Archive for 2018
176 posts from 01 January to 22 December 2018.
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Celibacy is not worth it, it leads to gruesome deaths.
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A small portal is open into an alternate universe, but we are only allowed to peek at it from afar. Not even worth for those who read the books, I would wager.
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Middle class black family man is living his life, when the father is lured into lucrative work and gets kidnapped and sold into slavery for 12 years. Even though it’s based on a 200 years old book, it’s still as powerful as ever.
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Bog standard “creep invades home of middle class person” horror film. Very modern since the main character rents a bargain home for a “mere” $4k.
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The Japanese music is damn eerie. It falls straight in the middle of the uncanny valley, it’s both familiar and a little strange. Works very well to make whole environment more contradictory.
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Kids falling down: The Movie of the Book. Eat you heart out, Labyrinth and The Princess Bride.
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A oddly mainstream Spike Lee joint, but still seeped in his particular style. Gripping from start to finish.
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Snowpiercer for kids, as someone put it. I think it muddles its political points too much to warrant such comparisons, but it’s apt.
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Baby’s first Woody Allen film. A lite romp consisting of guessing the actor behind the voice. It’s quite easy.
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Starts of as a Cellular retread, complete with LAPD copaganda, and slowly inches toward Hostel, thankfully stopping well before that.
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Cinema veritè, in 1930’s Alentejo. Structured like a revenge plot, mostly against metaphoric leeches represented by literal landowners.
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Good Old Testament scumbag God massacres His creation for the lulz. Humans must decide to stop being submissive or go mad from their actions.
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Not worth it to break my Iñarritu self-imposed ban(it’s not clear on the marketing he’s directing). Not even Naomi Watts can rescue this.
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Jim Carrey is a Tony Curtis dead ringer. Incredible.
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The accidental Bonnie and Clyde, except complete cretins. Reaches Nathan Barley levels of idiocy.
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Contrived coincidences cannot create cockups. Consequences cleanly cutoff.
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Polanski’s Eyes Wide Shut. Just an excuse to see his wife naked, yuck!
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The men with a name that drags a coffin around.
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A story that warps around itself so much, it exists on a vacuum. The best metaphor are those Teletubbies pink sludge bowls.
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Simplicity is when you remove all unnecessary features, you get this. A film that’s all meat, no fat.
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Stratospheric cast does an adaptation while Agatha Christie was still alive! Goddamn brilliant.
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Flash Gordon meets Braindead, but not as developed as any of those.
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Remake in name only. This has more in common with mother! and Black Swan.
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This is what passes for a soft Wes Anderson film. Not something profoundly sad as The Royal Tenenbaums, a fun romp, visually and orally bliss.
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Classic Russian Roulette sports film, with a backstory related to the effects of ‘Nam on a rust belt small town. Can be read as both “rah rah ‘murica, evil Vietcong” and “war is hell”.
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In this “fake” single-shot film, the fascist is never seen up close, only the victims matter. Fuck fascists, you will not replace us.
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Analyse This retrograde script. Old and busted ideas dressed up in fine leather and CGI.
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Equal parts Benny Hill, eye watering melodrama and regular Bond villain megalomania.
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The one where Bond faces Scaramanga, the guy with three nipples and a dwarf servant.
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The very first Roger Moore-led Bond has magic people, voodoo people.
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The one where the US Army fawns over the Taliban Mujahideen. That did not age well…
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Now this is more Rambo. Jingoistic, preposterous and ripe for parodies.
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Ferris Bueller’s Army Day. I understand he was playing a kid thrust into responsibility by war, but he’s still the nerd from WarGames.
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Childish BS, what a crock of shit.
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This started as one of those Christian themed scripts, but someone took a hatchet to it and turned into an abomination of epic proportions. Sinful, without pleasure.
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Rambo is a PTSD-laden ‘Nam veteran, drifting over flyover country and getting mistreated by everyone he finds.
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The only winning move is logic-bombing on HAL. Finally the long awaited sequel of The Breakfast Club where the cool girl doesn’t end up depressed.
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An alternate future where the “AI” response to “Siri, cure my loneliness” is not “Searching for porn/one-night-stands”, but phone sex with a machine.
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More of the same shit, only more so.
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Powerful stuff, particularly the post-credit Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally. 50 years go by in a flash.
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Twilight of the Body Snatchers. The Stephanie Meyer connection was only brought up later.
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The 80’s equivalent to the Fleischer cartoons. A smörgåsbord of dated effects, product placement, smoking in inappropriate locations and sex jokes. You know … for kids!
