Archive for Release Year: 2018
53 posts from 07 September 2024 to 19 March 2018.
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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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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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Lots of exposition to make sure you remember the last one. No major retcons that I noticed.
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The Thick of It transplanted to Soviet nomenklatura. Funny and horrifying.
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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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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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Another Transcendence mindfuck. This one is a more blatant Tarkovsky ripoff, mostly Solaris and Stalker.
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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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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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Remake in name only. This has more in common with mother! and Black Swan.
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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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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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Ace cast with an inspired script and visually gorgeous.
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A good biopic, sexually charged but not too much. Good, but not Oscar material.
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Shaolin Soccer meets Bourne, featuring Mediterranean refugees. Never thought that last sentence could ever make sense.
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Über hipster tale of real estate speculation, smoky clubs where not-hookers hook up, and massage parlous, with requisite happy endings. Fuggedaboutit, it’s Macao.
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The Shampoo Film: Two in one. Birdman on loads of coke, but also sweet redemption decades later. Damn rad, grrl!
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An old-school sci-fi horror B-movie, which turns out to be an adaptation of Bluebeard. The wetware Ex Machina.
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A crazy premise leads to a massive tear jerker. Nuts! No cockups here, I was unable to maintain a stiff upper lip.
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This is a very funny comedy, attuned to the Thunbergian times we live in (despite being done before that). Quirky, but full of heart.
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Ironic that an “adult” film about discrimination and police violence contributing to a never ending circle grief ignores those themes for cheap gags. It was if The Big Sleep had an happy ending. The gags are very funny though.
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Filipe Melo does an Americana short. It deals with the fact that the death penalty is as American as apple pie.
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A pox on all these people. Trump-era plot where Islamic terrorists are coming through the Southern Border, leaving prayer rugs lying around? Alejandro is now a good guy and the spook has feelings? Just no.
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A bog standard horror film, but with Florence Pugh. Indistinguishable from any other.
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Totally rad, man. It’s John Wick meets Fury Road, in the style of the cover of a metal band album. “Psychotic drowns, while mystic swims”.
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Not a bad riff on the Ocean’s Eleven genre, with a great cast to boot. I find it most ironic that main cast’s salaries are similar amounts to what they are allegedly stealing, but they don’t split it equally. Life imitates art, badly.
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Cloudier Atlas. The same story, slightly tweaked through the ages, entwined between themselves.
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Troma still exists? Wow. This is right up their alley, but spoken in Portuguese. A much better output than Linhas de Sangue, against all odds (budget, ensemble cast).
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On the surface, this is just another Black Swan for Natalie Portman to get typecast in, or Her Smell for pop. But it seems more than that, with deeper thoughts about the world.
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High-Rise meets generation ships, turning to ʻOumuamua. Did not know this is an adaptation of a sci-fi poem from the 50s.
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An entire film dedicated to the common retort “Not even if you were the last man on Earth”. Shaun of the Dead meets The Hangover, with more dicks since this is a German film.
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Gaspar Noé on the cheap can still pay off. And his trademark craziness is toned down, despite the title, this is only a bit weird.
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A modern, post-Snowden, low budget Strange Days. The murder investigation framing device kinda defeats the point of the story.
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A tasteful anti-“canned lion hunting” screed, brought to you by Rolex.
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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.
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A left-wing film in which workers unionise and achieve their goals, even when scabs cross the picket line. Squint! Squint at the grandeur.
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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.
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Yet another Chinese blockbuster like Mortal Engines. Based on a book, suure. Fun for the whole committee.
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Just like Salt, it’s incredible the amount of old scripts still floating around being just made acritically. This is neither Mission: Impossible, nor Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy. It completely fails to choose a tone and stick to it.
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More like Amphibiousman. He fights just as good on land. More hippopotamus, less sea lion.
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Same vibe as Mom and Dad, with an extra crammed up social commentary. The Coens contribution must be spicing up the script with nice dialogue, but that’s it.
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Die Hard on a building. The Rock’s Reality Distortion Field approaches Arnie, he just has too much charisma.
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The quintessential millennial horror film, part of the “nihilist slasher” genre. Incredibly engrossing, naturalistic, and scary.
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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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A bunch of mixed messages here, particularly the ending that fixes (almost) everything.
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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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Hail Paimon. Go ahead, chase me, I’ll run away to the attic.
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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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This is one of those Z-list direct to streaming releases, probably unearthed because Sydney freaking Sweeney stars in it. It’s not bad enough to become blackmail material, it’s just beige and anodyne. It’s not even the good kind of Z-list, just Hallmark shit.
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This is another origin story, but different from Spider-Man 3. Who can keep track anyway.
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An R-rated Predator film written by Shane Black? With this cast? Sign me up, this is amazing.
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My god, this is too realistic. A billionaire CEO transitioning to lobbyist organisation green washing, another billionaire bankrolling stuff while congress gridlocks.
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American comedies, how cute. This is their middle-brow offerings, not just pure slapstick, puke, and fart jokes, but nothing subversive and actually funny either. A big talented cast in service of crap.