Archive for 2023
147 posts from 12 January to 27 December 2023.
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The 2021 version. Yet another version of the same silly plot, with better actors and modern effects. Ironically, they must have reused a lot of the game itself, the latter versions are identical.
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Paul Schrader copied the classic film noir so well, it includes Hays Code limits. Is this for adults, or is it Bugsy Malone?
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The difference the writer not being a woman makes: we go from Romancing the Stone to generic Temple of Doom: cultural insensitivity, random action scenes, plot nonsense.
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Brilliant. Falls a bit short in terms of plot, it just ends abruptly, but more than makes up for it everywhere else. It’s like a human mind: precious but fragile, breaks down if mistreated, or over analysed.
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I film about people of low socio-economic class that ruin their (shitty) lives after talking to the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover, continuing to ruin lives beyond the grave.
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I was truly convinced this was an allegory about AAAAIDS. But then Malcolm McDonald gets shot and meek Natassja Kinski absconds to Virginia and gets back a sex fiend. The analogies break down from there, I lost the plot. The writer was really putting out fires with gasoline.
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A nice little morality tale, with some technobabble transhumanism and action scenes. Not as visually stunning as other Tarsem Singh films, bummer. Technically great, I guess I just fundamentally disagree with the premise.
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One part teen soap opera, other part gruesome body horror schlock. Who is the audience for this, exactly? Probably teenagers making out in the cinema without paying attention to the film.
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An European version of Snowpiercer, where the villain looks like Cypher from The Matrix until the last reveal. Maybe I’m dumb, but the philosophical stuff very muddled.
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Half horror drama, like a baby’s first The Ring, half buddy cop film, with a no-nonsense sassy black woman and a younger detective, being biblically chased by the CSI girl and the killer’s sister. Doesn’t really gel.
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Well well, Robert Zemeckis, notorious second fiddle to Spielberg, does a better Indiana Jones than the real deal, much superior to Temple of Doom and even Raiders. That wasn’t on my bingo card.
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John Wick meets Stranger Things, with Karen Gillian, with added killer escorting a child, like all modern fiction. This has much less action than John Wick, it’s more focused on the female side, makes it more balanced.
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Whoa, the tone of this is all over the place, it’s too serious and dramatic for a comedy horror, but too silly for a proper drama. Tries to have it’s farm cake and eat it too. No wonder Sam Raimi moved to Marvel films, where this kind of appeasement to everyone is their bread and butter.
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What the fuck is this, a lot of noise, screams, and darkness. Horrifying production values here. Clearly a video nasty, not many redeeming qualities here.
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Oh wow, this is what a not so good Ken Loach film is? It gets better than this?
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Oh my, another American “comedy”, about corrupt cops busting other more corrupt cops, with American Pie level shenanigans. How come Brian freaking Cox was roped into this, was his SAG insurance about to expire in the end of the year and needed a credit?
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Run of the mill Conan ripoff, with a ridiculous main love interest. Some Roger Corman tax dodge. The last blooper is during her sex scene, when she’s topless pleasuring the main character, while the crew laughs. That says everything about the production.
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Truly an hollow man, before and after turning invisible. The nerds win! The guy in the convertible falls into the fire, while the woman driving the station wagon prevails, with science!
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What a goddamn nice looking mess. The battle scenes are the best, if you like the Gladiator cold opening repeated several times. The rest can and should be ostracised to Saint Helena, with three officers and 12 servants.
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This is a very straightforward and simple story, with not many flourishes, twists and turns. It’s a purely cerebral experience, even the noir element is subdued. It’s first and foremost an anti-eugenics treatise.
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Invasion of the Daemonic Alien Physical Esoteric Scientific Body Snatchers. A diminished Carpenter posse, it lacks a charismatic character to elevate it to Big Trouble in Little China.
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I hate this work. This kind of self-referential story, Hollywood talking about itself, replacing actors for trite purposes. A giant cast of talent doing nothingness. At least Seinfeld was funny.
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An adaptation of a German book series, for kids. Wreck It Ralph with public domain characters, or The League of Extraordinary Gentleman for girls.
