oakbymaple Reviews

Bridgerton (2020– )

An embarrassing attempt at target audience based product design

[2/10 · 3 August 2022]

Complaining in detail about the painfully in-your-face writing, the abscence of any character development, the jarringly wooden dialogue, the ridiculously stenciled acting, the embarassingly obvious low cost music or the fact that a piece of media which at least pretends to be history related is not only pure fiction but also decisively disregardful of its matter would be a waste of time: It's not really an attempt at storytelling or filmmaking but rather a product designed by the numbers to appease the lower instincts of a strictly defined target audience. This is mainly done by the good ol' cheap humiliation of the reverse aggregate of people, of course handing out payoff after payoff without putting in the pesky effort for buildups.

One extra star for the costumes which naturally are ahistorical but also the only corner that wasn't cut .

As a postscript I do recommend scrolling through the reviews here and form your own oppinion on how this kind of reception could have formed a 7.3 rating.

Age of Cannibals (2014)

Truly remarkable, fortunately not for everyone

[9/10 · 24 December 2021]

Do you know German movies? They all belong to one of two genres: goofy, forgettable commedy coated in a thick layer of feel-good sugar, or grim drama, depleted of color and prospect. These archetypes draw from a very small pool of themes, which get explored by the ever same characters that are tightly locked to the charged actors. Variation, creativity and the development of new ideas seem to be very unpopular in German cinema, and if you're looking for any of these in movies you might just be out of luck here.

If it just wasn't for this piece: it completely disregards the popular formulae, picks a central idea - or rather question - and relentlessly explores it with no respect to the viewer's expectations.

At the core there are only three characters, who get sent on a journey through post reason capitalism. As the high profile business consultants they are they need to always be on top of everything while their slowly exposed human elements have them stumble into catastrophy with little to no control. The characters' clash and demise is entertaining to watch by itself, not at last due to the clearly involved actors. Yet there is a lot of double flooring that provides good nourishment for thought during and after the movie without pointing fingers or putting forth easy answers.

The open-minded and off-grid approach to telling this story might be taken as overly artsy by some and others will be pushed away by the remaining rough edges that are unavoidable when something is made entirely from scratch. However the boldly presented and and carefully crafted structure of the final product will most likely impress everyone else and maybe even provoke some thought.

In short: a fine movie by itself, but a revelation for German cinema.

Now You See Me (I) (2013)

Pretends to be super smart with nothing to back it up

[3/10 · 24 August 2020]

The opening is solid and promises a fast paced, cleverly laid out plot with unique characters and a long-term payoff: the reveal of a secret character. What follows sure is fast paced but also laughable in terms of character building and cleverness. Take for instance the final twist, the chararcter reveal: it brags about how insanely clever it is while completely ignoring that it forgot the setup to the payoff. The setup to the main plot point! But it's by no means the only one lacking foreshadowing or at least coherence. Twists and reveals are thematically particularily interesting in a piece on stage magic, but most of the turns come out of complete nowhere, defy any logic and sometimes even invalidate previously, apparently carefully established plot points. Another symptom of this sickness are the "magic tricks", that in a number of cases are just flatout high fantasy literal magic, sometimes poorly explained by throwaway lines or just dumped on the viewer in the hope that the insane frequence of plot turns won't leave any time to ask questions. The characters also fall victim to missing foresight: the initially very intriguing mystery about the four horsemen and their final motivation actually never gets lifted and leaves them as ultimately mindless plot devices. As a result, the amount of cringe in the final two scenes that this mess of a plot culminates in is simply awe-inducing.

There could have been a world of trickery and deception to be playfully explored in the context of professional magicians, but all the movie does is throw the viewer a ton of impossible to chew bones and require them to swallow those with next to no help. All the while bathing itself in its aura of self-proclaimed genius.

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

It's solid

[8/10 · 26 July 2020]

I know I saw this one in cinema when it came out and was pretty content with what I expected to be a sci-fi action movie back then. After watching it a second time my opinion of the movie has not worsened, it might actually have improved a little here and there when comparing it to other major hollywood productions these days:

The movie ticks every box when going over the sci-fi action but also the writing-checklist. The plot has a properly developed arch with setups and payoffs. Its stakes are high and so is your investment and the suspense. There might be a plot hole here and there but they're minor in themselves and ultimately unavoidable in space anyway. The characters show actual development and special traits and weaknesses. They actively deal with issues like friendship, love and obedience. The actors all perform really well, although the main attraction of course is Cumberbatch. I'd even go as far as saying he's the main reason for me liking the movie so much: "My name is *Khan*"; Chills, literally! Then there's action that can be best described as awesome with great cgi and admittedly a bit too much lens flare, a score that gets you going and lots of star trek gadgets.

But isn't "ticking every box" a kind of weak reason to like a movie? For me personally in this case it isn't: all the parts are there and they even fit very well, I just love it! But apart from this personal opinion it's also worth being highlighted in a broader context: nowadays multimillion hollywood productions can deal with not even looking at the checklist of basics, produce utter garbage and still be a commercial success. So why not like a movie that shows it understands and appreciates the laws of writing?

One more word on the flood of 1-star reviews: I hope I showed why those are mostly unjustified from a technical viewpoint, but they seem to come from a very emotional direction anyway. Of course, none of the above mentioned traits exceed somewhat high expectations, no element of the movie blows your mind, and some weaknesses (no spoilers) should actually be discussed. But hating a solid sci-fi action movie for not enlightening you and blowing you away like Star Trek used to back in the days? That sounds very much a question of expectations and not of craftsmanship in filmmaking.

Takumi: A 60,000 Hour Story On the Survival of Human Craft (2018)

It's not a documentary, it's a commercial

[1/10 · 26 July 2020]

During the first half or so this piece of media tries extremely hard to appear contemplative and thought provoking while painting the most uninspired, chliché-driven and completely empty of meaning image of traditional japanese culture. It's not really a demonstration of craftsmanship in filmmaking up to this point, but not a crime either. But it doesn't just stop there: from then on it completely stops trying to hide that it's not in fact a badly handled documentary but really a overblown, phoney commercial for the Lexus car brand. It's a deceptive and manipulative try to heighten their self image to an almost transcending point while not only misunderstanding the concept of documentary journalism but maliciously faking it to further their interests.

Ran (1985)

Maybe a masterpiece, but only to Connoisseurs

[6/10 · 26 July 2020]

The Movie certainly has its qualities: carefully built characters, impressive costumes and scenery and an apparent skill in storytelling, at least in some places: the bigger hollywood productions of these days could probably learn tons here.

That being said I don't think it's a great movie. It's hard to follow at some points, especially at the battle scene and in its more experimental sequences. Here, heavy with meaning symbols are extensively presented, which not only makes the plot appear very drawn out but also hard to grasp: they are so abstract at times that picking up on them is rather unlikely, unless you have a profound literary background knowledge and a trained eye of course. The strong influence of classical theatre is also only a plus for the more educated: for instance characters proclaiming their thoughts and feelings is a necissity on stage, but in film this feels kind of out of place. The same goes for the demonstrative use of the names of the scene of events: it's obviously a legitimate means of conveying critical information and also meaning in a script of a play, but film offers so many more and much more effective options than that. Also: Why is "going insane" such a must-have plot item in a classical drama?

All in all it's a movie that definitely will have its place in the collections of enthusiasts, but to everyone else it might just be too tough to chew. If you're not into Shakespeare or theatre in general, this movie probably isn't too enjoyable for you.