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Reviews
Fauda (2015)
Shaky cam makes this unwatchable.
Tried to watch the first episode but was done in by all the shaky cam. Why do directors keep using this? It's banal, not an original technique anymore. Every action scene in Fauda uses shaky cam. If you have a severe nausea problem with this (as I do), stay away from this series. What a disappointment.
Vantage Point (2008)
Waste of talent, plus shaky camera produces intense motion sickness
This movie wasted lots of acting talent. Briefly, it stunk. Simply awful writing and wooden characters sunk this movie. I'm amazed half the cast didn't walk away from this production.
VERTIGO ALERT!! I want to warn those who get carsick watching shaky camera action to avoid "Vantage Point." In terms of causing dizziness, headache, carsickness, etc., "Vantage Point" is a doozie. I had to make a run for the exit about a third of the way through the movie because of intense motion sickness from watching nonstop hand-held camera scenes. The damn movie left me nauseated for the rest of the night.
When will theaters post warnings to those of us who get vertigo watching shaky camera scenes in movies? They could spare us a bout of motion sickness.
Finding Preet (2006)
just awful
I love movies. I'll hang in until the bitter end of mediocre movies, hoping, hoping, hoping that there will be a redeeming line or scene that will make the viewing worthwhile. That said, "Finding Preet" fell below my admittedly very low threshold of what I'll sit through. "Finding Preet" became the second movie I've ever turned off before the end (the first was "Bonfire of the Vanities.") What's wrong with this film? Let me count the ways: 1) The scriptwriting was forced, unnatural, and stilted. You had stock campy characters who never veered from stock, campy lines.
2) The acting was forced, unnatural, stilted; I'm not sure if any of these folks ever acted before or if they were plucked off the street, but they just didn't know how to read lines. Over and over again, there were missteps in timing, too-large gaps between lines and responses.
3) The plot was hackneyed - after 8 minutes, you could predict exactly what was going to happen in the rest of the movie.
4) Finally, the lead character, Priti, just never generated enough sympathy for me to give a flip what happened to her.
I've wracked my brain trying to think of something to compliment in this film, but can't come up with anything. This film works only as a demonstration of how to fly a movie right into the side of a mountain.
The Departed (2006)
This is THE movie to see this year.
Wow. Repeat....WOW.
I can't heap enough praise on this movie. It's smart, fast-paced, extraordinarily well-written, and superbly acted. I think Nicholson, DiCaprio, and Wahlberg for sure, and possibly Damon, and Sheen will get Oscar nominations for this, while Scorsese will certainly finally win his. Also, a big nod to Alec Baldwin who was hilarious whenever he had screen time.
I have one quibble about plot: when the girlfriend discovers that Matt Damon is mobbed up, I can't believe that she was stupid enough to confront him. I also can't believe that he didn't kill her immediately at that point - he had no quibbles throughout the film about killing anyone else who found him out. Outside of this small point, though, the rest of the plot rang true. Was glad to hear the Dropkick Murphys in the soundtrack - it fit the story perfectly.
This movie just moved into my top ten films of all time list. Am going back next week to see it again.
Pride & Prejudice (2005)
Sugar-coated Jane Austen
I'll be gratified if this 2005 P&P pulls in a younger crowd and gets a few of them reading the incomparable Jane Austen, but the BBC P&P remains unvanquished as THE screen adaptation of the book.
This P&P offers few improvements over the BBC production, but there are some: 1) Jane is supposed to be knock-dead beautiful, but is played by a bovine-looking actress in the BBC production. The 2005 P&P got the casting here straight.
2) Ditto the Wickham actor. The BBC's Wickham was odd-looking and not charming enough to warrant Lizzy and Lydia (plus the rest of the town) swooning over him at first meeting. The 2005 P&P, again, did a much-better casting job here.
3) I like this 2005 Darcy, which surprised me. After Colin Firth, I didn't think anyone could ever again come close to nailing this character. But this 2005 Darcy did something that Colin Firth did not: he made the difficult shift from being cold and snobbish at the start to the final lovable Darcy believably.
This is where this newer P&P falls short: 1) Way too much time spent on close-ups of Kira Knightley. There's so much to pack into this movie. Why waste all that time on these pointless scenes? After the 4th one, I was sighing with boredom.
Also, couldn't the costumers have chosen wardrobe that better disguised Knightley's painful thinness? Something's wrong when you stop paying attention to the movie and instead, muse on whether Knightley has anorexia or is host to a colony of tapeworms.
2) Why oh why did they portray the Bennett's house, Longbourne, as something akin to a pig farm? Every wall was cracked and needed paint, the stones crumbling. There's nothing in Jane Austen to support this interpretation, and it ignores fact: even if the Bennetts are a heartbeat (the father's) away from abject poverty, they are depicted as gentry in the book. Pigs in the house - pah!
3) Mrs. Bennett was not silly enough. Look, I feel for her in the novel. If I were Mrs. Bennett, I'd be out with a lasso looking for rich husbands for my daughters too, but dammit, this is NOT the way Jane Austen saw her. An extraordinarily important point was missed here: Mrs. Bennett has be stupid and embarrassing enough that you can understand why Darcy steers Bingley away from Jane. She must make you cringe with mortification. She has to be silly enough to exactly balance Lady Catherine, which is exactly what Austen did in the novel. It's a delicious parallel that this movie did not pull off.
4) Not enough Lydia! The movie never gave Lydia enough screen time to establish her character. Ditch those overlong close-ups of Knightley moon-cowing around and add more Lydia!
5) Mr. Collins 2005: nice try,but not quite as good as Mr. Collins BBC.
6) Donald Sutherland a decent Mr Bennett, but this movie makes his relationship with Mrs. Bennett too warm, too intimate. The real Mr Bennett avoids the missus at all costs, irritably holing up in the library. When he has to be around her, his comments (all of which go over her head) hold her up to ridicule. Austen gets downright mean in her characterizations on this point. The 2005 movie had an improbable scene that showed Mr and Mrs Bennett in bed, talking and laughing together, a cuddly little scene that, considering everything Austen wrote, was ridiculous.
Overall, this movie missed out on some of the best fun in Jane Austen's novel: the biting humor, the occasionally mean (but horribly funny) wit. Yes, it was funny in parts but because it ignored the Austen edginess, it never achieved the depth of the BBC version.
Nice try, but nothing close to the BBC's rendition.
House M.D. (2004)
where do they get the plots for House?
They must have gotten last night's House plot from some obscure article in a medical journal. Napthalene poisoning from termites? Wow.
I loved it when House coughed and spit in the OR to break the sterile field and canceled the liver transplant. The way House's little Vicodin problem was only half-resolved was interesting, too. It's refreshing that the show's writers don't feel compelled to sew up all the loose ends neatly at the end.
This series far surpasses E.R., which was decent for about one or two seasons and then descended into maudlin soap opera.
When the characters in a medical drama start getting the disease-of-the-week themselves or their personal lives become the main plot line, the show is over. I hope House doesn't drift in that direction.