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Johnjronald-571-398268
Reviews
Rogue Strike (2014)
unintentional comedy / action
Clearly a vanity project independent film, total Marty Stu main character...the actor is also the producer and many of the voice-overs.
There are maybe 2 reasons to watch this film. 1) you're an anime nerd who loves English dubs and wanna see Brittney Karbowski & Shelley Calene-Black in a live action film and 2) you've had enough Navy JROTC/NROTC classes and a basic understanding of Oceanography to appreciate how completely ridiculous this movie is...I give it 4 stars because while it is a TERRIBLE movie, I was HOWLING with laughter at several points, but only because I was giving it the full MST3K treatment it richly deserves, and because reasons 1 & 2 apply to me personally.
They could only afford actual Russian dialogue for the opening scene...the rest of the scenes with Russian characters have them speaking English with Russian accents of varying quality. Oh and the WRITING! The writing is so god-awful I could not stop laughing. Like one of the hostage scenes....is written so poorly I can't believe the actors didn't stop the director and say "wait a minute, these lines are fugging stupid....can we get a re-write here?"
Definitely one of those rare instances of so-bad-it's good. And also because if you do actually understand at least a little bit about Naval Operations and International Relations the ludicrous ineptitude of the writing is really really funny. It's one step above "and the man pressed the button that makes the submarine dive and the submarine dove" levels of dumb. This screenplay wouldn't even merit an honorable mention in a short story competition....it would come back with "D-" on it and a note from the teacher "see me after class"....
Still, I can't say I wasn't entertained & I laughed way harder than I expected to. Four stars, but can only recommend to other people who meet the narrow niche interests above.
World on Fire (2019)
Ridiculous innaccuracies abound
While I genuinely like the characters in this show and the intense personal dramas they endure, I think the show officially Jumped the Shark when Gregorsz made it all the way from G'Dansk (Free City of Danzig) to the beach at Dunkirk (in France), ON FOOT apparently after wandering EAST for a bit to be on run from the Soviets before stumbling across a friendly British in the low countries(!?)....which meant that Gregorsz and his companion made it ALL THE WAY ACROSS NAZI GERMANY ITSELF to get there without getting caught and thrown into a KZ. NOPE. NOPE NOPE. I showed the physical impossibility of this to my mother with a map of Europe in our old World Book encyclopedia.
Also, fairly certain MI6/SIS would not be trying to evacuate Polish resistance fighters from Poland...at most they'd be re-arming and re-supplying them to continue the fight against Hitler and fight for the liberation of their country...not evacuate them to Yugoslavia during the Battle of Britain (1940) and before Germany had even attacked Yugoslavia the following year (1941).
There's nothing wrong with a good historical drama but they lose me utterly when they play so fast & loose with actual history happening around the fictional characters. It cheapens & weakens the story irreparably. Which is a shame because otherwise the acting and period costuming, etc, and cinematography are quite beautiful...the characters are well written & sympathetic. But the glaring nonsense with respect to actual historical events just ruins my enjoyment ultimately.
Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)
Slice of life college movie from 1980, but one of Linklater's weaker films
While I did enjoy this movie, it's from a different era and recounts experiences from a generation that isn't mine. While I'm also Gen X and middle aged, I was still in Elementary school in 1980, not finishing High School until the end of the decade. My college years are the (early-to-mid) 1990s, not the 1980s. It does indeed "feel" like a spiritual successor to Dazed & Confused. It captures the Zeitgeist of an age. As a Texan, I can tell you the college & town depicted are totally fiction. There is no Southeast Texas State...geographically that would be identical with the University of Houston....but you could grab a UH yearbook from 1980 and actually look up the members of the baseball team, which is not Linklater's point. I've attended a number of different Universities in the State of Texas, as have family members....the setting is meant to evoke the generic Texas college experience set in a small college town....places like Texas State University in San Marcos, or Sam Houston State in Huntsville. Not top tier schools like TAMU or UT-Austin, but mid-range schools the average Texas High School student could attend on a sports scholarship in 1980. I was never a college athlete but I did spend my first 3 semesters at TAMU in the Corps of Cadets, essentially a military fraternity that is like college ROTC on steroids. As such the characters were at once relatable on some level but given the decade of difference quite unlike my own life experience, too. I definitely had my favorites among the cast and appreciated how the main character both managed to fit in and find a place on the team but also strike out (ha) and find his own path, willing to be genuine and pursue a real relationship with a smart college girl in preference to a one night stand. I also couldn't help but like the mustachioed blonde team captain...kind of a social butterfly without a fixed identity but flexible and charismatic. The soundtrack is also pretty fantastic. While I have my favorites among Linklater's ouvre and this is not one of them, it's not a bad film. It's an intensely nostalgic film that probably has the strongest appeal to people who are Linklater's age...and Linklater himself is a Boomer not an X'er, and while many of his films speak strongly to Gen X, this one did not, but there's nothing wrong with that--it just is what it is. I don't begrudge the man his memories and appreciate his sharing them.
