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Miranda Veil (2020)
I did NOT see that coming
A wannabe serial killer picks a victim, only to discover that she can't die. What starts as a gruesome horror movie quickly turns into something completely different. Miranda Veil is a very strange film, full of contradictions and changes in moody and style. It's also a daring and quite cheeky film. Does everything work? No. Does everything make sense? Absolutely not. Did I still love every second of it? Abso-freaking-lutely! I can't think of a more delightful movie experience this year.
The Unusuals (2009)
Ironically The Unusuals is incredibly plain.
THE UNUSUALS: THE PILOT.
The Unusuals is a cop show that belongs in a different decade. After NYPD Blues, Third Watch, The Shield, hell, even after the old Hill Street Blues there's just no room for a toothless show like this any more. The plot lines are trivial at best, or just plain stolen (pop quiz: in which other cop show does one of the lead character's mum call all the time?), and the whole show is presented in pretty, calm pictures that just underlines the plainness of the whole endeavor. I've seen more interesting cinematography in The Golden Girls. And don't get me started on the police station, the most unconvincing piece of art direction in recent memory.
The characters are also terrible! Amber Tamblyn is cute. She's suppose to be the young, beautiful rookie, who's just transferred in to this tough station. Unfortunately all her collages look like they're fifteen and wandered off the set of 90210. Her partner, played by Jeremy Renner is so beyond bland it hurts, apparently he has "a secret", and we're suppose to be intrigued. I'd go ahead and be dutifully intrigued if he could manage a single convincing emotion. Even solid folks like Harold Perrineau and Adam Goldberg look like they've watched The Thunderbirds for acting inspiration.
The most offending elements, however, are those comic relief moments. Oh look, the cops are looking for a cat killer. That's so funny! And there's a guy dressed as a hot dog! Hilarious. They even put on that "this-is-funny-and-quirky-just-so-you-know"-music which plagues shows like Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives or Ugly Betty, and make them completely unwatchable. They even have one character who talks about himself in the third person, and has a funny mustache. Really!? The pilot lines up the plot for the series... There's something rotten in this station. They're gonna need to clean it up! Which of course begs the obvious question: Why would you need to clean up a station which looks so squeaky clean it'll makes your dentist's office seem like a dump? I love Amber Tamblyn, but I can't bring myself to watch such a mediocre show just for her. There aren't enough hours in the day to justify that.
36 quai des orfèvres (2004)
Big disappointment
This taut cop-thriller would have been a masterpiece if it had only been the opening of a film, twice as long. The whole set-up is here - two cops pitted against each other, in the search for a gang of armed robbers.
The corrupt cop managed to frame the good cops, who's thrown in jail and loses everything. And that's pretty much it. What should have led to a big revenge finale, slowly vaporises into thin air. Everybody you care about die, all the good guys lose, the bad guys get away with it all, and our hero takes it all face down without objections.
Watch "Heat" instead, if you're looking for a good cop film, or the Korean film "Bittersweet Life", if it's revenge you're in the mood for. This will only leave you with a profound lack of satisfaction, and a desire to take a shotgun and go out and kill something.
Shi wan huo ji (1997)
Backdraft in Chinese, only better.
This is like Backdraft in Chinese. We follow a group of firemen at a big fire station as they struggle with their loved ones, their bosses, making sense of it all, and of course with fires. The film spends the first 35 min. setting up the character and the story, before you even see the first fire. But this means that once you see the fire, you actually care about those involved in it. Around 60 min. into the story, the firemen arrive at a blazing warehouse, where the rest of the film takes place, as they fight with other stations trying to get the `fire of the decade' under control, and save the civilians trapped inside. I was impressed with the fire sequences in Backdraft when it came out, but this blew me away. There aren't as many fire-scenes as in Backdraft, but they are far more realistic, more often than not resembling the clips you might have seen of actual firemen at work. And what's even more surprising is that it's the actual actors performing the stunts (the DVD contains a small featurette that clearly shows this)! Even when the characters are being helplessly engulfed in flames, as they are running for their lives, it's still them! And I'm not talking about quick cuts, no, you this in slow motion: The actor running, the fire going faster, the fire catching up and swallowing the actor, and just when you think it's all over: the actor, with (apparently) the last breath, jumping clear of the flames and to safety. I would not hesitate to recommend this to anyone who loves Chinese/Cantonese cinema, but also to everybody else. Because this this is a well shot, well acted, well written film, that - in terms of describing the lives of firefighters - are far more