-look, was used up fifteen years ago). For me this pretty much ruined the movie - it seems as if Tarantino is just recycling old characters. Disappointing.
The other main disappointment was the extremely slow progress. Close to three hours, primarily filled with too lengthy dialogue and too many filler shots - with occasional blasts of gore. The story is simply too boring and lacks enough "story" to engage for such a long flick.
I get that Tarantino fans are all over this one with currently very generous review scores (probably ecstatic to see Jules again...) - but this one, unfortunately, is significantly weaker than greats such as Pulp Fiction and Django Unchanined. I guess we'll see average score come down to around a 7 in a while as the initial hysteria dies down. For me a 6/10.
The Act of Killing (2012)
Great movie, but not really a documentary
The Act of Killing is a fascinating movie with a unique approach to presenting some of the details on the killing of hundreds of thousand Indonesian "communists" in 1965 and 1966. The murderers responsible for the killings tell the story themselves.
I'll give the movie 8/10. It is an important movie to watch, about events that we (at least here in Europe) haven't heard much about previously. Not traveling to Indonesia any time soon after seeing this film
However!... there are a couple of points which made me feel slightly uncomfortable and is why I didn't give a full score:
- First of all – I can't see how this can be labeled as a documentary. The story is told by individuals who have been tricked to think they are participating in a completely different sort of film. Their descriptions sound believable – however there clearly isn't much focus on getting factual/real descriptions – particularly when several of the re- enactments are done in cowboy-costumes and/or drag-outfits. The movie they think they are making obviously isn't a documentary – so for all we know they might be either just be making up stories and/or heavily exaggerating to fit their own ambitions for the partly fictitious film they think they are participating in. In short – it's hard to know what is real or not. I don't really doubt that these guys are killers – but the way it is presented blurs out the lines between fiction and reality to such an extent that I can't label this as a documentary.
- Secondly,(after googling and reading about it after the movie..)the murder of several hundred thousand people in Indonesia in 1965 and 1966 is an event that deserves more respect than this movie gives – particularly since it attempts to be a documentary. How to kill someone by strangling them with wire really doesn't need to be demonstrated five times – lingering on the same gruesome details might appeal to the horror-movie crowd – but it becomes somewhat disrespectful to make a horror-movie out of such serious events. Particularly when mixing in comic-relief and a complete lack of factual information.
Tony 10 (2012)
One of the worst "children movies" ever viewed
Having taken my 9-year old son and 15 of his classmates to see this movie on my son's birthday (the cinema only had this movie running at the time-slot we were able to get this organized at) I think I can safely say, based on the feedback from the boys, that this is one of the most boring children's movies viewed at our local cinema for a very long time - if ever. One of the boys actually fell asleep in the middle of the movie - and most of them were thoroughly displeased with the film on the way home. My son was also quite upset - and his high hopes of a fun birthday celebration at the movies with classmates lay in ruins. Thank god for the vast amounts of popcorn and goodies we bought - or the whole event would have been a total disaster.
A few of my own thoughts on the film:
- The moral of the story, as it turns out, is that it's OK for parents to get divorced. Who the hell makes a movie which basically tells children it's OK to get divorced??? Not a suitable moral conclusion in my opinion for a children's move at all! Perhaps the film is meant as therapy for kids experiencing their parents' divorce? Who knows. - The storyline/plot is garbage and with not much going on apart from his parents being separated and him trying to get them together a couple of times. The only way they managed to make a film out of this is through extremely slow and long-drawn scenes with little happening. - The kid who played Tony did a fair job, with the exception being the lack of emotions despite the turbulent events he was experiencing. However, the entire crew of other actors were simply terrible. E.g. the father character was played so poorly, with constant exaggerated facial expressions, that it ruined every scene he appeared in. - In a couple of scenes Tony drives a truck. These were the only scenes where the boys paid much attention to the film at all. And this is the only reason I will give the film 2/10 instead of 1/10.
So for the love of god DO NOT spend money on this garbage. Not to mention buying tickets for 16 kids such as I did... :-/
Spartacus: Blood and Sand (2010)
R.I.P. Andy Whitfield
The life of a Gladiator was about surviving death each time he stepped into the arena. Today, I was upset to learn that the main actor in the series Andy Whitfield died of cancer just a couple of months ago. In sharp contrast to his character Spartacus who continuously draws the winning hand and beats the odds over and over again, Andy Whitfield drew the unlucky odds of blood cancer and passed away at an all-too-early age. From what I can tell he was a fine actor at still a young age with decades of acting still ahead of him.
I still have about half of the episodes of the season to watch, and it will be with a sting of sadness to see them now. However, I still look forward to it as the series is of such a high quality and plan to portion them out to enjoy them to the fullest! Without touching upon the details I will simply say that this is an amazing series which should not be missed - pick up the box-set as a gift to yourself or to a friend and get ready for an epic journey into the life of the Roman gladiators.
