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Justified: City Primeval (2023)
What a terrible show...
I am a fan of Justified. The old one. All it's seasons.
Along with shows like Breaking Bad, The Wire and Goliath it probably represented the "golden age of tv" that seems to have ended now.
This remake is very bad at all the things the original show was good at.
The episodes are chaotic. Loose ends flap around. The story line jars. The dialogue is at times embarrassingly bad and at other times (thankfully) wiped out by irritating music. (Who's stupid idea was it that thumping music instead of a developing story is what creates tension?)
Not all the characters is integrated into the story.
And please, a program like this is NOT the place for ideological "woke" BS.
Avoid this. Watch the old ones again.
The Northman (2022)
Bad movie full of holes.
Women screaming, running in the mud with huts burning.
Over and over.
And some agonizing by a number of actors to music that gives one an idea what a score for a Viking movie by Wagner would have sounded like. Lot of low notes.
Well photographed. That's all.
Serangoon Road (2013)
Disbelief NOT suspended
I could not get any way into this.
From the outset it looked like a crew acting a story.
While the set looked like a set for the actors.
Don't bother with it.
The Virtuoso (2021)
Dull, full of holes, not even pretentious
Rather take the dog for a walk.
This movie serves one purpose though: It is the "old geyser movie" (movies made with old actors who still has a smear of magic attached to their names) that finally made me decide NEVER to trust a movie again sporting famous actors who are now pretty old.
Specially if it hints to spies or mafia or revenge or such blah blah in the description.
They will probably be like this one: obviously made from a script hammered together in a week or so and shot in another two.
This film is an insult thrown by Anthony Hopkins to movie watchers.
Don't trust you anymore, Tony....
I.
The Midnight Sky (2020)
All the oooold sci-fi cliches
George Clooney is a really good actor. I cannot remember a dull movie he made - until now.
The dull one is this one. And boy, is it dull....
It is long and slow and irritating.
You can drive a SUV to and fro through the holes in the plot.
The set sucks obviously - for example: space ships are designed to maximize use of space in the ship. For obvious reasons. Here the dudes sit at a desk with huge empty spaces behind them which sports garish was it an attempt to decoration?
And so on.
The story has a number of element also that are not integrated.
Then the plot rests on a very fundamental element which is not cleared up. And this does not enhance "mystery" of any sort. It merely underlines the sloppiness with which the movie was made.
Made in Italy (2020)
Sentimental and tired
Lame and sentimental story. Ordinary shots. Mediocre acting, though Liam Neeson tries at times. Even bravely once or twice.
Directing of the sort which makes one think of a budget tool bought at a small town hardware store. The one that almost gets the screw out but you need to go buy a better tool.
The story revolves around a house in the Italian countryside. The house after a while is the best character even though it just sits there.
I started rooting for the house and watched the whole thing just to make sure the house is OK.
Give it a miss.
Barbarians (2020)
Wasted opportunity for good tv
Cliche ridden and clunky.
Thus boring.
This story cries out for a good tv series but this is not the one.
One (tired old) cliche after the other strung together with a cast and a setting that looks like an underfunded effort at a nearby setting.
Hastily made.
Then one is not yet talking about the tiresome efforts to be sociologically correct in today's terms. (Why? These were people long ago who ACTUALLY whacked the life out of each other. ACTUALLY led by men. Who were better than the women at beating the life out of the hated "other".)
Give this series a miss unless you are one of those crews that had to stay over in winter in Antarctica and you have watched all the other dvds three times.
Siberia (2018)
Thin story, Forgettable movie
Siberia leaves one with the impression that the movie was ended because the story line just ran out and there was no more scenes that could be filmed.
And that everybody concerned at that stage wanted to go home anyway.
The bit of story that is had up to then, was anyway full of holes and quite frankly lost credibility round the halfway mark.
Reeves walked into the movie sort of OK and walked out sort of OK.
Ana Ularu walked into the movie very sexy and walked out very sexy.
But without a story, that was just about all that it was.
Pity about the three or so totally unnecessary sex scenes. It every time broke the anemic tension that was built up, mainly through Reeves' worried look. He is actually good at doing that.
But for crying out aloud, the man needs a story to function properly....
In the end a waste of time. Don't bother.
Wilson (2017)
Almost had it there...
At first this movies lifts one's expectations. It could have been a great portrait of a straight talking slightly bewildered man (Harrelson is quite good).
