Change Your Image
songjiang2000
Reviews
Salem (2014)
Terrible
Wow, this is stupid. Weak acting. Plodding plot. Unsympathetic characters. Awkward dialogue. Ridiculous jump scares. The toad in the guy's mouth is cool--one star for that. If you like B horror films, you might like this, otherwise, save yourself the time and watch something else. Truth be told, I made it three quarters of the way through the second episode and just couldn't take it anymore. This is not an example of high quality television and is more like someone trying to milk a horror film over months instead of just getting it over with after 90 minutes. I just don't care for any of the characters, and it's not that it's because they are complex. They are cardboard cutouts with moving mouths. Some people like to see gore on screen. I close my eyes. The protagonist, John, speaks like he just dropped into Salem out of the 21st century. I was hoping for something intelligent, but this whole thing is an insult.
The Ides of March (2011)
Thriller with a Punch
Even though promo material says "pulse-racing thriller," I didn't believe it and sat down to watch a potentially interesting political drama. I enjoyed the twists and turns that happened as the tension mounted, and just when I thought the movie would end on a down note as an okay morality tale about corruption in politics, I was jolted out of my seat. It was just at that moment that I remembered what "Ides of March" connotes. OMG. I've been waiting for a thriller like this! One that keeps your interest until the very last frame and then, bam! Except that in most thrillers there is a question that has to be answered and it doesn't get answered until the end. In this one, you're not even sure what the question is and bam! you get blindsided. Double the fun.
I think some of the reviewers who rated this low didn't get the ending. And for those who think it is utterly cynical--I think they didn't get the ending either. Isn't Gosling's character a hero? Decide for yourself.
For those who were expecting deep political ideas, or a statement about politics today, no doubt they were disappointed. This is a thriller, but unlike most thrillers where there is one protagonist who confronts danger and comes out on top, this one is all about the motives and decisions of the main players. Every twist is unexpected but makes perfect sense in retrospect. I think I'll watch it again tomorrow.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)
The Desolation of Jackson
Halfway through this movie I began to wonder if someday someone would make a film about Tolkien's book The Hobbit. This movie isn't it. I felt addled by the action sequences and was left wondering why Jackson would create them out of thin air and then leave out genuine scenes from the book. Was the original story not good enough? And why does he have to demonstrate over and over that SAURON IS COMING! THE DARKNESS IS LOOMING! Please, we already know that this story precedes the Lord of the Rings (a great movie trilogy, by the way--you should see it). Like the first installment, this movie is geared toward fans of violent sports and video games. It's not Tolkien's light-hearted, imaginative, intelligent Hobbit. Someday...
Knowing (2009)
Tightly Woven and Philosophically Interesting
I'm not a big fan of Nicholas Cage, and from some of the other reviews I wasn't holding out a lot of hope for this one, but it works--really well.
For those who say the plot if full of holes, you need to watch it again. Roger Ebert was correct that everything little thing in this movie fits together perfectly. That is rare in thrillers.
Those who say the ending doesn't work, are probably biased one way or the other. If you are averse to religious themes, you won't like the implications of angels. If you are religious, you'll think the alien implications are cheesy. For me, I was waiting until the end of the movie--when you know it must be one or the other--ready to hate the choice Proyas made. Instead, I loved it because he doesn't tell you what it is. He lets it be both. If you are a literalist, you will probably hate this and think it's a cop-out. I took it as a simple metaphor of hope for meaning in a pretty hopeless world.
This is a thinking person's movie. And one question it grapples with is: what are the limits of scientific knowledge? We can trace the origins of everything back to the Big Bang, but what happened before that, and why is there anything instead of nothing? The movie doesn't tackle this directly, but it does indirectly. I'm not religious and don't believe in spirits or souls, but I loved this movie for how well it is crafted and how it got me thinking.
There is one significant flaw. The scene where Cage's character is in the classroom at MIT defining "determinism" and "randomness" is grossly inaccurate. He says that if everything is determined beforehand, then (there is a designer involved and therefore) there is meaning. This is simply not true. Determinism implies only inexorable cause-and-effect, not a designer. He is thinking of "fatalism," and that is what this movie is about (and is something scientists don't study). Obviously, not everything is determined if the strangers (as Proyas calls them in the commentary) can decide things. They are creating the fates of the people on earth, while also leaving room for free choices. These ideas run deep in Western culture, and it is interesting to see them explored here, which is why this one flaw is excusable.
While watching the movie, pay close attention to the motivations of each of the characters. To me, they played out beautifully.
I take this movie to be an excellent sci-fi fable on the themes of fate and free will. Where do we come from? Is there any meaning in life? My own personal beliefs don't align with the director's, but he does a great job of illustrating what probably the majority of people in Western cultures do believe and have believed for thousands of years (I'm speaking of transcendent meaning in life, not of aliens).
Worth watching--and more than once.
Frantic (1988)
Boring, unbelievable
I created an account on IMDb just to rate this movie.
Atmosphere? Yes. The rest was pretty lousy.
I love a good thriller and can even forgive a hole or two in the plot, but this one was unforgivable. Here are just some of the holes (if you want to ignore my advice and watch the movie anyway, don't read what follows). First, why would the kidnapper take the wife instead of the suitcase? That makes no sense. How is kidnapping her going to get the thing back? Second, why didn't the husband take the first eyewitness (or his friends) to the police? Third, when he found Dede dead, why didn't he go to the police and say, hey, look: a matchbook from the suitcase with a murdered guy's name on it--coincidence? Fourth, why didn't the husband ask Michelle what it was she brought back? That might be important! Fifth, when the police finally believed him, why didn't he let them handle it? Sixth, he's hiding in Michelle's apartment while she is being interrogated by the bad guys--so he takes off ALL his clothes and jumps into her bed to pretend to be her irate boyfriend--this is supposed to scare off these brutal criminals?!! Seventh, after the husband took off his shoes and socks to keep from slipping on the roof, why did he let the girl go out there in tights and high heels? Duh! Eighth, those French sniffer dogs should be fired for not finding the coke in his pocket--what was the whole purpose of him having the coke, anyway, just the "white lady" confusion? Lame. Ninth, so at the end, when the husband destroys the maguffin--the bad guys are just going to hang their heads? Really?!! They're not going to beat the living daylights out of him? Finally, why did the girl have to die? Are we supposed to feel sorry for the husband at that point? Did he fall in love with her? "Puerile" is the word for a director who thinks he would.
I read a user review that said everything in this movie fits together. Puhleeeeaaaaase! I feel like this movie was a bunch of hacks trying to make a quick buck. Did Polanski even show up on the set or did he just delegate to others ("make it look like Hitchcock") and put his name on it? It does have the feel of Hitchcock but not the intelligence. Don't waste your time like I did, unless you're a die-hard Hitchcock fan and want to see a failed homage.