Change Your Image
hpmudbld
Reviews
A Vigilante (2018)
An excellent revenge movie
Written and directed by a woman, it somehow weirdly fails the Bechdel test on purpose, I think. The movie has some violence, but ultimately depicts a woman on a mission of justice. I liked this movie a lot but I think that a lot of the lower rating were from people who expected to see a lot of violence. Instead this movie uses "implied violence" because it's not a story of blood and gore, but more of a story of restoration. Think of it sort of as Kill Bill but rated PG13 (even though this movie is rated R).
It might be helpful to recommend this movie to young women so that they can be made aware of some of the signs of potential threats to them.
Anyway, moderate pace, the three acts are very juxtaposed from each other, and acting and writing is good. The only thing I want to mention is that while this movie has some action, it's more about coping -- and this coping involves beating the **** out of bad peaople.
I See You (2019)
Unique
While a lot of the film used old and modern tension building techniques, this is a story that I never heard before. No gore needed in this thriller/horror. Highly recommended for people who like the genre, want something new, and don't mind a moderate pace. The pacing is actually brilliant and builds the story around specific moments which don't turn out to have the significance that they seemed to have had at first.
Also, great acting and writing.
Ghostland (2018)
Unique But Also Not
I was expecting a cheap ghost movie based on the title, but the movie itself is haunting. It takes a really dark turn about midway through in a way that I didn't predict. It also uses a lot of established horror tropes but mixes them up in a way that is very unique. One of the best horror movies I've seen in the last few years. I recommend it to any horror fan.
The Life Zone (2011)
Christian Propaganda meets Christian Power Fantasy
This movie bills itself as a Christian horror movie but it's mostly not. I'm going to try the most basic synopsis I can:
Three women awake in a maternity ward/dungeon to find that instead of having the abortions they intended, they are now captives of a doctor who just outright states that they're going to be incarcerated until they give birth. One woman tries to force a miscarriage but is unsuccessful. The other women turn out to not be real and what actually happened is that the woman who tried to miscarry actually died during her abortion procedure and is now in hell with the doctor who was to perform the procedure. The end.
The REAL spoiler is here: This is not what actually happens to women who get abortions or doctors who perform them.
I have no idea who the target audience of this movie is other than very religious people who get off on the torment of those who don't share their beliefs or maybe the children of those people as a sort of warning about what will happen to them if they ever have a pregnancy that they're not ready for. Either way, the movie is disgusting and terrible.
I recommend that everyone watch it. Seriously.
Love (2011)
Being atypical doesn't automatically make a movie good.
I've heard movies like this described rather pretentiously as "not spoon feeding you the story." There's a difference, though, in telling a story, and having a story loosely associated with a series of tangentially related washed out shots. Movies like this are very artistic. But I'm reminded of other art media which tell a story. Like poetry for instance. Imagine that you have a beautiful poem. Then someone randomly cuts out 75% of the words. What you're left with makes sense in the context of the missing pieces but by itself is an almost random collection of words. Those words might be descriptive and beautiful but they aren't cogent at all. When someone fills in the missing words, the reader may say "Oh, yes! It makes perfect sense and the fact that you tried to convey that idea incompletely makes you a genius!" I'm not that kind of person. I don't think you're a genius when you intentionally leave out part of your story or tell it out of sequence simply for art's sake. In fact, that maneuver is, by now, cliché. The first few films that experimented in partial story telling, forcing the cinematography to carry the film, may have been clever. At this point, however, it's lazy. It's a genre enjoyed almost exclusively by people who like to feel privileged and intelligent by "getting it." There's nothing really to get. It's an art film. It's meant to convey emotion, not a story. Anyone who "gets" the story is the one missing the point. These types of movies are marketed like regular movies which is dishonest. Hell, I just watched a trailer for it that seriously makes it look like an action thriller. The two minute trailer also easily managed to incorporate 90% of the film's dialogue (monologue). If it were an honest trailer, it'd have no ___logue whatsoever and would just be a series of washed out shots of a bikini clad female character who was never actually introduced and a guy running on a treadmill in a space station.
Stories have character development. They have a plot. They have a climax. They make you identify with the characters. Love had a character who changed, yes, but he didn't really develop. We were given glimpses here and there of his daily routine over the course of several years but it was basically the same scene, shot from different angles, for about 70 minutes or so. Realistically, the ending sequence could have happened 45 minutes earlier in the film and nothing would have been lost.
I didn't hate the movie but it did make me frustrated. I hung in there because I kept thinking there'd be a twist or resolution. Some kind of payoff. But in the end, it was a movie that spoke almost entirely in platitudes. It said a lot of very wise things that all seemed to mean nothing.
Smallville (2001)
At first it was worth a look, but then...
I consider myself to be an amateur comic fan. Most of what I read is less than popular, but I have a certain soft spot for Superman and Batman. The movies regarding the top DC duo have had their ups and downs, as have had their TV shows. Smallville, in particular, has shown itself to be the epic cliché for both wishy-washy comic writing and "CW-style" teen drama.
At first, the show definitely had promise. We were initially introduced to a teenage Clark Kent, making his way through high school as a mild mannered pseudo-jock whose best friend was (as we all knew was destined to become his arch-nemesis) none other than Lex Luthor. The character development for Clark, Lex, Chloe, and Lana Lang was pretty intriguing, and I especially liked how Clark had to balance his secretive heroic tendencies with his high school life. High school has its own set of rules, boundaries, and drama-- adult life is supposed to have different challenges. Those teenage problems are supposed to give way to a different set of challenges in adulthood... Not so for the Last Son of Krypton!