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Autobiographical story of the life of an aunt of the author, from what I can tell. Freaking ruthless female Scrooge, hiding her avarice with “charity”, piety, and religious adherence. This feels like a gender-swapped The Fountainhead, with less ideological ranting, but keeping the long stretches of voiceover reading the book.
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Pure, hardcore drama, mixing true soulmates and evil bureaucrats sub-sub-sub-contracting death squads on activists writing reports. True love can unite a career foreign office drone with a passion for gardening, and another richer activist/journalist with a knack for pissing off powerful people.
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Wreck it Ralph meets Street Fighter: for the big bad, it was Tuesday.
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A gender swapped Bonnie and Clyde, with a bizarre framing device as a smartass little girl as narrator, like the Inspector Gadget niece, or the protagonist of The Nice Guys.
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Damn, Vincent Cassel can talk passable Brazilian Portuguese, with a strong accent. Not a bit part either, a large role. Not sure how much is ADR, but he definitively dubbed himself. This is actually a Bildungsroman for the real protagonist, the older daughter. Quite a reactionary tale.
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More like The Crucible in a morgue. Salem dudes tortured a innocent girl in the 17th century, so her body gets bounced around modern times, until someone takes a peek and gets brutally murdered by other corpses.
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My god, the CGI face is so bad! Smack in the middle of the uncanny valley. Mixing it up with real actors of the calibre of Will Smith and Mary Elizabeth Winstead only makes it more cartoonish, but not in a good way like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.
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Was that a Werner Herzog picture as the ersatz Hitler figure?
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This is either one of the most subversive medium budget Hollywood films, or its yet another one “hero escorts kid that saves the world”. I’m no exactly sure, let’s go with the bland and safe option, because the alternative is unimaginable. I kept searching for the Chinese producers but they never came. This has no CCCP money, but includes Chinese Red Army imagery.
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This is a Mexican, not a Mexican’t. Just the right amount of silly over-the-top B-movie schlock, mixed with hardcore politics. Canonically a part of the Spy Kids universe.
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A bog-standard biopic about a very interesting story of CIA drug dealings, basically vindicated by internal CIA investigations. Of course the guy that re-broke the story killed himself with seven shots on the back…
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This is too tasteless for me to be angry about the Israel-Palestine relations portrayed here. It’s all about dick jokes and codpieces.
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A modern black-as-hell film noir, set in Chicago, decades before Spotlight. For a courtroom drama with people talking, it has some cinematic aerial shots, panning from downtown to the wrong side of the tracks.
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I originally saw this many years ago, but there were many images etched into my brain, particularly eating the live octopus and the fight scene in the corridor with the hammer.
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Oh my lord, a bit part for Léa Seydoux? Mike Meyers in a non-comedic role, post-The Love Guru? Fucking Eli Roth, man! What kind of crazy casting is this?
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One of the latest ZAZ-like films, made by the last Z of the bunch. This is a less risqué version of The Cannonball Run, with less crazy casting. Amy Smart as the helicopter pilot is as much as they go.
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In space, no one can hear you mix body horror with a lot of other cinematic references in a fast paced action film. A great film all around.
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A good version of Suicide Squad and The Suicide Squad. This has a fantastic cold opening, you are literally dropped into the action, with miniguns rolling in the first minutes. The titular Predators don’t appear until the last half, and they remain bad hunters.
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This is less edgy, less gory, more silly all around. It does work as a standalone action film of politically questionable variety (like Ghostbusters), but the RoboCop baggage drags it down.
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What the fuck, literally! This is pure Cronenberg weirdness wrapped around sexually charged arthouse. There’s less talking than other films, but sometimes it is too much.
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I’d buy that for a dollar! A bit dated now, but still prescient. Mainstream big budget films where a strike is not really shown in a negative way are precious.
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The famous invisible aliens film is not as bad as it seems. Pretty tame for a Timur-adjacent film.
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This is an incredible mix of musical, stereotypical James Bond flick, and noir adventure, in that order. Mamma mia!