Tenki no ko (2019)
A for Effort, C+ in overall execution
Watched this film last night and while it is indeed visually stunning, I do think this is one of Shinkai's weaker films. It's better than Children Who Chase Lost Voices but not much else. The film commits the sin of telling rather than showing Hodaka's motivations for fleeing his island home--he felt stifled there, or something. We just have to take his word for it because we don't get flashbacks to judge this independently for ourselves. The narrative feels incoherent...is this a delinquent with a heart of gold story? A modern magical girl tale? It's hard to tell. I can't not compare it with other films by different auteurs...as far as the theme of Weird Weather, I feel like Penguin Highway is superior to this film. As far as the emotional connection to the characters...even the flawed film Fireworks (Hanabi) from 2017 does this better--I cared more. Your Name is Shinkai's crowning achievement to date, so perhaps it's asking too much for him to keep knocking it out of the park every time. I appreciate the clear effort he put into this film and the (somewhat) muddled message about climate change (again, see the anime series Shangri-La for a more direct treatment of this theme)....but it just didn't quite land for me. I appreciate that Shinkai once again allowed himself to have an arguably "happy" ending (many of his early works serve up bittersweet disappointment & regret)...though of course it we are to believe the magical narrative Hodaka basically condemns the rest of Tokyo to worsening climate by stealing away the magical sun priestess from heaven and the (invisible) gods will have their apparent revenge! Or else Hina and Hodaka had a really bad drug trip and boy doesn't climate change stink for everyone because adults can't get their collective shizz together to do anything about it. It seems to be one or the other, hard to see how it'd be both--but that's the muddled answer Shinkai seems to be teasing us with with a playful shrug & smile....the movie is definitely worth seeing but if you had to pick this or Your Name to watch for the first time, definitely pick Your Name.
1917 (2019)
Beautiful cinematography, frustrating character(s)
The cinematography of this film delivers in capturing a vision of the hell-scape of the WW1 battlefield in France. Many of the scenes are hauntingly surreal, my favorite being the night-fight lit only by flares overhead.
I found myself frustrated by the main character's choices, though with the huge caveat that I have no idea how I would've actually reacted in his boots...and just as likely would've been one of the people pissing himself, paralyzed with fear like the captain in the final trench in the final battle.
That said, the movie compels you to think "what would you do?" as we follow Blake and Scofield on their lonely mission. My gut instinct would've been to shoot the German pilot immediately in his burning plane, not try to rescue him. Likewise, the German NCO puking in the street at night from overindulgence with brandy was a sitting duck and I was hoping Scofield would shoot him in the head. He fails to do so and winds up having to strangle a German private with his bare hands a few minutes later--far more up close and personal and dangerous! Yes, shooting the German soldier in the street would've given away his position, but his surviving and yelling "Engländer!" did that anyway. Perhaps I've just played too many FPS videogames...I found myself frustrated to Scofield's choices at times. I found myself unsure what to do with the realization that I'm apparently a few degrees more bloodthirsty than he. He succeeds in his mission, so you can't argue with results, I guess. And the primary objective is to get from Point A to Point B as fast as possible, not to waste time fighting Germans. The story has a ring of truth to it because he does (partially) succeed. If this were pure fiction aiming to convey a sense of nihilistic pointlessness of war, then the orders would've become unreadable after being dunked in the river with Corporal Scofield and the attack would've gone off to utter disaster anyway. Or at the very least Lt. Blake would've been lost in the first wave--but miraculously wasn't. Likewise, Scofield's flouting my expectations with his flawed but all too human (and humane) choices lends it an air of credibility as well. Truth is stranger than fiction at times.
One of the limitations of film is that while it can show us the horrific landscape of twisted, bloated, rotting corpses of horses and men, it can't reproduce the equally horrific stench that would've driven many of us insane. Likewise, unless we have personal experience to draw on, we only have our imaginations to guess what the mud & cold and discomfort felt like, and the words of survivors who wrote down their experiences for posterity.