I know that the way to keep viewers interested is to roll out a dump truck full of romantic subplots and secrets and betrayal, but I can't handle each and every one of those things in EVERY SINGLE EPISODE in a show that is supposed to be about the Man of Steel. Seriously... I get that this show has its own following and that the major fanbase doesn't really care about Superman-- and I'm also used to the way that TV and movies butcher classic comic-book characters, but come on! Superhero plots are supposed to be about thwarting enemies and righting wrongs... not about bizarre love quadraticals involving Lois Lane, Oliver Queen (Green Arrow), Clark Kent, and Tess Mercer (who the heck is this???).
Bottom line:
What I'm sick of:
Drama, romantic sub-plots, secrets and betrayal.
What I want to see more of:
Justice League and Justice Society characters fighting bad guys.
Started as a 9, wound up being a 5.5 (I rounded up).
End of rant.
PS, Learn to fly.
Star Trek (2009)
The worst part is that it didn't have to be this way.
Honestly, if you told me that Michael Bay had written, directed, and/or produced this garbage, I wouldn't have been surprised. This movie was basically a two hour action cartoon (sorry for rating so low if you're into action cartoons), with well-known characters from the Star Trek series. I refer to movies like this as having "porn" plots, because the ridiculous and often nonsensical plot is only an excuse to show you the action. I'm going to just go ahead and outline my specific qualms with the movie point by point.
1. A time travel plot, really? Aside from being severely overused, having taken place so far back in star trek history, this plot rewrites basically all of Star Trek. Five series, ten movies, a cartoon, and countless video games, toys, comic books, novels, and conventions should have been clues to the makers of this movie that people liked Star Trek as it is. It might not have been such a big deal if there weren't MAJOR changes made to the time line that are going to affect the entirety of Star Trek from now on. As far as I can tell, making an alternate time line ONLY serves to alienate the main Star Trek fan base. The plot could have been virtually anything else, and still kept the die hard fans.
2. Characters were one-dimensional and untrue to their originals. I don't really know what to say, so I'll just rant. Kirk was unlikeable and just a stereotype. A bad boy loose cannon jerk who plays by his own rules, rides a motorcycle and gets into bar fights while taking advantage of women and displaying a clearly broken moral compass? Really? Kirk? Really? I mean Kirk was always known to bend the rules and kiss the girl, but in this movie, he's like an extreme version of the Fanz. And what's going on with Spock? He's the most emotional character in the movie. It doesn't make any sense at all. And a romantic subplot with Spock and Uhura? Lord have mercy! The only character that seemed to be even remotely based off the original (and incidentally, the only character I really liked) was McCoy. He was hilarious. I feel like JJ Abrams was just taking advantage of an existing franchise to make money :(
3. The movie had nothing to do with Star Trek. The plot is entirely interchangeable. If you had changed the names of all the characters and changed the names of their home planets, this could have easily been a Star Wars movie. Or a new sci-fi franchise altogether. If you paid close attention to all the star trek episodes and movies, you see that each plot is a moral play where the main characters either have to make a tough choice with big consequences, or they learn an important lesson. And the best part was that they never got too preachy about it. They also managed to balance science fiction with action, comedy, and sometimes a bit of romance. The point is that the plots were always at least a little complicated and well explained. It just didn't feel like a Star Trek movie at all.
4. Star Trek XI was an animated feature. Oh yeah. It's not listed as an animated feature on IMDb, but it is. Really, if more than 50% of a movie is rendered on a computer, it should be labeled as an animated feature like the Pixar movies. Don't get me wrong, everything looked really cool, but the qualification is that it all looked really cool for a cartoon. I have the same complaint with the new star wars trilogy and 90% of the new action movies. The original Star Wars came out in 1977, but the effects they used are still mind blowing by today's standards. There's one simple reason for this: It looks real. The use of models and real pyrotechnics puts you inside the movie, like if you reached through the silver screen, that exploding console would actually burn you. The use of animatronics is what gives fantasy creatures their believability. I don't think anyone complained that the aliens from the alien trilogy looked fake or weren't absolutely terrifying. So what's the deal? This movie obviously had an enormous special effects budget, so they should have used it to show the world what models and pyrotechnics and puppetry can do in 2009, instead of showing us the same old tired CGI that we see in every movie these days.
5. It didn't have to be this way. This movie clearly jump-started the franchise, but it also reinvented it. Also, it brought in a bunch of people who weren't previously Star Trek fans. But it also alienated a sizable portion of the existing fans. The saddest part is that the movie had the potential to both please original fans, restart the franchise without reinventing it, and bring in new fans. The biggest difference is that Star Trek XI had several times the budget of any previous Star Trek movie. This could have been a huge action movie without destroying the Star Trek time line, and even with keeping the characters more like they were. It could have been a regular old prequel. It seems like the reason that they used the alternate time line was just so they didn't have to keep it true to form. There was absolutely no reason that the franchise had to be ravaged like that. Star Trek Generations, for example, was made on a 35 million dollar budget and it grossed about 120 million (1994 dollars). I wonder what they could have done if they had four times the budget. Would it have been a good Star Trek movie, true to the original franchise, with awesome special effects and a new fan base? Well, with the precedent having been set for Star Trek to be nothing more and a CGI explosion love fest, I guess we'll never know.