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Locke and key, a similar concept. A bit more dynamic, more Apple product placement, but moderately enjoyable. Naomi Watts as a mom is still weird, I watched Mullholland Drive too long ago, it tainted her image for ever.
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I was nun the wiser, but apparently The Conjuring dudes are trying to Marvel their way into a franchise? They seem about as successful, at least they are mostly standalone.
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Now that’s what I’m talking about. Makes Apollo 13 look like a home movie, and it’s not even about the effects. Just sheer moviemaking ability and great performances. It’s also not a sausage fest, unlike the whole Apollo program.
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CapCom, you shut up now because I’m talking here. Utter generic Ron Howard schmaltz about a better story than this film represents.
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It’s David Lynch all right, completely inscrutable. Explanations are futile, only questions remain.
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Ahh, the “good” old times, where a romcom about PUA was not a cancellable offence. This could be remade with the same script, but turning Will Smith’s character into an Andrew Tate-loving incel. Or have woman involved in the creative process at all.
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Insurance fraud as drama, this is weird. I thought only Suburbicon dabbled on that theme, it’s a genre now. “Angel of Debt” is a great moniker. Did not know this was a Gillian Flynn book adaptation, Gone Girl is less rural.
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Not Pussy Galore. Marsden does his best Ryan Reynolds impression, or maybe that’s how all Canadians sound like.
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A much, much crappier version of A Few Good Men. Equally jingoistic, but boring as fuck, with shitty writing. So many fake Americans. Bloated as the Yemeni bodies, there’s even time for a They Live-style wrestle match in the middle.
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Makes Stargate seem a documentary. The hodgepodge of references to ancient stuff is crazy. Of course the alpha couple are Canadian dudes with dreadlocks, for budgetary reasons, rather than outright racism.
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Come with me if you want less money. I only watched this for Mackenzie Davies, she hit the gym hard, but does nothing but kill people like crazy. It’s a CGI fest in the worst possible way.
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Wait a minute, I saw a variation on this film already, it was called Deception. And it was right around the same time too. Miramax and R ratings, I can’t unsee jacking off into potted plants.
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Hail Paimon. Go ahead, chase me, I’ll run away to the attic.
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MOAR sharks, one of them is a pet. There is also a giant octopus too (don’t call it a Kraken). The Chinese money is smellier this time, about half the film is spoken in Mandarin, the rest is shark grunts and Statham vocalisations.
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At first you think this can’t work again, lightning doesn’t strike twice. Then you have the opening shot, of Wille riding a sports car on The Strip, drooling over a breastfeeding mother, crashing into the valet service he is working with, being fired on the spot. Brilliant, even though I think I got the censored TV version.
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That was not what I expected from that title. A deep character study about American immigrants, several possible paths for the same starting point. You either die a hero, or live long enough to become a villain, and our protagonist has been around for a long time.
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Whaddaya you know, it’s a Paul Schrader film. Of course the protagonist is a jaded older guy, dying, raging at the world for its corruption, greed, general right-wing behaviour. Not as polished as First Reformed, there are too many rants to be accepted as a mainstream affair.
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An even bigger Harry Potter ripoff, but the plot is The Prodigal Son, ironic considering the Olympian setting.
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Chris Columbus directs another kids’ movie, age-adjusted Home Alone. The PG13-ness is preposterous, satyrs having sex must be implied, but chopping off Medusa’s head can be seen directly.
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I see the trappings of a good horror film, and totally agree with the message, but this tries to have its social justice cake and gore slasher scenes for the “ratings”. It feels disjointed.
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Great action thriller, at least the first half. The ending is pulled out of their asses, but it is a great romp.
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The rampage is not even the most interesting part of this, just a technical muscle flexing. Loved the practical effects! Feels like De Palma wanted to just do the rest of the story, but did the rampage for the ratings.
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Like a 100 minutes long TV episode. Fairly packed with jokes, a lower budget Airplane! or Top Secret!.
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A 50 years old parable on how screentime in children is bad for them, delivered as a long stretch of PG-13 screentime. Ya’ know, fo’ kids!
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What the heck this this, did someone cut all Arnie’s lines? Joely Richardson plays the same role as Color Out of Space.
