Archive for 2022

69 posts from 14 January to 07 November 2022.

  • Hanna

    Where Do I Begin? Life is Sweet, The Salmon Dance, Snow falls.

  • Restos do Vento

    Violence begets violence, silence continues the suffering, vengeful catharsis only delays the problem. In this case, for the next generation.

  • Independence Day

    Woo, Will Smart in the start of its Schwarzenegger-isation. It’s not MIB II-levels of “wooo”. Just like all Emmerich epics, this is bursting at the seams with shit happening, but at the same time it feels hollow.

  • Vice

    A libtard look into the life of Cheney, with barely any mention of more explosive stuff, and only a small video of Hillary Rodham selling the Iraq War like the corporatist war criminal she is.

  • Inception

    Good grief, the sound mix is truly awful. You can’t hear the dialogue, if you try to raise the volume your ears will be split on the explosions. I can see why teenage me thought this was the best thing since sliced bread: teenage me was dumb.

  • Mortdecai

    How quaint. It appears that someone thought that the best part of Ocean’s Eleven was the horrendous British accents and the sex jokes, and therefore based the entirety of a major motion picture on those skits. Preposterous, I say, good chap.

  • The Cheap Detective

    The followup to Murder by Death, with Peter Falk playing the Marlowe private dick that gets all the girls in the end. Incredible, considering he is a broke guy without a steady job.

  • Tank Girl

    Riot Girl is tight! Meek girl learning to face her oppressors is goddamn tight! Kangaroo-men are hopping mad!

  • The Handmaid's Tale

    A focused version of the TV show. It’s only the greatest hits, but they are almost all there. The TV show takes its time between plot developments, it’s less jarring and has less mood swings.

  • Super Mario Bros.

    An alternative universe where some blonde property developer from Brooklyn rules with an iron fist, plastering his name and face everywhere, while privately harassing women. Only good working class folk can save us from this deranged maniac. Good thing this was absolute fiction, no way this happened decades later.

  • Green Lantern

    This is very bad, in so many ways. Amateurish really, a low rent Deadpool (that’s saying something!). The casting is the worse, Blake Lively should be the action girl and Ryan Reynolds the love interest!

  • Sorry to Bother You

    A left-wing film in which workers unionise and achieve their goals, even when scabs cross the picket line. Squint! Squint at the grandeur.

  • Keeping Mum

    A touching family story, with extra murders. Nanny McPhee or Miss Marple or Mary Poppins as murderesses.

  • The Eye

    A remake of a Pang brothers film, that’s something that you don’t see every day. Jessica Alba is a sight for sore eyes, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Rachel Ticotin still has that Total Recall vibe.

  • Mechanic: Ressurrection

    Yet another PG-13 assassin murdering people, while boobs remain firmly in bras. It’s sort like Hitman (the game), making it look like an accident. Came for Michelle Yeoh, but it’s a cameo, no martial arts involving her. Jessica Alba is the love interest that does nothing but getting captured.

  • Out of Sight

    So that’s where Clooney met Soderbergh. A match made in heaven really. Ving Rhames should have been on the Ocean films.

  • Maelström

    Villeneuve’s second film. What the fuck was he smoking, so many questions.

  • Regression

    Emma Watson saying “Believe Us!” on TV, while being the villain, Evil incarnate. That’s ballsy. Troll level: Serge Gainsbourg.

  • Fast Times at Ridgemont High

    I’m pretty sure the creators of this dross were on dope. Just a whitewashed piece of Americana by Cameron Crowe, set in the worst possible place: high school. Just another Porky’s, but with rich folk.

  • Death Race

    An industrial small scale version of Mad Max: Fury Road. Sure, there’s a plot in here somewhere, but it’s all about stuff blowing up.

  • Bullitt

    Not too shabby for the inventor of chase scenes.

  • Unlocked

    A standard spy thriller, Bourne-lite, with evil CIA traitors. It’s just crazy that the bad guy wants to release a weaponized virus so that America legalises “medical martial law”: contact tracing, quarantines, access to medical data.

  • After Hours

    This is like a show reel of actors doing scenes. There’s barely a coherent plot, just a Scorsese expy having many woman throw themselves at him, and self destroying when they are rebuked. Ya’ know, New Hollywood, not like the olden days.

  • Baby Driver

    A strange ride. Too many drivers spoil the trip. Just like that jet-powered Beetle, it’s style over substance. Bill Pope is completely wasted.

  • Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

    A baby fathered by The Matrix, Shaolin Soccer, Moonlight, and In The Mood for Love. Usually, “stuck in a blender” is a metaphor, but this is a corker. A better multiverse than more Marvel crap.

  • Cartas da Guerra

    Epistolary look into the commissioned officer experience in the Portuguese Colonial War. A more mainstream affair, compared to Hotel Império.

  • Salgueiro Maia: O Implicado

    The missing biopic of a forgotten hero. Many civil wars were avoided by his charisma, calm and quietude.

  • The Animatrix

    A wide ranging anthology of The Matrix-adjacent stuff.

  • Unforgettable

    Ironically, this is a forgettable “sci-fi”-ish thriller about memories and murders. Linda Fiorentino is the scientist who does basically nothing.

  • Shout

    Footloose meets Hairspray. Came for Linda Fiorentino, but she’s only a bit part, as the speakeasy owner. The lead is literally a James Dean clone, a dead ringer.

