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il_conde
Reviews
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
Missing a sense of place and time and focus
It was hard to figure out what place in time the movie was occurring. A family of four grand parents, two parents and Charlie living in one dilapidated hovel in the middle of 21st century England? And they are white English living in terrible hardship? At the same time, modern video games exist, and a post industrial Japan also exists. What an odd mish mash that made the movie completely awkward from the get go. I could believe it if it was pre-war, war time, or post war England, but not the 21st century. The character of Willy Wonka played by Johnny Depp was another major problem. He was played (and also written) as a sociopath child - man. A kind of Peter Pan meets Michael Jackson meets eccentric foppish dandy. While this would be okay if he was a boy lost in a man's world, he is not in a man's world. He's leading a group of (mostly) wayward unruly children. It's like the blind, leading the blind. Johnny Depp's character provides no judgment or focus that the group on this adventure badly needs. Also, as everyone says, the Ooompah Loompahs are terrible. I enjoyed some of the visual production design elements. Those were fun to watch.
Gossip Girl (2007)
Kids way too urbane for kids
Another teenage show which show kids behaving like 35 year old lounge lizards, with all the confidence and panache of cynical bar flies (with underage drinking allowed in all bars they visit of course). Totally unrealistic and just down right stupid. I don't know who or what this show was about, nor what target audience it appealed to other than a bunch of silly ninnies who believe that 17 year old kids actually act and talk like this.
I don't know what started this trend - Beverly Hills 90210? Heathers? But the trend to show teenagers acting like horribly urbane adults is only believe by insipid teenagers or young adults who haven't experienced enough of life themselves to realize that the vision of these high schools is patently distorted and nauseating.
District 9 (2009)
NOT one of the greatest Sci Fi films ever!!
This is not a negative review of the film. Instead, it is a clarification of why I think those fanboys who rank this movie up there with Blade Runner and Children of Men must have very short memories.
The first half of the movie is basically throwaway. Its this mockumentary that supposedly frames the plight of the prawns into some kind of relevance. But its really just a lot of back story. The movie does nothing more for the morays of apartheid, refugee status, or whatever social commentary its trying to make beyond the assortment of interviews meant to set up the second half of the story. It's just a cute premise that serves as backstory for the "real" movie.
The "real" movie starts the moment Wikus finds the tube of liquid and gets infected. The camera calms down and the "documentary" camera gets replaced by a neutral camera and cinematic action style we're all familiar with. The shift in perspective is disconcerting. What POV are we really seeing? It's like a movie within the movie.
The movie is oddly dispassionate and unemotional. While the CG character animation is top notch, I never cared for the prawns, for the most part they seemed like a bunch of random bugs running away and on a rampage and only the father and son prawns were midly sympathetic. There was no villain I really hated - the MNU mercenaries were just nameless thugs and the head of MNU / the father was never much of a character. I loved no characters either. I liked the choice for Wikus - Sharlto Copley - hes an atypical hero, uncaring, selfish, nerdy bureaucratic type. He's different enough to be interesting but I can't say I rooted much for him or loved the guy - except at the very end of the movie when he has a change of heart and has his orgasmic heroic battle like every good action hero must do. His wife seemed hardly a character at all so his empathy with and from her had little weight.
Lots of stuff made no sense. Why did the prawns give up all their weapons? For cat food? Why didn't they just take what they wanted? Why did the command center drop down from the ship when it was such a pain to get it back up again? It was never clear at what point they were at with some/most/all prawns getting moved to the new concentration camp.
Overall it lacked the thematic unity of great science fiction like "Children of Men" or "2001", movies where I felt deeply involved with the characters. I can't believe some fans and reviews put it in that league.
The mockumentary reminded me of independent and student films like "American Zombies" and others of that genre. But the devolution of the movie into a well done but typical action sci fi flick seems to give the movie a schizo personality, with competing tonalities.
Camera work, while not Cloverfield shaky, was kind of wonkishly bad video shaky and can make you sick (as it did my date).
I was mildy entertained by the film, but my review is in response to the surprising laudations given to it by the reviewers and fans. I wonder who wrote those and why?? Possibly one of the most audacious SciFi films of the summer, but it lacks the thought and conviction for it to be anything more.
Pride & Prejudice (2005)
Lovely film masks poor performance by Keira Knightley
What a beautiful film. The costumes, production design and cinematography keep the production values very high. That goes along way when you have to mask probably the weakest interpretation of Elizabeth Bennett ever. Keira Knightley seems to mumble her way through the movie, and throws away practically every line with her lower jaw thrust forward in juvenile muggery. All the beauty of the film serves to put lipstick on a pig. There seems to be nothing going on internally to the character of Elizabeth. Ms. Knightley would have been far better suited to play Lydia running after redcoats as flighty as she is. She completely lacks any kind of probity, which is essential in a work much about judgment, character and prejudice. If I could mix and match the various elements of the three adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, I would have had Elizabeth Garvie from the original BBC series play the heroine, and this movie would have been just perfect. It's unfortunate that Hollywood seems to latch onto whatever 'hot young model', and who better in their mind to cast in the role than the anorexic ass kicker from Domino. It's really a shame that they could not have spread the casting net a bit wider and hired someone who could have brought some levels and depth to the character. It's good Keira did not win the Academy Award, the nomination was bad enough.
Dune (2000)
Poor script, acting, sfx
Any movie that has poor production values must rely on a great script and acting to carry it through. Dune, the mini series, is disappointing in almost all the elements of production. Alec Newman and Saskia Reeves lack the gravitas and charisma to make us care for their characters. Alec remains a Luke Skywalker type boy through the entire series, he never seems to grow up. Ms. Reeves lacks the beauty and majesty that Francesca Annis brought to the movie character. The costumes make the characters and soldiers look like reject costumes from name your favorite ethnic/German war movie and don't at all look functional, rather something you would wear for Halloween. The graphics are sub par to even junk scifi series like Deep Space Nine. A lot of the computer models and sets look unfinished, like they didn't have time to add textures to the panels. Game graphics are better than what you see in Dune and it just goes to prove that well thought out graphics from 1984 can look so much more appropriate than modern graphics done without care or proper design. A Hunter Killer in the shape of a sperm? Come on! Stupid and distracting. So much of the desert scenes are shot in tight shots, you never believe they are in a sandy planet, but on a back lot sandbox. The script moves from scene to scene in a halting episodic way perhaps because of the TV format. The characters seem to float from scene to scene with no consequence, no passion, and the worst kind of expository stilted dialog. Both the older 1984 movie and this mini series have huge deficiencies which is a shame, since Herbert's novel is a work of great vision.