Then that focus is lost. But replaced with another dynamic that quickly grabs the attention - the story wanders unexpectedly, but in a good way.
The middle part I watched mostly to see where the makers can take this story. And every turn was well within the logic of the story, well within the foundations laid down at the start for the characters and the spaces they move in.
Then it suddenly becomes silly and sentimental. And ends.
Did they run out of time and decide to quickly end this little money spinner? Did they grow bored?
Pity. It could have been a much better movie.
As it is there are much better ones to watch today.
Acts of Violence (2018)
Nothing to see here
Bad script. Dull dialogue. Cliche laden. Weak acting.
Give it a miss.
It is in the end a revenge movie and they could not even get that right.
Darkest Hour (2017)
A wasted opportunity
Just about everything is wrong with this effort which in the end retains one's attention mainly because one has seen Christopher Nolan's excellent Dunkirk.
This is supposed to be the political story behind Dunkirk. Winston Churchill was prime minister barely a month before Dunkirk happened.
And there probably still is a great story to tell there because Darkest Hour merely throws up what is well known in an almost comic book fashion. (For a far deeper look at it - and told by people who was in the British parliament then - see the appropriate episode of the documentary World At War.)
This movie starts out as a political biopic but halfway through loses focus and seems to become a C grade art movie with the Churchill character nervously "losing it" in the toilet and such other silly scenes.
Then the fibbing also starts. It has the main character doing "symbolic" deeds rooted in the artistic pretensions of the movie - unfortunately things that never actually happened (the train).
Joe Wright here had one of the most dramatic set of happenings in British history for probably a century or more.... why not stick to it?
Another matter that bothered one were the special effects like when the air journey to France was undertaken. Are the shots from the plane artistic shots that flopped or was is merely very badly made miniature props? It is unclear.
Gary Oldman plays Churchill and he makes a bit of a mess of it. Unfortunately for him one can go to YouTube and listen to Churchill's actual speeches. Oldman does not nearly get it right. Where the real Churchill sounds confident and calm Oldman's Churchill sounds scared and hysterical.
A movie that failed because the script was second grade and it started with history and then frantically seemed to want to become an art movie of sorts.
Loving Vincent (2017)
This is an animated movie
This is an animated movie - like a Disney comic movie - but done in a fake Van Gogh style.
The characters are not historical people, the names may be but the characters are as false as a talking mouse.
So - it is NOT an art movie. It is NOT a documentary. It is NOT a bio-pic.
It is to Van Gogh's art what The Lion King is to the Serengeti.
If you like movies with talking mice saying cute things, you may like this one.
Lucky (2017)
One of the great existentialist movies
A great movie has to be entertaining right to the end and also examine life in a brutally honest way.
This movie does this.
It is about the question who and what are we and about the emptiness we fear is outside our consciousness.
But is also is funny in a real way. Not like the Adam Sandler crap.
Of this movie one can say: Watch it. It is about you.
And about what Ernest Hemingway called "grace under pressure" - where pressure is the life we all experience.
I am glad I saw it.
The Assassination of Trotsky (1972)
Opportunity wasted on pretence
I missed this movie when it came out way back. Saw it now.
And I am glad I did not waste money on it way back when I had less to spend.
The event and the characters screams for a movie.
But decent movies does not have inflated pretense to "art" and has a good script writer.
This movie have buckets of embarrassing pretense and a terrible script. It even defeats Richard Burton, who plays Trotsky - and by the way is rarely in the movie!
Many shots of church bells, mediocre architecture, Alain Delon pouting with sunglasses on and Romy Scheider crying or panicking about something (it is never explained what) and so on.
But fortunately after this was made, along came Costa Gavras to show how such movies should be made.
Don't bother with this one.
Brave New Jersey (2016)
Like watching badly mixed paint dry
This movie suffers in the first place from a boring and disjointed plot. And that is a kiss of death for any film. It starts there. The basic plot situation makes one sit up - the doings of a number of people in an small town in the New York area who believed the by now legendary radio play that Orson Welles did with the H.G. Wells story War of the Worlds - a story about the Martians attacking earth. It was done in the form of news announcements and according to legend many people believed it was true and panicked. Brave New Jersey sets out to tell story of a number of them. And right there it all falls to pieces because the description of the plot is the most exciting part. For the rest it is mediocre acting, bad story line, boring characters... in fact mediocre soap opera. Don't bother with this movie. Rather stare at the wall.