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2001, a Blair Witch in Space.
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Jamie Lee Curtis honey traps 4 guys concurrently before their very eyes, and gets away with it! She falls for the one who finds her weak spot: sexual arousal when hearing spoken Russian.
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An Australian plays William Wallace, another Hollywood stunt casting choice. Robert Bruce is a minor character, but he was more important overall.
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Standard “drugs are bad” flick. Despite being about heroin addiction, everybody is happy, and after a brief “Kum ba yah” all is good.
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An ultra depressing film about lowlife Blockbuster Clerks / drug dealers that bite more than they can chew and get their lives kicked down a notch.
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A demo reel for Hot Jesus. A box ticking enterprise. Not even worth it to finish the
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Boner pill commercials masquerading as the Boogie Nights of romantic comedies.
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The Sherlock Holmes adaptation where Watson is the brains of the enterprise, Mrs Hudson is the heart and Holmes himself is an ignorant boob.
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Not a bad directorial stint for Jodie Foster. The ending is strong on this one…
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The American remake of Banlieue 13, with less parkour and more Paul Walker punching and shooting people.
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Completely crazy catwalk of cognate cameos. Creates a cognitive confusion concerning celebrities communications containing cant ciphers, commonly called slang. Neil deGrasse Tyson in da house, bitches!
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Less transporting gets done since the last time.
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A very good action film with really inventive fight scenes. Has more in common with the old Jackie Chan films than the usual fight-scene driven drivel, but with a better script.
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A bog standard thriller with the requisite twist and counter twist towards the end.
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The superior crazy people film. All female cast in which some poor woman deals with mental illness by pretending her neighbourhood in Washington Street is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
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Meta film in which Martin McDonaugh eviscerates himself, being impersonated by Colin Farrell.
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A classic sports plot elevated into greatness by being set in medieval Europe. Probably the only mainstream film that starts with a secondary character violently voiding his own bowels ‘till death (offscreen, of course, this is still Hollywood).
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Undoing the character development in the last film for fun and profit.
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One of Bond’s many low points. This is just bad.
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Actually pretty funny. The basic plot is good enough, but the script is tight and very well acted. A joy to watch.
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Freaking ace! Brad Bird gets the helm of the Impossible Mission Franchise and proceeds to do a The Incredibles inspired romp that is a joy to watch.
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How come this is so well regarded? It’s nothing more than white dudes talking.
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Laughable waste of resources. A very talented cast doing fuck all, a preposterous script that resembles Yu Gi-Oh and children’s card games, millions of dollars in cars getting wrecked.
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The Bond origin story that no one was pining for.
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Light horror for kids. At least that’s how this is sold, but the backstory includes people committing suicide, with on-screen hangings. Just like Pirates of the Caribbean, this was adapted from a Disneyworld ride, except this is dead, Jim.
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Back to thin plots layered on copious amounts of action scenes.
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The one where the franchise grows the beard. After dozens of formulaic carbon copies, they graduate to the big boys club.
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The good remake of The Toxic Avenger, with added anime referenced for good measure.
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Another competent musical from the Disney assembly line. Professionally Formulaic.
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Another Transcendence mindfuck. This one is a more blatant Tarkovsky ripoff, mostly Solaris and Stalker.
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Ensemble parody of action films in general. Low budget doesn’t mean low quality, but in this case that is not completely off the mark.
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RealDolls are people too (Incredibly NSFW, you have been warned!).
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Fucking hell, what a fucker the main character is. Fucks around so much he is dumped by all woman he dates and/or marries. The dipshit will bed everything that moves.
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Simple investigation into a murder that might have political connotations. Turns out it was a crime of passion and the political police are clutching at straws trying to extract meaning where it doesn’t exist.
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Taxi Driver meets Silence. The light political stuff is mild, but you can see the Paul Schrader speak through it. Travis Bickle’s youthful rage has turned into elderly depression and sadness for the heirs of his generation.
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More of the same with loads of callbacks and references. Doesn’t reach the level of the first one, it’s an action packed scene with an ironic plot.
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Hipster bullcrap. A low rent Spring Breakers.
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Even man-child Fritz Haber deserves love.
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A Stephen King adaptation about a mentally unstable writer, what a surprise. This is the one where he is stalked by a southern guy played with gusto by [Jesus Quintana](/2020/11/11/the-big-lebowski.html{:.inner-link}.
