Archive for Release Year: 2017

47 posts from 23 September 2024 to 14 March 2017.

  • São Jorge

    Boxing is life, and so is debt collection.

  • Life

    The first part of this made me think this featured a truly alien alien! I started thinking about Solyaris and everything.

  • Ghost in the Shell

    I though this was supposed to be an adaptation. Turns out to be a bog standard modern sci-fi blockbuster.

  • Beauty and the Beast

    Following all Disney properties, this is a completely safe film, all the rough edges sanded out, which turns a supposedly magical story into an anodyne cultural artefact. A mere husk, dead on the inside.

  • Alien: Covenant

    If Prometheus is like the The Phantom Menace, this is like Revenge of the Sith,

  • Perdidos

    This is a remake of Open Water 2: Adrift. It’s better than it sounds, but I haven’t seen the original.

  • The Assignment

    Here’s a 40 years old script that feels ripped from the virtual headlines.

  • War for the Planet of the Apes

    State of the art visual effects. Testicle-shrivelling details.

  • Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

    This is a worthy spiritual sequel to The Fifth Element, just lacks a phenomenal main duo. These are merely good.

  • Dunkirk

    A truly cinematic experience that eschews dialogue and characterisation for Stuka sirens and Hans Zimmer horns.

  • mother!

    Aronofsky does Rosemary’s Baby. Requiem for a Dream of pregnancy.

  • Blade Runner 2049

    Not so special K. A worthwhile sequel to a classic.

  • Peregrinação

    A road movie set in the Age of Discoveries. The main character travels through Asia in search of wealth and prestige and ends up shunned by the royalty.

  • Murder on the Orient Express

    Fancy-pants light Holmes that makes a competent film out of a great plot.

  • Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

    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.

  • Leviano

    Hipster bullcrap. A low rent Spring Breakers.

  • First Reformed

    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.

  • Malapata

    A demo reel for Hot Jesus. A box ticking enterprise. Not even worth it to finish the

  • The Dark Tower

    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.

  • The Circle

    Poe’s Law strikes again. The ambiguous ending only makes the satire more biting. As an extra, there are some Abu Dhabi logos at the start, making it a textbook case of The Man sticking it to The Man. Plus a dig at China! A triple whammy!

  • The Young Karl Marx

    Firebrands Talking at Rallies: The Movie. Tout le Welt parle eine hodgepodge of Zentral Europpéan languages, trés cosmopolitain.

  • Okja

    The film that better captures the green movement and its surrounding politics. It might seem to be about an humanised super pig, but it’s all a ruse.

  • Mom and Dad

    Brian seems to be bad part of Neveldine/Taylor. This is execrable bullshit.

  • Atomic Blonde

    Atomic Blend of John Wick and First Blood (by the jingoism). Atomic Bland exploitation of such a rich time. Atomic Bleat of the greatest hits of ‘89. A tonic bomb, every character is a functional alcoholic.

  • Get Out

    This is scary as fuck. The protagonist is always on edge, even on the quiet bits. The final police car is the linchpin of the whole thing, and it falls into the wrong side of the tracks. The non-supernatural elements are scary enough, but I guess there’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner for that?

  • The Mummy

    Another Uncharted live action “adaptation”, Indiana Jones is too old fashioned now. It’s not even on the same league as the Stephen Sommers films.

  • The Shape of Water

    Classic review of how crap the Cold War was, Creature From the Black Lagoon or not. You can tell by the first minutes on the bath it’s really a treatise on fucking. Fucking, and fucking, and fucking in heaven.

  • Flatliners

    The horrible horror retelling. Poor Joel Schumacher, his film was put under and never came back, the weight of all the sins dragged this to the abyss of generic jump scares and power failures.

  • Underworld: Blood Wars

    Moar shootouts (include video of Burly Brawl).

  • The Snowman

    A bit too routine for my taste. I think they tried to stick to the books and failed, since the characters are constantly running around and still some things are only lightly touched upon.

  • The Man with the Iron Heart

    This is awful in so many ways, it’s hard to pin down. The attempt on Heydrich’s life was more successful than this pitiful attempt at a biopic. It’s both very long, and too abbreviated.

  • Logan Lucky

    Ocean’s Seven Eleven. ‘em hicks sure ain’t no fools. It would help if Corrections Corporation of America wasn’t a human soul grinder.

  • Lady Bird

    A middle-class middle-of-the-road Bildungsroman.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • The Evil Within

    This is batshit insane. I think the weirdest part is where a billionaire ran a union shop, the SAG-AFTRA logo is prominent.

  • Life

    It’s probably an homage, but the whole plot is like Salt, a script unearthed from the 1950’s filmed straight. A Scary Dogmatic Alien (the dogma is communism), played straight? Like a philosophical Alien, devoid of all the subtext that made it great. Cool effects though.

  • What Happened to Monday

    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.

  • I, Tonya

    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.

  • Wonder Woman

    Yet another bloated two and half hours snorefest, with a truly preposterous 30 min long silly fight scene in a parking lot. God, it’s so long and painful.

  • All The Money in the World

    A story where the ‘Ndrangheta are not the worse villains, at least its an ethos. Worshipping Mammon is the root of all evil.

  • King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

    King Amleth Moses Pendragon, more like it. It’s IP now, a meaningless label to slap on unsellable dross to make it pop.

  • Revolt

    Some kind of direct-to-DVD sci-fi romp, very light on plot, with silly effects. Lee Pace and a Bond girl hit it up, until she drops out of the film (probably dead by the end, it’s ambiguous). Not bad enough to hate.

  • Wind River

    Now, that’s another Sicario. What happened Taylor Sheridan, why go from this to dross like Those Who Wish Me Dead? Is it the higher budget? The ego inflation from Sicario itself? I don’t get it.

  • American Made

    I knew it, Kill the Messenger needed some kind of softer human alternative. One with literal cartoon Eagles and Bears battling over the American lebensraum.

  • Molly's Game

    The opening shot is a perfect trailer, a deluge of words, a wall of voice, a barrage of dribble. This is like a centrist Robert Redford film, but instead of focusing on a little guy, it’s some rich and privileged white chick fighting the IRS to keep some blood money.