RIP Andy Whitfield... :'-(
Terri (2011)
No character development and no story
Terri had the potential of being a good movie 30 minutes in. There are two interesting characters we are introduced to: The main character - which is an overweight teen who has basically given up being accepted into society, demonstrating his resignation by wearing pajamas to school. And, the Assistant Principal Mr. Fitzgerald who, once a "monster" himself, is trying to help the misfits ("monsters") at his school understand that life will gradually get better. However, as the movie progresses there were in particular two aspects that destroyed the film for me:
1) I found little reason to sympathize with Terri. He has the same zombie-like acting through the entire film – and he has no interesting dialogue. But worst of all is that there is absolutely no character development throughout the film. At the end of the movie he is still walking around in his pajamas and he has learnt nothing. (And neither have we.. see next point.)
2) There is no clear story and no clear message to the film. Mr. Fitzgerald has some good monologues and some nice acting, but it remains very unclear what the makers of this film are trying to communicate. Also, in light of the fact that Terri has no character development throughout the movie, he didn't seem to learn anything either – so what was the point? And seriously: 30mins of three teens getting drunk and drugged-out with some ridiculous dialogue and completely unrealistic actions. Last half of this movie was garbage.
(I am, by the way, sick and tired of the endless number of movies which has to put drug-abuse into its films. Makes me wonder if every director is completely doped out
Probably!)
Dances with Wolves (1990)
Way better than Avatar
I just can't for the life of me understand why this movie is rated below Avatar...
After having seen this movie again for the first time in years, and after having seen Avatar, it is my opinion that Dances with Wolves is in an entirely different league in terms of story telling. The main ingredients of the story between these two movies is fairly similar - however, the pace and finesse with which Dances with Wolves portrays the development of the relationship between John and the Indians is masterfully done. While Avatar has huge flaws in its story-telling including some scenes with very weak dialogue - it might have gotten away with it as the audience is perhaps distracted by the bombardment of impressive CGI effects!
If you thought Avatar was good and haven't seen Dances with Wolves in a while - I highly recommend it. An excellent move that I think deserves a much better review score - and also should definitely be on IMDBs top 250 list.
Game of Death (2011)
Poor quality action
First of all let me point out that I really love action movies. I just recently spent time viewing several of Arnold's old movies, which are all classics! Take Commando - this is my definition of a great action film: Extremely simple story, but completely packed with some serious action, with a bad-ass protagonist spitting out cheezy one-liners after each round of pawnage!
Game of Death fails as a movie in pretty much every way possible. A simple "Arnold-like" action movie is what it SHOULD be. However, the people responsible for the film clearly thought that they had a story- line, actors, and camera-crew that would elevate this film to a "higher" level - whatever that is. Briefly summarized: The story and dialogue is a joke - some of the actors did such a poor job it almost makes some of the scenes embarrassing to watch. The main evil female agent must be one of the worst performances of 2010 - not to mention that the director for some reason decided to make most of the poorly acted dialogue scenes extremely long. So instead of filling the movie with cool karate-style Wesley Snipes action, the movie is mostly wasted on the weak story and the terrible acting. Most of the action scenes were even constantly interrupted by the bad guy having to shoot his mouth off - blah blah blah... What we WANT is pow pow pow!!!
By the way: The camera work and editing gave me a laugh. For some reason they have some sudden clips of black'n white shots - and some other artsy-fartsy filming which is COMPLETELY out of place.
I'll give this movie a 2/10 simply because I enjoy some of Wesley Snipes unarmed action scenes. But for gods sake don't waste your time watching this garbage like I did.
Finally a quick appeal to WS:
Dear Wesley,
Please fire your agent - or whoever persuaded you to participate in Game of Death. You are a cool guy and could renew your franchise of films where you kick ass again. But make it SIMPLE. A 1:30 film should have at least 60 minutes of action!!!
And remember to pay your taxes, Nebukanezer
PS: Wesley picks up a Glock 9mm (with silencer) from one of the bad guys in the hospital. These guns typically have between 15 and 17 rounds (full sized or compact versions). Without reloading the gun I think Wesley probably fired around 150 shots from this gun.
Inception (2010)
What a far fetched story
I was on the verge of leaving the Cinema on this completely ridiculously story. I hung in there (also despite the insanely annoying music) though, and am simply shocked that the film has (currently) a top 3 position of movies ever made. Perhaps I have entered a (bad) dream and have not yet woken up...
So the backdrop of the story is basically that a bunch of guys drug people and enter a dream world using a plastic box with wires attached to those entering the dream. In this dream they use the same technique (the box and drugs are now just apart of THIS dream..) to enter another dream. This process can be repeated a number of times - and in the movie they go to the fourth dream-layer. If you are killed while dreaming you will wake up - unless you are too heavily sedated (in real-life, or also in one of the dreams?..), which will then put you in a "limbo" state - which can potentially last for years. If you want to get out of a dream safely - you need to be "kicked" (sharp acceleration) in the dream-layer above the one you are currently in. If you are unsure if you are dreaming or not, you have a "totem" (a physical object that for some unspecified reason behaves differently in a dream - why?) that you can examine.
I just hate it. Simply hate it...
The only good thing I see in this movie is the ending: DiCaprio sees his kids again - but they look exactly as they have done in his dreams - they have not aged at all. This means that he is still dreaming and he is therefore stuck in a new limbo dream world - and will be there for a LONG time. Phew... that means there won't be a sequel until he wakes up again. Unless it is me that's still dreaming.