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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with less drugs and more cheap beer.
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Another Alien “sequel”, something that is technically a direct followup, but is in fact a whole other film. A crew of supermax prisoners have the hots for Ripley, but only the doctor gets a chance to relieve his blue balls, then he is brutally killed by the Alien.
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Hot damn, this is intense. “Show, don’t tell is” taken pretty far here, most exposition is replaced with body horror instead. High octane paranoia, relentless from the opening shot with the escaping “dog” to the final explosions.
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My god, Nolan disappears up his own ass. Tenet was very watchable as an action film, but this just goes on and on. Could have been a tweet.
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The damn quotes are all over the walls, man:
- Game over man, game over!
- For close encounters.
- They mostly come at night. Mostly.
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Not a very good adaption, but it’s not that bad as a standalone film. It’s light comedy, ironically much, MUCH, tamer than the book itself. Maybe I’m just sucker for Emily Blunt.
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Back to the convent she goes, this time to teach a group of unruly inner city kids what life is all about: bust your ass for a possibility of an education, while external consultants suck the school money into their pockets, until they close it down and earn passive income from the capitalist leeching.
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Gus van Sant does a shot-for-shot remake, with Anne Heche as Marion, the thief and philanderer, and Vince Fucking Vaughn as Norman Bates. With Viggo Mortensen on the cast, as the married boyfriend!
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Just a standard Statham flick, with a John Le Carré framing device, some kind of SAS Oman Civil War intervention. Takes a back seat to the wall-to-wall action sequences. Yvonne Strahovski does a mean Australian accent, throwing another shrimp in the barbie.
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Holy shit, this is so 90’s teenage “comedy”. And so American, the come to generic “Europe” with green screens on exterior scenes.
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Like a fine wine, it gets better with age. The soundtrack is incredible. Not to be confused with Repo: The Genetic Opera, which is also great for different reasons.
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Not so excellent, but it’s not The Matrix Resurrections. Kristen Schaal could make a mean George Carlin, if they let her.
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The one with Felicity Jones as less platonic love interest, but still far enough from first base.
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The one with Ayelet Zurer as the CERN scientist. Langdon gets some lascivious looks but not even first base so far.
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Yet another prototypical Wes Anderson film. Not an inch of novelty, no twist on the formula, just whimsical stories within stories, within stories, with the regular cast, deadpan deliveries, and gorgeous visuals. It’s less on the nose than The French Dispatch, but a similar state of mind.
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This is the one with Audrey Tatou as the platonic love interest. Ron Howard’s brand of blandness and safe. To think I once though this was a great thriller, I was very young and naïve. Remember, this is like Bond for Dunning-Kruger sufferers.
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Gender swapping is fun. Can you imagine this the other way around, no way in hell it would be done. A rare American comedy with funny writing, but gets a bit po-faced in the third act.
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Come on man, I got four kids to feed!
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Scumbag dude cheats on his wife while she is six months pregnant, that’s vilest than most Trump moves. But is she pregnant, or just a giant spider? Why does it start with a sub-rosa strip club where topless woman torture themselves with spiders?
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A Blue Dog corporate Democrat is destined to win the White House and that’s God’s plan, unless he’s content to remain a corporate drone and live with a British dancer in NYC. Out of that horrible premise comes out a nice film.
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Come on maggots, you want to live forever?
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Yes, I also read The Shining, and saw the film. Doesn’t make you special, director man. And in case the meaning wasn’t obvious, the Overlook Hotel BURNED DOWN, finito, dead.
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Damn, Eddie Murphy is like a charismatic Dave Chapelle. The film is a weird blend of Lethal Weapon and Die Hard, on the comedic side. It’s all script, with minor Bruckheimer action scenes peppered within.
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Total Recall as morality tale thriller. Once again, Fincher steals from the best, like a true artist.
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A posse of Coen actors casually creates one of the best westerns ever, providing The Dude with another character for the ages.
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Undercover cop extraordinaire and loving father gets his whole family killed by a mobster and goes postal, punishing them for their sins. Pretty subdued, considering its current appropriation by fascist cops.