  • Johnny English Strikes Again

    Again? The last one had funny moments, like laughing his ass off at Camero-bot 9000 being PM, and having MI6 brought to you by Toshiba, but this is just another low rent Bond-like with repeated jokes. I’m all up for sticking one up Silicon Valley twats, but this is not it.

  • Fitzcarraldo

    Some Irishman called Fitzgerald, a failed businessman, goes big or goes home. The crazy part is that it works, he goes big.

  • The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

    Nic Cage plays himself, playing himself. I’ve never meta joke I didn’t like.

  • Youth

    Maradonna, Miss Universe and Leonard Nimoy enter a Swiss hotel… This script has incredible jokes, followed by cruel and mean philosophical meanderings into the Universe. Just like life…

  • Blue Jasmine

    Neurotic Park Avenue socialite meets the real world, tragedy ensues.

  • In the Loop

    A feature-length The Thick of It series, about war and walls (either Gaza or some local council). Has familiar faces on similar situations, but they get fucked in less time.

  • Cemetery Junction

    Another serious-ish small-town-freaking-sucks film, but with jokes. Has David Brent as the working class patriarch (insert Gervais giggle). In a scale of The Town to Straw Dogs, this is about a 2 in the cosmopolitrometer.

  • Veneno Cura

    What’s this, I don’t even… That cold opening sets the tone, but it gets progressively weirder and weirder. Goes to very dark places, but never raises above voyeurism and gratuitous shock value.

  • Hellboy

    The Neil Marshall version, Neil Marshalled up to eleven. Gory as hell, in a fun way.

  • In Bruges

    Fucking Bruges. Interplay of bizarre humour and gruesome violence.

  • Men in Black II

    A letdown compared to [the first one](Men in Black){:inner-link}. Box-ticking exercise, everybody is just going through the motions.

  • The Power of the Dog

    Basic home drama set in the dust bowl ages (even though it seems like the 19th century). Visuals over plot, with top actors.

  • The Batman

    The Dark Seven, a bit lighter due to contractual obligations. Worth it to go in without any marketing exposure. The Penguin is fucking rad, as are all other birds!

  • Audition

    That’s fucked up. Slow burner, preps you you 90 minutes of romcom, for a final segway into trademark Takeshi Miike madness. The ending is very much anti-climatic.

  • Deliverance

    Hot damn, ‘em rebs sure ain’t psychos. Male-only Straw Dogs.

  • Odd Thomas

    Oddly weird mix of banter, pious bullshit, and superhero origin story. Doesn’t work too well, it feels unfinished. I had to see it to believe it.

  • Atonement

    You stupid child. Getting people killed, is that her idea of fun? And the final gut punch, oof.

  • Eagle Eye

    Pre-Snowden, pre-January 6 insurrection techno thriller. It’s a very competent cast with a silly script. Baby’s first Enemy of the State, Fun!

  • Whiteout

    White Noise…

  • Men in Black: International

    That’s no Sonnenfeld Men in Black. Strictly worse than the second one, with added Tencent cash and so much product placement.

  • The Host

    Just like Parasite (and even Mother), the tone swerves very fast from hilarious comedy to poignant emotional suffering. The USA are the real monsters…

  • The Town

    Fake Bostonians robbing banks and emotionally destroying a poor bank manager. Give it up, Ben, you ain’t no working class dude, let alone from the projects. Jimmy Renner is less fake than ye!

  • Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

    Baited with a Jarhead type, and all I got was another Pentagon propaganda flick. Kristen was right, he’s no hero.

  • Mia and the White Lion

    A tasteful anti-“canned lion hunting” screed, brought to you by Rolex.

  • Paradise Hills

    As the name implies, these are the opposite of paradisaical greenery. Nice costumes, with a mere clothesline plot to show them off.

  • Catwoman

    Me-wow! Woman Empowerment meets Sexy Leather Outfits. A much better look at the fashion industry that The Devil Wears Prada.

  • Nightmare Alley

    Be careful what you wish for. There’s always a bigger fish, the conman becomes the mark.

  • Anon

    A modern, post-Snowden, low budget Strange Days. The murder investigation framing device kinda defeats the point of the story.

  • Deathwatch

    Kinda redundant, an horror film set in The Great War’s trenches. Even if it’s a big purgatory metaphor, and the entity testing the souls is a German POW.

  • Brightburn

    Let’s go Brandon! Just an Evil Supes.

  • Barton Fink

    A writer going crazy, or is it? What’s in the box, what’s in the box? What’s in the box, is it the same thing as Se7en? ‘Cause I think it is…

  • Crooked House

    Too much mystery, not enough pay off. The first hour is good, but then it loses steam and sputters along until the end. Shame.

  • Die Welle

    Heil Teacher! The simplifier in chief. Group dynamics do most of the work, it only needs a small push.

  • Red Sun

    A samurai, and two cowboys meet in Arizona. Bushido koans are thrown around, but in the end the gun is mightier than the sword. What matters is that the quest is fulfilled, by the not so renegade protagonist.

  • Diana

    A story about Lady Di and the forgotten post-Charles pre-Dodi Diana fuckbuddy.

  • Breathe In

    An happy ending pulled out of their asses ruins an already bland family drama.

  • Strangerland

    WTF did I just watch?

  • Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice

    More like bore of yuck-tease. It’s a complete trainwreck.

  • Inherent Vice

    Stream of consciousness book? The narrator is perma-stoned, so it’s like glimpsing at a larger plot without long-term memory.