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Teens find a hole with a superpowers-granting machine and have to deal with the fallout of being too immature for the power they wield. Pretty interesting take on the superhero genre.
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Bog standard, formulaic rom com with swear words. Poor Jay Baruchel. This is so predictable you can almost use it a clock.
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Pool Newman.
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The missing Saints Row 3 adaptation, with some introspection casually thrown into the mix.
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The one with Halle Berry, Rosamund Pike and Maddona.
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The one with Michelle Yeoh. Vincent Price is Rupert Murdoch on steroids. Hired Ricky Jay to hack “SSL2 with 128 bits” links or something.
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Surprisingly introspective plot about oil pipelines in Asia Minor countries.
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Modern (about my age) Bond doesn’t really deviate from the formula. An above average action film.
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The one filmed in Portugal posing for Sicily, with George Lazenby.
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Now this is just preposterous. SPECTRE is doing false flag rocket launches from their hollowed out volcano lairs with monorails!
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Ludonarrative Dissonance: The Film. Yet another childish comic book adaptation that pretends to be edgy by using cuss words.
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The one that starts the silliness. This starts with a funeral for a “JB”, Bond sucker-punches the widow (which turns out to be the dead man) and eventually ends with Bond escaping on a jetpack.
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The one with Pussy Galore, Oddjob and the titular Goldfinger attempting to blow a nuke on Fort Knox to irradiate the gold and make all other gold more valuable.
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The quintessential James Bond. The one with all the recognisable elements:
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A badly paced risqué version of North by Northwest. Kinda underwhelming.
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The new one. Chloë Moretz is not as pitiful as Sissy Spacek, but she is a better actress, so it evens out in the end. The bullies are even more massacred here.
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Lousy cheating horror. I honestly saw this just for Kristen, but it’s from her teen phase, it should be ignored.
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Just another crap horror film. It would have directly to the bargain bin, but Jennifer Lawrence became a bankable star right at the same time.
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A very silly comedy. It might be a series of disjointed set pieces, but those set pieces are very good.
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Probably Scorsese’s finest.
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The other Bee Movie, equally as hilarious. A classic Nic Cage romp.
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Weaker gender swapped version of The Brothers Bloom.
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A 90 minutes long Flying Circus episode, minus people with military uniforms saying all that was silly. Even though it is.
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FFS, one of the worst endings I have ever seen. Batman is prepared for everything, but truly everything? All the fuss about making sacrifices for the people to nought, since the Bats wins everything in the end.
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Similar to Bronson, but focused on IRA prisoners.
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Ocean’s Breakfast Club. At least that what the script was gunning for.
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The incestuous love child of Labyrinth and Terry Gilliam.
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A classic. Worth it for the Callas aria scene alone.
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90 min long Biting Elbows video clip.
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North Korea invades California. Using HMMWV. What?
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Basic plot wrapping some fantastic dancing numbers.
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Completely pathetic. Antitrust wears Prada.
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Plain old CIA propaganda, with a touch of Hollywood trademark self-deprecation. Feels like U-571. Like everything CIA pumps out, it includes prominently that wall with a star for each KIA agent.
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Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Charlie Sheen in “tiger blood” mode.
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I love the credit to Anarchos Productions Inc.
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The Thick of It transplanted to Soviet nomenklatura. Funny and horrifying.
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Old school film noir about corrupt cops in Los Angeles (as the name implies). A bit too clean for my taste. Nearly as good as Chinatown.
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The one with Luke Evans as the villain. 20 min to stupid car chase.
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Yet another childish comic book adaptation. This one suffers from a lack of plot and too much Will Smith.
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Neo-Luddites vs Singularity-level AI. Who will win?
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Stylish take on the insanity POV genre. This film is a visual masterpiece. The range of camera trickery and editing skill is staggering.
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Some films show all their ideas on the title. This one does it on the synopsis.
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Joel Schumacher does a thriller that promises but fails to raise above mediocrity.
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A great film for our times. Paranoia leads to witch hunts which lead to wrecked communities. A great companion piece to Doubt.
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Standard John Woo film. Shit blows up while stuntpeople do increasingly crazy stuff.
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Someone watched the previous films and said “What if this was much more violent but still sold for kids?”. Doesn’t hold a candle to Jurassic Park 3.
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If being befuddled and lost while pretty colours parade around my eyes and Alice gets PG-naked several times was the point, this has achieved its purpose.
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Lots of exposition to make sure you remember the last one. No major retcons that I noticed.
