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wdavidmiller
Reviews
Cymbeline (2014)
Two Types of Viewers
Those who think this is supposed to be a regular adrenaline-inducing movie are sadly disappointed. Those who understand this is another modern interpretation of a Shakespeare classic are intrigued. The acting is solid, the direction is polished, and the soundtrack moves us along the story right to the end. Many of Shakespeare's works have translated well onto the big screen in a modern setting. Macbeth (2015), Romeo + Juliet (1999), and Hamlet (2000) starring, again, Ethan Hawke are just a few examples. The English of Shakespeare is not easy to follow if you are unfamiliar with the story (closed captions help), so a ten-minute summary on YouTube before you watch the film will go a long way.
Expectation is the key to enjoying this production. Expect Shakespeare, not Michael Bay.
Sightings (2017)
The importance of good writing
Believe it or not, the acting isn't what makes this movie hard to watch. They did their job for the most part, making amateur mistakes and a few scenes that were overdone, but passable. (There are a few exceptions, like the reporter with the hamfisted Spanish accent.) The direction carries a bit more of the burden, making poor choices like having a daytime scene where there's no excuse to keep the camera off the thing all the characters are staring at.
In the case of this movie, the director is also the writer, which is where Sightings blew its chances of being a watchable movie. Like his other movies, director Dallas Morgan saved money by writing the script himself. His direction is improving, but his writing has a long way to go. Even the best actors are confined by the limitations of the words they are given to say. If Morgan had invested more in this one element of film production the result would have been much better.
The Omen (2006)
Why?
This movie was unnecessary.
If the writer has taken it in a new direction, or put a new spin on it, the risk of losing in a comparison with the original would have been high, but at least there would have been a reason to do it. As it is the writer couldn't even be credited for his work on this film because it was so nearly identical to the original. Still, I gave this a 7 for two reasons: John Moore (director) and Liev Schreiber (protagonist). Both were restricted to a scene-by-scene, nearly line-by-line duplication of the original, yet both managed to unveil new perspectives of the story. In particular, I applaud Schreiber's gutsy choice to not simply channel Gregory Peck's stolid presence, but to show how his character could be even better understood as a vulnerable man being tossed by horrifying events out of his control.
Production and writing: 3
Directing and acting: 9
Doesn't average to a 7, I know, but the good really outweighed the bad for me.
Contactee (2021)
The key to a really bad movie...
The key to a bad movie is the same as the key to a good one: The writing.
I get it. The idea is to present an extraterrestrial movie in some way that hasn't been done to death. The writing is almost passable. There's a quick test to rate screenwriting: imagine reading the story as a novel instead of seeing it as a movie. The camerawork, acting, music composition... even the direction are all artistic attempts to interpret one original vision: that of the writer. (Of course, it should help that the writer is also the director, as in this movie. But then this is just proving my point. Not even the writer himself can bring good direction out of a bad script.)
There are some artsy attempts at some scenes, and I appreciate the nonlinear approach (once again) in the plotline. But the bottom line is this movie would have bombed even without the pandemic crushing its big premiere plans. People may blame it on a lot a things, but the bottom line is this movie was poorly written.
The House of the Devil (2009)
Too on the nose
No subtlety. Uber-slow pacing to glorify horror movies of the early eighties with almost no payoff. Even the "a-ha" at the end would have been a surprise... if left out.
House Hunting (2012)
Interesting start, but...
This movie could have been so much better, but it was cursed with the original Twilight Zone (1960-64) format: Riveting beginning (5 minutes), dull exposition about relationships (18 minutes), then an interesting ending (2 minutes). This movie follows the same pattern, but the exposition section is over an hour long.
Exposition slows down a movie, but it has its place. Foreign films-especially from Europe-usually commit a good section of the film to exposition. It works in those films, maybe because when you watch a film by Wim Wenders or Ingmar Bergman, you expect it to rest almost entirely on dialogue and a strong focus on relationships. House Hunting (2013) leans heavily upon exposition, but it's in the wrong genre for that. When people watch horror movies they expect it to be plot-driven with a heavy focus on the problem. This movie establishes a great problem at the beginning, then abandons the problem for most of the rest of the movie. Instead of focusing on a solution to the problem, the actors are given s script which focuses on soap opera relationships.
Maybe if I had understood from the beginning this aspect of the film I would have enjoyed the movie more. Their relationships do help them unfold the problem, but not enough. Nevertheless I do enjoy a good foreign film, so maybe the problem is simply in my expectations.