La French (2014)
Not worth the effort
This movie leaves one with the impression that the team shot a 4 hours long movie and then quickly had to cut it to 2. And that they then lost interest and just snipped it like a bored and failing student would do to a assignment that has to be in tomorrow. The result is that there are loose ends flapping all over the show and that many - sometimes crucial - plot developments are not sufficiently clear. It also suffers from too many sub plots that really does not contribute to moving the story forward. And the worst thing - it starts off with some promise. Which means one keeps on watching for far too long. In the end I finished watching it merely because I have been watching it for so long and to make sure it really is such a failed movie. But I did get one thing from it - I realised how important casting is. The crook and the hero look alike (unintentionally ... I think...)with the result one must work to follow which one is in frame. In the end a failed and boring movie with a stale plot.
Captain Fantastic (2016)
A failed movie that could have been
If this script had gone through three more reworkings, it may well have been a great movie. But it did not. The basic foundation of the movie is exciting (some spoiling coming) - the Swiss Family Robinson in the USA of today. A family that lives - by choice - outside of the modern US society and then for reasons that has to do with the rest of the story, is forced to venture back into that society after a long enough time in the romantic wild to become "noble savages". So an anthropological journey into the strangeness and flaws of the modern US (or part of it) society is set up. And set up well enough to make one look forward to the rest of the movie. Forgiving the quaint idea that nature is peaceful and good. It is this looking forward that makes one forgive the unbelievable premise of the story - a family living in the wild like it is a suburb, kids that get an education that most people only dream of by sitting in the wild reading books. (At the end of the movie one returns to this and gets a bit irritated for having allowed oneself to be taken on this ride - according to the makers of the movie all a family of two parents and four kids needs to construct an idyllic house in pure nature, is a saw and and an ax. They must go try it sometime. And killing a deer by sneaking up to it and jumping on its back and cutting the throat all in one easy movement? ) This journey has some moments of complete associating with the family and it does offer an insight or two but it soon crumbles in sentiment and ends bewilderingly... One was led into this tale by the supreme outsider family.... who strangely ends up the epitome of all they started to "show up". Give it a miss. A movie that could not decide what it wants to be, based on a script that was not thought through.
A Walk in the Woods (2015)
A movie that does not work....
Two reasons to give this movie a miss. 1. The actors are way too old. I am old myself, I should know. Basically, if you are old - like over 60 - and you are overweight (like one of the main characters) there is no way in the world you are going to walk a 100 miles, leave alone a thousand. The other actor does not appear overweight but is one year short of 80. We all know because he is a very well known and liked actor. 2. The script does not remotely succeed in making a story out of the material it is based on. It is loose and without any urgency. (Good writing does not guarantee good movies.) For good measure - the story is supposed to unravel over a stretch of walking. Quite some way. But the movie leaves one with the uncomfortable feeling of having been made filmed entirely in a short stretch of wood (and probably close to a hotel and a main road, given the age and the physical condition of the two main actors). So - a lame script and a movie that just cannot suspend disbelief (you're 74 and fat, there's no way you are walking that path, dude.... leave alone having a gammy knee as this character we are told, has...) The idea was probably good, but the movie falls in pieces in the execution. The ideas that is supposed to be the core of this telling, are not carried by the obviously far too old legs they are sitting on.
The Man from Earth (2007)
No special effects, yet a riveting movie...
This is a mix of science fiction and some real philosophical questions. And it works wonderfully. It is not a movie for anyone looking for special effects or violence. Nobody shoots anybody and there are no aliens. And the space travel is all inside of the collective Western mind. The whole movie was shot in a small, average house - with a shot or two outside where two or three cars are parked. All at night. No pretty scenery or shrubs. It is basically a conversation, so there are a number or characters - well played and well directed. There will be no Oscars for acting, it is not that sort of movie. But there is no inadequacies either. All is very well and neatly done. And that is how it should be, because the action and the utter fascination is all in the story that unfolds. It starts slow. Then it at some point you think you can see where it is going, and it is cheap and disappointing now, you think - then it goes there (!) and lifts off and transcends many things, among them was my jaded expectation of where it will go (and sort of went)! I ended the movie with a new insight and a new questioning wonder of things I grew up with all my life. This is one of those movies that illustrates the almost forgotten wisdom that a good story is all in how relevantly it delves into our minds(hello dr. Jung!)and how neatly or well it is told. This movie shows up the emptiness of mere special effects. If you have a brain, watch it.
Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (2014)
A movie that peters out in dullness
A movie that starts well, but in the end is a big disappointment. The basic building blocks are good: a troubled and unbalanced Japanese woman is convinced she has spotted something worth investigating and following, presumably because it will get her out of the dreary life she is shackled to. The story then takes one or two slight turns and runs out in an ending that has not only been done hundreds of times in the past, but has been done mostly much better that this one. The result is that one is left convinced that the makers of the tale did not actually know how to end it and went for the first (and cheapest) escape that will hopefully leave some people with a vague suspicion that the ending may be "deep". It is not. It is merely flat and disappointing. This movie had a phase (when Kumiko meets a sympathetic policemen in a snow covered landscape) when it could have gone somewhere, but it did not. It took the much traveled path towards its vague and boring end. It is mostly wasted time to watch this movie.
OXV: The Manual (2013)
Good, intelligent science fiction
If it is true that the position of sub atomic particles can be accurately predicted (and it seems to be), and if it is true that we are made of atoms (and we are) then is stands to reason that we can be predicted as well. And if that is true, then all history - into the future - is waiting for us already. This is one part of the movie. But before that, there is another great science fiction story. And true to the good science fiction that it is, it takes a real observable "fact" of our lives (in this case that some people seem to be luckier in most aspects of life than others, being at the right place at the right time etc) and builds it out into a logical conclusion, a little bit beyond "the ordinary" that life usually gives us. And it is well told. The movie starts off a bit slow, but it is used to settle the premise of the story in one's mind, so bear with it. It soon tuns into an intelligent movie that leaves one well satisfied. If you like science fiction (not the bang whiz special effects sort, but the sort rooted in ideas and good story telling)watch this one.
The Riot Club (2014)
Great movie about capitalism's bad side
On the surface this is merely a movie about a group of rich students at an elite English university. But just below the surface waits the real movie - it is a movie about the "bad side" of capitalism, about unchecked "old money" and "old privilege" which has as a downside "old arrogance" and "old exploitative instincts". Without giving the story away - it follows members of a club at university given to partying and raising hell. Membership is on invitation and largely passed on through generations. Does it sound familiar? Well, it follows on those lines and quickly one realizes the story is actually a great metaphor for "bad capitalism". And clearly and expertly intended as such. In the process the movie drags one along at a hectic pace. The result leaves you with the knowledge that you have just enjoyed one of the better movies in a long time - and that you have things to think about for days. The acting is good and the directing tight and close to the driving structure of the movie - the metaphor for "bad" capitalism and the inhuman arrogance that it can awaken in people. (Ever wondered how that waitress must feel that has been humiliated for laughs in the last "drunk and raising hell" movie that you saw? Then this movie is for you.)
Adormidera (2013)
A very bad and clumsy movie
Bad acting, clumsy directing and thin story. If you are alone in Antarctica and you have not seen any movie for months and are bored out of your skull, try it. Otherwise just give it a pass. Not worth it. It starts off badly - trying to invoke the cheap emotion of characters being battle weary. Then it moves on to situations that tries to milk this further but only succeeds in falsifying it more. The acting above all is bad - to go with the clumsy directing. I knew it was not going to be a great movie but was in the mood for a old time swords and blood movie. This was not it. This was just bad. One can climb into it further, pointing out the unbelievable clothing and that it presents fat nonathletic looking characters doing heroic physical deeds, but it will be repeating the first line. Avoid it.
Loin des hommes (2014)
The best movie in years
This is an action movie of the mind, of the soul. Based on Albert Camus's short story The Guest, this in effect sums up the writers philosophy with clarity and insight. It was shot in Algeria which presents a perfect backdrop - both because it was where Camus grew up and because the stark but beautiful scenery fits perfectly with the story.(It even hints at Camus's own life in Algeria. He was of the working class - real working class, like working with their hands - and with Spanish heritage.) It takes the Camus story a bit further - but always with elements that was in fact part of Camus's life. For anybody who fondly remembers existentialism and how it analysed our human predicament, this movie will be a reason to celebrate. For those who does not know it, but is clever enough to agonize over our predicament - like how do we save our humanity when life forces us into situations that show that we are NOT " fully in control of our destiny" - start here. The acting is superb and the directing is brilliant - and obviously done by someone who understands Camus. Do not expect special effects or action hero stuff. This story goes deeper than that. Far deeper. It is in French but as the dialogue is on the sparse side, the subtitles for English speakers are easy. A movie of a great idea wherein the message, the dialogue and the filming merge together into a powerful statement.