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Sicario, if Emily Blunt was actually working for the competition, split into random veteran, random surfer dude, and random trust fund valley girl. Did Oliver Stone took out most political references in exchange for the budget for shootouts?
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Just a regular film noir, where the “mystery” is checking which groan-inducing pickup lines do not result in hot steamy sex. And that ending, does not resolve anything at all.
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Emmerich-level disaster film, brought to you by many brands, and The Rock as the heart of the film, that’s just folly.
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A bunch of mixed messages here, particularly the ending that fixes (almost) everything.
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Juvenile Timur is already stylish, but this is too raw and “eastern European”. It’s not distilled into blissful and inventive visual transcendence like his next films. Angelina Jolie plays a mean ruthless Trinity.
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A better biopic than Marie Antoinette, with a somewhat similar style. Loved the speeches straight to the viewer, they are enmeshed in the story, usually ironic echoes of the main characters condition. The whole film is that, speeches extolling the virtue of equality in socialism, with men idling while woman toil.
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As intense as Sicario. A family drama with aliens. And with little to no dialogue. But the ending is very abrupt, there’s no resolution. There’s plenty of sequels though.
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An origin story. How did a philanderer, murderous wretch privateering in the name of Glorianna, a guy that sailed under Francis Drake, turned into a pilgrim warrior-monk? By watching pilgrims die at the hand of raiders while his vow of peace remained unbroken.
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That’s what I did when I noticed the Miramax logo. The Weinstein treatment. It’s so meta, it even opens with the youngest Barrymore clan member being slashed, to prove this is not your regular Hollywood film.
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A reversed noir with an horror twist. A great start to a meteoric career.
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Starts with a incredible scene and manages to hold up pretty well through the whole film.
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Classic Michael Bay/Bruckheimer collaboration. Not as much rotating cameras yet, but a lot of shit blows up. It’s also a non-official The Treasure prequel, since Mason gives up the secret location of Hoover’s archive.
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Thought it might not be a low budget thriller with mental health plot points (the modern daemonic possession), but it turns out it was a figment of their imagination all along.
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This is a more romantic twist on Back to the Future, just another excuse to have the good old 40’s and 50’s back in the spotlight. At least the theme park version.
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Like tears in the rain, the sheer visual power seeps into the water table and contaminates all downstream art.
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MrToo with a woman. I can see with the Oscars steer clear of this, there’s enough controversy with anodyne films, let alone one that takes deep stands in the culture wars.
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The Wizard of Oz. 50 Shades of Matrix. There’s more flesh on display than all the abbatoir scenes in Rocky.
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Like a refined jewel inside a pouch of imported silk, devoid of any imperfections or blemishes. Makes Frank Sinatra look like a complete idiot without charisma.
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Just here for Emily Blunt, this is a very short and narrow look at a small part of Victoria’s life, focused exclusively on palace intrigue, not even a glimpse into the outside world.
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This was not what I was expecting for a “political allegory”. Surely not Tarantino-esque shootouts and actual characters saying “Wanna fuck?”. This is not Parasite, not by a long shot.
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The Mummy Revolutions: The Two Towers. A lot of big set pieces and fight scenes, but less plot and quips. Not as good as the first one, but it’s still nice to recognise all these people, particularly 20 years later.
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Three hours? Sacrè bleu, that’s too much, way too much. I like the fight scenes and think they are up to par in inventiveness and brutality, but the rest is just a slog. Way too many people play their characters straight, unlike Laurence Fishburne, who is just having the time of his life. Please don’t make a fifth one, I’m spent.
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The opening says it all: a tracking shot of a modern subway station cuts seamlessly to the same subway in 1931 Berlin, right in the middle of an election campaign.
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David Lynch produces a Werner Herzog film. It’s much weirder than you can imagine, just full-on craziness.
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This is a just 2 or 3 stunt pieces wrapped in the thinnest of plots. It would barely cover a single game mission. A flimsy excuse to see Olga Kurylenko naked.