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What the hell was this about? Did they get the cast together and then came up with a script on the spot? What’s the point of having a testicle-shivering amount of talent without a plot?
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Goddamn fantastic cast doing jack shit to elevate this to beyond young adult fantasy for kids. Teens saving their world, that turns out to be a Fallout Vault with more incompetent people. Martin Landau and Bill Murray have a lot of fun chewing the scenery.
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Spielberg trolls a generation. With Cline on board, they turn the book into Wreck It Ralph for older manchildren. Feels like The Matrix from the POV of Agent Smith. Should have guessed from the book’s ending.
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Dadaist CGI cow roams an urban setting, like the subway, restaurants, offices. Cow-a-bunda!
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Generic action film that happens to take some cues from the game, ignoring the Angelina Jolie continuity. No The Descent references, for shame.
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From the director of In Bruges comes some fucking film about all the shit going down in America. A bunch of dipshits talking crap and fucking themselves up mutually.
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Zombies, with human emotions. The opening scene stays with me forever.
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300 ways of dying in the cradle of western civilisation in which more than 300 ships stop(?) an empire from raising. So it’s all lies just in the title.
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Meta film about a play that was to be adapted into film. Juliette Binoche plays almost herself, being tormented by her lack of youth, personified by Kristen Stewart and Chloë Grace Moretz.
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Yo ho, a pirate’s life for me. Nothing says “Freedom!” like a PG-13 Disney movie based on ripping off old Treasure Island and Cutthroat Island.
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- “Witness me! I am awaited in Valhalla!”
- “MEDIOCRE!!!”
- Faceless Immortan Joe is nasty!
- Furiosa is pretty calm, considering her name. Mad Max is also sane.
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Every horror film rolled into one.
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28 Straw Dogs. It even has Cillian Murphy.
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White trash struggles to live, while the universe conspires against them.
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Ghost Whisperer on Rohypnol.
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There’s no The Prestige into taking Mementos from other films. Pure Larceny.
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Clucking great children’s film.
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From the ads, it seemed like another American Pie, but this is something else.
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Wikus is the real everyman. A dumb bureaucrat who keeps fucking up.
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The anarchist’s cookfilm.
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Another [Snow White](Snow White: Fairest of them All){:.inner-link} adaptation, but fun and colourful.
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Hilarious take on the backstage of a Broadway play.
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Ultra British thriller.
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Variation on the same themes as The Matrix, with great window dressing. Mila Kunis was not the ideal actress for the lead, but it’s watchable.
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More a series of sketches than an unified plot. Still very much worth watching, if nothing else for the massive amount of talent on screen.
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Good grief, what a milquetoast affair. Directed by the American Pie creator, here comes corporatist propaganda faux-raging against the system.
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Another “unfilmable” story turned into a great film. That moniker looks like a dare.
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Unspeakable horror. Almost literally, the 3 bad guys have less than 3 lines in total.
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The one with the following quote:
20 bucks they killed him. Dykes.
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Melodramatic and over the top. Even being a war film, it has more in common with John Woo heroic bloodshed.
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A Catherine Keener meta film. She proves anyone can be typecast as anything.
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Jennifer Tilly is a half retarded maniac wannabe mother. Daryl Hannah is the forced surrogate mother. Together, they are at each other’s throats.
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Mainstream Gilliam is a mishmash of watchable-by-muggles and just too damn weird.
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Paul Giamatti violently chewing the scenery while Clive Owen chews on carrots. The dark and gritty adaptation that Bugs Bunny needed, not one he wanted.
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Hallelujah! Another cool musical. I was nun the wiser they existed.
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Porn without plot. Completely worthless.
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A scathing satire of Portuguese society. The script writer was a classy troll, and the fact that this was greenlit by the biggest broadcast network only makes it even funnier.
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A documentary about a documentary about the Nazi concentration camps buried by the British after the war.
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The first Bergman I ever watched is a feeble anti war film.
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What’s in the box (office)? The perfect Halloween film, if you like your candy laced with rusty razorblades, for your mind.
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Not sure if I should laugh, even though its funny.
Not sure if I should cry, even though is sad.
A Wes Anderson film. -
Cyclists falling over: The Movie.
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Should be named “The Pink Panther: You Too?”
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Not so much about start-ups, just another film to add to the long list of Nancy Meyers works.
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Not as disastrous as it seems.
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Can’t hold a candle to R.I.P.D., that’s my verdict. If that’s not a black mark, I don’t know what is.