I didn't know quite what to expect from this movie and while I did enjoy the aesthetic cinematic experience, like others commenting here I also felt vaguely disappointed and dissatisfied. We aren't given enough connection to the two main protagonists to care as much as we should about their plight. A flashback scene to Scofield's visit home, seeing family & friends but having the heaviness of knowing he had to return to the front might've helped this film, or giving us more of Blake's pre-war backstory....this is what got sacrificed for the sake of the illusion of "one long take"...
I also had minor quibbles with Corporal Scofield needlessly cycling the bolt action on his Lee Enfield, dramatically signaling his preparing to fight. The Lee Enfield rifle remains ever ready to fire after the first round is chambered. It's fine to show him run out of ammo and reload a fresh charger of ammo into the magazine, but beyond that he shouldn't be operating the bolt at all except between shots. But Hollywood & unreal Guns is a known cliche. Just eyeroll with it and get back to enjoying the story.
Tron: Uprising (2012)
Best of the TRON franchise, hands down
This animated series is thoroughly enjoyable with extremely well written characters that make you care about them. The voice performances are excellent and the animation is well done. Prequels by their nature are inherently limited, and I'm sad this story will probably not continue. It is basically the Rogue One to Tron: Legacy's Star Wars, to make an awkward comparison. The story certainly COULD continue....I'm dying to know what happens to Paige, a "medical" program who becomes a "security" program due to deception & profound personal loss who winds up hunting TRON but begins to question her mission....the real shame is this series was never given a Blu-Ray Home Video release and is streaming only. It's sadly a forgotten Gem that deserves a quality Blu-Ray but probably won't get one because of Disney's weird inconsistencies with putting out physical media. The soundtrack rivals TRON: Legacy for sheer awesomeness. Both OSTs are worth adding to your music library. My TRON playlist on my iPhone has both.
It seems the only way to watch/own it is via Amazon Prime Video, and I do strongly recommend it.
Summer of 84 (2018)
Amazing sound design, costume & set design and great Thriller!
I recently watched this movie which was given a limited 1 week run by Alamo Drafthouse in Houston, Texas. What immediately impressed me was the sound design, full of intentionally cheesy 80s synth music. It totally felt like watching a police drama from that era...I graduated High School in 1989, so I would have been about 2 years younger than the lead character Davey in 1984. The costume design is spot on; I used to own a windbreaker jacket that was exactly the same that Mr. Mackey wears in once scene, only mine was tan not yellow. The embarrassingly short men's shorts are true to the era as well.
The characters are likable and believable. Davey's theory seems outlandish at first but he and his buds keep gathering clues. And even though there are plausible alternative explanations for some of the circumstantial evidence, if you're paying attention there are a few clues that still don't fit the benign explanation.
It is a solid murder mystery thriller + coming of age story in the mid 1980s. It builds suspense very well. This is not a film for the overly squeamish. It deals with a serial killer and there is a body count. The conclusion is satisfying but unsettling. I have not seen any of the other films more negative reviewers are comparing this movie to; all I can say is it stands on its own merits and I was entertained. I want the soundtrack to this film and I plan to buy it on DVD so I can re-watch it, because it throws a lot of clues at you very fast and there's no chance to pause the film on the big screen. If you get a chance to see it in theaters, don't miss it!
Upside Down (2012)
Skip this, see Patema Inverted (2013)
The visuals in this film are drop dead gorgeous, and I mainly kept watching to see the camera work. I had already seen the anime movie Patema Inverted, which came out in 2013 (after this movie) and had very similar plot elements, but told the love story much more competently than this film. The final kiss-"I love you" is so unearned!...I think the script writer focused so much on the "mind- blowing sci fi*" elements (*read: silly elements) that the love story got very short shrift. The priorities should have been reversed...the "science" is patently nonsense, just a vehicle to tell the love story. Patema Inverted understands this and goes with it. Upside Down does NOT, and gets lost in the details of the strange world. There is a legitimate way to explore this strange world, as allegory, a la absurdist humor like in Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL, say, but not by taking the "science" of it all too seriously. The romance of this story should've borrowed a page from, say, Adam Sandler & Drew Barrymore's Fifty First Dates...that would have made this a much better film. Adam comes off as less endearing than creepy-stalkery and Eden, to her credit, reacts as you might expect, at least initially. There are some very humorous moments in this movie, some intentional (bathroom scene in upworld) some not (I could't help laughing at Adam getting the "hot foot" and running through the streets with his shoes on fire...I know it's supposed to be a serious dramatic moment where we care about his fate, but I could not stop laughing). This movie is on par with Jupiter Ascending...it's a pretty but dumb science fiction yarn with an underdeveloped love story...it feels like a student film with an outsized budget than a quality movie.