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More like the hateful two: Weinstein and Tarantino do 2 and a half hours of soliloquies about the Confederacy, then 30 minutes of blood-soaked shootouts for the ratings, but finally both Yankee and the Rebel join forces in reining in the real threat: the only female character. She gets slapped around hard, but is finally lynched, and all agree it was good.
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The original Gone in 60 Seconds, but with plot. Baby Driver without rapists. Not even worthy of Saturday afternoon viewing.
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What the hell, why is this a The Matrix ripoff in the first act? There’s slow mo shootouts complete with waving capes, lookalike music, elevators. Then it turns into a generic 90’s action film, where two of Elvis’ illegitimate children quarrel over 3 million dollars.
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Hot damn, that’s a nice modern detective story. Just like most modern plots, it incorporates the detective into the plot itself, even though our Kentucky Fried Poirot bills himself as a dispassionate, cold, calculating observer, seeking only the truth. In the end, all is good, even after all twists, double twists, and even untwists. The butler did not do it, in the attic, with the morphine injection.
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The silly adaptation. Fogg is still a upper class twit, but mostly the distracted type, always with his head on the books. Passapartout did rob the bank of England, but just to return stolen artefacts, so it’s fine, a kind of Elgin marbles situation. Monique is a struggling artist forced to wait on other twits like Vincent Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec.
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Warm Bodies, but crazier, it’s the whole kitchen sink. Zombies, Vampires, Aliens, Werewolves, but also teen romance, jocks, stoners, and nerds.
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What a goddamn mess. A 90’s The Exorcist, radical and shit. Hideous in every way. It just ends, no payoff for our suffering girl. Just a stroll in a garden.
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What a great film, I love how everything fits together. It’s really funny, the dialogue is full of zingers.
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Well well, Bourne with a family. But Reacher is still the noir anti-hero, a complete asshole who respects no one, we are supposed to root for him.
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Just people talking about hideous crimes. Kids! Revolting.
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Ah, I think this is a pretty faithful film noir update. Reacher is a complete asshole, to women, to allies, to everyone. But he’s also the Marty Stu protagonist, impervious to any threats. It’s better when the social mores being violated are from the 50s, he’s just a prick.
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Just a 2 hours long Red Bull/Monster commercial, with the added beats from the older film. No pitbulls being thrown at our protagonist, sad. It kinda makes sense instead of being surfer dudes, the new anti-social anti-heros are ecoterrorist stunt YouTubers.
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Good old Vicky gothic horror, with all the ingredients: ghastly blood and guts, burly men with guns powerless against evil, and last but not least, sexual proclivities which should scare any proper lady.
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In Inisherin, not In Bruges. It’s an improvement, since the protagonists are depressed common people, instead of depressed hitman.
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Oh, what a lovely day. I’m expected in film Valhalla.
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The quintessential millennial horror film, part of the “nihilist slasher” genre. Incredibly engrossing, naturalistic, and scary.
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Part of the Citizen Kane extended universe. In which a bout of jealousy and murderous rage, William Randolph Hearst shoots a guy in the head, while intending to kill Charlie Chaplin (which himself is about to run to Mexico with the 16 year old girl he just knocked up, since the statutory rape age is lower there).
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This is yet another female version of John Wick, but much less po-faced. There’s more than just smouldering rage, there are attempts at humour and drama. The lead is not Charlize Theron, though.
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A serious, philosophical script about the interplay of science and philosophy, warped by Arnie’s Reality Distortion Field. The big soliloquy on who should play God and decide who lives and dies regarding clones ends with a one-liner “So that you can go fuck yourself”. This might be an improvement.
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This is batshit insane. I think the weirdest part is where a billionaire ran a union shop, the SAG-AFTRA logo is prominent.
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Some kind of mesoamerican Blade Runner, bots hunting bots. It’s mostly self-contained, by way of the tried and true method of amnesiac protagonist that keeps discovering things about herself.
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This film is torn between a competent horror thriller about an abused girl turning inward, escaping into her own inner world; and some over-the-top mind-over-matter transhuman, toying with mere mortals like a cat playing with its food.
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Die Hard on a building. The Rock’s Reality Distortion Field approaches Arnie, he just has too much charisma.